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[ That... actually gets a soft chuckle from Erik. She's just basically called him old, even though he takes absolutely no offense. Her bluntness amuses him immensely. At least he won't have to worry about her not speaking her mind. ]

Bitching?

[ Sorry Eleven, you might need to teach him that one.

He looks at the frame he's just built, shaking his head at her guess. ]

No. I'm a mutant. It's a new species of human. All of my people have unique abilities— that's what Laura is, too.

Bitchin'.

[ Yeah she's correcting you on that, Erik. Take that g out of her 80s slang, please and thank you. ]

It means... looks good.

[ Is that what it means? She genuinely doesn't know. Nobody explained, she just took the context clue and ran with it. ]

Species. [ Eleven has been wondering about that. ] Laura told me about mute ants. She wanted to know. If I'm a mute ant, too.

[ He lets out a hum, like he understands but not really. He's old, as she eloquently put it. He's not going to go around using hip slang from the 80's. ]

Mutants. [ An important correction. ] It's just one single word. And you are that if you have a... something special in your body. Your cells. Do you know what those are?

[ He's guessing no, but it's worth asking regardless. ]

[ She nods, understanding the correction perfectly, and then she repeats: ]

Mute Ants.

[ She's not even being a little shit on purpose here. Not yet at least. She nudges those two words much closer together this time at least. It's... still not really quite right. ]

No. Is it about powers?

[ There's just a moment there where Erik stares, closes his eyes, then takes a deep breath. Something tells him he'll only frustrate himself further if he keeps trying to correct her without some (much needed) knowledge on the basis of that word, so he lets it go for now. ]

Not really, no. Every living creature is made of cells. They're these very small things, so small that you can't even see them with your eyes, but many of them come together to shape us. Our bodies are made up of all these cells, and inside them there is something called DNA. It's like... a code, that makes us look the way we do. If we're tall or short, if we have dark or light hair, the color of our skin. And among my kind, that code has something else that's different. A mutation, which is the change of something in that code, and that's what gives us our abilities.

[ He starts talking, and she... tries to listen, promise. It works for a while. Erik is pleasant to listen to. The content of his words... not so much. There's a very obvious moment when her attention starts to slide sideways, when she starts picking at the edge of a blanket, until halfway through his speech, she just actually breaks eye contact to look away, fluffing up a pillow.

It sounds like he's telling her there are small ants in everyone's bodies, and she thinks that's pretty stupid. She also doesn't get why ants need secret codes, or why secret codes make people look a certain way. Maybe it's like morse code.

The too long, failed to listen takeaway is: Mute Ation is a change and it makes people powerful. ]

Too many words.

[ You're welcome for this peer review of your Ted Talk, Erik. To Eleven, he's just like Tony in this regard. Maybe people who work with metal just like to talk a lot?

She looks back up at any rate. ]

Am I a Mute-Ant?

[ He can tell he's lost her about halfway through, though he still finishes, or tries before she's actually just creating other distractions, clearly not paying attention anymore.

He's somewhere between frustrated and endeared by it, but all he does is smile, take a deep breath, then lift his shoulders at her question. ]

You might be. I don't know.

[ There might be ways to find out. Hank probably could. But is it really important if it's in her genes? ]

Would you like to be?

[ Adults can be so... good, and so frustrating. More than anything, she just wants him to tell her. Why does he not know, if he knows all about cells and his people? How come he cannot look at her and determine if she is his people?

Eleven opens her mouth. It works silently for a moment, then snaps shut. She blows out a frustrated breath. Words are hard at the best of times; harder when she's feeling unsettled about something.

A shrug, after a moment. The gesture is almost sullen. ]

I don't know.

[ That's not quite true. She doesn't know how to articulate what's swimming in her mind. ]

Maybe I am... different. Not like Laura. And you. And Charles. And Pyro. [ She pronounces it Pie Row. ]

[ Some mutants can detect that in others, even know their abilities, or just how powerful they are. Erik is not one of them, sadly. But knowing that they've come from different realities, he doubts that she is a mutant, at least in the strictest sense of the word.

But that hardly matters, does it? She was in much a similar position in more ways than Erik would like her to be. More alone than the mutants in Erik's world are, too. He's never heard her speak of other powered individuals, so he imagines she has none among her direct relations. It must feel isolating, to not be the same as everyone else.

He knows, he's been there. ]

That's not a bad thing. Being different. [ He tips his head at her, smiles faintly. ] And just because you're different from us doesn't mean you can't belong. If you want to be one of us, no one will turn you away.

[ She has not talked about Kali yet, despite how fresh that is, and how much it informs her current state of mind. Perhaps it is too fresh to her, like a wound that needs to heal first. Perhaps Eleven is still grappling with who she could have been, had she stuck with Kali. Who she chose not to become.

For now, she looks up at Erik with a strange mixture of doubt and hope. ]

If you're different. People see a monster.

[ A beat. ]

I am a monster. I scare people. But... Mike says. I'm a superhero.

[ This conversation takes him back to the time Laura insisted that she was nothing but a weapon, and Erik wants to react now the way he did then. Implore with El not to call herself that, make her promise that she will do no such thing again. She is a child. Erik wants to put his hands around the throat of whoever drilled that belief into her mind. ]

There is nothing wrong with being different. If other people see you as a monster, then that is their problem. Not yours. They don't get to tell you what you are.

[ And she should definitely not believe them on it, but he knows from personal experience how that is easier said than done. ]

You don't need to be a superhero either. You don't need to be anything. You are a person, you deserve to decide what you want to be.

[ It would shock him, perhaps, the degree to which she truly grapples with believing she is the monster, that everything bad that has happened in Hawkins is her fault. She lacks the wider capacity to understand that the monster was the man who made her call him 'Papa', as if he had any right to the word.

His words... she listens, she understands them. But she doesn't understand them, not in the way she should. Eleven defines herself by what she learns from others. The concept that nobody else gets to tell her who she is feels... strange. She doesn't even feel like she has a name, not really. One on a paper that feels like it belongs to a dead child. A number that was all she knew herself to be for 12 years. A nickname given to her by her first friend. What else is there?

You are a person, he says.

Eleven doesn't understand what that means. ]

How do I know? [ A beat, then she specifies: ] How do I know. What I want?

[ The question is earnest, and it's small. It spans the entirety of her lived experience - it encompasses her identity, her sense of self. It also encompasses the lack of decorations on her side of the room, the fact that she still wears the clothes she arrived in that were so clearly given to her. The fact that she eats what others make, learns what others share, mimics what others do. ]

[ No, it would not shock him, because Erik felt just as dehumanized while he was under Shaw's control, and he was in that situation for much less time than El. A life under control is all she's known for the vast majority of her life. She was born into it. Erik wasn't. And he still felt that same difficulty in rediscovering who he was.

He knew what he wanted, though. Or he thought he did. Revenge.

He was wrong.

So her question doesn't surprise him. It does make him smile, though it's a little sad, knowing what she's struggling with right now. ]

It's difficult. It takes time. [ Patience, and giving even herself grace. ] But you try new things. Hobbies, clothes, food. You will know when it's something you want to do again, not because someone else told you.

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