As they walked arm in arm back toward town, Mike couldn't help but notice the nervous glances El cast at the homes they passed. He had spent years trying to picture what her life might be like. In all those times, he had envisioned a normal life for her: school, friends, a job; all the stability she deserved, and at first, it seemed as though he had been right. Now he could see, underlying whatever stability and happiness she had found, there was still the constant fear of the world catching up with them once more.
As they made their way down an old set of stairs off the boardwalk and onto the deserted beach, he could practically feel the tension melt away from her and ride away on the salty breeze. Away from prying eyes and illuminated by the glow of a half-moon peaking through a break in the clouds, they could have been a thousand miles away from the nearest living soul, and the contented smile on her face was the most relaxed he had seen her the entire day. He could also tell there were questions forming in her mind, things she wanted to ask but couldn't quite put to words yet, so for the moment they walked along the soft sand, her hand twined warmly through his.
"Sorry I dragged you out here in the cold," she apologized. "I just...I just needed you to myself for a few minutes. I know there's probably too much to even begin to say in one walk, but I just couldn't do this in front of dad."
"It's okay," Mike reassured her, "This has been an...unexpected day, to say the least. Certainly not what I expected when I got on the plane in Chicago this morning. But right now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be than right here with you."
He felt her fingers begin to fidget in his, as she readied her next question. She didn't want to ask, terrified of the answer, but she knew her whole world hinged on the answer. Hoping not to scare him with the loaded inquiry, she tried her best to nervously play it off as a joke.
"So. Will your girlfriend mind that you haven't called to let her know you made it to town safe?"
She ducked her head, afraid to meet his eyes, knowing her heart was ready to shatter into a million pieces if he confirmed her fears. He stopped, and held tight to her hand, turning her to face him.
"Are you asking if I'm involved with anyone back home?"
She raised her chin barely an inch before she dropped it again in a faint nod. Mike took his free hand and gently cradled her chin in his fingers, slowly raising her face until her gaze finally locked on his.
"No El," he said, with that same reassuring smile he used that day at the quarry, the first time he told her she wasn't a monster. "I don't have a girlfriend back home. Or a wife. Or a good friend I call when I get lonely. Late in high school, the guys kept trying to tell me I had to move on, and even tried roping me into a disastrous group date once, but there was never another who could compare to you. For the last twelve years, fourteen really, there's only been one person, one amazing girl who's captured my heart and held it tight."
As El stared back in amazement at his tender confession, two slender tears broke loose and rolled slowly down her cheeks, sparkling in the moonlight as they fell. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips; it was the answer she had been hoping for, and so much more. Of course, that opened a whole new set of problems, but she would take this one step at a time. Stretching out on tiptoes, she pressed a slow kiss to his lips.
"Come with me. There's something I need to show you," she said, taking hold of his hand and starting further down the beach, away from the last lights at the edge of town.
They walked in the powdery sand for several minutes in silence as Mike wrestled with the same question, now that she had opened that door.
"So, what about your boyfriend?" Mike asked, playfully nudging her shoulder with his own as they walked. "Is he going to be mad you're down here taking a romantic moonlit walk on the beach with someone else?"
The smile she threw him let Mike know she was equally unattached. "The only man in my life is back at the house, probably sitting in his old recliner in the living room, terrified I'm down here doing something stupid."
Mike couldn't help but laugh at the image she had conjured and soon she was laughing right along with him. He may have changed his name, more than once, but deep inside Hank still beat the heart of Jim Hopper. As they recovered themselves, Mike realized they had turned away from the water and were approaching the base of a rocky cliff running a good distance down the coast. As they drew closer, he was startled by a sudden scraping noise, as he watched an enormous boulder slide to one side of the cave entrance it had been blocking. It took a few seconds before his brain started making sense of what he was seeing. He looked over at El is absolute awe; she had neither raised a hand or even broken stride as she walked toward the opening now laid bare.
"What?" El said, glancing over with a satisfied grin on her face. "A Jedi needs a place where she can train in the ways of the force."
If Mike had been startled before, he now stared dumbstruck. She went on, pleased with his reaction, "When we settled down for the first time, I made dad buy the whole trilogy, and now they're the first thing on my list to go into the emergency bag if we have to run. I'm sorry we never got to watch them together."
"Maybe now we can," Mike said hopefully.
"Maybe we can," she said with her own nervous smile.
As they reached the mouth of the cave, she gripped Mike's hand tighter and pulled him close. "It's not far, but it's darker than anything in here. Stay tight to me and I'll make sure you don't trip."
They walked only a minute or so, and Mike felt the sand give way to rock beneath his shoes. Finally, she stopped, and helped Mike feel for a log to sit down on. She sat beside him and he was about to ask what they were doing, when a small flame suddenly flickered to life in a carefully stacked fire-pit in front of them. As the fire took hold and the space around them gradually grew brighter, Mike looked around and was amazed by the sight. The small entrance of the cave had given way to a large open cavern. At the back of the room, a spring of water poured out of a crack in the rock and cascaded musically down the face into a small pool before winding its way down to the sand, where it disappeared underground again.
Never moving from where she sat, El was carefully stacking a pile of driftwood in one corner that she had apparently collected and pulled along behind them as they walked. Several towers of rocks stood in another corner, delicately stacked in intricate patterns that he could only assume were placed without physical touch. On a shelf, roughly hewn into the rock, sat a single photograph in a simple brass frame and he recognized the snapshot immediately. It had been taken, reluctantly, by Hopper on Christmas morning, 1984, when Mike had brought El her present. The picture was of the two of them, still naive, hopeful children, arm in arm in front of the little tree Joyce had insisted he put up. El had refused to let that picture be tucked away in the lock box, and had a second copy, plus the original negative, tucked safely in the pages of her well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables.
"El, this place is...I don't even know. Amazing," he finally decided.
"I told you," she said with a proud smile. "A Jedi needs a place to train."
Mike could tell by the look on her face, there was more to the story and she was doing her best to mask it with a little humor. He let her collect herself before she continued.
"Dad never tried to make me stop using my gifts. He said they were part of what made me who I am, so I should be proud of them. But he also said I had to be safe about it and never use them around people who didn't know, unless it was the very last thing to keep myself safe. It happened only once, a couple years after we left Hawkins; I had to use them in front of someone and so we had to go on the run again. He told me it wasn't my fault, that I did the right thing, but I always blamed myself for having to uproot his life again."
"When we came here, I found this place and have used it to practice. And." She paused and took a hesitant breath, "too reach out. To see you." she admitted.
Mike was so absorbed in what she was saying, the full gravity of her admission hadn't fully sunk in, so she continued.
"After the first few years, when it became obvious we wouldn't be going home, back to Hawkins, any time soon, and possibly not ever, dad started dropping not-so-subtle hints that I needed to let you move on. He let me send a couple more postcards before finally putting his foot down and saying it was time. That if I wanted you to be happy, I had to let you go. So I started sneaking down here in the middle of the night so I could reach out and find you; the fire and the waterfall did a good enough job to replace radio static. I just needed to see you and know you were alright. I'm sorry, I know that sounds really creepy but on my worst days, I needed to feel close to you because even if you were thousands of miles away, somehow you were still able to make it all better."
She looked back at Mike, embarrassed at the confession and afraid he would be mad she had cut off contact while still finding him for her own benefit. As her eyes met his, she was surprised to find them brimming with tears he had been fighting back since unfolding her note that afternoon.
"I missed you so much, El," he admitted, giving the tears permission to fall. "I wish I could have been there for you. Getting out of the truck, the night you left, is the one moment of my life I truly regret. I should have stood up to Hopper and refused to let him tear us apart."
Giving release to her own tears, she pulled him close and nestled her face down in his neck, breathing in his comforting scent that had somehow not changed in all this time. "You know he never would have let you come. He would have drug you out of the truck and probably not even let me send you the few cards that I did."
"Still, you never should have had to go through all that alone. Sitting back in Hawkins, all I could ever do was hope and pray that you were somewhere safe, and that you were happy; that you were having the normal life you completely deserve."
"I know you did. I can't tell you how many times I came to visit in the night, only to find your bed empty and you alone down in the basement in the place where you once built the blanket fort for me, softly whispering your hopes out into the universe."
"You saw that?" Mike asked, a little embarrassed there had been an audience for his moments of quiet weakness.
"I saw. And it meant everything to me," El comforted, trying her best to alleviate his embarrassment and her own guilt for invading those private moments. "Your wishes came true for me too, really they did. It took a few false starts, and there has always been the fear of having to move on again, but dad and I have put together a good life here. He has always made sure we had a roof over out heads and enough to stay comfortable. He helped me learn all the things I should have during the years of school I missed and got me in to high school, helped me struggle my way through and actually graduate. He helped me figure out the world of friends."
She smiled, trying her best to assure him all had been happy for her, but she knew she couldn't give him only half the story. He had told her long ago that friends don't lie.
As her smile faded, Mike pulled El closer and asked, "What is it?"
"I made a few friends, but they could never replace you. No one could ever understand me like you could. Part of the problem was the mask I always had to wear around everyone else, never letting them know the real me. If they knew, we would have to move on. I could never tell people the real reason I'm afraid of swimming, or why seeing a soldier in uniform sends me into a panic attack."
Of course Mike knew the reasons behind those fears, and so many others. He couldn't help but picture a thousand simple moments something had likely triggered a terrible memory and she would have been torn between running away or suffering through the moment alone.
"During senior year, my English teacher looked so much like Papa, I actually thought it was him the first time I walked into class. It took everything I had to go to his class every day, and even then, I could barely concentrate. It got so bad I barely made it through with a C. Most days, I wound up crying alone in a bathroom stall after class, just trying to pull myself together again. The only thing that got me through each day, was picturing the reassuring things you would say if you were there. You would remind me that Papa was gone, and you would promise me everything was going to be alright."
She looked back into his eyes, feeling a weight lifting from her shoulders having unburdened the thoughts that had been dragging her down.
"El..I don't know what to.." Mike stammered.
"I really missed you too," she said, leaning close and pressing her forehead to his.
For a long time, they sat in silence, wrapped in each-other's arms and watching the gentle flickering of the fire. Each was already deep in thought, planning just what they were going to do, now that they had been reunited. Finally, it was Mike who spoke.
"I don't know just how we're going to do it, but we're going to figure this out. I can't live my life without you in it."
"I can't lose you again, either," she returned, "but I don't know how we make this work. We don't even know anymore if anyone is out there looking for me."
"El, we'll find a way, and you're not going to lose me. I..."
She raised a finger to his lips, silencing the vow she knew was coming.
"I know what you're going to say Mike, and I know we're going to try. But please." She took a deep breath, fighting back the lump in her throat. "Please don't make a promise you're not sure you can keep."
"El." He looked deep in her eyes, willing her to feel the sincerity flowing through him. "You are not going to lose me. I promise."