AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH
Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell.

It's rare to find a love so true that you can feel it in your mind, your heart, and your soul. A love, in which all things rational became but a single past and distant memory, you consume entirely.

Finding your soul mate, whether it be a friend or someone you love romantically, is like finding the purpose in life itself you've dreamt of since you were a young girl. Looking up to your mother and father as the prime example to what love is. That is not true, though. Melissa didn't see love in her parents relationship growing up, even when they were separated. She didn't know the meaning of what true love meant, what it felt like, before she came back to Hawkins. Hopper showed her how to be loved.

Hopper represented the true definition of what it means to be seen. To be seen is to be loved. To be understood as a whole.

He was her best friend, a man who would curse the world out for its own horrible mistakes and cruelty against her, and a man who'd follow her through the path of hell its self. Jim hopper was, he still is, the love of her life.

Melissa repeated the tape recording of Enzo, she decoded with Murray inside of her homes kitchen while the kids were being watched over by Chris and Robert, in her mind while she drove back to her house from her spontaneous visit to the bank to withdraw the precise amount of money he was asking for.

Hopper is being held in a prison camp somewhere in Russia, she was the first to make a connection and decrypt the woman in the call's voice, which she had a feeling is connected to the StarCourt incident last year on the Fourth of July celebrations. It all made sense to her.

He survived, somehow, and was dragged to an undisclosed prison ran by Russians.

Her hand tightened on the steering wheel to her convertible's steering wheel.

Her mind continued a repetition of what she saw that fateful evening. The combustion of the key, her screams covering herself from the flying metallic cogs and parts of the machine, all of those pulses of light spewing out of it.

Every little detail.

All in her mind like a cloud that never recedes or disappears never to be seen again. She tried to recall any little split between both the exploding key and seconds before it happens. If she had seen hopper escape. She hit the wheel of her car. She hated herself for thinking hopper was dead, she hated how easy it was for her to give up hope. How could she betray hopper like that?

Murray, who is shot-gunning in the passenger side of her car, jumped slightly at the sudden honk. He frowned, realising Milly is spaced out. " I know when something has you down in the dumps, missy. Talk to your old friend Murray, I might or might not have the solution to the woes you have." He huffed, guarding the leather stash of bank notes in his lap with his life, staring right into Milly's rear view mirror for any suspicious cars that might've followed them home from the bank. He's too paranoid.

" What if I was the reason... hopper was taken?" Melissa, mouth turned down in a pout, eyebrows slowly pinching. " I could've.. I could have gone back to get him, I should have followed my own gut instinct and gone to save him if I would've..."

" Okay." Murray, knowing exactly where it would lead if he didn't stop her there, cut her off. " First. Don't do that. Don't blame yourself, Missy. You didn't know if he had been killed by that blast. Or if he did or didn't get obliterated to atoms. That's something you can't predict, Melissa." Murray, in a softer register tone, reassured his old friend. He sighed noticing how she tried holding back tears.

" Second. Jimbo wouldn't want you to put blame on yourself for this. I am sure as hell don't blame you. Neither does anyone else." Murray stated, he put the cash at the bottom under the car seat, and he looked to her as the car rolled to a stop at the intersection stop lights. " If I hear that any, and I mean any, one does blame you then they're seriously mistaken and are wrong. Melissa Joyce Byers, you are a survivor. A survivor. You hear me? You survived being shot at, held captive by a psycho who is your grandfather, and you've been a survivor all your life. It isn't your fault. None of it is."

Murray put his hand on hers, squeezing it.

" Hopper wouldn't want to see you take all the responsibility of this. He'd kick my ass, right now, for even letting you go this far with thinking about it. I can just picture him yelling at me with that brutish, alpha male, ego of his."

Milly wiped her tears. It is true, all of it. Hopper would have Murray's head if he heard them and their conversation. And that made a weak giggle escape.

She knew how true Murray's words are.

Melissa felt her tears drying, her heart a little bit more firmer, as her determination came back into her mind on getting hopper back home soon. Soon she would have her hop back in her arms.

To be a dad to El, Jocelyn and little Sarah.

She would get hopper back. She had to get him back. She had to.

With the help of Chris and Robert agreeing to be the caretakers to little Sarah, and Jocelyn, while Melissa made plans to extract hopper out of the prison he is held up she would need to make an excuse on her whereabouts would be with Joyce. Her brothers, El, and others in her life.

Because she didn't need them to worry about her being in a Soviet prison country ran by a communist regime dictatorship. She knew that wouldn't go well. Not at all. Chris agreed to take the girls out of the state, back to New York with Robert, as she suspected things might go wrong real fast. He'd made a promise to take care of the girls if there are complications.

A thought that she didn't want to give light to but it needed to be taken serious.

That will need to wait, though. Melissa, shuffling around her in office space inside of her basement trying to get things in order for the extensive plan to travel to Soviet Russia, muttered on how she's incredibly reckless for agreeing to go across miles of distance to an unfriendly nation but all of it is thrown out the window upon the reason why she is going there in the first place. To save hopper.

Murray's exaggerate Russian opera music played upstairs, whisking away at the sound of his own terrible off-tune out of sync voice pretending he knew the whole choir number, making risotto for tonight's dinner he planned for her mom and her younger brothers along with eleven.

Milly rolled her eyes, automatically, each time she'd hear how ridiculous he sounded.

" I've told him several times he can't sing for shit. But the man refuses to give up trying to be a good opera singer." Milly muttered, cleaning dust off of her hands, as she walked up the stairs back to her main hallway smelling the risotto burning in the expensive restaurant graded fry pan she had.

Her eyes locked on to her daughter's milkshake, stained, doused dress as eleven came into view of her sight. Eleven's eyes immediately watered and she ran to her mother seeking comfort only milly can give her.

" What's the matter? What's wrong? Did something happen?"

Milly, confused on why Mike and argyle were in her house but invited the boys to sit at the table, asked wondering why her daughter smells of chocolate milkshake.

" Well, well! Aren't you lot a sight for sore eyes, huh? Come in! Come in! Missy and I have made you guys some heartfelt food for your tummy-tum-tums. Have a seat! Have a seat!"

Murray, a gloop of burnt risotto on the wooden mixing stick he used for the recipe shown, yells exclaiming his point.

" I hope you kids like risotto! Bon appetite, as the Frenchman says!"

Joyce had came back from being in the house, all day, for her job as a sales pitcher selling things in the comfort of her house.

She asked where Sarah and Josie were, Chris along with Robert had left several hours beforehand back to New York on an early flight out ahead of time, which Melissa told her the half truth of their trip to New York minus the whole secret mission to a whole other country to save her fiancé. It wasn't an exact lie told but half of it.

" There I was, headed down the I five, going to see a client in Ventura. I'm looking for a motel to stay for the night, and suddenly, bam, it hits me."

Murray, forming a cover story for the excuse of it being the fake reason for him suddenly appearing in California, banged his fork on the tabletop and Milly squeezed her nose using her fingers at how dramatic Murray is.

" Didn't the Byers all move here? I remembered Kathy mentioning the exact neighbourhood missy is in and it struck me I was right on the freeway exit to here! So here I am!"

" It's a small world after all, Murray, ain't it?" She piqued up, taste testing the watered down risotto hiding her grimace at how bad of a cook he is and has always been. She toughed it out, swallowing. Joyce had the same expression as her while they ate Murray's cooking and sips on the wine Milly bought home. " You did a good job, on the risotto, by the way. Mar."

" Missy, I wasn't born yesterday. I know my chef skills are abysmal. I can see it in your face."

He chuckled, thinking back to the first time he'd cooked a meal for Melissa when she had came to his home in Hawkins before he moved off grid to go live in a hermit life out in Chicago. She had no reason to be kind, to appease to his feelings about his shit cooking, but she did to not discourage his cooking.

" Kathy is the same. She isn't honest. I wouldn't think of you girls less if you weren't so nice and polite." He shrugged, genuinely. " Back on to the point at hand. So here I am thinking, hey you know what? Why don't I drop in, say hello to my old friends?"

" And your sudden arrival is highly welcomed, as usual, Mar." Melissa pointed out, playing along to her friend's charade he is doing to trick both of her brothers and her mother, tasting the wine as it became a palate cleanser for the bland risotto. " You are welcomed here anytime and any day."

" You know, Murray, this was real kind of you to do." Joyce recounted placing her wine glass down on the tables rug. " You being here for Milly, my girl, while she is going through a rough time in her life. Being a single mother, raising two small daughters, all alone. Well not alone because she has me to help her." Joyce, hand on Milly's finger her engagement ring still takes its place in her girls life she refused to take off since it's reminds Melissa that hopper is indeed real, rubbed it soft with a heavy heart for her daughters grief. " You're healing a part of her heart I didn't think would heal ever again."

" You don't need to say that, Joyce. It's okay. I'm here for Missy. She is a special little lady, who I know needs me, and I just so happen to have that radar of when there is trouble." Murray, winking at Melissa, grinned at her eye roll as her lips fail to keep her face blank while she smiles. " Besides Katherine would put me in the dog house if I had not done this. Not that I need convincing myself."

Joyce laughed, finishing her wine, the clanging of utensils on plates served as white noise in the air tense with an unusual tone of silence. She grins. " That sounds exactly like the little Katherine Henderson I know. She hasn't grown out of it."

" You should stay here, Mar. bring Kathy with you and that way we won't be separated much as we were before. Hell I'll even ring up Mandy and fly her out here too." Milly, her tone genuine with emotion of missing her girlfriends in Hawkins even though they were creating a fake story, says letting her fork drop. " stay here for a while."

" Tempting as the offer does sound, Missy. There is that thing you have, remember? You have that conference, that business trip, in Alaska."

Will and el drop their forks.

" Business trip?" He said, in a brief moment of confusion. " You have a business trip? I thought you were done with.. all of the fashion stuff? After you.. know.." He stated frowning. Eleven is just as, if not more, confused. Melissa stared down at her grey, pale, risotto for a split second to think of a reply.

" Yeah, I've been offered an extension contract up in Alaska. The whole conference is to show how I will be contributing to their sales and marketing. It won't be for long, but I'm taking Murray up on his offer to go with me cause I don't trust him to be in the house and not make a mess."

Milly smoothly lied. It came more natural to her to lie from her lies told in childhood to escape out of Lonnie's beatings.

She felt horrible for lying to her daughter, her mom, and her brothers. All of it.

" Thought it might take some time for me to think about reinvesting in my company. I have been meaning to do it for a couple of months now. Alaska is where they are based in."

" So do Eskimos, like, still live in igloos?" Argyle, speaking up for the first time since walking into the house casually with a very stoned and out of his mind Johnathan Melissa could smell reeking of marijuana, asked with curiosity. " Or, uh, are they, like, fully-blown, like, living in.. the suburbs now?"

Melissa's eyes bugged out of her head and almost choked on her wine. Murray had a dead-pan look on his face, still querying to who he is.

" Who's this?"

" Okay." Milly, diverting the spotlight off argyle, spoke up. " I think we need to discuss the issue of the elephant in the room here." Melissa turned to eleven, elbows on the sides of her plate, scanning her ruined special bought dress she had made for el as a present for Christmas. " What happened at the roller rink, today? It's clear something did. I think the truth might be more easier than a lie."

" Some girl got shmacked today at the roller rink. It was some pretty gnarly stuff, Miss Milly."

' Smacked? At the roller rink?'

Milly takes in the guilty look on elevens face, as it clicks together in her head why she is quiet. Milly chose to not jump to conclusions, taking in deep breaths of air, as she spoke softly. " Did you do it, honey? Did you hit that girl argyle is talking 'bout now?"

" She did it out of defence, Mil.. Milly." Will says, stuttering as he decided his sister needed to know the truth about why it happened.

" Angela was talking really bad about you and S.. She said some nasty things about how you aren't a good mom, how.. how you must've had Eleven at a real young age and called you the Californian whore! It was so horrible to hear it being said."

Melissa pinched her nose.

' Angela. It had to be her.'

How dare she spew such vile, hateful, and disgusting words. She didn't know their situation or their home state and life.

If I have learnt anything is to just be the bigger person. But that is wearing thin with Angela.

JASMINE SPEAKS;

I know I have taken a few months to update this book.

I put my focus on other fandoms and like I have done this in the past, with my other books I completed. I am slowly going to try to do this book once again because with the new season of it fast approaching I got some inspiration again.

The teaser of season five brought me back to life. It inspired a few new ideas I might explore more, in the last season, when it comes to milly and Jim and their little family.

What do you think of Murray and Milly? Their friendship as a whole? And her dynamic with El & her family?

I love writing Milly as a Mum/Mom. She's so sweet.