An elegant, lean man with frosty white hair wheeled himself towards Levi's bedside.
Eleven wanted to vomit. To cry, to scream, to murder, to rip his throat off.
A large scar adorned the left side of his face. It was like a slash or a rip. She then looked at the man's legs. Or lack thereof. She almost wished the demogorgon could appear again just to finish the job.
Then...a splash of freezing water hit her face.
She focused her vision with difficulty. Hopper's worried blue eyes locked into her hazel ones. She could hear Mike's sobbing behind her father. And then she tasted her own lips. Blood.
The blood stain started at her nose and dripped into her pale pink T-shirt. Her ears were bloody as well and her head throbbed. But this time she decided not to faint and cry. She was boiling in anger.
The fucking ringbell rang, and El wanted to just blow the damn thing off. Joyce got up quickly and opened the door for Max, Lucas and Dustin.
The trio was feeling like a pack of fish out of water. They couldn't relate to the family's grief, they could only observe from a distance.
El was sitting between Mike's legs trying to dry her tears and staining his shirt with blood. He wasn't looking any better. How many pounds had he shed again? Ten in two weeks?
The extent of his depression was absolutely noticeable. His once blushing cheeks were paler than ever, if that was even possible. His usually bright deep brown eyes were void of excitement and wonder. His upper body was so skinny he was almost sharp to the touch with all his bones poking out hazardously.
For El, hugging Mike was like hugging a stick now, unable to feel the discrete lean muscle he had acquired from swimming and running track.
But he was there. Absolutely all of him, for the love of his life (Whether that was Jane Hopper or Levi Michael Wheeler).
Max approached the couple, walking past Hopper and Will. She laid a hand on El's shoulder in a vain attempt to comfort her.
-'Hey...'
El almost jumped at Max's hand on her shoulder.
-'Hi'
-'...We're all here to help you, guys. You know how we roll. The party stays together'
El chuckled and nodded weakly, -'It's dangerous...you guys have to NOT be around the facility...I can't promise an easy evacuation, I plan to bury it forever',
She saw Max's ginger eyebrows pull together, -'Bury?'
El sighed deeply and finished wiping her face with her t-shirt,
-'...I don't want survivors this time. I want this to be over for good'
Max froze for a second and then nodded, -'Okay, for good'.
FLASHBACK
-MAX-
Mike sat cross-legged in his basement's floor with a curious one-year old baby in his lap. He was showing him his D&D book, as well as some notes for the next campaign.
-'And then this is what's gonna happen, see how there's the picture of a dragon?'
The little boy pointed at the binder and huffed, -'Huh?'
-'Yup...a dragon. It's gonna be neat' Mike chuckled and continued caressing and gently squeezing the subtle pillows of soft skin on his son's hands.
Max however, was less than starry-eyed about Mike's shenanigans.
-'Chem is hard' she confessed, trying to get Mike to help her further into the equations.
-'You're smart, Max, you can do it'
-'But it's hard as hell! Even YOU take a while balancing this shit'
Mike rolled his eyes and sighed, yeah, chem was hard but it was his forte. He had an A+ in fucking everything.
-'Okay, what do you need help with?' He asked absentmindedly as he let his son skim clumsily through the pages on the binder,
-'It's just...the damn equations and clearing the x'
-'Okay, well...that's easy though'
Max slammed her pencil on the table in frustration, hard enough to make Levi look up, his eyes watering at the loud noise.
Mike rolled his eyes, -'You upset him, you fucking caveman'
-'Well, I don't pay you five dollars for you to play smart ass on me! Tutor me, tutor' she rolled her eyes and pulled at his mop of hair,
-'Jesus, okay! At least apologise to my son then!' He helped Levi stand up unsteadily, walking him over to where Max was seating, the baby's big green eyes softening her a bit.
-'Sorry I'm a caveman with no respect of your wellbeing, sweet little man' she grinned and pinched his freckled cheek.
Mike smiled wide before putting a little baby bottle in the child's hands, making sure he was able to suckle off it, -'Okay, get entertained with that while I teach this knucklehead how to balance some atoms'
-'KNUCKLEHEAD?! It's on, Wheeler!'.
END OF FLASHBACK
El and Mike no longer knew the meaning of modesty, so showering and changing into fresh clothes in front of each other wasn't a weird thing to do anymore.
Hell, he had helped her clean her stitched incisions a year and a half back! Fuck modesty!
-'Have you eaten anything' El's soft voice stabbed and ripped through the silence in her bedroom.
-'No, I'm not hungry'
El sighed deeply and pulled on her bra. It wasn't like she had been eating properly as well, but at least she had some meals in her stomach, she knew Mike had been starving himself to the brink of death.
-'Mike, before we go, you should-'
-'Eat something? Yeah, absolutely' he said. That sarcastic fucking tone.
The tone he used to hide the sharp stabbing feeling in his empty guts, how when he sat up he would get a bit dizzy.
-'If I have to force feed you, I fucking will' she remarked, in an impossibly velvety voice, -'You're not coming if you can't hold yourself up for more than a while, Michael'
-'Don't tell me what to do, Jane, because I swear to God-'
El had it. She pulled her top on and rolled her eyes, -'GOD?! What GOD, MIKE? If there was a God, my son would be HERE' she pointed at the white crib, -'If there was a GOD, those men wouldn't have slipped their hands up my thigh, if there was a GOD you wouldn't be thinking about k-k-killing yourself every two seconds! ...and if there IS one...if there is a God...he's the one who will have to get on his knees and beg my forgiveness...I'll wait for you outside' and with that, she slammed the door behind her, leaving Mike completely dumbfounded and kind of angry. But not at her. At himself for being such a dick.
El slipped into the chair at the kitchen table and started eating the food Karen had brought in a while before. Cold ass food, she thought. But good.
Karen sat beside her with her hazel eyes brimming with tears.
Why the hell was she crying?
El drove her big doe eyes to her father and Joyce. They looked guilty of something, El wasn't sure of what.
-'Uhmmm' the girl hummed while trying to chew on the chicken pot pie as well,
Karen flung herself into her fragile arms, making El drop her fork, -'K-Karen?'
-'...I know all of it' she cried into El's nape,
-'...What is IT?' El asked, a bit intrigued now,
Karen held El's face and almost memorized her with her eyes,
-'...The truth. About everything, from start to-to finish...is it-is it true you can do...things...'
el looked behind her back at her father, who gave her an approving shrug,
-'...Yes' her voice was smaller than she had intended. Fuck.
-'Like-like-'
-'At this point I could maybe make an airplane hover for a while before fainting...I'm not sure, I haven't practiced since the baby was born, I could turn on every single vehicle outside, I could make the roof cave in on us, make the electronics fry themselves, and I could snap the necks of anybody in my way...and I also can find Levi, and save him from the people who have him captive...and that's what I'm gonna do'
Karen looked like she was gonna faint. She swapped her hands as if she was shooing away an invisible bee...-'Can you prove it?' She asked quietly.
Normally El would hate being treated like a damn zoo animal, just showing what she could do, but this was Mike's mom and her baby's grandma. She deserved to see.
El took her manicured hand and walked her outside where three cars were parked on the lawn.
Joyce's new Chevrolet (a gift from Hop), Hop's truck and Karen's sedan.
-'You may want to sit for this' the teenager warned her.
The remaming people were peeping from the inside, eager to see Karen's reaction.
Karen sat on the same garden table she had sat almost two years ago, hearing the news that her son would be a teenage father.
-'Pay attention' El's soft voice cut through her thoughts.
She saw El flick her finger very gently, and the sound of metal moving started to shoot through the quiet night.
Then, El just swapped her hand lazily and Hop's truck's tires screeched and burned as it slid across the pavement and lawn, cutting through the grass.
She then lifted her hand and Karen's car engine shot to life, the alarm ringing obnoxiously.
The lights inside the house flickered, and the curtains shook slightly.
El turned off the car with her mind and set Hop's truck where it belonged.
As she turned around, she noticed Karen's wan pallor.
-'...You did this?' Her voice just a thread of what it really was.
-'...As I said, if I try I could make an airplane hover, the whole junkyard crinkle, burn all the lights, kill...and find'
Karen couldn't possible trust her legs right now but she absolutely had to hug her daughter-in-law.
-'...You are...a miracle of nature'
El disagreed. She was a monster in potency.
The thought haunted her every night.
A miracle was supposed to be something good.
Like holding the small child she had grown inside her body, feeling him breathing against her neck, feeling the soft lint-like texture of his newborn hair, a characteristic soothing scent filling her nostrils.
A miracle she needed to save.
A miracle was Mike overcoming his depression over the course of the last year. Every breath he took in her presence was a gift. Even if he was broken now, at least his veins weren't split open, bleeding him to death.
-'No, I'm not. But thank you for thinking that of me'.