ADMIN NOTE:

oh wow okay . . it has been nearly two years since i have touched this fic. i am not ever kidding, days after my last update, my mom and i got covid and i have been dealing with a whole slew of health issues since then. but i am happy to say i have finally finished my rewrites and that this is the last chapter for this fic! rowens s3 fic is in the works so don't worry — but it may take me a while to get started on it as i am still dealing with some physical health stuff.

hope y'all enjoy this last chapter !

much love xx

PS, for my returning readers, i did make some changes — especially to the halloween chapter which is much longer now — so if you wanna reread, please feel free to ! i just wanted to let y'all know it's not absolutely necessary though ( unless you wanna read about an eddie cameo lol ).

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〝 THE NIGHTMARE PROJECT ， PT TWO

january 12th ，1985

Staying at Hopper's cabin was . . . interesting. Unexpected, at best. Utterly weird at its worst.

She had never slept in a bedroom where she could hear the wind howl and the floorboards screech better than late-night sneak-ins or what was referred to vaguely amongst three step-siblings as 'family arguments'.

She hadn't slept in a room by herself in years, and the fact that Max's quiet breathing wasn't keeping her company as she lied awake only made things harder. Harder to grasp. Harder to accept, even if it had only been just a few nights. It made her feel idiotic, it wasn't as if any of this was permanent . . . but her mind was insistent.

The idea that she was actually babysitting Eleven while Hopper was out felt more believable than the reality which presented itself: that she was sleeping in their spare room (which consisted of nothing but a mattress and very blue sheets, a bedside table, and a tiny lamp), in the middle of the woods, because she couldn't sleep in her own; because her ability to cope with nightmares was absolute shit, and her proximity to those who knew nothing of freaky lizards and other dimensions was too close.

That was all . . .

That was all, right?

Hopper's grim looks of concern had nothing to do with suspicion. The offer had nothing to do with the vague talks he tried having with her or the glimpses of the mark that had been on her wrist. It had long since faded, nothing but a bad memory, an imaginary twitch in her forearm. She had caught his gaze drift towards that arm before it snatched right back to nothing in particular; to a clumsy stack of files or a forgotten plate of crumbs left by one of his cops before she had told him what was wrong that night.

She felt a stab of dread at the thought that being in his cabin could have anything to do with that. It made her draw even further inward . . . because the moment who's coming she had feared for most of her life felt a little too real then.

It wasn't as if he hadn't assumed before; Hopper assumed multiple times. She could pick out the familiar look on his face and could predict when it would come again. It always did . . . but she was scared of it this time. She didn't want to have this conversation yet. She didn't want to admit it yet.

But . . . didn't she? Hadn't she been waiting for years, enduring all that time, so she could find a way out for all of them? So the three of them could get out?

She mentally shook her head. This wasn't a way out for all of them. Just her . . . but it was a chance. It was a chance, and she had no idea when she was going to get another. Maybe she could make it work. Maybe . . .

It felt more likely that she would chicken out because nothing had gone smoothly.

The first night went badly.

The second wasn't much different, and it made her wonder if she had just made a horrible mistake in accepting Hopper's offer . . . El's really. Rowen didn't feel she had the heart to go back on it when her hand was squeezed so tight.

Maybe she was stuck here (stuck somewhere better, albeit, but stuck nonetheless). It occurred to her that the majority of her life might as well have been a series of getting stuck; from the house that her dad locked her in to the school that she just barely made it out of. She thought she would finally be free after walking the stage . . . but somehow she had landed into another rut, a repeat of what had happened before.

She was trying to wiggle herself free of this one yet it felt like all she was doing was going from one to the other. A house that wasn't her own to a cabin that wasn't her own. Not really free . . . was she scared of it? It seemed so daunting, the idea of it. But it seemed worse to deny it, because if she did then where would she be then? Floating. Existing. Not really living, just waiting and waiting, then waiting some more.

Waiting for Max.

Waiting for the opportunity to get her life started to finally present itself . . . unless she was kidding herself, and the vast expanse she was staring at, wanting to go into was laughing at her. Maybe it didn't give opportunities, maybe it was waiting for her like she was waiting for it.

Maybe she was overthinking.

She put herself to sleep with those thoughts.

. . .

ii.

He had been a notoriously heavy sleeper until Sarah got sick. After that, his log-like form barely gave an ounce to his mattress, and his head never touched the pillow; if it did, he would have been swept away like he once was, into a dreamland of some kind. He couldn't risk that then, not when her moths breath teetered between a good thing and a fatality. They could never tell him when it was alright and when it wasn't, and he hated them for it. Doctors were supposed to have answers, not raise more questions.

It was why he hated hospitals. He couldn't sleep in the one she was brought to; it was too bright, too sterile-smelling, too hard and rigid and cold. It wasn't meant for sleeping in unless you were a patient. He wasn't one, she was; so he learned to fight his log-like urges until he shed the habit and sleep was light and airy. He was easily disturbed, but it rarely came to him anyway, so what did it matter?

It didn't . . . he didn't matter at all in comparison to her, and selfishly, he hated that they made him lose his ability to rest anywhere, deeply, when all they did was tell him his daughter was dying and proceeded to do nothing. To fail,.

Shit . . . no. They did do something. They did everything they could, but it wasn't enough for him. It never would. But she was gone now, and so he locked up that bitterness and hate in a box and put it underneath the cabin with everything else that bothered him. That chipped away at little pieces of him. He stuffed it all away to make room for El, to make room for the possibility of something new with her.

Unfortunately, his sleeping habits were not one of those things. He allowed his head to rest on the pillow now, his mattress to take on his weight . . . but there was a gun underneath him for a reason. There were boobytraps around the perimeter of the cabin for a reason. Twig snaps and shuffling through the leaves were enough to call him to attention, even if he was off in dream's kingdom.

When a scream let loose from outside his door, he might as well have been shocked awake.

"Hop . ." El's groggy little voice had brought him back down to Earth.

This wasn't another Demogorgon invasion, wasn't another cry for help from another dimension. This was Rowen; this was Rowen having a bad night; this was Rowen and her nightmares. This was what she was dealing with, how she was coping — or wasn't coping. This was her trauma, she had told them as much; now they were witnessing it unfold.

Some kind of grim understanding had washed over him once his heartbeat slowed and it registered in his half-asleep brain that there was no threat. No threat to them. No threat to Rowen except her own mind . . . He remembered when the nightmares first came for him, too.

The gun in his hands slacked and his grip relaxed.

Both he and El looked towards the outline of a closed door, all but gone to them in the darkness of the cabin. He could barely see it, could barely hear Rowen's whimpering now as the seconds passed and the reality of where she was sounded like it had settled in. That wasn't initially how it went for him. Initially, he was breaking things and tumbling and wanting to scream at the world for making him live through yet another hell . . . but eventually, he had sobered. Eventually, he reasoned himself into reluctant acceptance and stayed in bed when the nightmares woke him up. Eventually, he got better. El was getting better . . . Rowen would too.

"I can do it," El said quietly. She had come up to him by then, a small hand placed on the forearm that held the gun.

He had heard every word, but the frenzy that had stirred in his head was still calming down. All Hopper could do was nod and accept it, watch as El shuffled over to the other room.

Brave, quiet little El. He was proud of her. He was shocked by her.

Proud, shocked . . . same thing. Pleased, enraged. Amused, terrified. Traumatized. She might as well have traumatized him — what, with as many times as she had almost given him a heart attack. All of these things bottled up into one feeling that told him he was never going to let her go, not if he could help it. It had hit him when she wore the dress and went to the dance, when he discovered Rowen had given her the pep talk in the parking lot that he was supposed to give her. It had hit him hard.

Rowen had helped soften the blow a little, the least he could do was help her in return — try to, at least.

That was all any of them were doing, trying. Trying so damn hard.

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