DON'T DREAM ITS OVER
Crowded House

Checking in to an off the record, old fashion but sort of decent enough to not raise suspicion of its authenticity and the hiking percentage of being murdered, motel six in town for the night Melissa couldn't find a single moment to settle herself in.

Despite the lack of warmth in the entire room she counted her luck with having her simple designer winter coat on, it enveloped her entire body, and before she could lie down on the questionable looking bed, she takes off her shoes going straight to the phone.

She made a promise to call and check in on eleven, her brothers, and mom.

Dialling the home phone number to her mother's house, she is discontent to hear the dial tone ring dead out repeating the same beep three times, it confused her on why no one is answering the call. Last she checked her mother is home, with both of her brothers. So it concerned her immediately. " Mom never not answers the phone. She always picks the phone up, or at the least will answers it. Sometimes Johnny if he isn't high as a kite. Each time I call one of them picks up but nothing. It's like the phone was left and ignored somehow." A couple of times more Melissa continued ringing the house phone, wanting anyone to answer her.

" Here. You can try and call Kathy. Maybe it's the phone line itself, at the house."

" Kathy knows of our top secret mission, I already called and informed her of every detail." Murray, causally, mentioned. His red ear muffs and beret sat snugly on his head, to keep frostbite from his important body parts. Milly didn't act surprise as she had a suspicion Murray wouldn't lie to Kathy about something important as saving hopper. " I don't want to discourage you, here, Missy but the thing is we can't waste time doing phone calls to your family as it's important to know we cannot be late to what is essentially a ransom exchange."

Murray, blunt his approach to the situation given at hand, gesturing to the room using his hands.

" For that, for that, sweetheart I think you very much need to be focused and on time."

Melissa muttered. " Damn, Mar. okay."

" Now put your shoes back on, Missy. There isn't time for us to get comfortable in this sketchy, bed bug infested, place 'cause we have one hopper to save!"

Hiring a car came easy, when you could spend the money Melissa had on hand for emergencies, and this is a definite emergency that called for an immediate bribery for an old ran down car that's seen better days. Milly was the one to ride in the drivers seat, Murray calling shotgun, driving to a sketchy aeroplane hanger in the middle of an old airport for cargo planes. Yuri's fish n fly. Melissa pulled up to a tinkered, less than air worthy large aviator plane which would bring them to Russia.

' Okay, you got this, Milly. You got this.' Melissa, self assuring herself she wouldn't be the next to be featured on an unsolved mysteries episode in the making, took the time she had to stare out to the miles of mountain tops. Alaska is a wonderful place. Full of beauty, and landmarks to explore, if she hadn't been there to save hopper she'd have a vacation in the very place. 'Where is Yuri?'

" If things go sideways, I am going to show off my black belt in karate skills. And I should mention I made top of my class for how awesome my moves are, Missy."

Murray, satchel of cash in hand as a collateral measure intending to convince Yuri to comply by withholding the money if he didn't do his side of the deal, motions to how he easily can take Yuri down. Milly rolled her eyes, igniting her palm as a greying stormy mist emerges out of her hand with a sound of a hiss surfacing from of it.

" If he doesn't want to listen to us then, I think our new friend might be convinced otherwise if necessary, with the use of persuasion of the other kind. Mar." Says Milly, her eyes flickering grey to white and brown, causing a fluctuation of energy to frizzle the powerlines on the runway and Yuri's hanger. " Either way he is screwed if he tries any shit." Murray gaped at the evolving source of her energy pulsation. That is different from the last.

In the middle of their conversation a wielding of metal pieces could be heard behind them and the sound triggered Melissa to get into position with Murray staring, quizzically, at a sporadic looking engineer adorning a large wielding helmet came out of the less than air ready death machine with wings.

" Who are you?" He's Russian. Melissa, as quick as she could, came up her answer using the first language she fell naturally into.

" We are looking for a man named Yuri. Are you him, by any chance? Because we are on a rather tight schedule and we need to be somewhere real fast."

" Ah, you speak perfect Russian." He answered, from his post inside of the planes infrastructure he is building on, grinning. " Why do you ask for Yuri, pretty woman? Maybe I can help with the problem you need to resolve."

" We can't answer that, it's a private matter, I'm afraid." Milly retorts. She is already on edge with her nerves and he isn't making it better. She cast a look around at Murray, he understood her quiet request to be prepared to lie. " I would like to know where it is possible that I can find Yuri. Please. It's important."

" I'm sorry. I don't know how to tell you this, but you are a day late." A day late? Melissa narrowed her eyes. What is he saying? The man showed off claw marks left on the exterior panels mauled off by precise claw marks of polar bears. " You see marks? Yuri was on sightseeing trip to see polar bears, and then bears got into plane, and pull him out of cockpit and kill Yuri!" Melissa didn't believe the absurd, re-enactment of his story, and it showed in how she glowered at the man before her while he threw his hands up in a formation of a gigantic polar bear he'd seen. " He loved bears!"

" That is the biggest lie, and the most terriblest of acting, I have heard and seen. I have seen pretty shit broadways, in New York for my birthdays, in the past. But your one takes the highest spot on it Yuri."

Milly, flatly, declared finding his whole act heinous and abysmally bad. Yuri cackled, though his laughter is strained and hoarse as countless of years of smoking will do it to your voice box, at how he is easily impressed at the pretty American woman seeing through his show. Yuri raised both his arms, trying to bear hug Melissa, but she had been quick to naturally move out of the way and give her hand to him instead shaking it with her eyes meeting his. " You must be Milly! I thought I recognise Enzo's description of you. You match it quite well!" Murray, part quickly annoyed at how touchy Yuri is with his friend, diverts him back to himself and the two men shake their hands.

" And You are?"

" Murray." He, weirded out, answered. " We have.."

" Yuri. Murray. Yuri, Murray, Yuri, Murray. We rhyme!"

Melissa, irritation on a higher level than before— which she understood to be frequent as of late with the way her life is heading needing to deal and learn how to cope with the morons the people she surrounds herself with, throws up her hands above her head fed up. This idiot is being trusted to get them to Russia and back home to California? Great, that is just simply perfect. All she needs a hyperactive, terrible pun joke telling, Yuri to deal with.

Melissa marches her way in the hanger, throwing the bag on the file covered older make table Yuri uses to tinker around parts on for his plane, then unloads the entirety of the contents of the money on the mouldy rotting table that has seen better days.

" Forty thousand American dollars." Milly, occasionally glancing to the plane wanting to get on it and fly off to Russia, swiftly pulls the bag off letting it hang loose at her calf. " As promised. If you want more money, I'm well off. I don't really care if I lose more than half of my life savings. All I want is for you to fly us to Russia, we extract the agreed Cargo, and you bring us back in one piece like we agreed on. If you have a problem then I'd like to know now rather than while we are flying."

Murray, gawking at how professional of a woman she snapped into so quick with a blink of an eye, shuts his mouth once she takes charge knowing if he interfered there would be trouble. Yuri, who is wide eyed sniffing the cash like a greedy hound in heat, stares impressed at how feisty and adorable the American girl is. He found it hard to resist. A loopy grin takes place on his bearded face.

" Ah, the more you talk, pretty Milly the more I'm tempted to take up your offer on more money but Yuri does not care if he does or doesn't get it. I'm not picky." Yuri, a flirtatious wink thrown in the middle of his excitement for money at Melissa, is hyped to see the pretty mounds of cash on the desk. " I hope you do mind if I count. You two seem like very nice, very trustworthy people. I'd think you will allow Yuri to count the money." He motioned to the two unimpressed Americans. " But so was my brother before he stole my wife!"

Milly rolled her eyes, mumbling under breath, as she made her way to the coffee station Yuri set up previously she spotted walking into the hanger in spite of disliking the cheap smell of the stale base coffee chosen she had no other choices to choose from. One little coffee won't hurt.

Murray follows saying how Yuri is a complete and utter 'weirdo'. Milly nods.

She picks any mug she seen on the table, without a shadow of doubt, disentangling the see through mug of a day old coffee that probably should be replaced. Milly, in all honesty, didn't care for the possible outcome of being poisoned by drinking expired watered down station coffee.

' Cannot be worse than drinking unfiltered tap water straight out the basin.' Sometimes she wish she wasn't right.

Milly knew she should've trusted her own advice and not drink coffee, or take anything in general, from a stranger. Yuri had added a sedative in the coffee's packaging, somehow, to knock her and Murray out. Rope is cutting the circulation off in their wrists, Milly could just as well untie them. it would raise the alarm, her powers could be useful to their situation but it's too much of a high risk if the plane was destroyed, if she did do it herself.

Yuri came back inside of the plane, acting as if he didn't commit a crime of drugging two strangers with the intention of kidnapping them, which she calmly set her dead stare on him. " Why the long face, pretty Milly? Are you not excited for your journey across the iron curtain?" He expressed to Milly with a crazed smile on his unnerving face. A huff of resignation from her made Murray tense. Oh no, Yuri is going to get it. He all but thought.

" Okay." Melissa threw her head back, sighing, fed up. " I didn't want to do this but you left me no choice to do so, Yuri." Milly, burning off the rope which is binding her arms together behind her lower back using her energy pulsation, got up off the seat to show off her free hands and Yuri's eyes went wide in stupefaction as he dropped his jaw at her eyes glowing. Murray mutters 'now you're in trouble'. Yuri looked between the two, half shocked, half surprised to the point he fell to the cargo holder planes floor. Milly lowered her body to Yuri's level speaking in a calm manner.

" You see, Yuri."

Milly started, showing her palm. His expression deepened in a mortified, dazed, stare watching the grey swirls of mist dancing in the air with pulses of storming clouds.

" I'm a girl you don't want as someone to be your enemy. I've got three kids waiting for me, at home, that need their mother back alive."

She grabbed his collar, her eyes glistened with a haunting evil gleam that switches from dark brown to instantaneous grey, Yuri's face gleamed with a fresh shade of sweat as he gulp audibly.

" I cannot afford to lose the father of my children, the love of my life, because if I do lose him you'll be the first one I come to and I won't stop there. I will make sure you lose all your money, your life, and everything you cherish dear to you."

Milly's voice distorted for a long second. Her presence, it felt unearthly and demented the longer her stare is on Yuri.

" Uh, Missy. I think he gets the message..." Said a startled Murray, concern swishing in his eyes at the difference in body language Milly is showing. " Why don't you let him back up..?"

" So if you don't fly us to get my hopper, and you don't bring us back home, then I will personally see to it you don't have the ability to ever fly this piece of crap again. You got it?"

Yuri surrenders, wanting to salvage his own life realising he had screwed over the wrong woman for an extra few thousand dollars he wanted to see if he could get away with doing, while hands are in the air surrendering to the obvious angered and enraged girl who would definitely slaughter him if he tried to double cross them again for a second time. Milly's movements are harsh as she hurled Yuri up, pinning him to the entry and exit door. She glared straight up at him. " Try another way to fool us you will be needing to sleep on a ventilator for the remainder of your boring life. Understood?"

" I understand, pretty Milly. I promise."

Yuri says, a grunt in his voice, still calling her the name he came up on the spot with.

" Good."

Milly chirped, her smile splitting across her face, as she strides over to Murray untying her good friend's wrist from his binds that held him down.

Murray continued to be impressed by how capable Milly could be and her confidence in taking down older grown men twice her body size itself.

Yuri mumbled how he shouldn't be turned on by the act of violence but she's quite the bold, dominant, woman he liked. She reminds him of a Russian spitfire he once hooked up with.

" Yuri will fly us to get your hopper, Now! You sit back. Enjoy the ride! It'll be quite a long while before Yuri gets us to motherland! I have peanut butter if you are hungry. Blankets too!"

Melissa rolled her eyes, Yuri goes to the cockpit to begin the flight process for the trip to Russia to get back hopper, bringing the coat of hers she is in for more comfort.

She needed to sleep. Before her eyes closed, the smallest of smiles etched on her lips thinking how she is close to Hopper and her reuniting, head rested on Murray's shoulder.

' I'm almost there, Hop. Please just hold out for a little while longer, baby.'

Love can make you do crazy things. It can make you choose to believe whatever it is you are doing is right, that there's no reason for consequences, and with being in love comes with a rectified life choice of what is right and what is wrong because every sensible decision is based on the need to be able to show that you love the person on a certain personal level you'd do anything for them.

A quote that goes 'We accept the love we think we deserve' comes in hand to what Melissa thought. She didn't think she deserved to have love, a love so true she woke up every morning thinking she's in a dream. Her love for hopper is real. She loved him. She loves him. A love deep inside of her that suffocated her to the core.

You don't get it, do you. Lonnie would often say. No other man will ever look at you and say they love you because that is a straight fucking lie. He liked to remind her, in his drunk violent fused episodes, of how little love she deserved. You are just the same pathetic, little, bitch who doesn't see she is ruining the lives of every person she is in contact with. Just like your mother. Selfish as each other you are.

Hopper never made her feel worthless, not once. Unloved. Unworthy of love. He made her heart whole and mended the wounds he didn't cause just with the simple deed and act of mercy he had given her. It being handing his heart to her on a silver platter.

Going on a highly classified operation, and saving Jim from spending a lifetime in a Russian prison camp in the mountains of the Soviet republic war torn country— which Milly reminded herself is in a hostile takeover by the KGB, she didn't think it would take long for things to go wrong. And they did. Boy did things go south quick and real fast.

Murray was pretending to be the next karate kid, a dojo master, straight from a scene when mister Miyagi is teaching Daniel how to channel his chi showing off his skills.

Then after they found out the hard way of why they shouldn't have confront Yuri, he continued to be stupid thinking he could outsmart Milly pretending he's scared of her, the plane fell thousands of feet out of the sky itself.

One set back came after another. Just what she needed. Stupid Yuri, that greedy bastard.

Snow. Snow. More snow. Melissa started to hate the snow, there is too much of it for miles. A commodity she loved before now a reminder of it all being a blockade to stop her from getting to an end of this madness. She wanted to scream it out loud how it is Yuri's fault, but she knew that isn't at all the truth, so it'd be wrong of her to put the whole blame on Yuri. Even if it is partial at least.

All she wanted is her hopper. Isn't that asking for too much?

Melissa, knees up to her chest, blankly staring in the flames of the campfire she gathered from the fallen tree branches they crash landed on sighed. She let fall a tear that turned into a full blown sob as she buried her head in her legs. She misses her babies, her mom, eleven, Hopper. She wanted to go back home, see her brothers, be a family once again and for all. Things were falling apart before her eyes.

" Hey, hey. Missy. Don't of that, please don't do that."

Murray cooed, returning back to the set up scouting for anyone who could help them out for their rescue operative, he scoot past the raging fire to get to Melissa sitting next to her on a wood casket which was previously cargo in Yuri's plane and held her head. Letting melissa cry out each of her feelings she bottled up.

" Think of it this way, Missy. We made it didn't we. We crossed the Atlantic Ocean, fought our way out of a plane fight, and landed straight here in the motherland." Murray, using a stereotypical Russian phrasing from an old Hollywood movie, said mocking Yuri's phrasing of the word he used to describe Russia. " We did it. Yes, we obviously have made a major set back by miles, but what is an adventure if there aren't any tribulations?"

" It feels like.." Milly sniffled, clearing the traces of her tears off her cheeks. " All my life I've tried running away from the very things that have hurt me. The people.." her chin touched her chest, she can feel the heaviness settling and nesting inside her chest. " The people. Hawkins. All of it, Mar. I selfishly left behind my family all because of my fears. The shadows of my past I thought would be gone, for good, found me again when I first came back home to Hawkins." Her face hardened as an indescribable object of determination etched on her matured and burdened features. A fire.

Murray, curious to know Melissa's thoughts that are swindling in her brain, feels milly arise out off the make shift seat made of wood. She faced him and her hand clenched, her face fierce with a newfound sense of reason.

" I'm done running, Murray. From continuously waiting for the day I am consumed by the shadow of my past. I'm done hiding behind a fake sense of reality where I am safe from, being attacked or killed, and I am done playing the victim."

If it's a fight He, and the demons of her past life, wanted.

Then it's a fight they will get.

JASMINE SPEAKS;

I cannot believe I am close to completing season four! Did we all see the teaser trailer for ST5? The way I had to stop myself from acting like a crash out seeing all of my favourite characters finally in one trailer again after so much waiting leading up to it.

What did you think of this chapter? Milly and her bad ass power moments? Her with Murray?

How do you think hopper and her are going to reunite once they see one another?