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The sessions part 2

"Well?" asked Mike as soon as they walked through the door, "any news?"

Nancy looked at him sympathetically and shook her head 'no', lowering her head after so as to not have to see his reaction. Everyone was struggling, stuck in a horrible limbo of nothingness, each dealt with it in their own way: Karen made herself busy around the house, ensuring everyone was well fed and taken care of; Ted had pretty much just fallen off the face of the Earth and had volunteered for a month long business trip, not that he ever helped much anyway but Karen could have done with whatever moral support he was capable of; Nancy became withdrawn, she'd never truly gotten over her own experience of he upside down and losing Barb and the idea that after all of this she could lose more people filled her with dread; and the boys, well, they wanted action. They wanted to find the clues, follow the trail, rescue them from whatever had happened, even if it was just from themselves. Sadly, that had to come to an end. Lucas had no choice but to leave for his military college on time, lateness not being something that was particularly welcomed in the armed forces. Dustin also had to go, his college wouldn't allow him to come any more than 2 weeks late into the semester, a doubly hard blow as he was meant to be going to the same college as Max, they were meant to go together, have each other's backs.

That left Mike and Will, also going to the same college as each other, but one that was a little more understanding, especially as it was Mike's sister who was missing. But they knew the extension would only last another week and that they should both be preparing to leave.

Mike sighed in frustration, Will squeezing his hand in support. "How can there be no news, nothing?!" he challenged them.

"Mike, honey, Hopper is..."

"Fuck Hopper! He's doing nothing! He just sits on his fat ass doing nothing!" Mike lashed out, wiping a tear from his face.

Nancy looked up sharply at his outburst, "you know damn well that's not true! He loves her, but you know he has to be careful...we all know where El is, Max too, but we're just too afraid to admit it because there's not a fucking thing we can do about it!"

A silence descended over them all like a thick blanket, making it hard to breathe properly until it became stifling.

"Mike...Nancy..." Joyce started, nodding her head towards their mom who was silently crying in the kitchen, having removed herself at the first sign of the shouting. They both closed their eyes tightly for a moment in guilt and regret, then slowly, as one, made their way over to her.

"Sorry mom" Nancy said.

"Me too" Mike said, "it's just..."

"I know" Karen almost whispered back, "I feel the same" she reassured them, "but you know the Chief will do everything in his power to find them, we just have to wait, however hard that is, we just have to sit it out and wait."

Mike swallowed hard and nodded his understanding.

"And Mike?" Karen said, getting his attention again, "you know you have to start packing, we don't know how long we'll have to wait and I can't let you throw away your education, I just can't...no matter how hard it will be at first."

He nodded again, wiping away the few tears that had fallen. Will grabbed his hand tightly, "come on, I'll help you get started" he offered with a small smile.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

"Good morning, El, please sit and make yourself comfortable" Holtz said with a kind smile.

El looked around the room, trying to avoid eye contact as usual, and noticed that the furniture had changed. Instead of the hard, cold, metal chair she usually sat in there was, in its place, a comfortable looking armchair.