— CHAPTER 18 —
REACHING WILL

SATURDAY 12th NOVEMBER,
1983

THE sun has long since set by the time Hopper's cop car pulls into the Byers' driveway. Sandwiched between the other boys in the backseat (while El gets shotgun), Cath finds herself flooded with relief when she spots the familiar porch and the cluster of trees that surround the Byers home. But once she remembers what is at stake, her gut wrenches once more.

     She had been crouched down in that van with the boys as the sunlight started withering from the windows, the chill of another November evening creeping in. Huddled together they shuddered, both from anticipation and the cold. Cath could see her breath condensing into mist after a while.

At some point — she lost track of time — two armed men, surely the Bad Men, approached the van. They had hidden once more, hearts racing, and for a split second she was almost convinced this would be it. This is how they would go. Five scared kids who thought they could save the world, gunned down by two big bad men.

There had been a grunt. The shadows sunk out of sight, beneath the horizon. The door swung open and they yelped, a flashlight beam boring into their eyes. It took a moment to register the silhouette of a sheriff's hat and Hopper's unmistakably gruff voice, urging them to follow him. Trailing behind like lambs being herded, they were ushered into the back of his car, and the next thing Cath knew they were here.

But she heard Daphne. She was there.

She was so confused — what had Daphne been up to all week? But then again, it would explain all the sudden disappearances. All of the unexplained running-off. And why she suddenly befriended Nancy and Jonathan (admittedly, she just thought they were bonding after Will's 'death' but clearly not...).

Cath stumbles out of Hopper's car, feeling the crunch of dried-up leaves beneath her feet. The door to the Byers home swings open abruptly, and the first figure to emerge is Nancy Wheeler. Immediately upon seeing Mike she dissolves, rushing straight towards him — "Oh my God, Mike!" she cries, "I was so worried about you!" — and bringing him into a tight embrace. Mike, however, needs a moment to process what is happening, arms dangling limply at his sides as he stands expressionless, before he slowly snakes his arms round to her back and reciprocates.

But that's not who Cath is looking at. She's more concerned with the second person who emerges from the house.

Daphne stands solitary on the porch, staring with parted lips at her younger sister. For a moment, Cath stays still too, wondering who will run to the other first. In this dim light, she really notices how worn Daphne looks — the cut on her face, the slight straining of her eyes as if they are fighting fatigue. Something clicks into place, a magnetic pull. She can't possibly wait a moment longer. Cath launches into a run, staggering at the steps due to the short distance, and throws her arms around Daphne's torso. Daphne immediately catches her, arms wrapping tight. Familiar warmth of the same blood instantly washes over her and comforts her, and if she closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, they aren't standing on the Byers' porch but in their own living room.

Cath is the first to break away, Daphne seeming to linger on the hug for a little longer. She still clings tight onto her coat sleeves, looking up quizzically at her as she catches her breath.

"I don't get it..." Cath breathes, shaking her head. "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you the same thing," Daphne retorts.

In the distance, Mike squirms away from Nancy's prolonged embrace and she chuckles. The smile soon fades when she catches a glimpse of Eleven — who for some reason, Daphne stares at with a strange familiarity — and the Wheeler girl raises an eyebrow. "Is that my dress?" she asks, looking El up and down. El examines herself and freezes sheepishly on the spot.

Everyone crowds into the Byers' living room, couches soon filling up quickly and the kids resorting to sitting cross-legged on the floor. Upon instantly walking into the house, Cath has to do a double take. She doesn't know what happened since she was last here, but it looks like total carnage. There is a huge hole in the wall, for starters, and Christmas lights are strung all over the ceilings in multi-coloured bulbs. On the wall above the couch, the alphabet has been painted on with correlating bulbs above them. Most peculiarly, when Cath makes a comment to Daphne about it, her sister barely flinches as if this was all as normal as a weekend shopping trip...

     More and more, Cath is starting to get the impression that everyone has ultimately been pursuing the same case, but running in circles around each other.

They begin to update each other on what they know. Apparently, the lights hung up around the house are what Joyce used to communicate to Will with — and Daphne was there too (Cath is still confused as to how that works). And as for Will, his body was definitely not the one they buried on Friday. A fake. To this, Cath feels sick to the stomach, remembering the pain she had felt that night they dragged him out from the water. What was that all for?

Perhaps most sickeningly, Hopper and Joyce have been investigating, and have found what is at the root of the Hawkins Lab. Cath suspected it would be bad, remembering what Lucas and Mike had said earlier about Commies and weapons. But she could never have anticipated the words coming out of Hopper's mouth — human experiments. Children, locked up in cells and tattooed with numbers, put through psychological tortures to harness superhuman powers...

Cath glances over at Eleven, sat at her side, whose eyes glisten sadly. She looks from her shaved head, to the tattooed 011 on her wrist, remembers the bruises on her body when she was getting dressed. The urge to protect Eleven — no, El... it almost feels wrong to call her the other thing — is stronger than ever before. She wants to give her braids, to play her The Beatles, to have her experience a normal childhood. And how many other kids like her are out there?

Nancy takes her turn, mentioning how she had seen something a few days ago. "Some kind of monster," she tells the group, to which Cath's eyes widened in horror. So she had gone to Daphne and Jonathan for help, when no one would believe her. Together they were trying to track it down. It suddenly clicks in her mind: the 'hike' from the other day. Daphne recalls how they found some strange place through a tree.

"Did you find anything in there?" Joyce asks hopefully.

The colour drains from Daphne's face. Her eyes dart around the room, searching the expectant faces staring back at her, and she turns to Nancy and Jonathan. Jonathan lets out a small sigh and places his hand on the couch, next to her lap as a seemingly reassuring gesture, and Nancy nods sadly.

     Daphne takes a deep breath. "We did find something... and someone," she says. "The monster was there. And I... I found... I found Tonya in that place."

     "Tonya McCarthy?" Cath asks. That's one of the girls who went missing this week, who she remembers to be Felix's new girlfriend. Her heart leaps for joy at the chance of her safety, at least one out of three so far.

     "Well, is she alright? Did you get her out?" Dustin queries eagerly.

     "I'm sorry, could we maybe open a window or something? I just... I'm... I don't know." Daphne looks as if she might throw up any second, her chest heaving through a shallower breath as she sinks back into her seat.

     "There's... literally a giant hole in the wall?" Lucas remarks, glancing at the gaping crevice torn into the wallpaper near them, which lets in a chilly draft even through the efforts at covering it.

     Hopper watches Daphne carefully, taking in her increasingly external panic and reading her from the outside — then he shifts in his seat, somehow shifting the attention in the room away from her. "What was this place like?" he asks, making direct eye contact with her. Daphne catches it and, after tensing up briefly, drops her shoulders and recomposes herself.

"It felt like... I know this sounds crazy, but like another dimension," she explains. "It looked like Hawkins, but everything was darker. And colder. Like some horrible... alternate reality."

Cath nudges Mike's knee with hers, and they exchange a look. "Do you think it's... the Upside Down?" she asks him quietly. To this he nods quickly, but not subtly enough for no one else to pick up on it.

"The Upside Down? What's that?" asks Daphne.

Mike asks for a notepad, and with deep responsibility tries to replicate the demonstration Mr. Clarke gave them. He has scribbled the tightrope between two dimensions, the stick figure acrobat and the flea with corresponding arrows. "Okay, so, in this example, we're the acrobat," Mike explains dutifully. "Will, Barbara, Tonya and that monster, they're this flea. And this is the Upside Down, where Will is hiding."

As Cath re-imagines this theory with him, an image from a few nights ago suddenly flashes through her mind — the demogorgon figure placed on the upside down D&D board in Mike's basement. Demogorgon. The Upside Down. It all makes sense now.

"Mr. Clarke said the only way to get there is through a rip in space and time."

"A gate," Lucas adds.

"That we tracked to Hawkins Lab, with our compasses," Dustin announces. When he sees the puzzled looks of everyone else in the room, finding this far-fetched information a bit of a stretch, he rolls his eyes. "Okay, so the gate has a really strong electromagnetic field, and that can change the directions of a compass needle."

"Is this gate underground?" asks Hopper suddenly.

"Yes," El croaks out.

     "Near a large water tank?"

     "Yes."

     "How... how'd you know all of that?" Dustin asks curiously.

     "He's seen it," Mike barely whispers as he realises. Hopper must have somehow been in the lab before, or know something more than they do.

     "Is there any way that you could... that you could reach Will?" Joyce gently asks El, her motherly tone creeping in. "That you could talk to him in this—"

     "The Upside Down," Eleven completes her sentence with a murmur.

     "And my friend Barbara," Nancy adds in a strangled voice, leaning forward desperately. "Can you find her, too?"

     Soon they are huddled around the dining room table, a radio central to it. Everyone watches Eleven intently, afraid to cough or shift in their seats or on their feet as she tries to focus into the Upside Down, her eyes closed. It could look meditative, but from what Cath has heard of the Upside Down, this must be anything but that for her. After just over five minutes of trying, Eleven's eyes suddenly shoot open with a small whimper. The static on the radio grows faint, no longer being manipulated by her.

     "I'm sorry," she whispers, holding back tears.

"What?" Joyce lets go of Jonathan's hand. "W-what's wrong? What happened?"

"I can't find them," Eleven says shamefully.

To give herself a break, Eleven goes to the bathroom in the Byers house, and Cath quietly accompanies her — she vaguely remembers the way, although it has been a while since she was inside this place. Last time she was in this bathroom, Cath and Will were even littler kids, and they were lining up his miniature plastic animals along the sink's edge to play zookeepers. Eleven runs her hands under the faucet and splashes her face with cold water, rubbing her eyes before turning it off.

"Okay?" Cath asks, watching her dab her face dry with a towel.

Eleven nods weakly, her eyelids sinking slightly as she does. Cath can see how exhausted she is. When she thinks of how much she has used her powers in the last twenty-four hours, it's no wonder. After all of this is over, she thinks El is well overdue of a good night's sleep in a comfortable bed.

"Is it... scary?" she asks hesitantly. "Trying to reach the Upside Down?"

Considering this for a moment, El then nods. Her heart breaks for her. She wants to tell her about all the things they can do when this is over — maybe she could come to Hawkins Middle, and if things turn out as planned, she could introduce her to Andrea and the three of them could be best friends — but is distracted by Eleven staring absentmindedly at the empty bathtub.

"The bathtub," Eleven suddenly.

"... For what?" Cath asks. She is about to point out that now seems a rather odd time to have a wash, when it suddenly clicks — the correlation between the bathtub and the water tank Hopper had mentioned. They can use the water tank, or their own makeshift one, to contact Will and hopefully Barbara too. But how exactly would they achieve this?

Dustin Henderson, of course, seems to know the bearer of all knowledge science-related — the next thing they know, everyone is waiting as he dials a number into the Byers' phone and waits patiently. The person on the other end finally picks up. "Mr. Clarke? It's Dustin," he greets.

"Wait, our Middle School science teacher?" Nancy whispers harshly.

"Shhh!" Mike hushes her.

"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine..." Dustin says to Mr. Clarke, "I just, I... have a science question... do you know anything about sensory deprivation tanks? Specifically how to build one?" A pause. "... What is this for? Uh... fun." A longer pause. "You always say we should never stop being curious, to open any curiosity door we find... why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?"

A much longer pause passes, before Dustin scrambles for a notepad and starts scribbling down instructions. Cath sighs with relief — she knew Mr. Clarke wouldn't let them down in their time of need.

"I still can't believe you didn't tell me any of this," Daphne whispers to her.

"Well, maybe I would have," says Cath matter-of-factly, "if I'd known you were doing more than just 'hiking' with Nancy and Jonathan."

━━━━━━

HAWKINS Middle School is locked up and shrouded in darkness when everyone arrives, supplies at the ready to make their own sensory deprivation tank. Some of it still needs to be retrieved from various parts of the school, though. Everyone is about to split up, Hopper about to join Jonathan to get bags of salt, when Daphne catches him for a moment alone.

     "Hopper?" Daphne chokes out. He turns to face her, straightening his hat on his head. "I just... I wanted to say..." There it is. The inability to get the words out. She wants to tell him what happened to Tonya, she just wants someone else to know. She needs to share the burden. But how can she do that, when every time she opens her mouth she thinks she might be sick? "... About— about earlier, with Tonya—"

     "I understood," Hopper interjects. By the solemn look that crosses his face, she knows he really does understand, too. He stares at her pitifully, the long sigh he releases puffing a cloud of mist into the air. "I'm sorry you had to see that, kid."

     Daphne swallows thickly, trying not to think about what she has seen. Hopper places a hand firmly on her shoulder — still gentle, but with a kind of fatherly grip that grounds you into reality.

     "We'll work it out. But for now, let's focus on finding Will and Barbara, okay?" Hopper reassures her.

     Letting him go to Jonathan, Daphne joins Cath with the Wheeler siblings to raid a supply cupboard. She's thankful that she and Cath are reunited now. When she had heard all of the things her sister had been doing — and so young — she felt awful. And for a moment this afternoon, she really was struck with the possibility that they might have been too late to save them from the men at the lab.

     But now they are here, passing each other coils of hose pipe and wheeling it to the gym in a wheelbarrow. As they set on their way, Nancy watches Mike curiously. "What did she even eat?" she finally asks.

     "Who?"

     "Eleven."

     "Oh. Candy, leftovers —"

     "Especially your mom's meatloaf," Cath admits sheepishly.

     "— Yeah," Mike seems to smile at the memory. "And Eggos... she really likes Eggos."

     Daphne observes the two kids, with their back-and-forth conversation. She genuinely cannot remember the last time, or last person Cath looked so comfortable talking to that wasn't a family member. Now knowing their story, how they had all made their own loyal pact to find Will themselves and taken in this gentle but extraordinary young girl, Daphne could confidently see how Cath had grown to become a natural piece of their friendship group. It was something she thought her sister was missing for so long. It is the fact that she mostly missed out on all of this that riddles her with guilt.

     It clearly pesters Nancy too as she remarks, "I knew you were acting weird. I just... I thought it was because of Will."

     "I knew you were acting weird too, I thought it was because of Steve."

     Nancy sets down the wheelbarrow with a squeak, an earnest look on her face. "Hey... no more secrets, okay? From now on we tell each other everything."

     "Okay... do you like Jonathan now?"

     "What? No... no, it's not... it's not... it's not like that."

     "Hm."

"Do you like Eleven?"

     "What?! No. Ew. Gross."

     Well. That pact of honesty lasted less than a minute. In awkward silence, the Wheelers move on and leave the Delaneys in their wake. Daphne waits until they are far enough out of range, before leaning to her side and asking Cath, "So on a scale of one to ten, how convincing did you find that?"

     "A solid zero."

     "Yep. Me too."

     "Maybe it's a Wheeler thing..." Cath shrugs innocently, and Daphne chuckles.

When everyone reconvenes in the dimly-lit gym, the makeshift tank is ready. It consists of a paddling pool filled with water, and the necessary instructions which Dustin acquired from Mr. Clarke. Daphne takes a set between Jonathan and Cath, her younger sister kneeling beside Mike at the poolside. Eleven, as she is apparently called, emerges only in her light pink dress with a pair of goggles dangling from her hand. Hopper and Joyce take her hands and gently lead her in — first one foot, the cool water making her shudder, and then the other. Securing the goggles onto her eyes, she leans back into the water and floats herself on the surface.

For what feels like forever, the silence is only interrupted by the white noise of radio static and the gentle ripples of waters emulating from Eleven's body.

     Suddenly she tenses, her breath hitching. The water becomes more disturbed, and in its reflection, the fluorescent ceiling lights flicker weakly before plummeting the gym into darkness. Daphne feels Cath edge closer to her, and she secretly relishes the comfort as the darkness reminds her all too vividly of the Upside Down.

     "What was that?" Nancy asks shakily.

     "I don't know," says Mike, concerned.

     "Is Barb okay? Is she okay?" Nancy's voice starts becoming choked, as she leans over the poolside desperately.

     "Gone..." Eleven whispers at first, lips trembling, before her cries grow louder. "Gone! Gone! Gone!"

     Gone. Another one gone. Nancy's hand flies to her mouth, eyes glassy with tears and staring in horror at the pool. Daphne can't help but feel another gut punch, feeling a similar pain to that of when she saw Tonya... is Barb in there too? Rotting slowly, all alone? Very quickly, her hope for Will's survival is slipping through her fingers.

     "It's okay, it's okay," Joyce soothes, weaving her fingers through Eleven's as the girl gasps through terrified breaths, "Hey... it's okay, we're right here... we're right here, honey." Eleven kicks the water abruptly, and small splash on Daphne's forearm raises goosebumps across her skin. "I got you. Don't be afraid. I'm right here with you... you're okay, honey..."

     Eventually, Eleven's breathing slows to a steady pace again, and hand-in-hand with Joyce the crackle of radio static fades back in again. Daphne wonders if the Upside Down looks the same her mind — or wherever she goes to reach it — as it does in her own mind. She wouldn't wish that trip upon anyone, especially a little girl.

     "Castle Byers," she suddenly croaks after a while. Joyce instantly whips her head up and shares an alert look with Jonathan. The name must ring a bell.

They wait in anticipation, the silence like a glass ball waiting to shatter — and then it does, with one precious word.

"Will?"

Joyce lets out a sharp gasp. Next to her, Daphne feels Jonathan shift in his seat and hold his breath. On her other side, Cath leans forward intently, completely transfixed on Eleven with wide eyes. The memory of the small silhouette in the Upside Down — the one who saved her life, giving himself up for her safety — permeates Daphne's mind. Had she really left him for dead? Or has he made it on his own? This wait is killing her more than ever...

"You tell him... tell him I'm coming," Joyce stammers.

"Mom is coming..." Eleven mumbles under her breath,

A pause. Then, through a sharp crackle on the radio, a voice cuts through clear as day, and unmistakable:

"Hurry..." Will murmurs.

"He sounds so much weaker," Cath whispers sadly, and the other boys share an agreeing look with each other. She's right. Will sounds drained, like he barely has any voice left. It reminds her of the time when Cath was pale and bed-ridden with pneumonia a few years ago. She sounded like she was withering away, and so does he right now. Daphne suddenly does a double take — why did Cath say that as if she's contacted him before?

So many questions still need answering.

"Okay, listen, you tell him to..." Joyce fumbles for words, "... to stay where he is. We're coming. We're coming, okay? We're coming, honey."

Eleven jerks in the water, sending another splash towards Lucas's direction. "Will?" her voice wobbles, before once again growing more desperate than before. What's happening? "Will? Will! WILL!"

The abrupt movement of her suddenly sitting up almost drains half of the pool; Eleven pries the goggles off from her eyes, panicked as she takes in the concerned faces surrounding her. Joyce brings the soggy, frightened girl into her arms, cradling her shaven head and whispering comforting words to her. Dripping wet and teeth chattering, Eleven leans into the warmth of the mother's touch.

Daphne runs to the girl's changing room and finds a towel to dry Eleven off with. When she brings it back, Joyce dries the girl down before wrapping it around her like a shawl. Cath and the boys sit with Eleven on the bleachers while she warms up again.

     This is it, Daphne thinks, this is the pivotal moment. Tonya McCarthy is dead. Barbara Holland is dead. But Will Byers is alive. One life left to save, one chance, last chance. She overhears Joyce and Hopper arguing in the school parking lot — they are going to the Hawkins Lab together, it would seem — but soon it diminishes to the screeching of car tires, leaving Daphne as the oldest responsible one to look after the kids and her friends.

     She has a funny feeling. Daphne has always had a strong intuition, but now she wishes she could live in content ignorance. There is jus this gut feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach, that none of this is over yet. It can't be as simple as Joyce and Hopper going to the lab, and the youngsters waiting here for them to get back with Will. It's too good to be true.

     This feeling she's unable to pin her down leads her over to the kids, standing in front of Cath. Before she knows it, she is asking her sister, "Can we talk for a second? Alone?"

     Cath stands up, and they wander solemnly down to the end of the bleachers, where they take a seat next to each other out of the others' earshot. Daphne stares down at her brown lace-up boots, tattered and worn particularly after yesterday, next to Cath's scuffed Mary Janes. They have both endured a lot this week.

     "How are you coping with all of this?" Daphne finally asks.

     She fiddles with her hands in her lap. "It's... a lot. I don't think any of it has really sunken in yet. Maybe tomorrow."

     Tomorrow. A sickening epiphany occurs to Daphne, and she tries to push it out of her mind, but it's too late. The thought that there might not be a tomorrow. She can't explain why. Maybe it's the fact that both Tonya and Barb are gone, and that monster is still out there, possibly out for Joyce and Hopper as well as Will. Somehow, a final face-down with this thing feels imminent.

     So what does that make this moment? A goodbye?

     Daphne gets up and steps down a couple of levels, taking a seat on a row in front of Cath so she can look up at her. "Cath, I just want to say I'm sorry for this morning," she says, "what I said to you before I left home."

     It takes a moment for Cath to work it out. "Oh, you don't have to—"

     "No, really, I do. And you're so right. This isn't all a recent thing." She sighs, watching her sister stare back at her in confusion. It's funny... she remembers those features being much smaller than they are now. She's getting so big. "A few years ago," Daphne begins carefully, "I started going through some... stuff. Stuff you don't know about. It made me question myself, who I was, if I was worthy —" at this, she stops for a moment, noting the surprise that flashes across Cath's face. "— and I kept it from you, because... because I didn't want you to see me like that. And I needed time to figure out who I was..."

     There is more to it than just that, but she is worried of what Cath would think — she is already staring at her quizzically. The whole, honest truth? The bullying had reached its peak at Middle School. Up until then, Daphne and Cath were fused at the hips, often inseparable. They walked to and from school together. She often tagged along when she hung out with Amy and Felix. But she hit a certain age, just as the bullying hit her, and there was this sudden suffocation — this desperation to break away. Daphne needed time to figure out who she was again, after the bullies had stripped her skin-bare of her interests and passions. It is a long, sad, complicated story that is too much for her to try and explain to Cath now. There is only one thing her sister needs to know.

     "Yesterday morning, I was dealing with... something really heavy," Daphne admits. "But I never should have taken that out on you. I'm so sorry."

     "It doesn't matter..."

     "It does matter, to me. You're my sister. And I love you."

     Instantly, Cath perks up, growing upwards like a flower towards the sun. "I love you," she replies. "And I'm sorry too. I mean, you are growing up, so I should probably give you some space. Maybe I'll understand when I'm older."

     "Yeah, maybe," Daphne smiles. She imagines Cath would be a whole lot wiser at seventeen than she is, especially after this experience. She certainly would have made a great older sister, had their mother lived and had more kids.

     Cath appears to space out for a few moments — a rarity for her, since that is usually Daphne's job — so she squints back at her curiously. "What? What are you thinking?"

     "I was just thinking about 'Sense and Sensibility'," says Cath. "When I first started it, I thought I was obviously Marianne and you were Elinor... but now I think it's the other way around."

     "What's that supposed to mean?"

     "You'll have to read it and find out."

The sisters descend into gentle laughter, weakened by the strain of their world turned upside down, but still enough to relieve the load a little. Daphne suddenly lunges forward and brings Cath into her arms; her hands stroke the knitted hand-me-down sweater, fingers catching in her slightly frizzy hair. Confused, Cath reciprocates, wrapping her arms around Daphne's neck and burying her face in her shoulder. Goodbye. Just in case. The words die on her tongue. She just wants this moment to stay like it is, holding each other, forgetting about the dark underworld of Hawkins beneath their feet.

Cath pats her back, as if she is struggling for breath, and she finally lets her go. "Are you okay?" she asks, looking carefully at her. "You're acting all weird..."

"I'm fine. Go on, go back to your friends," Daphne says, nodding towards the boys and Eleven.

Her heart can't help but melt at the way Cath lights up at friends, but the glee is only brief as halfway over there, she turns back and scrutinises Daphne suspiciously from afar. She waves from her afar,

Daphne starts for the gym doors, with the aim of finding Nancy; but they swing open to reveal her right in front of them. In the empty, hollow hallway, Nancy sits with her knees tucked into her chest, the giant 'Hawkins Tigers!' emblem emblazoned behind her on the wall. When they lock eyes, it is clear she has been crying alone. A twinge of guilt makes Daphne flinch, that she didn't comfort her earlier — but maybe that was what Nancy needed. Some time alone.

Sliding down on the floor next to her, Daphne opens her arms out and lets Nancy lean into them. "I'm so sorry..." she murmurs. Tonya was one thing, still devastating, but not close enough to push Daphne to breaking point. But Nancy and Barb were best friends. She can't begin to imagine how much the loss must hurt.

But Nancy remains eerily quiet, suddenly breaking away from the hug with an affirmative nod, resting her chin onto her knees once again. Something in her distant stare changes; a flicked switch, from mourning to vengeance.

Jonathan emerges from the gym himself and, reading the room, resigns himself to respectful silence. He grunts as he takes a seat on the other side of Nancy — there on the linoleum, the trio sit and ponder the events of the last twenty four hours. Two out of three are dead and gone. It is considerably less encouraging than when there were still two lives to be saved, but now all of their hope is pinned on Will's survival.

"We have to go back to the station," Nancy finally breaks the silence.

"What?" Jonathan says, but doesn't sound surprised by her resolution. Neither is Daphne. She had seen this coming.

"Your mom and Hopper are just walking in there like bait. That thing is still in there. And we can't just sit here and let it get them, too."

"I'm with Nancy," Daphne agrees. "This is the only thing we can do. Tonya and Barb are gone, and if we can help it, I won't see anyone else in this town die on my watch."

Jonathan sighs, turning his body their way. "You guys want to try it out?"

By 'it', they all know he means the traps they had been preparing for. They should see it through, for real this time. Nancy looks up for the first time. Something has turned in her demeanour — now she knows that Barb is gone, she will not crash and burn. Not if she can bring the bastards who let it happen down with her in the flames.

"I want to finish what we started," she says slowly. "I want to kill it."

━━━━━━

A/N;

FIVE! CHAPTERS! LEFT!

the final countdown has begun! i can't believe we have reached this point, honestly i'm still pinching myself. i'm actually going to finish a book in 2021, EEK 😱 the action and drama is definitely going to peak in the next two chapters, and i'm sure if you are a stranger things fan, you'll know exactly what that is. then with three 'aftermath' chapters... we'll be done! thank you so much as always for your support as readers, it means so much to see people enjoying it.

— Imogen

[ Published: October 26th, 2021 ]