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For two days now, he's been chain-smoking Beverly's cigarettes.

He hadn't meant to go through her stuff, but she hadn't woken up that first morning and after the paramedics had come to check her out, then told Hopper this shit was completely normal, he'd found himself digging through her bag on the hunt for her phone. At the time, he'd wanted to call her friends, he'd wanted them to know, but then he'd found her cigarettes instead and rather than being angry, he'd set to work methodically smoking them one by one.

A nurse had stopped by on the first evening to check Beverly's vitals, to make sure she wasn't dehydrated and she, too, had insisted everything was just fine. She'd given him a short lecture about smoking around Beverly and when he had tersely answered they were his daughter's cigarettes, the nurse had sniffed in annoyance and left abruptly.

The nurse who had come in the next morning had been nicer. Prettier, too. Hopper has plans to see her next weekend.

None of that is important right now, though. If Beverly doesn't wake up by next weekend, he sure as hell won't be going out on any dates. He'll be planted right here, same spot he's been for the past two days, smoking and drinking coffee and forgetting to eat. There's two days worth of stubble on his cheeks and dark circles under his eyes and every time he looks at Beverly lying there with an IV drip in her arm to keep her hydrated, he experiences the same gut clenching fear he had when Sara had finally slipped into unconsciousness.

This can't happen again. It can't happen again.

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"Hey, hey, c'mon, it's okay," he says again and he knows they're just words, he knows he can't even begin to understand what Beverly is thinking right now when none of this makes sense, but all he wants is to comfort her if he can. When she hugs him, Hopper wraps his arms around her, holding her tight, murmuring what he hopes are soothing words, even if they don't all make sense. He rubs her back between her shoulder blades and holds on, maybe even taking as much comfort as he's giving.

It had scared the shit out of him, seeing her like that. So still, so quiet. So unlike the vibrant girl he's come to love so damn much. He'd been so scared that black hole had come to take another person from him and even though that friend of hers had said it was happening to a bunch of kids at the Home, Beverly's the only one he'd been thinking about.

"C'mon, you want me to get that out?" he asks after a few quiet moments, putting his hand gently on where the needle is taped to her skin. The nurse -- the pretty one -- had explained to him how to get it out properly and without hurting her, although at the time Hopper hadn't been convinced it would be necessary, he had still been too worried she would stay like that, pale and sleeping.

Even if everything still feels extremely far from okay, it's easy to let herself almost believe him like this. At least it's closer to it than it has been in weeks, if only for the simple fact that she's here. Thinking so makes Beverly suddenly worry about the others, Eddie and Jamie and the rest who'd still been there before she so abruptly woke up, but she's tired and confused, and she just wants to have this security for a moment. For so many years, she never let herself think much about what she didn't have, because there was no sense in longing for something that would always be out of reach. The home she was born into was the one she was stuck with. It's only since being in Darrow, in the year or so since she moved out of the Home, or maybe when she first started spending nights here, that she's let herself wish she could always have had a father like him, his arms around her comforting rather than threatening like what she's used to.

Over and over, she caught herself thinking, while in Regan's world and home, about the utter strangeness of actually having a life here it hurt to leave behind. That was never the case back in Derry, and she's sure it never would have been.

"Yeah," she says, nodding, when he offers to take her IV out, holding her arm out for him to do so. She's still not sure why it's there or where it came from, but she doesn't want it there if it doesn't have to be. "Thanks. I don't..." Her head still feels a little fuzzy, like she's not fully awake, which seems kind of strange in its own right. "Why's it there?"

No one who looks at Hopper or listens to him speak would think he's capable of being gentle, but as he follows the instructions the nurse gave him to take the IV from Beverly's arm, he's careful and slow and he hopes it doesn't hurt when he draws the needle out and then presses some gauze down to prevent it from bleeding or bruising. He'll never be a nurse himself, but he has a lot of experience from Sara, and he thinks he does a pretty halfway decent job of not hurting Beverly.

"You were asleep," he says. "You and a bunch of kids from the Home. Your friend Stan came by to check on you and told me a bunch of the others were all unconscious, too. The doctors kept saying it was normal, that it happens sometimes in Darrow and all we could do was keep you hydrated and wait until you woke up. It's been a couple days, but shit, kid, I was freaking out a little bit."

More than a little bit. He hasn't shaved, he hasn't slept, he barely remembered to eat anything. All that is evident in his face, in the circles under his eyes and the thickness of the stubble creeping up his cheeks and down his neck.

Beverly holds still as he slips the needle out of her arm, pointedly not looking at the place where he presses gauze down. It stings just a little, but not nearly as much as it could, something for which she would probably be grateful if she weren't still so confused. Everything he says only heightens that rather than offering clarity, and she shakes her head even before he finishes speaking. It's a bad idea, as it turns out, when she feels unsteady and a little woozy, but aside from the fact that she's here and was hooked up to an IV when she woke up and has no reason to believe he would lie to her, none of that sounds right. She couldn't have just been here and unconscious for a couple days. What she experienced was too long and too elaborate to be a dream, and anyway, she knows what her nightmares are like. This isn't it.

"A couple days?" she echoes, confused. "No, it's been, like, two weeks. I woke up, and I was somewhere else, this other world. A bunch of us were, me and Eddie and Jamie—" She can't say Richie's name; it gets stuck in her throat. It isn't that there are more important things, because there aren't, and because she does need to tell Hopper that her friend died, but there's more that the moment calls for. When she's still tired and disoriented and so fucking relieved, she feels entirely too vulnerable, her composure flimsy at best, but it's been ages. At least she's not the only one, she thinks. If the way he looks is any indication, he really was freaking out a little, something she can't help feeling a little guilty for now, though she had no control over any of it.

Her teeth press hard against her lower lip. "I didn't think I'd ever be back here."

"I know, kid," he says, then puts his arms around her again. She's bigger than Sara ever got, but it feels like instinct, the way he leans back against the headboard and pulls Beverly with him, letting her rest against his chest. She's bigger than Sara, but still a kid, still his kid, and it turns out these sorts of things don't get lost just because you don't get a chance to do them for awhile.

"I talked to a doctor, a couple of nurses, apparently this stuff happens here," he explains. "People go to sleep for a couple days, but in that time they go into this... Christ, I dunno if it's a dream or if it's actually that you go somewhere with other people. I think everyone here wants to call it some messed up shared dream situation, but..."

He trails off and shrugs. The way things happened with Will, Hopper doesn't think things are that simple. He'd been somewhere else every time he'd gone into that trance, Hopper doesn't doubt that at all.

For most of her life, Beverly hasn't let herself rely on physical comfort, mostly because there was so rarely any to be had. These past few days, she hasn't acknowledged needing support of any kind, too accustomed to dealing with this shit on her own. When things have been so fucked up for so long, though, and when she really had thought that she'd lost the life she had here, she can admit, if only to herself, how good it feels to be held. Just minutes ago, at least from her perspective, she was fighting a monster in a different world. It wasn't the worst thing she'd ever faced, but it came close, particularly after the loss of one of her best friends.

All of that feels closer to the surface now, hard as she's tried to keep it buried, to push forward. She couldn't afford to let herself break down then. She still doesn't want to now, but she feels raw and exhausted, and she at least knows, without question, that Hopper will be there for her no matter what. He's apparently been with her all this time, and the thought of that doesn't freak her out like it would have with anyone else.

"I don't think it was a dream," she says, as much to herself as to him, shaking her head a little. She thinks again that she knows what her nightmares feel like. Despite the death and the danger, this wasn't it. "I think... Maybe it's more like... When you show up here, and people say that you're still at home, too. You don't leave, but you're also somewhere else." It wasn't a dream. It wasn't imagined. Days' worth of grief couldn't be just in her head. "This place was even more fucked up than home was."

Hopper doesn't know how any of it works. He doesn't know how it's possible that they're here and still back home, but he's been here long enough and talked to enough people to figure out it's somehow true. And he believes what Beverly is saying now, that she was somewhere else, that all her friends were there, too. It lines up with what Stan had told him, all the others being asleep back at the Home.

"Where were you?" he asks. "You, uh... you wanna tell me about it?"

If this place they went was even more fucked up than Derry, which Hopper has come to think of as being more fucked up than Hawkins, he has to figure there was something really wrong there. Something she's still processing maybe. Something it might help to just get out in the open so it's not festering inside of her.

Beverly sort of hates that her first instinct is not to talk about it. Under the circumstances, she thinks it also makes sense. Just the conversation they've had this morning is the most she's spoken in days, and though she's spent far more time in Darrow than she did in that fucked up world, it's hard to shake the instinctive sense of nervousness that comes with that. There's a part of her, too, that feels like talking about it will make it real somehow. That's not how it works, but once she puts something into words, she can't take it back. Once she tells him, she's not carrying it on her own anymore, like it feels like she's been doing despite having been around plenty of other people who lost someone, too. In a way, she thinks that's why it has felt like that. She couldn't ask anyone else to share the burden of her grief and fear when they had their own to deal with.

But Hopper's here and he's asking, and she feels so, so tired under the weight of what she's been carrying around, as if it's only just caught up to her now that she's gotten some space from it. She can't just not tell him about something as big as this, anyway. As much as she wishes she could act like she's completely fine and all of this has been no big deal, she knows she can't.

"It's where Regan is from," she says, quiet and a little uneasy. "We were with her family. The world for them... It was invaded by these monsters, I guess. They were big, and fast, and they couldn't see but they could hear really well. You couldn't make noise, or they'd come." Her expression crumples a little; she tries her best to hide it, but she suspects Hopper will see. "One of them got Richie. He's dead."

Richie is a loud mouth little pain in the ass as far is Hopper is concerned most of the time. But he's also one of Beverly's closest friends and he knows the kid's heart is in the right place, especially where Beverly is concerned, so he's got a fair bit of affection for him no matter how often those ridiculous voices he does grate on his nerves. The news is a blow, like a punch to the gut, because kids aren't supposed to die.

He's said that so many damn times. Kids aren't supposed to die. But that never changes the reality that they do.

"Jesus," he says on an exhale, his voice hoarse. He holds her tighter for a moment. It could've been her, he knows, just as easily as anyone else. It could've been her. "Beverly, shit... that's- I'm so sorry, kid."

Beverly can't really do anything but nod, not sure what to say and not trusting herself to speak anyway. For days, she's been trying so hard to keep it together, knowing that she couldn't afford to let herself fall apart, unsure if she even had the right to. The others all have it worse, at least as far as she can tell. Besides, she's used to burying such things, and to dealing with them on her own. It's what she did back home, too, with no one to help her or on whom she could lean. At least, not until the Losers came along, but she was set in her ways by then. Now she has even less right to lay that burden on anyone else. If anyone would be safe to, it's Hopper, but she wouldn't know how or where to start. She's gotten through so much shit, anyway. It feels like she should be able to continue doing so now.

"Yeah," she says, because there just isn't anything else she can say, staying put in his arms. It's still the safest she's felt in a long time, and for the moment, she can at least allow herself that much. Having someone who'll look out for her is a nice feeling, more so than she would have expected, having spent most of her life without that. "I didn't really think any of us wouldn't make it."

She'd been so fucking wrong. There isn't anything she could have done about it, but she still hates that.

"No shit," he says, but the words come on a heavy exhale, sounding sad and weighted rather than the sarcasm they could have carried. Kids aren't supposed to die, but even more than that, they're not supposed to think about death. They're not supposed to be prepared for it, shit like that isn't at all fair.

They're supposed to leave the worrying about death to the adults. To people like Hopper, who can bury it under alcohol and pills.

"Fuck," he says. "Everyone else is pretty messed up about it, huh?"

Hopper might not seem like the sort of man who pays attention, but he does. He knows how close those kids are. He knows the way Eddie and Richie lean on each other, the weird sort of delight Eddie's boyfriend seems to take in Richie's voices, the way Regan looks at Richie when she thinks no one else is looking. That kid is loved by a lot of people.

"Mmhmm," Beverly answers, staying quiet for a moment after that, still not really trusting herself to say anything. She hasn't really been able to talk about this for days, and now that she can, she doubts that she could keep her composure. If there's anywhere it's safe to fall apart, it's here, but she can't quite bring herself to let it all come spilling out of her the way she knows it would. Richie is dead, and she's barely had a chance to let herself see it. She thought she was going to be stuck impossibly far from her life here for good, and she didn't even get to begin to process that before having to throw herself into surviving. There's too much that's too pent up, and the relief of being back only makes it seem stronger without something else to focus on instead.

Finally, she swallows hard, figuring she should tell Hopper what she knows about it. "He saved Eddie," she says, her voice faltering just a little. "Started yelling so the thing would go after him instead, or something." She doesn't add that it feels like she's let their grief supersede hers, and with good reason. Eddie is the one Richie saved, Jamie was there, Regan was his girlfriend. All of that, as far as she can see, takes precedence over how she feels about it.

"And... we had to be quiet. We couldn't really..." Grieve, she thinks, or talk about it, or react at all. The very thing that caused it to happen made it that much more impossible to deal with.

"Couldn't deal with it," Hopper answers softly and he's thinking about Beverly, but he's thinking about Sara, too. About losing her. Collapsed in the corner of that stairwell, his fist pressed to his mouth to stifle the sobs because he hadn't wanted anyone to hear. Men didn't cry like that, they didn't lose their shit, no matter what happened, but the second he realized Sara was gone, Hopper had felt himself losing everything.

"Don't do that, kid," he says. "Don't... stifle that shit, okay? Not now. If you wanna cry, you cry, and if you wanna scream, you go ahead, but maybe do it into a pillow so the neighbours don't call the cops. If you wanna hit something, you can hit me, okay? I can take it. Just don't push all that stuff away. Not for anything."

He pauses, then says, "'Cause I did that. With Sara. Trust me, it ain't the way to go."

Beverly nods, not wanting or having the energy to disagree, but she knows it's easier said than done. A lifetime of keeping heavy shit buried is a difficult habit to break, especially after the last few days made it a life-or-death necessity. Besides, she can't make this about herself now. It's too important to try to be there for her friends, though she can't do anything to help them or fix this, and there's too much else that would come bubbling to the surface if she let herself really feel the weight of this. She already keeps thinking about things she doesn't want to think about, the last death close to her she experienced overlaying this one and reminding her of shit she tries to hold at a distance for a reason.

They probably make a hell of a pair. He pushed it away when his daughter died; she pushed it away when her mom died. There was nothing else she could have done, anyway. It's not like there was anyone who would be there for her. There is now, but it's hard to lean on someone when she's not used to having someone to lean on in the first place.

"I guess it helps not being somewhere we can't make noise," she says a little ruefully. "Worst fucking place to deal with one of your best friends dying."

"Fuck," he says softly, hating that there's nothing he can do. No matter what happens, he can't give Beverly her friend back, he can't take away the trauma of what she's seen, what she's been through, and it makes him furious. He thinks most people would just get tired, they would be weary, they would feel powerless, but Hopper only feels angry.

Kids shouldn't have to deal with all this shit that's piled on them.

"You wanna go see 'em?" he asks. "Eddie and Jamie and that worried lookin' one, uh... Stan? I can take you to the Home. You oughta see 'em right now."

"I don't think I want to go out yet," Beverly admits, her voice sounding uncommonly small and soft even to her own ears. The past few days have been so fraught and uncertain, so filled with danger, and she knows that Darrow isn't like that, but she just wants to stay here, tucked away where it's safe, for a little while longer. Even if she doesn't intend to let herself fall apart the way Hopper has told her she can, she feels too fragile, anyway. As much as she wants to be around her friends, she needs just a little while to herself, too, not shouldering their feelings but dealing with her own.

"I can text them for now, and... maybe go over in a little while or something." The words come out almost as a question, her expression apologetic, though she's not entirely sure why. She's just woken up from some bizarre alternate reality. That she's not feeling up to being social yet should be reasonable enough.

"Yeah, of course," Hopper says and gives her another squeeze. "You don't gotta do anything you don't want to. We can stick around here, whatever you want."

Chances are he'll be answering the door before too long anyway, a loud group of boys tumbling through the door just to see her. Some of the time Hopper finds himself staring at them suspiciously, especially that Jamie kid, who's grown tall and broad in the past year, and has the look about him that Hopper thinks might break a girl's heart. But he's gentle with Beverly and he looks at Eddie like his heart might be exploding, so for the most part Hopper thinks they're safe.

And they protect her. All of them do in their own ways. They all protect each other. He figures he can't have a problem with that, just as long as none of them ever, ever hurt her.

Beverly nods, a little relieved, though it isn't like she would have expected him to usher her out the door after all this. He still looks about as tired as she feels, a bone-deep weariness that doesn't have much to do with sleep or lack thereof. She doesn't think it's just grogginess from having woken up after so long, either, though that probably doesn't help. Even having been here and unconscious, or whatever was going on, so much has happened and she hasn't really had time to process any of it. She spent weeks living with the threat of actual, tangible monsters outside, one of which killed one of her best friends, and there was nothing she could do but go along with it. That all seems to be catching up to her now.

"I thought that was it," she says, thinking that she might have said so already, but not really caring. "That we were gonna be stuck there or whatever. Like showing up here, but way worse." She'd been caught off-guard when she first showed up in Darrow, but at least it wasn't so suddenly and inescapably dangerous. At least she wasn't losing anything she would have been leaving behind already, a choice she made about Derry but definitely would not have done so here.

"I got you, kid," he says softly. "You're back now, you don't gotta worry about it."

But deep down he knows she's right to worry. It's possible all of them will end up somewhere else than where they started, somewhere other than where they want to be, and he doesn't want to think about Beverly ending up back home with that shitty father of hers and whatever monsters lurk in the sewers, but they both know it's possible.

For now, though, he's just going to promise to hold onto her. Give her that security, even if they both know it might not be permanent.

There's a lot more that Beverly wishes she could say. That she's really glad to be here, that it means the fucking world to have a place where that's the case at all, all the dozens of things she's kept buried since she first woke up in that place and since Richie died. She still feels pretty out of it, though, and still suspects that if she starts letting any of that out, she'll never be able to pull herself back together. Letting herself go there just isn't something she can do, not even here where she's safest.

"This place might be weird, but it definitely beats giant monsters with super hearing," she says. It's a weak, halfhearted attempt at levity, one she's sure he'll see right through, but at least it covers what she otherwise doesn't have the words for. It's true, too. As fucked up as Darrow might be, it's a hell of a lot better than Derry and even more so than the world Regan came from. "It still kind of feels weird just to be talking."

Hopper can't imagine. He's never been one to keep his mouth shut for any reason and having it be life or death means he'd probably end up dead. Right now he's not going to say that, it isn't something Beverly needs to hear, not after all she's just been through.

"This place is weird, but it's home," he says. "As fucked up as that is."

But Hopper doesn't mind. The only change he'd make is being able to see Eleven again. She would be safer in Darrow anyway, because no one besides Beverly even knows about her or the things she can do.

"Yeah, it is," Beverly says quietly. "I never really thought I'd have that." She doubts it will come as much of a surprise. Derry was home in a nominal sense, but it never really felt the way a home is supposed to. Even that last summer, when she had friends for the first time and things were somewhat better, they were worse at the same time, compounded by all that shit with the clown. She'd been terrified that whole summer. It was the happiest she'd ever been, before she got here. There are things and people she misses now, hazy as her memory of them might be, but at least it's safe here. Safer, anyway. Or it was, before she woke up in a different world, with monsters that could hear too well and eat people.

She smiles, the expression a little grim, but still well-meant. "Or that it would be somewhere like this, but it works."

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