the woman on the beach

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

    Alina Fairgrieves-Byers really wanted out of this. Her throat was raw with screams, and every so often a cough rattled out of her mouth. The crashed car, the monster, all of the images she'd seen were burned under her eyelids, pulsing there in case she decided to close her eyes. It would be so easy to whip off her blindfold right now, let El finish everything. Because even though the beach seemed so safe, Alina knew it wasn't. It would be so easy to walk away.

But that wasn't what she did. She'd always been brave—which didn't mean she had no fear, rather that she kept going in the face of it. And there had been many reasons in her life before now to be afraid, even before she'd been introduced to the Upside Down. So she kept her blindfold on. Kept her real arms by her sides. Took a deep breath of this salty air and wiggled her toes under the sand, preparing herself.

And that was when Mike spoke, his voice echoed and distorted through the sandy environment. "El. Al. Are you two okay? Are you okay?"

El took a deep breath. She was standing ankle-deep in the water, her face wet with saltwater and tears. She looked to Alina. "I'm okay."

"Me too." Alina blinked through the haze of sunlight, investigating the area. She'd never been to a beach before. When Linda left, her dad had been more focused on his work to let them go anywhere—although he had promised that in a couple years he'd take her on the best vacation of all time. Linda, on the other hand, actually had taken Alina on vacation, but not to a place where children would actually have fun. No, instead they went to various European countries to look at teacups and fancy china in museums.

Teacups and fancy china. Those were, apparently, the only things Europe offered.

"What's going on?" Mike asked.

"We're... on a beach," El explained. She moved towards Alina, taking her hand. Alina held it gratefully. It was a raft in the middle of a raging ocean during a thunderstorm.

"Okay, I may be dense," began Lucas, his voice softer than Mike's and providing an immense amount of comfort to Alina, "but the last I checked, there weren't any beaches in Hawkins."

"Nope," said Gabe. "Which means they aren't in Hawkins."

Max's voice came next. "What else do you see?"

Alina squinted through the haze of sunlight and the flock of seagulls that were still fluttering their way across the beach. And that was when she saw the woman. She had sandy blonde hair that fell just past her shoulders, a hat clutched in one hand, and she was wearing a see-through, ivory dress. Hoops dangled from her ears, and she stared off into the sea, an expression of pure tranquility written all over her face.

"A woman," El said quietly. "She's... pretty. I... I think she's looking at us."

And she was. The woman—whoever she was—had turned slightly, looking towards the two girls, who were both soaked to the bone with seawater and clutching each other like there was no tomorrow. A bright smile spread onto her face, and she raised her arm up in a wave, laughter spilling out of her mouth as the wind blew her hair around.

All at once, an incredible sense of peace came over Alina. This woman did not seem like she wanted to hurt them. She had the aura of a mother around her, the same sort of one Joyce gave off. Comforting. Kind. Basically, the complete opposite of Linda.

Then the woman cheered, clapping her hands. This was a little odd to Alina, and she quickly looked around the beach, seeing if she was actually looking at anyone else, but there was nobody on this stretch of land except for the three of them. But... wait.

There was no one on land. But there was a boy in the water. He had the same sandy blond hair as the woman, and was younger than Alina and El—perhaps around Erica's age. An expression of pure delight was written on his face as he ran towards the beach, clutching a green and yellow surfboard that was taller than him. His bare feet splashed through the water, and, as Alina and El watched, when he reached the sandy beach, he let the surfboard fall to the ground.

"You did it!" the woman cried as the boy ran towards her. Surfing. He'd been surfing.

"There's... a boy," El told the others. Alina, who couldn't take her eyes off the scene, was too transfixed to even open her mouth.

"Did you see that?" the boy asked brightly.

"Yeah, I saw that!" the woman replied, moving forward to kiss the boy on the forehead. It was her son. And that was who she'd been cheering for. Because Alina and El weren't really here.

"That was at least seven feet!"

"I don't know what it was," said the woman, "but it almost gave me a heart attack."

Yes, she was indeed his mother. She was gazing at the boy—whoever he was—with such an expression of fondness that could only come from a mother. And although Linda had never really graced Alina with that look, Joyce had multiple times. Each time she did, it filled Alina with so much warmth that she thought she might explode, and she'd want to shout it, scream it to the stars, that she was loved by a mother. That she deserved it.

Surreptitiously wiping tears off her face, Alina watched the boy tilt his head. "Ten more minutes?"

"Yeah, okay, ten more minutes," his mother responded, and the boy excitedly rushed off to his surfboard, which was right in front of the two girls that neither he nor his mother seemed able to see. "But any longer than that, dad's gonna be mad, okay?"

"Okay!" the boy cried.

"Billy?" his mother called, and Alina's heart stopped. "Watch out for rip currents!"

The boy—Billy—smiled toothily. "I know!"

And then he was off into the ocean.

Billy. Of course this was Billy. Alina had almost forgotten that she was in his mind. It was a Billy, albeit a younger, more carefree Billy, who didn't seem like such an asshole. A Billy with a love for surfing, a Billy before his life had gone sour. A Billy before Hawkins.

"It's Billy," El announced.

"It's California," said Max. "It's a memory."

And there had to be something hidden in this memory, or they wouldn't have been brought here. Alina knew she had to look, but she spent a couple seconds watching Billy splash around in the water, wondering where everything had gone wrong. She knew, of course, that his dad, Neil, was an asshole—Max had told her as much—but his mother seemed perfectly lovely. Had she died? Or just divorced?

Finally tearing her eyes away from Billy, Alina looked to his mother, and that was when she noticed it. Past the bright scene of a California beach was a cluster of thick thunderclouds, dark and ominous, rumbling in the background. Within the darkness, red lightning occasionally struck, providing a light, but it was a light Alina didn't want to see. It was a contrast to her own energy—both of the lights were red, and both could provide pain, but where Alina's powers were warm and soothing, the lightning was jagged and terrifying. She almost didn't want to make her way over there.

"There it is," she announced to the others, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. "The source. It's right there."

She turned to El, who was shaking. "Are you ready?"

The girl nodded, and relinked hands with Alina. With their hands clasped, the two girls made their way across the beach, their hair blowing in the fierce wind, the scent of seawater in their noses. And as they got closer and closer to the darkness, the wind got fiercer and fiercer, running its hands through their hair much in the same way a mother would tug a hairbrush through an unrelenting knot in her child's hair.

As they got closer, Alina found herself stopping. Because she noticed the familiar flecks of ash falling from the sky like snow. Ashes she was quite familiar with. Ashes from the Upside Down.

She reached out a hand, cupping one of them in her palm, and looked towards the presumed source again. Was this the kind of thing that had been locked in her own mind when she'd been possessed? A happy memory being used to conceal a heart of darkness?

A happy memory. Despite her not-so-happy life, Alina Fairgrieves-Byers had actually had quite a lot of those. But if she were to choose one in particular from her old life, the one before the possession struck her... she knew which one.

That single, glowing Christmas with her dad and Skywalker. The one that she hadn't thought about for ages, because every time she did, she found herself dissolving into a puddle of tears. Because Brandon Fairgrieves was forever dead, and he would never come back.

She swallowed thickly. From beside her, El had stopped as well, looking around the darkness that had previously been a bright day, cupping the flecks of ash in her palms. And then Alina spoke.

"Lucas?"

His voice was there immediately, although Alina would've liked the warm comfort of his hand to come along with it. "What is it? Are you okay, Alina?"

She took a shuddering breath. "I'm scared."

She didn't want to go on. She wanted to stay on that beach forever, sitting in the ocean and letting the waves lap over her toes. Wanted to watch Billy surf and pretend he was someone else, a bright boy who had never been corrupted by darkness. She wanted to forget about the Mind Flayer and the flayed and the fact that she'd basically killed somebody and the pain lighting up her body in real life. Because when she was on the beach, nothing hurt. And it felt like everything would be okay.

"We're right here with you," Lucas said eventually. "You don't need to be scared, because we're right here. We're not going to leave you, okay? I'm not going to leave you. I promise."

How ironic that was. Because, soon enough, something would happen, and Lucas Sinclair wouldn't be there for her. Nobody would. But Lucas's words had made her feel a little better. Just a little. But it was enough for her to keep moving forward.

Before she did, however, she took one more look back at the beach, where Billy was still surfing across the waves. Even from here, although it was faint, she could hear his laughs. And they were bright as can be.

And then they were moving again. But they only had to take a couple of steps before a voice interrupted them. And this wasn't the voice of her friends. It wasn't a voice in real life. It was a voice coming from inside the storm. Alina faintly recognized it as Neil's.

"Hey! Billy, stop!"

Squinting through the fog, Alina noticed two figures beginning to emerge, both wearing sunshine yellow baseball caps. One of them was the young Billy, stumbling across the sand and the other was Neil. As Alina watched, Neil grabbed Billy's arm roughly. Alina and El moved forward.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Neil spat. "What did we talk about, huh? You gotta slide!"

He was holding two baseball bats in hand, and it clicked that he'd probably been disappointed with Billy's performance during the game. Alina didn't know a lot about baseball, but is was obvious Neil was being too hard on him already.

El squeezed Alina's hand tighter and let her forward, closer towards the figures. Alina took a shuddering breath. She was trembling all over.

"I-I know," Billy stammered stiffly. He was still young, but Neil was yelling at him like he was much older. And the piercing tone in his father's voice was like a slap to Alina.

Because Neil Hargrove sounded exactly like Linda.

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧