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OFFICIALLY, HAWKINS was on a government shutdown. There were agents posted at every street corner, standing at every entrance, driving down every road. They checked every vehicle that attempted to enter the town, visitors were the only ones granted an exit passage. And officially, Jacqueline Mayfield did not give a shit.
It had been a long two years. Well, almost two years. It'd been eighteen months since Vecna split the town into two, combining the Upside Down with Hawkins and turning everything to shit. He jump started a town-wide quarantine, killed Jackie's sleeping schedule, and ruined her bank account with the need to purchase multiple cassettes to fit everyone's favorite song on the mixtape. And the bastard was still missing. Recovering, probably, but missing.
Jackie's hospital visits became less frequent after the first six months. Max hadn't changed, unconscious, breathing, and above all; alive. But barely. Jackie didn't remember when she'd started to lose hope, but she knew it had been ages ago. It hurt—ached, burned, to see her sister like that. Her external wounds had healed, casts discarded and bruises faded. That didn't make it any easier.
Slowly, the days had blurred. After the smoke and ash fluttered past the windows of the gymnasium, Jackie had known all of it was far from over. She and Steve had shared a panicked look, warned Dustin and Robin. Dustin, who was still limping, whose eyes were still bloodshot from the death of Eddie. Robin, who had been talking to Vickie, who had a scar on her collarbone from the vines. Steve, who despite not admitting it, the inner turmoil he was experiencing was taking a bigger toll on him this time around. And Jackie, whose baby sister was in a coma, who couldn't sleep without waking up, heart racing and cheeks wet, even with Steve's comforting words and back rubs, she could never get the memories out of her head.
The damage had already been done. Jackie didn't know how much more they could take.
Too sad, too hopeless to do anything else, Jackie spent most of her days in her and Steve's now shared bedroom. Susan hadn't been thrilled about the move, knowing her daughter would be sleeping next to a boy every night, but she wasn't exactly in the place to say no. Her mother had declined the offer to stay, taking a cot in the community housing once everything was up and running.
The weeks were short, but the days were long. Jackie's clothes mixed with Steve's in his dresser, the shoe rack by the door a jumble of her ratty red Converse and his clean Nikes. The bathroom was cluttered with hair ties, a pink toothbrush, and the retainer Jackie never wore. Steve's numerous amounts of hair products crowded the medicine cabinet, but she occupied the counter space, makeup brushes and too many different shades of lipstick she never wore.
Unsure of when the feeling changed—the feeling of moving in seeming more like actual moving in and not just an arrangement for safety—but as more of her things took over the house, Jackie realized that it was real. That she was living with Steve Harrington in the mansion that was his house, that the government was crawling around Hawkins, that her little sister had been in a coma for eighteen months.
