Chapter Five: The Things Still Buried

Things had been utterly flipped on their head for the Byers family since the last time they had set foot in their home three days earlier. They had to pretend everything was normal for the outside world. Once again, the parent's of Will's friends had no idea how much danger their children were in.

Joyce had hoped she was getting her children away from everything that haunted them in Hawkins, but it had only followed them. She had lost her job at the store for having to call off the weekend before Christmas. That didn't bother her very much. She wasn't stranded financially for the first time in her life as Hopper had managed to get them some compensation for all their troubles that stemmed from Hawkins Lab.

She had always had an easy bond with Eleven. Joyce had easily loved her like a daughter and it felt natural to take her in and care for her when Hopper had disappeared. She had always known that something had happened while she was in labor with Will and it had caused her to be overprotective of him his entire life. It was almost an obsession; only it had been instincts all along, Brenner and his people had been watching Will his entire life-while they had been torturing his sister.

Sarah and Alice had checked the house for bugs, so Joyce decided to have a private conversation with her children. "Will, El, Jonathan, can I talk to you alone?" she asked as the others were hanging up their coats. She hadn't felt comfortable having that conversation while at a government facility.

Joyce's children followed her to her room. She closed the door behind them.

"Is everything okay, Mom?" asked Will. "All things considered at least..."

"If it isn't, we're going to make it okay- all of us," said Joyce. She saw the three of them exchanging curious looks and smiled. They all had good instincts and she was going to make sure they followed them.

"I had a reputation for being unhinged in Hawkins," said Joyce.

Jonathan scoffed. "Only with the idiots in town."

"Maybe," said Joyce. "But I've been overprotective of Will his entire life because I always had this fear that he was in danger. I didn't know how or why, but every instinct told me that someone or something was after him. You were always so independent, Will, and after you got back from the Upside Down, I was just terrified if I couldn't see you. I kept you from doing the things you liked to do for so long and you missed out on so much. I'm sorry, Baby."

"It's okay, Mom. You were right, we just didn't know it," said Will. He did feel a sense of loss for the time he wasn't allowed to freely do things on his own, but he didn't resent his mother.

Joyce walked over and hugged her youngest child and kissed his forehead. "No, I had no idea what was really going on, but we all know the truth now. And now that we know, we can protect ourselves better. Hawkins Lab, the Upside Down: they messed with the wrong family."

Will, El, and Jonathan all looked up in surprise at their mother.

"We're not going to let them control our lives," Joyce continued. "We're not going to live in fear. I don't know how we're going to defeat them once and for all and get them out of our lives, but now that we know, we can figure it out."

"Yes," said El as she glanced at Will. "We can."

"I could come back and help," said Jonathan "Finish my degree later."

"No," said Will. "Mom's right. We're not going to let them run our lives anymore, and we're certainly not going to let them ruin something you worked so hard to get. Now that we know, we can figure things out."

"Will's right, honey," said Joyce. "You had to spend years working to help me with the bills because your father wasn't paying child support; and that wasn't fair. You still managed to do well in school and get a full scholarship. They aren't going to take that away from you."

Joyce glanced from Jonathan to Will and El.

"Will, you survived in that place for a week. You survived being possessed by that thing and fought it every step of the way. You even outsmarted it with the morse code. And El, you were raised by that man to be a weapon and you're still a good person. We're going to get through whatever happens next. Now that we know that whatever all this is will follow us wherever we go, we can move back to Hawkins if you want. I've never been completely sure if taking you from your friends was the right choice."

El saw something flash in Will's face for a fleeting moment. If she hadn't learned to read him so well, she would have missed it. She understood the look: Will didn't want to go back to Hawkins, but wasn't going to say anything because he believed that she, El, may want to go back. Part of her really did. She wanted to be with Mike again. On the other hand, she didn't want to be near the lab, even if it was shut down. There were a lot of other things about the town of Hawkins that she didn't like. The way that people had always treated her brothers and mother were among them.

"I-I don't want to go back," said El. "Too close to the lab. Too many bad memories." Will gave her a look that was mixed with surprise and gratitude.

"I really don't want to go back either," he said. "I do miss my friends, but they've moved on and so have I; and it's nice to walk down the halls at school and not have everyone staring at me. It's also good to not live in a town full of people who don't treat you like you're crazy, Mom."

El remembered the way the people at stared at her when she went into the Big Buy store. She was aware that the people in Hawkins stared at Will like that all the time.

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"You should just get your money back," said Will to Mike, Dustin and Lucas as he indicated the Minith Tirith model. "I just don't want to keep it."

"We're not taking it back," said Lucas. "We know a lot of things have happened in the past few days and it's been really weird for you, but we got that as a Christmas present for you and it's yours." Mike and Dustin nodded in agreement.

Will shut his eyes and leaned against the wall. El and Max exchanged a look.

"Since it's mine," said Will. "I can do whatever I want with it, right?"

"You don't want to demolish, do you?" asked Dustin. Will shook his head. "Then yes, it's yours and you can do whatever you want with it.

Will walked over and picked up the phone. "Hey, it's Will Byers. I've got something to donate to the shelter. Is there anyone who can come by to pick it up? Yeah, tomorrow's fine."

"You're donating it?" asked an astonished Lucas.

"Yep," said Will. He had a mildly defiant look on his face. "If you want to take it and get your money back, I can call the homeless shelter and cancel the pick up."

"No," said Mike. "If this is what you want to do, it's your call, Will."

He put his hand on Will's shoulder. Will seemed slightly startled. Mike pulled his hand away. Although Will had accepted Mike's apology after talking to Jane, he still seemed anxious after the whole incident of Mike blaming him for El leaving. Mike wanted more than anything for things to be like they once were with Will, but the more he tried, the more he seemed to push Will away.

Perhaps on some level he had blamed Will for El leaving Hawkins. Maybe Will feared it deep down and Mike's drug induced outburst had confirmed Will's fears. He seemed to be afraid to trust Mike again.

"Yeah, it is what I want," said Will.

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"I agree with your kids," said Hopper as he and Joyce talked in her room. "I really don't want to go back to that shit hole either. We actually do have options now, especially since we're doing this whole thing together and not alone."

"I'm terrified, to be honest," said Joyce. "Part of me wants to just take Will and El and hide in a bunker somewhere, but they've both missed out on so many things because we were afraid to let them do anything on their own for so long. I don't want to cause them to miss out on anything else."

"We know what's going on now," said Hopper. "Sam Owens and his people know what's going on and they're on our side. Alice is definitely on our side."

"She was held captive by Brenner for so long," said Joyce. "Are you sure she's not a sleeper agent or something?"

"She figured out how to resist his suggestions," said Hopper.

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The the night before Christmas Eve, most of the party members sat in the basement playing Will's Atari. Mike and El had gone to El's room to talk privately. Will was looking in a text book and making notes in his notebook while Dustin took his turn.

"Are you doing school work?" asked Lucas. "Didn't you have semester exams before break? Why would you have homework?"

"I'm just doing some assignments early," said Will.

"Why?" asked Dustin without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Oh, I don't know," said Will. "In case something from the Upside Down or Brenner's people attacks me again and causes me to miss school and fall behind."

"Sorry," said Lucas. "We didn't think.. we didn't mean anything."

"Nothing to be sorry for, don't worry," said Will as he slammed his notebook shut and stood up. He started to leave the room.

"Where are you going?" asked Lucas. Will's tone reminded him of the day he had tried to apologize to him in the shed by the Hawkins community pool. "Let's talk about this."

"I'm going to take a shower and there's nothing to talk about," said Will. "Are you two going to be alright?" he asked Sarah and Jane who were sitting with Max. They both nodded and Will headed up the stairs without another word.

"Something's going on with him," said Lucas to Dustin.

"Well, yeah," said Jane. "He was kidnapped by mad scientists and attacked by an inter dimensional monster a few days ago. He's a little on edge."

"We're his friends, we can help him," said Lucas.

"Try helping him by not pushing him," said Jane.

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Will heard Mike and El's voices in the hallway as he approached his room. He tried not to listen.

"You should come to Hawkins for New Years," said Mike. "We've been invited to this big party, and it'll be fun."

"I can't," said El. "Will and I, we-"

"I mean, Will can come too," said Mike. Will rolled his eyes and plugged his ears. That was a common thing that he often over heard Mike saying when he invited El to Hawkins. 'Will too.'

He, Will, had no desire to take along on a trip to Hawkins and wait for the moment that Mike decided to spend any time with him. He certainly had no desire to be trapped at the Wheeler house unable to go home if he felt like it. It was once a place where he loved going or ran to hide from his father, but ever since his family left Hawkins, the Wheeler home felt like a prison when Will visited.

As Will started to remove his shirt, he heard his bedroom door open behind him and Mike clearing his throat. Of course it wouldn't occur to Mike to knock.

Mike felt a stab of guilt as he noticed the bruising on Will's back from when he'd slammed Will into the cabinet.

"I'm about to take a shower," said Will.

"This'll only take a minute," said Mike.

"What is it?"

"Well, there's this New Year's Eve party we all got invited to."

"Congratulations," said Will dryly.

"You should come. It'll be fun."

"No thanks," said Will. "It's not my thing and I'm sure whoever is throwing the party doesn't want Zombie Boy there."

"It's Jennifer Hayes," said Mike. "She never called you Zombie Boy."

"She was always pretty nice to me," said Will. "But I just don't want to go."

If Mike could have seen inside Will's mind at that moment, he wouldn't have pushed. Unfortunately he was completely unaware of how Will was feeling at that moment. Partly because Will no longer confided in Mike like he used to when they were younger and partly because Mike himself wasn't as good at spotting when something was wrong as he used to be.

"C'mon," said Mike. "El won't go if you don't. Think of El. Besides, you gave away that model we made for you. You owe us."

Will's face remained impassive. When Mike would go over that wording in his head sometime later, he wanted to kick himself.

"Fine," said Will. "Can I go take my shower now?"

"Yeah, sure," said Mike. "It'll be fun, you'll see." Mike ran back to El's room.

Will stood in the shower a couple minutes later trying to absorb the heat from the water. Of course Mike and possibly Dustin and Lucas as well would think that he, Will, owed them because he had refused to do something that they had wanted him to do. He wasn't an equal member of the party and never had been.

The moments when the others had walked off without noticing that they'd left him behind flashed in his mind. It had been so common. Will felt stupid when he remembered Mike and Lucas running to the mall and leaving him behind as he was setting up the D&D board. 'Guys, I'm still here!' he had shouted. Why had he followed them? He didn't matter to them at that moment. His feelings hadn't mattered unless he showed them how upset he was, and then they'd try really hard to placate him.

"You don't matter," said Will quietly to himself, the temporary good feeling he'd had from his mother telling him that they weren't going yo let the lab and the Upside Down run their lives had faded. He sank to his knees and started sobbing. The sound of the running water covered up his voice and his crying. "You don't matter, you don't matter, you don't matter," Will said over and over again.

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This is somewhat following the same theory that my pre-season 3 MKUltra Ripple. The main difference here? Will and El didn't get to bond because Mike and Hopper (both behaved badly in season 3 because they were afraid of losing her and the Duffers were trying to pay tribute to 80s tropes regarding romance. The problem with trying to pay tribute to those tropes is that they were bad tropes. Those kind of tropes were why couples getting together were jump the shark moments. Mike was like Ben Wyatt or Jake Peralta in Seasons one and two. He was a nice guy who was in love and still maintained friendships. Season three he was more like Jim Halpert. He wasn't a bad person, but got a little cocky once he got a girlfriend and had laughs at other people's expense. Hopper was a great friend to Joyce in the first two seasons, but then started acting like a jerk because she wasn't ready for a relationship. It also was wrong of him to make Mike lie to El. Yes, Mike was being an obnoxious jerk, but Hopper needed to be an adult. Anyway, I hope we see them return to the characters they were in the first two seasons because they were just tributes to bad 80s tropes in season 3.

I had a theory about Brenner, which I touched on in MKUltra Ripple, but will be explored more in this fic. There will be some weird twists in coming chapters.