Chapter Text
On a military base, especially like the ones surrounding the Stargate, time had very little meaning. Day and night blurred into one without sight of the naked sky and there was always some kind of bustle going on in the corridors with shift changes and people in various states of pre and post mission.
There were pockets of quiet though, when the whoosh of the star Gate event horizon had settled, and no one was coming or going. When the techs could sit and work uninterrupted and medical didn't have anything but the usual post mission checks to do.
Steve enjoyed the job as much as he could. Whenever he had been deployed overseas he had liked seeing different places, different cultures etc if he wasn't keen on what they were doing there. The star Gate project was a step up from that; not only new countries but new worlds, as alien as the bottom of the ocean.
He liked somewhere scenic to be shot at.
He had been with the programme for just over a year, and only six months when Dustin had joined and quickly made a name for himself as the go to tech problem solver. From a wonky Walkman to a goauld blaster, Dustin seemed to have a sixth sense of what was wrong and how to fix it.
And let everyone know about it.
Steve had been dealing with Dustin's particular brand of humble since he was a kid, and in a world that often turned on its head, it was a refreshing blast of familiarity.
Another, less pleasant, but no less familiar sensation was the one occurring in his head; the flashing lights behind his eyes, the pounding in his temple and the sudden lurch to the left that his world makes when he stands up. He hasn't had a concussion in at least five years and he doesn't know what it says about him that that it happened once Dustin was back in the picture.
Still, he had been cleared enough by medical to leave the bay, if not for duty, light or otherwise. He had spent the last few hours sitting beside Dustin's work bench, playing a fairly one sided game of go fish while his friend waited foe the fabricator to spit out the parts that he needed to fix the second MALP that had come back out of action for the same reason that Steve currently was. Robot concussion.
He was very carefully not thinking about how different it felt this time, and how long it was actually lasting.
Not at all.
"Go fish." He said, throwing his cards down, only to have Dustin frown in his direction and roll his eyes.
"Cheater."
"I'm not cheating, you just suck at this." He gathered up the cards, picking post it notes off the back of them and shuffled before sticking them back into their sleeve. His head was starting to hurt again, and he could feel a nap coming on.
"I will have you know that I have a genius level IQ and hold grand master status." Dustin was brandishing a tiny screwdriver at him, face a picture of indignation, and Steve barked out a laugh that shot right through his skull.
"I only understood about half of that, but it doesn't change the fact that you suck at go fish."
Dustin was eyeing the cards and Steve knew that he was about to be challenged again. Which he will win again.
Best out of five had long since passed.
"Cheater."
"Seriously?"
They could have been there for a while, both as stubborn as the other, but the fabricator beeped obnoxiously and Dustin shoved away from the table, the wheels of his chair rumbling as he scooted over to the machine and carefully lifted the sealed tube protecting the small, delicate looking part that had been deposited.
"OK breaks over." The genius rose, holding the tube like a bomb. "I need to get this piece installed in the MALP, its going out in about an hour."
Steve knew, he was supposed to be going out with it. SG5 had been his team for the last year and didn't quite know how he felt about them going out with a substitute while he was recovering.
"Awesome." He said, getting up slowly and shoving the cards into the pocket of his fatigues. He followed the younger man into the main gate room where the machine waited at the bottom of the ramp, still and silent. To Steve it looked like something straight out of one of the movies that he used to shelve back in Hawkins. His whole life felt like one, these days.
"Don't be jealous, your noggin will fix itself eventually and you'll be back to throwing yourself into unknown danger daily." The words were muttered around the tiny screwdriver that had been shoved into Dustin's mouth as he stretched over the top of the machine to reach the open hatch that was just a dark space with a mess of open wires.
"I cant wait." He said. He wasn't sure of it was sarcasm or not.
It wasn't the first time retirement had passed through his head; it usually hit when he was poised in an alien jungle, or being chased by something wild or dangerous.
Occasionally when he was in his bunk in the barracks, surrounded by snoring people and he couldn't sleep, he wondered what a different life would be like. A gentler life. A life that didn't include sharing sleeping space with ten other sweating, farting marines.
He sat on the ramp when his head started to spin and shoved the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until the world stopped moving. The dull ache that resonated from the goose egg on the back of his head throbbed and then subsided.
"Do you have nothing better to do?" The words were harsh but Dustin looked worried and Steve felt like he had probably been upright for a bit too long for his scrambled brain.
He was probably a different colour too.
"According to the doc I actually don't." He said, "No screens, no reading, no writing until the concussion goes. So you get the unrelenting pleasure of my company until I'm cleared."
If he ever is.
"The highlight of my year." Dustin pronounced. Steve could hear shuffling, and a few metallic clicks to his left. The stale, recycled air of the gate room shifted as Dustin stepped back. "OK its ready to go, sir."
Steve pulled his hands away from his eyes to focus on Jack O'Neill's lean frame standing over them both, arms crossed over his strong chest.
"Good job, Henderson." He nodded as the MALP surged to life, booting up with a series of happily beeps. "Harrington, should you be here?"
He could feel the colonels eyes on him, his brow wrinkled in concern as he tried to hide it behind his usual gruff facade.
"Probably not, sir." He admitted and stood shakily. He moved out of the way of the MALP as it was repositioned on the end of the ramp, as Dustin fiddled with the screen, cameras and sensors.
"Best get back to medical or stay out of the way." O'Neill said, gesturing him away from the gate and towards the stairs to the observation room.
"Yes sir." He said and made his way up.
He was joined less than two minutes later by Dustin and he slumped into a chair next to an unused console and instantly felt better for not moving around.
The chevrons counted down and Steve looked out over the gate room, still not quite over the display that the gate made when it activated and the way the surface of the event horizon rippled like water.
The MALP trundled up the ramp and slipped through the event horizon, into the wormhole and through to the other side as good as new and he sent a satisfied nod over to Dustin. He could see the other members of SG5 gathered in the gate room, joking between them and razing the new face good naturedly. When he looked at them it wasn't the adventure that he missed or the adrenaline. It was the camaraderie, the friendship between them and the absolute knowledge that they had his back and he had theirs.
"Steve." Dustin's hand shot out, smacking him solidly in the shoulder. He flinched away and was about to snap back when he looked at Dustin's face and it was white as a sheet, drawn in shock.
Steve followed his gaze to the monitors showing the MALP readings and the camera footage and was met with a picture that haunted his nightmares.
"Holy shit." He could feel the blood draining from his own face, and he crept closer to the screen as the grainy footage solidified and the bottom dropped straight out of his stomach
It was, unmistakably, the Hawkins lab, and not the one in the world they were in. The cavern where the huge gate had been, the very first one, was covered in vines, the particles of mold and ash filtering through the air. He could see the tunnel that he and Dustin had hidden in, and as the camera panned around, the platform where Hopper had…
No.
"No, it… It cant be." He heard Dustin as he shoved the other tech out of the way and grabbed the screen, as if clutching the monitor was going to make the image, and all the implications that came with it, go away. "We closed the gate. We closed all the gates."
"El and will closed the gate." Steve said quietly. Dustin didn't answer.
"Whats…?" Dustin started and moved the screen further, peering into it intently as he tried to make out shapes in the darkness.
"Did you see something?" Steve asked and peered over his shoulder.
Dustin pointed to the very edge of the screen, in the shadows of the mezzanine where a large, dark shape scuttled slowly across the floor, spindly legs moving fast and close. The figure was tall but bent over as if it was hunched.
As if he was burnt.
"Colonel, close the shields." Steve turned urgently and met O'Neill's confused brown eyes, and to the mans credit he didn't flinch or hesitate, just slammed his hand on the controls foe the iris and closed it up tight as the MALP disappeared through the gate.
Steve turned his attention back to the screen as Dustin started to mutter about the readings in his ear.
"What are you two knuckleheads twitching about?" O'Neill moved far too quietly for a grown man in combat boots, and appeared behind them both like an annoyed wraith, jolting them out of their focus.
"We have seen that place before." Steve turned, and looked the man in the eye. He needed O'Neill to believe him; they couldn't let Creel; if the shadowy figure even was Creel, through the gate and back into the world. "We've been there, and there are things there you don't want on this side of the gate."
"What is that?" Dustin frowned pointing to the figure as it got closer. "It doesn't look like a Demogorgon, too small."
"Too big to be a demo dog…."
The figure moved into beam of the MALP's light and Steve held his breath in shock.
The thing was dressed, to an extent, the material ripped moldy and rotten as it hung against an upright frame. A human shaped frame. The feet were bare and black to the alarmingly thin calf, trousers split up the side revealing blood stained makeshift bandages.
It was close enough now for the light to shine off sallow, almost translucent skin stretched over a skeletal face and partially hidden under a patchy, matted beard.
The figure jumped every time the MALP camera moved, skittish and scared and very much not a Demogorgon. A mouth moved under the fall of the beard, but there wasn't a sound to be heard, even though the skinny arms waved expressively even if the movements were jerky and cut off. They could hear the ambient noises, but nothing from the figure.
The gestures, the landscape and the vision of hell in front of him made Steve's heart twist in his chest. He knew those gestures; could perfectly envision a long and lanky figure dancing nimbly over lunch tables, taking theatrical bows and taunting Steve's team mates like it was a sport. Even hunched, there was the greeting the spread arms, the long twisting fingers. He remembered everything; recognised everything.
He also knew the exact moment that Dustin recognised everything as well, just seconds after.
"Holy shit." Dustin said, his voice dripping in despair. He didn't take his eyes off the screen, off the figure that had pulled back on himself and was turning away dejectedly.
That wasn't Creel.
"Its Eddie."