WHAT. The Hoppers talk about the darkness & whether it's a good idea to help fight daemons WHERE. Fox Way WHEN. Backdated to day 3 of the darkness plot WARNINGS.vague reference to Russian prison/torture, not much otherwise STATUS. complete
Waking up to darkness two days in a row was unsettling. Hopper had spent a number of his eight months imprisonment in the "hole" - a dark cell with no way to tell what day it was or how long before the next attempt to torture information out of him. Eventually they'd given up on that tactic and moved him to an actual prison and the first few days had been brutal on his eyes.
Now he'd almost prefer that pain to the dread of more days in the dark, with monsters coming out of the woodwork again. Vallo had been a relief until now. But he was stubborn enough to focus on what he cared about more than his own anxiety and that was Eleven.
He slid a stack of waffles in front of her and a bottle of syrup. "Hey, kid, eat up. I think school is canceled and even if it isn't, I think we should stick together today. What do you think?"
Monsters. Darkness. These were things Eleven knew how to handle. But this darkness was pitchblack, and these monsters were a lot - they were all different, all dangerous in more ways than one. Injuries had been happening left and right. It had her restless and antsy, the nervous energy expelled by chipping off black nail polish.
It didn’t do much for her appetite, either.
“I want to go out there,” she answered him, taking the syrup to turn upside down and shaking the bottle a bit. El was going to take her time filling in every waffle square one by one. “I can fight. Better than I could before.”
It still hadn’t been enough to kill Vecna the moment she needed to, but she had lifted a tank that was easily over six tons without breaking a sweat. She should practice more. She should train. There had been a few of those creatures nearby that she was able to kill but there were more. There were always more.
Hopper had expected pretty much that response, but it still soured his expression even more than it had been already. He'd hoped she'd at least eat something before giving him heartburn.
But she wouldn't be Eleven without her bravery and stubbornness.
"Yeah, I kinda figured you would," Hopper admitted. He dropped down into the seat opposite her and rubbed his big hands over his face. "Listen, I know you can fight, okay? That's never been a question. It's just a lot to jump into. Demons in the dark?" His heartburn worsened. He frowned across the table at her. "Even if your powers are back, even if they are stronger. It's a lot. Can you at least agree that it's a lot to take on without more time to figure out your limits?"
El took a deep, calming breath through her nose. It was a knee-jerk reaction to want to snap back and insist that she’d be fine; that she could do this and not be on the receiving end of any consequence. Thankfully, it also only took her a few fleeting seconds for her to realize Hopper had a point. She didn’t know what these limits were, and when she thought she could handle a Big Bad Fight fresh out of re-awakening her powers, all she had done was prove Papa right.
“Yes,” she relented, but her eyes were hard - and stubborn. The syrup bottle cap was shut with a little clip sound. The waffles were literally drowning. It was perfection. “But the only times I will know what my limits are and learn are when these things happen. I have to try. I can handle it.”
That didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid. She was an emotional creature. She cried a lot, and there were plenty of monster encounters in the past that have sent her hyperventilating. Eleven was always good at pushing through it. Maybe she just had to keep pushing through it to be better.
It wasn’t the time for smiling, but between the clipped answer and the drowned waffle, he couldn’t help but smirk at her. A part of him still wanted to lock her in a closet and protect her at all costs. But he was trying to quiet that voice down. She was a damn superhero, not a damsel. But she was also his daughter and still a kid whether she felt like one or not.
“This isn’t the only time you can learn what your limits are. The military trains. Sports teams train. Musicians train. They don’t all just run out into the fray and do their thing and hope for the best.” He dragged a waffle from the middle plate over to his. People were moving around in the rest of the house and someone would be there soon to try and steal his breakfast if he didn’t dig in. “I’m not saying no, okay? I’m just saying if you go, I go. And if you go, probably some of your hyperactive friends go. So we’re not just running out into the woods to fight any random monster in the dark. We need a plan.”
“I am the plan,” she mumbled under her breath half-heartedly (she knew that wasn’t the best plan either, but still), using the side of her fork to slice into a piece of waffle. Papa had to push her - a lot - for results, often to the point of cruelty. Hopper wasn’t Papa, though. He would never.
But planning wasn’t her strong suit most of the time. Eleven knew that was something she had to work on, too. She was not alone. And Hopper was right (again); she had to consider the others, too. “I know they do not like light? The monsters. But I think I read that flashlights and lights from your phone are not strong enough to keep them away.”
It was good to watch her think things out. Hopper knew he wasn't exactly the paragon of critical thinking but he thought like a detective and he wanted her to have the kind of edge that being able to think quickly gave a person in a fight. At the very least, he didn't want her to rushing head first into every bad scenario, even if she was pretty good at coming out on top.
"Right, light. I've got the flamethrower that showed up here. But I think there were a few on that list that are resistant to fire. I bet the local shops have started pulling together strong lights though. Maybe some magic ones we can carry on us." He put syrup on his own waffle and took a large bite, chewing and thinking at the same time. His mouth was still full as he spoke. "Let's hit town and see what we can pull together before we go running out into the woods. What do you think?"
Eleven tackled her waffles with a little more eagerness thanks to the assurance they were going out. She had been restless since her powers came back, and she knew she was pent up rage from how things had ended back at home - with Max, with Hawkins. With everything.
The only real win was getting her dad back.
“You are right,” she agreed, exhaling a sigh that was less exasperated. El did give him a lookover from across the table. Hopper arrived in Vallo injured and starved. He was better now. She wanted him to stay that way. “I want you to be safe, too. I will have your back, and you will have mine. We will be a team. Like when we closed the gate the first time.”
It wasn’t that long ago but it also felt like it was eons ago, the two of them going into the pit that was Hawkins Laboratory. Hopper, armed with a firearm. Eleven, armed with herself. They had done well.
Hopper smirked. It was good to see her relax. Fight mode was her default, he knew and respected that, but any chance he could give her to feel supported and safe, he wanted to take it. Of course, he was still a dad, though.
"You got that right. We are a team. But if I think you've had too much, I'm going to tell you so and I don't want to get in a big fight with you out there where it's dangerous, you get me?" He took another bite and then looked around for his coffee mug. He'd forgotten it by the coffee pot. Getting up for it, he took a detour to grab her a glass of orange juice too.
"Drink this." He set the glass down in front of her. "You need some vitamin C with all that sugar."
El was not a fan of boundaries when it came to her powers - but she understood them. Did she always listen, though? That was the debatable part. She had used her powers at school before. If she felt like spying on someone for a specific reason then not a lot stopped her. Run herself ragged with them? Sure, especially when they were in a fight.
It wasn’t smart, or safe, and that was the point she knew Hopper was trying to make. She got it. But she still made a displeased face at him, taking the glass into her hands to sip.
“Juice is sugar too,” she pointed out with a little sass - and the tiniest, playful grin. “If it gets too much for us both, though. You get too hurt, we go. No hero stuff. You already did that.” And I made a project about it, she thought. Apparently she had missed the entire point of that assignment back in Lenora but she would still stand by her decision. “You are sure you want to do this, right?”
Hop had been a little… off when darkness began to blanket Vallo. The whole thing was unsettling to begin with but she had been a little more hyper aware when it came to him. He had been through a lot, and there were things she was trying to re-learn from him considering what happened.
Her sass earned her a one-eyed squint and a hair ruffle. Or at least, it would’ve been a hair ruffle if she still had her hair. He sank down into his chair, too big for the small table of this quirky kitchen. Somehow it was more charming than annoying. That was the magic of Fox Way, he guessed. It didn’t ward off serious conversation though, unfortunately.
“Going out there is already hero stuff, smartass,” he teased. His smile was fleeting. “It’s important to fight and to protect people. To use the skills you have to help. As long as you’re doing it smart. So yeah, I’m sure. I’m just…not a big fan of the dark. Between the upside down and underground labs and Russian prisons…” He shrugged, not bothering to finish the sentence. He filled his mouth with more waffle and syrup instead.
Oh.
That made sense.
The grin slowly faded into a frown as she thought about it. El wasn’t a stranger to darkness; she had been afraid of it when she entered the pitch blackness of the void when her powers first started up, but she had also quickly learned that it wasn’t the darkness that so much disturbed her. It was what she had found in it. She was desensitized to it at this rate. It didn’t occur to her that Hop would have an issue with it.
“One day,” she began with a deep breath, folding her arms over the table. “I am going to fight Russia.”
It was a joke. A halfway joke. A sort of joke. Something to lighten the mood, even if she looked weirdly serious about it. Looking serious about stuff made things more funny, didn’t it? (But she also really, really wanted to fight Russia). “But monsters in the dark mean we at least have experience, right? We will do our part, and we will come home.”
Hopper choked a little on his mouthful of waffles, coughing out a huff of a laugh. "You know, I have no doubt in my mind that you could take on an entire country."
He hadn't meant to make this about his own baggage but it was nice to have it out there. It felt good to remind her that no one was invulnerable. And there wasn't anyone he trusted more with that information anyway. He smirked, soft and fond. "You're absolutely right though. We got this. You, me, and my flamethrower."
His eyes dropped to her soggy waffle and he took a long sip of his black coffee. "Love you, kid. But you need to follow that up with a hard-boiled egg or something. You're gonna get me arrested."
“Love you too,” she told him with a smile, happy for the opportunity to be able to say it to his face often. Later, Eleven would google how hard is it to take down an entire country by yourself but for now she followed his gaze to her breakfast, curious as to what he was talking about.
The waffle was bathing in syrup. The sight was beautiful. She took the fork to dig in, but it was so soft that she had to bring a knife into the picture to properly slice it. El took a bite, gave a thoughtful hum about it as she chewed and judged it, and then used that orange juice to help swallow it down. “I think it needs more syrup, actually.”
Just because she was cooperative about fighting out there did not mean her defiance was completely gone. Hopper had to be kept on his toes, after all.