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Chapter Sixteen
Buffalo Stance
A ticking clock signalled that she ought to be getting home.
Cassidy had a habit of forgetting the time and letting herself get comfortable, particularly when left to her own devices in her great uncle's shop to shut up for the late afternoon as she hurried him off home when he spent more time rubbing his aching hands than getting any work done on the repairs set before him. His great-niece could be trusted to close as she had a set of keys and knew that anyone wanting Old Man Robinson's expertise this late on a Saturday afternoon was out of their damn mind.
Duck was also keen to get out to go see his friends, likely to smoke weed since there wasn't much else to do in Hawkins but go to Starcourt or get drunk when the colder months settled in as someone who had graduated high school. Cassidy preferred it this way though, to be alone from time to time.
But there was a very tight reluctance when her mom asked her about how it went spending time with that group of nerdy boys from her high school and that especially odd Icelandic girl that was fascinated by Mike Wheeler of all the people.
Cassidy liked being on her own. It worked for her best. She was Native American on her father's side, particularly of the Seneca tribe and people made stupid comments about her heritage all the time. And her father often was unable to keep quiet about those stupid comments. Her father, a poet and a lecturer in Chicago was outspoken often in the face of stupid comments. And she knew she was the same. This was why she kept it mostly to herself and remained in solitude with her books, content that most looks she got were out of curiosity and not out of unbound hatred for her status because she made it that way.
It wouldn't have helped matters to help one of the more coveted beauty therapists in the town who turned out some of the best prom looks since she arrived in Hawkins.
She didn't look it, but Donna Fox could turn her clients out being envied by all the other girls at their big high school events. Cassidy was her favourite client, even if she had been correct when it came to why her hair looked the way it did. Her genetics are more so than her mother's skills. Somehow this answer didn't bring about dismay to that sickly looking cousin of Will Byers, but only further questions.
This unassuming nature had made Cassidy feel warm in the presence of another girl her age for the first time in years, and recognising she was in the company of Dustin Henderson and Lucas Sinclair made her comfort only settle in. A girl like her sticking it out with the nerdiest boys in high school had to lack the shame accustomed to girls her age - a sense of shame that put Cassidy off most people based on her own experiences of how people assumed her to be based on negative stereotypes and their own biases. It was almost alien like - her procurement for wonder and learning. Cassidy knew that this had to have an extent, but she had been enamoured by El's presence, especially amongst these boys, of whom she had suspected since her own arrival in town a year prior, were partly afraid of Cassidy.
It turned out even they were intriguing enough to keep her attention, recognising their group dynamic rather instantaneously after a trip to the mall and somehow didn't allow her to feel entirely isolated from their group, even with their weird tendency to be overly protective of El.
Cassidy had found it pleasant for the short time it lasted. But was always ready to return to the books that kept her safe from disappointment.
She had puttered around reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the last four hours in between chores around the shop closing up when she made the call to Benny's from the store. There was a craving for those intensely greasy, very salty fries that had an added spice to it that no others had been able to replicate in the downtown of Hawkins where her great uncle's shop resided.
Benny's little secret he took with him to the grave she supposed. Cassidy was happy to be a patron of the restaurant until her life took her in a direction that made more sense for her in college, geographically speaking. Sure, it wasn't her mom or dad's favourite thing that her older brother Brian lived so far away, but he got into a good college in New York and got to explore it all and himself, unencumbered by the small-mindedness that came of small towns and state colleges with poor reputations, and safety of all patrons considered. Cassidy was proud of him. Even if it was a bit of a shock to the whole family. Karma had helped. Her Mom was no hypocrite - a hippie is as hippie does. Her Dad...well he needed more time and more work, truthfully. Her Great Uncle Ted might have been the least surprised by the idea her brother was gay and the least bothered, which begged the question...
She threw in a soda and chicken wings to make the meal more fulfilling and was ready to exit the building for good. Glenda had weaselled her name out the last time she ordered when she realised Cassidy was a regular. She had mentioned her name over the phone again to confirm the pickup and she could almost hear Glenda's mouth form a satisfactory grin.
It would have normally unnerved her that this college-aged waitress so badly wanted to know her name, but Cassidy eventually put it down to her actually finding enjoyment in her job.
Cassidy had locked up the back door to the building, and so felt the rush of panic run through her veins when she could hear the faintest sound that came from the same room. She found the lightweight metal bat - once used for less nefarious purposes, now being her best line of defence, as she strutted toward the back, through the aisles of miscellaneous hobby wares, through the break room and to the jiggling lock on the door that was much sturdier and more difficult than the glass shop front.
Honestly, who was going to try and rob a Hobby Shop, especially one that advertised that money wasn't kept on the premises?
She unlocked and kicked the door open, tired of waiting for who said potential thieves/vandals were going to be when Cassidy swung the bat expertly forward and leant it against her opposite shoulder.
"I don't care who you think you are trying to rob Old Man Robinson, just get the fuck out of here before I call the cops."
Oof, that would have been an unfortunate call to make given her stance on cops as a whole.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the bright light turned on at her switching the flip-up next to the door to illuminate these absolute -
"Cassidy! Shit - uh - we didn't know you were here."
She knows that voice well enough from the two classes they have together.
Of course, of fucking course Dustin Henderson and his friends would be the only people to find anything worth stealing in a Hobby Shop.
Cassidy finds the bright blue-eyed Henderson splayed out on the floor, some tweezers and a few hair clips not far off, confirming his attempt to break-in. Lucas Sinclair comes forward out of the shadows and started a rushed explanation that she cannot comprehend. She spotted the Cimarron not far off and Mike Wheeler walking with El but in between them, they're both holding up Will.
Cassidy's mind rushed. She had already witnessed Troy Donovan, unable to contain his irony, try to unleash hell on Will Byers and his loyal friends, finding himself the victim of one of them over the last couple of days. Had he finally made his mark and taken it out on Will?
She ignored Lucas' spluttered explanation - full of lies as he seemed unable to string certain stories together, even with Dustin getting up and trying so desperately to assist Lucas, but being unable to get a word into the anxious word vomit Lucas had spewed forth.
"What's wrong with Will?" she asked as he got closer, just walking on his feet but mostly leaning on his cousin and on Mike for support. El looked the most distraught, Mike's brow knitted tightly together, worried about how Cassidy would receive them in this condition.
"He's unwell," Lucas answered quickly.
Cassidy looked seriously at them both as she wondered what unhinged thought had brought them to her. He looked drunk, contagious and like he'd lost gallons of blood simultaneously, and she wasn't sure how it could be possible to look this sick without being in a body bag. She huffed angrily. "Yes. I can see that. He clearly should be resting! In his home or better yet - in the hospital ."
"Look Cassidy, I know this is the last place Will should be, believe me, we've tried convincing him otherwise. But we'll tell you everything when we're inside and get him the right help he needs once we're safe."
"Dustin," Cassidy tilted her glasses to look at him sincerely, which caused him to blush, "You've got to be kidding me. The right help he needs - Safe?"
And truly she is also shocked among other things. This might be the most Dustin Henderson has ever spoken confidently in her direction, intentionally.
Which means this is really bad.
"This isn't like getting in trouble with our parents," Dustin spoke with a severity she had not known him for, to Mike's distress as he tried to get him to shut up, but he continued, "- this is - this is Operation Condor shit, Chernobyl, forced sterilisation by the CIA level shit."
She looked at them all in disbelief. But when she finally sees Will's racked body, his pained face covered in sweat, Cassidy decides not to hold out any longer. She moved aside for them to get in, and gestured with her head harshly toward the interior.
"Quickly. There is a couch in here," she directed them through, still wondering why she was going along with this.
As Dustin is the last to go in, she holds her arm across the door, preventing his entry, "If you're exaggerating -"
"You are free to use me as target practice," Dustin's hand gestured to the bat.
Her green eyes narrowed on his blue ones when she eventually let him pass by. They enter and while the couch is at the far end of the room, it's more than soft and cushy enough for Will to settle his tired and aching body into. It's not far off from the kitchenette and the basement style freezer one could hide a body in if they were ever stuck. There's a dartboard hung up on the other side of the couch near the door to the shopfront, aged with time and speckled with holes. Dustin is closest to her as Lucas seemed to be surveying the place with tedious analysis, for what, she couldn't be sure. A rickety plastic and chrome dining table from the sixties is sitting in the opposite corner to the kitchenette as one walked in through the back of the shop, with mismatched chairs of different decades - not a purposeful choice but one of economic means, the floor being much the same of economically old tiling with a relatively new rug placed in front of the couch to add some warmth to this dingy room. As they are settling in, she gets in Dustin's vicinity, unsure as to whether it's inappropriate to put Will in an uncomfortable position as far as his severely declining health went.
"Did he take something? Because we don't have any time to waste contemplating how much trouble he'll be in - if he's not alive to get in trouble in the first place -"
"No, Will wouldn't do anything illicit - god that would have been easier to handle," Dustin reassured her.
She watched as El brushed Will's longer locks out of his face in a maternal manner Cassidy hadn't thought the group was capable of allowing her to show. She guessed though that Will had always been treated a little differently, handled with gentler intention.
She immediately turned to Dustin again, not needing to vocalise the panic in her eyes, the only one apparently prepared to give her steadfast answers.
Dustin took a beat, to check on his friends. Lucas had found a blanket and had draped it over Will, while El continued to watch over him like a hawk with a nest of newborns and Michael gave Dustin warning looks. Dustin seemed to disagree with whatever silent conversation was being had between them.
"It's...it's his condition," Dustin relented to Mike's displeasure, "He's been dealing with it for a few years - you weren't here but -"
"This town went through some shit - I know Will went missing for a week - is this - is this from the chemical leak?"
They're surprised she knows more than she ever let on this last year and a bit she's been in Hawkins, Lucas even pausing in getting Will a glass of water from the small kitchenette to be shocked for a moment.
"It was all over the news in Indiana, his nickname in school is Zombie and you all call my great uncle Old man Robinson, of course, I know what happened," she mentioned quietly, uncertain if she can even look Will in the eye, the one in the group that she felt the most understood by. "I just think you would be an asshole to bring that up to the kid who experienced it just because you read about it in the morning paper."
Mike softened somewhat at this, Will even has the audacity to chuckle.
When she looked at him again, Cassidy moved to the kitchenette cupboards and found a freshly laundered dishtowel in a stack. She threw one toward El as she insisted the sweat wouldn't feel nice, before finding a second dish towel in the freezer alongside a lot of game meat which always makes her want to gag when she's forced to go into said freezer. She scooped a bunch of untouched ice into the dish towel and tied it in a knot at the top to hold in the ice. She gives this to Will with a look she thinks only he can understand. You know you shouldn't be here .
This brings her to a question she knows she is going to dread the answer to. Joyce Byers was a resilient woman and she had met her while working in the shop, often coming in with Will. Her Great Uncle Ted said how formidable she was, all for the sake of her two boys during that awful week three years ago. The few times she had spoken to Will during schoolwork or assignments, his love and admiration for his mom were beyond anything that any mother with a teenage son could ever hope to experience. If anyone should be with him in this state, it was her...wasn't it?
"Why isn't he with his mom?" Cassidy crossed her arms tightly.
She hasn't heard him speak once, but Will is the first one to be vocal to oppose this suggestion. "My Mom can't know Cassidy."
"Your mom is literally your rock, Will."
Will looked like he couldn't retort to that very honest statement, and so Dustin took over and said frankly, "His mom might be compromised, we don't know for sure."
Cassidy tried to keep the twitching to this absurdity as an internal reaction, but couldn't quite keep that maintained. "So this is chemical poisoning?" Cassidy posed the question back to Dustin suddenly.
Dustin made a face that seemed to dispute that idea. "Yes...and no. It's not a toxic substance that is common with our - with our dimension."
Mike put his face in his hands, because, yes, she was really struggling to believe this explanation as to why this very unwell teenage boy wasn't being quarantined in a hospital at this stage and there probably was a more believable way around it - but Mike knew he was taking advantage of this slightly. Cassidy could feel her body absolutely rioting at what sounded like conspiracy theories far beyond that of the very real incidences of Operation Condor.
"Oh yep, toxic substances from different dimensions. Sure - sure - sure."
Cassidy grabbed her metal bat and picked it up before running to the phone, holding up the newly initiated weapon toward the others with a seriousness she had never needed to convey before now, picking up the corded phone attached to the wall and dialling with her pointer finger as she held the receiver with her other three, clutching the phone to her palm. "I understand that you have some very intense fears - but death should also be one of them and I can't watch you suffer anymore Will - so I'm going to phone for an ambulance and if any of you -"
The plastic phone receiver in her hand crumbled with direct breaks in the object that made for large enough cracks to become a puzzle to put back together, the spiralled cord attached to the base on the wall completely ripped apart. Cassidy choked on a gasp, the pieces of the phone receiver falling to the ground.
El is making a face Cassidy has never thought she could render as frightening as she had until now, shadowed with a wave of anger and preparedness she didn't think the sweet teen who yearned for Mike Wheeler's bashful smiles whenever she exited a dressing room with a new outfit on and so desperately wanted to mimic Cassidy's silky hair and length was capable of. Her eyes settled from the dark hue and her nose dripped a little bit of blood. It was deeply unsettling, to see that someone's eyes could lose all their friendliness to become the darkened circles Cassidy wished she hadn't seen. El barely checks to see what has come from her nose, just wiped it away as though it were a mere habit.
Cassidy, witnessing what she thinks might be her very own Carrie nightmare decided it was not worth sticking around to find out just how she would be killed.
As she backed up and tried to make a break for the open exit, as she never closed the door behind her when she let them in - it slammed shut before her hand could reach to open it wider and get the hell out of there.
With the jarring sense of being cornered, Dustin stood in front of El, to shield her from further distress as Cassidy held her bat up in defence.
"What the fuck?!"
"Let me try this again. Cassidy, this is Eleven," Dustin gestured from behind him. "She was a victim of the MKUltra serum from the womb. She has telekinesis abilities as a result of this experiment. WE call her El for short."
El behind him still tentatively held her hand up, ready to defend her friends.
At one direct look at the other boys, it was clear they were all aware of just how deep her past went. Cassidy sees Mike get up as well, furious that it had to come to this but also incredibly protective of El as he also stood partially in front of her, shielding her.
Dustin held up his hand toward Cassidy, having registered that whatever was between Mike and El made things more complex and she was possibly going to be a danger to that, making her back up further away, still holding her bat up, although it was highly useless if Dustin's statement was correct.
"She escaped captivity around the same time Will disappeared and helped save him three years ago, from an evil alternate dimension ," Dustin pressed on carefully, also aware of how impossible that sounded. "She disappeared shortly after to get away from the CIA and we only just got her back."
Mike chimed in, although was disgruntled to do so. "All we want to do is keep her safe. In order to do that, we can't contact anyone through phones because they trace them and we can't even notify well-meaning adults of any kind."
His eyes looked distant as his jaw set at a memory of blood pooling only so many hours ago in the hall of Hawkins High. "It sometimes ends up with them with a bullet in their head, even if they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr Howard was shot this morning during my detention."
Lucas had given up entirely. "Benny was murdered and they made it look like a suicide last time, all because he was doing what he thought was the right thing when he found Eleven looking for scraps of food in his kitchen after she escaped the lab."
His casual manner in reciting this is given a reaction to which Lucas rolled his eyes in despair.
"Well shit, if we're just letting this happen, fuck the NDA!" Lucas exclaimed, as he turned from his friends and looked directly at Cassidy. "Eleven won't hurt you if you don't run to the authorities and promise to keep everything secret as much as one can."
"We just got her back Cassidy, and they're right," Mike pleaded. "She wasn't in a good place…I - we can't let her go back there again - to either place."
Cassidy had noticed the slip up just as the others had and it seemed like Mike wasn't ever going to be saved from his own awkwardness.
She took a seat at the table and ran her hands through her hair, fully stressed and anxious now.
"I know it's completely unbelievable," Will said honestly, his voice still rasping. "My Mom says that they were trying to infiltrate the Russians and Eleven was their most powerful way to do it, they just ended up with a drastically different result, which in turn came with massive consequences," he grunted out as she watched his body give racking breaths. Mike looked to him again with exasperated concern, but only received a minor warning look before he made his final point clear.
"I know I might have to be taken into their custody if I want to survive this, they might be the only ones who can help me...But I won't be able to live with myself if she's the cost."=
He takes a moment to wheeze and cough which causes the entire group to panic. Will hushes them all and says, "I'm fine - I'm fine - it was just an actual cough, nothing is coming up."
Cassidy looked at each emotionally beaten group member and could tell they had all been through a lot of stress and worry, more than she was currently dealing with but the wounds were old and aching, hers was a fresh gash of conspiracy and superpowered teen girls. Will's voice brought her attention back to him. "If you stay quiet, we have a good chance of the party getting through this and maybe I can too."
She paled at the weight of his words.
The party awaited her verdict on their batshit crazy story with examples that Cassidy couldn't deny physically.
And if Mike Wheeler wasn't a bold-faced liar, Mr Howard was indeed dead…
She rubbed severely at her temples, moved her digits to her closed eyes and pushed her cheeks upward in the span of a minute, knowing this new predicament would put her through a migraine if she wasn't careful. She addressed the group at large, "I've got food pre-ordered at Benny's. I need to go pick it up."
They had not expected this to be her initial response to one of their biggest kept secrets of Hawkins, Indiana.
"We don't have your word," Mike insisted. Ever the leader, she had come to realise.
Cassidy Fox in all her plain pissed glory aimed her vision toward Mike as her arms landed in a thud against the table, "You just informed me that well-meaning adults have died just by being in the way, Wheeler. I don't think you've given me much of a choice."
Mike has at least some decency to level his eyes at the ground, his shoulders having sagging from his defensive and heightened stance. "We never intended for you to be put in this position."
And he really meant it.
El had lowered her offending magic hand down to her side. She instead used it to hold on to Mike's arm. He seemed to turn around and make sure she was okay and at getting the wordless small smile he needed, he looked relieved.
Kids acting like adults running from the government.
It wasn't what she initially thought she would deal with after one trip to the mall together. Maybe following up with a movie, but helping contain what she assumed was a fugitive of the U.S. government?
Cassidy wondered if her life would ever be normal after this.
"I'll keep El's secret," she said to their relief. "But I want a better explanation because I'm seeing a lot of holes. And a ride to pick up my food. I need to gestate this and to do that I need to eat."
Lucas fished out his keys from his pocket. "Let's get going then."
The first thing Nancy noticed after she had told an admittedly heavily redacted version of the events that took place three years ago was how Zoe concentrated on her hands. She found solace in the grounding nature of seeing them there before her and was contemplative of Nancy's story. It had explained more of Nancy's nature toward her need to find an outlet for her emotions.
But Nancy didn't have much time to consider Zoe's feelings on the matter. How this further bonded them in a way she couldn't with the best friend she had lost in that awful week.
"Now that you know, can I please borrow a shotgun?"
It was the weapon she felt most at home with, after all.
Before Nancy can receive an affirmative, Zoe asks her a question she isn't expecting.
"Where does this girl, El, fit into all of this?"
Jonathan was careful in his reactions as he side-eyed Nancy as best as possible. Probably a reluctance to continue with such a subject given the amount of paperwork they had to go through following her disappearance.
Nancy cautiously answered. "El was special...really special, Zoe."
Zoe's hands seemed to stop at the word 'special.'
Jonathan was the only one to notice out of the two, Nancy grappling with her choice of words more.
"And if what I've been told is true and she is back, then that's amazing…" Nancy seemed to be fighting some emotions that she hadn't expected. Jonathan suspected it had something to do with her brother. "But Mike didn't tell me...and if he couldn't tell me, that means they're in trouble and her psycho family are looking for her. And I can't...I can't -"
She felt Jonathan's hand clasp over hers as her tears spilled. He knew all too well the pain of losing a brother. He felt like the luckiest person in the world when Will was brought back from the nether. Nancy knew Mike would do anything for Eleven, even drastic stupid things - just as he did for Will. Jonathan's warmth jump-started something in Nancy, a strength she was unable to conjure herself.
"I can't lose him too. Not after Barb," Nancy said as her lip quivered. "I thought maybe I was being paranoid - but we know they're out there looking for her...so I have to protect them. I have to, Zoe," she said lastly, as though there was nothing else she was set on this earth to do.
Zoe wrung her hands near white, a last-ditch effort to reconsider something these two couldn't even begin to understand, but she looked directly to Ozzie. He had practically lifted the eldest Wheeler child into a hug upon her entrance into the range like a single-digit aged child who hadn't seen their father for the last workday, unwavering in his friendliness regardless of the hour and the thousands of questions she was sure he had for her, her very first contact in the range. He had set mugs of coffee in front of the two college kids when they entered the tea room for staff, with a tray of Chips Ahoy not far off. The overbearingly large statured silver-haired southern gentleman had a distinctly sad smile on his wizened face.
"I think it's beyond the point of no return, Z," Ozzie said finally.
Zoe closed her eyes with regret. She quickly spoke into an earpiece that the two arrivals hadn't realised was something she would be equipped with - Jonathan felt on edge at witnessing it, Nancy distracted by her own weepiness to see it.
She was unable to look at the petite girl as she was about to reveal the truth.
"I'm sorry Nancy, but we've been lying to you about who we are."
Her head tilted up to look at Zoe with a sniffle, anxiety peeking as Jonathan held her tighter than before. She could taste the tension in the air.
"James owns the shooting range, but it's a front for our real operations...and then you showed up, completely of your own volition to seek something that nothing else could do -"
A small group of people Nancy could recognise as just normal patrons of the range came in, armed to the teeth and unintentionally scaring them. Ozzie stood up and pulled a book out of the bookshelf unit, as it revealed an elevator. He looked the most apologetic.
"- Heal a loss that was taken - find the person you once were but lost to disenfranchisement - one of many victims of Martin Brenner's abused system," Zoe continued, a heady sense of self-hatred clear.
"You're one of them," Jonathan stated the obvious as he looked around with intense distrust of the armed folks surrounding them. Nancy's mouth was set in a firm line, her tears becoming hard with betrayal.
"You lied to me."
"I did Nancy," Zoe reiterated, wanting her to know her feelings were at least valid. "But you need to know that I'm not one of them anymore. I haven't been for a long time."
Nancy stood up and yelled, "How can I possibly trust you -"
"I will explain everything to you, both of you," she said as she stood up too, slower in delivery, Jonathan doing much the same in a protective manner with Nancy, "But we do need to move quickly. If Jane is indeed back from the nether and your brothers are with her, then you're correct. They're not safe. We're going to need all the help we can get to make sure they get out of this unscathed."
They were urged toward the elevator and squished together, holding hands tightly so as to not get separated. Jonathan was weary about the machine guns in his presence and Nancy was defiant in not showing her fear. Likely because her fury outweighed the feeling as her heart dropped to her stomach.
"Is your name even Zoe?" she asked with only the disgust a righteously angry young adult could muster.
"No…" her mentor said simply. "My name is Zemora Jackson. I'm one of the original inventors of the MKUltra serum."
Notes:
Yes, this is the stuff I like to write: The crazier stuff, the consequences beginning to unravel, the plots showing their folds and connecting with other storylines. I know there is so much to go, but I'm so happy that I'm at the halfway point of this fic, with true intentions of finishing it before Christmas this time! I can't have that fourth season come to bite me in the ass if the early April/May release is to be accurate and I'm still not finished on a fic that was created before the second season was released.
Also while I know the CIA stuff probably wasn't released well after the 21st century, in these circumstances they have full knowledge of these previous crimes against people and I think it's where Dustin and Cassidy will connect the easiest.
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