Chapter 11: A Long Time Ago

I was so afraid to touch you
Thought you were too young to know
So I just watched you sleeping
Then you woke and said to me
The night is cold it frightens me
I could sleep so easy next to you

El still has nightmares. Hopper is still there, always.

Hopper woke suddenly, and then immediately squeezed his eyes shut against the unexpected brightness. He fumbled blindly for the lamp next to his bed. "The hell…" He wasn't sure how he could have fallen asleep with the light on. He never did that, not unless he'd passed out in a drunken stupor, but that wasn't something he did anymore. He hadn't had more than two beers at a time since El—

"Shit," he hissed to himself, suddenly awake enough to realize what was going on. As he blinked away the last of his disoriented confusion, the light began to flick on and off as if in confirmation. He tore back the quilt and threw his legs over the edge of the bed, and just as he was standing up, the light went out with a loud pop.

It had scared the living daylights out of him, the first time this happened—he'd thought that someone had broken in, that the men from the lab were about to seize him and snatch El. When he'd realized it was El herself making the lights flicker, the fear had quickly turned to fury. He'd thought she was trying to contact someone, the way she had in that pool. And that would have put them both in danger.

But then he'd burst into El's room to find her fast asleep, writhing in pain and breathing shallowly, and his fury had melted into something else entirely.

Now he opened El's door carefully, having realized after the first few nightmares that sudden loud noises only made things worse. All of her blankets had been kicked to the end of the bed and she was curled up tightly with her knees to her chest and her hands gripping her hair. She wasn't screaming—she never did—but her breath came in loud, ragged, whimpering gasps.

"El," he said in as calm a voice as he could manage, crossing the room quickly to sit on the edge of her bed. "El, come on, wake up. It's just a dream, honey. You're dreaming."

The lamp next to her bed started flickering and she screwed up her face, her eyes squeezed shut impossibly more tightly. Her entire body was shaking, Hopper realized, trembling so violently it seemed impossible that her bones could withstand it.

"El," he said more loudly. "You're safe, you're safe, and I'm right here, I just need you to wake up for me, sweetheart, just open your eyes, you're home and I'm right here and everything is okay…"

It wasn't working. Her breath was coming faster, the whimpering growing louder, and the lights were beginning to flicker more insistently. He felt his eyes burn with tears as he watched her tremble with an imaginary pain that he was powerless to take away. He was afraid to touch her. He'd tried that once and she'd thrown him across the room. He would have been happy to spend the next few days battered and bruised if it meant she woke up, but she hadn't; the contact had just plunged her deeper into her nightmare and the unconscious use of her powers had made her all the more exhausted upon waking.

"Come on, sweetheart, come on, you just need to wake up—"

Her eyes snapped open and she drew away from him so suddenly and violently that it was as if some invisible force had pulled her back. The lights had all stopped flickering as soon as she opened her eyes and Hopper, squinting in the sudden darkness, could barely see the outline of her shaking form pressed up against the headboard. He reached over and turned on her lamp, which, now that it was operating normally and not glowing with supernatural power, filled the room with a warm, gentle light.

"Hey," he said, speaking much more quietly now that she was awake. "You're okay. It's okay."

El shook her head, looking wildly around the room as if she would find someone or something other than Hopper tucked away in a corner.

"Look at me, honey." He decided it was probably safe to touch her now and he reached out to put a hand lightly on her knee. She flinched, but didn't push him away, which he supposed was a good sign. "Just look at me, can you do that?"

Slowly, so that she would have time to move away if it was too much, he moved his hand up to her cheek to gently turn her face toward his.

"Good, good," he murmured. "Now can you breathe with me? In…and out. In…and out. Nice deep breaths, that's it."

But her eyes were rapidly filling with tears and she hadn't stopped shaking and even though she was maintaining eye contact a little more now, she still kept glancing around with genuine fear in her eyes. "The bad men—"

"—are gone," Hopper finished, firmly. "They're gone, El, and they aren't coming back."

"The lab—"

He felt his heart break as she was cut off by a hiccuping sob. He moved a little closer to her so that he could run his hand up and down her arm, hoping the contact might help to ground her a little. "Tell me where we are," he said.

"What?" she said tearfully.

"Just look around, and tell me where we are."

She looked around the room again, as if trying to confirm that she wasn't just imagining it. "We're at home," she whispered finally.

"That's right. We're at home. And where is home?"

"In—in the cabin. In the woods. Way…way the hell out here."

Hopper tried to smile at her, even though he wanted to cry himself. "Exactly. Way the hell out here. We're home, and we're safe, and no one is going to find us. Not the bad men from the lab or anyone else. You're safe."

"Promise?" she whispered.

Hopper squeezed her arm. "I promise."

At that, the last of the tension drained out of her body, and she leaned forward to bury her face against her drawn-up knees. With her face hidden, she started to cry in earnest.

"Oh, honey," he murmured, and gently pulled her into his arms. He rubbed circles on her back with one hand and with the other cradled her head against his chest. "Shh, shh. It's okay." She wrapped her arms around his middle and clung tightly, fingers clutching at the back of his t-shirt. He rocked her a little, continuing to whisper soft reassurances into her hair, until she seemed to be out of tears.

"You wanna talk about it?" he asked after awhile. He felt her shake her head against him and her grip became a little tighter. "Okay," he said soothingly. "You don't have to."

She really probably should, he thought. She'd shared so little with him about her time in the lab and almost never divulged the contents of her nightmares, and keeping it bottled up couldn't possibly be healthy. Not for the first time, he wished that it was possible to get her a real therapist. But even once she was out in the open, who could she talk to honestly without putting herself in danger?

"You know you can tell me," he said quietly. "If you ever want to. I'll always be here."

"I know," she said, her voice muffled in his shirt. "But I don't—I can't—"

"It's okay if you're not ready. But someday, when you are…it might help, you know?"

He felt her take a deep breath and nod. Then he glanced up at the clock hanging on her wall. It was not quite three in the morning, far too early to just abandon the idea of sleeping for the rest of the night.

"Hey," he said, still rubbing her back, "you think you can try to get back to sleep?" She tightened her arms around him again and said nothing. He sighed. "We can't stay like this all night, kid. And you need to get some rest."

"I can't," she said pleadingly.

He sighed again. Now that the adrenaline from seeing her hurting had worn off, he could feel his eyes itching with exhaustion, and he knew he couldn't afford to take the day off work tomorrow. "I need you to try, sweetheart. For me." Before she could protest, he extricated himself from her arms as gently as he could and stood, pulling the covers back up from where they lay tangled at the foot of the bed. He tried to ignore the pang of guilt he felt as she blinked up at him with her wide brown eyes, swollen and red-rimmed and filled with a seemingly infinite unhappiness. He leaned over to kiss the top of her head. "You want me to leave the light on?"

"Stay," she begged him. "Please, Dad."

She was a smart kid. She'd definitely figured out by now that he was powerless to deny her anything when she called him Dad. It did something funny to his heart that made him completely incapable of contradicting her, which was probably something he would have to start working on correcting. Right now, though, as she gazed at him with such fear and such trust, he couldn't convince himself that she was just trying to manipulate him. And really, how could he say no to anything she asked for, this kid who had been through so much and still emerged one of the strongest people he'd ever known?

"Alright," he sighed, and went around to the other side of her bed to lie down next to her. She immediately curled up against him, resting her head on his chest. Automatically, he wound an arm around her, holding her close.

The little bed was cramped and uncomfortable and his arm was already starting to prickle unpleasantly. He had no expectation of falling back to sleep that night. But, he thought, as El's breaths turned slow and even, it was worth it if it meant his little girl could rest peacefully.