wow it's been forever since I updated this. but I have things planned for this story so no need to fear! there will be more :) this chapter is shitty but I hope you enjoy anyway

Eleven sat on the porch next to Hopper with her knees pressed against her chest and her eyes wide as she watched Steve and Charlie come up the front steps. A thickness settled in the air around them and made him feel as if he might suffocate. He glanced over at Charlie whose gaze was fixed on Eleven. For two people who came from the same background they couldn't have been more different. Though Eleven could be tough when she wanted to she was, most of the time, soft spoken and kind. She laughed loudly at jokes on the television and smiled brightly when Steve snuck her sweets on the nights he babysat for her.

The sound of the bench creaking as Hopper shifted slightly broke some of the tension. "Look," he started, "I know that some cops aren't always so… understanding. But I promise I'm on your side here."

Charlie had long since given up trying to escape Steve's grip and settled for standing a few inches away from him. "I'm just supposed to believe you?" she asked.

Hopper glanced at Steve, a silent question if she was always so difficult. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to prove it to you." He admitted.

Steve tugged gently on Charlie's arm to get her attention. "Even if we wanted to turn you into the lab there's no one to go to. A bunch of the people who work there are dead now, and the ones who survived haven't been seen in a year."

"Papa is dead." Eleven chimed in quietly, her arms still wrapped around her legs.

Steve wasn't sure who Papa was or what his significance was it seemed to have some importance to Charlie. He felt her go tense before she took a microscopic step towards him. "What happened?"

"The monster." Eleven answered. "I saw it."

He watched Charlie's unmoving expression carefully, waiting for any sign of a reaction. She reached up to wipe away a drop of blood he noticed only a moment before, a crease suddenly settling in her forehead. He wished the roles were reversed and that he was able to read what was going through her mind. Based off of the conversation he assumed the man they were talking about was someone from the lab who was some sort of messed up father figure to them.

Hopper let out a quiet grunt before pushing himself to his feet. "Why don't we go inside, huh?" he suggested before nudging Eleven's arm and heading for the door.

Eleven followed him inside but Charlie didn't budge. Steve waited until the door shut behind the small girl before letting go of Charlie's arm and turning towards her. "What's up?" he asked, unsure of what exactly he sensed in her mood but knowing there was something there.

Her blue eyes were fixed on the door behind him. "I don't know." She said before she looked at him. Everything inside him stopped pumping for a moment when she looked at him. Steve remembered a time when a simple glance from Nancy had the power to make his insides halt. Though Charlie felt much different. "This is weird."

"Maybe a little." Steve admitted. It wasn't quite as weird as fighting monsters with a group of middle schoolers, including his ex-girlfriends little brother, but it was a bit strange. "But so what?"

She rubbed her hands together in what he guessed was, dare he say, a nervous tic. If nothing else came from the meeting he would at least be able to say that some of her wall came down. "I don't like talking about the lab." She said, her voice quieter than before.

"Do you ever talk about it?" She shook her head. "Well you have to talk about it a little bit."

"Why?"

Steve leaned against the railing of the porch, trying to think of the best way to explain it to someone who had never seen day time therapy talk shows when home sick from school. "It's healthy to talk about upsetting things because it makes them less upsetting." He said.

She made a face at him. "That doesn't make any sense." She said, crossing her arms under her chest.

"Not really." He agreed. "But it works." She glanced back at the front door to the cabin, slight hints of nervousness written across her face when she looked at him again. "What are you worried about? That we're going to turn you in?" she nodded a few times. "Okay, how about this? If Hopper turns you in I'll help you escape and then you have my permission to kick my ass."

The corners of her lips twitched upwards. "You sure you can get me out all by yourself?"

"I'll recruit everyone I know."

They twitched upwards a little more. "Alright fine."

Steve pushed himself off the railing and lightly pushed her towards the front door.

Eleven was sitting in the arm chair and Hopper had pulled over one of the chairs from the kitchen table, leaving the couch open for Steve and Charlie. She sat closer than him than he expected her to and pressed her hands together between her thighs, her eyes fixed on the carpet. Another silence, not quite as tense of heavy as the one before, took over the room. Steve's leg bounced up and down, a nervous habit he had adopted ever since his first face off with a Demogorgon in the week that Will Byers had been missing. Even thinking about that night made flashes of unpleasant memories devour his mind. It wasn't until Hopper spoke that he was able to blink them away.

"How long have you been out of… there?" he asked, leaning back against the chair.

Charlie's small shoulders shrugged. "Time is messy." She said softly. "I don't really understand it." She tilted her head up but kept her eyes in the same spot. "I remember seeing something on TV a little while after I got out about that singer with the glasses that got shot outside his house."

"John Lennon?" Steve asked, remembering the day clearly by how much his mom had cried while the news reports on the scene played on the screen. "From the Beatles?"

"Yeah, they said something about a bug."

Steve suppressed the urge to smile and was only successful in doing so because of how seriously she said it. "That was five years ago."

"How did you get out?" Eleven asked, leaning forward in her seat and voicing the question that had been on Steve's mind. He'd never had the courage to ask.

Charlie moved in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. "I think it was Christmas Day because a lot of people who worked there weren't there that day. Papa wasn't there. I can… make people think things and do things. So when a guy came in to bring me dinner I made him leave his keys. And I just… ran."

Eleven's eyes were wider than before, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Where did you go?"

"I found someone's clothes hanging outside and got on a bus." Charlie explained. "I fell asleep and got off in Pittsburg."

"That's a 6 hour bus ride." Hopper pointed out.

Charlie shrugged her shoulders, her arm brushing against Steve's. "I took a nap."

A snicker escaped his throat that he quickly tried to cover up with a cough. If he didn't know better he would have thought that Charlie had actually cracked a smile. Hopper, on the other hand, was still dead serious. "So where are you gonna stay?"

"My parents are out of town until the week after New Years." Steve offered.

"Yeah but what about after that?"

Charlie cut in before he could reply. "Look, don't take this the wrong way or anything" she said, "but I never really stay in the same place for very long. Your parents get home in three weeks. I might not even be here by then."

Steve did his best to ignore the way his heart sank slightly with disappointment. "But the lab is shut down. You don't have to run from them anymore. Without the lab the people who worked there don't have any power over you."

She studied him, her eyes darting across her face. He anticipated the blood to trickle out of her nose as she read his mind but it never came. She looked away from him, her gaze falling down to a spot on the wooden floor. "I don't know."

"The lab is shut down, you know." Hopper said. "It has been for almost two months."

"Why?" she asked. "What happened."

Steve, Hopper, and Eleven all shared a glance before diving into a story that would take almost an hour to tell. Hopper did most of the talking, Eleven chiming in every once in a while with something he forgot to add. Steve had been in the dark about mostly everything that happened until the end so the only thing he had to offer in the story was his two fights with Demogorgons and going into the Upside Down with the kids. Charlie listened with wide eyes and an open mouth. She would occasionally glance at Steve as if to make sure everything she was hearing was true.

Once the story ended with Eleven closing the gate a heavy silence fell over the room. Steve hardly ever talked about what happened with anyone. He didn't want to burden the kids with how badly he was dealing with it and he didn't have the heart to talk about it with Nancy and Johnathan. Images of the Upside Down and Demogorgons flashed through his mind while Charlie took in everything they'd told her.

"Does Will still have those now-memories?" she asked after a few moments had passed and her mind seemed to wrap around everything she'd been told.

"Not that I know of." Hopper said. "But he likes to downplay things sometimes. Thinks he's gonna worry us."

Charlie nodded a few times before turning her attention towards Eleven. "And you really think everyone from the lab is dead? Everyone?"

Eleven shifted in her seat, visibly uncomfortable. She purposely avoided looking at Hopper, who was watching her carefully. "Yes." She eventually said. "They can't hurt us anymore."

Charlie responded with a grunt of disapproval.

They didn't stay long. He could see Charlie growing increasingly uncomfortable until he suggested they go back to his house and get something to eat for lunch, which she eagerly agreed to. Before they left Eleven asked hopefully if she would see her again and Charlie assured her she would. She kept her arms wrapped around herself and remained silent the entire walk to the car. Steve didn't attempt to strike up a conversation. She'd experienced information overload, not to mention that she'd met someone else that had grown up in the lab for the first time.

When they finally reached his car and he started up the engine he spoke up, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he navigated the narrow trail. "Why do you think the people from the lab are still alive?"

She looked away from the view out the window, her legs crossed underneath her and her hands in her lap. His clothes practically swallowed her petite frame. "If you knew what those people were like you would understand why."

"Then enlighten me."

Charlie sighed and sunk down in the seat. He was prepared to let the topic drop, remembering how she said she almost never talked about the lab. But she surprised him by continuing. "They're willing to do anything 'for the good of the nation'. But they're actually just monsters." She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat. "We were locked in our rooms all day when they weren't experimenting on us. And we'd get in trouble if we ever said no."

A sick feeling was setting in his stomach. He hardly knew anything about life inside the Hawkins lab. Eleven never talked about it and anyone else who knew never brought it up. He'd always known it couldn't have been good but he never knew the details. "What would happen if you said no?"

"One time I wouldn't leave my room because I didn't want to do work. These two guys came in and dragged me into a cell with no lights or furniture. I was only given one meal a day instead of two and they would just kind of throw it at me when they came in."

"Jesus."

"I left a little while after that." She looked out the window again. "They have their orders from higher ups, which I overheard them talking about a few times. They'd do anything to get their little Guinee pigs as powerful as possible, and even more to keep us contained. That's why I don't believe they're dead. They wouldn't go down without a fight when they have so much work to do."

Steve thought over what she said, doing his best to not imagine a younger Charlie being locked in a room alone and scared. "So then where do you think they are?" he asked her.

She shrugged, the neck of her borrowed pullover falling down on her neck. "They have allies in high places. It wouldn't be hard for them to get help with hiding."

The image of her terrified face the night before when they'd met flashed through his mind. The fear in her eyes in that moment alone was a giveaway of just what the people she was hiding from were capable of. Charlie turned on the radio, a silent way of saying she was done talking, and the only sound for the rest of the car ride was Bondie songs.