𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 | stranger things

twenty-two

"Wren? Wren! It's gonna be okay!"

"I-I can't go through this again. I can't do this again!" Wren laced her fingers in her hair and paced around the room, Dustin doing his best to try and calm her down.

"I don't understand," Robin said. "You've seen this before?"

"Not exactly," Steve replied.

"Then what exactly? Why is it giving Wren a full blown panic attack?"

"All you need to know is it's bad." Dustin took Wren's water bottle out of her bag and handed it to her, encouraging her to take small sips once she got her breathing under control.

"I-It's really bad," Wren whispered, clutching her chest as she gasped for a full breath of air. She reached for Dustin's hand, and he gave it a comforting squeeze. She slowly breathed in through her nose, exhaling just as slow through her mouth. She took a drink of water and another deep breath.

"How bad?" Robin asked, looking at her small friend with concern.

"End of the human race as we know it kind of bad," Dustin said. "It's where the majority of Wren's anxiety has come from."

"And you guys know about this how?"

"Cause we've seen it before," Wren said, frowning as she finally came to her senses and got a full glimpse of the room. "W-Wait, where did the Russian guy go?"

An alarm went off the second the question passed her lips. Steve ran over to the door and took a peek out. A Russian guard with a gun spotted him, and he slammed it shut.

The quad ran out a different door and into a room where some Russian scientists were observing the gate they were trying to open. They hurried down a flight of stairs, Dustin screaming holy shit over and over again as he stared at the gate. Wren snapped at him – "We get it!" – and grabbed his arm as the older teens led the way down another staircase.

Steve knocked over some metal barrels to try and hold the Russians off as they went through another door. He slammed it shut, him and Robin pressing their bodies against it so that Dustin and Wren would have enough time to get out.

"Here, through this!" Wren lifted up a grate in the floor. She looked back to Steve and Robin. "G-Guys, come on!"

"Go!" Steve told them. "Just get out of here!"

"No!" Wren fought back tears. If the Russians captured them, she'd probably never see them again. "Not without you guys!"

"Wren, you need to go!" Robin shouted. "Go get help!"

"What are you two doing?! Go!" Steve yelled as they continued to stare at them like sad puppies.

"I won't forget you!" Dustin promised.

"Go!" Robin and Steve shouted. Dustin went down through the grate, pulling Wren with him as the guards busted through the door.

****

Dustin and Wren spent the next however many hours crawling through the air vents and shutting down fans. Wren told him everything that was on her mind, how she always got dragged into these things against her will and how Nancy was probably shitting herself wondering what had happened when she didn't come home the previous night.

The conversation then turned to their shared past experiences with the Upside Down. They had both encountered all of the same things, so why was Wren suffering more from anxiety and PTSD because of it?

Wren thought it was because she had a lot to worry about, even before she learned about the alternate version of Hawkins. For starters, she was a fourteen year old rising senior in high school. Skipping middle school for more difficult education, especially being as small as she was, had been a scary transition. On top of keeping up with homework assignments and surviving in a world where being different made you a target, the added stress of facing monsters from the Upside Down overwhelmed her with more than she could handle.

Every time a locker slammed too loudly or footsteps echoed a little too closely behind her, her chest would tighten and her heart would race, reminding her that the world was not as safe as she had thought it once was.

After some time, they made it to the end of the air vent. Dustin pushed up the grate, and they crawled out into a room filled with the green substances they had found in the boxes.

Dustin's eyes widened when he saw a red electric cargo cart. He went towards it giddily.

"Do you even know how to drive?" Wren asked with a frown.

"How hard can it be?" Dustin shrugged, sliding into the driver's seat. "Max did it."

"Pretty hard, actually, considering there's no key." Wren tapped the keyhole, and Dustin swore. "You didn't seriously think they'd just leave keys in there, did you?"

"There's gotta be a spare," Dustin said. As Wren wandered off to explore the room they were in, he started searching for an extra key. He picked the lock on a storage cabinet in the wall, grinning when he found what he was looking for. "Found 'em." He held them up and turned around, only to see that Wren wasn't there. His smile fell. "Wren?"

"Right here." Wren said from behind him, flicking the switch on a tool that she had found. Dustin jumped at the loud zapping noise it made.

"What the hell is that?!"

"Self defense. Deadly weapons can be useful."

"For what?"

"Self defense, I literally just told you. We use this to take out the Commies so that we can save Steve and Robin."

"I thought you were smart enough to be more realistic than that, Wren. We don't even know where they are, and even if we did, there are a million guards up there with weapons way deadlier than that," Dustin stated.

"I never said there weren't," Wren said as she slid into the passenger side of the cart. "But this," she lifted up the taser-like thing, "is better than going in there empty handed."

"The best thing we can do for them is to get out of here and find help. Our chance of surviving, and theirs, rises substantially."

"How are we supposed to get help when we're deep underground and have no way of contacting anyone on the surface?" Wren asked.

"Just trust me. Please?"

Wren stared at him for a moment before looking away, sighing. "I . . . I trust you."

****

The plan was simple. They'd cause a distraction to get the guards away from the room they were holding Robin and Steve prisoner in – that's where the green substances would come into play. Then, they'd charge in, use the weapon Wren found to knock out whoever else was in there, save their older friends, and get the fuck out of there.

The alarm blared as the green stuff sizzled through the floor. Dustin and Wren hid themselves until the guards had gone to investigate it. He led the way to a room and threw open the door. Wren ran in, the taser on. She jabbed it into the chest of a Russian doctor that was standing in front of Steve with some scary looking tools, knocking the man out.

Steve laughed. "Hey! Henderson, Wheeler! That's crazy, we were just talking about you!"

"Oh, my God!" Robin smiled.

"Get ready to run," Dustin said as he and Wren untied Robin and Steve. He led the way back to the cart, ushering the older teens into the back before stepping on the gas and driving as fast as he could to get them out.