A/N: Hi, everyone! I'm so glad you all loved the last two chapters, I am definitely very proud of them myself. Thank you for the lovely reviews, they put a smile on my face every time!
This chapter was much harder to write for me because I decided to tackle Dustin's POV. I absolutely adore his character, however, Dustin and I are two very different people and it proved itself to be challenging. I apologize if I did not capture him as accurately as a could have, but if you have any constructive criticism that you think I could benefit from, I would love to hear it.
DUSTIN / Search Party
On a Saturday in early December the party spent their weekend as they did any other: On the floor of Steve Harrington's living room fighting over what movie they should rewatch for the hundredth time, for no reason other than this was Hawkins, and their paladin had been to busy sucking face with his girlfriend to write any new D&D campaigns, so there was nothing else to do.
Except this time the fight was lasting a lot longer than usual because there was no El or Max or Rose around to suggest something entirely different for all the boys to scoff at before unanimously agreeing to. Instead, while Lucas and Dustin were pushing Back to the Future, Mike and Will were fighting for The Empire Strikes Back, and Steve was claiming he "couldn't care less about that nerd shit," the girls were all off at the Byers'.
Since Nancy was home from college for the weekend and Rose had not really left the house since she went blind, Joyce had suggested that they all get together for a 'girl's day.' Dustin did not know what the hell that meant, but he could only imagine how uncomfortable the idea of Nancy and Rose hanging out was for Steve. The thought typically would have amused Dustin, but for now he was just frustrated with his bickering friends.
"Ugh," Dustin groaned when he was officially fed up. "Just put on The Empire Strikes Back, it doesn't even matter."
"Traitor," Lucas muttered.
Will frowned. "If you really want, Lucas, we can watch Back to the Future. Dustin's right, it really doesn't matter."
"Uuugh," Dustin groaned again before pulling himself to his feet. "You're all hopeless. I need snacks."
"Oh, grab me some Pringles!" Lucas called after him.
"Yeah, yeah," Dustin sighed as he made his way into the kitchen and over to Steve.
The older boy stood with the contents of Rose's old medical file spread across the counter. He reviewed each page over and over as if new information would suddenly jump out at him. It seemed like Steve viewed it as a puzzle to be solved rather than what it actually was: a boring medical chart for what seemed to be the healthiest girl in America. Dustin wanted to tell him that his efforts were pointless, but having never seen Steve study anything so hard in his life, Dustin decided to spare him.
"Are you still trying to get something out of all this?" Dustin asked, joining Steve and picking up a graph that illustrated Rose's height over the years.
Steve sighed dejectedly, but never took his eyes from the paper in front of him. "I don't know what any of this shit means."
"Well, you're not exactly a doctor," Dustin reminded him.
Steve did not respond, he just began shuffling through more of the papers. One in particular caught Dustin's eye and he claimed it. It was a page of basic medical information that was just as boring as the rest of the pile, but it was the wallet-sized picture paperclipped to the corner that caught his eye.
It was Rose, who could have easily looked like a normal high schooler if it were not for the shaved head and familiar expression reminding Dustin of the night they found El in the woods. In the picture, she could not have been much older than Dustin was now, and he found it weird to think about, but it's the path his train of thought started down, anyways.
If Rose really had been fourteen in the picture, then it would have been taken when Dustin was eight. At that point, he had not even moved to Hawkins yet, and would not for another two years. But while he was off being blissfully oblivious and doing whatever it was second graders did, Rose and El and probably many others were trapped in that lab. Robbed of the simple childhood experiences he had been offered. The picture in his hands made it feel surreal. Not that he had ever doubted anything Rose or El had told him, but having proof from the inside caused the reality to settle in deeper than it ever had before. Dustin felt his stomach twist.
"It's weird, right?" Steve asked when he noticed Dustin staring at the picture.
For whatever reason Dustin could not take his eyes off of the photo, and even felt his gaze narrow at it. Her young face felt haunting, and he decided to cope with it the only way he knew how. "Since she's a twin, do you think there's a possibility that they took a picture of one of them and used it in both of their files?" he joked.
Steve smirked at the comment but once again did not reply. The guy had himself so stressed about Rose that he had not been in a joking mood too often lately. Instead he began piling the papers back into the manila folder.
"Do you miss her yet?" Dustin teased, referring to Rose having been out of the house for an entire hour now, as he handed over the page.
"Not as much as you do," Steve fired back, finally feeding into Dustin's banter. It had become a running joke that Dustin always had crushes on whoever Steve was dating, though he had never actually admitted to any of them. The fact that both Nancy and Rose had each told him something along the lines of him being 'cute' and the type of guy that 'any girl would be lucky to have' only gave Dustin's friends more ammunition against him.
Dustin could not even say he had a crush on Rose, like everyone assumed he did. Sure, he thought she was pretty, but knew most guys would. Other than that she was a really great friend and a fun person to be around, and hanging out with her and Steve was a much needed break from all of the everyday stress and drama that comes with being in high school. More than anything, he and Rose had formed a strong sibling-like bond, but Dustin had learned better than to try and reason with his friends and found it easier to play along. "It's not my fault your girlfriend likes me better than you."
"She did say you're cute…"
Ugh. There's that word again. Cute. It's what you call a puppy or a two-year-old, and Dustin was neither.
He was brainstorming his next jab when Lucas called from the living room. "Dustin! The Pringles!"
"Okay, man. Jeez!" he called back, quickly grabbing the chips and a few other snacks from the cupboard.
He made his way over to the living room, dropping the junk food on the floor between his friends. Steve trailed behind, and all five boys all jumped in surprise when a familiar but unexpected voice rang through the room.
"Hello?" a man called through all of their Supercoms. "Mike? Will? Anyone?"
They all looked to each other, confused. "Is that Hopper?" Mike asked upon recognising the voice.
"Only one way to find out," said Dustin, reaching over for his walkie talkie. "Dustin copies," he said into the device, hearing his own voice echoed out through the other boys' raidos.
"Dustin! It's Hopper, are you with Harrington?"
It was unusual for Hop to contact them over the radio. He only ever did it when he was working in the Blazer and would not be near a phone anytime soon. It even more unusual for him to request anyone other than Mike, and even that was just to check up on El. Though the request puzzled him, Dustin wasted no time turning to Steve and holding out the Supercom. "It's for you."
"Why?" Steve asked rhetorically as he snatched the walkie talkie out of Dustin's hand. He pushed the button and spoke into the radio. "This is Steve."
The whole room waited in anticipation for a beat before Hop's tinny voice filled the room again. "Steve, we've got a... uh, situation. I need you to bring the boys and meet me at the corner of Mirkwood and Franklin." The stress was evident in his voice, even over the radio.
"Why?" Steve asked again, this time into the Supercom.
"Just hurry, kid. When I see you, I'll explain."
The drive to the corner of Mirkwood and Franklin was a silent one, and Dustin knew he could cut the tension in the car with a knife. Everyone was on edge, and the only clue Hopper had given was in his sense of urgency. With what they have all been through, the possibilities were endless.
When they got to their destination, they saw Hop's police Blazer parked on a patch of grass near the edge of the woods. Steve pulled up and parked next to him while Hop jumped out of his car.
"Is everyone okay?" Steve asked immediately as he and the kids all piled out of his own vehicle.
"Everyone's fine," Hop assured as he unfolded the map in his hands, spreading it over the hood of the Blazer.
"So what's going on?" Dustin asked, having had enough of the suspense.
Hopper motioned for them all to gather around and pulled a pen from the pocket of his uniform. "I saw two girls walking -"
"Girls?" Dustin interrupted. It was already ridiculous, he saw girls walking every day.
The chief gave a long sigh and rubbed his forehead. "Let me finish, and then you can ask questions."
"Sorry," Dustin mumbled, looking down to his feet and kicking a rock on the ground.
"I saw two girls walking in the woods here," Hopper continued, indicating where with an 'X' on the map. "I couldn't get a good look at them, but they were both in hospital gowns. One was young but tall and blonde, the other had a shaved head and darker looking hair."
Hopper continued by drawing a circle around an expanse of trees, overlapping the first mark, along with another 'X' along the edge of those woods, not too far from the first. "We're here, at this second X, but they could be anywhere in these woods."
"What if they're not?" Dustin thought out loud.
"Then we'll figure it out," the chief huffed through clenched teeth.
"Do you think it's another test subject?" Mike asked.
"I thought the D.O.E. shut down," said Lucas.
Hopper chose to ignore Lucas' comment. It did not matter that the lab shut down a year ago. This was Hawkins, and they had all learned the hard way that anything could happen, especially when it came to girls with buzzcuts. He answered Mike instead. "Could be. That's why we need to find them before anyone else does."
They all nodded in agreement, except for Will who, thanks to interdimensional monsters, had always been left out of these kinds of adventures in the past.
Steve was the first to speak after a brief moment of silence. "So what's the plan, Chief?"
The search party had split up into two groups. Hopper, Mike, and Will would drive around the perimeter of the wooded area to see if they had begun walking along the side of the road again. Meanwhile, Dustin found himself trailing behind Steve with Lucas while they trekked through the trees, doing all the hard work. Not that he minded too much, he was the 'Compass Genius' after all.
Dustin looked over to Lucas just in time to see him pull a camouflage bandana from the pocket of his winter jacket. "Dude, why do you have that with you?"
"In case of an emergency," Lucas shrugged, wrapping it around his forehead and knotting it tightly in the back.
Dustin could not help but scoff. "Of all the things to carry in case of an emergency, you chose that? What about your slingshot?"
"The wrist rocket isn't exactly pocket-sized, genius."
Dustin rolled his eyes at his friend, but deep down he knew Lucas' bandana was all too fitting, and a search through the woods near Mirkwood would not be the same without it.
"Besides," Lucas continued. "We're not fighting a Demogorgon today, we're finding two lost girls in the woods. The wrist rocket would just scare them off."
Just when Dustin was about to make some sort of comment about how Lucas' face would scare them off plenty, he realized something. If Mike was right and at least one of these girls were test subjects, then they had to be numbered. Right?
"Lucas? What number do you think we're looking for?"
Lucas furrowed his brow, unable to follow Dustin's train of thought. "What?"
"If they really are test subjects, which numbers do you think they're gonna be?" Dustin clarified.
Lucas just shrugged. "I hadn't thought about it."
"Well, think about it! We know Ten and Eleven…"
"Eight's in Chicago."
"And it can't be Nine because she's dead -"
"So you could just pick a number between one and seven, really."
Steve, a few paces ahead of them, had stayed silent and focused for the most part, and was doing his best to actually search for these girls, unlike the eternally bantering boys behind him. Suddenly, he stopped short in his tracks, but Lucas and Dustin were so preoccupied they nearly ran into him.
"I thought I heard something," he explained, pausing for a moment to listen before continuing on his path through the woods. "Did you dipshits ever consider twelve?"
The dipshits had not, in fact, considered the possibility of there being any numbers past eleven. The more Dustin thought about it, the more he felt his jaw drop at the idea. Steve grew a smug look on his face at the boys' stunned expressions.
After a drawn out beat, Lucas was the first to speak. "How many do you think there are?"
Steve scoffed. "How the hell would I know?"
"Do you think they're both test subjects, or just the one with the shaved head?" Dustin asked.
"I'd guess both," Lucas answered. "If you think about it, they kept Eight and Eleven together for a while, and Nine and Ten together their whole lives. This could be like Seven and Twelve, or Twelve and Thirteen, or Six and Seven. They could've been kept together and escaped together. Besides, who else would the blonde girl be?"
"Where would they be keeping them together if Hawkins Lab shut down?" Dustin argued.
Lucas threw his hands up in frustration. "I don't know! Do you have a better theory?"
"Guys," Steve interrupted, but was promptly ignored.
"No, but when we find them, I'll be sure to ask!"
"Guys," Steve repeated much more sternly.
"If they're anything like El, they won't be telling you much."
"Guys!" Steve shouted over them, stopping once again. The boys shut up, and Steve tilted his head to listen to a distant yet certain sound. Leaves rustling. Then the crack of a branch in the distance. "Did you hear that?"
