Hawkins quaked as a loud boom thundered overhead. The street lights standing over the sleepy streets flickered, the cars parked along them blaring their alarms. At the Hawk Theatre, the screens simultaneously switched to black and the popcorn machine stopped popping. The radio on the janitor's cleaning cart at Hawkins Middle School erupted into static and a chorus of frustrated shouts echoed around The Silver Cat when the TV above the bar shut off in the middle of the Colts game. 

"What the hell was that?" Hopper shouted, slamming his foot on the brake. The truck came to a screeching halt on the side of the road, stirring up a cloud of dirt and dust. Accompanied by Joyce, and with Eleven, Mike, Will, Max, Lucas, and Dustin following not too far behind in their respective cars, Hopper had been on his way to the park where the Lab used to stand when the mysterious noise rattled his truck so hard that he nearly lost control of the steering wheel. "Thunder?"

Joyce craned her neck as she searched the darkening sky outside the passenger window. "I don't think so..."

Hopper glanced in the rearview mirror to see that the cars in his caravan had also stopped. "Whatever it was, we don't have time to lose," he said, switching his foot to the gas pedal. But before he could press down, Joyce stopped him.

"Hold on, Hop," she began, placing a gentle hand on his chest. "Take a breath, I can hear your heart beating from here."

"I can't take a breath, we've got to get to Quinn and to--" Hopper began when Joyce cut him off. 

"We will, I promise we will," Joyce assured him. "But you need to be in the right mindset when we do or people are going to get hurt."

Hopper sighed, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair. He ignored his creaking bones and the sharp pain shooting through his back, wondering just how age had crept up on him so fast. Aging was never easy for anyone, but it had been especially hard for Hopper because too much of it had happened without Sarah.

She hadn't been there when Eleven had gotten her college acceptance letter or when they road-tripped cross-country to move her to Oregon, blasting ABBA the entire way. She hadn't been there at his wedding, standing beside Joyce as one of her bridesmaids on the shore of Lover's Lake. She hadn't been there when he had gotten an accolade from the mayor for his 20 years of service as Chief of Hawkins Police. And yet he had instinctively looked for her every single time, forgetting for a blissful moment that she was gone only to be reminded all over again.

He turned his face away from Joyce when he felt his eyes watering, resting his bristly chin in his hand as he tried to blink the tears away. But Joyce could see right through him.

"Honey, what's wrong?" 

"Why does this keep happening to us? To her?" Hopper asked after he collected himself, but the words reopened the dam and he began to cry even harder. "If I lose her again, I don't...I...I can't..."

"You won't. We won't," Joyce said, her tone unwavering and her eyes unblinking. She placed a hand on Hopper's cheek and wiped away a stray tear. "We're going to fight for her just like she's always fought for us. And then we're going to bring her home."

☆ ★ ☆

With a single step, Sarah traversed from the known into the unknown; into a tunnel made of both sound and silence, of both light and dark. It was vast and yet it was suffocating; it was crowded and yet it was empty. 

"What is this..." Sarah began to ask James, but when she looked behind her he was gone. 

Images of people and places she knew and people and places she'd never meet flashed in the kaleidoscopes of colors and prisms of pigments that waxed and waned around her. She could hear voices, snippets of conversations she'd had, was yet to have, and would never partake in. 

"We're going to fight for her just like she's always fought for us. And then we're going to bring her home."

"It wasn't supposed to end like this. And so it won't."

"The Shire is burning...so Mordor it is."

"Not all those who wander are lost."

"Do or do not, there is no try."

"With great power comes great responsibility."

"We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?"

She felt like she was crawling in the spaces between the walls of a primordial house, passing through lives, loves, and losses with an eye and an ear to a peephole. She would have gotten lost if not for the blinding light before her that beckoned her into its embrace.

☆ ★ ☆

"Looks like we're moving again," Dustin announced to his passengers, Lucas and Max, who were sitting together in the back seat, and Will, who was riding shotgun. Eleven had elected to ride with Mike, which hadn't been a surprise to anyone. Dustin shifted the gear from park into drive and slowly followed Hopper's truck, careful to keep some space in case they had to come to an abrupt halt again.

"Now that Mike and El are back together, we should go on a double date with them," Lucas offered to Max with a cheerful smile. 

"Hold your horses," Max replied, holding a hand up to stop him. "They're not back together yet and if you pressure them they never will be. They need time to figure it out, you know, outside of our current trauma-of-the-week."

Lucas opened his mouth to argue but shut it when he realized that Max was right. "Well, after all that, then," he mumbled.

"You better be extending an invite to Will and I," Dustin spoke up from the front seat, shooting Lucas an accusing look through the rearview mirror. 

"You and Will want to join me, Max, Mike, and El on a triple date?" Lucas asked with an arched brow. 

"No," Dustin replied, rolling his eyes at Lucas's purposeful ignorance. After a moment's thought, he paused to lean over towards Will and say, "Not that I wouldn't be honored." Will chuckled and offered him a smile that implied he took no offense.

"You're both single, that's the only reason I didn't mention inviting you two," Lucas explained himself with a shrug. 

"I might not be for long," Dustin proudly announced, pulling his eyes from the road for a moment to watch their reactions through the rearview mirror. Lucas and Max shared a look of shock and Will blinked in surprise. "I have a lady friend."

"Who?" Lucas demanded, placing a hand on the back of Dustin's seat as he pulled himself upright to hear Dustin better.

"Her name is Suzie," Dustin answered with a toothy grin, his cheeks turning a pale pink at the mention of her name. "I met her when my company sent me out to Salt Lake City for a tech conference in July. She's a computer programmer for IBM and she's wicked smart. We've been e-mailing and talking on the phone ever since."

Lucas and Max continued to flounder for words until Lucas eventually said, "Good for you, man. We're happy for you." He patted Dustin on the shoulder and flashed him a supportive smile in the rearview mirror.

"What about you, Will?" Max asked, shifting the conversation towards their more silent car companion. "Is there anybody you're talking to?" 

Will's cheeks burned as he shook his head, unprepared for the question. "Uh...well, there's this guy in my program at NYU but I don't know...I'm kind of happy with where I'm at right now, to be honest."

Everybody nodded their heads in understanding, giving Will the space and silence to continue if he wanted but he elected not to. After the way Lonnie had treated him growing up, it had taken Will a long time to come to a place where he was comfortable with his sexuality. He hadn't really taken an interest in relationships like his friends had, and when he finally did start noticing others, he realized that they all shared one thing in common: they were boys. His friends had started to pick up on it in high school, some quicker than others, but they kept their mouths shut, supporting him in whatever small ways they could until Will felt comfortable enough to talk about it with them. 

Of the friend group, he came out to Eleven first. After Joyce and Hopper started spending more time together, Will and Eleven started spending more time together too and Will quickly developed a sibling-like bond with Eleven. They never had to say much for the other to understand what they were thinking or feeling, they could just look at each other and know. Eleven had had questions, since she wasn't very familiar with the concept of sexuality after her time in the Lab, but she learned quickly and had become even more protective of Will ever since. 

Next he came out to Mike. Mike was perhaps the person Will was the most eager and the most nervous to come out to. Mike was his best friend and one of the first people that made him realize his sexuality. Mike fumbled with his words when Will had told him, unsure of what to say in the situation but trying his hardest to be supportive and while he didn't entirely understand, he still made sure that Will knew that he was there for him. Will's feelings for Mike had long since faded away, but their friendship was stronger than ever. 

Will came out to Lucas and Max at the same time, mostly because there weren't many times that the two were apart (unless they were on one of their many, albeit brief, breaks). Lucas had asked stupid questions, which he hadn't realized were stupid, and Max had smacked him for each and every single one, but the two were immediately supportive. Max had been the first person in the friend group to pick up on Will's feelings and she made sure to keep the others in line so they didn't accidentally say something offensive in front of Will. After Will came out to them, Lucas immediately designated himself his wing-man and tried his hand at setting Will up with other guys, but he quickly realized that Will was more comfortable taking things at his own pace and became more than happy just to stand on the sidelines and support him.

Last was Dustin, but his number in the order for which Will came out had no bearing on their friendship. Dustin was the only person in the friend group who didn't at least have an inkling about Will's sexuality before Will came out to them, but it wasn't because he didn't care. Rather, it was because Dustin often had his head in the clouds and could be quite clueless about anything that wasn't in his current frame of reference. Despite this, Dustin had been the easiest person for Will to come out to because his response was to hug Will and to say, "That's awesome, dude. Wanna play D&D?"

Will smiled to himself, keeping it hidden behind his palm as he leaned on his elbow and watched out the passenger window. He preferred to keep most of the details of his love life to himself but he knew that whenever he needed to talk about it, he could. If not to his friends, then to his family, who had embraced him with open arms after coming out to them, Hopper included. 

Will meant what he had said, he really was happy with where he was at.

☆ ★ ☆

On the other side of the light was darkness. But not an infinite darkness like the void that awaited you whenever you shut your eyes; it was a darkness that twinkled with a golden moon and glowing stars. It was a darkness that was familiar to her, filled with tangles of overgrown trees and patchy pavement beneath her feet. It was the road that she had found Steve's wrecked car on. 

Sarah swiveled on her feet, her eyes searching for the tree that Steve's car had embedded itself into and when she found it she let out a cry of relief when she saw that his car wasn't there. While there were no definite signs that she was in the correct universe at the correct time, she didn't need them. She could feel it in her bones, in her blood, in her cells. She had done it.

Sarah half-expected James to make some congratulatory quip but after going through the portal, he had once more become strangely silent. Whether he was even still present in her mind, she didn't know, and she didn't have time to search him out because just then two bright beams of light blinded her and she had to block her eyes with her arm. 

The next part happened so quickly that Sarah couldn't even make sense of what had happened until it was over.

The bright beams of light swerved to the left, illuminating the dark trees on the side of the road as the screeching of metal filled Sarah's ears and the smell of burning rubber filled her nose. The lights careened past her before they suddenly came to a stop in a clatter of noise so deafening that Sarah momentarily lost the ability to hear. When her senses finally returned to her, they returned in full.

The lights flickered, their scope dimmer and now partially obstructed by the tree that had stopped them. Sarah now realized them to be the headlights of a car, the angry red taillights glaring at her as she approached the vehicle. But it wasn't the lights she was focused on anymore, it was the license plate. 

It read STVFTHR.

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★