Freckles & Curls | MILEVEN AU

thirteen - galaxies apart

song - You're Gonna Break My Heart Tonight by Tom Odell

~"The audience sit there in silence and
Hold on to their seats
For here comes the punchline
So short and so neat
You're gonna break my heart tonight"~

The silence in the house was deafening, every square inch of the cabin filled with a strange kind of friction between its occupants. The tension was unbearable, their routine interrupted with the difficulty that it took to even look at each other. Jane spent nearly every second staring coldly at her adoptive father, hoping that he could somehow see the shame in her eyes at how he had let her down. Meanwhile Hopper could barely look at her, avoiding her at every opportunity as if she didn't even exist, as if she back to being nothing more than a thing in that lab. She had refused to go to school, the pain too unbearable knowing that she would be within the same building as Mike, but unable to get closer to his heart. Hopper would be watching her every move and didn't even bat an eyelid when she stayed home instead of getting ready. He shrugged and left for work, the unreachable look in his eyes almost the same as when they first met. 

On the second day, he approached her with a guarded expression on his face. He stood at her door with some kind of restraint in his eyes, as if he wanted to say something but decided against it. He spoke in a gruff voice, looking down at the floor as if he didn't want her to see the vulnerability that lay within his eyes. 

"Do you remember when we found out that the lab was being shut down?" he didn't wait for her answer, continuing on hastily, "I told you that you would have more freedom...that you could think about exploring Hawkins more. You looked scared stiff...telling me that you weren't ready to see other people, that you only trusted me. You told me that people were bad and that you wanted nothing to do with them..that you just wanted me to keep you safe."

Jane looked away. 

"I taught you the word promise that day" he nodded as if encouraging her to remember, "I promised you that I would do whatever it took to keep you safe. So that nobody ever hurt you again, because you had already suffered through enough."

She closed her eyes at the memory. 

Hopper's voice shook slightly. "All I want to do is stand by that promise."

"I was twelve" she spat out. 

"And now you're nearly fifteen" he argued back. 

Her voice faltered. "I-I didn't know that I would meet Mike and that I would want more, okay? I didn't know that being stuck in here for so long would make me feel so...so trapped. It doesn't feel any different from the lab."

His face hardened. "Really? I'm like that psychotic son of a bitch?"

Mornings filled with breakfast filled her mind, snippets of him always allowing her drizzle extra syrup over her eggos after nights of terror. He would sit up and read to her when she couldn't sleep, when the darkness taunted her and felt too much like the prison she was trapped in. She could remember the soft look in his eyes when she first called him 'Dad' and how he squeezed her so tight into his arms, as if he wanted to keep her beside him forever. But she could also remember moments of fear, the fear that she would always be told 'soon' and never truly get the freedom that she wanted. She couldn't forget the feeling inside of her chest when he yelled at her, when he sneered at her feelings towards Mike like she wasn't even a human being. She could forgive, but she would never forget. 

His voice wobbled. "I-I just don't want to lose you, kid."

He was met with nothing but radio-silence, Jane's eyes cast down to her hands as if she was thinking over his words. All he wanted was for her to try to understand, to know that he wasn't trapping her for selfish and psychotic reasons like her real father did. The hurt was heavy in his stomach after she didn't reply, continuing to stare out of the window as if she was in her very own prison cell, a cell that he guarded.