Chapter Text
That was his new reality—one more day, more losses. The group that had once been so large was now reduced to only three survivors, if Steve could even be considered a survivor anymore.
The condition in which they found him was pitiful: covered in darkened black blood, his gaze empty, a gun pointed at his own head. If Hopper hadn’t arrived in time, there would probably be only two of them left now.
“Harrington, talk to me. What happened?” Hopper asked.
Steve’s voice came out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper. “Rob…”
Nothing more was needed for El and Hopper to understand.
The girl’s body lay on the ground a few meters away. The carcasses of Demogorgons and Demodogs were scattered around. The faithful nail-studded baseball bat lay broken—part of it lodged in a Demogorgon’s skull, part of it thrown beside Steve. Whatever had happened, it had been a massacre.
“You can’t give up, Harrington…”
“Why?” Steve interrupted. “It’s over, Hop. I have nothing left. We lost. I lost…”
“Buckley wouldn’t want—”
“You don’t know what she would want,” Steve cut in angrily. “We promised… that we’d only leave if it was together. I tried… I swear I tried… But those things didn’t kill me. I don’t know why I keep surviving.”
Hopper watched the boy in silence, feeling the weight of the last two years crashing down on his shoulders. Since Vecna won, the Abyss had swallowed reality and demonic creatures had invaded their world. The losses… Nancy Wheeler was the first, still in the Abyss. When they recovered the children, only four of them were still alive. Unfortunately, Holly wasn’t one of them. When everything finished merging, they fortified a base with everyone they knew who was still standing. One by one, they fell. Charles Sinclair, his Vietnam companion, did everything he could to save his family—only the children escaped for a while. Then Joyce… his beloved Joyce gave her life to make sure her children could breathe a little longer. Lucas and Max left together in an ambush. Over time, everyone was lost: Scott Clarke, Erika, Powell, Murray, the nurse who helped Max, little Will, Henderson, Mike… damn it, he even missed the days when his biggest worry was one of the Wheeler brats. Hell, he even missed that damn Callahan.
Today had been harder than the previous three months. Since Henderson’s death, Harrington and Buckley had been each other’s support. It was supposed to be just another ordinary day. He, El, and Jonathan would go out to look for supplies; Buckley and Harrington would stay at the base. But everything went wrong. They went to the lab—one of the last places that might still have supplies in damned Hawkins. Batteries, flashlights, anything was essential now. Jonathan stayed behind during the bat ambush. And when they reached the base, Buckley had been left behind too. But something might be able to fix this—end this cursed reality: Brenner’s old notes they had found in his former office.
“Steve,” El called as she approached.
“Leave me here,” Steve pleaded.
“I think I can fix this.”
“There’s nothing left to fix. She’s gone. They’re all gone.”
“We found some of Brenner’s notes,” Hopper said. “He theorized that El could access the Void and go back in time inside it.”
Steve lifted his face to look at them for the first time. El cried as soon as she saw him. His expression was empty; his hair was dirty, stuck to his forehead in clumps. A claw mark ran down the side of his face, just a few centimeters from his eye. She looked him over, searching for more, and noticed that his right hand—the one he used to hold his baseball bat—was now missing two fingers, including the ring finger that once held his and Robin’s ring.
“What’s the plan?” Steve asked.
“I think I can put the three of us in there and connect us to our past versions. If we show them what’s coming, they can stop it, and this will never become reality,” El explained. “Max, Dustin, Will, Lucas, Mike, Robin—everyone would be alive.”
“You can do that?”
“It’s our last card, kid,” Hopper said.
So the plan moved forward. Steve stood up and, one last time, said goodbye to Robin, promising to fix everything. The three of them ran toward Hopper’s old cabin. They would need the tank for the plan to work—for Eleven’s powers to be amplified.
---
Everything was fine in Hawkins that morning. It was February 1984. A few months had passed since Will Byers had been found alive in the Upside Down.
A few weeks had passed since Hopper found Eleven wandering in the forest and gave the child shelter.
Everything was normal. Steve Harrington was in the hallway of Hawkins High, talking with his girlfriend Nancy Wheeler and his unexpected new friend Robin Buckley. They had grown very close since she practically interrogated him at the movie theater while cleaning the graffiti Tommy had made about Nancy on the sign.
Will, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin watched the new redheaded girl who had recently arrived at the elementary school with some curiosity.
Suddenly, everything flickered. They were no longer in their usual places.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?” shouted a voice that could only belong to one of the kids.
Looking around, the landscape was like a dark sea. Everything around them was black, and beneath them was crystal-clear water.
“EL?” Mike shouted as he threw himself at the girl, hugging her. “You disappeared… I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered the last part.
“Mike,” the girl hugged him back just as tightly.
“Hello?” Robin shouted exasperatedly, looking around. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked, while most of them looked on, intrigued. Except for Steve, Jonathan, and Nancy, no one there seemed to know her. Hopper and Joyce were the only adults present, and they exchanged knowing looks. *We need to fix this*, they both thought.
“Girl,” Hopper turned toward Eleven. “Did you bring us here?” he asked, making everyone turn toward them.
“Wait,” Mike interrupted, clearly irritated. “You knew where she was?”
“Now’s not the time for this, Wheeler,” Hopper grumbled. But that didn’t lessen Mike’s anger—he was ready to argue back when El was faster.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?” Dustin asked.
“I brought you here,” another female voice replied as she approached, followed by two men at her side.
The sight made everyone’s eyes go wide. An older version of Eleven stood there—her hair longer, dark circles visible under her eyes. She wore something like a swimming uniform and looked to be around seventeen or eighteen. But the two men beside her were even more frightening: a much thinner Hopper, wearing a torn camouflage military uniform with a massive beard, and a Steve Harrington who looked over twenty, with a huge scar on his face, camouflage clothes covered in blood, and two missing fingers. Some of them trembled at the sight.
“What the hell…” Steve began, and both Nancy and Robin turned to him in shock.
“That’s you,” Robin said frantically, pointing back and forth between them. For a moment, she noticed the older version lift his gaze slightly to meet hers, which made her shiver at the coldness in his eyes.
“This is impossible,” Nancy murmured.
“Look, I think you’ve got me confused,” Max began. “I got to town this week, and I have no idea what’s going on here.”
“I’ll explain,” the older Hopper began, while his younger self stepped in front of the group to intercept any threat. “We’re from the future—or at least what’s left of it. We fought the Upside Down for years, more than we could handle, but our reality is devastated. This is our last hope to fix things. El is using the maximum of her power right now to give us a chance to change things while there’s still time. So we’re counting on you to pay attention to everything you’re about to see and make better choices than we did.”
A crowd of voices began to overlap—many incredulous, others still lost, thinking they weren’t part of this.
“SILENCE!” shouted the future Steve, and everyone shrank back slightly. “You don’t believe us? Fine. El can start with me.”
The older Eleven nodded and placed her hand on Steve’s forehead as images began to fill the void around them.
“You’re going to see our memories from now on, so sit down and pay attention,” El explained.