We found her, but where was he? El had been at the Byers' for two hours, but she hadn't been talking, every time someone would try and ask her a question, she would curl up into a ball on the couch. The trio was still out in the rain, nobody knew where they had gone. They hadn't been replying to the radio either.
Suddenly, the three barged into the house.
"Where were you!? We've been worrying about you three for the past two hours!" Yelled Joyce
"Sorry, the battery on Dustin's supercomm died, and we lost the connection to you guys because of the storm. We found Dustin but we got lost." Said Will guiltily
"Well, at least you guys are safe. They found El." Said Joyce
"They found El? What about Mike?" Asked Lucas
"We don't know. She won't talk." Said Joyce sadly
The truth was that the storm wasn't the thing that knocked out their connection, when Nancy found El she started blocking their supercomms, prolonging their arrival home, she knew it was a selfish thing to do, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to ignore them, but if she said what happened to Mike, it just made it real.
The three boys spotted El on the couch covered in a blanket and rushed over to her.
"Where is he?" Asked Dustin cautiously
"L-Lab." Said El, reverting to single words as a form of communication.
"Hawkins Lab?" Asked Hopper
El nodded, tears starting to come to her eyes.
"What happened? Why is he there?" Asked Lucas fretfully
"Bad men, took us." Said El
"How about I take you home." Offered Hopper, seeing that they weren't going to get anything else from her tonight
"No." Said El, not wanting to have to go back to her house, the place where the boy that's trapped in a lab lived, not wanting to have to confront the mother of that boy.
"She'll stay here for the night." Said Joyce "Then she can go home in the morning."
"Ok. Nancy, can you take these two to their homes?" Asked Hopper, motioning towards Lucas and Dustin
"Yeah, yeah sure." Said Nancy, holding back tears, her brother was gone, lost to a lab, used as bait, she didn't know what to do about it.
"What do you think happened?" Dustin asked Lucas
"I don't know, but whatever it is, we're going to get Mike back. Lucas said assuring himself, even though he had no clue on what they should do.
Dustin, Lucas, and Nancy left, leaving the five to figure out what to do.
"She'll sleep in my room, I can just sleep in Jonathan's room." Said Will
"Ok, I'll take the floor." Said Jonathan
"I'll sleep on the couch." Said Hopper "To make sure you're safe if they come after her."
El cried herself to sleep that night, and every night for the next week. Every night getting the nightmare that they would kill him to get to her. She never got a good night's sleep.
"Don't worry, I get them too, you just have to bear through it." Mike's voice went through her head every night. He hoped it helped, he hoped she could live through her pain. Every night he had the feeling that she was going to be trapped and would be back in her room the next day, but every morning he woke up, and no one was in the room. It assured him, it assured him that he could live through the pain, that he could make it, because she went through this for twelve years, and she turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.
"Hello Eleven." The sharp voice bounced around the blackness. Slowly, El turned to face it's owner. "Papa." She whispered, her words catching in her throats and coming out an unrecognizable whimper. "It's okay Eleven." He said, a cold smile plastering his face as he stepped forward. El scrambled back. "Don't you want to come home? We miss you very much." His body evaporated into thin air, and as she spun to the side, he was there again. Holding a gun to Mike's head. "Come home, Eleven. We miss you so much. Come home. You're sick, but Papa is going to make it better. Papa will make everything better." Trembling from head to toe, she shook her head, taking another lurching step backwards. "No." Tutting, he took the safety from the gun. The click seemed to echo through the whole space. "Come home Eleven. Come home. Papa will make you better."
"No!" She shouted, falling to her knees. "No! No! Stop!"
"I see. You aren't being very good, are you Eleven? I guess that means you need to be taught a lesson."
"Please, no…" she whispered, as the trigger was pulled and a loud bang shook the ground. Then they were gone. El pulled her knees to her chest as wracking sobs escaped her chest. "Eleven." The voice this time was different. Soft. Familiar. "Mike." The dark haired boy knelt down next to her and was immediately engulfed in a teary hug, at which he laughed. "Go home, Eleven." He whispered into her shoulder. She pulled away, confusion filling her face. "What?"
"Go home." Suddenly, his face began to change before her very eyes. The dark, wavy locks of hair upon his head tumbled down to the floor, leaving this Mike with a closely trimmed buzz cut. The right half of his face peeled away, exposing torn, bloody flesh. Maggots crawled around. This Mike's hands grew bony and wrinkled, shriveled and black. "Go home."
El began to scream, scrambling away and towards Lucas and Dustin, who'd appeared behind her. They pushed her away, shouting in her face, spittle flying. "What is wrong with you?" These words seemed to echo round the space, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. "Mike is gone and it's because of you! You're the monster! Will disappeared and it was your fault! You opened the gate! You got him taken to the Upside Down!" Brenner was back now, and he'd brought others. Benny. Barb. All the dead men from the lab. Their voices were unbearably loud, and El shrunk to the ground, tears streaming down her cheeks, hands covering her ears and knees brought to her chest. "It's all your fault!"
El shot up in the bed screaming, unable to stop. Will, who may or may not have already been awake due to some certain slugs which he may or may not have been secretly throwing up since he'd returned, burst into the room and was by her side in a matter of seconds, shaking her shoulders and silently begging her to wake up from the glassy-eyed state she'd entered. As Joyce rushed to the door, he'd succeeded in stopping her screams, and El now resided to heart-wrenching, hiccuping sobs. Will pulled her into a tight hug, and in that moment, as she cried into his shoulder and he pushed away images of the Upside Down which tried to invade, a silent bond was forged between the two. A silent connection. A silent promise.
Somewhere, deep in a laboratory not so far away, a young boy can swear he hears her screaming. His sobs hiccup in sync with hers.