Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s been two weeks since the fall of Hawkins and Mike is in Will’s bed again.

Well, on his bed. Legs up the wall, head dangling upside-down off the edge, the long dark hair his mom keeps telling him to cut, spilling down in soft tangles. He is talking at full volume, pale hands throwing shapes at every corner of the room, eyes flickering to meet Will’s every few seconds for emphasis. Everything about him is rumpled, angular, touchable.

He’s talking about El. 

“... so much better now, you know? Like, we really get each other. Once I’d said it, that I y’know, love her and everything, it’s like the last wall’s come down. It’s so perfect, Will, you know? But then the other day she said this thing about…”

Will sits across the room, back to the wall, elbows on his knees. Once upon a time, he would have come over and leaned against the bed, tilting his head up to look at Mike. Now, he stays out of range, picking at stray threads in the sleeping bag Mike will shortly crawl into, counting the centimetres between them.

Roll for shield, Will the Wise. Roll with disadvantage.

Eventually, it gets late and Mike runs out of steam. Will murmurs and nods in the right places, easily nudging his best friend to the conclusion Mike wants to hear. He doesn’t need to listen to the words; he is in tune with every crease of Mike’s brow, every shift in the tone of his voice, every anxious swipe of his illustrative hands. 

“Thanks for listening,” Mike says as he zips into his sleeping bag. His face is moon-pale as he looks up at Will, his freckles a splattered galaxy. In his head, Will has connected those freckles a thousand times, tracing constellations with a fingertip. Now, his fingers itch and he curls them into his palm, hidden beneath the blanket. “‘Night, Will.” Mike says.

“Night, Mike.” These are the first words he’s said in an hour. Mike hasn’t noticed.

Will lies very still, pretending to sleep until morning light slides beneath his thin curtains. Mike snuffles and mutters through his dreams, like he always does. His lips are parted, soft in their mumblings. Once, Will swears he hears ‘ cleric’ . 

It’s too much. The walls contract around him, the warmth of the blankets is stifling. He can’t breathe. 

Will folds back the bedding and pads, barefoot, around the room, gathering a sweater, yesterday’s T-shirt and a crumpled pair of jeans. He toes on his sneakers, but the latch clicks when he opens the door. Mike’s a light sleeper; they all are, after everything.

The sleeping bag on the floor shifts. A rumpled head rises from its depths and says his name. Will doesn’t turn around. 

“Where are you going?” Mike asks, then, when he doesn’t answer “Will? Will !”

He ducks into the corridor and shuts the door behind him, then lets out a long, shaking breath.  Mike’s barefoot and in boxers; he won’t be up in time to stop him leaving, but he still can’t take the risk. Even now, it takes everything he has to say no to that voice, that face, those eyes.

He hurries out the back, taking care again to make as little noise as possible. His bike is propped against the back wall, the handlebars and seat damp with dew. As he climbs on he thinks he sees a curtain twitch in his mom’s bedroom. His mom knows about his morning rides, as does Hopper. There wasn’t a choice in that; the first time he snuck out, Hopper almost shot him. Everyone’s too jumpy for secrets, especially in the Byers’ house. 

The bike is too small for him now. He’s all knees as he rattles up the cracked and winding track to the main road. The air between the trees is misty; it beads on the threads of his wool sweater, adding chill to the air whistling over his bare fingertips. The morning smells of cold and damp and pine. A little later, when the sun rises, there’ll be wood-smoke. By the time the day warms, sulphur and brimstone from the fissures will have snuffed out these peaceful, wild smells. For now, it’s almost like before. He can almost pretend.

He slows when he reaches the security checkpoint at the end of the track; a prefab hut with steamed-up windows and a spotlight on the roof. Clive, the security guard who always scores the dawn shift, nods at him as he passes. They have a deal now; he lets Will sneak out without complaint, and Will gives him sketches of comic book characters to bring home for his five year old son. 

It’s been almost two weeks since the fissures opened and Will’s world is a queasy mix of completely different and eerily unchanged. The house in California is gone, and the Party is all back in Indiana for the first time in over a year. The Byers even have their old house back, though it had been a fight. After the battle with Vecna, Dr Owens and his cronies had descended, determined to protect everyone but refusing to let them leave the Hawkins area. El, as the resident superhero and Last Hope For Mankind (™) was immediately moved into a revamped Hawkins Lab as a full time resident, an intense curriculum of physical and psychic therapies awaiting her. 

They were hoping to move everyone there at first - there was a lot of talk about converting all the offices into living quarters, of 24h security details and food deliveries hidden in electrician vans. His mom had, immediately and loudly, refused. Yes, she knew they had to stay in Hawkins, yes she knew they needed security and protection but no way in hell was she moving into the lab, end of fucking story. 

Hopper had backed her up without hesitation. She didn’t tell anyone her real reasons, because she didn’t need to. Anyone who was there the night Bob Newby died would understand why she didn’t want to be back under that same roof for a second longer than absolutely necessary. 

Not for the first time, Will is fiercely grateful that Joyce Byers is his mom, and that she has finally found someone who understands her. Hopper and Joyce…weird as it is to imagine his mother with anyone romantically, he knows this thing they have is good. They’re so right for each other; two broken people whose sharp edges just happen to tessellate. He’s so happy for her that it makes his heart hurt. 

He barks a bitter laugh into the wind. Everything makes his heart hurt nowadays.

It turned out that their old house was far enough out of town to have avoided the fissures, and close enough to the lab for the security details to share shifts. As for the ‘new’ owners, it wasn’t hard to get them out. With all the shit that had just gone down and the generous financial incentive for clearing out in 24 hours, they were more than happy to give up the battered little bungalow to its original inhabitants. 

The others were more scattered. Mike’s parents had moved with the rest of the Hawkins refugees to a smaller town, closer to Indianapolis, citing the need to protect Holly from the madness. Mike and Nancy were supposedly living with them, but Nancy spent so much time in Jonathan’s room and Mike in Will’s, that they were basically living with the Byers. Steve, Dustin, Erica and Lucas, and Robin and Vickie (who Will only knows about in theory, mostly through Dustin, via Steve) have all been forced to do the same by their families. Then, of course, there is Max…physically still in Hawkins Hospital, still as a stone, the rest of her lost somewhere in the void. They may all be in Indiana, but they feel anything but close. 

A memory surfaces, or maybe a collection of them, overlaid by repetition. They’re in the basement, the whole Party, sprawled among the debris of a completed D&D campaign, debating New Coke through mouthfuls of M&Ms and popcorn. The air is warm and smells of sugar, laundry and, just a little, of teenage sweat. Dustin belts out one of the latest advert jingles, then squawks as Lucas hits him with a pillow. Max laughs, curled between Lucas and Eleven like a cat in the sun. Mike is laid out over the whole couch, a bowl of popcorn tucked under one arm, his legs across Will’s knees. Mike sees him looking and flashes him a grin, his eyes soft with something that makes Will’s insides twist.

Back on the road, it’s starting to drizzle. Will shakes his head and pedals harder, then harder still, until the world is a blur and all he can process are his burning lungs and the white stripes on the road as they warp past beneath his wheels. He isn’t sure the exact loop he takes, only that his legs are jello by the time he turns for home, and his mouth tastes like blood. 

Chapter Text

Song of the chapter: Devil Town - Cavetown

Devil town is colder in the summertime

I'll lose my mind at least another thousand times

Hold my hand tight, we'll make it another night

I still get a little scared of something new

But I feel a little safer when I'm with you

******************************

At the house, Will cuts in through the back again, fidgeting with his damp hair. When he reaches his room Mike opens the door the second his fingers touch the handle. He must have been listening out. He’s dressed, but still a little puffy-eyed. 

“Hey,” Will says, watching Mike’s face flicker through a range of questions. Mike’s cheeks always have a pink tint in the mornings, flushed from how he sleeps face-down on the pillow. Last summer, Will spent a whole weekend mixing paints, trying to get the exact shade. Now, he looks away, swallowing a lump in his throat.

Once, Mike would have pulled him inside, hands on his shoulder, demanding to know where he had been and why he hadn’t been invited. But that was the old Mike. This Mike just says “Hey.” and steps aside, letting Will in to shuck off his sweater and shoes. They head to the kitchen together, shoulders jostling in the narrow hallway. It smells of orange juice and burned batter; it must be his mom’s turn to cook again. 

Will always makes sure he is back for breakfast. It is another unspoken rule of the Byers house; 7.30am is about more than just cereal and caffeine, it’s about making sure they’re accounted for, that they all made it through the night. 

Everyone else is already assembled. Nancy’s reading the paper and pretending not to steal blueberries from Jonathan’s plate (Jonathan has his nose in a photography magazine, and is letting her). Joyce is setting a plate of pancakes on the table, craning over her shoulder to laugh with Hopper, who is flipping more on a pan at the stove. It looks like he has just relieved her of pancake duty, to save them all from charcoal poisoning. Will and Mike slide into their own chairs, loading their plates. The uneasy knot in Will’s stomach unwinds a little. It’s nice like this, he thinks. Simple, warm. Normal.

That is, until Hopper breaks the illusion.

“So,” he says, once everyone has made a dent in their breakfasts, “Everyone ready to go by eight?” He doesn’t need to say where, they all know what it means by now. “This’ll be the last full day visit before you’re back to school, so we want to give you as much time together as we can.” He lingers on Mike, who nods tightly.

Nancy, Mike and Will are due back at the resurrected Hawkins High the next morning, so their daily visits to El in Hawkins Lab will have to be cut back. Plus, Mike is supposed to be back with his parents (there are only so many ‘sleepovers’ he can have at Will’s house just to be close to El) and Karen is already fixing to force him home, despite Nancy’s best efforts. The day has a weird, end-of-holiday feel to it, though what Hawkins has been through is anything but a holiday. 

Will shovels down his last mouthful of pancakes. He doesn’t say anything and no one looks his way. He knows why; his quietness is pathological now. Everyone has given up expecting him to speak. 

By 8.03, they’re ready to leave. Jonathan and Nancy share a car; they’re going to take the long route to pick up Dustin on the way. Across the driveway, Will watches Jonathan open Nancy’s door for her, scooping her into a brief hug and pressing a kiss to her hairline. She leans into him, just for a moment, and her face glows when she smiles. 

Will and Mike, who don’t have their licences yet, slide in behind Hopper and Joyce. Joyce leans round from the driver’s side seat, checking on the boys with concerned crinkles around her eyes, then squeezes Hopper’s shoulder as he pulls out of the driveway. She’s always touching them, nowadays. Will wonders if it’s her way of trying to hold them together; using her hugs and hands and knowing looks to physically make the connections between them. He smiles at her, trying to pour how he feels into it, and he knows she understands; this is all he can give right now.

They hit the main road and head into the trees, tracing the well-known route to Hawkins Lab. Beside Will, Mike stares out of the window as though willing the drive to go faster. He’s wearing shorts despite the cold, one bare knee bouncing. Will gives himself three seconds to watch the weak sun limn Mike’s hair with threads of gold, and the way he nibbles on the skin at the base of his thumbnail; a nervous habit he’s had since they were five.

He looks away. 

Hawkins Lab is still, officially, empty, and Dr Owens and his crew have taken pains to keep it looking that way. The car drives over cracked asphalt and unswept leaves, their tyre caps brushed by road margins overgrown with grass and wildflowers. They roll up to the guard booth, the only thing still manned, and, after a quick inspection, are let through without a word. 

Mike is not even trying to hide his fidgets now. He cranes forward to see the building, as though El will be waiting for him on the doorstep in her hospital gown and pixie cut. His shoulders are squared and he’s half out of his seat already; ever the Paladin, waiting to save the princess. 

She isn’t waiting for them in the doorway, of course. Instead, they enter the building and pass through layer after layer of russian-doll doors and security checkpoints. Joyce and Hopper peel off quickly, no doubt heading to meet Murray and Dr Owens in the main lab for an update. Mike and Will take their usual route, footsteps in perfect time, until they reach El’s makeshift apartment.

It combines two offices, a bathroom and a former staff room, which has a ‘kitchen’ that is mostly sink and microwave. Everything is beige or grey, the carpets the rough kind designed to hide dirt and high-traffic scuffs. There are no windows.

El is sitting at the kitchen table, nursing her morning mug of tea. Her hair is damp and she is wearing a soft grey tracksuit; a sure sign she is fresh out of the sensory deprivation tank. She gets up from the table when they open the door. Her face is pale but her smile is genuine. 

“El!” Mike lights up when he sees her, surging forward in a whirl of freckled limbs. They hug and break apart, the angles of their bodies still bumping awkwardly, like little kids. “I brought you some more Eggos.” Mike grins, holding out a bag. “They should last you ‘til Wednesday when I’m back.” 

“Thanks, Mike.” Eleven smiles at him and takes the bag, putting it on the counter behind her and lifting her chin so he can kiss her. She doesn’t open the cupboards and Will knows why; last time he was there, looking for coffee, he found all the previous boxes of Eggos stuffed in a far corner. Eleven hasn’t been able to tell Mike that she doesn’t eat them anymore. She knows how much he needs something to do, something to bring, to make her happy.

“Hi El,” Will says when she turns to him, returning her smile. El goes to hug him and it’s soft and easy. He and El have always understood each other; as though they vibrate on the same frequency. It’s soothing, this closeness. Will wonders if, if he had a sister, this is what it would feel like. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” she says, with a nod. “Still tired.” Since their last encounter with Vecna, El’s powers have been erratic at best, and the long hours she has spent in the new tank have taken more of a toll than they would a year ago. Dr Owens told them that it was like a sprain; an overworked muscle strained after sudden and intense use; she would recover.

“Did you find Max?” Mike asks. It’s a stupid question; they would know if she had. El’s smile dims a little. 

“She’s…nowhere, Mike. I can’t feel her, or see her.”

“But she’s alive.” Will reminds her, “so she has to be somewhere.” I can feel it , he adds the last part with just his eyes, but he knows she understands. They both have an intimacy with the shadows, with the Upside Down, that the others have never had.

“She’s working on it, Will.” Mike mistakes his words for criticism and holds El a little closer. He turns away from Will so he can look down at El. His voice goes gentle when he speaks to her. He never does that with anyone else. “Dustin, Nancy and Jonathan will be here around ten. What do you want to do until then, El? We could watch a movie? I still want to show you Star Wars…”

El pauses, then brightens. “Do you want to help me with my wall?”

“You’re still working on that?”

“Of course.” El ducks out of his hold and starts across the room, heading for the door that leads to her bedroom. “Come and see!”

El’s bedroom has the same bald, beige bones as the rest of her home, save for the wall above her bed. On it, El has sticky-taped a mad mix of souvenirs from life on the outside. There must be at least two hundred things there, everything from receipts and ticket stubs to fabric patches, pins and notes passed in class when they were all in Middle School. There is even a flyer from their school in California, though Will has no idea why she would want to remember that one. In the very centre is a single drawing on graph paper; a rainbow and a sunflower, both in El’s scratchy, childish style. Under it, she has written a single word: mom.  

“I got you stickers,” Mike says, going back to the bag of Eggos and pulling out a second smaller bag, misshapen and full. He pulls out three cling-wrapped strips and hands them to El. “Nancy helped me pick them. These are scratch and sniff ones, see? Watermelon.” he demonstrates “And these are sort of puffy, 3D. You can use them to stick more stuff down, or just put them anywhere. If you want.” He’s blushing again, his words stumbling over themselves whenever their eyes meet. 

Mike holds out the rest of the bag. “These are from Lucas too. And Erica added something, since her mom won’t let her come. She said ‘ take care of her or I’ll murder you ’ which is…very Erica, I guess.” 

El pulls out a reel of coupons from the arcade, some baseball cards and, lastly, a figurine of Applejack the My Little Pony. El laughs at that one, brushing her fingers over the little red apples of its cutie mark. “Like her Dungeons and Dragons character.” She says “But it does not have a coo-key.”

“A poison-soaked Kukri.” Mike corrects, smiling. “But we can make her one if you want?”

“Okay. Later.” El fiddles with Applejack’s tail, then sets her down gently on her bedside table. There are more treasures in the bag; postcards of Hawkins from the post office, a faded christmas card, a polaroid from their only Halloween together, a bottle cap in a shiny green, El’s favourite colour. It’s all junk, really, nothing of any value. What they are, however, is evidence that they’re thinking of her, of the memories they share, of the future they all hope to continue together. In this, they are priceless.

“Here.” Will fishes in his pocket and brings out a deep burgundy leaf from one of his morning cycles, a starburst of fresh pine needles and a sketch of the Hawkins skyline, coloured with his best pencils. He always brings her things that he finds in the forest, things from the real outside. “I tried to get all the colours right, so you can remember what colour the sky goes at sunset.”

Will doesn’t tell her that the drawing is old; from before they moved to California. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t been able to draw since he came back to Hawkins or, rather, since a certain night in a pizza parlour, hovering by a salt tank and waiting for the world to end.

El strokes the drawing with a fingertip, tracing the line where black outline meets the fuchsia-peach clouds. “It’s pretty,” she says. “Very pretty.” She sniffs the pine needles too, then adds them all to the wall. 

As she does so, Will realises that she’s grown. Mike will always be too tall, but she’s not far off Will’s height now. The lines of her face are changing too; still delicate, but sharper around her cheekbones and jaw. She looks older. For Mike, Eleven is still the girl he found in the woods, mute and thin and three-quarters wild. His very own superhero. Lately, in fleeting moments like this one, Will sees someone different; a mage with her own scars and skills and ambitions to make her way in the world. 

By the time they’ve found a home for everything, and El has given them a tour of the other additions she’s made, they get the intercom announcement that the others have arrived. Dustin, Robin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan descend on them with a round of hugs, admiring comments on the new wall, and (in Dustin’s case) a long and rambling update on the antics of the ‘amazing-super-hot’ Suzie. 

There is one weird moment where Steve makes a comment about Robin’s new friend Vickie, and how she should join them sometime. Robin flips him off, and her eyes dart to Will’s for the briefest of seconds. Will’s instincts tingle, but he can’t figure out why, so he lets it slide. 

They do watch a movie, but it isn’t Star Wars. Robin’s brought a pile of options from the video store, and they settle on The Last Dragon . Steve suggested D.A.R.Y.L but got shot down; there’s an unspoken agreement that anything skirting too close to their real lives is off limits. Even then, their enjoyment of the film is a little muted- reminders of Lucas and Max, and how much they would have loved the film, taint all of the best scenes. They all know why Lucas isn’t here, that he is at the hospital, at Max’s bedside. Even when he makes their meetings, part of him is absent. When they ask how he is over the supercomms, Will can hear the waver in his voice; Lucas is tough, maybe the toughest of them all, but the fibres of him are starting to wear thin. How could they not be, after so many hours praying into the quiet awfulness of the hospital room? Will doesn’t know how he stands it. 

Mike nudges his shoulder at a funny part in the film, eyes dancing. Will swallows and retracts his last thought. For the right person, he would be there. Night and day.

After the film, they eat lunch in the courtyard, tilting their faces up to the sun, making shapes from the clouds scudding overhead. Steve’s brought a pack of cards, determined to corrupt them with a version of poker, and they use some of El’s new stickers for gambling chips. Cards devolve into some sort of piggy-in-the-middle game where El uses her telekinesis to throw around a ball while everyone else tries to catch it. 

Later, as the shadows start to lengthen, Will collects the cups and plates and brings them back to one of the kitchens. He lingers over the soapy water and watches the others through the window. If they looked up, they would see him, but he doubts they will. It feels safer here, to be separated from them by glass. When he’s down there, in the middle of them, he can feel everything, so much love and trauma and ambition and joy and fear. It’s like stepping into a wind tunnel. Sometimes it’s easier to just watch.

“Will? Are you alright?” It’s his mom, carrying three empty coffee cups and a couple of plates. She, Hopper, Murray and Dr Owens have been somewhere in the lab all day. Will knows he should care, should ask for details, but this moment of sunshine and normalcy is just a bit too precious to cut short. 

“I’m fine, mom.” He gives her his best ‘ yes, really ’ smile. She ruffles his hair and cups the side of his face, like he’s seven again. Something about her is different after Russia, a little harder, a little more haunted, but her love for him still pours out of her.

“My boy,” she says fondly “Look at you, already so tall and handsome.”

“ Mom .” He lets her hug him, basking in the warmth.

“I was going to come and find you, actually,” she says after a minute or so “I got a call for an extra shift at work. Hop says he’ll run me down there, but we need the car. Are you happy getting home with Dustin, or Steve? They’re not far from-”

“Yeah, of course. No problem.” Her words are casual but the offer is huge; she is trusting him to be out of her sight. It’s a rare chance, and one he is not going to pass up. “Dustin was saying he’ll walk back, and it’s not far. I’ll go with him.”

“But not after dark?”

“No, I promise. Not after dark.”

When Will comes back down, the others have decamped inside and put a second movie on. This time it’s Robin’s choice, a ridiculous looking thing called Airplane! that had a lot of plummy accents and people throwing up. Will has come in too late to understand what is happening, but he takes a seat by Mike anyway. 

“El’s sitting there,” Mike says, then adds hastily “But you can stay til she gets back.”

“Where is she?”

“Bathroom,” Mike says, then looks at his Casio watch, the one that matches Will’s. He frowns. “Twenty minutes ago.”

Unease prickles down Will’s spine. “We should go find her.” he says, voice pitched low. Mike nods. Together they sneak out the back. Mike heads for her apartment rooms, but Will stops him. A cold tingle runs along the back of his neck.

“She’s not that way.”

“How do you know?”

“I just..” Will shakes his head. “Let’s try here first.” He leads them down several halls and two stairwells before he realises where they’re going. Of course; the lab. Despite being a half-baked, quickly-built version of the NINA project, it is still impressive. The domed ceiling is cavernous above them, stalactites of pipes, wires and vents dripping down from overhead. The air smells of wet metal and cleaning fluid, sharp and chemical. In the middle is the tank, open topped, the sides high to hide its contents, a harsh iron staircase leading from the floor to its edge.

They see El’s sweatshirt draped over the railing and, when they climb the stairs to the tank, they find her lying there in the water, cap on, face blank and eyes closed. As they watch, she twitches. At first it is a little frown, a snatch of her fingers, a wriggle of her bare toes. Within seconds, however, it has turned into full body shakes. She cries out, flinching away from something. 

Mike lunges to her side, eyes wide. “El? El please, wake up. Come out!” He grabs her hand, sloshing water. He looks skeletal in this harsh light, the shadows underneath his eyes deep hollows of fear. Will watches Mike’s chest shake as he inhales, as he tries to be strong for El,  and all he wants in the whole world is to hold him, to make him feel better. “ EL !”

“Mike!” El bursts back into consciousness with a tearing gasp. She looks at them both, and her face crumples when she looks at Mike. He gatherers her close immediately, not caring about the water soaking into his shirt. They look like the cover of a novel; the star-crossed lovers, true heroes, standing together against the world.

“El,” Mike says “El, tell me what happened, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” El gasps. “I’m so sorry. I felt good today, I…I thought I should try again, that I would be stronger. But I can’t find her.” she sobs into Mike’s chest “I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t -”

“It’s okay,” Mike murmurs into her hair, stroking her back until she stops shaking. “It’s okay, El. It’ll be okay.”

Will helps Mike get El out of the tank, then fetches them both some towels. He sits on El’s other side, his arm around them both, lending warmth. He doesn’t say anything. He has never been a good liar.

******************************

Chapter Text

******************************

It takes a long time to calm Eleven down. They get her back to her bedroom and Will fetches the others. Jonathan arrives last, bringing Dr Owens, who fusses with heart monitors and a new version of Eleven’s in-tank brain monitoring cap. Eleven complies limply, staring at nothing, her eyes red-rimmed. Owens makes her eat some candy, to get her sugars up, and leaves again with strict instructions to the Party to keep an eye on her, and fetch him if anything changes. 

Mike hovers at her bedside. He leans into Will’s shoulder, letting Will prop him up. Will is willing to bet Mike has no idea he’s doing this, but leans back into the touch all the same. 

They bring her back slowly, each of them taking their turn. Steve, Nancy and Robin swap jibes about the quality of Airplane! as a cinematic masterpiece, and bounce quotes between them like they’ve seen it a thousand times (Robin: Surely you can’t be serious! Steve: I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley! ).

Jonathan quietly fiddles with the radio in the corner until he finds a station with soothing music, carefully pitching it so that it floats through the room in the background.  It takes them all several minutes to realise what he’s done, but it bleeds the tension from the air. Nancy, who is laughing at something Steve said, notices first. She walks up to Jonathan, her court shoes clacking on the floor, and puts an arm around his waist. Steve watches her do it, his expression unreadable, until Robin elbows him and makes another joke. By the time she’s done (and Steve is soundly defeated in the movie-quote battle) El has a little more colour in her cheeks. 

Mike leaves briefly to brew Eleven her favourite tea (Will tells him which box it’s in, and ensures he avoids the Eggo cupboard). While he’s gone, Will sits down beside Eleven. Carefully, he takes the pine needles off the sticker wall and presses them into her hand. Eleven brings them up to her nose and breathes in deeply, over and over. When she looks at him, her eyes are shining with tears, but her gaze is focused, clear.

“Thank you.” she says. She reaches for his hand and her fingers are warm. How can Will blame Mike for loving her? How could he wish for anything that would break this girl’s huge, brave, battered heart?

His Casio bleeps, startling them both. His stomach plummets; 6pm already? Barely an hour of daylight left. If they hurry, Will and Dustin can be back to their homes by nightfall, but only just. 

“Go.” Eleven tells him with a sleepy smile “Go. I will be fine.”

Mike, when he returns, can’t be persuaded to leave El; he will take the camp bed in a nearby office room, the one he’s slept in a couple of times already in the last two weeks. Nancy and Jonathan drive back to the Wheelers’ house alone, with Steve and Robin hitching along until they are out of the woods. They all offer to take Dustin and Will but it’s out of their way and the car is squished as it is. Dustin’s mom is visiting her friend in one of the other outer houses of Hawkins. The address isn’t far from the Byers’, so the plan is for WIll to take him there, then do the last ten minutes alone.

“Just us then, muchacho.” Dustin slings an arm around Will’s shoulders and Will leans into it, a genuine laugh bubbling up in his chest. They leave the facility on foot, leaves crunching beneath their feet. The forest sings around them, all shushing leaves and stirring branches. The heat of the day has died off, and the rain has cleansed a little of the brimstone smell from the air. Dustin keeps up a steady stream of conversation, kicking a stone along the path with small, dancing steps. 

They reach the address on Dustin’s mom’s note without incident. It’s a pretty house, neat and small with a porch light that winks like a star in the clear evening. Dustin is wrapping up a hilarious monologue about Suzie using Pavlov’s theories to get her siblings to bring her snacks, giggling to himself so much that he almost ruins the punchline. Will’s heart swells with fondness for this smart, goofy, open-hearted boy; the Pippin Took of their little party, always on hand with a snack or a laugh or a song to brighten their days. 

“Thanks,” he says suddenly, a little shy. 

“What for?” Dustin pauses to grin at him. He is still scuffing the pebble he’s been kicking from one foot to the other.

“For walking me home, and for sticking with me. You don't have to.”

“Course I have to,” Dustin tells him, mid-skip “The rest of us are all paired off now, but I can step up because Suzie’s out of state, and ‘cause without me you’d have no one.” The words hit Will like a sledgehammer to the sternum. There’s a sickening pause and Dustin’s eyes go wide. “No! Uhm, I mean, not like that! You don’t have no one, I said it wrong! Shit shit shit, Will - are you okay? Will? I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay,” Will says. It isn’t. “You’re…you’re right. Thank you.”

“Shit, Will, you don’t have to thank me for being your friend!” 

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Will, I -!” Dustin still looks stricken. He makes an awkward motion with his arm, reaching towards Will, but a voice from the house jolts them out of the moment.

“Dustyyy! Dusty is that you?” His mom is on the doorstep, dressed in her loudest leopard print leggings. She gives them a little wave when she sees them looking. 

Dustin grimaces. “That’s my mom.” he says, although it’s obvious. “Will, I really am sor-”

“Dusty, come on! Janet’s made us some lovely meatloaf!”

“Coming!” Dustin yells back, his voice cracking with frustration. He looks at Will. “I’ll…let’s talk tomorrow okay? At school. I didn’t mean it like that, Will, I really really didn’t.”

“I know.” 

“Okay.” Dustin’s not stupid, and knows Will too well to believe him, but his hands are tied. “Tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

He sprints down the path, looking back so many times his mom yells again for him to hurry. She ushers him inside, still talking about meatloaf, and the door closes behind them. Will forces himself to wait a few more seconds, before letting the mask slip off his face.

His eyes sting, because of course they do; he still cries too easily. He still feels too much. Sensitive , his mom calls it. His dad was far less kind.

Will heads down the road, back towards his house. Above, the sky has gone from peach to grey, and the sun has long since vanished behind the trees. Exhaustion rolls over Will like a thunderhead. He stumbles to a stop, his gaze caught on a dark slash of green between two houses.Behind him is suburbia; familiar streets, lit sidewalks and plenty of doors to knock on if something happens. 

In front of him, down the little lane between the houses, is a path back into the woods. Specifically, back into Mirkwood. The spindly pines jut into the sky like broken bike spokes, like the scratches left by fingernails in horror movies, on the inside of coffin lids. Below that, everything is shadow, plush and black and welcoming. 

Will takes a step towards it, then hesitates.

Not after dark. His mom had made him promise. 

Will sways on his feet, torn. He turns for home, but Dustin’s voice echoes through his head again, sharp as a blade.

Of course I have to…’cause without me you’d have no one.

If he goes back now, those words will follow him. They’ll haunt him all night, settling into his skin like the toxic spores of the Upside Down. 

Will squares his shoulders and sets off into the woods.

***

Will breaks into a run as soon as he hits the treeline, but it doesn’t take long before he starts to tire, his legs shaking, feet skittering, pulse hammering in his ears. He’s never been a runner, never been an athlete.

If he had been, he’d have outrun the demogorgon all those years ago.

The thought knocks the remaining air out of his lungs. He stops, topples sideways against a tree trunk, and gasps for breath. He is far out of sight of the town now and the darkness is thick and velvety. He breathes in cold and wet and earth and shadow. When he was with Dustin, the evening was balmy. Now, his breath fogs in front of him, like a ghostly companion.

He keeps walking, not thinking about where his feet are taking him. It is fully dark now, and soon begins to drizzle, then to rain. Time and space blur and fold around him and, when he looks up he realises that, absurdly, he is near Lover’s Lake. It should have taken hours, but his Casio says barely thirty minutes have passed. He taps it and frowns; maybe it’s broken, the rain can’t be helping. 

There is a long, shallow slope down to the lake and he follows it without consciously deciding to. The lake flickers at him through the trees; the water is boiling black and red with mud and vines, but the shape is still unmistakeable. By the time he reaches the shore he can hear the sizzling of the rain as it meets the scalding fissure running down the centre of the lake. Will goes right to the edge of the water and stares at the abyss. The colours are blindingly bright. He knows just how he would sketch them; ochre, carnelian and amber, fading through cyan, indigo and pewter, into black. Heat ripples from the fissure, stinging his cheeks and drying his open eyes, like when he was small and stood too close to a campfire. Will breathes it in, mixing the smoke and flame with the dark of the forest. He lifts his arms, just a little, palms turned to the fires. It is like looking like a sunset and like looking straight into Hell. 

Why does it feel so good to stand here? Why does the pain in his chest leech away, like mud downstream, in a way it never would have done on a quiet, safe little street, or in the company of his friends?

He knows he should leave, but he can’t bring himself to turn away from this. Instead, he follows the line of the lake, taking a skinny deer track that winds around its edge. His soaked shoes crunch and snap over the carpet of fallen leaves. There is such a thick layer of them that the woods feel almost autumnal. In the dark, Will can’t see what he knows is true; that the leaves are black and ashen, the first casualties of the slow march of rot, curling inland inch by inch.

Another familiar shape looms out of the dark; Reefer Rick’s cabin. Impossibly, both buildings are still standing. They squat on the edge of the lake like twin toads, half outhouse, half ruin, three quarters hidden by layers of smoke, dust and otherworldly debris. Will wanders past the main building and down to the boat shed, where a boy called Eddie once hid from the world. 

For all the good it did him.

The air here is full of not-snow from the Upside Down. It gathers in silent drifts, like the ash must have done over the ruins of Pompeii. It piles on the shed’s roof and door frame like snow, and sticks in his throat and nose in the same airless, greenish way of mould in old buildings. 

The door has a chain and padlock looped around it, but once he gets close enough it’s clear that someone’s sawn through the chain, rendering it all useless. Will suspects it was Jordan’s gang, when they were being vigilantes and looking for Eddie. He carefully unwinds the chain and steps inside, taking care to close it behind him. 

He’s more than aware of what could be watching from the woods.

The cabin descends around him, snuffing out the red of the fires like a cloud over the sun. He takes a deep breath. He should not be able to see in here, but somehow he can, though it is more of a feeling than an image. He absorbs the sloped ceiling, old nets and fishing tackle; the clogged webs of long-gone spiders, thick with dust. It’s small, quiet and cluttered yet, somehow, it’s more like home than his house would have been tonight. Whatever that means. 

Will picks his way across the cabin. He feel-sees a jacket slung over an abandoned worktop and picks it up en route, slinging it over his shoulders. His body should like the warmth, should need it, but it feels like a fever, like sickness. Dimly, he lets it slide to the floor.

“What the FUCK, man?!”

Light bursts from nowhere, filling the cabin. Will screeches and stumbles back, whacking into the workbench, which is the only thing that saves him from the floor. He scrabbles behind him, grabs something that could be a chisel, and jabs it at the darkness. He can’t see. He can’t see ! 

“Woah woah woah woah woah ! Easy, man! Calm down!” The voice is male, and close. Will jabs the tool in its general direction, imagining all sorts of horrors looming out of the dark. 

“Stay back!” he yelps “Stay back, I have a weapon!”

There is a polite pause, then the voice asks. “You er… you’re gonna kill me with a spirit level?”

“I…what?” The dazzled spots are clearing from his eyes. Will blinks owlishly, realises what he’s holding and heat races up his neck. “Shit.” He grabs something else - a socket wrench, good enough - and holds it out. “Stay away from me!”
“Relax, I got the message.” The owner of the voice comes into slow focus. It’s a man, or a boy, rather, a bit older than Will, but not much. He’s tall and broad in a way that makes Will think queasily of Jordan’s gang of jock thugs, but then he sees he’s wearing a loose band shirt and boxers, and his long-ish, red-ish hair is tied back in a stubby low ponytail. The jacket that Will dropped to the floor is thick denim and covered in custom patches. It must be his. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You should be more worried about me hurting you.” Will insists. To his credit, the boy doesn’t laugh. Instead, with the slowness of a rider trying to tame a wild mare, he holds out a hand. 

“I’m Adam,” he says.

Will doesn’t take the hand. “Will,” he says, then inwardly curses. He probably shouldn’t have told him his real name. People know people in Hawkins. But he’s always been a horrible liar. What else could he have said? Mike? That would be worse. “What are you doing here?”

“Sleeping.” The boy, Adam, gestures at his loose clothes, then to the pile behind him. More details swam out of the shadows; a sleeping bag, a nest of tarps, an opened pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a pair of jeans slung over a chair. “You?”

“I…I was walking.” Will blurts. “This is a strange place to sleep.”

“It’s a strange place to walk.” Adam leans back against a pile of crates, studying Will. “You want a cigarette?”

Will flinches. “No.”

“Beer?”
“I’m sixteen.”

“Ah.” Another pause. Adam reaches for his jacket, one hand out in an ‘ easy now ’ motion, as though Will is holding a gun rather than a glorified bottle opener. Slowly, he draws something slim and white out of a pocket. Will blinks; it’s a Musketeers bar. “...Candy?”

Will stares. Adam waits. Seconds pass.

Fuck it.

Will nods.

Chapter Text

*****

Will isn’t sure if this is a chat or a stand-off. 

The boy, Adam, has found two camping chairs and set them up facing one another, by the door that opens out onto the lake. Fissure-light gleams beyond the windows, but Adam has a bright lamp and has set it between them, chasing the shadows back into the corners. There’s something cave-like and ancient about the way the light flickers against the gathered dark. It makes Will’s skin prickle.

“So, tell me about yourself, Will.” Adam says. 

Will shrugs. There isn't much to tell. There's too much to tell. He peels the Musketeers bar open with suspicious fingertips. Adam, who has no such qualms, is chomping through his third.

"You from Hawkins?"

"Well…yeah." Will says with a grimace. Who else would come to this hellhole? Adam reads his face and laughs through his nose. Despite himself, Will's lips twitch too. 

“Same here. Booorrrn ‘n’ raised.” he drawls for theatrical effect. “My aunt used to have a trailer up near Kerley. Course, it’s all fire now.” His grin flickers and he takes another bite of Musketeers bar to cover it. Will doesn’t pry; he learned long ago how to tell when someone is showing you a wound to help you heal it, and when they just need to let it sit in the open for a while.

There's silence after that, but not necessarily an uncomfortable one. Will is grateful; he isn't used to being in the presence of someone who doesn't know him, who is forming an opinion of him that has nothing to do with his past. It's a relief. It's a tightrope. 

Will can’t meet Adam's eyes, so he studies Adam’s pile of belongings instead. There is a truly worrying pile of junk snacks, a chipped tartan thermos, a duffel spilling miscellaneous clothes, a Walkman and snaking headphone cord. He has a black sweater bundled at the top of the sleeping bag, like a pillow, and under it is a stack of…

Wait. Are those…?

Three Camelot 3000 graphic novels peek up at him, gleaming like a secret. Will flushes. He's read those, the whole series actually. It's the only series he's read three times in a single sitting. It's also the only series he's never shown, or even mentioned, to the rest of the Party. Will gives Adam a furtive glance. Adam is watching the red light flicker through the windows, face pensive. 

Two years ago, Will had picked up Camelot 3000 for the Arthurian legends, expecting to resonate with Merlin, his favourite wise wizard counsellor at the time (Gandalf a close second). Instead, he found himself bewitched for another reason. In the story, when Arthur’s knights are resurrected, one of them, Tristan, comes back as a woman. A woman with a female soulmate, Isolde, from his life as a man. Tristan is horrified, resisting at every turn, but Isolde…

Will looks at Adam again, heart thumping.  

…But Isolde knew their love was unique, irreplaceable, no matter the bodies they were in. She fought for it, for the two of them to be together and, eventually, she won. There were precious few scenes between them and, when there were, Will’s eyes had filled with tears, something huge and clawing and empty churning inside his chest. 

Does Adam…know?  

Know what, Will? Something in him whispers.

Will fidgets in the chair. Nothing. It’s nothing. It was a good story. Interesting. That’s why it had stuck with him. 

The next D&D campaign Will DMd had been decidedly more mediaeval than usual. No one noticed, or at least he hoped they hadn't. 

Why did he hope they hadn’t?

“You want to know why I’m really here?” Adam says, apropos of nothing. Will nods, grateful to leave his previous train of thought behind.

“I’m, ah…I’m sort of, waiting. Just in case. I was…I was looking for Eddie. Eddie Munson.” To his surprise, Adam's casual expression slips a little. He looks…embarrassed? Nervous?

Will nods carefully “I know who he is.”

Adam tenses. “Look, before you say anything, he’s not the person they’ve made him out to be, okay? I know him. I’ve been in his class since kindergarten and he’s…all that devil shit, those murders? That’s not him. I swear.” 

“I know.” Will says, and tries to pour as much empathy into the word as he can. He wishes Dustin were there to share his stories, or anyone who knew Eddie. All Will has ever seen is his picture on the Hellfire Club’s wanted poster. All he can offer is the truth. “I never knew him but…I heard he was a good person.”

“If you still believe that, you’re a rare breed.” Adam says. He has his elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched slightly, as though shielding from a blow. “We were friends in Middle School, you know? Good friends. We used to hang out a lot - we had this band with a stupid metal name. Corroded Coffin?”

Will shakes his head, he doesn’t know the name, but Adam smiles anyway. He opens his palms, like he’s trying to illustrate something too big for words. “Man, you missed a gift . I mean, we were kids, not the next Sabbath or anything, but… wow it was a rush to play like that. You should have seen Eddie on stage. He was great with the guitar, even then, but put him in front of an audience and...yeah, he was like magic.” Adam is watching rafters above, but not seeing them. His eyes are bright, and a little glazed.

Will knows that look, that thousand-yard stare into everything and nothing. He knows what it is to think about another boy and feel as though words will never be enough. He knows what it’s like to realise something in you is different, and that your world will never quite sit right on its axis. 

“It’s dumb, really, to keep coming back here. To look for him. Honestly? We haven’t actually spoken in years.” Adam continues “After we got to High School he…I guess we…I got scared to be myself, you know? I just wanted to fit in, have an easier life. Graduate. And he… didn’t. He didn’t.” Adam’s still holding a Musketeers wrapper and, as Will watches, he folds it into a knot and pulls it tight. 

All the while, Will is trying to find the words.

He is so bad with words. How could he not be, when he’s spent his whole life trying not to speak? There are too many dangerous things inside him, things that have always been there, trying to burst out, wrong and terrifying simply because, in his heart, they feel the exact opposite. 

Once, when he was six, Will drew a picture of him and Mike getting married. It was something they’d planned together, lying bellies-down on the floor of Will’s room after school, heads together. Mike had watched Will’s pencils with rapt fascination, jabbing his finger at his favourite details, peppering Will with so many suggestions that Will had put a hand over his mouth to slow them down, giggling. 

Mike’s parents had wedding photos up in the house, back then, so they used them for inspiration. There was a big flower arch, a cake with stars and planets that was ten hundred layers (no ten thousand layers, Mike insisted) high. Everything was on a spaceship and all the guests got free puppies (or fish if they were like Tracey Baker and puppies made them sneeze) and there were arcade games and as many buckets of Pick n Mix as they wanted and a movie theatre and bedtime was quarter after never. 

It was perfect .

Until he’d shown Jonathan later that evening, once Mike had gone home. Until Lonnie overheard.

Back in the boatshed, Will sandwiches his hands, hard, between his knees, so he can’t feel them shake.

“I knew someone who was with him. That day,” he says at last. “Eddie actually protected him, you know. He was in danger and…Eddie saved him.”

Adam doesn’t move for several seconds. When he looks at Will, his eyes are liquid-bright, but then he blinks and his smile is back on, his face carefully armoured.

“Oh really?” Adam unfolds from his hunched pose. “Tell me about this friend of yours, the one who was with him. Was he a … client of his?” 

Will is about to answer when he registers the word client , not friend , and realises the conversation has just swerved from one forbidden topic to a new, equally controversial one.

Client . Oh. He remembers what Mike had told him about Eddie’s little side business, and how there always seemed to be money for Hellfire and Eddie’s band, even when everyone in it came from the wrong side of Hawkins. Will shoots a pointed look at the pile of Adam’s belongings, expecting to see an incriminating baggie, or…or whatever other drugs looked like. All he knows comes from Jonathan and Argyle, and it isn’t much.

“No.” He says, and there’s a bite to his voice. Adam raises an eyebrow.

“So you and your friend, you don’t…partake?”

“ No .” Why does this feel like two questions at once?

Adam gives a long, slow exhale, then waves a dismissive hand. “Sheesh. No cigarettes, no beer, no weed, no special K. Bet you’re fun at parties.”

Will’s on his feet in a heartbeat, his cheeks burning. Dustin’s words echo in his ears.

… without me you’d have no one.

“Fuck you.” he hisses at Adam, at Dustin, at everything. “ Fuck . You .”

Will angles for the door. He is already trying to think of new places to hide, his body craving the dark, safe quiet of the woods.

“Wait-!” Adam almost catches his sleeve, but misses (good, because then Will really would have hit him). Will steps out of range and Adam doesn’t lunge after him. That is the only reason he lingers. “Wait. Hey, that was out of line. Way out of line. Look, I’m an asshole, okay? I’ll leave. You can stay.”

Will shakes his head. He’s angry, but he’s not going to kick someone out. He knows what it’s like to sleep rough in a land of shadows and rot. 

The thought is an idle one, but it spreads like ink through his mind. Those are the other kinds of thoughts he can’t speak about, the ones that stir the deep black-water well where his memories of the Upside Down lie hidden.

“Eddie’s dead.” Will doesn’t know why he says it, and it comes out sharp. “You know that right? He died the day Hawkins fell. It’s been on the news.”

“Yeah but…” Adam shrugs helplessly “They never found the body and, y’know, no body no death, right? Like in movies.”

“This isn’t a movie.”

“I know that too.” He’s so open in that moment that Will’s anger, and the bubbling of that deep, dark memory-well, stills again. Will sits back down and perches stiffly for several seconds. 

“You’re a good friend,” he says “Eddie is...was... lucky to have you. Really lucky.” He stares at his feet so he can’t see Adam's face. The Musketeers bar is still in his hand, half unwrapped. He takes a small bite and chews. Will’s forgotten how cloying nougat can be; sticking to his teeth. How did Dart swallow this stuff? He thinks of the rows and rows of demodog teeth, then the sucking slide of its gullet, and shudders.

“You cold?”

Adam is frowning at him and his eyebrows are too bushy, but it sort of suits him. It takes Will a stupidly long time to realise he’s holding out his jacket. Will takes the jacket with murmured thanks and tucks it over his legs, more to hide his shaking knees than anything else. He stares at the bright lamplight, chews, swallows, and reminds himself to breathe. The jacket helps him settle. At least it’s warm.

After a while, his Casio bleeps. He glances at it and groans. How can it be that late? 

“Everything okay?” Adam is still watching him attentively. No one looks at Will with that much focus, not anymore. 

“Yeah.” he says “Yeah it’s just…late. I have to get home.” He stands and hands back the jacket. As Adam takes it, a weird twist of bravery shoots through Will. Another sentence tumbles out of him, edged with something sparky, something warm. “Like you said, I’m no fun at parties.” 

Adam’s eyes flick up and meet his for a second. They are very blue. A smile breaks over his face, slow as melting molasses. 

“I very much doubt that, Will,” he says, then “You know your way home?”

“Yeah, easy.” Will blurts out the words before he can think too much on that sentence. “Uhm. See you, I guess?”

“Sure.” Adam gets to his feet too. He’s taller than Will, broader than Mike. There’s a small silver stud in his right ear; it catches the light. “See you.” He holds out his palm, another offer of a handshake. It’s a question, but, for some reason, Will feels no pressure to answer it, if he doesn’t want to. It’s a choice. 

This time, he takes it.

Chapter Text

****

Will catches a cold from the rain, because of course he does. 

By the time he gets back home it’s 1am, he’s soaked through, and his mom is furious. She rounds on him before he even reaches the porch, her hair wild, eyes flashing. She clings him close and pushes him away by turns. Hopper is sitting on a chair in the background, mute and tense; he’s been just as worried, but he knows this is Joyce’s job.

Joyce yells at him for half an hour straight. He’s been thoughtless. He’s been reckless. He abused her trust. He will never be allowed out without a chaperone again, not until he’s thirty. 

With everything that’s going on, Will isn't sure he’ll see thirty anyway. He says as much, and it just makes everything worse. 

He is banished to his room and, as he peels off his clothes behind the closed door, he hears his mother’s rage crack into tears. Hopper’s voice is a sonorous rumble, and Will knows he is holding his mom, grounding her as he helps her get back to their bed. Will’s stomach burns with guilt, but the fever is already kindling by then, and soon the delirium sweeps it all away.

Now, it’s sometime that following afternoon and he’s lying under three comforters and still shivering. The stained ceiling twists and pulses overhead. The sun slingshots across the room and splatters on the wall, running down the wallpaper like fresh, bright yolk. 

There’s no one else in the house; everyone has work, and their numbers are scribbled on notes tacked up by the phone if he needs them. All he has to do is call.

Will groans and pulls an arm out from under the covers, lifting the matted, sweaty hair off his brow. Suddenly he’s hot. Really hot, like high summer. 

Last time it was this hot, the Party headed to the lake for a swim, laden with bags of squashed sandwiches, sunscreen and warm water that tasted like the plastic bottles it came in. They’d found a shady spot, thrown down their towels and raced for the water. Will, struggling with his shoes, had lingered long enough to see Mike barrel in head first, then burst up for air. His skin had been translucent in the sun, his body lean and angular. He had looked ethereal, like an elf, or a prince of the fey. When he’d shaken his hair, droplets had flown like shards of diamond and Will had wanted to shatter too. 

Last time it was this hot, Will had biked home at the back of the group, trying to look anywhere but at Mike, still shirtless, and the way his back muscles moved as he raced up an incline. 

Last time it was this hot, Will had come home to an empty house, just like this. Images had fluttered, feverlike in his mind, just like this. He had climbed into this same bed, thrown his clothes to the floor, lain just like this, hands hot beneath the covers and…and…

Will screws his eyes shut and grabs his pillow, mashing it over his face. "Stop it." He groans. "Stop it stop it stop it."

It’s no use. His limbs feel like lead but he throws the pillow across the room and stumbles out into the hall. He makes it to the kitchen, swaying a little, running his fingertips along the familiar whorls of wallpaper. There’s a lump of lit coal inside his skull, rolling around with every step, singeing as it goes. 

They’re out of ice, but he turns on the faucet at the sink as cold as it will go and fills a glass. He misjudges the swig and the glass clinks his teeth. He winces and forces the whole thing down, trapping a painful bubble of air in his lungs. When he’s done he gasps like a dying man, fingers locked and trembling around the ridge of the kitchen counter.

He can't go back to his room, so he heads for the living room instead and collapses on their couch. It’s new, and well made, much more expensive than they should have been able to find at Goodwill. All it took was for half the town to burn for such furniture to be available. Who would've thunk. 

Will lolls against the cushions for several minutes, sweat sticking his t-shirt to his torso. The air is suffocatingly still, syrupy when he inhales. Will considers the TV, just for a distraction, but the idea of adding sound to the sensory assault is hellish. He peers hopelessly around the room, wondering if there’s a window he could open, or an AC unit he’s somehow never seen before that he can discover and turn on. 

Something catches his eye in the far corner; a pine bookcase and, on the second-to-top shelf, a bottle of alcohol. He squints to read the label: Old Grand-Dad. Whiskey, then. 

It must be Hopper’s; after Lonnie, his mom wouldn't allow any hard liquor in the house. 

Will blinks and he's standing in front of the shelf. Another blink and his hand is round the neck of the bottle. The glass is clear and warm. The liquid inside looks like caramel, sweet and sticky like the stuff they use to make candy apples at Halloween.

What would it taste like?

A shimmer of sun catches on its curves; sharp, seductive. He pries off the cork and takes a sniff. It smells like battery acid and oven cleaner. It makes him want to retch. He should put it back.

His mom once said alcohol turned Lonnie into another person. Would it do that for him too?

The idea doesn’t sound so bad.

Will lifts the bottle to his lips, braces himself, and takes a swig. It’s worse than battery acid. He gags, shakes himself, then takes another gulp. Then another. And another. And another. 

When he can’t swallow anymore he staggers back to the couch and closes his eyes. The room tilts; it feels like he’s in an elevator that’s going up too fast. Will rides the wave, imagining that he’s shooting upwards through the most fantastical skyscraper, up and up and up into the clouds. He’s flying to Mount Olympus. To Cloud City. He’s in the rainbow spaceship he drew as a kid and he’s going to take it all the way to Krypton. 

This is nice, Will thinks. He was feeling pain before, and sadness, but they’re not here now. 

He’s too dizzy being worried to feel this. 

…Wait. What?

He’s too dizzy to feel worried about this. 

Yes!

Will snorts; that was silly. He is silly today. Silly and dizzy. Sillizzy. It’s fun.

He tips back on the couch, still giggling, limbs sprawled. He throws one arm up above his head and watches his fingers play with the sunlight. Dancing. Free. That’s what this feels like, he thinks. Free. 

A bolt of clarity shoots through him, catapulting him to his feet. 

He has to draw this, he thinks. He has to draw this feeling. 

Will twirls, arms out, barefoot, head tilted back, until his arm hits the doorframe. With a bit of trial and error, he makes it to his room and gets his pencils and paper spread out. There were some things in the way and they might be on the floor now but that’s okay. Maybe they like it there. It’ll be okay.

This time it’s not a lie to say it’ll be okay. Right?

The thought makes him frown so he shakes it away. No thinking. Colours, he needs colours. What colours does he want? All his favourite ones. Saffron. Butterscotch. Sandstone. Emerald. Mistletoe. Moss. He brings the forest alive on the page, shading in unexpected splashes of cerulean, seafoam and lapis, drawing out the richness with hints of burgundy, walnut and juniper.

If it’s a forest, there would be tree trunks there, too, right? Branches going up, roots curling down into the earth, lush and quiet.

Something flickers in the corner of his eye. He pauses, turning, but there’s nothing there. Maybe it was a bird passing the window, leaving a shadow. 

What colour would a shadow be? Deeper, yes. Burnt ochre. Sable. Umber. Ebony.  He picks up the pencils and gets to work, weaving them in with the rest of the pattern, connecting them up like the tributaries of a river, like…like….

It is only then that he realises what he’s done.

The pencil falls from his hand. Goosebumps break out across Will’s nape and forearms. He wants to break away, but he can’t; his limbs are frozen in place, his eyes fixed on the picture’s black centre, on its spiralling tendrils, on its eyeless, soulless face.

He’s drawn the Mind Flayer.

The world turns beneath him; the golden afternoon crumbling into ash and dust. The alcohol hasn’t made him different; it’s made him more of what he is. Dark. Rotten. Defective. 

Another twitch of blackness blooms in the corner of his eye, larger this time. His legs are shaking but he can’t make them unbend, can’t get himself to stand. The edges of his vision darken, as though shadow is oozing in from the walls, crawling down on him like an army of spiders, like the hoards from the mines of Moria. It sweeps over him and he can’t see anymore, he can’t think, he can’t even breathe. 

He’s going to die he’s going to die he’s going to die-

Will surfaces, eyes and mouth flying open in search of air and light. He sucks in oxygen that tastes of death, and his vision slants and blurs, trying to make sense of what it can see. There is nothing but dark, rolling blackness, in every direction. It’s disorientating, yet somehow familiar. 

Will swallows. Is this…is this the void? He remembers Eleven describing it once, but words have never been her strong suit. She never captured the sense of endlessness, the sickly chill, the viscous slickness of the inch-deep liquid beneath his bare soles. 

Will takes a tentative step forward and, in the same breath, realises he is not alone.

A body lies several paces to his left. A girl’s body. He takes another step towards it, heart in his mouth.  Her head is turned away from him so he cannot see her face, yet he knows her immediately. She lies still, so still, her beautiful red hair fanned out like a crown. She is still wearing the clothes she had on in Vecna’s lair. 

“Max?” he chokes, then tries again “Max!”

She moves. But she doesn’t move like Max, or like a girl at all. Her head lolls up towards him, eerie as a doll’s. Her skin is pale, streaked with green and grey and black. Her lips are parted, stained blue, and her eyes stare through him, milky and unseeing. She blinks and blood, bright red, falls like tears from her eyes.

Will stumbles back, letting out something between a scream and a sob. Max parts her cracked, bloody lips and screams.

WILL WAKE UP.

Her words hit him like a hammer, he stumbles back, falls-

And everything whites out.

************************************************************

Chapter Text

**************************************

Will wakes up with a hangover, covered in cold sweat, and surrounded by snow-drifts of paper. He’s lying on his bedroom floor, limbs skewed, and all of them hurt. He blinks and rolls onto his knees, shivering at the chill in his bones and the white hot ache behind his eyeballs. 

The room itself is ruined. The shelves are empty, their contents scattered. His posters are half-peeled off the walls, his drawers are open and frothing over with unfolded clothes. It looks like a scene in a crime drama, after they’ve searched the suspect’s house. 

How…?

Will sits back on his heels, massaging the life back into his face. His skin is stretched and dry, and the birdsong outside the window feels like a personal attack. He blinks and frowns - even the carpet’s been pulled up, what the-

He lifts the edge then flinches back. Beneath the worn colourless fabric is a twisting web of scorch marks. They criss-cross everywhere, burned into the wood, stretching far further beneath the carpet than he ever could have reached. Will runs a tentative finger along the nearest lines and his fingertip comes back black. Fresh, then. He feels sick.

…No, he really feels sick.

He hurdles to the bathroom and empties everything he’s ever eaten into the toilet bowl. As he clings to the cold porcelain, more memories of the night before come back; the endless darkness, the stench of rot, the oily water sluicing between his toes…

And a crown of red hair. Blind eyes. A screaming mouth.

WILL WAKE UP-

“Will?” His mom knocks on the door, making him flinch. “Will, honey, are you okay?”

“Fine!” he snaps “m’fine, mom! Go back to bed.”

“Sweetheart, it’s seven in the morning. Jonathan’s asking if you need a ride to school today. It’s okay if you need to stay home, it’s my day off so I’ll be here if you need-”

“I’ll go!” Will gets to his feet and splashes his face, scrubbing it hard with a hand towel. The idea of spending all day pretending to be normal in front of his mom sounds worse than anything school can throw at him, hangover or not. “I’ll be there in ten!”

He waits until her footsteps retreat then gropes around their (sparse) medicine cabinet for something that looks like painkillers. He takes three, finger-combs his hair flat, and moves like a zombie through getting washed and dressed. There isn’t a hope in hell of making his room look normal, so he settles with piling the worst of it behind the door and pinning down the carpet with his nightstand. He hides the bottle under his bed and, for some reason, stuffs the sheaf of drawings into his schoolbag. His mom’s never been the best with privacy, but it’ll have to do.

He grabs toast off the side and crams it into his mouth. It tastes like dust and Styrofoam. He chases it down with muddy coffee. His mouth feels like something died in it but there isn’t time to fix that now. 

Jonathan smiles at him when he slides into the car. He is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to an invisible beat. Returning the smile is easy; there’s something about his car that makes Jonathan more himself than he is outside of it. It’s the same in a photography darkroom, or those booths in the record store where you can put on headphones and just float away. He’s always been a creature of small spaces, of corners and quiet. It doesn’t make him weak, but it means people have to put just a little more effort to find the places where he can let his walls down. 

Jonathan starts the car, picks a radio station, waits for Will’s nod of approval, and eases them up the drive. They pass the guard booth with a series of polite nods; it’s a woman today, round-limbed and sour-faced. She has a badge but Will is too distracted to read the name. He stares out of the window as they pull onto the main road, last night’s happenings crowding his mind. The drawing. The dark. Max. 

Oh Max .

He needs to tell Mike. Or El. Or any of them. Dustin’s words from last night come back in a sudden stab, but he pushes it away. Yes, it hurt, but that’s not important right now. The important thing is Max.

Unless it was just a dream? A wasted, stupid dream?

You’re not the one with powers. Why would they listen to you?

A voice that’s not quite his sneers in his ear. For a second, he can almost feel warm breath on his cheek, but when he turns, there’s nothing there. 

“So, first day of school.” Jonathan says, shattering through Will’s thoughts. “Are you nervous? Feels like taking you to kindergarten all over again, except I’m in the driver’s seat, not holding your hand in the back.”

“You didn’t hold my hand.” Will objects half-heartedly.

“You keep telling yourself that.” Jonathan gives him another of those small smiles, the ones that carry so much warmth. He hesitates, then asks “Hey, are you okay? Like, really okay?”

“Yeah sure. Of course.” Will hates that the words don’t matter, that his brother can see right through him anyway.

Jonathan leans in and gives him a little cuff on the arm, all affection. “It’ll be fine, you know? It’s still Hawkins; same kids, same school, same classes. It’ll be like you never left. Plus, Mike and Lucas and Dustin’ll be there to make sure you-”

“Jonathan.” Will cuts in, and he hates that his voice has an edge to it, but it does.

Jonathan pauses, surprised. “Yeah?”

“Can we just…not talk today?”

“Oh. Yeah, I mean. Sure.” He’s hurt, and Will knows it, but when the minutes pass and Will says nothing, he feels his brother withdraw. By the time they reach the school, Jonathan has curled carefully back into his shell. The farewell smile he gives Will doesn’t reach his eyes. 

Will closes the door harder than he means to, but there’s no way to take it back. 

Things have been weird, with Jonathan, since that night by the pizza freezer. It’s strange how something so genuine and supportive could have made things worse but…skirting so close to the forbidden thing, but not actually saying it, has somehow put Will more on edge than ever. The idea that Jonathan knows something, but it’s not clear how much or about whom or even how he figured it out…it scares him. It makes him wonder if he’s been hiding it well enough, if he’s been hiding it at all. 

He’s five minutes late to homeroom but the teacher doesn’t seem to care. She says something about settling in, about knowing how much they’ve all been through, about how it’s okay to step out or talk to her if they need to. Everyone nods obediently. No one says a word. There are so many empty desks in the class - how many of them are from kids moving out of Hawkins, and how many belong to kids who died before they could?

He shivers, picking at the edge of his printed timetable; none of the others are in his homeroom class but he has English next with Mike, then Math with Lucas and Dustin. By mid morning, they’ll all know about the dream/vision, and someone can come up with a plan. 

The next 21 and a half minutes crawl by with excruciating slowness. Will bursts out of the room with the bell, swinging by his locker to drop off a couple of books. When he unlocks the door, a note falls out. Will is written on it in Mike’s distinctive scrawl. Will’s heart jumps. He sets down his books and leans against the lockers so no one can see the contents of the note. He unfolds it with care.

Not coming in tomorrow (Tues) need to be with El. You okay to bring me notes from Eng?

Hope you’re better.

Mike

Will lets out a long breath, folds the note carefully, then shoves it back in his locker so hard the books bang against the back. Fuck , he’s pathetic. 

English is a blur. Something about Greek Mythology, something about a reading list that Will hasn’t even seen let alone started. He jots everything down dutifully and tries not to notice the sharp little tugs at his fingertips, itching to make his hand draw something else, something darker.

After English he goes to the bathroom and throws up the toast and coffee. As he washes his hands he realises he’s being a fucking idiot. He doesn’t have time for classes, he needs to get real help.

Dustin and Lucas have saved him a seat between them at the back of the class, and they’re all early, which is a plus. They see the wildness in his eyes before he’s even sat down.

“Hey Will,” Dustin starts “I really am sorry about yester-”

“It doesn’t matter, Dustin. I get it.” Will doesn’t have time to crack open that wound right now. “I need to tell you guys something. Last night, I got drunk and-”

“Wait, you got drunk ?” Lucas frowns. He knows all about the Byers family and alcohol.

“That’s not important. What’s important is that when I did, I started drawing and…and I drew the Mind Flayer and somehow it pulled me into the drawing. I saw the void - like the one El’s told us about - and Max was there. She was hurt…bad. She needs our help.” He’s breathless by the time he’s done; it’s the most he’s said to either of them in weeks. He looks between them anxiously, waiting for one of them to leap in, to fill the silence. Then he registers Lucas’ scowl.

“You had a drunken nightmare about Max.” Lucas says. His voice is flat, low; a little dangerous. Will stares at him. Lucas is angry- why is he angry? “And you, what, suddenly realised she’s important? That she’s ‘hurt bad’? No fucking shit , Will.”

“Lucas-”

“You’re not the one who’s been with her. Every day. I’ve seen the casts, the bruises, what they’re saying about her eyes and whether she’ll ever be able to walk when she wakes up. If she wakes up. And you, what, get hammered then come in here with this big revelation that Max is not okay ?” Lucas shoves out of his chair, slinging his bag over his shoulder. The class is almost full now and people are staring, but none of them care. “Not cool, man.” Lucas spits. “Not fucking cool.”

He stalks out of the class. Dustin freezes beside Will, caught between them. Will knows which way he really wants to run, that the only thing keeping him in his seat right now is what he said to Will yesterday. Every group of four has two duos in it. Theirs have been defined from the start; Mike and Will, and Dustin and Lucas. 

One of those duos is still intact.

Without me, you’ll have no one.

“Go.” Will says. “He needs you.” 

“But-”

“Dustin. It’s okay.” Will means it, he really does. “I think I’m just gonna go home now.”

“That…might be a good idea.” Dustin’s lips twist “See you soon, yeah? Radio in when you’re home.”

“I will.” Maybe .

Will waits another ten minutes after Dustin has left, and for class to be in full sway, before he asks the teacher for a sick note. The teacher takes one look at Will’s ashen face and the bruised circles under his eyes, and doesn’t question it. Will gets his hall pass for the nurse’s office but keeps walking, straight out the front doors, past the bikes and across the playing fields. He ignores the road back to town and sets off instead towards the woods, and Hawkins Lab.

It’s been a while since he crossed Hawkins like this, especially without a bike, so he badly underestimates how far the lab actually is. He considers going back and borrowing one of the other party members’ bikes, but he only remembers Lucas’ lock combination, and he’s been shitty enough to Lucas today.

He walks for an hour, then another. There’s a blister on his heel and he’s sweating under his usual double-layer of shirts. He doesn’t dare slow down, or even stop for water, in case he loses the path or falls asleep and wakes up at night. Whatever madness is in him, he knows that darkness will make it worse. If he gets to the lab during the day, he might have a  chance. 

Or will he? Lucas’ sceptical face flashes in his mind. Maybe it was just a stupid drunken dream.

But it didn’t feel like one. Will has had nightmares before, fever-dreams, hallucinations and, hell, even the Mind Flayer’s eerie ‘now-memories’ - if anything, this felt like the latter. There was a deep wrongness there, too dark to have come entirely from him alone.

That was why he had to get to the lab. They had the equipment, didn't they, to study him? And they had El, who was the only one who could truly tell vision from fiction. How had El felt, the first time she entered the void? He will speak to her, Will decides; she will have the answers.

And Mike will be there.

Will quickens his pace. He doesn’t care that Mike will be all over El and it’s going to hurt and he’ll feel invisible again, he just needs to be in the same room as Mike right now. He needs to see Mike square his shoulders, clench his fists and be ready to fight for everything he loves. He needs Mike - skinny, rumpled, steadfast, heroic Mike - in order to believe that anything will someday be okay.

He reaches the lab just after noon, dusty and sweaty from his forest hike. The guards at their post tense, then recognise him and radio ahead. Dr Owens meets him in the lobby, his round face grave. 

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks.

“I had a vision.” One of the only things that made working with Owens easier when Will was younger was that neither of them were good at small talk. To Will’s relief, Owens doesn’t look fazed, or doubtful. Instead, he gives him a calculated look and a nod.

“We will need to run some tests,” he says. “Did your visions…was there any…output?” 

Will almost laughs. Trust Owens to make asking ‘ did you do an Eleven and rip a hole between dimensions? ’ sound like something on a census survey.

“I, um, I have drawings?” he shrugs off his backpack and fishes them out, handing them to Owens in a bundle. Owens doesn’t take them.

“We should continue this inside.” he says “Follow me.”

He leads them to a low-ceilinged conference room that smells of stale coffee and yesterday's doughnuts. There is a large table in the centre, and Will spreads out his drawings there. This is the first time he’s had a proper look at them and they’re….strange. Not that that is surprising in itself. Before, he drew clear tributaries. This time, the patterns are thinner, black and curling. They look, he realises with a jolt, exactly like the scorch marks beneath his carpet.

One of the pages is not like the others. He lifts it slowly from the pile and brings it closer so Owens can see. In the middle is a small figure in a sky blue jacket with long coppery hair.

“That’s Max.” Will says. The name catches in his throat.

Owens grunts to show he understands, and moves a few papers around, frowning “And the rest…this is another map?”

“It might be.” Will chews his lip, scanning the pages and pages of scribblings “I was…fairly out of it when I made it.”

“Drunk?” Owens asks, then, when Will starts to object, “I wasn’t born yesterday, son. And I can smell it on you a mile off.”

“It was whiskey,” Will admits, cheeks burning. “Can you…not tell my mom?”

“I will be phoning Mrs Byers and telling her all relevant details about why you are here,” Owens says firmly “...but I don’t believe omitting that particular detail would do anyone harm.” There is the tiniest twinkle in his eyes when he says this. It’s almost paternal. 

Will doesn’t know what to do with his face. “Um. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Owens is already turning away, one hand hovering above the maze of drawings “We need to analyse these,” he says “To see if we can match them to a source location. Good news is, I have a lot of data regarding Hawkins topography from your time with the Mind Flayer. Bad news is, Hawkins looks a little different than it did back then.”

Will grimaces in agreement. “You should start with Lover’s Lake.” he says “There’s a fissure there, and water. I think…it feels like that combination means something.”

Again, Owens just nods. “Murray Bauman has already been doing some work in that area. Do I have your permission to share the drawings with him?”

“Of course.” 

“And we’ll get you into the tank for a session by this evening. And some rooms for you for tonight.  We just need a little time to prepare.”

“The tank?” Will hadn’t considered this. “The new NINA? What do you want me in there for?”

“If you really did access the void and came across Miss Mayfield, then it stands to reason that you are drawing on the same source of power as Eleven. And, at present, you are having more success.”

The idea that Will could even be compared to Eleven, let alone have more success is terrifying. Will tries to backtrack “We don’t know that for sure. I mean, it could just be a stupid dream. I’m not special like El, I’m not…I don’t have powers. I could be wrong. I’m probably wrong.”

He cuts off. Owens has put a hand on his bicep. His hand is broad and warm. When his eyes meet Wills, his gaze is steady.

“We’re trying to find Vecna, Will.” Owens tells him gently “And we will use every avenue we can because, until Eleven recovers, reconnaissance is the most powerful thing we can do to prepare to take him down.”

“Yes, sir.” Will swallows. He has a sudden, queasy image of Vecna lurking right beneath their feet, his myriad vines slowly creeping through the earth. He shudders and Owens withdraws his hand. “Can I go and see Mike and Eleven? Before I go in the tank, that is.” 

“I don’t see why not. We need an hour or so to set it up. You know where to find them?”

A chill prickles across Will’s nape. He nods. “They’re in her apartment.”
He heads out of the lab and through the building at a half-jog. He feels suddenly very small, like a child seeking a pair of arms to run to. 

You are drawing on the same source of power as Eleven . Owens had said.

That couldn’t be true. 

Could it?

He slows to a walk just outside Eleven’s rooms, knocks quietly, and lets himself in. El often likes to nap between tank sessions and mind-work, so he doesn’t want to risk waking her. He enters the main living space and finds it empty, though there are the remains of some lunches on the table in the kitchen area. Two plates. Two glasses. A half-eaten Eggo.

Mike.

The door to El’s bedroom is three inches ajar.

**************************************

Chapter Text

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Will hovers for a moment, eyes on that little tell-tale gap in the door. He takes a tentative half step forwards, then thinks better of it. No. El deserves her privacy. 

And he knows that, whatever he sees behind there, it will only bring him pain. 

Softly, he pads back to the exit door. On the way, he sees El's supercomm on a side table and remembers his promise to radio Dustin. He picks it up without thinking, fiddling the dial to a familiar frequency, and steps out into the corridor so he won't be heard. 

“El?” the other end picks up almost immediately.

“Hey Dustin, it’s me.”

“Will? Why do you have El’s supercomm?”

“I'm just borrowing it." Will glances guiltily over his shoulder. He knows she won't miss it, but it still feels like a betrayal. "You said to tell you when I got home but I didn't go there. I'm at the lab."

"Why? Oh, yeah, about the dream?" Dustin sounds doubtful. "What did El say?"

"I asked Dr Owens." Will corrects “He thinks it might be something. He doesn’t want to rule anything out at least, so we're going to do some tests. I think I might have to stay here a while.”

“Like, days?”

“Maybe, yeah. He hasn’t spoken to my mom yet.”

"Shit, Will." He hears Dustin shuffle on the other end, like he's sitting up to listen properly. "D’you need anything while you’re there?”

“My mom’ll probably bring a bag.”
“Oh right. Course.” Dustin pauses. Will imagines he can hear his brain whirring on the other end of the line. 

In a flash, Will remembers the state of his room. His mom will know in a heartbeat that something is wrong, and then she’ll ask more questions, go poking around and…

It’s clear Dustin needs an excuse to help. Plus, he can’t remember the last time Dustin came to his house, probably not since they moved back, so he won’t think anything of the mess. He especially won’t want to look under the carpet. 

“Actually, Dustin,” he says, “Can I take you up on that? I've got some comics I wanted to read and Mom can’t tell her Batman from her Daredevil.”

Dustin laughs, and it sounds a little bit like an exhale, like relief. “Sure. What do you need?”

They talk for a few more minutes; just small stuff, like everything’s normal. Will hangs up and considers going back to El’s room to return the supercomm. In the end he just leaves it outside her door, like a confession, or an apology. Maybe both.

There’s no sign of Owens yet, so he finds another one of the old staff rooms and hovers in it for a while. There’s a water cooler and some stale cookies in a tin; he nibbles one while he waits. An orderly comes by briefly with a message from Owens; his mom is ‘not happy’ (probably a huge understatement) but has given her permission for Will to stay the night at the facility. The orderly gives Will a key to another set of rooms, in the same area but not too close to El’s apartment, and leads him to the door.

Will thanks her and spends the next few minutes exploring the room. There isn’t much to see; it’s roughly the same size and shape as El’s, only his has a small window in the kitchen area, above the sink. It overlooks the lab’s dumpsters and the barbed wire perimeter fence but still, he’s grateful. Will kills another half hour taking a shower and brushing his teeth with the travel-sized kit that has been left in the sink for him. He’s just climbed into the only change of clothes he can find (a grey shirt and soft pants that hang comfortably loose on him) when the door buzzer sounds overhead. 

He opens the door and is almost knocked off his feet by a tornado of Dustin. “Byers!” Dustin yells, as though they haven’t just seen each other, under tense circumstances, scant hours ago. “How are you, man? Nice new clothes. Sorry we’re late, we went by your place on the way back from school like I said but then your mom had a lot of questions and it took forever, but we still got your stuff, plus some extras.” He hands Will an old duffel that Will recognises from his family’s shed. He unzips the top. The bottom layers are a bunch of clothes and other overnight things, plus the comics and books he asked Dustin for. What makes him gasp, though, is the slim, brightly-coloured volume laid out just beneath the zipper, still in its plastic sleeve. The cover is a burst of yellow flames and, in its centre, stands the magnificent Jean Grey, her arm raised like Boudicca before battle. 

“No way ! Is this…?!”

“X-Men 134.” Dustin grins, watching Will cradle it with reverent fingertips “The most badass X-Men issue to date, the start of the Dark Phoenix Saga, featuring the original Hellfire Club and, more importantly, the one I promised to give one of my best friends for beating me in a bike race three years ago.” 

“Dustin,” Will’s whole chest hurts. He puts down the comic carefully, trying to hide the shake in his fingers. He smiles with trembling lips.  “Thanks.”

“S’nothing,” Dustin scoffs, but he yanks Will into a tight hug all the same. Will grins into his friend’s puffer jacket and breathes a little easier. 

“Hey Will.” Lucas is hovering in the doorframe, his dark eyes wary. Will starts; he was so swept away by Dustin, he hadn’t noticed him. 

“Lucas,” Will gets to his feet and heads over, shoulders hunched in anticipation. “Lucas, about earlier, I was out of l-”

He breaks off. Lucas is holding out his hand.

“But I drew first blood.” Will insists “I should have thought more before I told you. I should have said it better. I’m sorry.”

“Just shake my damn hand, Will.” Lucas huffs, but there’s a glimmer of warmth in his eyes, and he squeezes Will’s hand so tight it aches. 

“Thanks guys.” Will says, blinking so his eyes stop stinging. It’s just Lucas and Dustin. Still them, even after everything. Here, and here for him. Things are different, yes, but he knows now that he isn’t completely alone. 

There’s a knock on the door. Dr Owens pokes his head into the room. El is hovering at his elbow, a duplicate of Will in her soft grey sweater and pants. She gives Will an encouraging smile that he does his best to return. There is no sign of Mike.

“The tank’s ready,” Dr Owens tells him “Ready to go? I thought it would be helpful to have Jane observe, just in case.”

Will hesitates, turning to the others. Dustin shrugs and gives him a big thumbs up. Lucas dips his chin in approval.

Will turns to Owens, squares his shoulders, and nods.

This had better work.

******************

Chapter Text

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“Will?” Eleven says, brushing his hand on the water’s surface. “Will. Time is up.”

Will opens his eyes and the darkness disappears, but it’s the wrong kind of darkness, the kind that belongs to insomnia, restlessness and reality, rather than an otherworldly void. 

Will lets El help him out of the pool, his body and mind weak from the effort of so many hours in suspended isolation. This is his fourth tank session, at least his eighth hour of trying this, and he hasn’t felt even a flicker.  El doesn’t need to ask how it went; her powers can feel it. Her real, legitimate powers, that actually exist. 

“We can try again tomorrow,” she says, but Will is already shaking his head.

“It’s been two days. If anything was going to happen, it would have by now.” 

“Maybe not. It took me a long time.”

“But you could lift things with your mind and knock people over long before you did this.” Will towels himself dry, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Yes, he’s frustrated, but it isn’t with her. El is kind and attentive, beautiful and brave. He is the one ruining things. 

They meet Dr Owens on the way out of the lab. He’s carrying a clipboard; off on another errand. He stopped watching the sessions after Will’s third failed attempt.

“Any luck?” he asks, but he can already tell from their faces.. 

“Nothing.” Will says, because he can’t bear to hear El say it. “I’ve tried all of El’s suggestions, and yours, and nothing’s worked. I think…I think I should stop.”

Owens nods. The fact that he doesn’t even try to argue makes Will feel even more hollow. 

“I am afraid I have more bad news from Mr Bauman,” he says “He has also exhausted all options for pattern and topographical recognition from your drawings. There is nothing in them to indicate where Miss Mayfield might be.”

“Okay.” Will nods, biting his lip hard to make himself focus. “Okay. Thanks for trying, both of you. All of you.” he looks at El and, shit, now his vision is starting to blur. El looks so right in this place, with her steadfast expression and the power that runs through her so clearly he can sense it from rooms away. What had he been thinking, trying to be her, trying to walk in her shoes?

Had it all just been an illusion, a lie?

“Jane,” Dr Owens says “Could you give us a moment, please?”
Eleven glances at Will for his approval before she agrees. As she leaves, she touches his arm gently. “Come see me later?”

“Sure.” Will waits until she is out of sight then turns away from Owens, sniffing hard and wiping his face. When he turns around, Owens’ face is sympathetic, and that’s almost worse.

“I am afraid that we really do have no more avenues of enquiry with this, Will.” he says “You were right to come to us, and to report your experience but…but we need to consider the possibility that it was just what it appeared; a dream.”

Will knows Owens is right, and was even arguing for it with El minutes ago, but the words still hit him hard. So, after all, the truth is simple. Will Byers thought he was special, so he got drunk, hallucinated, and wasted everybody’s time.

Will says his goodbyes to Owens and heads to his room. He’ll keep his promise to El later, when he has himself more under control. 

The first thing he wants to do is get out of the lab clothes, so he can feel less like a failed experiment. Will tips out his bag and grabs two shirts - one to go under the other. He shrugs into the first one, and a pair of jeans. He starts buttoning up the second shirt, only to freeze when he catches himself in the mirror. 

Who is this person? 

Will pauses, staring at the dull plaid shirt, the hack-job haircut, the worn, frayed jeans and the dark circles under his eyes. He doesn't know this person, or rather, he doesn't know when he became him. 

Why does he even wear two shirts? He's been doing it for months. He always wears them layered, buttoned up high, hiding himself in increments against the world. This morning, he had thought Jonathan was the one who rarely peeked out of his shell. The reality is that Will is worse - he lives in his full time. 

Exhausting, isn't it? The whispering voice is back, silken in his ear. To be always hidden, always running, always trying to blend in with those who have never stepped beyond the Light -

The door opens behind him, then closes with a sharp slam. Will turns, startled.

“There you are.” Mike says.

“Oh. Hey!” Will hastily puts on his best smile, but it falters when he realises Mike’s dark brows are pressed together, his posture tense and troubled. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong ?” Mike repeats, and he isn’t troubled, he’s furious . He stalks across to Will and, though they’re still three steps apart, he crowds Will back against the wall, hemming him in. Will’s mouth goes dry, panic zapping through his limbs. 

What did he do? What did he do ?

“I’m sorry-” he starts, but Mike won’t hear it; he’s already in mid flow.

“I just spoke to Dustin and Lucas. Why the hell didn't you tell me you were staying here and using the tank?"

"What? I thought El-"

"El didn't even say you'd come! And you're just as bad because you didn't either! And now El hasn't been in the tank to look for Max for almost three days because everyone was making space for you. Why didn't you tell me? And why the hell were you getting drunk and delirious in the first place? That's so dangerous , Will! Were you trying to make yourself have a vision? Was that why? So you could be special too?"

Understanding snaps into focus. Will’s blood runs cold, then scalding hot. “Wait, you think I’m trying to take attention from Eleven ?”

“Aren’t you?”

“ No , Mike! What kind of insane question is that?”

“It’s not insane when you keep putting yourself in danger, Will! You don’t have powers like she does, you’re not a superhero, you’re…you’re you and you could get hurt .” 

“But so could any of us and-”

“No!” Mike grabs him, shakes him by the shoulders “No, you’re not getting it! You are not El, okay? You’re not her. You shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger, but you just can’t stay away, can you? You can’t stay home and just be safe. Finding you was supposed to do that. Getting the Mind Flayer out of you was supposed to do that. California was supposed to do that, but you’re still here .” Mike shakes him again. “Why? Why can’t you just stay somewhere and be safe ?” 

Mike’s voice cracks and he goes silent. The world comes back into focus and reveals the impossible. Mike is still holding Will, white-knuckled. He is a little taller, so Will has to look up at him when they’re this close. 

When did they get this close?

One of Mike’s hands is on Will’s shoulder and the other is cupping the base of his neck. Mike’s thumb curls a little on the soft skin beneath Will’s ear; it’s almost a caress. Will takes another breath, scared he’ll forget how to.

Mike’s top lip is slightly fuller than his lower one, with a maddening curve of a cupid’s bow that has tortured Will for years. This close, it’s impossible not to look at it, at the way Mike’s lips have parted, to feel the warmth of his words stirring the air between them. 

Will’s pulse is hammering in his ears. “Mike…” Will says, hopelessly, helplessly. His whole body is quaking. It feels like he’s dying. He leans-

And just like that, Mike yanks away. He takes a step back, then three more, flinching as though he’s been hit, as though proximity to Will is painful.

“Oh man. Sorry.” Mike says, sniffing and wiping his eyes roughly on his sleeve. “I didn’t mean all that. I guess I’m just worked up over El and Max and… everything, you know? God. Didn’t mean to cry like a fucking fag all over you.”

“What?”

“I said I didn’t mean to cry and-”

“Cry like a what?” Will's voice is rising.

“I don’t-”

“You said cry like a fag, Mike.” Hot bile boils in Will's throat. “Like a fucking fag.”

“Oh.” Mike hesitates “It’s just, uh, something my dad says.”

“And something Troy Walsh says. And James Dante. And Angela and Jason in California. 

And Lonnie .” Will clenches his fists and stares Mike down, unblinking even though his eyes are brimming and scalding tears are sliding down his cheeks. That moment of gentleness has broken him open, and now there’s nothing left to shield him from the hurt. 

“They say those words, and hundreds like them, to me. They say it to me . They’ve said it to me over and over since before I even knew what it meant. They’ve said it to tell me I’m wrong, that I’m broken, that I’m a mistake. And you know what, Mike? Until a year ago I didn’t even care. You know why? Because I had you. I had the whole Party, but especially you. Don’t you remember what I told you in the van? When you’re different, you feel like a mistake, but you, Mike, make people feel like they’re not a mistake at all. People like me .” 

“Will, what are you..?” Mike’s brows are slanted upwards in distress, his hands gentling. He doesn’t understand, Will realises. After everything; after all this time, he still doesn’t fucking understand. 

The bile in his throat is scalding now, and spreading. It courses through his blood and burns and burns and burns until his body can’t contain it anymore. Heat rolls out of Will, roiling clouds of rage, a pyroclastic flow, a black chaos, rampant. 

The lights flicker overhead. It’s getting darker everywhere. Will doesn’t try to work out why; he only has eyes for Mike.

“Will…” Mike stumbles back, hits a corner and almost goes down. His hands scuttle along the wall to keep himself upright. “Will, what’s-? Will, stop ! You’re not a-”

“But I am!” Will yells, advancing on him “I am a fucking fag, Mike! I always have been, and I always will be, and I can’t fucking help it and you can’t fucking stop it and you know why? Because you’re the reason I know, why I’m so sure it’s true, why I can’t run away from it even for a second. I’m a fucking fag and you have no fucking idea how much I…How I’ve spent my whole fucking life just... Fuck, and you get to just stand there and say that. Like it means nothing. Like I mean nothing.” 

The darkness pulses, sharpens into teeth, into claws. It wraps around Will and holds him, steadies him, wallows in the agony bleeding from his very bones. Mike reaches for him again, still trying to speak, still trying to be the hero, but Will is no longer really there. He sees Mike like an actor on a screen, like a figure on the ground from a thousand feet up. Mike’s fingers brush his shin and try to grab him, hold him back, pull him free. He is still trying to interfere. 

Stay away from me. Will says, and the voice is his and yet is not his. His anger is his own, but it’s bigger, stronger, many-limbed and darker than sin. He is smoke and hellfire and molten, burning rage. He is defending the human Will from the one who is hurting him, hurting him so much . 

“Will, please .” The human enemy, the one who hurts, is on the floor now. His face is wet and he crawls. He is scared and weak, so weak. He could be killed, killed in the swiftest, most satisfying snap of-

NO.

The human Will is fighting. He wants to spare the one who hurts. The shadow does not understand, but human Will was the one who was wronged, so he is the one who decides. This time. The shadow will protect him, instead. It will take him away from here, to the safe, dark place. 

To home.

From somewhere deep down, Will feels his feet lift from the floor and the walls of the room dissolve. He is frozen, yet the world moves around him at blistering speed. He smells pine and wet leaves and fresh earth and old blood. He is everywhere and nowhere, and then he is gone.

The shadows have swallowed him whole.

*******************************************************

Chapter Text

*******************************************************

Will Byers is the dark and the dark is Will Byers.

Time and space surge around him; dreams, nightmares and memories shredded to distortion. Will flies as though borne by a current, limbs loose, shadows threading through his hair, up his sleeves, between the buttons of his shirt. The shadow’s hold on him is gentle, and yet he cannot move.

Hawkins burns far below, a map with hell’s own X in its centre. Lovers’ Lake is a glass eye, black and blind. The road out of town snakes into nowhere.

The air shifts and they descend and descend and descend. The trees close in over them and the earth rises to meet them but instead of an impact they break through and soar again, this time up through darker trees and twisting vines and air that tastes of death.

The shadow sends Will Byers the relief of cool water in a heatwave, the softness of a bed after a long day outside. The shadow is explaining, expressing, the only way it knows how, that they are home and safe. 

Like it did before. 

The human Will flinches, asking. Before ?

Yes. Before.

The human Will does not remember. The shadow sends him the sting of a fresh graze, the sourness of lemons, the lonely solemnity of a church after dark. How can he not remember? It was not long ago. The last time they were together, in this world.

Will sends queries into the shadow like candle-lanterns, warm and bright and glittering. He wants to know. He wants to remember.

So the shadow will show him. 

**********************

Will Byers is the past and the past is Will Byers. 

The shadow wraps around his shoulders; a hooded cloak. It lifts him, guides him, tells him where to look and how to see, really see. Time folds like the pages of a book, flicking backwards, faster and faster through three full season-turns. 

The shadow sends him the silken feeling of sand underfoot, then the fish-eyed view of a telescope lens. Look. It sends. Look down. See.

The human Will looks down. And he sees.

He sees…

He sees 1983. A small boy with a bowl cut is on a little silver bike, racing his friend for a comic book down a road they call Mirkwood. 

He sees the small boy running home minutes later, bikeless and hunted, breathing shaky clouds into the cold night air. He sees that the boy is brave and his mind is clear; he tries to call for help, he finds shelter, he picks up his father’s gun with practised fingers and points it at the bolted door. It does not help him.

He sees the small boy running again, this time through the other world, with its barren earthen cliffs, tortured sky and grey, spore-speckled air. He has broken free of the one who took him here, the Once-Human with his twisted claws and dead eyes, but he is not far behind. The Once-Human is fast and will catch him, the shadow knows - the Once-Human is a hunter and this small thing is certainly prey.

And yet.

The boy, as he runs, wishes for somewhere to hide and, for the first time in the shadow’s eternity of living, it sees a wish come true . 

The cracked earth erupts into splinters, black, shifting, taking on new shapes. Trees burst from the ground and stretch sky-high. The Once-Human reels back, shrieking, and the boy begins to gain ground. The shadow watches as a forest ripples into life around them and, somewhere just ahead, is a little square nest of wood named Castle Byers.

The shadow moves closer to this growing world and, as it does, it feels a strong, unmistakable tug inside itself. The shadow is a creator, a maker, a crafter of worlds. Without consciously meaning to, it has answered the call of another who is made the same way, with the desire to shape, mould and imagine. The boy is making a wish, and the shadow has become his instrument. The shadow finds it is happy to oblige. 

The result is astounding. 

The shadow reaches for the boy, on purpose this time, and trickles into his mind, letting itself be pulled and thrown into sculpting new creations. The forest thickens with undergrowth, animal paths, a chain-link perimeter fence, a lake. The boy’s wish, still unsated, pours and pours across the land. Roads rise, flow and connect like river tributaries, and between them rocks stretch and shimmer into gardens, garages, homes and high-streets. The boy does not stop running and the black mass of creation stretches with him, on and on and on until the hills are gone and a whole town stands in its place.

Hawkins, incarnate. 

Yet, not quite. The boy’s wish has built it, after all, from the substance of the shadow’s world. It has a new shape, but carries the same taint. The new streets are empty, the houses worn and desolate with dust. The new woods are dark, with seething roots and dead, winter’s leaves. The beasts of the shadow’s world now walk that forest, their cries echoing between the rotten trunks.

It is beautiful and damned. The shadow is enchanted.

The boy falls, skinning his knees with a cry. He curls up, drained and terrified, and makes himself small. The Once-Human is still close, though disorientated; he is still hunting. The shadow intervenes, taking the boy to the place called Castle Byers and laying him down in its depths. The boy shivers and stares at the shadow, eyes fluttering. He speaks, in the way of humans, but the shadow does not know or understand what it means. 

The images flicker between them; another human, larger and male, hand raised and eyes flashing, a pulse of fear and hurt. Are you…?  The boy asks.

The shadow sends back rays of pre-dawn light, the crackle of a campfire, a laugh on the wind. No, it is not this man. It will not hurt him.

The boy crawls forward, wiping his eyes. He looks at the shadow, into the shadow, and his curiosity is like dandelion fluff, delicate on the wind. 

The boy speaks again, but he is learning; he sends the curls of mist on water, the coldness of stone, the endless stretch of early morning hours. You’re….you’re sad. 

The shadow does not know these words. It does not know what it is to speak, what it is to describe oneself beyond prey/predator and frightened/hungry. But when the boy lifts a hand, small fingers outstretched, the shadow is soft, and lets itself be touched.

Me too. They say. 

Together. 

**********************

Will Byers is the past, and he is starting to die.

The shadow knows that the boy must eat and drink, like all mortal creatures, but that was not part of his wish, and the new world offers nothing but rot and ruin. 

The shadow tries to bring him prey first, its own favourite, without success. It learns that the boy does not eat the blood of other things, that the spoils of a hunt, big or small, only frighten him, and stay untouched.

So the shadow searches. It watches the other creatures, the ones like the boy, but duller; bald and two legged, ignorant as prey. It finds the nests where they go for food, observes them as they cross parking lots at night, quickening their pace as they sense it, unseen and near. It brings the boy the spoils, gifts from the other world

It learns that the boy likes the small square treats in bright wrappers, but tires of them quickly and, once, is sick. The shadow brings strange shaped plants; palm-sized shiny orbs with a seeded core, crescent moons that peel into paleness, bunches of baubles clustered on a single stalk, but they wither and die, often before it can get them to the boy.

And so the boy fades. The shadow knows death; the slow creep of flesh off the bones, the dullness of the eyes, the tremble in the limbs. It sees death coming, closer. The Once-Human is distracted with another hunt, and the hungry creatures of the forest can be avoided, but still, death comes. 

The boy can no longer eat. The shadow leaves him in his nest, the small one he still calls castle  and goes to hunt again. When it returns, the boy is gone and signs of the forest creatures are everywhere. They have taken him. Death has taken him.

The shadow grieves. Time bleeds, and passes in silence.

Until it sees him again. This time the boy is older, and angry, and does not know him. The shadow has a name in the boy’s mind now, a true monster, a flayer of minds. The boy screams for the shadow to GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY.

But the shadow cannot. The shadow no longer belongs to itself, cannot make its own choices.

Something else has a hold of it now.

**********************

Will Byers is himself again, stumbling through the inertia of time and space. He gasps with his own lungs, curls his own fingers into fists, and yet he still floats in a web of shadowed air. 

Around them, the blackness thickens and drips, dividing into air and water. They are in the void. The shadow releases Will and he descends. He walks on the glassy surface, bare soles cold enough for his bones to ache. 

This time, he is not in another vision or memory, the void is here, and real, and now.

He sends the shadow a question, an iridescent bubble. What-?

A deluge of images; slamming doors, sealed lids, rusted padlocks, empty streets, closed vaults. Quiet.

Beneath this is another layer; skittering bugs fleeing from a shoe, a spider beneath a glass, a manacle looped to a dank cell wall. Fear. Servitude.

The shadow did not mean to bring him here, Will realises. It is frightened .

No sooner has he thought this, then she appears. Her hair is still a red halo, her body sprawled on the ground. Max. Will runs to her side, touching cold fingers to her pale cheek. She turns towards him, her eyes icy and blind.

“El?” she murmurs.

“No,” Will admits “No, Max. It’s Will. I’m sorry.”

“...Will?” Max leans towards his hand, but only her head moves. “Will, I can’t see you. I can’t move. What’s happening?”

“You’re in the void. Or maybe the Upside Down. I’m not sure.”

“The Upside Down? Like you were?” Max frowns, confused “Why is it so dark, Will? And Vecna, where is Vecna?”

“I don’t know.” Will’s eyes are stinging. No, he can’t cry. He has to get Max somewhere safe, back to someone who can actually help her. “I’m going to pick you up, Max. I’m going to carry you out of here.”
“But I can’t move.”

“Max-”

“No, I can’t move .” Max’s face crumples as she tries, calling out to limbs that no longer answer. The water ripples around her, despite her stillness, eerily regular, like the pulse of a living thing. Will tries to get his hands beneath her, slipping into the water, but Max’s body is welded within it, like a fly into tar. The more he tries, the harder it holds, the black slickness sucks her back down. 

He tries until he is panting with effort, until Max murmurs his name and, just slightly, shakes her head. She is no longer struggling. When she speaks, her voice is small, barely hers at all.

“How did you survive here, Will?” she asks.

The shadow stirs around Will, unseen. Will cannot tell that story yet; he does not understand enough. The lie is kind, harmless. “I don’t remember.” 

“You have to remember. I need you to. You lived for weeks in the Upside Down, so I can too.”

“You’re not…” Will swallows “You’re not in the Upside Down the way I was in the Upside Down.”

“Aren’t I?” 

Will opens his mouth, then shuts it, helpless. How does he explain?

The shadow surges forward, unbidden, and the images pour from it to Will, from Will to Max. 

Max sees them all in her mind; the hospital bed, the broken limbs, her wide, sightless eyes.

Max howls . 

It is loud, far far too loud, and rings into the endless dark. Will does not need the shadow’s shivering warnings to know that something has heard them, that something is coming.

He grabs Max’s limp hand and squeezes it. The other stays, stroking her cheek. She does not respond. Her chest rises and falls in desperate pants and, like in his dream, blood drips and mingles with her tears.

“Max. Max? Something’s coming, Max. I need to lift you, get you out of here…” Only then does he see that the water is rising. “Max!”

He grabs for her, scrabbling for a hold on her arm, her shoulder, the cords of her jacket, but they melt from his hands like ice in summer. Max begins to sink, inch by inch, until only her face remains. She is still looking up, towards Will, her empty eyes beseeching.

“ Will -” she tries, one last time.

Then, sudden and sharp, as though something has grabbed her from below, she vanishes into the black.

Will claps a palm over his mouth to swallow his scream. The shadow is at his side again, tearing at him, dragging him away. The other thing is coming, it tells Will, the Once-Human. Will must go. He cannot be here. 

Will tries to fight but, as ever, he is only weak, only human. His knees leave the ground, then his feet, and the shredding darkness sweeps over him again.

He blinks and the void is gone. Instead, he is in the air, suspended over the moon-dark surface of Lovers' Lake.

And this time, he falls. He lands in freezing water, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs and push him far beneath the surface.

He struggles, but he’s never been a swimmer. Too quickly, his limbs lose their remaining strength, and the small pocket of air bursts from his lungs in useless bubbles. His movements slow, then cease. He starts to sink-

Something grabs him by the collar, hauls him skyward, and everything goes dark.

*******************************************************

Chapter Text

*******************************************************

Someone has buried him, Will thinks. He can’t move, or see, and when he breathes it whistles in his lungs, constricted, like he’s sucking through a straw. He is buried deep down in dark, damp, ancient earth, and it is crushing him. 

Or perhaps it is water; he can smell it, and his skin is cold. Something shuffles in his periphery, and it might be waves, or it might be fabric. Everything is slow, and so, so heavy. His eyelids flutter, brow furrowing.

“Hey,” says a voice like distant thunder, somewhere above. “Hey, ‘you awake?” 

Will’s head lolls and his lips part, letting out a low groan. “No?”

The voice laughs. “Glad to see you can still crack a joke, you lunatic. What the hell were you doing in the lake?”

“The…?” Will’s words pull away from him, sucked into a thick black undertow. He doesn’t want to talk to the thunder right now. It would be much better to sleep.

“Hey. Woah, hey, no. Talk to me, okay? Stay with me.”

“Mmno…” Will does try, but the waters are so far overhead, and the current is strong. “... can’t.”

Something shakes him, just a little. “Not good enough. Talk to me, you dolt. Now. Or I swear I’m pulling out the big guns.” Several seconds pass. Will hears an intake of breath, then “You asked for it. Luke Skywalker is way cooler than Han Solo.”

Will’s eyes fly open. “ Lies .”

 “Absolutely. Got you back though, didn’t it?” The thunder is not thunder, it is Adam. He is looking down at Will and his eyes are laughing, though the lines around them are worried.

“F…” Will shudders, curling into whatever is wrapped around him “F-fuck y-you.”

“You are in no state for that, sunshine.” Will dimly registers that not all of the fabric wrapped around him is blankets. Some of it might be limbs.

“...t happened?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me that. I just found you face down in the lake and thought…fuck, I thought…” Adam sniffs, hard. “But hey, you’re fine. Now, at least.”

“Yeah.” Will nods, cheek brushing something he realises is half sleeping bag, half puffer jacket. He doesn’t own either, so they must be Adam’s. His own coat is on the floor, not far away, but he’s still wearing his jeans and t-shirt. They’re soaked. He shivers again. “Just cold.”

“No shit. Hey, do you think you can change? I swapped your jacket out but uh…you get it.  It’ll be better if you can, you know, because hypothermia and all. There’s some dry stuff by your foot and I’ll turn around.”

Will wants to tell him he doesn’t need to do that, that he doesn’t care, that he’s changed in front of friends all the time, but it’s too many words, so he just nods. By the time he’s shrugged out of his wet things and into sweatpants and a polo that are both too big for him, he’s shaking with fatigue, but the icy fangs in his chest have withdrawn a little. He breathes, fills his lungs for the first time, and almost cries with the mix of pain and relief.

“Done.” he manages, and Adam helps him back into his previous nest of sleeping bag and puffer jacket. Will shakes his head at the last one; he’s seen the goosebumps on Adam’s forearms. 

“You keep the jacket. Can’t both be cold.”

“Don’t you worry about me.” Adam insists, but he does take the jacket, only after making it clear that Will can have it back if he asks. “Feeling better though? You look…less dead.”

Will manages a smile, though his teeth are still chattering “Better.” 

“Good.” Adam smiles back. They’re sitting in one of the dinghies with tarps squashed around them for added cover. The space is small and curved, which means they end up very close. Adam’s arm is behind Will’s back, so Will is flush against his side. The warmth of him bleeds through the layers, like sunshine through wintering trees. 

 It makes sense, conserving heat like this, and he guesses that Adam has been holding him for a while but, still, Will’s face tingles with something more than the late-night chill.

He opens his mouth to say something, but Adam beats him to it.

“Do you want something hot? To drink, I mean? I don’t have heatable food and I’m out of coffee so it’ll just be hot water but…it’ll help warm you up faster. Keep you going until the morning.”

“Til the morning,” Will echoes. 

The reference to another time, to something other than the freezing here-and-now stirs something in the back of his mind. What had happened on the lake? The answer is there, he can feel it, and he reaches out mental fingertips, one palm poised over an inky surface. But, before he can break through, he has the sickening sense of something waiting for him there, poised, watching. He shudders again and retreats to the here and now, to the glow of the camping lamp, the smell of dust and lakewater, and the boy clambering out of their shared nest to set up his tiny stove.

Adam is neither graceful nor quiet as he works, which is a relief and a distraction. Will watches him with low-lidded eyes. Everything is warmly blurry in the yellow lamplight and the ring of stove flames glitters like a long-lost diadem. He blinks and time slips by in the strange way of stupours; Adam is back, pressing a chipped mug into Will’s hand. The surface steams gently.

“Bon appetit,” Adam helps Will balance the mug on his knee. “Think you can get some down you?”

Will presses his lips together and nods. It’s the last thing he wants right now, but he knows enough about hypothermia from health class and Hopper to understand how much he needs to get warmer. The first sip is so scalding that it makes him wince, but Adam holds the mug within reach, patient, until he can try again. Will sips and sips until, at last, he can feel the warmth of it sliding down his throat, spreading into his core like a lit matchstick in a big, dark cellar.

When he is finished, Will lets himself tip sideways, his cheek sinking deeper into the padding of Adam’s jacket. Dimly, he thinks he can hear Adam’s heart, steady and strong. 

Exhaustion pulls at Will, gentle and unrelenting, like the lulling current of a river. He curls into the comfort of being held, lets out a long, soft sigh and something deep, deep down unspools in sleepy contentment.

Will closes his eyes and drifts downstream.

**

“You sure you’ll be okay?” Adam asks, and not for the first time.

It’s dawn. Neither of them are sure how early; Will’s Casio died in the lake and Adam doesn't have a watch. They’re sitting on the camping chairs, assembling a breakfast of old hamburger rolls, sachets of ketchup from some fast-food chain, and strips of cheese and beef jerky. Will has already made several jokes about how Adam should have scurvy if he eats this shit daily, and Adam has shrugged them off with a laugh.

It’s a surprisingly tranquil morning. The rift in the lake is bleached of its ferocity by the pale early light and all they can hear is water, birdsong and each other. The chilly air, fresh from the overnight lake, cools Will’s cheeks. It has left tiny shining beads on the tips of Adam’s hair. 

“Yeah. Of course.” Will takes another large bite of pseudo-hamburger so he doesn’t have to say anything else. 

“And you really don’t remember anything about your midnight swim?”

Will shrugs and shakes his head. It’s not a complete lie; he knows the memories are there, and where they’re hiding, but some dark instinct tells him that opening that door here, without the safety of a lab or at least of being alone, would not be a good idea. What remains is a sense of urgency, a need, now that he is no longer physically collapsing, to get help as fast as possible. 

He isn’t blind; he sees the concern in Adam’s face; the hurt at being shut out after everything he’s done for Will since last night. But how could Adam ever understand? He has never met a demogorgon, never fought the Upside Down, never fled across the country or made a sensory deprivation tank in a late-night pizza joint’s freezer. He doesn’t have the nightmares that are all the scarier because they happened. He hasn’t become so used to being around death that it feels more like an encore than a surprise. Adam is not from that world, and he does not deserve to have it forced upon him.

Adam protected Will, so it’s Will’s job to protect him too.

After breakfast, Will heads to Reefer Rick’s main cabin to get changed and use the bathroom. The water is greyish and definitely not drinkable but it helps to rinse some of the stagnant lake-water off his skin. Shrugging into his old clothes is much less pleasant, but he doesn’t want to have to explain the new outfit to anyone else. When he comes back, he finds Adam back in the dinghy, his feet kicked up against the side and his nose in a book.

“What’s that?” Will asks, leaning his elbows on the dinghy’s edge.

“This?” Adam turns the book towards Will. “ Watchtower . Elizabeth Lynn?” On the cover, a man is riding a horse out of a mountain fortress, his green cape and golden hair blowing in the wind. 

Will shakes his head. “What’s it about?”

“What isn’t it about?” Adam grins, wafting the book like a conductor’s baton. “Stolen birthrights, sword fights, magic, intrigue, vengeance!” he pauses “And it’s…different. Can’t tell you too much but I found it…relatable? You kind of remind me of one of the characters, actually.”
“Really?” Will leans in a little “Which one?” He reaches for the book but Adam plucks it out of reach, eyes dancing.

“Spoilers, Mr Byers,” he says “Read it and you’ll see.” Will’s pulse stutters, just a little.  Was there something else in the way he said that? 

What sort of something, Will? What exactly are you looking for?

Will hesitates too long and the moment vanishes. Adam stretches like a cat and climbs out of the boat, landing on the dusty floor with a bounce of his sneakers. 

“I guess we’d better get you back.” He says “Which way is home?”

“Wh-? Oh. Um.” Will frantically tries to think of somewhere that is both on the way to his house and also not far from the lab. “Cornwallis?”

“Oh yeah, I know that.” Adam gets his dry denim jacket and shrugs it on “That’s a way away. I’ll walk you there.”

“I...I’m not sure…” Will’s heart thumps in his throat. 

“Half way, then.” Adam counters, unruffled, “Or whenever you get sick of my company. I won’t steal your secrets, Will Byers. Scout’s honour.” He dips his head and looks up at Will, sweet and shy, and Will’s face burns again.

“O-okay.”

Despite the pulse-racing start, the actual walk from Lovers’ Lake to Cornwallis is calm and uneventful. Their conversation circles back to Watchtower, then branches off into other books that they’ve both read, where they gush about their favourites and rant about tropes that bore them both. The tension in Will’s shoulders begins to ease. It’s so good to think and talk about something normal : fantasy monsters that don’t spring off the page to bite him, feelings and fates he can close up and come back to later, rooms he can be in without anyone wishing he wasn’t.

At some point, Will brings up D&D. When Adam admits he doesn’t know much about it, Will damn near trips over his own feet. “Wait, you don’t play D&D?”

“Hey! I know enough.”

“I thought you knew Eddie?”

“Hah! I knew him long before he was Mr Hellfire. Books were all we had back then, just like the good old days,” the last part is a mocking sing-song, accompanied by a wink that makes Will’s face flush. “You play, right? Who else is in your Party?”

“Oh, so you know about Parties?” Will raises his eyebrows, grinning when it makes Adam laugh again.

“I’ve absorbed a few things here and there. So, tell me?”

“I guess it started with four of us, back when we were kids,” Will relents “Me, Dustin, Lucas and Mike, but now we have a few more people that dip in and out, or are honorary members. We’ve switched it up a few times but mostly we have the same sort of roles. I’m the Cleric, Lucas is the Knight, Dustin is the Bard and Mike, he’s my best friend, and he’s the Paladin.” He focuses on keeping his voice level when he talks about Mike, but the tips of his ears still burn.

“Sounds cute.”
Will promptly has a heart attack. “ What ? No he’s not cute, what are you talking ab-!”

“I meant the Party , Will. Calm down.” 

“...oh.” Will feels two inches tall. “That…ah…makes sense.”

“So a Cleric, a Knight, a Bard and a Paladin,” Adam muses, tapping his chin with a finger. “I have no clue what those are. Knights throw a sword around and Bards sing? And Clerics are a bit like Pastors in church?”

“Close? But only if you squint.” Will laughs “Bards are the masters of song and speech, and Dustin’s always singing stupid tunes, making us laugh, and he sort of sucks at combat but comes up with the most genius loopholes to screw with whoever is DM. Sometimes he’s more like our Artificer though, because of all his inventions, so he took a couple of levels in that. Knights are all about adventure and quests and fighting the good fight. Lucas is the only one of us who can pass as a jock, and he’s the one who always came up with something sharp to say if someone picked on us at school, or he would shoot things at them with his wrist-rocket. I guess he’s like our knight in shining armour.”

“And what about Sir Mike the Paladin-Who-is-Definitely-Not-Cute?” 

“Don’t call him that!” Will tries to snap, but his voice squeaks like a sneaker on lino. “Paladins are the leaders, the ones that inspire us and show us where to go. They’re the warriors, the heart, the real heroes.”

“So just like a Knight?”

“Yes…no?” Will grapples “Paladins are like…holy knights, I guess? They believe in truth and justice and righteousness and often fight for a cause or something.” He bites his lip “This is boring isn’t it? Too much detail?”

“Not at all.” Adam slows a little bit so he can look at Will, radiating sincerity. “You said there are some guest players too, what do they do?”

“Well, there’s El, I mean Jane, and she’s our mage. That means she’s got magic powers, basically.” he weighs his words carefully, not wanting to linger on why El has that role. “And then Max, who’s a Zoomer.”

“I definitely haven’t heard of a Zoomer.”

“Neither has anyone else,” Will fakes an eye-roll “But she got away with it because she was dating Lucas. It’s just someone who moves fast.”

“ Was dating? Did they break up?”

“No, I mean, yes, but she…” Will stumbles, hard, and has to put his hand on a nearby tree to keep himself upright. The well of memories surges in his mind, and a howl that can only be Max’s echoes in his ears.

“What’s wrong?” Adam steps towards him, one arm out as though there to catch him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring up something painful…”

“No, it’s fine.” Will straightens, wiping clammy palms on his half-dry jeans. “C-clerics are the last one to tell you about, I guess. I’m a Cleric. We’re the healers, and we have magic, but it’s not like a mage’s; it doesn’t come from us. Cleric magic comes from a god that we serve, one that we understand like no one else does, so it lets us use its power in return. Like a link, a conduit.”

“Sounds like the coolest one yet.”

“Nah.” Will shrugs “Besides, I don’t make a great cleric. When people get hurt in the Party I never know how to help them, I can’t make them feel better. And I don’t…I’m not powerful in the way my friends are. I’m a weak link. A bad friend.” Too late, he realises he is talking about more than the game, and that his voice is choking with tears. Mentioning Max has fractured something in him and now the words are spilling out, too real, too raw.

“You’re not a bad friend, Will.”

“But I am. I ask too much. I want…too much.” Will takes a shuddering breath. It takes all his energy to keep walking. “Last night, before I came to the lake, Mike and I had a fight and…and…and I don’t know if Mike is - I don’t know if he’ll ever speak to me again.” 

“What was the fight about?”

“Nothing.” Everything . “I…he said something dumb and I got way too angry but it hurt and I just want him to understand and be…I just want things to go back to how we were when D&D was all we had to worry about and we were- oh. We’re here.”

He stumbles to a stop. The wood has cleared and Cornwallis crosses their path; a stripe of tarmac, jarringly mundane. 

“I should go.” Will says, horror mounting as he realised how close he had just been to telling a stranger all his secrets. “It was, ah, nice seeing you again and-”

“You sure?” Adam says, watching Will with obvious concern. “I can still walk you the whole way, you know. You don’t look so good, I’m not sure you should go alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” Will insists. “It’s not far and…and I was just joking before. Or, I wasn’t serious. I was messing around. Just tired. You know.” Fuck, he’s a horrible liar. A horrible, terrible no-good bad liar.

“I get it,” Adam says, and that can’t possibly be true, but the look on his face makes Will almost believe him. He looks abruptly younger, frailer and… sad . Sad in that bone-deep way, when you know you are the only cause. Will knows that sadness. He’s felt it too. “Do you know what you’ll say when you see him? Mike?”

Will’s stomach twists; he fidgets. “I…I don’t know. I’m still not sure what I…or  if I… or if he…” Will swallows, giving up. This is too big for words, even if he was any good at them in the first place.

“It’s okay.” Adam steps into the silence “You said he’s the Paladin, right? Always on the side of righteousness? Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy to see a friend in pain and not forgive them.”

“Yeah.” Will forces out the word, trying not to think too much about Adam’s use of friend .

Adam watches him carefully, and lets the silence stretch another few seconds before he speaks again. “As for what you said when he hurt you…at least you got the chance to say it, you know? You had the chance to be brave and you took it and I…not everyone does that.” His voice is smaller, quieter than it has been.

“You can always talk to me, you know?” Adam murmurs “If you want to. I reckon people who are different ought to stick together. Help each other.” There is no agenda there, or expectation, only sadness; their same, shared sadness. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” Will steps a little closer; not enough to touch, but enough to be in Adam’s orbit, enough to show that he’s there. “Adam?” he says, quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For…” he thinks of the change of clothes, the drying sleeping bag, the curve of the dinghy, the steaming mug, and a man in a green cape riding out from a mountainside fortress. His lips quirk up at the corners, just a little. “For everything.”

“Anytime, Will Byers,” Adam says with that crooked, gentle smile. “Anytime.” 

Will raises a hand to give him a tiny wave, suddenly shy, but Adam steps in before he gets the chance. He pulls Will into a hug, drawing him deep into the soft space within his arms, made softer by their double layers of jackets. Will is suddenly aware of the shape of Adam’s body, of the way he is tall enough for his shoulders to slot perfectly over Will’s, of how Will’s temple tucks easily into the groove between Adam's collarbones.

The hug lasts only a moment before they break apart and say their goodbyes. Too quickly, Adam and Cornwallis vanish between the trees. 

Will’s body feels warm the whole way back to the lab.

That is, until he sees the front gate hanging on its hinge like a broken tooth. The guard in the box is sprawled beneath it, his body motionless, skin raked raw.

From within the lab, a very familiar voice begins to scream.

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Chapter Text

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Will clears the broken gate and sprints into the building before his brain can catch up. Blood-splatters pepper the walls, larger streaks smeared on the laminate floor, tacky and slick beneath his soles. But no more bodies. No more yet .

The scream comes again, like a knife in the chest. He vaults across the entrance hall, his heart constricting as he passes the exact spot where Bob Newby died. No one else will die here, he resolves, not today. Not on his watch.

Because it is his watch now.

As he runs, Will drops the careful walls holding last night’s memories. He finds that dark, simmering place in his centre and plunges into it. Images burst through his mind in zaps and splashes: two boys shaking in a lonely room. Tears roughly scrubbed. A slur and a terrified, tear-stained face. Shadows. Years surging together like waves on a stormy sea. His childhood self, reaching for a strange, dark friend. Hunger. The void. Max’s face, streaked with new blood and salted tears. The lake, closing over, driving the breath from his lungs. 

The shadow, the thing they called the Mind Flayer, threads through it all. Will can feel it with him, close as cold breath on the back of his neck. His skin prickles, energy fizzling down to his fingertips. It crackles, pitch dark and ready to spring. All he has to do, Will knows, is ask.

He scales a stairwell and finds the first corpse, but it isn't human. 

The demogorgon is huge, at least a head taller than Hopper and doubly broad, its fanged, fleshy face horrifying even in death. Black blood drips from its maw and it lies beneath a starburst of flesh and cracks on the wall, as though it has been hurled against it at speed.

Eleven .

He has a full second to admire her strength before another one emerges from the twist of stairs one floor above. It launches down at him with an ear-splitting screech. 

Will throws up an arm. For the first time, he calls to the shadow. 

And, delighted, it answers.

The crackling dark lunges out from the line of his forearm. Black air moves like a scythe and the monster's howl severs into a wet gurgle as it falls, bisected, to the floor. 

It rolls down the steps towards him in a slew of flesh. For a second Will stares at it, panting. Multicolour sparks burst in his vision. He's going to pass out. He’s going to pass out.

The shadow curls over him, cool and steadying. Will inhales the smell of his mother’s treat-day pancakes, the warmth of Jonathan’s hugs, the roll and clack of a D&D die. Trust. It is telling him. Allies.

Will's senses (or their senses?) shiver and he spins just in time to see a demodog, creeping low, barely two stairs from his heels. Will, deliriously, mimes stabbing down with a staff, channelling Gandalf. The shadow whips to his fingers, thins and sharpens into the right shape and, together, they skewer the dog through its skull. An amazed laugh bursts out of Will, half hysterical. Wow. He's doing this. He's really doing this. 

They are doing this. It's seamless, effortless, impossible. 

His conversation with Adam flashes back to him, about the nature of clerics.

"Cleric magic comes from a god that we serve, one that we understand like no one else does, so it lets us use its power in return. Like a link, a conduit.”

In a fucked up world where the shadow is a deity, Will Byers may be a better cleric than he thought.

Two more demodogs appear below him, claws scraping each stair like knives on a whetstone. The shadow surges again but Will shakes his head; he doesn't need to go that way, and he must save his strength. 

Eleven needs him.

She is no longer screaming, but she is alive; he can feel her energy, like a clear wellspring, on the floor above. Her power is definitely there, but it's failing. She's exhausted, and scared.

He kicks off in her direction, up and out of the stairwell and into the maze of white corridors. The lights are dim overhead, the air thick with the miasma of the other world. Fear snatches strength from his legs, but the shadow settles over his back, like a mantle, like wings. 

Yes, Fly. It sends, seeing the image in Will's head. Fly together . 

Will puts on a final burst of speed and, at last, he finds them. 

The whole party is there, which is both a relief and terrifying. They are at a three way corridor intersection, huddled in an alcove with a shut office door just behind them. El stands at the front, feet planted, arms wide to shield her friends. She swipes blood from her nostril, eyes flashing, her teeth bared with rage and effort. 

Lucas and Mike are pressed into the corner, both bruised and filthy. Lucas is leaning heavily on Mike, licking blood from a split lip, his leg seeping scarlet below the knee. 

Beyond the door, Will can hear Dustin grappling with something metal and hissing shit shit shit shit under his breath. His brilliant brain has thought of something that'll save them, eventually. But it's hopeless, Will knows. There isn't time. 

And more monsters are coming. 

One demogorgon lies dead at El’s feet but two more tower over her, ready to lunge. Their spines undulate like snakes, heads raised like cobras, poised to strike. 

Will holds his breath, throws a vision to the shadow, and claps his hands hard together. Vicious black spikes leap from the walls on either side of the beasts, running them through in a hundred sickening places. They unsheathe a second later and the demogorgons drop, twin bloody ruins. 

El looks over them and sees Will for the first time. Her eyes go wide and her lips move, shaping his name, but the sound is swallowed by another animal scream, and another, and another, and another. 

The lights in every direction flicker and die and, in the reaching darkness, more shadow creatures emerge. Will hesitates, his nerve shaken as he realises all three other passages - left, right and behind him - are crammed with advancing creatures. They fill his senses; the old-meat filth of their bodies, their ravenous mouths, their low incessant snickering.

His legs are really shaking now. He can’t do this, he isn't fast enough, there are too many. 

The shadow mingles with his fear and disagrees. Listen . It sends him bat echoes, spiders' webs, roots connecting underground, the tug of a cat's cradle and the humming of a beehive. 

Hivemind . Will understands, and then, like eyes adjusting to a dark room, he can feel it too. It thrums everywhere, the buzz of hornets at the volume of a jet engine. The scared, small, human part of him recoils, begging to run. The wiser, darker part leans into the fray.

Will’s mind ignites, creative energy spiralling from his fingertips. He had never been a hero, but he has grown up with the tales of so, so many. He summons a lifetime of champions in his mind's eye. In that moment, he is Atreyu riding Falkor over a glittering Fantasia. He is Radagast the Brown mastering the creatures of the forest. He is Han Solo swooping down to help the rebels take down the Death Star. For a moment he even imagines himself in Adam’s Watchtower , riding from a mountain citadel with a green cloak soaring behind him. 

The shadow surges, gleeful, to his aid.

STOP. They command, as one, and they speak straight into the Hivemind.

The silence is instant. Every demogorgon and demodog freezes, shrieks snuffed, caught like rabbits in a snare. Will puts his back to his friends so he can see the whole horde and stretches both hands out, palms up and fingers clawed. He is aware of every democreature at once; can taste the adrenaline pumping through their tainted blood. 

The shadow gives him another pulse of power and his outstretched hands reach further still, beyond their physical limits and into the bodies of the beasts. Their chests are glass to him and he can see each of their hearts, fragile balls of flesh and sinew. He closes his shadowed hands around each one, feels them flutter inside his palm; mothlike, crushable. With a bitter thrill, he tightens his grip.

Die. He commands.

And die they do. Their corpses fall as one, like felled trees, and the eldritch stench of the otherworld fills the air. Overhead, the lights judder back to full, clinical brightness. The crawling sense of horror vanishes; Will does not need to look around to know that the threat, at least for now, has gone. 

The shadow stirs and starts to detach from Will. It sends him looped chains, a tight cage and the acrid tang of branded flesh. Consequences. It has helped him, but at great risk, and now it must go.

Will barely has time to react, let alone give thanks, before it wrenches from him  with enough force to bring him to his knees. He gasps, sucker-punched, and falls to all fours. Tears spill unchecked to the floor and his stomach buckles, but he only retches air. The world is harsh and still for several seconds. Will kneels amid the corpses, ears ringing, all alone.

Then someone grabs his shoulders and pulls him into a hug.

“Will!” It’s El, crying too. Her face is a mess and there is blood in her hair. “ Will .”

Will hugs her back with all his strength, which isn't much, considering. God, he loves her. He loves her so much. They sprawl together on the floor, laughing and crying and checking for injuries and then just, finally, holding each other. The others pile in around them; Lucas claps Will on the back and Dustin ruffles his hair too hard, yelling HOLY SHIT BYERS at the top of his lungs. They ask a thousand questions, which he is too tired and dazed to answer. Will just lets himself be held, seen, praised, maybe even loved. His party is alive. They are safe and together and, he hopes, starting to heal from the things that have driven them apart.

He will be their Cleric again and, this time, he will do it right.

It takes a long time for them all to disentangle from their pile and start trying to make sense of the aftermath. They scout the building and find Owens and Murray barricaded in the lab, then Hopper and Joyce, back-to-back and rifles primed, in the cafeteria. Amazingly, the entry guard is the only human casualty; everyone else has managed to hide or flee because the beasts had all been so focussed in their path through the building. They had clearly been aiming for a single group, or rather a single person.

El, used to such things, takes the observation bravely, but she does not let go of Will’s arm until several hours later, when they break apart to get ready for an early night’s sleep. Dustin and Lucas and Mike are lingering behind them, half-heartedly discussing getting a ride back to their families. At the door to her bedroom, El lifts a hand to wave them goodbye, then pauses, her eyes filling with sudden tears.

“Stay?” she asks, looking at each of them. Relieved, they all agree.

A flurry of pillows, sleeping bags and improvised mattresses follow. They pile together like puppies, beds overlapping, limbs sprawled. El turns off the overhead lights and illuminates her sunflower-shaped night-light, bathing the room in a yellow-pink glow. Dustin finds a couple of torches, pulls ghoulish faces in their beams and insists on telling a long (and terrible) ghost story until Lucas threatens him with a pillow to the face. Hopper sticks his head in to say he has told their parents where they’ll be and that he will set himself up as their guard for the night, outside. His quiet, slightly disapproving presence radiates comfort through the door. 

Later, when everyone else has settled down to sleep, Will lies awake a little longer and basks in the moment. The party is assembled and he is, at last, surrounded by friends. Tomorrow, he knows he will have to explain where he has been and what he has learned, what this link to the Mind Flayer means, and how they can use it to help Max. Tomorrow, too, he will have to acknowledge the reason why Mike hasn’t said a word to him since the shadow incident, and why he is now deliberately lying at the edge of their pile, as far away from Will as physically possible.

Tonight though, it is enough for him to have his friends alive and safe and together, even if it is just for a few short hours. Will cuddles into El’s side, kicks Dustin so he turns over and stops snoring, and sinks into exhausted slumber, a tiny smile on his lips.

It is a small, simple heaven, but heaven nonetheless.

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Chapter Text

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Will, as always, wakes first.

His mouth is sour and his hair is sticking to his forehead, too warm in the tangle of bodies. He extracts himself from the nest of sleeping bags and teenagers, taking care not to disturb anyone in the process. They are a funny jumble to look at; El always sleeps utterly still and on her back, hands folded neatly on her stomach, a bit like a pharaoh. Dustin, in contrast, is a full-on starfish, mouth wide and hair mussed. Lucas is face-down, cuddling his pillow like a life raft in the ocean.

And Mike…

He deliberately doesn’t look at Mike. 

Will pads around the room, grabbing someone’s hoodie and pulling it on over his T-shirt, then going back for an extra pair of socks because the coldness of the floor on his soles is an unbearable reminder of the day before. Satisfied, he heads out into the hallways, seeking somewhere with a window, a reminder of trees and green and sunlight to chase away the night.

The passages have a false quality to them at this hour, like theatre props waiting to be dismantled and reveal a cavernous backstage. Will dawdles, taking time to feel the stillness in the air, a reminder that everything is okay, that nothing is here to hurt him.

It works until he reaches the stairwell. 

Something pops on the floor above - plumbing probably- and he whirls around. For a split second he sees the Demogorgon pounce from its perch, feels its claws grab his shoulders and plunge in deep-

He gasps and staggers back into the wall, closing his eyes until the nausea subsides. The wall is cool and smooth at his back; steadying. He takes another slow breath, then one more for luck, and keeps walking.

The feeling lingers as he exits the stairwell and heads towards the Lab’s largest kitchen, where he knows Murray keeps the good coffee. Everywhere he turns, he can feel little echoes of what happened here; the mirage of a tail flicks out of sight behind a doorway, a vent shudders with the weight of a slithering body, a whiff of cleaning fluid twists into something cadaverous between one inhale and the next. 

Is this what people mean when they say a place is haunted? Will shakes his head; it’s just a building. If anything, he’s the one who is haunted. 

He finds the kitchen he was looking for; about the size of the one in the Wheeler house, but without any of their familiar clutter. This place is all bland angles and chipped pine, faded sideboards and industrial carpet. One side of the room has a table, cupboards, a sink and a coffee machine. The other side is a badly-tessellated collection of couches and armchairs, all mismatched and made of scuff-resistant, practical fabrics.

It feels like a hospital waiting room. 

Will gets himself coffee on autopilot and stares into it. The room is silent, save for the cheap plastic clock above the sink which ticks from four thirty to five am. He yawns and wonders if he should have stayed in bed, dozing sleeplessly. No, he knows it wouldn’t have helped. Plus, there is something cathartic about sitting here, alone. He just needs to be Will for a while.

It’s almost six when the door opens again. Lucas comes in, bleary-eyed and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He’s still limping a little from the gash he got on his shin from one of the demodogs. He crosses the kitchen without noticing Will and bangs through several cupboards before he finds the one with the cups.

“Lucas?”

Lucas almost drops his mug. “Shit! Will ? What are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep anymore.”  

“Oh. Uh, I guess me neither.” Lucas tries to smile but it flickers out too quickly. There are deep shadows under his eyes. He stares at the coffee machine, lost, for several seconds. Will sees the tense hunch of his shoulders; Lucas’ jock swagger has well and truly gone after the events of the last month. He looks like he is carrying the weight of the world. Will gets up and gently takes the mug out of Lucas’ hands.

“Sit down,” he says. “I’ll make the coffee.”

He dumps his own (now cold) brew down the sink and gets to work. Behind him, Lucas collapses onto the couch with a groan, rubbing his face and wiry hair with both hands. As an afterthought, Will toasts them both a bagel - peanut butter for him, cream cheese for Lucas, and brings them over on mismatched plates.

By the time he is done, Lucas has burrowed into a corner of the couch as though he’d like it to swallow him. Will lays down the breakfast offering and retreats to a separate chair, careful not to crowd him. Lucas eats like a starving man. Will nibbles at his own food, watchful. These things take time with Lucas, he knows, and food always helps.

The thought brings up a flurry of memories; Lucas at so many different ages, always first at the snack table, always there with a joke or a line that is the perfect blend of pointed and hilarious. Lucas, their knight; brave and true.

Will has missed him.

Lucas chews through the last mouthful of bagel, swallows, then exhales long enough for his shoulders to droop and lose some of their tenseness.

“Thanks.” he says, and Will smiles.

“Anytime.” He waits “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Lucas says immediately, then, after a longer pause “No, I guess. No.” He sips the coffee, wincing. “I just…it’s just…Max isn’t doing great. There’s been no improvement and one of the doctors said something about life support the other day and I just…I can’t stand it. I’m so angry , Will. I’m angry all the time, for what’s happened to her, for what happened to Hawkins…Hell, I’m angry at everything that’s happened to us since sixth grade . All I want to do is hit something, but everything just sits there and stews inside me because there’s no one I can hit. And even if I could, that won’t solve anything; it won’t close any portals, or kill Vecna, or bring her back.” his voice cracks. “I guess all I can do is try and mend things instead. Will…I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you, before, when you had that vision of Max. I said so much stupid shit and you didn’t deserve it.”

“Lucas, it’s fine. It did sound bad and…I know you know about Lonnie. I would have done the same.”

“Sure you would,” Lucas shoots him a wry look “Like you’ve ever held a grudge in your life. You’re too forgiving, Will the Wise.”

Will stifles a laugh “No one’s called me that in ages.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” This time, Lucas’ smile does reach his eyes. “Are you okay though? After yesterday, everything that happened…it was the Mind Flayer, wasn’t it? I know you tried to explain it to us yesterday but we were all pretty scared and tired and you were wiped out and…yeah I don’t think any of us were making much sense.”

“I can believe that.” All Will remembers of yesterday afternoon is muggy-headed exhaustion, too-bright lights and El’s small hands tight around his elbow. “Yeah, it was the Mind Flayer, or at least, part of it? It didn’t feel like it did when it got me two years ago. We were…communicating, I guess? Working together.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow “So, what, it’s your friend now? The thing that your mom had to burn out of you?”

“No. I mean, yes? Maybe? I…I can’t describe what it was like, but I promise it wanted to protect me, it was helping me. None of you would be alive if it wasn’t for it helping me - it killed the democreatures to save everyone.”

“I dunno, from where I was standing it looked like that part was all you.” Lucas is looking at Will, really looking, in a way he hasn’t for a long, long time. Will sees awe there, certainly, but fear, too, and a small flicker of doubt. “It was definitely you in there, wasn’t it? Like, in your mind?”

“Yes.” Will nods. It’s one of the few things he knows for sure. “I mean, it was there too, but I was always the one in control. Like…like Steve and his baseball bat, you know?”

Lucas is silent for three straight seconds, then he bursts out laughing. “ What ?” he screws up his face  “Will Byers, you did not just compare the Mind Flayer to Steve Harrington and his fucking nail-bat!”

Will can’t help it, he laughs too, leaning into Lucas’ back-slaps and shaking his head, too relieved to be embarrassed. 

“Holy shit, just look at us.” Lucas says, wiping his eyes “What the hell is wrong with us? We all nearly died last night and yet here we are having a conversation over coffee and bagels like it’s just another Sunday - how messed up is that?” He pauses, and his smile dims a little “Aren’t we allowed to freak out? Aren’t we allowed to be…I don’t know…kids that can step aside and let someone else do this and let us be normal?”
“I’ve done plenty of freaking out.” Will tries to make it sound like a joke, but he still slides his arms around his own waist, hugging himself absently. “I guess it’s like what you were saying about wanting to hit things; what does freaking out actually achieve? It’s happened to us so many times now that we’ve basically forgotten how.”

Lucas snorts “Tell that to Mike.”

“What?”

“Tell Mike that none of us freak out anymore, because that’s exactly what he was doing last night. I haven’t seen him so panicked since Starcourt Mall. Sure, we were all scared, but even before the demo-things turned up? Right after your fight? Man, he was destroyed . He ran and got all of us then, I swear, lapped the lab about a hundred times, screaming for you. And you know he doesn’t run anywhere ever. Owens was going to get him a sedative, though that was before the monsters showed up and everyone started running. I don’t know what exactly happened between you, but it shook him up. A lot.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Will squeezes himself a little tighter “Watching someone get possessed must be…scary.”

“And?”

Will frowns, “And what?”
“ And what happened with you and Mike before that? No, don’t brush it off,” he warns as Will’s mouth opens. “Dustin and I aren’t idiots, and neither is El. You were fighting about something before the whole Mind Flayer thing happened, and you guys never fight. It’s one of the whole cornerstones of our gang, has been since we were, like, seven. So, spill.”

“I…” Will knows his face is burning, but he can’t help it. Panic and relief war in his chest; Mike hasn’t told Lucas. Or not yet, anyway. But that means Mike’s given him nothing but silence to hide behind. When Will speaks again, it is barely a whisper, like a conjuration he isn’t sure he wants to make real. “What did Mike tell you? About what happened in my room?” 

“Not much, honestly. You were fighting, something about El using the tank, then he said something stupid - he wouldn’t tell us what - and then the Mind Flayer just…burst out of you and knocked him back and when he looked up you’d disappeared, like it had taken you again.” Lucas half-shrugs, palms turned to the ceiling “That’s what he kept yelling - that it had taken you, that he had to find you and save you and keep you safe. Over and over.”

“Did he…he didn’t say anything else?”

Lucas frowns “Anything else ? Dude, he said you got swallowed by a freaking shadow beast and vanished, I thought that would be the main headline? What-” 

The door closes, loudly, from across the room. They both flinch and turn to see Mike heading for the kitchen, very deliberately not looking at them. 

He grabs the pot of coffee Will made and fills two mugs. Will wants to tell him that El doesn’t drink coffee, but the words die in his mouth. Instead, like the pathetic, starving soul that he is, he stares, absorbing every little detail of his best friend.

Mike’s in his ‘good’ pyjamas, the ones he only wears when he’s somewhere unfamiliar, or less comfortable (like when they’re at Dustin’s, because his mom never leaves them longer than 30mins without checking in). They’re dark navy with a faint, reddish plaid pattern, and made of brushed cotton so his whole outline looks just a little fuzzy. They’re long enough for him but far too wide, so the neck gapes, exposing a V of delicate collarbones, the lines of his Adam’s apple and pale narrow neck. 

Instead of socks or slippers, he’s got those stupid sliders that he bought for California. He looks rumpled and silly and vulnerable and all Will wants to do is put his arms around his waist and sink into the soft ridiculousness of him, breathe it in and savour it forever.

“Hey Mike!” Lucas says “Do you want a bage-”

“ No .” Mike snaps “No. Er, I…I’m fine.” . His eyes find Will’s for the briefest of seconds and they’re so cold . Will shudders and, panicked, realises he is about to cry. Mike puts creamer in one of the coffees, gives it a stir and heads out, walking so fast that coffee sloshes a little onto the floor. 

Lucas gapes into the silence that Mike leaves behind, then turns to Will. “Seriously, what did you do to him?” 

“I…” Will tries, but the tears block his throat. His eyes fill and his vision blurs. He can’t stop it. He can’t hide it. It’s all too much.

“Oh shit, Will.” Lucas draws him over to the couch beside him “I’m sorry, man. C’mere.”

“I can’t tell you.” Will sobs into the shoulder of Lucas’ sweater “I can’t , Lucas.”

“Okay.” Lucas pats WIll’s shoulder, awkward but sincere. “You don’t have to. But I’m here, yeah? You know I’m here.”

Will nods, sniffs, and nods again. Quietly, he hates himself for wishing he was leaning into a brushed cotton shirt instead of Lucas’ clean grey hoodie.

*****

“We should really shave your head.” Dr Owens tells Will as he glues the last contact patch onto his temple. “But I’m afraid your mother put her foot down.”

“According to Steve 'The Hair' Harrington, you’d have been doing me a favour.” Will quips, managing a wobbly smile. 

They are sitting in one of the smaller rooms near the NINA lab. Will is perched on a narrow bed in the centre of the room and Owens sits in a stiff plastic chair beside him. In the background, the EEG bleeps and whirrs. It is early afternoon and, for the first time that day, they are somewhere quiet.

The original plan for the morning had been to sleep in but everyone had found themselves awake at dawn anyway, having slept lightly through anxious dreams about the events of the day before, and were down in the kitchen, blurrily making breakfasts, by 6.30am. Luckily, that had still given Will enough time to cry himself out, then wash his face and agree with Lucas not to tell anyone else. 

The morning chaos was soothing for a while. Everyone, armed with bagels, cereal and Eggos, congregated on the slouchy grey seats, balancing mismatched plates and styrofoam cups balanced precariously on unwise surfaces, murmuring to each other about nothing in particular. Joyce and Hopper had arrived shortly before seven. Jonathan, Robin, Steve and Nancy had been in town the night before, so would be joining them around lunch.

Will had fidgeted and chewed through a breakfast that tasted of cardboard. Worse, Joyce kept rubbing his shoulder and feeding him more Eggos until he stacked his plate under El’s to get it out of reach. Every touch, every glance, every word, no matter how kindly meant, stung, like his body was one huge frayed nerve. He sat with an (untouched, too-sweet) coffee on one knee, the other one bouncing with nervous energy, and longed for somewhere to hide. 

Owens had arrived at seven fifteen, focussed and calm in his regulation lab coat, and a collective sigh of relief had gone through the group. Owens wasted no time in delicate small talk; he poured himself a black coffee and sat down in front of Will.

“Are you ready to tell us what happened?” he had asked, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

Will had set his cup aside and let it all spill out, from the first nightmare, to the shadow taking him, to the return from the lake. Everyone listened, deathly silent, as he described coming back to the lab, calling the shadow to him and tapping into the hivemind to wipe out the creatures all at once. Owens had taken notes throughout, asking simple, straightforward questions so Will couldn’t slip off into memory.

Will had looked straight at Owens as he told the story, keeping his face and voice as neutral as he could bear. When he described what happened with Max, Lucas had to step out for a few minutes, returning with Dustin’s arm around his shoulders, his face ashen and his eyes fever-bright. Will, heart aching for causing his friends pain, made sure he focussed on the most helpful information, skimming around the exact logistics when he thought he could get away with it. 

The only thing Will deliberately left out was any mention of Adam. The party would only disapprove of involving another outsider. Plus, Adam was living in that dirty, far-out hideaway to process what he’d been through; if he wanted company, he would be in the refuges with everyone else. Will won’t be the one to shatter that for him. He also left out the part about what exactly he and Mike were arguing about when the shadow first made its appearance. Mike, notably, did not add anything either. 

Mike had been silent for the whole proceedings, finding little things to busy himself with that will keep him from staying in one place too long, or finding himself alone with Will. He was trying to be subtle about it but, as with everything involving Mike, his presence and emotions filled the room.

Will was hyper aware of every twitch in Mike’s expression, every lock of hair tucked anxiously behind his ear, every shift of his long limbs as he wrestled and reacted to what was being said.

El wasn’t stupid; she saw it too. Will spied her shooting Mike increasingly puzzled looks and suspected an inquisition is due later. It was a small mercy when Owens, once Will’s account was over, insisted on taking Will down to the lab for some more tests, as Will knew he would not be there to witness the confrontation (or, doubtless, the sweet reconciliation).

Now, as they sit facing each other in the small examination room, Owens tries to give him a reassuring smile. 

“I thought you gave me a clean bill of health,” Will says as Owens straps on the last device; a heart rate monitor.

“After some electrolytes and two good square meals, yes, I did.” Owens agrees, not looking up from his task “This is more investigative than diagnostic.”

“What does that mean?”

“Will…” Dr Owens sits back and looks at him carefully “How much do you remember of your previous time here? When the…ah…shadow creature had you in its power?”

“Not much,” Will admits. “Flashes, sometimes.” It’s not quite a lie; the flashes are a part of his daily life now, sometimes barely a ripple, sometimes waves that knock him off his feet for minutes at a time. They aren’t memories so much as feelings and static, no details that would be helpful here. Will shifts so he is sitting on his hands, hiding his shaking fingers. This is okay, he tells himself, Owens is going to help him. Owens has always tried to help him. 

The debatable part is whether he ever succeeded.

“Memory gaps are not uncommon in those who have experienced traumatic events,” Owens acknowledges “I imagine that it affects us all to some degree. However, in your case, as someone who has undergone the most, ah, long-term encounters with the other world, yours are likely to be more extensive. I…well, the team and I, believe that there may be something in those gaps that could provide greater insight into how this connection has been formed.”

“You’re saying I might have repressed memories, like El did?”

“It’s a possibility. Although, in your case, the memories will be from your internal world rather than what we witnessed in the lab, from the outside. Not that there was much that I managed to get at the time that was helpful,” he makes a small, wry grimace “Eleven was not exactly a forthcoming interviewee but you…you were a closed book.” His smile turns rueful, but fond. “A closed book with a steel, padlocked cover."

Will fidgets “I didn’t see the point in talking about it much. I thought most of what I saw were dreams and those that weren’t…the now-memories…I didn’t want to remember.”

“That is understandable.” Owens lifts a hand, doesn’t know what to do with it, so puts it down again. “After it forced access into your consciousness, I imagine your instinctive reaction to the Mind Flayer-”

“I don’t think that was the Mind Flayer.” Will insists. This isn't the first time he has been through this. “Well, yes, it was in a way, but it was being used, like an instrument, on me. It wasn’t what it wanted.”

The others weren’t exactly receptive to the idea. It made sense; once you’ve seen a spider-shaped monster made of human flesh chase you through the Gap, you would understandably be reluctant to see it as anything other than an enemy. 

Owens still looks unconvinced. “Let us hope that this will get us some answers, hm?”

“What if it…” Will chews his lip. It feels worse saying this out loud, like tempting fate. “What if it gets inside me again? Or I let something…else…through?” 

Owens exhales patiently. “You are not the first to fear your abilities, Will. It was the same when Jane-”

“No, that’s not the same.” WIll interrupts “I don’t have powers like she does.”

“Not exactly like she does, no, but..you have a connection-”

“A corruption.”

“No, a connection . After what the others told me happened back there, and the evidence our cleaning staff have been trying to get through for the last twelve hours, it’s a powerful one. I’d say I’m pretty convinced that, whatever you’ve managed to connect to, it’s on your side.”

Will nods, but he thinks back on what Lucas said earlier " You sure it was all you in there?" And suppresses a shudder. Is he sure? Completely sure? 

He blinks out of his stupor to see Owens pushing a small white pot towards him, containing three pink pills. They look…oddly familiar.

“Wait.” Will frowns. “Aren’t those…?”

“Eleven is able to access her abilities by narrowing her sensory world as much as possible,” Owens explains “Yet, when we tried the same for you, it was unsuccessful. Mr Wheeler’s description of what provoked your…reaction…implies that you may benefit from an increase in stimulation, rather than deprivation. Mr Hale overheard our conversation at the time and offered to donate his supply of…well, his supply.” 

“Hale?”

“Mr Argyle Hale.” 

“Oh.” Will hadn’t even considered that Argyle had a surname. “That…explains a lot.”

Dr Owens almost smiles at that.

"Do not worry, our technicians have thoroughly examined the quality and calibrated the dosage to ensure your safety. Our theory is that the use of psychedelics, coupled with proximity to water, might enable you to access a state that is more amenable for your particular abilities. Mr Bauman's theory (which he enjoys sharing often, at length) is that your experience could be more akin to lucid dreaming."

"Right." Will is still nodding, like an idiot. He stops, then just holds himself awkwardly, unsure how to move.

"Are you comfortable with this, Will?" Owens asks "We won't do anything without your consent."

Will nods again, limiting himself to two, but freezes again when Owens brings out something else from beneath the table. It is a pair of cloth wrist restraints, the kind they use on patients in a mental hospital. Will stares at them, mute. Suddenly he is twelve again, sitting in a small shed with his hands tied behind him, bright lights in his eyes while malice crowds into his throat and eyes, choking him, burying him, so that even the love of his family cannot reach. 

"These are a precaution only," Owens assures him "As much for your safety as for ours. Again, our experience with Eleven indicates that hand gestures increase and focus the offensive uses of her powers. Your account of last night also tallies with this. In the event that you…Do not return to yourself…then we can protect everyone in this facility."

Will hears him, but he is far away. He can't stop staring at the cuffs. So, he is no longer Will the victim. He’s dangerous now.

Another memory bursts forth; his small body burning in the tiny wooden cabin. His family’s distorted faces ring him, demonic, and his mother’s eyes are colder than he has ever seen. The smell of flesh and smoke; the way his screams taste of blood. A white-hot stab in his side and an end so wrenching that he knew he would never be whole again.

Will shudders, then squares his shoulders. “What do I have to do?”

"We had this room thoroughly prepared," Owens tells him with measured precision "It is secure and CCTV monitored. We have also taken the liberty of lowering the temperature. l will also lower the ambient light, to mimic conditions you have previously found helpful. This bed is here to ensure you are comfortable and you will be monitored throughout - if you wish to leave, all you have to do is ask. Understood?"

Will wets his dry lips. He has to ask. "Who will…see me like this?"

"Myself and my medical team only, I assure you." Owens understands, in his own way. "Whatever happens in here, we will not share it wider without your express consent, or in an extreme emergency."

Will shudders. He can imagine too many ways for this to become an extreme emergency. 

Owens catches his eye and holds it. He looks older, the lines of his face carved deep by the harsh light. 

“Are you ready, son?” he asks.

“Yes.” Will croaks, barely audible.

Of course, Owens catches it “You sure?”

Will nods and tries again. “Yes, I’m sure.” For the first time in a long time, it feels like he means it. Will tips the pills onto one hand and picks up the water glass with the other. 

Wincing, he swallows them down.

************************************************************

Chapter Text

*******************************************************

Owens leaves once Will has taken the pills, audibly slotting two deadbolts into place. Alone, Will looks around the dimly-lit room. Like everything in the lab, it is low-ceilinged and sparse; the bed is bolted to the floor, covered with thin sheets. The walls are grey and a beige cloud of damp colours one of the upper corners. The camera is a shark-blank eye, watching him from the wall above the bed. 

Should he lie down? He doesn't know.

Are the drugs working yet? He also doesn't know. 

On the other side of the bed from the door is, absurdly, child’s paddling pool. It has a pink flowery pattern and is filled with murky lake water.
“You told us that darkness and water felt like a significant combination." Owens says via the intercom. "As we couldn’t use the tank we thought this would… hell, it’s the only thing Hopper could get at short notice."

"Where did he find it?" Will asks.

“I believe it belonged to his daughter. Sarah.” 

Will's stomach clenches. "I need to be quiet now."

"Sure, just…shout if you need something, alright?" 

And, just like that, there is silence. Gingerly, Will scoots to the edge of the bed. It feels too vulnerable to lie down, but a bit stupid to stand, in case the drugs make him collapse. Do drugs do that? Until today, the strongest thing he's ever taken is Tylenol. 

He stares into the paddling pool. The water is utterly still, yet something about it is ringing faintly in the back of his brain, like a speaker just before the music blasts. 

An idea tugs at him; Will pulls off his socks and shoes and slides his feet into the water. It's very cold, and a bit slimy. He imagines things slithering between his toes, although there is nothing really there. 

How much time has passed now? The room isn’t quite dark enough to cast deep shadows, but it still distorts the lines of the walls. They shift a little in the corners of his eyes, like they’re settling into place.

Will swishes his feet. It’s warm in the room, a little too warm, so the coolness of the water is soothing. Sweat prickles in his armpits as he waits. Is there a clock here? He can’t see one, but he can hear it somewhere in his chest. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. A rhythm, familiar, that he can’t quite place.

The heat is dizzying now. He starts to hum, an old and familiar tune he learned from Jonathan. 

Darling, you gotta let me know. Should I stay or should I go?

A drop of sweat runs down his spine, soaking into the back of his gown. Or is it his T-shirt? He’s in Jonathan’s room, right? Listening to The Clash on his beat-up old radio, head bopping because he knows it’ll make Jonathan give him that rare big-brother smile. Sunlight streams in through the window, making the dust-motes dance, and happiness gathers and swells beneath his ribs, tight enough to hurt. 

It's always tease, tease, tease. You're happy when I'm on my knees

“You like the song right?” Jonathan asks “Like, for real, for real?”

Yes. Will says. Yes, for real, for real. The words are bubbles, pink and yellow, and they mingle with the sunlight. He purses his lips and blows until they dance away, laughing. The bed is really soft, maybe too soft, and his hands sink into it, up to the elbows. The walls are soft too, and they fold in like a badly made pillow fort. Too hot, Will thinks, too hot for the bubbles. His mouth is dry, his lips cracking. It’s too hot for the music.

The blanket walls descend and it gets darker. The golden sunshine is now a fireside at twilight, burnt ochre, scorched. 

One day it's fine and next it's-

black.

Everything is gone. Will lands hard on his back in inch-deep water. The worlds above and below him spin in different directions and all he can do is lie there, the beat still hammering through his body. He can’t move. The water is not water - it pins him down, a bug on a collector’s sticky paper, waiting for the pin. 

For a small eternity, nothing happens. Wet cold creeps along his scalp, down his spine, to the vulnerable creases behind his knees and elbows. 

Help . He thinks, into the black. Help . 

The darkness answers in increments. He notices it first as a burnt-wood taste in the back of his throat, then a flickering at the edges of his vision.Tendrils curl out of the dark, like roots, and surround him. Will turns his head and the sticky blackness releases him, letting him sit up to meet the shadow. 

Visions flurry through his head: open palms, blank paper, the stomach-dropping feeling of something forgotten. Why ?

Will tries to answer, but his thoughts are racing too fast. He sways and pinches the bridge of his nose, hoping the pain will bring him back.

The shadow sends hospital beds, the smell of bleach, pills rattling in bottles. Sick ?

No . But his mind has already linked the shadow’s images to the pink pills he swallowed, the restraints on his wrists, the claustrophobic press of a blood pressure sleeve on his arm. 

The shadow hesitates. An image of pale flowers on a bright windowsill flickers between them; a tentative acceptance. 

Will’s heart swells. He sends pictures back to the shadow; the seething halls of Hawkins Lab, the Demogorgon corpse on the stairs, the faces of his friends breaking into relief as they run forward to hug him. He shares the soaring, aching wonder of being held by those he loves. Thank you. He says. But also, beneath it, is a smoky curl of uncertainty; Why? Why did you help me?

The shadow hesitates; Will sees thin ice on the surface of a lake, a dewdrop hanging from a spider’s delicate web. There is more to this than what he saw the first time, Will realises; more than one creator admiring another. Something else happened in that first visit to the Upside Down, another puzzle piece tucked between yesterday’s alliance and Will’s childhood survival. 

Then, like an unspooling thread, the shadow decides.

Because.

The flowers become a gloved hand, palm up. Come.

Will takes it, and time pulls in around them, drawn thin like pinched silk. They trickle from the void into the Upside Down, to the woods around Castle Byers, down a thin deer-path that leads to Cornwallis, three years into the past. Together, they watch as a small boy walks down the centre of the road, his jeans too long, his jacket scuffed and stained after his first night in the woods. The shadow hangs over him, half-cloud, fascinated.

The small boy speaks.

Look . He says. We call these trees. This one is a Sweetgum, and this one’s Honeylocust. Up there, that’s Flowering Dogwood.

The shadow follows the boy’s pointed finger and curls around each tree, sampling the shapes of the leaves, running down the rivulets that form their trunks, each one different. Each one new.

Down here are flowers. The boy says again, finding a small roadside patch and touching each one lightly. Cardinals. Ragwort. Columbines. These strange new things are more delicate than the trees, so the shadow flits over each with reverent care. They are dull and desiccated, yet the shadow sees them both the way they are and the way the boy remembers them, at once grayscale and technicolour.

They move on together, following the not-river and its slick, black shape. Roads . The boy explains. Larrabee. Cherry. Randolph. Sinai. The shadow flickers high and low, mimicking their curves, their corners, and the way they connect. It is…pleasing…like roots, like tributaries. These, it understands. 

The roads clump together, flowing around large squared shapes with pointed tops. The shadow lingers at the boy’s shoulder, uncertain, but the boy leads on, naming everything they see. His words are shining threads, stitching understanding over the fear.

Hawkins. The boy says. Houses. Garage. Mailbox. Front door. Windows. Then, as they reach the wider streets. Cinema. Junkyard. Cemetery. Diner. Church.

The shadow is a collector of treasures, a hoarder of all things crafted with care. This world, from the mind of the boy, is built with detail born only of love. It is beautiful; a gift it will never repay. Never forget.

The shadow does not know of thanks, or debt, or friends. It does not know of care and understanding, of bonds and loyalty. It knows only the forces of life and death, danger and safety. It will use these crude tools to repay the boy for these precious, otherworldly things.

Later, when it brings the boy food, the boy gifts it with more words. At first he is frightened, with little to offer beyond pointing and names. Slowly, he strings the words together, glittering links of gold, and makes them into stories. He tells the shadow about things that cannot simply be pointed at, about homes, about art, about writing and books and songs and movies. He tells it all with such brightness that the shadow can see it too. The shadow revels. It rests. It forgets itself.

That is its biggest mistake.

It has forgotten that the Once-Human is still hunting. The Once-Human is clever; he does not reveal himself immediately. Instead, he gives them time and stays out of sight, his eyes watchful and footsteps soundless. He sees their bond and he learns of the exchange of pictures and words between them. He finds the golden story-threads; those beautiful, delicate weaknesses. He readies himself to strike. 

The boy is fortunate, in a way, that the hungry forest creatures find him first. They drag him to their lair amongst their other, ordinary prey, and the Once-Human is forced to delay his attack, thwarted and seething. But the Once-Human does not tolerate failure. He will not make the same mistake again. He will come for the boy.

Present-day Will floats and watches from inside the shadow, and feels its dread as though it were his own. Will sends soothing autumn leaves, sunbeams and birdsong. He asks Why? with all the gentleness that he can muster.

The Once-Human is a creator too, the shadow tries to explain. He is a shaper of matter, but he does not coax out the beauty with gentle adoration. No, he snatches and squeezes and forces and bends and breaks until the matter has no choice but to obey him. So it was when he found the shadow for the first time, and gave it its multi-legged shape.

So it will be if he finds the boy. 

As though the mention of the Once-Human has summoned him, the shadow senses something in the air. It flutters and twists, searching. The predator, afraid. By this time, Will can feel it too; the creeping sharpness in the air, the prickling sense of something watching, something coming closer with slow, inevitable steps. The silence shivers and segments, split by four heavy ticks of an eldritch clock. 

He is here.

The shadow swoops down on Will and surrounds him, thickening until Will can see nothing at all. Will hangs in the blackness, hardly daring to breathe. He cannot see, or be seen, yet he knows that this is a mere semblance of safety; if the Once-Human Vecna senses him, the shadow will be powerless to protect him. He is like a thief behind a curtain, knowing one single twitch will give him away.

The shadow moves, answering Vecna’s call, and Will finds a tentative way to see what the shadow sees. The stretching void becomes the fiery hell of Vecna’s innermost lair, blackness retreating to red scorched earth, spiked towers and shredded furniture. 

In its centre lies a familiar shape, her crown of red hair now faded, like autumn leaves after winter’s bite. 

Max whimpers as Vecna approaches, her sightless eyes roving left and right, trying to find him. She lies in a splatter of black and red; it clings to her, holding her body in place. Vecna crouches down, his head cocked to the side, his voice crooning.

“Hello, Maxine.” He strokes a long, clawed finger down her cheek. Max shudders. “Did you miss me? If only you could see yourself. Your suffering is exquisite.”

“Get away from me.” Max spits through bloody lips. “Get away .”

“Oh but where is the fun in that?”

“What do you want from me?”

“My dear Maxine, I want nothing from you. You have already given me the only thing of value; your life. You were the fourth key to allow me to re-enter our world, and there is nothing left of you now but dregs and echoes. I admire you, in a way, to have clung onto life when there is so little of it left. But it is futile, Maxine. Don’t you see? You are merely entertainment until the real challenge arrives. Isn’t that right…Will?”

Vecna turns, his smile gleaming sickle-sharp. His eyes bore straight into Will’s soul. At his feet, Max hears Will’s name and starts screaming.

“ Will ? Will are you there? Please, Will. Please . I’m so scared. It hurts so much. Make it stop. Make it stop. Let me go. Let me go-”

Vecna steps over her, towards the shadow and Will. Another step. Another. His hand comes up, his fingers spread wide like a demogorgon’s maw. Malice radiates from him, tendrils of darkness writhing for Will’s throat.

Between them, the shadow squirms. It jerks towards Vecna, then back around Will, warring with itself and screaming in pain. Will can feel the wrench of its loyalties; one love, one fear, torn asunder. 

Then, impossibly, there is an opening. 

Run, Will Byers.

The words are not said, but felt. A wind blasts through Will, whistling between the very cells of his body. Shadows seethe inside him, as though the Mind Flayer has burrowed  beneath his skin. 

GO .

The force is crushing, a whirlwind, an earthquake, but Will holds on with everything he has. He can no longer hear Max, but he can see her, and she is so close, so very close. He needs to get to her, he has to get her out of here.

But, already, his grip is failing. The shadow, fuelled in its fear, is too strong for him. His fingers slip and the red waste vanishes. Will falls and falls and falls, spinning over and over, down and down and down until-

BAM .

Lights burst on overhead and Will yanks through time and space with a force that jars every nerve in his body. He sobs, grabbing his knees to his chest to shield himself. His shirt is freezing cold, stuck to his back with sweat and lake water. For several seconds he pants into a harsh white nothingness, unsure where he is or if he’s still alive.

“Will?” Owens’ shadow falls over him and broad hands help him to his knees. “Will, can you hear me?” A second small light; a torch, flashes into his eyes. Will winces back, which seems to reassure Owens. “You gave me a fright there, kid, I’ll tell you that.”

“Where…?” 

“You’re in the lab. Hawkins. You’re okay.” Owens presses a thumb to Will’s wrist, checking his pulse. Will watches him for several seconds before realising what is wrong with this picture; where are the restraints? His head is bare too, and he is sitting on the floor rather than the bed. 

The room comes into slow focus, or rather what is left of it. The first thing he notices is the ice; crusting over everything from the bed frame to the slick of water on the floor. It isn’t a delicate frost, but hardened spikes; icicles in all directions, like feral teeth. Scattered over the ice are shreds of something pale, and at first it looks like snow. Then Will picks one of the pieces off his leg and realises it is a torn section of the wrist restraints. And there is a piece of the bedsheet. And the mattress. And the remains of Sarah Hopper’s paddling pool. 

“...did I…?” Will whispers, gaping.

“You did.” Owens nods. There is a sheen of sweat on his temple and his skin looks grey. “Or something did, through you.”

“The camera-” Will begins, but Owens nods to the upper corner of the room, where a black and twisted shape dangles from a single wire. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to.” He sounds like a child whining over a broken toy. Owens helps Will to his feet. Will sways; he feels like he’s been running laps in gym class for a week straight. 

“I know you didn’t, kid. But I hope you understand that, after what we’ve just seen, I can’t let you leave the facility, at least for the time being. It’s for your own safety, and everyone else’s.”

Will stares at him for a long, awful moment. He wants to cry. This is the price of being useful. This is what he must pay in order to be more than a deadweight victim. He swallows the weakness back down.

“I understand,” he says. “But it wasn’t a waste; I saw Max, I…I know where she is, I know she’s alive. When I go back in again, I can-”

“No.”

“What?”

“I said no, Will. I can’t let you try this again, for everyone’s safety, including yours.”

“But Max-”

“I want to help her as much as you do, believe me, but not at the cost of more lives. I’m willing to bet she wouldn’t want that either.”

“You don’t understand.” Will’s ears are ringing. He needs rest, then he can fight this, he can make Owens see. “You said my powers were like El’s, that my connection was useful.”

“And I meant it - at the time. After this,” Owens indicates the ruined room. There are some odd slashes on the floor near Will; four vertical lines. Are they claw marks? “After this, it’s different. Look, I’m not going to lock you up and I’m not going to stop you seeing your friends but, do me a favour, and make sure you stay calm, alright? We need to keep this under control. No caffeine, no sugar, definitely no alcohol, and nothing that’ll get you into an argument. Do you understand me? Look at me, son.”

“But-”

“Will. If you want to help your friends, you need to keep them safe. From everyone .” Owens grips Will’s upper arms like a vice. There it is again, Will realises, just like with Lucas; that mix of awe and doubt. That fear.

Will Byers is a monster once more.

Numb, he nods his way through the rest of Owens’ demands, hearing almost nothing. When Owens lets him go, Will refuses his offer of an escort; his rooms are minutes away and he needs to be alone. 

He heads back through the building like he is in an arcade game; controlling his limbs but not quite inside them. The passages are lit only with low emergency light; at any other time it would scare him, but Will has run out of fear to feel. 

Will does not realise he is passing El’s rooms until he is a few steps from her door. As usual, it is three inches ajar, a bar of warm light falls across his dimly lit path. The Party is enacting their usual Sunday night ritual of pizzas and movies, despite everything that’s happened. Fond warmth trickles through the numbness in his chest.

Inside, he hears raised voices, heckling a scene from a movie he probably knows. He smells sweet popcorn and greasy pizza, hears the shifting of bodies in improvised chairs. He steps around the sliver of light and, as he passes, he hears a throaty laugh that can only be Mike’s. In his unguarded haze, the sound hits like a punch to the sternum. Will quickens his pace, hearing nothing else but the blood pumping in his ears and the quiet groan of the vents overhead. 

He makes it back to his room and fumbles with the key in the dark. It takes at least three attempts and he is shaking by the time he gets it open. Will’s whole body longs to curl in on itself, raw and quivering like a small creature retreating to its burrow.

Just a few steps now. Just a few steps and he will be safe again. 

He is about to go in when he hears Mike call his name.

*******************************************************

Chapter Text

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Just like before, Mike hovers in the doorway, his expression clouded.

Just like before, Will plasters on a smile and braces for impact.

“Oh hey,” he says “You caught me. I was just gonna change then come out and join you g-”

Mike closes the gap between them in three quick strides and pulls Will into a hug.

Will can’t help it, he melts. He presses his face to Mike’s shoulder, inhales the familiar smell of his skin, his hair, his clothes. He revels in the way their bodies fit, the way that only theirs can, like two halves finally made whole.

They stumble inside together and the door shuts behind them. Mike doesn’t let him go and Will clings back just as hard. He needs this so much, like rain after a long, barren summer, like a life raft in a deep-sea storm. There will never be anyone he wants like he wants Mike, that he loves like he loves Mike. 

Oh god , how he loves Mike.

Will’s breath hitches and, suddenly, he’s crying again, his tears soaking into the shoulder of Mike’s jacket. He tries to pull away for a moment, to wipe his eyes, to get a look at MIke’s face, but Mike tightens his grip

“No.” he says “No, not yet.”

“Mike-”

“ Please , Will.” Will’s stomach swoops as Mike shudders through a sob and holds Will tighter, his lips crushed against Will’s hair. “You’re alive.” he gasps “I’m so happy you’re alive, you’re safe. You’re here .” 

Will curls his arms around Mike with renewed gentleness, one hand rubbing slowly across his back. “I’m here.” he says, softly. “I’m okay. Mike, I’m okay.”

“Fuck. I thought I lost you. I really thought I lost you. For good this time.”

“You’re never going to lose me, Mike. I promise.”

“No.” Mike shakes his head, hard, like a little kid “No, you can’t promise. You don’t know .” He leans into Will, like he’s forgetting how to stand. “Can we talk? Please? I can’t stand not talking to you.”

Will guides them to the nearest soft surface, which happens to be his bed. They sit side by side, shoulders brushing a little. Mike scrubs his face with his sleeve. Will tries to stop his head spinning. Silence settles around them. Finally it feels safe enough to speak.

“Are the others still awake?” Will asks. 

Mike nods “Yeah. Watching a movie. Dustin’s organised a marathon for tonight, and Steve brought pizzas. I think we’ve got an hour or so before they notice I’m gone.” He pauses. “Can I…stay here? For a bit?”

“Oh, um. Sure?” Will straightens, wondering if he should drag over the chair and-

Mike grabs his arm. “Don’t.” he says “Just…stay here. Right here. With me, okay? Like we used to?”

Will crumbles. “Okay.”

Mike guides Will down until they are lying side by side. He uses the lightest of touches, smoothing along Will’s sleeves, tugging at his cuffs, adjusting his body so they lie close but not too close. He watches Will with such intensity, like he’s persuading a skittish horse not to bolt, like he has no idea how much Will has longed for this moment and what he would give to make it last forever.

Finally they go still; their bodies mirrored parentheses, heads on the same pillow. The bed is against the wall and Mike is on the outside edge, his body a shield between Will and the door. Will can’t help but curl into the safe feeling that this gives him, at once both familiar and new.

“Hey Will?” Mike says after a few moments.

“Mm?”

“Waffles or pancakes?” Mike lifts his hand and demonstrates; fingers together for pancakes, fingers apart for Waffles.

Will laughs “Are you serious? We haven't done that since third grade."

“Deathly serious,” Mike’s eyes glitter in the low light “Waffles, Will Byers, or pancakes?”

"Waffles." Will brushes his fingertips against Mike's and the touch tingles all the way down to his toes. "Always waffles."

Mike's eyes are impossibly soft as he threads their fingers together, his right hand with Will's left. Will isn't sure which one squeezes first but they both hold on tight. Will wonders if Mike is planning for them to nap like this, like they used to do at sleepovers before they both got too big for a single bed. If Mike does sleep, he won’t mind, but he knows he won’t do the same; something precious is happening here and Will isn't going to waste a single second.

But Mike doesn’t sleep. Instead he moves a little closer and his thumb traces slow circles over Will’s knuckles. Goosebumps race up Will’s forearms. 

Is he…? Are they…?

Their foreheads touch and the world shrinks to the space between them. Will can count every one of Mike’s long, dark lashes. He can feel Mike’s breath on his lips. He closes his eyes, wishing.

“Remember that New Year’s?” Mike says.

Will blinks. “What?”

“New Years. Like, four years ago, maybe?” Mike is smiling, eyes now closed. “We decided we were gonna spend it in my old treehouse, the one my dad took down, like, three months later because it was a health hazard? We spent ages getting every single blanket in the house, loading up with snacks, changing the batteries on our torches and supercomms so we could send signals to Lucas, then we huddled up like this, all set…”

Will breaks into a grin. “And we were only in there for an hour because you got scared.”

Mike’s eyes fly open with mock-outrage. “I did not! It was because you were cold! I was worried about you!”
“No way! You thought there were zombies in Mrs Rodger’s back yard!”

“That was only because of that D&D campaign you’d done - it was SO good, but it scarred me for life!”
“So you admit it then? You were scared.”
“Only if you admit it was your fault!” Mike prods Will in the chest.

“You first.” Will prods him back, laughing.

“No, you first!” They dissolve into a shoving match until they’re both breathless with laughter, faces red. Mike’s right hand is still laced with Will’s left, but their free hands are buried in each other’s sweaters, somewhere between attack and defence. They pause to catch their breath again and a little bubble of silence grows between them. Mike’s fingertip is absently tracing the stripes on Will’s shirt. Will wets his dry lips. Mike’s eyes follow the movement.

“You were always braver than me.” Mike says softly. “Everyone thought it was the other way around, because I’m louder, but…it was always you who would call out the lie, or climb the tree first, or stand your ground when Troy was being a dick to us.”

“That’s not true.” Will shakes his head. “Maybe I did some of those things but…it was never without you. You were the one who showed me how to be brave. Everything I did, it was because you had my back. I knew you were protecting me.”

“But I can’t protect you like that now.” Mike admits, voice thick. “I guess I’m stupid ‘cause it took me this long to realise but… but the other night just made it so clear, you know?” His hand flexes, still gripping Will's sweater. “It scared me shitless, Will. It really did. When I saw the Mind Flayer take you, I…I’ve never felt so useless, so helpless. I couldn’t breathe .”

“But I came back, Mike. And I’m okay.”

“I know. I mean, yeah, I know but-” Mike sniffs, “You had to face it alone. Again. We’re a Party, we’re supposed to do this together.”

“You're making this sound like a D&D campaign.”

Mike’s cheeks go a little pink “I thought you’d like that.”

Will smiles, the small, secret smile he saves just for Mike. “I do. And you’re right; Parties protect each other, but everyone’s got a different job to do. Maybe this time, I’m the one making the Attack rolls, since I’m a proper hero now.” It’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out too raw. Mike lets go of Will’s sweater and cups their clasped fingers, so that Will’s hand is enclosed in both of his. 

“You were a hero before any of this, Will,” he says. “Even if you never found out about the Upside Down, or saw a Demogorgon, you’d still be a hero. That doesn’t mean you’re not badass now though,” he rushes in, as though Will would somehow be disappointed or misjudge the beautiful things coming out of his mouth “You were amazing back there. You didn’t even hesitate. It was…It was…” he shakes his head, gaze distant, wonderstruck. 

Will’s shoulders hunch; embarrassed. “It’s not all me,” he admits “It’s the Mind…the shadow. I just tell it what to do.” 

Will hopes that Mike won’t catch the shake in his voice, but he does. “You know it’s more than that,” he says. “You could have run, but you came into the lab, you found us and you faced down the danger. Like that time when Will the Wise could have cast protection and saved himself, but he cast fireball to save everyone else - remember? But…I don’t want you to think you have to do that stuff to be a hero. You don't have to keep sacrificing yourself for the Party, Will. Not now, or ever. You don’t have to be anything more than who you are. Than everything you are.” Mike takes a deep, shuddering breath and blinks hard. Mike is one of those rare people who look beautiful even when they cry; his tears fall one at a time, each a perfect pearl. “I just wish I could keep you safe. I wish I could be…better. Protect you better.”

Will lifts his free hand and brushes Mike’s cheek, just the lightest of touches, chasing the tear. Mike. His Mike. The courageous paladin with full plate armour over everything but his beautiful, vulnerable heart. 

“We will always need you, Mike,” he promises. “Always. No matter what you do, or don’t do. Who you can and can’t protect. You don’t have to be anyone but yourself.”

“I’ve missed you, Will.” Mike’s voice is breaking. “So much .”

“Me too.” Will whispers. “Me too.” He eases his hands free and pulls Mike in and down so his head is tucked beneath Will’s chin.   Will, foolish and bold, presses a kiss to Mike’s forehead, where his skin meets the soft curve of his bangs. Mike sighs against his chest, peaceful, and the tense lines of his body unwind beneath Will’s hands.

It’s only Mike . Will thinks. It’s only ever been Mike.

They lie like that for a long time, breathing together, not quite asleep but relaxed enough for the minutes to drift by, like leaves downstream.

“Remember that time when you wanted me to dye your hair red?” Will murmurs eventually, using the memory as an excuse to tug at a lock of Mike’s hair. “I don’t know where you got the dye from but you were so determined-”

“Ha. Yeah.” Mike huffs a laugh into Will’s collar “If Nancy hadn’t caught us, fifth grade picture day would have been a riot .” He shifts a little, and Will worries he is going to pull away, but he doesn’t. If anything, he settles closer. “We’ve done so much stupid shit, haven’t we? Remember when you swore you could talk to that one-eyed ginger cat that lived behind the movie theatre?”

“Hey,” Will tweaks Mike’s curl again, teasing “No slander on Mr McApplebees, he was the best. How about that time when you only ate cherry laffy taffy for a week-”

“It has all the nutrients you need, I swear!”

“Oh and I bet it’s totally unrelated to the fact you lost your first tooth days later, before any of the rest of us.”

“Oh yeah! Remember how Dustin freaked out because he thought I could give him mine, and then you freaked out because you thought they’d never grow back!”

“Stooop!” Will jostles him “Was that the same year when we spent half the summer teaching Chester to fetch-”

“…and the only thing he’d get were your mom’s socks! Yep. And when my mom took us to the beach and you saw the ocean for the first time and you asked me if the waves stopped moving when the beach was closed!”

“I was six!”

“And you were adorable .”

“Shut up , Wheeler.” Will cringes and covers his face. Mike scoots higher, so he’s back on the pillow again. Carefully, he peels away Will’s fingers, one by one.

“Only if you never do, Byers.” Mike says, and there is something darkly sweet in his voice,  it melts through Will like molasses, stirring something low in his belly. Will shuffles back, putting some distance between them, but not too much. Luckily, Mike doesn’t seem to notice. He settles deeper into the pillow, looking up at Will with those endless dark eyes. Will’s heart is beating overtime and a slow, delicious ache is swelling in his chest.

It’s so simple like this, so easy. Just him. Just Mike. 

He has never been happier in his life.

But, like everything, it doesn’t last for long.

“I’m not mad, by the way.” Mike says.
“Mad? For what?”

“For what you said…that you’re…that you don’t like girls.”

“Oh.” Will’s voice is barely more than an exhale. 

Mike surges in to fill the gap. “I’m so sorry for what I said when you told me, and if anything I ever did or said before that was the reason that…that kept you from talking to me. I’ll be better, I promise. I’ll never make you feel like that again.”

“It’s okay, Mike.” Will just wants to get back to the delicate thing they had, seconds before. 

“But it isn't .” Mike insists “What you said…I know you were angry but you never lie to me, Will. Like, ever. And you said it was my fault you didn’t tell anyone, right? That’s what you meant back there? That I was being just like Troy and the others.”

“That’s not-” 

“So I want to say I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I’m such a bad friend to you. I haven’t been paying attention, I haven’t seen you. All I’ve been doing is going on and on about my stupid girl problems and my stupid family and stupid insecurities and you were right there and you were suffering and I didnt even see it. Like the letters thing when you were in California- I called you so many goddamn times and the phone was always busy, and then I started a thousand letters but they all seemed so stupid and then…and then the other night when you told me and that was so fucking brave I just…I…I freaked out. It’s my fault the shadow thing got you again, my fault you were in pain for years and you didn’t tell me. I’ve been…the worst - to you, I… Will .”

“Mike, no. Please just-” The gentleness between them is slipping away, like sand through his fingers. 

“I’m supposed to keep you safe. Ever since that day on the swings. You’re my best friend. You’re so fucking important .”

“-just listen . Okay?” Will, unthinking, puts his free hand on Mike’s chest, right over his heart. Mike stills instantly, his dark eyes wide. “I forgive you. I’ve forgiven you so long ago that it doesn’t even matter anymore. It’s not like this is something that just happens all the time. It’s not like people like me are normal. How could you have known? I didn’t even really know myself, not for a long time. It’s only become clear, like, really clear, in the last year or so. Some things changed and…I guess I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

Mike nods, frowning just a little. “In the last year? So, there is someone? That you like, I mean. El said there might be, in one of her letters. Someone that made you know you were…” He hesitates. "If there is, I just want to know - what’s their name? His name."

Ice washes through Will.  "I…I don't want to say."

"Look it’s fine, I bet it’s someone from Cali so I probably don't even know them but I…I’m just…I want to know, okay? You know about El, and about Max, and about Suzie. We’re supposed to tell each other stuff aren’t we? We’re a party. You used to tell all of us everything. You used to tell me everything."

"Not this, Mike." Will says, so quietly "please, not this."

The feeling between them changes, like a cloud over the sun and something soft and vulnerable dies inside Will. Mike unthreads their fingers, rolls off the bed and starts to pace, frustration radiating off him in waves. 

“Why are you still shutting me out?” he snaps “I said I’m sorry, didn't I? All those memories…you used to come to me. You used to tell me things. What happened to us, Will? Where did you go? You said you want us to be best friends. Best friends means you and me against the world, doesn’t it? Just us. Always us.”

“But it isn’t always us, Mike.” Will gets up too, forcing Mike to stop pacing. “Can’t you see that? It hasn’t been for years . And that wasn’t my choice. You’re the one who pulled away, who kept trying to change, making things different. You’re the one who chose girls over the Party, and you don’t need me because you have El-”

“But I want you !” the words rip out of Mike, almost a shout, and the world drops away. They stare at each other, both suddenly aware of how that sounded. There’s less than a step between them and the air is electric.

“What do you mean?” Will whispers. Mike says nothing. Silence stretches. “Mike?” 

Mike’s mouth is trembling. He looks at Will and his eyes are desperate. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t come any closer.

And in that moment, Will sees the sharp-edged truth. Mike won’t do it. He isn’t ready. He doesn’t know how.

And in that moment, Will thinks of Adam; of his warm arms, his easy smile, his total trust. And in that moment, maybe, Will is tired of waiting.  

He steps back from Mike and shakes his head, gentle but firm.

“I have an idea of how we can defeat Vecna,” he says. “And I’m going to go and tell the others. Come back out when…when you’re ready.”

He steps out into the corridor, numb to his core, and leaves Mike standing alone in the dark.

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Chapter Text

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Will slips into El’s rooms just in time to see the credits roll on Ghostbusters. The room smells sleepy and everyone is various degrees of slumped between the couches and the floor. They’re down a few members; Jonathan and Argyle are at work and Joyce and Hopper are taking advantage of a few kid-free hours to do...things he doesn't want to think about too much. The rest all sit up when they see him, their faces a kaleidoscope of worry, wariness and hope. He can’t remember the last time he walked into a room and all eyes turned to him. He should be glad. All he feels is sick.

“I have a plan.” he says, simply. 

They assemble around the kitchen table, clearing it of wrappers and other debris, perching on chair arms and laps so they can all be close enough to see him. Will hovers at the head of the table and takes in all of their faces, one by one. 

There’s Steve, radiating his usual exasperated warmth and still munching on a slice of pizza. Robin, less comfortable with the crowd, fidgets on his left. Nancy, on his right and poised as usual, gives her a reassuring smile. Dustin plants himself nearest to Will, giving him his full attention like the teacher’s pet at the front of the class. El sits opposite, her hands neat in her lap. Last of all is Lucas, who hovers near Dustin, his tired eyes vacant. 

And of course, Mike is absent.

One thing is clear; Owens hasn’t yet told them about that afternoon’s experiment. Maybe he hasn’t because he trusts Will to do it himself. Will’s about to disappoint him, hard, if that is the case. Affection and nerves swell in Will’s chest; they all mean so much to him. “Thanks for coming,” he begins, then blushes bright red because that sounds way too corporate. He swallows and tries again; straight to the point. “I went to the void again today, and I saw Max. I know where she is.”

At once there is a flurry of questions. He manages to get out the full story, from the psychedelics to his vision of Vecna’s innermost lair. He tells them about Max’s condition, assuring them that she is still alive, but is running out of time. He tells them how the Mind Flayer isn’t a Mind Flayer, but a shadow creature from the other world that Vecna has bent to his will. Finally, with as much earnest urgency as he can, he tells them about his connection to the shadow, its affection for him, and its desire to protect him. He doesn’t mention the ice, or the claw-marks, or the fear in Owens’ face when he woke. He can’t bear to see that same look in any of their eyes. He has to be their cleric again, properly this time. He will banish the dark parts of his abilities and become who they need him to be. 

“The shadow is what gave me powers yesterday,” he explains “It also kept me alive the first time I was in the Upside Down and we’re…friends? Sort of? It cares about me. Without it, I would never have found Max - now we can plan to rescue her.”

“How?” Robin asks, blunt as usual  “She’s still in the Upside Down; all you’ve been able to do is see her.”

“No, it’s more than that. The shadow helped me find her, and she’s in Vecna’s inner lair, which means we know where she is, when before we didn’t even know if she was in the Upside Down at all. And if we know where she is, we know where we have to go to get her back.” He turns to El “El, you can get through to the Upside Down Creel house again, right? You’ve been there before.”

El chews her lip “It’s…hard. But I will do it.” 

“Hey hey, easy now.” Steve holds out his hands between them “Do what? What are we agreeing to here?” 

“A rescue mission.” Will says “Where El and I work together to get Max out.”

“No. Nope. No way.” Steve shakes his head, full babysitter mode activated. “That’s crazy. We’re barely recovered from the last time and El’s not at full strength.”

“She can do it.” Lucas is looking at El too, beseeching “You can, right, El?”

“I…” El’s hands tighten in her lap, knuckles white. “Yes. I will.”

“I want to know more about why the shadow’s bonded to you though, Will.” Dustin says, ever the scientist. “Do you think it was because you were the first one Vecna took? Or did he take you because the shadow liked you? Either way, it’s weird.”

“Point to any part of this that isn’t weird, Henderson. And wasn’t it a demogorgon who took Will?”

“It was Vecna, Steve.” Nancy chimes in “Demogorgons kill instantly, like they did with Barb.”

“But Vecna turned everyone into human pretzels and he didn’t do that with Will.”

“ Jesus , dingus! Way to be insensitive.”

“I’m not being insensitive, Robin, I’m telling the truth! We need to know why Will is still okay before we start planning a rescue mission that depends on him!”

“I’m right here, guys.” Will’s hands are clenched below the lip of the table. “And I’m okay because the shadow trusted me, simple as that. It’ll help us again, I know it.”

“Why? Just because it’s your friend all of a sudden?”

“Not ‘all of a sudden’,” Will insists “Since the day I vanished three years ago and…” he takes a steadying breath; they’re not going to believe him unless he goes all in on this. “This is going to sound crazy but, I think I’m the reason the Upside Down looks like it does. I think I created it. Not the Upside Down itself, but…Hawkins. I did it back when I was a kid. I’d forgotten a lot of it, like El did with her memories of Henry, but the shadow brought it back to me last night. I wished for somewhere to hide, somewhere I knew and…it happened.”

“...that actually makes sense.” They all turn to Nancy “The Upside Down is frozen in the past, remember? To the day Will disappeared. We learned that when we found my diary,” 

“This is mad.” Steve says. “He was a little kid , Nance.”

Nancy raises a perfect eyebrow. “So was Eleven when she threw Vecna through dimensions. Your point?”

“Yeah but Will’s not-”

“He is.” 

The voice comes from behind them. They all turn to see Mike in the doorway. His eyes are red-rimmed, his sharp shoulders hunched beneath his windbreaker, but his words are firm and sure. 

“Will says he has a connection with the Mind Flayer, and I believe him. More than that, I’ve seen them together.” Mike looks right at Will. “It’s…incredible.”

Will tries not to fumble, he really does, but his train of thought promptly evaporates. Luckily, no one else is looking at him anymore.

“You’re sure , Mike?” Dustin asks. “We’ve seen the Mind Flayer possess people before, and it wasn’t always obvious.”

Mike is already shaking his head. “I’m sure. I’ve seen it twice now, remember? In Will’s room and then in the lab. I swear it was Will in there. The whole time. I’d know him anywhere.” 

The show of faith, and the sheer sincerity in Mike’s voice, makes Will’s whole body burn. He wants to implode on the spot. He wants to hug Mike. He wants to run out of the room and never look back.

“But Will doesn’t have powers by himself.” Lucas says. “And the only time we’ve seen normal people get powers is when they’re not… them anymore. Like Billy.” 

The name sends a shudder through them all. Will’s fists are shaking now; is that how they want to see him? As just another one of the Flayed? Please, no. He’ll do anything.

“Seriously, guys? He’s not possessed!” Mike snaps. He stands at the opposite end of the table to Will, every inch the leader. It deflects everyone’s attention, giving Will space to breathe. “ It’s not like that. It’s like…like Prince Adam becoming He-Man once he’s got the Sword of Power. The sword chose the Prince, but he’s got the control. With the Mind…ah, the shadow, at his side, Will’s just as powerful as El.” Mike’s mouth twists, but he pushes on “In a different way, sure. But just as much. We’d be stupid not to use that to help Max.”

“Even if you’re right about this,” Dustin says “We still don’t understand why this is happening to Will right now . We know El’s had her powers since birth, but Will’s mom wasn’t experimented on for MK-Ultra like El’s was - right?” he waits for Will’s confirming head-shake; you never know, with Hawkins “And yeah, we know you’ve been able to sense bad energies from the Upside Down since you first went there but…that’s all we’ve seen until a few days ago. Even discounting California, that leaves a lot of time where the Mind-Shadow-Thing was either ignoring you or hurting all of us.” 

“Dustin might be right.” Lucas looks at Will with regret. Their recent misunderstanding about Will’s visions is fresh in both their minds.  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Will. It’s just…we need to get this right. We’ve already failed at saving Max once, and I don’t think we’re going to get a third try.” 

He looks away, blinking hard, and Dustin gives him a one-armed hug.

“Both good points,” Nancy says. The rest of the table angles towards her; she’s the unspoken smartest person in the room for a reason. “Will…you’re asking us to put a lot of faith in something none of us, including you, understand yet. If your powers don’t come from you, if they’re from the Flayer, then that means it depends on its loyalty, not yours. What if it changes its mind? Could you stop it if it did?”

Will doesn’t realise he’s swaying slightly until Dustin catches his arm. “Hey, you okay, man?”

“Yeah…yeah.” Will shakes himself  “Just light-headed.” He lowers himself into a nearby chair, knowing that this display of weakness isn’t helping his case at all.

“Here’s an idea,” Robin says “Obviously, we all agree we’re rescuing Max. Thanks to Will, we know where to find her - that means you’ve already played an essential part, Will, so thank you. Now, we can use that information to get El into Vecna’s lair again, and the rest of us can go in to defend her.”

“I like that.” Nancy agreed. “Yes, we’re still recovering, like Steve said, but so is Vecna, and the longer we wait, the closer he will be to full strength. Plus I think we have enough from the army surplus store for a second attempt.”

“If we don’t, Vickie’ll get extras  for me,” Robin butts in, then stumbles “I mean for us . She’ll get it for us. Her dad’s one of those weird survivalist people and I actually think her uncle might run the surplus store and she’s my really good friend I mean not as good as you guys but sorta I mean the best one I haven’t fought monsters with I guess and she’s actually really good with throwing knives and she showed me and it was pretty hot- I mean it was pretty hot outside when she showed me but she was still really good and anyway, yeah. She’ll get stuff. For us. If we…need it? Oh god.” Robin stares at them all for several seconds, then slowly puts her head on the table. Steve pats her on the back.

“Uhm. Thank you, Robin.” Nancy says smoothly “As I was saying. Steve, Robin, Jonathan and I will be the attack party and keep you guys safe from the demo-bats and vines and wherever else tries to take a chunk out of us. Mike, you’ll be with El. We’ll need some of us to stay behind to make sure everyone gets out, and monitor us while we’re in there. Dustin, can you get in contact with Suzie and see if Owens will give us some kit? We’ll also need to consult the maps of Hawkins and what we know of the Upside Down again, which Murray has, and he can get help from Argyle and Will-”

“No.” Will interrupts. “I should be there, with El.”

Nancy sighs, like he’s a child again “Will…-”

“You don’t understand. The shadow hid me from Vecna today. I got really close, and right up to Max, before he noticed me. I could get it to do the same for us, to cover us, so that we can stay hidden right up to the last minute. That means he has no time to prepare, or defend himself. We need that advantage, with El’s powers as they are. I…look, I swear I wouldn’t even be part of the attack, but it could still make all the difference.” 

Silence. He looks at each of them, and it’s so hard not to beg.

“I still reckon you should sit this out, man,” Steve says “It’s too risky.”

Will opens his mouth but he doesn’t get the chance to reply. Suddenly everyone is joining in, their words washing over each other in a tidal wave. 

“Yeah, we’re talking about the Mind Flayer, right? Like, the thing that’s tried to kill us a hundred times already?”

“You don’t look so good. You should rest. When was the last time you slept?”

“After what happened in the lab you deserve a rest, you don’t have to get right back out there.”

“We don’t know enough about your connection yet. We should do more research first.”

“We thought the Mind Flayer and Vecna were the same thing for ages, so they’re obviously close. What if when you use the Mind Flayer it alerts Vecna?” 

Over and over and over. Well-meaning faces with sympathetic smiles. Soothing hands, lowered voices. Poor Will. Sweet Will. Victim Will. No matter how strong he is, no matter if even Mike says he might be as useful as El, he still isn’t enough.

It hurts .

“Stop,” he says. Then, when they ignore him, he says it louder “ Stop!”  

That shuts them up. Will Byers never shouts. Most of the people in this room have never even heard him raise his voice. There is a power in that, Will knows; when the quiet person shouts, everyone listens. But it is a small power, and can only be used sparingly. It is not enough. Not anymore.

“You’re not objecting to my plan because it’s a bad one; you’re objecting because you doubt me.” he says “You’d never say any of this to Eleven. No-” He cuts them off. “ No , you wouldn’t.”  He stares right past them and locks eyes with El. She’s wearing one of his old plaid shirts, her delicate features smooth and still as marble. She is the only one who isn’t looking at him differently, the only one who has always seen him as himself, entirely himself.

Or so he thinks.

“Will-” she says, and he sees her glance at the others, seeking reassurance. He cuts her off before she can. “Friends don’t lie.” He says. It is their simplest, oldest appeal for honesty, and it strikes deep. His eyes are afire, holding her gaze. El freezes, staring at him, and time slows. Her lips close, and her silence is all the confirmation he needs.

Grief grips his throat. Holding his breath, Will pushes past them all, out of the room and towards his own. The low corridor light flickers at his heels and he feels the shadow whisper out of the gloom. Will slows, closing his eyes, and lets the shadow envelop him. He doesn’t ask for anything; he doesn’t care where they go, as long as it is away from here.

And the shadow understands. 

As they disappear, he feels a shiver at the edges of his senses; people coming after him, perhaps, his name shouted by familiar voices. But he doesn’t care now. Why should he? They can’t see him as anything but a victim, as weak little Will, so sensitive, so quick to cry. They don’t trust him, they won’t trust him.

So he’s going to find someone who might.

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Chapter Text

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The shadow releases him a few steps from Reefer Rick’s cabin. Will lands hard and staggers over dead leaves, overwhelmed by the grey, spore-filled air and burnt fissure heat. The shadow retreats immediately and without a farewell. Its abruptness makes Will’s stomach clench; is he using the shadow too much? Should he be kinder, thanking it somehow?

It is too late now, anyway. Releasing a sigh, Will fixes his clothes and finger-combs his hair flat (not that it ever helps) then turns towards the boathouse.

The door is shut, the chain looped and grimy as though no one has been there in ages. Will hesitates, wondering for the first time if Adam is even going to be there. It’s been three weeks since Eddie’s death, longer since his disappearance - what if he gave up and went to the shelters? What if-

“Hey, stranger.” Adam steps out from behind a tree and the world lifts from Will’s shoulders.

“You’re here!”

“Where else would I be? Thanks to a certain someone, this lake needs a permanent lifeguard.” Adam quips, but he’s grinning too “How are you holding up?”

“Good.” Will says, automatically, then “Uhm, I guess I’ve been better.”
“That bad huh?” Adam’s brow creases “Want to talk about it?”

“Yeah,” Will breathes “Yeah I really do.”

“Walk and talk?” Adam points a thumb behind him, to one of the tracks circling the lake’s edge. Will considers for a moment, then nods; he’s dead tired, but it will be good to move a little. 

Adam leads the way and, for a while, they say nothing. The track is uneven and littered with roots and leaves so it takes most of their concentration to keep their footing in the dim, woody light. Overhead, the sky deepens into nighttime, with only one or two stars to puncture the smoky black. Will lets Adam lead the way, not really paying attention until the lake vanishes off to their right and the path starts to climb.

“Where are we going?” 

Adam winks over one shoulder. “You’ll see.”

Another ten minutes of walking, and a familiar shape looms out of the blackness, its hollow eyes staring balefully at the sky.

“This is …Skull Rock?” Will isn’t sure how to react; wasn’t this where Steve said all the cool kids went to make out?

Adam sees his face and laughs  “Relax; I’m not going to have my wicked way with you. I just like this place. Plus I thought it would be nice to sit somewhere that doesn’t smell like I’ve been living in it for a month.”

Will grimaces “Ew.”

Adam pulls a face, teasing. “You’d be just as bad. Let’s sit here?” He points to a low, flat part of the stones, with just enough space for two. Will nods and they settle down, shoulder to shoulder. The view isn’t great; it’s mostly trees with occasional snatches of night sky, but it feels…cosy, like they’re in the bottom of a giant nest, shielded from the worst of the night.

Now is the time for him to speak, Will knows. He was the one who came to Adam to talk, and Adam has spent all this time leading them up here for the same reason. Now though…now the words won’t come. Will fidgets, curling into himself with embarrassment and rising stress.

Come on Will. Use your words.

More minutes pass. Eventually Adam sighs. Will tenses immediately, worrying that he’s frustrated, that he wants to leave, but when Adam speaks, it is without a trace of impatience.

“Hey, look,” he says “I know we came here to talk but I want to let you know that you don’t have to tell me anything, like at all. I’m good with sitting here all night in silence, or talking about some shit you saw on TV if you like. No pressure. But, ah, also no pressure to do that if you want to be real instead. Agh, I mean…does that make sense?” he rakes a hand through his hair, then rubs the back of his neck. Will watches him, puzzled. Wait, is Adam nervous ? Of Will ?

Not nervous as in scared. Nervous in a different way, a new way. A tingling, strange, topsy-turvy way Will has definitely felt before but has never, to his knowledge, created in someone else.

“Yeah.” he says, trying to hide the crack in his voice. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Adam smiles again, embarrassed, and some of the tension eases. Still, though, Will can’t figure out where to begin. The silence grows between them again. It’s getting cold. A light drizzle begins to fall. Will’s foot starts to jiggle out a feverish, accelerating beat.

“How about I talk for a bit?” Adam suggests.

“Please.” Will rasps, grateful like a drowning man thrown a rope. 

Adam’s smile is slow and sweet. “About anything?”

“Anything.” 

“As you wish,” Adam settles a little and his broad shoulders turn towards Will, drawing him in. “Did I ever tell you much about my family? They’re a colourful bunch; should keep us going for hours.” He doesn’t need, or expect, an answer. Instead he launches straight in, hands swooping in illustrative arcs, welcomingly effortless.

Adam sketches out his family in skilful anecdotes: his little sister, a delicate dreamer, who moved away long before the rest of Hawkins; his father, a war vet, who he has never liked; his mother, a housewife who insists that life is perfect, no matter how large the cracks. He talks about moving into the trailer with his aunt when he was barely a teen, already too angry, gangly and wild for anywhere so small. He tells Will of long dark walks in the woods and late nights spent tuning the radio to faint, crackly stations, desperate to hear voices from faraway towns where everything was different, where people were more like him. His stories are all tinged with darkness, but the way he tells them fills them with light, humour and hope.

Will listens for a while, soothed by Adam’s honesty, his lack of fear when his tales don’t paint him in the best light, or show him making bad decisions. Mike talks like this, sometimes, or he used to; long rambles about anything and everything, saved for those rare moments when it was just him and Will alone. Will remembers warm summer evenings just listening, led by the hand through the hills and valleys of his best friend’s vivid, eloquent mind. The familiar feeling relaxes him and, slowly, he begins to talk too. 

He tells Adam about his own family; about Jonathan’s awkward, authentic protectiveness, about his tiny firecracker mother with her mad schemes and fierce affection. He tells Adam about Nancy and how she sharpens Jonathan’s edges in the best possible way, coaxing ambition from his gentleness as he soothes her anxieties in turn. He even tells Adam about gruff old Hopper, with his brusque words and kindly actions, and his habit of fixing all the little things in the house that Joyce has been meaning to do for years without needing thanks or fanfare. He tells Adam about his childhood home, about the woods, and Castle Byers. He tells him about Mirkwood and morning bike rides and the things he collects from the wild places. Adam reciprocates with easy gladness, adding hidden bird nests, rare animal tracks, trilling insects and secret clearings to the backdrops Will paints.

Their conversation meanders on through old things, shared things and new things. The drizzle thickens, so they climb into the groove beneath Skull Rock, brushing soil from their hands and dew from their hair.

Finally, Will takes a long breath and braces himself. “Can I…tell you something? Now?”

“‘course.” Adam assures him. “Anything. As long as you want to.”

No pressure, just presence.

“Okay.” Will inhales again and the words rush, hot, to the tip of his tongue. Can he do this? Does he dare? 

Why not?  He made no promises.

And what does he have to lose, really?

“Don’t say anything until I’ve finished,” he warns. “And tell no one. You swear?”

He waits for Adam’s assurances, then squares his shoulders and just…lets go.

In one scalding rush, he tells Adam everything; from that first day in 1983, to finding El, to what really happened at Starcourt Mall. He describes how the Mind Flayer haunted him, but then, afterward, how his ability to sense its presence morphed into a strange kin-like friendship. He tells Adam about California, and Brenner and NINA. He whispers, barely audible, about Vecna and then, haltingly, about Max. Finally, he reaches the last humiliating conversation in El’s apartment kitchen. 

Will has never told this story before; never all at once, and never with himself at the centre. It’s a strange, giddying, gratifying thing to lay it out for someone and for them to listen, just listen , from beginning to end. As the words flow faster and easier, Will finds himself filling in the gaps with other little confessions, things from inside him that he never thought would be important enough to speak aloud. In fits and starts, sandwiched between more pivotal things, he unearths his own truths. 

He tells Adam how lonely he is, how lonely he has always been, and how his friends pushing him away this time is the culmination of what he has always feared; that he isn’t good like they are. Instead, he is corrupted, he is dark, he is ruined; they can all see it, and they secretly want him gone. Will swallows his tears and swears that he just wants to make amends, that he will do anything to make amends.

At some point, Adam takes his hand, holding it gently, but enough to ground him. By the end, Will is squeezing back and Adam’s thumb is smoothing slowly back and forth. The last words tumble out and Will slumps, exhausted. His eyes are raw from crying and his voice is hoarse from the torrent of words. He stares into his lap, not daring to look at Adam. For a moment, the only sounds are the distant fissure crackles and branches shushing overhead. 

“I’m finished,” he says, a murmur on the wind. Still, Adam doesn’t say anything. Will is just starting to worry, to wonder if he should leave, when he finally speaks.

“So…let me see if I’ve got this right.” He shifts a little, but doesn’t let go of Will’s hand. “For the last three years you’ve been living out a real-life D&D game, monsters and all, and this is the first I’ve heard of it?”

“I’m serious.” Will insists. “It’s not a joke. You have to believe me, I-”

“Oh, I believe you.”

“You…wait, really? You do?”

Adam gestures to the skyline, with its tinge of uncanny fire. “After all that shit down there, you really think I wouldn’t?”

“I mean…it’s all pretty crazy.”

“Sure is,” Adam pauses, then wrinkles his nose and puts on a (terrible) old-timey english accent “ Yet it is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth .”

Whether it’s from nerves or hysteria, he will never know, but Will bursts out laughing. “You did not just quote Sherlock Holmes at me, you weirdo.”

“Hey! Forgive a guy for reeling a bit, I just found out that the strange kid I fished out of the lake the other day is, in fact, a superhero.”

Will’s smile fades “No. No, I am not a superhero. Don’t call me that.”

“What’s wrong with superheroes?”

“Nothing, it’s…it’s just not right . Superheroes have secret lairs and sidekicks and spaceships and….I dunno, costumes?! They know what they’re doing, too, like, all the time. They don’t ride around on too-small bikes or have nut allergies or still need a nightlight to sleep. If they’ve got scars it’s because they fought off some alien invasion and not because they tripped off a curb in third grade. They’re not real . They’re not …like me. I’m…just a person. I’m ordinary.”

“Excuse me but like hell are you ordinary.” Adam flaps an exasperated hand “You have powers , man! That’s…don’t you get how special that is? How special you are?”

“Stop it.” Will tries to pull his hand free “I am not special.”

“Okay okay, no superheroes then, and no special. Tell me then, Will Byers. What do you want to be?”

“A…cleric. I guess. Like I always have been.” 

“Okay, you’re a cleric. A badass cleric though.” Adam nudges Will, eyes dancing “Compromise?”

Will’s mouth twitches, unable to resist “Yeah. Compromise.”

“A cleric makes sense too. Like you said, they serve a god, right? So the …what was it? Mind Flayer? That’s your deity.”

“Yeah, in a way.” 

“But you don’t feel good about that.” Adam guesses, reading his face.

Will shakes his head. “So you know how all characters in D&D have alignments? You have to choose if you’re Good, Neutral or Evil, then, within that category, you can be Chaotic, Neutral or Lawful?”

Adam’s brow furrows again “I remember Eddie talking about that, yeah. He was always Chaotic something, and would just change around the Evil, Neutral or Good bit.”

“Sounds like fun,” Will smiles and, with a little pang of sadness, wonders if he would have liked Eddie; the wild-haired, open-hearted guy who shared Will’s own fanatical obsession with D&D. He thinks he would have, very much. “Lots of people switch alignments, just for fun, you know? But not me. I’ve always been Lawful Good, no matter what the campaign is. It’s just…I haven’t even been able to play from the perspective of the other alignments - I can’t act them out, I can’t think like them. It’s just…me. Lawful Good, the rule-follower, every time.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Not when it’s just a game.” Will makes a face “But it’s different when it’s real. It’s more…complicated. Like the shadow, or the Mind Flayer - I’ve been trying to convince the others that it’s good, that it’s just here to help, but the truth is I know it isn’t. I know it’s done evil things; it’s killed and maimed and infected people. I know that better than anyone; I’m the only one that survived being possessed. So I…I know it’s not… good .”

“Chaotic good, maybe?”
“I don’t think it’s good at all. It’s like…a tiger can’t be ‘good’, or a shark. That doesn’t mean it can’t care, or do good things but…it’s a predator, and it has instincts. And while the powers are amazing, and I love it so much when we’re just working in sync, it feels like a  confirmation that I’m corrupted, you know? Like I’ll never be free from darkness and evil. I…I guess I don’t want to be a cleric for something that isn’t good, but I don’t have that option, because it’s the dark that listens to me. It’s the dark that I attract.”

“Is that such a bad thing? I mean, aren’t there D&D clerics that serve evil gods?”

“Yeah. Evil clerics.”

“Okay so what makes them evil?”

“They…they kill people, I guess?”

“Doesn’t everyone do that in D&D?”

“I mean…yeah, but…”

“So isn’t everyone evil then? Just depends on which side you view it from. Surely it doesn’t matter if the, ah, tool is less than squeaky clean, as long as the cause is right?”

Will raises an eyebrow. “This is D&D, not philosophy,” 

Adam laughs “Hah, guess I’m reading too much into it. Maybe that should have been my major instead. Too bad I went for animal science.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot up “You’re studying animal science?”

“Yeah. Well, almost; I got an offer and deferred for next year. I want to be a zoologist, maybe specialise in entomology.”

Will wrinkles his nose “Like…bugs?”

Adam nudges him “Yeah, you snob. Like bugs.”

They share a smile. Will realises they’re still holding hands. It’s…nice.

“I think you’ll be good at that,” he says, quietly “With animals, I mean. You’re…gentle.”

“So are you, Will Byers,” Adam tells him, with the softest of smiles “So are you. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”

He looks at Will’s small, worn face and makes a cross little noise in the back of his throat. He lets go of Will’s hand and slings an arm across Will’s back instead, drawing him in so that Will’s head is on his shoulder. His heart is a deep, steady boom against Will’s ear, and his skin is warm. Will closes his eyes and breathes in the scents of wood and dust and denim. Safe , he thinks I’m safe here. 

For now.

Adam feels Will’s sudden shudder and rubs his shoulder until it passes. “You’re gonna be okay.” he murmurs “It’s all gonna be okay.”

“I have to help them, Adam.” Will’s voice is thick with tears “I have to show them that I can be useful.”

“I hear you.” Adam says “And you know what? I think I have a plan…”

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Chapter Text

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Will makes it to Castle Byers just before his legs give out. It’s somewhere between midnight and dawn but he doesn’t know much more than that- his Casio is still dead and, with a thick canopy overhead, he has only snatches of the sky to reckon with. 

Castle Byers is still standing, but only just. The old sign (‘All friends welcome’) lies beside the lopsided fabric door, scattered amongst other pieces of beam and bracketing. It’ll never be good as new, but it’s enough to shelter in until he has enough strength to walk home. Or to the lab. He hasn’t decided yet. Will crunches a little closer - there are so many holes in the roof and walls that it's more ruin than castle, shielded neither from the elements nor from the view of someone approaching.

Which is why it surprises him so much when he pulls back the curtain-door and finds Mike inside.

Will lets out a decidedly inelegant squawk and almost falls. Mike grabs his arm just in time. He looks like hell - his hair in disarray and his face pale and drawn from lack of sleep. His smile when he sees Will, however, is sunbeam bright. 

"There you are! I knew you’d come back here eventually. Where have you been?”

“Just…wandering.” Will pulls his arm back and looks away. It’s not a lie, not really. 

“That’s a lot of wandering.” Mike observes, but he doesn’t press for more. Instead, he ushers Will inside and makes space for him to sit on the dented pallet-bed beside him. Will does his best to settle, but it’s hard not to notice how they’re both too big for the space now; it’s impossible for them to sit without their knees and elbows knocking. The clouds of their breath curl together in the chill night air. There is just enough moonlight to see Mike’s outline, but every other detail is blurred. Will is grateful; even now, the shape of Mike’s body against his side makes his pulse stutter.

“How long have you been here?” Will asks.

“A while.” Mike is spinning the toggle of his jacket in restless arcs. They're both holding themselves a little stiffer than usual. The tension between them is a shard of glass; delicate, iridescent, with sharp, hidden edges. “I was…worried, you know?”

“You don’t need to be. I’m fine.”

“I know but…where did you go? Were you with the shadow thing?”

“Yeah, for a while. I just wanted to be alone for a bit. To think.”

“Sorry if the others chased you away. They’re just worried, you know? Everyone just wants you to be safe.”

“Sure.” Will picks at a hole in his jeans. Safe, always safe. He’s so sick of it. He starts to say something else but a huge yawn cuts through the words. Mike hears him and laughs softly through his nose, then yawns too and looks at his Casio.

“Yikes, it’s late. And cold. We should get you back to the lab, get you something warm to eat and then-”

Will shakes his head. “I don’t want to go back there.” 

“Why? Too many people?” Will nods and Mike echoes him. “I’ll sort that; don’t worry. Once we’re within range I’ll supercomm the others and let them know you’re okay and that we’ll fill them in tomorrow.” Will can see the gleam in his eyes now; the paladin has a mission, and he’s determined to deliver.

“I’m not sure…” Will thinks of his quiet, familiar room at home, with the back window he knows how to sneak through.

“No way will we be able to get back to your house without waking your family.” Mike says, reading his mind again. “And I’ve got a better chance of convincing the Party to leave you alone than I have with Hopper or your mom.”

Will can’t help it, he lets out a little laugh. It feels like old times; their conversations are so in sync that half of the words go unspoken.  “I guess you’re right.”

They get to their feet and clamber out of Castle Byers. Will accidentally brushes one of the pieces of paper still tacked to the walls; pale, washed-out shapes are all that remain of the photos and sketches he once had on loving display. He brushes off the sudden pang of sadness.

“The lab is ages away,” Will remembers, as they get clear of the ruins. “It’ll take us all night to walk back.”

“Good thing we don’t have to walk then.” Mike leads the way to where his bike is lying in the leaves. He flips it upright and straddles the seat in one easy movement, then nods to the space behind him. “Hop on."

“Noo!” Will protests, shaking his head “I'm too heavy."

"Not for me." Mike promises. Sweet, gangly Mike who hasn’t won an arm wrestle since fourth grade. “Not when it’s you.” 

A lump rises in Will’s throat. “Okay.”

He climbs on, finding the pegs either side of Mike’s back wheel by muscle memory. He puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders, one foot on the ground. “Ready?” Mike asks. He twists round to look up at Will and the moonlight limnes his features in delicate silver.

“Ready,” Will chokes, and they push off into the dark.

They ride through the night, wobbly at first (as Will feared) but quickly finding their stride. Once they hit the main road, the terrain is easy and they pick up speed. The tarmac whips beneath Mike’s wheels and the whistling wind plucks at their cheeks, their hair, their sleeves. Riding like this is hard, especially on corners; the bike can overbalance if the two riders aren’t in sync, compensating for their combined weight and movements. Not so with Mike and Will. They swoop round bend after bend, effortless, and Will’s hands mould to Mike’s shoulders as though one were made for the other. 

They’ve always been in tune like this. Will may have a quiet, cerebral resonance with El, but his body and Mike’s have always been attuned, even when they were too small for something like attraction to explain it away. Mike and Will. Will and Mike. An ask and an echo. A question and an answer.

The road slopes downwards and Mike stops pedalling, letting them freewheel through a world lit only by his tiny front lamp and the night sky above. Nights have been scary places for Will for so long that he has forgotten how beautiful they can be. Tonight is a wonderful reminder; the air is clearer and even the stars are brighter.

Or maybe it’s just because Mike is with him; passionate, reckless, loyal Mike. Mike, who can always turn up the dial on Will’s quiet grey world and saturate it with colour. Will tilts his head back, wind in his hair and Mike's shoulders warm beneath his palms, and grins until his face aches.

They slow when they reach the flat and Mike pulls over so he can get to his Supercomm. As promised, he calls ahead, telling the others that Will is here, found and fine. Will isn't sure how he does it, but he manages to make sure no one is there to greet them, so their arrival back at the lab is marked only by the security guard, checking their faces and letting them pass with mute efficiency.

Will lingers while Mike stows his bike, and they walk inside together, shoulder to shoulder. The passages are sterile and dingey, and some instinctive part of Will reaches for the shadow again. Nothing answers, and he suppresses another shudder. 

They reach the second floor and the passage that passes El’s apartment on its way down to Will’s. At El’s door, Will turns automatically towards his rooms, but Mike lingers in the way.

“Do you want to…stay at mine tonight?” He says, scuffing a foot “Like a sleepover?”

Will hesitates. On one hand, the last day has drained him until he is cold through, and he wants nothing more than to stay in Mike’s warm orbit. On the other… “We might wake El.”

“She’s up already.” Mike shrugs “She wanted to know you were back safe, but she’s tired too, so we don’t have to say much to her.”

“You’re sure?”

“Dead sure.” Mike is trying to look casual. “So...what do you think?”

“Maybe,” Will says, then manages a smile “Do you have M&Ms?”

Mike laughs “Duh! I’m not an animal .” 

They let themselves into Eleven’s apartments, where Mike has his adjoining room. The central area, with the kitchen and couches, is empty, but El has left a couple of side lights lit for them to see by. The door to Mike’s room is on the far left wall and El’s is on the far right. El is definitely still awake -  her light is on, a golden bar shining through the gap between the door and frame. Mike motions to Will to keep going towards his room, then pads over to El’s and sticks his head inside. They have a quick, murmured conversation that Will deliberately tunes out, and then Mike comes back over to join him, letting them both into the room he lives in when he’s staying at the lab.

Will pauses on the threshold, staring. He hasn’t been in Mike’s room before, and it isn’t what he expected. Sure, the size and shape are similar to his and El’s, but Mike’s is so…spartan. His room at the Wheeler house is a riot of teenage mess; Mike has never been good at getting rid of things, so his drawers and closet have always been full to bursting with ticket stubs, too-small clothes, souvenirs from holidays and, of course, doodles from the Party’s favourite campaigns. The basement is similar, too, especially the drawings. 

That’s it, Will realises. It’s the drawings. This is the first time he’s seen a room that belongs to Mike without a single piece of Will’s art in it.

Well, apart from one very notable exception.

The painting hangs opposite Mike's bed, positioned with care so it can be seen from anywhere in the room. The acrylics are washed out and glossy in the harsh overhead light, but then Mike switches on his softer bedside lamp instead and its golden glow brings the figures into focus. There they are; the three-headed dragon, the rearing knight on horseback, the bard and his battleaxe, the wise wizard…and the paladin, gleaming in his armour, a scarlet heart and golden crown radiant in the centre. Will had spent months on that painting, hour after devoted hour, pouring every reckless hope and dream into each sweep of his brush. By the time he was done, he had suffused every stroke with so much of his heart that he was certain his feelings were visible, seeping like sunshine through the paint. This was a declaration, he had told himself, an unmistakable confession of love.

And he supposes it had been, in the end; just not for him.

The memory of that day in the van pushes a knife between his ribs; Will stands very still and breathes carefully around the pain.

"Found them!" Mike returns from the kitchen with two packets of M&Ms. He drops down on the bed and upends both bags onto the bedside table, then starts sorting the M&Ms into two piles of their respective favourite colours; orange and yellow for him, green and brown for Will (the tan ones have always had their own pile, because they are weird, and they always eat them last). Will joins him on the bed and watches Mike work, at the way his tongue pokes between his lips in concentration like it has since he was six, and it hurts how much Will wants to put his arms around him in that moment, to inhale the soft, familiar scent of Mike mixed with the candy; the backdrop to all of his best memories.

“Remember that time you found a red M&M?” Will asks “Back at the hospital when…” he trails off. They both know the ‘when’ he is referring to.

“Yeah, how old was that bag?” Mike laughs, still scooting the candies around “El and I were trying to work it out for ages. Serves us right for going for vending machine food.”

“True.” Will gives him a crooked smile “Imagine if we never defeated the Flayed because you and El got taken out by gone-off M&Ms.”

It’s not much of a joke, but Mike smiles anyway, and nudges over Will’s pile of greens and browns. Will starts picking at his share. His eyes drift back to the painting on the wall.

“It looks great there, doesn’t it?” Mike follows his gaze “I mean, it would look great anywhere, but still. I had to bring it with me when I knew I’d be here a lot. It was a pain in the ass to move but totally worth it.” He nudges Will “It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever owned. Seriously; thank you.”

“No problem. I…I worked hard on it.” Will manages “To get the scale and the colours right and everything…”

“Well, you nailed it. The textures, the details, and my god the wings on that Dzalmus…that was from my ‘82 campaign, right? They’re incredible.” Mike pauses, looking up at the painting with soft, lost eyes. “And it’s even more special to me because…because of what it means as well.”

“Mmhm.” Will shots a handful of M&Ms into his mouth and chews with more force than strictly necessary. Mike doesn’t look up.

“It gives me strength, you know? There are so many times in the last couple years where I just sit here and think, what's the point of me? I don't have powers or anything helpful to give, and I’m about as useful in a fight as a box of goddamn Eggos and…it’s hard, right? To keep showing up. To keep believing.” He shrugs, but Will doesn’t miss the shake in his shoulders “But then I see the painting and it...it just makes everything better. Because I'm…" He grimaces, his cheeks flushing red, eyes on the floor "because I'm…loved. And that's the proof." He sniffs once, eyes glistening. “I know El really loves me. Only someone who loves me could see me that deeply, right?”

Will nods. The knife is back in his side, digging through his ribs and into his lungs.

“I’m getting kinda tired.” he says, getting to his feet before his face can give him away. “Which way’s the bathroom?” 

Mike points, then catches Will’s sleeve before he goes “Hey, you okay?”

“Of course.” Will tugs, gently, but Mike doesn’t let go.

“I was telling you that stuff for a reason,” he says, eyes holding Will’s. “Because the painting’s not just about me, or about El; it’s about you too. You’re the one who made it, who helped her say those things when she didn’t have the words, and if you hadn't reminded me about it in the pizza place she…I don’t think she would even still be here. Everyone said I saved her life but…I would never have done it if it wasn’t for you. If you hadn’t been with me, right there, through everything…” He shakes his head. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that; what happened earlier with everyone else, when they said they wanted you to stay behind? it wasn’t because you’re not important, or not part of the team. I understand if you think that, and why, but that’s why I wanted to tell you that I feel like that about me too, and maybe everyone does, sometimes. Well, maybe not El but…” He catches Will’s eye, smiling until Will’s lips twitch too. “It’s more than that though. Remember when you said without heart we’d all fall apart? You’re right, but I think the reason everyone was freaking out back there and not wanting to put you at risk is because maybe you’re really the one who…and without you, we’d…Ah fuck, I don’t know what I’m saying.” He lets go of Will’s sleeve. “I’m too tired to make sense, I guess. Let me know when you’re done with the bathroom?”

“Yeah.” Will nods “Yeah, okay.”

He leaves and goes through the motions of getting ready for bed without registering any of it. He then swaps with Mike and, when Mike returns, they climb into their respective beds (Will is in a sleeping bag on the floor) without saying much else to each other. 

Mike flicks off the light and the room blurs into soothing darkness. Will burrows into his pillow, trying to get comfortable. Exhaustion pulls at him, his eyelids already heavy. He is just about to drift off when Mike speaks.

“Hey, Will?”

“Mm?”

“Can I ask a dumb question?”

“You’ve never needed permission before.”

“Rude!” Mike leans down to flick Will on the shoulder and they both laugh. Will waits for the question, but it is a long time coming. The sleepy air begins to simmer with a new, subtle tension.

“What is it?” Will prompts.

He hears Mike take a steadying breath. “You're…gay, right? That's the right word for you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“So you only wanna…get romantic…with guys.”

“That’s what gay means.” 

“And if you fell in love, it would only be with a guy, right?”

“ Yes , Mike.”

“So uhm. Is it…ah.” Mike wriggles under the covers. Will can feel him staring down over the lip of the bed. He deliberately doesn’t stare back. “Does it feel the same? When you love a guy? I mean…is it different than it is with a girl?”

“I don’t know. I've never loved a girl. Not like that.”

“But you've loved a guy?”

“Yes.” Will admits “Yes, I've loved a guy.”

“Loved? Or love? And is it that guy in California?”

Will’s face burns. “I don’t want to talk about that, okay? I said I didn’t.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.” Mike rolls onto his back again. There is silence for a moment, then he adds, so softly, “I just wish you would tell me his name.”

Will looks up at the painting. He thinks of Mike’s face as he sorted through the M&Ms, of the careful way he asked ‘ you okay ’ with his hands on Will’s sleeve, of his warm narrow shoulders as they whizzed through the dark on the bike.

“Maybe one day,” he murmurs. “One day, I will.” 

“Okay.” Mike says. His voice is quiet, small. “Sure.”

They lie for several minutes in silence. Will, infuriatingly, feels wide awake now. He stares at the ceiling, words burning behind his lips until, eventually, he can hold on no longer.

“Hey Mike?” he asks the dark.

Mike’s answer is immediate. “Yeah?”

“You should…ask El more about the painting.”

A shuffle, like Mike is propping himself on one elbow. “Why?”

Will keeps his eyes shut. “Just…because.” He rolls over and pulls up the covers so Mike can't ask more, but he can feel his curious eyes boring into his back. 

They don’t speak again after that, but neither of them get to sleep for a long, long time.

***************************************

Next morning, Will wakes early. Mike stays sprawled on his twin bed, all limbs, one bare arm dangling down towards Will’s now-empty sleeping bag. A twinge of tenderness tugs in Will’s chest, but he lets his friend sleep on.

Quietly, he lets himself out of El’s apartment. Aside from his rooms, El’s, and the tank labs, the only other place Will can find by memory is the roof. He heads there now, finding the latched trapdoor in the ceiling and the hooked stick needed to open it. He uses the stick to drag down the stepladder, then climbs it with care, the metal rungs cold and hard against his bare hands. 

It’s only a small patch of the roof (most of the rest is blocked off by blocky vents and satellite dishes, all rusted at the seams and streaked with lichen) but he found it once during a late-night wander and has been fond of it ever since. Will sits cross-legged on one of the least damp patches and turns his face towards the rising sun. 

One minute the roof is empty, the next, it is not. The shadow seeps out of the shingle and settles around him like a blanket, though it gives him no warmth. It curls and ruffles over him, like an animal checking for new scents. Blurred images rise in Will’s mind; an opening bloom, grasped hands, a questing tendril of mist. A greeting.

Hello . He sends back, sharing his relief and welcome as a spring of fresh-flowing water.

The shadow hesitates and offers him a tentative memory; for a moment, Will’s skin prickles with the raw, dark aura of Vecna’s lair, and his ears catch a snatched echo of Max’s voice. The images darken; knotted vines, a knife’s edge, and the bruised tinge of guilt. Hurt you?

No. He says, sending back the softness of worn sweaters and the scent of El’s favourite tea. No, you didn’t. It’s okay.

The shadow is mollified, but only just. It flickers around Will a little longer, restless. Will focuses on the treeline, watching the sun push its way up between the spindly trunks. He thinks of his coloured pencils, lying barely used in his room at home, and starts to match them with the colours of the sunrise. 

Terracotta, apricot, tawny. He thinks. Mauve, lavender, feldspar. Cream, butterscotch, caramel.

The shadow pauses, then settles, soothed by these new gifts. Will sits for almost an hour in silence, radiating calm and filling his mind with colours, until the shadow is curled around him and the sun is fully clear of the horizon. 

Eventually, Will starts to think about heading in; the sun is making him squint and his butt went numb thirty minutes ago. He shifts a little, chafing the life back into his legs. The shadow stirs, some of its agitation returning. Will gets to his feet and heads for the trapdoor, only for the shadow to surge in front of him, blocking the way. He pauses, about to object, but the shadow lunges at him before he can, engulfing him in darkness. 

He stumbles into infinite, directionless black. Where is he? This isn’t the void, or the Upside Down. It feels…familiar. Perhaps he is simply inside the shadow itself.

What do you want? He asks the dark, trying to be gentle.

For several moments there is no answer. Will starts to get restless, but then-

Wait.

There, low, a step or so in front of him, is a small furry shape. It is curled into a ball, pale as cloud fluff and quivering. It is a rabbit, and a young one, barely out of its burrow. It turns brown, sightless eyes to Will, whimpers, and dissolves. 

In a rush, Will understands. It is another of the shadow’s images; the smallest, weakest prey that it can conjure to explain how it is feeling. Will’s stomach clenches. This immense, indomitable force from another world is scared. 

No, not scared; terrified .

He thinks back to the images that it sent him on the night it helped him to kill the democreatures; tight chains, the bars of a cage, seared flesh. Consequences.  

Who is hurting you? He asks, sending golden-bubble questions and out into the emptiness; gentle and brightening. Please, I want to help.

The shadow flickers like a dying candle and sends another image. Tall, pale and seething with vines, a figure steps into existence in front of Will. Tendrils slither over ruined flesh and a slow smile splits a cadaverous, sharp-toothed face. Dead, milky eyes look straight back at him and that terrible, claw-fingered hand lifts, aiming for his throat.

Will stumbles back again with a strangled cry, hands flying to his face to defend himself, but the vision is already gone. Vecna .

The shadow feels his thrill of fear and responds in kind, shrinking around him. It’s so cold it feels sharp, and Will’s warm human body breaks into desperate shivers. He wraps his arms across himself and braces, pulling every warm and comforting memory he can reach to the forefront of his mind.

Fields of summer flowers wafting in the breeze.

Opening handmade gifts around the Christmas tree, still in his pyjamas.

The arcade, alight with colour and noise and so much life.

Mike running into the hospital room and putting his head on Will’s chest.

His mom and Jonathan pulling him into a Byers family hug.

The screaming cold ebbs, leaving everything raw. Will straightens, fresh tears frozen on his cheeks. He stretches out a hand, although there is nothing to reach towards exactly, and turns his palm up, as though he is coaxing a bird to land there.

Let me help. Tell me how I can help.

Another little shiver. Then, the image of warm, broad hands holding a fragile bird, a thumb stroking its delicate wings. Will does not need to help right now. The shadow is the one who is going to help him.

The image of Vecna returns, juddering and split like a filmstrip stuck between slides. The details darken, sliding out of focus, save for two things; the left eye, and the left hand. The image pulses and the vision of Vecna falls to its knees. Only the hand and the eye remain floating, wrenched free and soaked with black blood. 

The hand. The eye. 

The eye. The hand.

The hand. The eye.

The eye. The hand.

The shadow floods Will’s head with the two images, over and over and over and over, layered and glistening like Jonathan’s darkroom photographs. Will staggers back, swarmed like the birds in a Hitchcock movie, and lands back on the lab roof, blinded by the sudden brightness of the morning sun. 

The shadow retreats in the wake of this desperate act, draining away like dregs down a pipe. Will grapples for it, pleading for just a little more, and with the last of its shreds it sends him a single image: a windshield with a spiderwebbing crack in one corner. The cracks spread and connect until the windshield shatters.

A weakness. 

And then it is gone.

Urgency and understanding surge through Will like an electric charge.  It’s another clue, another key for taking Vecna apart. Heart in his mouth, he bolts down from the roof and back to his rooms, throwing on new clothes and trying to chafe life into his drawn, grey reflection. For a moment, he hesitates; he looks so small in the mirror, and young. Can he do this? Can he convince the Party that he is capable of being who they need him to be?

Adam’s plan rises in his memory, sending fresh prickles of excitement through him, and his reflection lifts its lips into a smile. He can do this, he promises himself; he knows this is the right path to take. Will Byers is about to come into his own.

Whether he has the Party’s permission or not.

It is almost seven by the time he leaves, hurrying because he knows he needs to catch everyone at breakfast before they head off for work or school. In his haste, he doesn’t notice the small piece of folded paper tucked beneath his door. It whisks into the shadow beneath his bed, landing face down, unseen.

************************************

Chapter Text

*******************************************************

Will Byers walks into the lab’s main kitchen at 7.03am. By 7.10 everyone has decamped to what can only be described as a War Room near the NINA lab. Mike, Will, El, Owens and Murray stayed the night in the facility, and the Byer House bunch were there for breakfast (Hopper, Joyce, Nancy and Jonathan) but the others are still in New Hawkins, so the next twenty minutes is spent calling the others to get them to come over right-the-fuck-now, school and work be damned. 

The War Room could sit twenty around its central table and whiteboards line every wall but the one with a window. No one sits down; instead, they rush around grabbing stationary, or  jitter through their breakfast while staring into space, or pace in circles, or do all three. There is something restless in the air, like the night before a final exam, or the last level in a video game. Will keeps his back to one wall, arms crossed and fingers drumming a nervous beat on his upper arms, until Mike presses a mug of El’s soothing tea into his hands. His fingers linger just a little, steadying, until Will’s go still.

At 8, Dustin and Lucas arrive on their bikes, panting and wide-eyed.

“What did we miss?” Dustin hits the ground running, “Mike said something about Vecna’s weakness?”

“Our moms think we’re at school,” Lucas is more cautious, looking at Joyce “It’ll work for a few hours but…?”

Joyce nods “I’ll call them. Sam, where’s the phone?” She heads off, her oversized jacket billowing behind her. 

“We should wait til everyone’s here.” Mike tells Dustin, shooting a protective glance at Will.

Will frowns and steps around him. “I’ll go through the details in a bit, Dustin, but what I know for sure is that we’re going to need Suzie’s help. Is Cerebro still running?”

“It got fissured,” Dustin grimaces “But if I had the right kit I could get it set up again real fast.”

“What do you need?” Murray asks, peering over the rim of a coffee mug the size of his face. “This place has got a decent communications hub, I can show you.” he catches their surprised looks and shrugs “What? Anything to get away from all this teenage angst.” 

“Awesome! I’ll let you know when I get to her.” Dustin promises, then heads off with Murray, a spring in his step, already pelting him with questions. Will has just enough time to see Murray start questioning his life choices before the door shuts behind them.

El comes over next, nibbling at a piece of toast. She looks so small and tired that Will opens his arms without a word. She snuggles into him, her arms around his waist, so they stand in a spiral of warmth.

“I’m going to go to NINA.” she says, voice muffled “To see if I can find Max where you said, Will. Hopper is going to help me.”

“Sounds good.” They disentangle. Mike, at Will's side, looks like he's going to hug Eleven too, but stops when he sees Hopper glaring from across the room. “Let…let us know how it goes, okay?” Will says.

“Okay.” El smiles at them both in that odd way she has; soft, delicate, slightly eerie. “See you soon.”

Owens passes El and Hopper in the doorway, returning from showing Joyce the phones. He has the slightly dazed look that most people get after encountering Joyce Byers in mission-mode. He has a large sheaf of oversized papers in his arms and, approaching Mike and Will, he spreads them out on the table. 

Will recognises Hawkins immediately - how could he not? - but under the bland contour lines there is another kind of paper; reams and reams of blue and black vines, scribbled in coloured pencils pressed hard against the page. The hairs on Will’s arms lift.

Owens sees him hesitate. “Ah, I…perhaps I should have warned you. I was fetching Mr Baumann’s topographical findings and thought that these…well, they’re the best map we have of the Mind Flayer’s influence. It could…offer some insight.” 

“Thanks.” Will tells him “It will.”

As Owens nods and leaves, Mike puts a hand on Will’s forearm. “You don’t have to do this,” he says, voice pitched low. There’s a little crease of worry pushed up between his brows. Will wants to touch it, to smooth it away with a fingertip.
“Yes, Mike. I do.” Will squeezes Mike’s hand before he pulls free. “It’s easier with you here, though. With all of us here, I mean.” He turns to study the papers, hiding the blood rushing to his face. Not now. There is no time for this now. “Do you think Nancy has more pencils?”

“On it.” Mike heads off towards his sister, who is scribbling lists in three notebooks at once, brow furrowed, while Lucas fires suggestions at her and Jonathan feeds her bits of Eggo. Will steels himself and looks down at the Hivemind map, then across to the latest one of Hawkins. Murray’s marked the size of the fissures at daily intervals; they’re growing a little, but it’s mostly fire and spore damage. Will frowns; how much time did the Mind Flayer need to build the Hivemind network shown in his old drawing? A couple of weeks at most. By that reckoning, Vecna could have stretched the fissures to Indianapolis by now. 

So why hadn’t he? Even if Vecna was badly injured, the shadow wasn’t, so why not expand, especially when his human opponents were at their weakest? It doesn’t make sense. 

“That’s your ‘big discovery’ face,” Mike reappears at his elbow with no fewer than ten pencils and a ballpoint. “What’s up?”

Will shows him and explains. “I mean, I don’t exactly know the scale but, you see what I mean, right? We’ve assumed his goal is to take over the world through Hawkins, but what if that isn’t it? Or isn’t anymore?”
“Does he have to have a plan? He’s crazy.”

“Come on, Mike,” Will lets out a little laugh “We’ve read enough comics to know even the crazy ones have a masterplan.” He looks up at Mike and their bangs brush together. They both flinch back and Mike laughs, too, a little too loud.

“Ha, yeah you’re right. I guess you’re right.”

They’re interrupted by the doors bursting open again, this time by one Steve Harrington, carrying a sack of apples and several bags of sweet and salted popcorn from the video store. He grins at the room and, when he dumps the bags, Will sees he has the nail bat strapped to his back.

“Refreshments: delivered.” he announces “Thought this would be balanced enough. What else needs doing?”

“Anyone spoken to Robin yet?” Nancy asks, coming over to give Steve a hug. “None of us know her phone number and it would be good to have some more IQ points over here.”

“First? Rude.” Steve hugs her back “Second, I’ve got it somewhere in my car. She’ll need a ride too so I can swing by and get her.”

“If she wants to come.” Jonathan watches Steve hug Nancy, unsmiling.

“Oh she wouldn’t miss this!” Steve releases Nancy and runs a hand through his hair. “Trust me.”

“Do you think you could ‘swing by’ War Zone on your way?” Nancy says, lifting one of her notebooks “I’ve been looking through the inventory and…it’s not good. Most of our weapons got wrecked last time we faced Vecna and the rest are 50% duct tape. Here’s a rough list.” She presses the notebook into Steve’s hands.

“Sure.” Steve hesitates “That’s…uh…a lot, Nance? I don’t think I can get that, and Robin, in my car.”

“Whats uuuuup brochachos?!” as if on cue, Argyle lolls in, cap backwards, eyes rimmed red. “Oh uh, and …sis…chachas?” 

“Hey man,” Jonathan grins, used to this by now “Fancy lending us the Pizzamobile?”

“Sure man! You got some more sick adventures planned? Where’s the superpower girl?”

“She’s around. We just need to get some stuff from Hawkins and it’s the only thing big enough. Weapons sort of stuff.”

“Dude, weapons ? Like, guns? Far out .” Argyle’s eyes go wide “Sure I’ll take you, jus’ say where ‘n’ when my guys.” 

“Faster the better, man.” Jonathan says “Thanks for this.”

“No problemo, Byers.” Argyle gives them a dopey grin and spins for the door “To the P-!”

“And, nope. ” Nancy grabs his collar, shaking her head. “You are in no state to drive. Steve?”

Steve throws up his hands “I’m not babysitting again!”
“Robin’s not gonna get in the…uh… Pizzamobile , without someone she knows.” 

“Hey, why not? Pizza is, like, ambrosia, little lady. Ride before you de…nide?” Argyle frowns. Jonathan pats his shoulder soothingly. 

Everyone turns to Steve, who rolls his eyes “Goddamnit. Gimme the keys. Come on.”

The next hour passes in fits and starts. Will and Mike try to find patterns between the fissures and the vines, but nothing matches up, save for a few focal points; Starcourt Mall, the town library, Hawkins Middle School and Lovers’ Lake. The fissures either bisect or end at one of these four points. 

“If the locations are meant to be special to Vecna, I don’t get it.” Mike says “Starcourt makes sense because of the Flayed and our Middle School was where El banished that demogorgon. The library could be a dead end, or just because it’s in central Hawkins, but…Lovers’ Lake? It’s way off and there’s nothing special about that place.”

“It was where the basketball player, Patrick, died.”

“Yeah but if that was what was being marked we’d have one in the trailer park and one in the road outside for Chrissie and that other kid.” Mike nibbles on the skin at the base of his thumbnail. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I guess we don’t know if they’re actually being marked at all, or if it’s just a coincidence.” Will’s eyes linger on the lake’s outline, specifically the area around Reefer Rick’s cabin. Is Adam okay down there? he wonders. Could he have seen anything? No; he didn’t even know about the Upside Down until yesterday, and Will has already dragged him in far enough.

They’re interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the passage outside. Nancy’s head jerks up and she beams “I hear reinforcements!”

Reinforcements burst in, but not quite in the form expected. Specifically, they’re a 4 '10'’ middle schooler with a My Little Pony backpack and flinty gleam in her eye. Two seconds later, she’s joined by a very frazzled Robin. 

“ERICA.” Robin pants “At least let me warn them first you little-!” She pulls up short “Oh. Hi guys. Erica’s here.”

“We noticed.” Lucas glares at his sister. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

“So are you.” Erica folds her arms and her pink beaded bracelets rattle. “Guess we’re even.”

“Steve and the others are still in the Pizzamobile.” Robin says “They’re just unloading.”

“The others?” Will frowns “I thought it was just Argyle?”

“Oh shit I forgot. We, uh, have another guest? She was at mine when Argyle turned up and I couldn’t exactly lie and it turns out her uncle really is a survivalist and owns War Zone so she gets a mean discount and you know how we know demo-thingies don’t like fire so would really hate it if we brought something that can do that like a flameth-”

“Did someone say flamethrower ?” The door swings wide and a girl stomps in, hair wild, scarlet blusher like warpaint on her cheeks. She beams, showing crooked teeth, and holds up the honest-to-god flamethrower strapped over her shoulder. Robin promptly chokes on air. 

“Isn’t she amazing?” Steve coos, struggling into the room with a large cardboard box in his arms. “Can we keep her?”

“She’s fuckin scary man,” Argyle beams in agreement from just behind him “I love women .”

“Same here, friend.” Robin murmurs, so quietly that only Will, who is right next to her, hears. “Same here. ”

“How much does she know?” Nancy hovers, looking less impressed. 

“They filled me in on the way here. Wait, let me see if I can get this,” Vickie puts down the flamethrower and taps her lip with one finger. “There’s a shadow world under Hawkins which is full of monsters, and they’ve been breaking through since 1983 when Barb and Will went missing - I remember the posters from school. There’s a big boss-monster who used to be a human and can get into people’s heads like Freddie Kreuger and feed off their trauma. Two weeks ago he killed four people and kidnapped a girl called Max, and ripped a massive X through Hawkins. Now you’re going to go down there and kill him. Oh, and at least one of you has superpowers? Did I get it all?” She grins at Robin, who goes an even deeper shade of red.

“Uhm…yeah, pretty much.” Jonathan says, at the same time Nancy butts in.

“Robin, you shouldn’t have brought her into this. We can’t afford to-”

“I am already in this.” Vickie turns to her and, for the first time, Will sees the deep vulnerability under her swagger. “My town is a smouldering heap and my cousin died in one of the fissures and we still can’t hold his funeral because there’s no body and the undertakers are overrun. Please. I want to help. I need to help.” She plasters her smile back on. “Plus, my uncle really does run War Zone so if you let me join, I can sweeten the deal with a serious arsenal upgrade.” 

“She’s not kidding.” Lucas has opened one of the boxes, which is stuffed with guns. There is enough for each of them to have one, if not two, weapons each. “Guys, look at these. Holy shit is that a Colt ? Can I have it?”

“Depends.” Vickie gives him a measured look “Do you know how to handle it without hurting yourself? They’re guns, not candy.” Lucas hesitates, confirming her suspicions. “Okay, no one comes near these unless they know how to use them.”

Everyone steps back apart from Jonathan, Nancy and Will.

“This is a decent selection,” Jonathan says, helping Vickie lay out her wares on the central table. “Which one do you want, Will?”
“I’ll take one of the pistols.” Will says, picking up the Colt Lucas had been eyeing with practised fingers.  “I’ve had more practice with rifles, but Lonnie’s Mossberg takes forever to reload.”

“You can shoot a gun?” Will lifts his head to find Mike, astonished, at his elbow.

“Uh, yeah? Lonnie taught us both when we were kids.” Jonathan explains. “I’ve still got his old Smith & Wesson Model 10. Will was always the best shot though, by a mile. Not that there was much competition; as a certain someone once told me, I can’t aim for shit.” He nudges Nancy, who gives him a fond eye roll. “Nancy’s the crackshot, as we all know.”

“Shucks.” Nancy eyes the table, then turns to Vickie. “This is…great, Vickie. Thanks.”

“That’s big praise from Nance.” Robin elbows Vickie, grinning. “I think you’ve made the team.”

Nancy sighs “Robin-”

“Holy shit how do you have a Beretta 92?” Will picks up the pistol in question, gaping “I thought they were government only.”

“Like I said, my uncle knows people.” Vickie shrugs. “Take it, if you want.” Will nods, eyes still wide. 

“Wait wait wait, why do you need a gun?” Mike asks, making an abortive grab for it. “Why do any of us need guns? We don’t have a plan yet!”

“I’m probably going to come out in hives for saying this but Mike’s right.” Nancy admits “We’re definitely going to need these, but now everyone’s here, we should talk this through. Mike, can you go and get El and Hopper? Will, can you get Joyce, Dustin and Murray? Everybody else, grab a snack and take a seat.”

They all scramble to obey. Only Vickie lingers, hopeful.

“So… can I stay?”
Nancy softens. “Yes, you can stay.” 

Will smiles to himself as he heads off in search of his mom, and Vickie and Robin’s whoops echo down the corridor behind him.

************

By 9am they are all gathered around the War Room’s central table, a battlefield of snacks, drinks and notes scattered in front of them. Nancy positions herself at the head of the table, a whiteboard behind her and a set of coloured markers laid out like a surgical kit in front.  El is fresh from the tank, her hair wet and her body tucked against Joyce’s for reassurance. Hopper broods on her other side, munching through a doughnut he has mysteriously procured. 

Lucas and Erica are glowering at each other from either side of Vickie, who sits with her elbows on the table, looking serene. Robin, on Lucas’ left, has a leg kicked up on a chair, saving it for Steve, and is still sneaking glances at Vickie. Will notices the permanent flush on her cheeks, and the wink that Vickie sends her when no one is watching. An urgent, disbelieving hope swells in his chest. Is he seeing what he thinks he’s seeing? He takes a deep breath and shoves the thought away; not the time, Byers. Not. The. Time.

Dustin has brought in a stack of print-outs and is drumming his hands on them in an affable beat. Beside him, Murray stares straight ahead, looking faintly murderous. Owens is on Murray’s other side, poised to restrain him if he decides to throttle Dustin. Steve is last to arrive, dragging a protesting Argyle by the peak of his cap - the greenish whiff clinging to them lets everyone know where he was. 

Nancy grabs a coffee mug and taps it with a teaspoon, getting everyone’s attention. Her hair is in disarray and she’s shivering from too much caffeine. Jonathan hands her his sweater and she shrugs into it gratefully. It drowns her tiny frame but, somehow, only makes her look more powerful. 

Nancy waits for them to settle. “Okay, so we’re all here because some new info has come to light and it’s definitely going to change how we wanted to run Operation Rescue Max. Let’s go through this from the top. Will?”

All eyes turn to him. Will freezes. He thought he’d done his part that morning, laying out the new information for everyone over breakfast. Although it’s mostly the same people in the room, it feels so much scarier to be up there, in front of them all, like some kind of military general.

He flinches as something nudges his leg, but it’s only Mike; their eyes meet and Mike gives him an encouraging smile. Will wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and stands up.

“...Hi.” He begins, looking down. He’s made a list of bullet points on the notepad in front of him but, with sixteen separate pairs of eyes now fixed on his face, the lines blur into nonsense. He looks at Nancy pleadingly. She makes another encouraging motion at him with a fond exasperation that somehow reminds him of Karen and Mike at once.

And far be it from Will to disappoint a Wheeler. Ever.

He clears his throat and tries again. “Vecna has Max.” he says. “And she’s hurt, badly. I know we all know that, but over the last couple days I’ve…um…found new information about how we can get her away from Vecna.” he swallows “This morning, I got another clue about a way we could, maybe, take down Vecna for good.”

Slowly, haltingly, and doubling back several times, he outlines what the shadow showed him on the rooftop; Vecna’s hand and eye ripped free, making him fall to his knees. He tells them how frightened the shadow was to give him this information, although he messes up because when he’s finished, he can’t see sympathy in anyone’s face, only contemplation. He sits down again, trying not to shake. All he can think about is the doubt on their faces from last time, the well-meaning insistence that he hide himself away instead of proving his worth. 

“It’s a risk.” Nancy begins, once Will has stuttered into silence. “I-”

“The Eye of Vecna and the Hand of Vecna, right?” Erica ignores everyone’s stares and fishes a book out of her backpack. Will needs barely a second to recognise the iconic red cover. 

“Is that the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook?” Dustin gawps “How do you just have that on you-?”

“Details, Henderson.” Erica slaps the book on the table and thumbs to a page near the back. “Here. The real Vecna.”

“Sheesh.” Steve peers down at the illustration “He looks even less fun than our version.”

“The book says he’s a powerful lich, which basically means he’s using evil magic to try to live forever.”

“Sounds…accurate.” Nancy concedes “Remember how he is obsessed with that clock, and what he said to me about the passage of time?” 

“Unnatural structure.” Eleven says. “That is what he said.”

“And then we all know about his left hand,” Robin says “That’s how he kills. And the eye thing…”

“That fits too.” Lucas picks at a thread from his sleeve until it snaps. “The eyes are the last thing he takes before…” he shudders. Robin puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Hold on just one damn second.” Hopper interjects “We’re seriously putting all this trust in a children’s roleplay game?”

“It’s more than a game.” Erica bristles “And it’s worked before.”

“Now you listen here, kid-”

Joyce lays a placating hand on Hopper’s sleeve. “Think about it, Hop. Even if they aren’t as significant as this shadow says, it’s still going to hurt him like hell when we chop them off.”

“Fine.” Hopper mutters after a long pause. He takes a sip of coffee and winces “Ugh. Cold.”

“What else does it say, Erica?” Vickie peers over at the book. “Wow this book looks wild .”

“Yeah, super cool right?” Robin gushes, despite the fact that she has openly told everyone on several occasions that she would rather eat her own foot than play D&D. Will catches Steve rolling his eyes at her and stifles a smile.

“Let’s see.” Erica runs a fingertip across the pages, brow furrowed. “So we all know that the only way to defeat a lich is by finding their phylactery - a thing that stores their soul. Looks like both the Hand and the Eye are powerful artefacts and the main source of Vecna’s power, so I guess they work the same way. With Vecna, another creature needs to take both the Hand and the Eye, and then be defeated, destroying both items at once, for Vecna to finally die.”

“Wait, put this in non-player words, okay?” Steve is massaging his forehead. “So…if we destroy the Hand and the Eye at the same time, that should kill Vecna?”

“Yes, Steve.” Robin sighs “Kill Hand and Eye means kill big bad man.”

“Big bad Lich .” Steve corrects.

“HA! See? He’s learning.” Dustin grins. Steve throws a pen at him.

“Does it give us any clues on how to destroy them?” Nancy asks.

“Only that you have to get them both at the same time, and that they won’t be affected by diseases or poison.” Erica recites instantly. 

“Wow, you really know your shit, pastel girl.” Argyle pipes up “Righteous.”

“Only Vecna, honestly.” Erica says “I, um…read up on him a lot when we were doing that campaign with Eddie.” She adds the last bit with uncharacteristic softness. Everyone pauses, imagining a world where Eddie had made it long enough to have a seat at this table, and how much better everything would have been. 

“Isn’t there more to Vecna’s lore than that though?” Will asks “You said a creature has to take the Eye and Hand and then be defeated but take doesn’t just mean ‘steal’, does it? In the manual it says you have to physically fuse yourself to the Hand and Eye, and that anyone who does that has to have them for the rest of their life, because taking them off will kill them.”

“Yeah but-” Erica pauses, frowning at the page.

“It won’t come to that.” Mike says “We’re assuming it’ll be word-for-word like it is in the book, which it never has been so far. I mean, demogorgons are supposed to have two heads for a start.”

Will’s cheeks burn. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Okay, so. New mission is killing Vecna and then rescuing Max, and doing this by destroying his Hand and his Eye.” Nancy summarises. “That means we’ll need to get some of us really close, without him having time to fight back.”

“A distraction.” Robin agrees “Like last time.”
“But better.” Nancy nods “He’ll be expecting us to do this again, so he’ll be extra wary. And we can’t go into the Creel house anymore, because it’s basically a lava pit.”

“I’ve got some ideas about where to try.” Dustin unfurls his pile of papers so they can see. It’s another map, but this time there are brightly coloured, straight lines criss-crossing Hawkins. 

“So we know that Upside Down activity always affects the electricity supply, yeah?” Dustin continues “This is a map of the power grid network in Hawkins. These bits?” he points to several spots where the lines are grey and colourless “These show where there have been major outages and disturbances over the last two months.”

“How did you get these?” Hopper frowns. “Isn’t this secure information?”

Dustin gives him a dreamy smile “I know right? Suzie is a genius . And she’s-”

“ -super hot. ” Lucas deadpans in perfect time with Dustin. “We know , Dusty Bun.”

“His girlfriend is a computer hacker.” Nancy explains to Hopper “Just…don’t question it, okay?”

“I stopped that a while ago.” Hopper grouches, but there’s no real anger in it. 

“Wait.” Will leans across the table, then opens the map he and Mike had been working on. “We were looking at those areas too. All of these locations are either at the end of a fissure, or right in its path.”

“Holy shit, you’re right!” Dustin pushes his map beside Will’s so they can cross-compare. “The outages are all clustered around the same points; the library, the lake, the school and the ruins around Starcourt Mall. If we’re looking for portals, or places where the divide between us and Vecna is thinnest, I reckon we need to go in one of those places.”

“El, have any of these stuck out to you when you were in NINA? Or do they feel important right now?” Will asks.

El stares down at the map, closing her eyes. A drop of blood slides from her nose. The air trembles for a second, then breaks. She shakes her head. “I will try with NINA.” she promises. 

“We noticed another thing about the fissures,” Mike adds “Well, Will did. They’re not really growing, and there are no vine tunnels that we could find, which means that Vecna’s had the chance to make his hold on Hawkins much larger, but hasn’t taken it.”

“So if he doesn’t want to expand the fissures…what does he want?” Robin asks.

“Maybe he’s waiting for something to come to him,” Vickie muses. “Robin said he’s kind of like a spider, right? Maybe this is his web. He’s got his four anchor points and now he’s just waiting for the fly to show up.”

Everyone looks at El, who pales and presses her lips together.

“We won’t let him get to you, sweetheart,” Joyce promises, squeezing her a little tighter. “We’ll kick his ass from here to Kamchatka before he lays a finger on you.”

“What if we don’t need El to find out which point to choose?” Nancy asks “What if we go for all of those places? How about a four-pronged attack? One for each fissure.”

“There’s enough of us.” Lucas agrees “And we can each attack the fissures in a different way. That way we’ll be able to find out what attacks are most effective.”

“Trust you to make this a science project. Nerd.” Erica says, but she’s nodding along with everyone else.

“Yeah, I can see how this would work with four teams.” Mike says. He is standing over the maps like the masterful DM he is, dark eyes intense with calculation. Will’s stomach flutters. “Let’s think about the Upside Down’s known weaknesses; fire, sound, electricity or bright lights and El’s powers. What if we match each one to a team? Team 1 can be firepower. Dr Owens, you’ve got the military contacts; how many staff in the lab can handle combat?”

“Enough.” Owens nods “Especially if combined with Hopper’s law enforcement.”

“Great. So an all-guns-blazing attack should work for the first fissure. Hawkins Middle is furthest out of town.”

“You just want an excuse to nuke the school.” Erica grins “I approve.”

Mike flashes her a grin of his own. “Team 2 targets the electricity. That’s you, Dustin. And Murray and Suzie. There’s a power plant not far from the Lovers' Lake fissure- think you could work with that?” 

“I reckon so...” Dustin is already scribbling something on a notepad. “Something like this?” He slides the doodle towards Murray, whose eyebrows shoot up. 

Murray turns to Mike and shrugs. “Yeah, looks like we can put something together.”

“Amazing.” Mike turns back to the table “Team 3 is sound. It worked on the demobats and it’ll work again. We need somewhere away from people so Starcourt is probably the best shot. Does anyone know how to rig up something that makes a lot of noise?”

“I know where to get some instruments and pretty massive speakers.” Robin blurts “Perks of being a theatre kid.”

“And I’ll help put them together.” Jonathan volunteers “I’ve been fiddling around with music systems most of my life.”

“I agree.” Nancy says, giving Jonathan a fond smile “He’s pretty gifted.”

Mike pulls a face at his sister’s mushiness but presses on “Team 4 would be El, using her portal closing powers. The rest of us split equally to cover them. That’s probably the least explosive, so El, you could take Hawkins downtown and the library?” 

“Yes.” El says, simply. “I can do that.”

“Good. One of those things is bound to work. Then whoever gets through first goes for the Hand and the Eye. Everyone good with the plan?”  Mike’s cheeks are flushed, his eyes shining. His fervour is infectious; Will can see it passing through the others like wildfire, lifting their spirits and focussing their resolve. He hugs himself beneath the table, falling in love all over again. 

“What about a five pronged attack?” Vickie says, surprising everyone. “Four on the fissures, and one in the centre?”

“Go on,” Mike says, intrigued.

“If it’s all four fissures, then it’s going to look like we’re throwing everything we have at him, and we’re doing it from our world. If we can find a way of sneaking a fifth group into his world, they can do the D&D version of stabbing him while his back is turned.”

“No need for a special version, that’s already my favourite D&D move.” Erica assures her, looking impressed.

“Also, hear me out, but what if we make it look like he’s winning?” Vickie continues “My uncle says the best way to sneak something past someone is to make them think they’ve caught you by planting something obvious. That way, they’re too busy feeling smart to notice the actual thing.” 

“I think I should be asking more questions about your uncle.” Hopper mutters into his coffee. Joyce shoots him a glare. 

“So we need to make him think he’s foiled us. Then, when he celebrates, we attack.” Nancy and Vickie share a grin; sisters in strategy. Robin beams at them both.

“The fifth is bait.” El’s quiet voice cuts through the air. “Bait that bites back.”

“ Exactly .”

“I will be the bait.”

Nancy frowns. “No, El. We need you on the fourth fissure and you can’t do both at once.” 

“I can do one then the other.”

“Are you sure? You’re not at full strength…”

“Vecna will also be looking for you.” Will adds “If you’re not part of the visible fighting, he’s going to assume there’s a surprise attack coming.”

“He’s right.” Mike’s hand twitches, as though he wants to take El’s, but they’re on opposite sides of the table. “And you’re our superhero, we need you to save your energy in case something happens.”

“But then who’s going to take the Eye and the Hand?” Steve asks. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think anyone without powers would be able to get close enough.”

“I’ll do it.” All eyes turn to Will “Well, the shadow can. I told you, he hid me from Vecna right up until the last second.”
“Will, I know the shadow’s helped us, but we still can’t be sure-”

“We can’t be sure of anything here.” Will insists. His heart is hammering in his throat now, but he can feel Mike, warm and sure, at his side and it gives him the strength to keep going. “What we do know is that the shadow is on my side, and it knows Vecna better than anyone. It gave us these clues, so it clearly wants him dead and gone as much as we do. I might not be as important as El but we do know that Vecna’s interested in me - he took me to the Upside Down and tried to find me when I was there. I think it’ll be enough.”

“Enough for what, Will?” Mike’s hand is beside his on the table. Their pinkie fingers brush accidentally. Neither pull away.

“To be bait.” Will takes a steadying breath “Look, I agree with what Vickie said, that we need to let Vecna think he’s won in order to catch him at his weakest. However, if one of the fissure parties puts on that charade, there’s a risk that in pretending to be defeated, he could actually hurt a lot of you. It makes sense that the smallest party takes that risk; i.e the fifth.”

“What are you saying, Will?” Mike’s voice trembles almost imperceptibly “I don’t understand.”

“I think we should make it look like I’m defecting; that I’m betraying you all to side with Vecna. No, listen, it makes sense. Vecna knows the shadow and I are…close, right? And the shadow…it isn’t ‘good’ - I’m sorry I tried to convince you all that it was, but we can’t think of it like that. It’s an eldritch power, so it’s anchored in darkness. Would it be so hard to imagine that it’s corrupted me, turned me? That it’s worn me down after all those years of starvation, possession, nightmares and loneliness? No, let me speak .” He half snaps, swatting the objections away “Plus, if I did shape the Upside Down into Hawkins then I’m sure that’s an ability Vecna wants on his side. And we know he doesn’t have that skill himself or the Upside Down would look very different. Don’t you see? It has to be me. It can only be me.”

There is a long, awful silence. Mike is shaking his head and his eyes are glistening, but no words come out of his mouth. 

“This is dangerous, Will.” Nancy says, “Without anyone to defend you. Are you…are you sure?”

“It’s okay.” El says “I will be with Will.”

“But the fourth fissure-”

“There is a way.” El is looking at Will, every inch of her shining with trust. “The shadow will bring me to him.”

Will stares back at her, rendered speechless by her show of faith and by the deep, instinctive feeling of a plan coming together, of a final puzzle piece clicking into place. 

“I pretend to defect,” he echoes her thought process, nodding. “At the right moment, I signal to the shadow and it brings you, El, because you’re the only one who can really fight him. I’ll get to Max and get her out if I can. Then you take the Eye and Hand from Vecna.”

“He’s going to notice the shadow coming at him, Will.”

“Not if he’s focussing on me, Mike. I’ll make sure he does.”

“Yes.” El wipes a tear away without breaking eye contact. “I will protect you, Will.”

“You’ll both protect each other.” Nancy agrees “And we’ll send each of you with at least one of us, armed with everything Vickie can spare.”

Will hesitates “I should go alone. If he sees more people, he’ll think it’s suspicious-”

“Not negotiable.” Nancy raises a cutting eyebrow. “You can tell him you convinced someone else to defect. Any of us. You’re not going in there without back-up, Will. You’re too valuable.”

Will swears his heart stops for three whole seconds. Valuable . He’s valuable.

“I agree with Nancy,” Jonathan says, as though his ‘ my girl is a freaking genius ’ smile wasn’t enough of a giveaway. “I’ll go in and protect Will.”

“No. We need someone who can shoot, kid.” Hopper says “No offence. I’ll go with him.”

“That won’t work,” Will says “Vecna’s definitely going to know something is up if I head in there with the head of Hawkins police.” 

“I’ll do it.” Mike grabs Will’s forearm and holds it tight. Will forces himself not to sag against him immediately. “I’ll keep him safe.”

“Mike, no.” Nancy says “You can’t fight, or fire a gun, so-”

“So stop me.” Mike stands up so fast his chair shrieks on the lino. They stare each other down, sibling to sibling. To everyone’s surprise, Nancy caves.

“Fine. But I’m going with you.”

“Fine.” Mike will take what he can get. “Three defectors.” He turns back to Will, eyes soft again. “But first, we’ll have to teach Will Byers how to lie.”

Will tries to return his smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. This isn’t his plan, this is Adam’s, and none of them have any idea.

A month ago, Will was a hopeless liar. 

Now, he is someone else entirely.

******

Six hours pass in a flurry of activity. Owens and Hopper spend the entire time on two separate phones, calling in every single favour they can think of which, it turns out, is a lot. Dustin and Murray barricade themselves into the communications lab, which starts emitting worrying tinkering sounds almost immediately. El and Joyce, in contrast, are deathly quiet in the NINA lab. Nancy, Robin, Vickie, Steve and Jonathan head to see Robin’s theatre-kid contacts and come back with Steve’s car piled high with kit, plus more in a tow-along trailer at the back. Argyle disappears to ‘check the pizzamobile is still ready to roll’ and doesn’t come back until they all gather again for lunch.

“It’s like a D&D campaign, isn’t it?” Dustin jokes as he hurries back to the communications lab, piling two plates high with pizza. “Team Artificer and electricity, Team Knights with the firepower, team Bard with the sound and Team Mage with Will and El.”

His words are met with groans of disapproval and, in Erica’s case, ‘nerd!’, but the team names stick. 

That afternoon, Hopper, Jonathan, Will and Vickie give everyone a crash course in handling guns on the lawn at the back of the lab. Steve proves to be surprisingly competent and mutters a few sentences about getting an air rifle as a gift as a kid. Erica is almost as fast, though they’ve all agreed she’s staying in the base with the electricity team. Robin is hopeless until they give her the rifle and, with the extra support against her shoulder, she’s knocking targets down in no time. Lucas is slower, and his technique still a bit sloppy, but he eventually earns his Colt. 

Mike is the worst of the bunch by a mile; all limbs and no focus. Will tries to help but his gentle adjustments only seem to make Mike worse. Eventually, Steve takes pity on him and gives him his trusty nailbat. Mike takes it and swings endearingly; it’s better than nothing. 

Finally, it is time to get back together and prepare to go.

Dustin and Murray arrive with a huge cardboard box, and Dustin dances around, throwing something brick-sized into everyone’s laps with the air of an ecstatic Christmas elf. 

“More presents!” He grins “Turns out Murray’s another certifiable genius and made us some of these babies!” 

“Supercomms?” Lucas holds his gift up. “Don’t we already have these?”

“These have ten times the range, Lucas! And they should work in the Upside Down. Plus, look!” he squeaks, showing them the headphones attached to each one “You can talk into these without dialling a frequency! Like spy earpieces!” 

“Okay that is pretty damn cool.” Nancy puts hers on and adjusts the headband “And we all get one?”

“Everyone, yes. Who knows where we’ll end up if shit goes down? These ones are special though.” He points to the ones held by Will, El, Mike and Nancy. “They’ve got GPS trackers attached - it’s pioneering tech and I have no idea how Murray and Suzie managed to make them smaller than a backpack, but they did it!”

“Gee Pee What?” 

“Global Positioning Systems.” Dustin beams “They’ve had them in aeroplanes for a few years now - y’know, Navstar? - and it uses satellites to tell other people where you are in the world. This way, we can track you through the Upside Down and rescue you if we need to!”

“Thanks, Team Artificer.” Will beams at Dustin, hiding the quiver of nerves that rises when he thinks about why their particular team needs tracking the most. “You’re incredible.”

“Not him,” Murray says, pointing at Dustin “His girlfriend though? Her I can respect.”

They run over the plan again, with Owens and Hopper confirming that they have enough forces on their way to the fissure arm to cause some serious ruckus. Team Bard have the speakers loaded into the Pizzamobile and every team has a map of Hawkins combining the eldritch, electricity and topography. 

It’s mid afternoon and everyone keeps glancing up at the sinking sun. It’s time to go. They pile out of the War Room, heading for their respective rides. On the way out, Owens grabs Will’s arm.

“Are you sure about this, son? After what happened before?”

Will wrenches free. “Can you think of a better plan?”

Owens’ silence is all the answer he needs. Will wheels and power-walks another few paces, only to find Mike hovering in the hallway, waiting for him. 

Will stops, concerned. “Everything okay?”

“Did you get my note?” Mike asks in a rush of air.

“What note?”

“The…never mind. I put it under your door. Earlier.” Mike shrugs. The tips of his ears are pink. “Just…check before we leave, yeah?”

“Um, sure. Cover for me?” Mike nods and Will hurries up to the second floor apartments. As he fumbles for the room key, he thinks of the last time Mike left a message for him, in his locker (was it only a week ago?) that had left him so breathless, only for it to be about English homework. 

“I swear to God, Mike…” he mutters as he pushes inside “I swear to God….” 

His room is a mess; Mike’s sleeping bag is still on the floor, alongside discarded clothes, candy wrappers and comic books. Will grabs his warmest jacket from the back of a chair and scans the floor. He lifts everything up and piles it on his bed, then checks under that too, using his bedside lamp as a flashlight.

The note is nowhere to be found.

Outside, someone stamps on the horn of the Pizzamobile and yells for him to hurry up. Will grimaces, then sprints back out of the lab as fast as he can.
Whatever Mike had put in that note will have to wait.

Unless he finds the courage to say it to Will’s face.

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to set as Joyce’s car rattles into central Hawkins, the shitty suspension barely clearing the debris still scattered in the streets. Broken doorways, abandoned cars and toppled pylons litter their path, most still smouldering, and the air is streaked black with smoke and spores. 

Inside the car, everyone is silent. El sits in the front next to Joyce, her head lowered, eyes closed in preemptive focus. The trunk of Joyce’s car is stuffed with a new paddling pool and Nancy’s car, following behind them, is groaning under the weight of the three biggest containers they could find, each filled with saltwater; El will barely be floating, but it’ll have to be enough. 

In the back, Will, Mike and Lucas are a crush of elbows and knees. Lucas stares out of the window on one side, fiddling with Max’s walkman. If Will strains his ears, he can faintly hear Running up that Hill coming from the speakers. Lucas hits rewind for the thousandth time and wipes something from his cheek, turning further towards the glass so his face can’t be seen.

In the middle, Mike is looking at El. His mouth keeps opening and closing, as though he is searching for something to say, but nothing ever comes out. A couple of times, his hand twitches towards her, to touch her shoulder, or maybe reach for her hand too, only for it to drop back into his lap, helpless. 

On the far side, Will curls into the opposite door and tries to stay calm. He can feel the shadow right there with them, curled into the gaps beneath the car seats, into the deepest tones of the fading sky and the shapes cast by the wreckage. He tries to speak to it, sending comforting messages of dew-damp flower buds, the smell of fresh cookies and yellow kites soaring on a summer wind. 

The shadow sends nothing. It is silent, but it is there, and that is what counts.

They pull up to the library and haul everything out of the cars and up the steps. They quickly shed their jackets; the night is cold but the unending fissure fire turns the evening dry as a California summer. The library is dark, dank and thick with the heartbreaking smell of mouldering books. Will runs a finger along the spines of one row, remembering the countless Saturday mornings spent there as a kid, mostly when his mom was working and Jonathan was still too young to babysit. His eyes are drawn, helplessly, to the non-fiction section where, in its Upside-Down equivalent, his body and Barb’s had lain for days before his rescue. For a moment, memory and reality merge and black vines burst across the faded panelling. Will flinches and turns away.

Mike appears beside him. “You okay?”

“Honestly?” He gives Mike a wry smile. “No.”

“Oh good, me neither.” Mike bumps his shoulder “Just...tell me if I can do anything, okay?”

“If something comes at me, hit it with the nailbat.”

“Well said, Will the Wise.” Lucas is on his knees, attempting to pour one of the saltwater containers into the paddling pool. Nancy is struggling up the library steps, her face turning purple under the weight of the second container. “Little help, though?”

They’re all sweating by the time the pool is set up, and it takes longer than planned, but Will’s stomach still swoops with a sense of not being ready , of all of this happening too fast. He finds one of the non-broken reading chairs and sits down, hands clamped beneath his thighs, breathing slow. 

A few steps away, Joyce and Nancy are laying out towels, spare layers and a flask of hot chocolate for El. El is somewhere nearby, hidden in the library stacks, taking a moment of quiet. Will watches Mike get up and head in her direction, his face set, and tries not to think about what will happen when he reaches her. 

“Hey.” Lucas pulls up a chair beside him, “Wanna talk, or just sit?”

Will shrugs, but his heart lifts a little “Whatever you want.”

“You know I’ll always pick ‘talk’.” Lucas jokes, settling a little closer. “What are you thinking about?”

“Mike.” Will says, without thinking, then panics and blurts “Because I saw him go after El! I don’t want them taking risks! That’s what I meant.”

“Don’t worry, they’re only, like, two rows over.” Lucas reassures him “And they probably do need to have a conversation, you know? After that argument last night.”

“What argument?”
“I don’t know exactly; Mike wouldn’t tell me. They were fine yesterday when everyone was looking for you, so I think it must have happened, like, really early this morning. Neither of them seem… mad , exactly but…it’s been weird. They haven’t said a word to each other today, haven’t you noticed? And they were on opposite sides of the table in the War Room instead of all over each other like normal.”

“Yeah…I guess you’re right.” Will hadn’t noticed, which is unusual for anything involving Mike. He is sure he remembers the three of them speaking in the War Room, though it was pretty brief and, come to think of it, El had gone to hug him , not Mike, and spoken to him , not Mike. He’d thought they were being distant because Hopper was watching but…had it been something else? “Do you think they’re…okay?”

“If they’re not, they will be,” Lucas shrugs. “They’re Romeo and Juliet after all. Star-crossed lovers and all that.” They both wince, though for different reasons. Will is about to brush it off, but then he sees the loneliness in Lucas’ face, and the way he’s still holding Max’s walkman like a talisman.

“If they’re Romeo and Juliet, then you and Max are Beatrice and Benedict,” Will tells him. “You know, from Much Ado about Nothing ? They bicker all the time but they’re always having fun and are, to be honest, by far my favourite Shakespeare couple.”

“That was a hardcore nerdy reference, Byers.” Lucas wrinkles his nose, then breaks into a tentative grin. “But I’ll take it.”

“Jane, sweetheart?” Joyce calls from the edge of the pool. “Mike? Can you guys get back here? It’s almost seven.”

“Time to go.” Lucas says, helping Will to his feet. They go and crouch by the pool too. Seconds later, Mike and El join them. This time Will notes the distinct distance between them. El looks serene, but there’s a perplexed darkness in Mike’s expression that hadn’t been there before. Will tries to catch his attention but Mike avoids his eyes.

“Ready?” Nancy asks. She has her Supercomm in her hand, headset-free so they can all listen. “Dustin wants us to radio in at seven to confirm our status, then the other teams’ll do the same.”

“Yeah, Nance, we were all at the briefing.” Nancy uses her free hand to flick a handful of saltwater in Mike’s face. He breaks off, covering his eyes “ Ow !”

“Serves you right.” She checks her watch again and, at seven pm exactly, she flips on the Supercomm. “Team Mage to Team Artificer, checking in.” She reads their call-signs with the unique ease of a girl who’s grown up pandering to many nerdy little brothers. “Just waiting on your signal, Over.”

<Team Mage this is Team Artificer, receiving loud and clear. All present and correct? Over.> They can practically hear Dustin grinning.

<Team Mage is ready to go! Over.>

<Teacher’s pets, the lot of you!> Murray’s voice crackles in, sounding breathless <Team Murray is in position!>

<Murray, we went through this, you’re team->

<We’re Team Murray and we’re in position at the Power Plant, kid. That’s the most you’re getting from me.> Murray cuts the communication.

<You’re not gonna say ‘Over’?> There is a static, spiteful pause. Dustin sighs. <Fine. Team Artificer to Team Knights, are you in position, Over?>

<Team Knights to Team Artificer, we are in position.> Owens responds smoothly. <Waiting on your signal, over.>

<Ten-Four, Team Knights! Stand by.> Dustin is beaming again <Team Bard, this is Team Artificer, do you copy?> Silence. <Team Artificer to Team Bard, do you copy ?> More silence. <...Jonathan? Steve? Robin? Anyone there?>

More silence. In the library, the members of Team Mage exchange worried glances. 

“Maybe they’re still setting up?” Mike guesses. Joyce nods, but her lips are pressed into a thin line. Will takes her hand and lets her squeeze it tight. 

More minutes pass. El, in thin layers so she can float in the pool, starts to shiver. Joyce takes off her jacket and drapes it around El, rubbing her arms to chafe some warmth into her body. 

“They’re fine.” Nancy says as the wait stretches into the tenth minute “They’re definitely fine.” She turns to Mike and Will “We should use this time to go over our part of the plan.”

“Are you sure, Nance? Wouldn’t you rather stay here until-?”

“I need to do something , Mike. Come on, we’ll go over there.” They head over to what remains of the children’s section and perch awkwardly on the kid-sized chairs. 

“Okay, let’s hash this out.” Nancy says, hands laced tight in her lap. “We wait for the other four teams to cause as much havoc as possible and, when El gives the signal, Will is going to summon the shadow and get it to take us right into the heart of Vecna’s lair. Once there, we have to distract him for exactly ten minutes, after which the shadow will bring Eleven to back us up. While she goes for the Eye and the Hand, we take Max and get the hell out. All we have to do is stay alive, and keep Vecna occupied, for ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes is a long time in the upside down.” Will cautions. He knows this better than anyone.

“I know.” Nancy says “Which is why I think we should change the plan.”

“What? Nancy! We can’t!”

“Listen, Mike. I’ve been thinking a lot about this and it’s just too risky. We’re both terrible liars and there is no way that Vecna, who has seen inside my head and knows everything about you from when it possessed Will, is going to be fooled. 

“You’re not a bad liar.” Mike says “You got into Pennhurst remember? And I can totally lie!”

“Pennhurst didn’t exactly turn out great. And as for you, Michael , name one time you’ve lied and not been instantly found out. I’ll wait.” Nancy glares at him “And do not say that one time in sixth grade where you stayed off school with a ‘fever’ because I totally gave you the idea to use my hairdryer to fake a temperature and Mom caught you by noon.”

“I-!” Mike snaps, then, after a painful pause, goes quiet. “Fine, but Will’s worse than me.”

“Not true.”

“Na-”

“Just listen . Will is the best secret keeper I know, and that’s saying something. And to keep secrets, you have to be a good liar. Trust me.” She looks at their scandalised faces and huffs in annoyance. “No? Will, tell me if there’s a single person in our circle that you don’t know a terrible secret about, one that could crush them, but you haven’t breathed a word?”

“That’s-!” Will starts, then the words sputter out and he realises…Nancy is right. 

Will is the only one who Lucas told about his family’s debts and how screwed the Sinclairs would have been if his mom’s spinster aunt hadn’t died last year. Will is the one who taught Erica how to throw a proper punch because one of the bigger girls had beaten her up on the first day of school and she hadn’t yet figured out how to fight back. He is the one who used to sneak into one of the girls’ bathroom stalls with Max after she broke up with Lucas, so she could cry on his shoulder, and the one who helped her to get an appointment with Ms Kelly a few weeks later. He is the only one Dustin has ever told what really happened to his dad. He’s also the only one who knows that Steve keeps a photo of Eddie Munsen in his wallet, hidden in the billfold, and that Nancy has one of Steve in hers, tucked behind one of Jonathan. He thinks about the winks and glances between Robin and Vickie that very morning, and how safely he has stored that suspicion away in the back of his mind. 

And then with Mike…there are more from Mike than he can count. 

“Exactly.” Nancy reads his face, triumphant. “Will’s got enough dirt on each of us to tear our lives apart, but he’s never used it for his own gain, ever. And that means he’s the best liar. The only one he can’t lie to is you , Mike. On any other day that would just be sweet but today, it’s the one advantage we have.”

“Is that true?” Mike is staring at Will. 

Will’s whole face is on fire. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Luckily, Nancy doesn’t have time for more of their shit.

“Now that we all know I’m right, here’s what I think we need to change.” She leans forward, eyes bright “Will, you need to betray us , that’s me and Mike, in front of Vecna. Mike and I think we’re going in as a surprise attack, but you’ve planned all along to defect and brought us along as collateral. Mike’s your best friend, so betraying him is the most powerful gesture you could make to Vecna. Look, I know it hurts. I do. But that makes it more believable.”

“I…” Will’s mouth goes dry. He swallows thickly and tries again.  “I…I can do it.”

“I know you can.” Nancy squeezes his shoulder “And that’s why you’ve always been my favourite of Mike’s little asshole friends. Just don’t let it go to your head, okay? And say whatever you need to make it believable. Pretend to knock us out if you have to; we’ll go with it. Nothing can shake our faith in you, I promise you that.”

Will manages a watery smile. “Okay. Thanks, Nancy.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, is the shadow still here?”

“Yes. Nearby.” 

“Have you…told it what’s happening?”
“Not much. Just in case Vecna…” Will wriggles his fingers “Plus, it’s hard to explain some things so…it’ll be there. I promise.”

“Good.” Nancy agrees, sitting back in her chair with a relieved exhale. “Mike, you still with us?”

Will can’t believe that he’s forgotten to check with Mike. He turns and his stomach drops to see his best friend staring into space, huge, unreadable things warring behind his eyes. Nancy says his name again and he blinks, looks at Will, and does his very best to force a smile.

“I trust you, Will,” he says softly. “I do. No matter what.”

“Thanks, Mike.” Will chokes out. “I…I trust you too.” 

For a moment it looks like they’re done speaking, but then Mike swallows and says “Listen, Will. About that note-”

<TEAM BARD IS BACK, BROCHACHOS AND CHACHAS!> Argyle’s dulcet tones shatter through the moment. Everyone jumps, exchanges wide-eyed glances, then runs back to the Supercomm. 

<About damn time, Team Bard!> Dustin’s reply is immediate, and audibly narked. <What’s your status? It’s too quiet over there. Over.>

<We know, Dustin. We’ve got a problem. Over.> Jonathan sounds strained.

<What kind of problem? Over.>

<The speakers aren’t enough. Even with everything on max and both Robin and Vickie playing it’s got to be over 120 decibels to do damage, and we’re not clearing 80.>

<Can’t you add another amp? Over.>

<Dustin we’ve dragged every amp we could find in Hawkins up here, there’s no more to add!> Robin shouts from the background. <I’ve got my trumpet and Vickie’s got her clarinet but they’re not enough- we need another instrument!>

<Wait, guys…> Steve says something, but he is too far away for it to carry. Robin’s answering shriek, however, comes in loud and clear.

<You brought Eddie’s guitar ?! Why didn’t you say so?>

Steve yells back, closer now <It was only meant to be a tribute to him, yaknow? Like he should be here->

<That’s cute and all but I don’t care right now, Steve! It’s an instrument and we need one!>
<But I can’t play guitar!>

<Bullshit. You’re a teenage womaniser, you definitely play guitar!>

<Yeah but only like one song!>

<Then we’ll play that!>

<We can’t play that, Robin!>

<Why the hell not?>

<Because only thing I fucking know is La Bamba!!>

<LA BAMBA IT IS THEN.> Vickie yells over them both <LET’S GO - GET YOUR EAR DEFENDERS ON, BARDS.>

Seconds later, an absolute cacophony blasts through the Supercomm, treating them to a superbly terrible rendition of La Bamba on clarinet, trumpet and electric guitar, topped by Steve screaming along in ‘Spanish’.

“IT’S A PILE OF BAMBA!!

YES A PAELLA BAMBA,

SEE NESSESSITO!!!

AND A POKE IN THE SPASS-YA!!!”

And just like that, the battle is on. 

El ties her bandana over her eyes and slides into the pool, keeping Joyce’s hand clenched in hers as she floats into the otherworld. Almost immediately her brow furrows, her free hand twitching as her power quests out into the fissure beyond.

The western border, home to Hawkins Middle School, joins the fray scant seconds later. A surge of deafening gunfire batters the quiet evening and the orange fissure grows forest-fire bright, flames bursting high against the dark.

Almost immediately, the Upside Down responds. The ground lurches underneath Team Mage, as though the very earth is cringing in pain. Will thinks of the tangled tunnels that once ran beneath Hawkins, and how they had felt burning inside him. He hopes fervently that the shadow isn’t feeling it this time, that whatever agony being dealt now is only hurting Vecna. 

No sooner has the first rumbling reaction faded, than the whole eastern sky erupts into blinding white light. Something fizzes through the air and every bulb in the street outside bursts into shattering sparks. The ground roils again and, for a second, they all stagger, blinded. Nancy is first to grab her supercomm. “Dustin what the fuck was that?”

<It miiiiight have been three power pylons falling into Lovers’ Lake and zapping it to bits?>

“DUSTIN.”

<What? We needed bright lights and electricity! Plus there’s nothing living in there!>
“Well not the fuck now there isn’t!”
<Nancy, do your job and let me do mine!>

“FINE.” Nancy clicks off the supercomm. “Dustin will answer for his crimes against the environment.” she tells them sternly “But for now, he’s right. Time to do our jobs. Will, where’s the shadow?”

“Incoming.” Will closes his eyes and turns his palms to the sky. He sends an image of himself out into the night, arms open, bathed in all the colours of the Hawkins sunrise. Come to me. He sends to the shadow. Help me set you free.

The shadow’s answer is immediate, and incredible. The darkest corners of the library go liquid , oozing from the endless shelves and vaulted ceiling in stalactites of tar. An icy wind sweeps in from nowhere, wrapping Will, Nancy and Mike in the eye of a storm-dark hurricane. 

Will plants his feet and closes his eyes, dimly registering Nancy and Mike holding onto each of his arms to steady him. He sends commands into the maelstrom with as much clarity as his frazzled mind can conjure: a wolfpack’s howl for gratitude, a blade for intent, three linked stars for passengers and, lastly, the red waste as a destination. The shadow sees and, mute, it understands. The library vanishes beneath them, like a rug pulled from beneath their feet, and they stagger into a wall of sulphurous heat. Will knows where they are before he’s even opened his eyes; the whole place resonates with something deeply twisted, a nightmare made all the more gruesome by its beautiful past. 

The bones of the Creel House are still visible: a twisting bannister, a snatch of wallpaper, a disembodied portrait with the faces scratched out. Mike and Will stagger together, gaping, but Nancy, who has been here before, marches straight ahead, sliding her Smith & Wesson from its holster like the pro she is. 

“HENRY!” she yells into the void. “MAX!”

“Nancy.” A voice purrs from the dark. Through the clouds of red mist, they see the outline of a figure; broad-shouldered, slithering with vines. “Michael. How good of you to visit.”

“We’re not visiting .” Nancy spits. She points her pistol at Vecna, her hands absolutely steady. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got you surrounded. Every fissure is getting closed tonight, and us? We’re here to take you down .”

“How intriguing,” the voice says, syrupy and slow. “And what do you say to that plan, Will?”

“He’s with us.” Nancy snaps. “Aren’t you? Will?” 

She turns to him, eyebrows raised. Mike hovers at her side, watching him too. They’re waiting, Will realises, for him to go ahead with the plan. 

And Will wants to, he really does. 

But something is wrong.

Something is very, very wrong. 

He can’t move. Not at all. The shadow has released Nancy and Mike but stayed with him. Only it isn’t floating, gentle, like it has been before. No, this time it is a vice . It seizes every inch of him, from the soles of his shoes to the fibres of his hair; not a single part can move. He can barely even breathe. As soon as Nancy says his name a current of power surges through Will, starting somewhere in the base of his spine and fizzling down to his fingertips. Helpless, he turns to face Nancy. He tilts his chin up, just slightly, and raw blackness surges out of him, aiming straight for Nancy’s weapon. The pistol flies from her hand, crushed into shards. Nancy grabs after it with a strangled gasp, then turns back Will.

“Will?” she says, taking a step back. “Will, what are you doing?”

Her voice trembles as she watches him, and her body shakes convincingly, but there is something off about her movements. She’s not afraid. Not really afraid. Not like she should be.

She thinks he’s acting, Will realises desperately. She thinks this is still their plan and that he’s pretending to betray them. 

Say whatever you need to make it believable. Pretend to knock us out if you have to; we’ll go with it. Nothing can shake our faith in you, I promise you that.

No . He pleads with silent eyes. Nancy, please. This is real. You have to run.

But it is already too late. Black horror crackles at his fingertips; he raises his arm and the shadow leaps and Nancy, strong, fiery Nancy, his big sister for as long as he can remember, crumples . The shadow hits her in the chest and her tiny body folds in on itself, hurled back and down where it slides, limp, through the red dust. 

NANCY. He yells, but his lips only curve into a smile, a sick, twisted, empty smile that the real Will would never have made. Nancy isn’t moving. Is she breathing? He can’t tell. 

Has he killed her?

Will barely has time to feel the despair of that question before his body starts to move again.  His arm lifts again, fingers splayed, and points straight at Mike.

Mike drops all hints at pretence. He drops the nail-bat and puts his hands out towards Will, placating him, trusting him. “Will! What the-?” 

Will has just enough time to see Mike’s horror turn to heartbreak before the shadow lunges at him too. Unlike with Nancy, it does not grant him the mercy of unconsciousness. Instead it wraps around him like a strangling vine from ankle to mouth. It leaves his eyes uncovered; his tears free to fall. 

“I must say, I am almost disappointed.” Through the veil of red smoke, Will sees Vecna’s sharp teeth gleam. “I thought at least the slightest part of you would suspect. We have spent so much time together now, Will, haven’t we? Told each other so many little secrets, whispered long about the temptations of the dark.”

Vecna takes another step closer. Will struggles in the shadow’s grasp, cold terror crashing through him, wave after wave. What is happening? 

“You even said it yourself, didn’t you? The Flayer isn’t good. It isn’t moral, or lawful . It is a predator, and it will always be a predator. Like me. And like you.”

No . Will is screaming now, but the shadow crushes his throat so he can’t make a sound. An icy suspicion sweeps through him, crystallising second by second. No. No. NO.

“Come now, Will. You are a smart boy, and so sensitive . So good at reading the intentions of others, the danger in their natures. Yet, here, you were blind. Did you really think your sweet little friendship would be enough to master the Flayer? That true loyalty could be built on flowers and rainbows and colouring in the sunrise? You have no idea of what the Flayer can do, do you? Well. Allow me to demonstrate.” 

Vecna’s outline snaps its fingers and the shadow contracts inside Will, squeezing every vessel in his body to a single, steely core. It holds him for a second, his bones creaking, then bursts out through his throat in an unending cascade. 

Will is the shadow and the shadow is Will and both are screaming, writhing, begging, flying, buffeted like a bird in a storm. The shadow splits, then splits again, ripping Will's mind into four pieces with it. Will can no longer feel his body; he is the shadow, only the shadow, and he sees what it sees. 

It takes the Hawkins Middle team first, swooping out of the earth in a boiling cloud, flooding the air until every car, every soldier, every weapon, every moving thing, shrieks and tumbles to the earth, blood and wires bursting from them as they fall. 

Next, it heads for the lake. A dark tsunami heaves itself up from the depths, pouring down over the people on its edge, then seizing the wires of the fallen pylons like the reins of a deadly chariot. Shadow-bolts surge down the wires, whip-fast, and burst out the other side, saturating the tiny comms room in Hawkins Lab and engulfing Team Artificer before they have time to scream.

Once it is in the wires, in the electrical signals, there is no stopping it. The shadow hurtles down one line to the wreckage of Starcourt Mall, ricocheting off the old scorched walls and down onto the terrified figures in the centre. There is a screech of jarring instruments, then everything goes still.

Lastly, it turns to the library. Through a haze of despair, Will sees it find the saltwater pool and flood it with black hellfire. El, Lucas and Joyce let out howls of pain and-

And then there is only silence.

Terrible, perfect silence.

And through that silence, Vecna steps closer. As the smoke clears, the vines blend into flesh and, flowing back from Vecna's temples, become red-ish, long-ish hair tied back in a stubby ponytail. 

Broad shoulders.

Thick boots.

A denim jacket, covered in custom patches.

And there, in the right earlobe, a tiny silver stud, gleaming in the light.

Adam looks straight at Will and smiles, his blue eyes like chips of ice. 

Slowly, he starts to clap.

**************************************************

Chapter Text

**************************************************

The shadow loosens, just slightly, and Will can breathe again.

“ Adam ,” he sobs “ Why ?”

“Ah,” Adam holds up a hand, his left, and the fingers elongate from human flesh to eldritch claws. “ Not Adam. Though I let you call me by that name for a reason. Do you see it? Adam was the first of mankind, the start of a new race that would inherit the world. The origin. The One . And as for why… ” He lowers the claw, just a little, so that it caresses Will’s face from cheekbone to jaw line. “What choice is there, for people like us, but to make use of the gifts we are given?”

“Us?”

“Of course. Us .” He draws the word into a long hiss. “You have no idea what you are, Will Byers, but you will soon. Then, you will understand why it was so essential that I find you, and why fate has brought us together, time and again.” He smiles “I must admit, the ease of finding you surprised me. I had expected a long, arduous hunt, and yet you made it so simple. I had barely built my first lure, and you stumbled straight into its centre.”

“A lure?” Will repeats, stupid with terror. He thinks of the call of the woods that night when he walked home with Dustin, of the thin track around the lakeshore that just happened to end at Reefer Rick’s cabin. He thinks of the inexplicable pull towards the boathouse. He remembers Vickie in the war room, likening Vecna’s hold on Hawkins to a spider in its web, waiting for the particular fly. 

They had all assumed that El was the target, but now…

“No. No you’re lying.” He wets his cracked lips, scrambling for answers. All those moments; the golden lamplight, the thawing joy of new friendship and, later, the solidness of arms around his shaking body. Secrets. Smiles. Trust. He felt those things. They were all so real . “You couldn’t have done all that. You were hurt . Nancy shot you. You-”

“I was weak, yes, but illusions have always come naturally to me. All it took was a little twist of something real, just as I did with sweet Chrissy, and Fred and Patrick. The boathouse was the perfect structure, and with a small overlay…” Adam spreads his arms and the boathouse flickers into existence around Will. He sees it ruined, then full of Adam’s things, then ruined again. Then it winks out entirely. “My appearance was the hardest to conceal, but…” he grins and something feral leers behind Adam’s warmly freckled features. “I had an advantage. I gave you what you craved; friendship, understanding, a shared secret… and you were more than happy to believe.” 

Camelot 3000 . Hot tea pressed into shivering hands. Lended jackets. The lost look in his eyes when he spoke of Eddie, the hint of shared understanding…

Will’s eyes are stinging, his winded lungs fighting for air. “So everything…” he swallows “ Everything was a lie?”

“No,” For a moment ‘Adam’ looks so much like he did in the boathouse that Will’s heart skips a beat. “No, sweet boy. That is the beauty of it. I did not need to lie to you. I showed you my favourite books, told stories of my real family, and shared my childhood dreams of etymology. Aside from my borrowed face and name, every word of it was true.”

“Your face now,” Will manages “Who is it? Are they real?”

“This? Ah, they were once.” Adam waves a lazy hand over his body. “My talent is in mimicry, not creation, so it was necessary to find a source. This one was a cousin, I believe, of one of your friends. Well, former friends. Victoria.”

The cousin of Vickie’s who died in the fissures. The missing body that no one could bury.

Rage boils inside Will, giving him the courage to meet Adam’s eyes. “Take it off.”

“What?”

“Take off his face .” Will spits. “It isn’t yours. You have no right.”

“I am a god.” Vecna growls “I have the right to everything .”  Adam’s warm skin flickers just a little, showing a flash of the scaled horror beneath. The only steady thing are his eyes; they hold Will’s, unblinking, ancient as arctic ice.

They are his real eyes, Will realises. Henry Creel’s. Vecna’s.

And one, the left, glimmers a brighter, colder blue.

“If those stories were true,” Will hisses “Then you are not a god. You’re just a man. A lonely, scared freak. You’re the same as any of us.”

“I was, yes. Once.” There is something else in Vecna’s eyes now; something almost real. “I showed you the sadness that has haunted me, like it has haunted you, ever since I was a child. But, like you, I had the darkness within me, and it has given me the strength to evolve. Do you understand yet? We are the same . Our wrongness, our sensitivity, our misdirected desires. We are tainted. Our ability to love, the purest thing a human can do, was twisted, inverted, from the moment of our birth. I did not hide my past weaknesses from you, Will, because I wanted you to see .”

There it is. The forbidden thing. It flutters, caged between them, and its wings are razor blades.

“No.” Will begs “We are not the same. I am nothing like you.”

“Always a terrible liar,” Vecna’s smirk returns. “That was why it took me so long to decide about you, you realise? When you rambled like a simpleton about that ridiculous children’s game; paladins and bards and clerics, I doubted. Could you truly access and master the darkness, as I had? Did you have the strength, the wit, the drive? It seemed impossible. Yet, when I tested you and let the Flayer answer your call, you surpassed even my wildest expectations.”

The night he spoke to Adam about D&D was the same night he found the lab gate hanging open and El screaming inside. Will shivers, sick.  “You…you sent those things.” he whispers “The demo-creatures. You sent them to the lab, to attack my friends.”

“I did. And look how you thrived . Their deaths were a thing of beauty, Will. Your command over the Flayer, the virtuoso genius in using the Hivemind…ah, it gave me such pleasure to see.”

“You could have killed my friends.”

“No, you could. And you would have, if you had limited yourself, if you had not succumbed completely to the darkness. Yet you embraced it so easily. It is natural to you, just as it is to me.”

“No-”

“ Yes .” Vecna touches his cheek again, his claw pressing hard enough to almost break the skin. “You are incredible . Yet from the day you drew your first breath you have made yourself small and meek and mild. You have held yourself back. You let people hurt you, beat you, reject you.” Adam’s mask flickers, lengthening and darkening, until Lonnie Byers is leering into his face, wolf-eyed and with whiskey acrid on his breath. “How dare you, Will? How dare you betray the power, the majesty, that lives inside of you?”

“Take off that face.” Will growls “Take it off .”

“I thought you would enjoy seeing someone familiar.” Lonnie mocks. “Your dear old dad.” he pauses, lips curling back over white canines “Unless, of course, you would prefer this face?” Lonnie’s stubble withdraws and pales, his salt-and-pepper lair lengthening into soft, black curls and-

“GET AWAY FROM HIM. DON’T TOUCH HIM.”

Will is screaming before Vecna even finishes the transformation. He cannot bear to see Mike like that, to see something else looking out through the eyes he has loved his whole life long.

“So desperate .” Vecna sneers, but Mike’s features slide easily back into Adam’s. “It is unwise to wear your weaknesses so visibly, Will. Another thing you will unlearn in time.”

“Don’t. Use. His face.” Will spits. “Let him go or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

Vecna pauses, observing Will’s ferocity like a scientist would a lab rat. “So it is him, truly?” he says “ He is the one? This boy ?” 

Vecna’s eyes cut sideways and Will’s blood runs cold. In his rage, he has forgotten himself, he has reminded Vecna that Mike is still there, mute, half wrapped in the smoke. 

Vecna snaps his fingers and Mike rises, struggling, from the ground. His eyes find Will’s, wide with terror. Will wrenches against the shadow’s hold, every atom in his body straining to get to Mike’s, to throw himself between him and Vecna. He gets nowhere.

“Michael Wheeler.” Vecna peers into Mike’s face and his lip twists with disdain. “Such a pathetic creature, to hold such power over someone so priceless.”

“Let him go ! You’ve got me, you don’t need him. Let him go!”

“So much anger, so much faith. And yet, he cares so little in return. Isn’t that right, Michael?” Vecna twines his fingers into Mike’s hair, and pulls. “You have no idea what our Will has been keeping from you, do you? So many years of secrets and stolen glances, of wishing, of longing for-”

“ No ! Stop! Don’t tell him!” Will’s eyes fill with tears. “ Please don’t tell him! I’ll do anything!”

“As you wish.” Vecna releases Mike and, when he lifts his hand again, there is a piece of folded paper between his fingers. Will’s name is written on the outer fold in Mike’s unmistakable chickenscratch. “Perhaps you would prefer this instead. The Flayer was kind enough to fetch this for me before you could find it, from your rooms in the laboratory. Do you recognise it, Michael?” 

Mike moans into the bindings covering his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot, pleading, flitting between Will and Vecna, Vecna and Will. 

“Don’t.” Will manages, eyes riveted on the note. It’s still pristine; an innocent, childish gesture so out of place in the harsh red hellscape. “ Please , don’t.”

“Oh?” Vecna tilts his head, twisting Adam’s easy grin into something calculating. “Do you really not want to see what he thinks of you? Of the prize that all your years of yearning, your unending patience and kindness and hidden pain have earned you? Of course you do. Here. Look at it.”

He holds out the note and the shadow’s hold tightens around Will’s head. He can’t turn his neck, he can’t even blink. His vision is blurred with tears, but it is not enough to hide the drawing.

It’s a swingset, scrawled in wobbly sharpie. The proportions are all wrong and the two boys on the swings themselves look more like bears than people but…but the meaning is unmistakable. 

Mike’s voice echoes in his head, a memory so clear it could have been yesterday. 

I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes. 

It was the best thing I've ever done.

There is something else; words scrawled beneath the swingset, too small to see. Will cranes towards it-

And the paper bursts into flame.

A howl rips out of Will and the shadow releases his head again. He bows forward, face contorted in shame and pain and anguish. Mike makes another choked noise and Vecna banishes him into the smoke with a flick of his fingers. 

“ Mike !” Will strains to see where he went, but he can’t move enough; he can’t find the strength. “Mike, please !”

“Ah, how magnificent you are when you suffer.” Vecna brushes off the ashes and smiles with poisoned gentleness. “Yet, beautiful as it is, pain is the birthright of prey, not a predator like you. Look how little all your longing has brought you, at how impossible it is to find the love that you seek. Believe me; pain is all that awaits you if you continue your small, lonely life in that world. You will never be accepted, be open, be able to belong. So why stay? Why not put your suffering to an end, as our abilities demand? Help me burn down the old world and build a new one where we are safe, where we are free.”

“You can’t. Someone will always fight back. They’ll stop you.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of your other friends? Would you like to see them? Then we shall, though I suspect you will come to regret it.”

He snaps his fingers and the red mists part, showing bodies strewn beneath their feet. He cranes his neck, feeling sick as he recognises Hopper and Owens’s sprawled shapes, then Lucas and Joyce, then Jonathan, Robin and Vickie. They are all on their backs, their eyes wide open, unblinking, unseeing. The ground beneath each body varies, showing that they are still physically in their locations in Hawkins, yet, through the shadow, Will can see all of them at once. 

“What did you do ?” He hates how weak his voice is, how his lungs wheeze, human and vulnerable. He thinks of the shadow’s attack; of his friends’ screams as they drowned in that terrible, indomitable surge of dark power. He thinks of the silence that followed. “Are they…?” Will forces himself to ask. He can’t tell if they’re breathing from here, can’t tell if …

“They are all alive,” Vecna promises “For now, at least.”

“Then let them go. If it’s me you want, you have to let them go.”

“I am afraid I cannot do that. As you said yourself, if I release them they will only fight back, and that would be so tedious . They have made themselves a nuisance far too many times. Plus they are, as you surmised, a little added leverage for me, to ensure your loyalty.”

“What did you do to them?” Will can’t stop looking at their haunted faces, at the way their hands are clenched, nails pressed into palms hard enough to make them bleed.

“Another little game of illusions, of course. While we wait, I have trapped each of them in their own personal nightmares. Here again, I have you to thank. As dear Nancy keenly observed; you are the secret keeper, and gave me plenty of ammunition. After all, what better way to take down an enemy force than to go straight through its heart?”

The heart.

“I’m not the heart.” Will whispers. “I’m not .”

“You are not.” Vecna agrees “You are the weak link, and until you embrace who you really are, then that is all you will be. You are fighting your true nature, sabotaging your own worth. 

You  told me yourself that you were corrupted, ruined, never ‘good’ like those around you. Well, who needs to be good? I will show you something better. I will show you what it means to have power .”

“I don’t want power.” Will chokes “I don’t want to be like you.”

“Stop denying yourself.” Vecna’s claw slices for Will’s neck, stopping at the jugular at the very last second. “I know you can feel it, the potential , the connection, the desire . That is why I want you, Will. That is why I have always wanted you. When I first took you to the other world, I was only intrigued, I thought it was Eleven who was my ideal partner, and that you would be an amusement; a chance for me to learn more before you inevitably died. But I was wrong. Eleven deals only in connections; in opening doorways and finding the lost. She is dependent on others but you, you are a creator . You are the one who can build me, build us , a better world.” 

“I don’t have powers. It was the shadow. It was always the shadow.”

“The Flayer only responds to those with abilities; it is only as powerful as the one who wields it. With most, it is barely a tremor. The others lost their minds, or screamed incoherence, or let it snuff them out instead of taking control. For years, mine was the strongest resonance I could find…until you. You, despite being merely a child, built a world in minutes , and purely on instinct. No one has come close, not before nor since. Not even Eleven.”

“Others.” Horrible understanding dawns within Will. He cannot mean the lab; he murdered El’s other siblings before he was banished. “What others?”

Vecna spreads his hands. “What else did you think I did for all those years? The first portal opened in 1979 and, though fleeting, a weakness remained. With patience, I found other places where the veil stayed permeable and, eventually, other people that I could tempt through the tear. Only those with a gift could see the gates, could respond to my calls, so I became a spider, sensing them out with little tendrils, tempting them to me. So many children have abilities like ours, did you realise? Dr Brenner took years tracking them down, and used chemicals to increase the probability. I found a way to find them simply by peering into their nightmares. 

“So, as the years passed, I gathered my test subjects one by one. Most were too young, or sick, or stupid to be of use, but not all. Just like I did with my spiders as a child, I kept them in little jars, built not of glass but of their own worst fears. I watched how they reacted- a little shiver here, a little premonition there, perhaps a spark of attack…the experience always killed them in the end, of course, but it was fascinating while it lasted. I learned so much . With each one I tested, each life I took, I tested the limits of the gifts we have and their resonance with the darkness of the other world. 

“I used the same method to find the four sacrifices; Chrissy and Fred and Patrick and Maxine. It was also why I chose Nancy to be my witness. None of them had much of a gift, of course; sparks of brilliance, yes, but never enough to be worth something. Not like Eleven, and not like you. Maxine was the only one to surprise me.”

“Max-” Will flinches at her name, but the shadow squeezes his throat, stoppering the words like fizz in a bottleneck. A tiny image seeps through the back of Will’s mind; a leaf on a still pond, cool with mist. The shadow is offering an apology, but its grip stays tight. 

“Yes, Max.” Vecna agrees, “I am grateful that I have been able to spend more time on her. She is the strongest of the four sacrifices, that is certain, but still not a fraction of your talent. Still, it was amusing and educational to…play…with her abilities. Without her, I would not have become nearly skillful enough to control your link to the Flayer so completely, or have learned the perfect ways that I plan to take Eleven apart, once I am done here.” He half-sighs, eerily fond “Ah, dear Maxine. Shall we invite her to this gathering too?”

He snaps his fingers and Max appears in the dirt at their feet. She lies still, but her eyelids are twitching, as though she is dreaming. Her beautiful hair is almost colourless, and the hollows beneath her eyes and cheeks trace the outline of her skull. Her clothes hang loosely and her lips are cracked and pale. Seeing her makes his whole body ache; she has survived here so much longer than he did as a child; her strength is awe inspiring and heartbreaking. He knows the depth of that physical, wasting pain. He has to rescue her. He has to get her out of here.

Vecna is watching Max, crooning something spiteful. Without his suffocating attention, Will has a sliver of space to think. He forces himself to take deep breaths, to push his mind back into his body, into the here and now and away from the swirling panic.

What comes back to him is a memory, a recent one; the fleeting image of the leaf on the lake, and the curl of cool mist. The shadow’s apology.

Something hopeful prickles through his chest. There might, just might, be a chance.

There is only one person in the world who can take on Vecna right now, and it is Eleven. He knows, deep in his bones, that, without her, there is no chance of anyone getting out of here alive. 

He thinks of what he saw through the shadow; of the boiling pool, of the screams echoing through the rotting library, but pushes down the doubt. He doesn’t even know if she is conscious , let alone in any condition to join the fight, but he has to try. If he can get her here, at least they have a chance. He, weak and pinned as he is, is too helpless to act.

So the only way is to persuade Vecna to bring her himself.

“You won’t win.” he spits at Vecna, who is still leaning over Max, interrupting his mocking monologue. “El will stop you. She is stronger than any of us. She defeated you once and she will again.”

It’s a challenge, and a thinly veiled one. For a few terrible moments, Vecna hesitates, then his pride kicks in and he takes the bait. 

“You have too much faith in your friends,” he purrs “Even after everything you have seen. I suppose, then, an example must be made.” he straightens and looks past Will, into the shadow holding him in place. His left hand unfurls, dread fingers hooked and black and crackling. 

“ Fetch her .” 

If Will’s words to the shadow were whispers, Vecna’s are a thunderclap. The shadow flinches into obedience, scattering and shattering like a swarm of birds in high winds. Just before it vanishes, Will acts. Quietly, so that it slips beneath Vecna’s command, Will sends a message to the shadow, thin and small as a needle. 

Tell El.

Help El.

Free El.

Please.

It’s a long shot, but he’ll take it. He is still not sure the extent that the shadow was ever responding to him; he is never going to be a hero like El. Yet Vecna had said that anyone with abilities, no matter how small, had some kind of resonance with the shadow, and Will’s premonitions, the goosebumps on the back of his neck, were enough evidence that there was something eldritch in him. 

And how could so many beautiful moments have been a lie?

And some part of him, deep down, like the taproot of an ancient oak, knows that Eleven is okay. The same part of him that always seemed to know what room she is in, or whether she is scared or sad or sleepless. The power has stitched itself between them, fostered by their love for each other.

His heart swells; he has faith in the shadow, and he has faith in El. 

Several seconds pass, or minutes, it is hard to tell. Will watches his friends faces, motionless below, and tries to breathe.

The shadow returns in a swirling void and a figure emerges from its centre, short-haired and delicate-featured. El. For a second his heart leaps-

But it is not to be. Instead of being poised to fight, El lands on her knees at Vecna’s feet, shaking. Her clothes cling to her, torn and soaked, and the exposed skin on her limbs is red and raw, like she has been burned. Will remembers the hellfire surging out of the pool and flinches. Every movement must be agony, but El, despite everything, lifts her furious eyes to Vecna’s.

“Henry.” she says. Simple, full of hatred.

“Eleven.” Vecna purrs “Our guest of honour. Well, one of them.” He gestures across to Will. “How exhilarating to see rivals reunited.”

“Friends.” El corrects, but Vecna’s smile only widens. 

“Oh? Are you sure, Eleven? I can see how tempting it is to convince yourself of that; given your new ‘found family’.” The words sour as they pass his lips. “Too bad he has already betrayed you.”

“You lie.” El sounds defiant, but her body shivers. Her eyes flit to Will’s and back again, then to the bodies beneath their feet. “He is my brother.”

“Are you really so blind? Even before you met, Will has been dreaming of breaking your heart. Haven’t you, Will? So many hours lingering in the background, watching and wishing, so many dark little fantasies about how you will take the one she loves away from her.”

“No.” Will shakes his head, hard “No, I would never. El, it’s not true.”

But it is true, and he can’t hide the fear, the confirmation in his face. El goes very still, watching every small shift in his expression.

“ You lie.” she repeats, but this time, she is looking at Will. Her lips are parted, eyes wide. She looks stunned. Betrayed, just like Vecna wants.

 Vecna spies the weakness and seizes it. “See, Eleven? He cannot hide his guilt, his twisted desires. He wants you out of his life. He wishes you never existed, so he could have Michael Wheeler all to himself.”

“You want…Mike?” she says, so slowly. She is still holding herself unnaturally still, as though her mind is racing too fast for anything else to matter. 

Will didn’t think any more of his worst nightmares could come true today. Turns out he’s wrong about that too. “No, El. I swear. I wouldn’t do anything. I’ve never done anything . I’ve been trying to keep you together, trying to help. I swear-”

She stares straight at him, but through him, as though his words, his face, his pleas, do not register. Something clicks into place behind her eyes, a decision that makes her whole face go dark, makes her delicate hands clench into fists at her sides. 

“Will?” She bares her teeth at him, voice rising “Will, how could you?”

“El.” Will’s words die in his throat. He has never seen her like this. He wants to rip himself to shreds with shame. “I’m so sorry, El. I am so sorry.”

“Friends don’t lie.” 

“El-”

“Friends don’t lie. ” She flies at him, screaming, battering him with her fists. Will flinches back, but there is only so much he can do with the shadow wrapped around him. El redoubles her efforts; her power thickens in the air around them and he feels it press against his skull, squeezing like she could break it, like she is going to break it. 

Beside them, Adam/Vecna claps his hands once again, delighted.

“Oh this should be amusing,” he laughs. “Flayer, release him . Let him fight. If you defeat him, Eleven, perhaps it will be you at my side after all. If not, well, either way  I will know that I have the strongest as my acolyte.”

El screams again and shakes Will by the shoulders. They both feel the moment when the shadow lets him free. Will staggers, dizzy, and she holds him steady, pulling him around slightly so that her back is to Vecna and he is the only one who can see her face.

Their eyes meet and, impossibly, El smiles.

Then she winks.

He barely has time to register before El strikes. She gathers a wave of force in the palm of her hand, so potent that the air shivers and glows with it, and aims for Will’s face. At the very last second, she twists 180 degrees and, instead, launches herself at Vecna.

Vecna has a snatched second of time to take a half-step back, to lift his left arm and start to scream. El’s fingers plunge into the socket of Vecna’s left eye and dig in deep . Black blood spurts instantly from the wound, pouring down her hands, splattering her face and clothes. Vecna screams like a thousand dying beasts. His body judders, his right hand clawing uselessly at El. The illusion of Adam disintegrates, revealing Vecna’s true, ruined face. 

Will makes a sound of strangled joy. For a bloodthirsty moment, all he feels is relief; they’ve got him. They’ve got the Eye.

But then Vecna’s scream darkens to a growl, his sharp teeth bared and black with blood. He makes a small, savage movement, and El chokes . Blood bursts from her lips; red - hers, not Vecna’s. Only then does Will see the spikes sticking through the flesh of Eleven’s back. “No.” he gasps, staggering forward, lifting his hands futilely, as though it would make any difference. “No, no no !” 

El whimpers in pain, but her teeth stay bared, her hand steady, fingers still digging. Vecna’s claw flexes , turning El’s cries into a wrenching scream. Her attack gave Vecna barely a second to react; it shouldn’t have been enough, but it was. 

She has taken the Eye.

But Vecna has run her through

“ El !” he screams her name because he doesn’t know what else to do. He needs her to know he is here that he can do something , all he needs to know is what.

“Will!” she half-screams, half-sobs “Will, help !”

With the last word, her arm wrenches free, the Eye in her hand, streaming sticky ribbons of sinew. Vecna howls, clutching his face, and his hand slicks free of El’s abdomen. He staggers back into the smoke, which swirls around him protectively. 

Will sees El fall and throws himself into her path, catching her before she hits the ground. She buries her face in the juncture of his neck, breathing in fast, shallow pants. 

Around them, the world pulses . Freezing darkness whips the air into blinding chaos. It’s impossible to breathe, let alone stand. They can’t see Vecna, but they know he is close. The pain has brought them a few moments, but there is no telling how many.

The bodies below them, of their friends, projected through the shadow, twitch and scream then vanish back to where they came from. Will cannot know who has survived and how badly they are hurt, but they are out of here, and that is enough.

A wave of sickness runs through him, drawing his attention back to El and, most of all, to the Eye clenched in her hand. Her fingers are shaking and she holds it loosely, as though frightened to get too close. Will stares down at this thing of pure, organic evil, and tries to think.

It is hard to think. They can both feel the Eye’s energy, tainting the air in their lungs and blood in their veins like carbon monoxide in a windowless room. The pull of the Eye is horrifying and yet, somehow, seductive. Will’s fingertips itch to touch it and his own left eye aches, like it no longer belongs to him, like it wants him to pluck it out and-

He gasps out a curse and flinches away, sickened by the tendrils that crawled so quickly through his mind. He thinks of Boromir, seduced by the power of the One Ring; of King Theoden, rotting from the inside as Grima Wormtongue whispers in his ear. He closes his eyes and forces the impulse back into the depths of his mind. There, he finds another shadow stirring, this time one much more familiar.

It comes to him in tentative wisps, drooping low like a disobedient hound. Will sees its shivers, its remorse, of the cost that Vecna has demanded of it, the effort and pain it went through in order to hold Will so tightly and for so long. It reaches again, softly. It hopes for forgiveness.

And Will wants to forgive.

But there is no place for that now. The red waste is crumbling around them, the stalactites of Vecna’s lair shaking and oozing into shapelessness. They need protection, fast.

So Will does not forgive. Instead he pulls on the shadow, clamping down on it with every scrap of control that he has so that it can’t return to Vecna, can’t protect him anymore. He drags it over him and over Eleven, putting a wall between them and the maelstrom of Vecna’s agony. 

El groans when he shifts against her. Her free arm is wrapped around her torso, her white sleeves stained red. Her face, pressed against his neck, is fever-hot and wet with sweat and tears. The Eye is hurting her too; he can see it in the way her hand twitches, as though it is a lump of fiery coal, steadily scorching through her skin. 

“Get us out.” Will tries to command the shadow, sending it sharp-edged pictures of the library, laced with the threat of primed pistols and scorching flesh. The shadow bucks around them both, straining, but they don’t move. An image of the Eye flickers through Will’s head, then one of an anchor, plunging into the depths of a wine-dark sea. 

Will understands. The Eye is a thing of the eldritch world; one of huge power and weight, and the shadow is weakened by its torn loyalties and the effects of the battle. While they still have the Eye, it cannot lift them, it cannot return them to the real world.

They have to get rid of it. They have to hide it somewhere that Vecna can’t find it, at least until they can come back and take the Hand too.

If they can come back.

He looks down at El, but she is barely conscious; beyond doing anything but getting from one breath to the next. He casts around desperately. Only then does he realise that he and El aren’t alone beneath the shadow’s hastily-built shield. 

Max’s body lies just beside them, unmoving and grey. Her eyes twitch and stutter, as though she is dreaming. Her left palm is open, facing the sky. 

“Will.” 

Will flinches and looks down at El, who has rallied herself enough for her eyes to regain focus. She sees his gaze dart to Max, to the Eye and back, and she understands. Her lips press together, swallowing the pain down for one final push.

“Can we hide it with Max?” Will asks, hating to have to ask more of El, hating that he can’t do anything useful himself. El’s eyes are wild and blank with pain. She takes Will’s hand and threads their fingers together, then grits her teeth so hard he sees her jaw muscles bunch. She nods.

Together, they move to kneel beside Max. El lifts the hand holding the Eye and presses it firmly into Max’s. She closes her eyes again and the air shimmers and ripples as it fills with her power. The girls’ outlines judder, out of sync at first, then together, like a viewmaster caught between slides. When El straightens, she sways and Will catches her, holding her narrow frame close against his chest.

Max does not move. She lies, pale and exposed against the darkness. Her palm, where El touched her, is wet and black, but the Eye is nowhere to be seen. El has tucked it somewhere inside Max’s mind, somewhere they have to pray Vecna will not be able to find in time.

The darkness throbs around them, expanding and contracting to the chime of an ancient clock, to the heavy beat of slow, approaching footsteps. Vecna is rallying. They have seconds, at best, to finish this.

“We. Need to. Hide. Max.” El gasps. “Need. Your help.”

“Anything.” Will promises “Take anything you can from me, from the shadow. It’s yours. Do what you need to do.”

El nods once, then closes her eyes again. The hand laced with Wills flares hot, then goes horribly, bone-achingly cold. Will grimaces and forces himself to hang on. In his mind he rallies every ounce of his strength, and anything he can spare to draw from the shadow, and pushes it down into that endless chill. El’s skin regains the tiniest of glows and a little of the tension bleeds from around her mouth. She takes another steadying breath and holds her blood-black hand out, hovering over Max.

Wisps of colour billow from her palm and settle over their friend, gauzy layers of shapes and sounds that Will can’t identify at first. Then he catches the bright stripes of a familiar T-shirt pattern, the sweetness of an ice cream cone, the low, grinding roar of a skateboard on tarmac. Understanding and awe sweep through Will. Just like Max did in her first fight with Vecna, El is building Max somewhere to hide, wrapping her in layer after layer after layer of good memories

The scent of newly opened comic books, of elegant store-sample perfume, of cotton candy and winds blown fresh from the sea. Fairground rides and rattling rollercoasters. Popcorn, sweet and hot from the stove. The tackiness of lipstick, the gleam of a smile in a mirror, the hiss of Farrah Fawcett hairspray. 

El’s mind is a beautiful thing; her memories are gemstones, precise in their lines, vivid in their colours. They glimmer, firm and bright, as she wraps them around Max, like layers of hard candy. Will does not have as many, but he sends them regardless. They settle like mist over El’s foundations, darkening the vivid colours. El has built the defences, and now Will is hiding them. 

The high-score sound on Dig Dug. A car on the freeway, windows down and radio blasting. Sunshine on a summer hillside. The Starcourt movie theatre as the opening credits roll. The way Lucas snorts when he laughs.

When his memories drain dry, Will reaches for the shadow. He wraps Max in more darkness, soft and velvety, as gently as he can. El’s jewel tones fade to greyscale, then black, then into nothing at all. By the time they are done they are both shaking, their faces wet with tears. There is no more to give. This has to be enough.

“Will.” El breathes. Her hand is squeezing his so tight her knuckles are white. “The shadow. Please.”

Will nods and sends his mind winging out into the dark for a final time. He finds the bruised, shrinking shreds of the shadow and squeezes them, like threads in a fist. Again, there is no time nor energy for kindness.  Fear binds the Flayer better than friendship, that is what Vecna said, and Will cannot risk any weaknesses right now. 

GET US OUT. He orders the storm. 

His mind fills with images of parched earth, shattered glass and cloud-fluff fur torn to shreds. Betrayal. Hurt. Confusion . Will’s tears fall thick and fast but he does not relent. If anything, he pushes harder.

GET US HOME.

The dark swirls around them, the sky crashes through the earth and turns everything inside out. For a moment all he knows is blind, fathomless inertia, then the shadow spits them out into a world that tastes like smoke and bile, but is mercifully, miraculously, familiar. 

Will dry-retches, trying to shake off the feeling of falling between worlds, trying to remember how to move his own body. He blinks and realises they are back inside Hawkins library, surrounded by toppled bookcases and the twin smells of old mould and fresh blood. Will sobs his relief into the ground, unable to do more than kneel there and shake for several heartbeats. 

Eventually, he remembers the shadow. Now that he knows they are safe, the grace to be kind is returning. He turns to where it released him, his mind brimming with images of contrition and thanks.

But it is already gone.

A soft sound, like a wheeze, makes him whirl around.

El is lying next to him, her pale shirt soaked through with blood. He crawls towards her and crouches there, touching her cheek. Her eyelids flicker and she blinks them open, trying to find him in the dark and confusion. 

“Will?” she manages. “Will.” 

“I’m here.” He takes her gently into his lap. Her whole face breaks into tender relief. It is the last thing he deserves right now. “I’m here. El, you’re…you’re hurt. Can I -?” She nods and he gently lifts the hem of her shirt. It is soaked through, her flesh gouged deep in four places, one for each of Vecna’s claws. She looks up at him and hiccups and bright red blood bubbles from her lips.

“Help.” she whimpers. Her head tips into his shoulder, her face scrunching in pain.

“I don’t…I don’t…” Will looks around, heart in his throat. The library is as they left it, though the pool has boiled into a lump of melted plastic, scorching the carpet for several metres in every direction. Beyond that…

Will gasps aloud when he sees the bodies; two women, one man, all of them instantly familiar. Nancy. Joyce. Lucas. They’re not moving. 

He dithers for a second, then sets El gently down on the ground. 

“I’ll be right back.” he promises, then crawls over to the others, checking each of them for a pulse, for a flicker of an eyelid, for the gentle rise and fall of their chests. “Mom?” he calls “Nancy? Lucas?” None of them move, but their skin is warm to the touch. All three of them look like hell; drawn, dirty and hollow-eyed, but they’re alive and no one else is bleeding and, for now, that has to be enough.

The library doors have been blasted off, probably by Eleven’s assault on the fissure, and the bleached light of dawn has started to pick out the details around them. Will finds their supply bags and a first aid kit (woefully inadequate) and hobbles back to El. El’s blood is deep red and flows slower than he had feared; no organ or arterial ruptures then. He sobs again with relief; that, at least, will buy him some time.

“This is going to hurt, okay? A lot.” he tells El, who nods and closes her eyes. He gives her a wad of blister tape to bite down on, just in case, and gets to work.

Moving quickly, he sluices the wounds with their one water bottle, cleans up as much as he dares with antiseptic, and then packs on layers of medical gauze and bandages until he has enough to staunch the flow. 

 For the first time in his life he is grateful to Lonnie; without the survival lessons gleaned from those disastrous hunting trips as a kid, he would have had no idea where to start, or how to keep going when his hands are slick and his pulse is beating in the middle of his brain, too loud for thoughts to get through. He ties the last bandage and pants into the silence. There is blood on his face, his sweater, his knees and El and it smells of death and he can’t think .

El coughs and takes a wet breath. Something pokes Will’s ribs and he realises she is trying to hand him a Supercomm. Whether it’s hers, his or one of the others’ he doesn’t know, but he clicks it on anyway, shouting into the dark.

“Is anyone there? This is Will. We need help. Please . Anyone there?”

<Will?>

“ Dustin ? You’re okay ? I thought…”

<Yeah so did I for a second there. When all that shadow shit came out the speakers? Man .>

“How…how are you okay?”

<Don’t laugh and it’s totally crazy but Murray made us wear these stupid tin foil hats - okay not tin foil but some kind of psionic blocker thing he invented that looked like tin foil - and we thought it was a joke and->

<And it fuckin’ worked! > Erica yells. <Team Artificer is alive and kicking , assholes!>

<Language! You’re a child.>

<I’m twelve you undergrown Firbolg!>

“Dustin. We need help, fast. El’s hurt, badly. Everyone’s hurt badly. Is anyone else still conscious?”

<Only two other people were dumb enough to wear the hats. I already sent them your GPS and they’re->

A loud, and very familiar, honking melody rings out through the night. Will turns just in time to see the Pizzamobile tear down the high street, headlights blazing. Two figures are illuminated in the front seat, foil crowns glittering like helms of victory. Steve Harrington lurches, white-knuckled, at the wheel. Beside him is Argyle, winding down the windows and blasting, at top volume, Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell.

<You see them?> Dustin asks.

“I see them.” Will breathes, despair and relief warring inside him.

<Good. We’re still in the lab and there are a bunch of medics here. Get back as fast as you can, okay? We’ll be ready for you.>

“Okay. And Dustin? Thank you.”

<Don’t thank me, you’re the hero here! Over and out.> Dustin severs the connection, leaving Will alone with his stomach-swooping shame.

Hero , Dustin had called him.

No, Will was no one’s hero. Not after tonight.

Don’t think. Don’t feel. Push it down. The only way to redeem what you’ve done is doing your job now and making everyone safe.

The van pulls up and Steve and Argyle descend in a flurry of curses, questions and helping hands. Steve is first up the stairs. His hair is in disarray, his face streaked with dirt. For a split second he looks like Han Solo, fresh from an adventure on the ‘Falcon, but then he turns to Will and his eyes are hollow, haunted in a way that only a real hero’s can be.

“We’ve got the rest of team Bard,” Steve pants “Dustin’s sending someone else for Owens and Hopper. There’s space for everyone else.”

Will nods, unable to speak. At the base of the library steps, Argyle opens the back of the van while Steve kneels next to Will. Steve lifts El gently from his arms, nods approvingly at the bandages, and takes her down to the van. Inside, on a layer of blankets and jackets, Will can see Robin, Vickie and Jonathan, all curled together, eyes closed and pale, but breathing. Steve moves on to Lucas, calling for Argyle to help. 

Neither Argyle nor Steve ask him anything; only whether he is injured and if he needs to lean on one of them to stand. Will shakes his head and they move on around him. On another day it may have seemed cold, but it is exactly what he needs. If anyone is nice to him right now, he will break down. 

Will gets to his feet in time to help with Joyce, then, finally, Nancy. Steve lingers over Nancy once she is settled in the back of the van, one hand hovering by her cheek as though he can’t quite dare to touch it. Argyle slings an arm around Will, saying something loud and encouraging that he doesn’t register, and by the time Will is released, Steve is heading round to the driver’s seat. He doesn’t look back again.

“So I guess we take ‘em back to the lab?” Argyle asks as he climbs in the front passenger seat, motioning for Will to follow. “Like Dustin said.”

“Hell no.” Steve says “We’re taking them straight to the real hospital. Will! You okay back there? Hurry up and get in by Argyle, we’ve gotta go!”

As he shuts the back doors, Will’s eyes rove over everyone, numb. Everything feels unreal; distant and distorted as though he’s viewing it from beneath thick glass. 

Will stumbles his way round to the front of the van, walking both hands along the side for balance. Now that they are outside, Will can’t help but notice that the fissure fires look much smaller; whatever the other teams did, and however well Venca had tried to hide it, it has had an effect. 

He’s exhausted, terrified, filthy and bleeding but he’s alive. They’re all alive. They’re not okay, but they’re stable. They’ve badly hurt Vecna. There is hope.

It is only when he opens the door and sees Argyle, with his glistening black hair that is long and straight rather than shoulder length and curly, that the realisation dawns.. 

Cold dread drenches his bones.

He knows the answer to the question before he asks it.

“Where’s Mike?”

******************************************************

Chapter Text

Will wakes to a white room, the smell of hospitals, and an IV in his arm. He shifts on the narrow, hard-sprung bed and breathes into aching lungs, trying to orientate himself.

He isn’t at home, that’s for certain, but neither is he in Hawkins lab; the ceilings are too high, the air too clear and clean. A thin blue curtain runs around his bed and, where the two ends don’t quite meet, he can see more beds similarly shielded from view.

The room (or maybe ward?) is quiet, save for distant bleeps and whirrs of machines at other unseen bedsides. He scouts around for a clock, but sees only a pale circle high on one wall, as though the one that was there had recently been taken down.

“Will?” Jonathan unfolds from the chair beside him. He must have been dozing, and poorly, if the purplish rings under his eyes are anything to go by. “Hey, how are you feeling?”

“Good.” Will nods without thinking about it. There’s a sense of urgency in the back of his mind that he can’t quite articulate yet, but he knows it involves the Party. “And the others?”

“They’re fine. Stable. You’re the first to wake up though, after me and mom, and we’ve only been up a few hours.” he gives him a wry smile “Our family have never been good at sleeping, huh.”

“I guess…” Will lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose and the IV cord pulls uncomfortably. There’s a distinct lingering wuzziness in his brain, like the last dregs of a hangover or like…like… “Wait. Jonathan, did…did someone sedate me?”

Jonathan’s mouth twists. “We’re at Hawkins Hospital. Apparently this morning, when we all arrived, the orderlies…Steve said he couldn’t stop them. And you were…” he deflates a little “I think it might have been for the best.” 

“For the best?” his confusion bleeds into anger “What was for the best?”

“Will…”

“ What , Jonathan?!”  

Jonathan takes his hand, ever so gently. “You were trying to get out, Will.” he says “Your vitals were terrible but you wouldn’t let them treat you because you wanted…you wanted to find Mike.”

Will’s eyes go wide.

Mike.

Vecna has Mike.

Memories fall together like the world’s worst Rube Goldberg machine. He remembers sprinting back into the library, ransacking the already wrecked stacks, calling and running and calling and running until Steve and Argyle manhandled him back over to the van. 

We don’t have time for this, Byers! We need to get everyone to the hospital!

MIKE.

He remembers Argyle bundling him into the front seat, basically in his lap. He remembers burying his face in Argyle’s bright shirt and letting out something between a moan, a scream and a howl, ripped from the deepest part of himself. He remembers Argyle holding him tight, surprisingly strong, until they left downtown and the panic gave way to dissociation. For the rest of the ride, everything had slipped by like water, his senses dialled down to minimum. 

Mike? Where is Mike?

Sometime later, the bright hospital lights had flashed him back awake. He remembers the hiss of doors, hundreds of strangers turning to stare, dry AC air and sweat and floor cleaner. Screaming. Collapsing in the foyer; floor hard on his knees. Screaming. Limbs lifting him, dragging him through flapping doors. Screaming. His nails digging into white coats, his throat raw. Screaming. 

No. no no no no no no Mike! MIKE. I have to get him. This is my fault. I can’t live without him. I can’t, I can’t . Let me go let me go let me go letmegoletmegoletmegolet-

“Will.” Jonathan’s nails dig lightly into Will’s hand and the pain brings him back, just enough. “Will, you’ve got to calm down or someone will come back and do it again. Do you understand?” 

“I…” Will stares through him for a second, then sinks back into the bed. “I understand.” “Good.” 

Will nods. The world retreats around him, all echoes and blur. When he speaks, his voice is far away, as though it belongs to someone else. “How long has it been? I remember the van, and arriving here, then…”

“About twelve hours.” Jonathan squeezes his hand once more, then lets go. “According to Steve, he and Argyle drove us all here in the Pizzamobile at like 4am and the hospital reception was two seconds from calling the 911, but then Murray turned up and scared the daylights out of everyone until we got our own ward. He was still here when I woke up - you should have seen him. He was wearing this big orange cable-knit and some kind of crazy foil hat but everyone was terrified of him. He made up this whole thing about a gas leak at the lab and how we all needed quarantining and to only be tended to by specialists from his team. Lots of flashing ID cards that I think he bootlegged from Owens. We have him to thank for this place, and the privacy.”

Will tries to smile back at him, he isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Where are Steve and Argyle now?”

“They went to the lab for some sleep around midday. Should be back soon. Dustin’s and Erica’s moms came and got them too; those two spent the whole night making sure everyone was safe - I don’t blame them for needing to be home after that.”

“And Mom?”

“She’s with Murray. They’re waiting for El to come out of surgery.”

A needle of worry pierces through the fog. “Is El…is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah I think she is. Like I said, I’ve only been up for a couple of hours and I don’t remember much after…everything.” He looks down, picking at a loose thread in Will’s bedsheet. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it yet but…no one else will tell me, so I have to ask. Will…what happened in there? Last I remember I was amping up the speakers and the fissure was shaking and it looked like something good was about to happen - then everything went jagged and black, and I woke up here.” 

“I…” Will can’t look at Jonathan. The curtains pulse and warp at the corners of his eyes. He pushes his hands under the covers to hide the shaking. “I don’t…” A picture flashes through his mind; everyone’s bodies, sprawled in varying shades of dirt, their eyes wide and blank, fists clenched. He glances at Jonathan’s hands; one palm is visible and there are four raw crescent shapes dug into the flesh, one for each fingernail. “You don’t remember anything else?”

“No.” Jonathan shakes his head and lets out a breathy, nervous laugh. Another terrible lie. “No, just weird dreams.”

“What kind of weird dreams?” Under the covers, he’s picking at a hangnail until it bleeds and stings. He remembers now; he knows what Vecna did to his friends, what Will’s failure allowed him to do to them.

I have trapped each of them in their own personal nightmares. Vecna had said. Here again, I have you to thank.

“It’s not important.” 

“It is.” Will wishes they weren’t having this conversation in a hospital ward. It feels like it did when he was a kid and the Mind Flayer had him and all he could do was sit in bed and be stared at, examined and worried over. A freak, as he’d always known he was, on full display.

Except that time it wasn’t his fault. This time…

“What I saw wasn’t real, Will. I know that. Mom knows that too. And when the others wake up they’ll be the same. It might take a bit of time but…we’ll be okay.”

“But it’s my fault.” Will chokes. His hands are juddering under the bed-sheet now. Jonathan eases them free and holds them tight, tugging Will’s fingers apart so he can’t pick at his skin again. “It’s my fault .”

“What is, Will? How is any of this your fault? It was Vecna. He did this.”

“No.” Will shakes his head, his face crumpling with tears “No, you don’t understand. It was me. It was my mistake. I’m sorry, Jonathan. I’m so, so, so sorry .”

He was the one who went to the boathouse, who spilled all their secrets to a stranger, who was so naive that he let everyone use that stranger’s plan and passed it off as his own. And for what? A smile and a listening ear and the chance to, just for a few hours, no longer feel so alone? How could he have sold out everyone he ever loved in exchange for so little?

Jonathan pulls him into a hug and holds him until the shaking stops. His hand smoothes up and down Will’s spine until his breathing slows to match.

“It’s my fault.” Will says again, eyes closed, buried in the soaked patch of sweater on Jonathan’s shoulder. “I thought I was special, that I could do this and be like El. I was wrong. I wasn’t strong enough and …I betrayed everyone.”

“Betrayed? Will, we lost a fight. No one betrayed anyone.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then help me to understand.”

“I can’t. Jonathan-” he pulls back and stares at his older brother, at the person who knows more of his secrets than anyone else alive, who has been there for him ever since Will was a tiny preemie in Hawkins Hospital and Jonathan was a serious-faced toddler, leaning over the cradle’s edge and promising to keep him safe.

Will sees at all those years of unconditional love in Jonathan’s face, and the words die in his mouth. If he comes clean, then he knows that Jonathan won’t be able to forgive him, not really, and Will can’t bear to lose that look of love. It’s too precious, too rare. So he swallows down the truth and shakes his head, repeating. “I can’t .”

And, quietly, Jonathan relents. “Okay.” 

Will leans back into the hug and they wriggle a bit to make themselves more settled. It reminds him of those nights, years ago now, when Lonnie would yell and Jonathan would let Will use his big headphones, cranking up the noise until all Will could hear was Joe Strummer crooning in his ear and feel Jonathan humming against his side. 

“I still mean it, you know, Jonathan murmurs “What I said in the pizza place.”

“What?” Will’s voice is muffled.

“That I’m here, and I’ll always be here.” Jonathan’s arm tightens just a little across WIll’s shoulders “That I love you, and there is nothing in this world that will ever change that.”

“But-”

“ Nothing , Will. Okay?”

Will swallows thickly, blinking away more tears. All he wants to do right now is apologise and cry and wish things were different, but Jonathan is warm and solid and familiar, and as the minutes pass, things get just the tiniest bit more bearable.

“Not even Legos up the nose?”

Jonathan laughs, squeezing him tight “ Especially not Legos up the nose.” 

Will laughs too and, for a moment, everything feels light, almost normal. He nudges his head a little further into his brother’s shoulder. “I love you too, Jonathan.” he says.

They sit there for a while, until a nurse appears and ushers them back to their separate beds. Exhaustion, and the remaining medication, slowly pull Will into a doze. Like a body into quicksand, he sinks back into sleep. 

*******

It’s early evening and Will is lying in his bed, eyes closed and face peaceful. Behind the façade, however, his mind is working overtime. 

They took out his IV an hour ago and he has been awake ever since, listening intently to everything happening around him, mainly to get a picture of his surroundings and, most importantly, the way out. Luckily, the ward is small (ten beds) and narrow, meaning that sound travels clearly from anywhere in the room. A couple of staff did a check-in round not long ago and, from that, Will knows that Owens, Robin, Jonathan, Nancy and Vickie make up the row directly across from his bed.  Lucas is on Will’s right and, to his left, is Joyce’s now empty bed, then Hopper, then El. The double exit doors are beyond El and, if the amount of keycode punching is any indication, pretty heavily secured against people coming in from the outside.

He hopes against hope that it isn’t the same for someone wanting to get out .

Will opens his eyes and sits up, sliding his bare feet down to the floor. Moving as quietly as possible, he shucks off the hospital gown, finds last night’s clothes in a neat pile at the foot of his bed, and tugs them on. They’ve been laundered and smell of cheap washing powder, but at least they’re clean. The best part is getting his shoes on; the ward’s cold, smooth floor is far too much like the void’s wet blackness for comfort. 

Aside from his clothes, the only things left out for him are a generic looking wash kit, a comb, some soap and flannel. He ignores them all, sweeping the space for something, anything, that could be used to defend himself; like scissors or some kind of surgical implement. Unfortunately, this is a competent hospital and they haven’t left so much as a pen out for him to take. 

(Although, if he’s honest, even if he had found a vicious looking scalpel, the idea of using it against Vecna is laughable.)

Carefully, Will peels apart the curtains surrounding his bed and creeps down the ward’s central aisle. He eyes the other beds as he passes, but resists the urge to peek inside. There have been no voices from behind those curtains, which must mean that the others are not yet awake, but there have been no screaming machines or flurries of staff entering either, which he hopes means everyone is still stable. He has to trust that assumption; he has to believe everyone is going to be okay.

A wink of light between the curtains around his mom’s bed makes him freeze. Steeling himself, he peeks through the gap and sees her asleep, a book (DeLillo’s White Noise ) teetering on the sheet beside her, the reading lamp still on. She must have come back from El’s surgery for a quick rest and ended up nodding off.

Will pauses at the foot of the bed. He can’t remember the last time he saw his mom like this. Her hair is loose and soft across the pillow and she is lying on her side with her hands tucked up beneath her chin, just like he often does. He is struck by how small she is. The sight makes something vulnerable twist inside him. Padding over, Will carefully puts the book on the nightstand, then turns back to the door. 

Will forces himself to take time walking down the aisle, careful not to let his sneakers squeak on the polished floor. 

He has to make this right. Just him. He’s the one Vecna wants.

No one else has to get hurt because of his mistakes.

He’s going to escape, get Mike and bring him home.

No matter the cost.

His pulse starts to race as he nears the exit. This is it. The door handles gleam in the low light and-

“Will.”

He full-body flinches, biting back a yell. The voice is coming from El’s bed, two steps to his left and behind a swathe of hospital curtain. For a moment he doesn’t move, hoping she was dreaming, but then she calls again and she sounds so small and raw and tired, he can’t bear not to answer. Gently, he draws the curtain aside and slips through.

El is lying perfectly straight and still, her one visible arm stuck full of IV tubes, her index finger enclosed by a blood oximeter. The sheets do little to hide the bulky bandages around her abdomen, more plasters cover the small burns on her hands and legs, and there is a fresh-stitched cut running along her hairline. Her skin is pale, lit only sparsely by the light of the screens around her. Her eyes, however, are fixed and steady on his face. 

“Hi, El.” Will perches on the edge of the bed, pitching his voice low in case someone overhears. “How are you feeling?” 

“Bad.” she grimaces “But better. Thanks to you.” Her smile fades. “You were leaving.” 

It isn’t a question, and Will is done with lying for today. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“You know where.” He doesn’t want to say it aloud. “I have to make things right.”

“Yes but not alone. You need friends. You need me.”

“We did all of that the first time, El. And now look at everyone. They’re all in comas . Mom and Jonathan are the only other ones that have woken up and you…you…” he bites his lip, hard, until the urge to sob fades. “I hate seeing you like this. It’s all because of me.”

“No.” El sits up so she can see him better. She moves gingerly around her stitches, but her face is determined. “Stay here.”

He winces when something knocks into his head from behind. It’s a sandwich from the hospital vending machine, white bread and some unidentifiable, thin filling. Someone has left a tray for El on her visitors’ chair, and she’s plucked the sandwich up with her magic. It drops into Will’s lap with a crackly thump.

“Eat.” she says. Then, when he doesn’t move, “Eat or I will call the nurse.” Will’s eyes flick to the door. El’s frown deepens. “Leave and I will also call the nurse.”

She fixes him with the same glare that has banished monsters, flipped vans and ripped portals between worlds. Will sighs, puts the sandwich into his mouth, bites down, and chews until it disappears. 

“Yum.” he says, voice flat.

“You need to eat.”

“I’m fine.”

“I hate that word.” El wrinkles her nose. “‘Fine’. People only say that when they’re actually bad, but it’s supposed to mean they aren’t.”

“People are stupid.”

“Yeah.” She catches his eye. “Really stupid.”

Will takes another bite of the sandwich. He thinks it's cheese, but everything tastes like dust right now.

“I know why you want to leave.” El says again, bringing him out of his trance. “But we need to rest first, and recover. Otherwise we will just end up here again. Maybe worse.”

Will shakes his head. “I can make this right, El,” he says “But I have to go now. Every second we sit here, Vecna is free. He’s got our friends, and who knows what he might be…” he breaks off, staring at the floor until his vision stops swimming. He never saw Vecna’s other victims, but he’s seen Max. Even the thought of Mike lying like that, drained and desperate, makes him want to tear himself apart. 

“No.” El’s fingers brush his, making him flinch. “They are alive - we can both feel it.” Grudgingly, he nods. She’s right; something between a hunch and an inkling tells him that Mike Wheeler is breathing and stable, wherever he may be.  “We will make it right together.” El says again.

Will doesn’t realise he’s crying until the first tear falls onto the sheet. “How can you say that? You know what I did. Vecna tricked me. I betrayed you all”

El frowns “Vecna is good at lying. He lied to all of us.”

“Not like he lied to me.” 

“Why were you different?” El frowns “Did he do something else?”

“I can’t tell you…I…” Just like with Jonathan, Will sees the openness in El’s eyes; the belief that he is someone good, someone worth trusting. He can’t bear to show her that she is wrong. El reaches for his hand, giving him the option of telling her without words, but he jerks away.  “I can’t , El.”

“You want to go alone, tonight…” she pauses for a long time, watching his face with her deep, searching eyes. “...because you believed Vecna’s lies in a worse way than we did. Is that the reason?”

“Part of it.” He wipes his eyes on his sleeve.

“But not all of it.” Again, it isn’t a question. Will nods, throat tight. “The other part…it is about Mike, isn’t it?” Something in the way she says this makes Will go rigid.

He knows he is supposed to say ‘of course, he’s my friend’ or ‘I’m just worried’’ or ‘sorry for thinking about him all the time when the others need help too’, but he can’t. Not anymore. Yes, the others are hurt. Yes, that includes his family. Yes, all he can think about is Mike, and yes, he should probably feel bad about it.

Trouble is, he can’t feel anything else right now. To pretend otherwise is just another lie. 

“I have to go to him. It’s killing me, El. I need to bring him home.”

“Like he did with you.” El murmurs. In the quiet and the stillness and the brushing of their fingertips, images flutter between them - two boys in Ghostbusters costumes, their arms around each other. I’m taking him home. And later, when one small boy’s hand clasps the other’s, clammy but full of conviction. Crazy together, right ? 

El moves towards him. He flinches, but she sets her hands on his shoulders anyway, gently forcing him to look at her.

“Will.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

He frowns. “What?”

“I love you.” 

“I love you too,” he hedges, still confused.

“I know. Will?” Her eyes hold him pinned.

“Yes, El?”

“There are different kinds of love, aren’t there?”

“I…I think so.” Where is she going with this?

“It took me a long time to learn this. About love.” El’s hands slip from his shoulders, but she doesn’t move away. “At first I thought there was only one, and then I thought there were so many kinds that one has to exist for every combination of every person everywhere. Maybe that’s still true, but there are types, aren’t there? They feel different, and they mean different things.” El’s face is set, but when she draws another breath it shakes. Will takes her hand and cradles it between his, like a wounded bird.

“What do you mean?” He asks softly. 

“The first love that I properly understood, I think, was the one for things. Things like Eggos.” A little smile flickers across her face. “And warm beds and the way the Mall smells and when things are just pretty. Then there is love for friends - that one was scarier to learn, because you have to trust as well; you have to choose to care about someone and sometimes you can be wrong and they can be bad or scary. Like Henry.” She rolls her shoulders a little, shucking off the memory. “Last year, I learned about the best one, or the best one for me right now; the kind of love that means family, like I have with Hopper and Joyce and Jonathan and you.” She squeezes his hand. “And then there’s the last kind, and I think I am still trying to understand it. A kind of love like Jonathan and Nancy’s. Like Hopper and Joyce’s. Like Lucas and Max.”

“And you and Mike.” Will adds, because he has to. Because he can’t wonder, even for a second, why El hasn’t put herself and Mike at the top of that final list.

But then El shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore.”

“No, El, that’s not true. Mike loves you - he said it when you were with Vecna, remember? And before, when he thought you couldn’t hear. You love each other, and that’s what saved you. Your hearts.” Will is holding himself so tensely that his muscles are screaming. He doesn’t know if he has the strength to do this again, right now and without a painting to hide behind, but he has to find a way. He has to. Because El needs Mike, because Mike needs El, and because Will can’t let anyone else down again.

“Hearts.” El murmurs, echoing him. “Will, please listen. I need to tell you that Mike…he told me about the painting. He said…he said I told you what to paint. He said you told him I did that.” Will nods, just a little. Just enough. El leans closer. “Why did you lie?” 

Will doesn’t answer. He can’t even breathe. He tries to say the words, but can only form them with his lips. They drag up his throat like a scream, like the last cry of a dying animal.

El’s eyes soften. When she speaks, her voice is so gentle it breaks his heart. “Because you love him.” she says.

“It doesn't matter. He loves you , El. He does. So much. I promise you he does.”

“I know.” She turns her hands over and takes him by the wrists, gently but firmly, not letting him pull away. “I know he does. And I love him too but…I don’t think we have the right one. I think I would…feel different…if it was right. And.... and I think maybe your love is the right kind.” 

Her words are an odd staccato, even more than usual. She looks up at him and there are tears in her eyes too. This feels like they’re pulling long shards of glass from somewhere in their chests, one by one. It is a deep, piercing pain, but the only way to heal.

“It’s not the right kind.” Will whispers, crushed with shame. “I shouldn’t love him, not like that. It’s not allowed, El. I’m wrong for feeling like that.”

“Why?” El says, so simply. “Love is beautiful.”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s not normal , not for a boy and a boy to…be like that.”

“But…” El’s thumbs stroke Will’s palms while she thinks. “But isn’t it more important that it is the right kind of love, rather than whether it is between a boy and a girl, or a boy and a boy?”

Will is crying openly now. He curls so far into himself that he bows forward, his forehead coming to rest on El’s shoulder. “I…I don’t know.” he whispers, so quietly he can barely hear himself. “I…if I could decide things like that then …then yes. I think so.” Will closes his eyes, somehow both braced against her words and drinking them in. 

“Mike believes he loves me like Lucas loves Max,” El says “and maybe he does. But sometimes I think…maybe he is confused too? Maybe that is why he couldn’t say it for so long, because he wasn’t sure either.”

“He was sure when he saved you from Vecna. He believes he loves you that way, and that is what matters in the end.” Will lets out another shaky breath. There are no lies in this place, no boundary between them, only truth, only honesty. “He loves you like that, in the right way, in the normal way. And he loves you more than he loves me.”

“Maybe.” El says, and the fact that she doesn’t deny it hurts so much , but at the same time it is exactly what is needed here because it’s the truth . She doesn’t know. She can’t give him a happy ending. She can’t untangle reality for him any more than any of them can change what is in their hearts. 

El gathers him into a hug, clumsy around her IVs. She smells of hospitals, and a bit like she needs a shower, but Will doesn’t care. It is dark and safe in her arms, and it holds him steady. “I do not know this for sure, Will, and I do not know much about love yet, like I said, but…I want to tell you something that I feel. I feel it like we feel things from the Upside Down sometimes.” She waits for Will to nod; understanding, acceptance, permission. “Will, I think Mike does love me. But his love for me is not for always. Not for forever.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He is like me. He doesn’t know about love. Not yet. He is not ready for you.” 

“He will never be ready, El.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think he needs time. I really do.”

Will looks up at her. His eyes are stinging. “But we don’t have time.”

El touches his face and, at his words, two perfect tears fall, one down each of her cheeks. “No.” she says, with more tenderness than either of them can stand. “No, we do not.”

They move as one, wrapping their arms around each other and holding on tight. El’s face is pressed painfully into his shoulder, her fingernails digging into his back. It is hard to breathe. It is unbearable. It is the most loved he has ever felt.

“You are the heart, Will.” Eleven tells him, her pulse strong and sure, beating in time with his. “You have always been the heart.”

Will shudders through a sob and holds her tighter. “How do I fix this, El? I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Neither do I.” El puts one hand on Will’s chest. “But you have the answer. In there. We have to find it.”

“I can’t. I’m a…a mistake. I’m defective. I let the shadow in, and then Vecna, and-”

“No. You are not a mistake. You never have been.” Her eyes are fierce, her touch gentle. She will not let him look away. “The only thing you did wrong was not to trust us with the truth. You hid things because you were ashamed, because you thought we wouldn’t love you anymore. But I love you, we love you, no matter what.” She smiles, just like Jonathan, and it hurts in the best way possible. “Okay?”

He nods, forcing the answer through trembling, tear-wet lips. “Okay.”

“Okay.” El says again. “Now, stay with me tonight, and tell me things. Everything. Trust me, and we can find answers together. Do you promise?”

Something cracks open inside Will, far down where the pain is sweet, like a pressed knot of muscle, or a joint popped back into place. He cups Eleven’s cheek with one hand. He loves her; God, he loves her. He loves them both, yet so differently. She mirrors his gesture and, at her touch, he knows she feels the same. 

“I promise.” 

He starts to speak. He tells her everything, from the very beginning. From Hawkins, Indiana, 1983. 

*******

El and Will talk all through the evening, and by the time Will crawls back into bed he is so exhausted that he sleeps immediately and deeply. 

It feels like barely a second before someone is shaking him awake. He protests at first, then picks up on the urgency. The person waking him is desperate; their grip on his shoulder is a vice. He is being woken like the world is about to end.

He opens his eyes. El is standing over him. Her face is white with pain and her free hand is clinging to the IV pole, the only thing keeping her upright.

“Wake up.” she hisses “ Will , wake up. Something happened.”

“Happened?” Will blinks around. The room is silent and still, as it has been all day. Nothing feels different. “What’s happened? To Mike?”

“No. To Max.” her eyes are wide. “We have to talk to Max.”

“How?”
“We need to make a NINA.” She sags down onto his bed, wincing. Her stitches are definitely bleeding. “I need to speak to her in the void.”

“Okay. Do you need me to find water? A blindfold?” Will is already looking around him, hoping for some flash of inspiration. He finds none, and El is already shaking her head.

“No time. I can go in my mind but…not alone. I am too hurt. But we can go together if you give me help, like before.”

“Anything.” Will is already holding out his hands “Anything, El. Take what you need.”

“Thank you.” She climbs onto the bed and he passes her a pillow to support her back. While she settles, Will grabs his T-shirt and twists it into a blindfold. El dips her head forward and he ties it for her. His fingers fumble and he’s pretty sure she is trembling too. They’re so tired . As he works he is starting to feel the same thing that El was describing; something blood-sick and urgent, something about Max.

El straightens and holds out her hands. Will takes them immediately, forming a circle between them. 

“Ready?” he asks.

“Ready,” says El. 

He has just about enough time to close his eyes when the cold overtakes him. Just like the shadow, it is endless, tearing and icy. Part of it is still El, still familiar, but he can also feel the absence of her energy, the gaps that need filling, like the lactic burn of muscles at the end of a long running race. He zeroes in on the gaps and starts to pour, sending every piece of energy and warmth that the last few hours have given him to fill that roaring void.  It is harder without the shadow but gradually, like a matchlight in a storm shelter, something is kindled, growing, coming alive between them. 

Will doesn’t know the exact moment when they cross the threshold. All he senses is the new depth to the darkness beyond his eyelids. He squeezes El’s hands, waits for her returning squeeze, and they open their eyes together.

The void stretches around them, endless, slick, black. Instinctively, he reaches for the shadow, and a sudden queasy emptiness washes over him. Wherever the shadow is, it isn’t waiting for him anymore, or looking out for him. The thought makes him even sadder than he expected. 

Will gets to his feet and helps El up too. As they stand, he feels a little giddy, as though the blood hasn’t reached his head yet. His eyes meet El’s and he realises she is feeling it too. She steps a little closer to Will.

“Something is-”

Before she can get any further, something flashes out of the blackness, bearing down on them in a wave of starbursts and static. It isn’t Vecna, or the shadow, but it’s terrifying. Will and El cling to each other as the void dissolves and bursts into brightness. They stagger across soft carpet, into a small, sleepy space that smells faintly of nail polish and sunscreen and lavender oil.

They open their eyes. Will doesn’t recognise the soft, pinkish glow of the seashell lampshade, the worn patchwork eiderdown, or the bright Endless Summer poster tacked beside the bed, but El does. She inches a little closer to Will, so that their shoulders brush.

“This is Max’s room.” she tells him “From the old house.”. They turn together, taking in the sunshine yellow walls, the floaty curtains and the messy bookcase full of trinkets.

“It’s not Vecna,” Will says “But it feels…”

“Weird.” El finishes. “Sad?”

“Well that’s just rude.” a new voice says from behind them, in the direction of the bed. They jerk around, eyes wide, to see Max sitting cross-legged in its centre. She is wearing her favourite brightly striped shirt and her hair is loose and vibrant as ever. The only sign that they haven’t stepped into the past is the walkman looped around her neck and the dark, haunted look in her bright blue eyes. 

“Max.” El takes a half step forward, breathless with relief, then hesitates. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah, it’s really me.” She gives El a sarky half-smile that is a better confirmation than any words. “I was wondering when you would stop by. Either of you gonna tell me what the hell this thing is?” 

She flickers for a second, moving from the centre of the bed to its edge in a quick fizz of colour. Her hands, previously empty, lift up towards them. In her cupped palms is a sticky black pool of sinew, dripping between her fingertips.

And there, in its centre, sits the Eye.

Chapter Text

“Max.” El beams, eyes shining with tears already “I have missed you so much .” She pulls her friend into a crushing side hug, burying her face in Max’s hair. 

“Hey! Careful or you’ll make me drop this thing.” Max laughs and leans into her, rolling her eyes affectionately. “I missed you too, you dork. Jeez, imagine if I’d been gone for more than a day, you’d never cope.”

El freezes, then slowly retracts her arms. Will watches a range of unnameable emotions flit across her face. 

“What?” Max asks, her smile fading. 

“Max.” El swallows “It has been twenty one days.”

“No.” Max takes a half step back “No, it’s been hours, at most.”

“That is not true.” 

Max tries to laugh, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Stop playing around, this isn’t funny.”

“I am not lying.”

“She’s telling the truth, Max.” Will adds, as gently as he can “Can you tell us…what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I remember last night .” Max insists, in the sing-song tone of someone stating the obvious. “We went to the Creel House and I was going to be bait and I was up in the attic with Lucas, but then Vecna must have got me or something because I ended up here. I’ve been bored out of my mind, but it hasn’t even gotten dark in here yet. I’d know if it had been that long.” She looks from Will to El and back again. “I would . I know my own damn room and how long I’ve been in it, okay?” 

“You mean your old room.” El says.

“No, this is my bedroom. You know that, you’ve been here enough times.” Max takes another step back, looking paler now “Why are you guys fucking with me? Is this a prank?” 

“Max, this isn’t your room now, you live in the trailer park off Kerley. You’ve lived there for months.”

“No I haven’t. Since when? We can’t live in a trailer, we’d never fit four of us.”

“Four?”

“Yeah, Will. Me, Mom, Neil and Billy.” 

“You don’t remember about Billy?” El falters when she says his name. Even now, after all this time, the wounds of that night feel raw.

“No? What happened to Billy? Did he do something dumb like get a DUI again, or did Neil kicked him out? Typical. He’s fine though, right?” She starts to look frightened. “Right?”

El shakes her head and opens her mouth to tell her, but Will touches her arm. 

“It’s okay,” he says to Max, treading carefully “Maybe we have it wrong. Things get weird in the Upside Down, don’t they?” Max nods, sniffs, then nods again. “We can sort everything out once we get out of here. This place…it’s a memory of yours, right? Of your room.”

“Yeah.” Max manages “Yeah, I know it’s not real. The calendar’s wrong.” She gestures to the wall. A surf-themed picture reads July 1985; the summer of Scoops Ahoy and ‘I dump your ass’; the last days before the Flayed.

“Do you know if Vecna built this? Does it feel anything like it did the first time he got you?” Will looks round at the comforting cocoon of a room and thinks of what Vecna had told him - about gifted children kept like spiders in jars, trapped in their own minds. This doesn’t look like a nightmare but, then again, he has learned the hard way that not all of Vecna’s traps are menacing at first.

“No. It doesn’t feel like that at all.” Max insists. “I - I mean… it doesn’t feel like the Upside Down or the Creel House, but… it does feel kinda wrong. I guess.” Dark fluid drips through her hands where they are still holding the Eye. She grimaces and tries to put it down on the bed. Her hands don’t tilt. She shakes them, with the same result.  “I can’t let go of it. It’s…stuck to me.” She winces, wriggling uselessly. “What the fuck is this thing?” 

Overhead, the light bulb flickers like a candle and they all flinch. “Get it off me.” Max’s voice starts to rise. El tries to steady her but she wrenches free, leaping to her feet. 

“Max.” Will takes a step towards her, hands out, placating. “Wait. Stay calm. Please stay calm.”

“No.” Max’s face is blank with panic. She throws her hands out with enough momentum to send any normal object across the room. The Eye stays put. “No! Get it off get it off get it off -!” 

“Okay. It’s okay, let me -” Will steps forward, reaching for her hands-

As soon as Will’s fingers brush her skin the lights go out. Black veins splatter across the walls and the air turns mouldy and thick. The pastel carpet and paint peel away, stripped back to skeletal boards over an endless black drop. Somewhere beyond the walls, something dark and huge shifts . Will recoils, snatching his hands back, and the sunny bedroom returns.

“Are you alright?” he asks immediately “Sorry, I…I had no idea it could…um-”

Max ignores him. She is looking straight across the room, to the wall where her mirror is hanging. It’s a pretty mirror, bordered with seashells to match her lamp. She has tucked several blurry polaroids of her, Hawkins and the Party around its edge. The sweet frame makes the horror on her face even more haunting. 

“Wait.” Max crosses the room and peers at the glass. Her reflection frowns back, identical. “Touch me again.”

“What?”

“I said touch me again .” When Will hesitates, she bumps deliberately against him and their bare forearms connect. 

The change is instant. In the mirror, a grotesque, skeletal version of Max stares back, limbs twisted, dried blood smeared beneath its white, sightless eyes.

Max screams and scrambles back.

“What…what is that? Is that…me?” Her eyes are saucer-wide. “No. No that’s not possible. I look dead. Am I dead? Did he fucking kill me? Tell me! Will? El? What’s happening ?” 

She starts to hyperventilate. The light flickers again and the hairs on the back of Will’s neck lift as something massive moves beyond the room, closer this time. He can feel it in the same way he used to feel storms coming as a kid, the way the still air outside thickened to herald an approaching thunderhead. El catches his eye; she can feel it too.

Will keeps away from Max but, like a spiderweb crack in a windowpane, the illusion continues to splinter. Max looks down at her arms as they, too, flicker. One minute they are whole and golden, the next woefully broken, fingers contorted, skin necrotically pale.

“Oh my god.” she whispers, voice distant and faint “Oh my god .” She stumbles back, bumping into the bed and sitting down hard. Her eyes are white now, the blue bleached to almost nothing. Her pupils are tiny pinpricks, unseeing and cold. “My eyes… what’s wrong with my eyes? They’re…Why can’t I see ?”

“Max.” El comes close and gathers her gently into her arms, crying too hard to say anything more. “ Max .”

“El I’m scared. I’m so so scared. What’s wrong with me?” 

“Vecna hurt you.” El holds her, swallowing sobs “Like he did Chrissie and Patrick and Fred. You…died. I brought you back but…but your body is still healing.”

El turns Max’s face inwards, against her shoulder, murmuring and stroking her hair while her friend shakes against her. As Max calms, the darkness retreats and, overhead, the seashell lamp resumes its steady shine. El looks at Will over Max’s head, pleading. Will would give her anything in that moment, but he feels so powerless. 

Eventually, it is Max who speaks, pulling herself out of El’s grasp. Her eyes are blue again, red-rimmed with unshed tears.

“Tell me the truth,” she says. “All of it. Even the worst parts.” She sits straight, jaw set and ready. Max is strong in the way that castle walls are strong, or a ship’s figurehead, or an ice-forged mountain peak; she is a girl who has been knocked down over and over and over and always, without fail, has found a way back to her feet. Now, Will sees her brace herself for yet another blow, and there is no choice but to let it fall. 

Together, Will and El tell Max everything that has happened since their first fight with Vecna, from the fissures opening, to Eddie and Jordan’s deaths, to Will’s new connection to the shadow, to El plucking out Vecna’s Eye and everything else that went right and wrong about the night before.

“You’re not dead, Max.” Will assures her as they catch up to the present moment “I promise. But you are in the hospital, and you’ve been there a while. Your arms and legs, and your eyes, they-”

“I saw the others.” Max cuts him off “I know how it works. Do I…do I really look like them? Like Chrissie did?” 

Will presses his lips together and nods. There are no words. 

Max sniffs once and squares her shoulders. “And Lucas? Is he okay?”

“He’s stable. He’s in a coma, like the others, but before that he came to see you every day, no matter what. He’d been reading to you, talking to you, making sure the doctors were taking care of you.”

“The Talisman.” Max says suddenly “He’s been reading me the Talisman, right?”

“You heard him?”

“Maybe.” she bites her lip “I don’t exactly remember but…I just know. Somehow.” She drops her gaze to her lap and pauses, taking a steadying breath before asking her next question. “I’m… really messed up aren’t I? I’m broken.”

“They fixed your arms and legs.” El tells her “But the breaks were bad and-”

“They don’t think I’ll walk.” Max’s voice turns bitter. “Lucky old me. Looks like my pro skateboarding career is over then. Or any kind of skateboarding. Or my life as I know it.” 

“That’s not true.” Will kneels beside the bed, careful not to touch her but wanting to be close. “It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t do, you’re still part of the Party.”

“Hardly. What kind of Zoomer can’t walk, or even see? I’ll be a …a burden. Useless.”

“You’ll never be useless. You’re still you.” El says softly “We all love you and we’ll never leave you.”

Max’s shoulders shake as she inhales. “But you’ll want to. One day. It’s no fun to sit in a hospital and read me books for the rest of your lives, right?” She laughs, just once, and it has a bitter, cutting edge. “This is so dumb but you know what pisses me off the most right now? I was supposed to go on a date with Lucas this Friday. And I’m gonna miss it. Or, I’ve already missed it. Not that I’d be able to go more anyway; it was meant to be to the movies and movies aren’t for…” She swallows, but the tears fall anyway. El puts an arm around her again. She holds Max as though she would give anything to shield her from the world forever, but has no idea how. 

“There are other Fridays, other days, other dates.” Will assures her “Lucas is lost without you. He’d give up going to the movies for his whole life just to have you back again.”

“But he shouldn’t have to. It’s not fair on him. It’s not fair on me either but at least he can escape, he can be free, be normal . No, stop. Listen.” she scowls at them when they both try to speak. “It’s not just my body that’s like this either. It’s my brain too. I’m not an idiot; the stuff I was saying before about this room and Billy and how much time has passed, the way you were both confused…there’s something wrong with my head, isn’t there? My memories are fucked up. And if my body’s broken and my brain’s fucked up then…what am I? Am I even me anymore? What if Vecna’s just wearing me away like…like erosion in a river? What if there isn’t enough of me left worth bringing back?”

“Don’t say that.” El is shaking now, devastated. “Please. I saved you. I brought you back. You are going to be okay.” She clings to Max but she sounds childish, like Will did when he was seven and still insisted Lonnie was going to come to the parent-teacher conference, or remember his birthday. 

Max doesn’t answer. She looks down at the Eye and her fingertips shift through the black stickiness. Wordlessly, Will gets up and opens the wardrobe, pulls out a random shirt and drapes it over Max’s hands. It’s a paltry disguise but Max’s lips twitch for a brief, grateful moment, and she breathes a little easier.

“So what’s next?” she says. “The plan is to take down this son of a bitch, right? With this?” She lifts her covered hands just slightly, careful not to jostle the cloth.

“That’s one of the things.” Will agrees. “We think that he has two weaknesses; the Eye and his left hand; the one he uses when he is draining people. They’re like…like powerful artefacts. I don’t know if he made them himself or got them from the Upside Down but, wherever they came from, they focus and amplify his power. If we destroy them, we destroy him.”

“So they’re his phylacteries then?” Max’s lips quirk up when Will does a double-take. “What? I have nerds for friends. Made sense to learn at least a bit about it. That and basketball.” The tips of her ears turn pink. Will’s chest aches.

“Yes, we think they work a bit like that. Technically, phylacteries are things that store a soul, but Vecna’s not exactly a typical lich, so it’s more complicated. What we do know is that, when El took out the Eye, it hurt him bad . Much more than any other injury we’ve dealt him before. Erica’s theory is that, like with a lich, we can defeat Vecna if we destroy the Hand and the Eye at the exact same time. So far, it looks like she’s right.”

“Erica’s theory, huh? Always knew she was smart.” Max’s smile is wry, and a little sad. “Tell her she can have my skateboard, okay? Now that…” She gestures down to her legs. They look heartbreakingly strong and whole in the bedroom light.
“Tell her yourself.” Will tries to smile, “Tell her when you’re back home with us and Vecna’s in pieces.”

“Sure, Byers. I will.” It’s a watery effort, but she manages to smile back. “So to destroy Vecna you need to get the Hand and the Eye together and then destroy them both at once. Does that mean someone just has to be holding them or…?”

“We aren’t sure. In D&D, a creature has to physically take on the Hand and Eye, as in fuse them to their own bodies, then be destroyed themselves in order to kill Vecna. Once that process starts, there’s no going back - the Hand and the Eye give the bearer a huge amount of power, but if either of them are removed again, the person definitely dies. But, like I said, that’s in the game, and we know Vecna isn’t actually a lich, so…so it doesn’t have to work like that.” He trails off, unable to stop thinking about the sickening, seductive whispers that had gone through his head when he last saw the Eye, and the way his own left eye started to ache and itch to be plucked free.

“We will find another way.” El promises them both. “No one is going to die. Just Vecna.”

“Okay,” Max exhales, a little shakily “Get the Hand, add the Eye, then nix them both together, I get it. And you gave the Eye to me because….?”

“We didn’t have a choice. In the last attack, we couldn’t get out of the Upside Down without leaving the Eye behind, so we left it with you, then hid you as best we could.”

“Right.” Max fidgets a little, her hands flexing under the shirt. “Is it…fused to me now? Is that why I can’t let it go?”

This had not occurred to Will. Stricken, he turns to El. To his relief, she is already shaking her head.

“No. I made it stick to you, but not forever. I was weak so I could only hide one thing, so I made you and the Eye one thing, just for hiding. It can be undone.” El stumbles through the explanation, still unfamiliar with how to put her powers into words.

“Can you, uhm, can you take it? Just for a second? Just to be sure?” Max’s voice is small, the tremble in it almost imperceptible. Will’s stomach twists; of course she is terrified, of course she wants to be certain. If even half of the D&D lore is true here, she’s holding her own death sentence. 

El hesitates. “Vecna might see.” 

“Just for a second, El.” Will urges “We need to know.”

As always, it doesn’t take more than a shared glance for El to understand him. She turns a shade paler as the implications sink in, and turns urgently to Max. Max shifts closer, wriggling her arms so the shirt falls to the floor. The Eye swims in its viscous pool, unseeing.

“Stay still.” El says, then cups her hands beneath Max’s. The air between them ripples and, when Max tilts her wrists, the Eye slides free. It settles into El’s hands and Max’s are clean again, without a trace of shadow. Max slumps with relief, but El is already looking sick, swaying and staring down at the Eye with something worryingly hungry in her expression. “It’s…speaking.” she says, “It…wants…” She cringes inwards, lips pressed tight as though trying not to vomit. 

“El-?” Max starts forward, brows tilting up in distress “El, are you -?”

“Please take it back.” El blurts. “ Please .”

“Yes. Yes of course.” Max holds out her hands and El tips the Eye back into them. She is breathing hard, a sheen of sweat visible on her forehead. 

Several seconds pass while she tries to get herself under control. At last, she says “You can’t hear it?”

“Not…really.” Max wrinkles her nose “A little, maybe. You know like when you stand on a train platform and have this weird urge to just….step out, sometimes?” (“Yes.” says Will. “What’s a platform?” says El.) “It’s like that. But I can handle it.”

“I heard it too.” Will confesses “Before we hid it with you. Maybe…maybe the stronger a person’s powers, the more it calls to them.”

“Maybe.” El agrees woozily. She tucks her hands back against her stomach, suppressing a shudder. “I should not touch it again.”

“You’re right.” Max says “I can hold it. I’ll keep it safe until you figure something out.” She curls her fingers around the Eye, forcing out a reassuring smile. There she is again; the wild, vivid girl who always comes back swinging, who plunged a needle into her own step-brother’s neck to stop him from killing her friends. “Is there anything else we can do to hide it more? I mean, I’m not sure what exactly you did in the first place to hide me, but…”

“El made a protective boundary out of all her good memories of you.” Will explains, describing the jewel-bright layers El had built around Max. “That’s why this hiding place looks like your room, I think. I helped hide it a bit, and it’s worked so far but…I don’t think it’s enough. El and I came here because something summoned us, some kind of disturbance or danger. I think the Eye was the source of it.”

“We know the Fillactuallies make Vecna stronger,” El adds “and when the Eye was talking to me just now it was trying to attach to me. So maybe it is trying to find someone to take it again, or get back to Vecna by breaking out of this hiding place. That might be why this room is…splintery.”

“Is Vecna trying to get in here?” Max asks. “If the Eye wants to get to him, it’s safe to say he’d want it back too.”

“I think he would, if he knew where we were.” Will exchanges a glance with El; both of them thinking of the sinister, looming presence they’ve felt pass overhead several times now. “But the memories we wrapped around you have hidden you so far.”

“Yes, but you built this place from your connection to me specifically, right? And the Eye isn’t me, so it’s like…an error, or a crack in the wall. If it’s trying to break out to find a host, and if you were getting warnings, and if I’m starting to see what I really look like…then that means whatever the Eye is doing is slowly breaking this place down. ” She chews the inside of her cheek. “Vecna’s gonna find us. Find me. And I don’t know why I know this, or if I know it, honestly…but I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

“But we need more time, more than anything.” Will tells her “Most of the others are still in comas, and El’s been badly injured. If we can keep you safe here for another day, or even until morning, it could make all the difference. Maybe we could try and add more layers of protection, El?”

“ I could try to do that,” El says “but not you. You made it worse before.” She looks at the mirror, and they all remember the way the illusion warped and cracked when Will touched Max.

“It’s still so weird that you have powers too, Will.” Max says, wrinkling her nose a little “I mean, not surprising after everything but…I can’t believe El’s not our only superhero now.”

“ Definitely not a superhero.” Will grimaces “But El might be right about my powers not being helpful. Unlike El, I’m still tainted by the Upside Down. That might be why the illusion reacts whenever I touch you, but not when El does. It’s like we’re trying to create a pool of clear water and El’s hands are clean, but my hands are covered in black paint. Does that make sense?”

Both girls nod, albeit slowly.

“So your powers aren’t like El’s at all? No moving stuff with your mind? No finding people?”

“Not really. Vecna told me the powers in the Upside Down affect different people in different ways. Vecna works with illusions and nightmares, El works with connecting and finding things, and I…I guess I create things. So maybe I also disrupt the illusion because it’s one creative power meeting another.”

“Vecna makes things look different,” El clarifies “But Will makes things .” She looks to Will, uncertain “We think it is like that. Will is still learning how to have powers.”

Max frowns for a moment. Her mouth opens, closes, then opens again. “You said Vecna targeted the sacrifices and Nancy because all of them had powers, right? In some way.” She waits for them to nod “That means I’m one too, doesn’t it? That I have powers.”

“Yeah but-” Will hesitates. Max has never shown any sign of having powers - but then again, had Nancy, or any of the others? Will had spent months, if not years, doubting and ignoring the ones inside his own head after all.

“ Do you have powers?” El asks.

Max pauses for a moment, then gives her a tentative grin. “Yeah, actually, I.... I think I do . Watch.”

She closes her eyes and - the only word Will can think of is fizzes - from the edge of the bed to the other side of the room. One moment she is sitting, solid as anything, and the next her outline blurs and shifts into starbursts, streaking from one location to the next at a speed almost too fast to see. It leaves brief lines like a comet’s tail in her wake. Will recognises it as the same sparkling stuff that spirited them out of the void and into the room, and from the moment Max moved from the centre of the bed to its edge when she greeted them. He had assumed they had just been blips in the illusion but now…

“Max.” El breathes her name like a prayer, her eyes are shiny with tears. “Max, you are wonderful .” This is the first time, Will realises, that El has been able to just be with other kids with powers, since her time in the lab. How incredible she must feel to finally, with certainty, know she is not alone.

Max laps them both again, her laugh bubbling after her. She winks over to Will’s side and does a little bow, like a court jester.

“Zoomer powers,” Will says, and Max grins with pride; her little spark of eldritch magic lighting her up from within. He thinks of how much the ability to move like that fits her, in the same way that creation fits him and connection fits El. Watching her face glow, Will is suddenly reminded of Vecna’s story about bringing other gifted children into the Upside Down. Had they, like Max, been delighted to discover their powers? At what point had Vecna revealed his true intentions to them and turned their joy into terror?

He looks away, staring at the little polaroids around Max’s mirror until his eyes stop stinging. 

“We have to get back to the others,” he says “and find a way to wake them up. El, do you think there’s a way you can make Max safer for a little longer? Maybe focus on hiding the Eye specifically, rather than adding more layers?”

“I don’t know. It is risky. If we do more, Vecna might see. And we know that he is close. Very close. And the hiding part was not really my power- it was yours that did that.”

Will huffs in frustration. “It wasn’t me, it was the shadow. If I could get it to help then we could have Max and the Eye hidden in a second.”

“Can you talk to it?” 

Will grimaces, thinking of the jarring emptiness he had felt on arrival. “I don’t think it wants to listen but…I’ll try.” He closes his eyes and pushes his consciousness out beyond the walls of Max’s cosy haven, sending subtle little tendrils out into the black-

BAM .

Something enormous smashes against the roof, throwing them all to the floor. Pictures topple off the walls and, in their place, there is only roaring, empty blackness. The shell light winks out and there is a terrible sound of splintering, like sapling twigs, like fracturing bones. 

The three of them tumble to their knees together, huddled against a howling, tearing wind that comes from nowhere, blowing right through their skin and into their core. Max sways; her face is grey, her eyes unfocussed. 

“I don’t feel so-” she begins, then her eyes roll up and she crumples to the floor. As she falls, the ground beneath them shatters , opening onto the wet, black expanse of the void. They splash as they scramble to right themselves, still sheltered somewhat by the walls and ceiling of Max’s bedroom.

BAM

A second deafening blow crushes into the roof. Boards fall away, revealing more blackness and, just beyond, the intestinal slither of thousands upon thousands of vines. Will forces himself to stand, putting his body between the vines and Max and El. His legs are trembling beneath him, like they did on that night in the lab, but this time there is nothing to reach for. The shadow has abandoned him.

And without it, he is useless.

BAM.

The roof buckles as a third blow lands, sending shards and splinters raining down on their heads. The air is thickening, the air squeezed of its oxygen. Below, there is nothing but the slick black floor of the void. Except…except…

Except the water is rising.

Before, the liquid surface of the void has never cleared the sole of Will’s shoes. Now, it slops against his ankles, climbing to his calves even as he splashes and struggles against it. El sees what is happening a second later and lurches to her feet, dragging a semi-conscious Max with her. Max groans, her head lolling. Her hands are tipped towards the floor but the Eye stays stuck in her grip, glueing her palms together.

The black water reaches Will’s knees, rising so fast he can see it move. Above, the roof buckles again, opening onto palm-sized chunks of void and vine. Will cries out to the shadow with everything he has, but all he feels is emptiness.

No. Not emptiness. Something else is stirring on the edges of his senses, coming closer, lithe as a jungle cat. The air thrums, so deep he can feel it in his throat. The thrums come in metronomic beats, like footfalls, like the booms of a distant clock. Overhead, there is a skittering scritch; are those claws? 

“He’s breaking in.” Max moans. “I can feel it. I can feel him. ” 

Thigh-deep in water, Will spreads his arms and sets his jaw. If he makes sure Vecna gets him first, then he can buy the girls a few more seconds. He just hopes that that will be enough.

But then El screams. By the time Will turns, Max has pulled out of her grasp. She uses her fizzing power to whisk out of reach, then turns to face them. In that moment, she is radiant; glowing with rainbow brightness, chin high, eyes defiant, red hair a whirling flame.

“Tell Lucas I’m sorry.” she says, cutting off their gasps and questions.

Then she closes her eyes and dives. 

The viscous water closes over her immediately, dragging her body down into the tarry depths. Will and El scream her name and scrabble after her, but they have barely a second before bright, blazing light bursts from beneath the surface, so dazzlingly strong that they feel it like a physical blow. It catapults them up and back, smashing through the remains of Max’s bedroom and out, not into vines but into sudden, searing whiteness. 

And then there is nothing at all.

*******************

Will plunges from one screaming void and into another. He is back in the hospital bed, crowded in by four medical staff. A defibrillator is whining, seconds from being put against his chest.

He flinches back with a scream and the doctors do the same.

“What? You’re-? You flatlined .” the one holding the electrode pads gapes at him, her dark skin ashen with shock. 

“ I’mfineI’msorryletmepastplease !” Will is out of the bed and standing before any of them can react. He sprints down the ward aisle in his socks, heading for El’s bed. As he reaches it, the curtain tears back, revealing three sprawled doctors, all recently knocked off their feet, and El, clutching her injured abdomen and wiping her bleeding nose. She looks up at Will, feral determination written in every inch of her stance.

“Max.” she says, and her voice is full of pain.

Will opens his mouth to answer her but is cut off by a cry from across the room. The scream becomes words, breathless, like someone gasping out of a nightmare. “What the fuck ?”

The voice is Nancy’s.

El and Will dash to her bedside, El still hobbling a little, and pull aside the curtain. Nancy is sitting bolt upright, her eyes and hair wild, shivering in her hospital gown. She stares through them for several seconds, with a look Will recognises; the viewmaster-slide feeling of being stuck between realities.

“It wasn’t real.” she breathes, looking between them. “It was a dream. It wasn’t real .” Her face crumples with relief, almost to tears. She looks so small, and so young; like the curious fourth grader Will met the first time he went to the Wheelers’ house, who wore elf ears for their first ever D&D campaign. Will starts forward, unthinking, and hugs her. She folds into him, shaking.

“You’re real.” she repeats, muffled by his shirt “You’re real, aren’t you? Will?”

“Yes. I am, it’s really me.” Will murmurs “You’re okay.” 

“I’m okay.” She sits back carefully and wipes her eyes. “Is…how is everyone? Is Jonathan here? And Steve and Robin and…?” 

“Nance?” A hand appears through their adjoining curtain, parting it just enough to see Robin lying there, grey-faced but with a tentative smile. “Nancy, is that you?”

“ Robin !” Nancy scrambles out of the bed and Will helps her over to Robin’s side. They hug with twin squees of happiness and exchange a flurry of half sentences, something about bards and la bamba, then breathe sighs of relief. Around them, Will can hear more stirring: Owens slurring something, Hopper’s gruff drawl, and the sounds of sheets rustling on other beds. 

The others are awake. Whatever just happened in the Upside Down has injured Vecna enough for him to release the others from their nightmare comas. Despite everything, Will’s heart lifts a little. 

The doors to the ward open, making everyone at Robin’s bedside (Will, El, Nancy and Robin herself) turn in unison.

“Nancy?” It’s Jonathan, vending machine snacks piled in his hands. He drops them all the second he sees her and vaults across the room, scooping her up and spinning her round with a laugh bright enough to light Hawkins for days. Nancy squeaks and her legs bend up as she spins, feet pointed, like a pixie’s. Jonathan releases her onto her bed and sits beside her, touching her cheek and murmuring questions. She answers just as softly, eyes shining. 

Will watches this for half a second before a loud, pained squawk bursts out from the next bed over. Robin stumbles to her feet and pulls back the curtain. Vickie is kneeling on her hospital bed, eyes unfocussed and expression fierce. She’s got a nurse in a headlock, one arm over his neck and the other twisting his arm behind his back. 

“Vicks stop! Stop, it wasn’t real!” 

“Robin?” Vickie looks over and falters, arms dropping as the last of the nightmare vanishes from her eyes. “You’re here?” 

“I’m here.” Robin grins, opening her arms wide so that Vickie can tumble into them. In the periphery, the nurse exits quickly, rubbing his twisted arm and muttering “I am not paid enough for this. ” but Will has already forgotten him, too caught up in the joy of seeing Robin and Vickie melt into each other’s embrace.

Robin tucks her fingers under Vickie’s chin and lifts her face tenderly, checking her over for any signs of injury. Finding none, she peppers kisses across Vickie’s forehead, then both of her cheeks, then her nose, until Vickie shoves at her, giggling, and presses their lips together.

For a long, echoing moment, Will can only stand and stare, unable to believe what he is seeing. He must make some sort of noise because Robin pulls away from the kiss and catches his eye. For a moment, her smile falters. 

“You’re….?” Will whispers, unable to even think the words.

Robin nods, her shoulders tensing a little, just in case. “Yes. We are. And it’s-”

“ Beautiful .” The word is out before Will even thinks it, a rush of relief and joy and wonder.

“Yes.” Robin relaxes, eyes glistening. “Yes it really is.” Her smile returns, bittersweet but even more heartfelt. “Want a hug, Byers?” she asks and, when he nods, gathers him in. 

“Thank you.” Will chokes, though he has no idea what he is really thanking them for, only that he wants to, that he needs to, in this moment. 

Vickie hums in amusement and plants a bruising kiss on Will’s cheek. Robin squeezes them both hard enough to break ribs. Will thinks he might die, here and now, from happiness.

The curtain rings rattle and they all break apart. 

“Lucas is awake.” El says, her face grave. “He is asking about Max.”

A heavy weight settles in Will’s chest. He untangles himself from Robin and Vickie, mumbling reassurances that he forgets as soon as they leave his mouth. He barely has time to turn around before Lucas jogs up to them both, looking tired but incandescently hopeful. He scoops them both into a crushing hug, like they’re a team who just won the big leagues, already talking a mile a minute.

“You’re okay! Thank god. What happened back there? Last thing I remember is the pool starting to boil and then you, El, and then- just lots of spikes and darkness. But you’re not hurt! And I’m not, and everyone’s awake! This is amazing! Oh, sorry -!” He pulls away, embarrassed, as El squeaks and grabs at her stomach, far too tender for the squeezes she just endured. “I just…I don’t know how you did it but if everyone’s awake…do you think that Max…?” He can’t even say it, in case he jinxes it, but the light in his eyes tells Will everything.

If it woke up everyone else, did it wake up Max?

Will’s whole body flushes cold. He tries to keep his face neutral; he doesn’t know if Max actually took the Eye - he didn’t see it exactly - but what other explanation was there? And if he is right…what would that mean for Max’s body, here and now?

Lucas is too buoyant to notice his hesitation. He claps Will on the shoulder again. “I’m going to go see her. Right now. Hey, can you come with me? I could use a friend.” He hesitates, vulnerable under his megawatt grin. Will’s heart aches as he smiles.

“Of course, man.” His eyes flicker to El. Understanding flashes between them; if Max really has taken the Eye, then Lucas is going to need friends more than most.

“I will catch you up.” El promises. “First, I need a chair.”

“Do you want help?” Will steps forward on instinct.

“I will be fine.” She manages a smile. “You go. Hurry.”

Lucas doesn’t need to be told twice. He thanks El then barrels out of the ward so hard the door swings. His muscular legs eat up the ground, making Will trot to keep up. He doesn’t stop to ask for directions, or even look at the signs; weeks at Max’s bedside have made this route instinctive by now. 

“Thanks again for coming with me.” he says as they round the umpteenth bend. Will smiles without saying a word.

Don’t thank me yet. Or at all.

Max’s room is in one of the long-stay wards, the last on a long passage. Lucas bursts inside in a whirl of anticipation. Max’s bed is by the window and a little to the left, so he has to go through the door and turn to the side to look at her directly. This gives Will a perfect view of Lucas’ face in profile, and the way it contorts into anguish the moment he sees his girlfriend’s face.

“ Max .” He falls to his knees at her bedside, hands hovering over her arms, her face, her hair, desperate to touch her and terrified of breaking her all at once. “Max, what happened to you? Can you hear me? Max, please !” 

Will pauses at the foot of the bed. Lucas sits back and, behind his broad shoulders, Max comes into view. She is lying perfectly still, her neck braced and her arms and legs wrapped in bandages just like before. There is no sign that she has moved, or that anything has changed at all, until Will sees her face. Her left eye has sunken in, leaving a puckered, bruise-dark hollow in its place. Blood has dried in stripes down her cheeks and her fingertips and nails are stained black. 

Lucas climbs as far onto the bed as he is able and leans over Max, stroking her hair with pleading reverence. “Please.” he begs, “ please .” But whether he is asking God or Max or Vecna or something else entirely, the only answer is silence. Slowly, his face a mask of pain, Lucas lowers his head onto Max’s shoulder and sobs. 

The door opens. It is El, perched in a wheelchair pushed by a breathless Joyce. El looks first at Max, then at Lucas. Unlike Will, she does not hide her lack of surprise. 

Lucas notes her expression immediately. “Something happened, didn’t it?” he says “In the Upside Down, just before we all woke.”

“Yes.”
“Were you there, with Max?”
“Yes.” Will, who knows her best, sees her fingers quiver in her lap. Lucas, blinded by grief, plunges from surprise into anger.

“Well?” he demands, standing now “What happened in there? Did Vecna do something? Why didn’t you help her?”

“We…we tried.” El’s eyes flick to Will and Lucas follows the movement. Will tries and fails not to shrink under his friend’s furious gaze. 

“ We ? You were there too?”

Will opens his mouth but the words die before they reach his lips. He nods.

Lucas curls in on himself as though WIll has punched him. “Just tell me, Will.” he says, utterly wrecked “Tell me what Vecna did to her.”

“It wasn’t Vecna.” Will hears himself say. His voice is distant, as though from another room, or another life. “It was my fault.”

Chapter Text

**************************************

“Do you want to put the radio on?” Joyce asks, nodding at her car’s beaten up dashboard as they pull out of Hawkins Memorial Hospital. 

“No thanks.” Will curls further into the passenger-side door and watches the streets of Hawkins blur by in a slew of brown, green and beige. It’s a grey day, the bellies of the clouds low above them, heavy with rain. An autumnal breeze had caught them as they crossed the parking lot, making them both shiver, and Will tells himself that this is why he’s huddling into the oversized coat (Hopper’s) that he found on the back seat, feeling like he will never be warm again. 

It is just after 9am. The Party started waking up hours ago, but it’s taken this long for all of them to be examined and (in most cases) discharged. Owens is recovering from a broken rib, sustained during Vecna’s attack, so is staying behind to undergo more treatment. The nurses have also agreed to keep Lucas in for another night for more general ‘observation’, though it is more of a kindness given his grief over Max than because of any medical problem. 

The rest of the Party is in the process of scattering - Steve came by to bring Vickie and Robin to their respective homes in New Hawkins an hour prior, and Nancy and Jonathan hitched along, planning to stay at the Wheelers’ house for a couple of nights. The story is that Mike is still in quarantine, guests forbidden, and Nancy’s theory is that she can keep Karen from interfering if she goes back under her roof. Erica, of course, is still with her family, giving them a similar story about Lucas. Dustin is home with his mom- Will knows he’s fine because he’s been ignoring supercomm calls from him since dawn.

Last but not least, Hopper is driving El back to the lab (she isn’t fully recovered, but Murray has swung another few administrative miracles to get her cleared for home treatment), and is going to stay there that night to help her settle back in. 

There might have been plans to meet up the next day, or that evening, or to have some sort of confab over the supercomms, but Will isn’t sure. He had barely stayed long enough to get a clean bill of health, and hadn’t even gone back to the ward to say goodbye.

Joyce eases their car up the driveway, passing the same battered security hut that Will used to ride past - was it only weeks ago? - and crunching up to the dilapidated porch. Will can feel his mom’s eyes on his back as he fetches his bag from the trunk (there isn’t much in there, just some overnight things he left at Hawkins Lab). She doesn’t press him to speak as she lets them into the house, and doesn’t chase him when he pretends not to hear her offer of a coffee and goes straight to his room instead.

His room is slightly stale after several days without him in it. Will upends his bag on his desk, not caring when things fall to the floor, and flops down onto his bed. Everything feels smaller, somehow, as though he has been away for years and grown three feet. Will fiddles with his plaid bed sheets and breathes in the smells of home. It should be comforting, surrounded by all the trinkets of his childhood, but it isn’t. Instead, he thinks of Max, cocooned in an eggshell-thin version of her own bedroom, and how easily it had shattered when Vecna came to call.

His mind drifts, helplessly, back to the Wheelers. Nancy and Jonathan will be there now. Will hasn’t been to their house in New Hawkins yet, so he pictures everyone reuniting in the doorway of their old place instead: a handshake for Jonathan and a stiff hug for Nancy from Ted, a swell of well-meaning fuss from Karen, a sticky-fingered cuddle from Holly. They would have been ushered to the table, laden with breakfast already, just like the old one had been. Ted would pick up his newspaper again, Holly would fidget in her booster seat and Karen would hover, doling out questions and extra helpings in equal measures. Will pictures Jonathan and Nancy squirming in their seats, trying to stay consistent, and not to look at each other.

…and then there’d be Mike’s chair, sitting empty; a fracture down the middle of a perfect domestic tableau.

Ted and Karen would have received the news about Mike over the phone already, and a house call the day before. Murray had made sure the stories fed to everyone’s families had been as convincing as possible and delivered by uniformed agents with official-looking NDAs, reports with scary diagrams and plenty of small-print to cement their legitimacy. A suitably plausible chemical had been blamed for the hazardous ‘leak’, and a range of symptoms described that explained the need for unconsciousness and quarantine, but would leave no lasting effects on their children. That morning, the families had all received calls and were told to prepare for their children’s return, that they all, even Lucas, had recovered.

Everyone except Mike. 

Will does not know how Nancy and Jonathan found the courage to go into that house, to sit at that table, and look at the hope in Karen Wheeler’s eyes. How could they nod and smile and watch her prepare for her son’s recovery when,  in truth, they both know there’s a strong chance she will never see him again?

That no one would ever see him again?

Fear seeps through him, clammy and curdling. Mike has been in the Upside Down for almost 24 hours, alone with a hurt and vengeful Vecna. What is happening to him, right that second? Is he being tortured, like Max? 

Or something even worse?

Joyce knocks, pulling him out of his trance. “Lunch is ready. I made spaghetti.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Will-”

“Mom.”

“ Will .” He hears a shuffle behind the door and knows it’s his mom putting her hands on her hips. “You can either come out and eat, or I'll come in and we’ll talk. You can pick which one, kiddo, but those are the options.” 

Spaghetti is his favourite, but he doesn’t taste a single bite. They watch TV with the meal on their laps, something Joyce normally only lets them do on birthdays and Christmas. Will forces himself to linger for another round of whatever daytime talk show they’re watching, to distract himself from the worry.

Of course, he fails. The echoes of his friends’ grief beat inside his chest like a second heart, an endless circle of drawn and desperate faces, of their final screams before the darkness swallowed them, of their wide-eyed shivering as they woke from their worst nightmares one by one. Without Will, none of that would have happened. He is the reason they went with the four-pronged plan, he is the reason Vecna played them right where he wanted them, and he is the reason why Vecna had tailor-made nightmare fuel for every single one of Will’s friends and allies.

You are the Heart. El’s voice echoes inside his head. He grabs a couch cushion and crushes it to his chest, hiding his face in its soft folds. He tries to lose himself in the memory of El’s warm arms, her low voice, her quiet confidence, but Adam’s voice hisses in the back of his mind, and cuts much deeper.

You’re not the heart. You are the weak link.

Everything is all your fault.

Will bursts awake, back on the couch with his mom and the shit on TV. He hadn’t noticed falling asleep. Joyce is at his side in an instant, smoothing his hair, pressing warm hands to his forehead, murmuring soothing words that he can’t hear, let alone respond to. His body is shaking, damp with freezing sweat.

“Mom?” his voice breaks “ Mom .”

“I’m here. I’m here, sweetheart.”

She makes him a hot chocolate and bundles him up on the couch once more, like she used to when he was little and got the flu every winter. Will inhales the squidgy-sweetness of melting marshmallows, whipped cream and cheap cocoa, and lets go, just a little. 

Joyce plumps back down beside him and switches the angsty reality show to an old black and white Western that is perfect because it’s stilted and dull and neither of them have to pay attention. It also goes on for a thousand years and, at some point, Will starts to get sleepy again. He leans towards his mom and ends up with his head on her shoulder. She scoots so he can fit more comfortably against her and strokes his forehead absently, her eyes still on the screen. 

The air smells of dust and family and lingering cocoa. Will closes his eyes.

He wakes after dark, to a blanket tucked around him and a quiet, empty living room. There’s a packet of M&Ms and a glass of water on the coffee table next to him and a note from Joyce to say there are leftovers in the fridge and that she’s having an early night. He stumbles off the sofa, bringing the snack and drink back to his room like talismans to ward off the night. 

He gets ready for bed but the moment his head hits the pillow he is wide awake again. For almost an hour, he lies counting the stains on the ceiling and trying not to think. Again, he fails. 

There are a thousand other things he could be doing, that he should be doing. Worse, his friends are all doing that right now . Jonathan called the Byers house at lunch with updates, and he’s heard the supercomm crackle a few times, so he knows everyone has been working hard all day, making a difference. 

Erica and Dustin are poring over D&D lore to try and find a loophole that includes releasing the Eye and still defeating Vecna. Owens is coming at the problem from a medical angle, calling in more favours with academic contacts to discuss transplants and amputations in hundreds of hypothetical scenarios, despite still being in a hospital bed himself. Nancy and Jonathan are, of course, keeping the Wheelers calm and keeping everyone’s stories straight. Robin and Vickie are with their respective families, pretending to be normal while they secretly assemble more amplifiers (Robin) and weapons (Vickie) in readiness for the next assault. Lucas is watching over Max, Hopper is with El and…

And all he’s doing is lying here and keeping Joyce so worried that she can’t do anything useful either. 

He’d offered to help several times when he was still in Hawkins Hospital. The first time was after explaining everything to Lucas, then again after relaying it with El once everyone was awake, but they had turned him down. He needed rest, they said. He deserved it. He should go home.

But Will isn’t a fool. He’d seen the hurt in Lucas’ face, the way he avoided Will’s eyes and kept his distance all morning. And it wasn’t just Lucas - they all still flinched at sudden sounds or unlit corners, or the flickering of a light bulb. They are hurt and haunted and they know it is all because of him.

No wonder they want him out of the way.

Somewhere between the witching hour and dawn, Will gives up on sleep and hauls himself out of bed. He dresses in a series of stumbling motions, exhaustion thumping behind his eyeballs and a fierce resolve in his gut. There is no point in hiding here anymore, pretending and delaying the inevitable. 

Will knows, in the deep eldritch part of him carved out by so many monsters, what the others do not; that all the lore and amplifiers and sawn-off shotguns in the world are never going to be enough. Vecna isn’t a tabletop monster with a set list of hit points; he is a force , the product of Henry Creel’s talent and intelligence, distilled by years of bitterness and pain into purest resolve. He is beyond fear now, or regret, or hesitation; maybe beyond mortality itself. He cannot be stopped, not until he gets what he wants; a world of his own - a world of freedom, darkness and rampant creation, with him as Eternal King. 

And there, of course, lies the solution; the part that only Will can play.

Because Will has built a world before - as a small child running from the monsters, wishing for somewhere to hide. Not only that, but Will, like Henry, has craved a sanctuary free of shame and guilt and loneliness. And lastly, like Henry, Will is a creature of the Upside Down; tainted and inverted, no longer good and light and unsullied like his friends. 

Ever since the Upside Down first took him, it has shaped him for this moment, to be the one who can meet Vecna’s needs. So it is only right that it is him who ends this. He will build Henry a paradise in the Upside Down and be his companion, for as long as he needs it. All he will ask in return is for Hawkins to be sealed away forever, and that everyone else is kept safe.

And if it costs Will his life, his friends, his future?

Well…

There are worse things to die for.

In his room, Will ties his boots with shaking fingers, breath ragged in the still, mid-night dark. Tonight, he is going to give himself to Vecna, and save everyone he loves.

**********************************

Clive, the guard with the son who likes Will’s drawings, patrols the gardens once an hour, on the hour. Crouched on his bed and already sweating in his winter coat, Will watches Clive’s thin torchlight sweep its way along the perimeter of the Byers’ property, then back round the house, heading for the prefab hut.

Time to make his move.

First, he turns on his radio - low, but just a few notches higher than normal so that his mom, if she wakes, will think he is still in his room. It also muffles the sound of him sliding his bedroom window open and clambering awkwardly onto the back porch. The moon is high tonight, silvering every leaf in the garden. He pauses for a moment, bewitched by a spider’s web glistening in the angle between porch beam and roof tile, then shakes himself and goes to fetch his bike. 

The Byers have a backyard fence in theory, but there are so many holes in it that he wheels the bike through one without much trouble. Once he is on the other side, and far enough from the house to be out of earshot, he climbs on and sets off into the woods. 

It’s hard terrain to ride through, made treacherous by the combination of night-time shadows and twisting tree roots, but he perseveres. Footprints would be too easy to miss on the forest floor, but a bike tyre makes a much clearer mark. He wants to leave a trail so, later, they will be able to piece together the story of what he is about to do.

He had thought about leaving a note, or even some letters like Max did, but he has never been good with words and there had been no time to try. Instead, he’d put one of his old drawings, a copy of a family Christmas gathering, out on his desk for his mom to find. It’s one of her favourites, he knows. He hopes she will understand what it means.

He imagines, for a moment, his mother opening his bedroom door the next morning, then her face when she picks up the drawing, finds the clasp on his window unlocked and his bike missing from the porch. His chest constricts. He forces himself to picture the world beyond the window instead, and what it might be if everything goes to plan. Perhaps, for the first time in a year, Joyce will pull back the curtains on vivid blue skies, fresh air, maybe even birdsong. 

She would be waking in a new and better world.

A world without Will in it.

There’s a symmetry in it all, Will thinks as he sweats up another incline. He was the first one to enter the Upside Down, and now he will be the last. He was the one who, by not dying in the Upside Down like he was meant to, brought back with him all that same horror and darkness into the lives of his friends and family. Now, he will be the one to close the door, to complete the circle. Once he is gone, the imbalance will right itself and the danger will be gone. Put like that, it sounds noble. Almost poetic.

He wonders if the heroes in poems were ever so scared they could puke. 

He sticks to paths that he knows well, shiveringly alert, but he doesn’t see a thing, animal or human, on the whole ride. Eventually the ground slopes down, nearing Lovers’ Lake. 

Reefer Rick’s cabin squats in its nest of waterside woodland. Its windows are dark and fuzzed over by underworld spores, like eyes milky with cataracts. Will skids to a stop and climbs off his bike. The Beretta nudges his thigh as he does so. It hangs from its nylon holster on his belt, a bulky sort of collateral. He also brought a flashlight, but the bulb gutters uselessly as he reaches the door, then winks out entirely when he steps inside. 

The cabin is dark and squalid, layers of junk mixed with the smell of stagnant water and old mould. This time, he can sense the lingering threat; the chill of otherworldly air on the back of his neck. He could have picked any of the fissures but this one feels the most meaningful - not just to him but to Vecna. This is where he first met ‘Adam’, after all, and the place to which the shadow had brought him time and again. If Will is going to make contact, here seems like the best place to start. 

He fumbles his way, half-blind, along the workbench, which is lumpy with dust-covered tools, then finds the edge of the dinghy lying under wadded tarps. Will closes his eyes and reaches out with his mind, sending images of torchlight Morse code and fizzing flares into the ether. 

I am here.

Come and get me.

I can give you what you want.

Time stretches in silence. Will opens his eyes again and mutters a curse, brow furrowed. The dinghy is pointed at a pair of double doors, the top third of which is made of clouded glass panelling. It gives him a murky view of the lake and the dim orange glow of the fissure. Will fumbles with the rusted latch-lock that holds the doors shut. It gives easily and the doors swing out and wide, revealing the rickety jetty and lichen-clustered launch ramp. Lovers’ Lake glimmers in the starlight, beautiful and serene, but the fissured horizon still burns a deep, sunset hue. 

Beneath the jetty, he can hear the wet slap of unseen waves on wood and, on either side, the shushing of waterweeds. Unlike last time, there is no hiss where the water hits the flame, and the volcanic stench is less oppressive. The attacks from the first battle; sound, light and fire, clearly had some kind of effect; the fissure seems smaller than before, and further away.

Maybe he needs to get closer.

His fingertips brush on the dinghy’s prow again and an idea takes hold. 

It’s an easy slide to get the little boat from its holdings, through the doors and down the launch ramp. It hits the water with a blunt splash and Will scrambles to stop it floating away. He snatches two oars propped by the doors and clambers in with a lot of undignified lurching, then nudges the dinghy off the shore. By the time he finds his rhythm he is breathing hard and his muscles are burning. It feels good. It feels like being alive.

He senses the fissure long before he gets close; a heat against his back, dry and singeing, and, beneath it, a queasy, bone-deep pull. Finally, it emerges; a shock of yellow, red and gold amid dreamy midnight blues. Will drifts at a safe distance, using slow strokes to keep himself steady, and turns to face the fire.

The pull is stronger now, almost magnetic. The hiss of the water is back, and it seems to whisper his name. The lake is deep and wide and dark and it makes him feel small. For the first time that night, doubt pools in Will’s belly; he is just one person, a boy scarred by darkness, a kid who survived when he shouldn’t, a small-town nerd who History will never remember. 

There is no shadow beast now, no eldritch powers fizzing at his fingertips. Just him. Just Will.

Is his sacrifice going to be enough?

He grits his teeth and edges closer with a decisive pull. It is enough. It has to be. And Will is more than just a kid, not because he is powerful or worthy but because he understands. Perhaps more than anyone, Will can relate to Henry, the boy behind the monster. Henry, who grew up lonely and sensitive and different. Henry, whose gifts are too dark and frightening to belong to a hero. Henry, who longed for love in a way that is forbidden, that could cost him what little he had. 

Under the burns and the vines of Vecna, under the vengeance and bitterness of 001, is the boy who let Will call him Adam, who likes Camelot 3000 and Musketeers bars, who wrapped Will in his own coat and walked him through the forest after dark, just listening. That boy wants safety, companionship, a place where no one will ever hurt him, and a person who will accept him as he is. He wants kindness, understanding, and maybe even love.

Will can learn to be that person. He can . He will turn himself inside out to make it happen. Anything, if it will keep those he loves safe.

At the very edge of the fissure, Will stops. The oars leave ripples on the black, fire-flecked surface of the lake. Will tucks the oars into the bottom of the boat and kneels, facing the flames. The vines aren’t visible but they are there, threading through his subconscious. He closes his eyes again and calls to the darkness. 

I am here. I am ready. Take me instead.

Henry, please.

Take me instead.

For long, long minutes, he waits. There is no answer. Desperation twitches in his gut; maybe he has to call louder. His fingers inch towards the holster and his Beretta. Maybe a shot into the fissure would -

WHUMPH.

Swift darkness engulfs him, snuffing out his senses. Will hangs, unable to feel the boat beneath his feet, the heat of fissure, or even the pounding of his own heart. The darkness holds him long enough for his head to spin and his lungs to scream for air, then drops him. His knees buckle and his hands hit dry, pungent earth. 

Will drags in grating lungfuls of air until his head stops spinning. He opens his eyes but sight brings him little comfort; all he can see is dark, dry earth beneath him and an otherworldly night sky stretching, velveteen, overhead. There is not a whisper of a breeze, and yet the air moves over him, curious drifts brushing his cheeks, his hair, his shoulders. It is almost a caress.

A memory rises; watching the dawn on the Hawkins Lab roof, naming the colours of the sky.

Will reaches out with a drift of dandelion seeds; fragile, tentative.

Are you here ?