Chapter Text
Prologue:
There was rage. For five years – although time works differently throughout the cosmos – there was rage in every corner of the galaxy. In the cold ocean of space, two things persist until acted upon – momentum, and vengeance. That was the battle cry of every buzzing particle that felt that burn as their one gateway to the last planet of life collapsed. Survival is usually an unfeeling thing. The big fish does not resent the smaller fish when it slithers out of its grasp, just the hungry feeling left in its wake.
But we do.
And we do not forgive easily.
********
Chapter 1: Flight or… well… flight.
Three years ago, Dustin thought he had entered the gates of heaven. The floors of MIT may as well have been marble, the gates made of gold, the way he felt like he was walking on cloud nine every time he hauled his briefcase – that’s right, backpacks are so high school – into the science building. Walking to his dorm, to the cafeteria. Being surrounded by nerds like himself day in and day out was like Christmas morning every single day.
For three years.
This year, it’s wearing off on him a bit. Dustin has begun to wonder if angels start to get bored of heaven, if they begin to hate white just because it’s everywhere. When his ex, Diane, had dropped out to go “find herself” in Northern Canada, Dustin had thought she was insane – like an angel leaping from the clouds to the shitty world below. Now, Dustin thinks Lucifer may have had it right.
Probably don’t think that so close to Easter, Dustin corrects himself as he shoves his textbook back in his bag. He was never going to study much anyways. The week before Spring Break always feels like a misty haze of “I can do this after the break.” Or during, since Dustin has remarkably little planned for next week.
Just more of this same building.
And his same apartment.
And his same part-time roommate who practically lives with his girlfriend now.
…he can’t stand it. In fact, suddenly, the thought of another week stuck at this school feels like suffocating. He’s sitting by himself in the stupid library, listening to some “study jazz” mixtape this hippie girl gave him in Linear Algebra, suffocating. He can’t take it anymore.
Dustin jolts up from the table, faster than he or the poor girl sitting next to him expect him to, and books it to the bus station. This will not be how he spends Spring Break: reading Stephen King, waiting to hear back about his acceptance into the accelerated master’s program. Sulking around, calling in to check every morning… holy shit, he needs a life.
And it’s not just that school is boring, although Dustin would never say that part out loud. It’s that life is boring. Every time he finds himself trapped in another three-hour lab session, his hands are secretly itching for something more than a calculator. A spear. A walkie-talkie with an urgent voice on the other end. And no, Dustin can’t admit that he misses it, because that urgent voice was someone who could die, and that spear was for killing literal alien monsters will a very real death count.
Some of those deaths he watched; some he actually held.
But it’s almost like that’s the problem – nobody needs him anymore. He can’t bark orders at people because “It’s urgent! There’s no time!” Instead, he has to patiently watch his lab partners parse the idea that a 1000% error is probably a sign that, yeah, you fucked something up.
“Holy shit.” Dustin mutters to himself as he thinks back on it. “I have to get out of here.”
Dustin is walking faster now, weaving through the now tapered out crowd of students who still have classes left before they go home for break. He probably looks furious, like he’s storming away in a huff from some undisclosed location. But he feels invigorated, because he finally has a plan to execute. If he can figure one out, that is.
He rolls through his rolodex of numbers, looking for partiers, wild cards, someone who would know how to make one week into more than just seven days of Fourier Transfers and comic books. Unfortunately, majoring in astrophysics hasn’t given him much “partier” exposure.
Then he finds it. And at the perfect time, a payphone as well.
Spring Break is going to be sick.
********
The alcohol in Spain is not different. Well, it is better, as in the wine is cheap and amazing and you don’t have to smuggle it around in a paper bag on your way back to the hotel. But it’s not different. The hangovers are so, painfully the same.
Will continues to grumble about this unfortunate truth as he peels himself off… the couch. There’s a perfectly good bed just three feet from him. Three feet too far apparently.
Will is, unfortunately, more familiar with blackouts than hangovers, purely because of the way he spent his first year at NYU Tisch. Before hangovers felt like the wrath of God and when Will was the worst lightweight he knew. If this happened then – and it happened a lot – Will would be freaking out, calling his small group of friends to ask exactly what life-ruining, humiliating thing he didn’t remember between getting in the cab and waking up in a trashed version of his shitty New York apartment.
It was, of course, never that serious. A couple creative dance moves, some names he doesn’t remember – he felt worse about not remembering the male names. Nothing insane or illegal. Well, nothing beyond the underage drinking part.
But right now, Will knows he has nothing to worry about. Not unless getting wine-drunk with his old roommate Margaret and watching some Spanish soap opera could get you in any serious trouble. It didn’t matter that they didn’t understand a word – it was just background noise for their last hurrah before they end their weeklong stay in Barcelona. Margaret’s flight was at 8:00 am, and it’s currently…
Oh shit. It’s noon.
“Fuck my life”, Will whispers quietly to the empty room. His ears are ringing, but that doesn’t stop him from stumbling to the closet to grab his suitcase. His suitcase which was fully packed and ready, until Will decided he absolutely had to show off the bracelet he got for Jonathan buried in the bottom. Now everything is scattered in a two-foot radius around his gutted bag.
There’s little time for folding, so all of Will’s belongings are getting shoved and squished with the frustration of a man who knows the night should have ended at the restaurant where it started.
The trip was so last-minute, you could almost call it an accident. Margaret had just finished her two-week run of some artsy play – Will should know the name, it was probably some verb that symbolized something deep and profound in a way he would never figure out, like “enter.” Even as an artist himself, he always felt like Margaret’s productions were both tacky and pretentious as hell. Which makes them awesome, he likes to think.
She called him the moment she got offstage and said “Will, we’re going to Spain.” And that’s exactly what they did, because what else are you going to do with the well-earned money you worked all summer for? Pay for school?
Maybe next time Will takes the semester off, it should be to work and not travel.
His head hurts. He’s already made note of that, but it feels like he can’t think about it enough. And his ears will not stop ringing. Will turns around to grab the last of his clothes.
The ringing doesn’t turn with him.
Oh. It’s the phone. The phone is ringing. Of course.
It’s been ringing for a while now, actually. Will darts across the full diagonal of the room to reach it before the caller gives up on him. He’s pretty sure he barely makes it in time.
“Hello?” Will tries to sound a little less hit by a bus than he feels.
“BYERS!” Will almost hangs up. Too loud. But the voice is familiar. “DUDE, I JUST HAD THE MOST AWESOME IDEA-”
“Dustin?”
“RIGHT, sorry.” The voice on the other end falls into a reasonable volume. “Yeah it’s me. I was thinking about doing something fun for Spring Break this year – y’know, for once – and then I realized I happen to know a super cool friend who lives in a super cool city and is taking a super cool semester off!”
Dustin emphasizes super cool like he’s trying to butter up a child before taking away their candy bar.
“I know it’s last minute, but I called and flights aren’t too bad right now, and I have all this money saved up from tutoring that one guy – y’know, the ‘how do I multiply exponents’ guy? I can-”
“How did you find this number?” Will doesn’t mean to be rude, but it’s not like anyone even knew he was in Spain. He didn’t want them to. For one week, Will wanted to be somewhere where nothing could follow him, which meant being AWOL for a little bit. The only person who knew where he was-
“Joyce said you called her from this number on Tuesday. Said you asked her to water your plants.”
Of course.
“Look, Dustin-”
“Please, I have nowhere else to go!”
Will knows he means this in an “I don’t wanna be stuck here,” way, but it comes across as “My family abandoned me on the streets and left me to die.”
This is exactly what Will didn’t want. Hawkins, haunting him everywhere he went. No peace of mind, no escape. But it’s Dustin. And Will already feels bad enough for hardly reaching out after he swore to stay in touch. That’s not to say he never calls his old party, it’s just that the distance between himself and the haunted graveyard that became of his hometown feels so… weightless. And maybe he wants to keep as much as he can.
The line is quiet for a moment.
“Will? Hello? Or should I say, Hola?”
“Okay.” Will finally exhales into the receiver. “Book the flight. I’ll meet you at the airport-”
“Tomorrow.” Dustin interrupts. “And I was hoping you’d say that, because it’s already been booked. Flight lands tomorrow 3:00pm New York time.”
Will’s flight lands around that time as well. Shit, he may not even make it home before seeing him.
Will’s flight. Oh shit-
“Ok great gottagobye-” Will hangs up. By the time he’s out the door, he’s practically flying already.
********
We’ve waited so long. Watched while we starved out, one by one, amidst gas giants and rocks and balls of gas. Watched the Earth turn, and turn, and turn. So green, so alive. Like a fruit tree sprouting in front of our eyes, we waited through the leaves and the flowers, through Spring and through Summer. But today, Autumn has arrived.
And we are so…so…
Hungry.
********
Max and Lucas have developed a routine. Max comes home to Lucas’s house – his parents sold it to him for a fraction of the buying price when they moved out to Tulsa -- around 5:30pm each day. She promptly removes her skirt and boots (she will never wear heels to work) in favor of some sweats. The television is always playing some after-school special, and Max likes to see what kids are watching nowadays, so she kicks her feet up and watches Batman and Robin run around in circles for an hour.
Lucas usually comes home around 6:45 – although, lately he’s been staying later and later at the new Ford manufacturing plant. Then, they cook dinner together and bitch about their shitty jobs all night long. Sometimes, they leave the TV on and tune in when some crime drama comes on the screen.
It’s a peaceful, gossip-filled routine. Max is fine with this.
Max… was fine with this.
It’s just that taking phone calls all day long at Mr. Wheeler’s office feels a little bit like clawing her eyes out. She’s grateful that Nancy even got her the job, but now she wishes she hadn’t felt obligated to take it. The way they speak to her, like she’s a robot there to take commands, or worse, like the word “woman” is invisibly written all over her forehead – not that they’d see it through the slightly overgrown bangs Vicky had begged Max to let her cut for her back in February.
But it was worth it, both for the paycheque she gets to spend at the hobby shop and the stories she has for her boyfriend at the end of every day.
Now, however, Lucas doesn’t talk shit the way he used to. He used to nod his head, sometimes giving a little “He did not!” and “You poor, mistreated puppy.” (Which Max knows is meant to be condescending, but the kiss he plants on her forehead when he says it nullifies the disrespect). Now, he always says the same, stupid thing:
“Don’t worry baby, someday you won’t have to do it anymore.”
Work, he means. Max won’t have to work.
It doesn’t make sense to her either. Max hates her job. She hates it so much she ran out of hatred for Mike and started joining him and Lucas for Mario night. She should want nothing more than to never work again.
But then she would have nothing left to bitch about. Nothing, but…
Children.
Max thinks about this as she watches Tom chase Jerry across her TV screen. She’s twenty-one now, but really, she still feels like a child herself. And it’s way too early to worry about things like that -- only it’s not. Because soon, Lucas is going to ask her to marry him. She doesn’t know when, and they haven’t spoken about it, but it’s coming. He’s going to ask her to be his stay-at-home mom.
And Max will say yes to marrying him. But she will not stay at home. And what if a no to one part of the question means no to all of it?
The door opens. It’s 8:30, and Lucas has just come home. Max doesn’t dwell on it.
“How was work?”
“Oh, terrible.”
She shoots him a smile. It’s almost real. “Perfect.”
The cycle continues.
********
“…and after everything he’d seen on his journey, he only learned one thing – to love, and to be loved, is something worth dying for. Again, and again.”
It’s been one week since Mike finished his last short story anthology. That first night was amazing, because, holy shit, he was finally done. He called Lucas the moment he mailed the final copy to his publisher, grabbed a six-pack at Steve’s Liquor Depot – of course he owns a liquor store now – and played Super Mario Bros with Max and Lucas until two in the morning. Days two and three felt similar, with the weight of this massive undertaking now off his chest. Finally, after a whole year hunched over his stupid typewriter.
Day seven, however, feels like he’s floated himself all the way off Everest, and now he has to climb back up again. And as he stares at the ceiling from his ever-shrinking childhood bed, it just feels impossible.
Mike gets like this. Nancy calls it the “Wheeler Woes,” because the two of them share a crippling need to be both busy and efficient. Which is great, until you’ve burned through all the things there are to busy yourself with, and now you’re stuck in your childhood bedroom surrounded by tokens of the loved ones who you no longer get to love.
Shit, Mike. Way to be a sap.
But it’s true. At first, when he started pinning up the letters and drawings, he justified it as “inspiration,” something to help fuel his stories and fill him up with the raw emotions to be refined and poured into his work. When he needed a tragedy, he would read El’s last letter, uncrumpled and dug out from Will’s old trash bin. When he needed joy, he listened to the mixtape Dustin mailed him to celebrate his first book deal.
It seems almost masochistic, purposefully dredging up the old memories just to make him feel something. But in all honesty, the emotions live so close to the surface that it doesn’t feel like digging anything up at all. More like selecting from a buffet of feelings sprawled out in front of him.
At first, that was the end of it. The mementos were just tools for the job.
But then he put up that painting – the one Will carried around like a security blanket for a week before gifting it to him in the van. There was no good reason for that, no easy emotion it would conjure. He doubts there will ever be a time he desperately needs a complicated mixture of grief, joy, and… something else he decidedly hasn’t named yet.
Something that makes him feel too small for the world.
It should be the things from El that evoke the most out of him. Every story seems to have a piece of her in them, like he’s keeping her alive every time he writes about love and beauty. And it does make him feel so much. Every time. Like fucking boulders on his chest. But it’s the drawings, the doodles of magical realms and knights and wizards, that complicate things. Because grieving the mystical girl of your dreams whom you loved with your entire heart is so cut and dry.
The whole picture painted across his bedroom walls is not. But it can be, as long as he never opens pandora’s box.
Will hasn’t called in three months. The box stays shut.
Mike isn’t just writing as of late, though. Since he graduated, he’s been taking over some shifts at the library. His mom says he “suits the place,” which Mike is certain is a dig at his new glasses, but he really does. It feels calm and unchanging, like a signal tower in a storm.
At Holly’s request, he’s arranged for a D&D night every Friday for the kids, and while they all wanted to DM for themselves at first, they eventually grew to love Mike’s storytelling prowess and practically begged him to join them in the library basement – which is where he’d be headed now, if he could just get up from his bed.
But something feels wrong. He can’t even explain it. It’s like if he gets off this bed, he’s going to see something he can’t unsee. Maybe a car accident, or another bird massacred by Mrs. Anderson’s cat.
Or maybe the calendar: March 20, 1992.
********
It turns out, sprinting down the long-ass corridor of an airport is a fantastic hangover cure. Will is gonna have to remember that for next time he finds himself running late for a flight he frankly couldn’t afford in the first place. The coffee the stewardess has so graciously placed before him doesn’t hurt either.
He leans thoughtfully against the glass, watching as the clouds make shapes beneath him. Cloud-gazing is so much cooler from above. If it were up to him, he’d never touch the earth again.
Will knows what he’s doing. Unlike his brother, or Nancy, or anyone else who left Hawkins, Will didn’t tell himself he was “onto bigger things” when he skipped town. He was, of course. The scholarship Tisch handed him was like a fucking moon landing level achievement. But that’s not why he moved – not why he has to keep moving. And while Will may be a coward, he’s not delusional, and he keeps that shred of dignity close to his chest every time he finds himself on another plane, bus, or railway.
It’s like he owes it to himself, the running away. Because twelve-year-old Will Byers didn’t get to run. But now he can. Like the fucking wind. The wind that’s keeping him 30,000ft in the air as of right now.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to take in the view much longer, because out of the blue, Will is knocked completely off his balance.
His hands dart to both sides of him in an attempt to remain stable. Or calm. Probably both. It’s just standard turbulence, nothing to freak out over. Just a change in vertical velocity that left him momentarily weightless.
But when Will looks over at the rest of the passengers, they all remain completely unbothered. As does the coffee on his tray, which should definitely have spilled at least a little with the impact.
Whatever, Will keeps his cool and shifts his shoulder blades together and back again, like he’s shrugging the disturbance off him. He reaches for the paper cup. It really shouldn’t throw him at all, it’s just that… well…
It’s just that it felt like-
Then it happens again, and this time, Will doesn’t stop falling. He's fixed in his seat, buckled in, but he’s falling, accelerating at a rate far greater than that of gravity. He can feel it in his stomach – the rollercoaster goosebumps trickling up from his shoulders to high up his neck. Will lifts his left hand to further assess the sensation.
And that’s when he starts moving through time.
He’s back in Hawkins. Back at the sauna, back at the cabin, back on the hill. He’s thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, feeling that cold, adrenaline-thick blood draining from his hands and feet. He’s watching people die. He’s begging people to live. He’s scattered across Hawkins in all different directions, watching himself being hunted.
Someone is trying to talk to him. A woman, he thinks. It’s hard to tell over the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, which roars over the grinding wrrrhhh of the airplane. If air is getting into his lungs, he wouldn’t know by the way his chest is being sucked inwards like a plastic water bottle on the wrong end of a vacuum.
This is what dying feels like. He knows the feeling all too well.
Will doesn’t know how long this lasts for, just that when he finally stops weightlessly crashing into his own memories, it’s because he’s crushed the coffee cup in his hand, and scalding hot water splatters across his chest and lap.
At least, it feels scalding.
Because He likes it cold.
Will can’t do anything but stare at nothing, sweat dripping down his back. The feeling passes – there’s nothing tugging at him anymore. But he remains utterly frozen.
Turns out, there really is nowhere to run. No airplane that can take you high enough.
Stupid. So stupid.