The age old story of two best friends falling in love...
... Only, one's a lab experiment with an entire Upside Down hunting her down, and the other won't leave her side, no matter how hard she tries.
steve harrington x fem oc / season 2 o...
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chapter twenty-six prettiest pawn
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RUBY KNOWS SHE'S SAID IT before, but she takes it all back. This is well and truly the worst day and the worst week of her entire fucking life.
That used to mean something, but she feels as if everything is just getting worse. The demogorgon tormenting her, following her around when he was only known as 'her monster', used to be the least of her worries — she longs for the days where she'd see the demogorgon in the shadows, not close enough to grab her, but enough for her to know that he'd get her one day. Is this that one day? Or this an entirely new monster, hell-bent on making her life completely and utterly shit?
She knows she's trapped inside her own mind, the Mind Flayer forcing her to live inside an old memory, and she's fucking sick of it. He didn't even let her pick a nice one. Like, given the chance, she'd choose... well, there's slim pickings, none of her memories are one hundred per cent happy, but she'd choose... 1983. When she was popular, when her best friend didn't know she had powers, when things were kinda shit, but her everyday life was normal. When she'd spend her summer days lounging around Steve's pool, and they'd go to meaningless parties, then fall asleep drunk next to each other at one of their houses — it depended on who's guardians were absent.
She'd give anything to be normal. If she could have one wish, she'd wish to be normal. She wants to give these powers up. She's spent her entire life fighting something that wasn't her fight in the first place — her mom died because of this, her dad became an alcoholic for years, she's had the shittiest life because her grandpa couldn't contain the Upside Down. Ruby wishes this could all go away.
But it can't — and she's reminded of this as she sits in an old memory of hers. The Mind Flayer has imprisoned her inside her memory of the lab, when her grandpa was running the joint. She keeps on running into him — and into the hot attending, too — which irritates her. Can they not give her a break? Her grandpa keeps on telling her, "They need your help," which, like, yeah, is that not always the case? She's not going through an experiment in here, though. She'd rather die than go through any of that again.
The hot attending hasn't said anything to her. He just watches her, whenever she's bored and decides to leave the memory of her old room — the one marked SUBJECT X: DO NOT ENTER — to walk around the lab. She forgot how well she knew this place, but she's been meaninglessly wandering the halls for what seems like years, waiting and waiting to go back home.
She managed to break free a while go — she doesn't remember how long ago it was now, every second in here feels like an eternity. All she remembers is that she knew her boyfriend was in danger, and she fought her way free. It made her upset, realising that the danger was her own body, the monster the Mind Flayer's turned it into.
