Chapter Text
November 3rd, 1993
Mike gets up with a gasp.
Everything around him is… pitch black. It’s like he’d been thrown into an expanse of nothingness. There’s no sound, and the air feels weird in here.
He looks around. It feels like the blackness goes on for miles and miles. There’s just nothing here.
He knows this place. This is the Void. El’s Void. The only other time he’s been here was moments before she vanished with the Upside Down, and it does not bring him happy memories to be in this place again.
Slowly, it dawns on him. This place is Eleven’s mind. It’s where she would go when she used her telepathic abilities. And if he’s here, then…
A little muffled sound and motion gets his attention. He turns around and follows the sound.
There’s a woman sitting in a chair, hugging one of her knees to her chest, and a table in front of her. There’s the unmistakable sound of static noise, like it’s coming from a TV or a radio, like it’s going through electrical interference or grounding faults. He approaches slowly, and can see that there’s a magazine open on the surface, and a newspaper to the side that dates to November 3th, 1993, the bold letters under the date spelling out “Maple Creek Daily”, with the Canadian flag beside it. In the magazine, just under the text, there’s a picture. A picture of a man and a woman embracing, their foreheads touching and their eyes closed, some tears running down the man’s face and the woman’s eyebrows all scrunched up, like they’re suffering. It’s an image that does something to his insides. That forehead touch. The longing.
He thinks he knows what this is. He thinks he’s afraid to keep looking at whatever this scene is.
And then. The woman sitting on the chair. He finally gets the courage to look up, and he almost wishes he didn’t.
Because looking back at the picture on the magazine like it’s hurting her personally, it’s her. It’s Eleven.
It’s a little different, the way she holds herself like she’s bracing for an attack, and her hair is very long now—something he remembers her being very excited to do, to grow her hair. And her eyes seem sad, a deep sadness mixed with despair and longing. But it’s her. It’s his Eleven.
He gasps, tears already welling in his eyes. He takes a step back, startled, and that’s when she looks at him.
Not at him, but in his general direction, like she knows there’s someone there, but can’t quite see. She can’t see him, and he doesn’t dare to call her name. He just looks, and looks, and keeps looking at her, like he’s getting his fill—and he supposes he is, after 6 years of dreaming about her face and trying hard not to forget what it looked like. What her laugh sounded like. What she felt like.
This is her. She’s almost so real he can touch her.
It feels like hours had passed before he lifts a hand in her direction, and she startles like she’s feeling him too, tears running down her cheeks and eyes so full of sorrow and longing it hurts.
Just as he’s about to touch her, she vanishes, taking his heart with her. Again.
—
“Mike! Wake up, dude,” someone says, shaking his shoulders. He’s pretty sure it’s Max, if the hard tone is telling him something.
His vision focuses and he blinks, batting her hands away. “Can you please stop screaming? God.”
“Can you please stop scaring the shit out of us? What was that, Wheeler?” She pokes his chest.
“What?” He looks around. They’re in his parents' basement. Or now, his house basement. After his parents went to retirement in Indianapolis, taking Holly with them, they sold the house to him for a really cheap price, which he bought with his grown-up successful author money. Besides Max, Lucas is standing with his arms crossed, looking at Mike like he’s worried. Dustin is sitting on the edge of the couch he’s currently lying on, and Will is standing by Dustin’s side, also looking worried. “What are you guys doing here?”
“What? It’s the third, man. It’s almost the anniversary.” Lucas answers, growing even more concerned.
“The third. Yeah, totally. Yeah,” he gets up, feeling the world spinning a little.
“What is wrong with you?” Max asks.
“Max,” Will admonishes softly. “Mike, are you okay? What happened?”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s like you were in a trance when we got here. You were staring into nothing and didn’t hear us,” Dustin says. “What’s wrong, man?”
“It was really scaring the sit out of us,” Lucas says, half-laughing.
Mike closes his eyes. It all comes back. The Void. The magazine, the newspaper. El.
“It was her,” he blurts. “It was her.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” Max asks.
“El. It was her. I have to-“ he gets up from the couch, rambling. He’s spiraling, desperation written all over his face. “Oh, God. I have to go get her. I have to-“
His friends exchange looks, Lucas being the one to grab Mike by his shoulders and stop him from going upstairs. Max grimaces when Mike tries to tackle Lucas’ hands off.
“Mike, calm down. Whatever it was, it was just a dream. It’s okay,” he soothes, but Mike is having none of it.
He shakes his head forcefully. He’s breathing hard now, face all flushed. “No, no, you guys are not getting it. It was really her. I saw it, saw her, in the Void. She’s in Canada. I have to go get her.”
“Oh God, are you on drugs again, Michael?” Max asks, a little red in the face, worry painted all over her face. “I thought it was that one time, you sucker!”
Mike rolls his eyes. “You’re not listening to me, fuck you, I’m not on drugs, you little redheaded mean bitch-”
“Whoa”, Lucas exclaims, putting his hands up. “Calm down, cowboy. Don’t go around calling my girlfriend a bitch. Or mean.”
“Sorry, Max,” he quips. “I’m just saying, I know what I saw–El is alive,” he says, his lips trembling. “El is alive.”
A few seconds of silence, and then all his friends saying it at the same time. “What?”
—
“So, you’re saying that El summoned you to the void?” Max says incredulously, like she’s not buying it. Mike would think the same, had he not known the redhead like a sister by now, but he sees right through her disbelief facade–she’s desperate to believe him. To believe El is alive, after all.
“Not summoned, that’s not how it works,” Mike replies, eyes rolling.
“Stop being condescending and explain it, then!”
“Oh my God, can’t you two give us a break? You’re twenty two years old, for fuck’s sake. Stop bickering like you did when we were fourteen,” Dustin snaps.
Lucas shakes his head, pulling Max to him. “What I think Mike is trying to say is he dreamt about Eleven pulling him into the Void and kinda contacting him?”
“Has he ever dreamt about the Void before? I think that’s new,” Will adds, speaking over Dusting, who’s saying that “it was probably just an off putting dream because of the anniversary.”
“No!” Mike screams. Everyone goes quiet in the room. “It was not a fucking dream, okay? It was real, I was in the Void, I saw her. I saw her.”
The party just stares at him. He’s doing that thing he does with his eyebrows when he’s getting emotional, and that is what makes Max break.
“Okay, okay. So what does that mean? Say, if you’re right and it wasn’t a dream. That she’s alive, six years after we all saw her die and she’s accidentally summoned you into the Void?” She asks carefully, the way one might ask a feral dog to let go.
“Not summoned–yeah, sorry. I don’t know, Max!”
“Maybe she was thinking about you and accidentally contacted you through the Void? Because you said she wasn’t seeing you, so she couldn’t have done it on purpose,” Dustin argues. “Theoretically speaking.”
“How did she accidentally pull him into the Void?” Max asks. “I thought that that needed a lot of concentration and stuff to, like, do.”
“And what? She’s in fucking Canada? What the hell is she doing in a small town in Canada?” Lucas asks. “Theoretically, of course.”
“And, theoretically, why didn’t she come back?” Will asks, a little sadness in his voice that he can’t quite shake.
Mike takes a deep breath. “I don’t know. I think,” he starts, “that she must have really escaped then, and ran away. I’m not messing around, guys. It was her.”
It’s almost funny how Max is the first one to break down. She tackles herself into Mike’s arms, babbling about ticket planes and rescue missions and her best friend being alive. It’s very emotional, so much so that soon there isn’t a single dry eye on the Wheeler’s basement.
They sit back, making plans and coming up with strategies, just like they did all those years ago as children.
The next thing they know, Mike has a booked flight to Canada in two days.
—
Mike’s not the biggest fan of airplanes.
He especially dislikes this one trip, since it’s taking hours to get to his final destination.
He busies himself with a book, then makes faces to the kid sitting beside him.
When he finally gets to Toronto Pearson Airport, he has to board on another plane to Maple Creek.
And when he does finally get to Maple Creek, it’s finally the sixth. November 6th. Exactly six years since he lost her for good. Ten since he found her in the woods.
He finds the nearest inn and checks in.
“Now, what?” He mutters to himself.
It’s cold the way it can only be in the early morning, and he doubts there will be anything to do in the still-asleep town. So, like he always does when his mind is empty, he replays that moment in his head. Their last hug, the last kiss. Her face just before her body was gone with the whirlwind of the explosion. How deadly quiet it felt after the gate closed and disappeared.
How he was quiet, for weeks, after he lost her. After she died. The whole year after what happened at the bridge, Mike kept disappearing, sometimes for days straight—just to show up again looking even more haunted and with the smell of cheap alcohol under his breath.
The first time he spoke after all of it was to snap at everyone. He yelled. Claimed he was the only one who had ever loved her and that it was just stupid how they wanted him to move on, to just forget it. It was just so unfair. He only had her for 4 years. He would miss her for the rest of his miserable, terrible existence.
Weeks later, he came around and apologized to everyone. Yes, he was mourning, but that didn’t mean everyone else wasn’t. He realized that he’d been so caught up in his own pain, that he didn’t see the way Max wandered on the school halls like she was a ghost again, just like after Billy died, didn’t see the way Dustin stopped coming around more and more, the way Lucas stopped caring about everything but Max, like he was giving himself a purpose and trying not to think about anything else, how Will seemed to be disappearing into himself more and more.
Didn’t see the ways it was affecting Hopper, and Joyce, and Nancy and Jonathan. Didn’t see that everyone was just trying to not get caught up in grief. Just like he was.
Eventually, the summer after graduation, everyone kind of just… slipped. Mike and Steve were the only ones to stay in Hawkins.
Mike couldn’t leave. He wouldn’t. A part of him would always think that if he ever left, then El would come back to no one. She would be all alone again. And he wouldn’t have it.
He hates it. He hates all of it. But mostly, he hates himself for not doing it. For not going in there with her the moment he realized what she was going to do.
It’s with those ugly, marred feelings swirling up inside his chest that he closes his eyes and dreams of chocolate brown hair and bright eyes looking up at him.
—
Mike wakes up around noon. It’s way less cold than before, and he finds himself restless.
He decides to walk around town, since he’s got nothing better to do and he isn’t about to go around asking about his dead girlfriend just because he thinks he saw her in a not-dream.
Whatever.
He walks slowly on Main Street, which is surprisingly full of life for a town with, like, 2000 inhabitants.
He goes into the little grocery store and buys some food. Makes small talk with the cashier, a blonde old woman with big eyes that makes him smile for the first time since he’s stepped foot in this country by asking him what’s he doing in such a town. He says he’s looking for something, something he lost a while ago and now he thinks he can get it back.
The woman, of course, doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but smiles encouragingly at him and says, “I hope you find what you are searching for, darling”.
He even enters the bookstore, looking around some titles and—ugh—seeing some of his works on the shelf. It always makes him self conscious, to have the reminder that people actually read the words he writes.
In the romance session, he grimaces and tries not to think about her while mindlessly reading a book’s summary.
You see, grief has a way to linger, to shake up everything, like you’re stuck on a rollercoaster that won’t ever stop–it’s unstable and unpredictable and you can’t differentiate between its highs and lows. But grief can also be the manufacturer of something bigger. A year after El died, Mike found himself searching for comfort in places he had never looked before: in the form of Max Mayfield. If there’d be someone who would understand what he was going through, it was her. They bonded over the pain of losing El and the notion that they’d never be fine ever again. They would sit in Mike's basement for hours on end, just… talking. When everyone else was afraid of saying the wrong thing to him, Mayfield would not hold her tongue when she’d feel Mike was being unreasonably mean on one of his bad days. But also, they would just talk about her. Remember things about her, like the way she spoke, the way she laughed. Her favorite things, her dreams. Once, Max said quietly, “she wanted to grow her hair long again. So we could walk around with matching braids”, and they spent the rest of the afternoon crying softly, her head leaning against his shoulder.
There’s something cruel about remembering. You can stop loving someone, but you just can’t forget all the little things you learned about someone that, once upon a time, was your world. Maybe, someday, though he thought it improbable, he’d get over her. Move on. But he’d never forget that her favorite colors were purple and yellow whenever he’d see hydrangeas or daffodils. He would always stop at the supermarket when he saw Eggos on the shelf. He’d remember the letters, the way the words used to get scrambled by the end of them, like she was just excited to finish and send it so that she’d try to write them faster. He would never again watch Miami Vice, not wanting to risk missing her excited gasps and the furrow between her eyebrows when she was deep in concentration watching it. There would be songs he’d never bring himself to listen to again, in case it brought memories of making out in a little cabin, memories of soft skin and soft hair in his hands and soft sighs whenever he’d kiss her neck and shoulders reverently. Memories of holding her body to his, safe, warm, like it’d prevent her from slipping away.
Yeah, maybe remembering was the worst thing that could happen to someone grieving.
Noise brings him out of his inner turmoil. He hears a loud crash, a book falling to the floor, then a brief laugh and someone humming on the other side of the shelf.
It sounds like something he’s heard before, and it feels like time’s slowing down as he walks towards the sound.
Then he sees her.
She doesn’t see him, not at first. But it’s her. It’s the same hair, the same face, the same posture he saw a few nights ago in the Void.
He’s speeding up to her even before his brain can catch up with the fact that El, his girlfriend, his life, is alive and breathing and right in front of him.
He comes to a stop in front of her and she finally looks at him. She’s holding three books in her arms, trying to balance all of them.
“El?” It’s tentative, careful. His voice is barely there, cracking after the last few days of not using it much.
She tilts her head, just like she always used to, confusion swimming in her bright brown eyes. Brown eyes just as he remembers. Her hair is longer, really, and a little lighter than before. It has some little braids on the sides, and it’s way curlier than it was six years ago. Her features are changed, bit more mature, pretty but also tired, like she hasn’t stopped fighting since the last time he saw her—but it’s her alright, that much he is sure of, these are the same doe eyes, the same button nose he used to give a little peck so she would stop talking when she was being unreasonable, the same pouty lips he could never forget kissing. She’s a little bit more tall, like an inch or so, but he still towers over her. Just like he did before, and it’s so comforting to have to tilt his head down to look at her. It feels like no time has passed. She holds herself cautiously, like she’s ready anytime to fight or flight. Her nails are covered in glittery purple nail polish, and she has a dainty watch and some bracelets on the wrist where he knows the tattoo should be. More importantly, on her pointer finger, a gold ring. A ring he would recognize anywhere on this Earth.
It’s her. Really her. He’s so happy he could combust on spot. He wants to cry, to scream. To grab her by the shoulders and ask her why. Why didn't she send him a signal? She has to know he would face off every demon on this very earth if it meant getting her back. She has to know.
But then she opens her mouth and Mike’s world turns sour and grey all over again.
“Do I know you?” It’s not said with malice, just confusion. Deep confusion, the kind you cannot fake, and Mike knows his girl better than anyone else in the world to know when she is and when she is not lying. Or knew. He isn’t sure anymore.
“What?” He asks weakly. “It’s Mike. Don’t you recognize me?” He tries with a small grin, but it falls flat and she grimaces. “What? El.”
“El?” She speaks slowly, like she’s testing out the name, to discover how it tastes on her tongue. Like she’s heard it before, but can’t remember when or where. She looks down at her watch. “Maybe you’re confusing me with someone else?”
Her voice, God, her voice. It’s still the same as in his dreams, but also not. He thinks he could spend hours listening to her talking.
“No, I- I’m sorry,” he croaks. “You don’t remember me?” His voice is so small it feels like he’s a child again.
“Remember? I don’t- I’m sorry, dude, but I don’t know you,” she says, sounding annoyed. She massages her temples with her fingers, sighing. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” she repeats, this time more kind, then turns around and leaves, her books long forgotten.
It almost feels like losing her again.
—
She doesn’t sleep well that night.
It feels like years since she last had this type of headache, the ones where it feels like her brain it’s trying to pop out of her skull. She searches for the strongest medicine she has, and it still isn’t enough.
When she finally does get some sleep, it’s only to be plagued by dreams of her running her fingers through dark, curly hair, a deep voice talking about monsters, nice hands holding hers and making forts under covers in a basement. She dreams about walkie talkies, a little cabin in the woods.
When morning rises again, it’s with the kind of dread only the perspective of facing the things you’ve buried deep within your chest and forgot about it can bring. The things we keep hidden so deep it hurts when you try to reach it back.
Because thinking about the weirdly charming stranger she met yesterday meant dealing with those things.
She can’t lie, she can’t stop thinking about him. From the way his voice sounded to the way his eyes shined when he first saw her. And she can’t make the little voices in her head stop—what if it’s something from her old life?
She’s made a life here. It doesn’t matter if he’s something or someone or anything from her supposedly old life. She has friends, her family, that have been nothing but kind and loving to her ever since she’s come into this town with nothing but the clothes on her body and a little backpack.
But this man brought up everything she always tries to bury deep inside. The fact that sometimes she gets these weird flashes, like memories or flashbacks, of a life she could not remember living. She’d see a redhead girl reading magazines, sharing a twin bed with a boy with hazelnut hair, sneaking around a little cabin, a retractile armchair. Sometimes, she’d see a water tank and a lab room. A cat hissing. And, whenever she’d get those flashes, she’d get serious headaches and, oftentimes, nosebleeds.
She sighs. Even if this man means something from her past–which she’s sure he does–, she does not wanna deal with it. No matter how tempting it is.
No matter how she can’t stop thinking about him.