WORD COUNT : 3.5k

After their less-than-friendly encounter with their father the other night, the Webb kids were much more hesitant when entering the house after getting home from the movies. Gordon peeked his head in through the front door first, silently looking around to make sure that the old man was nowhere to be found. With his head poked through the slightly ajar doorway, the oldest of the three siblings could hear the foundation-rattling snoring coming from within the house. The sound of their sleeping father put him at ease immediately. Gordon fully opened the door then, allowing for all of them to enter and escape the freezing Indiana weather.

Owen made a beeline to the phone upon entry, not even bothering to take off her coat. Despite the fun evening she and her brothers had, her mind had been preoccupied the entire time, thinking about what had happened with Jonathan and Nancy that night. Her fingers quickly dialed the Wheelers' phone number, taking a seat on the couch while she waited for an answer. Her free hand picked at a loose thread hanging from the end of her sweatshirt as she listened to the repetitive ringing.

"Hello?" The voice that crackled through the speaker certainly did not belong to Nancy. Nancy's voice has never been that deep and raspy.

"Hi, um, is Nancy there," Owen inquired, thinking that Mr. Wheeler may have answered the phone instead. Nancy might not have made it back home yet. This thought caused her mind to run through all of the worst possible outcomes. Jonathan and Nancy had gone out there completely unprepared and understaffed, after all. Something really awful could have happened to them while they were out hunting for this thing. Owen could feel her heart thumping increasingly louder in her chest at the thought, unsure if she could stomach losing someone else like this.

"Owen, is that you," the person on the other end asked, voice dropping just above a whisper. Her body stiffened at the question. She suddenly felt seen by the anonymous person on the phone with her.

"Who is this," she probed, avoiding giving an answer at all.

"It's Jonathan," he replied, swiftly. His answer made some of the stress roll off of Owen's shoulders for the time being. Although she was glad to know that Jonathan had made it back from the woods that night, her mind instantly jumped to Nancy.

"Is everything okay? Where's Nancy?"

"We're fine," Jonathan assured her, "Nancy's in the shower right now. She's alright, but she's pretty shaken up." Owen's ears perked up at this, worried about what could have happened that made Nancy freaked out.

"What happened? Did you guys find it," Owen queried, urgency painting her tone. Jonathan's silence through the phone did not provide any sort of clarity or comfort. Instead, it just allowed stress to sit heavy on her shoulders again. The silence was finally broken up by a heavy sigh on Jonathan's end.

"We, uh, we found something. But it's a lot. I don't think I can explain everything over the phone," Jonathan divulged, his voice strained. Owen immediately began to beat herself up for leaving them to do everything by themselves. She could hear the exhaustion in Jonathan's voice. "I... I think Nancy's almost out of the shower. She just needs some rest and then we can tell you everything tomorrow, okay?"

"O-of course. I'll come by Nancy's tomorrow or something," Owen nodded. Her lips were pursed as she dragged her free hand across her face. She knew that there was nothing that she could do now to help with whatever they had seen tonight. But if they were going to find Will and Barb, then she needed to be just as committed to killing this faceless thing as Jonathan and Nancy were.

"Okay," Jonathan agreed, quietly. "Talk to you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," Owen said, guilt still hanging over her as she hung up. The moment the phone was returned to the receiver, the pink-haired girl inhaled a deep breath and blew it out slowly. With everything that had been going on, she had no idea what to expect out of her debriefing with Jonathan and Nancy the next day. Unfortunately, from the sound of it, things may have just gotten so much worse.

✯

Owen could hardly wait to hear from Nancy and Jonathan the next day. She was wide awake and throwing herself out of her bed once daylight began to filter through her windows. Her bed head popped through the top of a turtleneck, a raggedy sweatshirt pulled on over the top for an added layer of warmth. Then, she shoved her feet into some dark jeans, eyes inspecting herself in the mirror. She ran a hand through her messy hair, in a half-assed attempt to tame the knots that had been created overnight. Ultimately, she gave up and stepped out into the hallway, not wanting to spend another second with her reflection.

Owen thanked her lucky stars that Gordon was the heaviest sleeper on Earth as she snuck into his room to grab the keys to his car. She lowered herself to unzip his backpack that had been tossed mindlessly on the floor, pulling the keys out of the smallest pocket. His light snoring continued steadily even as the wooden floors creaked beneath her feet. Owen snuck back out into the hallway, the keys tucked against her abdomen to avoid any metallic jingling. She gently pressed her back to the wooden door once she closed it behind her, releasing a relieved sigh. Her Converse-clad feet carried her through the rest of the house, headed towards the front door.

The sun was bright against her face when she stepped out onto the front porch. Owen turned and locked the door behind her before she hurried to Gordon's car. For the first time, she slid into the driver's seat, pressing the key into the ignition. Despite having her license for over a year, she had yet to actually drive Gordon's car due to his protectiveness over the old junker. The car made that familiar, worn out chugging noise when she turned the key, but started up nonetheless.

Old faithful.

Owen could feel the engine's rumble throughout the car, almost as if it was upset with her for wanting to get going so bright and early. Her hands settled on the steering wheel, her whole body buzzing in anticipation. She didn't give herself much time to worry about Gordon's reaction to her behind the wheel of his car. Instead, she focused on Jonathan and Nancy, their discoveries last night, and the route to Nancy's house. All of those things combined inspired her to shift the car into reverse and pull out of the driveway.

✯

Puffs of air escaped Owen's lips as she laid on top of Nancy's roof. Hauling herself onto the roof of Nancy's house was still as difficult as when she did it the first time. She lazily rolled over, pushing up and onto her feet. When she peered into the window, Nancy was already sitting up in bed, hunched over a pile of books. Jonathan was laying beside her on the bed, still very much asleep. Not wanting to scare the brunette, Owen tapped lightly against the glass. Nancy's light eyes looked owlishly at Owen through the window. She glanced once at Jonathan before she slowly got up from the bed and padded over to the window.

"I'm so glad you're here. I've been waiting for Jonathan to wake up for hours," Nancy murmured, already wandering back to the bed while Owen crawled through the window. She was donning baby blue pajamas, her hair all curly and sticking up like she had been tossing and turning all night.

"I couldn't get here fast enough. I've been so curious about what you guys found last night," Owen confessed, softly closing the window behind her. She took measured steps across the room, eyes peeking to make sure Jonathan was still asleep after her arrival. Seeing that his breath was still leaving him in steady, quiet huffs, she took a seat at the end of the bed. Well, as much as she could without sitting on the books or on Jonathan.

"We didn't find anything for a while last night. It just felt like we were walking in circles for... hours," Nancy started, her voice still quiet so as not to wake Jonathan. "But then we found this... this deer. It was bleeding, like it had been hit by a car or something. It was still alive, though."

Owen was listening intently, positive that a poor deer wasn't what had Nancy so shaken up last night.

"While we were trying to figure out what to do about it, the deer got... dragged into some underbrush nearby. Like, like something in the shadows reached out a-and grabbed it," Nancy went on, beginning to stammer through the story. Owen's eyebrows pinched together, sensing that this is where the story got weird. "Then I found this trail of... blood leading towards a hollowed out tree. Specifically towards this crack in the tree, uh, near the roots that was leaking sap or... something. It was pretty hard to tell with just my flashlight," she shrugged weakly, "But when I looked closer, the blood just kept going, straight into where the tree split." Owen's head tilted, puzzled by what Nancy was insinuating.

"You think this thing stuffed the deer into this split in the tree? Like a squirrel saving nuts for the winter or something," Owen pondered. Although she was being totally serious with her theory, Nancy cracking a smile at the comment was an added bonus. The corners of her lips turned up tiredly as she shook her head.

"Trust me, I wish that was all it was doing," Nancy muttered, the smile on her lips melting away almost immediately. "And before I continue, you don't get to tell me how dumb I was, okay? I know that I did something incredibly unsafe, but it had to be done. Just... remember that before I keep telling the story," the brunette warned, giving Owen a stern look. This was most likely the part of the story that Owen had been both dreading and waiting all night to hear. She knew she had done a slew of absolutely idiotic things throughout her life, making her one of the last people who could judge Nancy for whatever she had done last night.

"I... I climbed into the split in the tree," Nancy confessed, all of her words slurring together with how fast she spoke. Owen's eyebrows bunched together, leaning closer to the brunette. She was almost positive she hadn't heard her right.

"You climbed into the tree? The same one that was leaking sap and blood? And might have had a dead deer stuffed inside," Owen said slowly, enunciating every word.

"Yeah, that same tree," Nancy confirmed, giving a nod. "But it wasn't just a tree. I climbed through it." She paused, thinking back to everything that she had seen when she passed through the tree. "The hole in the tree was this... this tunnel. And I just crawled and crawled till I got to the other side. But the other side looked just like the woods I was just in. Except it was different," Nancy recalled.

"Different how?" Owen asked, unsure of what she could possibly mean.

"Just... darker. A-and there were these black vines covering everything. And these particles, almost like... snow, just hanging in the air," Nancy breathed, unable to even hold eye contact as she remembered everything that she saw. A shiver bolted up Owen's spine at the image that Nancy had painted.

"I could hear something nearby once I got there. Like, um, growling or something. So, I kept walking. And..." She trailed off, her eyes slowly dragging back up to meet Owen's. "I saw it. In this... this other place. It was feeding on that deer," Nancy choked out, lip quivering.

"Feeding? How was it feeding? It doesn't have a face," the pink-haired girl pointed out, head tilted quizzically.

"It's... it's face opened up. Like, it's whole face was a mouth. And it was full of... teeth," Nancy trembled, burning tears welling up at the edges of her eyes. "It turned around and saw me, or heard me, or... whatever. By the time I found that hole I had climbed through, it was starting to shrink, like it was closing behind me." The brunette slowly turned to look at Jonathan over her shoulder, eyes lingering on him for just a moment before she looked back. "Jonathan had to pull me out. I... I don't think I could've made it back without him," she concluded, suddenly busying her hands with the books in front of her.

Owen just stared at her in silence, trying to process everything that was just revealed to her. The monster was still alive and well nearby, the monster was even more dangerous than they realized, and there's this alternate world just like theirs but so, so much worse. It was a lot to try and grasp.

"Hey..." A raspy voice broke through the silence, both of the girls directing their attention to the sound. Jonathan was finally awake, slowly rising from where he laid on the bed.

"Hey," Nancy and Owen greeted him in quiet unison.

"Couldn't sleep? Or did Owen wake you up," he questioned. Owen rolled her eyes at the implication, which in turn, caused Jonathan to give her a tired little grin.

"Every time I close my eyes, I just... keep seeing that... thing," Nancy murmured, shaking her head. She plucked a pencil from the top of her comforter, once again trying to distract herself. "Wherever I was, that place... I think that it lives there. It was feeding there – feeding on that deer. That means that..." Nancy inhaled, trying to steady herself. "If Will and Barbara..." she tried to start again, but she got choked up at the thought of those two being anywhere near the place she had gone last night.

Even Owen felt her throat begin to burn with certain emotions being held back at the mention of Barb. Nancy had only been in that other place for a short amount of time last night. But she was still so shaken up by everything she had seen. Barb had been there for days on end with no Jonathan Byers on the other side to help pull her out.

"Hey. My mom said she talked to Will. If he's alive, there's a chance Barbara is, too," Jonathan tried to comfort them, eyes glancing between the two girls.

"But that means that she's trapped... in that place," Nancy shuddered, speaking just above a whisper.

"Then we need to kill this thing for good. If Barb is still in that other place, getting rid of this monster may just give her and Will a fighting chance to make it back," Owen commented, decisively.

"You want to go back out there," Jonathan asked, uncertainty coloring his tone. It was quiet for a moment as they all calculated the risks.

"Maybe we don't have to," Nancy replied quickly, suddenly flipping through one of the textbooks in front of her in search of a specific page. "When I saw it, it was feeding on that deer. Meaning it's a predator, right?" She talked to them while she looked, before she finally landed on the page she was looking for. "And it seems to hunt at night, like a lion or a coyote," she concluded, pointing to the images on the page.

"But it hunts alone. You never see lions or coyotes hunting alone," Owen interjected, finally understanding what Nancy was trying to explain to them.

"Right. Almost like... a bear," the brunette nodded. "And remember at Steve's, when Barb cut herself? And then last night, with the deer..." Nancy trailed off, leading them in the right direction.

"It was bleeding too," Owen interjected, finishing Nancy's thought. This comment had Nancy pulling up one of the other textbooks to show them. This textbook was already open to a picture of a shark feeding on some other animal. Nancy must have already been thinking about this for hours.

"Sharks can detect blood in one part per million. That's one drop of blood in a million and they can smell it from a quarter mile away," Nancy articulated.

"So, you think it can detect blood like that," Owen mused, eyes scanning over the textbook.

"It's just a theory," Nancy said softly.

"We could... test it," Jonathan suggested, clearly having paid pretty close attention to the scientific method lesson in school.

"We could cut our hands. Just like Barb did. That amount of blood clearly worked," Owen brought up. "Or we can just cut my hand. I don't mind being bait," she offered with a humorless chuckle.

"But, if it works..." Jonathan trailed off with a small, panicky voice.

"At least we'll know it's coming," Nancy shrugged, not sounding much more confident than he did. The three of them looked expectantly amongst each other. They were going to have to knowingly put themselves in very real danger to hopefully put an end to all of this.

The thick silence was broken quickly by someone intensely rattling the doorknob to Nancy's room. The abrupt sound, paired with the tension in the room, caused all three of the teenagers to nearly jump out of their skin. Even through the adrenaline rush, Owen saw Nancy and Jonathan instinctively reach for one another, hands gripping each other tightly.

"Honey, are you up?" Nancy's mom called out to her through the door, allowing for all three of them to let out a sigh of relief.

"Yeah, I'm... I'm getting dressed," Nancy replied, her breath still leaving her in quick, anxious huffs. Still curious but not wanting to make a big deal out of it, Owen peeked at Jonathan and Nancy's hands. She just wanted to make sure she wasn't just seeing things. And sure enough, even after the initial jumpscare, the two had their hands wrapped around one another. Owen tried not to think too much about it, almost positive that Nancy was just continuing to feel the horrified effects of the previous night.

"I, uh, made some blueberry pancakes," Mrs. Wheeler informed her, suddenly making Owen keenly aware of the delightful smell ruminating from the kitchen downstairs.

"I'll be down in a second," Nancy promised, squeezing her eyes shut in exasperation. Silence fell over the room again as they each listened to Mrs. Wheeler's footsteps retreating from the doorway.

"Your mom doesn't knock," Jonathan asked teasingly, a rare little smirk on his lips. This comment just caused all of them to chuckle amongst themselves, so grateful that Nancy had thought to lock the door before bed.

Owen carefully stood from her place at the end of the bed, not wanting to knock off any of Nancy's research. Both Jonathan and Nancy looked at her when she stood, not sure where she was planning on going from here.

"Well, if we're going to actually kill this thing for real... then we need more than that handgun Jonathan stole. We've gotta stock up on supplies," Owen announced, mentally preparing for battle against this monster. "You get dressed and you come meet us at the front door in twenty minutes," Owen directed, giving Jonathan and Nancy their respective tasks before turning on her heel to step out of Nancy's room.

"Well, what are you gonna do," Jonathan wondered, making Owen spin back around to meet their confused expressions.

"Personally, I am gonna go eat some of those blueberry pancakes," she stated, as if it was obvious. Owen gave both of them a sickeningly sweet smile before turning back around and stepping out into the Wheelers' hallway. She followed the smell of blueberries all the way down the hallway, down the stairs, and right towards the kitchen.

Owen had already grabbed a plate and began her pancake stack when the family realized that it wasn't Nancy who had joined them for breakfast.

"Oh! You must be Owen! I wasn't expecting you for breakfast. When did you get here," Mrs. Wheeler inquired, already setting out another plate for whenever Nancy decided to join them.

"I, uh, let myself in a while ago. Hope that's alright," Owen smiled, taking a seat next to Nancy's dad at the dining table.

"So, does that mean you snuck in through our window again," Mr. Wheeler grumbled, not looking up from his daily newspaper.

"I'm neither going to confirm nor deny that, Mr. Wheeler," the pink-haired girl retorted, reaching across him to grab the syrup. She practically drowned the pancakes in syrup as Mr. Wheeler watched on with an unimpressed look on his face.

"You know, you don't have to sneak in through the window, honey. We know you're Nancy's friend. It's totally fine if you just come in the front door," Mrs. Wheeler sweetly assured her, taking her own seat at the table. Her husband let out a short grunt, perhaps indicating that he did, in fact, mind if Owen entered the house.

"But then what'll happen to the element of surprise, Mrs. Wheeler," Owen pointed out, shoving a syrupy bite of pancakes into her mouth and putting an end to that conversation – for now.