Chapter Text
There’s something that happens in between, after Eleven decides that no , she’s not going to let Max die. She remembers gently placing her hand on her best friend, focusing all her energy at the task at hand as memories replayed in her head, but it goes black for a while after that.
What she had attempted to do was bring back Max from the dead.
But when she comes to, she’s in the rain in a forest, freezing, barefoot, and dressed in an XL Benny’s Burgers t-shirt, with a flashlight shining in her face.
“That’s…not Will,” Dustin says.
“Well, duh!” Lucas replies.
“Um…are you…okay?” asks Mike.
Eleven looks back and forth between the three of them. Her first thought is that this is a trick. Henry did something to her and now she’s in her own memories, and he’s going to try to kill her now, hopefully because she succeeded at saving Max. Or maybe he’s trying to subvert her from saving Max.
But Max’s trap…Max’s memories…felt much different than this. Eleven could still feel her surroundings in the real world, was still aware of the sensation of floating in the back of her mind. The place Henry and Max were in was fuzzy, altered, not quite right. Like what reality would feel like if its foot was asleep. If it…had feet, that is.
But this does not feel like that. The floating sensation is completely gone, the air is cold and crisp against her skin, she can feel every individual stick, rock, and leaf on the ground under her feet, and the looming presence of Henry’s shadow is totally absent. And it happens exactly the way she remembers: she follows Mike, Dustin, and Lucas through the woods back to Mike’s basement, totally silent because she’s still terribly disoriented and confused.
It isn’t a trick. It can’t be. This is real, as real as it was the first time it happened, and more real than any other time she’d called upon this memory. It’s actually happening. Henry isn’t here, and neither is Max, for that matter. Neither is Argyle or Will or Jonathan. She’s not in the tank. She’s not in California. She’s in the past.
Eleven is in Michael Wheeler’s basement, and Will is still missing, and Max won’t move to Hawkins for another year.
She probably looks just as confused now as she was the first time, but it’s for a completely different reason.
How did this happen? How is she here? Did she do this?
Dustin claps in front of her face, to test whether or not she’s deaf, and it snaps her back to the present. Or…the past. Or…whatever this is.
“Alright, that’s enough, alright? She’s just scared, and cold,” Mike says. Well. He’s got one thing right.
He grabs a shirt and a pair of pants from the laundry basket across the basement and hands them to her.
“Here. These are clean, okay?”
She takes them, slowly, and then pauses.
If this really is the past, does that mean she time-travelled? What if it’s like that movie Jonathan and Will took her to see, about the car that time-travelled and the boy that started to disappear because he changed the past? What if she changes things so catastrophically the future…the present…whatever…
Well, it’s not as if the future-present-whatever is all that great anyway. Maybe she was sent back for the very purpose of changing things…except it was her who sent herself back, wasn’t it? What if…
“They’re…for you. To change into, you know? So you don’t have to wear that shirt that’s way too big on you,” Mike says, apparently taking her confused expression as her being confused at clothes. He points to the door of the bathroom. “There, that’s the bathroom. You can change there.”
She nods, and her cheeks turn pink as she closes the door behind her, remembering what had happened last time. At the time it seemed totally normal to change right then and there, seeing as she’d spent most of her life dressed in thin hospital gowns that she changed in and out of in front of doctors and scientists all the time, but knowing what she does now about…normal people…the memory of the boys freaking out when she went to take the shirt off is mortifying.
Although maybe now…maybe now it never actually happened?
Staring back at herself in the mirror, Eleven suddenly realises how utterly exhausted she feels.
It’s odd how long it took her to notice, because now that she’s aware of it she can barely keep her eyes open. She listens to the muffled conversation outside the door—Dustin seems much calmer now than she remembers him sounding the first time; Eleven suspects it was just the whole trying-to-change-in-front-of-them that freaked him out—and she waits until Lucas and Dustin have left before she comes back out.
“Um, here,” Mike says, showing her the blanket fort. Some strange sort of nostalgia comes over her when she sees it. “You can stay here for now.”
Eleven examines him closer once she’s in the blanket fort. She’d forgotten just how little they were back then. It’s hard to believe how much they’d both grown since then. Or…that they will grow, eventually. Or…danget, she’s gotta figure out which tense to think in.
“Hey, uh, I just realised I never asked your name,” Mike says.
This is the part where she shows him her wrist, but she only remembers that after she’s already told him, “I’m Eleven.”
“Eleven? Like…like the number? That’s your name?”
She nods.
“Eleven. Okay. Um, well, my name’s Mike, short for Michael. Maybe we can call you El, short for Eleven?”
Another nod. The first few days shouldn’t be too hard to reenact; she barely talked at all when they first found her. Maybe she should just try to keep things as close to the way they were at first until she figures out what exactly is going on.
“Um, well, okay.” Mike stands up. “‘Night, El.”
“‘Night, Mike.”
She’s pretty sure she falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.
It’s disorienting enough to wake up and not remember where you are, but to wake up and not remember when you are is an entirely different experience.
Last time, she’d been awake before Mike came downstairs to see her. She’d barely slept at all that night, being scared out of her mind and wildly confused.
Well, she’s still scared out of her mind and wildly confused, but her exhaustion takes precedence over anything else.
And despite having slept all night long, she feels even more tired when Mike wakes her up this morning.
“I…what? Mike? Where…what?” she slurs, his young face slowly coming into focus as she drags herself up into a sitting position.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, it’s me. You’re in my basement, remember?”
Oh. Right.
He hands her an Eggo waffle, which is gladly accepted of course, no matter what year she’s in.
“So listen,” says Mike. “This is gonna sound a little weird, but I just need you to go out there.” He points to the window. “Then go to the front door and ring the doorbell. My mom will answer and you’ll tell her that you’re lost and that you need help. But whatever you do, you can’t tell her about last night or that you know me. Understand? Really, it’s no big deal. We’ll just pretend to meet each other again.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” Oddly, the imminent danger she knows she’s in right now because of the lab doesn’t seem as important, so the panic on her face is mostly recycled panic from last night.
“No... you don’t want my mom to get help?”
Eleven shakes her head.
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
Yes…but not just because of the Bad Men.
“Who...who are you in trouble with?”
“Bad.”
“Bad? Bad people? They…do they want to hurt you? The bad people?”
“Yes. And you…for…for knowing me.”
“Michael, where are you?” Mike’s mom calls from upstairs. “We’re going to be late!”
“A-alright, I’ll be back,” Mike assures her hurriedly. “Um. Just…just stay here, okay? Stay here.”
He leaves.
Eleven falls back asleep.
“Hey, are you okay? I mean I guess you probably haven’t had anywhere to sleep for a while so it makes sense you’re tired, but…you just…you seem really tired.”
El is really tired. She can barely keep her eyes open as Mike talks to her, and she can’t even bring herself to sit up. “Okay,” she mumbles. “Just…need to sleep a little longer.”
Ooh, maybe she shouldn’t. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen, right? She’s supposed to be too freaked out to be tired, and Mike is supposed to show her around his house…he biked all the way back home from school just to do that, won’t it be rude to just go back to sleep?
Why is she so darn tired anyway?
I guess time-travelling back three years just takes a lot out of me, she thinks. Especially if I’m really the one that did it in the first place.
Something occurs to her, something that hadn’t before…what if she isn’t the one who did it? What if someone else sent her back? What if it was Henry ? But how? And why? Why would he send her back with knowledge of him so that she knows ahead of time who it’s been the whole time, so it’ll be way easier to stop him when the time comes…unless, of course, he’s the one who wanted a do-over and now he has a better plan…
Wait, but wasn’t her nose bleeding when she “woke up” in the forest? Wouldn’t that mean it was her?
Except again… since when was time-travelling one of her powers?
You know what? She’s far too exhausted to figure any of this out right now anyway. El is going back to bed.
Michael stares at the strange girl asleep in the fort in his basement, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds, because he was just talking to her and then she fell asleep.
He’s a little bit annoyed about this. He just biked all the way back home from school just to show her around his house, isn’t it a little rude to just go back to sleep?
But she really does look exhausted, and he really doesn’t understand what’s going on with her, so it’s really not fair to be mad at her yet.
Mike sighs and sits down on the futon across from the blanket fort. This is weird. He finds some terrified girl in the woods with a shaved head and she comes back to his house, tells him he has to hide her from his mom or else bad people will hurt them both, and now all she wants to do is sleep?
Frankly, she seems far more comfortable here than Mike thinks he would be if he was hiding from bad people in a stranger’s basement.
So now what, does he just…wait until she wakes up? He doesn’t want to wake her up a third time today, but it’s freaking him out a little bit. He just wants to know what’s going on.
With another dramatic sigh, Mike puts his feet up on the coffee table and grabs a battered Daredevil comic off the floor. He’s read this one so many times he’s practically memorised it, hence its not-exactly-mint-condition, but he needs something to pass the time.
About fifteen minutes and six comics later, El begins to stir.
“El?” Mike says, head snapping up. “Are you awake?”
She murmurs something he can’t quite make out from across the room.
When he closes the gap between them and sits at the mouth of the blanket fort, Mike discovers she’s not awake. She’s…sleep-talking.
“Mike,” she murmurs. “Piggyback…save Max…no, no, no, no, please, no, can’t…stop him, he’s…stop, no, Henry, please…I can’t…let…let me go back, I can…wait, no. Will…Will… don’t…don’t hurt Will…”
Mike’s heart skips a beat. What is she talking about? How does she know Will? Does she know where he is?
“El!” he says. “El, wake up! What do you…what are you…wake up .” He shakes her, despite the fact that waking up a lost, exhausted little girl three times within the span of one hour is a little inconsiderate. He doesn’t care about that right now.
Eleven’s breath hitches and she stops talking. Her eyes flutter open, confused and panicked. “Mike? Mike, you’re…I’m still…I’m still here,” she mumbles.
“You were dreaming,” Mike tells her. “You mentioned Will. Is it…were you talking about my friend Will? He…you were telling someone not to hurt him. Is he in danger?”
Eleven stares back at him for a moment and swallows before nodding slightly. “Y-yes,” she says.
“My friend Will? Will Byers? How do you know? Where did you see him?”
Eleven doesn’t answer right away. She shakes her head slowly, looking down at her hands. “Mike…I…can’t…tell you yet.”
“What? What do you mean you can’t tell me yet?”
“Please, Mike,” she says. She tries to take his hands, but he yanks them away, confused and hurt.
“He’s missing. Nobody knows what happened, and we’ve all been super worried. But if you know something …”
“Mike, listen! You…you have to trust me, okay? I…there’s something going on, and I don’t…I don’t understand it yet, so I just…I will tell you. He is safe for now. Please, just…”
“Hey, how come all of the sudden you can talk now? You wouldn’t say a word last night and now you’re acting like…”
“We are going to find Will,” El interrupts firmly. “But I need you to trust me. I have done this before and I know how this goes. But if you mess things up, we might not find him this time.”
This shocks Mike into silence for a few moments. El gets up and begins to pace back and forth across the floor. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘this time?’ What do you mean you’ve done this before?”
“I-”
Then something new happens.
The lights in Mike’s basement begin to flicker, and his walkie-talkie on the table starts beeping.
Startled, Mike stands up and begins to walk towards it. “What’s…is that morse code? Who’s-”
[ .-- .-. --- -. --. ... - .- .-. - --- ...- . .-. ]
“El! El, wake up!” Mike says, shaking her awake. “What do you…what are you…wake up .”
“Mike? Mike, you’re…I’m still…I’m still here,” she mumbles.
“You were dreaming,” Mike tells her. “You mentioned Will. Is it…were you talking about my friend Will? He…you were telling someone not to hurt him. Is he in danger?”
Eleven stares at him. “Will?” she repeats slowly.
“Yeah, Will.”
“I…don’t know. Don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember what you were just dreaming about?” says Mike.
Eleven shakes her head.
“Really? That’s…weird. I always remember what I was dreaming about when I wake up in the middle of a dream. I guess maybe…maybe I heard you wrong or something anyway. I could’ve…” Mike sighs. “Sorry. I don’t know.”
Eleven exhales a silent breath of relief. Good. He bought it.
She glances at the walkie-talkie again. Maybe…maybe this is even more complicated than she originally thought.
One minute Will is in the back of a pizza place that smells like weed and pepperoni, feeling utterly helpless as Eleven lies blindfolded, trying to save not Hawkins this time but probably the entire world.
The feeling of dread that filled him then is totally different than the one that fills him now, though, because the next minute, Will is shivering and choking on ash-like particles in the atmosphere while hiding under his bed in the Upside-Down.
And it’s not a flashback. He knows that for certain. After everything that happened with the Mind Flayer, Will definitely knows the difference between flashback Upside-Down and real Upside-Down, and this is real.
No, the question Will asks himself now is not whether his surroundings are real or not, but rather, whether he is real or not.
He feels young, much younger, the same age he was when this whole thing started, when he first fell into the Upside-Down.
It’s a little sad now that he thinks about it, that he trusts the Upside-Down more than himself, but in some ways this place—as awful and dark and terrifying and cold as it is—feels so grossly familiar he recognizes it clearer than he does himself. It seems more plausible to him that he’s suddenly teleported across the country and into another dimension than it seems likely he’s aged backwards three years in the span of a second of two.
Unless that’s not what happened at all, of course.
A thought occurs to Will, a horrifying thought that fills him with so much dread he gets nauseous for a minute, that the last three years had never actually happened at all—that they’d been some sort of wildly vivid dream or hallucination, that he never escaped the Upside-Down and that he’s been stuck here the entire time.
But…but how had so much time passed in the dream, when it couldn’t have been more than a day or two in real life?
No, no, there’s something else going on.
Will crawls out from underneath his bed and stares at his hands.
It’s not a flashback. It’s not a dream, and neither were the last three years.
Will supposes the only logical explanation is that he is now Marty McFly.
He even has the vest to match.