I am sick of the chase...

but I'm hungry for blood.

I know the end.

  The relationship between Mother and Daughter is a hard one. Especially when Mother is a micromanaging maniac with a victim complex who likes to scream her throat raw in arguments and remind Daughter of her status as Mother. Mother & Daughter's bond most times is saccharine and fun—she's the Cool Mom, and lets her drink a glass of wine from time to time, and watch the films with swearing in them, and eat unhealthy food, and butters her up with all these nice little things...stuff she'll later throw back in Daughter's face in fights. Stuff that seems trivial when Mother doesn't let Daughter go to the party the cute boy, who's just one year older, is throwing, and starts to comment on how much she's eating.

  Mother's belligerent and cries a lot and believes a little too much in astrology and shouts until her body's abraded and hot, and the walls shake. And Daughter can be just as mean, because after all her body—her good bones and her fawn eyes—is a haunted house and the ghost is Father...and Mother hates Father.

  And then Mother dies and Sydney Sommers didn't know if she could call herself a daughter anymore.

  Hawkins was a small town but Sydney was lucky enough that she never really crossed paths with her so-called 'dad' much. She begrudgingly went to the station once to report her bicycle missing—but her jaw ached from clenching it so hard by just being in the same room as him that she eventually stormed out. She'd bump into him in an aisle at the supermarket sometimes—he'd probably be juggling armfuls of Budweiser and microwavable meals—and he'd try stammer a sentence together, like how've you been, kiddo? or ignorantly ask how her mother was doing, but Sydney never dignified him with anything more than 5 syllables. A few times, he had been known to send birthday cards—always a few days off, the glittery age on the front most likely wrong and his handwriting was so shit Sydney just knew he had stomached a few whilst scribbling his half-hearted attempt at fatherhood in a pen stole from work.

  Christine Sommers' death shattered the estranged Father/Daughter bond they had going, one Sydney liked, one Sydney was used to.

  Sydney had to move house. Sydney had to cram all of her belongings into the tiny, spare bedroom in her dad's shitty, decrepit excuse of a home. Sydney had to mourn her mum whilst getting to know a man who'd been a supermarket-aisle parasite her whole life. Sydney was livid and hollow and wanted to douse the world in kerosene and strike a match and watch it burn.

  Mother & Daughter was ugly and mismatched genes; Mother trying to refine Daughter to not be so much like Father; it was craters in the drywall of their suburban home from thrown vases and angry fists. Mother & Daughter was volatile screams of "I am your mother!" followed by the thready wails of, "Yeah, well I'm your daughter!" so neither forgot where the other stood.

  It was also a buried fallacy for Sydney when Chris Sommers wrapped herself and her car—that they had sung Fleetwood Mac at the top of their lungs in countless times—around a lamppost.

  Grieving's hard. Especially when it's partnered by Father—if Matt McConnell could even be considered a father—trying to get to know you; your best friend starting to look at you differently, like he'd start the earth-consuming fire you want with his own carcass as the pyre if it'd make you happy; and the world turning on its axis because of inter-dimensional monsters, a telekinetic girl, and Steve fucking Harrington.

Ella Purnell  ♰ SYDNEY STEVIE SOMMERS.

The doctor put her hands over my liver,
she told me my resentment's getting smaller.

Jake Johnson ╲ Matt McConnell

Jonathan Daviss ╲ Toby Stanfield

Kate Siegel ╲ Christine Sommers

Daisy Edgar Jones ╲ Nadine Munson

With,

Joe Keery ╲ Steve Harrington
David Harbour ╲ Jim Hopper
Idara Victor ╲ Imani Stanfield
Maya Hawke ╲ Robin Buckley
Sarah Snook ╲ Georgia Harrington
Matthew Macfadyen ╲ Scott Harrington
Jodie Comer ╲ Anya

✹

EST. 24th April, 2022.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

    i. can't believe i'm doing this 🙄 this is I KNOW THE END aka the manifestation of my phoebe bridgers & joe keery & jake johnson (dilf) obsessions. yearssss yearssssss ago i had a steve fic about a girl called sydney starr, it was a lot different to this (she was hopper's niece if anyone from quotev remembers and her sister had a will s2 thing going on). basically i've scraped 99% of that and just kept her name, and some of the LATER plot, but on a whole this is an entirely new backstory, somehow more trauma (RIP chris sommers u were a milf 🙏). a few things before we begin:

    ii. CONTENT WARNING ╲ canon typical violence, a lot of trauma (will address the trauma of the characters that i feel was kinda diluted, esp. with steve as he's one of the Leading Men), substance abuse, mommy & daddy issues, strong language, steve's savior complex etc.

    iii. this fic may be scattered with wayyy too many taylor swift, phoebe bridgers & fear street references, along with many references to 80s pop culture bc this gives me the opportunity to exercise a lot of useless knowledge i've got. also, fleetwood mac is a big deal here. sydney's full name is sydney STEVIE sommers (after stevie nicks duh) cuz chris LOVED fleetwood mac. idk why im telling u this but it feels like its important to mention

    iv. another kinda warning i feel like i need to give is that this fic has a love "triangle" (when really it's not just a triangle cuz robin, nancy, jonathan, etc.) i call this as a warning cuz i know some people dont like love triangles.

LOVE, DANI.