When he had come home the previous evening, she had a suspicion that he had visited the bar during his time spent away from everyone. But when he had come home the second time, there was absolutely no evidence. Her police training had kicked in for a mere second, wondering where the hell he had gone if he hadn't gone out to drink. That thought lasted only a few moments before the rush of the present kicked in and they fell into a screaming match.

But then she had woken up before the clock had struck midnight, hearing his tires peel out of the driveway. She had closed her eyes, forcing herself to go back to sleep right then and there or else she would stay awake and worry. He clearly didn't want to be worried about, so she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Maybe he had been right. Maybe she really couldn't understand what was going on in his head. Maybe there was no way in hell she could even begin to try to comprehend the hell he had been through. She knew how hard she was pressing him and she hated herself for it. Down to the core of her actions was the fear of losing him again. But the rational sense inside of her told her that she had the right to be angry, he broke a promise. 

She understood and then she didn't. Herself as a police officer could understand the barriers of his trauma, but herself stripped away of a badge and a title couldn't seem to comprehend it. Both sides of her brain were working against one another, and she was left with the constant cycling between understanding and not. 

So, when she had heard his car pull out of the driveway near midnight, she stayed as still as stone. She couldn't chase him down and drag him back each and every time. If he needed time alone, she'd rather it be in the dead of night when the world was supposed to be asleep. He had done what she had wanted him to do; open up. Even when his words were spit with venom and anger, all she had wanted was a sentence more than three words. He had done that, he was free to go. 

Her last thoughts before falling back asleep was her focus on just how cold the sheets were. She thought back to their first night home and just how warm and cozy the world had been. Before everything had the chance to rush back and take their full attention. That night was the calm before the storm, just two people holding each other ridiculously close in an attempt to ward off the demons. 

But now, her bed was cold again. Just as it always was. It didn't matter; she was too tired for any of it to matter. Instead of worrying, she drifted. So slowly, so quietly, so painfully tired. 

Her sleep didn't last nearly as long as she would've liked. She was shaken awake by her son standing over her bed. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, finding that her alarm clock was alerting her that it was only 2:35 in the morning. "Mom. Mom, wake up."

"Will? What's wrong?" she mumbled, trying to adjust her vision to the darkness of her bedroom. A small light in the hallway beamed through, highlighting the outline of his silhouette. Her lashes fluttered open and closed as his vision in front of her became more clear.

"Captain Lasky is on the phone, he said to wake you up because it's urgent," he whispered, taking the phone off of the hook in her room extension and handing it to her. She shot forward in bed, the sheets falling off of her shoulders as she pressed the phone to her ear. 

"Captain, what's wrong?" she spoke in a hefty exhale, her heart thumping a mile a minute. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Will wandered sleepily back to his room. Her fingers picked at the splayed seams of her blanket as she listened to the man's cautious voice. 

"Joyce..." he sighed, causing her heart to plummet. "I need you to come down to the station." she listened in agony as he paused again, only causing her to tense up further. "Dispatch called got into the Eight Ball Tavern. Jim was picked up on a bar fight. We have him here at the precinct."

For a moment, she swore she saw red. The anger was the quickest to reach her before utterly terrifying shock took control. She phased out for a moment, letting his words fly completely over her head. Not an ounce of exhaustion existed within her body anymore and she began to feel filled with pure adrenaline.

"I'll be right there." 

She slammed the phone down on the hook before shooting out of bed. As quick as she could, she threw on the scattered parts of her uniform and tried to dress herself as appropriately as possible. Her heart raced just as fast as her feet did, her heart ready to beat itself directly out of her chest. With one last pounce towards the door, she grabbed her gun and shield off of her bedside table. 

She didn't bother waking Will back up to tell him since it wasn't the first time she needed to leave in the middle of the night. Instead, she barely had her shoes on before she was out the front door and speeding out of her driveway. 

The first few minutes of driving felt treacherously slow. Against her inner conscience, she flipped on her lights and sirens and floored the vehicle. The squad car roared to life on the dark roads that led towards the city. Each row of trees that she drove by became emerged in the glow of her lights. For only a split second, that was. Just long enough before her car reached another long yellow line in the road. 

She tried to tell herself to ease her foot off the gas, she didn't need to go fast and she was reaching the limit of her maximum speed with the sirens on. But somehow, the connection between her brain and her foot was lost, and the speedometer continued to climb. 

As soon as the outskirts of town begun to turn into the city lights, cars that drove from the nightshift began pulling over parallel to her. One by one, they all parted the road like Moses parted the Red Sea. She hadn't realized that her breath was leaving her mouth erratically and tears were flowing down her cheeks. The entire time, she had no clue that the audible cries from within the car were actually coming from her. 

She reached the city in record timing, faster than she had ever driven before. Her tires nearly spun out as she slid into a public parking spot outside of the precinct, rather than navigate her way through the parking garage. She pushed past people, flashing her badge as she did so and half-assedly excusing herself from her impoliteness. 

With her body in control instead of her mind, her feet ran towards the stairs instead of the elevator. It would take her longer to get up through the stairwell, but she couldn't stand and idle in an elevator until she reached the tenth floor. 

She counted the large red letters on each landing of the stairs until she reached her destined floor. Practically sliding on her heels, she pushed past the large door and ran into the hallway. Familiar faces from the squad didn't register in her mind, even though they were eyeing her as if she were insane.

Once she reached the end of the long hallway, she saw the double doors that led into her squad's bullpen. Her feet slipped again, skidding her across the floors as she made her way in. Before she could spot anyone else familiar, she saw her Captain as he stepped out of his office and shut the door behind him. 

"Where is he?" she cried in a panic, closing off all personal space between them as she ran up directly against him. "Where the hell is he?"

"Joyce," Captain Lasky called out, but she continued to yell.

"No! Where is he? Did you put him in the drunk tank? He ca- he can't... He can't be in a cell, Captain. You can't put him in there! Where is he? Just let me get him out of the cell first, please!" she sobbed, but no tears fell. Only a redness of past tears and fear instead. Her fists were practically beating against his chest until he firmly grabbed her shoulders. "Please, he can't spend another minute in a cell!"

"Joyce!" he raised his voice, finally gaining her attention. "Joyce, breathe! I already knew not to put him in the holding cell. I put him in my office, he's perfectly fine." the calmness in his voice brought her down from the flying high anxiety. "But, I would like to talk to you first. Is that okay?" 

Once she caught her breath, she vaguely nodded and tried to gulp away the lump in her throat. The adrenaline was still racing through her veins as she followed him towards the cribs. She followed him into the room and slumped down on one of the cots as he stood with his back to the door. Cradling her head in her palms, she forced herself to hold back the second round of tears that threatened her eyes. 

"Captain... I— I'm so sorry." she breathed, her voice falling so low that even she could hear the heartbreak in her own voice. 

"Joyce. You put a BOLO out on his car yesterday. I ran the plate number that you called into Ackerman, you had it re-registered in Jim's name."

She sighed and gulped again, refusing to look him in the eyes as she spoke. "I know, Captain... and— and I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have, I jumped the gun." the feeling of shame wrapped around her like a straight jacket. She had promised herself she wouldn't let her personal life interfere with her work, but faster than she could handle, she was breaking that promise. Overnight, her brain had gone from being so clear to so cloudy. She couldn't tell right from wrong. She couldn't rationalize with herself like she had learned to do over the past three years. 

"I just want to know what's going on, Joyce." he stepped closer, his arms crossed behind his back. "I've seen you work a lot of cases, but none of them have hit you as hard as this current situation has... I'm worried about you, Joyce."

Once she remembered who she was in the presence of, she wasn't afraid of letting the tears fall. He wouldn't see her as any less of a person just because the stress had started to eat her alive. Her lower lip quivered as she kept her eyes glued on the floor. "This is just... a lot harder than I thought it would be."

He sat down on the cot across from her, his hands folding together as he did so. He cocked his head, trying to gain eye contact with her. "I know the situation is on a 'need to know' basis due to the... clandestine nature. But I want to help you and I don't know how to help because I don't know the details."

Joyce laughed sarcastically, shaking her head in disbelief. "You wouldn't even begin to believe me." she wanted to finally tell someone every single thing she had held in over the past three years.  A fresh pair of ears that hadn't seen it, but someone she could vent to. But every single signature on every single NDA she had signed flashed through her mind. 

Maybe he would believe her. Maybe anyone who saw the tiredness in her eyes and the exhaustion in her soul would believe her. 

"I can try," he said quietly. 

She finally looked up, seeing the pair of dark brown eyes staring at her. Eyes that held age that had been rightfully earned. Meanwhile, the age in her eyes came from deadly situation after deadly situation. He had seen years, she had seen pain. 

She cocked her head to the side, exhaling deeply before she had to try to force another wave of tears away. "Remember, a few weeks after I became a detective. Peter Rucker, one of our squad's biggest hits from 1967 had his charges vacated because of faulty evidence that we didn't find until we went back and looked? He was like the golden jewel of all busts in the history of this city and nobody wanted to believe, even for a second, that he was innocent. Then, he was exonerated..."

"I remember," he answered quietly. "It was my bust back in 1967, but the lab hadn't processed the evidence properly and he was acquitted. All charges vacated and we arrested one of the first people we suspected in the first place because the re-processed evidence put him at the scene. What does this have to do with anything?" he asked.

"I was there when Rucker was in court, and I remember the look on his face when they told him he was free to go. I've been to a lot of sentencing hearings during my time here, and let me tell you, I have never seen a single convict look as scared during sentencing as Rucker did when they released him. It was like he was terrified to see the light of day again because all he knew anymore was the darkness. So I looked up his file. He spent nineteen years in a maximum-security prison. Nineteen years." she paused, her jaw falling as she tried to breathe through the stuffed nose that her tears had left her with. "Then, just like that, his life sentence in prison became a life sentence without."

Lasky ruminated on her words, listening intently as she spoke. "You know," he started. "The justice system wasn't made to punish most prisoners. It was meant for rehabilitation. But, over time, it became a way of torture. I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of people in those cells that I'd like to see suffer. But then you think about all of the people who are in there trying to prepare themselves for a new, clean life back in society. They're set up for failure, but the reintegration is always the hardest part."

Joyce stared at the floor, following the lines in the tiles with her eyes. "He saved lives that day. Countless lives. Every day he spent in that prison is another life he saved. Present and future. But he didn't sign up for the outcome. That day, he signed up to die for them. He didn't know that his sacrifice meant suffering, not a painless and quick death."

She knew that her Captain had absolutely no clue what she meant, but that he understood. He didn't need the details to understand the grievances. 

"He saved me. He saved our kids. He saved more people than I'll ever know. People who don't even know his name, he saved. He can't even go home and sleep in his own bed after that. I feel like the worst person on Earth for trying to keep him steady and grounded to help him re-integrate because that means keeping him a prisoner in his home so he doesn't go out and do something stupid like getting into a fucking bar fight!" 

"Joyce," he leaned forward. "What are you so afraid of?"

She choked back a sob as she looked him in the eyes. "He slips, Captain. It's his signature, he slips when tragic things happen. He struggled after 'Nam. He struggled when he had to leave New York. God, he completely lost himself when his daughter died and his wife left... He slips when bad things happen to him and I can't bear to watch it happen again. Not when the stakes are this high."

The captain furrowed his brows, replaying her words in his head during the small moment of silence. "Whose stakes, Joyce? His... or yours?"

With a sniffle, she dried the tears on her face with the sleeve of her uniform. "Um... are you charging him?" she asked, desperate to change the subject before his words had enough time to sink in with her. 

"No," he answered quietly, pushing himself up from the cot and back onto his feet. "I spoke with the A.D.A, we have too many open cases and bigger fish to fry than a bar fight. That, and I'm pretty sure the other guy did more damage than he did."

Joyce nodded, starting to walk out of the room before he stopped her.

"I know we already discussed this, but are you sure you don't need more time off?" he asked carefully.

She stopped walking, hanging her head as she faced the door. "No," she answered after a brief debate with herself. She knew she could use some sleep and a vacation, but she also knew that working kept her head on straight. If she wasn't working herself to death, she wasn't handling life as easily. She had one more day on leave and Monday would be her first day back. "No, thank you."

"I'll leave you to go get him. I'll worry about the paperwork, you take him home and try to get some sleep in. You need it." he opened the door for her, standing back to let her go first. "Joyce?"

"Yes?" she asked, turning tiredly on her heel. 

"Thank you for talking to me about this. If you need anything at all, please don't hesitate to call me. I know this is rough, but it won't last forever. I promise."

The smallest smile filled her lips as her head bowed solemnly. "Thank you, Captain." She walked out into the bullpen, all of the night shift had their heads down to avoid eye contact with her. She was thankful that she knew these people well enough where they wouldn't judge her for seeing her public meltdown. All of them had their fair share of family issues that extended into their work life, so they understood her brief moment of panic. 

She let herself into the Captain's office, slowly opening the door to see him sitting in a chair across from the desk. "Let's go," she whispered, lacking any venom or emotion in her voice. As soon as he turned around, she saw the black eye and the handful of nasty gashes that tattooed his skin. 

Even though she was angry at him, she felt the overwhelming urge to be closer to him. She wanted to hold him, listen to his heartbeat thrumming against her ear. Instead, she settled for a gentle hand pressed to his back as she guided him out to the elevator. In silence, they both entered into the lift and waited for the doors to shut in front of them. 

With a sudden whirring sound, the elevator came to life and shuffled downward through the stories of the building, sounding a soft 'ping' after each floor. The tension in the small room crackled between them, both of them standing side by side with their heads held low. The moment she felt as if she were ready to run out of oxygen, Joyce's hand reached down and intertwined with his. 

She kept her focus forward, but from the corner of her eye, she was able to see him turn and look at her with a surprised expression. Instead, she focused her senses on the calloused palm that rested against her soft skin. 

With that, her lungs had managed to reinflate.

Although she felt incredibly disappointed in herself for how she felt, she was comforted with the fact that Hopper's car wasn't going to be in their driveway for the night. Instead, it was across town, his keys in the custody of the bartender who had pulled him and another man apart. Punch after punch was thrown, droplets of blood scattering the bar and the floor of the establishment. 

But he was safe, that was what mattered the most. Not her anger, not the bruises on his face and knuckles, not anything other than the fact that he was safe. But with his lack of danger also came her lack of words. She didn't even know where to start, or if she should at all. Maybe staying silent was what he needed or wanted. Maybe, for once, she outta stop trying to understand him and just let him do what he needed to do.

She was trying to fix someone who felt unfixable; someone who didn't want to be fixed.

So instead of reading him the riot act as she had intended to do, she drove him home in complete silence. The only sound besides her engine was the gentle splash of her tires running through puddles and the sound of her soft breath coming through her nose. 

The past few days had changed her perspective of the roads. Not long ago, she watched the blacktop during her tours, waiting to make an arrest at the perfect time. The sun-parched streets were the essence of her duty, bearing witness to crimes and wrongdoing. Now, the roads came into her vision when anxiety coursed through her veins. Now, the roads were a symbol of something being wrong. A place she would travel to fix a problem or to contemplate how she would fix their future. The roads meant that something had pulled her from her home, something she needed to remedy. Three in the morning and her eyes followed the yellow dotted lines. A measurement going towards Hell or on her way back. 

He was becoming two different people right in front of her eyes. One minute he would smile softly and remind her of his old self, and the next minute he was so cold and broken. 

"Hopper," she heard herself speak without realizing it. "This can't happen again."

From the corner of her eye, she saw as he leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know," he said, his voice thick with exhaustion and gruffness. 

"I mean it, Jim." she pressed, her jaw painfully tense as she spoke. "I don't care if you drive off and stay there for weeks at a time, but I just used up the entire squad's 'get out of jail free' card so this can't happen again."

"You're lying," he stated simply, causing her to whip her head around and glare at him. "You absolutely would care if I drove off. Three times has already proven that, so don't tell me you don't care."

"I do care! Alright?" she yelled, trying to focus on the road in front of her. "I care because I think you need help, Hopper! Like hell are you gonna find it at the bottom of a bottle or with your face slammed into the floor of a bar!" she could feel as her blood pressure rose with each notch of her volume. Her knuckles had become painted white with the tense grip she kept on the wheel.

"What, like a shrink? I don't need some fuckin' suit telling me I'm crazy! Especially one who doesn't have a goddamn clue about what my life is like!" he yelled back, a rising flush of red coloring his neck and cheeks as he did so. 

"Yeah, because what you're doing right now is so fucking rational!"

He turned in his seat, readjusting to face her. "How often do you think of eating your gun, Joyce?" he asked with venom dripping off of his tongue with every word.

"Excuse me?" she shrieked back in response. 

"How often? I've worked city cases, I know what they're like. How often do you see something so awful that it makes you wanna drown yourself in whiskey until you forget your own name? How often do you think about throwing in the towel because you've seen too much? Well, guess what? Out of every bad case you've ever worked, every case that you're convinced is the worst thing that could ever happen, it pales in comparison to the things I've seen. So don't even try to convince me that I'm out of my fucking mind because you have no idea! Neither does some shrink or cop buddy of yours or anyone. None of you have any right to tell me what the hell is going on inside of my head!"

As soon as Joyce spotted her driveway through the tears in her eyes, she ripped the steering wheel to the side and practically skid across the gravel. With record speed, the car was shut off and the driver's side door was slammed behind her. As she made her way up the front steps of her porch, she didn't bother looking behind her to see if he was following. Instead, she pushed past the front door and marched upstairs and into her bedroom. As soon as the lock clicked on her bedroom door, she slid down with her back to the wood, cradling herself as the unstoppable tears poured from her eyes. 

It wasn't long before Hopper was in the house too, but he saw no signs of Joyce. The only life he could feel on the first floor was the family dog who was curled up in his dog-bed, hazily awoken from the commotion. The guilt for snapping at her came almost immediately, just another shot of self-hatred filling him to the brim. He gently removed his shoes, setting them neatly by the door. 

His own tears burned in his swollen black eye, running down the red and battered skin of his cheeks. He stepped into the living room, stopping as he became chest to chest with the mantle over the fireplace. He hadn't noticed the photo of himself that had been collecting dust. With blood-dried fingers, he picked the small wooden frame up to inspect the picture. 

Will's birthday party, the same one he had mentioned to her. He was smiling in the background but everyone and everything else in the photo was blurred. Joyce hadn't told him that it was her absolute favorite photo of him. Right when life was actually okay. Even in the grief of losing Bob and dealing with the aftermath of the second storm, it was still a happy day. The day he had coined as one of the happiest of his life. 

But as he stared at the photo, he felt only a strong sense of hatred for the man staring back at him through the glass pane of the frame. He didn't know who that man was, or where he was hiding. That version of himself would have found his actions to be deplorable and disgusting. Lashing out at the one person who was sacrificing everything to help him through the next hardest part of his life. 

The man in the photo would've known that Joyce was currently sobbing in her room with her head between her knees. He would've been the first to run to her and comfort her. Except, the man that he was now had been the reason why she was hysterical. 

He hated the man staring back at him, but more than that, he hated that he could no longer be that man. He resented the new skin he wore, the new personality that his pain had crafted. He hated who he had turned into. 

He wanted to throw the goddamn frame across the room and listen as the glass shattered into a million pieces. That wouldn't destroy the photo, and it certainly wouldn't destroy the past or the present. He was doing that on his own, even when all Joyce wanted to do was help him.

The truth was, he was shutting her out. He didn't want her to understand. He wanted to carry the burden of sacrifice on his back and his back only. With a delicate hand, he gently placed the photo back onto its residence topping the mantle. 

As soon as the edge of the frame came in contact with the top of the fireplace, he heard himself heave out a broken sob. The tears fell faster and faster, each one dropping with the next inhaled breath. His body shook as he finally felt himself breaking. A long and overdue collapse of his inner self. Re-colliding with the real world and everything he had missed. Everything about himself that had changed. 

With exhaustion plaguing every inch of her body, she had managed to change back into her pajamas. Her body sluggishly moved across the room, folding up the scattered pieces of her uniform that had been tossed on her bedroom floor. Every few moments, another wave of tears fell and another sob was choked out from her lungs. 

Just as she was about to sit down on the edge of her bed, a soft knock at the door caught her attention. She pushed herself back up, quietly creeping over to the door. Her hand grasped the handle with a feather-light touch, opening it just barely an inch before she recognized Hopper's face peeking through the crack. Once she saw that it was him, she stepped back and opened the door further.

She could see the tear trails that ran over the dried blood on his face. His breathing was heavy and to her surprise, he showed no effort of forcing himself to stop crying. She had only seen him cry once since coming home and she wondered if he even remembered. 

"You were right," he whispered, sniffling as he gasped for air. "I'm not okay. I need help."

He collapsed forward into her and she caught his bear hug in her arms. She began to cry again as she held onto him for dear life, feeling every shiver of his body as he bawled into her shoulder. Somehow, feeling him crying against her was both crushing and the most beautiful thing she could ever imagine. Her fingertips dug into the back of his shirt as she tried to pull him as close as she possibly could.

"It's okay," she whispered hoarsely, taking a deep inhale of the scent of him. A scent she had missed more than words could ever describe. "It's okay, I've got you." she pulled back, moving her hands to his head so she could cradle his cheeks in her palms. His hands languidly moved to cover hers, the same movement he had made when she had pulled him from the Upside Down.

Up close, the bruises on his eyes looked worse than she thought. She guided his head down, pressing his forehead to her own. The feeling of his hot breath ran across her skin, carefully slowing down as she began to calm him. For years, she had longed to feel his nose pressed gently against her own, but she never had expected that it would be with the both of them sobbing in tandem. 

"Let's get you cleaned up," she whispered, carefully pulling away as she ran off to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth. When she returned, he hadn't moved. He stood in the center of the room, staring off into the distance as his tears fell to the floor. 

Protection mode kicked in and she was reacquainted with the intense urge to keep him safe. With nimble fingers, she slowly undid each button of his plaid shirt. As the material came apart, she saw the extra bruises and lacerations that covered his skin. "Oh, Hop," she whispered as she winced at the sight. 

She wrapped the cloth around her finger, carefully dabbing away the blood that had dried over his wounds. She fought back the urge to run her hand over his chest and down his skin, just a confirmation that none of this was a dream. That he was alive and right in front of her... even in bruised and bloodied flesh. 

She followed the cloth up from his chest and to his cheek, wiping away another deep scratch in his skin. "I was wrong," she whispered, keeping her eyes focused on the damaged patch of skin. "This whole time... I've been waiting for you to do the talking while I stayed silent. Like a— like a stranger." her voice cracked, her brows knitting together as she felt herself beginning to cry again. "I was waiting for you to fix yourself, and that wasn't helping." 

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he whispered back, his eyes following the hand that cleaned his wounds. "It wasn't enough to tell people about my pain, I wanted them to feel it." 

She stayed quiet as she moved the cloth to a gash under his eye. The blue fabric was turning brown with dark blood staining its fibers. She was cautious with his skin, careful not to brush burn the already tender laceration. She was trying to avoid his smoldering eyes that searched for her own. 

"Joyce," 

She took a deep breath, finally giving up her laser focus on his cheek to look him in the eyes. She wasn't sure what it was that she saw, but she knew it ignited a fire in the pit of her stomach. Right back to the feeling of being so small under his gaze. Suddenly, her breathing became heavier as her hand slowly came down and dropped the cloth on the floor. 

His hand lifted, threading through the side of her hair as he grazed her cheek. At the same moment she rose to the top of her toes, he begun to lean down. Her hand rested on the soft skin of his chest as he placed his lips carefully on hers. Her eyes closed on instinct and her body went warm at his touch. 

Her body's movements came without the slightest thought, doing only what felt right for the moment. Her lips parted into the kiss, deepening as he moved with a delicate and careful hunger. Three long, excruciating, lonely years that finally led up to the exact moment that he had wanted with every ounce of his being.