#s2!au

This idea will not leave my brain so I guess it's time for it to be the Internet's problem.

Eleven wanders the upside down. The seal feels warm against her fingers. There is no way out. As she wanders the empty, uncharted wasteland, she's unafraid. She thinks maybe she should be, as this is just another prison, another task for her to complete in total isolation.

As she wanders, she thinks about closing the portal, how she latched her consciousness onto the only other living mind she could find. On Will. On his fears. On his love. For his brother. For Johnathan.

Maybe love is more than she thought. Maybe love as Mike tried to explain was not all the love there is. Maybe there are different kinda of love. After all, Mike showed her Eggos. Lucas showed her thick homemade pancakes with chocolate chips.

Kids could be peers, not rivals, something for her to put herself against and win.

She wanders for a long time. The hunger becomes unbearable as her stomach tingles like it's bubbling. All she can think of are the incredible pancakes she had the Sinclair house. She dreams of maple syrup and honey. When her legs are sore from hours, from days of walking, she collapses.

The smell of dead demodogs is not so bad in the Upside Down. The texture of is terrible. But she's eaten worse things.

As her mind simmers back to consciousness, she realizes she's moving through the dense air of the Upside Down. Being carried. She tenses, but her consciousness just reaches out on instinct, slipping into the one who carries her.

And she sees herself. She sees him. When she closed the portal, he cried out and collapsed in water. Big water. In his mind, it's called a beach. The sun was all around him and the world went small. The bright sun fades around him as his body burns as if he's fire made flesh.

In the darkness, all she can see is him. All he can see is her.Their eyes met.

There's a woman's voice there screaming that he has a name, he is not Twenty-One anymore. The voice is far off but is cut off by the sound of crashing waves.

"You're alive," he then says.

She blinks her eyes open.

The path he carves through the chaos is intentional and quick, eyes ahead, focused. He knows where they're going. She can see in his mind where he's carrying her. She's not afraid.

As she shifts through his mind, his memory jumbles. Echoes of screams, doors slamming, and full body pain. It's hard to tell her pain from his.

He climbs through what seems like a rift in the Upside Down. It's terrifying enough to consider such an idea that she wraps her arms around his neck and hides her face.

Eventually, he carries her through a final portal into a laboratory. This one is not stark white. It's shades of light gray and green. It's less artificial and harsh. The temperature is warmer.

A woman with glasses kneels down in a smart white lab coat and asks for her number. Asks what lab she's from. Asks what her powers are?

Eleven stands on her own, but presses herself close to the boy who carried her. He's older than the boys she met in Hawkins, but a boy all the same. Or so she thinks.

He shifts his weight and clears his throat. The woman looks to him and she sighs, defeated.

After that, another woman escorts her to bathe and eat. She keeps a connection to the boy, tracking his location in the facility.

"Are you like me?" she thinks into his consciousness.

"No." is his response. "I have no powers, and was deemed failed experiment Twenty-one."

"But you heard. When I cried out for help, you heard me."

He thinks for a while. Confusion. Hurt. Uncertainty. Doubt. Failure. Failure. Failure.

"You have more powers than you think. Keep it from them. I will try to keep you safe."

Would anywhere be truly safe for her again? Being inside his consciousness, she could feel his strength, the determination to keep her safe. If she could stay connected to him, like this, it was possible she could lie, could be safe. He escaped. In the back of his mind, there is a loud, booming thought that he escaped all this and yet he's back. They're trapped. He wants them to be free.

"My friends," she smiles as the thought of them, "they called me El, but I chose the name Jane. Did you choose a name?"