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[video] un: eleven

[ The video clicks on to a young girl, perhaps 14 years. Her round eyes look a little unsure, brows drawn together in concentration as she figures out how to work this new tablet machine with the stupid name - it's not liquid. She's learned how to operate the application tools back in Beacon, so it's a transition rather than a completely new skill.

Eleven sits cross legged on her bed, half cast in the light of the strange lantern sitting right next to her. She sets the Fluid down on the nightstand, then briefly leans out of frame and picks something up that looks like a beak shaped, half plague doctor mask, distractedly scratching at her neck, where healed scars looks as though something once grabbed her by the neck. Finally, she stops fidgeting and looks at the camera. ]

Hi.

[ She speaks with a pattern that might strike as odd. Sometimes halting in odd places, or saying words slowly, as if she has to place them on her tongue very deliberately. ]

Is there an angel? Here? I need a... miracle. Or maybe. Someone old, with magic?

[ She glances down at the mask, worries her lower lip between her teeth, then adds: ]

There's something in here. It smells like... where I'm from. Home. It's fading. I lost my friend who did the... miracle. So it's fading. But it's important. [ She swallows, lips pursed. ] To me.

[ The things unsaid sit deep in her chest and ache - the home she lost months ago. The friends she lost along the way. A short, deep breath, she gathers herself, serious face relaxing into something softer, but still somber. ]

I can pay. With glitter pens. Or birds, if you have paper.

[Another small pause. She's about to reach out and shut the video off, when she remembers lessons learned. Right - manners. Or the attempt at them. ]

Thanks.

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[ She dabs at her eyes, trying to hold this particular flood back with all her might and none of her powers.

She hates this, this lump of dread somewhere low in her stomach, a weight that drags her own. All Eleven wants, desperately, is to have something here, with Mike - and he's not her boyfriend, here, she knows it. Perhaps six months ago, she'd have found it unfair for herself, perhaps she'd have been jealous of his new friends and of never growing into the Mike who loves her, but she's had six months to miss him and to mourn him, and to grieve her first and only love, lost outside the world she'd been trapped inside of.

It doesn't mean she doesn't... love him, but she can love him different here, and she doesn't know how to explain it without being unfair. ]

Yeah. I'm home. We can talk.

[ Eleven nods for emphasis. She can do this, she swears to herself. She can do anything, to make sure they're both okay. ]

[Through a stilted sign-off, through the last half hour of his shift, through the bike ride home, all Mike can think is: Of course. Of course he messed this up. Of course Max was pissed with him. Because it's not like he didn't see any of it coming. It's not like it wasn't real, like it won't be real again when he goes home. The old feelings that slowly shifted towards friendship will all fly right back into place, and this will all have been a dream.

A good dream, though. A dream he's not finished having. A dream he wants to keep, as long as reality will let him. And maybe that makes him horrible. Maybe he's the worst, and he was never deserving of either of them to begin with. But in the back of his throat, swallowed down deep, he hopes El will understand. He hope she'll forgive.

It was always one, or the other. And this is the world where he picks the other.

He knocks on her door about forty-five minutes later, just a brief rap with the back of his fingers.]

Hey.

[He's still in his stupid uniform, and there's garlic sauce all down his shirt, and his nose is red from the cold. A ridiculous sight. His eyes are earnest, prickling damp at the edges, but they fail to meet El's.]

I... I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. [He swallows dryly.] But there's something I have to tell you.

[ Mike looks ridiculous, but all that means is that something flutters fondly in Eleven's chest, despite... everything they need to talk about.

The truth is that she doesn't feel equipped for this conversation. Even with how many words she's gained and learned and jealously guards in her malnourished mind, Eleven still knows there is much she can't express as fully as she feels it, and she is scared that she will hurt Mike.

She's scared that Mike will hurt her, too.

But deep down, she suspects she knows what he needs to say. I don't love you like that. And it's okay. She needs to be okay with that, even if there's part of her that wants to be unhappy about it - that volatile part that yanked the skateboard out from under Max for speaking with Mike.

Eleven wants to be better than what Papa made her. She wants to be better for this Mike.

So she nods, sits up on the bed, cross legged.

Behind the bed, on the window sill, there are a handfull of origami birds made from candywrappers, others from paper. A stuffed Alpaca with a flower crown. Everything in the room is soft, and so are Eleven's tearful eyes. ]

You can tell me anything.

[He keeps hovering by the door, knobby fingers tracing the trim, eyes flicking nervously around the room, detail to detail. It occurs to him that he's never really seen El in her own space like this. Not back home, not when she was here before and relegated to a shared space. There were no origami birds then, no candy wrappers or stuffed animals.

Has he ever really known her? How much about El is still a total mystery? How much is a fantasized idea he invented himself? He picked a D&D class for her, for fuck’s sake.]

I, uh. I don’t know if Hopper ever told you, or if someone else told you, about, um- [His tongue feels like sandpaper, and his ears feel like they're on fire; he knows his cheeks must look it.] Some people are different, when it comes to who they like. I mean, romantically.

[He ruffles roughly at his hair, almost like he’s trying to hide behind it. He wants so badly to just tell El what happened, why he drifted away from what they were building, but doesn’t want to blindside her. He wants her to know the whole story, to know the whole him, just as he wants to know the whole her.]

Like, most girls like boys, and most boys like girls, but- [A hard, dry swallow. He tries to meet her eyes, but can't, not without another tight breath.] -but some of them like boys. Or… some of them like both.

[Finally, he manages a brief look up at her, guilty, hopeful eyes shadowed under his tangled hair.]

[ Eleven sits quietly, face patient while Mike talks. Max was mocking him when she said he talks too much, but Eleven thinks that maybe sometimes he is just the opposite of her - where she has too few words, maybe sometimes he has too many, so he needs to get more of them out in order to find his way to what he actually wants to say.

It's okay. She likes listening, whether it's a rambling stories about adventures at the mall she couldn't be part of, or complaints about school, or epic tales from past campaigns.

This time, it's romance, and perhaps Mike will be surprised when Eleven doesn't even blink in confusion, just nods. ]

Yes. Sometimes boys like boys. Sometimes girls like girls. Sometimes both like both.

[ Like Bruce, who loved Selina and danced with Riku, or Aziraphale and Crowley being 'old friends'. Eleven isn't stupid - and her idea of 'normal' has been shaped by specific people, rather than an unforgiving society. ]

[His eyes widen almost comically, a familiar gesture on his almost cartoonishly expressive face. Each freckle seems individually taken aback by El’s eager acceptance.]

Oh. Right, yeah.

[That’s definitely more than he expected her to know, not as a discredit to her intelligence but as a result of Indiana. There’s no way she absorbed such a casual view on sexuality from Hopper; did it come from Max, maybe? All Mike knows about California is that people there surf a lot, and have open minds.]

I, uh. I didn’t know you could like both, ’til I got here. And I knew I liked girls, you know? But it turns out- [He wipes sweating palms together; this is the first time he’s said it out loud, since the afternoon he told Will. ] It turns out I like boys, too.

[He looks up at El, something sheepish and frightened and quiet in his eyes.]

And the thing is- I really like one boy. He’s… I have a boyfriend, now.

[ Oh.

Eleven saw something coming, and is surprised it still hits her. Perhaps because she expected 'I don't love you here' a little more than 'I love someone else' wrapped in different words. Even being prepared to lose every version of him, this still hits a little different, and Eleven has to swallow around the flutter of jealousy.

This is not the Mike she knows. She has no right - but she's also just a child raised by someone wanting her to be volatile.

But this is Mike.

So Eleven swallows it all down. It's not that she's resentful, really - she's mourned the boy she loves for six months, and he's... he's not quite that boy. Same, but different.

Different isn't bad, like Will said.

It's just close enough that it hurts, and if there's a fleeting flood of angry, petulant jealousy and hurt, it's not because of him. Not even at him. Not even at his boyfriend. Just, perhaps, at everything in the world that insist that she must hurt.

But then there's something else there, too. Because this isn't her Mike, not really, and because she loves him fiercly, but different. And he really likes one boy, and he has a boyfriend.

So the tears come, and she sobs, but still smiles him, and she nods. And she asks the only thing that matters in all of this, the only thing she really cares about, after six months in the darkness... ]

Are you happy?

[Mike's face crumples with El's, and he sniffs tears back as he watches her react. Guilt and shame fill his stomach at every damp breath, even when her sob turns to a smile, especially when, after this unintended betrayal, El wants to know if he's happy. She should be angry, bitter, everything he feels like he deserves.]

Yeah. [He tries to match her smile, and his mouth wobbles.] I am. I'm happy.

[As convincing as it can be, still slouched restlessly in her doorway with his knuckles wrung white. He wants to cross the room, comfort her, but he doesn't know what he's allowed, what she'd be comfortable with.

Besides, he's not entirely finished.]

We're happy. [Tentative, fragile. A fraction of a breath of a question on the end. His chest gives a nervous shake, and it makes his voice waver as he adds, ] Me and Will.

[ Will...

And that one hurts, but perhaps not for the reason anyone would expect. Eleven isn't smart, but she understands some things. She understands that this Mike cares for her, but loves somebody else, and has a boyfriend.

And now she knows that he loves Will, and that Will loves him. And that means at home she's... She's in the way. It means she has to love them both fiercely here, and push the feeling down and down and down.

Sometimes you hide your darkness, so it doesn't hurt others. ]

Okay.

[ Her voice breaks on it. Mike means so much, and she wants and needs him to be happy. Even without her. Even if it hurts. And perhaps this place isn't so bad if he can at least be happy, here. ]

Mike. Can you. Can I. Can I still. Hug you?

[ Touch is still... it's not always easy. Except it is, with some people. ]

[He doesn't know to interpret her sadness as anything other than disappointment, than a failure on his part, and for a second he thinks that maybe he should leave. Maybe he should offer to keep his distance, to keep from causing her anymore grief.

When she asks to hug him instead, he's across the room in less than a heartbeat, already wrapping his too-long arms around her, pulling her close to his bony chest.]

Yeah, yeah, of course. [He mumbles it into the top of her head, and her hair tickles his nose and she smells different than she did last time she was here, but it's so good.] Always, okay? I'm still here for you, whatever you need.

[And maybe it's one of those promises that you can't help but break, when the world goes sideways and things get taken out of your hands. But it's one that he means. It's a statement of love, more than a statement of intent.]

[ She clings to him for a long time, just holds on and hopes that the moment doesn't come when she has to let go.

In a lot of ways, it helps. It's familiar enough to help shore up her defenses, to allow her to pull herself together after silently crying into his shoulder for a little while.

It's also unfamiliar enough to remind her that he's not the same.

Eleven pulls back eventually, though not too far. She stays close, and stubbornly wipes at her eyes. ]

I'm sorry. I don't... I don't want...

[ Maybe this is why he lies. But that's not something she can ask him, here. And maybe emotions aren't as easy as that either, as wanting only one thing in the same way all the time.. She doesn't know. ]

Am I. Do I... bother you? Here? I don't want to. Make you not comfortable. You or Will?

[Smiling cautiously, Mike reaches up and swipes a tear-damp stripe of hair away from El's cheek.]

No, never. I'm glad you're back, El. Both of us are. [He seeks out her hand, three fingers clumsily sliding through five, pulled close against his itchy sweater and it's too-small sleeves. The wool, same as his hair, smells like pepperoni.] Just because I'm not- ... Just 'cause it's not like that here doesn't mean-

[Dating or not, he'll always stumbles over his words when feelings are involved.]

It's like- [Okay, deep breath, starting over.]

That whole year you were at Hop's, and I was calling you- I didn't want you back just so you could be my girlfriend. Like, I-I had a huge crush on you- [Could his face be redder?] -but that's not why. I missed just talking, telling you about stuff. Trying to make you laugh. And there were all my favorite movies I wanted to show you, a-and my sister's movies too, in case you liked those better. And I'd already started to divide up my toys, in my head, and pick which ones to give to you, since you didn't have any.

[And he's thoroughly embarrassed, but he needs her to know - she's not just some girlfriend to him. A little bit of romantic awkwardness isn't going to change how he feels about her.]

I wanted to be friends, more than anything. I still want that. I don't want you to ever not be in my life again, okay?

[ And that, at least, warms her expression up. Through the wetness on her cheeks and how her eyes still swim, the smile is genuine. And... it's a relief.

They're important to each other - friends love each other, even if hey're not in love. They can be close, and she can hold him in her heart differently, knowing she's in his heart differently, but still important, too.

It's... surprisingly comforting. ]

I won't. I won't go anywhere. I want to be. In your life, too. And in Will's, and Dustin's, and Nancy's, and Steve's.

[ And she reaches up then, cups his cheek and nods, smile deepening. ]

I think... we'll be happy here. Like this. You're still my friend and my... person. You're important, always. I just... I just want to be. A member of the party. Like you said.

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