Work Text:
Lucas POV
I really hope I start to see less of these things.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, getting my brain to calm down.
I have been in a hospital visiting my friends too many times in my admittedly short life.
So much so I can instantly feel my anxiety shoot up as soon as I enter the building.
I have been fortunate to never be the one to be in one of these beds but as I look up at my best friend who is lying unconscious in front of me I’m reminded that my fortune only spreads so far.
I look around the room and everyone from the party is piled in.
I look down at the delicate hand clasped in mine.
Max.
She is still weak and not quite herself again since the coma and after a battle like we have just been through, I know she is tired. I can see her eyes drooping.
But the strength in them remains as it always has. Through everything she has remained strong.
It is what I loved the most about her. Her unwillingness to relent.
No matter what.
I look around and see the level of exhaustion in everyone in the room yet no one has any plans on leaving. From those who are new comrades to the ones who have been here since the very beginning.
It certainly is such a weird group of people all bonded by the deepest of things.
We’ve gone to war together.
And we won.
It was touch and go there for a minute. Despite all the planning and sacrifice by everyone, Vecna still overpowered us. I was cradling Max in my arms, El was knocked unconscious, Dustin and Will were taking cover next to me, not able to do anything.
But then Vecna made what might have been his first but was definitely his last mistake.
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It can’t end like this.
After everything it can’t end like this.
Yet it would.
Everyone was down or could do nothing about it.
That’s when I saw it.
Mike.
Running towards his girlfriend lying unconscious on the ground, grabbing her and pulling her into his arms with tears running down his face.
“El, I’m here, it’s okay,” I could hear him chanting in her ear.
The moment of love in the middle of all the horror brought a temporary smile to my face.
“I was hoping you would show yourself,” Vecna says in his deep voice that will always give me nightmares.
“Fuck you, piece of shit,” Mike yells back at him before returning his focus to El.
The statement makes Dustin chuckle beside me.
Same Mike. Defiant to the end.
Vecna chuckles at the statement and a chill goes down my spine.
“Pathetic child,” he says as he reaches out with his vines and grabs Mike around the throat.
He yanks Mike away from El who I hear lets out a small whimper at the loss of Mike.
“Really? Throat grab? So original,” Mike says as Vecna tightens his grip and I can see the oxygen start to leave Mike.
Dustin makes a move for his hastily constructed crossbow as Will ducks further behind the barricade we are trapped behind. I move Max over to Will and move to my bag to grab my slingshot.
I know it won’t actually do anything but I can’t do nothing.
“You can’t leave yet Mike Wheeler. No, no, no I am going to kill you but slowly, painfully, until you are begging for mercy,” Vecna says before turning Mike to look at El who is still laying on the ground starting to stir.
“Man you are just trying to hit all the villain stereotypes,” Mike says through struggled breaths in response as me and Dustin let loose our weapons.
While we both hit him but neither do anything and he gives us a quick dismissive glance over his shoulder before his vines extend and incapacitate all of us. I try to move my arms but can do nothing but watch the scene unfold in front of me.
“She banished me here. She made my life a living hell. It is only fair that I return the favor. Make her watch me dismantle the love of her life piece…by…piece.”
He punctuates the statement by sending a vine through Mike’s right shoulder and out the other side. Mike lets out a primal scream of pain that makes a new found agony grip my bones.
“Oh he is so fucked,” I hear Dustin say next to me.
“Mike will be fine,” I hear Will say but I get a sinking feeling at the terror in his voice.
“It’s not Mike I’m talking about,” Dustin says in response leaving all of us confused.
But as I go to ask my eyes catch movement from El.
Now I am not ashamed to say El has scared me in the past. The things I have seen her do I feel like that is fair, but nothing is like this moment.
It is her eyes.
They are not the calm collected strength I’ve seen.
It is not the loving look I have seen her give Mike.
It is not the look of despair I saw when Hopper “died” either.
This is a murderous look.
One filled with a level of anger and hate I have never seen before and pray I will not again.
“Ah she rises, let me help you with that,” Vecna says using his vines to pull her up to a restrained standing position similar to the one we are in.
“You Eleven are going to watch as I tear him limb…from…limb,” punctuating each of the final words by stabbing Mike through his right calf followed by right thigh.
“Let him go,” El says in a low, almost serial killer tone.
“She speaks, how adorable. If only it mattered,” Vecna said, not concerned while tightening his grip on Mike’s throat.
But as he is talking I see the vines start to slip from her and debris behind her lift.
It floats behind her drawing all of our eyes as it starts spinning. Mike is starting to fade and I can see El’s look get darker at the sight.
“Nobody touches him” she snarls out and the debris tornado builds behind her, increasing in size as she is now completely free of vines.
“You don’t push me around girl, we did this already, you lost,” he says taunting her but she is not hearing him anymore.
“AH!” she yells, sending a section of her tornado flying at the vines connecting Mike to Vecna. Vecna screams as the vine severs and El grabs Mike with her mind, bringing him closer to her, inside the eye of the storm.
With Mike now out of the way, the storm builds in speed and power around her.
Vecna’s vines start to retreat from us 4 but none of us even think to move as otherwise we would get caught in the debris tornado now fully spinning around the couple in the middle.
“I said no one…touches him!” she yells before sending the full force of the tornado funneled right at Vecna. He struggles against it for a minute but soon it becomes too much and he is swept up in the storm, spiraling around us.
The storm reaches out and grabs each of his limbs and starts to stretch him out.
Vecna bellows a powerful scream of agony but it changes nothing as the storm pulls his right arm clean off to another roar.
And one by one they get plucked from his torso like dandelions in a field.
Next his left leg, then his other arm followed finally by his right leg.
In what at this point could only be called a mercy, the full tornado flies through Vecna’s head and you can see his spirit drain from his body.
Slowly the dismembered body falls to the ground around the field, El dripping blood from her nose with the same wild killer look on her face. She lowers herself and Mike to the ground and she cradles him in her arms. A switch of the scene from only a few minutes ago.
“Mike, Mike,” she pleads to him.
“El,” I hear Mike whisper over the dead of night before he slips unconscious, all of us frozen at the site in front of us.
“Mike! Mike!” she screams at him before turning to us.
“Let’s go!” yells and it finally gets us moving.
Hospital.
He needs a hospital.
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And that landed us here.
El refused to let any of us help carry his body as we took off as quickly as we could for the hospital.
She is now sitting quietly simply watching Mike lay in the bed.
Hands joined on the bed as she stares at the heart rate monitor.
Bandaged, bled dry but still alive.
She watches him like if she takes her eyes off him for one second he will disappear.
It is weird to see him like this.
Lifeless and devoid of movement.
Mike didn’t sit still very much. Always moving, processing and thinking.
Mike was not always the easiest to be around but he never bent on what he set his mind to. The world bent to his.
He was our leader from the beginning and to the end.
He is my best friend.
Like he is to all of us.
Well even more than a best friend to El.
I mean, neither of them are even old enough to drive and yet they have already been through more than most couples in a lifetime.
We sit there for hours into the night. Everyone piled into the room is asleep in some awkward position. Leaning on each other.
From Hopper and Joyce to Max on my shoulder. From Nancy and Johnathan asleep on each other to the Wheeler parents awkwardly perched opposite Eleven.
I’m surprised they are allowing all of us in one room now that I think about it but I’m too tired to care.
I want to sleep, but for some reason I don’t.
My brain won’t allow me to relax enough.
Me and Eleven are the only ones left awake, her position remaining the same as it has for hours.
And just as I start to slip into blissful sleep I hear El’s voice.
“Mike?” she says lowly, quietly, urgently.
I sit up instantly and unfortunately shake Max awake.
“Uh what the fu--” she starts hazily but I lean forward, closer to Mike.
Others slowly wake around us but I stay focused on the pair in front of me.
“El,” I hear weakly come from Mike. “Are you okay?”
El lets out a watery laugh at the question and I can't help the chuckle that comes from me too.
“Yeah, it’s you I’m worried about,” she says smiling at him while running a hand over his face.
Her expression holds all the love in the world as she looks at him.
The opposite of the one I saw when she was battling Vecna.
Mike smiles lightly, still clearly very tired.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says looking at her.
“You’re all I worry about,” she says in response and Mike smiles a little bigger.
I’m not sure either are aware there is an entire room watching them right now. They are caught in their own world.
“Just…don’t go anywhere,” Mike says, tears in his eyes.
Eleven takes both her hands and grabs Mike’s hand that is nearer to her, standing from the chair and leaning in so she is as close to him as she can get.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” she says.
“Promise?” Mike asks.
“Promise.”
And with that Mike slips back into a peaceful slumber.
El does not move far, merely slides the chair she was sitting in closer and keep both hands wrapped in Mike’s and it hits me once again.
Vecna did a lot of things correctly if he wanted to win.
But he broke the #1 rule.
No one touches Mike Wheeler and sees tomorrow.