Disclaimer: Stranger Things is the property of the Duffer brothers. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this piece is taken from the song of the same title by Simon and Garfunkle.

MC4A Challenges (Retroactive): FPC; BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; SHoE; NCR; FF
Representations: Joyce Byers; Will Byers; Byers Family; Jim Hopper; Jane Hopper; Hopper Family; Upside Down; Motherhood; PTSD; ERP
Word Count: 2057

Setting: May 25, 1985

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Will hates thunderstorms.

It isn't like the "flashbacks" he used to have last year, though he must have assured her of that fifty times before she finally believed him. He isn't in the Upside Down, with the slime and the rot and the air full of floating ash. He just has a feeling, an overwhelming urge every time the lightning flashes to prove to himself that he's not. He'll stand at the window staring up at the black outlines of the tree branches silhouetted against the blinding sky. Joyce knows what he's looking for. In the Upside Down, those flares of light would have revealed the enormous, spidery form of the Mind Flayer. Not seeing it reminds Will that it's over.

Until the lightning comes again.

At first she tried reasoning with him. If the first flash revealed nothing, then there was nothing there. He didn't need to check again and again. He was safe. The Gate was closed. The Mind Flayer was gone.

"Mm-hmm," was the only answer she could get out of him. "I know, Mom." But he never moved from the window, and he never took his eyes off the sky.

Then she tried distracting him. She pulled out every game she could find from his and Jonathan's closets; she sat down at the kitchen table and attempted to draw with him, though his extraordinary talent definitely hadn't come from her; once she even invited his friends over on a day she knew a storm was in the forecast, hoping that Dungeons and Dragons would distract him where nothing else could. The result was always the same. With every crash of thunder, he would jump up and run to the window to catch the next lightning flash. Even Mike, who had always been unfailingly patient with Will, got annoyed, and Will made her promise never to do anything like that again.

But she didn't stop trying. The next time a storm hit, she and Jonathan set up a card table in the living room and covered the outside with so many blankets that no glimpse of lightning could possibly get through. Jonathan put his mixtape in the stereo and turned it up loud enough to drown out the thunder, and they all crowded inside the makeshift fort, Will sandwiched between her and Jonathan. He was as rigid as a board. She pulled him against her chest and rubbed his back, trying to make him relax, but it did no good. Within less than five minutes he had shot to his feet, flipping the table over and scattering the blankets on his way to the window. But that wasn't when she gave up. It was when Will—her sweet, mild Will—turned from the window and cussed her out, his gentle features contorted with a rage she didn't recognize and his mouth spewing words he must have stored up from the years of Lonnie's tirades Joyce had hoped he'd never heard.

So she's finally resorted to letting him kneel on the couch and stare out the window as long as the storm lasts. It's not a healthy solution, but it's the only one she's got. They both know she has enough unhealthy coping methods of her own.

She's deep into one of them now, dragging on the end of a cigarette while she stands on the porch staring up at the dark clouds closing in from the west. It's going to be a long night. Jonathan is over at Nancy's, leaving her to sit up with Will until the storms end, which is supposed to be around 1:00 AM. Of course, he wants her to just leave him alone, but she can't go to bed knowing he's still up staring anxiously at the sky. She wouldn't be able to sleep anyway.

The rumble of an approaching motor disrupts her brooding, and she looks toward the road just in time to see Hopper's huge brown Blazer pull up. She feels a rush of worry until she catches sight of Eleven—Jane, that is—in the passenger seat. It's a social visit, then. She grins, feeling unreasonably happy to see them.

"We're not intruding, are we?" Hopper calls as he stops the car. "I thought we'd come wait out the storm at your house instead of in our rickety old cabin."

"Of course not!" she calls back. "Glad to have you!"

As Hopper climbs out of the driver's side, Joyce notices that he's looking good. With some help from Joyce and Mrs. Wheeler, Jane has undertaken to learn how to cook, and the switch from Eggos and TV dinners is already starting to make a difference. He's got a long way to go to get rid of that beer belly, but the little girl has made a good start.

Not such a little girl, either, Joyce realizes as Hopper helps Jane down from the cab. Whether it's the new diet or the unstoppable force of puberty, Hopper's adopted daughter is shooting up and filling out at an astonishing rate. She must have grown at least two inches since the last time Joyce saw her, and her soft brown curls are just brushing the tops of her shoulders now. She can see the outline of breasts under the girl's T-shirt, and she reminds herself to make sure Hopper's bought some training bras for her. It wouldn't be a bad idea for him to keep some tampons on hand, either, she thinks. It probably won't be long before Jane needs them.

They reach the porch, and Hopper greets her with a quick hug. By now Will is outside too, and he throws his arms around Jane; Joyce notes with amusement that he's almost a full head shorter than she is. The first flash of lightning appears just as they begin to talk, and Will breaks off suddenly, casting an anxious glance up at the sky. Joyce puts an arm around him and steers him inside. She looks back and catches a glimpse of Hopper's concerned face as he and Jane follows her.

"So he does this every time it storms?"

"Every single time."

Sitting across from him at the kitchen table, Joyce tells Hopper everything, about Will's anxiety and her numerous failed attempts to help him. From the living room, they can both hear Jane patiently trying to draw Will away from the window, though after twenty minutes, he's stopped even responding to what she's saying.

Hopper is silent, scratching thoughtfully at his stubbly chin. She's come to rely so heavily on his judgment these past two years; between his common sense and his sheer bullheadedness, there's doesn't seem to be any problem he can't solve, even one from another dimension.

At last, he nods. "I have an idea. I just don't think you're going to like it."

She winces. "Please tell me it's better than 'Stand up to it and tell it to go away.'" The reference to Bob's plan to stop Will's "flashbacks" is half in jest—and even the fact that she's able to joke about it is progress—but she's worried, too. Following Bob's advice was what had allowed the Mind Flayer to take possession of Will in the first place.

"It's a little better than that," Hopper answers. "But it's not too far off." He reaches out and takes her hand before she has time to react to his statement. "Listen to me, Joyce. Bob—Bob's advice would have been right if Will's problem had been psychological, which is how we were all treating it at the time. He couldn't have known what was happening to him was real. But if Will's fear of storms really is just in his head, then the only way to stop it is to stop feeding the fear."

She nods, not looking at him.

"Someone's got to get him away from that window." He takes a deep breath. "But it doesn't have to be you. Let me take the lead on this one."

She looks up at him, the fire back in her eyes. "I burned a demon out of my son last year, Hop. I think I can handle this."

"Yeah, and you almost got strangled to death in the process," he counters. His voice softens, and he tightens his hold on her hand. "Haven't you been through enough, Joyce?"

Looking earnestly into his eyes, she gives him the only answer she can: "Hasn't Will?"

He sighs. "Together, then?" he asks.

"Together."

Hopper's plan, as he explains it to Will a few minutes later, isn't quite as drastic as she expected. Will won't be "quitting cold turkey," so to speak; instead, once a thunder clap hits, he'll have to sit with Joyce and wait for several seconds before going to the window. Hopper will keep track of the time and gradually increase the waiting period until Will is no longer at the window when the lightning flashes. At that point, the repeated exposure to the fear will finally begin to convince Will's brain that there's nothing to be afraid of.

"Before we get started, though, I want to lay two ground rules," Hopper says, fixing a stern look on Will's unresponsive profile. "First, you can choose to sit and wait quietly with your Mom, or you can choose to have me grab you and hold you down. I think you can figure out which is the better choice. Right?"

Will nods, his face expressionless. He hasn't said a word the whole time Hopper's been talking, just continued to stare stone-faced out the window. There's nothing to tell her how he feels about the plan—Afraid? Angry? Indifferent? Despairing? She hates not knowing what he's thinking, hates how inaccessible to her this whole experience has made him. If she lives to be a hundred, she'll never understand the horrors he's been through, and that knowledge puts a barrier between them she doesn't know how to breach.

"And second," Hopper continues, then breaks off. He seizes Will by the shoulders and pulls him to face him, forcing Will to look him in the eyes. "Second, you got any violence you need to get rid of, you take it out on me. You wanna kick, punch, scream, cuss, whatever you gotta do, kid, but you do it to me and not to your Mom. You understand me?"

Will nods, and for the first time Joyce sees an emotion on his face: fear. Fear… and perhaps a touch of sadness. Because Will, of all people, shouldn't have to be told these things. Will, who adores her more than anything in the world. Will, who has never been violent in his life. These shouldn't be things that need to be said to her Will, and he knows that.

Then there's a flash of lightning, and Will pulls away from Hopper to look up at the sky.

"Good," Hopper grunts, looking at his watch. "Let's go."

It plays out about as Hopper said it would: the waiting, the struggling against them, the kicking and screaming. There's an anxious part of Joyce that's waiting to see some sign of supernatural possession returning; she keeps putting a hand to his forehead to check his temperature, blessing the heat and sweat that prove to her he's still her son. But as the night wears on, his struggling gradually grows less vehement, more subdued. And by the time the rumbles of thunder are beginning to fade into the distance, Will has fallen quietly asleep in the space between them, his sweaty head resting on Hopper's arm. Jane is dozing too, sitting on the floor against Joyce's leg, the trail of crusty dried blood under her left nostril a testament to her role in keeping Will still. It had taken all of them, but they had done it.

"Thank you," Joyce whispers. "Thank you."

Hopper reaches over and squeezes her knee, the only part of her he can reach without disturbing Will. "We've won a battle. We may not have won the war. He's got a long way to go before he'll be completely over what that place did to him." He looks down at Will, a wistful look on his face. "He may never feel completely safe again."

"I know," she answers, slipping her hand into his. "I'm not sure I will either. All I know is that I'll always feel safer whenever you're here."

A/N: The observant reader might notice that Hopper's suggestion to help Will closely resembles Exposure/Response Prevention (ERP) therapy. Although what Will is struggling with is actually PTSD, there is some overlap in his behaviors with OCD, of which I am a long-time sufferer, which allowed me to draw on my own experience in writing this piece. The premise of ERP is to expose a person to a stimulus that causes anxiety (obsession) and not letting them complete the action (compulsion) they usually use to relieve the anxiety. This reduces the power of the anxiety response by retraining the brain not to fear the stimulus.