the new kid on the block

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

It had been almost exactly a year since her father and Eleven had died, and that was why Alina Fairgrieves was running. Her sneakered feet pounded against the sidewalk, her breath leaving her in a steady rhythm, and her arms pumped at her side. As Alina ran, the same three sentences echoed through her brain, drowning out everything else. The only three sentences she needed these days.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

A dull burn formed in her calves as she ran, a stitch beginning to crawl up her side, but Alina didn't stop running, relishing the pain instead of being annoyed with it. Her thick, curly hair bobbed from where it was encased in a rubber band, tickling the back of her neck, but Alina still didn't stop, even though she longed to scrape it away. When she was running, she could forget about everything. She could just be lost in the rhythm of her feet hitting gravel and her steady breathing and not the horrors of the present.

The surroundings of Hawkins were a blur as Alina Fairgrieves flew past them, her hands curled into fists. It was something she did while she ran, the sensation of her nails biting into her palms somehow comforting. Even when she uncurled them later and found crescent-shaped marks etched into her soft skin. Well, it didn't matter as much to her anymore. Her body was a tapestry of scars; fading stripes across her stomach and the backs of her legs, a line on the side of her face from when she'd hidden in a bush last year, a gash on her knee from when she'd fallen rollerblading.

Of course, she couldn't forget the strangest scars out of all of them—the ones on her palms. In the center of each hand was a splotch of fading red, right where the energy had shot out of her palms when her abilities remained with her. That was the week where blood constantly stained her upper lip from constant nosebleeds, and sometimes she'd get a tug in her stomach that pulled her towards Eleven. The very same week that they faded away.

That was also the week Eleven had died. She wasn't the only one, either, as on the exact same night, Alina's father, Brandon Fairgrieves, had also perished, leaving Alina with no parents to take care of her. Three years before, Linda Fairgrieves, Alina's mother, had run away from home.

And so Alina had gone to live with the Byers, her pet cat, Skywalker, also coming along for the ride. She'd helped the Byers family find their son, Will, who was Alina's classmate and had been kidnapped by a monster from another universe—the Demogorgon. After Will was found, Joyce invited Alina to come and stay with them as long as she wanted, and Alina, not knowing where else to go and not wanting to leave her new friends, had taken up that offer.

Life at the Byers household wasn't so bad. Sometimes Alina found she actually liked it. She shared a room with Will, and it had only taken a week after her move in before she became best friends with him. Will's brother, Jonathan, was also welcoming of her, and so was Bob, Joyce's new boyfriend, who latched onto Skywalker. And Skywalker, Alina's clingy cat who usually hated everyone except for her and her dad (although all of that was thrown out of the window if they gave him pats) had somehow taken a liking to him back.

But, of course, nobody could pretend that they hadn't been traumatized last year. Will had returned from the Upside Down a shell of his former self, constantly plagued with nightmares and flashbacks, and Alina found herself dissolving more and more into self-hate when she thought about either her dad or Eleven.

Eleven. Alina still remembered the day they'd officially met with astonishing clarity. It was the day she'd escaped from the Lab, and Alina had found her in the woods by the treehouse, shivering from the cold, her head shaved, wearing a hospital gown. They'd both felt the tug, the magnet in their stomachs, and that was how they became friends.

But now Eleven was gone. She'd sacrificed herself to bring an end to the Demogorgon's reign of terror, as, besides Will, it had ended up taking three others and killing most of the agents at Hawkins Lab, including Alina's dad, who she'd been wary about until realizing that he really had tried to help her.

Alina dug in her heels and ran faster. She'd started running six months ago, terrified that one day she'd be in a situation like she'd been in last year, where she'd spent her week running from agents and bullies alike. She'd been caught both times back then, and now she was making sure she never would again.

She was thirteen now, officially a teenager. Her last birthday had been spent without her dad celebrating with her.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

She'd made it to Maple Street now, which was her destination for today. Her and Lucas Sinclair, one of her best friends, were going to hang out and play Atari. Just the two of them.

Perhaps she should call him her best friend, as she was definitely closest to him out of all her friends, but she didn't really have a word to describe what Lucas was to her. She'd kissed him last year, confessed to him that she liked him. And he'd told her than he liked her back.

But then everything had happened with the Demogorgon and Hawkins Lab and Eleven, and Alina didn't want to be a burden on him. They'd both decided to wait so Alina could figure things out, but as the days went by, she began to wonder if his previous crush on her was fading because she was so different now, still recovering from the events everyone else, with the exception of Will, seemed to have moved on from.

Alina was running so fast that she didn't see the boy walking on the sidewalk. His head was bent, his tongue slightly out as he read the newspaper in front of him, absorbed in the stories written there. He didn't see her, either, but as he took another step forward, he heard her, and that was right before she barreled into him.

Both parties crashed to the ground. The boy dropped his newspaper and fell backwards, landing flat on his back, and Alina was thrown sideways, landing on a perfectly manicured lawn. The smell of wet grass met her nostrils as she landed, luckily without injury, but her shoulder ached from where she'd slammed it into the boy.

The boy. Alina got to her feet quickly, her face heating up with embarrassment. He was still on his back, blinking at the sun, newspaper beside him. He let loose a groan before sitting up, noticing Alina staring at him.

"I'm sorry," Alina said quickly, glancing down at him. She'd never seen this boy before. He looked to be around her age, with warm brown skin and dark hair cropped close to his head. He was wearing a white button-down and cringed as he looked at the dirt that had smeared onto it.

The boy let out a sigh. "This shirt was brand new. But, uh, it's okay. It's fine. I'm-I'm not hurt. That much. I mean, my shoulder kind of hurts from where you plowed into me, but..." he noticed Alina's facial expression. "Sorry. I should stop talking now."

Alina extended a hand to help him up, aware of the sweat that was beading on her forehead from her run. The boy took it gratefully, getting to his feet, and Alina picked up his newspaper, handing it back to him. Then they just stared at each other for a minute, each not knowing what to say, when finally Alina spoke.

"Are you new around here?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah. Uh, I r—I moved here recently. I got here on Friday. It's pretty nice here, don't you think? A little quiet though, but sometimes quiet can be nice. You hear a lot more animal sounds here. I was just reading the newspaper to see... sorry. I'm rambling again. It's a habit. Uh, I'm Gabe. Gabriel. Gabriel Burton."

Alina let out a laugh. "It's okay," she said. "I'm Alina. It's nice to meet you." She extended her hand to him again, wanting to be polite, and after a moment this strange boy shook, his palms smooth compared to her rough ones. "Welcome to Hawkins," she told him. "Are you going to go to Hawkins Middle?"

The boy—Gabe—nodded again, a small smile coming to his face. "I start on Tuesday. Do you go there?"

"Yeah. It's great, especially if you have Mr. Clarke. He's the best science teacher." Alina smiled at Gabriel. "I hope to see you there, Gabe."

"Yeah," said Gabriel. "Well, I, uh, I have to go. My grandma—she's probably wondering where I've gone. I just... I wanted to scope out the surroundings or whatever. These houses... they're really nice. And I don't know, Hawkins seems like a really nice place, too. One of the lowest crime rates in America, probably because it's so small. Nothing out of the ordinary except for that kid who 'came back to life' last year."

Alina's jaw dropped at the unexpected mention of her housemate. "Will?" she breathed. "Will Byers? How... how do you know about him?" Was Will's case that famous, to reach wherever this boy was from? She hadn't thought it was.

"Yeah..." Gabriel looked confused at her reaction. "I got caught up with the Hawkins news when I got here. I'm from Chicago, by the way. But yeah, I'm interested in those sorts of things. Always have been. Why? Do you know the kid?"

"You could say that," said Alina. Gabriel nodded a little, beginning to turn away from her, believing this conversation was over, when she called him back. "By the way, Gabriel," she couldn't help but add, "Hawkins may seem quiet, but look a little closer. We have as much going on as every other town."

Gabriel's face contorted in confusion at this, but he didn't say anything else. He just kept walking, his newspaper in front of him again.

Alina let out a sigh. Now, that was a weird interaction. Gabe seemed nice enough, but of course her first introduction with him was to crash right into him while she was running. She could never just have a normal conversation, it seemed.

The boy who came back to life. That was what everyone called Will now. After all, the body that had been dug out of the quarry last year had, according to the police force and the coroner, been his. They'd buried him. Had a funeral for him. Tossed flowers over his casket and mourned him. So of course, when news outlets discovered that the body buried under his name was not, in fact, Will's, they'd gone a little crazy.

Shaking her head, Alina brushed some dirt off her clothes and began to walk, not wanting to risk crashing into someone else by running again. She was almost at Lucas's, anyway, and sweat was already dripping down her forehead and neck.

As she was walking, though, something began to happen. It began in flickers. Houses in creams and browns would change to blues and blacks. The grass would crunch under her feet, burnt like the tree trunks at her own house. A chill would fill the air.

Then Alina Fairgrieves disappeared. A whole new setting, a new version of Maple Street, began to form around her when she rematerialized, which took half a second and didn't hurt a bit. The houses were tinged in blue, vines that were almost alive creeping up over the roofs. Flecks of ash cascaded from the sky like snow, fluttering down much in the same way the Demogorgon had after Eleven had split it into pieces.

And above her, the wind blew violently, and lightning danced across the sky.

Alina's eyes widened, but before she had any time to react any further than that, her setting blinked back to normal. She was back in Hawkins, the houses were normal, with the wind picking up the autumn leaves and scattering them across the sidewalk.

She clenched her jaw, looking around to make sure she wouldn't disappear again. But she was here, on Maple Street, about to spend time with Lucas Sinclair.

Still, she couldn't help the strange, peculiar feeling of panic from going through her, and that was the moment she knew. The moment Alina Fairgrieves realized that her adventures with the Demogorgons and the Upside Down were not over yet.

They were far from it.

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: we're back, baby! you guys don't know how excited (and nervous) i am to finally be posting this fic. i've been working on it for almost two months now, and i've almost reached the end. here's a little warning, though: this fic gets dark. really dark. and it's over 100 000 words, so it's gonna be a long ride!

hope you enjoyed this prologue! as usual, a vote or comment would make my day! 

'till next time!