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Mike’s calf is going numb, but he doesn’t bother to shift from his cross-legged hunch on the floor. He’s too big, now, too gangly and awkward-limbed for such a small space. But the blankets overhead are comforting. Cocooning him in plush, dusty safety.
His finger twitches against the button, but he doesn’t press. No crackling sounds seep from the walkie to his nonetheless anxious ears. Tonight, like any other night, he stares. Feels its weight in his hands. The near-lifeless air, alive only with a faint, warm buzz of familiarity. Of understanding.
He hasn’t said a word to the others. He knows they don’t blame him, that he couldn’t have known. But he should have. He should have caught it, and he almost did, but he was never good at reading her the way he reads Will. Instead, he let her go and blow herself up with a bomb he built with his own two hands.
Except it wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been. He may not have always understood her, but in that moment, faced with the inexplicable wall of her choice, he’s never been more lost. Like every other time, there was something more, hidden behind the face she would show him. But this one time, he swears he knew it. He may not have known what she was hiding, but he sensed its presence.
And when she died, the wrongness of it numbed him. She said she’d never leave him — friends don’t lie, they don’t, he reminded her of that. So she couldn’t be gone.
He did speak to her. That was real, he knows it was. And though he said nothing of worth, failed her yet again, he clings to it. Because it’s all he has — the only proof she’s not gone.
The kryptonite. How could she have called him into the Void if she were there, under those violent speakers? How could she have stood tall, calm, accepting her fate, if she were writhing under the thumb of some invisible enemy? No, Mike may be many things, but he isn’t delusional. He feels it still, like a rock in his belly, a heavy certainty. That was real, and El is alive.
He’s not sure how — he knows he surely hasn’t stumbled across the answer with his many whirling theories, crafted from the outside gazing in. But what can he do? He can’t search for her — a whole world to hide, and she doesn’t want to be found. She isn’t like Will, desperately scratching at the walls of his prison, screaming for someone to find him. She wanted to disappear. So she did.
No, all he can do is wait. Wait for her to come back home. Wait for a sign.
He never got to say he loved her to her face. Not the way he meant it — not in an honest way, untainted by the bitter taste of knowing he was manipulating her (for the greater good, for her own sake and Max’s and his and the world’s), evading the name ‘liar’ only by a technicality, saying words he knew full well she'd hear differently. The way she was supposed to hear them — the way he was supposed to mean them.
He loved her — loves her, still. He loves, now, the strange little girl swallowed up by her enormous yellow shirt, soaked and shivering in the pouring rain. The girl whose eyes widened in delight at mundane things like La-Z-Boy chairs and chocolate pudding. The girl who smeared pineapple pizza into his face and laughed, who teased him and smiled fondly when he rambled about the Rohirrim or Amazing Fantasy #15, though always with an air of Okay, Mike, enough. Time to come back to the real world that made his stomach crawl. He loves Jane Hopper, and all the missing her is like a boot pressing down on his chest.
So he sits, staring at the walkie-talkie in his hand, and he lets the words trickle out. “I had a good day,” he starts softly. “Quiet. I haven’t heard back from any colleges yet, but Mom says it may take some time.” He sighs, his finger tracing the grooves in the walkie. “I worked on the campaign. I know you don’t… need details. But I’m happy with it. What I got done.”
The basement is quiet, but he can hear the low throb of the television, the creaking of floorboards as his mother washes dishes. “I watched another episode of Miami Vice today. I still don’t really get it. Not that it’s complicated — that’s the problem, I guess. I mean, I don’t really get why you like it.” He twists his mouth, and sighs again, short and assenting. “Well, I do. I just don’t… get it. I guess that’s what makes the world go around.”
El liked her flashy stories, music and colour and badassery. She liked to gasp with wonder, to jump with surprise, to turn her mind off and soak in the clamour and coolness and fiction of it all. Mike, on the other hand, likes a rich, character-driven plot, sweeping fantasies with intricate lore he can spend hours poring over while still only scratching the surface — all the things that made El yawn but make his heart race and his brain buzz with excitement.
He’s drifted off into thoughts of knights and battles and space, and shakes his head. “Anyway,” he says. “I miss you. Watching it makes me think of you. Wonder what parts you’d like, how you’d look or what you’d think. I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I wish you were here.”
He lifts his eyes, gazing through hesitant lashes to scope out the room, as if some sign might appear. Something to show that she’s hearing him. Sometimes, some days and most nights now, he thinks he feels a presence, a glimpse of her, a hand on his shoulder or a certainty that she’s watching, and he can’t let himself think it’s just his imagination. He’s always trusted his gut before. He’s always been right.
“I know you’re still out there.” The buzzing pressure in the air, that warm awareness, pulls closer. “El?” His hand clenches around the walkie, knowing she can’t speak through it but hoping she will. He looks up, raising his head fully now, and he swears for a moment—
Nobody is there. The presence ebbs and he sighs, uncurling his long legs with a whimpering groan. His knees ache stiffly and his right calf is tingling like a son of a bitch. “Ow,” he mutters, rubbing at his knees and shaking his foot like a dog. When feeling returns, he gingerly stands, ducking under the blankets and turning to stare down at the little fort.
“Good night, El,” he whispers, and he can see her there like it’s yesterday, wide-eyed and silent, dubious but earnest, like he just might have all the answers in the world. God, how things have changed. “I love you.”
She knows, now. She knows.