Chapter Text
William Byers had roamed these halls for as long as Mike could remember being happy. Only after he vanished, Mike began to question why.
The first thing he asked his mother, that evening when the family had been dining in silence, was: “Where did he go?”
His mother had stopped the glass of wine mid air and contemplated the inky red surface. “They found a better place for work,” she said, then took a sip. Nancy had thrown him a pitying look and Mike did not ask again.
It took Mike a shameful amount of time to understand what that meant. Will had been as undoubted to Mike’s days as the sky was blue, as his mother was Queen, and as Nancy would follow in her footsteps. It often slipped his mind that the real reason for Will’s presence in the castle had been his family’s labor. That he was not simply another inherent factor in Mike’s life, as was dessert a part of every meal. That the servant working quarters were more than just excellent hiding places for a game, and the servants more than nameless faces, everlasting and unchanging.
It had been a dull day when Mike found Will for the first time. He turned five a few days before, and apparently this meant that he was not allowed to play with figurines and have stories read to him anymore. Now he was supposed to learn reading by himself, and sit at the palace library with a tutor for infinite hours every day. The tutor would yell at him when he moved in his seat, and when Mike complained to Nancy, she said that this was how things were going to be from now on. I will be Queen someday, Mike. I have many more things to learn. Count yourself lucky.
Her words did not stop Mike from running off the next time the tutor yelled at him.
Mike feared that the tutor would combine forces with nursemaids and his parents to find him, so he ran down stairs and stairs into places of the palace he had never seen before. They would not find him, Mike thought, if they looked for him in his usual roaming places. And Mike was right.
He also got terribly lost.
At first he did not care. He did not want to go back anyways. He hated the tutor. He hated his mother for leaving him to that tutor. He hated his father for not caring about anything he ever did. And most of all, he hated Nancy for doing exactly what their mother told her to do, even though Nancy always used to play out stories of adventure with him.
He spent a long time sulking, wandering through some dirty cobblestone corridor at the very bottom of the palace until he heard muffled sobbing.
Mike’s steps echoed back from the walls when he startled to a stand and the sobbing broke off with a small gasp. He looked around and saw no one but the suits of armor lining the hall, but he knew he had heard it. Was it a ghost? Was this dark hall haunted?
“Hello?” he called. No answer. He checked his pocket for the stick he always carried, even though he knew it would be of no use. You could not touch a ghost, much less hit one.
He braced himself. “Are you a ghost?”
The torches flickered wordlessly through the hallway. Mike took another careful step, stick ready in hand.
Then there was a sniffle. “No.”
It was a child’s voice. Possibly one as old as him. The hallway was dense and small with echo, so Mike had to guess where it had come from. He looked behind the suits, with no luck. “Then why can I not see you?”
Another silence. Mike took a few more steps forward, searching, when–
“Are you going to push me?”
It had come from his right, this time. Much closer, too. He searched behind the nearest suit. Nothing. “Why would I push you?”
The torches flickered a little more before the child said: “I don’t know.”
It came from the walls. No way it is not a ghost, Mike thought, before he spotted a thin recess in the wall. He ran to it and peeked inside, and sure enough, a small figure crouched in there with wide eyes looking up. They bulged out, red rimmed and puffy, like Mike’s whenever he cried.
“You are no ghost,” Mike said, breathing out.
The boy— Mike was now fairly certain that it was a boy— blinked at him, and his wide stare fell to the stick in Mike’s hand.
Mike kneeled to look at him better, hiding the stick from view. “Why are you hiding?”
The boy drew up his shoulders, evading Mike’s gaze. “They took my shoes.”
Mike’s eyes fell to the boy’s feet. They were indeed bare, and the rest of his small crumpled body shivered. “Who is ‘they?’ Why would they do that?”
The boy shrugged.
“Where are they? I have a stick. I can hit them.”
“No, do not–”
Mike whirled back, finding the boy’s wide eyes back on him. “Why not?”
“You will get in trouble.”
“Maybe they should be in trouble. Why would they take away your shoes?”
The boy’s gaze was almost pleading now. “They are more. Many more. And they are bigger and stronger. You have no chance.”
Mike did not like that this boy was calling him weak. “You just say that because you have not seen how well I fight with a stick.”
The boy said nothing, slumping back against the wall. Mike had never seen someone so small and tired, and suddenly it hit him that fending off a few evil boys was not going to help him right now.
Mike pocketed the stick. “What is your name?”
The boy blinked at him, as though confused at the question. “Uh. Will.”
“Hello Will,” Mike said. “I am Mike.”
Will nodded. “Hello Mike.”
“I am going to take you somewhere safe, yes?”
Will’s brows furrowed. “Where?”
“My chamber, maybe,” Mike said. “They will not find you there.”
The boy gaped. “You have a chamber?”
“You do not?”
“I mean. I share one with my mother and my brother and other people.”
“Really? That is so strange.”
“You think?”
“Where is your mother?”
“She is working.”
“And your brother?”
“Working too.”
“Then my chamber it is.” He took Will’s hands in his and helped him up, when he remembered Will did not have shoes. “You can have my shoes.”
“Really? But what about you?”
Mike bent down to take them off. “It is alright. I have more in my chamber.”
“You have more? Of those?”
“Yes, of course.” He handed his shoes to Will who held them like they were glass. “Go ahead. You have been cold for long enough.”
He dragged Will through the corridor the way he had come from, naked feet waddling over the cold stone floors, until he remembered he had no idea where in the palace he was. He could not ask any of the guards, lest to give away his location to anyone who was looking for him, so he made do with a long search through corridors and stairs, getting lost five more times until he found one that looked familiar. Looking back, Mike thought it funny that he had found Will hiding when he had been doing the same.
“What are you doing?” Will said, when Mike approached a wide staircase bracketed by guards. “We cannot go through there. Look at all those guards.”
Will had a point. However, Mike was fairly certain that this was the bottom of the staircase that he had seen from above a thousand times before. “We have to try. Maybe they will not say anything.”
“Maybe they will not–?”
“Prince Michael!”
Mike shot up straight, all hairs standing up on his neck. He grabbed Will’s hand to burst into a sprint, but Will did not move. He merely stared, at Mike or at whoever was behind him, shoulders drawn up and frozen. “Come on, Will–”
“Prince Michael.”
The tone was scolding now, and much too close. He turned around, facing Nursemaid Marcella approaching with a stern look.
He glared at her. “I will not go back to the tutor!”
“You—” She stopped, eyeing him. “Everyone is looking for you. You cannot just run off like that. Who is this? And where are your shoes?”
“This is Will.” Mike held up their connected hands without breaking the glare. “He is with me. I am taking him somewhere safe. Where is the Great Hall?”
“Somewhere safe? From what?”
She looked afraid. Mike got an idea. “Evil people. Very evil people. Is this the way to the Great Hall?”
“Ye— Stop this nonsense, Your Highness. You cannot bring a peasant—”
He burst into a run, tugging harder this time to make Will follow him. “Please make sure the evil people are not following!”
“Evil people? What are you saying? Get back here!”
He was well up the stairs with Will before any of the guards even stirred, and when he recognized the hallway, he cut into a corner that went in the opposite direction of the Great Hall. He hoped the fear of Evil People inside the palace would keep Marcella and perhaps some guards distracted for long enough. He gripped Will’s small hand tighter and chased up the now familiar corridors. He could hear his name being called, and avoided hallways he heard it from. Any guard or staff they passed, they ran by too quickly for them to react, and soon enough, they were on the last staircase leading to Mike’s chamber.
The guards outside his door did not bat an eye when he burst into his room with another boy, and he threw them a smile before closing the door. If only he had a key, that would be ideal. He would just have to hope that no one followed him here.
He turned around to Will, who stood a few steps away in the middle of the chamber. He hugged his shoulders, as though still cold, and his eyes gaped as he looked around. He looked even smaller standing in the vast room than he had crouching in the wall recess, and the dull color of his shirt and hair made him even more ghostly. Mike wondered how much more it would take for him to completely disappear.
“This is your chamber?” Will said, voice high.
Mike nodded. “Do you like it?”
“Do–“ He turned to stare at Mike. “You’re the prince.”
Mike made a face. “Of course I am.”
Will stumbled backwards and his gaze fell to the ground, face down, and arms clapped at his sides. “I did not want to trouble you, Your Highness. Please forgive me.”
It did not sound like something out of his mouth. More like a phrase he got told to say and practice, until he knew it by heart. Mike knew a lot of those phrases. He stepped forward, detaching Will’s hands from where they were glued to his sides. “Stop that. Come, I will show you around.”
Will’s fingers were delicate and knobbly, and Mike made sure not to grip them too hard. He showed Will his wooden knight figurines, his playswords, but most of all, Will seemed entranced by the windows.
“Woah,” he said, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against the glass. “That is so high.”
“Right?” Mike stood beside him. “Nancy’s chamber has even bigger windows. You can see the whole town from there.”
“Nancy? As in Princess Nancy?”
“Yes, my sister.”
Mike did not like how Will’s shoulders hunched. “Hey,” he said, making his voice as delicate as Will’s fingers had felt in his hand.
“Hm?”
“If you want I can stop being a prince. For a while.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“So you do not have to be afraid.” He cast Will a smile. “You are safe here, remember?”
Will’s eyes fled down to the windowsill. “I am not afraid.”
“Good.” Mike turned, angling his body to him. “So, do you want to be my friend?”
Will’s eyes bulged. “Your friend?”
“I am not a prince anymore,” Mike reminded him. “You do not have to be afraid.” He reached out his hand. “So, do you want to?”
Will’s gaze flickered from his hand to Mike’s eyes, then outside the window before it flew back to his hand. Then, a small smile curled around his fine lips, almost bashful as he carefully nestled his hand into Mike’s.
“Yes,” he said, and he looked up at Mike, eyes glowing. “Yes, I do.”
For the better part of his life, Mike believed that this was the best thing he had ever done.
For most of this part, it was true too. Of course, it was not long after that, that the nursemaids found them in his chamber and he got in trouble. He insisted for Will to stay, and Mike did not know how he got them to listen, but somehow he was successful. Will stayed until the evening, and then word got around the palace that a servant mother was frantically looking for her younger son William. Mike did not want to let him leave, but Will seemed to want to reunite with his mother. So Mike let him be escorted back to the servant quarters, not before swearing an oath that they would see each other again the next day.
After that, there had not been a day that Mike passed without seeing Will.
He would always find him in the same corridor they had found each other on the first day, except most times Will would be happily waiting for him instead of hiding from the other boys.
It was through Will that Mike found out that there were more children in the palace than he had known. Mike’s family housed many servant mothers and their children– many of whose fathers had died in the war— but Mike did not care to befriend any of them. Not if they were evil enough to treat Will like they did. Out of the few things he knew about those boys, one of them was that they liked to chase Will, push him into walls and smear him in grease when Mike was not around. Often Mike would find him crouched in a corner, trembling from humiliation and cold, missing a shirt or his shoes, just like on the first day.
Will was everything he had ever dreamed of without knowing he had. Will listened to his words in awe, and happily played every game that Mike came up with. He asked Mike to recount and play out all the stories he knew, so Mike learned how to read so he could read more storybooks he would recount to Will.
Soon, he would drag Will to his tutoring sessions so they would learn reading together, and then they would come up with their own stories. Will the Wise and Mike the Paladin were born, dominating most of their played stories that dragged them through the palace gardens, halls, and every hidden niche that no one else ever stepped into.
Every morning he would shoot awake with the sun, throw on the nearest tunic and run to the servant quarters where Will would already be hiding behind a different suit of armor each time.
“Will the Wise, where art thou?” Mike would call through the corridor, and Will jumped out giggling, calling back: “Thou summon me, great paladin, Michael of Hawkins?” And then Mike would drag him to the gardens, to his chamber, to his lessons, and only let him go when night fell and Will was not allowed outside the servant quarters anymore. Then they would wrap their hands around the other’s, and swear an oath to see each other again.
Mike had never understood why Will was not allowed to dine with them. Why his tutor’s eye twitched when Mike insisted on Will’s presence during his lessons.
“His breed is not fit for sophisticated things such as writing,” the tutor would say. “He shall go back to the lavatories and scrub floors.” But when Will was sent away and Mike refused to read aloud a single word, they never sent him away again.
As they grew older, and Will was required to work with his mother and brother, their time together grew tight. This did not stop Mike from seeing Will every day for at least a few hours, and Mike often saw Will eyeing the portraits and vast paintings hovering on the walls. He then gave him chalk, charcoal and spare paper to learn that Will was, in fact, a very skilled observer. More than that, he had the ability to bring all their stories to life on paper and Mike wondered if Will perhaps had a more vast world of thoughts than Mike himself.
Mike detested the hostility his tutor had for Will. Even more, the indifference his parents treated him with. No matter how many years passed, he was never allowed to dine with them, he always had to go back to the servant quarters in the evening, and sneakily meeting up at night was out of the question when the halls were littered with guards and rules. He would always have to wait until the next morning, when he would sprint out of his room before anyone but the servants had awakened, and find Will waiting for him in the same corridor as always.
But the day came that Will was nowhere to be found.
Mike had long been twelve at the time, and he searched behind each sculpture and armor standing in the corridor, calling: “Will the Wise, where art thou?” until his throat grew sore.
He searched the other corridors, the servant chambers, the kitchen, cleaning and laundry quarters. He returned at different times of the day for over a week.
“Where is Will?” he asked Master Cook Angelina, who often sent Will to the market in town to pick up foodstuffs. Mike sometimes accompanied him, despite his mother’s insistence that such a task was beneath a prince.
“Who?” Angelina said, ever gruff, without looking up from the meat she was hacking. She did not care for Mike’s princely status, rather treated him like another brat just like the other errand boys. It had never bothered Mike, until today.
“William Byers,” he said, teeth bitten. “My friend. We used to come down here together to pick up the errand list.”
“Don’t know him,” she grunted. She raised the big hacking knife and shooed him away. “Run along now, brat. Yer in the way of important work.”
Mike got so angry he considered asking his parents to fire her. It was after he asked all other servants he knew, that he found out nobody seemed to remember Will.
Will became the smoke from the tearoom’s chimney, with the hearth’s fire extinguished. Mike chased black streaks of air through the halls, untouchable, and soon dissolved and invisible. All that was left was the scent of burnt coal, sticking to cushions and the parquet, leaving the room freezing with a bitter memory of warmth.
He started to wonder whether he had gone mad. Whether Will had ever even existed. When he’d finally dared to ask his mother, those worries were subdued, but then he was left with grief. Nowadays, he wondered if she had lied to indulge his delusion.
In the end, Will had become a ghost after all.
And so, when Mike turned thirteen, he decided to become a Prince.