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Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.
It'd be impossible for Eleven to not know the colors of the rainbow by now like the back of her hand. The memory of vibrant chords was strewn upon white walls as if to masquerade for child's play to obscure metal sheets as a shelter to rebound destruction and its true role as a prison. The brightness of lights overhead and the color pencils limp on a table, prone to rolling over a work desk and onto the floor, (which Eleven had learned to fear the possibility of and tried her absolute hardest to practice halting the movement of after one unpleasant interaction with Three one morning) Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violent. White paper sheets and white hospital gowns that clung to skin as if a suffocating suit. And the bright colors streamed across the wall of a white stained room that more and more felt like a prison and brought such nausea with each passing note of clattering and quiet speech.
She's suffocating. She's eight years old again and after finding solace in her confidant who had been the only one to tell her the truth and try to save her, her red color pencil is rubbing—scratching against the paper in desperation of some type of solace to be reached, some peace. And so she steadied her pace, scribbling at a softer pace until she orchestrated a stream of color to paint the picture of peace she was looking for. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. She thinks them up in her head as she finishes her orchestra of visual melody, and with a black color pencil that clashes against the bright epiphany, she's drawn a picture of her and Henry's meeting from earlier. They're playing chess with smiles on their faces. Lighter sketches until pressed with some emphasis to finish her work. The heart that rattled in her chest with some sort of fierceness and anxiety built up of 'what-ifs' . What if she gets caught? What would happen? What would Papa do? To both me and Henry? She closes her eyes and recollects the cacophony of color. But this time, her eyes wander to Violet and Yellow. The brightest color of the U-shaped collection and penultimate darkest.
Eleven can only imagine the room being quiet and vibrant, but not of stark white terror and clammy hands, befuddled thoughts and a longer train of thought to collect her thoughts and verbalize in hopes someone would understand. But Yellow and Purple splotches upon each corner of the formal prison cell, shapes of circles and triangles and painted flowers. She'd always had an affinity for them. Even if only in picture books, she'd always wanted one of her own that she could own for herself. Flowers. Papa had called them. She imagines a flower with Yellow petals. And even bolder, of purple stems and a splash of yellow on each Leaf. A finest combination of gentle kindness and soft hearted belief. Yellow and Violet were the only colors Eleven has grown affinity for. And slowly but surely, it was becoming all she wanted. With Yellow and Violet, Eleven was no longer in the confines of white rooms that masqueraded as learning environments of love and kindness from a father figure, faux vibrancy to inspire warmth and strength, but in a home all of her own of Violets and Yellow splotches with oddly formed plants of Purple and Yellow that could only come to life way of a dream. But it's her peace. Her sanctuary that no one else can reach or destroy of a symphony of bright and dark she conducted all on her own. She's not so sure she's ready to share it.
But when the door to their shelter built to cave them in rattles and Papa walks in, pauses, only to resume after finding what he was looking for, speaking in a low voice that she used to find comforting despite the unease below the surface that she was desperate to ignore because of how desperate she was to believe in it. To believe someone wanted her. She had found some oasis. She realizes what her reality is, and in meeting with Henry where he promised her the chance of an escape, she disappears from the endless room of color and flowers with petals that are soft enough to rival the stuffed lion in her room. She's a member of reality again. And the nausea and heart that beats in quick succession have returned. With the ghost sensation of blood pooling in her ears and her eyes burning with fierce flame between them, the terror of him is nearly unrivaled. The memory of gut shocks of terror and begging pleas, electric shocks riveting like a buzzing vibrato he refused to empathize otherwise about. She couldn't forget about it as it clung to her memory. Even the solace of Purple and Violet couldn't do much shielding. But she never minded the attempt. She listens to his quiet voice croon in a mask of manipulation, soothing over any mistake or potholes left behind in the one-way dead end road he had paved. He holds out his hand for Ten.
Eleven silently pleads for him to not take it. And as if he ignored her, his hand folds into his and they've left as quickly as Papa had entered.
A rush of cold burn ricochets throughout every ache in her body. She looks up at the clock to check that the time was as designated for their rendezvous. She's made up her mind. Eleven slams down the Yellow color pencil and makes her way to the tall orderly by the door with one mission in mind. She can feel the Yellow and Violet blossoming behind her as if they've given her wings of courage. She had clutched it hard to her chest those moments ago without recognition.
With the bass click of a door being opened after bright light being flicked on, Eleven feels the strongest strum of dread within that she'd ever felt in days. She hadn't felt that feeling so strongly even on the day of the first venture into the bath. Where she panicked in the darkness and felt as though she was never taught how to survive this or swim (a word she had learned from an exercise with Papa in which she was instructed to move one toy that had to be wound up to 'swim' in a pool of water.) She felt as if she'd drown or would be swallowed up in discordant conversations that were far too loud and made her want to run and hide. But she was forced to endure. She had to. She couldn't endure Papa's disappointment and she couldn't endure the pressure of fingers into skin and rough manhandled as she was lifted into air and feet kicked until she was thrown into a dark, barren, cold wasteland of nothing and everything where only the worst was set to consume her and it didn't matter how much she called out for him until her throat ran raw and carved bruises into her own chords where she was left for nothing until he had returned as a savior in her eyes. Nothing had been like the first time she denied and disappointed him. And that instilled fear had been her guide for self preservation. So she endured and endured. And after days of silence after one experience in the bathtub that kept her eyes bloodshot and widened with a constant rewind of her watching a monster within the abyss of The Void.
She hadn't slept without nightmares in days.
She didn't want to face whatever walking nightmare had awaited her now in anticipation of violence. It terrified her. But she knew she had as little choice as another traumatic memory crawled to the surface. A sickly white cat in a cage that grumbled its discomfort fits in violence, the groaning and hissing managed to uproot Eleven entirely. She squeezed her eyes as tight as she could to rid herself of the memory that stained her brain until her mind fast-forwarded past cries for him and choked sobs that felt like despair and nightmarish reality kicking in simultaneously. She realized that in that very moment in time, she truly was all alone. And no clawing and banging at doors for oasis in a room full of mirages of your own creation would do no good. So she blinks away the cold wetness of tiredness under and in her eyes and sits up. There wasn't an escape from here. Not anywhere.
So she faced the beast she had to appease.
He had his arm tucked behind his back as though he had hidden something from her, posture in a leering bow. The slow and drive to anticipate steps drove a sword of anxiety and fear for the worst into the pit of her stomach until he outreached his hand in front of her with something that represented a peace offering. Bribe, even. Eleven had grasped at it with careful hands to inspect and admire. The weight of it was considerable in her hands and in that moment, Eleven considered she was holding something very important in the palm of her hands, a cold feeling she had grown used to. And the thin blankets she had kept to sleep were somewhat warm though never truly warm enough as she kept them around her for solace after she reeled from practice on especially hurtful days. But this feeling of coolness was pooled with some internal warmth that she could feel spiral in her palms to her wrists and chest. Peering down at the present, (which were no longer a surprise to her as she knew what they had come to represent. Anytime Papa had given her a present, it had been to award her for excelling or how she performed during practice. Or in this case, to goad her into doing what he had asked of her.) she had noted it was nothing she recognized at all. Not even in picture books or the pictures Papa gave her for exercises, for listening to the people in the photos given to her. It was something small, as he roamed her fingers over its animated petals with a delicate softness she felt was familiar to her stuffed lion's, but if she ran her fingers across them, the texture would change with ruffling.
A dark brown colored texture coated the inside of the pot, rooting the flowers. As curiouser and curiouser, she inspected the flowers further as the colors spun further and further interest from her, and she had unintentionally inhaled sharply. The color was dark, but had an odd, glimmering vibrance to it. Eleven is sure she'd been drawn to the color, and as she had admired it more and more and how it caught the light of the room that she had grown to turn away from due to what it'd mean each morning. But it had an admirable purpose now that made mornings not to exclusively fear the worst for. There was some good about it.
But as she observed more and more, the more somber she became. And the ache in her chest became apparent and her tiredness returned, though the origin is unknown. She had felt as though she had lost something she was unable to place. This...present had stirred something inside of her that she couldn't quite place. It was a vague but strong feeling that attempted to remind her of something she didn't quite know. But it left her somehow more saddened than her accidental recollection of some of the worst days she had spent at home. A numb and swallowed out feeling that wouldn't return. As if she had lost something she wouldn't be able to bring back for as long as she remained. Eleven feels like she could despair. To grasp onto a ghost of what only remains might be the heaviest despair of any. But when she looked up at Papa with a query in her eyes and as to why he gave her such a present, she realized he wouldn't be answering such questions.
She has since learned to settle.
El was strewn cross legged upon her bed and Mike was laying next to her, admiring how the winter sun's best attempts at sheltering and keeping them both warm as though they didn't have each other had framed her face in a glimmering angelic halo somehow. Her curls have grown out since their teary eyed reunion and had grown past her neck, a stark difference from how she appeared when they first met. Mike wishes he could've been there when her hair had first began to grow up in a messy pixie cut that, on anyone else, wouldn't have flaunted any of the charm that she had. And just to watch her hair grow out and her confidence in her appearance grow wasn't all he wanted. He wishes he could've run to her and end both of their pain early to serve as a panacea for both of them. That night was only three months ago but plagued his mind like an endless reel that would spin regardless of whether he'd have wanted to recount it or not. Some nights he wanted to forget the misery of knowing she was so far but so close. And many he didn't mind revisiting back in time to relive the warmth of her arms and the soothing rocking that he knew only they could both do to amend both of their wounds. It was all he needed on nights where simply a walkie talkie wasn't enough.
Mike peered down at the book El had been reading. She had been reading it with so much focus and interest that she didn't even notice how he had been watching and observing even her most miniscule microexpressions for the past five minutes. Most of the time they'd spent together, she'd catch him in the act and tease him for it. This, of course, wasn't most times. Sitting up and scooting over to her side as if the distance between either of them could somehow be closed any further, in half a teasing gesture and one of genuine piqued interest, he asked in the soft voice he usually shared when usually alone and allowed time to be intimate. "So, what are you reading? It must be pretty good." El's head snaps up as if playing by a mostly inaudible cue, and immediately she springs into action as she usually does when spurred about her interests—, soap operas, for one, was something that she seemed to be able to go on and on forever about. He didn't mind her excited chatter and he even was eager to follow along as she explained the most recent development of a love triangle or who had somehow gotten into an impossible car accident. He didn't mind it at all.
The glistening joy in having peace to confide in someone about such an interest you have to completely ramble on and on about, Mike had only just that within the party. But he knew no one outside of them would understand, and accepted it with grateful arms. He didn't mind the lack of change as long as he'd be accepted. And he had felt as though if the remaining ice surrounding him had somehow not entirely melted when he held the sun in his arms for the first time in nearly a year, he had thoroughly thawed when she animatedly spoken of All My Children and felt so comfortable doing so around him the first time they were able to meet after Hopper allowed it. The fear distance between them had been created all those months had been revealed as unfounded. And the gleam in her eyes with excitement whenever she spoke of her interests spread warm from his chest to all of him. Mike thinks he might even be at peace.
El eradicated any distance between their bodies and rested her chin upon his shoulder and looped her arm around his as she rotated her book around and placed the book on her propped up legs, resting on her thighs. "I'm reading a book Joyce gave me. About flowers." She didn't even bother using her fingers to flip through the pages as she flipped to one about yellow poppies. "This one is about yellow poppies. It says it grows inland but I don't know what that means." She pulls her eyebrows together in an expression of confusion and looks up at him as if to ask him to elaborate as she had always done when they read a book together. Or when she nestled next to him and listened to him narrate in a quiet voice just above intelligible hearing for them both. Nestled up in their own little crook was where they felt happiest and safest, not too different from a book upon floriculture being read together with words being elaborated upon for mutual understanding with warm, thick sweaters and heavy blankets strewn around them both and the typical blanket upon El's lap. "Inland would be away from a coast, like, the ocean. Or the border, where a city ends. Like, in the inside of a city or town.", Mike had peered down to make sure she hadn't any more questions and he'd explained it well.
But El seemed to be taking his explanation into consideration, and just as quickly as she had simmered down, a burst of energy dispersed from her, and several pages were being flipped all at once. It took Mike a while to realize she had been skimming the pages. The whiplash from the flipping of the pages settled as El reached the destination she wanted. "Yellow hibiscus." her voice was of a lighter and softer quality this time, as if her discovery was intimate. "It says this flower can only be found in Hawai'i. It's really rare." She pauses in silence as she traces the framed printed photo with her index finger. The silence prolonged as if she had been longing for the flower somehow. Mike knew she wanted to see the flower for herself, and he had begun to truly consider it himself. He hadn't known up until these moments that she liked or was interested in flowers, but if she longed to see them in person or own some of her own, he'd find a way to create a garden with every flower in the world if it would make her happy. And if it were somehow impossible, he'd find a way to make it so just to see that shimmer in her eye, it'd make it all worthwhile. And so he started, "It's pretty, isn't it?"
Stirring from the silence, she nodded, sitting up from her slouch with what he hoped was a dash of hope. "Really pretty." She said with a louder voice than the one that had trailed off into silence earlier. She placed her finger on the page opposing the one with the large framed image, and before she could speak more, Mike interjected. "You'll see them one day. I promise." She turned around at the mention of the golden word and met his eyes. They were swelling with absoluteness and determination. And El knew at that moment he would get her to see the hibiscus no matter what. Even if it took arm and limb for them to get to see even a glimpse, he'd show her. No matter what. She gave him the crooked smile she usually would to convey appreciation in the way she knew words would fail. "Thank you." She settled back into the nook of his shoulder, fingers intertwining with his, and quickly flipped through more and more pages, and Mike quickly recognized a pattern. Marigolds, Calla Lilies, Perennial Geranium, Zinnias, Begonias, Yellow Butterfly Bushes—,
"You really like yellow, don't you?"
El's head snaps up once again with a lack of recognition. Befuddlement was clear as Mike seeked to clarify for her understanding. "All of the flowers that you like, that you've shown me so far—they're yellow." Mike's voice is amused, not with intent to mock and berate. She's since learned that he'd never treat her with such cruelty, but she had been taken off guard. She had liked the color yellow but it hadn't become a consistent color she wore thanks to Hopper and Joyce's hand-me-downs and whatever her new father had been able to get. But she knew that she'd stare a little too long whenever she'd seen the color yellow worn by a person on television or had favored the yellow color palette and imagined what it'd be like to wear the color afterward. What she'd look like. So El resigned in agreement about an observation Mike had made about her that she somehow had never noticed before him. "Yes. I do like it. It's bright...and pretty." But when El had thought back upon the color, sometimes she would encounter a foggy memory that was otherwise indecipherable and hard to perceive other than the mist and fog hanging around it as if to shroud it in a hub of mystery. She would like to know, to uncover the shrub of mystery herself and decipher it. El never liked having things hidden from her. Especially what pertains to her. But she was never able to wave the fog away and find some answer, and was forced to sit with it.
"Hm," she hummed to herself as her finger strayed along the page, roaming the empty spaces and spaced out letters. And suddenly, she paused. The flower in the lab from the very day she had accidentally opened the gate and cradled the small flower pot in her hands. The purple soft and delicate flower petals with all the comfort of satin underneath her fingers, dipped in that and silk. The emotions that hadn't quite connected and left a shell within herself, a disconnection that she didn't understand. The coldness and despair in her chest that bloomed and managed to reawaken that cold day. With the struck of the book upon her bed the day Joyce had come by with a plastic container of leftovers because she had known Hopper couldn't cook well for himself with the studious book in tow, she had immediately began her search for why that disconnection existed. Why she had felt that feeling that day. She seeked out the book for answers she hoped it served as all knowing for. But turned out with nothing outside of the name of the flower and what it was, how best to take care of it, and the meaning of it too (she hadn't known such things had meanings, too). But as she recalled the sensation of Mike's fingers in the spaces between her own, she realized that this was not something she had to resolve on her own. And maybe, just maybe she could rely on someone else.
"In...in the lab..." Before she can even continue, Mike's dipped into concern for her through expressions, and with his own body language as both of his hands cover hers and begin a soft stroking gesture, small circles, in an effort to comfort. And it had given her some courage to continue on, so she inhaled and continued. "The day...I opened the gate. Papa gave me this flower. It's called a violet." She flipped through the book manually this time, skimming until she had gotten to the 'V's, pausing and tracing over the title of the flower on the header page. "It was pretty but it...it made me feel...weird." Frustration began to overtake her as she couldn't quite find the word she was looking for, and her thoughts asked shrouded in a slight haze as she closed her eyebrows in together in a struggle to describe her feelings. "It's okay, keep going." She had shifted from his side and rotated herself from sitting beside him to sitting while facing the opposing wall as he sat up against the headboard. Mike's words echoed in her head and she inhaled, letting out a sigh of relief, allowing her own head to clear even if for not too long. She was grateful for Mike always trying to understand her and refusing to give up on her because he understood her even when she couldn't express her thoughts as verbose. El was grateful for Mike's comforting physical presence as she tried to clear her thoughts, she was grateful for his quick comfort. She was only just beginning to learn Mike would never stray from her side.
"I was looking at the Violet but I felt as though I was...missing something. Like I had...forgotten. I looked in the book to figure it out but I didn't find anything. I still don't understand." She refused to let the anxiousness blanket her and pull over her. With Mike's calming motions, he was her attachment to reality and that she wasn't in her head all of the time. It was quiet for only a little while as her hand flexed up and against his grip. "You thought you were missing apart of yourself, you had forgotten part of you." I'm glad he understands. She almost sighs in relief, and nods. Mike pulls his bottom lip inward and hums in response, thinking of what to say. The silence doesn't linger for too long. "Books answer a lot of things, a lot of the questions we might have, but they don't answer everything, I mean, you won't find every answer in your book. Especially when it's something like this." In an unexpected move, he closed the book and placed it on the bed off to the left foot side of it. "You might not understand what you felt then but...that's okay. We can—we can figure it out, together." Mike seems to wince at that and El can't help but pull a smile in response as she watches his expressions. "I mean—I just—" his nose scrunched as if to say he wasn't trying to force her into doing anything with him and he was scrambling to explain. But her lips turn into a crooked grin. "I'm just trying to say that whatever is making you feel this way, we can figure it out. Together. We'll figure it out eventually, we just need time. It'll be alright." He leaves off with placing their hands in his lap and a tight squeeze.
El sighs in relief and nods, thankful for his understanding and help. It stays in warm and comforting silence for a little while until El blurts out what's been on her mind for a little while. "I like purple, too. Purple and yellow, I like them." He lets out an exhale of his own and pulls his lips into a soft and large smile to match with her crooked one. "Yeah, I thought so. You want to hear a secret? Mine's blue." This time, they both smile with their teeth. There was an intimacy there that was delicate and soft.
They both wished they could stay in that moment forever if possible, and in their own little bubble of Eleven's bedroom, they were both sure they'd be at peace discussing soap operas, flowers and hues of each other's liking forever. But it felt as warm and intimate and possible just to be around each other, and it was otherwise impossible that they'd feel that way around anyone else. They had been at complete and total peace with one another and it was sure it was impossible to replicate. So they continued to squeeze each other's hands with comforting tightness after tight silence began to filter through the bedroom tight and tight after time. And then, relief.