Almost had it all // Steve Harrington
10 parts Ongoing In Hawkins, nothing ever really disappears. It just waits.
Juniper grew up on the edges of town and the edges of people's lives-the daughter of two parents who never wanted her at the same time, raised by a father who loved her badly and a mother who loved her not at all.
By sixteen, she's learned how to survive quietly: working long shifts, asking for nothing, keeping her head down while the rest of Hawkins looks the other way.
Then Will Byers vanishes.
What starts as a missing boy begins to peel back pieces of Juniper's past she never fully understood-years she doesn't remember clearly, a childhood that feels borrowed, and a sense that something about her has always been slightly off. As strange events ripple through Hawkins, Juniper finds herself pulled into a reality that feels too close, too personal, and too familiar.
And woven through it all is Steve Harrington-unexpected, distant, and slow to matter in a way neither of them is prepared for.
But Hawkins has secrets, and some of them don't stay buried.
Not the lab.
Not the experiments.
Not the people who were touched and left unfinished.
As Juniper inches closer to the truth, she's forced to confront a terrifying possibility: that the life she's fighting to hold onto may not be entirely real-and that someone has been shaping what she sees, what she remembers, and what she believes from the very beginning.
Because some people escape Hawkins.
Others almost do.
*alternative ending of Season 5*