we're just kids

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

Christmas was fast approaching, and the Wheeler household had already been decorated, wreaths adorning every window, lights strung across inside of the household, a giant tree nestled into the corner. Christmas songs crackled out of an old radio, and outside, snow fell softly and silently, a cold chill rushing across any who dared brave the harsh climate.

Usually, Alina Fairgrieves would be the one outside. With Linda, she usually spent her Christmas breaks watching the snow fall, warming her hands with a mug of hot water and wishing for a better life. Even with just her dad, she'd find herself doing this tradition, although sometimes he would be out there with her. But this year, she found herself inside instead, in the cozy basement of the Wheeler household, with mugs of hot chocolate quickly drunk, stacked in the dishwasher.

This year, five kids gathered around a rickety table, where a gameboard was placed, instruction manuals sitting on laps. Mike Wheeler gazed around at the companions he was bringing on an adventure, weaving a complex tale with nothing but his words. For Alina, the basement had dissolved around her hours ago, transforming into forests and dungeons, and she'd been transported into the body of a warrior, one who had to fight make-believe monsters instead of real ones.

"Something is coming." The sound of Mike's voice, as usual, sent chills down all of their spines. The boy always had a talent of terrifying people with mere words. His voice was low, and he stared around at all of them, gauging their expressions. "Something angry. Hungry for your blood. It is almost here."

"What is it?" Will Byers, who was sitting beside Alina in a wobbly chair, alive if not completely well, had evidently grown tired of the suspense. He exchanged a worried glance with Alina before turning back to the Dungeon Master.

"It's the Thessalhydra," insisted Dustin Henderson, his customary hat, as usual, firmly upon his mop of curls, "I'm telling you."

Lucas Sinclair let out a sigh. "It's not the Thessalhydra," he argued, shaking his head.

"I'm telling you," said Dustin again, "it's the Thessalhydra!"

Dustin and Lucas seemed to be the ones who squabbled the most during these campaigns, arguing about which path to take or if to play it safe or dangerously. Although it could be annoying at times, Alina was glad to be here, sitting at the table with her friends. Just a month ago, she'd never been able to experience a campaign like this, playing only with her parents. Just a month ago, she'd never have even dreamt about it at all.

"I'm with Dustin," Alina piped up now, letting out a slight chuckle at Lucas's face. She'd been laughing more now. "It's definitely the Thessalhydra. Mike wouldn't spring anything else on us."

Sure enough, Mike Wheeler slammed a many-headed creature down on the game board. "The Thessalhydra!" he announced triumphantly, yet again taking in the faces of his companions with amusement.

"We told you, Lucas," said Alina, and Lucas just clenched his jaw, worried about what was to come.

"It roars in anger!" narrated Mike, his eyes wide. "Will, your action!"

Will threw his arms into the air, looking around the room frantically. "What should I do? I—"

"Fireball him!" Lucas suggested, always being the one to take risks. It was something Alina loved about him. One of many things.

Will bit his lip, turning to Alina and Dustin for advice, and Alina pondered it for a second. She knew now that sometimes you needed to take risks. Sometimes you can't go through the same old routines, the same old daily motions. Sometimes you needed to take a leap of faith. After all, if she hadn't taken the risk of sneaking out of her house and meeting Eleven, she never would've been sitting at this table right now. It was strange to think of, but the universe worked in strange ways. Human knowledge was never certain. You never knew where you were going to end up.

So that was why she nodded at Will with certainty now. She was done playing it safe. "Fireball."

"Do it," Dustin agreed, nodding his head with enthusiasm. "Fireball the son of a bitch."

Lucas grinned, happy to agree on something, and Will nodded, thrusting the dice forward. The party held their breath as they watched them tumble, knowing that the only way for them to win was if he rolled a thirteen or higher. It seemed like hours before the dice finally stopped spinning, going still on the gameboard.

"Fourteen!" Dustin announced with glee, and the party erupted into celebration, thrusting their fists into the air and whooping with euphoria. Grins could be seen everywhere at the table and their cheering could probably be heard from the next neighborhood over. Mike's voice then rose above them all as he narrated the final moments of the campaign.

"It's a direct hit!" he shouted, excited. "Will the Wise's fireball hits the Thessalhydra! It makes a painful—" the boy let out a shriek like a prehistoric dinosaur, getting out of his seat for the full effect—"And then..." Mike collapsed to the ground, causing the players to shoot out of their own seats to watch him, "it crumbles to the ground! Its clawed hand reaches for you one last time...and... and... and... and..." After a few moments of suspense, Mike slumped over, imitating the dead creature.

The party erupted into cheers again, pulling each other into hugs and patting people on the back as if they'd just won the lottery. Alina wrapped her arms around Will, happier than she'd been in ages. "We did it!" she cheered. "We did it!"

Mike sat back down, watching his friends run around the table, hooting and cheering. "Lucas cuts off its seven heads," he continued, "and Dustin places them into his bag of holding." At this Dustin held up his backpack, nodding, and it was as if Alina could see the seven dead heads resting in his bag. Mike continued, "Alina cuts off the pinchers and extracts the saliva, both of which can be sold for a fortune! You carry the heads out of the dungeon, victorious, and you present them to King Tristan. He thanks you for your bravery and service, and—"

"Whoa." Dustin cut him off, perplexed. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not it, is it?"

"No," said Mike slowly, "there's a medal ceremony—"

"Oh, a medal ceremony? What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, man," agreed Lucas, "the campaign was way too short."

Will nodded. "Yeah!"

Mike faced his friends, exasperated. "It was ten hours!"

"But it doesn't make any sense!" Dustin insisted.

"It makes sense."

"Uh, no, what about the lost knight?"

"And the infected bandit?" Alina added.

"And the proud princess?" Lucas piped up.

"And those weird flowers in the cave?" finished Will.

"I don't know," said Mike. "It's—"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by the basement door opening, revealing Jonathan Byers coming down the stairs. After making a couple of jokes, causing most of the party to giggle, he nodded at them. "Come on, Will and Alina."

Both Alina and Will stood up, gathering their things and beginning to follow Jonathan to the door. "Bye, guys," Will said, smiling back at his fellow party members.

"See you," added Alina, tucking a lock of her curly hair behind one ear.

"Bye guys," Dustin and Mike chorused.

"Bye, Will! Bye Al!" Lucas grinned at his friends, high fiving them both before they reached the stairs. A rush of fondness went through Alina at the sight of him. The boy she still liked, and who she knew still liked her. Right now, however, they were both okay with being friends. Alina needed time to recover from the immense trauma that had come over her a month ago, her father's death, which left her living with the Byers family.

Alina didn't mind living with the Byers. She shared a room with Will, as there wasn't another bedroom, but Will liked her. After less than a week of Alina living in his house, they'd become best friends, able to bond over the trauma they'd both gone through.

Alina found herself spending her days helping Will with his homework, wrestling with Jonathan, and, of course, heading over to Mike's for another campaign. Her days were now filled with things she never thought she'd ever get to do.

And plus, Skywalker lived with them now, too. Joyce had taken a liking to the cat when she went with Alina to gather her things and didn't want to separate him from his owner. Skywalker was as fussy as usual, but now with four people taking care of him, he seemed more content.

Although Alina knew that it would be a while before she recovered from the night everything changed, she kept going. She knew that both Eleven and her father would want her to keep going, want her to be a kid for as long as she did. And although she wasn't the same person that she had been the beginning of the week that changed everything, Alina still was a kid.

Now, as she followed Jonathan and Will upstairs, she touched the front pocket of her backpack. There were three things she took everywhere with her now: the letter she'd received from her dad, her switchblade, and the brand-new walkie-talkie the boys had pooled their money to buy for her as a welcome-into-the-party gift.

The notebook, the one she'd started two months ago, chronicling the life of a certain girl, was currently under the tree upstairs. It had seemed only fitting to give it to Mike, the boy who had only known Eleven for a week but had grown the closest with. The boy who had kissed her in the cafeteria (which confirmed Alina's suspicions) the night she died, the boy who had wanted to take her to the Snow Ball. Alina's notebook was something personal to her, but after weeks of poring through its pages, she knew she'd had enough. She knew Eleven's story now, and she'd always keep it in her heart.

But she didn't want her story to go unknown. So that was why she had given it to Mike.

"So," Jonathan asked, as they made it upstairs, walking towards the front door. "You two have fun?"

"Yeah." Will sounded happy. Alina guessed that everything seemed like sunshine and rainbows for him after being kidnapped by a creature from an alternate dimension. She was glad that he was happy, though. He certainly deserved it after all he'd been through.

Alina just wasn't sure if she did yet.

"Hey, guys," Karen Wheeler, who was at the kitchen counter, Christmas cakes and cookies surrounding her, smiled at them. She'd obviously been hard at work preparing for the upcoming holiday. "Wish your mom a merry Christmas for me, okay?"

"Yeah, thank you." Jonathan smiled back. "Uh, merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas."

Jonathan led them into the hallway, where Alina and Will pulled on their shoes and jackets. "So, uh, did you win?" he asked after a moment, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah," nodded Will.

"Awesome."

"Yeah," said Alina, "Will fireballed the shit out of the Thessalhydra."

Jonathan smiled at her, ruffling her hair. Usually, Alina would push his hand away. But today she didn't. Because Jonathan hadn't reprimanded her for cursing, like her own parents would've done. Because she was alive, and, against all odds, she was here.

Alina Fairgrieves was an outcast. She was a freak in every meaning of the word. But maybe that was okay. Maybe it was okay to not fit in with people who wouldn't appreciate you anyway. Maybe it was okay to like comics and Star Wars (to an extent that you named your cat after it) and Dungeons and Dragons and cheesy old movies. Maybe it was okay to live with scars. Maybe she didn't have to hide them. Because despite everything Alina had always believed about herself, she had somehow been able to make friends. They were all outcasts, but they were outcasts together.

The freakshow, the losers, the outcasts—whatever they were called, they did it together, and they held the titles with pride.

Alina would never know why the universe decided to lead her down this path. Why she was here, instead of at someone else's house, why she was heading to the Byers house instead of her own. Why she suffered through so much at such a young age. But it didn't matter. Because although she'd lost many, she was here. She was breathing in the smell of baked goods from the Wheeler kitchen, she was linking arms with Will Byers, and Christmas was soon to arrive.

Maybe someday the universe would lead her on a path to healing. Maybe someday she would be happy again. Because Alina was done with thinking things were impossible. She'd had superpowers for a week. Eleven had flipped a van with her mind. The party had survived being hunted by bad men, held at knifepoint in the Quarry, being taken into another dimension. Everything they'd done was impossible.

So perhaps Eleven, who the agents had been so convinced was alive, was somehow still out there. Perhaps she was trying to find her way back to them.

After all, thought Alina, a small smile on her face, a smile of hope but also of longing, stranger things have happened.

FIN.

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: warning: sappy author's note incoming!

acatalepsy is a philosophy that basically means that human knowledge is never certain. that we may never know for sure why things happen, why we're here, why, out of every planet in our solar system, we were chosen to live here. throughout this story, alina finds herself questioning why these kinds of things had to happen, to her, to her dad, to eleven. but the answer will always remain uncertain.

i've been working on this story since early 2019. back then, it was just an idea in my head. hey, i liked stranger things, so why not make a fanfiction about it? it could be a little fun project i could do. and just like that, alina and brandon fairgrieves came to life in my mind. they were characters i ended up believing, after a failed attempt at posting the first draft, would only be seen in my head. and i was okay with that. 

but then, for nanowrimo 2019, i decided to rewrite acatalepsy. this came after a lot of failed attempts at writing both fanfiction (my umbrella academy fanfiction will never be coming here, sorry to say) and original works. so i sat myself down, and i let myself immerse into the head of alina again. i added brandon's perspective. i added more description and whump and then i realized how much i truly enjoyed writing, and how much i was aching to share it with the world.

i was sure it wouldn't go well. i probably wouldn't get over a 100 reads, if i could even reach that. wattpad wasn't a new platform to me, i'd been there for around a year or two on another account, but i didn't have high hopes that people would actually like my writing. like my characters i had poured my heart and soul into. 

but then i started to get comments. then i started to get votes. i started to interact with the lovely people and found out hey! people actually do like my work! every comment and vote put a smile on my face and still does today. you guys mean the world to me. you got attached to my characters, you cried when brandon died, you made theories and aesthetics and it's honestly been the highlight of these last few months. i know 3k reads doesn't seem like a lot to most people, but it means everything to me.

now, to end off this absurdly long author's note, i'd like to dedicate this story. while most people dedicate their books at the beginning, i'd like to do it at the end. so, this story is dedicated to the people who have commented and voted, whose notifications have brightened my day. this story is dedicated to the people who supported me when i didn't.

ThatPumkins staarling unhallows idklostsoul wavyfloral charlotteistired
Robin-ahoy LimelightEilish , you don't understand how much your support means to me. sometimes i don't respond to your comments but i read them all and appreciate them so, so much. even if you haven't made it to the end, you still were there for this story, and you don't know how much i appreciate it.

if your name wasn't mentioned, that's probably just because i'm lousy with remembering, but honestly, if you've made it this far, this book is dedicated to you, too. i love you all.

this book will be marked completed soon, but don't take it out of your libraries yet! i might write extra bonus scenes and will be updating you with news of book two! so keep your eyes peeled!

and so, for the last time in this book, i'd like to say

'till next time.