(no subject)

Entry tags:

bev,
lucy

(no subject)

Jim Hopper is not an easy man to rattle.

He's seen shit. He was in Vietnam, he'd been a cop in New York, he lost his daughter, his family, he'd fought a damn monster and an evil lab while trying to save a bunch of kids, and that's all before being flung into this weird city he can't leave and where technology and time have both jumped forward thirty years. All of that, he thinks, is the sort of stuff that prepares a person to deal well with more weird stuff when it's flung their way.

But somehow he wasn't prepared for this.

He's sitting on the front stoop of the Bramford Building and he thinks he has plans to meet someone, but he feels like he's a million miles away. When getting his mail out of the box not ten minutes earlier, he'd shuffled through it all, most of it fliers for useless nonsense he's never going to buy and one envelope addressed to Former Resident. He was puzzling over that when he'd realized the next envelope was addressed directly to him.

It's official looking. Like it's come from the government. Or maybe some kind of lab.

He tears into it hurriedly and when the doctored birth certificate slips out, Hopper stares at the names for a long moment before he finds himself sinking down to the stairs. This was the plan all along. This was what he was going to ask Owens to provide him if he and Eleven made it out of that pit alive. A birth certificate that made him Eleven's father, something that couldn't be challenged, something no one would ever question. A way to give her a real life. A real family.

There's her name. Jane Hopper. His last name, his full name listed as her father. Theresa Ives listed as her mother.

He doesn't know what to think. His hand is shaking a little and Hopper pulls the birth certificate close, holding it against his chest with his eyes closed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Of course I will," Beverly says without hesitation, shooting him a quick smile. "That mean you're not kicking me out if she gets here?" It's not actually something she's thought about before now, teasing as she makes the question sound. On one hand, it's hard to imagine him doing that. On the other, she wouldn't blame him if he did. Eleven is his daughter, legally, and it sounds like things were pretty fraught back home. Maybe she would only be getting in the way if she were still hanging around. Of course, it's all hypothetical anyway, but that doesn't mean it's hard not to wonder.

She should really just be fine with it regardless. The Home is still where she lives, and will be for the foreseeable future. She's a hell of a lot more comfortable here, though, and there's no getting around that fact, or that Hopper is a big part of that.

"You kidding? If she ever ends up here, I'm gonna need the buffer," he answers with a snort.

That's true, but more to the point, he wouldn't get Beverly to get lost just because Eleven showed up. Eleven would probably have a brief rush of jealousy, she's the sort of kid who falls into her extreme emotions pretty quickly, but he also knows she's the sort to be able to look at something logically once that initial irritation is over. And she'd understand, having been taken in by him herself, just what he and Beverly have.

She'd never begrudge another kid something like that.

"She hasn't had a chance to hang out with a lot of girls," he says. "It'd be nice for her to have someone like you around."

"I'd like that," Beverly says, biting back her smile just a bit. There's no telling if it will ever happen, of course, but Eleven sounds seriously badass, and she trusts Hopper's judgment more than most people here. If he took her in, made her his legal daughter, then that says a lot on its own. "If it helps, I've never really hung out with a lot of girls, either, until the ones in the Home, so we'd have that in common."

She'd never really had friends at all, before that last summer. It hadn't bothered her then, being the only girl in a group of guys — aside from the rare comment from Richie, none of them ever made her feel unwelcome or uncomfortable — but it's still a little weird to think about sometimes, how she has no real experience with girls her age who weren't just trying to make her life hell.

"I hope she does show up," she adds after a moment. "I bet you really miss her."

"Yeah," he says. "I do."

But at the same time, he understands why people don't wish their loved ones to a place like this. There are so many limits in Darrow, limits on where people can go and what they can do. They're prevented from seeing their families, they're kept from their passions, their careers. Opportunities. If he really wants Eleven to have a good life, if he truly wants her to be free, then he can't wish for her to come somewhere like this.

"But until then, it's just you and me, kid," he says. And if it does happen, then it'll be the three of them. There's nothing that could make him set Beverly aside or forget how much she's come to mean to him in a short period of time. She's a great kid, one he'd do just about anything for, and Hopper is aware of why he does this, why he feels this need to adopt teenage girls, but he doesn't care. It's not doing anyone any harm in the long run, it's really only helping.

"Well, I can't say I have a problem with that," Beverly says, smiling lopsidedly over at him. "I kinda like it here." That pretty much speaks for itself, she thinks, or it should. She could easily have gone back to spending all of her nights at the Home, and the friends she has there would be a good incentive for her to do so. Even though it means leaving Eddie and Eponine and the others, though, she would rather be here than there. Maybe the thought is a dangerous one — it's not really her home, she doesn't actually live here, she can't just invite herself to move in — but it's been true for a while now.

"I mean, in case you couldn't tell."

"You're always welcome," he says. "Whenever you want."

The appearance of Eleven's doctored birth certificate has him thinking a little, although it's probably too early to actually say anything. After Sara he'd thought he was done. He'd been perfectly happy to drink himself to death, to just take pills and down them with beer until the inevitable day he just dropped dead in his trailer. Someone would have found him sooner rather than later, the chief of police doesn't just go missing without someone noticing, but he'd still have died alone.

But it turns out he'd been wrong. He's still got room for these kids. It's been kind of a nice discovery.

Maybe Beverly would want to live here full time. It's the thought he's had a few times before, but now, with this birth certificate in his hands, he thinks maybe it's a pretty good idea. He'll have to look into it before getting her hopes it.

"Definitely good to know," Beverly says with a laugh, "since I've been doing so much randomly showing up here." He's never once made her feel unwelcome, either, even when she's turned up without warning or stayed a little longer than she originally intended to. Likewise, he's never made her feel uncomfortable, either, and that, for her, is a big deal. At least there's no one specifically in the Home who makes her feel unsafe, but there's something wrong in the place itself, like some invisible force hiding in the walls. She would never say so outright, not like that, but she also knows that she isn't the only one who's aware of it or who's experienced some strange things.

The Bramford Building might be old and kind of haunted, but at least she doesn't hear weird noises in the night, or feel a phantom touch, and at least the shower has never drenched her in blood.

"Half the time they don't even ask where I'm going anymore. Or they do, but they're already writing it down or whatever."

"Shit, seriously?" he asks, finding himself scowling at the idea of the Home just letting her take off whenever she wants. Most of the time she's coming to his place, but he's not so naive as to think she's not also using it as a chance to sneak out now and then. Hopper might be on the wrong side of forty, but he remembers what it was like, being a kid.

If she lived with him, she'd probably still try to sneak out. Or lie about where she was going. They'd probably fight about it. He thinks he'd kind of like that.

"They should be calling me," he says. "Something. If something bad happened to you between there and here, I'd make them regret it."

"I think they're kind of distracted," Beverly admits, nose wrinkling a little. She doesn't mind it — remembers, suddenly, trying to slip out of the apartment unnoticed and finding a padlock on the door, suppressing a shudder at the thought of it — but whether they should be checking up on her or not, there are other things they seem to have on their minds. All things considered, she can't say she blames them. "Shit's still pretty weird there, I don't think they have any idea what it is."

It's all the more reason for her to spend as little time there as she can. If not for Eddie and Eponine, plus her worries about overstaying her welcome, she would probably be here a lot more often than she already is.

"Well, whenever you want, you're welcome here," Hopper tells her. He's said it before, but he doesn't think it can be said too many times either. He never wants her to feel like she can't just show up unannounced.

Technically he's supposed to sign her out, but if she needs him, he's not about to give her shit for coming and asking.

"I mean, if shit's really weird, you can stick around for the weekend or the week or whatever you want. I guess school's gonna be out soon, too, huh?"

"Yeah, it is," Beverly says, nodding. Back home, she'd always been relieved for the end of a school year to come around, and she supposes she is now, too. It's different here, though, where she's less sure what to do with herself. She doesn't need to avoid the Home like she avoided her apartment, but sitting around there all day sounds kind of fucking miserable. There's enough to do in Darrow, at least. It just feels strange, different in ways she can't quite pinpoint. "I don't know if having to sign out anytime I want to go anywhere or do anything is gonna be better or worse than sneaking out like I usually did at home."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only