chapter twenty-two ♰ A New Hope

  "So she didn't care? Like... at all?"

  "Oh I'm sorry? Did you want your ex-girlfriend to be mad at me?"

  Steve's neck nearly cracked from how fast he turned it to look at Sydney, his eyes wide with horror as a challenging stoicism subtly rose one of her brows.

  "What?" he coughed out, turning between to road ahead and the girl in his passenger seat, panicked. "No! That's not―that's not what I said!"

  Sydney's aloofness broke into a smile. "I'm messing with you."

  He deflated with a sigh of relief, then shot her a severe glare. "You gotta stop doing that. I nearly drove us off the road!"

  He was right. The leather seat under her now had a nail-tear after his tyres screeched from his foot slamming brutally on the brake. But Sydney just rolled her eyes like she hadn't just nearly caused a crash, and smiled out of the window at the thicket of pine trees lining the road. Ever since her 'confrontation' with Nancy, she had felt more at ease than she had in months. The last little haunt―the lingering sting―was Toby's hostility that morning. But Sydney kept telling herself it'd heal eventually. Toby never stayed mad at her.

  She was letting herself enjoy the little victories―such as Nancy burying the hatchet before blood could even be drawn, and the cold war between her and Steve being mitigated. She'd make up with Toby. They always did.

  "But yeah..." said Sydney absently, "she said she wasn't mad at me. Which is...outrageously good of her. I probably would've been crying and slamming her head into a brick wall."

  Steve nodded, a bit alarmed. "Comforting."

  She smiled again, and reached over the console to pinch his cheek. "I'm messing with you again. You should probably start catching on."

  Before she could fully take her hand away, Steve was sweetly brushing his lips across her knuckles. Sydney softened, keeping her arm outstretched as he kissed her fingertips too, not tearing his eyes off the road once. She felt a visceral tug at her heart; he was so pretty to look at. So ineffably pretty. When she let out a raw little sound from her throat at his ministrations, he looked up at her and flashed an innocent smile. Like he wasn't aware of the power he had over her. Like he had no clue at all.

  "So, uhh..." Sydney emptied her throat with a hearty cough and yanked her hand back. Steve had this shit-eating grin and Sydney let him have it, just stared shamefully out the window with a tight chest. "What's the plan?"

  "Your place, right?" checked Steve, brows pinching. When Sydney said nothing―still thinking about the loving kisses tingling across her knuckles―he looked at her, worried. "Right?"

  "Oh! Right! Yes, right."

  Steve frowned. "Have you changed your mind? Hey, if you still don't want me to meet your dad, I―"

  "Do you want to meet my dad?" asked Sydney sharply. 

  "I mean... Yeah," said Steve, giving a shrug. Eyebrows furrowing, Sydney sunk a little in her seat with a nod. And it was a sucker punch to Steve's gut. "But you don't."

  Sydney's head shook fervently. "No, it's not that." 

  "Hey, no, I fucked up so-"

  "Yeah, that's the problem."

  Steve tasted bile.

  "I just mean," Sydney added swiftly, trying to do damage control, "Dad knows how upset everything got me. I don't want him to think I'm weak or anything for forgiving you so easily."

  Steve would hardly call a year of yearning and painstaking love letters and a torrid affair "easy," but he doesn't say that. He's had enough of her being mad at him. Steve wanted Sydney to want him to meet her dad. It was a weird thing to long for but he had seen, slowly, over the past year, Sydney and her father form a bond that Steve envied. He heard the way Matt spoke about Sydney to other people―like she's his whole world. And Steve vividly remembered what Sydney was like after Matt got wounded in the upside down; catatonic until he was discharged from the hospital, and when he was, she was always at his side―even at the cutting of his cast. Matt was probably the single most important person in Sydney's life. Steve wanted to know him, and he wanted Sydney to be proud when she introduced him to her dad. He also wanted Matt to like him. He wanted Matt to like Steve for Sydney. 

  As if she could read his mind (and sometimes, Steve swore she could) Sydney reached out and put her hand on the nape of his neck. "Hey," she said, "I want you to meet my dad, ok?"

  Steve gulped. Hard. "Yeah?"

  Sydney smiled. It made his insides feel funny. "Yeah."

  "Okay..." He relaxed. "Okay, good. Because I want to meet him, too."

  All that enthusiasm went right out the window when Steve parked outside of Sydney and Matt's home and he realised the light on in the kitchen, a tangerine glow coming through the chiffon curtains, and Matt's truck on the drive. His stomach was suddenly in knots, and he started waging a war in his own head―what would be worse: another passive aggressive confrontation with Mother Dearest, or Matt McConnell kicking Steve out (but not before telling him what a waste of space he was for hurting his daughter.) 

  "Stevie," Sydney sung mockingly. "We're here. Are you okay?"

  "Am I―yeah, I'm...I'm good. Great. Let's―" He undid his belt. He felt like he was sweating. Shit, was he sweating? Did it gross Sydney out? "Let's do this."

  Sydney's mouth curled in amusement. "You're meeting my dad, we're not shipping off to 'Nam."

  Feels like it, Steve thought grimly.

  "Yeah, I know."

  "So, c'mon," she said, unbuckling her own belt and picking up her bag from its spot on the floor. "Let's go to war." 

  She was kidding, but Steve really felt like a soldier on his way to war as they made, hand-in-hand, the short distance from his BMW to the front door of the cabin. There was no knuckles against oak or even the jangling of keys for Steve to prepare himself, because Matt had obviously left the door unlocked for when Sydney came home, and she opened it with no hint of hesitation. The prettiest thing he's ever seen, Sydney looked over her shoulder briefly to grin at him, and walked right into her home, slipping between his fingers as he stalled on the doorstep.

  "Get yourself together, Steve," he mumbled under his breath.

  Bracing himself, Steve stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  Steve had been here before, but now his senses were tuned right up to max and everything felt more. A year ago, his thoughts were entirely on Sydney―it diluted everything else around him. Like the peeling wallpaper, all of the mysterious stains on the carpet, and the furniture that definitely came with the house because all the vintage patterns and frills didn't seem like something Matt would choose. It was homely. And even though Steve knew just by glancing around that Sydney hadn't decorated an inch of this place herself, it was so perceptibly Sydney anyway. 

  With a hole in his heart, Steve thought back to what he said to her last year. Less emptiness to fill in a smaller house. It was probably one of the truest things he ever said. Suddenly, he's a little kid feeling like an insect under a microscope in his own house―the ceilings are unfathomably high and the walls feel simultaneously too far apart, and too claustrophobic, and even though there was more rooms than three people needed, there wasn't love in a single one. The Harrington household was so hollow and dark―another fossil of the American Dream in Loch Nora. But Matt and Sydney's cabin at the edge of Lover's Lake, surrounded by drug dealers, tax evaders and single mothers just getting by, was home.

  The hole in his hearts stitched itself back up again when Sydney popped her head round the corner of the kitchen door and smiled brightly at him. "You coming, pervert?"

  "Pervert?" Matt's voice yelled from the kitchen before Steve could reply. He startled, and his eyes widen as Sydney's roll up to the ceiling. "He's a pervert, too?"

  "Dad," Sydney seethed warningly, before disappearing back behind the door.

  Palms definitely sweating now, Steve slowly made his way down the hall and into the kitchen, and he nearly got knocked right onto a fall when a mass of fur and drooling saliva came bounding right at him. Steve cried out in surprise at the hard feeling of paws colliding with his abdomen, and was instantly willed to his knees at the excited panting and barking of a huge, friendly German Shepherd. 

  "Hey, buddy," Steve cooed, ruffling the dog's unruly, dark coat. "Hey."

  "Bastard takes my dog too," Matt mumbled bitterly.

  Steve's on his feet again in an instant. Soldier. And, before he can stop himself, he's lunging across the kitchen with his hand outstretched and a belly full of nerves.

  "Hi, Mr McConnell, it's nice meeting you... again."

  Matt's brows pinch together as he stared between Steve's hand and Sydney stood behind him, giving him a pleading expression. Try, she begs, please try with him like you tried with me.

  "Yeah, somehow the interdimensional monster and missing kid made it less awkward last time," said Matt dryly. 

  He wasn't the best at subtext. 

  Steve laughed uncomfortably and pocketed the sweating, ignored hand in the back of his jeans. "Yeah."

  "Ziggy, I've gotta go back to the station," Matt tells Sydney, eyes completely sweeping over Steve and softening at his daughter. As he talked, he swiped up his keys from the counter and left a wad of crumpled cash in their place on the granite. "Told Hop I'd take the night shift to help with Merrill's pumpkin patch―he's pretty upset about it."

  After he pecked a chaste kiss to her forehead and went for the door, Sydney noticed a brown, paper file-folder tucked into his trousers, poking out slightly from under his jacket. 

  "You're taking the night shift because of... pumpkins?" Sydney asked warily. 

  Matt paused in the doorway. "Uhh...yes. It's a pretty big deal. Merrill's and Eugene McCorkle's patches are all rotten. Could be something big."

  Sydney and Steve exchanged a look―lie.

  "Well, I hope you solve it," said Sydney rigidly.

  Matt's smile was thin, and a bit neurotic. "Thanks, kiddo. Umm... I left some cash for pizza, knock yourself out." He then narrowed his eyes meanly at Steve, "not up." 

  As Sydney exclaims in protest, horrified, Steve started choking on air and fervent promises of "not at all, sir," and "I would never," and he's now most definitely sweating (he felt the beads of it dampening his collarbone and nape of his neck.) 

  Matt ignored both and left. 

  It wasn't until they heard his tyres rolling over the gravel driveway that both of them recovered from Matt's ill-placed joke, and Sydney finally turned to him. Her cheeks were slightly pink from embarrassment, and her ears felt hot, but seeing Steve in such a state admittedly made her feel better. Something about a twitchy and nervous and downright pathetic Steve was somehow even better than arrogant, charming Steve. 

  Don't get her wrong, she loved Steve's hoarse voice in the morning back at the lakehouse when he murmured illicit things to her as he kissed the shell of her ear and grazed his knuckles against her bare thigh. She loved the giddy feeling she'd get in her belly every time he teased her and even the horrible ache he made her feel when he upset her. (And there was no better anger than the rage he gave her―none more justifiable and divinely feminine and volatile and beautiful.) But the high she got from being reminded that he was just as weak for her as she was for him was incomparable. Suddenly, she understood people like Nadine Munson. When you get a taste of a drug, of a high, you don't want to let go. Sydney never wanted to let go of Steve Harrington again.

   "So," she exhaled. "You wanna watch Star Wars?"

✸

Alright, it's imperative to say that Matt McConnell didn't make a habit out of lying to his beloved daughter.

  In fact, Matt's had this lethal problem where he told Sydney things he shouldn't tell her at all―such as crude anecdotes from his teen years, and government confidential secrets, like Eleven, and her still being alive. 

  Matt never lied to Sydney. It just wasn't what they did. Ever since everything with Will, and the Upside Down, and both of them keeping things from each other, they had this silent pact that they would never do that again. They can't protect each other as effectively as they can if they're both on the same page―and that's why they kept so many secrets a week ago: to keep each other safe. It had all been in vain though―they both ended up intertwined in the same mess, the invisible string getting all knotted and unravelling to where they are now. Matt with a broken bone in his leg he may never fully heal and both of them burdened by a lifetime of interdimensional trauma. 

  So, Matt knew Sydney could handle her own. She's fought a monster from another realm, and swallowed the pill of a girl with telekinetic powers―hell, even befriended her. But there was one thing that Matt needed to protect Sydney against and had vowed to do so till the day he died: 

  Mother.

  A faceless, lifeless, haunting omen. A grave. A mass of rot that still tenants inside of Sydney. A totem. And an unsold case.

  That's what brought Matt here: back to the gunmetal grey hell of Hawkins Laboratory. Or, more specifically, Anya's office: a sterile little room, with generic paintings hung up on the wall and a porcelain dish of mints on her desk. 

  "So, I'm sure you have a lot of questions, Matthew."

  Even in an informal meeting, Anya spoke clinically, and with the fluidity of running water. 

  "It's Matt," he corrected, placing Christine's documents on the lab on Anya's glass table. "And yeah, I can think of a few."

  Anya flashed that placating smile again and gestured for him to go on. 

  "As you probably know, last year in January, my―" the words catch in Matt's throat. My what? "My daughter's mother," he decided on, "died in a car crash."

  Anya wet her lips. "Yes, I watch the news, Mr McConnell."

  Matt shifted in his chair, sceptical. "I was looking through her stuff a few months back with our daughter and I find these files." 

  He nodded his head at them and at his indication, Anya picked them up, reluctance evident in her eyes as her fingers curl around the brown paper and open it. She digested it all quickly―the stories from the text subjects of Project MKUltra, and Peter Ballard, the orderly's, testimony―and got to the torn page at the end with pursed lips. 

  "Do you mistrust me that much you ripped out a page?" she mused wryly. 

  "I didn't do it," remarked Matt. 

  Anya looked curious. "Your daughter?"

  Matt shook his head. "Sydney wouldn't. She couldn't care less about any of this. She wants to put it―her mom―behind her."

  "Hmm," Anya considered. "And you?"

  He blanched. "What about me?"

  "Do you still care for this woman?" drawled Anya. "Do you still love her, is that why you're here? To avenge a woman you love and left and lost―"

  "It's none of your business why I'm here!" Matt exclaimed, chagrined.

  Politely, Anya closed the document and folded her hands over it upon the table. "Actually, Matthew, it is my business. You're in my workplace, in my office, asking me questions―so, I'll ask again: do you still love Christine Sommers?"

  A ghost made itself home in Matt's ribs.

  "Yes," he muttered.

  Anya seemed contented at that. "Do you still love her, or are you guilty that you abandoned her and your child, and she died?"

  "Listen, if you're just going to―"

  "The last entry in this file is dated the day before the crash," Anya observed, interjecting him smoothly. Matt faltered, not expecting that. Anya raised a brow, "Am I wrong, Mr McConnell?"

  "No...no, that's right."

  "It could just be a coincidence," she pointed out with a shrug.

  "See, no, no―" Matt rebutted, straightening up and wagging a finger 'no,' "It isn't. I know it isn't. And since finding these, I realised―Chris was a good driver. She would've never crashed."

  Anya looked amused. "A pretty baseless defence. Your honour, this wasn't an accident, she could drive really well," she imitated. At Matt's deadpan glare, she sighed and touched her fingertips to the file. "Matthew, the roads were icy―it had snowed all week, and frozen over... No matter how good of a driver Christine Sommers may have been, if wheels go out of control over an icy road, accidents happen." 

  "Okay, well, where was she going then?" demanded Matt, frantic. "It was past midnight, and it was dark and icy, like you say―and back home, she had just about everything she needed to take down this lab! Where was she going?"

  "Do you want me to dig her up and ask her?"

  "I want the truth!" he yelled back.

  Anya leaned back in her chair and considered this, him. Matt McConnell―former dysfunctional alcoholic, deadbeat dad and flaky sheriff's deputy turned... functional alcoholic, proud father and, well, still a pretty flaky sheriff's deputy. In her training, Anya was taught to dissect people, but Matt was hard to dissect―a bloated, decomposed corpse rather than a fresh one. The silver instruments didn't quite sever the skin and Anya couldn't draw blood. 

  "The truth is that Christine Sommers got very close to shutting down this institution because of Project MKUltra, and she died an admittedly very... suspicious death a day after her final entry," said Anya, blunt and precise. 

  A knife. Matt flinched. She finally drew blood. 

  "And," she continued, "the last entry was torn out by someone who you, and your daughter, does not know...

  Is that truth enough for you, Matthew?"

  Matt sat back, baffled. "Y-Yeah, I think about summarises it."

  Anya nodded. "Good. Now. Do you want to hear the real kick?" (The deepest cut.)

  "There's more?" he asked miserably.

  "I've memorised every last staff member who has ever worked in this facility―you know, upkeep of pensions, and other admin nonsense―but this testimony of the orderly..." trailed off Anya, jabbing a finger against the document. 

  "What? What about it?"

  "Mr McConnell, Peter Ballard does not exist."

a/n: omg heyyyy im sorry for not updating since last year (haha) but here we go! its a little rusy because im getting back into the swing of writing for sydney but a chapter is a chapter and im glad that im finally returning to mine & steve's fav girl. ummm a bit of self promotion: ive recently published a rick grimes/twd fic so if u like my writing and like rick grimes, plz go check it out!! lots of love,

  dani xx