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xoxoladyaz · 1 year ago

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AU-gust, Day 11: Doppelgänger

A/N: So this is the first part of a potential series that I'm thinking of writing because I want a reverse harem for Stevie and also because I like to mess with canonical events as much as possible. I definitely tried to do something a little different here with my writing so let me know your thoughts as always!

TW: Canonical violence and creature death, mentions of major character death

It’s not a smooth landing.

She collides with the damp earth, palms scraping against dried out branches, knees sliding in the frigid fall mud. She gasps, and the air that floods her lungs smelt of decaying leaves, of abandoned squirrel feed, of rotting jack-o-lantern corpses, of chlorine.

Chlorine.

The pool.

“You will go across and then you will go back.”

“Fuck,” she spits out, nauseous as she leans her forehead against the ground. “Fuck.”

The dulcet tones of Modern English float past her, cloying and faint. I’ll stop the world and melt with you –

Faint.

Too faint.

“Fuck!”

She pushes herself to her unsteady feet. Is it the bites acting up, or the sluggishly bleeding scar around her neck, or was Seven not fast enough to fully scare away the rigor mortis that had gripped her body back –

Not home. Don’t think of home.

There’s no time.

“Save her, please.” She’d heard Nancy’s voice even as her eyes began to fail her. “Save Barb.”

“Barb,” she mutters as she forces her legs into a slow job.

“Barb,” she says again as her legs grow warmer, the muscles screaming with exertion.

“Barb,” she yells as she breaks into a run, the blood in her body rushing back to life all at once, pumping through her veins as she races across the forested floor, through the bushes and into her – the backyard.

“BARB!” She screams, and Barb – the other Barb – turns in her direction just as the lights under the pool go out.

Twenty feet away.

“Hello?”

“GET INSIDE – GET INSIDE THE HOUSE!”

Fifteen feet away.

“I – sorry, who are you?”

Ten feet away.

Faster, Harrington, you need to be faster –

“RUN – GO NOW!”

Less than five feet and –

The monster emerges from the shadows of the pool shed, taller than she remembers, its floral-shaped maw pulling into a snarl. Its screech sends shockwaves through the night air, through the pools’ small waves, through her memory and her body feels sweat for the first time since her almost-death. Other-Barb screams back, only a hair’s width away from the monster and, well, her knees are banged up anyways.

She grits her teeth and dives just as the Demogorgon’s claw swing out, sending herself and Barb crashing into the rough concrete of the Harrington pool deck. Other-Barb gasps at the impact and starts to scramble, pushing up and away from her and the monster.

Save her, please, Nancy’s voice echoed again. Save Barb.

The monster roars again, and she can almost feel its breath on her back. “Go,” she yells, shoving Other-Barb further along the cement as best as she can. “GO!”

A claw grabs her leg, piercing through skin, and with a scream she’s yanked backwards and tossed into the pool. She lands in the warm water with a harsh splash and

She’s there, paddling around with her Tommy and Carol in the summertime, ten years old and convinced she’ll never be happier than in that moment and

She’s there, the first time her and Tommy went skinny-dipping, back before her small world burst apart and

She’s there, doing her laps as Billy Hargrove’s eyes burn into her shoulder blades and

She’s there as the vines grab at her ankle and pull her down down down into hell, to the feast where she was the main course and

She’s there, at the bottom of the pool, and there’s no monster in sight.

But there is a shadow above the pool, its claws scraping the ground as it stalks menacingly towards the glass door where a figure with red hair stands amidst others –

Amidst others.

Fuck.

“This will be your job, you understand?”

She’s ten years old and her father has just installed the pool.

“You wanted the pool, so you have to take care of it, make sure we don’t get too many leaves. Understood?”

Her father’s face is shadowed but the tool in his hands is not. Long, metallic, with a basket on the end.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Good. Keep it close. And if I see a single leaf, I will drain this sucker.”

She shoves against the bottom of the pool, ignoring the sharp burst of pain in her leg and the screaming that’s starting in her lungs and swims, pushing herself as fast as she can towards the leaf skimmer at the end of the pool. She breaks the surface just as the creature lets out another scream and this time it is echoed by a chorus of voices, almost all of which sound familiar. Her hand grasps the skimmer as the house lights start to flicker around her, and suddenly she’s back at the Byers’ house watching Joyce’s Christmas lights go awry.

“Where is it? Where is it?”

“Nancy, Nancy!”

“NANCY!”

“ – WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK - ”

“ – GET INSIDE, HURRY - ”

“ – BARB! BARB!”

“Be careful now,” her father says as he watches her handle the skimmer. “It’s sharp under the basket. You got it?”

“Got it,” she says, and then she’s swinging the basket-less pool skimmer around in her hand as she turns and charges towards the monster and

Nancy’s firing her pistol, wincing with every pull of the trigger as the monster stalks closer. She can’t see Jonathan, he’s somewhere on the ground, and she sees that Nancy is going to run out of bullets soon but Nancy doesn’t stop, she just glares at the creature as she shoots and says

“Go to hell you son of a bitch!” She yells in time with Nancy’s memory and thrusts the sharp end of the pool skimmer through the monster’s torso. The sound it lets out sends shivers rippling across her skin but she does it again, pulling the skimmer back out and stabbing forward again.

The lights flicker as the monster falls forward, its talons clawing uselessly at the air in front of it. She draws the skimmer out for the last time and, with a final roar, impales its head on the now bloodied metal stick.

The pool lights turn back on alongside the radio that flickers to life.

I’ve been waiting for a girl like you, I’ve been waiting –

Panting, she drops lets go of the skimmer and watch as it falls forward slightly, still embedded in the monster’s skull. Its black blood is pooling slowly, staining the pool deck in a lethargic trickle that feels oh so satisfying after the last couple of days.

After the last couple of years.

“What the actual FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!”

Right. She almost forgot.

She lets a sharp exhale escape her lungs as she looks up and, sure enough, there’s Tommy Hagan, seventeen and half-dressed and utterly useless. There’s Carol standing behind him, pantsless. There’s Barb, bleeding but still alive. There’s Nancy and she can’t stand to look at her and see a stranger in her eyes, so she glances behind and –

She doesn’t know him.

But she’d know the moles on that face anywhere.

“Demogorgon,” she says, kicking the thing in the foot. “And there’s more where that came from.”

“Okay, WHAT?!” Tommy hollers again. “What the fuck are you – is this some sort of sick prank Harrington because I swear to God - ”

“It’s not a prank, Tommy,” she cuts him off before he can work himself up into a full-fledged tantrum. Tommy – no, Other-Tommy – whips around to look at her and if she had the energy, she would laugh at how quickly his flushed face pales.

“What – how do you know my name?”

“Or, better question,” Other-Nancy speaks up and fuck, it burns how much she sounds like her Nancy, all matter-of-fact and in control despite the fact that she hasn’t stopped trembling. “Who are you?”

“It’s now or never, princess.”

“I’m Stevie. Stevie Harrington.”

Crickets. Crickets and the rustling of leaves in the trees and Foreigner’s last strains playing on the radio. Won’t you come into my life?

“Holy shit.” Carol is the first to break. “Holy fucking shit.”

Tommy shakes his head back and forth, like a dog trying to get dry. “No, nuh-uh, there is no fucking way Steve has a fucking doppelganger - ”

“Only one way to find out.” Barb is the one to interrupt Tommy this time, and she turns around to look at the other boy – to look at Steve. Steve, who’s been frozen since the monster stopped moving. Steve, whose arms are hanging uselessly at his sides. Steve with swoopy hair and a constellation of freckles on his neck that look like Orion, that match the freckles on hers -

Steve, who hasn’t so much as blinked since he laid eyes on her.

“Steve. Steve,” Nancy hisses, elbowing him in the side, and then he’s moving, stumbling onto the pool deck.

Stevie steps over the Demogorgon carcass – since she gets not wanting to be near it, obviously – but he doesn’t stop walking towards her until they’re less than a breath apart. His eyes are locked on hers, and the shaking hand he holds out to her is clean and dry and warm.

She wipes hers on her pants leg – not that it will do much good, seeing as she’s soaked and covered in monster blood and scrapes and bruises – and she reaches back, taking his hand in hers and

The world flashes gold, just for a moment, and when the light fades from her eyes, the first thing she sees is a golden infinity loop wrapping around her wrist, its twin wrapping around his.

The others are screaming their exclamations, as apparently they witnessed the golden light too, but she’s not hearing anything they have to say. She’s too busy focusing on the way her other self looks at their enjoined hands, the way the warmth of their new bond seems to spread up his arms and into his now flushing cheeks, into his gleaming eyes.

“I’m Steve.”

“Stevie,” she says again, because that’s the only thing she can say and he knows, which is why he pulls her into his arms and there’s so much to do, God there’s so much to do, but for the first time in a long, long time she feels safe.

She can give herself five minutes to cry.

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