CHAPTER TWELVE
THIS ISN'T THE END

        Abby is discharged from the hospital and put straight on bed rest. Her head still pounds painfully from time to time. It had been a concussion apparently. The gash in her forehead which had been held together with nothing but a rainbow butterfly bandage had been stitched back together. The days that slowly pass by seem to have a lackadaisical effect. She wonders if it will ever end. It's only three days that she's on bed rest, but it feels like more. She sleeps for most of the day, it's really all she can do. It dismays her to know that while she's stuck at home, the world still carries on around her, the phones ring, and the clocks tick, but there she is, stuck.

Isla had visited when she could, they spent hours together as Isla curled up on a chair and finished her schoolwork. She brought conspiracy theories and the news that Hawkins Lab had been shut down. It gave her a sense of comfort to know that despite everything that had been twisted around and flipped upside down, at least one thing was still the same. Steve and Alex visited frequently, sometimes together, sometimes it had been only one of them, but their company is always appreciated. Alex had brought flowers every time she visited, holding them in her good arm while her broken one, sealed in a cast hung uselessly at her side and muttered something about finally having an excuse to wreck her mom's flower planters. Dustin brought the news of his new cat, Tews when he stopped by. Even Nancy had stopped by a couple of times, the first time to thank her for keeping an eye on Mike, but soon she comes just to fill the afternoons with idle chatter.

It was a joyful day when she can finally return to school. Her lunch was spent with Isla, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan at their own table. They couldn't talk about what had happened all those weeks ago with Isla there, but Abby supposes that this is a good thing. She needs a break from the thought of monsters, from the irrational fear of the darkness she had started to develop. They all need a break. Nancy was quick to offer a hand to help Abby catch up on the work that had piled up for every day that she'd missed.  Even Billy Hargrove had stayed out of their way.  Finally, things seem to be returning to normal in Hawkins. 

But this isn't the end.

Abby has also learned that Alex Harrington is exceedingly difficult to shop with. Her feet drag across the shiny floor of the store as Alex makes her third round browsing the aisles.  They've spent hours on end traipsing through the racks of the clothing store, picking apart different potential outfits for the Snowball.  Everything's a little too bright, or a little too itchy, or a little too small to fit over her cast, but Abby's enjoying the freedom that she had been stripped of during the weeks that she had been condemned to.  

"Kid, it's like ..." Abby glances down at her watch. "Okay, it's almost eight-thirty and I promised Steve and your parents that I'd get you back by nine, and so far you've ruled out every prospect that we've come across."

"Hey, it's not my fault that people assume that girls only want to wear dresses when they go to fancy events," Alex replies. She'd explained to Abby that she has never really liked dresses—they make her feel weird like there's something wrong about her.  Abby furrows her brows but doesn't dwell on this too much. "Why isn't just wearing a flannel acceptable?"

"Well, because, for one thing, that's basically what you wear every day, so it'll look like you haven't even tried," Abby lists. "And for another, you can't exactly wear long sleeves with your cast. Not to mention, you'd probably look like a lumberjack compared to everyone else there."

Alex only wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes. "Well, what if I want to look like a lumberjack? You know, what's even the point of going to the stupid dance if I don't have a date?  Mike and El are obviously going with each other—if Hopper even lets her go—and I'm like eighty percent sure that Lucas is asking Max to dance, and Dustin's supposed to be asking Stacey.  I mean, if I'm desperate, I could dance with Will, but dancing with boys? Eugh. Not that I'm much good with this cast anyway."

Abby laughs softly. She's grown used girl and the way she tends to speak her mind unfiltered, and her raucous and wild tendencies, and the way she tends to jump headfirst into things without a thought of the repercussions during the weeks that had followed the night Eleven had closed the gate. She'd found unlikely friends within the Harrington siblings, who both are not what they look like from the outside; Steve is way more than the King of Hawkins High (though the title had been taken from him by Billy), and Alex is way more than a girl with anger issues.  ("Your sister is something else," Abby would tell Steve later with a fond smile on her face.)

"Hey, well, if you really don't want to go, you can always hang with me for the night," Abby tells Alex. "Isla volunteered to help out with Nancy, so I don't really have any plans. We can watch cheesy Christmas movies with my parents or something."

"I'll think about it—hey, that looks promising!" Alex gestures toward a sweater that hangs on one of the racks.  It's dark blue with golden, shining stares embroidered into the thread.  The sleeves look loose enough to fit over Alex's cast.  

The now off-white cast, stained with dirt and grime, has only collected more and more signatures each passing day.  Alex claims to hate the attention that it gives her, but Abby's pretty sure that she revels in it, even if it prohibits her from riding her bike around town.  Her parents had even managed to clear up their schedule and come home for those four weeks to watch over her and, to an extent, Steve.  She remembers Alex gushing about the arrival of her parents to her the day after they had arrived and the excited gleam in her eyes that she had never gotten before when she talks about her parents.  Abby supposes that good things can still come out of bad, and she's glad that they've managed to find a silver lining in their situation.

But this isn't the end.

✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*

It's been a long time since Abby's been alone with her parents.  They sit around the counter in content silence.  For once, Abby's skin doesn't crawl, for once the hairs on the back of her neck do not stand up as the silence drones on.  This is the safe kind of silence that fills the air on a warm spring day when you're alone in a field with nothing but the sun or the kind of silence that fills the air when you're brought into a warm embrace.  It's the kind of silence where soft words that are left unspoken are traded because silence is all that they really need.

They haven't talked about that night.  The night that they had arrived in the hospital to see find Abby with the bandage on her forehead and strict orders to give her brain a rest in order for it to fully heal, and maybe it's a good thing.  There's too much that had happened that night; the near-death experiences, the blur that Billy's assault had become, the defeat of the Mind Flayer and its forces.  Abby still wants to forget it all.

The counter, as always is cluttered with newspapers, an assortment of junk mail that neither of her parents had thrown out yet, a notepad, scribbled on with a halfway completed shopping list, and the bowl of fruit that has always sat in the center of the counter.  For as long as Abby can remember, the kitchen has always been commonplace.  For generations, family meetings have been held around the counter that sits in the center of the kitchen.  Abby's sure that she can find records of family meetings of past generations somewhere in the dusty attic where all sorts of dust-covered antiques can be found.  Just like the car that she drives everywhere, the Foster house has been a family house for years, passed down to each generation.

"You're not going out with any of your new friends?" her mom asks.

Abby shakes her head.  She knows that she can call Steve if she wanted to see him, but she doesn't.  Not tonight anyway.  The events that had happened only the month before had been a wake-up call for Abby.  She doesn't know how much time she has left to spend with her family.  After all, she has one more year of school stuck in Hawkins before she moves on to college.  She doesn't know if she'll ever come back after she leaves, maybe she'll fall in love with the outside world.  She doesn't know a lot of things, and maybe before she would've searched for the answers, but for now, she's content with not knowing.  Time is something that you take for granted until suddenly something happens and you become all-too-aware that your time here is limited.  She'll make time to do the things that she didn't do before because she had been too fixated on the future rather than the present, but right now, she wants to be as close to her family as she can.

The human species, no matter what anybody claims, is fragile.  Abby has learned that much.  She thinks about the paralyzing fear she feels when she wakes up at night and the shadows converge on her.  She thinks about Alex's frail arm.  She thinks about how easy it would've been for the Demogorgons to tear through Steve's flesh if the boy hadn't been so lucky.  She thinks about how easily Billy had taken him down.  She thinks about how easily her own body had been maimed.

"Oh, well, we weren't doing anything special," her dad responds.  "Just Christmas movies and hot chocolate.  Are you sure you don't want to invite a friend over?"

"Really, it sounds perfect," Abby assured her dad with a soft smile as she stares down at the faded spot on the counter where she had scribbled her name in permanent marker.  Just like her car, there are bits and pieces of the Fosters in the simplest of things.  The house is a mosaic of the people who had lived there years before.  One day she'll look back on these she decides.  "Plus, it's been a while since it's been just us.  I think it'd be nice for that to be the case tonight.  So what are we starting with? Charlie Brown Christmas?"

"We're traditionalists, Abby," her dad replies teasingly.  "I think the world would fall apart if we did something out of order."

Abby lets out a rueful laugh.  "Well, I'd much rather not have the world end already." 

Not when it's just been saved.

There's a smile on Abby's face as she and her parents huddle on the couch because everything seems to shift into place that night.  It dawns on her, for the first time in weeks that everything's okay.  For the first time in a long time, she doesn't glance over her shoulders when the light turns off and she's shrouded in darkness.  She doesn't freeze up or feel any sort of fear because she knows that her parents are right there.  It's that night that she's able to take a deep breath, put a smile on her face, and tell herself that everything's okay.

But this is not the end.

author's note: i squeezed some last abby and alex moments in here because they won't really have many interactions in season three.  i also wanted some family moments since they never really happen in this story which is completely my fault.  but uhhh, yeah this is the end of part one, hope you enjoyed! <3