209. Get His Ass For Me Lucy

chapter 209, get his ass for me lucy

As Max looked at Lucas and whispered, "Is that..?", Lucy could not help but answer the question in her own mind. It had to have been the girl Leo had told her about—what was her name again? Twelve? Some sort of number, Lucy remembered. But, for a girl with unlimited superpowers, she looked... young. In fact, she could not have been older than eleven.

Oh. Right. That was her name.

She had a weak stream of blood trickling down from her nose, but no other visible injuries that attested to the fact that she had just fought off all of the Demo-dogs and won. She had not so much as broken a sweat.

Mike had burst forward the moment Eleven entered the Byers house, tearful and welcoming as he spread his arms to bombard her with a hug. She smiled up at him when they broke away from the hug, her eyes glossy.

"I never gave up on you," Mike told her, still holding her shoulders. "I called you every night. Every night for—"

"353 days," Eleven finished. She sniffed, beaming up at him. "I heard."

"Why didn't you tell me you were there?" Mike asked, looking like the human equivalent of puppy-dog eyes. Lucy would have felt bad for him, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on. She could only assume Mike and this supergirl were.. what, dating? But they only knew each other for barely a week before Eleven supposedly "died," right?

Lucy felt a pair of eyes on her and shifted her gaze to meet Leo's fervid stare. He raised his eyebrows, widening his eyes in the slightest and giving her a faint nod as if to say he agreed with the expression on her face.

"Because I wouldn't let her," Hopper interrupted, and all heads turned to his tall frame. He took slow steps forward until he was only a few inches from Eleven. "The hell is this? Where you been?"

"Where have you been?" Eleven shot back, but there was no hostility in her voice. All of a sudden, she burst forward, and Hopper caught her in a tight hug. He rested his chin on her head, placing a quiet kiss to her hair.

"You've been hiding her," Mike accused. "You've been hiding her this whole time!"

"Mike.." Leo started, taking a step forward, but he fell back into the group as Mike began hitting Hopper's back with frustration.

"Hey!" Hopper said, spinning around. He grabbed Mike's hands to stop the punches (that Lucy was sure felt like light taps to Hopper). "Let's talk. Alone."

And they shuffled back into Jonathan's bedroom, the slammed door muffling the majority of their words but unable to hide the fact that they were shouting at the tops of their lungs. Everyone else stood in silence, trying to ignore the fighting coming from the back of the house.

Slowly, the other party members began to trickle towards Eleven, glancing at her like they were tentative to give her a hug. She acquiesced happily, and Lucas, Dustin, and Leo threw their arms around her in a group hug. Lucy hung back with Steve, watching ruefully.

"Should I introduce myself?" she asked, voice a whisper.

"Maybe wait 'til things die down a bit," he suggested.

"Eleven?" came Max's voice, and she started forward, a welcoming smile on her face. She held out a hand. "Um, I'm Max."

Eleven stared at the redhead for a moment, before tensing up and brushing right past her extended hand. She instead met Joyce in a hug. Max stood behind, her hand falling limply to her side, eyes downcast.

Lucy shared a glance with Steve. With a teasing tone, she whispered, "Have things died down enough yet?"

Despite the situation, Steve held back a smile, not looking at her. "You're the most persistent person I know."

She just offered him a self-satisfied expression before stepping forward to greet Eleven as she fell out of her hug with Joyce.

Face-to-face, Lucy grew to understand why everyone was so intimidated, per se, by Eleven. For such a young girl, her eyes held a strict glint, like a frightened animal ready to bolt any minute. The trail of blood beneath her nose stained her pale skin with a deep red. She scanned her gaze over Lucy once, up and down like she was taking her all in.

"Hi," Lucy said, giving her most welcoming but smallest, non-frightening smile. "I'm Lucy. I've heard a lot about you."

She was expecting to earn the same reaction Max had; a tense-up, eyes narrowed, staring blankly at her, before stalking away and ignoring her completely. But to her surprise, Eleven managed a faint smile, even if she could only meet Lucy's eyes for a few moments before looking away.

Well, Lucy thought, it could have been worse.

Eleven turned over her shoulder again, back to Joyce. She swallowed. Lucy could practically see her mind spinning, trying to gather the courage to ask.

"Can I see him?"

Joyce and Eleven spent only a few minutes in Will's bedroom before they came rushing back out, joined by Mike and Hopper. Joyce was clutching a paper drawing of Will's in her hand. Lucy caught a glimpse of it; a red rip, as if between worlds, was scribbled in the middle of the paper, and Lucy could only assume this was the gate everyone had been talking about. The one Will had instructed them to close.

"El," Joyce said, breathlessly, holding up the drawing and looking around at everyone. "She says she can close it."

"It's not like it was before," Hopper elaborated. He met each person's eyes, making sure they understood him. "It's grown. A lot. And this is only considering we can get in there; the place is crawling with those.. dogs."

"Demo-dogs."

Hopper turned his head to Dustin, wearing his signature solemn glare. "I'm sorry, what?"

Dustin stared back at him for a second before responding. "I said, uh.. Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgan and dogs. You put 'em together, it sounds pretty badass—"

"It's what we call them," Leo explained. "It's—"

Hopper clenched his jaw. "How is this important right now?"

"It's not," Dustin and Leo muttered together, shrugging dismissively. "S–sorry.."

"I can do it," Eleven said, bringing everyone's attention back to the topic at hand. "I can close it."

Hopper met her eyes. His nostrils flared. "You're not hearing me."

"I'm hearing you," Eleven said. "I can do it."

"Even if she can," Mike said, "there's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies."

Max furrowed her brow. "I thought that was the whole point."

"It technically is." Leo nodded. "But if we're right about this, then right now, Will is the body. And if El closes the gate, she's killing the mind flayer's army."

"And Will's a part of that army," Lucas finished, his voice grim.

"Closing the gate will kill him," Mike confirmed. "We can't let that happen."

"This is what I've been trying to say all along." Leo pursed his lips, moving to the wall to inspect one of the pieces of the tunnels Will had drawn. "So I've been thinking about what we know, and it's not a lot. We know Will is under the mind flayer's control. We know he's a spy. We know he'll kill us if we don't keep a close eye on him. And we know.."

He turned around again, back to face everyone, but his eyes were glued on the fireplace. Joyce followed his gaze, and her breath caught as it all clicked into place.

"He likes it cold," she whispered. "That's what Will kept saying to us. He likes it cold."

"We keep giving it what it wants," Leo said, nodding his head to Joyce to express his confirmation. "It's like a virus. Like any old flu or cold or something. And to get rid of those, you have to make the host uninhabitable. Load them up with antibiotics and medicine."

"So if he likes it cold," Nancy said, nodding as she caught on, "we have to burn it out of him."

"But last time he found out where we were," Lucy pointed out, her arms crossed and brow scrunched together. "So we have to do it somewhere else. Somewhere he wouldn't be able to recognize."

Suggesting Hopper's remote cabin was the most helpful thing Lucy had done all night. She would not forget the rush of satisfaction when Hopper pointed to her and pursed his lips—it was like the universal old-man non-verbal sign of "Bingo!"

Jonathan threw Will over his shoulder and Hopper led him out to his car, chanting the directions to his cabin so they would stick. Nancy, after gathering all heat-related devices from the Byers household, rushed after them, dumping the heaters into Jonathan's backseat and hopping into the passenger's side.

With Nancy, Jonathan, Joyce, and Will safely on the road to the secluded cabin, next up was Eleven and Hopper, who were both preparing to head off to close the gate. Lucy understood foggy details about how dangerous the task they were pursuing was, so she wished Eleven a brief good luck and headed back inside the Byers' house.

Once everyone came back inside, the mood of the house had sobered down to a somber tone, everyone worrying for someone else. Nobody was guaranteed to live. Lucy realized that. But the idea that somebody could actually die over this was something that she still hadn't come to terms with.

"Okay, so.. now what?" she asked, standing to the side with Max as Dustin and Steve shoved the dead Demo-dog into Joyce's fridge. "We just wait?"

"Not much else we can do," Leo confirmed. He, Lucas, and Mike sat on the couch, each of their legs bouncing in time with each other. Leo expelled a heavy sigh through his lips and threw his head back, running his hands down his face. "Wish there was. I feel like shit, sitting here doing nothing while El's out there..."

"That's not exactly true," Dustin said, appearing with Steve at the kitchen door. "That we can't do anything. These Demo-dogs, they have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away. So if we get their attention..."

"Maybe we can draw them away from the lab," Leo finished, sitting back up. His eyes were wide and he nodded his head fervently. "We have to go. We have to do something."

"Yeah, and then we all die," Steve said loudly, spreading his hands.

"Don't be so negative," Lucy chastised. "That's only one point of view."

"It's not a point of view, Luce, it's a fact," he said, lowering his voice as he spoke to her. "We can't let them go out there and kill themselves."

"Who said they'd be going alone? We could keep them safe, Steve. You told Nancy you were a good babysitter. Live up to it."

"I said a good babysitter, not a good body guard. We can't keep them all alive if we go into these tunnels. It's practically a suicide mission."

"I'm not saying it's not dangerous," Lucy whispered, her eyebrows furrowed in earnest. "But I'm serious. We have to do something, and if—"

"We got it!" someone suddenly called, their voice sounding further away, and Lucy and Steve broke away from their hushed conversation to realize the kids had moved all the way into the kitchen while they'd been distracted.

"Woah, woah," Steve said as he and Lucy followed them into the kitchen. "Got.. what?"

"This is our way into the tunnel!" Mike was on his knees, pointing fervently at one particular corner of the drawing of the tunnels that were hung up all over the house. "And over here.. this is like a hub. So you got all the tunnels feeding into here."

"So we cause a distraction from right here," Leo said, "and we get all of their attention. Maybe if we set this on fire—"

"Yeah, no; that's a no," Steve said flatly.

"The mind flayer would call away his army," Dustin pointed out. "They'd all come to stop us."

"Not happening," Steve decided, lifting his shoulders in a conclusive shrug. "It's not. I'm not letting this happen. Nope."

Mike looked up, chest rising and falling heavily with adrenaline. "But—"

"No, no, no, no," Steve interrupted. "No buts. I promised the others that Lucy and I would keep you shitheads safe, and that's exactly what I plan on. We're staying here. And we're waiting for the rest of them to do their job. Does everybody understand?"

"This isn't a joke, Steve!" Leo yelled. "Maybe get your head out of your ass; if you even can, with all that hair—"

"Leo, please!" Lucy cut in, her face stricken with disbelief. "Everybody calm down. We aren't going any—"

The loud rev of a car's engine cut off her words, and all of their heads whipped towards the front of the house as headlights blared through the broken window. Max rushed over to peek out, and Lucas was right behind her. Lucy could hear faint rock music from the approaching vehicle.

"It's my brother," Max muttered, and for the first time since she had met her, Lucy heard a faint trace of fear in her voice. "He can't know I'm here. He'll kill me. He'll kill us. We're dead."

Lucy felt Steve's eyes on her, waiting for her to turn and for them to make the decision together, but Lucy's mind was made up. Billy Hargrove's assholery had been tolerable when Lucy hated Steve, but he had absolutely no business at the Byers' place. Not then; not ever. Billy needed to leave, and Lucy was going to make it happen.

"I got it," she muttered, her voice thick with fury as she flung the front door of the Byers' house open to meet Billy as he skidded to a stop. Lucy tugged the door shut behind her. Billy's headlights were so bright they practically blinded Lucy, but she wasn't about to let him know that. She just clenched her jaw.

She drew in a short breath. All she had to do was get him out. Tell him to go, and she would be done with him.

The driver's side door flew open, and Billy Hargrove spilled out with a cigarette caught between his lips and a sultry glint in his dark eyes. He leaned against the open door of his car, looking her up and down; his eyes were much too piercing for her liking, and she suddenly felt very exposed before him.

Lucy tried to recall when she had first met Billy Hargrove and realized in a split second that she had never truly done so. She had heard stories, sure; knew of his complete and utter jerkiness. But she had never seen him in action before now.

"Lucy Andrews," he said loudly, his voice booming over the loud stereo of his car. Lucy hated the way he drew out the second syllable of her first name. "My, my. I never thought I'd get the pleasure."

"Don't get too excited," she replied, leaning against the wooden beams of the porch. Playing it casual was the best she could do. Otherwise, she had no idea what could get him to go away. "What are you doing here, Hargrove?"

His lips split into a sickening grin and he spread his arms. "Why, I'm only looking for my step-sister. Is that so bad?"

"You aren't gonna find her here," Lucy replied. "In fact, I'm the only girl here. Even Joyce is gone for the night."

She regretted the words as soon as they were past her lips, and tried not to physically wince at them. She definitely should not told him that there were no adults in the house. He would definitely take advantage of the fact that Lucy was, presumably, the only "adult" around.

His eyebrows shot up on his forehead and his lips parted, but the smile remained. Lucy could tell he recognized her slip-up. He lifted his fingers to his lips and removed the cigarette from between them, dropping it to the ground to stomp it out with his boot.

"Really?" he challenged, taking a few steps forward. "Little birdie told me all the kids were here. Now, was she lying, or are you?"

Lucy did not want to let him get any closer to the house, so she met him in the middle, growing unfortunately close to him. "Your sister, Billy? Who is she? Not sure I've ever had the pleasure."

"Small? Redhead?" Billy listed, gesturing vaguely to around Max's height. "Bit of a bitch?"

"Not ringing any bells," Lucy spat, trying not to get onto him for calling Max a bitch. "Now hurry on home, Hargrove. It's getting late."

"Oh, yeah?" He smiled again—a shitty smile that reeked of predatory implications. His voice lowered, growing husky and, frankly, repulsive. "Well, why don't you join me, sweetheart?"

Lucy sneered, trying not to gag. "I'll have to pass. You have a nice night."

As she turned and began to head back inside, Billy's voice stopped her in her tracks: "Tell me this one thing, Andrews."

She faced him once again, arms crossed. "What?"

"There a reason you're lying to me right now?"

Lucy raised her eyebrows, her lips parting in a momentary falter. "How many times do I have to say it before it gets through your thick skull, Hargrove? Max isn't here."

Billy barked a laugh right in her face, and Lucy's stomach dropped. She had fucked up again—and bad.

"So then how could you possibly know her name?"

Lucy rolled her jaw. "I've... I've seen her around."

Shitty lie. She knew it. He knew it. Billy scoffed lightly, dropping his head. He took a few steps in, bridging the gap between the pair of them, his eyes dark. He jerked his chin over to the front window. "Then who is that?"

Lucy glanced over her shoulder in time to see all of the kids' heads ducking as quickly as they possibly could. Max's long red hair caught on the top of the couch and kept in view, revealing her even after she had ducked herself away. Lucy bit back a curse and turned back to Billy.

"Go home, Billy," she whispered, no longer playing nice. "I'm not kidding."

He gave her shoulder a light tap, but with his strength and her weight, it shoved her back a few steps. He followed her into it.

"No can-do, Luce," Billy taunted, eyeing her up and down. Lucy's stomach recoiled at the way he said Steve's nickname for her. "I'm getting my stepsister, one way or another."

"Hey!" Steve burst out from the house, anger written all over his face. He put a hand on the same shoulder Billy had shoved, Steve's grip much gentler and guiding as he pulled her away from Billy. "Don't you touch her, asshole. Lucy, get back inside. I'll handle him."

The only reason Lucy followed Steve's instructions was to race back to Will's bedroom. She ignored all of the kids' worried questions and rushed right past them. She threw the door to Will's closet open and dug around as quickly as she could, her heart racing. Behind her, she heard the front door slam open and Billy's husky voice rattling around the walls.

"Shit," she whispered to herself, rifling around all the normal shit that would be in a twelve-year-old boy's closet. Finally, she found a cardboard box buried beneath a pile of old clothes and dragged it out.

It was labeled HALLOWEEN in big, bolded permanent marker.

"Yeah," she muttered, "this'll do."

When she rejoined the scene, her stomach jumped into her throat as she found Billy with his hands on Lucas's shirt, shoving him back into the stove. Lucas's face screwed up in a pained wince. Billy was not letting up any time soon; not if Lucas was still breathing.

"You're dead," he was threatening, his lips right next to Lucas's ears to make certain he heard it. "I warned you; you go near her again, and you're dead."

"No," Lucy said, roughly pulling Billy away from Lucas by the shoulder. "You are, sweetheart."

Using the surprisingly sturdy lightsaber from Will's old Halloween costume of Luke Skywalker, she swung the plastic tube across Billy's face. His head spun with the force. When he looked back to her, his cheek was bleeding where she had made contact.

She could only imagine how utterly stupid she looked. Luke Skywalker's lightsaber clutched tightly between both her hands, the plastic breastplate of some knight costume, and nothing but pure rage glowing from her deep brown eyes.

Before Billy could get over his flat-out bewilderment of her outrageous outfit, Lucy used his momentary distraction to her advantage and swung the lightsaber down on him once more. It was the best she could do, okay? Using a real weapon was way out of the picture—she could get away with using a plastic sci-fi laser sword, but threatening Billy with a real-life gun was where she threw the line. And it wasn't exactly like she was equipped to fight with her bare hands.

She could hear the others' voices—cheering her on, maybe even laughing at her blind courage—but all she could focus on was the boy in front of her.

Billy lifted a hand to swipe the blood from his cheekbone. He looked down at it, then raised his eyes back up to Lucy. No longer was he staring at her like he wanted to get into her pants; his lust had been replaced by a dangerous anger.

"I didn't wanna have to ruin such a pretty face," he said, his voice low. Threatening. He balled up one of his fists. "But you're asking for it, you bitch."

Lucy set her jaw and glared determinedly as Billy raised his fist behind his head. He was giving her a chance to run. But she just stood there, waiting for the point of impact.

And one came. But not from Billy.

Something blew into her side and pushed her to land harshly on her hip, her back hitting the wall and forcing the wind out of her. When she looked back up to Billy, Lucy found Steve where she had just been, blood dripping from the side of his lip and a groan escaping from his mouth.

"Steve!" Lucy shot forward, but someone grabbed her arm.

She turned to find Max holding her back. The redhead shook her head. "He'll kill you, Lucy! Steve has to take this one."

"He'll kill Steve, too!" Lucy argued furiously, still struggling against Max's grip. But Leo joined, helping by grabbing hold of Lucy's other arm to keep her back. This was perhaps the breaking point for Lucy; she spun around to face her younger brother, still trying to wrestle free from his grip, anger radiating from her face.

"Leopold Andrews," she warned, poison dripping from her use of his full name, "if you don't let go of me right now, I'll tell everyone what the Great Grounding of 1980 was really about."

Leo's brown eyes went wide with earnest fear. For two entire years, the party had been trying to pry out of Lucy the real reason Leo had been grounded for three weeks. He had originally tried to play it off as something small, like forgetting to do his chores, but once Lucy accidentally let slip that there was much, much more to it, the boys were invested.

For two years, she had withheld telling them, and it all paid off; because Leo's fingers instantly released from Lucy's forearm.

She wrenched her other wrist out of Max's grasp and hurled forward. Billy was landing blow after blow on Steve's nearly-unconscious frame. If nobody had stepped in, Steve might have damn near been killed.

Lucy had no idea what took over her. She felt the bitter taste of rage in her mouth, a flaming fist of fury clamping around her heart and driving her forward.

And the kids could only stand back in a paralyzed shock as they watched the Hawkins' golden girl rip Billy Hargrove to shreds.

If she hadn't had the element of surprise on her side, she would have been flung to the side easily. But since all of Billy's attention was on demolishing Steve, he did not take notice to Lucy flying up behind him before it was too late—she had already smashed the plastic lightsaber over his back, the pieces shattering in two and splintering over him. He collapsed to the ground, groaning on impact.

"You fucking ASSHOLE!" Lucy screamed, still whacking at him with half of the broken lightsaber, its serrated edges catching on his shirt. He managed to roll over and tried to reach out for Lucy, but she just kept screaming, bringing the now-deadly weapon down time and time again. She emphasized each word with a hit, her voice growing in volume until she was damn near ripping her vocal cords in two. "I—am—so—done—with—douchebags—like—you!"

His face was bleeding from a multitude of cuts and bruises, and his shirt was covered in all sorts of blood and sweat. His lip was busted. He gurgled and moaned something incoherent—probably calling her a bitch, or something.

"I—swear—to—fucking—GOD!" Lucy screamed, before lifting the broken lightsaber over her head and driving the jagged end into the floorboards next to Billy's face. When he didn't immediately move to leave the house peacefully—probably because Lucy had just beat him in with a child's toy—she picked him up by the shirt. She had to strain against his weight, but altogether held him up long enough to curl up her right fist and drive it straight into his nose.

He fell limp, and she dropped his shirt, allowing him to hit the ground with a heavy thunk.

When she turned around, all of the kids were staring at her, their jaws popped open and eyes as wide as saucers. Mike was the first to speak.

"Holy... shit," he said, nothing but true awe in his voice.

"Dude." Dustin leaned over to Lucas. "Is it bad that I thought that was hot?"

Lucy's gaze drifted over each of them. Her chest heaved with pants and suppressed sobs. As soon as she opened her mouth, though, she burst into tears, cradling her fist to her chest. Weakly, she managed to stammer out between sobs, "I think I broke my hand!"

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