To Heal All Wounds

Hope on Fragile Wings

Steve remembered, distantly because he wasn't really listening, a story Nancy had told him forever ago. A woman opened a box and war flew out. She tried to close the box, but before she could, all of the bad things in the whole world had gotten out. When she finally did force the lid down, however, she heard a crunching sound. Hope, she noticed, was trying to get out after all of the bad, and she'd broken its wing.

"Hope is a fragile thing," Nancy explained, "but strong enough that even a broken wing can't stop it."

Steve hadn't fully understood what that meant until he started hearing rumors of people coming back. But now that it was seeming more and more true, Steve found himself fighting with the fragile broken hope fluttering in his chest. He fought it the whole way to the station.

He couldn't let himself hope.

Not again.

Between Nancy's station wagon and Steve's car, the whole group made their way to the sheriff's department. The drive should have only taken half an hour, but it seemed like everyone in Hawkins was heading to the same place. They tried rerouting half a dozen times, but eventually had to pull over ten or so blocks away from the station. Even from that far away, it was clear that they were getting nowhere near the station in their cars. Not with the teeming mob of Hawkin's residents armed with missing posters surging in the same direction.

"Well, shit," Steve sighed. Nancy pulled up next to him and motioned for him to roll down his window.

"Are we turning around," Steve asked. Nancy only shook her head and put her car in park. "We'll need to walk. If there's even a chance that Eddie is alive we need to get him before someone else does."

"What do you mean someone else gets him? He's a town hero now."

"He won't know that, Mike. Last he knew, he was wanted for a murder he didn't commit. We need to get to him before someone else does so that we can explain it, rather than him finding out on the fly."

"Even with us telling him," Dustin said, "it's still going to be a shock. We need to do this... gently."

"He's a grown man," Steven began, only to be interrupted by Dustin's correction.

"A sensitive, grown man."

"It's going to be disorienting," Nancy finished, "as his friends, we need to make this transition as smooth as possible."

"Okay," Steven finally relented, the last to exit his own car, "fine. But how are we going to get to the station? We're blocks away and there is no clear path."

"So," Lucas shrugged. "We'll make a path."

"Make a path how?"

Instead of an answer, Dustin simply barreled forward, shouting "BEEP BEEP BEEP" at the top of his lungs. Lucas grabbed the back of his shirt, Max grabbed Lucas' hand, and so on and so forth until Steven was sandwiched between Robin who had her fingers curled around his belt, and Nancy who held onto his wrist.

It was, Steve was reticent to say, surprisingly effective. Sure, people were pissed off, but as bendy as Dustin was, and with as loud as his voice could go, he cleared a path. Only once was there an issue, when a large man not only refused to move, but also stepped into Dustin's way wherever he went. It took Robin and Nancy both breaking formation and picking fights from both sides to get everyone by. They could hear him cussing them all out over the din of the crowd for several meters.

When they finally got to the front, Officers Callahan and Powell were struggling to keep the crowd at bay. Steve had thought that they were distracted enough, but Officer Powell caught Dustin by the shoulders.