Chapter Text

One

Eleven

“No wait, I’ve definitely, I’ve definitely read about this before.”

El literally has no idea what Max is trying to see. As far as she is aware, they’re supposed to be sitting around and reading with the door open “three inches” according to Hopper whether it be Max or Mike over. Just with Max around, he failed to check in on them.

“What do you mean?” El asks her.

“The whole. . .you know. . .thing.”

But El shakes her head, which only makes Max roll her eyes. “Oh just hold on a second.”

El waits more than a few seconds as Max tears through some of her magazines. The whole time El sits there holding onto an issue of Wonder Woman she had been attempting to read the whole time, but words came slow to her, at times.

When she finds whatever it is, she holds up the magazine for El. It’s in one of those gossip magazines she reads a whole lot, but in this one, there’s some huge true crime article. Max hands it over to El and scoots a whole lot closer while they’re sitting there on the floor. El glances over her shoulder, the door’s open its three inches but she forces it to swing shut. Hopper’s not even around. He’s out there acting like he can ask Mrs. Byers out again think maybe she’ll say yes. Maybe she would.

“Hello? Earth to Eleven! I’m talking to you!” Max waves a hand in her face and El returns to looking at the article. “Some girl just snapped one day and killed all these people.”

El sits there holding onto those pages stuck on t-e-l-e-k-i-n-e-s-i-s. “Ok.” She hands it back to Max who again rolls her eyes. “What?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?” El turns a page in her comic book to show how she’s busy.

“You’re not alone.”

There’s a moment where those words ring loud and true in the air until El remembers she knows how unsure they’re from the start. She’s never been alone. Well, alone here in Hawkins other than maybe Will Byers-ish. El takes back the magazine lying it over Wonder Woman and all her glory. El touches the page looking at a class portrait of some girl named Carrie White who killed all the kids before summer could start, at their prom. Quite different from their little dance, nobody even died there. El looks up at Max unsure what to say next because they all know she’s never been alone.

“No.”

“No? No what?” retorts Max.

“Whatever you are thinking, no,” El adds a shrug for some flair and looks at her comic. Max groans and lies back down, but remains so close to El. Some of her hair gets caught on El’s knee. El doesn’t read, instead, she uses her hand to brush some of the hair away but Max sits up glaring at her as she pushes her own hair behind her ear. “Sorry.”

“What was that about?”

An answer doesn’t even pop up in El’s mind while she stares at her so she shrugs. She holds up her comic book. “I heard she’s coming.”

“To Hawkins?” Max bursts into laughter. “No way.”

“She is.”

“Who said this?”

El looks down. “M-M-Mike.”

“No way! You’re talking again?”

A shrug is her answer.

Max and the rolling of her eyes, it’s her constant attitude of annoyed. She looks back at the article she shared of some girl who could move things with her mind and a lot of people had to pay for it. Whoever wrote it mentions how there are more out there, but of course, there are, they all knew it, too. She looks back up at El with a genuine smile.

“What?” whispers El trying to hide her smile behind her comic.

“We should go then, and if she doesn’t show, I get to punch Mike in the face.”

El bursts out laughing. “Ok. Yes.”

“Perfect.” Then Max takes the comic from her replacing it with the magazine. “But you should study up on this Carrie White and let me know if you need any help. I deserve some one-on-one time with Wonder Woman.”

Still, El laughs, she can’t hide her smile for much longer. Max can see her expression but doesn’t seem to notice a change as she accepts the trade and lies on her stomach to read more about Wonder Woman leaving El behind to read about this Carrie White who is nothing like her one sister. They weren’t even alike. El sits there and touches the photograph of Carrie when music interrupts them.

Sounds like Hopper’s home as his music plays. El snaps her attention to the door, it pops open the three inches letting more music spill through as Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners plays. This gets Max to wrinkle her nose while she shakes her head.

“I leave if he doesn’t listen to something better.”

El opens her mouth about to let Hopper know this but Max covers her mouth, the whole time El laughs as Max struggles to keep her quiet especially when Hopper enters.

Max let’s go of El. “Hey.”

“Isn’t it a little late?” he asks.

“When are you listening to better music?” says El and she continues to laugh.

“Didn’t realize it was such a tough crowd,” grumbles Hopper. He looks at Max. “Ride home?”

Max shakes her head. “Sleeping over.”

“Do your parents know?”

El looks at Max who says nothing so she offers up an answer, “Yes. We told them.”

“Yeah,” adds Max, “They said they’re happy I have actual friends.”

Hopper sighs and knocks on the doorframe before he starts to move away. “I’ll order a pizza.”

Max looks at El gawking. “How dare you?”

The music switches to The Sweet and Max still shakes her head. El asks, “What?”

“You! You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous!” El closes the magazine not wanting any part of it. “I like this song.”

Max quiets down to hear Fox on the Run. “Same, but another day, we learn about music.”

El lies down on her stomach to smile at Max who still lies there. Even though neither of them speaks, the two start to laugh and somewhere Hopper yells for them to keep it down while his new music plays and they are left to one another. El rolls onto her back and stays beside Max not too sure what to say next. They have plans though, at least, which is nice. To meet Wonder Woman. Not that she’d let Hopper know the truth.

Chapter Text

Two

Dustin

Dustin slams a newspaper down interrupting whatever Mike and Luca were talking about. They shut up and glare at him. Dustin steps back going, “What?”

“What do you mean what?” retorts Lucas. “You just walked up and did. . .that.”

“Right, right. Did you guys see this?” Dustin flails a bit as he points at the newspaper before them.

Lucas leans forward picking it up reading a headline, “Bradley Trevor still missing.” He turns the paper for Mike to see pointing at a photo of a boy in a baseball cap. “Um ok?”

Mike squints at it. “He’s not even from around here.”

“What? No! Not that.” Dustin grabs it from Lucas. “Not that one!” He points at another headline about a girl named Carrie White. “Look at this! She basically blew up a whole town with her mind!”

This gets Mike’s attention. He snatches the newspaper from Dustin and Lucas moves closer to look at the article with him outlining what happened somewhere in Maine where a girl destroyed just about everything starting with the gym at prom with so many students inside. A complete different scenario then El showing up at the Snowball Dance, wearing her little dress, The Police playing and there was no death that followed.

“Has to be fake,” Lucas manages a comment.

Mike though is sure quiet while he stares at the paper. “Yeah, fake. I mean, this is impossible.”

“Impossible?!” Dustin practically shouts.

“Yeah.” Mike hands the paper back to Dustin. “It. . .I’m sure it’s fake.”

Dustin stands there staring at the two. Lucas taps on the table looking away from them. He glances back at the clock to change up the conversation as a whole. “Where’s Will?” Nobody has an answer. He looks at them. “What? So none of us know where Will is? He’s late.”

“He’s been hanging out with Robin a lot lately?” replies Dustin but it’s still posed as a huge question.

“That’s true,” mutters Mike. He takes the paper back to reread the article. “We shouldn’t tell El about this, right?”

Dustin and Lucas are busy having their separate conversation, at the moment. “We could just go to the mall and see if he’s there,” says Dustin.

“No, I’m sure he’ll show up asking about D&D or something.”

“GUYS!” Mike snaps. He points at the article about Carrie White killing people with her brain. “Should we be worried? Should we be talking to El or not?”

“I thought you guys broke up,” comments Lucas with a smirk.

“Shut up, you and Max break up all the time and are currently broken up.”

“Hey, you don’t have to remind me,” grumbles Lucas. “Alright, can we do something?”

“Yeah, good idea. I should call El.”

“That’s definitely not what I meant!” retorts Lucas.

‘I’m calling El.” Mike pops on up from his seat to pick up the phone.

Dustin and Lucas look at each other rolling their eyes and shake their heads, but Mike is too busy listening to the phone ring and ring with no answer. He looks back at the other two who make no comment. He hangs up. There’s a moment of silence while he sort of just hangs out there thinking if he should dial again or not. He looks over at Lucas and Dustin and does a little shrug.

Lucas smirks. “Guess you’re still not talking.”

Chapter Text

Three

Max

Max holds up an album with a blurry woman on the cover who looks like he is standing in front of curtains. All El can make out is “Kaleidoscope” in front of a bunch of colors. She stands on the other side of record bins pausing to stare at whatever it is Max found.

“So this, we need to get this to make sure you and Hopper listen to good music,” Max says.

“Ok?” El puts her hands out and Max hands it off to her. They’re in some back corner of the mall at some record store that always looks about to close. The place doesn’t even have a sign for a name, but it sure does have an “open” sign. El stares at the record sleeve before looking up to see Max looking through her bin. “What. . .is it?”

Max is so close to speaking when somebody interrupts them by saying, “What have we got here?”

Max turns to face them about to tell them off but stops because out of all the people in the world Will Byers is standing by El who shows him the album cover. Instead, Max asks, “Hey, what’re you doing here?”

Will shrugs. “I work here now.”

“Why didn’t anybody tell me that?”

Another shrug from Will. “I don’t know, I haven’t really been talking to everybody.”

Max nods and points at El. “Apparently she and Mike are talking again.”

This gets a little weird grunt and shoulder movement from El who hands the album to Will.

“Siouxsie and the Banshees?” Will laughs and looks up at Max. “You would pick this.”

Max squints at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, just, seems like your kind of music. Better music. Want me to see if I can play it?” Will points up and El looks, but there’s only a light above them with some colorful tapestry hanging over it. For the first time she realizes they’ve been listening to some song the whole time, so soft and relaxing, I’m Not in Love by 10cc. She smiles and nods to Will who slips away to the register holding the album up to some bearded man standing around there. The most they can hear is: Wait your turn and Will returns without it in hand. “I can probably put it on in a bit.”

“Really, it’s ok. We’re just gonna get it and go. We have things to do,” replies Max.

“Oh, yeah, sure, sorry.”

“We’re-We’re going to see Wonder Woman,” El fills in the silence growing between them.

“Oh really? When? I forgot about that.”

“Today,” replies El.

“He meant what time today.” Max comes around to stand beside El. “Soon so you’ll probably be at work.”

It’s as if Will is about to say something else at first. He opens his mouth to speak only to stop and does a little shrug. “Yeah, probably at work. You’re right.” He hesitates while both El and Max stares at him. “So let me check you guys out with a family discount because. . .El.”

“Hi.” She waves.

The two follow Will as he goes to stand behind the register by the bearded man who is hanging out there. He has an upside down name tag on and is apparently a Joe. He steps out of the way letting Will come up behind the register holding onto the album.

Joe looks at it then up at them. “Right on.”

“Please. . .never say that to us again,” replies Max.

Joe is a little too taken aback to pay any attention. This leaves Will stares at the register while the man while Joe stares at the girls. An awkward silence forms around them until the man starts to whisper some tips for Will to which he breathes out saying, “Right, right.”

“Soooo do you have to like answer questions about favorite bands to work here?” Max attempts a conversation getting Joe to look back at her.

“Friendly now, are we?” he chuckles. “Sounds like a good idea though. Weed out the rubes.”

“I don’t know what that means,” El whispers.

Max nods, she swats at El getting her to stop talking. “We at least know Will here is ok. He’s a pretty big fan of The Clash.”

“Who isn’t?” laughs Joe.

El goes to raise her hand but Max catches it.

“Ignore her, she and her ex used to only listen to Corey Hart. He has bad taste.”

When Max smirks, El pushes her a bit saying, “Stop.” Except she smiles the entire time.

“Ok, I finally got. . .” Will is about to say more but the lights snap off all at the same time. Everybody looks up, Will runs a hand through his hair and looks at El. The lights don’t quite return, instead, they start to shudder and Will puts the album down on the counter. “It’s. . .” He provides no further explanation, doesn’t need to do so. El nods to him and turns around.

“Be. . .right back!” Max exclaims and fakes a smile.

The music is going on and off, it garbles I’m not in love, I’m not in love over some static-filled speakers. El darts out of the store with Max stumbling to catch up to her. All the lights are erratic throughout the mall. People are stuck staring at them while others back out, heading toward the exit or to their next stop until metal scrapes along metal. Railings are pulverized as a demodog flies in their direction. Lights are all flashing around them while people scatter, screaming, glass flings around all over the place. El reaches up imagining she’s grabbing onto the creature to tear it from the sky throwing the creature into the ground.

Max stands there gawking at the creature there, but El begins to tug at her sleeve getting her attention. Max looks up to find Wonder Woman standing in front of them. Her lasso in hand as she looks down at the demodog before looking at the girls and tilting her head to the side. Will comes darting out of the shop shouting something along the line or something like “MORE!”

Wonder Woman whirls around about to unfurl her lasso to capture a second demodog leaping in her direction, its head like a tulip, but full of so many teeth. Her lasso flies out missing her target, it’s not on her more on El as again El reaches out screaming, she claws the air picturing herself dragging the creature out of the air and slams its body into the ground letting glass shards dig into its skin. The entire time El stands there still holding onto the creature with her mind ignoring the fact her nose bleeds while the demodog struggles until its legs stop.

Again, Wonder Woman looks back at El who releases the demodog and wipes the blood from her nose with her elbow as she stands there. She’s staring down at the two of them with Max and Will standing beside her. Max touches the back of her arm getting her attention asking, “You ok?” El just nods.

“You know. . .what this is?” Wonder Woman asks them.

El again just nods for her answer.

“You fight them before?”

“. . .Yes. . .” El exhales.

The lights return to normal, no longer fake strobe lights. Some people begin to move around looking at the disaster that followed Wonder Woman. Up above where the railing and glass broke, Robin and Steve stand. They stay away from the broken part.

Steve yells, “What the heck?”

“We should go,” Will states.

But Max and El are too busy staring at Wonder Woman who is sizing them up. She then looks at the creatures on the ground before returning her focus to them. “Yes, we should go.”

“Yes!” Max smiles.

El uses the back of her hand to wipe blood from her face again.

“What’s going on?” Steve continues to yell down at them. “GUYS?”

Since Max, El, and Will aren’t moving. Wonder Woman sighs and shakes her head saying, “We should go.” This time she nods in the direction of an exit and starts to move.

Again, Max shouts, “Yes!” She grabs onto El’s elbow to lead her away while signaling for Will to follow. She stills holds onto El moving real close to her as they walk. El doesn’t quite have her balance back as she looks over at the creatures, so distracted. Will comes up on her otherside blocking her view. He smiles and nods to her. The three continue along casually exiting the mall like they’re not following some Amazonian warrior around.

Chapter Text

Four

Danny Torrence

Daniel Torrance knew a thing or two about murder, which is unfortunate when you consider the fact he is all of ten years old. Chances are if you ask the average ten-year-old they have some vague understanding of death. Meanwhile, Daniel Torrence lived beside death for so long and could tell you when you’re about to die. It happens whenever he sees flies crawling across people’s faces.

“Danny?” his mom Wendy captures his attention. He’s standing around on some boardwalk licking a bright blue popsicle, it stains his lips and tongue. Doesn’t make sense to be out by the ocean on a day like this. Clouds are in the air and nobody else is around, not with lightning about to crack across the sky. “What is it?”

Wendy pays a man for two hot dogs then comes over to Danny holding onto them. Danny says nothing while still enjoying his cherry popsicle. She won’t like what he has to say so he smiles at her. It’s ok she doesn’t quite get it.

“Is something wrong?” Wendy asks again.

Danny chomps off the last bit of his popsicle, he sits there sucking on the popsicle stick and shrugs. He takes it out of his mouth and says, “Nothing, just thought I saw something.”

Wendy’s jaw clenches, it looks as if all her teeth are about to break as she cautiously looks around them at how few people are out and about on the boardwalk. None of them are stopping to stare at them. The hot dog guy is busy dropping some more hot dogs into a basket of boiling water in his cart. Rather than speak up, she takes the stick to toss it and trades Danny for a hot dog. Her movement is all tight like she struggles to move on, she drops the trash in a wastebasket and looks back at Danny who stands there holding onto his hot dog looking at something new instead.

Some paper scrapes the ground to his toes. He looks at it with the hot dog slowly tipping forward about to break loose as something steals all of his focus.

“Danny!” Wendy shouts.

This doesn’t even get his attention, not even as the hot dog splats across the paper with some grease smearing across it. He looks up at her, “Baseball Boy.” Wendy stands next to him looking at the scrap on the ground of a boy in a baseball cap named Bradley Trevor. Danny stands there looking as if he’ll topple over any second to either vomit or faint. Wendy is quick knowing him pulling him closer to the edge of the boardwalk because Danny drops to his knees puking over the side.

Only the hot dog guy watches them. “You ok?”

Wendy is quick to nod.

Danny heaves and wipes his mouth while he crouches there. Wendy sits beside him, holding onto his shoulder the whole time. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her, You’re hurting me, as her fingers dig into his skin. They say nothing for some time letting seagulls fill in the silence growing between them. Wendy soon sighs, Danny doesn’t puke a second time but stares down at the water. It’s all filth down there between dock legs, trash keeps rocking back and forth against the wood. Wendy’s pretty sure she spots some lone condom floating around down there.

“Are you ok to walk?” Wendy breaks the silence.

Danny looks over at the hot dog guy. There are a few flies crawling up his cheek almost touching their spindly legs into his right eye. “Tell him to go to the hospital.”

Wendy looks back at the man. “Ok, we will, but we should go. Can you walk?”

All she gets is a nod from Danny.

Wendy helps him up as they make their way towards the hot dog guy, she pauses and looks at him. “I don’t know if you feel like you need to hear this, but you do, you should go to the hospital when you get the chance.” Without further explanation she and Danny make an exit leaving behind Bradley Trevor, his picture pasted in between other children, just another lost child but that’s not true. Danny doesn’t want to look back, he can still feel the boy’s death inside his bones.

Chapter Text

Five

Mrs. Wheeler can’t remember the last time she saw Steve Harrington when she finds him knocking on the door. It’s him and some other girl who is leaning into the side of their house, she waves. The two are in some ridiculous sailor outfits. She looks at Steve for a bit while he just smiles.

“Steve. . .Nancy’s not here,” Mrs. Wheeler comments.

This causes the other girl to snort before she attempts to cover up her reaction.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Wheeler, we’re actually here to talk to. . .” starts Steve but he looks at the girl who rolls her eyes at him and mouths something before Steve looks back at Mrs. Wheeler. “. . .Mike.”

Mrs. Wheeler takes a step back and yells, “MIKE!”

“We can. . .just go downstairs, it’s ok,” Steve says without waiting for permission. He pushes past her with the girl as they make their way into the basement.

Mrs. Wheeler is left there looking all too surprised with the door wide open. “Let me know if any of you are hungry!”

###

Steve and Robin stop on the stairs looking down at Mike, Lucas, and Dustin as they all hang around the basement. Mike is lying on a sofa complaining about something to Lucas and Dustin is too busy looking through what appears to be newspapers. It’s really no surprise seeing how he’s always onto something.

“Long time no see,” Steve announces his and Robin’s presence. All three look up at him. “What? No more movies to sneak into?”

“You guys sneak into movies?” asks Dustin.

Lucas and Mike make no comment, Mike even sits up on the sofa.

“Wait, who all sneaks in?”

“Mike, Lucas, Max, and Will,” replies Robin, which gets their attention, as well. Before Mike or Lucas could comment with a Who are you she beats them to the punch. “I’m Robin.”

“She’s Robin,” Steve adds like he didn’t hear her, maybe he didn’t even hear her. “Looks like you’re missing three.”

Mike tosses his hands up, growing annoyed. “Ok, what do you want Steve?”

“It appears that your three missing friends have made a new friend today,” replies Steve.

Dustin puts down the paper he’s reading. It looks as if he’s ripped a few articles out of some of them. “What does that even mean?”

Both Steve and Robin look at each other, they shrug and Robin ends up taking the lead on this one. “I saw them leaving with Wonder Woman after Starcourt was attacked.”

This gets Mike’s full attention. He jumps off the sofa, his knees knocking into the back of Lucas’s head who stays seated and glares at Mike. “ATTACKED? What does that mean? Wait! Are we talking about El? Is she ok?”

“Yeah, she’s probably better than ever now that she’s friends with Wonder Woman,” replies Robin.

“Demodogs,” Steve adds.

“NO! They’re gone! They’re all gone! We saw that!” Mike continues to shout.

The ruckus gets Mrs. Wheeler’s attention upstairs, not that she comes down to see what’s up. She just yells, “Everything ok, Mike?”

“YES! GO AWAY MOM!” Mike shouts back.

Robin laughs. “Oh he is a jerk,” she whispers to Steve.

“Where’s El?”

“She is with Max and Will, we said three friends.” Steve glances at Robin who snorts and looks down at her hands trying to hide her reaction from the kids. Whatever Dustin has been reading captures his attention again, he’s digging through articles he’s ripped from papers. Steve sort of keeps an eye on him even though he’s facing Mike and Lucas. “They left with Wonder Woman.”

Lucas manages to speak up before Mike can cut in again. “When you say Wonder Woman, you mean the Wonder Woman, right?”

“Correct,” replies Robin.

“I mean, that’s actually pretty cool.” But Mike shoots Lucas a dirty look. “What? You know I’m right. Did they fight. . .demodogs with Wonder Woman?”

“Don’t know, Robin said she just saw them leaving with her.”

Dustin stops looking for whatever it is he wants to find. “Steve, come look at this.”

Steve, of course, hops off the steps to meet up with Dustin as Robin walks down after him. She stops looking at Mike and Lucas raising an eyebrow at them. “I think they’re better without you.” Robin doesn’t provide time for much commentary because she goes to join Steve and Dustin.

This leaves Lucas behind dramatically ushering to the spot she just stood, “Who does she think she is?”

All the while, Dustin is showing Steve all the articles he’s found about Carrie White and the destruction of the prom along with other possible cases of kids who move stuff with their mind. But Robin leans between the two of them pointing at a headline: Bradley Trevor still missing. “I heard about that, I think it said something about him walking home from a baseball game not too far from here. Nobody’s seen him since. I think somebody said they might have even seen him get into the car with somebody.”

“Robin, it says Iowa.” Steve points at the article. “We’re in Indiana.”

“Ok, I meant like it’s not out in Florida or somewhere far away like that.”

Steve hands the article about Carrie White to her. “Read.”

“Oh shit! No! I heard about this already, too!” Robin looks up to see Steve and Dustin giving her a weird look. “What? I like Unsolved Mysteries and strange things like that.” The two continue to stare at her. “What? No, really. Ok.” She picks up the article again about Bradley Trevor. “Also, he’s a little weird, too, and he’s not the first weird kid to go missing. There’s been others.”

“Like. . .how many others?” it’s Mike who pipes up as him and Lucas join the conversation.

“I don’t know off the top of my head.”

“Can you estimate it?! Like as in ten kids or less than ten kids?”

Robin shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe less than ten? Why?

Mike looks at all the work Dustin did. “Just. . .Eleven.”

Steve leans a little closer to Robin, he points at his forearm. “We call her that because she’s eleven out of eleven kids the government tested on.” Robin makes an oh face and shakes her head without a better answer. He looks at the Iowa kid gone missing then Carrie White up in Maine. “Do you think?”

The question isn't really directed at anybody and nobody answers the question. They’re all stuck there staring at pages about the destruction Carrie White caused. She tore apart a whole town with her mind, peeled apart the lives of the people in it, and nobody knows where she went. The police want her for arrest and a Sue Snell is the only person begging for Carrie to come back, that it’s ok, she forgives her.

Chapter Text

Six

Will

“Incredible,” whispers Wonder Woman as she watches El stand in one place lifting a soda can above a car. It had been sitting on the hood. They’re outside watching El focus, she keeps her hand out before digging her fingers into her palm and the can is crushed. “Have you always been this way?”

El releases the soda can, she drops her hand to the side. It bounces a little when it hits the gravel road. Max and Will sit off to the side. Max claps but when nobody else does, she stops and sits on top of her hands, instead, muttering a “What?” to Will who stares at her.

“I don’t know,” replies El. She picks at a scrunchy on her left wrist and peels it back a little showing a small tattoo there: 011. Wonder Woman tilts her head to the side, some of her dark hair falls into her face. It's all waves. She smiles and looks up at El waiting for an answer. She looms over all of them but acts as if they are on level. “. . .Long story.”

“I imagine so.”

El pulls the scrunchy back over her tattoo. “Yes.” She looks over to Will and Max who remain sitting in the gravel and signals for them to do something.

“They found her after she escaped from a lab.” Will talks while he watches El for a nod or a shake of her head. “We don’t know a lot about what happened.” He does look at Wonder woman. “They took her from her family, the people at the lab and did something that opened a. . .”

“Door,” El finishes for him. “They opened a door.”

“A door?” Wonder Woman looks quite puzzled. “What kind of door?”

“To. . .an upside down,” continues El.

Will adds, “It’s where those creatures are from.” He pauses. “And there’s more out there.”

“HOW?” snaps Max. She didn’t mean to shout. “Sorry. But really, how?”

“I don’t know.” El picks at her scrunchy. “We should go. Hopper.”

“Hopper?” repeats Wonder Woman.

“Her dad,” Max answers for El.

El snaps a look at her. Max shrugs off the dirty look. They all are standing ready to go. Max moves to stand closer to El while smiling at Wonder Woman who looks at the three. “Thank you.”

“Call me Diana,” Wonder Woman lets them know. “I am staying at the Hawkins Inn, ask for me.”

El, Will, and Max watch Diana walk off. She gets in a different car and drives away as if she were some normal, everyday person. As soon as she is out of sight, Max almost falls face-first exhaling before she jumps up covering her mouth.

“HOLY SHIT! That just happened!” she yells. “That really just happened! Call me Diana! Amazing. She’s amazing and-and you’re amazing, El.” She puts both hands on El’s shoulders shaking her a bit in the excitement. “We should go after dinner, I’ll just say I’m at your place again.” She gets El to smile, she looks a little sheepish there. “Perfect.”

Already El and Max are heading back towards town with Will standing there not moving at first. He ends up chasing after them. “Hey! That’s not fair! What if I don’t want her over again tonight.”

Both El and Max look back at Will. “No, at Hopper’s.”

Will catches up and is walking right beside them. “Ok, but you know he’s going to come over for dinner with you two and I’m a little tired of all your giggling and chatting.”

“Sorry that you don’t like us making fun of you,” says Max before looking forward, her and El burst into laughter. Will is left there to roll his eyes. He looks off to the side realizing they have quite a bit to walk back. Gravel gives way to taller grass they need to walk through to reach the rest of Hawkins. There were so many times he came out there with the rest of the crew following either Mike or Lucas. Sometimes Dustin even took the lead. “Hey. . .Will. . .?”

But Will is still looking off realizing too late that he’s not lost in some memory. It’s something else because whatever it is wriggles its way through the grass towards him before the earth trembles and starts to tilt. He attempts to catch his balance pretty sure he hears a WILL behind him, but the world continues to turn. His arms flail around to catch his balance, it’s never been like this before, he’s never had this experience like this, it’s never been like this before and he loses his step falling forward only for his chin to scrap across the wood of a boardwalk.

Underneath Will water slams into the legs of the boardwalk. Somewhere an ice cream truck sings its little tune while a child cries. When Will looks up, he sees the kid losing their balloon. It floats up, up and away. The world is stuck in its new place. He raises to his feet using his forearm to wipe the blood from his chin. A woman stands beside him pointing at the ice cream truck. Her words sound as if she’s talking to him from deep underwater, “Ice cream?”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” some boy yells at him, he appears to be about thirteen or fourteen with a bowl cut. He’s got an Apollo sweater on even though they’re out on the boardwalk in the summer. Everybody else is in t-shirts eating ice cream and eating melting popsicles. “Who are you?”

“Um. . .Will. . .and you are?”

The kid glares at him. “Tony.”

“Where am I?”

“Leaving.”

The world quakes all over again as the world begins to tilt throwing him off balance. This is not the Upside down, it’s nothing like it. Just a regular world. The woman continues to ask about ice cream and Will reaches out in an attempt to grab onto Tony but misses. He falls face first again into the boardwalk, but it tosses him off to the side and he opens his eyes finding himself stuck in a hospital bed. His mom and Hopper are beside him, both asleep. Will sits up waking up his mom. She straightens up, touches the back of his hand and smiles.

“Hey, what happened back there?”

“Um. . .nothing, I’m ok.”

“You sure about that?”

Will nods and scoots back into his bed. He lies there looking up at the ceiling without anymore words. He’s stuck on the kid Tony telling him: You’re not supposed to be here!

Everything means something.

Chapter Text

Seven

Eleven

Max wakes up unsure what disturbed her in the first place. It has to be too early, it’s not like a noise woke her up yet she did. She sits up realizing El is sitting on the floor with a blindfold on. It takes just about everything for Max not to comment knowing El would have something to say about it. But all those words kept building up inside of her anywhere and she couldn’t bite them back.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

El pulls the blindfold away to look up at her. “Looking to see where Will went.”

“He’s at the hospital, you know that.”

But El sits there running her fingers across the blindfold not really accepting this information. It’s something else that’s wrong so Max climbs off the bed to sit in front of her. She hugs her legs while looking at El who is staring at something and nothing all at the same time.

“What do you mean you were trying to see where Will went? Did something. . .happen?”

El looks at her and nods.

“Something bad?”

“I don’t know.” El’s whisper is close to being inaudible. “He went somewhere far.”

“And you know this how?”

El only shakes her head.

Max looks over at the door. There’s an uncomfortable quiet in the house without Hopper around to snore through the night then wake up claiming, Bad allergies. She pops up so fast almost knocking into El to turn on the little TV in her room, not that it really works. It welcomes white noise into their life and Max looks back at El.

“Try again, but only if you want.” She sits back down in front of El. “I’m right here, if you need me. I mean, not that you need me.” Max looks at the floor deciding it’s a real good time to shut up.

At least, El smiles this time around before she ties the blindfold back into place. She inhales deeply then lets her whole body relax leaving Max behind to sit there listening to the steady sssszzzt sound of the TV.

###

The world is all black other than El’s reflection across a thin level of water. She stands still looking around thinking of Will. As she walks forward she realizes she can see Joyce Byers reflection in the water. Hopper’s there, too. They’re sitting in seats, fast asleep almost like light beacons in the darkness. El moves closer to them, she’s as quiet as she can be. Noise travels here. Just to her and not them. She looks at Will, he too, is like a beacon of light but shines a whole lot brighter than the other two. He’s asleep, as well. El needs to squint a bit as if she’s out on a super sunny day.

“Will. . .” El whispers hoping to see his eyes open. They don’t. “Where did you go?” She touches his hand and closes her eyes.

Her stomach somersaults, it feels as if she is on a ride, and when she opens her eyes the whole world turns. No, it’s just her. Joyce, Hopper, and Will are in the same spot as El tilts away from them. She goes to reach to grab onto Will but right when her fingers almost touch his, she’s somewhere else. She sits up on the floor of a room with no personality. The sort found in hotels with pale paintings on walls, all of which look the same so you can’t tell if you made the wrong turn or not.

Behind her something scrapes and scrapes and she realizes there’s somebody speaking. El stays still looking at the pale walls watching a slight shadow move across them. Whoever is with her is a lot shorter than her. She looks to the side noticing a woman sleeping in a bed with a light on beside her table then beside her a child is there in a striped sweater whispering to himself the same thing over and over again. He’s got a knife in hand and something else as he writes in red on a door.

El watches, it takes her a second to realize he writes whatever he’s muttering, “Red rum, red rum, red rum.” She tilts her head to the side while taking this in.

“Will?” she whispers and the child whips around, his murmurs turn closer to a shout, “Red rum! Red Rum!”

The sleeping woman snaps to attention seeing something is wrong and yells, “DANNY!”

“Danny?” El repeats looking at the boy with the knife and lipstick in his other hand.

The woman panics. Neither of them see her there as she looks from the boy to the door.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Somebody says.

El turns to see a different boy or maybe the same boy, just a few years older? They look alike and not alike all at once. He has a bowl haircut and an Apollo sweater on. “Who are you?” she asks.

“Tony.” He pauses, glaring at her. “And you are. . .in danger.”

“Danger?” El looks away. The world moves so fast, it tilts and flings her back into her room. She gasps for breath ripping the blindfold off and uses her arm to wipe blood from her nose. Max touches her knee while sitting there, waiting for her to find a way to get back. El looks at Max. “Red rum is a. . .drink?”

“Yeah, but not an age-appropriate one.”

“Oh.” El sits there. She can’t think of a Danny they may all know. “Ok.”

“Where’d you go? Where’d Will go?”

El shakes her head. “Don’t. . .know.” She looks back up at Max. “Not the Upside Down.”

Chapter Text

Eight

The Truth Knot

A door slams shut sounding more like thunder, the sort that’s all too close and all too close, too soon because you forgot to keep track of the storm. Rose the Hat or at least that’s what they call her stands before her RV. Everybody in the camp stalls to stare out of fear and interest. Together each one of them create the “they” who calls her Rose the Hat and together they call themselves, The True Knot.

“We have a problem,” announces Rose the Hat. She stalks forward, her movement is all too feral. It causes the rest of them to inch forward, too, but with such caution. A tension grows and grows among them. “One of you. . .is a liar.”

It became quieter than quiet. Rose the Hat continues to stalk forward, she weaves her way around each person pausing to look them straight in the eye. Not a person flinches as she does this. “One of you. . .” And she stops in the middle of everybody. “One of you. . .isn’t even here.”

Nobody comments.

Rose the Hat grimaces. “Where’s Grandpa Flick?”

“Sick,” somebody whispers. It’s so low and so easy to miss even with the quiet.

“Sick?” shouts Rose the Hat. “Now how is that possible? Rubes get sick, not us.”

“That boy. . .” another somebody whispers. “He made him sick.”

Rose the Hat stands so still. “I don’t like that, I don’t like that at all.”

“Looks morbilli. . .or measles. . .whatever it’s called.”

Rose the Hat sucks in her lower lip and shakes her head. “That’s no good. Nobody’s to visit him but me and Crow.” She cuts through the crowd, if anybody stands in her path a bit too long, she shoves them aside. The second thunder crack is her again slamming a door shut, just to Grandpa Flick’s RV.

The members of the True Knot continue to stand around in silence looking at the RV. Only death can follow this.

One member has something to say. They call her Snakebite Andi, and she didn’t really mean to overstep Rose the Hat with what she wants to say. It’s just, she has a feeling and a feeling that if she doesn’t act on it, they will start to die. “. . .I have an idea!”

Some leave telling themselves, Fuck it, she’s too new to get it. Others wait to hear her out more of boredom than curiosity. Only a Silent Sarey stays, she smiles at Andi and is interested. Just more interested in Andi than in what Andi has to say.

Snakebite Andi doesn’t see the smile or really the disgust of the rest. Just the vague thoughts of a distant dream she had the other night. One of a kid who walked upside down in their world or maybe she walked upside down? It was hard to tell since it was night, the sky and ground were both black and he walked like it was all normal, just above her head.

“We can find another kid, I know it. Next town over.”

“Nah, shut up, Andi,” snaps a Jimmy Numbers.

“No, really, I know it. You have to believe me.”

“You’re just a fucking kid.”

Snakebite Andi rolls her eyes. “Yeah, so what? I know I’m right about this. Can’t you all feel it?”

People murmur.

Jimmy Numbers makes no further comment.

“I knew it, you know it, don’t you? We can fix this. We just gotta go to. . .” Snakebite Andi looks around like she’ll see a map or something.

Silent Sarey who’s called that for a reason ends up speaking up, catching them all off guard. She’s so quiet, she seems to disappear and other times, when she thinks hard enough, she can disappear. “Hawkins.”

This prompts Snakebite Andi to smile for a change. The two smile at each other even with passing memories of a boy walking above her, upside down in their world. “Yes! There! We gotta go.”

Some others leave. Jimmy Numbers groans. He digs into his back pocket fishing out some keys. “Come on, you two.” He points at Snakebite Andi and Silent Sarey. “Rest of you, cover for us. We buying food.” He takes the lead forcing the two to chase after him. He passes the RVs to one of the few cars they got parked along the edge.

Once inside, Snakebite Andi sits in the back and leans forward looking at Jummy Numbers. “I know just the place to go, too.”

“Where’s that?”

“The mall, I think.”

Jimmy Numbers starts the car and glares at her. “Is this a joke? Cause kids hang out there?”

“No, this is about a specific kid. Trust me. I mean it. Find the mall.” She looks over at Silent Sarey who’s unfolding a map tucked into one of the back seats. “Find a mall, we go there, a Hawkins Mall.”

Silent Sarey uses her eyes to say I know, I know.

Jimmy Numbers starts to drive. He pulls ahead still shaking his head. “I sure as fuck hope you’re right.”

Snakebite Andi leans back in her seat with such defiance. It almost distracts the other two from their current tasks. “I know I’m right.”

Chapter Text

Nine

Max

Max is the only one left awake after El crashed earlier in the evening. She lies next to El, sharing her bed attempting to read some book she found in the other room. It appears that neither El nor Hopper are not readers. Her two options were The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy and Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. She picked the latter but after reading it for a bit she starts to regret this option as it follows a brutal murder bringing her back somehow to El asking her what kind of drink red rum is.

The door creaks open and Hopper looks in. He pauses and whispers, “Do your parents know you’re here?”

“Yeah, we’ve already been over this,” Max retorts. She honestly didn’t realize the snoring stopped. She had no idea how long Hopper had been up. If he’d even been awake when she crept out there looking for something else to do while El slept. “Go away, we’re sleeping.”

“We need to talk,” replies Hopper. “Wake her up. I’ll meet you in the next room.”

Max rolls her eyes. Hopper is already gone to catch a glimpse of her attitude. She lightly shakes El’s shoulder leaning a little closer. “Hey, Eleven. . .” she whispers. This stirs El right away. She stares at Max without getting up. “Yeah, I think we’re in trouble.”

El sits up yawning looking at her clock. It’s about five in the morning with no reason with either of them being awake. She makes no comment and leaves the room with Max trailing behind her, murder book in hand. Max considers returning it to its spot to collect more dust. No need to invite all that into her life.

Hopper signals for them to come closer and he points at the TV set as a recap of the news plays showing Wonder Woman at the mall and El close by her. He looks up at the girls. “Care to explain?”

“Not really,” replies Max.

“We were safe,” El says.

“You know you can’t just waltz right out there in public. What if someone saw you?”

El glances at Max who shrugs. She looks at Hopper. “Wonder Woman saw us.”

This gets no retort from Hopper while he stares at them. He finds some words, “Did anybody else see you?”

“No,” replies El.

“Are you sure?”

Again, El answers. “No.”

Hopper nods. He looks at the TV but it's playing an infomercial. “I think it might be best if you leave first thing in the morning, Max, there’s a lot El and I need to talk about.”

“Ok, but nobody saw anything. They all think it was Wonder Woman. Trust me, ask Will. He was there.”

Hopper snaps his attention back at them. “Will was there?”

“Yeah, he works there now.”

Whatever runs through Hopper’s mind isn’t apparent while he sits there. He leans back in his chair looking like he’s about ready to just sleep there.

“There’s a boy. . .” El whispers. It gets both Hopper and Max to stare at her. “Not in the. . .Upside Down.”

“There’s a lot of boys not in the Upside down,” retorts Max. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

“He’s in danger.”

Hopper looks at her before he leans a bit to look at the kitchen clock. “It’s a bit early for this, don’t you think.”

“His friend. . .” continues El.

But Hopper interrupts her. “Wait so there are two boys. . .not in the Upside Down?”

El nods.

“Are they. . .here?”

El shakes her head. “They are on the ocean. He said. . .I’m in danger.”

Hopper and Max shut up. They watch her carefully. Hopper sighs and looks back at the clock again. He gets up turning off the TV. “Come on, let’s get waffles. There’s bound to be someplace open.”

“We leave?” blurts El.

Hopper points at her. “Don’t say anything.” He goes to fetch his car keys and returns with an old baseball cap which he puts on her head. “There, perfect. Let’s talk about this in the car. I need coffee.”

Max grins at El before she looks back at Hopper. “I love you, Mr. Hopper.”

“I’ll be in the car.”

After Hopper leaves, Max takes El by the hand leading her back towards her room so they can throw their shoes on. But El moves all slow, something is on her mind. Max watches her. Whatever is distracting her makes it look like she forgot how to tie her shoelaces. For a moment, Max thinks about asking what’s up, but then El glances up at her. Somehow she just knows, El doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, Max smiles at her again and stands up.

“I need to get you all some better reading material.” Max lifts up the book she’s still holding. “This-This is all about murder.”

“Of who?” El asks.

Max shrugs. “I don’t know, an actress. Anyway, let’s go. I’m actually starving.”

El stays silent as they make their way outside. It’s cool without the sun up yet and Hopper drives off, heading past a sign that tells them, they’re leaving Hawkins.

Chapter Text

Ten

Eleven

A server drops a plate of waffles topped with ice cream and whipped cream in front of El and chocolate chip pancakes in front of Max. They leave for a minute to bring some more coffee to the table filling up Hopper’s mug while he sits there staring at the two. They’re at some diner outside of Hawkins. All the advertisements on the placemat make no sense. None of them are for the shops the girls are used to looking for.

“So. . .” Hopper attempts to start while the girls are digging into their meals. “. . .We need to talk.”

El looks up shaking her head. “No talk.”

“Oh, no, we do need to talk,” retorts Hopper. Both El and Max give each other a look, it’s all smirk before they look back at Hopper. “Great, don’t tell me, you’re both telepathic now.”

“No.” El shakes her head. She pauses eating to drink some orange juice. “There’s nothing. . .to talk about.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong because there is a lot to talk about,” retorts Hopper causing another shared smirk between the two. “Ok, ok, you both-you both need to stop doing that.” He makes them laugh right as El is attempting to eat a giant glob of whipped cream. She loses some. “You deserved that.”

El uses the crook of her arm to wipe her face causing Max to toss a napkin at her from a container on the table. “Jees, get some manners.”

“So. . .the mall. . .” Hopper started getting the two to actually shut up. Max takes a rather large bite of her pancakes, she chops down on them while glaring at him. He looks away from her at El instead. The girl is a bit intimidating, Mike was an easier adversary. “You know you’re not supposed to leave like that.”

This prompts El to shrug as if she can cause the comment off. “I know. I can. . .rebel.”

But Hopper shakes his head. “Nooooo, you can’t rebel. Max can rebel but not you.” He pauses. His comment gets Max to look out the window for a bit forcing him and El to match each other’s stares. “You understand why, right?”

“Yes. . .but. . .I don’t care.”

“Yeah, but I think you do.” Hopper takes a huge swig of his coffee forgetting how hot it is, but he doesn’t let anybody know his tongue is all burned up now. “Why’d you go?”

“Max said. . .” El starts and Max snaps her attention at her like she’s mad she just got thrown under the bus. “Max said. . .” El stares at her for a few seconds before returning her full attention to Hopper. “Wonder Woman was there and I wanted to meet her.”

“Max said that?”

Max rolls her eyes. “It’s not like I made it up besides everything is fine. Nobody but Wonder Woman noticed El and if anything that’s probably really good.” Max looks at El while picking at her pancakes with her fork. El smiles back at her although Max is all serious. “If anybody bad did see then we now have Wonder Woman on our side so nothing can hurt us.”

If Hopper didn’t start saying something right away, El would’ve questioned the us in Max saying: Nothing can hurt us. But he talks and Max looks back at her food no longer eating it. El doesn’t touch her food while Hopper rambles and she watches Max fidget. The ice cream is melting taking what’s left of the whipped cream with it.

“Hey, Hey. . .Eleven, you’re not even listening to me.” Hopper waves down the server for another cup of coffee. He glances at their plates. “Do you want that to go?”

“No, I’m still eating,” says Max without even eating.

The server returns with the same old pot of coffee. They’re pouring more while admiring the girls. “Is one of these your kid?”

“Yeah, her and her girlfriend,” replies Hopper, taking the coffee right away drinking it again too fast, just burning his tongue all over again.

“I’m just her friend. . .who’s a girl,” Max interrupts. Her face is burning bright red.

El looks over at her tilting her a bit but makes no comment on this. Instead, she looks over at Hopper waiting for the server to leave and tries to take charge of the conversation. “What about the boys?”

“What boys?” asks Hopper.

“From the not-Upside Down. Where are beaches?”

“Wait, no, we’re not talking about that yet. We’re still talking about how careless you were at the mall.”

“But I want to talk about the boys on the beach,” retorts El, she squints at him. Some of the silverware on the table vibrates. Tremors run through the table.

Max hops up. “I um gotta go to the bathroom.” She pauses to do a quick look for a sign. The server passes them and points it out in the back corner. Max makes her way back there only to pause outside. The one bathroom has a little “occupied” sign on it. She leans into the wall ready to wait when she bumps into a corkboard there. Behind her are some flyers to places she’d never heard of and some flyer full of missing kids’ faces. For some reason, she takes it down looking at all of them and brings it back to Hopper and El who’ve reached the arguing stage of their conversation on the mall. “Hold up.” Both Hopper and El stop and Max lifts it. “Are any of these guys the boys you saw?”

Hopper almost grabs it out of Max’s hand but she’s quicker than him. She pulls her hand away and drops it in front of El who traces her hand over some of the kids’ faces grimacing the whole time. “Don’t show that to her.”

“Where’d they go?” El asks looking up at Max.

“Missing, people don’t know like Unsolved Mysteries.”

“You don’t watch that show,” Hopper comments but Max gives him a look. “You’re telling me you both watch that show?” He looks back at El who continues to touch each kid's face. “You shouldn’t watch that show.”

“Stop telling her what to do!” snaps Max, but she regrets saying it as soon as she does. “She’s not some small child and when she was, she went through a lot more than you.”

El stops moving while she looks at some boy wearing a baseball hat, his name is Bradley Trevor. She touches the side of his little picture like something will happen. It doesn’t. Something prickles inside of her causing her to look up and around. Whatever it is, it grows a lot stronger. Whoever was in the bathroom makes her way back to the register where two others stand. El holds onto the images while watching them pay for their food chatting about something. The two girls in the group stand close, their shoulders touch and even their hands for a split second before turning to leave with some guy with them. He’s counting their change only to stop. The girls crash into him. He glares at El who continues to sit and stare not hearing what Max or Hopper have to say on the matters of missing children. Whatever is prickling inside of her grows.

“What’re you looking at?” the guy snaps at her before moving outside. He gets into some old beat-up car with the other two. All three of them sit upfront. The two girls share the passenger seat giggling about something. El keeps looking out the window at them.

This time Hopper waves to get El’s attention. Max is gone. “Are you sure you don’t want that to go?”

El looks at him. “What do. . .murderers look like?”

“Ok so that’s even a wear question for you,” replies Hopper making the executive decision to flag down their server for boxes. “You’re still not off the hook, you know that right.”

El’s still staring out the window though. The group’s gone and the prickling sensation fades. “What does red rum mean?”

The server returns with some boxes for them. Hopper takes them and plops the soggy waffles into one. El turns her attention to him. “Why? You drinking behind my back, too?”

“No.” El smirks at him. “The non-Upside Down boys said it to me.”

“No idea then.” Hopper closes the box and pushes it closer to her. “You ok?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

El looks out the window again. “There’s something wrong with those people?”

“What people?” Hopper looks out to see an empty parking lot.

“Nevermind.” El holds her box and Max returns. She shoots Max a big smile. While nobody is really looking, El hides the flyer of missing kids underneath her box ready to go. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

“Ok, but I’m dropping Max off along the way.” Hopper hands her some boxed food. “Somebody at this table is now grounded.”

“Wait! What?” snaps El.

“Oh, glad you heard that. Come on.” Hopper goes to pay as the girls exit heading towards his truck.

Outside El shows she has the flyer and Max pretends to act all horrified. “El, that’s stealing.”

“I make my own rules,” replies El.

“Ok, but G*d made that rule so you suck and you’re a bad person now.”

“Maxine!” El bursts out laughing although Max isn’t sure why. It’s all what’s in El’s head. Some thoughts churning and coming together. “I have a plan.”

“Is it to steal more?”

Hopper is on his way out toward them.

El leans super close to Max and whispers, “No but to save what’s stolen. Like kids.” She nods in the direction of her food and the flyer. It’s all coming together between the two of them. Max looks up at her unable to close her mouth as she attempts to search for words. But Hopper’s there unlocking his door first before they can get in. Once he’s inside he leans across his seat to unlock the back door. El continues to smile at Max who is so out of the loop. “Like you said. . .nothing can hurt us now.”

“I don’t think I meant it like that,” but Max whispers this to no one because El is already in the car scooting across to the other side so she can get in, too. Rather than making some come back, Max sits in the car and looks at her box. Hopper pulls away from the diner looking for some song to play.

“Oh. . .stop. . .” El says, he almost stops the car but it’s the song. “Max likes this song.” Max keeps looking down so nobody can see her cheeks turn red. Hopper listens and keeps driving as they listen to Spellbound. Even though Max avoids looking at El, she can see that El’s smiling at her from the corner of her eye as the song keeps on playing. There are vague thoughts to missing kids and more thoughts to what El said.

Like you said. . .nothing can hurt us now.

Chapter Text

Eleven

Mike

Mike is at the door by himself, busy knocking because nobody’s been answering the phone. To make it worse, nobody’s answering the door either. But that doesn’t stop him from knocking, he has it half in mind to start banging on the window right when the door finally swings open to reveal Jonathan there. Both Mike and Jonathan stand in silence while looking at each other. It’s about to grow too weird but Mrs. Byers walks by holding onto a coffee mug. Whatever she’s drinking is steaming even though it's super hot out. All the windows are open with no AC in sight, just a little fan is clicking away in the kitchen.

“Um hi,” Mike says while both Mrs. Byers and Jonathan stare at him.

“I haven’t seen you around here in a while,” she comments.

“Oh, I’ve just been busy, Mrs. Byers.”

“Joyce, please.”

Mike nods. “I’ve just been busy, Joyce.” He continues to just stand still in the doorway. Chances are this is a bad idea and somehow people sensed him calling so they ignored it ringing. “Is Will around?”

Joyce takes a big sip of her drink. “No, he’s at the mall.”

“Wait, what? With who?” blurts Mike.

Jonathan grimaces. “He’s at work.”

This has Mike at a loss for words because he can’t remember Will talking about a job or really Will talking much lately anyway. Not since their fight. Since then, he avoided them. No more Will laughing with them, no more even Will in the background saying, “Can we play D&D tomorrow?” None of it. And by the looks of it, no more Joyce and no more Jonathan welcoming him into their home. He wanted to pretend his sister was more to blame for that fact.

“Right, I forgot, I’ll go visit him at. . .” Mike pauses as if Joyce or Jonathan will finish the statement, but of course, they don’t. And of course, he has no idea what Will told them about him and the others and the fight but he imagined Will never mentioned the fight. “. . .Starcourt.”

Mike backs up grabbing his bike from off to the side. Neither Joyce nor Jonathan really say anything, but it looks as if Joyce is saying something with her eyes like there’s more than one person around with superpowers. Whatever it is, Jonathan nods and leaves closing the door behind him. “I’ll give you a ride. Throw your bike in the back.”

And Mike does without protest nor does he ask about where they’re headed. It’s the mall, which is good enough. His bike is in the back as Jonathan pulls off heading towards Starcourt and a lot, a lot of awkward silence between the two especially as the radio doesn’t work.

At some point, it’s unbearable and he looks at Jonathan. “So I heard you and. . .”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” grumbles Jonathan.

Mike looks away from him. “Yeah. I get it.” He pauses for a while and glances at Jonathan. “I feel the same about. . .me and El.”

Jonathan doesn’t even look at him, but at least he’s busy driving. “Sorry to hear that.” He mumbles it and Mike almost doesn’t hear him, but he does and the quiet returns. At least, it’s not too much further to the mall and it’s not like they need to find a parking lot because Jonathan drives right up towards the entrance and parks. He looks at Mike waiting for him to make a move.

“Oh. . .thanks. . .” says Mike as he climbs out. He gets his bike from the back before moving to the rack and locking it up. By the time he looks back at the car, it's gone. Jonathan is driving off without him. Mike stands there realizing, nobody ever told him where Will works.

Mike makes his way into the mall and looks around trying to think of where Will would work. A game shop, for sure. A bookstore, too. He spots across the way from him a record store and that’s probably where. Mike cuts across the mall and enters the store. It stinks like a skunk and the lights are on low. The whole place is pretty dim with all sorts of records in stands throughout the middle. There’s two women and a man picking through the records whispering about titles.

“What are you doing here?”

It's Will. Mike continues to stand in the store entrance as Will moves toward him, he’s pulling along a cart with some records on them. Joy Division is playing in the background. Mike looks over at the counters where some speakers are set up and the album is on display.

“You’re blocking the. . .” Will starts to say but Mike moves out of the way to stand beside the cart Will has. The three other people in the store stop talking to look up at them before returning to their business. “What do you want?”

“Oh wow. . .” Mike pretends he’s looking at the music, he picks up an album. “Kenny Rogers.”

“You came here for, Kenny Rogers?” retorts Will biting back a laugh.

Mike smiles at him. It’s been a real long time since the last time he heard Will chuckle. “No, I came to see you. Everybody else is busy and El isn’t talking to me.”

The moment’s gone. Will scowls at Mike and takes the album from him to drop it into its place. “Oh, so you’re only here because everybody else is busy.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t mean it like that!” Mike snaps.

Again, the three other people look up at them. The man says something this time around to Will, “This guy bothering you, kid?”

Will shakes his head and returns to his work.

“Who are they? Who are those people?” Mike snaps his attention back to Will. “Do you know them?”

“For all of thirty minutes,” the one woman pipes up. The woman next to her stays quiet, but she nods. “And we can tell already he doesn’t like you.”

“We’re friends, ok?!” Mike snaps at them before he starts to follow Will up and aisle. He goes to return the albums back to their place. Silence reaches out to them. Will pauses and looks over at Mike. The records done playing. Even though Will isn’t looking at him, Mike keeps talking to him. “I didn’t mean it that way, really, Will, I mean that.”

After Will puts the last of the records away, he looks up again at Mike, partially smiling at him. “Hey?” Will pauses kind of glancing at their audience. “You can pick the next one. . .if you want.”

“Really?” Mike beams at this but he gets only a shrug as a response. Already Mike is scanning titles not sure what to choose, there’s a lot and there’s a lot less he knows Will likes. To give him some space, Mike wanders over a little closer to the three others in the store before he plucks an album off a shelf imagining it matching all the nights they hung around listening to The Clash while Jonathan worked on photographs. Mike turns around holding up the album. “Are you a Ramones kind of guy?”

“Sure.” Will smiles and he takes the record from him. “El and Max were here the other day.”

Some reason, this startles Mike. So they knew about Will and he didn’t. But of course. It was in the news anyway. Wonder Woman visiting Hawkins and disaster conveniently strikes at that moment.

“You like The Ramones, new kid?” the man asks him.

Mike shakes his head.

“Figures, you look like somebody who probably listens to a lot of Boston or Foreigner.”

“Ok, but More Than a Feeling is a great song.”

“Said no one ever,” whispers the one woman.

Mike moves towards Will who is behind the counter. “Who are those guys?”

“We can hear you,” the woman says. She leans into the records before her. She isn’t too old, actually. Maybe she’s even in high school or college or something. “I’m Andi but they call me Snakebite Andi.” Mike gives her an awkward wave not too interested in this ordeal. He’s not too sure what he expected to happen when he decided to show up. “That’s Sarey, but she don’t talk much so we call her Silent Sarey.”

“Ok. . .hi. . .” Mike again waves.

Will leans a little closer to Mike, there’s some strange expression on Will’s face. He doesn’t say anything at first then whispers, “I got the same weird introduction.” Then a little louder for the three to hear, he points out the man. “And that’s Jimmy.”

Jimmy smirks.

“No, cool name?” Mike retorts.

Jimmy shrugs, but Snakebite Andi has an actual response, “We call him Jimmy Numbers cause he’s an accountant and knows like a lot about computers.”

“Andi. . .” grumbles Jimmy and glares at her.

But Andi is ready to chatter away. “Are you two from around here?”

“Born and raised,” Mike replies.

Will fixes the record on the player letting it play. He looks over at Mike again, the same strange look across his face. Mike looks at him so close to just going what but neither of them say a word while looking at each other. Instead of starting a conversation, Will starts to fix up the counter space. “I head out soon.” He pauses. “If you want to do something.”

“I’d like that.” Mike smiles at him. “We could see a movie?”

“I don’t want to see a movie.” Will looks away again.

Jimmy Numbers walks up to the register pulling out his wallet while keeping two records tucked under his arm. There’s wads of cash in his wallet, all about to spill out when he opens it. “Man, if you’re looking for something to do, we’re in town for Sarey’s cousin’s show.”

Will is busy ringing Jimmy up while Mike stands beside him. “Show?”

“Yeah, like garage band or whatever.” Jimmy looks back at Silent Sarey who says nothing. She just stares across the room giving Mike the chills. It’s all pretty weird. “Right, Sarey?” Again, she says nothing.

“I’m good,” Will mutters. He drops the records in a bag and takes money from Jimmy Numbers. Their fingers touch and Will hesitates, the color drains from his face as he stares at the guy. “I would love to go to your show.”

“Great, it’s free.” Jimmy Numbers pulls some paper from his back pocket and scrawls on it with a pen. “That’s the place. Starts at seven.”

But Will continues to stand there with his hand out and a wad of cash in it. “Great.”

Mike waves his hand in front of Will’s face before looking over at Jimmy. “I think we’re good.” He looks at Will again. “I was thinking maybe we could play D&D.”

Except Will looks at him, money falling from his hand. Meanwhile, Jimmy Numbers backs away smirking at them. He leaves with the two others. Will blinks a few times, he grimaces as if his head hurts. “Wait, what just happened?”

“Nothing but you telling that guy you’d go to some show.”

“I did?”

Mike looks out the door to the store, somebody else is entering looking like they own the place. Probably because they do by the way he goes straight into the back and Will greets him with a small wave. “Yeah, you did.” Mike picks up the money. “Are you ok?”

Will runs a hand across the back of his neck, sighing. “Weird.” He picks up the paper studying the address, wherever this show is, it’s not far. “Maybe I’ll go.” He tucks it into his back pocket.

“Why don’t I go with you?” Mike doesn’t even really mean it. “Lucas is probably free by then, too.”

“Great.” Will gives Mike another weird look.

“What?” Mike snaps this time around, he doesn’t mean it to sound so harsh. “Is there something on my face?”

“I’ll see if Jonathan can dive us a ride.” And Will leaves to grab his stuff from the backroom after the other guy leaves. He barely acknowledges Mike. While waiting, Mike makes his way towards the store entrance again, pretending to read over the albums but a newspaper catches his eye. It's right outside the store, but he picks it up anyway. The front page, of course, is all about Wonder Woman fighting a demodog even though he was pretty sure they were all dead.

Will shrugs his way past Mike, “Sorry about you and El.”

He doesn’t stop nor does he invite Mike to follow along, but he does get another giant WHAT because Mike is pretty sure nothing there is nothing too wrong between him and El. That’s a lie. Probably a huge lie. He keeps up with Will but almost loses him because he sees Silent Sarey staring at them. The other two appear to be out of sight but Sarey won’t look away nor does she blink. Mike turns to poke Will.

“Hey. . .” he says getting Will’s attention. “What do you think her problem is?” He points at Silent Sarey but when the two of them look, she’s vanished. Both Will and Mike stop and stay put. Again, Will touches the back of his neck while staring with Mike at the empty spot where Silent Sarey stood.

Chapter Text

Twelve

Hopper

Joyce is right about to close up when Hopper shows up. He knocks on the window like it’s not obvious he’s standing there. She has the key in hand getting ready to lock up but lets him in first. Hopper storms in already rambling about some issue and she reaches down locking the door, getting ready to count all the cash in the register for the day. When she turns around, she realizes Hopper's still talking about whatever.

“Hold up,” Joyce interrupts. Hopper shuts up looking at her. “Jim, hold one a second, what are you even talking about?”

“Are you-Are you not listening to me?” snaps Hopper.

For some reason, Joyce laughs at this shaking her head. “No, I’m not. It’s why I asked.” She walks over to the counter and pops open the register getting ready to count any income. There’s not much more than when she opened for the day. She stands there staring at it, glad Hopper is pretty quiet. “Ok, so what’s going on?” She slams the register shut. “What’s El up to now?”

“I don’t know, Joyce.” He sounds all gruff and goes to lean into one of the shelves only to knock over a bunch of cereal boxes. Hopper struggles to pick it all up. “It’s just. . .” He pauses for a really, really long time. To the point Joyce looks at the clock, she really wants to go. Any later and somebody might say something. “What-What. . .What did you say to Will when. . .”

Joyce tilts her head to the side. “When. . .what?”

Hopper releases one long exhale. “You know. . .! When Will. . .”

Joyce’s eyes get all big. “Ooooh. Oh! OH! Ok, well. . .” Joyce points at Hopper and awkwardly touches his shoulder, she’s not too sure why, she imagines it being a touch of encouragement or something. “So you’re really bad at heart-to-hearts so. . .ok then probably don’t do that. . .” Hopper stares at him, his mouth ajar. “Ok, I’m sure we can figure something out, just give me a moment.”

Already Joyce is behind the counter about to dig around. She finds a pen and paper getting ready to write. She leans into the counter putting pen to paper. “So how did El. . .come out to you?”

Hopper runs his hand across the top of his head. He knocks more stuff off the shelf but this time, he doesn’t pick it up again. Instead, he leans there looking at Joyce again not saying much. “She hasn’t.”

Joyce drops her pen. “Jim! Just because El is a little different doesn’t mean. . .”

“She’s always hanging out with Max!”

Joyce laughs. “Ok, but that’s normal.”

“No! This-This is different! Trust me! You’re not the one sitting around with them in the room.” Hopper pauses looking around as if he’ll find a better answer. “Just. . .Just help me, Joyce.”

“Ok, ok, ok,” Joyce mutters and again picks up her pen. “You know, I may not even be the best example. I just kept telling him at first that he’ll change or it’s just a phase so I’m-I’m not really the best. . .”

But Hopper moves over to the counter, he touches the back of her hand and Joyce tenses up. He let’s go of her hand instead. “Joyce, you’re a great mom.” She smiles at this and avoids looking up at Hopper. “But also I don’t have a lot of time so we should start brainstorming.”

###

As soon as Hopper walks through the door, he stops and starts to play some music. El’s door is partially open and it smells like she burned something in the toaster. Seeing that she left a box of Eggos out on the counter, it’s that. He plays You Don’t Mess Mess Around With Jim by Jim Croce hoping it’ll lighten the moment. An old favorite or so he hoped. It’s been a while since El sat around to talk to him about music or movies or TV shows. El didn’t really talk to him anymore. It’d been some time since they watched westerns before nodding off for the night and he couldn’t remember the last time they made triple decker Eggo extravaganzas. Other than the breakfast they had with Max, it’s been a long time since they enjoyed a meal together and looks like she already ate her dinner. She had Eggos without the extravaganza part.

“El!” Hopper yells. “I need to talk to you!”

El peers out the door at him as he collapses onto his seat. She waits a bit then the door swings open without her needing to push it with her hands. There’s a plate on the floor of her room with half an Eggo left. There’s some magazine lying around it. She comes to stand and stare at him not even sitting down.

Hopper ends up asking, “What are you reading about?”

El looks over at her room and lifts her hand closing the door. She ends up sitting down by him. “Ralph Macchio.”

“Ralph Macchio?” Hopper bursts out laughing. “Who even is that?”

“Karate Kid.” El even mimics a karate chop.

Hopper shakes his head while chuckling. “Wait, Karate Kid? Is that like your thing now? Do I need to sign you up for karate lessons?”

This gets a smile out of El. “No.”

“Good because I wasn’t going to.” Hopper goes to turn the TV on but he’s still playing music. Besides, he does want to make a better attempt at talking to El. She’s not looking at him though, she’s looking at the blank TV. “I could try to get some books about karate for you.”

El only smiles at this.

“MacGyver is coming on tonight, I think.”

“I don’t think it is,” El ends up laughing at this.

“Huh, weird. Got my days all mixed up, I guess.” Hopper shrugs and doesn’t say much as his music continues to play. “Hey, there’s something I’d like to talk about?”

El snaps her attention back at him. “Mike?”

It’s Hopper’s turn to laugh because it’s quite the opposite. “No, something else. . .”

He’s searching for the right words when the phone starts to ring and El pops up shouting, “Will!”

“Not him either,” replies Hopper.

“No, it’s Will.” El darts away to answer the phone. Hopper groans burying his face into the palm of his hands. She picks the phone off the hook leaving Hopper there to watch her, but she signals for him to turn down the music. “Will?”

Over the phone, Will replies, “Can we talk?”

El twists her fingers through the chord. “. . .About what?”

“I think something bad happened today, I don’t know-I don’t know how to explain so just call Max and we meet where Castle Byers was.” And he hangs up leaving El to turn around facing Hopper while he’s busy pretending to not eavesdrop on her.

The two are basically at a standstill while Hopper pretends he’s not paying attention while El watches him. She goes over into the kitchen grabbing the Eggo box she left out and tosses it in the trashcan before she comes and sits by Hopper. She looks at him. “Oh. . .I like your. . .shirt.”

“Go ahead,” Hopper ends up saying. There’s a lot of words Joyce challenged him to say and all of them seem more important. Not one of them comes to mind while he sits there. “Will wants to hang out?” And El nods. “Do you. . .like Will?” But El shakes her head. “Do you. . .like anybody else?”

“Other than. . .Will?”

Hopper ends up turning on the TV even with the music playing. At least El turns it off, she doesn’t even have to move towards the record player. “I meant, other than Mike or are you two still talking?”

El shrugs as if she can rid herself of the question. She disappears into her room for several minutes before returning to the main room back to wearing black suspenders with a pink shirt with palm trees on it, it’s button-up and tucked into her pants. El walks to the entrance slipping on her shoes.

“Can I make a call?” El asks while tying the laces.

“Sure, I don’t see why not.” Hopper is flipping through the channels. He almost says something else because he overhears El on the phone asking to speak to Max before letting her know Castle Byers. “Oh so you’re hanging out with Max again, too?”

El is heading back towards the door. “Yes.” She’s about to leave but ends up pausing with her hand on the doorknob. “What did you want to talk about?”

Hopper changes the channel again, it flashes to some white noise which he turns down the sound on. “Something we can talk about later. Go talk to Will and Max, just be back in an hour or two. Ok?”

“Ok.” El smiles and nods making her way outside

And Hopper yells after her, “I mean it, too, two hours.”

Before El closes the door, she shouts one more, “Ok!”

She’s off about to power walk towards the Byers’ resident. She leaves the trees behind that crowd where she and Hopper live. She pauses and looks back at the building feeling some odd, inkling of a thought that maybe she should stay behind and talk to Hopper. El goes to leave feeling some chill crawl up her back making her look all around. Nobody’s there. It doesn’t look like anything else is around. She does one more sweep of the trees and pauses because maybe, maybe there’s something by one of the bushes. The branches are a bit crooked as if somebody is standing right around there attempting to hide, which is such a ridiculous thought because El is right there staring right at whoever it would be there. A few of the branches move, but nobody is still there. It’s not like it’s windy out either. Rather than wait around any longer, El starts walking off again, planning to make sure she’s back exactly two hours later.

Chapter Text

Thirteen

Will

Will is standing in front of a mirror in Jonathan’s room. He’s not home to comment on the fact that he is standing around holding one shirt in front of him than another. The first choice is a maroon and mustard yellow shirt with chunky stripes going across him then the other was a Coca-cola shirt he bought on a whim after seeing it on clearance. It wasn’t even like he was a big Coke drinker, probably because his mom was always bringing home Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.

“What are you. . .” Joyce doesn’t finish what she’s saying because she startles Will. He almost falls face-first into a mirror. She looks at Will trying to not look all embarrassed, but he’s shuffling one foot and his cheeks are red. “So where are you going?”

“A concert.”

“A concert?!” Nobody comes to Hawkins to perform. She walks into the room a bit more. “I mean, who’s playing?”

“I don’t know.” Will returns to looking at his reflection with the Coke shirt in front of him. “Some garage band.”

“That’s cool. Who’s going?”

“Just me and Mike then maybe El and Max.” Will switches to the striped shirt and looks at his mom. “I invited them, too.”

Joyce grins. “Wait, hold on.” She disappears from the room. Will hears her door open up and her rummaging around before returning. Joyce tosses him a tank top with a red ring collar and it says New York City on the front. “If your hair is getting that long, you might as well start dressing up like John Lennon, too. It could be a good look for you.”

Will holds up the shirt in front of him. “I’m not really. . .”

“Yeah, yeah, we know. You’re too good for The Beatles with all your loud noise you call music, but trust me. . .” Joyce pauses for dramatic effect “. . .you’ll look good in this and it’s better than those.” She chuckles as she backs out closing the room giving Will some peace to change.

But Will stands there testing all three shirts. He smiles at the idea of the New York shirt even though he’s never been out there but hey, that’s a conversation starter and an easier one than anybody asking about his life. He tosses the other shirts to the side only to watch them tumble away as if they’re rolling down a hill. The world tilts forward flinging him away from the mirror and straight into sand. Will inhales a good bit of sand and starts hacking away. He’d tell him it’s not real but then he wouldn’t be choking on sand.

Will hugs the shirt to his chest with one hand while he uses his free hand to push himself up. Sand falling from him and into his eyes. He wipes some of the grains free only to realize large stone walls rise up before him. There’s not even a lot of sand around him. It’s just paths cutting through grass but he can hear the ocean beating the ground behind him. A little turret glares at him with its super small window. It’s as if a castle is in front of him. The wall spikes out at him. There are people murmuring all around him, but none of them really seem to be there at the same time. It’s like they’re ghosts haunting this castle.

“HEY!” a child leans out the small window of the turret. He waves at Will. “I need to talk to you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you! Come on up here!” The child signals for him to come up into the castle.

Will looks around and decides to head where he sees most of the people. He rounds the side of the wall heading towards an entrance that funnels people inside. It almost looks more like a star there. It doesn’t take him long to learn, it’s not a castle but a fort called Saint Augustine. Will passes tourists unsure where he is in the world. Any time he says excuse me they don’t seem to hear him because maybe he’s more of a ghost then them.

The stone is bleached by the sun and weathered by all the salt. Will can taste the ocean on the breeze and is almost too distracted by all the tiny seashells tucked into the stone. He touches a few of them as he makes his way to the child who waits for him inside the turret. A small sliver of light reaches them.

“I’m Danny!” And he puts his hand out like they’re going to shake, but he’s so much shorter. Still, Will does shake his hand. “What’s your name?”

“. . .Will.”

Danny smiles at him. “I can’t believe you heard me. Dick and Tony said it wouldn’t work, but I sure proved them wrong. Didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” Will just agrees with the kid. He looks all around again and touches another shell embedded in the wall. “Um sorry. . .but where am I?”

“Florida,” replies Danny. He points out of the turret at a woman who doesn’t stand too far from them. She’s admiring the ocean. “My mom is moving us again. I wanted to stay with Dick because he gets it since he also has the shining but mom says he’ll follow up soon. She really wants to go move now. I think it’s because she’s afraid of all the ghosts.”

There’s a lot to unpack there and Will doesn’t know where to begin from who the heck are you to asking about these ghosts. Instead, Will goes straight for the most reasonable question because it’s not often he ends up someplace like this with responsive humans. “Why am I here, Danny? What did you want to talk about?”

Danny tucks his hands into his pockets and puffs his chest out a bit. Will can’t really figure out his age, maybe he’s eight or younger. There’s something about him that makes him seem so much younger yet so old all at once. “Ok, I’ll tell you, but you can’t be mad at me. Dick says I shouldn’t do this but you answered my call so if you get nightmares, it’s not my fault.”

What does somebody even say to something like that? Will nods.

“Alright then,” chimes Danny, he rocks back and forth. Heel to toes then toes to heel. “Kids like us are disappearing out there and I don’t know why.”

“Kids like us?”

“You know, the shining. It’s what Dick calls it. He says we shine like read minds and see stuff that hasn’t happened yet.”

Still, Will stares at Danny almost at a loss for words. Some reason, he tightens his grip on his mom’s shirt and says some lyrics that come to mind, “Who on earth d’you think you are? A superstar? Well right you are, well we all shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun, well we all shine on.”

It gets Danny to stop rambling for a split second. “Oh hey?! What was that? Did you just make up a song for me? We all shine on! I like that.”

“Not me, it’s by John Lennon.”

“Ok, so I don’t even know who that is.” Danny laughs as if it’s pointless to follow up on who John Lennon is or his song. “But you’re right. We all shine on! I bet Dick would agree with that. Wait until I tell him, but of course that won’t be until we get to Maine so I can call him or I guess I can call him with the shining. I did that once but all the way in Colorado and he was all the way in Florida and he heard me so loud and clear he came and saved us.”

Since I have no idea what you’re talking about seems like an inappropriate answer, Will goes with a smile and a nod before adding a quick, “Cool,” to the one sided conversation.

“But the kids who are disappearing, you know what I mean right?”

Will is so close to shaking his head no but there’s some odd prickling feeling about it. Some thought he ignored and pushed away where he sent all his other terrors. It’s some distant thought where he thinks of sticky summer days and eating hot dogs while watching the game, none of which belong to him. His mom and brother weren’t ever sports people nor was he and Bob probably was, it just never really came up. Yet he could taste somebody else’s summer except it’s locked away with so many other memories. Lonnie liked baseball a whole lot. They’d go to games together, but Will shoves the thought of his dad away to where he kicks all his bad memories now.

“You have a box, too, don’t you?” asks Danny.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” blurts Will because what?

“To put all the ghosts inside. All the bad. Dick taught it to me after. . .she. . .found me again.”

Not a box, but something else. As if he’s the one kicking all the bad straight through the portal letting it no, it can’t hurt him any longer. Another thought strikes him of the three people when they first walked into the record store. He’d been dusting and not really paying attention other than a quick hello he uses for everybody who enters. Only as they walked past them, something else drifted in the air. Will looked up, he ran his hand along the back of his neck thinking some other danger was near but there was nothing, no sign, nothing. Not even a flicker of the lights. Something was wrong yet he convinced himself, convinced it was all in his head.

“I think I know,” Will manages to get out and it sinks in, really sinks in. “I’m in danger.” And it sinks in so deep, his heart almost stops. “Mike! Mike is in trouble!”

Danny whispers something that Will almost misses because the world is already tilting again, he’s being flung back into Jonathan’s room. He just knows it. Joyce is shouting something, her words almost out weigh Danny’s but Will strains to hear him, Red Rum.

Well, that’s pointless, is Will’s only thought before some guilt conquers him. Joyce helps him sit up. He toppled over at some point when he visited Danny. He thinks about asking her if she knows what the kid meant about the shining or kids disappearing but kids disappear all the time and sometimes in mysterious ways. Who knew that better than Will and his family.

“I’m fine,” Will snaps at Joyce, he didn’t mean to sound so rude. “I just. . .I forgot to eat today.”

Joyce stares at him and gets up. “I’ll make you something before the show.”

“I’m meeting El by Castle Byers,” he replies.

“Guess I’ll make something for her, too.” Joyce pauses in the doorway. “You sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah, really, I’m fine, just hungry. I need to change before El gets here.”

Joyce makes sure she doesn’t pry any further and closes the door.

Will sighs and gets up noticing something red on the door. He looks over his shoulder realizing somebody wrote on it with maybe red lipstick, which is weird. Nobody wears that in their household. But it clearly says RED RUM just like what the kid said. Will shrugs it off. Best to clean it before Jonathan sees. He changes into the New York City shirt and turns to face himself half wondering if he should ever get those John Lennon glasses if his mom has a point. But no, that wouldn’t suit him.

Somewhere Joyce yells to him that she sees El outside. Will takes a step back still looking at his clothes not really sure why he’s caring so much. It’s just a concert, but it’s not. He even called El because of the weird feeling he had of all those people before Danny said. . .mid thought Will feels at a loss. He’s still staring at the reflection but inches over a bit to get a better look at the door’s reflection cause it’s not RED RUM written there but MURDER. He glances at it to be sure but backward it really does say MURDER.

Chapter Text

Thirteen

Eleven

El clings tight to Max while she stays balanced on the back of Max’s bike. They glide past the Byers house towards the trees where Will’s fort once stood. Not that either of them ever really spent time there. It belonged to a Will the two never got to know. Max stops by the ruins of the fort. She stays on waiting for El to hop off and as soon as she does, Max gets up kicking out her little bike stand.

“Hey, what would you do if I got a motorcycle when I learn to drive?” Max asks.

El shrugs. “The same?”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Max also awkwardly shrugs at this. “But it’s good to know you’ll ride or die with me on my future motorcycle.”

“Hopper will say no,” responds El.

“Um so it’ll be our secret. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him unless we die.”

“Yeah, unless we die.” El kicks at some of the broken pieces of the fort. She finds a nail sticking out from one of the boards. El drops down and pries it from the wood then turns around to Max. “I made this for you. Just for. . .you.” And she drops the rusty nail in the palm of Max’s hand. “I swear.”

“Oh, you swear?” Max laughs looking down at it. “This could kill a person!”

El wrinkles her nose. “Noooo.”

“Yeah, tetanus. You have your tetanus shots right?”

“Teta. . .nus?” El tilts her head to the side not quite gathering what she means. “I don’t know.”

“It’s this disease that makes your jaw like lock up so you can’t eat and you die.” Even with the chance of tetanus, Max puts the rusty nail into her back pocket. “I’ll treasure it forever.”

“Now you can give demodogs teta-nus.”

“Sweet. So you have superpowers and Will like has superpowers and I can kill with a rusty nail.” Max comes over looking at the wood. “We should find more so I can make claws like Freddy or Wolverine.” Max finds another nail real quick and starts to pry it free. It’s easy with the wood all soggy out there. She manages to twist it free right before Will walks out to join them. She turns around hanging onto her second rusty nail taking in Will and his new shirt. “Ok, hold on, what’s happening?”

Will doesn’t say anything until he’s right by them. “I think I’m in danger,” he blurts, keeping his voice at a whisper. El and Max exchange looks before Max signals for him to just get to the point. It’s not like he’s rambling about something else. “I-I talked to this kid who said kids are disappearing. . .”

“Tony?!” El pipes up.

“Um, no, but his name is Danny.”

El jabs a finger into Max’s side getting her to mutter an ouch and glare. “I know. . .him. Him and Tony are friends. I met them.” El looks at Max again. “From the not-Upside Down.”

“Yeah. . .not-Upside Down. That-That really describes it, but earlier some weird people showed up and invited me to a show and I feel like it’s some weird trap.”

“Trap?” whispers El.

Max rolls her eyes. “You know what a trap is.”

“But how is this. . .a trap?” El shoots her a dirty look.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Max offers her two cents to the conversation. “But if you really think these people are dangerous then shouldn’t we call Hopper or someone.”

“Wonder Woman,” adds El, hearts basically glow in her eyes.

“Ok, but what if it turns out to not be a trap. We can’t just bring her into it even though I want to say yes,” retorts Max.

Will nods in agreement. “But what if we come prepared?”

“Prepared?” El looks between the two of them. “How?”

“I’ll go alone and you two watch out for me or like Max and I will go. Mike is going to be there, too, so we should try and get there before him.” Max and Will pause expecting El to say, Mike. She usually does but this time she’s quiet while staring at Will. “He was at the store today and overheard so he’s coming.”

“Ok,” El says first and then Max also says, “Ok.”

Will smiles like they accomplished a lot. “Oh wait, did Danny or um Tony ever say anything weird to you?”

El nods. “Red Rum.”

“Yeah, so that’s murder spelled backward.” Will sort of shrugs like it’s no big deal. “So there’s that, sounds like a pretty big threat.” He gets both Max and El to gawk at him but he starts to back away from them. “So really we should try and get there before Mike does.”

Chapter Text

Fourteen

Mike

“Are you serious right now?” Lucas shakes his head. He’s standing with Mike in the food court at the mall while Dustin is by himself at a table enjoying some ice cream. “It’s not like you work here.”

Lucas doesn’t have anything in front of him nor does Mike. The only reason why they stopped by was to see if Dustin was around since he wasn’t answering any of their calls over the radio. Nobody was. No El. No Max. No Will. No Dustin. It’s like they’re all falling apart but it matters and doesn’t all at once.

“But! I am working on something here,” replies Dustin with a huge smile. “Wanna see? It’s from something I brought up the other day about that missing kid.”

“No.” Lucas rolls his eyes and turns his attention to Mike who is looking off at either somebody or nothing. “Can you believe this guy?”

Mike returns to them. “What? Huh? What’s happening?”

“Where’s your mind at?” Dustin laughs again.

“Just thinking about something, nothing really. Ok, are we all ready to go?” Mike continues.

“You weren’t even listening to him!” Lucas snaps. “He just said he’s not coming because he has some project with Steve!”

Dustin is busy digging out a vein of fudge in his ice cream. “Hey! It's an important one, too, it’s like all Unsolved Mysteries in the back there.”

Neither Mike nor Lucas really pays attention leaving Dustin to focus on excavating the chocolate vein. Lucas ends up commenting on some other fact. “Still not over El breaking up with him.”

“I didn’t-I didn’t realize there was a breakup,” Dustin comments although he vaguely has a memory of it. He kind of gives Lucas a look because it’s obvious or Dustin feels like it’s obvious, they’re growing apart except nobody wants to admit this. A sort of breaking of the fellowship. “So I’ve been looking for more cases like Carrie and like El and like. . .”

Mike gets up taking a step away from the table. “Anyway, we’re going now.” He waits and Lucas too as if Dustin is going to join them.

Instead, Dustin continues to sit there saying “Bye guys.” He’s smiling the whole time watching his friends make their exit without even bye to him. Once they’re out of sight, Dustin sighs, gets up, and carries his ice cream off to say something to Robin who looks all annoyed but points him to the door that leads to the back leaving Mike and Lucas behind to take off without him.

In the back of Scoops Ahoy, Steve is staring at a whiteboard with some images pasted to it, all cut out from newspapers and magazines. They’re taped over Robin’s little chart that says “You Rule” and “You Suck.” Only the shadow of it really is left with tally marks in the “You Suck” column except for one bright purple line in “You Rule” thanks to Steve using a permanent marker.

Dustin just sits at the break table watching Steve observe it before he ends up turning around looking over at Dustin. “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“The national average of missing kid cases has gone up,” replies Dustin. All he gets is an annoyed look from Steve. “What?”

“Got it, but what am I looking at over here? Kids go missing all the time. We don’t know them so what’s the big deal?”

Upfront Robin snaps open a little window and sticks her head in looking at them. “You dingus, he was upfront about it. Those are weird kids with weird powers who’ve gone missing. Jees, can’t you wrap your head around that? I swear it’s like the fourth time we’ve had this conversation.”

Robin is about to snap the window shut before Steve can get a word in but he talks as fast as he can while still making sense. “I get that but not this-this set up thing going on!” Still, Robin pulls it all the way shut leaving him there without any more of her input. Steve returns looking at the cases. Bradley Trevor, Iowa. Carrie White, Maine. Audra Mundy, Colorado. Eddie Ng, Illinois. Mike Bardugo, Nebraska. Chris Silver, Kansas. Evelyn Martin, Colorado. Ali McManus, Missouri. Kate Kristoff, Colorado. Tiffany Gates, Kentucky. Tabby Ross, Illinois.

“I got it!” Steve whirls around looking back at Dustin. “We should make a map!”

“A map?”

Again, Robin snaps open a window. “It’s a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads and more.” She leans into the wall smirking at them.

“Thanks for educating us on what a map is, Robin.” Steve rolls his eyes and moves closer to the board. “We should see where these people are from like there’s three from Colorado. One of them is from Boulder and another from Sidewinder. Seems like a map kind of thing, right?”

“Yeah, but you still sort of suck,” replies Robin.

Dustin is staring at the board for a bit. Other than the incident in Maine, they’re all clustered in the same area, they’re all. . . “Getting closer,” he says out loud. It gets both Robin and Steve’s attention. “I think, I’m not great at geography but those states are around us and whatever is happening, it’s getting closer to us.”

Chapter Text

Sixteen

The True Knot

In short, Rose the Hat is furious. Three of the True Knot betrayed her and she can’t have that happening ever again. She tosses the car door open and leaps out. Anger is all wrapped around her. She pauses looking out at some abandoned factory, it’s crumbling into the ground, nobody’s been there for some time or so it appears. She moves toward the door, somebody kicked the door in at some other point letting it way there as a tinderbox.

“I know you’re there Sarey!” Rose the Hat shouts. Behind her, the car stays on with Crow Daddy in the driver’s seat waiting for her to return. “Get the fuck out here!”

There’s a few overgrown bushes by the abandoned factory’s entrance. The leaves though are mainly falling off, dying. A few of the branches move and Silent Sarey is partially crouched there hiding in plain sight, but she’s out in the open unable to focus anymore on being unseen.

“MOVE!” Rose the Hat’s voice booms causing Sarey to scramble up on her feet. There’s the sound of shifting wood inside the house and Snakebite Andi exits looking from Silent Sarey to Rose the Hat. “I knew you were here, too, so not a word yet.” She pauses, waiting around and soon Jimmy Numbers makes an appearance to stand beside Snakebite Andi. “Grandpa Flick’s dead. Not that any of you’d know seeing you ran off.” None of them say a word but Jimmy Number looks about mad enough to get a word in. “Why are you here?”

The car shuts off behind her and Crow Daddy leans forward shouting out the window, “Somebody’s comin’.”

“We found somebody,” it’s Snakebite Andi ends up being the one to speak up probably for the best because Jimmy Numbers is ruminating in some anger. “Told him there’s a show here tonight. He’s strong, full of steam, probably worth a lot to all of us.”

This gets a smile out of Rose the Hat. Behind them all, Crow Daddy is climbing out of the car and slams the door shut. He leans against the car looking out as two boys make their way towards them all. The boys are walking with bikes and lost in conversation. One looks deeply aggravated about something while the other listens to him.

The boys come to a complete stop after they notice the whole crumbling factory scene and five people standing around there. They give each other a look all while Rose the Hat moves a little closer to them, she’s grinning real big.

“Hello there,” Rose the Hat says to them and even though there’s only anger wrapped up all around her she does her best to push other thoughts in the boys’ direction. Some of the peace and others of excitement for the show Snakebite Andi mentioned. “You two sure are early.”

“I think we have the wrong place,” says the one boy, he and his friend appear to be frozen in the same spot. “Gonna probably go.”

“No, don’t,” Crow Daddy speaks up. “We’d hate to start losing guests before we start.”

Snakebite Andi glances at Silent Sarey who never exchanges the look but instead watches Rose the Hat. That’s not him, she updates Rose.

Without having to look back at her, Rose the Hat replies, They’ll do.

Rose the Hat walks up to one of the boys touching his bike’s handle. “What’re your names? I think I’ve seen you around town before.” Lie but of course, it’s believable to them.

“Mike,” the boy says before he points at his friend, “This is Lucas.”

“Mike!” Lucas snaps at him. “We should go.” He even takes a step back while Mike remains in the same spot, he doesn’t move or blink or anything other than standing around breathing. “Mike! Come on!”

“Sorry,” Rose says. “But I can’t let that happen.”

It’s still only Lucas who continues to step backward while Mike doesn’t even flinch still nor does he notice Crow Daddy moving at him with a crowbar in hand. He swings it at Mike as Lucas screams for him, the bar slams into his side. He falls into his bike, his hand getting stuck in the spokes of the front wheel. Lucas drops down to his knees with confusion strewn across his face. Snakebite Andi walks up to him touching the side of his face and he collapses, passing out. Next, she leans over touching the side of Mike’s face, too, and he blinks before passing out as well.

“You didn’t have to do it like that,” Snakebite Andi tells Crow Daddy.

“What do you know? Of course, I had to.” Crow Daddy leans into the crowbar while Rose the Hat looks at the scene of two unconscious kids.

“Get them inside,” Rose ends the conversation before whipping around to enter the abandoned factory.

Crow Daddy grabs Mike off the ground and throws him over his shoulder leaving Jimmy Numbers to hoist Lucas off the ground. Snakebite Andi and Silent Sarey fall in step with each other going into the factory with the rest of them to do what needed to be done.

Chapter Text

Seventeen

Eleven

El hangs tight to Max, her arms are wound around her waist as she balances herself on the back of Max’s bike with distant dreams of motorcycle futures. Maybe there will be a day the two could escape town and explore more of the world without Hopper following her all the time. She’s left before, but it almost seems like a lifetime ago where she met a mother and a sister. And even now there’s no way to know about either unless she separates herself from Hawkins. The road they’re on curves towards an abandoned factory. Two cars are out front and some people who are around. Even while embracing Max, El digs her fingers into her palms thinking about what must be done.

They’ve been warned.

But nothing could’ve prepared her for the scene ahead.

Max scoots off the road. Will is several feet behind them keeping somewhat of a distance. Her bike glides towards both Lucas and Mike on the ground with people hoisting them up into the air. An iciness curls its way through El’s heart. It's fear attempting to take control of her and she has to wonder if Max feels the same because she doesn’t stop her bike even though she is about to roll straight into one of the people.

Rather than wait and crash, El leaps off Max’s bike. Her knees slam into the ground, the forward motion knocks her forward a bit as she throws both her hands out with one single, loud thought: PUSH!

There are five people in front of them not including Lucas and Mike and every single one of them are thrown off their feet. As fast as they fly up into the air, they crash into the ground. One of them is a woman in a hat, she loses her hat only to start laughing as she lies there before getting up onto her feet. El sneers at her doing her best to stay focused. Stay focused. Focus. Mike is a crumpled and unconscious mess on the ground. It’s been so long since they really last spoke. Since he came over and sat in her bed. Since they kissed and sang along with music that Max labeled as awful. Focus. Since Mike lied to her about a dying grandmother to hang out at the mall and since this look on his face when she returned from the world beyond Hawkins for the first time when he thought she died. The look on his face then isn’t something easy to forget.

The woman with the hat fixes it on top of her head as she stands there. “Well, what do we have here?”

Max crashes into the man who has Lucas, her bike spokes catch his body as she starts to slam her fists into his face. “Don’t you touch him!” she screams

“That’s him,” a girl says behind the woman pointing at Will behind them as he rolls up onto the scene.

The woman and El lock stares with one another while the other people stand up leaving unconscious kids on the ground. The one Max fought manages to wrangle her off himself and slams her into the ground and kicks her hard in the side. Max looks as if she’ll puke from the impact.

“I think I’d much rather know what this is,” the woman says as she sizes up El. “What’s your name?”

El squints at her thinking through each letter of p-u-s-h and with her one hand, she grips the air flinging the woman off the ground as her hat falls then she slams her into the ground with a single motion of her hand. “Not your business!” she snaps at the woman. Her attention turns to the two men, with the flick of her wrist they’re launched in two different directions giving Max a chance to climb back onto her feet. “LEAVE!” she yells at them. She turns her attention to the girl who points at Will. Another girl is standing behind her until she’s no more, she’s gone in the blink of an eye causing focus to slip away.

Behind El, Will closes his eyes partially thinking of something Danny said to him. Something about shining on and reaching out for help. If he’s loud enough then help will come. But it’s not the boy he thinks of and at first, he almost considers Hopper before screaming one loud HELP into the world with his eyes closed and just the thoughts in his head. At some point before ever leaving his home, he wrote out the number and address of Hawkins Inn where Wonder Woman said she was staying except she also told them Call me Diana. His fingers dig into his pocket somewhat touching the paper hoping, hoping beyond anything he can reach out to Wonder Woman with his scream for HELP. Some part of him hoped he could connect this to a world he already knows one where he is Will the Wise, a cleric able to scry. Maybe that’d help bring some serious help to them.

The girl who could disappear returns, visible again as she swings a crowbar at El. She strikes El down hard but El starts screaming back at her and throws the girl into a tree holding the girl there before climbing to her feet ignoring the fact her blood starts dribbling down her face. Focus. PUSH. But El is knocked off her feet, not that anybody touches her. The woman in the hat walks towards her again.

When El attempts to sit up, she can’t move even with every muscle straining against some invisible weight. The girl who disappears does so again as she drops down from the tree. The woman in the hat crouches beside El, “Look at that, I can play, too.” Then she peers up at Will who stands there with his eyes closed. “But first, he’s the one we want.”

Max is still on the ground beside the man she fought, she stays there curled up as if she’s doubled in pain from when the man kicked her. He nods to the woman in the hat. Max uses her fake pain, which is really actual pain, but she uses this to her advantage. Who would think some girl like her would strike out again?

Her fingers reach into her pocket pulling free the rusty nail El gave to her promising she too can fight demodogs. Good thing, this man is a more realistic target. He doesn’t even pay attention as Max moves again, already he heads towards Will leaving her behind with Lucas. But Max strikes as fast as she can as she partially leaps up to dig the nail into the fatty part of his thigh as deep as she can.

In retaliation, the man backhands Max so caught off guard. He looks down prying the nail from himself and throws it to the side. Again, he kicks Max while she’s down even though this time around she doesn’t look like she’ll get back up. It’s hard to tell if she’s sobbing in pain or what, El can only see her out of the corner of her eye as it feels as if the weight of the actual world presses her down into the ground like she’ll break on through to the otherside thanks to this woman in the hat. Will is out of sight but whoever hurt Max is going after him.

All the icy fear melts, anger replaces it, swelling up inside El’s chest. It feels as if insects are crawling all over her body like buzzing wasps ready to kill. El digs her fingers into her palms, her hands grow sticky with blood as they cut through her skin and she starts to scream as she pushes back on the pain, pushes back on the weight, as she thinks of the woman in the hat and the others who hurt them, even the girl who disappears who is way out of sight but not out of mind.

El can’t let them hurt her or any of them. The weight fades and the woman in the hat notices, it’s like she can feel El’s ruminating thoughts. The woman snaps a shocked look at El who digs her nails deeper into her palms. The rocks digging into her back stop doing so as El lifts off the ground, the woman in the hat does, too, in fact all of them. The cars start to lift up and something rips through the trees, branches break and leaves fly up rather than down. Even metal starts to scrape across metal, its sound rips past any other possible noise.

But Max manages to yell louder than the chaos, “EL!”

The entire world collapses back into place. El rolls to her feet as fast as she can but so does the woman in the hat who looks ready to launch herself at El. As the woman moves forward a blinding light lashes out, it startles El who falls backward looking up to see a glowing rope wrapped around the woman in the hat. Behind her close to Max stands Wonder Woman. She uses her lasso to pull the woman in the hat back down to the ground right over some rocks, knocking her out cold.

Wonder Woman jerks her lasso back into her one hand as she uses her other reaching out and catching the invisible girl beside her. She returns to sight and Wonder Woman grins at her before using her to knock over the man who runs after Will. The two slam into each other, they’re knocked off their feet before Wonder Woman whirls around using her lasso to capture the other girl bringing her down to her knees. With one person left, El kneels there and throws her hand up catching him before he can attack anybody. She glares at him watching as she lifts him from the ground.

“Who are you?” Wonder Woman demands from the girl caught in her lasso.

“. . .Andi. . .” she starts to say and Wonder Woman pulls the lasso tighter around her, squeezing so much air from her lungs. “Andrea Steiner.”

“What do you want with these kids?”

“Steam,” gasps this Andrea Steiner, leaving everybody dumbfounded.

“Steam?” Wonder Woman repeats, she tilts her head to the side because none of it makes sense.

Behind them there are a lot of sirens screaming out. The girl who can disappear scrambles back to her feet. She says nothing, she hasn’t the whole time, she eyes the man beside her and the woman in the hat. Without a sound, both her hands fly out beside her and she’s gone again with the man and the woman in the hat. The other man El has disappears into actual thin air. El’s hand drops, she can’t tell if he is gone-gone or invisible-gone. Doesn’t matter seeing how her focus splintered. Either way, he’ll be gone-gone soon.

Two cop cars pull up to the scene and Wonder Woman keeps Andrea Steiner caught within the confines of her glowing lasso. Somebody else on the scene says, “Get an ambulance out here!” Mike and Lucas are still down for the count while Max sits up rubbing her wrist.

“What does steam mean?” Wonder Woman demands.

El stares at Andrea Steiner, pain distorts her expression as she claws at the lasso. Somebody comes up behind her touching her shoulder. She looks up seeing Hopper is there giving her what’s probably supposed to be a comforting squeeze. It doesn’t help as the iciness returns, curling straight through her heart and into her stomach. All the buzzing anger is gone.

“It’s how we live,” Andrea Steiner spits the words out. “They die so we stay alive.”

None of this computes. Keeping the lasso tight around the girl, Wonder Woman moves closer to her about to ask another question. But Andrea Steiner touches her cheek looking her right in the eye. The lasso slackens enough as Wonder Woman falls to the ground, unconscious.

Hopper lets go of El and pulls a gun on the girl. “On the ground, hands on the ground.”

Andrea Steiner shakes her head, smirking at them. Beside her the girl reappears, she takes Andrea Steiner’s hands and together they’re invisible gone like the rest of them. Nothing is left of them but the two cars waiting outside the factory and three people unconscious.

“What the. . .” Hopper starts to mutter while he points his gun at nothing.

Max continues to sit there rubbing her wrist, she maybe sprained it on her way down. No different than any other time she fell wrong off a skateboard. She looks over at El trying to smile through her pain and opens her mouth to say something.

Only El cries out, “MIKE!” El runs straight past Max and kneels down beside Mike. Blood sinks into the grass around him. His eyes flutter open but either some metal or wood, it’s impaled his side from when El lifted up the world to drop it again. “M-M-Mike!” El sobs as she stares at him. Pain is too much for him to speak or really move, he tries to make out his wound, but El stays beside him. There aren’t a lot of words she can find herself forming other than, “Mike.” She doesn’t move him and Hopper comes up beside her looking down at him. Hopper shouts something to the other officer but all words from the world around her fade. But she does find a few additional words to share, “Mike, you are. . .ok.” It’s supposed to be a question but comes off more as a command.

El runs her fingers through his hair while sitting there with Hopper. More sirens are growing closer, there’s help on the way. Mike looks so still, be he’s breathing, it’s easy to tell that he’s still breathing and El hopes her best guess is that, he’s not too injured maybe more surprised than injured.

Wonder Woman sits up rubbing her head, confusion is obviously on her mind by the face she looks as she scans the trees around them. The world looks empty, only people are sitting around her and not over there. Wonder Woman makes eye contact, “Who were they?”

“Don’t know,” replies Hopper.

“They kill kids,” it’s Will who speaks up. “A lot of kids.” Will stands with his bike, he never moved once but he realizes he brought this help to them. He looks from Hopper to Wonder Woman. The coming sirens are also his help because he somehow was loud enough to reach them, to shine on like Danny said, to stop any of them from dying or at least, to stop any of them from dying in the meantime.

Even though Max is sitting beside Lucas, she rubs her wrist and watches El until Lucas flinches. He abruptly sits up gasping for air as if he had been drowning. He looks all around, surprised to find Max sitting right there.

“Oh, you’re alive,” Max says to him patting his knee with her good hand. "That's probably a good thing."

“It's a great thing!" Lucas replies, he stares at Max. "Wait! How did you get here?”

“I flew,” replies Max. “Learned how to last night.” Still, she rubs her wrist, pain prickles inside of it. Her expression softens a bit and she asks, “He, are you. . .ok?” Again she looks over at El and Mike. An ambulance joins the scene and Hopper signals for them to go towards Mike first. “Because Mike isn’t. But. . .you're ok, right?”

Lucas looks at Will who stays by his bike then at the paramedics with Mike, El, and Hopper. “Wait, no! I mean, yeah, I'm fine but-but. . .what happened? What. . .there were people. . .” He hesitates looking at Max. “Wait! What happened to you? Are you ok?"

“Doesn’t matter,” mutters Max watching Hopper pull El away from Mike. "But also yeah, I'm. . .ok."

It gets Lucas to stop asking questions and to take in the scene. There’s just chaos left behind. Hopper moves El away as she continues to sob. They sit on the back of his car leaving other officers to investigate the two left behind by the children murderers they casually tried to fight. Children murderers with superpowers who knew nothing about El but something about Will. Max looks at Will who avoids engaging her as he waits by his bike.

Something is up, and it’s not the usual Hawkins annual chaos.

Chapter Text

Eighteen

Eleven

There’s no hospital visits for El. No updates until somebody calls her. Max, Mike, Lucas, and Hopper are all gone, there to wait whether to learn or get better. El waits next to the phone not sure what to think of the world, her world, what happened, this world they all live in. Somehow she lifted herself and everybody else up in the air then lost them and hurt them.

El looks at the clock, it’s getting late and she stares at the phone that’s still not ringing. It’s been about five hours, five whole hours since everything happened. Five. Hours. That’s a lot of time with nothing happening and the silence of home. There’s music to play and a TV to turn on, but none of it is interesting with three friends in the hospital.

Hopper didn’t even leave a number for her to call, but she knows Max’s number and Will’s number. Will who isn’t even at the hospital with him so she dials the number and waits.

“Hello? This is Joyce Byers.”

“Is. . .Will there?” El asks as soon as she gets the chance.

Silence occurs at first. Great, no more answers. “No, Will said he was with you. He said he called from your place.”

But Will went home after the incident. She saw him leave, he left on his bike without much else to say as the ambulance disappeared down the road. El holds onto the phone without much to say.

“El? Is everything alright?” Panic is picking up in Joyce’s voice, which is all too familiar. “Eleven?”

“I’m fine. . .” El trails away looking at the clock again. It is about to be five hours and thirty minutes since everything happened. “Maybe he left with Hopper? I was with Max.” She slams the phone onto the receiver and turns to face the clock again releasing one long sigh, it feels as if she’s deflating. She sinks down to the ground. And to nobody at all, El comments, “I should go.” Where? She has no idea and it’s not like anybody is around to hear her talk because they’re all gone, gone because of her. She’s alone because of her. Not the people who attacked them, this has nothing to do with them.

El taps the floor before getting up again. She heads into the kitchen digging through some of the cabinets by the fridge until she finds a giant phone book. She slowly flips through the pages, sometimes letters aren’t her best friend. Soon she finds H and goes one-by-one down the list until she reaches Hawkins Inn. With it she goes to stand by the phone, waits exactly three minutes before dialing the number in a book.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Hawkins Inn, this is Christina Tran speaking, how may I help you?”

“Yes, I am calling for. . .Diana Prince,” replies El.

“May I ask who is speaking?”

El waits half unsure what to say, Max would know what to say right away. “Yes. . .Eleanor Prince. . .her daughter.”

“No problem, please hold as I transfer your call. If she doesn’t answer, please call back and leave a message with me.”

There’s some clicking on the line before the phone begins to ring and El is pretty sure she should give up when instead, Wonder Woman answers. “Hello, Diana Prince, who is this?”

“Eleven.”

Maybe she doesn’t recognize what she means at first because Wonder Woman doesn’t say anything. When she does, El smiles. “Eleven! Right, you are the girl who can move things with her mind.” Even though they’re on the phone, El nods in response. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes.” Tears cut into her voice. El looks at her hands, there’s still some blood underneath her fingernails. Didn’t matter how many times she tried to clean up. Blood from Mike. There because she dropped him and he got hurt. She hurt him. She hurt Max, too, she fell and put her hand out, spraining it. All because of her. “I am.” She pauses. “Something wrong.”

“What’s wrong, Eleven?”

“I don’t know.” This time El sobs, for real. It’s not a few tears slicing into her words, but full-on sobs even though she tries to choke them down. “I-I-I. . .I hurt them. M-My friends.”

El attempts to imagine Wonder Woman on the other side of the line, but it’s going to be her as Diana in normal people clothes. Her long wavy hair as she wore some t-shirt and maybe shorts because it’s all hot outside. Super but normal like she could be. “Eleven,” her accent is so thick and El wonders where in the world she lived as a kid. Max told her about an island of all women who trained together. “I am not too sure what to say to you. Is there a mentor you can speak with?”

“No, no one,” El says it and right away it feels like a lie on her tongue. Everybody has been there for her. Hopper. Joyce. Max. Mike. Even Lucas and Dustin and Steve. Except none of them could stop her if they tried. She could easily kill any of them, right? It’s haunted dreams and no reality. “Nobody.”

Wonder Woman is probably thinking of what to say next. El hears nothing and picks at the ugly strands of Hopper’s carpet. “I am sorry to hear that, Eleven. I have to return home, but I can stay in touch to maybe visit Hawkins again.”

Home. “Where all the other women are?”

“I am sorry, what do you mean?” Wonder Woman ends up asking.

“You come from an island of women who fight. Is that where you are going?”

“Oh, no, sweetie, no, I am sorry. I am going back to Washington DC, that is where I live right now. But you give me your number so we can stay in touch. How does that sound?”

“When do you. . .leave?” El asks while looking at the clock.

“In maybe ten, twenty minutes? I am already packed to go and need to check out, but I promise to call you as soon as I can when I make it home.”

El gives in and gives out Hopper’s number, he’d be mad about it. Too many people knowing here they stay. Interrupting their possible nights. It’s been a long time since either of them enjoyed each other’s company. Without saying bye to Wonder Woman, she hangs up already heading towards her room. She pushes the door open and flicks the light on. Somewhere there has to be a bag for her to start shoving clothes in, maybe in Hopper’s room. There’s no time to make it to Hawkin’s Inn but they’re not too far from the main road, near the sign greeting people to Hawkins and asking for them to come back. If she waits there then maybe, just maybe, she can stop Wonder Woman and beg her to take her away. Even if it’s just for a moment in time to learn how to be better. It’d be better than any of this. There’s a whole life ahead of her and it’s clear, she’ll become stronger with no control. That’s not a good future.

Chapter Text

Nineteen

Eleven

El leaves home the only home she’s ever known with a single bag all packed up, her clothes are stuffed into it with a toothbrush. Just in case, she took some Eggos from the freezer, wrapped them in a paper towel then stuffed them inside. With all of it, she slings a strap over her shoulder as she takes off making sure the door is locked. Her bedroom light is on, she left the radio on, too, pretending instead she’s lying around on her bed and pining as normal girls do so whenever Hopper gets home it’ll be like she never left. Already she can picture him coming home calling out for her and when she doesn’t answer, he’ll stand at the door, waiting exactly seven minutes before lightly wrapping his knuckles on the door. He would knock super light before softly saying, “Hey El? Can we talk?”

But she won’t be around to say anything in response and maybe by the time he figures it out, he’ll come in to find the note she tried to write out for him. Big crooked letters that just said. I am sorry.

El takes off trying to think about how far the road is, once she reaches it, then she’ll make her way from Hawkins to the sign and wait out there to say something to Wonder Woman when she passes her by.

All could’ve gone according to plan if Max didn’t ride up into the driveway spotting El disappearing between the trees. Max drops her bike. It springs up and down, but she doesn’t even look back to fix her bike even though her stepdad or Billy will be so mad to find a dent or any mess of the bike point out how this is one in a million reasons to why she doesn’t deserve anything nice. Yet can’t even care about it at the moment, and leaves it there even knowing it’s about to rain, which will add rust to dents, making it worse but with El fleeing, she knows deep down, somehow, there are worse fates.

She sprints off as fast as she can manage, but El is already pretty far ahead. Chances are she doesn’t even notice Max chasing after her. “EL!” Max starts to scream. “EL! ELEVEN!” There’s some part of her brain warning her that El can’t hear her between the distant thunder rumble and El crashing through the woods. Lots of breaking sticks and crunching leaves. “JANE HOPPER!”

That gets El to stop, her feet catch some branches almost sending her face-first into the ground. Branches quiver on all sides of them. El’s arms whirl around at her side attempting to catch her own balance. Before turning around, El squeezes the strap to her bag. She doesn’t wanna look at Max, but to keep on to stop Wonder Woman begging her to follow along for a bit. Already she had a plan, once she made it to DC she’d call home and tell Hopper all of the truth beyond her plain I am sorry left for him.

But El turns to look at Max who keeps her feet planted where she yelled Jane Hopper. A few feet separate them from each other. The two stare across the emptiness between them. Words, there’s a whole lot of words flooding El’s mind but all of them come up as gibberish, too many letters twist with others and she has nothing to even say to Max but a whole lot of everything to say to Max. If she tries to speak, it’ll just come off as the nonsense sounding off in her brain.

Max finds some words, “Where are you even going?”

“Away,” El yells, not that she needs to but there’s a lot, there’s too much inside her and it’s all about to burst out again. Max looks up watchings leaves float on up around them. Thunder continues to rumble above them, but it’s almost a whisper seeing how far away it is from Hawkins. El embraces it though, it’s almost needed white noise to single out actual words in her thoughts. “Sorry, I have to. . .go.”

“Where?” retorts Max, she yells because some anger sparks up inside of her. “Where are you even going?!”

“AWAY!” El screams at her. “It’s hard! I have to. . .go!”

“Alone?”

El has no come back. Instead, she stands there losing time. Wonder Woman made it clear she’s on her way out and heading to DC. If worse comes to worst then she’d have to make her own way out to DC. She’s made it to Chicago so she can make it there, too.

“Yeah. . .!” A sob catches up with her words. Just a lot of everything implodes inside of her, brittle stress and strength, warped together with some other feelings that she doesn’t have the right words to define yet. Her legs shake, not able to stay all balanced. Rain makes it worse. The skies open up, at last, and El goes to take a step back but already it’s getting muddy out there. “I have to!”

“Ok? But where are you going to go?”

Look, if Max knew her better, the question wouldn’t come up. El tries to make herself believe that. It’s not like Max was around when she left, went up to Chicago following pieces of her life she had no idea she had. Even though it’s raining a whole lot, Max decides to run after her. Instead of waiting around, El makes her way to the road. She has a mission to accomplish. Getting to Wonder Woman will be a lot better than her going alone to DC.

“Please! Just stop! Where are you even going to go?” Max strings each word out as she screams after El. “Jane! Everything-Everything is ok! I promise! I’m ok! Mike is going to be ok!”

“No!” El sobs. She turns to face Max only to crash into her, but Max steadies her. “No! Not ok!” Thanks to the rain, she’s sopping wet, her socks feel all sloshy, and it’s not like anybody can see her cry but it’s obvious by the way her voice cracks. She uses her elbow to wipe some tears away. Doesn’t help. “It’s not ok so. . .I have to go.”

“But I don’t want you to go!” protests Max. “You don’t get to just leave! That’s not fair, not fair to me!”

“What about. . .me?” El whispers, her words are close to being lost in the rain. “I said I have to go. Why don’t you-you listen to me? Listen to me! Friends listen!”

Max’s fingers curl up into her palms as she stares right at El. “Ok! I would listen but you have to explain yourself otherwise I’m going to be so mad!”

That’s hard. El’s still sobbing and again wipes at her face. She doesn’t even know how to explain because too often there are words and feelings and strangeness popping all around her head. All sparks of pain that she can’t get through because people don’t get it and it forms, forms in all sorts of strange and weird ways.

“I don’t. . .I don’t know,” El’s voice doesn’t crack that time around. “I d-don’t know! I hurt you! I hurt Mike!”

“Barely!” Max pauses, she lifts her hand. A little brace protects her wrist. “Ok, I mean, barely for me. You did a number on Mike but that’s-that’s not even your fault! I know! I know people who hurt people on purpose so I know it’s not your fault, and-AND my wrist is my fault. I put my hand out before landing like some idiot.”

“Ok.” El sobs and takes a step away from her. “I still need help.”

“I’ll help you.”

El shakes her head. “No.” She pauses. “Wonder Woman.”

There’s not much to say to that. “Really?” It’s not like Max can actually help El more than somebody like Wonder Woman. “She’ll help you?” And El nods. Max continues to stare at her and like El, she uses her elbow to wipe some tears of hers away, too. “Cool! Cool! I’m. . .I’m happy-I’m happy for you, El.”

“Thanks.” El takes another whole step away. “I have to. . .go. I am sorry.” El turns. She stands there holding tight to her bag’s strap and does her best to carry on. The road is close enough to hear cars drive past. She’s losing time and that’s no good. If she knew what Wonder Woman’s car looked like, she could stop it. Simple as that. She could do anything if she put her mind to it.

“WAIT!” Max shouts after her and El does stop without looking back cause she can see the road where cars pass them by. At least, she has El’s attention. “I’m coming with you.” And El does look over her shoulder at her. The two are drenched from the rain and sinking into the mud. Songs carry pass them from cars moving along. “Did you really think you’d just. . .” Max can’t find the right words and instead blurts, “Don’t leave me.” Again, a beat of silence before she adds, “Please.”

El continues to stand in the same spot no longer looking at the road even with somber songs and fast songs colliding in with each other. Catchy ones, too. All tangled together as people drive by, carrying on with such different and normal lives compared to theirs. “Sorry,” El manages a whisper.

“Sorry?” retorts Max. “Well, I’m sorry because I’m coming! You can’t stop me.”

“But. . .”

“No, buts!” And Max storms up beside her looking at the road as a car slows down. Rather than looking at it, Max stares at El. “I want. . .I don’t want you to leave without me. It’s-It’s-It’s. . .”

“Complicated,” El finishes for her.

Some smile passes over Max’s face, but El doesn’t have the time to think about it because Max snaps her attention away, not wanting El to see her agree. That’s the word she wanted to use. Complicated. The car that slows, comes to a stop and a window lowers. “Eleven?” the driver says and El gawks at them because out of all the people to find her, it’s Wonder Woman. “What are you. . .” Wonder Woman ends up pulling off the road because of the bag El holds onto. “Oh, Eleven, is everything alright?”

The back window slides down and it’s Will sitting back there. “El! Max! What are you doing here?”

Good question, but neither El and Max opt to say the truth, Complicated.

Wonder Woman continues to watch her from her seat, “Eleven. . .you are looking for me?”

“Yes,” says El and she nods to make sure her precise point gets across. She looks back at Max, clutching so hard to her bag, her nails dig deep into her palm. It’s the second time or third time, by that point, she’s lost track of the times her hands are all sticky with blood. “I have to. . .go.”

But Max is already at the car throwing open a door. “Yeah, I know.” She ducks her head into the car looking at Will. “Move over.”

“Huh?”

“I think that was pretty clear.” Max starts to push him in. Will unbuckles and slides to the opposite side letting Max take the middle seat leaving El on the outside of the car. The rain is splashing into the car because she’s taking way too long to make her next move. “What are you waiting for, El?”

Yet El continues to stand there gawking at her. She embraces that word complicated and words shared between them so much earlier yet they seem so far away. Nothing can hurt us now. If she chooses to go alone, make some stance against Max, scream at her and tell her to go away then there is no ‘us” in her statement, Nothing can hurt us now. They’re on the roadside though, post hospital visit and hurt. El though, El did that to Max, sprained her wrist and could’ve killed Mike. She could’ve killed any of them, it’s not like she’s never killed before.

“Eleven, I have to go, I have work to do and I say this but not lightly, you and Will are welcome to join as long as it is ok with your guardians,” Wonder Woman says.

“Her dad said it’s ok as long as I’m around,” Max answers for El, she avoids looking over at El. “He wants me to keep tabs on her, make sure she’s really ok.”

Again, El can see Hopper in her mind’s eye, knocking on her door after waiting exactly seven minutes. Him wrapping his knuckles so light over the door and saying her name, thinking she’s up or has fallen asleep to whatever songs are playing over the radio. He’d walk in and he’d find her note sitting there.

I am sorry.

It’s not the first time she’s left. It’s what kids do, normal kids, but none of them are normal. Not anymore and El’s never been normal in the first place. She climbs into the car looking at Max, she ends up sitting there and smiling stuck on those words, Nothing can hurt us now. It’s more than us because Will’s there, too. Wonder Woman starts to drive. She pulls onto the road looking back at them.

“Do not let me regret this,” she comments. “I swear, if they say I kidnap you then I am going to abandon you three like this never happened.”

She doesn’t leave room for any of the three to say a word or two. Instead, she turns up the radio, it’s in the middle of Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle, it’s such a Hopper song. El comes close to mentioning how she likes the song but Max and Will make a face so she keeps the comment to herself. Besides, her love for the song is more between her and Hopper and all the times they listened to music together or watched westerns. The song sounds more like a memory. It’s there all twisted up in all the other comments and words from everybody along with the idea of Hopper coming home to an empty house. IF he walked in at that moment, he’d hear his song playing thinking she’s alone in her room listening to it. Then he’d wait in front of her room for his seven minutes before lightly wrapping on the door saying, “Hey El? Can we talk?”

His question would be followed by music lyrics rather than her saying yes or no. Jim Croce would be there in his place telling him, But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them. Hopper would be stuck, looking into such an empty room with the light left on pretending he’s not alone in the world. I’ve looked around enough to know that you’re the one I want to go through time with. Without El there, Hopper will have to call the police, but he can’t because nobody can really know about her and he’s the police. No matter what, he’ll have to find her with no evidence to track her down by other than the sadness of her apology note.

El tires to breathe in deep, but tears still quiver inside her. They’re breaking up in her lungs and her heart hurts so much with the image of Hopper on repeat. Without saying a thing of the growing sadness, Max touches the back of El’s hand making no comment. They don’t look at each other but instead watch as Wonder Woman drives straight past a sign letting them know: Leaving Hawkins, Come Again Soon.

Chapter Text

Epilogue

Danny Torrance

Something goes bump in the night. It’s loud enough to wake Danny but not his mom, she still sleeps but he’s lying there in some motel bed looking at the bathroom. The doors open just a tiny bit to block out the lit-up light switch. It glowed too bright and orange that Danny couldn’t fall asleep at first. His mom rolls over a bit letting some cold creepy into the cold.

Danny considers closing his eyes to insist: Nothing is there. Nothing is there. Nothing is there.

The woman from Room 217 can’t hurt him anymore. She’s gone and locked up in his box. Her hunger stirs inside of him sometimes but he can’t let her out. There are days Danny thinks of her crawling out and strangling him in the room, her skin falling away, peeling so fast. Danny tugs at the blankets wanting to cover his face but can’t, his mom is hogging it not that she knows. She’s fast asleep. Right when Danny closes his eyes, there’s another bump.

Water drip, drip, drops in the bathroom. He moves from the bed, his feet hit the ground and it’s all cold. Still, his mom doesn’t wake so it’s up to him. Anyway, she’s too scared these days since everything that happened. Since their dad turned on them and haunted and hunted them. He scoots his feet across the floor remembering all Dick told him about catching those things that go bump in the night.

Danny pushes the door open, the tub’s faucet is loud and nothing moves inside. Something moves catching his attention and he realizes, they’re not alone. Somebody’s standing there on the other side of the mirror. Danny squints and Will Byers squints back at him. Will’s there flossing his teeth then stops cause Danny’s there without the world turning on them.

Will ends up waving first and Danny waves back then closes the door. Danny flips the switch about to say something to Will but he’s gone in a flash and instead, a woman with such a sharp face looks right at him. Her blue eyes cut straight through him, he feels a pang of danger in his heart.

“And what is this?” the woman hisses, her voice hurts like walking on shattered glass. Even though it appears she’s in a bathroom, too, she’s wearing a black top hat. But Danny says nothing, he closes his eyes and starts to count his Mississippis knowing when he opens his eyes, she’ll be gone.

Good thing Danny’s right because Will is back, his palm against the mirror as if searching for a way to get to Danny. “What happened?” whispers Will.

“Where are you?” replies Danny.

Will shrugs. “Somewhere in Ohio, I think? I’m moving now, too.”

“Where?”

“Washington DC.”

“DC?” Danny almost says this way too loud but also he wants to wake his mom to ask where they stopped for the night. It’s been a bit since they left Florida and there’s no way they’re close to Maine yet. “I’m going towards DC! My mom said we’ll even stop to look at the monuments!”

“Danny? It’s Danny right?” It looks as if somebody is saying something to Will on the other side of his bathroom door. “I’m Will, I don’t remember if I told you, but I’m Will.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m Danny.”

Will nods. “We’re in danger, we’re fleeing because of trouble. Me and my friends, but we have some pretty great help.” He pauses looking again at the door in his bathroom before back at Danny. “Try and meet us in. . .DC. . .”

“Because I’m in danger, too,” Danny admits thinking of the woman staring straight at him. She’s gone now and he’s glad because Will is a lot better even when he disappears from sight. It’s just him alone in a motel bathroom needing to find out a way for them to connect with Will otherwise murder is searching for them.

The True Knot

Rose the Hat punches the bathroom mirror, it cracks around her fist and she stands there glancing at the blood on her knuckles. Somebody knocks at the door and she comes out of the bathroom heading straight to her RV door. She kicks it open and stares at Jimmy Numbers standing out there.

“What?” she snaps wiping the blood away on her pants leg.

“We have a problem,” replies Crow Daddy as soon as he can.

“And what would that be?” She glares at him not wanting to acknowledge the people behind them. Whatever it is, she doesn’t want to hear it but she has to hear him out.

“Jimmy Numbers.”

Without further explanation, Rose the Hat shoves Crow Daddy out of the way going towards the growing crowd. People part and Silent Sarey sits by Jimmy Numbers helping him sit up. She looks over at Rose the Hat not sharing words, her per usual.

“What’s going on?” Rose the Hat’s voice booms over everybody else’s.

Behind her stands Crow Daddy who speaks up, “He has a fever and his jaw is all locked up while we were trying to eat then he started shaking.” Jimmy Numbers looks all tense, his whole body looks all locked up, the tendons in his throat are bulging.

“Get him inside,” Rose the Hat starts to back up. She looks over at Crow Daddy. “What do you think it is?”

Crow Daddy just shakes his head. It’s not like any of them ever got sick. Just wasn’t what happened, not since they left their rube life behind. “No idea. Something’s changing. Nothing like Grandpa Flick. Big Mo has the measles, too.”

Rose the Hat climbs into her RV about to slam the door shut. She glares right at Crow Daddy. “Find answers.”

Scoops Troop

No hospital visits are allowed. Dustin sits in the back of Steve’s car as he drives down the road. Upfront is Robin and Lucas is with them, too. He’s in the back giving Steve directions the whole time until they almost reach the scene of the incident. Steve slows down. It’s mandatory by the police officer standing there anyhow.

Steve rolls down the window while everybody is looking at the scene. Caution strips are even up, more than the one time Will went missing but people didn’t believe he was taken. This is different. So different. Hopper isn’t at the scene any longer. Just other officers who are looking around the scene. Taking photographs of the two cars left behind.

“What’s happening here?” Steve asks the officer working traffic.

This leaves Dustin and Lucas getting a good look at the scene. Dustin is scrawling down the license plate numbers left behind at the scene while Steve chats with the officer and starts to drive on.

Lucas leans back in his seat to stare at the back of Steve’s seat. “So what’s the point of this?”

Robin looks back at Dustin because Steve is too busy focusing on the road as a driver should. “Trust us, it’s important.”

Dustin looks at what he wrote out and then some news clippings and rumors surrounding their Unsolved Mysteries attempt. He looks up. “It’s a match. It’s them.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” asks Lucas.

And Dustin shows him some of the articles. “Should’ve listened to me, told you I was working on something important.” So many kids just gone and probably dead, creeping closer and closer to them. After Lucas reads a few, he slowly looks up at Dustin. “Crazy, right?”

Hopper

Music murmurs as Hopper slowly enters his home. He has a plastic bag with him with a pint of ice cream sweating inside it. The lights are all off but the one in El’s room, he can see it from underneath the door. He turns a light on and continues inside. First, he leaves the ice cream in the kitchen, it just sits out there on the counter as he makes his way to El’s door.

Hopper stands outside his door trying to listen for any movement. El would’ve heard him come in, but it doesn’t seem like she’s up. Some song plays but the speaker distorts the sound from one time it popped during a nightmare she had. Any time the past came back to haunt El, it broke out into their lives.

The music keeps on murmuring and Hopper is more than usual at a loss for words. He’s about to wrap his knuckles across the door but instead, he stands there waiting and listening until it grows a little too strange. Since it stays all quiet when the radio switches to another fuzzy production of a song, Hopper walks away from the door. He ends up putting the ice cream in the freezer and digs a paper out of his coat pocket with some words on it, all thanks to Joyce insisting on talking to El.

Again, Hopper stands there listening to a song, unable to define what it is and rather than knock, he just says, “Hey El? Can we talk?” But she doesn’t answer, leaving him there, all awkward. “You didn’t answer the phone when I called, I bet you’re upset. . .Mike’s going to be alright.” Still, she’s unresponsive and Hopper sighs. “Anyway, this might be a bad time but there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” When she doesn’t answer, he opens the door a bit to see her hiding underneath her covers. He closes the door feeling weird for springing in on her like that. “Um anyway, I know this is a difficult conversation especially after everything that happened today but I just really, really want to talk about this.”

Hopper peeks inside to see El under her blankets, he’s pretty sure she moved a bit to listen to him. It can’t be easy and there’s not even a lot for him to say something about a growing kid with superpowers. Not really something anybody really preps you for.

“I know I’ve been a little strange in the past about you and Mike but am fine with you and Max, but I know you care about them very much, and that’s why it’s important that we set these boundaries moving forward so we can build an environment where we all feel comfortable, trusted, and open to sharing our feelings. Feelings. Jesus. . .” What am I really talking about here? It’s not really the thing you talk about right after coming home from a hospital, not after something like that. There’s a lot for them to talk about and it’s not like any of it is ever going to be normal. “Hey El? Is it ok if I come in?”

No response.

“Ok, I have ice cream. . .” Hopper waits. “I know you’re getting older, growing, changing, but I felt like this is a triple-decker Eggo extravaganza kind of moment. We can invite Max over. But I’d like us to just talk because if I’m being really honest, I’m pretty scared of all this change. Not like-Not like what happened today, I want to be there for you, for that, too, but I’m scared because I don’t want things to change.”

Since there’s still no response from El, he ends up opening the door all the way. Just in case something is wrong, again, the whole thing isn’t some scenario people prepare you for.

“El, I’m just coming in to make sure everything is alright. I’m not mad or anything at you, I promise. This is all pretty new territory for me and I swear, I want everything between us to be open to share our feelings and comfortable.”

Not once does El move as he comes in. Panic strikes up in his heart, it's beating a whole lot faster with loss creeping up on him and inevitable change. He moves the blanket finding only pillows underneath. Hopper stands there staring at her empty bed, the lights are on and the radio is playing and a single note is left on top of one of them saying I am sorry. Hopper grips the blanket while he gawks at this, unable to really understand what he is looking at, he was so sure, so sure he saw her move and listen to him talk. As if it’s going to help the situation, Hopper looks all around her room then outside of it, but El’s gone.

Hopper knows for sure she’s gone with no idea where to find her in the world. Then like maybe she’ll pop out from behind the couch or lead the bathroom, he calls out, “Eleven?”