Okay first off I'm bumping them up to senior year for the finale. It's not like Super important to the plot of this but it annoyed me lmfao
Okay anyway. Bomb goes off. El vanishes. Mike goes practically catatonic. We all unfortunately remember this.
The government arrests everyone and separates them all for interrogation. Mike is like very very vaguely aware that he's kinda talking and that the doctors are doing tests but he is SO out of it. He really does not know what's going on. By the time Owens arrives to shut everything down and take over the incident and let's everyone go Mike is SHOCKED to find out its been like 3 days. He feels like no time has passed since he last saw El.
He only really snaps out of it once Nancy and Holly are with him :(
Ted died in his coma while all the commotion of the plot was happening, and they DID get Holly to Karen just like Mike promised her. But be so real guys Karen had her throat and chest slashed apart and then strained herself to walk across the hospital and then was in an explosion...like she hangs on a bit longer but she doesn't make it. Sorry.
Steve and Jonathan offered to clean up the house for them but Nancy, Mike and Holly insisted on doing it themselves. It DID help them heal a little but after that they were all like yeah we Cannot be here anymore. They move into the Harrington house until the house sells, and then the 3 of them take off to Boston.
Hawkins being under federal lock down for 3 years was kinda a huge news story everywhere else, so bc of the insane circumstances Nancy's full ride scholarship to Emerson is still on the table. Mike got a ged before they left Hawkins, so he enrolls there and he and Nancy hate that they have so many classes together. They live in a 2 bedroom apartment, Mike sharing a room with Holly, and they know the government has it bugged with microphones but they don't really care. They accepted the hush money and they're not gonna do anything. They're just too tired.
But Holly reads everything her siblings write for school before they turn it in, and Mike is like sorta okay at cooking, and Nancy keeps coming up with dumb activities and hobbies for them to try so no one has time to think about the dread(tm). So they're doing okay. They're sad but they're not necessarily unhappy.
They're still in touch with everyone- they weren't the only ones who fled Hawkins as soon as they got a chance. The entire town is pretty much gone. Everyone's spread across the country and the phone is almost never on the hook because someone's always calling to check in.
No one's heard anything from him in well over a year. But he asks Mike to come meet with him.
Nancy tags along because she doesn't trust him, and they're both surprised when they arrive to whatever location and Hopper’s there- he's also confused.
Owens pulls them all into a room and is like. Okay don't kill me. The higher ups wouldn't let me destroy all of Dr. Kay's research and experiments. They just put me in a supervising position to prevent any more laws from being broken.
And the others are like...okay?
Which means the experiments with Kali's blood on pregnant women were stopped. But as El is dead there was nothing legally stopping them from continuing their research on her eggs that Brenner had frozen.
Hopper’s flipping the desk.
He goes on to explain that during the nina stuff El had mentioned that Mike could sense her sometimes in the void, and Brenner made notes speculating that Mike may have low level psychic abilities. Dr. Kay had these notes, and she was also aware that Holly was taken by Vecna bc SHE has psychic abilities, so when Mike was locked in interrogation for like 3 days. Well. He was so out of it. He didn't really know what papers he was signing and what tests were being done on him. He was 18 already. They took advantage of his state to get him to sign a consent form saying they could use a sperm sample of his in experiments.
Owens then says luckily this wasn't a successful trial. Almost none of the embryos took in their surrogates, and almost all of the ones that did didn't survive. Key word almost. The very last one survived a whole pregnancy and birth, but the team has run extensive tests on the baby and she shows no sign of inheriting powers from El. Just a normal little baby. Since the government has no use for her, they planned to just put her in the foster system, but Owens felt Mike and Hopper deserved to know.
Hopper is (validly) enraged, he's out for blood and wants nothing to do with this. The baby is a symbol of all of El's suffering to him. But he was only brought here as a courtesy- he has no legal claim to the baby. Mike is in shock (fair) and he doesn't know if he wants to claim custody, but he definitely wants to see the baby.
Nancy has met her brother before, so she already knows they're leaving here with a baby.
And yeah the second Mike sees El's big brown eyes looking at him, he's done for. He thought he was never gonna see them again.
Holly when she comes home from a sleepover to find all her shit moved into Nancy's room and Mike crying while trying to assemble a crib and Nancy destroying the kitchen trying to make a bottle and a screaming baby in the living room: I left you guys alone. For a DAY.
Mike names his daughter Elowyn, for her mother and also because it sounds kinda fantasy-like, but they end up usually just calling her Winnie for short. She has even more freckles than Mike and Nancy keeps joking that she looks like a dalmatian. She's a yeller like all the Wheelers. All 3 older Wheelers are knee deep in baby books bc they have no idea what they're doing. No one's sleeping. Mike is crying like 24/7. But they're all weirdly happy lol Nancy sat them down for a game plan meeting Winnie's first night there and was like guys listen. We fought an interdimmensional wizard demon in space. We can fucking keep a baby alive NOTHING is ever going to be that hard again.
A little over a week into bringing her home, Nancy and Holly went out and Mike JUST got the baby down to nap when Lucas kicks the apartment door in,,,didn't even bother knocking,,,
Max, Will and Dustin are behind him and they're all yelling that if they aren't holding a baby in the next minute there will be blood
(Hopper told Joyce, who told Will, who told everyone else and Dustin stole Steve's car so they could all road trip to Boston lmfao)
I'm imagining Max holding the baby and like actively sobbing while saying in a loving baby voice "Winnie Wheeler is the dumbest name I've ever heard she's gonna be bullied!! Mike you're so lame for this!!" lmfao
But they're all obsessed with her and crying about El and it's a whole thing. Lucas' parents sent a bunch of Erica's baby clothes with him. Dustin brought her a fucking chemistry kit for ages 6 and up. Will snuck one of El's teddy bears into his bag without Hopper noticing. Max got into knitting to help train her coordination skills back up but she's really bad and impatient with it so she gave the baby a "blanket" that's just like. One single badly done granny square lmfao.
Anyway over the next fews months they settle into a routine that works for the 4 of them. Everything's nice and calm. Work, school, home, very normal and mundane routine. And then one night at dinner the jar of baby food Mike was trying to feed Winnie telekinetically starts floating and gets thrown across the room.
Holly's like 😨 but the speed at which Mike and Nancy lock in is truly impressive. Brief eye contact and they already know what they're gonna do about this. They know there's no cameras in the apartment, just mics, so they play it off like 'haha nice throw honey' and then Nancy very casually starts talking about how they should all take a vacation soon. School break is coming up, and they really haven't done anything Fun with the government payout, they should plan a trip! Her and Holly go back and forth with a few different locations and then Mike bullshits some story about Ted always saying he wanted to take Karen to Paris, and they should 'go for them'
The Second they land they're on the move. Stage a hold up at the airport so they're way too late to check into the hotel they had reservations at and they can get a random room in a different place that the us government wouldn't have known to bug.
They decide they can't just disappear under new identities- that would make it obvious they have something to hide. They instead start playing up that they just really got the travel bug!! Mike and Nancy are like rich 20 somethings it's totally normal for them to pull out of college and travel the world! Sure it's less common to do that with an 11 year old and an infant but they make a point to always have Holly enrolled somewhere no matter how short their stay in a place is.
They usually don't stay in the same place longer than six months- Nancy starts going investigative journalist mode obviously so by the time it takes her to find a new case, solve it, write the expose, and mail it to Murray in the states to publish for her. That's usually how long they stay lmao. Mike and Holly (and Winnie, when she gets older) help with the investigations of course because the Wheeler's are nothing but nosey, Hardy Boys found dead in miami, but Nancy doesn't Mention that in her articles bc she worries it'll make her and Mike look like irresponsible guardians lmao.
Mike was already the type of crazy person who could churn out multiple books a year, and with all the different settings and crazy shit happening around him he is NEVER starved for inspiration. Novel after novel like he's possessed. He doesn't really do series, but all his books are connected with hidden codes woven into them- even in the earliest forms of the internet there's fan forums dedicated to trying to decode everything. He gets HUGELY popular.
and of course the codes and messages are mostly all about El. He never uses a name for her, but like....think about all the Beatrice poems in a series of unfortunate events. That sorta vibe. Sometimes it's just the dedication page, sometimes hidden in the story itself, and there's almost always a character inspired by her as well.
Also no they didn't tell anyone back home that Winnie has powers, and when they send mail/call them they never bring it up just to be safe, but like...everyone just safely assumes lmfao. But since they've made themselves so public, and still visit with and keep in touch with people in the states, luckily no one in charge ever gets suspicious about them.
As for trying to raise a super powered baby...well it's not easy lmao
Luckily since she's So young, once she learns the concept of yes/no they manage to really hammer it into her that these are a Private thing. Sure there's slip ups, and they're always prepared to cause a scene to distract people from them, but as she gets older she's mostly good about it. Mike really walks a fine line with the whole thing, because he doesn't want to scare her and he also doesn't want her to think her powers are a bad thing, so for a while he's like 'it's just really rude to use your powers in front of other people! what if they get sad they don't have them?' and then when she gets to superhero story age he's pointing out how so many heroes pretend like they don't have powers, that they can still use their powers as long as they're safe and responsible with them, stuff like that.
He tells her all about El of course, but when she asks why El isn't with them, well. He can't exactly say "she killed herself before you were even born", you know? So he goes with a "she's a superhero and she REALLY wants to be here but she's so busy protecting everybody" storyline 💔. He's not planning on Never telling her the truth, but he wants to wait until she's an adult. He doesn't want her growing up scared of "bad men" and developing complexes over how she was born, you know?
Nancy, Holly, and him actually do a pretty decent job helping Winnie learn and control her powers considering they don't really understand them lol. They do a lot of like...catch and float exercises, they'll have her mess with the lights during hide and seek to make it harder to find her, stuff like that. It's always some kind of learning game. She REALLY likes going in the void for remote viewing stuff but that's the thing Mike is most strict about- she HAS to ask for permission every time and most of the time he says no lol. All her other powers are "you can use them in the house or when you're alone". She has gone in the void without permission a few times but he like always catches her lmao
Overall though she grows up to be very fun, smart, adventurous. She's kinda Mike's evil twin/his shadow. She loves that they travel so much and it's made her pretty outgoing. She loves weaseling into tight spaces to help Nancy solve a case, she loves proofreading her dad's books with Holly, she's the kinda kid that always has a bunch of mix-matched bandaids on and messy hair and huge happy grin on her face.
Okay now let's rewind and get back to El
El escapes the US, and for a while is in full autopilot mode just trying to survive. She eventually gets to Iceland and decides it's far away enough that she can catch her breath. She settles into a place on the edge of a city- not too secluded, but still gives her enough privacy. Her fake identity is Jana from Canada, and her cover story is a vague mention of losing her family in an accident and needing a change of scenery for her mental health. It serves it's purpose of making sure the people she sees around regularly think she's fragile so they won't pry.
She explores the entire area, mostly for surveillance purposes, but that eventually leads into her getting into hiking as a hobby. She gets a waitressing job and it bores her to tears but at least it's something. She paints every room in her shabby little rental place purple and buys fresh flowers once a week. She makes small talk with her neighbors. She doesn't have it in her to enroll in a school just yet, but she's a frequent flyer at the library and is working through it shelf by shelf. She gets entirely too attached to a stray cat she feeds daily. She gets highlights in her hair and insists she won't cut it unless she starts tripping over it. She tries to make it to the waterfalls at least twice a month.
The more she starts to settle into her new life, the more the adrenaline wears off, and she thinks at first that that's why she's so tired all the time. Like it's all catching up with her at once. But as the months go on she just keeps feeling a bit off, so she eventually caves and goes to a doctor.
Finds out she's like, fucking 7 months pregnant.
She refuses to believe it at first, sure she put on a little weight from eating her heartbreak away, but she's in no way got a baby bump. But the doctor insists that between her being so young, fit, and tall, it's perfectly normal for her to not have a huge bump. She's had other symptoms that she just attributed to stress about. well. everything.
She understandably freaks out. First at the realization she did all that intensive training and battling vecna and the mind flayer while pregnant. Then at the realization of what would've happened had Dr. Kay managed to capture her. Then at the thought of how much more complicated it will be now if she has to up and run again. Not to mention the only experience she has with kids is when Holly occasionally third-wheeled on dates when her and Mike were 13, and all they really did was give her candy and made sure she didn't wander into the street.
But...El is lonely. El can't see her first family again, in order to keep them safe, but that doesn't mean she can't ever start over. She thought she'd give herself a little more time to grieve the past first, sure, but still. She knows deep down this kid is going to have powers, so she can't in good conscious put her in the system, plus she can't bear the thought of no one wanting it and the kid growing up alone just like she was for so long. Plus...it's Mike's kid too. And she misses him so much it feels like she's down a lung.
This is the one and only time El considers breaking her own rules and contacting Mike. She's made it months without using her powers to check on him, or anyone else for fear he might be there and sense her presence anyway. She's just trying to keep them all safe, knows they're probably all going to be under surveillance for the rest of their lives. She never doubted for a second that Mike would give everything up to be with her, but in the end she just couldn't bring herself to let him. She knows he deserves to know about the baby, but...El's life is never not going to be complicated. This baby's life, even if El didn't keep it, would never not be complicated. Mike didn't have to live with that.
And when she goes into the library one day and sees his debut novel out, (something he wrote and barely edited in a frenzied couple months of grief after the bomb went off, and was picked up by the first publisher he sent it to because it was so messy and raw they thought it'd be the next american classic), El sees the novel, and she sees Mike's real, legal name on the cover, and she sees a dorky picture of him in the book jacket, and she reads the author bio and finds out his parents died and he now has partial custody of his baby sister at just 18, all because El let him hide her in his basement when they were 11 years old...it just reaffirms the decision she made in Hawkins. She's not messing up his life anymore, whether he likes it or not.
(She buys every book he ever puts out, though. She reads all the dedication notes to her, and she decodes all the hidden messages for her, and she has notebooks full of her responses back to him that she'll never send.) (She's relieved, in a way, because she thinks this means he figured out what her plan was, that he knew she wasn't dead.) (He didn't.)
El's obviously out of her zone when it comes to babies, especially since she had so little time to prepare, but she's in a bit of an older community, and they all feel a tad protective of the young orphan girl with the sad eyes and shy smile, so the second it Gets Out her neighbors are trying to help. Giving her hand-me-downs, making homecooked meals she can keep frozen, stuff like that. The diner she works at is pretty slow, so the boss said she can bring the baby in with her once it's old enough to be in a highchair. The librarian picks out the best pregnancy and baby books they have for her. She's more than a little overwhelmed with how nice people are being, but she's greatful nonetheless.
She gives birth alone in her tiny little bathroom because she was too scared to go to a hospital. She had planned to, but just couldn't do it once the time came. She could not stop thinking about her own mother, what had been done to her. She couldn't stop remembering when Terry Ives showed her memories of her own birth- how much love her mother had felt, and then the devastation of losing her. Everything Terry Ives had done, had gone through just to try and save El had never mattered more to her than in this moment. So when she saw that she had a little girl, she named her Ivy, in honor of her grandmother she'd never know, in honor of the Ives family getting another chance at happiness in spite of everything.
Ivy's powers start up almost immediately after birth, so for a while El is constantly on high alert trying to anticipate what she'll do next lol. The concerned neighbors chalk her not taking visitors up to new mom jitters combined with being overprotective after whatever accident took the rest of her family. No clue she's actually locked in psychic warfare with a newborn. Things are flying all around the home and the power on the whole block has been blown out more than once in a week.
El eventually figures out a way to get it under control- she manages to get into the baby's mind a bit, not a full void dive in, but enough to feel what she's feeling, and if El just thinks calming thoughts, Ivy chills out. El basically has to turn herself into a breathing white noise machine, but hey, whatever works lmfao. All the baby's powers are being used trying to stay connected to her mom, because what baby DOESN'T want that, so she's too tired out for any more power outbursts.
This mini mind meld ends up being a HUGE help as Ivy ages- she can't read El's mind, per say, but it makes her intuitively know that she has to hide her powers from everyone else. El is thrilled she catches on so quickly- as much as she appreciates everything Hopper did for her in hindsight, that's not the kinda life she wants her daughter to have. El doesn't have to explain why things are dangerous, and she doesn't have to keep Ivy under lock and key.
Ivy grows up extremely smart- she was already just a bright kid, but as she gets to conversational age, El just kinda starts talking to her about the textbooks she's reading? Lmao like El is still dedicated to basically teaching herself everything, and six months of public school didn't really give her a concept of like, grade levels, so she ends up teaching Ivy whatever she's currently learning. Like, if she's reading a book about astrophysics, so is her 6 year old lmfao.
Ivy's pretty shy, but she's sweet and polite and has a crazy active imagination. Every time she comes up with some new wacky story, El can only think of Mike. El and Ivy read his books together, and El tells her that the coded messages he writes are actually for her. Tells Ivy that her father isn't a fiction author, he's an adventurer recording all his journeys, and that she's just too little to join him right now, so he writes those coded messages just for her to figure out because he knows how smart she is. One time, Mike put out a book about a curly haired, gangly limbed little girl solving mysteries in a magic forest with a big waterfall, and Ivy was CONVINCED it was all about her and a sign she was almost old enough to go adventuring. It made El's chest ache so bad she had to go to the doctor to be sure it wasn't something else.
Overall, though, they live a pretty quiet, uneventful life. Ivy has friends at school, El makes friends with their parents. They join a book club together. El's a soccer mom. El eventually starts up a little tourist business where she takes people around different places. Ivy can be a bit moody at times, but she doesn't fight with El all that often since they can read each other's feelings and therefore always know where they're coming from in a disagreement lol. They meditate in the void every morning and night. El's a bit more lax with letting her use her powers- she herself will use them throughout the day, and she doesn't want to be a hypocrite. Her only rule is that Ivy is always careful to not be obvious about it. If people are around, make it look like something mundane could've caused it. You know?
Okay so one night, Ivy's like 12, she's home alone because El's co-workers bullied her into going out with them for a night. There's nothing good on tv. She's bored. She decides to hop in the void for her nightly meditation in there.
Weirdly, though, almost immediately, she's face to face with a girl she's never seen before. She's NEVER seen anyone in there other than her mother before. This girl is around her age, has messy black curls in a bob and possibly more freckles than anyone else on the planet, and familiar light brown eyes. She ALSO looks shocked to see someone else in there. Both girls are like. spider-man pointing meme at each other lmao
So they start chatting. Like, you wouldn't pass up a chance to talk to someone with the same powers as you, right?
Ivy finds out that this girl's name is Winnie, and she's not really allowed to be in the void, but her dad's away on a book tour so she figured she could get away with it this time. Ivy's like okay weird we have the same powers and our dad's are both writers??? And Winnie's like 'oh I've met a ton of writers, I usually tag along to all my dad's events, what's your dad's name maybe I've met him?' and Ivy says 'Michael Wheeler' and Winnie's like. what the FUCK.
So they start talking more. They're like okay our mom's have different names but the same powers and both met our father when they were like 11/12...right right not suspicious. Oh you've never met your father and I've never met my mother? right right okay. Wait but my mom's not a superhero, she's just on the pta?? Yeah well my dad's a fiction author and has NEVER MENTIONED YOU, SO-
God it's like. 2002? They have SEEN the Lindsay Lohan parent trap movie lmfao they piece together pretty easily that they have some Bitch Ass Liars for parents!!! and they want ANSWERS!!
They meet up every single night while Mike's away on tour- exchanging information and stories, theorizing about what is Wrong with their parents, getting to know each other. They're so similar and they get along so well. It hurts them to know they could have been sisters and besties this entire time. They both feel abandoned by their respective missing parent despite the fact the other swears it seems so out of character for them, and like, they're hurt that they fell for the dumb lies as long as they did. Sure the stories about superheroes and adventurers were fantastical, but when you have magic fucking powers yourself and no reason to think your parent is lying to you, obviously you'd believe it? But now it was just making them feel dumb and naive and angry.
But they love getting to know each other now. They swap gossip from their schools, tell funny stories from growing up, give each other book and movie recs, practice their powers some more with each other. They become best friends. They also hatch a plan.
Eventually, Mike gets back from his book tour, so Winnie can't sneak into the void anymore. It was easy to do it when Holly fell asleep, but Mike always just had a way of knowing that drove Winnie up the wall.
Babysitting duty relieved, Holly goes back to the states for a bit to visit with Max. Nancy's like undercover with the Irish mob for some fucking reason. Winnie's finished the school year so Mike is like 'okay just us for a bit! Where do you wanna travel to next?' and Winnie's like. well we've never been to Iceland.
She was half expecting him to freak out at that but he didn't react at all- he was just like 'huh you're right we haven't. let's go!' lol
She TRIED to subtly get him to go on one of "Jana's" tours, but Mike's always preferred to just bumble around without a guide. But luckily, Ivy had told her that she and El could be found at the waterfalls at almost the exact same time every other Sunday. They ALWAYS hiked there. And Winnie knows her dad loves visiting waterfalls so while he's not much of a hiker, it wasn't a hard sell.
When they find each other, the girls make a big show of like running to hug each other and making a scene lmao like 'oh, you don't know my BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD, MOM?' like make no mistake they ARE mike 'the brat' wheeler's descendants lmfao
El and Mike are looking at the girl's and then each other in total shock, hundreds of emotions rushing through them all at once, Mike is just finding out in this second that El is even ALIVE for fucks sake, and.....that's all I got lol I told you I'm not writing the whole thing out 😜 hope you enjoyed
