Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

This Town

"This Town"

Discarded stars

Like worn out cars

Litter the streets of this town

- Go-Gos

It was strange to be in Hawkins again, in full daylight, and see it looking just like a typical summer day. Like nothing had changed. Joyce drove past Melvald's, thinking she really owed Donald two weeks' notice. She hadn't been back since Hop—since the mall blew up. And she didn't intend to. As soon as the kids were ready, she was going to talk to them about selling her house, and she and the boys and Eleven were going to get the hell out of Hawkins, Indiana, and never look back. But she hadn't worked up the nerve to tell her boss that yet, and guilt stabbed her even as she drove by the store without stopping.

Joyce parked in front of the police station, trying not to look at Hop's parking space, where a conservative-looking blue sedan took up the place where the big police truck should have been.

Inside the police station, Flo met her. "Joyce. Thanks for coming in. He—I've been cleaning up the chief's office, and I saw something you ... something you should know about." Flo's eyes were reddened, as if she'd been crying, and her voice cracked as she spoke. She held out a manila envelope.

"What is this?" Joyce opened the flap and withdrew a sheaf of documents. The one on the top read "Last Will and Testament". She pulled it completely out of the envelope and saw that it was signed by Hopper and witnessed by Flo and another person. Underneath the single page of the will Joyce saw a pension form and some other forms she didn't recognize. She looked up at Flo. "He did this?"

Flo nodded. "I was so proud of him for thinking ahead. I didn't—none of us knew about this girl, this Jane Hopper he mentions. We only knew about Sara. But—" She blinked away tears. "I'm glad he had someone."

"Me, too."

"Do you know this girl?"

Joyce nodded. "I do."

"He gave her to you. He gave everything to you, including his police pension. Were you—" Flo paused. Her eyes were clear as they met Joyce's. "He deserved better, you know?"

"I know. I knew. Before he died, we—" Well, what had they, really? They'd agreed to go on a date, that was all. That it had meant more than that, to both of them, would have been hard to explain.

"Well." Flo's set face indicated that it was about time. Or possibly much too late. Joyce agreed with her completely.

"Flo, I—I wish I could tell you everything that's happened these last few years. I wish I could explain ..."

"You don't have to. Something happened—we all know that. Something to do with that building on the edge of town, the one that's closed down now. And something happened to the Chief, too. He stopped drinking so much, stopped using so many drugs. He seemed ... happy. This girl Jane, you, I'm guessing had something to do with that."

"I hope so. I ... I loved him," Joyce said in a small voice, wishing she'd had time to admit that to him. "Maybe I always did, since high school. I don't know. But—Will would have died without him. I probably would have died without him. Elev—Jane would have died without him. And he knew that." She looked around the police office, the desks mostly empty today. Joyce had skipped Hopper's police funeral, knowing better than anyone that he wasn't there, and she'd paid little attention to the choice of a replacement. She hoped whoever it was would be happy in the job; she hoped nothing unusual would ever happen here again. "He was a good police officer, a good detective. He took really good care of this town."

"I know that. They may not," Flo added, tipping her chin toward the empty desks, "but I do. You're going to take care of this girl, this Jane?"

"The best care I know how. We—I'm thinking of selling. Going somewhere besides Hawkins. New start, you know?"

Flo nodded. "Probably for the best."

Unspoken between them was the knowledge that as long as she lived in Hawkins, Joyce would be the town ditz, the town screw-up ... and likely would be looked on as the reason the police chief was killed. There had already been suspicions about her and her boys after Will's fake funeral, and after Bob was killed and the lab destroyed. Now it would be worse.

"I'm sure it will be," she agreed. Tucking the papers back in the envelope, she held it up. "This all taken care of?"

Flo nodded. "His lawyer was the executor. I'm sure he'll be in touch. Otherwise, you should start seeing payments from the pension plan within another month or two, and ... everything he owned is yours. And Jane's."

"Thank you, Flo. I had no idea. He never told me any of this."

"Didn't think he would've."

Behind Flo, a speaker squawked to life on her desk. "Mrs. Kirby, please bring the Gardner files into my office."

She rolled her eyes. "Duty calls." There was a pause for a moment, and then she sighed heavily. "Think I'll retire soon. Might be that time. He—this one doesn't need me, not the way ..."

"Flo. Anything he left behind, anything you might ... want, or anything the other officers might want ... just let me know. To remember him by."

"Thank you." Static came through the speaker again, the sound of someone clearing his throat, and Flo raised her voice and snapped, "I'm coming."

Joyce brandished the envelope again as a thank you and hurried out of the dimness of the police station into the sunshine. She looked at the envelope, the papers representing such a careful arrangement, almost as if he had known ... She wished she had him here in front of her, to tell him how proud she was of him, to slug him for leaving her, to kiss him the way she should have kissed him in that Russian bunker.

But she couldn't do any of those things. All she could do was go home and take good care of his girl. And so she would.