Chapter Text
It was Nancy who suggested he travel to Iceland. They’d been talking about Mike’s latest book over Thanksgiving, how he was finding it hard to world-build the more he stayed still.
Mike had never left the States until last year, when his publisher sent him on an all-expenses trip to the English Midlands for inspiration. The forests there were infamous with authors, especially those within the fantasy genre. There was something awe-inducing about the greenery and quiet hillsides, Mike thought. For a few days, all of his problems seemed to fade away and he returned home with renewed motivation. He’d found the answer to the long-pondered question: what was the world like outside of Hawkins, Indiana?
He’d left his hometown for college, sure, and there had been a few stops around the country here and there, but there was just something different about travelling the world. Mike wondered then, after this first taste of discovery, about all of the things he’d been missing out on. He wanted to be more cultured, to learn more about history and language. He wanted to try the local cuisines of countries he’d only ever heard of. He had spent so long sheltered, keeping to himself to avoid any potential hurt, that he had practically cut himself off from the world outside.
Since the first novel had become something of a quiet success, he hadn’t once needed to worry about money. His bank account was stable, partially due to a graduation present that made up a good chunk of his savings, and while the book profits were nothing to write home about, they were good—not enough to make him quit his day job. He still worked part time at a small Radio Shack back in Boston.
Once Mike knew that writing was his calling in life, he never saw much need to venture outside of that. Did he build a world-ending bomb at sixteen years old? Sure, but it wasn’t exactly a passion project. If he’d ever felt the drive in any way to fall into science the same way Dustin had, all motivation would have left his body the moment the explosion went off. It took everything from him. He lived in darkness and daydreams for a year after that, until one day it was like a switch flicked and he suddenly found life in his body again.
It had been the thought of her, too, still having life that brought him back from the brink of oblivion. The thought of his love, maybe—by some chance, some miracle—having made it out alive. He knew it was far-fetched, but it gave him a new perspective on life: he couldn’t just sit idly by and let her fade away into nothing but a long-lost memory. She had to live on, even if only by his pen.
Mike imagined that maybe, by just wishing her into existence, she would always be there. Not a ghost, nor a memory, but a girl immortalised in writing, the way legends are.
So, he wrote. Stories about a party of four going off on these fantastical, almost nonsensical, adventures. In the second book, the party became five. They gained a female member to honor Max. But even in the first installment of “The Otherworld Chronicles,” there was one character who was always around but never named.
She wasn’t a party member exactly, but a quiet, mysterious mage who seemed to appear out of nowhere in times of need. She would show up every other chapter, turn the paladin into a bumbling, blushing loser with nothing but a glance, before helping the group defeat the monster towards the end of the story. By the third book, Mike suggested she might be called Juniper.
It was the Thanksgiving after this third volume was published that Nancy cornered him. She’d slid the first draft he mailed her across the dining table as their mom plated up dessert and said, “You need to find your hero again, Mike. He’s lost.”
“What the hell are you talking about? He’s right where he’s always been.”
“As in, I don’t understand his purpose anymore. What’s he working for, Mike? A life of sipping ale in some dingy, weird pub? That doesn’t sound like the paladin I know.”
“You almost sound like a fan,” he’d teased his sister.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” Nancy had rolled her eyes. “I just think you’re talented, Mike, and I don’t want you to lose that because you’re bored or something.”
“I’m not bored.”
“Well, it reads like you are,” she’d told him. “Nobody wants to read about some sad guy who’s too scared to go after what he wants.” Nancy had skimmed through the pages until she landed on the last one, and she’d dragged her finger across a section marked with pink highlighter. It read:
Tears welled in the mage’s eyes as Marcus extended a lush handkerchief. She pinched it between her fingers with a stunned expression, as if having never been shown kindness. “Thank you,” she said, bringing the cloth up to her lips where blood had pooled. Slowly, she turned away from him.
He longed to grab her by the waist and plant a kiss on her lips, blood be damned, but something was holding him back. It felt like a weight on his shoulders, and he knew that lifting it meant crossing a line they could never walk back from. One day, he hoped to be brazen enough to shake it loose.
“I’m not one of your readers, little brother.” Nancy wiggled her eyebrows, lips pulled into a sly grin. “You want her, go get her.”
When his agent suggested a trip overseas, it had been a no-brainer. He got to see more of the world, to expand his—along with his characters’—horizons. That first trip had been a real eye-opener, and Mike had loved exploring so much that he’d decided to take a year off work. He was on good terms with his boss at the Shack, and there was no rush on the latest book. Theo Riley’s avid readers would have to wait for the next adventure. Mike always knew he would have to publish under a fake name, that his epic tales of adventure and magic would be the ghost stories told by someone who never existed at all. He couldn’t use his name—anyone’s, for that matter—because it would only put them in danger.
He believed wholeheartedly for all the years that Eleven disappeared herself to protect them, to put an end to the government’s puppeteering of their lives once and for all, and Mike knew he would never forgive himself if he jeopardised that in any way. It’s why he never looked for her, why he never ventured outside of his safety bubble to find answers. If she left him for the reasons he thought, then going against her wishes would be the worst thing he could do. It’d been a promise, of sorts, and searching for her meant breaking the trust she’d put in him.
Now, it’s mid-fall 1994, and he is four months deep into a trip around the Nordic lands. He has nothing but muddy boots, a wallet of foreign cash, and a backpack full of clothes not built for the weather. The latest stop on his connect-the-dots of the world is Selfoss, Iceland. A fisherman in Reykjavik had suggested he give the town a quick stop-by for its scenery, but there’d be a problem with his taxi; something about a blown tire and no cell service. Mike wasn’t too sure what was going on because of the language barrier, but by the time they arrived, it was well into the night, and the driver was friendly enough to drop him off at a local B&B for the night.
Lumières du Nord was run by an older French couple who had moved to the island about ten years back. It was a white building in the middle of the town center, tucked between a florist to one side and what looked to be an expensive seafood restaurant to the other.
The door was open slightly, despite it being the middle of the night, and there was a long-winding staircase up to the reception. The wooden floorboards creaked as Mike ascended them, his knuckles pale white as he clutched the banister for safety. It felt like the whole place might crumble in a moment’s turn. It wasn’t rundown by any means, but it definitely needed a lick of paint and some TLC, Mike thought. But then, maybe that’s what they were going for. Despite its flaws, it felt… quaint.
The reception was right at the top of the stairs. A large oak desk that looked like it had been ripped straight out of a classroom. There was a puppy curled up in a plush bed by the side of the desk. It growled, rising to alert, when Mike dropped his backpack at his feet.
The girl at the desk didn’t acknowledge his presence, too preoccupied with a crossword. She was sitting sideways to him, on a swivel chair with her legs pulled up to her chin. She twisted and twisted the pen in her hand until the capped-end finally made its way between her teeth. She was stuck, that much Mike could tell.
He searched for a bell to catch her attention, fearing she might jump out of her skin if he suddenly spoke, but there was nothing on the desk except for the logbook and an empty teacup.
The receptionist leaned back in her seat, pen still tucked between her teeth, and brushed a few fallen curls aside. There was nothing of note about the move except for the ring on her index finger. Mike had only ever seen one of the sort.
When he was fourteen, he had purchased the very same one at an antique store back in Hawkins.
But… no, it couldn’t be. It would have to be a miracle. Not that she would be anywhere, but that she would be here, running the front desk of some random hotel in the middle of basically nowhere. Mike liked a fairytale as much as the next storyteller, but this… this would be too much. There was no way. It would be the strangest story ever.
Mike always wondered what finding her again would be like. He liked to think she would pull him into the void, give him a date and time, and he would rush to meet her by the waterfalls they’d talked about but never pinpointed. It was a fantasy, he knew that, and life was never that kind. But the delusion, the idea of an epic love story their family could talk about for generations, had been enough to live on.
Mike never once thought that the moment his heart started beating again would be like this. But there was lavender in the air, and that’s how he knew. It was always her favorite.
This is not the first time Mike has seen her; she’s come to him in his dreams, and in the short, coffee-colored curls of a girl in the concession line at the movies. Eleven crossed his mind every morning as sunlight slipped through the blinds of his bedroom window to illuminate his face.
One time, back when her death was still a fresh cut, and he hadn’t yet considered that reality might not be what it seemed, Mike became so convinced that this vision—this beam of light with her face on it—had been some kind of message from the void that he almost booked himself a one-way ticket to the afterlife. He would have gone through with it, too, if only Dustin hadn’t shown up with Trivial Pursuit and a six-pack of Bud Light that he’d obviously talked Steve into procuring. Mike had never been more grateful to have his friend than that day.
But this version of Eleven before him, this young woman with her patchwork overalls and blonde highlights… She was no illusion. She was real.
Once upon a time, Mike had studied her every feature, back when he had little else to do except homework and monster-hunting. He could remember cradling her face so tenderly in his hands—as if a glass jewel that might break should he ever let it fall—that it would be almost impossible to forget what she looked like. He had kissed that tiny, faded scar on her forehead far too many times not to recognise her.
You’ve seen me… the real me.
Her hair was lighter, pulled back into a braid by a patterned scrunchie that reminded him of old arcade carpets. Purple eyeshadow lightly dusted her lids, and Mike would be lying if he said it didn’t remind him of fruit punch and dancing to The Police's greatest hits. She had on a simple long-sleeved white raglan beneath a pair of denim overalls, the front adorned with an array of material patches. They almost looked like scout badges.
The nametag pinned to her left brace read ‘Eleanor,’ but that’s not how Mike remembered her. Her name had fallen from his lips so many times, in so many ways, over the years—a yell, a plea—that his tongue once probably considered it idiolect. A secret language of his own invention. Eleven, Jane, but most of all, El. Most of all, my love.
Mike had never considered the possibility that she might have kept it, anyway she could.
“Hi,” he croaked suddenly, voice groggier than intended. He gripped the edge of the desk, his fists tense, and cleared his throat. “I mean… hello.”
She looked at him then, finally breaking free from her newspaper. All-too-familiar hazel eyes met his brown, and Mike’s heart soared.
The moment must take her by surprise, too, Mike mused, because the biro slipped from her grasp and she almost flew out of her chair at the sight of him. Her brows pulled into a confused knot. She looked more puzzled now than she did trying to work out the weekly crossword.
“My…” she whispered, tears in her eyes now, too. Whether she meant to say his name or something else, Mike couldn’t tell, but he’d like to imagine it was the former.
My Mike.
There’s a pause, a silent moment to take each other in.
Then, “hi.”