Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

13 July 1986:

"I told you, Peter! We cannot do anything right now!"

"And you think I can, while being miles away inside a bus?"

"Yes!" she almost yells. "Can't you just make that thing fly with your mind or something?"

Maxine 'I only accept 'Max' Mayfield has been trying to stay calm throughout the whole day, she really has. But after the 'Angela' incident, she doesn't know how much she can last before lashing out at the other line of the telephone booth. (Thought it's not Peter's fault for their - as in Max's, Mike's, Will's and El's - bad luck.)

Peter sighs. - He was on his way home from a long, tiring day of work at the St Louis Mental Health institute, one of the greatest in California, when the phone call from the children happened. -

"No, Maxine," he says, expecting the girl's enthusiasm with whatever had to do with his telekinetic abilities, a subject that ended up being reused multiple times in conversation, thus turning into a bother to be explained to some easily impressed teenagers. "I cannot do that. I could if I was the only passenger, but I'm not. It's extremely dangerous without having a clear sight of my surroundings. I'm not risking my life for a five minute difference."

"Which station are you approaching?" asks Max, her own insistence overwhelming her, but she keeps on going nontheless. Eleven is still inside the arcade. Alone. She needs their help.

"Springfield," says Peter automatically, his voice raspy and exhausted.

"So it means-"

"It means that I have still twenty minutes until I get where you, Michael and William are. You will have to wait either way. So have patience. Can you do that?"

The redhead sighs. "I guess... we don't have any other option."

"And talk slower," he advises her. "I cannot hear you through the parasites. Start again. From the beginning, this time."

"Alright..." mutters Max, bracing herself to tell the story of Eleven's misadventure as briefly as possible. "Eleven is having a full on panic attack - or rather, did - because of Angela and her clique." She manages to spit out in the end. She can practically hear Peter's quality of voice change on the other side from calm to increasingly agitated.

"Angela Morris? You bumped into her? Christ..." There is a pause before the man twice her age speaks again, so to contain his fury that is slowly rising. Max can feel it despite the parasites that muffle his voice. "What did she do this time?"

"Well, remember when El and Will decided that it would be a good idea to show us around the Rink o Mania?"

Peter knew that the red haired girl was as nervous as Elevn must have been at the moment of her torment by these foolish children that were arrogant enough to call themselves 'bullies'. If anything, Peter considered them 'nuisances'.

"Sure," he mutters, his tone promising definite threats and danger ahead. "Go on."

"Well, they did - and it was going well, until Angela appeared -"

"Skip the details. Go to the main part."

'Asshole.' Thinks Max before gritting her teeth, suppressing her frustration and saying, "Angela dragged her at the skating rink."

"And?"

"And Mike, Will and I ran behind them, but two boys of Angela's gang tried to beat us up."

"And?"

"Angela and the others formed a circle around Eleven and weren't letting her escape, calling her a 'loser' and a 'crybaby'. Then someone spilt coffee on her dress and she fell down."

"And?"

"That's when she had the panic attack."

"I see," says Peter, his eyes flickering to his left where an old woman of seventy something pushes past him to sit down, upon entering the bus. He makes a grimace of pure irritation. He hates people in general and the elderly are no exception.

He can sense the girl's curiosity building up before she even satiates it by asking, "Do you know something? About the panic attack, what may have triggered it?"

The bus comes to another halt again. People leave, people enter. One more station left. Peter grips the cellphone harder and grits his teeth. "Yes." Some memories, he doesn't want to remember. "I do."

"Well? What happened?"

'Always eager, that girl.' He might as well give the truth up now instead of this being one of the million secrets surrounding Eleven's prior life in the lab.

"She was turning nine, two months prior her birthday," he starts off. "She was doing well in Brenner's tests, most of them. Extremely well. Excellent, even."

Max has had a bad feeling about the way too praising introduction of the unfortunate occurrence. Her voice comes out as strained when she says, "Let me guess; some of the other kids grew jealous of her powers."

"Mhmm." Peter can only nod as the most difficult part of the memory is scrapped out of the darkest corners of his brain quite eagerly. "One day, four of them somehow managed to disable the cameras of the Rainbow Room. They locked her in and started to throw her around the room with their powers, like she was nothing more than a rag doll in their hands."

"They had formed a circle. They wouldn't let her leave it," murmurs Max and Peter's soft "Mhmm, exactly," indicates that her guess is right. "Shit, that's a lot of bullcrap to take from children that were supposed to sympathize with you because of your powers..." she whispers in realization.

She swears that Peter is smiling on the other side of the telephone. "It is, indeed." A few seconds pass so to digest the new information, before the man says, "As regards to our issue now, you three will find Eleven and -"

"I told you, we cannot, dammit!" It's her own turn for a hiss due to fury. He doesn't get to be the only one angry around. "They locked us out of the arcade so we don't know where she is!"

"They locked-" mutters Peter, fighting very hard the feeling to sigh deeply and instead he says, "And why would they do that, Maxine? Care to elaborate?"

"Because Mike and I, we punched Barry Carmon and Allan Higgins full on the face - broke their teeth too, while Will was trying to drag us away, but some guards caught us and threw us out of there."

She can also feel the satisfaction that his voice will be filled with before he even utters the next queue of words. She feels like punching him. She wishes she had powers too at that moment so to teleport, make him feel her fist connecting with his cheek despite the distance that physically separates them. "Are the boys there, with you?"

"Yes," she says and glances at Mike and Will who have been looking at her with eyes full of anticipation. "Would you like to speak with them?"

"No, it's fine. Just... you shouldn't have been so reckless, you and the Wheeler boy." He speaks softly in a fatherly tone. A tone he usually uses on Eleven, not them. Not her, that's for sure. He's El's guardian, not hers. "You know that, we've been over it," he finishes, knowing how much he has managed to push her button until the sixteen year old girl explodes and pretty much makes his own pride swell up again.

"Hey," snaps Max. "Stop being patronizing with me."

"Right, right," he drawls, very much amused by the frustration of his adoptive daughter's best friend. "My bad. Remind me again, how's Billy doing?"

"Still dead and fuck you very much, Peter!" she hisses. She can sense him grinning on the other side of the line. Annoying man. "Can't you honestly stop being an asshole for one bloody minute? We have more important things to worry about; like the fact that Angela and her goons are still in there and Eleven hasn't been seen yet."

"Right," he replies coldly, not an inch of sympathy in his tone. "As well as how you three were supposed to prevent this from happening and you didn't."

The gingerhead is successfully riled up in no time. "Don't blame this on us! We did what we could! They were eight of them and four of us! It wasn't a remotely fair fight."

The blue eyed man hums from the other line of the telephone. Their time is almost over. "Did what you could'. Very well. I will let it slide this time."

Max rolls her eyes. 'So fucking dramatic...'

"We will speak again in person." Peter's voice has gained his 'professional' tone as she calls it, cold and distant. "I doubt there is anything left of importance."

"Uh huh, sure. Bye," she mutters, having already exhausted her patience and made her decision. She hangs up and places the wired telephone back on its proper place on the booth without a second thought.

Max sees Mike and Will getting up from their own seats on the bench they had decided to occupy while waiting for her to make the phone call and walking to where she's standing, arms folded on her chest, her face flushed from frustration.

"Well..." says Will. "How did it go?"

She shrugs, annoyed. "He's on his way. We'll just have to wait for about ten minutes."

"Good. That's... good," supplies Mike, brushing a few of his longer bangs off his forehead. "Then why are you like this? Peter always helps."

"He was too quiet this time," she murmurs. "Quiet' means 'more danger' in his language. I have a bad feeling about this..."

"Well, to be fair, it was your and Mike's idea to call him so..." Will leaves the implication of his sentence hanging mid air, for all three of them knew what it meant.

"Let's just hope Angela will break a few bones,"  says Mike, his eyes half joking, half concerned and genuinely intrigued of what resolution the older telekinetic's interference will have on today's events. "I mean, she has been a right bitch to you two throughout the year, so... I say, she'll get what's coming to her."

Max nods and twirls her left braid aroung her index finger in nervousness. She had made the twin braids earlier this morning and they are both coming off their black rubber bands, so she removes one after the other to rewrapp them again on both of their ends.

All they have to do now is to wait.

Chapter Text

Peter arrives at the arcade just to find three children running up to him, shouting at him to make the doors open as if they had been waiting him for centuries and not barely twenty three minutes. 'Honestly, teenagers'.

"Alright, I'll open it," he says, blue eyes shimmering with annoyance for a millisecond before every sign of guilt is gone. He barely has to lift a finger and the heavy blue door made of steel opens. "There you go, get in."

Max, Will and Mike don't waist another minute and practically speed run inside. They don't even thank him, but, to be frank with himself, he doesn't expect any better.

"Quietly," he orders with a last minute groan, an advice that goes unheard, before he enters the amusement center himself and shuts the door that bangs with an ear splitting sound behind him.

*****

"So... which one of the million blonde girls in here is An-? Oh."

Peter's eyes and head have been suffering from seeing blue and red spots due the horrible disgrace that the owners of the arcade dared to call 'lighting'. The place looks like a disco, if anything. And Peter hates loud places like these.

"Why, bless my soul. We found her," he murmurs with that same calculated wickedness that has just now changed the quality of his voice into something more menacing, Max has noted.

"Will you break her arms?" she asks, hoping that this will be it.

"If I feel like it, sure," he drawls. "Why? Is there something off limits?"

"Even if there was, you'd find a loophole to get through it," says a timid but wise Will Byers. His behavior is in complete contrast with Max's and Mike's often outbursts of irritation.

Peter secretly admires his perception more than the other children's.

"Huh. Good point, Will," he whispers and with no other sign of goodbye, he leaves the three kids behind to only walk towards that suffocating lynch's little elite group.

His eyes dart around the way too crowded and loud hall, the skating ring too, but Eleven is nowhere to be found. 'Never mind'. He will deal with his trauma stricken ward later.

Now all that matters is for these vain fools to understand that they are not to mess with his little girl. Angela Morris would simply have to serve as an example for the rest of these pathetic high schoolers that think themselves 'intellectually superior' because of their miserable attempts at 'bullying'.

'Bullying? Right. These children don't how how striking true fear into people's hearts truly feels like.' How intoxicating it can be. How irresistible. 'Henry' used to know. 'Peter' surely knows. No matter his name, fear will always be this man's tool to yield and with it, to shape most of the people he meets to his image.

Except for her. (Well, her adorable band of friends came at a close second.) He couldn't, for the life of him, be cruel to her - or shape her, manipulate her into changing to suit his needs in any way. She was perfect. Eleven, his little girl, was perfect already. His only rule. His sole limit. Avenge her. Protect her. Cherish her. See her smile. That's all he'd wanted since he took her in when they escaped from this awful place that Martin Brenner had the audacity to call a 'lab'.

Everything he did, all of it... was for her.

Even this. Peter doesn't regret what he'll do to that girl in the slightest. No matter what he'll find about her past by looking into her mind. It will be a quick, merciful death, if anything. He can be merciful when he intends to. Eleven will understand -eventually.

Like how she grew to understand why he murdered the rest of her brothers and sisters. It took her a while. She cried - a lot - but eventually his company made up for it. Her longing for a family was stronger than her initial fear for him. It has been eight years since.

And he cannot bear to see her sad, solemn and quiet, like the way she was these first days. This is why that Angela character must cease to exist.

Peter's eyes are solely pinned on the cheeky blonde girl that is laughing with her six friends, probably at some stupid joke, like how funny it was when Eleven - "Jane" - was covered in coffee and weeping all the while they were pointing their fingers at her, calling her a loser. He makes an incoherent sign with his hand to Max, Will and Mike not to follow him but to stay where they are in the shadows, so no police officer will take notice of them.

While being on his way towards the group of high schoolers, he notices that curious eyes glance at him. Two girls, one with curly black hair and another one with straight brown smirk to each other, probably checking him out. But not Angela. She is too busy laughing at what Higgins, her second in command, a boy with a green shirt and a blue hat is whispering to her ear.

When Peter finally stands before them in his more formal gray suit - not the white doctor's uniform - all laughter has died out.

"Hello," he says, not leaving room for any more awkward silences than what it's needed. "Mind if I cut in your conversation for a bit?"

He speaks to all eight of them, but Angela senses his eyes on her. Whoever this man is, he couldn't care less about her friends.

"Errr..." The sixteen year old girl with the pink shirt, the blue shorts and the horrid electric blue rubber band that must have been her favorite looks at him a bit alarmed. Good. She should be. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"Oh, right, sorry. So silly of me," mutters the handsome man. He must be in his mid thirties. "I'm Peter. Peter Morgan."

- The truth is that when Eleven turned nine years old, he had decided to change the last name that Dr Martin had given him, 'Ballard' to 'Morgan'. He had always preferred 'Peter' to 'Henry' though, so he kept that. But the last name, that would be something he had created for himself, unperturbed by his past family bonds or any previous association with Martin. -

"Jane's guardian," he continues more softly, offering his right hand out for a handshake, surprising her, though she shakes it back, confused as to why this man is kind to her. "Angela, isn't it?" He asks the blonde with the sweetest - most sickening for him - smile. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Angela feels that the handshake is a bit harsher than what she would have liked. Her hand hurts afterwards, but maybe the man's hold is too strong. Maybe he hasn't noticed it. "You too, I guess...?"

"Look, I..." Peter plays it off as hesitant, as if he hasn't thought of every single word he wants to tell her. "I understand that you and my daughter aren't getting along very well, which is to be expected to a certain extent. You're teenagers, after all. I'm not here to reprimand anyone, just..." He furrows his brows and makes his lips seem pouty, thus making him look more sincere than he felt. "Would you like to talk?"

The blonde blinks at him stunned. 'Stupidly,' Peter would say. "Talk? With you?"

"Sure, why not? It will only take six minutes," he replies to ease her worries. "I'm sure that your friends can wait for such a little while. We can sit at the lobby there."

And with these words, he gestures at the rows of tables of a nearby fast food company, not a lobby and the seats weren't for free, but McDonald's by the likes of it. Eleven, Mike and that Henderson boy liked to eat there from time to time. Peter didn't quite appreciate junk food.

Angela glances at her friends for a few seconds, just to have a confirmation. When the six of them nod at her that it's fine, besides their curious expressions, that is, she turns back to face him. "Alright," she spits, though her voice comes off as trembling and unsure.

"Excellent," says Peter at his ward's bully with the kindest of eyes. "Please, pick any spot you prefer."

He sees her taking a look around the restaurant. Her eyes are glued to the right side of it. There's a table at the third row, third out of five that is empty, so she tells him to sit there.

Once they do, and after Peter insists to treat the girl a frizzy drink, - orange juice, seeing as she already had a milkshake - and he orders a drink of his own, he initiates the discussion. "Was it good?" he asks her. It's about the juice.

"Sure, yeah," answers the blonde, her brown eyes still trying to figure him out. Other guardians would have lashed out at their children's bullies, but he takes her out 'to talk'? Surely, Peter Morgan is a weird one.

"You can take the mask off now," she adds. "I know you're here just because Jane called you. Really pathetic of her, crying to her daddy."

"She didn't... she didn't call me." He taps his fingers, the left ones, on the top of the table.

That makes the girl feel uneasy.

"She doesn't know I'm here. I was told of the dispute by some other people."

"Ah. I suppose that's less pathetic," she mutters, before looking at him with intrigue yet again. "Why do you talk like an attorney?"

He chuckles. "To be frank, I'm a psychiatrist. I don't know where that thought of yours came from."

"Apologies," she drawls, not really meaning it.

"Yeah, sure," he whispers. "No problem."

"So what do you want from me, huh? You said you wouldn't yell at me or 'reprimand' me, whatever that means."

"I want to know the reason..." he murmurs, still sticking with the casual grin. The only thing giving him patience is the vision of her eyes. Frozen eyes. Dead. "...of why you're doing this."

Angela - the personification of Eleven's nightmares as regards to her high school experience - finds herself unable to think of a good enough comeback, so she gulps. "W - what?"

Something is really wrong with that man, handsome and charismatic as he may appear.

"Oh, you don't have to talk, if you don't want to. I can very well take a guess or two about what is the real root of the problem. You can nod every time I am correct about any of my assumptions. That's all I ask for. Then I'll leave you alone. I promise. Facing your fear is a very brave thing to do, after all, don't you think?"

"I... um, yes...?"

"Great. Let's begin."

He's practically purring, his vocal tone rich like melted caramel. But that lasts only for mere three seconds.

After that, his expression turns stone cold and scary. "Fiona Meiss, as in your mother, has been depressed for five years, since she divorced your father, Adam Morris, when you were nine. The divorce happened because she caught him cheating on her with another woman, most definitely a hotter, younger version of her in her mid twenties. Yes or no?"

"Is... this a joke? How do you know-?"

"Just answer the question."

"Yes..."

"Good," drawls Peter, satisfied. "That caused you to experience a loss of control, so you tried to regain it by becoming popular in school, especially in high school and establishing a 'protection squad' of some sorts that would guarantee you that stability that was previously missing from your life."

"I..."

"Yes or no, Angela?"

"Yes, but that's none of your goddamn business-!" she almost shouts, but then remembers that she cannot leave. She doesn't want to. Her legs are glued to her chair, her feet to the floor. She is transfixed, watching him like one watches a horror film.

"It is when it concerns my ward," hisses the man before quickly regaining his composure. "Last question; You targeted Jane because you were jealous of her friendship with Maxine, Michael and William, her financial stability and the fact that she hang out with people that didn't make her feel empty and full of self loathing every second of the day - like you do, when the only thing you and your friends talk about is which adult you want to make out with because of your daddy issues."

"I don't know who told you this shit, but-!"

"Yes-" Eyes dripping with mischief, satisfaction of being on the winning side once again. Such a common thing for him. "-or no?"

She shakes her head. Her cheeks flush red from the raw anger. "I'm not answering that!"

Peter smirks - smirks not grins, meaning it comes across as sinister to her - and takes his own bottle in his hand. He takes a sip off his vodka, sour cherry flavored. He makes the taste of sweetness in his tongue last longer. He swallows the drink slowly before leaving the now half empty bottle on the table.

"That's alright. You don't have to. I have my answers either way. Congratulations. You just sold yourself short."

The girl is left speechless. She doesn't even notice the waiter, who comes to take their nearly empty glasses away. When did she drink the juice? She doesn't remember drinking anything. Matter of fact, when did he finish his own drink? He was talking this entire time.

When she eventually finds her voice, she sputters, "Can I... can I go back to my friends now?"

Peter rolls the plastic white straw that is still inside the bottle.

"Of course," he says softly, not bothering to look up when he hears the ear piercing sound of a metallic chair sliding backwards and Angela standing up.

She gets as far away from the table as she can and begins walking at the direction her friend group is; sitting on a bench near the skating rink.

********

He smiles again when he hears the girl gasping, her body falling down with a loud thud.

People scream, police officers and shop owners run off to help her stand up when one woman realizes that she doesn't have a pulse. Heart attack. Simple, yet quick and painless.

Eventually, he too approaches the crowd of distressed adults and crying children.

He takes one look at the now deceased miss Morris and says with a steady, commanding tone, making his presence be seen for as long as those fools need it, "Someone should find that mother's number, inform her of her daughter's situation."

His eye catches Maxine, Michael and William, who cannot believe their own eyes as they walk beside him, heading into the storage rooms of the arcade so to find Eleven. His ward's friends do not dare to say anything for a while, wisely so.

"But you said-" mutters Mike, still puzzled and freaked out by what he's seen.

Peter cannot find himself to pretend to care, not when it's just the four of them. "I thought you didn't like broken bones. Too cliché. Predictable."

"That's not what Max meant when she told you that we needed help!" whispers the curly haired boy.

The man with the will of steel, the eyes of sharp stalactites that cut deep merely takes out a cigarette out of the pocket of his grey shirt. He doesn't light it up. He barely smokes.

"Well, in that case, children, that's too bad. You didn't clarify what was it that you deemed suitable as a 'retribution' besides the usual bone damage, did you?"

"We-!" chimes in Max, but he cuts her off.

"Did you?"

"No," she and Mike mutter in unison. In defeat as well.

"Good," he says, lighting the cigarette on fire  with just a flick of his finger and leaving the ashes fall for the mere purpose of showing off. "Now that this problem is out of the way, we are left with the most important part; find Eleven."

The redhead looks at the two boys with a frown.

They surely don't want to be in El's shoes, despite how impressive or charming her guardian can be, and this - this right here is one of the reasons why.
Peter can be comforting one moment and hellish the next. Their own families aren't perfect, but this is another level of 'fucked up'.

Chapter Text

He finds Eleven inside the supply room, knelt down the cold marble floor, staring at the shelves full of buckets with paint of various colors and broken vending machines that were discarded there. He opens the door slightly to let a bit of light in.

That catches her attention and she turns her head around to see who is the person who found her. Once her eyes settle on him, she becomes more embarrassed, because it's Peter and not some unknown folk who wouldn't know her exact situation.

"Hey..." she whispers, head bowed down once again, looking away.

"Hey," he says, just as gently. "May I come in or do you need more time?"

"No, you can. I don't mind." Her eyes are pinned on the wall. "I think I... I think I cried enough."

So he closes the door, but not completely, leaving it open one inch so a line of light can break the monotony of the otherwise pitch black darkness. He approaches her and sits besides her carefully as if trying to console a wounded fawn.

Deers were her favorite. He didn't favor animals more than he did people, but he could see the beauty of a baby deer lying on the grass with its mother nearby, like the one they had watched through binoculars when she was eleven years old and he had taken her hiking in the woods that were he closest to California for a weekend. She was rather mesmerized by these beautiful and slender creatures.

"Your friends are waiting outside," Peter murmurs. "Would you like to see them?"

"Not yet," answers the girl. "Just give me ten minutes..."

She had grown to like the quiet, and she knew that Max and Mike could be too angry and loud for her liking. She adored them, but she could use some peace at the moment. Will was another story.

He wraps one arm around her shoulders and she lays her head on his shoulder by instinct. "Okay..." His eyes soften and he breathes in once, relaxing a little as well.

"Take your time," he murmurs and places a chaste, fluttering kiss on her forehead.He watches with equal care as she releases a breath. Her lungs are moving closer to what is her usual breathing rate. He is relieved.

He hears her turning her head to look him in the eye and then he sees her flushed face with the dried tear stains on her cheeks. "Hey, umm... how did you know...?"

"What happened?" he prompts her , finishing the thought.

"Uh huh."

"Maxine called me. She was very worried about you, you know. All of them were."

The girl with the long tangled hair and the white dress ruined by coffee stains squints her eyes, giving him a curious look, as if doubting his words. "They were?"

"You're underestimating yourself again, stop," says Peter, his tone turning back to stern. "Of course they were. You have good friends, Eleven, much as I don't want to admit it. People who care about you, people who will get mad for you. Don't forget that."

She nods before muttering, "Sorry."

He passes a hand through her hair. He's smiling, just the barest bit. "What are you sorry for, little one?"

"That you had to leave work because I couldn't handle some idiot's teasing."

"Hey, don't say that," he snaps, raising her chin so they can have direct eye contact. "Look at me."

So she does. Her own smile is faint, but it's there. She feels better already.

"Your safety will always be my priority." His thumb brushes her cheek until it reaches the corner of her mouth and stays there. "Always."

She doesn't mind the intimacy. She has gotten used to it by now. Peter was an extremely touchy person. He had no concept of personal space, despite his sociopathic nature. Something that always surprised her.

'Thank you.' It's not her mouth that says it but her head, it projects the thought to him.

"Of course," he whispers.

Five minutes pass in silence, before Eleven decides to speak again.

"Hey, Peter?" she says, drawing her head away from his shoulder before giving him a glance that screams of fear, of alarm.

On his part, he is as calm as he can be. "Hmm?"

"What happened to Angela?" she asks, her eyes anxious like they're prone to be every time she learns of one of his initiatives to defend her. "I mean... I heard screams."

Shit. He isn't ready to tell her that. He knows she won't take it well. (And it's the first time he has killed a person since...) Most of the times a cracked elbow is fine enough to send a message, but Peter has grown quite bored of it, how repetitive it turns out to be.

"Well..." he starts off, trying to bring the final point of the subject matter as lightly as possible, "There were, indeed, screams, but they weren't hers. She didn't feel any pain."

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't break any of her arms."

He has balled his hands into fists on his lap, knelt as he is on the floor, still very much near the girl. "I made her heart stop instead."

He doesn't need to look at her to feel the shock that is growing on her face.

Her voice cracks when she stutters, "You... you made her have a heart attack."

"Well, to be fair, her grandfather - the one on her father's side - died due to similar causes two years ago," he mutters, his vocal tone unmistakably dry. "If I'm not mistaken, there is a high chance for her father to also experience heart failure in the future, so it wasn't completely out of the blue."

Eleven stares at him, baffled. How can he be so calm about ruining a girl's life? A girl that, albeit bitchy, still was in the same age as her. A girl who, maybe, would have the chance to grow out of it. But now that opportunity would never arise. Character development doesn't apply to the dead.

"You said you wouldn't do it again..." she finally croaks out, when she is certain that she is in a somewhat better psychological state to continue the conversation. "You promised."

"I'm s-"

"Don't," she barks, interrupting him. "Don't say how sorry you are - because it will be a lie. It's going to make me feel like shit."She gulps. "So don't say it."

"Fine." He drops his own arm away from Eleven's back, trying to give her space to process the information she has just received. "I'm not saying anything."

None of them speaks. Peter hears only their breaths, unsynchronized, in disorder. One calmer (his), the other (hers) more panicked, laced in fear, in doubt.

He would find something to occupy his thoughts and leave her to ponder, unbothered, if it wasn't for the muffled voices outside. He fights the urge to sigh. It's her friends. They must have tried to eavesdrop. Well, there isn't much to move the conversation forward, so he decides to open the door of the tiny storage room.

Max and Mike stumble down and fall on the floor, because they were leaning against the door and hadn't heard it when it had opened. Will is still standing well on his legs behind them.

Peter grins. At least they are amusing. They make even Eleven raise her head, snap out of her short self loathing session. Her attention is caught and she manages to display a smile, even a tiny one at the sight of them.

Mike stands up relatively quickly. It's Max who hit her knees when she fell so now it's even more difficult for her to move.

With a wave of his fingers, Peter makes Max's legs move on their own so that she can rise up and off the cold surface.

"Hey, hey, HEY!" screams the redhead, angry and rightfully so. "No using your powers on me, asshole! I am perfectly capable on standing up by myself!"

"Sorry," he drawls, though it becomes clear to Max that he says it only for appearances. Peter 'Morgan' aka 'Henry Creel' never regretted his actions (and he doesn't plan to start now).

"Did you tell her then? What happened?" asks Mike, placing a gentle hand on Max's arm to calm her down.

Eleven pins her eyes on her friends. Disbelief mixed with anger. "Wait... You told him to kill her? You knew he'd do this?"

"No!" exclaims Will in a hurry, stepping forward. "Of course not. We had no idea he would do that! We thought that Angela would get a little scare, that's all."

"Yeah, we just wanted to give her a lesson, you know, for teasing you," says Max, her eyes betraying her ever so growing panic.

"If I may-" starts off Peter, but his ward interrupts him on the spot.

"Oh, so as it turns out you're actually talking?" asks Eleven acidly. "Even though you said you wouldn't? Finding excuses again. Great..."

She gets on her feet and walks to the door, pushes it open and then takes a look over her shoulder directly at him. "Guess I'll leave then. I'll return with the next bus. I need more time. Peter..."

She takes a deep breath in to stabilize her hazy and ever working mind as much as she can. "Don't expect me to be home before ten."

"Do you want any of us to come with you?" asks Mike. "Where will you even go?" 

Eleven gives Will a sympathetic glance, a glance that is admiring, full of adoration. (A gaze that shows how much she trusts him with her emotional turmoil yet once again. Max and Mike may be the avid advocates of what regards her rights as a teenager, they may call Peter on his bullshit, but Will is the one she truly feels comfortable talking to.)

"Will may come, if he wants to. We'll be somewhere around the neighborhood anyway. Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not mad at you..." (Well, that was a lie. She is mad - at Max and Mike. It will fade in time, as every irritation between them tends to do, but she cannot stay impassive at their recklessness. They should have thought this through.) "... but you know. Will is better in all of this."

('This' being the 'empathy' department of emotions.)

Max nods solemnly at her friend. "We understand. Do what you think is better for you right now. And... we're really sorry, seriously."

She recognizes that maybe she took it too far without even thinking of what the consequences would be for the girl's mental state.

Mike, on the other hand, blames Peter. He's sure that when Max's head clears up, she will realize the man's manipulation as well. Not that she hasn't already, but seeing El distressed makes the redhead blame herself. Truth is, if Peter didn't 'show off' and just broke the blonde's arm, none of this would have happened.

Will looks at the girl with the fiery hair and eyes blue like calm lake waters and the too tall, curly haired boy with the sharp cheekbones, full of angles everywhere and gives a sheepish grin at the two of them. "Well... see you later. The bus leaves at five minutes. You can-"

"It's fine," says Peter, his tone softer than the previous time he had spoken. "I saw multiple taxis near the parking lot. I can very well pay one of them to take us all back. You two can go on."

He is sad, and every child knows it, but in Eleven's opinion, the 'now' sadness doesn't matter. Not when the 'then' anger had won already.

"Good, okay... See you later then," says Will and goes after Eleven, who has already walked out of the storage room, the door now swinging behind her, firstly at some speed until it is slowed completely. Then it stops.

Peter, Max and Mike exit the small, suffocating room some time later, when they have heard El's and Will's footsteps fading away and the bus, next thing, coming and then leaving, heading back to the area where Joyce's and Eleven's own homes are.

******

Eleven leads Will to an old children's playground. It's seven in the afternoon by now. They are sitting in the swings, Will's favorite spot, as he had told her one day.

He asks, "How do you feel?"

She unties the grey rubber band with which she had connected two strands of hair at the back of her head so it wouldn't fall to her eyes and then grabs the lot of her hair and ties it into a ponytail. She feels that she will start to sweat in a few minutes. Her skin is already red and itchy.

"Angry," she whispers. "Very very angry."

"Mhmm," mutters Will, trying to make her come out of her shell, even by walking on eggshells, by swimming closely into dark waters. "Because...?"

"Because..." she breathes out, closing her eyes briefly. She reopens them, staring right ahead at the direction of the sunset. "...when he did it before, when I was eight... I saw slaughtered bodies of children and he told me..."

She whips off a tear before it even has the chance to roll down. "He told me that I would understand when I got older, that he did it to protect me. Because the world was too cruel for someone like me. Because I was different. I was special. And it was all. bullshit."

Eleven's eyes find the shining orange disk on the sky that serves as the sun. To her it looks more like a vinyl disk on a pickup machine inside these vintage antique stores she had passed by a few times while cycling through the city with all of the Party.

The boy with the eyes the warm color of coffee - and the brown hair whose bowlcut is subtler than it was in previous years, thus suiting him way more - takes her hand into his and gives it a gentle squeeze.

"At any case, it's not your responsibility to forgive a behavior - or anything, really - just because the person that hurt you is supposed to be 'family' or an 'adult you were really close to'. Whoever that person is, you're allowed to be angry - for as long as you like. Because, in the end, a shitty behavior remains a shitty behavior, no matter how many good memories you and that person have created together. You cannot turn a blind eye to the bad because 'good is there as well'. Do you know what I mean?"

Eleven is smiling. (He made her smile. He did that. Not Hopper or his mother, Max or Mike. Him. He did that. That feels... nice. They were just starting to get close. Will is relieved that the girl has started to open up more.)

"Yes," she whispers. "Yes, I definitely do. You said it all, what I've been thinking. All of it was there."

So Will grins back. "Good, umm... Okay."

Out of sudden anxiety, he takes his attention off his friend and too stares at the beautiful pink and orange colors that are swirling and melting together on the pink dew canvas of the sky. "I don't - I don't think I have anything else to say so... yeah. We can just, you know, stare at the sunset, seeing as it's already here - and free."

"Okay," he echoes back, her hands grip the metallic chains of her own swing and with a push forward, she begins swinging like the time she was nine and more carefree. "Thanks for the boost of confidence."

"Sure," mutters Will. "No problem. Happy to help."

He looks at his feet. He thinks of Mike and his own misery. But he has to put his own needs aside for now. Will's unrequited love life with his best pal is nothing to be compared to Eleven's issues with her psychotic, yet very succesful at manipulation guardian.

He knows the girl will not forgive Peter for that. It will also take time for her to trust him with any of the people that she holds close to her heart.

(Good. In Will's own words, that son of a bitch needs to be humbled down. A lot. Hopefully, this will teach him a thing or two about reevaluation methods).