The Promise After (mike x eleven)

The Promise After

When she sees Will get up, El knows they've come back.

She cranes her neck from where she's sitting, looking over the crowd of soldiers to see Will run to his mother. Within seconds, the two are joined in a tight embrace, crying with relief. The sight makes her heart hurt and she wants to run and hug Joyce too, but El immediately notices.

He's not with her.

El's heartbeat starts to quicken as she stands up and begins looking around. He...he must be somewhere else.

The soldiers are everywhere, walking all over, and El is looking in every direction trying to see around them. Every second that passes by seems to stretch longer as her chest begins to tighten. There was no sign of him.

El feels a panic begin to bubble inside her, threatening to boil over as she frantically looks in the distance, trying to see if anyone was coming from further away. Although her eyes are still desperately searching for him, there is a deep, undeniable pit in her stomach that's telling her something is wrong.

All that is needed to confirm that feeling, is the terrible moment when El locks eyes with Joyce.

She looks at Joyce, and although her face is partially covered by Will's shoulder, she sees the message in her eyes immediately.
At first, there's a hint of reluctance in them. Almost like what's about to come next is unavoidable, but still unbearable.

Then. It's there, in Joyce's eyes. She doesn't have to say a single word, the message is written clear as day across her expression.

I'm so sorry.

And just like that, the panic that has been threatening to boil over in El fizzles out in one second and is replaced with something else entirely.

All-consuming, uncontainable grief.

It fills her entire body as El takes in the gravity of Joyce's message. Her eyesight blurring with tears, she all-but whispers, "No."

No.

He can't be gone.

She stares back at Joyce and the expression is still there as tears begin welling up in her eyes, too.

He's gone.

El feels her heart slowly ripping out of her chest, piece by piece, as she fully processes what's happening. What happened.

She's shaking. Every limb.

Hopper isn't coming back.

Her throat burns. Her head throbs.

All she can see through the blur of her own tears is the black of the night. Her vision darkens as a feeling of unbearable pain, pure agony takes over her entire body. The black sky morphs into a black hole as her knees begin to crumble underneath her.

The black hole takes her. It swallows her up into the infinite nothingness.

Her ears are ringing, she's dizzy, and the black hole has sucked every last ounce of warmth out of her body. She's completely and utterly empty.

Before she knows it, she's on the ground. Although she hates it, wants to deny it, the words flash through her mind, brighter than the neon logo on the outside of Starcourt.

Gone. Hopper is gone.

Without trying to, without even realizing it, El opens her mouth and lets out a heartbreaking, desperate, terrible scream.

***

When he hears it, Mike swears he has never felt his stomach drop so fast.

He has never felt his heart rate go from normal to nearly pounding out of his chest in a matter of seconds.