"EAST IS CLEAR. No sign of Dart. Where'd you go, you little bastard?" Mike's voice came crackling over the radio.

"West is clear, too." Dustin seemed to be searching even harder than the rest of them, trying to get to Dart. "Will?"

"South is clear. Lucas? Anything?" Will confirmed.

Caroline moved to open up the last classroom door at the end of the hallway, but Lucas held her back.

Instead, he ran at it like some kind of constipated ninja and kicked open the door, walkie talkie at the ready.

There must have been a teacher in there, because Caroline saw Lucas freeze and another voice rang through the hallway. "Excuse me! Mr. Sinclair!"

Lucas stammered. "Sorry, I was looking for... study hall. Bye."

He turned back to Caroline, who stood a few feet away, laughing so hard she was in tears.

"Nothing here, man." Lucas muttered into the walkie talkie. He stared at Caroline, who was gasping for breath. "What are you laughing at?"

"Why the hell..." she couldn't even get the words out.

"I would have been ready if Dart, like, attacked you or something!" Lucas protested.

"Because a fat slug is so scary," Caroline laughed. "It's not Jabba the Hutt."

"You should be thanking me," Lucas said irritably. His voice went up a couple octaves to try and imitate her. "Thanks Lucas, you're my knight in shining armor, I should thank you with a kiss!"

Before Caroline could respond, a sudden coldness seized her, making her freeze. Pain erupted in her chest, making her gasp.

"What?" Lucas demanded, stopping. He grabbed her shoulders. "What's happening?"

Caroline looked at him with fearful eyes. "Will."

Thanks to her Twintuition, Caroline knew right away where to go. She followed the feeling outside, where she could see the far outline of a figure she knew was her brother.

"Will!" She shouted, but he didn't turn around. So she sprinted towards him like it was home base, faster than she had ever run in any softball game.

As she approached him, she could see him screaming desperately at something.

"Go away! Go away!"

When Caroline turned to see what he was screaming at, she realized she was in the Upside Down.

She started to cry out of fear and pain, her brother half a football field away, too far for her to reach. Her feet were rooted in the spot, seeming to reach down, down, down...

She remembered what Bob had said in the car that morning, a million years ago.

"Go away. Go away!"

The monster began to lower itself closer down to the ground, black tendrils swirling towards her.

"And then it was gone. Just like that."

"GO AWAY!" Caroline screamed, louder than she had ever screamed in her life. It felt like her throat was tearing itself apart, every molecule of her body joining in desperation.

The tendrils swept towards her face. She opened her mouth to scream again, and suddenly everything was black.

GO AWAY-

She felt the monster, choking her as it entered inside of every pore, through her nose and mouth and ears and eyes, suffocating. It overwhelmed her senses as the monster molded itself inside her, lining itself with her very soul.

go away go away go away go away go away-

The screeching from the monster was deafening, and it seemed to last for eternity. Until finally, it had fulfilled its purpose. The work was done.

And then Caroline Byers woke up.

Thoughts were whirling around her brain a million miles and hour. She knew things now.

Things she would never be able to forget.

Her head pulsed with pain, a dull ache aggravated by the tiniest things; the buzzing of the light hanging over the dining room table, the engine of a car driving down the road a football field away.

"Baby, what happened?" Her mother snapped her out of her thoughts with her gentle tone. It was warm and familiar, but now sounded... annoying, to Caroline.

"I can't remember," WIll insisted as his mother continued to pester.

Joyce sighed. "I need you to try."

WIll gulpes, looking at his sister's anxious expression before turning back to their mother. "I... I was on the field and.. and then it... it all just went blank, and... and then you were there."

"Will, I need you to tell me the truth."

Will continued to lie, but Joyce saw right through it. She got up and grabbed a picture that Will had drawn a few days ago.

"This shape, I saw it on the video tape from Halloween night. It's the same shape as... as your drawing. These episodes that you're having, I think Dr. Owens is wrong. I think they're real. But... but I can't help you if I don't know what's going on. So, you have to talk to me. Please. No more secrets, okay?"

Will cracked. "Okay."

Joyce sighed with relief. She glanced at her daughter, who was staring at the opposite wall, unmoving. "Did... did you see this thing again on the field?"

"Yes," Will spoke for him and Caroline.

"What... what is it?" Joyce stammered.

"I don't know." Will's lip was trembling. "It's almost more like ...a feeling."

"Like the one you had that night at the arcade?" Joyce nodded in understanding.

"Yes." Caroline finally spoke, in a quiet, unnervingly toneless way. Her hands were twitching like she was itching to grab something, and she still was avoiding her family's gaze.

"What does it want?" Joyce pressed.

"I don't know." Will started to cry. "It came for me, and... And I tried. I tried to make it go away. But it got me, Mom."

"Well, what does that mean?"

"I felt it... everywhere." WIll sobbed brokenly.

"Everywhere. I- I still feel it. I just want this to be over!"

Joyce pulled her son in close and held him to her, holding back tears of her own. "It's okay. It's okay. Hey. Listen. Look, look at me. I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Whatever's going on in you two, we're gonna fix it. I will fix it. I promise. I'm here."

"It's too late," Caroline whispered eerily.

Her family stared at her and she finally looked back at them, a tear slipping down her cheek. Joyce's eyes narrowed when she saw something different in her daughter's eyes.

Whoever that was, it wasn't Caroline Byers.

"Hey." Joyce sat on the edge of Caroline's bed, brushing her hair off her sweaty forehead. "How you feeling, sleepyhead? Any better?"

Will spoke for her. "We're feeling better. Still... weird, though."

"Same as last night?"Joyce nodded in understanding.

"Yeah," Caroline croaked."Can you turn off the light, please? It hurts."

Joyce frowned, her mouth slightly open as she looked at the ceiling light. "Baby, it... is off."

"Hurts," Caroline repeated, laying on top of her covers.

"All right," Joyce said quietly. She put a thermometer in her daughter's mouth. "Hmm."

She moved to Will's side of the room and repeated the motion, again frowning at the temperature.

"Is it a fever?" Will asked.

"No. Uh, actually, it's cold." Joyce stared at the tiny thermometer. "Do you feel cold?"

"No," Caroline said. "Just a little out of it. Like I haven't really woken up yet. And my head... hurts."

" You promised no doctor," Will said anxiously when Joyce stood up.

"And I meant it. No doctor," Joyce forced a smile. "You know what? I'm gonna run you a nice bath and it'll warm you up and hopefully get you feeling better. It should help with a headache. How's that sound?"

Joyce left to start the bath and Will immediately walked over to Caroline, laying down next to her. She tangled their fingers together as she breathed out of her nose, trying to get rid of the ringing in her ears.

"He's everywhere," Caroline whispered lowly. "He knows... everything."

"I know," Will said back. "But... we can fight him together, okay?"

There was a hollow silence. Then Will's voice broke and he squeezed her hand.

"This is all my fault," Will whispered. "God, if I had just stayed home that night, none of this would have ever happened. Now you're stuck hurting, too. "

"Hey. What did I say?" Caroline sat up and looked him in the eyes. "Twintuition isn't something we can control, but I wouldn't give it up for anything. We're in this together, okay? For better or worse."

"Isn't that something old people say to each other?"

Caroline grinned weakly. "It can go for twins too."

"Well, it's true," Will sighed. They heard the faucet turn off in the bathroom down the hall. "Do you want me to go first?"

"Yeah," Caroline nodded. "I just want to sleep more."

"'Kay." Will left the room to bathe.

It was only a couple of minutes later when suddenly the pain seemed to triple in her head, making her cry out. She rolled off her bed onto the floor, making her mom run into the room.

"Baby! Callie!" Joyce knelt down and grabbed her daughter. "What happened?"

Caroline panted as the pain subsided. "I don't know," she said, clamping a head to her forehead. "Will did something-"

WIll stood in the doorway. "Mom."

"Yeah, sweetie, what is it?"

"The water. I touched it. It's too hot."

Well, that explained the pain. He didn't like the warmth. He needed cold.

Joyce sighed and followed Will to the bathroom, where she dipped her hand in the water. She looked up, concerned. "I... I can cool it down a little bit, baby, but we gotta get your body temp back up."

Will's voice changed at the same time Caroline felt the pain in her head stop abruptly, at the same time a kind of unnerving calm washed over her.

"No."

"What?" Joyce looked up, looking terrified.

"He likes it cold," Will and Caroline in unison, rooms apart.

"Hey! Knock, knock. We have a visitor." Joyce walked through the doorway of her twins room cautiously.

Caroline sat in a sports bra and shorts, facing the open window as cool wind blew into the room. Will sat beside her, bolt upright, no shirt on, the two of them basking in the cold.

Hopper came and gently sank down on the bed next to Caroline, holding one of Will's paper drawings. "So this thing, this shadow thing. You told your mom it likes it like this. It likes it cold?"

"Yeah," Caroline closed her eyes, willing the dull ache in her frontal lobe to disappear.

"How do you know that?" Hopper asked in his gruff voice. Just like her mothers, the voice that once brought her joy and comfort and a sense of safety was irritating now.

"We just know," Will shrugged.

"Does he... talk to you?"

Will shook his head, eyes flitting downward in thought. "No. It's like... I don't have to think. I just know things now."

"Things I never did before," Caroline finished for him.

"And, uh..." Hopper stared down at the drawing. "What else do you know?"

"It's hard to explain. It's like old memories in the back of my head, only... they're not my memories."

"Okay." Hopper nodded, pretending to understand.

"I mean, I don't think they're old memories at all. They're... they're now-memories, happening all at once, now." WIll was getting frustrated, trying to explain.

There was no use, of course. He would never let them. All it did was make the pain worse in Caroline's head as punishment, and she mentally begged her brother to stop talking.

"Can you describe these now-memories?" Hopper pressed.

"I don't know," Will insisted. "It's... it's hard to explain.

"I know it's hard but can you just... Can you try? For us?"

"No," Caroline whispered. "Will,
please, it hurts."

Will ignored her even though it pained him. "It's like... They're growing..."

"Will," Caroline said warningly.

"and spreading..." Will continued to look at Hopper, knowing that of Caroline were in the right frame of mind right now, this is what she would want him to do.

"killing."

"STOP IT!" Caroline shouted suddenly, her mind exploding with pain.

Hopper quickly grabbed her arms and held them down as she tried to squeeze her head. "Hey, hey, hey!"

"Stop it!" Caroline just kept yelling at her brother, eyes glued to the shaking figure who had stood to abandon the bed.

"I'm sorry," Will sobbed as his sister cried out in pain. "Callie, I'm so sorry- it's what you would want me to do!"

"No, no, no. It's okay, sweetie. Hey, hey, sweetie..." Joyce held her son as Hopper held her daughter, looking between the twins.

Suddenly an idea formed. "Will," Joyce said slowly. "What if you didn't have... to use words?"

I'm not even fully awake right now, i'm posting this at two in the morning so bear with me if the story is shit because i'm tired as hell right now.

Comment and vote and i love you and i'm going to sleep now