Right Side Up - A Stranger Things Season 4 Fanfic (incomplete)

Chapter 1

Grief; (n) Intense sorrow, especially caused by someone's death.

Hurt; (adj) To be in emotional pain

Guilty; (n) A feeling of anxiety or unhappiness that you have done something immoral or wrong.

These are the words that can be used to describe Joyce Byers. Grieving. Hurt. Guilty. In her head, the death of Jim Hopper was her fault. He had sacrificed himself. For Hawkins. For the kids. For her. And all she did was sit there and watch it all happen. If I hadn't turned those keys, he wouldn't have died. We could've been a family...

Those thoughts were taking over her mind, no matter how much she tried to push them away, they always came back. The guilt, the grief, the pain, it all came back. She had tried to quit smoking. For him. But she couldn't control herself when her disgusting thoughts weren't getting out of her head. She had to distract her self. She had to forget. She had to-

"Mom?" A quiet and sleepy voice said behind her.

She turned around to see El in Hopper's old "Hawkins Police Department" shirt, which was huge on her; Hopper had given it to Joyce at first, but she figured El needed it more than her, considering it was one of the only things they had found untouched while cleaning out Hopper's half-destroyed cabin, rubbing her eyes and looking at Joyce with a half-asleep look.

She was growing into quite a dashing young woman. Her beautiful golden-brown locks had grown out to just above her waist, and although she still had a petite figure, her personality was that of a full grown woman.

"Oh, hey honey" Joyce said, putting on the best fake smile she could, while extinguishing the cigarette she was smoking behind her back. She tried not to smoke in front of the kids, afraid of giving off a bad example. Besides, she had promised to them, and to herself, that she would quit, although the kids knew her promise wouldn't last long. They knew their mother would end up smoking at least two packs of Camels, overwhelmed by the stress she had to live with. They didn't blame her though. They could imagine how she felt, so they never pressured her.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" Joyce asked, looking at El with a concerned look. She didnt want her kids to stay up all night, simply because they didn't have to. She knew that they wanted to help her, but she just couldn't bring herself to open up to her children, burdening them with her problems, when they could barely handle their own.

"A nightmare woke me up" El admitted quietly, shifting her eyes to the floor, focusing her attention on the cracks between the wooden floorboards.

"Aw, sweetie.." Joyce went up to her daughter and wrapped her into her arms. "Wanna talk about it?" She asked, pulling away from the embrace, and looking lovingly into El's eyes.

El nodded in responce, and took a seat on the couch, followed by Joyce, who sat next to her, and put her arm around the girl's shoulders, pulling her close to her.

"Well.. I was in the void, and it was dark, empty and cold... Colder than usual.." El shivered at the memory of what she had felt in her dream.
"Then I heard his voice.. He was calling my name... He was far away, but it felt like his voice echoed everywhere... He was begging me to come find him.. I think he was crying.." The girl looked at her mother, tears were forming in her eyes.

"Who is 'he'? Who's voice did you hear?" Joyce asked. She was worried about El's health. She knew it was hard for her to deal with the loss of the only person she thought to be family, but the girl was slowly losing her mind over it. Or so she thought...

" Hopper's. I think he's somewhere out there. I think he wants us to find him."