Chapter Text
Will sometimes wonders if the feeling he gets that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong is pessimism or premonition. It doesn't help that it tends to emerge when things just seem to be going a little too well for him.
Moments like this where the villain, the final villain, is all but awaiting the killing blow and Will is so close to getting what he wants.
"You fucked with the wrong family," Joyce spits with more venom than Will thought she possessed. He sees others take a few steps back and doesn't blame them.
Strangely, Vecna still isn't cowed. His deformed face even stretches into a leering grin, as if, somehow, he's still one step ahead of them and just waiting to reveal the winning ace tucked up his sleeve.
As Joyce raises the axe, something itches in Will's head, something he's missing. It feels too easy - a four year long battle ended in merely four hours. The feeling emerges again, but he ignores it, instead finding his gaze unconsciously drawn to Mike, who mirrors his unsettled expression. Mike, who opens his mouth and starts to say "wait-"
But he can't halt the trajectory of the swing. Looking back, Will doesn't think anyone could've stopped it, because Joyce brings down the axe with all the unstoppable force of an immovable executioner. It's almost poetic.
Until there's a harsh tug, something hard and heavy slamming into him, pushing and pushing and pushing into his skin. He tries to resist the invasion, but it's too strong, too fast, and it's everywhere.
And suddenly, Will feels everything.
The burning spike driven through Vecna's back, Will's back, the pain lancing through Vecna's neck, Will's neck, as the blunt blade of the axe falls on his throat like a guillotine on a guilty man's head - almost enough to bring Will to his knees.
Rage, resentment and wrath coursing through his veins instead of blood. How he wants to raze the world to the ground simply because he can. The sick satisfaction that even at the end of his life, he can still ruin Will's.
And the taste of something bitter undercutting it all: fear.
Henry's scared of his own mortality just like the rest of them. He's scared of death. It's so painfully human that Will has to swallow back the sliver of sympathy he still has for the monster.
But now he understands why Henry's never fully connected with him before, in this all-consuming way that makes it difficult to know where one starts and the other begins. Will can see everything, like he's peeled back every layer of his grotesque skin and exposed himself entirely.
It also makes one thing clear: this is Henry's last play.
He knows they won't kill him while his life is tied to Will's. It's a sick and twisted method of turning their love for him into a weapon, and it's working.
Joyce takes a few halting steps towards Will, head swivelling back and forth between him and the axe uncertainly, expression warring between hardened determination and concern. Grim acceptance settles in its place as she seems to decide something.
Will knows what she's decided with a dreaded certainty. For his mom, between killing Vecna or saving her son, the choice is as easy as breathing.
But he can't let her make that choice.
Before anyone can stop him he lunges towards Vecna. Vecna, Henry, who knows his thoughts, his fears, his dreams, and exactly what he's about to do.
Vecna's grin widens as he throws out a twisting, warping arm that extends right towards Will's pounding heart.
But the thing about Henry being able to predict Will is that Will can predict Henry too.
Will ducks and slides under the arm, shaking off the guilt when he hears shouts of alarm and the harsh sound of Vecna's arm hitting whoever took Will's place.
He braces himself before practically throwing himself on top of the axe. His weight drives it cleanly through Vecna's neck, sealing his fate - as well as Will's.
For a moment, all Will feels is an overwhelming relief, before an agony like barbed wire tightens around his neck, making all the other injuries pale in comparison. It hurts more than anything he's ever felt before, even more than a broken heart. His knees buckle and he crumples to the ground, teeth clacking together painfully and what's most likely a concussion forming within the base of his skull - ironically one of the most minor of his problems.
"WILL!" Someone screams. Maybe his mom, maybe Jonathan, or maybe no one at all. Maybe it's his mind making things up to fill the silence again.
His mom reaches him first - all soft, urgent reassurances.
"Will, Will honey, we're going to get you to a doctor, okay? It'll be okay.” But the tremor in her voice betrays what Will already knows - that no doctor could cure someone with invisible injuries.
Then he realises he can no longer pick out the distinctive voices of Jonathon, Dustin or Lucas in the din of background noise. He tries to say something, but can only manage a pitiful wheeze which rattles in his chest and escapes him so quietly that he's surprised his mom is even able to understand what he's trying to ask.
“They're okay baby, they're okay,” she soothes. “They've got everyone else checking on them so don't worry, okay?”
Will musters up a pained smile. It falters when he hears Mike, sounding more terrified than he’s ever been, even when faced with interdimensional monsters.
"Will, Will!” Mike stumbles a few times, kicking up clouds of dust. “Hey, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay.” He turns to Joyce, frantic. “He's gonna be okay, right? Tell me he's gonna be okay,” he demands, verging on hysteria.
Joyce shakes her head. “Vecna,” she grits his name out like a curse, “he showed me what killing him meant - what it meant for Will. And I was- I was ready to pull the axe out, consequences be damned, when Will, when he-” she chokes on her words. “Will, why? Why?” she repeats to herself over and over again, cradling Will's head in her lap.
But she knows why. They all do. But understanding and acceptance are two very different things.
“El, can't you heal him? Like you did with Max?” Mike asks, stupidly hopeful. All eyes snap to El who visibly wilts under the attention, but sets her shoulders.
“I will try,” she says. She kneels down and places both palms on Will's chest, then closes her eyes in deep concentration. There's a few seconds of silence where the voices of Steve and Robin quietly ushering the kids out echo around the cavern. El opens her eyes, the tremble of her lips turning hope into despair.
“I'm sorry, Mike. He and Henry…they are too connected now and I am- I am too weak,” she whispers with such guilt and sorrow that Will wishes he could reach out and tell her ‘it's not your fault’.
“Then try again. Try again!”
Nancy pulls him into her arms. “Mike, you need calm down-”
Mike pushes her away fiercely. “No, no, I won't calm down! Will is dying, and no one's doing anything!”
“It's not that we don't want to do anything, it's that we can't,” Joyce says shakily, as if trying to keep her voice steady and brave for Will's sake. “You think if there was anything we could do to save Will, to save my boy, I wouldn't do it?”
The sight of Joyce giving up, Joyce who had fought tooth and nail for even the slimmest chance of bringing Will home, snaps Mike out of his frenzy. He bows his head and goes quiet. Scarily quiet. He then kneels down beside Will and starts talking.
“Will, please don't go, please, not again,” he begs quietly, like Will has any choice in the matter. “We need you, Will," his voice breaks, "I need you, so please, don’t-"
He dissolves into more begging and pleading but Will doesn't know who he's bargaining with - fate, predeterminism, God? Because of course Will would choose to stay, if he could. Stay and watch them all grow old together, until this nightmare fades into a bad dream and they could tell it around a campfire as a scary story to their kids.
But he doesn't have a choice. And he's starting to realise he never has. From the moment he was taken, to the mindflayer infiltrating his body, to falling in love with his best friend.
Maybe this is just another one of those funny little things that needs to happen to continue the narrative. Will Byers needs to disappear to close the story just as he opened it.
There's a ringing in Will's ears and Mike's shouts become even more frantic as his vision darkens. He desperately wants to comfort him but his tongue is weighed down with warm metal that he's starting to realise might be blood.
Then something warm plops onto his face, something that isn't blood. Will blinks and realises that Mike is leaning over him and he's crying.
His dark eyes are glittering and swollen, tear tracks travelling past his freckles and the mottled bruise forming on his cheek. Despite scrubbing furiously at them, he never takes his gaze off Will, as if pinning him with it will be enough to keep him there (it’s not enough, it's never enough). His curls are weighed down with dirt and debris and his mouth is twisted into something that Will desperately wants to tug on until it becomes a smile.
Will still thinks he's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
And despite what he'd tried to convince himself over and over again, Mike is still everything to him. He's the heart that holds the party together - that holds Will together, too. And Will confesses, in the seconds before throwing himself on that axe, when he thought he might choke on his own fear, he'd thought of Mike. Mike and that reckless, inspiring spirit that he both envied and adored.
Mike is everything except his Tammy - at least in all the ways that matter.
And Will also knows that, if Mike asked, he'd rip out his own barely beating heart from his chest and offer it to him. It was always his to take anyway.
But Mike doesn't ask. He only shakes like a leaf, like it's taking everything he has to keep it together. So instead Will uses the last of his strength to wipe a few of the tears away with his thumb and a touch of wonder. Wonder that Mike could make an expression like that for someone like him.
He wants to apologise, but he knows it wouldn't do anything and that deep down he would make the same choice again - the first choice he's ever truly made for himself. The thought brings a ghost of a smile to his face before he remembers it'll also be his last.
Mike takes Will's clammy hand into his own before it can fall back to the unforgiving ground and cradles it like it's something worth holding onto. The tears are flowing freely now, splashing across Will's skin like watercolours on a canvas.
Mike's lips are still moving, but Will can't hear him anymore and he knows his sight's too blurry to lip read now because Mike's lips seem to be forming around the word 'love'.
With the loss of sight and sound, Will's focused solely on touch: the vice-like grip of Mike's hand trying to anchor him as he slips away, his mom stroking his hair, El grasping tightly to his other hand,
then, nothing.