PROJECT SUNSHINE → CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT: TRUTH SERUM
summary: steve harrington x lab!oc. series rewrite-ish | read on Ao3
when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown.
word count. 5k || masterlist
a/n. this chapter has everything: season 2 mike wheeler, a real conversation about steve & robin's time with the russians, a steve & hopper heart to heart, and by dear sunshine <3 thank you guys for still reading this monster of a story
warnings: cannon typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness. season 5 will stray the furthest from canon events!
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Tagged list: @sattlersquarry, @leptitlu, @adaydreamaway30, @excelciorst, @mysticmoon-0107, @emforjin
SUMMER 1987
“Are you trying to get yourself hoisted up a flagpole by your underwear?” asked Eddie, his face void of amusement as he peered at a pacing Dustin.
The kid rolled his eyes. “No one does that,” he said. “Look, I know there will probably be backlash, but if I pretend the club never existed in the first place, how will your name ever get cleared?”
“Once we kill Vecna than we can-” Steve started to say, but Dustin was quick to cut him off.
“Oh, right. And where the hell is he? We’ve done Crawl after Crawl, searching for this asshole, and have found nothing. There hasn’t been even the smallest clue as to where he’s hiding.”
Since the military set up shop, the group devised a plan to explore the Upside Down in search of Vecna, the root of almost all of their problems. Mike had taken the liberty of naming them Crawls, where Hopper would sneak into the back of one of the military trucks that made frequent ventures to the Upside Down through the large Gate at the public library. On the Right Side Up, as Steve liked to call it, he and Dustin would hop in the van, courtesy of the radio station, and track Hopper’s movement using some nerdy device.
Square mile by square mile, they searched and charted the Upside Down in hopes of finding Vecna or a clue as to where he was hiding, but over a year in, they had nothing to show for it. Yet, they were almost certain the monster wasn’t dead, but rather healing and waiting for his next attack. So, they continued to look, but the lack of a show for it was putting everyone on edge.
“Besides, you think when we kill Vecna that everyone will magically forget the deaths of Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick? They won’t,” Dustin continued. “I so much as mention D&D in public and I get looks like I murdered them.”
Eddie sighed and sank deeper into the old couch. “I don’t think reinstating Hellfire is going to change much, Henderson.”
“If people see that it’s just a club, not a cult, of nerds playing make-believe, then maybe they’ll at least start to question why Hellfire was so bad in the first place. Maybe it won’t wipe your record clean, but it may get people to use their pea-sized brains to think a little bit harder about who the real bad guys are here!”
Tamera, having sat and watched the conversation in silence along with Robin, cleared her throat and looked at Dustin with something between a grimace and sympathy. “There are still too many people who are convinced the ‘earthquake’ was some act of God, like a punishment for Hawkins letting a supposed evil, devil-worshipping cult go unchecked for so long. A dozen people died that night, when the Gates opened. And a lot of those people’s friends and family blame Hellfire. This goes way beyond Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick.”
Dustin threw his hands up as he stopped his pacing, glaring at all of the older teens. “So what then? Eddie’s name is never cleared, and he has to live in this shitty basement for the rest of his life? Is that what you guys want?”
Steve watched as Eddie’s jaw ticked from how hard he was clenching it. For a moment, he worried Eddie would lash out at Dustin, not undeserving, but it certainly wouldn’t make anything any better. However, the flicker of anger in Eddie’s eyes faded into a look of silent retreat as he took a deep breath.
“The second this lockdown is over, I’m skipping town, and I’ll hunker down with Wayne in his cabin in Tennessee. It’s not like I planned on rotting in this hellhole of Hawkins anyway.”
“So you’re just gonna run away?” Dustin didn’t seem like he meant for his words to have such a bite, but they landed harshly on the concert floor.
“Hey,” Steve quickly said, raising his voice just enough to tell Dustin to cool it. Neither he nor Eddie had anything else to say, and the kid started to make his way toward the stairs. He started to climb before the door above opened, and a series of footsteps started to make their way down.
Dustin deflated a little and retreated back into the basement, lingering at the bottom of the stairs with any trace of anger wiped clean from his expression.
Joining the group was the Hopper clan, along with Joyce.
El and Leia greeted Dustin with hugs, making him smile and the remaining tension in the air vanish just like that. Both of them had a way of pulling Dustin out of his moods with ease, even quicker than the other party members. They were like three peas in a pod, or weird triplets in another life.
“Everyone wanted to join us today, so I figured we’d do it here,” El explained, looking to Steve. “I radioed the others to meet us here, too, if they wanted.”
El had started visiting Sunshine in the void the day after she was taken. Between her search for Vecna and Max, she liked to ensure that her sister was okay, okay as could be considering her circumstances. More often than not, El invited Steve to sit with her when she checked up on Sunshine. Steve found himself in the Hopper’s cabin at least once a week, seated on the floor of the living room in a semi-circle of superpowered children while El relayed what she saw of Sunshine inside the Void.
There were rare occasions when Sunshine would be speaking, and El would push her voice through the radio or walkie beside her. And while Steve tried to hide it, when he heard Sunshine's voice, tears always welled up in his eyes. None of the kids ever mentioned it, but Kali would grab the box of tissues and pretend to blow her nose before sliding the box in the middle of the circle. Leia would lean her head on his arm as her own storm of emotions took over, but also like a reminder that he wasn’t alone in that moment.
At least once a month, El would have her visits at the radio station, this month’s earlier than it was supposed to be, proving how antsy everyone was getting. It often fueled them to continue their plotting and planning for ways to get her back and find Vecna.
While El set up her radio and tied a blindfold over her eyes, the rest of the party arrived, along with Nancy and Jonathan.
The basement was crowded, but in a way that was comforting to Steve. He sat on the armrest of the couch and tapped his fingers against a mug of coffee, how many of which he had consumed over the course of the day lost to him.
No one ever knew what El would see when she visited her, and that prompted a gut-wrenching nervousness to gnaw away at his insides. It was like his body and mind wanted to prepare him for the worst-case scenario every time; it was exhausting and didn’t help his already lack of sleep issue.
“Ready?” El asked the room, even though it was her doing all of the work. They replied with a series of ‘yes’ and ‘yeah.’ Then, the lights flickered. There were several seconds of heavy silence before she spoke again. “She’s talking to that lady again.”
“Dr. Kay?” asked Hopper. No one knew exactly who the woman was, only that she was seen most often with or talking to Sunshine.
“Yes.” There was a short pause before the doctor’s voice poured through the radio.
“Helping us helps you.”
“Helps me do what, exactly?” Sunshine’s voice filled the room. A series of sharp intakes of breath followed from the group, Steve being one of them. There was a liveliness to her voice that they hadn’t heard in a while, a snark that was almost enough to bring a smile to Steve’s lips. “Helps me continue to lie here while you bleed me dry?”
Almost every time El visited, she explained that Sunshine was hooked up to an IV. Instead of something being administered to her, something was being taken from her: her blood.
“You are a small piece in something much bigger than you can under-”
Sunshine cut the doctor off. “Funny. I’ve heard that one before. And do you know what happened to the person who said it to me? He died what sounded like a pretty painful death. I’ve come to learn that history has a way of repeating itself; so, I’d be careful, Doctor.”
“Doctor Brenner wasn’t as smart a man as he claimed to be.”
“And you’re not as smart as you pretend to be.”
“She’s getting braver talkin’ to them,” Hopper said, his expression unreadable and eyes trained on the wall behind El.
Standing up from her spot on the couch, looking ready to start pacing, Nancy followed, “Or she’s stopped caring about the consequences of what she says.”
Her words sank like a stone in Steve’s stomach. For over a year, Sunshine had been stuck in what probably resembled the Lab she had grown up in, reliving it all over again. And as much as Steve didn’t want to admit it, he knew that there was a chance Nancy was right. Sunshine had told him time and time again that she couldn’t do it again, and yet she was. She was right back in the hands of some doctor, being poked and prodded and researched. The sheer idea of anyone laying a hand on Sunshine, against her will, burned like kerosene inside of Steve. It smothered his sadness in anger; he didn’t know which one was worse.
“Is that so?” replied Dr. Kay.
Sunshine hummed. “What? You think you’re the first person, the first team, with the idea to take my blood and study it after Brenner and Miller?”
Confusion then swept across the room in a series of furrowed brows and shared glances to see if anyone knew what she was talking it.
“Excuse me?”
“It really is funny how you and the rest of your government and military friends act so smart, so superior to everyone else. Yet, who was it who figured out the Russians had infiltrated Hawkins, hm? Oh, right! A couple of bored teenagers did. Those Russians were right under your guy’s nose, and you had no idea. You had no idea they were poking around this place, the Upside Down or whatever you call it. That doesn’t seem superior to me, but what do I know?”
“Wait,” Mike said suddenly. “She just called the Upside Down ‘this place.’ As in…as in she’s in the Upside Down, right now?”
“What do the Russians have to do with your blood?” There was an edge to Dr. Kay’s voice, like a warning.
“They knew about the Upside Down, somehow. But they didn’t know about me. I thought they did, but it wasn’t them who was stalking me in the mall; that was you and your men. Besides, the look on their faces when they saw me use my abilities wasn’t of people who expected it,” Sunshine began, sending Steve back to the summer of ‘85, of polaroids that Dustin stole from some man in a suit and a Russian code drawn on the white board in the backroom of Scoops Ahoy.
She continued, “After the Russians captured us, they had the same idea you did, only years before. They drew my blood. I can’t say what or what they ended up doing with it because we escaped; They weren’t the smartest either. It just has to be a bit humiliating for you, doesn’t it? Not only the fact that some kids on a summer break outsmarted not just the Russians, but were miles ahead of our own government. And that your idea wasn’t even original.”
There was a harsh sound that came through the radio, the unmistakable sharp contact of a palm hitting a cheek. El took an equally sharp breath.
Robin, from across the room, found Steve’s gaze, her eyes wide. “That must’ve happened when they separated her,” she said before noticing the increasingly confused gazes being tossed around. “When we were captured, the Russians tried to interrogate us separately. Then they threw Steve and me together, but not Sunshine.”
“Captured and interrogated?” Hopper repeated, his voice raising just slightly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Be quiet!” El shouted, silencing everyone instantly.
“If you really believe that you and your friends are so clever, so much smarter than us, then why are you still here?” Sunshine did reply to Dr. Kay, and Steve could practically hear the sick smile twisting up on the woman’s face. “I think you all just got lucky. You happened to be at the wrong place at the right time. But it looks to me like your luck has run out. You’re not escaping this place, and your friends aren’t coming to get you, not this time.”
“She’s wrong!” El said, like she was trying to tell Sunshine, trying to yell it through the Void so somehow, someway it would reach her sister’s ears.
And while Sunshine couldn’t hear or see El, somehow, she did know because in a much quieter, almost timid voice, she said, “You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think I am.”
El tore the bandana from her eyes and hastily wiped the trail of blood into the sleeve of her flannel.
Mike was the first to jump up and move to the desk cluttered with papers of notes and plans and other information they collected over the past several months. “This changes everything!” he said. “If Sunshine is being held in the Upside Down, then we have the upper hand.”
“We do?” questioned Jonathan.
Mike nodded. “We know the terrain and some of the rules it plays by. Hopper’s been exploring it for months-”
“Then how come he hasn’t found a whole military base?” asked Dustin. “I doubt they’re using an Upside Down infected house or something. They’ve had to build some sight of operation there.”
Hopper stepped beside Mike, glancing down at the strewn papers too. “Probably because I haven’t set foot on the far side of town yet. There’s plenty of open space to construct some kind of base while still having the cover of the woods on three sides if they need it. If I had to guess, that’s where they are and where those trucks head during every Crawl. They’re not scooping the place out; they’ve already settled in.”
“That’s where they’re keeping Sunshine. It’s got to be.”
“Not to cast doubt on this, but it’s still a military base, yes?” Mike and Hopper both nodded at Tamera before she spoke again. “How exactly are we supposed to break in on that side if we couldn’t come up with a way to break in on this side?”
“During the next Crawl, I’ll scope out the area, see if there’s any access points that are weaker,” said Hopper.
“Once we know the layout, even just a little, we can leverage the element of surprise and our knowledge of the Upside Down, break in, and rescue Sunshine,” Mike said.
Hopper shot him a look. “There is no we, Wheeler. You kids aren’t going anywhere near the Upside Down, let alone this base.”
Dustin and Lucas mirrored the offended look on Mike’s face.
“You’re gonna need all hands-on deck for this rescue operation, you know that!” argued Dustin. “This isn’t a hunt for Vecna; this is getting Sunshine back. We’re talking about the rescue of a party member, which means-”
“This isn’t a game,” snapped Hopper.
Lucas sighed. “We just want the best odds at getting her back.”
“I know, kid. I know that. But we’ve discussed this a million times.” When there was a shot at getting Sunshine back, Steve and Nancy had already insisted on being the ones to help do so; there was no room for argument. Nancy was the best shot next to Hopper, and Steve had a kind of dangerous desperation. Anyone else, above the age of eighteen, who wanted to help was more than welcome, but the only help the kids would be doing would be from afar, where there was no chance of capture or injury.
“There’s no use in getting ahead of ourselves until I have a chance to see this place for myself, alright?” Hopper looked around the room for a reply from everyone, which came with slumped shoulders and rolled eyes.
The smallest sliver of hope started to tangle with the pit of worries and rocks in Steve’s stomach. He didn’t want to get too hopeful, but he couldn’t keep spiraling deeper. He was on a very thin line.
If Hopper checked out the base and found a way in, there was a real chance they could get their Sunshine back sooner rather than later. Steve would be able to hear her voice again, not through a radio but from her lips. He would be able to hold her again and tell her how sorry he was for breaking his promise to keep her safe.
“We can’t wait too long,” El said, her eyes glossy. “We can’t let her lose hope that we’re coming.”
“This is Sunshine we’re talking about,” Joyce gently tried to remind them.
Kali, however, shook her head solemnly at the woman who had volunteered alongside Hopper to look out for her. “Even people like Danielle can only hold onto hope for so long. She’s been here before, remember. Just because it’s not Dr. Brenner and Miller doesn’t mean it’s not like the Lab. Hope is a rare thing to keep inside a place like that.”
“We’ll get her back before that happens,” said Mike as he stood tall instead of his usual hunched form. There was a look that glittered in his eyes that Steve remembered from that night Mike had insisted on their venturing into the tunnels under Hawkins to set them ablaze to buy more time for El to close the Gate. It was the look of a leader.
It was odd, Steve thought, how just a kid could command enough presence that made you want to follow him, but Mike Wheeler had just that.
Hopper nodded. Whether he nodded because he believed Mike or because he didn’t want to spread any more doubt amongst the group, Steve didn’t know. And he didn’t have the chance to try to figure it out by just the look on Hopper’s face before the man’s gaze shifted to look at Steve, of all people, before it flickered onto Robin.
“Harrington, Buckley, are to explain this ‘Russian interrogation’ that you both decided not to mention to anyone?”
Steve winced, and Robin chewed down hard on her lower lip before she laughed uncomfortably. “Geez, that was ages ago…”
“And it sounds a lot worse than it was,” Steve added. All things considered, what others in the room had gone through was much worse than their stint with the Russians.
Hopper pinched the bridge of his nose. “That night at the mall, you said you fought one Russian.” Steve was surprised he even remembered that after everything.
Dustin joined the conversation. “Technically, that’s true. Steve did fight one Russian, and he won!”
“Right,” Robin nodded. “He couldn’t exactly fight the others because our hands were tied…literally. That didn’t stop them from beating the shit out of him, though.”
Steve squirmed under everyone’s sudden gaze falling onto him. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, but that’s kind of my thing at this point, you know? Like, oh, Steve got beat up, again.” No one laughed at his lame attempt to bring humor to the situation.
“There’s a difference between a playground fight and the Russian military,” said Hopper. “You said they interrogated both of you?”
“Yeah,” Steve said with a sigh. “They thought we were working for somebody, like our military, I guess. They refused to believe that a couple of kids working at the mall cracked their stupid code.”
“In a day, mind you,” added Robin. “They just kept asking and asking who we worked for. I don’t know if they thought we were just immune to interrogation or what. But then they brought out the drugs and-”
Joyce then stepped in, her eyes widening at Robin’s words. “Wait, drugs? They drugged you?”
Steve nodded. “Just Robs and me, not Sunshine. I think it was like some kind of truth serum, which I didn’t know was a real thing. But we were telling the truth, so that didn’t work either.” He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t really remember much between the creepy Russian doctor with the drugs and puking it all out of our system in the mall bathroom, honestly.”
“Sunshine got out of the room they stuck her in,” Dustin said, filling in some of the gaps. “Erica and I couldn’t find a way out, so we were gonna come back and try to rescue them. Luckily, we ran into Sunshine before we ran into any Russians, then we escaped the base but were stuck in the mall until you guys came.”
“Jesus,” Hopper muttered. “And no one thought to mention this when we regrouped?”
“There were more important things going on,” Steve said. “It didn’t seem like a big deal. Besides, we were fine. We are fine.”
Robin nodded. “That doctor guy, Owens, had his people check us out a couple of days later, and they said the drugs didn’t do anything weird to our bodies besides make us confess our secrets to each other.” Her words seemed to do little to reassure the group.
The truth was, if they hadn’t faced a giant monster constructed of melted Hawkins residents shortly after their encounter with the Russians, maybe it would have left more of a mark on Steve and Robin. Sure, they had a couple of physical scars from it, a fear of getting shots at the doctors, and nightmares now and then. But the whole ordeal had been quickly overshadowed by the Mindflayer, which is why Steve never bothered to bring it up to anyone besides Robin and occasionally Sunshine after the fact.
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Steve said.
Hopper looked like he had more to say, but refrained with a sigh. “We wait until the next Crawl to do anything more about Danielle, understood?”
Later that evening, Steve snuck away to the roof of the radio station. The party had stuck around to soak up some more time together with Hopper’s kids, since they couldn’t run freely around Hawkins with each other anymore. Usually, when they would get together, there wasn’t much time for them to act like kids, but they fit in the time where they could.
Steve needed some fresh air, and the roof was usually a nice and quiet place to think.
As the sky started to turn from blue to purple, he searched for the first sign of stars. He would say they reminded him of Sunshine, but there were very few things that didn’t remind Steve of Sunshine. From the stars in the sky to the smell of coffee, it was like she was everywhere but nowhere at the same time.
“Harrington,” Hopper’s voice broke through Steve’s thoughts, causing him to hang his head at the interruption.
“If you’re here to lecture me some more, I’m really not in the mood,” he said, not turning around to look at the man. Hopper stayed quiet as he moved across the roof to stand beside Steve at the rooftop’s edge. “I’m sorry for not saying anything, but it was and still is the least of our problems, okay?”
Hopper sighed before the smell of smoke filled Steve’s nose. He glanced at the cigarette as Hopper took a long drag and exhaled, letting the smoke be carried off by the summer breeze.
“I thought you quit?”
“I cut back,” Hopper corrected. “This is just a little bit better of a vice than drinking. And as much as the kids hate it, I’ve gotta do something to keep my head on right.”
Steve just hummed in response and returned his gaze to the sky. He’d thought about starting smoking again, something to take a little bit of the edge off. But he knew Dustin would hound him with health facts, and if…when he saw Sunshine again, she’d probably smell it on him and make that face she often had when he used to smoke. So, he stopped himself from buying a pack whenever he was at the gas station.
“I’m not here to lecture you. That wasn’t what that conversation downstairs was for. I just wanted you and Buckley to understand that there are things you can’t joke your way through.”
That feeling returned to Steve, that heaviness that made him want to sink to the floor. If Hopper wasn’t there, he would have.
“I know it’s not a joke.” His voice came out quiet, tired. “But it’s over. It’s been over, and a lot worse things have happened since. The only thing I care about is getting Sunshine back and killing this stupid monster. That’s what I’m worried about, not the scary shit we’ve already been through.”
“So you admit it was scary?”
Steve rolled his eyes, but the phantom pain of his swollen eye from Russian knuckles flared up in his right eye. He blinked a couple of times until it went away.
“Not as scary as the Mindflayer, or when I thought Sunshine was dead after fighting the thing. It wasn’t as scary as Vecna or when Max was dead for a minute.” Steve could’ve added more, like Barb vanishing from his backyard or being ambushed by Demo-Dogs with a trio of middle schoolers he was supposed to protect, but he figured Hopper got the point he was trying to make. Steve had faced down a lot of scary things in his life, and he had a feeling more were to come.
“Fair,” said Hopper. “But those Russians sure do pack a hell of a punch, huh?”
If anyone had any reason to be fearful or have nightmares of Russians, it was the man who spent months trapped in a Russian prison.
“You would know better than me,” Steve shrugged.
That got a chuckle out of Hopper. “I’m not trying to make this a competition, Steve.” The use of his first name caught him off guard. To Hopper, he was ‘Harrington.’ “I’m trying to say that I understand what you went through. And as much as you want to play it off, I know those men don’t pull their punches.”
Steve pressed the palms of his hands against the stone ledge that circled the roof and squeezed his eyes shut before he said, “That wasn’t the scary part.” Steve could take a punch; he had taken several, and they weren’t what kept him up at night. “It was knowing that I was responsible for Erica and Dustin and still letting them go down in that base in the first place. I let Robin get dragged into this mess. And I couldn’t stop them from taking Sunshine and hurting her.” Really, Steve could have a hundred hits, but he couldn’t handle failing the people he cared about. Yet, he kept doing so.
“I didn’t care what happened to me,” he admitted. “I cared about what happened to them.”
Hopper snuffed out his cigarette. “If you keep blaming yourself for things beyond your control, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“That’s the thing, though, those weren’t things way beyond my control. I didn’t shut Dustin down when he started pursuing the Russians. I didn’t stop Max from being Vecna-bait. And I didn’t stay with Sunshine even though the day before, she and Kali told me that someone had followed them. Those are all things I could have controlled, somehow and someway. Maybe not entirely, but I could have…I should have done something!”
Hopper turned to face him, grasping Steve’s shoulder. “I need you to listen to me.” Steve didn’t want to. He didn’t need anything person telling him he shouldn’t blame himself, because he did, and nothing was going to change that. “Just because you could have done something differently doesn’t mean the outcome would’ve changed any. Trust me. For years, I was in this…this hole because I blamed myself for what happened to my daughter, Sarah. And I still do, sometimes. But I know that if I kept digging myself deeper into that hole of blame and guilt and what-ifs, I never would have gotten out. What good would that have done anyone? I know I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I know those kids downstairs wouldn’t be mine.
So, you know what I did? What I’m still doing? I’m crawling out of the hole, no matter how hard and awful that crawl may be. And if you want Sunshine back, which I know you do, you gotta start crawling out of that hole too, son.”
Unwilling tears welled up in Steve's eyes as he cast his gaze down at his beat-up sneakers. More often than not, he felt more guilt than hope. And he knew that was a dangerous thing.
He closed his eyes and took a breath before he met Hopper’s gaze. Steve’s throat was tight, and he was scared he’d actually start crying if he spoke. Instead, he nodded, conveying what he needed to. Hopper smiled sadly at him and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze before he dropped his hand.
“Get home and get some sleep, okay? El and the twins look forward to yours and Buckley’s radio show too much in the morning for you to oversleep.”
Steve let out a wet laugh and nodded again before Hopper turned to leave the roof.
As the sun disappeared and the stars were un-blanketed from light cloud cover, the little lights seemed to wink down at Hawkins, as if they were daring someone to make a wish on them. And there were a lot of wishes that needed to be made.
