CHAPTER FIFTEEN
XV. when worlds collide
[ season 2, episode 9 ]

Steph could still remember the first time she was told the story about her missing step-cousin, Veronica Hayes.

She was ten. They just moved back to Hawkins after her father's unprecedented death ( a freak car accident on the highway that wiped his car out completely ) to shack up with Aunt Jenny whilst her Mom saved up enough cash to buy them another, smaller home in Atlanta City. You see, her father made all the big bucks. After he died, Loretta Miller was forced to work, which was something she had never done in her entire life. And to work, she needed a babysitter ── her own sister proved to be more than sufficient.

During their time together, Jenny liked to tell Steph stories. Some of them make believe, some true. None of the anecdotes ever really clung to her memory, standing out amongst the rest. None of them but one.

Steph had been riding her scooter around Aunt Jenny's house, which was against the rules ── this was during her rebellious phase when she went against everything her Mom set in stone. Mistakenly, she collided with the drawers mounted beside the TV, as well as tearing a wavering tapestry down from the ceiling. One of the frames slipped off the box of smoothed oak and shattered into several little pieces of glinting glass. But the photo wedged inside remained untouched, obscured behind the broken shards. Steph had never really noticed it before: a young girl, a mane long red hair tamed into two pigtails, perched on a swing. Jenny's husband, Norman Hayes, was standing behind her with an enormous grin splitting across his face. Steph remembered staring at the photograph for a while, trying to understand. Nothing came to mind.

She knew Norman's face from photo albums, the wedding photo Jenny had pinned to the kitchen wall. But this girl . . . Steph had never seen her before. She had the same green eyes as her late Uncle, but that was where the similarities ended. And she looked nothing alike to her Aunt.

Further confusion.

She decided to leave it alone and question the meaning behind the photo at a later date. She also didn't want to be reprimanded for knocking over something with value, so jumped in to begin discarding the evidence.

When her Aunt Jenny returned from pampering the front garden, covered in molecules of smeared dirt from the flower beds, she saw Steph trying to sweep up the smashed pieces of a picture frame. Consider Jenny's curiosity piqued ── until she saw which drawer it was that had been disturbed. The intricately carved drawer hidden next to the TV, concealed by a hanging tapestry.

That one.

She was left with little to no choice. Jenny had to tell her niece who that mysterious girl in the photo was. She was badgered with questions. Answers were demanded. Confusion set in. Shock. Horror.

Nothing could have ever prepared Steph for Veronica's abduction story.

But when that redheaded girl walked through the front door of Joyce Byers house, Steph knew something had gone amiss in her Aunt Jenny's terrifying tale.

She left out the part where Veronica lived.

Because . . . here she was.

Someone else had walked into the house before her, however. A younger girl with slicked-back hair and heavy eye makeup, features contorted into a sharp scowl. Steph glanced around at the expressions upon her comrades' faces, and gathered the idea that this wasn't just any old wannabe-punk star. It was Eleven ── it just had to be. Who else could open a locked door without a key? Someone with mind powers, that's what.

But Steph couldn't focus on Eleven. Her eyes refused to traverse anywhere but Veronica's face. She looked unrealistically confident; she did not emit a singular molecule of fear or apprehension. Unlike other people, it didn't radiate. It didn't fester. It just didn't exist, simply put. Veronica looked fearless. But how accurate were expressions in depicting human emotions buried beneath the surface?

Not very.

"I never gave up on." Mike claimed. He and Eleven had shared a lingering embrace, a reunion that brought tears to their eyes. "I called you every night. Every night for ──"

"353 days." Eleven finished. "I heard."

People were beginning to notice the strange older girl standing behind Eleven. They had never seen her before. Or at least, some hadn't. Lucia's brows furrowed, and she recalled the files that she saw Steph stuff into her bag before the Demodog ambushed them. One of the aforementioned files had a photo glued to it of a girl wearing a hospital gown, fiery red locks spilling over the patterned sheet like a steam of lava. She looked similar. It was all in the eyes.

Mike sniffed, "Why didn't you tell me you were there? That you were okay?"

"Because I wouldn't let her." Hopper interjected.

The surprise was evident amongst the group. Eyes widened, brows cinched together, lips parted. Hopper's bold statement was small, but had an impactful meaning behind it. Steph could see Mike hadn't taken it all too well, the truth about Eleven's true whereabouts. The truth about the man who had sworn to remain honest at all times.

"Where have you been?" Hopper demanded, pinning Eleven with an authoritative gaze. He was curious about the stranger, too, but questioning could wait.

The so-called mage scowled, "Where have you been?"

Unexpectedly, the pair embraced. Hopper placed a tender kiss on Eleven's head, clearly thankful to have someone so familiar by his side again. Steph's eyes removed themselves from the heartwarming scene, back to Veronica. She was finally looking around at the crowd, scrutinising every single member of the collective. When her gaze befell Steph, nothing registered within her expression. It remained the same; closed off. But not because that was who she was as a person. Rather because she didn't recognise the blonde.

Veronica had no idea who she was.

"You've been hiding her this whole time!" Mike Wheeler suddenly exclaimed, cheeks reddening with unwarranted fury. He gave Hopper a harsh shove, which the man did not appreciate at all.

He grabbed a fistful of Mike's jacket, yanking him out of the room, "Let's talk. Alone."

Mike looked like a disobedient puppy being pulled to it's crate. He thrashed against Hopper's vice-grip, teeth clenched together furiously, and when the door at the end of the hallway slammed, Mike Wheeler's outburst began. His raised voice trembled throughout the entire house. Steph and Steve shared a wary look from the corner of their eye, and that's when they both came to the realisation that their hands were still weaved together.

It was Steph who broke contact. And that sensation of solace drained until she felt nothing but self-reproach.

The beacon of light had dimmed.

Wanting to focus on something other than the raw memories flicking through her mind like a broken record, Steph decided to approach Veronica. The redhead looked extensively out of place, swaying on the spot with her arms folded defensively. Her lips quivered into a warming smile that was undoubtedly forced when she noticed Steph, gradually closing in. The gesture changed Veronica's face completely: from an intimidating stranger to someone who couldn't hurt a fly.

For a second, Steph could only see that innocent little girl with fiery pigtails staring back, plucked directly from the picture her Aunt Jenny cherished.

She cleared her throat. Introductions were mandatory, even if the two distant relatives weren't entirely strangers, "Hey, I'm Steph."

"Ronnie."

They stared at one another awkwardly. Steph extended her hand ── which wasn't something she would do in any normal greeting, only this wasn't normal ── and Veronica shook it tentatively. As someone with impenetrable force fields surrounding her emotions and expressions, Steph could easily interpret the cold and distant look Veronica was studying her with as a defence mechanism. The redhead didn't want to put her entire heart and soul into this encounter, because who knew what was going to come from it on the other side? The better option was to be a shadow, unforgettable. Empty. Hollow. No real sentiments involved. That way, coming out unscathed was inevitable.

"How did you and Eleven come to know each other, then?" Steph asked.

From the stories, she had never heard mentions of Veronica's name during the hunt for Will Byers, the gory battle against the Demogorgons. To all of Hawkins, Veronica was a lost girl with no hope of ever making it back home. She was as new to Steph as she was to the rest of the group.

Veronica glanced over at Eleven, watching as she embraced her friends. "She found me. And I'm thankful, too."

"Found you?"

"Yes." she nodded. Her gaze was boring into Steph's soul, undoubtedly quizzical to the blonde girl's immediate show of inquisitiveness. "The same facility carried out experimentations on us both. Used us as their pawn. Luckily, we were both in the right place at the right time. We're sisters ── we just don't share the same blood as most relatives do."

Like us, Steph thought. We're cousins, bound by a widowed marriage.

"I wanted to come back with Eleven because Hawkins is . . . familiar to me." Veronica mused, as if she didn't quite understand the reason herself. She opened up to people easily, Steph noticed. But there was a staggered edge to her tone that made her words sometimes seem, and sound, a little unbelievable. Lying, but only when it was deemed necessary. And in this case, she was telling the whole truth. "It's an eerie place. I've heard bad things about it. Mostly bad."

"Well, there's a reason people say it's a cursed town ── mostly the old conspiracists." Steph said. "I can't pretend I don't agree with them. It's like a magnet for tragedies."

"I heard. When Will Byers went missing, I saw something about it on the news. Everyone did." Her gaze twisted to Will, strewn along the sofa. He looked innocent to the naked eye, but brimming beneath the surface was a darkness they couldn't quite comprehend. "And when he was found, the reports were everywhere. Plastered on the papers. All over TV. It could've been a tragedy; Will was lucky."

Will was lucky. Or he had been, at least. Another tragedy had struck him shortly after the first, festering deeply, nesting inside of him, in the form of revenge. Not Will's revenge ── rather something that was using him to fulfil its own sinister means.

The Shadow Monster.

Little to did Veronica know, she was another lucky one. And like Will, her fortunes were severed short. Because here she was, in the very place her calamitous story began, painfully oblivious to what brought her back to Hawkins in the first place.

A gut feeling she couldn't understand. Dwindling memories struggling to resurface.

Steph was unable to bite her tongue anymore. Veronica looked so lost, so hopeless. She needed some assistance, "Is there any reason why you think Hawkins is familiar?"

"I think I was born here." Veronica responded. "And the lab . . . I remember it well."

Steph kept her mouth closed. Veronica's pupils dilated as she recalled memories from her past, reminiscing the time she spent holed up in Hawkins Laboratory with a distasteful expression. The intensity of the programme erased figments of childhood from her mind, leading to a permanent ache withering away in Veronica's brain, permeating evocations. The only way to heal it was to remember. To truly remember.

"Listen, Veronica," Steph lowered her voice. "I haven't been completely straight with you ──"

"Veronica?" the redhead echoed, brows furrowed. She shook her head, trying to understand a revelation Steph was oblivious to. "Nobody calls me that. I haven't used that name since . . ."

Aha! Steph had unknowingly triggered a memory to surface. She had used Veronica's given name, not the abbreviated one that she must have forged to separate herself from a past she was unable to grasp.

"Since what?" Steph pressed. All Veronica had to do now was to keep digging.

Her features contorted into a pained grimace; the memories were battling to stay locked away, submerged in darkness. But Veronica had already located a source of light, "Since I was taken. From this town ── from my family."

Steph nodded. Her heart was thumping erratically. She dipped a hand into her bag and pulled out the bunch of secret files that she had snatched from the laboratory. Getting into a scuffle with Demodogs to retrieve the files had been a fortunate win on her part, after all. They had a purpose.

Without a word, Steph handed the papers to Veronica. The redhead took them into her hands hesitantly, eyes widening at the emboldened name printed on the corner of the larger stack. Veronica Hayes ── 009.

"I'll give you time." Steph said. She was going to need it.

She walked away from Veronica, who sank down against the wall, poring over the plethora of words situated in her file.

The circumstances revolving around Veronica's father were unfortunate, and it was a shame she would never have the opportunity to reunite with the man who died trying to find her. Sacrificed himself for answers that didn't come to light ── until now. But her family didn't stop there. The name Jenny Miller was stamped in that file somewhere. Or Jenny Hayes, as it was documented as. Veronica would recognise it right away, and with that recognition would come an undying urge to find her stepmother. That's when Steph would swoop in, address her connection to the branch of relatives, and have Veronica and Aunt Jenny reunite after far too many years apart.

It all worked out in the end. Always. With patience, of course. Patience is a virtue in these trying times.

Steph reconvened with the group congregating in the middle of the sitting room. Eleven and the other youngsters were smiling and hugging, while Steve Harrington ── who had never really met the mage before ── sat on the sofa, watching the encounter with a placid expression.

Nonchalantly, Steph nuzzled into the open space on the couch beside him. She twirled the tennis racket between her hands, succumbing to a silence that Steve effectively broke within seconds.

"So," he began with an edge of inquisitive to his voice. "Who's the girl?"

On instinct, Steph glanced over at Veronica. She was sitting in the same position, reading the files with utmost intrigue, pressing her back to the wall. "That's Veronica."

"Do you know her?"

"Indirectly."

Steve's brows cinched together, "Okay . . . That just fills me with more questions than I had two seconds ago."

His words were an indirect demand for an explanation. Steph owed it to him. She had left him in the dark about her entire laboratory scheme to unearth the truth about her family, leaving him to piece together conclusions that mostly involved her being unhinged or recklessly brave.

The question still remained in both. Why did she endanger her life by traversing into a Demodog-infested bloodbath?

"Fine. You wanna hear the truth? Listen," Steph turned to face Steve fully, prepared to delve deep into the story of Veronica Hayes. But the close proximity of their faces ── just inches apart ── proved to be a distraction. The words that had been fully formed in her mind, clambering to the tip of her tongue, poised to tumble into sentences, seemed to bubble and melt like sea-froth ebbing away from land. She could focus only on Steve's eyes. The colour, the intensity of his gaze. Dark chocolate with strange flecks of forest-green that spiked around his pupils like a formation of tall trees.

Even down to the eyes, they shared no similarities. But what was that statement? Opposites attract.

Steve cleared his throat. If it hadn't been for this distraction, Steph probably would have stared to the point it became weird. She was thankful Steve had brought her sharply back to reality.

"You were saying?" he said. There was a smirk dancing across his lips ── the signature smirk Steve used whenever he had won someone over. Proved someone wrong. Tried to make someone crack. And he knew it.

Steph hadn't yet cracked. But she felt a stir in the winds. A change in the tide.

"It's a long story." she said finally, clearing her throat. It was strange, but Veronica suddenly seemed less interesting. Steve had infiltrated each and every one of her thoughts. She couldn't even think straight. "It's confusing. I don't understand it myself. Veronica's dad is ── was ── my step-uncle. But, like Will, she just mysteriously vanished. She never made it back home. The lab used her, conducted experiments. She escaped. Found Eleven. Came back. That's the general gist."

Steve nodded. Like Steph, he wasn't completely overwhelmed with the desire to know exactly who this new arrival was. Not anymore. Something a little more interesting had caught his eye.

He pointed at Steph's peony-pink cheeks, smirk seeming to stretch beyond the point of tolerable, "You okay? You're looking a little flustered there."

Steph's cheeks warmed, reddening more, if that was even possible. At that point, her flesh was practically radiating a heat that was powerful enough to scold, and she loathed herself for it. Exposing herself so freely. What happened to the facade? The mask she wore so vigilantly?

It must have slipped.

"Deep breaths, Miller." Steve said. Steph immediately recognised the words to be a repeat of her own, from earlier when Steve freaked out over the haunting declaration that the Mind Flayer's sole ambition was to squash the entire human race. His version of the statement was more a tease than a snarky remark, differentiating from Steph's take. And he knew it got under her skin, in many more ways than one, "It'll all be over before you know it."

With full awareness of his actions, Steve walked away.

The key with girls is just . . . just acting like you don't care. It drives them nuts. And then you wait. Wait until you feel it.

No more waiting needed. That powerful electricity Steve had previously informed Dustin about during their hunt for Dart ── the thing he felt when he was with Nancy Wheeler ── surged relentlessly. A lightning bolt of indescribable ardour.

It was real. It wasn't something made up.

It was there.

✧.｡. *.

The gate to the alternate dimension could be sealed again, the exact same way it was opened. And no ── not the garden gate, as Lucia had assumed. Rather the one buried beneath Hawkins Laboratory, guarded by the Demodogs that mercilessly ravaged Bob to pieces.

As if on instinct, Steph raised a hand to her injured shoulder and clamped the swollen flesh. A dull throb pulsated down her arm, burrowing deeply into the crevices surrounding her protruding collarbones. The pain was intense, saturated in one place, that she pulled her lips into a thin line to smother the possibilities of crying out. And the fear of the situation didn't help. Mind games ── branching agony off into several directions. The fear of any encounter occurring, having only fatal consequences, made her think of the wound she acquired in the lab. Doubled the pain. Refreshed the memories.

Her eyes dropped down to her shoes. Splatters of dried blood marred the cream material. Bob's life essence reduced to nothing but droplets that could be wiped away, if scrubbed hard enough.

"Hey," whispered a voice. It was gentle. Feminine. "Are you okay?"

Lucia.

"I'm fine." Steph replied.

She wasn't. Not really. Who had to know that, though? There were far more pressing matters to be concerned over, including the possibilities of colliding head-on with a ravenous pack of Demodogs.

Hopper had everyone gather around the dining table for yet another discussion. He mentioned the Upside Down gate, explaining to the group of how drastically different things were going to be this time around. "It's not like it was before. It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. That place is crawling with those dogs."

"Demodogs." Dustin corrected.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I said, uh," Dustin cleared his throat. "Demodogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass──"

"How is this important right now?" Hopper interjected, exasperated with Dustin's futile attempts at giving the creatures a more sophisticated name.

He lowered his head, "It's not. I'm sorry."

Eleven stepped forward, having already made her mind up about the undisclosed plan she was sure to include her in some way, shape or form, "I can do it."

Hopper sighed, "You're not hearing me."

"I'm hearing you. I can do it."

"Not alone." Veronica added. Everyone turned to look at her ── evergreen eyes sparkling with determination, lips pursed, cheeks drawn in taut to reveal high cheekbones. "I'll go with you."

This didn't bode well with Hopper. He turned on Veronica, who still stood her ground despite the dull accusation, "Hey, slow down. We don't even know if you're trustworthy, yet."

"She is." Eleven assured firmly.

She and Veronica exchanged a brief look. Nodded. Turned back to their peers. Hopper still didn't appear swayed, nor on board with the scattered array of ideas, which wasn't anything new.

Mike had figured something out in the time it took for the silence to grow unsteady, "There's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies."

"I thought that was the whole point." Max said.

"It is, but . . ." Mike paused, collecting every piece of intelligence and knowledge he needed like broken shards of a glass vase. "if we're really right about this ── if El closes the gate and kills the Mind Flayer's army──"

"Will's a part of that army." Lucas pointed out ominously.

"Closing the gate will kill him." Mike concluded. The silence befell the entire group once again, but certain, keen eyes lingered on Joyce Byers. She was thinking, mechanical cogs swirling behind her inky-dark irises. Before anyone could mention her noticeable vacancy, Joyce bounded away from the sofa chair and led everyone into Will's room.

They fanned out across the open space. Steph and Lucia joined Max and Lucas. Cold, bitter air slithered in from the open window.

"He likes it cold." Joyce murmured, absentminded. She was coming to a slow, steady realisation. "It's what Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold."

She stepped over to the window and slid the thick glass-pane back down into it's seal, effectively securing Will's fate. Everyone watched.

"We keep giving it what it wants!" Joyce exclaimed.

"If this is a virus . . . and Will's the host, then . . ." Nancy began uncertainly. Not sure if she believed herself, the word tumbling from her lips.

Jonathan nodded in agreement, "Then we need to make the host uninhabitable."

"So if he likes it cold . . ." Lucia mumbled.

"We need to burn it out of him." Joyce said, her lip curling in disdain as she thought about the thing attacking her innocent boy from the inside out. Helping had been a difficult feat until now. She was going to do whatever it took to save Will from the Mind Flayer.

"We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time." Mike added.

"Somewhere far from here." Steph added.

That was a given. Shrill phone-calls and the sound of a bat colliding harshly with this aforementioned, endangering phone risked too much. Their lives were on the line. Permanently. One wrong move, everyone was dead. Reduced to ashes.

The Demodogs had quenched their thirst for human blood now. And they were not going to stop with one fatality.

They needed more.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

im half asleep so if
there are any spell
checks or grammar
mistakes ignore them

:)