After setting Mike down, almost immediately Eleven went and sat on the floor right next to the boys head, grabbing his hand and holding it tight. She was silent as she gently brushed the boys hair from his face, and held an expression on her face that Hopper could only describe as love.
"Eleven."
Hopper shifted in his seat in the armchair in the corner and turned to face the girl. Eleven continued to gaze at Mike, giving no indication that she had heard him.
"Eleven, answer me."
The girl lifted up her head hesitantly, and slowly raised her eyes to meet his own.
"Eleven, honey, we need to get Mike home, his mother is probably worried sick."
Eleven's eyes went wide as saucers, and she scooted closer to Mike, and grabbed his hand tighter, almost protectively.
"No. Mike stays here." Eleven says with as much confidence as her small 15 year old stature could muster. "He can't go back there. Not safe."
She shakes her head violently when she says "not safe."
"Eleven, what do you mean by not safe?" Hopper is confused for a moment before it dawns on him.
The bruise.
Ted caused that bruise.
Oh.
Hopper repeats this revelation to Eleven, and watches as the color drains from her face.
"You..you weren't supposed to know about that." she says in one of the smallest voices he has ever heard on her.
"And you were?" He says as his gaze turns to the once again sleeping teen on the couch.
"Well.." she says hesitantly, "H-he needed someone to talk to when it got bad…and I was always there… it hasn't been this bad in a couple wee-"
She is cut off by Hopper standing up abruptly from his position at the armchair, and is surprised when he comes and kneels next to her, their faces inches apart.
"This has happened before?" He asks with barely controlled anger.
Eleven doesn't answer, settling instead for turning her gaze to the floor, suddenly finding it very interesting. Then, she closes her eyes for a moment and freezes in place. Hopper didn't realize what she was doing, until he noticed that the T.V. had turned on and until he saw the small line of blood trickle down her nose.
"Oh hell no, you are not getting out of this one." He said as he moved to grab her arm to shake her out of whatever trance she had put herself in.
But before he made contact with her arm, her hand shot out in front of her and she grabbed his wrist, hard.
The second their hands made contact, everything went black.
When he opened his eyes after regaining consciousness, he was met with darkness. Everything around him was dark, and the ground beneath him had inches of standing water, making his shoes wet. The only source of noise he could hear was the splashing of the water as he walked, and his own breathing.
Hopper sat in silence for a couple minutes, wondering where he was and what the hell had happened, before he heard something coming behind him.
He turned around, and was surprised to see it was Eleven-or at least a hallucination of her- tiptoeing towards him, crying.
"Elev-" He is cut off by her shaking her head.
"I'm sorry." she says through hiccupped crying. "Don't tell Mike. please." She has stepped closer to him now, her voice pleading with him to understand.
"I just had to show you.. I had to." she says in a broken voice.
Hopper is about to tell her it was okay, to question her about what she could show him that was so bad, before yet again, she grabs his hand.
And yet again, his world goes black.
Although this time he doesn't wake up in a world of darkness, but instead, a world of black and blue.
Distantly, she hears yelling. Although she can't recognize the voice off the top of her head, she can't help but feel like she's heard the voice before, long ago.
She turns towards the yelling, and starts walking towards the sound, not seeing anything except for the black expanses of nothingness, until she sees two people appear suddenly in the distance.
One of them she immediately recognizes as Mike, and with that revelation she starts running as fast as she possibly can towards him.
She skids to a stop, though, about 20 feet away from him, when she sees the other figure..Ted? Yes that is Ted. Mike's dad. Good.
She is wrongly mistaken.
She watches in a silent horror as the man creeps closer towards Mike, still screaming obscenities at him.
And when Mike backs away from him, tears coating his face.
And when Ted raised his hand up and made contact with Mike's face.
She watches him fall.
She watches as Ted pulls him roughly from the floor, and pushes him roughly into the glass coffee table.
Mike doesn't get up. He lays there, motionless.
Ted has left by this point, leaving Mike alone. Hurt.
Eleven has never felt so scared, so helpless, since back at the lab.
She knows he can't hear her, but she still screams at him to wake up. She screams until her throat is raw, and her voice is barely a whisper.
It's so quiet. So quiet she can hear her heart crack at the sight of Mike.
She doesn't care how long she's been sitting there, staring at Mike.
She's not leaving until he wakes up.
When Hopper comes back to, he is not in the world of darkness, but sprawled across the floor in the cabin.
Images flash through his mind, each one cutting deep-like the cut on Mike's forehead.
The cut that he watched Ted give to him.
Eleven had given Hopper a memory, had let him relive that moment through her, had let him feel everything she had felt, see everything she had saw.
Now he understood why Mike couldn't go home.
He understood far too well.
