He had tried to tell them about his episode, the vision of the ticking clock haunting him in the bathroom mirror, how Will had turned around and heard Vecna's sharp, cutting voice in his head. He had tried to tell them way before they had shimmied up the rope falling from the gate's entrance, and when they had haphazardly fell into the Upside Down. The first person, Eddie as it was, managing not to crack their heads on the floor before retrieving a mattress on the other side for everyone else.
The plan was to get to Vecna's lair, altogether if they could help it. There was great strength in great numbers, but they weren't certain whether it would be possible, not with the bats, or 'death pigeons', as Robin had emphasised with a grimace. Which is why they had set groups that they had promised to stick to, so music would be readily available to the people who needed it. Will was in Mike's group with Eddie, because of course he was. It did make sense, and Will couldn't begrudge the decision.
Eddie had also the bright idea to bring his guitar.
("What if that fucker," he nods to the music player, "cuts out on us, or something. This is our great little backup, and it has double purpose! Imagine it knocking Vecna's teeth clean out. Does he even have teeth?" He had asked, disturbed, but quickly moves on, "y'know, doesn't matter. Would be kind of rockin' anyway to just batter the slimy bastard."
El says, "it would be bitchin'."
He points at her, "yes, exactly. It would be bitchin'."
El beams at him.)
Except nothing was bitchin', not currently for Will. There was, like. A block, or something. On his speech. He massages at his throat anxiously, willing for the words to just roll out before it was too late.
"Will, you alright?" Mike says, looking tentative, as it was the first time he'd spoken to him since their last encounter.
Will snaps his hand back, tries again to say something about what had happened, even if it was to Mike, but mumbles out, "yes. I," he grinds his teeth, he had meant to say no, of course. He tries to force it again, but ends up saying, "I'm... N-Fine."
Giving up, he adds a simple and awkward, "thanks for asking," to perhaps lighten the tension between them, even if it's a little. At least Mike is trying, he supposes, even though it's unknowingly to nil affect since he can't say what he wants to.
He digs his nails into his hands, feeling upset, before looking up to meet Mike's eyes. The eye contact feels a bit intense, so he drops his gaze to stare at the rhythm of his shoes walking along the pallid, squelchy ground.
"Ha, that's, yeah. That's great. I'm glad. I mean, no problem," Mike stutters out, scratching at his neck.
"Yeah." Will says in reply, though tilts his head away slightly, tightening his lips at Mike's strange behaviour. If he knew his little comment would make things even worse between them, he'd have said nothing.
That leads to the wondering of the why he can't say anything that he wants to. He's just had a premonition of his death. Maybe subconsciously he feels it would do no good, bring morale down or something? But that didn't make sense. He was endangering himself by saying nothing, maybe everyone if… if it happened at the wrong time. Soon, Vecna had said, voice distorted but calm, your time is coming.
No, something was horribly, terribly wrong.
They continued their trek, watching their steps carefully, hiding when they heard rustling nearby in the trees. They were keeping cover under the canopy to avoid the bats relaying back their presence to him, considering they were part of the hive mind too.
A swishing noise sounds above them.
They were quick to duck behind rotting trees, Mike and Eddie hiding behind a huge trunk in particular, with Will close at their back. He saw Max hushing someone a few metres away.
The swishing noise they had all heard grew closer, but Will felt an entirely different presence, unlike that of a sailing bat in the air.
His back pulls taut, standing up from his crouched position.
He felt Mike turn and grab his hand to bring him back down, whispering, "what are you-,"
Suddenly, it was like everything was muted. He felt his mind expand, then contract, as if something, or someone, was poking around, testing the boundaries. His fingers, his toes, they went tingly and numb. He started feeling a cold sweat, and he raises one hand to the back of his neck as he feels an electric current run up his spine.
"Vecna." He gasps out, and everyone turns to look at him wonderingly.
"Will?" He hears Mike say, now fully facing him, hands on his shoulders and peering into his eyes with his eyebrows scrunched together.
Will feels a sly grin creep up his face, but it wasn't him, he couldn't control it.
Panic was seizing him in a rush, and he was shivering uncontrollably.
Suddenly, the faded sounds become a disquieting ricochet, and he begins to see triples of his friends from all angles but all walking towards him disjointly. Pulsing red light flashes behind his eyelids and a sickening laugh freezes him altogether.
Blackness envelops him.
As he comes to, he feels his hands are wrapped around warm skin, someone scrambling underneath him and struggling for breath.
"Will," Mike chokes, tears burning his eyes.
Just before someone tackles Will to the ground, he sees the headset and music player, clutched in one of Mike's hands lifted above the ground as if to protect the device, and his other touching his neck weakly as he gasps for precious air.
Yet, whilst his thoughts are screaming, Mike, oh my God, Mike, in a rushed panic, Will instead shrieks involuntarily, "let go, let go!" He thrashes and bruising hands attempt to hold him still. Salty tears race down his face at the blurred image of Mike's throat, burgeoning in marks of violent reds and blues and purples.
El feels stuck in place, watching the vicious scene of Will's attack unfold. It had transpired after Mike had taken the quick action of grabbing the headset and trying to place it over Will's ears at noticing something was wrong, just for Will to knock him away, ragefully, and set his sights on it as if the music box was some kind of weapon.
She hears the others yelling in the background, a raucous of sounds.
El looks up. Bats.
One is clawing through the thick canopy, and as she looks back at Will, vines are twining around each other, moving unlike before, centred around where Will is held against the ground on top of them. Yet, they were not moving to strike at him, surprisingly.
"We have to get out of here," Nancy says with wide terrified eyes.
The first bat flies in, and Steve whacks it away with a powerful swing of his club.
"Run!" He screams at Eddie, noticing another one aim straight for him. Eddie becomes busy in fighting it off, with some help, and he stabs at it with one of the weapons he'd loaded upon his person.
Mike feels disjointed, he's now breathing a little easier, Will hadn't been able to strangle him for long before Jonathan had thrown him off, but the bruising feels heavily evident and tender.
"We can't leave Will." He says roughly as he soldiers up from the floor, standing his ground but swaying, thinking bizarrely that Steve could mean to propose leaving Will whilst they all ran away.
"Mike, we know," Nancy says, another bat now shirking its way through, squawking with razor-sharp teeth. "But we still have to leave."
Argyle is crazily jumping around in terror, avoiding where Eddie and Steve are battering one bat, and not knowing where is better to stand to avoid any bats that could be above, that could be circling them, "dude, I don't like this." He says, a little shrill.
"I'm staying with him. We'll go somewhere else. He can't go to Vecna, not after that, and you guys need to focus on bringing him down. I'll keep Will safe. We have a music player." He waves it, "just go whilst you still can, you have the best shot at this," Mike says, sternly, eyes flitting from El to Will, who had slowly grown more stiff against Jonathan, who was shaking him and repeating his name.
"I'm staying with him too." Jonathan says, looking up after sweeping Will's sweaty hair back from his forehead.
Nancy nods, agreeing with them. She looks around, spotting one bag laid at the foot of a tree, grabbing it, before she says promptly, "then take this, there's rope inside, just in case," she tosses a glance at Will, "he might… attack again," her lips purse, holding back feelings of powerlessness, wondering how it, the Mind Flayer, Vecna (who knew what he was capable of anymore)? How something had possessed Will again, as she could find nothing else to explain what had happened. She tosses the bag at Jonathan's chest for him to catch, "the bats know where we are, more will be coming. Everyone else. We need to get to the Creel's, now."
So, the rest of the group sets off hurriedly just after killing the third bat to arrive, El looking back over her shoulder to see Jonathan and Mike grab Will, Will who was stiff to the bone and was mumbling nonsense, and the headset now placed on his ears firmly. They started hauling him along as fast as they could in a different direction.
She becomes more resolute, tries to feel confident that she can bring Vecna down a second time to save Will, knowing Vecna was no longer that far away. She doesn't look back again before the trees obscure her view of them.
Jonathan, Mike and Will had gotten quite far along when they heard the flutter of bats increase in pitch again above them, and they stopped abruptly, Jonathan raising a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. Thankfully, Will had grown silent as time had passed.
The bats pass them by to head in the direction they had just come from.
They let out sighs of relief once the coast was clear.
They journey on.
Will gasps awake, eyes wide open with terror. Body in foetal position, cold seizing him.
He sits up, looking around to see lifeless ground and broken walls surrounding him, vines clambering the expanse of them, and Will in the very corner of a blacked-out patch, feeling its death and decay spoil around him.
"Mike!" He shouts, fearfully, hands pushing himself up to a standing position, feeling very weak.
He feels something familiar, a dark presence, but sees nothing. Vecna.
"What have you done?" Will says, shakily, knowing he was there to hear.
The vines curl, and the wall rips, and little by little, a horrific scene plays out, with Vecna's clawed hands shooting through, the vines pulling back and then hurtling through the opening, and Vecna's body gets dragged out when the vines attach themselves to him. Will stands motionless, frozen in terror.
"Not anything you didn't want to happen," Vecna's penetrating voice resonates. Vecna now stands just ahead of him, goo coating his form but a sick smile playing at his mouth. Yet his mouth never moved to speak. Why is he speaking inside my head? Will thinks, distressed.
"That's a lie. That was you."
He feels his hands choking his friend, Mike staring at him, shocked, scrambling feebly with one hand to get his unnaturally strong grip off him, and Will away from the headset that he wanted desperately to break, break, break.
Vecna hums, "but it was your hands, was it not? Not even strong enough to fight for the one you cherish the most?"
Will gulps, shaking his head.
"Oh yes, I know all about your begotten, unrequited crush. I can see into your head you see. What would happen, say Mike found out your dirty little secret, hm? Would he grow to despise you?"
Images flash, of Mike's face morphing into one of disgust, backing away, only to be zipped away by the flash of a void.
"Oh, Will, don't you see? You have nothing left. You've inflicted so much pain and terror. You're already a killer, after all. I wonder if your friends ever forgot that fact. No, not now. It's all surged back, those memories, you would be a real threat if you returned to them. Would they even welcome you back, I wonder?"
More flashes, this time terrible screaming at the very sight of him, hurtful yells of 'monster!', 'stay away!', 'we can't trust him, guys!'
"We still have to leave." Nancy had said, but this time the group turns to leave him behind, the bats ripping into his flesh, and the scene fades in and out in front of him, like a mirage.
The group, his only friends, feeling like they had to protect themselves, and escape. Leaving him behind.
Is that not like always? Will thinks, of his own volition. Remembering Mike ignoring his letters, yet sending El one weekly; the D&D club they had all joined, a secret from Will, but never for one second wanting to play with him that long summer before.
"Will… Join me. There's nothing left for you there, not anymore. Give in to me." The demeaning voice whispers.
But Will could never leave them behind. He loved them, so much. He wanted to help El, with her bullies, put her display back together, knowing it had meant so much. He wanted to tease Max and Lucas, hug his mom, spend time with Jonathan and just listen to music, like the old days. He wanted to truly befriend Robin, someone who could understand him fully, for the first time in his life. To not feel the gigantic pressing weight of being alone with what he knew about himself for once.
Most importantly, he wanted to fix his friendship with Mike. Before it was too late, and they drifted more and more apart.
"No," Will whimpers, shaking his head.
"You belong here, and you know it." Vecna hisses inside his mind, one last time.
Vecna raises a hand, face manic, and Will tries to crawl away, feeling lifeless, defeated.
He hears laughter until it goes dark, the same crawling and overwhelming feeling of it being everywhere.
The same flashes surround him of his friends, faces that forcefully turn into expressions of disgust, fear, distrust.
It's not true. Stop it, Will thinks. He resists with all the little strength he has left.
Vecna grows frustrated when Will runs away, tripping along the while, limbs weakened. But he was running away from the visage of Mike and Jonathan that he spotted in the distance, and from the same music he had listened to not only a few hours ago, remembering when Eddie threw his head back and laughed. And as he looks back that final time, he sees Mike, hunched in front of his body pushed against a wall of rock, his mouth opening and closing as he talks, face troubled, but he can't hear what he's saying.
A hiss of unbearable noise screams in his ears as Vecna encroaches upon him, and Will turns away, continuing his mad rush forward, eyes trying to find a good hiding spot.
But a vine grabs at his ankle and Will exclaims fearfully, "no, no, no," as it begins to wrap around his form, and he feebly attempts to push it off.
"Perhaps I'll just kill you, you're certainly of no use to me now," Vecna gets closer, smiling broadly, "as a spy, that is," and Will's mind screeches to a stop. It's happened again. But not with the Mind Flayer, not this time.
With Vecna's creepy eyes set and trained on Will's and him steadily getting closer, as if finding a certain thrill in his slow approach like that of a predator, with the vines twining ever closer, shortening Will's breath, and pulling him up to an upright position, Will feels out of ideas.
He sobs, having realised Vecna knew his friends were heading right towards him, and had known for a while, yet finding listlessly that he can't see a way out of this to warn them, and understanding deep down that it was likely too late.