Welcome travelers!
Once again, I'll say that Season 3 was absolutely incredible, and you should definitely go watch it (I have done so more than once now). Now that comes not only has a suggestion, but a warning, because I have integrated some important season 3 content into the following chapter, so if you haven't seen it yet, DO NOT continue reading past this point.
To the guest reviewer named Jon, two things. First, thanks for the review, I always love to see and read them. Second, you called me out literally one chapter before I planned to address the one-sidedness. Up to this point, it has been completely intentional, and I had a resolution planned to address it. Your review gave me the motivation to actually write it out, but still, the timing is uncanny. With Season 3 dropping, it gave me a much better way to round out this arc than I had planned, so I changed my plan a bit, and I'm very happy with it.
*IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED WATCHING STRANGER THINGS 3, DO NOT READ THIS CHAPTER, MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD*
And now, the chapter...
"Alright, now tell him what you want," Liz instructs, sitting next to El, a hand on her shoulder.
"A coke," El says in her mind. "A cold one, from the fridge."
She looks to Liz, not quite sure what's supposed to happen.
"Well, give him a second, he's gotta walk back over," Liz tells her, letting go of her sister's leg. "Knowing Lover Boy, he'll trip up the stairs while he's at it."
El frowns at her, but doesn't comment. A few seconds later they hear footsteps approaching from the hallway, and then Mike appears, holding three cans of coke, condensation already gathering on the red cans.
"I didn't know if Liz wanted one too, so I grabbed three," He says, setting them down on the table.
El beams at him, resisting the urge to tackle hug him, as is her natural instinct.
"It worked," She declares, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Yes, it did," Mike replies, entirely in her mind, grinning like an idiot.
"Told you we could get that range extended," Liz comments, opening her can and sitting back. "The emotional connection has what I assume is an unlimited range, but if you keep practicing, you can get the talking distance up to par."
"Easy for you to say," Mike tells her, sitting down heavily on El's other side. "That was exhausting."
"What did you expect?" Liz asks sarcastically. "Sharing a telepathic connection with your girlfriend would be a walk in the park? You'd instantly be a master of psychic powers with no experience and no clue what you're doing?"
"Be nice," El interjects, before they can start arguing again. "Mike's doing really well. I'm proud."
She smiles at her boyfriend again, and then pulls him closer with her mind so she can kiss him. He doesn't resist, pulling away with an even bigger grin.
"Ok, you've earned a break, I guess," Liz decides, standing up. "I know El can keep going, but you'll pass out if we try to extend your range any further right now."
Mike's grin turns into a grimace, though Liz's words are true. El can send him messages all the way across the building, but when he tries to reply he can barely go further than across the room. It's so easy for her to pick up, but here he is holding her back.
"You're doing perfect, Mike," El assures him, feeling what he feels through their link. "It's only been a week."
They're interrupted by Liz closing the door to the apartment and clicking the lock shut. Her face is much more serious when she comes back.
"Why'd you lock the door?" Mike asks, sitting up a little straighter in his seat.
"Because we need to talk, and I don't want anyone interrupting," She says, sitting back down. "And I also don't want you two walking out on me, because this has been a long time coming, and it's not waiting any longer."
"Talk?" El questions. "About what?"
"About a lot of things," Liz answers, taking a sip of coke. "You, him, the two of you together, Hopper, the list goes on."
El purses her lips at the mention of Hopper, but doesn't comment. They've been back on regular speaking terms since the camping trip, and he's come over for dinner twice in the week since they returned. It's been slow progress though, three long grueling months since Liz had revealed the truth to them.
"We'll get to him in a minute though, first we're going to talk about you," Liz starts. "You're about to go into high school, but you haven't shown any interest in any of the electives you get to choose. Once Hopper gets everything finalized, you'll need to pick something."
"I want to be with my friends," El answers matter of factly.
"And you will be, seven hours a day, five days a week, plus every second you're around each other out of school," Liz responds, rolling her eyes. "But 'friends' isn't a class, 'friends' isn't a field you go into later in life. I know you're just getting into the regular girl things here, but it's important that you be able to branch out on your own and find stuff that you like just because it's what you like, nobody else."
"She's got plenty of time for that," Mike interjects, trying to defend El's choice. "If she wants to take classes with us while she adjusts, what's wrong with that?"
Liz is silent for a few seconds, biting her upper lip.
"El, it's been almost two years since you got out of the lab, and almost a year since the lab shut down. What do you want to do, now that you're free?" Liz asks after a few moments. "What do you do in your free time, alone, that makes you happy?" She pauses for El to answer, but the younger girl just presses her lips together. "What's your favorite food that isn't eggos?"
"I don't even know the answers to some of those things, and I've had a lot longer to think about them," Mike insists, not seeing the point of this conversation. "Why does this matter so much right now?"
"Because right now El is your girlfriend, she's a party member, she's Hopper's daughter, she's Steve's tenant, she's my sister," Liz lists, looking straight into Mike's eyes. "But she isn't her own person yet. When you guys aren't around, she just waits for you to come back." She shifts her gaze to El now. "If you're going to be a full participant in the real world, then you need to become a full person, El. You need to have your own interests, your own hobbies, and your own life. It's fine to want to do things with your friends, but you need to exist whether your friends are around or not."
Liz stops to breathe, and El looks caught between wanting to cry and wanting to be mad at the girl in front of her. Mike opens his mouth to say something, but a touch on his leg from El stops him. El swallows hard, and then looks back into Liz's eyes, trying to figure out what she sees there.
"Thank you," She finally says, evidently finding the answer to her unspoken question. "For being honest."
"Well, you guys say it all the time, right?" Liz replies with a half smile. "Friends don't lie."
El cracks a smile back at her, and then turns to Mike.
"I wanted to try cooking," She tells him. "Do you want to take it with me?"
"I'd love to, if I weren't already locked into my schedule," Mike responds, hiding his shock at her sudden acceptance of Liz's argument. "I can try talking to the guidance counselor to change it."
"No, don't change it for me," El insists. "I need to start being my own person."
"You're not going to break up with me now, are you?" Mike asks, only a little nervous for the answer.
"Not yet," El answers, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek, and then whisper in his ear. "But we'll see."
Mike's eyes go wide, and he inhales sharply, until El starts to laugh. Liz can guess what she just said, joining in the laughter while Mike tries to stop his pulse from racing a mile a minute.
"Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to Mike," Liz announces, the short-lived mirth evaporating. "Seeing how I've lived through all of your memories, so you can't lie to me, I'll just ask. How's your arm doing?"
Mike reflexively covers his left arm with his right hand, having worn short sleeves today since he'd probably die in a long sleeved shirt. It's a wonder Liz can survive, wearing a leather jacket in this heat. El tenses beside him, not prepared for the sudden shift in conversation.
"Don't pretend, I've known about it since we first met," She tells him. "I was going to bring it up that night too, but the Hopper news spiralled way out of control." This time Mike tenses, remembering the night he'd told El. That had been hard enough. "So I'll ask again, how's your arm doing?"
"It's fine," Mike answers shortly. "It has been for a long time."
"Has it though?" Liz questions. "I know I haven't read you for three months, but I doubt your thoughts have changed that drastically since then."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mike retorts, not convincing either of the people who hear him.
"You thought once El came back, you'd be fine, you'd never even think about doing it again," Liz responds, setting her coke can down. "But you have, you've thought about it a lot. Every time you remember what it was like to lose her, you want to add another line."
"I'm not talking about this right now," Mike says, starting to stand. He makes it halfway up before he freezes, struggling ineffectively against his invisible restraints. "El, let go of me."
"No," She says, turning her full body toward him. "Is she telling the truth? Do you still want to cut yourself?"
Mike struggles again, trying to break himself out of the iron grip El's mind has on him. It's not until he finally accepts that he's not going to get free on his own that he sighs, sad and defeated. He doesn't say anything, but when El sees the tears start to run down his cheeks, she stands to hug him. His body starts to move again, but only makes it as far as El's embrace.
"Not talking about it isn't the same as dealing with it," Liz says after a minute of silence, her voice quiet and solemn. "Just because the source of those thoughts ended, they're still inside your head. You still lived through them, you still felt them, and they're every bit as real now as they were then."
It takes another minute, but Mike finally sits down, tightly gripping El's hand.
"What am I supposed to do?" He asks, wiping his eyes with his free hand.
"Honestly, I don't know for certain," Liz answers. "There's no cut and paste method that will magically cure you, unless you want to just get rid of a year of your memories altogether."
"Is that an option?" Mike questions, only half joking.
"No, it isn't," The older girl tells him definitively. "You don't want that to happen, it's not pretty."
"Then what I am supposed to do?!" Mike demands, his despair turning to anger. "What was the fucking point of bringing this all up again if you can't help?!"
"So you can start to figure out what works, and what doesn't," Liz replies calmly. "Ignoring it doesn't, so we can cross that off the list. Finding something that works usually means finding a hundred things that don't."
"And what then?!" Mike continues. "I just live with it forever?!"
"In a way, yes. Your thoughts and memories are with you forever, whether you consciously remember them or not," Liz explains, starting to shrug off her jacket as the room heats up. "But you can accept them and move past them. It won't be quick, or easy, but you'll know when you're there."
Mike is quiet for a while, looking down at the floor in front of him. It's several long moments of silence before he finally opens his mouth. "How?"
"Because the itch will finally be gone," She says, with incredible certainty. "You'll be able to look at your arms and not see where the next line can go."
Mike finally looks up just as Liz is folding her jacket up. Aside from the beach, this is the first time he can remember her being without it.
"I have more memories in my head than anyone, dozens and dozens of lifetimes of people I barely remember, but know everything about," She tells them, turning her arms over. The undersides of her arms are pale, almost concealing what lies across them. "You lose yourself in them. The line where you end and they begin just disappears after so many, and then no matter how hard you try, you can't pull yourself out of the mess that's in there now. It was one of the few things that I knew was me." Her voice cracks with the last word, so she stops. El and Mike both notice the teardrops rolling down her cheeks, but neither can even open their mouths to speak. "Every time I pulled the knife across my arm, that stupid switchblade I keep in my pocket, I knew that I still existed, that I was still in there and I was still a person."
There are four lines on her left arm, and two on her right, all close enough to her elbows that they'd never show.
"Six lines, right?" Liz asks, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "That's the number they gave me, back when I was still just Elizabeth, so that's what I gave myself, to remember."
None of them speak for a long while, the minutes stretching on without interruption, the only faint sounds coming when a car passes by outside.
"It was all in the year after I escaped," Liz finally says. "I wanted to get it all out of my head, but I couldn't, not without getting rid of any piece of me that was still left, so that's what I did." She manages a half laugh. "I've lived enough lives now to know better, I guess. I've spent the last four years moving past it, but it's still hard sometimes, still easier not to talk about it and pretend everything is fine again."
"When did you know?" Mike questions, his voice quiet and wavering.
Liz actually smiles, a real, genuine smile.
"I finally stopped feeling the itch when I met Kali. It was just so nice to know that there was another person like me that could keep going without what I was doing," She explains, her tone softer than they've ever heard it before. "If she could do it, then so could I. Then I found out about Eleven, and I got scared, that one of us had escaped one prison just to be put in another." She laughs, a full laugh this time. "Guess I was wrong, huh? Seeing this little family you guys put together, how you all actually cared about each other, as people...that's when I stopped seeing the next six lines."
By this point, El is all but sobbing, and Mike puts his arms around her.
"It's gonna be alright, El," He whispers.
"You might want to talk to your friends," Liz suggests. "Will especially, after all he's been through. You guys were there for him, so let them them be there for you."
Mike doesn't respond, still not sure what he wants to do. All he's sure of right now is that he needs to stop doing nothing.
"Let's take a break," Liz decides, finishing her can of coke, the other two still unopened. "I'm gonna grab another drink."
"I thought this was the break?" Mike questions as the older girl stands.
"Well, we need a break from the break," Liz answers. "We still have more to talk about, but we can wait a few minutes before we dive into it."
As she leaves, unlocking the door, Mike is astounded yet again by how quickly Liz changes emotions. It's like flicking a switch, they're all just ready to go.
"Mike?" El murmurs, wiping her eyes. "Why does everything have to be sad?"
Mike squeezes her in his embrace, wholly unprepared for this conversation, though he hadn't been particularly ready for the other two.
"Not everything turns into something sad, we just drew the short straw lately," He tells her. "And if comic books have taught me anything, it's that we're going to be stronger because of this. The strongest characters never have an easy past, but they have the power to make their future whatever they want it to be."
"I want to be happy," El responds, sniffing. "I want to live a normal life, without the lab, without the Upside Down. I want to go to the mall with Max, and eat too much popcorn at the movies, and get brain freeze from eating my ice cream too fast, and I want to have a real family."
"And I want to spend the rest of my life with you," Mike replies. "So if you're willing to put up with me, I'll do everything I can to make sure you can do all of those things, whenever you want."
El smiles, hugging Mike back. They don't need to say anything else out loud, they can feel it just fine.
"Well isn't this sweet?" Liz comments, coming back in with a new can of coke. "Since we're already talking about family, seems like a nice segway into conversation number three."
Like before, she closes and locks the door, flopping onto the couch next to her leather jacket. Her can opens with a crack and a hiss, and she takes a swig before setting it down on the table.
"I'm gonna save the relationship one for now, I think Hopper has some kind of speech planned for that," Liz starts again. "Which means it's time to finally talk about Hopper, and how he's really not the bad guy you keep thinking he is."
"He gave me up," El retorts. "Called me a science experiment."
"And why did he do that?" Liz questions, crossing her legs underneath her to face the two younger teens. "Did he do that and then just sit back and watch?"
El doesn't answer, and Mike says nothing.
"No, he didn't," Liz says, answering her own question. "He made a deal so he could get Will out of the Upside Down. Would you have preferred that Will have died in there?"
"No," The two of them say in unison. El opens her mouth to say something else, but Liz keeps going.
"Would you have preferred that Hopper and Joyce have died in the lab?" Liz inquires, giving them both a hard look.
"No," They say again, and again El seems to want to say something.
"Then was Hopper trying to sell you out, or was he trying to survive and get Will back?" She persists. "The answer is, he wasn't. The idea that you might need protecting didn't cross his mind until after everything was finished. He knew you had powers, like the characters in the 'stupid comic books', and assumed you'd be able to take care of yourself." She puts air quotes around the comic books part, at which Mike seems to take some offense. "He realized he was wrong after what happened, so he took a chance, and left some eggos out in the woods. From the moment he found you, all he's wanted is for you to be safe."
"Because he felt guilty," El mutters, giving up on trying to cut in on Liz's spiel.
"Did I tell you he felt guilty?" Liz questions, and after a moment El shakes her head. "He didn't, even if he probably should have. He regretted it, for sure, but he never felt guilty. Getting Will out of the Upside Down was his number one priority, and he did what he had to do to accomplish that. After that, his number one priority was keeping everyone safe, which meant keeping up his part of the deal, but he kept thinking about the girl that disappeared."
El maintains her dark expression, drawing her knees up to her chest.
"Things got quiet, and there were less government agents looking over his shoulder, so Hopper decided to take a chance," Liz continues. "He waited until everyone would be celebrating with their families, and then he left some eggos in a box in the woods. He did it every three days, until you caught on, and then brought you somewhere he thought you would be safe."
"That I could never leave," El retorts, sounding a lot like Liz did when they first met. "A year inside, waiting."
"His methods were questionable, yes," Liz relents, but doesn't give up. "But as soon as you followed him out of the woods, his number one priority changed. He put everything he had into making sure you were safe, even if you weren't happy about it."
"Yeah, and where did that get us?" Mike asks, throwing in his bitter two cents.
"It got us to exactly this moment that we're having right now, whether you like it or not," Liz answers. "It got us to where the two of you can be together without having to look over your shoulders every ten seconds to check for government agents. Without Hopper, El would have died from exposure in the woods-"
"I'd have been fine," El interjects, glaring over her knees at Liz.
"You had a week left in you, at best, and then you'd have been dead," Liz snaps, shooting down El's attitude with her definitive knowledge. "Hopper saved your life then, and made sure you'd get to keep it."
"Then why did he lie?!" El demands, her emotions finally reaching a boiling point. "Why didn't he tell me?!"
"Because he was afraid he'd lose you," Liz answers, as if it should be obvious. "I know you've both heard it mentioned, but Hopper had a daughter before you, years ago. She got sick and didn't get better, and all Hopper could do was try to make her happy, until she was gone." El sinks back a little, knowing a little bit of this story. "You gave him a second chance, so he decided that if it was between happy and safe, he'd make sure you were safe, at all costs."
"He still should have said something about it," Mike responds. "Then at least-"
"What, Mike? At least what?" Liz interrupts. "It would have gone better than it has so far? I appreciate the thought, but you're not that naive." This time Mike shrinks back in his seat. "This was something Hopper planned to take to his grave, until I came along. It was festering though, something Hopper was using to justify not liking you, Mike, and all of his rules for you, El."
"Then why are we supposed to like him again?" Mike asks. "If he's just so against us, then why should we forgive him?"
El remains silent, her brow still furrowed, but slightly less dark than before.
"I'm not saying you have to forgive him, but you need to stop thinking that he's a bad guy and treating him like one," Liz explains. "He's a dad who's trying his best to keep his daughter safe, because he can't go through losing another. All I'm trying to do is get you to understand his side of this argument."
"What about our side?" El asks quietly, the venom from her earlier tone gone.
"He understands, I made sure of it," Liz tells them. "So the very least I'm expecting from the two of you is to do the same."
Mike and El look at each other, a silent conversation passing between them.
"Can you show us?" El requests, putting her legs back on the sofa.
Liz smiles at them, and then nods. There's hope for them yet.
XxX
"I really can't believe you, Hop," Joyce comments, taking stock of what Hopper had just shown her. "El is finally starting to let you in again, and this is your great idea to help with that?"
"What, you don't think she'll like them?" Hopper questions, wondering if he'd made a mistake in his current endeavor.
"Oh, no," Joyce says, shaking her head. "She's going to love them, but was it really a good idea right now?"
"I thought it was kind of metaphorical," He defends. "I was already there when I got the call from Steve, so I thought I should bring them along."
"And you sold your trailer?" Joyce inquires, moving past his crazy plans.
"I didn't sell the land, I just sold the stuff inside that was gathering dust, and the actual building materials for scrap," He answers. "You know Gary, with the construction company?"
"Of course, they fixed my wall," Joyce replies, not seeing the connection.
"Well, the cabin is a little far from town, especially from the school, so I got Gary to give me a deal on building a new house where the trailer used to be," Hopper explains. "Nothing too fancy, probably only one story, but there'll be plenty of space around it, and the lake's right there."
"You're very excited," Joyce observes.
"Of course I am, I think she's really gonna like this," He says proudly. "She'll get to have her own room that doesn't open into the entire damn house, and I'll get to have a door again."
"I'm sure she'll love that," Joyce murmurs under her breath.
"Just you watch, I've got a really great feeling about this," Hopper responds. "And we're still good for Enzo's tomorrow, right?"
"Seven thirty, I know," Joyce confirms. "Just focus on this meeting first, there must be a reason El wanted you to come over so suddenly."
Hopper opens his mouth to reply, but then the front door of the apartment building opens, Liz leaning out to call to them.
"Let's get the show on the road!" She shouts. "I've only got time for one set of lovebirds right now, so we need to get a move on!"
Hopper rolls his eyes, which makes Joyce laugh.
"Go on, I'll keep an eye out for now," Joyce tells him, giving him a gentle shove.
Hopper nods, taking a deep breath. He meets Liz at the door, and she raises an eyebrow at him.
"Did you do what I think you did?" She asks, throwing one last glance across the parking lot to where Joyce is waiting.
Hopper just smirks, not answering the question as he walks past her. Liz shakes her head and then starts toward the stairs, letting the door close behind her. Without another word, they make their way up to El's apartment, finding her and Mike waiting for them on the couch.
Liz closes the door behind them, locking it just like before, which Hopper raises an eyebrow of his own to.
"Well, I'm here," He says, sitting on one of the sparse pieces of furniture. "What was the big emergency?"
Mike and El look at each other, and then El sits up a little straighter.
"We need to talk," She starts. "About everything that happened."
Hopper's eyes widen for a second in surprise, but then he composes himself. He'd spent time figuring out what he would say when this day finally came, but here he is without his damn speech. Hopefully he can remember some of it.
"What you did hurt us, both of us, in ways you don't even know," Mike tells the grown man, who purses his lips.
"But we understand why you did it," El says, images flashing behind her eyes when she closes them. "Even if we don't like it."
"We decided, with a little help, that going through this cycle again and again for the rest of our lives isn't a good idea," Mike continues, throwing a glance toward Liz on the other side of the couch.
"So we want to make some ground rules, so we can move past this," El concludes.
By this point, Hopper is beyond shocked, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two teens, and then at Liz, who just smirks.
"Umm...ok..." Hopper says, with every shred of eloquence in his body.
"We're never going to have full disclosure," Mike begins, vaguely remembering his agreement with Nancy that they'd never kept. "But from now on, we don't keep the big things a secret. If it affects all of us, we all deserve to know."
Hopper nods, his whole body more numb than anything else as he tries to process the scene unfolding around him.
"I know you want me to be safe," El picks up. "And for some reason, you think Mike isn't safe. We're not going to stop being together, but we promise not to be stupid when we're alone."
Hopper knows better than to argue with that one, despite his lingering disagreement with their joined-at-the-hip relationship.
"And the rules need to change," Mike says definitively.
"Don't need so many," El agrees. "We have the 'don't be stupid' rule already."
"We can talk about it, for sure," Hopper responds, finally regaining enough sense of himself to contribute to the conversation. "But before we do, what changed? We were making progress, but I thought I had weeks left to write this speech."
Mike and El both glance at Liz.
"That would be me, Hop," Liz answers. "See, I can use my powers for good, if I really want. I can understand someone better than any other person on the planet, and I can spread that understanding to other people. I helped you understand them back in July, and I helped them understand you today."
Hopper nods silently for a few moments, his gaze shifting to the coffee table between them. When he looks up, he has a single tear running down his cheek.
"Thank you," He says, and then turns to the kids. "If you don't mind, I had some things I wanted to say during this speech. I don't really need all of them now, but whether you already know or not, I need to say them."
They both nod, and Hopper takes a deep breath.
"I asked Joyce to help me write the damn thing, so it turned into something about us all being comfortable sharing our feelings," He starts, looking down at the coffee table, only vaguely remembering the beginning of the speech, but that's not the important part. "Feelings...feelings are something I almost forgot I had. For years, I've been stuck in the same place, like a cave. A deep, dark cave."
None of those present question him, one having seen everything, and the other two having seen enough to understand.
"And then, I left some eggos out in the woods, and you came into my life," He continues, looking up from the table to El. "And for the first time in a long time, I started to feel things again. I started to feel happy." He pauses, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "I don't want to keep you from your friends, or even from Mike, since he's so important to you. I guess I've been feeling...distant from you, ever since last fall, like you're pulling away from me or something. And then May happened, and now here we are."
El breathes deeply, still with her own personal misgivings.
"I miss playing board games every night, and making triple-decker eggo extravaganzas at sunrise, and watching old westerns together before we doze off," He tells them reminiscently. "But I know you're getting older. Growing. Changing. And I guess, if I'm being really honest, that's what scares me. I don't want things to change."
El can't deny missing some of those things as well, but it still has the tinge of mistrust that she can't shake.
"I think maybe that's why I've been so against letting you guys be together," He says, looking at Mike as well. "I've been trying to maybe...stop that change, to turn back the clock. To make things go back to how they were." He looks down at the table again. "But I know that's naive. It's just not how life works. It's moving, always moving, whether you like it or not."
This speech is new to all of them, even to Liz, and she seems a little impressed by what Hopper had come up with, even if a lot of it is off the cuff.
"And yeah, sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it's sad," He informs them, well versed in both. "And sometimes it's surprising. Happy. So, you know what?" He looks back at the two teens, focusing on his daughter. "Keep on growing up, kid. Don't let me stop you. Make mistakes, learn from them, and when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt." He pauses for a moment, his own most recent hurt all too clear to him. "The hurt is good, it means you're out of that cave. I know what I did hurt you, and I will regret that for the rest of my life, but I'd do it all again, because you helped me leave that cave, once and for all."
El can't help the tears that roll down her cheeks, though she does wipe them away. Even Mike's eyes aren't dry, despite what it meant for him.
"And as for the rules, most of them were bullshit anyway," He adds with a chuckle. "You can throw those out the window, so long as you keep the don't be stupid rule. But please, if you don't mind, for the sake of your poor old dad, keep the door open three inches."
El nods, wiping at her eyes again. She'd seen a lot of it in Hopper's memories, but hearing him say it himself carries a different weight. Jim Hopper, the surly Chief of Police of Hawkins Indiana...
Her dad.
"Friends don't lie," El tells him, schooling her expression back to normal. Hopper sucks in a breath in preparation for a blow, either verbal or physical. "But family sticks together."
Her solemn expression turns into a smile, which Mike copies. Hopper's chest blossoms with warmth, feeling better than he has in months now.
"Well, we have some new family members now," Hopper says with a hearty laugh. "They're waiting outside, I guess I should introduce you."
El's eyes widen, rising from the couch in sudden excitement and curiosity, and pulling Mike with her. Hopper gets up as well and starts toward the door, and then toward the parking lot, the two teens hot on his heels. Liz stays in her seat for a few more moments, silently joining in their joy.
They're not the family she ever expected to have.
"Hey, wait for me!" She shouts, hurrying after them.
They're better.
Ah, I can hear it in the distance, the angry mob coming for me.
This chapter addressed a lot of the personal problems of and between the 'main' characters so far. I will be focusing content on other people moving forward, but so far all of my set up has required this focus. El has only acted, and really existed, through her relationships and interactions with the other characters, never on her own initiative (except for going to find Kali, which was 11/10), so I want her to branch out into doing her own things. She won't just become a lone wolf, don't worry, but she's going to start being a lot more opinionated and exploratory as she develops as an individual.
Mike is still plagued by his thoughts, a feeling I'm sure many of us can relate to, if on a smaller scale than him. Trauma doesn't just disappear when the initial cause goes away, it sticks with you, and it can consume you if you try to ignore it forever. With help and support, though, you can learn to move past it. It doesn't go away, but it doesn't control you.
And Liz! I'm sure some of you think I'm showing a pattern in trauma coping methods, but this seemed like the most realistic thing for her. When she resonates with someone, she essentially lives their life through their memories, and in a way she becomes them, because now they're a part of her. When there get to be too many parts of you that aren't you, that's when the real you starts to disappear, so Liz latched onto her number. No matter how many lives she carries with her, Six is Liz and Liz is Six, nobody else.
Now, as always, I'm not a psychologist, I don't have any more license to say how these things should or would go than anyone else. This is just how I believe these things would go in the context of the world I am creating. If you, or someone you know, struggle with suicidal thoughts or actions, I encourage you to reach out to someone you trust. There are people out there that want to help you, and they will if you let them. The national suicide hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255
And as for Hopper, yes, I took his speech from Season 3 that he NEVER GOT TO READ! Everything would have been fine if he just read it, but NO, Mike is a brat and Hopper is too impatient to deal with children!
Ok, I'm fine, everything is fine. We're good, we're all good here.
Moving to the future of this story, it's time for school! We get to see that party back in the classroom and dealing with all the fun stuff that comes with being in school again! Isn't that exciting?
The list stands at:
Complete- Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, Spring Break, mystery surprise Parts 1, 2, & 3, summer break(start), 4th of July, end of summer part 1 & 2
In Progress- start of school
To Do- the real story is about to begin
Until next time!