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I heard that you've been self-medicating in the quiet of your room, your sweet, suburban tomb. And if you need a friend, I'll help you stitch up your wounds
When Jim and Joyce got married, their little families fused into a kind of big one. They seemed like the perfectly normal suburban family: a nice, big house located in one of Hawkins’ best streets, a fluffy little golden retriever puppy who had replaced the Byers’ previous dog, a happy just married couple with two adorable teens and an interesting, handsome young man that left to study photography in the big apple. Lonnie leaving and Will’s disappearance seemed to be long forgotten by the whole town, as well as the mysterious appearance of Hopper’s new adopted daughter.
To everyone else, they were normal. The thing is that they weren’t.
Even after a few years, the trauma of everything that had happened to them still haunted the family, specially El and Will. They had bonded over their similar experiences with monsters and the cold, dark upside down, which made them feel as if they had been brother and sister their whole lives. They trusted each other more than any other person, which sometimes made their parents worry or their other friends be jealous (a particular Wheeler kid more than anybody else), but that was just how things were. El and Will had become inseparable, being the only ones who really understood what the other had been through.
So when El found Will in the kitchen one late night after having come back from sneaking out to see Mike, she immediately knew something was wrong.
“Hey there” she told him, “why are you awake? It’s almost three in the morning”
“I could ask you the same thing” Will said, smiling and raising his eyebrows. “How was Mike?”
“Shut up” El mumbled, lightly slapping him in the shoulder. “Can’t sleep?”
Will didn’t want to tell her the truth, he didn’t want his sister or any of his family members to worry. However, he knew he couldn’t lie. Not to El. “Yeah, I… I’ve been having nightmares. I don’t know, I thought I had gotten over it but I guess I haven’t. I came here to grab some water for sleeping pills. Please don’t tell mom, she’ll freak out”
El’s heart shrunk with his confession. Wordlessly, she reached for her brother and hugged him tightly. It was the best way for her to tell him that she understood, that she was there. She had never been and never would be the best with words, but affection? That, she could show perfectly.
She let go of Will once she felt hot tears spilling on her shoulder and sobs shaking his body. El guided him to his bedroom, where she helped him lie on his bed. She then took of her shoes and lay next to him, putting her arms around him and letting Will rest his head in the crook of her neck.
Her brother’s sobs made El want to start crying, too. She understood how his nightmares worked because she sometimes had the same ones, too. However, she kept it together for him. Seeing El cry would break him even more and she knew it. So, instead of crying, she ran her hands up and down his back and through his hair while softly singing a lullaby.
Will kept on crying, but this time there was also joy in his tears. He loved his sister so much it made him cry, her display of affection and willingness to help him no matter what moving deep emotions in his chest.
They fell asleep on Will’s bed together, El only closing her eyes once she felt Will’s body relax and his breath calming. The following morning Will would wake up from the best night’s sleep he’d had in weeks, and he’d realize how good it felt to let it all out. How good it felt to have someone as kind as El in his life, someone who cared.
How good it was to have love and reassurance instead of sleeping pills.
I heard that you've been having some trouble finding your place in the world, I know how much that hurts. But if you need a friend then please just say the word
When El started high school she was ecstatic. She finally got to be a normal kid and see her boyfriend and best friends every day, what could be better? However, the truth of high school suddenly slapped her hard in the face.
There was homework and there were difficult subjects.
There were teachers that were just plain mean.
And, speaking of mean, there were kids that seemed the reincarnation of the mind flayer or some force of evil.
El had pictured high school as a magical place, and now she wasn’t that sure it was as great as she had thought. She was a little far behind from her classmates general knowledge and she needed twice as much time to understand a new topic. She lacked the social skills needed to survive the jungle of teen kids without getting hurt or to ignore her teachers’ harsh criticism over some of her work.
Her friends helped her, sure, and Mike did too, but she still felt like she didn’t belong. Like she would never be a part of this thing people call everyday normal life.
Will, being as sensitive and close as El as he was, could tell that El wasn’t fully enjoying her first school experience. He wanted nothing more than for her to have what she could never have before: a sense of normalcy. So with the excuse of having to discuss something from math class with her and under the scrutinizing looks from their friends, he dragged the girl with him to the halls during lunch.
Once Will had made sure they were alone, he spoke
“Hey El, I’m sorry I made you come here without asking, I just wanted to know if everything was okay” he told his confused friend
“Yeah, I’m okay. Why do you ask?” El told him
“It’s nothing, probably, but I’ve seen you kind of frustrated about school and stuff, and I just wanted you to know that if something’s bothering you, you can talk to me. I know Mike can be… intense, he wants to protect you from everything so he worries too much, so if you ever need to speak to someone that isn’t him because you don’t want to worry him, you can count on me” Will explained, kind of rambling. El’s intense gaze was suddenly making him nervous. What if I screwed things up?
To Will’s relief, El spoke. “Thanks, Will. School can be… hard. Kids are mean and studying is difficult. I’m” she tried to remember Hopper’s word of the day she had gotten some time ago “ overwlemmed , no, overwhelmed”
“Yeah, school can be too much sometimes. But you have Mike, and the rest of the party, and me to try and make things easier for you. You can always talk to Hopper for extra tutoring, or Nancy, or even mom. She’d love to help you. Things will get better, you’ll see” he told her, giving her a quick hug. He was glad that she had opened up to him and he could somehow help her. He owed it to her.
“Thank you, Will” El told him while hugging him back, voice filled with honesty and gratitude. “You’re a good friend”
“You’re a good friend too, El. The best”
You've come this far, you’re all cleaned up, you’ve made a mess again. There's no more trying, time to sort yourself out
El had stopped throwing psychic tantrums once she had learnt how to control her powers. She had better understanding of how her powers worked and how to make them stop, even in emotionally charged moments. She was getting better and better at using them the way she pleased, and she hadn’t used them accidentally since that day Hopper and her had a fight over Mike at the cabin all those years ago. Something like that could never happen again.
Or so she had thought.
The first time she fought with Mike was a day she would never forget. They were arguing over some stupid girl at school who had a crush on Mike, and how Mike never seemed to tell her to back off. He argued he didn’t want to look rude, but El thought he was being a bit too kind. The arguing escalated to a full on shouting session, leaving both their throats raw and hearts completely broken. Would they really break up over something as silly as this when they had gotten through so much just to be together?
El left Mike’s house slamming the front door. Thankfully, they were alone, or else his whole family would have found out what had happened. Unfortunately, what they thought would be makeout time turned out to be something much more bitter.
When El arrived to her house, she couldn’t help the throat wrecking scream that left her body, making her eyes slam shut and her fists curl up in small balls. She couldn’t hear the noise of things breaking and flying everywhere over the thumping of her heart in her ears, so she didn’t hear when Will came out of his room, shocked and scared when he saw the state his house and his sister were in.
He knew El wouldn’t snap out of her trance with words, so he ran to her and tackled her to the ground with the tightest hug he could possibly give her. She tried to push him but she couldn’t, and Will was impressed by his own strength. Who knew such a tiny boy could contain this hurricane of a girl?
Slowly, things floated back to the ground and El’s hysteric crying calmed down, leaving her on shedding silent tears while hugging her brother on the floor.
“What happened, El?” Asked a concerned Will after a while. “You never lose control over your powers like that”
“I know, I’m sorry” she mumbled against Will’s shoulder
“You don’t have to be sorry, I’m just surprised, that’s all. You’ve come so far learning how to use your powers that I can’t understand how you lost control over them” he said, letting El go and cleaning the blood and tears on her face with his sleeve
“Mike and I had a fight. I- I don’t know what to do. I think things are over” El explained, looking down in embarrassment
Will didn’t know whether to gasp in shock or to laugh at his sister’s words. Mike and El never argued, not about important things, and while it must have been terrible Will knew things were far from over between those two. “El, look at me. Mike’s been my best friend for ages and I know he’s too in love with you to let you go. Ever. He waited for you without being sure you were alive for almost a year, he was the most depressed we had ever seen him. Without you, he just wasn’t Mike anymore. He needs you, and you need him. There’s no Mike or El anymore, not since you left the lab. Now it’s MikeandEl and even though you’re only 16 I’m sure that’s the way it will be for the rest of your lives. I’m almost as sure of that as I am that I like boys ” he joked, earning a watery chuckle from the girl sitting in front of him. “Whatever happened, you’ll get through it. Together” he said, lifting her chin with his hand
He knew his words worked when he saw El smiling softly. She then proceeded to tell him what had happened, and this time he actually chuckled. How could she believe they had broken up over such a trivial thing? Their love had survived demogorgons, upside downs, mind flayers, months of separation and Mike would give up on her over a simple argument? Not possible.
After some time, they cleaned the whole house up and put things that had floated away into their places. It took them their good hours, but once they were finished the house looked as if nothing had happened.
A few hours later, when Joyce and Jim returned from work, they couldn’t tell their daughter had had a psychic meltdown in the middle of the living room.
Some hours later than that, when a tired looking, bloodshot eyed Mike came knocking at the door and a smiling Will had opened it, he couldn’t tell his girlfriend had thrown the sofa across the room while crying over him.
El wouldn’t tell them, and Will wouldn’t, either.
She had sorted herself out with the help of her brother.
She would always will with his help.
Hold on tight, this ride is a wild one. Make no mistake, the day will come when you can't cover up what you've done
Being in the salted water bathtub kind of felt like being at the tank back in the lab, only this time El really wanted to do it. She had a good purpose.
El saw herself surrounded by blackness, the familiar void engulfing her in its nothingness. There, far away, she saw a girl about Nancy’s age. Lying on the floor. She was-
“Dead!” She screamed in terror, not knowing if she had said it out loud or only inside her brain, but she didn’t care at all. She was scared, frightened, terrified. She feared that Will had faced the same fate.
Turning around, she saw another thing, kind of a tree house that had rotten to the point of almost falling down. The door had something written on it. Castle Byers. Will. She entered it, moving what looked like a dirty bedsheet from the door opening. And then she saw him.
Oh, there you are.
She approached Will with cautious steps until she was kneeling in front of him. He looked terrible. Gone. He was covered in gunk and connected to one of those horrible, parasite looking things that lived in the upside down. It was feeding from Will, weakening him to the point of making his body look blue from the lack of blood flow in it.
She grabbed Will’s hands in an attempt to wake him up. He only opened his eyes when she told him his mother was coming to get him, telling her only one word: fast.
El wanted to tell him to hold on, she wanted to warn him that he had a long road ahead of him, she wanted to tell him she was so sorry for opening the gate, but she didn’t know how to express what she wanted to say. There was no way to put those kind of feelings into words.
Instead, Will and everything around him vanished into thin air and, when she woke up crying in the pool, she knew it was too late for her to tell him everything she wanted to.
She hoped it wasn’t too late to save him.
Now don't lose your fight, kid, it only takes a little push to pull on through. With so much left to do, you’ll be missing out, and we'll be missing you
One of the first things El did when she returned from Chicago and reunited with her loved ones was ask Joyce to see Will. She knew she wouldn’t like what she was about to see, but she had to. She owed him.
She also offered to close the gate, knowing damn well what that could mean to her life but also wanting to do everything she could to save her friend. She felt connected to him in a weird way. They hadn’t even met properly, but if something was to happen to him…
However, Mike noticed that if she was to kill the mind flayer, it would take Will, too. That wasn’t an option. Will had to live, and she would make sure of that.
Entering the room where he was lying on a bed, Joyce created a plan to get the thing out of his body so that El could kill it without any consequences. She was a smart woman, something El admired.
Once the plan was put into action, everything could turn out great or it could go disastrously. That’s why, before Joyce left with Nancy, Jonathan and Will to the cabin, El asked for some time alone with Will. They were in a hurry, but she needed to talk to him. This time, she needed to tell him what she wanted to say.
Nobody had the heart to deny El some time with Will, so with the promise to come back in two minutes, they left her alone with him in the room.
“Hi, Will. I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for opening the gate and doing this to you. I’ll fix it. Don’t go, please. We’ll miss you. I’ll miss you” she said grabbing Will’s hand and kneeling next to the bed.
“We’ll fight together, and we’ll win. I promise”
Grit your teeth, pull your hair, paint the walls black and scream: "Fuck the world ‘cause it's my life, I'm gonna take it back.” and never for a second blame yourself
El and Will coped with their feelings differently. Specially since the beginning of their sophomore year at high school.
For Will, trying to overcome his PTSD was full with anxiety and panic attacks. He would pull his hair and grit his teeth and completely lose control over his mind and his body.
For El, trying to overcome it caused her to go through a sudden punk phase. She changed the overalls and soft curls for a similar look than the one Kali and her friends had given her, she listened to punk rock music and painted her bedroom completely black. She also lived with a carpe diem mentality, seizing every moment and not caring what others thought of her. It was her life, after all, only hers to live and decide.
They both had one thing in common, though. They blamed themselves for everything that had happened.
Will blamed himself for Bob’s death, for all those deaths that day. He blamed himself for causing pain to his family. He blamed himself for being so reckless and just letting the mind flayer take him. He even blamed himself for Dustin’s cat’s death, arguing that Dart wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for him.
El blamed herself for Will’s disappearance. She blamed herself for everyone she had killed. She blamed herself for opening the gate. She blamed herself for throwing Max off her skateboard and making Lucas fly through the air. She blamed herself for hurting Mike all those 353 days. She blamed herself for being a burden for Hopper and all her friends.
They knew things weren’t their fault. Like, at all. But they couldn’t help feeling that way. Their loved ones always told them they weren’t to blame for anything, but guilt was eating them both alive.
One night summer night after they had finished their school year, they talked about it for the first time. They were sitting on the porch of their house, munching on some chips in silence, when El spoke
“I’m sorry” she told Will
“What for?” he asked, confused
“Everything. I opened the gate, Will. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have got to go through all that crap” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know, I guess I never got to apologize to you”
“Are you kidding me El? You saved me, all of us, twice. Nothing is your fault. I should be the one apologizing” he told El, grabbing her hand
“Will don’t-“
“No, let me finish. I should have run away from both the mind flayer and the demogorgon when I could. I was paralyzed with fear, and I couldn’t fight it. If I had…”
“It’s not your fault, Will” El told him, squeezing his hand
“It’s not yours, either” Will squeezed back
“It’s neither mine nor yours, okay? Compromise” El smiled to her brother
“Yeah, compromise” Will said, smiling back at her warmly
That summer, the panic attacks seized, the cute overalls and soft curls returned, but most importantly,
The guilt left.