Work Text:
Will knew that this was probably not the smartest idea he’s ever had. Hopper had made it plenty clear: no one was to visit the cabin, now that the military’s presence and surveillance was growing by the day. But today Hopper and Will’s mom were out scouting whatever complex the military was building in the center of town, and Will was careful to take the back route to Hopper’s cabin that nobody can find unless you know where to look.
He just needed to get out of the house. The Wheelers were being very polite and welcoming to him and Jonathan and his mom, but there were a lot of people in that house now, and they were always stepping on each others’ toes. Besides, there was Mike, who had apparently decided that he was going to mend the rift in their friendship that had grown before California by spending basically every waking minute with Will. Which Will wasn’t complaining about; in fact, he was enjoying the extra attention too much, which is why he needed a few hours away, to clear his head and remind himself of the strict lines he would not allow himself to cross, for his own sake.
Also, he just missed El. He missed her comforting, silent presence and her strange insights. He had hated Lenora almost as much as she had, but at the end of the day he could cross the hallway to her room and draw while she did homework and enjoy each other’s company in peaceful quiet. She was good at helping him clear his head, and with everything running through it right now—the least of which being Vecna’s presence lingering at the back of his neck and the worst being Mike Wheeler’s frustratingly beautiful cheekbones—he just wanted some time with his sister.
However, he probably should have considered the fact that said sister had superpowers and was currently on the run from the government, because no sooner had he lifted his fist to knock at the cabin door than he felt himself being thrown backwards, slammed and held against a tree. Will gasped, the wind knocked out of him. The door opened, and El stood there, arm out and blood dripping from her nose. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and the invisible grip holding him loosened. Will dropped to the ground, stumbling slightly.
“Will!” El ran towards him and enveloped him in a hug. He wrapped his arms around her with a grin. “Hey, El.”
She pulled back, examining him. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry—”
“No, no, I’m fine, don’t worry,” he assured her. “Sorry. My bad. I should have radioed or something.”
“Hop didn’t tell me you were coming today,” El said as they headed back to the cabin, arm in arm. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” Will said. “But yeah, this visit is not exactly Hopper-approved, so, uh…”
El shot him a grin. “I will not tell him.”
He smiled back at her. God, he missed his sister.
They ended up in El’s room, where her schoolwork—courtesy of Joyce’s attempts to keep up her education while she’s on the lam—was spread all over the floor. As El gathered it into a messy pile, apparently grateful for the excuse to abandon the work, Will took a moment to assess her room. It was different from her room in Lenora; this room was much more sparsely decorated, but he could still see bits of El peeking through. A few friendship bracelets that screamed Max were strewn across the desk; photos of the party and even of El and Hopper were taped hastily over the bed; Jonathan’s old Walkman laid by a stack of cassette tapes, Blondie and Madonna and the Beatles. Will grinned when he saw a drawing of him, her, and Jonathan that he’d made for her displayed proudly above the dresser.
Will refused to let himself think about how Mike was noticeably missing from El’s memorabilia, while her room in Lenora had been stuffed to the brim with him. He wasn’t here to think about Mike.
Will plopped down on El’s bed, stretching out his limbs. He noticed an orange sticky note stuck to her bedside table. Hopper’s handwriting:
Jane -
Off doing surveillance with Joyce. Should be back by 9. Make sure to get your work done.
Love, Hop
The note itself was innocuous, but it gave Will pause.
Jane. He knew that was El’s legal name, the one her mother had chosen for her, the one on her (forged) birth certificate. In Lenora, everyone at school had called her Jane, too. She’d always been El, in his head, because that was what Mike and Dustin and Lucas had said when they’d first told him about her—their superhero friend.
But she wasn’t just their mythical superhero friend anymore, the one Will heard stories about but could never picture. She was his sister, kind of; they’d never said that exactly, but it was how he saw her in his head. Not a supernatural, magical legendary figure, but a sister who always left toothpaste in the sink and liked when Will painted her nails and made him and Jonathan watch Grease with her six times in a row.
“Hey, El?” he said.
“Yes, Will?” She dumped her papers unceremoniously on the desk and joined him on the bed, shoving his legs aside so she could sit next to him.
“I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“Do you—uh,” Will stammered, trying to find the right words. “Do you, like, have a preference? For your name?”
This earned him a furrowed brow. He tried again. “Like, I know Eleven is what they called you at the lab. But obviously, that’s weird, because you’re a person, not a number. Which is why Mike nicknamed you El, right? So, like, I’ve always just called you El. But I know that your, like, birth name, like your mom named you Jane. And that’s what people at school said, and stuff, and it’s what Hopper calls you. So I guess I was just wondering, like, do you have a preference? For what I should call you?”
She was silent for a moment, contemplating. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“You don’t have to have an answer,” Will said. “I was just, like, wondering. I realized I never asked what you preferred.”
She chewed on her lip in concentration. “I like that Mike and Dustin and Lucas named me El,” she said slowly. “They didn’t like calling me a number. And it made me feel…important.”
Will nodded but stayed quiet, sensing there was more.
“I think Hopper calls me Jane to remind me that I am his daughter,” she said, softer this time. “He wants me to know that I am a real person and not a lab experiment and he does not only care about me because I have superpowers. Joyce calls me Jane, too, sometimes, I think for the same reason.”
“What about you?” Will asked. “Who do you want to be?”
“Do I have to pick one?” his sister said. “I like being El to Mike and Dustin and Lucas. But I like being Jane to my family. They are both…me.”
“Of course you don’t have to pick just one,” Will assured her, earning a smile. “But, uh, what should I call you, then? El or Jane?”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Jane,” she said, like it should be obvious. “You’re my brother, and to my family I want to be Jane.”
He couldn’t help but grin at how casually she called him her brother, like second nature. “Cool,” he said. “Jane.”
“Cool,” Jane said, matching his smile. He wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulders, and she leaned her head against his neck, and Will’s eyes caught again on the picture he’d drawn of the three of them. Will, Jane, and Jonathan. He should make a new one, with his mom and Hopper.
They’re an odd little jigsaw puzzle of a family, he thought, but he was so, so grateful.