Chapter Text
He thinks death comes for him somewhere among the rotting wood of Castle Byers.
It's vivid. Death is a girl in a pink dress and no shoes. Death is a girl with hair shorter than Will's. She comes to him, where he's curled up in the cooling embers of his own warmth, soaked through to his very bones. Will, her voice is small and distant.
Am I going, now? he thinks he might ask her. But she doesn't answer him— maybe death doesn't answer people when they die. Maybe death doesn't hear them at all.
Your mom is coming for you, she whispers, and maybe death is a little cruel, too, to make promises that aren't real.
Something growls outside, and death vanishes like watercolor paint, like an entire ocean of water is spilled onto her. It's enough to make him lurch upright, for the cold air in his lungs to sharpen everything into focus. For him to finger the freezing metal of the rifle, for him to pick it up when the barely-there wood-stick wall splits down the middle, for him to fire it into the monster's mouth when it screams at him. It's enough for him to run, to climb, to jump, and it's enough to make him think no, no, I'm not ready yet when he falls.
This, death-or-not-death-but-maybe-dying, is all he remembers when his eyes slide open like crystallizing honey in a hospital bed. It's all he remembers, for a long time.
They've given the monster that took him a name: demogorgon. They've named the place it took him: the Upside Down. He doesn't tell them about any of it, about anything he remembers, about anything he doesn't.
He doesn't tell them this, either: there is something wrong inside of him. There is something gone, and something else in its place. There is something so, so wrong.
Death is a girl named Eleven, and Will immediately feels guilty about it— she's not death, not at all. He doesn't meet her until long, long after he's gotten back home, her existence in his memory a static image of washed-out pink and pale, dirty fingers. When he does, it clicks that Eleven-El is a girl and she's alive, and he sees his own eyes mirrored back at him; dark, with the shape of a faceless monster in her pupils, with the stringy viscera of that place in her irises. He looks at her and thinks she understands, thinks he understands her, too, a little.
They don't talk to each other very much. Mike steals her away while the sun burns bright in the sky and Will stays out after dark less and less. But when he does see her, there's never much of a need for words, anyway. He'll look at her, and she'll look at him, and he thinks they're both saying I know.
Before he meets El, he wonders if he's going to see her again, as a shadow the size of a mountain eats away at him from the inside.
Will doesn't remember much from this time, either. He remembers being cold, then too hot, and not knowing where his limbs began or where the shadow's ended. But he remembers something else, too.
He's standing in the depths of a valley, and everything's amber. It's not red, not blue, but amber, like light reaching through smoke. It's amber like dawn, like a hill after a fire. The shadow crawls across the horizon, and it's mythical. It's not coming for him, he knows, like he knows his own name, because this is it. It's inside him, he's inside of it, it's already woven them together— this is the very simple and neat thing buried behind all those layers of flesh and cold and uncertainty.
Should I stay, he hums to himself, not quite sure why. Or should I go?
"Go," comes from the earth or maybe the air, from somewhere that is not him. It's not the shadow, either, because it doesn't feel cold, not how it likes to exist. His feet sink into the ground, soft and dry, limbo. He thinks if he turns around, he'll see someone behind him.
"Where do I go?" he whispers.
"Back."
So he does, because he thinks he can hear music, or the chime of a clock; can hear someone far away saying something he thinks sounds right, or real. He goes back, and it's to darkness, further from that singularity. And he understands what's going on, then, as his fingers twitch and Mike's voice goes I asked you to be my friend, it was the best thing I've ever done, and he watches a kaleidoscope of pathways and single-minded creatures— he knows what they need to do, and he forces his hand to move, echoes the same thought over and over and over.
Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate.
Won't you die if the gate closes? the thought blooms somewhere in between. He pushes it to pass.
Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate.
Where is she, he finds himself wondering.
Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate.
He searches for death in the darkness, because surely she'll come for him again.
Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate.
He's tired.
Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate. Close gate.
And it hurts, when they burn it out of him. It hurts like he's burning alive, and maybe he is. Cut open and cauterized in the same moment, over and over, the shadow leaves gouge-marks on its way out. It tears, somewhere inside of him, and things— pictures, flashes of movement, bone-white walls, sun-white light, things that don't make any sense —flow by in their own undertow, until the writhing of his limbs belongs wholly to him.
His mom is sobbing. She holds him, and he feels his pulse in his fingertips, feels it everywhere, feels it drum on his side where it stings like lightning. "Oh, Will," his mom breathes, hands cradling his face. "I love you." He feels the weight of his bones, the weight of his skull as it rolls to the side. He feels hollow, gutted, split into fifty-thousand different pieces scattered all over the floor and in the air and out the door. He's so tired.
He should be relieved. He is, he is relieved, how couldn't he be?
But, above all else, Will is afraid. I want it to be over, he'd wished, in a ruined mirror of his own home, in his real home watching green slip down the sink drain, out in the field screaming go away, out in the forgotten crevices of his own mind— I want it to be over. And he doesn't know if it's over, because there's still ice leaving a thin layer of frost over his ribs, and it's terrible and he wants it gone and he doesn't have the motion left in him to cry. But his mom is here, and Jonathan is, too, and they're warm, and he curls his fingers into Jonathan's hand.
It all feels distant. Foggy. I want it to be over, wishes the boy trapped on the edge of a dream.
He's stuck, as the world moves on without him.
What they don't tell you about being possessed, what they don't tell you about coming back to life, is that you are not infinite, and what is taken is never returned. They don't tell you that time is something that can be taken, either, or that it can be warped and out of order and collapsed into fast, split-second clips.
Half of him is still laying on the ground in Castle Byers, or on the cracked floor of the library. A fourth of him is still standing in an amber valley. The fourth that's left wants to be stuck somewhere, too, so it picks Mike Wheeler's basement and tries to reproduce the warmth that once came from a tabletop.
The world moves on, and Will watches it goes by.
It's not my fault you don't like girls, Mike tells him in one pass-by flash. The fourth of Will standing in an amber valley watches the shadow with remorse; the voice that once told him to go, to go back, it whispers, "What did you expect?" It whispers, "They don't understand people like us." And he feels his knees and teeth rattle in the cold.
Will stares at Mike, not in an amber valley, and walks out into the pouring rain. He doesn't particularly care what Mike has to say, after. The road shimmers, wet and slick, but he doesn't fall as his bike tires cut a wake through the ground.
He goes home and he grabs an axe and he takes it right to Castle Byers. He imagines himself, a year or two younger, curled up inside. Time seems to slip, again, as he watches an image of himself, fingers trembling as they hold up a rifle. He watches himself, hair damp and clumped on his forehead, plastered to the skin beside his ears. Will blinks and he's looking at a rain-soaked curtain, back in what he thinks should be the present, one that isn't rotting. There's no boy behind that curtain. He swings.
It falls, extremely easily and with very little force. He swings again, and again, and again, again— he wonders if this is what the demogorgon felt like, when it ripped open the abdomen of Castle Byers to tear him out. He drops the axe, somewhere in the mud, and looks at the open cavity. His chest throbs, like the heart in it is too big and demanding for what it's been given. He looks at the things inside the cavity; the dusty lights, the blanket, the photos. Something hurt, dark, and ugly bubbles up from the bottom of his stomach. It crawls its way up out of his throat and he sobs.
"So— stupid," he cries, wet fingers crumpling the picture in front of him, the snapshot of the four of them, happy and young and stupid.
It is stupid, isn't it? the voice in the amber valley sighs, but he's not in the amber valley. He's in the forest, on the ground, and the chill that creeps up his spine has nothing to do with the rain. The hairs on his neck raise, like a warning. He isn't quite sure what they're warning him of.
He opens his mouth, to answer, to ask the voice, maybe—
"Will—!"
He won't answer, then. The cold, the cold, the cold, it's everywhere. He feels it, feels the shadow in the valley, and he knew, he knew it wouldn't be over.
I want it to be over. He turns around, hand sheltering his neck from the cold. "He's back," he hears himself say, and everything else seems to matter just a little less.
They move to California and he barely knows El. Understands her, in the simplest of ways, but does not know her. He doesn't know her favorite color, or what her favorite song is. He doesn't know if she has any hobbies she enjoys, or whether she prefers summer to winter.
"I am your sister now," she tells him on the doorstep matter-of-factly, Upside-Down-irises soft and warm, and he feels a smile sprout on his face.
When they're in Lenora Hills, house different and bigger and newer, Will helps her decorate her room. She helps him decorate his. He gets them matching flower pots, a green sprout in each, and she cradles it in her palms like if she squeezes too hard it'll break.
It's warm in California, and Jonathan grows out his hair. The sun bakes their living room in the afternoon, and Will likes to lay in the heat. His mom makes the three of them spaghetti and meatballs on Fridays and El always tries to get her entire serving wrapped around a single fork.
Mike stops writing to Will, and Will lets this particular hurt pass, just as anything else. Mike stops calling, too, and Will gets to hear him in fractions when his voice gets loud on the phone with El. It's… fine. Will understands. Will understood when Mike said did you think we were gonna sit in my basement and play games all day and it's not my fault you don't like girls and— Will understands now, too. He'll always understand.
You were so easy to break.
El draws him a picture— Will, her, Jonathan, mom, and Hopper. It's a bare-bones drawing, and they're standing outside of the house, holding hands. "Will you teach me how to draw?" she asks him, nervous, and he gently takes the drawing from her proffered hands.
"Of course I can," he says quietly, thumb brushing over the texture of colored pencil on paper. "This is already amazing, El," he tells her, and he means it in absolute honesty. Mike, Dustin, Lucas— they never draw. They've never enjoyed it, not like Will. But El, he sees some part of him, reflected back, that yearns to create something. She smiles at him, and she's beaming, brilliant.
So Will learns El, and El learns Will, and—
Stop it. Get out of my head. Stop.
Death might be here for Will Byers, again. This time, it is formless. This time, it sidles up right alongside his heart, and it asks him, in an approximation of a language that does not contain words, do you give up?
Do I give up?
You were so easy to break.
I had all the answers.
Do I give up?
If death did not take him before, why should it now? He’s not ready. He still has more left to give. He still has more left to give to people who can’t be ready yet, either. Mike's eyes are peeled wide open, afraid, staring up at a face that does not belong to Will, and Lucas is bleeding on the ground, and Robin's back is to a totaled truck— no, no, no.
I had all the answers.
This world has no place for minds like yours.
I had all the answers.
I want it to be over, once wished the boy trapped on the edge of a dream.
Do you want to be my friend? Mike Wheeler asks him on the swingset.
Castle Byers, says Jonathan. All friends welcome. You better always let me in, because I'll always be your friend.
This is beautiful, honey, his mom smiles, his drawing held gently in her hands.
Look, this is a twenty-sided dice, Mike grabs his hand and places something heavy and warm in his palm.
I love you, once thought the boy who was different, to people who he knew would love him in return.
He wishes for everything to stop—
—and it does, because he wants it to. And he wants these things— the demogorgons —gone, and he brings his arms down and their bones crunch. He snaps them, like the demogorgon did to the walls of Castle Byers while he withered away inside. It's easy. It's so goddamn easy.
And they're gone, and Vecna is gone, and suddenly he's on his knees. He feels so, so viscerally alive. He feels like himself.
Hands. Hands shaking his shoulders. He's still kneeling. The cold still lingers, on the back of his neck, and it's displeased— Vecna is displeased, and goosebumps rise in a wave on his arms. He finds he isn't particularly afraid of them.
"Will? Will, come on, please, say something—" Mike's rambling by his ear, clutching onto him like a fishing line.
"Mike," he makes his lips say, because saying Mike's name is as natural as breathing.
Mike's looking at him with wonder-slackened lips, and Will's looking back, couldn't look away even if he wanted to. And damn Mike, for being a black hole, for drawing Will in and never once letting go, even when it'd felt like he did, when it'd hurt. When he'd hollowed a space out for himself in Will— a space that Will had maybe let him carve —and left it empty.
But that doesn't really matter now, Will thinks. Will is himself, regardless of what hollow, half-cracked framework he's made of.
"Hey," Mike says, barely above a whisper, hands sliding from Will's shoulders, up, cradling the edges of his jaw in his palms. His hands are wet, smooth, warm, and his fingers tangle a little in Will's hair. A car's on fire behind him, and Will swallows, the movement of his throat sliding against Mike's pinkies.
"Hey," he answers, because what else should he say?
"You saved me," Mike's eyes are dark, glittering tourmaline. "You saved me."
Will huffs, and then he's laughing, a bit, because it all feels so bizarre. And Mike's lips quirk up, pushing at his cheeks; Will watches him exhale.
"How did you..?" Mike trails off, head briefly tilting back in the direction of the demogorgon.
Will isn't sure how to explain it, something so deeply internal and discordant. "I knew… it's kind of like you said, before," he says. "It was in me, and I saw things, and I just— knew it, then. I wanted it to stop, and it did this time." Mike's fingers tighten a bit at the sides of his face, and Will lets his head go lax in them. He feels a little tired, but he's… fine. He's felt worse after falling off his bike.
Gravel crunches behind him. "Will?" his mom says.
He leans back, and for a second Mike's hands don't loosen, like he doesn't want to let Will go. But then he does, and Will's looking at his mom, her face so relieved. "Oh, baby," she smiles, and she joins them right there on the ground, pulling him close in a hug. In this moment, there is no demogorgon carcass thirty feet away. There are no dead soldiers on the ground, there is no fire, there is no gaping wound to an alternate dimension bleeding red into the air. There is just this: Will, Mike, and his mom, clutching each other on the gravel, and Will is filled with so much love.
They go back to the Squawk. There's no one left to stop them as they quietly slip out past the metal gate, missing every child they'd intended to save.
"I can find out where they are," he tells his mom and Mike as they stumble down the road, every other street lamp burnt out.
"The kids?" his mom asks, and he nods.
"If I get close enough, I think I can— sense it. See them," he chews on his lip. "Once everyone's back I can explain it more."
Mike's hand squeezes his shoulder, out of nowhere, and Will jolts. His head twists around, and Mike's brows are furrowed. Are you okay? he mouths, and Will nods faster than he's ever nodded in his life, whipping his head back around. Mike doesn't do that anymore. He doesn't touch Will, not like this, not since the shadow crawled into his head and took up residence.
It's strange, is all. It makes Will feel both lighter on his feet and weighed down on his shoulders. It's fine, it's whatever, it doesn't matter. He puts one foot in front of the other.
Lucas is already there when they make it down to the basement. Will recognizes the long gash on his chest, oozing and red, and he grips Lucas gently by the shoulders. "You're okay," he breathes, and Lucas grins shakily, forehead shiny with sweat.
"Will, you won't believe this," he says, equally as breathless, eyes bright. "I swear, I was about to die, there was a demogorgon about to end me. But it just— it stopped, and then it, it started floating, and it— it—"
"Its bones all crumpled like paper and it died," Mike finishes, having materialized next to Will.
Lucas raises a brow. "Shit," he says, "that happen to you, too?"
Mike huffs. "Yeah. But— I'm fine, we're fine. Will saved us."
Lucas gapes for a moment, and his eyes slide between Mike and Will like he can't quite figure out if they're fucking with him or not. Will resists the urge to shrink into himself, to hide in his own skin. "What do you mean?" Lucas asks.
"I—" Will starts. "I did that. I overrode the hivemind, I think?"
"I told you, you're a sorcerer," Mike says.
"Shit," Lucas exhales, and he crushes Will into his still bleeding chest, idiot— "That was so creepy. Thank you for saving me, thank you—"
"I always will," he says quietly, past the lump in his throat, and Lucas holds him tighter.
Will pulls away, glancing down at his own shirt, where there's a dark line— Lucas's blood. "You need to get that treated. Like, twenty minutes ago."
Lucas huffs. "I was kind of running like my life depended on it. I didn't know if any more demogorgons would come after it."
Will tugs him over to a chair and forces him to sit down. He, his mom, and Mike scrounge up anything they can find: Lucas squirms and yelps when they clean and disinfect the laceration, and his mom wraps bandages around gauze tight and secure.
Robin and Murray burst through the door and down the stairs, then; Murray's face is unusually delighted, and Robin's saying, "Holy shit, we almost died, but it was crazy—"
"The demogorgon started floating and all of its bones broke," Lucas says this time.
Robin blinks. "Yeah, actually," she says, astounded. "How'd you know?"
And after they explain the whole thing to her, Will pulls her aside by the stairs, and he says, "Thank you."
"For what?" she asks, and she's got a small smile on her face.
"What you told me, in the tunnels," he shuffles his shoe against the ground. "It— it really helped."
She gasps. "My advice awakened your Vecna powers? Me?"
Will rolls his eyes. "Not just you. But… what you said, you were right. You helped a lot," he says. "So, thank you."
Robin's smile grows, and Will, once again, thinks he is filled with so much love.
"We need to go into the Upside Down," Will tells them once they're standing still.
His mom opens her mouth, an unreadable look passing over her face, and then her mouth closes. "Why?" she asks.
"I can go alone, too," he offers. "I'm way closer to the hivemind there. Being so near the gate… I could see everything. I could sense everything, even when we were walking away."
"No," Mike beats his mom to denial. "You're not going in there alone."
Will hesitates, unsure of how to dissuade him, if he even should. "I think I need to get inside Vecna's mind. He really didn't like it when I saw that place where he's keeping the kids. If I'm that close again, I think I could get right in."
"And what do you plan to do once you figure out where the kids are?" his mom asks him.
Will shrugs. "Destroy what I can in his head. Then we find them."
It goes like this: Murray stays behind to watch over the Squawk, for when the others return, and the rest of them march right back to the big, red gate on the side of the library.
They walk through the decaying, runny-yolk membrane of the gate between worlds, and the air is just the same as he remembers it. Cold, dusty, thick. He hates it. There's a base on this side of the gate, too, and it's also empty, like the same catastrophe that swept over the rightside up went back for seconds in the Upside Down.
It goes like this: they wander, Will doing his best to follow the sense of cold that's slightly different from the rest of the chill, and they wander straight into El; she's supporting the weight of a girl with a shaved head and dark skin, and Hopper looms behind them like a wraith with a gun.
"Will?" El gasps, and she reaches for him with one hand, fingers dirty and trembling.
"El," he says, and he's so glad she's safe, she's alive, of course she is, his strong and wonderful sister. "You're okay," his voice cracks, and he doesn't care.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him, face firm, hand clutching his tight. The girl leaning on her shoulder peers up blearily.
"Looking for him. Vecna," he tells her, and she frowns.
"What?" she hisses. "That's— that's not safe. What are you thinking?"
"Listen," he tells her, "I— something happened—"
"What? What happened?" Hopper interjects, and Will blows a breath out past his mouth.
"I killed three demogorgon at once with my mind—" "What?" "—because I hijacked the hivemind, and I can find the kids if I get close again, and maybe hurt Vecna inside—"
"You're like me?" El's looking at him, eyes wide and so vulnerable, so open. She looks hopeful, and she looks devastated.
"I don't know," he tells her honestly. "I think— I might be different."
Her hand tugs him closer, and she pulls him into half a hug with the strength and warmth of one that is full. Her eyes are watery, and she tucks her head into his shoulder. "Different or not," she whispers, "I'm glad you're okay. Love you."
El always says I love you like it's the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it is, for her. Maybe it's her favorite thing to say, to fill others with that total, absolute warmth, generous and indiscriminate. "I love you too," he whispers back, and he's so warm, warding off the cold depths of a wasteland he once thought he was going to die in.
It goes like this: they take a moment to fill each other in. El and Mike disappear behind a tree, and Will sits next to the girl who'd leaned against El's shoulder— Eight, Kali, the girl El's spoken of on nights in Lenora Hills too hot to sleep through. She's looking at the sky in its bruise-dark glory, white spores sprinkling down to the ground— she's looking at it with some form of comfort, of peace.
"You're El's brother?" she asks, voice raspy and weak. Her eyes don't peel away from the sky.
"Yeah," he says softly. "Are you her sister?"
A small smile blooms on Kali's lips. "Yeah," she echoes. "She's my sister."
They sit in silence for a few seconds. It's a natural silence. "I'm glad she found you," he says. "She missed you."
"I missed her, too," Kali says simply. "She's grown. She loves you all."
"She's easy to love," he says, and she finally looks down from the sky, looks at him.
"Yeah," she says. "She is, isn't she?"
Mike comes to their side some moments later, back from the mysterious space behind that tree, face some mixture of confusion, frustration, and baffled relief. El doesn't follow him— she walks up behind Hopper, some distance away, tapping his shoulder. Will opens his mouth to ask what happened, but something in the tense line of Mike's shoulders stops him.
It goes like this: they're about to wander deeper, some new, warped version of a crawl, when it all unravels like a ball of loose yarn.
The earth splits open beneath them— this isn't supposed to happen —and a weeping, orange incision spreads under his shoes, and Will barely has time to blink before something crashes into him as he begins to fall, and then he's truly falling—
It goes like this: Will's eyes snap open as he chokes on the air in his own throat. He's flat on his back, looking up at the violet-blue-red-wine sky, and he coughs. He props himself up on achy wrists, eyes narrowed as they pan across an empty, sloping expanse, like— is this the Upside Down version of a lake?
There's a dark shape in his peripheral, and it moves, and Will shuffles back, panicked. The shape groans, and Will squints— it's Mike. "Mike?" Will blurts, crawling over, and Mike's curled up on the ground, hand pressing into the side of his head.
"Will?" he mumbles, lifting his head up, and Will scrambles to slide his arms under Mike's to help him sit up. "Where are we?"
"I don't know," Will says. "A lake, maybe? I don't think we're anywhere near where we were before."
Mike nods, looking satisfied with this answer. "You were alone when the rifts opened," Mike says. "Couldn't let you go alone."
Will swallows. "Thanks," he says quietly, and it's entirely true. Being alone, in the middle of nowhere in the Upside Down— that is one of the many things that Will is afraid of. It's a scenario that's haunted him in night terrors, in progressively darker spirals, in unwelcome wanderings as he'd sit in class looking out the window.
Mike's eyes find his in the dark. "I wouldn't let you go alone," he repeats, and Will's chest aches, a little. You did let me go alone, more than once, he almost gently reminds him. He tears his gaze away from Mike, guiding his focus to the constant, insistent hum in the air; something like a radio wave, almost tangible, he swivels his head in the direction it's coming from. It's strange— there's almost two competing signals, one strong and varying in its exact location, the other weaker and steady, still. The stillness, it confuses him. It intrigues him.
"I think we should go this way," he says, pointing to the direction of the stillness. It could be any direction; north, east, south, or west, it doesn't matter.
"Why that way?" Mike asks as he grunts and lifts himself off the ground, onto his feet, dusting the knees of his pants off.
Will points to his head. "Intuition?"
Mike licks his lips. "Okay, cool, lead the way with your freaky intuition."
Will rolls his eyes, and resolutely does not look behind him as they walk toward something neither of them know.
The Upside Down is… unnervingly calm. There's thunder and lightning in the sky, a slight breeze in the air, vines on the ground that they step over, but there is nothing else. Will doesn't feel like he's being hunted, not like how he was when he was twelve years old. What was already lifeless is more-so, now, and that unsettles him more than the alternative. Where is everything?
"So," Mike says after maybe five minutes have passed. Will can't tell.
"So?"
"Just now, like, when El and I were talking," he says, "we broke up."
Will doesn't freeze in his steps, but it's close— "What?" he says, glancing back. Mike's staring at the ground, face twisted in an expression Will doesn't understand. "I— Why?"
Mike makes a disgruntled sound. "She— she said she didn't need me. That she needed to focus on herself, I guess, and stopping Vecna. I guess I hurt more than help with that. But I thought she did need me, because of that painting, you know? What she thought?" Mike says. "So I asked her about that, and you know what she said, Will?"
Will does stop walking, this time, heart pounding in his chest, and Mike's already looking at him when he turns around. He's frowning, and he says, "She said, what painting?"
Will barely gets out, "Mike—"
"Why did you lie?"
And isn't that the question? Will opens his mouth, closes it. His palms are sweaty where his fingers are curled into fists. Why did you lie? His mouth is ash-dry as he says, "Is now really the time for this—"
"Yes!" Mike says, stubborn. "Or you'll avoid me and this conversation for the next five years, because you don't like confrontation."
Will's lips thin. "Just, is it a big deal?" he asks, knowing the answer. It's a big deal, to Will, and to Mike, evidently— shit, how stupid was he, to think it would never come back to bite him in the ass? But it had worked, hadn't it? Mike had spoken to El, and she had saved Max, sort of, and Mike had said my life started the day we found you in the woods, and Will had understood, as he always does, even when it hurts and hurts and hurts— he'd understood, which is why he lied, so Mike could say those words to El, so Mike-and-El could thrive and everything would be okay.
"It is," Mike says, flat. "Why'd you lie, Will?"
"What I said, about you being the heart, that was never a lie," Will hears himself say, like he's observing a train wreck in progress of his own making. "I just— I just thought it would mean more coming from El."
Mike's brows furrow. "What?"
"You know, you know how hard everything was then. That— it just helped keep everything together. I didn't mean to lie to you. I swear."
He sees Mike mouth the words keep everything together? and Mike breathes into the mottled air. "We don't lie to each other."
And Will feels anger, sudden and uncontrollable, build in his gut. "You can't tell me you've never lied to me. We were kids, Mike. I'm sorry I lied, but it helped. When she piggybacked, you— you knew what to do, you knew you were the heart."
"No, you—" Mike cuts himself off, a frustrated groan seeping out past his lips, running a hand through his hair. "If I'd known it was from you—"
"It wouldn't have been the same, would it?" Will snaps.
"It would have! It would have been—" Mike cuts himself off again, fidgeting in place.
"What?" Will says. "Would've been what?"
"I—" Mike flounders. "It would've been different, but it would've meant— I mean, you're my best friend. It would've meant— meant more, I don't know, okay?"
Will bites the inside of his cheek. Now he feels angry on El's behalf, or something, because Mike can't seem to decide who's important to him on a good day, let alone a day where the fate of one of their friends is undetermined. He turns back around, and keeps walking. "It— it had to be from El," Will says, quieter. Because you didn't really seem like my best friend anymore. I hadn't heard from you in months. Why would whatever I made mean more to you than El? He doesn't say any of these things. Will says, "I thought you loved her. That you just needed a nudge, to know how important you are to her." To me.
Mike doesn't say anything for a moment, the sound of their shoes against the ground the only sound. "Okay," he says eventually, subdued. It doesn't sound like an ending, not at all. Just a pause. Will breathes, and they keep walking, and he doesn't let his heart fracture in his chest.
It goes like this: they walk until they reach a wall.
"What is that?" Mike says, disgusted. His hand reaches out to poke the wall, and his finger makes a squelch sound as it lodges itself into— the wall's flesh? It's a meat wall, really, and it's the steady, still signal that Will's been following this whole time.
"It's what I was looking for," Will says, miffed. "A meat wall."
"Why'd your intuition take us to a meat wall?"
"I don't know," he grits. "Let me just, let me try something."
Will closes his eyes, searching for that same feeling as when he saw through the demogorgon's eyes, through Vecna's eyes, when he floated above it all as himself. He is all he needs, and he latches onto the latent hum of the wall, and the more he listens, the more he sees the thin, plentiful threads— they're converging into a singular, large thread. He follows it, gently, quietly, for a long time, and he thinks he knows what sits at the other end. Who sits at the other end.
Vecna's mind is a dark, dark thing, inscrutable, a whirlwind. Like if Will lets himself get too close, he'll get swept away somewhere within it. He lets himself get just a little closer. But maybe it was too close, because the thread pulses, suddenly, like a warning bell, and the hum spikes into a buzz, into a vibration, into something harsh. But Will doesn't let go, even as it gets louder and louder and louder—
Let me in, he demands.
It goes like this: the wall of flesh consumes Will between one moment and the next, but Mike is not anything if not stubborn; when the wall swallows Will, it swallows the person attached to him, too.