Nobody says anything. Nobody questions anything about the countless hours he spends alone, on the outskirts of Hawkins lab. Nobody mentions the walkie talking he keeps on the floor beside his bed. Nobody asks about his disappearances. After all, he always turns up hours later, rain-soaked and distraught. Nobody confronts him about his quietness, or the way he seems to be folding in on himself, from guilt or grief or both. They notice, of course.

. . .

84 days. Not quite three months. He keeps the count in his head, and every day, it drags him farther away from her.

He feels her. Not physically.

She's a shadow, a presence. He feels her in his thoughts, like there's some barrier she is trying to break.

He can feel where his thoughts end and hers begin. It's a beautiful, complex bridge that she's haphazardly constructed over the more recent weeks.

Her presence is a relief. It's unfamiliar, even befuddling, but it gives him hope. Mostly, it just drives him crazy.

She caresses his thoughts as if they are fragile, precious things. He tries to reach out to her, but fails. His boundaries do not stretch far. Hers stretch over several thousand universes.

. . .

Mike felt her on Christmas morning. For the second time. The blurry happiness of the day made him forget almost completely about her, if only for a few hours. Opening gifts, the heaping plate of pancakes their mom had expertly made, and the prospect of showing off his new gaming system to his friends later that day had him buzzing with excitement.

Mike. The single, whispered word slipped into his subconscious as he was helping his mom clean up after breakfast. He dropped the plate he was holding as he whirled around, unable to detect where the sound had come from. The blue ceramic shattered across the kitchen tiles.

"Mike! Really?" His mom was on him in an instant, eyes flashing. He didn't register her words, still staring at the floor. The sound he'd heard wasn't really a sound at all, but a thought. His name.

"Get a broom, will you?"

He was shaken out of his reverie, but not fully recovered.

Mike. His mind reeled. He managed to make his feet move toward the closet in the hallway, reaching for a broom. It was there, away from everyone, that he felt her. His brain had trouble processing the thought. She was close to him. She was just, there.

He began to clean up his mess, methodically sweeping the pieces into a cracked, plastic dustpan.

. . .

The first time he felt her: In Mr. Clarke's old science classroom, back pressed against wooden cabinets, watching her disappear before his eyes. He'd felt her reaching out. He felt all her anger and fear exploding inside his own chest, throbbing with the beat of his heart. There had been something else, too. And she was gone, shattered.

Mike tried to push the thought from his head, without success.

This time, she'd given him something to hold on to.

A name.

. . .

After that, he felt Eleven all the time. She was always near. Sometimes, she actively tried to break the barrier. What he got was fuzzy and interfered by his own mind playing tricks. He'd feel a sudden emotion seize him, it's strength overwhelming. Like the time he'd gone to see a movie with Dustin. Inexplicably, he'd had a sort of panic attack. The fear rose inside him like a monster. He'd begun to tremble. He knew that. Dustin noticed, because Dustin somehow notices everything.

When he was questioned, Mike lied. Claimed he was getting a fever.

It wasn't just fear. Hunger and thirst, and something else. Like longing, though he wasn't sure if it was just his own. Whatever it was, it lived in his chest constantly and tore him apart, piece by piece.

She could get full words through to him. When Eleven spoke, he'd try to answer. He failed. Every single time.

His grades began to suffer. Her voice distracted him from the present. It even distracted him from his friends. They didn't say anything, but he knew they felt his absence. They knew why he'd distanced himself from them. They knew about her. All Mike wanted to do was bring her home.

In the recent weeks, he'd been having dreams. Wandering dreams that morphed into nightmares before he awoke with words on his lips that were not his own. Every night, it was the same.

He'd run through an endless expanse of trees that grew thicker and more clumped together the more he traveled. Every corner, every misty patch of darkness, a voice hid. It taunted him, led him deeper into the unknown. He wound up back in that classroom. He wound up watching her disappear. Every. Single. Time.