El woke up a few hours later to find that the bed next to her was empty. She sat up and looked around the room. It somehow looked so different than she remembered it to be before she fell asleep. While it was only a few hours ago, it looked just like a normal room now. There was a small table with a chair, a television, and a lamp. There were no black vines and no monsters, and it seemed much smaller.
Light streamed in around the edges of the curtain and the clock said it was 8:39. She'd been asleep for just over 2 hours. Hopper's gun was still on the side table, and she heard water running in the bathroom.
El pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Even though the room no longer looked scary, and Hopper was only in the other room, she didn't like being here alone. Her leg anxiously bounced up and down until Hopper exited the bathroom.
"Oh, hey kid." He seemed surprised to see that she was awake already. He ran a hand through his wet hair and sat down on the end of the bed. "We're going to get back on the road soon, so uh, why don't you get ready to go."
"I'm ready," El answered quietly with a shrug.
"Well, it's going to be a few more hours before we get home. Ah, maybe go use the bathroom and stuff before we go," he awkwardly suggested. They wouldn't be able to stop anywhere for her to do that in the daylight with El dressed the way she was.
El nodded and shed her blanket, shivering a little when the air hit her bare legs.
When she finished using the bathroom, she stopped to look at herself in the mirror. It was the first time she'd seen herself in weeks. She knew she looked different- she looked bad. There were spots under her eyes that almost looked like bruises, and she desperately needed to shower and brush her hair. Her mouth tasted terrible and she wanted to brush her teeth too, but the bathroom was void of any toiletries.
Instead, she filled a styrofoam cup with water and brought it up to her lips. Even drinking was too much effort and she had to put the cup back down after only a few sips. She was still so tired that everything felt like an overwhelming task. El gave up trying to make herself presentable and stepped back out of the bathroom, waiting for Hopper to give her further instructions.
He was softly speaking on the phone to someone, but after he saw her, he quickly ended the conversation with a, "Yeah, we will." Once he hung up, he turned his attention to her. "Ready?" Hopper tried to make his voice sound natural, but El noticed that he was different too. He studied her for a moment, and El looked to the ground, hugging her arms around herself self-consciously. She rarely felt shy or uncomfortable around Hopper, but for some reason, she knew how terrible she looked and didn't want him looking at her any longer.
Hopper sensed her avoidance, so he picked El's blanket up off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Let's get you home." He forced a reassuring smile.
El hugged the blanket to herself and managed a nod.
Hopper clipped his weapon back to his waist and walked over to the curtains. He pulled them back just enough to see if there was any activity going on outside in the motel parking lot. Thankfully, all was rather quiet, so he opened the door and ushered El to their vehicle. Hopper remembered that she had bare feet when she gingerly tip-toed down the sharp metal steps, holding on to the railing and obviously trying not to put full pressure on her feet. He contemplated asking her if she needed help, but he didn't want El to feel like he was babying her, despite desperately feeling like he needed to do just that.
He walked behind her to the car and El climbed into the passenger seat. She wiped the gravel off her feet before curling her legs up and snuggling back up in the blanket.
Hopper drove them only a few feet to stop back at the front office. "Just have to drop the key off," he explained when El picked her head up, silently questioning the stop.
The nosy clerk from the overnight was gone and the young woman at the desk took his key and quickly checked him out without any questions.
He got back in the vehicle and drove them just down the road to the first gas station he saw. He made sure El was going to be okay for a few minutes while he filled up their car and went inside to pick out a few snacks. He settled on a package of mini donuts, Fruit Wrinkles, and a Coke for El. Not the healthiest of breakfasts, but he reasoned she needed to put some weight back on anyway. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a black coffee for himself.
While Hopper was inside, El accidentally made eye contact with a man in a car that had pulled up next to them. He was harmless enough, but she turned and quickly looked away. El still felt like every person who saw her could immediately tell who she was and what she had done. It felt like every single person was just waiting to drag her back to that place.
El pressed her eyes closed and tried to calm herself down. She knew she was being irrational. Thankfully, it was only another minute before Hopper joined her in the car.
"Everything okay?" he asked when he saw her concerned expression.
He knew it was a stupid question. Everything was obviously not okay. But El nodded anyway and relaxed her grip on the blanket a little. Hopper pulled out the folded map from between their seats. "We've got, oh, maybe 7 hours before we get home," he explained, double checking that he knew what route would get them there.
El suddenly felt even more overwhelmed than she had earlier in the motel. She didn't want to be in the car for 7 more hours- she just wanted to be home.
"Got you some breakfast," Hopper added, putting the two packages of snacks in her lap. He set her Coke in the cup holder between them and took a long drink of coffee. "Alright. Let's get out of here." He sighed and lit a cigarette, pulling out of the parking lot.
El typically didn't enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, but today the smell was familiar, and it somehow relaxed her. She realized that maybe that was why Hopper smoked them.
She eyed the food in her lap. While her body was telling her that she was hungry, she didn't feel much like eating. Still, she forced herself to eat almost all the Fruit Wrinkles anyway and even managed to eat one tiny donut hole, if only to make it so that Hopper would stop watching her out of the corner of his eye. El tucked the rest of the donuts in the compartment on the bottom of her door and curled up in the blanket, resting her head against the window.
Hopper turned the volume on the radio up a little, and they listened to the American Top 40, until El eventually drifted off to sleep to Phil Collins somewhere in the top 20s.
An hour or so later, she kicked the blanket off herself with an uncomfortable whine. The sun was bright and beamed in directly on her. Her cheeks were pink, and her hair stuck to her forehead. She stretched her legs out, and all without opening her eyes, she bunched up the blanket in her hands and turned it into a pillow to rest against the window.
Hopper continued to steal quick glances at her until he was sure that she was back to sleep and wouldn't catch him looking at her. With the blanket completely off, her body was exposed enough that he could finally see the physical extent of the damage that had been done to her over the past few weeks. He ankles were rubbed red and nearly raw. There were old and fresh bruises on her thighs and a healing scar across her tiny wrist; he felt instantly sick when he started to wonder how the marks came to be. The heat was getting to him now too, so he cracked his window a bit, at least enough for some circulation, but not so much that the wind would be loud enough to wake her up. He hoped she would just stay asleep until they got home.
It was a few hours later when El's breathing sped up, and she slowly blinked her eyes open. She took a deep breath but laid her head back down against the cool glass of her window. The sun was no longer out, and though they were driving towards some dark, storm clouds, she still felt too hot and her stomach churned uncomfortably. She pressed her eyes closed, but that only seemed to make it worse.
"I don't feel well," she finally admitted out loud. Hopper turned to her and saw that she had an arm clutched tightly across her stomach. Her breathing was too fast, and she had an almost panicked expression on her face.
"Like you are going to be sick?"
El gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
"Need me to pull over?"
This time she emphatically nodded, and he slowed the vehicle down on the shoulder of the road. El shoved her door open before they were even fully stopped and leaned out the door to throw up. After a minute, she stumbled out of her seat, not caring that she was pretty much only in her underwear; she needed air. El collapsed to the gravel, pressing her throbbing and spinning head into her hands. Hopper put the car in park and climbed out, joining her on the side of the road.
When she wasn't actively throwing up, she alternated between unintentionally audible whines and sniffles. She really tried to hold back her tears, but she couldn't manage to stop them. Hopper realized his anxious pacing probably wasn't helping, so he sat down next to her and leaned back against the car instead, silently telling her that he would wait there as long as she needed him to. He was thankful that they were on a pretty dead stretch of the highway.
"I'm sorry," El finally sniffled after a few minutes. She wiped a tear away with her palm but refused to make eye contact with Hopper. She felt stupid and embarrassed for getting sick and crying.
"It's okay," he promised her softly. "You just got carsick, that's all." He put a hand on her back to comfort her.
"Carsick?" El repeated. Her eyes flicked towards him and then away again.
"Yeah, that happens sometimes when you fall asleep in the car. It can make you feel a little bit nauseous when you wake up," he explained. "One time when I was a kid, I was on vacation with my friend and his parents and I fell asleep in their car. When I woke up, I puked spaghetti all over," he smirked, exaggerating with his hands. "I didn't eat spaghetti again for years."
El's eyes softened. Hopper always seemed to know how to make her feel a little bit better, and she knew there was no reason to be feeling so stupid.
"Does carsick make your head hurt too?" she finally managed to ask. She pressed her palm against the middle of her forehead, closing her eyes again.
"You're probably a little dehydrated too," he explained with a sigh.
That was his fault. He should have made sure she drank something last night before bed and again before they left this morning. He glanced in the car at the only option he had for her to drink- a bottle of Coke… also his fault. He pulled the bottle out of the car anyway and took the top off, handing it to her.
"Here. Take just a little sip."
El did as he instructed and made a face. It mixed with the residual acid in her throat and burned as it went down.
"Sorry, kid. Probably not the best thing to drink after puking, huh," he apologized.
El nodded in agreement. After another few minutes, Hopper helped her stand back up and then he knelt back down to brush off the gravel that stuck to her bare legs. El tugged at her short t-shirt, feeling a lot like the day she met Mike, Dustin, and Lucas for the first time. This time was so different, but the awkward and insecure feelings were still very familiar.
El reminded herself that she wasn't alone anymore and that the man in front of her cared for her. He maybe even loved her, and he would never want her to feel this way.
When Hopper stood up, she turned to him and buried her head against his chest.
"You okay to keep going?" he asked. His arms wrapped around her.
El suddenly wanted to tell him exactly how much she loved him. It was something she thought about a lot over the past few weeks without him, not knowing if she'd ever even see him again.
She wanted to thank him for caring enough to find her but all that came out of her mouth was a soft, "I just want to be home."
"I know, me too. Probably close to 2 hours or so," he promised her.
El tried hard not to cry, but a miserable whimper escaped her lips, and Hopper could hear just how uncomfortable she was.
He hated it, but he knew El was incredibly tough. They just needed to make it home and get her settled back into the life that she used to know.
They would get through this.
Hopper helped her back into the car and dug through the fast food bag from the night before, searching for a napkin. He gently wiped the blood that had slowly trickled from one side of her nose. He didn't want to think about why that was happening now when she hadn't even been using her powers.
"Ready?" he confirmed, bending over slightly to stand at eye level with her in the seat.
She gave a positive nod, and Hopper uncharacteristically pressed his lips against her forehead for a quick kiss. He pulled back with a heavy sigh and nodded. "Alright, kid," he told her, buckling her seatbelt around her.