[A/N: First things first, to all my regular readers; I'm so, so sorry. I've been caught up in so much stuff for the past few months that I simply haven't been able to write and submit new chapters. Inspiration for other stories and fandoms has started haunting me as well, so I haven't really prioritized this story as much as I should have.

I have made a personal promise to myself that I would really finish this, though, so don't worry; we'll definitely come to the end. For now, I hope 2 new chapters will make up for all the waiting. We're slowly building up to the climax of the Doctor's adventures in Hawkins, so expect some exciting upcoming developments!

Thank you for all the incredible love and support 3]

Chapter 11: The Forest

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Mike woke up with a pretty good feeling about what today would have in store for him and his friends. They had not found out anything on the funeral other than what the woman had told them (and she seemed to think mr. Clarke was quite an amateur as well, judging by her snarky response to his explanation), but at least they now had some kind of proper lead they could follow. When they got back, the woman had demonstrated a small nifty tool she had invented – apparently it was called a 'sonic screwdriver' – and Dustin had come up with a theory about a magnetic field they'd be able to track with it. Of course, the woman had praised him on being such a bright light – and boy, had he been proud of that, but oh well, perhaps they were now finally able to find out how exactly Will had disappeared to wherever he was stuck now.

And so, he walked down the stairs, whistling excitedly, and greeting his family when he appeared in the kitchen. "Hey mom, hey dad, hey Nancy, hey Holly, hey ma'am –"

He stopped dead in his tracks and for a second he was almost sure his eyes would pop out. "What the hell –"

"Mike, I'm sure I didn't hear any cuss words?" Karen asked, shooting him a warning look. He swallowed. "No, sorry, mom, I'm just confused –"

"Oh, I'm sure you are sweetie, but you really didn't have to hide the fact that you were seeing a counselor. Miss Smith turned up at the door this morning, she explained us the whole story. I must say, I'm very impressed. She's very professional, don't you think, Ted?"

"Mhm," Ted Wheeler mumbled, barely looking up from his newspaper, "women shouldn't be shrinks."

"Well, you've got something to look forward to, sunshine," the woman, sporting a sunflower-patterned apron, responded as she turned around. "Just wait a few more decades, you'll be listening to a female president on the telly,"

"Excuse me?"

"'Ello Mike!" the woman cheered, changing subject with her usual swiftness, "Slept well? I sure did, even though it was just for five minutes or so – I don't tend to sleep that long. Might be because of the voices in my head. They sure like to keep me awake."

"Oh, miss Smith," Karen giggled. "Alright, people, time for breakfast! Are you coming, Mike?"

"Sure, Mom." Mike mumbled, attempting for the second time to catch the woman's attention, but she – again – seemed far too excited to notice anything. The Wheeler family began to eat their breakfast in respectful silence, before Karen, at the head of the table, looked up and asked: "So, if you don't mind me asking, miss Smith, how do you think Mike is doing?"

The woman looked up and replied, with a mouth full of baked egg: "Healthy, young boy, and quite persistent as well. Reminds me of a couple of people I traveled around with, although I couldn't possibly remember when I did that. Oh, and he's got a bit of an oddly shaped face, so there's still the off-chance that he happens to be an alien, but I'll make sure to notify you lot in time if that's the case."

Holly giggled. Karen smiled: "Oh, dear, isn't she funny, guys?"

"Amusing." Ted mumbled.

"Yeah, hilarious." Mike snorted. "Look, Mom, miss Smith wanted to take me out for a walk today, I'm sure you're okay with that?"

"Well, if she proposed it, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem. Didn't you say you were going out today as well, Nancy?"

"Yeah, I'm probably going to look some more for Barb," Nancy said.

"You'll be careful, right?"

"Of course, Mom."

"Who's Barb?" The woman asked, tossing the egg aside and taking a bite out of a sandwich. Nancy frowned at her, but still replied, shrugging: "A friend. We went to a party together –"

"Which she didn't ask permission for," Ted remarked.

"Ted," Karen said sharply, casting him a look.

"It's okay, mom. It was stupid, yeah, but anyway, she's still lost, and with all of this going on I'm worried something happened to her. It's been a couple of days and no one's found her yet."

"My my, you lot sure seem to have a problem with friends going missin' in this place," the woman said, taking a swig from a cup next to her plate. "Perhaps it would help if you all became enemies. No, hold on, that's a stupid idea."

The table fell silent. The only reply came from Ted, a couple of seconds later: "Inappropriate."

"Oh, but it wasn't my suggestion," the woman quickly said. Mike saw her raising a finger at Holly and hastily decided to interrupt: "Anyway, so, yeah, I really want to thank miss Smith for her help. Yesterday was very difficult and her talks have really helped me."

"I'm sure they did," Karen smiled. "Although I can imagine it has been difficult, especially since Will meant so much to you… right?"

Mike nodded. He noticed the woman's face falling, almost as if it broke open from inside – it was that rare occasion when some deeper part of this strange person seemed to emerge, a part which truly frightened him because he had a slight suspicion it was the closest to her true face.

"Loss is a strange thing," the woman quietly remarked. "You won't ever get used to it. Never."

"Amen," Karen said. The conversation mostly died down after that, no one at the table feeling the urge – or capability, for that matter – to bring up a new subject. They finished their breakfast and each of the Wheeler family members went their own way – Karen went to do the dishes, Nancy brought Holly upstairs and Ted decided to spend some more time arguing with the battered television set. The woman offered to help, but he shrugged it off, cheering in victory as the damned thing finally flickered and started displaying a string of commercials (but only after the woman had secretly pointed at it with her screwdriver).

Once Mike was outside, having circled back to gather their gear and pick up Eleven, he returned to the woman. She was standing on a pile of brown leaves, hands stuffed into her pockets. As he saw here there, framed by the golden light of the early sun like some holy picture in an old book, Mike could not help but again wonder who exactly she was – where she came from. Why she instinctively had decided to help, instead of simply leaving them be to find answers to better questions. She had a ship. She knew more about space and dimensions and alternate realities than even the biggest geek in Hawkins. They had more or less accepted she was weird, yeah, but an alien? And how could it be she was so human-like, then?

"Doctor," Eleven said, and it was then he noticed she'd been staring at him the whole time. He asked what she meant.

"Doctor," she said again, and pointed at the woman. He shook his head. "No, we don't need to take her to a doctor. She's been fine so far. But maybe later, if it turns out she's got a concussion or something… maybe that'll help her to get her memory back."

Eleven shook her head, but didn't reply. Not for the first time, he thought a bit about Eleven as well. Had there been a life before this one? Did she have a family? And was this somehow all connected… was there a reason that at the same time his best friend went mysteriously missing two of these… strange figures had turned up?

"Ready?" the woman asked. She didn't sound excited. There was a strange tone in her voice he hadn't heard before.

"Yeah," he said, "although I guess it wouldn't hurt if you asked me before you decided to meet my family without telling anyone. You could've blown up our whole cover,"

"'Spose."

Mike swallowed. "Look… is everything still alright with you? Back at breakfast, you sounded a little, uhm…"

The woman sighed. "Just a little tired, that's all."

"You sure?"

"When I said "loss", I didn't just mean loss of a person, Mike. I also meant losin' in general. It'll probably sound a little difficult to you, but it feels like I'm constantly driven by fear these days. Fear of never rememberin' who I am, fear of losin' everything I have left – even though I'm not even sure what that may be – fear of never findin' your friend…" She looked up, her almost golden hair in a strange contrast with the distant expression on her face. "It's dreadful."

"Yeah," Mike answered, struggling to find the right words, "That, uh, that sucks."

They were left in silence, all three staring into the distance as the wind rustled in the branches of the trees above them. Eleven was the first to take action. She nudged Mike and he quickly shot up: "But, uh, of course you can do it. We believe in you. We all do."

"Oh, but that's not what I'm concerned about," she said, turning around with a smile. "It's just that I don't know if I can live up to it." She took the sonic out of her pocket, flipping it around a few times before holding it up, the children watching its soft, orange glow with big eyes.

"But I will try."

They met up with Dustin and Lucas and headed off to the woods. Once they reached the old, abandoned railway running through the forest, the woman took out her screwdriver and started tracking the supposed magnetic field Dustin had told them about. It had taken them a while, but finally she seemed to have found a sort of direction, which more or less aligned with the direction the tracks were running in. The boys quickly followed, Dustin up front trying to get some more answers out of the woman regarding her planet of origin ("Gallifrey"), her people ("arrogant and bad-tempered, most of the time") and her favorite food ("I just have an odd craving for custard… just no pears") before he soon found she wasn't in the mood for providing him with more colorful details. Lucas didn't hide the fact that he had his doubts about the whole plan – as usual – and occasionally casted a quick glance at Eleven, though no one seemed to notice.

The girl was unusually quiet herself as well. Perhaps it was because she was directing the full capacity of her powers at disrupting the magnetic signal to lead them away from its source. It was something she had been doing impulsively, from the moment they had left and the woman had activated her screwdriver. She couldn't risk bringing them close to the terrifying dangers she herself had barely managed to escape from – especially Mike. She didn't want him to get hurt. They were her friends, sure, but there was just something about Mike that caused this weird feeling in the pit of her stomach which she couldn't quite understand. The thought alone of something happening to him was beyond scary.

Or perhaps it was because of some different emotions she had been developing for the woman – and hold on, because this was a tad confusing to her as well. But she swore she felt actual distrust for her. It wasn't the same kind of distrust she felt for Papa, because that kind was entirely rooted in fear, but this was something more in the direction of… disappointment, perhaps. And the strange thing was that it had not even been a sudden feeling; perhaps it had been there all along. The feelings of trust and excitement had just been a little stronger, until now. But why? Why couldn't the woman be trusted? Why was she disappointed in her?

And so, she led them in the opposite direction of the gateway, but what was about to happen in the next few minutes was beyond anything anyone of them could have ever anticipated.

They arrived at what appeared to be some kind of junkyard – it was a terrain littered with old trash, plates of rusty steel, carcasses of all kinds of cars and the wreckage of an old school bus. The woman arrived first, frantically waving her sonic around which started to emit a stuttering, whirring sound as the light started to flicker. "Oh no, come on!" she hissed, frustrated, as she shook it up and down and inspected the crystal.

"What's wrong?" Dustin asked, quickly joining her as Mike and Lucas walked around to inspect the rest of the place. Eleven came to a halt a few feet behind them, quickly wiping off her upper lip.

"Lost the signal. I'm tryin' to get it back but it's so… it's weird. Almost as if it has never been there."

"Is the portal here, then?"

"I'm seeing nothing at this side," Mike yelled from behind a rusty car frame. "Just loads and loads of trash."

"Same here," Lucas responded.

They spent some more time searching, although it rapidly became quite clear they wouldn't find anything. The portal was nowhere to be seen, nor, according to the woman, any trace that indicated it had ever been there. Eventually they all gathered in the center, the woman still walking in circles around them, trying to pick up the signal again.

"So what do we do now?" Dustin asked.

"Well, I mean, I think it's all quite clear what happened, don't you think?" Lucas snarked.

"What do you mean?"

"It's her," he said, pointing to Eleven. The girl didn't cower this time, simply standing there, tracing the arms of the woman's ragged coat. "She's the one blocking the signal. She's been misleading us the whole time!"

"That's bullshit!" Mike yelled. He looked to the woman for help, but she had lowered her screwdriver and bit her lip with an uneasy expression on her face.

"It's not. You know it's not. She's been acting weirder than normal. If she can slam doors with her mind, she can definitely screw up a magnetic signal!"

"Why would she do that?"

"Because she's trying to sabotage our mission. Because she's a traitor!" He stepped towards Eleven, Mike screaming for him to come back, but he didn't listen. "You did it, didn't you? You don't want us to reach the gate. You don't want us to find Will."

"Lucas, come on!"

"I saw her wiping her nose on the tracks! She was using her powers!"

"Bull! That's old blood. Right, El? El?"

"It's not- it's not safe." Eleven exclaimed, her eyes starting to tear up.

"You lot, I think that's enough," the woman tried to interrupt, "Let's just calm down for a minute and –"

"What did I tell you? She's been playing us from the beginning!" Lucas yelled.

"That's not true," Mike said, "She helped us find Will!"

"Find Will? Find Will? Where is he, then? Huh? I don't see him. Just think about it, Mike. She could've just told us where the Upside Down was right away, but she didn't. For God's sake, even the woman helped us more than she did! She just made us run around like headless chickens!"

"All right," the woman said, raising her voice as well, "calm down!"

"She used us, all of us!" Lucas went on, "She helped just enough so she could get what she wants. Food and a bed. She's like a stray dog."

"Screw you, Lucas!" Mike shouted, the raging anger becoming quite clear in his voice now as well.

"No, screw you, Mike! You're blind blind because you like that a girl's not grossed out by you! But wake up, man! Wake the hell up! She knows where Will is, and now she's just letting him die in the Upside Down! For all we know, it's her fault!"

"Shut up!"

"We're looking for some stupid monster, but did you ever stop to think that maybe she's the monster?

"I said, shut up!"

Mike suddenly lunged at Lucas, the boy barely being able to raise his own hands before they started wrestling. The woman gasped. "Knock it off, you idiots!" Dustin yelled.

It all happened within a matter of a few seconds. Eleven finally moved. She raised her hand just as the woman ran to the fighting pair to pull them apart. The woman let out a surprised yelp as she saw her feet lose their grip on the ground. Both her and Lucas suddenly went flying, soaring through the air as Mike and Dustin screamed. Lucas landed rather painfully on a plate of steel; the woman seemed less lucky. She landed a couple of feet further, disappearing behind a pile of scrap before she hit the ground and most of her body went limp. She tried to get up. Wouldn't work. Nothing seemed to work. The last thing the woman heard were the terrified screams of the boys, echoing in her head, before she lost consciousness and total blackness settled before her eyes.