Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Sweet Child o' Mine

"Sweet Child o' Mine"

I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain

- Guns n' Roses

Hopper waited impatiently in the open door of the police truck, watching Eleven and Mike say goodbye. He felt a mixture of guilt for keeping them apart for so long and apprehension about the way they looked at each other and longing to take her back to the cabin and have it just be the two of them again and irritation that he had no time for any of this.

Whoa. Eleven was standing up on her toes, her head moving toward Mike's. Kissing? Now? Oh, no. No way. "El!" he snapped. When she turned to look at him, he said, "Come on, let's go. It's time."

She came and got into the truck. Joyce and her boys and the Wheeler girl were in Jonathan's car. Hopper hoped between Joyce's memory and his directions they would find the cabin okay, but that was their job. His job was to get Eleven into that facility without either one of them getting killed, and it wasn't going to be easy.

As they drove away, El looked back over her shoulder at the rest of the kids, Mike in particular, standing there on Joyce's porch. She kept looking until the truck had gone around the bend and she could no longer see them.

It occurred to Hopper to wonder if, of the two of them, maybe El understood what was important the best. He had cut himself off from everyone when he came back to Hawkins—no friends, barely civil to his coworkers. But she had immediately found friends, even after a lifetime of solitude. And she had never let go of them. Maybe she had been right, all along.

She was silent as they drove, and so was Hopper, each lost in thought. But he wanted to know. Where she had been, what she had been doing, why she had left. Well, maybe he knew that last one. But the rest— "So, we're just not going to talk about it, huh?"

Eleven rolled her head on the back of the seat, turning from the window to look at him. "About what?" she asked, her voice clipped and angry.

If she could be angry, so could he. "Oh, I don't know, I'm just curious, you know, why all of a sudden you look like some kind of MTV punk."

She went quiet again, and he could have kicked himself. Why did he always have to do that, get mad and make statements instead of asking questions?

"I'm not mad, kid," he clarified. "I just want to know where you've been. That's all."

"To see Mama," she said at last.

Mama? He froze. Her mother, lost in the darkness of her own mind for so long thanks to Hawkins Lab? So she must have found all the papers he left. What had she thought, how had she felt, seeing her mother for the first time? What he wouldn't have given to have been there with her, to have been able to support her. If only he'd told her the truth, he could have made it easier for her. But he didn't voice any of those thoughts. He wouldn't even have known how to begin. "Okay," he said instead. "How'd you get there?"

"A truck."

"A truck?" Hopper repeated.

"A big truck."

"A big truck? Whose truck was it?"

"A man's."

"A man's." While he had been off at the lab, his little girl had been hitch-hiking? All the things that could have happened to her flooded his mind, and it was all he could do not to freak out.

"A nice man."

He realized he was staring at her, and tore his eyes away long enough to make sure they were still on the road. "Okay," he managed, and thought he really deserved a fucking medal for staying this calm. "So let me just get this straight in my head. So a nice man in a big truck, he drove you to your mama's and, then, what, your—your Aunt Becky gave you those clothes and that makeup?"

Eleven stared out the window for a moment before turning to look at him. "I shouldn't have left."

He wanted to say 'damn right you shouldn't have'—but he had left her there, left things so badly between them, and then got caught up and hadn't come home. What choice had she had? "No," he told her. "No, this isn't on you, kid. I should've been there. I should never have lied to you about your mom. Or about when you could leave. A lot of things I shouldn't have done." He wished Joyce was here. She would understand Eleven; she would understand him. She would know how hard this was for him. "Sometimes I feel like I'm—" The words stuck in his throat. He didn't even know which ones to use. He thought of Sara, Diane, Joyce, hell, even his own mother. "Like I'm just some kind of black hole or something."

"Black hole?" Eleven asked.

"Yeah, it's a, you know, it's this thing in outer space, it sucks everything towards it and destroys it. Sara had a picture book about outer space; she loved it."

"Whose Sara?"

"Sara?" It occurred to him that he had never told her about Sara. In fact, he hadn't so much as mentioned Sara's name in a long time. That seemed unfair to her. She didn't deserve to be forgotten, hidden away, like that. "Sara's my girl. She's my little girl."

"Where is she?"

"Well, that's kind of the thing, kid, she, uh—" He couldn't use the word. He had never been able to use the word. "Well, she left us."

"Gone," El whispered.

"Yeah. The Black Hole. It got her. And, somehow ... I've just been scared, you know. I've just been scared that it would take you, too." It was so hard, so hard to push the words through, to let her see so clearly into him, into who he was. But she deserved it. She deserved to know. And if they were going to salvage anything from this, if they lived through it—she had to know who he was. "I think that's why I get—so mad. I'm so sorry. For everything. I can be so—so—"

When he lost the words, Eleven finished for him. "Stupid."

Hopper smiled. "Yeah. Stupid. Just really stupid."

She looked at him, and he could see that he was, if not forgiven, moving toward it. Eleven reached her hand out, and he put his hand in hers. And it felt—right.

"I've been stupid, too," she whispered.

"I guess we broke our rule."

She smiled at him, acknowledging his newfound ability to poke fun at himself.

"I don't hate it, by the way. This whole—" He gestured toward her. "Look. It's kinda cool."

"Bitchin'," El corrected.

"Okay. Sure." Someday he was going to want to know where she had learned that one. But for now, he was going to enjoy the fact that he had kind of found a friend. "Bitchin'."