Work Text:
Jane Hopper.
That’s the name printed on the birth certificate Hopper brought to the cabin today. He says that because of it, she is safe from the bad men. That she can go to school. Soon.
Too bad the name is wrong.
Jane, she thinks, Jane Jane Jane Jane Jane. She rolls the name around in her mind, poking it and prodding it, trying to find its edges.
It’s the name Mama gave her.
It’s pretty. Too pretty.
Jane is the name of girls on the television. She’s watched them for three hundred and sixty-one days now. Long enough to know that Jane has long beautiful hair, manicured nails, fancy dresses, and flawless make-up. Jane has a big pink bedroom with a four-poster bed and a phone that she uses to call her friends on Friday nights. Jane grew up with a Mom, a Dad, a Brother, and a Dog. Jane worries about who to take to the school dance and how to style her hair.
She’s sure Jane has never killed and eaten squirrels while living in the woods in winter or had close-cropped hair matted with blood and slime. Jane’s never been used as a tool to spy on men halfway around the world. Jane’s never set free monsters that tear apart the people she loves. Jane has certainly never murdered ten people by making their brains leak out their eyeballs. Not pretty, she thinks.
No, she finally decides, she isn’t a Jane—can’t be a Jane—even if she’d sometimes like to be.
But if she isn’t Jane, then who is she?
Eleven, she thinks.
It’s the name Papa gave her.
Eleven is a tool in Papa’s toolbox—a finely crafted tool that requires constant upkeep and maintenance. Too long out of the box and the tool will start to dull, lose efficiency, so Papa keeps her carefully controlled. Eleven wears hospital gowns and crowns of electrodes. She sleeps in a cold, tiny cell with only nightmares for company. Eleven walks alone in the inky blackness grasping at smoky echoes. Eleven only needs to reach out her hand to crush any obstacles in her path, blood trickling from her nose.
No! She thinks, more forcefully this time. The name Eleven feels like Papa’s warm breath on her neck, his dry hand on her shoulder, his papery voice in her ear. When she thinks about it too long, her mind goes back, kicking and screaming to her tiny cell. Eleven haunts her like the vision of Papa her sister conjured in the warehouse. Her skin crawls and her breath hitches and tears well in her eyes. She screws them shut, keeping the tears at bay.
On her darkest days, she worries that she is no more than what Papa made her.
That Eleven is all she deserves.
Then, she thinks back to that night with Mike—the first night—three hundred and sixty-eight nights ago.
El, she thinks.
It’s the name Mike gave her.
A gift, she thinks.
Hopper had taught her about gifts a few days after he’d found her feral in the woods (Day Three-Hundred and Fifty). He’d given her a book and said, “Here, take this—it’s a gift.”
She reaches out and takes the book, inspecting it. “Gift?” She says curiously.
“Yeah. It’s ah- A gift is somethin’ you give to somebody else. Somethin’ you think they would like.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Says Hopper after a second, taken aback.
“Why do you give… gifts?”
“Lotsa reasons,” he says shaking his head “to show somebody that you care about ‘em.”
“Gift,” she says, testing how the new word feels in her mouth. “Gift,” she repeats firmly, deciding she likes the feeling.
“Yeah kid,” Hopper chuckles, “Gift. That’s G-I-F-T. That’s your word for today.”
El was a gift from Mike.
She doesn’t know who El is or what she’s supposed to be.
She doesn’t know if El is a killer or a girl who likes dresses and make-up.
She doesn’t know if El has beauty like Jane or a purpose like Eleven.
But she does know one thing.
Whatever else she may be, El has friends—Mike and Dustin and Lucas and Will and Joyce and Hopper. These people—they love El, they protect her. They love her even though she’s killed people and maybe got their friend trapped in an alternate dimension.
They don’t care.
They think she’s awesome.
With them in her corner, she doesn’t have to be Eleven or Jane, or whoever.
With them, she can build something new. She can decide what El is, who El should be.
El may carry pieces of Eleven within her, but she is no longer Papa’s tool. El won’t ever be Jane, but someday, if she chooses, she could be something like Jane.
El slips comfortably into her chosen name, reveling in the love and possibilities it embodies. She doesn’t care what a piece of paper says, she knows her name. Resolved, she gets up to go and tell about Hopper her choice.