"I've been thinking," Discord is saying. He waits for Fluttershy's automatic response to that phrase whenever it leaves his mouth and is not disappointed.

"Always a dangerous habit."

He can't help grinning in the moonlit darkness. Fluttershy has a flashlight out over her schoolwork and is chewing on the cap of her plastic ballpoint pen. She always does that when she's working through some particularly devious problem. Over the years, she's managed to chew grooves into most of her pens and pencils, and a lot of Discord's, too.

"I mean, we've got, what, thirty days of school left?"

"Thirty-eight," Fluttershy corrects as she underlines a few words on her reading.

Discord scowls. "Weekends don't count."

"I need to study on the weekends."

Discord snorts but doesn't argue the point. He'd tried telling her before that she doesn't necessarily need to study, but that's a debate he lost a long time ago.

"All I'm saying is," he pushes on, "it's the end, right? I mean, you're going to Columbia in the fall. So, how about we do something a little crazy this summer?"

He carefully avoids mentioning where he's going, because that's a topic that they have yet to properly talk about. He definitely can't go to Columbia with her; they both know any application he sent would be laughed off the campus.

Fluttershy fixes him with a stare and Discord shifts awkwardly against the tiles on her roof. "I promise it's not illegal this time." When Fluttershy continues to look at him with an unconvinced expression, Discord sighs and gives in. "Let's go on a road trip."

That throws her for a second, and Discord talks quickly to fill the quiet.

"I mean, don't you want to see the rest of the country a bit? Just take a drive without an essay or a test hanging over your head? We can see that arch in Seattle or wherever or the Golden Gate Bridge or . . ." His voice trails off.

"You're sure this isn't because you want to get out of the state because you did something illegal?" Fluttershy asks skeptically.

"No!" Discord shoots back, offended. "Well, I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything illegal lately."

"You have a car?"

"Well," Discord proclaims proudly, since it's pretty rare for him to actually plan ahead, "you know how I work at the farmer's market after school. I met this farmer who needed to get rid of his old truck, and I had a bit saved up from the job since my parents won't let me buy anything fun after the Noodle Incident without them checking it out first, so I called Mom and I bought it."

Fluttershy sighs and her breath pushes a few strands of hair away from her face. "Fine. After finals, though."

Discord just grins and leans back.

The two of them sit there on her roof as the moon shines down at them from above.

-X-

Hawkins, Indiana. 1984.

There is a cancer at the heart of this small town, set somewhere in the quiet middle of nowhere.

It lies beneath the surface, echoing from the events of the past year.

The moonlight passes over the town, as somewhere, the voice of Bob Dylan croons through a radio.

"Oh, the times they are a-changin' . . ."

-X-

Hobbes is waiting for Discord when he climbs back in through the window.

"So?"

"She's coming," Discord says with a grin.

Hobbes nods at that and reclines back onto Discord's bed. The tip of his tail twitches lightly, casting a shadow light a writhing snake onto the floor from the moonlight shining through the window. The bed groans slightly as Discord lies down next to him. The two of them are looking up at the ceiling, where, if you look carefully, you can still see the swirls of color left from the time Discord had decided that James Pollock paintings could be imitated by an eight year-old.

His parents hadn't been particularly impressed by the defense that "It was art , Mom!"

"You know," Discord begins, "I saw Rosalyn in town today."

Hobbes gives a low purr that tells Discord that he's listening.

"She's back from college early. She was up at the grocery store. You know, it's funny. She didn't recognize me. I could recognize her the moment I say her – even though she changed her hair – but she didn't recognize me. Walked right past me."

"Well," Hobbes says philosophically, "it has been years."

"I think she's getting married."

"Really?"

"Yeah, she had a wedding ring on. Not a cheap one, either, it had a diamond on it. I don't know if it was real, though."

"Well, did it look real?"

Discord furrows his brow, thinking back. "Yes, I think so."

Hobbes shrugs, the bed moving under his shoulders. "Then it was the same thing as being real, don't you think?"

"No," Discord says with a frown. "If it was real, then it was real. If it's fake, then it isn't really real, even if we think it is."

"If you can't tell the difference, then is there a difference?" Hobbes asks. "I mean, if no one could tell that her wedding ring was fake, then how could it be fake?"

Discord just shakes his head. "Well, there should be a difference."

Hobbes doesn't reply to that and Discord wonders if he's fallen asleep. Then,

"Did you get the air conditioner fixed?"

Discord sighs. "I'll do it tomorrow."

"You said that yesterday."

"I'm pretty sure we had this conversation last night, too."

Hobbes just laughs at that, before stepping off the bed and walking to the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Writing a note."

"I refuse to follow any schedule imposed by a piece of paper on principle."

"You refuse to follow any schedule, period."

"Exactly. See: principle."

Hobbes rolls his eyes (Discord can practically hear him rolling his eyes) and puts the piece of paper down on the desk before lying back down on the bed.

"Hobbes? That conversation we had last night, you remember it, right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I was dreaming when we had the conversation."

Hobbes snorts. "Don't you know that we talk in our dreams? We talked about this before, remember? Back when you were six?"

"Oh, right. Just seems as though that been happening less and less, lately."

Hobbes gives a noncommittal growl and turns on his side, away from Discord.

"Hobbes?"

"Yes?"

"Remember Mr. Bun?"

"Fluttershy's doll? Yes, why?"

"I was just wondering if the two of them ever talk anymore. I didn't see Mr. Bun in Fluttershy's room when I went over. Actually, I don't think I've seen him in a while. Not since her mom died."

"Of course you haven't," Hobbes snaps, his temper suddenly flaring. "She grew up."

-X-

It's well into winter break when his mom makes Mike take down El's fort. He still thinks of it as hers, even if she hasn't lived in it in months. His mom had caught sight of it a week after Christmas, when she had come downstairs to break up another hours-long campaign.

"Michael." She taps her foot impatiently. All the other kids are gone. They'd seen the clock in her eyes.

"Mom."

"I don't know why you think you need to keep that blanket hanging, Michael -"

"Mom."

"- but frankly, it's starting to get a little morbid."

"Mom."

"I mean, Michael, at some point you're going to have to accept that she isn't coming back -"

"Mom!"

"- and even if she was, she wouldn't be living here. I mean, really, she probably has a mom somewhere -"

"MOM!"

"Don't interrupt me, Michael."

Mike just falls to the floor and scowls darkly across the room. His mom sighs.

"Mike, I get that this is hard, but sometimes -" She pauses, chewing her lower lip. For an instant, she looks as lost as her son. "I just want you to know that you can talk to me, OK?"

Mike doesn't reply.

Karen sighs and heads back upstairs. From above, Mike can hear voices drifting down. She's talking to her dad. She's wondering aloud if they should find a psychiatrist. His dad just waves it off as hormones, and then their voices drift out of earshot.

He turns his head to look at the blanket fort. He stands up and walks over to it, laying a hand on the patterned fabric. There's a layer of dust that clings to his hand when he pulls it away. On a whim, he breathes a puff of air onto his hand and watches the motes float off into the room, briefly visible in the dim basement lights.

Suddenly, he draws his hand back and whips it forward like he's throwing a rock so that it crashes into the cloth. He doesn't feel better for it.

He reaches out and grabs the cloth, yanking it onto the ground, and stomps on it as hard as he can. He kicks a chair, then shoves it as hard as he can onto the floor. He kicks some of the pillows, twisting his whole body around to get the maximum force into the blows.

This goes on for a few minutes.

Finally, panting, Mike sits on the ground and stairs at the mess he's made. He still doesn't feel any better.

(The next morning, when Karen sees that the fort is gone, she doesn't feel particularly satisfied. She just feels worried.)

-X-

Discord is waiting outside the school, idly flipping through some old paperbacks lying the glove cabinet that the owner hadn't bothered to clean out, when a rock hits his window.

"Hey, Twinkie!"

Discord groans and starts rolling down the window. "What do you want, Moe?"

A grin full of chipped, yellowing teeth peers back at him. "Just checking out your ride. The fuck, Twinkie, I didn't know you were loaded."

Discord notices, for the first time, that Moe's teeth have a light green film over them. It bothers him a lot more than it should.

"So," Moe continues after a short pause. "This seeing any use, yet?"

Discord looks at him blankly. In his head, he's wondering when Fluttershy's going to come out of the school.

"What?"

"Girls, man. You had any girls in here? Like that one you keep hanging out with. The Derkins one. Used to have purple braces. Hey, if you're not using it, maybe you should let me borrow. I got a date." He says the last sentence with a boasting tone of voice, like he expects Discord to be impressed at his nascent social skills.

"With a sock, maybe," Discord mutters.

Immediately, two meaty hands grab the collar of his shirt and drag him through the open window, banging the top of his head against the window frame. "The fuck you say, Twinkie?"

With an almost fascinated horror, Discord hears his mouth open and say: "You'd better be nice to me, Moe."

"Haw! Why?"

He should really shut up.

"Because someday my tax dollars will be paying for your prison cell."

Discord head snaps back through the window and he can taste blood leaking out of a split lip. Outside, Moe is standing with his fists clenched, but his eyes look just a little like those of a deer Discord had caught sight of using a flashlight seven years ago. Moe's dad is living in prison right now.

At the moment, Moe seems to be trying to think of a good comeback. Finally, he settles on "Well, fuck you , Twinkie" and wanders off.

There turns out to be a box of cotton balls in the glove compartment. They don't look too old either, so he rips the box open and is dabbing at the corner of his mouth when Fluttershy finally gets out of school.

He can tell from the sharp intake of breath outside his window. "Is this a joke, Discord?"

He grins, even though it stings his lip. "Nope."

He's sitting in a Chevy C/K 1974 and right now, he knows Fluttershy is trying to do some numbers in her head. "How on earth . . ."

Discord shrugs. "I got a good deal. I mean, what were you expecting?" As he says this, he reaches across and unlocks the passenger door.

After a moment's hesitation, Fluttershy walks across and gets in. The car pulls away from the sidewalk.

"I don't know. I think I was kind of expecting one of those old VW buses with flowers and rainbows painted on the side. One that would break down every few miles. One that'd you'd gotten scammed for."

"The ones that hippies used to have?"

"I guess." She looks over at him and says, rather sharply, "What happened to your face?"

He'd been hoping she wouldn't notice. "Moe and me had a talk."

" 'And I,' " Fluttershy corrects. "Is that going to be OK?"

"It's just a cut."

A few miles of road pass in silence. At one point, they pass by a yellow school bus taking kids home from elementary school.

"Is Mrs. Wormwood still teaching?" he wonders aloud.

"Yes. I see her every week when I volunteer at the school teaching science."

"What's that like?"

"You know, she isn't really that bad."

"The old witch hated me."

Fluttershy shrugs. "To be fair, you were an absolutely terrible kid to work with. If you want, we could try stopping by the old school before we leave and you could try talking to her."

"It'll be a cold day in hell," Discord says by way of reply.

"She's honestly not a bad person," Fluttershy mutters with a sigh.

They slow to a stop in front of a red light. Fluttershy grabs one of the books on the dashboard.

"Firestarter?"

"It came with the car."

"Oh."

The light turns green.

It's a few more minutes before Discord breaks his silence. "Remember Moe's dad?"

Fluttershy rolls her eyes. "Bit hard to forget?"

The police had come for him after he'd crashed his car through the garage door, staggered out stinking drunk, and started screaming obscenities at his neighbors. The household inside had been more of a mess than the man himself, especially his wife.

"It's just that when it happened, I thought that explained everything about Moe. I mean, I felt sorry for him and everything. I thought he would be better without his dad around." His voice lapses.

"But?" Fluttershy softly prods.

"He's still a dick." The phrase hovers in the air between them for a few moments before Discord feels the need to explain. "I just wonder, why's he such a dick if he knows what it's like to be bullied? If his dad was a jerk to him, why does he get off on being a jerk to other people?"

Fluttershy is quiet for so long that Discord thinks that she's just decided not to answer. When she finally does speak, it's carefully, choosing each word with exacting attention and care.

"About a year ago, I was reading a book by Paulo Freire."

"Who?"

Fluttershy shoots him a look that clearly says "Don't interrupt me, peasant . I'm imparting wisdom."

"He said that people who have been oppressed tend to look to their oppressors for guidance, that people who have been oppressed usually have no problem oppressing people themselves. People who have been bullied don't usually dream of justice, they dream of doing the bullying. They don't care that someone is being bullied, as long as it isn't them."

Discord chews on that. "So, what you're saying is -"

Fluttershy cuts him off. "I'm not saying anything. I'm just thinking out loud."

"OK," Discord says without conviction. He's not sure that he understands, but he thinks he might.

They drive the rest of the way to their homes in silence.

Outside Fluttershy's house, Discord suddenly turns as she's about to leave and asks, "So who was Paulo Freire, anyway?"

"A Brazilian educator and theorist of critical pedagogy."

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

Fluttershy just laughs and heads home.

-X-

Jonathan Byers is, in a word, losing. He's losing the war to maintain his sanity on multiple fronts. He'll think he's making progress somewhere only for life to violently blindside him like a deranged locomotive. He'll try to pay attention to everything, and everything will slowly sink beneath the surface. He feels distinctly overmatched and overwhelmed and absolutely outnumbered. He'll lie in bed and have the distinct sensation that the blankets are drowning him in their comforting grip as he quietly floats beneath the waves. So, for the sake of simplicity, let's just number the ways he's losing.

1: Something is up with his brother. He's coughing just about all the goddamned time these days and it's gotten so bad that even his mom has noticed. She took Will to a doctor a few weeks ago but the man had just shrugged and asked if Will had ever had a history of allergies. The problem here is that this shouldn't have been his mom's problem. His mom has enough shit overflowing her plate right now. This is supposed to be where he, as the older brother, takes charge and looks after the household when his mom can't.

Right. That's been going well.

2: He has no fucking clue how he's supposed to sort out his feelings about Nancy and Steve. They're still together, and for all intents and purposes, they're the freaking picture of a healthy, stable high school relationship. Jonathan has absolutely no desire to inject his own, screwed-up self into that perfect picture. He isn't the most self-aware kind of person, but he knows enough that people probably don't want creepy photo-taking stalkers drifting around the edges of their lives, much less pushing their way towards the center.

Doesn't change how he feels though.

Of course, Lonnie Byers is never really very far out of his mind's eye whenever he thinks about them.

3: He thinks he might be going insane. Just a little bit.

He has nightmares every few nights about the monster that leave him sitting in his room with his souped-up baseball bat tightly clenched in his hands. He sits in the middle of the room, far away from any of the walls. He's gone so far as to push the bed away from the walls so that he can sleep a bit easier.

Occasionally, he'll grab the bat and the rifle from the shed out back and go through the woods with a flashlight. He's not sure what he's looking for. He's not sure what would even happen if he found something. He just goes looking.

As sort of an add-on to this (3-a, if you will), his grades have been slipping up. Enough that his mom is starting to give him concerned looks at breakfast. This is a problem because this is the point in his life where he needs to start thinking about his college application. He tried to write his essay for NYU during winter break, but all he can think about for "Life Experiences" is the time he hunted a faceless interdimensional demon. He's pretty sure that qualifies for a "special, unique, distinctive, or impressive" life experience.

The problem is that it is absolutely, certifiably insane.

4: He's pretty sure that he's actually lost this time.

The trees all look unfamiliar at this time of night, without even a moon to cast some light, and his flashlight had started dying on him about ten minutes ago.

Well , he thinks drily , at least it isn't a school night .

-X-

His parents finally confront him about the trip about two weeks before school ends. He's coming home with a bag of groceries for his parents, tuna for Hobbes (they still don't sell swordfish steaks, so Hobbes has to settle for cruelty-free tuna), and supplies for the trip. Mostly medical stuff that he can kind-of use and toiletries.

His parents are waiting in the kitchen when he comes in.

They're sitting down at a table in a disgustingly casual manner, with that air of practiced normalcy that only comes when you need to fake it. They're fidgeting just a little too much for it to be real and the awkward way they're looking at each other would be a massive red flag on its own.

Discord resolutely does not look at them until after he's put the groceries away. The steady, persistent thump of meats and vegetables and fruits and tomatoes (if everyone's going to argue about what they are, he'll just make them their own category) hitting the different levels of the fridge fills the room for a few minutes. He folds up the bag and puts it in a box in the space under the sink. Then he turns and takes a seat at the table with his parents.

"So, you guys change your minds?"

His mom looks awkwardly at his dad as if pleading for help, before fixing her eyes back on Discord and taking a breath.

"Look, Discord, it's just that we never actually thought you were serious about this whole idea."

Discord declines to respond to that.

"I mean," his dad says, picking up the thread of his mom's statement, "you've had some pretty crazy ideas over the years, if we're being honest. That time you tried to go to the Yukon, for starters."

(Upstairs, Hobbes, who is listening through the floor, smiles at the memory. If you go digging through the closet, you can still find Discord's old helmet. That had been the event that had made him decide that, in the end, Discord's parents were really all-right people.)

"Honey," his mom reaches over to grasp his hand, "if this is what you want to do, then we're not going to stop you. You're legally an adult now, after all."

Discord's dad mutters, "Terrifying thought." He keeps it low, though, and only Hobbes catches it.

"And we think that having Fluttershy along is a good idea, for a lot of reasons."

"Mainly that she'll be able to bail you out of prison." This time, his dad isn't successful at keeping it low enough and his wife shoots him a look.

"Just, are you sure you want to do this?"

Discord nods, and his eyes have an unfamiliar light of determination in them.

"All right, then," his dad states, "heaven help us all."

His wife kicks him under the table.

He groans. "All right, Discord. Now, you're going to be spending a lot of time with Fluttershy, so there are a few things we – your mom and I – have decided you need to be aware of."

"Oh." Discord's face has an expression of horror slowly bubbling to the surface. "Dear God, please, no."

His father nods grimly. "I'm afraid so."

(Upstairs, Hobbes just chuckles.)

-X-

All of them played with their radios at night, at first, jumping through frequencies, looking for –

Well, to be honest, none of them were really sure what they were looking for. A voice, maybe. Something that would tell them that the world was somehow still following the rules. Unspoken, vague, undefined rules about abstract concepts like good or justice, but rules nonetheless.

They stopped, one after another, though none of them really ever talked about it.

Will stopped first. It was hard looking for someone you didn't know, and he had a small problem waiting for him in the kitchen sink. He had only listened out of some weird sense of duty to the person who, according to his friends, had saved him.

Dustin stopped next. He can see that something's up with Will, that something's up with all of them, and he makes an executive decision. Focus on the home front.

Lucas held out a surprisingly long time. He felt guilty for a long time about the things he had said, but even he gave up eventually.

So now it's just Mike, sitting up at night and fiddling with the radio. He whispers a name that night, when he thinks everyone in the house is asleep.

(Somewhere else, somewhere very cold and very, very dark, someone else whispers his name so that it frosts in the chilled air.)

-X-

Graduation is a reminder of why they got the yearbook slot for "Most Unlikely Couple."

Fluttershy is valedictorian. Obviously. She had spent the night with Discord, nervously rehearsing a speech while Discord had folded his old homework into origami. Two weeks before, she had been stressing about whether or not she would be valedictorian, while Discord had rolled his eyes and wondered "Who else?"

(Mr. Bun, if he had been capable, would have said the same thing, albeit much more comfortingly.)

So that's Fluttershy.

Discord is the kid who barely scrapes by with borderline grades – and that's with the help of the school's star student – who almost misses his name being called because he's busily plotting a zombie uprising, and who blows a bubble with his chewing gum as he gets his diploma.

That's Discord.

But Fluttershy still drags Discord along to her different parties afterwards, when the Science Club and the orchestra and the Medical Society all throw end-of-high-school celebrations.

Fluttershy gives a few more speeches because she's president.

Discord sets off a rocket – by accident, he swears – and learns why the club keeps a fire extinguisher in the workshop. The science teacher gives him a truly magnificent stink-eye.

A few days later, Discord drives up outside of Fluttershy's house.

When she steps into the car, she notices that Hobbes is seated directly between the two of them.

"Really?"

"Really."

She waves good-bye to her parents and the car trundles out of the driveway.

This is how it starts.

-X-

About a month into freshman year of high school, Fluttershy has a nightmare. She lies in bed when her eyes open and she is surprised by the weight of the dark on her eyelids. There is nothing she can see beyond the edge of her bed; it all stretches into a blank, empty darkness. It stretches on and on in every direction until she can't even begin to guess where the end lies. She sits, a speck of soft color in pajamas and her blanket in the smothering black. She lies back down and closes her eyes.

In the morning, she wakes with the firm conviction that she had an extremely strange dream, but when she mentions it to her parents, she cannot think of a single detail of her dream to tell them. The feeling that she needs to remember her dream nibbles at her mind throughout the morning until, at some point in the morning, it slides from her mind without a whisper and she forgets about the dream entirely.

The next night, when she wakes in the dark, she is lying on the ground. The ground itself doesn't feel like anything; it's just one of those irrelevant details that never crosses her mind in the course of dream. She is lying on her side, unable or unwilling to move.

From beneath her, something is rising. It flows around her and begins to cover her. It pours between the spaces in between her toes and under her fingernails and into her ears. It keeps rising and begins to cover her face, blinding her and choking her and running into her slightly open mouth. Finally, it covers her completely, drowning her beneath an inky black surface that quickly calms, as smooth and silent and unmoving as a mirror.

-X-

They hit the southern shore of Lake Erie in two hours. They both put on shorts and sandals, slather on sunscreen, and go for a walk. Discord double and triple checks the car to make sure that it's locked before they set out. It's hitting the end of mid-day, after the worst heat has already passed and the sea breeze is heading outwards.

Out over the water, the sun is settling comfortably into the line of the horizon, painting the sky in shades of pink and red and gold. The sun itself has dimmed to the point where you can look at it straight-on without feeling like you're putting needles in your eyes.

Discord right hand snakes between the two of them as they walk side-by-side down the waterline and lightly grips Fluttershy's left. To their left, the tide is coming in.

"So." Fluttershy breaks the silence first.

"Yeah?" Inside, Discord wonders what he's done wrong this time. At least, he's hoping he didn't do anything wrong, but that's honestly the most likely scenario.

"So."

A bead of sweat drips down Discord's forehead, traces a path past his eyes, slips down his neck, and drips into the collar of his shirt.

"We've never really talked about how you decided to do this, you know." Fluttershy waves her hand expansively in front of them, taking in the beach, the ocean, the other groups of people enjoying the ocean, and, of course, themselves. "Did this just come out of nowhere, or . . ."

The question trails off, inviting Discord to respond.

"Well, I was at the library a few months ago and I was talking to one of the librarians. We'd talked a few times before that, so she kind of knew me. I was going to leave and before I left, she mentioned that they had gotten a new book a few days ago – a few days before that, not literally a few days ago – and she said she thought I should read it."

"Which book was it?"

" 'On the Road,' by Jack Kerock."

Fluttershy raises an eyebrow. "Don't you mean 'Kerouac'?"

"Right. Whatever." Discord waves his left hand dismissively. "The point is, the book was about the author going on a road trip, and I thought, that sounds really cool. So, I mentioned it to my dad, and he told me that there were always these landmarks he wanted to visit with his family, but he'd just never had the time. His job, you know? And that was pretty much it."

"How was the book, though?"

"Oh, 'On the Road'? I don't know. I had to return before I was able to finish it. There was something really cool, though. Jack, the guy who wrote it, wrote the whole thing in three weeks in one sitting. I'm not kidding, he actually jury-rigged this crazy single huge roll of paper to a typewriter so that he wouldn't have to break his flow to change pages."

Fluttershy frowns. "Don't you know that's a myth?"

"What do you mean?"

"Mr. Chapman was telling us about that in English. The book actually took about ten years to write."

"No, but the original scroll is actually on display in a university somewhere."

"The thing is, he did type that scroll in three weeks, but he had the whole thing memorized at that point. He started spreading the story that he had written the whole thing in one sitting after he got a publisher to release the book. He was deliberately trying to create this image of an artist who could pump out a book perfectly on the first attempt."

"Oh."

At this point, they bump into another couple coming down the beach, but neither pair stops. A third person, sitting in Discord's backpack, is the only one who seems to notice.

"I kind of wish I didn't know that now," Discord says quietly, after walking quietly long enough for the sun to sink a few more inches.

"Sorry?"

"The book. It just seemed a lot more special back when I could imagine this guy crouched in front of a typewriter, pounding on the keys and living off of coffee and drugs for three weeks."

"I like it better this way," Fluttershy replies with a shrug. "I mean, this way, it seems more like an actual book. Actual art should take work, you know? Things should take time. That way, when you finish something, you know that you can be proud of it because you put effort into it, instead of just slapping it down on the table."

"I don't know, the world just seems less special with that fact. I mean, wouldn't it be cool if you were one of the people who could do that?"

"Not really. I mean, if you were one of those people, sure. But what about everyone else? I just like it better when I can do something if I try hard enough to do it."

"But what about the stuff you'll just never be good at?" Discord presses. "I mean, no offense, but you'll probably never be as good of a piano player as Candace cause she started playing when she was one or something."

"I can't do anything about that, though. So why stress about it?"

"I guess." Discord sighs. "It's just that, whenever I read those articles about how the best time to learn something is when you're young, it seems as if that chance passed before I even knew it was a limited-time deal. It's like, somehow, the best part of my life is already behind and I'm not allowed to know that until after it's already gone."

"Hey!"

They turn. The couple from earlier is running up to them.

"Sorry," the girl pants as she comes to a stop. "Have you seen a pair of sunglasses? My boyfriend lost his and we can't find them."

"Well, when did you notice it was gone?" Fluttershy asks.

As she's off being the reasonable one, Discord bends over his backpack and zips it open. "Hobbes!" he hisses.

A newly bespectacled tiger looks up at him smugly.

"When did you even get that?"

"It's not my fault if humans are too slow to see my awe-inspiringly fast pouncing skills," Hobbes informs him. "Or too distracted with human mating dances."

Discord gags, which makes the three behind him look at him oddly. "Nothing!" he says politely, before turning back at Hobbes. "I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to keep that."

"Since when are you the law-abiding one?"

"Since dad threatened to ship me off to military school after the Second Noodle Incident."

"I don't think he was serious."

"I don't plan to test that theory. Hey!" He tosses the sunglasses to their rightful owner.

"Thank you!" The man frowns. "Wait, how did you -"

"My tiger found them," Discord replies tersely and grabs Fluttershy's wrist. "Bye now!"

The couple just raises their hands in confusion. Leaning over to Fluttershy's ear, Discord whispers, "I'll explain later. Just go with it."

Fluttershy looks confused, but finally nods cautiously and they start walking.

It's quiet for a while.

"So, are you going to tell me what happened there?"

Discord glances at her from the side of his eye, screwing up his courage. "Do you remember Mr. Bun?"

"You mean that stuffed rabbit I used to own?"

"Yes."

"Not really. I mean, I gave her away a few years ago to a cousin. Is this, you know, relevant?"

"I'm just going to promise you right now, on the memory of Mr. Bun and the time I threw snowballs at you when we were six, that I am not a kleptomaniac."

"I didn't say that."

"You were thinking it. Loudly."

"No I wasn't!"

"You definitely were."

"Uh-huh. And which snowball fight should I use as the spiritual collateral for this promise?"

"How about the time I threw a snowball at you, and then you went out a rolled up this huge bundle of snow and buried my whole head under it?"

"Oh God, you actually remember that?"

"Absolutely."

"Huh." Fluttershy chews on that for a few minutes. "That's actually kind of sweet."

"Well, it was kind of hard to forget."

They both laugh at that memory. At the edge of the water, the sun has almost completely vanished, leaving the sky to the west a dripping crimson.

"We should probably head back now," Fluttershy mutters.

"Right."

They come to a stop, facing the darkening horizon. This time, Fluttershy's hand reaches first.

-X-

"Mr. Owens."

"Gentlemen. Have we made any progress?"

"Sir, we're following the life signs underground, but the rate at which they move suggests that there might be some underground network beneath the town."

"Like sewers?"

"We're looking into it, sir."

"And the source of the contamination?"

"We're still trying to pin it down, but we think it might have infested a residential area."

"Then we had better work quickly. A residential clean-up will be harder to hide from the news cameras."

"Yes, sir."

"And put some more manpower into the shutting down the portal downstairs. We had to redirect a passenger jet to avoid them noticing the magnetic shift."

"Sir, shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that we might still be able to use the portal for research?"

"Doctor, I could care less what you find out about the portal and wherever it goes. Right now, this has the potential to become a bigger embarrassment for the U.S. government than Iran. You have until the portal is shut down to continue your experiments. Then, it's all up to the Department of Energy."

-X-

Discord doesn't take Hobbes out of his bag until Fluttershy's taking a shower in the motel bathroom. Rather, he opens the bag and Hobbes saunters down to the carpet, stretches himself to his full length on the cheap polyester, and carefully ignores Discord's glare.

"Are we going to talk about that?"

Hobbes rolls his emerald eyes. "You mean those sunglasses? Please. They weren't even real Dior."

Discord lets a breath out of his mouth slowly. "You know, I'm still not used to this."

"Used to what?"

"Playing the sane man in the room. You were the one who tried to talk me out of driving the car into the ditch, remember?"

"I haven't changed, Discord. You did."

Discord thinks about that long into the night. He's sleeping on the couch that night, while Fluttershy takes the bed. They'll switch tomorrow night.

He had decided that Hobbes was the product of an overactive imagination around the time he was half-way between twelve and thirteen. That hadn't stopped him from talking to Hobbes, necessarily, just made him more careful about being seen talking to him. His parents had made him take meds once when he was nine. For about a week, he had walked like a zombie, bumping into walls and talking to no one. Even his parents had been relieved the night he had come down for dinner and declared that he was launching a populist revolution.

Of course, Hobbes hadn't stopped talking to him even then.

Most of the time, Discord is able to think of Hobbes as a particularly embarrassing holdover from his childhood, similar to the metal pins in his knee from when he had driven his wagon off of a tree, which his parents hadn't believed when he had told them, or his fondness for red-and-black striped shirts.

And then Hobbes steals a pair of sunglasses.

It's always small, never big enough to warrant some serious questioning on Discord's part, but big enough to make him wonder . . .

-X-

It's not cold. It's not hot either, but mostly it's not cold. It's just dark.

She's not really sure that dark is the right word to describe this. At Home-but-not-home, they had told her that darkness was when there was no light. They had held a little ball that was glowing white-yellow to show her what light was.

She thinks that he would have explained it better. Him. His name was –

She thinks hard. She pushes her mind to remember. There was the wet and the cold, and a yellow shirt, and his name was –

"Mike."

She remembers, and for a moment feels satisfied. It's hard to remember anything out here in the black.

His eyes were black, she remembers. That's important.

What color are my eyes? she wonders. There was a . . . mirror (?) that Mike had. Are my eyes open? Do I have eyes?

She can't tell. All around her is black and black and white and black and –

White?

In the distance, somehow, she sees (that's the wrong word, but it's the best she has) a pinprick of white. It brightens the slightest bit (this is all wrong, but there's no other way for her to think of it) and for a moment, after the silent, choking, blinding dark, it burns her eyes.

Then it begins to darken and Eleven feels the sharp, agonizing sting of fear cut into her heart.

Eleven, she remembers, that was me.

It matters now, as she looks off into that tiniest, burning atom of light. She gazes at that last speck of hope and imagines her hands reaching out into the dark, stretching across the distance between them to grab it and pull it towards her before it flickers out into the dark.

The light slowly dies, fading into the black, and she thinks, panic screaming in her mind, "No," and pushes . She pushes so hard she hears something crack, as if the world itself had split in two, and she can't tell if the crack comes from inside her or around her.

The light jumps suddenly, brightening like a horn of fire, and all around her, the darkness begins to burn.

-X-

This time, they're just going to drive through the night. It's Fluttershy's idea, insanely enough, but Discord's happy enough to drive. They've just hit a highway that winds its way through a forest and the best wildlife comes out at night anyways.

"I'm just saying," Discord is saying, even as Hobbes stiffens beside him, "we don't need to be outside long, Fluttershy! Just give me ten minutes with the camera and a flashlight and then we'll go wherever you want. Just ten minutes –"

"And you'll break your neck tripping over a tree," Fluttershy finishes for him. "And I'll need to drag you through the woods and drive you to a hospital and your parents and my parents will drag us home in chains."

Discord is grumbling under his breath when Hobbes turns towards him. "Stop the car."

"What?"

Fluttershy looks at him oddly. "I didn't say anything."

"Now!"

Discord's foot moves of its own accord and slams the breaks. Fluttershy is wearing a seatbelt. He isn't.

"Ouch," Fluttershy says drily.

Discord just glares at her while rubbing the general area on his chest that had just crashed into the steering wheel.

Fluttershy rolls her eyes and opens the passenger door to step outside. "Well," she announces, "at least we're still on the road. Car looks fine. If this a plan to force me to let you go sightseeing in the forests at night, it's even stupider than normal."

A groan comes from the car.

"How about I drive for a bit, huh?" Fluttershy calls out.

The driver's door opens.

"That's what I thought."

"Discord!" Hobbes snaps.

"What?" Discord demands.

"We can't leave yet."

"Why not?"

"Are you talking to Hobbes?" Fluttershy demands.

Discord holds up a finger behind his back, eliciting a snort.

"I'm not sure," Hobbes replies with furrowed brows. "As far as I can tell, she's in the woods."

"Who?"

"She's not sure. She's confused."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Look, just grab a flashlight, OK? It should only take a few minutes." He sniffs the air, his whiskers twitching in the moonlight. "She isn't far."

Discord glares at Hobbes, and in doing so, forgets rule number five of living with Hobbes: Don't get into staring contests with tigers .

"Fine!" he shouts.

"Discord?"

"Just give me ten minutes, Fluttershy, OK?" He grabs a flashlight.

"You're not serious."

He holds the driver door open for her. "If I don't get back in ten minutes, throw Hobbes into a ditch."

He walks off before Fluttershy or his own sanity can get the better of him.

The night chill sinks into his bones and he almost sprains his ankle just walking off the road by stepping into a pothole.

Something about the whole situation feels unreal to Discord. Ten minutes ago, he had been arguing with Fluttershy about the possibility of vampires hanging around in these forests. Then his stuffed tiger ordered him into the woods.

I want you to start at the beginning , he imagines a psychiatrist saying. Your tiger started talking to you?

Even in his imagination, he can hear the incredulity.

When he first hears it, he can't figure out what it is. Quiet breathing. Air coming in and out of a set of lungs. A small set of lungs, judging by the noise. For a moment, Discord wonders if he's stumbled on a bear cub. Well, he decides, if I have to die, angry Momma Bear is a pretty badass way to go . He walks to the noise.

It's dark in a way that's hard to describe for someone who grew up in suburbs. The darkness is hair falling over his eyes, blacking out anything more than a few feet in front of him. The flashlight feels like a needle being waved in the face of a dragon. Everywhere he points it, the hard flat light lets him see a few feet, and then when he pulls it away, the details of what he saw fall out of his head.

The breathing, however, is starting to get a little more distinct. He tries walking a bit more quietly, as his feet crunching on the underbrush almost drown out the quiet breathing. Everything else is almost deafeningly quiet, as if the forest is holding its breath, and even the quiet crackle of leaves might as well be machine gun fire.

Suddenly, he realizes that the quiet breathing isn't so much in front of him as it is beneath him. He looks forward and a little down and points his flashlight. There are a tangle of roots and, if he squints, a hint of pink.

Fear rapidly clogs Discord's throat as he thinks about what that means. He puts the end of the flashlight in his mouth and starts pulling at the roots. They're old, decaying, and they come apart easily in his hands. He lays his hands on the body and feels warmth. He wraps his hands around a surprisingly small arm ( a child, he thinks blearily) and pulls .

The kid comes out easily, so easily that Discord falls over and the kid comes to a rest with a soft umph on his chest.

He thinks she's a boy at first, judging by her hair, but it's a her. She's wearing a pink dress and a blue-green plaid jacket over it. Discord lies back with a groan and tries to think of a story for Fluttershy.

-X-

Dr. Owens drags a hand over his face and looks down at the cooling cup of coffee in his hand. He considers getting up and restarting the coffee machine. There are only fifteen minutes left before he heads out for the night. He's staying, for now at least, in a motel on the outskirts of Hawkins. Cheap fluorescent lights, a constant whirring of broken air conditioners, and the omnipresent smell of piss. He'll be relieved when he can leave this podunk piece-of-shit town behind and get back to actual civilization.

Someone – an intern or something, he can never remember – sticks his head in through the doorway. "Sir? Are you busy?"

"No, kid, I'm actually enjoying the copious amounts of free time that come with shutting down the second-biggest covert research facility in the world."

"Oh. Well, then –"

Owens rolls his eyes. "Get in here."

"Sir, about ten minutes ago, the Montauk facility recorded an unusual energy burst near around the northern border of Ohio, and wanted to know if we had picked up anything similar."

"And?"

"Sir, you locked down those instruments last week."

"Shit. Alright, kid, get someone to put together an investigative group and get the exact location, as clearly as possible, from Montauk. Last thing we need is another incident report this close."

"Yes, sir."

"And start up the coffee machine. Looks like I'll be here for a while."

-X-

"OK, start from the beginning just one more time."

"Fluttershy, I really think this can wait!"

"No, it really can't!"

Discord swears and slams the breaks on the car when they turn a bend and see a deer freeze before their headlights.

"I just went for a walk in the woods and came across the girl, all right!"

"No, it's not alright. How the hell did you find her?"

"I heard her breathing," Discord mutters. The deer finally bounds away into the woods.

"Why did you even go for a walk, anyway?"

"I felt like it! Is that a crime now?"

"It's sure going to look like one to the police. Have you thought about that? 'Sorry, officer, I just happened to come across a girl sleeping in the woods, and, yes, I get that she looks malnourished and sleep-deprived, but I swear we didn't kidnap her.'"

"Did you find a hospital yet?"

Fluttershy lets out a scream of frustration and unfolds the map sitting on her lap. "Where's your flashlight?"

"I think it's rolling around my feet somewhere."

Fluttershy sighs and reaches down. A few seconds later, she triumphantly pulls the flashlight up and flicks it up. "We're on the 90?"

"Yeah. Do we actually have to go to the police about this?"

"Are we seriously asking that? She could've been kidnapped!"

"So we just drop her off in front of a police station and drive on. I don't see the problem there."

"Have you taken a look at her? She looks seriously sick right now. What if she dies because we left her outside overnight?"

"That seems like bit of an overreaction."

The girl in question is sitting between the two of them, not yet having woken up. Discord had to forcibly remove Hobbes and stuff him under his seat. Taking a second look at her, he does have to admit that she looks extraordinarily pale.

"Wait, take the exit coming up."

Discord complies. Up ahead, he can see a straight row of streetlights and, further up, a glowing red sign that says EMERGENCY.

That's when he feels a small set of fingers grab his wrist.

"Hey," he almost shouts in surprise, "you're awake! I mean, good, you're awake!"

The girl peers at him with a strange mix of fear and fascination. Beside her, Fluttershy coughs.

"Kid, uh, you all right?"

The girl slowly turns her head to look at her.

"Hi," Fluttershy says with fake cheerfulness. "My name's Susan, but everyone calls me Fluttershy. What's your name?"

The girl doesn't say anything.

"Hey, my name's Discord. Just, you know, in case you were curious." The hospital is getting closer. "Can you talk?"

Fluttershy shoots him an angry look, like show some tact, idiot!

Beneath his chair, he can hear Hobbes sighing in exasperation.

"What?" he shouts.

"What?" Fluttershy asks in annoyance. "Don't treat the girl like she's stupid!"

"Not you!" Discord kicks the underside of his chair. "Would you just shut up, you useless cat! Unless you have something productive to say!"

"Who are you talking to?"

"Him!"

"Who?" Fluttershy raises the flashlight in suspicion.

"Crap, not in my eyes!" Discord shouts and automatically raises his arms.

The car immediately flies out of his control and starts skidding to the side of the road at one of the lampposts. "Goddammit!" he roars as he grabs the wheel again and slams his foot down on the breaks. The car doesn't stop, the tires squealing as they burn out against the asphalt of the road.

Then, it jerks to a stop. At least this time, Discord's wearing a seat belt, too.

Everything is quiet for a minute. Discord and Fluttershy both turn, very slowly, to look at each other. Both of them recognize confusion in each other's eyes. Then, they very, very slowly tilt their gazes down to the look at the girl.

Her hands are outstretched in front of her and her face is contorted in an expression of intense concentration. "No," she pronounces, very calmly and very clearly.

A drop of blood runs down her face.

-X-

"Mr. Owens? The report came in."

"And?"

"The way it's looking right now, the team is almost completely certain that there was an event out in the northern Ohio forests. They're trying to triangulate an exact location, but the background radiation levels are high enough for them to be certain that an event happened."

"Shit. Well, why now?"

"Well, sir, the thing is . . ."

"Just spit it out."

"A few of the scientists kept some of the instruments running to finish up a few of their experiments, and they noticed that this took place around the same time that there was a significant power surge in the sewer system that they're certain is linked to the infection we've been analyzing."

"Goddammit. Any good news?"

"They think that if we give them a week to study the results, they'll be able to determine where the infection is located."

"All right. Give them the go-ahead."

-X-

Over Fluttershy's protestations, Discord drags them to a local motel. They put the girl in a bed, where she goes out immediately. They step into the hallway, and immediately start fighting.

"Why haven't we just gone to the police?"

"Just think about it, all right? We've got a girl, who did . . . I don't even know! She's out in the woods at night, she looks exhausted, and did you see the number on her wrist?"

"There was a number on her wrist?"

"Yeah. The number 11."

"What's your point?"

"That doesn't seem shady to you?"

"Which is just more reason for us to go to the police."

"I'm just saying, what if there's more here than we're seeing?"

"What?"

"Just give this until morning, OK? Just let me ask her some questions."

Fluttershy gives him her best dead-eyes glare. "Has it occurred to you that she might kill us?"

"I'm pretty sure if she was going to kill us, she would've done it by now. I mean, she stopped a car!"

"We think she stopped a car."

"Right. You going to go looking for wires, or something?"

Fluttershy sighs. "I'm still not completely convinced that this isn't a prank of yours."

"Oh, come on, would I do that?"

Silence.

"OK, fine, just give me until morning. We'll figure out what to do then."

"Fine."

"Thank you."

-X-

Will Byers has a problem, and that problem is sitting in the sink this morning.

The slug wriggles blindly, searching for something. He carefully opens the faucets and lets the water carry it away into the sewers. He waits until any trace of the black sludge is gone.

As he motions to close the faucet, the world shifts just a little bit, and for a moment, he's back in the Upside-Down.

I can't keep doing this, he thinks. "I can't keep doing this," he says out loud. He'll do it today, he decides. He's going to head down to his mom and his brother and tell them exactly what's going on.

And then, as quickly as a snake, something makes him reconsider. Not a voice in his head, but something more. Something that makes him want, more than anything else in the world, to think this through one more time. He needs to think about this one more time, just to be sure this is what he wants.

After all, he thinks, he hasn't been hurt in any way, not really. And his mom's getting enough trouble as it is, with her job on the rocks lately. His brother isn't doing much better.

"Not yet," he suddenly says out loud. Not until things are a bit safer. Think about it. They want to take care of him. He shouldn't repay them by pushing more stuff into their laps. Just until things have calmed down a bit.

He nods at himself in the mirror, and even there he looks a bit surer, a bit more certain. Just a little longer , he reminds himself, and reaches for his toothbrush .

-X-

Neither of them sleep for more than a few exhausted seconds that night. They just sit staring fitfully at the girl on the bed. When the first rays of dawn start creeping in through the window, Fluttershy abruptly stands up and, throwing a challenging look at Discord, heads out of the room.

He tells himself he's not worried.

She comes back about fifteen minutes later with coffee, bagels, cream, and warm sandwiches.

"Have I ever told you," Discord asks reverentially as he reaches for the food, "that I love you?"

She ignores him and stalks over to the bed, where she waves a warm pastrami sandwich over the girl's nose. The girl wakes up immediately.

"Well," Discord mutters, "that worked. Some of this is mine, though, right?"

"You owe me," Fluttershy answers. Discord replies by hungrily digging into a bagel while Hobbes watches the whole tableau from the top of the TV.

"You hungry?" Fluttershy asks kindly.

The girl nods slowly, her eyes never leaving the sandwich.

"I'll give this to you," Fluttershy explains, talking very slowly and deliberately, "but you need to tell me your name."

The girl looks up at Fluttershy's face when she says that, clearly trying to decide something.

"El." She points a finger at herself. "El."

"Like 'eleven'?" Discord asks.

She shakes her head. "El."

"OK, El," Fluttershy says and tears off a bit of the sandwich and hands it to her. She eats it in a second and begins licking the crumbs off her fingers. "Now, where are you from?"

"Bad place," El says shortly, and reaches for the sandwich.

Fluttershy pulls it just out of reach. "What bad place?"

"Papa."

Fluttershy frowns. "Was Papa bad?"

El stops reaching and pulls her hands back. She looks down at her lap. "Yes," she says finally.

"All right," Fluttershy whispers, "it's OK to say that if you think so. Why was Papa bad?"

"Experiments." El's lips curve around that word, as if uncertain how to pronounce, like something she had heard before and was just now trying it out for herself.

Discord and Fluttershy share a look. "OK," Fluttershy replies as she turns back to El and hands her the sandwich.

Fluttershy stands up and grabs a cup of orange juice, which she leaves on the bed stand next to El. Then she grabs Discord's wrist and drags him out into the hallway.

Back inside, El looks around the room, properly for the first time. She freezes when her eyes come to rest on the tiger lying on the big black box sitting in the corner of the room.

The tiger winks a lazy, bright green eye at her. It raises a finger to its mouth and somehow, El thinks of the feeling, if not the specific word, "safe." She thinks of Mike standing in front of her in the bathroom and Joyce holding her after the bath. She thinks of the "pillow fort" that Mike made for her.

She goes back to eating while the tiger watches with twinkling green eyes.

-X-

"We need to go to the police."

"Wait, that's what you got out of that little talk?"

"Well, what did you get?"

"That something shady is going on!"

"Which is exactly why we need to the police."

"Well, what if this is . . ."

"If this is what?"

"Look, I get it sounds crazy."

"I haven't even heard what you think this is yet."

"Do the words 'government conspiracy' not pop into your head at any point?"

"Oh my God . . ."

"I'm just saying!"

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Remember that time in tenth grade?"

"You mean that time you went through a conspiracy theory phase and put tinfoil over all your house's windows?"

"It sounds bad when you put it that way."

"And my house's!"

"There's a journalist I got in touch with."

"So we can go from amateur crackpot to professional crackpot?"

"No, he's an actual professional journalist, I swear."

"Who's interested in conspiracy theories?"

"More like, he keeps an open mind. He was one of the guys who exposed MKULTRA."

"What?"

"It was this crazy CIA experiment with LSD and stuff."

"You lost me at 'CIA experiment'."

"It was a real thing, OK? There were journals and newspapers involved and there might even be a Supreme Court case next year. The point is, this guy, Jerry Thompson, he was involved in breaking the story."

"And he's 'respectable'?"

"Nice air quotes."

"Discord . . ."

"Yes! He was with News on the March back in the 40s and he led the investigation into that famous guy's death, you know, that newspaper guy at Xanadu."

"Charles Foster Kane?"

"Yes, that guy!"

"And now he does conspiracy theories as a professional journalist."

"Well, he's retired."

"You're kidding me."

"He won a Pulitzer a few years ago!"

"You got nominated once for your retelling of the Noodle Incident. That doesn't fill me with confidence."

"What if I'm right, though? That there's a government conspiracy?"

"Just saying those words makes this feel more ridiculous."

"But what if I'm right?"

Fluttershy groans and turns to rest her head against the wall. "Where does he live?"

"New York. We can get there today if we drive hard."

Fluttershy seems to be counting to 10.

"You're taking me to Broadway when this is over."

"What? No way."

"And Mount Rushmore."

"No."

"Or I'm calling our parents."

". . . Fine."

-X-

Joyce Byers is well aware of the fact that most people in town think she's crazy. It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion.

Sometimes, she isn't sure if they're wrong.

When Donald had left her with a copy of self-help guide for people possibly suffering from psychiatric disorders, she had dumped it into her garbage without a second thought. Now, as she goes digging through last night's trash, she wonders if she might not need it.

She pulls the crumpled pages from the trash can. There's a small smudge of ketchup – probably ketchup, hopefully – that she wipes away with her finger. She opens it to the second page, where it lists symptoms. There's a picture of Nancy Reagan smiling obnoxiously at her, with a list of terms and short descriptions listed below the image. One of them says "paranoia".

At the bottom of the last page, they've left a national hotline for people who think they might need help.

She picks up the phone.

It's surprisingly tempting to try to call the number. To push off some of the insanity filling up her life and say that it's just in her head. She reminds her sons, every few days at dinner, as gently as she can, that she's there for them if they ever need to talk to her about something.

Except neither of them are getting the message, because both of them are really obviously keeping things from her. They think they're good at hiding things, but they're really, really not. At least, not from her.

And then there's the small matter of the other fucking dimension that she clearly remembers taking a walk through. If she imagined that, she doesn't want to think what that means for the state of her subconscious.

She doesn't need a fucking shrink. She raised two sons without Lonnie. When everyone else thought Will was dead, she found him. She found him.

Well, she had a little help . . .

Suddenly, she starts punching keys, because she's going to kill something if she can't talk to someone. If he believes her, then that at least means she isn't completely nuts. If he doesn't –

The phone starts ringing and she presses it to her ear. What if he isn't home? she wonders, but there's a click.

"Hello?"

"Jim?"

"Oh, hey, Joyce. Is there something wrong?"

"Jim, I'm going to say something. It might sound a little crazy, but can you just promise me you'll listen till the end?"

"Uh, sure."

"I think something's going on with the lab again."

"Hey, Joyce –"

"Till the end, dammit! Have you noticed all the plumbers coming into town lately?"

"Well, yeah, it's time for a state inspection. You saw the announcement in the paper, didn't you?"

"OK, how come I've never heard of these before?"

"You never cared about plumbing before?"

"Hopper, the state never cared about this town before. The state didn't even remember this town existed before last year."

"Joyce –"

"Don't interrupt me, Hop!"

"Joyce, I really need to go."

Click.

-X-

In the morning, El wakes up before either Discord or Fluttershy, both of whom, despite being so tense that they had thought they wouldn't sleep for a week, manage to wake up on the couch in the morning with El staring at them curiously. Fluttershy's face is pressed into Discord's neck, while Discord spits out a few strands of Fluttershy's hair.

They're both immediately red-faced and jumping to opposite ends of the couch while El watches the two of them like she's discovered a brand new species of bird with an extremely confusing mating dance.

Discord decides to grab some food this time and Fluttershy hurriedly packs up the few things they took out of their bags. She's putting away their toothbrushes when she sees El sitting cross-legged on the floor. A pillow is hovering in the air in front of her as she gazes intently at it.

Trying very hard not to make any noise, Fluttershy puts the toothbrushes away and walks over to El. She tries to figure out how to word this. She lays a hand on the girl's shoulder and starts, "El . . ."

That's as far she gets before the door slams open and Discord barges in announcing, "FOOD!"

The pillow drops immediately.

"Whoa," Discord says, his finger raised, "was she just . . ."

Fluttershy nods.

A grin breaks over his face. "Man, that's cool! Hey, I wonder how heavy she can lift."

Fluttershy shoots him a pointed glare.

"What?"

"Don't you think, Discord, that maybe we should keep this quiet for now? Avoid attracting attention? Not carrying out weight-lifting contests?"

Discord rolls his eyes. "It was just an idea. Anyway, we're good to go, right?"

"Yes," Fluttershy replies. Discord grins again and grabs one of the two bags lying on the floor and heads down the stairs. Fluttershy grabs the other.

As El starts to stand up, Fluttershy leans down to her. "Listen, El," she starts hesitantly, "just so you know, that think you do with your mind?" She waits until El nods slowly before going on, "Could you not do that for a little bit? We don't want to make anyone curious."

"Bad people," El whispers.

"Right," Fluttershy nods, although she has no idea what El's talking about. Actually, the words and the way El says them sends an odd feeling of uncertainty crawling at the back of her neck. "We don't want any bad people getting curious."

El nods, once, sharply, and turns to follow Discord.

They drive for hours, while Discord and Fluttershy keep up a steady stream of banter passing between them. El says nothing and a few times, Fluttershy forgets that she's there.

Slowly, the shores of Lake Erie disappear. The lake lasts a little longer, hanging onto the horizon as a single length of gleaming blue that stretches as far ahead of and behind them as they can see. It never really stops, just keeps going and shrinking and going and shrinking until it's suddenly less than a point in the distance. Eventually, they head further inland and it thins out bit by bit until Fluttershy can't see it even if she squints.

Ohio itself seems largely a resolutely flat country, mainly fields of dirt and grass, with a few forests, towns, and cities to break up the monotony. It just goes on and on and on . . .

They pass a sign that says "Welcome to New York!"

Thank god for the sign , Fluttershy thinks. The landscape of New York is so similar to Ohio that if it hadn't been for the sign, she wouldn't have noticed that anything had changed.

Discord seems to be having a similar thought, because he turns to her and says, "Isn't New York famous for skyscrapers?"

"That's the city, idiot, on the coast."

"Oh. No skyscrapers until then?"

"Basically."

"Huh. Funny, isn't it, that we never think about New York having grassland?" He gestures out the window with one hand. "I mean, it's like the city of New York is just everything we know about the words, New York, you know?"

"I know what you mean. Like how you know that the entire state of New York isn't just one city, but –"

"Right. I mean, there are probably people who live in New York who don't live in a city, but do they exist? It's like Indiana. I mean, if I held a gun to your head and asked you to find Indiana on a map, could you?"

"Yes."

"You're you. Shut up."

"No, but I seriously do get what you mean. There are probably people living in Indiana and working there and maybe even dying there, but how often does the state of Indiana cross your mind, right?"

"Right. It's as if every time you think about it, actually think about it, it's as if you're rediscovering sections of the world and you think, how did I forget that part of the world existed?"

The conversation lulls for a second as they both look out their windows. Both of them have rolled the glass down and are enjoying the wind rushing through their faces. Between them, El has fallen asleep again. Given how emaciated she had looked the night before, Fluttershy doesn't blame her.

"You know," Discord starts, "when I was really young, I used to think my house was the whole world."

"Oh?"

"I mean, I looked out the windows and stuff sometimes and if someone asked me, I could tell them that, yes, there was a place that was outside those windows, but it was as if the outside didn't matter."

"When did that stop?"

"When my parents started letting me run around in the backyard."

"That makes sense."

"And then I met other people that my parents invited over, like Uncle Max, and . . ."

"The world got bigger and your tiny little child mind was blown."

"No, not really." Discord actually sounds thoughtful for once, which is, in Fluttershy's experience, a sign of something actually profound or a sign of imminent disaster. "It's just that the world got a little bigger and I kept going, if that makes sense."

"So when did the existence of Indiana shock you?"

"I don't know, honestly. It was just, at some point I noticed that the world was getting too big for me. I looked back one day and I thought, I used to think I was the center of the universe, isn't that cute?"

The conversation slows again, hanging between them on tenterhooks and waiting for someone to open their mouth.

"If it makes you feel any better, I felt the same way."

"About Indiana?"

"No, Discord, just, about life. I mean, there weren't any chapters to my life, understand? I would just think back every now and then and laugh and think about how naïve and young I used to be. I never felt like anything was changing, it just happened."

"Oh, I don't know. . ."

"Do you have some deep insight into my life to offer me?"

"Well, ninth grade. I mean, you just were just so intense about school after that year."

"But that's kind of what I was talking about. Like, I never, during the year, thought, 'I want to be super good at school'."

"Really?"

"Shut up. It was just, I started doing stuff like clubs and competitions, and people said I was good at it, so I just kept doing it and doing it. Then, at some point in junior year I looked back at my life and I realized that I had kind of locked myself into a certain course of life and I had never actually decided on that course. It just happened."

"That's kind of weird, actually."

"How come?"

"Cause I remember my parents talking about you, and they would say stuff like, 'That Fluttershy just has her whole life figured out, doesn't she?' 'I know! Discord, why can't you be more like her?'"

"Oh my god, shut up," Fluttershy says laughing.

"Hey, it wasn't just my parents," Discord protests, but he's laughing, too.

The laughter refuses to die down until several minutes have passed.

"Thing is, Discord," Fluttershy says, her words tripping over themselves a little hesitantly, "there were times where I wondered if I wouldn't have been happier doing your thing."

"My thing?"

"That whole screw-the-system, devil-may-care kind of attitude."

"Well, why didn't you ever try it, then?"

"I thought about it, but I never really wanted to try it out. It was just, somehow, that wasn't exactly me . Neither was school, not completely, but it was more me than skipping class would have been."

"Hey, I stopped doing that!"

"Because I made you."

Despite themselves, the two of them smile at that.

Up ahead, a sign announces that there is an automobile rest stop coming up in about half a mile.

"We should probably grab some food," Discord mutters.

-X-

"Mr. Owens?"

"Chief Hopper. We understand you've been fielding some inquiries about our investigations."

"I told you, sir, I'll handle them."

"And you've been doing an admirable job of that so far. However, we might need to revise some details of the deal."

"The hell do you bastards want this time?"

"We think we might need to test the Byers boy –"

"No."

"Hopper, please understand –"

"Don't even go there."

A pause.

"We'll be back."

-X-

They stop by at a McDonald's. It isn't by choice, necessarily, it's just that it's the only restaurant open at the car stop. So Discord fills up the car engine while Fluttershy goes to get food. El stands by Discord and watches him curiously as he pumps gas from the Texaco station. He's gazing just a little mournfully at the closed pizzeria by the McDonald's.

"How?"

"What?"

The two of them look at each other, Discord looking down and El looking up. "Oh!" he says as realization pops into his head. "You mean the gas pump. Well," he scratches his head, "I'm actually not sure. I mean, there's probably some kind of pump involved, probably related to pneumatics . . ."

He trails off as he sees the complete lack of comprehension on her face. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

She just keeps looking at him. Then she furrows her brow in concentration (Discord surreptitiously looks around to make sure nothing sharp goes flying at him).

"Why do you need to use it?"

The words are slow and halting and almost painfully quiet, so Discord has to lean over to hear them properly. There's a sense that the words are tools that don't get used very often, or children who have been bedridden for days and are trying to get feeling back into their legs.

"Well, we need it to fill the car's engine with gas."

Again, the lack of comprehension.

"You know, gas? For the engine? For the car?"

At the look on El's face, Discord starts to feel a sense of confusion begin to creep up on him. "I mean, you know what a car is, right?"

She slowly shakes her head.

"Oh." Discord drags his fingers through his hair, because he really hadn't considered this. "OK, so this ," here he pats the truck with his right hand, "is a car, right?"

El looks from his face to his hand, then back to his face. She raises a finger and points to the car. "Car," she says.

Discord nods.

She smiles. "Car." This time, her voice sounds just a bit louder, closer to a normal speaking voice.

"Right," Discord says with a grin.

"This is a Car!" This time, her voice is almost proud.

"OK, complete sentences," Discord mutters. "That's good."

He glances around. There are two gas pumps by a tall sign that says Texaco. A little beyond, there is a little row of stores along a little road that ends in a small curve for cars that want to turn around. McDonald's is the only one that's open. Beneath the Texaco sign, a small convenience store sits low and squat, with long windows that afford Discord a clear view inside. A single man sits behind a counter reading some paperback.

"El, could you stay here for just a second? I'll be right back." She nods in response to that.

The pump has finished filling the engine. He pulls out the pump and then grabs the receipt. Discord walks over to the convenience store and pushes the glass door inwards. A little bell tinkles to announce his presence. The clerk doesn't look up from his book. As Discord walks closer, he sees that it's a copy of a Robert Ludlum book. The Bourne Identity .

"Hey," Discord announces loudly, trying to get the man's attention. "Do you have any children's books? The kind with lots of pictures?"

The man points a finger to an aisle at the end of the bookstore. His eyes don't leave the page.

In the back, there's a small stack of picture books, the type that are thin but wide and have seemingly hand-drawn images on the front cover. He grabs a few Dr. Seuss books, a worn copy of The Giving Tree , The Very Hungry Caterpillar , and, from the bookshelf right above, three Frog and Toad books. Just to be safe, he also a grabs a book about the alphabet. Then, he looks a bit higher and frowns.

Back at the counter, he drops his stack of books in front of the clerk, along with the receipt for the gas. The man finally puts his book away, leaving it face-down on the counter so that he can start tallying up the prices on his battered old cash register.

"You know," Discord starts awkwardly, "in the book section . . ."

"Yes?"

"You have a bunch of adult novels right above the children's books."

"Oh?"

"A bunch of really adult novels," Discord repeats, trying to get his point across.

"And?" The man is putting the last number into the cash register.

"Well, any kid could see them."

"No kid will see them," the man replies. He grabs a piece of paper at the top of register and tears it off. He lays it down facing Discord and puts a pen down.

"Well, why not? It's right there."

"No kid ever comes by here," the clerk replies. "No one ever comes by here." He taps the pen. "Sign, please."

"Do people just not come around here?"

"If they didn't come today, they probably won't be here tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"Ruskies. You know, nowadays, the people in the Kremlin and the people in the White House can send missiles at each other across the world in twenty minutes." The man snorts. "Bunch of pencil-pushers playing God."

He taps the pen again. "Sign, please."

Back outside, Discord walks back over to the car, where El is standing by patiently. He pulls the driver door to the truck open and El steps inside, followed shortly by Discord himself. A little self-consciously, he tries to make himself more comfortable in his seat. "El, do you know how to read?"

She just looks at him with questioning eyes.

"Do you know," he pulls out his alphabet book ( Learn the Letters! the titles promises), "how to read this?"

She slowly lifts the cardboard cover to the first page. "OK," Discord murmurs as he reaches his hand to skip past the first few pages of the title, the publishing info, and a note for parents to get to the actual text, "like this."

Her eyes travel down the page and her mouth opens a little, her lips curving here and there as if to shape words. She frowns and her face scrunches in concentration. For a few seconds, she just sits looking down at the page.

"A little," she finally says.

"Do you want to try to read it?" Discord asks.

This time, she nods rapidly.

Discord grins at that, the smile effortlessly working its way to his lips. "Great!" he says. He looks up through the windshield and sees Fluttershy finally walking out of the McDonald's. There's a grease stain on her shirt and a bag clenched in her left hand.

"El, give me second," he says, though she doesn't even look up from the book. He pushes open his side's door, steps out, and starts walking to Fluttershy. They meet about ten feet from the car.

"My God," Fluttershy snarls, "would it kill those people to clean their restaurant sometime this year?"

"Fluttershy, we need to talk about El."

"Discord, this whole side trip was your idea –"

"Fluttershy, just hear me out. I think . . . I think she might have been abused at some point."

"What?" Fluttershy asks sharply.

"Or at least raised somewhere . . ." He pauses. "Fluttershy, she didn't know what a car was."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. I've been thinking –"

"Before you get into your conspiracy theories –"

"She didn't know what a car was! Tell me that's not weird!"

Fluttershy stops at that and looks back at their car, nibbling on her lower lip. Inside, El is sitting hunched over, reading her book.

"What's she doing right now?"

"I went to convenience store and got her some picture books."

"And?"

"She can read a little bit. A tiny bit. I mean, she's struggling with this book about the alphabet I got."

Fluttershy chews on that for a little bit. She lets out a groan. "How much longer do we have until we get to New York?"

"Three or four hours."

"And you've got the address."

It's a demand, not a question.

"I already told you I know where he is."

Fluttershy nods once, sharply and quickly, more to herself than to Discord. "Right, let's keep going. I think I'll drive for a bit."

"I'm really fine . . ."

"You've been driving for almost six hours. I'll take over for a little bit."

"No, it's really fine –"

"Discord?"

"Yes?"

"I'll drive. Now eat your Big Mac."

-X-

Discord is sleeping with his face leaning into the glass. Fluttershy has the paper (a map, she thinks) open and covering the dashboard. El sits with the papers (Pages? Book?) open on her legs.

"K," she whispers, "for key. For king. For . . ."

She frowns, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth. "For . . ."

"Kangaroo," a voice under Discord's seat whispers. "Kang-Gar-Ooh."

"Kangaroo," El whispers. "For kangaroo. Thank you."

Fluttershy glances at her oddly, but El ignores it.

From beneath Discord's seat, an orange-and-white-and-black head pops out and grins at her with sharp, sharp teeth. She's not scared, though. He's nice. "You're welcome," he says and licks a few crumbs off of the long hairs on his face.

"They're called whiskers," he mentions offhandedly, "and scurries back beneath the chair."

"Whiskers," El murmurs. Something new .