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Nancy and Robin joined them soon enough, rushing into the dark school with wide eyes and worried expressions and finding the other four at the end of a corridor, Briar at the fore of the group.

Specifically, it was the corridor she had just seen the clock at the end of.

"It was here!" She exclaimed, her voice breaking as she held her flashlight up at it. "Right here."

Her eyes were filled with tears, her body shaking. She hadn't been to sleep in over a day, and she hadn't thought of anything positive in over eight months.

On top of that, she'd just been cursed by an interdimensional serial killer.

(But she wasn't going to tell anyone that yet).

"A grandfather clock?" Nancy's voice behind her cut in.

"Y-yeah," Briar's voice stammered. "It was so real. And then, when I got closer, suddenly I just- everything went black. And then I saw this pair of eyes- they-they were white and the skin was black and then- then I woke up."

She'd been terrified when she awoke, looking around at Steve, Dustin and Max and trying to decipher if they were real or not.

"It was like she was in a trance or something," Dustin added. "Exactly what Eddie said happened to Chrissy."

Briar nodded, heart in her throat.

She turned round, unable to look any of them in the eyes. Dustin and Max were just kids, after all, and Nancy was the smartest person she knew but even she wouldn't be to find a way around this.

Robin hated her at the moment, and probably always would, because she was going to die before she could tell her the truth.

And as for Steve Harrington, he would never know how in love with him she actually was.  He would never know that he was the light of her life, the sky to her earth, the best person she had ever known.

Because she couldn't tell him that.

So as she turned around to face them all, she found herself staring at the wall just past Steve's shoulder, speaking to them with a shaky voice.

"That's not even the worst part."

𖹭

They ended up back in Ms Kelly's office, both Chrissy and Fred's files on the desk, Briar stood behind it and everyone with their eyes on her.

The girl felt uncomfortable, but she just needed to say this.

They deserved it. Each and everyone of them deserved this from her. So she was going to do it.

"Fred and Chrissy, they both came to Ms Kelly for help," she started, her eyes on the desk and clouded with tears. "Uh- they were both having headaches, bad headaches that just wouldn't go away, and then-"

Tears flooded her eyes and she fought to push them away. "Then the nightmares," her voice broke. "Trouble sleeping. They'd wake up in a cold sweat, crying-"

Her voice got colder and more fearful as she delivered her next line. "And then they started seeing things."

She didn't know what Fred or Chrissy had seen, but she knew that their visions would have been just as real as that goddamn clock had been.

"Bad things," Briar continued, squeezing her eyes shut. "From their pasts."

She could feel Steve's eyes on her, those beautiful chocolate-and-honey brown eyes directed at her. But she couldn't look at him. That would break her.