\Warning: Homophobic slurs consistent with the time and minor assault./


Chapter Seventeen

Town Called Malice

She answered the door after hearing the tentative knocking and saw him, dressed in a plaid shirt, with jeans wrapped up in a brown leather coat and boots. Hopper's hands were tucked into his coat pockets when she opened the door and was somewhat thrown to see her in a purple velvet wrap dress. She didn't wear any form of a skirt since they had been in school together. And now here she was, in a dress and wearing just a touch of make-up.

Joyce certainly didn't look bad, as she held a stance that insisted that while not used to this, she was happy to try this more formal look for a change. While Hopper would have taken her as she normally was, he found the effort more than appealing and more of an encouragement of things he had been pretending didn't exist between them.

"Hi," he said after they sized each other up.

"Hi," she said softly, a gentle blush adjusted to her cheeks, before moving to the side to let him in.

There were two glasses set up on the table along with a bottle of Ballantine's. Hopper whistled at her drink of choice, not one to decline the offer.

"I'll just get some ice," she said, as she gently touched his arm on her way passing him to the kitchen.

His body reacted against him as his heart fell into his stomach, remembering what he had been just informed of earlier, but unable to get the sensitivity out of his system.

God, he just wanted to be happy. Joyce Byers was basically given him ample opportunity - with good malt and all. And all that came to mind was his previous meeting.

Hopper was often able to disguise his inner conflicts, but Joyce caught him mid-thought as she pulled out the ice bad from the freezer and asked, "Everything okay, Hop?"

He looked upon her again, how pretty she was and how alone they were. Hopper was often able to bury his concerns down into another part of himself - the part of himself that housed his past, his Sarah - things that he wasn't ready to delve deeper into - not without the numbing of a good drink and a great broad...but Joyce hadn't been someone who he had wanted to jump to in order to forget. He liked her because she couldn't forget, wouldn't forget, otherwise, how could she keep on living without something to live and love for?

Jim realised that it was part of the reason he put off considering her as something more for so long - even when his smile only came because of her, even when everything in him and around him was telling him that she was someone worth being with for all the reasons and more he could ever want and need.

But there was always that goddamn catch.

"Yeah," he sighed, "Just a rough shift. I was glad for the call, really."

She smiled and poured him a drink with ice, pushing it toward him through the hutch.

"Well, how about we try to forget our rough days, just for one night?"

Hopper looked down at the proffered drink and swilled it around as he looked at her one last time. His attention dropped to her lips, which he had often avoided for the sake of propriety, and so when he recollected him, there was a sense of understanding from her that hadn't been so boldly displayed before.

His brow quirked as he responded with his glass raised, "To forgetting."

She clinked him with her own glass before they both drank it down.


Lucas' Cimmaron tread the road toward Benny's with few others to disturb their trip. Dustin was answering all of the questions that Cassidy had insisted on getting answered during the trip as she was not easily satisfied by a story about other-dimensional creatures. Dustin was more than accommodating which made Lucas want to puke. It was Mike gushing over El, all over again . And the one person who could get why he rolled his eyes at this display was getting sicker and sicker in the back of Old Man Robinson's Hobby Shop.

The party had decided that this would be the one and only time they would split up as they knew they were stronger together. They would grab Cassidy's food, drive back to the shop and hunker in for some much-needed recuperation until the very early hours of Sunday, and take Will to Indianapolis to give him a fighting chance. It was the opposite of how they got through this mess years ago after many flubs and hurt feelings, Lucas being one of those hurt. But he didn't have his hang-ups and natural distrust toward El and her motivations now. She was absolutely on board with getting Will medical attention, even with the restrictions they were undergoing. He still wondered whether it was even right for them to go on this dangerous journey with her, but he remembered the way she practically swallowed those pancakes whole and it made his heart pang with a sense of guilt.

Lucas knew he was sold on Eleven being back. But how they were going to retain her freedom with Will's life on the line was another question entirely. One that would need to be solved if they all had a chance of making it out alive…

He was certain Mike wouldn't like his suggestion, but it seemed like the only logical one after he was chased with guns in Hawkins Middle.

The familiarity of the farm signs and tree lines notes that they're about 2 minutes from Benny's establishment. A line of black cars driving in the opposite direction on the road is slowly but surely making Lucas realise that the model and make are not common within Hawkins, even for the richest folks. What's more daunting is the lack of license plates, the uniformly strict manner in their driving and the spacing between cars. Dustin was too busy talking with Cassidy and so Lucas is the only one to feel his heart drop into his stomach.

He cleared his throat, which got Cassidy's attention, reducing Dustin's chance to bond with his crush. Lucas deadpanned as he didn't want to make it too obvious to Cassidy, who may have needed something close to being hit by a bus to recognise a guy crushing on her. "Yeah, guys - I'm pretty sure that's CIA driving on the other side of the road."

Cassidy's shoulders sagged at the sight of the oncoming hoard. While her questions were incessant, she was mostly under the impression that a majority of it was real, considering what she had witnessed only so many minutes prior.

"That doesn't look like Mayor Kline's set-up," she mentioned as she sat further down in the passenger seat. Dustin sat back in his seat, previously leaning forward to talk more comfortably with her.

"You reckon they know about your car, Sinclair?"

The question posed seemed to be the first that made the danger feel more inevitable. Sure, they had been discussing laboratory experiments in Hawkins Lab, an evil dimension filled with flower head monsters that sat beneath it and lots and lots of cover-ups, but this was the first instance in their conversation that they had hoped that this was something they had missed in their intel on each and every person involved in Eleven's life before she disappeared.

"Probably," Dustin's voice squeaked.

"Let's just wait and see if they follow us," Lucas tried to slow down the feeling of adrenaline rushing through his veins.

He tried not to speed up to bring more attention to his car if they had some awareness of his vehicle specifically. Not a word was uttered between the three should they jinx the luck that they so scarcely had in this space of time.

Eventually, the restaurant came into view, the well known greasy spoon cafe giving them a reprieve from the high intensity they were now coming down from. Dustin laughed quietly, wheezing as he said, "They really didn't think a Cimarron was worth noting down - once."

"Shut up, Dustin," Lucas muttered tiredly.

As he parked in the most shaded part of the lot outside Benny's, Lucas took a minute to breathe out the stress and adrenaline he had withheld for the sake of not acting irrationally while Dustin somehow remained silent, potentially also waiting for the calm to settle in properly before he felt too secure.

Cassidy slowly sat up and patted her hands nervously on her lap, looking through the restaurant windows as best as she could from the distance. When she saw who was inside, she tried not to bring any attention to it until Lucas' sharp eyes saw him and his posse. There were two men in a booth nearby them, and while they looked mighty sceptical to Lucas, he could sense that they could be bypassed as the hunting types that Hawkins' diverse township accounted for, given the right circumstances. The ringleader of the former group though...

"We really can't catch a break today."

"What?" Dustin asked with alarm.

He gestured out a booth in the restaurant with three occupants, nearby the two older men in suits. Dustin patted Cassidy's shoulder, "If you want, we can go somewhere else, my shout."

Lucas wanted to smack Dustin upside the head but couldn't in his position so had to accept rolling his eyes until they nearly fell out of his sockets.

Troy Donovan sat across from James and Brock in one of the booths by the window, currently making a mess of a burger and talking with his two companions as though whatever they had to say was the least interesting thing he could be listening to.

"He won't notice if I'm quick," she said earnestly, almost trying to convince herself, wrapping her long silky hair into a quick bun and putting the glasses on. "I just need to pay and pick up after all."

"Oh c'mon Cassidy," Lucas spoke exasperatedly. He had put up with a lot, but he couldn't seriously allow this blatant misconception of Troy's particular attention on Cassidy Fox.

"What?" there was an accusatory tone to her as her body angled better to look at him and lean against the passenger door.

"The guy is obsessed with you," Lucas pointed out slowly, he pointed at her for more direct impact. "I get your whole thing isn't to get involved," which caused Cassidy's brow to furrow in confusion as to when she made that her moral statement in her existence, "But when it comes to what is a huge asshole of a human being finding every reason there is to talk to you, you have to admit that he might be sweet on you, right?"

Cassidy looked away from Lucas and back to the restaurant to see said subject throw a single French fry at Brock who was obnoxiously laughing at something. The action shut him up as he picked up the stray fry and ate it without any sense of table manners.

The grimace rose on all three faces in perfect, repelled unison. Sure the boys were gross but they tried to leave that to Mike's basement.

Eventually, she sighed, loosening her body some as she rather roughly searched her side bag for her wallet, and panted through the annoyance at having to locate the admittedly small cardholder in her mess of a bag in the dark, "He may have an unhealthy interest in me - but it's not for the reason - you're thinking of."

Lucas snorted in disbelief, "And what else could be so important to someone like Troy Donovan when it comes to a girl?"

At this question, Cassidy finally had her hands on her wallet with a small smile of relief and as she registered just what Lucas had said to her, her brow rose, "It's your lack of imagination that holds you back, Sinclair."

Carefully opening the door and stepping out, she looked back into the car at Dustin and said, "Oh and thanks for the offer, but I have an addiction to Benny's fries. Maybe next time."

She didn't catch the way Dustin's eyes shone and the way he fell back in his seat as Lucas glared at his lovesick behaviour, as she had long closed the door and was swift in her approach.

Cassidy popped up to the counter after the bell clicked to announce a new patron's arrival or exit through the glass door. She received a warm smile from Glenda when she recognised her at the counter as she was polishing napkin dispensers.

"I was wondering when you would get here," the friendly waitress said upfront.

"Yeah I got delayed," she said quietly, hopeful not to bring any attention to herself.

Glenda put the white polishing cloth down, the distinct smell of white vinegar wafting nearby Cassidy. "We just need to box the fries. I recall you saying last that you liked them 'piping hot'."

"As fresh out the fryer as possible. Indiana's Autumns are too cold to have them sit in wait."

Glenda could almost agree with her, even if it impacted the kitchen slightly. She turned to the kitchen window and rang the bell. "I got Fox here for her order."

The fry cook spoke absentmindedly, "Five minutes."

Cassidy forked out the payment and was glad for the soda to be passed to her, sipping from the straw in the Coca-Cola branded cup.

"It's quiet tonight," Cassidy spoke conversationally, wanting to keep her attention at the counter so she wouldn't give any particular patron the idea she wanted to chat and delay her further from getting back to the harboured fugitive and the two teenage nerds in her uncle's shop. Glenda seemed to make a face to say that there was a story to that. Cassidy hoped it was quick.

"Yeah, I had to send Tanya home, on account of the creepy folk in the corner over there who seem to be the only ones who have come in all night," she said as she leaned in. "They give me the heebie-jeebies."

"It can't possibly be one table's fault, Glenda," Cassidy responded as she gave one sly look over at them.

"That's just it, sugar, it wasn't just them," Glenda said as she leaned in, a twinkle of gossip in her warm brown eyes and a sense of otherness to her tone that at this point Cassidy was willing to understand. "It was a whole lot of them taking up our booths. Most of them shipped out not long ago," Glenda said, her side-eye a touch dramatic and her continuing duty on the dispensers somewhat lacking certain missed spots. "Stranger thing is that the pizza place downtown is handing out free food. I know Johnny Wilkerson - he's a cheapskate. It's just too coincidental for this place to be so deliberately quiet...feels weird to see people you don't know, ones that are dressed sharper than Mayor Kline in a place like this...Chief Hopper certainly didn't enjoy the drink he had with them."

Cassidy tried not to react too viscerally at hearing this very important point that seemed like a passing detail to Glenda, considering what she had to say was all lining up with the kind of men that were putting Lucas and Dustin and now consequently herself more on edge than getting in trouble with their parents. Putting Will off from getting medical attention until dawn...putting El in a position where she broke the phone without needing to physically touch it...

"Wait, the Chief was here? With these strangely well-dressed men?" Cassidy tried to train the overt concern out of her voice.

"Yeah," she said quietly, "You know I reckon it all goes back to that stuff that happened a few years ago - that poor Byers kid and all. Seen men like that often enough before now, but they really multiplied the last few days. Makes you think there's more going on in this town than you'd ever believe."

Cassidy nods casually at her last words but the alarm bells are ringing in her head. Even the local police are involved? But she remembered Chief Hopper's name from Will in passing and had seen the truck pull up to the school to pick him up...

There is a call to Glenda from, unfortunately, Troy's booth. Thankfully the bell at the kitchen hutch window is rung out sooner and her bag of fries and chicken wings is finally supplied in full. Glenda doesn't give it a second thought when she passes the bag over and gives her a quick farewell. Cassidy quickly pulls out a couple of Washington's and stuffs them in the tip jar. She might have been invaluable to whatever these teens overtaking her breakroom was planning to do.

As she turned, she ran into Troy Donovan, who held her with ease as his arms stopped her jostling movement and stilled her in place briefly before letting her go.

"Sorry," she quickly apologised, attempting to get around him, but he prevented her from doing so, which immediately aggravated her. Whether he noticed her discomfort or not seemed to be of no concern to him, as he casually leaned forward, a sense of entitlement that made her want to swat him.

"I don't know what you think you're doing hanging out with those losers Fox," he said as he whispered closely to her, "but it will probably end badly."

Cassidy's eyes dash to that of the table she's most concerned about and sees they have absolutely no interest in the conversation, clearly just taking their time to drink beer and eat chicken wings and not notice the Cimarron in the lot. Troy's friends are only somewhat conspicuous as they watch Troy talk to her, as he brushed his hand up her arm. She remembered him attempting to do something similar when he realised she had been transferred to Hawkins High when she moved into town.

"Is that a threat?" she finally asked.

"No," he almost spat the word with poison. "They attract freaks to their group. Hopefully, you don't get caught in the net before it's too late…you could always hang out with us after all." His hand trailed back down her arm and her unoccupied one took it in a vice grip. It caught the attention of the two tables which was not what she wanted to achieve in this, but mostly to stop him from brushing her arm - it was the most irritating thing in the world. She moved in closer to him and leaned into his ear.

"You don't need to act like this…I've always kept my word."

The action, while highly misinterpreted by everyone else, was enough to make people feel like they were watching something intimate - something they shouldn't. Both booths' occupants seemed to look away, ashamed of watching them so close, to begin with. Good.

"I can't trust you around them," he responded evenly, voice gruff, but a flirtatious smile evident.

She made a slightly cooing noise in response to this as she let go of his hand and moved her free hand to his shoulder, deciding that the only way to get through this was to pretend, just like he did. Her tone dripped with impregnable tension, "Maybe if you hadn't been such an ironic short-sighted son of a bitch, you wouldn't be paralysed with fear about some guys who enjoy passing the time playing Dungeons and Dragons ."

Troy's smile didn't vanish but the niceness in his eyes did, his jaw setting in the hard line as he clenched from the pure and unadulterated truth. Cassidy patted his shoulder again, before saying, "Just trust me, okay?"

She didn't wait for his answer though, slinking away with a lot more sway in her step. Cassidy then grabbed the soda from her well-disciplined hand that also held her bag of food and skipped the steps, before walking off to Lucas' car.

Nothing was said at first, having settled back into the passenger seat as she pilfered through the bag and finally chewed and swallowed on one of her desires, a golden fry fresh and spiced and salted.

"Well?!" Lucas finally broke.

She looked at the two and realised they had been waiting for her to fill them in on her minor run-in with Troy Donovan, which they probably witnessed from the safety of his car.

"Oh, yeah, something dumb and vaguely threatening to my level of popularity, as usual, found out something more relevant though," she said, offering them fries. Lucas declined but Dustin wasn't about to turn down her offering

"And?" Lucas asked impatiently.

"Start the car," she told him. "They might be utilising the local police force to find El."

"How do you know that?" Dustin asked incredulously as the engine revved to life.

"Glenda is a fountain of knowledge," she admitted.

"The waitress?" Dustin asked, compelled.

"Mhmm," Cassidy mumbled through her chewing, "All those cars we were scared of before were probably leaving from Benny's since a ton of those nicely dressed CIA men were here…with Chief Hopper..."

The beat to Beethoven's Fifth dropped as the radio came to life in the car. It was actually Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven, but the beat had just dropped and now the two teen boys had definitive intel on Hopper's placement in all of this, Lucas having turned down the funky beat that followed to absorb this new and damning information better.

"Yeah, they had some very serious talk that didn't end well...from the way you both look terrified this is way worse than I anticipated," Cassidy observed with a higher-pitched voice like she was about to find out some new bullshit.

Lucas was furious and caught Dustin's eye in the rearview mirror, "You explain, I just want to drive."


Troy dropped himself back into the booth after that odd showcase. "I'm meeting up with her soon…she wants me."

The other two shake their heads at what might be just another Troy Donovan conquest. It didn't hurt that he had the shiny new Chevy Cavalier parked outside and a reputation for being an asshole which could occasionally earn him some desire from the female population of Hawkins High, but he certainly had a strange selection when it came to the girls he chased.

Brock seemed to voice their confusion best.

"But what the hell was she doing hanging out with those losers?" He emphasised the pet group name with his face scrunched up and grossed out by their association. "Are you sure that's your type?"

Troy looked immediately bored by the insinuation and sneered. "People make mistakes all the time Brock…it's part of human nature," he tried to excuse, looking back out the window to see the car she arrived in drive off hastily, "She'll turn around soon enough."

"Who would want to hang out with that freak girl anyway?" James mentioned before finding himself on the end of one of Troy's seriously perilous glares. James had to stop himself from snorting at Troy's high level of sensitivity as he clearly mistook what he said to mean he was talking about his desired side-piece.

"I wasn't talking about Fox," James explained with a mean voice. "I was talking about Frog Face's girlfriend. The one who broke your arm three years ago - the fucking freak."

Troy sipped from his soda, which had been spiked with Brock's cheap vodka his mom had stowed away from Costco shops in a very piss poor hiding place. "Well, they can get married in straight-jackets in Pennhurst for all I care."

This earned a few low chuckles from the two bunched in together opposite Troy. He looked out the window again and finally contemplated what James had said. Sure Troy would pick and choose what he actually listened to when it came to his dipshit friends, but this was something that wasn't worth letting dissipate in his myriad of complicated thoughts.

The girl who was holding onto Wheeler when he followed their group back to Sinclair's car at the mall. She had looked familiar, but he just thought it was some band geek who got all jittery over Wheeler one-upping him. He hadn't considered it might have been the shaved feral-looking girl.

"She was there yesterday?" he interrogated James suddenly, trying to bring about some disbelief, in hopes James meant someone else. "I thought she was dead!"

James swallowed his burger and bit down with discomfort, the memory getting clearer for him.

"She didn't have the buzzcut…but I remembered her the second she looked at me like she was ready to kill me for saying anything to Wheeler," he gestured with his burger-fisted hand across his neck. "And after what happened last time, I didn't want to test her freak abilities out again."

"What happened last time?" Brock asked, only to be given a look from James that was uncertain before saying, "She acted like she was some sort of witch - properly Pennhurst material."

James went back to eating as Troy's nostrils flared at their insensibility to have not pointed that out sooner. He leaned over and smacked James across the head.

"Why didn't you say anything, you fucking moron?"

James put his arms out in immediate defence as Brock watched the two in some fascination, not fully informed of the past that James and Troy had shared to the extent that it may have actually been a problem for them and not the other way around.

"Harrington showed up and I was more scared of what my parents would do to me after that," he stated honestly, finally seeing the shame in that childish aspect and sheepishly finished with, "So, I forgot."

Troy's features formed his repugnant feelings of his friend's wimpishness as he couldn't quite relate to having parents actually discipline him. He was their little angel after all.

"Scared of your own parents, Jesus James."

James grunted and retorted, "Not everyone has idiots for parents like you, Troy."

Troy barely responded with an intolerable gesture for some before there was a shadowing presence next to them at their booth, two men standing tall and looming over their mini jerk convention. They were wearing sleek suits and had been a couple of booths further down to them before this but had seemed to gain interest in their conversation as they had slipped out and now found themselves at this teenager-filled booth. There was nothing to define what profession they were attached to and nothing that told Troy that he had any requirement to try and acquaint himself better for respect's sake.

"Can I help you?" Troy asked with not an ounce of politeness, loathsome to their interruption, which didn't seem to be how James or Brock looked at these two official standing men, regardless of how little Troy saw other people - a God complex bestowed upon him by his mother's desperate need for a child and after so many years of missing out, finally receiving Troy and giving him more than love but everything.

"Gentlemen," one of the men began with a whitened smile but nothing warm behind it. "We were just overhearing your conversation…and it seems we might be able to help each other out."

Troy looked to the two opposite him, who were content to not get involved and pretend their food was more important. But Troy could see they weren't the type to leave which only made him more forward in his disappointment that they had yet to leave them alone. "I know I'm hot shit but if you don't fuck off, I'll assume you're some kind of faggy molesters, got it?"

The two men briefly looked at each other, contemplating - probably on whether Troy was even worth the time since he wasn't remotely pleasant to deal with.

They both seemed to make a silent decision and the other one answered. "We're looking for a deranged and dangerous individual…a girl around your age. Your description seems to match the person we're looking for. Is there anything you can tell us about her whereabouts over the last 24 hours?"

James and Brock look over to Troy, whose grotesquely annoyed appearance slowly transitioned to that of a smirk.


Neither could quite tell you how they got to this position. All Hopper remembered was having a couple of drinks, feeling her knee brush against his and then one look was all it took.

A kiss, as deep as old friends goes - seared them together in an embrace. He had her waist in his hands and she had wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him down closer to her petite height.

The blood through his veins was thrumming with an excitement he hadn't felt in years, his limbs had never felt so light since his return to Hawkins from the city; his heart warm with trepidation.

Flashes of the happiness he once had and could have again with her were paralysing his guilt, a beautiful element of life serenading him away from his previous encounter at Benny's.

Maybe he could be happy, maybe he could have his second chance with Joyce and live the way he had once when he had his Sarah. Maybe he didn't have to experience his existence as a constant ache in his muscles and bones. Joyce had certainly experienced pain and she didn't seem to shy away from the concept of trying for better days. Why couldn't he just be part of that with her?

He wanted that. More than anything.

But Jim knew he couldn't have his cake and eat it too.

When he thought of how she took on the maternal role to that little girl, he knew he could never go forward if she didn't know….that there would be further anguish to overcome and for her not to understand why it wouldn't be fair on the mother of two with a deadbeat ex-husband to contend with.

"Joyce," he pulled away, deliberately as he knew he lacked the strength to do so gently when all he wanted was to wrap himself around her.

"Jim?" she asked, chest heaving as her eyes fluttered open to reality.

With all his might he stopped himself from falling into an abyss with her again and swallowed harshly, "I can't do this."

At those very firmly admitted words, Joyce pulled away from his touch entirely, sore from the contact and ashamed to be jilted.

"I - I want to - I really do Joyce, but I -"

"It didn't stop you with half of the single women in this town," she said sourly.

Jim closed his eyes as he realised that she thought it was because of her. It kind of was. He couldn't pretend with her anymore.

As she turned around, her face warm and pink as she couldn't begin to face this rejection head-on, Jim Hopper finally came to terms with his biggest fear and said:

"I met with the people who ran the Hawkins Lab before I came here."

This stopped Joyce's actively humiliating mind from continuing with fervour, a renewed apprehension to his admission.

He felt physically sick when Joyce had turned around again, this time able to look him in the eye - a question he hadn't seen in her flighty eyes since Will had disappeared - a disappointment brewing.

"Why would you meet with them?" she finally asked him.

"I made a deal with them, the night we got Will back. I told them where she was…"

Her eyes widened, hands roughly placed to her mouth, shaking her head in disbelief. Joyce couldn't even fathom putting another kid in danger, even for her own. She couldn't, not for that poor girl. Her body moved without her express intention as she sat on the couch. She could hear him explaining, but it was almost too eccentric a story that her experience could hardly fathom.

"- they thought she was dead or that on the small chance she was where Will was - in that other place. I - I couldn't believe even she would survive down there - but they weren't doing anything to help her - and so I would give her supplies weekly, sometimes more, and they would disappear from this box I had set up in the forest, so I thought the other place was still fragile enough to get these things through and that she was getting them."

A million thoughts ran through her, a lot of things stopped her from outright screaming at him. He had kept it to himself for three years. Even if it was batshit crazy, he was still trying to make up for his betrayal.

"I'm still doubtful - but I didn't stop sending supplies - and these CIA guys, after going no contact for a long time - turn back up out of the blue and call to meet me - turns out Martin Brenner is alive and tells me she might have returned and is somewhere in Hawkins-"

The colour from Joyce's face disappeared at these words.

Will had been acting so odd for a teen boy who had been through way too much and had been doing better despite all of it. His flightiness had increased and his habit previous to this week of keeping secrets had been mostly extinct up until his recent unsteadiness. She thought it had something to do with the time of year, afraid something new might turn up or his post-traumatic stress disorder was ramping up. Or that he was stressed because of some bully. Maybe something normal.

But he had been cagey in a way she hadn't experienced in some time that was beyond the issues her boys had dealt with for being weird or soft amongst their classmates. The way he had been on the phone - even if he didn't want to hang out with his mom on a Saturday night, Will Byers was sensitive on how he approached this topic and yet he had been distant with her, uncertain with their conversation. He had acted far more mature than most boys his age ever were, even if she felt something of a disconnect these last couple of days, and so it was becoming clearer to Joyce Byers as to why he had been different.

"-but she can't have - if she did then it means she either got out of town and came back stupidly or somehow managed to survive there for three years and that can't be possible - even with the fucking gas mask I sent through -"

Her son had been brilliant but also very secretive. It broke her heart, but more than anything, she wondered to what detriment this could have been if he couldn't even trust her.

"Will knows...he knows she's back," she suddenly spoke as her voice wobbled, certain Eleven had indeed returned, which caught Hopper off guard. "He's known this whole time, and he didn't tell me."

Joyce took a couple of deep breaths, trying to hold her tears back. She had dealt with one too many blows this evening and her son's likely involvement in all of it was the breaking point.

A red and raw anger fell through her as she looked bitterly at the man before her.

"How could you?" she declared, sad and tired with disappointment. "How could you possibly help these people...after everything that happened to Will - you - you condemned Jane to that hell, Hopper."

Jim looked down, hoping that maybe Joyce could be forgiving but knowing ultimately, it would not be in her nature to do so when it came to her children or the little girl who sought her out for comfort that night, the one she knew was missing a mother who fought gallantly and paid the price for it. Joyce stood up and began to look for her leather coat, comfy shoes and her keys to the car.

"Will is probably in danger all over again, because Brenner and his gang will immediately go looking for him and the boys - did that occur to you?" she said over her shoulder after finding her keys and pulling the coat arm through, "Or were you too gullible to remember that these people don't care about our kids being obstacles to their little science project?"

She had grabbed her purse and fiddled through it to make sure her wallet was inside. Joyce couldn't afford to not be prepared.

"Where are you going, Joyce?" he walked toward her steadfastly.

"I'm going to look for my son - I can't lose him again -"

"Let me help you, Joyce please-"

She slapped him hard across the face. Jim Hopper is well acquainted with physical violence but not quite so from the small Joyce Byers. He got too close to her and she was furious now, tears spilling with no shame for her emotion.

"Why should I let you help? This is all your fault!"

There is something not being said, but Joyce knows deep down that there was a reason Will couldn't be upfront with her. She would never have put Jane in the way of danger but something had made him doubt her and worry that that was no longer an option.

"I know, and I'm sorry - but I have a better set-up -"

"I don't want your help!" she yelled at him with a revulsion deep in her diaphragm, her hands itching for the calming relief of a cigarette but her anxiety over her son won out. "Now, please just leave me alone."

Jim ran out after her and watched as she got into her car. She started it quicker than he had ever witnessed her being able to, wondering if the guys at the shop created a miracle by fixing her car or if the vehicle felt how angry she was and didn't want to be a party to her fury at that moment. Joyce peeled out of the property, wiping away her tears determinedly over this new chaos as her greatest worries for her son's wellbeing abruptly played over and over, leaving a whirlwind of dust following her, the dark November night barely lit by the car's headlights.

"You fucking asshole," Hooper expletively exclaimed in disgust to himself.


Nancy and Jonathan stepped out after Ozzie and Zemora - knowing now James' nickname was at least Ozzie, as they were followed by two operatives with machine guns. The elevator had descended for a while and when it opened up into a base of operations, neither college student could have expected it to be so underground.

Sure there was a level of sophistication to the concrete and glass interiors, lighting strips along the bottom and at its brightest covering the ceiling with not a hint of natural decay from use, making it evident to the two that it was a well-paid operation, but the fact there was no official entrance other than the front of the range brought more questions than they had received answers.

As they were walking through, Nancy could recognise some other faces. Sure she had been barely acquainted, but when they saw her, some stopped in place to watch this farcical tale unfold, a woman with glasses who had been speaking on the phone swivelling her chair to follow their line of path Nancy recognised as the cleaner. Most others continued on, just another day at work.

There was a glass room in the middle of all the others and the two were shepherded inside after Zemora and Ozzie by the packed operatives. There was a soft atmosphere inside and carpet underneath them. It was much quieter once the door was closed.

Jonathan saw the wall labelled "Dire Information" first, recognising his picture and Nancy's, having hot dogs in New York City upon arriving a week before classes started for them so they could settle in.

Nancy followed him to it and the other four in the room were no longer of interest as she stared at the board with him. She saw photos of Mike and Will with their friends eating in a booth at Benny's - it looked fairly recent as Will's hair was much longer and Dustin was no longer wearing his hat. She knew for sure how recent when she could also see them at school jumping into Lucas' Cimarron.

Jonathan also saw pictures of all the kids' parents, Hopper with his Mom - wearing her smock which likely meant she was on a lunch break of some sort. It got even weirder when he saw pictures of Steve Harrington exiting Hawkins Memorial Hospital.

"You've been watching us," Jonathan said as he turned to them.

"Surveilling is a part of the gig, I'm afraid," Ozzie answered as he stepped up next to him. "Truth is, we let it lie when we knew y'all were focusing on your lives after everything that had happened with Hawkins Lab."

Nancy chuckled quietly to herself.

"Something funny to you, kid?" one of the men who had been holding a gun had asked.

"Yeah, what were you thinking you were going to accomplish following us all around? Sure, Eleven has a connection with all of us in some capacity - but that's your biggest concern?"

Zemora looked to her partner and he nodded. Ozzie had shooed out the two men without any hesitation in the matter, the clear commander of the lot and not receiving a single word of complaint to his order. He could handle Nancy and Jonathan if things went south, but he was certain they knew the implications of what was happening once they saw the set-up.

"You're referring to the other dimension creatures?" Zemora asked Nancy once they were clear.

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief, as she shook her head to delay further clarity, "Like it's a secret here?"

"A well maintained one," Zemora admitted. Nancy's eyes widened with greater concern to their list of priorities of what she experienced - the teenage girl with superpowers or the monsters that were nigh unstoppable when totally unprepared.

"Word got around to the field agents and desk jockeys about flower head monsters - was immediately called a hoax," James added with mirth. "Someone nicknamed it the Army of Audreys."

"You don't believe it?" Jonathan asked with heavy dismay.

Zemora shook her head to confirm the opposite. "Jane was born with telekinetic abilities thanks to the LSD serum injected in Terry Ives before we realised she was pregnant and String Theory has been around for decades. Some of my colleagues are naturally sceptical," allowed Zemora as her eyes quickly scanned the workforce surrounding them, "but we're aware of this threat, have seen the footage from an archive that survived and we will be ready to encounter it should it be a problem this time around."

Jonathan shook his head in disbelief as he looked back to the 'Dire Information' wall. Nancy took a seat in one of the chairs available as she looked to Zemora and Ozzie for further explanation.

"What makes you so sure you can handle this? Most of the last group were killed by those creatures or El when threatened."

Zemora took a seat opposite her and said, "I understand your hesitation to trust me, Nancy. I've made some very, very naive decisions in my life. I was seventeen when Martin Brenner took me under his wing and made me his protege and so was very easy to manipulate. Before him, not many would give me the time of day."

"He's also incredibly intelligent, charming and persuasive," Ozzie mentioned with heavy distaste. "Which is why he was the Head Honcho for so long."

"And what - you took over when everyone was killed? Your men followed us from New York?"

"No," Zemora erred, deep with concern at this new addition to Nancy's quick trip from the Big Apple. "This whole thing is separate to what Hawkins Lab ever was. We're not planning on getting Jane back for the sake of putting her in a padded cell and using her when it suits the US government. We need to find her first - before they do."

Jonathan interrupted suddenly, "And who are they?"

"Hawkins Lab. They were officially disbanded by the CIA but they were operating secretly following this. We thought this was finished but some of our Defence leaders caught on to certain activity that wasn't feasible as the odd conspiracy theorist behaviour - we usually write this stuff off. There was a divide between reacquiring Jane for the sake of her powers and retaining her to… to…"

As Zemora trailed off, Jonathan and Nancy didn't require much more than that to figure out what they had planned to do if not as a weapon.

"If she is alive, she's a fifteen-year-old girl," Jonathan spoke with severe loathing. "You would imprison a fifteen-year-old girl?"

"It was worse than that, Mr Byers," Zemora said, a pain of acrid guilt shifting through her at this.

"We wouldn't do that, refused to," Ozzie insisted with poignance. "We're the alternative."

"Yes," Zemora picked up, "Some of the US defence officials were funding Hawkins Lab to retain her, no matter how long it took. Once that was discovered and those monsters were a confirmed issue, they were," she paused to find the least unappealing word for what was likely to have had a bullet in their temples, "...discharged from the service and the others took over. Hawkins Lab lost funding but somehow regained it through another source. We were given funding to find Jane before they can possibly manage to do so."

"And without Brenner, who is Hawkins Lab Director now?" Nancy asked.

Zemora's mouth opened before closing again. She stood up and walked to the board of 'Dire Information' and they followed her path as she stopped. Zemora pulled a tack from the board and a small whooshing noise whistled in the air as she removed the developed picture to look at it closer.

She had looked at it often since its discovery had made her near ill at the confirmation.

"We didn't think he made it after what happened in the Middle School," she said earnestly, "Hell, I hoped one of those things had eaten his face off...While I wasn't entirely wrong - it certainly didn't kill him."

The picture was handed to Nancy as Jonathan looked at it over his shoulder. The hair was recognisable from all the files they had ever had a chance to look over when they came of age. Joyce had been practically seething at pictures of him near Eleven's mom.

Sure, Nancy and Jonathan had never seen him face to face, but neither forgot what the man in charge of a lab who faked his brother's dead body to get out of the responsibility of Will being lost in the Upside Down and allowed the police to believe Barb was but a simple teenage runaway would ever look like. They just didn't think they would have to deal with the potential that he may never have died that night.

"But they were all killed - Eleven was the only one who could kill the Demogorgon before it got to the boys - it's the only reason they survived."

Jonathan's voice interrupted hers though.

"Isn't that Steve's house?"

Nancy looked closer at the photo again. She could see the mouldings of the house she lost her virginity in - the house she lost her best friend - the house where Steve rarely saw his Mom and Dad because they were too busy with something they deemed more important than him. Now, it was sometimes visited by Martin Brenner?

"When was this taken?" she asked suddenly, some desperation in her voice.

Jonathan plucked the photo from her possession and found the date, carefully inscribed on the back.

"You said he was only in Hawkins the last couple of weeks Nancy, Steve would have been at college," he immediately reassured her.

"And if he was lying?"

Jonathan shook his head, refusing to follow Nancy's line of paranoid thinking. "Nancy. It's Steve. I'm pretty sure he's like Dustin's assigned Big Brother or something...he wouldn't do that to them - to you."

"Wait, what - how -"

"You and Mike get down to the nitty-gritty, Will doesn't like to get into details about his stuff - he talks about other people, which is why I know about Dustin being in the Big Brother program with Steve."

There is a little shocked look on her features at his impatient explanation - for once not allowing any Steve Harrington slander despite how awkward things could be between them.

"If you're referring to Steven Harrington, he only recently arrived in town - mostly been at the hospital seeing his grandfather who is closer to the pearly gates now that the diagnosis is terminal - he rarely stays home," Ozzie said as he started pulling out his pack of cigarettes. He offered one immediately to Nancy but had it on good knowledge that Jonathan didn't partake, which only made him feel less like he had any privacy in this room. He lit up and leaned over toward her with the lighter.

Nancy couldn't deny that she could really use the nicotine but was also very unsure about Ozzie still.

"C'mon kiddo, the lighter's not going to blow up in your face."

After a few moments, she said, "I wish you had just been upfront...I could have helped you if you really aren't like the Lab people."

He sparked her up as she leaned forward and he flicked it closed. "Not really in our M.O. to involve ourselves with underage kids anymore, no matter how quickly you were made to grow up, Nancy."

Jonathan frowned for a brief moment. They had some very big concerns and an unintentional familiarity when they spoke of the little girl Jonathan remembered encountering all those years ago. His face settled into closure for what had so confused him - they weren't just worried about Brenner's work and the impact it had on the country and their defences - they were guided by more than that.

"You keep calling her Jane. You knew her mother...did you know her?"

It was clear that of all the questions they had expected, this had not been one of them - a question filled with one too many answers and a hell of a lot of pain on any given day. Zemora's greatest shame seemed to have come to light, and Ozzie was the only one able to encourage her to confront that some things were unavoidable and that they couldn't stew in guilt when it only prevented them from fixing their mistake.

Her jaw was tense before Ozzie answered for the both of them. "I was head of security for Hawkins Lab. Zemora helped to raise Jane from birth."

"Raise her?"

Zemora decided to take over before Ozzie could be too gentle on the retelling.

"My team and I developed the serum shortly after I graduated from Harvard. Brenner was my reference, so I was basically contracted to him through the Department of Energy in Hawkins, an undercover CIA operation."

She was convinced by Brenner that if they didn't remove Jane from Terry during the end of her third trimester, she would miscarry and the serum could kill her and Jane. Zemora explained simply, "In removing her mother's agency to Jane's upbringing, Terry wouldn't suffer as she would be better off having forgotten Jane and moving on to create an entirely new and normal family."

Zemora had trusted Brenner to have made the right decision in this case as Terry did seem to forget what she knew initially. Her eyes brightened at the memory of the first recorded incident. "Jane had shown her gifts as early as six months into her infancy and even that was a lot for us to contend with...we reasoned that Terry would have been totally incapable with her development."

Her face soured shortly afterwards.

"Jane was called Eleven a couple of years into her life. I didn't think much of it as we had a few children who had abilities and we numbered them out of habit, but we always knew them by name as well. I kept calling her Jane in our sessions, there was no pushback about this for years. Brenner only began to have a problem with it when the little girl insisted her name was Jane, not Eleven...boy she would throw tantrums when he called her Eleven."

"Had a few moments when even Brenner couldn't pretend he had it under control," Ozzie recollected with antipathy. "We were called in and Zemora would follow and she would just cry after that and reach out toward Z for comfort."

Nancy pursed her lips at this retelling, butting her cigarette out on a small table with an ashtray nearby.

"He didn't want her to have anything more than a professional relationship with me," She swallowed, her throat sore from the memory. "I knew that Terry couldn't be her mother, not realistically, but I didn't think it would be terrible to allow her more than one figure to trust. After all, he insisted she call him 'Papa' - so why couldn't we know each other by our given names…"

She looked down as she planted herself against her desk. "I started to notice a few of the employees taking issue with Jane's treatment. Sure, I had a stray thought here and there, but they questioned Brenner's methods outright. I often wouldn't see them again, and I wondered whether they had just left or worse."

"Things for us changed when I realised we were outnumbered insofar as Brenner's strongest supporters in the Lab up against those who dared to oppose his treatment of the subjects, Jane getting it the worst as she had shown the greatest potential against the threat of Communism. The others got to be together and Jane rarely saw them as they didn't want her to be influenced too much from socialisation when she was seven," she said, her brow troubled with this lack of normalcy that would normally be encouraged in her line of work for stronger youth development.

"What I was attempting to do was replicate the DNA that had given her access to her abilities, making it applicable to consenting adult candidates who would be selected within the ranks of our Defence. Martin didn't believe it would be as potent as it would be with Jane's genes already intact," she snarled an embittered smile that followed. "I thought maybe it was a funding issue, but it turned out he truly believed we already had the perfect spy. He put through the proposal to the Department of Defence, with my forged signature and got the go-ahead. I found her tattooed along with the others, with their numbers and they were beginning to option pictures of Russian officials for her to locate."

"I knew deep down, I should have said something much sooner than that. But I'd said it - he'd gone too far, forged a path that didn't need to be taken and that Jane didn't need to be put through what most adults can not handle - that he was too impatient to work with what I had proposed...he tried to have me killed for it."

Jonathan took hold of Nancy's chair, clutching it until his knuckles were white as he took in every word, neither able to look at her as she recalled those years.

"He chose the wrong person to try and eliminate the threat," summated the smoking man in the chair near them as it was clear that Brenner had ordered him to do so, a shrug of the shoulders as Ozzie continued, "We tried to regroup and make a grab for Jane - but we only managed to escape with our lives. She was only eight when we got out."

"We bided our time until we got out of Brenner's red zone and found some contacts in the agency who had owed me a few favours. The two of us laid low until the director called us in around '83 and said Brenner had fucked it all up near beyond repair - got too big for his boots and Experiment Eleven had escaped and there had been a big breach reported from the official Department of Energy HQ regarding Hawkins, Indiana, recording a high potency of energy, unknown to the Earth's atmosphere," a brief understanding between them that this was where they all came in.

Ozzie sighed, "We set up here after coming up empty when it came to Jane's whereabouts and clearing up the mess that was left behind as best as possible. We thought some of the Lab workers who were unaccounted for in the buildings impacted had ended up in the other dimension, Brenner included, but we were sorely mistaken."

The emptiness in the room following Ozzie's voice coming to a hush was distinctly lousy.

There was something new in Nancy that was more than angry. She felt ill as new tears sprung up and Jonathan nodded but didn't look remotely pleased to be proven right. Nancy swiped at her face furiously.

"You know it's one thing to lie about everything to me - I get it. I've been doing it for years…" she reasoned. The dark and blurry past of the body of a young girl wearing her dress floating in the kiddie pool, searching out her best friend in a dimension that even adults would have needed professional mental intervention to overcome, clutching to Joyce when things were getting seriously bad, crying when she found Barb's rotting body, remembering how she put herself through it all because they had given her something more than a highly funded government facility could provide - Nancy felt her blood boil through it all, reaching a summit of her greatest grievances through all of this.

Maybe it was the loss of Barb talking in her head, egging her on with Mike's added misery - Joyce Byer's constant terror as it continued on, even after she got her boy back. Eleven's treatment had always made her feel sick.

"My toddler sister had better communication skills than her when we met and she was twelve," Nancy's voice filled with a maliciousness that she often didn't think was healthy to give out. "You contributed to that - that disempowerment no matter how much you try and put all the blame on Martin Brenner..."

"Yes, I enabled it," Zemora agreed without hesitation, the stabbing sensation ever-present, when she looked at the petite young woman she had hoped, would never have to find out the truth. There was a touch of resistance from the ever-loyal Ozzie who had witnessed her transformation, but Zemora knew that Nancy had no evidence of this, so why should she just accept it and move on. "...I'm accountable for why we are here today."

Nancy could feel the muddiness of a headache all rummaged in with her emotions begin to formulate. She removed herself from the chair she had sat in, to settle for whatever explanation Zemora had for her, but she was unconvinced, as she found a pitcher of water and a paper cup.

Her mentor may have been remorseful, in fact, she had no doubt about it. Her posturing was all Nancy knew for the last three years, unable to fully expand on why she was so undone from the loss because of the part - or lack thereof - she played in keeping Barb safe, to begin with. The overridden guilt that wouldn't allow for progress, personal or timely.

She swigged the entirety of the cup's contents back and poured a separate one for Jonathan. In all of this, she was relieved she wasn't alone - but especially that it was him dealing through this with her as well. Nancy could trust him - both to be by her side and keep her accountable for her actions before she did something beyond the moral line. She didn't think she had that with anyone else who wasn't her family at this point.

He sends her a small, secret smile as Nancy handed him a cup. Her fingers tapped the cup in a beat as she leaned on the desk next to Jonathan, opposite Zemora's current position at her own set up with Ozzie in between them in an adjacent desk in the square open office.

"What do you plan on doing - if you manage to find El...Jane?" Jonathan asked.

It was something that Nancy hadn't been able to pinpoint whilst churning mentally in her own toil. Jonathan's absence in connection to the two allowed him a more precise interpretation of the tale and just where that left them in the picture in this stalemate of a situation.

"You're not going to go back to testing her, are you?" Nancy demanded, the immediate thought following Jonathan's legitimate enquiry.

"No," and Nancy swore it had been a while since she had heard Zemora speak with such conviction. "Should there be no obstacles, our arrangements following Jane's return will allow her the freedom of a normal life."

Jonathan didn't waste any time with the inscrutability of what was a merely sentimental response.

"How?" he asked, emphatic to a better answer.

"By removing her powers, for good."


Hoping to complete this before Season 5 comes out lol.

Please review if you have a moment to spare.

Fadinggx