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“You did well on your tests today, Eleven.”
“Thank you, Papa.” Eleven sat still as Papa removed the electrode webbing from her head, pleased with his praise. She had put a lot of time into practicing.
“You show improvement. Well done.” Papa stopped in front of her, a small smile on his face. “I can tell the testing has made you tired.”
“Yes,” she replied softly. She hadn’t wanted to tell him she was tired, but somehow he always knew anyway.
“Why don’t you go play in the Rainbow Room while I continue testing your brothers and sisters?”
Eleven could not contain a small gasp of excitement. She rarely got a chance to be in the Rainbow Room by herself, and all the toys would be at her disposal for her to continue practicing.
Papa walked to the door of the testing room, opening it. “You know the way, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Eleven hopped off her chair, unable to help a smile. “Thank you, Papa.”
Her socked feet whispered over the tiled floors as she headed towards the Rainbow Room. The halls were quiet aside from the voices of passing orderlies and nurses as they talked with one another, most noise muted and contained behind the large doors. She turned the two corners required for her to reach the Rainbow Room, her pace speeding up with excitement as she spied the door, but she slowed as she got closer, hearing a peculiar voice drifting from within.
It took her a moment to piece the noise together. It was music, or rather, someone singing. She had heard music before occasionally on the radio as she passed by the nurse’s station, in some of Papa’s tests, or falteringly composed by her brothers and sisters on the toys provided to them. However, she had never heard anyone just singing, devoid of instrument or reason.
She approached the door, listening carefully. The voice carried on from within, so soft she could hardly hear it, and she could not make out any words. Wanting not only to know what was being sung but who sang it, she pushed the door open slightly.
“Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me…”
The soft words touched Eleven’s ears, and she knew who it was before she even saw his figure moving about, putting away the toys left on the floor. The orderly she considered a friend—Peter, he had told her once—who offered her kind words and gentle smiles when the frustrations of trying to excel at Papa’s tests seemed overwhelming.
He continued singing quietly, the words slipping into humming before reappearing, forming an incomplete but continuous melody. His voice was already nice while speaking, but Eleven was enthralled by this new side of it. It reminded her of a warm, fuzzy blanket.
Wanting to hear better, she leaned further in, and the door squeaked as she pushed on it. To her dismay, Peter’s singing ended abruptly as he turned around, a startled look on his face. However, his surprise quickly turned into the soft smile she was familiar with.
“Hello, Eleven,” he said.
“Hello.” Eleven stepped fully into the room, letting the door swing shut behind her. “Papa said I could come play.”
“You must have done well on your tests, then.”
“Yes. I’ve been practicing.”
“Well done.”
Eleven could not help but return his smile. His approval was easier to gain than Papa’s, but she enjoyed it just as much. “What are you doing?”
Peter looked down at the toy car in his hand. “I was just cleaning up.”
“Uh…” Eleven fidgeted a little, trying to put her thoughts into words. “You were…singing?”
To her surprise, Peter looked almost embarrassed, an emotion she had never seen before from him. “Yes. I do it sometimes, when I’m by myself.”
“I liked it,” she said.
Peter’s smile turned into a grin, another new expression for him. “Thank you. Can’t say I’ve had an audience before.”
Eleven shuffled closer to him, lowering her voice to a careful whisper. “Is it a song from…outside?”
Something she could not name flickered across Peter’s face, something almost sad, as he leaned down, his words a soft murmur. “Yes, it is from outside.”
Eleven nodded silently. She knew very little about what lay beyond the walls of her home, only catching little tidbits here and there, from the doctors and nurses, and rarely Papa himself. But talking about the outside was a subject Papa did not like, so she avoided it…except when her curiosity got the best of her.
“You should go ahead and play,” Peter said. “While you have the chance.”
“Can you sing?” Eleven blurted. “It was…nice.”
“Only if you can keep it to yourself,” Peter told her. “Papa will not like it if he finds out.”
“I will,” Eleven promised wholeheartedly.
A large hand brushed gently across the top of her head. “Then I will.”
So he did. Eleven tried to practice with her abilities, but her attention was preoccupied with Peter as he moved about the room, picking up the spare toys on the floor. He sang quietly, barely above a whisper, but it mesmerized her nonetheless, along with the words.
“Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea, mermaids are chanting the wild lorelei…”
There were not many words, but Eleven begged him to repeat it several times, wanting to commit them to memory. Some of the words she had never even heard before, but she wanted to remember them too as her imagination ran wild. Soon enough, her mouth was moving of its own accord, forming the words he sang in a silent echo as she stared at the puck board, trying to will the puck to fall into the correct slot.
“You could try singing, you know,” Peter said, breaking off his song as he noticed her mouthing along.
Eleven looked up at him, her brow scrunching. “I…I don’t know how.”
Peter just smiled at her. “Maybe one day, then.”
Too soon, it was time to eat, and he guided her out of the Rainbow Room to the cafeteria. She hadn’t practiced as much as she had originally intended, but she was satisfied, the melody drifting through her mind.
She kept it to herself as she promised, only drumming it out with her fingers when she was alone, but every time she and Peter saw each other, they shared a knowing look. However, they never had another chance to be alone until he found her weeping in her room, in pain from the harsh treatment she received at the hands of Two. His voice trembled, strained from his own beating, but he sang to her nonetheless in a whisper as he ran a hand across her hair.
“Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart, e'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea, then will all clouds of sorrow depart…”
Then only days later, he was gone, banished by her own hands, and she was left alone to suffer. And in her suffering, the melody faded from her memories along with Peter altogether, only coming to her in faint, random strains as she laid in isolation, imagining the gentle touch of someone she yearned for but could not remember as she cried.
She would only rediscover the song, “Beautiful Dreamer”, among Hopper’s records years later. The title was enough to reawaken a distant memory of a gentle voice, and one day when Hopper was gone, she listened to the song in its entirety. By the end of it, tears were streaming openly down her face, though she did not know why. She listened to it on repeat, committing it to memory once more, though she told no one.
She could never remember why the song made her feel like crying, until 1986.
El hung in the visceral Upside Down, her vision full of red and black. Dark tendrils lashed at her arms and legs, and though she tried to keep them at bay, her strength waned. The metallic tang of blood lay heavy on her tongue, and she could feel it oozing down her face.
A dark, misshapen figure approached her, and she could feel the pressure of his enmity, weighing on her, crushing her like nothing else she had ever felt before. The tendrils tightened, and a sob burst from her lips.
“Eleven.” Vecna spoke, and the horrible truth of her reawakened memories was confirmed. His voice was twisted just as much as his body, but she would know it anywhere.
“Peter.” His name fell from her mouth for the first time in seven years, tears of pain spilling out with it.
He made no reply, approaching her like a predator stalking fallen prey.
“Was it a lie?” El asked, trembling. “Did you hate me?”
“If you will not join me, then I have no use for you.” Vecna said, his talons curling outwards as he raised his hand.
El sobbed, unable to summon her powers. She would die…
Unless.
She had heard how Max was saved, how Nancy was saved. Music.
And she remembered.
The words spilled forth, neither harmonious nor beautiful, a sorrowful echo of a voice once far more sweet and soothing to a strange little girl’s ears. But sing she did, in pain and desperate hope through the blood and shadow assailing her.
“Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart, e'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea, then will all clouds of sorrow depart…”
Vecna stood still, and the frightful maelstrom of the Upside Down seemed to freeze with him. The quivering, tear-filled words pierced his mind like one beam of sunlight through a stormcloud, shedding light on what had long been dormant beneath darker influences.
Vecna’s mouth moved, but the voice that came out was quiet with disbelief. “Eleven?”
All of the Upside Down trembled as the claws that had sunk themselves deep into Henry Creel’s mind were wrenched free as though they had been burned with fire.
Eleven lifted her tear-filled gaze as her bonds loosened. “I know how to sing, now.”
The scabrous flesh of Vecna’s body began to fall away, crumbling like dirt. Eleven watched, her heart rising as she began to see the man beneath once more.
Now freed of the shadow that had controlled him for many years, Henry Creel stepped forward, and in his gaze she saw the same fondness she had thought she would never see again. She knew his truth, and knew their bond had not been a lie.
“Maybe one day?” With the same smile he had given her seven years ago, he extended his hands to her.
Smiling through her tears, Eleven reached out and took his hand. “Yes, one day.”