[REWRITING] When He Sees Me, Steve Harrington

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CHAPTER 029. HOME

IT'S JANUARY, 1986, AND LAURIE'S DOING OKAY.

It's been six months since Starcourt. Six long months since tragedy struck the small town of Hawkins, six months since Laurie's entire life was changed in a matter of minutes. It's been six months since she could finally breathe again because they're finally all safe.

Or, supposedly safe, anyhow.

It's been hard knowing the truth; knowing that all the mysterious disappearances were actually mysterious deaths and were just collateral of a large government cover-up. It made her lose faith, to tell you the truth, because how can the people who are in charge of protecting them be that cruel and deceitful?

She survived something terrible and Laurie can still see the pain, sometimes. She can see the Mind Flayer baring its sharp teeth as it chased them in Nancy's station wagon, the way a sobbing Max Mayfield fell to her knees beside her dead brother, Steve all bloody and barely conscious on the floor of the Russian bunker.

She can still hear it, too. The faint sounds of Steve pleading for his life through the thick walls in the Russian base, Billy Hargrove gasping for his final breath after his last ditch effort of stopping what he'd started, Eleven sobbing into Joyce's shoulder at Jim Hopper's funeral service.

It was a lot, but it's over now. They're safe again and Laurie started to move on as soon as she could. She knew wallowing in the past wouldn't make anything better, make things different. She doesn't want her entire life to be defined by one bad thing she went through.

     Laurie's had good days and bad ones, too. Some have been spent with Robin, the past entirely forgotten as they laughed til their muscles burned and some were spent with her sobbing into Steve's chest because she couldn't bare to leave the confines of her bedroom.