Work Text:
Will finds himself in Gable Ridge Road Base. Looking around, he sees the rest of the party and others aswell, all being surrounded by the military. He pushes his hands up, keeping quiet through all of the noise he had trouble understanding. But there’s one person his eyes weren’t seeing. Jane. Will quickly looks around, trying to find his sister.
“El?” he calls out, looking over to Lucas, who was right next to him, being pushed against one of the trucks. He looks where Lucas’ gaze is on. The gate. Jane was right infront of it. Looking at Will, ready to end her suffering. The cycle.
“No, no..” he blurts out. “El!” he calls out, about to run towards her, when two military guards catch him by the arms.
El stares back at her brother, as everyone’s gaze is now on her, they’re all calling out her name as she takes a long sigh, her breath shaking.
Will breaks out of the guards’ grip, about to fall onto the ground. But instead of falling onto the ground, he falls into a puddle of water, everything turning pitch black around him.
He looks up, seeing Jane walk up to him. He quickly stands up, running up to her. As he stops right infront of her, he begs her to listen.
“El, come on, please..” he says, his voice cracking. The tears in his eyes are now visible, as he tries to push them back. “Please, El, don’t do this.” his voice raises, with more visible cracks in it.
She just looks him in the eyes. She looked scared, so scared. But she took a deep breath, taking his hands into hers.
“El, please. I can’t lose my sister. I can’t lose you.” he cries out, tears staining his face and his voice continues to crack more.
“I’m so sorry, Will.” she says as he tightens his grip on her hands, seeing his tear stained face made her voice crack aswell.
She’s visibly shaking, looking unsure with the decision she’s about to make.
“Jane, I love you, please!” he chokes out, already crying. He can’t lose his sister.
“Tell Max that I wish we got to hangout more after she woke up. Tell Dustin that-“ she says as Will cuts her off.
“No. You’re not going anywhere. Look, we’ll- We’ll figure things out, okay? No one’s going to look for you anymore, we’ll keep you hidden! We’ll-“ he cries out as Jane is one that cuts him off with an unexpected hug.
He quickly hugs her back, with a grip so tight he could almost break her. “Please, don’t do this..” he says, as his tears stain her shirt.
Jane pulls away from the hug, looking into his eyes, holding his hands in hers. “I want to thank you, for everything.. You and Johnathan are the best brothers I could ever have.” her voice cracks. “Tell Joyce and Hopper that they were the best parents I could have, tell everyone that I love them with my whole heart.” she says, shedding a tear.
She takes a deep breath, as Will puts his hands on her shoulders. “Jane, no. Listen to me.”
“I’m sorry..” she says, looking at his tear stained face, shedding another tear. Just like that, she dissapears into thin air, as Will tries to grab onto her.
He then opens his eyes and is currently laying on his bed, covered in sweat, breathing heavily. Just another bad dream about a situation that’s been haunting him for months now. The loss of his sister.
He sits up, taking a deep breath. The sun shines through the window right into his eyes. He quickly averts his gaze, only to look at the bed beside his. Jane’s bed. The one that has been left untouched ever since they lost her.
The bed had purple bedsheets on it, Jane’s favorite color. With a beige plushie of a bunny with droopy ears sat on the bed. Joyce sewed it for her once, Jane loved that plushie.
Will quickly tries to push the thought of Jane away. He still wasn’t over her, he missed his beloved sister so much.
He slowly stands up, taking a slow breath once again. He looks over to his right, seeing his paint stand, with a canvas on it.
Right, he forgot. He goes to look up to the painting he started 2 weeks after Jane decided to end her life. He only sketched out the layout. The background was done, a very simple one: just a purple sky with simple clouds on it.
He sighs, only if she just chose to talk to anyone else but Mike, maybe.. Maybe she’d still be here. He looks at the sketch of her face, knowing that it doesn’t look like her at all.
Hell, whenever he tried to imagine her in his head, his mind would just go blank. Or it’s maybe like if he could imagine it, but when he wanted to focus on her features, it’s as if his vision got blurry and he couldn’t make her features out.
He looks over at the small table next to the painting stand, seeing the wooden palette he once laid multiple shades of purple on, the paint being dried for so long now. He looked over to his brushes, seeing the dried purple paint on them aswell.
He never even managed to wash the brushes. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. That day, after he finished painting the purple sky on the canvas, he couldn’t stop crying. It’s been three months now, and that painting was just rotting on the painting stand, waiting to be finished.
He takes a deep breath, deciding that he will finish it today. He grabs the brushes and goes into the kitchen to run them under warm water, watching the paint dissolve slowly, staining his fingers.
He’s pretty stressed out, what if he can’t manage to get her face right? No, he has to. Goddamnit, she’s his sister. And yet.. He can’t make her face out.
He started washing the brushes faster, in an attempt to let his anger out. He hated himself for this. He can’t even remember his sister’s face.
Joyce cuts him out of his thoughts by putting a hand on his shoulder “Hi, Will..” she puts on a genuine smile.
“Hi.” he quickly averts his gaze back at the brushes, trying to wash the rest of the paint off of them.
“..How’d you sleep?” Joyce asks, a hint of concern flashing in her gaze now, looking at her son, who’s visibly bothered by something.
“Fine.” he says, with a slightly annoyed tone in his voice, still washing the paint off.
“Will, what’s wrong, you seem-“ she asks, only to be cut off by him.
“It’s nothing, mom. Just please..” he says, raising his voice slightly at his mother.
Joyce forces a smile. “Okay.” she says and walks off to the living room, leaving Will to it.
When Will manages to get all of the dried up purple paint off, he grabs a small, beige cup and fills it up with clean water from the sink.
He quickly goes back into his room, feeling a bit guilty because oh earlier. He shouldn’t have talked to his mom like that, it was unfair. She’s just trying and he’s just.. He’s being so distant towards everyone all the time.
He tries to push those thoughts away now, wanting to solely focus on the painting of his sister, not his mom.
He pulls out the box of acrylic paint from under his bed, picking out some colors for Jane’s skin tone. He grabbed the red, yellow, burnt sienna and white paint tubes to mix the skin tone.
He also put burnt sienna on the corner of the color palette, the color he once blocked out her features with, only to get them all wrong.
He took a deep breath before picking up one of the paint brushes and dipping it in the brownish color, steadying himself before going on ahead to fix the face.
He closes his eyes, trying to remember Jane’s face, only to be met with no result. Everytime he tries to imagine her facial features, it’s like a light switch just flipped in his mind, and everything went pitch black.
He got mad at himself. Goddamnit, why can’t he remember his sister’s face, no matter how hard he tries?
Will takes a deep breath and just decides to go on with the flow and hope he’ll get her features right this time.
He starts blocking out the features again, measuring and making sure that everything is anatomically correct.
But it isn’t working out. First, he gets the lips wrong, making them way too plump, Jane didn’t have them this plump.. Whatever, he’ll fix that later.
Her nose.. He can’t remember. No, no.. It wasn’t this big. Was it small? Or.. even smaller? It’s all a blur now, god. It’s only been a few months and he can’t even remember his sister’s face.
He decides to just leave it this small, it’ll look better when he actually paints the face.
He blocks out the eyebrows aswell, avoiding the area that troubles him most when painting, drawing.. The eyes.
He thinks that he managed to block out her eyebrows pretty well, looking at the canvas.
The last feature remains.. The eyes. He’s been avoinding the eyes for a while now, being afraid to block them out.
Eyes have always been a problem for him, he just can’t seem to draw them right, no matter how hard he tries.
He takes a deep breath before going on to block out Jane’s eyes, his hands shaking a bit while doing so.
He managed to block them out somehow, but they looked nothing like Jane’s. He for sure didn’t know how her eyes looked like, it’s all a blur.. But they certainly did not look like this.
Maybe it’ll look better, once he actually paints them..? He thought to himself, unsure.
He stays still, looking at the canvas with a brush in his right hand. Will realizes that there’s no point of blocking the eyes out again, since it’ll become more messy than it already is now.
He then takes another brush, one that is a bit bigger than the one he used for blocking out the features. He dips it into the color he mixed for Jane’s skin tone.
He actually starts painting her face now, being heavily focused on it. Every paint stroke is done with extreme precision, since he’s afraid of messing up even the smallest thing.
He paints the lips, fixing them up a little bit, only for them to look strange. Did her lips look like this? He can’t remember.. Maybe it won’t be this noticeable when the whole face is finished.
He moves onto painting the nose, being careful with every paint stroke he makes. He managed to get her nose pretty much right. It looked a bit off, but it wasn’t terrible.
He then ignores how terrible the eyes look and starts painting the eyebrows, which managed to look okay.
He moves onto the last thing on the face, they eyes. The thing that he was distancing himself from. He starts painting the sclera, using faint blue and a little bit of faint red. It takes him a moment to remember the color of Jane’s eyes.
Were they green? No, that’s not right.. Maybe blue? No, that.. That was Vecna’s eye color. The only eyes that were permanently carved into Will’s mind ever since he was 12 years old, the only eyes he never forgot and never will.
He snapped back from that thought, not wanting to think about that. He was dead, there’s no way he’d get him now.. Not after everything.
He finally remembered. Her eyes were brown. Dark brown. He starts coloring her eyes dark brown, carefully shading them and polishing them off.
He adds eyelashes and the final touch to her eyes, the spark in her eyes that she had when Will showed her the paintings of his that he never showed to anyone but her.
He takes a step back, looking at the face he just painted. It didn’t look like his sister at all. Goddamnit, why can’t he remember?
Why is he this stupid that he can’t even remember how his sister’s face looked like, why does he have to be like this?
Will feels so.. useless. Ever since that day, it’s like he lost himself. Lost his artistic talent. It’s like he can’t even remember how to draw anything. All he can think about is that day and how he couldn’t save his sister.
Goddamnit, it’s been 4 months and he hasn’t pulled himself together. His childhood was gone, taken by a monster. A disgusting monster. And his sister.. She was gone too, forced to take her own life, because those monsters wouldn’t stop going after her.
“Focus, William, focus..” he thinks to himself, but the memories and everything were so strong. His breathing began being faster and more heavy, his body visibly shaking now.
The memories were overwhelming. The memories with Jane began to replay in his mind, but her face was so messed up. It was either blurry or incredibly messed up.
He shed a tear while breathing out a strangled, shaky breath. The memories coming in all flooded into his mind, especially that night they lost her. That was his sister taken away from him.
That sister that taught him so much. That sister that brought back his spark. That sister he understood so much and cared for so much. She was gone. She wasn’t returning, ever.
The emotions came in a big wave, and he burst into tears, not being able to stop them. He wiped his tears away, but it didn’t stop them from coming.
He looked at the painting of his sister through his tear-soaked eyes, not even being able to recognize that it’s her. He let out a loud sob and stormed over to his table and digged through his pencil case angrily, looking for scissors.
He almost ripped the scissors out of the pencil case and stormed back to the canvas. He let out a shaky breath, filled with raw emotion.
With one move, he pierced the scissors through the canvas angrily, letting out all of the emotions. The anger targetted at the people that had done her wrong. The anger targetted at Michael, who he truly despised through the love he felt for him, because he couldn’t convince Jane to stay.
Despite his nightmare, he’d convince her to stay. He would. Why didn’t she talk to him instead of Michael, or anyone else? Anyone else from the party would convince her to stay.
He looks at the large tear on the canvas he did with his scissors. But he didn’t stop right there.
He digged the scissors into the canvas once again. This time, the anger targetted towards him, for not being able to remember the face of his sister, after everything.
He ripped the whole canvas, paint staining the scissors and his hands. But he didn’t care. He wiped his tears with his paint-stained hands, wiping the paint onto his face.
He fell onto his knees, still gripping the scissors in his right hand. He decides to let them go, slowly letting them fall off to the ground.
He lets out a loud sob, his face covered in tears and paint of numerous colors. He’s so overwhelmed and emotionally unstable from all of this. It’s like he lost himself since that day.
While that day was considered victory for everyone, for defeating that Monster.. For Will, it was the day he lost his sister, and himself.
That day was gonna haunt Will for the rest of his life now, engraved into his mind.
Will let out numerous loud sobs, shaking on his knees. He cradles his face in his hands, tears staining his face and hands.
He then realizes, that there’s no point of trying to paint or draw anymore. Because the inner Will was now dead.
The two of them died that day, but only one of them stopped breathing. Oh, how he wished she’d take him with her.