[ The idea has Eleven visibly excited, but she tries to look nonchalant. The definition of a teenager attempting to play something cool that they are very much not remotely chill about. ]
It's okay. If the bad men come. I can kill them.
[ She sounds matter-of-fact about that. The kind of nonchalance that comes not from boasting but from knowing.
Nancy's story makes Eleven listen intently, though. Papa is not her father, but took that position over Eleven and over Kali and over... her mind draws a blank here. She knows there were more children. She's seen the closed doors with the numbers on them. But something happened, a few years before she escaped the lab and she can't... remember. It doesn't matter now. What matters is that Nancy is kind, and asks. And Eleven thinks of 'Jane', the name Mama wanted to give her, before Eleven was stolen. The name Kali used for her, that felt like a costume. Jane is like a fake identity, the remnant of a life she never got to live, the idea of her that Kali wanted to shape. So after a moment: ]
My friends call me El.
[ And she shares it in invitation for Nancy to do the same. After a moment of quiet hesitation: ]
no subject
[ The idea has Eleven visibly excited, but she tries to look nonchalant. The definition of a teenager attempting to play something cool that they are very much not remotely chill about. ]
It's okay. If the bad men come. I can kill them.
[ She sounds matter-of-fact about that. The kind of nonchalance that comes not from boasting but from knowing.
Nancy's story makes Eleven listen intently, though. Papa is not her father, but took that position over Eleven and over Kali and over... her mind draws a blank here. She knows there were more children. She's seen the closed doors with the numbers on them. But something happened, a few years before she escaped the lab and she can't... remember. It doesn't matter now. What matters is that Nancy is kind, and asks. And Eleven thinks of 'Jane', the name Mama wanted to give her, before Eleven was stolen. The name Kali used for her, that felt like a costume. Jane is like a fake identity, the remnant of a life she never got to live, the idea of her that Kali wanted to shape. So after a moment: ]
My friends call me El.
[ And she shares it in invitation for Nancy to do the same. After a moment of quiet hesitation: ]
Is... your father like Papa? A bad man?