Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

The Best of My Love

"The Best of My Love"

But here in my heart

I give you the best of my love

- The Eagles

Talk to them, she'd said. Like he was their friend. As if Jim Hopper had any idea how to talk to a friend. Joyce was his only friend, the only one he'd had in ... years. Ever, maybe. Oh, he'd gotten along with his fellow cops, and he'd played nice for his and Diane's 'couple friends', but as for sitting down and talking to them, having a 'heart-to-heart'—forget it.

He nearly did, too, returning to his desk and lighting a cigarette and dismissing the whole thing. He'd just tell El Mike couldn't come over anymore. That's what he'd do. He was in charge; she would do as he told her.

But then he pictured her face, her eyes wide and hurt, when he told her that. He could practically script the whole argument that would follow. He didn't want to be that kind of dad. And he did want to do things the right way, Joyce's way, and make her proud of him, make her understand that he was willing to change, to be the kind of man she could count on. Bob would have been all over the chance for a heart-to-heart, he thought. No question about it.

He reached into a drawer and took out a sheet of paper and a pen.

"Dear Eleven and Mike—"

No.

"Hey, kids, we gotta talk. This thing here isn't working—"

No.

How had Joyce started? He reached into his pocket for what she had written out. He shouldn't copy it word for word—it sounded like Joyce, not like him, and if he was going to do this, he might as well do it right, do it his way. Still ... it didn't hurt to start out with some of Joyce's touchy-feely stuff.

"Eleven and Mike—There's something I've been wanting to talk about. I know this is a difficult conversation, but I care about you both very much. And I know that you care about each other very much, and that's why it's important that we set these boundaries moving forward so we can build an environment where we all feel comfortable, trusted, and open to sharing our feelings."

"Feelings," he muttered. "Jesus." He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before looking back over the paper and realizing that he had actually written "Feelings. Jesus." Damn it! He started to crumple up the paper, but stopped. After all, that's what he would say. It's what he had actually said. He wanted this to sound like him, right?

Picking up the pen again, he thought about what to say about feelings. What the hell did he know about feelings? He rarely acknowledged that he had any.

"The truth is," he wrote, "for so long I'd forgotten what those even were. I've been stuck in one place." A dark place, he thought. "In a cave, you might say. A deep, dark cave." He remembered when he first felt something, after all those years drugging and drinking all the feelings out of himself, and he smiled as he wrote the next sentence. "But then I left some Eggos out in the woods and you came into my life. For the first time in a long time, I started to feel things again. I started to feel ..." Hopper hesitated, then wrote in the word tentatively. "Happy." He remembered those early days in the cabin, when it had been just the two of them, when she was safe and sound and entirely his. She wasn't entirely his anymore, and wasn't that really the problem?

"But lately, I guess I've been feeling distant from you. Like you're pulling away from me or something. I miss playing board games every night, making triple-decker Eggo extravaganzas at sunrise, watching Westerns together before we doze off."

Hopper smiled, remembering those times. He had heard Joyce say similar things about Jonathan, about the way he had been as a little boy. Maybe this was all normal, he thought. Maybe it was part of being a parent to a child who was growing up.

"But I know you're getting older, growing, changing. And, I guess, if I'm being really honest, that's what scares me. I don't want things to change."

He'd kind of lost the thread a bit, writing more to Eleven than to Mike.

"So I think maybe that's why I came in here, to try and stop that change. To turn back the clock. To make things go back to how they were. But I know that's naïve. It's just not how life works. It's moving, always moving, whether you like it or not. And yeah, sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it's sad. And sometimes, it's surprising. Happy."

He looked at the paper, feeling tears sting his eyes. He had wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to being Sara's dad, to having his girl in his arms. But that could never happen. And he knew that if Sara had lived, he wouldn't have been there when Eleven needed him, and she might still be out in the woods alone; she might be back in the lab, being an experiment. Will Byers might well be dead, locked in another universe. Joyce might have—would have—gone out of her mind. Like Eleven's mom. Maybe, after all of it, what had happened to Sara had put him on a path that made a difference. Maybe that meant he could live with it.

Picking up the pen, he decided to finish it. "So you know what? Keep on growing up, kid. Don't let me stop you. Make mistakes, learn from them. And when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you're out of that cave. But, please, if you don't mind, for the sake of your poor old dad, keep the door open three inches."

He smiled, unashamed that there was a tear rolling down his face. Eleven would understand, when he read this to her. Joyce would be proud of him for taking the idea of a heart-to-heart seriously. And he realized, somewhat to his surprise, that Eleven could be his friend. He could talk to her, really talk to her. Maybe that was what parenting was about—learning to be honest and open with your kid, letting them make you a better person.

Folding the paper, he put it in his breast pocket, ready to be read out loud tonight.