Chapter Text
Will Byers was sure he was the only person left with any semblance of a brain. He knew it. It was practically in his veins. He had been walking through this town for 568 days, and he was almost certain. He was the only one left.
It's not that everyone around him was gone. Quite the opposite, actually. They were just... off. He had put his friends and their weirdness on the fact that they were still grieving El. Will understood that. She was his sister, after all. Then he blamed it on the leftover chaos covering Hawkins like a scratchy blanket. But even that couldn't last forever.
Will was sure of it at his graduation. Sure, graduations were supposed to be boring. Marching in a straight line was encouraged. Surely there was a reason for the mechanical-sounding band, or the blank signs in the crowd. Everything had a rational explanation. At least that's what Will told himself.
He walked up and received his diploma as he was supposed to. The words fell out of his mouth, like they have so often since last year. He doesn't even remember what he said. It's clearest when he looks at it through the corner of his eye. Or his mind. Whatever.
Will knew that wasn't what Mike was planning to say after graduation. He could practically taste the words, the real words, sticking in his teeth like peanut brittle. He ran his tongue over them, feeling the shape. The sharp edges of Mike and his not-quite-rightness.
At least Will was aware he wasn't in full control. At night, he put one hand over his right eye and one hand on the back of his neck, and he felt the fuzziness growing under his skin. He hadn't told anyone. He couldn't be saved anymore. Vecna had made sure of that the second he saw Will. Lonnie made sure to drill it into his head like a gunshot. Like the sound of tires on the ground. Like he knew from the start.
Will had never felt this wrong before, though. Mike seemed to catch it too. He looked at Will with his puppy eyes as he slid his foot across Mike's. He cornered him after lasagna, all bones and viscera.
"What's the matter?" Mike asked. They were in a hallway, eyeing each other in the way only they knew how to.
"Something doesn't add up here," Will replied. He was all nonchalant about it. He had gotten good at hiding. "Like, everyone seems like they're just acting. Did you ever wonder about how Max graduated? She didn't even go to school for two years. And did Vickie just disappear off the face of the earth?"
"Will, you're doing it again."
"Doing what? Noticing what's going on here?"
"What exactly do you think is wrong?" Mike was pointed as he said this. He always knew exactly how to get under Will's skin. He could scrape off the edges and join everything else festering under there. Will would probably welcome it. He could cut up his eye and make a nest for his best friend.
"You haven't noticed?" Will was almost indignant as he said this. He knew Mike, and this wasn't Mike. This was some distant body-snatcher with his best friend's body and voice.
"Will, you're being paranoid." Huh. Mike still had the Will voice. He had the soft eyes that went with it. He was in there somewhere. Will was sure of it. He just needed to break that sugary shell and let the real Mike out.
"I would know if I were being paranoid. Look, you know Vecna messes with our minds, right? What if he was only making us think we won?"
"Will, can you even hear yourself right now? Vecna is dead. El killed him, remember? Was her death for nothing?"
There it was. "What if it was? What if he's in my head right now?"
"I would kill him with anything I could find."
"Would you kill me?"
"I've already lost one love, I can't-" Mike stopped dead in his tracks. He closed his eyes, then opened them one at a time. Right eye first, then left. "I've already lost El. What's another Byers twin?"
Will felt his bones shift at that. His skin toughened under Mike's blue eyes. Blue? They were always brown, brown as the mud they played in as kids, brown as Mike's Coke he sipped, fucking brown. Will shook it off. He had some work to do.