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“I’m ready.”
“El, please—” Mike’s voice cracks, watching her stand in the middle of the room, everyone backing away to the far corners, trying to hide in the shadows. “You don’t have to do this.”
He can hear the anguish in his own voice, the desperate waver, the longing ache of wanting to pull her close to his side and never let her go.
“I do,” she says, eyes softening only for a moment, looking at him with resigned inevitability. The weight of the world on her small, strong shoulders. She wears it well, but now isn’t time for Mike to be thinking like that. “I have to do this. I have to fight.”
“El—”
That’s all Mike can get out before they hear a large crack from above, everyone else folding in on themselves as El stands centrally inside the cabin, readying herself. They knew it was coming, they knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time. That doesn’t stop Mike’s heart breaking at the thought of it, though. Realistically, there’s nothing any of them can do except El.
He knows this, he hates it, and he wishes he could stand right by her side.
“Stay back,” El murmurs, eyes becoming dark and stormy, lip curling. She’s brimming with anger. Mike doesn’t think he’s seen power stirring inside of her like this since that first fight, when she disappeared and left his soul wanting, pining for her.
He closes his eyes briefly, willing himself not to cry. Stop thinking about it.
They wait. Seconds seem agonisingly long as something stirs from above them. El’s eyes dart back and forth, not sure where the monster is going to strike first. The cabin is creaking, wind picking up and slamming against the windows.
Mike wonders was it always going to be like this, were they always just going to run out of time—
“Shit,” Lucas screams, flinging himself back as the arms reach through, encircling the house. Encircling them. Encircling El.
Mike doesn’t have time to think anymore.
“There must be something we can do,” Lucas reasons, looking at them imploringly. “We can’t just sit here and wait.”
“What other choice do we have?” Mike retorts irritably. “We don’t even know where it is. We can’t fight against something that isn’t there.”
Everyone quietens then, looking subdued. El looks around the room, catches the worried glances that Jonathan and Nancy share. She’s trying to swallow down the bile rising in her throat, thinking about these people she loves, in danger. Her friends. Her dad. Mike.
“Will,” she speaks softly, but all eyes are instantly on her. “Can you… Do you know where it is?”
The kids are sitting in a circle, legs crossed and looks curious. Jonathan and Nancy are sitting on the chairs at the table, across from each other, looking equally interested in the answer. Max and Lucas are holding hands, clinging to one another. Will looks uncomfortable at the question, and El winces. She knows what it’s like when people turn to you for all the answers, and you’re not sure if you have them. She doesn’t mean to put him on the spot, but she has to ask.
They have to know for sure.
“I can feel it, but I can’t…” Will trails off, looking guilty, as if he’s letting everyone down. “It’s not like before. I can’t—I don’t know where it is.”
El nods dejectedly, assuming as much. She’s not sure how, but they can both feel it. They know it’s close, the presence of this new monster unrelenting in its torment. El closes her eyes, willing herself to think of something, anything.
“Hey,” Mike murmurs softly, touching her knee. “You okay?”
El opens her eyes, looking straight into Mike’s big, soft ones. He’s looking at her with so much concern that her lip starts to quiver, and she wills herself to hold back the tears.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Mike says, noticing her pain and El feels her heart skip a beat at his soft tone. “We’re gonna figure this out, we’ll think of something.”
She’s trying to ignore the fact that everyone is avoiding her gaze, but intently listening to their hushed conversation. She grasps Mike’s hand, squeezing it and allowing his presence to anchor her, to calm her rattling nerves.
El knows everyone is looking to her for answers, even if they don’t say it. They’re looking to her for some master plan, to step in and save the day like she always does. She wills herself to be that pillar of strength they’re looking for and gnaws at her lip, wracking her brain to try and think of a plan.
She knows she’s powerful, but she’s not sure if it’ll be enough this time.
“Look at me,” Mike says gently. El pulls her eyes away from the thread she’d been picking at in her new yellow shirt, something she’d picked up at the mall with Max a few days ago. Seems like years ago now, she thinks to herself, wishing desperately she could go back to that easy fun and teenage angst, rather than this life-threatening, world-ending catastrophe.
“I can see your mind whirring,” Mike speaks again, trying to get her attention. She flushes guiltily at ignoring him, her brain going off on a tangent again. He only smiles.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admits honestly, and Mike takes her other hand in his, twisting his body to face her on the hard-wood floor and squeezing her hands gently.
“None of us do,” he replies, blowing out a large breath, “It’s okay. You don’t have to have all the answers.”
She looks at him uncertainly, and he gives her a soft smile. Like the day they were reunited, cosy and warm, like bathing in the golden glow of a sunset after a long day exploring outside. Lazy and heady and all-consuming in the best way.
“We can figure this out together, remember?”
She nods, biting her lip and blinking back tears. When Mike’s there, it feels like they’re the only two people in the room, in the world, in the universe.
She can’t help it.
El is mesmerised by him. The gentle curl of his hair when it’s humid; his long and bony fingers, limbs growing too fast for his skin to catch up; the tender press of his nose when they kiss, gently nudging her own; the soft smiles she can feel against her lips; looking deeply into his kind eyes and then looking down, counting his freckles like constellations against his skin.
She’s never met someone quite as spellbinding as Mike Wheeler.
He’s strong, he’s fierce, he’s clever. Unwavering in his loyalty, and protective of those that he loves. She’s so lucky that she has him. She knows him so well, better than she knows herself.
That’s how, when the idea comes to her, she knows he’s not going to like it.
She looks away from him, once again surveying the scene around her. Jonathan and Nancy are whispering lowly, both looking deeply concerned. Lucas is playing with his wrist rocket. Max is chewing on her cheek, trying to block out everything that’s happening. Will is wringing his hands together, no doubt sensing the unavoidable danger just as she does.
This is how she knows she’s right.
El coughs, drawing everyone’s attention to her. The eyes on her are expectant and unblinking. She swallows, feeling the weight of this realisation on her tongue, weighing it down and making her want to run away. To grab Mike’s hand and leave, uncaring of the consequences.
But El knows she could never do that, and neither could Mike.
There’s a beat of silence and then:
“I have to find it.”
No one speaks, and El feels like a part of her is dying.
“I know… I realised. I can find it.”
“What? No.” Mike replies immediately, aghast. “You’re not going anywhere,” he continues firmly.
“I don’t have to,” El replies, looking at him and willing him to understand without her saying the words.
Everyone else’s looks are blank, but Mike catches on almost immediately. God, she adores this boy.
“No, no, no, no, no,” His eyes are pleading, but El can’t look away, drowning in the pain of his realisation.
“What? What’s going on?” Nancy questions, not understanding.
“El wants to go into the void and find it,” Mike speaks, voice hard. El knows he’s not angry at her, not really. He’s angry at the world, at circumstance, at fate, for dealing them such a cruel hand once again and trying to keep them apart.
“Do you think you could?” Max asks nervously, hands shaking. She’s been oddly quiet, El observes, but she doesn’t blame her. They’re all terrified.
“Yes,” El replies simply, never taking her eyes off of her boyfriend.
“What did I just say? What did I just say?” Mike almost screeches, and El feels her heart splitting in two at his pain, practically hears the crack. “We’re doing this together; you don’t have to fight all these battles by yourself!”
“I know, Mike,” she says gently, and it’s the use of his name that pulls him back to her, out of his heady anger, she can tell. He looks at her, eyes wide and she could just drown in him. She knows he doesn’t like it, but she has to do this. “But I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t,” he says bitterly, petulantly, because he knows she’s right.
They’re running out of time.
“Mike,” she begs softly, not quite sure what she’s asking for.
“If we know where it is, then it knows where we are, remember? Did you think of that? When Will saw the Mind Flayer, it saw us right back.”
His voice has lost its hard quality, going limp and prickly. It’s like she used to feel when she was a kid in the lab, when no one would listen to her, no one would help her. Scared and alone and unheard; unseen for more than just a lab rat they could conduct experiments on. She doesn’t break eye contact, knowing this moment is too important.
“Yes,” she replies, bringing a hand up to cup his face. He’s so tall, he’s almost out of reach. Just like when she could see him the void, but never touch him. He’s here, but not here, simultaneously. “We’ll have to be ready.”
She swallows painfully past the lump in her throat. El can’t focus on anyone else but Mike, the rest of the room deathly silent.
“But, what if—what if—" Mike cuts himself off, taking a deep breath. "I can’t lose you again,” he’s echoing a conversation from another time, the pain tenfold and suffocating. El hardly dares to breathe, looking into his anguished face and feeling her emotions mirrored there.
“You won’t lose me,” she whispers, clinging onto this moment. She’s drinking him in, for all that he’s worth. This might be one of the last times she gets to look at him properly, to study him like this, as he should always be looked at.
She’s not going to miss her chance, not now.
“You don’t know that,” he replies and grips her wrist, not tightly, but enough to move her hand away from his face and take both of her hands into his own instead. They’re facing each other now, and El knows she is looking at her world.
“It was me, Mike,” she says delicately, hating to admit it, “I brought this here. I opened the gate. I closed the gate and trapped it inside. It’s me that let it in, and me that has to find it.”
“It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t know,” Mike says firmly, and then nothing.
Long seconds pass and no one speaks. Mike lets go of her hands, instead crouching down and viciously tugging at his own hair. She knows that feeling of pressure inside your head, and she’d give anything in this moment to be able to transfer his pain to her, to take away all the fear and longing.
“Hey,” she leans down, gripping his hands and pulling them away. He looks up at her then, their eyes level and hearts beating equally as rapidly. “Stop.”
Mike does so, just looking at her with wide, earnest eyes. She knows he wants her to say she won’t do it, to say this is all a bad dream and that they’ll wake up and realise they just accidentally fell asleep on her couch again; her head resting on his chest as they hold each other close.
But she can’t do that.
“Mike,” El whispers, firmer now. A beat passes. He stares. “I need you to trust me.”
The room is so silent El thinks she’s inside the void, as everyone waits for Mike’s response. She’d completely forgotten they weren't alone until now, Lucas’ soft intake of breath reminds her of everyone's presence, waiting.
“Okay,” Mike gulps, giving her such a loving look that El wants to fling herself into his arms, her safe place, and never leave. They stand, but she knows he’s not finished speaking. “Okay, but just… Just let me—”
He doesn’t need to finish his sentence for her to catch his meaning, launching herself into his arms, clinging on for dear life. He grips her shoulders hard in the hug, hers bunching up his shirt around his waist, fingers tight in their grip.
She can feel his tears in her hair, just as hers start to stain his clothes.
They pull back, and he looks down at her; she feels his love even though they’ve never said it, not yet. She kisses him then, reaching up for him, not caring if the others see.
The force of it is bruising, both of them pouring every ounce of love and pain into this one kiss, this one moment. El knows the monster won’t come for her in the void, but he will in their world, and there might not be time for this after.
She needs Mike to know how she feels.
They kiss for what seems like hours, but really can only have been a minute or less. When she pulls away, El sees in her peripheral vision that everyone has averted their eyes, but they’re reluctantly smiling, teasing them, even.
El can’t bring herself to smile, but she’s glad that amongst all the chaos, she got to have this. Got to make them smile one last time, no matter how wrong it feels in the moment. Got to have Mike.
“Let’s do this.”
She’s on a beach.
That’s new.
She’d left the others, blindfolded, sitting cross-legged in the centre of the cabin. She can still feel them, if she focuses on it. The pull of the other world.
El ignores it for now, looking around and trying to get her bearings. It’s storming, lightning crackling and electricity pressing in on her like a weight, making her want to shut her eyes. It’s constricting her throat, the power of the Mind Flayer taking up almost all the space around her.
“Where are you, you bastard?” She whispers, the word feeling foreign on her tongue. She must have picked it up from the boys, from Mike.
El closes her eyes for a moment, willing herself not to think about Mike. It’s too painful.
A flash of lightning strikes in the distance, thunder booming, and El jumps back, not expecting it. This place is nothing like she’s ever seen before. She feels out of her depth, and takes a breath to steady herself.
She walks forward a few steps, spinning in a circle and looking up at the dark sky.
She doesn’t understand.
Then, just as suddenly as the thunder had appeared, it’s replaced by the sound of running footsteps—
“—El, El,” Mike is screaming, but she feels like she’s underwater. His voice is so muffled, her head hurts so much. “El come back! Wake up!”
“It’s—There’s no time—I can’t—”
She rips off the blindfold, gasping, and she can hear her heartbeat in her ears; she feels like it’s lodged itself in her throat in her frenzied panic.
“What is it, El?” Mike’s voice centres her, ringing loud and clear amongst her scrambling thoughts. She looks to his face, tears blurring her vision, but he’s there. He’s always so clear to her against the din of everything else. Everything might be screaming for her attention, but it’s drowned out by him.
No matter what, there’s always Mike.
“He’s coming.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Lucas is screaming, but it sounds far away to Mike, like he’s on one side of the abyss and Lucas is on the other. Because that’s what this is, watching El using all her strength to fight off this monster; he’s falling into the abyss of losing her, and he’s not sure he’ll ever make it back out.
She’s screaming, and he can feel his heart clenching, watching her tense expression and her nose gush blood. He looks around, Lucas and Will cowering next to him, Jonathan and Nancy holding hands on the other side of the room, Max separated from them in the corner.
Mike sees fear, he sees pain, but he also sees something else:
Awe.
Realistically, they all know, Mike knows, that El is powerful. She’d flipped a van and killed a Demogorgon, killed people, right in front of their eyes. She’d closed the gate. Even though he didn’t see it, he can still hear Hopper’s voice, reverent, as he told them about it.
El’s head had been in Mike’s lap, her body limp as she lay drained and unconscious, but heart beating. She was alive. She hadn’t broken her promise.
He’d stroked her hair back from her face over and over as he’d listened to Hopper speak. Her feet had been in Hopper’s lap as he’d taken up the other side of the Byers’ couch. Hopper had been rubbing her shin absentmindedly, as everyone sat around and listened with rapt attention.
He’d told them of how the demodogs had been swarming; he’d gunned them down but there were just too many. He’d told them of her deafening screams, both sides of her nose bleeding as she’d levitated, pouring all her strength into saving them. Hopper’s voice had been strained, tears in his eyes as he spoke of carrying her back to the car, taking her back here where they could all recover and lick their wounds together.
That’s when Mike had known Hopper was serious about being her dad, and he knew they could come to an understanding.
Watching her now, even through the terror, Mike feels that same amazement. Her eyes turn bloodshot as she forces the arms back, her own arms outstretched as she channels all of her power. Mike imagines it rising inside her, like a bottomless well of energy and electricity that she draws on.
He’s never seen her look so beautiful.
She’s been practising, with her powers. Her nose doesn’t always bleed now, if it’s something small. Sometimes only a tiny drop. Mike always kisses her forehead when she does it, her expectant and joyful smile warming him from the inside out. So proud of her he can’t even put it into words.
Seeing her like this, now, in all her bravery and glory, he’s blown away by how much she has overcome, and how much she still has to give.
The cabin is shaking, barely standing on its foundations as the monster grapples for control. El is still screaming and it’s all Mike can hear, her cries ringing in his ears like a siren.
Then, it happens.
The monster changes tack, using one of its arms to lash out, knocking himself, Will and Lucas to the ground. They’re all winded, struggling for breath as the arm prepares for a second attack, and that’s when her voice pierces the electricity in the air.
“NO.”
Mike looks up, seeing the fire in her eyes ablaze.
She looks otherworldly.
He’s never loved her more.
She directs her arms at them, and the monster's arm bends, a sickening crunch as it breaks and then retracts. The other comes swooping down, going for Max this time. It's one last ditch attempt at fighting them, wounding them, but El won’t allow it.
“I SAID,” she pants, chest rising and falling rapidly, the air so charged and viscous she’s almost floating in it, “NO.”
She cracks the other arm, causing both the claws to retreat, leaving gaping holes in the wall as the sound of the monster stumbling away haunts their ears. In the silence, Mike can hear everyone’s laboured breathing, their panic audible.
El stands in the middle of the room like a God, hands balled into fists and fury in her eyes. A beat passes and Mike scrambles up, reaching for her. As he approaches, she softens, falling limply into his arms and letting him hold her.
He soothes her, murmuring, you did it, you did so good El, you saved us over and over into her hair as their breathing evens out, hearts beating as one.
“It’s not over,” she whispers, looking up at him with wide eyes and he knows in that moment, deep in his soul, that he would die for her in a heartbeat.
“What’s happening?” Will asks. Mike turns to look at his best friend. Will must feel goosebumps rising at the back of his neck, because his hand reaches up and rubs it, face fearful.
“He’s coming,” El says firmly. Mike looks back at her and is surprised to meet her gaze; she only has eyes for him in this moment. “We need to be ready.”
“Who’s coming?” Max asks nervously, voice laced with exhaustion already.
“Billy.”