Hey, everyone who decided to read this!
Okay so this is my first attempt at fan fiction so I apologize if it's not perfect. If u do read it, plz leave a review so I know what your thoughts are. I'm not sure how many chapters will be in this, but probably more than one. And no, I don't own Stranger Things. Thank u for reading and hope u enjoy!
Mike stared, horrified, as El stood in front of the Demogorgon, but her brown eyes were locked on him, full of pain, but also determination. Blood leaked from her ears and nose. Her face flickered in and out of sight, in sync with the lights of the classroom. He knew what she was about to do, but what she said next confirmed it.
"Goodbye, Mike."
His vision blurred slightly with tears, and his heart was in his mouth. His back was heavy against the cupboard he was leaning on. He felt frozen. Mike suspected she was using her mind to hold him there.
A moment later, her face was turned away from him. The Demogorgon screeched at her, but El stood unflinching and unafraid. Mike heard her utter the words "no more" before raising her hand out towards it.
El started to shake with the effort. She let out a high-pitched scream, causing all three boys to cover their ears. The room vibrated at the amount of energy El was using to kill this monster once and for all. The Demogorgon began to disintegrate, black debris peeling away from it and starting to conceal El from view.
Mike leaned forward, wanting desperately to save the girl he loved from destroying herself to protect them. He couldn't let her die, he couldn't- he gasped, realisation suddenly hitting him. El was using all her powers on the monster; he was no longer immobilised. He could move!
Without a second thought, Mike shot up from his position on the floor and ran towards the screaming girl. He barely registered the shocked and surprised shouts of "Mike!" from Lucas and Dustin.
"EL!" Mike yelled, before he ran into the cloud of blackness. He collided with something solid and shoved her hard, pushing her out and away from the internal darkness that now surrounded him. He tried to follow her out, find his way through the suffocating obscurity. But he found himself losing all his senses, before his mind also faded to empty black.
El gasped as she landed hard against the classroom floor, knocking into a nearby chair. Straight away, she turned around and her eyes searched for him. All that remained were a few drifting black ashes, and a large crack in the board where the monster had stood moments ago. The Demogorgon was gone. And so was Mike.
For a moment, there was utter silence.
The boys stood frozen in the same positions they'd been in before, hardly daring to breathe as the truth of the pandemonium of what had just happened slowly dawned on them.
"M-Mike?" the girl whimpered, mostly to herself. She was exhausted from all the energy she had used to kill the monster, but that was the last thing on her mind right now. She refused to believe it. He couldn't be gone, not Mike. It was supposed to be her who disappeared. She was meant to keep them all safe, especially him. She'd failed. He'd saved her life, and now he'd been the one to pay the price. The boy who had taught her so many wonderful and beautiful new things, who had somehow found a way into her heart in a way El did not know how to explain, had been taken away from her.
Dustin was the first to react, breaking free of his paralysis. "El?" he called, before rushing across the classroom and kneeling beside El on the floor. Lucas was quick to join him. "Are you okay?"
El's horrified eyes stayed frozen on the spot Mike and the Demogorgon had vanished. She didn't answer Dustin's question. "Mike," she repeated, fresh tears leaking down her face. She didn't think she'd ever felt this amount of pain before in her life. The only thing stopping sorrow from overwhelming her were Dustin's steady hands on each of her shoulders. "Where is he, where did he go?" El demanded frantically, as if Dustin or Lucas might know the answer.
Lucas looked back over his shoulder, his breath catching in his throat. "We'll find him, El, don't worry," he told her, giving the panicked El the best reassuring smile he could muster, although inside he was terrified Mike was gone for good.
Dustin started to come up with his own consoling comment, before all three of their heads snapped round at the sound of men shouting at each other in the distance, at another side of the Hawkins Middle School.
"Crap, the Bad Men are still here," Dustin muttered, using the only name he knew to refer to the evil people that were responsible for this hell they had faced. The people responsible for taking El's childhood away, and now for the disappearance of his friend. He looked back at El, gasping. "Crap, they're looking for El! We have to go, right now!"
With the help of Lucas, he quickly grabbed El's arms pulled her to her feet. She stumbled slightly. "Can you walk?" Dustin asked urgently, ready to run carrying her if had to.
El nodded at him. Dustin and Lucas started to pull her towards the door, but she stopped them, turning around once again. "But Mike-?"
"We'll get him later," Dustin insisted, alarm bells going off in his head as he heard the men's voices getting closer and louder. He needed to get El out of here quickly or she stood no chance.
"Promise?"
"We promise!" Lucas insisted. Upon hearing that, El finally let them lead her out of the classroom. She wanted to resist and pull away, but deep down she knew Mike was no longer in that room. She didn't know where he was, or if he was even alive, and that frightened her. She realized she was more scared than she'd ever been in her life. Facing the Demogorgon had been nothing compared to this.
El stayed trapped in her terrifying thoughts, not aware of the twists and turns Dustin and Lucas were making with her along the school corridor to find the nearest exit.
El vowed right then that she'd do whatever it takes to find him. She wouldn't let him down, just like he hadn't let her down.
She would find him.
She promised.
Mike's eyes shot open and he gasped, spitting out a vile substance, breathing heavily.
After a few seconds, his head stopped spinning and he took in his surroundings. He had never felt such familiarity and such strangeness at the same time. He knew he was still in the classroom, lying in the exact place he had been before. He didn't know how long it had been; seconds, minutes, maybe even hours. He was lying on his back on a cold, damp, slimy surface.
The classroom didn't look the same though, that he knew. There were thick, slimy vines intertwining around all the furniture, the walls and the floor. Everything looked rotten and discomposed. The air was somehow a grey-blue colour and small fragments floated around the gloomy atmosphere.
Then there was the sound. It sounded eerie and inhumane, a soft, haunting humming, nothing Mike had ever heard before.
The boy instantly knew where he was. They'd talked about this enough, they knew this was where the Demogorgon came from. He was certain this was the upside down.
Groaning, Mike sat up from his position on the floor, heart beating fast. He slowly stood up, leaning on a decaying table. He held his clammy hands in tight fists, shaking from a mixture of cold and fear.
He looked around, searching for any sign of human life. "El?" he croaked, uncertainly. Mike cleared his throat and called louder. "EL?"
He started to move himself towards the door frame in a haze, stumbling over the vines beneath his feet. "EL?" He called again, reaching the exit and looking down both sides of the dark, desolate corridor, which was also wrapped in ghostly vines. "EL? DUSTIN? LUCAS?"
No one replied, just the faint echo of his voice. Taking a deep, shaking breath, Mike made his way down the halls of the upside down version of his middle school, walking quickly, trying to find a way out.
Mike felt more afraid with each passing moment of being trapped in this place. He couldn't stop the horrifying images flashing through his mind; being stuck in here forever, never seeing his friends or family again, never seeing El again, dying alone in this dark, miserable place.
Turning a corner, Mike's hopes suddenly lifted. There at the end, was a glowing, red light. He started to run towards it, praying it was what he thought it was.
Only ten feet away from it, his face lit up with relief. It was a portal, a way for him to escape through, and get out of this terrible place.
He ran the last few steps and his hands slammed into it. He stared transfixed at the thin layer of red goo, the only thing in the way of him breaking free and getting out. Mike shoved his hand through and it broke easily enough.
But then he realized the problem, his reassured smile flickering and dying. He hadn't noticed there were bricks still surrounding most of the portal until just now, making the area to the other side small and narrow.
Mike knew he couldn't fit through it, certainly no more than his head. The real world was only inches away from him and he couldn't get to it. Angry tears sprang to his eyes, as he realized what this meant.
"No!" he yelled, shoving his arms into the remaining bricks, willing them to crumble enough for him to get through. They stubbornly held their place, and he soon realized it was no use.
Mike pulled at the red goo to give him a clearer line of vision of the real world. "HELLO?" He shouted, hoping there were still people in the school that would hear him and help him escape, maybe even his friends. "HELLO? EL? LUCAS? DUSTIN? ANYONE?"
He grew more desperate by the minute, wanting to be out of this place. "HELLO? IS ANYONE THERE?"
Then he heard a voice. Mike hadn't heard what the person had said, because he was too busy yelling. He instantly shut up, and listened.
There were footsteps coming closer towards him. Mike tried to peer around and see who it was, but there wasn't enough room. The person, whoever they were, didn't try to say anything else.
Mike swallowed, heart hammering. "E-El, is that you?"
A few more seconds went by, where nothing happened except the incoming footsteps echoing along the floor.
And suddenly a face appeared in front of Mike's, making eye contact with him through the crater, eyes piercing.
Mike's breath caught when he realized who it was.