The drive back was quiet. Mostly due to El's soft tears which alleviated once they left the town.
Teresa didn't know what it was, but she could feel it. As if she could feel as El felt. She felt heartbroken. Perhaps it was because she never wanted to see El cry, and the girl was so close to it. Or perhaps it was just some of the protective Hopper instinct that told her.
It was enough to tie down her thoughts instead of dwelling on the horrible headache forming behind her eyes. But even still, none of it helped when they arrived at the cabin.
Throwing caution to the wind, Teresa drove closer to the cabin, so they'd have to walk less.
"You can't leave without me. We agreed. You promised, El," Teresa said quietly as they walked.
"I thought you lied."
"I'm not Hop," Teresa reminded her. "And Hop isn't lying. He said something that he wasn't sure about. And I know that looks like lying, but it wasn't. It was stupid of him to tell you something that he didn't actually know."
"He lied."
Teresa didn't know how to make it better. It broke her, deep down.
No more than her father's face did when they made it back to the cabin, though.
"Friends don't lie. Isn't that your bullshit saying?" he asked, looking to El, but the girl just walked past him into the wooden shack. "Hey, hey! Hey! Don't walk away from me!"
"Dad, this is not the time," Teresa tried, but Hopper was way ahead of her, following El to her room.
"Where'd you go on your little field trip, huh? Where? Did you go see Mike?"
"He didn't see me," El replied.
"Yeah, well, that mother and her daughter did and they called the cops. Now, did anyone else see you? Anyone at all? Come on, I need you to think!"
Hopper was almost desperate, but he was masking it well with anger. Teresa knew that, he'd been just as worried when he called her the first time she was arrested. Even though those allegations didn't stick, he'd called because Diane told him. He'd been angry then too, but eventually he broke and asked if she was all right.
She didn't see this working out that way.
"Nobody saw me!" El raised her voice, Teresa closing and locking the door behind the three of them.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Jim turned to his daughter. "You both put us in danger, you realise that, right?"
"You promised— I go!" El accused, making Jim turn back to her. "And I never leave! Nothing ever happens!"
"Yeah! Nothing happens and you stay safe!"
"You lie!" El was shouting this time, and Teresa already knew where this was going.
"I don't lie! I protect and I feed and I teach! And all I ask of you is that you follow three simple rules. Three rules! And you know what? You can't even do that!"
"Dad!" Teresa snapped, El hitting her dresser in anger as Hopper left her room and went into the main room of the cabin. "She's a kid!"
"You're grounded," he told her, then turned to El and repeated it. "You too. You know what that means? It means no Eggos," he threw the boxes from the fridge onto the floor before he crossed to the couch. "And no TV for a week."
"Dad, come on—"
"No," he turned to Teresa. "You know exactly what it means," he pointed at her accusingly before he leaned down to pick up the TV, but El wasn't about to let that happen. "All right, knock it off. Let it go," he struggled against her telekinetic hold on the device. "Okay. Two weeks. Let go!" She didn't. "A month!"
"No!" El shouted back.
"El, let go," Teresa tried, taking a step closer, but the girl lifted a hand and pushed Teresa away. "Jesus," she groaned as her back hit the table, stumbling before she found her feet.
"Well, congratulations. You just graduated from no TV for a month to no TV at all," Hopper reached for the cord.
"No! No! No. No!" El rushed to the television set, trying to make it work.
"You have got to understand that there are consequences to your actions," Hopper told her, reaching to help up Teresa, but she waved him off.
"You are like Papa!" El accused, turning around at him, though she had also watched Teresa stand properly again.
"Really? I'm like that psychotic son of a bitch? Wow! All right," Jim nodded, turning back to El. "You wanna go back in the lab? One phone call. I can make that happen," his voice calmed down, but he was still on guard.
"I hate you," El seethed.
"Guys, come on—"
"Yeah, well, I'm not so crazy about you, either. You know why? 'Cause you're a brat. You know what that word means? How about that be your word for the day, huh? Brat. Why don't we look it up? B-R-A-T. Brat," Hopper reached for the dictionary, throwing it to El, but with a raise of her hand, it instead flew back at him.
"Eleven!" Teresa raised her voice, having been the one to catch the book as her father ducked out of the way just in time. Neither of them were listening, however.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Hopper asked, staring at the younger girl in his care. He took a few steps towards her, but the couch was suddenly pushed in his way. "Hey!"
"El!" Teresa tried to follow the girl into her room, but first it was the bookcase that fell, then the door was slammed in her face as an attempt to hold her back. "Come on, El, open the door!" she knocked.
"You wanna go out in the world? You better grow up! Grow the hell up!" Hopper shouted, managing to get himself free as he pounded on the door.
With a scream from El, the windows of the cabin shattered, Hopper pulling Teresa into him to shield his daughter from the shards.
Between heavy breaths filled with adrenaline, Jim checked on her, finding her unharmed, with only a small scratch on her cheek. She let out a breath, sliding against the door, and dropping her head into her hands. She could hear El sobbing in her room, and she couldn't help.
This was what Teresa hated the most; feeling helpless.
"It was my idea," she finally looked up, watching Hopper as he picked up a broom and started cleaning up, still muttering to himself.
"What?"
"I told her I'd drive her. That we could see him as he left school, but they were still doing something. I found her there, and drove her back. If I didn't tell her I would take her, she might not have left," she explained, eyes rimmed with tears that she hastily wiped off.
"There are three rules, and three rules only, Reese."
"Yeah. Exactly. She wouldn't be alone, the curtains were drawn. If I would have been here, I would've knocked," she told him, sniffling as her emotions surfaced on her face.
"Why would you do that? Put her in danger?!"
"Because she's right, dad!" Teresa pushed herself to stand up, raising her voice at her father for the first real time since she moved back. "Hell, you keep telling her she'll be able to leave soon. And we both know it'll be a while until things calm down, and you don't actually know when she can leave! The Hollands paid for Murray Bauman of all people to look for her, and they don't know Barb is dead! He thinks she's a goddamn spy, and I'm sure there are others who do still think it! That's never going to leave, dad!"
"There are things going on you don't know about!" he replied, temper still flaring.
"You can't protect her forever!"
"I can try!"
The cabin was silent, father and daughter staring at each other, daring the other to say what they were both thinking. Well, they were both thinking it, just not the same way.
"She's stronger than Sara, you know," Teresa's voice was no longer sharp, instead gentle. "El isn't like other kids. So you especially can't treat her like any other kid."
"That's why we're here," Jim agreed, gesturing to the cabin. "This is safe."
"It'll never be safe. Not for her," she disagreed. "People will be looking for her. When others find out about what she can do, people will continue to look for her, whether we're still tense with the Russians or not. You can't keep her like this. You know how that ends."
Jim Hopper knew exactly how it would end. But right now, this was the only way things could go.
If only Teresa could say all of that without a pounding headache, and a heavy feeling in her gut.
──────
Jim disappear for a little while to calm down with a walk. It gave Teresa a moment to get herself together. Thinking in the quiet allowed her to remember a few things that may be able to help in alleviating the pain she suddenly felt.
In a moment of frenzied thinking, she tore up the door in the floor, rummaging through some of the boxes Hopper kept down there as storage. She found Murray's file, and threw it up into the cabin's living area before she pulled herself back up. Closing the door and covering it with the carpet as well as the sofa, she pushed the coffee table aside, giving herself enough space to arrange the papers in a way that made sense to her.
Phoebe Jones, 20, Indiana State University
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Mescaline, Sensory Deprivation Therapy
Electroshock Therapy
The information detailed the drugs her mother was given, its dose, where she was recruited from, how old she was at the time of the first approach.
But Teresa's eyes caught onto one very important piece of information.
The Government of the United States of America, by power of the Director of Central Intelligence hereby licenses Dr Martin Brenner to carry out experiments as set out in the document of MKULTRA.
Past research into the experiments filled in the questions that arose from the inclusion of the private letter, which made Teresa lean back against the sofa she had sat in front of.
But that would mean—
Teresa gathered the papers together, stuffing it back into the folder, and slipped the whole thing under her mattress. She pushed the sofa aside again, and looked through the boxes labelled Hawkins lab, until she found the file on Terry Ives. Almost identical.
It was the photo included in her mother's file, however, that sold her theory.
"Son of a bitch."