picture billy in russia for a moment. just—stay with me.
give me billy at eighteen, all sun-browned skin and golden hair, grabbed by the russians from starcourt right from under everybody’s noses. a fake funeral and a closed casket, a body they never see. give me russia taking him apart quietly but efficiently, shipping him east to kamchatka, into a prison carved out of snow and rot and obscene cold. give me a buzz cut and threadbare clothes and a cell that teaches him how small a human body can feel. give me days that blur together because the light never changes and the language doesn't make sense yet, because orders are hands on his shoulders and boots in his spine before they're ever words. he barely has time to mourn his curls before they’re taken, all california and boyhood, vanity and heat and softness, and they can’t exist here. give me monsters first, because it’s easier that way—something inhuman to fight, something he can flatten with a lift of his hand and a flick of his wrist, with only a nosebleed for its price after. give me the brief stretch of time where he doesn’t know if anyone is looking for him but decides it’s better not to wonder, because hope hurts worse than the cold. give me the moment they realize the boy is more useful than the cages he’s emptying. give me a uniform, a rifle, a training, a mission, then another and another and another one, and victories stack up because they have to, because there is no other way, because he is repurposed into a soldier, pressed into service, taught the words for it: duty, motherland, loyalty.
give me billy at nineteen, under constant supervision so he won’t run. and he doesn’t, doesn’t even think about it. doesn’t think about california anymore, about salt air and beach heat and how the sun used to feel on his skin, like something that would always come back. doesn’t think about hawkins either, about schools and half-formed college plans, about max and her friends and how badly he wishes he’d known how to be better to her while he had the chance. and he definitely doesn’t think about steve, about all the almosts and maybes and all the things that never had time to become anything else. billy doesn’t fight it, and that’s important. there is one attempt, early on, a resistance that burns hot but short and leaves nothing behind but ash and a lesson learned too well. what lasts is resignation; what lasts is the voice in his head saying: this is what you’re for. give me moments where escape is technically possible—a door not locked, a guard distracted, an open ground—but billy purposefully looks away. give me the shameful relief that follows when he realizes not choosing hurts less, when fear fades and routine settles. what lasts is understanding that no one is coming and that maybe no one should.
give me billy at twenty, who has fully convinced himself this exile is deserved, permanent, a punishment neatly assigned, and he belongs here, a safe distance away from everyone he loves so he can’t hurt them again. it’s better for them this way; believing he’s dead is a kindness and erasing himself is a mercy. those old versions of him were unlovable anyway—at least here he can be useful. he stopped fighting a long time ago and doesn’t need guards anymore; the russians trust him, or pretend to, and either way it works because he’s never tried to escape, not once, not even with a door wide open and an ability to raze an entire military squad to the ground in mere seconds. give me the bitter laugh he chokes on when he remembers his father telling him to man up, to join the army, to stop being such a waste of space—because now he’s done exactly that, just for the wrong flag and something tells him it still wouldn’t be enough because god, apparently, has a sick sense of humor. the thing about russia, about exile, is that it teaches a person how to survive without joy, and he adapts alarmingly well, with discipline settling deep into his bones and anger becoming controlled, weaponized. they give him top-secret assignments and don’t babysit him anymore: there’s no need. he knows the drill, knows his abilities make him valuable. he might never be as strong as the girl that stopped him, but he keeps trying anyway, even if none of it makes sense. he learns that the cold war is just war with a better camouflage: violence, sabotage, assassinations, covert operations where names don’t matter and faces blur together afterward. billy is very good at it, not because he’s evil, but because he knows how to turn himself off. it becomes something like procedure: you do the thing, you come back, you clean your hands. you don’t think about the past. and you never think about steve.
give me billy at twenty-one, trying to fit in somewhere he can never truly fit in, standing in front of grocery shelves stacked with things that have no emotional history for him but with labels he can read now, can speak russian fluently because there was no other choice. he buys bread that isn’t sliced and milk that tastes wrong, learns to put sour cream in his food because people look at him strangely if he doesn’t. he practices a normal civilian life, or pretends to at least, in the spaces between missions—between killings for a government that isn’t his but being paid for it anyway. he’s grateful, in a way; he knows his place now. his skin pales, his accent fades, his name isn’t even billy anymore, and still none of it fits, none of it quite works, no matter how hard he insists that it should, because back there—in hawkins—it never could. because back there he failed everyone, failed max, failed her friends, failed the whole fucking town and steve too. so this is good. being far away. cold and alone. this endless grinding usefulness feels fair. it feels clean. no one even needs to brainwash him because he does it himself, reframes everything until it makes sense, until he has a purpose, until he can wake up in his small apartment, hear his neighbors through thin walls, drink bitter tea and think: this is my life. this is how it will always be. there is no escape and even if there was, why would he take it? at least here he can’t fail the people he cares about ever again.
give me the years billy stops counting. years pass and billy stops measuring himself by numbers because they don’t mean anything anymore. he is twenty-two, twenty-three and he has pretty much come to terms with it. he doesn’t think about steve but steve never leaves him. steve exists like a low-grade fever billy refuses to acknowledge; he can’t even picture him clearly anymore because faces blur with time, but the feeling of steve stays: warmth and safety, some version of him that didn’t have to be so sharp every goddamned second just to survive. billy tells himself that version was a lie. billy has lived longer in this version of himself than the california one, longer than the boy with sunburned shoulders and too much anger and nowhere to put it. years pass and billy has pretty much dealt with it. he tells himself it’s proof enough. that if he can live like this, if he can keep going without breaking, then whatever he felt before must not have been real enough to matter.
he packs for another mission and it is easy to lose yourself in the ritual of it. it starts at home, automatic and precise: clean clothes folded the same way every time, boots checked, laces replaced before they can fray; a small first aid kit he assembles himself—bandages, disinfectant, painkillers—because he trusts his own hands more than anyone else’s; a knife balanced just right—a familiar weight in his hand, and another one tucked where it’s hidden. he lays everything out, counts it, makes sure nothing is missing and puts it back exactly the way it needs to be. it is easy to forget it should scare him more than it actually does. it is easy not to flinch when they tell him he’s being sent back to the united states, back to hawkins this time, because he knows the place better than anyone, knows the terrain and the roads and they have unfinished business with the americans. they equip him carefully, respectfully, tell him that they trust him, tell him this is his chance to prove his loyalty once and for all, to honor the years they’ve poured into him, the man they’ve made out of him. the killing machine, billy corrects them silently in his mind. he nods, thanks them, and spends half the flight thinking about it. he knows it’s all a lie, knows they don’t trust him, have always just pretended to so he’d play along. he knows they’ve kept eyes on him, knows there’s a sniper somewhere, always has been, positioned a few blocks away in case he tried anything. he never did, not even when he felt especially suicidal.
what he doesn’t expect is how fast everything comes back the moment they touch american soil. proximity brings with it the knowledge that hawkins is still hawkins and people are still living there, still raising kids there. that max might still be there, that the harrington house might still have its lights on at night. that even if steve isn’t there anymore, even if he’s moved on, if he’s gone—the town itself is still full of people billy once tried, badly, to protect. what he doesn't expect is when it hits him, like a punch to the gut: his exile didn’t protect them. he didn’t make things safer by disappearing. he simply wasn’t there.
whatever the real mission is, whatever they’ve not told him they’re here to do, billy knows that it will make things worse, that if he lets this continue, hawkins won’t just be collateral damage—it will be the main point of it once again. and for the first time, something in him refuses. because this goes against the only rule he's ever kept: don’t hurt them. not them.
in the end, it is easy to make the choice. easier than it has been in years. he turns on his comrades without hesitation, loosens the grip on his control, on his rage, the way they taught him to, uses what they made him into and points it back where it belongs. he sees the momentary shock in their eyes as they close for the last time. it is fast, brutal, efficient. he destroys the comms, the transport, anything that could follow him. when it’s over, he stands there shaking, smearing the blood from his eyes and his nose, staring up at the sky and thinking that he might not be allowed forgiveness, but hoping anyway that this counts for something.
she opens the door and freezes like she’s seen a ghost, because to her, he is one. then she’s moving, hitting him, fists weak and furious and real, half-punching, half-crying into his jacket like she’s afraid he’ll vanish if she lets go.
“you’re such an asshole,” she sobs, voice breaking and hitting him again, harder this time. “you’re such a—god—“
billy doesn’t stop her, doesn’t tell her to calm down, doesn’t say he’s sorry. he’s learned that apologies are useless unless they’re earned. she presses her face into his chest and he lets himself hold her, breathing her in. she smells like home, like detergent and safety and something that hurts too much to recognize.
“they buried you,” she says, muffled. “do you know that? they buried you.” he swallows and nods, because he does know.
people start to gather after that. lucas, older now, meeting billy’s eyes with something steady and unreadable, like a heavy acknowledgment, like maturity. the wheelers—nancy’s sharp-eyed disbelief, mike’s open-mouthed shock. someone presses a cup of coffee into his hands, someone tells him to sit down. he does. no one asks where he’s been, no one demands an explanation. they look at him like he’s something fragile and miraculous all at once, like if they blink he’ll be gone again.
he doesn’t say billy’s name at first. he just stands there very still, eyes locked on him, expression frozen, wordless and a little lost. billy waits for the flinch, for the anger, for the distance, for the look. it doesn’t come. steve slowly crosses the room and stops too close, because of course he does. always too close.
“we looked for you,” he says, a little dumb, like the words just slipped out, like he’s just stating a simple fact that should have been obvious from the start and not confessing to anything at all.
something in billy breaks. he doesn’t deserve this, he shouldn’t be here, his brain supplies automatically—but steve’s hands are warm when they touch his and billy lets himself lean into it anyway. and then steve breaks too, right in front of him. his breath hitches, his big brown doe eyes shine too bright as he looks up at billy, tears welling up in them, his whole body shudders, like he’s trying and failing to hold it together. before billy can think, steve is pulling him in, arms crushing tight around him, sudden and desperate enough that billy stumbles half a step back. he catches himself and holds on, fingers digging into steve’s back, his neck, anywhere he can reach. steve is shaking against him, face buried where billy can’t see it, and billy closes his eyes and stands there, lets himself be solid, lets himself be something real. hears something breathless like god, billy—i thought— pressed close to his ear and commands himself not to break just yet.
it takes him a while to understand what’s happening. it’s not complicated but it does go against every rule he’s treated as sacred throughout these years. takes him a while to realize that exile was something he kept choosing over and over again, not because he chose to leave but because somewhere along the way he has decided that he was the problem, that he was dangerous, that being gone was the same thing as protecting them, because disappearing hurt less than allowing himself some hope; it felt safer. he never asked if anyone needed him, never let himself imagine coming back because he believed he shouldn’t, because he decided, alone, what was best for everyone, and it turns out he was wrong.
steve is still there when he opens his eyes. max is still there too. the room isn’t empty and no one sends him away. billy exhales, slow and shivering, and thinks that maybe this time his usefulness doesn’t have to mean his absence. that maybe this time, he doesn’t get to decide what he deserves.
and that this time, he could stay.
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