Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Live to Tell

"Live to Tell"

I was not ready for the fall

Too blind to see the writing on the wall

- Madonna

For a moment after Joyce turned the keys, a split second, nothing happened and she both despaired and hoped that it hadn't worked.

Then a series of explosions rent the air, and she opened her eyes, which she had squeezed shut at the last minute, not wanting to see, and watched as the machine exploded, piece by piece, from back to front, blinding light shooting from it in all directions. Joyce threw her arms up in front of her face to protect her eyes.

She remembered the nod Hopper had given her, the smile on his battered and beaten face. He had known; he had been ready. Whatever had happened to him, he had been prepared for it. He had wanted her to. He wouldn't blame her for turning the keys and killing him.

But she would blame herself. For not being faster. For not being strong enough to help him fight the big Russian, for not hurrying ... for not kissing him, for not showing up to the date he had wanted so badly, for not admitting to herself or to him how important he was to her.

She didn't fear for her own safety—the glass of the control room would hold. It had been built to. And she didn't fear for the Russians—they had started this mess, in their greed and ignorance, they could reap what they had sown.

Only when the light was gone, when the machine was nothing but a mass of twisted metal, did Joyce dare to look at the spot where Hopper had been. It was empty, as she had known it would be. He was gone. He had sacrificed himself for all of them. Just the kind of macho crap he would pull, she thought, wishing she could be annoyed at him instead of feeling this terrible emptiness where he used to be.

Opening the door of the control room, Joyce made her way carefully along the walkway toward the place where Hopper had been standing. Tears rolled down her cheeks. If only there had been more time! Just another minute. Thirty seconds. Time for him to get away.

At least there was no body, she thought, unable to stop herself from seeing Bob in her mind's eye, his body mangled by the demodogs. She couldn't have borne to see Hopper, so strong and capable as long as she had known him, torn apart by some machine, some electric force.

"Hop," she sobbed, missing him already and he was only just gone. "Hop!"

Hands closed on her shoulders, turning her around, and she recognized Murray. "Jim," he said urgently. "Where's Jim?"

She couldn't speak, but he saw the truth in her face, his mouth opening in shock. None of them had expected this—it hadn't been part of the plan. If only Hopper were here so she could yell at him for not sticking to the plan.

But there was no time for that, either. Behind Murray, people in uniforms flooded into the control room, and Joyce remembered that they were still here far below Hawkins in a Russian bunker, and no one here was going to thank them for what they'd done today.

Murray had come to the same conclusion. He grabbed her hand, and they hurried down the nearest stairs and out the first door they came to, out into the main area of the bunker, which was surprisingly empty of people, given how many had been rushing around there earlier. Joyce didn't question it. She was just glad to be able to run far from where she had left Hopper. Or what was left of him. Which had been nothing.

She followed Murray, who led her up a ladder and into a room on another floor. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Before Joyce had the presence of mind to find an answer to that question, people in uniforms with guns burst through the nearest door—but these people were yelling in English.

"Don't shoot! Americans! We're Americans! Americans!" Murray shouted.

Well, Joyce thought sourly as she raised her hands to show that she was no threat, better late than never. Hawkins Lab had finally sent the goddamned cavalry.

*****

Hopper had been prepared to be sent wherever Sara had gone—he had known Joyce had no other option but to turn those keys, and he had wanted her to. To save their kids, to save Hawkins, to save the world. What was the life of one broken-down small-town police chief compared to that?

But in the last moment, as her eyes had closed so she couldn't see what had happened, he had found an option. He had always been good at that, looking at a case and finding the holes, the empty places where facts should be. In this case, the hole had been right in front of him, gaping open—the only place there was to escape to.

He must be crazy, he thought, even as he dove for the open gate into the Upside Down. Only a crazy person would go into that nightmare willingly. But where there was a way in, there would be a way out, and he was far from being sure the same could be said for dying. So he took the leap of faith into the mouth of hell, trusting to his instincts, to El, and to Joyce, to get him back out somehow.