Chapter Text
Will is twelve years old, and dying. He knows what death is, knows from Mr. Clarke’s class how your body shuts down and your organs fail, one by one, until they can’t support you anymore. What he didn’t know was how afraid he would feel. How cold. He knows it now.
“Should I stay or should I go now,” he hums, his voice cracking over the words. He’s not sure if the song is keeping him sane or pushing him farther into insanity. All he knows is that he can’t stand the silence. “If I go, there will be trouble—if I stay, it will be—”
Outside Castle Byers, a branch snaps.
Will jolts upwards, eyes wide. Heavy footsteps follow the snap, way too close to the fort’s entrance. The monsters hadn’t followed him here, so he thought he was safe.
Of course it was only a matter of time.
Step. Step. Silence.
There’s no time to run.
The wall of Castle Byers bursts open, a monster barging through and opening its horrible petaled mouth to scream. Instinctively, Will grabs his dad’s gun from the ground and aims it. His aim’s gotten better, these last few days. It’s had to. He lines up the barrel, not stoping to overthink it, and shoots the monster right in the throat.
While it recoils, he takes the chance to get out of there. Pushes past the door’s tarp and books it into the night—it’s always night here—carrying only his gun and backpack. He can hardly even feel the cold anymore as his legs pump at maximum speed, his sneakers slapping the ground. He knows he doesn’t have long. The monster is right behind him. And there might be more coming.
In the open, he assesses his options. There’s nowhere else to run, nowhere to duck for cover.
Not on the ground, at least.
He stops at the base of a heavily-limbed tree and gets a slippery foothold, climbing up it as fast as he can. It’s a good thing he spent his childhood in the woods, making fantasy worlds from grass and wood. It’s a good thing he’s small for his age, and quick.
He climbs as fast as he can, hearing only his own panicked breathing in his ears, along with the monster’s distant roars. He doesn’t know if it can climb. He hasn’t seen any in the trees, but he has no idea what these things are capable of.
Red lightning forks across the cloudy sky, seeming almost close enough to touch, as he reaches the highest branch. The tree’s too skinny to climb any further, so he hugs the branch and scans the ground. And waits.
No sign. Did he lose it?
Then, a break in the fog—Will can see the top of the monster’s head, turning from side to side as it searches for him. He tries to breathe more quietly. He tries to turn invisible.
It doesn’t work. The monster’s head snaps up, finding him with terrifying accuracy. It yowls with fury, leaping up to claw at the tree’s base. To climb.
Crap.
He still can’t go higher. He can’t go down, either, not without breaking a leg. Frantically, he searches his surroundings.
There’s another branch, from another tree, just a few feet away.
Below, the monster is gaining on him.
There’s no other option.
He jumps.
For a moment, everything is weightless. He can feel his limbs flailing in midair, feel the cool rush of air against his skin. The sky is dark and angry and not at all like home. It might be the last thing he ever sees.
The branch scrapes his arms.
He misses.
What follows is a blur of pain and white-hot fear, Will trying to balance himself against anything he can feel as his body bruises its way down the tree. There’s a sharp tugging sensation in his armpits, and then a nauseating freeze in momentum, his legs dangling in midair. His backpack straps, he realizes, caught in the tree. They’ve saved him.
And—killed him, also. Because now he can’t move. Crap, he thinks again, kicking his feet with no success. He’s stuck here. He’s stuck, and he’s—slipping. He’s slipping, oh god, the adjustable parts of the straps getting looser and looser as he struggles, and—
And.
That’s the last thing he feels, before he hits the ground.
That’s the last thing he feels at all.
—
Will comes to, groggy, feeling like he’s choking. He winces and rubs his throat, the remnants of his dream already fading. Probably just the usual trauma highlight reel, though, so he’s fine without reliving it. Holly’s footsteps are fading up the Wheeler’s stairs. He knows they’re hers, because that’s what happens when you live somewhere for this long. You know the inhabitants like your own family.
Because, in some cases, they are.
From the couch, Jonathan scrubs his hands over his eyes. “Shit, man,” he grumbles. “We overslept.”
Will squints against the bright lights coming in from the basement windows and turns towards his brother. “I thought you were setting an alarm.”
“I thought you were!” Jonathan bitches.
Will groans, pushing against the air mattress and stumbling to his feet. At this rate, he’ll be lucky to get a single strawberry for breakfast. He can already hear the chaos of the combined Wheeler-Byers family upstairs, volleying for scraps. It’s like living with a wolf pack.
Five minutes later, Will’s trying to explain to his mom: “It’s always Jonathan’s fault.”
“It’s not always Jonathan’s fault!” she says, which Will assumes is in reference to the multiple times that he himself has dragged his feet over waking up because he was cold or sleepy or in a bad mood, causing them all to be late to school. But that’s neither here nor there.
“It’s always Jonathan’s fault,” he insists, reaching for the fruit bowl, and Jonathan rolls his eyes. Next to Will, Mike silently slips an extra piece of bacon onto his plate. “Thanks,” Will murmurs, and Mike gives a slight smile in response.
Will thinks about that smile all throughout breakfast. He feels like in the past year and a half, he’s turned into the target audience for one of Nancy’s teen-girl magazines that he secretly steals and reads in the basement. How to know if he’s really into you! How to read the signals! What does THAT LOOK mean? He’s read every issue front-to-back, and he still has no clue how to decipher Mike Wheeler’s expressions. It’s a curse.
He’s thinking about it still in the chaos of leaving the Wheeler residence, as he hops onto the seat of his bike and follows after Mike, Holly trailing after them both. “The Morning Squawk, Mike!” she shouts, pedaling faster. “We’re gonna miss it!”
It’s still weird to see Holly like this—as a fully-formed person, with agency and height and opinions, when before Will left for Lenora, she was still learning how to read. He’s missed so much. But it’s like he’s making up for all of it, now, being fully immersed into the Wheeler family. Into Mike’s daily life. He wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Mike arches an eyebrow at his sister, then flicks on the radio he attached to his bike over the summer. Robin’s voice bursts out of it, right on time: “Goooood morning, Hawkins! This is WSQK, The Squawk!” A cartoonish eagle sound follows the greeting, and Holly laughs with delight. Will smiles, too. He likes Robin, likes how… herself she is. It makes him feel safe. Relatively, anyway, with the state of everything else.
He listens to Robin chatting about her 500th broadcast, snarkily “encouraging” military compliance, and gushing about some date she’s going on (good for her!) and thinks that things could almost be normal, if it wasn’t for the helicopters swarming overhead, and the camo-green army tanks passing them by on the road. If it wasn’t for the terrible, gut-deep feeling that things could start back up any day now, even if they’ve been quiet for a while.
If it wasn’t for Mike’s smile, the one he’s smiling at Will right now! Ugh!
Will still doesn’t know what to make of it. He smiles back, and hopes that the world will wait another day to end. Just so that he can figure Mike out, first.
—
When Mike and Will get to school, Dustin’s already getting beat into the lockers. A good sign, Mike thinks. God, it’s too early for this bullshit.
Lucas has already started up the defense squad, his biceps bulging as he crosses his arms over his chest. “You remember that time my sister kicked your balls so hard you limped for a week?” he asks Andy, loud enough for the other kids in the hall to hear and snicker about it. “Yeah. If you touch Dustin again, I’ll kick ‘em so hard, they pop like water balloons.”
Killer line. Mike sidles up to the lockers, leaning one hip against them in a way he really hopes looks cool and intimidating. “Do it,” he tells Lucas. “Probably a good idea to stop this plebeian from reproducing.”
That one doesn’t get as many hallway laughs. Maybe they don’t know what the word plebeian means. Typical. Mike, for some reason, cuts a glance over at Will—who’s smiling, looking amused at Mike’s joke. Score! Of course Will gets it. He always does.
“Boys!” Mrs. Preston, the hallway monitor, shouts out. “Do I need to start handing out detentions?”
Andy fixes the collar of his varsity jacket, looking around the hallway. Even with his dumb buddy at his side, he’s clearly outnumbered. He flicks his eyes down to Dustin’s torn Hellfire shirt, sneering. “Hope you brought an extra shirt, Henderson,” he mutters. “No one wants to see that shit.”
And with that, he’s off. Mike breathes a sigh of relief, and hears the others do the same. They live to see another day. Awesome. Still, Dustin flips off Andy’s retreating back, like that does anything at all.
“You’ve gotta stop provoking them, man,” Lucas says, as they bundle down the hallway together. A conjoined unit, a pack. Even though the circumstances royally suck, Mike can’t help the small thrill he feels at the idea of the Party reunited. It’s been ages now, but it still feels good to have Will back with them.
“Oh, so this is my fault?” Dustin says dryly. “For what, wearing a t-shirt?” Mike sighs, but—well, yes. It is. They’d all given Dustin grace at the beginning—hell, none of them had been much better off, after Eddie—but it’s been over a year now. Mike’s not saying Dustin has to be done grieving or anything, because he’s not either, but couldn’t he just make it easier on himself? On the rest of them? Give them one less thing to worry about, when everything else is already so much?
“You know it’s more than that,” Lucas says. He’s trying to be gentle, Mike can tell, but his tone betrays how exasperated he is. How exasperated they all are, at this point.
“I can’t be like you guys and just turn the other cheek, or whatever,” Dustin bites out, getting snippier by the word, “while those meatheads spread their bullshit about Hellfire. About Eddie.”
“Eddie never gave a rat’s ass what those mouth-breathers thought of him, and you know it,” Mike points out, trying to keep up with Dustin as he quickens his pace. “You know what he would care about? Vecna. Finding him. Killing him.”
“Do you seriously think I don’t care about that?” Dustin snaps. “Really, Mike?” He turns, whip-quick, to face him, and the Party comes to a stop near an empty, quiet classroom.
Mike takes a second to breathe. To choose his words carefully. To consider Dustin’s feelings, but also the good of the group. The good of Hawkins. “I think,” he says, his tone more level. “That you’re fighting two battles, and we need to be fighting one.”
Thankfully, Will nods his agreement. Finally—backup! “Mike’s right, Dustin,” he says gently. “What if you get hurt? Like, really hurt. I’m sure Eddie would be grateful to you for defending him—”
“Screw you, you didn’t even know him,” Dustin blurts, before taking in the look on Will’s face. He sighs, small and quiet. “Sorry.”
Will swallows, looking at the floor. Mike tries to keep breathing.
“You’re drawing attention,” Lucas says, into the silence. “And that’s not what we need right now. We need to—follow the rules. Blend in.”
“Stay focused on our next crawl,” Mike adds.
Dustin leans back against the wall and massages his eyebrows. “Blend in?” he repeats. “Follow the rules? That’s not what we’ve ever done.”
“Dustin,” Will tries. “We’re just saying—”
“We stay true to ourselves!” Dustin cuts in, truly aggravated now. “And we’re supposed to stay true to our friends. We stand up for what’s right, no matter the cost.”
“Nobody’s denying that,” Lucas says. “You’re not listening to us.”
“No,” Dustin volleys, widening his eyes and leaning forward to match him. “You’re not.”
And with that, he stalks away.
Mike winces.
“Dustin,” Will calls again, holding his arms out plaintively. But it does nothing. Mike pats him on the shoulder in commiseration, and Lucas looks back at them both, his eyes mournful.
“...We’ll get him next time?” Mike tries.
“There might not be a next time,” Lucas sighs, then walks off in the opposite direction. He’s right, Mike thinks. That’s what they were trying to tell Dustin—that they can’t worry about Vecna killing him if Andy and his goons get there first. That he needs to save his strength. Worry about the things that matter. They all know what Eddie stood for. That’s what matters, right? Not trying to change the minds of people who won’t ever understand.
“Uh. Mike?” Will says.
Mike looks over. His hand is still on Will’s shoulder. Gripping it, kind of.
“Oh,” he says, wrong-footed without knowing exactly why. “Sorry.”
Will smiles, small and private and so, so great. That’s Mike’s favorite smile. The one that reminds him everything’s gonna be okay, as long as they stick together. That they’ve got this. “It’s all good,” Will says.
And it is.
It is.
—
At lunch, Lucas is still ranting. “I’m telling you, he’s lost his mind,” he tells Mike and Will. “Did he tell you guys he wants to start Hellfire again?”
Mike blinks. He’d—well, he’d love to start Hellfire again. If it wasn’t for everything. It it wasn’t for Andy and his goons. For laying low. Maybe they could start small, though, and play D&D again within the Party. When this is all over, of course.
More importantly: Dustin didn’t tell Mike. And from the panicked, confused glance Will sends in his direction, he didn’t tell him, either. “When did he say that?” Mike asks.
“This weekend,” Lucas says. “He was talking about ‘finding the lost sheep.’”
Will traces a finger around the rim of his Coke can. “It’s a good idea,” he says softly, glancing at Mike a second time. “Or it would be, if it wasn’t for—”
“Everything,” Mike agrees.
Lucas rubs tiredly at his forehead. “Like I said. He’s lost his damn mind.”
And that, of course, is when Dustin plops down at the table. “Who’s lost his damn mind?” Mike winces, trying to discern if he’d heard them or not. From the look on his face, he’s worried the answer might be yes.
“Uh,” Will blurts, looking concerned. “Uh—”
“Andy!” Mike jumps in. “Andy’s lost his mind. Can’t believe he’s picking fights in public now.”
Lucas raises a brow. “Can’t believe he’s picking fights at all, after Erica kicked his ass.”
“Yeah, that was—messed up,” Will agrees nervously. They all look at Dustin, trying to figure out if he bought it.
Dustin’s expression hasn’t changed: flat, kind of pissed off. Then again, he always looks like that, these days. He shakes his head, looking off in the middle distance. Doesn’t say anything.
A third glance, from Will. Mike bumps their shoes together under the table, trying to comfort him. Dustin will be Dustin, he wants to say, with the bump. Meaning: He’ll be okay.
Luckily for them all, the radio chooses that moment to crackle to life. “Hey there, friends! This is Rockin’ Robin.”
Then, they’re in go-mode. Robin’s laying out the next crawl, and it’s too early, but Mike can’t think about that right now. He’s got his pen to paper, decoding her signals: North. Zone G1. 10 PM, two hours. All typical, all normal, except that the military’s moving their timeline. “Meet up after school?” Mike asks, looking around the table. He almost expects some resistance, or at least a rolled eye: the debrief isn’t really necessary at this point, when they’ve done so many crawls already, but he likes to be safe rather than sorry. Gets it from Nance, he thinks, though he’d rather die than say that out loud.
But everyone, thankfully, seems just as serious as he is. Like they’re all thinking the same thing: Maybe this time, it’ll be it. They’ll find Vecna, or a Vecna-related clue, and they can be one step closer to ending all this. To living normal lives.
Mike just doesn’t know, as they split off their separate ways, why the word normal puts such a heavy pit in his stomach.
—
“Lucas, we’ll take our usual observation post,” Mike says, setting their figurines down on the map. “Once the burn starts and there’s sufficient cover, we’ll signal Hopper, who’ll make his move.”
He lays out the plan as usual: Hop gets in position, Dustin and Steve track telemetry. Six miles up Cornwallis, disembark, Hop searches the zone. And, hopefully, finds something. Even just a shred of a something. Mike tries not to think, as they study the map and commit the new zone parameters to memory, about what El’s doing right now. She wants to go on the crawl, he knows. Has been dying for it. Hop won’t let her, of course. Doesn’t want her stepping one toe into the Upside Down. Doesn’t want any of them down there, for that matter. Mike would just say screw it and make his own plans, but—and he can’t believe he’s saying this—the old man is right. It’s dangerous, with the military. With the way they’re still looking for El. It reminds Mike of that awful summer, all over again.
After they’ve debriefed, Dustin clears his throat. “I hate to be a downer,” he says, in a voice that implies he doesn’t hate it at all, “but, uh—zone G1? Really?”
“We’ve gotta search the whole area,” Mike says defensively, though he already knows what Dustin’s getting at. “Vecna might think to hide somewhere subtle. Y’know, hidden?”
They’d checked the hot spots first, obviously. Or Hop had. The lab, the library, even the Byers’ old house. Nothing. Not even a lone demodog. It’s like the whole Upside Down has packed up and moved camp. Now, if Hopper is to be believed, all that’s left is… emptiness.
But! They still have more ground to cover. Hence, the crawls.
“Yeah, I get that,” Dustin says, trailing a finger over the map’s dusty surface. “It’s just—what’s even in there? Circuit City? Best Buy? What’s the chance Vecna’s shopping for Lucky Charms?”
Mike shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. We stick to the plan.” Will’s nodding, looking hopeful, so Mike ramps up his energy. He can feel that prideful feeling simmering in his chest, the one that kind of borders on panic, the one he gets when he knows it’s up to him to lead the pack. To bolster his friends, to give people hope. To make them believe.
“It doesn’t matter if it takes a hundred more crawls,” he says, planting his hands against the table. “A thousand! We don’t stop until we’re goddamn sure that wrinkled, rotting, noseless bastard is dead and gone and never coming back.”
Will’s smiling, now, looking reassured. And Mike’s saying it for El’s sake, but also Will’s. Max’s. Eddie’s, too. Everyone who’s been hurt by this monster, who won’t be able to sleep at night with even the slimmest chance that he might still be out there. Mike hears Will whimpering, sometimes, from the basement. Late at night. He sits at the top of the stairs and listens to the sound of Will’s nightmares until they whittle down to nothing. Mike doesn’t know how to make them go away. He doesn’t know what to do, except for this.
He has to do something. And until there’s a better plan, or more information to go off of, this is the only option.
He puts his hand out above the table. “Everyone in?”
Lucas, looking determined, slaps his palm on top of Mike’s. Then Will. Then, when there’s only one of them left, they turn to look at Dustin.
Dustin’s mouth twitches to the side. His torn Hellfire shirt ripples in the late-autumn breeze. “I want to see Vecna’s heart on a platter,” he says. His voice is low, almost scarily detached. Like he has nothing left to lose. “Just wish I could do it myself.”
Dustin puts his hand on top of the pile. “For Eddie,” he says.
“For Eddie,” the Party echoes.
With that, they’re decided.
With that, the crawl is on.