WHAT. Grown up El picks her teenage dad up from jail WHERE. Vallo Police Dept and then outside in the parking lot WHEN. October 26th WARNINGS. recreational drug use STATUS. complete
Hopper never did deny he was troublesome during his youth. He had done things, made mistakes, tried to make sure Eleven didn’t make the same mistakes but was also working on making sure he wasn’t too smothering - she craved whatever normal experience she could get, even if it did involve some mischief.
She did not, however, expect to ever be put in a situation where she’d have to pick up a much younger version of her father from the police station for attempted car theft. Was this karma for some of the hell she put him through (which, often, involved some fights and pranks revolving around the use of her powers)? Was this a lesson in parenthood for when she and Mike (her Mike, deep into the future) took the next step in their relationship?
She preferred it to be the first option but who knows.
“Thank you,” she politely told the clerk, giving a digital signature on the online paperwork for bail. The initial call had her mildly panicking but he wasn’t hurt, and now she had this sense of amusement take over that she tried not to smile about. Stealing cars was a serious offense! Hopper shouldn’t be doing that. But it was a little bit funny.
El schooled her features into something more stoic when they brought him out, the keys to his blazer dangling from her fingers. “Hi,” she greeted with a raised eyebrow. “How was prison?”
At home, Hopper mostly kept his troublemaking to smoking behind the school or a little bit of a five-finger-discount at the local Gas n' Sip. He wasn't a car thief. But he'd seen that Eddie kid trying to steal a car that was maybe a little out of his league and something about the situation had made him want to help rather than hinder. Maybe just the idea that getting far away from this weird place would require less emotional maturity. He was lacking a bit in that area.
Which was why he frowned petulantly at Eleven while a cop unlocked the handcuffs they'd insisted on putting on him between the holding cell and the waiting room. He rubbed at his wrists.
"Ambiance was crap," he deadpanned, squinting at her. "The place could really use a few paintings. Maybe a Brigitte Bardot poster."
Brigitte - who? Nope, Eleven did not understand that reference and the feeling was nostalgic. She was a little more up-to-date on things now, and she and the rest of them had to learn Vallo a lot of Vallo together which had her be on slightly more even levels with them. This Hopper only knew his era back home, and it was safe to say they were equivalent to ancient times.
“Don’t get caught next time, then.” Wait, no, that was terrible advice. “Or do anything that requires you needing bailing out.” There! That was a good recovery. El had this. She crossed her arms, staring sternly at her fat–Jim. Oh, god, this was weird on so many levels. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just–very disappointed,” she delivered, feeling like she completely nailed it in saying those words.
It would probably help him to know who she was, though. El considered that after the fact.
Hopper snorted, caught somewhere between amusement and confusion. He didn't know this lady but she talked like she knew him. Maybe she was just one of them Mormons on a crusade to keep teenagers out of jail or something.
"Didn't exactly ask anybody to bail me out, but I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Unless you're trying to recruit me for some kinda religious mumbo jumbo," he said. "...No offense." He might not have been religious but he had a few manners. Somewhere. "Have we met or something?"
Right. This part. Her eyes blinked at him owlishly, but she recovered a little more confidence after squaring her shoulders and offering him a smile. “I’m El,” she answered, hand waving at him (Sara’s bracelet, still on her wrist and resting over the 011 tattoo). “Your daughter.”
One of your daughters.
“At this current time in Vallo, I’m supposed to be - fifteen?” she squinted in thought, trying to do the math in her head. Fifteen sounds about right. El knew her age had been a little off since she had been the first Vallo arrival out of their group, and that was almost fifteen years prior to her time too. “And you are older, so both of us are displaced at the wrong year. But that is okay, stranger things have happened. I won’t ground you for trying to steal a car.”
Hopper had been told some of this when he'd woken up in a strange cluttered house, charming but weird. He'd worried he'd been kidnapped by hippies and taken to their commune or something. Now he blinked just as owlishly back at her before he narrowed his eyes into a squint. She'd been used to that face, even if he didn't know it.
"El. Jesus. Right, okay." Everything felt crazy but also not that hard to believe somehow. Maybe he was high on mushrooms or something. "Thanks for…" He gestured around him and then rubbed a hand over his face. "This is so weird. Who's your mom? Did I meet her in this place?" Should they even be having this conversation in a police station? Hopper needed an antacid. He didn't wait for her to answer his questions before he wrinkled up his face one more time. "Am I really high right now? It's fine if the answer is yes, I just wanna know."
Eleven’s brows flared up at all the questions mostly for amusement. Big bomb to drop on a Hopper so young (he was adult aged, technically, but so much younger than what she knew him to be) but he was taking it well. “You are not high right now,” she answered him calmly - though he could be. Did she have a joint rolled up in her purse for emergency purposes?
Yes. Yes she did. (This was clearly an Eddie and Steve influence.)
She motioned him to follow her as she led him out of the station. “You adopted me in 1984, back in Hawkins,” El went on to explain, offering him the car keys as they approached the chevy. It was obviously the most outdated vehicle in the lot with its square features and Hawkins Police Dept. lettering on the side. Ironic, considering their current predicament. “And this is yours. You taught me how to drive with it.”
Adopted. Okay, Hopper thought. No mention of a mother involved. He wasn't a cop yet - he wasn't even a soldier yet - but he still had the brain of a future cop. Men didn't often adopt kids by themselves so something must have happened that tied them together. Some kind of trauma. He watched her as he followed her to the truck. She walked like someone who knew how to fight.
Wait. "Mine?" He blinked at her and then the truck, taking the keys on instinct. "I'm a cop? Shit." His gaze shot back towards the police department with its big "Vallo" lettering on the side. "Or, I guess I was?" He had no idea where they were going to go but he knew he really wanted to be somewhere else. But he remembered the kid as he climbed into the front seat.
"Oh, uh. There was a kid. That I was sort of…helping. Do you know if we can get him out too?"
“That’s Eddie,” El told him. “My friend Steve - he has him, don’t worry.” That was going to be a fun moment for him, too. They had arrived together but agreed to deal with their respective wards separately. It was easier this way. She claimed the passenger seat next to him, digging into the satchel that was her purse. “You were a sheriff back home, though you were kidnapped by Russia and people thought you were dead. I don’t know who the new sheriff is. But can we sit here for a minute? I have…”
It was in here! Steve had rolled it up for her and - there it was. Beautiful wrapped and delightfully plump: a joint.
“No one cares here. You just have to smoke responsibly.” Eleven opened the glove compartment to pull out a lighter, and lit fire at the end of it with a quick puff. She then passed it over to him with a wry grin. “Here, have some. You can ask me whatever questions you have.”
Hopper’s eyebrows climbed. He’d wonder if this was just a long practical joke if it weren’t completely nuts, completely expensive, and if she weren’t so easy to believe. She talked straight, no bullshit. And he didn’t know if he was in a looney bin somewhere, beating against padded walls, but he was still glad she was here. Handing him a joint of all damn things.
He glanced out the window towards the police station. There was a couple big trees and plenty of other things going on so he doubted anyone inside could see right in to the car anyway.
“It would be really stupid to get me out and then get me thrown right back in, so I’m going to take your word for it,” he said, like a warning. It wasn’t one; that was just the way he’d talked since he was about ten and already taller than every kid in class. He took a drag and held onto it, blew out calmly with only the slightest cough. It had been awhile. “Shit, that’s good stuff. How long have you been here? Also what the fuck. Russia?”
Rolling down the windows and letting the smoke flow free was an option, but El hesitated because - couldn’t this be considered hot boxing? This was hot boxing. They could simmer in this and get even more stoned (that’s what Eddie taught her once anyway). “Since I was fourteen,” she told him, coughing into her own fist a little with a grin. “But I was with you before that. Do you know the Department of Energy in Hawkins? It is - was - a place where human experiments took place. I was one of them.”
She plucked the blue bracelet on her wrist to show him the tattoo on her wrist. Eleven had options to get it removed throughout the years but she declined; this was part of her. “You got involved in a lot of weird things and - yes, one of them was being taken to Russia. Russia’s lucky I have not had the chance to go back to our world yet.”
Now, she knew that taking on an entire communist country on her own was more difficult than she thought at fifteen but the hopes of revenge hadn’t died down.
“You took me in, though, and you taught me to drive in this.” El pat-patted the dashboard. Hopper had also taught her how to change the oil, and a tire - all which she probably did way better than Mike when needed.
This all felt weirdly okay to Hopper. It probably shouldn't have. If she was his daughter, he should protect her from the kind of guys who got caught trying to steal cars and then got high in a police station parking lot. But she seemed confident and sure of herself. Not like she needed any protecting at all. Hopper took another hit while he processed what she'd said and let the weed do its work.
"The Department of Energy is experimenting on people? Christ." He frowned, but her ease at telling him suggested this was not just old news but news she'd moved on from. He chewed on his lip. "Sorry, I should have…" He took another hit because why not? He was smoking pot with his future kid. "...I feel like I should have smart shit to say. Wise shit. But I just barely graduated high school by the skin of my teeth and I'm shipping off to the army soon so what the hell do I know. And you're. Well. You seem like you're good? Happy?" He glanced over at her. "I must not mess you up too bad."
“Will you stop hogging this,” El mumbled under her breath, grabbing the joint from him - it’s time to share, dad, though she was sure she was getting high alone on the weed fumes that were creating a fog in the car. “But it is okay if you don’t know what to say. You’ve given me a lot of lectures during the years.”
She could grin about them now as an adult (as she breathed in a small hit for herself). As a teenager, though, she hated them. Eleven had slammed doors and broken mirrors from the sheer energy of her defiance. “You did not do anything to mess me up. You…” she refrained from taking another hit for the next part as she figured out the words. “You fixed me.”
If that made any sense.
“I was with a man who made me call him Papa, he was a real dick but he is dead.” She had made peace with that the moment she walked away from him, dying as he tried to justify what he did to her. “You found me in the woods, and you showed me what a real father was like. You were not always perfect but you took care of me. You loved me. You were the dad I needed.”
Hopper was already feeling the effects of the joint so he let El take it with his hands raised in “defense”. His smile got a little dopey at one end and then flickered with the real emotions that snuck up on him. It was too young to think about being anyone’s dad but shit. It sounded real nice to help a kid out and be what she needed to feel safe.
He had no way of knowing Eleven would save him right back.
“Shit,” he murmured feelingly. “That’s…heavy. I mean good. Not the…Papa stuff. Kinda hoping that guy died painful and I don’t even know his real name.” He slumped down into his seat as much as he could at his size and drew aimlessly on the slightly foggy window with his finger. “Would you change anything? I don’t know if I’ll remember any of this, but I can try.”
Heavy question for a heavy topic. Eleven thought about it, rolling the joint between her thumb and index finger. Then, after a moment: “No.”
That didn’t mean everything was always sunshine and rainbows between them. They had tempers and were stubborn, and sometimes words were exchanged - words that they regretted - but she still would not change a thing. “You can be difficult,” she told him with a smirk. “But so can I. All the fights we will have are because we care about each other. That is not a bad thing. I would do everything the same way every time. It gives us a good future with friends, and family, and even if this place makes us a little crazy sometimes… we’re happy.”
El passed the blunt back to him now that she had her fill.
It wasn’t the answer Hopper expected. He wasn’t sure he could’ve said the same thing to his own father, even though the man hadn’t done anything especially wrong in raising him. But he didn’t think he was much like his dad either. Something about hearing you’re difficult but so am I made him feel better about this whole parenting gig.
“I’m difficult. You brought a joint to a police station.” He smirked and took a drag, blowing it out away from her direction. Saying things from the heart wasn’t any easier for teenager Hopper than it was for middle-aged Hopper, unfortunately. Even high, he wasn’t sure he could admit that a happy family sounded damn nice and that he wanted to be a good dad. But he did give her a soft glance and then a single nod. “I’m glad. You’re stuck now. You can’t change your mind and tell me not to dance in the house or whatever annoying shit old man me does.”
“Now for the important questions.” He leaned forward and stubbed out the joint in the ashtray. He wanted to ask about the experimenting stuff but he was going to have to work up to that. “Are you as hungry as I am?”
Oh no. Should she have told him to stop with the bad dancing? Dammit. Missed opportunity. Eleven let out a dramatic sigh, the smirk becoming this amused little smile. She was stuck, but in one of the best ways.
“I’m so hungry,” she laughed, propping her elbow against the window part of the car and holding her head up with her hand. “I can give you directions to Foxway. We have a lot of snacks there but you need to put on your seatbelt.”
They had time to chat more, and she’d do his best to answer his questions - and maybe give him a little hope about Joyce for the future, too.