Chapter Text
The pain registers only when Beth’s vision merges back into a single image again, and Beth drops to the kitchen floor with a choked off scream.
“Oh shit, oh fuck, Beth? Beth, are you okay? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it had you and- Oh.” Barb cuts off abruptly as she looks at Beth’s leg, her breath becoming erratic. “Jesus Christ-”
Normally, this is where Beth would say something about how it isn’t as bad as it looks. But right now? The only thing Beth can do is try not to puke from the pain and the smell.
Beth doesn’t get burned often.
She gets bloody knuckles and dislocated joints and concussions. Cuts that need stitches and bones that need casts and occasionally she even needs to dig glass out of her skin.
But she almost never gets burned.
Turns out, that shit fucking sucks. Props to Barbie for coming to save her from the evil plant-life, but fuck, getting her leg barbecued in the process is suboptimal, to say the least. This hurts more than anything has hurt in a very long time, and Beth’s only comfort is that she can’t be dead if it still hurts.
(It had stopped hurting, towards the end.
No pain; just an empty, aching sort of cold that inched closer and closer to her heart until there was nothing and she was gone.
So yeah, could be worse.
It doesn’t feel like it, but intellectually, Beth knows it could be. This is the better option in the grand scheme of things, for all that she can feel her own heartbeat pulse through the singed flesh of her leg.
If things hurt, and fuck do they ever hurt right now, then shit can’t be too bad, right?)
Barbie is next to her, hands hovering over Beth’s leg like she wants to do something to help but is scared to touch her. Beth is pretty sure she’s saying something, but it is very hard to focus on anything but how much the air moving against her burned skin feels.
Fuck, Beth might actually puke. God, she hates throwing up. Time to try avoiding that by focusing on something that isn’t how shitty she feels.
“Gun?” Beth asks through grit teeth.
“What?” Barbie asks, looking dazed and glassy eyed.
“Did we get the gun?” Fuck, Beth hopes so. She’s going to be so pissed if this was all for nothing. She’s still wearing the backpack, at least, but she’s pretty sure the dropped the shotgun-
“Oh! Right, yeah, I grabbed it- What are you doing?!”
What Beth is doing is trying to stand up. Try being the operative word, because boy fucking howdy does her body not want to cooperate with her plans. For a moment, Beth thinks Barbie is going to help her, but unfortunately the girl only helps her into a chair and very gently pushes her into it. When Beth tries to get up from the chair, it only takes Barb’s hands lightly pressing down on her shoulders to keep Beth in it.
“Yeah, no,” Barbie says, words accompanied by a frantic little laugh. “You need to keep still. Your leg is- Fuck. It’s…bad. Y-You shouldn’t be standing on it, I don’t think.”
Oh, Barbie sounds like she’s about to cry again. Not ideal, but Beth’s brain feels like it has been dunked in molasses and then flash frozen, every thought leaving a brittle, splintering feeling behind her eyes. She’s not too sure on her ability to string a sentence together right now, much less a comforting one.
(Fuck, her head hurts. She thinks her nose is bleeding again.
At least the pain behind her eyes keeps her from thinking about the pain in her leg.)
“Mkay,” Beth sighs out. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. She’ll stay in the chair, for now. “Gimme the walkie talkies.”
Barbie gives a tight nod, and rushes off.
Beth closes her eyes, breathing.
(Her eyes hurt, and her leg hurts, and everything just fucking hurts-)
The lights start to flicker.
Beth stands up so fast the world spins, grabbing the shotgun, because the lights flickered when the monster grabbed her out of her yard too-
“Yes!” Barb says, loud and frantic! “Yes, we can hear you! Beth! Beth, the walkie-”
“Who is this? Where’s my sister?”
And suddenly Beth can’t stand, because that is Will’s voice crackling over the supercom. She crashes back into the chair, her burns screaming as they brush against the table.
“Oh shit!” Barbie sprints to Beth’s side, all wide-eyed concern, but Beth doesn’t give a shit. She snatches the walkie talkie out of Barbie’s shaking hands.
“Batman to Robin,” Beth rasps into the receiver through a clenched jaw, hand pressing the button down so hard she’s vaguely worried the plastic might crack under the pressure. “Come in Robin, over.”
“This is Robin! I read you, I read you!” says Will, voice bright and happy even as it shakes. And then, a new voice-
“Beth, are you okay?! Who’s that with you?! Holy fuck, man-”
Eddie’s voice, sounding half an inch away from a panic attack.
“Honey, can you hear me? Wh-Where are you, sweetie? Are you okay?”
Mom, audibly in tears, as Will and Eddie talk over each other in the background.
“Mom, you gotta say over and let go of the button so she knows it’s clear to talk.”
“Oh! Oh, uh, over.”
Beth lets out a hysterical burst of giggles, before saying, “Not gonna lie, I, uh, I’ve definitely been better.”
Barbie gives Beth such a look of incredulous disgust at Beth’s knack for understatement that she has to laugh again, which fucking sucks, because laughter is a full body exercise and Beth’s body fucking hates her right now. Barbie grabs the walkie out of Beth’s hand, fiddles with the button for a second, then says, “This is Barb Holland. Beth…Beth is hurt pretty bad-”
“Don’t say it like that, you’re gonna freak out my family,” Beth snaps at the other girl, leaning closer to the receiver. “I’m fine, just a little banged up-”
“Bad burns on her leg, and her arm doesn't look too good either.” Huh. Beth hadn’t really noticed it, but the arm the vines had grabbed does kinda hurt too. Fuck, worry about that later. Barbie is still monopolizing the walkie talkie, and Beth is having a real bitch of a time keeping her eyes focused right now, so it’s probably better to let her take charge. “We’re holed up at the Byers, but, it’s- everything here is wrong. It looks like Hawkins, but it’s all…rotting.”
“Vale of Shadows,” Beth murmurs, and for some fucking reason, she thinks she hears Dustin’s voice echoing it. Damn, she feels concussed. This place is the worst. What was she-? Right. Louder, making sure her tongue is moving right, she says, “It’s like the Vale of Shadows.”
“Bethany, baby, love of my fucking life-” Man, Eddie does not sound like he’s doing well. “-did you get kidnapped to an alternate nightmare dimension?!”
Beth isn’t sure if she laughs or sobs as she answers, “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Great, fantastic, superb,” Eddie rambles. “Only you, man. Only you. First with the fucking spidey-senses and now you’re getting dragged into different realms-”
Oh. Huh. He’s acknowledging her Bad Feelings out loud. Beth…feels something about that, even if she can’t quite figure out what between all the bullshit
“Think I’m seein’ the future now, too,” she adds, vision going unfocused a-fucking-gain.
“Go fuck yourself, Byers,” Eddie tells her with feeling, and Beth grins despite herself. Fuck, she’s never been happier to hear his voice. “Will, get back on here, I’m done letting your sister give me an aneurysm."
Will and Mom start talking to Barb, and Beth tries to pay attention. Really, she does. But the world is splitting in two and her leg hurta and her arm hurts and her fucking nose is bleeding again-
ChristmaslightsAlphabetAxe-
There’s something behind her eyes. Something watching, watching, watching. Searching for something, hunting for someone, and it wasn’t her at first. Beth is not the prey it wants. She’s not supposed to be here-
“Should I stay or should I go now? If I stay there will be trouble-”
But it will take her. It will take her and everyone, because it is hungry in a way that will never be fixed. It likes being the apex predator, and it thinks she will be easier prey now-
BurningShatteringFollowing-
F o u n d y o u.
Beth jumps to her feet, ignoring the pain that threatens to make her blackout and the overlapping voices of her family and Barbie, and grabbing the backpack and shotgun, because-
“Barbie, we need to go.”
“What?! No, Beth, we literally were just saying we need to stay put so-”
Ice spears through Beth’s chest as howls chorus in the distance.