Hopper entered the room cautiously, sliding his hand along the wall to search for a way to turn on the lights. His fingers bumped into something that felt like a light switch, and he flicked it upwards.
The abrupt brightness of the lights startled El, and she slowly blinked her eyes open. When she saw him, she managed to prop herself up on her elbow, staring at him in disbelief.
He knew exactly how she felt.
He hadn't expected to find her here this easily. She wasn't hidden, and her door hadn't even been locked or secured.
She was laying on a small bed, covered by a sheet and dressed in only underwear and a shirt that came to the top of her thighs. He could tell that she'd lost weight. Her face was thinner, and her eyes were rimmed with unhealthy, dark circles.
When she didn't immediately get up, he moved to her bedside. "Let's get you out of here," he told her softly, attempting to pick her up, though something tugged her back down.
He pulled the sheet back to find that her ankles were shackled in two white fabric ties attached to the bed posts. He grabbed his pocket knife out of his jeans and began quickly sawing at the easiest point of access, which was the fabric between the posts and her legs. He didn't ask why she hadn't used her hands or her powers to release them herself.
El laid on the bed lifelessly until she felt the tension on her legs let up. Even though the bonds were still wrapped around her ankles, she realized that she could freely move both of her legs again.
A strangled cry unwillingly escaped from her lips, and Hopper glanced back at her open door. He quickly whispered, "Shhh. It's okay. You're okay," though he couldn't stop the urgency and concern from creeping up in his own voice.
He slid his arms under her and picked up her too light body.
"No!" El cried out just as Hopper was hit hard in the back of the head, falling forward onto her bed. It hurt, but he wasn't disabled in the slightest. He left El on the bed and turned around, throwing a punch straight into the assailant's face, blood instantly spilling from the man's nose. Two more blows later and the man was passed out on the ground.
Hopper picked El up again and adjusted his grip so that she was on his hip. She wrapped her legs and arms tightly around him, practically freeing both of his arms. With a pistol in one hand, he took off as fast as he could while carrying a small teenager. He made his way as silently as possible back through the building. This place hadn't been nearly as secure as the lab. At the front door, he stepped over the body of the only other night guard that he had already easily taken out.
El knew they were outside when the cool air hit her bare legs, but she still didn't open her eyes. Hopper didn't bother putting her in the passenger seat. He climbed in the driver's side and slammed the vehicle into drive with El still clinging to him between his body and the steering wheel.
He drove well over the speed limit until he hit the highway, not even caring which direction they were travelling. Hopper anxiously watched in his rear view mirror for the next 20 miles until he was satisfied that they were not being followed. He wondered if El had fallen asleep because she hadn't moved or said a word since they had gotten in the car.
When he pulled up on a nearly empty truck stop, he pulled over to get her settled into her own seat. Hopper looked down at her and realized that she had not been asleep. Her eyes were consciously pressed closed much too tightly for that.
"Kid, it's okay. You're safe," he promised her softly.
El slowly blinked her eyes open and looked around. Her breathing sped up and her silence dissolved into full body, gut-wrenching, sobs. Her hands aimlessly gripped at the fabric of his jacket.
"I know, I know," Hopper managed to say to her, burying his hand in her hair, holding her close to his chest. "I'm sorry," he whispered, when she finally started to calm down.
He was sorry that she was scared. He was sorry he hadn't found her sooner. He was sorry that she had to go through this sort of torture again. He was sorry that he couldn't keep her safe enough the first time. He was sorry that she couldn't live a normal life like she deserved. He was sorry for so much, but that was all he could manage to say.
While it wasn't terribly cold outside, El started almost violently shivering. Hopper wrapped his arms around her and climbed out, carrying her over to the passenger seat.
When El felt him trying to set her down, she started to panic. "No! Please, no!" she cried, desperately trying to hold on to him.
"It's just the other side of the car," Hopper tried to explain to her, but she was in almost a state of delirium. He forced her hands off him and moved quickly to get a blanket out of the back seat. The moment he let go of her, El curled up on herself and squeezed her eyes tightly shut again.
Hopper moved back to her open doorway and pulled his jacket off, wrapping it around her shoulders. "Look, I'm right here," he told her, tucking the blanket in around her too. "El, open your eyes... El, now. Look around," he pressed when she didn't respond. "Hey," he tried again, growing a little worried. "El." He tapped her cheeks lightly with his fingertips.
El's eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly, softening only when his eyes met hers. "See? It's just our car," he said carefully, realizing now that she actually was delirious and possibly hallucinating from who knows what drugs or maybe just simple dehydration.
Hopper didn't ask her, and El wouldn't have been able to tell him anyway. She was forced to take a tablet nearly every other day in the afternoon when Brenner was ready for her. She didn't know what it was, only that it was terrifying and made it so that she couldn't fall asleep until it would start to wear off sometime overnight.
El didn't know that it was LSD- the same drug her mother had been given, only now in a much stronger dose due to her powers.
She could have refused. She could have said no. She could have spit it out. However, Brenner had countered her every move with ultimatums; he threatened that he knew exactly where her friends and family were, and he would take them out, one by one, for every act of disobedience.
So El complied with whatever he wanted. She became his puppet. She took the drugs, even though they sent her to a terrifying place and made her see upsetting things. While her body was physically here, her mind was Upside Down.
"No. No El, look at me," Hopper instructed forcefully when her eyes started to wander. Her eyes darted around, and she looked absolutely terrified. He got her attention back and noticed how incredibly dilated her pupils were. "Say it with me…I'm okay. I'm safe…El?" he pressed.
"I'm- okay. I'm safe," she choked out.
The shadows surrounded Hopper, and she wondered why he didn't seem scared of them too. But still, she didn't take her eyes off his, knowing that even if what she was saying wasn't true, at least she wasn't alone anymore.
"Good, yeah," he said letting out a breath. "I'm okay. I'm safe," he repeated with her again and again, until eventually her breathing slowed down, though her worried expression remained.
When Hopper was satisfied she could be on her own for a minute, he closed her door and made his way back to his seat. Luckily, they had been heading in the right direction on the highway, so he pulled back onto the interstate and continued driving.
The drive to her hidden location in the middle of Nebraska had been over 12 hours away from Hawkins, so they had a bit of a trip left. He turned the radio on to a soft volume, in hopes that it would help El relax and realize that she was out of that place now.
He occasionally glanced at her every now and then, trying to keep an eye on her without giving away the fact that he was very concerned about her mental state. He wanted her to feel as normal as possible again, and he knew that treating her like she was going to break, wouldn't help.
He also knew that she was exhausted and just wished she'd close her eyes and sleep, but she never did. El stayed bundled up in his jacket and the blanket, staring blankly ahead. What he didn't know was that she couldn't fall asleep, because if she did, the monsters would get her.
About an hour into the drive, he saw the familiar lights of a fast food restaurant approaching at the next exit.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
El didn't answer or even acknowledge that he was talking to her.
"Thirsty?" he tried again, still met with silence. "Well, I'm starving," he told her as casually as possible, pulling into the first restaurant with a drive thru.
Truly, he wasn't hungry. In fact, he felt almost sick with guilt and worry when he looked at her. But he ordered two hamburgers, french fries, a soda, and a milkshake anyway, hoping he could entice her to eat at least one of those options. He managed to ingest a hamburger, before shoving the rest of the food towards her.
"I'm really ruining my diet here. You should probably help me eat some of this," he told her, holding the milkshake out towards her.
As if something clicked in her head, El turned to him and carefully grabbed the cup with both hands. She took a slow sip from the straw. It was strawberry, her favorite flavor.
She never reached for any food, but she did occasionally take a drink every now and then from the cup, even though she remained in her almost catatonic state. Again, Hopper waited for her to fall asleep, but she never did.
They drove for hours in silence until nearly 3 AM, when he felt so tired that he realized it probably wasn't safe for him to be driving anymore; he'd been awake for nearly 24 hours now.
Hopper pulled into the parking lot of the first motel with a vacancy sign lit up.
"Home?" El's quiet voice asked, startling him. It came out as a question, though it was pretty obvious this was not their home.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, we'll be home soon. Just a few more hours. We're going to stop here to sleep for a little while," Hopper explained to her. He didn't want to leave her alone in the car, but he looked over her disheveled, pants-less state, and knew he couldn't bring a kid looking like this inside without looking suspicious. "I just have to go into the office to get a room key. I'll be right there," he told her pointing through the window to the small check-in desk. El didn't respond, so he quickly got out of the vehicle and went inside.
"We only have single rooms left," the older front desk woman informed him, eyeing his car parked out front.
"Oh, that's fine. It's just me and my daughter," he excused quickly.
"Awfully late to be travelling. Where you two headed?" she asked curiously.
"Meeting my wife and son out in New York. Moving," he lied easily.
"Long ways to move, huh."
"Yeah, just trying to get as far as we can every day."
She smiled at him sympathetically. "That'll be 16 dollars".
He pulled out his wallet, glancing nervously at the car. Even though he was decently certain that they hadn't been followed, he hated leaving El alone.
The two exchanged the money for a room key.
"It's room 207. Just up those steps on the second floor." The woman pointed to the staircase outside.
"Thanks. I appreciate it," Hopper smiled back, hoping to make their interaction as benign as possible.
He went back out to the car and moved to a parking space closer to the stairs. He didn't necessarily want the nosy front desk clerk to be able to see El up close.
When he parked the car, El didn't move to get out, so he walked around to her door. He removed the half empty cup of warm, strawberry milk from her hands and did a once over. His eyes stopped on her ankles, which were still wrapped in the fabric that had previously held her to her bed.
"Let's get these off you," he told her softly. It was the middle of the night, but if anyone were to have seen her, it would have looked unusual. "Stay still," he warned, though she hadn't moved in hours.
He slid his pocket knife between the fabric and her skin until the wraps dropped to the floor of the car. Her skin underneath was chaffed and red, one of the few physical signs of the abuse she'd suffered in the days since she had gone missing.
He also realized that El was still dressed rather inappropriately, so he wrapped the blanket around her again and picked her up to carry her to their room. El had come so far in just a year and half with him, but it was almost as if they were starting over. Only this time, he wouldn't have to work so hard to gain her trust. El buried her face against him and clung to his side, like she was still deathly afraid of something or someone.
Hopper wasn't aware that it'd been just over 12 hours since she'd been given any LSD, so while El was starting to have some moments of clarity again, there were still flashes of darkness and monsters all around her.
When she was high on the drugs they had given her, she wasn't consciously able to use her powers. Instead, they came out only in unexpected and frightening ways. And when she wasn't trapped in the darkness, Brenner all but stripped her of her strength with dangerous threats.
A few months ago, when she was home, the monsters never scared her much; she always felt like she could handle them. However, now that they were coupled with the paralyzing thought of her being the cause of harm to the people she loved so much, fear took over.
Day by day, she started to forget what it was like to have choices; she started to shut down.
Hopper shifted her in his arms to unlock the door to their room. Lit only by the lights streaming in through the window, he made his way into the dark room. His legs bumped into the side of the bed, and he sat down on the edge, reaching for the lamp on the small end table. When it turned on, El lifted her head to look around.
Hopper was able to lay her down on the bed without much of a fight. He closed the curtains and went into the bathroom, pouring her a glass of water.
"Kid, try and drink some of this," he told her, trying to keep the edge of concern out of his voice. El sat up and did as he asked- only a few swallows, but better than nothing. Hopper took the glass from her and set it on the nightstand. "We're just going to be here long enough to get some sleep, okay?"
El nodded, though she wasn't sure if she could sleep just yet.
Hopper double checked that the door was locked and kicked his shoes off. He pulled the pistol from its holster and laid it on the end table, climbing into bed next to her. El eyed his gun and her eyes drifted around the room, watching the wall that had looked normal a second ago, get overtaken by creeping black vines.
Hopper shut the lamp off, not thinking about her old fear of the dark that she used to have, especially in unfamiliar places. In the time that she had stayed with him, her fear had gradually declined until it was almost non-existent. But now that the room was black, El instinctively rolled over and curled up close against him. The dark did make it harder to see the monsters, but that's also what scared her.
She was on top of the bed covers, covered up only by the blanket from the car. When Hopper felt her moving closer, he wrapped an arm around her. "You okay?" he questioned, prepared to turn the lamp back on for the night if she needed him to.
"Safe?" El asked softly.
"Yes, El. It's safe. I promise," he replied, exhaling heavily and kissing the top of her head.
Hopper pulled her closer and adjusted the blanket around her so that she was completely covered up aside from her face. He stroked her hair and she let out a shaky breath as her eyes eventually adjusted to the dark.
It wasn't long until El felt his hand slow and his breathing deepen. She stayed curled up against him, listening to his rhythmic heartbeat under her ear for hours, until the sun was starting to come up, and the last of the monsters had disappeared.
"Safe," she murmured softly, finally closing her eyes and giving in to sleep.