"Don't be cautious, don't be kind You committed, I'm your crime Push my button anytime You got your finger on the trigger But your trigger finger's mine"
-Billie Eilish, copycat
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CAROLINE BYERS WAS DYING.
She could feel it everywhere, down to her very bones. Her lungs were melting and her skin was torching.
She was being burned alive.
God, this was worse than dying. Her head had exploded by now, surely. But if she was dead, why did it hurt so bad?
She knew she was being moved, she felt her body being clutched and thrown around and jostled. Caroline was no longer in control; the demons in her head had taken over, now.
She could feel her brother, his pain enhancing her own. It was the definition of pure agony, convulsing and suffocating in her own skin, having no control of her limbs.
And eternity passed, and then Caroline was surrounded by bright white light. She had curled up into a ball, screaming so loudly that she swore her throat tore.
"Help!" Caroline heard someone yell in her ear, and she assumed she was being carried. "Help! Please!"
Caroline could hear Will somewhere down the hall, matching her screams, before a familiar voice broke through.
"God! Caroline!" It was her mother. What was her mother doing... wherever she was? "Hold on, sweetie!"
Caroline realized vaguely she was at the lab. She felt the pull towards the opening into the Upside Down, where He had escaped in the first place.
Where the other part of her had appeared.
After all, they were one in the same now.
Caroline had gone from screaming to sobbing as she writhed in pain, the realization hitting her all at once.
"Stretcher! Stretcher!" Dr. Owens was there now, too, waving over nearby doctors.
"I'm right here. Just hold on," Joyce whispered as she held her daughter's hand. They wheeled the twin down the hall.
Caroline was parallel with Will now in a hospital room. She tore at her jacket and shirt, desperate for any kind of cool breeze. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her skin coated in sweat.
The monster, He was completely taking over, and she had already let go. She wished it was all over; she couldn't handle it anymore-
"Vitals?" Owens called, cutting open Caroline's heavy coat as she writhed on the bed.
"Heart rate 220 . Temperature's 106!"
"Will, where does it hurt?" Owens turned urgently to the Byers boy, knowing that Caroline was past the point of ability to respond, "where does it hurt?"
