Chapter Text
On the night of November 6th, 1983, Will Byers didn't come home from his friend’s house. The next morning, he was reported missing. His bike was found on the side of the road, at the edge of the woods.
A few days later, his lifeless body was pulled out of the quarry.
His mother Joyce snapped. She insisted he wasn’t dead, that he was speaking to her through the lights. She bought boxes and boxes of Christmas lights, stringing them up around her house.
It took a while, but after a couple of months, she finally came to terms with the fact that her son was dead. Nobody in Hawkins looked at her the same way after her freakout, though. Nobody except Bob Newby, to whom she eventually settled down and got engaged.
Will’s older brother Jonathan fell into depression. He was forced to grow up too soon, his mother leaving him to plan his brother’s funeral while she was watching the lights flicker. He said he wasn't upset about it. (He lied.)
He started dating Nancy Wheeler. He made friends with a guy named Argyle, who had moved to Hawkins from California. They smoked weed together a lot of the time. Jonathan knew that his mother knew what he was doing, but neither of them said anything about it. Everybody copes differently.
When he was 19, he moved away from Hawkins for college.
Will’s best friends, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike, fell apart. At one time, the four of them had been inseparable. It was just them, the Party, against the world. But when four turned into three, their one-infallible friendship crumbled into dust.
There was no Party anymore without Will. Will was the foundation of the house; without a foundation, there was no structure. And so the house caved in, and the three went their separate ways.
Dustin tried to keep the Party together, he truly did. He wanted to talk about and work through their feelings, but he eventually gave up when they just kept resisting. He sought out somebody else to talk to and found Steve Harrington. They grew close and formed a bond, not unlike that of a father and a son. Eventually, Dustin was sent to a summer camp and got a girlfriend, Suzie Bingham.
Lucas bottled up his feelings. He refused to talk about Will, instead preferring to pretend nothing had happened. It was easier for him that way. He thought if he didn’t acknowledge the pain, maybe it would go away. He met Max Mayfield one day, and they started dating as well. Her fiery personality paired well with his.
Their relationship was mostly an on-and-off thing. Anyone with working eyes could see that they deeply loved each other, but sometimes they had trouble working out their issues. But Max made Lucas happy, and Lucas made Max happy.
Mike… he was the worst of the three. After Will was gone, it was as if a piece of him was missing. The day they found Will’s body, Mike tore his basement apart. Ripping up posters, pushing over chairs, and finally collapsing on the floor in tears; nearly everything was destroyed. However, not a single one of Will's drawings had so much as a fold in them.
His mother moved his most important things out of the basement and into his room. No one ever stepped foot in the basement anymore unless they really needed to. What was once Mike’s safe space turned into a place full of unhappy memories and pain, and he avoided it like the plague.
For many long months, Mike shut himself in his bedroom, refusing to talk to anybody. He looked through old drawings of Will’s, mourning the loss of his closest friend. Many times he thought back to the first day of kindergarten, when Mike and Will first met. The memory was comforting, like a warm hug. After this discovery, Mike buried himself in the memories of the past. He wrapped himself in them, layers and layers of protection against the cruel world outside.
The only person he opened up to was El Hopper, a kind girl with telepathic abilities who had aided in the search for Will Byers. She peeled back each layer gingerly, and Mike found himself opening up more and more to her each day. Her presence was comforting, like a gentle whisper in his ear, full of encouragement and love.
She reminded him of Will, with her kind nature and selfless tendencies. They grew close and even tried dating for a while, but mutually agreed they were better as friends after only a couple of months.
In return, El opened up about her life. She had a great relationship with her adoptive father, Jim Hopper, who was the chief of Hawkins Police. Her name was actually Jane, which had been given to her by her birth mother, but in the lab she spent her childhood in, she was called Eleven. Her “Papa” was Dr. Brenner. He ran a lab where there were more kids like her- more kids with powers. El told stories of alternate dimensions and monsters, and Mike listened every time with interest.
And so, everybody in Will’s life eventually moved on and tried to lead happy lives without him. He wouldn’t have wanted them to still be upset over him after three years, they knew this. They kept his memory close to their hearts because they could move on, but they couldn’t ever forget him.
What these people
didn’t
know was that Will Byers was not dead. Hurting and afraid, yes. But still very much alive.