runtowardsomething | (no subject)

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jim hopper

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It's more than a little strange, how everything seems increasingly far away. Perhaps stranger still is that she doesn't seem to be the only one for whom that's the case. Having Eddie here helps on that front, as well as many others — with the two of them here, maybe they can't forget, not entirely — but try as she might to hold onto it, what happened in Derry feels more and more like a dream than anything she actually lived.

A few things, though, stand out as real, and Beverly refuses to let herself lose sight of them. The blood that spurted out from her sink and coated her bathroom. The crack when she'd hit her father in the head, knowing that he would never try to touch her again. Bill's cheek under her hand, sticky from the cut he'd put there. There's a scar now, a jagged little sliver across her palm. She hopes it doesn't fade. If anything could serve as a reminder of that summer and the promise they made to each other, it's that.

Cold as the weather is — a far cry from the summer she remembers leaving behind — she peels off her gloves and sticks them in her jacket pocket, tracing a fingertip across that line on her palm and drawing in a breath before she bends down, picking up a rock by her feet. The park is all but empty at this time of year, apparently, and she's glad for it. Living in a goddamn Children's Home has afforded her next to nothing in the way of privacy, and while it's still several steps up from living at home before here, most of the kids at least a shade nicer than the ones she went to school with, it's nice, relieving, just to have a few moments to herself. At least they let her wander a little, as long as she's back by curfew, which in itself brings with it a few hazy reminders of Derry and missing children.

People still don't seem to give much of a damn when someone up and disappears, but at least there's that.

The surface of the lake is nearly — close, but not quite — frozen, chunks of ice floating, but she gives the rock a hurl anyway, sending it skimming across the surface as best as the weather will allow, smiling a little to herself when she actually gets some distance on it. Then she bends down for another to try again, not yet noticing someone else on the path nearby.

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"Yeah, it really can," Beverly says, brow raising slightly, though she doesn't want to stop and dwell on the ways in which that's proven to be the case. Even if she tried, too much of it might still be too out of reach, and that's not something she wants to confront right now any more than is necessary. Besides, the same applies well enough to Darrow. None of this is anything that should be possible, and yet here they are, and she's sure it's real. There's no way in hell she could ever have imagined anything this elaborate. It's all too strange, too far-fetched, for that.

She offers him a smile as she steps into the diner, a little crooked but warm and genuine all the same. For all that she might not mind the weather, it is something of a relief to be inside, some of the feeling starting to return to her cold fingers. "Well, this place looks pretty normal, at least."

"Better than all those shops that have popped up everywhere," he agrees, gesturing back toward the street where they've come from. Even from right here, on his way to a booth, he can see two, both bearing the same logo.

Coffee had always just seemed like fuel to him, something to drink in the morning so he could get going after he took a few of his pills and then something to drink again in the afternoon when the pills began to catch up with him. But now it's a multi-million dollar business just throwing whipped cream on some sugared up shit.

"You'll adapt better than I do, kid," he predicts. "You're young enough. You'll figure it all out. I'm too old for this."

There are things Beverly can't help but think that she doesn't want to adapt to, but she knows better than to say so. It isn't that she thinks he'd judge her or think less of her for it — and even if she did, she'd have no real reason to care — but rather that she's a hell of a lot better off than she ever was at home. It's worth whatever she has to put up with for that to be the case. She shouldn't complain about the utter lack of privacy or a space of her own when at least she's safe. Teenagers can be fucking awful, but at least there are people whose job it is to look out for the kids under their roof.

She'll take it. She doesn't really have a choice, anyway.

"Too old to get hooked on Sugar Smash?" she asks with a flicker of a teasing smile. "Because I'm pretty sure there are people here who'd tell you there's no such thing."

"What the hell do they know?" he asks, taking out his cigarettes as he moves them toward a booth before remembering, for the tenth time that day, that he's not allowed to smoke inside any of these places. With a grumble, he slides the pack back into his pocket and sits down, slouching against the back of the booth and just letting himself sit for a moment.

It feels weird, not having anything to do here. Hawkins had never been an epicentre of crime, but ever since Will had gone missing, his life had been a pretty glorious clusterfuck and he'd mostly dealt with it pretty well. Darrow is empty in comparison and he sort of hates it.

"You miss your parents?" he asks. "My kid... shit, she'd love it here."

Because, so long as she could keep herself under control, there would be no hiding in Darrow. No need to stay inside with the door locked and the shades drawn.

"No," Beverly answers, a little more quickly, more tightly, than she'd intended. It isn't something she talks about, not even with the rest of the Losers' Club, not even after what they saw. She sure as fuck doesn't plan to do so with a stranger, no matter how nice he might be so far. Even just the one word feels like a slip, though, and her eyes widen a little for it, one hand pushing back through her cropped-short hair.

She's not his anymore. She's not. She doesn't ever have to be again. It's just harder than it ought to be to remind herself of that sometimes.

Her expression quickly turning a little sheepish, apologetic, as if that can erase what she's sure must have been a moment of weirdness, she shrugs. "There wasn't... a whole lot for me back there," she says, as if that's an explanation, though it doesn't actually have anything to do with the question of her parents, and she half-suspects he'll know it. "What's she like, your daughter?"

It says something, although Hopper doesn't want to stop and examine it long enough to figure out what it says, that when she asks, he thinks of Eleven first and Sara second. For a moment he tries to reason with himself, to push away the guilt. Sara died, he doesn't know what she would be like now, the teenager she would have turned into. It would hurt too much to answer it as if she were still alive anyway. He used to do it, used to pretend she was still around, just living somewhere else with her mother, but he can't now.

It's time to live in the present.

"She's a weirdo," he says with a grin. "Scary smart, stubborn as hell and she's got a mean streak, but I think she learned that from me. She's also the most honest kid I've ever known and loyal to a damn fault. She'd do anything for her friends. For me."

His smile fades a little and he shakes his head. "I know I've disappointed her a hell of a lot recently. It'd be nice to see her again. Tell her I didn't mean it."

It hurts a little to hear, a bittersweet sort of ache deep in her chest. Some people are just good liars, she knows, but it isn't hard to tell that he means this; he'd have no reason to tell her, a stranger, as much otherwise. All of this — the look on his face, the way he talks about his daughter — must be genuine, then, and it's impossible for her to imagine being on the receiving end of that. She'd take disappointments and apologies over what she got instead in a fucking heartbeat. Having neither the first idea how nor any desire to talk about that, though, Beverly smiles instead, a little wistful.

"Sounds kinda like she'd have gotten along with my friends from home," she says, thumb tapping absently against the tabletop. "And... Obviously I don't know her, or you, really, but if you can say that at all, then I think she probably knows. At least on some level."

"Yeah," he says. "I hope so."

Eleven is smart. Smarter than he's ever been and he figures some people might attribute that to the experiments done on her, to the drugs they'd given her mother, but he knows that's not the case. She was always going to be smart, it's just that the experiments made her different. Made her lonely.

"So your folks weren't much to write home about, huh?" he asks. She can keep it to herself if she wants, but the way she's said it, so quick to say she doesn't miss them, it's not a difficult thing to guess. Not much of a stretch at all, he figures, to assume they weren't all that present for her. It annoys him, though he tries not to let it show. He lost his kid, lost every last bit of her, watched her disappear before his very eyes, watched her die and he would give anything to have just one more moment with her.

Meanwhile someone out there -- two someones -- treated this kid bad enough that she doesn't even miss them.

Beverly half-wishes he hadn't asked, half-wishes she hadn't said anything. It would have been easy enough to pretend, to act like any other kid who's probably grateful for some semblance of freedom while missing home more than they'd want to admit. She can't take it back now, though, and there's every chance she wouldn't have actually been able to say it. If she tried to backtrack now, the words would just die in her throat. She's fucking glad to be away from there, whatever the cost. Saying so, though, has never been worth it, not with the likelihood that no one would believe her, not with the sort of things people used to say about her, not with the consequences she might face for doing so.

Even before kids started going missing and an evil fucking clown started terrorizing them, she hadn't felt safe in a long time.

"Yeah, that's putting it nicely," she says, figuring she might as well be that honest now that she's started. She smiles wryly, though, albeit self-consciously, as she speaks, an attempt at downplaying the weight of it. "It sounds like she's pretty lucky, your daughter. My dad definitely wouldn't have cared if he disappointed me, whether he meant it or not." Disappointment doesn't begin to cover it.

Hopper knows he's not always a great dad. He knows he yells when he gets scared and he knows he didn't always appreciate his time with Sara when he had it. He knows there were moments when his kid -- both of them, he understands, looking back now -- had hated him a little and he knows he probably deserved it.

But he also likes to think that if Eleven was here on her own or if someone could find wherever Sara is now and ask her, they'd both say they miss him. That they'd like to go home.

"I'm sorry, kid," he says. "That's shitty."

Because he's been a cop for long enough that he knows disappointment isn't the worst of it. Hawkins might not have had much in the way of crime, but working in New York for those few years had given him enough nightmare fodder for the rest of his damn life.

Beverly shrugs, a short, contained movement, because he's not wrong, and because she has no idea how to say so, never mind to admit just how true it is. It's always been easier not to talk about it, and it shouldn't matter now anyway. She's a long, long way from Derry and her father and everything that happened there. Hell, she hardly knows now how they wound up on this subject in the first place, or at least why they've stayed on it.

Still, she means what she said. His daughter is lucky to have a parent who evidently seems to care so much, who would have no reason to be saying things like this to her if he didn't mean them, who would probably never intentionally hurt her.

"At least he's not here," she replies, still not entirely sure why she's telling him any of this at all, however vague any statements might be. "I guess if I have to be stuck in some weird future alternate universe and living in a home with a whole bunch of other kids, there's that."

Kids hate their parents all the time. That's pretty much a fact of life, that's what Hopper figures. He hated his dad with something bordering on regularity, he'd hated his mom a few times, too, but there's a big difference between hating your parents some of the time and being genuinely glad they're not around.

Even the angriest of kids would miss their parents in a situation like this if their parents weren't complete crap.

"Yeah, so who's keeping an eye on you now?" he asks with a little smirk, watching to see her reaction. A home can't be the best for that sort of thing, there are way too many kids for them to look after and as long as they're all in their beds when they're supposed to be, that's what he figures the staff would consider a win.

"What, like, specifically?" Beverly asks, letting herself sound a little amused, mostly just relieved that he doesn't press the subject. If he asked just why she's pleased to be away from home, she doesn't know what she would say, how she would manage to deflect. There's certainly no pretending it's nothing, not with what she's said already, but she's not about to tell him the truth, either. She's never actually put it into words before, never acknowledged it verbally. Now, with some guy she barely knows, whom she's only just met, doesn't seem like the time. Besides, what difference would it make? She's here, her father is back there, and that's all there really is to it.

She shrugs. "There are a few people who look after the teenagers," she says, just a hint of disdain in her voice, though she still speaks lightly. "But no one has, like, one caretaker of their own or anything."

Hopper nods, but doesn't say anything else, having already made the decision that he's going to be the one looking out for her. It doesn't have to be a thing like it was with Eleven, he doesn't have to rescue her from the cold, from the hunger, from being kind of an idiot and nearly getting herself caught by those lab assholes over and over, but he can still check in on her.

He's a cop, after all. He can get a job here, he can get another badge and use it to make sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing when it comes to her. And the other kids in the home, too, of course, but he's never met any of the other kids in the home. Beverly's the first one to have put a face on the whole venture.

"So what do they do?" he asks. "Make sure you put enough food in your mouth and go to school?" They probably don't help with homework. Sure as hell don't tuck them in at night or tell them to be careful. They probably don't even ask where they've been.

"Pretty much," Beverly says, and shrugs. "Make sure we're in bed by curfew, and don't try to sneak anyone in, or whatever." She's seen a couple of girls do exactly that anyway, but she's hardly about to judge them for it. As long as she doesn't have to hear whatever it is they're getting up to, it's none of her business, and it's not like she doesn't do her share of things she shouldn't, going out to smoke among them. Then again, she'd much rather be caught with a pack of cigarettes than a boy in her room, but she doubts there's much chance of the latter happening anytime soon. Some things, it's hard to find herself particularly interested in yet, even if she sometimes traces the scar along her palm and thinks of Bill. "They're... I mean, at least they give a shit, but I think it's pretty clearly just a job, at least for most of them."

It's unnecessary, too. She hasn't needed anyone hovering over her like this in a long time; she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Explaining that to them, though, would likely make no difference whatsoever. Especially with people showing up from all sorts of different places and times, they've probably heard it plenty of times already.

She's too young to be sneaking anyone into her room. That's Hopper's first thought. His second is that she really isn't. She's probably thirteen or fourteen and Hopper knows he'd been chasing after girls at that age. It had never really amounted to much, not for another year or so, and she's not much older than Eleven so he really doesn't want to think about that, but he'd always promised himself he wouldn't be that sort of dad with Sara. He'd never wanted her to feel like she couldn't talk to him about something because he would be too angry.

Hopper knows he had a temper, but having Sara had calmed it. It's a struggle to find that calm again these days, but he knows he has to do better.

"You seem too smart to try and sneak anyone in," he says instead of telling her not to do it. She'll do whatever she wants, he's got that sense, but it'll probably be worse with someone telling her not to. "I guess I'm technically not a cop here, but if you need anything and they're not doing things right, you come find me. Deal?"

It isn't just for any amount of common sense that Beverly has no interest in trying to sneak a boy into her room. The thought alone is an unsettling one, at least now. Maybe one day, it won't be; maybe one day, she'll be as interested as some of the other girls are in seeing how far she can get with whatever boy she happens to be interested in at the time. Contrary to the rumors that used to follow her around, though, that's nothing she's looking for right now. A good-bye kiss, soft and sweet, was one thing. Letting someone touch her is a different matter entirely.

She can't tell him that, though, not without it likely raising questions, given what she's said already. Instead, she focuses on the rest of what he's said, wondering why he's offering such a thing in the first place. It's a nice gesture, and he seems like a nice guy, but it's not exactly something she can imagine anyone back home doing. Besides, she's just some girl, no one to whom he owes anything. He means it, though, or he seems to, and maybe that's enough.

"Yeah, okay," she says, one corner of her mouth lifting just slightly. "I can do that."

Hopper nods and says, "And in return, you can show my kid around if she ever shows up here. She's gonna need some help."

Truthfully, he's not sure what Eleven might do without Mike. She's a smart kid and she's independent and fierce. She'd made it a year without him, but Hopper knows she had been waiting for the day she she was able to see him again. Sometimes it had seemed it was the only thing she was living for, the only thing he had to offer her was the possibility of being with her friends again.

Without Mike, she'll need someone. Hopper won't be able to help her the same way another kid can and it might do her some good to spend some time with another girl.

"Of course," Beverly says, that much, at least, coming easily. Her track record with other teenage girls may not be the greatest, but there are a few here who aren't so bad, and the way he talks about his daughter, she'd guess the same would apply there. Besides, she's already dealt with adjusting to this place herself and knows how difficult it can be, even with someone from home here. Hell, that much is probably the same anywhere. Ben was the perpetual new kid — she wouldn't have even known his name had she not run into him that day, though she barely remembers now how that happened, only that it did — and that was in a town as small as Derry, with far less to see than there is in Darrow.

She pauses a moment, then adds, "I hope she does. Show up. For your sake. It sounds like you really care about her." Maybe it should go without saying, where a parent and a child are concerned, but that's never been her experience. Besides, given what he said before, she kind of wonders if maybe it might help to hear it.

He really does and realizing that had been scary at first. Caring about her meant she could hurt him. Not intentionally, but if he ever lost her the way he'd lost Sara, Hopper doesn't know if he could survive that. Sara's death had nearly killed him, but to lose two children would have ultimately been the end of him.

It doesn't matter that he's not Eleven's biological father, it would still kill him.

"I can't even say I wish she'd show up," he says with a faint smile. "I want to see her again, but this place isn't exactly bursting with opportunity." And he wants a better life for her than a place like this can give.

"Yeah, you've got a point there," Beverly replies, her smile small and wry. She can't say she minds that entirely, mostly because it's still got far more opportunity than Derry ever did, and for all the weird shit she's heard about happening, it all seems to pale in comparison to what she remembers about that last summer. It may be hazy now, occasional details coming back in bits and pieces, but she's pretty sure that if she could survive that — and if she could survive thirteen years living with her father — then she can probably make it through just about anything this place has to throw at her.

In its own way, it seems almost painfully nice, that he wouldn't want his daughter to show up for her sake, regardless of the fact that it means he might never see her again. She wants to say that, but it seems too revealing in its way, giving away too much of what she means to try to keep to herself.

"I barely ever get to do anything. But I guess that comes with the territory, having people watch you all the time or whatever."

"What would you want to do?" he asks. "If you could."

Even now, if someone asked him that question, Hopper isn't sure he would be able to come up with an answer. Within the confines of Darrow, there's not much that interests him, which is a little dangerous. The last time he was bored -- and depressed, he has to acknowledge that -- he'd spent a lot of his time drinking and taking pills just to make sure he could get through a day. It's Eleven that changed that in him and while he still likes a beer with his dinner, the pills never found a foothold in that little cabin they'd shared. It's not something he wants to go back to, even if it would be an easy way to alleviate the boredom.

What he needs is a damn job. What he needs is to go down to the police department and lay out his credentials and see where it gets him in a place like this where he can't actually prove anything. If he has to retake some kind of exam, he thinks he could pass, but he'd be more concerned about a physical test.

"I don't know," Beverly says, shoulders lifting in a shrug. It's not really something she's given a lot of thought to where specifics are involved; mostly, it's just hard to go from very little supervision to nearly constant, so that she couldn't do anything now even if she wanted to. Oh, there are times like this, when she gets to wander without anyone looking over her shoulder, but for the most part, however much of an improvement this may be over her last circumstances, she can't pretend that it isn't somewhat stifling. Though she'd take this over that, without question, knows that, in a lot of ways, she's gotten lucky here, it would be nice if there were a little more of the world available than this. "But something. More than having to tell someone where I'm going every second of every day."

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