AUByler? UniByler?
TW: Mentions of death and sewer slide.
New Byler variant that just came to me that I don't have a proper name for:
A universe where Mike dies at The Quarry in Season 1, but Will still comes back from The Upside Down like normal. Coming back to a world without Mike.
A universe where Will dies in The Upside Down in Season 1, and Mike has to go on living in a world without Will.
Two INCREDIBLY similar alternate universes. The literal only difference between them is that in one, Mike died in Season 1 and in the other, Will died in Season 1. Other than that, the two universes are IDENTICAL.
Skip to Season 5, where both universes are reaching their final conflicts with Vecna. Due to how close these two universes are and how Vecna is trying to merge the two dimensional planes (or whatever the hell he was trying to do in S5) it leads to, you guessed it, multiversal shenanigans. The two separate universe's Upside Down's begin coexisting with each other, or maybe they kind of always did and now the veil is just becoming incredibly thin.
Short story long, at some point, both universes have a group in The Upside Down, and both groups include Will and Mike. As you'd expect, they get separated from their respective groups, and as you'd expect, they bump into each other.
Neither one can believe it at first, but they are quick to immediately fall into each other, tears in their eyes as they embrace in a death grip.
"You're here. You're really here. Have you... but I saw your body. I know I did..."
"But... you... The Quarry... Dustin said you jumped a-and-"
"Wait... Dustin? When... when did you talk to Dustin?"
Will pulls back from the hug, meeting Mike's tearfully confused expression with one of his own as he sniffles. "He told me... when I came back. After I got out of the hospital."
"What... what do you mean when you came back? Came back from where?" Mike demands, bordering on hyperventilating as he grips Will's shoulders.
Will raises an eyebrow, more confused than ever. "The Upside Down. When I came back from The Upside Down. After I got out of the hospital, Dustin told me you... you were dead. That he watched you jump. That... that he-he watched you commit suicide, Mike." And Will was sobbing again. He always was when he thought about what happened to Mike. What Mike did.
Mike panicked for a second, hands shaking and unsure what to do before he quickly pulled Will into another bone crushing hug. "No. No no no no no, Will, I'm fine! El saved me! I didn't die, I'm okay!
"But..." Will managed out between sobs. "Then... where have you been? An-and if El saved you, why didn't she tell any of us? It's been years!"
Mike pulled back again, so confused as he stared at Will. "Will..." He started slowly. "Where have you been?"
That startles Will. "What...?"
"Where... Will, I saw your body at The Quarry. After you disappeared. We found you. Dead. In that... that stupid fucking lake..." Mike looked away. tears forming in his eyes again despite his attempts to hold them back.
"Mike..." Will started, cupping his face and pulling it to look at him again. "That wasn't me. That wasn't my real body."
"Yes it was!" Mike insisted, ripping away from Will, tears streaming down his frustrated and hurt face as Will jumped. "I know it was, I know it was you, Will, I know you and that was you! It was your body, I know it was!"
"Mike..." Will tried calmly, taking a half step closer to him with his arms raised in surrender. "Then how am I here right now?"
"I don't..." Mike trembled. "I don't know. I don't know what's happening."
Will let out a shaky breath, tears still rapidly rolling down his face. "Me either." And like that, they were both in each others arms again, crying and holding on for dear life.
"Is it... is it Vecna...?" Mike forced out after what felt like hours. "Have we... have we been trapped in some fucked up hallucination for years?"
"There... there's no way..." Will mumbled, refusing to let go of Mike for even a second. "There's no way the last five years have been fake. I came here with the group."
Mike finally pulled back again. "The group? Who did you come with?"
"Jonathan, Steve, and Robin." Mike just stares at him, his eyes widened. "What?"
"That's not possible."
"What do you mean?"
"I came here with Nancy, Dustin, Steve, and Robin."
"What." Will said bluntly, eyes the size of saucers. "That... that's impossible. You couldn't have come with Steve and Robin. I came with Steve and Robin."
"Will... something's not right."
The duo decide it's best if they try and find the others, if they're actually there, to try and piece together what is actually going on.
Thankfully it doesn't take long to find the two groups, who have bumped into each other by this point. At first, Mike and Will are relieved that the two groups are actually there, and that what they remember happening before bumping into each other actually happened.
That relief immediately dies when they see two Steve's and two Robin's.
"Wait, but, this is impossible. How can there be two Robin's and another one of me?"
"Maybe they're clones?"
"I don't think they're clones, Dustin." Will replies incredulously, to which Dustin's head whips over to him.
"Says you! You're the most likely to be a clone out of all of us! You're dead! We saw your body!"
"Will's not a clone!" Mike snaps immediately.
"Mike." Nancy says, calm but with an undercurrent of frustration. "Will's dead. You know this."
"According to you." Jonathan butts in, voice firm, but gentle. "If my memory serves, Mike's the dead one."
"What?!" Nancy calls out in shock.
"Yeah, uh, we kind of already had this conversation..." Will cuts in sheepishly, signaling between himself and Mike.
"Yeah, we can figure out which one of us is actually dead later, if either of us even are. Right now, I'm more concerned with our conflicting memories and the fact there are two Steve's and two Robin's." Mike agrees. He had Will back, he didn't want to be confronted with the reality that it might not be real. Will next to him felt too real to be fake.
The group shelves the conversation, realizing that standing there arguing wouldn't lead them to any sort of conclusion. They decide to make their way towards one of the many gates open between Hawkins and The Upside Down, reasoning that maybe when they go back home, things will return to normal and the members of their group that aren't real ("They're real, Nancy.") will simply be gone.
They finally find a gate, but just before they step through, Will stops them.
"Wait!" He calls out, bringing the group to an immediate halt. He turns and looks at Mike. "Mike, come here."
Mike looks a little confused, but meets Will at the gate. Will doesn't look at him, just stares at the gate. "On three, we both walk through the gate." Mike realizes what he's doing, and feels his heart stop. This was a test. A test to see if one of them really was dead.
Mike swallowed, and nodded. Will let out a long breath before speaking. "One. Two. Three." Will speaks, both boys closing their eyes and walking through the gate.
And when they open their eyes, they're back in Hawkins.
Both of them.
"Will?"
"Mike?"
And with no hesitation, they're clutching each other again. They still have no clue what's going on, but if it means they're both alive, they'll take it.
Slowly the others start walking through, having no issues until it's just Jonathan, and the Steve and Robin from Will's group.
"Guys! You comin', or what?" Dustin calls.
"We can't get through!" Jonathan replies.
"What? What do you mean?" Will asks.
"It's like there is some sort of invisible wall. We're coming in contact with something solid when we try and come through." Steve explains.
Nancy steps forward, reaching out to grab Jonathan's hand and try to pull him through, but the second his finger tips meet the gate, Nancy can't pull him any further, no matter how hard she tries. "What the hell...?"
"That's impossible. How can we-"
"Alternate Universes!" The two Robin's exclaim at the same time, completely interrupting the conversation.
"What?" They all simultaneously exclaim.
The two Robin's stare at each other through the gate. "You go first." They both say at the same time.
"One of you just talk!" Mike exclaims.
"Right, right!" The Robin still in The Upside Down says. "Suppose we are two eerily similar alternate universes, where in both of our party's are fighting the same threat, being Vecna and The Upside Down. It wouldn't be weird to assume that if we're both fighting the same thing, that The Upside Down is acting as some sort of pocket dimension between our two parallel universes. And now that Vecna has so many gates open and things are amping up, the walls between our universes are thinning, maybe even breaking-"
"And allowing us to make contact with each other within The Upside Down!" The Robin back in the right side up finishes, a bright smile on both of their faces as The Upside Down Robin nods enthusiastically. "That's why you guys can't come through the gate. It leads to our universe!"
"Wait." Will butts in. "Then how come I made it through? If what you're saying is true, I'm not from this universe."
"Because our universe doesn't have a Will." Nancy says, voice scarily quiet as she just stares at him. "Not anymore, at least."
"Hold on, hold on, hold on!" Dustin speaks loudly, arms flailing as he speaks. "You're proposing that we're from two completely different universes, wherein the literal only difference is that in yours, Mike's dead, and in ours-"
"You're dead." Mike interrupts, looking directly at Will with the most heartbroken expression on his face.
~
Short story long, the two groups work together to beat Vecna in both universes, and the Mike and Will from them get together and they find some way to travel between their universes when everything is over and they have a lot of deep conversations about each other, and their universes, and the dead versions of them (they have all the same memories of each other leading up to their respective universes deaths because the two universes really are exactly the same besides that) and what they had been doing the past few years, and the guilt they feel about being stupidly happy together and having found each other despite the fact their universe's versions are dead and they visit each other's graves all the time and they're really happy together but it's still a little angsty because they have a lot of trauma around losing each other and how everything happened in their own universes.
I don't know what to call this variant lol. I like UniByler but it just kind of sounds like they're going to University lol. And AUByler sounds like it could be just any Byler AU lmao.
Thoughts? Ideas?