The living room of the Henderson household was filled with the voice of the scientist on the television screen, his monotone voice as he narrated the documentary on the science channel almost succeeding in luring Nora into the sleep she hadn't quite managed to find the night before. As the shock eventually wore off about the truth of a world beneath Hawkins, even with the gate permanently closed, she tossed and turned on the couch for the entirety of the night, jumping at the slightest sounds in the house. Each sound of the ice maker in the refrigerator was a Demodog coming back to finish the job, the heat kicking through the air vents no doubt ready to release those floating spores into the air around her, to poison them all.

If she hadn't known her niece and nephew were so deeply embedded in the truth of what lurked in the dark, she would've been back on the road long before now. Hell, maybe she'd even already have crossed the state line out of Indiana, making a beeline back to Kansas. How fearlessly the kids charged into those tunnels last night to start a fire and buy Eleven and Hopper some time, and how Anna had run after Nora the second she needed help without stopping for a moment to wonder who was around the corner she couldn't be sure. But she knew she owed it to her sister's kids to see firsthand that the gate really was closed for good.

The muffled sound of music drifted through the closed doorway of Anna's bedroom, where she was getting ready for a date later this evening, and Claudia was long gone for the night for her bookclub meeting. Nora's eyes flickered back to the screen, to the documentary the thirteen-year-old boy next to her was so engrossed in, and her eyebrows furrowed together slightly as the picture of the scientist on screen was replaced by a video clip of a group of tadpoles swimming through a pond, the narrator now detailing the species of pollywog in front of them.

"So this is what you thought Dart was?" Nora asked Dustin skeptically, looking back over at her nephew.

"He was bigger than this when I first found him, but yeah." Dustin explained. "He didn't look like any pollywog I'd ever seen before, which is why I thought I had a groundbreaking discovery. He almost looked like a green slug, nothing at all like the dogs down in the tunnels."

"And what have we learned?" she asked skeptically.

Dustin sighed, though she could still see the mischief flickering in his eyes. "Always make sure your scientific discoveries aren't from another dimension before bringing them inside your house."

"Atta boy," she said proudly, reaching for a handful of popcorn from the bucket sitting between them.

At the sound of the door opening down the hall, Nora and Dustin both turned to see Anna emerging from her bedroom, clad in a cream colored sweater and a pair of jeans and clutching onto her purse for dear life. She gave them a nervous smile, and it was hard to miss the internal panic she knew was happening inside her niece's head as she prepared for her date.

"How do I look?" Anna asked. "Be brutally honest."

"Anna's got a boyfriend," Dustin sang in a teasing tone. "Anna's got a boyfriend,"

"He's not my boyfriend," Anna reminded him. "Yet, anyways."

"Honey, you look beautiful." Nora assured her. "That Jackson's one lucky guy."

"Jason," Anna corrected her with a smirk, and to Nora's relief, she could see some of the nervousness leaving Anna's expression. "Jason Carver."

"Well, whatever his name is, he's a really lucky guy." Nora repeated, standing up and pulling Anna into a hug. "Have fun, be smart, just don't do anything I wouldn't do." she said, giving Anna a wink before taking her seat next to Dustin back on the couch.

Nora and Dustin watched as Anna left through the front door, leaving them alone once more to watch the documentary on pollywogs. To her relief, it was nearly over, the narrator making his final comments as the credits began to roll.

"Alright," Nora mused. "That was..."

"Incredible, enlightening, everything you never knew you needed to know?" Dustin supplied for her.

She paused for a moment, staring back at the giddy thirteen-year-old. "Y'know what, yeah, it was." she said, cracking a sarcastic smile to the boy who was none the wiser. "Alright, Dusty, how about you go get the cards, and I'll get our pizza ordered?"

"Deal," Dustin said, giving an excited smile before hurrying to his room to go find a deck of playing cards.

While Dustin searched through his room for the cards, Nora made a call for the pizza, ordering a large pepperoni for pickup. By the time they regrouped in the living room, sitting on the floor on either side of the coffee table, Dustin had already dealt out the hands for a game of Garbage, a tradition for whenever Nora came to visit. Dustin had been keeping a running score of their wins for years, and while some visits their competition was closer than most, the last couple of visits Dustin had managed to find his way ahead.

"So aside from deadly monsters," Nora began, picking up the six of hearts from the top of the pile and placing it into the spot in front of her, before flipping up the card underneath. "How's school going?"

"It's going okay," Dustin assured her, waiting until Nora was finished with her turn before picking up the two of spades where she'd discarded it in the middle. "Weirdly enough, this is the year that everyone in school decided not to wear costumes for Halloween anymore, so we were the only ones. Which was totally lame on everyone else's part, because our Ghostbusters costumes were so cool."

"Lame," Nora agreed.

"I'll have to show you my proton pack later, Aunt Nora." Dustin said excitedly. "It looked just like the real thing."

Nora smiled, watching Dustin as he flipped through the cards in front of him, placing them in their correct order. While she knew that, when she was thirteen, she cared far too much about what other people thought of her, her nephew didn't let it bother him for a second, and she admired him so much for it. Dustin Henderson knew exactly who he was, and she was all the more proud of him for it.

"So do you know how long you're planning to stay in town for?" Dustin asked after a while, a few rounds into their game. While Dustin had managed to get down to only seven cards left, Nora was only at nine left.

"I'm not sure," Nora admitted, setting down the four of diamonds as she studied the cards in front of her, the three, seven, and nine spaces still facedown. "It's been nice, having a little bit of a getaway and spending time with you guys, all things Mews considered. Once we figure out a cover story for your mom with the cat, anyways, then I'll think about it a little more."

"Maybe you could stay until Thanksgiving," Dustin suggested. "I mean, you were already planning on flying out here anyways, maybe Uncle Jeremy could just come and meet you, and then you could drive back down together."

"Maybe," Nora agreed, plastering on a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes. "That sounds nice."

"What's he up to this week while you're gone?" Dustin asked, and Nora shrugged.

"Just work, probably." she said nonchalantly. "They're starting a new project, so he's been working some longer hours, trying to get as much done before the holiday season as he can. I know he wishes he could've been here to spend time with you guys."

"Yeah, I miss him." Dustin said. "Do you miss him while you're here?"

"Of course I do, buddy." Nora said, plastering on a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes before looking towards the kitchen to catch a glimpse of the clock on the wall. "Oh, look at the time! I should get going to go pick up the pizza. Did you want to come with, or do you just want to hang out here while I go?"

"Nah, that's okay," Dustin assured her. "I'll just hang here, see if there's another documentary on."

"I'll be back in twenty." Nora said, reaching for her purse and pulling her shoes on as Dustin began to fiddle with the television. "Just remember, Dustin Clarence, if you look at my cards while I'm gone it counts as another win for Team Nora."

Nora shot him a wink before heading out the door and hopping into the blue car that sat in the driveway. It was a short drive to the pizzeria in the town square, the place bustling on a Saturday night, and as Nora hurried inside to get out of the chill, she spotted a familiar figure in the pickup crowd, sheriff's jacket pulled on over a brown plaid flannel as he leaned against the wall.

"Well, well, well," Nora spoke up, pulling Hopper's attention over to the woman standing in the doorway, and she took a spot next to him as he studied her with a slight smile. "We've gotta stop meeting like this, Hop."

"Great minds think alike, I guess." Hopper said, nodding in greeting. "Picking up for you, Claudia, and the kids tonight?"

"Just me and Dustin," Nora explained. "Claudia's off at bookclub and Anna's got a date, so pizza and cards were on the menu for the evening."

Hopper nodded in understanding as she spoke. "It's just me and El tonight, too," he said. "I've got some old westerns I've been wanting to show her, so we're having a marathon."

"That's sweet," she said. "Dustin told me a lot about her, I think it's nice that you've taken her in all this time."

"What can I say, she's a great kid." he said simply. "She's saved our lives twice now, so I figure giving her a home is the least I can do."

A comfortable silence settled briefly between the two in the crowded pizzeria, shuffling around as one by one, names were called to pick up their orders. It was noisy, Jim and Nora hardly able to hear one another over the roar of the Saturday night rush, but he looked back over at her, breaking the silence as he spoke once again.

"So," he said. "Nora Hoffman, was it?"

"That's right," she said, nodding.

"Well, tell me about him." Hopper pressed. "Who's the lucky guy?"

"His name's Jeremy," Nora explained over the noise of the crowd. "We met my senior year, shortly after we moved. We got married after graduation, settled down back in Kansas not far from my parents' house, and the rest is history." she said with a slight shrug.

"I'm happy for you," he assured her.

"Thanks, Jim," she said, glancing down toward his left hand, but she didn't see a ring present. "So what about you? Any lucky lady in your life?"

To her surprise, he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "My wife, Diane. I met her shortly after I got back from the service, and we settled down in New York with our kids."

"New York?" Nora echoed, surprised. "Wow,"

"What, can't see Jim Hopper as a big city cop?" he chided, smirking.

"No, it's just..." she trailed off, searching for an explanation. "I just never knew big city was where you saw yourself."

"Actually, it wasn't," he chuckled. "Which is how I ended up back here. I had a good run out there, but it just wasn't for me."

"And you said you had kids?" Nora asked, and a look crossed his face that she couldn't quite discern, so brief it was gone as soon as it appeared.

"Two," he nodded. "Danny and Sara. They're out of town with their mother this weekend."

"That sounds really nice," she assured him. "I'm happy for you, too, Hop."

"Hoffman!" a voice rang out from the front counter before either of them could say anything further, the teenaged boy at the counter holding a pizza box in his hand and looking around expectantly for her.

"That's me," she said, looking back at Hopper with a small smile. "It was really nice to see you again, Jim."

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "It was nice to see you again too, Nora."

Nora bid Hopper goodbye, heading to the counter to pay for the pizza and take the box from the employee's hands. She headed back towards Claudia's house, praying to everything holy that Dustin hadn't managed to adopt any new sort of scientific species while she was gone.

Or worse, look at her hand of playing cards.

The pizza was long gone, with a well earned new tally under Dustin's name in their Garbage leaderboard by the time Claudia returned from her book club, joining Dustin and Nora on the couch for the late night news. However, when the lock clicked in the front door one more time, signalling Anna was home from her date, Nora, Claudia, and Dustin all looked towards the front door excitedly, eagerly awaiting to hear how her evening had gone.

"There she is!" Nora announced as Anna shut the door behind her.

"How did it go?" Claudia asked.

"Do you have a boyfriend yet?" Dustin asked, the three of them instantly bombarding her with the questions.

"It was good." Anna assured them. "No boyfriend yet, but I did meet Jason's niece, who's in your class." she clarified to Dustin.

Dustin nodded. "That's Molly. She's cool."

"I'm so happy for you, Annie." Claudia said, rising from the couch and pulling her daughter into a hug. "That Jason seems like such a sweet boy."

"Yeah, he's great," Anna assured her. "I think I'm going to turn in, get some sleep. Goodnight guys,"

The three of them bid Anna goodnight as she shut herself back into her bedroom, and one by one, Claudia and Dustin followed suit, leaving Nora alone to her makeshift bed on the couch. While normally she preferred the pitch darkness of a room when trying to sleep, she kept the television on, same as she did last night, hoping the dim light of the screen would ward off any monsters threatening to lurk around the corner. With that, she grabbed her blanket, tucking into what she guessed would be another night of fitful sleep.