Author's Note: This is my first fanfic so bare with me, I will try my best to deliver quality content in a timely manner. I do not own the concept of Stranger Things or the Character's in the story, but simply am adding onto the ending. Critiques are welcome. Thank you and enjoy!

October 20th 1985

The thick air clung to her face, legs, and bits of skin exposed through the holes in her now faded and grimy pink dress. She was weaker and more delicate by the day, and had been for the past year, yet, by some miracle of the universe, she was still existing. Her heart, beating and her lungs still pulling air in and pushing air out of her hunger ridden body. But the world around her was an unforgiving place, full of monsters, toxins with different elements of this dimension congealed onto every surface. The chill never left the air and there was never a place to get dry. You could swear you saw mold growing on her feet if you looked at the child now. Her body was jagged, emaciated from weeks without food. The food in the mysterious box had served her well for a handful of months; but other monsters started to realize they could prey on her by waiting by it. She had been able to slip past them less and less as she got sicker and her powers grew less effective. It had been weeks since she had last been to the box and she felt the fire in her now bloated and starved belly. She had been trying to conserve her energy by laying in the blanket fort in Mike's basement, covering herself in the soggy blankets and occasionally mustering up enough energy to try and reach the other side with the boxy radio still here waiting for her. A couple times she could have sworn she had heard voices, their voices, exclamations of excitement. Or, at times she had heard an unfamiliar voice, of a lady, comforting, or stern. But she had only been able to do this a handful of times as her abilities were limited from weakness.

Her hair at first had started to grow out, but through lack of nourishment her body had to slow down and conserve itself to stay alive, most of the hair she had grown had fallen out. She was pale and moving too much caused her pain. She didn't know what to do, but she knew she needed to get back to the other side. To where there was Mike and Eggos. She currently lay in the blanket fort, desperately trying to keep herself warm, even though it was a fruitless effort, and getting up to courage to make the trip to the gate, the gate that lead to the bad men, the men that she never wanted to see again. If only she had enough energy to make another one, somewhere else, she would. But at the moment as she started to doze into a restless state of sleep that was the least of her worries.

Things hadn't been quite the same on the other side either, the group of goofy and carefree preteens had changed quite a lot from the year before. While still playful, they didn't have as many moments of laughing to tears in Mike's basement or Castle Byers. Dustin and Lucas, the lesser affected, had grown more serious, less likely to take crap from people. Mike had turned from the leader that he had been before, to an inwardly troubled boy who was often moody and depressed. Will, well he was another story, he had PTSD, from his week in the Upside Down and was jumpy, constantly looking around and hated being in the dark, especially alone. He was less lively, more timid and was wakened nightly by terrors. But they understood each other, for all they had been through they supported and understood what they were all going through. They didn't usually talk about the happenings of the year before. Unless something of importance came up, then they all chipped in with their ideas and knowledge. But these instances were few and far between. Will had eventually disclosed the slug situation but made them promise not to tell the adults, or even Jonathan or Nancy. They still didn't know much about it seeing as it only happened once every few weeks. They had, however found the best way of killing the body invaders were to douse them in gasoline and burn the little suckers. It smelled horrible, but got the job done. They had started middle school which was going as well as could be expected. They were still the odd ones out, still pursued by Troy and his group of goons on the daily.

Nancy and Steve were still prosperous in their relationship going on a year now, and Steve could be seen in the Wheeler's living room with the family most nights, or down in the basement with Nancy and the rest of the boys. The siblings had started hanging out more after the events of last year, they had become closer. Jonathan hung out there too, when he wasn't working that is, and was even friends with Steve, having gotten over the fight of last year. It wasn't a perfect world and there were still some tense moments but for the most part things were good.

As for the Wheeler parents, things had gone pretty much back to normal with Karen growing increasingly more annoyed with Ted's lack of caring. Holly was now in pre-school which gave Karen time to do more stuff for herself. She had a few friends in the neighborhood that would come over for dinners occasionally, sometimes the Wheelers would go over to other people's houses. She had noticed the change in her children though, as any parent would have, and just for the life of her couldn't deduct what the matter was with her concern of her's had lead her to seek the help of Joyce, who had explained Mike's attachment to the stranger girl from the year before that the government had shown them a picture of. Karen had never met this girl with the buzzed head, and was baffled that her son had grown so close to her, without his parents even being aware of her presence in the house.

When asked about the girl, Joyce felt a tightening in her chest, she didn't really know all that much about her, but she was sure that she had gone through some shit. It was the mother in her that yearned to be able to hold her little body again, to make sure that she was fine and to give her peace in the world. Cause she surely had not felt that the girl had had peace in her life at all. But it didn't do to dwell on things that could not be changed, she didn't know what had happened to the girl and to be honest, didn't really know where she had come from. She told Karen this when she enquired about her, telling her only things that she could remember. How the girl had been pale and never looked like she was comfortable. How she held herself tensely, ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. Karen had felt her heart go out to this child she had never met when she heard about the sadness in her eyes, and the way she whispered words at a time, not knowing how to make proper sentences. But what could she do, she never even seen the child let alone interacted with her. Plus she had 3 kids of her own at home, 4 if you counted Ted, which sometimes she did.

Of Course Joyce knew that Hopper knew more than he had said, to her or to anybody. She often thought about getting the information out of him, but was always either too busy or too scared at what she might find out to ask. Not that she knew he would tell her, but they had grown closer in the past months since the demogorgon had been killed. As of right now, she couldn't really pinpoint what exactly they were, some nights they would hang out and drink beers in silence or with a quiet chatter, but then they wouldn't see each other for days.

Hopper himself was another story. He hadn't gotten over the small girl that sacrificed herself for a boy she had never met. He felt a pang of guilt in his stomach at the thought of how he had given up her place to that Dr. Brenner and his minions. He should have lied about her location, told them they were hiding her in the basement of the police station or something like that. Or that she had run south. But he hadn't, and she was gone now. Well not gone per say, she wasn't in this dimension, that was a fact; but she was in that other world. He had gotten worried if she was even still alive after almost every trip to the box in the woods to bring her food had him throwing out the food that was in there from the last time. She wasn't eating, and that was a bad sign. He thought about Sarah in these moments, how her appetite had gone toward the end. These quests were proving more and more taxing on his mental state and he would usually go home and pop a few pills before turning in for the night after giving the new food to the box. But there was a glimmer of hope that kept him going, that maybe she was still alive. He had seen what she had been through, and knew she was strong. However, over the past 5 or so months he had been losing that hope that she was still alive.

This is how life was for everyone, and it went on, slowly for some and faster for others, in the not so peaceful town of Hawkins Indiana. But that was all about to change, and none of them even saw it coming.