𝐩𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐭

xxi. I CAN DO IT

    

     Charles stayed by El, holding her hand in one of his as she screamed and sobbed in pain. "What is that?" Erica asked as she looked at the thing moving inside her leg. "There's something in there." Mike said and Charles looks at him right away.

"Yeah, no shit, Wheeler." He says. "Jesus Christ." Dustin said from the right side of Charles. "Keep her talking. Keep her awake, okay?" Jonathan said before he is running off. "You know, I like your new shirt, El, where did you get it?" Charles asked and El looked at him. "Th-the Gap." She says.

"Oh! Nice." Charles smiled and Mike noticed El no longer looking at Charles and closing her eyes. "Hey, hey, hey. Stay awake, stay awake." He says and looked at Charles and Dustin. "Let's get her on this side, get her on this side." He gestured and Charles and Dustin are quick to help, only to have Steve help them as well, "easy, easy, easy." He says.

"It's uh, you know, it's not actually that bad. There was a... the goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg, and like the whole bone came out of her knee, six inches or something, it was insane." Robin said and Charles looked up at her with a confused look on his face.

"Robin."

"Yeah?"

"You're not helping."

"I'm sorry."

Jonathan came running back fast and quickly kneeled down in front of El. "Okay, alright, El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay?" He said and she sobs. "Okay," she says, sounding scared. "I need you to stay real still." He says, putting on gloves and then holding out a wooden spoon to her.

"Here, you're gonna want to bite down on this, okay?" He says and Charles sighed as Mike took it from him and put it into El's mouth. Jonathan holds out a knife and Charles' eyes widen. "Holy shit. Holy shit." Dustin said and Jonathan looked up, obviously hesitant to do it at all.

"Do it." Mike said and Charles looks down at El right away who was still holding his hand tightly. "Okay." Jonathan said and started to cut, blood oozing out. El starts screaming loudly and Charles looks away with a grimace.

"Oh, shit," Dustin said and Charles looked at her leg right when Jonathan reached inside. Eleven screeched in pain and Charles looked away, his eyes shut tightly closed. She keeps screaming and squirming, "Jonathan!" Nancy says. "Stop talking!" Jonathan yelled at her.

"Goddamn it!" Jonathan said, not being able to quite catch the thing moving around in her leg. "No!" El yelled and Charles looks at her. "Stop it!" She shook her head. "You heard her! Stop!" Charles yelled at Jonathan who abruptly stopped and looked up at El. "I can do it." She says.

She slowly sits up with Mike's help, "I can do it." She repeated and Charles lets go of her hand, moving back a bit to give her some space. She is panting softly before she raised her hand, using her powers. She starts screaming and groaning. "God!" She exclaimed but kept going anyway.

She starts screaming as it got closer to her open wound. She continues screaming even when the glass shattered behind them all of them yelping or gasping. El continued until that thing was out of her and she raised it to her eye level before throwing it far. They all look that way, when someone came out and stepped on it, killing the creature.

El is panting, slightly hunched over as she looked up and saw it was Hopper, with Joyce, Sarah and Murray. Charles quickly got up and ran over to his mom, he hasn't seen her in nearly a week. "Mom." He said and ran into her arms.

She hugged back right away, "hi baby boy.." She sighed, also feeling the same relief of finally seeing her son again after that long week.

All of them now sat in the middle of the food court, catching up to speed with everyone. Hopper and Sarah sat side by side as Hopper held El in his arms and Joyce sat at the other end with El's foot in her lap. Charles stood next to Robin who was sitting on the edge of the water fountain.

He would sometimes glance over at Will. "The Mind Flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins, to stop El, to kill her and pave a way into our world." Mike said. "And it almost did. That was just one tiny piece of it." Max explained further.

"How big is this thing?" Hopper asked. "It's big." Jonathan said and then murmured to himself, "thirty feet, at least." He shortly adds. "Yeah. It sorta destroyed your cabin." Lucas told the man who glanced at Sarah next to him.

"Sorry." He said softly and Sarah looked over at the fourteen year old boy, smiling just faintly. "Okay, so, just to be clear, this... big fleshy spider thing that hurt El, it's some kind of gigantic... weapon?" Steve then asked, sort of confused.

"Yes."

"But instead of, like, screws and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon... with melted people." Steve said and Charles merely rolled his eyes. "Yes, exactly." Nancy said right away. "Yeah, okay." Steve says and Charles glanced at Robin who raised her eyebrows when she saw Charles' look.

"I— yeah, I'm just making sure."

"Are we sure this thing is still out there, still alive?" Joyce asked as she looked at Max and Steve then to Jonathan and Nancy. "El beat the shit out of it, but yeah, it's still alive." Max says.

"But if we close the gate again," Will said who Charles looked at right away. "We cut the brain off from the body." Max continued for him. "And kill it." Lucas added right away. "Theoretically.." He said as he looked at the others. "Yoo-hoo!" Charles looked over right away and saw Murray making his way over while waving a bunch of papers around. Charles just rolled his eyes, looking away.

authors note charles, in any situation ever: *rolls eyes in Annoyed Gay*