Work Text:
He was caught. Held back from escape like a bear stuck in the cold metal trap of those who thought themselves higher than it. Forcing him still when it was in his nature to run free; keeping him from where he was meant to be, where all instinct told him he must go. He felt wild, he felt rabid, and like a wounded animal, he fought and bit and tore in all of his pain so that he might finally taste release again.
Mike screamed until the pressure ripped his throat. Then he kept doing it anyway. It was a fruitless endeavor, in truth. No matter how many times he howled "Get off of me! Get off of me!", the soldiers did not let go of him. Nothing gave—
—Until something did. Before he realized it, the constraints that withheld him fell away, evaporating into the sudden blackness that surrounded him, and he slammed to his knees in a shallow bed of water. There was nothing else. Every sound that had surrounded him before had melted away like ice in the warmth of sudden spring. That which had held him, encased him, liquifying and dissolving into nothing.
"El!," he cried, clambering up to his feet and rushing towards her when he caught sight of her figure approaching. They connected at once, and he gripped her arms like they were a lifeline. "You have to get out of there! You have to get out!"
Her face was anguished, a downturn of her lips and a crease between her brows that sent dread tunneling down to the very depths of his stomach. "None of this will ever end," she told him, "not if I'm still here. This is what I have to do. I need you to talk to the others-"
Fear struck him, hard and sharp like a sword through his chest. "No, no-"
"-I need you to help them understand my choice."
He shook his head violently. He was trembling slightly, and he could feel it. He thought that she must, too, for the way that the tears began to bead up at her waterline. "But I don't-" he said, his words tripping over themselves in his haste to get them out. How long did he have here with her? "I don't understand!"
"I know," she answered, so gentle that it hurt, even devastated as she sounded at the same time. "But you will. One day, you will. You understand me better than anyone, you always have."
One day. One day one day one day. The thought ran rampant through his mind, and it was a strange thing, because he hardly even understood the implications of it. What day, he wondered, and when? How many days could he stand to be without her all over again? This time, so different from all the others. With this, the gone would be so in a way that was far too sure, far too permanent. A way that left hardly any room for finagling, for altering the truth until it could decently soothe him. Could he really go on with the knowledge that there was truly, inarguably, no possible way for her to return to him whatsoever?
Mike knew the answer before he had even asked himself the question.
No, of course not.
He searched for her gaze through all of it, all of his shock-still panic, all of the glass of her tears of sorrow and apology, and he begged of her then, "Let me come with you."
She startled, freezing for a moment before looking up to him with wide, alarmed eyes. "Mike, no," she said quickly. "No, no, no. You- You can still go. You can have a life after this, far away from here. Go...Go and find those three waterfalls, and have enough of a life for the both of us."
Even the mere thought of it, of any life after this, after watching her die by his own unknowing hand, by his bomb, was unimaginable. Unfathomable. "I don't want any life without you," he told her, and he meant it like nothing else. "I told you- I told you, that day in the pizza shop, that my life started the day I met you. I meant it, I meant it, and it will end if I lose you."
I'll live, but I won't be alive.
"Mike-"
She was crying. It was his fault, he was doing this to her; but he couldn't help it, the desperation. He'd have gotten on his knees if he thought it would do any more to convince her of his plight. He begged, and he beseeched: "Let me go with you. Let me come. Please don't leave me."
She was quiet, just for one little moment, but in this darkness where he could not possibly tell when he'd be ripped away from her, that second of silence stretched out like some everlasting eternity. Mike watched her eyes flit all around his face as though she was searching for something. Searching for, perhaps, any one implication that he was not entirely, completely certain of the request he was making toward her. Seeing if anything in his agonized expression gave away some minuscule hint that he had not thought over the consequences of this decision and accepted them. She was seeing if he was unsure, if he wanted to back out.
He had never been more sure of something in his entire life.
When it seemed that she had realized that, the smallest hint of a smile came across her lips. Something like relief, that she had the permission to finally be selfish, to take something of her own from a world that had constantly taken and taken and taken from her first.
"I would never leave you," El whispered. She leaned forward to touch their foreheads together. "I love you."
As softly, as carefully, as though being too earnest might make her change her mind, Mike repeated, "I love you."
In an instant, the void was gone. Mike was yanked back up by the soldiers who had held him before, and he began to try and tear away from them with an even more fervent intensity than he had the first time—a feat which one would perhaps not even think possible, but it was. He made it possible. He would make anything possible if it helped him, in even the most minute of all ways, to get to her. Mike looked across the clearing, past every soldier and truck and other insentient obstacle trying to block him, and met her eyes again. They were focused, and there assured, and when she jerked her head almost imperceptibly to the side, he felt the grips on his arms give way again as the soldiers were knocked backward. The sudden balance shift almost had him falling to the ground again, but he tripped into a sprint before he had the chance to topple, and his boots were crashing against the street with the force of his every eager step forward.
Behind him, there was a terrible mix of screams. Dustin, Lucas, Will, and others he could not very well discern in his haste to go on. Nancy was the loudest, the highest, the most distressed. She sounded like she was being murdered, like the very sight of him running away from her and toward the gate might kill her.
I'm sorry, he thought. He threw the words out into the overhanging universe as though it might be able to deliver his words to his sister when he could not. Nancy, I'm so, so sorry, but I can't- I can't-
Were the soldiers chasing after him? Was anyone? He hoped not. Let him go, he begged wordlessly, and let them all be safe. Let them live even when he wouldn't, even when he couldn't bear to. He could not be stopped now, not now, not when he was so close. He let the vacuum sucking air and debris in through the gate carry him inward, pulling him where his own legs began to falter in their fiery exhaustion. He was so close.
When finally, finally, after what felt like a lifetime, he crossed over the threshold of the gate, he collided into her so hard that the force of their embrace spun them around and her feet left the ground, or maybe his did, for one split second. He heard El let out a breathy little sob, and he felt a sudden sense of cool relief wrap around him like a blanket.
"I love you," he told her again, desperately, "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Her hands came up to hold against his cheeks as she wept out, "I'm sorry." And then quieter, more hesitant, like she was afraid to say it and afraid to feel it, "Thank you."
Mike tightened the arms he had wrapped around her like they were the only things tethering him to that spot. Don't thank me, he wanted to say. I would always do this. I need you to know that I would always do this, no matter what. I would do anything for you.
Instead, he merely said, "I'll always be with you."
He turned his head to the side and was able to see everyone he had left behind on the other side of the gate. Nancy was fighting against the soldier holding her, and even Jonathan's knuckle-white grip on the back of her jacket, with the same sort of onerous ferocity that Mike had fought against his own. She was screaming for him, her face a red whorl of despair, her voice rising shrilly above the cacophony of both the others' clamoring and the soughing sound of the implode, and Mike felt so horrible, but he did not regret it. He looked there, at all of his friends, all of his allies, everyone who had been by his side since this whole nightmare had begun four years prior. There was so much he wanted to say to them, so much he would never be able to get out. He wanted to thank them, he wanted to apologize to them, but he could not explain his decision now. He knew that none of them would ever understand it, that none of them could, even if they tried. Had any of them ever felt as he had, that there was only one person who could truly understand them, and that they could ever feel as though they might die without that person? It was such a connection, such an inexplicable thing. He had met El in those woods, drowned by the cold autumn rain, and it had been like something had finally clicked. Something he had been missing all of his life, a puzzle piece he'd not even had the knowledge to realize had been absent. Without her, he was unwhole. He had found that out in the year that she had been hidden from him, and he'd never forgotten it.
But it was so much more than that, even still. He could never have any of the words to properly explain it.
El, with her hands still on his cheeks, turned his head away from them until he was looking toward her again. "Just look at me," she told him. Her voice wavered. He was half-sure that he only heard it because of how close to her he was.
"It's okay," Mike murmured. She nodded even as a tear slipped down her cheek.
She smiled, a wobbly thing, and repeated, "It's okay."
He leaned in, and she met him there and crushed her lips against his. One of her hands went around to cup the back of his head, and he focused on that, those feelings, and the warmth of her pressed up against him, rather than the wails of those he had escaped, and the implosion of the Upside Down.
The last thing that Mike knew in his life was El. There was no more that he ever could have dreamed of wanting.