AN:

Okay guys, I know I said I'd upload Chapters 3 and 4 back-to-back, but Chapter 4 isn't finished yet because Chapter 3 is so long and took me AGES! Anyway, I wanted to at least upload something today. Chapter 4 will go up tomorrow. Hope you enjoy!

Three The Fly

The escape had been strangely effortless. Then again, Jane knew Dustin must have perfected their route over weeks—maybe months—of careful calculations. He knew where every nurse and guard would be at all times, even when it wasn't procedure. He knew when they took their bathroom breaks and where the orderlies snuck out for a late-night smoke. He'd spent enough time getting on the good side of the nurses that he knew how much gossip they had to share between rounds. He even knew Harold the janitor's routine to the minute. So when he and Jane surfaced on the ground floor of what had used to be Seven Steeples—the ornate Victorian building that had been the women's department until its demolition and modern rebuilding in the Seventies, Dustin had explained, as if this were part jail break, part tour—it only took ten minutes to take an unmanned fire exit out back and trek across the frozen grounds through dense tree cover, and just like that they were standing under the wrought iron fence.

The only barrier left between Jane and freedom.

She had mixed feelings about that, obviously, but her mind kept shifting back to her father's funeral—which she hadn't, in reality, been permitted to attend, not that she'd been welcome anyway. But the thought of a strange, faceless figure, claiming personal tragedy over a lost brother—over a lie—using the memory of her favourite person in the world to do it… That thought kept her steadfast.

Dustin dug a rucksack out of the shrubbery and pulled out a large, thick towel and an extra-long leather belt with a giant buckle that even the Seventies wouldn't want back. Jane shot him a bizarre look to match the bizarre bug-out bag.

He seemed offended. "What? It had to be stuff they wouldn't question at the gate!"

Jane took the belt in her hands and stuck her whole fist through the eye of the buckle, suppressing a grin. "And they didn't question this?"

He snatched it back from her and traded it for the towel. "Do you see the top of that fence? I couldn't bring rope or a ladder or a grappling hook, for Christ's sake!"

He was right. It was too high to climb without some sort of aid, and the buckle would serve well enough to loop over one of the spires.

The spires.

"So the plan is to get up and impale ourselves?" Jane asked as Dustin effectively lassoed one first try, which impressed her enough to wonder how much practice he'd had and where.

He shot her a look that seemed to question if her intellect had peaked in high school. "What do you think the towel is for?"

Jane bit back a smile. It was so strange, feeling the urge to smile again. Her face felt hot, her mouth felt like a rebelling second entity attached to her, a mind of its own… But Dustin always had brought out the smile in her.

She let it free. "How could I ever have doubted you?"

"I don't know," he deadpanned, plucking the towel from her again and swinging it up over the fence—still folded long-ways for extra padding. He turned to her. "Okay, you first. At the top, try to stay up on your feet. It's a towel, not a mattress, but this is a Princess and the Pea kind of situation."

"Except the pea is a row of giant iron spikes," Jane quipped, grabbing hold of the dangling belt. "I feel like Indiana Jones. All I'm missing is my hat."

Dustin looked at her for a second, his expression flat and unimpressed, before shooing her impatiently. "Just get up!"

It really had been too soon to laugh. Jane quickly discovered she had no upper body strength and in his effort to give her a boost, Dustin had basically thrown her over the fence. She landed flat on her back, the breath knocked out of her, and for a minute it was tough to distinguish the stars from the bump on her head and the real ones in the sky above her. At least she hadn't screamed.

Dustin landed on his feet next to her, belt already in hand and he whipped the towel down, slinging it over his shoulder.

He turned to her. "You okay?"

This was actually the first time Jane had ever truly appreciated the cold. The frozen foliage underneath her now cradled her pulsing skull. "If I say no, will you let me lie here for a minute to ice my head?"

He shook his head and held out his hand. "I just rescued you from an evil sanatorium. You think I'm going to let you catch your death now?"

Jane sighed and closed her eyes, steeling herself for the dreaded vertical thrust. "A girl can dream." And she clapped her hand into his.

She slept most of the way back to Hawkins. Well, dozed was probably a better word. Flashes of streetlamps and power lines under a deep navy sky pierced through the fog of sleep, the same as Dustin's liquid tenor ghosted around her ears as he sang along to Every Breath You Take under his breath. After the Snow Ball in 1984, Nancy had made him a mixtape with all the songs from the dance on it and labelled it 'Nuts.' No one else knew what it was about—Mike especially had pestered them about it for ages—but Dustin had treasured it since that day. When he'd finally caved and bought a Walkman in senior year, he'd put the tape in his car and never taken it out, no matter how sick of the songs everyone else got. It was nice to know some things never changed.

When Dustin finally pulled up and cut the engine, it must have been close to dawn. Gently, he squeezed her shoulder, giving her a tiny shake.

"Jane? Janie? Wake up. We're here."

The whisper-yelling brought her to. She straightened, wincing as her neck ached from sleeping on it funny. She probably shouldn't have slept after knocking her head anyway, but the familiar warmth and worn padding of Dustin's car had been too much to resist. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and looked out the window.

They were parked in a gravel lot, backed up against a pasty, off-yellow concrete monstrosity. On the opposite side, the L-shaped tin wall of a chop shop. Old car parts and metal storage boxes littered the grass alley alongside the driveway. Jane knew where they were.

"You're squatting behind Maggie's Café? What happened to your house?"

"Used it to pay off college," he answered. "And would you know it, I'm still in debt. We can't all get scholarships like your boyfriend."

As soon as he said it, he knew he'd fucked up. His eyes went wide as saucers and he looked at her in absolute horror.

"I mean—"

"It's fine." She pushed herself out of the car, slamming the door mildly between them.

He couldn't help it. Yes, years had passed, but he'd also spent years calling Mike that, and vice versa—his habit of just calling her 'girl' had originated from when he'd used to refer to her as 'your girl' to Mike.

"Mike, where's your girl?" she remembered him saying when Mike arrived first to anything. She'd always followed closely behind, of course, so the presumption that wherever one of them went, the other followed was not out of line.

Dustin scrambled out of the car. "Jane, I'm really—"

"You don't need to be sorry," she cut him off. "Really, you don't. I just… This is all a lot, Dusty." She felt tears prick her eyes.

"I know." He popped the trunk and dug out a beaten old briefcase and a full laundry bag. Then his eyes sparked. "Oh, and for the record, I live above Maggie's Café. In an apartment."

"We're not squatting then?" Jane was grateful for the change in subject, feeling herself relax.

He indicated a fire escape behind her. "Ladies first."

This was at least a climb she could manage. She followed the stairs all the way to the top and waited for Dustin on the landing. He brandished a key and muttered something about making her a copy before letting them both into the cramped foyer.

Watching him kick off his shoes, Jane realised how she must've looked; bare feet covered in grime, hospital gown, leaves in her hair, nose frozen red. Her nose. In all her confusion and eagerness to escape, she'd completely forgotten about using her powers earlier. She touched her nostril gingerly; it was crusty with blood.

There was a bang from deeper inside the apartment and Jane startled.

Dustin glanced toward the room the noise had come from and back to Jane, putting a finger to his lips and motioning with his other hand for her to follow him.

Another bang as they ventured further down the hallway, passing three open doors that comprised two bedrooms and a bathroom, and Jane wondered why her friend wasn't reaching for some household object that could be used as a weapon.

Finally Dustin stopped in the last doorway that Jane saw over his shoulder opened out into the kitchen. She couldn't believe her eyes.

"Took you long enough," the man balancing precariously on the bar stool muttered, glancing Dustin's way. "You know, you'd think changing a lightbulb would be simple, but no! Not when there's absolutely no good angle to screw in the—aaargh!"

It all happened so quickly. Dustin stepped out of the way while his roommate briefly returned his focus to the task at hand, working only by the dull morning light filtering in through the window over the sink. When he looked back he seemed to have a heart attack. Mid-sentence, he let out an honest-to-God scream, and then he was crashing to the floor, flinging his arm out for purchase but only managing to knock a plastic fruit bowl over. It clattered to the ground and oranges spun out in all directions, one rolling right up against Jane's toes.

She scooped it up and hurried to stand over her old friend's crumpled form.

"Brown Eyes?" he mumbled, his words vaguely garbled. Definite concussion risk this time.

She offered a hesitant smile.

"Hey, Steve," she said. "Sorry to make you drop everything."

The poorly-timed joke went right over Steve's head as he glanced between the two of them and then back up at the light fixture. The unsecured bulb had dropped with him, shattering against the edge of the counter and onto the floor near his feet.

"I just…" His eyes lost focus and his eyelids fluttered closed. He sounded like, if he weren't about to pass out, he might cry. "…wanted a sandwich."

Carrying Steve's limp body to the couch had been a job and a half. He may not have gotten fat in the years Jane was away, but she'd definitely grown no stronger, and Dustin had proven to be surprisingly weak for someone with such a solid frame.

Jane sat with their old babysitter while Dustin fetched the documents he'd been talking about from his room. He'd been happy to wait until she was settled, but Jane couldn't relax now. Her mind was racing.

Timidly, she reached out and brushed a lock of Steve's famously perfect hair out of his eyes.

"Still the best hair in Hawkins," she whispered with a smile.

She'd grown close with Steve very quickly after the night she closed the gate. Hopper had seen how well he looked after them all, keeping them out of trouble, even after the Mind Flayer was trapped back in the Upside Down. So that was when Steve became her actual babysitter. It was a pretty full-on gig, especially when Hop started working a lot more overtime in a pre-emptive plan to afford to send her to college, but considering he was a bit lost and that his grades weren't up to par for his own college career, Steve liked doing something he was good at. Jane was glad, too, because without becoming part of the family, Steve would never have found his life's vocation as a cop… and a proper father figure in Hopper.

He was the one who had found her, four years ago. He was the one who had called it in. And even though she'd confessed—even though she gave him no reason to love her anymore, no reason to trust her anymore—he'd let her take the fall not because he believed she was guilty, but because he knew that, whatever the reason, she was lying for a good one. He'd told her as much, through the Perspex, right before her trial started.

"Janie, I don't know why you're doing this," he said. "I know better than anyone you'd never hurt your dad. You said so at the house… Just no one listened."

He'd actually been crying, his eyes watering. The few tears that did escape, he hadn't bothered to wipe away. He wasn't ashamed to miss the man who, in so many ways, had made him one.

"But I know that after everything, you would've told me if you could. " He put his palm against the glass. "Friends don't lie, right?"

"Okay, I've got 'em!" Dustin flourishing a manila folder, coming out of his room, jogged Jane back to the present.

He slapped it into her lap and sat himself down on the edge of the wooden coffee table. It was impressive, the number of things they'd managed to fit in this room. Their apartment didn't strictly have a lounge room, so they'd put a tiny iron patio table with two chairs outside on the tiny back balcony amongst the flower pots and used the remaining space inside to put in a couch and a TV. Jane couldn't imagine they used the patio table at all while it was cold, but come spring it would lovely, facing the setting sun.

Uncertain about what she'd find, she read the file's thickly-scrawled label and shot Dustin a look. "'Vacation spots'?"

"You think I should have labelled it 'Government Secrets'?" he fired back defensively.

She turned the cover, pleasantly amused by the illustrated title page. "I had no idea you wanted to go to Disneyland so bad."

"What kind of idiot doesn't put up a second line of defence?" He smacked her knee. "Just read it."

Her smile fell when she skimmed over the following page. Therapy transcripts. Her therapy transcripts. In full. She hadn't realised they'd done that.

She flipped through the pages in a rush, hoping to find some explanation for it somewhere—anything that would make this make sense.

She recognised the sessions, of course. She remembered them all. Nothing detailed, of course, but rereading them, she could vaguely recall. It came as no surprise that Dr Welling would keep a detailed record of their conversations at CSH, but these… These weren't her sessions with Dr Welling. These were her sessions with Dr Ford.

"Where did you get these?" She didn't mean to sound so aggressive; she knew she wasn't angry with Dustin. But she was fucking angry with somebody.

His expression was sympathetic as he answered, "Steve lifted them from the station. Chief had 'em on his desk."

"But why?" Jane couldn't believe it as she rifled through more pages, the dates going as far back as her first year of school—real school. She'd needed some help dealing with it but she never thought anything she said really deserved writing down. Her time with Dr Ford was an outlet. He'd been such a comfort, there to help her. Or so she'd thought. Wildly, she turned to Dustin. "Why do you have these, Dustin?"

He held up his hands in peace, slowly reaching out to rest his hand on her back. "Steve was getting behind in his workload because no one wanted to partner with him. First time King Steve hadn't been part of the in-crowd." When Dustin saw she was not at all amused, he continued, "He stayed back one night to work on some case files. That's when he saw them."

"Saw who?"

"The Chief and Mayor Hopper."

Dustin and Jane both jumped as Steve pushed himself up.

He winced as he righted his head. "I think my brain's splattered."

"Grey mash or not, tell her the rest," Dustin pushed.

Steve rubbed his temples but obeyed. "It became a pattern. Once a week, they'd have a meeting. At first I thought it was just to discuss town safety but the second time, the Chief saw me; got all defensive and told me to go home. Been wary of me ever since."

"Not a professional secret keeper then," Jane commented. "The ones trained in lying don't falter like that."

"Honestly I think he's just a pawn." Steve reached for the transcripts and started rummaging through them, looking for something. He continued absently, "But a pawn with evidence. I just don't know what the evidence means."

"A small setback," Dustin piped up, unconcerned.

Steve found the transcript he was looking for and handed it back to Jane. "I've sorted them by date since, but this was the one I actually saw on his desk. He had me in his office to ream me for some shoddy paperwork and I saw your name at the top."

Jane carefully read over the first page. It was a stapled booklet, just like the rest of the transcripts, and at first glance, there was nothing to differentiate this one from the others; just another session where she talked about never feeling normal. She remembered Doctor Ford had asked her if she really wanted to.

But at the bottom of the page, a word caught her eye and she felt a knot bigger than all the other knots in her stomach. A blizzard. He'd asked her about a blizzard. Specifically, asked her to imagine she was lost in a blizzard.

"I want you to imagine you're lost in a blizzard, Jane," Dr Ford had said. "I want you to imagine you're lost in a blizzard, and that you need to find a house."

But why? None of this made sense. It had been so many years ago; she'd completely forgotten about it. He'd only brought it up once. Back then, it had just been some vague exercise to convince her that subconsciously, she knew she did belong—because the house she found, the house she felt safe in, was any house that had Hopper in it.

Her blood ran cold. It had had a fireplace.

"You see, there's a stamp here that—" Steve reached across her to point at something on the paper—a stamp, presumably—but her vision was suddenly blurry with angry, confused tears.

"Shut up!" she almost yelled, ripping herself and the document away. She was on her feet, pacing; overwhelmed.

"Janie." Steve sat forward. "I know this is hard, but it says 'candidate.' Candidate for what? Look at it," he urged.

Jane did. He was right. There was a big blue stamp in the top right-hand corner that read 'CANDIDATE' in block letters. So there was even more that she didn't know how to rationalise. Great.

"Blizzard," she whispered under her breath. "Why would he ask me about a blizzard?"

Both men stared at her blankly.

"Is that important?" Steve asked, tone as thick as his hair.

She made an exasperated noise. "You don't understand! There was this whole psychoanalysis thing they did at CSH, like worldbuilding… I had to create this room… It's hard to explain."

"Wait, a room?" Dustin dived for the discarded pile of transcripts.

While it really wasn't the issue at hand here, Jane felt decidedly uncomfortable knowing that two of her greatest friends in the world had read through everything she'd tried to keep hidden from them for years. It would have been enough to make them feel like she was a stranger.

"Found it!" Dustin all but threw it at her in his enthusiasm. "The bottom, under 'Professional Recommendations.'"

Jane stacked the two booklets she was holding and found her place on the unfamiliar one.

Under the heading, there were a number of lines about prescribed drugs and dosages—anti-depressants—but the final two lines brought her up short:

Recommending the addition of Periphax 100mg 2x daily; subject to dosage increase if symptoms persist

ROOM trigger determined

"I thought it was an acronym," Dustin said quietly. "But maybe not."

A trigger? There'd never been any trigger. She'd designed every facet of that room in therapy. Except, evidently, the actual house with the fireplace and the snowstorm outside… Those had been fed to her. The snowstorm had obviously been a consciously forgotten memory of Dr Ford's scenario and the house had stayed in her mind due to trauma…

Except she'd imagined the house long before she ever physically went to it.

She felt sick. What was happening? Was it all insane coincidence or was Doctor Ford a liar? And despite not always being the brightest crayon in the box, Steve was a good cop and always asked the right questions in the end. This time was no exception. Candidate for what?

"What is Periphax, Janie?" Dustin asked, voice quiet. "I asked Dr Collins when I broke my arm, but he said he'd never heard of it. And I never came across it in any psychiatry journals when I was trying—"

"It's an anti-psychotic," she answered quickly, the words rushing out.

She didn't want to lie anymore.

It wasn't schizophrenia; Dr Ford had assured her dad of that. But it was something—something eating her up inside. For a while, Hopper had worried it was something paranormal—like maybe the Mind Flayer still had a foothold in their world somehow—but she never showed any symptoms like Will's. She was still Jane. She just wasn't right. She was so scared all the time, waking up screaming from nightmares that never made any sense, soaked through with sweat. She'd started sleepwalking. She'd wake up in the middle of nowhere, and had to find her way home on nights that Hopper didn't wake up and find her first. She'd heard things in the dark, felt strange compulsions—like driving to places she'd never been. She just wanted it all to stop. Hopper only let her on the Periphax in the first place because of how badly she'd wanted it all to stop.

But wait.

That wasn't quite right.

He'd only let her on the anti-depressants because of how badly she'd wanted it all to stop, but that was just because of the Imposter Syndrome back then, not everything else. Sophomore year in high school, she'd felt such a strong disconnect from everyone—everyone. Even Mike. It wasn't apathy—she cried about it when she was alone—but something inside her just always felt different, like no matter what, she would never be what they wanted her to be… Who Mike thought she was. She felt like such a fraud.

Hopper insisted that she was just dealing with a lot more than most kids her age, but when he realised he couldn't help and that she wasn't getting better, he let her start sessions with Dr Ford.

The anti-depressants had helped. She'd done well in school and felt right with her friends again… She'd felt secure enough and in love enough to lose her virginity to Mike. With Mike.

Then the nightmares had started, and the sleepwalking. She and Hopper had argued about taking her off the anti-depressants but they'd helped her so much and Dr Ford assured him they didn't have the chemical properties to be the root problem. Hopper had been at a loss when Ford had raised the possibility of anti-psychotic medication.

But they had fixed her. It was a miracle; a God-send. He couldn't have imagined she'd be so well-rested and bright.

Two years, that medication had kept her happy. And with her happy, Hopper seemed happy. Obviously not that his teenage daughter was loaded up with drugs, but happy knowing the alternative.

And then he died. And happy was out of the question.

"Wait," Jane said out loud, flipping both booklets back to their cover pages and holding them up side by side. "Wait!"

"Brown Eyes, what is it?" Steve queried. He'd been calling her that since he'd shown her Bambi. Almost eight years ago now.

"The 'candidate' one—it came after!" she exclaimed. "After the Periphax!"

"So?" the boys asked in unison.

"So, the snowstorm and the house and everything came after the Periphax!" She thought back hard. "Ford's sessions changed after I started taking it, became more hypothetical, but I always thought it was just because I was feeling better so we could focus on other issues. I didn't question it, the same as no one questioned when I needed anti-psychotics because I always had flashback freak-outs, so nightmares and sleepwalking were just more of the same!"

"Jane, what are you saying?" Steve pressed, obviously wishing he already understood—wanting so badly to understand for her.

"I'm saying, I think I only became a 'candidate' for whatever after I started taking the Periphax." Jane thought it through again as she took a moment to breathe. It could be a massive leap. It could be. It could be just wishful thinking on her part—that there was someone else to blame for why she was like this—but it all made sense. At least, enough sense to run with it until they hit a dead-end. "I'm saying that all the PTSD shit I had before the anti-depressants wasn't the same as the stuff after. My nightmares from before were all memories—they really happened! I was never afraid of the hypothetical! But the nightmares after—they were all imagined, all fiction."

"And the sleepwalking?" Dustin asked.

Jane shrugged. "Never happened before."

"So…"

She could practically see the cogs turning in Steve's head as he took a moment putting it all together. His face was so expressive when it was confused.

"You think these anti-depressants gave you psychotic symptoms?" His eyebrows were practically to his hairline, his tone just as disbelieving. "But why? Why would Ford do that?"

Again asking the right question. Why would Ford do that? Jane didn't know. But she was pretty sure she knew the beginnings of it:

"To justify the Periphax."

Despite how awful it was if it were actually true, she felt herself practically vibrating with excitement. She was trying not to get too ahead of herself in case this turned out to be bogus, but if it weren't—if she was right and she'd never actually needed anti-psychotics to quell a natural imbalance in the first place—then maybe the impossible weight she'd been carrying for four years could be lifted. Maybe she could stop being afraid of herself.

So much for not getting ahead of herself.

She stared at the documents again.

Steve may not have been part of the in-crowd; he may not have always been the sharpest tool in the shed or the first horse out of the gate or whatever anyone wanted to say about him. But he'd been looking out for her since 1984 and he always noticed when something was off. Those cops had no idea who they were dealing with, who they so easily dismissed. Because now not only was he a seasoned thief but he was also a fly on the wall.

She glanced up at him. "You did good, Steve."

He winked at her and flashed a smile and she knew that if this had been 1985 she'd have fainted from her girly crush. "Always here for you, Brown Eyes."

She went back to reread the line about the 'ROOM trigger.' It was definitely too soon to make the leap that it was related to Welling's exercise. At least, too soon to be certain about it. But it was something she was going to figure out, before anything else, if possible. Whether the boys supported it or not, she was paying Dr Ford's office a visit later. She wasn't going to be stupid, but she was done being hidden away. She just needed a plan. She needed to know exactly what questions she wanted answered.

"There is one more thing, though," Steve said nervously. "I wanted to say before but I didn't want to…interrupt the flow."

Jane's forehead furrowed. "What is it?"

He pointed to the documents. "See the stamp? See how there's a symbol beside 'candidate'?"

Jane looked at it. It was kind of wiry, like twisting weeds—a little Celtic. "Yeah? What about it?"

"That's the logo for Fause."

Jane frowned. She'd never heard the word before. At first, she just thought he'd said 'house' with an itch in his throat. Not that that would have made any more sense.

At her uncomprehending expression, Dustin explained for Steve, "Fause… The tech company I told you about. Where Mike and Will work."

Understanding dawned. Well, not exactly understanding. Actually, the opposite of understanding. Now Jane had more questions than she'd ever thought possible. But it was a start.

"I don't suppose there's any known link between Dr Ford and Fause?" she asked.

Steve shrugged. "Not that I know of, but I can see if there's a paper trail."

Jane shook her head. "There won't be, but we should try anyway. Just be careful."

"You think I'm stupid?" He laughed. "Janie, those transcripts you're holding are not the originals." He turned his head away, muttering more to himself than to her as he added, "Took me hours, too."

Jane was about to ask Dustin if he'd noticed anything else out of the ordinary in the transcripts when Steve turned to him and snapped suddenly, "I can't believe you didn't tell me you were bringing her! I thought we were going to talk about this—plan it together!"

"It was need-to-know!" Dustin exclaimed defensively.

Steve looked like he might blow a fuse. "I'M NOT NEED-TO-KNOW?!"