The first time Billy was allowed out of his hospital bed, he had to be sedated. He thrashed around, breaking everything in reach. It was a long time before he was allowed to try again.
The doctors were always talking in low voices where they thought he wouldn't hear. Brain damage making him violent. Mutism from trauma. All bullshit. Billy wasn't talking because he had nothing to say to any of those people.
He threw another fit when he found out about his car. Another when Max tried to visit him. Billy would scream and shake and cry any time someone he knew came to see him.
He had nothing to say to any of those fucking people.
His strength came back slowly, but surely. He was always monitored, some asshole with a needle waiting by for him to misbehave. Billy learned to rein in his anger, but he never let it go. It festered, grew as Billy thought about everything that brought him here.
Everyone had known but him. The monsters. Everybody, including his fucking sister, had known about it. They just let him sacrifice himself for some girl he'd never fucking met.
She was the only one he would see, that girl, because she was the only one who had looked at Billy and not seen a monster. She never tried to make him talk. Never talked, herself. Just sat there with him on days when Billy's nightmares got too much.
When they finally released him, it was the girl who was waiting for him. She didn't try to help him, just walked slow enough that he could follow. She led him to a car, apparently having pulled some strings for Billy. Handing him a set of keys. Told him he was allowed to want to break stuff, but he shouldn't try to break himself. He just grunted out a rough 'thanks', the first word he'd said in months.
Billy didn't once check the rear view mirror as he sped out of Hawkins with just the clothes on his back. Didn't think it, or anyone there, deserved a single fucking look.








