Happily Ever After

by ishiptoast

"Hopper, what does marry mean?" "Well, it's something people do when they really love each other and want to spend their lives together." He sees the twinkle in his daughter's eye and hurries to add further clarifications. "But ONLY when those two people are adults and are mature enough to do so." Or, the one where El learns about marriage over the course of her life.

3. 1986

1986

Divorce.

El had heard the word before, and thought she understood the concept. She had known people who got divorced (Hop and his first wife, Joyce and Lonnie, Max's parents, etc.) but until now, she hadn't truly given it much thought.

Mike had commed her that morning, asking if they could go somewhere to talk, and she knew something was off. He had been distant for several days leading up to that moment, and she was worried about him. When they met in the woods outside the cabin, he told her, with a crestfallen face that broke El's heart, that his parents were getting divorced.

As she held her boyfriend in her arms, letting him sob into her shoulder as she held him, her mind was spinning. El had always believed in the power of love. After all, love was something that had helped her defeat the evil of Hawkins, time and time again. Her love of her friends, her boyfriend, Hopper, even her Momma that she barely knew. She couldn't picture something so strong just…ending.

Despite knowing Mike since she was 12 years old, El didn't know the Wheelers that well. Sure Karen was always kind to her, sometimes asking overbearing questions about their relationship, but things always stayed in the "polite, not quite strangers" zone. Ted was someone who always stayed in the background, not showing much interest to know her. For a while that was a source of relief, given that she didn't want too many questions to be asked about her past. But now she thinks of how she never saw them interact like they were in love, never gave off the hint of an undeniable connection. It broke El's heart to think about, especially knowing these were Mike's parents. She remembers back when she was living in California, and Mike wasn't able to say that he loved her for a long time. He had said it was because he was scared of losing her, but El wonders if not hearing it from his parents contributed too. This thought only makes her hold on Mike tighter, wanting to protect him from any kind of pain.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers into his neck.

It's in this moment, seeing his broken form, that she vows that history would NOT repeat itself. If she knew anything, it was that she loved Michael Wheeler, had loved him for a very long time, and nothing was going to change that.