El sniffled loudly rolling over in bed. "Ugh," she groaned, closing her eyes again. She didn't want to get up, but she knew that Hopper would be back in her doorway any minute. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. El barely made it to the door when everything started spinning. She leaned against the door frame for support and closed her eyes.
"You alright there?" Hopper asked. He was standing in front of her when she managed to open her eyes again.
"Tired," El mumbled. Her eyelids closed unintentionally.
"Hm," Hopper replied. She felt a hand graze her forehead. "Jesus kid. I think you're sick," he explained. "Back to bed."
"Not sick. Just tired," El argued, sneezing.
"Yeah, yeah okay. Not sick. Tired," he pacified still helping her back to her bed anyway.
Hopper returned in a minute with two white tablets. "Medicine," he explained helping her sit up. She took cup the of water but stared at the tablets in his hand.
He had already explained to her before that there was some medicine that helped you when you didn't feel well. Still, it didn't stop the fear that crept up every time she had to take the 'good medicine.' It was hard to forget because she'd taken many medicines in her lifetime, sometimes with terrible side effects and scary results.
He put his hand on her back, sensing her hesitation. "It's okay," he urged softly. She took the tablets one at a time and swallowed each of them with a sip of water because she wanted to feel better, and she trusted Hopper.
"You need to stay in bed and rest today. No trips in here to see Mike," he warned her, patting her head.
El nodded weakly. She was sure she didn't have enough energy for that today and besides, she didn't need to visit him as often anymore anyway. Hopper allowed supervised visitations twice a week. El greatly looked forward to Fridays and Sundays.
Today was only Wednesday, but that meant she would see him in just 2 more sleeps.
El noticed that Hopper was looking at her strangely for a minute. He sighed and got up. "Radio me if you need anything, alright?"
"Yes," El agreed, closing her eyes.
She kept her promise and stayed in bed all day. Hopper came home early that night; El noticed that it wasn't even dark outside yet. She heard him shedding his work clothes, and then he approached the side of her bed hoping that she had improved at least a little. "How ya feelin' kid?" he asked, running his hand along her burning forehead.
El whined. "Bad," she managed to croak.
Hopper came back with two more white tablets. This time she took them without question, and Hopper wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad sign. She fell back to sleep for a few hours and when she woke up, Hopper brought her a bowl of soup.
"We don't eat in bed," El reminded him of the rules.
"I know. But today it's alright." He even brought the tv into her bedroom and sat next to her while she tried to eat. She managed to eat half the soup, not because she was hungry, but to make Hopper happy. She didn't like seeing him worry, and she could tell that he was worried even though he was trying to hide it.
"I wish I could go there," El mumbled softly.
"What was that?" Hopper asked.
They had been watching The Brady Bunch episode where they were at an amusement park. "I want to go on a rollercoaster," El clarified.
"Maybe someday," Hopper chuckled.
El nodded satisfied and drifted back to sleep.
Hopper slid out from under her and brought the television back to the living room. He dropped down to the couch, exhausted from the day. It wasn't a big deal, it was just a cold, he told himself all day. It was just the first time that he had witnessed her actually sick and not just depleted from using her gifts.
But fuck, all kids get sick, all kids get colds. That's all it was, he reassured himself again and again. He cracked a can of Schlitz and eventually fell asleep in front of the tv.
He woke up in the middle of the night to El crying in her sleep. She had her palms pressed tightly against her eyes and forehead.
Hopper shook her gently, trying to wake her up. Her forehead was wet with sweat. El gasped and sat up, bringing her hands immediately back up to her face. "Hurts," she whined, pressing her hands against her eyes; her head felt like it could explode.
"I'll get you some more medicine," he told her, knowing that it was the best he could do. El moaned, tossing back and forth, unable to get comfortable for another hour until the medication finally kicked in.
Hopper sat next to her bed, his head pressed into his hands too. He tried not to think about how terrible the timing of this was. Not that ever he wanted El to get sick, but why did it have to be now.
He looked at the clock. It was 4 am.
Which also meant that it was 8 years today.
8 years since the day that he failed to save his own little girl.
And now he couldn't help El either.
He stared at the kid who had thrown the covers off her body in distress, the kid whose hair was plastered against her sticky, sickly forehead.
His mind flashed back to his own little girl, his little girl who tried to be brave when they poked her with seemingly hundreds of needles a day. His little girl who would cry herself to sleep from pain just like the kid in front of him did now. And he couldn't do anything to stop it.
Needless to say, Hopper had zero sleep the rest of the night.
When El woke up it was light outside, so she wrapped her blanket around herself and climbed out of bed, if only to make it to the couch. El slumped down, and Hopper joined her, sipping on a cup of coffee.
"Work?" El questioned, wondering why he was still home, thinking that it was later than it actually was.
"Yeah." He looked at the clock. "In another hour or so. It's still pretty early."
"Oh," El replied. She laid her head on the arm rest and watched the boring morning news.
Before Hopper left, he set a timer for her so she would know when to take more medicine. El did as instructed because the medicine made her sleepy and when she was sleeping, she felt better.
She also felt better remembering that today was Thursday. This meant that she would see Mike tomorrow, and Mike always made her feel better too.
El drifted in and out of consciousness all day.
This time when opened her eyes, there was only black. She recognized where she was, but not how she got there. She couldn't remember if she had been awake or asleep before arriving in the void.
She started walking and everything around her started to change. The black turned to green and blue, and suddenly she was walking around outside in an empty playground. It was sunny and warm, the opposite of the day they were having in Hawkins.
El walked around, enjoying the warm sun beating down on her. Sometimes the void, if that's where she was, was scary. But today she felt very calm and safe.
"Hello?" she called out to the emptiness, wondering if she was truly alone.
"Hi," she heard a quiet voice say from behind her. El turned around and saw a little girl peeking out from behind a tree. She had blonde hair in two pony tails, blue eyes, and was wearing bright blue overalls. For some reason, she looked familiar even though El was sure she'd never met her before.
"It's okay," El told her, not wanting her to be scared; this wasn't a scary place.
The little girl stepped out towards her. "Do you want to play?" she asked shyly.
"Okay," El smiled. She remembered that she was sick and probably shouldn't be playing, but she had felt fine now. The pounding in her head was gone and she could breathe without her chest rattling.
The little girl ran over to the swing set. "Could you help?" she asked El. El followed her over and held the swing still while the little girl hopped up on it. "Push?"
El had never pushed anyone on a swing, but she grabbed the chains and pulled it back, like she'd seen on tv.
"Okay, now I do it by myself," said the little girl.
El sat down on the swing next to her. She'd never been on a real swing either, only the one on Will's front porch. Not really knowing what she was doing, she moved her feet back and forth on the ground until the swing was moving a little on its own.
"Can you pump?" the girl asked.
"I- I don't know," El replied honestly.
"Like this," the girl laughed, swinging her legs back and forth. "I'm not very good," she finally admitted. "But you're big, so I bet you can."
El copied the girl and felt her swing getting higher off the ground. She realized she really liked swinging; it was fun and made her stomach feel funny in a good way.
"Do you think you could hurry up and get better?" the girl asked El after a minute. "Daddy doesn't like it when we are sick."
El didn't understand- the little girl didn't look sick.
"I'm not anymore. I'm all better now," the girl continued, as if El had wondered that last thought out loud.
"I don't think I know your daddy," admitted El.
"Of course you do silly," the girl giggled. "Daddy is Jim."
"Jim…Hopper?" El clarified, not sure if she was understanding.
"Uh-huh. He's my daddy and now he's your daddy too. That makes us sisters," the little girl squealed proudly.
El's swing had stopped moving, but the little girl kept swinging back and forth.
"Sara?" El finally asked after a moment.
The girl looked at her and smiled, shaking her head positively. "Mommy has baby Noah and daddy is happy again because he has you. But he's sad when you are sick. So you have to hurry up and get better," she explained. Her swing slowed down, and she jumped off, running to the slide. "C'mon, El!"
El had never told her her name.
El followed her up the slide and stopped on the steps while Sara hesitated to go down. "I used to be scared of being up high, but not anymore," she bragged. As she was going down the slide, El noticed the blue hair band wrapped around one of her piggy tails; it was the same as the one on her own wrist.
El followed her down the slide. It was fast, and she couldn't hold in her laughter when she got to the bottom. She would have to make Mike take her to a playground someday. Even if they were supposed to be for little kids, it was still a lot of fun. They ran to the merry go round and pushed it around in circles.
Sara was smaller than El so she couldn't run as fast, but they ran around a few times. "1, 2, 3!" Sara yelled before they both hopped on. The spinning made El dizzy and they both laid down giggling, enjoying every spin.
"You should make daddy take you to get Triple-Treat!" Sara exclaimed excitedly.
"Triple-Treat?"
"Uh-huh. It's the most yummiest ice cream ever. You have to go to the snowman to get it," explained Sara.
The merry go round slowed to a stop, and Sara grabbed El's hand hopping off. "Thanks for making my daddy happy again. He was very sad when I had to leave."
El smiled down at her. She was going to tell her 'you're welcome,' but the little girl had a sad look on her face for the first time since El had met her. The sky suddenly grew dark, even though it had been the middle of a bright sunny day only a second ago. "Just tell daddy that he's the best daddy in the world. And I love him, and I miss him a real lot, k?"
El couldn't help but bend down to hug her.
"I will Sara. I promise," vowed El.
And just like that, the girl evaporated in her arms.
"Sara?" El called, running through the now empty grass. It was growing darker and darker, until she was back in the black nothingness.
El sat up with a gasp and instinctively brought her hand up to wipe the blood from her nose. Her head was throbbing again, and she started coughing, making it hard to breathe. She was most definitely not better.
El sighed heavily when she was finally able to catch her breath. She wrapped her blanket around herself tightly, thinking about where she had just been. She had promised Sara that she would tell Hopper what she said, but she wondered if he would believe her. El knew that Sara was gone, and she had never talked to anyone who had been gone before.
But still, she promised, so she knew that she would have to.
That night Hopper came home looking as equally as exhausted as El. He hoped that she would be better when he got back, but she was still bundled up in the same place that he had left her that morning. Hopper slumped down on the couch next to her.
He held a hand to her forehead, thinking that it maybe wasn't quite as warm as it had been that morning. Hopper made them both dinner, and they ate on the couch, breaking more rules.
Half of El's tv dinner disappeared, which was more than Hopper could hope for. Maybe she was improving a little after all. After dinner, El snuggled up in her blanket next to Hopper. She could see now that he was indeed sad, just like Sara had said.
"I'm sorry I'm sick," El sniffled softly when Cosby went on commercial break.
"It's not your fault, kid. You don't have to be sorry," Hopper told her.
"It's just, I know that when I'm sick it reminds you of her. And it makes you sad," she explained.
"What?"
"Sara," she said in a near whisper. "Because Sara was sick too, and you get sad when you have to think about her."
He sighed. Apparently El had caught on to what he had thought he was hiding quite well over the past few days. "Yes, I do get sad when I think about her," he admitted.
"She doesn't want you to be sad. She says she loves you and misses you a lot. She wants you to be happy."
"Who says that?" Hopper asked, pulling away to look at her.
"Sara," El repeated. Though she was telling the truth, she still felt guilty when she saw the look on his face.
"How do you know that? Did you see her?"
She nodded, a little nervous about what he was going to think.
"Sara's gone," he dismissed, knowing El could only talk to the living. "It couldn't be her."
"She had two ponytails and her eyes were blue just like yours," El added softly. "She said she was my sister. And that she loves you. She wants you to be happy like her mommy because her mommy has Noah."
Hopper was sure now that she must have just seen a picture of Sara somewhere, and maybe he had mentioned Diane's child, Noah, to Joyce or something?
He nodded in response because he had no idea how to react to this.
"Oh, and she said you should take me to the snowman for Triple-Treat?" El added as a question.
Hopper blinked back tears immediately. The ice cream parlor they would frequent in New York was called the Tip of the Iceberg and had a snowman on the sign. Sara had always called it the snowman; Triple-Treat was her favorite flavor. There is no way El could have known about that.
"Sara…told you that?"
El nodded.
"How did you see her? When?"
"I don't know. She came to me when I was sleeping today. She said you were the best dad in the world."
Hopper closed his eyes and bit down on his bottom lip so hard he could taste metallic.
"It's okay," El consoled. "She's okay."
Hopper doesn't break down, and especially not in front of other people. But what El had revealed was too overwhelming.
Was she really okay wherever she was? Could he really let go of all the guilt after all these years? A sense of relief poured through his body and he held tears in; he could not cry in front of El.
"You miss her a lot," El whispered.
"I do. But she's okay?" Hopper asked once more.
El nodded. "I promise."
She snuggled up on him, and Hopper held her tighter than he ever had before. "So…when can I have Triple-Treat?" El asked.
He laughed, and the sound made El smile. "Unfortunately, Triple-Treat isn't in Hawkins kid. But one of these nights, we will go out for ice cream, and you can find your own favorite."
"Okay," El agreed, sad that she wouldn't be getting to try the yummiest ice cream in the world. But at least she was going to get some kind of ice cream.
El wanted to ask him one more thing. "You are Sara's dad. And now you are my dad?"
"I suppose that's correct. I take care of you like a parent, but you don't have to call me dad if you don't want to," he replied; he didn't want to force El into anything.
"Sara said she is my sister. So that makes you my dad," El considered out loud.
"Yeah, sure," Hopper agreed.
"Dad," El repeated smiling.
Hopper kissed her head, feeling overwhelmed. Neither of them had anything more to say, so they continued watching the Cosby show in silence until the phone rang.
Hopper got up to answer it.
It was the Wheeler kid, and he wanted to know what time Hopper would be coming to pick him up tomorrow. Hopper rolled his eyes; it was always the same time every week and the kid knew that. Though he did mention that El was sick and they may have to postpone their meeting if she wasn't better tomorrow.
El overheard and got up, frowning. "I'm sorry, kid, but you shouldn't see him if you are still sick. You don't want to get Mike sick too," Hopper cautioned, covering the mouthpiece while he talked to her.
El understood.
She definitely didn't want Mike to feel like this.
"Can I please talk to him?"
Hopper sighed. He didn't usually allow them to talk on the phone, but he was feeling much too soft tonight to tell her no.
"Make it quick," he said handing her the telephone.
"Hi Mike," El answered. Sick or not, he saw the ridiculous smile that she always got when she talked to him.
"El, the Chief said you are sick. Are you okay?" Mike's worried voice came through the line.
"I'm okay. I think I'm getting better," El said, not wanting Mike to worry.
"Okay, that's good. Being sick sucks."
"Uh-huh," El agreed. "Do you think we could go to the playground? I mean, when I get better," she asked.
"Yeah, sure," Mike said quickly. He would never tell El no, no matter what the request was.
"Okay good. I really like swinging," El commented.
She wanted to tell him about her sister, about her dad. But Hopper said to make it quick so she would save that for the next time she saw him.
"If you aren't better tomorrow, maybe I could see you on Saturday," Mike suggested.
"Can I see Mike Saturday?" El excitedly asked Hopper.
"We'll see," he grumbled. His head pounded now too; young love was really going to be the death of him.
"I think he said yes," El told Mike watching Hopper roll his eyes. "Well, I have to go."
"Okay, I'll see you soon," Mike replied sadly. "El? I hope you feel better."
"Thank you. Me too," she agreed. "Good night Mike."
"Night El."
El hung up and curled back up on the couch, choosing not to further discuss when she could see Mike next. Hopper always had the final say, and she didn't want to press her luck.
When Hopper noticed her getting drowsy, he offered her more medicine. He didn't want her to wake up in pain in the middle of the night like she had the night before.
El took the pills and whispered, "Night dad." She laid down and sighed, content. The next time he looked down at her, she was asleep.
Dad, Hopper thought staring down at the kid next to him. She wasn't Sara, but that didn't matter anymore. He didn't have to feel guilty for being happy; Sara wanted him to be happy. She had always asked him and Diane for a little sister. And well, she didn't exactly get her wish, but he hoped she was happy anyway.
He blinked back tears thinking about the last night that he saw his little girl 8 years ago. She was so pale and thin. Miserable was the only way to describe her. Wishing to hold her for one more night would have been selfish.
Hopper inhaled deeply and rubbed his itchy, wet cheeks, before getting up to carry El to her bed.
El wasn't completely better in the morning, but she was getting there. Still, she begged to see Mike on Saturday instead of Friday because Hopper had scared her about getting Mike sick too.
El thought that Friday was the longest day ever, but finally Saturday came, and El popped out of bed getting dressed in record time. Hopper dragged himself out of bed too. He knew that he had to make good on his promise to let her see Mike today, even though it was not their usual day. He was even more exhausted than normal today, chalking it up to the impossibly long and emotional week.
They picked Mike up, and El asked Hopper to drop them off at the Hawkins Elementary school's playground. He warned them not to over do it, because El was still recovering. El agreed, but then immediately shot out of the Blazer, dragging Mike away by his hand.
Hopper was still uncomfortable about leaving them alone in public, so he stayed in his vehicle, creeping from a distance in the parking lot like Joyce would have done with Will. Perhaps he wasn't as afraid of the bad men as he was about her being alone with Mike, though he would never admit that out loud. What was it about these kids- his head started aching every time he thought about them together this week.
Mike felt kind of silly thinking about playing at the playground, but when he saw how happy it made El, he let it go. He understood that El never got to do this as a kid, and he really didn't mind it; he secretly still liked playing with Holly when their mom would take them.
El ran straight to the merry go round, running full speed around it, until she thought she might not even be able to get on. "1, 2, 3!" El exclaimed as she had learned from Sara. El sat on edge of one of the handles and hung her head back, watching the world spin upside down.
When it started to slow, Mike asked, "Again?"
El nodded yes, so he got off and pushed them around and around until they both thought they would be sick if they didn't stop.
Mike showed El how he could walk up the jungle gym without any hands; El was impressed. She mustered up the courage to hang upside down once but wasn't ready to try the no hands jungle gym thing yet, even though she knew she could stop herself from getting hurt.
They ran over to the metal slide which was growing increasingly hot in the sun. This slide wasn't like the other one she had been on; it had a bump in the middle. "Did you know you can go down it like this?" Mike demonstrated, sliding down head first on his stomach.
El tried it and laughed the whole way. "Or like this!" Mike said, laying down head first on his back. "We used to dare each other to do this all the time," Mike told her before he let go. El watched him fly over the bumpy part and slide right off the bottom, smacking the dirt hard.
"Are you okay?" El asked running over to him.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just, uh, maybe you shouldn't try that," he warned sheepishly, quickly getting up to wipe the dirt off his clothes.
Hopper smoked a few cigarettes and kept an eye on the two of them for a little while. All seemed innocent enough, so eventually, he put his hat over his eyes and laid back.
They made their way over to the swings, and Mike taught El about 'underdogs.' It made her so happy that Mike must have done it 20 times.
Mike also showed her how they could lay on their stomachs and twist their swings together, both of them narrowly missing the metal posts with their heads as they untwisted.
They both were swinging normally until Mike thought of something else they could do. "Do you want to play spider?" he asked awkwardly.
"What is spider?"
"So uh, it's where we both swing on the swing at the same time. Like you have a lot of legs hanging down, so it's kind of like a spider."
El thought that sounded fun, so Mike dragged his feet to slow his swing down. "Okay, so you just get on the front, put your legs here," he showed her. El climbed on straddling Mike's lap. Her feet couldn't touch the ground, and she gripped the metal chains tightly so she wouldn't fall off.
"I won't let you fall," Mike promised, sensing her unease.
El smiled nervously and nodded her head; she trusted Mike.
"Okay, so now, we just both start to pump our legs. Like this," he instructed, slowly starting the swing.
El copied him, subtly moving back and forth on his lap.
Shit, Mike thought. He realized now that he hadn't exactly thought this out very well. He glanced over at the Blazer and waited for Hopper to come storming out. When he didn't, he thought it was safe, at least for a few minutes. Or maybe Hopper was just waiting until he got home to kill him. Of course there had been no specific rules about not playing spider on the swings, but he was sure that this violated some kind of boundary that Hopper had set for them.
However, once they started getting the hang of it, El was giggling so much that he couldn't just ask her to stop. They stayed this way for at least 10 minutes until they both slowed down. El finally let go of her grip on the metal chains and put her hands around Mike's shoulders instead.
"Did you know Sara?" she asked.
"Sara?"
"Hopper's daughter," El explained.
"Oh, no. He didn't live here with her. He moved back after she uh…," Mike quieted.
"She's my sister," El declared. "I mean, not like my sister like Nancy is your sister. Different."
Mike nodded, understanding that El meant that Hopper was like a father to her.
"We played on the swings together too."
"You saw her?" Mike asked confused.
El nodded. "She was in my dream when I was sick. She wanted me to tell Hopper that she still loved him even though she isn't here anymore." El paused. "She said he's my dad now too."
This time Mike nodded.
"Do you think Hopper is like my dad?" El asked, secretly hoping to get approval from Mike.
"I mean, yeah. He's definitely like your dad. He tells us what we can and can't do just like a dad would," Mike laughed.
"Yes, he definitely does do that," El agreed. "I don't think he'd like this very much," El smirked realizing now how intimate of a position they were in.
"I don't either," Mike laughed nervously eyeing the parking lot.
El hopped down, and they both walked back over to the jungle gym, hanging on it until Hopper appeared, calling them to back to the Blazer. He drove them back to Mike's house and El gave him a quick kiss before he jumped out of the vehicle. El wasn't shy about it anymore, though Hopper didn't miss that the Wheeler kid always tried to turn it into an awkward hug instead when he was around. At least the kid wasn't totally stupid.
El and Hopper ate dinner on the couch one more time because Hopper was growing increasingly lazy as the day wore on. They fell asleep in front of the tv, and this time El woke him up, quietly telling him to go to bed. "Yeah, yeah," Hopper agreed, shutting off the television before stumbling into his own bed.
The next morning, she was awake before he was again. Hopper groaned and put his hand over his eyes, blocking the onslaught of light. El noticed that he looked bad.
"Are you sick?" she asked, approaching his bedside.
"I'm not sick, just tired," he moaned, rolling away from her. El laughed, knowing that he was teasing her. She reached around him and put a hand to his forehead just as he had done to her; it was burning.
"Okay, not sick. Tired," El agreed, heading towards the bathroom to get the good medicine out for him anyway. She would have to postpone Sunday's visit with Mike for another day.
Today, her dad needed her.