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California wasn’t really Will’s place. That was probably obvious, he’s not sure how it could’ve been, so far away from everything. He didn’t have friends- he barely had acquaintances , the acknowledgement that he was seen, that he existed. He just had Jonathan, El, his mom.
So he took up painting. He had been into art for as long as he could remember, but had never gone all in the way he did in that tiny middle-of-nowhere California place. He didn’t go to football games so he sketched. He rarely went shopping, rarely having money to spend anyways even with the government compensation, so he worked odd jobs to get money for paints and pastels.
He painted anything and everything. Whether it was detailed painting of their DnD party, (he had decided he’d say it was from El, he could get her to play along), portraits of his friends for class, sketches of stories he didn’t know how to put into words, drawings of memories or- something else , Will liked the feeling of getting lost in his work, the slow, voluntary feeling of cautiously slipping away from reality for an hour or two at a time.
That dissolved when they returned to Hawkins.
Will was happy to be back, even if he wasn’t particularly in love with the circumstances, what with the somewhat-kidnapping of his sister, the near death of his friend, and the opening and closing of the glowing cracks accompanied by a rumble in the ground, a swooping in his gut, a prickle on his neck, dead residents, and a few moments of a world with matching scars which wasn’t important, and was silly to dwell on.
That’s what Will was, surely. Not dying. Not in danger. Not at risk of losing everything, how could he be? He had already been all of that before. No, surely this time he was just silly, maybe this time everyone would be safe. This time his mind wouldn’t straddle the worlds.
Part of him wondered where that left him, if everything was fine. If nothing bad ever happened again. If his friends weren’t forced to care for the sake of their world.
“Wiilllll?” Mike’s hand waved in front of his eyes. “Hey!” Mike snapped in front of his left eye, his head on his hand where he was leaning over to look Will in the eyes, his hair grazing his shoulders.
Will breathed in, blinking rapidly. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. You were saying?”
“I was saying,” Mike did a dramatic little hand gesture “-that we need to be prepared to confront the fact that this isn’t the last we’re going to see of Vecna, right Will?”
Will nodded. “Right, yes.”
Robin squinted at him, leaning forward from her spot next to Steve on the white tile floor. . “And, so, Will, he can feel Vecna? How do we know that he’s not still possessed by the shadow monster or whatever?”
“ MIND FLAYER!” Dustin yelled.
Lucas glanced over at Dustin. “Seriously?” He turned to Robin. “ SERIOUSLY? How many times to do we have to say it, the mind flayer got burned out of Will’s body. Years ago. If Will still had that thing inside of him, we would know . Would’ve been pretty helpful if when we were trying to save Max, Vecna could just sunnon Will for him to mess it up.”
Will squirmed a little bit at the thought.
“I was there when it happened, and it seemed to be pretty permanent,” Nancy said, glancing up awkwardly. Will suspected it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing she wanted to remember. That was fair. He didn’t want to remember either.
Robin made a surrendering gesture with her hands. “Okay, okay, you can calm down now, children.”
Lucas and Dustin hmphed in tandem.
“Mike is right,” El breathed. “This is not the end.”
“ Thank you El!” Mike exclaimed.
“Oookay, so what can we do about it?” Steve crossed his arms and surveyed the room.
Everyone glanced around, searching for an answer. El returned to her rubik's cube.
Steve sighed. “Great, I guess we’ll get to that when we have to. Anybody want to play truth or dare?”
There was a knock on the door. “ HEY WILL? Come help me with these for a sec.” Jonathan’s muffled voice came through the wood of their new front door. New front door. Not the old Byers house, not the California Byers house, the new Byers house. The new start at an old life house.
Will jumped up, startling Mike slightly, who had still been leaning on Will slightly. “Coming!” He creaked open the door to find a smiling Jonathan, arms full of three thick, giant folders.
Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “Found your paintings.”
Will’s eyes went wide. He was half sure they were lost. He was half sure he’d never see them again, and here they were.
Jonathan glanced down at his cargo. “Well, most of ‘em anyways. One got shot. I threw that one out. It was the one you were working on in the kitchen.”
Will nodded, remembering, before grabbing one of the folders and leading the way to his room, passing everyone in the living room to his right.
“What are they carrying?” he heard Mike ask.
“Art,” El responded. “Will’s art. He has a lot of it.”
“Oh.” Mike nodded. “Thanks for telling him to paint that painting by the way, I love it.”
Will’s eyes went wide. El glanced up at him, to which he nodded subtly and frantically.
“Ah, yes. The painting. I did. You’re welcome.”
All of their rooms were on the second floor in this house. Hopper was living with them now, which made things a bit complicated, but it was nice all the same. Their mom was happier. That was nice. She deserved it.
Will’s room was the farthest down the hall, tucked away from the rest, but stacked with boxes like every other. The only things unpacked were his desk, bed, and a few changes of clothes.
“God,” Jonathan laughed as he plopped the paintings on the table. “You really did make a lot of these, huh?”
Will let out a soft snort. “Yeah, I did.”
Will turned his back on Jonathan, looking over the piles of boxes to see if there was a better place to store these, a corner he could tuck all of them away, obvious enough that he wouldn’t lose them but annoying enough that the inevitable friend in his room wouldn’t go snooping too quickly at the ones Will would rather keep to himself.
A swooping feeling made Will double over slightly, his vision fuzzing. No, no, not now not now- he breathed in deeply, shutting his eyes tightly. His vision cleared. That had been close. Far too close.
“Will-” Jonathan started sharply, a hint of fear in his voice. “-What is this?”
Will turned around, glancing down at what Jonathan was holding.
“It-” the words caught in his throat. “It’s a painting of the Upside Down.”
It was in fact one of many paintings of the upside down, done in reds and blues and greens and blacks of the view from his window in California. White and grey specks spiraled around the canvas. He had done it for Art class, passed it off as an imaginative drawing and titled it “A not-quite snowy day”.
He hated that painting but he loved it. He loved the piece, it was one of his best and he had spent hours on it trying to get the colors just right.
He hated it because he didn’t have to imagine it.
“Yeah no shit. Why does it exist?”
“The school let me take some paint home to finish my major grade for the fall?”
Jonathan threw his hands in the air. “And that’s it?”
“Yes!”
“No, Will.” Jonathan took a step forward, resting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You can tell me things, remember?”
Right but sometimes he didn’t want to. “Yeah, I know, Jonathan. I’m fine. It’s fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Uh huh. So… you wouldn’t mind if I did this!” He grabbed the painting from the desk and flung open the door, racing down the stairs, Will sprinting after him. Jonathan burst through the doorway to the living room, panting slightly with the painting clutched to his chest.
Nancy looked up at him. “What the hell Jonathan.”
He looked down and spun the painting around. “Will’s hiding something.”
“Wh-” Will spluttered. “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT JONATHAN.”
“Will,” Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at him. “I’ve known your tell since we were seven, you’re not getting out of this one.”
Steve ran his fingers through his hair. “Alright do you guys wanna, oh I don’t know, sit down first?”
Jonathan sat down in an armchair still wrapped in plastic, Will moving back between Mike and Lucas.
Max looked around. “I’d like you to know I’m very lost.”
Steve’s eyes lingered on Will. “Yeah… so are we.” He glanced at Jonathan. “Care to explain Byers?”
“Will’s hiding something.”
Robin raised her eyebrows. “You said that already hun.”
“Yeah well… It’s true! Clearly!”
“That doesn’t make sense Jonathan!”
“Will?”
“Why would he be?”
“I still don’t know what’s happening.”
“Okay, okay. Can everybody just calm down for one moment?” Lucas looked around the room. “Good. Will, leave the room for a second.”
“Why do I have to-”
“Yeah!” Mike said. Why does he-”
Dustin cut in. “Will, please.”
Will glanced at Mike who gave an apologetic look before walking out of the room.
“Jonathan, explain.”
Jonathan took a deep breath. “Okay so, Will painted a painting of the Upside Down. More than one. This one is the view out his bedroom window. It’s stylized but very detailed and precise. And Will immediately got nervous when I asked him about it. I- I also think he might have had one of those… feelings. When I had my back turned I glanced over and he was grabbing his neck and doubled over. I think he only felt like it was a second but he was standing there for like two minutes .”
Everyone went quiet, Jonathan sitting back down on his crinkly plastic covered chair and looking at the group.
“Well that’s-” Steve started. “Not… ideal.”
“So…” Max looked over at Lucas. “He is still possessed?”
“What? No!”
“Okay well then-”
“Jonathan?” Mike looked up. “Do you think he’s having visions again?”
“True sight!” Dustin screamed.
Jonathan looked over at Dustin, then back at Mike. “I don’t know. I- maybe. I think we should ask him.”
El looked up. “I think so too.”
***
Three more minutes of argument later and Will was yet again returned to his spot on the couch.
Robin was looking at him from her spot to the left of the L of the couch, like she was trying to figure him out. Dustin kept sneaking glances at him from three spots over, and El hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Will’s heart was still pounding, which he knew was dumb. Nothing bad would come of telling him. He knew this. It didn’t help.
Steve Harrington was the first to speak. “So kid, what’s going on?”
“Wha- nothing I already told you!”
Jonathan looked over sadly. “Will, you stood next to your bed for over two minutes grabbing your neck and then acted like nothing happened.”
Will paused. “It wasn’t that long…”
Jonathan looked incredulous. “Yes it was!”
“Will…” Mike turned to him, looking into his eyes. “Did the visions start again.”
Dustin didn’t correct him this time.
And Will just didn’t care anymore. He had had enough of pretending and lying and he still would have to do so much of it.
He could let this be real.
“Why would they ever have left?”
Jonathan let out a tiny laugh. “What?”
“The Mind Flayer had some involvement, but he wasn’t exactly the start of it all. There was no reason for the visions to stop after the Mind Flayer left my body.”
Lucas jumped up. “So you’ve been having visions this whole time?”
“They weren’t important.” He mumbled.
“Of course they were important! You could’ve told us what was happening! Helped us!”
“Right but there was nothing to say! It always just looks the same. It’s just the same. Sometimes the storm is visible and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the Mind Flayer is there and sometimes it’s nowhere. It never matter s.”
“So why didn’t you tell us?”
Will stayed quiet.
Steve stood up. “Hey uhh, Robin Nancy and Max, come over here I need your help with something.”
Robin looked up. “What? Why- oooh yeah.”
“Come on.”
The four of them left the room quietly, leaving Dustin, Jonathan, Mike, El, and Lucas.
Will looked over at Mike, tears in his eyes. “At first I just didn’t want you guys to worry. I wanted- I needed to be… normal. I just needed it to be over so I pretended that it was. After what happened at the mall I told mom. We thought it would… it would be best not to tell anyone. It would just be safer and easier.”
El looked up. “The migraines.”
Will nodded. “Yeah. The migraines.”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan looked between the two of them. “What migraines?”
“Will had migraines. Sometimes he would have to run out of class because of them or get picked up by Joyce or leave the building. They were visions weren’t they?”
Will nodded. “The official story is that I have occasional visual hallucinations as a side effect of PTSD accompanied by migraines. That was why I could just run out of the room when necessary. The day that I started painting that was the longest I’ve been trapped in a vision. For two hours there was just- nothing.” His eyes were glazed over, and he was staring at the wall on the other side of the room. He remembered that day. He had just sat on what must’ve been his bed though he couldn’t see it,, avoiding vines and the eyes of anything passing by, and waited. Tried not to think. Not to move. It had felt all too familiar.
Jonathan put his head in his hands. “I just don’t understand how I didn’t hear about this.”
El looked over. “You were on weed.”
Lucas snorted. “I’m sorry what?”
Will interjected. “And also I didn’t want you to. None of this is your fault. I rarely have times like that. It took months for me to have another once the Mind Flayer left. It just goes in and out like waves.”
“And have they increased since you came back to Hawkins?”
Will glanced over at Mike before looking away. “Yeah, they have. You saw me fighting off one earlier. I had another one when we saw the cracks. THeyr’e in the Upside Down too. THere they’re even bigger, glowing and radiating- something. I had one last night as well for a while, and had a really short one in the hallway while I was waiting.”
Mike snapped towards him. “Wait just now?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean fought off,” Jonathan questioned.
“I don’t know, when everything starts to go a little fuzzy and the worlds start to flicker, sometimes if I calm down enough and really focus they’ll stop for a second. But I can tell they’re not just flashbacks because they feel the same as they did with the Mind Flayer. I can’t quite explain it but everything feels- wrong.”
Lucas looked up. “Do you think you could tell us what you see if you have another? You could walk outside and investigate the cracks? If your body stays here we could follow you and you could still talk to us, or tell us later if that doesn’t work.”
“Yeah, I can try.”
***
It took five hours. Just five hours. He had hoped that he would have some time. He secretly wished that it would come so late that the others would forget, that he could just fight it off and move on.
They had agreed that someone had to Stay with Will at all times, which ended up meaning Jonathan. Max, Steve, Robin and Nancy had all left, leaving the five remaining members to ask questions.
Will showed them some more of his art, sketches of the glowing storm in pencil, small oil paintings of things that were no longer there in the real world. Nancy had told him how the Upside Down was stuck in time, though he didn’t know how far, so every now and then when he had a vision he would go looking for things that weren’t there anymore, a well that had crumbled, a vine-covered tree house that had since been taken down and returned to someone’s garage.
Sometimes he didn’t have time for that. Sometimes he just had to run.
Will had begun to make himself a snack in the kitchen when the worlds began to switch, flickering. The Upside Down, their world. The Upside Down, their world.
“Jonathan,” he called out. “Jonathan?”
For a few moments he could see Jonathan approaching him out of the corner of his eye, saying his name, and then he was gone.
Everything was gone but the vines and the particles and the dark. He waited there for three minutes like they had agreed, enough to get everyone out of the living room and to him. They must’ve been around him by now, must’ve been there. He wondered what would happen if he walked through one of them. He imagined for a moment that they were wrong, that his body disappeared and he was really here, that they couldn’t find him this time.
“I’m- I’m gonna start talking now. I really hope you’re there.” He took a few steps toward the doorway, being careful to avoid anything littering the floor. He stepped out of the threshold and looked out onto the forest. He had to get to a crack. There was one through the forest. He had to get through the forest without being found or losing vision.
He had never been attacked in a vision, save the Mind Flayer. He didn’t know what would happen.
He didn’t want to.
Something screeched in the distance. Right, he should be talking. “I’m heading toward a crack, so I’m going to head into the forest. I’ll try to move slowly enough so that you guys can follow. Everything looks pretty normal. The storm’s a little ways away. It’s… big and… loud.”
He jumped over a log, scanning every which way for signs of danger.
He shivered. It was so cold. It was always cold. He wanted them to be there, with him, where he could see them and feel them. He didn’t want to be here.
The vision didn’t waver.
He dodged a tree and headed deeper in, then took a left toward the light. He could see the glowing fog of the cracks, splitting the town like a deep river.
He edged closer. “It’s glowing. It’s probably forty feet across, I’m pretty sure it's far bigger than the ones in your world.”
Something screamed from the crevice. He watched as a bony appendage lifted the body of a monster out onto the ground. A demodog, Dustin would insist. His heart sunk.
“ I have to run.”
He sprinted back into the woods, leaping over trees, that thing following in tow. He watched as more joined it, his heels just a little too far out of reach. He ducked behind a tree in the blink of an eye, breathing shallowly.
He probably looked stupid right now. Maybe Lucas or Mike was laughing.
The storm rumbled. A strike of lightning just within his vision reached out unnaturally far, striking what little he could see of his new home. He could’ve sworn he heard whispers. Not human whispers.
He closed his eyes.
“ WILL!” Jonathan pushed his shoulder, making it hit the tree hard.
“ OW , Jesus Christ.”
Eleven looked at him, her expression unreadable. “You said the cracks were bigger on the other side.
He nodded, taking in the daylight, the real-ness of the world around him. He was sitting against a tree, legs sprawled, the five others crouching over him.
Eleven nodded. “So things can get in.”
Dustin looked off into the distance at the crack. “Yeah, their objective is more getting to our world than getting back to theirs.”
Mike sighed. “Well great.”
***
Knock knock knock.
Will sighed into his pillow.
“Yeah?”
Jonathan closed the door behind him. “You could’ve told me you know.”
Will sat up, sighing. “I know.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Jonathan sat down next to Will, making the bed creak. “You gave us quite the scare there, yelling ‘ i need to run ’ before sprinting into the darkness being chased by invisible monsters doesn’t seem like the kind of thing to lead to someone being fine.”
“I’m used to it by now.”
Jonathan looked over at him, his eyes watery. “But you shouldn’t have to be, Will. This isn’t a normal part of puberty!”
Will laughed. “I know. I still don’t understand why it happens but I think we’re going to find out whether we want to or not.”
Jonathan stared out the window at the forest. “Yeah, I know. But hey,” He tucked Will’s head against his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean we can’t be happy in the in-between, right?”
Will gripped his shirt and smiled. “Right.”