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Enemies (of the State) to Lovers

Enemies (of the State) to Lovers

Anonymous

You’d lived in Hawkins all your young life, gone to school with Joyce and Jim and Scott and Sam, but unlike the rest of them, you’d gotten out. You’d waved goodbye to the tiny town and headed to Indianapolis, then Kansas, then New Mexico, chasing down weird stories wherever it took you. You looked into stories of Aliens and Government corruption with equal interest; Roswell and MKUltra both held your attention. You thought the whole Cold War was bullshit, quite frankly, and it was just two garbage governments against each other with normal citizens in the crossfire. It was not an opinion that made you many friends.

But when you heard two kids from your old hometown had gone missing, and one of them belonged to your old friend Joyce, you went back. You’d never had the loyalty to the town that people expected out of you, but you had loyalty to the people you loved in spades, even if you hadn’t seen them in years.

And then Will was found and Barb was not, and you left again, but you promised Joyce you’d keep in touch, and you started chasing down other children, the children numbered one through ten that had to have come before that little girl. It was hard to find records of them, but you were tenacious - you found a couple promising immigration records, some falsified death reports, those sorts of things.

When someone nearly killed you, you realized you were probably on the right track. When it happened again, you got a bunker in South Michigan and decided to lay low for awhile. The only thing that brought you out of hiding and back to Hawkins was the news that Will was unwell and the little girl called Eleven was back.

Two supernatural, pseudo-apocalyptic events in 13 months was more than enough for you, and after Eleven told you about Eight, confirming your theory about the immigration records of the British Indian child, you kissed them on the foreheads, bid them all goodbye, and retreated back to your bunker. By your estimates, you had another year before something went wrong in Hawkins again, and you deserved a goddamn break.

Which for you meant a hell of a lot of reading, a hell of a lot of knitting, and just enough freelance journalism and investigation to pay the bills.

You were, in fact, sitting down with a book about Roswell one fine July evening when the bell rang. The interruption annoyed you not so much because you’d never read the book before - you had, three times - but because you were not a fan of visitors. They always brought fresh bullshit.

This thought was not abated when you saw Joyce Byers with two men on your doorstep, though your heart softened a little bit.

“It’s only been six months,” you said by way of greeting.

Joyce laughed humorlessly. “Tell me about it.” She had bags under her eyes dark enough to pass as ink, and she scrubbed one hand through her knotted brown hair. “There’s been...a situation.”

You swore. “Why didn’t you call me?” you demanded.

She shook her head. “There wasn’t time. It all happened...so fast.”

“So did the other times.” You frowned, glancing around. “Where’s Hopper?” There were two men with her, only one of whom you vaguely recognized, and neither of them were the chief of police.

She made a choked off sound, shoulders shuddering, and the curly-haired man - the one you didn’t recognize but definitely wanted to know - placed a hand comfortingly on her arm. His other arm was tied across his chest in a sling.