"It feels like a morning, long ago… I knew you when you were… when you were only a dream I had."
Wonder Woman: Earth One
Eleven knows where she is without even opening her eyes. The smell of mildew emanating from the damp carpet beneath her. The sound of music and crackling radio static seeping through the ceiling. The occasional metallic clanging of the rusting pipes buried behind the drywall like the muffled tolling of distant church bells. The taste of stale air that has been trapped in the room for years and the salty scent of half-eaten packets of potato chips left strewn all about her. A pale yellow glow that she can barely detect through her eyelids.
Back again, a voice says.
Yes, Eleven says. Back again. The words come to her without her thinking and the sound of them seems to vanish the moment they leave her throat, as if eaten up by the peeling varnish on the wood-paneled walls. When she opens her eyes she sees Mike staring back at her through a tangled mess of hair. In the murky light of the basement his face is all angles, the ridges of his cheekbones and his porcelain chin and his stern brow jutting out as if chiseled out of dark, unmoving stone. All sharp edges in a world of distorted lines that seem to waver in and out of focus. And then he uncrosses his legs and turns his head to face her and the entire illusion disappears.
They're waiting for you, Mike says. She's waiting for you.
I know. I know.
She reaches out and peels back the blanket obscuring her view of the rest of the basement. The old familiar motion giving way to the old familiar view, everything just as it always has been. The plastic figurines and the binders lying atop the table in the corner and a sense of anticipation in the air as if Will and Dustin and Lucas could come bundling down the stairs at any moment, just as they would when they were only children. At three one five.
Are you ready to go? Mike says.
I – Eleven says. There is a part of her that knows what she wants to say. What she must say. Yet the thought is still difficult to bear and when she turns to look at the stairs they are just as she remembers them and just as she fears, stretching up and up towards a closed door that the light from the lamp in the corner cannot reach. But what if –
What if?
What if she hates me?
Why would she hate you?
Because, Eleven says. She pauses, just enough to pick at the words carefully in her head before she makes them real by lending them her voice. Because it's all my fault, she stammers. Because – I – I – could have saved her, and I didn't, I didn't because – and now she is all alone – because of me –
Jane, Mike says. He puts a hand on her shoulder and she winces at the sensation of contact as if the warmth of his palm sears her skin. Jane, he says. You know that isn't true.
– and I should have been thinking about saving them – saving everyone. I should have been – instead of –
Listen to me, Jane.
– thinking about her, and thinking about –
Jane.
– me, and –
Jane.
The name finally registers and Eleven stops mid-sentence and she is briefly distracted by the strangeness of the sound of it. She has been El, short for Eleven, for so long that her real name – the one that she had seen inscribed on her birth certificate and that her teacher had called her at Lenora Hills High – barely seems to fit. Barely feels real. Like a faded photocopy of herself with some of the letters missing, cut off in the margins.
Do you really think, Mike says. He stops as he and Eleven try to find the right words to say. Do you really think that you could have gone on pretending that –
I –
That you loved me even though you knew – you knew you didn't feel –
I did love you, Mike.
And maybe you still do, Mike says. His voice still squeaks in the way that it used to years ago. But it's like Will says, you know. There are lots of ways you can love someone. He crosses and uncrosses his legs and fiddles with the collar button of the yellow, short-sleeved shirt that is draped over his bony shoulders. But when you thought – you thought we were going to lose, Mike says. And when One told you we were all going to die. Who was it, Jane? Who was it?
I – Eleven stutters. She feels Mike gently squeeze her arm.
You need her then, Jane, Mike says. Maybe you still do.
Mike, I – I –
And maybe. Maybe she needs you, too.
Eleven opens her mouth to speak again but nothing comes out except for a long, heavy breath. She feels a warmth on the back of her neck and swivels her head around to see a window behind her that she has never noticed, a narrow pane of clouded glass near the ceiling that lets in a wintry light that only reaches the foot of the stairs. She can see nothing of the world outside except for the ghostly fingers of tree branches that cast long shadows over the rectangular patch of pale gray projected on the carpet.
Has that always been there? Eleven says.
I know as much as you do, Mike says without turning his head.
Eleven crawls out from the den of bedsheets and feels a throbbing dizziness overtake her as the blood rushes from her head and trickles down towards her legs. She braces herself against a wall, feeling her palm stick to the varnish and her foot knock over something hard and plastic next to her. When she has finally collected herself she looks down to see the walkie-talkie lying on the floor, static crackling faintly through the speaker.
Ready to go? Mike says.
Eleven takes a few tentative steps forward, feeling pins pricking against the soles of her feet as she shuffles along the carpet. She approaches the table in the corner and takes the figurines one by one, holding them up to her face and feeling their outlines with the tip of her finger. The jagged ridges of the Demogorgon's plastic scales. The Mind Flayer's tentacles, curled and poised to strike. Vecna's robes, caught in a gust of wind that has been frozen in time. She wanders around the room, the muffled sound of her footsteps mirroring the slow rhythm of her heartbeat. She inspects the poster of the eagle on the wall and the cracked leather of the armchair and the flickering lamp with its turquoise base and the lifeless television set. She runs her hand over them all, feeling the dust accumulate on her palm. When she reaches the bottom of the staircase she finally turns to Mike and nods. Okay, she mutters. Okay.
She takes a deep breath and steps forward and onto the first step and feels the wooden plank creak under her weight and she reaches for the railing and feels it sway when she leans on it and she looks up to the top of the stairs and sees the door standing there, a black monolith that towers above her from the gloom. Then she looks behind her and sees Mike standing, beside the patchwork blanket draped over the cushions on the carpet where she had always been when she would open her eyes, looking at her with a blank expression on his face. Just as he always had.
Right behind you, he says.
Eleven lets herself breathe out and once she has steeled herself to take another step she breathes in again. She feels the whole staircase seem to rock back and forth and when she braces herself against the bannisters she feels as if they will collapse at any moment and so she leans against the wall instead, feeling the dirt and mold and flaking varnish accumulate on her shirt. She steps up and up, gradually becoming consumed by the darkness until finally she dares to stick out a hand in front of her and feel the cool brass of a doorknob against her clammy skin.
I'm right here, Mike says. It is as if his voice is being extruded through the speaker on the walkie-talkie, fading in and out of the static. I'm right here. She twists the knob, feeling it jam for a moment before it finally gives way. El, he says. I'll always be right here. And then she pushes the door and steps beyond the threshold and into a bright light that obscures a world she cannot see.
Eleven awakens to the glint of the early afternoon sun filtering through the wispy clouds that sit high in the sky. Through her half-closed eyelids she can see Max still asleep next to her, the faint remnants of a smile on her face and music playing through the headphones that have fallen from her ears and now hang around her neck. Hopper is listening to the radio with the volume turned down so low that Eleven can barely hear the song coming through the speakers. It is still loud enough for him to hum along as he taps his hands on the steering wheel to the beat. It is only when Eleven reaches over and hits the pause button on Max's cassette player and he hears it click that he realizes that she is awake.
"Rise and shine," Hopper says.
"Where are we?" Eleven says.
"Just about to cross into California. Should be a few more hours before we get to Redding."
Eleven yawns, stretching out her arms and massaging a sore spot in her neck that had been resting awkwardly against the headrest while she had been asleep.
"What'd you two get up to last night?" Hopper says. "You both seem exhausted."
Eleven looks out of the window and sees a sign that reads "Welcome to California" and feels something within her shudder. "Nothing," she says quietly. She can see Max's reflection in the glass against the low, spiny bushes that sit hunched at the side of the highway. "It has been a long trip," she says.
"All I'm saying," Steve says, setting his empty soda can down on the picnic table. "Is that you don't know they like each other –"
"But that's the thing, Steve," Vickie says. "We do know, because –"
"I'm just not convinced it's not them being. I don't know. Weird. I mean, you know, girls are pretty weird –"
"Jesus, Steve, will you just shut up," Robin says. She breaks off a small piece from the twig that she has been fiddling with and flicks it at him, half-jokingly and half out of a very real exasperation that has been simmering within her ever since he started talking. It's not the skepticism, Robin thinks. That was a feeling she would share from time to time whenever she felt less optimistic about her and Vickie's chances of not being the only gay couple in the new sleepy town they were going to attempt to call home. It is the unbearable sound of him and Vickie arguing and the way that it accentuates her throbbing headache and the fact that he just doesn't have a good reason, she thinks, and you have to have a good reason.
Steve scrunches up his face into a sarcastic expression that Robin thinks would befit an eight-year-old child. Maybe nine, if she were being generous. "Sorry, Robin," he says. "Just, you know. Sharing my opinion. Free country and all."
"King of Hawkins High," Robin mutters to herself. Then, as if needing someone to reassure her that her memories of Steve sitting atop the social ladder are not just some hallucination, she turns to Vickie. "Can you believe they named this guy the King of Hawkins High?"
Vickie only giggles and flicks a stray lock of her bright red hair to one side. Robin watches her continue to fold and unfold a paper napkin in her hands, the edges fraying into long strands that Vickie picks at and places in the pocket of her jeans.
"Look," Robin says. "All I'm saying is when you're – you know, like me, like us, you can kind of. I don't know – tell. Like, from the vibe –"
"Oh, the vibe," Steve says, chuckling.
"No, I mean – like, how they've been avoiding each other –"
"Oh, how they've been avoiding each other. Yeah, when I'm trying to get with a girl I like, I always avoid them –". Steve rolls his eyes and tosses the soda can at a nearby trash can. To Robin's delight he misses so that he has to get up out of his seat and trudge over to it and pretend that the wind had knocked it off-course by licking his fingertip and sticking it in the air.
"No, Steve, that's not the point," Robin says. She presses her palm against her forehead, her pounding headache now worse than ever. "It's like – I don't know, the way that they look at each other, and –"
"Robin. Shut up."
The sudden interruption takes Robin aback and a few moments pass before she is able to pull her train of thought back together again. No, Steve, Robin thinks. You shut up. Yeah, real mature, Robin. His attempt to bring their argument to a screeching halt only succeeds in strengthening her determination to prove her point. "No, Steve, listen, all I'm saying is that, you know, if you just looked at them, you'd know that all they want to do is run off into the sunset together, if only they knew –"
"Robin, seriously," Steve says, now with a sternness that she has not heard since before Hawkins had been reduced to a smoldering ruin. "Shut up."
"Jesus, Steve, you're the one that brought this up in the first place –"
"Robin."
"Hey," Robin hears someone say behind her in a quiet, raspy voice. She turns and sees Max standing with her hands tucked in the pockets of her jacket. There are dark circles under her eyes that appear all the darker in the shadows cast by the waning afternoon light. The sight of her immediately makes Robin's stomach tense up and a queasy feeling washes over her as she feels her mind begin to race out of control, poring over everything she and Vickie and Steve have just said in the vain hope that Max might not be able to decipher what and who they have just been talking about.
"Uh, hey," Robin mutters. She can barely hear the sound of her own voice and sees Vickie give her an odd look out of the corner of her eye. "I mean – hey, Max."
Steve nods his head at Max and Vickie gives her a small wave, her lips pursed tightly together and her legs bobbing up and down.
"What are you guys up to?"
"Uh, nothing. We were just –" Robin tries desperately to come up with something, anything, that they could plausibly have been doing and she looks over at Steve and Vickie with eyes that scream for help.
"Just shooting the shit, you know," Steve says.
"Yeah," Vickie adds. "Just shooting the – yeah."
Max raises an eyebrow and the slight change in her expression, the barely detectable tensing of her mouth and the twitching of her eyelid, is enough for a bottomless pit to form in Robin's stomach. Oh God, she thinks. The jig is up. She might never be able to speak to Max again and they would have to spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid each other in a small town where avoiding anyone is impossible. But then she sees Max's gaze fall back to the dusty ground beneath her as she kicks at a pebble with her foot.
"Hey uh –" Max stammers. She does not look back up. "This is kind of weird, but – I realized – I realized. When we were talking, the other day. I never asked how – how you and Vickie –"
"Hold on," Robin says, turning to Steve. "Steve, don't you have, like, some taxes to file or something?"
"Taxes?" Steve says, staring back at Robin cluelessly.
"It's okay," Max says. "He can stay."
It is only then that Steve seems to realize what Robin had been hinting at. His eyes widen and he clenches his teeth and shrugs his shoulders at her in what she assumes is meant as a silent apology.
"How Robin and I what?" Vickie says.
"How you – you know, met."
"Oh, that's easy. We met in band – you know, Robin played the clarinet, I played the trumpet, we both pretended to like going to those stupid pep rallies." Vickie mimes playing a trumpet by wiggling her fingers in front of her face. Nice one, Vick, Robin thinks. In case she doesn't know what a trumpet is.
"No," Max says. "I mean – how did you meet – as in –"
"Oh. I – uh –". Vickie gulps for air and for a moment she and Robin lock eyes and Robin recognizes the same look in her eyes, the look of a deer in headlights, all turquoise and marble white still gleaming in the fading light, that she had on her face the first time they had dared to confess their feelings for each other.
"It, uh – it just kind of happened," Robin says. Her voice is overtaken by a sudden hoarseness that surprises even her. "You know, it was all a bit of a blur, you know, given the whole Vecna trying to take over the world and you guys almost dying and everything. But – you know –". She pauses for breath and senses a thought bubbling up to the fore of her consciousness, a thought that she has held within her for what seems like forever but that now compels her to lend it her voice. "I guess when you think you're about to, well, you know – I guess you decide you don't want to die not knowing. Even if it could be painful. Like, really painful. And so – and so, I think we were hiding from one of those things and one thing led to another and I said something like, 'Hey, this is super weird but, uh, I really like you, like, not just as a friend even though I do really like you as a friend too but like, like like, and pretty please will you tell me if you like me too or if this is super awkward and we're never going to talk to each other again.' And uh, yeah. I guess that was that."
"So romantic," Steve says. Robin feels around in the grass at her feet for something to throw at him but there is nothing suitable and so she has to settle for rolling her eyes at him.
"I thought it was romantic," Vickie says. "And, for the record – I had my own speech prepared too, but I guess, uh, I guess Robin beat me to it. So – yeah."
Robin looks back at Max. She is still staring at the patch of earth at her feet. Robin is not sure if she has looked up since they started talking and she watches her nod her head silently, as if in agreement at some mute conversation she is having with someone else entirely in her head.
"Is there someone you're – I don't know. Hoping to – meet?" Robin says.
"What?"
Robin knows from the way that the color drains from her face that Max has heard her.
"Is there someone you – you like?"
A crow caws in the distance, the mournful call and the fluttering of its wings as it soars high into the sky punctuating the quiet that descends upon them.
"No," Max eventually mutters. "No, I just – I just guess I feel like – I didn't know the whole story? And I felt – felt kind of bad, not asking." Robin can see the cogs whirring in Max's head, her lips quivering as they trace the beginnings of sentences that she ultimately discards. "Anyway, I think. I think, I mean, I promised Mike I'd uh. Lend him this book I'm reading. You know. I'd better catch him before dinnertime."
"Uh, okay," Robin says. "Sure." She can do little more than watch as Max starts off in the opposite direction to the Wheelers' trailer, dragging her heels in the dirt, the uneven rhythm of her footsteps fading into silence as she becomes a silhouette in the distance against the light of the setting sun. She turns to Steve and, with the little energy she has left to deal with him, mouths something to the effect of I told you so and feels only the slightest sense of satisfaction when he nods back in acknowledgment.
"Rob," Vickie says when Max is out of earshot. "Is that – is that really all you remember?"
"No," Robin says. She wraps an arm around Vickie's waist and rests her head on her shoulder, feeling a bone press against her temple and the soft fabric of her overshirt against her cheek as it flutters in the breeze. There is the smell of the shampoo lingering in Vickie's hair and of the car that has accumulated on her clothes and of the dried pine needles that they have crushed underfoot. "But you know. I guess it's the feeling that really matters, right? I mean – to her, at least."
They stay intertwined as Robin wordlessly tries to piece together what Max is up to. What she is thinking. What might have happened with Eleven for Max to finally lose her ever-present cool. Eventually though she decides to let it be. Give them time, Vickie had said. And so she would. She would only sit on the sidelines, hoping for the best.
"Robin," Vickie says. Robin feels her lean further into their embrace. There is a breathless sparkle in the sound of her voice that pierces the stillness like a sparrow's song and to her surprise when Roibin looks up she sees the ripples of tears beginning to form in her eyes.
"What's wrong, Vick?" Robin says. "I'm sorry – I'm sorry, I –"
"No, no, nothing's wrong," Vickie says. She shuts her eyes and lets the first of her tears trickle down the side of her face and Robin brushes them away with her palm. "Just –" she says, her voice trembling. Robin sees a smile as wide as she can remember unfurl across her face. "You didn't look. You didn't look around this time."
Eleven feels her arms beginning to buckle under the weight of the grocery bags, her shoulders turning numb and her muscles aching and the plastic digging into her palms as she stumbles slowly towards the Byers' trailer. Yet when she turns around to her dismay she sees that she is barely twenty feet from where she started. The sun is beginning to dip below the horizon and she can feel a chill beginning to overcome her as the beads of sweat accumulating on her brow evaporate and disappear. She looks around for Max and sees her standing in the distance, talking to what looks to be Robin and Vickie and Steve and for a moment she thinks about calling out to her but in the end she decides against it and tells herself that it would not be good for her, that she is tired enough as it is and that heaving groceries across the campground might set her back a few weeks or even months and that she can make it on her own.
She does not know why Hopper had insisted on her taking the groceries over. She knows that he is just sitting on the recliner in the trailer with Joyce by his side, drinking lukewarm instant coffee and talking about nonsense that she does not understand. Or perhaps she does know and only does not care to know. Hopper would always become an odd and unpredictable man around Joyce, Eleven thinks. She dares to wonder if one day she might be the same way and the thought sends a tingling sensation rushing up her spine.
When Eleven swivels her head back to look in the direction of the Byers' trailer that still seems to her only to be a white speck sitting far away she sees someone standing in her way, a tall, thin shadow backlit by the fading sunlight. "Mike," Eleven whispers to herself under her breath. Even from a distance his silhouette is unmistakable and yet she has been avoiding him for so long that in the moment it feels as if he has been transplanted from those strange dreams that would occupy her sleep and into the real world. She would pinch herself if she had a hand free. She considers turning around and pretending that she has left something back in the trailer or that there is some other excuse, any excuse really, that would allow her to turn back and hide inside but as she takes another step forward she feels her toes catch against something jutting out of the ground and before she even realizes what is happening she finds herself lying in the dirt, watching a can of soup roll away, a sharp pain in her knees.
"You okay?" she hears Mike say.
She looks up and sees him jogging over to her. She goes through the same routine she always would, dissecting the intonation of his voice for any sign of anger. When he is close enough for her to make out his facial features she scans his eyes and his brow and the corners of his lips. As always there is nothing there except for the same inscrutable expression, tinged with a hint of concern.
"Yes," Eleven says. She picks herself up and dusts the dirt from her knees and rearranges her jacket so that it is sitting squarely over her shoulders. "Thanks."
"Need some help?" Mike says. He stops the can with his foot before it can escape any further and picks it up, tossing it up into the air and catching it as if it were a football.
"It is okay. I just have to take these over to Will."
"Oh. Well, I was going to go see him anyway. Really, it's fine." Eleven watches as he takes one of the grocery bags and struggles to lift it, eventually resorting to slinging it over his shoulder and almost losing his balance in the process. "Jesus," he says. "What the hell is in these things?"
"Food," Eleven says flatly. "I think."
For a moment they stand locked in an awkward impasse, staring at each other wordlessly. Eleven does not know whether she should reach out and take the bag from Mike and set off again. She could use the help, she supposes. But having to walk next to Mike and feel what she assumes is resentment radiating from him might be an even heavier weight to bear.
"Hey," Mike finally says. He sets the bag back down on the ground and rubs the spot on his shoulder that it had been sitting on. "Uh – Will said. Will said I should talk to you."
"About what?" Eleven says.
"I don't know – I just –"
Mike pauses and Eleven watches his brow begin to furrow, the deep creases emerging across his forehead just as they always would whenever he was rummaging through his mind, looking for the right words to say.
"Look," he blurts out. "I just – I get it, okay?"
"Get what?"
"Just – ugh. I mean, what you said. You know. When you – you dumped me. I mean, don't get me wrong, it sucked. But I – I mean, I get it."
I'm sorry, I don't know if I love you anymore, she had said. What do you mean, you don't love me? he had said. What the hell does that even mean? The memories of their last real conversation play over and over again in her head; the reverberations of Mike's voice and the tremors in her own and the sound of the rain on the roof like the crackling of radio static. The fear that Mike might hate her for leaving him – for leaving him alone when they needed to stick together more than they ever had – has dwelled within her for so long that she has come to accept it as an unquestionable truth, an inescapable part of her new reality that she would just have to deal with for the rest of her life. But now there is a feeling that begins to bubble up within her, like the first shaft of sunlight that emerges through a dark mass of storm clouds.
"Mike –" Eleven stammers.
"Anyway, I guess – I guess what I'm trying to say is – I kind of miss you being around, you know? We all do," he says. Eleven notices a panicked look in his eyes and realizes she must have been frowning. "Wait – I promise this isn't some lame attempt to get you to take me back. I just – I miss talking to you and – hanging out and I was – hoping. I don't know. We could start anew. As friends. You know, now that we're moving to California?"
Eleven looks up at Mike, studying his quivering lips and the wisps of dark hair draped over his forehead and the dark orbs of his eyes that still shine with a youthful glint in what remains of the daylight. After everything that has happened he is still the awkward boy that she had stumbled into out of the woods in the middle of a rainstorm, who had nervously paced around the basement and hid Eggos in his pockets and tried to impress her with his collection of plastic dinosaurs. It is as if for the first time since they had broken up she is finally looking at him, him and not a mirage that she has constructed in her head.
"And, you know, just to be clear. Not trying to get back together or anything, promise –"
"Mike," Eleven says.
"– you know, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of guys in California who'd be lucky to – you know, and that'd be totally cool –"
"Mike."
"Sorry. Anyway, what I wanted to say was – uh. I mean. Friends?"
Eleven watches him attempt to force a smile onto his face as he runs his fingers through his hair and fiddles with the clip on his wristwatch. Then he stretches out his hand and looks at Eleven, a faint hope glimmering in his eyes. There is something in him that she has missed too, she supposes. The earnest eagerness with which he would ramble on about his D&D campaigns. The way he would patiently explain things about the world outside the lab to her and pretend that it was totally ordinary for her to not understand them.
"Okay," Eleven says. She takes his hand and shakes it, just as she had seen Lucas do so many years ago in the scrapyard outside Hawkins. "Friends."
Eleven feels Mike's clammy palm against her own. They stand with their hands clasped together for what seems like an eternity, Eleven looking at Mike and Mike's lips pursed and eyes darting back and forth as his gaze wanders between different spots on the ground. Eventually, he releases her hand and takes the grocery bag at his feet and slings it back over his shoulder.
"Hey," he whispers conspiratorially. "Couldn't you like – I don't know. Use your powers for this?"
"Against the rules," Eleven says.
"Oh. Yeah. The rules."
Together they trudge on, stopping every now and then so that they can set the bags down and stretch out their arms and wiggle their fingers until the sensation returns to them. Eleven feels a calmness wash over her, as if some great weight has been lifted from her shoulders and she can finally feel the cool evening air fill her lungs and the blood coursing through her veins. It is as if there is a long-extinguished light within her that has finally been relit, that illuminates a seed of optimism that makes the distance they have left to cover seem not so long and the approaching night seem not so dark and that feeling - that feeling in the back of her head, that buried itself there that cloudy day she had decided to walk down Cherry Lane - seem all the more real.
"You are just like Dad, you know," she says.
"Hopper? How?"
"Uhm. Uh. I think. Yeah. I mean –"
"Oh come on," Mike says. He frowns but Eleven can hear the smile in his voice and the beginning of a laugh that he attempts to hide by pretending to cough.
By the time they make it to the Byers' trailer the sun has dipped below the horizon. The wind has picked up and it shakes the pine trees that stand at the edges of the campground and sends the loose needles tumbling through the air like pieces of dark confetti. Eleven notices a mop of brown hair and two glistening eyes peeking out at her from the window that quickly shrink back and disappear as they approach. She turns to Mike and sees that he has not noticed and so she lets him knock and they wait for Will to unlock the door and let them in.