30. Father

All in all, El's third Christmas in Hawkins outside of the lab had been a success.

It was a quieter day than the past two years, as most of her friends' families decided to venture outside of their town to go visit relatives and friends for the holidays, leaving just El, Mike and Dustin at home for the first week of break. Dustin, bless his heart, didn't mind third-wheeling with the couple as they all got together to laze about, watching movies, building snowmen, whatever the three of them felt like doing as they finally got to breathe after their first semester of sophomore year. The trio actually got along surprisingly well, making for a relaxed, enjoyable first week while they waited for their friends to get back.

El spent Christmas morning just with Hopper exchanging the little gifts they'd gotten for each other and spending the day in their pajamas, stuffing themselves with whatever food they had while watching old Christmas movies on their TV.

After convincing their parents to let them duck out of their familial festivities later that evening, Mike and Dustin joined the pair at the cabin, with Hopper and Dustin turning a blind eye while Mike and El exchanged 'Merry Christmas' kisses.

Among the gift giving and cookie eating that ensued that night, Mike offhandedly mentioned his aunt and uncle coming down from upstate Indiana to spend a couple of days with them that week, only to stop abruptly when he realized they'd be here the day that El was planning on coming over so they could spend time together.

"...do you want to meet them?" he asks her timidly, knowing she's not fond of new people and she bites her lip, not wanting to say no, but the shy side of her really is not a fan of the idea. "They'll be bringing my baby cousin Adam too." That sparked her interest. She had never actually gotten to see a baby up close, since all the people she knew were done having kids and she'd only ever gotten a small glimpse of the babies around Hawkins. Enthusiastically, she agrees and Mike smiles. "Cool, I'll let them know. They're awesome people, I'm sure they'd love to meet you too!" he tells her and she grins, already excited to meet a new part of his family.

That changes quickly, however. The more she thinks about it, the more her thoughts remind her that she very well could be horrible with babies and could mess something up terribly. Not to mention that this was her first impression on some of Mike's relatives and she's the worst at first impressions, always screwing up something and having to work extra hard to reverse her mistake.

Her stomach is doing flips when she arrives at the Wheeler house a few days later, which is not an uncommon occurrence, but today it's out of her unrelenting nerves rather than excitement and she taps her hand on her leg as she hears the quiet conversations inside halt and footsteps come closer to the door.

Mike opens it, much to her relief and she returns his loving smile, stepping into his embrace as he reaches for her. The knot of anxiety in her stomach begins to melt away as she breathes him in, a little less scared as he silently reassures her that he won't leave her side through today.

He lets her pull back when she's finally ready and she glances over Mike's shoulder to see an older man with a kind face leaning against the entryway of the living room.

"El, this is my Uncle Mark," Mike says and she bravely steps forward to shake the man's hand. "Hello, it's nice to meet you," she says as politely as she can. "Nice to meet you too, El, Mike's been talking about you for a while," Uncle Mark replies, his eyes teasing, yet affectionate and she likes him instantly. A blush spreads across her cheeks as she pictures Mike going on and on about her, almost giggling when Mike clears his throat.

"And this is Aunt Donna," he says hastily as her gaze falls on the woman sitting in a rocking chair right by the fireplace. She smiles warmly up at her and El does her best to return her greeting, but she's too curious about the bundle Aunt Donna is holding in her arms.

"And Adam?" she asks quietly, timidly, not wanting to seem like she's disregarding Mike's aunt, but wanting so badly to get a closer look at the little child.

It catches her off guard when the woman gently asks, "Do you want to hold him?" Her tone is encouraging and El just can't say no.

She nods wordlessly and goes to take a seat on the couch, Mike sitting beside her as they watch Donna rise to her feet with the little bundle in her arms, cradling him delicately. El wipes her hands on her palms, swallowing hard, not wanting to make a mistake, but Mike's hand on her back grounds her and she sits up straighter. Confidently, she stretches out her hands and his mother smiles reassuringly at her before setting the child she birthed into El's arms.

There's a moment of panic when neither person has a steady grip on him, and El hurriedly secures her arms around the baby, marveling at its soft warmth. When he's supported and nestled safely in her lap, her eyes flicker up to his face and she gasps quietly as she pulls back the corner of the blanket resting on his cheek.

He looks so...fragile. So fragile and beautiful as he sleeps peacefully, his perfect face twitching every once in a while as sights and sensations float through his brain. Her eyes trace the curve of his button nose, the shape of his mouth, marveling at how little a human could be. Her finger brushes timidly across the smoothness of his cheek and her heart simply melts when the child nuzzles into the warmth of her hand, still fast asleep.

"He's beautiful," she whispers breathlessly, daring to look back up at Adam's parents for a second to see them watching her adoringly. "Isn't he?" Uncle Mark responds gently and El nods, before readjusting him in her arms slightly, gazing back down at his face.

This wonderful being trusts her, she muses. He's helpless, unable to fend for himself, desperate to be sheltered by anyone who could keep him safe and in this moment, even in his sleep, he trusts her to watch over him. While that thought should scare her, something inside her swells at the thought of being so trustworthy in the mind of a child. Even though she isn't related to him (yet) and this is the first time she's ever laid eyes on him, she can feel the stirring need to protect the bundle in her arms with everything she has. His trust is precious to her and she would do anything to defend it. Because she knows what it's like to be helpless. And she's forever grateful for the people who honored the trust she placed in them in her most vulnerable state.

She's jolted from her wandering thoughts when the baby shifts and begins to whimper. Out of instinct, she quietly shushes him, doing her best to rock him soothingly side to side, but it's no use as his whimpers abruptly become cries and her heart rate spikes as he scrunches up his face and wails.

She suddenly panics, feeling increasingly inadequate to deal with him, doubling her efforts to get him to calm down, to protect him the way he's asking her to, but he just continues to cry and scream and she doesn't know what to do and she must've done something wrong and she can't fix this-

"I've got him, El, don't worry about it," a voice comes from above her and she looks up to see Mike's uncle reaching out his arms to scoop up his child. Numbly, she hands him over, watching him cradle the boy delicately and she shrinks back into Mike's arms.

He pulls her to him and presses his lips against her temple. "That was great, El," he whispers in her ear and she cuddles into his embrace. "How was it?" he murmurs against her hair.

A lump forms in her throat, but she refuses to let it win, concentrating on breathing in and out. In and out, she lets her breaths flow. She focuses on her heartbeat, steady and strong, allowing it to slow until it thumps gently, as she listens to the thrumming heartbeat below her ear.

"That was...overwhelming. He's so...little," she settles on eventually, fiddling anxiously with the edge of his shirt and she hears him sigh as he holds her a little bit tighter. "I'm proud of you," he tells her quietly, his smile evident in his voice, warm and soothing. The heaviness on her chest begins to lift as she allows the gentle touch of Mike's fingers stroking her arm to center her.

Donna has excused herself to go to the restroom and Mike's uncle has taken to wandering aimlessly around the living room, concentrating on the baby in his arms more than where he's going as he gently bounces his son up and down and whispering to him in hushed tones, quieting his cries. El's eyes follow him lazily as she snuggles in Mike's embrace, curious and awestruck at the amount of patience and love he holds for his child.

It's when the man eventually takes a seat in the chair by the crackling fire that her thoughts begin to drift to her own paternal figures.

Her mind starts at Hopper. How, although he never met her as a baby and wasn't around when she was still a little child, he's cradled her like that before. Like nothing in the world could stop him from making her feel loved. Whether it was after a nightmare, a fight or just simply when she needed a hug, he knew when to drop everything and give her the comfort she longed for. Sure, Mike could provide that same comfort as well, but there was something about a father figure embracing her that made her feel completely secure, like she didn't need to worry about her safety anymore because she was completely protected.

But she wasn't the first daughter the man she now calls her father had held.

She's seen Sarah's baby pictures before. She's seen the overwhelming joy that a camera happened to capture whenever he held her, his only biological child. It's the most alive she's ever seen his face, painted with wonder, devotion, anxiety, love, she could see it all in the picture she had found in Sarah's belongings. She was his light.

El had always struggled with the fact that she had replaced her. A small part of her was convinced she would never live up to Hopper's expectations of a daughter or that she was just a stand-in, an archetype of what he wished he had. No matter how many times her adoptive father tried to convince her that she had filled the black hole in his heart beyond what he could comprehend, she was always prone to insecurity, and so, would lay awake at night wondering if Hopper was awake too, crying over the little girl he had lost, the child he would never have.

As she continued to watch Mark tend to Adam, she couldn't help but notice the same emotions Hopper held for Sarah shining on his face and she internally begs whatever higher force is listening to let him keep his son, to let him cherish him and raise him like...like...

'Like Hopper never got to raise his,' her mind fills in for her and while she agrees with that statement, the next thought that pops up wriggles through her attempts to grasp it and before she knows it, a voice whispers, 'Like your mama never got to raise you,' and suddenly, she's squeezing her eyes shut as memories of the man she had called her dad for the first twelve years of her life come flooding in.

The man who most certainly never held her with the tenderness that Adam's being held with. The man who refused to nurture through her childhood. The man who never looked at her the way Hopper looked at Sarah or Mike's uncle looked at Adam. The man who just wanted to use her to win a war, not because he cared for her in any capacity.

Mama had shown her what happened. She'd seen herself as a baby, even more fragile and delicate than Adam is right now, being ripped from her mother by that man, the bond that forms between a child and their parent broken the second she was in his arms.

That man was not her Papa. The lying, deceitful bastard, she hates that she ever called him that. Hates that that label ever led her to believe that he was her loyal guardian, that she could trust him with anything, that he would nurture her and care for her the way a father would his child.

For a moment, she allows herself to be selfish, bitterness settling in her stomach as she watches Mike's uncle whisper sweet nothings to his son.

That could've been her and Mama. She could've been rocked by the light of a fire, snug and warm in a blanket without anything to worry about. She could've been calmed by her lullaby, instead of the stone cold nursery rhymes Papa used to read to her. She could've been a normal child, growing up beneath the sun under her mother's watchful gaze, but instead she got her light from the artificial bulbs that hurt her eyes when she woke up in the morning and she was watched through their cameras.

They'd damaged her. Oh, how they'd damaged her. She's proven that her scars can heal, but that doesn't stop them from resurfacing every now and then, keeping the thought in her mind that she will never be whole again. The wounds that started when she was an infant were the ones that hurt the most. The neglect. The abuse. The lack of care.

It scares her how easily they were able to manipulate her, convince her that the scars they were giving her were normal. Her young mind couldn't have known better, it had never seen the outside world, never experienced what a parent was supposed to be like and so, the bad men took advantage of the precious vulnerability a baby holds without an inch of remorse.

Make one wrong move and Adam could be damaged too.

She simultaneously wanted to hug Adam's dad out of gratitude for his unconditional love toward his son and scream at him to make him realize what a delicate thing he holds in his arms. But she supposes he realized that the second Adam arrived into the world.

She admires him, admires Hopper for the strength and durability they both held in raising a child, because heaven knows their job is beyond important and ridiculously easy to mess up. It's almost too easy, her thoughts remark darkly, Papa's face still hovering in her mind.

...what if...

Her previously half-lidded eyes shoot open and she sucks in a breath, a thought occurring to her that she's never come across before. Her chest begins to constrict and she stands up quickly, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from the father and child before her.

Mike's hand is slipping in hers in an instant and she distantly hears him call her name, but her mind is spiraling to a terrifying place, one she's never visited before, though she briefly considers the possibility that it's always been there.

She spares a glance back at him, his concerned eyes accented by the fire. "Come with me?" she whispers, her voice shaking only slightly as she tugs on his hand. He nods somewhat reluctantly, but gets to his feet anyway. "Excuse us," El quickly remembers to say to the man sitting across from them as she hurriedly leads Mike out of the room and up the stairs.

He remains silent as she grips his hand tightly, heading straight for his room, fumbling for his doorknob in the darkness. She pushes the door open, leading him in without a word and he flicks on the lights, turning to face her, worry sketched into his features.

"El, what's wrong?" he asks her gently, taking hold of both her hands and lacing their fingers together. Without a second thought, her mind shuts the door and she ducks her head, piecing together her words as he waits patiently.

"Mike, if...if we...," she starts, but it suddenly catches up to her how presumptuous what she wants—no, needs to tell him is. She doesn't want him taking this the wrong way, knowing he very well could, but this...this is important. Really important. And when she looks back up into his warm, honest eyes, she lets her fears wash away as she gazes at the boy who could one day be her husband.

"Mike, promise me something." Her voice is so soft, she briefly wonders if he even understood her at all. But he takes a step forward, squeezing her hands as he replies, "Anything," and her heart melts into a puddle. Finding strength in his eyes, she continues.

"If we ever have kids...promise..." She releases a shuddering breath, collecting herself. "Promise me you'll be the best father you can possibly be to them."

She trusts Mike. She trusts Mike with all of her being.

But she also trusted Papa.

There is no connection between the two men and she's very aware that they couldn't be more different if they tried, Mike being infinitely better than the man who kidnapped and raised her.

But that doesn't stop her thoughts from flashing to their future children, knowing somewhere in her heart that they were going to end up as parents one day. Together. Parents of a beautiful, delicate, defenseless little baby, born out of the unfathomable love they hold for one another and that baby is going to depend on them and blindly trust them for its survival.

And if they screw it up...if the baby's father screws it up...the loss of paternal love would destroy any child, let alone their's.

It would mean trauma beyond repair. Scars. Nightmares. Flashbacks. Pain. The same pain she seeks to soothe within her every single day.

She can't let that happen. No, she won't let that happen. She hasn't even met their child yet and she's already prepared to defend it with her life.

She holds her breath, fearing for just a moment what her boyfriend's reaction will be. The look on his face is one of a confused surprise before it gives way to intense concern and she just knows he's wondering where this came from. She waits patiently, holding his gaze steadily until finally, finally his features soften into a tender determination. He takes one step closer to her, letting go of one of her hands to cradle her cheek gently and she can feel her pulse racing as she looks into his bottomless eyes.

"El," he begins, his voice soft and completely serious. "I promise you with all of my heart that I will love and protect and support our future children with everything I have. No matter what happens, I'll always be there for them and they will have the father they need. I won't...I won't be like your Papa, not even close. Hell, I won't even be like my dad. I'll do everything I can to be the dad you deserve. You have my word, El. They'll always be safe."

She exhales slowly, the tension easing off her shoulders and she smiles at him gratefully before wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her head against his sweater. There are tears in her throat and she lets them fall softly as she clings to the wonderful boy she knows will be by her side for the rest of her life.

He understands. He understands this fear she's had buried within her maybe better than she does and he's willing to work through it with her, something that makes her cling to him tighter, wanting him to know how much she appreciates him.

She's scared, so scared that she'll raise a damaged child, but he gets that, in a way that no one else does. And maybe...maybe he's afraid of the same thing.

"I promise to be a good mother," she whispers, her voice muffled by his shoulder, but he hears her all the same and squeezes her fiercely, pressing his lips to her head and letting them linger. "You will be an amazing mother," he murmurs against her hair. "Our kids will be lucky to have you."

Her chuckle is shaky as her tears come faster, but he's got her, letting her have this tender moment without letting her go under. "They're going to love you," she tells him, meaning it with all her heart.

"I love you," he replies and she turns her face to nuzzle into his neck. "I love you too," she whispers back.

She never doubted how strong of a parent again he would be after that day. Her faith that their children would adore him and be sheltered by him never faltered as she watched him grow into a young man that she fell more and more in love with through every passing day.

Ten years later, she would watch, exhausted but elated from her hospital bed, as he held his firstborn child, a son, for the first time. She would watch as he cradled him lovingly, tears streaming unabashedly in his cheeks, the pure, overwhelming joy and adoration shining so brightly on his face.

And she knew then that her fears would forever be silenced.