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El is sitting up on the rooftop when Will finds her. She’s staring off into the horizon like it’s the last time she’ll ever see the sun, and he wonders if she thinks it is. He knows this is one of the main reasons why he’s come up here in the first place, too. To feel the warmth of the sunlight one last time.
“Hey,” he says quietly to get her attention, trying not to startle her. She turns her head in his direction, just a little, to look at him. Her expression is guarded, but some of it drops when she realizes it’s just him.
“Hey,” she whispers back, scooting a little to the side to make space for him, as if the only place to sit is besides her. He slides down next to her without a word, pressing his shoulder against hers for what might be one of the last times he’ll ever get to do this. He feels her head dropping against his shoulder, and slowly reaches around to drape his arm around her waist, pulling her a little closer. El snuggles in, like she would in Lenora sometimes, and for a moment, they’re just two kids.
Will breaks the silence after a moment, conscious that the time granted to them is limited, and that privacy is even more so, with the amount of people currently coming in and out of the building.
“Please tell me you’re not trying to do what I think you are,” he says quietly, fingers tugging at the fabric of her jacket. She stays quiet for a bit, just breathing in sync with him, like she’s trying not to shatter the moment.
“Can you tell me the same?” El counters, and gives him a sad smile, and Will’s heart squeezes. He knows she’d guessed. She must have guessed it as soon as she got him out of the trance, after these awful visions.
His mom, dead. Jonathan, dead. Mike, dead. Lucas, Dustin, Max, dead. Everybody, gone. Because of him. Killed by him, and yet not him. The him that was no longer Will Byers, but something else, something cruel, something that relished in sorrow after stealing the last traces of his autonomy.
Will closes his eyes, and tugs her closer. Her head feels steady against his shoulder, like an anchor.
“They will use my blood to create more monsters. This will never end,” El says, indirectly admitting that he is not wrong about her plans. “It can only stop for a moment, if I do not do this.”
“They’d have to catch you, first. We won’t let them, you know we won’t.” Will tries, even when the promise feels hollow when he’s not planning to be around to see it through. She must know this, too, because she looks at him with that sad smile again. She reaches her hand towards his face, caressing his cheek.
“I’m tired, Will,” El says, and it doesn’t sound resigned, heartbroken. It sounds like a fact, like something she’d been coming to terms with for a while, and Will’s heart aches for her, because he understands the feeling. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He’s not sure what secret can be more shattering than a quiet admission that she’s planning on sacrificing herself. That she knows he’s planning on doing the same.
“Of course. I’ll take it to my grave,” he promises, and this is what gets her eyes to water for the first time during this conversation. She looks up at him with so much sorrow, rubbing circles into his cheek like she’s trying to make sure he’s still steady and warm beneath her palm, for just a few more hours.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she sniffles, “I wish there was a different way to close it.”
Will moves his free hand to her head and settles it in her hair, caressing it gently. She’s slicked it back again, and he hates seeing it like this. She loves her curls. She loves long hair. And she keeps forcing herself into molds that are better for her as a weapon.
“I’m tired, too, El,” he says, moving his hand in soothing motions. It used to calm her, in Lenora. “I think I’ve been tired for a long time.”
“Me too,” she whispers, and looks away from him to focus on the sky again. Then, quietly, “Mike keeps talking about waterfalls. In some faraway land. After this is over.”
Will sucks in a deep breath at the words, trying not to dwell on them. It used to be one of the staples of their D&D campaigns, back in the day. After a successful campaign, the Party would relocate to an unknown land with beautiful sceneries and start anew, and the cycle would repeat for as long as they wished, game after game.
Will misses these days, sometimes. The simplicity of them. The joy and whimsy they used to bring. He has not felt that in so long, not even on the best days following the worst week of his life. He thinks this is a part of it, too. Why the decision he’s made is the only one that makes sense anymore, and he thinks this is why that is the only decision that makes sense to El, too. They’re broken like that, the two of them.
“I don’t want to see waterfalls, Will. I hate the water. I… I hate the bath. I hate the basins. I wanted to see forests. Cities. Mountains. Not water,” El confesses, and her voice breaks a little. He tugs her in a little closer, because he knows.
“I’m sorry, El.”
And he is, because it is unfair to her and to him both. They’re kids. They should be preparing for school. For a school ball. Will should be worrying about the fact that he’s just had to come out to what feels like half of the population of Hawkins, including Mike, clueless as ever. El should be worrying about regular, teenage things, or maybe about a bad book. Something mundane.
Instead, they’re two kids, sitting atop a radio station that is filled with people, both of them getting ready to die in the loneliest place of all, a place that does not even exist in reality. Will their deaths count, if it’s there, in the other world? Will it hurt, the way it hurts to be hunted down and possessed and used? Will it be quick, the most merciful that life could grant them?
“We’ll hurt Jonathan,” El sobs, tugging at him, and he buries his face in her hair at the same moment as she hides hers in his shoulder. “Joyce. Hop. Mike. Everyone. We’ll hurt everyone.”
Will blinks his tears away, because they will. But he would hurt them, anyway, and a selfish part of him thinks this is easier. When he won’t have to be there to see the aftermath. When their injuries will not be physical.
“They’ll live, El. They’ll survive. They’ll grieve. They’ll grow. They’ll love again,” he’s not sure who he’s trying to convince, El or himself. Maybe both, because he knows it’s not that easy. Knows what grief does to a person, what depression does. Their family and friends deserve better, but it’s hard to decide what that is, when the choices are the end of the world and sacrifice.
“Will… do you think we can see it? In another life? The forests? The jungles? The big cities?”
“Of course we can, El. Even… even savanna, if you want. Where the elephants are.” She laughs at this, the first sound that has some semblance of happiness to it. “We can go wherever you want.”
Not in this life, he thinks, but if there is an alternate universe, he hopes they get to be happy there. He hopes she gets to grow up to be a regular, happy teenage girl. He hopes he gets to grow up to be happy, too, in that other life.
El turns away from him again, looking back at the sky.
“I would have liked that. Living with you, Will. And the elephants.”
“Yeah. I would have liked that too, El. You, me, somewhere warm.”
“Without water.”
“Yeah. Somewhere warm, without water,” he agrees. Because if the cold represents a trap of his abuser’s making for Will, the same is true for El and the water torture she’s been put through. “You know I love you, right, El?”
She doesn’t turn to him, but she nods.
“Yes. I love you too. Thank you for being my brother Will. I think you were a great one.”
“Well, I didn’t really have a choice,” he jokes, just to hear her laugh one last time. She gives him that smile of hers, a little exasperated and so final. “Thanks for being my sister, El. I always wanted one, and you were the best. If you get there first, wait for me? I won’t let you be alone for long. Just long enough for the others to be safe.”
Will is not sure if a ‘there’ exists, after death. He wants to believe that it does, because it feels too lonely, to just close his eyes forever and be done for eternity. He hopes there’s at least a moment where a ‘there’ is true, so he can find El there, and they can leave together, one last time.
“Yes. I will wait for you,” she promises, and he believes her, because this is the last piece of hope nobody can take from him, or from her. If they were doomed to this fate from the start, at the very least, they get to write their own ending, one last time.
“It’s a promise.”