-8-
The Darkness of Eleven.
By TimeTraveller-1900.
-8-
Mike flopped onto her bed while she worked on trying to get her art presentation fixed. The same presentation she had made, and the same one Angela destroyed when she tripped her up, and it got smashed.
Angela.
Just…thinking about that cruel, evil girl was enough to make Ele-No, she wasn't Eleven, not anymore.
Now she was Jane.
Jane Ives.
Jane Hopper.
Did it really matter which one she was? Personally, she was indifferent, just like she was indifferent to Mike's presence. She knew she had brought this on herself. She had lied to her friend, telling him she had friends here and she was happy…only for it to blow up in her face after she was humiliated in the rink, and then when she smashed that skate in Angela's face. But she didn't regret it, not one little bit. Angela had had it coming for a long time, the blonde girl was lucky; if she'd had her powers, then she would have painfully torn her apart slowly.
Thinking of her lost powers made Jane more depressed than ever. It was ironic, it really was. She had grown up loathing her powers for years. It was because of them and Papa's interest in them that her mother, Terry Ives, had her brain fried. It was her powers which made everyone interested in her.
The thought made Jane feel sick to her stomach, but it was true. There were times she genuinely wondered if everyone from the Party - Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Joyce, Hop, and Max - cared for her because of her powers. The last year she had gotten only a smattering of letters and calls, and it hurt her so much, but she had tried to make the effort to stay in touch.
Now she wondered if it was worth bothering.
Now she knew the truth, she just needed all of this time, while she was allowed to go out, have friends, and even go to school, something she'd never been allowed to do in her entire life…Jane missed her powers. She missed them so much.
But she knew something else, something so painful that she needed to find a way to admit it to herself.
"So, umm, are we just not going to talk about it?" Mike broke the silence.
Jane almost laughed bitterly. Now he wanted to talk; last night he had pretended as if she didn't exist. "About what?" She whispered back, her back tensing with growing disappointment.
If he noticed her mood or if he was masking his own emotions since he spoke in his usual cheerful manner, Jane couldn't tell and she didn't care.
"I dunno, just maybe like about yesterday or everything."
Jane felt as if a stone of ice was settling in her stomach. She didn't want to even think about yesterday. She was tense enough as it was.
Jane didn't look at him. "There's nothing to say."
For a moment, Jane wondered if Mike would lose his patience and snatch her glue sticks from her hands, but he didn't. But she could hear his growing impatience and concern in his voice.
"Yeah, I guess I'm just a little, umm," he began and gathered his thoughts, "I guess I don't really understand; why didn't you tell me what's going on here?"
Jane didn't look up from her work. She had been trying to keep what was happening away from Mike, but Will was right. Her adoptive brother had not been impressed with her lies to Mike, but there was nothing they could do now. Mike now knew the truth. But what she was surprised by was why he even needed to ask. If he even knew what she was like, then he would have thought about her motives behind the lying and realised she hadn't wanted him to worry.
But does he even care? A treacherous voice asked her in her head, and Jane tried and failed to get rid of it. She was having enough doubts as it was and she couldn't get rid of it.
"I mean, y'know I'm not really Mr Popularity back home, back at home," Mike tried injecting humour into his voice, but it fell on deaf ears. "I mean," his voice and tone sobered, "you've seen it; I've been bullied my entire life. I mean, I know what it's like."
Jane had on the tip of her tongue, No, you don't, but she decided against it. Instead, she said, "I remember. I stopped you from falling to your death. I lied because I didn't want you to be worried. But there's a vast difference between what you went through, and what I've been going through."
"Okay, what don't I know?"
Here it was, the chance to say what was on her mind. "I was a fool, Mike. We all were - Joyce, Owens, Will, Jonathan - we were all fools. We all thought I could make it, have a normal life," she couldn't stop the sudden bitter laugh that bubbled up inside her chest, "I am different. I do not belong. It's just taken me so…so fucking long," out of the corner of her eye, she caught Mike's start at her unexpected profanity, but she ignored it, "to face the truth."
"You mean, in Lenora?"
Another bitter laugh tried to leave her mouth, but she stopped it halfway as she turned. "Anywhere," she said, her voice shaking.
Mike looked surprised, but he quickly tried to make her feel better. "C'mon, you can't actually believe that."
Jane remembered the way she had been mocked by everyone for her lack of knowledge and her social awkwardness before she lashed out in a rage last night.
"Everyone looks at me like…. if I'm a monster," she whispered, horrified since it brought back memories of her miserable childhood on top of the way she had led Dustin, Mike, and Lucas around Hawkins to find the Gate, only for Lucas to realise she was misleading them with her powers because she simply did not want them to know she had opened the Gate in the first place.
"Well, they just don't know you."
Jane had had enough. At this point, she didn't care about the people living in Lenora. "You think I'm a monster too," she gazed at him, her eyes sparkling with tears.
Disbelief flashed over Mike's face. "What?" He asked.
Turning in her seat to face him, Jane gave him both barrels. "Yesterday, the way you looked at me, you were scared of me."
The words threatened to shatter her heart into little pieces. Jane had detected a strong connection between herself and Mike from the moment they met, in the woods while they were trying to find Will after he'd fallen into the Upside Down; he had been the first to accept her since Dustin and Lucas hadn't; he could have easily left her to rot in the woods, soaked, lost, and alone. But he hadn't. The idea of him seeing her as a monster this whole time… disturbed her, and it opened her mind to terrible ideas. What if this entire time, he was leading her up to something horrifying?
True horror flashed over Mike's face. "No, no, that's not-that's not true," he stammered as he tried to find the right words to calm her down, "I was surprised, maybe I was a little upset in the moment, but I mean…I'm sorry, I-I just didn't know what to do. I mean, it was so crazy, it happened so fast, but it doesn't change anything, it doesn't matter. I-I care for you so much!"
Up until he'd finished saying the last sentence, Jane had been considering letting this mess slide, but she knew she couldn't, and this just clinched it.
Bitterness flowed through her words, and she had no intention of hiding them.
"Care?" Jane shook her head, disgust at the word so clear even Mike noticed it. "But you don't-you don't love me anymore?" Did you ever love me, really Mike? But no matter how tempted she was to actually speak that part, Jane could not force the words out. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Her doubts were bubbling to the surface once more.
Frustration and disbelief bloomed on Mike's face and it reflected in his body language, as he waved his arms, wondering clearly where all of this was coming out from; it reminded her so much of how Hop threatened him to stop dating her, and how she had dumped him because she had caught him and the others at Starcourt (she would not think for a moment about the chaos of that mess).
"Who said that I didn't?" He demanded.
"You never say it!" Jane snapped, her own frustration bubbling up inside of her chest.
"I say it."
Jane stood up slowly and loomed over him. "You don't. You can't even write it, Mike," and she went to the stupid box she had kept the letters in, and grabbed a stack of them. "'From Mike," she threw the letter away, "From Mike." Another letter was thrown to the floor. "From Mike, From Mike, From, From, FROM!" With each letter she threw to the floor, her voice shook with both anger and sadness.
Mike picked up on her agitated state and quickly tried calming her down. "Okay, okay, look, you're being ridiculous!" He said, ignorant to the fact those words only made her more annoyed. "What is this? You know what I think of you! You're the most incredible person in the world, and you can't let these mouth breathers ruin you, ruin us! I mean, they're nobodies. They're nobodies! And you're a superhero!"
Jane's breath caught in her throat, and not in a good way.
All of her insecurities about her adoptive brothers, her stepmother, her friends from Hawkins…all of them bubbled up in her chest. Jane had sometimes suspected Mike and the others had only put up with her because of her powers because they could call upon her to do everything while they did the basics despite the strain it caused her.
She had no trouble believing Owens and Papa saw her like that, a tool to be used and then discarded or ignored when she wasn't of any use, but Jane had truly hoped Mike and the others did not see the same thing. Owens and Papa had used her her whole life in their experiments, but when she had escaped she had hoped to finally move on with her life, and just be normal.
And that was a mistake; there was too much of a divide between Jane and everyone else; whether it was some social cue she didn't understand, some new phrases, or pieces of knowledge everyone had and she lacked. Angela had seen her problems and she had been bullying her like so many others. But she had clung to her friends and family with all she had…and now those bonds were snapping.
-8-
Mike was staring up at El in shock at what was happening; he had never heard any of this from her before. Not once, not even when Hop drove a wedge between them.
He had been so scared he hadn't even tried to make the effort to stop it, so was it any wonder El dumped him like that? Truthfully he was unsure of how his feelings for this incredible young woman went, and Mike had struggled to say he loved her. He was disappointed she had not told him about Angela and the bullying, but Will had been honest.
Deep down Mike could more or less see where El was coming from when she had lied; when he'd found her with his friends after Will vanished, El had just escaped the Lab after she had opened the Gate into the Upside Down, and she had no knowledge of the world at all, and she had sucked up everything she was told like a sponge.
But he had grown to fall in love with her, although Mike didn't know if it was even love or not. But he knew he had messed up big time this time for not telling her how much he loved her in those damn letters! He was out of his depth and he didn't know what to do; every single time he tried to make things right, they just became worse, like how he had just called El a superhero.
Because she was one.
It was true.
She had saved him, saved everyone, so many times. He remembered the time she'd sat on his dad's Laz Z chair, and she'd laughed, and she had looked so upset when his mum had come back to the house, and he'd had to shut her up in a cupboard to stop her from being found he had wanted to protect her with everything he had since he was still reeling from Will's disappearance, and the fact people were trying to kill her.
Silence rang out throughout the room, and El stared down at him. Her expression changed from tearful and upset until her expression was the same cold, calm, almost hostile mask he had seen her wear whenever she had lashed out, and he almost gasped. She had never looked at him like that before like he was some enemy who wanted to attack her.
"Not anymore," El said coldly.
Mike's breath caught in a half gasp, as he gazed up at her in shock and horror. "El-," he started, but before he could say or do anything, anything to make things right between them, there was a knock on the front door. Breaking eye contact, El went downstairs. Mike followed. He could have said something, as they left her bedroom, but she moved too fast for him to get the words out.
"…you aware of an incident that happened involving Jane at the rink-o-mania?" A man's voice spoke, Mike and El only catching the question.
Oh no.
Cops.
"That was an accident," Will was standing right in front of them, he hadn't noticed them coming down the stairs.
"We have a warrant here that says otherwise," another cop said.
"A warrant?" Jonathan scoffed from the door, trying to laugh this off to stop the cops from coming in and arresting El, "C'mon, c'mon, that's crazy, that doesn't mean it happen-."
Mike didn't even realise El had caught the eyes of the cops until one of them spoke.
"Hey there, you Jane Hopper?" One asked, making Will turn towards the stairs and his eyes widened when he saw his adoptive sister; Mike saw the surprise in his eyes, clearly, he hadn't known El would give herself up like this.
"Yes," El whispered.
"El-," Will tried to speak, but El ignored him, and she stepped closer, her eyes not leaving the cops.
"I've been expecting you," she said, and Mike had never heard that tone come from her. It sounded like she had just…given up.
Mike felt as if the whole world was collapsing around him as the police snapped the cuffs on El's wrists, and read out her rights (he thought he heard a scoff coming from her, but it was so slight that he couldn't be absolutely sure). Mike tried desperately to catch her eye, but she was gazing coldly ahead, her eyes red with tears. But he saw that her cold gaze hadn't gone away, and that scared him more.
-8-
Jane had scoffed when the police officer read her rights, and it had taken all of the control she had learnt at the Lab to stop herself spitting in contempt; she was already being arrested for assault, what difference did it make for her if they were offended by whatever she did? Jane had simply learnt how to control her emotions and her control over them with the time she had been at the Lab; she'd needed to as her powers manifested.
But right now, she was angry.
Rights?!
Where were those pretty words dressed up as justice when Brenner and the Bad Men kidnapped her, tearing her away from her mother and forcing Terry Ives to fight for years trying to get her away simply because of a small piece of evidence?
Where were the police, the judges, the D.A.'s when Brenner and the Lab threw back her cases into her face?
Where were the police when Papa fried her mother's brains, leaving nothing more than a husk?
Where were the police whenever one of the people Kali killed actually got 'justice' thrown at them?
The only police she cared for, and respected, had been Hopper. He had to obey the same pointless rules and laws which seemed to change every single day of the week, but he knew how to fight for justice. He had not bowed his head when Will was snatched by the Upside Down, he had dug deeper and deeper for the truth, even endangering himself in the process. That was a fight for justice, these cops didn't care.
Jane ignored the gossip and the stares she got as she left the house. She had done her best to be friendly to the neighbours, and she knew they were stunned out of their minds by the sight of her being arrested. She didn't care. She wanted to be left alone. She ignored Mike, as he tried to get the officers to answer some of his questions. She bit her tongue when a heavy hand dropped on her head, memories of how she was often beaten by the orderlies coming back…She winced as she settled in her car seat, shifting about comfortably. They didn't even bother to put her seatbelt on, and they just slammed the door in her face. The sound made her grimace.
Just you wait until I get my hands on you, Angela, she mentally spat with malice, already picturing the arrogant blonde bitch who'd made her life a misery for the past year lying on the floor. Dead. Jane normally kept her dark side bottled, but with her current feelings, she was more comforted by the dark promises right now.
Great, now I am channelling my sister.
Thinking of Kali was a comfort. Jane didn't know for sure what had happened to Kali after her escape from the Lab, but Kali did say she had been taken in by a kind family, and they'd been unable to help her with her powers. But had she been in a situation like this? Jane didn't know. She hadn't spoken to Kali for a long time, and she missed her so much. But something told Jane that Kali had gotten into trouble since it did fit in, and she had just lashed out and she had found it liberating. As she tried to sit comfortably in the police car as the officers got in, Jane had to admit, that lashing out at Angela had felt as satisfying as tearing a Demogorgon apart, or ripping the Mind Flayer piece by piece, and then feeling the relief of closing a Gate.
She was not a superhero. She never was.
"-even," a hand patting the window drew her out of her reverie, "Eleven, listen to me, okay? Eleven, will you please look at me?" Mike demanded, but Jane ignored him. Why was he calling her by that damn number? He had nothing to say she particularly wanted to hear, and just hearing the number Papa and so many others had called her over the years made her resolve to ignore him stronger. But she was curious about why the police weren't even wondering why he was calling her a number instead of a name. Then she decided it didn't matter.
She had made a huge mistake.
She had let herself fall in love with Mike, and while she did love him….she wasn't sure if it was the kind of love Joyce had for Hop (where had she gone anyway, and with Murray, of all people?) anymore, and right now she didn't know if her feelings for him were mutual.
"Everything's gonna be fine!" Mike kept trying to reassure her, and while she felt warmed by what he was saying, they were just words. "I am going to fix this!" Mike's voice was drowned by the sirens of the car, and it was almost a relief to be driven away. She had no idea what the police planned for her, but she knew that even if they let her go, she couldn't stay. Not anymore, and that made her sad, but at the same time, she felt it was for the best if she just simply let the Byers and Mike go.
They had done so much for her, but perhaps it was the kindest gift she could come up with.
-8-
"And that's when you struck her?" One police officer said, summarising the incident.
Jane nodded. They had been going over the same story over and over again now, and truthfully she didn't have anything she had to say to them. The police officer was not satisfied by her nodding reply.
"I'm going to need you to give me a verbal response."
Jane sighed. "Yes. That's when I struck her."
What was the point? They had already condemned her.
"Why did you hit her?" The other officer asked.
Jane took a deep breath. "For a whole year, Angela and her friends have been bullying me. Yesterday, I'd been reunited with…an old friend and we went to the rink to have some fun, and she humiliated me. I was upset. I ran off, covered in milkshake. Nobody did anything while that blonde bitch and her bastard friends laughed, and others joined in. I was crying in a room, and when I confronted her she laughed in my face again. Then, I snapped." The words came piling out of her mouth, and with a start, Jane recognised the voice that came out as Kali rather than her own. "Angela got what she deserved."
The words were spoken by her, but she was channelling Kali's spirit. Maybe Kali was right, this whole time; they should be lashing out at the world. As she stared at the two policemen coldly, uncaring how they viewed her and she had picked up a lot from Hopper and from the TV in the cabin and here in this miserable dump about sociopaths and psychopaths, Jane did not care if they viewed her like that.
"I just wish there had been another way," she added in sorrow, but it was hollow because she felt Angela deserved the beating she'd gotten, she honestly wished someone had stopped the girl from going too far.
"You know, she got a grade 2 concussion-."
"Maybe it will stop her bullying others!" Jane spat back. "Maybe it will make her realise she is pushing the limits of what others will take."
"You're not upset about it," the first police officer observed.
"No," Jane said.
"You're right, she doesn't," the second officer said.
"Did you want to kill her?"
Jane narrowed her eyes, and her lips curled in contempt. "If I had wanted to kill her, then I would have continued hitting her, wouldn't I?"
"Don't be funny, Missy."
"My name is Jane," Jane had to stop herself from looking down at the wrist her 0-11 tattoo was printed into her skin.
"Whatever."
And with that, Jane lost any interest in the interview. If they couldn't be bothered with something as personal as that and treated it so flippantly, why should she be interested in them? But as she was photographed, forced to hand over her fingerprints….Jane swore, that if she ever had the misfortune of meeting these men again, she was going to kill them.
When she was escorted to the police van, she was told she was being taken to a juvenile detention centre. To her surprise, she found Mike, Jonathan, and Will outside, but she ignored them.
-8-
Despite the limited view of the outside, Jane was surprised and more than a little worried. She hadn't known that juvenile hall was outside of Lenora, it wasn't the sort of knowledge she had looked for when they'd moved here after the mess with Starcourt. In the meantime, Jane considered her options. She knew enough of this juvenile detention hall to know it was where kids hurt others, like she had, or committed other crimes. From what she understood and what she'd picked up over the last few months, it was like a mini prison in itself, but there were things you could do to pass the time.
Jane wasn't worried; she had grown up in a prison, of sorts, and if there was one thing you picked up, it was the ability to shut your brain off. That wasn't the problem. It was what was going to happen following her release.
She was leaning towards leaving Lenora, in fact, she was positive about it. She hated California; Angela had made sure of that. She never wanted to see the place again as long as she lived. The hard part was how she could leave. She knew Joyce, Jonathan, and Will were going to be there, waiting for her to come out. How could she leave them?
Jane shrugged. She could worry about that as her tenure there lasted. But she wondered what she could do when she got there; if there were other young offenders there, she could make friends, learn how to steal, how to fight even. The last one was a necessity; she could not walk around through life without knowing how to defend herself and with her powers…gone, she had nothing else.
At the same time she could find other possibilities, she just needed to look for them.
Speaking of possibilities, she didn't know where to start when she got out. Where would she go, what would she do? She doubted she could find Kali again; after the police raided her warehouse, there was not a chance in Jane's mind that Kali would go back. She hadn't survived that long by being stupid. Jane had only found out about Kali by chance, and she'd had a hard time tracking her down. She couldn't do that anymore, but the idea of having her powers back…she didn't know how to get them back, but if she found a way, she would go look for Kali. She didn't have anyone. She didn't want to go back to Mike.
In her mind, she remembered herself striking Angela…but then she remembered a flash; she was in the rainbow room, blood everywhere, and she was positive she heard Papa demanding to know what she'd done…
What was that?
Jane came out of her thoughts when she thought she'd heard a different engine. Curiously, she looked out of the window. Her eyes widened when she saw three dark cars following the van. Jane's heart began to race.
No.
Not…the bad men? But why? Why now? What was happening?
Two of them sped up after rounding a curve, accelerating past the police van, and coming to a full stop in front of the van, brakes squealing. After flinching from the sudden stop as the driver quickly braked before they crashed, Jane stood up slowly, trying to get a better look. One of the doors opened, and a hard-faced woman wearing an immaculate suit got out, she walked to the passenger's door, the window rolling down so the officers could speak to her.
"Are you transporting a Jane Hopper?" She asked.
"Yeah, what is this?" The police officer sounded curious and concerned. Jane stiffened, her worst fears bubbling inside of her. It was the Bad Men, but why were they even here? She hadn't had any powers for a year. She wasn't of any interest to them. Or was she?
The woman agent held up a leather wallet with her ID and badge. "I'll take her off your hands."
Jane's heart sank. Oh no…
To her surprise, the police….just complied. The officers undid their seatbelts, they opened the doors. They were going to just hand her over without a word, without even asking why a group of people who were clearly government agents wanted a young offender. Didn't anyone ask questions anymore?
No matter. Jane had no intention of just going with them; they might be miles away from anyone or anywhere, but she wasn't going to just…go like that. Jane braced herself as she stood by the door. The moment the door was unlocked, she kicked the door with all of her strength, catching the two officers who groaned, and she leapt out. But she was tackled and wrestled to the ground.
"No!" She cried, mentally begging her powers to come back, throw these men off. She concentrated hard, she wished her nose would bleed once more, anything…she just wanted to be free! But the men holding her were still there. Nothing was happening. She was trapped. As she was held still, the tight hold on her shoulders keeping her still, and as she stood there, the door of the third and last car opened up, and a familiar figure stepped out.
Dr Sam Owens.
Even from where she was standing she could see his cheerful smile. "Hey, kiddo," he said.
Jane took a deep breath. She turned to the men holding her, then back again. "Dr Owens," she greeted, trying to calm. "I was not expecting this."
Owens shrugged. "Neither was I," he confessed. "I was coming to find you anyway when you were….arrested. A roller skate, really?"
"It was a spur of the moment," Jane glanced back at the men surrounding her. "It's okay, you can let me go. I'm not going anywhere." She turned back to Owens. "So, what's happened now? I can't do anything. You know that. It's one of the reasons why you've protected me for a year."
Owens nodded. "True, but what if we can help you, Eleven?"
Jane blinked. "How?"
"How 'bout we get a bite to eat?" Owens spread his arms out welcomingly. "My treat?"
"That's the smartest thing I've heard all day," Jane twisted around so she could glance at the police officers; they were recovering from the blow that stunned them after she kicked the doors. If they'd heard the conversation, she did not know, didn't care; Owens had the means of silencing them, although she was not sure how.
She didn't care.