-8-
"Naw, there's nothing we can do to get the van fixed," Jonathan complained morosely.
Will bit his lip, glaring at his brother in disappointment that he would be so reckless, that he would be off his head with drugs to just deal with the stress. He had thought his big brother was more mature than that. And he hated who it reminded him of. With a disappointed huff, Will smashed a fist into the van's wall and marched away.
Jonathan and Mike both jumped at the sound, and both watched in incomprehension as Will stalked away. "What's wrong with him?" Argyle asked.
"Maybe you should find out," Mike turned to Jonathan pointedly, getting the feeling that Will was angry with Jonathan and that only Jonathan should find out why.
Jonathan was already feeling bad for what he had done, but while he didn't like the way Mike was just putting him on the spot like that, he nodded anyway, and he stood up, and he followed Will.
"What's wrong?" Jonathan asked his younger brother calmly.
Will looked squarely into his face. "You really can't see it, can you? Our friends in Hawkins are in danger! Max could still be in danger, and yet you smoke one of those stupid things just because of…what, exactly?" He said unbelievably. "The drugs, the carelessness, the sheer apathy….!"
"What are you talking about?" Jonathan asked uncomprehendingly as he got a sinking feeling in his chest.
Will sighed. "I see Lonnie, not Jonathan when you do that, when you think for yourself and not for others."
Lonnie Byers.
Their father.
The two boys had an extremely toxic relationship with their father. Lonnie had always been a greedy, lazy bum of a man who had thought nothing of causing pain and heartache for them and their mother. When Will was younger, Lonnie had tried to make him interested in sports, but while Will had tried, just to be closer to his father, it had failed simply because he was not interested and cared more for art, Dungeons and Dragons, and dozens of other things Lonnie despised.
Their relationship was nonexistent now. Lonnie had briefly returned to Hawkins just after Will was abducted and taken into the Upside Down. Jonathan had gone to him on the off chance he knew where Will was, but he hadn't been there. Lonnie is never one to pass up on the chance to make some cash. Totally ignorant of the truth, Lonnie returned to Hawkins, conning their mother into thinking he cared…and all the time, he was more interested in suing the owners of the quarry where the fake body Brenner and his goons, the 'Bad Men' as El had called them long ago had dumped it.
Their mother had thrown a fit of rage when she discovered it, and when he tried to stop her from obsessing over Will until he was finally driven away, but they hadn't seen him since and Will hoped to keep it that way.
When he had heard the news, the little part of him who believed that his father did love them, just died. But then it had been dying more and more for years.
Jonathan stilled. If there was one thing capable of getting through past his drug-induced apathy, it was that. "I'm nothing like that bastard, Will," he shook his head in denial.
"Oh no? Lonnie would never have risked his life to save me, to fight off Demogorgons and God knows what else, but you did, Jonathan, and I loved you for it. But when we moved to Lenora, you changed. You stopped caring about us, about Nancy, and even now you're doing it still by smoking those stupid things. That's the sort of thing Lonnie would have done, and to hell with the consequences. If you're nervous about seeing Nancy, either get with it or just don't come with us," Will turned away from his brother, leaving Jonathan standing there, shaken and forced to accept the truth about his mistakes.
-8-
Mike looked up as his friend came back. "You okay?"
Will nodded, "I am now. He just…he just reminds me of Lonnie nowadays, and I don't like it."
Mike flinched, he knew only too well what Lonnie Byers was like. More than once, he had left the Byers residence in Hawkins, his mind assaulted with images and his ears full of Lonnie's toxic diatribes. Ted Wheeler was one of the most boring, aloof people he knew, but he was a saint compared to Lonnie, Jim Hopper wasn't perfect, but he had always put people before himself, always.
Mike knew enough of the history of the Byers family to know where Will was coming from; if he said Jonathan was acting more like Lonnie, a man who did nothing for anyone except Lonnie Byers, who cared for nothing and nobody else apart from Lonnie Byers instead of Joyce Byers, a woman who had braved the ridicule and pity of an entire town when her son was abducted and nobody did anything until Hopper discovered the body in the morgue was a fake and continued to do good even if she was rushed off her feet, a woman who had taken a traumatised girl into her family and showed her so much love as she loved her sons, then Will was right.
"Do you think he'll wise up?" Mike asked pointedly.
"If he has sense, then yeah, he will. But he only started taking the drugs Argyle gave him when he began to get stressed, so there is some hope for him. I hope he returns to the brother I love and know best," Will said sadly.
"Me too," Mike said sadly, thinking of Nancy. He knew she had wanted to come and shake Jonathan out of his apathy and make him go to college, and grow up, but she hadn't. Mike wondered if their flings would ever become a full-on romance, but he wasn't going to get involved. In fact, it might make Jonathan wake up if Nancy decided to date someone else.
Will shoved his hands into his pockets and looked around. As he did he realised something. "Where's El?" He asked worriedly.
Mike was on his feet. "What do you mean?"
"I mean she's not here."
Mike looked around too, but he couldn't see her. They looked in the pizza van, but she wasn't inside meditating. They went behind the van, but she wasn't there. They scanned the landscape, but they couldn't see any sign of her. "El?" Mike yelled.
"El, where are you?" Will called.
Attracted to the sounds and what was going on Jonathan and Argyle came over. "What's happened?"
Will turned to face his brother. "Have you seen El?"
Jonathan thought for a minute, his expression becoming more worried. "No. How long has she been missing?"
"I don't know."
"We weren't looking!" Mike yelled, angry more at himself than at Jonathan; they had just gotten El back from Brenner and Owens just as those army douchebags attacked the Lab, and she had just fought against the same warped monster who'd slaughtered his entire family because he thought they were evil and wrong.
Suddenly a red tear appeared in front of them all, and vine-like growths appeared in the evil reddish light, pulling them apart. Will shivered, the skin on the back of his neck suddenly feeling as if millions of hornets were stinging it and moving across it at the same time, just as he felt all the time the Upside Down was nearby, its hideous influence affecting him.
And then El stepped out, and she sealed the gate but she didn't get rid of it. Mike wanted to shout at her, but she was grinning from ear to ear.
"It works!" She cheered.
Will shook as he tried to get over his dread at the still-open gap. "What works?"
"I remembered what you said about the Upside Down being like hyperspace in Star Wars; it can move us through space, and really fast. It's what happened to Hopper. I've been practicing for the last hour," El told them.
"Where did you go to?" Argyle asked.
"I walked around this part of the road," El answered, turning and pointing to the track they'd come from. "I walked down there," she turned and pointed to a rock a short distance away. "I went over to that rock." She then turned to the road as it led away. "I went down there a short distance, then I came back. If you went down there, it would take, like," El bit her lip in thought for a second, "20 minutes or so. But with the Upside Down, I could get there and get back back in a minute."
Will and Mike stared at each other. They knew the Upside Down was a hellish dimension, that it could help get them home, back to Hawkins was almost too much for them to imagine. "So, you're saying we can just…teleport to Hawkins?" Mike said excitedly. He didn't want to be stranded in this desert.
"That's right. Have either of you two got your watches, and do they work?" Eleven asked suddenly, looking between Mike and Will, who were both bewildered at her request.
"Er, yeah, why?" Mike said.
"I've got mine, but like Mike said, why do you ask?" Will added.
"Can I borrow yours, please Will? I've got a reason, but I need to test my guess," Eleven held out her hand.
With a confused glance at his brother and friend, Will slowly handed over his watch to her and she took a look at the time. "Okay, now when I get back, let me know how long I was gone," she said.
Mike was getting as tired as the others at how mysterious she was acting. "El, what are you trying to prove?" He asked as patiently as he could. But she ignored him, and she stepped back into the Upside Down gate. "Just wait."
The small group waited nearly half an hour for El, and they didn't take their eyes off of the hole. And then she returned and she checked the watch Mike was wearing, checking it against the one she'd borrowed and she laughed with delight. "It works," she cheered.
"What works? What have you done?" Jonathan demanded.
Eleven showed them, by holding out her borrowed watch. When they saw the contrasting times, they couldn't believe it. Mike's watch had ticked the time away for nearly half an hour, but the watch El had borrowed showed she had only been gone about 2 minutes!
Mike gazed incomprehensibly at El.
"I've time travelled. When I saw Joyce and Hopper fighting with Murray in Russia, something was off and then I saw them boarding a plane back for the States, but then I remembered something else. Mike, do you remember when I stopped the Demogorgon in the school at Hawkins?"
Mike couldn't help but shudder; the whole mess had given them all bad dreams for months. But what frightened him the most was the ending which he had thought, well they'd all thought barring Hopper, resulted in El's death.
"Yeah, I'm hardly likely to forget it, but why bring it up?" Mike asked.
El seemed to sense his bad mood, and her manner became a little more solemn. "Sorry, but when I stepped into the Upside Down, I had to get out, and I found another hole. When I went through, the school was completely empty. I made my way down to your home, and I saw the police there."
Mike nodded, remembering the whole thing only too well. "Yeah, I remember. We'd left the school and half an hour later, we were dealing with the Department of Energy, and the agents that went with them, and we had to listen to them lying about you."
Eleven sent him an apologetic look. "What was half an hour for you was only…a few minutes for me, Mike. I remember wishing to urgently get out of the Upside Down Hawkins School. Now I realised what else it could do, and I wanted you all to wait for twenty minutes while I wanted to leave after a few."
Jonathan began to understand. "El, do you think we can use the Upside Down to get back to Hawkins and stop One from destroying Hawkins?"
"I don't see why not."
Will had seen enough time travel movies to know meddling with time was a bad idea. "Are you sure that's a good idea? We might create a parallel world like the one in Back to the Future where One merely kills more than four people and causes more death and destruction."
Jonathan and the others were disgruntled by the image, but Eleven was adaptable. "No, it's a good idea, but it might be impossible, we might need to use time travel to help Nancy, Dustin, Lucas, Max and the others."
"How?" Mike asked curiously.
"I was thinking we could arrive in Hawkins after Nancy's meeting with everyone in Max's home," Eleven explained. "We wait in some part of Hawkins, and we travel to the gate in the Upside Down they're going to use to get in, we follow them in, and we help cause as much damage as possible. I won't piggyback into Max's mind because I was already there, but I can do a lot of damage. One of the problems I had fighting with him was I was in two places at once, concentrating on my connection with my body, and fighting him in Max's mind. While I'm there in person, perhaps I can do more good. "
Jonathan, Mike, and Will all agreed with her there. With her powers back, Eleven was going to giving them all the help she could. "So when are we going back?" Argyle asked.
"I was thinking tomorrow morning," Eleven said, disappointing the others, but she went on, "I've only just discovered this power and I want to keep practicing it a little bit before morning. And besides, until I know I can jump long distances with others with me, we'll need to jump relatively short distances before getting back to Hawkins."
"What did you have in mind, El?"
"Let me show you," Eleven went back into the van and pulled out one of the sketchbooks they'd bought to give her and Will to take their minds off of the journey when it became very clear they would have to travel by road instead of taking a plane. Flipping open the pages, Eleven sat down on the step and let them lean over her.
"This is us," she drew a star on the paper, "where we are now. In the morning, we'll jump through…," She then drew a circular line and then drew a small, crude looking house, "to here. This is that old man Fred's gas station. Next, we jump," she drew another concentric line and then drew a much nicer looking but still crude looking house, or building, "the pizza parlour. We're going to need to go there."
"Oh cool, we can have more pizza, and you love it, right El?" Argyle grinned.
Eleven ignored him. So did Mike and Will, who both sensed there was more to their stopover there for pizza. "Why are we going there?"
"I had a look around while we were there last night. I saw large old boxes and a trolley, and we're going to use them for where we're going next," Eleven drew a new circular line, "The NINA lab."
"Hold it, the place that was shot up, the place you crashed a helicopter?" Argyle demanded.
"The same. Only we're going to see if I can slip us back in time before the military arrived, and in the confusion, we empty the library Brenner and Owens kept of me during my time in the lab at Hawkins," Eleven's face became serious. "We have to get them at all costs."
"But why?"
Will thought he understood. "You're frightened you might lose your memories, and your powers again, right El?"
Eleven nodded solemnly. "Once was bad enough, twice is terrible," she said. "I never want to lose my powers again. While we're at the Lab, we won't be able to stop the soldiers from killing everyone, but if we can perhaps save one or two, and get Owens to safety, then it would ease my conscience. They were there because of me. Anyway," she went on and drew a new concentric line - Mike began noticing that the circles were narrowing more and more, and he then saw she was drawing them a spiral to better represent her plans, "we jump back to our home in Lenora; now, we have a choice, we can leave the videos there, or take them with us to Hawkins," she drew another nice looking house, "then we jump to the gas station Kali and I stopped over with her gang," Eleven drew a new circular line, "then we jump to the warehouse Kali and her gang used."
Will saw the smile on El's face as she brought up her 'sister.' "El, do you think she's still there?" He asked.
"No. Kali had spent years learning how to survive after leaving the Lab for the first time. The police had been swarming the warehouse. None of them would have risked going back after that."
Mike saw the sadness in her face and he put his hand on her shoulder, he got a look of surprise back in return. Seriously, why couldn't he please her anymore?
"We then jump to my Aunt Becky's place," she drew a new house, this time one with a stick figure, "and then we jump straight to Hawkins," Eleven lifted her gaze, her expression was serious. "Should we travel back in time, or not?" She asked seriously.
Mike shared a look with Will. "I think we should, yeah. If we can do more to help Max and Nancy, then yeah."
"Why aren't we jumping straight to Hawkins? Why are we stopping over at other places?" Jonathan asked the question that had been on all of their minds.
"Do you think I want to jump to all of these places?" Eleven asked indignantly, but she collected and calmed herself. "Look, sorry, but if there's one thing I've learnt it's not to push my powers too much. I've done it before, and I lost my memories and I wound up in a coma that lasted months. I don't want to end up in that state again. The point is until I've practiced this new power and learnt more about its limits until I can do it without thinking, I want to take it slowly. And I want to get those tapes back. Brenner and Owens had a huge library at the NINA lab, and they can't fall into the hands of the military, or be destroyed. What if I lose my powers again? If Owens can rebuild the NINA tank, then I can use it whenever I want, but I want to keep those tapes."
Mike couldn't help but understand things from her point of view there, and he had to admit that a part of him was curious about what was in the tapes even if the thought of spending hours watching the girl he loved and cared for so much being kept as a lab rat disgusted him.
