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He found her in a cold, empty room. The bed was unblanketed, more like a slab of metal than a place to rest, and Mike repressed those immediate terrifying questions that popped into his consciousness: is this what it was like? Where she grew up?
She was slumped over in bed, in a hospital gown. Her head shaved. The image sent him hurdling back to 1983, the rain, the yellow t-shirt. Her huge, pleading eyes. How she made his heart flutter. The first time he’d experienced that feeling. How many times he’d felt that since, looking at her.
But she looked so different now. So much older and worn. Her eyes decorated with dark circles, thin blue veins pressed against the skin. He shook off his shock and lunged for her. He grabbed her hands in his own.
"El, El,” he whispered. She looked up at him. What he saw was void of hope. Her eyes weren’t pleading with him now; he couldn’t seem to find her in them at all. Her breath was ragged.
“Mike,” she said.
“Come on,” he said. “We have to move.”
He circled one arm behind her back and tried to lift her with the other, just as he did six months before. Tried to shoulder her weight, shoulder some of her burden. She shook him off.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse. “No.”
“El,” he said. “We’re running out of time – ”
Shouts and shots echoed in the distance. The distant sounds of chaos, of danger. To El, it was the sound of inevitability.
“No more,” she said. “No more.”
“El, come on. Please.”
She grabbed his wrist. Grabbed it with force. She looked at him then, for the first time since he arrived. Her eyes were fierce. He could see her in them, now.
“Where I go, people get hurt. Ben, Bob, Billy, Heather… Hop,” she swallowed, “People die.” Her breath was labored. “You were wrong, Mike. I was the monster all along.”
“El – ”
“I can’t… I won’t let this happen to you. Go.” Her countenance was that of someone unwavering in her conviction, but her eyes gleamed. She looked as only El could: destructive and vulnerable all at once.
He watched her for a long moment. Pale, sickly, nearing a line from which there was no coming back once crossed.
“No,” he said. “No way.”
“Mike,” she said, with as much severity as she could manage for someone so ill.
“You think, because you have the powers, I just have to listen to everything you say? I’m not twelve anymore. If you throw me against this wall, I will wake up eventually. And I will get back up and I will find you. I will come back again and again. I’ll wait 353 days, I’ll wait 1,353 days! I’ll never stop searching. I’ll never give up.”
El did not say anything. Her expression had softened, her eyes gently quizzical.
“Look around,” Mike went on. “Look at what he’s done to you. You’re really going to tell me you’re the monster?”
Her eyes slowly glanced about the bare, dank room.“Everything… everything I’ve done – ”
“ – has been to help, El!” His volume had risen with the intensity of his words, and he glanced around to ensure he had not drawn attention to the pair of them. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I don’t know why this happened to you. It’s not right, and it’s not fair. But you didn’t create this, El. You did the best with what you were given.”
El’s eyes were cemented on her bare knees.
“So many people love you,” Mike continued. “Hopper, They Byers, Lucas, Dustin ¬– Me!” His voice hitched on this last word. She glanced up and met his gaze. “I love you. I love you more than anything in the whole world. Doesn’t that count for anything? Don’t I count for anything?”
El didn’t speak, only looked at him, her eyes glistening. After a moment, she whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He grabbed her hand and held it tightly. It was ice-cold. “If you don’t want to hurt me,” he said, “then don’t hurt yourself. Let me help you.”
They looked at each other. Each saw in the other the spirit of the child from that rainy night of ’83. Both fiercely loyal, protective. All courage. All bravery. Neither willing to give up on the other.
El wrapped her arms around Mike’s neck. They felt thin and frail, and it worried him. But it felt good, too. It felt like home. He closed his eyes, exhaled deeply. A breath he’d been holding since he arrived in California.
“Come on,” he said. “We have to go.”
She nodded. Relented. “Okay.”
Mike placed one arm around El’s waist, and El’s arm around his neck. “Careful,” he said gently. She could hardly walk, her feet dragging behind her.
The explosive chorus of danger and destruction sounded closer than before, but it was behind them now. Mike stayed on course. He knew what to do; he’d been here before.