He hadn't told anyone where he was going but he bet they would figure it out soon. With that in mind, he pedaled faster, not wanting to waste any time, especially since overhead, the black night sky roiled with the storm clouds that had been gathering all day. As Mike screeched his bike to a halt, the raindrops started to fall. He hopped off his bike and pulled his hood over his head. Pulling his flashlight out of his backpack and turning it on with a click, he stepped off the road and into the woods.
There was thunder pounding in the distance but he couldn't hear it over the heartbeat that was pounding in his ears. This was just like that night. Even the rain that was pouring down so much that in minutes he was soaked to the skin was the same. The only difference now was he was alone. Lucas, Dustin, and even Will had given up months ago. It wasn't like with Will, Dustin and Lucas had told him sadly. "Mike, we actually saw her d-"
That was the point where he cut them off. She wasn't.
Dead.
Even thinking the word was painful. She was out there somewhere. He knew it. All he had to do was find her.
He could barely see anything through the sheets of rain and darkness, even with the flashlight. Its light only reached a few feet ahead of him. "Stupid-" he mumbled as he whacked it against his leg, but the light didn't get brighter. All it did was flicker sickly. He should have changed the batteries before he left. Great.
"EL!" he shouted.
As always, there was no response. The knot that never loosened in his stomach tightened. But that never stopped him from trying again and again and again:
"El, where are you?"
"El, are you out there?"
"El!"
"EL!"
Long after his voice had gone hoarse, he stopped calling. He'd been walking for what felt like hours and he was completely soaked. The storm raged on as he continued to walk, his legs aching. The only sound was the rain and the wind. It all felt so empty and cold. He felt empty and cold. Not that that was a change. He felt like that most of the time now. It was like there was always this big gaping hole in his chest that just got bigger whenever he thought about her. So it felt like it was getting bigger and deeper every minute of every day. He couldn't stop going over what he could have done differently; could he have stopped it? Could he have saved her?
That was what hurt the most: there wasn't anything he could have done and it just made him feel worse. Made him feel like it had all been inevitable.
Although, if he was honest with himself, everything about his time with El, everything about her, had seemed too good to last.
The hole got deeper.
He stopped walking. Trying to ignore the lump in his throat, he swallowed, setting his jaw. He croaked out one last, "El?"
It hung pathetically in the air and then faded away with all the rest. His shoulders slumped. The flashlight was getting weaker by the minute. He decided to head back, not caring much for the idea of trying to get back to the road without any light at all. He was pretty far into the woods; it would take him awhile to get back out. He sighed, gearing himself up for all the questions that he knew were coming, the concerned glances, or worse, the pitying ones, where everyone looked at him like he was going nuts. Maybe he was. Everyone else thought he was chasing a ghost. But he couldn't give up on El. He would try again tomorrow. And the day after. And then every day after that until he found something, anything.
He started to turn around, but something caught his eye, something in the flashlight's beam that didn't have the jagged edges of trees and branches and leaves, the only things he'd been finding for the past year.
His heart leaped but he took a deep breath, reminding himself it was probably just some old tarp or something equally as disappointing. But as he got closer to it, it looked less and less like a tarp and more like something. . . human. His heart was pounding now, blood rushing in his ears as he crouched down. Whoever it was was so covered in dirt and grime he couldn't even tell what color their clothes were. He set his flashlight down next to him and reached out a hand. But then he paused, his hand hanging in the air inches away from their shoulder, a horrible thought crossing his mind. Someone collapsed in the woods in the middle of a storm? Alone? What if they were. . .? His stomach curdled but he took a deep steadying breath: he had to know.
Gingerly, he turned the body over.
He let out a strangled yelp.
It was Eleven.
Her face was covered in dirt and mud but he would know it anywhere.
"El!" he gasped. "El, wake up! It's me! It's Mike!" Frantically, he bent an ear down to her chest. There it was: a faint heartbeat. Extremely faint, but it was there.
"El!" he said frantically, now gently shaking her shoulder.
Why wouldn't she wake up?
What if she couldn't wake up?
How was he going to get her home? He had to get her home and out of this storm. He could already feel himself shivering and panic started to set in as he wondered how long she'd been out here like this.
"Please, El," he tried again, his voice breaking this time. Please wake up, he thought desperately.
But then she moved her head.
"El!" he gasped in relief. "El, are you all right?"
Her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at him, eyes barely open at all from exhaustion.
"Can you move, El? Do you think you can walk?"
She opened her mouth but no sound came out.
"What?" Mike said, leaning an ear down close to her mouth.
"Yes," he finally heard in a raspy whisper that was barely more than a breath.
Relief flooded him. "Oh, good. Here," he said, reaching for her hand. "Let me help you up."
Her small hand latched onto his with a painfully tight grip. Ignoring the pain and holding on tighter, he slipped his other arm under her back to help her sit up. She sagged into him, nearly making him lose his balance.
"Are you sure you can walk, El?"
Slowly, she nodded into his chest, and he noticed she was shivering. No wonder; she was still wearing that pink dress and Chief Hopper's shirt, and both were full of holes. She was still wearing his socks and sneakers, but the socks were showing through the fronts of the shoes; they were falling apart. He dropped his backpack and tore off his coat, draping it around her shoulders. He had the hooded sweatshirt; he'd be fine. She was probably already freezing to death.
He grabbed his flashlight and shouldered his backpack before slowly standing up, taking El with him, all the while saying, "It's all right, I've got you."
Once they were on their feet, El leaning all her body weight on Mike, he let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to help her stay on her feet. Slowly, they set off, heading back the way he had come.
Mike raced home, El sitting behind him on the bike, her arms wrapped around his middle. The way she leaned into him like she couldn't hold herself up scared him and he pedaled all the faster.
They finally came to a gentle stop right outside his basement door. After helping El off the bike, he threw open the door.
"MIKE!"
Both he and El jumped. The basement was full of people, all on their feet: his mom and dad by the couch where they'd probably been sitting, Lucas, Dustin, and Will around the table, and Nancy behind them, a hand clapped over her mouth. They were all staring wide-eyed at the pair dripping and shivering in the doorway.
"Geez," Dustin whispered as Mike's mom raced over to them, followed closely by Nancy. El shrank into him.
"What happened, Mike?" Concern and fear were written all over his mother's face.
"El needs help, I'll tell you in a minute," he said, his teeth chattering.
Nancy gently pushed her mother aside. "Mom. Let me. She knows me." To El, she gave a tender smile. "Hi El. Remember me? Nancy? Mike's sister?" El started nodding before Nancy was even finished. She took Nancy's outstretched hand with what must have been the same iron grip that Mike had felt because worry suddenly clouded her face. But she looked back up at Mike and smiled, trying to put him at ease. "I've got her, okay, Mike?" Then she wrapped her arm around El's quaking shoulders and slowly led her up the basement stairs.
Mike fought the urge to follow them, knowing that Nancy would take care of El, but still feeling the panic of not having her here with him. He'd just gotten her back and didn't want to spend any more time than he had to away from her. He'd had a year's worth of that and it was enough for a lifetime. Besides, his parents and friends were all still staring at him, waiting for an explanation.
"What's goin' on, Mike?" his dad drawled, a frown replacing his normally bored expression.
"Where have you been?" his mom asked, clutching his shoulders. He looked past her at Dustin, Lucas, and Will and knew from the looks on their faces that they knew exactly where he'd been. They looked excited; El was their friend, too, so they would definitely be glad to have her back, but was that guilt or worry that he also saw in their eyes? He couldn't tell and honestly, it didn't matter. He looked back into his mom's brown eyes, which were wide and scared as they took in her son. "Honey, you're soaked. And look at you, you're so cold you're turning blue! Mike, what were you thinking going out in that storm?" she cried, cupping his cheeks in her hands. He pulled away. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I found El." He smiled, shivering. "She was out there, in the woods." He'd thought that coming in out of the rain that was still thundering down outside would have meant he'd be warmer, but if anything, he felt colder.
But that was only on the outside.
Inside, he felt like he was floating. She was here! She was alive!
His mom looked like she didn't know what to make of him, standing there dripping, saying he'd found his friend in the woods, but he had found her, so she sighed and smiled ruefully. "Honey, why don't you go change into some dry clothes?" He nodded and sidled past her. The guys were all smiling at him and they swallowed him into a group hug. Then they let him go upstairs with smiles, grins, and thumbs-ups, which he returned. Just before Mike closed the door he heard his mom's voice suggesting that they might want to come back tomorrow.
"Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler, but. . ." Lucas started as the door clicked shut.
Upstairs in Nancy's room, El was sitting on her bed, looking around at the pinks and blues and the warm yellow light. She still felt weak, but a warm shower while Nancy waited close by to help had invigorated her enough that she could sit up on her own.
She didn't know how long she'd wandered through the woods that day or how long she'd laid there in the mud. Honestly, she didn't know how she'd gotten into the woods at all. The last thing she remembered was that moment in the classroom when she'd said goodbye to Mike and Dustin and Lucas, her friends, the Demogorgon plastered against the wall by her power, the scream that had come from somewhere deep and hidden inside of her, the throbbing pain that had filled her head as she felt the warm blood streaming out of her nose, and then nothing. She'd woken up in the middle of the woods, dark storm clouds peeking through the tops of the trees. It had been cold, so cold. The pain in her head was gone and she reached up to touch her head. She'd been shocked to find hair, long hair reaching down to her shoulders. It was stringy and dirty when she held it up to get a better look at it.
It must have been a long time since that goodbye.
She was still wearing her dress and the shirt from "Hopper" but they were nothing like how she remembered. They were falling to pieces. She'd gotten up and started walking, not knowing where she was, but wanting to get away from the cold that surrounded her. The cold feeling inside wouldn't go away until she woke up in the rain with Mike looking down at her with worry and fear written all over his face. Worry and fear for her.
Now there was warmth all around her. Nancy had given her a pair of her soft "pajamas" and the bed was soft and springy. She felt her eyelids getting heavy as Nancy sat behind her, gently combing her new hair. She'd decided she liked it, especially the way it brushed against her ears.
"There. Is that all right?" Nancy asked once she'd finished, her blue eyes searching El's face. El nodded and smiled. Nancy smiled back, and El thought it looked like her entire face had been lit up. She was still a little shy around Mike's sister, but she was very nice, treating her with the same gentleness that Mike did.
"You can sleep here tonight, if you want, El." She paused. "Are you hungry at all?"
El shook her head. All she wanted to do was sleep, but there was still something gnawing at her.
"Where's Mike?"
Nancy raised her eyebrows. "Oh. I don't know. He's probably still down in the baseme-"
There was a knock on the bedroom door. Nancy got up from the bed and opened the door just enough so she could see out but not enough for Eleven to see who it was.
Not that she needed to see once the person started talking.
"Is. . . El all right?"
Mike's quiet voice made her heart leap. She blinked in surprise as her face started feeling very very warm and her stomach felt funny, almost like she was going to be sick, but not really sick. She didn't know what to call it but she knew it didn't feel bad.
"She's fine, Mike." El could hear the smile in Nancy's voice as she answered her brother.
Brother.
She remembered Mike talking about that. How he wouldn't be like her brother even though Nancy would be like her sister. And then he'd done something. He'd leaned forward and put his mouth on her mouth. She still didn't know what it was, but she knew that it hadn't felt bad. It had actually felt very nice, she remembered. She didn't know how, but now her face felt even warmer, and her neck, and her ears. She even felt like she had to take a deeper breath, so she did. Maybe she was sick.
"Oh. Good. Um. . . can – can you tell her – um, can you tell her that I said hi?"
Nancy chuckled. "I'll tell her." She paused. "Or you could."
El barely heard Mike's "Oh, right!" but then he was inside and she finally got to look at him. His face was very red and he was still wet from the rain. He was a little taller now but other than that, he looked the same.
"El!" he smiled, sounding a little out of breath. "How are you?"
She smiled and nodded. "Good."
"Oh great. Me too." He bit his lip, looking extremely nervous. He kept moving his hands, as if he didn't know what to do with them. He finally put them in his pockets and looked down at his feet quickly before looking back up at El.
"Are you feeling any better?"
She nodded again.
"Oh good. That's great. I was really worried about you." His face turned a shade pinker. "Um, I mean, I'm glad you're okay." He cleared his throat and looked away again.
"Thank you, Mike."
Mike looked up and shrugged, grinning. "You're welcome."
Nancy sighed from the doorway. "Mike, El's going to sleep in here tonight."
He jumped as if he'd been shocked. "Oh, right. Sorry. You need to sleep. I'll, um, I'll see you tomorrow, El."
He didn't walk out though, just rocked back and forth on his feet. Then he turned and left, carefully shutting the door behind him. Nancy grinned at Eleven and rolled her eyes, sitting down on the bed next to her. Even though Nancy's eyes were blue, she looked just like Mike when she did it.
Outside the door, Mike squeezed his eyes shut. Tell her I said hi? He covered his face with his hands. This was not how he'd imagined talking to El when she came back. He'd acted like a complete idiot in there! What was she thinking of him now? He looked back at the closed door. He didn't really want to leave. He wanted to stay close by. What if she needed him?
Ha, he thought. El, the superhero, need him?
But still. . . oh, it was stupid.
He sighed and shivered, realizing he was still in his wet clothes. He walked across the hallway to change.
Back in Nancy's room, El had crawled under the covers. They were very soft and warm. Nothing like her bed in the lab. It had always been very stiff and she'd never had blankets. Nancy had gotten into her own pajamas and laid down next to her.
"How are you feeling, El?"
El nodded into the pillow.
Nancy chuckled softly. "Good, huh? Are you comfortable?"
El nodded again.
"All right then. Hey, if you need anything, don't worry about waking me up, okay? I'll be right here." El returned Nancy's warm smile, then shut her eyes. Sleep immediately claimed her.
Nancy stayed awake, wanting to keep a close eye on El. She had been so weak Nancy had been afraid of her falling down in the shower. But she hadn't.
El had fallen asleep a few hours ago and seemed to be sleeping peacefully, although at times, her face was clouded by a frown. Nancy knew that she had been through a lot. According to Joyce and Chief Hopper, El had been kidnapped by the government and been a science experiment her whole life. It sounded more like something in a science-fiction movie than real life. It made her blood run cold, the thought of growing up like that, a lab rat. What must that have been like? It was no wonder she was always so quiet. Why would a lab rat be asked to talk?
Nancy shuddered. El was so sweet. She didn't deserve any of that. She understood why Mike was so protective of her. Who would want to hurt someone like El?
Of course, she knew there was another completely different reason Mike worried so much about El. Standing by the doorway, it had been so hard for her not to laugh, watching him trip all over himself talking to El. It was actually the sweetest thing that he cared about her so much. He'd really missed her. El's reaction hadn't escaped her either; the poor thing had looked scared to death, her cheeks completely pink. It had been an entire year since they'd seen each other. That must have been really hard on both of them. More than once, she'd caught Mike crying in the basement next to the fort where El had slept during that week. He would always try to pretend that he was fine, but no one was fooled. He had been devastated when El disappeared. Nancy had only known El for that one night and she'd cried when she found out what happened to her. What must Mike have felt like? They were only twelve years old and they'd gone through so much, she thought, her heart aching. She just hoped they'd be all right.
The house was quiet. The rain was still coming down outside, occasional rumbles of thunder making El stir in her sleep.
Nancy's eyes were burning from exhaustion, but just as she was thinking about closing them for just a few minutes, she heard the hallway floor creak, followed by rustling outside her bedroom door. She sat up in bed, frowning. She got out of bed slowly, trying not to jostle Eleven, and opened the door.
It was Mike spreading out his sleeping bag.
"Mike."
Her whisper might as well have been a shout for his reaction: he jumped up, wide-eyed.
"What are you doing?" she whispered, frowning in confusion.
He looked down, avoiding her eyes. "I just. . ." he whispered. He didn't say anything else, just shifted his feet and tried to cram his hands into his nonexistent pajama pockets.
She studied him for a minute, then sighed. He was so transparent. "Mike, just bring it in here."
He looked up with a frown. "What?"
"Your sleeping bag. Bring it in here."
He paused, confused, then let out a quiet "Oh!" of realization. He reached down and dragged it through the door and across her bedroom floor.
"There at the foot of the bed," she whispered, pointing.
On his knees, he straightened it out. Then he looked up at her, sheepish. "Thanks, Nancy."
She bit back a chuckle. He must have been lying awake all this time thinking about El.
"Sure."
She carefully climbed back into bed, watching El to make sure she didn't wake up. She didn't and only rolled over onto her other side, facing the window. Nancy took a deep breath, turned off the lamp, and was asleep within minutes.
Something woke El up. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was and started to panic, her heart pounding. Then it all came back: Mike finding her in the woods, bringing her home, Nancy helping her, Nancy's room. She was in Nancy's nice room. She was warm. She was safe. But she was still very tired and wanted to go back to sleep; it was just that outside, the wind was howling and rain was still rushing down, pattering loudly against the window. El sat up in bed and looked around the dark room. Everything looked a little distorted in the shadows. Nothing looked familiar. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them. She thought about Mike. Where was Mike?
Something made a rustling noise. She looked over to Nancy, but she was asleep and hadn't moved. El's stomach dropped.
Then what had made that noise?
Nancy had said to wake her up if she needed anything. . . El frowned and looked over the side of the bed.
Nothing.
She carefully crawled towards Nancy and craned her neck to look over her sleeping form to the other side.
Nothing.
That only left the foot of the bed. She looked around the room one more time, the objects starting to look more familiar as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Slowly, she crawled to the gold railing and curled her fingers around the cold metal, peering over it to the floor.
Something was lying there. She squinted. It moved, making that same rustling noise.
It was Mike! He'd rolled over in his sleep, and his blanket had made the noise.
But it was Mike! He looked upset, a deep frown on his face. He rolled over again. Then again and again, looking more and more upset each time.
El didn't know what was wrong and it scared her. What was wrong with Mike? She crawled off the bed and walked to the foot of the bed. She crouched down next to Mike, frowning in worry, then laid down next to him on the floor. He rolled onto his back and El scooted away. The blanket was twisted underneath him, exposing his arms. She rested a hand on his arm, watching his face. Slowly, the frown left and his face was peaceful. She sighed in relief and closed her eyes.
Nancy woke up the next morning and rolled over to find El's side of the bed empty. Her heart jumped and her stomach dropped as she sat bolt upright. She wasn't over by the window or the door. She scrambled to the foot of the bed and looked over the edge.
There she was, on the floor next to Mike. They were both fast asleep and facing each other, holding hands. Their hands must have found each other during the night while they slept. She sighed in relief and felt her heart melt.
They were going to be all right.