There were a few ways a person could react to surprising events happening to them.

Some people froze up, startled by change and slow to adapt.

Some people recoiled, saving first themself before all else.

Some people faced it head-on, attacking first and asking questions later.

Joyce was the last type.

With all the terrifying, supernatural things happening lately, the fleshy section of her wall was less concerning than her son's voice on the other side, terrified and calling out for her. It was only reasonable, in her mind, to help in any way she could. Attack first.

Until finally - finally! - she had her youngest son back in her arms, sobbing and smelling of death and old earth. Joy was not a word that could have encompassed the flux of emotions collapsing around her in starbursts of galaxies too all-encompassing to name.

There was only a moment of silence after the wall closed. A moment to hold her boy, to feel his breath and his trembling and the choked hitch of his chest that said Alive! He was alive!

The body they'd pulled from the lake, the one they'd identified as her son - who looked so similar it was terrifying - wasn't her son. She was holding him, she had been right . She needed to tell Johnathan, needed to tell Hopper because someone out there wanted her to give up and leave him lost in a dark place that could be reached through a barrier that tore and stank like days-old flesh.

A soft shift of cloth caught her attention, and Joyce looked up from her methodical smoothing of his hair, from the tight, clawed grasp around his waist. No one could take him away again!

For a brief moment, her swirling mind didn't recognize the girl in front of her. Her eyes catalogued the injuries with an almost distant sort of calculation, the rest of her body honed in and tuned to the child in her arms.

The moment passed, and recognition jolted.

"Barb-" She started, and when brown eyes flicked up to meet hers, Joyce couldn't help but stare at the ragged furrows gouged into her cheek and neck, bright starbursts of color radiating pink across her fair skin with either irritation or infection.

Joyce kissed her son's forehead, the smell and slime irrelevant through one last squeeze of affection, affirmation, possession. She wanted nothing more but to soothe his tears, but there was another problem in front of her, and her instincts drove her to act.

Will clung tighter, twitching panicked when she started to push him away, his wide eyes and desperate expression looking years younger than he was.

"We need to get you both to the hospital" She murmured, and the logic of that seemed to penetrate Will's mind rather quickly. He loosened his grip, legs wobbling like a fawn as he stood up with her, still pressing close to her side, head tucked under her arm. Seeking protection under her wings.

"Barb, sweetie, can you walk?" Joyce felt her hands fluttering between reaching out and hurrying to call an ambulance. She felt the question turn over in her head, even as the girl's expression turned confused, eyes scanning the unmarked wall they'd fallen out of.

That made her decision for her.

Joyce let Will cling along, let him lean against her hip as she punched 911 into her phone, thoughts scrambling for the words to say. How could she explain this? Was it even possible to explain?

" 911, what's your emergency?"

"Hi, this is Joyce Byer, I need an ambulance sent to my house immediately." A breath, a hesitation pulling her throat closed for just a moment as she wondered about the body, the lies about her son, the sharp paranoia hovering around Hopper. "My son, Will Byers, and Barbara Holland are at my house - Barbara is really hurt, she looks like she was mauled by an animal - tooth marks." She heard an intake of breath - surprise? - before the operator started rustling around on the other end.

"Can you confirm the address?"

Joyce rattled off their road and house number, watching her son tentatively touch the wall by her new phone, craning his head to look around at the christmas lights strung in an electronic web around the house. He looked so scared.

"What are their ages?"

"Twelve and ...Fifteen, I think?" She only knew Barbara through

"Are both of them conscious?" She had to check, but Barbara was still sitting up, head lolling back against the coffee table and turning in the same bewildered examination of the house that Will was caught up in.

"Yes."

"Can you go into more detail about their injuries?"

"Will is standing, walking, he looks confused, but not dazed." Joyce herded them back toward where the teen sat, stretching the phone's cord as far as it would go - just long enough to crouch next to the girl. "Sweetie, where else are you hurt?"

"Everywhere." Will's rasping voice surprised her, his fingers digging into her sweater. "I think her leg is the worst, though."

The emergency operator seemed to be aware a conversation was going on, and didn't press as Joyce coaxed Barbara into letting her pull the bottom hem of her sweatpants up.

She got to about mid-calf before her brain processed what exactly she was seeing, and a moan of sympathy was strangled out of her.

"She- Barbara-" Her voice was shaking, she had to be clear, they had to know how to fix her- "Barbara's left leg is… really bad. There's a- ah, a large part of her calf missing , and it, it- was bit-" She swallowed, pinning the phone between her ear and shoulder, trying to be as gentle as possible as she pulled the elastic hem away and up. Joyce could only whisper, muscles coiled tight in sympathetic pain as her mind twitched sideways in an attempt to stay on track - they needed her.

"It looks infected - there's dark veins radiating from... Stitches. Someone tried to give her stitches, but her skin is really red" Who could give her stitches? She still didn't know the details of Will's disappearance. Had they been kidnapped? A hundred awful scenarios whisked through her head, but none of them explained how they'd returned, how Will had been able to communicate through the lights.

None of it explained the creature that had clawed out through her wall.

They sat together for a short while, answering questions, prodding Barbara to keep her focused on them instead of lolling her head in a daze. She was clearly sick- skin clammy even beyond the strange fluid of the doorway, fair skin nearly ashen grey, freckles and torn skin standing out in sharp relief.

Will was likewise pale, but as he shed the unfamiliar jacket and rubbed some of the goo from his head with the less-filthy shirt underneath, he still seemed healthy enough. Color was coming back to his cheeks and lips, at least, like the slow path back to warmth after staying out in the snow for too long.

At long last, she heard sirens wailing toward them, and told the dispatcher as much, leaving the phone on the floor to shuffle with Will and unlock the front door for them.

The next half- hour was a whirl of EMT's and flashing lights, knees bumping against Will's as she held him in the back of the Ambulance, the two of them watching Barbara's breath fog up the inside of an oxygen mask. The two of them tried to be inconspicuous as the EMT's continued to move over her, checking blood pressure and heartbeat, examining the stitches and calling out terminology to each other that she only roughly grasped.

Will leaned into her every touch, clearly exhausted, yet walking a razor's edge of fear at every new movement. She could feel the tremors just under his skin, the way his muscles tensed and jumped every time someone moved unexpectedly, or when the ambulance rocked suddenly.

She helped to towel off his hair, kept the shock blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders.

The hospital was another flurry of activity, and Joyce did her best to keep up with Barbara's condition, but Will needed care as well, and the teen was being ushered to the Emergency room just as Will was assigned a room. It was a small town - they knew who she was, and her parents would know shortly that she'd been found.

The barks of doctors and the rapid squeak of a wobbly wheel on the stretcher faded around the corner, swinging doors slapping shut behind them. Joyce sat by her son's bedside, shock still buzzing over her brain, hand clenched perhaps too tight around Will's arm, but he didn't voice a complaint.

He was alive.

He was alive.