Chapter Text
“You had a beautiful family.”
Mike laughs, a vague, almost nasal sound, his gaze fixed on the landscape in front of him, appreciating the little—almost nonexistent—noise of the city and its pollution. He’s sitting on a cliff, the stone warm from the sun beneath them, the soothing sound of water nearby: two waterfalls moving in loud, fluid motions.
“I mean it. Even though your little son inherited Nancy’s personality, he terrified me.”
“Did you see it?” he asks, still not turning his head, his eyes locked on the waterfalls and the distant mountains. This time, the person beside him laughs—more teasing than tired.
“Of course. Sometimes I made sure they were okay. I wanted them to be okay. I wanted them to be happy. That made me happy,” she replies, her voice soft and calm, carrying a peace Mike never thought he’d hear.
“Although you, out of everyone, were the one who gave me the most trouble,” she laughs. It’s not said cruelly—more like a light joke. Still, Mike tightens his hands on his legs, his knuckles turning white as his nails dig into his palms. He doesn’t know what else to say without crying.
“I’m sorry…” he says. He tries not to break, because he doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for. For everything, maybe. He was always the one who caused the most trouble because he never knew how to understand himself, or fully comprehend his feelings. He doesn’t know when he lowered his head, but his tears fall onto his jeans, darkening the fabric. He sniffs desperately and, once again, feels pathetic.
A soft, delicate hand appears in his blurred vision. He recognizes it—years of holding that hand, and one final time trying to reach it. It squeezes his fists in a gesture of comfort.
Mike cries for what could have been and never was: a life where the universe didn’t force them to end up like this, running away from the place where they grew up because the world was too cruel to them, where they created a monster that made them grow up too fast, too soon.
He cries for the ending his life had, and for a marriage identical to his parents’.
It takes him a long time to pull himself together. The sun remains high above them, dazzling. He doesn’t feel it burning, but he does feel it scorching. Mike is overwhelmed with emotions, so many that he doesn’t even want to understand how he ended up here.
The hand over his remains there—steady, peaceful—waiting for the last tear to dry and the last overwhelming feeling to fade. Finally, Mike squeezes back.
“I didn’t say it before, but I’m glad to see you, El.”
He finally looks up at her. After more than forty years, their eyes meet, and Mike feels like crying all over again. Eleven. Jane. The girl he found in the woods. The one he teamed up with to find his best friend. A companion who didn’t deserve crossed, confused, stranded feelings. A friend he could have given more than empty words, doubt, and confusion.
Eleven laughs, her rosy cheeks lifting as she smiles. She looks good—happier, calmer. There’s no Upside Down, no Vecna, no government hunting her. There’s only sun, water, and freedom. Peace. Something she should have always had.
“Hello again, Mike.”
El finally hugs him, pulling him into her arms, and he feels a weight lift from his chest. They reconnect in that embrace once more.
They stay like that for several minutes. When they pull apart, Mike feels more aware of himself and his surroundings.
Eleven looks exactly as she did the last time he saw her—seventeen years old, long hair, a young face without wrinkles. Mike realizes he’s young again too. His knees don’t creak, his back doesn’t ache, and that persistent cough he developed in his fifties is gone. He looks down at his hands, flexes them, and confirms the pain in his fingers is gone. He feels nostalgic—and euphoric.
Eleven watches him, amused, but says nothing. Not until Mike looks at her, full of questions and no answers. She bites her lip, thinking of a reply that doesn’t sound insane. Then she remembers she’s talking to Mike Wheeler—the boy who stood up to the government because he believed his best friend was alive, the one who always treated the most absurd ideas as absolute truth. So she sighs.
“It’s a dreamlike passage. Your soul is processing your death, so it brought you here.” She gestures toward the rocky mountains and waterfalls. “And I came because I wanted to talk to you. One more time.”
Mike frowns, but it makes sense. In a way.
He died. He knows that. He remembers the chest pain that had been there for weeks, ignored as stress or age catching up to him—until that morning, when the pain intensified and all the symptoms aligned into a heart attack. Mike simply let himself die. He had no more options.
Then he opened his eyes and was here. Not long after, Eleven arrived and kept him company.
“Your wife cried. A lot,” she says, and his mind fills with the image of Rose. “But your son was with her. He cried too. And your daughter-in-law. They really are going to miss you.”
Mike nods but doesn’t speak. His marriage to Rose wasn’t the best, nor perfect, but he tried to make it work. Sometimes, sitting on the couch while Rose complained about him on the phone, he remembered the afternoons when Ted Wheeler slept on the couch, Karen called her friends to complain about his dad, Nancy went out with her friends, Holly played in the living room, and Mike rode his bike with the Party—anywhere, really, especially the arcade machines. At least he escaped home.
Every day, when he saw himself in family photos next to Rose, he remembered his parents.
“Mike,”
El says again, softer this time, startling him. “Were you happy?”
He thinks about it. It takes him a long time to answer. Eleven waits patiently, not judging. But Mike doesn’t want to speak.
“Didn’t you say you saw everything?” he replies instead. He doesn’t look at her, and his voice comes out harsher than he meant. Still, El sighs.
“I did. Actually, I saw more of you than of the others. Max and Lucas’ baby girl is beautiful—she went to a really good university and got happily married. Nancy and Holly looked incredibly happy whenever I went to visit them.”
She takes a breath, trying to steady her voice, emotional from finally talking to someone after so long.
“Dustin is way too adventurous, so with him I got to know many different places, and Steve was truly an amazing travel companion. Jonathan became famous, and I was so happy for him—his photos were beautiful, I always knew they would be. Mom and Dad did too; I cried at their wedding. It was perfect… even if the cake was awful.”
Mike laughs softly, more tears slipping down his face, his skin now feeling sticky.
“And Will…” She continues, glancing sideways at Mike before going on. “He went through so much. I was truly glad he found happiness wherever he went. His art filled hearts that couldn’t express themselves. I was very proud of him.”
Mike was too. Mike really was.
They were twenty-eight when the party finally drifted apart; they met once more, the typical once-a-year reunion. Everyone was announcing wonderful news, doing a final recap of their lives. That was when Max announced her pregnancy—but also that she and Lucas would be moving to another country for work. Dustin said he was moving too; apparently, he had fallen in love with places near forest borders and wanted to live for a while without the constant rush of the city.
Finally, Will announced he would be leaving the country as well—his paintings had been incredibly well received, and they wanted him as an artist for a new construction project that promised to become a national landmark.
He was so excited when he said it that Mike swallowed the fear lodged in his throat and, with his heart in his hands, hugged him one last time.
Mike never saw Will Byers again. Not in person, at least—though sometimes, letters arrived.
Still, Mike felt like he lost direction in life. A year later, he married the first girl he met at one of his writers’ meetings. Rose. They dated for only six months before getting married, both desperate to fill a life shaped by expectations and fear. A year after the wedding, Michael was born—his son. After that, his life as a family man became nothing more than a poor imitation of Ted Wheeler.
“But you… well, I never felt like you truly enjoyed your life,” Eleven continued, unaware of Mike’s pain.
“Whenever I visited you, you were… in a trance, like you didn’t really know what was happening. Or you were buried in those machines, fingers moving way too fast. Whenever it was my turn to visit, you were always in the same place.”
And it was true. Mike tried to give his family comfort—he cared for them, he loved them—but they simply weren’t… they weren’t what Mike had dreamed of, or what his soul had longed for. He was happy. But he—and apparently Eleven too—knew that this happiness wasn’t the happiness either of them had been searching for.
“What stopped you from being happy, Mike?”
The cliffside space seemed to compress around them. Mike refused to look Eleven in the eyes—but she stared straight at him, inside and out.
What was it that kept him from being happy…?
“Was it my death?”
No.
Even though Eleven’s death and farewell marked him in indescribable ways and shattered him for years, Mike never blamed her death for his unhappiness. He loved her, and for many years he truly did. Maybe in a way that took him years to understand wasn’t romantic—more like a pure, intense love. Two souls searching for comfort, safety, peace. They didn’t want to face the world; reality terrified them, its cruelty too much to bear. Two souls connected by the same thoughts and emotions.
If they had had time, maybe Eleven and he could have untangled those misunderstandings and been happier. Unfortunately, time was the one thing they were never given.
And it seemed Eleven had reached the same conclusion.
“It wasn’t the separation of the party either. You’re not selfish enough to be angry at them for leaving.”
And she was right. Mike was happy for them. Sometimes he looked at the last photo Lucas sent him by mail—a postcard from New Zealand taped to the envelope, and handwriting that could only belong to Max: Merry Christmas, nerd. Jane says hi.
The baby looked exactly like Lucas. Mike laughed so hard—her smile was a perfect copy of Erica’s. Lucas must’ve cried blood when he realized it too.
Dustin was happy as well; his phone calls—at least the last one Mike received—gave away his excitement. Mike would never take that from them.
And Will… oh, Will.
Will sent him letters with different postcards each time. Sometimes photos, sometimes drawings. His handwriting was sometimes messy, sometimes stained with paint, sometimes carrying memories inside. Mike kept every single one—until the last, when Will sent only a small die. Yellow and blue blended into a beautiful gradient, a shield with a tiny heart on one face, and a cleric’s hat on the other.
A silent goodbye that hurt more than anything else.
Once again, Mike lost direction in his life. Funny enough—he had already lost it before.
Eleven seemed to find those thoughts endearing—How can she hear them?—because she hummed softly and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Mike startled but hugged her back just as firmly.
They stayed silent for a long while, Eleven’s head resting on his shoulder, her arms almost crushing him. The silence broke with her whisper.
“I think you were unhappy more because of yourself than because of others.”
Mike said nothing, letting her continue.
“You always thought too much and never said anything. You were emotionally quiet. You locked yourself away and pushed unfamiliar feelings into some corner of your mind—and when you finally let them out, you never questioned why they felt that way.” She hugged him tighter.
“Your feelings for me weren’t romantic. Love doesn’t look like that. What we had was codependence. We were the same—we didn’t understand emotions, and when they surfaced, instead of questioning them and shaping them, we either locked them away or ignored them. We never gave them room to become whole. And time never helped us.”
“When did you get so wise?”
They both laughed, the sound echoing through the landscape.
“Actually… when I died. The Upside Down matter, the wormhole energy were too unstable. I didn’t really die—I got trapped in a kind of limbo between time, reality, and whatever lies beyond. At first I was scared, but then I realized time moves in ridiculous ways.”
She let him go and sat in front of him.
“Sometimes I could see Henry’s life in the past. I met Hopper and Joyce when they were young—even your mom, she was beautiful. Then I saw Will, his childhood. I saw you. I saw all of you. Sometimes I saw my mother’s memories, and my sister Kali’s. The memories piled up until all I could do was cry after watching them, not knowing what to do next—or doing nothing at all. It was too much… so I shut down.”
Mike listened closely, holding her hand the way she had held his earlier. She smiled softly.
“My resentment grew so much that I screamed—and something exploded.”
“What?”
“Yes! Exploded. I thought I’d broken the universe or something. Like one of Dustin’s theories.”
“He—”
“Then,” she interrupted, “the landscape changed. I was in Hawkins, not in the past—in the present.
“I tried to find everyone, but you were the only one left. So I stayed with you for a while. Sometimes I saw Mom and Dad in Montauk, and when Jonathan visited, I went with him. Time worked differently. Sometimes I hid in the void, sometimes in memories like this place. Then I’d return, watch over you, make sure you were okay, and leave. I learned a lot that way—sometimes Max’s and Will’s university classes were interesting. Sometimes other people were. I learned just by watching and appreciating.”
“So you were like… some kind of entity?”
She rolled her eyes at him but laughed.
“Something like that. The Upside Down was a wormhole, and World X was an immense energy source. When I tried to close it—or destroy it—it collided in a strange way. A wormhole is a bridge connecting other parts of the universe. With enough energy and speed, you can travel through time. Dustin said it was impossible, but… when I lived it, I had nothing else to say.”
“Incredible,” Mike whispered, trying to process everything. “You became smarter because you were everywhere—and nowhere.”
Her muttered something like I was always smart so quietly, he ignored it.
“I tried to contact you all, but Dustin also said that could change everything—like a butt effect.”
“Butterfly.”
“Yeah, butterfly. So I stopped. I was afraid of bringing Vecna back, or of the government noticing and putting everyone at risk. So I let it be.”
“I’m glad you at least got to experience some freedom, Eleven.”
She looked at him with tear-filled eyes and smiled.
“Me too.”
She turned to look at the landscape.
“Watching helped me understand many things. I appreciated what existed more—and I realized you and I were the same. That’s why we never fully fit.”
The waterfalls kept flowing, their sound echoing through space and distance.
“Neither of us took the time to look beyond. You were a neglected kid; I was an experiment. We didn’t know the world—and we were terrified of it. What we felt was love, but not the kind expected of lovers. It was love of—”
“Companions. Trauma companions.”
“Yes. Trauma companions…”
Silence ruled for what felt like twenty minutes—he didn’t know, didn’t care.
“I like to think we were more than that, though. You were a protector to me, Mike. A savior. An anchor. You and Max were pillars in my life. But we were never romantic.”
Mike laughed, shaking his head.
“Never.”
Denying that truth now would be stupid. He had learned to name his feelings—affection, love, care. Eleven left without ever living a normal life, without ever hearing Mike speak his true feelings even once.
The conversation lingered in the air—no agreement, no answer.
Mike and Eleven. Jane. Two people who stayed together out of fear of an unknown world, and out of the peace of being near someone who thought the same way. Mike was sure they could have been great friends, if they’d had time.
“I think I loved Will.”
The words slipped out before he could stop them. He turned quickly to look at Eleven—unsure of what to expect. Her wide, tender smile wasn’t what he’d imagined.
“Yes. That too,” she laughed softly. “I think by the time you realized it, it was already too late.”
Mike groaned and shoved her shoulder. She laughed openly.
“I loved him. I love him. I will love him. I was so stupid. Neither you nor he deserved to love someone like me. I was careless, rude, and I didn’t understand myself. I hurt you both.”
Eleven stayed quiet for a moment.
“I forgave you. And Will never blamed you. I saw him—always. Sometimes he talked to me, even if I couldn’t answer. I was there with him. With my brother.”
Mike swallowed hard.
“Sometimes he apologized. Said he could never forget you. That he truly loved you. That he wanted you—wanted to see you. He cried every time. Sometimes he got angry with himself. Said that even while being happy, having everything, he still missed you so much it hurt. That it hurt—and he wanted to run back to you.”
Mike pressed his lips together until they bled. The sky above them slowly darkened.
“Seeing him like that destroyed me. I wanted to hold him—but he couldn’t feel me. It was unbearable. But I understood then. My feelings. Yours. Oh, Mike—we were too young. We were at war. We weren’t allowed to live. And when it finally ended, everything was already sealed.”
Mike laughed bitterly and broke down. Hurting Will hurt the most. Will—his best friend, possibly his soulmate. The constant in his life.
“And seeing Will break affected me so deeply because…” Her voice cracked. “Because I wanted to be with him. To support him. To see his achievements. To scream for him. To be at my parents’ wedding. To be there for my brother, my best friend, my friends. I wanted to live with you all. I wanted to live.”
The sky finally broke. Thunder cracked, rain pouring down, disguising their tears.
And there, on a rocky hill, between twin waterfalls and heavy rain, Eleven and Mike cried—for what could have been, for what was, and for what got stuck in between. No judgment. No expectations. Just company.
And at last, they closed a chapter left painfully open.
The book finally shut.
🔮
When they finally stopped crying, El’s eyes were red and swollen.
Mike ignored the fact that his clothes were completely dry after having been caught in a downpour; the sky above them had returned to normal, once again a beautiful sunny day, with a few gray clouds lingering, but at least it was no longer raining. It wasn’t even cold.
Mike waited for El to calm down before speaking again. His voice was hoarse, his throat sore, but he could deal with it. He took the time to truly observe his surroundings: the hill sat directly in front of a double waterfall, a place he had once wanted to visit with El and the rest of the party—to make them happy, far away from the Upside Down and Vecna, from the government and the horrors tied to all of it. Beyond that, there were more mountains, and emptiness—but not a bad emptiness. More like the emptiness of freedom.
Then he remembered that he was supposed to be dead.
“Hey, El,” he began. She answered with a vague hum. “I died, right?”
“Yes,” she said, stopping her rubbing of her eyes to look at her hands. “Yes. We’re in your limbo. I really wanted to come talk to you, to see you one last time. I can’t leave—after all the time I’ve been here, if I make one wrong move, everything could turn into a mess. Or at least, I think so. So I wanted to come here. With you. You brought us here. I just followed.”
Mike opened his mouth in understanding. But panic followed immediately.
He had never really been afraid of death.
He used to believe that once it happened, he wouldn’t be conscious anymore—or that he’d simply forget. But now he was terrified.
Would he see Will again? What did El mean by one last time? The familiar fear that had followed him his entire life—but sharper, stronger—twisted in his stomach. He turned suddenly, grabbed El by the shoulders.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice trembling.
Eleven looked at him, confused and scared, as if she thought he had finally lost his mind.
“Mike, you need to leave. You don’t belong here. Even if you stayed, you’d be alone. I have to go—I already did too much by coming here, so I wouldn’t be able to do it again. And if you choose to stay, you’ll have nothing.”
Mike stared at her, genuinely desperate.
“What?”
“Well, I thought you already knew, genius. You died. I’m not completely dead, but you are. I don’t know what’s beyond this.”
Mike stood there for several minutes, his brain processing everything so fast he thought he might go insane. Then, suddenly, he laughed.
Eleven stepped back, convinced now that he truly had lost it.
He laughed hysterically for what felt like hours—time worked differently here. But he didn’t want to leave.
Not yet. Not when there were still things left to fix, apologies to make. Not without seeing Will again. Not when he had just reunited with Eleven. Not when he had finally learned what it felt like to let his emotions out, to accept them. Not when he finally felt brave enough to speak.
Holly had once told him: When you finally understand what you feel, it’ll be too late.
Mike Wheeler was truly terrified.
He curled into himself, hands gripping his head, trying to calm down. From a distance, Eleven gently patted his back, her face far too worried to say anything.
“It’s okay, Mike,” she said softly. “Being afraid of dying can be terrifying. You don’t know what comes next, or what might happen. But it’s time for you to rest. Maybe in another life, another time, we can all be together again.”
Mike was about to scream in desperation, when his writer’s brain clicked.
As a famous writer, Mike had trained his memory relentlessly—remembering past stories, emotions, deadlines, editors’ names, characters, landscapes, plots. His brain had been pushed beyond what he ever imagined, and now, once again, it worked.
“…a wormhole is a bridge that connects different parts of the universe. With enough energy and speed, it’s possible to travel through time. Dustin said it was impossible, but when I lived it, I had nothing else to say.”
Mike jumped to his feet so fast that he knocked Eleven backward. She yelped and hit the ground with a dull thud, but Mike ignored her. He stared at the sky as if the answer had come from there—not from his friend lying on the ground.
“What the hell—?”
In another time, he might have teased her for the venom in her voice and the curse that slipped out so naturally. Now, he needed her again.
“El—when you said you tried to communicate with us, and all that butterfly effect stuff… were you serious?”
“Well, if the fact that I managed to be here with you, pulling you out of your depressed ass, isn’t answer enough—then yes.”
He could hear her rolling her eyes. She used to do that all the time when they were dating, like she couldn’t believe Mike Wheeler was real.
“Try it with me here.”
The silence grew heavy.
Then—explosion.
“What?”
Mike started walking, stepping over Eleven’s body as he went. She was still sprawled on the ground like a starfish, but as soon as she saw him leaving the quarry, she scrambled up and chased after him.
“Are you insane, Mike? No—forget it, you’re definitely insane! Did you not just hear what I said? Oh my God! Max was right—you’re an IDIOT!”
Mike sighed. Rose, his wife, used to yell at him every day, furious with their dull, empty marriage. Hearing Eleven—his true friend, his trauma partner—do it felt almost comforting.
.
.
Like a breeze over an open wound.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You said the wormhole, with enough force and matter, can allow travel. I remember Dustin talking about this once.”
He stopped where the ground turned softer, dropping down and drawing shapes in the dirt.
“The wormhole has two connected mouths. One of them experiences time dilation—because it’s near something extremely massive, or moving close to the speed of light. Like you, under emotional overload. When the mouths reconnect, they’re no longer synchronized in time.”
Eleven watched every line and circle.
“So entering through one mouth makes you exit through the past of the other. Do you get it?”
“No.”
Mike growled in frustration, but sighed. He needed her for this stupid idea.
“Eleven, the Upside Down isn’t a place—it’s a bridge. A wormhole. When it exploded, one part stayed behind and the other kept moving forward. That’s why at first you saw mixed timelines, and later you started seeing us in the present.”
The air felt tighter. Mike straightened.
“You said you could see Hawkins in the past—sometimes my mom’s time, sometimes when I was a kid—but you could also see us. When you felt that something ‘exploded,’ it was the bridge. It broke. And now there are more ways to cross without needing the original bridge.”
“You want me to learn how to use those ways… to go to the past.”
She wasn’t looking at the dirt anymore. She was looking at him.
“Yes.”
Eleven didn’t look surprised. She looked resigned.
“Bu—” “—but I want you to come with me.”
She froze.
“You’re insane.”
“I’m serious. Completely serious.”
“I don’t know what will happen if I leave. I could destroy everything—Max, little Jane, little Lizzy, Jonathan, Will—”
“El, everything will be fine. It’s not—”
“Your family.”
Mike fell silent.
“Your family could be ruined, Mike. Think about them. Your grandson. Is that what you want for them?”
He thinks about it. He really does.
His marriage and his family might have been nothing more than an updated version of the Wheeler family back in the ’80s, but in the end, they were still his family. Nearly forty years of his life. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to them. He wants them to be happy.
But…
“—Hey, well, if we’re both going crazy, then we’ll go crazy together, right?”
“—Yeah. Crazy together.”
But he wants Will back so badly.
He wants to fix things.
He wants to see him again, to stand by his side and grow old together, to chase their dreams together, to reach the top together. He wants everything—he wants everything with Will Byers once more.
And this time, he wants to do it right.
“We’re not changing this past,” he said quietly. “We’re going to another one. One where we can still choose.”
“W-What do you mean?” El looks up at him with tear-filled eyes, wiping a few from her cheeks, and Mike doesn’t even let himself feel guilty for making her feel that way.
“This timeline is already set. We’ve got it. You died, or didn’t die. Dustin traveled. Lucas and Max got married. I got married. And Will… Will became a famous painter, and his works were some of the best in the world…”
“I don’t think in the world, but—”
“The best. So this timeline is done. Vecna won’t come back, the Mind Flayer won’t either, the Upside Down will stay where it is. You leaving won’t change a thing, El. You already did what you had to do. If you disappear, it won’t make Vecna appear, it won’t make the world explode, nobody will die.”
Mike grabs her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him.
“We’re going to the past, but we won’t ruin this timeline. No. We’ll create another, same memories, same events, but now we get to choose, to do it differently. We’ll make a new future. One where we can be happy and make the right choices. We’re being given a golden chance, El.”
She’s still crying, silent, staring right at him. He senses the doubt in her, that familiar confusion and fear she always carried when facing the horrors of the Upside Down… again.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen, or what it could do. It might go wrong. We could disappear. Or it could send us to another time. Or mess with the entire universe, or—”
“Hey,” he shakes her gently, maybe a little too hard. He hears Eleven clench her jaw, she goes silent, groaning from the pain. “Ouch… ow, sorry. But hey, calm down. You’re panicking.”
“It’s your fault!” she hits him hard enough to knock the wind out of him, but he still laughs without humor. Then he keeps going.
“First, if we disappear, at least we disappear together. And we won’t end up in some alternate universe where I got that stupid orange mohawk; in either case, if we vanish, it’s the easiest outcome of all. Done. No pain, nothing. The rest… we can fix.”
El laughs—really laughs this time. He still has his hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her, bring her peace. She wipes her tears with too much force.
“For a moment, El. Choose for yourself. Don’t look at anyone else. Stop watching the present, stop observing everything at once. You did it once, look at how it ended.”
She’s silent. Mike is still tense, jaw clenched and sore from holding back so long, from trying not to yell and scare her, from trying not to scare himself.
“There’s only… one chance. Just one. And we’re in this together. It’s all or nothing. We’ve faced worse than just ‘disappearing.’” The air feels heavy, almost alive. Mike can’t tell if it’s him or if the limbo around them is reacting to their emotions—maybe he’ll figure that out later.
Again, with a deep sigh, he says, “…and I think, in the end, if you were waiting years to see me and tell me everything you went through, deep down you knew this would happen. Or at least something like it.”
Finally, Eleven lets out a tearful laugh. She returns the squeeze of his hands on her shoulders and lifts her face, determined.
“I forgot how persistent you get when it comes to Will Byers.”
“You made me think Will was okay, that he was still out there, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t!”
“All I know is Will is alive. Will is alive! He’s out there somewhere. All we have to do is find him.”
“Let’s do it.”
Mike leans his head back and laughs, free and sharp. His eyes fill with tears, and he hugs El so tightly he might break her.
“Thank you. Thank you for trusting me.”
Eleven hugs him back and smiles.
“You have a way with words. That’s why you’re the leader; Will loved it when you talked like this.”
“Really?” Mike pulls away, looking embarrassed. Eleven smiles playfully, but her face has this look of disgust, like seeing shy Mike is some kind of stinky bomb.
“Okay. Explain it to me again.”
🔮
“Alright. One more time,” Mike says.
“You don’t control time—you only have access to it. You choose where and with whom you appear based on your emotions. That’s why, when you exploded from all that emotional overload, you broke the bridge and started seeing both the past and the present.”
“It’s like with Will,” Eleven says slowly, “when Nancy said the Upside Down got stuck on the day Will was taken…”
Mike nods. “Yeah. Henry was using Will. The Upside Down reacted to Will, but Will learned how to handle it from a different perspective. You have an even broader one—that’s why you can manage the gates and move through time. But for this to work, the travel requires emotional clarity.”
They step closer, as if sharing a secret out loud—even though there’s no one else around.
“The past we choose will create another timeline,” Mike continues. “The price is not belonging to the original one.”
Eleven takes a deep breath, never breaking eye contact with him.
“If the bridge connects two different points in time,” he says, “then we don’t have to go very far. We just need to choose which door to enter.”
“But I don’t know which one is right,” Eleven says, stepping back, her mind clearly starting to drift inward again. Mike reacts quickly, closing the distance before she can get lost.
“If we choose wrong, we’ll end up somewhere else, and I won’t know how to come back. And if everything gets altered and we destroy an entire timeline and—”
“Eleven,” Mike interrupts gently. “You don’t have to go back. You’re already there.”
She freezes, her breath catching, as if his words have triggered something. A click.
“…I just have to stop looking at everything at once,” she murmurs, “and choose when to begin.”
“Exactly.” They stare at each other, faces serious, determined.
“The wormhole responds to memory and emotion—not coordinates.”
“Then we need to choose a time where both of us—you and I—were feeling something intense,” Eleven says. “That way I can anchor to it.”
They both think. Eleven looks conflicted. She doesn’t want to go too far back—but not too late either. A critical point, where everything shifted, where everything made sense only to be swept away by a group of kids trying to be heroes.
.
.
.
“1987!”
They shout it at the same time. Sparks light up their eyes, and they laugh immediately at the connection.
In 1987, the Byers lived at the Wheelers’. Eleven and Mike finally had time apart. Mike finally had time to reconnect with Will. All the feelings aligned—but never fully resolved. A few months later, the government and Vecna were after them again.
But it was the final battle.
“Not too far. Not too close. Perfect.”
Eleven nods, smiling. Then she closes her eyes, focusing.
“I tried to connect with you all a long time ago, so I’ve practiced this,” she says. “But I need you to do your best and keep up with me.”
Mike immediately positions himself behind her, back to back.
“Have you done this before?”
Eleven hesitates before answering—the subject clearly delicate.
“Yes.” She doesn’t elaborate. “But not with someone who can handle it like you. This will be my first time.” She smiles. “How exciting.”
Mike chokes slightly and turns to look at her, but her eyes are closed and that satisfied smile remains on her lips.
“Close your eyes,” Eleven continues. “Your soul in limbo should be easier to find—you’re not a physical body, and this mental space is yours, made for you. My presence here means you now have a connection to the wormhole too, since I entered without permission.”
“That’s true,” Mike adds, nodding. “It’s probably weak, but it exists. Still, the fact that you entered my limbo specifically is something we should look into later. Asking Dustin doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
Eleven laughs softly and nods. Then she exhales and focuses. Mike closes his eyes as well and waits.
At first, nothing happens.
They remain there for what feels like hours. Mike sees nothing but darkness behind his eyelids and starts to panic—a lot. The way time doesn’t function like it does in the living world makes him want to rip his hair out. He doesn’t fall asleep, nor do terrifying thoughts come. It’s a strange, unsettling peace.
“Mike…”
El’s voice pulls him back. He opens his eyes sharply and turns toward her. Blood trickles from her nose, her skin pale, but she isn’t looking at him…
She’s staring straight ahead.
It takes him a moment to realize they’re no longer in the rocky dreamscape—but in Hawkins.
Over the years, the town had grown, becoming more civilized. The fear of what happened had faded, making it more livable—closer to a city than a small town. He recognizes it because Michael wanted to vacation there with the whole family the year before.
But that’s not what catches his attention.
It’s the door.
Standing exactly where Hopper’s cabin once stood. The door itself looks normal—plain, ordinary—but it’s open. On the other side is Hopper’s cabin, real and alive, wooden and surrounded by forest. Mike looks behind the door and sees a massive KFC. He looks back at the cabin.
He laughs hysterically.
“It worked… holy shit, it actually worked!”
He laughs, giddy, overwhelmed with the urge to kick, shout, spin around. He can almost see Will again—hear his voice, his laugh, his hair falling into his face. God, he’s desperate.
Eleven wipes her nose gently and stands, leaving Mike on the ground in his euphoric spiral.
“Mike…”
“Yes?” He finally looks at her. She looks serious—not doubtful, but careful.
“We’re leaving everything behind. You know that, right? Walking through that door means we won’t come back here. Going there doesn’t guarantee a wedding in France, or a baby, or even a comfortable life. We’ll be seventeen again. We’ll face Vecna, the government, the Upside Down all over again. It could go very right—or very wrong.”
“I know,” Mike says softly, standing and brushing dirt from his knees. “I know, El.”
She nods. Her eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t let them fall. There’s something else there—longing. Mike knows she understands exactly what they’re choosing.
“Okay,” she says. “One last thing.”
“Yeah?”
She looks at him. He holds her gaze. Silence fills the space.
“This stays our secret. Okay?”
Mike smiles. He agrees completely. Even if he could tell Will, he doesn’t want Will carrying any more weight than he already will.
“Okay. And this time—please don’t sacrifice yourself. We can find another solution.”
Eleven laughs and loops her arm through Mike’s.
“Promise.”
The door grows closer. Mike feels excitement—but also nostalgia. Sadness. He’s leaving behind a life different from the one he’s about to live. And even if it wasn’t the life he wanted from the beginning—it was still a life.
In his heart, Mike says goodbye. He thanks them. He apologizes to his family, to Dustin, Lucas, and Will. He promises to fix it this time. Not to complicate things. Not to ruin anything.
And with that thought—
He steps through the door with El.
🔮
When they step through the door, everything becomes too much.
The first time Eleven tried to do what Mike asked of her—on her own—she was surrounded by millions of doors.
She never stepped into any of them, but she could see what was inside each one. Sometimes she was in the moment when Mike found her in the woods. Sometimes when Will was taken. Sometimes when Hopper was in high school. Sometimes she saw Henry as a child, his time in the lab. Thousands of memories and events stood before her. But she never acted.
Stepping into one of those doors meant more than just entering and fixing things. Mike knew that too. Defeating Vecna and returning to that point was not something she wanted to relive. Deaths. War. Not a single second to rest, because resting meant they had already lost too much time. Never enough. Never finished.
She learned that her vague emotions guided her to where she wanted to be. She could exist between the present and the void if she wanted. She could exist between time, without living it. But if she stepped through a door, she would no longer be observing from the outside—she would have to live it, and use her powers to find a way to connect to that past or present.
In simple terms, Eleven lived through memories. But now, she would have to turn one of them into a new timeline. Easy. Simple. Of course.
Mike’s body goes limp. She is still holding him by the arm—if she lets go, everything ends. She feels the weight of time pressing down on her, the present and the past mixed into a single sphere of energy that settles heavily in her stomach. It makes her groan in pain. Her body and mind feel like they are about to explode. The cabin feels farther away.
She starts to wonder why she agreed to this. Maybe she could have punched Mike and left him in his limbo. Or helped him cross to wherever dead people go. But Mike was right. Erica’s and Dustin’s university lectures had always been fascinating. Wormholes. Cracks in time. Energy. Motion. Power.
She listened, amazed, to every word, every assignment. In the end, she had thought about it too—changing something, doing something, searching for a solution so they could all choose better for once, have control for a single moment. But she had been too afraid.
She thinks of little Jane, a small girl like Lucas but with Erica’s attitude. Max laughed every time the girl said something that drove her father insane.
She thinks of Lily, Jonathan’s oldest daughter—a beautiful girl who loved art and dreamed of being an actress. Joyce used to say she looked just like her.
Eleven had confirmed it when she visited the past version of Hawkins. She saw Joyce and Hopper.
She saw everything.
She saw Will—his paintings, his smiles, the approval forms for every project, the way he lit up whenever someone praised his art.
She saw everything.
And she saw it from far away.
She wanted to be there.
She wanted to change something.
She wanted that life for herself too.
She wanted to graduate in that horrible orange gown, have a graduation photo, play D&D with everyone even if she didn’t fully understand how, go to college, study, learn, make friends, look back and say, Yes, I did it. She wanted to be there for every birthday, every party, every Christmas. She wanted it so badly.
The fact that there were so many doors only meant that she could. But she had never seen it from Mike’s point of view. Deep down, she wanted Mike to say it out loud, to take the first step. She would follow. Terrified of choosing on her own.
She is starting to regret it—but she doesn’t turn back. Not yet. If this ends here, then she will face it head-on.
Mike’s body grows heavier, as if gravity itself has become real. Eleven tightens her grip, even as the energy around them feels like a violent storm. Her arm aches. Blood pours from her nose. Her head throbs, close to splitting apart. She wants this. She doesn’t want to relive everything—but she wants to do something. She knows more now. She understands more. She knows there are other options. She carries the knowledge of past, present, and future. She knows what to do.
She doesn’t want to face it again. But she wants to go back and change it.
Her tears finally fall—pain, pressure, emotion, anger that Mike is unconscious and doesn’t even know what’s happening. But she knows she wants this. She wants to be there. She wants to live.
With one last effort, she reaches out.
“El… you don’t have to go back. You’re already there.”
Remember. Remember. REMEMBER.
One day, months after moving back to Hawkins from California, Mike came to see her at the cabin. Hopper reluctantly allowed them to be together—with the door open, specifically, and with him nearby to keep watch. Eleven rolled her eyes and pulled Mike into her room anyway, leaving the door open just five inches. They kissed, talked—just talked.
After a long conversation and a kissing session—gross, honestly, she doubts she could ever do that again—they fell asleep sitting shoulder to shoulder, the sun setting behind them. The only moment of peace. The following week, her training to defeat Vecna began. Weeks, sometimes months, passed before she saw Mike again. Her time was limited. She barely saw her friends. Her family had to visit in secret. Time slipped away.
With that memory in mind, Hopper’s cabin feels closer. Now she can see it not only from the outside, but from within. Some things remain exactly as she remembers them, and she can’t help but feel amazed. She moves forward, searching through her mind as reality begins to blur with what should not exist.
And there, in the middle of the room, Mike and Eleven from 1987 are asleep. Their positions promise stiff necks and bad moods when they wake—but they are there.
She laughs softly to herself.
She did it. She made it.
“The wormhole responds to memory and emotion, not coordinates.”
Mike, that bastard. Always too smart for his own good. Too bad he was also an idiot.
She still feels the pressure of time.
Energy vibrates against her skin. She still hasn’t let go of Mike, afraid that if she does, he will disappear forever. Carefully, she sits in front of their 1987 selves. Mike lies beside her, his face peaceful. If this works, she wants to see his expression when they wake up.
A deep breath. A sharp feeling.
She wants to live this time.
Please—whoever you are, whatever exists—let her have this.
And with that, Eleven gets to work.
In a blink, she and Mike are in Hawkins, 1987.
She laughs.
And time begins once again.
She is back.