Content warning: suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, internalised homophobia. If any of the above are going to be difficult for you to read about, please, please skip this chapter, it won't affect the overall plot or understanding of the story.
7.
It's late. Will's still awake. He'd known trying to sleep would be futile but El had levitated his blow-up bed into her room and had told him to lie down and shut his eyes because he definitely won't sleep if he doesn't even try, a line he's sure she's copied from his mom.
El's asleep. Given she's the only person he knows who struggles with sleep as much as he does, and they both witnessed the exact same horrors, he knows she must still be recovering from draining her energy levels earlier. He keeps trying not to think about it, about earlier, but ever since he woke on a couch in Steve's house, blanket draped over him and his mouth tasting of vomit, it had filled every thought. It's as if they never left the nightmare.
Every time he closes his eyes, there's a different face behind his eyelids. He sees Jonathan, helpless and hurt, their mom, heartbroken, begging him to stop. He sees Dustin and Lucas, their broken bodies a reminder of his betrayal. And he sees Mike, traumatised and terrified, conscious while he was tortured. While Will tortured him.
"You can tell them," El had offered, once he'd awoke.
He'd shaken his head. If he'd opened his mouth, the only thing that would come out would have been a scream.
"C'mon," Dustin moaned. "One of you, please! El's kept us waiting ages already."
Will had felt El's eyes upon him but had kept his head dipped, not wanting to see whatever message she was trying to convey.
"001 showed us something," she said. There was a pause as she tried to find the words. "His body was hurt by the guns. Hurt bad. So he… he left his body. He went to Will's."
There was a beat of silence before his friends exploded in sound.
"Went to Will's body?"
"Vecna's inside Will?"
Then, quieter than the others but deafening to Will: "No, no no, this isn't happening."
The panic in Mike's voice pierced Will's chest like a knife and before he knew it, he had lifted his head and got a front row view of the tears in his best friend's eyes.
He can still picture Mike's expression now. Lucas and Dustin's hadn't been much better. And the worst thing is, they didn't deserve any of this. They didn't deserve the pain and fear and horror and effort he was causing them yet again. They'd put up with it for years. Put up with him. They'd put up with him being quiet and weird and scared of everything. They'd risked their own lives to save his, not just once but twice, and he'd never even thanked them for it properly. And now he was going to destroy them all in the worst possible way. All because he's too weak to fight. Too pathetic.
The future Vecna showed them should have ended with his death, not theirs.
His eyes burn as more tears fall. He rolls onto his side and buries his face into the blanket, wiping roughly at his cheeks. Everything feels so hopeless. It feels like it's a waiting game, waiting to become the monster.
"001 is going to kill again," El told them all.
There was a silence, but Will's ears were ringing. Ringing with the sound of Vecna's laugh. Ringing with the sound of Mike's screams.
"Kill who?" Lucas asked.
It was then El's bravery faltered. She looked at him, but Will wasn't able to say it either. Their silence turned into understanding.
"Kill us?"
El gave one single nod.
An icy shudder ripped through Will's spine.
Dustin swore. No-one else spoke. Will wanted to say he was sorry, but it felt like a completely insignificant response.
"And… he's going to make Will do it for him."
Hearing the words out loud made his stomach lurch and he'd hung off the couch and retched violently. Bile trickled from his mouth and sullied the shag pile rug beneath him. Mike's hand landed on his shoulder and Will expected him to rub his arm like usual or maybe even give him a hug, but Mike just gave him an awkward pat and then removed his hand to tuck it away safely under his own thigh.
The rejection felt like a stab in the chest. But Will understood. Mike didn't want to touch him now he knew he was gay. He'd already been forced to kiss him once, it made sense he wanted to keep a distance, to prevent it happening again. And after what Will had seen in the vision, he thought it was a good idea too.
El hadn't told them that part. She hadn't told them that somehow amid the blood and death and horror, they'd watched him and Mike kissing, watched him climb on top of his best friend's lap and slip his hands up under his shirt. Will doesn't know why Vecna showed them that, but if it's in the same context as killing his own brother, it confirms that his feelings for Mike must be wrong. It also means that what happened between them in the kitchen of the abandoned Italian restaurant can never be repeated, no matter how much he may want it to.
"Aren't you going to ask me?" he had hissed to El, in the brief moment between climbing out of Steve's car and heading back into their home, "about what you saw between me and Mike?"
She had given him a funny look that he couldn't quite read. "That bit's not important," she'd said, opening the front door. And then the conversation was over.
And Will knows El is right. His stupid, disgusting crush is not important, not when he's about to break the bones and rip the eyes out of the same person, while he's conscious and screaming the whole time. Not when he's about to kill his best friends and the family who've always put him first.
Will's head hurts. It's been hurting ever since he woke after El was inside his mind. At first he'd thought it was a lingering effect of waking before the sleeping pills wanted him to, now he knows better. And he doesn't think it's the kind of headache that's going to go away.
"I couldn't kill 001," El had told the party, "but I pushed him down, further inside Will's… con-cious-ness. He can't act through Will from there. It gives us time."
Lucas shoots him with a distrusting look. "So, is he going to kill us all, or not?"
"It's Will," Mike had said, as if he wasn't even there, "of course he's not!"
"It's not down to Will though, is it?" Trust Dustin to ensure everyone has their facts straight. "It depends if Vecna regains control."
"I won't let him," Will had said. It had come out so fiercely, they'd all looked at him in alarm. Or maybe it had been fear. "I'm not going to kill you, okay? Any of you!"
But he knows that willpower is not enough. The prickling in the back of his neck has spread all the way down his spine. There's a soft humming in his ear. Sometimes, when he blinks, there's a speckle of dust in his vision. El may have suppressed Vecna for now, but Will can feel him fighting back.
He trusts El and believes her when she says she's bought them some time, but it feels like prolonging the inevitable. They don't have a great track record with planning against Vecna. The monster broke Max and left her in a coma and Will's going to have a front row seat as he does the same and worse to everyone he loves. He can't stop thinking about the vision from Vecna, of Dustin and Lucas's mutilated bodies, of Jonathan floating in the air, of Mike screaming in agony, and he knows he'd rather die than let any of that happen.
And so, lying awake in the middle of the night, he comes up with a plan of his own.
He sits up and wriggles out of the sleeping bag as quietly as he can not to wake El. The bedroom door creaks slightly as he pushes it far enough open to slip through and he freezes, waiting to see if she's heard it. At this point, he can still feasibly claim he was on his way to the bathroom, but he knows if he has to resort to that, it'll disrupt his determination and he'll end up back in bed without the courage to go through with his plan.
But El doesn't stir and he takes it as an omen. He walks barefoot through the house until he reaches the front door. There, he pulls on his coat, mismatched against his button-up pyjamas, and shoves his feet into a discarded pair of shoes. They're Jonathan's trainers, not his, but their feet are the same size now and it's the absence of socks that feels stranger than the borrowed shoes.
Getting out of the door is the hardest part because he knows it always makes a noisy click when it shuts. He decides not to take the risk and leaves it just slightly ajar. By the time anyone notices it, them realising he'd snuck out won't change anything. He steps out.
The night air is cold. He shivers and it's easy to blame it on the chill. But through the gloom, he spots his dad's old shed, the real source of his tremor in his limbs. None of them come in here much. Will had a bit when he was little and was still trying to make his dad like him. He'd sit and watch and agree as his dad ranted about whatever was bothering him that day. Since he left, there wasn't much need. But Will had known there was a gun there, and he'd known that he dropped the gun when he was taken, so one day, sometime between getting released from the hospital and starting having the episodes, he'd snuck back in and hidden it beneath the loose floorboard at the end. Just in case the demogorgon came back for him.
He finds the gun with ease but once it's in his hand, the metal feels like it burns him. He thrusts it back on the nearest shelf and glares at it. Holding it shouldn't be the difficult part. Seeing the item in front of him drives home what he's decided to do. He's only shot the thing once before and he'd hit nothing more damageable than a thick tree trunk. Even some distance away, it had left a deep dent and splintered the bark around it. He doesn't want to think of what it will do at close range.
He thinks of afterwards, of who will find him, El or Jonathan or his mom. He really hopes it's not his mom. The thought of putting her through that after everything she's done for him is almost enough to change his mind. But he reminds himself he's doing it for her. For everyone. It's his death or theirs. He just wishes he could have said goodbye to her, given her one last hug, told her that he loves her and that she deserves to be happy.
He knows she'll be upset, that they all with be, but upset is better than dead. Upset, they can recover from. He pictures their lives as they could be if he rids them of Vecna and the Upside Down. His mom and Jonathan living in a nice new house somewhere with Hopper and El, a happy family unit of four. The party, playing games in Mike's basement or at the arcade. The five of them out in a rebuilt Hawkins, the boys on bikes, El on the back of Mike's and Max, fully recovered, riding her skateboard alongside.
That's all he wants. Everyone to be happy. And that can't happen if he stays around to steal their lives. He picks up the gun again and this time gets used to the feel of it in his hand. It's quite fitting, he thinks. This was where it all started. And this is where it is going to end.
He can remember quite clearly the last time he stood in this shed and loaded this gun. And now, chest heaving, tears tumbling down his cheeks, he's just as scared as he was back then.
His hand is trembling so violently it's hard to load the ammunition. He tries to focus on the job at hand rather than thinking about what comes next, but it's hard when his brain is determined to remind him about every single person he loves, who he's never going to see again. With a deep breath, he feeds the final cannister into the gun and closes the latch.
He unhooks the safety catch and lifts his arm, pressing the tip of the gun into the side of his head.
Unbidden, he imagines his mom. He imagines her smiling at him, pulling into a hug, planting a kiss on the top of his head and calling him Baby in front of all his friends. He imagines her finding his dead body, falling to her knees, screaming, not getting out of bed for months afterwards, barely eating, surviving off cigarettes and cheap red wine.
His arm sags at the elbow and his placement of the gun slips. He scrunches his eyes shut, sending further tears onto already damp cheeks, and resumes his position. He reminds himself he's doing this for his mom, to save her life. To save everyone's lives.
It's not about him anymore. It's about the outcome. It's about what will happen if he doesn't.
He knows he needs to do it now, before he starts shaking so hard it becomes physically impossible.
His finger skims the trigger.
Do it. Do it.
"NO!"
The gun flies out of his hand. It crashes against the wall and falls to the floor. He attempts to pick it up but then realises he can't move. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees El, arm out in front of her, blood trickling from her nose.
"El, let me go," he says, his voice cracking.
She shakes her head. It sends a tear tumbling down her cheek. "You can't do that," she says.
He struggles again to try to break free, but El's powers hold. He's frozen in place. There are tears blurring his vision, blocking his nose and he needs to wipe them, but she's not even letting him lift his arm. He needs her to free him before his resolve to shoot the gun disappears altogether.
"El, please!"
"No."
"I… I wasn't-"
"Lie!"
His body is shaking with the force of trying to escape her hold. "I just…" He takes a shaking breath. "It- it would save everyone from Vecna. From me."
"That doesn't make it okay," she says, fiercely.
"Then, what-?"
"We will find another way." She walks closer to him, her telepathic hold on him never slipping. "I need you, Will. Your mom needs you. Mike needs you."
It's that which pushes him over the edge. A sob shudders through him, making his chest ache and his knees buckle. He strongly suspects El's hold is the only thing keeping him upright.
"If I let you go," El says, "promise you won't get the gun?"
Will hesitates. His eyes flicker to the discarded weapon. Even if he ran for it, El could lock him in another hold or send the gun flying across the room again far quicker than he could reach it. But that's not the deciding factor. The moment has gone. He can no longer bear the thought of leaving behind his friends and family, of never seeing them again. He wants to want to do it. He wants to be able to save them all. But the crying has weakened him, both mentally and physically, and he doesn't think he's strong enough to do anything than curl up in a ball and cry.
"Do you mean it?" he asks, breathlessly between sobs "There's another way?"
"Will," she says. "I mean it. Friends don't lie."
He wants to believe her so badly. "Okay." The word slips from his mouth.
"Promise. No gun."
"I… yeah. Yeah, I promise."
Through blurry vision, he sees her scrutinising his face. She doesn't verbalise her intention, but he feels her release him. He crumples to the floor.
El's arms wrap around him, holding him tight.