GODDAMMIT!
Ana had left for all of five minutes to double check that the doors were locked, and the older two had escaped from under her watchful eyes. Jonathan Byers' car was gone too, so she knew they weren't just off in another part of the building either.
These kids just had to make life difficult, didn't they? Is this the annoyance Hopper always felt when Ana herself was being contrary? The reading teacher tried not to deliberate on the comparison for too long.
Well, she hadn't lost the younger four yet, so at least there was that. Hopefully, Jonathan and Nancy could manage whatever they'd run off to do without proper adult supervision.
And that's all Ana had to go off right then, hope, because the crew had returned to the stalemate of waiting.
If only time were passing as uneventfully for Hopper and Joyce at Hawkins Laboratory.
The police chief was faced with two impossible choices while locked in the interrogation room. One, protect the girl and sacrifice Will Byers to whatever wasteland he was currently trapped in. Two, sacrifice the girl and earn the opportunity to rescue Will from almost certain doom. The latter wasn't just about giving up Eleven, though. Sending agents to recover her at the school also meant betraying Ana's location, and she could very well be caught in the crossfire.
Ultimately, Hopper had chosen the option with the most amount of variables. The lesser of all evils, as it were. If you throw enough things up in the air, some of them have to come down landing upright, right? He willed that to be the case, hoping that Ana could take care of herself and the others like she had been so stubbornly professing for the last week.
Because he too, only had hope to go off right then.
Dustin and his damn pudding obsession had actually given them a few minutes of leeway that'd they'd have otherwise missed.
Seeing the wave of government officers pour into the Hawkins Middle gymnasium had prompted Ana to grab each kid by the jacket collar and throw them one by one into the hallway before directing them to her classroom.
Maneuvering through the hallways as quickly and quietly as possible, Ana kept herself between the men who were pursuing them and the kids she was trying her damnedest to protect. Unfortunately, her room was on the opposite end of the school, and they still had a lot of ground to cover.
They didn't make it, unfortunately. The quintet was cornered and surrounded in the hallway, their escape route entirely blocked. Each way they turned, they were met by a wall of armed men.
A middle-aged woman separated from the group and approached, she appeared to be the leader, clad in a khaki trench coat and wielding her gun at the group.
The second the unknown woman's firearm audibly clicked, Ana had reacted out of instinct and raised her own. Firing one shot, Ana hit the woman just left of center mass and watched her fall to the ground.
She'd never shot anyone before but now she had, and Ana felt oddly desensitized to the life she had so hastily taken. But, there was no use dwelling on it, though, as Eleven was using her powers to debilitate the remaining agents who all began to bleed from the nose and ears before falling to the floor, seemingly dead as well.
The strain had been too much for the little girl, however, and she also fell to the tile, overcome with sudden weakness. She was drained like a dead battery from overuse.
The boys wanted to inspect her, tried and wake her to ensure Eleven was okay, but the group didn't have the luxury of time which would allow for such things. So, Ana had hiked the girl up into her arms and directed the children to pick up running to her classroom.
But, again, they didn't make it.
Dr. Martin Brenner, the cause of every strange thing that had befallen the town, the one responsible for every disappearance and untimely death, now blocked their way along with three armed men.
With the unconscious girl in her arms, Ana could no longer reach her gun to stop these men in their tracks. She'd have to resort to using words in order to deter them.
"Touch these kids, and I'll rip your dicks off!" Elegant. Classy. Ana felt her message was conveyed appropriately. It seemed to spur something in her subordinates as well.
"You want her, you have to kill us first!" Mike had warned.
"That's right!" Dustin supported.
"Eat shit!" Lucas added.
Ana would have applauded their morale had her hands not been otherwise occupied, not that it mattered much since they were all immediately grabbed from behind.
Ana tried to hold onto Eleven as long as she could, she really did. But, with one uniform at her back, and Brenner prying her fingers off the girl's clothing at her front, she'd quickly lost the battle of strength. All she could do was watch in disgust as the mad scientist cradled his would be science experiment on the floor in front of them.
"Eleven? Eleven, can you hear me? Eleven?" Brenner asked while gripping the girl's face in his hands.
"Papa?" Eleven questioned weakly, fading back into consciousness slowly.
"Yes, yes, it's your papa," came Brenner's creepy reply. The monicure said with such feigned affection made all their stomachs turn in disgust.
The boys and Ana continued to fight against those attempting to restrain them. Each kicking, punching, and screaming endlessly, anything to gain an advantage and get loose.
"Shh, shh, you're sick." Brenner had tried to convince Eleven when she became visibly confused and upset. "You're sick, but I'm going to make you better."
"You're sick, you fucking psycho!" Ana didn't garner any attention for that insult, not when the hallway was full of their shouts and threats at that point. The expletives bounced off the cement walls but landed on decidedly deaf ears.
"I'm going to take you back home, where I can make you well again. Where we can make all of this better, so no one else gets hurt." At least one more person was going to get hurt that night, Ana was going to make sure of it, even if it was the last thing she did.
"Bad." Those were the first words that left Eleven's mouth with some measure of strength, and they sparked optimism in the hearts of her company. "Bad," she repeated and reached for Mike to the best of her abilities, but Brenner wasn't allowing it.
All grappling in the hallway was brought to a grinding halt, though, when the electricity started flickering.
"Blood," Mike whispered beside them as an explanation. Blood brought the monster, and pools of it were forming beneath their feet, staining the linoleum tiles a ghastly red.
Oh, shit! They needed to get out of there, immediately!
With the other adults distracted by the monster bursting through the adjacent wall in a cloud of rubble, Ana, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike broke free of the arms that had previously suppressing them.
As the shooting started, Ana, once again, brought the weakened girl into her arms and the group took off running.
Finally, they made it to the pseudo-safety of the familiar English classroom.
"No matter what happens, you four stay behind me!" Ana ordered while placing Eleven carefully on one of the tables at the back of the room. If this was to be her last stand, then Ana was going to go down swinging. With her loaded gun trained at the entry, she waited.
All too soon, the Demogorgon came smashing in, completely leveling the classroom door in its wake. Ana pulled the trigger as rapidly as possible. Each shot ripping into the monster's body, but none slowing its advancement in the slightest.
The boys behind her were shouting, but she could only focus on what was in front of her, this screeching, monstrous thing, and the fact that her chamber was now empty. Ana struggled to reload as swiftly as possible, fear making her movements clumsy and less efficient.
The beast was still stalking towards them, bellowing in a way that made their ears ring, flexing menacingly, and soon it would be close enough to touch.
After what felt like an eternity of fumbling, the gun was finally reloaded, and she was back to shooting at the monster with minimal success. But, with one final squeeze of the trigger, the monster catapulted across the room, pinned against the chalkboard where it stayed.
Neither she nor the boys could claim responsibility for this sudden turn, which became abundantly clear as Eleven strolled to the front of the room. Her reddening eyes were trained solely on the beast in front of her, pinning it down with her stare.
"Eleven, stop!" Mike and Ana yelled in unison, reaching the same conclusion about the girl's intentions. But, they'd simply been flung to the back of the room for their troubles, which was where they'd be compelled to stay as events unfolded before them.
The girl advanced on the monster with an unwavering determination. The effort it took to hold the Demogorgon at bay was producing a steady stream of blood to be expelled from her nose and ears.
They all knew the next step was necessary, necessary to end all the suffering, but that didn't make it any less undesirable.
With one final look back at the group, Eleven muttered, "goodbye, Mike." Then, using all the force contained in her tiny body, Eleven destroyed the monster. Her and the beast, both disintegrating in a plume of ash.
The boys called out for their friend, but she was gone. Extinguished, same as the creature she had unintentionally brought into their realm.
In the ensuing silence, in the melancholy aftermath, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, and Mike Wheeler gravitated towards their teacher who held them close to her while they cried in agony for their shared loss.
That's the scene the paramedics and police came upon when arriving at the school, and Ana refused to let a single one of them go until their respective parents had come to claim them from her.
What felt like hours passed before everyone amassed at the hospital, waiting for Will Byers to awaken. Everyone except Ana Thompson, that is.
She'd opted to go home, to the solitude of her own house, instead. She'd played her part in the night's events, but this, this was about family now. Something which she wasn't, to anyone.
Hopper had found her there after coming through the unlocked front door. Who was worried about something breaking in when the worst had already come to pass?
"It's over?" She asked without looking at him. Instead, staring blankly at the drink in her hands. She felt hollow, like everything inside he had been scooped out and discarded, leaving behind an empty shell.
"Seems that way," he huffed, taking a seat on the couch next to her. He didn't bother her with the details of what went on in the waiting room, didn't want to weigh her down further with a retelling of the conversation that took place inside the car that picked him up outside the hospital. She looked tired enough already, those dark circles under her eyes returning, so he spared her the burden of such knowledge.
Instead, Hopper pulled her into his side, which she nestled into willingly, welcoming the warmth of his heavy arms wrapping around her. "You know, they say relationships bred out of trauma never last," Ana said lightly, a shallow attempt at breaking the palpable tension that remained.
He chuckled for the first time that night. "We'll see."