Chapter Text
Will Byers had learned by the age of eight that survival was not the same as safety, nor was it living. The distinction had been carved into him like a scar: harsh, undeniable. Now, nearly a year after he’d fled to New York’s steel-and-glass embrace, Hawkins felt less like home and more like an old wound reopened every time he dreamed of it.
The warnings came first as whispers, then as headlines. A missing boy in Queens: pale, small-framed, his disappearance noted only after days passed with no school attendance. A subway worker was hospitalized for "exhaustion," babbling about something that screeched from the tunnel walls before it grabbed him, a wound that looked so similar to the one on Lucas that it made me take a double-take. The police reports piled up: three separate officers describing a smell like burnt ozone and rotting meat clinging to empty platforms at nightfall; one even taking a sample of some slime that looked too much like something from the Upside Down for comfort.
He wanted to believe it was just his mind unraveling: stress, sleeplessness, the weight of Hawkins pressing on his ribs like a ghost. But then came the itching. A slow-burning crawl along that scar on the nape of his neck, gnawing at him for days until he couldn’t ignore it anymore.
And last night? The cold had returned…he always liked it cold. not New York winter cold, but something older, something with teeth in its breath as shadows coiled too close behind him when he biked home alone from Mike's house.
The same wrongness that had slithered through Hawkins' trees in '83; where walls pulsed like living things and darkness mouthed words only children were supposed to hear: "Will... Will... ours..."
He didn’t call Mike. Didn’t dial Jonathan’s number or reach for his mother. No, this time he knew better than to drag them into the dark ocean with him. Instead, Will crossed the room in three strides and ripped his shotgun from its hooks on the wall, the same one that had stared at him every morning since moving in.
He hadn't held a gun in years, not since vowing to live free of the shadows that clung to him from Hawkins. A promise to himself carved into the quiet morning routine of his Brooklyn apartment. But he hadn't forgotten what Hopper had said, back when he was still trying to find his bearings here in the city. And after all, life in NYC wasn't perfect just because he’d moved away from the nightmares. Still, he had promised Hopper that he would keep one in his apartment for safety, he saw the necessity of having access to it, drag is getting popular in New York, as is being lesbian or gay however that doesn’t always mean safe, just safer.
If Vecna was back? If something wore that name like a second skin while hunting through New York tunnels? Then it would find him first. not Mike clinging to sleep; not Robin laughing over coffee; not Max blinking awake beside Lucas as some shadow slithered closer.
No more graves carved from family.
The barrel felt heavy in his hands as he checked shells with mechanical precision: "You want me?" The thought seared through him hotter than fear ever could. "Then you come get me."
As the final shell slid home in the familiar click-and-lock cycle, Will felt a rush of déjà vu; back in the shed again, loading the first gun he'd ever held while the world outside groaned and twisted as some hellish painting came to life. No more. No one else had to suffer what he had. Not any of his friends; no new child who never had a chance to grow up.
He left the apartment just past midnight, plunging into the city's streets like a diver sinking into the ocean's dark. The air tasted of rain and rusted iron as he approached the entrance to the old subway tunnel; even New York's neon glow seemed to bend away from the gaping hole, leaving it drenched in moonlit shadow.
The moment he stepped into the tunnel, his body locked up, every muscle coiled like a spring. The air was wrong. Not just damp or stale, but heavy, as if pressed down by something unseen; metallic and sour with decay clinging to every brick wall. His breath came in shallow hitches. too loud, he scolded himself each exhale echoing back at him from too close behind.
And then? A flicker in his peripheral vision: shadow stretching where no light touched it; movement where there shouldn't be any.
Vecna had always been patient, followed calmly like a wolf chasing a deer. So why instead of watching and stalking is he already closing in?
Vecna had always been patient. A shadow in corners. A whisper at dusk. The kind of predator who let fear do half his work: watching, waiting for you to feel him coming before he ever struck.
But this? This was wrong.
His footsteps echoed too close behind Will now, not creeping from the darkness but closing in, fast as a blade sliding home between ribs; each step too precise for something not human anymore.
A laugh rasped from somewhere just over his shoulder:
"William... you forgot how we play."
He spun around, gun raised, but found nothing. No figure, no movement. just the cold air and the dark that seemed to watch him with an almost-hungry gaze.
Hallucinations. Paranoia. That was it. The last of the Upside Down was gone, Vecna was dead, his therapist had told him that the paranoia and hallucinations were normal, but he’s been taking the meds prescribed for him, and yet...
His scar was itching again, is he going insane?
He took a deep breath, trying to steady his shaking hands as he switched the safety off the gun. No more running. He is going to explore this tunnel and if there’s nothing? He can go back to his psychiatrist and get anti psychotics or whatever the hell they prescribe.
His hands shook as he raised the gun, sweat beading at his temples. The air reeked of something rotting.
not just decay but something worse, something alive. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying to understand what was real, but as soon as he opened his eyes, he noticed something along the wall.
Slime oozed from cracks in brick walls like veins bursting under skin; thick and glistening clear under flickering emergency lights before curdling into an iridescent sheen, the same sickly shimmer Hawkins’ trees had given off when they bled in ‘83.
No.
Will stumbled back a step. Too loud, too loud, have you learnt nothing William? His throat locked around one choked thought: It was back. Not just haunting him, but here now too? In New York? It doesn’t make sense, is it here for him? How many people have been killed here because of him? Vecna was right, he belonged there, not here.
The tunnel let out a low groan behind him; not metal settling...
But breathing, he jolts immediately and whips around his eyes searching for the slightest movement.
Just as before, raise your gun and shoot he thought, that was his mistake.
The thing lunged out of the dark without warning. too fast, too solid, and nothing like the creatures he remembered. No vines. No hive mind. No distant psychic echo he could latch onto. Completely blindsiding him, Will slammed into the tunnel wall, pain bursting across his ribs as the gun skidded across the concrete. His wide eyes look up to meet the glowing white eyes of this monster that looks human. The monster snarled: wet and furious and for the first time since he was twelve years old, Will realized something terrifying.
He couldn’t feel it.
No echo. No shadow. No sense of its shape in his mind. He couldn't feel it. A sudden, gut-wrenching absence, a vacuum where the familiar echo should have been. This thing wasn't from the Upside Down. This thing came from wherever nightmares were born, something dark, ancient, and utterly alien.
“G-Go away!" He gasped, stumbling backwards.
It wasn’t from the Upside Down.
"Go away!" he repeated, the same way Bob had taught him, the same way his therapist explained to do when he was hallucinating. Every muscle tensed for flight. But as he scrambled away, the creature lunged again, a blur of teeth and claws, closing that distance so quickly Will barely had time to blink. Pain flared across his cheek as razor-sharp nails just missed his left eye.
Will braced, expecting a killing blow, but instead, a shotgun blast shattered the tense silence. The sound was deafening from this close, echoing down the tunnel, and it threw back the creature as if the buckshot were hot lead through butter.
Will clamped his hands over his ears as the creature’s shriek split the air, higher than anything human, more like metal scraping bone. The second shot hit it square in its chest (or where a chest should’ve been), sending up another spray of blackened gore. By the time the third round punched through what was left? It didn’t dissolve so much as crumple. slumping into itself with wet cracks until all that remained was… this.
A pile too still to be natural; bones already bleaching pale under flickering light while silver bullets glinted among them like teeth bared from some predator below ground. Will scrambled back with a choked gasp, swiping wildly at his face as clear ooze dripped from his lashes. It burned: like acid on skin or maybe just the sheer wrongness of it crawling over him. His vision blurred in streaks; he could taste rust and rot in each ragged breath.
Get it off.
His fingers smeared worse across his cheeks before clawing at sleeves like they might peel away too if he tugged hard enough. The creature was gone: reduced to fragments, but its filth clung stubbornly as if laughing that even death couldn’t be escaped here cleanly.
A low drip sounded behind him where more gore slid down tunnel walls...
A heavy boot stepped into Will’s line of sight.
“You alive, kid?”
His vision cleared, heart thrumming, chest heaving, and he stared at the older man standing over him grizzled, flannel-clad, shotgun resting easy against his shoulder as it belonged there. His eyes were sharp but not unkind, scanning Will with the efficiency of someone who’d seen too many bodies to waste time pretending.
“I—” Will swallowed shakily. “Yeah. I think so.”
The man snorted. “Think so ain’t good enough in this line of work.”
“This line of—” Will pushed himself upright, wincing in pain. “What was that?”
The man studied him for a long moment, gaze lingering on the gun lying useless on the ground, the way Will’s hands still trembled like he’d fought something far worse than tonight.
“Not a damn thing you were prepared for,” he said finally before offering Will a hand. “Name’s Bobby Singer.”
Will froze.
For one heart-stopping second, it was the fall of 1984 all over again. the same gruff voice saying his name like an anchor in storm-wrecked seas. But no… not possible. Not when Hawkins had burned him raw with loss already. Not when it was wills own mind that led to bobs demise.
This Bob. this stranger studied him with those same sharp eyes that cut through bullshit but held kindness beneath; even his jawline was wrong somehow, too square where Will remembered softer angles under firelight years ago.
God is cruel.
A lump rose in his throat as he choked out:
"...Bob." Like a plea for proof or maybe just more pain disguised as hope.
Bobby exhaled through his nose, not quite pity, not quite relief. His grip stayed firm as he hauled Will up, calloused hands rough but warm in a way Hawkins’ winters had long since forgotten. “Come on kid, let’s get you home.”
"I thought it was… something else," Will muttered, still tasting blood and slime on his tongue.
Bobby just grunted; no platitudes or questions about what exactly he’d expected to find down here. They walked side by side toward the tunnel mouth where city light bled back into reality when suddenly, wills eyes caught something on the ground.
A small shoe lay half-buried in gravel.
Will stopped dead.
Not just any shoe: scuffed white sneaker with fraying laces; too big for a small child but unmistakably Mike Wheeler's. The same pair Mike wore every damn day of fifth grade when they’d first met at the swings
No.
Will staggered as if punched. That shoe shouldn’t be here. Mike shouldn’t be part of this nightmare creeping through New York tunnels.
But before he could lunge for it: before panic could drag him under again, Bobby hooked an arm across his shoulders, yanking him back against a chest too familiar, too safe, despite being from some stranger with the same name and rough hands that knew how to hold people together when they threatened to shatter.
"Come on kid," Bobby muttered, low enough that no echo carried it further than between them two alone; not gentle but firm, not lying either way either way: "...There ain't no savin' 'em." A confession wrapped in gravel-voice truth.
Will stutters out a breath and sighs leaning against the man, soaking up the comfort as if he were still that 12-year-old boy heaved out from the upside down, and not the twenty-year-old man he is today.
“A kid went missing,” Will said in a small tone, letting himself be guided as if a ship out at sea, as if Bobby was the first lighthouse that he could chase. “That’s why I came.”
Bobby stopped in his tracks, almost making Will stumble in his arms.
Will met his eyes, something old and raw tightening in his chest. “I survived something like this when I was a kid. I don’t—” His voice cracked, just slightly. “I don’t want anyone else to go through that.”
Bobby exhaled slowly, the sound tired and heavy. “You got no training, half an idea, and a whole lotta trauma.”
Will glances away. “I know.”
“Good,” Bobby said. “Means you’re honest.”
They stood there for a moment, city noise bleeding back in, life going on like monsters weren’t real.
Finally, Bobby jerked his head toward the stairs. “You wanna help save kids like the one you used to be?”
Will didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Bobby grunted. “Then you’re comin’ with me. First rule? We do this smart. Second rule? You don’t hunt alone.”
Will followed him up into the city, the night air cold against his skin, and for the first time since Hawkins, the path in front of him felt terrifyingly clear.
The world was still wrong.
And this time, he wasn’t going to survive it by accident, he wasn’t going to run and hide like he once did, he was going to learn to fight.