Eight months ago, they got her back from Brenner. She was the same little girl that had gone missing from their lives a few short weeks prior, but something about her was different. Hopper thought she just needed time to readjust to her life again.
Five months ago, Hopper's world exploded when they found of that she had been impregnated during her kidnapping, in hopes of bringing someone else like her into the world.
Another experiment. Another weapon.
Hopper wanted the pregnancy terminated immediately.
He feared she would end up no different than her own mother, or perhaps worse.
It wasn't safe. It was suicide. They would always be after her. Always after her child, he would tell Joyce.
But El was adamant; she's killed people before, but she wouldn't kill a baby. Her baby.
El had so many choices taken away from her, and Hopper realized this was not something he was willing to destroy their relationship over, so he knew that the only thing he could do was try to help her. Try to figure out how to keep them safe.
He and Joyce brought Doctor Owens into the picture, and after a lot of time and careful planning, a safe and secret adoption for the baby was planned.
24 hours ago, El went into labor, and Hopper was reminded about just how tough this kid really was.
But time passes much too fast, and now it's time for her, Lydia, to go.
He doesn't want to be the one to tell her.
He doesn't want to be the one to rip her child from her arms just like she had been from her own mother.
But there's no other choice, so Hopper reminds her softy, "El, it's time."
She doesn't look up from the baby buried in her arms. She has her head nuzzled right down on her blanket, whispering promises and desperately trying to remember everything about her, right down to the way she smells.
It didn't matter that she was just a kid herself. The loss of a child still hurts no matter how it happens. Hopper puts his hand on her back, and she understands that her short time is over.
El carries Lydia over to the car seat that sits on their dining table. She carefully unwraps the blanket, and the baby begins to whine.
"It's okay, it's okay," El shushes, sniffling softly trying to contain her own tears. Even though she's never used a car seat, she successfully straps the baby safely in.
Hopper turns away, pacing to keep himself occupied, while the doctor puts on his snow boots and jacket.
"Do you think it would be good for her to keep something from the baby?" Owens asks Hopper.
Hopper is about to tell him no; a clean break would be easier on her. But then he sees the blue hair band around El's wrist and realizes that it's not fair to ask her to do something that he couldn't do himself.
He goes to El's bedroom and takes out a small quilt from her blanket rack.
"Why don't you keep her blanket," he softly suggests to El, as she continues to tuck the white blanket with balloons on it around the infant.
She shakes her head. "It's snowing. She'll be cold," she tells him adamantly.
"We can send her with one of your blankets instead," he offers, showing her the quilt.
El stops tucking the baby blanket in but can't do anything more. The simple task of removing the blanket was too overwhelming and Hopper could see that, so he switches out the blankets quickly, while El watches on.
"We better get going," Owens says after a moment, putting his hand on the baby carrier. The baby is already back to sleep, not knowing any better. El steps up to the carrier once more.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she tells the sleeping baby. "I love you more than anything in the world. I love you. I love you," she repeats, softly kissing the baby on the head. She's absently gripping the baby's blanket in her hands and steps away, so the doctor can pick up the carrier.
"She's going to a wonderful family," he promises. El nods, knowing that it's the truth. But that didn't make it any easier.
The second the door is opened, the cold wind from outside blows snow in from the porch.
"Make sure she stays warm, okay?" El instructs with a rising panic, as Doc Owens steps outside.
"The car is already waiting and warmed up," he reassures her. "I'll let you know when we get there," he tells Hopper, who wraps his arm around El's shoulders.
"Thanks," he nods, letting the screen door slam shut but still watching until they disappear into the snow. When they are out of sight, he closes the door, but El doesn't move from her spot.
Whatever she had been doing to hold herself together was now gone. The life was drained from her, and she collapsed to her knees on the floor, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. Hopper sits down next to her. He wasn't going to tell it was going to be okay, and he wasn't going to tell her that she would be safe now, that her child could have a normal life. No, he wasn't going to tell her any of that because it wouldn't make this any easier. Her daughter didn't die, but he still knew exactly what she was feeling, and he knew there was nothing anyone could say to make it better.
While he knew what she was going through, his own feelings right now were a bit different than El's. He felt immense anger over her sadness, anger over everything she's been put through in her short 14 years on earth. He wanted everyone who's ever hurt her, anyone who has so much as worked with Martin Brenner, dead. Or maybe not dead; maybe he wanted them to feel exactly what this poor child was feeling right now, which perhaps was worse than being dead.
Hopper had been lost in his own head for who knows how long when he realized that El was finally quiet; she had cried until she had nothing left. The past 36 hours had been rough on him, so he couldn't even imagine what her body was feeling. He picked the kid up and carried her to her bed. She went nearly limp in his arms from exhaustion, yet she didn't let go of the balloon blanket gripped tightly in her hands.
He tried to lay her down carefully in her dark bedroom, but she was already awake, drifting in and out of consciousness. She brought the blanket up to her face, nuzzling into it. Hopper sat back on the bed next to her until she had fallen asleep again.
Seeing her like this reminded him of how young she really was. Given everything she's gone through, sometimes it was hard for him to remember that she was just a kid herself. He felt so much guilt over the fact that she has never been able to truly feel safe, or that she's never had the chance to feel love from one of her birth parents the way she did for her own child.
"I'm so sorry El," he told the sleeping child, leaving a gentle kiss on her head before exiting her bedroom.
He spent the night wallowing in much needed beer and cigarettes.
Owens called to let him know that the baby had been successfully passed on to her new family. Hopper thanked him for his help, and that was it.
It was over.
He had fallen asleep on the couch at some point but had woken up to a rustling. He immediately sat up and turned to where he heard the noise.
"Sorry," El apologized, gingerly bending over to collect the bags of frozen peas that she had dropped on the floor.
The doctor had recommended only 24 hours of ice on her sore nether region, and El was nearly at 36 hours now, but Hopper wasn't about to tell her not to use it if it was going to bring her some relief. "Do you need something for pain?"
She shakes her head no. "I already took some medicine."
She brings the ice up to the front of her shirt, pressing the bags against her chest.
Oh, right, there was that kind of pain too.
"You can just yell if you need something, and I can get it for you," he tells her, helping her walk back to her bed.
"It's okay. I had to go to the bathroom anyway. There's still a lot of blood," she explains.
"Like I should call the doctor?"
She shakes her head no again. "I just think it was too long," she tells him simply.
She had been asleep for nearly 6 hours, and he couldn't remember the last time she took her pain medication.
Hopper quickly learned with Diane, and again with El, that nearly all of pregnancy could be embarrassing. However, it was easy with El because she had never been shy about her body. Growing up in the lab, she was taught that she was not private property, so the embarrassment of sore breasts and nudity was practically lost on her.
He followed her back to bed, again, staying with her until she was asleep. It was the least he could do.
Eventually, the frozen peas were no longer as frozen, and her shirt was wet, so he covered her up carefully and returned the vegetable bags back to the freezer.
He set an alarm for 4 more hours; it would be 10 am, and she could have more pain medicine and ice.
Despite being exhausted, he couldn't get back to sleep.
El was back awake another hour later too, so he made breakfast for them and delivered it to her bedroom.
"Thank you," she tells him. "But I'm not very hungry."
"I know you aren't. But I need you to eat some of it anyway, okay?"
She agrees and managed to eat half an Eggo but couldn't force in any more than that. Mike called just before noon to check on her, but El didn't want to talk to him, which Hopper realized was a first. She stayed in her bedroom most of that day, only getting up to go to the bathroom. He finally put the tv in her room, so she would have something to do besides stare out her bedroom window at the falling snow.
The next day she swore to him that she would be okay while he went to work, but he found himself making an excuse to come home early to check on her.
She had used her powers to open the front door. It was the first time he had seen her use her them in months. They weren't sure if it was safe for the baby while she was pregnant, so she didn't use them unless she really needed to. She was sitting on the couch, running her fingers absently over the silky edge of the baby blanket.
Days passed, and he tried to get her back into a routine. To keep everything as normal as possible, to ignore the symptoms of her deepening depression, with excuses about her wounds being so fresh, or her being young, or that it was just all the hormones. But when she had gone nearly a week without wanting to see Mike, he knew she was not okay.
"Just leave me alone!" she screams at Hopper. "Please! Just please. Leave me alone," she begs. Her voice breaks, and she sinks to the ground in tears in her doorway.
He knew exactly what it was like to want to be alone when you were suffering. And he knew what being alone with grief could do to someone. He wasn't going to let that black emptiness take her any further than it already had.
That night he wakes up to her screaming in her bedroom.
She hadn't had a nightmare in months.
When he got to her room, she was already awake.
"I heard her," she tells him adamantly, throwing her covers on the floor, pushing past him into the darkened living room. "I heard her, she was crying," she tells him turning on the lamp, wildly searching the house for someone that she knows isn't here. Hopper grabs her shoulders to snap her out of it. "It was her…I…heard her," she cries, looking to him for help. Fresh tears drip down her cheeks.
"I know kid, I know."
"She was here."
"I know. I believe you."
It's all she needs to hear. She collapses, and he brings her close to him.
"You believe me?" she hiccups when she can finally manage to get words out.
"Yes, I do. After Sara, I saw her too. And I heard her. I didn't know what was real, but then I figured out that it was in my mind, and I had to pack all that away otherwise I was going to fall down a hole that I couldn't get out of."
"How do I forget?"
"Well you don't have to forget. She'll always be with you right here." He places his hand over her heart. "But uh, we can talk to the doctor. There's medicine that you can take that will help you," he explains. He hates the idea of having to medicate a kid for depression, but she obviously needed something.
"Medicine? I'm not sick."
"I know you aren't sick... But it's medicine that will help you in here," he tells her patting her head. "It will help you to not feel so sad all the time. It will help you do things that you used to like to do. Like seeing your friends, playing games. Things other than sleeping," he explains. "It will just help you feel better."
"I want to feel better," she nearly begs.
"I know. I know."
They sit together for a few minutes, before she quietly confesses, "I don't want to be here anymore." Her words hit him hard as if someone punched him in the gut. He knew exactly what that confession felt like, and it was killing him to hear it from her mouth. "Everyone would be better if I wasn't alive. If I was never born. Mama would be okay, Joyce and Will would be better, Mike wouldn't have to worry," she explains to him as if it were that simple.
Hopper is quiet for a moment before his thoughts come rushing out.
"You know, I thought that about myself once too." He pauses before the next sentence comes out of his mouth. "I even had the gun in my mouth, ready to pull the trigger."
This was something he had told no one, and it was perhaps even dangerous to be telling her now.
"Sara was gone. Diane left. No one would even miss me," he explained to her. "I, uh, well I don't know what stopped me that night. But I got some help. I started taking my medicine, and sure, everything was okay. I wasn't thinking about dying anymore. But I wasn't happy. I was never happy. Do you know what changed that for me?"
She shook her head no.
"You did, El. I would be no where without you, kid. You give me reason to be here, to keep breathing. To keep trying even when things feel really hard. You've given me so much. And I don't want you to ever think that you don't deserve to live, that the world would be better off without you. Because I know that's not true."
El is crying now, and he feels instant guilt and remorse for putting something like this on her.
"But what if I can't?" she asks.
"Can't what?"
"Get better," she answers solemnly.
"I'm going to get you some help, okay? I'll help you get better. I've seen you do much harder things," he promises her. He holds her here for a few moments before he decides to get her back to bed. After her suicidal confession, there was no way he was going to leave her alone, so he laid her down under the covers and then laid down next to her. El turned over, curling up on his chest. "I'm glad you are here," she sighs sleepily before drifting off to sleep.
For the first time in a long time, he realized that he was truly glad too.