"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter Seventy-Four: New Plans
(The Gate)
***
This can't be real.
That's all Rowan could think as she stared at El, seemingly returned from the dead, a living ghost. It had to be a hallucination or something, because El was dead, Alistair had said he, Mike, Lucas and Dustin had witnessed her sacrificing herself when she destroyed the Demogorgon.
But here she was, standing there in front of them, as if she'd never died, as if Rowan didn't live with the pain of what could have been and the guilt of leaving her, Alistair and the rest of the kids to fend off Brenner and his men, then the Demogorgon, alone.
"You... you can see her too?" Alistair whispered, voice hoarse, and Rowan realised that Alistair must be wondering if that was El's ghost.
Rowan nodded and Alistair sucked in a sharp breath, eyes glinting wetly as he stared at the friend he'd thought he lost a year ago.
But their reactions seemed dulled in comparison to Mike's as he breathed, "Eleven?"
El smiled. "Mike."
That's all it took, the boy dropping the candle holder and all but running to El who looked just as overjoyed to see him, the two meeting in the middle and clutching each other tightly, as if the moment they let go, the other would disappear.
"Is that..." Max whispered and Dustin and Lucas nodded. Cami shot Alistair the same question with her eyes and Alistair managed to say in a thick voice, "Y-yeah, that's... that's El. That's her."
Cami's eyes widened as she looked back to the reunited couple, Mike and El still clutching each other.
"I never gave up on you," Mike said, voice hoarse with unshed tears. "I called you every night. Every night for—"
"Three hundred and fifty-three days," El finished, smiling as her eyes shone with unshed tears. "I heard."
"Why didn't you tell me you were there? That you were okay?" Mike questioned, confusion thick in his voice, and honestly Rowan was confused, too—if El was okay, if she was alive, why didn't she send any sign that she was?
"Because I wouldn't let her."
Shock jolted through Rowan as she stared at Hopper, who strode toward El and demanded, "The hell is this? Where you been?"
"Where have you been?" El shot back just as Hopper gripped her in a side hug, a hug El melted into, tension leaving her shoulders. A hug that Rowan and Alistair would have collapsed into if Aunt Aco was hugging them.
The siblings shared a look, a look they soon shared with Aunt Aco, whose face was tense as she watched the interaction. They understood very well now why El hadn't contacted anyone and let them know she was alive—and why Hopper and El seemed to have some sort of bond.
