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@imbricare
private multimuse written by v (she/her, 30+). muses & more info under cut.
this blog contains mature, unsavory and potentially triggering content including but not limited to narrative explorations of e.g. trauma, horror (including gore & body horror), toxic relationships, power imbalances, age gap relationships, and more. 👉 proceed or hardblock at your own discretion.
It means that Joyce and her axe had failed just as her children had failed in killing him. It means he may very well be immortal in this new Abyss-mutated body, and with the only link to the world outside of it being in Will's head, he doubts his sanity will last all that long after Will's gone. If he has any to keep.
I'm here.
For now. For reasons that Henry can not fathom, even with Will lain open like a map spread across a desk. He stares at Will as if this will be the time that he can figure out why. That someone could be so deeply forgiving and accepting doesn't make sense even with the hundreds of minds that he's absorbed.
Even that first time, he remembers, Will had tried to help him. His throat is not real but it works anyway.
"I don't think I can," he says quietly, the same broken-child voice as the first time he had seen what had happened to him. When Will had watched with him what had made him apart from everyone else, the evil that had overtaken him and created the demon his father had so feared.
Maybe he wasn't born a demon like he'd been so convinced for so long, but it doesn't make him less evil. Irredeemable. How can there be anything else left for him when the body slowly healing will never be anything but nightmarish?
Unlike that first time, Will refuses to be a passive bystander. What he didn't know back then, he knows now: that a gored hand is still a hand worth holding. That it still wants to be held. Will plucks the plea and it falls into his lap with complaisant ease, like apples in September. It never occurred to him to question where it comes from: He writes it off as Henry's because if it were his own, he'd need to question everything.
"You can't afford not to," he says, a softness that blunts the spearhead of truth. "I can't afford you not trying."
Because if that's all there is – hopelessness ad infinitum – then Will ought to throw himself off a bridge tomorrow, save them both from a lifetime of misery.
His hand slots into Henry's like a shock jolt. He almost pulls back but the nervous twitch in him is more surprise than regret. He saves his regret for the monster: the facade of it, crumbling. A safety mechanism eroded over a self portrait.
@immobiliter asked: "You don't have to be what they tell you to be, you know? You're not stuck. You can change."
4 billion souls on Mars. By the feel of it, half of them were gathered on Ares Plaza today, and because the two of them stood at the back of the crowd, Alex had a confident grip on his estimate.
Although, to be fair: at the back translated to on a raised dais along with the rest of the military brass influential enough to warrant special treatment – because let's face it, even in a colony turned congressional republic, equality was a spectrum rather than an either/or situation.
So. Special treatment it was. Visibility, too. Show certain names and faces to the public over and over; let the grooves deepen. They had danced the dance of performativity often enough that it had long lost all its magic – if it ever held any to begin with when often enough meant every year since they had been old enough to commit it to memory.
Back then, there had been three Shepard siblings on the dais. Two parents also. Now he sandwiched his mother with Noah on the other side, silent and drawn up to her full height, which wasn't much, but she made it work.
Alex had always been her older brother but now he was the oldest, and that was a particularity he never felt more than when he was home. Bobbie had been trying to tell him as much before the gong called them outwards, away from sparkling wine and olives under a mirage sky. To dance their dance of ceremony.
She broke protocol by continuing their conversation; even if it was in whispers. The corner of his mouth twitched. He didn't look away from the Prime Minister even as her speech congealed into background noise.
"Change, huh?" The grin was really fucking hard to hold back all the sudden. "Sure. Might as well tell a krogan to go vegan, that's about as much as I can change my spots."
His mom bumped her elbow into his left arm, and he had to bite the inside of his cheeks.
And then seized his opportunity during an applause break, leaning over to Bobbie's ear. "Wanna hit the bars later?"
Wasn't all that often they had the chance to do the old pub crawl down in the Canals.
Mike chooses to believe that death isn't an option only because of his apparent too-deep connection with Will. That only both of them dying could be enough to permanently end Vecna-One-Henry.
Mike chooses to believe that because he refuses to believe that it's because Will wants Henry to stick around. That whatever the Mind Flayer had done hadn't transcended dimensions yet again to overtake his best friend and turn him into a husk to be used against everyone Will loved.
Mike will not believe that Will really cares for the monster that ruined lives. Ruined their lives. That any of this is voluntary, wanted, mutual.
Not ever.
But Will looks at him like the only thing he needs is for Mike to understand. He can't understand. Won't understand.
Taking a breath so deep his lungs begin to hurt, he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Okay. As far as Will's concerned there's only one road forward, but that doesn't mean there's really only one road. He can still find it... Will just doesn't need to know about it. Not until he has something concrete.
Opening his eyes, he nods. Once, jerky. "All right."
Immediately: suspicion. He knows Mike too well for anything else.
"…all right?"
Will squints at him, like that's going to make a difference – like he can squeeze the real thought processes behind that thin veneer out of his best friend. His best friend. Does that make him a hypocrite? There are certain things, after all, that he absolutely cannot let Mike know, ever. He would sell his right kidney to make sure that Mike would never find out that–
But what's past is past and dead in the ground. He buried all of that years ago. And the dead should stay buried.
All Will asks for now is acceptance. Mike accepted him once, twice, countless times. He accepted him as a loner, a loser, a nerd. As a deviant of the Oscar Wilde sort.
What's a little more compared to that? Let him have his gothic heroine moment, Mike.
"Iiiii don't trust you when you say it like that," Will concludes, tender in the way his mouth slants into a smile that's half apologetic and half amused, in spite of himself.
The corner of his mouth ticks upward; it's too dry and bitter to be a smile.
He's been a poison longer than he's able to remember. A poison in the perfect family his parents had thought they'd created, a poison in Brenner's lab just waiting for the lid to slip off, a poison in Hawkins dredging up every horror that had existed in the town.
The poison Will had never fully purged.
"I'm not a cure." But that was all right, he supposed. One left more reminders than the other. His finger curls under Will's chin and tips it upward. "You transformed the poison into something else." What he was, it was too soon for him to guess at, but that didn't change the fact that Will had not only withstood the poison but metabolized it into something else, turned him into something else.
"…what if you are for me?"
His voice is so, so small. The truth wants to slot into place like logic. It would be compellingly reasonable to say that Henry belongs to him like a fish belongs in water. Will turns it over and over in his mouth; the taste and shape of it. The sound of a thought that wants to become unquestionable.
The bigger question mark is in the touch Will doesn't know how to respond to. He knows how he wants to but it's not how he should. Probably.
He shouldn't feel comforted by a presence that used to haunt him, either.
He shouldn't yield to it, let alone embrace it–
But all he wants is for the questions to float away forever and leave him with one path to walk. Take the crossroads away from him. Take away all masks except for the one that pulled down the veil between them.
No more hiding behind closed doors when he wants to be all of himself. No more conforming to a society that would require him to cut himself in half in order to be palatable.
Because there is no sun that does not cast a shadow, too.
It's just so… complicated. With everyone else. With you, it's–
It can be a terrible, terrifying thing, to be known completely. It can also be–
easy.
I just want it to be easy. I'm so tired of having to pretend all the time.
Pretend he's sunshine without night. Pretend nothing ever happened to him. Pretend there are no scars. Pretend it's not a part of him, what happened. Pretend he has to cut it out and force himself back into a mold he won't fit anymore.
Relief is a weight that drops. His shoulder shake.
BLACK SAILS (2014 - 2017) Hannah New as Eleanor Guthrie & Jessica Parker Kennedy as Max 1.02: "II"
@godresembled asked: ❝ no one else understands me. but you do. you always do. ❞
"…not always," Will demurs, if only because it's a rote performance at this point.
So many things became rote: wake up, find Henry first. Subway chats in his mind instead of the walkman that he used to bring everywhere. Company while he works. Or not. Learning not to mind either way. Evenings spent present rather than tweaked out of his mind.
He doesn't have to flee anymore. The haunted house has turned into a quiet place.
"But so do you, don't you? Understand me, I mean. Not in a way anyone else ever has. I'm not sure that's a compliment but… I mean… I don't know. We're not exactly normal, are we?"
No, Will. You are not.
Even now, even when you can stand in front of him and see him with your eyes, touch him with your hands – you are not. Let a vine climb a wall for long enough and even if you remove it, it'll leave its traces, weathering its shadow into a surface once immaculate.
No one else understands me. / We're not normal. It sets the tone.
For the days ahead. For the weeks of a raw and tender reimagining.
The months.
The years.
The years, and now rote is habit is routine is their life. It's a different kind of vine that clings: to never lose sight of who you are. Two-gether. Not normal: a path never walked upon.
Maybe it fazes him; maybe it doesn't. Normal was never in the cards, anyway.
It's just that sometimes, the path ahead takes an unseen turn and you don't know whether it's a switchback or a cliff. Because some things, some things you'd really, really like to have the answer for before you ask the question.
If one of us were to die–
The thought like a wave, lapping at Henry's mind because Will doesn't want to open his mouth and say the words out loud. Could be evasion. Could be superstition.
–what do you think would happen to the other?
He doesn't look up from where he's curled in on himself in the armchair; but his eyes are very, very still on a page they stopped reading.
"Do you always have to be filming everything?"
Will's a little doe-eyed about it. There's something so goddamn innocent about the look on his face. It makes something twist in Billy's stomach. It's not a bad feeling. It's more anticipatory. Like the feeling that comes while sitting at a red light. Fingers tapping on the wheel. Foot twitching on the break. Waiting for the green light. That's where Will is now. Billy remembers being there, too. Knows the road ahead. It's not an easy cruise. Billy fucked up so many times along the way. He knows Will's gonna fuck things up, too.
But then he thinks of Steve. Their summer plans. The fact that Steve's got his toothbrush and clothes here in his trailer. How Steve comes to rest his head on Billy's chest because he wants to hear his heart beat, nothing more.
Not everything Billy did was a fuckup. Same applies to Will.
But cars don't drive on their own. Will's gotta hit the gas on his own.
Billy blows out a laugh. Airy and through the nose. "Yeah, at home. Ask your brother. Bet he could do it. Or go to a big city and get it done there. People don't give a shit in cities. Not like they do in these one horse towns." Billy wrinkles his nose. It's a little dramatic. Swears he can smell the goddamn cow shit from inside the trailer. "Better yet, get the hell outta this town one day, Byers. Live a little."
Then it just sort of happens. Will follows suit until he's barefoot on the armrest next to him. Billy sees it. The way Will curls his toes in thought. Like he's trying to bring the words to the surface. But it's there in the way Will follows his example. Like maybe if Will stands on his shoulders, then he can reach a point where Billy is now. That puts some weird fucking knot in his stomach. He's not good at this. People never come to him for shit like this. But Will does.
And Billy's got strong shoulders.
But it's pretty clear that Will still sees some version of Billy Fucking Hargrove, the enigma. (Hey man, I am cool; I am the breeze. ) But the enigma was just noise. His head turns. Billy looks at Will. There's a flicker there. The enigma is not all there is. And then Billy's really looking. Like he's digging deeper. Peeling layers. Pushing a bit to get Will closer to figuring it out.
"Gotta be more to it than just cool," he cuts in. It's advice. "Piercings are kinda permanent. They'll close up eventually if you don't wear anything. But the mark'll always be there."
Then the mood shifts. There's something lighter around Will's mouth. Like he wants to smile. Then he says it. Of fucking course. Now it's all coming together.
"George Michael? Jesus, are you and Max droolin' over his posters together?" Billy snorts. A grin breaks. The kind that shows teeth. Then Billy's looking away into the middle distance. The metalhead in him cringes. "You two are somethin' else, y'know that? She came back from that concert and started diggin' through all her shit 'til she found my old leather fingerless gloves. Started wearin' 'em when she needs the wheelchair. Says he wears 'em, too." Billy can't even be mad that Max didn't bother giving them back. Not when he thinks about how she kept them all this time. Like she was holding onto him.
"So what is it about the guy? Cause it sure as hell ain't his music. Did he shake his hips too much at that damn concert?"
Will is still trying to wrap his head around the idea of Jonathan punching a hole into his ear – something he knows is going to stay an idea forever because he can't even fathom considering that for real – when Billy correlates leaving town with living a little and all Will can think, all of a sudden, is I lived a little too much.
But Billy’s proposing a different kind of living.
I plan to, Will almost says. All colleges he wants to apply to are out of state. Okay, yeah, and IU but he’s looking into that mostly as a favor to his mom. With a twinge of guilt, actually: It’d be the most affordable option. Let’s see what he’ll get first: a scholarship or an earring.
Either way – it’ll change something about him. In him. And like Billy says: It’ll stick.
“We’re not drooling, oh my God…” he mumbles, all faux-cool, awkward teenager the way he tries to shrug it off. And then it hits him, the reason why his heart’s going a mile a minute and his brain is all muffled, like he’s going numb and dumb at the same time.
It’s not like talking to Robin. It’s not like talking to Steve, even. What little talking Will has brought himself to bear. What little he can give in return for what he’s taking: other people’s experiences, lessons learned and advice shared. He’s not even looking for any of that with Billy. It’s just…
…it's just that. Talking. Not to learn how to carve out a life, not to compare and contrast. It's the kind of talk that fills the cracks between what is expected and what simply is, and because Will was taught that nothing about men like them exists in simplicity, it's a breath of relief. It's normalcy the way he never knew he wanted it: not as a mask but as a backdrop. And somehow, that makes talking about George Michael's hips feel right.
And then he's far, far away – in that front row again, shaking his own hips, dammit, and yeah, he can see the fingerless gloves now, remembers them because he remembers every single detail of that stage that night; and he knows Max started wearing similar gloves soon after, only he never knew where they came from.
"He's just…" A genius! Honestly! Oh my god, he's so– "Cool, I guess." Will shrugs; but faux-cool can only hold the door for so long before the fanboy breaks out. "His music is great! Maybe you're thinking about the Wham! stuff. That can be a bit cheesy, I know. Faith is so much better, it's a really good album and he's a really good live singer and–"
The next time Will looks over and Billy catches him staring, he's still quick to avoid eye contact. But his mouth twitches his like he's holding back a grin.
He's gonna get that earring. He just made his decision.
Commander Shepard. He'd heard that name, of course. News about the invasion of the Citadel had spread far and wide across the galaxy, as well as his untimely demise and the work by the Illusive Man to revive him. Many believed that this now put Shepard firmly on the side of those humans here in Terminus maligned and exploited by those in the more affluent parts of the Milky Way — but Flint knew the truth. Shepard was a Martian and a thoroughbred soldier: he was likely unhappy enough to begin with that he was receiving orders from Cerberus and not the Alliance.
“ I've yet to understand why your partner believed that a scientist working alongside Commander Shepard was necessary to our rescue. ” He might have looked haggard — haunted, even, but that fire in his eyes burned anew at the thought that his actions had already gotten outside attention. Before he could make preparations, before he could reach out to other mercs and pirate crews, to Aria T'Loak, to the Illusive Man. Before he could ensure he was on the front foot with this. What he'd seen on board that station tainted by the protomolecule had changed everything.
Sparrow and Drummer he could understand, even if the former was a pain in the neck: someone with the coordinates and two experienced captains to help them escape that beleaguered, doomed station. But Madam Herta? Flint knew her by name and reputation — and while it was clear that she was not one of the scientists involved in this project, she had too many loyalties to his former employers to fully trust her intentions.
Despite the lines of concern written into Eleanor's face, Flint remained stoic as he stood across from her. “ He can be interested if he wants to be. He can relay a message to Anderson and Udina that I won't be surrendering the protomolecule or sharing it with anyone until the top brass on Earth and within the Systems Alliance cede to my demands. ”
He held her gaze, intent on making his case. “ I believe it can be used as a deterrent to protect Terminus — and by extension, Cerberus — against Systems Alliance tyranny, as well as upsetting the established chain of command back on Earth. Seeing what I saw out there, it's clear that Earth already has this substance within their grasp and is experimenting with it to a point where they can wield it as a weapon. I'll wager they don't want the Council to know about this, or else humanity risks losing its hard-earned seat and other species will be clamouring for access to this research too. Under the assumption that those who witnessed the tragedy on board that station, along with yourself, are the only ones who have knowledge of the protomolecule's existence, that means we're the ones who can set the terms from here on out. ”
@imbricare / cont.
"She was necessary to your rescue."
Ideally, they could have kept this protomolecule under lock and key. Realistically? Certain channels were most likely ripe with rumors already, one wilder than the other. As if the truth needed any embellishment.
"So what's your plan? Tell him to go fuck himself? And you think he will?" Eleanor sneered. "If half of what they say about him is true, he isn't going to leave without what he came for. If he came for it. He might still ask us to destroy it. Honestly, I would think higher of him if he did."
That… thing. Every hour it was in their possession was a ticking time bomb under their feet. If Flint was going to use it as a bargaining chip, she would rather he got it over with quickly.
"So you will meet with him?" A question laced with doubt. He could dispel it with a straightforward answer; or he couldn't. No matter how much Eleanor might play-pretend that she held the reins in this partnership, there was no denying the stark and naked truth that her mind turned to when it left the pretext behind: Flint was a rugged individualist before he was anything else.
Sometimes, it got in the way of the keen wit she so appreciated in the man.
"Promise me you won't mess with a Spectre, Flint."
Frankenstein. Herta was no poet or writer, but she was not so uncultured as to not recognise the classics — or the point Shepard was trying to make. Victor Frankenstein abandoned his creature upon realising that he had made a monster. The creature spent the rest of its lonely existence trying and failing to connect with humanity. The difference here was that, monster or man, the mad scientist's faith in her test subject predated the moment he had once more drawn breath of his own accord.
She was not always good at dealing with people. In fact, she had a reputation for being hard to deal with, as well as having a notorious temper. Why the Illusive Man had put her in charge of Shepard's physical and psychological wellbeing, she did not know — but for the sake of everything at stake here, she would do what she always did, and be honest.
“ You died. Project Lazarus brought you back to life. ” The official line. What Shepard had been told over and over since the moment they had escaped the facility he had woken up in. Herta folded her arms, leaning back against the desk behind her. Eyes wandered briefly to the EDI terminal on he other side of the medbay, but she opted to pay it no heed. Without her tech, this project would not have been possible. “ But, if you want the detailed version, without the science: your body was recovered, I was contacted by Cerberus and we agreed to collaborate on the project to bring you back. You'll notice how beautiful and youthful I am, despite the history books detailing that I was one of the pioneers of understanding the Charon relay? The same technology is responsible for that as well. ”
She cocked her head at him and paused. Whether he was reassured or further unnerved by that fact was up to him. Perhaps it made both of them artificial freaks of nature.
“ I heard all about the attack by Sovereign on the Citadel, and how the Council tried to blame the geth afterwards. Since then, I've been trying to figure out when and how these Reapers will return to finish the job of harvesting the galaxy. When Cerberus made me this offer, knowing what you might help me learn, I couldn't refuse. ”
Herta held his gaze expectantly. “ Any other questions? I can't speak for the rest of Cerberus, I suspect I don't even have the clearance to know — but my personal goals align with yours. ”
@imbricare / cont.
The amount of times he'd been told YOU DIED recently, you'd think it had sunk in already but it kept popping back up like driftwood.
Too weightless to drown; too heavy to die. Story of his life.
How scary fast a man became a thing.
Shepard had turned away from her but that put him right in front of the reflective window, which made his skin crawl worse. He came back to the mad scientist, drawn to the answers he didn't want to hear but would get anyway. Or wouldn't. It didn't matter, actually. He was here but he shouldn't be, and that was the gist of it: the how was secondary.
You would think.
Only the how was what kept pecking at the membrane of his brain like a starving bird in winter, a thing he had only ever seen on screens, the winter and the bird. Back home, red desert earth didn't know any seasons; and it was too early yet to introduce them under the domes.
Too early for somethings.
Too late for others.
He wasn't meant to see it happen now. He wasn't meant to be here, to hear, to speak, to breathe air into lungs that had to be stitched back together only so they could function. How do you come back from that? It occurred to him what his great-grandmother with her rosary beads would say: You don't because you shouldn't.
And then it occurred to him that a photograph of him would have been on the family altar for these past two years, offered incense and cempazuchitl in the annual ofrenda, and something about that,
something about that drove it home:
He was dead.
He had died.
His bisa would have things to say about Project Lazarus as well, he reckoned; and none of them good. Her rosary beads clicked,
clicked,
clicked.
An echo in his brain. Words seeped through. And Shepard had too many questions to filter through the bottleneck that was his overwhelm. A fast-blur haunting: a torn hull; the klaxons blaring. Joker unwilling to let go. Kaidan unable to, until Alex addressed him as a soldier and not a–
He looked for purchase in the correlations.
"You believe, then. About the Reapers." Business. Good. He could hold onto that. He could tether his dark eyes to the light of that. His eyes, the one thing he still believed were truly his. "That why you're working with Cerberus? And where did a ragtag bunch of no-gooders find a scientist like you?"
Mike only knows what El and Will have told him about mindscapes; he's only seen El's the one time, and it was such a stark contrast from what he's heard about Billy's, and Vecna's, that he knows he can't possibly grasp the reality of them.
He does know that no one is able to definitively tell him that the memories within aren't unbiased. He knows that everyone is the protagonist of their own story (even if he may think El is the protagonist they're all meant to revolve around) and that makes him inherently distrustful of anything Will could have seen through Henry's reflection.
Besides, why should anyone be responsible for babysitting Vecna? Let alone Will. "Why isn't death an option?" But it's more out of despairing frustration at the situation than Will specifically. Why does Vecna get to live but El died?
"I don't care how human he is, he isn't," he says stubbornly, but he knows Will well enough by now he knows there's no talking him out of this. All he can do is be supportive. And stand by with a flame thrower or one of Nancy's guns just in case. "What if it's just a trick to get to you?"
Why isn't death an option.
Ah, and here they are, arrived at The Question of Questions. And Will knows the answer, knows it with a gut-depth kind of precision that can topple you. Like a stone dropping. Balance dislodged. His sense of self shed and regrown like old skin.
"I…don’t think that’s an option anymore," he's quiet to say. To think out loud. His eyes are just as slow to find Mike's. "Not as long as I’m alive, I suppose. He’ll always have me as an anchor."
The answer, then. His mycelial cord.
Will, in turn, knows Mike well enough to know there's no talking him into accepting what he isn't ready to accept. Not now, at any rate. Maybe never, and the thought is the second stone that drops. Will picks it up and throws it like a brick; he isn't ready to deal with it yet. He opts, instead, for patience.
And a smile. The hesitant shaping of one – as askew as a picture frame mounted in haste. Their world out of shape. "But he already got me, Mike," Will says, infinitely delicate. "And I'm still here."
Billy's hands shake. The kind of shake that comes when he's feeling everything at once, and he's fucking powerless to do anything about it. That's when a tear slips. "She's trapped. Trapped in his mind." Billy's just out of arm's reach from Max. It's killing him. It's really goddamn killing him. The way her fear pulses through him until his skin crawls. Urgent anxiety. Her heart rate's up. Billy feels the pounding of her heart in his ears. She's running. Running from Vecna. And he can't pull her the fuck out. Can't block the blows. Can't stop the fear. The pain. And it's like he's facing down the Mind Flayer all over again. And all he's got is his two hands, holding back everything.
Billy made the fucking deal. This isn't how it's supposed to end.
And this isn't where it ends. Run, Max. You fuckin' run.
Billy sees it. Sees the way the relief washes over Will. But it's quick. Like a flash. And then Will's all over the place, piecing together things that don't make sense to Billy. "Wishard Hospital? Indianapolis?" His thoughts are running, and Billy's counting the miles and minutes. To come back.
Come back,
'Before it's too late. If you can even hear this, and I really hope that you can. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Billy.'
Something's slipping away. It's Will. And then suddenly, Billy's choking on words. A plea. "Don't let him take her. And tell Harrington." Tell him what? "Tell Harrington... he'll know..."
Billy's alone. In the hospital. An old familiar ache. But he reaches for the door handle. Grips it. Turns it. Opens the goddamn door. Walks out.
Leaves the fucking ache in the hospital room.
'Am I dreaming, or is that you, Harrington?'
Harrington...
It echoes in Steve's brain, tripping him up in his thoughts, in his heart, and in his feet. Billy's voice, a familiar timbre, hums against Steve's ear. And it's like Billy's here again. For a second. Steve feels his legs give out, and it's like he trips over air. He blinks, heart lurching in his throat, and loses his grip. The Coke cans slip from him hands, condensation leaving streaks of wet against his palms, and they hit the floor, in tact. But now they're this loaded thing, ready to explode with the crisp crack of the tab.
Just like Steve. Because his heart's like the cola, brimming against his chest like it's not enough space, not enough space, not enough goddamn space for what he's feeling in his heart. Like if someone touches him, Steve might just fucking burst,
Burst with all the things he could not say. Memories of the way they gripped each other's shirts that day it all changed, like it was some goddamn thing between them. Like who can pull whom closer. Like who could hold whom tighter. A contest, daring, daring, daring. Until the dare was a plea in the way Steve's eyes were on Billy's lips with a question, and Billy was feeling something soft, something new, warming his skin. And it was gentle, so goddamn gentle. And charged. Like how could it be both at once? And yet it was. "What are y'lookin' at Harrington, huh?" And then they weren't looking. Not with their eyes. Their eyes were closed. Their mouths pressed together, seeing a whole fucking lot.
That was over Christmas break, 1984. Seven months. A wave so high, it filled everything. And then it was gone. Billy was gone. And the thing is that Steve wasn't even left drowning. He thinks maybe it would have been easier that way. Like maybe it would have felt like Billy somehow. The weight of his body sinking into the mattress, sinking into him. But no, Steve was just left empty. Stuck in a town where everyone moved on. Except him.
And then the wave came rushing back.
"Wh-what do you mean, Byers?" Steve's stepping forward now, looking at Will like there's never been something more goddamn serious than this conversation. "You're telling me you saw Hargrove?"
He's not wrapping his head around the conversation between Lucas and Will. Because there's this urgency in his feet pulling him forward. Time's ticking. Steve whips his head around until his gaze lands on Max. Distantly, he catches Will and Lucas talk about illusions, and Steve realizes he doesn't fucking care. Like if there's a goddamn chance Billy's alive, he'll take it.
Steve turns back to Will. Leans in. "Where? Where did you see him?"
Real, unreal. Max like a lifeline. He's looking at her now, past the curtain of his thoughts piling in around him, and he implores her to
Help me make it make sense
But all she does is lie there, ghost-sheeted and lifeless. Billy seemed more real than Max does. And then she tucks away behind the urgent frame of Steve Harrington, and there's something in his tone that belies the haunting, too. Billy fills in color like specks of pollen in the spring air.
Where?
"… a hospital in Indianapolis," Will frowns. "It has to be an illusion, right? I don't get it. I've never been able to– it's only ever been in Hawkins that–"
He drifts of into what-ifs and could-bes and there's Steve in his face like that, and– something tangles. The implication of it turns the air syrupy-thick between them.
"…you don't think it's an illusion, do you?"
"Will, he was torn to shreds." Lucas sounds hesitant; more so than Will has ever heard of him before. When he looks at him, he knows why: Lucas' eyes are trained on Max in her hospital bed. Max, the porcelain doll. Max, the sister. "Max saw it."
They both frown then: Lucas because he tries to imagine; Will because he tries not to.
"I know that." His voice is flat. "I know it doesn't make any sense. But if it's not an illusion, it has to be…"
Sundays? One day a week, endlessly, until Will dies or his body finally puts itself back together enough for him to try to tear back through.
It's still more than Brenner had ever graced him with, he has no choice but to acknowledge.
More than he'll ever get from the being even more at home in his mind than he is in Will's.
"Fine," he repeats, the snarl still in his voice softened slightly. A snap closer to a released rubber band than crocodile jaws shut.
It's better than nothing.
(It would have been better if Joyce's axe had actually done the work that she'd thought it had.)
It's better than not having anyone to talk to again.
He imagines he can hear the tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock. It's preferable to the whispers, but he hasn't allowed himself to think that in so long that it doesn't fully form as a thought anymore.
"And if I'm silent?" In their overlapped minds, Henry isn't entirely sure silence is a possibility, but he'd so much rather spectate the new than go back to circling through memorized mazes of stolen lives.
Silent. How silent is the monkey, really, when it’s breathing down your neck? But Will isn’t good at saying no. Can you even be– He knows he won’t say no before the thought finished manifesting itself.
He couldn’t say no to his dad,
Sons go to the ballgame with their dad, that's just how it is
He couldn’t say no to Mike,
So yeah, El needs you. And she always will.
He couldn’t say no to Mark, to Heather, to that cute guy at the sit-in in his sophomore year…
Why should Henry be any different?
"Maybe." Maybe is the new no. Maybe feels solid, but also vague enough that he can give it now without having to worry too much about sticking to his word later on. Maybe buys him time. "Depends on the moment, I guess?"
"But you had us and he still almost —" he can't say it, everything he'd felt seeing Will in a hospital bed again, because of Vecna, always because of Vecna. It didn't matter if it had been Will in control that time, the rhyme and reason behind it was all the same: Vecna.
Mike lost El to him; he nearly lost both parents and Holly to him; he's nearly lost Will over and over and over again. Nearly every night culminates in someone dying because of him, every dream contaminated with memories of Will's body fished from the lake, Will's eyes cold and hard, Will's pain-wracked screams; El dying for them in the school, in the the military's gate, nearly dead in the mall. His parents bloody and torn on the floors of their house. Max in a year of suspended death, the way she fought so hard to regain control of her body. The way he'd encounter Nancy in the kitchen at night when neither could sleep from the dreams.
How often he wakes in the middle of the night just to find Holly fleeing her own dreams.
It all wars against the way Will looks at him now.
"I don't care! No matter how alone you were, you would have never done what he did!" Mike slams down on that argument with his full weight, refusing to believe for a moment that Will has a single bone capable of such atrocities. "It wasn't me that made you good, you just are! The Mind Flayer didn't make him bad it just gave him powers!"
He has to pause to catch his breath, his heart pounding in his ears. "El only ever tried to save the world, not kill it." And she'd been alone too, without anyone nearly her entire life. He tries to blink away the hot feeling in his eyes, that never-healing cracked-open feeling in his chest. "El died because of what he did."
"But it did make him bad! You don't know what he was like before – I do! I do because I've seen it!"
They can stand here and argue all day long about whether or not Will would have had the luck to withstand what Henry couldn't. Because luck is what it boils down to, if you asked him – luck and circumstance and love that holds it all together. Not that anyone asks him.
It's ironic, really; five years ago, he would have given everything to hear Mike heroically defend Will like that. Like he believes it. Like Will deserves it. Like it's anything other than just happenstance, plain and simple.
He sighs, suddenly tired, and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Look, there… there's two options. You can have him cast out into the world and abandoned to the Mind Flayer and his influence, or you can have him here, with me, where he's– he's– he's the most human he's had the chance to be in a long time, okay?"
You get what I'm saying? When he's safe, we all are.
Even as tears burn hot down her cheeks, she's digging her fingers into her face to push them away. Forceful. Max looks up, up, up, as if that will stop the tears from flowing. As if it will stop her from drowning. She holds the emotion in gritted teeth, too fucking pissed at herself for crying. Fights the tears like she fights everything else: an anger that boils with temperamental flare all across her face, in her eyes, and in the way her body shakes. That is her way. It's the only way she knows.
'You fucking scream right back.'
Then it comes. The reassuring words. It's gonna be okay, please. She hears her father, drunk, as he grabs her and pulls her down onto the living room floor, away from the ghosts and bullets that live in his head. The ones from the Mekong Delta region when he was in Vietnam. The ones who took him away from her. 'Shh, baby. Don't let them hear. It's gonna work out. We'll get out of this hellhole and be home soon.' She hears her mother, words strained, as she ushers her outside. Away. Get out of the house. 'It'll all work out soon, baby. Just go outside and play.' Max remembers when her mother thought she worked it out just fine. The day her knight came to save her. Neil. But Neil wore something more sinister under the armor. Something monstrous.
Should have seen this coming, Max thinks. Happiness is not something in her life. Come on, grow up! She hears herself from years ago, biting back at Steve and Lucas and Dustin when they gave her that bullshit line: It's gonna be okay. 'No,' Max had said forcefully. 'I don't need you to reassure me and tell me it's all gonna work out. People have been telling me that my entire life and it's almost never true.'
It's never true.
"Don't," she says, voice shaking through the tears. Max looks at Will, feels that thread woven between them. She knows he's the only one who understands how those words feel. How people always try to soften the reality. They know better. They've both known better. "Don't say it's gonna be okay, Will, please."
It's never true, but Max wants so much for it to be. And it's so fucking naïve of her to want something like that. She's all too goddam aware of it.
She watches as Will closes his eyes, fights whatever shit is going on. Max feels sick thinking about Henry being alive. She feels her heart in her throat like she's running from him all over again. Running back home. Don't think about it. Don't let Henry catch you. Think of happier memories. It comes. Max nestled shoulder-to-shoulder with Will on his bed, the smell of Joyce cooking up something with lemon and bolognese, the reassuring knowledge that she'll go home later and Billy would be there (and so would Steve).
And then the truth: Max has been happy. She got her brother back. They got to try again. Live together in the trailer. He's working on cars, she's working as an EMT. Steve's with them now. She has her friends. Will. Even with thousands of miles between them, they have never once turned their backs on each other. She IS happy.
And maybe that's why Henry's back. To take it all away again. Don't take it away. Don't. Take. It. Don't you fucking dare take my brother, and don't you fucking take my best friend.
Max is getting anxious, and it's like Will knows. His eyes open and he's looking at her. She lets out a breath, momentary relief. This is all a little much, but she finds herself nodding. Trying. "Yeah, let's sit."
When he comes back, Max looks at the Coke that Will places on top of an old sketch. If Neil were here, he'd yell about not placing drinks on things like that. Neil is gone, but still, the thought comes, restless and automatic. Billy sometimes needs to remind her that he's gone, and she sometimes needs to remind him, too. Max swallows and looks back at Will. "It's okay," she whispers, and she means it. "Coke's fine." She reaches out, fingers curling around the cold bottle. It hurts a little, thinking about the way they clinked cans years ago, so carefree. There's no clinking bottles now, and she can't bring herself to take a drink. Max only sits in the silence that stretches between them like some great divide. She looks back down at her shoes because Will's not looking at her right now, either. Are we strangers to each other now?
Then he talks, and she listens. Blue eyes drag up from her sneakers to Will's face. Her brows knit, trying to concentrate. Something angry and protective and sad lingers when Max sees the anguish all over Will- how hard it is to speak. Is that Henry, making it hell? "No," she answers. It doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense.
Max shifts in her seat. "I mean," she tries again. "I know it's you. You're not, like, possessed or something." She knows this well- knows it better than the others in the party. Max had seen Billy when no one else would. Max went to Billy when no one else would. I believe you, Billy. And right now, she looks at Will, really looks. Like she's trying to see him, too. But there is a difference. Billy was always fighting that Mind Flayer, trying to push past it. And he did push past it in the end.
And then Will says we, and she flinches a bit. Henry around her throat. Max reaches up, touches her neck. No, he's not there. She looks back at Will.
Trying.
“But this time I know, Max. I know. It’s not like it was back then.”
And at the risk of telling her what she might have already heard from Mike, Will takes the plunge.
“I first felt him again on… on my birthday. Last year.” It's a roundabout way of admitting he has been lying to them all for a year and a half. Will trains his eyes on the can of Coke rather than on Max's face. It's easier that way. "I don't know why… why now, and why like this. We think it's because of how– because of what happened."
If you let the kids go, I’ll stay.
For Will, it was a deal he didn't think he'd have the courage to make. For Vecna, it was the beginning of the end.
For Henry, an opening.
“He’s not controlling me. And- and I’m not controlling him. We’re-“ Oh, he scrapes by devastation within a hair’s breadth of saying one. “…I can be in his head as much as he’s in mine. That’s how I know. He can’t lie to me.” And I can’t lie to him. “I would know if he did. He’s not going to cause any trouble. He doesn't want to.” Not anymore. Right?
Right?
A gray lie like a new dawn: the saturation is the same.
If Will's hand shakes a little when he reaches for the can, it's not just because he's nervous. He hasn't been out of the hospital for a week yet and it shows in a myriad of little ways, more so for others than for him. He doesn't look in the mirror these days when he can avoid it, so it's for Max to notice the bruises under his eyes, stark against that underskin yellow that tells you his liver's been working hard to not fucking die on him. What Max can't see is the fog in his head, the way only certain strands of thought seem to push through – and how hard it is to hold them all at once, between his weak and clumsy hands.
“I don’t know what Mike told you… probably enough to make you drive all the way down here.”
It feels like he has one foot in one problem each: what happened to his body, what he let happen because he was stupid, so stupid; and what happened to his mind. Heart. Body. All of him. Is it really two separate issues when his bones are the house of both?
Somewhere behind the fogginess, he isn't surprised about Max standing in his doorway. Thunder approaches before it breaks: And he spent the last five days waking up wondering if today is the day. She timed it well; he has a check-up two days from now and then he's going to Montauk with his mom.
Yeah, his mom. The signs that she's currently crashing on Will's couch are everywhere: an unfolded blanket thrown over the armrest, an old cup of coffee on the windowsill. Her travel bag between the couch and the neglected spider plant in the corner. She went out to give them time to talk, and Will's relieved for more reasons than one, but mainly because she's back in extreme helicopter mode otherwise.
Not that he's allowed to bring it up, as Joyce has made very clear. Repeatedly. Will doesn't have the energy to fight her on it right now.
He doesn't have the energy for a whole lot of things.
“What do you want to know?”
"But he looks... older." Even if he didn't look his age, like he belonged to the same overlapping high school years of their parents, he still looked older than Will. By a lot. It doesn't take knowing Henry's actual history to know they've got a lifespan between them.
"A lot older," he can't help adding, as if Will needs the emphasis that had sat in her voice already.
His gaze drops for a second before lifting back up to Will's. He doesn't want to understand any of it, at all, but he loves Will. Has loved him with his whole heart since the day Joyce sat him down to tell him he was going to have a little brother or sister. He'd promised himself and the-baby-to-be that he'd always protect them and love them no matter what, from anything and everything. Back then the monster that he'd expected to fight had been Lonnie and the little asides, the sideways glances they already got from other people in town.
Then Vecna had shown himself to be something bigger than all of it.
Jonathan will never understand. He can't understand. That doesn't change that this is Will, and all he's ever done is try to be on his side. So he clears his throat a little. "How... how do you forget?" he asks, but tries to strain everything that isn't just curiosity out of it, like he's asking about a non-Vecna boyfriend who just happens to be eye-wateringly old for Jonathan, let alone his little brother.
""I…he…" What do you say to that? Will sighs. "Yeah. I guess he does."
He can't blame Jonathan for the undiluted disgust apprehension that sits on his face. So he has to relent. Jonathan's question is a bird screech in his mind. "It–" used to bother me, he almost says, and then tries again. "I used to be more aware of it. At first. Now…"
It's hard to remember when sometimes I can't even remember where I end and he begins.
These are things Will keeps in the enclosure of his mind, accessible to two halves of a whole. Jonathan, his half in another constellation, exists outside. How can Will expect him to understand? He doesn't have the words to explain it. Maybe…
Maybe if he didn't have to say it at all.
He tears his empty-moment silent stare from his brother and leans over the armrest. Tucked between the couch and the coffee table is a leather-bound portfolio case that Will pulls into his lap.
Hesitation grips him.
Jonathan is his brother, yes; but this? This is so personal it's intimate. A turn-your-skin-inside-out kind of intimate. And then Will looks at his brother and the doubt dissipates just enough to give him the final push he needs to hold out the case. And then, with bated breath, he waits.
He risks undoing everything he tries to say; he knows this. His art over the last two years tells one story, warts and all. From trapped and un-alone and desperate to something new, something unexpected. A bridge. Under arctic water; under hollow ground. He fell headfirst into Henry's world and before he knew it, he fell.
He fell.
"This is how." Will holds out a gentle hand before Jonathan can turn the next page.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
It comes crawling back, hesitation. "…does that make sense at all?"
