𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐌𝐘, ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳᶦⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ

[1.23] Half Return

       THE STARS ARE ALWAYS OUT. She knew that, but she didn't know it. Not at this moment. Not as her lifeless body sat unmoving, as it had for the last two days, in a dull hospital bed and hooked up to machines and medicines that were responsible for keeping her stable.

Valentina Varner wasn't dead. She was alive, but not well. She was far from well, in fact.

Steve visited every couple of hours. He was always coming in and out of the hospital. The hospital, but never her hospital room.

When Steve initially arrived at the hospital two days prior, with an unconscious blonde dangling in his arms, he sat in the waiting room for hours with several children and a couple adults that he didn't even know were involved with this 'Demogorgon' he'd learned so much about.

When a doctor finally came into the room to announce that the girl could now have visitors, it was only him and Chief Jim Hopper left waiting. The kids had gone home with their parents one by one while Jonathan and Joyce Byers sat with an awakened Will in his own room.

Nancy offered to stay, but the truth was that Steve didn't want her to be there. Despite how harsh it sounded in his head, there was only one girl Steve wanted to be with at the moment. He wanted to see Valentina—Vee—alone.

After the doctor's words registered in their tired ears, the two men casted sunken looks to each other. The older of the two nodded, allowing Steve to be the first to see her. Hopper was there because he had to deal with the paperwork and complications, but Steve was there because he had to be.

He had to. For her. For himself.

Steve swallowed so many times on the way to her room out of nervousness that he thought his throat might actually dry up before he even got the chance to see her.
He almost wished it had, though, because he would have been whisked away to a hospital room of his own and wouldn't have had to face the sight of a lifeless Valentina Varner.

There was life in her, technically, the slightest bit that was just enough to call her 'alive', but Valentina didn't look it. She was pale, lighter than she always looked. Her skin looked transparent even, like Steve could actually see the medicine and drugs pumping through her body.

He hated to admit that the sight almost made him throw up. She looked sickly and inhuman, and it made his mouth fill with saliva and dug a pit in his stomach. But it wasn't her that made him sick. Valentina could never make Steve feel that way.

It was the fact that Valentina looked like this because of him. It was Steve's fault she got hurt. It was his fault she was backed into a corner and left helpless. He was supposed to help her, he was supposed to be there.

Even though Steve wasn't supposed to be there that night—not even knowing about that night until that night—he was supposed to be there because he was always supposed to be there. He was supposed to be wherever she was.

Steve made it a couple steps into the room, just enough to stand by the bed and graze her hand, before he dropped it immediately. It was cold, so cold.

It's your fault.

Then his feet carried him out of the room in a full sprint, leading him to the nearest trash can where he emptied the pitiful contents of his stomach.

That was the last time Steve entered that room.

He'd returned to the hospital several times since then, but he could never bring himself to face that damaged look of the girl he did this to. The guilt was eating him alive.