"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter One-Hundred-And-Twenty-Five: Alistair
(The Battle Of Starcourt Mall, Pt. 7)
***
*note: While reading, listen to the above cover of Running Up That Hill for extra pain :)*
"ALISTAIR!"
His name ripped out of Rowan in an agonised scream as below, Alistair—her brother, her little brother—stood there, kept in place by the flesh pierced through his chest, where he had stood in front of El—to protect El. Rowan stood there on the balcony, agony like she never felt before ripping into her, piercing her heart like that tentacle pierced her little brother's heart, her ears ringing with choked gasps—Alistair's choked gasps.
As quickly as it impaled him, the Mind Flayer pulled its tentacle out, refocusing on Billy Hargrove. And without that tentacle to keep him aloft, Alistair collapsed to the ground, exposing a ring of blood on his chest, soaking his shirt crimson, scarlet pouring from his lips, a shocked, pain-filled, terrified expression on his face. His brown eyes going slowly glassy.
And everything in Rowan shattered.
Rowan let go of the railing, collapsing to her knees as she screamed. And with her scream—with her agony—her lightning responded, exploding out of her in a cataclysmic shockwave of her pain. Distantly, glass shattered, but she didn't hear it, the entire world was silenced, and it felt like she was burning alive and being torn apart and stabbed in the heart all at once and she was still screaming.
(Steve noticed the girl he loved's veins light up blue, the tendrils of lightning coming to life on her skin, before the surge struck. He grabbed Robin and Valerie, shouting, "DUCK!" and pulling them down as the surge was unleashed, lightning that stung and knocked anyone still standing back but didn't stop your heart—but Steve knew Rowan must feel like hers was stopping, because he saw it too, he saw the shattered look on her face as she gave out that heart-wrenching scream, on Cami's face and on Will Byers' face, he saw Alistair Graveswoood be impaled too)
Rowan's throat was growing hoarse from her screams, but she barely felt it—it was nothing compared to the agony pulling her apart piece by piece, her heart brutally ripped out of her chest, leaving the splintered bones of her rib cage behind, and pulverising it. Lightning burned in her veins, writhed around her, surging outside of her, as the image of that tentacle impaling Alistair's chest replayed over and over and over in her mind like a broken record, and she was still screaming.
A screech came—under it was another agonised cry, another name being shouted, another person dying—and it pierced the haze of agony Rowan was subdued by. And her eyes snapped open and she saw the Mind Flayer and grief twisted into anger. Electricity crackled under her skin, hot and raging, and with a scream full of pain and fury, Rowan fired every spark, every bolt, she had inside her at the monster who took her little brother from her.
