I've given up on proofreading things before I upload them. If I proofread it'll never go up and I've accepted it. Enjoy this update anyway!

A nightmare jolted Steve awake and sent him sitting upright. A sharp pain shot up his back and his hand instantly reached around him to grab the source. For a brief second he wondered why he was sleeping on the floor. When he looked over at his empty bed and the messy blankets on top of it his memories from the night before came crashing over him like a tidal wave. Panic started pumping through his veins at Charlie's absence. Had she snuck out in the middle of the night after all?

Steve jumped to his feet and darted down the hall. The bathroom door and his parents' bedroom were both open and void of petite mind-readers. He hurried down the stairs and surveyed the living room and dining room, both empty, before going into the kitchen. Steve stopped in the doorway when he spotted her standing in front of the open refrigerator with her back to him.

She pulled out the container of orange juice before turning to face him. Her hair was tied up and into a pony tail and there was a red mark on her cheek from sleeping, sleep still clouding her eyes. The sleeves of his shirt hung past her hands, making her look even younger than she was. She was, dare he say, cute.

One of Charlie's eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. "Think I ran away?" she asked.

"I, uh… yeah." He admitted.

The corner of her lips twitched upwards a fraction. Just enough for him to notice before her expression once again turned stoic. "My backpack is still upstairs. Did you think I left without it?"

"I didn't notice it." Steve said. He pushed his hair out of his forehead and met her on the other side of the room, digging through the refrigerator. "Are you hungry?" he glanced at her just in time to see her shrug. "It's okay to say you are."

She hesitated, her eyes flickering over to the contents of the fridge before meeting his again. "Okay."

Steve pulled a box of frozen waffles out of the fridge and popped four of them into the toaster oven before grabbing two glasses from the cabinet and putting them in front of her. Charlie poured orange juice into them and brought the second one up to her lips but hesitated to drink it. It wasn't until he took a sip of his own that she copied. How could something so simple have the power to be so heart breaking? "Do you think I'm going to try and poison you or something? That I'm going to kill you?"

Charlie stared at him over the rim of her glass. It was ironic that she was able to read everyone she came across yet she herself was so unreadable. "I think everyone's trying to kill me." She answered flatly.

He felt his mouth hang open but no words came out until he practically had to spit them out. "Is that a joke?" Steve asked

She held his gaze for a few moments longer before taking a sip from her glass. "Sort of." She said, setting it down on the counter. "A truth-based one."

"But the lab shut down, right?" Steve said, in hopes of being helpful. He watched her eyes move out the window above the sink behind him. "So you don't have to worry about having to hide from it anymore. Right?"

Charlie shrugged, carefully watching something outside. "The people who worked there are still out there somewhere. They didn't just vanish." She said. Her eyes suddenly met his again and in a moment the tension that had settled over her seemed to soften somewhat. "It does help that the actual building is shut down though."

Steve watched her bring the cup back up to her lips and take another sip, all the while trying his best to get inside her mind. Eleven didn't talk about the lab much, at least not to him, and the effect it had on her to that day. He imagined that it wasn't easy. But she didn't seem nearly as worried about the people at the lab as Charlie did. Maybe it was because she had a support system. Steve figured that someone living on the street didn't have many people they could be close to.

Before Steve could worry much about what to say next the phone behind him started to ring. He watched Charlie's eyes go wide before she sat upright, suddenly looking tense. Her gaze followed him as he stood up and walked over to the phone behind him. Out of all his guesses of who might be calling (Hopper, Dustin, his mom) he hoped it was Hopper. Steve picked up the receiver and glanced at Charlie, who looked slightly less alarmed, before speaking. "Hello?"

"Steve?" Hopper's voice was unmistakable even over the phone. "Your message better be a prank, kid."

"It's not." He replied, leaning on the wall. His eyes were locked with Charlie's across the room as he talked. A small part of him was still afraid that if he dared to look away from her for too long she would disappear. "Not quite my sense of humor."

"Tell me everything."

Steve let out a quiet sigh, silently hoping it wouldn't make her feel weird to be talking about her in front of her. "I heard something outside last night, so I went out and it was this girl. I saw the number on her arm so I brought her inside. Her name's Charlie."

"And she can do things?"

"Yeah." Steve scratched the back of his head. "Can we come over? Try and figure things out? Maybe she can meet Eleven?"

Hopper's voice dropped a little and he could hear him ask "You wanna meet her?" before addressing Steve again. "When can you come?"

"We can leave in a few."

"Alright then."

Steve hung the phone back up on the receiver and walked back over to the table, taking his seat once more. For what felt like the hundredth time already he tried to read something in her expression. Either she was a sociopath or had an incredible poker face. "You okay to meet them today?"

Charlie held onto her glass with both hands, her gaze dropping down to the juice inside. Instead of replying she simply shrugged her shoulders.

"You can tell me if you're not, you know." He said.

She remained silent and as still as a statue. Steve could only begin to imagine how scary the world was to someone who had such a negative experience with it. He hardly knew anything about her but Steve found himself desperately curious to learn everything about her she would let him. All of a sudden she pushed her chair back and got to her feet, heading out of the kitchen. "Let's get this over with." She said flatly.

Steve quickly jumped up and followed her, grabbing his keys off the keyring and yanking the front door open. When they reached his car Charlie stood stiffly a few feet away while he got in no problem. He rolled the passenger window down and leaned over so he could see her. "It's fine." He told her. "I promise I have practice."

Charlie stayed put for a few more seconds before inching towards the car and lowering herself in. "I don't like cars." She mumbled as she clicked her seatbelt into place.

"Why not?" he asked her.

In his peripheral vision he could see her knuckles go white when the engine started and he backed out of the driveway. "They don't feel safe."

Steve tried not to smile. She was less intense when she was nervous. "I'll go slow."

As he drove to Hopper's cabin he tried to see Hawkins through the eyes of someone who had likely avoided it their whole life. The streets were full of memories, mostly positive for him. Had Charlie been near Main Street when she escaped? Who was the first person she had interacted with in the outside world?

Charlie was silent for more than half the ride. They were only a few minutes away from where they had to start walking when she finally spoke up. "You think too loud."

"Excuse me?"

"I can hear you without trying to." She explained, sitting low in the seat with her arms crossed on her chest. "And it sucks."

Steve spared a glance at her before looking back at the road. "What sucks?" he asked.

"Being here again." Charlie looked away from the view out the window to face him. Her gaze was so intense and heavy that he felt small and transparent when she looked at him. "It brings me back to things I don't wanna go back to."

He had to stop himself from saying he understood. There was no way he ever would. "Seems like the kind of thing that would suck."

"So does living in the same town forever." She said.

Steve looked over just in time to see a microscopic smile drop back into her neutral expression. "Was that a joke?"

"No." she said defensively.

"You can make jokes you know." Steve told her, since she seemed to be convinced otherwise. "What, are you scared of being funny?"

Charlie turned to look out the window once more. "You could say that."

Steve parked the car in the same spot he always did when he drove the kids to see Eleven, or the few times he had to baby sit when Hopper had to work late. The remains of the melted snow from the storm a week back sat in large mounds every couple of feet away from each other. When they got out of the car Charlie wrapped her arms around herself and waked closer to Steve than he expected her to.

"Are you cold?"

"No."

It was a bad lie.

The walk from the car to the cabin seemed a lot longer walking next to Charlie. He tried not to worry too much about how the meeting would go since he apparently thought too loud. But her comment about him not calling the police the night before made him anxious about what would happen when she met him.

And what about Eleven? He didn't even want to let his mind go there.

When the cabin came into view he glanced over at Charlie, who was just as unreadable as ever. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine." She answered shortly.

Steve walked up the creaky steps and knocked on the door three times. From the other side he could hear some movement heading towards them. He half expected Charlie to turn and disappear into the trees. But she only stood stiffly by his side, her eyes looking somewhere far away. Steve heard all the locks from the other side of the door before it opened and Hopper stood in its place.

His eyes instantly looked at Charlie before he waved them inside. Her movements were stiff as she followed Steve inside the cabin. Compared to the distance she had kept between them the night before she was practically holding his hand. Steve exchanged a glance with Hopper as she looked around the room.

The silence in the room was thick and awkward, and Steve was thankful that Hopper was the one to break it. "So, um, Charlie right?"

"Yeah."

Steve watched Hopper cringe slightly at her response. "Where's Eleven?" he asked in hopes of easing some of the tension.

"She's in the shower." He answered, nodding down the short hallway where the bathroom was. "She's pretty excited about this." Hopper looked at Charlie, who was inspecting the police radio on the other side of the room. "You wanna sit down?"

It took Charlie a second to realize he was talking to her. She straightened up and quickly sat in the chair so she could sit by herself. Steve and Hopper lowered onto the couch, both of them watching her carefully. He wondered if Hopper felt the same sense of intimidation he had the first time he met her.

This time Steve took it upon himself to break the silence. "Last night Charlie asked me what had happened to the other experiments when the lab shut down. Do you know what happened?"

Hopper shifted slightly on his half of the couch. "I tried to find out, but everyone who worked there kind of went underground. All I know is that they're not in the building anymore."

Steve was pretty sure he saw disappointment flash across her face. "That's not a lot." She said quietly.

"I'm still trying." Hopper continued. "I even got a search warrant for some areas of the building, but I didn't find anything."

Charlie's dark eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead. "Search warrant?" she asked.

"Yeah. It's basically something that gives the police permission to look through something."

Steve felt his stomach sink all the way down to his feet. It seemed he should have acted on his plans to warn Hopper about what he assumed were her negative feelings about cops sooner. He watched Charlie carefully as her eyes wandered to Hopper's jacket hanging up on a hook next to the door. Her eyes went wide and she jumped to her feet when she saw the police badge.

He expected her to get cross with him or yell. She instead bolted for the front door as fast as she could. Steve was up and after her before she even jumped down the porch stairs. For someone with such small legs she sure as hell ran fast. Charlie had the advantage of having practice running for her life. Steve had the advantage of running laps multiple times a week. It didn't take him long to figure out that she was a short distance runner.

She started to slow down a little less than a kilometer away from the cabin. It wasn't until she tripped over a log and almost fell that Steve managed to get close to her. He grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her towards him, securing his arms around her small waist before she could get away.

"Get off me!" she screamed, flailing her arms in attempt to get away from him. "Get off!"

Her piercing voice was almost enough to make him consider letting her go. Her regular speaking voice was lower than most girls he knew yet her scream was straight out of a horror movie. "Just calm down." He told her in between screams.

"You lied to me!" she yelled, this time banging her fists against his arm. "You're a liar!"

"Would you just stop for a second?!"

Instead of replying Charlie swung her fist behind her in attempt to punch him in the face.

Though she continued to struggle for what felt like forever she quickly stopped screaming. Steve figured that she'd eventually wear herself out and that he just had to make sure she didn't escape his grip. It just took a lot longer than he expected. When she settled for trying to squirm away from him instead of hitting him he figured she was calm enough to talk to. "Hopper's different from other cops, okay? You can trust him."

"Bullshit." She spat. "They're all the same."

"What do you think is gonna happen? He's gonna turn you in?" Steve asked. "Eleven's lived with him for over a year and he's never turned her in. Most of the time no one even knew she was there. Not even her best friends."

Charlie scoffed. "Then he's a good actor."

Steve hoped she would pull herself together and listen to him soon. His arms were getting tired of holding onto her so tightly. "You know, if I was going to turn you in I would have brought you were. I would have gone to the police station or a news broadcaster."

For a moment she stopped struggling, likely thinking over what he said. "Then why did you bring me here?" she asked eventually.

"To ask him what to do."

Charlie turned towards him as much as she could. "If you don't know what to do with me then just let me leave."

"No."

She let out a short sigh and started pushing against his arms again. "Fine." She said. "Let's get this over with."

Steve let his arms drop but quickly grabbed onto her arm just in case she was still planning on running. He hadn't realized how far they had ran until they started walking back. Charlie once again went stiff by his side but didn't try and escape once in the long walk back. Steve tried to imagine what it was like to be her. What had happened to her that she was so scared of everything? He imagined that the quality of life for someone who was so scared all the time wasn't as high as it was for everyone else.

"I got arrested once." Charlie said suddenly. When he looked over at her she had a small drop of blood inching out of her nose. "It wasn't a fun experience."

"What happened?"

She wiped her nose with her hand and her hand on her borrowed sweats. "He did things I didn't like." She replied shortly.

"Like what?"

Charlie shook her head instead of replying out loud.

It took almost ten minutes for the cabin to come into sight again. He could see Hopper and Eleven sitting on the bench on the front porch talking, neither of them noticing Steve and Charlie coming back. He glanced over at her, doing his best to read her expression but coming up short as always. "You okay?" he asked her when he couldn't figure her mood out.

"Yeah." She answered quietly. "Fine."

As they stepped over the trip wire Steve kept his fingers crossed that things would go better the second time around.