Will the Wise
Steve Harrington x Hopper!disabled!fem!reader—She's in the Mindflayer's fake world and in it...she's with Steve and Sarah is alive and Henry Creel sighting. TW: grief and pain and the Mindflayer's taunts.
“You had us worried there for a second,” Sarah-not-Sarah whispers, her face older, more developed but eyes still her eyes and smile still her smile. It’s like you’ve landed in a world where she never got sick, never died. A world where you were never racked with her loss, with the pain of her being gone.
A world where you never cried over her flat-lined body.
“I…I had you worried?” you cry, your hands pushing your body up into a sitting position, the sticky feeling of wires covering your body, the feeling of tiredness prevailing.
“Well…yeah,” Sarah says, looking at you like you’ve lost your mind, gone completely insane. “You’ve been in a coma for three days. We didn’t know when you’d wake up…if you’d wake up.” Her blue eyes fill with tears as she swallows, her fingers twisting and twining with your hospital blanket, the sound of slamming doors and hurried footsteps echoing from the hallway.
You don’t know what world you’ve woken up in, what kind of place the creature has sent you to, but a part of you doesn’t care. You have Sarah.
But you don’t have El. You don’t have the sister you chose, the one you’ve been working your ass off to teach, the one who knows how to teach about magic and powers and experiencing life again.
“She’s awake?! She’s really awake?!” you hear Steve cry as he rounds into the room, his eyes bloodshot and mouth cracking, dry. You wonder if he’s your best friend here too, but then he’s running to you, his hands coming to cup your face, his lips crashing into yours and you can’t help but gasp, taken aback at the ferocity and despair in the action, the pain and the fear.
And the way it feels exactly like you’ve thought it would, just perfect and right and proper, like your world has realigned on its axis, coming to rest in the orientation it always should have been in. It’s why you kiss him back, just for a moment, delighting in this small piece of this twisted, fucked up world you’ve been shoved into.
The fucked-up world that you’ve always wanted.
“Get off her, Steve!” a gruff voice you would know anywhere says as a broad hand pulls Steve from you. “She just woke up. Give her a damn minute!” He sounds just like your dad, looks just like him, but it’s not him because this isn’t your world.
It can’t be. You can’t have gone through all that pain and loss and terror in a coma dream. You just can’t! That suffering was real, this place of perfection and hope is not. Your life isn’t this good and there is no Eddie, no Max, no Party…
No Jonathan. No Nancy.
“Oh, my baby!” Diane cries, her hand still decorated with the wedding rings to your dad and nails painted a bright blue, nails decorated with your and Sarah’s initials—a mother’s acknowledgement of her children. “You’re alright! We were so worried!” Her face is red, swollen with tears and she looks like she’s been falling apart. Falling apart…for you?
She’s never done that. Not once. Not even when you were a kid, because you were always fine. Always good. You never needed her—not like Sarah.
But this is a world where she was never sick at all. You don’t know how you know, you just do.
“I see you’re awake, Miss Hopper,” calls the doctor as he steps into the room, lab coat on, clipboard held before him, eyes glancing to your vitals monitor, taking a note down. “How are you?”
“I think that’s a shit question to ask someone who just woke up from a coma,” you answer, your tone dry and irritated, arms crossing of their own accord, legs crossing. Legs…crossing?
Legs crossing?! You reach down and pull the blankets back, exposing two legs. Two complete, flesh and bone legs, skin still your skin and feet still your feet. No metal or plastic in sight, no stump. No loss.
No change.
“When you were in a coma…did you have…any…visions? A different life perhaps?” the doctor asks, his voice drawing your eyes up, back to him, away from the leg that can’t be but is.
“And if I say I did? What will you do to me? Lock me up?” Your eyes narrow at him, the feeling of constriction in your chest still heavy, something sitting deep inside, a lump in your throat that constricts your breathing, your voice. It’s too much. Too much. Too much.
This is not your life, but yet it could have been. It’s like you’ve woken up in a reality where Sarah never got sick. It’s like you’re seeing the life you could have had and god it’s beautiful because here…you never would have broken. You would have been whole and hale and not grieving with every breath you took for your sister and your mother and your father. No, because they’re here.
“No, not unless you didn’t understand that this was real,” the doctor says, tone careful and even and measured. You look around the room, at the tear-stains on Diane’s face, at the stoic, breaking look on Hopper’s, the anxious one on Sarah’s aged, changed face and the utter despair and fear and relief on Steve’s, you realize that you don’t know when you’ll get out of this. If you’ll get out of this.
And you’d really prefer not to be locked up.
“I did,” you admit, the words a whispered exhalation, playing at the part they expect. “But I know this is real. I remember enough.” The words are the right ones because the doctor nods, smiles and gestures your dad and Diane out, whispering to them while Sarah and Steve stay.
“What was in this other world?” Steve asks, sitting down on your hospital bed, swinging his legs up, laying beside you, his arm wrapping around you, giving the opening to snuggle into him as if you’ve always been doing it. “Was I in it? Did we do…things?” You let out a small laugh, tucking your chin in and curling deeper into him, revelling in this feeling, this experience. This lack of guilt.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
***
Hopper cannot believe this. This sight of you prone and motionless, distended black veins spreading through your skin and eyes flicking back and forth rapidly, some vision only you can see some nightmare haunting you that he cannot fix.
He sits by your bed in the cabin, his hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer, as if he can bring you back to him by simply praying to a god he hasn’t believed in in years. Not since Vietnam. Since Sarah.
You were always there, his little girl, his rock, even when you shouldn’t have had to be. He looks at you and he feels like he’s failed you. He’s failed you because he left you to grieve alone, to grow into the person who has to protect and save and defend because no one was there to protect you when you needed it. He sat by, drunk, and let you struggle with learning to protect yourself, morphing into the person who protects everyone else so that no one ever has to suffer through what you did.
And now, you’re paying for it.
Now, Hopper is losing both of his daughters.
“What have I done, baby?! What have I done?” he cries, his head falling to his hands, body shaking with sobs.
“You left her alone,” slithers a voice in the room, one dark and strange and yet all too you. One that sounds so much like you while also not at all that his head lifts, only to be met with you-not-you, eyes entirely black, mouth open, the strange voice you but not. “And I filled in the cracks. She’s my daughter now. She’s safe until I get her to me.”
***
Six months have passed since you woke up in this dreamscape. Six months of dates with Steve and knowing what it would be like to be with him, to be held by him and to let the feelings grow. Six months of contending with Sarah in a house you haven’t lived in since you were eleven, the two-story Craftsman not nearly big enough to contend with a precocious twelve-year-old girl intent on stealing all your clothes.
Six months of calling Diane, someone you’ve resented all your life, mom and having her hug you with warmth and love like she never did in your entire life. Six months of watching your dad smile and laugh, look in love. Six months of watching your dad never pick up a single beer bottle, his body different, not as expanded from the alcohol as he is in your world.
Your old world.
The longer you spend here, wrapped in Steve’s clothes, playing on the baseball team with your two legs, yelling at Sarah to leave your shit alone and living in a house with two parents, the less you want to go back to the world of terror and hatred and pain. You like it here.
You like it too much, you fear.
“Ready, babes?” Steve asks you now, his voice drawing you from your head and you blink once, reflexively before turning to him, your cheek hitting his arm where it’s braced behind your head.
“I’m sorry, what?” you ask, arms crossing, holding your body together as if you’ll fall apart, too broken for the world where you never would have been broken at all.
“I asked if you’re ready to go into school. We’re gonna be late if we don’t go now, but I could be persuaded to stay in a little longer, if you know what I mean,” he says, his lips tilting in a mischievous grin, pupils blowing across the expanse of hazel, the colour of the woods at night.
“Shut up!” you say, shoving at his shoulder and opening the passenger door of his Beemer, chest still constricted and tight. You don’t know why, but you know the feeling. You know this feeling you just don’t know what it means. Your hands curl around your backpack straps as you close the door and walk to the school, steps even and controlled and normal, the leg of flesh your own, not one of metal and plastic hinged on your skin by a saddle.
“Babes, wait up!” Steve cries, slamming his door and running to you, his hand pulling yours from your backpack, fingers interlacing with yours, the easy contact sending your heart stutter-stopping. “Nance and Barb and Jonny will wait for us. You know this.”
That was the hardest part to get used to—Barb, your Barbie. For the longest time, you had trouble looking at her, only seeing the half-eaten corpse in the vine-covered pool, white fluffs drifting around you like fungal spores. You looked at her and saw her dead body, not the live person before you.
It’s easier now, but still hard. The other hard part was finding out that in this world that could have been, you never dated Jonathan. It was always Nancy for him—he was fated for Nancy in every world. That had crushed you, seeing the light in his eyes directed at her, knowing this you never once had that directed to you, that this version would never have known the tender way he touched late at night, the way his arm was always protective wrapped around your hip, the big spoon to your little. You felt sorry for this version of you, but at the same time grateful because she never had to see the man she loved the most go off to love her best friend.
Over her.
“I know. I know they’ll wait, I just don’t want to make out today and be a parking lot show like yesterday,” you answer and Steve sighs, giving your hand a squeeze, the feeling enough to speed your heartrate up, to give you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach.
“Not into exhibitionism, then?” he asks you and you let out a snort, one that chokes in your throat when you catch a glimpse of Eddie, the boy you’re with in your world, but not even on the same stratosphere in this one. You look at him and remember Halloween, back when you were in the world without Sarah, the world that feels like a dream.
You look at him and you remember the feeling of his lips on your skin, the way he said your name like a prayer, a revelation. You remember the way he reacted when you called him baby, when he told you that he just wanted to be with you any way he could.
And in this world, he probably doesn’t even know your name.
It hurts more than it should.
“Definitely not,” you answer, ducking your head into Steve’s chest, his hand leaving yours, arm coming to circle around your shoulders, anchoring you to him while you slip your hand into his pocket.
“And you touching me doesn’t count?” he asks you, his voice teasing, eyes glinting with mischief as you look up, his lips curved up into a smile.
“When am I not touching you?”
***
Steve cannot handle this, this absence of you, of your touch and presence. The sound of your laughter, the loss of your smell. The loss of your smile. He misses it, misses you and hates this thing that resides inside your skin. The thing that speaks in riddles and prophecies, the thing that shames everyone around it while keeping your room arctic, claiming to need it cold. That without the cold, it’ll damage her body before it can take her home.
He cannot handle it and it is why he stands at the cabin kitchen counter, a mug held tight in his hands, knuckles fisting the handle so tightly they’re bone white, eyes locked on your door where the thing in your skin sits.
The thing in your skin sometimes breaks, it sometimes sounds like you, your eyes beating back the black, your voice asking for help, asking for safety. Whispering about memories that aren’t yours, but are. When your eyes emerge from the black, all black, you sketch blue lines on a black background, a map of sorts. You plead for them to wake you up.
To bring you home.
Yet Steve doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know how to bring you home and it’s killing him because he’s supposed to be your protector, the one who brings you to safety but he’s failing. He’s your best friend and he’s failing you.
And he doesn’t know how to fix it.
“How do I save you, Hops?” he whispers, looking down at the mug filled with weak, watery coffee. “How do I bring you home to me?”
***
“You look perfect, Stevie,” you assure him, straightening his tie before lifting the black silk gown over his head. You can hear him chuckle as the silk slides over his gelled stiff hair, settling onto his shoulders, the pleats still perfectly pressed. Everything about him is perfect.
Always.
“I’m gonna miss you,” he whispers and you can feel the tears well in the back of your throat, the knowledge that he’s leaving you, going out to California, to Berkely, to college while you stay behind. And even when you leave, it’s not to him. No, it’s to New York, your loyalty to your dream first over the love you think you’ve always wanted, always needed.
“I’m gonna miss you too,” you whisper, tears lining your eyes, making him blurry as he pulls you to his chest, your sundress covered body pressing against his silk one. His arms are strong and steady, grounding you in the moment as you sniffle, holding the tears at bay, trying to prevent from them from falling when the world blinks out and in and out and in, the world of Steve’s bedroom, of his arms gradually replaced with a cold feeling, one of winter and fear and death.
One of your world.
You can see your bedroom in the cabin, covered in a map of tunnels, dark ones made by something that’s not you, by a hurried hand. You can hear the creature’s voice in your head, slithering through your mind, whispering go back to the dream, little one. Go back and let me handle this.
It’s what makes you stay, what makes you push through the rapidly devolving, evolving dream, the life you haven’t lived, will never live and times you have not reached. You push past it, trying to control the body with the leg of metal and plastic, saddled to a stump of flesh and ragged cartilage, standing up and walking slowly and steadily to the door, your head jerking as the creature fights for control but you refuse to let it win.
You refuse and open the bedroom door, seeing Steve at the counter, hair mussed and eyes haunted, framed by purple circles under his eyes. “Stevie,” you croak, voice hoarse and dry and raw from screaming, from a voice that must never have been yours. You watch as Steve’s eyes fly to you, the mug slipping from his grip, porcelain shattering onto the counter, the shards glimmering in the light.
And that is the last thing before the creature pushes you back, pushes you back to a dreamworld that is starting to feel far too much like the real one.
***
Will hates what has happened to you, hates that he couldn’t save you even when he meant to. Hates that his plan failed because somehow you understood what he was going to do, understood before even he did.
He doesn’t know how you did, only that now you’re paying for it and he wishes that he were the one paying for it because no one ever protects you and he wanted to. He wanted to save you like you always save him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t because you are so damn intent on protecting him. Even when he doesn’t want to be protected.
“She’ll be okay,” Mike whispers, his hand resting between Will’s shoulders, voice low and soothing, eyes fixed on Max and Lucas, both of whom are holding in tears and shaking with the force of silenced sobs. “When has she ever not been okay? She cut off her leg and survived; she’ll beat this too. I know it.”
“Shut up, Mike! Just shut up!” Dustin cries, his voice cracking, tears overwhelming him and dripping down his cheeks. “We don’t know! We don’t know anything! So just shut up!”
“She did this for me,” Will whispers, the pain in Dustin’s voice, the anger and rage cracking something inside of him, something fragile that he’s been trying to hold together. “She did this for me so we need to save her like she would us.”
“How?” Max asks, her voice raw from the cries that slipped from her lips, the cries that she feels she has no right to, yet can’t seem to stop. “How do we save her?”
“I don’t know. Yet”
***
New York is everything you’ve ever dreamed of, the skyrises and brownstones, the coffee shops and libraries. Central Park, the Rockefeller Centre. Everything. But you miss Steve, you miss him so much that it feels like you have a hollow ache in your heart, a bit of it scooped out with his loss. The phone calls and letters don’t make up for the distance, with him being half-way across the country—the west coast to your east coast.
You miss him and you miss the relationship, the tender touches, the memories he filled you with that don’t exist but do.
You miss him, but you love New York more. You love your shitty apartment, Jonathan just across the hall. You love NYU and the library and your classes and the way your professors believe in you, in your potential. You love being with people who are like you for the first time in your life.
It’s worth the pain to be here. It’s worth the loneliness and regret and cold bed. It’s worth it all because this has always been your dream.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” you cry, the feeling of someone’s body against yours pulling from your thoughts, from the memory of Steve, back to this moment, to the man you’ve run into. “I was so not paying attention. Are you okay?” You look up, eyes locking onto a pair of ice blue ones, glimmering with amusement, pupils slightly dilated, attraction showing through.
“I’m just fine,” the man says, his voice soft and sweet, calming you in a strange way, a way you haven’t felt before, a way that contrasts with the butterflies fluttering in your lower belly, warring for air space. “My name’s Henry, by the way.”
“Nice name,” you say, smiling at him, transfixed by the way his blond hair curls and the way his lips curve in a smile, eyes matching the amusement. “Sorry again.” And then you push around him, aiming to disappear into the throng of people on the sidewalk, aiming to leave with the memory of his eyes only. His beautiful eyes. But he catches your wrist, his touch warm and grounding, little bursts of electricity erupting where he touches you.
“Do I not get to know yours too?”
“I don’t know. What’s in it for me?” And then he smiles, a broad smile, a beautiful smile that you want to see again.
A smile that seems so familiar.
Like a dream you once had, but can’t remember.
