aquariusdeanw

vale ;

22yo • multifandom • doctor whoDespite everything, it’s still you.«birds in a cage»

815 posts

Brenners Death Makes Me Emotional. But Not For Him.

Brenner’s death makes me emotional. But not for him.

When we see El for the first time she’s in a lab gown, barefoot, starving after she spent a night in the forest where she saw the outside world with her own eyes for the first time in 12 years.

we discover that growing up she was praised for doing morally wrong things, punished for doing morally right things.

when she was punished though, it was never Brenner. He always ordered other guards to hurt her. When it was time to praise her, there he was. He built this sick relationship where she sought approval of the only person that didn’t physically hurt her.

It’s twisted that Brenner actually believed that he was doing it for her. That he actually saw her as his daughter.

El wonders in the woods and there she finds Mike, that brings her home with him. At his house she is shown love in a way that she never thought it was possible. With kindness. With tenderness. She sees Nancy room, sees her baby pictures and El slowly realizes how much she missed. The childhood that was stolen away from her.

When Brenner and El reunite at the end of s1, he’s “worried” about her; but it’s too late, she already saw a world completely different from the lab, a way of treating her completely different from how she was treated there.

«I’m going to take you back home, where I can make you well again. Where we can make all of this better, so no one else gets hurt.»

«Bad. Bad. Mike. Mike.» she says when he picks her up.

Brenner is devastated, things will never go back to the way that they were. She knows that he’s the bad guy just like everyone else at the lab.

///

Everything stays like this in El’s mind until she feels the weight of who she is. Yes, she hits Angela without her powers, but that reminds her that she did use them to kill people. That she could’ve used them for bad things. That she could be the monster. That papa could have been right in taking her away and keeping her locked up. She barely resist the police and doesn’t try to defend herself in the interrogation room because maybe she deserves to be locked up.

Then everything changes again. Papa is alive, she runs, he’s still bad in her mind so she hits him. She tries to run away one more time, but he’s the only one that knows how to help her discover if she’s really the monster, so she takes his extended hand, and they’re together once again.

He explains a lot to her, talking about her real self. But something isn’t right, and when she discovers what really happened to One, it’s too much to take.

He let her down once again, and this time there is no doubt in her mind. He’s not her papa, her dad, and all the bad things that happened in her life are because of him. Her mom, Benny, Barb, Bob, the gate, the mind flayer, 001. All the things that she felt guilt over, were never her fault.

She’s not the monster. He is.

When she tells him that, he cries. The tears are not manipulation. He really is sad. He really believes he’s doing the right thing. He doesn’t understand why she won’t understand.

The military comes to kill her so he picks her up in his arms and runs like he did many years before. He tries to protect her when the helicopter shoots them.

He’s dying on the ground when he tells her “I want you to know, I’m proud of you.”

Something that every kid wants to hear their parents say to them.

“You’re my family. My daughter.” He says. He bops her nose, like he always did. El cries and takes his hands.

With his dying breath he begs her to understand, just that. He doesn’t beg for forgiveness, just understanding.

Eleven turns her head away. In the direction of Will, Jonathan and Mike.

The little girl that was tortured throughout her childhood, never turned bad. The little girl that could have had every excuse to choose herself, always put the others first. Her moral compass never wavered. The little girl that jumped at every touch, at every sound, learned how to love and how to be loved. She saved Will and she saved the world. Because there was one thing that he never taught her.

“A friend is someone you do anything for.”

One good lesson that she valued infinite times more than the thousands bad things he taught her.

All of her pain originated from him, he doesn’t deserve her giving him peace in death.

She drops his hands.

«goodbye papa.»