Two Intruder

Jane lay in bed that night, restless. There were a multitude of reasons for this. For one, she was hungry. For another, she was cold. The patients were never fed right in this godforsaken place and the bedding was paper thin—it did nothing to protect against the elements of Fall. But most importantly, there were the events of today. Welling was always a competitive egomaniac, desperate to hide the fact that he was probably a thumb-sucker until he was twenty-five and still sometimes on rough days. Jane had promised herself years ago that she'd never lose sleep over anything that first-class mouthbreather had to say, and she wasn't about to let herself down now. It had nothing to do with him.

In part, she was afraid to dream. But she didn't even need to get that far; she closed her eyes, and there was his face, his hair fluttering around it as his gaze dropped to her mouth and he whispered her name.

She'd been Jane for just shy of a decade now, but he'd only ever called her El. It became something of a pet name when everyone else adjusted habits.

Mike Wheeler in a snowstorm.

She shook her head and rolled over to face the wall. Granted, her room was small enough that whichever way she lay, she was basically face-to-wall regardless, but something about the solid expanse directly on the other side of her eyelids made her feel safe. It was strange, considering the crippling claustrophobia she'd experienced as a child, but somehow the solidness of it—the impenetrableness—comforted her now. She could imagine it was a shield for her mind; nothing could get in, nothing could get out.

Mike Wheeler in a snowstorm.

Mike.

With a sigh of exasperation, Jane flipped onto her back.

"Get out of my head," she whispered in the darkness. I don't want to see you.

Didn't want to or couldn't?

She hadn't lied to Welling before; she didn't miss Mike. Not in the way she'd used to, at least. She didn't long for his long arms around her, whispering into her hair that it was all going to be all right. She didn't burn for his touch, for his perfect alabaster skin and his hot mouth to cover her, to consume her. Then again, the drugs they had her on here made it very difficult to have a sex drive. But it was deeper than that. Mike Wheeler had been her other half. But that was before. Why was he suddenly all she could think about when she'd blocked his memory out years ago?

Mike Wheeler in a snowstorm.

Jane could feel herself drifting, and she let sleep rise up like a dense black cloud and swallow her.

"Eleven," he said.

She took a step back, her breath unsteady. "You're not really here."

He didn't say anything else. Just watched her.

She scrubbed her hands over her face in an effort to clear her vision. Nope, still there.

"What do you want?" she demanded, feeling more panicked than irritated.

For a moment, she didn't think he was going to answer, his expression static.

But then he looked past her, into the dim room behind her, his voice sounding far away. "Where are you?"

Jane didn't understand. She half-turned to take in the room behind her. She'd never seen it from this angle. Usually she stood there by the mantle, going along with Welling's leading questions because it was the easiest way to kill their hour. But even in this dim light, there was something…

Dust motes came together across the room, sort of a heaving outline at first, fuzzy and nondescript. Then a clearer picture formed. Still only grey, still only dust, but Jane would recognise the silhouette of her father anywhere. His posture was rigid as he stared down the sight of his shotgun.

It was all he'd had with him in this strange house. But he'd known it was the wrong firearm to save her. She remembered him teaching her back outside his grandfather's cabin—shotguns are pointed, not aimed, because they're generally designed for shooting at moving targets. There was no way he could have shot the man behind her with any guarantee she wouldn't also fall victim.

"It's the gun," Mike said from behind her, reading her mind.

Her father's ghost began to lower his weapon, resigned to his fate to save her, and Jane's stomach dropped.

She whirled around to face Mike, but a handgun came up in her face. Mike wasn't the intruder, she knew that. So why was he holding the gun?

"Goodbye, Jim Hopper," he said, but it wasn't his voice. It was the voice that had haunted her for years.

"No!" she screamed. She couldn't watch it happen twice.

She threw herself between the pistol and her father and saw Mike fire. The shot was deafening, and then, like switching off a TV screen, everything suddenly went black.

Jane writhed in her sheets as she came to, gasping and crying. The sheets felt like lead on top of her; damp with her sweat, weighing her down. She couldn't get free.

She was so disoriented that it took her a minute to realise it wasn't just her sheets; someone was forcibly holding her down, covering her mouth. She struggled against the intruder, a sudden wave of panic prickling her skin that it was the same orderly who had raped schizophrenic Catherine Fuller in the showers, but the sheets made it impossible to get a grip on him.

In a burst of fear and rage, she threw him off her into the opposite wall. He dropped and thudded against the floor heavily and swore at the assault.

"Jesus Christ, Jane!"

Jane's nose dripped as she sat up fully, holding up her hand to finish him off.

Then she realised that she recognised his voice.

He was so much taller now, pulling himself up to his full height with a groan. She couldn't see him, of course—not even his vague outline—but she could hear where his voice was coming from.

"Dustin?" she asked incredulously, her voice so small and breathless with disbelief.

"Hey, girl." She couldn't see him but she could tell that, despite the soon-to-be bruises, he was smiling. "Long time no see."

Jane released the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. "Dusty…"

Several beats passed.

And suddenly she launched herself into his arms. She felt so small against him. Granted, she'd grown a lot taller since they were kids and filled out in a few places once puberty hit, but she was well underfed here and hadn't had a good night's sleep in years. His arms seemed to wrap around her like giant pythons; strong, thick, unyielding.

This was too surreal. Jane didn't even quite believe he was here. How could she? Four years, no visitors, and suddenly Dustin was somehow here holding her in her locked mental cell?

It just didn't add up.

"I know I've got a lot to explain," he mumbled into her shoulder, eliciting a breathless chuckle from her at the irony of that statement. The last time she'd seen him was at her murder trial. "I just don't know where to start."

"You know you'll be gutted if they find you here?" she hissed.

He pulled back just enough to fish some keys out of his pocket and jingled them gently near her face.

"They're not finding anybody here." He sounded so proud of himself and then came that familiar giggle. Jane could go her entire life listening to that giggle. Though it was much deeper than before, somehow it was still the same.

There was just too much to process about this whole situation. All Jane could manage was, "How?"

"Easy."

She could practically hear his grin.

"I'm staff, baby. You think I went to college for a desk job?"

That didn't answer any of her questions. "Dustin—"

"I'm a psychologist," he answered, knowing what she was going to say. "Got a job here when all the government renovations started six months ago. I knew you were here, I just couldn't find you. Then one night I managed to find the tunnels and realised there was this whole underground wing—"

"Wait, what?" Government renovations, tunnels, an underground wing. It all sounded like a Famous Five novel to Jane.

Dustin didn't falter. "Why do you think you have no window, Jane? Why do you think no one's visited you in years? We haven't been able to find you—you disappeared!"

"No, this was my official sentence." She shook her head. "It's on all the Court documents—"

"Jane, it's not." Dustin sighed heavily. "You have no idea what's been happening in Hawkins since you left."

"Since I was arrested!" she corrected, outraged.

"Yeah, of course, arrested." He dropped his voice lower, as if being overheard could mean death. "Jane, what are they doing to you here?"

Her eyebrows pulled together. "What do you mean?"

"Jane, half this place is already shut down for patient abuse and neglect. What have they done to you? You can tell me."

"Nothing!" she insisted. "I mean, yeah, there has been an impressive level of neglect, but seriously, nothing. Just a lot of therapy—"

"Okay, well, whatever they've done, we'll have to figure it out later," he whispered. "I've got to get you out of here."

"Wait, Dustin!" She ripped her arm out of his reach as he dragged her toward the door by her wrist. "I can't just leave! I'm a convicted murderer!"

His tone made it sound like this was literally the last problem on his mind, like it deserved the same amount of pause as if she'd stolen a stick of gum. "Yeah, but you didn't actually do it."

She stared in his vague direction, completely flabbergasted. "That's not what Johnny Law says!" It also wasn't entirely what she thought.

"Look, Jane…" He sounded tired. Dustin never sounded tired. "Whatever is happening here—whatever they want with you—I think it's connected to a bunch of weird shit that's going on back home."

"Like what?" Jane wrapped her arms around herself, frozen to the core at this point. She actually felt sick with cold.

"Like people suddenly moving away. We've got a new mayor, a new sheriff. Almost a whole new police force, in fact. And now local government's trying to clear Merrill off his own farm—some of the other farmers, too."

"What does this have to do with me?" she asked.

"Because they used Hopper to do it!" he replied. "They used his death to mount their campaign. It was huge, Jane. They said that while the murderer was behind bars, a lot had to change if Hawkins would ever be safe again. Parents ate it up. Mayor Hopper said—"

"Mayor… Who?" It was information overload, but those two words pulled her up short.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," he said. "The new mayor is Jack Hopper… Chief's brother. Arrived for the funeral and never left."

"But Dad didn't have a brother," Jane insisted.

"I know." Dustin's voice was grave. "That's why we need to get you home. They locked you away for a reason, Janie. I don't know why, but we're gonna find that bastard who killed your dad and we're gonna make him pay. And we're not gonna stop until we cut off the head of the snake."

"But Dusty…" Jane couldn't help feeling like all of this was just a whole lot of weird with no connections, at least when it came to her. "Why now?"

"I told you," he said. "I tried to find you before but—"

"Okay, then why me? What about the rest of the party?" She tried to laugh it off but what she said next had definite sting. "I mean, come on, I can't have been your first choice."

He exhaled slowly, and somehow she could feel his sadness.

"Jane, my family moved away," he admitted finally. "My mom started acting really weird, suddenly talking about Florida! She hates the coast!"

"I remember." Jane recalled a group trip they'd all taken to California after high school graduation. She didn't think she'd ever seen someone so at odds with the water.

The number of times Mrs Henderson had said, "It belongs in a tap, not on half the earth's surface!"

"Anyway, the mayor's wife runs a new tech company with a branch in town. Computer stuff. Both Will and Mike have jobs there. It's like they never leave."

At the mention of his name, Jane's throat went dry, and suddenly it occurred to her that besides the obvious legal dangers of returning to Hawkins, there was a whole other kind of danger she hadn't considered: reunions.

"I'll come with you," she finally said. "But I have to stay hidden. I can't see—"

"I know," he said easily, simply. Like he really did understand.

"So… Where do we start?" Jane knew they were probably going to have to have this conversation again before she was able to properly make any sense of it, but considering Dustin seemed to be the man with the plan, he had to have a starting point.

"I've got some documents at home you'll want to take a look at," he answered, opening her cell door a crack and listening out for any disturbances.

Slowly, he moved out into the corridor, and with the extremely faint light from the night nurse's station up ahead, Jane could see him motioning for her to follow him. As they approached the station, she could see Nurse Fiona had passed out.

Jane cocked an eyebrow at Dustin. "Your work?"

He shot her a pearly grin with a wild glint in his eye and whispered, "Drugged her coffee."

As she followed him up some emergency stairs he had to use his staff card to access, Jane whispered, "You're going to have to tell me the full story at some point."

"A magician never reveals his secrets, Janie," he quipped, ushering her into yet another half-lit corridor.

This one looked like an observation suite, except from what Jane could see, all the cells were empty.

"It's pretty reckless, you know," she hissed as she blindly followed him into another staircase. "Using your card like that. Can't they log who's coming in and out?"

She almost bumped into him as he stopped and turned to face her, holding up the card. "Oh honey, you know I've covered us from every angle."

Jane looked at the card. Nurse Fiona Watkins. Tough old bitch who needed to lose some weight.

She looked back at Dustin. "Don't call me 'honey'."

"Agreed," he conceded, on the move again. "One and only time, I swear."

"Where do you even live now, anyway?" she asked. This definitely wasn't the time for conversation, especially for sharing highly sensitive information, but Jane found that now she had someone to talk to—someone she actually wanted to talk to—she just couldn't stop.

He laughed up ahead of her. Quietly, of course, and a little bit breathlessly on account of the stairs, but it was such a genuine sound. Jane had really missed laughter.

"Funny story, that," he answered. "You'll only believe it when you see it."

AN:

So I know Mike and a bunch of other characters aren't in it yet, but I didn't want to rush anything because I want the reunions to be right. I can promise that Chapter 3 will involve a fan favourite and a couple of laughs (hopefully—if my writing does its job), as well as a bit of angst as Jane sneaks away to do something she really shouldn't. Additionally, Chapter 4, which I'll hopefully upload back-to-back with Chapter 3, will follow Jane as she makes the first of many break-ins into the tech company Dustin mentioned. Wonder who she'll run into? :P