𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 : 4.4k

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐀 𝐆𝐑𝐔𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 finally caught the others' attention, shaky breaths leaving her crumpled body as she weakly twitched against the floor before going slack. Owen's eyes widened at the horror of seeing El's lifeless form, having gotten basically no indication that something was wrong.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Mike was the first to rush over, dropping to his knees beside her and rolling her onto her back. Streaks of blood had poured out of both of her nostrils, staining her upper lip and along her cheek. The rest of the group crowded around her, examining her sweat-drenched, ashen complexion as she let out pained groans.

"What's wrong with her?" Erica wondered aloud.

"What's wrong? Hey, what's wrong?" Mike asked gently, all of his focus honed in on Eleven.

"My leg... My leg," she answered, brokenly.

"Her leg! Her leg, okay," Jonathan nodded, helping Nancy roll up her pant leg and peel the blood-soaked bandages back from her wound. Nobody was prepared for the sight of her wound, causing a cacophony of disgusted groans to ring out upon its exposure. The skin was inflamed and oozing, twitching and squelching unnaturally like there was something moving beneath the surface. El screamed in agony as the wound jolted suddenly, only confirming Owen's suspicion that there was something in her leg — some kind of parasite, it seemed.

"What is that?" Erica demanded, leaning forward to get a closer look.

"There's something in there," Mike quickly replied, El's grip nearly crushing his hand. The bulge beneath her skin started to shift downwards toward her ankle, moving further away from the wound's entrance. The spectacle had Dustin doubling over and clutching his stomach. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, quick to avert his eyes.

Thankfully, Jonathan kicked into older brother mode, unable to watch El struggling like this. He hopped to his feet, giving each visible face a stern look. "Keep her talking. Keep her awake, okay?" he instructed in a rush. Then, he took off, sprinting towards the collection of restaurants on the other side of the food court. Owen and the others could only watch helplessly as Eleven thrashed against the floor, fighting an internal battle against whatever was lurching through her leg.

In his absence, Robin started rambling, earning dubious looks from nearly everyone in the group as her nerves got the best of her. "You know, it's not actually that bad. There was a... The goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg and the whole bone came out of her knee, six inches or something. It was insane–"

"Robin." Steve interrupted her before she could recall another gruesome memory that would allow her to continue mindlessly rattling on. However, she didn't see it in that way. Her voice was hopeful when she instantly replied.

"Yeah?"

"You're not helping," Steve quietly informed her, casting a sideways glance at El, who was still doing her best to even stay conscious. A trembling wail from the injured girl on the floor snapped Robin out of it pretty quickly. "Right, sorry," she nodded.

When Jonathan returned, his hands were sheathed in thin, plastic gloves, each of them wielding a wooden spoon and a knife. He knelt at El's feet and met her teary eyes. "Alright, El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay? But I need you to stay real still," he told her. Jonathan handed off the wooden spoon to Mike, but kept his eyes on Eleven. "Here, you're gonna wanna bite down on this, okay?"

When Jonathan finally allowed his gaze to drop to the angry-looking gash on her leg, the knife he had brought was hovering just over her skin. His heart hammered in his chest, perfectly in-time with everyone who was watching him in anticipation. El's whimpers were muffled against the wooden spoon between her teeth, but they weren't silenced and they weren't getting better. Jonathan cast a final, apprehensive glance upwards, spotting the determination on Mike's face.

"Do it," the younger boy instructed, all out of breath.

This was the push that Jonathan needed in order to finally press the blade against El's skin. The scream she let out was immediate, her head thrown back as Jonathan sliced along the center of the wound. Once the opening was wide enough, he slid two of his gloved fingers directly into the incision and began burrowing around within El's leg. There was another chorus of groans from the onlookers, all of which were nearly drowned out by Eleven's screams of agony. Frank, the group's local first-aid assistant, held his breath as he watched, unable to wrap his mind around the amateur, sci-fi surgical procedure that was happening right before his very eyes. He was no surgeon, but everything about the scene in front of him just looked wrong.

A collection of what looked like blackened veins snaked outwards from the gash. It seemed like they were only getting worse by the second, so Nancy grabbed Jonathan by the shoulder and shook him. "Jonathan!"

"Stop talking!" he snapped, his eyes screwed shut. "Goddamn it!"

It must've become too much for El, as she was quick to sit up and spit the spoon out of her mouth. "No! Stop it!" she screeched, her words swiftly morphing into pained begging. "Stop! Stop!"

Nancy shoved Jonathan's hand away from El's leg, effectively breaking through whatever dissociated haze he had forced himself into in order to get the job done. El weakly sat upright with a grunt, trying to straighten her back but only managing to hunch over her leg, instead. "I can do it," she sniffled, barely loud enough for Owen to hear at the back of the group. A couple of heavy pants escaped El as she stared intensely at the slash on her leg, trying to muster up the energy to do anything.

Owen peered over Jodi's shoulder, watching El's hand loom over the wound as she started to direct every ounce of mental power into it. The lump beneath the skin began to spasm, pulling the flesh taut above it. All kinds of horrid noises emanated from the wound as El worked the unwelcome guest out from within it. Owen didn't think anything of the wretched feeling that was crawling up her back, assuming that any sense of danger was related to the near-death experience happening right in front of her.

El's screams just kept getting louder and louder before eventually being drowned out by the Gap literally exploding behind them. Everyone ducked and covered their ears in response to the blast, but Steve was quick to reach out and cover Owen's head, tucking her against his chest to avoid the shards of glass as the display case went flying everywhere. His sailor costume was scratchy against her face, but he was warm and protective. It would've been enough to make Owen's head spin had they been in any normal situation. But Steve was only slow to uncover her face because he wanted to make sure there weren't any more imminent projectiles before they pulled away.

Hardly the time to really savor a moment like that.

When Owen peeked back out, every light in sight was flashing and flickering while El let out a deafening scream. A slimy hunk of alien meat floated mid-air, held up by the power of Eleven's mind. Owen's eyes widened as she leaned in to get a better look at it. That's what was in her leg? No wonder she was in so much pain.

With an abrupt thrust of her sickled hand, El hurled the intruder across the food court. It skidded across the floor, leaving bloody streaks in its wake. The thing didn't even land in a heap like everyone expected it to — no, it was unsettlingly sentient as it made a pathetic attempt to crawl away from them.

However, with a shrill screech and a repulsive squish, what was left of the thing in El's leg was flattened beneath a large, brown boot. Owen and the others followed the denim pant leg all the way up to the easily recognizable mustache belonging to none other than Chief Hopper. His usual police uniform had been swapped out for a tropical-patterned button-up, but the smear of blood on his forehead and large gun in his hand stood out against the colorful, beach vacation attire.

Owen's lips lifted into a relieved smile when she saw that he was accompanied by Joyce Byers and... some bald guy in a wife-beater and cut-off shorts. Her look of relief was short-lived, replaced only by pure confusion. As much as she hated to admit it — and she really hated to admit it — the oddball actually looked kind of familiar.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

The entire group collected around the mall's central fountain, debriefing one another on everything that had happened while they were apart — and it was a lot. Owen sat with Robin on the edge of the fountain, her legs crisscrossed beneath her while Robin had her knees pulled against her chest.

"The Mind Flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins to stop El, to kill her and pave a way into our world," Mike explained, motioning towards Eleven. Owen's lips twisted at the sight of her; although she seemed better than she was earlier, she still looked so tired and limp as she leaned against Hopper, a damp napkin pressed to her forehead.

"And it almost did. That was just one tiny piece of it," Max nodded.

Hopper's intense stare maneuvered about the group, searching for answers. "How big is this thing?" he asked.

"It's gotta be at least thirty feet," Law replied, peering amongst those who had seen it to make sure his appraisal wasn't too far off.

"It's bigger than a house," Nancy confirmed.

Lucas sucked his teeth. "Which reminds me, it sorta destroyed your cabin," he informed the chief with a sheepish look on his face. He uttered a quick apology upon seeing Hopper somehow deflate even more.

Steve spoke up from beside Robin, just wanting to make sure that they were all on the same page. "Okay, so just to be clear, this... this big fleshy spider thing that hurt El, it's some kind of gigantic... weapon?"

Nancy nodded. "Yes."

"But instead of like, screws and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon... with melted people," he continued, barely even making sense of the words that were leaving his own mouth.

"Sounds about right," Owen muttered, feeling the imminent danger looming over them like a shadowy storm cloud. It felt like they were in the eye of the storm, having gone through so much already, but with even more to come. If the Mind Flayer was out looking for El, it was only a matter of time until it found her, and from the way they were describing it, no amount of preparation was going to help take this thing down. The odds felt stacked against them in all the worst ways.

Steve's lips flattened into a thin line. "Yeah, okay. I– Yeah, I'm just making sure," he shrugged, playing nonchalant.

"Are we sure this thing is still out there, still alive?" Joyce wondered aloud.

"El beat the shit out of it, but yeah. It's still alive," Max said.

Jodi's arms crossed over her chest as she ran the toe of her shoe along a crack in the floor. "Definitely still alive," she mumbled beneath her breath. She didn't feel qualified to interject into the conversation in any way, but she knew what she saw at the steel mill. And as much as she wished that she was in the midst of some fucked-up, extremely realistic nightmare, that 'big fleshy spider' was just as real and terrifying as they were making it sound.

"But if we close the gate again–" Will started.

"It'd be like cutting the brain off from the body," Gordon finished. "Can't have one without the other."

"It would kill it..." Lucas chimed in before backtracking. "Theoretically."

A sudden cheerful whoop echoed from the other side of the food court. The bald guy in the questionable outfit was gripping two handfuls of paper, crunching them in his fists as he swung them around to garner everyone's attention. "Yoo-hoo!" he shouted, rather forcefully. "You're gonna wanna see this!"When he slammed the crumpled paper down on one of the tables, everybody felt as if they had no choice but to gather around him in order to catch a glimpse at whatever marvel he had produced.

Turns out, the 'must-see' item was just what appeared to be a hand-drawn schematic of the Russian base — and a poorly drawn one at that. The only indication of what they were even looking at was the very specific, unmistakable shape of that sizable machine that the Russians had shooting a laser beam into the gate. Nonetheless, Owen watched as the man dragged his finger across the sheet of paper, directing their eyes to a specific point on the map.

"Okay, this is what Alexei called 'the hub.' The hub takes us to the vault room," he explained, looking up through his bushy eyebrows to make sure everyone was following his train of thought.

"Okay, but where's the gate?" Hopper asked, his voice tinged with skepticism.

The bald man jammed one of his fingers against a now-greasy spot on the page. "Right here," he replied. "I don't know the scale on this, but I think it's fairly close to the vault room. Maybe fifty feet or so?"

Owen couldn't help the scoff that she let out at that insanely wrong estimation.

"More like five hundred," Erica corrected, stepping up from the back of the group. When the bald man saw who had spoken, his bearded jaw hung open. "What, you're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?" she challenged.

His bespectacled eyes bored into the little girl. "I'm sorry, who are you?" he asked, the question simply dripping with sarcasm.

"Erica Sinclair. Who are you?"

When Erica answered back with the same level of brashness, it took the man off-guard momentarily. "Murray... Bauman," he replied, the statement itself morphing into a question.

Owen's eyes widened when she finally realized who this man was exactly. "Holy shit! That's where I know you from! You're that quack from the Chicago Sun Times!" she exclaimed with a snap of her fingers. The poor Holland family had hired him to investigate Barb's disappearance the year prior; Owen had seen his picture on the business card they handed to her over a bucket of fried chicken. With Nancy and Jonathan's help, he had actually brought the lab's victims as much justice as he could with such limited resources. It was honestly pretty heroic.

"Glad to know you're a fan of my work," he grumbled, still holding on to the shreds of sarcasm he had left. Owen hadn't really meant to say the 'quack' part out loud; she was just regurgitating the phrase she had heard so many others use to describe him. Still, she mustered a lopsided smile and a bashful shrug, hoping that would be enough of an apology.

Erica was singularly focused on the task at hand, though. "Listen, Mr. Bunman, I'm not trying to tell you how to do things, but I've been down in that shithole for 24 hours," she announced before addressing the rest of the onlookers. "And with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die."

"I'm sorry, why is this four-year-old speaking to me?" Murray retorted.

"I'm ten, you bald bastard!" Erica snapped, making the grown man's jaw drop yet again.

"Erica!" Lucas scolded.

"Just the facts!" she shrugged, making her older brother sigh in disappointment.

"She's not wrong, actually," Owen admitted, pressing her hip against the table. "That hideout is full of blood-thirsty Russians with weapons you've never even seen before. If you go down there unprepared, your Missing Person posters will never leave the bulletin board in the police station."

"But that doesn't have to happen," Dustin said, optimistically. He stepped towards the table and motioned towards the rudimentary map. "Sorry, may I?"

"Please," Murray hissed sarcastically, a fake smile on his lips. Being told that his initial plan was shitty by a highly opinionated group of kids was growing stale by the second.

Dustin plopped down into one of the chairs surrounding the table and dragged the map towards himself. He plucked a pencil out of his vest's front pocket and got to work. "Okay, see this room here?" he asked, using the pencil to scrawl a circle around to a rather large room on the map. "This is a storage facility. There's a hatch in here that feeds into their underground ventilation system." He dragged the pencil across the page, right towards the giant laser. "That will lead you to the base of the weapon. It's a bit of a maze down there, but between me, Erica, and Robin, we can show you the way."

Hopper's eyebrows lifted toward his receding hairline. "You can show us the way?" he repeated, flatly.

"Don't worry. You can do all the fighting and the dangerous hero shit, and we'll just be your... navigators," Dustin reassured him with a warm smile on his face. But Hopper wasn't entertaining that idea for even a second. All he gave in response was a hard and fast 'no.'

Well, actually, he also said 'nope' at some point, but it's all just semantics, really.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

Against the child experts' wishes, the adults had decided to try and figure out a plan on their own. Owen wasn't optimistic about their fate, but there was no convincing them. If they so desperately wanted to live out their death wishes, then nothing she said was going to stop them. As Hopper, Joyce, and Murray got ready to invade the Russian base, the teenagers formed clusters throughout the food court, talking quietly amongst themselves in the rare moment of rest.

Owen made her way over to El first, wanting to make sure that she was alright after that bloody encounter with the Mind Flayer chunk in her leg. El and Max were sitting together next to the fountain, their shoulders pressed against one another as they watched the Party officially reunite. Owen strolled over, her calloused hands clasped in front of her and a subtle smile on her lips.

"How you doin', El?" she asked, gently.

Dark, violet circles sagged beneath El's eyes when she looked up at Owen. She still looked so much like the little girl in the pink dress that Owen had met in late 1983, but it would've been hard to ignore the effect that the past few years had on her face. It seemed that saving the world time and time again could really take a toll on a person. El's voice was hoarse when she spoke again.

"I'm fine," she nodded.

Owen couldn't help but snort. "Yeah, 'cause that was believable," she muttered as she sat beside Eleven. When she looked over at El and Max, their wide eyed gazes were studying her pretty closely. Owen's brows furrowed in response. "What? Did you guys need a minute or something? I can go bother someone else."

El shook her head as the solemn look on her face dissolved slightly. She sat up, bringing her face closer to Owen's. "What did Dustin mean... when he said you have superpowers?" she questioned, softly.

Owen let out a short, humorless chuckle. "Oh, right. That." She shoved the baggy, torn sleeve of her pirate costume up her arm to reveal the three zeros inked into her skin. "I didn't really think twice about these until I met you."

El reached out to grab her arm, pulling it closer to inspect the tattoo. Even Max leaned in over Eleven's shoulder to get a better look. "But... Why did I never hear about you?" El murmured.

Owen's lips pursed. "That's the point of the number actually. I wasn't exactly what they wanted. So, they got rid of me. And with a number like zero, no one even thinks to ask about you," she explained, desperately trying to ignore the way her chest ached through that bit of information. "I was there and gone before you were even born."

Eleven's big brown eyes peered up at her curiously. "What can you do?"

Owen breathed out a laugh. "I can make the Earth go all rumbly," she told them, using Steve's words from earlier. "But I also have a sixth sense, kind of? Like, noticing dangerous shit before anyone else. And I'm, like, weirdly agile. I don't really have to think too hard to do those last two things anymore, but the Earth rumbly thing is still a work-in-progress."

"Can you find people?" Eleven pondered.

"Find people?"

"Yes. Like how I found all of you... In the darkness."

This made Owen pause. A couple of heavy blinks fell as she stared closely at Eleven. "In the darkness? You mean, like the void?"

"The void..." Eleven echoed. Then, she nodded slowly.

"I've been there. But I've never found anyone on purpose," Owen confessed. "Most of the time, they're the ones who find me. I've only ever seen a phone booth and..." She glanced over at Max. "Your brother."

Max averted her eyes, then, pulling at a loose string on her shorts. "You've seen him there, too?" Her voice was feeble, like she wasn't sure if she actually wanted to know. So, Owen spared her the details — the horrifying screams, the distant look in his eye, his blood-stained clothes. It was too much.

"Yeah. I-I saw him." Owen's eyes darted over to Max, once, twice, three times, just to see if there was any change in her beaten-down expression. When there was no noticeable shift in her blue eyes, Owen timidly reached a hand over and comfortingly patted her knee. "It'll be okay, Max. We'll figure this out together, just like we always do."

Max's smile was tightlipped and tense when she lifted her head. But Owen knew that there wasn't anything she could do to fix it at that moment. Thankfully, the boys crowded around them and redirected their focus into a more lighthearted conversation. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it was all they had.

Out of the corner of her eye, Owen spotted Steve and Robin sitting together on the counter of Hot Sam Pretzels. She was unable to stop herself from becoming transfixed by the doofus with the big hair who was trying to launch a balled-up straw wrapper through Robin's finger-length goal.

Owen's stomach did the same little backflip that it always did at the sight of him, but it wasn't just a backflip anymore. She felt like she could crawl out of her skin just by being in the same room as Steve, like her heart wanted nothing more than to jump right out of her chest and run home to him. It was suffocating in all the best ways, like there wasn't enough room in her body for all the things she felt about him. And the fact that Steve actually reciprocated those feelings? It was more than her brain could handle.

He must've felt her staring because when Steve turned, he met Owen's eyes instantly. The wave he delivered in her direction was sweet and even a little nervous. But so was hers in response, so neither of them thought anything of it.

"You guys are cute together."

A new voice snapped Owen out of her trance. She hadn't realized that she was smiling until she felt the muscles in her face relax again. Law's friend, Jodi, sat just a few feet away at one of the tables, a knowing smirk on her delicate features. Thankfully, Eleven and Max were too wrapped up in their own conversation with the boys to hear her, but Jodi's words had already rattled around several times in Owen's brain.

She stood from the edge of the fountain and wiped her sweaty palms against the material of her pirate costume. "We're not together," she informed her with a nervous laugh. Owen mindlessly wandered over to where Jodi was sitting, her eyes darting around to make sure no one was listening.

Jodi's perfectly sculpted eyebrows shot upwards. "Oh! My bad. I just presumed–"

Before she could finish that sentence, Owen was sliding into the seat beside her and huddling in close. "But...Well, let's just say that if one of us did want to be together and the other one was absolutely terrified, what the hell would you do in that situation?" she pressed in a hushed tone.

Jodi's jaw hung open, momentarily taken aback by the question. "Wait, you're asking me for advice right now?"

Owen's lips pressed together as she gave a curt nod.

As discreetly as possible, Jodi turned in her chair to face Owen. She leaned in just a bit closer and then launched into love guru mode. "Well, not that I'm assuming who's who in this situation, but what's so terrifying?"

Owen let out a deep sigh she didn't realize she had been holding. "Thank you for not assuming, but... I guess I'm just intimidated. I have no experience with dating whatsoever. Like, none. And he's pretty much the opposite. So, I'm just, uh, more than a little worried that he'll think I'm boring or stupid or immature or some combination of those or something worse entirely."

"But you just said he likes you. I'm pretty sure he would know by now if you were boring, stupid, immature, or all of the above," Jodi pointed out.

"Well, what if I become any of those things and he gets tired of me?"

"You're basing your decision off of these random, pessimistic hypotheticals?"

"It could happen!"

Jodi's eyebrows pinched together, her dark eyes silently pleading. "Owen, this hopelessness can eat you alive if you let it. There'll always be some reason not to tell someone how you feel. But if this boy has laid it all out on the table for you, don't you think he deserves the same thing?"

Owen fell silent, mulling over her words. She chewed on the inside of her lip, tearing at the skin and making it sting. She hated how right Jodi was, how vulnerability was the only way to avoid hurting Steve. So, she looked up at Jodi and offered up the last traces of apprehension that she had in her arsenal.

"What if it doesn't work out?" Owen asked, softly. Vulnerably.

Jodi's lips sloped into a genuine smile before she answered with a question of her own.

"But what if it does?"