News is Shared

Hawkins, IN

May 29, 1986

Across town, Mike Wheeler sat at the dinner table, uninterested in his plate of meatloaf and even less so the boring story his Dad was telling from his day at work. He had just brought a glass of milk to his lips when her voice ripped through his mind.

"MIKE!"

He sputtered milk all over his plate and nearly dropped the glass as his mind rang with her anguished cry. He immediately felt her presence, standing very close, in the room with him. His parents just stared at him, as though he had suddenly grown an extra pair of arms. Nancy, on the other hand, could tell immediately from the look on his face what was going on; El was in his head and it was something urgent.

"You just remembered you're supposed to be at Dustin's working on your science project, didn't you?" she lied, inventing an excuse for her brother to leave the table in a hurry. "I told you guys you shouldn't put it off until the last minute."

Picking up on the save she had expertly manufactured, Mike threw a thankful glance at Nancy before confirming her lie.

"Yeah, I forgot I told him I would be over at 5:30 to work on it," Mike said, expanding on her fabrication. "I've gotta go."

Without waiting for an objection from his mother, he grabbed his plate and carried it into the kitchen. Shouldering his backpack, Mike headed out the back door and grabbed his bike. Walking it up the trail behind his house, Eleven started in.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you jump, but I had to talk to someone."

"It's okay, El," Mike comforted. "What happened?"

As he climbed on his bike and began to peddle, Mike was suddenly aware of the warmth of her arms around his waist as her presence climbed onto the bike for the ride. It was not the first time she had done this, though she was perfectly capable of floating alongside as he rode. He didn't mind the closeness at all, reveling in the connection. Tonight, he could practically feel the pain and confusion coursing through her across the distance that separated them; a distance he was closing just as fast as his legs would carry him.

After a long pause, she finally began, "Papa is alive."

"What? How?" Mike replied, shocked. His mind immediately shot back to that night in the school, when he watched with his own eyes as Brenner was tackled to the ground by the demogorgon. "Go back, start at the beginning."

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she began by recounting her conversation with Kali several weeks ago. How, after putting it off, she had finally gone looking tonight. How she had found Papa, quietly eating dinner as though he hadn't been dead for almost three years.

After another long pause, she continued "I was there too."

"What do you mean?" Mike asked, confused. "Like, standing there watching him?"

"I was there eating dinner," she continued. "Well, it was me, but not me. She had my face. She looked just like me. But her wrist said 012."

She paused and then, in bewildered turmoil she asked "Mike, how does he have another me?"

Mike was stunned at what he was hearing. "How can that bastard Brenner be alive?" he wondered, teeth gritted against the anger that she was having to go through all this after trying so hard to put her past to rest. "And who is this girl with Eleven's face?" He could tell that question was somehow tearing her up even worse than Brenner being alive.

The answer came to him in a flash. "Twins," he blurted.

"Twins?" she responded. "What is twins?"

In that moment, Mike was thankful that Joyce Byers had already had the Birds and Bees talk with Eleven, so she understood the basics of where babies came from and he could skip past that bit. He explained how, sometimes, a mom can have two babies at the same time. Most of the time, they looked different, and could even be both one boy and one girl. Other times, though, the babies can be from a single split embryo and are identical. Sometimes, it is possible to miss that there are two babies during tests until they day they are born.

"Brenner probably hid that in her test results, even if he did know," Mike thought, but kept it to himself.

"But Mama only had me," Eleven said. "She showed me in her dream circle."

"Think back hard, how much of the delivery did she see that she showed you?"

Eleven thought back hard to everything Mama had shown her and realized she had blacked out right away, and awoken much later in her hospital room, with the sunflowers.

"Not much of it," she conceded.

"That has to be it. If you were born with an identical twin, that doesn't seem like something Dr. Brenner would have told you about. It would have been just another science experiment to him; twins that he could raise in different environments to see how your powers developed differently."

All the while, Mike had been peddling with all his might, trying to reach her. As he swung off the road and down her driveway, he felt Eleven's presence leave his mind. Pulling to a stop and dropping his bike by the front steps, he looked up to see her swing open the front door and rush to him. Only now, in the safety of his embrace did she allow the tears to fall.

"Papa is alive," she sobbed. "And he has another me."

They stood there for a long time, her sobbing into his chest, him holding her tight, stroking her hair and knowing there were no words for a moment like this. Finally she pulled back and looked up into his eyes.

"Let's go inside," he started. "You're not going to like it, but we have to tell Hopper. I know it won't be easy, but we can't keep this a secret; he'll know what to do."

Slowly she nodded, casting her eyes back to the ground as she sniffled, "Yes."

An hour later, Hopper turned off the main road and drove his Blazer down the gravel driveway, pulling to a stop in his usual spot by the front steps. It had been a long day, but a quiet one. All he wanted was a couple slices of pizza and a cold beer. Grabbing the hot pizza off the passenger seat, he thought about how great the truck would smell for the next week. Only as he turned to climb the front steps did he notice Mike's bike laying on its side, abandoned in the grass. He immediately shifted into furious-father mode. Of all the rules that had been established and tweaked over the last two years, the firmest rule had been that no boys - especially Mike Wheeler - were to be over at the house when he wasn't there. Marching through the door and into the kitchen, he dropped the pizza on the counter and stormed off to find them, bracing himself to catch them in some act fathers should never find their daughters in.

Rounding the corner into the living room, he pulled up short as he spotted the two of them on the couch. Mike was sitting there, staring worriedly off into space. He was gently stroking her hair as she lay with her head on his chest, dozing slightly. She had clearly been crying, quite a lot. The blindfold still hung abandoned around her neck and her face and shirt were caked with drying blood. He knew whatever had happened, it was bad. For a moment, he almost wished he could have caught them making out on the couch; that, at least, he was prepared to deal with. All the anger ebbed away and was immediately replaced with a flood of concern for his little girl, clearly in anguish.

Rousing from his daze, Mike spotted Hopper and made a move to wake Eleven. Hopper quickly held up a finger, indicating for him to wait a minute. He turned and headed back into the kitchen, forming a plan as he walked. While he was still trying to figure out the finer points of dealing with a teenage daughter, particularly one with her difficult past, he had learned a few tricks that tended to help. He popped two Eggos into the toaster and a mug of water into the microwave to start heating. He began running hot water in the sink for a washcloth. He dropped the Eggos onto a plate, stirred some instant cocoa powder into the mug and assembled everything on a tray, which he carried back into the living room and set on the coffee table in front of the couch. Only then did he give Mike a nod to go ahead and wake her up as he settled into the chair across from them.

Eleven woke with a start as Mike gently shook her shoulder. She looked back and forth in a quick panic between Mike and Hopper, who both stared back in sympathetic concern. Only then did the entire night come flooding back to her. She buried her face once more in Mike's chest as another wave of tears wracked through her. This new round subsided quickly, and Mike began soothingly wiping the blood from her face. That done, she reached for an Eggo and tried taking a tentative nibble. At that moment, the flakey treat that normally brought her so much joy went down like a blob of thick paste.

Hopper sat there, silently taking in everything happening before him. "Too upset even for Eggos, this is going to be bad," he thought as he watched Mike continue to hold her and clean the blood from her face, working to comfort her. Again, try as he might, Hopper just couldn't hate the kid.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she tried a few tentative sips of the cocoa and began to revive a little more.

"So?" Hopper asked gently, attempting to get the ball rolling.

Eleven looked first at her father and then back at Mike with pleading eyes. "I can't. Will..?" she trailed off.

Mike nodded, "Sure." He turned to face Hopper as Eleven nestled deeper into his side, still holding the uneaten Eggo more for comfort than anything else.

Mike took a deep breath and began, "Jane went looking for someone, in the In-Between." Even though it felt weird, he always referred to her as Jane when talking to Hopper. It just felt like the respectable thing to do, calling his daughter by her proper name. Over the next twenty minutes, Mike recounted everything she had told him earlier, trying his best to hold back his own thoughts on the situation. At the mention of Kali and the fact that she was the instigator that had sent her off on this hunt, Mike could tell that Hopper was visibly angered. He described how Eleven had found Dr. Brenner casually sitting down to dinner and his scarred appearance after surviving the demogorgon attack. Most disturbing of all, he went on to describe the girl she had seen there with him, a perfect copy in every detail, except for the 012 tattooed on her wrist.

Mike ended by describing his theory of identical twins and Hopper had to admit that it sounded more than plausible. "You're pretty bright, kid," Hopper complimented. Not sure how else to respond, Mike returned a sheepish half-smile.

Somewhere during Mike's description of the night's events, Eleven had fallen into a deep sleep, exhausted by the mental turmoil of the evening. Standing up from his chair, Hopper walked over and scooped her into his arms, carrying her back toward her bedroom. Turning back to where Mike sat on the couch he said, "Stick around, we need to talk," before continuing down the hallway.

While Hopper tucked Eleven into bed, Mike sat there running over in his mind all the things Hopper could want to talk to him about. He knew he had broken one of the cardinal rules of the house by coming here while Hopper was out. At the same time, it had been an extreme circumstance and there were countless things that seemed much more important at the moment.

As he walked back through the living room, Hopper motioned for Mike to follow him into the kitchen where they were less likely to wake her, though in her current state she would probably be out for the rest of the night.

Trying to get in front of the reprimand he was sure was coming, Mike began "I know one of the main rules is that I'm not supposed to be over here when you're not home. I'm really sorry, but she was so upset and scared when she reached out to me that I knew I couldn't just leave her over here alone."

Hopper almost laughed at the apology. Maybe he was doing this whole father thing even better than he thought, if after everything tonight, the boy thought he was in trouble. "It's okay, kid. I'm not mad at you," he said with a reassuring smile. "This was obviously an extreme circumstance, and there was no chance of the things happening that the rule is supposed to prevent." Taking a pause, he continued, "Actually, I want to thank you. I don't know what would have happened tonight if you hadn't been there for her."

Mike was taken aback. Not only was he not in trouble for coming over, he was actually being thanked for doing so.

Hopper continued, "Would your parents notice if you didn't come home tonight?"

Grateful once more for Nancy's quick thinking at dinner, Mike replied, "No. They think I am at Dustin's working on a project for school."

"Good. Would you mind crashing on the couch here, tonight?" he asked. "I know after all this, if she wakes up during the night, she is going to want to talk to you more. And right now, I don't really want her trying to find you out there," he said, giving his hand a sweeping wave around them, "wherever her mind goes to find you."

"Yeah, of course," Mike nodded. Of course he would stay; to be there if she needed him.

"One more thing," Hopper went on. "We both know she is going to want to go back and find him again, both of them I guess. In the end, there's not a thing you or I can do to stop her. But I need your help in trying to talk her out of it as long as possible. I can't see anything good coming from her trying to track down that son of a bitch."

"Yes," Mike nodded again, knowing full well he would try to talk her out of it, and that she would look for Brenner anyway.

"Okay. Thanks. Did you have dinner? Want any pizza before I throw this in the fridge?" he asked.

"No thanks," he said, shaking his head. "Not really hungry, considering."

"Yeah, me neither," Hopper replied, picking up the untouched pizza and sliding the box into fridge. Grabbing a beer from the top shelf, he turned back and continued, "There's a quilt and a spare pillow in the hall closet, help yourself. I've got to make a phone call and see just what I can find out about this new girl, if she exists."

With that, he turned and walked into his room, shutting the door behind him. Mike looked around at the silent, empty kitchen and decided Hopper probably wouldn't be coming back out tonight. He flicked off the lights and headed to the hall closet to get the bedding and fixed up the couch for the night. After turning out all but a single light, so he could navigate the unfamiliar space if he had to get up in the night, he laid down and tried to process the evening's revelations. Exhausted though he was, his mind was a whirl of confusion. How could there be a second Eleven out there, still in Brenner's clutches? He knew that Kali had very different powers from Eleven, so what kind of powers does this new girl have? His heart was breaking for the turmoil he knew Eleven was going through, trying to come to terms with the possibility of a twin sister and the awful truth that Brenner was still alive. He wanted so badly to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and let her know he was there for her. He also knew that if Hopper found them together right now, this new-found peace would come to a crashing end. Hopper was taking an enormous risk allowing Mike this deeply into the workings of their new family, and he didn't want to do anything to risk getting shut out once again.

Eventually, exhaustion overtook him and Mike fell into a deep but fitful sleep. Down the hall, Eleven passed the night in her own deep, and mercifully dreamless, sleep.