So, Will had been transferred.
The new room he was placed in was quaint and small and not as bright as the blinding whiteness of the hospital. In fact, grey and a light blue seemed to be the resounding colour theme. The bed was comfier too.
Will flexed his fingers in the quilt, nerves bubbling.
Jonathan and Nancy had gone with him to help him get settled in his new environment, hopefully somewhere he wouldn't be for long. They left not too long ago, having received an urgent message from the hospital's reception. Will was, of course, curious, and hoped it wasn't distressing news. Doesn't think he could handle anything but good news, at this point.
Mike left long before that, but before he'd gone through the door, he had paused, with a careful head tilt in Will's direction, as if thinking whether he should bother to say goodbye. Yet, they never even as much as met eyes after Mike dropped his shoulders, muttering an excuse under his breath at the room at large, something about needing to go see El, once the awkward silence that had descended between them had become too unbearable.
Will's heart feels clenched in anxiety, a tightness in his chest.
He's always hated fighting with Mike. But it had been a long time coming, and he reminisces over old times when things had been easier. Surely, they'd come back from this, gloss over it, and everything would be fine again?
But he was kidding himself, wasn't he? Will sighs deeply, and then flops back down into his white, fluffy pillows, brown hair falling haphazardly against it. He reaches his free hand up, and biting back anger, pulls at his hair harshly until tears form in his eyes.
Why did he say all that? Why couldn't he get over it? Mike had clearly moved on to better things than their stale friendship, and for good reason. Because if he really did know, then how could Will blame him? It wasn't as if it hasn't happened before, an image of Lonnie lighting up behind his eyelids, and Will would have just let it happen without so much as a word had he known the reason. Because it was simple and easy to understand, no one wanted to actually be friends with… someone like Will.
Sure, his friends had come to his defence when the bullies targeted him for exactly just that, but that's before they knew any of those words were true.
And before he knew it, he was sobbing silently, rolling over to hide his face and to quiet his stupid, stupid self-pity and whiny snivelling.
"He's a… sensitive boy, isn't he?"
"When is he going to man up, Joyce?"
"He's a kid! You're being unreasonable, Lonnie!"
"Just shoot! Just shoot it, Will!"
"You're such a fucking cry-baby."
"Running off to fairyland, freak?"
Will wants to blot everything out and awake to a world where he wasn't the butt of some demeaning joke, somewhere he wasn't laughed at because he's strange, to not be in a place where he feels alone and judged and different every minute of his life.
Will just wants to feel whole.
He gulps back the pain, and blinks away any lingering tears, wiping at his red eyes.
He hopes anyone watching him on the monitoring camera are entertained, and a bitter laugh bubbles up in his throat. What a pathetic sight he must make, he thinks blithely, and then ducks his head in his knees.
He just… wished he was someone else, anyone else. Someone who never knew Mike Wheeler, and never knew heartbreak quite this bad.
Suddenly, he starts to hear rushed voices from around the corner of his secluded room getting closer, and closer. Will stiffens.
Dr. Owens had talked about tests, and he'd been dreading the thought since.
What if the results came back and something was wrong with him? Would he be locked up here indefinitely, his friends slowly not stopping by as often, abandoning Will all over again?
But as the doors slam open, he hears an unexpected voice that settles his nerves and overwhelms him all at once.
"Mom?" Will's eyes well up with tears once again, but in complete contrast to before, it's with an outpouring of happiness, and then they spill down his cheeks as his mom rushes him in a hug so tight, he chokes up at the affection.
His thoughts spiral, filled with the pain of the last week, but the feelings of abandonment and self-hatred tumble out of his veins, even if it's just for this one short moment.
He didn't know how much he missed her, how much he needed her for a semblance of comfort.
"Oh, Will! I've missed you so much!" She takes a long look at him, noticing something twisting behind his eyes, "are you okay, love? Have you been eating?" She crushes his cheeks and wipes away the tears, worry etched on her face.
"Yeah, I'm-I'm okay." He knocks her hands and wipes his face in her stead, embarrassed, "how was the trip?" He hiccups out.
"Yes, of course. The trip," she looks faintly amused, "it was, definitely something." Her smile brightens the room, "I have some incredible news for you, in fact."
"Oh?" He laughs, blocking off any lingering thoughts to the back of his mind. "And that is…?"
"Hopper. He's alive, and back in Hawkins."
Will feels stunned with shock, and the words tumble out, "is that a sick joke, or something?"
"Nope," she pops the 'p', and her smile widens further, which should have really been impossible.
"What?"
His mom catches him up, on everything. The ransom, the trip to Alaska (not for business, clearly, and he caught her guilty catch of the lip as she apologised for the lie), their encounters with a shifty, agitating man named Yuri, who betrayed them, as unsurprising as the act was as deemed by Murray anyway, and she rolls her eyes when she tells Will of Murray's well-placed 'I told you so' after the ordeal. The plane crash, reaching Hopper and his companion after infiltrating a Russian camp, which at Will's gormless expression, she had smirked and said, 'yes, I know. Your mom is so cool, I'll wait for you to say it too.'
But also, the presence of demogorgon's at said camp. And wasn't that a horrifying conversation.
"They took one with them?"
"Oh, not just one."
Then, she explained their battle with the Upside-Down in the Soviet Union, and Will talked anxiously about his battle in Hawkins which had his mom unsettled completely, because she wasn't there to protect him, and she pulls his head to her chest and presses a kiss to his hair, rocking him as he expressionlessly says how Vecna nearly got him, nearly killed him.
She hushes him, "it's over now. He's dead, he can't get you, not again."
"But, it's-it's not over, not yet, is it?"
His mom looks at him with a questioning, perturbed glint to her eyes, "well, Dr. Owens says once El's been cleared of most, if not all suspicion, she'll be allowed to close the gates in due time. The military, well. I don't know if you know about this yet, honey, but-,"
"I know. The military, they think it was her, don't they? That killed them. But it wasn't. It was Vecna." Will says, his voice shaking.
"Yes, well. They have a plan to change that. It's happening as of right now, actually. The quicker we get it sorted; the sooner El can close the gates." Her expression seems trustful and determined, as if it will all work out.
And Will doesn't know why. But he feels something claw deep in his guts at the mention of the gates. Something intrinsically, gut-wrenchingly wrong at the idea of them closing.
And Will panics at the feeling. Why would he be so, so angry at the idea? His head was messing with him.
Feverishly, he closes his eyes tightly, and his head starts to pound with the anxiousness that never abates, from the troubled thoughts and all of the stress from crying…
"Will?"
He snaps his head up, "what?"
"Is everything okay?"
He feels her eyes run over his face, searchingly.
"it's nothing. It's just, been a lot. To process."
She starts to nod, "yes, of course. You need to get some rest before Dr. Owens comes back. I'm sure they'll be finished soon."
And the question sits on his tongue, and leaps out, "how exactly are they proving it, that it wasn't El?"
And his mom shakes her head, stands up, "later, okay? You need to stop worrying. Trust me, El will be fine. She has Hopper now, and he's going to stop at nothing to prove her innocence. You think he'd let anything happen to her?" She smiles at him, and he stares back.
"Yeah, yeah, I guess. You're right. I just need," and he throws a thumb back at his pillows.
"Okay, sweetheart. Are you sure you're going to be alright? I can stay if you like, but I do need to sort the house out." She smiles wickedly at him.
"Wait, the house? As in,"
"Well, I don't think all of us can stay at Hopper's, not without sleeping on the floor, hm? And Hopper's pulled some strings for us. I just, I want my babies to be happy. And I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision, leaving." Her face falls, and her lips thin in regret.
But it vanishes as she looks back at Will, snatching his hand up to squeeze, "We'll talk more later, okay?"
And Will nods, and after a final crushing hug, his mom leaves, blanketing the room in silence once again.
But all Will can think about was that muscle-clenching fear, the pit in his stomach, the goose-bumps running up his neck…
No. His mom was wrong. Because whilst she imagined the ease of it being over, Will imagined just the opposite.
Because maybe Vecna was gone. But the Mind Flayer wasn't. And the broiling emotions under his skin, Will knew for certainty what it was. The Mind Flayer. It was furious, and its feelings, they seemed… More, fully-fledged. As if the link was more, somehow, than what it used to be. Or the Mind Flayer was less… animalistic, and Will could understand what it wanted in the same way as if it could speak and actually tell him. But Will didn't know what any of that could possibly mean for him.
All he did know was that: whilst the battle had been won, now it was time for war.
And Will didn't know how to tell any of them.
"You're telling me, that thing. It's been going round snatching up these kids? For what, to open their world up to ours?" He says ridiculously, slamming gruesome images of the three victims down on the table.
"That's exactly what I'm telling you." Dr. Owens says, nervously.
"I wouldn't expect you to even comprehend it, you pea-brained-," Hopper interludes.
And the Lieutenant Colonel takes a threatening step forward.
"Men, men," Dr. Owens immediately calms, "let's settle down, shall we? I'm sure even you can't turn away from the evidence right in front of us, can you?" And they stare at the dead-eyed face of a monster, vines at his neck, a scaled face…
"I suppose not, Owens." The army man clicks his tongue.
"But that girl… She's still a danger,"
Hopper bares his teeth, "that girl saved this entire town!"
"Be that as it may, she was trained to assassinate, we can't possibly let her-,"
And Hopper yells, emotional, "she's a 15-year-old girl. She deserves her life to not be ripped away from her, scumbags like you to not take and take until she has nothing left. Leave her alone, or I swear to God-,"
"You'll do what?" He scoffs, glaring, "she's government property, if you've not forgotten."
"You fucking lay one hand-,"
"Surely, we can come to an agreement?" Dr Owens suggests, face twisting in alarm.
"Finally, a person who talks in sense, and not intelligible grunts of a caveman," the man's lip curls at Hopper, and Dr. Owens places a warning hand on Hopper's arm as he steps forward, anger sparking brand new.
"Once those gates have been closed, and there's no further incidents as El was of course, never the culprit," he gives a pointed look to the images splayed across the metal table, "El should go free. She can prove herself not to be a mindless weapon, but as a young girl who was thrust under circumstances no ordinary person would face in their lifetime. Have some compassion, Lieutenant Colonel. That is all I ask."
He takes a moment to think, and against his better judgement, gives a jerk of his head in agreement.
"But I mean it, anything strange happens before or after, and I will have no choice but to do what I deem right." He stares them both down solidly before storming thunderously from the room.
Hopper is buzzing, as if he wants to follow and commit unspeakable violence to Sullivan's smug face, but Dr. Owens claps his shoulder and snaps him out of the thought.
"I think that went well, no?"
Hopper looks at the hand blankly, simmering underneath the surface with red-pricked anger.
And Dr. Owens snaps his hand back, grimacing.
Will's head had been spinning in turmoil for a while until the mental exhaustion proved itself too much to stay awake.
He falls into a dream. No, a nightmare.
Will… It calls from the shadows.
And then he finds himself in a very familiar basement, but it was barren and dark.
He sees a figure in the distance, seeming so very far, but it starts walking up to him, and a light flickers overhead.
It lights up Mike's face in a yellow-amber glow, with shadows in the contours of his under eyes and cheekbones.
"Mike?"
"Will." Mike speaks, but the word was more of a grunt, as if he finds speech a complicated feat.
"We need you." Mike says, or is it Mike?
Will's mind feels scrambled.
"We?" He questions, voice trembling.
It nods, and then smiles in a way where it wants to be comforting but comes across as ingenuine.
"They are so unkind to you, Will." It gurgles out.
"What?" Will takes a step back, reaching hands behind him as if to find something to hold on to, something to defend himself.
And then, it jumps, as if like a flash, to right in front of his face, and the hand reaches out and touches his face, flicking at a falling tear.
"Why do you cry?" It whispers, and Mike's face distorts and twists in front of him.
Will gasps, stumbling back and tripping, his head falling back but not landing on solid floor. His arms flap as he falls, falls, and falls.
He wakes up with a start, sweating and delirious.
With laboured breathing, he scrambles and claws at his throat, but air doesn't seem to come willing.
So, he attempts to calm down, ground himself.
He looks around, recognising grey and light blue walls, and a comfy quilt and white pillows, not a barren basement, and not Mike Wheeler, staring at him with dull eyes and speaking with a voice that he can't match with his best friend.
Because it wasn't Mike at all that he was dreaming about, was it?
It was the Mind Flayer, and it seemed it had picked up some new tricks.
Tricks that Will hoped wouldn't lead to his undoing, like he feared it eventually would.