Chapter Text
Michael Wheeler’s coffee has gone cold again.
He stares at the mug, ceramic, chipped at the rim, a faded Hawkins High logo barely visible through years of use, and tries to remember when he last took a sip.
The typewriter stares back at him from the kitchen table, silent and judgmental. The page is half-filled, the ribbon already fading where he’s struck the same sentence too many times. He’s been rewriting that paragraph for three days now.
Or maybe four. Time does that thing lately where it pools and stretches, becoming unreliable.
The mage stood at the gate, ready to sacrifice everything. But what if she didn’t? What if—
Mike yanks the paper free before he can finish the sentence. The sound of tearing is too loud in the kitchen.
The mage stood at the gate. Everyone watched her die. But illusions are powerful things, and—
He rips that page out too.
Outside, November rain taps against the window of his childhood home—his home now, though he still thinks of it as belonging to some other version of the Wheelers. The ones who existed before.
His parents sold it to him for almost nothing when they retired to Indianapolis three years ago together with Holly. Nancy sends him articles about unhealthy attachment to place. He doesn’t open them.
Twenty-six years old and he’s become a ghost in his own life.
His landline buzzes. He ignores it. It buzzes again.
The stack of mail on the counter has grown impressive in its neglect. His publisher, Miranda, writes actual letters now because he stops answering phone calls after the second or third. The one on top has “URGENT—CONTRACT DEADLINES” written in red Sharpie across the envelope.
The thing is, Mike Wheeler is technically a successful author.
His first novel, written in a fevered six-month stretch when he was twenty-two, hit the bestseller list almost immediately.
The Mage at the Gate.
Critics called it “a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves to survive.” They didn’t know they were reviewing his last eighteen months, over and over, in different words.
He’s published two more since then. Same themes, different metaphors.
Heroes who might have died. Heroes who might have escaped. Endings that refuse to be endings. The checks keep coming.
He deposits them automatically and watches his bank account grow while his life shrinks.
The telephone rings again. He lets it go twice.
On the third ring, he reaches for it.
“Will?”
His voice is already tired.
“You’re alive.” Will’s voice is careful, the way he would talk to something wounded that might bolt. “That’s good. I was starting to worry you’d merged with the couch.”
“I don’t have a couch.” It’s technically true—he got rid of the basement couch two years ago when the memories got too thick. “I have a chair.”
“Mike.”
“I’m fine.”
“You didn’t answer my last three calls.”
“I was writing.”
The pause on the other end is long enough that Mike can feel Will choosing his words.
They’ve known each other too long for Mike not to hear the shape of Will’s concern, the specific quality of worry that means he’s talked to Dustin and Lucas and Nancy, and they’ve all agreed Mike is getting worse, not better.
“How’s the book coming?” Will asks finally.
Mike looks at the stack of paper beside the typewriter. Five thousand words this month. Four thousand of them torn out, crumpled, or blacked through so hard the ink bled into the table.
Net progress: a single thousand words. All of them circling the same question he’s been asking for eight years.
“It’s coming.”
“That’s what you said last month.”
“Well, it’s still coming.”
Another pause. Mike gets up and walks to the window, phone pressed to his ear. The street outside is empty except for Mrs. Kline walking her dog.
Some things in Hawkins never change.
“Jonathan and I are coming home for Thanksgiving together with my husband,” Will says.
Will’s wedding happened two years ago and as much as it was beautiful, it was a reminder of an ending that Mike will never experience.
“We were thinking maybe you could come to the Byers’ place for dinner? Joyce is doing the whole thing. She asked about you. So did Hopper.”
Mike’s throat tightens at Hopper’s name. He hasn’t talked to Hopper in over a year. Can’t.
Every conversation becomes the same thing: Hopper trying to convince Mike to accept what happened, Mike unable to explain that acceptance feels like betrayal.
“Maybe,” he says, which they both know means no.
“Mike, you can’t—” Will stops himself. Starts again. “You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself.”
“Do what?”
“This. The whole hermit thing. The staying. Everyone else managed to leave. Even Max finally left last year, and she actually—” Will cuts himself off.
Mike knows what he was going to say. Even Max left, and she actually mourned El too. Her only girl friend. Her bestfriend.
“I have a life here,” Mike says. It sounds weak even to him.
“You have a routine. That’s not the same thing.”
Mike’s jaw tightens. “I should go. I’ve got a deadline.”
“You always have a deadline. You’re never actually close to meeting it because you keep writing the same ending in different ways, hoping one of them will feel true.”
The accuracy of it makes Mike’s chest hurt. “Will—”
“I’m not trying to push. I just—” Will’s voice cracks slightly. “I miss you, okay? We miss you. The version of you that wasn’t stuck in that moment at the bridge.”
After they hang up, Mike stands at the window for a long time. Mrs. Kline and her dog have disappeared.
In the reflection of the glass, he can see himself. He is too thin, wearing the same Hawkins High hoodie he’s worn for three days, hair doing that thing where it sticks up because he keeps running his hands through it when he’s stuck.
He looks like someone treading water. Or drowning slowly.
His typewriter is still open on the table. He should write. He should answer Miranda’s letters. He should do something other than exist in this terrible amber of his own making.
Instead, he goes down to the basement.
It’s exactly as it was.
The table where they played D&D for years. The old armchair. Dustin’s science fair trophy from seventh grade still sits on the shelf. Lucas’s old basketball. Will’s sketches tacked to the walls, most of them, anyway. Max’s zoomer book from their last campaign.
Mike sits in the armchair and looks at the spot where he used to shelter El when he was eleven.
He saw the framed photos he left in the hasement. There’s one he looks at sometimes, even though it hurts. It’s from graduation day. Not the ceremony, Mike didn’t take any photos during the actual event. He was too numb, too focused on not falling apart in front of everyone.
This photo is from after. They’re all at the memorial bench. Hopper’s talking to him, saying something Mike barely remembers. The others are in the background, trying to give them space but also clearly worried.
That was the day. Eighteen months after the gate, eighteen months after El stood in the Upside Down and everyone watched her disappear when the bomb went off. Eighteen months of Hopper telling him to choose: keep blaming himself or find a way to accept it.
Mike chose a third option: refuse to choose at all.
The telephone rings. Mike doesn’t have to check the clock.
It’s Dustin.
That’s how it always goes—Will first, then Dustin, then Lucas. A careful rotation, like they’re taking turns making sure he’s still here.
He considers not answering, but Dustin will just keep calling.
“Dustin,” Mike says.
“Mike! Man of mystery! Recluse extraordinaire!” Dustin’s enthusiasm is aggressive, weaponized. “Question: are you aware that Thanksgiving is in three weeks and you haven’t responded to a single call about it?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Horseshit. You’ve been marinating in your maybe-grief cave.” There’s a rustling sound, like Dustin’s pacing. “Look, I’m in town for the weekend. Suzie’s visiting her parents in Utah and Steve and I decided to hang out tomorrow, so I’m all yours. I’m coming over.”
“Dustin—”
“Nope. No arguments. I’m bringing Thai food from that place in Indianapolis because god knows Hawkins still doesn’t have decent takeout. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
He hangs up before Mike can protest.
Mike sits in the basement for thirty-five more minutes, then forces himself upstairs to make himself slightly more presentable. He changes his hoodie at least. He runs water through his hair.
Lastly, he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and sees a stranger who happens to have his face.
When Dustin arrives, he doesn’t knock, he just uses the key Mike gave him years ago and never asked for back.
“Jesus Christ,” Dustin says, standing in the doorway with bags of food. “It smells like existential crisis in here. When did you last open a window?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Seriously, Mike. This is intervention-level behavior.” Dustin pushes past him into the kitchen, starts unpacking containers. “I brought the good stuff. Pad Thai, spring rolls, that mango sticky rice you pretend not to like but always eat.”
Mike sits at the table. The smell of food makes him realize he forgot lunch. And maybe breakfast.
Dustin plates everything with the efficiency of someone who’s done this before, then sits across from Mike and just looks at him for a long moment.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Dustin says quietly.
“What thing?”
“The disappearing thing. Where you’re physically here but not actually present. It’s been getting worse since the anniversary.”
Mike picks up his fork. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. And you know what? That’s okay. None of us are fine. Max still has nightmares about Vecna. Will can’t stand ambiguity anymore, as he needs everything clearly defined or he spirals. Lucas won’t talk about any of it, which is its own kind of not-fine. We’re all fucked up. But the rest of us are at least fucked up in locations other than Hawkins, Indiana.”
“This is my home.”
“This is your purgatory.” Dustin’s voice is sharper now. “You’re twenty-six years old. You’re a successful author. You could literally live anywhere in the world. But you’re here, in your childhood house, rewriting the same ending over and over and pretending it’s productivity.”
Mike’s jaw tightens. “You don’t—”
“I do, actually. I know exactly what you’re doing because I did it too. For a year after everything happened, I stayed. I kept running calculations. Kept trying to prove mathematically whether your theory was possible. Whether Kali could have—” He stops. “But eventually I realized I was trying to solve a problem that doesn’t have a solution. Not one we’ll ever know for sure.”
The words hit Mike like a physical thing. He sets down his fork.
“She could still be alive,” he says. It comes out defensive, desperate.
“Maybe,” Dustin says, and the kindness in his voice is worse than if he’d argued. “Maybe she is. Maybe Kali really did create an illusion and El escaped through the tunnels. Maybe she’s out there somewhere, at some waterfall, finally at peace. Or maybe—”
“Don’t.”
“Or maybe she died in the explosion and your campaign ending was just a beautiful story you told yourself and us because none of us could handle the alternative.” Dustin leans forward. “And here’s the thing, Mike, both of those realities are equally possible. You don’t get to know. None of us do. That’s the hell of it.”
Mike stands up abruptly. The chair scrapes against the floor. “I think you should go.”
“Mike—”
“I’m serious. Thanks for the food, but I’m not, I can’t do this right now.”
Dustin looks at him for a long moment, something sad and frustrated in his face. Then he sighs and stands.
“You told us a story that day,” Dustin says quietly. “About the mage who didn’t really die. About Kali’s final illusion. About El escaping to find those waterfalls. And it was beautiful, Mike. It gave us hope. It gave us a way to survive losing her.”
He pauses at the door.
“But somewhere along the way, you stopped being able to tell the difference between the story and the truth. And now you’re trapped in the space between them.”
After Dustin leaves, Mike doesn’t eat the Thai food. He goes back to the basement and sits in the armchair until the sun sets and the room fills with shadows.
His telephone rings twice more that night. Nancy first, then Lucas. He doesn’t answer either.
Lucas leaves a voicemail. Mike shouldn’t listen to it, but he does.
“Look, man, I’m just gonna say it.” Lucas’s voice is blunt.
“This maybe-she’s-alive thing? It’s killing you. Because you can’t grieve and you can’t celebrate. You’re just stuck. And I get it, I do. I spent a year trying to figure out if Max was okay after everything, if she’d ever really recover. At least I knew she was alive. You don’t even have that.”
He pauses.
“But at some point, you have to choose to live your life anyway. Even in the not-knowing. Especially in the not-knowing.”
The voicemail ends. Mike sits in the dark.
He pulls the chair closer to the table and adjusts the typewriter until it’s square with the edge. He feeds the page back in, rolling it carefully until the half-familiar paragraph lines up again. He stares at the sentence he’s been circling for days, fingers hovering over the keys, waiting for them to finally know what to do.
The mage stood at the gate. Everyone thought she died. But the truth is—
What is the truth? That’s the question that’s been suffocating him for eight years.
He wasn’t in the Void with El that last time. He was outside, being held back by soldiers, watching through the gate as she stood there. He saw the flash. Heard the explosion. Saw the gate go dark.
Eighteen months later, he told everyone a story about what really happened. A story where she lived. Where she escaped. Where she got her happy ending.
And he believed it. He had to believe it. The alternative was—
He slams the typewriter cover shut, the clatter echoing in the quiet kitchen.
The alternative was unbearable.
But sitting here in the basement, surrounded by ghosts and maybes, Mike realizes something he’s been avoiding for years.
He’s been living in a story. His own story. One where El survived, where she’s out there somewhere, where the ambiguity means hope instead of loss.
And maybe that story is true. Maybe it isn’t. But either way, he’s been using it as an excuse to not live his own life.
Because if he leaves Hawkins, if he moves on, if he lets himself be happy somewhere else with someone else, what does that make him?
Someone who gave up on her? Or someone who finally accepted that some questions don’t get answered?
Staying isn’t protecting her memory. It’s not keeping her alive through faith.
It’s just Mike, frozen at the gate, watching her disappear over and over again, unable to move forward because moving forward means accepting the not-knowing.
The realization doesn’t come with relief. It comes with terror.
Mike goes upstairs. It’s 2 AM.
He grabs the phone before he can think too hard about it, flipping through the Yellow Pages for an airline. He dials the number, listening to the automated menu until he finally gets an agent.
“One way out of Indianapolis,” he says. “Anywhere. Just… not here.”
Portland. Nancy’s there. She’d be surprised. Maybe pleased.
This is it. This is the moment where he chooses. Stay in the maybe. Leave and live anyway.
He thinks about El standing in the Upside Down. The last words she said to him in the Void.
"You understand me, better than anyone.”
Did he understand? When he told that story at graduation, was he understanding what she would have wanted, for him to have hope, or was he just unable to face the truth?
He doesn’t know. He’ll never know.
His hand shakes as he dials the number again, reading the digits off the card like a prayer.
One-way ticket to Portland. Three days. Done.
He puts the receiver down and stares at the cold coffee in front of him with the terrible understanding that leaving Hawkins doesn’t mean accepting she’s dead. It doesn’t mean accepting she’s alive, either.
It means accepting that he doesn’t get to know.
It means choosing to live in the unknown instead of being paralyzed by it.
He’s twenty-six years old, and he’s finally admitting to himself that maybe the story he told at graduation was true.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe El is alive at some waterfall, finally free. Maybe she died in the explosion, and the story was just his way of surviving.
Both are possible. Neither can be proven.
And he has to find a way to live anyway.
Three days. He has three days to say goodbye to Hawkins. To the basement. To the version of himself who thought certainty was necessary for living.
He picks up the phone and dials the familiar numbers one by one. For the first time in weeks, he calls them all.
“I’m coming to Portland,” he says, voice tight. “Friday.”
The responses come immediately. Surprise. Relief. Nancy’s laugh carries through the receiver, sharp and bright, like three exclamation points all at once. Dustin talks too fast, excited, too loud but Mike doesn’t answer half the questions and appreciates the energy anyway.
Will’s voice comes last, calm but with that familiar edge: “About damn time.”
Mike hangs up and sits back in the kitchen one last time. The blue plate, chipped mug, the way morning light slants across the counter—he takes it all in, memorizing Hawkins like a map he might never return to.
Then he goes to the basement one final time.
There is no upside down anymore. El is… somewhere. Maybe alive. Maybe not. Schrödinger’s hero. Schrödinger’s love.
Mike feeds a fresh sheet into the typewriter. He rolls the carriage and takes a deep breath.
Then he begins, fingers hesitant but determined.
A new ending.
The mage stood at the gate. And what happened next, no one would ever know for certain. But the paladin, after years of waiting for proof, finally understood: some stories don’t get endings. They just get the next chapter. And you have to choose whether to keep reading anyway.
He pulls the page from the typewriter, smooths it against the table, and sets it carefully in a folder.
Michael Wheeler leans back in his chair, hands still trembling slightly.
For the first time in years, he is finally, terrifyingly, ready to move forward.
Not because he’s accepted that Eleven is dead. Not because he’s certain she’s alive.
But because he’s accepted that he’ll never know, and he has to live anyway.
Even if that means carrying the maybe forever.
Even if that means she’s everywhere and nowhere, real and imagined, gone and possibly still out there, all at once.
He climbs the basement stairs and doesn’t look back.