chapter 012,
close the gate

                                AS MAX LOOKED TO LUCAS AND WHISPERED "Is that..?", Lucy couldn't help but answer the question in her own mind. It had to have been the girl Leo had told her about—what was her name again? Twelve? Some sort of number, Lucy remembered. But, for a girl with unlimited superpowers, she looked... young. In fact, she couldn't have been older than eleven.

     Oh. Right. That was her name.

     She had a weak stream of blood trickling down from her nose, but no other visible injuries that attested to the fact that she had just fought off all of the Demo-dogs and won. She hadn't even broken a sweat.

Mike had burst forward the moment Eleven entered the Byers house, tearful and welcoming as he spread his arms to bombard her with a hug. She smiled up at him when they broke away from the hug, her eyes glossy.

     "I never gave up on you," Mike told her, still holding her shoulders. "I called you every night. Every night for—"

     "353 days," Eleven finished. She sniffed, beaming up at him. "I heard."

     "Why didn't you tell me you were there?" Mike asked, looking like the human equivalent of puppy-dog eyes. Lucy would have felt bad for him, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on. She could only assume Mike and this supergirl were.. what, dating? But they only knew each other for barely a week before Eleven supposedly "died," right?

     Lucy felt a pair of eyes on her and shifted her gaze to meet Leo's fervid stare. He raised his eyebrows, widening his eyes in the slightest and giving her a faint nod as if to say he agreed with the expression on her face.

     "Because I wouldn't let her," Hopper interrupted, and all heads turned to his tall frame. He took slow steps forward until he was only a few inches from Eleven. "The hell is this? Where you been?"

"Where have you been?" Eleven shot back, but there was no hostility in her voice. All of a sudden, she burst forward, and Hopper caught her in a tight hug. He rested his chin on her head, placing a quiet kiss to her hair.

     "You've been hiding her," Mike accused. "You've been hiding her this whole time!"

     "Mike.." Leo started, taking a step forward, but he fell back into the group as Mike began hitting Hopper's back with frustration.

     "Hey!" Hopper said, spinning around. He grabbed Mike's hands to stop the punches (that Lucy was sure felt like light taps to Hopper). "Let's talk. Alone."

     And they shuffled back into Jonathan's bedroom, the slammed door muffling the majority of their words but unable to hide the fact that they were shouting at the tops of their lungs. Everyone else stood in silence, trying to ignore the fighting coming from the back of the house.

     Slowly, the other party members began to trickle towards Eleven, glancing at her like they were tentative to give her a hug. She acquiesced happily, and Lucas, Dustin, and Leo threw their arms around her in a group hug. Lucy hung back with Steve, watching ruefully.

     "Should I introduce myself?" she asked, voice a whisper.

     "Maybe wait 'til things die down a bit," he suggested.

"Eleven?" came Max's voice, and she started forward, a welcoming smile on her face. She held out a hand. "Um, I'm Max."

Eleven stared at the redhead for a moment, before tensing up and brushing right past her extended hand. She instead met Joyce in a hug. Max stood behind, her hand falling limply to her side, eyes downcast.

Lucy shared a glance with Steve. With a teasing tone, she whispered, "Have things died down enough yet?"

     Despite the situation, Steve held back a smile, not looking at her. "You're the most persistent person I know."

     She just offered him a self-satisfied expression before stepping forward to greet Eleven as she fell out of her hug with Joyce.

     Face-to-face, Lucy grew to understand why everyone was so intimidated, per se, by Eleven. For such a young girl, her eyes held a strict glint, like a frightened animal ready to bolt any minute. The trail of blood beneath her nose stained her pale skin with a deep red. She scanned her gaze over Lucy once, up and down like she was taking her all in.

"Hi," Lucy said, giving her most welcoming but smallest, non-frightening smile. "I'm Lucy. I've heard a lot about you."

She was expecting to earn the same reaction Max had; a tense-up, eyes narrowed, staring blankly at her, before stalking away and ignoring her completely. But to her surprise, Eleven managed a faint smile, even if she could only meet Lucy's eyes for a few moments before looking away.

Well, Lucy thought, it could've been worse.

     Eleven turned over her shoulder again, back to Joyce. She swallowed. Lucy could practically see her mind spinning, trying to gather the courage to ask.

     "Can I see him?"

     Joyce and Eleven spent only a few minutes in Will's bedroom before they came rushing back out, joined by Mike and Hopper. Joyce was clutching a paper drawing of Will's in her hand. Lucy caught a glimpse of it; a red rip, as if between worlds, was scribbled in the middle of the paper, and Lucy could only assume this was the gate everyone had been talking about. The one Will had instructed them to close.

     "El," Joyce said, breathlessly, holding up the drawing and looking around at everyone. "She says she can close it."

     "It's not like it was before," Hopper elaborated. He met each person's eyes, making sure they understood him. "It's grown. A lot. And this is only considering we can get in there; the place is crawling with those.. dogs."

     "Demo-dogs."

     Hopper turned his head to Dustin, wearing his signature solemn glare. "I'm sorry, what?"

     Dustin stared back at him for a second before responding. "I said, uh.. Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgan and dogs. You put 'em together, it sounds pretty badass—"

     "It's what we call them," Leo explained. "It's—"

     Hopper clenched his jaw. "How is this important right now?"

     "It's not," Dustin and Leo muttered together, shrugging dismissively. "S–sorry.."

     "I can do it," Eleven said, bringing everyone's attention back to the topic at hand. "I can close it."

     Hopper met her eyes. His nostrils flared. "You're not hearing me."

     "I'm hearing you," Eleven said. "I can do it."

     "Even if she can," Mike said, "there's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies."

     Max furrowed her brow. "I thought that was the whole point."

     "It technically is." Leo nodded. "But if we're right about this, then right now, Will is the body. And if El closes the gate, she's killing the mind flayer's army."

     "And Will's a part of that army," Lucas finished, his voice grim.

     "Closing the gate will kill him," Mike confirmed. "We can't let that happen."

     "This is what I've been trying to say all along." Leo pursed his lips, moving to the wall to inspect one of the pieces of the tunnels Will had drawn. "So I've been thinking about what we know, and it's not a lot. We know Will is under the mind flayer's control. We know he's a spy. We know he'll kill us if we don't keep a close eye on him. And we know.."

     He turned around again, back to face everyone, but his eyes were glued on the fireplace. Joyce followed his gaze, and her breath caught as it all clicked into place.

     "He likes it cold," she whispered. "That's what Will kept saying to us. He likes it cold."

     "We keep giving it what it wants," Leo said, nodding his head to Joyce to express his confirmation. "It's like a virus. Like any old flu or cold or something. And to get rid of those, you have to make the host uninhabitable. Load them up with antibiotics and medicine."

     "So if he likes it cold," Nancy said, nodding as she caught on, "we have to burn it out of him."

     "But last time he found out where we were," Lucy pointed out, her arms crossed and brow scrunched together. "So we have to do it somewhere else. Somewhere he wouldn't be able to recognize."

                              DECIDING ON HOPPER'S CABIN WAS the most helpful thing Lucy had done all night. She couldn't forget the rush of satisfaction when Hopper pointed to her and pursed his lips—it was like the universal old-man non-verbal sign of "Bingo!"

     Jonathan threw Will over his shoulder and Hopper led him out to his car, chanting the directions to his cabin so they would stick. Nancy, after gathering all heat-related devices from the Byers household, rushed after them, dumping the heaters into Jonathan's backseat and hopping into the passenger's side.

With Nancy, Jonathan, Joyce, and Will safely on the road to the secluded cabin, next up was Eleven and Hopper, who were both preparing to head off to close the gate. Lucy understood foggy details about how dangerous the task they were pursuing was, so she wished Eleven a brief good luck and headed back inside the Byers' house.

     Once everyone came back inside, the mood of the house had sobered down to a somber tone, everyone worrying for someone else. Nobody was guaranteed to live. Lucy realized that. But the idea that somebody could actually die over this was something that she still hadn't come to terms with.

     "Okay, so.. now what?" she asked, standing to the side with Max as Dustin and Steve shoved the dead Demo-dog into Joyce's fridge. "We just wait?"

     "Not much else we can do," Leo confirmed. He, Lucas, and Mike sat on the couch, each of their legs bouncing in time with each other. Leo expelled a heavy sigh through his lips and threw his head back, running his hands down his face. "Wish there was. I feel like shit, sitting here doing nothing while El's out there..."

     "That's not exactly true," Dustin said, appearing with Steve at the kitchen door. "That we can't do anything. These Demo-dogs, they have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away. So if we get their attention..."

     "Maybe we can draw them away from the lab," Leo finished, sitting back up. His eyes were wide and he nodded his head fervently. "We have to go. We have to do something."

     "Yeah, and then we all die," Steve said loudly, spreading his hands.

     "Don't be so negative," Lucy chastised. "That's only one point of view."

     "It's not a point of view, Luce, it's a fact," he said, lowering his voice as he spoke to her. "We can't let them go out there and kill themselves."

     "Who said they'd be going alone? We could keep them safe, Steve. You told Nancy you were a good babysitter. Live up to it."

     "I said a good babysitter, not a good body guard. We can't keep them all alive if we go into these tunnels. It's practically a suicide mission."

     "I'm not saying it's not dangerous," Lucy whispered, her eyebrows furrowed in earnest. "But I'm serious. We have to do something, and if—"

     "We got it!" someone suddenly called, their voice sounding further away, and Lucy and Steve broke away from their hushed conversation to realize the kids had moved all the way into the kitchen while they'd been distracted.

     "Woah, woah," Steve said as he and Lucy followed them into the kitchen. "Got.. what?"

     "This is our way into the tunnel!" Mike was on his knees, pointing fervently at one particular corner of the drawing of the tunnels that were hung up all over the house. "And over here.. this is like a hub. So you got all the tunnels feeding into here."

     "So we cause a distraction from right here," Leo said, "and we get all of their attention. Maybe if we set this on fire—"

     "Yeah, no; that's a no," Steve said flatly.

     "The mind flayer would call away his army," Dustin pointed out. "They'd all come to stop us."

     "Not happening," Steve decided, lifting his shoulders in a conclusive shrug. "It's not. I'm not letting this happen. Nope."

     Mike looked up, chest rising and falling heavily with adrenaline. "But—"

     "No, no, no, no," Steve interrupted. "No buts. I promised the others that Lucy and I would keep you shitheads safe, and that's exactly what I plan on. We're staying here. And we're waiting for the rest of them to do their job. Does everybody understand?"

     "This isn't a joke, Steve!" Leo yelled. "Maybe get your head out of your ass; if you even can, with all that hair—"

     "Leo, please!" Lucy cut in, her face stricken with disbelief. "Everybody calm down. We aren't going any—"

     The loud rev of a car'd engine cut her off, and all of their heads whipped towards the front of the house as headlights blared through the broken window. Max rushed over to peek out, and Lucas was right behind her. Lucy could hear faint rock music from the approaching vehicle.

     "It's my brother," Max muttered, and for the first time since she'd met her, Lucy heard a faint trace of fear in her voice. "He can't know I'm here. He'll kill me. He'll kill us. We're dead."

     Lucy felt Steve's eyes on her, waiting for her to turn and for them to make the decision together, but Lucy's mind was made up. Billy Hargrove's assholery had been tolerable when Lucy hated Steve, but he had absolutely no business at the Byers' place. Not then. Not ever. Billy needed to leave, and Lucy was going to make it happen.

     "I got it," she muttered, her voice thick with fury as she flung the front door of the Byers' house open to meet Billy as he skidded to a stop. Lucy tugged the door shut behind her. Billy's headlights were so bright they practically blinded Lucy, but she wasn't about to let him know that. She just clenched her jaw.

     She drew in a short breath. All she had to do was get him out. Tell him to go, and she would be done with him.

     The driver's side door flew open, and Billy Hargrove spilled out with a cigarette caught between his lips and a sultry glint in his dark eyes.