HOPPER DECLARED THE TOOL SHED behind the Byers house suitable for them to interrogate Will should they disguise it to a point where he, and the Mind Flayer in turn, wouldn't recognize it. It was coincidental since the shed was where Will had been abducted into the Upside Down a year prior, but there weren't many other places they could use at a quarter past midnight.

        The same quartet that had fought the Demogorgon a year ago worked to clear out the interior of the shed and drape it with any and all materials they could find. There was an underlying tension between Nancy and Steve but they did their best to ignore it, both separately concluding that they had more important matters to deal with. On the other hand, there wasn't any tension between Jonathan and Amara, only a burning question on the latter's mind.

        "Hey," she gauged Jonathan's attention, holding the tarp against the wall for stability while Jonathan taped it in place. "Where were you yesterday?"

        Jonathan completed fastening the tarp to the wall before hopping back down to the ground. "Why do you ask?"

        "I don't know," Amara responded truthfully. "We were partnered for a report for history and you weren't there. It's probably not important right now but I was wondering if it had anything to do with all of this."

        Jonathan glanced over to the other side of the shed, to where Nancy was helping Steve attach another piece of tarp to the wall. Nancy had been the first to break the strain by commending him for helping the kids alongside Amara. "We, umm, we found a way to spread the word about what happened to Barb by making her death sound more believable," he whispered. "Hopefully the word gets out and those bastards are finally held accountable."

        Amara nodded in understanding as she and Jonathan continued obscuring the wall. Of course. Nancy would never skip school and Jonathan would never abandon his brother, unless they felt compelled to avenge someone dear to Nancy who represented what could have happened to Will had they not found him in time. All of them had been forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of a deal Hopper had negotiated with Hawkins Lab, but the lab itself was unlikely to continue operating if people believed the watered-down version of the truth.

        "I'm sorry I missed the assignment," Jonathan apologized as they were layering the walls with old newspaper clippings. "I'll make sure to arrange a time to get it done after this is all over."

        "No, it's fine. I'm glad to know you weren't just leaving me to complete it on my own," Amara reassured him with a soft smile. "I hope the truth comes out."

        Once the inside of the shed was boarded up enough that it wouldn't be recognizable to any of them if they woke up there, Jonathan bound Will's limp form to a chair and everyone other than him, Joyce, Mike, and Hopper filed out of the room. Their objective was to jog Will's memory enough for him to recall who he was and give them insight into how to defeat the force holding him hostage. As for the others, they were back to waiting inside the Byers house until further notice.

        Everyone had a distinct coping mechanism they were utilizing while they waited. Dustin had started pacing in the kitchen while Steve was swinging his bat in the next room over in an effort to loosen his nerves. Lucas and Max sat across from each other, trying to convince themselves and each other that their plan was infallible, and Amara remained propped against the wall across from the phone, tapping her foot lightly against the floor.

        "Hey."

        Nancy had joined Amara and was standing across from her by the phone. She had her arms curled around her thin frame and was occasionally glancing to her right, where Steve was still perfecting his hit. Amara nodded in greeting, vaguely wondering why Nancy wanted to talk. Because she knew that Nancy had an ulterior motive that extended beyond simply saying hi.

        "Are you by any chance mad at me?" Nancy asked tentatively, gnawing on her bottom lip amid her anxiety.

        Nancy's question was the last thing Amara had been expecting to hear from her. "Why would I be mad at you?"

        "I don't know," Nancy mumbled, looking down at her feet. "I guess I feel like I've been a shitty friend lately."

        "What do you mean?" Amara queried, cocking her head to the side.

        "Well, I invited you to a party you clearly had no interest in going to," Nancy listed, though she was visibly relieved at the notion that Amara held no resentment towards her. "And then I tried to get you to have a drink at said party when you didn't want one. Then when Jonathan and I were planning to skip school to get revenge on those assholes for what they did to Barb, he suggested we let you know about it in case you wanted to join, but I told him we didn't have enough time even though we did. It's just, we fought a monster together last year and I've been so consumed with guilt about Barb that I didn't consider how you might have been affected."

        "It's not your fault," Amara insisted. "You lost your best friend. I didn't."

        "That doesn't mean you don't have trauma," Nancy told Amara, reminding her of how her brother had said a similar thing last year. "I failed to realize that. You still have those scars from a year ago. You had to fight those monsters again, which must have brought back memories you wished to forget. This fight is far from over, but afterward I hope we can be friends for real this time."

        Amara didn't feel comfortable enough to tell Nancy that the trauma she had endured growing up with autism far outweighed the trauma she had accumulated from fighting monsters from an alternate dimension, but the smile she gave Nancy was authentic. "I hope so too. I'm not mad at you, and neither is Steve."

        Nancy instinctively pivoted to the room Steve hadn't left since Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike had started interrogating Will, and she turned to face Amara again with a shamefaced expression. "Really? 'Cause I don't know if we officially broke up or not and I feel like I cheated on him with Jonathan – "

        "Maybe talk to him at some point?" Amara suggested. "He's not mad at you, I promise."

        "Thank you," Nancy beamed. "I'm glad you two are friends now, by the way."

        Just as Amara and Steve had built a bridge through their shared uncertainty of who they wanted to become in a world that expected them to already know everything about themselves, Amara and Nancy at that moment formed a bridge through their shared experiences. They didn't have the same degree of trauma, but it was still trauma nonetheless and that was what mattered the most.

        Hopper abruptly opened the back door and returned inside, followed by Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan. Everyone who had been waiting gathered around the kitchen table again, Hopper equipping himself with a notepad and pen and seating himself in one of the rickety chairs.

        "What happened?" Dustin questioned.

        "I think he's talking, just not with words," Hopper informed them, scribbling down a series of dots and dashes – morse code. While Amara didn't have it memorized as she had a hard enough time comprehending the English language, she recognized it right away.

        "What is that?" Steve queried as Hopper began translating Will's message.

        "Morse code," everyone else responded. Amara felt slightly bad for Steve for being in a situation where he couldn't be of good use, something she often grappled with.

        "H-E-R-E," Hopper spelled out once he had finished decoding.

        "Here," the group chorused. Joyce and Jonathan were particularly affected, acknowledging that they had a glimmer of hope to save Will.

        "Will's still in there," Hopper's words reinvigorated their fight against the Upside Down and the monster using Will as a pawn. "He's talking to us."

        After that those who had been in the shed returned with the intention to remind Will of who he was enough to ground him into his body and reveal the Mind Flayer's liability. Not caring that it would wake the neighbors, Jonathan blasted Will's favorite song, Should I Stay or Should I Go by the Clash from his boombox. Those who had previously been waiting for a sign that Will could still communicate to them were now given the job of translating the frequency Hopper dispatched from his walkie-talkie to Dustin's.

        Within time, they had a message written down in red crayon.

        "Close gate," they all read simultaneously. Amara gathered that Will knew no way to defeat the Mind Flayer other than by cutting it off from their world. The only question was, how were they to close the gate?

        The phone suddenly rang, most likely the military backup they now understood they didn't need. Cursing, Dustin bolted to the phone and slammed it back into the hook. When it rang a second time, Nancy ripped it from the wall and flung it onto the floor. But it was too late; if Will – no, the Mind Flayer had heard the noise and pinpointed the location they were at, all of them were in imminent danger.

        "Do you think he heard that?" Max inquired, visibly anxious.

        "It's just a phone. It could be anywhere," Steve answered, though he didn't quite believe what he was saying. "Right?"

        "I don't know," Amara murmured with apprehension. "I'd recognize my landline anywhere."

        Distant roars indicated that Will had heard the phone and the Mind Flayer had determined its location to be at the home of its host. It was as though the universe depended on a trade-off of some sort; they now knew how to obliterate the Mind Flayer, but they had to battle a drove of monsters first.

        "That's not good," Dustin stated the obvious.

        "Hey. Hey, get away from the windows!" Hopper shouted at Lucas, Max, and Mike, who had returned to the bungalow in haste along with Joyce and Jonathan. Once they had delivered Will's unconscious figure to one of the bedrooms, they assembled in the living room once again as they prepared for battle. Hopper had unearthed a shotgun to accompany his assault rifle, and Amara felt her heart sink at the fact that the bullets would have no effect on the creatures whatsoever.

        "Do you know how to use this?" Hopper interrogated Jonathan.

        "What?"

        "Can you use this?" Hopper repeated, his voice several octaves higher amid the increasing uncertainty.

        "I can," Nancy said, stepping forward. She caught it swiftly and made sure it contained enough ammunition before aiming it at the window. Amara picked her crowbar up from the coffee table where she'd discarded it and positioned herself between Nancy and Steve, who had his bat at the ready. Everyone who had a weapon, even if it was a wrist rocket or a candlestick, stood closer to the windows to protect those who were unarmed.

        Deja vu flooded through Amara's system as she gripped her crowbar, remembering how lucky she and her companions had been that the Mind Flayer called the creatures away before they could harm them – and even then it was at the expense of everyone at the lab. This time there was nothing they could do nothing other than fight off the monsters and hope they all made it out alive.

        Every growl prompted them to change direction and aim their weapons at the bushes rustling in the distance. Amara angled herself in front of Max, who was trembling at Lucas's side while Steve did the same with Dustin. The monsters were so close, and yet they didn't penetrate the house. They had a perfectly good meal waiting for them, so what were they waiting for? Unless it was another trick the hive mind was playing on them, making them feel safe enough to venture outside only to strike them there.

        Except the creatures were emitting noises of pain. Something else was fighting them; Amara knew that from the distinct snapping of bones. But they didn't dare lower their weapons, knowing that anything powerful enough to take out an army of those monsters could easily wipe the group of fighters out in one fell swoop.

        All was silent until something came crashing through the window in a shatter of glass that rained onto the drawing-covered floor. Everyone clamored and stumbled back from the first monster to infiltrate the bungalow, only letting their guard down when it lay there unmoving. And even then there was a potential that it was counting on them to do so.

        "Holy shit," Dustin murmured. Hopper was the first to inspect the beast to ensure it was lifeless, keeping a firm grip on his rifle.

        "Is it dead?" Max questioned, her voice quivering.

        Hopper didn't answer them with words, still approaching the creature with caution. One boot prodded at its head and when it didn't react, everyone exhaled in relief. But their fight was still far from finished: they still had to confront the force that had killed the monsters.

        The deadbolt on the door unlocking on its own had them all pivoting 180 degrees and lifting their weapons once more. The chain was the next to fall on its own, giving whatever was on the outside a clear route in. Amara clutched her crowbar so firmly it was almost painful, not wanting to imagine the severity of the threat that awaited them on the other side of the door.

        Only it wasn't a threat. It was a girl attired in a black punk jacket, jeans rolled at the ankle, and worn converse, her short hair slicked back with gel and dark makeup framing her eyes. But even a year later, there was no mistaking the soft features or blood stemming from her nose. At the sight of Eleven, who was miraculously alive, everyone lowered their weapons. Mike was the first to approach the girl he had never given up on, and only then did her solemn countenance falter and she smiled back at the boy she had never stopped dreaming about.

        The two of them instantly fell into each other's embrace, clinging to each other after almost a year apart. From behind her, Amara heard Max ask Dustin and Lucas if she was the same girl the Party raved about. All they could do was nod, in too much shock to speak.

        "I never gave up on you," Mike disclosed to Eleven once they'd separated, his eyes glassy with tears. "I called you every night. Every night for – "

        "353 days," Eleven finished. "I heard."

        Mike's smile faded at her revelation. "Why didn't you tell me you were there? That you were okay?"

        "Because I wouldn't let her," Hopper spoke up, approaching Eleven. "The hell is this? Where you been?"

        "Where have you been?" Eleven retorted, glowering up at Hopper. He appeared to have no justification so he pulled her into a hug as a truce, causing Amara to realize that they had known each other long enough to start caring about each other. This was news to all of them who hadn't expected her to still be alive, let alone in Hawkins.

        "You've been hiding her. You've been hiding her this whole time!" In his anger Mike shoved Hopper roughly, provoking the Chief to let go of Eleven and face the boy.

        "Hey!" Hopper seethed, catching Mike's arm before he could attack further. "Let's talk. Alone."

        As Hopper ushered Mike down the hall into one of the rooms, Eleven had the chance to hug Lucas and Dustin as well as Joyce, the first person to look after her as if she was her own child. Shortly afterward Eleven requested to see Will, the boy she had saved but never had the chance to meet. Amara allowed herself to slump onto the couch for a moment, processing just how much had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

        "You okay?" Steve inquired as he sat beside her. "Shit, you're probably sick of me asking that – "

        "I'm not, don't worry," Amara hurried to answer, because it was nice to know that he was looking out for her. She wasn't okay – she was exhausted and drained and they still had a gate to an alternate dimension to close. Fighting otherworldly beasts was far better than the mundanity of her day-to-day life, but it wasn't a healthy coping mechanism. She didn't regret stepping up to the plate when she was needed, but everything had to end somehow and if they managed to win again, Amara would return to a world not built to suit her needs, where she'd have to make a choice between being judged or being invisible.

        Why did she have to choose when she wasn't the one who needed to change?

        Amara didn't involve herself in the search for Will and the war against the Upside Down because she wanted to feel like a hero, which she was sure the younger kids thought of her as. She did so because she wanted to feel like more than just a girl with a diagnosis she didn't choose to have. All she ever wanted was to have friends who saw beyond the stereotypes society portrayed her to be. Was that really too much to ask?

        "Steve, do you think we could still be friends after this?" Amara asked carefully. "Like, you wouldn't care if hanging out with someone like me would ruin your reputation?"

        "My reputation's ruined enough as it is," Steve replied casually, leaning back against the sofa with his hands clasped behind his head. "Like I said, I don't even know who I am anymore so being popular is no longer a going concern for me. So yeah, definitely."

        Amara beamed. "Thank you. It means a lot."

        As she returned her gaze to the floor, Steve idly wondered why she thought of herself as a hazard to his reputation. Even if they hadn't conversed regularly in the year between when Will had been rescued and now, it wasn't hard for him to notice her in the halls of school; reading some science fiction novel while she waited for class to begin, laughing with that one band geek Steve couldn't recall the name of, humming along to Billy Joel while she completed her homework during study hall. He supposed that nobody tended to view her as more than a nerdy loner type who preferred delving into the imagination of an author as opposed to getting trashed at parties, but that might have been because only a few select people had witnessed her look the Demogorgon dead in the eye and lash it with her crowbar. If Amara believed she posed a threat to his popularity, Steve never wanted to be popular again.

        By now, Joyce and Eleven had returned to the kitchen, where the latter caught sight of the morse code message the group had translated. "You opened this gate before, right?" Joyce queried.

        "Yes," Eleven responded quietly. She felt immense guilt at the fact that she had been the one to open the gate, but the last few hours had taught her not to blame herself, but those who put her life in danger all because they craved control. She had to close the gate in an act of defiance against them.

        "Do you think if we got you back there, that you could close it?" was what Joyce asked next.

"IT'S NOT LIKE IT WAS BEFORE," Hopper explained to the group gathered around the kitchen table again. "It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. That place is crawling with those dogs."

        "Demodogs," Dustin couldn't help but interject, disgruntled that his coined term of the monsters wasn't catching on.

        "I'm sorry, what?"

        "I said, uh, Demodogs," Dustin elaborated. "Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass – "

        Hopper squinted his eyes in frustration. "How is this important right now?"

        Dustin lowered his head. "It's not. I'm sorry."

        "I can do it," Eleven stated, bringing everyone's focus to her. While no one doubted her capabilities, Amara was sure the kids, Mike in particular, feared losing her again.

        "You're not hearing me," Hopper protested, too worrying that the girl he had grown to care for as a daughter would die at the hands of the Mind Flayer. He couldn't lose her, not after Sara.

        "I'm hearing you," Eleven insisted firmly. "I can do it."

        "Even if El can, there's still another problem," Mike piped up from beside Hopper. "If the brain dies, the body dies."

        "I thought that was the whole point," Max reminded him, confused as to why he was bringing it up.

        "It is, but if we're really right about this... " Mike continued. "I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the Mind Flayer's army... "

        "Will's a part of that army," Lucas realized.

        "Closing the gate will kill him," Mike concluded, his face grim.

        With that newfound information in mind, they trooped down the hallway into the room Will was occupying. He lay on top of the blankets, still clothed in his hospital gown. Of course, it made sense that the moment they discovered a solution, they happened to encounter another obstacle. They could close the gate at the cost of Will's life or leave it open to save his life, even if the Mind Flayer continued to have possession over him. The universe was cruel and only offered solutions when there was a price that needed to be paid.

        "He likes it cold," Joyce uttered, her eyes trailing to the open window.

        "What?" Hopper inquired, though he was reminded of the day when Joyce had requested him to check up on Will, the day after the Mind Flayer had infected him. It was the beginning of November and yet every door and window had been open.

        "It's what Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold," Joyce regurgitated. She strode to the open window and pulled it shut, cutting off the breeze. "We keep giving it what it wants."

        "If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then... "

        "Then we need to make the host uninhabitable," Jonathan finished Nancy's statement, kneeling by his brother's side.

        "So if he likes it cold... "

        "We need to burn it out of him," Joyce declared, her voice laced with fury.

        "We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time," Mike mentioned, not wanting a repeat of what happened in the shed.

        "Yeah, somewhere far away," Dustin added.

        From there, the group's final plan came into place. Hopper had an idea of such a place, namely the cabin in the woods he had been hiding Eleven in for a year. Will had never stepped foot there, meaning the Mind Flayer wouldn't recognize it and send the monsters after Jonathan and Joyce. Once the Mind Flayer was expelled from Will's body, Eleven would be able to close the gate and cut the brain off from the body.

        Amara didn't have much of a role other than looking after the kids alongside Steve and Nancy. She wished she could do more to help but at the same time understood that the best thing she could do for herself and everyone else was to take a step back and let the others finish what she had started. Despite the urge to contribute further, she knew that Kevin would have wanted her to take a moment to put her needs first.

        When she exited the house, Hopper and Jonathan were backing their respective vehicles out of the driveway. What surprised her was that Nancy was occupying the passenger seat of Jonathan's Ford LTD, rather than staying behind as they had planned.

        "I told her to go with him."

        Steve had journeyed outside as well and was leaning against one of the beams supporting the awning. There was minimal lighting but Amara noted that he looked more peaceful than he had in a while. Similar to grief, Steve's breakup with Nancy had gone through several distinct stages; denial from the fact that she had been intoxicated when she called him bullshit and the possibility she might not mean it, bargaining when he thought of anything he could have done to prevent them from breaking up, dismay when he came to terms with the reality that there was no future between himself and Nancy, and acceptance when he discovered that perhaps the two of them were better off broken up. All he wanted was for her to be happy, even if he couldn't be the one to make her feel that way.

        "You let her go," Amara realized. It was a statement, not a question.

        "I had to," Steve whispered. His original hope had been for himself and Nancy to work it out between them. Even though things hadn't gone the way he wanted them to, he had discovered a purpose through babysitting a group of misfit teens and shedding his desire to remain popular. And he'd befriended Amara, an intelligent, tenacious young woman who didn't put up with his shitty girl advice.

        As the clock neared one in the morning and the fate of Hawkins depended on a band of outcasts once more, the two babysitters retreated indoors. After all, they had a house they needed to protect from being set on fire.

published to quotev: 9/6/22
published to wattpad: 8/10/24

AUTHOR'S NOTE

birthday update from yours truly <3

big "no way! why should i change? he's the one who sucks!" energy in this chapter. seriously, if anyone judges you for being who you are, they aren't worth your time.

i've only got about four chapters left until i finish season 2, and then onto season 3. amara's going to rule there!

love, lydia