Keep me Closer - Billy Hargrove - Stranger Things

36: Distress

Quinn has woken up in the car and screamed the whole way in extreme pain. She was curled up in a ball in the back seat screaming mad crying. It wasn't just the pain of the Billy that she felt. The energy levels in her body were exploding. She tried containing it to avoid killing everyone in the car and herself. It consisted of a lot of strength on her part. Strength she didn't really have. Her veins glowed a violent blue with streaks is red and black throughout.

She groaned and grunted and El cried in pain while Mike helped keep pressure on her leg. Max helped keep pressure on Quinn's slashes on her forehead and chest that continued to flow blood.

Nancy swerved into the nearest store parking lot. Max and Mike helped El out of the car and Jonathan carried Quinn.

"She's not screaming anymore. That's progress." Lucas tried to lighten the mood.

Quinn grunted and struggled to breath. She breathed like she was holding in a cough and wouldn't let it out. Her lungs and her body needed to let something out that she wouldn't risk. Every breath she took for more and more painful.

Nancy threw a rock threw the door making the glass shatter and they all walked through it. Jonathan set Quinn on the ground next to where they sat El down.

They walked around the medical aisle looking for any thing that could help.

"Okay let me see El's" Nancy said and they lifted her pants up to see her blood gushing out. "Lift up Quinn." Nancy instructed.

They sat a nearly fainted Quinn up. The gash on her forehead dripped blood down her face and the one on her chest soaked her clothes.

Nancy got the gauze and peroxide to poor on her leg and Max stopped her.

"Whoa whoa what are you doing?" Max asked.

"I'm cleaning the wound." Nancy replied like it was obvious.

"No no, first we need to stop the bleeding, then we clean, then disinfect, and then bandage." Max informed and everyone silently stared at her. " I skateboard, trust me." - "Mike hold this." She said and put his hands on her wound with a towel over it to help stop the bleeding. "Keep pressure on it nice and firm, okay? Will, do the same for Quinn." - " We are gonna need water and soap." She told Nancy and Jonathan.

"Okay." Nancy stood up.

"Alright." Jonathan said and went with Nancy.

Lucas tipped over his backpack. And dumped it all out. Max looked at him confused.

"Does any of this help?" He asked.

Max looked at him frustratedly.
"No. Go get me a washcloth and a bowl." She commanded.

"A bowl?" Lucas asked

"Lucas." Max said in a 'just do what I ask' kind of tone.

Will hit Lucas's arm. "O-O-Okay." He stuttered.

"I got her." Max said to Will about Quinn signalling that Will could go with Lucas.

El groaned in pain. Quinn was no longer making any noises. Just loud breathing. Her eyes were closed and she was moments away from passing out. Max did her best to get the blood off of Quinn's face but more slowly would drip from her forehead and slide down her nose and go down dodging her eyes and went down her cheeks past her lip.

"Can you hear me Quinn?" Max asked. Quinn slowly opened her eyes. She didn't say anything she just looked at Max. "Where does it hurt the most?"

"Everywhere." She whispered and tears fell from her eyes.

"It still hurts from what Billy feels?"

"No." She said and then grunted and gritted her teeth. Her veins started to glow more of a red colour with bits of blue hidden within and black sprouting throughout started to spread. She grunted and threw her head back in pain.

"Is it your powers?" Max asked and El and Mike looked at Quinn worriedly.

"Yes." Her voice squeaked.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know." She cried and lost strength to hold her head up. She gritted her teeth and curled her hands into a fist.

"What does it feel like?"

It took a moment to Quinn to respond. She stopped breathing for a moment and just closed her eyes and cried. Then she let go and breathed out. "Like.. I'm storing all this energy all this power and it just needs to be let out. But I'm scared. I've haven't been this.. I've never felt like this, this intensely before I don't know what to do." She whined.

A few seconds went by and it got worse. She groaned and the ground started to shake under them. And things around them started to fall off of the storage counters. She took a deep breath and then it would stop. The kids all looked at each other in fear. Max got up to check on the guys to see Was was taking so long. Quinn shut her eyes. She couldn't even try to focus on anything other then the pain.

**Quinns POV*

My body felt like it was collapsing. Like it was caving in and was about to just let everything out. I felt like giving up. But I couldn't. Who knows what would happen if I did.

I kept getting small glimpses of flashbacks from the lab. My pain from the lab was just about this intense. It gave me flashbacks and PTSD I tried to push back in the back of my memory hoping to forget forever.

~Flashbacks~

"Move the car with out burning it Twelve." Brenner commanded.

I looked at the car and manipulated the energy around the car to move it. It was too much. It was too heavy. I couldn't do it. It was physically too much for my body to handle. I started to break down. I screamed and fell to the ground. And the car ended up exploding.

Brenner looked at me disappointedly and I saw two men walking towards me about to take me back inside. Since a dark room never seemed to affect me. I had powers that made me glow. They strapped me down to a table. Put a rubber thing in my mouth. Stuck things to my forehead and would shock me until I passed out and I would wake up supposedly charged with energy like I was some sort of battery.

~ End ~

~ Flashback 2 ~

They usually shocked me on a low enough level to keep me awake temporarily, but high enough to where the whole hospital could hear my screams. This time was different. It was higher then normal. I didn't really do anything wrong today. I didn't really do anything today. They just experimented on me. The windows and glass in the room shattered. They didn't stop it. They continued to turn it higher. Both my nostrils bled. My veins glowed so bright they looked like they could burst. All the light bulbs in the whole hospital broke. A huge explosion was let out of me killing everyone in the room and burning the straps right off and disintegrating nearly everything in the room.

~End ~