✓ Her Mixtape, Stranger Things

lv. nothing cuts like a mother

Ever since her father left, Rue had never felt what real love was. Only the manufactured love produced by the woman who birthed her, twisting her daughter's mind to love and cherish her because no one else would.

And the rare nights, she would cry at her feet. She'd ask her to stroke her cheek, to kiss her forehead. Please look after me, mom. Please stop yelling at me. Please tell me what to do right. Please, mom, will you ever love me like other moms love their daughters?

Mom, please. Love me as I love you.

She'd be a child asking her mother to love her.

But what is a mother?

Should she kiss you goodnight?

Do mothers do that?

Even when she's gone, she's not really gone. Emilia was everywhere Rue went. Her face was engraved in memory to the last freckle and speck in her eyes. And the smell of her perfume and the sound of her voice. And the softness of her skin. And how her eyes would light up when she smiled. It hurts. Because she was gone, she wasn't there. She was only a memory now.

She had never loved her daughter, and the daughter loved her nevertheless.

It was the complex type of love a child couldn't understand. Emilia Davis was a person Rue was told to love because she was her mother, but there was no other real reason to love her. Emilia had hurt her. Mothers are not meant to hurt their daughters. And yet.

And yet.

There's still the child in her that loves her mom.

And at the same time, Rue never wanted to be like her mom.

She refused to use her powers on people because of it.

And she never wanted to hurt people the way she had.

But there she is, standing at the center of a deserted room with mutilated bodies at her feet.

Rue was everything her mother was and worse.

Hot tears had pricked her eyes the second she stepped into the household on the Wheelers once again. Dustin Henderson and Lucas Sinclair's mothers had run up to their sons, wrapping them into their arms, cupping their cheeks, kissing their faces, and stroking their heads as they frowned at them in worry once they saw their bleeding wounds and bruised skin.

Rue stood there watching it all occur, her stomach twisting with furious jealousy because she wished to be held that way. A part of her hoped Joyce Byers had been there, and Rue would have preferred to hear her yell at her after being chased by officers if it meant she knew someone was concerned about her. That someone cared. Joyce Byers seemed to be the only person who could love Rue like a mother should, even though Rue wasn't her daughter.

Sheriff Powell shut the front door behind him once everyone had walked into the house, and he immediately led the teenagers into the living room with officer Callahan.

The living room of the Wheelers housed about half of Hawkins. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but the Hendersons, Sinclairs, and Wheelers were all sitting there, as was practically the whole police department.

The children sat on a couch, wincing as their scraped skin and bleeding cuts shifted and hurt with every movement. Mrs. Wheeler had also winced as she saw the grime, blood, and dirt-covered teenagers crammed together on her beautiful, expensive, new, clean couch.

Chief Powell grabbed a chair from the kitchen and placed it right before the couch. He sat down as Callahan stood next to him, his arms crossed over his chest. Chief Powell sighed, folding his hands on his lap. "And what exactly were you all doing at the lake?"