Jopper OS (English Vers.)

One Way Love

Context:

- All the events of season 1 have taken place.

- This OS takes place after S1

- Hopper hasn't found Eleven yet

- Will hasn't had his visions of the Upside Down yet.

Enjoy the read...

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Hopper's POV

Life had gone back to... not normal, far from it, but things were nearly banal compared to the events of the last few days. One week had gone... I could barely grasp how my body could be comfortably sunk into my armchair, eyes staring at the television, when seven short days ago, I was facing dark forces that I still struggled to understand.

Seven short days ago, I had entered a parallel dimension, where everything was desolationonly. Joyce and I felt like we had reached hell, a point of no-return.

And yet, I am now home...

Then why do I have the vague feeling I left a part of myself in this sordid universe ? Why do I still feel like I have, inside my lungs, some of these particles that float around in the polluted air of the Upside Down ?

When just one month ago...

One month ago... who was I ? Far from these sordid secrets, I was just a picture. The picture of the idle chief, in a town where nothing ever happens, who drowns his boredom in drinks.A picture that likes it better when each day looks like the other, that prefers to sink into a sad and never-ending rhapsody... to forget about a past that is too heavy.

One month ago, I woke up with the certainty that nothing ever happened in Hawkins, and went to bed knowing perfectly that it would be the same tomorrow.

My main preoccupations were to make sure that I would always have a substantial stock of drinks, and to visit the Byers from time to time, to say hi to Joyce, my only true friend.

She and I knew each other since we were kids. Our friendship survived the throes of time,when said time separated other friends, and family too...and it never weakened. Only my leaving Hawkins nearly destroyed all of this. And when I came back years later, grieving the family I had just created, and that had already slipped through my fingers, she welcomed me, all the good memories resurfacing, and tears ran down her face at this moment.

I realised at this very moment that, even if I had missed the town I was born in and which had seen me grow up, this strong and exceptional woman was what I had missed the most.

And the bonds that united us had shown all their strength when they had had to heal not only the wound that the death of my daughter had inflicted upon my soul, but also, later, the rough patch she was going through with her husband, that she couldn't have escaped alone.

We were nearly spending our daily lives together.