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The bullet was hot as it entered Kali's body. Everything around her was as the windows broke inward with flames. Kali did not scream, she did not cry. She had wished to die, just by her own hands. But her friends hadn't had that choice, so why should she?
She did not move, not even as she heard necks begin to snap and saw bodies drop to the ground. It was over for her. No more tricks, no more illusions. No more anything.
Kali didn't remember her parents' religion, her true ones. She knew that they'd named her for a god. She knew of reincarnation, that maybe this wasn't the end. She'd be born again, as a flower or bee. A better life than the one she had. Axel, Dottie, Funshine, Mick, and her could all be together in that one.
While she hadn't closed her eyes she only now noticed Jane and Hopper above her, both their hands on her wound. They tried to apply pressure but Kali knew it was failing. She could feel the blood soak through the clothes she'd been lent.
She saw their lips move but she didn't hear what they were saying. Hopper jumped up, going out of the room. Maybe just to let Kali and Jane have this moment. This was going to be the last time Kali was alone with her sister.
Jane kneeled in front of her, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Don't cry Jane,” Kali begged, wrapping her hand around Jane's futile attempt to stop the bleeding. “My story was always going to end here.”
“No,” Jane sobbed. “No, no, it doesn't have to be like this.” Kali thought about that for just a second when Hopper gave Jane his plea. The life he described for her, that could be worth fighting for. Could Kali have a life like that? She didn't know if Hopper believed it given his apparent feelings on her. She knew she didn't.
“It's okay Jane. Your story doesn't have too.” She remembered the clarity she felt as she was tased by the guards in her failed escape from Dr. Kay. Through the screams she realized she should have died long ago. Been done with all of this. The realization that all the experiments should have never been born, that Henry should have killed all the subjects before Jane could challenge him. Should have rather killed himself than been used and abused by Brenner.
But as she looked at Jane, her crying baby sister, she found the words came easy to her even if they might be false. “I-I think you can make it. Kill our brother, destroy the bridge, then go from there. Leave Hawkins, Indiana, America, hell this entire continent. Go where Kay will never find you.”
“No,” Jane sobbed. “Not without you. I can't lose you, Kali. Not again. Together. No matter what.” Jane stopped applying pressure to Kali and for a moment Kali thought Hopper was back with medical supplies or a bullet to the head.
Then she felt pressure, more than just that. She didn't feel the wound well, maybe shock or just her brain hiding the pain. But she felt the pressure on it, twisting and cold. She felt her blood's heat slow as her clothes became tighter and tighter. Blood dripped from Jane's nose and Kali knew she was serious. Kali loved Jane and Kali loved her enough to try. They whispered then of a plan, of dead brothers and ghosts who wouldn't be quite dead.
So Kali laid ‘dead’ when Hopper returned. And when she knew that both Jane and Hopper had left the floor she got onto her knees and one step at a time walked out of there. Not for the first time she wished she had Jane's powers, illusions couldn't help much now. Could she have saved her friends if she had Jane's powers?
Maybe they were always doomed, that death would come early for all of them. But would try and fight off that destiny, she owed it to Jane to try. Kali walked out the back exit as she realized the flaming helicopter had shared that fire with the lab. She'd once gone out that door, when she was so much younger. When she had more…faith that things would be okay.
She followed the metal planks until she knew she was pushing her luck too far. So she sat back on her knees and tried, tried so hard to breathe normally. She closed her eyes and waited.
She couldn't see things from far away like Jane, but she had her own way of sensing people's actions. Mick had called Kali a seer once, for Kali's ability to sense people's next moves. Kali didn't believe in anything as simple as fate and long suspected that it was just a form of mind reading, just actions instead of words.
Mick still called her seer until the day they killed her though.
So Kali knew where to go, slowly and invisibly, as she snuck through the portals Jane had pried open. Kali let out a prayer to whatever god would listen when there were no military around. She trudged to where she knew they were though, avoiding the ‘kryptonite’.
Her wound had regained sense and she was in enormous pain, but if the sisters pulled this off, Jane had a future in being a surgeon. Kali would've laughed if her body wasn't twisted and she was in earshot of the woman who tortured her and all those women for months. Kali couldn't bear to think of them without seeing them strapped down and dying slowly.
She wondered if they were still in the Upside Down, if they had all died or if Kay had them removed. Either way, their fates were sealed. When this was all over Kali would ask Jane to check. That caught Kali off guard, an after. She smiled to herself then.
Maybe Jane's dad had more brain than Kali had given him credit for after all.
The smile fell from Kali, Jane hadn't given her any opiates after all, just stopped the bleeding. She could hide in this building without her illusions, yet she didn't find it worth the risk. Then the military began to move outside and she forced through her pain, no matter how much blood poured from her nose.
Kali looked out of her hiding place and she saw Jane standing back in the portal, even through the mayhem of her own friends’ fight with the military. Kali used her illusions instantly and while Eleven stayed in the portal, Kali saw Jane run across the mayhem, through the crowd and past the kryptonite.
Kali's wound had started bleeding again, but Jane was at her side, taking her by the arm and standing up. The pain pushes the words Jane said from Kali's ear. It was getting worse. Still Kali held on, pushing her own words from her mouth. “We need to leave,” she told Jane, her tone as assertive and clear as could be expected.
Kali's eyes wanted to close, but she had her plan. She held onto it, onto the mirage of Jane. Until Kali felt something like wax being pulled from her skin. It ripped off hair and skin, but it didn't hurt. With faster and faster breathing she realized that the Upside Down was gone. It had exploded.
Curiously she looked down at her hand. She didn't look at her surroundings or pay attention to even where she was. In her hand, a blue glowing butterfly was there. Kali was still alive.
With her other hand she reached out and felt until it met something solid. She weakly grasped at Jane, alive and breathing. Kali turned to see her sister. Jane was dirty and there were tears in her eyes and she was shaking. She was alive.
“I'm sorry, Jane,” Kali whispered, eyes already closed. Kali felt it as surely as she felt the bullet in her gut that somehow, she would survive this. She would wake up. Kali didn't know where or when. The government had witnessed them dead and they wouldn't chase after the dead.
Her last though before she gave into slumber, was Jane having to lug her sleeping body around until they found some place safe.
☆☆☆
The sun was shining in Kali's eyes as she woke up. She was laying on something soft, with a blanket over her and her head on a pillow. She rocketed up, before a sharp pain cut deep into her. Slowly she lowered herself back down. Kali looked around the room, a living room.
It felt cozy, lived in. Child proof almost. The TV was on, some weather show. But what caught Kali's eyes was the woman in the rocking chair. Her hair in a messy bun and wearing a dress, there was an emptiness to her. She murmured words that Kali couldn't hear and it took a second before Kali recognized her. Terry Ives, Jane's mom.
Kali knew that meant she could only be in one place. “Oh, you're awake,” a voice said. Kali, painfully, craned her neck to see a woman standing in the doorway, holding a bag of groceries. “Um-” she muttered. She looked like Terry and Jane, but with shorter hair and more wear to her skin. This woman hadn't been locked up like the other Ives women. “Jane, your friend is-”
Jane appeared from behind the woman, “Kali!” she screamed. Jane's hair was down completely, brushed out. She wore a purple sweater with denim pants. She looked like a regular teen girl and that was what pushed Kali to begin crying. Not the bullet still logged in her guts, or the horrors she'd gone through. But her little sister, safe.
“Jane,” Kali whispered back, as she powered through the pain and wrapped her arms around Jane. It hurt, it definitely still needed medical attention. The two
couldn't stay here, even if for now it was safe.
Yet Kali let her worries about the future drift away, because no matter what happened, she and her sister would have one.