❝ and suddenly i'm an angel on the cutting room floor, wearing gore, a blank stare, not much more.❞
-daphne gottlieb
STRANGER THINGS SEASONS 2 - 4
。° fem oc x steve harrington
。° fem oc x robin buckley
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OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT YEAR, a slew of horrid memories had found their way back in. Moments Mel could have previously sworn she'd never been a part of were now a piece of her she couldn't shake. She had powers. Powers over memories.
Memories. They were the very fiber of a person's being. She knew this more than anyone else ever could, and this notion stood to outline Melanie Lee in slashes of festering infection, a monster.
She followed orders like a dog. Never fought against the man with a nose like sharpened steel and eyes that could, with a frameshift click, seep with any emotion he willed them to. She did anything to please. Anything to avoid punishment. And if she closed her eyes, she could still hear children's screams, echoing down a maze of titanium white corridors, hot against cold.
At every appointment she once had at Hawkins Lab, she'd do the same thing, again and again. Erect memories in others, alter them to no bounds, settle them back to dust. The human mind was her sandbox and if she wasn't careful, she could scramble it beyond repair.So, she danced that line between her subject's life and death. Until the end of the day when she would be forced to wipe her own mind clean of all she'd done and witnessed, singe it from her subconscious. Back to dust. Mel never thought the memories could come back. She had gotten rid of them, wanted to get rid of them. So why now were EEG scans, head-panging nosebleeds, frightened eyes, Dr. Brenner so fresh in her mind?
As if she wasn't already suffocating enough under the pressure of being alive and in high school at the same time.
Now, you would think the realization that she had been born with supernatural mind powers would have changed Mel's entire course of life from this point forward. Instead, Mel refused to let it sink in further than surface level. She shoved each and every memory away with brute force. No matter how vivid her visions from that lab were, Mel decided the superpowers just didn't feel like they could be hers. She didn't fit the mold, after all.
