Chapter Text
It felt like the end. Like the last breath Mike would ever take. He covered his face with his arms as an unnatural hand closed in on him, arm and claws stretched, ready to take him right there. Mike was sweating, yet his blood ran cold from terror. Dying would be so fast that he wouldn’t even have the time to see the light. He braced himself for impact.
But it never came.
Time stretched for so long he thought he might already be gone. The only indication that he was still alive was the sound that did not fade, the monster still roaring.
As he uncovered his eyes, he saw it held in place by some invisible force. He stared, wondering if he was making it all up, because it looked like Eleven’s powers, yet… She wasn’t here.
That’s when he saw a silhouette at the edge of his vision. In the blaze, shadows twisted through the smoke, impossible to pin down. For a moment, he thought it was El, her arm outstretched. But as the smoke shifted, he finally caught the details. The build, the clothes, the hair.
Sorcerer.
He was trying to catch his breath. Trying to anchor himself after what happened, not realising this was far from over. His vision shifted again. For a split second, through the noise and pressure and through eyes not of his own, he saw Mike, arms raised, bracing for something that was already too close.
Time slowed down to a crawl, and Robin’s voice echoed in his mind.
I was looking for answers in somebody else but I had all the answers.
Memories of his life flickered through his mind, the way he had always imagined it would in his last moments.
Two kids playing on a swing. They barely knew each other, and yet all it took was one question to become friends. Those same kids who would make a basement their playing room for years to come, spending so much time at each other’s houses that they became a second home.
A kid showing his art to his mum and his big brother, who are just looking so, so proud. His brother helping him build a castle. Making it the perfect playground to pretend to be the wizard from that one book Mike used to read with him.
He saw himself laugh and run and twirl and dance. His younger self waved his wand as if to cast a spell, and he held on to it all.
He felt the power creeping closer, Vecna’s thoughts pressing in, threatening to collide with his own. He had pulled away so many times before, letting things unfold behind his eyes, afraid that if he reached back, he would lose what little control he had left, that the power would consume him instead of strengthening him.
But this time, he let him in.
He wasn’t afraid anymore.
The power surged through him rather than against him for the first time. It didn’t slip across the surface of his mind as it had before. He was the mind. And for the first time since he had been taken, since his dreams, his childhood had been stripped away from him, he felt in control.
He was pulling the threads now, and he used them to hold the demogorgon back, freezing it in place. Then the images flowing through his mind flipped around some more, and he could see it all simultaneously. He saw Lucas, on the ground, defenceless, the kids gone. He saw Robin turn around from the gap in the van and the flash of realisation on her face as she accepted her fate.
Will held his second arm, the motion helping him visualise the threads as he held them tight. He stopped the second demogorgon threatening to end Lucas’ life, then the third that was on Robin.
They tried to resist it, tried to push against it, but the more they tried, the tighter the hold. Will could not let go.
He could feel their frustration, and on top of that, their will to kill, their desire to obey Vecna’s order. These creatures were just like all those soldiers whose bodies were lying around them, lifeless. They were pawns in someone else’s game.
No matter, Will could not forgive them. All the happy memories he visualised made all the pain, the heartbreak, the fear even stronger, and he could feel it underneath it all: the rage. More power started coming through, so fast and hard that he was almost overwhelmed. With it, he clenched the threads and pulled them upwards, lifting the demogorgons’ bodies. He did not know what he was doing exactly, but it felt right. Like he had done it a hundred times before.
He could see his friends’ faces from above: confused, focused and paralysed.
The power kept coming. He let it in like he was charging a fireball in one of their D&D campaigns. When the power came to an all-time high and threatened to drown him, he let go.
The sudden pressure pulled and twisted at the limbs of the monsters, breaking them successively with a snap, overthrown by the power that had been released all at the same time.
They collapsed on the ground at the feet of what would have been their next victim. Their limbs were twisting in odd directions, just like they had been with Vecna’s victims.
The world fell silent.
Will’s vision slowly came back into focus, though it remained blurred from the exertion. Something warm tickled his nose, almost reaching his upper lip. He wiped the blood before it could, and when he looked up, his eyes met Mike’s.
They were wide with shock. With awe. But what Will noticed most was the slight smile Mike gave him.
Will felt proud.
He barely had time to register his mother calling his name before the weight set in. His body felt impossibly heavy. His knees gave way. His eyelids shut before he could fight it, and he hit the ground hard, too weak to soften the fall.
The last thing he heard as everything went dark was his name, shouted raw with panic.
‘WILL!’
Mike tried to shout again, but the smoke burned his lungs, the sound breaking into a cough instead.
He and Joyce exchanged a single look and moved at the same time, rushing towards Will’s still form.
‘Don’t move!’
A soldier rose from behind one of the Jeeps, his rifle already aimed at them, hands shaking.
‘I said don’t move,’ he repeated, his voice quivering. ‘I will shoot.’
He looked pale. Unsteady on his feet. Whatever he’d seen out here had stripped away any pretence of control. There was no feigning normalcy after this. There was only chaos, and bodies left where they’d fallen.
Joyce and Mike didn’t flinch. Their feet stayed planted, their eyes holding the soldier’s gaze with quiet defiance.
A few metres away, a corpse was shoved aside, revealing another soldier who had been hiding beneath it. He staggered upright, face split open by a deep gash that ran from his eyebrow to his chin, slicing through his eye on the way down.
He stared at the bodies surrounding them, breathing hard.
‘Jesus…’
He barely had time to register what he was seeing when he was called out.
‘Hey! Come over here! Did you see this?’
He took a few steps towards his officer, checking what he was showing him, noticing one of the kids on the ground, seemingly lifeless. He looked at the higher-ranked soldier with confusion. What on earth was he supposed to see?
Catching his expression, the other clarified: ‘This kid can control those things!’
Mike tensed up. Joyce took a step forward. But the soldier didn’t feel threatened by it in the slightest and just motioned his gun slightly to display that he would not hesitate to shoot.
‘Control them? How?’ The second soldier asked, now staring at Will’s unconscious form as if he had grown a second head.
‘That’s what we need to figure out, we need to bring him back. Watch those two while I load him up in the Jeep. Got it?’
‘On it.' The officer passed his gun to the recruit. He must have lost his in the midst of the chaos.
Mike and Joyce could only watch as the first soldier picked Will up like a motionless doll and threw him in the back of a bloodied Jeep, the only car that was left upright. Joyce flinched at the sound of Will’s body hitting the floor of the vehicle. The engine growled to life, tearing through the silence.
It disappeared into the passageway to the Upside Down, diving into the cold and cruel world Will once escaped from.
There was no catching up to them now.
Joyce dropped to her knees, eyes wide and already burning with unshed tears. Mike dropped down beside her, hugging her tightly.
‘We’ll bring him back. I promise.’ He whispered, solemn.
Joyce broke down and sobbed on Mike’s shoulder, holding onto him as if to anchor herself. The shock was overwhelming. She lost him again. How could she lose him again? The sadness, the guilt, the shame, all of it came crashing down on her as she kept weeping.
Mike pushed her back slightly, only to cup her face in his hands and reiterate his promise: ‘You hear me? We’ll bring him back.’