3,000+ words y'all, ain't ya happy?
Joyce asks Lilith to stay over one night when she has to work a night shift, Jonathan is out with Nancy on a date, and Steve has Jane Duty. Lilith had declined hanging out with them because she wasn't feeling too great, had a headache that felt like ice-picks stabbing the backs of her eyes, and she was just going to lay in bed in her trailer but then Joyce called to ask if she could come over to watch Will.
Lilith knew that Nancy had planned a night out with Jonathan and she didn't want them to cancel their date just because Joyce is too scared to leave her younger son by himself. They've probably had to do that a few times now, and that's entirely unfair to all three kids involved.
Besides, she has a lot in common with Will, so it's not like she's going to complain about spending time with the kid.
There was a day when she told the Party that she drew the dragon Steve gave them, and that's when Will started to really warm up to her. They would trade drawings, or finish each others projects and call it a collaboration with matching grins. The end result of their shared artwork is always so freakin' awesome! There was also that time, one day after school, when he heard The Clash playing through her headphones.
Their friendship became a solid thing after that happened. A thing that was quiet and enjoyable when everything -or everyone- around them was too loud and annoying.
She gets to the Byers' place and Joyce rushes through a list of things. Rules and just-in-case stuff and when she'll be back, along with explaining that Will spaces out and walks around sometimes. She gives a quick explanation -a lie, actually- of how it has to do with the week he went missing, and the trauma of it. Tries her hardest to make it seem like it's not a big deal but also a huge fucking deal at the same time. Then she runs out the door, hops in her car, and peels out of the driveway.
Lilith settles on the couch while Will sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, and the two of them spend most of the night watching stupid TV and drawing together. She gives him tips on how to make a person look a little more realistic. He teaches her how to draw fantasy stuff, starting with the Party's D&D personas.
They're in the middle of an episode of Dukes of Hazard and their respective drawings when Will suddenly freezes. He drops the red crayon he'd been using and stares off into space with a look of horror. Lilith watches him curiously as he stands up and walks slowly to the front door, still staring at something she can't see.
Joyce had warned her that this might happen, but never told her what to do if it did. Does she go over and shake him out of it? Should she call Joyce at work? Maybe she should call Steve and ask him, because this might have happened to Will while he was babysitting.
Actually, no, she can do this on her own.
She thinks so, anyway...
Lilith stands up and cautiously makes her way over to Will, who has now opened the front door and walked out onto the front porch to stare at the night sky for some odd reason.
She snorts.
'Odd reason'? This whole situation is 'odd'!
Lilith gently places her hands on Will's shoulders and steers him back into the house, walking him over to one of the chairs in the kitchen so she can force him to sit down. Standing next to him with a hand still holding one of his shoulders, she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She has to calm down, just breathe and concentrate on the small body of strange energy sitting in front of her.
It takes a couple of minutes for anything to happen.
Cold, dark, something that looks like snow floating through the air.
An open field with nothing around for miles but trees and sky and the floaters in the air.
She almost gasps, but manages to hold it back even though it's already halfway out of her throat. There's a voice in the back of her head nagging at her to stay quiet, and she decides listening to that voice is the best thing to do right now.
In front of her, a few feet away rather than right in front of her like he was minutes ago, is Will. His back is turned to her as he stares up at the sky. The dark, dark sky, completely devoid of stars and a moon.
"It's gone." He mumbles.
His quiet voice echoes across the empty lot, making it sound like they're in a small room instead of out in the open.
She wonders for a second what he means.
Is he talking about the moon and stars? Or is there something that's usually up there that she doesn't know about?
"It's really gone..."
She rushes over to him and places both hands on his shoulders again before asking what he means. It takes him a while to answer, she has to ask a couple times before he properly responds, and when he does he sounds so hazy that she starts to worry even more.
"The Mind Flayer. It's... gone. It's actually gone."
"The what?"
Silence.
"Y'know what? Nevermind. We gotta go. Now."
She pulls him back, holding him tight against her stomach and chest, wrapping her arms around his upper body to maybe keep them both warm in... wherever they are.
She takes two steps back, dragging Will along with her, but stops when she hears something.
(Low guttural groans and high-pitched screeches, accompanied by a clicking noise.)
She shudders and swallows the lump that just formed in her throat. Closes her eyes and tells herself to wake up, wake up, wake up!
She opens her eyes and it's there.
(All terrifyingly lanky limbs, disgusting grey skin, and claws that could and most likely will kill her.)
Will sees it too, and finally snaps out of his trance. He turns his head to look up at Lilith over his shoulder with eyes just as wide and terrified as she thinks her own are. Then he turns completely around, seemingly trying to burrow into her midsection for safety, muttering over and over-
"Not again, not again, not again..."
She tightens her grip on him, one hand on the back of his head and the other arm wrapped around his shoulders, holding him as close as physically possible while she stares at the monster.
(It hunches down, then leaps at her with it's maw open and she knows this is the end.)
She squeezes her eyes shut then, and begs herself to pull them out of Will's dream. She doesn't want to come back into reality screaming along with him while the monster rips them apart int he dream world.
Or, y'know, possibly die in the dream to also die in real life.
She begs one last time to any deity out there as she hears the creature make that horrible sound again.
They both come out of the episode with a sharp gasp. Lilith falls backwards onto her ass against the kitchen floor, hard, probably bruising her hip with the impact. Will whips around in his seat to stare at her. His face is the same as it had been in the dream, just before he buried his face into her shirt.
Eyes wide and terrified...
She throws her hands up like she's surrendering and nervously exclaims, "Don't freak out!"
Will nods slowly in response.
A full five minutes pass before they sit down to talk.
Lilith's nose had started to bleed quite a bit while she was using her powers. So much, actually, that a small puddle formed just in front of where her feet had been, and she decided cleaning that up took priority over the impending questions they both had.
Also, she doesn't want to have this conversation and she's been stalling to avoid it, but it has happen sooner or later so...
Should've just called someone, she chastises bitterly.
She throws out the bloody toilet paper she'd used to clean herself up and checks for any left over blood under her nose or around her lips. Will is visible in the corner of the bathroom mirror, sitting on the closed toilet, patiently waiting for their little chat to begin.
She sighs, turns, and leans back against the sink.
Surprisingly, he the first thing he asks about has very little to do with her powers.
"Does Steve know you can do that?"
She cringes and mutters a barely audible, "Not yet..."
"You should tell him."
"Well, I was trying to figure out how-"
"He wont freak out, if that's what you're worried about." He tells her, "He fought the monster during that week I went missing. It was guna eat Jonathan and he came in with his bat."
The conversation pauses for a second so she can process that information, and the line of Q&A that follows their break doesn't exactly line up all that well.
"Wait, your brother's seen that thing too?"
"We call it the Demogorgon, like the DnD monster."
"And Steve fought it?"
"It took me to another dimension. We call it the Upside Down."
"Who else?" She snaps, tone of voice unintentionally dipping into the pool of panic and pissed off that's been slowly filling up since they started their back-and-forth. "Who else has seen it?"
"The whole Party knows." He replies, obviously ignoring her the way she asked. "It took me, so the guys went out to look for me, but then some stuff happened. Jonathan and Nancy went hunting for it because Nancy was sure it took her friend Barb, then Steve showed up and he helped them try to kill it. I don't know everything because I wasn't actually there, but I'm sure they all know."
"Max too?"
"Yeah. Last year there was a new version of the monster and she helped fight them. She wasn't supposed to be there but she just... kinda got wrapped up in all this crap by accident, and now she knows all of it."
Lilith covers her face with her hands. She wants to scream, to cry, to hit something! Anything to distract herself, to make herself forget that this is even happening. Instead, she lets out a strained cross between a groan and a long-winded squeak and drops to the floor. Then brings her knees up to her chest and lets out a fairly pathetic-sounding whimper.
"But if you have powers, isn't that good?" Will asks, probably to shift the topic off of traumatic monsters.
"I wanted to get away from the bad shit!" She cries into her hands, "I dealt with that old bitch and her family for years just so I could get away from it! And when we got here I thought Oh, small town, nothing exciting will happen here. But no! No, I find out that monsters are real and now someone else knows what I can do-"
Will cuts her off with a rushed, "El can too!"
She laughs, a short and dry laugh that's more exhausted than anything else, and gives Will a tired smile. "I know. I saw the tattoo."
Lilith looks at her wrist, the one with the ever-present leather cuff, then reaches over and roughly takes it off so she can show him her number. When she holds her hand out and Will sees the tattoo on her wrist, he freezes for a couple seconds. But then he looks at her, and the dorky little smile he gives her slows down her pulse just enough to help her not feel so much like she's having a Goddamn heart attack.
"You're in luck!" He cheers dramatically, obviously trying to cheer Lilith up with theatrics. "Our weird little family loves taking in people with superpowers and tattoos."
"Family? Like you and Joyce an-"
"No, everyone." He rolls his eyes and she chuckles, "The guys, Max, Hopper and Mom, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan. They all accepted El, why not you too?"
Suddenly, Lilith is overcome with a sense of Hope; something she's never properly felt before. And it's accompanied by a feeling of elation and maybe even a little pride for having this stupid 'gift'. All these people, the 'weird little family' as Will called them, are accepting of people like Jane, which means other people like herself as well. All of them. If she told them what she could do she wouldn't have to hide anymore. Not from them, anyway.
But...
"No." She whispers, glancing up through her lashes at Will, who's giving her a weird look. "I can't. It's- it's cool. Freakin' awesome, actually. But I can't. Not right now, anyway."
He nods, "I get it."
"You do?"
"They'll treat you different." He says with a lazy shrug, "Everyone treated me like I was made of glass when I got back and I hated it. I still hate it. If you tell them, they might treat you differently too. My mom babies El sometimes because El was kind of, um, childish when they found her. She didn't talk much and didn't know what a lot of words meant or what some normal, everyday things were because the lab had her since she was born and never taught her stuff."
"They tried to erase my memories." Lilith tells him bitterly, "They stuck this thing in my face everyday for what felt like forever, and it would flash and my head would pound. Eventually I forgot stuff like my name, my family's faces, how old I was..."
"I coughed up slugs for months after I got back from the Upside Down. The Demogorgon laid eggs in my stomach with this weird tube that went down my thro-"
Lilith grimaces, "Dude, gross. Please don't."
They smile at each other then. Tired, sad smiles that radiate I understand, and then Will says, "Just promise you'll tell someone. Even if it's just Steve. It might be good to have someone you can talk to about... stuff."
She nods, "Do you have someone?"
Will looks down at his feet, "Nobody else was in there for a week and came out alive, so not really. But Nancy went though a Gate in the forest, and Hopper and Mom went in to get me. Plus, El was there for a little while after she killed it." He looks up again, smiling weakly at her. "I talked to Mike about the Mind Flayer last year, when everyone thought El was dead. He was the only one who wouldn't give up on her and he was sure he was able to feel her, I don't know, presence or something. I felt like that was close enough, but he was right and she's back now, so I'm crazy by myself again."
Lilith snorts just before she stands up. Once she's on her feet she rests her hands on her hips and smiles down at him.
Will is supposed to be a little ray of sunshine even though he's all kinds of fucked up. He's supposed to smile and show her that even the really bad shit can't keep you down all the time. But right now he's all frowns and sadness, and that's just not right in Lilith's opinion.
He looks up at her, confused by her sudden change in mood. Especially when she reaches out to take his hands and pulls him to his feet.
"I'm crazy too." She tells him, all serious and shit, but smiling at the same time. "I have nightmares if I don't sleep next to someone. Some of them are about this thing I'd never seen before tonight. A thing that's apparently named after a monster from some nerdy board game." She smirks at him and he gives her a small smile back, "And I'm crazy for using my weak-ass telekinesis to put force behind every punch I throw at Billy Hargrove, even though it wears me the Hell out."
He laughs as she pulls him out of the bathroom by his hands, both of them stepping awkwardly. Lilith because she can't see where she's going, and Will because she's going too fast for his short legs to keep up. He has to try his hardest not to stumble with every step.
"I'm crazy because according to the normal people-" she says normal like it's the worst insult imaginable. Will grins up at her. "-anyone who lives the way I have for the last decade has to be absolutely nuts!"
He laughs again, leading them down the hall to the living room. Once there, she spins them both around in quick circles, almost like they're dancing, but more like they're just stupidly trying to make themselves dizzy.
"And apparently I'm crazy for dating Steve Harrington. No clue why, exactly, but I've heard a bunch of people say so."
They slowly stop spinning until they're just standing there, looking at each other with matching dopey grins. Lilith lets go of Will's hands and drops down to crouch so she's at eye level with him because she feels like maybe being at the same height as him might help the point she's about to make sink in.
"You're not crazy. You've just seen some really traumatic, basically supernatural, shit. Shit that would give even the toughest adults issues. Hell, I'm sure Hopper would be having episodes like that too, if he'd been in your place. Nobody should ever have to see or go through that kinda thing, let alone a freakin' kid." Will's got this glassy thing going on with his eyes, but it doesn't look like she's lost him yet, so she continues. "I'm not guna treat you like glass, lil dude. If everyone does then it'll just screw with you, and all you really wanna do is be a normal kid, right?"
Instead of answering he asks, "Were you normal?"
"Before, yeah." She nods, the smirks. "I mean, I floated a cookie off the counter here and there, pushed a bully onto his ass with my mind once, and read my brother's mind a few times to get some blackmail material. Other than that I was your typical, American, outcast of a little girl."
"Cool."
"Meh." She gives a lazy half-shrug, then gets back into Serious Mode to continue her pep-talk. "Anyway, my point is that I'll never treat you the way everyone else does. And you can always ask your mom to call me instead of Steve. She might think you've got a crush on me-" He makes a disgusted face with a noise to match and she gives him a mock-hurt look in return, then rolls her eyes. "-but... at least I'll be here to pull you out of one of those again. We can talk, too. I think I know more than I should about all this Upside Down crap, but I need some info to go along with the stuff I've only seen."
"That sounds really good, actually."
"Like free therapy for both of us."
That's the first time Will hugs her and Lilith can't help but think that for someone so small, he's surprisingly strong when it comes to bear-hugs like that.
So, that's how that happens.
Lilith earns a permanent position as Will's babysitter when Joyce and Jonathan have other things going on. Sometimes Steve joins them, but about ninety percent of the time it's just the two of them.
She enjoys those days a lot.
They happen more often when Lilith explains to Joyce that payment isn't necessary. There's a bit of bickering before the woman finally gives in, albeit very reluctantly. Lilith has to convince her that's it's not because the Byers' financial situation, because Lilith is poor too. Sure, she could definitely use the cash, but she'll get a real job before she takes money from Joyce; who needs it more than Lilith does.
No, she takes the job because Will is honestly one of her top three favourites of the kids. Always has been, always will be; even before they're little chat about powers and acceptance. She likes that he's quiet and polite. It's stuff they have in common. Just like their shared artistic interests and similar taste in music.
She'll gladly do some pro-bono babysitting if it means chatting with a kid she's pretty fond of who:
1) Knows about her powers.
2) Is understanding of her reasons for not telling the others about said powers.
3) Is willing to be pseudo-therapist buddies with her.
It helps them both, and it's good for a little bit of fun now and then.
Now El and Will both know about Lilith, so that should be good for future chapters.
It might make Revelation Day (2.0) kinda awkward, maybe even give it a bit of tension, but that's all good, right?
I think so, at least.
Tell me what you think!(?)
