Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Desperado

"Desperado"

Your pain and your hunger

Are driving you home

And freedom, oh, freedom

That's just some people talking

- The Eagles

"You are slow today, American," Antonov remarked, stopping next to Hopper as he hammered away on the never-ending railroad. "Not sleeping well?"

"Who does?" Hopper managed between blows with the sledgehammer.

Antonov nodded thoughtfully. "I confess, even I have trouble sleeping sometimes."

"Yeah? Must be rough."

"You Americans and your sarcasm. What do you think of, when you can't sleep?"

Hopper paused a moment to stare at the guard. "Who cares what I think?"

"Oh, come now. You must have dreams. Things you want, people you miss. Fantasies." He leaned closer to Hopper, glancing at the other prisoners. "They all do, you know."

"Good for them," Hopper grunted, heaving the sledgehammer and narrowly missing Antonov's head on the downstroke.

"Yes?" Antonov looked at the others doubtfully. "I suppose so. You know what I was told, when I was young at my grandmother's knee? That sometimes, dreams come true."

"I seem to remember hearing that one myself," Hopper admitted. The signal for lunchtime had just come, so he put the sledgehammer down and regarded Antonov with interest. "This is hardly the place for fairytales."

"True. Everything that happens here is real. Very real. Think about it, American." And Antonov moved off. Hopper followed the other prisoners to the food line, wondering. If this was a movie, that would have been the guard's opening gambit toward some kind of extortion ... but Hopper didn't have anything to give him. Not here, anyway.

Probably it meant nothing. Another form of torture, at best. But it gave Hopper something to think about, and that was valuable in and of itself.

A few days later, Antonov appeared at the door of Hopper's cell just after he had returned to it for the night. "What dreams will you have tonight, American? Dreams of home, perhaps? You must have people you miss, people you wish you could ... contact?"

"I do," Hopper admitted warily. Stupid to feel his heart leap at the whispered word, stupid to hope or to trust in this man's seeming friendliness. But his heart did leap, and he did hope. "But that's impossible. So I understand."

"For you. For others ... not so much."

"You mean for you?"

Antonov smiled. "Possibly."

Hopper looked around his empty cell. "I have nothing."

"Here."

"Without contact, I have no way of getting anything."

"So we understand each other."

"Do we?"

Antonov looked around sharply, as if he heard something. "Good-night, you pig of an American," he said in Russian, and he spat on Hopper's floor, barely missing his boots, before slamming the door, leaving Hopper in an agony of hope and fear.

For several days, there was nothing. He barely saw Antonov, and when he did, Hopper resolutely refused to look at him. If Antonov was playing a game, Hopper wasn't biting. And if he was on the level, drawing attention to themselves was the last thing they could afford. He had to hope that Antonov would find a way to communicate.

At last he found the guard walking next to him on the way out to the railroads. Like lightning, Antonov's foot struck out and tripped Hopper, who fell heavily, barely catching himself before he hit the frozen ground face-first. "Clumsy American!" Antonov shouted. "I will show you what we do to clumsy prisoners!" He hauled Hopper to his feet and dragged him around a corner.

"What the—"

"Shut up and listen!" Antonov hissed. "We have little time. You and I, we have mutual interests. You wish to contact your loved ones—I wish for money. For money, I will arrange for you to get a message to America."

"But I don't have—"

"Your American friends, they must have money, yes?"

"How much do you want?"

Antonov nodded, pleased that Hopper understood. "Several thousand, I would imagine."

"How do I get it?"

"You think about that. We will talk again. Now, where do you want it?" Antonov raised a fist.

Hopper considered, then pointed to his midsection. Antonov punched him, hard, and Hopper doubled over, groaning.

It was difficult to go back to work on the chain gang with this new idea in his head. To be able to contact America, to tell Joyce and El that he was alive, to ... maybe if he offered more money, Antonov could arrange to get Hopper a message back from them. Joyce would have his life insurance money, his police pension. She could pay.

And then a new idea struck him, knocking the breath out of him even more effectively than Antonov's fist had done. Joyce had access to much more than the few thousand Antonov had suggested. If the man wanted money so badly, if he was willing to contact America for a little bit of money, how much farther might he go for a lot of money? For tens of thousands, maybe he could arrange for more than messages to be transported to America.

The idea was so intoxicating that Hopper felt nauseous with it. Slow down, he cautioned himself. It wouldn't do to get his hopes up.

But still, he held his breath waiting for the next time Antonov would approach him.

"Have you thought about it, American?" the guard muttered to him as Hopper sat over his pitiful bowl of thin soup the next day.

"Yes."

"So, we are in business, as your people would say?"

"Maybe. What if—what if I had more?"

"More? How much more?"

"Ten times as much as you said. More than that, maybe. How big a package could be transported for that kind of money?"

Antonov sucked in his breath sharply and looked at Hopper in surprise. "You ask a great deal."

"I know it."

"But ... for so much money ... perhaps. I know a man." Antonov stepped closer to Hopper, lowering his voice. "A smuggler. He brings in American goods. Perhaps ... perhaps he could be persuaded to take out American goods."

"It's a big ask."

"It is. But ... I like a gamble." Antonov smiled. "The smuggler—odds are good he would be interested, for such a sum. Five to one, maybe. I will consider it."

And he was gone, leaving Hopper to choke down his soup and to try not to hope too hard that he had just made a deal to escape this nightmare.