Sorry that this chapter was so short, but I felt like I really needed to get something out. I try not to go more than five days without updating. Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, keep them up :) Enjoy!

Joyce awoke slowly and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She looked around the house and saw that it was dark out. There was a bottle of vodka on the coffee table next to her head, a parting gift Murray had given her a few days back, after Starcourt. She flicked her eyes to the clock overhead and realized that it was ten-thirty in the evening. She cursed to herself and stumbled to the phone through the poorly lit household.

She dialed the Wheeler's phone and waited impatiently for someone to pick up on the other line. She heard a click and then a pubescent male voice.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mike? It's Joyce," she replied.

"Hi, Mrs. Byers. What's up?"

"I was just checking to see if Will was at your house right now," she asked nervously. Despite all the time it had been since November of 1983, she always became exceptionally unhinged when she wasn't sure exactly where her youngest child was.

"Yeah, he's here. Is it alright if he sleeps over here for tonight? My Mom said it was okay."

"Yeah, sure, that's fine. Just make sure he gives me a call tomorrow morning so I know everything is okay."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Byers. Have a good night."

"You too, Mike. Say hi to your mom for me."

"I will," he responded, and then hung up. Joyce put the phone down and walked back to the couch. She poured herself another shot and downed it in a swift gulp. Her face contorted, but the warmth that filled her body made her quickly forget about the taste.

It made her forget about a lot of things. The vodka had been her best friend forever since the fourth. It had been three days. Three long, painful and agonizing days. And the only things that had been on her mind ever since that night had been Hopper.

Fucking Hopper. And what made her forget about Hopper? Alcohol. But not really. It just seemed to... lessen the pain.

Joyce was convinced that her love life was cursed. After Lonnie, she was sure the next person that she would meet would be the one. And it would have been. She easily imagined herself growing old with Bob and moving away, starting a fresh new life away from Hawkins, away from the terrible memories. And then he was gone.

For sure, her next partner would be the one right? She would find love and find a person to finally settle down with and start rebuilding her broken life. But no, those fucking Russians had different plans.

She slammed the shot glass down and gave herself another, and poured it into her mouth without another thought. She gagged but did not relent as she had a third. She fell back down on the couch and felt a tear start to form in the corner of her eye. She could almost feel Hopper sitting beside her, talking about the date she had asked him out on, just less than an hour from... from his death.

That word made her sick. Sick to the stomach. She did not want to accept the fact that he was dead. He couldn't be. There was not a body. She had seen the other bodies, the Russian ones in the corner of the room. Those mounds of melted flesh and bones. There was no pile where Hopper had been standing before she pulled the switch. She kept telling herself that he got away. He must have jumped through the gate, or ran away into some kind of escape room. But that just meant he was trapped in the Upside Down, or some Russian POW camp, probably getting tortured.

"Hopper," she stuttered, covering her mouth with her hand, now completely in tears. Her body shook as the sobs came out of her unwillingly. Thank god Jonathan was out with his friends, the last thing she needed was him to see her like that, drunk and crying on the couch. God, she was a mess.

She remembered standing in the parking lot, right after they have gotten out of the Russian base. Will had run to her, across the wet pavement, and hugged her. She felt so relieved to know that her boy was okay, and when she saw Jonathan in the ambulance with Nancy, she felt at ease knowing that all her kids were alright.

But then, she had looked over and seen something that had seared itself into her mind, something she would never forget. She had seen El, wandering around the parking lot, looking for her...her Dad. She had looked so lost, so helpless and scared. Like an orphaned puppy, who had just lost its entire family in a matter of moments. She had looked around, her hope falling by the millisecond only to come to the heartbreaking conclusion that he was gone.

And then she met her gaze and sobbed into Will's shoulder, and Will didn't even know what was wrong until after.

"Oh my God, El," she cried into the crook of her arm. She had a fourth shot, which she had a hard time swallowing. Her final thought before passing out on the couch again was that she had to do something to help El. She had to carry out what Hopper had been doing before he had died.

She had to help El.


Max sat alone in her bedroom, staring at the ceiling. She had been doing this for a while now, alone with her thoughts. Her mind was sort of empty. She had been thinking about Billy, the image of him standing up to the Mindflayer etched into her mind like a chiseled rock. But it had gotten to the point where she had been thinking about it so much that it almost didn't feel important.

She guessed that this could be possible; she had been sitting here for nearly three hours. It was like she had cried out all the tears, vented out all the emotions...and now she was just...empty. On top of that, she was wondering where the hell her parents were. Then it hit her.

They were out of town, with friends. That meant that they had no idea what was going on, no idea about Billy, about anything.

"Fuck," she whispered, thinking about how awful it was going to be when they finally came home. She knew that her Mom would be devastated but she honestly had no clue how her stepdad was going to react. He was abusive and seemed to hate Billy in every possible way. But still, he was his Dad, and that had to mean something.

Right?

Rubbing her face, she crawled out of her bed, and slowly trudged across the hall and set a hesitant foot into Billy's bedroom. Resting her hand on the side of the doorway, she moved in. She smelled the beer and cigarettes mixed with sweat and cologne. She saw his disgusting posters on the wall and the ashtray on his desk. To anyone else, it looked like a smelly mess of a young man.

But to her, it was a symbol of a family member who had given his life for her and her friends. She stepped toward his bed, fell onto it, and screamed into the pillow. For as long and as hard as she humanly could, ripping her vocal cords raw.

She looked up and saw his leather jacket hanging on the back of his door. She crawled out of her curled up position on the bed and stepped toward the article of clothing. She took it in her hands, folded it up and clutched it close to her chest, salty tears falling and dropping onto the jacket. She brought it to her room and set it down on her pillow. She lay down next to it, and pulled it over her body, almost as if it were a blanket of sorts. It was like a part of Billy was still with her. And at the moment, she promised herself that she would keep this jacket, keep it in her room, and never let leave her room. So that a part of her brother would always be with her. That was the last thing she remembered before she drifted to sleep.

The phone rang abruptly, and she dragged herself over to it and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hi, Max!"

It was Lucas. Doing her best to hide her feelings, she sniffed and wiped her eyes, and tried to put on a convincing voice. "Hey, Stalker. What's up?"'

"Everyone is at Mike's house right now. Do you want to come and hang out with us?"

Max smiled. This sounded like the perfect thing to get her mind off things. "Yeah, I'll be there soon."

Max knocked on the front door of the Wheeler household and planted her hands on her hips. She heard some commotion coming from the other side of the door, and then it swung open. She was greeted by Mike and Lucas.

"Is El here?" she asked.

"Hello to you, too," Lucas said mockingly but jokingly. Max laughed and pulled her boyfriend in for a hug and placed a kiss on his cheek.

"We don't like El going anywhere near the front door. She's in the basement, don't worry," Mike told Max.

"Good," she grinned and charged past the two boys to be united with her new best friend. She charged down the stairs, at the bottom of which El was waiting eagerly. Her face lit up when she saw Max running down the wooden steps.

"Max!" she exclaimed. Max laughed and enveloped her in her arms, and El wholeheartedly reciprocated.

"How are you doing?" Max asked.

El parted from the hug, still smiling. "I'm okay. Everyone is here."

"Hi, Max," Dustin called out from the couch. Will waved to her from where he was sitting

cross-legged on the floor.

"Hi guys," Max waved back at them. She was still very friendly with Dustin, but her and Will still had not quite connected yet in the way she was with the rest of the group.

"So what have you guys been up to?" El asked.

"Well, we've been teaching El how to play Dungeons and Dragons, but she doesn't like it that much," Mike replied, smiling.

El spoke up quickly. "No, that's not true," she said. "I just don't understand it enough. It's just so complicated."

"Do you want to play with us?" Lucas asked. He was worried Max would consider him a nerd, but he realized that she probably already thought that about him. He saw a smile tug at the corner of Max's lips.

"Yeah, sure," she replied and walked over to the table where the board was set up.

The boys immediately got excited, which did not go unnoticed by Will. He was absolutely ecstatic that Mike and Lucas seemed to be finally getting back into D and D. He was hoping that they weren't faking it, but he was sure that they weren't.

"Okay," Will said. "Max, you can join Lucas so you can learn how to play. That's what we're doing with El and Mike."

"Alright," Max said, and sat down beside Lucas on one side of the table. Lucas pulled Max in with his arm and curled it over her shoulders. From there, Will launched back into the story, doing voices for different characters along with sweeping gestures, making it feel as if there really was a story unfolding right on the table in their basement. And the group played D and D for a long, long time.


Jonathan walked through the unlocked front door of his house and saw his Mom passed out on the couch, next to a bottle of vodka. He sighed. He knew his Mom was hurting, hurting badly. She was grieving for Hopper. He understood this. Hopper had done so much for their family over the last year and a half, and the fact that he was dead shocked even him.

He walked into his room and dropped his bag, and collapsed onto his bed. Alone with his thoughts, his mind started to roam. He thought of the people who had been lost. The belongings that had been lost. Of the people that he knew, there was Hopper, Billy, Heather, Heather's parents, Mrs. Driscole, and Bruce. He didn't feel bad about Bruce. He always resented Tom for being so mean and unfair to Nancy, but he would not have wished death upon him.

But the person who he felt the most terrible for was not someone who had died. It was El.

Her only parent, the only proper parent that she had ever had, had died in a heroic sacrifice. And now, El was homeless and orphaned. He knew that his Mom was thinking of something, right? She was the only adult who knew about all of it, and she was, well...perhaps not the best candidate to adopt a third child. But she was the only candidate.

Of course, he could pick up some extra hours, and help his Mom out. He definitely would. It was the least he could do for the girl who saved nearly the whole world and his brother and himself on many occasions. And right now she needed help.

He knew that he would try to be the best big brother to her, and he also knew Will would do the same. And the more he pictured it in his mind, the more he thought it was a good idea. Him, Will, his Mom and El all living together, in a small and modest house, helping El get past her loss and moving toward a better future for all of them.

The concept brought a tear to his eye, and he smiled to himself. He smiled, turned on his side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

Next chapter will be out tomorrow or the day after.