far too young to die ✰ m.w.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"El," Emily gasped, walking to the girl and pulling her into a hug.

"Em," Eleven said, accepting the hug and then hugging Mike as well.

"What-? Where have you been? W-We called you. Every night. For-"

"353 days. I heard."

"Why didn't you tell us you were there?" Mike asked her. "That you were okay?"

"Because I wouldn't let her," Hopper said, stepping forward. His eyes were on Eleven when he asked, "The hell is this? Where have you been?"

"Where have you been?" Eleven directed the question back at him as he pulled her into a hug.

Emily and Mike exchanged a look, both of them realizing, because of this interaction, where Eleven had been all this time.

"You've been hiding her," Mike said to Hopper. "You've been hiding her this whole time!" He tried to shove Hopper, but the man turned around and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.

"Let's talk," Hopper said. "Alone." When he saw Emily glaring at him, he knew she was just as angry with him as her boyfriend was. "Both of you."

Hopper took Mike and Emily into Will's bedroom, which was the farthest down the hallway, so it would be harder for the others to hear their conversation from the living room.

"Protecting her! Protecting her?" Mike angrily repeated Hopper's reasoning for hiding Eleven from them before Hopper even shut the door all the way.

"Listen to me," Hopper said. "The more people know about her, the more danger she's in. And the more danger you and your families are in."

"So we should be thanking you then?"

"I'm not asking you to thank me! I'm asking you to try to understand."

"Well, I don't understand," Emily spoke up. As she continued to speak, her voice got louder and shakier as she began to cry. "We thought she was dead! You knew how upset we were over her going missing, and you didn't say anything! The least you could've done was tell us she was okay, that she was safe. You didn't even have to tell us where she was! But you didn't say anything, you lying son of a bitch!"

She began to push him and hit him relentlessly, and even though he retreated back into the door, her blows weren't hurting him, and he allowed her to get her anger out until she was just left with tears, at which point he pulled her into a hug, which she accepted.

"You're okay, kid. You're okay," Hopper said in a comforting voice as Emily sobbed into his chest. He noticed Mike standing there, unsure what to do after witnessing his girlfriend's outburst, also with an upset look on his face, and he pulled him into the hug as well. "I'm sorry."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The message that Will had been communicating to them through Morse code had been "close gate". Seeing this written down on the back of a notepad on the kitchen table, Joyce had posed the question to Eleven of whether or not she could close the gate, seeing as she had been the one that had opened it. Now, everyone was gathered at the kitchen table, debating this.