Chapter Text
Mike could’ve bet on everything that tonight was going to be the last night of his life.
Derek Turnbow is right. Once the demogorgons start ripping through the space-time continuum and materializing by the dozen, military can’t do shit to stop it.
Mike keeps his eyes on Will, looking for something, anything that would indicate how bad this attack is going to be. The three children by his side have all been in contact with Mr. Whatsit; Mike doesn’t know who he’s going to take next. Maybe all of them. Fuck.
Mike had considered Will as being a sorcerer, sort of similar to Vecna. His theory comes down to Will being an extension of Vecna, an earthly body tethering him to Hawkins from the Upside Down. If Vecna is destroyed, Mike hopes Will would become an amputee of sorts, someone missing a limb in the shape of Mr. Whatsit / Henry / One / Vecna but still able to live. He can’t imagine what would happen if he’s wrong, if Will is Vecna. He can’t fathom any alternative that leaves Will dead. He won’t allow it.
Regardless of his current theory, he knows that as soon as Will gets goosebumps along the smooth nape of his neck, they’re fucked. Sure, an open flame can deter the demogorgons, a round of bullets can knock them off kilter, but it’s only ever for a moment. They can’t be completely stopped. Not without El.
Suddenly, Will’s body shoots ramrod straight, then convulses. Mike’s stomach drops as Will’s body collapses.
“Will!” he yells.
He tries to take a step towards Will’s now seizing frame, but he’s held firmly in place by two sets of strong arms, thick with muscle wider than his thighs. Mike pushes against the military personnel, tries to yank his arms out of their iron grip. He’s just about ready to kick these damn grunts in the balls. As if sensing the suggestion, they shift out of range and tighten their grip.
Mike watches, helpless, as Joyce runs to Will. She slides to her knees and scoops him up, cradling him from the chest up. The way they’re positioned reminds Mike of the Pietà Will had shown him when he was in his statue and sculpture phase.
“Look at how peaceful she is,” Will had told him, pointing at Mary’s face on the dog-eared page of an art history textbook he renewed from the library three times over. “Even though her son is on his deathbed, she doesn’t look scared. She stays strong for the both of them. That’s love.”
“Wouldn’t her crying be more realistic?” Mike had countered. “I mean, this is supposed to show her son dying…it doesn’t even look like she’s upset about it. She’s just holding him with a straight face.”
“I don’t think it’s a straight face necessarily…” Will’s eyebrows scrunched together as he looked at the textbook page; they often did when he was concentrating very hard on something. “I think she looks so serene because she knows that it was a necessary death…and maybe because she knows he will rise again… and she’s holding on to that fact, that shred of hope, instead of breaking down right away.”
Mike had never really understood art, but he could always appreciate Will’s creations. Even when Will would explain art-related things to him, he’d try his hardest to understand. Will was always far more knowledgeable on that sort of thing than Mike ever could be. If Will was passionate about it, why couldn’t he be too?
Still, as someone who didn’t grow up religious hearing a rather religious explanation from another fellow non-religious person, Mike may have expressed a bit of incredulity. Will, always the perceiver, quickly added, “at least that’s what the textbook says.”
Mike now watches Joyce smooth out Will’s hair and tell him that she’s there, that everything will be okay. Deep in his gut, Mike feels the urge to be that person for Will. To hold him in a time of need.
Raindrop-like tears trail down Will’s cheeks, and under the repurposed Hawkins High stadium lights, his pale face seems to glisten. Like wet marble.
Will whispers something to Joyce that Mike can’t quite make out.
“What?” Joyce asks, leaning her ear close to Will’s lips.
“They’re coming.”
A beat passes. Two. Then the lights surrounding the military base start to flicker. Slow, at first, then rapid flashes in dissonant rhythm.
Mike hears a collective gasp from the children behind him. He rips his eyes away from Will and follows their line of vision. As if someone slashed a hole in the air with their sword, a gate to the Upside Down rips open a couple of meters away. A demogorgon jumps through the gash and lands with a bang. Roars.
Mike spares a glance at Will’s unmoving body. Takes a half step forward. The guards must have loosened their grip, knowing something is wrong with Will.
“We’re all gonna die!” Derek yells, but his voice is quickly drowned out by the round of gunshots hurled to his left.
Oh right. The demo.
They need to leave. Now.
Mike breaks free from the guards’ grip and runs to Will, the children he had tried to evacuate from the military base following closely behind.
He wraps his arm around Will’s waist and gently hoists him up, Joyce grabbing onto Will’s other side to hold him upright. Mike takes note of Will’s freezing body drenched with sweat. He holds on a bit tighter, hoping that maybe he can transfer some of his warmth to Will.
Will’s head lolls towards Mike, as if it is too heavy to lift himself.
“C’mon Will,” Mike coaxes. Snap out of it.
Joyce takes her eyes off Will to yell at the children, “Let’s go!”
Derek and the two others take the lead, with Mike, Will and Joyce staggering behind.
Mike is briefly reminded of second grade field day, when he and Will teamed up for the three-legged race. They won by a landslide, raced perfectly in sync.
With Joyce thrown into the mix and Will barely conscious and demogorgons and gunshots replacing the sound of parents cheering, Mike is having a hard time envisaging winning this race.
“Go with them,” Joyce says, “I’ve got him.”
Mike opens his mouth to protest, but Joyce’s hard stare silences him. He nods and quickly untangles himself from Will, then repositions his barely moving body to rest entirely on Joyce. Mike spares one last look at the both of them.
He’ll be okay. He has to be.
Mike jogs up to the kids and grabs hold of Derek’s shoulder. The other two—a girl and a boy—freeze with their mouths agape. Mike remembers when he was their age, blissfully unaware of the interdimensional horrors yet to be discovered. Mike swallows.
“Follow me,” he says, trying his best to stay calm, and makes a beeline to the closest building. He glances back to make sure the children are following and catches sight of Will in the distance, on the ground, screaming and writhing in agony.
In the short amount of time Mike had his back turned, a dozen or so demogorgons had materialized around the perimeter of the base. Gunshots fire in every direction, yet Will’s screams slice through the noise. Mike feels like his chest is being ripped open.
Stay calm. Breathe.
The four of them round the corner of the building and crouch. Mike scootches forward, ever so slowly to get a look at the scene. He watches Joyce drag Will across the base, screaming and thrashing his limbs. Around them, officers are using flamethrowers or firing machineguns at the demos, trying to kill them to no avail. Some demos run away–from the fire mostly–while others swipe at the closest men.
Mike forces himself to look away, focus on the task at hand.
“Eyes on me,” he tells the kids. “You move when I move… stop when I stop, okay?” Mute with fear, they all nod their heads.
Mike jogs over to the closest military vehicle, keeping his strides short to match the children’s pace. He has a view of the base’s entrance, their one-way ticket out of here. After a quick assessment that the coast is clear, he starts again. He checks back every few paces to make sure they’re still behind him.
With his back turned, he doesn’t realize a demogorgon has blocked his path until he’s a beat too late. He throws his arms up to block the kids but knows it’s not going to do anything except maybe save them a few seconds before their imminent deaths.
The back of his head feels hot before he sees a line of fire heading in the demo’s direction, engulfing it in seconds. The demo steps back, dazed, and starts to screech in what Mike assumes is pain. He faintly hears Will’s scream in the distance.
He pushes the children out of the fire’s way and gets ready to start running again when he catches a glimpse of red in his peripheral. The gate to the Upside Down is opening, ripping apart in jagged edges.
He glances at Will across the way, and he is now lying still, so still that Mike can’t tell if he’s breathing. Joyce doesn’t seem too alarmed, though–she’s quietly cradling him as she did before this whole thing started. Back to the Pietà.
Suddenly, something explodes, shaking the ground and sending a group of officers flying backwards before catching fire. The few still alive roll back and forth on the ground to put themselves out. The car Mike and the kids were crouched behind is thrown off to the right as if it were blown by a strong gust of wind. Mike rakes the base to see who is causing all of this destruction until his eyes land back on the gate. Ever so slowly, a greyish-brown being is walking down from the gate’s platform, completely unbothered by the gunshots being fired at him… or through him?
Mike can’t see its face but knows all too well who it must be.
“Vecna,” he breathes.
Off to his right, the same officer who saved him with the flamethrower aims at Vecna. The fire shoots out for a second, then, as if Vecna was protected by a large, impenetrable bubble, fans outward. Mike can barely comprehend how it’s happening; he doesn’t even get the chance to try. With another makeshift gust of wind, the flames change targets, hurling right towards him.
The sheer force of it sends him flying backwards. When his head hits the concrete, all goes black.
He feels his head ache first, then the rest of his body. He hears flames crackling and hissing. Slowly coming to, he opens his eyes and adjusts to the ravaged scene before him. Vecna is nowhere to be seen, unconscious bodies are strewn across the base, and the nearby buildings and vehicles are either demolished or bathing in flames.
He sees Will in the center of it all, on his hands and knees, with his head down. Breathing, albeit labored, but breathing nonetheless. Mike sighs, releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.
He’s about to call his name, when the ground between them rips open. A beat of peace passes before a demogorgon leaps out and starts heading towards Mike on all fours. Mike, still slightly disoriented, scrambles to his feet. He should be running, he knows this. Yet for some reason he’s frozen in place.
As the demogorgon leaps up to close the gap between itself and Mike, all Mike can do is throw his arm up and think, this is it. I’m going to die.
He had told El that if the campaign wins, they can all live happily ever after in a faraway, peaceful, beautiful land. But what if the Paladin takes a critical hit and doesn’t make it out alive? Does the campaign crumble and fall? Sure, the afterlife would be Vecna-free, but he’d be without his party…without Lucas and Dustin and Max and El and Will.
Will. What would happen to Will? Mike had told Will time and time again that he’d always protect him, always be there for him. What help would he be if he was dead?
He can’t die. Not yet. He refuses. When the demo attacks, he’ll fight back with everything he has. He must.
It takes a second longer than he expects for the demo to pin him down. He’s waiting for it, determination and adrenaline now pumping through his system, but nothing comes.
Mike slowly moves his arms away from his face and opens his eyes. His jaw slackens–he can’t believe what he’s looking at. Frozen in midair, the demogorgon has its arms extended, only a few feet away from grabbing Mike’s throat and ripping his head clean off. The demogorgon is trembling ever so slightly, as if it’s using all its might to break through whatever restraint it’s currently bound in.
For a split second Mike wonders if he’s responsible for this. Then the demogorgon rises higher, revealing Will underneath it, still a far distance away but now standing tall with his arm extended outward, palm facing up.
Fuck, Will the Wise is a sorcerer, after all.
Something akin to pride blooms in Mike’s chest as he watches Will hold the demogorgon in place. Will is like no one Mike has ever met; he always knew Will had something greater in him. Something powerful. Something innate to his already extraordinary soul.
Will then throws out his other arm to the side and snaps his head upward. The demo in front of Mike only raises higher. Still trembling, the demo straightens before each limb dislocates and pops in directions limbs probably shouldn't go in–first its arms, then its legs, then, in Vecna’s signature style, its neck.
Rather than mirroring the demo’s injuries and screaming in pain, Will is completely silent. Completely in control. Mike is awestruck.
The demo’s lifeless body drops to the ground, and Will drops to his knees. He doesn’t pass out from exhaustion like Mike knows Eleven would’ve. Rather, he just lifts his head and wipes his bloodied nose.
Despite the destruction around him Will looks…well, Mike thinks he almost looks beautiful.
And at that moment, Mike’s heart seems to start beating again.