I don't own anything.
Mike could barely sleep. The thought of being able to spend the day will El made his stomach flutter. When he got her call, he couldn't say yes fast enough. He still felt like she wasn't real, like she was still gone. She only felt real when she was right in front of him.
His cheeks burned when he had thoughts like this. He couldn't imagine telling El these things, he was sure he'd make a fool of himself. He laid in his bed and stared at the ceiling. He couldn't wait for the morning. He closed his eyes and went back to the moments with her.
He went back to the first day they got to be together since she closed the gate. It was the next day, she was so tired. She didn't even know he was there, but he sat on the Byers' floor and watched her sleep. He sat and watched every rise and fall of her chest, every flare of her nostril.
He had cried that night. When everyone else was asleep and he was curled up on the Byer's living room floor with an old quilt that smelt like cigarettes and moth balls. He was relieved that El was safe, and so was Will and the Mind Flayer was gone. Everyone he cared about was safe, they didn't have to be afraid anymore, but he still cried. It was like it had been building up and had to fall.
Mike started falling asleep. The sound of his walkie jolted him from sleep.
"Mike?" He could hear El's whisper through the static. He flipped onto his other side and grabbed the walkie off his nightstand.
"El? Are you ok? Over." He asked with urgency.
"I miss you." She replied, he could hear the small smile in her voice.
"I'll be there tomorrow, first thing. Over." He told her.
"Are you tired?" She whispered, the static made her voice difficult to hear.
"A little, are you? Over." He asked.
"No, excited to see you. And my friends." She said quietly with a bit of a giggle.
"You should sleep, it won't be good if you're tired tomorrow. We'll have all day." Mike assured her. The line went silent for a moment.
"Ok, Mike. Good night." She said, he could picture her frown.
"Night, El. Over and out." He turned off his walkie and put it back on the night stand. He couldn't stop smiling. Just hearing her voice made him smile. He put his hands behind his head and stared up at his dark ceiling. His cheeks started to ache. He fell asleep.
He jolted awake from the sound of his alarm clock. He turned it off and sat up in bed. Mike yawned and rubbed his eyes. He thought he might have dreamt of El, of what she looked like during the summer. At dusk, in the backyard with the greenish-yellow blinks of fireflies and the golden sunset shining off her cheekbone.
He got up and got ready to go. He found himself comparing different sweatshirts, one was black and the other was navy blue and he started to flush. He felt so stupid, he knew El could care less about any of these things. He picked the blue one and ran downstairs.
"Michael, do you want eggs?" His mom asked from the kitchen counter.
"No, thanks, I'll just have an eggo." He said going to the freezer. He put one in the toaster and went to get his backpack from the basement. When he got back upstairs, baby Holly was eating a waffle cut into pieces. He went to the toaster and saw that his was gone.
"Mom," Mike groaned.
"Put another one in. You're having eggs too." His mother rolled her eyes. He huffed and retrieved another eggo from the freezer.
His mom brought him a plate with scrambled eggs and a warm waffle. He gave a quick thanks and poured syrup over his plate. He scarfed down her breakfast and quickly went out the front door. He mounted his bike and started riding towards El and Hopper's cabin.
The ride went by fast. He was walking through the woods when he noticed that little snowflakes were falling around him. When he got to the cabin his hands felt frozen.
He raised his hand to knock but the door swung open. El stood there smiling. She moved for him to walk inside. He couldn't stop himself from grinning.
"Morning." Hopper said curtly, bringing his coffee up for a drink. Deca sat next to him, a smile spread across her lips.
"Good morning, Chief. And you too, Deca." Mike gave a small smile.
"Good morning, Mike. And goodbye, Jim." Deca said with a wide grin. Hopper lowered his brows at her but broke into a small smile which surprised Mike.
"I'm going, but the rules still apply. And you both finish your breakfast." Hopper ordered while putting on his coat.
"Can me and Dustin read more dicti-dictionary?" Deca asked picking up her fork.
"Sure, but just no going outside." He nodded and put his hat on. Deca happily ate her scrambled eggs. El looked at him with the most honest smile he'd ever seen.
Hopper walked outside and closed the door behind him. El glared at the door and with a small tilt of her head all the locks clicked. She walked over and sat on the sofa, she patted the cushion next to her.
He happily took the seat, she smelt like shampoo. He tried not to think about how she smelt, he looked over at Deca who ate her eggs with a smile. She saw him looking at her and frowned.
She got up and cleared her plate into the trash and went into El's room and closed the door. He breathed out relief.
"What's wrong?" El asked him, looking concerned.
"Nothing, its just hard to talk to you knowing she's reading my mind." He didn't mean to sound annoyed.
"Deca tries to block you out. She can't control it." El sounded defensive, he had never really heard her talk like that.
"You can control your powers." He said trying to reason.
"Different type of power, she can't help hearing things or feeling things. It hurts her." She said softly. Mike was flooded with guilt.
"Why don't you want to be her friend? She's good." She frowned.
"I just- I don't trust her. We barely know her and she's in your house." He replied.
"You didn't know me, and you brought me to your house." She reminded him.
"But that was different, you needed help." He could feel his cheeks burn red.
"She needs more help. She was there longer. She knows everyone's pain, she feels it and it hurts her and it stays inside, and it festers. She felt your pain, try to feel hers." El was explaining it to him the way he explains things to her.
He just sat quietly. He didn't know what to say. El had changed so much, she was different now. She knew so much now. He was different too, he now knew what it was like to lose something important.
When El disappeared, it was like his heart went with her. For a year, he walked around with a hole in his chest. Now she was back and alive, but things were different, so different.
He watched El turn on the TV with a tilt of her head and the sudden sound of Days of Our Lives made him flinch.
"Soaps, huh?" He asked with a smile.
"My favorite." She gave a small smile, her eyes stayed on the screen.
"My mom watches them. I always thought they were cheesy." He said, trying to get her to talk to him.
"No, sometimes its sad, or surprising, or pretty. Like when Roman and Marlena kiss." El smiled. Mike loved the way her eyes lit up as she talked about them.
He scooted next to her until their shoulders touched. Mike felt his heart flutter, he could feel her shoulders rise and fall with each breath, he closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of her apple shampoo and the faintest scent of cigarette smoke clinging to the blanket laying over their laps. They started watching Days.
Not very far into the episode Deca shot through El's bedroom door and raced to the front door of the cabin. El and Mike's eyes followed her.
She swung open the door and stepped onto the porch, the leaf covered porch cold on her bare feet.
"Dustin!" She swung her arms out and wrapped him in a big hug. She was so happy that he was there. Before he could say anything, she grabbed his hand and pulled him into the cabin.
"Deca! Slow down." He laughed as she locked the door.
"Its been so long. I missed you." A wide grin was spread across her face.
Dustin couldn't stop smiling, and he tried very hard to relax his cheeks. He turned and saw El and Mike staring at them. He gave a small nod and looked back at Deca, who smiled at him like there was nothing else in the world.
"Want to see?" She put her hand out. He nodded and took her hand in his, he watched her face. She didn't react to his sweaty palm.
His view of her was interrupted by flashes of El and Chief Hopper. He was helping her read the dictionary. Her and El were sitting together. Then they were hugging. She was laying on the couch falling asleep and felt so warm, so whole.
His sight returned when she pulled her hand back.
"How do you do that?" He asked.
"I don't know. Instead of searching, I think of my memory." She said plainly.
"I'm glad you're happy here." He told her. She smiled and nodded sincerely. He remembered that he had a gift for her and took off his backpack to get it.
"What is it?" She asked, excited to see.
"X-Men #101, the first time we meet Jean Grey. They call her Marvel Girl. She's like you and El." He said handing her the comic book. She took it and started flipping through it.
"I can read it with you if you want, help you with some of the bigger words." He added.
"Yes, can we?" She asked smiling.
They sat at the table and read for a while. When she came across a word, she didn't know she paused and listened to Dustin reading in his head.
"You're doing really good. Chief's a good teacher." Dustin said with a small laugh as she turned the page.
"You're helping me to." Deca smiled at him.
"I haven't had to help you yet." He replied.
"When I don't know the word, I listen to you read it." She told him and continued reading aloud.
"Hey, that's cheating." Dustin interrupted.
"Cheating?" She asked.
"It's like doing something to win a game that isn't fair to the other person." He tried to think of how to explain it.
"We aren't playing a game." She tilted her head, a bit confused.
"You can't get the answer out of someone else's head just because you don't know it. You have to try to get the answer yourself." He said trying to make sense to her.
"But I did get the answer." She replied.
"By looking in my head." He tried to be patient, but it was a little frustrating.
Deca gave a deep sigh.
"I'm not allowed to listen, now I can't get answers. No one knows how hard it is not to listen." She closed the comic book and pulled her knees to her chest.
"How do you read minds? How do you block it out?" He asked, before he was never sure if he could ask her.
"I don't have to do anything to listen, its just like hearing someone talk. I can't control what I hear or feel. I have to focus on one person to see what they're thinking, and I have to really focus to go into memories they aren't thinking about." She said softly, she struggled to find the right words.
"To block out thoughts I have to focus on something else. When there's more than one person its hard to understand everyone at once and its easier to ignore them when I can focus on a different noise." She continued.
"I don't hear you while I read, but if I need to know a word I stop and listen to you read it. I didn't hear Jane today because tv made it quiet." She hoped she explained it right. Dustin nodded slowly.
"Why do you need to touch someone? To, you know, get inside their memories?" Mike asked, breaking the silence.
"Makes us close, makes a bond. Closer I am the more I see. When I touch them, it quiets everything else." She told him.
"Did you see inside Papa?" Jane asked softly. Deca felt herself being pulled into an old memory.
She sat cross legged on her small cot. She was tracing the lines of her palm with her fingertip just to pass the time.
The door to her room opened abruptly and the men dressed in white wearing the bulky headphones stomped in. One of them hit the button on the small controller clipped to his belt.
A deafening sound blaring from the speakers around her room caused her to scream clutching her ears as hard as she could. They grabbed her arms with their large gloved hands and pulled her from the bed.
She didn't bother to fight them. The pain caused by the blood curdling screech paralyzed her. The sound made her feel like her skull was vibrating and her ear drums were bursting with every sound wave.
The sound continued to terrorize her as they carried her down the hall. She screamed and struggled.
One of them swiped their ID card in front of the door and kicked it open. They dropped her on the metal chair and walked out.
When the door closed behind him the sound stopped. Her arms fell into her lap, she hunched over resting her head in her hands and tried to catch her breath.
No matter how many times she heard that sound she never built a tolerance to it. When she started to be able to go inside their minds from afar they tried out different things, different sounds but this frequency was the most traumatic.
She had composed herself and sat straight in the chair. She looked across the room to the window. Papa stood at the desk in the other room, the room attached to the one she sat it. She looked at him
The door opened, she turned towards it and saw a man wheeling in the evaluation cart.
He was tall, bald, heavy, and his mouth was twisted into a permanent frown. He wore a white coat and black slacks, he had a cattle prod attached to his belt.
The room was filled with his thoughts, or lack thereof. All he was thinking about was the set up of the equipment. He avoided eye contact and corrected his thoughts when they began to wander.
He slipped the head gear on, it was cold against her scalp. He sat in the chair across the table from her.
"Ten," Papa's voice rang through her sore ears from the speaker in the top corner. She sat up more in her seat.
"I need you to answer some questions today." He spoke softly. She nodded and began focusing on the man in front of her.
"What color is he thinking of?" Papa asked.
She didn't have to try very hard. Blue, blue, blue, blue. His repetition filled her ears.
"Blue." She answered quickly.
"Good, Ten. He's picturing an image. Describe the image." Papa ordered.
She focused harder on his eyes. She could feel his unease. She saw flashes of it, only glimpses. The moment she could see a part of it clearly the rest would fade. It was frustrating her.
She reached her hand towards him. He flinched away.
"Ten. No contact." Papa scolded. She trembled at his sternness.
"It's a crutch. You must use your mind. Concentrate, focus on the image." His voice softened. She nodded at his words.
With a deep exhale she focused harder. She pushed herself into his mind. She could see the image, but she felt her throat close before she could describe it to Papa. She felt her palms trembling and her stomach twist.
She had passed by the image she was meant to see and was seeing flashes of the man's life. He was alone. The loneliness encircled her like smoke. She saw flashes of his reflection, the dark rings under his eyes even darker, the fluorescent light flickering, the smell of him burned her nostrils.
She couldn't stop herself. She saw even further. She could see a woman walking out a door, suitcases in each hand, there was yelling. The yelling blended together into an incoherent jumble.
She saw him with the same woman. There was more yelling. She could taste the burning, rancid taste that clung to his mouth. He was screaming at the woman, she was yelling back. He grabbed her wrist, he was hitting her. She could feel her own knuckles aching and wanted to stop.
She was pulled from his mind by the electricity traveling through her side. She fell off the chair, the head gear was yanked off as she hit the ground.
He jabbed the cattle prod into her hip. The prongs seared into her skin and made her muscles contract. She couldn't stop the spasms or the cries she let out.
"No more! I'm not doing this again!" The man yelled at Papa and slammed his palm against the large window.
He stormed out of the room not bothering to take the cart with him. She laid on the ground breathless, the floor felt cold against her burning cheek.
"Ten, what did you see?" Papa asked softly as he came into the room. He knelt on the ground in front of her.
"Papa," She began, but was too weak to say the words.
He touched her face; his cotton gloved fingers stroked her forehead.
She slowly raised her hand to his cheek. He froze, unsure how to react.
When she placed her palm on his cheek, she remembered the images inside the man's head. She replayed them in her mind, for Papa this time.
She watched as his eyes dilate. They darted back and forth while he watched the memories she'd intruded on.
His pupils contracted as his vision returned. He looked at her with awe. He slowly moved both his hand up to her head. His thumbs stroked her temples. She closed her eyes, letting the tears fall. She felt the blood start to drip down onto lip, but she didn't care.
That was the last time she felt love from Papa. Or whatever that was that he felt towards her, she reminded herself. She knew real love now. She sees it between the party, between Jim and Jane, between Jane and Mike.
Papa never had love for her, or Jane, or any of the children they stole. Deca now understood that.
"Never saw inside Papa. Too much darkness to see through." She told them.
AN: Sorry for such a long wait. I really struggled with writing that flashback, I wanted to get it right. I like how it turned out, I hope you do too. Thanks for reading!