One

Chapter Nine: The Gate

   Mike walks past Phina, "Eleven?"
   "Mike," she gasps.
   Their arms fly around each other, holding on to one another for dear life. They both cry, Eleven gasping as she does. Phina sinks to her knees as she watches them, as she looks at the girl that she had thought she had lost. The sister she had thought she had lost. Her mind flashes to sightless blue eyes and pale blonde hair, no, El wasn't gone like Two, she wasn't gone.
   Mike pulls away from El, "I never gave up on you. I called you every night. Every night for..."
   "353 days," El cuts him off, "I heard."
   "Why didn't you tell me you were there," Mike asks, sounding slightly betrayed, "that you were okay?"
   "Because I wouldn't let her," Hopper answers, slowly walking towards her, "the hell is this? Where you been?"
   "Where have you been," El fires back.
   Hopper pulls the girl into him, hugging her close to him with one arm.
   "You've been hiding her," Mike accuses, his anger growing, "you've been hiding her this whole time!"
   He shoves Hopper and Hopper grabs his shoulder, "Hey! Let's talk. Alone."
   They leave and the group can hear Mike yelling at Hopper but they choose to ignore it.   
   "El," Phina asks.
   The group looks at the girl on the floor, her eyes flooded with tears and her lips quivering as she looks at the girl across from her.
   "Phina," El cries softly.
   Phina lets out a quiet sob, "you're here, you're really here."
   El falls to the ground in front of her, "I'm here."
   Phina cries, pulling Eleven into her. Phina's arms wrap tightly around El's shoulders and El's go around her waist. Phina needs to just hold her, to feel the living warmth radiating off the girl, to convince herself that El wasn't gone, not like Two.
   "You're not gone," Phina sobs, "you're really not gone."
   "I'm here," El whispers, "I'm here."
   "You're not like her," Phina sobs.
   Everyone in the room grows confused but Phina doesn't care, "you're not like her, you're not like Two."
   El understands then, "I'm here, sister."
   Something in Phina snaps and is healed all at once. She lost one sister, she had thought she lost another one, but she hadn't. Her sister was right here in front of her and she hadn't lost her.
   "Don't hog her all to yourself now," Dustin jokes quietly, his voice a little choked up at the scene in front of him.
   Phina smiles, pulling away from El slowly, "right, right, I-I-I'm sorry."
   El looks at her with worry in her eyes but Phina just chuckles, "you have to reunite with a few more people than me. I'm... I'll be fine."
   Phina stands up from the ground, pulling El up with her. She nods at the girl and turns away, wiping her eyes. She leaves the group to reunite with El and going out the back door. When she does, she takes a deep breath of the cool air. It stings her nose but she welcomes the pain. She leans against the wall, tilting her head back and closing her aching eyes.
   The door opens and closes, "are you okay?"
   "I'm," she hiccups, "fine, Steve."
   "Clearly you're not," he whispers.
   She opens her bloodshot eyes and looks at him. His eyes are filled with comforting warmth and concern. They pleaded with her to tell him what was wrong.
   "A few weeks after my fifth birthday," she whispers, sliding down the wall to sit on the cold ground, "another test subject was brought in."
   She lifts her hand in front of her tilting her wrist to show Steve her tattoo, "she had the number two tattooed on her wrist. I wasn't sure what her power was at first, just that she was younger than me and she screamed and cried for almost an hour before she finally saw me sitting on my mat in the corner. When our eyes had met, she was gone in a second, in the opposite corner of the room. She had superhuman speed."
   Steve listens intently, sitting down on the ground in front of her, laying a warm hand on her knee, "you don't have to tell me."
   She shakes her head, "Two was my sister just as much as Nancy is, even more, honestly. She was the only kindness that I had ever known, the only warmth in that horrible place. I was supposed to be the protective big sister but I wasn't able to protect her when she needed me most. She died, murdered by those people while they forced me to watch."
   The tears returned, leaving trails of cool wetness on her cheeks, "I couldn't protect her, Steve. It's the reason I'm so protective now, that I'll gladly throw my life down to save the people I love. It's because I couldn't save the person that showed me how to love. I couldn't save her, my sister, Two. I couldn't save her, Steve."
   Her breathing becomes shallow as she starts to sob again, "I-I-I remember her eyes, so bright, like the sky I had never seen, I-I r-r-remember the way they stared at me, cold, d-d-d-dead, g-gone."
   "Hey, hey." Steve shifts to his knees, pulling Phina into a warm embrace. "Breathe, Phina, breathe. It's okay, you're okay."
   She wraps her arms around his waist, sobbing into his shirt, "I couldn't save her, Steve."
   "I know," he whispers, holding her tighter, "I know and it's ok. You were five years old, Phina, five. I can't act like understand because I don't. When I was five I cried over the crust on my sandwiches. The things you went through, the things you saw, a five-year-old should never see, let alone live through. You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened because there was nothing you could have done, nothing."
   "But I could have, I could have done something, I could have burned them, drowned them," she cries, "I could have done something!"
   "And then what," Steve asks, pulling back to look her in the eyes, "you die as well? Phina, what happened was out of your control, it was terrible but it happened for a reason. If you had died back then, where would we be now? You here for a reason, Phina, a damn good one too."
   Phina takes a deep breath, trying to calm down as much as she can. Steve was right. Phina had a reason, a purpose for being here right now. She needed to be there for her family, her friends, to protect them like she couldn't protect Two, because she could do something now, and she would do anything and everything to protect the people she loves, no matter the costs.
   "Thank you, Steve," she whispers, wiping away her tears, "seems like you've been comforting me a lot lately."
   He smiles at her, "I'm glad to help."
   She looks up at him and his eyes are filled with nothing but warmth, all of it directed towards her. That warmth falls over her like a blanket and she wishes the moment could last forever. She wishes the warmth could last forever, but time goes on, whether they like it or not, and the winter cold always sets in to cancel the warmth of summer.

-1229 words-
   Chapter Nine!! Here it is!!! The next few parts are gonna be a wild ride full of action, and maybe a little bit of romance ;) ;) Are you ready?
-Morgan