༉˚*ೃ ᵒ¹. 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐀!

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 nightmares since the day she was born. Figures with reaching arms and white lab-coats, blood on young skin, gripping cruel hands and twisted machines that had the shadows of monsters, stabbing needles, and the faces of dead children. She'd thought she'd known the worst of it, that she'd be prepared for every other nightmarish thing to come.

          Katie was not.

          The world was white, white, fading white and blue and lights dancing before her eyes. It hurt, it all hurt everywhere, her chest, her mind, her eyes which stung and burned, and her fingertips which were numb with a pain she could never explain. Emptiness, emptiness. For her, the voices were silent, shouting at one another from where she sat, only a dim wail against her skull.

          She was cold and the night around her was dark even with the lamps lit in the living room, and she felt like a child enclosed in white walls again. She wished she was buried below the ground, but she was not, she was in someone's home and her hands were clasped over her ankles as she curled over herself. The position hurt—her knees digging into her ribs—but Katie Hopper didn't care, because there was a big wide hole in her chest that was left broken and gaping an empty, and that nothing could ever fill. It was tearing her open inside, ripping, gouging, that gentle numbness of grief that numbed every other feeling until the world was just cold. Because Sara Hopper was gone, and so was their father, and now it was just the three of them, like they'd never been a real, loving family.

          She was silly: silly to believe they would ever be safe, that they would ever escape the clutches of the lab or its monsters. She hated herself for it, that naive stupidity that had convinced her that everything would turn out alright. That it would return to normal, and Sar and Hopper would be right at their sides. Katie was destined to lose family. It had begun the day she was born. So, Katie pushed her hands against her cheeks in grief until her face became sore and her fingers ached. She couldn't even remember how they'd gotten here, who'd moved first, who'd picked her up off the ground or who'd started the car. It was a blur. She thought she'd been screaming a lot.

          It hurt. It hurt so much that she couldn't think, that she didn't want to think anymore. God, it just hurt so much.

          The living room roared back to noise: a thousand different things at once, voices shouting, that wicked crescendo, crying (she couldn't be sure who that was) and something being thrown, the sound of rain against the windowpane, and down the street Katie could hear police and ambulance and fire-truck sirens, and Kate wished it would all just end. She squeezed her eyes shut again and Max Mayfield put her arms around her, drawing the girl's head against her chest. Kate could hear her heartbeat. She knew it was aching too.

          Joyce Byers was yelling, Nancy, Jonathan and Robin were crying and shouting too—their faces contorted and splotched with paleness and red—and poor Steve Harrington sat on the couch with a pillow in his arms and a very far away expression on his face, the shocked, dull kind, like he couldn't quite believe it. A necklace shone in his hand—the golden wishbone which Katie had given Sar to protect her, and which had been Two's before her—and Katie started crying harder. They should throw the stupid thing into the lake. It was bad luck after all.

          It frightened her how quiet James was, in the same way that Katie was, she guessed. He had El pressed close against his side, squashed between him and Mike, but he didn't look very there. His eyes were focused on the carpet of the Hopper living room, they did not move. His expression was very vacant, his lips naturally pressed together and his skin pale, chest rising and falling softly as he breathed. Far away.

          Once, there had been twelve of them, and they had been happy. And then there were five, and they were happy too, because despite it all, they had everything they needed. Now they were the only ones left, and they'd never felt half-as-whole. He had always been one of the oldest, surpassed only by One and Three and Lune, and, like Sar, loving and protecting them had always been his responsibility. It would be hammered into him after he held Two's body in his arms, and the necklace in his fingers. That if his family crumbled any more, it would shatter them.

          And then there were three.

          Katie had no idea how she should be feeling. Right now, it was just... empty. The others in the room seemed not so unsure. Nancy lost her best friend—again, again—and she was pacing with her face red—crying often did that—and her hands knotted in her hair, expression utterly stricken and dress torn, "We need to go after her—!"

          "Where? Where are we supposed to go? She fell into the Upside Down, Nancy!" That was Mike, as stubborn as ever and in a clash with his sister even after the events that had just transpired. Even though his face was contorted with anger and lashed with dried tears. They were always too similar for their own good. "The Gate is closed, the machine is destroyed, whoever was in the lab has run—"

          "We have to try!" rose Dustin's voice. "I mean, think of Sar, she's stuck there alone, we don't know if she's okay—hell, she's probably not." He was doing the typical Dustin thing where he was waving his hands around calculatedly, his eyebrows raised and his expression firm as he worked out some kind of plan in his head. He was pronouncing his words far too much, rounding the letters. Then he pointed at Eleven, who still had her face tucked into James' shoulder. "Why doesn't El try to open it?" An expression of frantic panic was still present on his face.

          "El's powers aren't working!" yelled Mike back. This was how he was—how he was when Max joined, even, thinking she was replacing El—it was his anger and defensiveness that rose to the surface when he was upset. He was flinging his hand out almost accusingly at El, staring Dustin down with scathing eyes.

          "We still need to try!" said Max, her voice much too close at Katie's side. Kate did not turn her head to see what Max's expression was—but she was sure it was some mixture of red-hot anger and desperation.

          "Yeah!" that was Lucas, perched on the couch arm-rest with his long legs dragged up. "This is Sar." He said it so surely, so determinedly, like that fact meant it wasn't even a question. There was no debate, no other option. It was Sar.

          Mike, quite obviously distressed and with a face nearly as red as his sister, seemed up for an argument. His brows pinched tightly together and his lips pulled back into a defiant snarl. "So what if it's Sar?! That doesn't mean we can just magically get her back! We need to be realistic here!"

          "Realistic?!" shouted Max, red hair flying around her face as she shot her gaze towards Mike. "We are being realistic! We just need to figure out how!" Katie sensed the denial there. That was the first stage of grief, wasn't it? Denial. It was in all of their words now, in their clenched hands and fingers, their pinched, desperate faces and their shouts. There was that anger seeping in next—perhaps Mike had already reached it. Surely, he looked angry enough that he might start crying again. If Katie hadn't been so numb, perhaps she would have given him a hug.

          Jonathan, who had been pensively quiet so far with his blanched, almost frightened expression and jittery movements, spoke up then, in a croaking voice, "Look, I agree with Mike—"

          "Oh, you agree with Mike?!" exclaimed Nancy with a look of incredibly pained fury on her face, brows stitched and eyes wide and nose flared. "Are you kidding me?!"

          "I— I just mean we have to be serious about this—!" He was doing that nervous thing where he flailed his arms around, trying to stick to his point but clearly feeling under threat. There was that same sense of distress tugging at his words. "We just— She's in the Upside Down. The only time we got Will back was because the Gate was open, and Joyce and Hopper walked through. It's closed now." It was rational, but it was exactly what Nancy didn't want to hear, her face growing stiff and furious. Clinging to that last shred of hope.

          "So we fought for Will but we won't for Sar?" yelled Lucas, which just about set everyone off. Will, himself, looked astounded at the idea and began to yell at his brother, new tears still wetting his face. He shoved himself away to shout—Nancy joined him, poor Jonathan—and then Mike was all up in Dustin's face, probably frightening poor, distressed El who was characteristically quiet, and then Lucas was in his, and Katie caught a snippet of Lucas shouting, "Do you even care?!" at Mike Wheeler, before it was all enough.

          "Stop it, stop it!" Katie exclaimed, clasping her hands over her ears. Her blonde hair was streaked with blood and mud, tied in its loose two braids, and her face was wet with tears. The room stilled, and everyone's faces turned to look at hers. They were a mess: Nancy's hair was wild and her makeup was smeared across her face; Jonathan's eyes were red-rimmed and his lips were dry while Joyce leant against him with teary cheeks; James was very distant, his gaze vulnerable; Robin was wet-eyed and twisting her fingers anxiously; the kids' faces were all red; Steve, who had not said a single word, looked empty. "Just shut up! It doesn't matter!" she yelled. Max's body was oddly calm and soothing against her side, and at those words one of her hands wrapped around Katie's shoulder. Katie scrunched her face up as tears ran down her cheeks again. Never had she been so in rage, so cruelly outspoken, a roar—it was eating her up inside. She knew what happened to siblings and parents who stepped out of her sight. "They're fucking dead, and they're not coming back, so SHUT UP!"

          Steve Harrington stood up abruptly, stiffly, a bit like he was a ghost and he was only dreamwalking through this world, and they all turned to look. They'd nearly forgotten he was there—how silent and pale he'd been, frozen in time—and now their attention was solely on him, as he stood still like a puppet on strings for the first time.

          "Steve," Robin said lowly, reaching for him. He brushed past her dismissively and headed for the front door, the golden wishbone necklace still clutched in his fingers, face a kind of empty mask. It was jarring, not the Steve Harrington they knew. Before any of them could stop him—his strides were long and purposeful—he was out of the house and into the night. The door slammed shut in the wind behind him.

          "Steve!" Nancy called, running after him with tears still in her eyes. "Steve, don't go!" But as she stood at the fly-screen door, Steve was already disappearing into the night, and he didn't stop to listen to her. Nancy dropped her head against the door and began to cry again. It was very silent for a moment, only her upsetting sobs filling the air.

          Katie did not succumb so easily, she'd taken to staring back at the carpet with tears tracking down her face. No more sobbing, tonight. A few more passing moments of silence. It all felt like their worlds had been flipped upside-down. "We can stay at our house," said James, and there was something so very wrong in James' voice, something shallow and a little empty, like he was only a bit there. It was a very sad sound. Slowly, he raised his eyes to look at Joyce. Like maybe he was trying to convince himself that he was okay too. "I'll look after them."

          "No," said Joyce firmly, her hair a mess and her face splotched and lips cracked but that fiercely, distraught motherly expression on her features again. "No, no, you are staying with us tonight." She was a good mother, thought Katie very sadly. She would be a nice mom.

          "But—"

          She held out a hand—very thin, gaunt and trembling, gentle—to quiet him. "Just tonight. Until we get everything... sorted out." Joyce looked very tired, she closed her eyes for a moment, lightly. There were dark circles formed beneath, the edges of her lips were tipped down. Katie did not interfere. She only had James now. Once again.

          "I'm going to go find Steve," said Nancy quickly. Her cheeks, nose and eyes were splotched with pink, she had not stopped crying since the hours before when it happened, and now she hastily grasped her keys out of her pocket, fingers shaking and nearly dropping them.

          "I'll come too," was what Robin Buckley said surely, still in her dirty Scoops Ahoy uniform and her short blonde hair awry, standing up next to Nancy suddenly, though they'd spoken about three sentences to each other between them.

          "And me," added Jonathan, like it wasn't even a question. He had his hands uncomfortably clenched at his side, perhaps he didn't know what to do with them. But Nancy looked over at him softly, with that shaky, teary-eyed expression, and Robin nodded as trembling-handed Nancy headed towards the door, the others in tow. Whoever thought the four of them would be friends, in the beginning? Sar tied them together, a little bit, Katie supposed. She'd always tied everyone together.

          "Try the cliff over the quarry lake," murmured James, loud enough so they could hear, that same tone to his voice. "They used to go there when Sar couldn't sleep." Of course he'd known that, he couldn't sleep either, even if there weren't any nightmares. Something about falling asleep not next to the one you loved most in the world—and knowing you never would again—made it feel wrong.

          Katie wondered if it would be the same now, with two empty bedrooms in the Hopper household.

          Robin Buckley nodded back to him as she closed the Byers' front door behind them, engulfed in the cold night air. It was still raining, the droplets glinted off of the three teenagers' faces as they disappeared into the darkness and then into the orange glow of Nancy's car's headlights. Maybe they would find Steve, maybe they wouldn't. Kate wasn't sure which would be better.

          It hurt. It hurt. It felt as if someone was very slowly pulling the nerves out of her heart, the veins from her skin, tearing them out of her being so very softly. Grief was so very strange, like that. At first, she'd been screaming. Joyce had wrapped up her split and bloody and bruised hands—they had broken open on the laboratory floor—but now she was so very still, she could feel every inch of the pain inside her. So very painful.

          They heard Nancy's car reverse quickly out of the driveway, headed up towards the quarry. Max was still holding onto Katie with both arms—Kate was aware she should probably be holding her back, but she couldn't manage to. Her body was stiff and frozen, chest torn. "She's not coming back," said Katie very softly. "Neither is Dad." It sent another painful tug through her ribs, her arms and her throat. She knew. She knew. She'd known Sar had always known it was coming, that great tragedy. It was something that Katie'd never thought about much, because she'd always been sweet and happy and naive. It was different now. The children of the lab never did very well apart. She knew. "They're not."

          "No, don't you say that," said Joyce Byers in a firm tone—that mom tone—and it was clear she was still upset about the whole thing, the way her mouth quivered a little. She looked very small, next to Jonathan and Will, who were both taller than her. Surprisingly frail, despite her headstrong nature. "We're not going to give up on Sara." Perhaps she was blaming herself, too. She was the real adult, after all. "Even if we can't get to her, we can't give up on the idea that she might come back on her own."

          Katie closed her eyes for a moment. If Will Byers couldn't come back from the Upside Down, if Barbara Holland, then what hope was there for Sara Hopper? She felt the tears coming, again—God, she hated those tears—wiped them away in frustration. Max pressed her forehead against the jut of Katie's shoulder. "You don't understand," said Katie weepily, and then didn't elaborate further. James would know, El too. The kids of the lab were just pieces, small fragments. They never would have survived the lab without the others by their side, it broke them into little shards. They were only whole when they had another standing at their side—stitching them together. See Kali—vengeful, a loose cannon—or how lonely and vulnerable Sar had been in Chicago. They weren't made to stand alone. They'd never lived long without one another. With each death in the lab, the next had come quicker, they'd all grown vulnerable, like their skin had been flayed open and anyone could see inside. And then there were just those four. It had been such a delicate balance—only the four of them left to keep each other standing—and now Sar was gone, and alone with no other of the children to understand or comfort her, and they were left just three pillars stitching themselves together with frayed thread. Maybe it would all come crashing down. We were made to be together.

          "We're going to get her back," swore Joyce, and it sounded like much too much like a promise to be comforting. What had the children of the labs' promises taught them? Seven's promise that she would never leave Sar, Two's promise of their collective escape, Sar's promise to Steve. If you had no promises, you had none of it to lose. Joyce didn't quite understand, of course—hadn't yet picked it up, not quite like the children of the lab had.

          How could you lose a sister and a father on the same day? Katie almost still hadn't processed it, there was that numbness gripping at the edge of the clench in her chest. She wanted them back right now. She wished she'd never come to Hawkins. Then she would have never met Hopper, and Sar would have come to live with her in Wyoming. There wouldn't be this pain. This pain. She would have never known him. Sar would be safe. Never would they have known how it felt to have a proper family once again, and to lose it all. They should have never come. She thought it even as Max squeezed her, even as Katie buried her face in her hands and her friends sat across from her. If she'd never known them at all, she would never know how much it had hurt.

          It all felt so very empty.

          She wondered where Sar was, right now. If she was coming back to them. They'd all sat around, waiting for a voice of telepathy, some kind of grazing of their minds, for some sign that Sar was still out there. And when that hadn't happened, they'd waited a bit longer. Perhaps she'd come walking right through that front door. That would be very like Sar, to get them all worried and come waltzing back in bloody and beat up, but fine. They waited for quite a long time, just hoping. Sar was always quite good at miracles. The clock ticked by, second-by-second, minute-by-minute, until it had been hours and maybe more, and Katie wasn't sure how time was passing anymore—was it even passing, anymore?—just the ticking, just the quiet waiting, for the door to open and it to be Sar, or maybe even Steve and the others home again. Hour-by-hour, oh, it felt so very numb. So very lonely, so strange. Katie could feel her fingers freezing where she sat, growing stiff and numb and unused, her face hollow and worn.

          They sat, looking at the door, for a very long time. But she didn't return to them, didn't walk through that front door. Maybe she never would again.

༉*ೃ༄

and it begins!

in case people didn't notice, this takes place directly after the last chapter of moonmaiden act three. like, after the scene with the ambulances in the rain post-starcourt mall, i imagine they all go to the byers' to break down everything that happened — and shout about it

:(

ALSO, just so people know: for the context of both this and moonmaiden, you know that final section of the last ep of stranger things season 3, where it says "three months later"? in the moonmaiden series, i'm changing that to one month and a half later. just because i feel like 3 months was a lot of time between the mall and everything else for steve and robin to be getting a new job, for the byers' to move away, etc, etc. i understand the show did that because they did the same "three months later" for both season 1 and 2, and wanted it to be consistent, but since i'm changing the timeline for this spinoff series, i'm altering it. so, yes, for this and moonmaiden, those events will be ONE MONTH AND A HALF LATER! <3

word count: 3,591

07.01.2021.