Chapter Text
When Mike woke up, his head was pounding. He blinked open his eyes, reaching up to rub at them with his knuckles when he realised his hands were tied. His head snapped up, his brain already thinking of how to get out of this situation, when he locked eyes with a face about four inches away from his. Mike reeled back from the bright brown eyes of… Jane? No, this wasn’t Jane, at least not his Jane, but she looked almost identical, the only difference being that her hair was shorter, only just down to her shoulders, whereas his Jane had grown it out after they killed Vecna, having no reason to keep it short.
“Guys!” Not-Jane shouted, “He’s awake.”
A gun cocked to his left. “Try anything, and I will shoot you.” Mike turned to the sound of the voice.
“Nancy!?” Okay, this just got weirder and weirder. What the hell was Nancy doing holding a gun to his head?
“Don’t. What have you done with Will, and why the hell do you look like my brother?”
“Will? Where is he? I didn’t do anything! Is he ok?” A million questions flew through his head at once. What happened to Will. If he needed help, why the hell was Mike tied up? And where the hell was his sword?
“I could ask you the same thing.” Not-Jane asked, and, oh he did not like that look. That was definitely not a look he wanted turned on him again, so he tried to calm down. All of his efforts were promptly ruined, however, when he walked into the room.
It’s like looking into a mirror. If that mirror looked like he hadn’t replaced his clothes in years. There were patches everywhere. His jeans, His jacket, only his shirt was safe from the white and red painted strips of fabric, quotes and symbols arranged everywhere and, scattered in between them were spikes, studs and all kinds of metal you could think of. It, honestly, looked quite good. On his shirt was a repetitive phrase, ‘The Clash’ written in red block letters and layered underneath a yellowish image of a man playing guitar and singing into a microphone. Underneath it read ‘Tour 1984’.
“What the fuck.” Mirror-Mike said, his face falling. “What. The. FUCK?!” He turned to Not-Jane and pointed at Mike. “El, who is that?”
“We don’t know, Mike, but he has to know something.”
“Something about what?” The red-head in the doorway asked.
“Holy shit, this could not get weirder. Max?” They ignored him.
“Something about where Will is.”
“You know where Will is?” Suddenly all eyes were on him.
“Oh sure, He’ll be here in few minutes I’m sure, and you should probably let me go before he gets here, because if you don’t, he’s gonna kick your fucking asses.”
An indecipherable look crossed the Mirror-Mike’s face, and he surged forwards towards Mike, causing him to flinch back violently. The chair they had him tied to rocks back onto two legs, and he tried to regain his balance when his doppelganger kicked the chair, causing it to lurch backwards and Mike’s head to slam into the floor.
A ringing erupted into his ears almost immediately and his vision went blank.
It stayed like that for a moment, before his vision coming back and his hearing not long after. Although he wishes it didn’t. The bickering that filled the room was almost as undesirable as listening to his father whinge. He laid there, letting an exasperated sigh out when another Lucas, yet again similar to his friend, walked into his view and crouched down next to him.
“What are you doing here, Paladin?” That word knocked his breath from his lungs. Maybe they aren’t so bad after all, they know what class he is at least, he thought.
Yet another retort was on the tip of his tongue, How many times do I have to tell you, I have no clue!, when he realised that he did know. He must’ve hit his head quite hard if it made him remember.
“Sit me up, Lucas.” Lucas wasn’t snappy or rude with Mike, so Mike would show the same respect back.
Once he was propped up, he explained what he remembered.
~+~
He had walked down into the basement, having been out all day with Jane and wanting to surprise Will, and he drew up short.
Will was casting.
Mike had leaned up against the wall as quietly as his armour would allow and watched, not wanting to distract him. He had always loved watching him cast, he looked so beautiful. The glow from the runes caught his hair in just the right way and gave the illusion of a halo. He looked even more angelic than usual. How on earth did Mike get so lucky?
Due to his daydream, he had leaned slightly too far, and clipped his shoulder plates on the corner of the wall, making a clanging sound. He flinched, closing his eyes and hoping he hadn’t put Will off his casting and caused him to mess up the spell or ruined the surprise, when he felt a sick lurch in his stomach. He opened his eyes quickly, still disorientated, and stumbled forwards in the new burst of light.
Two faces had stared confusedly at him, but they looked wrong. That wasn’t Jonathan. And that certainly wasn’t Jane.
“Is that… Mike? And why is he in a knight costume?” the Not-Jonathan had asked confusedly. Okay, something was seriously wrong here. Mike had drawn his sword and pointed it at Not-Jonathan. He tilted his chin up and puffed his chest out in his best intimidating stance. Just as he was about to ask what the hell was going on here, a heavy blunt object struck him in the side of his head, and he fell to the ground.
~+~
“Yeah, that was me,” Nancy quipped from the corner, and pointed over to where she had put the gun down on the bedside table. “Sorry, I guess.” She said it almost like a question.
“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” the other Mike asked.
“Why would I lie to you? I just wanna go home.” He really did. He did not want to spend another second here, especially knowing that Will could be in danger if his spell backfired. “Look, can you please untie me, my shoulders hurt.”
They all looked around at each other, debating whether he could be trusted, so he decided to call in the best thing he had to offer, his sword.
“If I fuck up, you can keep my sword. Paladin’s honour.” Hopefully his face conveyed his sincerity.
“Deal.” he recognised that voice.
No fucking way was Eddie Munson stood at the door.
“Eddie? Holy shit dude I haven’t seen you in years!” Mike beamed.
“Oh no, I’m not the Eddie you know, dude, but you have got a cool sword, one which I would very much like to keep should you break our trust.” Eddie turned to the others and vouched for him, “Paladin’s honour, guys. He won’t break that.”
“If he does, I’ll kill him.” the other Mike muttered, glaring daggers at him.
“Mike!” Not-Jane admonished him, moving to Mike’s hands and untying him. The pressure around his shoulder blades almost immediately eased when he could adjust his arms and stop stabbing himself with his armour. He rubbed his wrists and took the sword back from where Jonathan offered it to him. Mirror-Mike took two steps towards him, pointed his finger in his face and said, with no humour in his tone, “You are going to help us get Will back, or so help me God,”
Mike got the feeling he didn’t want to know the rest of that threat. He went cross-eyed, looking at the end of Mirror-Mike’s finger before making eye contact with him and nodding. He understood, probably better than everyone here, how worried Mirror-Mike was, and he wanted nothing more than to swap back with this universe's Will.
“Where’s Dustin?” Mike asked. “And Erica?” If the rest of the party was here, and Eddie too, then Dustin and Erica couldn’t be far.
“With Robin and Steve. They’re picking Vickie up and dropping her to the hospital.” Eddie said, but there was something off with him. Was it his teeth?
“Mike,” Max called, and both him and Mirror-Mike (God he really needed to figure out a shorter name for him, maybe just Wheeler?) responded.
“Okay, that’s gonna get on my nerves, from now on, knight Mike-”
Both Mike’s interjected with a slightly outraged “Paladin”, but Jonathan decided not to respond in favour of continuing.
“Paladin Mike, you are now just called Wheeler, and our Mike is Mike.”
“But-” Wheeler tried to cut in, but Jane’s hand snapped over his mouth, stopping him. Without thinking, he licked it.
A look of pure disgust came over her face, followed by a loud “Ewwwwww, Wheeler! Did you just lick my hand?!” He gave her a cheeky grin, and said nothing.
Max, however, cackled.
“Your face, El! Oh that was beautiful, I wish I had filmed it!”
Wheeler smiled.
“See, this Max is cool! My Max could stand to learn a thing or two from you. Not that she isn’t cool herself, but I’d never be caught dead saying that to her face.”
“Your Max? Oh this should be interesting,” Max leaned forwards.
“Lets move into the basement, there isn’t enough room in my bedroom for storytime.” Nancy suggested, grabbing Jonathan’s hand and near-pulling him from the room and down the stairs.
“My sister, ever the critical thinker,” Wheeler muttered under his breath, only Jane heard him and she giggled as they walked downstairs.
He entered the basement and Mike, still tense and with his arms folded, pointed to the sofa to indicate for him to sit. Not wanting to make an argument within his first few hours here, he sat. Everyone gathered around and waited, but it took Wheeler a minute to figure out what they wanted from him and by the time he realised, Steve, Robin and the kids had come back.
Steve stared at the armoured, longer haired version of his friend on the sofa for a total of about ten seconds, before loudly declaring that he doesn’t want to know and goes immediately to stand over by Eddie, leaning into him as if he can’t bear the thought of not being in contact with him, even in the smallest way.
“Well, Mike, you’re the storyteller, care to explain?” Robin urges and finally takes the pressure off Wheeler. The compliment smooths Mike out enough that he explains, albeit with a bitter tone of voice, as if he would rather Vecna himself be here instead of Wheeler.
“So, hold on, let me get this straight,” Robin said once Mike was done, “The armoured dude that is sitting on your basement sofa is you, and he’s…” She trailed off, staring at him blankly.
“Unfortunately so, and he’s from another dimension, as far as we know.” Mike responded.
“It would do you some good to tone down that animosity, Mike,” Wheeler shot a dirty look at Mike. Himself? Whatever, that wasn’t the point. The point was, his doppelganger was being a total bitch.
“Bit hypocritical, don’t you think, considering we are technically the same person?” Mike snapped back, waving his finger between the two of them to further his point and waiting for a response that Wheeler would not give him the satisfaction of receiving.
“But,” Erica interrupted, “how does that help us find Will? I mean, is he even in our dimension?”
“I can check.” Jane said. “If I can find him in my mind then he’s either here or in the Upside Down.”
“Wait, you guys still have that here?” Wheeler asked, shocked. Him and his party destroyed their Upside Down almost a year ago, but apparently this universe’s version of them had yet to do the same.
“...What?” Steve piped up from the corner.
“We destroyed our upside down last year.”
“So you know how? That’s great! You can teach us how.” Lucas beamed at Wheeler.
“Well, yes?” He said, but the uncertainty in his voice made Lucas pause. “Theoretically, but your Upside down might be different to ours. I would need my Will if I was to actually help you.”
“Well then I guess we just have to get you your Will.” Jane said from where she was standing by the stairs. “Come on, the cabin has a bathtub I can use to find them. If they are in this dimension, I’ll find them.”
~+~
Once they had all gotten to the cabin and caught Joyce and Hopper up, Jane stepped into the tub and set to looking for the Will’s.
The door closed, and an uneasy silence settled over the room. Not everyone was here, only Jonathan, Mike, Wheeler and the rest of the party had come along, but the silence became too much too fast even for them. They were all just as worried about their Will’s.
In an attempt to ease the nervous energy in the cabin, Max turned to Wheeler, and asked him about his universe. Desperate for something to fill the gaps and grateful for a topic he could talk about at length, he turned to her with a fragile smile and began to tell her.
“Well a few months before we destroyed the Upside Down, we were on a crawl, and a Demigorgon appeared out of nowhere. Will was midway through a complex spell, so he couldn’t help me kill it and could barely defend himself. The rest of the party were nowhere to be seen, so it was up to me to protect him. I thought we were goners. That is, until you showed up.” He pointed at Max, his storytelling getting more and more animated the further he got. The whole group was paying attention now, even Mike, never mind how begrudgingly it seemed, so Wheeler carried on, careful not to be too loud lest he distract Jane.
“My sword was trapped in the demo’s chest, I couldn’t pull it out without getting my face clawed off, and I was trying my best to keep it away from Will, but it wasn’t working. It raised its hand, ready to strike me when…” He paused for dramatic effect, raising his own hand in a poor imitation of the monster. It had been a while since he last told a story this exciting and, truth be told, he missed it. “A dagger came flying, lodging itself in the demo’s neck and throwing it off balance long enough for me to free my sword! Her red hair flew in my peripheral, and together me and Mad Max took out the demo.”
He smiled at Max, “You saved my life that day, and Will’s. Thank you.”
Max grinned and opened her mouth to speak but whatever she was about to say was cut off by the sudden opening of the tub door as Jane came out gasping for air, redirecting their attention to the task at hand. Dustin shot forwards to her side, brushing her soaking hair out of her face.
“El? Did you find them?” Mike asked, and Wheeler had quite possibly never needed an answer this badly in his life.
Still catching her breath, Jane nodded.
“They’re in the woods.”
~+~
Will’s ears were ringing like they used to when Lonnie would shout at him and Jonathan when he was a kid, and something solid and rough was pressed against his back. He opened his eyes and, for a brief moment, thought he saw his own D&D character sitting opposite to him. Clearly, he’d hit his head, so he sat up straighter, rubbing the back of his skull and blinking away the bright spots of light that were flaring up in his vision.
He opened his eyes and, for some reason, the purple-robed Cleric was still sitting in front of him, looking just as disorientated as Will.
Ok, so he definitely wasn’t hallucinating, but stranger things have happened, right? His own D&D character sitting six feet from him really wasn’t that unheard of considering the fact that mere months ago he rode in the back of a pizza van with his brother and Argyle, who was absolutely baked, mind you, to save his sister who has magic powers. Still, he rubbed his eyes to check that the duplicate was still there.
Clambering to his feet, he slowly made his way to the other side of the clearing, stopping next to WIll The Wise and shaking his shoulder to wake him.
In hindsight, he probably should’ve expected the punch that his doppelganger threw.
Will hits his back, the ghost of a fist still present on his cheekbone as he hears the other Will scrabble to get to his feet and away from him. Will let out a groan before easing himself onto his elbows and arching an eyebrow at the boy who just hit him.
The issue was, he could barely see Will The Wise with the massive staff in his face. Will pushed himself back and slowly got to his feet, hands raised like he was soothing a cornered animal.
“Hey, hey, it’s ok, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Who the hell are you?” The other Will asked, straight-backed and defiant, but he couldn’t completely hide the shake in his voice.
“I’m…you.” Will said, resigned, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I think, at least. Or rather, you’re me. My D&D character at least. Will The Wise, right?” That’s gonna get old fast, he thought, making a mental note to figure out a different, shorter name to call his doppelganger.
The other boy blanched.
“What?”
“Look, I’m not too sure, but from my point of view,” Will took a second to think and find any sort of reasonable explanation for this, came up with nothing, and switched to less reasonable ideas. “Maybe, you’re from some other dimension?” He shrugged his shoulders, hoping to convey that he really had no clue how either of them ended up here.
“Ok, so you expect me to believe that I, oh I don’t know, figured out interdimensional space travel?!” The other boy lowered his staff and waved his free hand around to accentuate how little sense that made.
“Look, I don’t know, but weirder things have happened to me so, honestly, this could be much worse.”
“Worse?! How could this possibly be worse?” He raised his eyebrows in pure horror. “I am in some random dimension, with some random kid, who looks just like me, and no way out!”
“Well you could be stuck in the Upside Down, so count your blessings. Hey, is your last name still Byers?”
“Yes?” Perfect, that cleared up Will’s name crisis. ”How is my name your biggest concern right now?”
“It’s not. Look, I know these woods, the school isn’t too far from here and we can get to Mike’s house from there.”
“No. We can’t leave the woods just yet.” A sudden and concerning wave of fear washed over Byers’ face for a split second before being replaced by that calm expression that he has worn like a mask since Will first woke him up.
It was unnoticeable before, but now that Will had seen him with a different expression, the blank look was unnerving, like Byers was an unfeeling thing, when, if he was anything like Will, then he likely felt things so strongly that it nearly killed him. His eyebrows, furrowed only two seconds ago, were now smooth and relaxed and framing brown eyes, glazed over as if Byers was intentionally not showing any emotion at all.
Will broke the silence when he saw Byers swallow harshly, presumably at the lapse in his calm facade.
“Why?” Byers' eyes slid back to his as he raised one eyebrow in question. “Why can’t we leave the woods?” Will clarified.
“Because Mike was with me when the spell went wrong.”
Will’s face fell. There was a second Mike here. How was he supposed to hide his feelings if he would be around Mike twice as much? And, even worse, this second Mike could be in danger!
All thoughts of Mike were promptly swept from Will’s mind, however, when Byers’ words caught up to him.
“Wait, spell? What spell?”
“Last I remember, I was casting before I woke up in your woods. Mike must’ve been watching me, I heard his armour clank and got distracted. That’s why I messed up the spell. And now I’ve put us both in danger by transporting us to some random universe and I have no idea where he is!” Despite his best efforts, Will could still hear the panic in Byers’ voice,
“I mean, do you guys still have the Upside Down here? What if he’s in your Upside Down?” Hysteria was slowly creeping into Byers’ expression, and Will knew he only had a few moments to calm him down.
“Hey, hey Byers, it’s ok. Chances are, he just swapped with me. He’s not in the Upside Down, he’s probably just at the Wheelers’ with the others. He’s safest out of everyone in Hawkins, man.” Will said in a soothing tone.
“Swapped with you?” Byers questioned, his curiosity and confusion winning out over his sheer worry. “What do you mean, ‘swapped with you’?”
“Oh.” Byers didn’t know. “Well, before we woke up here in the woods, I was in Nancy’s room with her and Jonathan.”
They were talking about whether or not the crawls would amount to anything or they were just going to keep turning stones and coming up empty-handed when he felt a sharp tug behind his eyes and a bright white flash clouded his vision, then he woke up with a pounding headache and a ringing in his ears, propped against a tree in the woods behind his school.
“Oh. Okay, so he’s fine then.” Byers said, visibly relieved.
“Yeah, so we just get to the Wheelers’ house, find your Mike and you cast the spell to get you home.” Will says, already turning to head out of the woods.
Byers stayed silent, but Will could hear his footsteps following behind him so he assumed his lack of talkativeness was because he was still worried about his Mike.
After a few minutes, the silence only filled by Will’s warnings of low hanging branches or roots poking out from the underbrush, with no response from Byers other than a muffled grunt of assent every time he registered the warnings, Will couldn’t take it anymore.
“If he isn’t there, El will be able to find him. She can find anyone as long as she has something of theirs or knows what they look like, so, assuming he looks like our Mike, she can find him. Even if he’s in the Upside Down she’ll be able to find him.” He said over his shoulder.
“Not sure how you expect him to survive in the Upside Down alone, even with his sword.”
That brought Will up short. He turned on his heel, locking eyes with Byers, his eyebrows almost merging with his hair from shock.
“How old is your Mike, exactly? Because I survived in the Upside Down for a week when I was twelve, and I didn’t have any weapons, so unless your Mike is five, I think he’s gonna be ok for a few hours.”
“Well- hold on, you did what?” Byers’ mouth went slack.
“Not exactly a time I relish in remembering, but I got taken by a demigorgon; I only survived for that long because I hid in Castle Byers until Hopper found me, but still.” He waved his hands as if to emphasise his point. He never used to talk with his hands when he was a kid, but he picked the habit up from Mike when he was thirteen. “Wait, did that not happen to you?” Will did a double take from where his gaze had fallen to the side, not wanting to see the sympathy on Byers’ face for Zombie Boy.
“No.” He blinked at Will, an undecipherable look on his face, before jerking his chin to tell him to keep walking. “When Mike found Jane in the woods, she told us about the gate and asked us for help. None of us have ever been in the Upside Down alone besides Hopper before.”
“Well, I still disappeared out of thin air, I’m sure Nancy and Jonathan have asked El to see if she can find me.” Will gestured over his shoulder,hoping to give off a blase attitude, but really, he wasn’t sure if Jonathan would think to go to El for help or if he would panic and try to find him on his own. He’d like to think his brother is smarter than that, but he’s always worried slightly more than was necessary about Will.
The two boys kept walking, this time in far more comfortable silence, until they were no more than five minutes from the edge of the forest. It was there that Will heard the voice of the absolute worst person to run into when traveling with a purple-clad boy whose outfit was adorned with gold stars and who looked near-identical to him.
Andy Harper stood at five foot ten and, from what Lucas had told the party, a phenomenal basketball player. He was also a massive prick. He had a reputation among the freaks and nerds in Hawkins as a bully, someone to steer clear of at all costs, unless you want to walk away with a bloody nose at the very least. He was quite possibly the worst person for certified chief freak William Byers, a status that was sure to come with the nickname Zombie Boy, to run into when walking around with someone who looked Identical to him.
And yet, here he was. Smoking a cigarette and sharing a bottle of Jack with one of the girls he and Chance had befriended.
Will rushed backwards, pinning both him and Byers to a nearby tree just out of view of Harper and the girl he was with. Surely she was a cheerleader, but Will couldn’t put a name to her face. He was thinking of a way to sneak past when he paused. Andy had tormented all four of them for years, but specifically Dustin when he refused to end Hellfire despite Eddie’s pestering; the town still thought Eddie a Satanic butcher and Hellfire his cult following, so they didn’t take too kindly to Dustin’s adamant refusal to shut it down. More often than not, he would show up at Mike’s or, more recently, the WSQK, bruised and broken from yet another one of Andy’s ambushes and one of the others had had to patch him up.
Now, Will had an opportunity to give him a taste of his own medicine. Despite what it may seem, he was fairly strong, a byproduct of waves of cold fear pushing him hard enough to make sure he could defend himself weaponless if necessary, and Andy wouldn’t be expecting it. Plus, if things turned sour, he had a cleric to back him up.
He turned to Byers, who had a questioning look on his face but luckily followed Will’s lead and stayed silent and hidden. Will signalled for him to stay put, then slipped around the tree, making his way towards Andy. The girl was facing where Will had come from, so she saw him and raised an eyebrow, not scared at his presence, simply confused. This gesture, however, caused Andy to turn around.
Right into Will’s fist.
The crunch that sounded was near-sickening, but reminders of how it had been Andy’s fist on Dustin’s jaw only weeks before kept the hits coming. The girl turned tail and ran almost immediately, booking it into the woods and turning to the main road, presumably to head home, but if she decided to report it to the cops, which Will doubted she would, then he’d just play the ‘step-son of the chief’ card and get out of it. Andy deserved every punch Will threw.
Harper gave as good as he got, though, and Will was thrown against a tree, his head slammed backwards with the force and a few punches landing square on his nose, and the crack that echoed around the clearing told Will that his nose was broken, even if he couldn’t feel it due to the adrenaline flowing through his veins. He just hoped Byers would stay put.
Will had enough wits about him to raise his knee in between Andy’s legs, and the way he shifted backwards off of Will and hunched forwards told him that he’d hit his mark. Will grabbed the hair on the back of Andy’s head and slammed his face into his knee.
Then he did it again.
And again.
And again, just for good luck.
When he let go, Andy was limp and he fell forwards, onto his front. Will hefted him over onto his back to look at his handiwork, and was met with a bruised and bloody face. Andy;s eye was sure to be swollen for a week at least, but he wouldn’t snitch. Losing a fight to Zombie Boy was hardly something he’d want anyone knowing, so if he kept his mouth shut, so would Will.
He looked back over his shoulder, locking eyes with a slack-jawed Byers and smiling, wincing slightly at the lick of flames that moved through his face from his nose.
“We should get going.” Will jerked his head over his shoulder at the road to the school, before pausing and looking back at Andy.
“On second thoughts,” he said, crouching down and taking Andy’s letter jacket from his limp form, before urging Byers over. “You can’t go into town like that, help me get him out of his jeans and you can put them on.”
“You’re kidding.”
Will looked at him, deadpan. “Do I look like I’m joking to you?”
Five minutes later, Will and his doppelganger walked out of the woods, no purple robes in sight.