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For a moment, there was only the intangible darkness surrounding him. He was swimming in pitch black, trying to touch something. He was disoriented, but he tried not to panic. El had warned him. He opened his eyes wider to discern something, anything. The merest gleam of light, but the nothingness overwhelmed him and his breathing caught up. He blinked, put a hand on his chest in which his heart seemed to want to break through.
.
.
.
And then, vague shapes started to appear. The mist started to take a form. Wood, light coming from small candles on which the wax was already melted halfway. Will walked, he noticed that his senses were coming back. His feet touched the cold and damp… floor, if he could call it that. He was walking on nothing, gravitating in-between time and space. Caught between the slides.
So that was what the void was. That was what El saw when she searched for him in the upside down. That was what she went to visit every single night since Max became plunged into a coma.
-
They had the idea because Will could sense Henry, or 001, or Vecna. His connection with him was so strong that it could transcend dimensions. Henry had, accidentally, or perhaps purposefully, shared parts of his powers with him. Will didn’t have psionic powers like El did. He couldn’t use telekinesis, and he definitely couldn’t go into the void by himself without her help. But the piggyback technic could work. They thought that, since Henry was in his mind; Will was too. Unwillingly, by granting him those powers, probably as an attempt to control him and make him his spy, Henry left himself open. And now Will could really be the super-spy he had wished to be a few years ago, when the mind flayer first got possession of his mind.
-
That was how Will ended up there. In an attic, a dusty, dimly lit attic. He saw a little boy standing in front of the candles, a gruff drawing laid before him. Will recognized the mind flayer.
The traits were rough and dark, the drawing inspired something uncanny. Will felt the hair on his arm rise up as he stared at it. Frozen in front of a simple portrayal as if it was the real thing. He was back at being the scared thirteen year old who saw sinister apparitions, scared of the day they would catch up to him. Uncomfortable, scared, he didn’t even notice that the young boy was bleeding from his nose. When that younger version of Henry suddenly opened his eyes, Will was propelled back, like something abruptly pulled him away. He levitated for a few seconds in the void, once again seeing nothing, feeling himself falling.
———
He was someplace else now. A new scenery, a new place he never saw and had yet to explore. Here laid Henry’s secrets, here laid everything he had to unearth in his mind.
It was red, destroyed, utter chaos and destruction all around him. Lighting struck in the sky as pieces of a broken home floated all around him. Tied onto pillars, with vines crawling on their limbs, stood the victims Vecna had claimed. Their deformed faces in a frozen expression of agony: a last scream, a final look of terror etched on their feature despite having no eyes to express it.
Will looked away, teardrops burning in his eyes. This was the place Max visited before. She had managed to escape, she drew it, so why was he there? Why was he led to this place, whose secrets were already revealed? He wanted to communicate to El that he wanted to go. So he screamed, afraid this might’ve been Vecna who brought him here, that he wanted to hunt down a new victim. Vecna knew he was there already, he was fighting for the control of his mind- he could bring Will whenever he wanted him to be.
He screamed for El but his echo struck him back. He looked all around him, his breathing catching up rapidly. A panic attack, he had those often. He knew how to recognize them now, he knew what it meant when they swelled up in his body and left him no place to breathe. When his heart raced so hard he was afraid it would give up. When his limbs were shaking, his guts squeezed painfully. His eyes filled with tears as he felt it; he was about to die. He would die. If not by Vecna’s hand, then by his own panicked body.
.
.
.
And then a bright flash of white blinded him. The light of the end of the tunnel? Was he ascending? Could he, ascend? He closed his eyes and let the light take him away.
———
He did not feel warmth enveloping him. He did not hear the chanting of angels. Nor did he hear the burning flames of hell, or Vecna’s guttural voice telling him it would be over now.
He woke up in shivers, on the floor of an all white room. Sanitized, empty, it reminded him of the hospital.
His eyes tried to adjust to the light but it was blinding. The flashes made him squint as he felt his iris burning. He felt dizzy when he flipped on his hands and knees to try to get up. And then he knew the place. It was the Hawkins lab.
He heard some noises from afar, behind the closed doors. Afraid, but determined, he decided to get up to investigate. That was the reason he was there in the first place. Investigating Henry’s memories, trying to find a flaw, an opening. Henry has a fractured mind, it wasn’t easy to navigate it, even harder to understand, and impossible to piece back together. Nonetheless, in the hope of a fissure, Will crossed the door and walked carefully, on his tip-toe towards the noise.
He saw security guards dragging an older version of the boy he had seen just a bit before. He could’ve been eighteen, maybe he was in his twenties. He didn’t fight back, maybe he was unconscious?
Will followed them, remembering what El had told him during the brief. He is intangible in there, invisible. The only one who could sense him was Vecna. If that were to happen, he had to run into a corner of his own mind to find a happy place, and El would pull him back. But since Vecna could see him, Will wondered if that version of Henry in this memory could as well. They had the same powers, after all. Even if it was a memory of the past, could he sense he was being observed? Could their connection transcend time itself?
Could he sense the curious eyes meddling into his brain?
If he could, he wouldn't show it.
Henry was thrown into a room, the door savagely slammed behind him. The two men in white uniforms locked the door and walked away, satisfied with their work.
Will approach to look through the window of the door. What he saw inside was a Henry sitting with his legs crossed, his back to the door. He didn’t know what his expression was like, if his eyes were closed, if he was sitting while unconscious. But he did see what was in front of him; a large drawing. The sky on it was red, torn by a black breach from which creatures spilled. Standing underneath, a figure. A blond man, looking down at the city he was flooding. And beside, another person. The two of them looked at a vision of horror, a sea of blood, the swarm of black creatures tearing, killing. Who was that by his side? Eleven, the ally he wished to have?
He shivered at the thought of what could’ve happened if El had accepted; if she had given up and chose to stay with him. Their powers doubled, the damages greater. Henry, alone, had opened four large gates and let escape an army of demodogs. He had single-handedly destroyed Hawkins with the power of his mind. If Eleven had joined him, there would be nothing left of the world. That drawing represented a terrifying turn of event, one that luckily didn’t happen.
.
.
Too soon, too fast, too abruptly and suddenly, Will was pulled someplace else. Those changes were always rough and unpredictable. It looked like Eleven and Vecna fighting to get him to see what they wanted him to see. Eleven bringing him in the attic and the lab, Vecna showing him the place where his victims came to die.
———
This time, he was transported in the upside down, a version of it he didn’t know. It was deserted, even emptier than when he got there in 1983. All alone, roamed a burnt Henry whose clothes were torn and ripped. He was defending himself against hungry creatures, taming them by extending a hand, and suddenly making a fist out of it, resulting in the demogorgons imploding. They died with a screech, and the observers of the scenes ended up falling back under the pressure of Henry’s unknown powers. Predators had become the preys, they found a bigger master.
Henry kneeled to touch the blood pooling at his feet. He slowly reached out with his hand, and with his powers started tracing shapes with it.
Will’s eyebrows furrowed as he watched. Tableau. He was making tableaux. Whenever, wherever he was, Henry would find new material to portray something. He was creating in his destruction.
As the realization hit, Will was pulled back again. Transported this time to a place he didn’t know. It resembled the attic of Henry’s childhood in its emptiness, in the crackling wood and spider webs. It wasn’t the attic though, too dark, closed and away from the world, it seemed like Will stumbled in the deepest secrets of Henry’s mind.
Stood before him hundreds of paintings. All over the walls, on the floor, some on easels. Will had access to a part of Henry that had remained, so far, forbidden. The paintings, it seemed, obtained more than anyone could know, more than Henry himself knew in what animated him, obsessed him, tormented him. So many deaths. Too many corpses. Too much black curling up at the bottom of the paintings. Never any light or, if there was, it was to illuminate the blackened bodies, the screams of horror, the outstretched hands where death surprised them. Nobody could be at peace with that in the back of their eyes. Perhaps Henry had tried to free himself from it, to throw all the horror onto the canvas.
.
But amongst hundreds of those dark paintings stood one on an easel who caught Will’s attention. A bearer of light, very little, a thin glow, but enough to provide him with a space from which he was able to slip away smoothly. The eyes, his own eyes, staring back at him. His real eyes, not the black ones when he was possessed by the mind flayer. The shade of hazel with a glow of green, a loving gaze, like the boy on the painting was in love with the one looking at him.
But Will was not in love. Will didn’t understand why there was a painting of him, standing there. The only representing a live human- the only one that bore hope and love.
He averted his gaze to look back at the others. They were so dark. The black and dark gray traits were made with rage. The red of the blood seemed to spill out of the canvas to propagate all over the floor. Massacre, death was in those paintings. Will stepped back, confronted at the vision of horrors, and from the corner of his eyes, still seeing his own reflection frozen in time, imprisoned in a painting.
.
He walked one, two steps, afraid of turning his back to see more of them. But he needed to find a door to escape.
Goosebumps appeared on his neck. The presence was getting nearer.
"El!" He screamed, but his voice sounded muffled, like the room was soundproof. He took his fifth step back and his back touched something. Too soft to be a wall or a door, but immobile and cold. He turned back in fear, gasping when his eyes crossed clear blue ones. But the man behind him was not Vecna, not the person Max and Nancy described. He looked nowhere near like a monster. But it was neither a young Henry, or the one in the laboratory. He looked like he would’ve looked if his body hadn’t been destroyed by the upside down: tall, a perfect skin, almost forty. He was wearing a white shirt with a brown tweed gilet. His clothes were a little vintage looking, like a man who never escaped the fifties. But despite the good looks, the clean clothes, Will backed up in fear. The eyes were looking straight at him and he knew this man was the enemy. He could not be fooled, he was in his mind, he had found him.
"Eleven!" He screamed again. But Vecna, 001, Henry had a small chuckle. Mellow and warm.
"She can’t come in here," he said, which should’ve sounded like a threat, a warning of Will’s impending death lurking right above his head like a sword about to fall. He was not mocking either. It was a simple fact, an information he was giving.
Will breathed in, mustering up the courage to make himself stop shaking.
"Why not? What is this place?" He said, congratulating himself for having formed a sentence almost without his voice breaking. The few tremors didn’t trigger any laugh for Henry.
"A private place, the only corner of my mind nobody can see," he disclosed, like talking about the weather.
Will frowned. He should use Dustin’s wit to reply something like: well I can or Eleven’s bravery to say: I’m here now, game over for you.
But he had neither the confidence, nor the brains to be thinking about being snarky right now. He just shook, standing pitifully in front of that man. At last, seeing him face to face. He wished he wasn’t such a coward. He thought about the day he would see him for the first time, everything he would tell him. And yet there he was, weak.
"You must wonder why you are here," Henry started, still with the same calm voice. There was no anger in his eyes, no intent to kill. But he knew he was a trickster, he knew how to manipulate people with that angelic face. Will didn’t answer, but when Henry started stepping closer to him he backed.
"D-Don’t get any closer!" Or what? He asked himself. He was connected to him, he had true sight, but Henry was the one with the power to squeeze the life out of him in a second. Eleven was the one with the powers to counter that. And there he was alone. Eleven could not reach him, he had to face him alone.
He knew that, once, Henry did not want to kill him. He was the only one that monster was willing to spare. But he didn’t know if that time had changed.
Unexpectedly, Henry neither laughed at his face nor stepped closer. He stayed in place, and instead continued.
"You’re here because I’m letting you," and accompanying that sentence came a smile. Small, very small, but not cold. There was a glint of warmness in his cold eyes. He wanted to ask how, why, what did he want to do? but he couldn’t find the voice to say it. Muted by fear, by confusion, Will stood and stared, saying nothing.
"I want you to see," Henry said. What? Will thought. He brought him here in a place of decay, filled with paintings representing hell itself. He wanted him to see destruction? His plan? He had already shown everything to Nancy. So why him, why now?
"S-see… what?" He ended up asking, surprised he even found the strength to say it.
Henry swept the room with a hand movement, showing his paintings surrounding Will. He walked forward, Will backed off. He stopped for a moment, enough to let Will step further away, not to scare him, like he was a wounded animal, a little mouse in front of a cat.
Will took quick steps to the side, getting as far from Henry as he could, and Henry kept walking towards a painting. The one showing Will’s face, the only one which was out of place and different in the sea of misery. His frown deepened, he glanced from the painting to Henry holding it.
"I…" Henry struggled to speak. Was Will dreaming or was this man, this monster, hesitating? He wasn’t even looking at Will anymore. His eyes were on the wooden floor, stained with dozens of drops of paint. He looked like a child about to be reprimanded, or like Max when Lucas would give her compliments.
"This is you," Henry started carefully. Which, yes, Will could notice. That was his own face.
"I made this while thinking of you," this made sense, what kind of person paints something he isn’t thinking about? How could he paint him if he was thinking of- an apple? Will did not care to know that, he cared to know why he made it.
"I am.. always, thinking of you," Henry said with a heavy sigh, like he was finally freed from a secret.
"You’re on my mind. And I do not mean literally, as of now. I know our circumstances are… particular," he rambled. He rambled like Will would ramble when he was embarrassed. Like a little boy with a crush. He was beating around the bush, for what?
"But even when you’re not, seeing my thoughts, you’re still there. You’re always there. And, I believe… that might be love"
Will stood in shock. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Henry, 001, Vecna, love?
Did he mean, with him?
He stared at him. This man was mental.
"Love?" He choked with a huff, what sounded halfway like a laugh and a sob.
"Yes," Henry lifted his head higher, put his shoulders and spine straight, like he was tired of being stomped by shame. Definitive, his head held high, with his eyes sparkling as he stared at him with a fire raging in his pupil.
"I love you" he said this time, clearly, with no hesitation or any sort of shyness.
But no matter the conviction with which he said it, Will wouldn’t believe it. He was formal; a man who had in him images of such horror, which had fueled to the point of obsession, could not love.
Suffering when it took a hold of someone did not leave room for anything else. Will knew that people could suffer to the point of loving their pain, of maintain it, of adding new torments to it. Will was part of them. Part of those believing he deserved it, that he had to live with it.
Henry had seen too much. He did not love; he was obsessed. It was two different things. And his obsession was in death, misery, horror- not in him.
He was only just Will Byers. He was not loved. And how sad would it be if the only man who loved him was… a killer obsessed with destruction. Was that what was so appealing? Henry saw his mind, so he saw all of the decay living inside of Will? He saw the pain and misery, became obsessed with it and believed he loved him?
That was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Will shook his head in refusal, which had the effect of making Henry widen his eyes.
"You don’t believe me?"
"I- no, of course not.." he didn’t want to show himself insulting by telling him it was stupid, he didn’t know how a killer might react- so he did his best not to hurt his feelings.
"Why don’t you? I speak sincerely," Henry said, he looked genuinely hurt.
"You don’t love me, we don’t even know each other" Will replied carefully. And only this time did Henry scoff.
"I’m in your mind. I know everything about you. I know you better than everyone. I know you better than you know yourself," Henry retorted. Will had to admit he had nothing to reply to that. Unfortunately, he was right.
"You.. you can’t love. You don’t know what it means," Will said under his breath. He muttered it hoping Henry wouldn’t hear. Unfortunately for him, the space was so empty and Henry so attentive that he did.
"Do you? How does one know when he’s in love? What even is love?" He asked, stepping closer. Will stepped back, but this time, Henry didn’t give him the courtesy of leaving space. He kept moving forward. Will would soon hit the wall, he would be trapped face to face with him.
His breath grew more urgent.
"Love is.. it’s.. it’s the most powerful feeling it’s… to…" Henry walked into him like he wanted to trap Will. That was probably the case. He was getting so close Will was forced to tilt his head back to look at him, blindly walking back and trying not to fall over.
"When you feel like.. no one else is… could… it’s when…" no matter how badly he wanted to talk, his thoughts were a maelstrom in the sea of his mind. His ideas bumped into one another, he could not speak, he could not think. His back hit the wall and he was trapped; Henry standing right before, leaving him no space to breathe. He was so scared his heartbeat started racing, his face was getting hotter.
"You’re obsessed… with darkness, and death, and pain.. you want suffering, y-you.. feed of it. You absorb the pain of your victim and claim them… you think you can free them by death.. you’re death. Death does not love.." Henry raised his hand and Will squeezed his eyes shut tight.
Eleven, Eleven, Eleven, save me!
That was it. If he opened his eyes, he would see the claw placed above his face, ready to take his life, Vecna would feed off his pain, his one and only true love.
.
.
.
Instead, a soft hand laid on his cheek. The brain had its own ways of protecting itself against emotional overload. And that of Will suddenly stopped, he refused any activity.
"You speak true," he started, his voice was gentle, his thumb just as much as it stroked his cheek.
"I am… haunted. You’ve seen it. No matter how much I try to purge, no matter the amount of paintings.. There is simply too much pain in this world" his voice was filled with melancholy. He did not raise his tone, nor did he stop brushing over Will’s face.
"I see it all. I see it in the minds of people. It’s a curse. I’ve been cursed with the power to see and purify the pain with more bloodshed but it never stops," this time it was desperation. Will opened his eyes to take a look, to see if his eyes spoke the truth as much as his words did.
"I don’t know how to make it stop. All there is is suffering and I kill, and they stay with me, and it gets worse, I want it to stop," he didn’t let Will avoid his eyes. He stared straight at him, his body pressing closer.
"But it does stop when you’re in my mind. When you’re the one there, there is no more place for any of the pain of the world, no matter how great it is" his thumb brushed right above his inferior lip, then stroked the corner of his mouth
"You are wrong about one thing. I do love. And I love as much as there is death in the world,"
Will remained speechless. He did not talk nor moved when Henry took a hold on his waist, the hand on his face cradling it.
"If I am death, then believe I love you as much as I obsess with pain"
And with that he sealed his lips to Will’s. His hands were shaking as he clung to Henry’s shirt, at first to push him away and then… then…
His eyes closed and he felt himself melting. If it were not for Henry holding him he would’ve collapsed already. His eyes filled with tears, his fist tightened around Henry’s shoulder. He let himself be kissed. Body heating all over, his mind in a blur. Multiple thoughts crossed his mind.
Henry was a manipulator. He was lying. But if that man could not love, then he couldn’t believe love existed. That drawing he had seen, he thought it was Henry and Eleven but what if… what if it was himself by his side? Henry kissed him like he would die if he didn’t. Henry was the enemy. Henry was death. Henry was love.
———
He was pulled back and woke up in water. He couldn’t see a thing, he couldn’t hear, he started batting his limbs all over until.. a pair of hands caught him, and suddenly- he could see.
He was in the bath. The blindfold was taken off. Next to him was Eleven. She had saved him. If… he even needed to be saved.
He was trembling so much that despite the solid pair of arms encircling him, his teeth were clattering and goosebumps had appeared all over his body.
“Will are you okay? Did he attack you?”
Will’s lips were blue, but he still felt the burning sensation of Henry’s kiss.