Wasted Days
The kids were all asleep, each one on a bed of their own finally.
El laid on the top bed, her head poked out from beneath while she slept peacefully. Sirianna was on the bottom bunk, stretched out like a damn starfish, her long hair a tangled mess beneath her head. Harry had the trundle and he was curled up tight, a blanket loose on top of him - probably his sister's doing if Jim had to guess.
There were three neat stacks of clothes folded and laid out on the dresser, an outfit and pair of shoes for each of ‘em. Jim could tell whose was whose just by looking - Sirianna would be the one with the cosmetic bag laid on top, Harry had the green sneakers, El had the little purple shoes with the flowers on the sides.
They were just the right size for an eleven year old girl, Jim's best guess on El's age. He looked at those shoes for too long, let himself think about the daughter that wasn't there to wear them.
Jim wondered what Sarah would think about the kids living in Jim's house, wondered if she would have taken El in and told Jim he had two sets of twins. She would have, Sarah inherited all of Diane's friendliness and none of Jim's ‘hermit habits'.
God, she had always wanted a sister. Jim didn't want more kids before she got sick, couldn't imagine having them when she was gone.
It started with a nosebleed, a fucking nosebleed.
Jim had been out in the backyard with Sarah, kicking a soccer ball back and forth. She wanted to play when she started kindergarten in the fall and was after Jim every day to play with her. Jim didn't mind, he liked watching his little girl run after the ball with her pigtails flying and giggles spilling.
Then she kicked the ball to Jim and her nose started bleeding. It started slow, then was a steady pour in the minute it took Jim to carry her inside. Jim knew it wouldn't stop with normal pressure, it was the third one she had that month and Jim's gut said he should have taken her to the hospital the first time.
"Diane!" Jim wrapped Sarah up in one of his soft jackets, snuggled her in his arms. Diana popped in from where she had been baking in the kitchen and she dropped the egg in her hand as soon as she saw Sarah. "Let's go get Sarah checked out," Jim said.
Diane was ready in an instant, already comforting Sarah with whispered words of reassurance and love. Jim glanced at the yolk on the floor, figured they'd be home before it had a chance to dry.
Sarah wanted a sister and Jim never gave her one, not until she was gone and would never get to meet the kids he took in.
Jim was always a step too late - he didn't catch the killer until someone was dead, didn't help a victim until after their life was changed, didn't give his daughter something like siblings until she was gone.
It couldn't be like that for Will Byers, Jim wouldn't let it.
Jim left some cash and a note for the kids to buy what they needed from the store. He left a little extra, just in case. They knew he wouldn't be home until late, Jim was hoping he'd made it back period.
Hawkins was still dark, everyone was still in their beds asleep. The town was dark, the sun wouldn't be up for several hours. Jim didn't speed, but he didn't fuck around either on the drive to his first stop.
Joyce might be asleep, Jim doubted it.
Jim cut his headlights before he pulled in Joyce's driveway, not before he saw Joyce huddled up on her porch, having a cigarette. Jim grabbed one for himself before he got out of the cruiser. Joyce started toward him before he could even light it and he cut her off before she could ask.
"No news," he said. He met Joyce halfway and pulled the envelope he prepared from his inner jacket pocket. "I need you to hold on to this, give me forty-eight hours before you open it."
"What?" Joyce took the envelope and immediately tried to open it. Jim grabbed her hand, shook his head.
"Look, I'm going after Will, alright?" He should have known he wasn't going to leave without some explanation. "If I'm not back in two days, I want you to take that to the bank and cash it."
"Cash it?" Joyce ripped open the envelope the second Jim let go of her hand and he puffed irritably on his cigarette. Damned stubborn woman. "Jesus Christ, Hop! What the fuck is this?"
Jim's entire savings, every cent he never touched that had been steadily gaining interest over the years. If Jim didn't make it back, he wouldn't let it become a shit show like Benny's assets had become. Jim didn't have a wife, had no legal children.
What Jim had were three kids that were going to be displaced and homeless if he didn't make it back to them. What Jim had was one friend he could trust, one good woman who would watch out for them.
"I know I'm asking a lot, but I don't have anyone else to ask," Jim said. He grabbed Joyce's hand to make her look at him when she was still ogling the check he made out to her. "Joyce, you get me? I'm going to get Will and if I don't make it back, those kids are going to need someone."
"Hop…" Joyce wasn't a crier, Jim appreciated it. She stared up at him and there was a lot of shit in her eyes, no tears though. "Let me go with you," she said. "Don't go alone."
Then who would they have?
Jim didn't know exactly what he was facing, didn't think he'd get a clear answer even if he interrogated each of the kids until he was blue in the face. Jim heard monsters and he heard wizards in white; Jim planned to find out how they liked six rounds in the chest.
"You stay here, I'll be back," Jim said. He squeezed Joyce's hand, let it go. "If I'm not back, take that check to the bank Monday. Go buy Audrey's old place by the lake, and for God's sake, make Harry have his own room."
"Damn it, Hop." Joyce reached out and hugged Jim around the waist before he had a chance to dodge her. She kept it brief, but then sighed at him all tearfully.
"Do those kids know how lucky they are?" she asked.
Jim doubted it, doubted anyone knew they were lucky until it turned on them.
"Daddy, please." Sarah was curled up in Jim's arms and he rocked her uselessly, hating how fucking useless he was.
Jim could secure her home, he could keep their city safe from ‘bad guys', but leukemia? Jim couldn't fight cancer, he couldn't arrest it. All Jim could do was hold his baby while she cried from another round of chemotherapy.
Sarah was so weak, constantly nauseated. She had lost weight so quickly, her summer tan just as quickly. And even as Jim tried to comfort her, stands of her beautiful hair fell off in his hands.
"I wanna go home," Sarah said, her sobs only making everything worse for her. "Daddy, please, can we go home?"
"Soon," Jim said, praying that he wasn't lying. "We'll go home soon, Princess. You're being so strong, I'm so proud of you."
When Sarah got to go home, Jim was going to get her everything he told her no about before. She could have a puppy, he would repaint her room, Jim would make the time to build her the playhouse she wanted so badly.
God, as long as she went home, Jim would do anything she wanted.
Jim parked his cruiser in the woods, grabbed his bag from the back and loaded it on his back. He had his service weapon on his hip, his personal one strapped across his chest, and a couple extra in his bag with most of his knives.
It wasn't a far walk to Hawkins Lab, Jim had it all plotted carefully out. In eight minutes, the west gate would be unsupervised for roughly thirty seconds.
Jim had fifteen seconds to scale the fence, another fifteen to cross the lawn to the building. That didn't give him a hell of a lot of time and he'd have to play the rest of it by ear.
When he was facing a government building full of wizards without rules and unknown monsters, there was only so much planning he could do.
Fucking wizards and monsters… when did Jim's life become the fucked up side of a fairytale?
The woods were dark, Jim didn't bother with a flashlight that would give him away. The most he had was the cherry on his cigarette, a little orange beacon of light.
It could be worse, Vietnam hadn't been easy to travel through when Jim had been a soldier. He had guys then that followed his lead, any one of them were ready to protect the others with their lives.
What Jim wouldn't do for a fucking battalion backing him then…
Jim had the first part of his operation timed out just right. He could see the fence when shift change began and he started scaling it right at the time. Fifteen seconds, that was all he had given himself to scale a ten foot fence with barbed wire up top.
Fifteen… fourteen…
Jim counted while he climbed, counted when his feet touched the ground. Jim didn't pause, didn't look to see if he'd been spotted. He shifted his rifle in his bloodied hands and ran toward the building.
Fifteen… fourteen…
He was a second over, didn't pause, didn't hesitate. Jim rounded the building to find the door he wanted and put his weight into kicking it open when the knob didn't turn.
The doorway splintered, an alarm sounded, and Jim was in.
"Take my fucking marrow!" Jim yelled, slamming his fist on the desk and knocking a framed photo down. Diane put her hand on Jim's shoulder, just as pissed as he was but too polite to start breaking shit.
Jim didn't care- he didn't give a fuck.
The doctor said that Sarah had relapsed and her leukemia was becoming too aggressive to treat with chemo. Too much chemo could kill her, none would kill her.
And some jack-assed doctor wanted to sit across from Jim and say that Sarah's best chance at survival was a bone marrow transplant, one they needed a match for.
Sarah could have all the marrow in Jim's body. His lungs? Take ‘em. His heart? He wouldn't need it if Sarah didn't get better.
They had been in and out of the hospital for a year, a year of Sarah sobbing over the needle sticks and treatments, a year of Diane fighting her ass of to get their daughter everything her heart desired.
A year of Jim watching his baby get sicker and sicker. A year of fucking torment.
"We tested you both," Doctor Dumbass said, as if Jim fucking forgot about the samples he and Diane gave to be tested. One of them had to be a match, they were both fifty percent of Sarah's generic makeup, the odds were in favor of them matching.
"Diane was not a match, and Jim, I'm so sorry, you're unable to donate blood marrow."
"What?" Diane's hand tightened, a silent warning for Jim to hold his temper. "Is he a match?"
The doctor didn't say Jim wasn't a match, he said was ‘unable' to donate. Jim would rip his fucking marrow out himself if he had to, he would donate it.
"He is, but Jim donating would make Sarah sicker…"
"Oh, God." Diane let out a sob and her hand became her arm while she tried to pull Jim toward her, pulling him away from the news that they couldn't just run from. "Does he - Jim has it too?"
Jim didn't know what it meant that he didn't care if he did, he didn't care except for how it was going to affect Sarah and his ability to help her get better. Jim would give up fifty years of his life if it meant she could be healthy again.
"Jim, you do not have leukemia… you have a genetic anomaly, Li-Fraumeni Syndrome."
"Is that… cancer?" Diane asked, the new dirtiest word either of them knew.
"It is not," the doctor said slowly. He pushed his glasses up, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It is a mutation of the TP53 gene, commonly known as the tumor suppressor gene."
Jim's ears started ringing and he itched to light a cigarette, something to ease the tightness slowly strangling him from the inside.
The tumor suppressor gene. Jim's gene that suppressed tumors was mutated. A gene, a genetic marker, inside of him that suppressed tumors was damaged inside of him.
"Did I do this?" Jim asked, his voice as choked as his chest felt. "Did I - fuck, is this my fault? Did I make her sick?"
The doctor didn't answer him, Diane did when she pulled her arm away.
Jim ran, looked in every well lit nook and cranny as he did. The hallways were white, sterile, worse than any hospital. It felt unnatural, it told Jim they were hiding something inside that building and he needed to run until he found it.
Every room he cleared was another copy of the one before it. A storage room, library, a room full of large black cauldrons that bubbled with something inside of them. Jim was going to clear that whole building one floor at a time, but he sensed his time was running short.
He already shot one man with a wooden stick in his hand - a knee shot to take him down instead of killing him. It was the only mercy and warning Jim would give, they had their magic, he had Smith & Wesson.
At the next junction, Jim spun around and tried to make a decision. When in doubt, go left. There was a sign halfway down the hallway on his right, one that marked the area off as restricted.
Jim ran toward it, the thud of his boots focusing his mind and keeping him sharp while a siren wailed from the walls and shouts about an intruder could be heard.
"Come on," he whispered to himself, checking each room he passed. One room made him slide to a halt, one room with windows for a wall and a single mattress on the floor.
It looked… it looked a hell of a lot like some horrifying mixture of a room in an asylum and a jail cell. Jim might not have thought twice about it, might not have noticed the little faded elephant stuffed animal on the bed, not noticed the Dr Seuss book peeking out from beneath the pillow… if he didn't know exactly for who that room was made for.
If Jim didn't know that a little girl spent as much of her life as she could remember in that room, he might not have thought twice.
Jim didn't need to be screwing around, he had to find Will, but he could take eight seconds to take that stuffed animal and book for the little girl who might be missing them.
"Daddy?" Sarah laid on her bed and didn't even have the energy to lift her head. Jim's baby girl, the prettiest and most energetic five year-old he knew, had become pale, weak, too tired to cry anymore.
They had to stop treatments, it was doing nothing but causing Sarah pain. Jim couldn't accept it, didn't know how to get through it, but they were calling it palliative care.
They called it end of life care.
After only seven years, Sarah was at the end of her life.
"Hey, Princess." Jim forced a smile for his girl, his whole world, and tiptoed past her mom sleeping in a chair to climb on Sarah's bed. The only tube she had hooked up to her was a nasal cannula for oxygen, a single IV for pain medicine.
"I missed you," Sarah said as she snuggled in Jim's lap, not much bigger than she had been before the leukemia, before the hospital, before Jim started sleeping at the police station.
"I missed you," Jim said. He pressed a kiss to her smooth head and settled her more comfortably against him. God, he missed her every second he was away.
What was he supposed to do when she was the one who left him?
"Daddy?" Sarah looked at Jim and he could see she was hazy, swimming in the fog of painkillers to keep her comfortable. "Will you read me a story?"
There was nothing Jim wouldn't do for her - nothing.
Jim looked over to her bedside table and picked one of Sarah's favorites, The Giving Tree.
It used to be a silly story for Sarah, something Jim saw as a childish way to talk about a parent's role in their child's life. It took everything he had to read it to her in her hospital bed that she would never leave.
"Cut down my trunk and make a boat, said the tree," Jim read. "Then you can sail away and be happy…"
"Daddy," Sarah started coughing, horrible spasms that crackled with the infections filling her body, "Daddy, when I sail away, will you ever be happy?"
Jim ducked his head, held his breath while he pressed his lips to her head. Why? Why his baby girl? Why Sarah?
"No, baby," Jim whispered, swallowing back his tears. If Sarah was going to be strong, Jim would be strong with her. Until the very end. "I won't be happy without you."
Jim had to close his eyes against the grief, the early grief. He felt a tear fall, felt it sneak past and slide down his face until it touched Sarah's head.
"I want you to be happy, Daddy. I can't be happy if you're not happy."
The last room at the end of the hall, the one that had fifty fucking warning signs on it, had to be it. It had to be because Jim had fucking wizards at his back and it would be a dead end for him if there wasn't a new dimension past the doorway.
A dimension where a little boy was trapped.
The door had to be twelve inches thick of pure steel, the handle wouldn't give way for any bullet. Jim would be more likely to have a stray ricochet back and kill him than he would have with it busting the door handle.
No, it required a different sort of —
"Hey!"
A hand grabbed at Jim, attached to a body that ran up on him silently. Jim raised his rifle, didn't hesitate, turned around and clocked the man in the face. Once, twice.
His eyes rolled back in his head and Jim was using that same method on the door before the man - the man in a black suit and a wooden stick in hand - could even hit the ground. It took more than two hits, but Jim busted the butt of his rifle on the door until it finally broke and fell down, leaving the door free to swing open.
The room he put his energy into breaking into was a control room of some sort. It was divided like an interrogation room, tables of computer monitors and stacks of books on one side and then a wall of glass to separate it from…
Something so fucking unholy that Jim's blood ran cold when he tried to take it in. It wasn't Jim that felt cold, it was whatever was beyond that glass, those creeping black shadows and endless darkness.
If that wasn't the fucking upside down dimension of magical monsters, then Jim didn't know what else would be.
There was a door that glowed around the edges, a bright gold that Jim didn't think he could open with any force in the world. If he couldn't open the door, he'd fucking go through it. Jim backed up a step, shifted his gun so the butt would break the glass before his body, he took one more breath of clean air - hoped to God it wouldn't be his last - and ran with his full might.
Jim expected to have to shatter the door, to barge in the upside down with a spray of broken glass and determination. Instead, Jim burst through with his entire body shoving him forward and when he just went through what felt like a cool mist of air, he landed hard on the ground.
And when he did, when Jim fucking rolled and immediately lost sight of the glass wall and the lab he left behind, the shadows began to cling to him, to pull him deeper within the darkness.
It didn't take Jim long to understand why Will Byers had told Joyce that he was at ‘Upside Down'. Once Jim picked himself up and soldiered onward, he saw that the woods he walked through were familiar, so was the cruiser parked just off the side of the road. It was darker, everything lit in a twilight sense of purple while howls and screeches of God only knew what filled the air.
Jim walked carefully, kept his eyes and ears peeled for anything unusual.
Anything more unusual than the everything he was encountering.
The air was thicker, colder. Jim should have been sweating after his trip to get there, but he was damn near shivering.
Jim peered in the cruiser and saw it was filled with mold and little bugs or something crawling around, in and out of the vents and radios. It better not look like that when he made it out… Jim looked around the woods and suppressed the childish urge to shiver… if he made it out.
Since Will Byers had been haunting his mom's place, Jim figured that would be a decent starting point. He planned to walk over there, check it out. Maybe the kid would know how to get the hell out of there once he had him.
The problem was, Jim didn't even make it out of the woods before one of the shadows he sensed following him swooped down to attack.
The feeling it must have caused hit Jim first, a hard wave of freezing grief that nearly buckled his knees. Jim gasped and reached out to grab the fence post he was passing when —
Jim, small and weak, cowering from his father while his ma hid herself in her room. Jim crying, apologizing, knowing he didn't do anything wrong.
Ferro, Jim's buddy he met in BCT and ended up on the same battalion with in Vietnam. He had a bullet slice clear through his neck, he choked on his blood while Jim never did understand what he wanted to tell him at the end.
Sarah, laying in her coffin with her arms folded over her chest, as pretty as a doll. She was surrounded by pink roses while the preacher talked about God taking only the most precious to return to his gardens.
There were gunfires and explosions in Jim's mind, the sound of a heart monitor when it flatlined. He didn't know where it all came from, but it got louder when the monsters attacked.
They were more smoke than solid, like giant black ghosts with robes that trailed behind them as they flew toward Jim. He raised his gun, doubted if a bullet would hurt them. If it gave him a single parting, just enough that Jim could book it…
Jim fired off two rounds, directly in front of where he stood. The bullets tore through the monsters like mist and Jim ran after them, gritting his teeth when the mist-monsters froze his skin. They didn't chase after him and the further Jim got, the more his mind cleared up from what seemed to be a replay of every horrible day he ever lived through.
If that was the kind of shit that Will Byers was trapped with then Jim hoped the worst day that kid had was a skinned knee or a fight with a friend.
They weren't the last monsters that Jim had rush him while he tried to make it to the Byers house. Just outside of town there was a giant fucking snake that slithered up to him with ten times the speed of a normal one and fangs the size of Jim's hand. That mother fucker could be shot and Jim left it full of lead.
Something little and blue with wings and an evil face bit Jim when he was a block from Joyce's. The fucker was fast, hard to shoot. Jim's arm started swelling up from the bite and he stared at it, wondering if he needed to suck some sort of venom from it.
When he started to get dizzy and nearly fell in Joyce's front ‘upside down' yard, he figured he might as well. Jim put his mouth to the bite and started sucking hard, pausing to spit whatever magic venom crap had his arm turning dark purple.
The heat that had been crawling up his arm lessened and Jim kept at it until the flames were gone and all he spat was blood.
There were a whole lot of people depending on him - three kids who didn't need another loss. If some fairy shit thought out was going to take him down, it would be wrong.
Jim would crawl in that fucking house if he had to.
Joyce's house, like everything else in the upside down Hawkins, was a freak show. Jim couldn't tell what it was that coated the walls and doors until he got closer, but it was spider webs. Thick, glistening, white ropes of what had to be some sort of webbing.
Jim didn't want to see the kind of spider that would leave webs like that; he didn't think he was going to get much of a choice.
Jim shifted his rifle so he could load a new clip then grabbed his hunting knife to start sawing at the webbing. It fell apart easily, like silk in his fingers, but it left a sticky residue that he tried to scrub off on his pants.
Combat zones were starting to sound like a better place to find Will Byers than the monster infested version of Hawkins he was in.
"Get in, get the kid, get the hell out," Jim muttered to himself when the last of the webbing covering the door fell to his feet. The door creaked open on its own, revealing a dark interior with only a faint sound to be made out.
It would be fucking amazing if it was Will making that sound, if Jim could find him cheerfully playing with his toys and all too knowledgeable about how to get the hell out of there. Except it only took Jim a minute inside to start hoping that Will Byers was nowhere near that damned house.
The house was dark, cold, nothing like Joyce's real place. There were twinkling lights under the webbing on the walls, only the red bulbs of Joyce's Christmas light shit we're blinking, adding a twisted bit of light to the place. Every step Jim took echoed and he raised his rifle when he stealthily moved toward the kitchen where the scraping came from.
Jim had his rifle up, his breathing was steady, and he walked in the room ready for anything. He scanned the kitchen quickly, noted the cabinets were ripped off, the webbing coated much of the walls. Thank fuck that there were no signs of —
The scraping that Jim heard wasn't scraping once it was closer - it was clicking.
Click. Click. Click.
The clicking increased in speed and tempo when the ceiling started to move and Jim couldn't raise his rifle fast enough.
Spiders. Fucking massive spiders the size of a Clydesdale started dropping from the ceiling, crawling down the walls, all hissing and clicking as they rushed toward Jim.
"Fuck!" Jim didn't stop to think, he just started shooting while he tried to back out of the house as quickly as he could. The spiders could be shot and Jim took one down, two down, three down - and more took their places. One lunged for him with viciously sharp fangs exposed and Jim shot it in the face and ended up splattered with an acidic smelling green goo.
When he stepped backward too quickly to get away from the massive body of the newly dead one, one of the fuckers must have gotten behind him to attack.
Jim barely had time to react - he felt something sharp, hard, huge, cutting into his side at the same time as another one went for his head. Jim shot the one in front of him, spun around and shoved the rifle through the dead black eyes of the one dripping Jim's blood down its face.
The room spun and Jim needed to get the fuck out of there. Will wasn't there, not alive if he was, and Jim wasn't going to last against the endless stream of spiders that became quicker and more furious with every one that died by Jim's gun.
Jim shot two more before he took a chance and ran. They chased him, somehow fitting through the kitchen doorway like they weren't too huge to even fit in the house. And Jim didn't need to get hung up on that detail, he was in a magical monster dimension so shit didn't need to make sense, but were there no fucking laws at all?
The front door was still open and when Jim burst through it, firing over his shoulder to keep the fuckers from following, the cold air was a relief as he sucked it in. His breathing was ragged and every step sent shockwaves of pain from his side. It didn't feel like the fire from the fairy thing, it was a creeping coldness moving through his body.
When he pressed his hand to his side, only daring to drop his rifle so he could swap to the service pistol he could aim one handed, Jim's hand came back covered in his blood.
Everything was spinning and Jim stopped a block from Joyce's house to puke in the road. He couldn't fight fucking magic, the next thing he encountered was going to kill him. Jim couldn't go back without the kid, didn't know how the fuck to leave even if he had the kid.
His mind turned hazy and Jim knew he was stumbling like a drunk, clutching his pistol like the lifeline it was.
Where to go? Where to look? If the kid wasn't home, would he be… at a friend's? Will Byers had friends, surely? Yeah, yeah, Jim remembered the friend… the one kid… what was his name?
"Daddy?"
Jim could barely see, everything was becoming gray and blurry, but he could hear just fine. He could hear. He heard her. He knew that voice, knew it.
Jim lifted his head and felt his heart seize up, the cold shock washing away the haze in his mind if only for a moment.
Sarah.
Sarah stood in front of Jim on the sidewalk, beneath the purple light that was as wrong as everything else. It was her - but it wasn't, couldn't be. Sarah didn't have her beautiful blonde hair when she died, she didn't have grey skin or maggots crawling through her empty eye sockets.
Sarah was lifting her arms, reaching for him, "Why did you do it, Daddy?" It was her voice, her soft and sweet voice cutting through Jim sharper than anything had yet. Jim couldn't move, couldn't think, he couldn't fucking breathe.
"Daddy…" Sarah stepped toward him with her arms up, reaching for Jim, for her dad. "Why did you kill me, Daddy?"
Jim didn't know what day it was, what month. He didn't give a fuck about the year either. Diane screamed, she cried, she grieved with her friends and her family. Jim sat in Sarah's room, sat by her grave, sat outside the school she never got to attend and he drank. Jim drank until the pain was gone, until he had just a little bit of time where everything wasn't crushing him inside.
Someone knocked one day and Jim ignored it, he didn't care who it was, it would be for Diane anyway. Jim knew Diane hated him when she walked past him, hated that Jim couldn't save their daughter - hated that Jim could have given her his marrow and instead probably gave her the cancer that took her.
It didn't matter that Jim would trade anything, everything, to have her back. Sarah was gone, gone, gone. She was gone and Jim would have followed her, he would have chased after his baby and left the world that was meaningless without her, but who would remember her? Who would know how much she hated to brush her teeth and loved to be poked on the nose? Who would carry the memories of her learning to ride a bike and making her first soccer goal if not Jim?
If Sarah was gone, her memories had to still exist.
"Jim." Diane's voice was sharp, the new tone she had for him. She was tired, she lost the same love Jim had, and it was tearing them apart. Jim didn't know why she stayed, wouldn't blame her if she left.
Jim looked up and saw that it wasn't one of Diane's friends or family members who knocked, it was two men in dress blues and solemn expressions.
"Sergeant Hopper?" The general stepped forward and offered Jim his hand. "General Riley. We'd like a minute of your time."
"It's not a good time," Jim said, the words rough and raspy. His eyes moved toward the photos on the walls, the ones he looked at every day of Sarah. General Riley's eyes followed and Jim could see pity filled them when he turned back to Jim.
"I understand, but that's what we're here to discuss." General Riley pulled himself tall, took a stack of papers from the lieutenant beside him. "I understand that you were diagnosed with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome."
"I… yeah." Jim didn't know why there was a General in his house or why he was mocking Jim's inability to help his daughter only two months after Jim had to bury her.
"Sergeant, on behalf of the United States Armed Forces, I am here to discuss that matter with you. We'll need you to sign a form before we say anything else, your wife as well."
The form was a nondisclosure, Jim had signed plenty of them during his time in the service. Jim signed only because of the dull sense of curiosity he felt, Diane signed hers quickly to try and end the conversation altogether.
Once they were signed, General Riley offered Jim a neatly stapled stack of papers.
"During your time in the war, it was recorded that you were one of the soldiers exposed to Agent Orange, the biochemical agent we deployed in Vietnam. Sergeant, I regret to inform you, you are the sixth soldier to have their TP53 gene mutated after exposure to this agent…"
General Riley said more - careful apologies in a monotone voice, an outline of everything the NDA Jim signed covered, and mention of a compensation check on its way to Jim's bank account as they spoke.
All Jim heard was that the herbicide he was told not to concern himself with had caused his genetic mutation, caused his daughter's death.
Diane heard the same thing that he did and left with her bags packed ten minutes after the General and Lieutenant did.
"You killed me, Daddy. Why?" Sarah's voice shook and Jim's body fought with his mind - his mind told him it wasn't Sarah, it wasn't real, his body wanted to hug his baby one more time.
"Princess, no." Jim - he didn't, fuck, he didn't mean to. And there she was, telling Jim exactly what he knew to be the truth. It was Jim's fault, Jim's syndrome that caused her cancer.
One of the maggots in Sarah's eyes fell to the ground and the quiet plop of it falling halted Jim's step. It wasn't real, that wasn't his daughter. Sarah was beautiful, even in her final days, that grey-skinned monster was just that, a monster.
And Jim had kids that he didn't kill, kids who still needed him, back home.
"I'm sorry." Jim swallowed the sob that almost broke free, pushed it down beneath his desire to live. "God, Sarah, I'm so fucking sorry."
The pain in his side was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the rip in Jim's chest when he turned away from his princess and started running.
Sarah ran too, chasing Jim with her accusations and her hurt —
"You killed me, Daddy! You killed me and now you're leaving me? Don't you love me anymore?"
Love her? Sarah was the only true love that Jim knew, she was his everything.
"Daddy! DADDY!" Sarah became shrill when Jim ran into the woods, running from the guilt and the grief. "DON'T LEAVE ME, DADDY! PLEASE, I LOVE YOU!"
Jim spun on the spot, couldn't keep running when he heard her voice break in pain. Jim could die, would die, if it spared her even a second of pain. His turn knocked him off balance, the trees tilted in a blur as Jim went down in slow motion. Sarah was there, her hair in pigtails and her soccer socks up to her knee, Jim lifted his hand for her - to hold her hand one more time.
When his hand fell, it fell on a spark of golden light. Jim's hand was caught in a vortex - a new web of warm golden light - and he cried out for his daughter while his entire body was swallowed by the light.
"Sarah…"
Her name was still on Jim's lips when he was knocked down again, on the ground in the forest that was familiar, warm compared to what he just left.
Sarah was gone though, she was gone and Jim curled in on himself while he screamed over the bitterness of it all - he didn't save Will, couldn't save Sarah.
The scream echoed in the woods, ending when Jim's chest heaved and he felt himself drifting further away with each pump of his blood that soaked him. Jim rolled on his uninjured side, blinked until his vision cleared and the sight of the normal night sky made him think.
If he laid there, if he didn't get up, he was going to die. Some part of him thought he wouldn't mind that, wouldn't mind going off to some supposed garden in the sky where he might see his girl. It wouldn't be Jim's hand that did it, wouldn't be a sin held against him by the same judgemental bastard that decided seven years was long enough for Sarah.
Another part of his mind thought of a different girl, one with green eyes and screams that Jim could still hear in his sleep some nights. That girl had been through hell, was Jim going to add to it? Was he going to lay there without a fight knowing somehow that she would be the one to find him?
With the last of his energy, Jim struggled up to his feet and fought through the swimming vision that nearly knocked him back down. If he was in the woods, in the Hawkins side of the world, then his cruiser would be nearby, he just had to find it.
It took what felt like a lifetime, a lifetime of staggering through branches that scraped him and roots that tripped him, but he found it. The cruiser was clean, mold free, no bugs in the cabin. Blood smeared the door handle, smeared the steering wheel when he grabbed it, smeared the lighter he fumbled with to light the cigarette he needed.
The drive back to his house was a blur, Jim didn't know if he even managed to stay on the road for most of it. He thought he might have had the wrong place when there were cars parked there, cars that didn't belong to Jim and he couldn't immediately recognize.
His vision began to go black and Jim just needed to get inside, get in the house. Somehow, if he got inside, he'd be fine.
Jim made it two steps out of his cruiser, two steps toward what he hoped was his house, when the blackness creeping up on him won and took him down.
The last thing he heard that time wasn't Sarah, wasn't the monster pretending to be his little girl, it was a boy - the boy that Jim couldn't die on —
"Hop!"