@008tm sent a meme: ❛ was it you? did you do all this? ❜
The heat from the helicopter's explosion was still burning hot on her face, even at this distance — though the fate of the pilot and the sniper with the gun pointed at her were the least of El's concerns. She'd done it. The empty, hopeless feeling in her chest that had plagued her for months, ever since Starcourt, had gone, her power finally returned to her, its familiar static crackling beneath her skin as it had always been. Or at least for as long as she could remember, if not her entire life. Even with the collar that papa had placed around her neck in those angered moments before the government's arrival, when she'd tried to leave this facility of her own accord, she could feel it. She could return to Hawkins and save her friends now. She could protect them from Henry. She could protect Max.
Unaware of what else might have been going on around her, El did eventually turn — and met the gaze of the most surprising of allies out here in the middle of nowhere. “ Kali... ” Even at a distance, her sister seemed virtually unchanged from the last time El had seen her, though she didn't immediately start forward to meet her embrace. Kali's words halted her step, created a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she looked back at the burning inferno she'd created all by herself. Papa had said that the Nina Project should bring back her powers stronger than she could ever remember them being, and he was right. A superhero, or a monster? She did not yet know their limits.
El nodded, tentatively, though the destruction and death around them did not seem to deter the way that Kali continued to close the gap between them. She stepped forward to greet her, reaching forward to take both of Kali's hands in her own, checking that she was definitely real. “ Did the government people bring you here? ” she asked softly, sparing another glance at the desert surrounding them. “ Or did you follow them? ” It was difficult to believe that Kali had tracked her here, particularly after the two years they had spent apart and the way that the two of them had parted in the first place. But perhaps she had come to find papa...
She thought again of what she'd seen in those tapes, the memories that had been hidden for so long, blocked out by her own mind. The urge to share what she'd seen with a friendly face bubbled up in her, and her voice faltered. “ I know about Henry. I know about all of it. ”
