files and feelings

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Alina woke up at five in the morning in her own bed, and for a moment she lay there, eyes darting around, confused. She didn't remember falling asleep, only being in her father's arms for an unknown reason and waking up here, with her shoes removed and palms bandaged, but still wearing her clothes from last night. Speckles of blood covered the fabric, making her look back down at her bandaged palms. She must've bled all over them last night.

And then Alina remembered why, exactly, she had been in her father's arms, and why, exactly, her palms were bleeding, and everything crushed her again, the heavy weight of death looming over the house, pressing her into the ground. Her mouth was sour, her eyes swollen from all the crying she'd done, and that, probably, didn't even compare with how Lucas, Dustin, and Mike were feeling.

Alina remembered Eleven, claiming to have known where Will is, and, in a way, leading the others right to him. But Eleven had said that he was alive, had said that he was hiding. From the Demogorgon, the unidentified monster that was not a bad man from the Lab, but something else entirely.

Eleven said—

Alina's eyes widened, and she threw back the covers, sliding out of her bed. It was five in the morning, which meant that Brandon Fairgrieves was not quite awake. Which meant that a certain office would be available for her thieving. Grief was pulsing through her, giving her a purpose, and so Alina found herself slipping outside of her room, padding silently downstairs.

Living with Linda taught Alina how to get to places without making a noise. One day, when she was home alone, Alina had marked down every creaky floorboard in the entire house, created a map of where to step on a piece of scrap paper. She used to carry it with her everywhere, practicing getting from one room to the next without making a sound, before she'd memorized the list and she didn't need it anymore.

So it was that Alina managed to slip past her father's room with barely a whisper, clutching two paper clips in her hands. She slunk down the stairs, passing a sleeping Skywalker, who was looking so adorable that she couldn't resist stopping to pet him, and made her way to her father's office.

She would get in massive trouble if she was found out. She wouldn't just be grounded for one month now, entire years could go by without a comic or a rewatch of Star Wars.

But right now, she didn't care. Will's death had made her one-month long sentence seem like nothing, perhaps because it was; in the grand scheme of things, losing her comics wouldn't matter. One day she would lie in a grave, one day her life would be snuffed out, her breathing ceased. One day she would attract flies and fade back into nature. Nothing mattered anymore.

So with bated breath, Alina waited, fiddling with the lock with her paper clips. She'd had these for a while, and had already bent the first one into an L shape, her tension wrench, the other one bent flat to be used as her pick. Biting her lip in concentration, Alina felt the pins inside the lock with her pick, depressed them, and unlocked the door. It had taken less than thirty seconds.

Alina had heard the door open before, and it wasn't exactly quiet, so she oiled the joints with some vegetable oil in her kitchen. The door opened without noise, and Alina slipped inside, the pride of successful rule-breaking filling her.

Just like his room, Brandon Fairgrieves's office was an organized disaster. His desk was filled with an array of papers, and the shelf above it contained a number of files. Anything in here had the possibility of concealing the file.

She started, logically with the files on the shelf, taking mental pictures of where they were on the shelf before she picked them up and searched through them. There wasn't anything interesting in the first few, just old papers from his old job, but when she got near the bottom, she began to find transcripts in Russian. Her breath caught and she ran her hands over the inky black letters, wishing she could decipher them. But, inevitably, she had to put them back. Her dad could wake up at any time, and she didn't exactly want to be caught red-handed.

There was no file about Subject Eleven on the shelf, and Alina frowned. Of course. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Of course he wouldn't put the file with the others. He was a paranoid man, and even though he had no idea his spunky twelve-year-old daughter knew how to pick locks, he still would keep it away just in case.

She moved to the desk next, rifling through the papers, most of them in undecipherable professional work language. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she jumped at every creak the sound of the house settling made—or perhaps the noise was just Skywalker; there could be a ghost in the house and Alina wouldn't know as she'd assume all strange noises were caused by her cat. Working was easing her sadness, and she found it easier to be focusing on something other than Will instead of dwelling on the poor boy.

She was just reaching the bottom of the file when she found a photo. It had obviously been ripped off of something—she could see the jagged marks where it was torn—but that wasn't what made her breath hitch. It was the fact that the girl in the picture was her.

The picture was of her as a baby, but Alina still knew it was her; she'd seen baby pictures of herself before. The baby in the picture had the same big eyes, the same chubby cheeks and only a slight fuzz of brown hair atop her head.

What was the real proof, however, was the dress that Alina was wearing in the photo. The same dress she had been gifted from her mother when she was eight as a birthday gift. "For your future daughter!" Linda had said happily. "I wore it when I was a baby, and so did you, and so will your daughter in the future!"

Imagine giving an eight-year-old a dress for her future child, Alina thought, disgusted, before looking back at the photo again. A cold chill ran down her spine as she recognized where this photo had been taken.

Hawkins Lab.

Alina's hands were trembling again, thinking back to the blackened doorknob, the burnt trees, her bleeding nose. Hawkins Lab. But it was impossible. Impossible to even think of. A thought so deluded, so strange, so—

At the bottom of the pile of papers—and photos—sat a file. On the front, written in neat writing Alina hadn't noticed the first time she'd seen it, the words Subject Eleven—1971-1983 were written. This was it.

Alina grabbed the pile, quickly placing each paper back exactly where it had been, just as a voice called out from upstairs.

"Ally?"

Alina's pulse skyrocketed, but she forced herself to remain calm. With a speed she didn't know she had, Alina shoved the file and the photo into her shirt, darted out of the room, shut the door and headed into the kitchen, sitting down at the table with her head in her hands just as Brandon Fairgrieves came down the stairs. His face softened when he saw her.

"Hey, Ally. You're up early. How are you feeling today?"

"Can I stay home today?"

Her voice was hoarse from all the crying she'd done last night, and she hoped her dad would think she was trembling from sadness, and not fear. Of course, she was upset, but right now fear had overruled everything, and she kept second-guessing herself, worried that a misplaced paper or lopsided file would clue Brandon Fairgrieves that she'd broken into his office, stolen the file on Eleven.

"Of course you can." Brandon smiled sadly at her. "You haven't been feeling well for the past couple of days, have you?"

Alina nodded. "I've—I've had this massive headache, and my throat is sore, and I just—I don't want to go to school. Not after Will."

"Ally. It's okay." Brandon gazed at her fondly, and she almost couldn't take it, almost let the file slip, almost revealed to him everything she'd found out about him, not even to mention the strange papers in his office. Almost told him about Eleven, the girl he'd claimed was dangerous but really wouldn't dare hurt them. But she couldn't do that to Mike. Or Dustin, or Lucas, or El herself. Not after Will.

Friends... they tell each other things. Things that parents don't know.

She kept her lips sealed.

"T-thank you."

"Why don't I make us some breakfast, and you can change out of those clothes, take a shower. Unfortunately, I've got work to do, though. Will you be okay here by yourself?"

"I'll be okay." Alina got up. "I'm going—I'm gonna take a shower. Thank you, dad."

Alina practically ran upstairs to her room, where she gathered some clothes and headed into the bathroom. She sat on the toilet lid and turned on the shower, letting the water run to avoid suspicion as, with shaking hands, she opened the file.

The picture of Eleven stared back at her, the very same one her father had shown her the night she escaped. Alina smiled at it before moving onto what she was really looking for—the journal entries about her. Subject Eleven, the first one had written on the top. 1971.

And so Alina began to read. A girl in bloodied clothes with tear tracks on her face sitting on the lid of a toilet, reading a file about a girl with strange abilities probably wasn't what Linda Fairgrieves had expected when she gave birth to her daughter almost thirteen years ago. But Alina wasn't a miniature Linda Fairgrieves. She was a mess, a girl who had lived in silence, a girl who grew up learning things like how to make it across the house without a noise, the girl who taught herself to fall out of trees and pick locks because she was so bored, her chest bursting with wanting for a confidant, for a friend.

A girl involved in government conspiracies and dead boys.

After Alina showered, she ran a comb through her dark hair and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked better than she had, with fresh clothes and all of the blood wiped away, but she was still a mess, a mess with red eyes who couldn't stop thinking about Will, the last words he'd ever said to her. See you around. He couldn't have predicted it. Nobody could. Death wasn't picky. It went for everyone and everything.

She was just heading downstairs, the smell of sizzling bacon reaching her nose, when the phone rang. Alina picked it up, and found it was Lucas. His voice was hoarse as her own, laced with exhaustion and grief as he spoke.

"Do you want to come over?"

Alina nodded, then realized Lucas couldn't see her. "Yeah," she said. "I do. Are you—I mean, of course, you're not okay, but—"

"Al. Please. I don't want—I don't want to talk about him right now. I just—I don't know, I feel like you'd understand. And... I don't know, I guess I like having you around. It'd make me feel better."

"I'll come over as soon as possible," she promised, leaning against the wall. "I have something to show you, too. If you're in the mood for it."

"You have? What did you find? Is it about Will?"

"No. But—" Alina glanced around. The hall was empty, and she knew her father was downstairs, but she was still quite paranoid, finding herself lowering her voice regardless. "It's about you-know-who. I did it. I got the file."

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧