PRETTY SICK!
— we go out tonight ☆

Gen didn't know how long they'd been driving down the gravel road, nor did she make any attempt to sit up from her lying position in the backseat. All she could do was stare at the roof of the van and prepare for some kind of happy ending for that night, her back laid against the bottom of the row of seats as her head occasionally lolled to the side to look at Hopper and Eleven, the muscles in her legs started to cramp from the bent position they rested in. The felty fabric seat smelled like cigarettes and old spilled booze, maybe a bit of vomit if she sniffed hard enough. Her own stomach churned at the thought.

The silence within the van lasted about as long as she expected: too drawn-out for it to be comfortable, but not lengthy enough to save Gen a headache.

"So, what, we're just not gonna talk about it, huh?" asked Hopper. His tone was always so strangely accusatory, both Gen and Eleven found it hard to not take an immediate defense when he did that even if they knew better in the back of their minds.

She saw El twitch uncomfortably and side-eye him. Her new look was—well—a look, similar to what Gen wore when she felt like putting a bit more effort into her outfit, or when the band had a gig. The hair gel took her by surprise, though. She couldn't help but wonder in silence, normally Eleven told her things she would never even imagine telling Hopper, but that was when Gen could still access people's minds. Maybe she wanted her to initiate first, but Gen simply couldn't, much to her own disappointment. A gaping hole sat in her chest where her power used to lay.

Eleven sighed. "About what?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm just curious, you know, why all of a sudden you look like some MTV punk." The statement fell from his lips scornfully. So much so, in fact, Gen glanced over at them lazily to watch.

She rolled her eyes at Hopper and looked back out of the window without giving him the satisfaction of a real response.

"I'm not mad, kid. I just want to know where you've been," he paused. "That's all."

"To see Mama."

For a moment the world stopped around Gen. The concept of "parents" never crossed her mind. Not for her, not for Eleven. Now, there was an ocean in her stomach; swirling and furious, violent and churning, it sloshed against her insides and suddenly her own deficit filled her lungs like she was drowning—El had "Mama". Her Papa was a monster and a dead one at that, the reason that they were forced to fight from the very beginning, but this so-called "Mama" held a tenderness unlike anything Gen had ever experienced. She was so sick with envy the very second those words left her mouth.

She wanted to be happy for her, the person she considered a sister most days, but she found herself turbulent with the feeling of betrayal. They were supposed to have each other, both products of science that had nearly everyone fail them up until they became situated with the outside world. It felt horrible, but she wanted to revel in pain with someone who understood her, as much as two people with a language barrier could understand each other. She worried that, now, since El had another potential parental figure in her life, they just wouldn't get each other anymore.

Too engrossed in her own thoughts, the teenager hadn't realized that the conversation progressed until Hopper's voice raised and Eleven stared ahead blankly in shame.

"I shouldn't have left," she muttered as she tore her eyes from the road.

There was a long pause and Hopper grunted. "No. No, this isn't on you, kid. I should've been there," he frowned slightly. Gen watched his face twist and contort with guilt every second that passed. "I should never have lied to you about your mom. Or about when you could leave. A lot of things I shouldn't have done."

She rolled her head back to a straight-lying position, staring up at the roof. This vulnerability from Hopper felt intrusive, like she was an outsider looking in on an intimate moment between father and daughter—some kind of alien that peeped through people's emotions. Naturally, she thought of when Hopper questioned her whereabouts for the day's past and how her interrogation was much less "heart-to-heart" and more, "buddy-grilling-buddy". She would have reacted much differently to Eleven, but the sentiment would've been noticed, maybe even appreciated in a few days' time.

But, she also understood how she wasn't the same as Eleven. Wasn't locked in the cabin for nearly a year. So she shut her eyes and focused on the conversation, calming herself.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm..." he paused and inhaled. Tears threatened to fall. "Like I'm just some kind of black-hole or something."

"A black hole?"

"Yeah, it's a... You know, it's this thing in outer space. It sucks everything towards it and destroys it. Sarah had a picture book about outer space, she loved it."

A black hole. A thing that perpetually destroyed anything in its path with nothing to stop it but itself, it would leak radiation until it killed itself and dissipated into nothingness in the galaxies that spread across the universe. Black holes were a plague, a nuisance, everything bad in the world that destroyed, destroyed, destroyed. Gen finally discovered an analogy for her thoughts, something that applied to her very being, the reason she existed.

Every death around her, every injury, or overall bad thing that happened felt like her fault because she was so used to being the black hole. The thought of other people finding out the same thing tormented her, like when they realized it, they would treat her like the monster that she was.

"Who's Sarah?"

"Sarah? Sarah's my girl," stated Hopper, simply. "She's my little girl."

With her face still streaked with tears, Eleven asked, "Where is she?"

"Well, that's kind of the thing, kid. She, uh... She left us."

"Gone."

"Yeah," he sighed, his eyes flickered to the rearview mirror to glance at Gen who watched him speak, encaptivated.. "The black hole. It got her. And somehow... I've just been scared, you know? I've just been scared that it would take you, too. I think that's why I get... so mad. I'm so sorry. For everything. I could be so... so..."

"Stupid?"

"Yeah," Hopper smiled, "Just stupid."

As she watched Hopper and Eleven grasp onto each other's hands, Gen grasped the significance of love. Of family. How she loved the people that sat directly in front of her, and how they loved her too. She just prayed that the black hole wouldn't get them. Not Hopper's, but hers.

𓆩♡𓆪

A gun clutched in both hands wasn't a foreign action for Gen, but it was one that she hoped would fade into the past with her newfound life in Hawkins. A redo of everything she'd missed as a Russian spy who also happened to be a teenage girl. Unfortunately, where supernatural went, supernatural followed, and she found herself with one hand on the grip of an M4 carbine and the other supporting the body of the gun as she trekked behind Hopper and Eleven through the lab.

She'd whisked it off of the corpse of some military personnel in the lobby; El looked disgruntled with the callousness of it all, but she understood the need for as much firepower as they could get within their small arsenal. Every pool of blood at their feet reminded them why they were there, and why they had to do what they did along the way. Gen couldn't help it when her face twisted at the sight of Bob's body, or the thought that any pool of blood could've been Angelica's, though, those prospects made her skin crawl with discomfort.

Fallen soldiers were fallen soldiers, but those two bled because of the shortcomings of others; poor civilians caught in the crossfire of something much bigger than anyone could have comprehended.

Their footsteps echoed through the hallway's deafening silence like raindrops against pavement and Gen found herself becoming more and more antsy the less they saw of the Demodogs. Not a single one dared to cross them, which meant that they were all somewhere. Huddled in the lab, racing towards the Byers' home, or swarming the cabin—anticipation ticked, a clock built in her chest that matched the rhythm of her heartbeat. Thankfully, Hopper and Eleven knew the layout, so they would be in and out of the lab as fast as they possibly could.

Gen avoided the area for so long, and now she'd willingly waltzed directly into the gaping maw of extinction. Hell on Earth. The evil of all evil. Whatever embellished phrase she could use to describe how fucked any of them could end up by the end of the climax of the fight—if they were able to put up a fight at all.

She stepped over a puddle of crimson, which looked black in the darkness unless Hopper shined his flashlight on it, and nudged El through the doorway with the flat of her forearm, careful not to point the muzzle of the gun at her. When they entered the stairwell, they finally heard the first noises to come from anything in the building. They sounded human; someone moaned and groaned quietly from a flight further down than her group, and from the looks of the blood smeared across the railing, they were injured.

Hopper turned to the girls. "Stay here."

Both nodded in agreement and Gen took a spot beside Eleven, aiming the gun down the stairwell in-case something decided to zero in on them and begin an ambush.

Within a few seconds, he muttered an, "Oh, shit." And descended the rest of the stairs on that flight.

Gen motioned her head for El to walk ahead of her, and at the bottom of the stairs, pushed into the corner, there was a man bleeding profusely from several wounds on his body. A doctor, or scientist. His clothes were ripped from where claws sank into his flesh and his skin looked pallid, sweat reflected off of the bright light that Hopper shone at him. They appeared to be somewhat familiar with each other, from the way Hopper spoke to him, but Gen didn't bother asking any questions. She preferred to stay silent on most missions.

"Oh, yeah. I've been meaning to tell you. This is Eleven and Gen. Eleven, Doc Owens. Doc Owens, Eleven," informed Hopper, "Gen, Doc Owens. Doc Owens, Gen."

She stared at him blankly.

"They've been staying with me for about year, and Eleven is about to save our asses." Jim looked up at him. "Maybe when this is all said and done, maybe you could help her out, too. You know? Maybe you could help her lead, like, a normal life. One where she's not poked and prodded and... treated like some kinda lab rat, you know? I dunno, it's just a thought."

Clearly this was some kind of negotiation tactic, so Gen began to raise her gun at Owens slowly, only to have Eleven place a gentle hand on the top and side-eye her. The ravenette shrugged her shoulders at her in a "What?" motion and El merely blinked at her in response. She grumbled under her breath. Some people never grasped the concept of intimidation.

The doctor groaned as Hopper tightened his belt like a tourniquet around his leg, purposely being slightly too rough with him to be completely painless. "But, uh... think about it," he said as he handed him a revolver, "Don't go anywhere."

Gen let out an amused breath from her nose and Owens chuckled as they continued on their way down the stairs and towards the basement, which couldn't have been a very long way away considering the fact they started on ground level. Every step lower made her tighten her grip on the carbine. An assault rifle would have made her feel more secure, but she was lucky to even have a weapon so easily available to her, especially with a half-full magazine of bullets.

Guns, step over the dead body, stay low, guns, step over the dead body, stay low. Her conscience echoed everything she'd ever learned about pulling off a successful building clear-out, and though the sentiment was there, she found herself growing more and more annoyed with the ordeal as she passed every dead person on the floor and scanned the area for a better gun with more ammunition than she had in hers—if the lab bothered to keep their nose where it belonged, they wouldn't have been in this predicament in the first place. She would have probably spent her Sunday night egging the police department with Eddie, or watching American football with Hopper and Eleven.

Neither of those things happened, though, and Gen simply wished for everyone to make it out unscathed so they could do those things the following Sunday.

On the last few steps, she saw El stop again and Gen nudged her with her forearm again, but this time she didn't budge. She saw her shoulders shudder from a heavy breath that she took and the teenager frowned at the sight, nudging her again, but this time a little harder than the last. Her sister glanced back at her, eyes wide.

"Gen."

Motherfucker. Immediately her heart rate picked up and Gen thought she might have felt something wrong with the area, or worse, wrong with one of the other groups that they left to complete their own missions. Instead, Eleven held her hand out for Gen to hold.

She sighed. "I can't. Two hands on the gun."

Eleven's brows came together, knitted with fear and worry and everything that a young girl could possibly feel with the fate of the world on her shoulders. She held her hand out again and pleaded, "Please."

Gen looked down the stairwell and exhaled, caving almost instantly. She slung the gun onto her back and took El's hand in her own, picking up the pace to catch up with Hopper, who snuck around the stairs with his military expertise. Both of their palms were sweaty and Gen wanted to let go of her hand at the feeling, but she didn't for God knows what reason. It offered much less comfort to her than the gun did even though Eleven was her own force to be reckoned with, but it did feel more stable, sturdy, like a metaphorical force field had been placed around them.

El ignored the cracks in Gen's skin that traveled down the lines of her knuckles. They descended the last of the stairs and stared down the hallway, into the control room that would seemingly lead them to the gate that El needed to close. It made sense, seeing as there were muted growls that emanate from the open door that led into the room.

She let go of the girl's hand and got a proper grip on her carbine again. Hopper looked at them, "Stay here."

It seemed a little silly, how Jim always insisted on leading despite the fact that he was traveling with two supernatural beings, both of which could rip something to shreds with as much as a close of their fist.

Still, she stood beside El and let Hopper take the lead, looking between both ends of the hallway.

"El," she whispered and motioned for her to put her back to the wall. An exposed angle meant blind spots, and Gen wanted to eliminate as many of those as she possibly could without straying away from the path.

Eleven trembled beneath her layers of too-big clothes, though she tried to hide it from Gen, who noticed it almost straight away. She watched her apprehensively. "You're going to be okay, yes?"

The girl swallowed thickly and looked back at her. "What if I can't do it?"

Without missing a beat, Gen replied, "Then I'll see what I can do from there," she paused and bumped her with her shoulder. "If you fall, I'm picking you up. I... I can't carry it for you, the weight of it all, but I can carry you."

She nodded in solidarity with her, nerves calming slightly.

Abruptly, the groans of the creatures became high-pitched shrieks that echoed throughout the corridor. Gen quickly armed herself again and marched towards the corner that Hopper turned down, stopping right before it and peering around the edge.

He stood a few feet inside of the room, dumbfounded with the sight in front of him. The Demodogs spasmed and squealed into the dry air without moving from their places until they leapt into the red cavern in the ground, it had an elevator shaft held up by wires and equipment that would send it plummeting into the depths of the ground with the click of a button, Gen could only assume from the pulsating light that it led to the thing they were searching for, the root of their problems. The gate.

She crept into the room, just as perplexed as Jim who stood in front of a shattered glass barricade, each of them looking at each other, stumped as to what had transpired a few seconds prior.

The walkie on Hopper's hip crackled to life with Jonathan's elated, yet frantic voice. "Chief, are you there? Chief, do you copy?"

"Yeah, I copy," he replied.

There was a beat, and then like an elegy for the end, Jonathan uttered, "Close it."

Gen carried on forward without wasting a second, hurdling over the fence around the elevator and unlatching it from the inside so El and Hopper could get in with ease. Though, when she raised her head, she found herself face-to-face with a gaping wound on the wall. Vines strung from one end to the other and the darkness of the room made it hard to decipher where concrete ended and the fleshy Upside Down substance began; the sight of it made Gen's breath catch in her throat as the memories of her time spent in the other dimension came flooding back to the forefront of her mind. The starving, the cold, the blood, sweat, and tears that went into her and Will's survival, or the mental turmoil caused by the ones that weren't so lucky.

"You cannot save everyone," Boris' voice echoed in her mind. She had to try this time.

She only snapped back into reality when Jim clapped her on the shoulder, sending a shockwave through her whole body as she caught the wind that was knocked out of her lungs. In a fell swoop, he hit the button and the elevator rattled as it roared to life and began lowering them into the dark abyss. Gen adjusted her grip on her gun and side-stepped back and forth as they went deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper—and they only needed to get to the center of the gate, the largest part, so the pure size of this thing astounded her, though she expected no less.

The group looked at each other once the elevator stopped and simultaneously nodded, mentally preparing for whatever may come their way the moment El began to close the gate.

She raised a hand towards it and bowed her head, muscles tensed as she used her power to slowly, but surely, seal the gate that imposed on their lives in Hawkins. For a few moments, Eleven was confident, but it wavered as a figure approached the other side of the red mass; its head was larger than their cabin and a creak in Gen's stomach told her that-that was the shadow monster that stole her power—the Mind Flayer.

The pure size of it startled El enough that she faltered slightly and both Gen and Jim squeezed the body of their guns a little tighter than before. Her hand quivered wildly, yet the gate only seemed to open faster than a few moments prior; within a few seconds, though, she refocused herself and its burned edges began to heal, becoming plain gray concrete once again. The rest of the group could only watch in awe of it all.

That was, until something skittered up the wall of the stone plummet, and both of them snapped their heads in the direction of the sound. Then something else scampered past Hopper's flashlight, and then the elevator rocked back and forth when a Demodog landed on the roof and swung its face into Jim's gun. An entire army began to attempt to swarm them, using the darkness as leverage to cause confusion.

Gen grunted and used the light that the gate emitted to locate the stray monsters, shooting them down with as much precision as she could while using a gun that was unfamiliar to her and occasionally aiming solely on sound. One fell to its death after being hit with one of her bullets, and then another, and as the mass of them grew larger and larger, her carbine jammed. She pulled the trigger twice more and it clicked at her in response. She quickly grew impatient and tossed the gun over the metal barricade, sticking her arms out over the edge and letting the pressure build up in her nerves so she could pop the Demodogs with max precision.

Jim shot the monsters down from the walls and Gen bursted anything that landed on the roof of the elevator and hung their head down into their faces. They exploded with ease, like overfilled water balloons, and with each rigorous movement she felt the skin on her hands crack more and more, like repeated papercuts that threatened to sneak up her arms.

Suddenly, Eleven began to scream.

Gen looked over at her figure as it raised into the air. Both of her arms were outstretched past her and she screeched as she unleashed the peak of her power to close the gate and to stop the tendrils of gas that tried to break free from the confines of the Upside Down. El was ending the fight, once and for all.

Darkness enveloped them as the gate sealed and the girl dropped from the air, getting caught by Hopper. All three of them collapsed from exhaustion and relief, gripping onto the one thing that brought them comfort in that moment; each other.

The ravenette snaked her arm above them and smacked the red button that would send them up to the surface, immediately recoiling her hand as it stung, like someone sliced the webs of all of her fingers. Hopper held onto both of the girls, who held onto each other, his face buried in their hair and shoulders despite the sweat and Demodog grime that covered them. He listened to their heaving breaths and muttered into Eleven's ear, "You did good, kid. You did so good."

Gen let herself be vulnerable for them, just this once.

So, she held them a little tighter, afraid that they would fall right through the floor if she let go.

—————
——— AUTHOR'S NOTE
oh my god, one more chapter of
act one and it's officially over 😭
the action has finally finished and
everyone is safe... or are they 😈

it only took me 8 months to get to
this point in the book 💀

don't forget to vote and comment!

PRETTY SICK
girlpools  /  2023