END OF BEGINNING- a byler fanfiction/ stranger things s5

Say It Ain't So

Summary: Aftermath Part 2

a/n: elumax superiority as a power trio. 

Word Count: 685

How is it possible that things keep getting scarier?

The sky started raining that dust shit from the Upside Down which is just amazing. Also, apparently my sister had a vision of me and our entire family dying which is just incredible. Sometimes I wish I was in a coma so I didn't have to deal with all of this.

But Hopper's back, which is great. Also, he and Joyce are totally together.

Steve is also apparently back in the picture, because he and my sister are spending more time together recently. Jonathan looks like he wants to murder Steve, but I've noticed he looks at me that way sometimes too so maybe he just has a resting murder face? (Jonathan is going to throw some hands in s5. You can't dissuade me.)

How is it possible that El and Will moving back to Hawkins has made them both more distant from me?

Guess some questions are just made to be forever rhetorical.

For the first few weeks everything was kind of crazy.

The town had to adjust to all this chaos, and the government had to try and explain all of this rationally. So we're back to the radioactive leak and Russian hostility, though I'm pretty sure the Russians have gone for good and the radioactive leak was a lie from the beginning. More than half the population of Hawkins moved. The remaining half had to pick up the pieces.

Since neither Eleven or Hopper are meant to be alive right now, and since the Byers sold their house in Hawkins, they've all shacked up in an old radio tower building. It's kind of nice actually, even if it's not a real house. There's a whole area where El trains her powers. Everybody knows Vecna's still out there now, healing, and it's only a matter of time before he continues on in his plot to end the human race.

Because of the raining dust and billowing clouds, we have to wear masks outside so we don't inhale too much of the toxicity. There's a curfew too, so no one can be out past eight, though my mom makes me be home by seven thirty.

Apart from everything being weird in a general sense, things are also different in a more personal sense.

El and I have this new dynamic where everyone is cool with us but us. Hopper actually likes me now which makes it so much worse. We never really talked about anything properly. We just act like everything's fine and normal, like how things were before El moved to Lenora. Maybe everything is normal, and I'm just overreacting. I don't know.

Lucas spends pretty much all of his time at the hospital, and sometimes Dustin, Will and I go keep him company, but it's his burden. We all know that Max meant the most to him and El. Sometimes Lucas and El will just sit there together watching her, like maybe she'll wake up by the sheer force of their will power. It might be possible with El. She's tried reaching out for Max so many times, but she hasn't found her. Not yet. We all have hope.

We've all taken up posts helping out around town when we can. I'm the mailboy.

There's something liberating about getting up ridiculously early in the morning, and biking through the dark empty roads with just my thoughts and the wind. Holy shit, I think I might be going insane here.

There are special government teams investigating the gates over town. No ones allowed near them.

I remember how much force and energy it took for El to close just one of the gates. She couldn't close these ones. She tried. She couldn't.

I think that's getting to her. She's never been so powerless, not even when she didn't have powers.

We're all just waiting for Vecna to strike again. To see who his next victim will be, if even bothers with that miss time. Maybe he'll just surprise attack us and blow Hawkins to smitherens.

I'm pretty sure now I'm going insane.