Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock. Knock, knooock, knock. Knock.

"Did I do that right?" Steve asked, his fist raised to the door of Palace Arcade. "These stupid secret knocks they come up with are so damn hard to remember."

Sarah pressed her hands over her eyes as she peered through the glass, the reflection from the bright sunlight making it difficult to see inside. She could barely make out the humped shapes of the arcade machines lined up like a row of tombstones, collecting dust. Palace Arcade had closed down three years prior after the previous owner had gone bankrupt, but Keith had recently acquired ownership and was working on renovating the place for a grand re-opening. After some lengthy convincing that included a hefty sum of cash, Keith had agreed to let them use the space for a very important party.

"I think so," Sarah answered when she caught sight of a new shape appearing from behind one of the machines and rushing towards the door.

A click and a rattle later, the door was cracked open just far enough for Lucas's head to stick out. "Nobody saw you, right?" he asked, his eyes unblinking and his mouth set in a straight line.

"Right," Sarah and Steve replied in unison.

"And you parked down the street, not in the parking lot, right?"

"Right," Sarah and Steve repeated again, this time with a matching roll of their eyes.

Lucas ushered them in, his eyes assessing the parking lot for any movement before he pulled the door shut and locked it. "She's going to be here any minute," Lucas informed them, a hand placed on each of their backs as he pushed them away from the door. "The others are in the back room. Stay there and don't come out until I give the secret knock."

Lucas demonstrated by rapping his fist against the side of a pinball machine. Knooock, knock, knooock, knooock. Knock. Knock, knock, knock.

"Another secret knock?" Steve groaned. "Can't you just shout or something like a normal person?"

Lucas ignored him as he hurried them into the back room where Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Will, Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, Hopper, and Joyce were all waiting. The small, cramped room could barely contain everyone but Sarah and Steve crowded in as Lucas shut the door on them.

"Hi, everyone," Sarah greeted the others in a whisper, barely able to recognize the person standing next to her with the little light that filtered through the cracks of the window shades.

"Happy birthday!" a chorus of whispers returned the greeting. It was Sarah's 32nd birthday, a birthday she never thought she'd even reach, but she made everyone promise that they wouldn't make a big deal out of it. She had a complicated history with her birthday since she never officially knew when it was, and she told her friends and family that she'd rather spend her time celebrating something else.

"Oh, hey, Sarah," Robin said, her voice drawing Sarah's eyes to her right. "This is my girlfriend, Vickie."

A hand emerged in front of Sarah's face but she wasn't able to see who it belonged to very clearly. "Nice to meet you," Sarah said as she shook the mysterious hand.

"Nice to meet you too," the presumed owner of the hand, Vickie, replied.

"How much longer is this going to take?" Dustin groaned, his grumbling stomach echoing in the small space.

"Dude, I told you you should have eaten before we got here," Mike's voice replied, accompanied by the sound of a sharp smack that indicated that he had hit Dustin on the shoulder. Another smack, this one much louder, followed shortly after, indicating that Dustin had slapped Mike in return. Before it could turn into a full-on brawl, Eleven pushed herself between the two.

"Knock it off," Eleven scolded them, her voice quiet but her tone sharp. "You're going to ruin the surprise."

The following silence lasted only two minutes before somebody else broke it with a sneeze. And then another. And another.

"Sorry," Will apologized, wiping at his watery eyes. "Allergies."

"I think I've got some allergy medication in my purse," Joyce whispered to Will as she dug through her bag, the clattering of pens, coins, and an assortment of other items nearly deafening in the silence.

"Joyce," Hopper said softly, the rattling coming to a stop when he rested his hand gently on her arm.

"Sorry."

This time the silence broke a record: three minutes.

"Can somebody please explain to me why exactly we're doing this at this dusty old arcade?" Steve asked, the boredom finally getting to him. His leg bounced up and down as he fought to stand still.

"Because this is where Max and Lucas first met," Nancy answered, trying to keep her voice as quiet as possible. She ended up being too quiet however, because Steve didn't hear her.

"What did you say?"

"Because this is where Max and Lucas first met," Nancy repeated herself, this time a little louder.

"That's not technically true, they first met at school. The arcade is where Lucas told Max--" Mike began when a unified groan cut him off, followed by the clicking of the front door opening. Max had arrived.

"Shh!" half the room hissed to the other half, their bodies turning rigid and their breaths becoming shallow as they strained to hear what was happening outside the door. Muffled words broke through the cracks but they weren't clear enough to make out.

"What are they saying?" Eleven asked, her head craning towards the door to hear better.

Sarah, being the closest to the door, placed her ear against the wood. "Max just asked why Lucas had her meet him here...Lucas said something about nostalgia...Max replied that she can see right through him..." she translated for the others as loud as she could without revealing their presence but those towards the back of the room had a hard time hearing her.

"Why don't you just open a portal? Like, a little tiny one," Dustin suggested, his fingers pinching together in demonstration.

"What did he just say?" Robin asked, her question based out of incredulity rather than an inability to hear, but she was ignored.

"Fine," Sarah conceded, pulling her head away from the door. "But you all need to be dead silent or Lucas is going to kill us."

Dustin and the others nodded their heads eagerly until a portal the size of a grape appeared before them. It was too small to see through, because if it was any larger Lucas and Max would notice it, but it enabled them to better hear what was being said. Robin and Vickie remained silent, managing to keep their shock and confusion contained for the sake of the surprise.

"Max...I asked you here because..." Lucas began, his voice trembling. "Dammit, I'm sorry, this is going really poorly..."

"It's okay," Max replied, her voice soft. "I think I know what this is about."

"You do?"

"I do," Max answered. A beat of silence passed. "You've forgotten how many high scores I set at this place and needed a reminder. It's understandable, really. I often drive by just for the rush of the glory days."

Lucas chuckled, his grin evident without those in the back room even needing to see it. "Your ability to kick ass at Dig Dug is a large part of the reason why I fell in love with you. But that's far from the only thing. I have a whole list, and if you'd like I can read it to you, but it's so long that we'd be here until we were dead and I can't ask you this question if we're both skeletons."

"What question?" Max asked in a whisper, the words barely able to escape her mouth.

"Max Mayfield," Lucas began. There was a pause, which those in the back assumed to be the result of Lucas getting down on one knee and pulling out a little black box. They all held their breath as they waited for the question to come, some of them becoming nearly light-headed from the wait. "Will you marry me?"

"That's very presumptuous of you," Max answered, her voice warbling from the tears. "But yes. Yes, of course I'll marry you, stalker."

Before Lucas could even react, the door to the back room flew open and Sarah, Steve, Mike, Eleven, Will, Dustin, Jonathan, Nancy, Robin, Vickie, Joyce, and Hopper all rushed out into the arcade in a riot of whoops and cheers.

"You guys didn't wait for my secret knock!" Lucas scolded them, his tone contrasted by the smile that was stuck to his face.

"Portals trump secret knocks," Steve informed him with a pat on his shoulder in congratulations.

Mike, Eleven, Dustin, and Will immediately surrounded Max and Lucas, watching eagerly as Lucas slipped a dazzling diamond ring onto Max's finger. The two were barely able to sneak a kiss before the other four were on top of them in a group hug. No matter how far apart life took them, they were still a party and always would be.

The older adults lingered at the edge of the celebration, with Steve, Sarah, Nancy, and Jonathan forming their own little group. Hopper stood with his arm wrapped around Joyce, watching the kids fondly from the sidelines while Robin and Vickie convened in the corner, silently debating whether they had actually seen what they had just seen.

"Thanks, by the way," Sarah said to Nancy. "Your cover-up story of the rift really helped to shift people's attention elsewhere."

"No problem," Nancy replied, turning to look up at her husband. "Jonathan helped. It's a trick we learned from Murry Bauman: water down the truth into something believable. So instead of telling the public that it's a rift to an alternate dimension, we tell them that it's the contrail of a secret military aircraft that's being tested."

"Nancy is a genius," Jonathan added, beaming down at her. "It was her idea to pin it on the military. Now they're too terrified to send anything up to check it out for fear of proving her article right."

"I only bought us a little time. This will all blow over soon enough and then they'll start poking around. Do we have to worry about them finding the new dimension?"

Sarah shook her head no. "It's secure. I've got people on the inside."

After dealing with Quinn and altering reality around the rift to make it appear invisible to those below, Sarah had opened a portal to the other side of the rift, taking Steve, Hopper, Joyce, Mike, Eleven, Will, Max, Lucas, and Dustin with her. When they first arrived in the brand new dimension, they found it incredibly foreign yet oddly familiar. It was quite barren to begin with, including only the basic structures of buildings in places where they knew them to be despite having never been there before. Sarah could recognize elements of both Hawkins and Helia in the land before her and she felt at home in the new world she had created.

Sarah's next stop had been to Helia, where with Adam's help, she convinced the Helians of the future her mother had seen and the direction that they must take. They accepted this truth more easily than Sarah had anticipated, likely because they too, had felt the land dying beneath their feet even if they didn't know exactly what it meant. While they mourned Diane, they moved forward, and Amelia even stepped up to take charge of the transition to the new dimension.

Before returning back to Hawkins, Sarah had walked through the hallways of the skyscraper that she had lived in for the past ten years with Adam at her side. From the windows up high, she could see the beginning of the rot that was creeping across the dimension, turning everything dead and dark. The process seemed to be moving quicker now that her mother had died and she wondered if the two were connected.

The first half of their walk had been silent, with Adam still processing the sight of his best friend frozen in stone. Sarah had needed Adam's help to contain Quinn in a pocket dimension until they could figure out what to do with her and he had crumbled to the ground upon seeing Diane, sitting motionless for several minutes.

"I don't have your mother's ability to see ahead but I think I always knew this was coming," Adam had finally said at last as they rounded the corner to Diane's office. "And yet funnily enough, I'm still not prepared."

"I don't think anyone ever is," Sarah had replied. A flash of memories sprawled across Sarah's mind in that moment, eliciting a small smile on her face. While her relationship with her mother wasn't the one she had been hoping for her entire life, while it had been messy and complicated and filled with mistrust, she couldn't deny that there had been good times. Far and few between, but there. And maybe even a fondness that Sarah hadn't been able to grasp until just then.

"So, what next?" Adam had asked, tucking his arms behind his back and looking to Sarah. "Will you step up in your mother's place and lead this new dimension?"

"No," Sarah had answered with a firm shake of her head before turning to look at Adam. "You will." When Adam's forehead creased with concern, his mouth parting in anticipation of words that didn't come, Sarah added, "With some help."

In the weeks that followed, Sarah alternated between cleaning up the mess she had created in Hawkins and assisting with the new dimension, which she had begun to call Snikwah even though she knew it wasn't likely to stick. Steve, Hopper, Joyce, Eleven, and some of the others had even tagged along a handful of times. There was still a long way to go and much to build, but the new dimension already looked vastly different from when Sarah had first stepped foot in it and with some assistance, she was able to watch Snikwah progress even when she wasn't there.

"Look who's back," James had greeted Sarah upon her first return to Snikwah. "Did you miss me already?"

"Maybe like a speck," Sarah had replied, fighting a losing battle against the smile that crept onto her face as she approached him in the main square of what was quickly becoming Snikwah's capital. The structure was very similar to that of downtown Hawkins, albeit more modernized and golden. "Like a little, itty-bitty, tiny speck."

After taking leadership, Adam quickly learned that the "with some help" Sarah had been referring to was his own son. James had been resistant at first, but Sarah convinced him that she needed him there to keep eyes and ears on the dimension, and after a long heart-to-heart in which Adam apologized for abandoning him, James eventually learned to enjoy spending time with the father he had never gotten to know.

"I'm here for Quinn," Sarah had informed James as she strode towards what was the Mayor's Office in both Hawkins and Snikwah. On the way, she passed a statue of Malcolm that was being erected in memory of the man who had died trying to give his people a new life. While he hadn't been successful when he was alive, it was only through his failure that Sarah was able to complete his vision and she had demanded that he be honored in the new dimension.

"Right this way."

James had led Sarah to Adam, who opened the pocket dimension in which Quinn was being kept just long enough for Sarah to slip through. Quinn had not been happy to be imprisoned but the pocket dimension was a cell only in the sense that she couldn't leave. Aside from that, it was actually quite beautiful; full of swaying willow trees and a valley with a glistening lake in the center. Quinn had received medical attention for her leg and a steady supply of food during her time there, which mellowed her out considerably. Like Sarah, she had fought for so long. Now she was just tired.

"He's gone, isn't he," Quinn had said, her voice carrying on the breeze as Sarah approached her. Her left leg was mostly healed thanks to the abilities of another Helian, but she still favored her right. "What was left of my father."

Sarah had nodded her head in response. The second the rift appeared in the sky, Sarah had felt Malcolm's abilities leave her. Malcolm had been consumed when he had created the Upside Down, it only made sense that some part of her would also be lost when she created a new dimension.

"So...you're just going to leave me here forever?" Quinn had asked next, but the question was less demanding and more curious. She could use her abilities to find the answer before Sarah even spoke, but it seemed that she had chosen not to.

"That's actually what I'm here to talk to you about," Sarah had replied. She then paused to survey the world around her. "I don't blame you, you know. Not entirely. I'm not saying you're innocent or that I would have done the same, but I understand. I understand why you did what you did and I think with some work, there's a place for you that isn't here. Maybe even a place in the new dimension I created."

Quinn had cocked her head, studying Sarah with furrowed brows and closed lips. She appeared to be waiting for the other shoe to drop and was surprised when it didn't.

"Is that something you would want?" Sarah had pressed, her unblinking eyes watching Quinn's every move.

"I think..." Quinn had begun after taking a moment with her thoughts. She wrapped her arms around her waist, swaying between her two feet as she stared off somewhere over Sarah's head. "I think you're right."

It was then Sarah's turn to be surprised. Quinn took a breath and explained. "I think I'm done too. When I was in the Lab, I saw him. I saw my dad. Not actually, of course. It was when I was sedated and I still don't know if it was a dream or a vision or...a message. But he told me to fix things. At the time, I had a very different understanding of what he meant but now I think I finally get it. Fixing things didn't mean following your mother. Fixing things didn't even mean bringing back my father, no matter how badly I wanted it to. I think fixing things means finishing what my father originally set out to do; creating a world where humans and Helians can coexist."

A long moment of silence had passed with the two of them just staring at each other until a smile spread on Sarah's face and she replied, "Follow me."

"People on the inside?" Jonathan asked, releasing Sarah from her thoughts and returning her to the engagement party. "Do you mean Helians?"

"With a little help from Owens and my own abilities, we altered some documents to get Amelia, Daniel, and a couple other Helians into select government agencies," Sarah answered. "They're keeping the U.S. government focused elsewhere while also learning a bit more about Earth."

"But with Helians coming and going, will you have to worry about the same thing happening to Snikwah that happened to Helia?" Nancy asked next.

"I honestly don't know," Sarah replied, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "My mom made it seem like this was the final solution, and while taking her for her word isn't always a good choice, I trust that she always did what she thought was best for her people. While she wasn't exactly a good mother, she was a good leader."

"What about Quinn?" Steve asked, his eyebrows dipping in concern and his eyes glistening with a mixture of feelings. "I know you said she's not in that pocket dimension anymore, do we have to worry about her seeking revenge?"

Sarah shook her head with a confidence that put Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan at ease. Using her abilities, she could see and hear Quinn in that moment through James' eyes and ears. Right then, Quinn was in Adam's office discussing plans to bridge the gap between dimensions with a community center where humans and Helians could come together. Sarah listened as Quinn explained to Adam that as more Helians explored their companion dimension, there would be more kids just like herself, James, Sarah, and Eleven, and they would need a place where they could live as a family together.

"We don't have to worry about Quinn," Sarah smiled, leaving the discussion at that.

Sarah weaved her arm between Steve's and leaned her head against his shoulder as her eyes surveyed the room. While the party was for Max and Lucas, they weren't the only couple to celebrate. Despite everything they had all been through, they were all still together, and had even found love in the process. There was Robin and Vickie, who still wore matching looks of shock but had begun to mingle with the rest of the party. There was Hopper and Joyce, who were slow dancing in the corner, Joyce's head resting on Hopper's chest. There was Mike and Eleven, whose hands hadn't left each other's for the entire duration of the party. And of course, there was herself and Steve. Sarah glanced up at Steve with a smile and he pressed a kiss onto her forehead. She had never been so happy in her life as she was there in a dusty old arcade with her friends, family, and the love of her life.

The party continued for another two hours without even a millisecond of silence passing through the room. The group shared memories, old and new, laughing at the good ones and smiling through the bad ones. They speculated on the future and the new adventures it would bring; though, hopefully nothing quite as exciting as what they had already been through. They even sang Sarah Happy Birthday and brought out a cake, despite her begging them not to. By the time the party had ended, Lucas locking the door after the last person left, Palace Arcade was rejuvenated with a lingering livelihood that it hadn't seen in years; a livelihood it hadn't seen since a girl with flaming hair and glowing hands arrived and asked a group of kids for their help.

"Have fun at the engagement party?" Sarah asked Steve on their drive back to Hopper's cabin. Sarah had since returned the woods around the cabin back to its original state and had taken residence there.

"I did," Steve replied, glancing over to her from the driver's seat. "We should do it again sometime."

Sarah's head snapped towards Steve inquisitively and Steve smiled in response, refusing to elaborate. They remained silent for the rest of the car ride, smiles pressed to their faces as they basked in the presence of each other. Their relationship hadn't gotten off to an easy start. Steve was still sorting out his feelings for Quinn and they had ten years to catch up on, but if they knew anything with certainty, it was that nothing would pull them apart again.

Steve parked his BMW in front of the cabin, turning to look at Sarah before opening the door. "What now, Birthday Girl?"

"Well..." Sarah began, her cheeks turning pink as her eyes glanced down at the clock. "We've got an hour before we're supposed to head over to my dad's for dinner..."

"I think I know how to spend it," Steve replied with a wiggle of his eyebrows. He leaned over the center console, his lips moving closer and closer to Sarah's. When they were within centimeters of contact, Steve pulled back with a wink and climbed out of the car.

"Not fair!" Sarah scoffed with a smile, blindsided by the deception. She pushed open her door and rushed after him, racing him towards the front door of the cabin. Steve just barely beat her there when Sarah tackled him, her weight pushing him against the door. They stood there for a moment, panting and staring into each other's eyes, until they couldn't wait any longer.

Lips glued together, Steve pushed away from the door, his hand blindly searching for the handle. He had to pause his search to pull Sarah in closer, the two pressed together so tightly that they were nearly one. It was almost impossible for Steve to take his hands away from Sarah but he remembered that they were still outside and his hand finally found the handle, pushing the door open and pulling Sarah inside.

As the door shut on Hopper's cabin, a soft breeze kicked up a trail of multi-colored leaves that danced over the roof, almost like Hawkins was expelling a breath that it had been holding for far too long; a breath of relief, a breath of peace.

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