Eleven sat on the couch covered in a thick blanket, watching a particularly old western that made very little sense to her, when she heard the special knock on the door.
Without taking her eyes off of the T.V., she reached out mentally and snapped open the four slide locks and the deadbolt with little effort. She heard Hopper enter the cabin, tap his boots against the door frame, and shut the door, though she didn't turn to look at him. He had gone on his off-day without telling her why, and that, in her experience, was never a good thing. She was a little apprehensive to learn what exactly he'd been up to while he was away.
He stepped around the couch to turn the T.V. off and then sat down beside her, laying two envelopes on the coffee table. One was slim and white, and the second was big, brown, and overflowing.
"What's that?" Eleven asked, nodding her head at them.
He didn't answer right away. He sat hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his mustache with his right hand, looking down at the brown envelope.
"I went to see Dr. Owens today," Hopper mumbled from behind his hand.
Eleven's heart rate accelerated in alarm.
"Bad man," Eleven said in a nervous whisper.
"Nah, he ain't all bad," Hopper said. "He had something for me. Well, it's for both of us, actually." He reached for the white envelope and handed it to her. She took it gingerly.
Opening it, she pulled out a blue paper with writing she didn't understand. "'Cert…certificate of birth?' What does that mean?"
"It's a paper the parents get when a baby is born. Then when that baby gets old enough, they keep it. It's proof."
"Proof of what?"
"Life. Existence." Hopper turned to her. "It shows who your parents are, where you came from." He pointed. "It's also got a social security number."
"What's that for?"
"In American, you have to have a social security number to do just about anything. Go to school, get a job, etc. That number is your whole life."
She frowned at the digits on the page, then the ones on her arm. "Another number."
"Yeah," Hopper laughed. "We all got 'em, kid. I guess most of us are lucky that it's not our name, too." He jerked his chin at the paper. "Keep reading."
"'This certifies that in the state of Indiana, Jane Hop…'" She looked up at him. "Hopper?"
He nodded solemnly.
"'Was born in Hawkins, child of Teresa Ives, Mother, and James Hopper… Father." She looked back at him and lowered the paper, though still clutched it in her fingers. "I don't understand. What does this mean?"
"Means it's official," Hopper said. "We're family. You're kinda stuck with me now. Sorry 'bout that."
She shook her head, but didn't say anything. She was feeling a lot of things she hadn't experienced before and couldn't properly name, and was having difficulty sorting through them. She stared hard at the paper for a few minutes. Hopper watched her quietly; he seemed to be giving her space to process all this and room to react. Perhaps preparing for a storm, if she wasn't happy about the arrangement.
After a few minutes, she folded the paper again and gave it back, which he placed on the table next to the large brown envelope.
"What is that?" She asked.
Again, he didn't answer immediately, and when he did, it was with a very heavy sigh.
"Well... since we're family now, I figured I should introduce you two."
He reached into the brown envelope and pulling out everything that was inside it. There were drawings, old elementary work sheets, coloring pages, but most of it was pictures. Sifting through, he extracted a photograph of a small, blonde-haired, blue-eyed child, wearing a frilly blue dress, smiling widely. Her curly hair was pulled up into two pigtails with aqua blue bands.
"Is that Sara?" Eleven asked tentatively.
Hopper nodded. "This was her first grade class photo. Just a month or two before everything went to shit." He found another photo, in this one, Hopper was sitting with Sara and a blonde haired, blue-eyed woman who strongly resembled Sara. Hopper was clean-shaven in the picture, and they were all smiling.
Eleven pointed to the woman.
"That's Diane," Hopper said. "We were married. Then Sara died. Then we weren't married anymore."
"Why?"
"My fault mostly," Hopper said, staring at the picture. "She wanted to move on, try and get her life back, but I couldn't let go. I started drinkin', lost my job because I stopped showing up, all kinds of things that she quite understandably didn't want to deal with. I wouldn't have wanted to deal with me, either."
"Where is she?"
"Philadelphia. She got remarried a few years ago, had herself a new little baby boy. She's doing good. She's happy."
He reached into the pile of papers and drew out another certificate, like the one Hopper got from Owens, but from a different state. The name on the top line was "Sara."
"She'd be your sister," He said, staring at the type font as though he couldn't see anything else. "She'd have loved a sister."
The emotions that had been swirling in Eleven's body had settled, and of the remaining ones, the most prominent was sorrow. "What was she like?"
Hopper's chin shook, and she thought he might not be able to talk about it, but he said, "She was so smart. Smarter than me. Got it from her mom, I guess. She's so interested in science and space and all that stuff." He plucked at the aqua blue bracelet around his wrist. A tear fell from his eye and disappeared into his beard.
"She was gonna grow up to be a paleontologist and also an astronaut doctor. Not an astronaut that was also a doctor, a doctor that only treated astronauts." He smiled. "She was gonna have thirty kids, but she wasn't gonna get married cause boys were gross. She was going to do so many things." More tears fell, and he wiped his nose on his sleeve. "She never got the chance to do anything."
Emotions can be infectious, especially when the person exhibiting them was so stoic and self-contained ordinarily. Eleven could feel tears on her own cheeks as Hopper spoke.
"Her birthday was April 17th," He said. "She would have been seven if she had made it that long. She nearly made it." The tears were falling freely now. He didn't even attempt to wipe them away. Eleven wondered if he had ever said these things to anyone. She knew vaguely that most people in town didn't even know he had had a daughter.
"A few months after, I came home and Diane was packing up Sara's room. Just pulling down everything and stuffing it into boxes. I asked what she was doing… and she said she was donating it. That she couldn't stand looking at it all every day. And I got so… angry. It was like she was just throwing her away and I couldn't believe she could do that. I over-did it a little; I yelled a lot, started throwing things. That's when she kicked me out for the last time. That," He pointed to the pile. "Was all I managed to save. That's all that's left of Sara.
"Well," He said, "That and this." He pulled the bracelet off of his wrist and toyed with it a little. "She used to wear these stretchy blue hair bands, like, every day. She had all kinds of different bows and hair things she could've worn, but she always wanted these.
"One day, while she was on chemo, she pulled them out so she could take a bath, and all her hair came with them. After that, she couldn't wear them anymore. I was going to throw them away, but she made them into a little bracelet and had me wear it. She said she wanted to save them for when her hair grew back."
His face crumpled. Holding the little blue bracelet in both hands, he pressed it against his forehead and wept.
Eleven pulled herself up to her knees and hugged Hopper around the shoulders, crying into his neck. They stayed that way for some time.
When Eleven drew back, inexplicably, the blue bracelet was now circling her wrist. She looked at Hopper questioningly as she reached to pull it off.
He stopped her. "No, you should have it," He said. "She'd want you to have it. I want you to have it, too. We're family now."
She smiled and her lip quivered. She nodded and looked at the bracelet. A tenuous connection to a sister she'd never meet. She looked at the two certificated on the table.
"Sara was your daughter," Eleven said slowly, carefully. "Does this mean that I am, too?"
"Yeah," He said, regaining composure. "That's exactly what that paper means. You're my daughter. I'm your dad. Officially."
"Just officially?" Eleven said.
Hopper shook his head. "No, not just officially. If you want, it could be for real."
"For real," Eleven repeated. "Not like Papa."
"No, not like Papa," Hopper said seriously. "I know he wanted you to call him that, but was there ever a time when he called you his daughter? Treated you like a dad is supposed to?"
Eleven shook her head emphatically.
"No, because he doesn't even know what it means. I doubt he's ever really loved anything. Certainly not you." Hopper looked down at the two certificates. "I loved Sara. And I love you, too, kid."
Eleven had never once in her entire life heard those words. The swirl of emotions was back, but this time, the most out-standing one was joy. Incapable of speech, all she could do was smile and cry.
Hopper reached out an arm and Eleven hugged him around the middle, resting her head on his chest. He squeezed her tight with both arms and planted a peck on the top of her head. After some time had passed, they let go of each other, but she took his hand and held it. They both needed the comfort of touch right then.
Eleven dared to picked up a drawing and asked Hopper what it meant. He told her it was supposed to be a dog-velociraptor, laughing. It went on like this for several hours: Eleven would choose something from the pile, and Hopper would explain what it was; tell little, loving stories about Sara's brief life, and then he would put it back into the envelope.
When they had gone through the entirety of the pictures and papers, all that was left were the two certificates sitting side by side on the table. The only thing they had in common was the line, "James Hopper: Father." He folded them and put them both in the brown envelope and sealed it. This wasn't just old memories anymore. It was proof, just like Hopper had said. The love of a man for his daughters.