Invisible String || S. H.

15: she's back just in time

Mollie (pov)

Mike was the first one to greet her. She's been here in Hawkins for the past year and Hopper had her hidden. I thought it was kind of messed up to keep her away from everyone but the more I thought about it the more I understood Hopper.

All of us could hear the screaming match Mike started in the other room. While that was happening, it was Lucas and Dustin's turn to greet her.

Eleven noticed Dustin's new teeth. Of all things for her to notice, it was sweet. Dustin did that weird purring thing, which gave me a small chuckle. El gave most of us a warm welcome back, except for Max. I told Max to try not to take it personal and that she was like that with me when I first met her.

The whole group reconnected in the living room to figure out a plan that would include El. She saw the 'close gate' message we translated from Will on the table.

"You opened this gate before, right," Joyce asked her.

"Yes," El responded.

"Do you think if we got you back there, that you could close it?"

El didn'y have to answer again, she knew what needed to be done.

"It's not like it was before. It's grown. A lot. That's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs," Hopper said.

"Demo-dogs," Dustin corrected him.

"Dustin, not now," I said.

"Okay, sorry."

El said she can do it. I believe that she can but how much power would she be able to do? Hopper said it's way bigger than last time, but the majority of us don't know how much bigger.

"Even if El can, there's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies," Mike said.

"I thought that was the whole point," Max said.

Mike continued, "It is, but if we're really right about this. I mean if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer's army-"

"Will's a part of that army," Lucas finished.

"Closing the gate will kill him.'"

We all turned to Joyce thinking she might not be okay with sacrificing her youngest son. She went into Will's room and the rest of us followed her. "He likes it cold. That's what Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold. We keep giving it what it wants."

"If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then-" I started.

"Then we need to make the host uninhabitable," Jonathan finished.

"So if he likes it cold," Nancy questioned.

"We need to burn it out of him," Joyce answered.

"We have to do it in a place he doesn;t know this time. Somewhere far away." I said.

And with that, Hopper picked up Will and took him, Jonathan and Joyce outside and gave them directions to somewhere. The rest of us went searching for any heater we could find for them to bring to the location. I stayed in the house with the kids and found one in the hall closet and brought it outside and gave it to Jonathan.

"Hey, J. Long time, no talk," I said.

"Yeah, you could say that," he said reluctantly.

"Uhm, so Nancy told me where you guys went and other things."

"She did? Well, it was- it... It felt right, ya know."

"Yeah, I get it, just don't break her heart. I'm sure it'll hurt Steve to know. I'm not gonna tell him, that's for Nance to do."