Chapter Text
“I see him,” El says. She’s floating in the bathtub at Hopper’s cabin, a steady trail of blood dripping from her nose. She’s taken on that faraway tone that tells Mike she’s somewhere else, somewhere he can’t follow. “He… is with the others. The children.”
“Is he okay?” Mike asks.
El remains silent and perfectly still.
“Eleven,” Mike urges. “Is Will okay?”
“I… am not sure.”
The simple words are a dagger to his heart. If it isn’t an immediate yes, then he has let Will down again.
Mike hasn’t been able to unsee any of it. The red flash that burst from the radio tower, along with a noise so deafening that Mike’s ears haven’t stopped ringing. Robin falling from the top of the tower; Robin plummeting; Robin hitting the ground like a bird without wings. Will’s heartwrenching screams as he was dragged away from the tower and through that bloody wound, a gate to the Upside Down. Mike, too far to save any of them: to save Robin from dying, to save Will from being dragged back to that place that had stolen his childhood.
He hadn’t been able to save them in the same way that he hadn’t been able to save his family. Holly is still missing; his parents are still in the hospital; Nancy, too, is in the Upside Down, with Dustin and Jonathan and Steve, somewhere that even El can’t see.
Mike, too far, too late, every single time.
“This is good,” El says softly. “I can see them… where they are. This means that it worked. But Will… I think he is under Vecna’s control. Like he is asleep, almost.”
“Like he’s cursed,” Mike murmurs.
Will had thought that he could use his connection to the Upside Down to bring down the wall that El and Hopper had discovered. Play a loud enough blast from the radio tower in their world, use Will’s connection to amplify it in the Upside Down, hope the frequency was enough to tear down the wall, maybe even to destroy whatever it was protecting.
At the very least, the wall seems to have come down, even if every other part of the plan has gone as poorly as possible.
Mike thinks of Robin splayed on the ground, the charred craters on her skin. Will’s entire body had been fighting against the demogorgons, fighting to reach her, but it had been no use. He had still been screaming her name as Mike had watched him disappear into the Upside Down.
“The wall was protecting Henry,” El says. “It was hiding the place where he is keeping them.”
“Then we have to go there,” Mike responds, feeling completely helpless as he watches El drift in the water. “We have to save them. Will and Holly and the others.”
El’s mouth is pulled into a frown. She doesn’t look upset—perplexed, if anything.
“What is it?” Mike asks.
“I need a moment.”
As Mike waits, he envies El’s gift. Just to be able to see Will would be a balm to his upset nerves. To know that seeing Will be dragged into the Upside Down wouldn't be Mike’s last time seeing him.
When El finally sits up, pulling the blindfold from her eyes, she sets her gaze straight on Mike. At the rims of her eyes, tears have pooled.
“El? What is it?” Mike asks, his heart hammering in his chest. “Will, Holly, the others, are they—are they okay?”
El brings a hand to Mike’s cheek, her lips pressed together in a sad smile. Her damp fingers tremble against his skin. When they had been dating, there would have been fire in that touch. Now all that remains is the warm comfort of a friend who understands him. He closes his eyes, just briefly, and allows it to steady him.
“You should stay here, Mike. I will find them.”
Mike shakes his head. “I can’t stay. My best friend and my sister are there. I want to help. I—I need to go with you.”
“I am worried…” El begins. “That he will use you against them. That you will be hurt.”
Mike shakes his head. “Maybe I can help. Maybe I can… I can get through to them somehow. I can snap them out of their trance.”
El tilts her head. She seems to be looking for something in Mike’s eyes.
“Please, Eleven,” Mike implores. “I can’t stand by and watch again. If something happens to them and I know I didn’t at least try to save them—I don’t know what I would do with myself. I don’t know how I would live with myself.”
She runs a thumb across Mike’s cheek. “You are a good friend. Mike the Brave,” she murmurs.
The words bring an image to Mike’s mind: a three-headed dragon the colour of blood, four figures led by a paladin with a heart-emblazoned shield. His chest aches as he imagines a boy leaning over an easel, deft fingers in control of each stroke.
“Just like the painting.”
Her brows furrow. “What painting?”
Mike shakes his head. He feels a bemused smile on his face. Maybe she’s embarrassed to talk about it now that they’re no longer dating.
“The painting you had Will make. You know… You’re the heart.”
El’s hand falls from his face and into her lap. “I didn’t ask Will to paint you anything, Mike.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
Mike wants so badly to think about the implications of El’s words. Why would Will paint that, if not for El? Why would he have said all those things in the van, if not for El? And if that painting and that speech had played over and over in his mind as he had told El that he loved her, then who had he really been confessing to?
The realization is an avalanche, something sudden and crushing. It rips the air from his lungs, the feeling from his fingers. The thing about being caught in an avalanche is that you don’t think about it when it comes. You don’t analyze the angle that the snow comes from, or the depth of the pile on top of you, or the amplitude of its roar. You just focus on survival.
So Mike focuses on survival. Not only his, but El’s and Holly’s and… and Will’s.
Will, Mike thinks, and he can’t begin to describe the feeling that that single syllable evokes. This time, I’ll save you. And I won’t let you go again.
—
Since that night that Will became a sorcerer, gates to the Upside Down have come and gone as easily as snow falls in the winter. It doesn’t take long for El and Mike to find one, torn into a thick tree trunk in the woods by Hopper’s cabin, a shrieking red like gauged flesh.
For what he hopes is the only time, Mike enters the Upside Down.
Immediately, he knows that it’s wrong. His entire body is telling him as much—that he shouldn’t be here. His stomach flips, inverting itself, his mind clouding with the incomprehensibility of this new world. Every nerve in his body is aflame, every part of him that runs on instinct telling him to run away, to turn away.
Two things keep him going forward. One, El at his side, giving him a nod of encouragement. She has done this before. She wouldn’t have let him come here if she didn’t think he was capable. Two, the thought of Will. Not only the Will that is trapped here now, but the Will that had been taken here five years ago. The one that had been taken from him, that had come back permanently changed. Mike will not let him go through this alone, not again.
Mike steels himself and presses forward.
This world is swallowed up in a blue haze. Little flecks like ash hang in the air, never quite touching the ground. An ancient smell like brimstone spreads its tendrils around them. The gnarled roots of trees web their way across the ground, the thrashing limbs of some creature from the depths.
All El says to him is, “Watch your step.”
It's strange, Mike thinks, that he knows his way in such a world as this. It is, after all, a reflection of his own world—his Hawkins. His home is here, his school, all the places that house his memories. The one problem, of course, is that none of that information can help them find Will. Vecna could be keeping him anywhere.
“Will painted this structure, where he saw Holly and the other kids,” Mike tells El. “It was like… a bunch of red spires, all caving into this sort of core. I mean, it looked huge. Now that the wall is down, we should be able to spot something like that, right?”
El nods. “It will be easier to see when we are out of the woods.”
She keeps a steady pace, and it is all Mike can do not to fall behind her.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I am ready.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course you are,” Mike says. El has faced Vecna before and won. Twice, if memory serves him right. And Will took on those demos. Together, they have a fighting chance. No—they’ll win.
“Will is lucky to have a… a friend, like you,” El says.
Mike tilts his head. It must be the sulfuric smell of the air, not her words, that leaves him feeling breathless.
“Well, yeah, we… he’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember.”
“He is very special to you, isn’t he?”
Though the Upside Down has no hint of warmth, the simple question causes Mike’s face to burn.
When he struggles for words, El turns back to face him. “Mike,” she says, “it’s okay.”
Mike’s tongue becomes a block in his mouth. He keeps his head down, minding the wayward roots, the oozing puddles, the pockets of earth that threaten to give way beneath a body’s weight. When El looks away, he hastily wipes his eyes.
Eventually, the trees thin, giving way to a clearing. They are out by the cemetery now. Beyond those twisted iron gates, rows of headstones rest like greyed teeth jutting from an open maw.
“Mike,” El says. “There.”
She’s facing westward. Mike tracks her gaze and sees it: a thrashing cloud, bright as hellfire, above a concave structure of red, sinuous spires. A sound like a gunshot cracks out, shaking the sky above their heads, rumbling the ground beneath them.
Mike’s legs almost give out, but he remembers Will’s words, Will’s quiet strength, his courage. His sorcerer never gave up on him; the paladin will not turn back now.
Mike and El carry on.
“I’m not sure if you have a plan already,” Mike starts, clutching the straps of his backpack as the red cloud bathes them in its bloody light. “But I have—I have something that might help Will. I—I’m not sure, really, it’s something I made a while ago, I was just thinking, maybe—”
“Mike,” El says. Her voice is cool and calm, an oasis in this strange place. “What is it?”
“Well, I was just thinking about how—you know how Lucas told us that that song helped Max whenever Vecna tried to take her?”
El nods.
“I, uh, I made something for Will. A mixtape. Maybe it’s silly, but I was just thinking, if you can keep Vecna’s attention for long enough, maybe I can play it for Will. And then… and then when he’s free from his trance, you can both team up against Vecna. I don’t know. It could be totally stupid.”
“Not stupid,” El says, a small smile on her face. “It is a good idea. We will try it.”
Mike nods. He lets a moment of silence pass before he asks, “Do you think we can really do this? I mean, the two—three, once we free Will—of us versus Vecna. I’ve never gone up against him before, but isn’t he, like, really powerful?”
“I will ask you a question. If I suggested that we turn back now, would you agree?”
“No, of course not. Will and Holly are in danger.”
“Then we keep going,” El answers simply. “Besides, like you said, you may be able to help them. Maybe more than you know.”
Mike has always admired El’s bravery. Even when she had been as little as Holly, she had gone up against these kinds of monsters without hesitation. She had gone up against them and, Mike reminds himself, had won every time. Mike tries to take in some of that bravery. He uses it to forge his armour, to sharpen his sword.
As the structure grows nearer, the energy of that pulsating cloud something he can feel in his bones, Mike tries to find a gap through which he and El might enter. They have to do this carefully. One wrong move, and they give themselves away.
Another step, and Mike loses his balance. He hits the ground face-first, and he hears the crunch of his own nose, feels a sickening burst of heat where it has most likely broken. Something with a mind of its own has wrapped around his ankle and pulls him across the rugged ground, right to the heart of this structure, this winding cage.
“Mike!” El calls after him. He twists his head over his shoulder to see her throw her hand out, but nothing happens. She is left behind, swallowed up by the fog, and Mike is dragged between the spires. They are hard as rock, shredding at his clothes and nipping at his skin, leaving small and bloody gashes in their wake.
And then he is at the centre of it all. Whatever had been dragging him releases him, leaving him bowed on the ground. He is at the eye of the storm—no, the middle of the clock, where twelve children stand equidistant to each other, buried alive in the red spires. There is Derek, and there, one of the other children Mike failed to save; Mike turns his head and there is Holly, eyes shut as if in sleep, some horrible appendage latched over her mouth. The sight brings a quick and stinging pain to his eyes.
In the middle of it all, Mike sees Vecna for the second time. He is a horrible, overgrown creature made of snaking vines and eyes that are all too human. This time, the sight of him is worse, as Will is standing by his right side, close enough for Vecna to reach out and touch. His arms dangle, head tipped back ever so slightly, his eyes perfectly white and blind to the world.
Mike’s heart slams against the cage of his chest.
Kind of you to join us, Michael, Vecna booms. It is the kind of voice that you feel more than hear. It trembles through Mike’s whole body. William will be happy to see you.
With those words, Will is released from his trance. His irises snap back into place, and he staggers, suddenly aware of where he is. When he sees Mike, his lips form a single word, a single protest: No.
Will starts toward him, but Vecna dips his head to the right, and Will is restrained by some invisible force. It pulls him back, keeps him rigid and hovering just above the ground. The movement of his eyes is still his own, and those eyes are locked onto Mike, filled with a kind of fear that Mike hasn’t seen from him before.
Mike doesn’t have the strength to pull himself to his feet. Just the presence of Vecna is something magnetic. He doesn’t know how to rise against it, how to fight it, so he lets it fix him into place. He only hopes that El finds her way here. He can’t do this without her.
I knew you would come, Vecna continues. I have always had my sights set on you, Michael, but I knew it would not be enough to threaten you alone. You, so selfless, always willing to sacrifice yourself for those you love most. To get you in my grasp, I first had to threaten the things important to you. I took your best friend. I took your sister. Do not think I will stop there, Michael. Do not think any of the others are safe.
Mike can barely force the words from his lips: “Let… them… go.”
I am glad that you are here. There are so many things that I have been waiting to show you.
The breath is ripped from his lungs. His eyes dart to Will, whose chest is fluttering with shallow breaths, and Mike shakes his head. No, no, no—
Do you know why I have chosen them for this glorious purpose?
Mike is shaking, every bone in his body vibrating with a force that threatens to break him. He can’t listen to any more. He can’t—he can’t breathe, he thinks he must be dying. It’s Will’s expression that will do him in. He’s looking at Mike and he’s so afraid, like he’s afraid what he’ll find out, like he already knows what’s coming and hates Mike for it—
I only choose the ones who know they do not belong. As Vecna speaks, his eyes turn to each of his victims in turn. It’s Holly first. The ones who make imaginary friends because they have no other option. Derek. The ones who choose to be hated so they do not need to face the pain of rejection. Will. The ones, the mistakes, who fall in love with their best friends knowing the whole world would damn them for it. Isn’t that right…
Mike has to look away from Will. Those horrified tears that pour down his cheeks, the gape of his mouth, everything set against the dark truth that is about to be loosed.
Vecna’s eyes land squarely on Mike.
Michael?
Then Mike is at the Snow Ball. He and Dustin are standing side by side. Dustin is looking at Max dancing with Lucas, shoulders slumped, but Mike—Mike is looking at Will, swaying side to side with a girl, as he swallows down a lump in his throat.
Mike is standing in the rain. He’s arguing with Will, he’s so worked up that he barely knows what’s coming out of his own mouth, and then some ugly beast rears up from inside of him. It’s not my fault that you don’t like girls! He immediately wants to apologize, but he can’t, because… why can’t he apologize?
Mike and Will are sitting next to each other in Argyle’s van. Will is staring out of the window, shoulders shaking, muffling his sobs with the palm of his hand. Mike knows that he’s crying, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything. He trains his eyes on Will’s painting, trying to ignore the way his own hands are trembling.
In all of these moments, Mike is frozen. He’s always thought that his inaction has been something protective. If he bites his tongue, if he doesn’t act on what his heart is telling him, then things won’t change. If things don’t change, he doesn’t risk losing anyone. His family or his friends or Will. Especially Will.
This time, too, he is frozen, a captive of Vecna’s, but his horrible secret has been forced out all the same. Vecna has spoken the truth that even Mike hasn’t dared to put into words, the one that has only existed as something gnawing and nameless in his chest.
Then Will is at his side. Mike doesn’t know how he got there so suddenly, he only knows that that stare is something to recoil from. The expression on Will’s face is the same one that he’s worn in Mike’s nightmares time and time again. His eyebrows are furrowed, his nose wrinkled, lip upturned. The truth is out, and it disgusts him.
“Mike, is that true?” Will asks. His voice, usually so soft, brims with judgement, a damning conviction. Mike must already be in hell. “You’re sick, Mike, you know that, don’t you? I thought we were friends. I called you my best friend. And this whole time you were in love with me, like some kind of freak. Aren’t you ashamed?”
The words keep coming, but Mike clasps his hands over his ears. He can’t listen anymore. He can’t look. He can’t live with this, this dark secret that has been ripped from inside of him, leaving in its wake a black hole that threatens to swallow him entirely. He wants it to stop. He almost prays for it. He doesn’t realize that he’s screaming until the sound suddenly stops, the skeletal fingers of Vecna poised under his chin, and then he is levitating, flying, and then he feels himself begin to fall apart.