THE WIND BLEW THROUGH SARA'S HAIR AS SHE JUMPED THE CURB ON HER BIKE, RACING DOWN THE STREET. The bike was yellow, fittingly. Katie had gone in early for sport and James had taken her in, so Sar decided she would ride today. James had taken her car like usual and would drop it off at the school before work. It was their usual Tuesday routine. Hopper tended to be busy with Eleven late at night, which was perfectly fine, but it meant he couldn't do the running around. And James was shit at saving which meant he had to borrow one of their two cars.

She sped down the hill, feet idle on the pedals. "Hey, kids!" she exclaimed as she slid onto the street next to them. Her blonde hair was flying in the wind, backpack bouncing over her back and jacket flapping in the wind. The three boys looked up at her sudden appearance.

"Hi, Moonmaiden," Dustin said with a toothy grin. Mike pedalled alongside him, huffing. They met on this road whenever Sar rode, if she was on time. Sara just grinned at Dustin's nickname as the four of them drifted down the hill towards the school. The three boys began bickering over something as usual, while Sara just laughed at them.

When they passed the school complex, Sara turned to them. "This is my turn," she teased. The kids waved a goodbye as she made a sharp turn onto the High School road, tires bumping over the uneven drive. Cars drove slowly through the carpark as she trailed alongside them. She leapt off it as she reached the pathway, walking it to the bike racks that were stationed outside the front of the building. She put the lock on her bike so it wouldn't be stolen, and grabbed her books for the next lessons.

•°•☆•°•


SARA WAS APPROACHING HER LOCKER AS SHE SAW A LIGHT CROWD IN THE HALLWAY. Her first four lessons of the day had gone painfully slow, courtesy of being in Tommy H's Biology class and her ending up pulling his chair out from underneath him after being flicked in the head just one-too-many times—she had to admit she was proud of that. She'd scored a detention for Friday evening, which was irritating in itself. Growing pains shot up her arms, and an aching had set in behind her eyes for seemingly no reason—her chest felt like it was compressing slowly again, like under a heavy metal weight which increased when she breathed—a usually unsual, but now normal occurrence which plagued her nearly every day, since the night of the demogorgon.

Now her day just got more annoying as she passed the eyes of all the 'it' girls, hanging around the lockers to chat. She had to push past Vicky and Tina to even get close, the two who were gawking mindlessly at something. She rolled her eyes at them, side-stepping Carol who shot her a short glare. The small collection of girls seemed to be pretending to converse with each other, but Sar could tell they were secretly eyeing something.

She paused as she saw a boy leaning up against her locker, books clutched in hand as he seemed to take a break. There was a packet of cigarettes peeking from his front pocket and thin-rimmed sunglasses hanging off his barely buttoned shirt. She just blinked at him for a second and walked towards her locker. The boy turned as she approached. He had dark eyebrows, a blond mullet, and a smirk on his face. The girl stopped short in front of him, books in hand and an unimpressed look on her face. "Hey?" she said to the boy. Her eyebrows were raised.

He licked his lips, eyes dragging down her as he leant against the locker. "Hey."

She just blinked at him, tightening her grip around her books. The girl raised her eyebrows even higher, unimpressed. "What're you doing?" He was blocking the door of her locker with his shoulders. "You're in front of my locker."

He stepped back slightly, letting her open the door. He leant up against the beside one, earring dangling. "Well, this is my locker, sweetheart," he said with a grin. He had bright blue eyes that were trained on her face, complete with a flirty smile. "I'm Billy, and it looks like you're stuck with me." His tongue ran over his lips again and she just shook her head, slamming her locker as she started down the hall. She made a face at Carol and Tina as she passed.

The girl strode into the cafeteria, surprising the students crowded inside. It wasn't an unusual occurrence though, the Hopper girl slamming the doors a bit too forcefully open whenever she was pissed. The younger students scrambled out of her way as she made a direct line towards their group's table. She'd never done anything to any of them, but breaking Tommy H's nose had a reputation. Sara threw herself down in the seat beside Jonathan, startling the three teenagers. Nancy looked over with furrowed eyebrows. "I've got my locker next to Mr. Ass of the Century. Great."

"Next to Billy Hargrove?" Nancy asked, eyebrows raised in that signature look, already knowing who she was talking about just by the description. "He's..." She craned to peer behind Sar, where he was strolling into the cafeteria laughing at something Tommy H said.

"I know," Sara agreed. She pulled out her sandwich angrily, slamming her bag on the table. "Literally I was there for a single second and he was already trying to get in my pants. Seriously?" She turned to shoot a glance at him.

"Really?" Steve asked, joining their gaze. "Man. I heard he's on the basketball team." Jonathan turned to look over Nancy's shoulder now.

"Surely he's not better than King Steve," Sara teased with a sly grin, kicking him in the ankle beneath the table.

He just glared at her. "Don't call me that." Sar laughed.

Sara took the chance to peek back over Steve's shoulder at where Billy Hargrove had taken a seat at Carol's table. It wasn't every day there was a new kid in Hawkins, so it was quite the cause for excitement. "Is he chatting up Vicky?" she asked, eyes narrowed as she watched the scene unfold. "It's, like, first day of school, dude." Nancy just raised her eyebrows and turned back to her lunch. Sar just shook her head and took a bite of her sandwich.

Jonathan rushed off halfway through lunch to develop photos for his photography class in the darkroom, and the rest of them had chatted for a while. When the bell rang, Sara ran to get some of her items from her locker before slowly beginning her trek to the art room. Her teacher was usually a couple of minutes late, so it gave time for all the students to have a few minutes break. She still had her coffee in one hand which she was drinking from, paintbrush clutched in the other.

The soles of her sneakers scraped along the pavement as she took a sip of her coffee, thinking to herself. Sar hadn't seen anything of the future since the night with the demogorgon—if that's what it truly was—and believe her, she'd tried. She'd strained her mind to come up with any sense of what she had felt that night. It was hard for her to even believe it was real at all, and not some scenario she'd made up in her head from the energy she had been expelling. That seemed like the most logical answer. She hadn't told anyone about it, anyway. It was probably nothing.

Sara turned as she heard the noise of a basketball hitting the ground from around the corner. It was a bunch of eighth graders, messing around. They were sprinting around the concrete court, throwing the ball into the hoop and jostling with each other. She paused for a couple of moments, watching as the ball struck the ground.

"Six. Six, are you listening to me?"

The kids were throwing the ball to one another as they shouted with excitement and laughter. They were bouncing around.

"Six."

She got glimpses of their grinning faces through the chainlink fence.

"Kill them." She remembered a hand ghosting across her bony shoulder. "Can you do that for me, Six? Kill them."

One of the boys shoved the other out of the way with a laugh. The sound of the ball on asphalt echoed in her ears.

His voice seemed to be right in her ear. "Are you weakening, Six? Do you want to go in the room? Do as I say."

The ball flew through the hoop and the kids jumped up and down with cheers, jostling their friends.

His words seemed to get methodically louder, until they were ringing. "Kill them. Do it." Her fingers dug into the skin of her wrist. "Do it."

"Sar. Sar!" Hands landed on her waist and she jumped violently, a gasp leaving her lips. Her eyes were wide as she turned around to face Steve, who was watching her with an expression of concern spread across his face. She knew she must have looked frightened. "Hey," he said. His RayBans were pushed up on his head. His eyes darted towards the direction she'd been staring back, before they returned to her, wide and worried. "You okay?" His hands were still on her hips.

"Uh." She swallowed, eyes darting back to where the kids are playing. "Y-yeah. I... I just..." His hand moved up to lay on her shoulder. Her throat seemed to close over. She avoided his gaze.

Steve just looked at her face closely. "Really?" he asked her. She just shook her head slowly, shamefully, and let Steve pull her into an embrace. She wrapped her arms around him. They stayed like that for a moment before the boy began to lead her down the path. "Come on, let me take you Art." He kept his arm tight around her shoulders and didn't let her look her back. They still made it to the art room before the teacher, taking a seat in one of the co-joining single rooms out the back. Sar already had her easel set up here, and some of the things in one of the drawers.

"Aren't you going to be late for class?" she asked him softly as she pulled her things out of her drawer. She began to arrange her brushes on the table. The girl took a careful seat on the wooden stool. She still seemed shaken. Her paints were already out and she dipped the brush in it, starting on a practice sketch of a lilac.

"Got a free now," he told her.

Sara turned at that. "You dropped Biology?" she asked, eyebrows furrowed. Steve just shrugged, throwing himself down in the chair beside her. "Really?"

He just shrugged at her. "Wasn't my thing anymore. I kept with Ms. Charlesworth for almost a year but I swear if I hear her go on about that cat one more time I'm going to kill myself." Steve ran a hand over his face. Sara cracked a smile at that. "Not to mention I was border failing."

"Oh, Steve, Nance could have tutored you. I could have. I may have it in a different block, but we're doing the same topic. You could have asked." She had put down her paintbrush now, leaving a purple streak of acrylic behind.

He shrugged. "Didn't want to bother you. You're focused on Art, and Nancy is on Chemistry. Y'know? It's okay. I got sick of it anyway. Not my thing."

"Hmm," she said, lips still twisted. "If you're sure." She stared at him again for a moment before glancing back at the piece of paper she was working on. He stood up, pacing slowly around the small room. It was just about as large as a large closet, but cozy. Her teacher had set it up this way so they wouldn't be distracted by each other's art. Sara had practically set it up so it was her own space. There was a large wooden shelf creeping up one wall, filled with all her things. Since they were in their second-to-last year, and the last-years got an entire other room, they got first priority in this block. It basically meant she could do whatever she wanted to it. Some of her art were hung up along the walls, there was a collection of tapes in a box in the corner and an array of spilt paint on a desk.

Steve stopped to admire her artwork. "They're all of them?" he asked, looking at her arrangement of paper hung up around her work area. They were all paintings or sketches of children and teenagers, each of varying ages but with the same haunting nature to them. Most of them had their heads shaved. And he could see through each of the ways they were portrayed, the type of person they could be in real life.

"Yeah," she said, smiling as she admired her work. "They're pretty much the only people I paint. It's nice to remember them like that." He was surprised to see them here. She never talked about the lab, let alone the kids or what had happened there. He doubted even Hopper knew most of the details.

He took one of them down from its pin. It was an acrylic painting of a girl dancing in fire. He'd seen her before, in Sar's older sketchbook. She had the same, dark, piercing eyes that seemed to look straight into him. She was in a ballet costume made out of fire, one leg pointing towards the sky. With one of her raised gracefully in the air, as if she was about to take a bow, he could easily read the '007' on her tanned wrist. Steve admired the detail of her pointed face as he turned back to look at Sar. She was still watching the painting he held in his hands.

Steve could see her finger scratching numbly at a spot up her right wrist. The tattoo of her '006' was covered up with a large amount of makeup, but Steve knew the spot well. He reached out to take her hand. Her eyes darted up to meet his, before she dropped the hand by her side.

Steve didn't say anything. He knew she didn't want to talk about the lab, or any of the things that had happened in it. It was hard enough her and Katie and James living here in Hawkins without the new scientists realising they were the kids from the old records — let alone if she had a breakdown. They all left her alone about it, but Steve knew she still struggled with everyday life. He wouldn't pretend that he hadn't seen the stars stuck onto her bedroom ceiling, or seen her staring at teenagers with particular attributes: like girls with dark skin, or with hair pale as quartz, or tall boys with brown hair. It was just something she dealt with every day, and he could only assume James and Katie experienced the same things too. 

Her paintbrush was paused on her paper as Steve rifled through some of her art pieces, leaving a wet, ugly stain behind. Something felt wrong. She couldn't quite explain it. It wasn't like the feeling from last year which had drawn her to this town in the first place, but it was something similar. An ugly feeling which rose in her stomach like an illness. It made her clench her toes and look down, eyes moving as if searching for something as she tried to reach out to find what it was.

"Sar?" Steve asked her. She glanced up from where she'd been staring at her page. The purple paint had worked its way through the paper. "You all good?" He seemed worried that she might have been having another repeat of earlier.

She just nodded at him, putting her paintbrush in her pot. "I just..." Her voice faded off into a breath. Steve was still staring intently at her, eyebrows curved with worry. Her gaze cast out the small window to her right, watching the expanse of the oval which stretched across the ground. "I thought I felt something." 

•°•☆•°•

Why am I listening to romantic songs while writing this. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

OK I KNOW BILLY IS AN ASSHOLE BUT I LOWKEY LOVE HIM BECAUSE HE DESERVES SOME LOVE WITH HIS DAD ALRIGHT? YOU CAN FIGHT ME ON THAT. I REALLY WANT TO MAKE HIM AND SAR FRIENDS IN SEASON 3 CAUSE GOD KNOWS IF THE DUFFER BROTHERS ARE GOING TO DO ANYTHING TO MAKE HIM A BETTER PERSON.

Another reason why I've been procrastinating is I am plagued with too many fanfiction ideas and am all trying to execute them, and so right now I am planning all a Billy, Nancy, Game of Thrones, T'Challa, Bucky, Avengers, Jon Snow, Commander Lexa stories plus my Bellamy story - and honestly there's too many it's killing me. But I want to write them all and it's so hard! So yep I just kept getting new ideas and having to plan them don't kill me. This is my priority for right now, though, so you don't need to worry. BTW if you're interested in any of the people/shows above I said I'm writing about tell me cause I'll let you know when I finally get around to posting them!

Also Love, Simon was honestly the greatest thing I've ever seen. I bawled my eyes out at one scene and was screaming by the end, I LOVED IT! OFFICIALLY RECOMMENDED! (Is me recommending my favourite movies going to be a thing? I hope it's going to be a thing.)

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! HOPE YOU GET HEAPS OF CHOCOLATE AND HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY!!