A/N This chapter is the result of a few things I've been chewing on. Timelines, loose ends, that sort of thing.
Christmas week-ish, but before the actual Christmas day.
Adding an additional note to respond to review by Linguo because you don't have your PM enabled so I can't send you a message and I am incapable of not responding. It's a compulsion, I'm waiting for the appropriate 12-step to hit the market but until then, I'm going to need to be humored. So I hope you find this note.
First of all, good spotting re the Genie case. I was not aware that the father hung himself (thank you for the info) and I was aware that she was never able to internalize grammatical structure or learn more than a few words. There is at least a valid argument that her linguistic abilities were compounded by trauma. I have wondered (but obviously not enough to delve that far into linguistics to find out) what a case study like Helen Keller brings to the discussion. There you have an individual who is in an otherwise non-traumatic environment and yet completely deprived of access to language. Keller received intervention at age 7 which is not yet outside of the critical language period, but I would be curious to know if there were other similar cases where intervention came much later and how those case studies support or contradict the critical period theory.
As is applies to the show, Eleven's saving grace (completely losing sight of the fact that this is fiction and her real saving grace is the decision to write a script that gives her more lines) is that she wasn't in complete isolation. There was the whole Rainbow Room sequence and Brenner does interact with her, albeit minimally and only to be a manipulative prick, but hey, language is language.
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The first time she demanded a tree, he gestured out the window to the forest beyond and she was not amused that he had purposefully missed her meaning. Not just a tree, a Christmas tree. He removed the decorations Flo had so kindly put in his office to make it festive and brought them home to Eleven. Two birds with one stone as far as he was concerned.
"What is a resolution?" Eleven asked staring at her first Christmas tree.
"A resolution? Like a New Years resolution?"
She nodded. The things she picked up on, he wondered to himself
"It's like you make a promise to yourself to do something. R-e-s-o-l-u-t-i-o-n. Look it up," he responded gesturing towards the dictionary.
She flipped through the pages until she found the word. "A firm decision to do or not do something," Eleven read
"That's right."
She paused and contemplated. "What something?"
"Oh well it could be anything. People like to think of a new year as a time to start over so they decide they're gonna lose weight, eat better, read more, that sort of thing. Some way to improve yourself."
"You need a resolution," she declared. "You need rules."
"I have rules," Hopper grouched back.
"No, I have rules. Mike has rules. You have no rules."
"That's because I'm not a kid," he said with a healthy dose of sarcasm
"Brat," she shot back
"Seriously?" he raised an eyebrow.
"Badly behaved, spoiled, impolite," she recites the memorized dictionary definition. It was his word of the day after all.
"Alright fine," he humored her seeing as how she was clearly not going to drop this, "what do you think my rules should be?"
"Number one, don't be late. Or at least send the signal. Number two, no secrets."
"What secrets?" he interrupted defensively.
"When is soon, can I go to school, can I see Mama. Just tell me. Be honest. That's fair. Three, no more TV dinners. They suck."
"Tell you what, I'll get better about being on time, but sometimes I get busy with work and lose track. But I really will try. And I'll get us some cookbooks and we'll learn to cook together, ok?"
"What about no secrets?" She pressed.
"Look kid, sometimes there are just things I need to handle, ok?"
"Bullshit," there had been a lot that Eleven hadn't called Hopper out on lately, but there was no way she was going to let that fly. "I can handle the gate, I can handle the demogorgan, I can handle secrets."
"Hopper considered what it would mean to genuinely have no secrets. There was at least one he was terrified of El finding out. She would hate him and he'd lose her forever. He couldn't survive that, he was certain. He would take that secret to his grave and the only other person who knew about it had already taken it to his.
Being confronted with something extremely uncomfortable, he turned it back on Eleven. "If you really want no secrets, then I want to know what exactly happened when you took off to see your mom."
Eleven realized that she had not fully considered what a genuine no secrets rule might mean. Hopper still had no idea Eleven had been to Chicago. No idea El had found her sister Kali. No idea Brenner might be alive. She wasn't entirely sure why she wanted to keep these things to herself, but she did. She could tell Hopper more than just the fact that she'd hitched a ride to see her mother. She'd tell him the rest...eventually.
"Ok," she said jutting out her chin defiantly, "you first. Why were you really late?"
He paused, took a deep breath and then took the plunge. "I met with Dr Owens, again, that's why I was late."
"Dr Owens is a Bad Man," Eleven was clearly pissed Hopper was cooperative with anyone from the lab, Dr. Owens included.
"He's not totally a Bad Man," Hopper justified. "He's more like a morally ambiguous man."
"Am big what?" El asked, confused.
"Ambiguous. It means to be two ways at the same time. Part good, part bad. Look, I'm not saying I'm friends with the guy, but I have to check in with him to see how things are going so I know when it will be safe for you. Ok?"
"Is it safe?" She asked hopefully.
"Not yet, kid. Remember one year. It's only been two months. But he did tell me something else that was helpful. A way to help you get more caught up on school stuff."
Eleven raised her eyebrows in silent question.
"Well, see now there was a girl out in California. She's an adult now, but when she was a baby, her father decided there was something wrong with her so he locked her in a room. He wouldn't let anyone else see her and no one ever spoke to her. She wasn't found until she was about your age now and she couldn't speak a word because she hadn't heard anyone speak since she was a baby."
"Her papa was a bad man," El said darkly feeling uniquely empathetic. She moved next to Hopper on the sofa and leaned into him for comfort.
"Yeah he was kid. A very bad man who is now locked away in prison." Hopper wrapped his arm around El and kissed her head as he pulled her into a protective hug. "The thing is," he continued, "there were a lot of doctors who tried to help this little girl learn to speak. What they found out is the brain learns language one way when we're babies and another way when we're older."
"Papa didn't let anyone talk to me either," Eleven's voice was even quieter. She rarely spoke about the lab and how she'd suffered. "If I made him happy, he talked. If I made him mad, the Bad Men put me in the dark and no one came. Is that why it's hard to learn words now?"
"I think so kid. But this girl did learn to speak. Not completely normal, but she did learn. And you didn't hear a lot of words when you were little, but you at least heard some. And you were younger than this girl when you got out of there. So I think, I think maybe using some of the things that worked for this other girl would work even better for you."
"I could be ready for school?" She asked
"I don't know, ok? I really want you to be able to go to school, but I worry if you're not ready, you'll just be miserable. It's a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time." Hopper couldn't stomach the thought of Eleven being teased for being stupid. Kids could be such assholes.
"We'll try," she conceded without confessing she shared his doubts.
They sat together on the sofa a while longer, letting Hopper's secret sink in.
"Your turn," Hopper finally said to change the mood a little. "I want to know about this adventure of yours."
"A nice man in a big truck took me to Mama," she shrugged
"Mm-hm, and when you got to your mom's what happened?"
"Aunt Becky showed me Mama."
"And...," he prompted
"Then Mama showed me what happened," El finished. Hello, this was new information.
"What do you mean 'what happened'?" He tried and failed to keep his voice even.
"Mama saw I was born and Papa took me. He told her I died but she saw. She took a gun to get me back. She found me in the room with the rainbow. Then they hurt her real bad," Eleven got more and more quiet as she spoke and by the end, she was basically whispering to Hopper's rib cage.
The information itself wasn't new, but the fact that Terry Ives somehow communicated it to Eleven was. "How did she show you?" He asked.
Eleven covered her eyes. She'd gone into the void to find Mama. Of course she did.
Eleven sniffled and burrowed into Hopper's side until she fell asleep. Secrets were exhausting.
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Hopper sat on the porch of the cabin that night, smoking and thinking. He mentally subtracted 13 from 1984. El was born sometime in 1971. What was he doing in 1971? He was a newly promoted detective for NYPD and he and Diane got married. Everything was good and the future was bright. And El was a helpless newborn in the hands of a psychopath.
Two years later, 1973. Sara was born and he and Diane just couldn't stop staring at her and how perfect she was. She had her mother's golden hair. And El was two and locked in darkness to control her. Was that the year Terry managed to find her, Hopper wondered?
Three years later, 1976. Another promotion to Lieutenant and Sara got sick. He got her into the best hospitals and did his best to comfort her through countless blood draws and treatments. And five year old Eleven who should have been in kindergarten was poked and prodded like a lab rat with no one to hold her.
One year later, 1977. A small white coffin dwarfed by the floral arrangement Diane had selected resting on top. A blue hair ribbon wrapped protectively around his wrist while his heart died to escape the pain. And El had never seen daylight.
Three years later, 1978. He had destroyed his marriage because he'd checked out when Sara died. He fell into the abyss. The divorce was final and it was suggested to Hopper that he take a personal leave of absence to avoid anything that might mar his professional record. And El was 7, and her training began in ernest.
A year later, 1979. Hopper returned to his home town for his father's funeral. Now he was truly, completely alone, broken and broke. Hawkins needed a Chief of Police and Hopper's 11 years with the NYPD was impressive enough to make him a shoo in. Hawkins was quiet enough to hide the fact that Hopper used pain killers to kill a different kind of pain. And a few miles away eight year old Eleven was subjected to the latest break throughs in psychological torture the CIA had to offer.
What if he'd found her then? Would she have a better chance at something resembling a normal life? Could he have saved her from the guilt of having killed? Could he have gotten to her before she knew about Upside Down? Before Upside Down has known about her? If instead of drowning himself, he'd just opened his eyes, what would he have seen?
The door cracked causing Hopper to shift his focus away from the night sky.
"Outside?" she asked
"Yeah kid, of course."
"She pointed to Hopper's chest. "Sad," and it was hard to tell if it was a question or a declaration.
"A little," he admitted. "Thinking about the past."
"El? I'm sorry the Bad Men hurt you. I was right here, right outside and I didn't know. I wish I had."
"Not your fault," she said firmly.
No, he thought, but I was willing to risk you going back to save Will Byers last year. No matter what he did to atone for it, Hopper would never truly make up for it.
"I have one more secret," he announced. She wasn't sure how many more secrets she could handle tonight. "Not a secret really, maybe more of a surprise. But we've had a long day so this is a good time."
He handed her the white envelope that had been hidden in his jacket pocket for a few weeks now. She opened it and looked confused.
"Dr. Owens did that for you. For us. It's a birth certificate. You need one to go to school, get a driver's license, that sort of thing."
"This makes you mine?" She asked.
"It makes us each other's."
