Chapter Text
Jonathan knows where he is before he opens his eyes.
The smell tells him everything. Cigarette smoke—Marlboro Reds, the kind Lonnie smoked. Cheap beer—Milwaukee's Best, the silver cans piled in the recycling. And underneath it all, that particular mustiness of a house that's falling apart while nobody has the money to fix it.
It's his house from when Lonnie still lived here.
He opens his eyes.
They're in the Hallway. Wood paneling that he replaced in '82 but hasn't been replaced yet in this moment. Single overhead bulb flickering at exactly the wrong frequency—the one that used to give him migraines when he was young, the one he learned to just ignore because complaining about a headache when there were bigger problems felt... selfish. Water stains on the ceiling in the shape of something his twelve-year-old brain used to think looked like a reaching hand.
He's not twelve now. But he's watching himself be twelve.
"You failed the people you love."
Vecna's voice. Not from a direction. From the walls. From the air. From inside Jonathan's own chest. Cold. Deafening. All Consuming.
"All of them. William, your weak brother. Joyce, your tired mother. Nancy, your girlfriend whom you lied to for eighteen months. Let us see what happened, shall we?"
The door at the end of the hall opens.
Twelve-year-old Jonathan comes out. He's small. So much smaller than Jonathan remembers being. Wearing a flannel shirt that's too big—it was Lonnie's first, before Lonnie left it behind, before Jonathan claimed it and wore it until it fell apart. The kid has something in his hands. A cassette tape. The case has careful handwriting on it—Jonathan's handwriting from ten years ago, neater than it is now, the handwriting of a kid who's trying to make something special.
For Will at the top of the label.
Should I Stay or Should I Go as track one.
Present Jonathan stares at the cassette. He gazes at the track. It's the one that he copied and carries around with him at all times. A reminder... of a life that existed before the shifts, before the work, before everything happened. He remembers making it, sitting on his bedroom floor with the radio and a blank tape and the rock station from Indianapolis. Remembers writing out the track list three times before he got it right. Remember wanting it to be perfect for Will.
The twelve-year-old is walking toward Will's room when he hears it.
Sound from the living room. Lonnie's voice. Low. Controlled. The kind of angry that doesn't yell.
The kid stops in the hallway. Turns his head toward the sound.
"No," present Jonathan says. He's talking to himself. To the memory. "Don't. Go back to your room. Put on the headphones. Don't—"
But he already knows how this goes.
He lived this.
Steve and Dustin materialize slowly, particle by particle, beside him. He can't help but see the resemblance in their manner of appearing with the photographs he develops at the dark room. Slow. Steady. They look disoriented. Confused. Steve's still got the bat in his hand even though they're not in the physical Upside Down anymore. Dustin's got the compass. There is no sign of Nancy anywhere.
"Where—" Dustin starts.
He can't finish the sentence.
The twelve-year-old has changed direction. He's walking toward the living room now. Toward Lonnie's voice.
"Jonathan?" Steve's voice. Careful. "What is this?"
"My house. When I was twelve." His voice comes out grave and hollow, even though he had thought he would be incapable of producing it.
"Why are we—"
He stops talking because the twelve-year-old has reached the living room doorway.
They follow.
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The living room is exactly as Jonathan remembers it. Every detail is preserved in terrible clarity.
The sofa with the mismatched cushions—one brown from the garage sale on Maple Street in 1979, one tan from the Goodwill in '80, one orange that Joyce found on the curb when the Hendersons moved. She'd tried to make them coordinate, bought throw pillows to tie it together, but they never quite matched. The TV is the old RCA, wood-paneled sides, antenna extended at that specific forty-five-degree angle because it's the only way to get Channel 13 clear enough to watch. The lamp in the corner has no shade because the shade broke in 1980 when Lonnie knocked it over drunk and they never had the twenty dollars to replace it just yet, so it's just a bare bulb on a brass stand. The carpet is that particular patterned brown of the late seventies—geometric shapes, burnt orange and brown and tan—the kind that absorbs smells and holds onto them forever. It still smells like Lonnie's cigarettes and the cheap beer and something else, something Jonathan can't quite name but after a lifetime of being through it, can't help but associate it with the smell of a house where bad things happen.
The walls are wood-paneled, dark. There are pictures on them—school photos of Jonathan and Will from years past, a wedding photo of Joyce and Lonnie that Jonathan knows Joyce will take down the day after Lonnie leaves for good. The ceiling has a water stain in the corner from the leak upstairs that Lonnie keeps saying he'll fix but never does.
Lonnie Byers is standing in the middle of the room.
He's wearing jeans and a white t-shirt stained under the arms with sweat. Work boots even though he hasn't worked in three weeks. His hair is greasy, pulled back in a ponytail. He's not drunk—that would almost be better, Jonathan thinks, because drunk Lonnie is unpredictable but sober Lonnie is calculated. Sober Lonnie knows exactly what he's doing.
He's holding a belt.
Not his dress belt. The work belt. Thick leather, heavy metal buckle. The one that leaves marks.
Will is on the sofa.
Six years old. So small it physically hurts present Jonathan to look at him. He's wearing the striped shirt—red and white and blue stripes—that Joyce found at Goodwill for two dollars and Will loved because it looked like something from a catalog, something a normal kid would wear. His feet don't touch the floor. They dangle, sneakers hanging loose because Joyce can't afford new ones yet and these are half a size too big so he'll grow into them. He's holding Mr. Baldo—his stuffed wizard doll with one eye missing, the ear that's coming unstitched—clutched to his chest with both hands so tight his knuckles are white.
He's trying to make himself as small as possible. Shoulders hunched up near his ears. Chin tucked down to his chest. Back pressed into the sofa cushions like he's trying to disappear into them.
It's not working.
"I'm not your mom," Lonnie is saying. His voice is calm. Conversational. That's the worst part—not yelling, not screaming, but calm. The voice of someone already knows the outcome, but is relishing the process. "I'm not putting up with that queer shit."
The belt comes down.
It happens fast. The leather moves through the air with a whistle. Connects with Will's thigh—he was going for the backside but Will twisted at the last second. The crack of leather on a six-year-old's leg.
Will screams.
The sound cuts through everything. It's not a cry or a yelp. It's a scream. The sound a six-year-old makes when hurt by someone who's supposed to be dad. It's high and sharp and terrified and underneath the terror is confusion because Will doesn't understand what he did wrong or why this is happening, doesn't understand why saying he wanted the She-Ra figure instead of He-Man led to this.
Present Jonathan flinches like he's the one being hit. His whole body jerks. He can't help it. That scream is burned into his neural pathways. That exact sound, that exact pitch, that exact moment of six-year-old Will Byers understanding that his father is hurting him on purpose.
Beside him, Dustin makes a wounded noise and turns away, both hands going to his mouth. Steve goes completely still, as if he's seeing something he can't process, when his brain is trying to rethink what he's watching with what he thought he knew about the world. Jonathan can see Steve's knuckles white on the bat he's still holding, gripping it so hard his hands are shaking.
Lonnie raises the belt again.
He's got it pulled back, arm extended, ready for the second strike. His face is calm. Almost bored. Like this is a chore he's doing, unpleasant but necessary. Like he's taking out the trash or mowing the lawn.
And the twelve-year-old Jonathan moves.
He doesn't think about it. There's no decision-making process. His body makes the choice before his brain catches up. He's across the room in three steps—later he won't remember taking those steps, it will just be a blank space in his memory between standing in the doorway and being in motion.
His fist connects with his father's kidney. The punch is not good. He's twelve, he's small, he's never taken a boxing class or been in a real fight. His form is terrible. But he puts his whole body into it, all of his ninety pounds of twelve-year-old fury, and Lonnie is not expecting it. The impact is enough to make Lonnie grunt, enough to make him stumble slightly, enough to stop the second strike from landing.
"Leave him alone!" The twelve-year-old's voice cracks on the words. He's going through puberty, his voice changing, and it breaks in the middle of "alone" and shoots up an octave. "Asshole!"
Lonnie turns.
Slowly. Deliberately. Looks at his oldest son.
Goes very quiet.
And that's when you know it's bad. Not the yelling. The quiet. The quiet means Lonnie has made a decision. The quiet means attention has shifted. It means Jonathan just made himself the target.
Present Jonathan watches this and he wants to grab his twelve-year-old self and pull him back. Wants to scream at him: run. Grab Will and run. Out the back door, into the woods, anywhere. It doesn't matter where. Just get out of this room before—
"You wanna defend him?" Lonnie's voice is conversational. Almost friendly. There's even a smile on his face. Not a nice smile. The smile of someone who's about to enjoy something.
He smacks twelve-year-old Jonathan on the back of the head with the back of his hand. It's not hard. That's the point. It's not about causing pain—this particular strike. It's about humiliation. About showing that hitting Jonathan is easy, casual, requires no effort. That resistance is pointless. The smack makes a sound in the quiet room. Makes the twelve-year-old's head snap forward slightly.
Then Lonnie shoves.
Hands on the kid's chest. A hard shove that sends the twelve-year-old stumbling backward toward the couch. He catches himself on the coffee table, knocks over a half-empty beer can. It clatters to the floor, spilling on the carpet.
The twelve-year-old doesn't try to run. He sees Will on the sofa and he makes a decision. The same decision he's been making since Will was three years old and Lonnie first started getting rough. The same decision he'll keep making for the rest of his life.
The cassette tape falls from his hands. It hits the carpet with a soft plastic sound—the sound of the case hitting the shag carpet, muffled and quiet. He doesn't stop to pick it up. Doesn't even look at it. He's already moving, already throwing himself forward, already putting his body between his father and his brother.
He lands on the couch half on top of Will, gets his arms around his little brother, covers Will's body with his own twelve-year-old body. Makes himself the target.
Will is sobbing underneath him. Small scared sobs, muffled against Jonathan's shoulder.
The belt comes down on Jonathan's back.
Once.
The sound of leather on a twelve-year-old's spine is different. It's sharper somehow. Higher pitched. The crack of it followed immediately by the twelve-year-old's grunt as the air is forced from his lungs.
Present Jonathan hears that sound and his knees buckle. Steve catches him, arm around his waist, holding him up. But Jonathan can barely stay standing because he's back there, back in his twelve-year-old body feeling the belt come down and the specific burning pain of it and the way his whole back seized up and—
Twice.
The twelve-year-old bites his lip. He's trying not to make noise. Making noise makes it worse. Making noise gives him satisfaction. Making noise means you're weak. He's learned this.
But he can't help the breathing. The ragged gasping breath as his body tries to process the pain and keep functioning.
Underneath him, Will is crying.
Three times.
Four.
"Not strong enough, Johnnie."
Lonnie's voice. Taunting. Satisfied. Enjoying this.
Five.
Both boys are crying now. The twelve-year-old can't help it anymore. The tears come and he can't stop them. But he's still trying to be quiet.
Will is sobbing outright. Full body sobs. The scared crying of a six-year-old who knows something very bad is happening.
Six.
The belt comes down six times total before Lonnie stops.
Present Jonathan counted them. He always counts them. In the original memory, he counted to know when it was over. In every nightmare since, he counts them again. Six. The belt came down and he twelve-year-old took all of them while Will was underneath him crying and protected from exactly nothing because the belt came down anyway, the pain happened anyway, the trauma remained anyway.
Lonnie drops the belt onto the coffee table. Adjusts his ponytail. Walks toward the bedroom like nothing happened. Like this is normal. Like this is just discipline. Like he didn't just beat a twelve-year-old child for the crime of protecting his little brother. Like he hadn't beat up his own toddler son for the crime of wanting a doll that wasn't up to his 'manly' standards.
The bedroom door slams.
The living room goes quiet except for crying.
The twelve-year-old slides off Will. Off the couch. Onto the floor. His movements are careful. Testing. He's doing an inventory—checking his back, his ribs, his shoulders. Making sure nothing is broken. It's not his first time. He knows how.
Will is still on the sofa. Still crying. Small scared sobs.
The twelve-year-old reaches up from the floor. Puts his hand on Will's ankle. Barely touching. Just contact.
I'm here. Still here. We're both still here.
The silence is broken.
"He was barely a teen," Dustin says. His voice is shaking. "They were both just kids!"
"Twelve years old," Vecna agrees, "and he thought covering William's body would be enough. But it wasn't, was it, Jonathan? The belt still came down. Six times. William still hurt. Still screamed. Still carries the trauma of moments like this to this day. All you did was add your own pain to the equation. You didn't prevent anything. You just—amplified William's suffering. Added to his guilt that he was the cause of your pain as well. You didn't help. You were, and still are, useless."
Jonathan can't speak. His throat has closed.
"And William remembers this," Vecna continues. "Remembers every detail. Remembers his father calling him queer like it was a curse. He remembers the belt. Remembers his brother's body on top of him and the belt not stopping. Remembers that his brother tried to protect him and failed.”
The twelve-year-old is picking up the cassette tape now. Checking it for cracks. The case is fine but he checks anyway, runs his fingers over it carefully, making sure it's not broken. Finding it intact, he sets it on the sofa cushion beside Will.
His hand goes back to Will's ankle.
Still there. Still touching.
Steve's hand lands on Jonathan's shoulder. Heavy. Warm. Real.
"Don't listen to him," Steve says quietly.
But Jonathan is listening. Because Vecna's not wrong. The belt came down. Why? Because he wasn’t enough.
Didn't make himself enough, period.
The world goes dark, as they are all sucked up once more into who knows what lies ahead.