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The thing about being the Dungeon Master, was that you knew when you were full of shit. You knew when you fudged dice rolls, you knew when you knocked a monster’s last couple of hit points to allow for a heroic ending, you knew when you gave the characters plot armor, you knew when you allowed for something dubiously within the rules to happen. You saw everything.
Mike had known, on graduation night, five years ago, that he was bullshitting. His theory just required too many ‘ifs’, ‘ands’ and ‘buts’. He’d seen in his friends’ eyes that they bought into it, and that had made him feel a tiny bit better.
At least he was good for one thing, even if that one thing hadn’t been saving El.
“Can you pass me the gravy, son?” Ted asks, his mouth full, and Mike obliges.
Sometimes he has the sneaking suspicion that his dad doesn’t remember his name. It’s probably not true, but then again, Ted Wheeler always looks vaguely surprised and confused when Mike walks into a room. Like he’s thinking ‘Oh, right. I have one of those’.
“I’m so happy that you’re all here,” Karen says for the fifth time at least. “We have Holly for a little bit longer, but it’s going to be so quiet once you’re all gone.”
She reaches to tug on Holly’s cheek, and the teenager scrunches her nose, but doesn’t pull away. She can let her mom have that — especially when she’s wearing one of her more open dresses and the large, white scars on her chest are this visible.
“We’ll visit, mom,” Nancy promises, reaching for her mom’s hand. “We’ll come back so often you’ll get tired of us.”
Karen laughs, but still dabs at her eyes with a napkin.
“You’re one to talk,” Mike comments, mouth full, between two bites. “You’re for sure going to be stuck in New York full time. Now that you’ve got that fancy job…”
“Internship,” Nancy corrects him. “I’m not hired yet.”
Mike shrugs. Same difference. It’s not like anything resists Nancy very long.
“And I can still make time. Maybe not right away, but…” She trails off, and then mischief lights in her eyes. “Mike, you could stay here to keep Mom company. You can work from anywhere right?”
Ted scoffs.
“He should get a real job,, is what he should do.”
“Um, Mike’s a New York Time bestseller,” Holly points out, always ready to go to bat for her brother. “That’s a real job.”
Ted rolls his eyes.
“He got lucky, but is that the kind of money to raise a family on?”
Karen elbows him in the ribs, and he gives her a confused look.
“It is, actually, dad,” Mike replies, shoveling food in his mouth. “How much do you make again?”
Karen snaps her fingers as Ted starts sputtering. Even as she tries to keep the peace, she can’t hide the grin on her face.
“That reminds me, Nancy, Mike, now that you have your own place, maybe you don’t need to receive your mail here? We got some kind of subscription for you two recently.”
“Right, Mom, I’ll get on it,” Nancy promises dutifully while Mike just shrugs.
He can’t remember signing up for any subscription. Could be from one of the guys, his editors, or even a one-time offer and his mom didn’t realize.
Either way, he picks it up before climbing to his room, and throws it on his desk without looking at it. Everyone’s in town for Thanksgiving, and he’s promised them an epic campaign, so he’s got his work cut out for him.
There’s also the fact that Max and Lucas told him a few days before that they want him to be the best man for their wedding, and he wants to start jotting some ideas down for his speech. Everyone seems to think that he’s this master at improv, and that’s just— not true. He’s just really, really good with prep.
The wrapped newspaper ends up thrown and forgotten in his suitcase when he leaves town again.
Writer’s block is a bitch. That’s not new — it was already the case when he was coming up with campaigns for his friends — but it’s a lot more annoying now that writing is his full-time job. Money’s not the issue, not with the last book’s success. No, the problem is that Mike is getting fucking bored.
It doesn’t help that his mind is teeming with ideas, and he just can’t seem to get them out onto that stupid fucking blank sheet. He’s already gone for a walk, he’s sat in a park, he’s tried to get a coffee, his notebook open in front of him in case the words finally come to him, he’s given Nancy a call, he’s— he’s out of ideas, is what he is. So now he’s pacing the room, trying to find something that could either kickstart his mind or, if that doesn’t work, that he could at least take his frustrations out on.
He finally tears the wrapper around the newspaper — it’s some kind of travel magazine. He’s like, 99% sure he didn’t get it, but frankly, it could have come from anyone. Nancy’s told him he needs to ‘broaden his horizons’ to get better at writing, and everyone else thinks he should try to ‘put himself out there’, whatever that means.
There’s a pin badge, inside the magazine, but there’s just a name on it, and it’s not one he recognizes. ‘Fossárdalur’, whatever the hell that means.
He skims through the newspaper, finds a big article about Iceland and its many wonders.
Well, Iceland sounds cold as hell, and after his time in the Upside Down, he thinks he could live his entire life without ever being cold again.
He’s about to throw the magazine aside when his eyes catch a sentence, and he thinks his heart downright stops beating.
“Fossárdalur”, it reads, “is an absolute must-see. Easily accessible by car, the river is most famous for its many waterfalls.”
There was a time when Mike didn’t believe in coincidences, but that was a long time ago. That was back when the world was filled with monsters, girls with superpowers, and other dimensions. That was back when there was magic.
That was back when El was still around.
He reaches for the phone, to call his friends, to figure out which one of them is responsible, if any, but drops his hand before he does.
It would be useless. He’s famous enough by now, on a lower level, that companies just send him shit. Even if Dustin, Lucas or Nancy didn’t get it for him, it could be his editor, it could be a newspaper that figured it would be nice to be quoted as an inspiration for his next novel, hell, it could even be a fan’s doing — that would explain why it arrived at his parents’ place, and not his.
He can’t hope. Hope is the mind-killer that would bring total obliteration, as Paul Atreides would probably phrase it, were he in his shoes. If he starts hoping, he will undoubtably be consumed by grief when it turns out to be nothing.
So he doesn’t let himself. He pushes hope far, far down, crushes it with rational thought, and doesn’t let himself think about his hands.
Even as they open up his suitcase and start packing.
He shouldn’t be surprised when there’s no one at the waterfalls. He shouldn’t be sad. He should feel nothing but wonder at one of nature’s great accomplishments. He’s supposed to have made sure of this — to have steeled himself against any disappointment, once and for all, by not letting himself hope, by not letting himself believe, by not even letting himself think. He’s supposed to be fine.
Instead, it’s like losing her all over again.
The old wound gapes wide open. Grief feels like complete body failure, and he falls down in the snow when, unable to do anything but scream with no one around to hear him. His legs refuse to carry him, his arms feel too heavy to move, even his tongue can not form words. All he can do is sob.
He thinks of staying here. Letting himself be swallowed up by the snow, like she let herself be swept up in the vortex. That’d be fair, wouldn’t it? She gave up. Why shouldn’t he get to do the same?
But when the cold turns into numbness, he, somehow, gets back up. He walks to his car. Turns the heater on. Starts driving, even though his body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him.
It doesn’t feel like he even is right now. Maybe he did die by the waterfall. Maybe his ghost’s just going through the motions, trying to convince itself it’s still alive.
He stumbles into a bar in the nearest town, and the heat pierces straight through everything.
He’s still here, apparently.
Looks like he can’t even die right.
One of the waiters greets him in Icelandic and tries to take his order. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he throws his hands up and walks away in front of a dumbfounded Mike.
As he does, he taps a waitress on the shoulder and signals for her to go take care of the dumbass American.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
Mike thinks he’s making shit up again. That he’s only hearing her voice because he wants to so bad. That when he looks up and sees her face, it’s because he’s finally lost it — maybe they’re both dead after all.
She leans it and puts his hand on his as a quiet warning.
“Don’t say anything,” she exhales, so quiet in the crowded place that he could miss it. “I’m Elenore and I’ll be your waitress tonight,” she says with a smile that’s just too warm, too bright, too happy to be a customer service smile. “What can I get you?”
Very, very slowly, Mike drags his thumb over her skin. She’s warm. She’d been so cold, back in the Void — like she was already dead. She’s here. She’s alive.
“I’m Mike,” he says, words falling out of his mouth a jumbled mess. “I’ll have— I’ll have—”
He’s not known for going speechless. If anything, he always has something to say.
Jane-El-Eleanore smiles.
“How about I bring you today’s special?”
“Y-yeah. Yeah, the special sounds great.”
Then she’s gone, and it takes everything in him not to grab her and stop her from leaving his sight — he never wants her to disappear on him again — but, somehow, he does.
It feels like he’s spent the last 7 years in an ice vault, and he’s finally been taken out. It feels like he’s alive again.
It feels like magic has returned in the world.
“I’m leaving,” El whispers.
She’s in his arms, in his bed, and everything is right in the world again. Not even her words can change that, especially not when Mike had been expecting them.
“Where are you going?”
She shakes her head. Not a surprise either.
“Will you write?”
This time, she hesitates.
“I’ll write,” Mike adds. “I’ll keep— writing and publishing books.” And they will all be about you, he doesn’t say. “And you’ll be able to read them and know that I’m thinking of you. And you’ll see me on the jacket. And—”
She kisses him.
She’s still warm. She’s still real.
“We can never be together, Mike,” she whispers. There’s tears in her eyes. He hates this. She should never have to cry again. She should have everything she’s ever wanted, she should be the happiest person in the world, she should be surrounded by all her friends and wrapped in all of their love. “You should be happy.”
He tightens his hold on her protectively.
“I would rather not be able to be with you for the rest of my life than to be happy with someone else,” he says, and as flippant, as dramatic as it is, he means it.
She’s his one and only.
“We should have a code,” he says, mind running at a hundred miles an hour. El smiles through the tears. She’s missed this. She’s missed him. She’s missed the way he’s always, always coming up with solutions. She’s missed the hope she feels when he’s around. She’s missed the life she was supposed to have with him. “You should send me something, like, once a year? So I know you’re okay and I know where you are. Maybe— It doesn’t have to be a travel magazine. How about a book from the country you’re in? I’ll get a P.O. Box set up, and I’ll ask all my readers to send me stuff, so it’s not suspicious.”
“But how will you know which one’s from me?” she asks. She knows he was getting there. She just wants to play her part, wants to hear him explain, wants to see his eyes light up once again.
“How about— How about you dog-ear the eleventh page of the book? That can’t be a coincidence.”
She laughs.
“Okay,” she says.
“And you’ll let me visit, right?” he asks, faltering this time. “Every— Every five years?”
“That’s a long time,” she whispers.
“I don’t care,” he says, and he’s never meant anything more. “And— and maybe we’ll come up with something. With a better solution. You think you can teleport?”
She laughs again and shakes her head. This is the happiest they’ve been in— in over a decade. Since that summer, before Hopper went away. In this moment, Mike really does think they could figure something out. He always does, and so does she now, it seems.
He likes to think that maybe he rubbed off on her.
“I’d wait a lifetime to be with you again,” he says, quietly, and then she kisses him again, and nothing else matters.
She’s here.
She’s real.
She’s alive.