Work Text:
November 6, 2007
Mike Wheeler could not believe he had finally finished it. When he set out to, somehow, remember her through his words, he didn’t think he would be able to find a way. After all, he wasn’t allowed to talk about her, or anything that had happened. And, obviously, his family or friends would be able to figure out who he was writing about very quickly, if they were to read his latest work.
Honestly, that was why he had put it off for as long as he did. He knew everyone would expect it in his first books. So, he wrote some other things, stories that didn’t involve anyone remotely like her, so no one would know. He got a literary agent and built up a career and pretended he was moving on. And, on the side, he would write about her.
His life started nearly thirty four years ago in the woods. It ended exactly thirty years ago not far from those same woods. He only had one choice - to tell their story, somehow. Hiding in plain sight. So he wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
Mike wrote of a young girl who had been abused her entire life. No magic powers, no inter-dimensional portals, and definitely no military. Just a girl who had been locked away by her parents, unable to socialize, trapped and beaten and isolated. He wrote of a young boy whose family didn’t feel like a loving home, but a strange, cold, angry place. A place where a mother’s hug was the only sign you were loved.
He wrote that the girl escaped, found a way out, ran away, as far as she could. She found the boy - not in the woods, no, that would be too close. They met in a city, one on a coast, far away from everything that happened in the real version. The boy took her in, helped her, hid her from everyone else, so she could be safe. Eventually, she learned all the things she couldn’t learn locked away. He helped her, and sometimes his friends would, too - though, of course, he focused on the boy and the girl, as too much description of the friends would just make it harder to pass this off as an unrelated story.
Mike had pitched the book as a tragedy, and his agent had been on board. All his other works, by this point, had their share of heartbreak, though of course it was embedded within epic adventures. But here, he had asked for the chance to tackle a difficult subject with no happy ending - and got the green light.
Life didn’t have happy endings anyway.
Sure, all those years ago, he tried. He tried for her. He tried for his friends. He tried for his family. He rationalized how she might have survived, escaped, lived. Even now, he thinks she might have escaped for a little while. Maybe she was even still out there, with how smart and adaptable she was.
But even if she had escaped, the odds she was alive and happy now? Astronomically low. She had had such trouble fitting in without the help of the whole party, how could she do it without any of them? How could she live without detection, when she relied so much on her powers? How could she find food, water, shelter, and friends? How was she not doomed to a lonely existence if she had managed to live?
How could she not contact him, even in the void, even if they were watching him? He could keep a secret. He knew he could, and she did, too.
So she had to be dead, or caught, or lost. Those were the options. He wanted to believe, but he couldn’t. Not anymore.
He pretended to believe when he met up with his friends and family, but it was an act, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before they figured that out. So he pushed forward on the book, working as hard as he can, knowing he had to finish it.
The girl’s family found her, years later. Because they were her parents, they had the last say. It did not matter that she was abused, that her rights were being violated. No, it didn’t matter at all. She was under eighteen, and thus, the property of her parents. And the boy couldn’t do anything, since he was under eighteen too.
The girl had two options: be abused again, or die. And, so, she picked death. Not that such a choice is a real choice.
Hopper had said it was. But he was wrong. She had never had a choice. Her only option was suffering, and she had never deserved it.
She saved the entire world, but the world didn’t deserve it.
Mike would burn it all if he could. He would go back and destroy the universes. He would smash them together. He would even help Vecna. And that’s why he knew he needed to stop. He couldn’t be allowed to go down that path, he would never let himself do so. She would never have forgiven him if he did.
The girl in his book escaped, through death. And the boy, of course, found out. He found her, so small and broken and gone forever. So he joined her.
A modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but instead of warring families, they were driven to it by a system that protected the terrible and enabled the evil. A system that was growing again in full force, empowered by terror and loss and eavesdropping on phone lines.
On September 12, 2001, Mike knew if she had managed to escape, the government would now try to find her again, even harder than before. She had no options. No choice. No agency. None of it.
So he give their fictional selves that agency, to die together, in the end, rather than apart.
He edited it, polished it, went through every hoop his agent asked for, and finally got that final green light. It would be published in the new year. The true story of what she had been through, in its most distilled form, was out there. The actual picture of how parents and governments work together to keep children in chains, portrayed by a kind broken girl and a giving broken boy. How they didn’t have a choice, only pain, and the inability to escape.
Everyone else had managed to move on, even Hopper. How did they? How could they all forget her? Their tears, memories, reminiscing, none of that meant anything as they kept living their lives and pretending it was all okay. Had any of them actually loved her? Or only, the idea of her - of what she provided for them, not her as an actual person. Like she had been their imaginary friend, and not a deeply broken girl who deserved to be happy with the rest of them. Like she hadn’t even ever been real - like Terry’s daughter had been born dead, after all.
How could they act like it was all okay? Like anything was okay? None of it was okay. None of it at all.
Mike didn’t resent them, though. He knew that’s what she would have wanted him to do, too. It was his own weakness that he couldn’t. He wished he had managed to figure out how to heal, but he couldn’t.
Part of him had hoped writing the book would do it, but if anything, the wound opened up and revealed itself to be a festering cancer. There was no way for him to escape it, not forever. The pain would eat at him, and eat at him, and eat at him, until the only parts of him left were the parts that hated and raged and screamed. And such a person was only a danger to everyone around them.
So, as Mike confirmed he approved of the publishing of the book, after he signed off on the final version, he sat down to write one final thing. The last thing he would ever write, the last story he would ever tell.
Dear Everyone,
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live without her. I couldn’t live in a world that did this, that treated such a good person this way. I know she wanted me to be happy, but I can’t. I never will be. At least now, I can be at peace.
Mike.
There was no love, no acknowledgement of their pain, no reassurances. He hadn’t gotten any, so they wouldn’t either.
At night, he would scream, scream, scream in pain. He hadn’t slept, not really, not since. He would pass out in the comfort of drugs and alcohol, the only things that could make his guilt shut up. But then, the morning would come, and with it, his piles and piles and piles of regrets.
Why hadn’t he said, I love you, one last time? Why couldn’t he get it out? What was wrong with him? Why was he too broken?
Why hadn’t she taken him with her? He didn’t understand. He could never understand.
And he couldn’t keep living without her.
He just hoped his friends would remember him, even if it was to hate him for what he was about to do. That was fine. Better to hate him for being a coward, than for being a villain. There was no future for him that didn’t go in the latter direction, so ending at the former it was.
They all deserved their happy endings. Eventually, they would realize and come to terms with the fact that they had actually lost him the same day they lost her. It had just taken him a while to finish the job.
The method was quick and efficient. The quarry was where he should have died all those years ago, so it was where he went now. None of his friends or family could live in Hawkins anymore, except Steve - and he wouldn’t be anywhere near here, not with school in session. And certainly, there would be no miraculous rescue.
Taking a deep breath, Mike stepped over the edge.
The familiar falling feeling brought back memories of terror and regret. But he felt no regret, not now, not this time. And when he hit the water, he did not feel the pain of the impact. Instead, the deep pain, the pain that had been festering inside of him for twenty years, finally, finally, went away.
The last thing he heard, softly, in the warmth of the light he crept towards, was her voice.
Mike.
And so, he let his breath escape, forming her name with his last gasp.
“El. I love you.”
With that, the light swallowed the storyteller whole.
He had found peace after all.