A girl is a gun, Eddie has jokingly told you one night before his untimely death.

He suggested that Steve was good with weapons, and you had taken a damn good place as just that. Locked and loaded, starting in the background but getting picked up along the way as someone useful.

Somehow, things never seemed to look up.

And now the goddamn apocalypse was happening in Hawkins.

Steve barely knew you existed until The Starcourt Mall. You were just another face in Hawkins High-school, slinking around with the weight of your brother Eddie's last name.

You started out as a target.

Gradually, as Eddie became friends with Dustin and had been merged into the dysfunctional group, so did you. Turns out, your knack for Russian literature and music fundamentals made Steve and Robin gravitate towards you to assist with their dilemmas.

And you didn't really know friendship until you were tied back to back with Steve, drugged and bloody in the basement of a Russian military base.

Turns out, Steve didn't really know true heartache until the nights where he saw you lay across the couch, eyes permanently searing a gaze into the wall that could only be described as lost.

As for the gun part; Eddie had been right. Nancy had a handgun, but you were the first to jump at the prospect of being a sniper. Russian guards and demobats alike, Steve watched you do what Nancy couldn't; take a life with no regrets, all for the sake of your friends.

He could handle a weapon. A baseball bat with nails, his fists, a good nine millimeter or the revolver he kept in his glove compartment. But could he handle you?

No, would he?

Your aversion to touch and sharp words, thin patience and often all consuming silence were seemingly red flags, yes. But Steve knew how to handle a weapon. He knew how to disarm someone.

He just needed to do it to you.

It wasn't until he had returned from the upside down, bloody and injured, that he realized where his eyes kept going. Whether your eyes were trained on the target, firing off fireworks at the mind flayer or tightening the dampened fabric of gauze around flesh, his eyes had been there. You didn't say anything as you patched him up, but he noticed that you had taken longer than you should have. And it had been for the simple reason of the fact that you were thorough, using hospital like precision while your own wounds had been haphazardly wrapped with fucking duct tape and shredded jackets.

It had been two years since the Starcourt mall incident.

Four months since the upside down had merged with the real world. Four months since Vecna had taken the helm as the greatest threat, becoming Cognitohazardous and sending max into a coma.

Four months since Eddie had died.

And now, there were five in the group that resided for the week in a safe house while everyone figured out the plan.

You, Robin, Steve, Jonathan and Nancy.

It was obvious that in the coming months, not all of you would survive - perhaps some of the kids or the older high schoolers would become victims of tradgedy.

But no one's fate was set in stone.

And in the face of incoming death, prophecy rumored unconventional love could save a life.

Thanks a fucking lot for saying that stupid gun innuendo, Eddie.

"You good? I haven't heard you say a word in like, fuck, three days?" Steve sighed, leaning against your doorway. When you nodded, he continued, adjusting his tattered jacket. "We're gonna need you for uh, weapon assessment soon. Nancy got a semi automatic from Murray, but its jammed."