Never Tear us Apart

by Folklorewriter26

Chapter 4: The Hunt

THE PADALIN 

NIAGARA FALLS 

---

Mike Wheeler was well and truly pathetic. He surely felt it as he drank in the sight of the — his — house, and he steadily comprehended it by the mere thought of Hopper having to take it all in too within the matter of hours. 

He stood solemnly and expectantly at the end of the drive, all narrow windows and weathered trim, as if it, too, were bracing for judgment. The thought of Hopper having to take it all in within the next few hours made something small and mortifying twist in his gut. The photos. The decor. The way the place had been built around a girl he'd dreamt of now longer than he had her for.

He wasn’t trying to make a shrine. That would have been easier to explain, at least, but shrines were for the deceased — and Mike's girlfriend wasn't dead, she was simply missing. 

He hadn’t planned on purchasing it two years back. He’d told himself that more than once, as if repetition could turn impulse into reason. But he’d also known, with the same quiet certainty that haunted most of his decisions, that leaving it untouched would’ve been an equally unforgivable mistake.

He already owned a place in San Francisco, a loft wedged into the heart of the city, where he’d grown accustomed to knowing the nature of his quarrelling neighbours’ lives better than his own; where mornings often awoken him with horns blaring; where he woke to the prime specimen of road rage and the rattle of garbage trucks instead of birds. 

But San Francisco was so loud. She would have hated it. She wouldn't have felt like she belonged. And Mike didn't want that for her. 

The thought settled in his chest, heavy and familiar, and for a moment he could almost see it — the way she’d flinch whenever Hopper barked out a string of curses after stubbing a toe; the way her hands rubbed together when rooms grew too full, too close; the way she’d quietly, deliberately change the radio station the second metal rock crept in, her mouth pursed in concentration.

El liked softer things. Slower ones. It was exactly why he brought this house. 

Mike swallowed and let his gaze travel up the façade of the house, to the narrow upstairs windows beneath the slanted roof. He’d chosen this place because it was quiet. Because the walls were thick and the street rarely busy. Because the garden out back caught the sun just right in the late afternoon, and because the air near the falls always carried a coolness that felt clean. Because it felt like somewhere she could breathe without nervously looking over her shoulder. 

Inside, every room told on him.The parlour with its pale walls and too-carefully chosen furniture. The kitchen arranged for two — always two — even when he ate standing at the counter, even when no one ever took the second mug. The staircase lined with photographs he pretended were just memories and not proof of devotion.

Upstairs, behind locked doors, the worst of it waited, and it wasn't the ensuite he never slept in. It was the spare rooms he hadn't meant to touch at first. They started out as harmless, empty rooms that held no true purpose besides holding old junk like Mike's old D&D campaign books — but he made the mistake of standing there too long and allowing himself to envision something more. The second had followed in a quiet, shameful spiral — tiny hangers, folded clothes, books stacked low where small hands could reach them. He’d told himself it was hypothetical. Symbolic. A writer’s indulgence. 

Nancy’s face when she’d opened the door had told him otherwise. He’d locked them both that night and hid away the key where no one would ever think to look, except him. Especially him.

Now, standing in the drive with the house looming and the party on their way, Mike felt something shift within him, but not shame this time, but a fragile, reckless hope threading through the ache. If she were alive — which he knew now was true — then the house wasn’t pathetic, and nor was he. It was waiting, just like him, waiting for its owner to come home. 

Mike closed his eyes and, just once, let himself imagine her there without flinching. Not as a memory. Not as a dream. But real — moving through the rooms, touching the walls, leaving her floral and balmy milk scented soap aroma behind.

He closed his eyes despite himself. He could see her, suddenly — not as a memory, but as a presence. El in the doorway, shoulders hunched inside one of his sweaters, eyes wide and uncertain and bright with that careful hope she carried like glass. El padding barefoot across old wooden floors. El touching things gently, as if afraid they might disappear if she wasn’t careful. His chest ached so badly it bordered on nausea.

Please, he thought, not to God — never to God — but to the universe, to the thing that had taken her and might still give her back. Please let me be right.

She's alive.

The thought didn’t feel fragile. It felt inevitable, like something that had been true all along and only now had language. The house unspooled in his mind, the parlour warming, the stairs no longer lonely, doors upstairs not locked but opened by a hand he knew better than his own.

He felt it; her mismatched socks (one polka-dotted purple, one striped yellow) on the kitchen chair, her raspy laugh ricocheting off old wood, her standing in the blue room doorway — not afraid of it, not turning away this time — simply breathing in the life she should have had with him. The life he'd been so, so ready to give her. 

The image didn’t hurt the way it used to, and he supposed it was because he no longer had to envision her with life. He knew now, and that steadied him like a guiding light. He opened his eyes again, heart thudding, and stared at the front door like it might open at any second.

God help him, he was ready. The ache inside him didn’t hollow him out anymore. It filled him, dense and electric. Love like gravity. Love like direction. Love like he hadn't felt it in years. 

---

The phone rang when Mike was standing in the kitchen, fingers curled hard around the edge of the counter like it was the only solid thing left in the world. The marble was cool beneath his palms, grounding in the way pain sometimes was. He let it ring once. Twice. He answered on the second ring, not the first — because answering on the first would mean admitting how long he’d been waiting, how tightly hope had wound itself around his ribs.

“Nancy?”

There was a pause on the other end. A breath drawn in and held too long. He could hear movement — the soft rustle of papers, the scrape of something being set down, maybe a jacket shrugged on and forgotten. Proof that she hadn’t stopped moving since they’d last spoken. Proof that she’d taken this seriously.

“I’m sorry,” she said immediately, like the words had been burning a hole straight through her chest. “It took… it took hours to get through to Max and Lucas.”

Mike closed his eyes. His forehead dipped forward, hovering just shy of the cabinet door. He stayed very still, as if moving might knock something loose inside him that he couldn’t afford to lose yet.

“They’re okay,” Nancy added quickly, too quickly. “They’re both okay. They just—” She exhaled, slow and controlled, the way she did when she was trying not to editorialize. “They’re worried, Mike. Really worried. Lucas is on base this week and Max’s shop is completely slammed, but neither of them laughed. Neither of them brushed it off. They just… asked a lot of questions.”

Mike swallowed.

That helped. A little. Only ever a little.

“They believe me?” he asked, quietly. Not hopeful. Careful.

“They believe you,” Nancy corrected. “Which is not nothing.”

His grip on the counter loosened by a fraction.“And Dustin?” he asked, already bracing himself.

Nancy hesitated.

“I didn’t get him,” she admitted. “I tried. I called and left a voicemail, which I’m already regretting because I sounded like a lunatic. He’s buried under finals right now, Mike. Like— underground. He probably hasn’t left his dorm in a while.”

A ghost of a sound left Mike’s throat — not quite a laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That tracks.”

“Will and Jonathan—” Nancy continued, and her voice softened in that way it always did when she talked about them. “They said yes. Immediately. No questions. They’re in. They just… need help covering it. Money’s tight right now, especially with Jonathan freelancing and Will’s lease renewal coming up.”

“I’ll pay,” Mike said without hesitation. The words came out sharp, decisive, like he’d been waiting for the opportunity. “All of it. Flights, hotel, food, whatever they need. I don’t care.”

“I know,” Nancy said gently. “I told them.”

There was another pause. Longer this time. Heavy. Mike felt it settle in his chest before she even spoke again, like a storm pressure drop.

“And Hopper,” Nancy said. Mike’s jaw tightened, bracing for impact. 

“I sent Will,” she went on carefully. “I didn’t want to do it over the phone. I thought— I thought that might be worse.”

Mike nodded once, even though she couldn’t see him.

“What did he say?” he asked.

Nancy swallowed. He could hear it: the hitch, the recalibration.

“He got quiet at first,” she said. “Frozen, almost, I guess, taken aback.”

Mike’s eyes slid shut again, and this time his forehead pressed fully into the cabinet door. The wood was solid. Unmoving. Unimpressed by grief.

“And then he snapped,” Nancy continued. Mike exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, like he was diffusing something volatile inside himself.

“He said you had no right,” she said quietly. “That you shouldn’t have called. That it was cruel — that you were cruel — for even suggesting it without proof. He said—” She broke off, then forced herself forward. “He said he’s buried her once already, and he won’t do it again just because you can’t let go.”

The words landed like a bruise. Deep. Spreading.

Hopper’s words — you have no right — echoed even though he hadn’t heard them himself. Mike swallowed hard. Maybe he didn’t have the right. Maybe loving El didn’t entitle him to reopen old graves, to rip at scars Hopper had barely learned to live with. The man had lost a daughter once already, and then he’d loved El like one, too. Mike had loved her differently — fiercely, foolishly, completely — but he’d loved her alive.

And God, didn’t that count for something?

“But,” Nancy added quickly, “Will said he was shaking, Mike. I don’t think he even realised it. He kept asking where you were. How long you’d been thinking about this. He told Will to tell you—” She hesitated. “He told Will to tell you to get help.”

Mike let out a breath that felt like it scraped his lungs raw on the way out.

“So that’s a no,” he said softly.

“For now,” Nancy replied. “He just— he can’t hear it like this. Not yet.”

Mike nodded again, alone in his kitchen. Alone with the photos on the fridge. Alone with the staircase just out of view. Alone with the locked doors upstairs that held too much hope and too much grief to touch.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice rough. “For trying.”

“I did try,” Nancy said, and there was something fragile and earnest in it, something that reminded him she was tired too. “I’m still trying.”

“I know,” Mike replied. “That’s why I called you.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll be there,” she said finally. “No matter what.”

Mike’s gaze drifted toward the hallway, toward the bend in the stairs, toward the rooms that had never stopped waiting — for footsteps, for laughter, for a girl who had once changed the shape of his entire life.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I know.”

Mike drew in another sharp breath and seriously regretted calling his sister a pain in the ass. He had been wrong — embarrassingly, spectacularly wrong. Because of everyone he’d least expected to care this much about El at a time like this, Nancy won. She cared. She trusted him. She believed him when belief was easier to dismiss as delusion.

She hadn’t asked him for proof. She hadn’t told him to move on. She hadn’t said it’s been years, Mike. She had just listened — and then she’d acted.

He wondered, distantly, how many nights she’d spent lying awake thinking of El too, and felt something twist in his chest at the thought.

---

THE MAGE

Kirkjubæjarklaustur — Iceland 

It took her approximately thirty-two minutes to pack up and disappear into nothingness again. 

She noticed the number because she always noticed numbers — seconds between breaths, steps between doors, heartbeats before impact. Thirty-two minutes felt almost generous. Too long, maybe. Long enough to second-guess herself, long enough to let the weight of this borrowed life press against her ribs.

She did it efficiently, almost tenderly, like muscle memory guiding her hands where thought could not. Clothes folded tight. Essentials only. The picture of him hesitated over, then slid carefully between pages of a book so she wouldn’t have to see his eyes and falter. The room emptied quickly, like it had always known it would one day be left behind.

Running had always come easy to her, vanishing, too. It was what she was best at, after all.

She didn’t reach out to Owens this time. Not for help. Not for forgiveness. Not again. She’d learned the cost of that kind of hope — the fine print written in blood and needles and locked doors. Whatever he had once offered her, it had always come with strings, and El was done being tethered to men who claimed to know what was best for her.

Instead, she took her savings, the quiet, careful pile she’d built coin by coin, shift by shift, job by job, and bought a ticket to Greenland.

Why Greenland? She didn’t know, but it made sense. She had to make a stop, maybe dye her hair again, buy a new pair of blue contacts, configure a new disguise. 

She told herself that once she landed, she’d buy another ticket. Greenland to Chicago. Chicago felt closer to the truth somehow, closer to the centre of the map she kept folded in her head. And then Indiana. Bloomington — maybe. Hawkins, if she were brave. Or stupid.

She didn’t have a plan. Not really. She only knew she had to go back.

Back to the place where her life had broken then remade. Back to the place where her name had first been stolen from her mouth and replaced with a number. Back to Indiana, where her aunt Becky lived with files and the last proof that Jane Ives had existed before she’d been erased.

She needed the paperwork. The records. Birth certificates, hospital logs, signatures in ink that couldn’t be argued with. Proof that she had lived. That she hadn’t died in that hospital crib as an infant. That she hadn’t simply vanished into the ether the way they’d wanted the world to believe.She needed evidence that she had been robbed — not lost.

And if she couldn’t find it? El’s jaw tightened as she slung the bag over her shoulder.

Then maybe that wasn’t the point at all. Maybe she wasn’t meant to stitch herself neatly back into the world they’d denied her. Maybe the truth didn’t live quietly in manila folders and filing cabinets. Maybe the only way forward was through fire.

The lab. The government. Dr. Kay. Every shadow that stood between her and the life she wanted — between her and him. Whatever it took.

She stepped out into the cold Icelandic night without looking back, boots crunching softly against gravel, heart hammering with something dangerously close to anticipation.

This wasn’t running anymore. This was momentum. And for the first time in a long time, El Hopper wasn’t disappearing. She was coming for everything they owed her.

---

THE PADALIN 

NIAGARA FALLS 

“I—I know it sounds insane,” Mike said, the words tripping over themselves as soon as they left his mouth, like they were afraid of being spoken aloud. “There’s no concrete proof. Not yet. But—I felt it.”

The sentence lingered there, fragile and exposed. No one moved.

The air thickened, heavy and close, as if the room itself had leaned in. Nancy’s brow knit together, worry etching lines that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Will pressed his lips thin, eyes flicking away like he couldn’t bear to look directly at Mike. Jonathan clenched his jaw and took another slow pull from the beer in his hand, the can creaking under his grip.

“You felt her?” Will asked finally, voice careful, almost gentle — but the doubt was there, threaded through each word. “You—like… before? That time you—”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

The room seemed to shrink in on itself, the walls inching closer, the ceiling pressing down. Mike felt the memory rise up anyway, sharp and invasive, prying open a place he’d spent years sealing shut. The psychiatric ward. The way the air smelled perpetually clean and wrong — antiseptic and despair. The blank ceiling tiles he’d memorised night after night, the hum of fluorescent lights that never shut off, the quiet horror of being told his grief had turned into something pathological.

He remembered how they’d looked at him then. Pitying. Careful. Afraid.

This wasn’t that. This wasn’t delusion or desperation or a boy who couldn’t let go.

She was out there. Alive. Breathing. Existing beyond memory and imagination. And he would pull her back into the world, even if it meant chasing the truth until the day his legs gave out. 

The silence broke the wrong way — not with belief, but with motion.

Jonathan scrubbed a hand down his face and let out a slow, deliberate breath, grounding himself. “Okay,” he said at last. “Okay. She’s alive.”

Mike’s heart jumped painfully at the words, hope flaring so sharply it almost hurt.

Jonathan looked at him then, really looked, eyes sharpening. “Now what?”

Now what?

The question burned.

Mike swallowed, his throat raw as his thoughts scrambled for shape. The plans he’d been building in his head for years — half-formed, obsessive, secret — surged forward all at once. Kay. The government. Project MKUltra. Every theory he’d forced himself not to linger on suddenly felt inevitable. Not madness. Not fixation.

Necessity.

Jonathan’s rather practical words cut through him. Now what? Now what? His throat burned as he struggled for the right answer, the plan that wasn’t just desperation dressed up as strategy. The government, Kay, Project MKUltra — every scheme he’d concocted in his head since she vanished suddenly became necessary. Not obsession. Not paranoia. Necessity. If she didn’t trust anyone, if she was careful, if she was afraid — then it was up to him to build the safety net she couldn’t.

“What?” Mike asked, a frown forming. 

“She isn’t here,” Jonathan pressed. “If El wanted to be here, she would be. That’s not an accusation — that’s just reality.” The words hit harder than Mike expected. He stiffened, jaw tightening.

“She didn’t stay away because she wants to,” Mike said immediately. Too fast. Too sure. “She stayed away because she was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Nancy tilted her head slightly, her eyes carefully examining Mike. 

“Of Kay,” Mike said. The name landed heavy in the room. “Of the government. Of them finding her again and cutting her open and taking her blood.”

 “Mike…” Will swallowed.

“I know,” Mike cut in, softer now, but no less certain. “I know how this sounds. But think about it. She’s been hunted her entire life. Every time she’s trusted someone in power, they’ve turned her into a weapon. A resource. A lab rat.”

Jonathan crossed his arms. “So what, she just… disappears? No trace? No call?” 

“She’s good at that,” Mike said quietly. “Disappearing. And it makes sense, she stays hidden like that because she thinks it keeps us safe." Mike’s hands curled into fists at his sides. She shouldn’t have to hide. She shouldn’t have to fear anything ever again. 

Nancy’s eyes flicked to him again.

“You’re saying she’s hiding?"

“I’m saying she’s out there somewhere, surviving.”

He could feel his heart climbing into his throat. She’s alive. She’s out there. She’s breathing. She’s real. The thought was almost unbearable, the yearning twisting itself into a knot that refused to be soothed by anything he could touch or see. Every instinct told him to drop everything, hop on the next flight, and find her. But logic — that damn, painful logic — whispered in his ear: she’s smart. She knows how to vanish. She knows how to survive. And if he moved too fast, if they all moved too fast, they’d lose her again. Mike’s hands twitched, fingers flexing at his sides, and yet, underneath that meticulous caution, something primal and unrelenting surged: the need to run, to leap across countries, to follow the faint heartbeat he felt in his mind, to drag her back into the light where she belonged.

The room went quiet again, but this time it wasn’t disbelief — it was calculation. Jonathan nodded slowly.

“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say she’s alive and hiding because she thinks Kay will find her. What then? I mean, you said it yourself, she's good at disappearing. El doesn't want to be found; it'll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Then we don’t go looking for her. Not directly.” Mike took a step forward, hands shaking now but voice steady. 

“What?” Will frowned. 

“We make it unsafe for them to go looking for her,” Mike said, voice trembling with something in between excitement and terror, “We expose everything.”

 “Everything?” Nancy’s breath hitched, just slightly.

“Everything,” Mike repeated, suggesting this from him. “Project MKUltra. The lab. The experiments. The stolen children. We build a case. A real one.”

Jonathan let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Mike, you’re talking about suing the government.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I am.”

"You can’t just—”

“Yes, we can,” Mike insisted. “Because it’s not just a conspiracy anymore. It’s a crime. Human experimentation. Child trafficking. Medical abuse. They erased her identity. Stole her from her mother. Abused her for years on end. That’s illegal.”

Will’s voice was barely above a whisper. “They won't lose, Mike. They can't, not with something like this.”

They already tried.” Mike met his eyes, determined. 

That landed. Jonathan shifted uncomfortably. “And Kay?”

“We sue her personally,” Mike said. “Malpractice. Unethical research. Fraud. Violations of consent. We drag her name into the light so hard he can’t hide behind classified stamps anymore.”

Nancy’s mind was clearly racing now. “If we do that… if we expose it publicly…”

“They can’t touch her,” Mike said. “Not without everyone watching. Not without admitting she exists.”

Will’s eyes shone. “You’re doing this so she can come back.”

Mike’s throat tightened. He nodded once. “So she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Jonathan exhaled slowly, a deep sigh. 

“I know,” Mike said. “But it’s the truth.”

Nancy glanced at Jonathan, then at Will, then back to Mike. “If we do this,” she said carefully, “we need proof. Documents. Names. Medical records. Something concrete.”

Mike’s mind flashed to Indiana. To Bloomington. To a woman who’d been erased just like El.

“Becky,” he said.

Will’s head snapped up. “Her aunt?”

“Yeah, she lives in Bloomington with El's mom.” Mike said. “She has paperwork, everything we need. And I know Hopper has most too, I just need to get him to listen."

 “So we find Becky first.” Nancy’s eyes widened.

“And if we’re wrong?” Jonathan nodded slowly. 

 “Then that's on me. I’ll live with that, I'll take the fall for it alone." Mike didn’t hesitate. They all looked at him.

“But we aren't wrong,” he continued, voice trembling now, “and if we do nothing — that’s worse. I won’t do that again.”

“Okay. Then we do this properly.” Nancy exhaled slowly. 

Mike let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

Because for the first time that night, it felt real.

Not just hope, but a way forward, a path. And yet, fear clawed at him. Fear that she’d disappear again, that the moment he stepped out too soon, too fast, she’d vanish like smoke through his fingers. Fear that this “proof” he felt — his certainty, his intuition — wasn’t enough for the world, for the government, for Hopper, for everyone who had tried to keep her safe in different ways. But that fear, as sharp as it was, could not outweigh the pull of hope. The yearning that had been lodged in his chest since the first moment she’d left him — the need to find her, to protect her, to be with her — overpowered it all.

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