WHAT: Visiting Mike's grave a year after his death WHERE: Vallo Forest WHEN: 2029 WARNINGS: Death, grief, talks about revenge because they MAD STATUS: Complete
”I never gave up on you. I called you every night, every night for–
“Three hundred and fifty three days. I heard.”
It had been three hundred and fifty six days since Eleven had last heard his voice. Three hundred and fifty six days since she had last seen him alive. Three hundred and fifty six days since he was killed. Tomorrow, it will be three hundred and fifty seven days and counting; the number will double, then triple, and so on. The world kept going. The world kept dying.
The flowers in her hands were hand-picked from a meadow nearby, the petals yellow and purple - like the ones he’d given her the moment he got off the plane in Lenora. She didn’t want to come empty-handed. Eleven wanted to visit his grave with something.
Six feet under, Mike Wheeler’s body was buried. It wasn’t fair.
People paid visited and paid their respects, but she and Nancy lingered once they left. It wasn’t until they were alone that she began to arrange the flowers over the patch of raised, knees pressed into the dirt, cheeks wet with tears. There wasn’t any sobbing. She was… quiet, for the most part.
“I miss him,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand before going back to the flowers.
The day it happened – or at least the day that Nancy found out about it – she couldn’t help it. She thought back to the vision of the world that Vecna had showed her. She hadn’t thought of him in so long, having gotten incredibly comfortable in Vallo. She hadn’t thought there was a major threat like that here. Even when the threat came out, Nancy still had the hope things would turn out to be okay because they weren’t in Hawkins where the only person she knew powerful enough to defeat monsters was Eleven.
It wasn’t okay. Even with more powered up individuals. Her worst nightmare that Vecna had shown her had still happened.
“Yeah.” There were no tears. Nancy usually saved those for any bit of alone time she managed to get because someone had to be strong. But her eyes still had that shine as though she wanted to cry right there and then. “Me too. I’m sorry, El. It shouldn’t have been him.”
“No,” El agreed, not a wobble in her voice–it was firm, sharpened with this rage that simmered under her skin. When they found out about his death, she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t let herself feel what she wanted. All of it would burst out of her in power – whatever power that remained in her anyway – and that’d put a target on her. On the rest of her family.
She couldn’t let that happen.
“It shouldn’t have been,” she continued, sniffling as she patted the soil around the flowers. Her hands were caked in moist earth. “But we won’t lose anyone else. We can’t. And going after that coven – it will help. It has helped.”
They had tracked members already. They’ve done away with them too; swift, brutal deaths so they could move on to the next. They were traitors to this place. Eleven felt no guilt about it.
Nancy gave herself a moment to just watch the young girl pat at the soil before deciding to step closer and sit down next to her. She didn’t move to help only because she had a feeling she’d ruin it even more. Gardening, planting flowers, all that stuff, was not something in her forte. Plus, it felt like something therapeutic that Eleven just had to do.
“We’re not going to. The coven also fucked themselves over anyway, so it’s on them.” Not that Eleven probably needed that reminder. Between the two of them, if the world could turn their anger into pure atomic energy, it would be enough to take down Castle Whitespire and then some in a single blow.
“I wanted all of us to be here,” she added quietly. “I hated Hawkins when I got here because I realized we had so much here that we don’t have in Hawkins.”
El let out this mirthless, bitter laugh. Hawkins. Sometimes she didn’t think about their original home, where Mike was alive but Max barely was, and Eddie was dead. There was no doubt in her mind that it was being ripped apart too, just how Vallo had been torn to shreds here by a Vecna-like entity she couldn’t win against. That no one could win against.
“We are not better off there either,” she pointed out, rising up from the ground to dust the dirt off her knees. “But life here – it was nice while it lasted.”
There were a handful of normal years. Dances and proms. Festivals. Birthdays. Holidays. Eleven had experienced so many firsts here, and she was a fool to believe that all those firsts would be strictly good ones.
“No, I know.” If there was any place Nancy would want to travel to, it would not be to Hawkins. Never to Hawkins. Maybe back in time instead before things went to absolute hell. Maybe it could happen and they could save him in time. Maybe that’s not how time-travel worked though and some sacrifices had to be made. Maybe it could have been her instead…
They may have annoyed each other a lot of times since the day they entered middle school but Nancy was always ready to die for him. And now she lived and he didn’t. The nice life here should have kept lasting.
“I just sit here and wonder if it would have been better if we went back or stayed here, or if everyone from home showed up here and we still had to fucking deal with everything that had happened. But… maybe they wouldn’t have gotten to him if we were all here. Max, Lucas, Will, Jonathan, all of them.”
It was nice to think about the hypotheticals sometimes. The what could have beens if more of their friends were here. If, maybe, they won back home. If it was better after they did, and if they all came out of it alive.
Eleven took a step back from the grave, standing flush against Nancy with their arms touching. A prelude to a hug, if that. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” El responded softly but not unkindly – not to Nancy. Never to Nancy. “I think… we will always lose people. Whether we’re here, or home. We will just have to keep fighting to lose less.”
Nancy let out a breath, leaning into her younger sister. Would have been sister-in-law. Didn’t matter, she was still a sister to her.
Her eyes were still on Mike’s grave though, when she spoke again. “Then I think we focus on taking down as many as those fucks that we can.”
“That is the plan,” Eleven agreed quietly, slipping an arm around behind Nancy to wrap around her waist. Head dropping onto her shoulder, her eyes didn’t leave the grave either. It wasn’t directly unmarked – they didn’t want to make it obvious in case the wrong people stumbled across it – but they had set up hidden markers around the area to know where Mike rested. “We fight.”
Attacking Vallo as a whole was one thing.
But attacking Mike – killing Mike – had made it personal. All of Vorerra was on their shit list, and if she spent the rest of her time eradicating them for how they sided with Interitus, for how they were responsible for what happened to Mike?
It would be a time well spent.
“Can we stay for a little while longer?”
“Of course.” Nancy’s arms had automatically encircled the girl when she moved closer. There were so few of them left, she clung to them as much as she could. It was clear there was no telling when they would have their last hug, their last meal together, their last battle or scout or recon together…
But she was just as determined as her to make sure the Vorerra coven were made aware of how wrong they were in the side they picked.
After a few seconds of silence, Nancy let her head lean gently against Eleven’s. “I love you, El.”
“I love you too,” El told her, the ghost of a smile on her lips. It was easy to get wrapped up in losing Mike; that was a hole in her heart that was never going to be filled again. Not even making the lives of those responsible hell would make it whole again. It was a bandaid at best – a very bloody one.
But she still had people, and she didn’t want to lose herself to the point that she lost sight of that. There were others to fight for and protect, and that was enough to keep them all going.