Chapter 26: The Adoption Finalization
POV: Adam
May 15th, 1984, and Adam stands in a courthouse that smells like floor wax and institutional indifference, wearing his only dress shirt borrowed from Jonathan and a tie that Joyce spent twenty minutes trying to get straight. The formality feels surreal—bureaucracy attempting to document love that's already been living and breathing in the Byers house for months.
Adam Mills is about to cease existing. Adam Byers is about to become real.
Joyce sits beside him on the wooden bench, her best dress pressed and her hair carefully styled, but her hands shake with nervous energy that has nothing to do with legal procedures and everything to do with the magnitude of what they're making official.
"Nervous?" she whispers, reaching over to squeeze his hand.
Terrified. Grateful. Overwhelmed. How do you put a name to the feeling of becoming real?
"A little," Adam admits. "Good nervous, though."
Good nervous. Like the difference between anticipating pain and anticipating joy.
Will bounces in his seat with barely contained excitement, still weak from his ordeal but determined to witness the moment his temporary brother becomes permanent family. Jonathan sits with his camera ready, documenting everything with the serious attention of someone who understands that some moments are too important to trust to memory alone.
Even Hopper has shown up, uncomfortable in his dress uniform but present in the way that matters. He catches Adam's eye and nods once—approval, acceptance, and a warning all wrapped up in a single gesture.
He's claiming me too. In his own gruff way, he's saying I belong to this extended family that includes everyone who matters.
"Adam Mills," the judge calls, his voice echoing through the courtroom with official gravity.
They approach the bench—Adam flanked by Joyce and the social worker who's guided them through months of paperwork and background checks. The judge is older, kind-faced, the sort of person who's probably presided over hundreds of adoptions and still finds joy in making families official.
"I've reviewed your case," the judge says, looking directly at Adam with genuine warmth. "Orphaned child, exemplary foster placement, glowing recommendations from teachers, police chief, and community members. This appears to be exactly the kind of successful placement the system is designed to create."
Successful placement. If only you knew what went into creating this particular success story.
"Adam Mills," the judge continues, "do you want Joyce Byers to become your legal mother?"
The question hangs in the air like a bridge between one life and another. Adam looks at Joyce—this woman who found him living in an abandoned car and chose to save him, who defended him to skeptical cops and suspicious bureaucrats, who made him feel wanted before he'd even learned to want anything for himself.
"Yes, Your Honor," Adam says, his voice breaking on the words. "More than anything."
More than anything. More than power, more than knowledge, more than the ability to control monsters or change fate—I want this. I want her. I want them.
The gavel falls with finality that echoes through dimensions.
"Adoption granted. Welcome to your forever family, Adam Byers."
Adam Byers. It's official now. Legal and permanent and real.
Joyce pulls him into a hug that lifts him off his feet, tears streaming down her face while she whispers promises about forever and family and love that doesn't require conditions or explanations. Will cheers from the gallery, Jonathan's camera clicks, and even Hopper allows himself a rare smile.
This is what victory feels like. Not defeating monsters or saving lives, but belonging somewhere completely and unconditionally.
Back at the Byers house—his house, his home, his forever place—Joyce has prepared a celebration that's perfectly them. The cake is slightly lopsided because she's never been much of a baker, but it's chocolate because she remembers Adam mentioning it's his favorite. The decorations are homemade because store-bought feels impersonal for something this important.
"Speech!" Will demands, bouncing with energy that makes him look more like himself than he has since November. "The newly official brother needs to give a speech!"
What do you say to people who saved your soul by choosing to love you?
"I don't know what to say," Adam admits, looking around at faces that have become his world. "Thank you doesn't seem big enough."
"You don't have to say anything," Joyce says gently. "You just have to stay. Forever."
Forever. The word should feel like pressure, like obligation, but instead it feels like freedom.
Will presents a handmade card decorated with drawings of all their family adventures—camping trips that never happened, Christmas mornings, birthday parties, the kind of normal family moments that exist more in hope than memory.
"To my brother—official edition," Will has written inside in his careful handwriting. "Thanks for making our family bigger."
Brother. Official edition. Like I've graduated from temporary to permanent status.
Jonathan's gift is his old camera—the one he used before upgrading to his current model, complete with a bag of film and a promise to teach Adam proper darkroom technique.
"Every family memory keeper needs one," Jonathan says with the easy affection of siblings who've chosen each other. "Besides, Will's always drawing our adventures. Someone should be photographing them too."
Memory keeper. Like I'm being entrusted with documenting proof that this family exists, that we're real.
That's when Hopper arrives, carrying a wrapped box that he presents with the awkward ceremony of someone who's not used to gift-giving but is determined to do it right.
"Keep in touch with your old man," Hopper says gruffly as Adam unwraps a walkie-talkie identical to the ones the Party uses. "Channel 7. Emergency frequency."
Your old man. Hopper just claimed me as family too.
The realization hits Adam like physical force—he doesn't just have a mother and brothers now, but a father figure who's chosen to include him in the extended network of people worth protecting.
Later, as the celebration winds down and the evidence of joy gets cleaned away, Joyce takes Adam somewhere he's never been—the Hawkins cemetery, where stones mark lives that ended before their stories could be completed.
"I want to show you something," Joyce says quietly, leading him to a small section where a modest marker reads simply "Unknown Child—Found 1983."
Subject 017. The boy whose body I inherited.
"I had this placed," Joyce explains, her voice thick with emotion Adam doesn't quite understand. "For whoever you were before. I don't know his name or his story, but he deserves to be remembered."
She knows. Somehow, she knows I'm not entirely the person she adopted.
"I don't know who you were before," Joyce continues, pulling Adam close. "But you're my son now. All of you—whoever you are, wherever you came from. You're mine now, and I'm yours, and that's all that matters."
All of me. Even the parts that aren't really mine, even the borrowed memories and stolen identity—she's claiming all of it.
Adam cries into her shoulder with the ugly, gasping sobs of someone finally grieving for losses they never knew they carried. He mourns for Subject 017, for Michael Thompson, for the family he never had and the childhood that got lost in laboratory fluorescents and interdimensional warfare.
But underneath the grief lies something warmer and more powerful—gratitude for the family he's found, love for the people who chose him, and the absolute certainty that he belongs somewhere permanently and unconditionally.
[NAME OFFICIALLY CHANGED: ADAM BYERS]
[JOYCE BYERS RELATIONSHIP: UNCONDITIONAL MOTHER (100%)]
[RELATIONSHIP LOCKED: UNBREAKABLE]
[SAFE HOUSE BONUS DOUBLED]
[NEW TITLE: SON OF JOYCE]
[MENTAL RESILIENCE AGAINST PSYCHIC ATTACKS]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: +5000 XP]
[HOPPER RELATIONSHIP: FATHER FIGURE (75%)]
[JONATHAN BYERS RELATIONSHIP: TRUE BROTHER (95%)]
That night, Adam Byers—not Adam Mills, not Subject 017, but Adam Byers, son of Joyce, brother to Will and Jonathan—sleeps in his room in his house with his family, and for the first time since transmigrating, feels completely, terrifyingly real.
This is my life now. Not borrowed, not stolen, but chosen and claimed and made official by people who love me enough to make it permanent.
Through the bond, Scout sends waves of contentment from his patrol route. The creature doesn't understand human legal procedures, but he recognizes pack bonds when he sees them, and his satisfaction feels like approval from the only friend who's seen Adam at his absolute worst.
I'm home. Finally, permanently, unshakeably home.
And that's worth everything—every sacrifice, every secret, every impossible choice that brought me here.
This is my family. These are my people.
And I'll die before I let anything hurt them.
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