Heartbroken//Mileven

Chapter 1

You have to let me go, I need you to. And if I were strong enough, I'd force you.

All at once she was gone. Like she had never existed; vanished, lost, transcending his un-powerful tragically mundane life. And it hurt. It was the kind of pain that settled in after, the lingering kind that never left a moment of peace.

Sitting in the basement was torture, and Mike was subjecting himself to some circle of hell, because everything still reminded him of her; so violently. 

The blanket fort was still kicked over in the corner, the result of his lack of self control, he remembered disgustedly. The wet spot on the floor from the first night, the huge teeshirt that swallowed her whole, and the Eggos he saw his sister take from this morning; it all breathed of her. 

Half of him felt this incessant need to pretend that she was about to come bursting through the door next to him, the image of reunion tormenting him over and over again. The practical half, or probably not so, wanted to be swallowed by the despair he felt creeping up.

It enveloped him, threading through his veins, rooting him to the linoleum floor as he watched the horror of a self sacrifice unfold in front of him. He was screaming, thrashing, fighting tooth and nail to stop her, but to no avail; all he could do was sit there and plead silently that she would stay. 

And how selfish of you to do even that. 

He scoffed to himself. Pathetic.

Mike knew his friends felt helpless in this as well, just, differently. How else were kids supposed to deal with trauma as niche as this? He knew he had become irritable, distant, probably an overall drag to be around, but they still all tried their hardest. It was the most difficult thing for him to realize that he was supposed to be the one holding the group together, you know, the heart. These days he felt like the left defective kidney at best. 

The worst part were the adults, sniffing around asking too many questions, and they always did. 

Karen wasn't stupid, it was obvious that her sons behavior had changed more dramatically than what was "normal". Well she was used to Nancy's erratic years, the door slams and dramatic outburst, and surely she had a handle on Ted's moods, but this was worse than both combined. There were certain, occurrences, that she could not wipe from her worried mind.

A couple of nights ago she was fed up; Nancy wasn't home again, Holly had put up a fuss going to bed and Ted had left every single dish in the house for her to clean. She had intended to go down to scold Mike for not even offering to help his tired mother, but had found him instead curled up in the blanket fort. Sweet, she initially thought, but the closer she got, the more concerned she became. Mike was crying, which was already odd, but it seemed like he was talking to himself through the Supercom she was always begging him to turn down.

Creeping back upstairs she decided this kind of thing was certainly too much for her to deal with, she needed a second more professional opinion. A therapist would be, an option, yes, her sister in law had just gone through a divorce and needed one for her kids; maybe something of the sort would be good for Mike. She wanted it to be a mutual decision however, this was imperative to her conscious as a good parent.

He was indifferent.

Mike sat in the stuffy office trying not to sneeze, it smelt like the fakest, cheapest perfume money could buy. He would've lamented the offense of his nose further if the door hadn't slammed open. The therapist strolled in, crisply strutting to her desk in her awkwardly tall heels. She held a whole stack of neatly arranged papers, sorted and stamped the with the same logo as Hawkins Lab. Well that caught his attention.