Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Words

"Words"

You look at me as if you're in a daze

It's like the feeling at the end of the page

When you realize you don't know what you just read

- Missing Persons

It had been such a good day, Hopper thought. Such a good day, in a long damned streak of bad ones. Talking his way into that facility, catching them in the lie about the tapes, finding out all the back story on the microfiche ... he'd felt like a real cop again. Like Detective Jim Hopper, two steps ahead at all times. It had been awkward seeing Marissa again in the library, but it was always going to be awkward seeing her again.

He'd been prepared to go to Joyce and tell her progress was being made, that he had reason to believe they were moving forward, and to deal with whatever emotions that news brought up.

But now—now he was driving away from the quarry, where they'd pulled that poor kid's body out of the water. He'd had a bad feeling about the place from the start, the chill in his gut he always got when he was in the most obvious, and therefore most likely, place. Nothing strange, nothing sinister, just a poor damned kid who got scared and lost his footing and ruined his mother's life.

The very last place he wanted to go right now was to Joyce's house, to watch her break when he told her that her son was dead. But he didn't have any other choice. It had to be him. He couldn't bear for her to hear the news from anyone else.

She met him first, before he could get the words out. "Hop, there was something in my house. It came out of the wall. It—it was a thing, a monster. You have to go in there, you have to get it out."

He drew in a breath to tell her anyway, but he couldn't. Not yet. "All right. Let me look." He gestured to Powell, and they went in, guns drawn, neither of them surprised to find that there was nothing there.

The house was—he didn't understand what was going on in the house. There were Christmas lights strung everywhere, all over the ceilings, and a string on the wall with the alphabet painted under them. What had she been doing to herself? He was willing to bet she hadn't slept since Will had gone missing, and had only eaten when someone forced food on her. She couldn't keep on like this. He wanted to hold her the way he had in high school, all those years ago, to take care of her. But he couldn't do that. He was the Chief of Police, and instead of making things better, he had to make them so much worse.

He brought her inside, with Jonathan. Joyce went immediately to the wall, putting her hand on the smoothness of the wallpaper, frowning at it.

"Joyce. Joyce!"

"What?" She came toward him, but turned her head so she could stare at the wall, puzzled and worried about it far more than she was about what he had come to tell her. And he couldn't put it off anymore.

"Joyce. We found— We found something."

She nodded vaguely, but wasn't listening.

"We found Will, Joyce. In the quarry."

Behind him, he heard a sharp gasp from Jonathan.

Joyce didn't look at either of them. "No." She said it as though she was distracted, as though she hadn't heard him.

Gently, Hopper kept trying to reach her. "We think ... well, our working theory right now is that he crashed the bike, made his way to the quarry, and accidentally fell in."