Chapter Text
He woke up in a cold sweat, like he did every night he dreamed about her. It always ended in the same way, her disappearing into thin air, leaving him just standing there, disappointed for yet another night. It wasn’t right, why did she have to vanish, just like that; he barely got a goodbye. It left him hiding his pain around everyone, most people were oblivious, except for his sister and his friends. It’s like it broke him, like everything around him just shattered.
For the most part after his dreams he just shook it off, tried to bury it down with the rest of the sadness guilt and hopelessness. But some dreams shook him up for the rest of the day; his friends could tell when he was having those days, he would just zone out at times, and he wouldn’t talk much. They usually tried to give him his space, time to think, he already had too much time to think. Some days it was too much, he didn’t feel like getting out of bed, just to fake a sense of normalcy and go back to bed, just to repeat the process the next day, and next and so forth; but he did because it’s what she would’ve wanted, she gave up her chance of a normal life, for his chance at one at all.
That day was one of the worst ones yet, he was so shaken up that he needed someone to talk to, just to get everything off his chest. So that day at school he decided to tell Lucas; he may have been the harshest person out of the group, be was also the realist, and maybe he had good advice on how to try and cope.
“Eight months, eight fucking months” Mike said bitterly “It’s been too damn long, don’t you think she’d be here by now if she was going to come back at all.”
“Wow, this dream really did shake you up, usually you’re all optimistic about her returning.” Lucas said truthfully, he wasn’t used to Mike swearing, but it started happening right after she was gone.
“I just, I don’t know man, what to do, if I give up, I feel like I given up on any possibility that she’d ever return, like it’d never happen. But if I keep trying to believe that she’d come back, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to move on in life. And I don’t know what would be more of a disappointment to her, if I stopped waiting for her to come back, or if I wasted her sacrifice just waiting here, stuck at a standstill in life, waiting for something that might never happen.” Mike poured out, finally allowing himself to breathe.
“Why can’t you wait for her and move on?” Lucas asked, just judging by the shocked look on mike’s face, that was not the answer he was expecting. “Why not live life, enjoy life, but still be there if she comes back. Even if it’s just for the next four or five years I think staying in Hawkins won’t be that hard. Therefore, once you go to college, you won’t feel like you’ve abandoned her, but you stayed, just in case she came back, and if she does, you know that you waited long enough that you could save her. Life isn’t always so black and white Mike, sometimes you just have to look harder for the gray.”
Mike pondered over his friend’s advice throughout the day, trying to find flaws in his plan, but he couldn’t; there was no logical reason he couldn’t wait for her and enjoy life in the process.
Yeah, he’d do that, he’d live.