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Will Byers died for the first time in the fall of 1983, as for the second…
It didn’t hurt—that was the worrying part.
His body was numb: part shaking, part in shock. His breathing came fast, shallow, uneven; each inhale harder than the last.
They burned him—Vecna, the Upside Down, they had sundered the hivemind, and annihilated the legion that served it.
Will hadn’t gotten to see the moment they’d won, and wasn’t truly certain that they had. Because Will fell at that moment, the slow drip of his surrogate mother no longer feeding him.
Though it sounded awful...Will had to admit: he had known. Will had known this would happen; that he would die alongside the hivemind. It was once...just a feeling, background noise- a strange understanding of finality that Will couldn't quite explain. The drive back from California felt like the Charge of the Light Brigade, riding into the jaws of Death, odds against them, knowing that victory would be his undoing.
But Will had been in Hawkins for almost two years now, and the fight lasted far too long to be considered only a battle. During that time, those once unexplainable feelings became very clear. Dustin had figured it out...of course, parroting it off just like he had every other wild theory before. And much like those previous guesses, Will was certain that Dustin was completely correct.
Will was…what Vecna had made him. Seven days of incubating and transforming into a child of another dimension. Stripped of his past blood, his past relation. Becoming a fragment of something vast, proliferating, an organism of endless reach.
Connected.
That’s how he had been found, as a child. Hopper recounted: a tendril of something wet and black shoved into his mouth, walls surrounding and encasing him. At first, Hop had thought it was Will’s attempt to hide, or the Mind Flayer’s attempt at draining him.
But it made sense now…that they had pulled him from a womb. Strung out and cut from the umbilical cord- born again screaming, thrust back into the waking world, even stranger than before.
Hop’s explanation stuck with him, the pieces began to click, and the meaning of all those impending feelings of relation finally fell into place.
He had known when the monsters were close, he had known when the collective grew…because he was them—he had become them. Spawn. A small hair on the head of a great beast.
So when they burned them, destroyed them. He would die with it.
In truth, he had anticipated it—death, that when the horror was thwarted, he would disappear along with it. He never voiced those concerns since, in all honesty, death no longer concerned him. It had been a short and strange life for Will Byers, so he wouldn’t fight it if his end came in the same way.
But there were a few things that tied him here, to this earth. His mom, his brother…and his Mike, Mike…
Mike. Mike was here.
He was speaking, his mouth moving, but Will couldn’t make out the words. He pressed his eyes closed and tried to focus, travel through the fog, make his way to the sound just past his ears.
Then it came.
“Please don’t—you can’t, it’s not—I never got to tell you”, Mike sounded desperate, his voice cracking.
God, if anyone could make him fear death, it would be Mike Wheeler.
Will was lying across Mike’s lap, a hand in his hair, Mike’s body hunched over, his nose near brushing his own. Will’s face felt wet, and when he opened his eyes to look at Mike, it was clear the feeling came from tears. Not his own.
There was so much he needed to say, and so little time to spit it all out.
“Mike”, he gasped.
“Yes, yes, I’m here—I’m here,” Mike said quickly, his words tumbling over one another as if he could hold Will together with sound alone.
“I’m…sorry”, Will said, chest trembling, “it was, I knew this was going to—”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay”, Mike interrupted, hand coming up to cup his face, “But just...stay awake, okay? You can’t leave me, you aren’t allowed to. I want- you need to keep breathing for me, can you do that?”
“Yeah”, Will whispered, “anything.”
“I need to…”, Mike started, breath hitching, “I’ve been such an idiot. I just…you can’t go, you can’t—”
Will didn’t know what to say. What comfort existed for a moment like this? The truth was too cruel, and the silence between them already felt like goodbye. He knew this was his final act, the slow dimming of the light. But Mike Wheeler’s face, shattered with anguish, made him wish he could stay, just to spare him the breaking.
Will coughed, “Mike, I…”
Mike shook his head, “I love you.”
Nothing made sense. Mike didn't make sense. Will was- he was...well, finally letting himself die. He was letting fate take the reins, with no complaint. He had once thrashed, screamed, and run. He had run from the monsters, hidden away in a castle where the ceilings hung low, and tried desperately to survive. But Will grew tired. He was tired of surviving. Just surviving. Taking the days as they came and allowing time to run through him, past him. Looking backwards, thinking backwards- never quite being able to see a future past it. One where he just...walked. No sprinting, no hiding...no falling.
Falling was inevitable. He had known, and somewhat welcomed it. Death was a reprieve.
Mike Wheeler had confessed to him. Will saw a future. He-
Will searched Mike’s face, tracing every flicker of emotion, desperate to understand what those words had meant. And what he found there…what he found was awful.
Mike loved him, and Will wasn’t ready to die anymore.
“Jesus, why did you have to go and tell me now?”
“Shit”, Mike choked out, shaking his head. “Shit, I love you…so that’s why you’ve gotta stay with me.”
“I’m trying,” Will said, voice thin, “But I—I don’t think I’m—”
“You have to,” Mike insisted. His hand cupped Will’s jaw, thumb trembling as it brushed his cheek. “You have to, because we need to—I’m going to take you on a date.”
A future. Thinking forward. Walking.
Will blinked, dazed, “A date?”
“Yeah,” Mike said, forcing a weak smile through the tears. “To Starcourt. We’ll go see a movie, and you can hold my hand—and I’ll drive you home, kiss you goodnight. I’ll—I’ll even watch you as you walk in, to make sure you get back safe.”
Will hummed, “Sounds nice.”
“Yeah”, Mike said, voice shaking now. “Yeah, so you just—keep your eyes open, okay? On me. On me.”
Will couldn’t. As desperately as he wished to live, if only to stay in Mike’s embrace a minute longer. He couldn’t.
This wasn’t a fairytale; he wouldn’t be saved by this. Will was dying. He felt it in the tremor of his hands, the dull ache fading into nothing, the wet rasp that had replaced his breath. Mike still refused to see it, eyes bright with desperate faith. But Will had never been one for illusions.
He needed to say goodbye…while he could still form the words.
“I love you too.”
“Good”, Mike nodded, like the words could anchor Will to the earth. “That’s good—I hope you do, since we’re going on a date.”
“No, Mike”, he whispered, his voice fragile, fading. “I mean, I love you…”
Mike’s eyes widened, “No”, Mike said sharply, his breath hitching. “No, you asshole. This is not a goodbye; you are not leaving me here. I can’t do this without you.”
Mike leaned forward until his lips found Will’s: shaking, cold, desperate. The kiss was barely a touch, more breath than contact. Will wanted to feel it, to return it, but he was too far gone. Mike didn’t move; he just stayed there, still and broken, as if he could hold back death by refusing to let go.
“You’ll be okay”, Will mumbled, feeling the way Mike shook against him.
“I won’t”, Mike said, pulling away slightly, voice cracking apart as his tears fell onto Will’s cheek. “I won’t, I really, really won’t.”
“I’ll erm”, Will chuckled, “see you on the other side?”
Mike folded over him, shaking with violent, helpless sobs. He clung to Will like touch alone could summon him back, like love could defy death. The sound he made was broken, guttural—too human to be contained. He held the boy he loved as the light bled out of him, knowing they could have had time, but fate had stolen it. Unfair. Cruel. Exactly as it was always meant to be.
Will couldn’t speak anymore; he didn’t have the strength. He kept his eyes open, refusing to look away—because, well… if he had to die, he’d rather do it watching Mike. There was something almost romantic about that, in a quiet, macabre sort of way.
Darkness crept in at the corners of his eyes, his breath slowing to shallow and laboured.
He could sense it now. Something waited there, just past the blackness; it was calm, almost welcoming. It smelled like wood and soil after rain, like leaves breaking down into the earth. A cloying sense of sweet rot—the perfume of change, endings feeding beginnings.
Will knew then that he would not cease with his final beat. That this was simply seasons at work, a transformation.
Will tried to find peace in it, in the change, in returning to wherever he had been before birth. But Mike made it terribly hard not to pull back…to not regret.
If there was anything after this, he hoped that Mike would be there…someday.
Will Byers died for the second time in the fall of 1987.
Will was put to rest in a red casket. His funeral was short, taking place in the same church that buried him five years prior. He will be dearly missed by his mother Joyce, his brother Jonathan, and his friend Mike.