Ashes Falling Upwards (stranger things, Will x OC/reader)

Dream

"And about what time did you have this dream?"

Ashley Park slid her thumbs over each other absentmindedly between the warm walls of her hands. When the skin touched her heartbeat echoed through her connected fingers like a closed circuit board.

"I dunno. Around midnight?"

Dr. Owens nodded, his pen scratching hurriedly across his paper.

"And...can you tell me exactly what happened?"

The beeping from across the room quickened as she searched her mind for the details. As she forced her mind back into that dark grayness.

"Well, I was back there," she started, hating the tremor that still hung in her voice, "in that place."

"Right."

In-that-place. She could almost see the words appearing in the way the top of his pen swung back and forth in the air. Every now and then it would disappear behind the top of his paper, then swing back into sight. She wished they could just talk about watching pens. Or anything, really. Anything other than this.

"Ashley, I know this is hard, but we can't help you unless you tell me exactly what happened," he reminded her when she didn't continue.

She sighed. That was such bullshit. It wasn't like Dr. Owens had ever been trapped there. It wasn't like he could ever truly understand.

"I was, um, I was hiding in my room— the version of my room in there, I mean. I'd pushed a chair under the door handle like my mom showed me to keep it out."

"Your mother, was she there?"

"No."

"So you were remembering your life in this dream?"

"It didn't feel like a dream, really."

She pulled her knees up to her chest, sliding one hand to grasp around the other wrist. Her palm was clammy.

"I heard the creature. I knew it was coming, but my legs wouldn't move. And when I looked down, I saw that there was— um..."

She swallowed heavily, feeling tears force their way into the corners of her eyes despite her efforts to stop them. A phantom pain cracked open in her right knee, as if trying to bring her back into the moment. The machine beat along with her heart, pounding faster and faster.

Boom

Boom

Boom

"Ashley!"

She blinked, releasing her wrist and stretching out her fingers, feeling the blood flow back into them.

"What happened after that?" Owens gave her a patient smile that made her want to dash out the door. She tried to shake away the fear lingering in her mind, all around her mind. It had been almost a year, and she still couldn't talk about that place without getting like this. To be fair, that dream had probably uncovered a lot of buried trauma, but she'd thought she was stronger than this. Her mother needed her to be stronger than this. Seriously, at this point it was just pathetic.

Besides, people say that your mind forgets the details of painful or scary experiences. So how the hell was she supposed to remember everything that had happened an entire year ago?

"I saw that my legs were covered in black fog," she finally finished.

"Black fog?"

His pen scratched the words across his paper. Black-fog.

She took a deep breath, spelling out the words in her head like he had instructed her to whenever the emotions became too strong.
B-l-a-c-k. The jagged peaks of the machine slowed gently. F-o-g.

"It looked almost like tendrils. But it was alive."

"Was this the creature?"

"No, this was different. It wasn't trying to kill me, it was testing me."

"Testing you?" he sat forward in his seat, his eyes focused intensely on hers. "Are you meaning to say it seemed like it had intelligence?"

"Yes?" He looked more worried at that than she would've liked. "It wanted something from me. Or maybe... for me to be something? But I wouldn't. It couldn't get what it wanted, so—"

"So?" He pushed, his pen hovering over his paper, waiting to scribble down her words.

God, I want to go home.

"So it broke my legs." She stated plainly, trying not to go back to the memory, to the pain that felt like so much more than a dream.

"It..."

"Yep." She let a smile crawl over her face, unsure if she was trying to convince Owns that she was okay or herself. "Snapped 'em. Opposite directions."

"Ah..." his pen seemed hesitant in its scribbles this time. "Do you know why?"

"It couldn't get what it wanted from me," she answered after a moment's thought. "So it was kind of like a punishment. Or maybe a warning."

"I see." He added a few sentences to his paper, then set it aside, placing the pen down and leaning forward. Ash looked away as he rested his elbows on his knees. She really couldn't handle knees anymore.

"You've been through so much. But I want you to believe me when I say that it's going to be okay. Alright?"

She stared hard at the cabinet handle behind his head.

"Y-yeah. I know."

"It's going to get better. You're out of there."

"I know."

"And the people who did this, who let the gate open, they're gone now."

She just nodded, tired of talking. Tired of going along with this like she believed him.

"How's your mom doing?"

Oh great. Ash tried to hide her frown.

"She's fine."

"I see she still won't come in," he mentioned, with an added glance around the room.

"It's not her fault!"

Ash didn't hide her glare this time. Anyone who badmouthed her mother deserved it. It was fine that she wouldn't talk about Ash's time in that place. It was fine that she got upset whenever Ash mentioned it. It was fine that she wouldn't come in for Ash's appointments. And it was fine that she hadn't put in a missing complaint until Ash had been missing for three days. She was just stressed.

"She just wants everything to be normal. She can't handle all this."

He nodded with obviously faked understanding. "But it must be hard on you too, not having that support."

"I don't need it." She leaned forward as well, this time meeting his gaze with her own. "I'm fine."

He sighed but didn't argue, glancing at the clock instead.

"Well I believe that's the end of our time today. Do you have any other last thoughts?"
She shook her head, pulling off the device he had put on, unsticking everything else he had stuck to her and repeating, "I'm fine."

As she started towards the door he called, "if you have another dream, I want you to call me, okay Kiddo?"

She scoffed as the door clicked shut behind her.