[A/N: This fic is cross-posted from AO3. Title and quotes at the start of each chapter are from Wonder Woman comics. Thanks very much in advance for reading!]
"Then it hits me – maybe what I've been doing all along isn't living life… maybe I've just been avoiding death."
Wonder Woman (2006), Issue 10
It has been raining for hours. The yellow shirt that when dry had swallowed her entire body up down to her knees now hangs heavy from her neck and clings to her arms and torso and feels as if it is soaking her all the way to her bones. She forces herself forward not knowing whether to pay attention to the earth beneath her or what is ahead of her but she is not sure it matters or whether soon she will be dead and gone whatever she does, drowned face-first in the waterlogged soil that threatens to swallow her feet with every step or doomed to wander endlessly in the dark and featureless wood until there is nothing left within her but an empty void. And yet on and on she stumbles groping at the darkness before her until in the distance she can see a light flitting back and forth and she it is not sure if they have found her or if it is him returned to call her to him or if it is finally time for her to lay her head to rest but she stumbles towards it all the same, hurrying, feeling what remains of her muscles eat away, willing herself towards it until she sees her, eyes the color of the cornflowers that grow wild on the hills on the outskirts of Hawkins, yellow raincoat dripping with rain, calling out, El, El, I thought I had lost you –
And now they are in the gymnasium of Hawkins Middle School and all around her she sees their reflections refracted in the blue and silver tinsel hanging from the ceiling and they are all alone with the music echoing as if forced through one of the loudspeakers at the mall hanging a hundred feet away. It is snowing and she looks up to see the night sky above them and the stars glimmering like specks of sand and a great tornado of dust hovering above them, watching them as if they were figures in a diorama under museum glass, and she can feel it now feel him but she is safe she knows as long as she is lost in those eyes and it is snowing the grey flakes of soot blanketing their hair but nothing can hurt them as long as they are dancing and they are holding each other and she is counting her freckles and she can feel the tickle of her breath on her nose.
But the lights flicker on and off, on and off, and she feels the arms around her neck loosen and it is still snowing and she sees those eyes grow paler and paler until the irises are barely distinguishable from the sea of bone-white that surrounds them. She sees her collapse to the ground, a pile of broken limbs and there is no color except the growing pool of dark crimson that surrounds her and she tries to scream but nothing escapes from her throat and the world is silent except for that song echoing through the empty gymnasium - every breath you take - and she looks around expecting to find him staring back at her but all she can see reflected before her in a million shards of glass is that face with its whitening eyes gasping for air melting into her own - every step you take - as if she is trapped in a kaleidoscope –
"El."
Eleven awakens to find Max staring down at her. Her heart is racing. It feels as if it could burst out of her chest. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. She sits bolt upright in her sleeping bag, nearly knocking Max over in the process. She looks around her. She is surrounded by the white, plastic walls of the tent in which she had been sleeping. She runs her fingers through the grass beneath her.
Slowly, she brings the world around her back into focus.
The ringing in her ears subsides and reveals the low murmuring of disembodied voices outside. There is a song playing on the radio, but she cannot work out what it is. She can smell the soil, still damp from last night's thunderstorm, and the remnants of laundry detergent clinging to her clothes. She feels the collar of her plaid shirt slowly peel away from the spot on her neck that it had been pressed against while she had been asleep. And finally, she sees Max, looking at her with a concerned expression on her face. Her eyes remind her of the sky on that day so many years ago when they had run off to the mall together.
"Are you okay?" Max says. "It looked like you were – you were having another one of those dreams."
Eleven opens her mouth to speak but she can feel the words become stuck as they attempt to spill out at all at once from her throat. In the end, she settles for a small nod and what she hopes emerges as a smile. She feels herself drawn into an embrace so tight that she cannot move her arms. She buries her face into Max's shoulder, shuddering as she feels the warmth of her neck against her cheek, counting her heartbeats. Slowly, her own pulse begins to settle back into a regular rhythm. They stay intertwined for what feels to Eleven at the time like hours but then only a fraction of a second as soon as Max lets go.
"They're all waiting for us at the edge of the camp," Max says.
"Max."
"Yeah?"
"I –"
Eleven watches Max fiddle with the zipper on her jacket. In her head, she is searching for words that she has been looking for for years, words that she knows she cannot find and that may never be enough and that she suspects may not even exist. I'm sorry and I just wish we could live in that day when we went to the Starcourt Mall and you took me shopping at The Gap and we made that girl's orange juice explode all over her dress and we ate ice creams on the bus ride home and I found out what it meant to know what I like and what I really like with all my heart is –
"Never mind."
Max frowns. Eleven watches her face scrunch up into that expression she wears when she is concentrating on figuring something out. Eventually, though, she shrugs her shoulders and moves to peel open the tent door.
"Hopper says he wants to be in Kansas City by sundown," Max says. "We'd better get going."
Outside, Eleven finds herself in a maze of disaster relief tents. She is reminded of a picture of a fish, lost in a bed of bleached coral, that she had seen in one of her science textbooks the last time she had been sent to California. The rest of the landscape has been reduced to rubble. Here and there are small piles of concrete and wood and twisted steel; the occasional burned-out remains of a car; sometimes broken pieces of furniture haphazardly heaped together into makeshift shrines to a time and place long forgotten, where everything had been normal.
To save their home from One, they had been forced to all but destroy it.
Eventually, they make their way to a huddle of cars and caravans parked at the edge of the encampment. She sees Hopper, learning against the driver-side door of his car, smoking a cigarette. Joyce is loading cardboard boxes into a campervan. Will and Jonathan are sitting inside, playing a card game. They wave at her and she waves back. The other families are packing their own belongings, or what remains of them, into their own cars and trailers. The Wheelers. The Sinclairs. Dustin and his mother. Steve, Robin and Vickie.
"It's not such a bad deal," she remembers Owen explaining to her. "I'll pull some strings and see what I can do about helping you move back out to California. I know you didn't have a great time out there last time, but hopefully having all of your friends there too will – make things easier. You'll like it out in Palomino. It's by the sea. Saltwater's meant to be good for the skin, you know."
She remembers Owens smiling.
"It's the least we can do, really. Give you a chance at a normal life."
She is still not sure she knows what that word means.
"Where were you?"
Eleven is brought back to reality by Mike's voice. She plays the question back over in her head, analysing it for any trace of anger or bitterness. She decides there is none but does not - cannot - believe herself, and so in the end it is all the same. She does not lift her eyes to meet his, staring instead at a red spot on his chin.
"Sorry – I must have fallen back asleep after breakfast," she mutters.
"Oh, okay," he replies. "Well, we were worried about you, that's all. We'd better get going."
We were worried about you, that's all. The words play themselves over and over again in her head. For a moment she expects Mike to kiss her, hug her, anything, but then the memory washes over her like cold water and she is left, shivering and alone, as he returns to Nancy's car – her, Mike, I'm sorry, I don't know if I love you anymore, him, What do you mean, you don't love me?, her, I don't know, I like you as a friend, but, Mike – I don't know if I love you, him, What does that even mean? What the hell does that even mean?, her, I don't know, I don't know – and all she can do is turn around and walk silently to where Hopper's car is parked, looking back occasionally to see the smudged footprints her shoes have left in the soft earth.
It had been a stupid thing to do, Eleven would think to herself in the days after One had finally been defeated. To leave Mike in the middle of the fight of her life. To leave the person who had given her the strength she needed to finally confront him. One was gone, of course – truly gone, dead, buried, any link to the Upside Down severed for good – but the cost had been Hawkins, her home, the only home she had known, being reduced to nothing but a ruin which, once everyone had been relocated, would be wiped from the face of the Earth. Maybe if you had not dumped Mike in the middle of everything we would still have Hawkins, she would think to herself. Maybe you would then not be so alone.
And then there was the feeling – the indescribable feeling of having failed, even in the face of her own victory. It was a great weight that sat upon her chest and made it difficult to breathe, each morning when the military men would march into the center of the encampment and pin up the list of people who had been pulled from the remains of buildings around town. With each passing day and each new list the weight had grown heavier. And it had been heaviest that morning when we were listening to them read out the names when we were in the line for breakfast and you heard them read out Susan Hargrove and all I can remember is your screaming that horrible screaming and you saying I guess I know what is like to be truly alone and you crying and crying and I wish I could have saved her I could have saved her I could have saved all of them –
"We'd better get going, kid," Hopper says, extinguishing his cigarette butt with his shoe. He climbs into his car and Eleven does the same, clambering into the backseat. Max is sitting next to her, music playing through headphones covering her ears, staring out the window. Eleven is not sure that she even notices her.
"Everything okay?" Hopper asks. Eleven notices her vision becoming clouded by tears and she wipes them away with her hand. She forces her lips into a small smile and nods.
"Yes. Okay."
She feels the car vibrate as the engine starts and they pull out onto the road leading out of town. It is fall and the leaves of the trees that line the road are beginning to turn brown. A few have already fallen and they form little clouds as they are picked up by gusts of wind. Hopper fiddles with the knobs on the dashboard and the radio crackles to life. It plays a song that Eleven recognizes. She could hear it through the door that night she and Max had had their first sleepover. She does not remember what it is called. She turns and looks at Max, still staring out the window. For a moment, she thinks she sees Max looking back at her in the reflection. She quickly turns away, and watches through the rear window as what remains of Hawkins disappears behind them.