(May 1986)
Sadie sits on the bench outside the hospital, ignoring the chill in the air. Ignoring the droplets of rain beginning to pelt her skin, and the fabric of her dress. The moisture that is already starting to dampen her hair. A part of her still can't fathom everything that just happened. Everything it means. And the other part?
The other part of her knows that after tonight, nothing will ever be the same.
A tear slips free before she can stop it, and Sadie lifts a hand to wipe in frustration at the irritating droplet, sniffling as she tries to will away the painful ache inside her chest. She wants it to go away. She wants the pain to stop.
It feels like she can hardly breathe, and the longer Sadie sits there thinking over everything, the more she starts to wonder if she even wants to try.
Thinking back to where the day began, Sadie tries and fails to determine if she could have seen this coming. If there might be something she could have done to stop it. She remembers trying to talk Chrissy out of going to meet a stranger for drugs. Trying to talk her out of the drug component entirely, and then veering over to trying to get her friend to buy from someone they knew when the initial plan failed.
But Chrissy had been insistent. She was terrified that if she stayed in Hawkins for the sale, someone would see her, and tell her mother. Her father. The police.
By the time Sadie realized that her friend had already made her choice to leave, it had been too late to even attempt to stop her.
Chrissy left before the last class of the day. And the next time Sadie had seen her was fifteen minutes ago, when the doctors had been trying to revive her.
Trying, and failing…
The worst part of it all wasn't even the overdose. It wasn't Sadie's instinctive supposition that if she had just acted a little sooner—if she had paid better attention to what was so clearly a desperate cry for help—none of this would have happened.
No, the worst part was when Jason had turned to her not long after rushing into the emergency room himself, and told her in no uncertain terms what she was already starting to believe, in her own mind.
"This is on you, Sadie. You. You were her best friend, you knew she was doing this, and you just let her."
A sob bubbles up before she can stop it, and Sadie buries her face in her hands as her shoulders start to shake. She knows Jason is right. She did this. She failed Chrissy when her friend had needed her the most.
Still, knowing it—repeating it time and time again in her own mind—and watching her brother look at her with something not all that far from hatred has he says the words aloud are two entirely different things.
Sadie doesn't remember much about what happened after that, save for bits and pieces. Andy's arrival. The rest of the basketball team piling into the waiting room not long after, rallying around their captain. Leaving her to fend for herself.
Before she could even think about it, she found herself running down the hall. Stumbling down the stairs, nearly blinded by her tears. Barely managing to hold it together for long enough to use the payphone just outside the hospital doors, and then?
Waiting on the bench. Sitting nearly motionless until she can hardly tell where her own tears end, and the rain soaking her skin begins. Trying not to continue crying, failing miserably at that, and then succumbing to endless repetitions of self blame.
She doesn't even realize someone is standing in front of her until she feels a hand come to rest on her knee.
"Hey—"
Sadie looks up, then, another choked sob escaping as she recognizes familiar brown eyes. A concerned expression. A hand already reaching out to pull her close. She can barely remember choking out the words over the payphone what feels like ages ago. Telling Eddie about Chrissy through the crushing pressure in her chest, bubbling up through her throat until she thought she might suffocate. But he's here. Eddie Munson is standing right in front of her.
Still feeling as though she will split apart into a hundred tiny pieces at the slightest provocation, Sadie allows Eddie to pull her to him, her entire body shaking until he tightens his arms around her to hold her together. She wonders, briefly, over the fact that it always seems like he is the only one that can do such a thing. The only one that can keep her from falling apart when that is all it seems she is able to do.
Sadie's tears soak the fabric of Eddie's shirt as much as the rain pelting down around them, heavier now, but he doesn't press her to move. He doesn't press her to talk.
Eddie is simply there, and although she cannot put it into words, Sadie is far more grateful for that than she believes he will ever know.
…
(Present day)
Sadie shivers as she wakes from the dream—memory—whatever awkward combination it is, a tight knot already forming in her chest despite the years that have passed. She can feel the warmth of her daughter cuddling close beside her, the soft rise and fall of Chrissy's chest causing Sadie's mouth to twitch into a half smile as she smooths a dark curl away from her brow. She waits for her mind to drag her back to the guilt she feels over the thought of her daughter enduring a transient life. A life on the run because of choices that were not her own. But Sadie couldn't leave her with Andy. She couldn't. Not when he knows, now…
No. Sadie is not going to think about that.
Trying to extricate herself from the grip her daughter has on her clothes without waking her, Sadie scoots from the bed in Steve Harrington's guest room, and pads over to the window at the far end of the room, illuminated slightly by the light of the moon peeking through the sheer curtains. After everything, she is still remarkably grateful for Steve's reluctant willingness to skate around certain topics during their conversation earlier that night. Certain people.
Sadie knows Steve, though. She knows she isn't going to be able to evade his curiosity—his questions—forever.
And if her brief stint crashing at his house ends up involving an encounter with Dustin?
Sadie doesn't even try to suppress the snort that escapes, her shoulders shaking in amusement even in spite of how she knows against the combined inquisitive force of Dustin and Steve, she will be well and truly screwed.
A part of her honestly misses that. The connections she had in Hawkins that she had never been able to find after she and Andy left. Not that she had expected anyone else to care who was head cheerleader—who dated who—after high school, but to sit in a room full of people night after night, and realize no one noticed or cared when something was wrong?
To have the wives of Andy's friends sit with mimosas in hand, blatantly ignoring how shaky she seemed—ignoring the bruises, or how she never wore short sleeves, even in the summer, after the college basketball team had suffered a loss—
That was almost worse than the violence itself. The violence that only grew when her best kept secrets were suddenly laid bare, and he nearly killed her for the deception…
Sadie reminds herself that she is not going to travel down that particular road for what feels like the hundredth time, though, instead turning back from the window and watching as Chrissy fidgets a bit, turning over onto her other side before continuing to sleep.
She reminds herself that what's done is done. The mistakes she made aren't exactly going away. She cannot go back in time to correct them.
The only thing she's done over the last years that doesn't qualify as a mistake is currently sleeping soundly in the bed just a few feet away.
With a sigh, Sadie moves back over to the bed, stooping to fish for the familiar pack stashed inside her purse, ignoring the twinge in her heart at the thought of succumbing to a habit she never should have developed in the first place. She doesn't really remember when it started, save for it being some time after Chrissy's birth. And although she wants to deny the reasoning behind it with all she has, Sadie knows she isn't quite skilled enough to run from that particular truth.
Somehow, nicotine had been a way to fill a void she didn't want to acknowledge. A void she honestly knew would never go away after she left Hawkins for good.
Sadie always reminds herself that she rarely does this. That she rarely gives into the temptation, and she's always been careful to keep it far from her daughter. But even that reality isn't quite enough to rob her of her guilt, her lips thinning into a line as she clutches the pack of cigarettes and her lighter in hand, and heads out of the bedroom, shutting the door with a soft click behind her.
It takes her some time to fiddle with the lock on the sliding glass door that leads out to a small deck area in Steve's backyard, but Sadie manages it, wandering down the deck stairs and heading farther out into the yard not long after. A breeze ruffles her hair, and she tries not to think of how the sensation of the grass tickling her feet as she moves reminds her of another time, entirely. Another day. Another year.
A field outside of a trailer, warm arms snaking around her waist. The scent of cigarette smoke clinging to skin—to clothing—almost comforting while a mouth moves in lazy kisses against her neck and those arms that circle her waist tighten, pulling her back against a solid source of warmth…
Sadie squeezes her eyes shut against the tears that threaten as she lights the first cigarette, her lungs already burning.
And she seizes on that sensation. The burning. The lingering instinct to cough. Sadie focuses on these things with all she has so that she can ignore the ghost of arms lingering around her waist.
"Since when do you smoke?"
Sadie whirls at the unexpected sound, glancing first at the lit cigarette in her hand, and then at Steve, standing near the back edge of the deck, watching her with no short supply of astonishment. She can feel her cheeks flushing, and she is half tempted to stub the cigarette out and head back inside without a word as a result. But Steve surprises her, heading down the stairs and moving to join her, a faint smirk toying at his mouth before he gestures to the cigarette still held in her hand.
"I'll consider forgoing an answer if you share."
"I thought you quit."
"Old habits, right?" Steve shrugs, taking the proffered cigarette, and noticing that Sadie seems to have relaxed some, as a result, skepticism apparent in her gaze as she favors him with a raised brow for a moment before she speaks.
"Does Robin know?"
"No. And if you say anything—"
"I'm a dead woman walking. Got it," Sadie laughs, the sound giving Steve far more relief than he truly feels he deserves, given the lingering shadows he can still see on occasion hiding in her eyes, "But Steve?"
"Yeah, Sadie."
"If you take me out, that means you're going to end up with yet another kid on your watch."
"Chrissy's a cute kid. Pretty sure I'll survive," Steve says, bumping his arm against Sadie's, and passing back the cigarette in the same motion, "Guess being the eternal babysitter isn't as bad as I try to make it out to be."
"You say that now. Just wait til you're all that stands between Chrissy and hot chocolate. Or Mr. Duckington. You'll be singing a different tune."
"Mr. Duckington?"
"You'll probably meet him in the morning," Sadie explains, finding that she almost enjoys the look of baffled amusement Steve wears, while waiting for her to go on, "He's a regular at breakfast. Nap time. Bed time…"
"Got it. Is she uh—she gonna be okay if she wakes up in there alone?"
Sadie's heart warms at the genuine concern she can hear in Steve's inquiry, and she is forced to use the cigarette in her hand as cover for why her eyes have suddenly started to glisten with emotion over the consideration he is giving to a child that he hardly knows. He doesn't owe them any of this. This kindness that Sadie knows she will never be able to repay.
She knows she has to answer the question, though, and so Sadie swallows past the sudden weight lodged at the back of her throat, passing Steve the cigarette once again before she forces herself to reply.
"She sleeps like the dead. I think it's more likely she won't wake up at all."
"Gosh, wonder what that must be like."
"No kidding."
Silence hangs between them for a moment, and Sadie finds herself more than a little surprised that it is more comforting than anything else, her gaze wandering over the yard in front of where she stands as she tries to suppress a shiver brought about by another cool gust of wind. She has a feeling she already knows what's been keeping Steve awake at night, given that she distinctly recalls Andy mentioning something about an engagement his mother had mentioned when he spoke with her on the phone a few months past.
She supposes she knows a little something about what he must be feeling. About wanting someone—loving someone—that you could never have.
But Steve hadn't been the one to make a conscious decision to leave that someone behind, like she had. He hadn't been the one to run from his feelings—from the truth—making one bad decision after another until everything no longer made sense.
Steve isn't the one who had turned away from his feelings for Nancy, desperately trying to force himself to believe they had never existed at all. Not like she had done, with Eddie…
Eddie.
Even thinking about him now sends a stab of regret through her chest, the impact so painful that Sadie has to exert a great deal of effort to avoid crumbling to pieces on the spot.
"Hey—you okay?"
"Fine," Sadie nods, ignoring the lingering doubt in Steve's expression, her attention almost completely zeroing in on the way the breeze ruffles the leaves on a nearby tree to avoid looking him in the eye. She knows he doesn't believe her. How could he, when she had always been such a terrible liar?
But whether Steve is even considering her answer or not, he remains silent on the matter, and Sadie is left stunned, at least until she realizes that he is apparently going to opt for another method entirely to try and get her out of her self-created shell.
"So—Robin was going to drop by later tonight for dinner and a movie. Kind of a—a tradition we've got going, but I was thinking since you're here, we could maybe go out—"
"You don't have to do that, Steve. I can just—"
"What? Fade into the background with your kid and pretend you're not even here? No," Steve cuts in, shaking his head as he watches Sadie stare at him in obvious disbelief, "Besides, you and I both know Robin would absolutely kill me if I knew you were in town, and didn't say a word."
Surprisingly, Sadie manages a smile in response to that particular reality, the idea of Robin's reaction to what Steve is suggesting proving to be more humorous than she dares to believe. Of course, a part of her is still very much reluctant to risk making her presence in Hawkins widely known. But in spite of the ever-present fear of word somehow getting back to Andy, Sadie also cannot deny the allure of rekindling those connections that she thought she had lost for good.
Life after Hawkins had been so lonely. And Sadie would be a fool to pretend she had not been spending the majority of her days after her departure fervently wishing that she had never left…
"You're sure it's alright?" She questions, biting the inside of her cheek to conceal a growing grin as exasperation becomes apparent in Steve's features, though he is clearly careful to ensure absolutely none of it leaches into his tone as he replies.
"Absolutely. The more the merrier and all that shit. Hell, maybe Chrissy can even help me win a few points with the ladies."
"So—you want to use my daughter as your wing-man."
"Hey, if it works, why the hell not, you know?"
In response to the familiar, lopsided grin Steve gives her, Sadie cannot help but laugh, happy to be back on steadier footing, even if it only lasts for a moment. She knows she doesn't deserve this. This reprieve. The idea of enduring a day without the crippling loneliness that always tries to swallow her whole. But she knows she doesn't want to spend another night alone. Another night dwelling on the mistakes of her past.
If that makes her selfish?
So be it.
…
Hello, my darlings! And welcome to a surprise new chapter brought to you by getting told not to come into work until later on tonight! (That sound you're hearing is me throwing a small party because after only seven days I'm already beat, and there's still fourteen more to go). That said, I really hope that everyone enjoys this chapter, even though it was a bit of a filler. I'm hoping to work my way up to a surprise reunion Sadie doesn't expect for the next installment, so I promise things will start to pick up soon!
As always, my heartfelt thanks go out to each and every one of you that has taken the time to read, follow, favorite and review this story so far (and special thanks to Guest, MulishaMaiden, and musicluver246 for the feedback the last time around)! I appreciate the support so, so much more than you know, and I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as the last!
Until next time, angels…
MOMM