Chapter Text
Where, oh where, was Dustin.
Will had totally seen it coming. With how Dustin had been, the fights, the seriousness, the silence, the lack of laughter and every other behaviour that Will could that was very not-Dustin, somehow him missing a crawl did not seem very surprising.
Except Dustin wasn't the kind of person to miss something this important for personal reasons. He had never missed a crawl before, even with his grieving. Will hoped he didn't hurt himself. And that someone else hadn't either.
Will tried not to dwell on it. Tried not to let his thoughts spiral into worst-case scenarios. He told himself Dustin was probably fine. Probably.
His mom appeared soon after, and for a few precious seconds, the worry loosened its grip. Will's chest warmed as he spotted El with her, Hopper close behind. He hugged her gently, realising, to his surprise, that he had actually missed the girl.
———
Why hadn't any of them learnt how to operate Dustin’s equipment?
Well besides him that is. He knew how to work it, mainly because he'd helped Dustin with it, watched him adjust the screws, and listened to him speak about what the different switches did. He didn't know it perfectly, but enough, and he was willing to bet that he knew it the best out of everyone else.
Knowing how to work it and actually being allowed to work it were two very different things. He was not allowed to go operate it. Of course not. Naturally. It had been exactly like this for all the past crawls. Will wasn't allowed to do anything. Will waited, Will listened, Will hoped that Vecna wouldn’t reach out to possess him and try to spy on his friends and family.
Things went downhill really quickly after that.
Plans derailed, voices rose, panic threaded itself through every conversation. Somewhere in the chaos, Mike and Nancy had to rush off to the hospital to be with Mrs. Wheeler, leaving Will behind with his mother and Robin.
And Holly was gone.
Taken by the demogorgons. To Vecna, if he had to guess. El had followed her into the Upside Down. Of course she had. El always ran toward danger because that was the kind of person she was. She was also allowed to do so.
Will sat on the chair, face buried in his hands. He had somehow become like a harbinger of doom, a harbinger of doom with a sore head. Probably not a very happy thought. He didn't want to talk about his problems at all, but he had a feeling they would be important, and so he did, telling his mother whatever he had figured out so far, including the fact that his connection with the upside down hadn't been severed after all.
It was all truly depressing.
Nevertheless, the comparison to a radio gave him a pretty good idea, even though his mother clearly did not agree. Then again, it didn't surprise Will. She rarely agreed with anything that might be even remotely dangerous to him. While under other circumstances that would touch him, with Holly missing and Mrs Wheeler in the hospital and Dustin's absence, Will really needed to do something useful.
Joyce listened patiently, her worry deepening with every word.
Robin explained his situation with a comparison to a radio. Tuning in and out. Signals that never fully stopped transmitting. It somehow made perfect sense to him.
Joyce shut the idea down immediately, fear sharp in her voice, and Will wasn’t surprised. She never agreed with anything that had even a one percent chance of him being in danger. Under normal circumstances, that would’ve hurt. It would’ve made him retreat.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
Holly was missing.
Mrs. Wheeler was in the hospital.
Dustin was still nowhere to be found.
And El…
Will needed to do something. Anything.
———
Something that he needed to do came in the form of Robin Buckley and her approval of his plan to tap into the hive mind. Will found that it provided him the incentive he needed to go against his mother's wishes for the first time in a while. He had a feeling he would regret it in a while, but for now, he figured he could help out in the only way he knew.
As they walked through the forest, towards the area where he’d had his last vision, Will couldn’t ignore the feeling of foreboding that had gradually been growing over the past few minutes. The darkness and silence reminded him of when he had been taken all those years ago, and Will found himself shifting closer to Robin almost unconsciously, taking comfort of the older girl’s proximity.
The location of his earlier vision did not serve as a blessing in disguise, and Will walked on when he didn’t feel anything, hoping that his legs might lead him to something useful. And hopefully they wouldn’t get lost either. Will really did not fancy getting lost in the woods again. He did not even wish to be in the woods deep at night with the—
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, were you at the hospital yesterday?”
“The hospital?” Will blinked in confusion. It took him more than a few minutes to get out of his headspace and remember what she was talking about.
Man, why did she have to bring it up… Will had been doing an excellent job of not thinking about that moment at all till then.
“No!” Will denied, way too quickly, way too fervently, “No, no, no, no.” Was that too many no’s? Could Robin tell he was lying? He hoped not.
“I didn’t see anything.” he muttered. Robin had definitely seen through his lies, because he was sure she had no other reason to tell him more about their “friendship” than if she felt he was there. Which he definitely hadn’t been. Definitely not. What was Will even supposed to reply with? He didn’t even know her name was Vicky until two seconds ago. Oh gods, should he have asked who Vicky was? Pretended he hadn’t seen her?
Or maybe she actually meant what she said and just overshared when she was nervous. Although Will had never seen her do that. Then again, they'd never been alone together either. But Robin hadn't seemed like the kind of person to do that. Oh gods, that was it. She had definitely seen through his crap— wait, why was she running?
Will followed her till she came to a stop in front of some sort of spiral created from what seemed to be tiny rocks. Robin seemed to know about them, mandala or something, Will didn't really listen to her, because the mention of children, reminded him of something, laughter and talking of other children present and they were having fun, which meant—
A merry-go-round. Will stopped in front of it, and stared up, the sky almost exactly the same as why he'd seen in his vision. He felt rather silly. Does that mean he was Holly back then? But he'd been seeing through the eyes of the demogorgon back then, so why was he suddenly seeing through Vecna's victims. What was next, he'd be seeing through Vecna's eyes?
Oh…
Oh.
He had been seeing through Vecna's eyes all this while. Vecna invaded the minds of his victims. He was a part of the hive mind after all. Will had been seeing through Vecna's eyes, who had been seeing through his victim’s eyes, and therefore he had been seeing through Holly’s eyes.
Okay that was confusing.
But it did make a lot of sense. Somehow, he was doing the opposite of what Vecna used to do with him before. Instead of him being through Will's eyes, Will was now seeing through Vecna's eyes.
Which was both really cool and terribly scary.
The sound of a vehicle stopping drew Will’s attention towards the gate, towards a yellow bus. He and Robin watched as the kids walked by them, chatting and joking with each other, and Will pressed a hand to his neck as he, yet again, saw through someone else’s eyes.
Vecna’s next victim.