Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“My name is Micheal Wheeler, I’m 16 years old, and a year ago today, my best friend lost his mind.”

A complete monotone. Mike leaned back on the stiff blue couch, crossing his legs. He stared intently at the man across from him, looking for any reaction. There were usually two types of reactions when Mike said something like this to a new psychologist. The first was forced sympathy. The psychologist would lean their head to the side and frown. It was never a very genuine frown, but a frown nonetheless. Then, they’d say ‘Good God, that’s awful,’ and Mike would roll his eyes because he didn’t need a psychologist to know that much.

The second type of reaction was confusion. If Mike went to a psychologist out of town (he had tried a couple in the cities), they usually wouldn’t have heard the story of Hawkins’s very own youngest and newest lunatic, the boy broken by a tabletop fantasy. They’d take a long, hard pause and say ‘Really now?’ as if Mike was making things up. Which, of course, he was not. His best friend had truly lost his mind. 

This psychologist frustrated Mike the most because he had neither reaction. He wrote down a few words immediately after Mike spoke. His wrinkled eyelids leveled and he sighed, as if Mike’s statement was nothing to bat an eye at. As if losing your best friend to some awful trick of the mind wasn’t the worst thing in the world. That frustrated Mike. At least the others had acknowledged him. Even if their sympathy was constructed, he didn’t mind the validation of the awfulness of his situation. 

“Alright, Mike,” the man finally said. “It seems to me like you’ve done this whole introduction thing before. Have you?”

Of course he had. Mike had been to ten psychologists in the last year. That’s why he already knew this one wasn’t going to work out. He didn’t like his attitude. He didn’t like the way his office had bare walls. At least some of the others had tried to give the illusion of a cheery environment. This office made Mike feel like he was the one who’d lost his mind. An endless grey void.

“Have you?” the man asked again. 

Mike sat up, snapping out of his own thoughts, and breathed deeply through his nose. “Yeah, I have. You’re not my first psychologist, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Mike’s mother placed a hand on his back and sat forward from beside him on the couch. “He’s had trouble connecting with a few of the people we’ve brought him to,” she explained. She looked quickly to Mike, who didn’t return the gesture, and then back. Mike seriously didn’t know why she insisted on being at his initial session every time. Maybe she was the reason he couldn’t connect.  “My husband and I heard good things about you from a friend, though. We were hoping you’d be different?” 

The man raised his greying eyebrows. “I have a reputation,” he mused. Setting down his clipboard. Then, he stuck out a wrinkled hand for Mike to shake. “Well, Mike, my name is Dr. Flinn. You can call me Rodger. I have a feeling we’ll get along well.”

Mike simply glared at the hand. He didn’t make any move to take it. Why would he? He already knew this psychologist wasn’t going to be a good fit. His mother might as well start looking for her next supposed miracle worker. 

Noticeably off-put by Mike’s lack of response (Mike admitted to liking when the psychologists were caught off guard by him), Dr. Flinn retracted his hand and leaned back in his own seat, picking up the clipboard again. “Well, anyway, Mike, you said your friend lost his mind. Would you mind explaining that for me? I just want to use this session to get a comfortable grasp on what we’ll be dealing with. I’m sure you know that by now.” 

Mike nodded. “Well, yeah. It’s exactly what I said. He lost his mind.” He looked down at his hands in his lap and then back to the psychologist. “Will.” A year later, and he could still hardly say the name without breaking down. “He was my best friend of 12 years. Then, one day, he just woke up and started spitting out all this nonsense about monsters and other dimensions and stuff. He was so freaked that they had to put him in Pennhurst. No one saw it coming.” That was the strangest part. Mike felt like he knew Will so well. It had never sat right with him that he hadn’t noticed any signs of Will becoming like that. He should’ve seen something, but one day he was normal, and the next he was screaming and running around like a maniac. 

“Will Byers?” Dr. Flinn asked. “Is that your friend? I remember reading about him in the paper.” 

“Yeah. That’s him.” Mike crossed his arms. “His mom didn’t want that article written and they published it anyway.” He remembered reading it. He remembered Joyce calling the newspaper and cussing them out while he and Nancy were over for dinner a day after Will went away. He could remember everything so clearly.  

Dr. Flinn wrote down a few sentences in silence. Mike took this opportunity to look at his mom and try to give her some sort of sign that he didn’t think this was working out. He made a helpless face at her.

His mother gave a silent sigh. “Give him a chance,” she whispered. 

Dr. Flinn, oblivious to the mother-son interaction, looked back up. He clicked his pen in his hand as he spoke. “Now, Mike, are you allowed to visit your friend at Pennhurst?”

Mike listened to the click of the pen a few times before answering. “Yeah. But I haven’t visited in months.” 

“Now, why’s that?”

“I don’t like how he gets.” 

“How he gets?” The pen continued clicking. 

Mike thought of Will’s tear-stained face. He thought of his millions of drawings. He thought of him practically yelling in Mike’s face, trying to convince him there were alternate dimensions, that Mike had a superhero ex-girlfriend, that Will had gone missing when he was twelve. He thought of the sheer disappointment in his eyes when Mike said it wasn’t true. The desperate need for someone to validate his crazy ideas. How hopeless Mike felt knowing he could never help him. 

“How he gets,” Mike repeated. “Just… It's too much. He’s hurt and I don’t want to see him like that.”  

Dr. Flinn wrote that down. He asked without looking up, “How do you think halting your visits has affected you?” 

Mike had to think about this one, the continuous sound of the pen loud in his mind. “It has its benefits.” That much was obvious. Of course keeping yourself from seeing someone you care about in an awful place is good for you. “...But also its downsides.” Mike missed Will with his entire heart, crazy or not. He wanted his friend back. “I don’t know, it’s just different.” 

“Different,” Dr. Flinn repeated. He wrote that down too, then resumed his pen clicking. Click. Click. Click. “Now, Mike, have you been diagnosed with any mental disorders? Not like Will’s, of course, but-”

Mike interjected. “The last psychologist suggested I had depression," he said quickly.

At this, his mom leaned forward and put a hand on Mike’s knee. Damage control time. “We really don’t think she knew what she was talking about,” she said to Dr. Flinn. “There’s nothing wrong with Mike.” 

Mike rolled his eyes, brushing the hand from his leg. He’d heard this a million times. Nothing was wrong with him. Just the fact that his best friend was gone and it was eating away at him every day. “Then why am I in therapy, Mom? Is it supposed to be a fun pastime for me?”

Now his mom looked at him, her brows struggling not to furrow together. “Honey, you know this has nothing to do with your… mental state. Your father and I just think you should talk to someone about Will.” 

How could they talk about Will and not his mental state in the same sentence? “Mom, I-”

“Mike,” Dr. Flinn said, placing a hand in the air between them. “Look, if your mom says there’s nothing wrong, we’ll continue under that assumption. If I come to any conclusions in our sessions, I’ll make sure to update her, and we’ll set you up with a psychiatrist, how about that?”

Mike couldn’t believe this. He sat back again. “Fine.”

There was a long silence in the grey room before Dr. Flinn cleared his throat and continued. “Now, you say Will’s insanity came on suddenly? How did that affect you?”

“Obviously not well,” Mike responded. “He was fine one day and… crazy the next. It’s not like I was anticipating it.” 

“Yes, and do we know how Will became like that? Was there a cause?”

Mike shrugged. He wanted this to be over. “Not really. The doctors theorized he just wanted so badly to have something important happen to him, or maybe to feel normal, that he took his stupid D&D world and convinced himself it was reality.”

Mike’s mom cut in, “A lot of people suspected he was a queer-”

“Which is irrelevant,” Mike shot back. 

Dr. Flinn raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment on that. “Dungeons and Dragons? Do you play this game?”

Mike wished. He’d really loved that game at one point. The escape from reality, quality time with his friends. But he couldn’t bring himself to go back to it now. “Not anymore,” he said. “I never used to believe it messed kids up… but then Eddie Munson turned out to be a serial killer, and then Will… Well, you know, all of us just felt like we shouldn’t play anymore.” He didn’t know why any of this was relevant. Who cared if he played D&D?

“All of you? Who is-”

“My friends Dustin and Lucas.” 

“I see.” Dr. Flinn wrote a couple things down and thought some more, clicking his pen again. 

Mike couldn’t stand the clicking. It was making him tense. He didn’t like the clicking, he didn't like the walls, and he didn’t like Dr. Flinn. He didn’t know why he was asking such stupid questions. Mike didn’t want to talk about Will anymore. Not today of all days. He wanted this to be over. 

Dr. Flinn persisted even so. “Alright, Mike,” he said. “You said Will was your best friend, right?”

“Yes?” Mike didn't know why that mattered. Of course Will was his best friend. 

The pen clicking also persisted. “Now, would you still consider him your best friend?”

Mike had been looking absently around the room, but snapped his head back to look at the psychologist. “What? I- Pass. I don’t like that question.” 

Dr. Flinn leaned in, pen clicking even faster. “Why? Why don’t you like it, Mike?”

Mike looked away again. Each click was bringing him closer to letting loose the ball of frustration building in his chest. He could see his mother’s big eyes on him too. The room felt smaller than it had been, the grey void closing in. “I don’t see why it matters,” he muttered, eyes on the wall, fingers kneading palms in his lap. 

Dr. Flinn was even closer, the stupid pen still clicking away. The room was even smaller. “Come again?”

Mike turned back as something in him snapped like a rubber band, his voice raised. “I said I don’t see why it fucking matters, sir.”

Dr. Flinn backed away, the noise of the pen finally stopping.

There was a light impact on Mike's sleeve as his mom nudged him. “Mike!” she said, also raising her voice a few tones. “Don’t use that foul language with your psychologist. Apologize to him. Now.” 

Mike simply leaned back again. “Maybe he should’ve respected that I didn’t want to answer that question.” 

Now his mother’s lips were pursed, eyebrows furrowed. She sat up straight on the couch and stared down her son. “I don’t care, young man. You will not talk to him like that. Apologize.”

The psychologist looked between the mother and son. “Mrs. Wheeler, it’s really alright. Perhaps we can-”

Mike stood up abruptly, decidedly done with this train wreck of a session. He didn’t need a psychologist who just got on his nerves all the time, that wouldn’t help him. “You know what?” he said, looking from his mother to Dr. Flinn, raising his arms in surrender. “I just don’t think this is gonna work out. I think we should just go now, Mom.”

He watched his mother put her head in her hands. “Micheal, please do not walk out of this room.” This wouldn’t be the first time Mike had. 

For a minute, Mike tried to search for something to say, some way to explain himself, but he couldn’t do it. Defeated, he simply said, “I’m done, Mom.” With this, he turned from her and the psychologist and swung open the door. Walking out, he slammed it, trying to let go of his festering emotions. He was going to run, but curiosity got the better of him and he placed his ear to the wood, listening for just a second. 

“I’m so sorry, doctor,” his mom was saying. “Really, he’s a sweet boy. He’s not usually like this. I-”

“It’s no problem, Mrs. Wheeler. I assure you I’ve dealt with much worse than angry teenage boys.”

An angry teenage boy. That’s all these people ever saw in Mike.

Mike heard his mother sigh again. “It’s just… I don’t know. I should’ve picked another date to make this appointment. I think he’s having a lot of trouble since it’s the one year anniversary of the event. His friend’s birthday is tomorrow too. It all just piles up on him, I don’t know-”

“Mrs. Wheeler, it’s alright.”

Hearing this, Mike turned and walked swiftly down the hall. He pushed another door open and walked onto the sidewalk without looking back. He was so done with the psychologists his mother found. They never listened, they didn’t understand him, they asked questions he didn’t want to answer. If he couldn’t connect with the first 11, why would he even keep looking? It was useless. These people couldn’t give him what he wanted. No psychologist could give him anything close. He wanted his friend back. He needed a miracle for that, not a doctor. 

Mike opened the door to his mom’s car, parked outside the building, and slumped into the passenger seat with a defeated shudder. Quietly, he waited for his mom to come out and give him his latest talking to. He knew what he did was wrong. He just couldn’t imagine doing anything different. 

Would you still consider him your best friend?

Mike couldn’t believe Dr. Flinn would ask such a thing. How was he possibly supposed to answer a question like that? Could Mike still consider the boy his best friend if he hadn’t truly connected to him in a year? He wanted to say yes. With all his heart, he wanted yes. Of course Will was his best friend. 

Still, something in the back of his mind told him the answer was no. Mike couldn't stand that.

Truly, Mike had no idea what to think. The only thing he knew for sure is that he missed Will. He wanted his bike ride partner back, his walkie talkie talker, his novel artist, his emotional support, his Halloween duo costume, his head, his heart, his cleric. People always said you didn’t know what you had until it was gone, but Mike knew damn well how much Will meant to him. Even before he slipped away.

A full year. How had it possibly been a year? It felt like it had been seconds, days, decades, and ages all at once. Mike simply didn’t know what to think anymore.

And then he was crying. Like an idiot, he was crying in the passenger seat of his mother’s car, burying his face in his hands. People were probably walking past, wondering what was possibly so difficult for this teenage boy to understand. It wasn’t like he’d never cried before. Mike cried more times than he cared to admit, but he never felt less idiotic. 

“You are my best friend,” he sobbed into the empty air of the vehicle. Nothing responded, nothing happened. He hated how he couldn’t tell if it was even true.

Then he heard his mother knock on the window, peering in at the sad sight of her son. She frowned and got in on the driver’s side, starting the car before she said a word. Once they were on the road, going at a comfortable speed down the main street, she finally said, “You can’t just keep doing that, Mike.” Her voice shook with fragile gentleness. “I know you’re hurting. I know you want to feel better. I want you to feel better so badly. But if that’s going to happen, we need to find someone you won’t walk out on. You understand that, right?”

Mike wiped his tears away and slumped down in his seat. The heat on his cheeks let him know he was still blotchy. “I know, I know. I just… I didn’t like him.”

“You don’t like any of them, Mike.”

“I did once!” he argued. “I told you I liked the last one! She was different from the rest.” The last psychologist Mike had was one from the cities, but she was kind and gentle. She understood Mike’s emotions. She wanted to help him, truly help him. 

“She didn’t know what she was saying,” his mom said, turning into their neighborhood.

“You just made me stop going because she suggested I might have depression.”

A forceful turn of the wheel. A long sigh. “You don’t have depression, Mike. Nothing is… wrong with you.”

Mike slammed his hands down on his lap, trying not to raise his voice. “How would you even know? What if I do have it, Mom?” 

“You don’t.” And that was final. Mike’s mom pulled into the driveway without saying another word. 

Holly was already waiting outside on the front steps, dressed in her soccer socks and holding a shiny new ball. She waved excitedly as she watched her mom and brother pull in, unaware of their serious conversation. 

Mike’s mom sighed before she opened the door. “Look, we can talk about this later, if you really want to. I have to take Holly to her soccer practice now.” She blinked a few times, drumming her hands on the wheel. “Just think about everything, okay? I think maybe this psychologist could be a good fit for you. We’ll talk later.” 

Mike opened the door without saying a word. Once he’d left and shut it again, he muttered, “No we won’t.” His mom always said they’d talk later. They never did. 

“I only want what’s best for you, honey!” Mike heard his mom call. He didn’t look back.

Holly passed him without much recognition and ran to the seat where Mike had been before, too excited for her practice to think about much else. He listened to his mom greet her as he made his way to the front door of the house.

Once inside, he kicked off his shoes and made the mistake of making eye contact with his father, who sat, as usual, in the living room. Eye contact meant he had to get involved in yet another unwanted conversation. 

“So? How was the new guy? Do we actually like this one?” 

Mike shrugged, looking down. “No. We weren’t connecting.”

“Eh, I could’ve called that.” His dad looked back down to the paper he was reading. “I tried to tell your mother she should just give up. You know, back when I was a boy-”

“You would’ve had to deal with this stuff on your own. I know.” Mike had heard this a million times. Maybe his dad thought it was helping him feel better, putting his situation in perspective, but it definitely wasn’t. 

“Exactly,” his dad continued. “I think we oughta just leave you to yourself. I don’t wanna pay for another glorified scam artist just for you to say it’s not working.” Ted Wheeler, of course, did not believe in therapy. 

“Maybe we oughta,” Mike said under his breath, and he made his way for the stairs, ready to be back in the solitude of his room. 

“Hey! Your sister’s coming home for spring break, remember?” his dad called up after him. “Your mother said she wanted your room clean. And the bathrooms up there too, alright?” 

“Yep.” His response was too quiet for his dad to hear, only a little more than whisper, but Mike didn’t really care. He didn’t feel like cleaning right now. 

He was, however, admittedly excited for his sister to come home. He hadn’t seen her since Will’s initial breakdown, since that had happened during her last spring break. He had a feeling she’d be able to understand him a lot better than their parents and all the psychologists could. She’d once lost a best friend around his age too after all. Barbara, who skipped town and never looked back to give her old friend an explanation. After years and years of friendship, she just left. He knew the whole case had never sat right with Nancy, just like Will’s had never sat right with him. 

What did the universe have against the Wheeler siblings? It was anyone’s guess. 

Upon entering his room, Mike jumped face-first onto his bed and just laid there for a moment, listening to the clock in the hallway tick. He didn’t count how many minutes he stayed in that position, but the sky darkened at some point, casting a shadow over the bed. Mike didn’t care. He didn’t even turn on the light.

At some point, Mike thought he heard something. At first he brushed it off. It was probably just the wind outside, blowing branches against the house. The weather had been stormy all day, so that wouldn’t be a surprise.

But the noise persisted. It was coming from inside his room. 

Mike sighed and stood up slowly from his bed, looking around in the dark for possible suspects of the sound. He listened harder.

The noise was static. 

Mike furrowed his brows in concentration. Surely it wasn’t what he thought it was. 

Slowly, Mike kneeled down beside his bed and stuck his hand into the dark space under it. He pulled out his old walkie talkie, the one he used to talk to his friends on. The noise, sure enough, was coming from the old box. A consistent static, like someone was trying to say something. 

Then, the box spoke. A girl’s voice said, “Mike?” 

Mike nearly dropped the walkie talkie in surprise. Who could possibly be trying to talk to him on this thing? It didn’t sound like Lucas’s sister, nor any of the women in his other friends' houses. Still, something about the voice gave Mike deja vu. Where had he heard this before? 

Mike slowly lifted the antenna, his hands shaking. “Hello?” he asked timidly into the speaker. “Hello? This is Mike, over.” 

No one responded. 

He tried again. “Who’s there? This is Mike, over.” 

Just as Mike was about to give up, he jumped as a voice spoke back. Unfortunately, it was not the voice he was looking for. “Mike? Why are you on this channel right now?” Dustin’s voice spilled through the box. 

Mike sighed in defeat. “Nothing. I thought I heard something. My mistake. Over and out.” 

Perhaps he really had imagined someone saying his name, or maybe it was just some trick Dustin was playing on him. 

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this had happened before. Even though it hadn’t. Mike obviously had never spoken to a girl on a walkie talkie. Except for Max, that was, but she’d been in a coma for over a year now, so this obviously wasn’t her. It didn’t sound like her anyway. 

Rolling his eyes, Mike pushed the antenna down and shoved the walkie talkie back under his bed. Surely all the emotion of the day was just making his mind play tricks on him. It was ridiculous to think some random girl was contacting him on his childhood walkie talkie. 

It’s just a weird day, he thought. The anniversary of Will Byers going insane. 

A weird day it certainly was.

Chapter Text

High school was torture because there was never anything to do anymore. The D&D club was obviously disbanded, and nobody wanted to talk to the kids who had been in it before the fall. There had been rumors upon rumors about what exactly Dustin, Lucas, and Mike got up to in their free time. Devil worship, rituals, drawing plans for another mass murder. In the minds of Hawkins students, it was all on the table. Of course, Mike had told people a million times he had no idea Eddie Munson was a psychopath, but that didn’t matter. For all his peers knew, they were at the top of Mike’s hit list.

Mike had tried to join the school newspaper team a few weeks ago to give himself a different image. He had proposed a new section where kids could write short stories and have them published, and the team reluctantly let him on to run it. Still, no one talked to him at meetings, and other kids had barely submitted any stories for this month’s edition. Usually, Mike would have a problem with that, but it just meant there was more room for his stories. He’d originally written a lot of fantasy stories for the paper, but kids on the team complained that he was basing them off of his devilish D&D (which he wasn’t, because they were obviously more Lord of the Rings inspired to anyone with a brain), but now he stuck to science fiction.

Mike read the newest edition of the paper at his locker. His story this week (about a crime-fighting alien organization on Venus) was in the very back. They’d actually had the nerve to cut off the last sentence, too. The sentence where it was revealed that the ‘aliens’ were humans all along. It was genius. It was also not on the paper. 

As Mike considered if this was worth complaining about, Dustin and Lucas popped up beside him, neither one very enthusiastic. Lucas was a head taller than Dustin, and the two looked very different, but Mike thought of them like twins these days. Their friend group had always been very close, obviously, but there were times when Mike thought there were tighter dynamics within that. Mike and Will had always been one of the tighter pairs, stuck at each other’s hip even outside the group, and now Dustin and Lucas were the closest, making Mike feel like a bit of a third wheel. 

He knew he and his friends were an inseparable trio, but Dustin and Lucas spent more time together. They’d been able to lean on each other when Will slipped away, and Mike just lost motivation to keep up. He realized he lost motivation to do much of anything, actually. Usually, Will would be the person he’d lean on in a situation like that. So, he knew it was his own fault that he felt distanced from his friends, since he hadn't put in as much effort, but it still made him sad. 

Lack of motivation. That’s another reason he joined the paper: to feel like he was doing something. But, seeing how his stories were being treated, he thought he might drop that too. 

“Alright evening last night?” Lucas asked, leaning against the lockers. 

Mike shrugged in return, shoving the school paper into his backpack. “Eh, it was fine. Holly had a soccer practice, and we’re just getting the house ready for Nancy to come home.” He hadn’t told his friends about the whole psychologist thing. He wasn’t sure why, but he just figured they didn’t need to know. 

Now Dustin raised his eyebrows, alerted by the name of his childhood crush, even though he had a girlfriend of his own now. “When’s Nancy coming?”

“A day or two. Not sure.” Mike shut his locker and sighed, wheels turning about his friends’ unusual small talk. Most of the time, they met Mike with some crazy story or outlandish theory for the day, their casual conversation was out of character. “Something’s up with you guys. What’s going on?”

Dustin and Lucas looked subtly at each other out of the corners of their eyes and then back to their third friend. 

“We were just talking about how it’s weird that it’s Will’s birthday today,” Lucas said cautiously. He, of all people, knew Will was a sensitive subject with Mike. Just like Max was a sensitive subject with him– in a completely different context, that was. “I don’t know, we’d just normally be celebrating with him. And we’re not.”

Mike knew very well it was Will’s birthday. He wouldn’t forget something like that. “Yeah. It’s weird,” he responded, raising the end of his sentence to invite more explanation. 

“We thought maybe we could do something?” Dustin tried. “Like, go to the arcade in his honor or something.”

“Okay…” 

Lucas looked down at his feet. “Or we could… visit him?”

“What?”

Will was sent to Pennhurst four months after his initial breakdown. He’d been there for eight months. In the beginning, the four months prior, Lucas, Dustin, and Mike tried to see him often. They’d listen to his tales, they’d try to help him. Nothing worked. Every time they saw him, they just lost a little hope. Will was so devastated when they wouldn’t give into his fantasies, and it was awful to see him in such a way. 

When he moved over to Pennhurst, it was suddenly a drive to see him. Pennhurst was just far enough out of the main part of Hawkins to make it inconvenient to visit. On top of this, high school was busy. Dustin, Lucas, and Mike all took hard classes, Lucas had intense basketball practices, Mike had to take his little sister everywhere, and Dustin was getting involved in the newly founded robotics club. They had less and less time to see their friend, and every time they did go, it just ended in disaster. The doctors weren’t convinced their presence was helping Will either.

The trio officially decided to stop making regular visits three months into Will’s time there. What Lucas and Dustin didn’t know was that Mike continued to go until well into the fifth month. He had thought maybe it was different with him, that he could connect to Will on a level the others couldn’t. If anyone was going to make Will okay again, it had to be him. And he was determined to an unhealthy extent. He’d tried so hard to connect with Will, to bring him back to some reality. It got to the point where it was all Mike thought about, and both boys were so frustrated about the loss of each other that every time Mike visited, it ended in senseless argument. Mike was (unofficially) red-listed from the building, his parents decided it wasn’t good for him, and that was that.

And now, after all that, Lucas said this. 

“You want to visit him?” Mike asked. The very thought of it drained the color from his face. They couldn’t do this.

Lucas opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “Well, I don’t know. We haven’t seen him together in such a long time. We just thought-”

“And what do you think he’ll think of us?” Mike interrupted. “Look, we stop visiting him for months on end and you expect he’s just gonna be fine with us walking in there to celebrate his birthday together?”

Dustin retracted his head. “Well, maybe-”

“He might be crazy, but I know he’s got mind enough to think that’s shitty.”

Saying that was a mistake. Now Lucas stood up straight, pushing himself off the locker. “I wasn’t trying to be shitty. You know that. Maybe he’d appreciate us actually making time for him. Making it look like we actually give a shit, which I do, Mike. And so does Dustin.”

There was a silence in the air as Mike refused to respond, continuing to look disapprovingly in his friend’s direction.

Lucas hit harder in return. “Now the only question is, do you?” 

Mike dropped the silent act immediately, mouth open in shock as he took a step forward. “Don’t you dare ask me that question, Lucas. He was my best friend. You know damn well he was my best friend.” 

“Was or is?”

Now Mike faltered. 

Would you still consider him your best friend?

He shook his head. “Is,” he corrected himself. “Is. He is.” 

Lucas crossed his arms, unconvinced. “Yeah? ‘Cause it seems like-”

“Guys!” Dustin stepped in between the bickering friends, trying to cut their tension. “Seriously? You’re gonna fight about this right now? How do you think Will would feel about that?” 

Lucas and Mike both snapped their heads to Dustin, their expressions changing as they realized how ridiculous they probably sounded. Will’s absence had definitely left space for a little tension every now and then in the group. He’s always been their best peace-maker.

Mike looked around the hall, trying not to make eye contact, still soaking in what Lucas had asked him.

Dustin continued. “Look, maybe Mike has a point. Will might get the wrong idea if we only come to visit on his birthday. But, Lucas is right too! We have to make time for him because we all care about him. All. Of. Us.” he gestured erratically, trying to get to his point. “I think we should visit, just not today. Let’s go sometime over spring break, right? We’ll all have free time then, right?”

Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose before he nodded silently, leaning back against the lockers again. “Okay, yes,” he said, his tone completely changed. “You’re right, Dustin. That sounds like a good plan.” He tilted his head forward, staring at Mike with what he could only describe as a certain distaste. “Mike?”

“Sure, yeah. I can do spring break,” Mike said, trying to fight the urge to combat it. The mere thought of visiting Will activated his fight or flight mode. 

Dustin nodded. “Good.” He put an expectant hand up in Mike’s direction. “Now, you drew first blood.” 

No way. He was trying to get them to do the gross spit handshake they did as young kids when they got in fights. 

Mike shook his head slowly. “Lucas drew first.”

“What do you mean? I was obviously-”

“Son of a bitch, guys!” Dustin said, putting his head in his hands. “Just apologize! Are you 12?”

Lucas sighed and placed a hand (not spit on, thankfully) out for Mike to shake. He tried for a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry I got aggressive. I guess you had a point. And I know you care about Will.” 

Mike accepted his hand and shook it. “Yeah, I’m sorry too.” 

Dustin looked satisfied enough with this interaction and nodded. “Good job, guys.” He put his hands on his hips. “Well? Let’s talk later about when we can visit, okay?”

The bell rang from somewhere above the three, and Mike looked around. “Yeah, let’s,” he said, already making his way off to class. 

The rest of the day, Mike couldn't stop thinking about the fact that it was Will’s birthday. Something about what Dustin and Lucas suggested rang true. It was strange not to see Will on his own birthday. 

It would be weird to go as a group, he caught himself thinking, but what if it was just me? It had been so long since Mike saw Will. Surely Will felt the same way in return. Maybe it had been idiotic to think he could connect with Will on a level the others couldn’t before, but now he felt the same idea growing slowly in his head. Could it really hurt to visit him? What was the worst that could happen?

Mike knew the worst that could happen. First of all, they probably wouldn’t let him in. Second, even if they did, he could already hear Will yelling at him. 

But, then again, it had been three months. The frustration from before had probably died down since then. For all Mike knew, Will would be happy to see him again. 

As he biked home at the end of the day, with no plan made to do anything with Dustin and Lucas that evening, he tried to forget about the whole idea. He stared down the road, trees passing. It was stupid. Why would he go see Will now of all times? 

And then he was in his room, folding a blank piece of paper and writing ‘Happy Birthday’ on the front. And then he was writing a card, more like a letter, to his best friend of 12 years. And then he was telling himself to give up. And then he was staring at his old walkie-talkie, waiting for it to speak again. And then he was signing the card with his name, sealing the deal. 

It wasn’t his best work, nor was it appropriate subject matter for a birthday card, but Mike had a lot to say. 

Dear Will,

Happy birthday! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve visited. I know it’s shitty of me, and I know you’re probably upset. I’m upset with myself too, so I get it. I should’ve come over more often. It just got hard for me. I know you know we don’t see eye to eye as much as we used to. I know we both want each other to believe something so badly, and it’s been frustrating for both of us to have that divide, especially as best friends who used to think so much of the same.

I think Lucas, Dustin, and I are going to visit you together soon, too. So hopefully that’s something to look forward to. I guess I should mention Dustin and Lucas wanted to come today too, but we decided that might be overwhelming. Still, our party isn’t really complete without you, right? We all miss you.

Hawkins isn’t the same without you either. Neither is school. Or life. Or anything, really.  I don’t know if you’ll ever come back, but I hope you do every day. I just feel a little lost without you, I guess. Like it’s a part of myself missing rather than a friend. I don’t know if that makes sense.

And you’re still my best friend, even if I’m not yours anymore.

Well, that’s all I have to say except, I guess even though we probably both think all of this seems hopeless now, I promise I won’t give up on you if you promise you won’t give up on me. 

Your friend,

Mike

It was hardly a card, but it was the least Mike could say to Will. All the words he couldn’t say in the moment. He hoped it at least meant something.

He borrowed the car, telling his mom he was going to go pick a couple things up for a science project. She believed him, maybe just relieved at the prospect of her son doing something normal. 

Then Mike was on the road. It was Will’s birthday, a year after he went crazy, three months after Mike had seen him last, and he was going to visit. 

Many times on the drive, Mike had second thoughts. Something in the back of his head kept trying to convince him this was wrong. Another part kept telling him it was right, though, and that part was, for however much of the worse, stronger. Mike continued down the road. 10 minutes out, the voice trying to convince him to turn back went silent. The card stopped burning in his pocket. He was going to visit Will. 

Pennhurst was dreary as always. From the outside, it looked like an old English college, one of the ones Mike used to dream of attending. The trees were blooming for spring, bright and cheery against the blue sky. The prospect of Will being trapped inside overshown all of this. Mike hated how Pennhurst looked. 

He parked in the near-empty parking lot and took a deep breath before walking slowly inside, to the front desk, where a younger woman was working. 

She regarded him with a blank expression, bright lipstick on her mouth. “Here to visit someone?”

Mike nodded slowly, swaying on his feet in anticipation. “Will Byers?” 

The girl raised her eyebrows. “Well, isn’t he popular this week? First, his mom, and she’s pretty regular, but then his brother, who is not a regular, and now you, who I’ve never seen before. Name?” 

“...Michael Wheeler.”

The girl flipped through a book on her desk and stopped on a page. “Michael…” she repeated. Then she looked up. “You’re red-listed.” 

Mike sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He looked around the room, feet still swaying. “I just… it was three months ago. It wasn’t anything official either.” He stopped this movement and walked closer to the desk, a serious expression. He needed to get in. “Look, he’s my best friend, and it’s his birthday today. Surely you could let me in.”

The girl thought about it for a moment, dragging her tongue along her upper teeth as she drummed her pink fingernails on the book. Then, she finally took pity on Mike's woeful face. “Fine,” she said. “I think he’s out back right now. You can follow me.” 

Mike muttered a quick thank you and followed the girl into the hall, giddy to have passed the first complication. No matter what had happened, he knew he couldn’t take a no for an answer from the front desk. He at least had to see Will. 

He looked around at the blank walls of the hall, wondering how many times Will had walked this way in the past eight months.

“You probably don’t know this, but they recently had to move him to a different area,” the girl was saying as she continued forward, getting Mike’s attention. “A little altercation with one of the workers or something… I don't know, but I think he’s fine now. I believe he’s out by the pond.” She shook her head like this wasn't normal. “He’s always painting under this big tree back there.”

She turned and pushed open a large door, leading Mike into the sunlight that was cast over a large green area outside. 

Mike let his gaze fall on a large pond towards the back. Sure enough, there was a big tree at its bank, still missing leaves, and–

Will. Will Byers, three months later, and still all the same. Mike wanted to run to him. He also wanted to run away. If let loose at the moment, he didn’t know which way he’d turn. 

“There he is,” the girl said unceremoniously. “At his easel again. He’s made some… interesting works to say the least. I mean, brilliant artist, but it’s quite the world he’s made for himself.”

Mike nodded mindlessly, eyes stuck on the figure that he knew so well in the distance. “Uh-huh, he’s really creative.” 

The girl almost laughed. Mike could see it from the corner of his eye. “If you want to call it that, sure.” She made a ticking sound with her mouth before speaking again. “Do you want me to come over with you, or can you take it from here?”

Mike shook his head very slowly. “I… I’ve got it. Thank you.” He waved the girl off and turned again to face his destination. Will Byers was 50 feet from him. 

Mike felt the card in his pocket and a sharp wave of anxiety coming on. What was he doing? 

He inhaled once deeply and walked swiftly to the tree, passing various other patients without much regard. When he was almost to Will, the boy still hadn’t noticed Mike. He was fixated very deeply in whatever it was he was painting, eyes following the smooth strokes of his brush.

Mike had no idea what to say. Here he was. He was visiting Will, Will was right in front of him.

Stupidly, all he could manage was a weak, “Hey.” 

Will almost jumped at the noise, and his eyes darted up to see who had said that. When they landed on Mike, they widened quickly. Will said nothing. Nor did he smile, he just stared at Mike. 

“Hi,” Mike tried again, a little louder this time. He took another step forward. “It’s… well, it’s, uh, me.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Will returned his focus to his painting. 

At least quietness was a better reaction than frustration. Mike would take this. He moved forward again, trying to grasp for any conversational straws. “I’m, uh, I’ve been seeing psychologists.”

Will didn’t look up, unimpressed. “Yeah, me too.” 

Right. Mike sighed at himself, closing his eyes. That was a stupid thing to say to a literal mental patient. He tried again. “What are you painting?”

“Him.”

“Who?”

Now Will sighed, stopping his painting to look at Mike again. “The Mind Flayer,” he said. “But you don’t know what that is, so it doesn’t matter.” 

It took everything in Mike not to look disappointed. Will was still stuck in this fantasy world. Mike knew he would be, but it still hurt to hear it said out loud. 

He continued to talk anyway. “Can I see him?”

Will shrugged. “Yeah. Fine, whatever. Maybe it’ll jog your memory.” Will stepped aside, inviting Mike to stand beside him on the other side of the easel.

Mike slowly walked around and took in the painting. It was an awful thing. Well, it was beautifully curated, but Mike couldn’t help but feel chills down his spine as he took in the large, swirling shadow creature that dominated the canvas, backed by a sky of dark blue clouds and vibrant, red lightning. The creature, although it had no eyes, looked like it was staring into Mike’s soul, like it was going to consume him. He tried to avert his gaze. “It’s… really realistic.” 

Will nodded from beside him. “It’s almost like I saw it with my own eyes.” 

Again in his own world. Mike tried to connect. He had to connect. “There are mind flayers in D&D, remember? We encountered them a couple of times in our campaigns. Is it possible that you’re thinking of-”

“I know there are mind flayers in D&D, Mike,” Will snapped back, not taking any of Mike’s attempts at peace. “That’s what we named it after. We-” He stopped himself, looking thoughtfully at the painting. “Forget it,” he said, more quietly this time. “I just sound like an idiot trying to explain it.” The wind blew his hair, and he shook his head. “Why’d you even show up, Mike? It’s been… well, probably months since the last time I saw you. Why now?” 

Mike felt the presence of the card in his back pocket again. “I was just… thinking about you. You know, since it’s your birthday and everything.” 

“It’s my birthday?” Will asked, eyes angled up towards his friend. “So, it’s been a year since this all began, then. It’s been a year, and not a single one of you has thought just maybe I might not be making all of this up? Are you serious?”

Now Mike turned to him, face red, and he tried to place a hand on Will’s arm. “I want to believe you, Will. I really do, but-”

Will yanked the arm away. “But it’s not possible. I know. I’ve heard it a million times, Mike. Alternate dimensions don’t exist, kids don’t have powers, possession isn’t real. That’s all I’ve heard for the last year.” 

So we’re doing this again. Mike was struggling to keep up. He didn’t want to argue with Will, but here he was. “And you disagree? Do you really think all of that sounds logical?”

“No! Of course it doesn’t! It’s not logical, Mike. But it’s true anyway.” Will looked from the painting to Mike, so pained that his friend could hardly bear to look at him. “Somehow, Vecna made everyone forget any of it ever happened. I don’t know how or why, but he did something to all of you except me, and now I’m paying for it. And El’s been in the Upside Down alone for an eternity now, taking him on by herself. I don’t know if she’s even still alive, and no one even remembers enough to care!” 

Vecna. The name made Mike cringe. All of Will’s stories revolved around this villain he’d created based on the D&D character. It was Vecna who ruined his life, Vecna who put Max in a coma, Vecna who actually killed all those people in 1986, and Vecna who was making it so no one believed him. A magical reason he’d dreamed up for all the troubles of his life.

Will’s sudden volume had attracted the attention of people around them, and Mike didn’t want to get kicked out again. His eyes darted nervously to check if anyone was coming to take him away.

Will must’ve noticed the commotion too, because he lowered his voice. “Look, Mike, thanks for thinking of me on my birthday, I guess, but I think it’d be best if you left now.” He picked up his brush again and returned his focus to the easel. “If you’re just gonna stand here and pity me because I lost my mind or whatever, then I’d rather you just leave. Goodbye.” 

Mike retracted his head, shocked. This was how his visit was gonna end? “Will, I- I just- Come on! Could you please let me off the hook for once? It’s your birthday and I just wanted to see you. I just want to talk again.”

“And we talked,” Will said shortly. “Congratulations. Now go. If you’re not gonna believe me, I don’t wanna hear it.” 

Will wasn’t letting him speak. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“And I’m insane, right? Aren’t I supposed to be unreasonable?” Will shook his head, letting out a small, breathy laugh. “This is ridiculous, Mike. Thank you, again, but just leave.”

Mike felt like he could cry. He just wanted to see his friend again. He’d come all the way out here, even when his mind was trying to convince him not to, and now Will wasn’t even accepting him. “Fine!” he said, taking the card from his packet and throwing it at Will’s feet. “Happy birthday, Will. I hope you’re having the time of your life.” 

Will looked quickly at the card, but returned to the painting without a word. 

“I was just trying to do something nice for you,” said Mike, using all he could not to break down in tears in front of his mindless friend. When he didn’t gain any other response, he turned on his heel and swiftly made his way back into the building, not looking back to see if Will’s eyes followed him. He didn’t even look to see if Will picked up the card. He assumed he’d probably just throw it away, based on how Mike had left him. He’d been foolish to come here today. Why had he ever thought it would turn out well? In what world did that turn out well?

Mike walked back past the girl at the front desk without acknowledging her. He thought maybe she had put a hand up to ask him something, but he was out the door before she could say a word.

Once safely in the car, safely on the road going back towards Hawkins, he finally cried. He wasn’t even sure if he truly thought the visit would turn out any differently. There was always a small hope, three months could make a big difference. Unfortunately, he failed to acknowledge that the difference could be for the worse. Will was angry with him and rightfully so. He’d given up on him. Mike was frustrated too, if it meant anything. He knew it wasn’t Will’s fault, whatever was wrong with him, but it was still ever so frustrating. 

Mike tried to pass the rest of the ride without thinking of much at all. He was tired of always having this on his mind. He just wanted to be released from this painful limbo he found himself in throughout the past year. Yes, maybe he was just an angry teenage boy, like the last psychologist had suggested, but that still hurt. 

When he pulled into the driveway, it was already dusk, the sun just under the horizon, painting everything a similar blue to Will’s painting. Mike could guess well enough that he was almost late for dinner. 

He tried to look unaffected as he walked into the dining room. 

His mom raised an eyebrow as she set a plate of chicken on the table. “You were gone for quite a while,” she said, fishing for answers. “All for your class assignment?”

Mike shrugged, slumping into his seat. “Yeah. It was a big project.” Big project, indeed. “I don’t think it’s gonna work out.” 

Half past 10, Mike was the only one left in the living room, which was strange, because his dad would usually still be in his usual position in the armchair, reading a paper or simply mindlessly watching the TV. Tonight, Mike’s father was at some late meeting, which meant it was Mike’s turn to do the late-night living room shift. 

He wasn’t really doing much of anything, just thinking about all the things he’d done today. All the things he’d done wrong, specifically. Fight with Lucas, visit Will, expect things to change, write that stupid card. 

He shook his head and tried to let it all slip from his mind. Surely this couldn’t be as bad as he was making it out to be. 

But it had been at least an hour since he sat down to think about it, so obviously it was holding some weight. 

The windows showed nothing but blackness outside as the night climbed slowly toward its peak. The moon had been obscured by clouds, so the only light was other houses on the street, but most had turned their lights off by now. No one was stirring. Mike would’ve thought that with spring break starting tomorrow, more kids would be out and about still, but the world seemed silent. 

Then there was a knock at the door. 

Mike nearly jumped from his seat on the couch. Who could possibly be outside his house at this hour? Had his dad lost the key and couldn’t get in? Possibly, but Mike thought he wasn’t going to be home until after midnight. And if not him, then who? 

As the knock came again, Mike rose slowly from the couch, aware of each footstep as he walked to the entry. 

He’d seen people in horror movies get killed like this. He had half a mind to ignore the noise. The other half couldn't care less.

A third knock came as Mike’s hand reached the doorknob and he took a deep breath before swinging it open. 

The door opened to reveal a girl no older than him, a dirtied face, and unevenly managed hair. Her fingernails were long, and her eyes were somehow so wide and so tired at the same time. She stared for a quiet moment, a knowing look that Mike didn’t understand, before speaking in the same voice Mike had heard over the walkie-talkie.

“It is over. He’s gone.” 

Chapter Text

“It is over. He’s gone.”

Mike blinked at the girl in his doorway. She was so disheveled that it looked like she’d been living in the woods for her entire life. Her face was scarred, her hair was a rat’s nest, and dirt gathered under her long and jagged fingernails. The only tidy thing about her was her puffy red jacket, from which there hung a price tag on the sleeve, as if she’d snagged it straight from a department store– perhaps without paying. Really, she looked like a wild animal more than anything, with her wide, darting eyes and her feral stance. But what was she doing at Mike’s door? 

“He’s gone?” Mike echoed her, trying to wrap his head around the visitor.  

The girl simply nodded. “Vecna is gone. I defeated him. We are finally free.” She gave a small smile, which she retracted upon seeing Mike’s disgusted face. 

Vecna? Mike glared at her at the mention of the name. “Is this supposed to be some sort of prank?” Now he understood. Someone had set this girl up to come and pretend to be a part of Will’s story to mock Mike. Well, it wasn’t funny, that was for sure. He seethed at the girl in the doorway, resisting a strong urge to push her down the stairs. 

She acted lost, tilting her head innocently. “What do you mean, Mike? Of course I’m not pranking you. I defeated Vecna like we planned. I was in the Upside Down-”

“Go tell whoever set you up to this to fuck off.” 

“Mike, I-”

“Go to Hell.”

Mike slammed the door before the girl could further her sick performance. He didn’t want to put on any more of a show for whoever was watching from the bushes, laughing their heads off at Mike’s face. Probably some lame jocks with nothing better to do than keep beating Will’s condition like a dead horse. Mike imagined it now, the dirtied girl was obviously the girlfriend of one of these guys who’d they’d convinced to dress up like some fantastical character to get a reaction from Mike. Because it was the anniversary, and, for whatever reason, guys like that thought mocking the horrible parts of people’s lives was funny. 

There had been a lot of people who joked about it in the first month after Will went to Pennhurst. Mike and his friends could barely go down the hall without someone yelling at them. 

Look out, I think that’s a… demogorgon!

Hey, Mike, when are you due to be shipped off to join him?

Watch it! I don’t wanna catch what Will has!

There were whispers in every class, people waiting for them at the bike rack with newly curated insults, people had even shown up outside Dustin’s house one night, making noises outside his window until his mother came outside and threatened to call the cops. It was awful for a long while. 

After the first month or so, though, people lost interest. Once in a while, people would whisper a loose rumor about Will, but Hawkins students were always onto the next big scandal. Once Freddie Palmer slapped a teacher, Will Byers and his wacky mind and his wacky friends were old news. 

But apparently not old enough. Someone had it out for Mike. Maybe they’d overheard him and Lucas arguing in the hallway today, or maybe someone had even spotted Mike driving out of town and knew he went to Pennhurst. Whatever it was, Mike refused to let these stupid kids gain any entertainment from their harassment of him. This wasn’t supposed to be funny. It made Mike sick that Will ended up how he was, and some people thought it was okay to joke about. They hadn’t visited him. They hadn’t seen how he hurt. 

Mike closed his eyes and tried to shake the interaction from his mind. He looked out the window once more, just to see if anyone was stalking around in the dark night. When he didn’t see any movement after a few minutes, he headed upstairs to try and get some sleep. This wasn’t worth his time. 

In the morning, his mother asked about it over breakfast. 

“I heard a knock on the door pretty late last night,” she said to her son after everyone had found their place at the table. “Did you answer it?”

Mike’s dad looked up from his paper at the mention of this, eyeing Mike for some sign of dishonesty over his reading glasses. Holly looked too, though seemed to have less concern for the subject, stabbing at her eggs simultaneously. 

Mike's eyes glanced from member to member of his family, and he shrugged lazily, not fully awake after a night of restless sleep. Thoughts of snickering kids and crazed best friends had kept him tossing and turning well into the latest hours. He was feeling tired and irritable this morning, and definitely not in the mood to talk about last night’s doorway interaction. “It was no one important. Just some kids from school trying to mess with me.” 

Mike’s dad rolled his eyes. “I figured. Your generation just walks around thinking they can do whatever they want. No respect for our private property. I’ve been telling your mother we need to put in a fence for years.” He sighed heavily and went back to the paper, tuning out as fast as he’d tuned in. 

Mike’s mom just frowned across the table, not yet done with her interrogation. “Were they friends of yours? What did they want?”

Mike wasn’t sure why this mattered. “It was nothing, really. They just wanted to… I don’t know, get my goat or something. It’s not a big deal.” He looked back to his own plate, trying not to go red in the face. He really, really would’ve rather not have to think about this anymore.

His mother didn’t deter. She’d latched onto a potential imperfection. Her kid was being picked on like a loser. “Do these kids do this a lot? Tease you?”

Fine. Mike felt another ball of frustration rolling up inside his empty stomach. “Well, I don’t know. I think it was just the whole Will thing? Right? ‘Cause it’s sorta the anniversary of that, and for some reason people love to make jokes about it. ‘Cause, like, they didn’t have to go through it, and-” Mike stopped himself, realizing that he was rambling. “Really, it’s not bothering me.” 

This was unconvincing, obviously, because his mother’s nose was still wrinkled in distaste. “Well, we should call the school, shouldn’t we? If there are kids making fun of you, and they’re going so far as to come to our house-” 

“Mom, seriously. It’s fine. I don’t even know who they were. We don’t need the school involved.” The last thing Mike wanted was more attention on himself. He’d had enough when Will first got sent off. Meeting with the principal, school counselors, talks with teachers, an assembly, whispers in the hallways. He’d rather just fade into the background now. That way, he wasn’t forced to think about it all the time. 

His mom looked like she might say something else, but took a breath and put on a smile instead. “Alright, well, if that’s what you really think. But if these kids are giving you trouble-”

“Yes, I’ll tell you. Fine. But, really, it’s not important.” Mike picked up his fork and stuffed a bite of eggs into his mouth, ending the conversation. How many times did he have to say it didn’t matter?

His mom stared at him for a second longer, just trying to think of something else to say before returning attention to her breakfast, defeated. Then a moment later, once Mike finally thanked the universe it was over, “You know, maybe you could talk about this with the next psychologist. I think you should-”

A rubber band broke. Mike stood quickly from his seat. “Holy shit, Mom! Can you drop it? I said it wasn’t important. And I don’t wanna see another one of your stupid psychologists. I’m done!” Tired and irritable. This was the fault of that stupid girl.

Now the whole table was looking again. 

“...Michael, language,” his mom chided shakily, shocked by her son’s outburst. 

Language. Mike had told her the truth about how he felt, and all she could think about was his etiquette? 

Holy shrugged from her own seat, unfazed. “I’ve heard the word shit before. Everybody says it at school.”

“Honey, you don’t say it either. It’s not a good word.” 

Mike’s father’s eyes were up from the paper again. “Apologize to your mother, Mike. You don’t speak to her like that. And if she wants you to see another psychologist, you’ll see one. Do you understand?” 

Mike shook his head. He couldn’t believe this was happening. The frustration was back and strong. Something he was missing, something not clicking. Everything made him angry. “No! Nobody in this house ever cares about what I want! I- I tell you how I feel, and you don’t listen! You don’t even care about helping me feel better, you just want a normal son.” He looked around again, searching for words to explain himself. “You know, I went to visit Will yesterday. And it sucked. And I was so upset, but I didn’t even tell you because I knew you wouldn’t care about how I felt. You’d just scold me for not following your rules. ‘Cause who cares if I’m hurt about it, it was probably my fault for going there in the first place, right?”

No one at the table spoke back, just staring at Mike as his words hung in the stiff morning air. His parents didn’t even have a trace of sympathy on their faces. His mom looked at her son like he had lost his mind. His dad was emotionless. No apologies, no understanding, no nothing. 

Mike pushed his chair in. “You probably wouldn’t even care if I died, at this point.” With this, he turned his back and walked swiftly away from the dining room and didn’t stop until he was back in his room, slamming the door behind him. 

Frustrated, he sat down on his bed and took a few large, deep breaths, closing his eyes. He’d just been so angry lately. And at everyone, too. He snapped at Lucas, he got irritated with Will, cussed out the girl at his door, and now he was yelling at his mom and dad over the breakfast table. 

Nothing made sense anymore. Mike’s entire life had gone off the rails after Will lost his mind. He couldn’t even describe it, but it was like he was missing something. Like, deep down in his soul, he knew something that he couldn’t remember, like it had been ripped from him. Something that would make everything make sense.

Until he found that something, he was simply lost.

About 20 minutes after the breakfast outburst, a knock came at Mike’s door. He could tell it was his mother from the sound of the hand against the wood, gentler than his dad and stronger than his sister, and the bounce of her manicure. He didn’t respond even so. 

“Mike? Hello?” His mother called from outside. “Honey, can you come out?”

Mike turned on his bed to face the door, but didn’t make any effort to answer. 

His mom was silent for a moment. Then, “Look, Holly has a soccer game, and we have to go. It’s okay if you don’t feel like coming with us, I just…” She trailed off.

Another silence. Mike could almost hear his mom breathing on the other side. He almost said something, but kept his mouth shut. 

She was quieter now. “I want to talk later. Please. Really talk to you. You’re my son, and I want you to know I will always care. I know…” Another trail off. Mike heard her sigh and place a hand on the wall. “Just take the trash out while we’re away, okay? We’ll chat when I get home.”

With this, there was the sound of footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Then Mike’s father muttering something about children, then a call for Holly to hurry up, shuffling of squeaking shoes, and the front door shutting. Then silence. 

Mike laid in bed for a moment more. 

Finally rising, he slumped downstairs to collect the trash to take outside, like his mom had said he should. He figured he might as well be useful. Maybe as an apology for his attitude at breakfast, if that even warranted an apology. He supposed he’d gone a little overboard with his emotions, so taking out the trash it was. 

Going out the front door, Mike looked nervously around at the block, searching for any signs of more kids who might want to pester him.

Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he had a small suspicion that he was being watched. At one point, while hoisting the trash bag into the large can, he even thought he heard someone in the bushes across the street. A quick whip of his head, though, and he realized nothing was there. He was simply getting himself worked up. No one cared that much about messing with Mike that they’d hang around and stalk him all day. The girl at his door had been a one-time occurrence. 

This was believable, of course, until the girl appeared in his living room. 

Mike had finally convinced himself he was being unreasonable, trying to think of anything else as he stepped back inside. He looked at his feet as he walked through the front door and kicked off his shoes. Then, he decided, he might as well watch something mind-numbing on the TV. What better did he have to do anyway? It was the first day of spring break, and Mike surely needed a break. 

As he turned his head to the living room, though, he yelped in surprise, jumping back so far he almost hit the wall. 

There, standing with an expectant expression, was the same girl from last night, still dirty and tired. She tilted her head as she observed Mike’s freak-out. 

“What the hell?” he yelled at her. “Get out of my house! What are you doing here?”

“Mike,” she said sternly. “You are being very strange. Didn’t you hear me last night? I defeated Vecna.” 

Mike narrowed his eyes. “I’m calling the cops.” He dashed swiftly for the phone, reaching his hand up to the wall to grab it. 

Somehow the girl got there before him, faster than she looked with her scrawny limbs and wide eyes. She took the phone from the wall and simply held it to her chest, like she was guarding a small creature, and there was a good chance she’d put up a fight if Mike tried to take it back. “No,” she said plainly. 

Could kids from his school really be so invested in a prank that they broke into his house? Maybe Mike was dreaming, or maybe Will’s crazy stories had finally got to him and he was also going crazy. 

“I came here because Will is not home,” the girl continued. “I went to our house, and there was a strange man, but no Will. And so I came here, but now you’re being very strange to me.” She sighed and her voice trembled. “Everything is wrong.”

Mike decided to play into her little game, hoping eventually she’d give up the phone. “You know Will?” he asked, crossing his arms. 

The girl retracted her head, scrunching her nose. “This is not funny, Mike. I have been gone for a very long, but I haven’t forgotten anyone! Of course I know Will, I am his sister.” 

What? Mike squinted his eyes at the intruder. “Wait, wait, wait. What’s your name?”

Now the girl squinted back. “I am Eleven. But you call me El.” She paused. “Is this some sort of quiz?”

“Eleven,” Mike repeated. He remembered the name because it was a big character from Will’s story. “Right, my crime-fighting ex-girlfriend." This was ridiculous. 

“Yes!” Eleven said, pointing. Then, she frowned. “Well, no. I don’t fight crime.”

Mike put his hands on his hips, just waiting for the right moment to grab the phone. This was a truly invested bully, but Mike wouldn’t put it past some of his peers, and the girl did seem familiar in a way. He must’ve seen her in the hall before. “So… you’re telling me we were dating.” 

Eleven nodded. “Yes- Do you really not know who I am?”

“I have no idea who you are.” 

Drumming her fingers on the phone, she swayed on her feet. “Why don’t you remember?” she asked (as if Mike would have an answer for that). “Do you remember the Upside Down? Demogorgon? Mind Flayer? Vecna?”

“Yeah, they’re D&D monsters.” 

She shook her head. “No. Well, yes. But they’re also real. You named the monsters from the Upside Down after D&D ones, remember? Like, the demogorgon? The one that took Will when he went missing? You had that little metal statue with the… heads. Multiple heads.”

Now Mike was starting to feel himself sweat a little bit, but tried not to show that he was becoming nervous. Not only was Eleven reciting exact details from Will’s stories, but the demogorgon figure seemed to be an awfully personal detail to recall. “Look,” he said, eyes darting from Eleven’s face to the phone. “Please just tell me if someone put you up to this. It’s not funny anymore.” 

“Why would I lie about the Upside Down? Friends don’t lie, remember?”

Mike put his hands up in frustration. “I don’t know! I just… bet you’re someone’s girlfriend and he’s having you come to my house to mess with me about Will. It’s not funny. His… situation isn’t a joke.”

Now Eleven’s expression faltered. “Situation?” she asked, taking a step towards Mike, who promptly backed up. “What situation? Is Will okay? Where is he?”  

“Pennhurst,” Mike said, rolling his eyes. “Is that what you want me to admit? My best friend has been at Pennhurst for a year?”

“...What is Pennhurst?”

Mike couldn’t believe the girl was making him go through all of this. “The mental hospital outside of town. He went crazy a year ago, talking about all the stuff you’re saying right now. I’ll admit it! You’re a great actor. Congratulations, but you can drop it now and go tell whoever put you up to this to fuck themselves, okay? This is anything but funny. This is sick. Will’s a real person… He’s not some joke.”

“You think Will is crazy,” Eleven said to herself. “But, does Lucas remember me? Dustin? I’ll talk to them instead.” 

“No, of course they don’t remember you. You don’t exist.”

“Well, what about Max? Max would know me. She is my best friend. Where is she?”

“In a coma. She’s been like that forever. Drop the act.” Mike was really tired of this, now. 

Eleven put a thoughtful finger to her mouth, eyebrows furrowed as she muttered to herself. “Still in a coma… How? I- Vecna is gone now. She should be okay… And why does nobody…” 

This girl was way too invested to be a Hawkins student. She must have, Mike theorized, been an escaped patient from Pennhurst, inspired by hearing Will’s fantastical stories before breaking out and coming to torment Mike.  

Whatever she was, she looked awfully pale, standing there with the phone, her dirty fingers shaking as she thought to herself, wrapped in her big, stolen jacket. Mike thought she might pass out. 

“Look, do you need a glass of water?” Mike asked. “Let’s get you something to drink and then we can talk.”

Eleven nodded slowly. “Yes. Fine. Water.” She slowly put the phone back on the wall and walked with Mike as he led her to the couch and sat her down. She crouched a little, looking down at her hole-filled tennis shoes, soiled with dirt and– was that blood?

Mike shivered at the thought of where that blood could have come from. “I’m going to go to the kitchen,” he said, trying to level his voice. For all he knew, this girl could smell fear. “I’ll get your water and be right back.” 

Eleven just nodded, still looking down. 

Mike backed slowly into the kitchen, not taking his eyes off of the girl until he was safely in the other room. Supporting himself on the counter, his mind raced and he took a few shallow breaths of air. What was he going to do? There was an escaped mental patient in his living room, and one most likely capable of violence based on her blood-stained shoes. If Mike didn’t act fast, he’d probably be killed. 

He walked slowly to the sink and turned the tap on, leaving it running as he tiptoed to the kitchen phone. He’d just call someone and have her returned before she even knew what was going on. Everything was going to be fine. 

Once his hand was on the receiver, Mike sighed with a victorious relief. He started to dial up the sheriff’s office. 

Then, he saw Eleven standing at the entrance to the room from the corner of his eye, and his heart dropped into his chest. He had only made it to the second number, so he tried to dial faster. 

“NO!” Eleven stuck out a fierce hand, pointed straight.

Mike had trouble explaining exactly what happened next. First, the phone flew suddenly from his hand. Then, it was as if some invisible force pushed him backwards, and the wind was nearly knocked from him as he was thrown into a dining room chair. 

Quickly, Mike tried to get up from the seat, but realized he couldn’t move his legs. Something unseen was keeping him trapped right where he was. 

Eleven slowly walked toward him, hand still outstretched, and he watched a small drop of blood fall from her nose. 

“Who the hell are you?” Mike yelled at her, still struggling to move.
“I am Eleven,” she responded. “You found me in the woods with Lucas and Dustin. You kept me in your basement. I helped you find Will when he went missing. You contacted me every day on your walkie-talkie after I left. Do you remember?” 

Mike was almost in tears with fear. “I don’t know you!”

Eleven sighed and walked forward again.

“What are you-”

She swiftly grabbed Mike’s wrist. 

Then, everything was black. Mike thought for sure he had been killed. A crazy girl broke into his home and murdered him. He was dead and his family would find him bleeding out on the dining room floor.  

In the black void where he found himself trapped now, he screamed bloody murder, waving his limbs around like it was going to save him from this awful fate. He was in Hell. Mike had died and now he was in Hell. 

Then, he looked to his side and saw Eleven staring at him, concerned. 

So, maybe this wasn’t Hell. Whatever it was, it was insane. 

Mike gestured erratically. “Where are we? Are you some sort of illusionist or something? What did you do to me?”

Eleven shook her head, ignoring Mike’s questions as she walked around in the blackness, water rippling under her feet. “This isn’t right,” she said. “I was trying to go to the memory where you met me in the woods. But… something is blocking our way.” She took Mike’s wrist again and concentrated.

The blurry figures of a dark woods started to appear around them, but it was too fuzzy to even make out. It was like a low-quality image, and it kept fading to black and back again.

Mike blinked. “You’re telling me we’re in my memories?” 

“We are trying to be. Something is keeping us from them. It’s like they are off-limits.”

“So, my memories are locked like some video game level?” None of this was making sense to Mike.

Eleven didn’t seem to understand the comparison, but she nodded even so. “Yes, like… that.” She paced back and forth as the void flashed in and out of the blurry woods. “We should be seeing you right now. You should be 12 and in the woods and then you find me. I wanted to show you, to prove it to you, but your mind is barring it off.”

Mike still stood there, his entire perception of reality crumbling before him. “Wait, so are you… actually named Eleven?” There was no way… Will’s stories, could they possibly be true? It didn’t make any sense. No one remembered; there was no evidence. How could that be possible? Mike thought he’d probably be aware if another dimension had overtaken his hometown at some point. 

“Of course I’m actually Eleven,” Eleven snapped, still trying to figure out her locked memory predicament. She paused and pointed a finger at Mike, which he backed away from, out of fear that she might send him flying backwards again. “And you took far too long to realize it. You are very stupid, Mike.” 

“I’m-” Mike scoffed, defensive even despite his lack of comprehension. “Well, even if this is all real, which I’m not convinced it is, can you blame me? Obviously, my memories are blocked off or something. That’s not my fault. Wouldn’t you be skeptical if a girl showed up and told you all this supernatural stuff was real if you didn’t remember it?”

“Maybe,” said Eleven, but she stopped the debate there. “You are still stupid.” 

Mike gave up on fighting back. He instead turned to thinking about the implications of all of… this. Hypothetically, if Will was right, that meant he’d been trapped in Pennhurst for eight months, even though there was nothing wrong with him, and he just had to sit and watch all his friends as they forgot everything that had happened to them in the last years. If that was really true, Mike felt terrible. He thought of all the times he’d argued with Will, all the times he didn't believe him… Could it possibly be that he’d been wrong? Was Will the only one with a full mind this whole time?

“And you’re sure I’m not hallucinating right now,” he said aloud, less to Eleven, and more to the universe. 

Eleven answered anyway. “You are not hallucinating, Mike. I know it is crazy, but everything Will told you is true.”

“Well, then why the hell don’t I remember?” If this were real, Mike felt horribly robbed and full of a great emptiness. If he was supposed to have had all these crazy supernatural experiences, where were they? He could barely think about the fact that he could have all these thoughts and feelings that he simply couldn’t remember. 

This was it. This was what he was missing, the reason his life made no sense anymore. He needed back his memories. He wanted them now. “How do we get them back?”

Eleven closed her eyes and suddenly she and Mike were back in the dining room again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why you can’t-”

“Vecna,” Mike said suddenly, remembering his last visit to Will. “Will said something about how Vecna had made everyone forget. Do you think it’s him?” Mike shivered at the prospect of a supernatural villain powerful enough to erase the memories of so many people. Will always talked about how evil Vecna was, how terrifying he was, how disgusting, but could he truly do this? 

Eleven pursed her lips. “Maybe… but I defeated him. That means everything should be okay now.”

Mike got up from the chair and crossed his arms, starting to pace as he thought. He couldn’t believe he was actually theorizing about interdimensional monsters right now. He was hallucinating. He had to be dreaming or hallucinating. “Well, what if this was, like, his final stand, right? Like, he used the last of his powers to do this?” Then Mike bit the inside of his cheek, a realization dawning. “But that doesn’t make sense, does it? You said you defeated him recently, and Will’s been the only one with memory for an entire year.”

“No, it makes sense,” said El in return. “His final stand in this dimension. A year ago, our plan was to confine Vecna. We wanted to trap him in the Upside Down. I was going to be in there with him, fighting him from that side, and you were all going to try and help me from the other side. But then you all stopped contacting me after a while... Maybe that’s why. He used the last of his hold on this world to take all your memories so you wouldn’t be able to help defeat him.” 

A shiver went through Mike’s spine. He didn’t like the fact that somewhere, deep in his mind, he knew this villain and his evil ways, but he couldn’t recall it. “But why not Will?” he asked quietly. “If he really wanted everyone to leave you, why not just take the memories of all of us?”

Eleven thought for a moment, a large frown playing across her face at whatever hypotheticals were coming to her head. Then, finally said, “An anchor.” 

“Anchor?” 

“Will was always… different for Vecna. They’re connected, somehow. Their minds. Will has always been able to sense Vecna, and Vecna has always been able to… I don’t know. Will’s like… a host. For a parasite.”

The thought of this also made Mike shiver. He couldn’t believe he couldn’t remember any of this. His best friend was a host for some evil being and he simply couldn’t recall it. The more he heard about Vecna, the more he wanted to stomp his face in. “What does that have to do with an anchor?” 

“Well, maybe Will is acting as an anchor. To keep some control over what happens in this world, Vecna needs some recognition. Someone who will keep his presence alive. A grasp on this side of reality.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “But if Will is… somehow keeping his presence alive by acting as an anchor… doesn’t that mean-”

“He’s not gone. I defeated him physically in the Upside Down, but some amount of Vecna, no matter how small, is here, in this world.” Eleven dropped her head to her chest, her eyes shut tight as she took a deep breath and then looked back to Mike, an intense worry in her face. “Vecna is alive.”

Chapter Text

The next course of action for Mike and his newfound (or, found again, he supposed) accomplice was obvious: Rescue Will Byers. 

Mike couldn’t stand the thought of him locked up in Pennhurst for no good reason, with all the people he cared about having suddenly forgotten everything they’d been through. He couldn’t stand the memory of trying to convince Will that what he said wasn’t true. He finally understood why it made Will so mad. 

Mike also couldn’t stand the fact that five years of memories with his best friend had been ripped from him. What had they done together? Mike couldn’t remember any of the moments, but he knew all his feelings were the same as before, and he cared deeply for Will, that was for sure. He’d always cared deeply for Will, ever since they were kids, but why still? What in the last five years had kept them so tightly bonded? 

He wanted all of this back. 

Eleven climbed into the passenger seat of Mike’s car with urgency, waving her hands as if to hurry Mike up. 

“I know, I know,” Mike muttered, digging for the keys in his pocket. He was lucky that Nancy hadn’t taken this car to college, which meant it was usually available for his use. Technically, it was still Nancy's car, and Mike hadn’t had his license for that long, so his parents usually made him ask before he took it, and he just biked to school to avoid the fuss. Today, though, he couldn’t care less about asking for permission. 

Once Mike found the keys, he climbed quickly into the driver’s side and started the car. He was still putting on his seatbelt by the time they were out of the driveway. 

The drive wasn’t all that long, but long enough for Mike to think. A lot. And this was good, because he had a lot of pieces to put together. 

“So… we were actually dating?” he said at one point. Mike still couldn’t wrap his head around that. In his altered memories, he’d never had a girlfriend. He’d never even liked a girl before. Actually, he was quite frightened by the prospect that he’d never like a girl. Hearing that he had a girlfriend was a relief, sure, but something felt off about it.

Eleven rolled her eyes dramatically at Mike’s question. “Yes. Will you stop asking that?”

He’d only asked three times now. This was a blatant overreaction. 

Mike clenched his jaw, still not convinced about the whole thing. “Why’d we stop?”

Now Eleven was silent for a moment, considering this. She kept her eyes on the road ahead of the two. “Just… differing visions. For our futures. Or… different goals, maybe.”

This was vague. “Really?”

“Really.” Eleven sighed and laughed a little under her breath, leaning back in her seat. “Mike, I was raised in a lab and was speaking fractured sentences at 14. I think… I need to find myself before I even think about finding boys.”

Mike considered this. “Fair. That makes sense.” Still, something seemed off about the whole thing. Mike drummed his hands impatiently on the steering wheel, and he looked at Eleven as they stopped at a red light. “What about me, though? Was I an okay boyfriend?”

Now Eleven rolled her eyes again, but with less frustration than before. “You had your moments. But, again, different goals.” 

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Well, what the hell was my goal?”

Eleven shrugged. “Mmm… I just think we are better as friends.” She pointed forward. “The light. It is green. That means go.” 

Mike returned his focus to the road, putting his foot down steadily on the gas. “That didn’t answer my question.” 

“It is just… hard to explain. Maybe when we get your memory back, you will figure everything out for yourself.” 

It was Mike’s turn to sigh. “Well, that clears everything up. Is there some giant awful truth about me that you’re keeping a secret?”

Eleven shook her head vigorously. “No. No, not that. I don’t know what the truth is about you. And neither do you, maybe?” All of this seemed difficult for her to articulate. Mike had a feeling they’d had a very similar conversation in the past, and one that was just as uncertain. “I just think… We both need to find ourselves. In other places.”

This answer still didn’t satisfy Mike, but he decided to let it go, turning to a different subject before he could give his brain time to think on this one any longer. “So… you care a lot about Will?” He also found it strange that he wouldn’t remember someone who obviously cared so much about his best friend. 

“Well, yes, of course. He is my brother.”

Mike retracted his head at this. He’d never even heard of Will having a sister, nor was this fact mentioned in any of Will’s Pennhurst retellings. He thought maybe Eleven had said something about it earlier, back at the house, but it was before Mike was taking her seriously enough to actually consider anything she said. “You're actually his sister? Like… paternally, or something?”

Eleven made a face that suggested the meaning of this word was lost on her. 

“Like, from the same dad,” Mike explained. 

Eleven shrugged. “I do not know Will’s dad. Joyce is our mom, though.” 

Now this seemed implausible. “Joyce had another kid?!” 

“No. No, no, no. She took me in,” Eleven explained. “I am from the lab. Mama is in Illinois. But Joyce is my mom now.” She paused, a melancholy look growing across her face. “Or, was. I guess she does not remember.”  

“But she will,” Mike asserted. “We’re going to restore everyone’s memories. We have to.” This was a given, he supposed, but he liked to say it out loud, just in case. Mike wanted his memory back more than anything.

He was silent for a while again, just thinking about the task ahead. Of course, the closest issue was somehow getting Will out of Pennhurst. The plan was sort of up in the air and rocky. It involved a lot of… I don’t know. We’ll figure it out when we get there, which stressed Mike out because he liked to plan. That’s why he’d always liked being a dungeon master. At least he knew what was up ahead. Unfortunately, the time to plan was short, and Eleven was insistent on Will getting out as soon as possible (which Mike, of course, wouldn’t argue with– it was about time Will left that place). Also, unfortunately, this might be a hard task without a fully developed plan. 

Then Mike almost laughed with realization. He had, apparently, fought monsters before. If he could survive something like that, getting Will out of a mental hospital seemed like nothing. Surely he’d done worse things. 

Truly, it was what came after the break-in that scared him the most. Confrontation, that was. He was so scared Will would never forgive him for not believing. Sure, Mike felt like he deserved something along those lines, but the thought of Will– real and sane Will– never being able to look him in the eyes again made his chest tight. 

“Okay,” Mike said finally, feeling cold sweat build on his forehead. “So… before I see Will, is there anything I should know? Something important that I forgot about us.” 

Eleven raised her eyebrows. “So much,” she said. “How about… when he went missing. You wanted to find him very badly. You were so, so worried. And the lab people– the bad men– they placed a fake body in the lake and said it was him. You were upset. You yelled at me because you were so upset he was gone. You didn’t even talk to Dustin and Lucas. You just went home alone.” 

Mike shivered at the thought of finding Will’s body. He had hardly been able to deal with Will losing his mind, so Mike couldn’t imagine what he’d do if he lost him in such a definite way.

“Was I the one who found him?”

“No. Joyce and Hopper went to the Upside Down… But you helped from this side.” She straightened her posture in a sudden revelation. “Oh, and you kissed me.” 

What? “...Right after you escaped from the lab?” 

“Yes.” 

Mike shook his head at such a ridiculous thought. “Wasn’t I, like, 12?”

“Mhm. It was very strange. You are very strange, Mike.” 

“Thanks.” Mike was silent for a moment, taking in this statement and keeping his eyes on the road. They were almost to Pennhurst now, only a minute or two away. He knew the streets they drove on. He knew the streets too well. The trees and buildings always loomed here, even if they weren’t that tall, and the people on the sidewalks always seemed to stare. “Do you think he’ll forgive me?” Mike asked quietly.

Eleven furrowed her eyebrows. “Hmm?”
“Will,” Mike said a little louder. “I haven’t… It’s been a year and I haven’t believed him. We haven’t connected in that long, and I left him for three months. Do you think he’ll ever forgive me for that?” 

The answer was no. It had to be no. Mike was an awful friend, and Will could see that plainly now. Mike could see that plainly.  

Eleven thought the question over, staring intently at passing trees. Passing and looming trees. “Yes,” she finally said. “I think he will. It is like California, right? You were away from each other for a year, and then you were friends again.”

Mike had no idea what the state of California had to do with any of this, but decided not to ask. “You really think he can forgive all of that?”

Now Eleven was confident. “Will is very kind. He is forgiving. Sometimes to his own detriment, and especially with you. I think he will accept your apology.” 

Mike frowned, not sure how he felt about this answer. It seemed to be implying that, yes, Will could forgive him, but that didn’t mean he should. That seemed wrong, Will forgiving Mike even though he shouldn’t. But, then again, Mike supposed he’d selfishly rather have that than no forgiveness at all. He’d just have to make the forgiveness worth it. Starting today, Mike was going to be the best friend Will could ask for. It was the least he could do. 

Mike turned the car into the entryway of Pennhurst’s grounds with a shudder. Here they were, and with very little plan for the rest of this operation. Mike tried to block out all the ways this could possibly go wrong from popping into his head. 

As he parked, Eleven reached into the back seat and handed Mike a plastic bag. This bag held his disguise. The two had decided it was best for Mike to look like someone else if they tried to go in to visit. Mike was, of course, red-listed, and there was a good chance someone might recognize him from yesterday if he just gave a fake name. 

So, Mike pulled out the things they’d collected quickly from around the Wheeler house: a golden-blond wig from some old Halloween costume and glasses. Hopefully, this would be enough to fool the workers. It’s not like they’d remember Mike’s face that much, and glasses always made someone look like a different person. 

Mike grimaced as he put the wig on and looked in the rearview mirror. He thanked the universe he hadn’t inherited a monstrosity like this from his mother. 

Eleven laughed at him as she pulled a purse with a second disguise from the back. “This is like when we met,” she explained. “You put me in a wig too. Because my hair was so short.” 

Mike huffed and put on the glasses, not in any mood to reminisce on things he couldn’t remember. “Let’s just get in there.”

The same woman was working the front desk, with a slightly brighter shade of lipstick today. And more eyeshadow too. She eyed Eleven and Mike curiously as they walked in, and, fortunately, didn't seem to remember Mike. 

“Hello,” she said evenly. “Are we here for a visit?” 

“Will,” responded Eleven in a matter-of-fact way, rushing to the desk with wide eyes.

“Will Byers,” Mike clarified, trying to deepen his voice for further disguise. 

“Will Byers again,” the girl said to herself. She flipped through her book and frowned. “Unfortunately, his visiting hours are over for now. Maybe if you came back in-”

“No!” said Eleven, putting her hands on the desk now, which startled the girl. “We- We must see him. You must let us.” 

“We’re extended family,” Mike added on the spot. “We’re only passing through, and we haven’t seen him in so long! Is there a way we could get in?” Mike tried to look upset, which was not difficult to do in his current state. 

“We are cousins,” explained El slowly. “Very far cousins. We are from California.” 

The girl chewed some gum in her mouth, unimpressed. “Pretty pale for California, both of you.” 

Mike looked down and realized, yes, he was too pale. Eleven didn’t look much better, having been in an evil dimension for the past year. This was going horribly already.

“Look,” said Mike. “Could we talk to someone, then? My sister and I, we love Will very much, and it’s been so long. Surely there’s something you could do for us? It’ll be years before we get this opportunity again. I don’t know if I can live without seeing him that long.” This time, he really played up the emotion in his face, and so did Eleven, although Mike wasn't sure if she was faking the frustrated welling of her eyes or not. He only hoped she wouldn’t send the girl flying across the room. 

The girl looked from Mike to Eleven a couple of times with her brightly framed eyes and sighed. “Fine. I guess I could let you see him, but you’ve gotta be quick. And don’t tell anyone I’m letting you do this. If you see my boss-”

“Lips are sealed,” Mike assured her. 

This seemed to convince the girl enough, and she nodded before looking back to her book. “Names?” 

Mike and Eleven looked at each other in a short moment of panic. 

“I am… Angela," Eleven said, pointing to herself with a suspicious lack of confidence. “And his name is Jim. And our last name is Byers, like Will, because we are his cousins.” 

However unbelievably this was presented, the girl seemed to take little notice and wrote the names down without any more questions. “I can’t lead you back,” she said. “If the boss knows I’m gone…” She gritted her teeth. “Just- Second floor, door 208, okay? Don’t draw attention to yourselves.” 

“208,” Mike repeated. “Thank you so much, miss. Your kindness is much appreciated.” He gave her a forced warm smile and took Eleven by the arm, leading her swiftly back into the halls of Pennhurst. “I can’t believe that worked,” he muttered as soon as they were far enough away. He was starting to like this lack-of-plan thing, though. This was exhilarating. What else was exhilarating: Being moments away from reconnecting with Will Byers after a year of confusion and misinformation. Mike’s hands were literally shaking at his sides as he continued down the hallway and up the stairs, and he removed the wig and glasses, not needing that to be the first Will saw of him today. He didn't speak a word to Eleven. He could hardly even breathe. Would Will really forgive him?

Eleven stopped from ahead of him, halfway down the dimly-lit hall of the second floor, and turned to a door. “208,” she said. “This is it.”

Mike slowly approached, taking in the cold entry. His heart was pounding violently in his chest, and he thought he might pass out. Will was feet from him, and he was coming home.

“Are you ready?” Eleven asked.

Mike swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I am.” 

Will sat on the bed in his room and studied the pills in his palm for a quick moment before bending down to stuff them into the hole in the side of his mattress closest to the wall. His hand felt the touch of the various other pills in the crevice, and he made a mental note to dispose of this load as soon as possible. He couldn’t let his avoidance of the medication become noticeable, especially after keeping it up for so long. 

That would just give the doctors another reason to start electroconvulsive therapy. 

Will shivered at the thought of this. His mother had always been anti-ECT and made it well-known to the doctors that she didn’t think her son would need any sort of treatment as such. She assured them every week, he’ll come back, I can see it. The unfortunate side of this was that Will wasn’t coming back. He had nowhere to return to. Still, the doctors gave in to Joyce’s great concern, and Will had avoided the treatment thus far. 

That was until he’d foolishly pushed the doctors a little too far the other day when he got into a quarrel with a worker. It was, in his defense, so hard not to become frustrated with all of these people when he knew he was right. He couldn’t blame them for thinking he was crazy, no, but he still got frustrated. This frustration had unfortunately built to a moment when he had just finished a very detailed painting of the Mind Flayer, which he was going to show to his mom at her next visit to see if it sparked any hint of remembrance. The worker who had come to tell him it was time to go back to his room was, rightfully, disturbed by this painting and tried to take it away. Will, very tired due to a nightmare-filled sleep the night before, lost his cool and got slightly violent with the worker without thinking. He thought ‘pounced on the man’ was a little dramatic, but that’s how the event was retold. This concerned the doctors, and they decided they couldn’t take Joyce’s excuses any longer. Will was dangerous, and they needed to try ECT.

The news of this was so disappointing. All Will knew about ECT was that it induced memory loss, and he couldn’t lose his memory. He was the only one who still had it. It was imperative that his own mind stayed intact if there was to be any hope of helping El.

He tried to stay unproblematic to avoid the treatment up until that night. No, he wouldn’t pretend he’d been ‘cured’ by the medications and the doctors, but Will tried to stay relatively calm. He’d keep trying to convince his family and friends they’d really forgotten something, but he couldn’t go any further. Trying to escape or fight back, he’d realized, would only land him further into this prison, and he’d be even more useless to El there. As much as he hated it, the best he could do was wait. 

But now it had been a year, and El still hadn’t returned. In his moments of great doubt, Will found himself, for the very first time, thankful to have some connection to Vecna, because it gave him a connection to El. If he could feel Vecna’s struggle, then he knew El was still fighting. All Will could do was wait, but at least he could wait knowing there was something to wait for. 

This was until a day or two ago (Will often lost count), when the struggle in his mind simply stopped. Vecna’s presence was, as always, still there, but the struggle was gone. Will feared this meant the worst: El had been taken down. 

This possibility truly made Will shiver. He couldn’t stand the thought of poor El, cold and alone in the Upside Down for an entire year without the help of anyone, fighting Vecna tooth and nail only to lose it all. 

And if El was really gone, then what more was Will fighting for? How long could he keep trying to convince everyone the Upside Down was real? Did it really matter anymore? Questions like these made his head hurt, so he stood up and went to the window, trying not to think any longer. Surely, surely something would happen soon. El would be fine, Vecna would be gone.

Maybe he really was going crazy.

Then, there was a knock on the door, which was strange because nobody usually came to check on Will for a while now. The last nurse had just left, which gave him about three hours before the next.  And usually, the nurses just walked in without invitation after knocking. Could it be that they’d finally figured out Will wasn’t taking his medication? Or perhaps the ECT was coming sooner than he expected… Whatever it was, it made Will nervous.

Still, he went to the door and braced himself as he opened it, expecting bad news.

What he saw was the opposite. 

Will dropped his hand from the knob and stood in shock as he looked across the doorway, his eyes meeting familiar brown ones, tired and relieved all at once. 

“El…” he said, because he was becoming too filled with emotion to say much else. “El, you’re back.” 

El’s smile grew wide as she looked back at him, and she nodded quickly.

Will didn’t know what else to say, so he threw his arms around his long-lost sister and hugged her tight, taking in the feeling of her being alive. He’d been so worried, but this, this meant everything would finally be over.

After a moment, he pulled back, his mind racing. “Does this mean… Vecna…?”

El looked down for a moment and then nodded. “Well, yes. I defeated Vecna. But…”

Will already knew what she was going to say. “But he’s not gone.”

El nodded again, now with some difficulty, and a tinge of guilt in her eyes. “I- I don’t know how. I defeated him, which means everyone should be back to normal… but nobody remembers.”

This disheartened Will for only a moment before he shook it from his mind. “Well, what matters is you’re here now and you’re safe. That’s the most important thing. Now we can solve the last of our Vecna problems together. No more splitting up, and no more Upside Down.” 

“Together,” said a weak voice to the side of Will and El’s exchange. 

Will didn’t have to look to identify it, but he did anyway, and there was Mike. Mike Wheeler, pale in the face and kneading his hands together subconsciously, he looked like he might burst into tears when Will met his eyes. 

Will didn’t know what to think of Mike right now. He hadn’t known what to think of Mike for a while. It was hard not to be frustrated with all of his friends, even though he knew it was unfair to hold them responsible for all of this. He knew the stories he spouted out weren’t the tiniest bit believable, so of course everyone thought he was crazy. But he also thought if anyone would believe him, it would be Mike. This was also an unfair standard to hold him too, but Will couldn’t help it, and it made him frustrated. Will had never fought so much with Mike as he had over the past year. He was more frustrated with Mike than with anyone else who didn't remember. 

On the other hand, Will had loved Mike. Well, who was he kidding? He still loved Mike, despite everything, and he had since he was young. Maybe it was awful, maybe it was something he would never be able to do anything about, but it was painfully and regrettably true. And even when Mike thought Will was crazy, Will had been touched by how passionately he wanted to make him better. Mike tried so hard to make Will come home, so hard Will contemplated if it would be best to pretend he’d been cured of his Upside Down memories and just go. He’d never seen Mike cry like he’d seen Mike cry over the past year. So, yes, he was extremely upset with Mike right now, but with the way he was looking at him at the moment, Will simply didn’t know what to think. 

“Will…” Mike tried, hands still aggressively kneading together. “I- I’m so sorry.”

Will was conflicted. He kept his eyes on Mike, but spoke to El. “Did you help him remember?” Maybe if Mike, the old Mike that was, was back…

El shook her head. “I don’t know how. But he believes you now, at least. He didn’t believe me until I shot him across the room.” She looked around suddenly and took a step forward, her face becoming serious as she put a pale hand on Will’s arm. “Look, we came here to get you out. We should go before anyone notices.” She held up a purse in her other hand. “We have a disguise for you.” 

“Okay, yes.” Will took it from her swiftly. It was true, if they were going to break out, they better do it quickly.

Will had dreamed of this day for a long time now. He’d always imagined something similar: El showing up at his door and saying it was all over and she was coming to set him free from this purgatory. In most versions, the world would be cured of Vecna’s power, and Will could walk freely from the building, but he’d always considered the possibility that he’d have to escape. And now it was here.

Mike and El turned away as he changed into the costume, which consisted of a hat, sunglasses, and a sweater and pants from Mike’s closet. Will was initially concerned about how Mike’s clothes would fit him, since Mike was very thin, but Will had lost at least a few pounds of muscle in Pennhurst, so it wasn’t all that bad. The pants were only a bit snug, and the sweater was roomy to begin with, so it all worked out in the end. 

When Will was ready, he nodded to El, who put her hand on the door.

“We have to go quickly,” Mike said to the group, keeping his voice low. He had his own simple disguise, a ridiculous-looking blond wig and glasses. “We’ll just walk right back out the front before anyone notices, without any commotion. The car is in the side parking lot, so let’s just get there as fast as possible. Once we’re out of town, we should be safe.”

“No one is supposed to check on me for a couple of hours,” Will said. “So my absence shouldn’t be a problem for at least a while.”

“Good,” said Mike, and he looked at Will for a little too long.

“Open the door,” said El, noticeably antsy. “Let’s just get out. No more talking.” 

Mike frowned, obviously worried by this escape plan. “Maybe we should be having a conversation on the way out so people don’t-”

“No more talking, go!” El pushed forward and opened the door herself, looking out quickly to see if there were any witnesses before motioning for the boys to follow her. Mike looked shocked by the sudden initiation of the plan, but blew out through his mouth and turned to follow. Will came out last. 

The three walked in silence down the long, colorless hall and stairs, looking nervously at the walls and floors. Will knew this place all too well by now, and he didn’t wish it goodbye as he left. They passed one worker, and Will could feel the collective anxiety build between them as he passed, but he hardly paid them any mind. Will’s disguise was, apparently, working. 

When they were at the front desk, Will sighed with relief. He couldn’t believe he was actually leaving this place. 

“Hey, you two.” A voice came from behind them, and the group stopped in their tracks. The front desk lady, Gina, was staring at them with a raised eyebrow. “Wait… weren’t there just two of you?”

Mike’s eyes were wide. “Run,” he said under his breath, but nobody moved. The room was stiff.

“Wait,” said Gina, rising from her chair and cautiously making her way around the desk, heels slowly clicking on the floor as she crept. “Is that.. Will Byers?”

Will grimaced, but tried not to show it. They’d been caught. Gina was pretty lazy at her job, but she had a surprising knowledge of all the patients. Of course she’d recognised Will. 

Mike turned and put his hands on his hips. “No, it’s not,” he said in a deep voice. “Just… a friend from the area. We ran into him while going to see Will.”

The girl continued forward, but Will saw her hand creeping toward the phone on the end of the desk. “Then what’s his name?” she asked. “I’ve been checking people in since this morning, and I don’t remember him.” 

“His name-” Mike stumbled. “Look, I don’t see why it’s any of your concern.”

At this answer, Gina lunged for the phone. 

El gasped and stuck her hand out, almost as a reflex, sending Gina flying back. She hit the wall with a loud thump, the force knocking various items from the shelves.

The group stood for a moment in shock, El with her hand still out, Mike with both his hands over his mouth and his eyes wide behind his glasses. Gina stayed unmoving on the floor, and Will hoped desperately that she had simply been knocked unconscious. He could do without a murder being pinned on him on top of the whole going crazy allegation. 

El turned around slowly, her hands shaking and blood dripping from her nose. “Run now,” she said with her bloodshot eyes fixed on the door. She stumbled forward and then broke into a dash, to which Mike and Will followed without argument. 

Mike made it to the car first, panting as he fumbled with his keys in panic. “Holy shit,” he was muttering to himself. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” 

The trio tumbled into the car the moment it was unlocked, El vouching quickly to sit in the back with Will rather than the front with Mike, and closed the doors forcefully. Mike gripped the wheel with white knuckles, breathing deeply into his chest.

“Drive!” Will shouted at him. “Go, go, go!” 

“I know!” Mike shouted back, stepping on the gas pedal with so much force that they all lurched backwards. He made a messy break for the exit, running over at least a few curbs before setting off down the street at 20 miles over the speed limit. “Holy shit,” he said a little louder now. “Holy shit, we just killed someone.” 

“We did not,” El answered shakily, fishing erratically in the door for a tissue. “I am sure she is okay. What else was I supposed to do? She knew we had Will! She was going to call the police!” 

Mike made a sharp turn. “Well- Well, I don’t know! But now we’re gonna go to jail for aggravated assault! So much for breaking Will out, now we’re all gonna get sent to Pennhurst!” His eyes darted. “Do you think they followed us? Is there someone on our tail now?” He sped up even more. “Jesus Christ, they’ve already called my parents, I can feel it.” 

“Mike,” Will said, trying to keep his own cool in the back, which was hard to do when both of his accomplices were freaking out. He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and gave him a supportive squeeze. “It’s gonna be okay. I’m sure they won’t be onto us for a while now. I mean, you had disguises, right? And I’d assume you gave them fake names. They won’t know you had anything to do with it.” 

“Well, yes, but-”

“Mike.” 

“Where are we even gonna go? I can’t just take you back to my house! I mean, my parents would send Will right back. And the Byers don’t remember either. Or Lucas, or Dustin, or ANYONE, so we can’t just-”

El had her head in her hands. “Mike, pull over.” 

“You seriously want me to pull over? ‘Cause right now, I think that’s the worst thing I could do. Plus, you’re the one who-” 

“Mike! NOW! Just pull over in an alley or something! No one is chasing us!” El yelled at him, ripping her head from her hands in a burst of desperate anger. 

Will wondered with a creeping worry what was happening with her.

Mike said nothing in return to the outburst, but gradually slowed down and came to a stop at the side of the street, all the while looking nervously in the rearview. Will wasn’t sure if these glances were to check for persecutors or to watch El. 

El opened her door without a word and stumbled hastily over to the wall of a side alley, using her arms to stabilize herself on it as she took a few deep breaths and stared at the bricks.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mike asked, his voice small.

“I don’t know.” Will opened his own door and got out, keeping his eyes on his sister. He ran over to where El was and put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” He tried to look at her face, which was somehow even more pale than before.

El shook her head, continuing to breathe deeply. “I don’t know. This is new,” she said. “It’s like using my powers on that girl… drained me. And not like before when I would feel tired after using powers. I feel so weak now. I don’t know.” She leaned her head against the wall. “I used so much power against Vecna,” she said quietly. “I think… maybe it’s all going away. Permanently. I feel it.” 

Will frowned as he took this all in. El losing her powers for good wouldn’t be ideal, especially with some part of Vecna still having a grasp on this world. “Are you sure that’s it?” he asked. 

She nodded, hoisting herself into a straight position. “I just feel it. It’s different. Like I am emptying. I only have so much left.” 

“Only so much left,” Will repeated, the reality of this bouncing off the bricks above them. “Well, we’ll just have to be smart about it. …You’ll have enough to help get us through the last of Vecna?”

El grimaced at the thought of that, gritting her teeth. Her eyes, Will noticed, were exhausted. Will remembered an energetic curiosity sparking El’s eyes before she’d gone to the Upside Down, but it had been replaced with something deeper. “If we’re smart,” she said. 

Will nodded. “Well, okay. Then we’ll be smart. The most important thing is for you to be okay. If you ever feel like you can’t do anything more, we’ll just figure out some other way to fight Vecna, okay? It’s gonna be fine. We’re together again, and that’s our biggest weapon.”

Will wasn’t entirely convinced of this himself. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, nor did he want to know what was in store. Despite everything, though, he was finally out of Pennhurst, and that alone made him feel ready to take on the world. 

Will was going back to Hawkins. 

Chapter Text

Mike slunk hesitantly out of the car about a minute or two after Will and Eleven left in a hurry. He didn’t really understand why Eleven needed to stop so badly, especially since it was very likely they were being chased. 

Well, maybe not. Mike admitted, that sounded a little crazy, especially since no one had seen the commotion that happened in the Pennhurst lobby, and it would take people a while to figure out who was responsible. And, even if they found names in the records, how could they possibly trace that back to Mike? He’d, hopefully, left no trace of himself at the scene of the crime. 

Reflecting on this in a more rational state of mind (as rational as he could be after learning that other dimensions existed), Mike took a few deep breaths. He was safe. Will wasn’t going back; he’d make sure of that. 

Eleven and Will had been crowded together by the faded brick wall of the nearby alley, holding onto each other and saying quick things that Mike couldn’t hear from the car. They seemed so close, both now and back at Pennhurst, which was strange, mostly because Mike felt so alienated from them without his memory. He could only stare at them making big, sad eyes at each other in the alley for so long before he decided he had to go out and see what was up. 

As Mike approached, Eleven caught him in the corner of her eye and stood up straighter. Her nose was still bleeding, an after-effect of using her powers, Mike had noted, but she also seemed entirely more drained than before. Not that Eleven hadn’t seemed drained since the moment she appeared at Mike’s door, but now, for whatever reason, it seemed worse. Her eyes were dark and sullen, and her shoulders slumped without meaning. 

“What’s going on?” Mike said cautiously, walking forward at a measured pace. He was, admittedly, a little freaked out by Eleven still. Sure, he now believed all the stuff about knowing her for years, he even believed the stuff about dating her, but that didn’t help the fact that she could toss people around with her mind. Mike feared he might make the wrong move and, perhaps to his own demise, get on her bad side. 

“My powers,” Eleven responded, wiping the drip of blood from her face. “I think they might be going away… and for good this time.” 

“They’ve gone away before?”
Eleven stared at him, a little lost, before she nodded. “I forgot you don’t remember. I lost them, and we thought it was forever after the Starcourt battle. But then I got them back. This time, I can feel they won’t come back.”

Mike took this in. Starcourt, the mall that had burned down in a fire a few years back. Obviously, that wasn’t the truth, if he had to guess. And Eleven’s powers going away forever… “Don’t we need them? If we want to fight…” Mike felt ridiculous saying this. “Vecna?”

Will sighed, coming to join the conversation. “We’ll just have to use them as sparingly as possible. There’s gotta be a way to revert Vecna’s influence without using too much of El’s energy. We just have to find the source… and hopefully taking that out will cut off the rest of it.” 

Mike racked his brain for what Eleven had told him of the past few years, sensing a fault in this plan. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we taken out a ‘source’ before? And then the Upside Down kept coming back despite this?”

“Yes,” said Eleven. “But this is Vecna. It’s different. He is not just the source of one problem, he is the source of the entire Upside Down. Taking out the last of his hold on Hawkins should eliminate him forever. His physical body is already gone, we just need to find the last piece of him.”

“Okay…” Mike thought again, crossing his arms and swaying on his feet. This all seemed very hypothetical to him. “And didn’t we come to the conclusion, before we went to get Will, that Vecna is using Will as an anchor or something? Could that possibly be the source you’re talking about?” 

Now Will frowned, taking in this possibility. He blinked a couple of times before responding. “I would’ve thought… Well, I would’ve assumed the source of all this memory loss would be in the memories of one of the people who it affected… Since- well, since I’m not really a part of that-”

“But Mike is right,” said Eleven. “We did guess that you could be the place he is operating from. You have always been an anchor for him. Why not now?” She stepped closer to Will, studying him. “Do you feel him? Right now, can you sense him?”

Will stammered. “Well, I- I always can, you know? All the time you were in the Upside Down, I could feel him struggle and fight with you. It was constant. But after you defeated him…” Will shook his head, placing a hand to the back of his neck and closing his eyes, as if to feel a pulse there. “It’s not as strong. It’s almost like he isn’t there anymore, and, for all I know, what’s left that I’m feeling is just a phantom of what I’ve sensed for so long. Like, my mind isn’t used to being free of that.”

A silence sat cooly between the three of them, all trying to work out some solution in their heads. Will still had his eyes tightly shut, as if he was searching for something deep within his soul. Eleven stared intently at the bloodstain that she’d made on her grey jacket sleeve, and Mike just drummed his fingers. He wished so much that he knew all that these two did. 

“Well, maybe it’s not Will, then,” he finally said, catching Will and Eleven’s focus. “Maybe… there’s a way to manually restore people’s memories.” He turned to Eleven, trying not to make any sudden movements. “Eleven, I know you couldn’t reach my memories when you went into my mind before, but there’s gotta be something in there that’s keeping me from knowing everything. Could we try looking at my fake memories? Maybe there’s a source there?”

Will’s eyes lit up with a spark of an idea, and he stepped closer. “A source,” he repeated. “Everything comes from a source. If you want to find a source, you should go to where it all began.”

Eleven shook her head. “I did. I tried to go to when Mike found me in the woods, and-”

“No,” Will said quickly. “Further. Mike doesn’t even remember me going missing. You have to go back to when it really began. Our D&D game. November 6th, 1983, right? There’s gotta be something there.” 

Now Eleven paused, taking this in. “Before, I wasn’t even able to enter the memory… Do you think this one would be different?”

“Well, it was before the memories Vecna blocked off.” Will turned to Mike, who was impressed by his ability to be thinking so rationally only a short time after escaping the place he’d been trapped for almost a year. “Do you remember our D&D game? We were fighting the demogorgon, yes?”

Mike nodded slowly. “You rolled a seven. I remember we could find the dice because it flew off the table, but then you told me it was a seven before we went to bed-”

Will tilted his head. “Went to bed?”

“We had a sleepover. I remember, your mom called mine and said it was okay. I… I don’t remember many details after that.” Mike shook his head, realizing the fog that seemed to cover all of his memories from after that moment. He could remember anything they did that night, or the next morning for that matter. It was… it was a school night, wasn’t it? Were they all at school the next day? Thinking about it too much gave Mike a sharp pain through his head, like a strike of lightning in his brain.

Will turned back to Eleven. “This is it. This is the moment it changes. He remembers everything as it was until after our D&D game. You have to try and go there.”

Eleven looked around cautiously, eyeing the main sidewalk beside them, and various passersby giving them glances. “Further in,” she said quickly, tilting her head deeper into the alley.

Once the group had moved back and around a corner, Eleven took a deep breath, her dark eyes on Mike. “Do you want me to do this?”

“I-” Mike looked from Eleven to Will, not exactly sure what to think. He had half a mind to protest letting this girl invade his mind again, but supposed there were bigger things to worry about. “I want my memories back. If Will thinks this will work, then let’s do it.” He held his wrist out this time, so that Eleven didn’t have to grab for it again, and took a deep breath. He was ready. He was going to remember. 

Eleven looked at Will and nodded. “You will be alright out here?” she asked him. “I hope we are not gone long.” 

Will shrugged. “I’ll manage. And if anybody happens to stumble back here, I’ll just make something up. I’ll… I’ll be fine.” He said this less convincingly than Mike would have hoped for, but neither he nor Eleven decided to push further. Will was probably in a strange place right now, having only just gotten out of Pennhurst. Mike didn’t want to leave him out here, but he figured he’d be more help to him with a memory than without one. 

“Okay,” said Eleven. “Let’s go, Mike.” She reached up and hesitated for only an itching moment before latching her hand onto his outstretched wrist. 

Mike’s vision was immediately submerged in blackness, and he felt a wave of chills run through his body, like he’d been thrown into the ocean without warning. His stomach dropped quickly and he shut his eyes as tightly as possible, waiting for it to be over.

When he opened them again, he was in a familiar place: his own basement. The lamp light was warm, and the night outside was dark. He watched the wind blow in the trees and could almost feel the frigid wind of the night on his back. The sprinklers in the yard were creating a steady rhythm, barely audible in the commotion of the room. 

In front of Mike were several small figures: his friends and him, gathered around the basement table. They were all so young and lively. Dustin’s teeth had yet to grow in, Lucas’s hair was shorter and his face rounder, and Will’s eyes were big and hopeful as he listened to his friends bicker about what to do next. Young Mike himself was hunched behind his DM screen, eyes darting from partymember to partymember in giddy anticipation. He looked so much different than Mike did now. He was less sullen, for sure, and his features were so defined at such a young age. The meaner of the kids at school had called him ‘frog-face’ for laughs in middle school. That name had always hurt Mike, but he liked to think he’d grown out of the worst of it. 

“We made it,” Mike said quietly to Eleven, who stood beside him.

She nodded, looking around the room. “Where is the corruption? Is something wrong that you see?” 

Mike looked around himself and noted that nothing seemed out of place. It was definitely a more lively-looking basement than it was nowadays, but that was just a feature of the times. Mike spent less of his time there now that he seldom had his friends over. “Nothing,” he said to Eleven. “Maybe we’ll see it soon.” 

Their conversation was cut short. “Something is coming,” young Mike said seriously, eyeing the table still. “Something hungry for blood.” 

This statement perked up Eleven’s ears, and she looked with concern at the table. “Blood?” she asked. 

Mike held her back from approaching. “It’s just the game,” he explained. “He’s- Well, I’m narrating.” 

Young Mike continued, obviously unable to see his older self and Eleven watching him. “A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here.” 

The young friends leaned in with anticipation, eyes growing wide and worried. 

“What is it?” Will blurted, his voice so incredibly small it made Mike’s heart hurt a little. How he yearned for nights like this back. 

Dustin lifted his head. “What if it’s the demogorgon?” he asked, gaining exasperated reactions from his friends. “Oh, Jesus, we’re so screwed if it’s the demogorgon-”

“It’s not the demogorgon,” Lucas cut in. 

Young Mike looked from player to player, trying not to crack a smile at their worry. He split their conversation quickly by slamming a miniature onto the table. “An army of troglodytes charges into the chamber!” he announced excitedly. 

Dustin smiled. “Troglodytes?”

“Told you,” said Lucas, leaning back in relaxation at this turn of events. 

But even older Mike remembered this. The troglodytes weren’t the worst to come. He remembered planning this campaign for weeks on end, working on it for hours after school so he and his friends could play. This surprise attack was his best twist yet. He found himself starting to smile as he watched the old game play out. 

Young Mike did not smile, completely into his storytelling. He looked slowly around. “Wait a minute,” he said quietly. “Did you hear that? That… that sound? Boom, boom, BOOM!” He slammed his hands onto the table, making his friends jump and yelp as he bubbled with pride at his brilliant campaign. “That didn’t come from troglodytes, no,” he said. “That came from something else.” 

Mike practically said the words along with him at this point. Now he was really missing the days of playing D&D with his friends. These were some of his favorite memories. The ones that were real, at least.

Basking in the anxious silence of his friends, young Mike slammed down another figure, one with many long and twisting heads. “The demogorgon!” he said loudly, and the rest of the group freaked out, shifting in their chairs. 

Dustin groaned. “We’re in deep shit,” he decided. 

Young Mike wouldn’t hear complaints. “Will, your action!” he commanded, leaning over the screen. 

Will’s eyes darted, and he shook his head. “I don’t know!” he said. 

“Fireball him!” Lucas shouted. 

This seemed bold. “‘I’d have to roll a 13 or higher.” 

“Too risky,” Dustin agreed urgently. “Cast a protection spell.” 

Lucas rolled his eyes at this suggestion. “Don’t be a pussy. Fireball him!” 

“Cast protection!” 

Eleven laughed at the bickering of the young boys from beside Mike. “You are so small,” she said. “Your voices are very high.” 

Young Mike was slamming his hands on the table again. “The demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering!” he shouted across the room. “It stomps towards you. Boom!”

Lucas shook his hands in panic. “Fireball him, Will!” 

“Cast protection!” Dustin yelled over him. 

Will looked from friend to friend, overwhelmed by this choice. He cast his gaze down, thinking as all three of his friends continued to yell. Mike watched him slowly pick up his dice and take a deep breath. “Fireball!” he yelled, tossing the die across the table with such force that it tumbled off the other end. 

The whole party got up immediately to try and look for it, scrambling around each other in anticipation. They raced to opposite ends of the room, yelling incoherent things as they clawed the floor for any sign of the die. 

“Mike!” Mike heard his mom yell from the top of the stairs, catching young Mike’s attention. 

Young Mike raised his hands, still in a searching position on the floor. “Mom, we’re in the middle of a campaign.” 

“You mean the end?” his mother responded. “Fifteen after.” 

“This is it,” Mike said to Eleven. “This has gotta be it.” He watched his younger self run desperately up the stairs to debate with his mom. “Follow him,” Mike said. 

Eleven and Mike ran up behind the young boy, making their way to the kitchen as young Mike approached his mom with pleading eyes. “Mom! Wait, just 20 more minutes,” he said. 

Mike’s mom turned to him in response, but something looked off about her. She looked discolored in her skin, and when Mike’s gaze reached her face, he saw that her eyes were completely white. “I told Dustin and Lucas’s moms that they’d be out of here by eight o’clock!”

Young Mike tilted his head. “What about Will?” 

“Oh, I didn’t tell you?” The corrupted Karen looked down at her young son. “Joyce called. She’s working late tonight and asked if Will could sleep here.”

“This is wrong,” Mike said, shaking his head. “You said he left. And… look at my mom! Something’s really wrong with her.” 

“I see that,” said Eleven, bracing herself before sticking her hand out and pointing it to the creature pretending to be Karen. As Eleven focused, Mike watched the mother freeze, her fists tightening and her veins darkening. Finally, after a painful few moments, she opened her mouth wide and let out a terrible noise, releasing a cloud of black smoke. 

The scene shifted suddenly, and young Mike was pouting as his mom, who was now looking like her real self, said, “It’s a school night, Michael. I just put Holly to bed. You can finish next weekend.”  

The memories hit Mike like a ton of bricks. He gasped and stumbled back as Eleven let go of his wrist, and he was shot violently back into the real world, a thousand moments revealing themselves in his head at once. He thought he might explode with realization, emotion, fear. Everything all at once: bikes, hospitals, farms, cars, Halloween, monsters, dances, the mall, the rain, fireworks, funerals, boxes, letters, paintings, clocks. It was all coming back like an invisible weight over his head. 

Will’s hand was on his shoulder, Mike thought. He couldn’t tell because his world was spinning as the truth tried to fit itself into place. 

“Are you alright, Mike?” Will asked. 

Will Byers. Woods, walkie-talkies, the quarry, the gym, zombie boy, going crazy together, spies, Morse code, abandoned campaign, slipping up, apologizing, moving, going, going, gone, reuniting, fighting, forgiving, confusion, fear, neglect. Will Byers, Mike’s friend of 12 years. How had he ever forgotten all of this? 

“Mike,” Will asked again, his grip tighter. “Do you remember?” 

Mike blinked, unsure if he could even speak with all this recollected knowledge. “Yes,” he managed. “I’m fine. I’m fine, it’s just… There’s so much that I forgot.” And now his eyes were welling up, darting and overwhelmed. Demogorgon, Upside Down, Mind Flayer, possession, flesh, death, visions, clocks, blood, Vecna. “I’m so sorry,” he said, looking down. The ground was all he could manage to take in right now. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help. I should’ve done something. I should’ve believed you. I should’ve remembered!” Now there were tears on his cheeks, hot and stinging. He must’ve looked like a mess. He felt like a mess. Or maybe he felt like he messed up. He couldn’t even tell. 

Will shook him. “Mike, it’s okay,” he insisted, trying to look at his face. “Mike, talk to us.”

“It only matters that you remember now,” said Eleven- El. She also put her hand on his shoulder. 

Mike shuddered. El, El, El. Basement, t-shirt, pretty, mouth-breathers, pudding, kissing, missing, dancing, kissing, girl, girlfriend, doubt, shame, letters, signing, lying, desperation, leaving. So many thoughts were creeping into his mind, old internal battles ready to be revived for another round. Mike tried to block them all out. El was right, all that mattered right now was that he remembered, and he could help. Mike could help. Mike was a hero. Mike was the heart. He helped; it’s simply what he did. 

“We need to get back to Hawkins,” he said, trying to level the shaking of his voice. Now his mind raced with plans for their next action. “We can’t stay at my place, obviously, but is there a way we could go to yours? How much power do you think you have left in you, El? Enough to get us a safe home base?” 

Will and El exchanged a sly glance, the meaning of which was lost on Mike.  

“I think I will have enough,” El said. Mike hadn’t noticed it in the moment of his own confusion, but she looked incredibly tired after restoring his memories. Blood ran freely from her nose, a familiar sight now. “I should have enough to restore a few more memories.” 

“But not all,” Will thought aloud. “This isn’t a permanent solution. We can’t just bring El to every person in Hawkins. We still need the source. There has to be a bigger source.” Mike had a feeling Will knew the source was most likely himself, but he didn’t want to admit it- to himself or the others. Mike understood that much. He supposed they could wait to find out until something made itself more clear. 

“I will have enough to restore a few more memories and find the source,” El said. “If we are smart. I must be sparing, that’s all.” 

“And you’re sure it won’t come back?” Mike asked. “Not with the… sensory deprivation? Not with any sort of-”

“No,” said El definitively. “It’s going away. Forever now.” 

Mike figured this was something El would quite like, in any other context than the one they were currently in. She wanted more than anything to live like a normal girl. Maybe, after all this was over, she finally would. For now, they needed her. 

“Let’s start with our house, then,” said Will to El. “We can restore Jonathan, right? We might want another mind on our team anyway. Mom, when she visited me last, said she was going out of town for work. That's good, right? It means you only have to restore Jonathan. That’s sparing.” 

El nodded. “Sparing.”

“Then, Byers’ house it is,” Mike said, grabbing the keys out of his pocket as he turned on his heel. “Come on! Let’s get moving!”

“You see, that’s the problem,” Mike was saying from the driver’s seat as he drove down the highway at a steady yet over-the-speed-limit pace. “I think we’ll need more help than we realize. Or more support at least. We have no idea if Vecna has anything more planned, but I’d guess, since he’s barely hanging on, that he’d make some desperate attempt at more control. A last stand, you know?” He’d been in constant monologue mode since he started driving, talking through his various hypothetical plans for Vecna’s final defeat. 

Will couldn’t help but smile at it, even if most of Mike’s words were about impending doom. He kept looking back at El from the passenger seat and exchanging knowing glances with the tired girl. It was such a relief for both of them to have their Mike back. Authentic and awkward and determined. Will has missed him so much over the past year. And, yes, Will was still frustrated, because he simply had to be after a year of no one believing him, but now that Mike was himself again, it made being angry a lot harder. Mike Wheeler, Will always had a soft spot for him, for better or for worse. Mike was so very hard to hate, even at his worst. And now, when Mike was at his best, spewing plans and theories like this was his own campaign, he was impossible to hate. 

As the horizon line started to morph into the shape of Hawkins’ downtown, Will felt a tightness in his chest. Here he finally was, after eight months of waiting. Hawkins didn’t necessarily hold all that great of memories for him, but it was still his home, no matter what, so he missed it nonetheless. However many horror stories he’d found himself living out here, he was glad to be back. He supposed anything would beat a life stuck in Pennhurst. 

There was a swat at Will’s arm, and Mike pulled his hand back to the wheel. “Earth to Will,” he was saying. “Did you hear me?”

Will shook himself out of his thoughts and looked to his friend. “What? No, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” 

Mike nodded. “I asked if you knew if a lot of your stuff was still at your house. Like, are we going to need to get more of my clothes for you to borrow? ‘Cause you can, that won’t be a problem. I just need to know so we can get it figured out.”

Will pursed his lips. “I’m… not sure. Mom and Jonathan rarely talked about the location of my clothes when they came to visit.” 

“Okay, well, yeah. Obviously. I just-” Mike shrugged. “You know what? We’ll just figure it out when we get there. First priority is Jonathan anyway, I guess.” 

Will looked back to his sister, who was trying unsuccessfully to close her eyes for a while. “Are you up for another mind-restoration?” He was so worried about El’s powers running out too soon, especially with Vecna still there. If El somehow ran out for good before Vecna was gone, what would they do? Will hated that they had to rely so dependently on El for all of this, but it was simply how things went. 

And now, Will’s mind was quieter than it had ever been. He hoped this simply meant Vecna had finally left him. He feared it meant something more. Vecna had held onto Will for five years. Why would he let go now? In his last stretch?

El frowned, opening a single eye. “I should be fine. It’s just one more. I said before, I have enough power for a couple. I might need the night to recharge after, but I can help Jonathan.” 

“Good.” Will leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes for a moment as well. It must’ve only been an hour or two now since Mike and El came to rescue him, but so much had been flying through his head ever since. 

As Mike drove into the downtown area, he nudged Will softly, making his eyes open again. “Hey, I’d keep your head down here. I don’t want anyone to see you and get you sent back. Not now that you’re here. It’s… It’s just a small town. Someone’s bound to recognize you.” 

Will looked quickly around. Mike was right. It was the first day of Spring Break, and Will saw many familiar faces out on the streets. Kids from school, neighbors of his friends, he thought he had maybe even seen Dustin’s mom. She’d definitely recognize him.“Okay, yeah.” He slid further down into the seat and tried to cover his face with his hands. “Maybe front seat was a bad idea.” 

“No, I’m glad you’re here,” Mike said quickly, eyes still darting at pedestrians passing by. “Just gotta be careful.”

The group made it successfully through downtown without any obvious outings of Will’s presence. There was one close call where a girl from school looked a few seconds too long at the window, but Mike leaned forward and distracted her with a wave before she could set her focus on Will.

Once the car rolled onto Mirkwood, Will sat back up. Looking at the woods, the same place he first saw the demogorgon, he felt shivers roll through him. Then, a sharp feeling in the back of his neck. His hand instinctively shot up.

El leaned quickly forward, wide-eyed, and Mike whipped his head around, slowing the car.

“What?” asked El. “Do you feel him?” 

Will took his hand slowly away, trying not to let it shake as he let out a deep breath. Surely he was imagining things. “It’s nothing,” he assured his friends. “Just… weird to be back, I guess.” He hoped with all his heart that was the truth. Vecna was gone. Vecna had left him for good. He couldn’t be there still, he just couldn’t. 

Mike seemed to accept this answer enough, returning to his normal speed. “Well, I hope everything goes smoothly with your brother. It was so weird in my mind… El and I got there and… Well, it was like it had been breached, right?”

“Mind breach,” El agreed.

Will sighed and leaned his head against the window. A breached mind sure didn’t sound good, but he figured that’s what he’d been dealing with for the last five years now. A mind breach. That’s really what Vecna was to him. 

“When did everything start for Jonathan?” El asked, mostly to Will. “Where will his mind breach be? He wasn’t at your D&D game. It must be something else.” 

Will hadn’t thought about this. He frowned, not exactly sure when Jonathan realized Will had gone missing. It would’ve been the night of or the morning after. The morning after, most likely, since Jonathan came home late, he probably assumed Will was asleep by then and didn’t bother to check. “Try the next morning,” he told El. “If that doesn’t work, just go back further.”

“Next morning,” El said to herself. “Okay, I am ready.” 

“Good, ‘cause we’re here.” Mike pulled into the grass in front of the Byers’ house and parked. He tilted his head to look at his friends. “Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Will and El said at once. It was time to restore Jonathan. 

The group walked slowly up to the front porch, peering into the windows for signs of life. Jonathan was home, from the looks of it, because his car was out front. The yard was also noticeably grown over, the grass longer than Will had ever seen it. He wondered if his mom had stopped trying to take care of the place.

“Should we all be at the door, or would it be best if you guys stood to the side?” Mike asked quietly. “I mean, he’s gonna be freaked out if he sees I have his crazy brother with me.”

El shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll just restore his memory. He can see Will; it won’t hurt. We need Will to convince him we are telling the truth. It will be easier for me to enter his memory if he isn’t resisting.”

“Right,” said Mike. He looked around and took a deep breath before knocking rapidly on the chipped and faded door. “Jonathan?” he shouted. “Are you home?”

For a moment, there was silence. Will listened to the wind in the trees and took in the smell of the old wood that he stood on. This house held his best and worst memories, but it was home. Eight months away, and he was home. 

“Jonathan?” Mike tried again, and this time, the door swung open.

Jonathan Byers, hair unkempt and deep, brown eyes baggy, stared at the three figures that greeted him in his doorway with a blank expression, the faint smell of marijuana drifting out from behind him. He was tired in the way that suggested that he had just woken up, despite the fact that it was well after noon. Will’s insanity had taken quite a toll on him, which Will regretted deeply. He knew both his mother and Jonathan hadn’t taken it well. Jonathan had tried to drop out of college in order to stay with his mom after Will was taken away, but Joyce insisted he go. Still, every time Jonathan visited, he mentioned college wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. Will supposed it was hard to focus on education with everything else going on. He felt awful that the mass memory loss had impacted people he loved like this. He didn’t like to think about the fact that he was the reason Jonathan’s life had fallen apart. 

“Will…” Jonathan said slowly. He blinked a couple of times, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “I- I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“Jonathan!” Mike said, trying for an enthusiastic smile. “Uhh… So, this is gonna sound so weird-”

Jonathan seemed to wake up suddenly. “Wait. Mike, why the hell is Will with you? What did you do?” 

“Broke him out,” answered El. 

“Broke him-” Jonathan shook his head, unbelieving. “You broke him out? Why in the world would you do that? And,” he turned to El. “Who are you?” 

“I am Eleven,” said El plainly. “We have a lot to tell you. You should sit down. Let’s all go inside.” 

“What? No! I-”

“Jonathan, “ Will pleaded. “Please listen. There’s a lot you don’t understand right now, but we’re gonna explain everything. We need your help.” 

At the request of his brother, Jonathan finally broke. He tried for only a moment to think of some further argument against this before slumping his shoulders and stepping aside to invite the strange trio indoors. 

Once situated in the living room, the group stared nervously from one to the other. Jonathan looked as if he were contemplating running.

El kneeled in front of Jonathan and smiled gently at him. She spoke like she would to a small toddler. “Jonathan, I am Eleven. You do not remember me, but I am your sister. I am here to help you remember everything you have forgotten about the last few years.” 

“Everything I’ve-” Jonathan retracted his head. “Is this about Will’s story? Is this some sort of therapy thing that’s supposed to help him?”

“Not therapy,” said El. “This sounds very crazy, but everything Will says is true. An evil monster named Vecna took the memories from everyone, and now you think Will is crazy. I am here to help you take back your memories. Will you let me help you?”

“It’s true, Jonathan,” Will added, seeing his brother’s skeptical expression. “We did the same for Mike. He remembers everything now.” 

“I do,” said Mike. “But we need you, too.” 

Jonathan looked around again, holding up a shaking finger. “Either I am very high,” he said. “Or very drunk. This isn’t real, you don’t-”

El gave a frustrated sigh and grabbed Jonathan’s wrist suddenly, forcing the two of them quickly into his mind. 

Mike and Will looked to each other, now being the only two conscious people in the room. Mike hadn’t had any chance to simply speak with Will yet, whether that was for better or worse. Mike wasn’t sure, now that his thoughts and memories were all coming back. Will Byers was a complicated subject in Mike’s mind. 

Will stifled a small laugh as he looked at his siblings. “Well, that went about just as well as I thought it would.” 

Mike let a smile play across his own face, and he leaned back on the couch where he sat. “Yeah, I reacted about the same when El came to my door. It was so stupid. I freaked out on her.”

Will got up and sat next to his friend, oblivious to how Mike tensed as he got closer. “You did?” he asked. 

“Yeah, totally. I thought she was some kid from school trying to get a reaction out of me.” Now Mike’s expression dropped. “They did that, you know. In the first months after you went away.” 

Will stared down at the floor. “Figures. I’d expect as much from our enlightened peers. They sure know how to make someone feel… different.” 

“Yeah. Different.” Mike was quiet for a moment, his hands, he noticed, mindlessly kneading each other again. “But, hey, I like different. Imagine how boring our party would be if we weren’t different.” 

“Yeah, you’re right.” Another silence. Then rapidly, “You said you were seeing psychiatrists? When you came to see me, I mean. You said that.” 

Mike laughed under his breath, still embarrassed by the audacity of the statement. “Yeah, that was stupid, wasn’t it? Trying to tell a mental patient about psychiatrists like it was some crazy thing.”

“No, it was fine,” Will said quickly, his hands also fidgeting in his lap as he continued to keep his gaze on the floor. “I just- How was that? Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, it was more of my mom’s idea than mine. She just… thought I needed to talk to someone after losing you.” Mike perked up, realizing what he’d said. “Not that I lost you. That’s not what I meant. I never thought that you-”

“Mike, it’s fine.” Will lifted his head and instead focused his gaze on his siblings again. There was another long silence. “I wonder how long they’ll be in there,” he wondered aloud. 

Mike was still on the psychiatrist subject. “I’m just sorry,” he blurted. “I feel awful that you were there for so long without anyone on your side. I mean, I was being an idiot. I should’ve tried harder.”

“I’m not mad,” Will admitted quickly. “I mean, I can’t blame you for thinking I was crazy. It’s not like it would’ve been rational to believe me. Vecna destroyed all the memories, all the evidence, all the cards were sorta stacked against me.” 

“Well, yeah, but you’re my best friend. I should’ve at least considered it, right?” Mike groaned and put his head in his hands. This was hard. He didn’t like having this conversation, and he didn’t like that Will was forgiving him. Will deserved to be angry about this. Mike couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized the truth in Will’s stories. 

Will was silent a moment longer before he finally turned to Mike, looking straight at him for the first time since their conversation had begun. “You know why I knew you were still in there somewhere? Under all the taken memories?” he asked quietly. “It’s because you were so determined to get me back. Everyone else, even my mom, gave up after a while. They’d come in and listen to me, they’d even pretend they believed me sometimes. But you never did. Every time, you would come in and try so hard to make me see that I was talking nonsense.” 

“And that’s horrible,” Mike concluded miserably. 

“No, it means you cared. You wanted your best friend back so badly that you wouldn’t give up until I gave in. I admired that. It reminded me of the real you, the one who stayed with me when I was possessed by the Mind Flayer, or had my back when Vecna was at large. You never give up on me. That’s nothing for me to be angry about.”

Mike’s face felt hot, and he couldn’t name exactly why. 

“And, yeah,” Will continued. “I guess I’m a little frustrated. And things are gonna take a while to go back to normal, but I want you to know that I’m not holding it against you. Whatever frustrations I feel, they’re not your fault. They’re Vecna’s doing.”

Mike supposed he could take this. If Will wanted to blame it all on Vecna, that was up to him, but Mike still couldn’t help but feel like the worst friend in the world right now. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said.

Will tilted his head. “Hm?” 

Now Mike was really red in the face, and he hoped it wasn’t noticeable. “Just, whatever changed between us in the last year, I’m gonna make it up. From here on out, I’m back. I am Michael Wheeler, and you are my best friend Will Byers, and no matter what happens next, I’m gonna be here. I’m gonna believe you.”

Will smiled sadly. Mike wished so badly that he could read his mind, and Will was about to respond when-

Jonathan and El opened their eyes violently, and Jonathan lurched back in his seat, breathing heavily as he looked frantically around the room like a cornered animal. 

“Holy shit,” he said breathlessly, and Mike could see the overwhelming weight of the memories seep into him. Then, Jonathan’s eyes shifted to the couch, and he rose slowly from his seat. “Will,” he said, and ran, stumbling to his brother. He threw his arms around him and embraced the younger boy tightly, as if scared he might fade into the shadows of the room. “We’re gonna fix this,” Mike listened to him whisper. “We’re gonna fix all of this right now.” 

Chapter Text

Will woke early in the morning, after having a seeping nightmare of scenes from the Upside Down. Even as he opened his eyes, in the red glow of early dawn, he thought, for only for a moment, that he was back. His breath hitched as he sat straight up in his bed, ready to run from whatever horror might fling itself upon him, but with a few tired blinks of his eyes, he loosened again. It was only the gleam of the early sun. He was safe. 

Mornings had started like this more often than not at Pennhurst. The curtains on Will’s window were dark blue, making the room gleam with the ominous color when the light hit them just right. Everything else at Pennhurst had been pure white, from the sheets to the walls to all the clothes they gave to Will, so he thought it seemed like a very cruel joke for this one splash of color to have such an awful effect. 

He put the lingering anxiety he felt aside as he looked at his alarm clock and realized it was already eight-thirty. He could smell breakfast cooking. 

With a sigh, Will pushed himself up from his bed. As his feet hit the floor, he felt a small shock in the back of his neck. The ever-present proof of Vecna hiding away within the dark corners of his mind. Will had hoped desperately that he was gone for good, but these feelings seemed to be coming back, and that meant nothing but trouble. Perhaps Will really was the anchor that they were looking for, but he wasn’t ready to consider that possibility quite yet. There was, after all, still a chance these feelings were simply phantoms of the ones that had been there before. It had been so long since Will had been free of Vecna’s mangled grasp, perhaps his mind just wasn’t accustomed to letting it go. 

Deep down, though, even if Will wouldn’t admit it to himself, he knew positively that Vecna was still there. 

After putting on a hastily-chosen outfit (luckily, Will’s things, including his wardrobe, were still in his room, exactly as they had been before he left), Will walked out into the main part of the house to find El and Mike already at the kitchen table, and Jonathan making eggs nearby.

“Not really,” El was saying, mid-conversation. “I did not fight him constantly. There would be long times when I would hide. Or he would hide, and send his monsters after me. The Upside Down is a large battlefield. A lot can happen there.”

“Did you ever try contacting us? Or seeing where we were?” asked Mike, tracing a lazy finger around the rim of his coffee mug. 

El shrugged. “Once or twice I tried, but with the gates closed, it was almost impossible. And Vecna was blocking me whenever I tried. Interference. I gave up after a while. I needed to put all my energy towards fighting.”

“A year in the Upside Down,” Jonathan said, contemplating this as he scooped the eggs onto a large plate. “That must’ve been rough, El. I’m sorry we couldn’t be there to help.”

Will walked tentatively into the room, causing everyone to snap their heads in his direction. He had a sneaking suspicion that they’d had a conversation about him before their one about El’s battle. He wasn’t sure if he liked that possibility.

“Good morning,” Will said, walking to the kitchen table and taking the open seat next to Mike. 

Jonathan smiled warmly at him. Will knew he was so relieved to have his little brother back in his life, especially now that he had his memories restored. Yesterday, after waking from El’s mission, he had barely left Will’s side for the rest of the day. Will was glad to have his brother back too. Even in his darkest moments, Jonathan always believed in him, always supported him. He was the best brother Will could ask for. 

“You slept late,” El said. 

“Not that late. It’s only eight-thirty!” 

“We were all up an hour ago.” 

Will shook his head. “Well, I didn’t think we were leaving until ten. That’s what you told me last night, at least.” 

This statement seemed to change the mood of the room, somehow. El paused, studying Will with intent, like he’d said something wrong. “Leaving?” she asked. “For what?”

Now Will was confused. They’d just discussed this. “Last night, before we went to bed. You told me you wanted to go to Max and try to wake her today.” 

El exchanged an uninterpretable glance with Mike and turned back to face Will again, a serious expression. “I did not talk to you last night,” she said. “And I had no plan to see Max either. Are you sure this happened?” 

“I remember it… clear as day.” Will’s mouth felt dry. How did he remember a conversation that El didn’t? Were her memories also going away? Or could it be that Vecna was messing with Will’s memories now? He didn’t like the sound of either option. Swaying in his chair, his vision blurred as a tense wave of panic washed over him.

“Will, is everything alright?” Mike’s hand was on his shoulder, but his voice sounded distant as Will considered the potential meaning of his faulty memory. 

Both Mike and El stared at him from across the table. Even Jonathan had stopped what he was doing to study Will’s expression. It was just like when Will had put his hand on the back of his neck in the car yesterday. To everyone he knew, he was a harbinger of bad news. He hated having that role.

Will shook himself out of the balling worry that had started to build in his chest, and the blur that had gathered in his eyes receded. Again, he was probably looking too far into it. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he insisted, and hoped it sounded convincing. “It was probably just a dream. No big deal.” 

Mike released his shaking grip on Will’s shoulder, and El slowly let her gaze fall. The moment was over. No bad news. Not now. Not when things were just starting to go right again.

Jonathan set a plate of eggs and toast in front of Will, two more in front of Mike and El, and then one for himself as he sat to Will’s other side. “Well, breakfast is ready. And, even if Will’s conversation with El was just a dream, it brings up a good question. What’s your plan for today?”

Will sighed, relieved that the subject was being changed. 

El stared at her plate with a blank face, head resting on her hand. The light in her eyes had yet to come back, as if she’d left it somewhere in the Upside Down. Perhaps it wouldn’t return until Vecna was gone for good, giving the group yet another motivation to end this all quickly. “Well, Max isn’t a bad idea. Mike, you said she is still asleep?”

“Yeah, still in a coma. Ever since Vecna… Well, you know.” Mike lowered his own gaze to his plate and he picked slowly at his toast. 

Will couldn’t believe it had been so long and Max was still in the same condition that she had been put in on that Spring night of 1986. He thought about this and said, “Well, we theorized that it was Vecna keeping her asleep, right? Like, he was trapping her somewhere within her own mind so she couldn’t help us. But if El defeated him-”

“She should wake up now,” El finished. “If we go to her, I think I could finally wake her. It won’t be like before when I couldn’t get inside her mind. Vecna does not have enough power to keep her asleep anymore.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “And what if Max is the source, or the anchor, or whatever? Maybe she’s the place where Vecna’s rooted, right? I mean, it makes sense, since she’s a constant, dormant factor in his plan.” 

El squinted at him. “If she is the anchor, then waking her up might be harder than we think. If it is her, Vecna will guard his last grasp on this world heavily. I hope she is not the anchor. I want to wake her up without trouble.” She took a definite bite of her breakfast and leaned back in her chair, not willing to support any further theories on the matter. “Where is she? The hospital?”

“Her house,” said Mike. “They transferred her to her house at the trailer park a while back, once they realized her coma was gonna stay constant. Sometimes nurses come in to check on her, but her mom is her primary caretaker.” He sighed, half an eye roll. “Well, more like Lucas. More often than not, it’s him that’s staying with her while Ms. Mayfield’s passed out on the couch or something.” 

The thought of that, however depressing, made Will smile. He couldn’t believe how constantly Lucas had stayed with Max, even so long after she’d first been admitted to the hospital. He never gave up on her. He was determined she would wake, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. If Will ever wanted an example of real, authentic love, he needed only to look to Lucas. Lucas, undoubtedly, loved Max. He was sure the poor boy would be thrilled to know El was back with a hope to wake his sleeping love. 

“How much of your energy is it gonna take to wake her?” Mike asked El. “I mean, is it smart?” 

“It is essential. If I do not wake Max before my powers drain, then she might never wake,” El said plainly. This was a subject on which she would not debate. “I do not know how much it will take, but it is worth it. I said yesterday, I still have enough power to do a handful of things. I’m sure I can do this and have more than enough to still drive out Vecna and restore the memories of a couple more of our friends. I can get Dustin and Lucas back. Then we will have a team.”

“A party,” Mike corrected her. “We can defeat Vecna with the party.” 

“Party, yes,” said El, setting down her fork with a defiant dignity. “But I don’t care what we defeat Vecna with, as long as his slimy, noseless face is gone. For good.”

This, Will couldn’t help but agree with. 

Max’s trailer looked even more dingy than it had before Will went away, showing signs of neglect prominently. Will also noted that the large tear in the earth that had once split straight through this trailer park was gone without a trace. Where it had been, new grass grew and new people had parked their homes. To see the evidence of everything that had happened covered up like this was suffocating, in a way. Will could understand why his stories had seemed like the ramble of a madman. There was nothing to show for it anymore. All the evidence of his existence, his struggle, his fight, it had all been erased. There was little in the world that could make a boy feel smaller than that, smaller than the feeling of being erased. 

With the car parked in front of Max’s resting place, Will, El, and Mike turned to each other, eager for action.

“We can’t just walk in,” El said. “Max’s mom will see Will and freak out. I don’t have enough energy to restore her. I say we go in the back, through a window-”

“We won’t have to,” Mike said, shaking his head, his gears turning again. “Max’s mom barely knew Will. I doubt she’d recognize him if she saw him. I say we just knock on the door and say we’re friends who want to visit.” 

El seemed unconvinced by this, her eyebrows furrowing. “And if she does recognize him? Then what do we do? I said, I cannot use any of my power on her. She will call the police and Will will go back to Pennhurst.” 

“She won’t! I promise you!” Mike sighed and draped his arms on the wheel. “Look, even if we went with your plan, don’t you think it would be just as hard to explain why we broke into her house if she were to catch us? She might call the police either way at that point.” 

“You said it yourself, she is always passed out on the couch. If she is passed out, she won’t catch us.” 

“And if she’s not?” 

“And if she is-”

“I just think-”

“Guys!” Will leaned towards his friends, gesturing to them with a disappointed expression. Both Mike and El were grumpy this morning, and Will wasn’t a fan of their bickering. He hoped there wasn’t something larger going on between them that he wasn't seeing.

El huffed and crossed her arms. “Sorry, Will. What do you think? Whose plan is better?” 

Will rolled his eyes. He didn’t want this to be a ‘pick-your-favorite’ scenario. “I think you both have good plans,” he said. “Here’s the compromise: We knock first, just lightly enough to see if she’s awake, but not wake her up if she’s sleeping. If we don’t get an answer, we assume we’re probably safe to go in the back. Satisfied?” 

El’s arms did not uncross, but she shrugged, glancing sideways at Mike. “Half-satisfied.”

Mike raised his eyebrows at her, his lips curved in a way that suggested he thought he’d won, and he left the car with a slam of his door. 

“What the hell, you guys,” Will complained aloud. 

“Should’ve left him without his memories,” El said. “I forgot he was difficult with his memories.” With this, she also left the car. 

Will, with another roll of his eyes, followed his friends. 

Mike made it to the door first, and glanced back only once before knocking four times, carefully with the back of his hand.  

The group waited impatiently for some sort of movement on the other end, El tapping her foot and Will swaying nervously on his feet. Will hoped, whatever happened, that this did not result in anything more chaotic than planned. Somehow, things always ended in chaos for this group. 

Fortunately, Ms. Mayfield did not answer the door. 

Unfortunately, Will was still recognized. 

Standing in the entryway to Max’s trailer was Lucas Sinclair, tired in the eyes and holding an unfinished novel in his dropped hand. He didn’t look too much different than when Will had seen him last, but, as was seemingly a trend among all Will’s friends, he was more exhausted than ever. Even so, his eyes widened as he stammered, “What the- Will?”

Will backed up. He hadn’t even considered that Lucas could be the one to worry about in this scenario. Maybe it would be better if Will just stopped coming along on these mind restoration missions. Then there would be no reason for anyone to be confused.

“Lucas!” said Mike, obviously caught off guard by this turn of events as well, but trying to play it cool. “You mind if we come in and see Max?”

Lucas cautiously stepped forward and out the door, closing it behind him like a warden. He didn’t want them getting in. His expression was set and serious. “Mike, could you explain to me why Will Byers is standing here?”

Mike blinked, a nervous waver in his voice. “They… they let him out. We came to tell y-”

“Mike, I know that’s not true because Dustin and I went to visit him yesterday. And he was gone. They told us he escaped with the help of some unidentified relatives.” His eyes narrowed. “Was it you? Did you break Will out?” 

“Yes,” said Mike. “But you have to listen, Lucas. Everything Will has been saying, all of it for the past year, it’s all true. We need you to help us. We need to see Max.” 

Lucas shook his head immediately. “I’m not letting you near her. You- you’re crazy! I mean, just the other day you were telling us why it was such a bad idea to go see him and now you’re… you’re breaking the law!” 

“For a good cause,” Mike insisted. He stepped slowly towards Lucas with his hands up. “We should restore his memory,” he suggested quietly to El. 

“Can’t,” she said back. “I don’t know how much energy I’ll need for Max.” 

Lucas didn’t understand any of these statements, and he looked concerned at the thought of whatever this unknown girl and his friends had planned. Will could see how this could seem like a bit of an ambush to him.

“Look, we just want to help,” Mike said as he continued forward. “You’re going to need to trust us, though. You’ll understand everything soon enough.” He cautiously started to put his hands down. 

Lucas perceived this as a threat of violence. With a quick darting of his eyes, the boy took off down the stairs and started to run across the trailer park, pushing the crazed trio out of his way. 

El instinctively put out her hand to stop him and then hesitated, sighing at her need to conserve herself. “We need to get him.”

Will nodded and figured if El couldn’t do anything, he might as well take this into his own hands. He was, surprisingly, a fast runner, trained by escaping from interdimensional horrors so often. He took off after Lucas, sprinting to catch up with him. 

Lucas looked back a few times, surprised by Will’s pursuit. This was his first mistake, and also his downfall. The taller boy slowed just enough for Will to gain ground on him and within a moment, Will was at his back. He grasped onto Lucas’s shoulders and sent the both of them to the ground. 

Lucas struggled as if for his life under Will’s grasp. “Get off of me!” he cried.

“Lucas,” said Will, strained as he tried to keep Lucas down while the others caught up. “We are seriously here to help. You need to trust us. I know, I know better than anyone that it sounds crazy.”

“How the hell are you gonna help?” 

El appeared behind the two, and she crouched down to look at Lucas. “Because I am Eleven.” 

Lucas blinked at her. “Like, the girl with magical powers from Will’s story? Yeah, right.” 

“The girl with magical powers that can wake Max up,” El corrected. “We need to see her. I am here to help. I think I can finally free her from her sleep.” 

This line of argument seemed to hit a soft spot, and Lucas stopped struggling, enough that Will felt confident in releasing him. Lucas looked from friend to forgotten friend. “You really think you can wake her?”

Will nodded. “Worst case scenario is we really are crazy, but don’t you think it’s smart to at least give it a chance?” 

“Give it a chance,” Lucas repeated. He brushed himself off and rose to his feet, the others following him as he gave a shaky breath. “I still don’t know what's going on here, but if you say you think you can wake Max, I’m on board for anything.”

Lucas led the group inside the trailer, bypassing Max’s mother, who was, as theorized by El, passed out on the couch. Max’s room was at the end of the trailer, and Lucas led them all inside gingerly, as if not to disturb her.

Max lay on her bed, orange hair resting on the pillow and spread like a lion’s mane. She looked peaceful enough on the outside, but Will could sense a great deal of pain and suffering going on somewhere within her mind (how he could sense it, he decided to ignore). He couldn’t imagine being trapped like this for so long, even longer than he had been in Pennhurst, or El in the Upside Down. Max had missed the final battle, the closing of the gates, the moment everyone forgot. Now, to the world, she was not the victim of some awful wizard, but of an earthquake, miraculously holding on for so much time.

El walked towards her slowly, taking in the sight of her sleeping friend. “I am here to rescue you,” she said to her in a low voice, sitting on the bed beside her.

“What is she going to do?” Lucas whispered to his friends, eyes glued to the bed in front of them. 

“She’s gonna go inside Max’s mind,” Mike said, as if this wasn’t anything unusual. “She wasn’t able to before all of this, because Vecna had control, but now she defeated Vecna, and he’s weak, so we hope she can actually get Max out now.”

“Vecna, the evil monster from the other dimension,” Lucas recalled. “I hope you understand how little sense this makes.”

“I do, actually. I was in the same boat before El restored my own memory.” 

El looked back to the group, a hand hovering above Max’s wrist. “I am going in,” she said. “Stay here. If something goes wrong somehow, just be ready. I don’t know what I will find in there.” She shuddered after this statement, as if expecting something terrible waiting for her on the other end. 

“We’re here if you need us,” Will responded, giving her a nod. The best he could do for her was to hope his faulty confidence was contagious. 

El nodded back and took Max’s wrist, sending her sharply into whatever maze Max’s mind had become in the last years. It was probable that this extraction could take a while, which meant a lot of waiting around for Will, Mike, and the unknowing Lucas. 

“Holy shit, she’s actually doing something.” Lucas walked towards the bed in a cautious curiosity. He waved his hand slowly in front of El’s closed eyes. “So… she’s in Max’s mind? Like actually?”  

“Actually,” said Mike, walking further into the room and taking a seat against the wall across from the bed. 

“How does that even work?” Lucas felt the empty space around El’s head, as if he might find invisible gadgets and strings that were helping her to perform her trick. “Is Max gonna be okay?” 

“Better than she is now, I’d guess,” said Will, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed. “It’s about time she woke up.”

Lucas gave a saddened laugh and sat in what looked to be his usual chair beside the bed. It was a wooden one, pulled from the kitchen “Yeah, it really is.” He frowned, then, taking a look at the drawing on Max’s wall, a crude illustration of Max and Lucas in a movie theatre, he asked, “So, if you’re all telling the truth, does that mean Max was really the victim of this evil monster guy and I just don’t remember it?” 

Mike jumped to respond first. “I know it’s hard to understand. Vecna, the evil monster guy, somehow blocked all our memories so we couldn’t help El defeat him in the Upside Down. At least that’s our theory. It was hard for me to conceptualize how I could forget something so large either. It’s crazy what he did.” He glanced at Will, who averted his eyes nervously for fear Mike would catch him in the act of staring. “I’m glad I’m back, though. All that matters is that I know now.” 

Will looked back again once Mike had turned his eyes away. Why had he looked at him? Why then? He rolled his eyes at himself. Why did it matter? 

“And she’ll restore my memory?” Lucas was asking Mike. 

“Yeah, soon. It just depends on how much energy she uses up with Max. Her powers can be kind of draining and she needs to charge back up before using them again.” He grimaced. “And she’s also losing them forever.” 

Lucas, despite his lack of knowledge, could tell this was bad, based on his changing facial expression. “Forever? What do we do when she runs out?” 

“Vecna will be gone for good by the time she runs out,” Will said insistently from the doorway. This had to be true.

“Okay…” said Lucas, his eyes turning back to Max, where they stayed glued, and his mouth silent, for a whole minute. 

“Focused,” Mike mouthed at Will, and motioned for him to come sit beside him. 

Will didn’t have to be asked twice, and took a seat beside his friend, facing the bed and looking for signs of struggle in El’s dormant face. 

Mike, on the other hand, looked straight at Will, which was excruciating. The bad thing about having the real Mike back was that it was much harder to deny how much Will loved him. Before the memory wipe, Will had simply given up on ignoring his utterly forbidden feelings for his best friend of 12 years. Mike was kind, he cared, he smiled and it made Will feel happy. Will thought he might want to be with this boy forever. As a young child, this simply meant Mike was his bestest friend. As he got older, though, Will realized it was something more. He was, for lack of any other term that might describe it, in love. This was awful, and he knew that. Plus, Mike obviously liked girls. He’d dated El for two years after all. Will’s hopes of Mike ever liking him back were slim. In Pennhurst, it was easier to forget about the problem. There were so many other hopeless futures on his mind that this one took the backseat, and, besides, the Mike he’d known and loved for so long was locked away beneath a cloud of Vecna-curated amnesia.

Now that Mike was back and whole, though, forgetting was impossible. And, even worse, the whole conversation yesterday about Mike being there for Will no matter what gave Will hope. Hope was dangerous. Hope never turned out well, especially for Will. 

That was until he hoped El would return from the Upside Down, and hoped there would be a way to bring back his friends as he knew them. If he could hope for these things and have them appear, then perhaps hope with Mike wasn’t all that bad. 

One day, he was finally going to work up the confidence to just tell Mike how he felt. That day was not today. He was so scared it would do nothing but ruin their friendship, and that was the last thing Will wanted to happen. If there was anything more important than Will’s love for Mike, it was his friendship with him. For now he’d just keep stupidly hoping something would click, and Mike would love him back and there wouldn’t need to be any confessions made. They’d just know. That’s how it worked out in Will’s most unbelievable dreams.  

“You think it’ll be long?” Mike asked. “El rescuing Max?”

Will let his running thoughts slip from his head. “Might be,” he said. “I can… well, I can tell Max is struggling in there. It’s not all peaceful now that Vecna’s lost most of his grasp.” 

Mike’s mood changed immediately. “You can tell?” he asked, tone becoming quieter. “How? Is it-”

“I don’t know,” said Will, drumming his fingers nervously on his knees. The prospect of Vecna still being inside him made his stomach churn. “I just don’t know.” 

Mike frowned, almost sympathetically. A flat frown and big eyes. “You think he’s still with you,” he said. “You don’t want to admit it, but you do.” 

Will sighed. Mike could read him like a book. It was a wonder the boy hadn’t realized Will’s awful feelings for him. “I guess,” he said. “It’s possible he’s still inside me.” He didn’t even like to say it out loud. He wanted more than anything in the world to be free of the evil monster who had corrupted him for so long. He was tired of being a toy, a tool, of being invaded and controlled and used, of feeling the grime of the Upside Down flow through his veins like lead, like he was no longer of this world, like he was a stranger in his own body, a monster as sickly and horrifying as all the others.  

“We should tell El,” Mike insisted. “If he’s still there, she can knock him out of you.” 

Mike didn’t understand. If Vecna was still a part of Will, even after all these years, then he wouldn’t leave without a fight. Will had a sneaking feeling that if Vecna was in his mind, there was a whirlwind of chaos to come. He could almost feel it now: Confusion and blood and tears and loss and an overwhelming sense that he was alone. Even now he could feel this future. It shut him down.

“He can’t be there,” Will said, convincing himself more than anyone. “It just… doesn’t feel right. There have been no obvious signs.”

“Well, you said you could feel that Max-”

“It was just a feeling. An instinct. Nothing more.”

Will felt like this didn’t convince Mike, but the boy decided to drop the conversation anyway, maybe picking up on the fact that Will was not ready to talk about that possibility. 

“You and El,” Will said, trying to change the subject. “Are you okay?”

Before Mike could explain himself, or even react to the question, Max shot up in her bed, making Lucas jump back from his chair in surprise. Mike and Will got quickly to their feet, ready to greet their old friend, or help El if needed. Their enthusiastic stature changed when they took in the full sight of the waking girl.

Max Mayfield, hair messy and ratted from lying in bed, donned a fearful expression, looking frantically around the room. Although she looked, Will assumed she could not see, for her eyes were still foggy and clouded over, like Lucas had described them on the night she was taken by Vecna. 

“Where am I?” she spoke in a rattle. “What’s going on?”

“Max?” Lucas asked quietly, half a smile growing across his face, as if he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or scared out of his mind. 

“Lucas?” Max turned her head toward the voice.

Lucas nodded, getting up and carefully walking toward his awakened lover with his hands outstretched. “I’m here,” he said. “It’s okay.” 

Then Max frowned, and recoiled from Lucas’s approach. “No, you’re not,” she said. “Don’t try to trick me. Lucas is dead. You are some… some phantom of him. You’re Vecna’s doing.” 

Will and Mike exchanged a confused glance. Something was wrong.

“I’m not dead,” Lucas said slowly, also caught off guard by this reaction. “Max, I’m here. I’ve been here, waiting for you this whole time.” 

“Shut up!” Max yelled at him. “You can’t trick me. You’re not Lucas. Go to Hell.” 

“Max,” El tried, reaching a hand out and taking hers. “You are okay. I released you from your sleep. Vecna had trapped you, but now I brought you back.” 

Max also recoiled from this voice. “Eleven,” she said, taking a defensive stance on the bed. “Stay the hell away from me.”

El blinked, releasing her grip. “What?” 

“Oh, don’t ‘what?’ me. You know perfectly well what you did, you traitor.” 

El kept her gaze stern and looked back to Mike and Will. “Something is not right. I think Vecna has corrupted her memory… similar to how he erased everyone else’s.”

Max continued to frantically look around, now perched on her pillows in a threatening manner. “Who are you talking to?” she urged. Then to the unknown receivers, “Don’t listen to her! Whatever she says, don’t listen!” 

“I will have to go back in,” El continued. 

Will didn’t like the sound of that. “Will you have enough energy?”

“Waking her up was easy. This is the challenge I anticipated. Somehow, I need to figure out what Vecna is doing to her. It might take a while, but I will have enough energy.” 

Mike nodded, soldier-serious. “We’ll be prepared to help if needed. Do you need something? A drink? Battery?” 

“Just help her!” Lucas wailed, eyes wide and terrified as he witnessed Max’s blinded outburst.

El turned back without another word and placed her hand again on Max’s struggling wrist. The two fell still and silent. 

The room was completely quiet for a moment, apart from the sound of Lucas’s labored breathing and frantic pacing. 

“So, did I forget that I died?” he asked finally to Mike and Will. “What in the world was that?” 

“You didn’t die,” Will assured him. “It seems like Vecna has… changed her memories for some reason. El is trying to fix it. It’s gonna be okay.” He hoped to himself that the things he was saying were true.

Mike and Will spent the next several minutes trying to explain the whole Upside Down/Vecna situation, in all its complexities, to Lucas. They briefly covered the events of the last five years and even answered a few clarifying questions before Lucas, after what must have been half an hour, once again became focused on the sight of Max and El deep within Max’s mind and stopped responding to his friends’ explanations. Will figured this was understandable. El had been in there for a long time now, and he wondered if everything was going alright. No doubt Lucas was worried out of his mind. 

Lucas’s lack of attention meant Will and Mike could resume their earlier conversation, in which Mike had never gotten the chance to answer Will’s question.

“I was asking about you and El?” Will prompted as they both stared at the bed. 

Mike raised his eyebrows and broke his focus. “Oh, that? Jeez, it’s stupid, really. I think we’re just both on edge about all this. That’s all. I should apologize for being an idiot about the thing in the car, I really should.” 

“Is something up?” Will asked. “Well, other than the fact that Vecna is still haunting us, that is.” 

Mike seemed to find the question difficult to answer, pausing for several moments with a rather sour look on his face. “Guess we’re just both thinking about a lot,” he finally said. “I mean, obviously, El would be on edge after a whole year in the Upside Down. I get that. And me?” He looked down, like a scolded dog. “Well, it’s just confusing. All my memories and emotions and everything coming back after being dormant for so long. I almost feel like there are things that make less sense now that I’m whole again, you know? Like, things I forgot I was even struggling with in the first place. So that’s why I was quick with her.” He shook his head and looked up at his friend. “I know it sounds stupid. You can tell me I’m stupid.” 

“You’re not,” said Will. “Surprisingly, I get it.” 

“You didn’t lose your memories.” 

“But I lost the people I cared about. And now they’re back. And it just makes everything a whole lot more complicated. So, I get it.” Will’s abysmal feelings. He wondered what was bothering Mike. 

Mike clicked his tongue and gave Will a sideways look. “Well, I hope I’m not making things more complicated for you.” 

Well, wasn’t that funny? Will tried not to react in any criminalizing way to the statement. “No, I’m glad to have you back. I really am.” Will looked forward, trying not to make any unneeded eye contact. “I missed you,” he said quietly. 

There was a new silence in the air after that. It was suffocating to Will, but Mike seemed to be comfortable in the lull, simply thinking. Will could tell when he was thinking deeply, because he’d get a certain look on his face. This was the benefit of being best friends for so long, you could pick up on things like this. It was like a secret code.

“I missed you too,” Mike said finally. “But, I guess that doesn’t count anymore, since you weren’t really missing. You were just right.” He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “I still can’t believe I ever forgot all that. It’s… just so hard to explain. It was all just gone.” 

Will nodded, more understanding than Mike might’ve thought. “Vecna is scary like that. He can manipulate you so seamlessly that it doesn’t even feel like anything’s wrong. But then when you realize what happened…” Will shivered to himself thinking about it. “Then it all just feels awful. Like-”

“Like you had something stolen from you,” Mike finished. 

“Yeah, exactly.” Will still remembered when he’d been possessed by the Mind Flayer (or at least what he thought was solely the Mind Flayer) a year after he went missing. He remembered it taking over his brain, he remembered struggling to remember his mother’s name, he remembered being able to do nothing but watch as it spoke with his own mouth. 

He also remembered this morning, learning that his memory from the night before was completely fabricated, how it had thrown him off-kilter.

But that couldn't be Vecna. It was just a dream. 

The feeling remained familiar. 

“I’m just still so sorry about all of it,” Mike was saying.

Will couldn’t help but give the boy a shove in return. “We had this conversation yesterday,” he said. “I don’t blame you, remember?. You don’t have to feel bad about anything. And plus, you said you’d make it up to me, didn’t you?” 

“I did,” Mike said, a small smile inching onto his face. “How am I holding up so far? Just like old times?”

“Oh, just like them. You’re so old times I can practically see your freshman year pimples.” 

“Pimples! I did not have acne freshman year. I did not have acne. No.” 

Now Will let himself laugh. He loved that he could let himself laugh around this Mike. After years of interdimensional horror, he was so much more thankful for times like this. “You did!” 

Mike’s mouth was open in mock offense. “Well, you’re one to talk. Don’t think you’re so high and mighty. I see acne on you right now.”

“You liar.” 

“I do! It’s right there.” Mike stuck a lanky finger out and poked the side of Will’s nose. 

Will giggled like an idiot as he shot his hand up to his nose and felt around. Dropping it, he shoved Mike in the chest. “You’re so full of shit. There’s nothing there.”

Now Mike was laughing too, struggling to get his words out. “It’s just starting to form. You’ve gotta trust me.” Then his eyes widened. “You have more.” 

“I don’t!” 

Mike was trying to hold in another fit of laughter, but let it go as he grabbed Will’s face and examined it, rotating his head from side to side like a doctor in the office. “Both cheeks. And your forehead.” 

Will was practically splitting his sides, and his face hurt from smiling. “Absolute bullshit!” he declared through another cackle. 

When he finally recollected himself, Mike’s hands were still holding the rim of his chin. The dark-haired boy’s smile had lessened to a more contemplative form, as if he’d become lost in thought in the middle of his ploy. His eyes lingered on Will’s with a wistful disposition. The two stared at each other for a moment too long and Will gave a short and slightly nervous laugh.

When Mike realized what he was doing, he lowered his hands, stepping back from Will. “Sorry,” he said. “I-”

“It’s fine,” said Will quickly, still smiling despite everything, still smiling like the idiot he was. “It was fine.” Who was he trying to convince? 

Mike seemed like he didn’t know how to respond to this, and his face became instantly duller. He turned away, looked back three consecutive times, and was about to say something when he noticed movement from Lucas. 

Lucas stood up from his chair, gaze glued still to El and Max. 

El had opened her eyes, and was also looking intently at Max, who was still in her own mind.
“Max,” El said. “You are back.” 

Like El had spoken a magic spell, Max’s eyes shot open. The fog that had covered her sight before disappeared, leaving her pale, blue eyes, wide and blinking. 

El spoke again. “Welcome home.” 

It was already evening by the time El felt well enough to come out of her room and speak to the group. Waking Max, restoring her memory, and restoring Lucas’s had drained her astronomically, but she insisted that she could now at least sit and talk about it. So, Jonathann was helping her walk gingerly over to the living room, where Will, Mike, Max, and Lucas waited for the update. They were all curious about what El had learned on her mind mission, and what it meant for the future of their plans. 

Max had recited what she could, but was still in a state of shock from her long-awaited rescue, and the events were blurring together in her head. What the group had gathered from her was that Max had been trapped not within her own memories, but within Vecna’s, and she had been living there, or in some strange world created by them, for all this time. An elsewhere. 

After Vecna was semi-defeated in the Upside Down, the world disappeared abruptly, and Max was trapped in a void of nothing for the past few days. At first, she thought she had died, but she could still feel Vecna’s presence, however small it was, and had hope that an escape was still to come. 

El went in to rescue her, and that’s when things got muddy. Max wasn’t exactly sure what to describe from that point on. 

Lucas had also needed to recover from his own memory restoration, and had reacted in a similar way to Mike and Jonathan when the awful truth of his situation came crashing down on him. Now, though, he couldn’t leave Max’s side, obviously both thrilled and terrified by the fact that she was awake, alive, and speaking. He looked at her like she was a statue of glass, ready to shatter at any given moment. 

Now, Max and Lucas sat on the couch, hip to hip and knee to knee. There hadn’t been any confirmation that they were still in a relationship, but Will figured this positioning spoke a multitude for that. 

He and Mike sat slightly further from each other, if only by an inch or two. Will was worried that their exchange back at Max’s had given the wrong idea to Mike, as he’d barely said anything specifically to Will since. Whatever hope Will had been building in that light moment when they’d been laughing was quickly leaking from him. 

After a minute of waiting, El entered the Byers’ living room, leaning dependently on Jonathan for support. She was so exhausted that simply walking was difficult for her, and would be until she’d properly charged herself up again. This intensity of the energy drain, Will noticed, was so much stronger than it had been before. This was probably to do with the fact that her powers were slowly leaving for good.

 Jonathan helped El into a chair, where she leaned back and took a moment to breathe. 

The whole group eyed El with ravenous curiosity. What was the verdict? 

“El, Max explained up until you woke her up,” Lucas said, starting the conversation. “What the hell happened after that? Why were her memories all messed up?” 

El furrowed her brows. “It was hard to say at first. But I think I understand. Vecna still had a small grip on Max’s mind. All he could hold onto was a strong memory of hers, something big enough for him to easily grasp.” 

“I could sense that,” Max said, nodding slowly. Her voice was still small, as if she was only learning how to make noise again. “Even before you came to get me from that stupid void, I knew Vecna was still in there somewhere.”

“But what about when she thought Lucas was dead and stuff?” asked Mike, like an impatient child. 

“Rooted in such a strong place,” El continued, “he had just enough power to corrupt her memory, just in the slightest way. He altered only two things. One, Lucas had died, and two, I had betrayed her before she was put to sleep. It seems like a lot, but since she had been in that memory world ever since, Vecna didn’t have to make any alternate memories for her after that. His grasp on her was, fortunately, small. That is the good news.” 

Jonathan grimaced, his leg bouncing nervously. “That means there’s bad news?” 

El nodded. “It means that Max was not Vecna’s anchor. I knew it when Lucas’s memory was not automatically restored after she awoke. Vecna still has a hold on someone else.” 

“He has a hold on almost everyone, doesn’t he?” Max said, leaning forward. “You said everyone has their memories blocked, right? Doesn’t that mean anyone could be an anchor? Because then the anchor could take forever to find.” 

“Well, no,” El said quickly. “I have a theory after restoring a few memories now. I think that the blocked memories… they are of the past. Vecna isn’t currently holding onto all of them.” Seeing everyone’s confused expressions, she tried to explain further. “It’s like… when Will paints a picture. If he paints a dot on a canvas and leaves, the dot stays.” She tried to visualize this by painting an invisible picture. “I think the memory block is like a dot that Vecna left in everyone’s mind. The anchor is a different canvas. One he’s working on currently, and continuing to add to.” 

This gave Will the chills and he took a sharp breath in. He knew what El was saying. She was saying that he was the anchor. But nothing had happened that would prove it yet. Until something happened, it could just be Will’s imagination. He didn’t want to send El on a wild goose chase, especially since her powers were limited. 

But it seemed obvious, and apparently the rest of the group thought so too, because several heads turned to Will. 

“So if everyone with a memory block is a deserted canvas,” Lucas said. “That implies the anchor is the person who didn’t have a memory block.” 

“It’s a theory,” said El. “And until we have more solid proof, that is all it is. But, Will,” and she looked him dead in the eye, a sympathetic face. “Keep an eye out for anything. We have no idea what Vecna is planning, but I would guess it is nothing good.” 

Will tried to spend the rest of the evening as normally as possible. His friends wouldn’t stop looking at him like they’d all just learned that he was set to die in three days, but he was determined to seem like the prospect of Vecna in his head wasn’t scaring him as much as it actually was. He could scream and cry and claw at the walls all he wanted within his head, but on the outside, he was calm and collected.

El had quickly gone back to her room after speaking about her theories with the group, and everyone else had a semi-happy dinner. Perhaps they were trying to take their minds off the impending doom awaiting them, but this was impossibly difficult. Of course, it was thrilling to have Max back and Lucas was glad to be back and in the game for good, but the looming sense of dread above the group often overtook their feelings of hope, making laughter thin and far between for the rest of the evening. 

When Max and Lucas finally left, deciding they had better explain themselves to Ms. Mayfield, the house was quiet again, and everyone wanted nothing more than to escape the ominous guesses of what could come next by entering their own dreams. 

Within an hour, Will was the only one awake and still in the main living area, just quietly contemplating. He shut his eyes tight, trying to sense the possible evil soaking through his brain. His knuckles were white as he searched his memories. Where would Vecna be hiding, if he really was there?

Miraculously, the feelings that Will had been so sure were shooting through his head before were almost unnoticeable now. This let him relax. Maybe he was right, all of this was just a big case of overthinking. Vecna had left Will when he was defeated. Surely, the monster would’ve acted by now if he was still within him. 

“Still awake?” A familiar voice echoed into the room, making Will’s eyes shoot open. Mike leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt. Will hadn’t heard him walk over. It was as if Mike had simply appeared out of thin air, like a ghost. 

The boy eyed Will with a gentle curiosity, which made Will nervous, since Mike still had yet to talk to him alone after today’s interaction. 

Will shrugged. “Just not tired yet. How about you? I thought you went to bed already.” He’d actually seen Mike retreat into the spare room about half an hour earlier, and assumed he was in bed. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Mike responded. “I guess there’s just too much to think about right now.” He pushed himself casually from the wall and walked over, taking a seat next to Will on the couch. There was, fortunately, no sign of any subtle rejection from him.

“Tell me about it,” said Will, rolling his eyes. “I think I’ve got too much on my mind to ever sleep again.” 

“You’re scared about Vecna.” 

Will could hardly tell himself otherwise anymore. “Terrified.” 

Mike seemed less concerned about this than Will might’ve guessed he would be, tracing his feet across the carpet in a mindless fashion. “I would be too,” he said. Then, “You want to talk about earlier.” It wasn’t a question. It was like Mike could read Will’s mind, he just knew. 

Will tensed at the subject, unsure what point Mike was trying to make. Either this conversation went very well, or very badly. “I guess,” Will decided to say. “If you think there’s something to talk about, that is.” 

“I do.” Mike reached suddenly out and grabbed Will’s face, like he’d done before. His hands were warm, letting any fluttering worries of his bluntness escape Will’s mind. “You liked this, didn’t you?” 

Will could hardly stop himself from leaning into the warmth of Mike’s touch. He didn’t know what to say. “Why?” he asked, cautiously placing a hand on Mike’s wrist. Perhaps this was it. This was the unspoken moment Will had been waiting for… but something was off. 

Mike continued to cup Will’s face in his palms, and he looked him in the eyes, but his bewildered smile from before was gone. Mike’s face was blank as he looked down at his best friend, no gleam in his stare, no signs of life, even. 

Will realized this cold energy and backed hesitantly from Mike’s hands, which lingered in the air. “Mike?” he asked, now becoming frightened. “What’s going on?” 

 Mike opened his mouth, but no words escaped him. His blank stare bore into Will with the force of a boulder. Something was terribly wrong, Will could sense it. 

“Mike?” he asked again, louder. He reached out and shook the boy’s shoulders, trying to gain any reaction from him. “Mike, talk to me!” 

Then, with a blink of his eyes, Mike was gone, as if he’d never been sitting on the couch. The cushion was not weighted down where he had sat, and Will’s hands were grasping at nothing in the air in front of him. Still, the lingering feeling of Mike’s hands on his face remained. It felt real.

Will retracted his hands, which started to shake as his mind spun with implications of what had just happened. The walls felt tall above him and the couch seemed to want to swallow him whole. For a moment, Will thought he might lose consciousness as the room swirled around him. 

Like you had something stolen from you.

This was the work of Vecna. There was no doubt now.