EDITED
✪ ✪ ✪ = Time skip
The two kids make it to one of the boys houses and sit on the couch, listening to the boys talk among themselves.
The boys turn around and ask, "Is there a number we can call for your parents?" He speaks, looking at Four.
The boys start to talk on top of each other.
"Where's your hair? Do you have cancer?"
"Did you run away?"
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"Is that blood?" One of the boys tries to reach out and touch Eleven, and Four puts their arm up again to protect her.
"Stop it! You're freaking them out!"
"They're freaking me out."
"I bet they're deaf." The boy with a baseball cap claps right in Four's face, making them jump. "Not deaf."
"All right, that's enough, all right? They're scared and cold." The one boy in the middle says. He seems to be very fond of the kids.
They could hear thunder, and it made them jump. At this point, anything made them scared.
The nice boy came back with some clean clothes. "Here, these are clean. Okay?"
Four grabs them slowly and puts them up to their faces.
Eleven stands up, about to take her shirt off. Four reached to keep Eleven's hands down, and it looks like so did the middle boy.
"No, no, no, no!"
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
"Privacy?" Four mumbles
The boy was quick to respond. "See over there? That's the bathroom. Privacy. Get it?"
The kids nod. Four picks up the clothes and heads towards the bathroom. Eleven walks in last to see the middle boy, closing the door.
Eleven quickly grabbed the door, making the boy visibly confused. "You don't want it closed?"
"No," Eleven says in a quiet yet hearable voice.
"Oh, so you can speak. Okay well... Um, how about we just keep the door?" He closed the door so just a crack could be seen. "Is this better?"
Before Eleven protests, Four speaks up, "Yes."
Four starts to change while Eleven looks around. Four starts to think.
The boy with the cap seems to be a little more imaginative than the other boys. He had puffy curls in his hair. It looked like he had no teeth. She could hear him talking outside.
"This is mental." He speaks.
The boy in the middle had gentle eyes and fluffy hair. He seemed more based on common sense than what's really going on or what others think.
"At least they can talk."
"The one said 'no' and 'yes.' Your three-year-old sister says more."
The last of the boys says he was probably the most down-to-earth a 12-year-old could be. He was dark-skinned and probably smart, but in a dumb way, if that makes sense.
"The other one said 'privacy'."
"She tried to get naked."
"But the other one stopped her."
"Sure, but there's something seriously wrong with them. Like wrong in the head."
"She went like..." Four heard a tiny thump.
"I bet they escaped from Pennhurst."
"From where?"
"The nuthouse in Kerley County."
You've got a lot of family there."
"Bite me. Seriously, though, think about it. That would explain their shaved hair and why they're so crazy."
"Why she went like..."
"They're escapees, is the point. They're probably psycho."
"Like Michael Myers."
"Exactly! We should have never brought them here."
"So you just wanted to leave them out in that storm?"
"Yes! We went out to find Will, not another problem."
"I think we should tell your mom."
"I second that."
"Who's crazy now?"
"How is that crazy?"
"Because we weren't supposed to be out tonight, remember?"
"So?"
"So if I tell my mom and she tells your mom and your mom,"
"Oh man."
"Our houses become Alcatraz."
"Exactly. We'll never find Will."
There was a slight pause. "All right, here's the plan. They sleep here tonight."
"You're letting a girl—"
"Just listen! In the morning, they sneak around my house, go to the front, and ring my doorbell. My mom will answer and know exactly what to do. She'll send them back to Pennhurst or wherever they came from. We'll be totally in the clear. And tomorrow night we go back out. And this time, we find Will."
Four snaps back to reality when Eleven taps their shoulder.
"You done?" Four asked, and eleven nodded. "Let's go." Four says they are walking out of the door to see the two boys walking up the stairs.
"Here you guys go. This is mine and my sister Nancy's sleeping bag." The middle boy says
"You really think they're psycho?"
"I wouldn't want them in my house." Four hears the boys say, and just then the boy with the cap and Four lock eyes.
"Mental." He says he's making Four look away.
Four's focus goes to the middle boy when he says, "Hey, Um, I never asked your name."
Four rolled up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo that shows '004'.
"Is that real?" The boy reached to touch the tattoo, only to have Four pull away swiftly.
"Sorry, I've just never seen a kid with a tattoo before. What does it mean? Four?"
"My name is Four," Four says in a hoarse voice while grabbing Eleven's arm to show him her tattoo.
"Eleven," He whispers before speaking up again. "Those are your guys names?"
They nod in unison.
"Eleven and Four. Okay. Um, well, my name is Mike. Short for Michael. Maybe we can call you El. Short for Eleven. And we could call you... Um..."
"Y/N. Just call me Y/N." Four says, interrupting the boy she now knows as Mike.
"Oh, okay, night, El. Night Y/N."
The kids look at each other and say at the same time, "Night, Mike."
Mike closes the fort he made for the kids, turns off the light, and goes up the stairs.
Y/N closes their eyes and tries to sleep. Meanwhile, El sits there for a minute before going to sleep.
✪ ✪ ✪
That morning, El found a walkie-talkie. Y/N watched as she played with it until Mike came down.
Mike opened the kids fort and immediately looked at El's hand.
"Hey, you found my supercomm." So that's what it's called. Y/N thinks but is quickly snapped out of their thoughts.
"Pretty cool, huh? I talk to my friends on it. Mostly Lucas, because he lives so close. Signals are pretty weak." Y/N looks at him. 'Man, he talks a lot.' Y/N thinks.
Y/N has always been good at thinking. After all, she can do a lot of things to the mind.
Mike goes to pull something out of his pocket.
"I got you breakfast." He says he's handing the kids one waffle each. "So listen, this is going to sound a little weird, but I just need you two to go out there. Then go to the front door and ring the doorbell. My mom will answer, and you'll tell her that you're lost and that you need help, but whatever you do, you can't tell her about last night or that you know me. Understand?" Mike finishes with a smile, acting like what he said was obvious. "Really, it's no big deal. We'll just pretend to meet each other again. And my mom—she'll know who to call."
Y/N looks at him with an 'are you kidding me?' face and says, "No."
Mike looks at the girls, confused, and repeats Y/N's words. "No?" El repeats is back. "No." At this point, everyone in the room had said 'no'.
Mike talks again after an awkward silent moment. "No, you don't want my mom to get help?" The kids shake their heads. "You're in trouble, aren't you?" Neither of the kids say anything. "Who are you in trouble with?"
Y/N said nothing, but El whispered, "bad."
"Bad?" Mike repeats. Wow, this boy sure likes to repeat other people.
"Bad people?" Mike guesses. Y/N and El both nod at the same time.
"They want to hurt you? The bad people?" He also likes to guess a lot.
El holds up a finger gun to her head, then to Mike's, and finally to Y/N's. "Understand?" She said it just as Mike did a few minutes ago. While Y/N looks to the floor.
The moment of realization was cut short by a woman, probably his mom, calling for him.
"Michael. Where are you? We're going to be late. Let's go!" Y/N wondered what they were going to be late for, so they read his mind.
It was something called 'school'. Y/N had heard about school; it was a place that kids went to learn. Y/N wasn't sure exactly what they did in school, but they really wanted to go to one, or at least see one.
Y/N was snapped out of their thoughts by Mike. "All right, I'll be back. Just stay here, okay? Stay here." Before walking up the stairs, he closed the fort.
Y/N and El looked at each other. El had a look of regret. And Y/N had a look of worry.
✪ ✪ ✪
After a while, the two kids heard people coming down the stairs. El got close to Y/N for protection, and Y/N turned the two invisibly. The fort door opened to reveal a smiling Mike, but his smile quickly faded. Once he looked, he saw no kids.
Y/N quickly becomes visible once they see the look on his face.
"Woah, now that's cool, but why'd you do it?" He was confused. As the kids smile at one another.
"No reason; we just thought you were someone else." Four explains.
"Oh," He says, his smile quickly returning. Well, come on then."
The three of them walk up the stairs when Mike starts talking again.
"You want anything to drink? We have OJ, skim milk... What else? Um, we have..." Mike stops talking when he sees the two weren't behind him. He walks up to them and continues talking.
"Oh, this is my living room. It's mostly just for watching TV. Nice right? It's 22-inch. That's like ten times bigger than Dustin's."
Y/N was very interested in what Mike was saying, but he stopped because El walked away.
El walked over to the fireplace with Y/N and Mike close behind. She rubs her finger on one of the pictures. "Pretty," she says quietly.
"I guess." Mike says as he stops walking, but Y/N wants to see what El presumes is 'pretty'.
Y/N looks at her and thinks she is actually kind of pretty. "That's my sister, Nancy. And that's baby Holly. And those are my parents." Mike says as the two make their way down the line.
Mike pauses before saying something again that makes Y/N and El freeze.
"What are your parents like? Do they live close? Ar-" Y/N stops him before he can say more. "What's this?" They say they were pointing to a chair El was next to.
"Um... That's our La-Z-boy. It's where my dad sleeps." Mike says he is answering Four's question. He looked at El and said, "You can try it if you want."
El looks at Y/N, asking if she can. Y/N trusted Mike for the most part, so they nodded their heads in approval.
Y/N watched as El made her way around the chair and Mike kneeled beside it.
After El sat down in the chair, Mike said, "Just trust me, okay?" El nodded in response.
After that, Mike pulled a lever, 'causing the chair to fly back. Y/N's head shot up from the floor where they had been staring to look at El with a face of shock and worry, only to see El smiling at Mike.
"Seems fun, right?" Mike put the chair back in place. "Now you try." Mike said he looked at Y/N.
with a bright smile on his face. Y/N shake their heads, while El reaches for the lever, making herself fly back again. The two of them laugh, looking at El.
✪ ✪ ✪
The three kids make their way up the stairs, and Mike starts showing the kids his toys.
Mike starts speaking, mimicking one of the toys he showed them. "Ready are you? How do you know you are ready? His name is Yoda. He can use the Force to move things with his mind, like this." Mike finishes pushing all the toys in between the kids while saying, "Whoosh!"
Y/N watched as El wondered away while Mike was talking. "Oh, this is Dinosuar Rory. Look, he has a speaker in his mouth, so he can roar." Mike pressed the button, making the dinosaur toy roar a high-pitched roar.
Y/N was very interested in Mike's life. They often found themselves thinking about what they would be like if they were 'normal'. Would they and Eleven still be siblings? Would they have ever met Mike, Cap Boy, and Common Sense Boy?
Y/N turned back to reality to see Mike set down the toy and run over to El. Y/N stood up and made their way to where the two were standing.
"Oh, these are all my science fair trophies. We came first every year. Except for last year when we got third." He sighed "Mr.Clarke said it was totally political."
Y/N smiled until they saw a picture of all the boys, but there was one boy Y/N didn't recognize. El seems to notice too.
After a moment of silence, El slowly put her hand up to touch the part of the picture that the cute and mysterious boy was in.
Mike looked at El, then at Y/N, who looked back at Mike. "You know Will? Did you see him? Last night? On the road?" Before either one could answer, the three heard a car pull up and rushed to the window.
Mike grabbed their hands and started running down the stairs.
"I bought Pizza and Macaroni."
"Okay,"
"Okay."
They heard a woman and a little girl talk back and forth. Y/N was ready to turn all of them invisible, but Mike ran up the stairs before they could.
"Ted? Is that you?" The women yelled from down the stairs.
"Just me, mom!"
"Mike? What are you doing at home?"
"One second!" Mike yelled, ending whatever kind of conversation they were having.
The three of them ran into Mike's room. Mike shut the door while Y/N and El looked around, shocked.
Mike dragged them to a closet and opened the door, signaling for them to get in.
"In here. I'll be right back, okay?" Both
Kids were
.
"Please, you have to get in, or my mom will find you. Do you understand? I won't tell her about you. I promise."
El ignored his whole speech and focused on the word promise. "Promise?" El said.
Y/N got scared and just wanted to get in the closet so they weren't caught by Mike's mom.
"It means something that you can't break. Ever." Mike explained to El what a promise was.
"Michael?" His mom said it again.
Before anyone could say anything else, Y/N grabbed El's hand and dragged her into the closet.
Once they were in, Mike closed the door, and Y/N sat on the floor, expecting it to be a while.
El started to breathe heavily and look around. "El?" Before Y/N could do anything, El melted on the floor next to Y/N and put her head in the crook of Y/N's neck.
Y/N started playing with the hair El had on her head. Partly to comfort her and mostly to read her mind.
El's Mind
El was being carried away by two men in all-white clothing. She was crying, not sobbing, and yelling the name Y/N hated the most, Papa. Just then, he appeared around the corner.
Y/N recalled this very moment when El was carried right past Y/N and El's cell, which they liked to call a 'bedroom'. Y/N was excited to see El, but when they saw her go right past, Y/N knew immediately where she was going.
This was the acute cell. The guards called it a cell, even Papa.
"Four!" El screamed Y/N's old name, and they screamed hers right back. "Eleven!"
And that was all Y/N saw, but now they were seeing a whole other point of view.
El was thrown into the cell. Before El could run back out, the door closed. She ran and banged on the door as hard as she could, Yelling both Four and Papa.
She gave up after a while and sat in the corner, sobbing.
Present
Y/N opened their eyes to see El crying the same way she did in her memory.
Y/N hugged El, saying, "Shhh, it's okay. I know. I know. It's okay," Y/N said, El continuing to cry. Suddenly, you heard the bedroom door open, and Mike spoke. "Eleven? Y/N? Is everything okay? Guys?" He opened the closet door to see Y/N and El on the floor.
Y/N looked at him, and he bent down as El looked up at him. "Mike," she said, calming down. Y/N was surprised to see how she calmed down in his presents.
Y/N was a little jealous of this. Y/N was with El for all her life. They've been through everything together.
"Is everything okay?" He asks.
Everything was quiet for a minute until she nodded.
"Are you sure?" Mike asked, sounding genuinely concerned. El smiled and said, "Promise." She said it back.
A quick pause Mike helped El up, then Y/N. Mike continued to show off his toys before inviting the other boys over.
✪ ✪ ✪
The boys walk in with a questionable look on their faces while Y/N and El are sitting on Mike's bed.
"Are you out of your mind?"
"Just listen to me."
"You're out of your mind!"
"They know about Will. Well, at least she knows about Will." Mike says, pointing at El.
Y/N scrunches their eyebrows and snaps back. "Hey, I know about Will too."
The two boys look at them in amazement, seeing as they didn't know they could speak full sentences.
"What do you mean you know about Will?" The Cap Boy now known as Dustin asked Y/N, but Mike interrupted her.
Mike grabbed the picture of the four boys. "She pointed at him, at his picture. They knew he was missing. I could tell."
"You could tell?"
"Just think about it. Do you really think it was a coincidence that we found them in Mirkwood, the same place where Will disappeared?"
"That is weird."
"And she said bad people are after them. I think maybe these bad people are the same ones that took Will. I think they know what happened to him."
"Then why don't they tell us?" The down-to-earth boy, they learned, was named Lucas, slightly raising his voice as he walked towards the kids. "Do you know where he is?"
After the two didn't answer, he got closer and grabbed El's shoulders. Now yelling, he said, "Do you know where Will is?"
"Stop it, you're scaring her!"
"She should be scared! If you know where he is, tell us!" The boys fought back and forth.
In the process, Y/N got into Lucas's mind and made him think about some memory he had of a little girl kicking him in the shin and running off. Doing this caused him to freeze. El noticed and elbowed them in the side, which made them lose focus and let go of Lucas's mind.
He looked at Y/N, shocked, as they wiped the blood from their noses, and their eyes stop glowing purple "You shouldn't have touched her." Y/N said, calmer than a river.
Lucas turned to Mike, saying, "This is nuts. We have to take them to your mom."
"No! Eleven and Y/N said telling any adult would put us in danger."
"What kind of danger?"
"Her name is Eleven. El, for short."
Mike, what kind of danger?"
"Danger danger." Mike says that before doing the finger gun thing, El did it, but before he got to Lucas, he smacked Mike's hand.
"No, no, no! We're going back to Plan A. We're telling your mom." Lucas says he's going back to yelling.
He stomped toward the door and opened it. It immediately closed back up. He tried once more, but it closed and locked again.
All the boys turned to look at the kids; this time El had the nose bleed, and both of them were standing up.
"No." Y/N and El said it in unison.
✪ ✪ ✪
"Nancy, boys, dinner." Mike's mom says that as they went down the stairs, all the boys said to stay where they were.
Y/N and El could hear them talking down the stairs, but they ignored it.
"I'm bored. Where's that thing... the, uh, oh, the supercomm?"
Only Y/N knew that El could speak full sentences. "Um... Oh, it's down stairs."
"Okay, well, I'm going back down the stairs."
"Hold on. I'm coming." Y/N finishes
As the two walk down the stairs, Y/N turns them invisible right before Mike's mom sees them.
El plays with the supercomm while Y/N looks at the game pieces from a game called 'Dungons and Dragons'. They also read the handbook; they now knew a lot about the game and could probably play it without any problem.
"El? Y/N?" Mike says he's carrying a try of food, with the boys following close behind.
"No adults. Just us and some meatloaf." Y/N walks over and sits next to El.
"Don't worry. They won't tell anyone about you two. They promise. Right?" Mike turns around to look at the guys.
Dustin said, "We never would've upset you if we knew you had superpowers."
Mike swiftly moved and hit Dustin on the leg. "What Dustin is trying to say is that they were just scared earlier. That's all."
Y/N mumbled, but El still heard them. "El was scared, but Lucas still attacked her."
"We just wanted to find our friend." Lucas said, finally not yelling.
"Friend? Fou-Y/N, what is 'friend'?"
"Umm. I don't know. I've never had a friend." Y/N said the boys looked sympathetic.
"Are they serious? ...Umm, a friend is someone." Lucas was speaking, but Mike cut him off.
"It's someone that you'd do anything for. You lend them your cool stuff, like comic books and trading cards. And they never break a promise."
"Especially when there's spit." All the boys added something to the 'meaning of friend, but when Lucas said this, Y/N and El stopped him in his tracks.
"Spit?" the kids said in unison.
"A spit swear means you never break your word. It's a bond." While Lucas was talking, he spit in his hand and shook it with Dustin.
Dustin was disgusted. But Mike still talked.
"That's super important, because friends...they tell each other things. Things that parents don't know."
When the boys were done talking, El looked at them in a not-so-nice way. But Y/N continued to look at the DnD board.
Y/N gets up to go back to the board, and El follows close behind.
The two kids sat at the table where the board was held.
The boy started the notice. Lucas was the first to say something. "What are the weirdos doing?"
Y/N was looking at the game pieces. El had closed her eyes, and Mike asked, "El? Y/N, what is she doing?"
Y/N looked at Mike, then looked at El in complete focus, her head tilted down.
Y/N brought their heads back up. "She's looking for Will." Y/N said with a tiny smile.
Just then El's head came back up, and she grabbed Will's character and looked at it closely. "Will." was all she said.
Mike sat next to her and said, "Did you see him? On Mirkwood? Do you know where he is?"
Y/N started to catch what El was throwing. Y/N took their hand and swiped it across the board, and El flipped it, putting Will's piece in the middle. Everyone seems to be confused except Y/N and El.
"I don't understand." Mike said Y/N was about to give him a long explanation, but El spoke up. "Hiding."
"Will's hiding?" Mike asked in a low tone. All El did was nod. "From the bad men?" Mike continued guessing. El and Y/N shook their heads. "Then from who?" Mike asked.
Y/N bent down and grabbed the Demogorgon piece and set it next to Will's character. All the boys looked at each other in horror and worry.
✪ ✪ ✪
A//N: Wow, this was a long one, but everything that happened in this chapter comes in later, like how Y/N put the Demogorgon at the end. Y/N has way more powers than you've seen, and probably more than you think. Thank you for reading. This chapter has 4227 words.