Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The others had managed to pull Derek down, but at what cost? The barn felt too small for the amount of fear packed into it. Derek was panting like a caged animal, trembling, glasses askew, breath coming out in short, sharp bursts as he backed away from Joyce, Robin, Erica and Will. His eyes shot between them, wild, like he was waiting for one of them to suddenly turn into something else. 

His wrists bloomed violet where the rope had bitten into them, hair sticking to his face with sweat. He looked small in the open space.

“You’re lying,” he said, voice cracking. “All of you. You drugged my family. You drugged us. You think I’m stupid?” 

“No,” Joyce quickly said, bridging the distance, palms raised. Her voice wobbled despite her best effort to keep it calm. “I think you’re scared. And I don’t blame you.”

Will’s head still throbbed from the earlier vision, like something had left fingerprints behind his eyes. “Derek,” he said gently, “I know what this feels like. I really do. But we didn’t do this to hurt you. We’re trying to keep you alive.” 

“By kidnapping us?!” Derek snapped. He looked at the doors again, calculating distance. “You’re not heroes. You’re just crazy.” 

Will flinched at the word. 

Erica bristled. “Okay. Rude. Also, inaccurate.” 

Derek took a step forward, then another, closer to the doors. Erica and Robin instantly banded together, forming a defensive wall. 

“Don’t,” Robin warned. 

Too late. Derek bolted, again. Robin’s hands shot out, grabbing onto Derek as he thrashed. The air moved again, and Will froze.

It wasn’t loud at first. It never was. Just that creeping cold, the kind that sank into his bone marrow, made his skin prickle like static before a big storm. His breath left him as the sensation slammed into him, stronger than before. 

“No,” Will murmured, vision swimming. “No, no, no–” 

Robin turned to him sharply. “Will?” 

Dust shook loose from the rafters. Derek froze mid-step, terror crowding out his disbelief. 

“What–” he began. 

The barn doors shuddered, the lights shuddering. The Demogorgon hit the doors like a battering ram. Metal warped inward with a shriek, wood splintering as claws punched through. Erica screamed. Robin pulled Derek backwards just as the doors flew open, the creature’s silhouette filling the entryway, backlit by silver moonlight, towering, slick and impossibly agile. 

Joyce sprang into action, swiping a rifle that had been propped against one of the walls into her hands, raising it and firing. The blast echoed through the barn, smoke billowing in the air as the Demogorgon reeled back, howling in rage. Will’s legs gave out, hitting the floor as he arched, screams lacing with the Demogorgon’s until it was hard to tell if he were making the sound, or if it were the creature. 

The Demogorgon didn’t go down, however. But it lurched backwards far enough to be thrown out the barn. Headlights blazed across the horizon like a second sunrise. 

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Inside the car, everything happened at once. Nancy barely had time to register the Demogorgon before Steve slammed his foot down hard on the pedal. The engine roared, tires screaming as the car lurched forward.

 Dustin shrieked from the passenger seat, hands flying up to grab onto the grab handle with both hands. 

“Steve. STEVE. STEVE!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” 

“DRIVING,” Steve yelled back, eyes locked straight ahead, jaw clenched tight enough to crack. “HOLD ON.” 

Jonathan braced himself against the car door just as the Demogorgon spun around, its flowered head snapping open with a thunderous cry that shook the air. Air installed in his lungs – he could see its teeth now, rows and rows of them, glistening under the headlights. 

“Oh my god,” he whimpered, “oh my god, oh my god–” 

The impact was brutal. The car slammed into the Demogorgon with a bone-rattling crunch, throwing everyone forward. Dustin’s chin struck the dashboard hard, biting down on his tongue as blood filled his mouth. Nancy’s head snapped back against the seat, stars bursting behind her eyes as she screamed. Jonathan was hurled sideways, knocking hard into the door. 

“IT’S ON THE CAR,” Jonathan hollered, voice breaking into something high and terrified. 

The Demogorgon snarled, claws ripping across the hood, its weight denting metal as it was dragged backward. Steve fought the wheel, knuckles white, teeth bared. 

“GET OFF – GET OFF!” 

The creature finally tore free, tumbling off the trunk and hitting the ground several times, before rolling to a stop as Steve swerved sharply, tires skidding over gravel. Jonathan glanced back just in time to see it regain its footing, then bolt. Straight for a newly opened portal on the side of a stone windmill. 

“No, no, no,” Nancy said, dread flooding her chest as scarlet washed over grass. “Steve, it’s going for the gate.” 

Steve threw the car hard in reverse, twisting the wheel harshly. One of his hands reached for the accelerator, thrusting it forward as he urged the car faster. 

“STEVE,” Nancy screamed, “STEVE – YOU CAN’T!” 

“I’ve got this!” Steve grit out. 

The portal swallowed them. The world tore. The car screamed as reality folded in on itself, the air going thick and suffocating. Red lightning crawled over the windshield. Dustin clutched his seatbelt, openly sobbing now. 

“WE’RE GONNA DIE,” he blubbered. “WE’RE ACTUALLY GONNA DIE–” 

Nancy squeezed her eyes shut, fingers digging into the seat as the pressure crushed in from all sides. Jonathan shouted her name, blindly reaching for her shoulder just as the car struggled – and then, they burst through. 

The Upside Down swallowed the sound, the car slamming down hard onto ash-covered ground as Steve skidded to a stop. The engine stalled. Silence rang. No one moved. 

Dustin let out a shaky, hysterical laugh. “We’re alive!” 

Steve blinked, chest heaving, then barked out a breathless laugh of his own. “Hell yeah, we are.” 

Jonathan had an arm thrown over his head, a shiny sheen of sweat coating his face. “I hate you so much,” he panted. 

Nancy had leaned forward, hands braced against the back of the driver’s seat, trying to steady her breaths. “Steve,” she said quietly, “you realize that was insane, right?” 

Steve wiped his own sweat away, finally letting his hands drop from the wheel. “Yeah, but it worked.” Light crept into his words, and everyone let out a sound, half groan, half relieved sigh. 

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The world folded in on itself. Will saw Holly first – skin blue from cold, eyes moving rapidly under closed eyelids. Beside her, two others. They were suspended – held – by shadowy, fleshy spires that pulsed faintly, pumping substance down their mouth from a tentacle sealed around their mouths like a breathing mask Will had seen the patient in the room he and Robin had raided earlier. Except only, this wasn’t keeping them alive. It were slowly rotting them from the inside out, killing them. 

Will’s vision stretched wider. Eight more spires emerged behind them. Empty. Will gasped, clutching his chest as the image shattered. He scrambled to his feet, a visible tremor running through his hands as he grabbed a red paint can, not aware of what he was doing until the bristles of the paintbrush hit the wall. Thick, uneven strokes. Red pressing into the wood. Spires rising higher and higher, grotesque and unmistakable. 

“They’re alive,” Will said breathlessly. “But he’s planning for more. He’s not done.” 

The barn doors swung open again. 

“Will!” 

Mike’s voice splintered as he stumbled inside, Lucas gripping his arm tightly. Mike looked awful – pale, sweating, blood blooming through the side of his shirt, dark and sticky. 

Will whipped around, and his heart shattered. 

“Oh my god,” he said, darting forward. “Mike – what happened?” 

“Threw himself right in front of a Demogorgon while we and the others were fighting it at the Turnbows' place,” Lucas said grimly. “Almost died.” 

Mike squared his shoulders, defiant. “Dustin would have if I didn’t do anything,” 

Will’s breath shook. He yanked his jacket off, pressing it hard against Mike’s side. “Sit. You’re losing too much blood.” 

Mike sucked in a sharp breath, but didn’t argue. He just sagged into him, eyes fluttering. “Will, I…” 

“Stop,” Will interrupted softly. “Just . . . stop.” He helped Mike against the wall, bringing the ravenette down with him as he slid down. 

A groan cut through the room. 

Erica whipped around. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” 

Tira stirred on the ground, face contorting as she let out a groggy, confused noise. “Ugh, my head. Erica?” She mumbled as Erica sank to the floor in front of her, pulling the bag off her head, plucking a straw of hay from Tina’s hair. “What . . . what did you do?” 

Erica’s hands moved to grab her shoulders. “Okay, okay, breathe. You’re fine. You’re just  . . . very sleep-adjacent.” 

Tina squinted, then tried to sit up. “You drugged me.” She states accusatorily. 

“Temporarily!” Erica protested. “For monster-related reasons!” 

Tina scowled. “Don’t make me laugh. Monsters don’t exist. You probably did it because you were jealous of me and Josh!” 

Erica sputtered, then glared. “What? I’m sorry, but he’s all yours! I’m not exactly into boys whose faces look like a clock.” 

Tina made an offended noise. “He does not look like a clock!” 

“He does! He looks like he hasn’t heard the word ‘hygiene’ in a decade.” 

“So what? Are you jealous, Erica?” 

Tina’s words turned Erica to stone, and she clenched her hands, opening her mouth to retort, but Joyce quickly chimed in before she could. 

“Alright, that’s enough, you two.” 

Lucas suddenly stepped forward, expression darkening. “On the way here, Mike and I spotted something. The military. They’re taking kids. Buses. We saw one already halfway full.” 

Mike nodded, leaning into Will. “I don’t . . . I don’t think they’re taking them to school.” 

…

The WSQK building came into view, its familiar walls washed pale under the flickering security lights. The radio tower towered just ahead, red beacon blinking steadily against the night sky, indifferent to the chaos that had just unfolded miles away. Stones skittered away from the tires as the cars pulled in, door shooting open instantly, everyone spilling out with frantic and unfinished energy. 

Will was the first to step inside the building, warmth folding around him like a blanket. Joyce shadowed him, hand brushing his shoulder as if triple checking he were truly there. Erica stalked in with her arms crossed, eyes darting like she expected something to jump out from behind the soundboard. Robin followed, backpack slung over one shoulder. 

Mike lagged near the doorway, Lucas staying within arm’s reach of him, clearly keeping an eye on the way Mike leaned just a little too heavily against the wall. The makeshift bandage bound to his side was already darkening through the fabric. He waved off Lucas’ look with a muttered ‘i’m fine’, but his voice lacked any real conviction. 

Derek stood awkwardly in the center of the room, arms wrapped around himself as if he could hold his unease in place. Tina skulked nearby, still groggy, her movements slow, eyes unfocused as she drank in her unfamiliar surroundings. Erica shot her a quick look – part concern, part warning – before facing back to the group. 

Joyce took a breath, grounding herself. “Okay,” she said, voice firm in a way that made every head in the room turn towards her. “We need to move fast. If Henry is taking kids, then we can’t just wait for him to come to us.” 

Lucas leaned forward. “If we can figure out which kids Henry’s already reached, we can get them out. Before he returns.” 

Erica snapped her fingers suddenly, the sharp noise jolting everyone more awake. “Secret tunnels,” she said, already nodding to herself. “Still intact. Still hidden. We move them underground and out of sight.” 

“And Murray,” Joyce added, relief flickering briefly over her face who wasn’t already in danger. “He can take them somewhere safe. Far away. Somewhere Vecna can’t reach easily.” 

Mike straightened slightly at that, despite the clear discomfort and pain written all over his face. “Then that’s what we do,” he said, “We don’t wait for Vecna to play his cards. We take his pawns off the board.” 

Joyce looked around at them. “We get those children out,” she said. “All of them. Tonight.” 

…

The field was a pool of twilight, barely visible against the indigo sky, rough grass brushing their ankles as the group moved in a loose cluster toward the treeline. Somewhere ahead, hidden beneath rotting wood and leaves, was the trapdoor – the entrance to the tunnels. 

Mike flanked Will’s side, slower than usual. Will noticed how he seemed to favor one side, the way his breaths came shallow when he thought nobody was listening. Every so often, Mike’s hand drifted unconsciously toward the fabric under his ribs, fingers flexing. 

“Hey,” Mike said quietly, voice punctuating the quiet. His voice carried just enough levity to mask the strain underneath. “Can I tell you something kind of  . . . insane?” 

Will looked at him, lips lifting. “At this point? We’re way past insane.” 

Mike snorted. They walked a few more steps before he spoke again, eyes focused on the dark line of trees. “I think you might have a better grasp on the hive mind than you realize you do.” 

Will slowed. “What?” 

Mike faced him then, expression earnest in the way that always made Will feel like his chest were splitting open, like Mike had decided this mattered enough to be tender with. “I mean it. You keep calling it visions, but . . . what if it’s more than that? What if it’s not just Vecna letting you see things?” 

Will’s brow furrowed. “I don’t . . . I’m not controlling anything, Mike. It just – happens.” 

“Yeah,” Mike said softly. “That’s kind of my point.” 

For a moment, it was just the two of them, for a blissful second. The others moved ahead, Joyce murmuring directions, Erica whispering something sharp under her breath against Lucas, who scoffed lightheartedly. 

Will’s eyes moved over Mike’s face, taking in the way the silvery glow of the moon traced the contour of the taller boy’s face, painting it in gentle, silver hues, trailing it like a whisper. 

Mike chewed the inside of his cheek. “Do you remember Will The Wise?” 

A faint, fleeting smile touched Will’s lips. “How could I forget? I’ve always associated him with when time wasn’t so cruel back then.” 

Mike smiled sadly. “I know. But, listen. Will The Wise was a wizard – a cleric, really. Wizards learn magic. Books, spells, rules. But you–” he gestured at Will, as if the words were hanging just out of reach. “--you’re not like that.” 

Will blinked, heart leaping. “Mike,” 

“You’re more like a sorcerer,” Mike finished, confidence coloring his voice now. “It’s not something you learned. It’s just . . . you. It’s always been you. Kind of – like Vecna.” 

Will let out a surprised chuckle. “So what, you’re saying I’m evil and hellbent on destroying the world now?” 

Mike stopped walking entirely. “No! God, no,” He shook his head vigorously, a curl falling into his eyes. Will wanted to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, and he had to hold himself back from actually doing so. “I’m saying the opposite. Vecna – Henry – he didn’t read his power out of a book either. It came from him. And you’re connected to him, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re the same.” 

Mike drew near, his presence suddenly filling Will’s space. “It means you might be able to push back.” 

Will stared at him. There was a pull in the pit of his stomach, a flutter of nerves. His face grew warm. “That’s . . . that’s a lot of pressure, Mike.” 

“I know,” Mike said quickly. “And I’m not saying you have to do anything. I just –” He glanced up at the stars, then back down at Will. “We could really use some magic right now.” 

Will’s heart jumped in his chest, and he felt warmth, everywhere. Not the biting, repulsive cold he’d felt when the Mind Flayer had possessed him three years ago, but bonfire warmth that made him feel as if someone had struck a match under his skin. He suddenly pushed Mike’s chest weakly. 

“You’re a nerd.” He chuckled. 

Mike stumbled half a step, laughed, and instantly shoved him back – gentle, careful. His brief touch was enough to send shockwaves under Will’s skin, then prickling shame in his stomach. Mike had Jane, and Jane had Mike. Mike didn’t belong to him. The sooner he accepted that, the easier it would be to move on, wouldn’t it? 

He didn’t know if he believed that anymore. 

…

The trapdoor shut above them with a dull, final thud, plunging the group in a dim, echoing half-light. Joyce led the group with the flashlight, its beam cutting through dust and damp stone. The tunnel was alive with the sound of dripping water and the soft scrape of shoes against packed earth. 

Will walked near the back, back stiff. Mike was a few steps ahead, limping slightly, head turned just enough that Will could see the familiar slope of his shoulders. 

Robin noticed. She fell into step beside Will, their arms brushing now and then in the tight place. For a while, she didn’t say anything. Let the silence settle. 

Then, softly, as if afraid of startling something fragile, she spoke. “You know,” she said, staring into the darkness, “there was a time when I thought, if someone liked me back, then I’d finally feel real.” 

He glanced her way, startled. “What?” 

Robin’s lips curled just a fraction. “Tammy Thompson,” she said, the name bouncing strangely off the tunnel walls. “My very first, very dramatic, very doomed crush.” She let out a quiet breath. “I built her up into this whole . . . idea. Like if she chose me, that would mean I was worth choosing.” 

He swallowed against a sudden, burning dryness. He knew that feeling. Had lived in it. Still did. 

“She didn’t,” Robin continued. “She liked Steve. And that hurt – like, really hurt – but not because I lost her. Because I realized how much of myself I’d handed over without even asking if she wanted it.” 

Her voice softened, grew steadier. “I spent so long thinking I needed someone else to tell me who I was. To confirm it. Validate it. Like if nobody saw me the way I wanted to be seen, then maybe I didn’t exist that way at all.” 

Will felt every word like a stone dropped into water, ripples moving through his chest. 

“I had to learn,” Robin said, “that wanting somebody doesn’t mean disappearing for them. And loving someone – really loving them – doesn’t mean you get smaller so they can get bigger.” 

A wave of emotion stole his breath, leaving only a tight, constricted passage. “What if . . . what if  they  don’t  see  you  at  all?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. 

“Then you see yourself,” she said. “And you keep being you anyway. Because the right people? They don’t need convincing. They already feel it.” 

Will thought of Mike’s laugh, the way his name sounded rolling off the boy’s tongue. Thought of all the times he’d forced himself smaller, quieter, softer, hoping not to ask for too much. 

“I don’t regret loving her,” Robin added quietly. “But I’m glad I stopped waiting for her to tell me I mattered. You don’t need to earn love, and you definitely don’t need to bleed for it.” Her eyes shimmered. 

For a second, it felt like the tunnel wasn’t underground at all – but suspended in something weightless and infinite, held together only by truth. 

“Uh, hello?” 

Will and Robin both jumped. 

Mike had turned around several yards ahead, flashlight angled lazily toward them, basking them in ghostly light. His expression was unreadable – somewhere between suspicion and poorly disguised irritation. 

“What’s taking so long?” he asked, looking between the two of them. “You guys, like . . . fall into a moment back there, or something?” 

Will’s eyes widened immediately. “What – no! We were just–” 

Robin snorted before she could stop herself. 

Mike’s mouth pulled down. “Right. Cool. Because it kind of looked like you two were having a very intense . . . whatever that was.” 

He turned back around with a sharp huff. “Just saying – we’re kind of in a hurry. Government. Apocalypse. Monsters. Ringing any bells?” 

He didn’t wait for an answer. 

Robin watched his back for a beat. Then she leaned toward Will, whispering, “Wow.” 

Will let out a breathy laugh, half-mortified, half-disbelieving. “He totally thinks–”

“--that we were flirting?” Robin finished, grinning. “Oh, absolutely.” 

Will laughed harder now, the sound soft but genuine, the tightness in his chest easing just a little. “That’s . . . actually kind of hilarious.” 

Robin bumped his shoulder gently. “Jealousy is one hell of a drug, Will Byers.” 

They started walking again, closer this time, footsteps syncing up as they followed the others deeper into the dark. 

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The moment Steve forced the car through the portal, gravity twisted sideways. The world inverted in a violent and nauseating lurch, headlights scattering against a sky that churned in bruising reds and purples and grays. Ash fell in slow, endless spirals, caking the windshield before the wipers could even clear it. The air outside looked thick enough to chew.

For one suspended second, the tires didn’t touch the ground at all. Then they collided. The car slammed down hard onto cracked, vine-laced earth, suspension shrieking in protest. Steve gripped the wheel so hard his fingers blanched white. Nancy still braced herself against the back of the driver’s seat. Jonathan twisted around to make sure Dustin hadn’t been flung forward in his seat against the dashboard . . . again. 

The world stretched endlessly in every direction; a warped reflection of Hawkins, engulfed in rot and shadow. And directly ahead of them, cutting across the horizon like the edge of the world itself, was nothing any of them had been prepared for. 

It rose impossibly high. Not concrete. Not steel. It looked grown. A massive curving wall of dark, sinewy material, ribbed and layered like exposed muscle. Veins pulsed and snaked below its surface, emitting a low, rhythmic vibration that they could feel more than hear. It curved at the edges of their vision, suggesting something circular, contained. Trapped, even. 

Steve’s breath stuttered in his lungs when he’d realized too late that they were still accelerating.

The ash-blanketed ground beneath the wheels shifted, slick and unstable. The tires lost traction. The steering wheel jerked violently in his hands. The headlights illuminated the wall in blinding detail as they skidded closer and closer. 

Nancy’s voice cracked, gripping Steve urgently by the shoulder from over the seat. “Steve.” 

Jonathan clutched the seat instinctively. 

Dustin choked on a fast breath. The car fishtailed, and there was no time to correct it. The bumper collided with the wall in a violent, dramatic metallic scream, throwing everyone forward. The hood crumpled forward, the windshield spiderwebbed. The entire vehicle shuddered. 

There was nothing but ringing silence for a moment. Then everyone started speaking at once. 

“Steve! Are we–”

“Is it moving?!”

“You hit it!--”

“--I KNOW I hit it!” 

Just as the panic began to spiral into something worse, static crackled from Dustin’s backpack, jarring and sudden. Dustin instantly reached for it, pulling the bag open with shaky hands. 

Hopper’s voice, unmistakeable, was strangled with fuzzy, lingering static. “Steve. Jonathan. Does anyone copy?” 

Nancy snatched the walkie, heart pounding. “Chief? Yes, we’re here, we copy. We’re in the Upside Down and crashed into some sort of wall, where are you?” She asks, desperate, out of breath. 

A pause, then, “Stay where you are.”

Another voice filtered through the line. “We’re close.” 

Jane. The sound of her voice did something to the air, made it feel less hopeless and lost. Steve watched Dustin’s face light up a little at the sound of it. 

…

Hours passed by in slow, excruciating increments. The landscape never changed: warped streets, collapsed buildings, skeletal trees that reached toward a sky that refused to move. Hopper walked beside Jane, steady and ever watchful, shotgun gripped tight but never raised. 

When they finally spotted the car – crooked, dented, headlights dying – Jane felt something loosen inside her chest, and she’s moving faster. Movement. Four silhouettes cloaked in darkness, backlit by the flickering car lights. Dustin’s eyes locked with Jane’s, and everything else fell away. 

She noticed the bruises that haven’t quite faded yet. Yellow edges traced along his cheekbone. The split near his lip appeared to be freshly irritated. His nose bore the subtle swelling of something that had healed wrong but not completely, still split on the bridge. 

Her breath caught. He only smiled. 

“Hey,” he greeted casually. 

Jane closed the distance instinctively, looping her arms around his waist and pulling him into her, one of her hands finding its way to tangle at the back of his head, feeling the soft, wild curls there. 

Dustin leaned into her, sighing softly. Jane pulled back to look at him, hands drifting to cradle his face, thumbs sweeping over the fading injuries as if confirming they were real and not just a trick of the mind. 

“What happened to you?” Jane murmured, genuinely worried. 

Dustin flushed, sheepish yet touched. “It’s not as bad as it looks.” 

That’s the second time that night she’d heard that excuse. Jane narrowed her eyes. “You got hurt,” 

“I’m okay, really.” He insisted, but he averted his eyes down to the side. 

Jane’s eyes locked onto the skin separating over his nose, and suddenly leaned in, brushing her lips naturally over the wound. She felt his skin grow hot under her touch. She leaned back, a soft smile pulling across her face at the way his eyes had grown wide, obscenely red. 

Jane thought nothing of it, though her heart fluttered. Thought it was a completely normal and natural thing to do for a friend – just like how she’d seen Joyce frequently kiss Will or Jonathan on the cheek when they were hurt. But, she supposed that was slightly different, considering they were family. Oh well. Dustin was like family, so it couldn’t have been all that bad. 

Behind them, Steve cleared his throat loudly. “Okay. Cute. Adorable. No offense, but could we maybe not do emotional reunions in literal hell?” He mumbled, though an undeniable hint of fondness and amusement tinged his voice. 

Jane dropped her hands and stepped back, but still close enough to reach out and run her fingers over the edge of Dustin’s sleeve, as if checking he were real and “okay”. 

Hopper nodded in the direction of the wall. “That thing you hit? It curves in a full circle. The lab stands in its center.” 

Dustin tilted his head slightly in thought, face shifting from flustered speechlessness to deep analysis. “So, like a giant cage.” 

Hopper nodded again grimly. “Exactly.” 

Jane looked over to the towering shadow of Hawkins National Laboratory rising above the trees. It felt like a heartbeat that she’d tried hard to forget the rhythm of. 

…

The lab stood untouched in the Upside Down, preserved like something sacred to the dimension itself. Vines crawled along its exterior, but they did not break it. Did not consume it. The building stood at the center of the Upside Down like the eye of a hurricane. 

Hopper stopped at a ridge overlooking the entrance. The red lightning arching overhead lit up his face in ominous, flickering flashes.

He pointed to the four that stood not too far away. “You all stay here,” he ordered gruffly. “If something goes wrong, you come find us. Otherwise, you don’t move. Alright?” 

Steve began to argue, but then caught the look on the older man’s face and thought better of it, pressing his lips into a tight line and nodding. Jane tossed Dustin a reassuring look from over her shoulder when she spotted the worried look on his face, as if to say I’ll be alright without saying it out loud. 

She turned towards the building, and pushed into the building with her father. Inside, the air was heavy – sterile beneath decay. Lights blinked overhead. The corridors were intact, clean. Then the alarms began. The sound ripped through the hallways in a piercing, concentrated frequency. Not only deafening, but also pressurizing. A vibration that clawed under her skin and settled in her head. Red flashing lights bounced off the walls, shrouding the both of them.

She screamed, and her knees buckled, dropping to the cold, polished floor. It was the same weapon. The same thing that had stripped her away. Her hands flew to her ears as blood dribbled from her nose, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to physically shut the sound away. 

Hopper was speaking – no, yelling – for her to do something. She couldn’t make it out over the noise – it felt as if it were spreading through her like an endless, unbearable heat, ripping her apart from the inside out. His voice couldn’t find its way to the surface. The noise was dissolving it like acid. The noise intensified, and Jane felt as if she were going to pass out. It was all she could perceive, and it pressed in on her everywhere. She couldn’t get away. Couldn’t get out. She couldn’t even hear her own pounding heart or hysterical sobs, but felt them all the same. Her breath quickened until her hands felt like static. 

A frost encased her chest, and her thoughts melted into nothingness, and the floor rushed up to meet her cheek before she could even process she was toppling over, and didn't even feel the impact. The world blackened for several minutes, before she slowly lifted her head from the floor, the lights blurring and stretching in her hazy eyes, before she blinked and saw Hopper was no longer at her side. Panic seized her. 

Sweat slicked the palms of her hands, making them slip as she pushed herself upright, vision spinning, gripping the wall as she fought to help herself to her feet, though her legs trembled beneath her. Thick saliva pooled in her mouth, but she swallowed it back, but it felt like trying to swallow rocks. Jane pressed a fist to her mouth, coughing wetly, putting her weight against the wall, gasping for air. Her vision dimmed at the edges, and she felt the breakfast she’d eaten earlier begin to roll a slow, unpleasant churning in her gut, making her tongue feel sour. 

Jane’s eyes blurred, leaving nothing but ghosts floating about the empty hall. Footsteps echoed, and her head snapped toward the voice. Confusion and disorientation clouded her mind, making it impossible for her to put the pieces together that this was the same man from what she saw in her mind. His steps were calm, measured, and repulsively familiar. 

“Hello, Eleven.” His features were lost in the milky fog that filled her eyes, but his presence pressed heavy against her like a disease that never truly went away. When she finally recognized the cruel slope of his broad shoulders, her stomach dropped into a void. 

Dr. Martin Brenner loomed in front of her. He was an old wolf, gray around the muzzle yet with teeth just as sharp. Age had only polished his malice, making him a more refined kind of danger. His snow white hair had grown thinner, wrinkles had set deeper. He looked at her with cruel curiosity, as if observing some sort of failed lab experiment. 

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Jane managed to squeeze the words through clenched teeth, voice shaking with something deeper than just anger. She felt it coil at the base of her spine, threatening to erupt through her skin.

Dr. Brenner hummed, eyes glinting with malice. “Life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?” 

The air grew thick, turning to a quicksand-like consistency that made it harder to move. Jane glared at him like she wanted to burn through him, tear him apart, take away everything he’d taken from her. 

Dr. Brenner slipped his hand under her chin, forcing her to look up at him, into his eyes that threatened to consume her. “You’ve grown stronger,” he noted, tilting her face side to side slowly, observing her. Jane tried to pull out his hold, but he held her still. “But strength without discipline is mayhem.” 

“Stop talking,” she growled. 

“You were always my greatest success,” he said softly. Too softly, as if he were talking to a child of his own. “And my greatest disappointment.” 

Dr. Brenner didn’t ask. He just stepped into her orbit, brushing a loose strand away from her eyes with a swipe, but his touch felt heavy, pinning her in place and leaving a phantom burning on her cheek. Jane felt the sudden, sickening urge to shrink away. He didn’t let her. 

A vortex of scarlet, white-hot fury swirled inside her chest, threatening to suck her under and all her breath with it. Dr. Brenner closed in on her, using his height to blot out the light, shadow stretching over her. 

“You need me,” he wheedled, turning his voice to a velvet trap. His words felt like a wet cloth tightening over her nose and mouth, stealing the air right out of her lungs. She felt his eyes dismantling her, stripping away her defenses without speaking another word. 

A shotgun cocked behind him, and its barrel pressed against the nape of Dr. Brenner’s neck. 

“Take one more step,” Hopper snarled, voice dark with promise. 

Brenner turned slightly, irritation and surprise flickering over his face as every muscle in his body locked. 

Hopper’s voice was the only sound Jane allowed herself to hear, a steady anchor in the sea of agony she’d been drowning in only a few moments ago. Jane focused on him. On Dustin. On the people who chose her without condition or cages. 

Jane’s ribs felt like clattering glass, strangling the air out before the energy burst through her chest like an overflowing lake. An invisible wave struck Dr. Brenner, slamming his spine into drywall. A curtain of silence fell. Hopper caught her as she flung herself into him, fisting the back of his coat, Salt erupted from over the rims of her eyelids before she could blink, dripping down her jawline. 

Hopper stroked her hair, rocking her. “Shh, I’ve got you. I’m right here. He can’t hurt you anymore, I won’t let it happen. Never again.” 

Jane peeled herself away to gasp out, chest tight, “The vault.” 

They found it sealed away at the end of a reinforced hallway – different from the one in Jane’s mind. What she saw in there must’ve occurred years back, because the walls were painted a different shade of white, and the floors were stained with something dark and scratched – as if some kind of creature had recently barreled through. She tried not to think too hard about that. 

Jane pressed her palm to the metal – warm, and alive. She felt it vibrate over her skin. The door hissed open, letting hot mist roll out, blanketing at their feet. 

Jane looked up, and her heart nearly stopped. She was strung up like a marionette with its strings pulled taut, hovering in a grotesque mockery of light, trapped in wires, dressed in white. Her face was from a lifetime ago. Jane scrambled up the table edges circling the other girl, hands ripping the metal coils away, just to pull her down into a shaking embrace. 

Jane’s vision turned to watercolors, tears falling once more. She couldn’t stop them, they just kept spilling, heavy and thick over her cheeks. “Sister,” she breathed, feeling Kali stir against her, heartbeat beating against hers. 

Kali’s arms held her just as tightly, tilting her shaved head against Jane’s shoulder, and Jane’s fingers held it there gently. “Jane.” 

Retracting slightly, Kali traced Jane’s familiar features with her eyes, face wet. A broken smile curved her lips. “You found me.” 

Jane blinked rapidly, fighting back the stinging heat behind her eyes, trying to stop more tears from falling. “Yeah. I knew I would,” she whimpered, before dragging her sister into another desperate embrace, their tears soaking through layers of clothing. 

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The sky stretched an ever endless, unchanging bright artificial blue – and the bright sun never seemed to shift at all in the sky, continuously basking everything in too warm light, slanting through the trees all around. But they weren’t like the ones back in Hawkins; they stretched too high, too straight. Their trunks stretched without branches for an unnatural distance before splitting into skeletal limbs that webbed out across the sky like fractures in glass. Their bark wasn’t rough – it felt nearly smooth to the touch, like exposed and polished bone. Max walked carefully through the green grass, her footsteps muffled. 

There were no birds. No singing of insects. No breeze. And yet, the leaves whispered. Sometimes they murmured fragments of conversations. A man’s stern voice. A clock chiming. A door slamming somewhere far away. Sometimes it was just a low, indistinct hum, like a memory trying to resurface but failing miserably. 

Holly pressed close, so their clothing brushed with every step. 

“Why does it feel like it’s watching us?” Holly whispered, eyes darting around anxiously, clutching Max’s hand tightly. 

Max didn’t answer immediately. It was, but also wasn’t. It was him. 

“We’re inside his head,” she finally said quietly, glancing upward as the canopy flickered with image. The bark of a nearby tree shimmered, and Holly spotted wallpaper pressed into its grain. Blue. Foral. Then it became bark again. 

“It’s not a place,” Max continued, cautious. “It’s his memories pretending to be one.” 

They reached the mouth of the cave tucked deep between two massive, split boulders. The same Holly had seen earlier. The entrance yawned open like something breathing deeply and slowly in an eternal slumber. 

The moment they crossed the threshold, the air twisted. The forest sounds stopped. No murmurs. No phantom echoes. No doors slamming in the leaves. Only silence. 

Holly exhaled, gripping Holly The Heroic in a loose hand unconsciously. “It’s quiet.” 

“Yeah,” Max murmured. “That’s how I knew. C’mon,” 

Max pulls Holly gently between the tight walls that lead into a wide opening. Holly observed how Max seemed to make the place appear more homey than what the place originally offered. A blanket was thrown across a sloped shelf, a makeshift bed. Books were sprawled all over, and there were tickmarks carved into the wall, like Max had been counting the days (or was it months?) she’d been trapped here. From how many there were, it looked like centuries. The room opened up to reveal a vast snowy landscape, glittering hills catching the little dim light the cloud blanketed sky provided. The cold didn’t creep into the room – it was as if there was an invisible barrier separating the room from it. 

Max sank against the sunwarmed stone wall, drawing her knees up. The cave wasn’t too large, but it was deep enough that the forest light from the other direction couldn’t quite reach the narrow hall. The stone wasn’t warped like the trees. Didn’t even shift textures. It felt vacant, asleep. 

“I’ve been exploring ever since I woke up here,” Max said, staring at the cave ceiling. “After . . . everything.” 

She didn’t say died. Holly knew the words felt too heavy in this strange, suspended space. 

“At first, I thought it was just the Upside Down,” she continued. “But it’s not. It’s quieter here. More controlled, like it’s being held on some sort of leash.” 

Max took a deep breath, tugging at her sleeves. “I tried to get out. I ran for what felt like days. Every time I found an edge, it just looped back into something else. A memory. A hallway. A backyard that didn’t belong to me.” 

Max looked at Holly, blue eyes strangely intense now. “And then, I heard it.” 

Holly’s breath hitched. 

“Music.” The word barely squeezed through Max’s throat. “Lucas was playing my favorite song. Kate Bush. I could hear it through everything else. Like it cut through the trees. Through him.” 

The walls trembled, as if even recalling that moment made the world unstable. 

Max continued, ignoring it, “I followed it. I could feel something tugging at me. Like I almost made it back.” 

Her hands curled at her sides, anger and hopelessness flickering in her eyes. “But so did Henry. He found me before I could reach it.” 

Holly’s eyes went wide. “Did he?--” 

“No.” Max shook her head quickly. “No, I ran. As fast as I could.” 

Max pressed her palm flat against the wall. “And then I crossed here . . . he stopped suddenly.” 

Silence settled heavy around them. “He won’t come inside. He stands at the edge sometimes. He looks different here. Smaller. Like this place shrinks him.” 

She glanced toward the cave’s darkest corner outside the room. “I think this cave is tied to something he doesn’t want to remember. Something he buried so deep even he can’t rewrite it.” 

Max looked back at Holly, eyes unreadable. “When I saw you at his house, I realized something.” A pause. “He’s distracted by you. You’re new. You’re not fully part of the story he’s still building here yet.” 

The forest beyond the cave on the other side, separate from the snowy landscape, gave a deep groan, like wood bending under too much weight. 

“That gives us a chance.” 

Holly’s voice wavered. “A chance for what?” 

“To break it.” 

Max leaned forward, fierce despite the deep exhaustion lining her face. “This world runs on memories. And memories aren’t perfect. They crack. They contradict each other.” 

She motioned toward the cave entrance. 

“When you go back to the house . . . play along. Let him think he’s guiding you.” 

Holly swallowed, disbelief shaping her features. “You want me to pretend?” 

Max nods. “For now. You smile when he wants you to, you listen when he speaks. You don’t fight him.” 

She reached out, squeezing the younger girl’s hands in her own. 

“But you watch. You find the weak spots, the memories he skips over. The ones that glitch,” she whispered. 

Holly’s bottom lip trembled. “But . . . what if he knows I’m faking it all?” 

Max looked to the entrance, then back to Holly, eyes hardening. “You run, and never stop.” 

Her voice softened. “Run back here.” 

A long beat of silence stretched. “He won’t follow.” Max concluded, 

Max stood slowly, brushing pine needles from her jeans. “This place is built on what he remembers, but also what he’s afraid of. And fear is never controlled as he thinks it is.” 

She squeezed Holly’s hand one last time, an encouraging gesture. “Go, now. I’ll be here.” 

Holly nods once and pushes through the walls, rushing back outside and toward the house before Henry could return. 

• · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The military base wasn’t salvation. It was a trap dressed in fluorescent lighting and chain-link fences. Searchlights swept over the perimeter in harsh, pale arcs. Helicopters roared somewhere overhead. The air reeked of gasoline, sweat, and panic, and it hit the back of Will’s throat hard. Everything moved in a blur, soldiers shouting, boots pounding asphalt, the metallic clink of rifles being steadied. 

Will stayed close to Joyce, hair still sticking to his face with sinkwater after the pipes to the sink in the bathroom of the facility the military had locked all those kids in burst suddenly, soaking both he and Mike to the bone as they scrambled to stop it before the whole room could flood. Joyce had her hand locked around his wrist, hauling him forward protectively. 

They were moving children – small, wide-eyed, trembling children – toward Murray’s truck parked near the far gate. Robin was already there, ushering three of them into the back department of it, voice somehow steady amidst the chaos.

“Go, go, go!” She hissed urgently, slamming the door behind them. 

Lucas had taken two others toward the tunnel access point, the same tunnels they’d mapped earlier. He didn’t turn back. 

Erica and Tina were gone – safe in the watchtower overlooking the base as they had planned. For once, the adults had pushed them out of danger before they were too late. 

The atmosphere suddenly became all too suffocating, bringing a metallic taste to the air. 

A guard, weathered by time more so than the others, instantly bellowed, “STOP THEM!” 

And everything exploded. Military police moved in faster than any of them had time to get away. Derek was slammed against a vehicle, wrists pinned behind him as he cursed excessively and furiously. Biceps locked around Joyce before she could move. Mike was not pleased, letting out an angry “get the hell off me!” as he thrashed, shoving at the shoulder of the cop restraining him. 

A tremor ran beneath the asphalt, like something massive had turned its face towards them. The first portal tore open like a wound ripped by invisible claws, splitting the air with a wet squelch that crawled inside Will’s mouth. Black-red light spidered out from the gash, painting the base in violence. The heat that once filled the air subdued, and breath bloomed white in the dark. 

A sickening, hot current rushed from Will’s head to the soles of his feet, and his vision shattered into black velvet. His legs turned to water, plunging him down so fast his head cracked on the pavement. 

He felt them racing. Through darkness. Through membrane. Through him. The first Demogorgon rocketed through the tear with terrifying agility and force, landing atop a soldier and driving him to the ground in a single, crushing impact. Its face peeled open, and it bit down, ripping through wet muscle and skin. Blood splattered everywhere. 

Gunfire exploded. More portals ripped along the fenceline, behind barracks, near fuel tracks. Everything quickly became a tornado in a glasshouse. Demogorgons poured through, moving with coordinated violence that felt purposeful, not random. 

Will felt all of it. 

Every bullet that tore through their flesh felt like a hammer against his ribs, and it felt as if his bones were exploding. When flamethrowers ignited and fire engulfed one of them, his back bowed off the ground, white-hot agony lanced through his veins, forcing a scream from his throat. 

He was no longer pinned to the pavement. He was in claws scraping metal. In teeth ripping fabric and skin. In rage. In hunger. Joyce’s voice reached him faintly through the storm, but he could not reach her. His lungs refused to expand, trapping a gasp in his throat that felt like dry cement. 

The air was thick with panic, blood and smoke. Beneath it all, something ancient and approaching. 

…

Murray did not hesitate. The second the first portal opened up on the ground, he threw the truck into gear so violently it lurched forward before Robin had even shut the passenger door. 

“Seatbelts!” He barked, though none of them had time. 

Robin twisted in her seat, half kneeling, half bracing herself as she looked through the narrow window leading into the back department of the truck. The youngest one was sobbing uncontrollably. Another had gone eerily quiet. 

The truck’s back end swung side to side on the gravel as gunfire followed them. Robin looked out the window once –saw Will collapse, Joyce held back, Mike shouting, and something heavy collapsed on top of the hood. The impact cracked the windshield. 

Robin screamed. A Demogorgon clung to the bumper, claws punching through metal like it was paper. Its open face pressed against the fractured glass, saliva dripping downward as it shrieked. 

“Murray!” Robin yelped, eyes wide. 

“I see it!” He bellowed. 

Murray whipped the wheel to the side, sending the truck careening towards an incoming pole. The sudden swerve threw the beast sideways, but it stubbornly kept its claws punctured into metal. It heaved itself up higher, claws screeching steel as it reached for the roof. 

The children in the back screamed as the truck tipped onto its side, overbalancing on the curve of the road leading into a vast, grassy field, keeling over and sliding. Robin’s cheek struck the passenger window hard, pain exploding through her face. 

The Demogorgon lost its footing, flying off the roof and hitting the grass several times, bones cracking and popping, before rolling to a stiff stop. 

Head pounding, heartbeat in her cheekbone, Robin lifted her head with a moan, blinking away the dots that had etched into her vision as she pushed herself through broken glass, hand pressing against the side of the collapsed truck to help herself up, legs protesting. Through the smoke billowing out the bumper and disappearing into the night sky, the road cracked red-orange, and claws broke through. 

…

Lucas hadn’t stuck behind to see how bad things were growing. He was already shoving the two kids toward the maintenance tunnel entrance and followed suit, heart hammering. 

The tunnel was narrow, and Lucas had to feel his way along the damp walls sweating moisture, as he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. The sound of gunfire above reverberated through the concrete like distant, rolling thunder. 

The roar snuck into his ears from behind them. Lucas spun around just in time to see a Demogorgon forcing its way through the tunnel opening, claws scraping golden sparks from concrete as it squeezed its massive frame inside. 

“RUN!” He shouted, and the kids scrambled forward, big eyes wide as saucers with terror. 

Lucas grabbed the first solid object within reach – a rusted pipe wrenched loose from a support bracket. He set his back into a swing, and the iron whistled through the air, before slamming into the creature’s head with a dull crunch. It slowed the Demogorgon just enough for the kids to eat up distance. 

The creature retaliated instantly. Its claws slashed across Lucas’s ribs. Lucas heard the grind of bone beneath the creature’s talon as its serrated hooks rented the flesh there, making ragged swaths of skin give way there. A bright, electric violin string snapped behind his ribs, and he cried out, the world tilting sideways as he went down, limbs heavy and useless, though he refused to let go of his hold on the pipe, clutching the rough surface desperately as the Demogorgon leaned over him, spittle dangling from its teeth as it growled. 

The Demogorgon lunged, then stopped. Its head twisted, as if listening to something Lucas couldn’t. Confused and terrified, he stared, panting for breath. 

…

Will lay on the pavement shaking, the smoke that had clogged the air feeling like molten glass with each intake of air, tearing a raw, blistering trail down his throat and down into the pit of his chest, pooling like lava. 

The air in the center of the base began to warp and distort, bending inward as if gravity had become tangible. Black lightning threaded across the sky in jagged snakes. The concrete below broke in branching fractures. Every standing floodlight wavered, then shattered simultaneously, plunging half the base into erratic shadow. 

The widest standing portal yawned slowly, stretching vertically until its light crept over vehicles and guards alike. Frost spread across metal surfaces. Breath crystalized in the air. And he stepped through. Vecna unfolded from the darkness with a horrifying calm, vines and sinew slithering subtly across his elongated form. The pulsating crimson from the rift clung to him like wet blood, carving the features of his altered flesh out from the surrounding darkness. 

Seized with panic, the standing guards reacted with a terrified, uncoordinated spray of bullets, but they never reached Vecna. They froze midair in a quivering arc several feet from his frame, suspended as if caught in an invisible resin before clinking uselessly to the ground. 

With an effortless flex of his claw, three soldiers were lifted off their feet at once, and an unseen weight slammed into them, folding their spines like dry kindling as they dropped into mangled heaps.

Joyce screamed Will’s name from somewhere far to his left, but an invisible weight crushed him to the pavement, holding him down forcefully. 

Vecna’s gaze found Will. Jagged threads of ether coiled around Will’s bones, dragging him upright. The toe of his sneakers tore against the asphalt, until the ground released its shackles and he fell upward. 

“No! Don’t touch him!” Joyce’s voice tore through the air, hurling herself forward. 

 She didn’t make it far, because he snapped his head to her, and an invisible hand swatted her off her feet, sending her careening into a parked military truck with enough force to dent the metal of the door, forcing the breath from her in a silent gasp. 

Mike’s face contorted in anger and fierce protectiveness, but the air hardened and he was thwarted by a psychic shockwave, catapulting him into a pile of debris. A sharp edge tore through the skin of his temple, drawing a long line of blood, a sharp groan slipping through his lips. 

Will felt his atoms being unwound, his body forced into a sickening motionless drift. He clawed at nothingness, fingers passing through open air that now behaved as a cage. Vecna lifted a finger, curling as if beckoning Will closer. The air pulled him until his face was only a couple inches apart from Vecna’s – until he could feel the cold exhales of his breath, a wet gust of a sunken marshland and a thousand rotting souls. 

Vecna’s voice didn’t just shake the air, it unpooled in the mind, a slick, oily, crackling sound that left a film on the senses. It was as if a man were speaking through the throat of a dying wolf. 

“You feel them,” he eventually said, voice resonant. “Every nerve. Every fracture.” 

Vecna reached out, claw clutching Will’s chin, forcing him to look into his icy eyes. “You were my revelation,” he continued softly. 

Will’s jaw worked, clicking against the thick, static-charged air, but the force pressing in on his chest turned his lungs to stone. 

“When I took you in ‘83, I learned what transformation truly required.” 

Vecna’s hand slid up the side of Will’s face, rotten fingers splaying there like the legs of a spider, leaving an oily sensation that burned into his skin. 

“You endured what others could not,” Vecna stated, studying him like a sacred artifact. A prized possession. “Children . . .  are unfinished. Their minds are not rigid. They are perfect vessels.” 

Vecna’s fingers mapped the planes of Will’s cheeks with a heavy thumb, a sculptor marking clay. “With guidance, they can be reshaped.” 

Will’s head swayed in a low, broken arc, salt tracing hot, frantic paths toward his jawline.

 Images flashed through his mind in warped vision – Lucas, slumped on the ground, eyes heavy lidded as he watched a kid reach out, choking out a small “help” before being yanked through a still open portal. He watched Lucas turn too late, scrambling back on his hands, yelling as the new Demogorgon caught up to him, lifting a claw.

Robin, peering into the torn opening of the back department of the tipped truck, her face a mask of helplessness and despair as the rift slipped shut, children gone, fingers gripping the wreckage to keep herself on her feet before looking back at the new Demogorgon that had emerged from below the earth, already swiftly barreling towards her, screeching.

  Vecna’s lips lifted, and his eyes became a dark, airless place where empathy went to die.

“You have shown me what is possible.” Vecna offered a faint, agonizingly slow angle of the head before stepping away, dissolving into the pulsating light of the rift, moving as if stepping through an open door. 

The roaring void that kept Will aloft vanished, replaced by a swift kick of gravity, pulling him down to the ground hard, knocking the breath from him. 

A violent chasm ruptured the pavement, bleeding red as a bony hand shot out, slamming onto the pavement after one, a Demogorgon heaving itself upward, dripping with membrane. It locked onto Mike, bellowed, and launched into the air, slobbering jaws spread wide and eager.

Mike’s arms snapped up in an involuntary, defensive box, a shrill cry ripping from his throat, eyes squeezing shut, bracing for the inevitable contact he would face. 

Will’s breath froze in his chest, and suddenly the words Robin had whispered to him in those dark tunnels came rushing back to him, the warmth of her voice smoothing the edges of his panic. 

“You see yourself. And you keep being you anyway. Because the right people? They don’t need convincing. They already feel it.” 

Will pulled the memory over him like a warm blanket, sealing his eyes against the cold reality of the present. 

…

“Do you remember the first day that we met?” Mike. Hearing him again in his mind felt like slipping into a bed with sun-warmed sheets. It was the time where he felt as if he weren’t in control at all, didn’t even recognize himself, but Mike had been there anyway. He stayed.

Will had been sitting alone on a swingset on the first day of kindergarten, kicking against dirt slowly as he swayed himself slowly on a swing, lost in thought. He watched as the kids his age chased each other on the playground, laughing and joking as he sat alone. He remembered feeling like everybody on that campus seemed to have their own people they just . . . got along with naturally, and he did not. 

“It was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends and . . . I just felt so alone and scared, but . . . I saw you on the swings, and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you, and . . . I asked.” 

A boy his age with a head of dark, messy curly hair plopped into the swing beside him, lips pushing up into a kind smile as he looked at Will, eyes sparkling. Will had never seen anyone other than his mother and brother look at him with that type of light before. The boy pumped his legs under him, swinging enthusiastically, and he asked,

 “Do you wanna be friends?” 

“I asked if you wanted to be my friend.” A single tear slipped down Mike’s cheek as he looked at his possessed friend, looking into dead eyes, voice strangled with emotion. 

Will nodded, a smile creeping onto his face as well. A silent confirmation. 

“And you said yes. You said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” 

There was him and Mike having a sleepover for the first time, trying not to laugh too loud as they whispered inside jokes that nobody but them understood, pulling the covers higher as they huddled together for warmth. 

Jonathan kneeling to help tape a torn drawing, fingers messing Will’s hair reassuringly. 

Joyce humming softly in the kitchen, brushing a line of flour from his cheek as she laughed like the sun. 

Mike holding Will in his arms, promising to protect him from the world if he had to. 

The first time he and Jonathan had constructed Castle Byers, binding together sticks and rope, and the way he’d use it as a safe haven when playing ‘castle’ with Mike. 

Every moment he’d been chosen, when he felt he didn’t deserve it at all. 

…

A thrumming, organic heat blossomed beneath his breastbone, wearing against the icy connection. All three Demogorgons began to lunge, but the world buffered, trapping the creatures mid-shriek, quaking with unspent fury. 

…

This is it, Mike had thought distantly. This is how it ends. 

An icy current shot down his spine, and his ribs felt far too small for his racing heart, slamming against the bone as if trying to physically jump out. 

When the expected warmth failed to materialize, he went still, gasping breaths growing quiet, slowly waking his eyes to the cold, then stretching them wide. The Demogorgon, trapped between invisible, crushing walls, it convulsed, emitting a prolonged, shriek that sounded like rending steel, struggling in the air that felt it fast above ground. 

His eyes slowly shifted past it, and the air died in his lungs, leaving him mouth-gaping and silent as he struggled to grapple with what he was seeing. 

Will stood a good ten feet away. The glow of the embers licking the night sky behind him traced the curve of his jaw, a single line of light that drew Mike’s eyes to him like a moth to a lantern. The firelight bled around him like liquid gold, painting him in a honeyed, bright haze. The hearth-light caught the stray strands of his hair, weaving a soft, copper crown around his head. 

His eyes were no longer the spring green Mike had mapped out like the back of his hand, but now milky-white shadows, two burning moons.

His arm was stretched outwards in front of him, palm open and facing the sky, fingers bent and trembling. He was doing this. Joyce was staring too, one hand clamped over her mouth, frozen in place. 

Tendrils of cold magic pulled the beast ten feet high, forcing its joints to hyperextend in a grotesque display of unnatural anatomy.

Will’s other hand shot out from himself, fingers spreading, then his chin lifted, as if controlling three at the same time, his entire body trembling, as if holding them back by force – which he clearly was. 

The Demogorgon hung in the air for a moment, then suddenly Will balled his arms and pulled them into himself, jerking his chin down to his chest, and the vacuum of the spell imploded, the sound of a thousand dry branches snapping under a weight as the internal pressure bloated the limbs until the fractured bones protruded from skin, separating muscle as it dropped from the air in an unmoving lump at Mike’s feet.

Will’s roaring torrent of power abruptly ceased, and he fell to his knees like some sort of burnt out star, chest buckling as he desperately sucked in air, face still turned down to the pavement, hands still balled. 

His left hand slowly unfurled, then his right. When he turned his face up, like fog lifting from a dark lake, the stark white void within his eyes broke apart, restoring the green depths that had been lost. Metallic sludge broke loose from his nostril, tracing a thick line down to his upper lip. With a slow lift of his hand, he backhanded his nose, leaving a greasy smear of red under his nose. Looking at him was like stepping into a sun basked forest; intense enough to blind, but warm enough to melt the terror freezing his veins. 

He looked terrifying. 

No. 

He looked beautiful. He looked less like a boy and more like a constellation that had forgotten its place in the sky, and came down to occupy a place on Earth instead. 

The power still humming around Will’s fingertips like some sort of magnetic field should’ve scared Mike, but it did not. It was the way Will was looking at him – assured in himself, calm – that made Mike’s lungs pause. 

His eyes traced the lines of Will’s weary face; the smudge of crimson, the tremor still lingering in his frame, the way he looked so impossibly powerful and impossibly fragile at the same time, and a dazed, awestruck smile pulled at Mike’s parted lips.

Sorcerer. 

Mike’s heart hammered against his throat like a bird trapped in a sweater, demanding he hold it quiet. It’s normal to feel this way, he told himself, anyone would feel this way after being saved by a sorcerer. But even as he thought it, he still couldn’t get his hands to still.