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July 5th 1985 - 12:34am
Joyce watches as El stumbles forward, confused, broken, before the young girl runs towards her and joins in with the hug. Joyce clings to her, desperate to feel something that isn’t guilt and pain and panic. How will she explain to her, this girl who has lost so much (her childhood, her mother and now her father) that she was the one who killed him, she was the one who turned the keys and caused Jim Hopper to die? How can Joyce ever look her in the eye?
Everything after that happens in a blur of movement and haste that Joyce doesn’t really take in; Murray disappears, Mike and the others are picked up by their parents and El? El is left alone and Joyce, the one who caused this girl to be alone in the first place, offers her a warm bed to sleep in and some semblance of normalcy in the fallout of the tragic events of the evening.
El nods, smiles sadly and grips her hand. Joyce breathes out a small sigh of relief.
She spots Owens approaching then, and Joyce is suddenly hopeful, silently wishes that maybe she’d been mistaken and Hop hadn’t been taken from them after all, but judging by the look on Owens' face she knows her optimism will be short lived.
She sighs, holds Will and El close and awaits confirmation that she killed the one man who’d ever truly believed in her.
July 8th 1985 - 9:12am
It amused Joyce, in a morbid way, how much Hopper had infiltrated her home without ever having lived there; a half finished packet of camels on the coffee table, a couple of cans of the beer in the fridge left over from Will’s birthday, a spare set of his cabin keys hung up by the door. Every little part of Hop that exists in her house makes Joyce reel in guilt, especially when El spots them too, a flash of sorrow sweeping across the young girl’s face before she shuts down again and disappears into her room.
Joyce has barely slept since the events of Starcourt, those last moments seemingly burned to the inside of her eyelids; his accepting nod, the tears in his eyes and hers, the knowledge that she was going to kill, did kill, the man who had been a mainstay in her life for the last 3 years. When she does sleep, she awakes swiftly from nightmares, the same scenario playing over and over again. Hop dies. Sometimes it's Will or Jonathan or everyone. But each and every time it is Joyce who flips the keys, who kills those she cares about.
She wanders into the kitchen, hair tucked into a messy bun and scruffy clothes pulled on in haste. She's not hungry, but Jonathan has been pestering her to eat so she'll make up some toast to stop him worrying about her, just for a little bit.
She can hear Jonathan, Will and El (poor El) whisper conspiratorially to each other around the kitchen table. They stop as soon as she enters the room, but the guilty looks on their faces are enough to let her know that she's been the subject of their chatter. It doesn't surprise her; she's been despondent, quiet, tearful in the days since Starcourt; it's Bob all over again (but she'd had Hopper by her side to help her with her grief then, and it's her fault he's not there now...)
Joyce hadn’t told anyone, except Murray, the exact details of what had happened, but they can all guess, can probably all work out that Joyce alone flipped the keys when Hopper didn’t make it out of the bunker alive.
She hates the feeling, the pain, the guilt. There’s a constant stab in her chest, because deep down, in her heart, Joyce knows she did the right thing, knows she had no other choice.
She’d driven past Enzo’s the day before on the way to buy some much needed groceries, and had had to pull over to cry and scream and punch the steering wheel at the injustice of it all.
They saved the world, but Joyce feels like she’s lost hers.
July 20th 1985 - 2:25pm
It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon the day of Hopper’s funeral. The service is well attended, folks from all over town come to pay their respects. (Diane couldn’t make it, but instead sent some lovely flowers that Flo kindly takes off of Joyce to take to the station.) There have been far too many funerals in the last two weeks, and plenty more to come as the town reels from the Starcourt ‘fire’ and the loss of life. Billy’s had been the week previous, and Max, poor Max, is standing next to Lucas, tears creeping down her cheek.
Joyce feels her own slide down her skin, cool against the oppressive heat of the day. She clings to Jonathan and Will, their hands an anchor as the priest runs through the words and lines that he’s repeated half a dozen times since the 4th. Joyce wonders how many of the people would have pitched up if Hop hadn’t died in the circumstances he had; he’d never cared about his reputation, but she’d heard the comments and the rumours. None of them realise how Hop had helped save the world. None of them ever would.
El isn’t there. She should be, but the town is still unaware of her existence and it’s not fair, it’s not fair, that Hop’s own daughter can’t be here to say goodbye, when the woman who killed him, who ensured that it is an empty casket being lowered into the ground has a front row seat.
[She and El sneak in after dark to say their farewells; they sit for 2 hours not saying a word, just resting against each other lost in their own thoughts…]
Joyce thinks about the girl, alone at the Byers house, unable to attend the funeral of the only proper father she’s ever had.
Afterwards, when the soil is flung back over the wooden box, the low rumbling of the guests starts to drift through the cemetery. Callahan and Powell both nod at her, their dress uniforms smart, backs ramrod straight as they walk back to their cruisers. Others drift past on their way out, and Joyce overhears a couple whispering about her, about how Joyce Byers had lost two men in two years and wasn’t that so tragic?
Joyce hates it.
Karen walks over and places a well manicured hand on her arm, while Ted lingers at her side, looking just as uncomfortable as he always does. Mike is at their side, but he can’t look Joyce in the eyes, because he at least knows, knows, what Hop sacrificed for this town.
“I’m sorry for your loss Joyce,” Karen says, heartfelt and genuine.
Ted nods and utters, “Hopper was a good man.”
Joyce stands there, wide eyed and confused.
“Hop and I… we weren’t... it wasn’t... he was just a friend…”
Karen gives her another sympathetic look and squeezes her arm, while Ted’s snort is loud enough to infuriate her. Christ, even Mike looks unconvinced.
“I know you’ll miss him Joyce,” Karen says as she leaves, shepherding her husband and son back to the car. Joyce can only look at them as they walk away.
Will reappears at her side, having been speaking to Max, Lucas and Dustin, and he hugs her, offers her a tissue as the tears begin again.
“Fuck this,” Joyce mutters under her breath, and then: “I need to go home…”
Will dashes off to get Jonathan, leaving Joyce on her own again, and she stands, alone, beside the grave of the man she misses more each day. Other members of the congregation wander past, uttering their condolences and eyeing Joyce with a sad look, as if she’s the widow here, as if she’s lost a husband, or a lover, when in fact she’d lost neither. Just a friend and the potential, the wish, of something more.
August 16th 1985 - 10:30am
Joyce sighs as she slips another wet dish into the drying rack. The radio plays something upbeat but she’s trying to tune it out. The house is silent apart from that; the boys are both out, trying to enjoy the remnants of summer with their friends, while El is tucked away in the room she shares with Will, curled up and reading some kind of detective comic while she waits for Mike to come over.
There's a long list of chores for Joyce to finish, and as she dries her hands on the worn and battered dish cloth, she switches off the radio, preferring the quiet hum of the fridge to anything else. Joyce picks up a discarded Coke can from the side and tosses it in the trash, trying hard not inspect it for any unusual signs of damage.
She had caught El in the kitchen yesterday, hand in mid-air, gaze focused solely on the empty tin of tomato soup. The girl had looked guilty, then sad, as she realised she’d been seen, and dashed past Joyce into her room before she’d managed to say anything. It had broken Joyce's heart all over again. Not only had El lost her father, but she'd lost her powers too, something which she had always relied on, had been a comfort and now, like her father, they had gone too.
Joyce is halfway through loading the machine with Will’s laundry when there’s a knock on the door. She wanders over, puzzled, and opens it, shocked to see who’s lingering on the other side.
“Mornin' Joyce,” Owens says, a sympathetic look on his face, “sorry to bother you on this fine day; I was wondering if I could come in?”
Joyce nods and allows him to pass, then shows him to the kitchen. He takes a seat and peers around the small room while Joyce heads over to the beat-up kettle on the sideboard.
“Coffee?”
He shakes his head.
“No thanks, my Doctor says I need to watch my blood pressure, and the caffeine doesn’t help apparently.” Owen shrugs and smiles then, lopsided and friendly, as if he sees her every day of the week (she hasn’t seen him since July, when he escorted her off quietly off the premises at Starcourt, told her he was ‘sorry about the Chief’ and that he’d be in touch.) “I’ll take a water though, if there’s one going.”
Joyce nods, fills a glass, and places it in front of him. She takes a seat opposite, the one Hop always used to sit in, and watches as condensation trails down the edge of the glass.
“What’re you doing here Owens?”
“I’m here to give you what I hope is some good news. In light of" he waves his hands in front of him, as if he's trying to come up with the right words, "recent events, I spoke to the higher ups, about you, your boys, about Jane and the Chief. We’re gonna give you some compensation, for everything that's happened to you since this whole... fiasco started. Use it however you want, but you could get out of this hellhole if you so choose, leave the shit memories behind and be there for your kids in some place new. You could start over.”
Joyce sits there and takes it in. She doesn't want their money, but she does want to leave. There's nothing tying her here any more, not really, and the memories of the last three years are too raw and painful for her to imagine still being in Hawkins by the time the next year comes by.
Owens gives her a couple of minutes to herself then, almost reluctantly, draws her attention once more, the subtle cough he gives enough to pull her from her thoughts.
"There's, uh, one more thing. Of a more... personal note," he says, pulling something out of his pocket. He fingers it carefully, tapping the edge of it, like he's hesitating about even giving it to her.
He passes over an envelope and Joyce opens it, then drops it almost immediately.
It’s a birth certificate.
“The Chief wanted to do this for Jane, for Eleven, if he ended up…” Owen hesitates, takes a breath, continues. “Stipulated it when I arranged this for him the first time round.”
El’s name is there, and Hop’s and, more importantly, hers. It digs at Joyce, the ease with which she’s become a parent, a parent, with Jim and it’s like the universe was taking yet another swing at her for the stupid choices she made as a kid, when she’d chosen one route in life instead of another (Congratulations Joyce, here’s what you could have had…)
She chuckles bitterly at the paper, slots it back into the envelope and ponders just how she’s going to break it to the kid sitting on her bed down the corridor.
[“Hi sweetheart, just to let you know that I’m your Mom now. I know I killed your Dad, but let’s just try and move on from that shall we?”]
Joyce hates herself. She barely takes in the rest of the conversation; Owens talks about the amount of compensation and moving them all somewhere safe and ensuring they’re provided for and Joyce nods and replies at the right moments, but doesn’t really process anything until Owens shoves some paperwork under her nose and leaves her with orders to read it carefully and sign it when she’s ready.
After Owens’ car disappears down the drive, Joyce makes herself a coffee and sits at the kitchen table, attention split between the envelope and the paperwork. She looks up as El appears, a sad smile on the young girl’s face.
El sits opposite, where Owens had not 15 minutes previous. The silence drags. The slow drip of the kitchen tap marks some form of time. (“I’ll fix it for you at the weekend Joyce, after this celebration thing the Mayor's organising of the 4th is all over. I’ll bring El round and make a day of it...")
Minutes pass until: “I don’t blame you.”
Joyce furrows her brow in question.
“For… for Dad.”
Joyce lets out a breath she didn’t even realise she was holding.
“You had to… the boys… Mike said… you had to. The world - it would be broken and gone if you had waited.”
Joyce doesn’t know what to say, just nods numbly. El reaches out, grabs her hand.
“I miss him, like you miss him,” the girl says, as simply as if she were saying hello. “I… I loved him too.”
And there it is, the truth, the unbearable truth that Joyce Byers had been avoiding since that moment in the bunker, if not days, weeks, months before. She sobs then, and so does El, and everything comes out; how guilty she feels, how sorry she was, how she wanted to look after her, but understood if El wanted nothing to do with the woman who took her Dad away.
El, wonderful, sweet El, takes up the role her father did so often the past three years and pulls Joyce into a hug, holds her close to comfort her as she whispers that it’s all going to be okay, that’d she’d love to stay with her and the boys, that she doesn’t blame her and that her Dad would be proud of what Joyce had done.
When they both finish crying, Joyce shows El the paperwork, and the certificate, and talks through what Owens had said.
El nods, understands and smiles, just a little, at the thought of moving somewhere safe, away from the horrors of the last few years.
Joyce takes a shuddering breath, tries to calm her breathing and looks at the paperwork once more.
"I'll read it all through, with you and Will and Jonathan. We make this decision, as..." she pauses, closes her eyes and tries again. "We'll do this, as a family. Together. Our choice - not Owens', or anyone elses. Ours."
El beams, the first real smile Joyce has seen from her in weeks, since maybe before everything went so awfully, awfully wrong. The girl doesn't say anything, but instead hugs Joyce once more, tightly, as if trying to convince the older woman that everything is going to be okay. She dashes off as there's a knock on the door, and the sound of Mike (and the rest of the group it seems, judging by the volume) echoes through the house.
Joyce is left, once again, by herself, surrounded by paperwork and empty coffee cups and something that feels a little bit like hope. The crushing weight of guilt and pain has lifted a little - it'll linger, will be a permanent fixture in her life, but Joyce has had so much trauma and suffering and pain that what's one more example in a never-ending pile?
She flicks through the paperwork, eyes some of the properties that Owens' has suggested and makes a note of the fee they're willing to give her. It could work - it could definitely work.
It feels to Joyce like a new beginning, the chance of something good, something worthwhile and full of hope. It hurts though, she realises, to know that it came from something so terrible.
But she'll try, for the boys, for El, for Hop.
[7 months later, she receives a parcel in the mail, and her world gets shaken up all over again...]