THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF.

▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

STARCROSSED (book one).
°• CHAPTER FIVE •°

" YOU'RE DOING THE
RIGHT THING. "

▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

ELIJAH WOLFHART HAD ALWAYS HATED FUNERALS SINCE HE WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD AND HIS MOTHER DIED. It's an awful story, really, something for another time. A time that he'd be ready. But he remembered how terrible he felt. How he felt something that felt a lot like grief rip at his insides until they were shredded and he had to pretend he was alright while fixing the tie of his suit. Tobia Wolfhart was too busy with his own emotions to help. Nevaeh didn't know how to do it and all she did was cry that day. Elijah did too. He just didn't at the funeral because he was what held the rest of the family together. He did later, though, when Steve was there. He let Elijah cry onto his shoulder until his eyes were red and puffy, and he couldn't anymore. But Steve wasn't there this time. This was all why he decided to stay home after hearing of the announcement for Will Byers's funeral.

Then again, Will Byers might not be dead.

Esme Wolfhart died when Elijah was fourteen years old. Don't ask him how. Some days he still doesn't know the answer to that question. That pain was still fresh even five years later. It was like losing a part of you and having no other choice but to create different pieces to replace what their loss left.

Five stages of grief follow the loss of a loved one. It was silly to admit how much Elijah denied the death of her as crazy as it was to consider Will was possibly alive because Tobia kept his late wife's ashes on the dresser in his bedroom since the day she was cremated. The child in him just wanted the touch of a mother back. Elijah was furious, at who, he doesn't know. It was his mother some days. It was himself others, to the point where he'd bargain to trade places, and wished it was him instead.

For now, Elijah was stuck in steps four and five. He knew his mother was dead. He's long accepted it in a way he can't accept Will's death. But those facts still left her son in a deep depression he can't crawl his way out of.

Will might not be dead, but Esme is, and Elijah can't help her anymore. But he can still try to help Will.

Elijah found it in himself to find something better to do, more useful, since everyone else was going. He waited until the rest of his family was gone before jumping to it. Nevaeh would kill him if she came home early, but he figured it was worth the risk if it brought them closer to the truth. She's gone, but he's still cautious as he opens the door of his sister's bedroom. Elijah doesn't know how long they'll be at the funeral, if they'll stay through the entire ceremony and the aftermath, so he has to work fast.

The blanket on her mattress is draped too close to the floor so Elijah rips it upward and makes a note to put it back later if he doesn't want to face her wrath. He crouches until his knees hit the floor and he bends over to get a clear view under the bed. It's full of dust, books, other various items that stemmed from her childhood that she doesn't use anymore. Elijah moves them around in hopes he'd find what he's looking for, but it's not there. Nevaeh was smart enough to not hide these things out in the open. But they're alike in more ways than she'd think because he knows his sister like he knows his own mind, and it wouldn't be long until he found it.

Elijah calls it a victory when he takes a step back and he hears a squeak coming from the wooden board underneath the rug he pressed on. He smiles, but he knows it isn't made from triumph because he was right. This sucks, but jackpot.

He quickly fell to his knees and lifts the corner of the rug. Elijah flung it to the side so he could delicately press the tips of his fingers to every crease until he hears it again, the soft creak that signals he found Nevaeh's secret spot. He knows he's going to hell for this, but if it helps his sister, he'll pave that road himself. Elijah carelessly dug his nails into the crease of the wooden board until he has a nice enough grip that allows him to tug it out of place.

A shoebox that was once pink but now was covered in layers of dust stares back at him. Elijah knows Nevaeh hadn't bought a new pair of shoes in a good amount of time. She's had this for a while, has kept it close as if it made her feel safe. He can't imagine that all of the contents inside do the same when he pulls the cover off and sees a scatter of various items hidden in the cardboard. Elijah doesn't want to pry anymore than he has, so he only shuffles through the precious family pictures, old childhood memories, and only stops when he hears a quiet rattle.

The orange pill bottle has been freshly placed inside. There wasn't a spec of dust. Elijah still brushes his thumb across the label and blinks away the wetness that forms in his eyes so he can read the capital, black letters clearly.

HAWKINS, LABORATORY

EXPERIMENT 0022

Elijah saw his sister as many things, a major pain in the ass he loves more than anything for starters, but an experiment was not one of them. He tries to remember what she told him. When Lewis cut her off from her supply, she was desperate enough to find someone else. A part of Elijah blamed himself for that. He was too caught up in himself, too sucked in on the mission to find Will Byers, and was blind to the pain Nevaeh was in.

There's nothing that Elijah wants more than to throw the bottle out of the window, to dump every last pill in the toilet to watch them flush away, but the trust between the Wolfhart siblings had to flow both ways. Nevaeh hasn't ridden a high and relapsed yet. She trusted Elijah wouldn't snoop through her belongings and accuse her of doing so, and he couldn't break that trust. This wasn't going to be an easy road for any of them.

She'd be back from the funeral at any time now. Elijah takes a deep breath and places everything back exactly where it belonged, settling the board over his sister's secret again. This was only project one to the answers he wanted. The next one was coming soon, almost like the stages of grief.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

It's almost nice to spend time with Nancy, not that Elijah would ever admit that out loud. He didn't hate her as much as he thought at first, and he wondered if she had second thoughts about him too. She wasn't as stiff as she was the first time she was in his passenger seat. Nancy was patient as Elijah scribbled a note that explained he needed space for a few hours to his family and stuck it on the fridge, and even smiled when he stepped outside as she was tossing a bag into the trunk.

Elijah twirls the ring of his keys around his pointer finger as his gaze lands on the wooden bat Nancy was balancing in her hand. "You have a bat?" He questions as he makes sure to lock the front door. "What, did you steal it from your brother or something?"

"Is it hard to believe it could be mine?" Nancy counters with a raise of her sharp eyebrows. She's clearly been practicing its usage as she twirls her wrist and the bat spins with the movement. Her fingerless gloves provided support ensuring the wood wouldn't rub her skin raw or let the bat slip. Elijah barks a laugh, and even opens the car door for her so she could slide in.

His car still reeks of cigarette smoke, he realizes, as he settles in. Elijah takes note that Nancy doesn't seem bothered by it. She isn't concerned anymore, not even by his presence. It's almost like their friends. He listens to her quiet hum that follows the music from the radio and taps his steering wheel with the beat. It'd be a lie if Elijah said he wasn't surprised when Nancy called and asked for another ride, per Jonathan's request. He was happy now, though, that she had. He really underestimated her from the start, and had a feeling she felt the same towards him.

The empty field Nancy had Elijah drive her to would have been silent if it wasn't for Jonathan standing in the midst of the grass, popping off rounds. Elijah shoves his hands in his pocket and watches with a peeked interest as his friend aims his gun, a small pistol signed under his father's name, at a line of empty cans balanced on cut logs. Jonathan's shoulders are tense with frustration that loosen when Nancy calls out, "You're supposed to hit the cans, right?" To both annoy him and announce their presence.

A smile appears on Jonathan's face at the sight of them. "No, actually, you see the spaces in between the cans? I'm aiming for those."

"You're doing great, then," Elijah comments with a light tone of sarcasm. He pulls his hand out of the jacket of his pocket and holds it out expectantly. "Let me try."

"What would your dad say?" Jonathan questions with a raise of his eyebrows.

Elijah shrugs. He knows Tobia is a peaceful man who has made a few mistakes with his children, but always had his heart in the right place. "He's not here," Elijah says simply that Jonathan accepts and hands the other his weapon.

He knows that Nancy and Jonathan are watching, but Elijah doesn't feel the pressure to hit his target exactly. This wasn't his first time holding a gun, anyway. He's a boy from a small town, after all. Elijah straightens his shoulders and flexes his arms, grasping the firearm with his finger placed gently on the trigger. He tilts his head, eyes squinting, until his gaze locks perfectly onto his target. Elijah gently presses the trigger with a squeeze. It bangs, jerking his hands in surprise, but he watches in silent awe as the bullet doesn't skim a can or fly between them. It glides smoothly through a metal canister.

"Shit," Nancy says. It's the first time Elijah's ever heard her swear, but he takes it as a compliment. Her blue eyes are widened with amazement. "You're really good at that, Eli." Jonathan nods in agreement.

Elijah shrugs. He knows dumb luck was usually on his side. "Yeah, I guess." He extends the gun towards her. "What about you? Have you ever shot a gun before?"

He receives a scoff as Nancy looks back at him in surprise. "Have either of you met my parents?" She points out. Elijah hasn't had the pleasure of meeting Mr. or Mrs. Wheeler, but judging by what he first thought of Nancy, he could only assume they were a pair of uptight parents that would lose their mind at the idea of their daughter even thinking about touching a gun.

Jonathan takes the gun instead. He checks on the chamber and pulls a few dozen bullets out of his pocket to fill it again. "Yeah, I haven't shot one since I was ten. My dad took me hunting on my birthday." The smile on his face turns sadder at the memory. "He made me kill a rabbit."

It wasn't the first time Elijah heard Jonathan's story about his dad. He still never pushed the topic though, knowing how sensitive it was for him. Jonathan's grief of someone still alive was left in the stage of anger, and that fury was mostly directed at the abandonment he felt.

"A rabbit?" Nancy echoes.

"I guess he thought it would make me into more of a man or something. I cried for a week," Jonathan admits. Nancy lets out a breath. Jonathan glances toward her. "What? I'm a fan of Thumper."

The joke causes Nancy to chuckle. "I meant your dad."

"Yeah, he's a real fucking prick," Elijah agrees. "I can't imagine what Joyce saw in him." How a woman as good as Joyce who clearly loved her boys more than anything in the world loved a man like Lonnie was beyond him.

Jonathan nods. "I guess he and my mother loved each other at some point, but..." He clicks the chamber back in place. "... I wasn't around for that part." The other two sense his discomfort towards the topic, and Nancy decides to change it by simply holding out her hand when he goes to shoot the gun again. Jonathan's surprise is clear, but he still passes it to her. "Um... Yeah, just, uh... Point and shoot," he advises.

"I don't think my parents ever loved each other," Nancy confesses.

"They must've married for some reason," Jonathan suggests as she starts to cock the gun.

Nancy simply tells her story to them. She seems lost in her words, but still focused on shooting. "My mom was young. My dad was older, but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So, they bought a nice house at the end of the cul-de-sac... And started their nuclear family."

"Screw that," Jonathan comments.

That makes Nancy grin. Elijah can almost feel the adrenaline she must have coursing through her veins as she drags her tongue across her lower lip and prepares to shoot. "Yeah," she agrees. "Screw that."

The gun goes off, and the can she aimed at flies off. It's almost a perfect shot. Elijah grins, but he can't help the sorrow that causes him to say, "My parents did." They shoot him curious stares and he shrugs. "They loved each other."

"I'm sorry," Nancy apologizes quietly as she lowers the gun. Elijah isn't sure what she means until she says, "I heard about your mom when it happened. I can't imagine how you felt."

Esme's Wolfhart suicide was big news when it happened a little over five years ago.

"It sucked," Elijah says even though there was much more to it than a suckish feeling. It was so much more. It was starting to smoke cigarettes because a few puffs of nicotine took the weight off his chest even for a minute or two. It was refusing to get out of bed for days, missing school and only passing his classes because his teachers pitied him. It was a forever pain in his chest, an empty part of him forever gone, something he could never get back.

It was like Elijah died too, and they just forgot to bury him.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

The minute Elijah felt tears stinging his eyes he went to sit in his car. He hated talking about his mom. He hated the feeling of loneliness creeping up on him, like he was the only person in the world, so he just watched Nancy and Jonathan practice with the various weapons she had so he couldn't possibly feel like that. It was nice to have more than one friend, some that understood. Elijah felt so alone after his mother's death, after Steve left him. He hated being on his own.

Elijah didn't even know why they were there, exactly. Did they really think the smudge in the picture was some sort of monster?

Jonathan must not have learned his lesson from the past because Elijah jumps at the sudden tapping on his car window. He takes a deep breath, rolls his eyes, and opens the door. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah. We wanted to venture further, see if we can practice maybe with Nancy's bat until it's too dark to see," Jonathan offers. And being Elijah's best friend, he knows more than anyone (other than Steve Harrington) just how much he hates to be alone. That's why he made the offer clear.

Elijah's just glad he doesn't have to think of anyone's death or abandonment any longer, not with them.

The sun was already starting to settle by the time they were finished, and by the time they were wandering back to where Elijah's car was parked, it had vanished completely. The light of the moon became their guide through the woods. He was exhausted, worn out, evident in the way his shoulders slumped and his sneakers dragged. Elijah was about to open his mouth and proclaim just how tired he was, when a sudden noise stops the trio.

It goes unheard by Jonathan, who turns in confusion when Nancy and Elijah stopped in their tracks. "What, are you guys tired?" He asks.

"A lot," Elijah mumbles as his eyes scan the quivering trees. "Did you hear that?"

"Shhh," Nancy hushes before Jonathan can answer. They fall into a silence and wait for the same sound to appear.

It's awful the second Elijah pinpoints it. He recognizes it as a quiet whimper of pain, something living that knew it was dying and was begging for mercy. He shines the beam of his flashlight in the direction they heard it so they can follow the trail and discover exactly what causes the sound.

"Oh, God," Nancy cries out as she sunk to her knees.

A deer was spawled on Earth's ground, slowly becoming apart of the soil. It's limbs were twisted, mangled so badly that it could barely lift it's head. Blood gushes from the open wounds that weren't caused by the slice of a blade. Elijah clasps his hand over his mouth when he feels his stomach churn at the poor sight.

"It's been hit by a car," Nancy whispers. Her fingers graze the wounds before drawing back. She glances at the boys over her shoulder as the dying animal whines louder. "We can't just leave it."

"I can't," Elijah chokes out after he drops his hand. He has to look away before he vomits or burst into tears, maybe both. Nothing with a beating heart deserved to suffer like this.

Nancy must choose herself to be the one that makes the hard choice as she draws the gun out slowly, but Jonathan catches her wrist. "I'll do it."

"I thought you said - "

"I'm not ten anymore," Jonathan declared.

The deer cries again. Elijah forces himself to look his best friend in the eye and press a hand to his shoulder. "And that's not a rabbit," he reassures him quietly. "You're doing the right thing."

He hopes Jonathan believes him because he can barely see his smile under the moonlight. Elijah only watches as he takes the gun from Nancy and stands, positioning the weapon so the barrel of the gun is pointed directly at the twisted head of the deer. Elijah braces himself - for what, he doesn't know exactly - for the bullet to finally put an end to a miserable life, or the terrible bang that followed?

But Elijah wasn't ready for a long arm to extend from the bushes and drag the deer's body to be swallowed inside the leaves.

They gasp together in panic and stare into the void the deer disappeared into in gaping horror.

"What was that?" Nancy asked anxiously.

Elijah's heart starts pounding in his chest until it brings an ache to his ribs. They extend their flashlights and take slow, cautious steps forward. Splatters of blood shine under the light, the crimson red staining plants like a bloody path. Elijah expects the deer to be planted not too far, planted somewhere else, but he doesn't see it anywhere.

"Where'd it go?" Nancy whispers.

Elijah shakes his head. "It's gone."

"Do you see any more blood?" Jonathan asks. They shake their head in reply. Elijah glances away from the blood he once saw when he hears Nancy whisper his nickname and is drawn towards her.

The flashlight Nancy is holding shines into the open hole of a tree's trunk base embedded into the ground. Elijah doesn't dare even snap a twig or crackle a leaf in fear whatever creature took the wounded deer would hear, but he crouches above her. "What is it?"

"Look," Nancy instructs softly.

A strange, slime drips from the opening of the trunk. It looks deeper than it's meant to go like the cracked hole wasn't all there was to it. It almost appeared to be a mouth, and the stomach was waiting, hungry.

When Nancy rips her backpack off her shoulders, Elijah stares at her like she's insane. "Are you nuts?" He demands.

"No," Nancy shakily says as if she wants to believe she's braver than she feels. "I'm desperate."

And a part of Elijah knows how she felt. Nancy was desperate to find answers for her missing friend, and if it meant diving into a deep hole like Alice in Wonderland, then so be it. He watches for a minute as she disappears before deciding he can't let her do something this dangerous on her own. Elijah throws the instinct to turn back away and sinks to his knees behind her.

It practically parts open in a gape as Elijah squeezes his broad shoulders inside and shuffles the rest of himself in. He grimaces in disgust at the goop that falls and stains his hair, his clothes. The flashlight in his hand starts to flicker the deeper he goes, and he tries to focus on the short flares. Nancy has already emerged from the tunnel and Elijah faintly sees her hand extend towards him to help him stand.

He tries to wipe the slime off of him when he's on his feet. Elijah gags as it drags across his finger and splats to the ground before finally surveying where they were. An odd blue tint greets him, and as far as he can tell, there's no more moon. They're surrounded by trees covered in the same goop they had to crawl through. It's almost like they've never left.

The demand to know what the fuck is going on gets lost in Elijah's throat when they stop at the sudden snarl before them. Whatever world they were in suddenly stops.

It almost looks like a man without a face, like something out of a nightmare. It's limbs were long, so large that Elijah feared a single step would make the ground beneath them crumble. The thing they see is knelt above the deer, ripping apart it's flesh, and seemingly feeding on it with snaps of hungry crunches. It gnaws on the animal's bones, swallowing pieces of it almost whole.

Fear had never felt as powerful as it did in that moment. Elijah terror brings him to freeze exactly where he was until he felt completely numb. He barely feels the touch from Nancy that gently grasps his hand and gives the limb a soft yank as a signal it was time to get the hell out. Elijah's fingers twist until he's clutching her hand too and allows her to guide the terrified boy with slow steps backward.

They've barely made it three steps before a stick snaps with the loudest crack Elijah's ever heard in his life under Nancy's boot.

Suddenly, the creature spins so fast that the motion cracks it's spine. Elijah shouts in terror as it's face opens like petals from a venus fly trap and the thing roars towards them, sharp teeth dripping blood. Nancy screams back, the sound ripping through her throat until it's blood-curdling.

The last thing Elijah hears is Jonathan calling for him and Nancy before he snaps out of whatever fear controlled him, and bolts away with her like his life depended on it. Something told him it did - and now, grief hadn't seemed so bad anymore.

━━━━━━━━

author's note:

i stan two protective big brothers and their names are elijah wolfhart and jonathan byers.

yikes, he's in the upside down tho. 😦

i didn't really feel like writing the scene between jonathan and nancy where they talk about the picture so i improvised. the little detail about elijah's mom was revealed too, which will also play an important part later!

an important painful part, is what i mean. hehe.

- koda

.•° ✿ °•.
WORD COUNT:
4k.
°•. ✿ .•°