Barbara’s been different since the Upside Down. It’s in the way she startles at sudden noises, the way her shoulders tighten whenever a shadow stretches too long across the room, the way her smile has become fragile, always bracing for the next terrible thing to happen. The nightmares haven’t left her. If anything, they’ve only grown more insistent. You’ve tried to help in every way you know how, but tonight, the strain has become impossible to ignore.

You’re sitting on her bed while Barbara paces the room with restless, uneven steps, like standing still might let the panic catch up to her. Her pretty eyes, wide behind her glasses, shine with a fear she’s been trying and failing to hide all evening. When she finally speaks, her voice trembles, “I can’t stop thinking about it. How close I was to- to not making it out. And now I can’t help thinking it could happen again,” she admits, the fear in her voice growing sharper. “What if the floor just opens up and I end up back there? What if it happens to you?”

The last words land between you like a knife, because that is where Barbara’s terror grows too strong. It’s not just that she’s afraid of losing herself again, it’s that she is afraid of losing you, too.