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a message from eleven
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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
Alina was well and truly frozen now, her face pale, her mind awhirl, her words stolen right from her mouth, but Mike still found the voice to speak, confusion etched onto his face as he looked at his friends. "What do you mean?" he asked Will. "How did you hear Alina? And... and why?"
"I don't know," said Will. "Maybe it wasn't your voice, Al, maybe it was just someone who sounded like you. But... if it really was your voice, Alina, and I really think it was, you were talking to me. You told me... you told me not to run. You told me to stay. You told me you'd help me. But I didn't listen. I was too afraid. I ran anyway." His face was hollow. "Did I make the wrong choice?"
"No." Alina had finally found the breath to speak. A thousand things she wanted to say jammed on her tongue, but she swallowed them for now. She needed to talk to Will. Just Will. Maybe he could help her if she told him she'd seen the same shadow creature that had chased him. Maybe he'd understand if she told him it had chased her in her own dreams, too. "No, you didn't."
"Is this all real?" Mike asked. "Or is it like the doctors say, all in your head?"
"Like for me," Alina prompted. She was shivering now. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears, and she kept whirling around, as if expecting the shadow creature Will saw to come find them in Mike's basement. "When I have my own episodes. When I go back to the day my dad died."
"I don't know," said Will. "Just... just please don't tell the others, okay? They won't understand."
Mike licked his lips, training his eyes on the candy-covered floor. "Eleven would," he said eventually, his face devoid of any emotion.
"Yeah," said Alina softly. Sometimes she thought she'd gotten over the loss of her friend, but the loss—and the loss of her father—were like wounds that were scratched at too often. They would reopen, and all of the old feelings would leak right back out. She swallowed thickly, leaning her head on Will's shoulder just as he spoke.
