chapter twenty-three
lando calrissian

        Dustin paces back and forth across the length of the bus, muttering fervently to himself, all the while as he rattles the foundations of the bus.  It's been like this for the last twenty minutes as they wait for Hopper to collect them, Alex has effectively tuned the boy out.  Hours have passed since they made contact with Hopper and Nancy.  The sun is setting over the horizon, but the chief has not yet revealed himself.  The chief's instructions were clear, though: Stay where you are.  Do not move.  (The same instructs that you give a small child, should they be lost—but they're not lost, they're hiding).  Lucas has seemed to take those instructions literally—Alex has not seen him move an inch in the past twenty minutes, he sits on the bus seat with his chin resting on his balled fist, lost in his own head.  Alex doesn't blame him.  It's easier to become numb to reality rather than face it.  The only indication that he is awake is the incessant bouncing of his knee.  Mike sits dejectedly on a discarded chair that had made its way onto the bus sometime before they had arrived in the junkyard, his face rests in the palm of his hand propped on his knee and he watches as Dustin continues to pace back and forth. 

The bus is sweltering hot, almost uncharacteristically hot for a late November day in Hawkins.  It seems that this day is nothing but painstaking torture (but at least, for now, they can catch their breath).  Alex wishes that she hadn't worn long sleeves that day.  They're pushed up to her elbows and she has the sudden urge to rip the sleeves off altogether.  But she doesn't.  The leather that covers the padding of the seats is warm.  Sweat clings to Alex's forehead and condenses into droplets that she wipes away before they can drip down her face.  The putrid air that has been trapped in the bus along with them is about to suffocate her and makes the wait on the bus even more torturous.  Alex itches to step outside.  But she resists the temptation.  She's not that stupid.  She will not become the reason that they are found.  She would not be able to live with that guilt (if they even made it out alive).

Currently, Alex sits on the bench opposite Lucas, beside El.  The girls sit shoulder to shoulder and El leans into Alex's touch as she watched Alex rifle through the card deck they had found in the bottom of Dustin's backpack.  Alex has shown El magic tricks in a halfhearted attempt to calm the girl's nerves.  It seems to have worked.  Her eyes grow wide with each trick and Alex shows, and she can't help but let a soft smile fight its way onto her face.  Alex holds up she hopes is the card that El had selected—she'll admit that she's never been particularly good at card tricks, and if she does get the cards wrong, El doesn't have the heart to tell her—the Ace of Spades and holds it up for El to see.

"This your card?" She asks softly for what seems to be the hundredth time. 

El begs her to repeat the tricks because she is still filled with so much wonder.  Alex obliges.  She likes seeing El like this.  She can't wait to teach El more about how the world works so that the girl may still have a small chance at normalcy.  It's what she deserves.  She deserves a normal life after years of being treated like an experiment (fundamentally, that's what she is—that's what she was born to be, but that doesn't have to be the case.  Alex will be damned if El does not live through this to have a semi-normal life).

El nods.  "Yes."

"You can tell me if it's not," Alex reminds her, "I'm not going to get offended."

"It is," El insists. 

Alex laughs quietly.  "That's all the card tricks I know.  Here, I'll teach you how to play Go Fish."

"Go...fish?" El repeats.

"Yeah," Alex confirms with a nod.  "It's fun.  Steve and I used to play it all the time."

"We're hiding from the government, and you're teaching her card games?" Dustin asks incredulously, finally pausing in his continual pacing. The bus stills.  Temporary relief.

Alex only rolls her eyes.  "What else are we supposed to do?  You should join us; it'll take your mind off of Landon Cal-something-or-other."

"Lando Calrissian," Dustin corrects through a clenched jaw.

"Whatever," Alex replies, waving him off.  "The point is: we're not in Star Trek.  I don't even know why you keep bringing him up."

"Okay, first of all: Lando Calrissian is from Star Wars, not Star Trek," Dustin tells her.  Alex only watches, amused.  "Second: Lando betrays them to the Empire.  And third: once this is all over, we are having one hell of a movie night because I refuse to watch you suffer like this."

Lucas lets out a sigh, speaking for the first time in almost an hour.  "You realize she's doing this on purpose, right?"

Alex blinks and turns her attention to Lucas with an expression of innocent confusion.  "Doing what?"

In all honesty, Alex does not understand half of the pop-culture references that the boys make (She admits, though, that it's fun to watch Dustin get so passionate about them).  She has never been interested in Dungeons & Dragons or comic books or Star Wars.  Gowing up, you're influenced by the people around you.  Steve had never been interested in that, and Steve had always been her biggest influence. Whatever Steve liked, Alex was bound to like too.  In the end, everything that makes you you is a small part of somebody else.  We are just mosaics of all the people that we have loved, even if only for a split second.  Alex doesn't mind the idea of allowing the boys to become a part of her as well.

Dustin lets out a heavy sigh and starts to pace again.  The bus shakes and Alex lets out a small, exasperated sigh.  And the cycle continues.  Dustin reaches the end and turns around.  Alex shuffles the deck of cards.  Lucas resumes the tapping of his leg.  Mike stares dejectedly at the walls of the bus.  This continues for several minutes.

Finally, Mike snaps.  "Will you stop pacing?"

"It's been way too long," Dustin fires back.  He takes a few steps closer to Mike.  "Do you know what?  Maybe you're right.  Maybe this is all a trap, and the bad men are coming to get us right now!"

Alex lets out a sigh.  "Here we go again."

"It's not a trap!" Lucas exclaims.  "Why would the chief set us up?  Nancy, maybe—" Mike throws his arms up, offended "—but the chief?"

Dustin points to Lucas.  "Lando Calrissian."

"Will you shut up about Lando?" Lucas snaps.

"I don't feel good about this," Dustin replies, his voice raised several octaves as he paces toward the opposite side of the bus.  Alex can hear the panic building up in his voice.  He whirls back around and approaches Lucas, leaning down in his face.   "I don't feel good about this!"

"When do you feel good about anything?!" Lucas shouts back as Dustin paces once again.

A faint rumble pricks at Alex's ears.  She pauses in her shuffling of the card deck.   "Guys, shut up," she hisses.

The rumbling grows louder.  This time, the others hear it too.  The bus falls into silence as the five children turned fugitives cluster around the front window of the bus, watching with palpitating hearts as a black car makes its way into the junkyard.  The deck of cards lay abandoned, spread across the bus seat.  For a moment, Alex is relieved, Nancy and Hopper have arrived.  But that small moment is short-lived when another car pulls into the junkyard from the opposite side.  Suddenly, the bus doesn't seem so hot anymore. 

"Shit!" Dustin swears.

"Go, go, go, go, go!" Mike urges as they turn around and clamor to the very back of the bus.

"Lando," says Dustin with a hint of vindication in his voice as Alex tucks herself behind a bus seat, pressing her back as far into the wall of the bus as she can.  Dustin cowers beside her, panting heavily.

"You think they saw us?" Lucas whispers from the opposite side of the bus. 

"I sure hope not," Alex whispers in reply.

"All of you, shut up," Mike hisses, poking his head from around the final bus seat where he hides with El.  The girl in question grips the top of the seat with her small hands and pokes her head over the edge.  All Alex can see are her eyes, wide with fear. 

The bus falls into silence save for the ragged sounds of their breathing.  Alex can hear her heart thud in her ears.  Faintly, from outside, she can hear the closing of car doors—but after that, nothing.  The bad men stalk the junkyard quietly.  Eerily, she is reminded of when she and Steve would play hide-and-seek in the woods.  Alex would always try to quiet her footsteps so Steve wouldn't hear her coming so that he would have a false sense of security in knowing that she was not close.  But this game of hide-and-seek is different.  The stakes are higher, and Alex is not the seeker.  This is a deadly game and there is no way around losing.  There are only so many places that five tired children can hide in a junkyard.  Eventually, the bad men will sniff them.

They are right where the bad men want them.  Miles away from the rest of Hawkins.  Nobody will hear the gunshots.  Nobody will hear them scream. 

Usually, Alex formulates hundreds of ways that a situation can play out, all with different endings.  But Alex only sees one way that this can end.  They will be caught.  They face men with guns and their only weapon is a girl—a human girl who is just as tired as the rest of them.  Maybe, they stood a chance with El by her side if they were hiding away from a single man.  But instead, they are hiding from several.  And each is armed with a gun.  They do not stand a chance and Alex does not blame El.  She has bitten the bullet for them too countless times, now.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  She hurts someone, and in return, she is hurt, too.  And finally, it has taken a toll on her.  They cannot expect her to fight all their battles for them.  El is still human.  El is still just a kid.

What will happen when they are caught?  Will they be shot down and left for dead while they collect El?  Will their blood perpetually stain the bus?  Or will they be taken away too?  Will they be locked away for the remainder of their days, separated from each other, with their only company being the memories that they once shared together?  Will there be funerals for them?  How will the Lab cover up their deaths and disappearances?  Will they be regarded as martyrs, or will they become faces on the backs of milk cartons?

There is a high-pitched squeak as the doors of the bus are pulled open.  Alex freezes and then curses herself for not thinking to barricade their only entrance earlier.  But there's no turning back time now.  This is truly the end.  Alex tenses and waits for the bad man to reveal himself.  Maybe, if she jumps out at him, she'll surprise him long enough for the others to make their escape.  She will gladly take a bullet for them if it means that they'll make it out of this alive.  Alex prepares herself, pushing herself into a crouching position, ready to spring.  She waits for the footsteps in the aisle, but they never come.  Instead, there is a sharp cry of pain, followed by a thud and a grunt.

Alex flinches and peers around the seat that she ducks behind.

"Hey!" Comes a shout from outside of the bus followed by another loud cry of pain and another thud of a body against the ground.

"What the—" Another thud.  Another grunt.  Another body meeting the ground. 

The door creaks open and the five children rise as Cheif Jim Hopper reveals himself as their savior.  He has a gun in hand, and he is breathing heavily.  "All right, let's go." 

None of the children move.  Their feet are planted stubbornly to the ground as they stare back at him.  Suddenly, they are back in Principal Coleman's office all those days ago.  Hopper only clenches his jaw.  "Let's go!"

And the children scramble to follow him.

author's note: alex and el make my heart go woosh okay 🥺