Work Text:
“WIL-”
Will is stuck, hands frozen in the air as he sees Mike’s body drop. He thinks people around him are screaming, frantically trying to get to their loved one.
He’s not sure why they can’t.
Mike’s body is still wrapped in Vecna’s vines. Will can feel him. He feels his breathing stop, he feels the squeezing of his last breath out. Mike’s last breath.
Will can’t breathe.
He feels disconnected as someone puts their hands on his shoulder, shaking him. No, he feels Hopper’s foot as he stomps on a vine, trying to get to Mike. He feels Jonathan’s flame thrower on the tendrils, probably trying to clear a way to Will.
Someone is holding him now. He’s not sure who. He doesn’t care.
Something comes out of his mouth. At first he thought it was another Dart, a demodog being born from him again. He feels possessed again, but different. Vecna isn’t controlling him and neither is the mindflayer. He just… isn’t there.
People are moving around him- moving him.
Finally he moves, breaking away from whoever is trying to shield him from the final drop of Mike’s body. He feels the absence immediately.
Will isn’t running- hell he’s barely even walking. Its a stumble, but not to Mike.
No. Not to Mike.
Mike is gone- Vecna made sure of that. Vecna- Henry made sure Will felt it.
Will… oh Will, Will, Will…
Will doesn’t flinch, not like he had done before when he invaded his mind. He keeps shaking off the hands of his family, determined in his movement even if he is exhausted.
Mike is gone.
Nothing else matters anymore.
Someone has a hand around Will’s front, holding him up after a stumble. His hand shoots out, palm upwards. If he couldn’t make it to Vecna, he’d bring the monster to him. His eyes watch as the grotesque monster spasms, trying to keep control.
Will wants to watch as he rips this motherfucker apart, limb from limb. He doesn’t give a shit if it kills him as well. He can apologize to his mom when he's dead.
He faintly hears Lucas’s voice screaming his name beside him. He hears enough to understand Lucas is the one holding him back.
Vecna’s arm shoots out to the side, the crowd around him flinching back. But Vecna isn’t in control.
The monstrous fingers are shaking, a futile attempt to control Will. But Will isn’t a puppet, not anymore.
A pained noise erupts from Vecna, a half scream-half cry. Will smiles.
Where there once was a slithering, vine and tendril covered arm was nothing. A gross- satisfying splursh fills Will’s ears as Vecna’s left arm goes first, crumbling inwards on itself before it’s torn from the body.
Flashes of a young boy, blonde and covered in blood, smashing a scientist in the face with a rock. Will knows in an instant that its Vecna- Henry. It was Henry before he became one, when Henry was just Henry. Then a small boy, in a red and yellow puffer vest with a shake in his hold as he grips his fathers gun.
William don’t you see-
“All I see…”
Vecna’s right arm is pinned back in the air. A strangled grunt escapes the monster’s mouth. Blackish blood is tumbling out the wound on his left side.
With the tilt of his head, the other arm is pulled. Slowly and gruesomely pulled out of its socket and starts to tear away from the body. Will feels a wetness coming from his eyes. He’s pretty sure it's not tears.
“... is that I’m not that little boy anymore.”
A sickening squelsh accompanies a strangled scream. Will isn’t sure who’s scream is louder. His or Vecna’s. But its the last thing he hears before he collapses.