Chapter Text
Jane Eleanor Hopper, no matter how she presents herself, is no longer an optimist. Despite her cheer, logic is ingrained in her thought process.
It wasn’t always that way; there was a time when she was young, naive, and waiting for someone who wanted her to walk into that group home and look at her without greed in their eyes- a time when she paid the scar on her leg no mind- a time when she was one of ten women graduating with a psychology degree in her class and only thought of her accomplishments- and, of course, a time when she awaited a call from Will Byers.
Reality always caught up with her whenever she dared to hope. The scar on her leg catches her attention on most days. She was disregarded by her male coworkers despite being more qualified. She has not heard from Will Byers in almost four years.
She lost all gall to look on the bright side a long time ago, and it is that simple fact that has rooted her in place for much of her adult life. She’s not yet reached the point of pessimism, but she’s gotten used to having to interrupt colleagues who cut her off first. She’s gotten used to the nightmares and dealing with them alone, without a pair of arms to hold her. She’s gotten used to only having one brother. Her life isn’t bleak, far from it, but it has lost the characteristic shine it had in her teenage years. She can’t help but miss it.
Some things haven’t changed. Jonathan and, more recently, Nancy, are still important parts of her routine. She calls her father and mother every couple of days, usually when making herself dinner. She’s lost contact with the few friends she had back in Indiana, but still has a few acquaintances from work and college that she meets with on the regular. Life could be better, but it could be so much worse. It has been at some point.
Sometimes, she finds a strange sense of courage, late into the night, when she’s staring at the ceiling with too much nerve to sleep, and hopes like she did when she was ten. She hopes to be taken seriously. She hopes for her siblings in foster care, whose faces she’s long forgotten. She hopes for a sign of life from her brother. It always finds her in the brief silences in her day, and only occasionally does she have the energy to entertain it.
Hope once again finds her on a Friday evening in November, with rain drilling into her balcony door windows, a CD Jonathan gifted her playing softly from her coffee table, and a new recipe she’d been wanting to try. Joyce may not be her biological mother, but Jane must have inherited her inability to cook somehow. Her day in the office was surprisingly smooth; her patients, the few she’d had today, were doing relatively well, as was she. When she got home, she had her favorite pair of pajamas waiting for her on her dresser and her favorite pair of slippers beneath it.
She stands in her kitchen now, chopping vegetables, and finally relaxing her shoulders in preparation for the weekend. She set all the ingredients the recipe called for across her cluttered island. She’s already chopped the carrots and slid them into the bowl next to her, and she’s about done slicing the potatoes into bits as well. All that’s left are the onions and peppers.
Jane hums along to the music floating softly in the background. She faintly recognizes it as one of the albums Jonathan gifted her for Christmas last year. The Cranberries’ “To The Faithful Departed”. She’d been a bit unsure, typically sticking to pop or pop-adjacent music, but Jonathan had insisted she try it out. She’s since bought three more of their albums. Something about this CD called to her, though, and she’d found herself pressing play on her CD player before starting on dinner.
As Salvation slides into When You’re Gone, Jane indulges in the familiar ache in her chest. She wonders if Will would enjoy The Cranberries. If he’d dance with her around the island as they would in their shared bedroom at fifteen when Dancing Queen came on. If he’s still as useless with eggs and a pan as she is. If he’s still finding places to squeeze her favorite flowers in whenever he paints. But hope is an old guest in her heart, one that doesn’t clear the cobwebs when it stops by, and it certainly doesn’t now. She doesn’t let herself think of him, think of the hole he left in her life, any longer, lest she pokes at old wounds.
The chorus of Free To Decide registers in her mind as she dumps the potatoes into the bowl. She’s stopped humming since When You’re Gone. Sighing, she steps away from the cutting board, massaging the sides of her neck and leaning against the kitchen cabinets. Sudden vibrations bounce off her spine, and she spots her flip-phone on the other side of her stove, ringing. She leans over, swipes it into her grasp, reads the caller's name, and answers.
“Jane, hey! Sorry to call you so late. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Rebecca’s voice sounds out through the speaker, peppy even at ten P.M. on a Friday.
“Don’t worry, I was just starting on dinner. What did you need?”
“A few of the girls and I were thinking about going out tomorrow night for some drinks to celebrate Angela’s promotion, and we wanted you to come. Are you free?”
Jane feels an annoyed twitch in her upper lip before she can stop it. As much as she’d like to get along with her (very few) female coworkers, Angela is someone she has a hard time tolerating. Nonetheless…
“I should be able to. What time?”
“Seven P.M. Over in that fancy winery an hour away. You know the one?”
Jane does not know the one. She, frankly, does not understand the praise of wine, or alcohol in general. Perhaps it’s because many of her patients tended to be alcoholics.
“Do you have the address? I don’t think I’ve been.” She wanders to the opposite end of the island as she asks. As much as she dislikes wine, Angela, long drives, and the strange gut feeling that began to bubble as soon as Rebecca asked if she was free, Jane truly doesn’t have anything to do. Going out could do her well. She’s been holed up either at home or at work for the past three weeks, anyway.
“Yeah, I do. I have it written down somewhere,” Rebecca says. After a brief moment of silence, and inaudible yelling that sounded like a child, she speaks again. “Sorry, Andrew is giving me a hard time. I’ll send you the address once I find it.”
“No issues. Have a good night, Rebecca.”
“Goodnight! See you tomorrow.” The call ends.
Jane shuts the flip phone and sets it down beside her. The weird instinct in her body has increased steadily since she first noticed it, and she frowns. She hasn’t felt this off in years.
“You’d expect me to be more in touch with my emotions, considering I’m a psychologist,” she mutters, making her way back to the half-filled bowl. Maybe she delayed dinner too much. She chalks it up to hunger, even if it had never come with the rising anxiety that it does now.
As she reaches for the peppers and the knife, Electric Blue nears its end, and I’m Still Remembering takes its place. The crunch of the vegetables splitting under the blade cuts through the calming melody sharply, and it further twists her gut. Frowning, Jane sets the knife down.
It’s not hunger. She feels off. She hasn’t felt off in years. Feeling off didn’t mean bad, but it didn’t mean good either; and the last time she felt off, it was when Will called her for the last time.
Before she can think about it any longer, Will You Remember? Begins to play. The ominous instrumental doesn’t help in settling her at all. She rounds the island, aiming to pop the CD out of its player. Just as she reaches it, her phone rings once again, and the feeling triples in intensity. She stares at it for a moment, hand flickering towards it briefly in confusion.
Reluctantly, she lets the music continue and hears the switch in vibe from the music, walking back to the kitchen. She hadn’t been expecting Rebecca to call her with the address, but there was probably a reason for it. Jane just needs to find a pen and paper. Grabbing the phone and opening it with one hand, she uses the other to open a drawer nearby and wrangle what she needs into her grasp. Setting the notepad she acquired down onto the counter, she glances at the caller's name, and does a double take as she clicks the pen open.
It’s not odd for Jonathan to call, not at all. In fact, after losing contact with Will, they’ve only talked more. It helps that his and Nancy’s apartment is only a fifteen-minute drive away. They meet as much as they can. What is odd, though, is Jonathan calling this late. She knows her older brother, even if she’d met him after double digits, and she knows he’s usually in bed by nine-thirty, either with a book in his hands or out like a light. He doesn’t call this late, and if it were Nancy, she would’ve used her own phone. Despite her puzzlement, Jane sets her pen down slowly and answers the call.
“Jonathan?”
“Jane.” The way he says it makes her pause, and her gut feeling crashes over her once more. She can’t quite place what he’s feeling yet.
“Are you okay? You never call this late,” Jane stands up straighter, eyebrows furrowing.
“Late job,” Jonathan brushes off, and she realizes that he sounds frantic. In a rush.
Hopeful.
“Listen, Jane, I-, shit, I need you to-to get to mine.”
“Jonathan, what’s going on? Are you hurt?” Jane barely registers moving towards her coat and shoe rack, with the beginnings of panic lining her lungs.
“God, no, just- Nancy’s home, she-” Jonathan cuts himself off, like he was gulping for air, like he was nearing the point of tears, “she called me-Jane, El, you need to get there. I don’t know if I’ll be there before you.”
Jane shivers at the use of her middle name as she shoves her arms into a jacket. He only calls her that when something is wrong. “Is Nancy hurt? Did something happen to her?”
“No, no, no, she’s fine. El, she called, said there was-that-”
“Jonathan, breathe.” Her car keys are jammed into her coat pocket. Her apartment keys are already dangling from her wrist.
Jonathan takes a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. “She said there was a man looking for me, that he just knocked, and that he looked so-so anxious, and that it looked like he got- oh, god, she said he looked like someone beat him. Jane, El.”
“Jonathan?” She throws the door open.
“He said his name was Will Byers.”
Jane freezes instantly. Her door is wide open, cold slipping down her front, and Joe has started playing on the CD.
“...What?”
“He said his name was-was Will. Will, El, Will Byers.”
“But he lives in California. How is- he can’t be here.” Her voice leaves her mouth like a ghost. It feels like she’s sinking, and she wants to run, but she can’t, because hoping now would kill her.
“I don’t know, El, but Nancy said to come over because she doesn’t know what he-what he looks like, and when she called, I was an hour away. Please, El, get over there.”
Jane doesn’t bother with locking the door behind her. She doesn’t bother with the elevator, either; she’s already down the hall and rushing down the third-floor stairwell.
“How long until you’re there?” She pants.
“Twenty minutes.”
“You knew about this for forty minutes, and you’re just now calling me?” Jane doesn’t mean to snap, but she does anyway, because Will might finally be an arm's length away, like he used to be, after four years. Four years.
But, suddenly, everything makes sense again, because right when she finishes sprinting down the pavement to the driver's side door of her car, Jonathan says:
“No, I’ve- I’ve known for fifteen.”
Her hands tremble as she slides in front of the wheel and starts the ignition. “I can be there in ten.”
“Me too.”
“Jonathan, what if it’s-” her voice cracks, “-what if it’s not him?”
She barely registers that she left a CD playing in her car as Just My Imagination rings in the silence of the car. The Cranberries, again. “Bury The Hatchet”.
“I don’t know, Jane,” Jonathan whispers, crackling across the speaker, “but I really fucking hope it is.”
And at that, Jane feels the cobwebs in her heart loosen their grip.
“I’ll call when I get there,” she says.
“Please, Jane, please.”
“I will,” she promises.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll- I’ll see you there.” He hangs up.
As Jane pulls out of her parking spot, she dials another number.
“Jane? What’s up?”
“I’m sorry, Rebecca,” Jane hears Shattered starting, “something came up. I can’t make it tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s a bummer. Why?”
“I’m not sure yet,” and she really isn’t. There are two reasons she wouldn’t be able to go, but both depend on whether it’s really, truly Will in an apartment, fifteen minutes away. “Family emergency. I’m sorry.”
“Sure thing. I’ll tell Angela you said hi. I hope you sort everything out.”
“I hope so too. Have a good night.” She hangs up the phone, spots the green light, and goes sixteen over the speed limit.
Jane doesn’t want to believe it, but she finds herself trying to, for the first time in ages. The last she’d heard from her brother, they were twenty-one years old, he was studying for a major in illustration at CalArts, and he was promising he’d visit soon. It’s a leap in the unnatural realism that she instilled in her mind years ago to even begin to think that he’s here now, especially without telling anyone anything prior.
It’s not Will, her brain urges. Will wouldn’t just show up. That’s not who he is.
But Jane used to look for the best in every corner of life. She used to give her coworkers the benefit of the doubt, and once upon a time, she sat up every night waiting for someone to want her. If Jane has changed, and she has, even if only internally, Will easily could’ve as well. For all she knows, he could’ve turned into a deranged serial killer in the four years of radio silence.
But, again, that’s not who Will is, and she finds her heart at war with her mind. Even if he’s changed, it refutes, we know Will. And no matter how much he’s changed, no matter how little he’s spoken to us, he’d always travel across the country just to see us again, no matter what.
She wants to be realistic, but feeling hopeful feels so much better than being right. And it’s a feeling she’s missed for so long. She feels the way it courses through her muscles and makes her feel the most alive she has been in the past six months, and it promises her that it can only get better from there. It has to.
Desperate Andy cuts through the static of the road outside, and she spots the familiar turn into the complex soon after. She pulls into the parking lot, and the anxiety quaking in her is enough to replace her bones with jelly. But as she watches Jonathan park across from her, who crammed an hour-long drive into twenty-five minutes, she feels her resolve steel. He steps out, and they make eye contact. The air says everything, and they say nothing, two minds set on one goal.
They run inside and into the elevator. Jonathan jams his finger on the close door and the fifth-floor buttons. As it rises, they stand shoulder to shoulder, and Jane finds comfort in Jonathan's presence the same way she did when she was fourteen and starting high school. She can tell she’s doing the same for him.
His hair is windswept, his eyes red-rimmed, and he left everything in his car other than both sets of keys, and Jane is in a similar state. She finds that she doesn’t care, not when the elevator pings the arrival at their destination and creaks open. Not when she and Jonathan stumble to apartment 305. Not when Will could be on the other side of the door that her big brother struggles to unlock. She doesn’t care because she’s finally found hope again after so, so long.
And when the door bangs against the wall as they rush in, she doesn’t know why she ever doubted her brother in the first place, why she ever even considered that hope was the most useless thing to cling to. It’s what got her through her toughest moments, and what dragged her to her feet and held her close as she pushed through.
She doesn’t know why she maintained her disbelief, because the man sitting across from Nancy is what finally clears the cobwebs. His hair is different, he’s jittery and flighty, and there are yellowing bruises visible on his chin, but the curve of his nose and the moles scattered across his cheekbones are evidence enough. He spots them, and the hazel in his eyes that begins to gather tears all but confirms it.
Hope is here because hope is Will Byers, and Will Byers is hope, and even though it’s nearing eleven P.M., it feels like the sun is peaking through the clouds after a century of rain.
Tears gather in her eyes, and she and Jonathan rush to his side. She’s in his arms once again, and she hasn’t felt this safe since the airport before he left for California.
“Jane,” he croaks, his deep voice soothing every doubt in her mind. “Jonathan.”
“Will,” they respond.
Jane Eleanor Hopper lost her optimism when she lost her brother, but now that he’s right in front of her, she’s hopeful that she can get it back.