Work Text:
He catches up with her in the middle of the woods, their friends still stranded somewhere between Mirkwood and the old Byers’ house. She is sat by the foot of a tree, legs pulled up to her chin in a self-embrace.
Sensing Mike draw closer, she tips her head in his direction, halting him in his tracks.
“El, let me go,” he says, almost instantaneously.
He still has control of his upper body, and she takes in the hurt look in his eyes with heaviness in her chest. I’m sorry.
“El, seriously. Please.”
“My fault,” she mumbles to herself. If the expression on Mike’s face is anything to go by, he heard it too. “All my fault.”
Mike frowns. “What is your fault, El?”
“All of it. Hop and- and Will. Max. It was all me.” She drops her head, which drops the hold on him, and hugs herself tighter because Mike is still too far away to do it for her. “It is my fault, Mike.”
“What?” he rasps, dark eyebrows scrunched in confusion. It could be disbelief. She's not sure.
Mike reaches her side, lowering himself to the ground beside her. He kneels at first, an arm stretched out to grip the tree as if to cage her in. To keep her there. “No, it’s not.”
“Do not make it better, Mike. None of this would have happened without– without me. The tests. Papa. Looking for Henry. Just– just because I am not a monster does not mean I am not responsible too.” Eleven takes a deep breath. “I did this.”
“It’s–” Mike pauses, his mouth open and closing as the words fail to assemble. He drags his nails down the trunk, collecting dirt with his fingertips in a bid to keep his hands busy.
It’s not worth the fight.
“Fine. If that’s what you want to hear, then yeah, you kinda caused all of this, but that doesn’t mean you have to deal with it by yourself. It doesn’t make it your fault. Okay? It doesn’t matter who or– or what started anything. You didn’t mean for any of this to happen, El. Right? You couldn’t have stopped it then, but we can now, alright? All of us. Just… let us do that. Please.”
“I don’t know how,” she admits. Maybe it’s everything he’s been waiting to hear, or maybe it’s nothing at all. Mike’s face is unreadable save for the tears in his eyes. “I always… do this alone.”
He moves to sit beside her, the toes of his shoes scraping at old bark as he crosses his legs. The bandage around his arm is pulled tight—too tight, El notes. What if it’s hurting him? She should ask Nancy to check it.
Before she can ask him how he is, Mike adds,
“And I don’t want you to do it alone, El, not again. Every time you do you’re in danger and I can’t stop it and it’s– I’m not doing it again. I’m just not. I’m not risking losing you for a third time because I was too useless to do anything. I- I have to do something instead of just sit around and wait for you to come back or leave again. Let me help.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, I haven't quite figured it out yet. But that's what we do, right? Just... work shit out when it comes at us. That’s why we need to come up with a plan. Together.” Mike furrows his brow. He pulls at a handful of grass blades by her left thigh. “A new plan. You know, given the last one just went to total shit and all.”
Eleven feels the overwhelming urge to throw her arms around him. For a hug, a kiss. Maybe both. But she tucks the fantasy away for safekeeping. Later they will have time. Right now, there is only pain. No balm.
In a quiet, almost inaudible voice she finally says, “want you to help me. But I… want you to be safe, Mike. I need you to be safe.”
“And I will be. Okay? I promise. I will be. But you have to promise it too or else it doesn’t count.”
He licks his lips, dark eyes washing over her face. He looks starved. Desperate. Maybe he wants to hug or kiss or both just as much as her, she considers. Maybe he has been lonely lately. She has been… distant.
“We’re boyfriend-girlfriend, El. I'm pretty sure that's how this works.”
“I... promise.”
“Okay. That’s-” Mike sighs, “that’s good. Great, actually. So we’re both gonna be safe.”
“Yes.”
“You know if you don’t keep your promise then I’m not either, right?”
El feels her heart thud at his confession, but she lets the words — No, no, you’re not doing that — die on her tongue. She grabs his hand, dragging her thumb over his knuckles. “Trust me, Mike.”
“I do – totally. You trust me back?”
“Always.” She offers a weak smile. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He nods, turning her hand over to lace their fingers together.
The words still feel foreign in her ears, but they sound right, too, El decides. They sound good.
“Just a little longer, alright? I swear. And then… then it’ll all be back to normal, and we can pretend none of this ever happened.”
That gives her pause. Eleven raises her chin to meet his eye properly, brows pulling into a slight frown. She doesn’t want to pretend — to forget.
“Nothing?”
Mike immediately shakes his head, teeth tugging at his bottom lip. “Sorry, I– that was stupid. Definitely not all of it. We’re still– I mean, we would still be together. I hope. I just meant, like, maybe we can have a normal life for a change—as normal as it can be, considering.”
“Considering I am… not normal,” El says, her voice somewhat clipped. She doesn’t mean it to be, but…
Mike reaches for her face. The curve of her jaw fits perfectly in his palm. He fingers the short hair by her earlobe, thumb brushing her cheek.
“No! No, that’s not– you’re special, El. That’s not a bad thing. And maybe it makes you different, or, I don’t know, a little odd, but it doesn’t matter. Not to me, okay? It doesn’t make you any less of a person. You deserve a normal life, but– I mean, it’ll never be totally normal because we’re in the middle of hell and we can’t just, like, forget that. But-” Mike pauses, throwing a look over his shoulder to the forest.
It’s dark, and it gives Mike a chill when he stares too long into the distance, but there is wonder tucked between the birches and upturned vines too. There has to be beauty here somewhere. It’s where they met.
“But maybe we can focus on the good things when all of this is over.”
Eleven moves her hands to his face, drawing his attention back to her. She presses her forehead to Mike's, brushing her nose along his, her eyes glued to the bloody nick on his chin. “What good things, Mike?”
“Everything else? I don’t know, just– whatever makes you happy, I guess,” Mike quietly tells her. It’s sincere, and she finds it endearing when he blushes, a boyish look softening his sharp features. “That’s kind of all I want right now.”
The girl closes her eyes. She breathes him in for a moment; he reeks of musk and sweat, yet it’s the overpowering scent of lavender detergent that grounds her senses. It’s calming — an anchor.
“Both of us… happy. That is what I want.”