Chapter Text
When Mike comes to, the world is still on fire, people are still screaming, and he knows that they have lost. His head is pounding and his vision is still clouded from the blow he just took, but from where he lies on the ground he manages to watch as a gate closes right in front of him, swallowing the last two children he’d been trying to protect together with their cries for help. He only has to turn a little, breath heavy as he tries to support himself with his hands, to see Will hovering a few inches off the ground, in front of a monstrous humanoid shape seemingly covered in slimy vines that can only be Vecna. Oh, they’re so fucked.
Cold dread fills Mike’s stomach. For all he knows, a Demogorgon is only waiting for him to be distracted to jump him and rip him to shreds, but he can’t take his eyes off the scene consuming itself only a few feet away from him. He can’t see Will’s face well, but he can see his arms and legs contorting, his neck twitching, as if he’s trying to get free, and Mike knows that Will is in pain. It sends off all sorts of alarms in his head, and he wants to get up, do something, run to that son of a bitch Vecna and kick him or whatever, but he can barely hold himself up, and goddamn his useless body deciding to pull some damsel in distress shit just now.
So he just lies there, helpless, a scream building up in the back of his throat, as Vecna curses his best friend. Mike is not an authority on the curse, he wasn’t there to see anyone die at the hands of Vecna last year, but he was told that his victims froze and then started levitating, and this sure as hell looks like it. What will happen next – bones snapping, limbs bending at unnatural angles, eyes being sucked up into Will’s head – he can’t even bear thinking about.
But then, just as Vecna’s hand is hovering over Will’s forehead, the monstrous creature suddenly lets Will go. Will falls to his knees, which are still very much bending at the right angle, thank fucking God, and Vecna turns and walks away through the enormous gate without a backward glance. A massive wave of relief floods through Mike – Will is still alive, Will is okay. Mike can see him, palms on the ground and breathing heavily, but uninjured.
His elation lasts all of two seconds, because his gaze falls on the ground between him and Will, where one of the metal sheets covering the gates was ripped open and the very fabric of space time has seemingly started boiling. Claws tear the slimy tendrils of the gate apart, and a huge Demogorgon climbs its way up out of the ground.
For fuck’s sake, Mike thinks. Of course, Vecna would leave his monstrous lackeys to do the dirty work for him. Only, this Demogorgon doesn’t seem interested in Will. Instead, it turns to Mike.
Still half lying on the ground, his head a throbbing mess and his limbs so heavy he has to put in a massive effort just to push himself to his feet, Mike thinks with an extreme bout of calm clarity that this is the end of the line for him. He’s not one to go down quietly, but he can’t see himself possibly doing anything to save his own life just about now. Besides, a part of him is glad that it’s him and not Will, that’s about to be killed. He thinks that maybe, while the Demogorgon is distracted, tearing his body to shreds, Will will be able to somehow escape. Four years ago, he’d have died for Dustin by jumping into the quarry if El had not been there to save him, and he will do the same for Will. This is just going to be a bit more painful, he thinks.
The Demogorgon takes a leap towards him, and Mike instinctively raises his arms over his head to protect himself, for whatever it’s worth.
But the lacerating blow never comes, and instead Mike hears a screech. He opens his eyes, slowly lowering his hands, and spots the Demogorgon, frozen in mid-air only a few inches above him.
Just like Will before, the Demogorgon is visibly struggling, its limbs twitching, but it cannot move even an inch. And then Mike’s vision comes into focus on Will behind it, and his first thought is Goddammit why didn’t he run? But the second one is Oh.
Because Will is standing, his arm outstretched towards Mike and the Demogorgon, his teeth gritted and his eyes veiled by a milky sheen, and Mike knows that he is the one holding the Demogorgon back from ripping him to pieces.
As Mike watches, dumbstruck, Will extends his other arm, then snaps his head back. He pulls his hands to his chest in balled up fists, and Mike hears a sickening crunch. Above him, the Demogorgon’s limbs snap, its head caving in, and the monster topples to the ground in a motionless pile of wet, slimy flesh and broken bones.
Will falls to his knees once more, and when he raises his head, Mike can see his eyes lose their white cast, and a trickle of blood descend from his nostrils.
Holy shit. Will just killed the Demogorgon. With his mind. With his fucking powers, and Mike knew it. His best friend is a real-life, honest to God sorcerer.
He wants to pump his fist in the air and holler in victory, he wants to run to Will and sweep him up into a hug despite barely being able to stand, but he doesn’t get the chance to do any of these things. Because as he unsteadily starts stumbling towards Will, the boy’s head snaps back, his eyes go white once more, and something is wrong.
Will knows, the moment Vecna walks through the gate and the Demogorgon emerges, that the dark wizard will make him watch as his servant kills Mike. He has looked inside Will’s mind, pried his memory and violated his thoughts, and he has seen, he has seen all that Will truly is, down to his very core. And of course, there, in the most guarded place within him, Vecna has found Mike.
And not just Mike. Vecna has cast his net far and wide to find Will’s weaknesses, and has recognized two more faces: Robin and Lucas. And now he’s going to make Will watch, through the eyes of the monsters, as Vecna tears through the flesh and blood of his friends until only their lifeless forms are left.
The contours of the images are blurry, edged with red, and Will can feel it, the rage of the hive mind, its thirst for blood, its desire to kill, almost as if it’s Will’s own. It courses through him, mixing with disgust and horror, with the part of him that’s still him. And he’s thirteen again, the Mind Flayer infecting his mind like a virus, his thoughts no longer his, living through the agony of watching himself slip away, aware and powerless to stop it. The tunnels under Hawkins are crawling with vines, Demodogs are prowling their depths, and soldiers get ambushed and cornered and are massacred in a bloodbath, and the Mind Flayer sings in his mind, always hungrier, never satisfied.
Only this time, those about to be hurt are some of the people he cares for the most in this world, his friends, those that never gave up looking for him when he was taken to another dimension, who didn’t stop trying to bring him back even when he became a spy for the enemy, who showed him there is more than one way to love and that he is not a mistake, that he is right where he needs to be.
Lucas. Robin.
Mike.
Mike, who sat down next to Will on a swing on the first day of kindergarten and asked him to be his friend. You’re not taking Mike.
“I was looking for the answers in somebody else, but I had all the answers. I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared. Scared of who I really was. And once I did that, I was so free. It’s like I could fly.”
The Mind Flayer found a little boy, who was afraid of being alone, who was afraid of being different, and took him. Emptied him of his memories and his thoughts and the things that made him himself, and filled him with cold darkness. But Will is not thirteen anymore, and he’s still scared, and he is different, but that is okay.
So he reaches out, into the hive mind, the monster that is trying to fill him with its nothingness, and instead pours himself into it. He floods it with his own thoughts, his own memories, and his will.
That’s when the hive mind starts to sing for him. A power he has never felt before courses through him, tingling at his fingertips, and all he has to do is raise his arm for the Demogorgon to stop in mid-air where it’s about to attack Mike. With his mind’s eye, Will sees the Demogorgon that’s leaping towards Lucas and just thinks Stop. He throws his head back and the monster that was going to tear Robin’s throat out freezes. And then blood-red rage fills his vision, but this time it’s his rage, anger at all this evil that has taken so much from him, killed so many, hurt Bob and Max and El and now is trying to take Robin and Lucas and Mike away from him. Will just wants it gone. So he makes it go away.
He pulls on the strings, draining the Demogorgons of life, despite the hive mind’s scream of pain and its echo through his own head. They snap like twigs, falling to the ground like ragdolls.
Just like that, it all rushes out of him, the hive mind momentarily disconnected, and he goes to his knees. He pants, a sudden exhaustion washing over him, but he has never felt better in his life. Right across from him, Mike stands unharmed, a look of triumph on his face, and he thinks I did it. I saved him.
YOU SAVED NO ONE.
Pain explodes in Will’s head, and his vision goes cloudy just as he sees Mike start to make his way towards him. He feels the moment Vecna brings his attention back to him like a knife slicing through his brain. The MAC-Z around him vanishes, and Will finds himself in what looks like a dark cave, or the hollowed-out insides of a tree, the walls covered in thick black vines, vines that hold him in place, squeezing around his ankles and wrists and neck and Will can’t breathe. From a distant memory, he recognizes Vecna’s lair. Panic fills his mind.
YOU DARED USE MY CREATURES, Vecna rumbles, right in front of Will, and Will can feel his anger.
YOU THINK YOU CAN CONTROL THIS POWER, DO YOU? He continues, mocking, and Will feels every word washing through him and sweeping him away.
“Let me go!” He screams, with what little air he has left, the vines tightening further around his throat. He tries to channel his will through them like he did the Demogorgons, but this time, he is met with resistance, like running head on into a wall.
YOU ARE A FOOL, WILLIAM. YOU HAVE NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. ALL THIS POWER, IT COMES FROM ME, Vecna says, and the hive mind pushes back at Will, pins and needles puncturing his mind and tearing another scream out of him. The pain feels unbearable, and his eyes fill with tears he can’t contain.
YOU ARE WEAK, AND YOU WOULD DO WELL TO REMEMBER THAT, Vecna hisses, before bombarding Will’s mind once more.
Will is in the shed behind his old house, holding his father’s rifle in shaking hands. Something rips behind him, and before he can do anything, a repulsive creature with no face has grabbed him and taken him through the wall of the shed, into a place of darkness and cold.
WEAK.
He is standing in the field behind Hawkins Middle, and he turns to face the shadow monster taking form amidst the dark thunder clouds. “Go away!” He shouts, but the monster grows long tentacles of smoke, and they go in his mouth and in his nose and in his ears, and he can’t breathe anymore.
BROKEN.
Mike is in front of him, under the porch of the Wheeler house, rain pouring in a deluge a few feet away from them.
“Well, it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” He says, and it feels like the world crumbles around Will. “I mean, what did you think, really. That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?” Will feels so stupid, because he did, he did think that what he and Mike had could never change, and he was wrong, so wrong. He takes his bike, and he cycles home in the storm, going straight for Castle Byers, and he tears it down with his bare hands as the rain mixes with his tears on his face.
PATHETIC.
He’s still there, in the woods, rain soaking his hair and his clothes, staring at the remnants of his childhood refuge, only Vecna is next to him now.
THIS IS WHO YOU ARE. THIS IS ALL YOU’LL EVER BE, Vecna says, almost softly, but Will can hear the sneer in his voice.
And Will knows, he knows that Vecna plays with the minds of his victims, makes them see things, bad things. But these are Will’s memories. They’re not visions Vecna has concocted for him; on the contrary, they’re the pure and simple truth. He wasn’t able to fight the Demogorgon, nor the Mind Flayer. He clung on to Mike, when Mike was ready to move on, stupidly, pathetically so. And there are dozens of other memories, of all the times he’s felt scared, left out, alone, jealous, hateful, wrong. A mistake.
A little, tiny voice in the back of Will’s head whispers that this is not all he is. That he was happy, once. But right now, this is all Will can see. The voice is drowned out by Vecna’s mocking laugh.
LET GO, WILLIAM, AND YOU WILL BE FREE.
Voices overlap with one another in Will’s head, of his father, of the other kids at school, of Mike and Lucas and even of Jonathan and his mom, and Will feels so overwhelmed. They laugh at him, mock him, some shout insults and others snap in annoyance, some try to let him down gently and others tell him to just grow up, be a man. Will covers his ears, trying not to listen, but the voices are in his head, and they only grow louder. Tears stream down his cheeks, and he screams for help, for anyone who will listen, but no one is out there. Just Vecna and his vines and his monsters.
In the end, Will just wishes for it all to be over.
By the time Mike has limped his way to Will’s side, Joyce is already there, hands on Will’s shoulders and tears in her eyes, panic in her voice.
“Will? Will! Will, please, wake up!” She repeats over and over in a desperate litany.
Mike’s brain feels like it has short-circuited. How is this even possible? Vecna let Will go, Mike saw it. And then Will hit back at him, at the Demogorgon that was going to kill Mike, and his eyes were white but it was him, it was Will, not the Mind Flayer or Vecna, Will. Will, who didn’t let Mike die. Will, who interfered with Vecna’s plans.
That’s got to be it, decides the last lucid part of Mike’s brain. Will used Vecna’s monster against him, and now Vecna is punishing him. Mike feels sick.
Joyce’s cries are increasingly more desperate, her voice breaking over and over as Will fails to wake from his trance, his eyes white and glassy and staring ahead, unseeing.
There must be something Mike can do, anything. Music. He has to get Will some music to listen to, preferably something that he likes. And Mike knows just the thing. They all made themselves or each other mixtapes with their favorite songs on them, precisely in case this were to happen to any of them. And then he remembers that only a few hours before they left, Will had been listening to his mixtape, only to take off the Walkman as they all started discussing the plan to rescue the kids, and leaving it… on the couch in the basement of the Squawk. Where it remained.
Shit. Shit! Goddammit, how could they have forgotten about the tapes?!
But now is not the time for Mike to kick himself over some stupid mistake. Think. Will singing something work? Will blasts that mixtape so loudly in his headphones Mike can hear it when they’re both hanging out in his quiet room. Surely he remembers some lyrics. He can’t hold a tune to save his life, but he will try for Will’s.
And then, just as Mike is about to open his mouth, Will slumps forward in his mom’s arms, Joyce taking his weight with a surprised oof. She grabs his shoulders to push him back a little and look at his face, and Mike sees that Will’s eyes are back to their usual shade of hazel. He exhales in relief, again, his hands falling to his knees as the terror that was holding him up leaks out of him. Thank fucking God, he thinks, for the second time in barely ten minutes.
“Mom,” Will says, and his voice makes Mike look up. There is confusion in Will’s tone, and fear, but it’s also like something is… missing.
“Yes, baby, I’m here,” Joyce says, smiling with tears in her eyes, her hand coming up cup Will’s cheek.
“W-what happened?” Will asks, and sure enough, through his watery gaze Mike sees that same thing he’s heard in Will’s voice, or better, doesn’t see, because it’s an absence, an emptiness, even if Mike can’t quite pinpoint it. Something is still wrong.
“Oh honey, you went in a trance for a moment there, scared us to death. But you fought, you fought that vicious monster, and now you’re back,” Joyce explains, her voice soft.
Will frowns, the confusion in his gaze deepening. “What? What monster?” He asks, and Mike’s knees tremble. Something is very wrong.
“Vecna,” Mike replies before he can stop himself, and Will’s gaze finally turns to him.
And there’s nothing there. Will’s expression as he gazes at his best friend is… blank.
“Who are you?” Will asks, and the world comes crashing down on Mike.