and finding only why

[10_20_15_5_50]

It was something like a fifteen-hour drive, from Porcupine River to Hawkins; when Sam had first looked it up, that was the conclusion, and when she'd first driven down, that was about how long it had taken her. For that first trip, she'd often been over the speed limit, but not by much. She hadn't spent the whole haul alternating coffee and gingerale, hoping the latter would calm her nervous stomach, which seemed to be both colder than anything she drank, and doing slow somersaults. (The way it had been since she'd first read Will's last letter, though her stomach had turned faster then, when the dread was fresh; it had slowed over hours.) She hadn't breezed by every opportunity to eat real food, rather than the bag of raisins she'd grabbed in the process of packing---a process which was, thankfully, all but automatic after too many concerts to count, and the errands she'd undertaken for various associates. Criminal records were common among adepts, but she'd been lucky.

Rabbit's foot, the other rabbit's foot, pennies, buttons, coral, red thread, twenty bucks and that better be it. She might've missed something in her hurry... but she hadn't missed a trick, pulling over before the border to find the stub of eyeliner perpetually in her pocket and print GUILELESS across her forehead, hoping to ensure she'd be through customs quickly.

The Label had worked, and ten minutes into the United States of America, she scrubbed it into illegibility with the side of her hand. The last thing she wanted was---

Well.

The last thing she wanted was the worst case scenario (everything bad, her too late to help) but she didn't want the backlash of the spell to bite her in the ass; the last thing she needed was to be stopped for speeding and seem like a shady motherfucker to the cop who'd stop her in that hypothetical. An hour of backlash, an hour wherein she would not exceed the speed limit, that was... bearable, though it wasn't easy.

It was something like a fifteen hour drive from Porcupine River to Hawkins, but despite the hour in which she'd had to behave herself, Sam arrived after only twelve. Stiff and sore and stumbling for the first few steps, she limped up to the Byers' door and knocked. Three times. And another three. And another three; insistent and afraid.


For deadboywalking

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[deadboywalking]

It still hurts to move, even a full 40-some hours after...everything. After the exorcism. After they'd hung a piece of plastic over the shattered window and swept up the broken glass and gotten rid of the demodog in the fridge. After everyone had dispersed - the boys and Max to their homes, El and Hopper back to the woods, the Byers to the house to peel drawings off the wall and stuff them into a jumbo trash bag.

Joyce and Jonathan had done most of that, since Will's hands started shaking too badly when he even looked at the drawings he'd made. The drawings he could barely remember making. They'd let him lie down on the couch, curled up under a blanket with ice on the mark the hot poker had made. It's starting to scab over, finally, but it still hurts. The ligature marks on his wrists and ankles hurt, everything hurts.

Still, when he hears the knocking, Will slowly, gingerly rolls to his feet, since his mom and brother are out back, cleaning out the shed, and he's worried it might be Hopper. Or his friends. Or, impossibly, maybe it's Bob, alive and whole, against all odds. Either way, he does his own version of limping over to the door, creaking it open and leaning on it heavily.

It takes him a long moment of staring to recognize Sam, the fog of recent possession making everything unfamiliar. But then an exhausted half-smile flits across his face.

"Hey."