She’s real. She’s real. She’s here.

I think my heart actually stops when I see her.

We’ve been running for what feels like forever, dust in our lungs, the distant echoes of the Demodogs howling behind us, Hopper’s voice in my ears barking orders, but all of it—all of it—just drops away the second I see her standing there.

Eleven.

Not a ghost. Not a dream. Not a memory I’ve been clinging to in secret for 353 days.

She’s… taller. Her curls are grown out, wild and dark and full like a stormcloud, a little tangled like she’s been living somewhere she couldn’t care about mirrors. Her jacket is too big, beat-up. There’s a rip at the sleeve. Her eyes are the same though—big, dark, and full of that quiet intensity that always made me feel like she could see right through me.

God, she’s right in front of me.

The air in the cabin smells like smoke and damp wood, like Hopper’s cologne and blood and adrenaline, but all I can focus on is her. The way her breathing hitches. The dirt on her cheeks. The faint scratch near her temple. Her lips part, just a little, and she lets out a breath—like she doesn’t believe I’m real either.

“Mike,” she whispers.

My chest caves in.

Everything I held together for almost a year—every sleepless night, every stupid radio transmission, every time I stared at that cabin in the woods and hoped—just… collapses. My throat burns. My eyes sting. I try not to cry but I can’t help it. There’s a pressure behind my ribs that cracks wide open when she says my name.

I move forward without thinking. So does she.

Our arms wrap around each other like we’ll break if we don’t. Like we might disappear again. She’s warm. Solid. Shaking just a little. I bury my face in her shoulder, and everything else—the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer, the stupid lab—it all melts away.

She’s alive.

She’s here.