Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

I Never Quite Got Back

"I Never Quite Got Back"

My dream is right, reality is wrong

'Cause I'm still with you where my heart's concerned

From where we were, there's no return

...

I'm still out there in that world you took me to

- Sylvia

"Will! Will." Joyce shook his arm, lightly at first, then harder.

He didn't move, or look at her, or indicate in any way that he had heard her or felt her touch.

Joyce held him, looking for some sign of recognition, some response. The staring eyes, the half-opened mouth, the tension throughout his body—something was very wrong. She shook him again. "Will!"

And then he was back, looking at her wildly and with terror in his eyes. "Mom? Oh, Mom!" He threw himself into her arms, shaking.

"Will, what on earth—?" She held him close, tighter and tighter, as if she could hold him hard enough to keep him safe forever.

"I was there. You know. There."

"The Upside Down?"

Will nodded against her shoulder. "I was just standing here and then—everything changed, and I can't get out."

She didn't miss the change in tense. "Has this happened before?" He went still in her arms, and she could feel him getting ready to lie. Holding him at arms' length, Joyce looked at him closely. "It has, hasn't it? How long has this been going on?"

"All the time," he whispered. "Ever since I—since I got back."

"And you never told me?"

He flinched at the tone in her voice, his eyes welling with tears, and Joyce pulled him close again.

"Never mind that. Have you told the people at Hawkins Lab?"

"No. I thought if I told them, they might—"

He didn't have to finish. That's what Joyce thought, too. "And it's not getting any better?"

"Worse."

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. What had these people done to her boy? "Okay, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make you some hot cocoa, and then I'm going to call Hopper, and we're going to talk about what we can do to help you. Is that all right?"

Will nodded, his arms tightening around her. "But ... not Bob, okay?"

"Of course not." Joyce hadn't told Bob anything other than the usual story, that Will had been lost in the woods and given up for dead.

She made the cocoa and saw Will curled up on the couch in front of the TV watching The Facts of Life, although she didn't think he was paying attention, judging by the way his face didn't change when the laugh track came on. Then she went to the phone, dialing the familiar number of the police station. When Flo answered, she said, as she always did, "It's Joyce Byers. Is he in?"

"I'll put him through." Flo never sounded enthusiastic about it, though. Joyce knew they all saw her as a substandard mother, and a hysteric, whose regular calls to the Chief were bad for her and bad for him and just bad all around. She also knew they thought there was more to the relationship between herself and Hopper than there was. None of it mattered. Hop knew her, and that was all she needed.

He answered the phone, sounding distracted. "Chief Hopper."

"Hop, it's Joyce. I need to talk to you."

"Can it wait?"

She glanced at Will, who was staring into his untouched cocoa. "Not too long. It's a ... new development. Or—well, it's not new, but I just found out about it." They tried not to talk too openly on the phone, never knowing who might be listening.

There was a pause. "All right. I'll come out later, but I can't stay long."

"Thanks, Hopper."

"Yep." And the line went dead. Joyce went to join Will on the couch and let him beat her at Space Invaders, glad to see a smile appear on his face after the third round.

Hopper showed up just as she and Will were sitting down to Hamburger Helper, Jonathan working late tonight. "Hey, Hop. You want some?"

He looked at the dinner table as though he had forgotten something important. "No, I'm good. But I have to go. What's this new development?"

Joyce looked at Will, who looked back at her, his eyes huge in his pale face. Clearly he wasn't going to tell Hop. "Will's been having ... I don't know what you'd call them. Fits?"

"Seizures?" Hop asked, sitting down next to Will and looking at him intently.

"Not like that, no. Just—he says the world goes away and he's back in that place, in the Upside Down."

"That's not uncommon when someone's been through a trauma like that, to relive it. I've seen it a lot in guys I came back from Vietnam with."

"No," Will said, softly but with certainty. "Not reliving. There. Really there. I can reach out and touch that stuff in the air."

Hopper stared at him. "Crap."

"So what do we do? I can't take him to the lab, we can't tell them this. They'll—they'll take him away or something, use him for experiments."

Eleven's name hung unspoken in the air. Hopper glanced at his watch for some reason, then he cleared his throat. "Yeah, I agree. We'll ... let me look into it. Maybe there's a specialist somewhere, someone who understands trauma." He reached out and touched Will's shoulder. "Okay, kid?"

"Okay."

"Good. You hang in there." Hop got to his feet. "I've gotta go."

"All right. Hop?"

He stopped in the doorway.

"Everything okay? You seem—" She didn't know how to describe it, but it felt off.

"Yeah, everything's fine." And he was gone, leaving Joyce and Will to try to pretend everything was normal.