TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CHAPTER IS INTENSE. SUICIDE AND SELF HARM, GASLIGHTING.

READ END DESCRIPTION!!!!!

"OLIVIA!"

Lucas's screaming was a rude awakening from the tiny paradise Steve and Olivia had created for themselves a moment ago. Olivia's head shot up from Steve's knee and she stumbled to her feet.

"Lucas!" She yelled, trying to regain her balance. Why did she drink so much?

Terrified sobbing was her only answer.

Steve beat her to the door. He threw it open with so much strength that splinters of wood from Olivia's panicking fell to the floor. "Lucas! What happened?!"

A wave of nausea washed over Olivia at all of the sudden commotion; she could feel a raging migraine on it's way.  She swallowed down the bile rising in her throat and stumbled down the hallway towards the noise.

"Shit! SHIT!" Steve's voice was an octave higher from the front porch.

"What?!" Olivia shrieked. She kept her fractured arm close to her chest. The pain was unbearable. "STEVE!"

Lucas came sprinting into the living room, the boy's big brown eyes full of tears. He was shaking uncontrollably. "I swear, I don't know what happened, she just started screaming and then-"

Olivia shoved past him, her vision white from anxiety. The icy air bit at her flushed cheeks as she ran through the front doorway and stopped dead.

Caroline lay on the front porch, eyes rolled back into her head as her entire body seized. Her limbs were contorted and her head thumped onto the wood patio.

Steve was kneeling next to her, looking up at Olivia in terror. "I read somewhere that you aren't supposed to touch someone having a seizure-"

"You aren't," Olivia gasped, dropping down to her knees. "But this- this isn't a normal seizure."

"Something's happening to Will," Lucas confirmed. The poor kid's eyes were glued to his girlfriend's as his bottom lip trembled.

"So do we move her?" Steve looked at Olivia, who was trying to remember how to breathe.

"We need to take her to the lab," Olivia managed, holding back tears. "That's where they'll be taking Will. I don't know what else to do."

"Okay. Get in the car, I'll carry Caroline." Steve bent down and secured Caroline's neck against his chest before lifting her off the ground.

Olivia ushered Lucas to Steve's car, climbing in the passenger seat. Steve lay Caroline in the back seat with Lucas, letting him take his girlfriend's head into his lap and cry into her hair.

"Hey," Olivia reached behind her and took Lucas's hand as he cried. "Look at me."

Lucas looked up at her, seeming so, so small. Olivia felt a pang of grief; he reminded her of Eleven. 

"She's going to be okay, alright?" Olivia forced a smile through her tears. "I promise."

Steve pulled out of the driveway and began speeding down the road towards the lab, going so fast that the entire car roared. 

"Promise," Lucas said thickly. 

It wasn't a question. 

"Eleven used to say that a lot." Lucas tucked Caroline's hair behind her ear as the tiny girl trembled. He looked at Olivia. "She used to make us promise when we'd say something. It was really important to her."

Olivia didn't trust herself to speak, instead looking out of the window as they raced down the street.

"Your sister was amazing," Lucas said softly.

A tiny sob broke free from Olivia, making her clasp a hand to her mouth, trying to force the pain back in. She was. It was still excruciating to use the past tense, to try and describe a person who had meant so much to her. 

But then again, how do you put a person into words, past or present tense? Eleven was Olivia's baby sister, a bond that was so special and sacred that it went beyond just life or death. Even after finding out she had been killed, it didn't change anything.

And then, right when Olivia lost one sister, she got another.

Now Caroline lay in the back seat of the car, having a seizure, possessed by the monster Olivia had let escape from the lab.

"I can't lose her," Olivia didn't realize she had spoken until Steve took her hand. His eyes were glued on the road, one fist clenched around the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles were white. 

The hand holding hers, though, was nothing but gentle.

"You're not going to lose her, okay?" Steve said. "We're going to get to the lab, and it's going to be fine. We're going to figure this out-"

"How?" Olivia said angrily. "How- how is it going to be fine? Nothing about this is okay! Every single part of this is my fault, you know that? Everyone one I love always leaves! Eleven, my mother, Papa, Caroline-"

"That's just the alcohol talking," Steve said weakly. "And it's not your fault, you can't do that to yourself."

"It is," Olivia whispered. A tear trailed down her cheek. "There are a lot of things you don't know. It was me."

Lucas was starting to understand. His eyes widened in horror. "Olivia..."

"What?" Steve said, looking in his rearview mirror at the kid in the back seat. "What am I missing, here? Because as far as I know, it wasn't Liv who made that monster attack everyone, and it wasn't Liv who got the twins possessed-"

"It was."

The lab.

Papa had told her to.

Papa had told her it was her duty as his daughter to obey.

She had opened the gate.

"I opened the gate," Olivia whispered. She couldn't look at Steve. 

Silence.

"You... opened... the gate?" Steve's voice sounded distant.

Olivia nodded numbly. Her fractured arm throbbed. "It wasn't Eleven. She always did try to protect me."

"What... what do you mean you opened the gate?" Steve stammered. "Your powers couldn't do that, right?"

Papa's words rang in Olivia's mind. 

You could destroy worlds.

"They forced you to do it, didn't they? Brenner and... and everyone?" Steve asked in a low voice. He looked at her pleadingly. "It's not your fault."

"They didn't make me," Olivia whispered. "I... I wanted to impress Papa. Show him I could do it. I... it was all me."

"I don't...," Steve said, taking him eyes off the road long enough to look at her. "I don't understand. How..."

Lucas just stared at her in horror. Caroline had stopped seizing now, a limp, sweaty mess in the back seat. Olivia was almost grateful that she was catatonic; she could have a few more hours until Caroline realized she was a monster.

Before she could tell Joyce. Or Will. 

Before her secret was out to everyone, and she would be on her own again. Alone and abandoned, forced to live with the fact that she had no one else to blame. 

Olivia remembered the day she opened the gate like it was yesterday. 

The power she felt, like she was unstoppable. Like she could do anything. Like she was invincible.

The horror on Eleven's face as the tiny girl stared at her, watching the roof tiles break and the wall crack open, bit by bit.

But most of all, Olivia remembered the pride on Papa's face, as though she had finally lived up to his expectations.

And then suddenly, fearfully, he was telling her to stop, that it was enough. But she couldn't quit now- not when she was so close to her goal. No matter how much everyone kept yelling, it couldn't faze her in her power-hungry craze.

Then the gate opened, releasing a roar from the monster within. 

"They told me to stop," Olivia said numbly. She stared at her fractured arm, rotating her wrist, almost wishing it would break. She imagined it just finally spintering, breaking into a hundred pieces, turning into a mangled mess. 

She wanted to be hurt past the point of ever being able to hurt someone again.

Steve didn't respond. He was clenching his jaw.

"Papa... he kept saying it was enough, that he was proud of my work," she laughed darkly. "But I couldn't stop. The ceiling started cracking-"

"Stop," Steve clenched his hands on the steering wheel.

"- and the the wall started breaking, and then it started to open, bigger and bigger, and until Papa started shouting for someone to sedate me-"

"Olivia-"

"But then they saw my face," Olivia said loudly, pressing down on the fractured bone with her pointer finger. "And they were so scared... and I didn't stop."

See, the thing about my... gift," Olivia bit down hard on her tongue, tasting blood in her drunken state, "It destroy things, Steve. Actually, it destroys everything. And... I let it. I opened the gate myself, and there's no one else to blame for that."

Lucas sat silently in the back seat, tears falling over his pursed lips and trembling chin. Olivia took one glance at him in the rear- view mirror of the car and quickly looked away.

 A violent flurry of emotions roared inside of her. Disgust at herself and the monster of a person she had created, sorrow at the fact that as soon as they got to the lab, she would have to leave, grief when she realized that she really was going to lose another little sister, because of the portal Olivia had opened...

Yeah, being drunk definitely wasn't a good idea. 

So Olivia decided to focus on her fractured arm. The pain was grounding for her- helped her calm down. Because she deserved it. Because she was in control. Because she had brought it on herself.

Soon enough, the lab came into view, looming over the city of Hawkins, forcing itself on the people who just wanted to live their lives there. Olivia started to formulate a plan:

As soon as she made sure Caroline was with the doctors inside the lab, she would leave.

She would have to do it quickly so no one would try to stop her, because no one was changing her mind-

She would run, faster than she had ever run in her life, through the trees and over the dirt and far away from Hawkins Lab.

Because she had done it before, almost exactly a year ago, and no one had caught her-

And once Olivia got to the quarry, she would... do what she had to do. She vaguely remembered Jim Hopper saying something along the lines of, "a fall from that height, and the water turns into concrete"...

And then, no more Olivia Brenner. Just like that, she would be gone. In one blink, Olivia would no longer exist, except in memory of the people who had known her for barely a year, who surely wouldn't care that much if she were dead.

"Get her ready," Steve said gruffly to Lucas, snapping Olivia out of her thoughts. Lucas heaved Caroline up to her head was resting on his shoulder, jaw set and ready.

They pulled into the parking lot of the lab, which was lit up like a giant supernatural magnet in the night. There was a flurry of motion at the front entry, and Olivia's stomach dropped when she saw the Chief's truck parked right next to them.

Will was here too.

Olivia swung open the door of the passenger seat before the car had even come to a full stop. She yanked on the handle of the back seat, swinging it open, securing Caroline's neck as she tried to lift her up.

"Watch out," Steve moved her out of the way, his jaw set with determination. Then, like a superhero in one of the many films her brothers had made her watch, lifted up Caroline with ease and ran full speed towards the front doors.

"Help!" he shouted. "We need help!"

"Where's Dr. Owens?" Olivia ran ahead of him, making way. She could hear screaming down the halls of the lab as a stretcher was moved away from the entrance; Will must have gotten here just a few moments ago.

"Will?" Lucas had just ran in behind them, watching the flurry of doctors gathering a stretcher and crowding around Steve. His face was terrified when he realized both of the Byers twins were completely catatonic.

Caroline's state seemed to have worsened significantly now that she was in the same building as her twin. The doctors had lay her on a stretcher, trying to hold her down. The little girl's back was arched in pain as she screamed, sweat coating her skin. Her sobs tore into Olivia's heart, and she knew she had to go.

It was time.

Taking one last look at Caroline, knowing that she was in the best hands possible, she felt at peace enough to have the courage to do what she needed to do next.

She smiled through her tears as she whispered a small goodbye to the people who had made this the best year of her life.

Then she turned around, ignoring Lucas calling out to her, and ran out the doors.

It was less than a mile to the quarry, and Olivia knew the way like the back of her hand.

Somehow, even though the air was almost below freezing, Olivia didn't feel the cold. She just focused on pumping her legs, her feet pounding on the ground over and over, every step closer to the quarry. 

It was what had to be done; she knew that. Every second she was alive was another second she could lose control of her powers and hurt someone.

Or open up another portal into the Upside Down, letting another supernatural monster out.

It was all her. 

There was no one else to blame.

Olivia was the one who had unleashed the fury of the Upside Down, all because she wanted to impress her Papa. The reason Eleven was dead, the reason her other little siblings would soon be dead too. 

Destroyer of worlds.

Destroyer of families and people and hope and normalcy and love-

Suddenly Olivia was falling, her face slamming into a particularly sharp rock. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and she looked up, sobbing. 

She had made it to the quarry. 

Crying, Olivia stumbled to her feet, wiped the blood off of her lip, and held her fractured arm close to her chest. 

She walked towards the edge of the cliff and stared down at the black water far below, taking a moment to admire the way the stars reflected off of the surface. The stars that she had had to wait sixteen years to see.

It was necessary; Olivia knew that. Every second she was alive was another second she was putting the people she loved in danger. If she really cared about them, she would have to sacrifice herself.

All of the pent-up anger suddenly released itself, and a scream broke free, rattling the trees and causing the ground to quake under her feet.

There was a dead silence after the outburst that rocked Hawkins, echoes of Olivia's pain dying out after a moment or two.

Panting, Olivia looked down below her, shoulders trembling as she fidgeted her feet on the cliff's edge. Sobs racked her chest like a physical pain.

She had heard a story of how, once, Eleven had saved Mike on this cliff. She had shown up out of nowhere to save the day, being the hero Olivia had always tried so hard to match up to.

But Olivia Brenner was no hero. She couldn't mend and fix things like the rest of her father's subjects could. All she did was destroy, like a malfunctioning machine that couldn't be shut off.

As she looked up at the sky one last time, Olivia realized how scared she was.

A scared, small girl who had seen too many things in her short life to ever come back from.

She held her breath, about to step over the edge, when someone's voice rang through the clearing.

"Olivia!"

Olivia spun around, the tears frozen to her face, the cold night air making a cloud around her flushed face.

Steve Harrington stood a few feet away, panting, a bead of sweat running down his temple. Olivia realized he must have run all this way, following her.

"Steve, stop," she held up her uninjured hand, her lip trembling. "You need to leave. Just... just go, okay? I have to do this."

"Don't you dare," Steve said angrily, stepping forward. "You do not get to take the coward's way out of this. You do not get to leave us here to deal with all of this bullshit, okay? You don't get to leave me."

"I have to, Steve!" Olivia pleaded. The rocks around her started trembling and she cursed loudly. "I can't help you, alright? It's me, I'm the reason the portals keep letting the supernatural in, I'm the reason the monster keeps getting in their heads! Every time..." 

Steve stared at her brokenly, his eyes shining with tears as her voice broke and she clamped her trembling hand to her mouth. 

"Every time I lose control," Olivia sobbed. "The gate opens a little bit more. More people are going to get hurt."

"Come back over here, okay?" Steve whispered. Olivia couldn't help but realize how beautiful he was in the moonlight. "Hopper is on his way, we can get through this together."

"No," Olivia smiled through her tears. "No, we can't."

"Olivia-"

"I really do like you, Steve," she whispered. Another tear fell and she winced as her fractured arm pulsed with pain. "Take care of them for me."

"No!" Steve shouted. He ran forward, but she had already turned back around to face the water way down below.

She took one more breath.

And then Olivia Brenner jumped.

READ!!!! IMPORTANT!!!

So... don't hate me?

I know, this chapter is really intense and heartbreaking. It really dives into Olivia's backstory a lot more. It was her who opened the gate, and she was the reason portals kept opening all over Hawkins, like the one Nancy got trapped in in season 1. She really screwed up, and every time she loses control, the gate opens up a bit more.

It also went a lot deeper into that, into Olivia's mental health. She's in a lot of pain, and the guilt is crushing her. She's obviously suicidal and depressed, and that comes from a very deep and personal place to me. It's a horrible thing and it's so very real, and I channeled that into Olivia quite a bit.

If you are in pain or need someone to talk to, here's the number for the National Suicide Hotline in the U.S: 800-273-8255. Please, please use it. You are loved and cared about!