tangled (mileven au)

a new day

๑ 17 ๑

El awoke the next morning, still a bit shaken up from the previous day's events. All the strain she had put on herself while fighting with Brenner left her body feeling awfully weak. Even after all she had done at the lab throughout the years, her body still wasn't quite used to what she could do.

Thankfully though, the excessive pounding on her head had eased up overnight, so she wasn't in as bad of shape as she could've been in.

Everything else that occurred surprisingly didn't bother her all that much. Sure, it was a bit unsettling to know that someone was killed standing just a few feet away from her, someone she had known her entire life. She could still hear the sound of the gunshot and the loud thud that followed when his body fell to the floor.

As unsettling as it was though, she could only focus on the relief she felt just thinking about how she had gotten away from that monster... forever, thanks to the Chief. There was no fear that she would somehow be found and dragged back to that cabin. She felt safe and free, like when she first went out into the world with Mike, only now that feeling would stick around much longer than a day.

With that in mind, it didn't take much to force herself out of the warmth of Mike's bed, welcoming the start of a new day.

El made her way down to the kitchen where she found Mike, inhaling a large bowl of cereal. She took a moment to enjoy the sight, admiring how cute he looked shoveling spoonful after spoonful into his mouth.

It wasn't long before she got lost in thoughts of him and how amazing he'd been to her. After leaving the cabin and the life she knew behind, they'd gone straight to Mike's house and he had been taking such good care of her ever since. He insisted on waiting on her hand and foot, and he certainly did. From running her a warm bath, to making her dinner that she graciously scarfed down before passing out in his comfy bed, he happily did it all.

She wasn't sure what she had done to deserve someone like him in her life, but she would always be grateful for it, for him.

El carried on with her staring until he finally noticed she was standing there and dropped the spoon into his bowl.

"El! You're up! How you feeling?"

"Good, like a free bird." She sighed contentedly, finally leaving her place near the doorway to get to him. "Well, a free bird that flew into a tree, but still free."

Mike chuckled softly, looking up at her with the softest grin on his face. "Good."

"What's in there?" She asked, gesturing to the large box she just realized was sitting on the counter.

"Oh, Chief Hopper brought it over last night after you'd gone to sleep. He figured you'd want to know more about your family, so this is all the information he managed to dig up."

El removed the top from the box, finding a decent sized stack of files inside. "Oh, wow. That's a lot."

She eagerly flipped through each one, her eyes catching random bits of information on who she really was, who she could've been. There was also information about each of her parents— where they were born, their birthdates and unfortunately, both their death dates.

Of course, she expected to find one for her mother, but with her father it was a different story. After finding out that the man she believed to be her father wasn't actually her father, a small part of her was hoping that her real one was out there somewhere.

But he wasn't, and that small part of her was let down. She wasn't going to dwell on it though, putting all her attention back on what was written about herself.