Chapter Text
The lights in Mike’s kitchen are flickering again.
Beside him, Lucas laughs at something snarky that Max says. Dustin’s face turns a shade of red, as bright and unmistakable as the tomato sauce stains on the pile of napkins in the middle of the table. They’re talking about something that Mike only vaguely processes, and none of them seem to notice that Mike has zoned out again.
None of them ever do—at least not anymore.
None of them except…
”Mike?” Will’s voice breaks him out of the trance, soft and uncertain. “Are you… are you okay?”
Above them, the lights continue to flicker.
There’s a lump in the back of Mike’s throat. Everything inside him screams of danger danger danger, which doesn’t make any goddamn sense. It’s been well over a year since it happened. The most danger that Mike’s been subjected to since the military finally decided to leave them alone and stop monitoring them is Max Mayfield’s reckless driving.
But now, the lights are flickering in Mike’s childhood home.
And Mike… Mike can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing something here.
It’s just your grief talking, Michael, his mother’s voice echoes in the back of his mind. She doesn’t understand, but she’s trying to—doing her best to bridge the gap between the two of them.
…
Bridge, Mike thinks, and he closes his eyes, wincing at the sudden splitting pain in his temples. The bridge—
“Mike? Hello? Earth to Mike?”
Mike flinches. It’s Dustin who breaks him out of the trance this time, not Will, and Mike opens his eyes, unsurprised to find the rest of the Party looking at him. Gone are the smiles on their faces—the easygoing joy that Mike constantly finds himself wishing he could partake in. They’re concerned for him, which Mike supposes is kind of them. They still care about him, just like he still cares about them, but everything is just… it’s just more complicated now.
“Is everything okay?” Lucas asks hesitantly.
No, Mike wants to say.
He wishes he could explain himself, but none of them—not even Will, unfortunately—would understand. All of them have already begun to move on, making their plans to leave Hawkins and explore the world outside of this fucked up hometown of theirs. There are still a few months left until things really begin to change—until Lucas and Max head to California, until Dustin starts school at MIT, and until Will makes his great escape to the big city. The four of them are finally happy, and Mike…
Mike can’t take that away from them.
But the lights in Mike’s kitchen are flickering again.
One, quick flicker. Then a longer one. Followed by another quick flicker.
Two flashes of light. Another longer flash.
One long flicker, then one short one.
Wait.
It’s a pattern, Mike realizes. It’s—
“Hey.” Will puts his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Mike.”
The lights stop flickering.
Warmth rises to Mike’s face, and he meets his best friend’s eyes, unsurprised to find a familiar sadness and concern in them. Will squeezes his shoulder. Mike’s heart, the damn traitorous organ that it is, skips a beat.
Are you okay? Will asks without even saying a word. Do you want the others to leave?
I don’t know, Mike thinks.
He hopes Will can somehow understand, because for some godforsaken reason, Mike feels like he’s going fucking crazy here. He’s going fucking crazy, and there’s no way any of this is even real, and God, what is he even doing? What is he even thinking, looking for patterns and signs when they’re not even there? He’s going crazy. That’s the only explanation for it.
It’s not real. Mike forces himself to take a deep breath. He stares at the lights above them. Nothing changes.
There is no pattern.
There is no secret, hidden message.
There is no signal coming from far away.
This is his reality.
“Sorry,” Mike manages to say, and he forces a smile, looking at the rest of the Party. “Guess I just… guess I just spaced out.”
Max, of all people, gives him a sympathetic look. She’s still a pain in Mike’s ass, but she also gets it. She knows what it’s like to lose someone. She knows what it’s like to grieve.
And that’s all this is: grief. It’s all just Mike’s grief getting to his head, making him see things and think that there’s still hope when there just isn’t.
El is dead.
Mike is still here.
The story is over.
This is all that’s left.
“I’m okay,” Mike adds, softer now.
It’s a lie, and he knows it, and the Party knows it too.
No one says anything though. None of them call Mike out on his bullshit. Nobody tries to get him to open up. They all must have decided that there’s just no saving him—no pulling Mike out from the depths of his despair.
As far as all five of them are concerned, Mike is a lost cause. It hurts, but it’s reality. It’s their reality.
And maybe that should’ve been Mike’s first clue.
The funny thing that nobody tells you about grief, Mike thinks, is just how fucking crazy it makes you feel.
This is hardly Mike’s first brush with grief; after all, you don’t survive the shit he’s lived through without losing people. He’s witnessed firsthand the end of far too many lives, and while not all of those lives really mattered to Mike, that kind of shit stays with a person. It’s the type of thing that he used to dream about all the time when he was a kid—the bright red, sticky blood splattered on the ground, and the gunshots ringing so loud in his ears that he can’t hear anything else, and the snarls coming from the shadows. Those dreams used to haunt him as a child, leaving him trapped in the memories of the past.
But most of all, Mike still remembers dreaming of a body, freezing cold and drowning in the water, and he remembers dreaming of a girl yelling at the top of her lungs to save him.
He used to try and save them back in those dreams. It never worked. The dreams always ended the same way.
The boy drowns in the icy depths.
The girl is lost to the oblivion.
And Mike is left alone.
Nowadays, he doesn’t dream, and that’s terrifying in its own kind of way. Mike wonders, distantly, if this is just another defense mechanism that his tired mind has forced on him. If he doesn’t dream about all of this anymore, if he shuts those memories out, if he lets himself become numb… then, it won’t hurt as much. Then, maybe, he can live his life.
Mike stops dreaming.
The boy stops drowning in the quarry’s waters.
The girl saves herself from the oblivion.
Mike is still left alone.
Life goes on in spite of it. One month turns into two months, and somewhere along the lines, two months become six. Then six months become a year, and a year becomes over eighteen months, and—
And not a single dream haunts him.
Until one day, it does.
It’s about three weeks after graduation when Mike finally dreams again. He comes home from a day spent in Indianapolis with the Party, and… and he feels okay. The empty feeling in his heart is still there, still raw and aching in the same way it has been for the last eighteen months, but being with his friends helps.
They spend all day at a massive arcade in downtown Indy. Max kicks their asses at every single game. Dustin complains the entire time and challenges her to a laughable amount of rematches. Lucas carries Max’s prizes proudly like the lovesick fool he is. Will takes the losses with stride, and he sticks close to Mike the entire day. He’s a familiar, comforting presence—a balm on the open wound that Mike’s heart has become.
With Will by his side, Mike thinks that maybe… just maybe… things might be okay again. Maybe he won’t feel like this forever. Maybe he can be happy again.
There’s more there that he’ll have to face one day—complicated feelings and fears that Mike can’t quite look in the eye yet.
Truthfully, he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to look those fears in the eye.
But today feels like a baby step in the right direction, and when Will hugs him goodbye, happiness—like real, genuine happiness—fills the cracks in Mike’s heart, allowing him to feel hopeful for the first time in forever. It’s a good feeling.
Mike all but collapses into bed when he finally gets home, exhausted but feeling more like himself than he has in months, and he’s out within a matter of moments.
And it’s then that the dreams begin.
The first thing that Mike notices is that it’s cold in his dream.
A chill runs down his spine, and Mike blinks, trying to get his bearings. The world around him is entirely unfamiliar—the sky glowing a bright, unnatural shade of yellow and the atmosphere colder than any place he’s ever been before. It hurts him to breathe the air. Exhaustion wears heavy on him, and his head is pounding, almost like… like…
Dread settles into Mike’s stomach.
He scans the world around him again, searching for something—anything—that might help him figure out what the hell this place is. There are various rocky formations around him, but beyond that, there’s nothing. No signs of life or civilization or anything.
There’s nothing here.
”Hello?” Mike calls.
Hello? ‘ello? ‘lo?
His own voice echoes back to him. No one else responds back to Mike’s cries.
A lump forms in the back of Mike’s throat. He takes a cautious step forward, heart racing in his chest. “Hello?” Mike repeats, and again, he only hears his own voice echo back to him.
And yet…
Yet, Mike gets the feeling he isn’t alone here.
I don’t believe in coincidences, Lucas had once said. Not anymore.
Mike hesitates. Hope, the dangerous, foolish thing that it is, ignites in his chest.
There’s only one explanation for this dream—for this strange, otherworldly realm that he finds himself in.
“El?” Mike calls.
Her name echoes in the emptiness of this realm, and tears sting Mike’s eyes. Hope burns inside his heart, and it hurts. God, it hurts to hope, but fuck, he can’t help himself.
He tries again anyway.
”El!” Mike yells. He’s running now, and God knows where he’s running to. “El! Where are you? El?! EL!”
The scream that tears itself from his throat is loud and guttural, and Mike’s voice breaks. She’s not here, something deep in the back of his mind whispers. The words are a knife in Mike’s stupid, stupid heart, and he closes his eyes tightly, tears streaming down his face. She’s gone, Mike. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s—
Suddenly, a scream breaks through the silence.
Mike flinches, turning his head so quickly that he damn near gives himself whiplash.
His heart stops.
Everything inside Mike freezes.
That’s—
Another agonized scream echoes across the empty realm, and it sends a chill down Mike’s spine.
“MIKE!”
Mike’s legs begin to move before his mind can catch up. Suddenly, he’s running, running, running as fast as he can to the voice. Dust flies around him, and his chest is burning, the atmosphere of this place making him feel sick, but Mike doesn’t fucking care. He doesn’t fucking care, because that’s him, that’s Will, and he’s in danger, and something’s hurting him, and Mike has to get to him, he has to get to Will, he can’t lose Will too, he can’t—
“Will?” Mike screams. “Will! Where are you? Will! WILL!”
He runs as fast as he can for as long as he can, calling out for Will over and over again, but he never gets a response. The sound of his own voice is all Mike hears. The open, never-ending expanse of this new world is all Mike can see.
There’s no one here.
Not El and not Will.
It’s just Mike.
Tears well in Mike’s eyes, and he stops in his tracks, desperately looking around and trying to find the source of Will’s voice. “I don’t understand,” he whispers helplessly.
Then, louder: “I don’t understand!”
His voice breaks as Mike screams—over and over and over again. His throat is raw, and now that the tears have started, they don’t stop. They won’t stop, and suddenly, Mike is on his hands and knees in this strange realm, sobbing and screaming like it’s the only thing he can do.
Maybe it is. Maybe this is just… just some fucked up nightmare that Mike is stuck in, and there’s no getting out. Maybe all he can do is suffer through it.
“I don’t understand,” Mike chokes out.
He looks up at the hazy, yellow sky and tries to make sense of it all. He’s not sure what good it will do; after all, it’s not like there’s some cosmic being out there who has all the answer to Mike Wheeler’s fucked up life. It’s not like there’s some magical solution to all of this—no way to bring back what Mike has lost and to prevent him from losing anyone else.
This is his reality now.
“I don’t understand,” Mike whispers helplessly.
One last, desperate attempt to find answers.
He finds none.
The world remains oh so quiet and oh so still. There’s no sign of El anywhere, like Mike had hoped, and Will, too, is gone—slipping further and further away from Mike’s grip.
A tear rolls down Mike’s cheek. He closes his eyes, curling up on himself and weeping quietly.
When he finally wakes in the morning, he feels numb.
It’s raining the night that everything changes again.
Mike doesn’t know why he still does this to himself. There’s a part of him that thinks, maybe he enjoys the misery. Maybe it helps him feel something again, because anything is better than this horrible, numbness that has taken over his life.
It’s July. Summer is more than halfway over, and the Party only has a few more weeks left in Hawkins before they go their separate ways. The lights have stopped flickering in Mike’s home, and he doesn’t dream again after that night. Nobody seems to notice that anything is wrong with him.
Either that, or nobody cares.
He can’t blame them, after all. The four of them—Max and Dustin and Lucas and Will—all seem to be happy together. Mike knows they hang out without him, because there are only so many times that Mike can reject their invitations before they finally give up. Will is the last one to give in, but even he pulls away from Mike eventually. There’s a sadness in his eyes whenever Mike is around, and Mike hates himself for it.
He has a hundred different apologies stuck in the back of his throat. Maybe, if he was braver, he’d open up and let Will in. He would admit that… that things aren’t as straightforward as they seem. He’d tell Will that yes, Mike loves El, but… but that he loves Will too, in a way that he can hardly even articulate—in the way that Mike should have loved El. It feels wrong; it feels like spitting on El’s memory to do this, especially when Mike knows those feelings have been there longer than she has been gone. He can hardly think about it without feeling sick to his stomach.
So, Mike just… doesn’t.
He owes Will a hundred different apologies, and he can’t even say a single one.
No wonder Will drifts away from Mike.
And in the cruelest twist of fate, the vision Vecna had shown Will has become Mike’s reality.
A lump forms in the back of Mike’s throat, and he tosses a rock over the edge of the cliff, counting the seconds it takes before it hits the water.
One… two… three… four…
He loses track eventually. The water probably ripples when the little pebble finally hits the surface, but it hardly makes a difference at all. From this height, Mike can’t even see it.
It’d be easy—too easy—to just do it, Mike thinks. His feet are dangling off the edge of a cliff he’s already jumped off once, and he could just do it. He wonders if he’d be like the little pebble—insignificant in the grand scheme of things, hardly noticeable as it meets its fate in the quarry’s waters. They’d drag his body out of the water like they did with Will’s so many years ago, and maybe, Mike’s friends would cry.
They’ll mourn you, the sneering voice in the back of Mike’s mind whispers. But then they’ll move on. Just like they did for her.
It’s not their fault, Mike tells him. They should move on. It’s what she’d want.
It’s what I want too.
A tear slides down his cheek, and Mike stands shakily, peering over the edge of the quarry. He’s done this before, back when he was terrified of death and still had a purpose in life. Years have passed, and he’s no longer scared. His life doesn’t have much of a purpose.
What more does he have to lose?
They’ll be okay, Mike tells himself. He has to believe that they’ll be okay. His family and his friends and Will… they’ll learn to move on. They’ll be okay without him. They’ll be okay.
I’m sorry, Mike thinks, and he steps off the ledge.
His life flashes before his eyes. Time slows down, down, down, and Mike closes his eyes as the wind whistles through his ears. His stomach is turning, and there’s something still in the back of his mind that can’t believe he has actually done this. That part of him is terrified—terrified of what will happen when he hits the bottom, terrified of what death will be like, terrified of any life that might exist after he leaves this one.
It’s too late for that now, and so Mike will die in the same way that he lived: alone and afraid.
I’m sorry, Mike thinks again, and then—
Then, suddenly, the falling stops.
Some invisible force catches him.
Mike’s eyes fly open, and he peers up in the darkness, searching for the force that saved him. There’s only one person who could’ve done that, and it’s not possible, it’s not, it can’t be—
But then, a familiar voice calls, “I would really like to stop saving you like this.”
A choked sob escapes Mike’s lips. He’s floating, being gently lifted back up to the top of the quarry, and by the time he reaches the cliffside, he’s a snotty, sobbing mess. Distantly, he wonders if he really has died and if this is just some fucked up vision that his mind has contrived to help him pass from this life to the next.
But then, he sees her. She’s here, standing in the darkness and staring back at him the way she always has, and Mike… Mike knows.
She’s here.
She’s alive.
”El,” Mike breathes.
He reaches for her with trembling hands, and El’s lower lip trembles. Pain flashes across her features, right before Mike’s hand passes right through hers.
Mike’s heart drops to the bottom of his stomach.
I don’t understand, he thinks. I don’t—
”Mike,” El whispers, and she takes a step towards him, eyes wide and urgent. “I need you to listen to me, okay? Listen to me.”
There’s something desperate in El’s voice. She’s terrified—more terrified than Mike has ever seen her before. Her entire body is trembling, and Mike doesn’t understand, he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t know what’s happening—
“You have to wake up, Mike,” El tells him. “Wake up. Wake up, and — and run. Find Will and run.”
A pit of dread forms in Mike’s stomach. “What — what are you talking about?” he manages to say. “El, please, I - I don’t understand—”
Tears well in El’s eyes. “Please just trust me,” she whispers. “Please, Mike. I…”
Her voice trails off, and she looks around, dark eyes narrowed into slits. “I can’t stay much longer,” she murmurs, before she turns back to Mike with that desperate look in her eyes again. “You need to wake up, Mike. Run. You have to run—“
“El, I don’t understand,” Mike says desperately. He reaches for her again, only for his hand to pass right through. “You - you died; you died months ago. How are you here? What’s going on?”
”Oh, Mike.” El’s eyes fill with tears, and she shakes her head, meeting his eyes.
For the first time, Mike can read her clearly—can see every single emotion written across El’s face. There’s regret and guilt and understanding and fear in El’s eyes. She’s never looked this scared, and Mike’s heart drops to the bottom of his stomach.
It’s only then that the puzzle pieces begin to slot together in his mind.
He thinks back to the lights flickering in his home. To the Party drifting away from each other—drifting away from him—in a way that now feels like far too familiar of a scheme. He thinks back to that dream he had of Will, after months of not having a single one and to all the other, smaller moments when things didn’t make sense, and—
Mike understands.
He finally understands.
“It’s not real,” Mike whispers.
His heart races inside his chest, and El takes a shuddered breath, before confirming Mike’s worst fears. “No… it’s not.”
Then, before Mike even has a chance to process what’s going on, El straightens her shoulders and looks him in the eye once again. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she says, holding her hand out towards him. “I will find you again. I will find all of you. I promise I will get you out of here. But right now, you have to wake up and find Will.”
The next thing Mike knows, he’s falling again—down, down, down towards the icy waters of the quarry.
When he finally reaches the bottom, everything goes dark.