Chapter Text
“Hey El. Day three-hundred and fourty-four. If you’re there, please, let me know. I promise I won’t tell anybody, just give me a sign.”
A sigh.
“It’s Halloween soon, which is a holiday where we dress up and decorate everything to be scary, like ghosts or skeletons. Me and mom went shopping for my costume today. We’re all dressing up as Ghost Busters, which are guys from a movie…” he sighs again. “I wish I could show you.”
“But basically, they hunt and catch ghosts as their job and…”
He stalls, his facial expression displaying the fact that he’s had a sudden thought.
“That gives me an idea… If you’re hiding, from like the bad men or something… maybe you could dress up for Halloween! Nobody would recognise you then, so you could come join us! Then maybe… maybe I could try to sort something out with mom to let you stay with us again.”
He finds himself feeling excited, despite doubting the likelyhood of her showing up.
“You could go as a ghost! A ghost outfit is really simple, all you need is a white sheet that covers you completely, hanging just above your feet so you can still walk. Then you just cut out two holes where your eyes are, and that’s a ghost costume. It’d be perfect, we could say we…” he stalls, suddenly realising the word ‘captured’ probably isn’t the best here, considering her background.
“We could say we found you.” he cautiously treads around the word. “You could come trick-or-treating with us; it’d be amazing!”
“Oh, man. El, if you’re there, please, try to find us. We shouldn’t be too far from my house – you’d probably hear Dustin and Lucas shouting like always anyway.”
He daydreams of the posibility for a moment. The thought of El showing up in a ghost costume, being able to experience Halloween with them, being able to eat far too much candy after it all.
“I really hope you make it.” he finally says. “Anyway, I need to go to bed. Goodnight El. I hope you’re okay, and I really hope you can come back some day.”
He waits a moment, as he always does, before retracting the SuperCom’s antenna, then lowering the volume knob to the “off” position.
El spins her head to watch him walk towards the basement stairs, vanishing as he begins walking up them, prompting her to remove her blindfold.
For the first time in days she’s lost track of, she’s smiling. Halloween. Dressed up, hidden by a sheet over her. It sounds like the perfect solution to getting out without being recognised by anyone that might be looking for her. Now she only hopes that Hopper will agree.
She sleeps well that night; the smile remaining throughout the night. She dreams of meeting the party, meeting Mike, them dressed as ghost-busters (she’s seen his outfit during her visits), her dressed as ghost. Mike’s right, it would be amazing. It’s the perfect idea.
She wakes up early the next morning. Immediately, she finds herself a spare sheet, tosses it over herself, and carely marks where her eyes are with a pair of scissors. Taking the sheet off, she then expands the two holes, making plenty of room for her to see through.
Looking at herself with the outfit on in her small mirror, she smiles behind the cloth. It hides her face completely. Nobody would recognise her. She could find Mike, reveal herself to him, maybe the others as long as they don’t go and shout her name, and then go ‘trick-or-treating’ with them.
She can’t wait.
“What’s ‘trick-or-treating’?” El asks Hopper during breakfast.
He pauses, looking at her. “Mike mention that?”
She nods, as he’d expected.
“It’s… something kids do on Halloween. You go to people’s houses, knocking all the doors. When they answer, you say ‘trick or treat!’, and usually they give you some candy.”
“Candy?” she perks up.
He smirks. “Yeah, whatever they have. There are the rare few that’ll show you a trick instead, but most do stick to treats.”
“What kind of tricks?”
“Magic tricks, I guess, like ones we’ve seen on TV.”
She nods, understanding. Trick-or-treating sounds fun, she decides. She can’t wait for Halloween, to show Hopper her costume and ask him to take her.
The day finally arrives. Waking up, suddenly remembering Halloween, a smile shoots onto her face as she springs up from her bed. Reaching underneath, she pulls the cloth she’d cut and places it on her bed. She quickly gets dressed, and then tosses the cloth over her head, looking at her reflection in her mirror to make sure the outfit still looks good. It’s perfect.
She creeps out of her bedroom, being as quiet as possible, before coming to a stop just behind Hopper. He turns around, and she nearly laughs at his sudden scare.
“Ghost.” she informs him simply.
“Sure are, kid.”
“Halloween.” she further clarifies.
“Sure is, but now? It’s breakfast.”
“Trick – or – treat.” she finally says, hoping he’ll understand.
He turns to her, halting his actions as he takes in her words.
“You wanna go trick-or-treating?”
She nods her head.
“Are you serious?”
“They wouldn’t see me.” she says.
“Who wouldn’t?”
“The bad men.”
“No.” he says firmly.
“But-”
“No, kid.”
“But they – I’d stay hidden under here.”
“It’s too much of a risk.”
“Not stupid.” she immediately follows. “I stay under here. If trouble, I run, wait, then come back here when safe.”
He drops his head with a sigh.
“You know why I don’t want you going out, kid?”
“Not safe.” she says simply. “But I’ll be careful.”
“I know you would, kid. You’re not stupid, I know that, but…” he pauses, sighing. “I just don’t wanna lose you, okay? You’ve honestly become like a daughter to me. I couldn’t bare it now.”
She smiles at his words, ducking her head in her shy way.
Eventually she lifts the sheet from her head, before walking up to him, giving him a small hug “You’re like a papa to me.” she tells him. “A good papa.”
He smiles at that, a lot. Damn, this kid knows how to break barriers.
“You won’t lose me.” she says. “Please? Can I go?”
He sighs, about to deny again, but he looks down at her, and is caught by those begging eyes of hers. So innocent despite everything, so pleading, so curious.
A sigh again. “I can’t exactly take you with me, kid. I don’t have a kid, not for real anyway. It’d be a bit suspicious for me to be suddenly taking a kid out trick-or-treating.”
“I can go with Mike.” she says, hopeful.
“You-” he pauses. “This was all his suggestion, wasn’t it?” he deduces, pointing to her outfit.
She eventually nods her head, ducking it as she worries over what his reaction may now be.
“I should’ve guessed.” he simply says.
There’s an uncomfortable pause, as Hopper runs the scenario through his head. Yeah, she’s not stupid. Yeah, he can trust her to behave, to keep low. He’s sure he can trust Mike to do the same. Can he trust the rest of them, though?
Perhaps if he managed to talk to Mike first, introduce El to him alone first and let him do the work of keeping the other guys quiet, maybe this could work. He knows full well he’ll be sweating bags whilst she’s out, constantly worrying. He’d set a strict curfew, and demand that Mike bring her to a meeting place at said time.
Mike will probably beg to know where we’ve been all this time.
Maybe… Maybe it is time.Just him.
“Alright, fine.” he says. Her reaction is immediate, her back straightening in excitement.
“But listen to me. And listen good, okay?”
She nods.
“I will talk to Mike first. You’ll stay back. Once I’ve decided if it’s safe, you can show yourself. He can know who you are. The others…” he sighs. “That’s his choice, if he can trust them to keep quiet.”
She nods her head, the smile on her face growing by the second.
“You stay with Mike at all times. I want him to bring you back to me by nine, okay?”
Her head tilts up as she thinks of what nine PM looks like on a digital clock, to tell Mike.
“Two… one, zero zero? Or nine zero zero?” she says, having used twenty-four hour time with Hopper.
“Yeah. Twenty-one hundred. Nine PM. No later or I’ll go absolutely insane. Got it?”
“Nine. Promise.”
He squeezes his eyes, sucking up the fear of finally letting her out, sighing through his nose.
“Okay, kid. If Mike promises to stick to those rules too, this can work.”
She squeezes him tight, nearly knocking him over. “ThankyouThankyouThankyou!” she blurts out.
“Woah, easy!” he laughs. “You’ve been so good all this time, it’s about right you finally get a bit of a treat.”
She’s practically jumping. “Thank you!” she blurts again. She tugs on his shirt, pulling him down to her level. She places a quick enthusiastic kiss onto his cheek, not even thinking about it really, but she’d seen the gesture on TV plenty of times, so the concept of it has been worked into her head for a while.
As she runs off, Hopper is stunned. He raises back up slowly, watching her run off into the bathroom, likely to sort herself out already. But he can’t help but feel stunned at the kiss. She’s never done that before. The thought of affection had never crossed his mind, but now she’s so happy, so excited, that she seemed to do it out of natural instinct.
Yes. That’s a tear under his right eye. It’s been so long since he’s felt a fatherly love, or received a daughterly love, but here, now, that’s exactly what they just shared. He can’t help it. The smile on his face is huge as he runs his fingers over where she’d kissed.
He doesn’t regret his decision in the slightest. She’s so happy, he’d put himself through the panic he’s sure he’ll be feeling later fifty times a day if it could make her this happy all the time.
Now he can’t wait to see both of their faces as he allows them to meet, for the first time in nearly a year.