yikes I'm posting this without proofreading it because I haven't posted anything on this account in so long and I'm kind of anxious to post again. Hope you enjoy chapter two of this story regardless of the many typos there likely are
The two sat in silence on opposite sides of the kitchen table. Her eyes were fixed in front of her and she was still shivering. Yet she kept on her soaking wet jacket and backpack. Steve could hear her foot tapping lightly on the ground as her leg bounced up and down nervously. He wondered what it had been like when the kids found Eleven. Had she been so shut down?
He cleared his throat and figured he could try to get her talking again. "You want to tell me your name?" he asked. "Where you're from? Anything about you?"
Her eyes glanced up from the table to look at him. He couldn't decide if she was glaring at him or if she was just intense looking. In the light of the kitchen he could now see her more easily. Blunt cut black bands hung on her forehead and her eyebrows peeked out from underneath them. Her skin was fair and she had a pair of dark circles that matched his own. After a few seconds, of which she remained silent, she looked back down at the table.
Steve let out a small sigh and leaned back in his chair. "Are you hungry?" from what he could make out of her underneath her jacket she was thin. He figured she'd been digging through the trash for food scraps. "I can make you something to eat?"
Her shoulders twitched just enough for him to take it as a shrug. Good enough for him.
He got up from the table and walked over to the fridge. Steve pulled out the bread and cold cut slices. While he grabbed a plate from the cabinet he saw her looking at him. The second he met her glance she looked back down at the table in front of her. Only a minute or two later he brought the sandwich over and slid the plate towards her.
She stared at it for a moment without moving an inch. "I didn't poison it." He told her. "It's okay."
Slowly she brought her hands out from under the table and picked it up. The first bite she took was hesitate. All the ones that followed made it clear just how hungry she was. Her fingernails had chipped black nail polish and he could just see the top of the tattoo on his arm.
She was halfway done eating when he spoke up again. "I have a friend, you know." He said. "She has a tattoo like yours. And she can do things. With her mind." The girl paused and looked up at him. Her eyes searched his face before falling back down to the table. "She can move things with her mind. And she can find people."
She lowered the sandwich. Though she didn't look directly at him her eyes moved up slightly. "What's her number?" she asked. Her voice was quiet, barely loud enough for him to make out. He had to hold back a smile that she'd finally spoken.
"Eleven."
She took another bite. "I don't know her." She said once she had swallowed.
"And your number is six?" he asked.
When she looked up at him again he was sure that this time she was glaring. "My name is Charlie."
Steve nodded a few times. "Okay, Charlie." She looked back down as she continued eating. For a moment Steve wondered if he should get her something else to eat. How long had it been since her last meal? "You can do things too, can't you?"
After taking the last bite she slid the plate away from her. "Nothing as cool as telekinesis." She said. Her eyes met his and they both fell silent. Moments passed, neither of them moving an inch, with the rain outside the only sound in the room. He noticed a small stream of blood dripping from her nose only a second before she reached up to wipe it away. Steve knew that the blood meant she was using her powers but he didn't see anything in the room change. What was she doing? "I appreciate your sympathy." She said before leaning back in the chair. "But I don't need it. I'm a big girl."
"You were digging through my trash." Steve pointed out. She didn't seem to have a response since she simply stared at him. "Do you have new clothes to change into? Ones that aren't soaking wet?"
Charlie shifted in the chair slightly. "No." she admitted. "There's room for more important things." She reached over her shoulder and patted her backpack.
"I'll get you something to change into." Steve pushed his chair out and stood up. Out of the corner of his eye he caught her flinching when he moved. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay?" he said. "Just getting some clothes."
He waited for her to respond before moving. She let out a small sigh, grabbed her backpack, and got to her feet. The top of her head didn't quite come close to reaching his chin. While she was a bit intimidating she was less threatening when she stood next to him. She kept a few inches of distance between them as they walked up the stairs and down the hall towards hid bedroom. They were both still dripping wet from the rain water so he figured they'd both have to change. Her boots squished on the carpet lightly as they walked and he hoped they wouldn't leave a mark he'd have to explain to his mother.
Once they were in his room he dug through his dresser for an older pair of sweats that wouldn't hang off of her too much. In his peripheral vision he could see her looking at the photos he had hung up on his wall. Just as he pulled out a t-shirt she pulled a shot of him and the basketball team off the wall.
"What sport is this?" she asked.
"Basketball."
Charlie nodded and put it back up. From what he knew about Eleven it was easy to see that there was lot about the outside world that she didn't know or understand. Steve was beginning to wonder if the same could be said for Charlie. He handed her the clothes. "There's a bathroom down the hall that we passed. You can change in there. And you can leave your stuff here if you want."
"No thanks." She replied flatly as she took the clothes from him. Charlie stopped in the doorway and added, without turning to look at him, "Thanks." Before Steve got the chance to reply she disappeared into the hallway. He could hear her footsteps fading away.
He quickly changed out of his clothes and tossed them in the hamper before putting on new ones. While he waited for Charlie to get back he debated calling someone and telling them. But who would he call? Hopper? Nancy? Dustin? What were they going to do at 10:30 pm? He figured his best option would be to convince Charlie to meet Hopper and Eleven and drive her to the cabin the next day. In the meantime he just had to make her comfortable enough to make her want to stay. She could easily disappear in the middle of the night.
When she came back in her boots were in her hand and her jacket was sticking out of her backpack. Without wearing the hood he could see her jet black hair just reaching her shoulders. The shirt he'd given her hung loosely off her shoulders and she had the ankles of the sweats rolled up. She would have looked like a little kid if her face wasn't so intense.
Charlie dropped her bag down on the floor. "Who's Hopper?" she asked
Steve's brows pulled together. How the hell did she know about Hopper? He knew for a fact that he hadn't mentioned him to her. The only person he'd told her about was Eleven. His gaze drifted down to her hand which had a small smear of blood that hadn't been there when she left. "Did you… read my mind?"
One of her eyebrows raised up and disappeared under her bangs. "Who's Hopper?" she asked once again.
He sighed. Steve knew he'd have to be careful with what he said to her since she could read his mind. "Eleven lives with him. He takes care of her. He's going to adopt her."
Charlie narrowed her eyes at him slightly. "Really?"
"Really."
She leaned against his desk and crossed her arms across her chest. Charlie was pretty, in an intimidating sort of way. The second the thought entered his mind he watched her carefully to see if she had heard. But her eyes were scanning his room and she seemed pretty oblivious. When she finally met his eyes again she shifted slightly. "So, you think I'm gonna disappear in the middle of the night?"
Steve put his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. "I don't know." He admitted. "Maybe. Will you?"
Charlie stared at him while she seemed to think about her response. He wished he could read her mind. Her face was a blank canvas that was impossible to read. Her expression had yet to budge since she entered the house. He wondered if she would look less intense if she smiled. "I don't know." She said after a few silent moments passed. "I mean, it's not like I have anywhere else to be. But…" her voice trailed off.
"But?"
She sighed shortly. "People who help me get hurt, okay?" she said. Steve wasn't sure if he was imagining it or not but she seemed uncomfortable all of a sudden. "I'm sure you're a nice kid and everything, so if I leave don't take it personally."
Steve smirked. "Did you call me kid?" he asked. "We're, like, the same age."
"Whatever." Charlie said. "You gonna call one of your friends and tell them about me?"
He shrugged. "Is that alright."
"Who are you going to call?"
He hesitated. Who was he going to call? Dustin? Nancy? Hopper? Hopper seemed like the best choice but he still wasn't sure. Still, he figured it was at least worth a shot. "Hopper." He finally answered. "Who Eleven is staying with."
Charlie stared at him, standing so still he wondered if she was even breathing. She only moved when another drop of blood leaked from her nose to wipe it away. "Fine." She said. "As long as you're not calling the cops."
Oops.
He sat down on his bed and picked up the phone from his nightstand. As he dialed the number he kept one eye on her in his peripheral vision. While the line rang she turned back around to look at the photos on his wall. Hoppers unmistakable voicemail message came from the other line. "It's Hop. You know what to do."
Steve cleared his throat quietly. "Yeah, Hopper, it's Steve. I have, uh, kind of a situation." He chose his words carefully since Charlie was in the room. "This girl was outside my house and she's… well, she's like Eleven. Call me back as soon as you get this, okay?" Steve set the receiver down before getting up and walking over to stand next to her. He followed her gaze to a picture of him and Nancy, one of the few he had kept up.
"She your girlfriend?" Charlie asked.
"She used to be." Steve looked down at her. "What made you come back to Hawkins?" from what Mike and Hopper had told him about Eleven's experience in the lab he would never want to come back after going through something like that.
She shrugged her shoulders, eyes still fixed on the photos. "I had a dream a little while ago about the lab. It had been bugging me." She snuck a quick glance at him. "I probably will leave soon, you know." She told him. "The longer I stay the more time I give them to catch me."
Steve raised an eyebrow and turned to face her. "You don't know?"
Charlie turned her head just slightly in his direction. "Know what?"
"The lab got shut down." He opened up one of the drawers of his desk and rummaged around for the newspaper article he had saved. Why he saved it in the first place he wasn't sure. But it had finally come in handy. When he finally found it he handed it to her. "It got closed down like a month ago. There was a bit of an… incident."
She took it from him hesitantly. "Incident."
"A lot of people died there."
Her head snapped up. "What?"
"I can tell you later."
Charlie eyes him for a moment before looking down at the paper. She stared at it, silent and motionless, for so long he briefly wondered if she could read. As far as he knew Eleven couldn't read. Before he could wonder too much she set the paper down on his desk again. "What happened?"
As reluctant as he was to tell the story he figured she of all people deserved to know what happened. "There was a gate that opened to some other dimension. This monster came out and took two people back with it. It also killed a bunch of people from the lab. A bunch of new people started working there and it was different than what it used to be. But the gate opened again more monsters came out and killed pretty much everyone in the building."
Her eyes were still fixed on the paper and her eyebrows were pulled together in the middle of her forehead. It was such an outrageous story he wouldn't blame her if she didn't believe him right away. She looked back up at him. "What happened to the other experiments?"
Oh shit.
He hadn't even thought about what had happened to the others. Since there was Eleven there had to be at least 10 others. Clearly some of them had escaped, but what about the ones that hadn't? Steve didn't think he had the heart to tell her he had no clue so instead he answered "Hopper would know better than me. We can ask him about it tomorrow."
Charlie nodded a few times. "Yeah, okay." She quickly brushed her hair away from her eyes. Her hair was damp from her hood that had been soaked through with rain water. "Who else knows about Eleven?"
"Kind of a lot of people." He said before picking up a picture of the kids off the wall. Steve pointed his finger at Will. "This kid went missing. His friends found where when they went to go looking for him. His older brother and his mom and his older sister know too." He moved his finger to Mike. "He and Eleven are kind of dating."
She stared at the picture. "How long has she been out?"
Steve thought for a moment. "About a year. Will went missing last November and that's when they found her. I don't know how long she was out before they did." He stuck the picture back up on the wall. "Is there anything else you need?"
Charlie shook her head. "No, I'm just tired."
"Okay." Steve said. "Well, you can take my bed."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Where are you going to sleep?"
His cheeks turned pink at the possible suggestion that she thought he would share a bed with her. "I'll get a sleeping bag and sleep on the floor." He told her. "It's not like I sleep well anyway."
She eyed him for a second, her black eyebrows inching towards one another, before she turned and walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. "Do you have nightmares or something?" Charlie asked, crossing her legs underneath her. "Are you going to wake me up screaming at 2 AM?"
"Um, no, I just don't really sleep." Steve answered. "At all."
Charlie kept her gaze fixed on him a little longer. Her eyes were icy cold and bid enough to make her look doll like. She was short and petite yet something about her was incredibly unnerving. Even when she wasn't reading his mind he felt like she was looking right through him. It wasn't until she looked away again and moved to get under the blankets that he realized he'd bene holding his breath. She leaned back against the pillows and pulled the blankets up to her waist.
"I'm really not going to run away in the middle of the night." She told him. "Not tonight."
Steve shifted uncomfortably, not quite sure how to respond. "Do you need anything else?" Charlie simply shook her head. "Okay, well, I'm going to take a shower. If you need anything just knock on the door and shout."
He watched her in his peripheral vison while he dug through his dresser for a change of clothes before heading down the hall. The hot water of the shower burned his skin at first but he eventually got used to it. He usually took showers as the opportunity to clear his head but images flashed through his mind nonstop. The scared expression on her face when she spotted him, how difficult it had been to convince her to come inside, how totally shut down she was. She was intense in a similar way that Eleven was, yet so much more.
When he got out, dried off, and got dressed he headed back down the hall towards his room. Charlie was still propped up on the pillows behind her but her head was lolled to the side and her eyes were shut. Like she had fallen asleep by accident. Steve grabbed one of the pillows she wasn't leaning on too much and the throw blanket on top of his comforter before laying down on the floor.
He stared up at the ceiling and listened to the soft sound of her breathing. Though he tried to stop himself he wondered when the last time she'd gotten a good night's sleep in a bed had been. Days? Weeks? Months? He didn't want to think about it. After going through what she had, if her experience had been anything like Eleven's, he figured she at least deserved to have a consisted food supply and a place to sleep. As he drifted off to sleep he tried to ignore the memory of news reports he had seen about how dangerous it was to live on the street and did his best not to imagine someone with such a tough shield being so scared.