something_incredible | (no subject)

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lucy

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Apparently in 2018, it's impossible to find anywhere that allows you to smoke inside. He could quit, like half the people he meets these days suggests he do, but Hopper doesn't really like the idea of giving up the one thing that's still familiar to him in this weird city.

He's not even a cop anymore. He could be. At least, he's pretty sure he could be, but this place seems to fall somewhere between New York and Hawkins when it comes to the level of crime he'd be facing and Hopper honestly isn't sure if he's ready to take a step back in New York's direction. Hawkins had been weird in recent years, yeah, but somehow facing down a bunch of monsters with heads full of teeth where their faces should be just doesn't seem as daunting as returning to cases of assault and murder and rape and abuse.

Shit like that's exhausting. New York had just about wrung every last little bit of good out of him and he can think of a lot better things to do with his time than going back to being a cop.

Like smoking. And drinking. And maybe taking a few pills to ease the pain. He hasn't, not yet, but he thinks about it every day. The only thing that keeps him from going back there right now is the thought that Eleven might show up here someday and he'd hate for her to see him like that, his eyes glazed over, just this side of high on whatever pain pills he was able to find. It had been fucked up before, but at least before there hadn't been a kid to worry about. The fact that there hadn't been was what took him to the pills in the first place, but now there is again. There's Eleven.

Maybe some other kids, too.

So right now he's huddled outside a bar, the collar of his Hawkins PD coat turned up against the cold wind, smoking the last cigarette in the pack he'd bought the day before. He's going through them too fast, but there's not much else here to distract him.

Another beer maybe. It's probably too early to get drunk, but just one more won't kill him. He takes one last drag from his cigarette before crushing it against the heel of his boot, then turns back toward the bar and nearly walks straight into someone.

"Shit, sorry," he says, lifting his hand to her shoulder to steady her.

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Lucy's got a few books bundled under one arm and a coffee in the other. It's been a productive day spent in her office at the university and then in the library. After finishing grading a slew of exams, she'd gone to the library to pick up a few books she'd been meaning to read and now she's heading home.

She's taking a sip of the coffee when someone seems to just appear in front of her, causing her to startle and stumble. Coffee spills slightly down the front of her jacket but she keeps her feet and her books mostly due to his hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay," she says automatically, trying to brush the coffee off her jacket with the fingers of the hand she has around her coffee cup. "It's okay. I'm fine."

She looks up, notices the jacket and though she knows Hawkins PD doesn't mean he's joined Darrow's force, she still says, "No harm done, Officer. I wasn't paying attention."

"Shit," he says again when he realizes he's knocked coffee all down the front of her jacket and he reaches into the pocket of his jacket for a napkin or a tissue, something he can offer to her so he doesn't come across like a complete jerk. Having a kid around him so often in Hawkins means there's actually a handful of napkins stuffed into one of the pockets and he grabs at them in some relief, holding the wad out toward her, feeling like a damn fool at the same time.

Half the people he's met in this city are children and teenagers, this seems to be the first time he's run into someone close to his own age and of course he's spilled coffee down her front.

"They don't let you smoke inside anymore," he explains, gesturing at the bar as if that will make sense of the fact that he's just walked into her.

"It's okay," Lucy says, trying to reassure him. "This is not the first time I've spilled coffee on myself and it won't be the last. It's okay, really. I appreciate that you kept me on my feet more than a little coffee on my jacket."

Lucy tugs at her collar, presses her scarf to the liquid to dampen it and then sighs before smiling at him. "And you must be from quite the different time for that to be surprising. They haven't allowed that in my time for a long, long time."

Just from looking at him, she can't guess from what time he might be from. She doesn't think it's too long ago just by the jacket but maybe that's something he's picked up since arriving. "At least it's not snowing today. Cold but not as cold as it's been here."

"1984," Hopper answers, knowing it's more than three decades before the time he's found himself in now. Most of the time he tries not to think about it, knowing if he does, he's not going to be able to stop. So many thing are different, enough to overwhelm him, and he has enough to think about with adding technology and all the shit he doesn't know to the pile.

He almost gives an awkward pat at the front of her jacket with the napkins before he realizes what he'd be doing and stops himself with his hand outstretched. He's been around kids for too damn long, it's like he's forgotten how to interact with actual adults.

"I'm Jim," he says. "Can I buy you a replacement coffee?"

"Lucy," she says, offering her hand and then nodding in answer to his question. "And that would be wonderful, sure."

Lucy glances back, eyes falling on the bar that he'd been standing outside of and nods at it.

"Unless I'm taking you away from something? A coffee can wait if you have some troubles to wile away? I've gotten pretty good at that myself but I tend to use wine. The only reason I was going with coffee right now is that I need to stay awake tonight. Wine will put me right to sleep and make me the prototypical lightweight."

"No," he says with a shake of his head. It's better if he gets away from the bar, if he doesn't just end up drinking himself into another stupor. When Eleven had been around, it had been so easy to just not drink like he'd been before, to just toss the pills in the toilet and forget about them. Everything had been a hell of a lot easier with her around. Except, of course, dealing with her.

Now he's on his own and drinking seems like the only thing he can think to do.

"No, it's okay. The troubles will still be here later," he says, then smiles a little. "I can forget 'em for awhile with a cup of coffee. So why is it you need to stay awake tonight?"

"Grading," Lucy says and rolls her eyes. "College students like to tout how smart they are but some of their exams are...less than good. If I get too frustrated, I'll just toss them aside and go to sleep and I can't do that. I need to get them done or I'll never do it so I've set that as a goal for tonight."

She's not sure if she can hold true to it though. Most of her students are exceptionally well spoken but there are some who are...not great test takers. She's not sure what she's doing to do if she sees 'George Washington' as an answer because it's easy to write when you don't know the true answer.

"So, coffee. I figure it's better to prepare now than to wait till I'm home and I can use coffee as an excuse to not grade."

"You're a teacher," he says with a smile, turning in the direction of the nearest coffee shop. It hadn't taken him long to learn the bars and the coffee shops, but he prefers the places that serve simple options, not the ones that have thirty six different kinds of coffee with flavours he's never even considered until this place.

"Sorry, a professor," he corrects himself. "Must have a lot of patience."

Even just dealing with one kid has been tough for him at times, but what he wouldn't do to get Eleven here with him. It's not even that she has abilities other kids don't, because Sara had certainly been frustrating, too.

"Some days are better than others," Lucy says dryly. "Sometimes, I think they're the smartest bunch I've ever taught and sometimes I want to beat my head against a wall when I see people mix up the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It happens more often than you'd think."

Thankfully, it was maybe one or two students per semester and it was always just a dumb mistake. Once they were corrected, they were pretty embarrassed.

"But, I would think an officer of the law would have to have the same level of patience," Lucy says, nodding to his jacket. "You have to see a lot of bad things and stupid things too."

That's something he can't deny and he grins faintly and nods as they walk. It's true he's seen a lot of shit as a cop, but right now he's not much of anything and he's still not sure if that's for the best or not. It's only been two weeks since he got here and he feels like finding a job means he's accepting he's not going to leave and Hopper isn't ready for that.

Looking at Lucy, he says, "Yeah, it takes some doing sometimes. I haven't gone back to it since I got here and... are you one of those people who are from this place?"

He's only met one or two so far, mostly he's been keeping to himself.

"Oh no. No, I'm not from here," Lucy says immediately, shaking her head. "No. I got here maybe half a year ago? It seems like it's been longer but I don't think it has. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be from here."

How did you make sense of not being able to leave? Not everyone went on vacations, sure, but people had to suspicious when it came being able to drive to one specific place and going no further. How did people not question that? How did it not cause questions to be asked?

"No, I'm from the United States at around present day as far as I can ascertain," Lucy says. "I know most of the technology here well enough."

That's something of a relief, although Hopper doesn't know why. Most of the people from Darrow have been nice enough, they've just been kind of off. Strange in a way he just can't get comfortable with and that's saying something, given the past year and a half he's had.

"Does it get any less weird?" he asks, finally pulling open the door of a coffee shop. It's a quiet place, they don't seem to do as much business as the bustling shops he sees on every corner, but he likes this one better. Understands it more. "So far it hasn't gotten any less weird for me, but then this..." He pauses and pulls out his cell phone, although he's pretty sure the battery is dead. "This doesn't make any sense to me."

"It...doesn't," Lucy says which she knows is probably not helpful. While she doesn't have it as bad as he does considering she knows what a cell phone is and isn't confused by certain appliances or other gadgets, the fact that this place exists in the first place is confusing and unsettling.

"It gets easier though," she says, trying to be reassuring. "You'll learn what that is and this place is full of helpful people who will want to help you. That thing you're holding is just a handy way to call someone so you're not stuck waiting at home. It's convenient even if it can get...addictive."

"I don't think there's anyone I want to talk to that badly," he admits with a grin, then shoves the phone back into his pocket as he gestures for Lucy to pick a table. It's not as convenient as the other coffee places, but he likes that it's slower. More his speed, he thinks.

He can see how it would help with a kid, though, how it would be better to keep an eye on someone like Eleven. How it would have been better to call her whenever he was going to be late. Maybe he would have disappointed her less.

"I got a kid back home," he says, rubbing his chin as a waitress comes over. Of course he'd say it as soon as they're about to be interrupted. It keeps it from being too serious. "I keep thinking about her."

"Oh?" Now that has to be a difficult situation to be in, stuck in a city that you can't leave when you have a child. She's been having a difficult enough time with just knowing her sister and mother are back home. She doesn't know what she'd be feeling if her child was back home. What the heck does a parent do when something like that happens?

"How old is she?" Lucy asks, thinking too late that that might be a little too much information for someone that this man doesn't really know. "That must be hard, to be away from her. Unfortunately, not even a cell phone would help you in that situation. I've tried to call people back home and it does nothing but ring busy."

Hopper just asks for two coffees of the waitress when she comes to where they're sitting and she nods in response, going to get that for them and leaving a menu behind. Given that he's just been drinking -- not drunk, thank god for small favours, he thinks -- he's not in the mood for anything, but he pushes it toward Lucy in case she's interested.

"Thirteen," he says with a faint smile. Sara would be fourteen now if she'd lived, just a year older than Eleven. He thinks about that lot. More than he should, probably. "Her name's Jane. Her mother died a long time ago."

The lie is a hell of a lot easier to tell someone he's only just met than it had been to tell Eleven.

"Ah, single father," Lucy says carefully, quietly. "That has to be difficult especially for you now that you're...here."

No matter what people have told her about how she is still, somehow, back home, hasn't left, she can't help but think she's missing out on the opportunity to get her sister back or to spend more time with her mother. She's stuck in a city where she can do nothing for no one back home.

"I'm sure you miss her," Lucy remarks, tapping a finger against the table and smiling lightly. "That's one thing I really hate about this place, not being able to communicate with anyone back home. Not to even tell them you're alive."

"I do," he says, not quite looking at Lucy as he says it. It's still so damn weird sometimes, thinking about the world he's found himself in again, the things he never imagined he would be doing, not since Sara died. He hadn't wanted it. There hadn't been any real relationships since Diana left him because he didn't want them, because they just fell apart and people got hurt or they died and it was his fault. Somehow it came back to that.

But he hadn't had a choice with Eleven. He couldn't just leave her out there to fend for herself, not with the lab trying to find her, not with the things he knew they would do to her. He'd needed to keep her safe and now he misses her.

"Do you have a family?" he asks. "Kids?" Easier to deflect in that way a little, maybe find some way to commiserate instead of making it all about him.

"Oh no. No no no no," Lucy says with a laugh. She tries to imagine herself with kids, with people that she's in charge of and shakes her head, laughing again. "No, no children. I have a sister but my family is relatively small. My mother has lung cancer so in between teaching, I spend time taking care of her."

Lucy doesn't mention that her mother's not sick anymore but it's not because of cancer treatments. It's because time is wrong, off. Amy is gone, her mother's okay and she has no idea what to do to fix everything.

"I suppose I count my students as temporary children," Lucy remarks idly. "They're my kids for a few hours a day and then I send them home and I'm happier for it."

There's something about the way she so adamantly refuses the idea of having kids that makes Hopper grin. At one point in his life, he knows he'd been like that, too, he knows if any of the friends he'd made during the war had asked if he wanted children, he would have answered almost exactly like that. No. No no no. And he would have meant it, too, would have meant it with all his heart.

But everything had changed when he'd met Diane, even if he didn't actually know it until she was pregnant. There had been so much fear associated with that news, but at the same time he'd felt something change inside of him. He'd loved Sara long before she was ever born.

"I'm sorry about your mother," he says. "That's a lot of work, taking care of someone who's sick."

"I had help. Amy, my sister, we worked together to make sure she was as comfortable as she could," Lucy says, heart twisting once again. It was amazing to have her mother back on her feet, healthy and whole, but at the cost of her sister? At the cost of someone she loved so dearly, who had kept her sane and together, when all she'd wanted to do was fall apart?

It was her fault that Amy was gone in the first place and not being able to get her back is killing her. But, the guilt she feels at wanting that, at wanting her mother to go back to being sick is festering as well.

"I don't want to say you get used to anything like that because it sounds...cruel," Lucy says, frowning, "but it's true. We worked out a system and we still were able to live individual lives. I would make the same choice again if I had to."

It comes up all at once, everything about Sara, everything he and Diane had to do, the way they had done something similar, the way they'd worked out schedules to make sure someone was always at the hospital with their daughter. People in Hawkins knew, not because he'd told all of them, but because he'd told one or two and Hawkins was a small town and people liked to talk. It's still not something he talks about very often. He'd barely even told Eleven about Sara and he knows that's a mistake, but it's one he can't rectify right now.

He shouldn't say it now either, but for the first time in his life, he's sitting down with someone who's saying things he's been through, things he understands deeply. The sorts of things people only understand when they've been through the same thing.

"Jane," he says, looking down at the table top, at his coffee, at the blue braided hairband around his wrist. "She's adopted. I was never with her mother, but I used to be married. We had a daughter, too, her name was Sara. When she... I mean, I know what you're saying. We worked out schedules to make sure someone was always with her when she was in the hospital and it became almost... normal. For awhile."

There's instant sympathy, instant softening in her face, in her posture. It's not pity because she doesn't want anyone aiming that at her so she makes it a point not to direct it anyone else. It's compassion and empathy, the knowledge that only people with a sick family member understand. It doesn't matter the sickness, it only matters that when something like that happens to someone you're close with, you do whatever yo have to do to make it work, to make them your priority.

"You do what you have to do and you make it work," Lucy says, nodding. "It's never easy but it becomes normal, like you said. You put your own feelings into a box and just focus on what needs to be done. If they need to be cleaned up today, if they need another pillow because they look uncomfortable, if the light's too much, if the temperature's right. Small things that you and I would take for granted for ourselves but not for them."

That's exactly what it is. Everything went into a box until Sara died and it stayed there and it let him care for her in all the hardest moments, even if he knew he couldn't carry the burden for her. Hopper knows he's not always the best man, wasn't the best husband, wasn't even the best father a lot of the time, but when she had been sick, she'd been his priority. The only thing he cared about.

Maybe that's why he'd lost Diane, too.

Nodding, Hopper smiles faintly, a twisted expression, and says, "And sometimes things stay in the box even after everything's done." He'd cried for Sara, held himself, curled into a ball and cried, but even after the grief had run dry, he had hurt. And so he had medicated himself with pills and with alcohol.

"I haven't had to...face that yet when it comes to my mother." And she's been refusing to face it when it comes to Amy. She can get Amy back. She doesn't know how she's going to be able to fix time but she will make it her priority for the rest of her life. Flynn Garcia and Rittenhouse are dangerous but they are not Amy.

She needs Amy back for her own sanity.

"But, I've prepared for it," she adds after some thought. "And you're right. Sometimes the only way to...keep going is to put things like that in a box never to open them save for every once in awhile. Grief is debilitating. If you don't want it to sink you, you do what you have to do."