Chapter Text

-CHAPTER ONE-

“It’s bullshit.”

Steve’s ears were ringing. God, everything hurt.

“It’s bullshit.”

The thrum of something pulsed distantly, and Steve felt sick. Like he was back under the mall, tied to a chair. Or maybe in a bathroom stall, coming down from a wickedly awful high, his own bile burning his nostrils.

Wasn’t that Nancy’s voice?

“Nance?” he asked, and indiscriminate nothing suddenly became something. He opened his eyes, and he was in a sticky bathroom, party litter dumped around the space. Nancy’s drunken gaze scowling up at him.

“You’re bullshit,” Nancy slurred at him. Her glassy eyes bore into his, and her pretty white sweater was stained red.

This… couldn’t be happening. Steve lived this once. But that was years ago.

Shit. How hard did he hit his head this time? He… couldn’t remember. What had been… What had Steve been doing? Just now?

“You’re pretending like everything’s okay,” Nancy continued pointedly, and Steve just stared.

Fuck, he really didn’t want to relive this. It had been horrible the first go-around. Jesus, his head must be really fucked up this time. One concussion too many.

But everything looked so goddamn real. The lights bore into his eyes; the floor clung to his shoes with spilt punch. And, yeah, it did smell like vomit. But that was because someone clearly missed the toilet, and it had spilled over the side. Honestly, that was pretty nasty.

The muffled track of something he remembered being popular played just beyond the door, and he could swear he heard people shouting chug, chug, chug somewhere outside.

“You know, like we didn’t… like we didn’t kill Barb,” Nancy kept on.

Jesus, he really didn’t need this again. What had Steve been… Where had he been…?

“Steve!” Dustin’s scream pierced in his ears. It was dark still, barely any light, sky roiling red. Daylight had been snuffed for a while now. “Oh, god. Oh, god, no! Steve, please!”

“Like, it’s great. Like, we’re in love, and we’re partying.”

Henry Creel’s eyes were hauntingly cold. They stared at Steve apathetically. Like he didn’t matter. Like he never mattered. He’d just been a hinderance.

Blood gurgled from his throat, dribbling from his lips. In some sick way, it was satisfying. A part of him had already died when Robin was taken from him. He only knew it was her because her stupid, lame, beautiful, perfect doodled Chucks. When he cried, he knew tears wouldn’t bring her back. And he was pretty sure he’d only kept going for the little shit that kept screaming his name when he should have been running, like Steve had told him to.

“Yeah, let’s party, huh? Party. We’re partying.”

“Oh, god. Steve! Let him go! Steve—Please, Steve!”

Jesus, this sucked. The pain that he couldn’t even howl about now sucked. The gnarly, twisted shitbag who had shoved his whole fucking hand into Steve’s stomach sucked. Henry Creel wasn’t human. Hadn’t been for a long time. Gazing blearily at his slimy visage now, it was hard to see him as anything but the monster he was, and maybe always had been.

Honestly, it mostly sucked that Dustin was about to see Steve die. Maybe ripped in a bloody display of two, guts and all. And he didn’t need that. The kid had enough trauma.

“This is bullshit.”

So, with effort, Steve wheezed, “Run the fuck away!” for the last time.

Dustin’s you-die-I-die nonsense needed to stay just that. Nonsense.

Dustin, run—the mantra started in his head. Run, Dustin. Run. Run. Go. Run!

“Steve!” Dustin was still shouting, but it sounded dimmer. Steve’s vision darker.

Shit… Dustin wasn’t even going to run, was he? Well, fuck. He meant to say it. He hoped he had managed to between shoving Dustin back and getting his own stomach or kidney or intestines or whatever the hell Henry had ripped into minced inside of him. Or he at least hoped he’d said it recently. I love you. That kid owned the real estate that Robin didn’t.

“It’s bullshit.”

The pain was gone. The numb set in.

Then someone screamed, and Steve barely strung the thought together to gather: El?

Steve stared at Nancy while she leant on the marble counter, glaring at him. What the fuck was happening. Was this hell? Was Steve in hell? Did he die and, because he’d been such an asshole before, he got stuck in this shitty moment in his life again?

Steve wasn’t even sober. Everything felt a little fuzzy, wobbly. He wasn’t smashed like Nancy, but he’d had enough to feel it in his veins, fogging up his mind. But, at the same time, he was weirdly cognisant. Like he hadn’t been conked on the head a dozen times over. And, actually, he guessed he hadn’t yet. Assuming he was entertaining that this was happening.

Because Steve had died. He’d just been disembowelled in 1987. But now he stood in a trashed bathroom at a high school Halloween party in 1984. And that wasn’t possible.

Steve needed… Well, he sure as hell didn’t need drunk Nancy.

“Uh…” Steve began, because what the fuck was he meant to say here?

He did remember this, right? It wasn’t a weird drunk fever dream? The last three years? But this moment was play-for-play what he recalled. Or, what he thought he recalled.

Shit, he needed to see if he was crazy. Maybe he was having a breakdown. Some sort of episode because it was a year out, so he just imagined, what? Three more years of trauma?

Nancy scowled deeper and snatched the wet washcloth off the counter, rubbing at the stain that would never come out of her outfit. “Uh…” she mocked him bitterly, looking down at the damage while she scrubbed fruitlessly.

Okay. Nancy was being sort of… rude right now. And Steve was having a mental breakdown. Maybe. So, things were looking all around bad at this moment.

“Listen, Nance—”

“You’re bullshit,” Nancy mumbled under her breath.

And, okay, Steve couldn’t do this right now. He hesitated—he shouldn’t just leave her alone, right?—then he shuffled around her to crack the door open and peer out.

The waft of stale booze and raucous din amplified, a sea of heads visible that Steve used to know but hadn’t seen for years—or maybe he had. Maybe all his marbles were not only lost but shattered and cracked, kicked around. And then a familiar husking voiced reached him.

“Look, that’s a solid deal, alright? I’m, like, giving you the best of what I brought, man. Take it or leave it,” Eddie was saying, spieling what Steve remembered to be his wheeler-dealer speech. It was jarring, hearing him after all this time.

Hey, Steve… Make him pay.

Those words had haunted him. Well into ’87. And Steve couldn’t even manage to do it. To make him pay.

Was it real? The Upside Down was, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

So… Steve could have memories from the future or something. Was he Marty McFly in this scenario? Was that movie even out yet?

What the hell was Steve supposed to even, like, do right now?

There was a break in the crowd, and suddenly Eddie was visible. He had a Black Sabbath shirt on, leather overtop it. Steve distantly wondered where his battle jacket was—that’s what Dustin had said it was. A battle vest. Jacket. Whatever. What a stupid name.

Steve had wished he’d kept it, after all was said and done. Eddie’s loss preceded Max’s preceded Lucas’s preceded Jonathan’s preceded Robin’s. It just kept going.

Oh, god. Jonthan was here. He hadn’t seen it happen to him. It was mainly Nancy’s sobs and Will’s haunted, catatonic stare that communicated it. Hopper confirmed it later, when he and Steve were reloading ammunition.

Oh, wait. Jonathan was here. Jonathan was here, right? Was that enough to confirm Steve wasn’t batshit? Maybe not. But…

“Eddie,” Steve said without much thought. It swivelled attention his direction, both from Eddie Munson and Peter Wilkins—he was in Steve’s graduating class. Steve only knew him from sports and parties, but they never really meshed in crowds, just passing ships.

Eddie’s big doe eyes found him—make him pay, the scene flashed back to his mind, ashen Upside Down, parting for the last time—and Eddie quirked a grin, ready to sell to King Steve. But Steve wasn’t King Steve. And he usually wasn’t the buyer, anyway. It had typically been Tommy. But this was the right environment. Big party. Drunken patrons.

And, a belated realisation, Eddie didn’t know Steve as more than some meathead jockstrap. To him, Steve was just a willing wallet, not even the tale of a babysitter spun from four motor-mouthed freshmen.

To be honest, that kind of blew. Steve (maybe?) knew Eddie, but Eddie didn’t know fuck all about Steve. Not really. He only saw the old persona he’d yet to fully shed.

“Steeeve Harrington,” Eddie called. “Just let me finish my business here with my good pal Peter and I’ll be right with you, mkay?”

Steve swallowed. Was he having a mental breakdown? He might be. And he was waiting on bated breath to talk to Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson? About what? Hey. Good to see you alive?

“Sure. Run away,” Nancy was grumbling behind him. “Party, what a fun party.”

Steve fucking hated life right now. And he needed out. He needed to breathe air that wasn’t thick with smoke and booze and teenagers he didn’t know anymore.

“Yeah,” Steve drew out the vowels, stepping into the hall and closing the door behind him. “No. You know what? Nevermind, man.” He could just find Jonathan. Tell him to take Nancy home. He’d done that before. Or, if this happened before, he’d done that before.

Yeah, Steve needed to get the hell out of this house right now. He needed air. He needed to not be here. Steve just died. Steve’s still alive? In 1984? But he died.

Shit.

Steve shouldered past Eddie’s drug deal and a dozen other partygoers. He ran into Jonathan, exactly where he thought he might be, which was doing wonders for his state of mind, and he said, “Jon. Hey. Uh, hey, Jonathan… Nancy’s in the bathroom. She’s—can you take her home?”

Jonathan blinked at him confusedly. “Um. Sure, but… why can’t you?”

“I’m not—” Steve didn’t know what to say. “I can’t do this.”

True to his admission, he turned and walked the rest of the way outside. Nancy was Steve’s girlfriend. But Nancy wasn’t. Nancy was Jonathan’s girlfriend. Right? No. Maybe.

Jesus, his head was splitting. The familiar drill of a migraine started forming in his temple, and he didn’t stop walking until he reached his Bimmer.

If none of it was real, why did Steve make up that he and Robin Buckley became inseparable? Robin wasn’t even on his radar. And Steve felt really stupid about that. Because she was Robin.

And then there was Eddie Munson. Steve just really wanted to complete his make believe outcast crew? And he spun a whole tale about Henry Creel? The deaths of Chrissy and Fred and so many others? His mind killed Bob? Billy?

Okay, maybe Billy.

But Steve wasn’t actually that creative of a guy. All that was… too grand for his brain to manifest. He hadn’t realised he was hunched over the cold metal of his car until the crunch of gravel drew his attention. His cheek pressed against maroon as he turned to look.

There she stood, tiny and with short curls that dusted her ears. Steve had never met her. But he had. He knew he had. So he said, “El.”

“Steve,” she acknowledged, sounding like a little pipsqueak. Because she was. One of Steve’s little pipsqueaks, all miniature in this turned around evening.

“Is this real?” Steve dared to ask. He was far enough from the party now that no one was likely to wander to where they were. Or if they did, they wouldn’t be cognisant enough to consider how strange it was that Steve Harrington was chatting with a grungy-looking middle schooler. “Am I… Am I, like, real, right now?”

“I did not know what would happen,” El told him in that monosyllabic delivery she’d somehow mastered. “But it was right as you faded… I took you with me. To retry. And we landed here. Now.”

“So, it’s real?” Steve pressed. “What I remember. Or like, predict? I guess? I lived that? We lived that?”

El nodded.

“And everyone—”

“I could not—I could only take you, because you were…”

“Dying,” Steve said bluntly. “I died,” he whispered more so to himself. Later. Breakdown later. Jesus, it was Halloween? 1984? “Where are you supposed to be right now?”

“Not here,” El said with a tight smile. “Come with me to tell Dad?”

“We have to—?” The horror set in. “No one knows. No one knows anything. Jesus Christ, just us? I don’t… I don’t even know if I remember everything right. And we, what? Try again? Try better this time? This is goddamn crazy. Like, actually crazy.”

El flattened her mouth to a line, and her smooth reaction was older than it should have been on her face. “I did not know what else might work. It was this or it was nothing.”

“What about the rest of them? Back there?” Steve wondered aloud morbidly. “Are they, uh. Are they gone?”

“I do not know. But they are here, so I do not think they can be there.”

The gravity of that fell heavy on Steve. Everything that had made up Robin, Dustin, Nancy, everyone for the last three years… gone. Only memories in El and Steve’s minds.

“Holy shit,” he said.

Steve Harrington died at twenty-one years old. And now he lives again at eighteen, with what might honest-to-god be the weight of the world on his and one little girl’s shoulders.

“Let’s talk to Hop.”

***

“You smell like cheap beer,” Jim Hopper accused Steve while he stared him down in his cabin’s living room.

“Sounds about right,” Steve muttered. It was bad timing, this little time travel jaunt. Oh! Actually. “Hey,” Steve said to El, who glanced up at him. “It’s like Back to the Future, right?”

El smiled wide, “Yes!” And then the smile dropped. “But you are just you. And there is no back.”

“Right,” said Steve, grimacing.

“Okay. Enough of whatever the hell that is. What were you doing? Both of you? Harrington, you understand how this looks, right? A guy your age, and her?” Hopper’s expression was critical, and he remained intimidating, even if he didn’t sport all the muscle Steve had gotten used to seeing on him.

“Uh, no,” Steve said quickly. “I mean, yes, I understand. But no, definitely not.”

“Start talking, then.”

“Dad,” El said, and that seemed to grind everything to a halt.

Hopper’s sharp inhale was followed by baffled floundering. Then he said, with a weak and disbelieving inflection, “Dad?”

El smiled sadly, picking at a blanket tossed over the back of a chair to her right. “Yes. This will be difficult to swallow, I think. You… You barely know me now. So you may not believe me—”

“You need to believe her,” Steve interjected.

“—but many things have happened. In a future that does not exist anymore. And Steve and I have experienced them. There is so much we need to tell you. To warn you about. You and everyone. We… we need to help Will. It is my fault—”

“No,” Steve said sternly. He turned to her and faltered at her appearance again. It was only an impression of the girl she grew to be, and it still threw him off. But they’d had this conversation ten times over. Whether it was him, or Mike, or Will, or Hopper, or anyone else, they all firmly believed: “This was not your fault.”

And El did what she always did. Smiled kindly in response but did not confirm the claim.

“Okay,” Hopper said slowly. He darted his gaze between them a few times. “So you and Steve Harrington are from the future. That’s what you’re staying? That’s your story?”

“You know, you and I have literally been in the trenches together, Hop,” Steve said blithely. “Weird to be treated like just some kid. Were you always this much of a hard ass?”

“Excuse me?”

“Joyce made him softer,” El conspired, and it had Hopper’s attention shooting down to her.

“Joyce?”

“What’ll it take to convince you? Don’t ask me lotto numbers,” said Steve.

“Okay,” Hopper huffed with a sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s just—let’s just pretend that I’m humouring this. After all the shit last year I don’t… I don’t know what to believe. And Will’s… Yeah. Yeah, tell me. What’s this future, and why, uh—Jesus, I guess I’m saying this—time travel?”

El summed it up nicely, saying, “The Upside Down won.”

“The dimension won? Won what?”

“Well, it was more like the asshat who manipulated it won,” Steve provided. He was helping. He could help.

“Henry,” El said, then she turned to Steve. “Make it simple, Steve.”

Was Steve making it complicated?

“There is a person making all this happen? One of those government schmucks?”

“Definitely not!” Steve barely stifled his scoff. “They probably wish, though.”

“Right,” Hopper said sceptically. “And he won. Won what? How?”

Steve shrugged. “I mean, he slaughtered most of Hawkins. And, uh. I guess I died too, so…”

Hopper stared blankly at him. A small hand touched Steve’s wrist, gaining his gaze.

“I am sorry, Steve. I did not get there in time.”

“Hey,” Steve said, realising that maybe he’d spoken that truth too numbly. That maybe he hadn’t really processed it. That it would come to haunt him in the night, like everything else. “No, I mean. It’s you and me, kid. I guess I, uh. I’m sort of proud to be here with you. That I got to be the one to…”

What started as comfort crumbled at the bottom. El only had Steve. All those beautiful connections she’d made across the years, gone. Empathetic wetness started to prickle his eyes, and he couldn’t help but think she drew the short straw. Why him? Why Steve’s death? Why take him along for the ride?

El must have seen it on his face, because she smiled in that sad, serene way she tended to.

“It is fine, Steve.”

“You don’t need to lie to me, El.”

That triggered it, it seemed, because she bit her lip and scrunched her nose, a few silent tears slipping over her cheeks. “It is fine, Steve.” But this time, it really didn’t sound like it. Steve dropped a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she leaned his way, her head resting on his side. “You smell like trash.”

Steve laughed at that, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

“Okay,” Hopper grabbed their focus. “Okay, you are not the same little girl I left at home this morning,” he told El, who gazed up at him, willing him to accept it. “And you,” he addressed Steve. “You shouldn’t even know her. Or really about her. And—” his attention went to El again, “—did you call me ‘Dad’?”

El’s eyes shined as she simply said, “You are my Dad. That is what I call you.”

“Oh,” Hopper said, conflicted. Maybe a with a hint of happiness. “And you’re both from the future? To, uh. Stop a tragic end, or something like that?”

“Pretty much,” Steve told him. “Don’t worry. I hate it to. Thought I was having a mental breakdown until El found me.”

“And it’s only you two,” Hopper needled, but he was sounding more lenient, like he might be willing to consider it a possibility. “Why? Why now?”

“Henry killed Steve,” El said softly, like she didn’t want to say it at all. “And Dustin, he—” she cut herself off and Steve’s blood went cold.

“Dustin what? What did that little shit do?” Steve could feel himself panicking. The adrenaline of a fight was bleeding back into him, and his skin tingled under the surface, like it was too tight. He turned his head to pin her with a wide-eyed look. “What did Dustin do?”

“It does not matter now, Steve,” El told him. It was probably a kindness.

“I told him. I told him to run! I’m always telling all my little whippersnappers to run. He didn’t—Jesus. Tell me he didn’t do something stupid. The little butthead always does something—”

Big, fat crocodile tears rolled from El’s eyes now.

“I could not listen to him,” she admitted, biting back a sob. “He broke. Everyone was so… Everyone broke. If you die, I die, he kept—and I could not—”

Steve took his free hand and rubbed it over the bottom of his face, covering the lower half of his expression. Christ. He blinked back tears and let out a noise, strained and wounded. Jesus Christ. Dustin.

“He loved you,” El choked out, forcing a smile.

Steve did lose the handle on a sob then, managing to hoarsely whisper, “That little idiot.”

“I’ll regret saying this,” Hopper murmured. “I think I might believe you.”

***

“So how old are you?” Hopper asked, a cigar in his mouth where he sat by a cracked window.

“Twenty-one,” said Steve. He was pretty much sober now. Reality sucked even more.

“Sixteen,” El said primly beside him.

“Six—!” Hopper’s exclamation clipped into a scoff. “Yeah, alright.”

It didn’t sound yeah, alright to Steve. It sounded like Hopper still wasn’t fully convinced.

As if to prove that point, Hopper sighed and dangled his cigar between two fingers, staring at Steve. “Look. Kid. I know your dad. Some bigshot investment banker, right? Shows face at the local fundraisers for clout. Sure, I know him. I barely know you. Some kid who sat with the rest of us in a waiting room. Who signed an NDA? That’s it. That’s who you are to me.”

Hopper wasn’t wrong. That didn’t make it sting any less.

The guy had become a paternal figure for him, in a way. Something between that and a friend. Now they were just strangers.

“Steve is… Steve,” El said, as if that were all that needed saying.

Every once in a while, she was still just a kid. Coming from her current appearance, it sounded even more childish.

“And that means what?” Hopper groused, sucking in a long toke.

El glanced up at Steve; he remained the only one standing, arms folded and hip pressed against the edge of the peninsula that carved out a divide into the kitchen.

“He is the babysitter.”

Steve had half a mind to rebuke that. Say that he wasn’t and hadn’t been for a while. Instead, what happened was his mouth formed a nostalgic, placid smile and he huffed lightly to himself. The little twerps. He’d die for them all over again if he had to, wouldn’t he? He’d failed them once, some more irreversibly than others. It wouldn’t happen again.

“So, in this alleged future, you looked after the kids. While us actual adults, what? Neglected them?” Hopper asked.

“It wasn’t that simple,” Steve told him. Between the broken buzz and the reckoning of whatever the fuck mess Steve’s existence had become, a bone-deep weariness speared into him. This is how it would be, right? Convincing. Fighting tooth-and-nail for people to listen. Take this shit seriously. Steve wished El had taken someone else. Someone more capable.

When he realised a moment later that was the same as wishing death on that person, he took it all back. But maybe it didn’t matter. They were gone. Everyone who had been. Figments of a future that no longer played out.

“We were pulled in different directions all the time. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. And some of us…” Steve trailed. He wasn’t sure where to take this. He darted a look at El. She just watched him with the same hesitance reflected back. She didn’t know what to say either. Not really. And Steve was still the babysitter. “Couldn’t even be around if they wanted to.”

Hopper’s brow drew down at that. Maybe it was Steve’s delivery, but he looked more contemplative now. “And, in this, uh. In this future… you just took it on yourself to watch the kids?”

“It just turned out that way,” said Steve. It took a while for him to own that responsibility.

“And it was three years then? Of this supernatural crap?”

“And some change,” Steve affirmed.

“Forgive me if, despite everything, time travel feels a bit farfetched,” Hopper grumbled, hollowing his cheeks to take from his cigar. “Like I said, I don’t know you, Steve. This could be one weird, fucked-up Halloween prank. I know kids like you, Harrington. They like to act out because daddy doesn’t pay enough attention to them.”

Something in Steve hardened at that. “You’re right. You don’t know me. But wouldn’t that be a little too messed up? It was… just this last year for you, we all dealt with the demogorgan. All learned about the Lab. We all knew about Will’s cover-up. Barbra Holland’s death.” Steve took a grounding breath. His nails were biting into his own arm. “God, and you don’t even know the half of it, Hop. I wish it was a lie. So don’t patronise me, alright?”

“So then tell me—whatever this whole doom prophecy is!”

“Everyone fucking dies, Hop!” Steve seethed. God, he felt like he was ripping at the seams. He hadn’t realised he was barely holding it together. But desperation had built up without him noticing, and now it just flowed. “You think this shit is bad? It’s—It’s 1984? Will’s possessed, or whatever. He never gets over it, never. And more. People. Die. They always do. Poor freaking Bob Newby bites the dust. Then, Jesus, I don’t even know how many when that hive mind shit happens. Billy is a shitbag, but at least he died saving Max. And the deaths somehow got worse, Chrissy snapped to pieces. Max, nearly… Eddie—” That was the first death Steve felt chip at something inside him. He’d cared about the guy, even if it was new and a lot of it was through Dustin. But by the end, he was one of them. Then he was gone. Just like that. Limp, bloody, held in Dustin’s arms as he sobbed. “—Eddie was the first of ours to go. But not the last. So try telling me again why I’d lie about Max Mayfield. Lucas Sinclair. Robin Buckley. Jonathan Byers. My-fucking-self.” Steve was breathing heavy, nails digging deeper, eyes glassier. “Max, Lucas, Jonathan. Fucking Rob. Robin. I wasn’t even with her.” And here he was. Safe. No Upside Down creeping through outside. Standing in Hopper’s cabin. Getting a do-over. While Robin had died alone. “Fuck,” he said, a revelation. He couldn’t look at Hopper anymore. Or El. He turned and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing every morbidly awful feeling that strangled his throat back down. “Jesus. They’re all just gone. And the last thing Dustin saw was—” me dying.

“Steve…” El said carefully.

And that wasn’t right. El shouldn’t be looking after Steve.

“I’m fine. Give me a second. Sorry.”

“Okay, kid,” said Hopper. “Alright. I hear you. And I’m not sure I followed all of that, but I’m pretty sure you said Will is possessed and that Joyce’s boyfriend Bob the Brain is a goner. So it sounds like… we have some work to do.”

“You believe us? You will help?” El asked hopefully.

It was quiet for a stint before Hopper said, “Whether I believe it or not won’t stop me from helping. I don’t know how you both seem to know about Will. But it lines up.”

“I won’t let Henry manipulate my brother again,” El said fiercely.

Steve turned back around just in time to witness Hopper’s expression moving though several emotions, landing on perplexed as he asked wryly, “Your brother?”

***

Dustin had been feeling weird all night. Out of place.

He’d just broken rank with Lucas, having already said his goodbyes to Mad Max. And he thought he liked her. He really did. And he still sort of does. She’s a total badass.

But he’d watched Max and Lucas for a moment and suddenly felt like a voyeur. Like he was wedging himself into something he wasn’t meant to.

Sack of candy in hand, he trekked up the driveway and startled when the trashcan rattled.

It’s not Mews, his brain whispered. Heart picking up pace, he dragged his feet over to the can. It’s not Mews. It’s not a pet. It’s dangerous. You can’t keep it. It’s not a pet.

He lifted the lid and spotted a weird, slimy oversized tadpole.

It’s not a pet. You can’t keep it. It’s not from here. It’s from somewhere dangerous. It’s a predator. Get rid of it.

Dustin kept staring. The weird thing was chittering lowly, perched on a bag of trash.

Get rid of it!

“I…” Dustin trailed, lost. Dart doesn’t exist. It never did. It’s a predator. Get. Rid. Of. It.

Dustin’s head started aching and he groaned, blinking to centre himself again. But when he opened his eyes on the third blink, the world was dark. Dank and covered in debris and gooey vines. Nothing looked right. Abandoned, dead and lonely.

Dustin blinked again as red lightning struck in the distance. Everything was fine. Normal.

The creature in the trashcan hissed at him. Get rid of it! His mind still screamed at him. But he couldn’t. Dustin wasn’t a killer. Dustin was just a—

“How do I know if it’s not just a lizard?”

“Yeah! How do you know if it’s not just a lizard?”

“Because its face opened up and it ate my cat.”

Dustin just needed someone who could do it for him. And maybe he already knew the perfect candidate. So, for now, he scooped it up in his ghost catcher.

“Sorry about this, my sludgy frienemy. But I don’t think you belong here.”

***

“Joyce?” Hopper questioned, then, “Oh. Hey, Bob. Uh, yeah, Happy Halloween to you too. Can I, uh. Can I talk to Joyce for a second? It’s important.”

Steve was exhausted, sat next to El on Hopper’s dinky couch.

“How’d you do it?” Steve asked her. He was curious. Had been curious since realising he wasn’t cracked. “How’d you bring us back?”

El frowned at him, a wrinkle between her brows. “It is not easy to explain. There is a place I can go. It is quiet. Full of nothing and water. I created it. Here is like there. But different. Like… a film. I rewound. But I wasn’t sure where it would stop. Like rewinding without looking at the television. Guessing when to hit the button. But it is like… the movie was ruined when I ejected it, the film pulled out of the VHS tape. We need a new movie now.”

“—Yeah. Yes, tonight. I know you have your date. I’m sorry about that, Joyce. But I promise it’s not a waste of time.”

“I’m not sure I totally get it,” Steve admitted.

El huffed with weary amusement. “I am not sure I do either, Steve. But it is done.”

“I’ll be bringing guests. Friends.” Joyce must have said okay, because Hopper hung up the receiver with a sigh. “You good to follow me and drive, kid?”

“Yep,” Steve affirmed.

Tonight sucked.

***

“Steve?” Jonathan asked confusedly, surely having not expected to encounter Steve’s mug again tonight.

“Jon,” Steve acknowledged, worn out.

Hopper and El had already made their way in, El smiling timidly at Will, who watched her sit down next to him, baffled.

“Joyce, you know Steve,” Hopper gestured to where Steve again refused a chair, opting to lean on the wall. He hadn’t been in this house for long years now. It was strange to be back.

“Hi, Steve,” Joyce said kindly, if not bewilderedly. “How are you?”

Steve had always liked Joyce. It was depressingly dampening when she became quiet after losing Jonathan. Never really recovered part of herself. Steve understood it. It was different, he knew that, but losing Robin was like losing a limb. Losing Jonathan must have been like losing half her heart.

“I’m, um. It’s fair to say I’ve had better days,” Steve offered with a forced smile.

Joyce didn’t press him on it, but she did tilt her head in mild concern.

“Hey, Will,” Steve greeted him, only realising after that he’d barely spoken to him at this point in time, in 1984. Brief waves when Will passed by the Wheelers’ living room on his way to hangout with Mike in the basement.

Will tore his focus from El, pinning it on Steve. “Um… Hi.”

“Who…?” Joyce asked, glancing at El before eying Hopper.

“This is El,” Hopper introduced. And that must have been strange for El. To have to be re-introduced to her adoptive mother. “And we think she can help Will.”

“We?” Jonathan asked, sidling next to his brother. “As in: you and Steve?”

“We, as in El and Steve. And right, me too, since I brought them here.”

“El?” Will asked tentatively. “El the mage?”

“Yes,” El confirmed brightly, smiling at Will in a way that had Steve’s heart cracking. God, it had been so long since they’d had time to smile. Those two had formed a bond not dissimilar to Steve and Robin’s. And El looked so happy to be beside him again. “The mage.”

Will’s expression opened up, and he grinned back at her. “I… was hoping to meet you! But… Why are you here? Now?”

“I can protect you,” she told him determinedly. “From the Upside Down. I will not let it touch you. It has not—I can tell it has not infected you yet. And I will not let it. I can be your shield.”

“You’re going to cast… a protection spell?” Will hazarded an uncertain guess.

Steve forgot the kids’ dorkiness was so much worse when they were younger. “She’s going to fend off Upside Down stuff with her mind,” Steve clarified. Honestly, it didn’t sound much better, now that he’d said it out loud. “She’s basically a superhero.”

“Oh,” Will blinked at Steve, then eyed El. “Um. Okay. Thank you?”

El smiled blindingly at him, and Will shrunk into himself, seemingly unsure what to do with her attention. He, like El, was so damn small. Jesus. When had the kids stopped being kids? Looking at the two of them now, they looked like they’d never get older.

“Hop? Can I talk to you?” Joyce asked warily.

“We’re, uh. We’re not done, Joyce. Sorry. Harrington, that’s your cue.”

Steve frowned at Hopper. They hadn’t discussed exactly what was going to happen here. That Steve was going to be put in the hot seat again. He gave Hopper a bitter smile.

“Right now?” he asked.

Hopper grimaced back at him. “Yes. Now, Steve.”

Steve nodded to himself, took a breath, and didn’t dare look at Jonathan when he said, “Right. I don’t know how else to say this without just saying it. So. El and I are from the future; it’s not as impossible as it sounds. And, ah… some bad stuff is coming our way.” He lifted a limp pair of jazz hands. “Surprise, I guess.”

“Maybe it is more like we remember the future,” El added helpfully.

Steve pointed lazily to her. “Yeah. That.”

“Sorry,” said Jonathan. “But, what?”

“I don’t know what else to say, man,” Steve directed at Jonathan.

The longer he spent in a not-rend, un-fissured Hawkins, the more jarring it felt. Steve was used to considering the angle of his back and its vulnerability. Used to the constant of weaponry—his bat, a gun, even grenades on the odd occasion. Most pleasantries were a thing of the past, and it became survival. So Steve survived. Until he didn’t.

And now he leant on a wall in the Byers’ house on a calm October evening, teenagers partying and kids probably gorging themselves on Halloween candy by now.

It felt fake. That sort of normalcy was so far removed from Steve’s reality.

Except, now this was Steve’s reality.

“You’re from the future?” Jonathan repeated sceptically.

“We remember the future,” El said again, but Jonathan only spared her a quick glance.

Steve really didn’t have anything other to say than, “Yes.”

“Can you prove it?” Jonathan asked.

Steve sighed with ill-patience, bumping himself off the wall and untwisting his arms to hold them up with an aggravated, “How? What could I say that would convince you, Jon?”

“So you can’t prove it,” Jonathan affirmed, and Steve felt a little targeted.

Did Jonathan dislike him right now? Had Steve missed that before? He thought they’d been alright in 1984. Is this because Steve was still dating Nancy, and Jonathan—Oh god. I’m still dating Nancy… Should I stop? Or do I make it work? Wait, I’m still in high school. I’m still writing college applications right now. I haven’t even, like, said two words to Robin. Maybe ever! Am I supposed to pretend to be eighteen?

But it’s not pretending when I am just eighteen now. This is what things are now.

But I was just hunting demodogs. I was just fucking up recon on the church. How am I supposed to go back to this? This isn’t real, or it is, but it’s—I don’t fit here anymore.

He came out of nowhere. Freaky monstrous thing, not even sparing me a monologue. Just a hand through my gut, squeezing, twisting—God, bloody copper on my tongue, knowing it’s done. I’m done. I failed them, all the kids. Robin. I never made him pay. For any of them.

Searing pain, wrenching. But Dustin. Dustin had to live. Out of everyone, that kid—

“—eve!” El’s voice broke through, and Steve realised that he’d been staring into the middle distance, his chest inflating with quick, sharp breaths.

Steve swallowed, scanning the room and everyone was just looking at him. His gaze landed on El, who looked ready to get up from her seat, her brow furrowed as she watched him.

“Sorry,” Steve said, forcing his mind to reorder itself into function. Pulling it back to now. “Did you ask me something?”

What answered him as was soft question from Will. “Are you okay?”

“Maybe I was too rash with this,” Hopper muttered, spearing Steve with a wary evaluation. “Maybe everyone’s just on edge this time of year.”

“Steve, would you like me to introduce you to Dr. Owens?” Joyce asked softly.

“Owens?” Steve asked, then he exchanged a look with El. “Shit, should we tell Owens?”

“He might tell Papa,” El considered. “Papa would not fix his mistake. He would just make it look like it was not his doing.” She scowled. “But we might need Owens. To finish it.”

“I mean, we might need Owens for manpower. Supplies, artillery. They didn’t, like, have their shit together, but at least they distracted him enough that we had opportunities. And we don’t have the capital for this. And I—Jesus—I don’t even have a job right now. They shut the programme down this year, right? After the Lab was overrun?”

“Yes,” said El.

“Well, maybe they don’t this time. Maybe they turn it into what it always should have been—severing the goddamn connection. Does Brenner even know Vecna is Henry Creel?”

“Henry Creel?” Hopper asked, reminding Steve they were surrounded after the whiplash conversation between himself and El. “And Brenner? Did you ever meet the bastard?”

“I remember Henry Creel—God, that’s a name I’ve not heard for… almost twenty years?” Joyce said, baffled.

“Oh, right.” Steve blinked at her. “You, uh. You guys went to high school with the creep.”

“What the hell does this have to do with Henry Creel?” Hopper pressed.

“Henry was an orderly at the Lab,” El said, and all eyes drew to her. “He is like me. Except… He was corrupted. He tricked me. Killed everyone there… except me. And I banished him. But I did not realise he would come back. You know him as Victor’s son. But Victor didn’t do it. Henry did. And he will try to return. And he will succeed, if we do nothing.”

Emotions filtered across Joyce’s face in quick succession, and in the end her hands came up to cover her mouth as she breathed out an aghast, “Oh my god.”

“Mom?” Jonathan asked, alarmed, swivelling his attention over El, Steve, then Joyce.

“You’re telling me that Henry Creel is the reason this shit is happening?” Hopper asked critically.

“Not exactly,” Steve told him. “But he makes it a hell of a lot worse. And if we get rid of him, chances are we can get rid of the rest of it after.”

“Mom, who’s Henry Creel?” Jonathan asked, but Hopper continued:

“And he left you alive?” The question was directed at El. “Why?”

El got that guilty, ghostly look on her face again, so Steve cut in with, “El, it is not your fault. You know that.”

She didn’t respond to Steve. Instead, she pulled at her sleeve and revealed her ‘11’ tattoo. Her experiment number. It made Steve sick just thinking about it, especially as she was now, too small and fragile. “I am Eleven. He was One. He tricked me. Papa knew he was dangerous, so he put an inhibitor in his neck. To stop his powers. Henry… pretended to be someone he was not. A friend. But friends do not lie. I did not know he lied. So I removed the inhibitor. And now he is free.”

“A murderer who did what he did to his own family, with what? Psychic powers, is free? He’s out there, right now? And he has it out for Hawkins?” Hopper looked ready to explode, hand curled tightly around his chin.

“Right now… I think he is in Dimension X,” said El.

“But it’s still his influence in ‘84, right? Until he shows up in the, uh, flesh? In the Upside Down in ’86?” Steve asked.

“’86? Like, 1986?” Jonathan was sounded breathless. Maybe he finally believed, then.

“It could be ’85 when he gets into the Upside Down,” El mused grimly. “I could have been in California.”

“We wouldn’t have known, both you and Will gone,” Steve concurred. Then he caught Will’s wide eyes. Will, who had been incredibly quiet this whole time. “You—You moved away at one point, bud. But you guys came back.”

“Where the hell was I?” Hopper asked, voice tight. Fed up.

Steve couldn’t blame him. This was probably a lot.

“Gone,” both he and El said at once.

“Not dead,” Steve offered.

“No. Not dead,” El confirmed.

Then Steve remembered where Hopper was and the mess under the mall that led to it. “Oh my god. When did those fuckers even get here? Have they announced the mall yet? Should we just… Should we just tell Murray? Get him to blast it across the media? Make Owens and them do something about it?”

“Murray. Bauman?” Hopper hissed. “That ass wipe was just in my office—are you his informant?”

“What?” Steve scoffed. “No. Jesus. He has his own sources.”

“Steve, how old are you?” Jonathan asked, like it was at all important.

Steve’s expression twisted into something exasperated as he turned to Jonathan. “Why does everyone want to know how old I am? I’m twenty-one. Was twenty-one.”

Jonathan flickered his gaze between Steve’s eyes, searching. “So it was 1987? I was twenty?”

Something in Steve plummeted. He shouldn’t tell him. Or maybe he should. Their choices now, then, and onwards had consequences. They all needed to understand the gravity of this. How crucial it was that they listen. That they all did something before it spiralled.

“No, man.” Steve stared straight on, refusing to look away. “You weren’t. A lot of us… weren’t anymore. You were nineteen. That asshole… he has a lot to pay for.”

“Oh my god,” Joyce said sombrely. “No. No. None of that is going to happen. We are going to take down this monster. He will not lay a finger on my boys.”

“So you believe us now?” El asked the room.

It was Hopper who answered for all of them, giving a definitive, stony, “Yes.”

***

It was past 3 AM by the time Steve left the Byers’ house.

There had been a lot of arguing. About what to do. Who to tell. What to say.

Steve was supposed to brainstorm with Hopper and Joyce on how to blackmail Dr. Owens into an agreement where El could live without the fear of detainment and persecution. And also to get him onboard with defensive measures. They needed Dr. Owens to flip the script.

For now, El was staying at the Byers’ house, to keep a close eye on Will. It was this year that Will was a lens and messenger for Vecna, before they even realised that was a threat. It was more crucial now than ever that they prevent that. Henry couldn’t find out El and Steve were wise to potential catastrophe, having experienced it once. He could never be allowed in their heads and shouldn’t be in anyone’s near them either.

Hopper was also staying at the Byers’ house. And Bob, Steve suspected, would be turned away at the door. Poor bastard. Joyce liked him, but she loved her kids more.

Jonathan hadn’t said much to Steve. He’d been quiet. Maybe contemplating his own apparent demise. Will was equally silent. Steve hoped they’d both pull through it.

El told him to call. That they could get walkies. But to call, if he needed to. That she was serious. And yeah, she probably was. She was the only one who got it. Who knew the whole of it, what they’d seen and carried. Her even more than him.

El had said everyone was broken. It wasn’t until he was back in his Bimmer that he realised himself and El were also in that mix. But that sounded about right.

Steve Harrington of ’87 was a world away from Steve Harrington of ’84. And he couldn’t just wrangle that back. Even so, Hopper told him that he better be in school tomorrow. That he could just come by after the last bell rang. To still take his life seriously, because he wasn’t in a warzone right now. He was in high school. And that wouldn’t change.

A retry, El had said. And maybe that was more than just the Upside Down, if only by happenstance alone. God, that felt fucked.

Everything felt beyond messed up. Made worse for the fact that they’d, some more begrudgingly than others, agreed that everything disclosed over the evening stayed with only them for now. Just their small circle. Until they figured out their full approach.

Steve sort of felt like they’d be needing all hands on deck. And like complicit silence could blow up in their faces. But he understood it from their point of view, he guessed. The bonds weren’t fully there yet. Neither was the trust.

El hadn’t said yes or no. She observed, as she tended to do more when she got older. Steve was pretty sure she agreed with him. And they both knew the Upside Down had a way of rearing itself just broadly enough to tap everyone anyway.

It was probably inevitable that it would come up. All the secrets they’d unravelled over the years. That El and Steve were three years too many.

“Not a word,” Hopper had said. “Not until we figure out exactly what we’re doing.”

El hugged Steve tightly before he left, whispering into his ribs, “Goodnight, Steve. Do not be lonely, okay?”

He wanted to cry. Right then and there. This kid, robbed of a childhood, forced to be a weapon, was worried about him. Worse, she saw right through him. He petted the top of her head affectionately, ignoring Hopper’s disbelieving regard—because he’d only recently gotten her out of the woods, literally—and he said back, “You too, kid. Love you, alright?”

El pulled back and smiled. “Love you, too, Steve.”

They all exchanged those precious words by then. Knowing it might be their only chance to let the others know. Allow them to take it with them if they died.

Fuck. Their lives had really become a horror.

So when the tears finally fell as he was driving down silent, familiar roads, he didn’t berate himself for it. And he’d long since given up his own rule about not smoking in his car. For several reasons. What the fuck did it matter when the world was ending? He needed a fix for stress. And it always felt like a homage for the fallen. He still wished he’d kept that stupid battle jacket. Had a Kate Bush cassette. A basketball he and Lucas had shot hoops with. The picture Jonathan had given him, Dustin and Steve in frame, laughing at something silly and inconsequential. Robin’s stupid, lame, beautiful, perfect doodled Chucks.

“19-fucking-84,” Steve said, one hand on the wheel, the other pinching a lit cigarette between his knuckles. His watery eyes fixed on the dark street ahead of him. “Let’s go.”