Eleven

If he was still drinking, Hopper would think this was a goddamn hallucination.

But he's not. He's sober, has been since September, five whole months at this point, which is the longest he's gone without a drink since he was probably fifteen. When Sara had been born, he'd cut way down, but never stopped, and after she died that intake had shot up and then beyond. It had taken another girl who needed him to make him cut back again.

And now she's coming down the sidewalk in Darrow, clearly lost in though, and Hopper's goddamn heart breaks. He hasn't seen her in three years. It hasn't been that long for her, he can tell just by the way she looks. Her hair is longer, yeah, but it hasn't been three years. For him, though, it's felt like a lifetime.

"El?" he asks when she nears him. He's just standing there holding a paper grocery bag in one arm, a cigarette burning uselessly between the fingers of his other hand.