|| GUARDED || Billy Hargrove

Chapter Five - The Flayed

|| Gᴜᴀʀᴅᴇᴅ ||

"What do we do now?"

"We shouldn't have even brought him here in the first place. He's still flayed." Mike muttered in response to the redhead.

"He's still Astrid." Max snapped.

"The girl is right. My son is still in there, he wouldn't have been so quick defend us if he wasn't." the adult in the room agreed, though his accent thickened slightly as he spoke with great emotion.

"I could, talk to him." Eleven explained slowly as she stepped out of the bathroom and gently traced her fingertips across the tyrian purple mark on her throat.

"What?! Did you see what happened at the pool!?" Mike protested.

"You can?" Friedrich looked at her hopefully. She nodded gently and Max placed a cautious hand on her arm.

"Are you sure?"

"I can do it." El confirmed with finality. The girl glanced over at the unconscious body of Astrid laying out on the sofa, she then strode across the room and kneeled next to him.

Max handed her a blindfold and instructed Friedrich to turn the radio to static. The boys watched with wide eyes as they couldn't believe they were actually trying to do this.

Eleven tied the rag around her eyes and placed a hand on Astrid's cold skin, keeping the thought of him in her mind. When she unscrewed her eyes open she was back in 'the void'. "Astrid?" she called experimentally, and her voice echoed around her.

"-El?" she heard faintly, so she ran and chased the voice, each step causing a splash against the wet floor. She could make out a figure sat cross-legged on the floor dozens of meters ahead of her.

"...Astrid?" she spoke, slowing down and coming to a stop a few feet away from them.

He looked up at her, grinning widely. "El." he jumped to his feet and hugged her. "I'm glad you're ok." he buried his face in her hair as he hugged her.

"You're not...flayed?" she asked in confusion, her brows drawing together and pulling away from the hug.

"What? No, I swear! This is all me El, believe me please?" he begged.

His eyes were a slightly darker blue than they used to be, she noticed, but nothing much else was different. "But you, your arm was-"

"I know, I know. It's hard to explain, I don't even fully understand it myself to be honest." Astrid interrupted her.

"What's wrong then? You protect us, but you have powers like me?" Eleven pushed. Astrid looks at her for a few moments, as if debating with himself.

"I..last year, when you got the mind flayer out of Will. Me, Billy, Steve and the kids were at the Byers' and he tried to take me over."

"Who?"

Astrid stared at her solemnly until she understood, her eyes widening slightly. "Billy, he helped me fight him off. But then you beat the Mind Flayer, and we never got rid of the part within me. It grew and evolved until it became something else. He's smaller than the Mind Flayer but... he's on our side and- and now I have these powers, I'm stronger, faster and I can do things."