"SO THE ACROBAT CAN ONLY WALK FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS." Sar wondered when her life got so weird that she was in some kid's basement, watching him draw a stick figure on a tightrope on a piece of paper. Who was she kidding, her life had always been weird.

"And— and the tightrope is our dimension? Right," Steve's eyebrows were furrowed. "Okay."

"Yeah. And we're limited to just walking on this side. But what if there was a flea on the tightrope? And the flea can walk forwards and backwards, and around the other side of the rope."

"Upside down," Sar and Steve said at the same time.

"Yeah!" Mike exclaimed. "And to break through to the other dimension for us, you have to create some kind of doorway." He stabbed the pen through the piece of paper. "Like this."

"Like the portal thing at the tree. It's what I went through. So it's like a gate between our worlds."

"Yeah," Dustin agreed. "A gate."

Eleven sat across from them, on the couch. She was still wearing that pink dress Mike had found her. She looked tired. Sar wondered if she'd been sleeping. Probably not. She herself had nightmares that plagued her dreams. Sar had her arms crossed on the coffee table in front of them. "So how do we close it?" Her bright eyes were determined.

"Close it?" Lucas said.

Sar shrugged. Strands of her blonde hair were falling out of its loose ponytail. "Well if we're assuming it's open, then that means anything from our world could get through. But," she put a finger down on the table, "it also means anything from that world could get through. We can't just assume there's one Demogorgon. There could be hundreds. We don't want those getting into our world."

"They'd destroy everything," said Mike.

"Exactly. So we want to close this... gate, right? Do you know how to do that?"

Dustin raised a finger before slowly deflating. "Not exactly."

Sar's fingers were drumming lightly on the side of the table.  "El, could you close it?" The younger girl had her knees drawn up to her chest, looking over at Sar with dark eyes.

"Maybe," she murmured. She gave Sar a small nod. Her head rested on her bony knees. 

"How would we even find this gate?" Steve asked. He seemed just as uncomfortable about being in the Wheeler's basement—without Nancy, furthermore—as Sar was. But it was much too dangerous to get Nancy or anyone else involved in this, they decided. It was just between them, and the kids. 

"Well, Mr. Clarke said it would disrupt the magnetic field, because of the large amount of energy," Mike told them.

"It might even destroy our world," Dustin added.

"Oh, well that's reassuring," Steve said.

Sar looked between them. "I could find it, with the energy thing. I can sense it. There was that portal in the woods, but I think it might have moved or something? The feeling isn't where it was."

"So we've got teleporting portals now." Steve was running a hand through his hair.

"Apparently," Sar agreed. "Or maybe it can cover up its energy. Like disguising itself."

Lucas looked up with lowered eyebrows. "You're saying this portal's alive?" The others looked over at her at that comment.

Sar was shaking her head. "I don't know. I mean, how do we know? It was making this... sound. Kind of like it was alive? I don't know." She made a face. "But I can detect energy. Which means I can find it. And I bet it is coming from that damn lab."

"Lab," Eleven repeated. "With... Papa."

The blonde took that as a sign to get up from her position on the floor, and slide onto the couch next to Eleven. She wrapped her arm around the younger girl. Eleven's fingers ran over the ink numbers on Sar's wrist, in an act of self-comfort. It was hidden beneath Sar's jacket sleeve. Sar tucked the girl under her chin. "Look, I'll try to track this thing down. Considering I haven't felt it yet, it's either very large or very well hidden. But under no circumstances are you to go looking for it yourselves, you hear me?" The boys nodded, but their promises didn't meet their eyes. "I'll know if you go out there. So don't you dare."

They nodded quickly at her, though Sar suspected she'd have to track them down and make them turn back in the near future. She moved to stand, shifting off the couch. She knelt in front of Eleven. "Hey, sweet girl," she said. A pain twinged at her heart at the familiar words. "I'll be back soon, okay?" Eleven gave her a few short nods. "Keep them safe, you hear me?" she whispered in the younger girl's ear. Then she placed a hand on El's cheek. "But you keep yourself safe first. Don't go near the lab, don't let yourself be seen. The bad men are still after us. Keep yourself safe." Eleven was staring at her with her dark eyes. "Are you sure you don't want to come stay with me?" 

Eleven looked back over at the kids before shaking her head slowly. "Want to stay with Mike," she said, words slow as if she had to think about each one before she said it. Sar had been the same, when she first left. She wouldn't have had talked at all if it hadn't been for Lune.

Sar lowered her eyebrows. "Okay, El. Remember: stay safe. Don't let them make you do anything dangerous, okay?" Eleven nodded to her. "Good. You know how to contact me if you're in trouble? Open your mind and call, okay? I'll be looking out for you." El gave her a single small nod. Her small hand was clutching onto Sar's wrist, where her fingers rested on the girl's cheek. "Okay," she said. It was hard to part with Eleven. After all this time, another child of Hawkins Lab was alive. She'd felt them all die one by one, from far away in Chicago. One lucky one had gotten away—only one—and the rest had died in that damned place. But she hadn't felt Eleven. That was a first. Brenner must have gotten good at blocking out her senses. 

Did that mean there were other children in there?

Sar let her hand slip away from Eleven's face and she stood. She plastered a smile on her face again, but it was less convincing this time. She still couldn't believe that they left all those children to die in there. 

"Shall we head off? It's going to get dark soon." Steve was standing in the open doorway, watching her. 

Sar began to cross the room. "Yeah, Farr—"

"Hey, yeah," Steve waved his hands in front of her before pointing an accusing finger. "We don't need to talk about that here." She just grinned at him widely. 

Her eyes were mischievous. "Okay, Fawcett. Let's go." Steve gave her that murderous look again as she skipped after him. 

"Faucet? As in tap, faucet?" Lucas was muttering behind them, eyebrows lowered. 

Dustin was just shaking his head in confusion. "It's weird, man."

•°•☆•°•

THE AUTUMN LEAVES BLEW IN THE TREES ABOVE THEM. A small robin flitted from branch to branch. Her father was pushing her on the tire swing out the back of her home, Sar spinning under the oak trees. Her short blonde hair blew around her. "Higher!" she squealed to her father. He laughed and pushed the swing harder. She swung her legs as she flew through the air. "Hooray!"

She wasn't sure how it quite happened: perhaps it was too forceful of a push, or perhaps she was just clumsy. But whatever it was, her hands slipped from the rope of the tire swing. She remembered feeling herself falling and hitting the ground with a loud 'thud'. Something must have sliced against her arm, because the next thing she knew, there was a lot of blood. Her blue dress was stained red and she was screaming. 

Her father ducked down instantly, the tire swinging discarded beside them. Sar was crying as her father picked her up. The blood was running down her arm in long rivets. He glanced down at the gushing wound, and then the piece of metal sticking from the ground. He kept his arms around her as he looked back towards the house. "Diane! We need the ambulance!"

Her mother had come out, dragging the phone as far as she could with its chord reaching from the kitchen. She was understandably panicking—her daughter was crying on the floor surrounded by her own blood—yelling down the phone. Sar had calmed down as the paramedics arrived. They'd taken her in the back of the ambulance with her parents, and she watched the insides of the ambulance flash red, humming along to the siren. Her father was on one side, her mother on the other, and a kind man was putting pressure around the bandage on her arm. Her mother's hand was playing with her hair.

Sar didn't like hospitals, she'd decided that day. They were white and cold, and smelt like antiseptic and death. They were just always a bit too clean. It made her uneasy. After she'd been fixed up, they all sat by the hospital bed together. She had a plastic wrap around her arm, which the nurse was going to bandage further."Look, Papa!" Sar exclaimed, holding her arm up proudly to show off the long gash full of stitches. It had been lucky the metal hadn't cut her deeper, the doctors had said, or it could have hit a major vein. Sar was lucky, she had decided.

Her father was holding her hand, the stuffed tiger she always had on her pressing up beside her. "I know, sweetheart. That's going to be an impressive scar."  She grinned proudly, looking down at it. The nurse said something to her as she wrapped it in a bandage. The stitches had left a scar which she would have forever. It was cool though, she'd decided. She could pretend it was a battle scar to the other kids in the park. It was cut in a distinct jagged line up the front of her bicep, looping into an 'L' from where she had twisted to hit the ground.

Her father held her hand away from going to touch it. "Let's get out of here, kid, what do you say?" he asked, stepping away from her hospital bed. Her mother stayed crouched beside her, holding Sar's fingers to her lips.

"Yes!" Sar exclaimed. She swung her skinny legs off the bed, and her mother helped her to stand. The hospital gown was loose around her small frame. Her blue eyes blinked in the sunlight as she hopped up and down.

She followed her parents into the other room. "I just need to get you discharged and then we'll be going right home." He wrote a name down on the sheet. The nurses began talking to him about remembering how to care for the stitches, what and what not to do. Sar rocked on her feet as she waited, hand firmly clasped in her mother's. 

She'd missed the way some of the doctors were looking at her a little too hard. A little too eagerly.

•°•☆•°•

NOT EDITED BECAUSE IT WAS LATE. sorry if there were any mistakes.

i was meant to upload this chapter earlier but wattpad just wasn't working for me. it kept deleting the chapter for some reason and then said i'd published it, but it all of a sudden deleted again - so i don't really know what's happening. apparently my sister got the notification it uploaded but said it had been removed, which means my chapters are just deleting. it sucks because i edited the chapter and now o forgot what I changed?? so sorry if there are mistakes or stuff that don't make sense. i'm just not going to go back to other chapters in case they delete ?? let's hope this bug or whatever doesn't decide to remove any other chapters. because of this, if for some reason another duplicate chapter of this releases, let me know. it's just acting all weird.

EDIT: IT SEEMS TO BE FIXED NOW AND DID POST TWO CHAPTERS