Concept: Will gets vecna’d and there’s a scene of him running through the forest in the dark in the upside-down, and he can hear the search party and hopper yelling “Will Byers,” but they can’t hear him when he stop running and yells back, screams that he’s here. they just keep yelling his name, over and over and over. he’s still screaming back to them, voice raw and sobbing, and they’re right there but he can’t get to them, he’s stuck again.
All he can hear is his name. And not for the first time in his life, Will Byers wishes he was somebody else, if only so that he wouldn’t have to keep hearing that name over, and over, as if he’s stuck in a loop, unable to get out. unable to get away from being himself, from his own name, his own existence, the mistake that it is.
Its like when Lonnie would scream for him, “Will Byers,” entering the house with a bang, knocking the door against the wall and using Will’s full name to discipline him as if it was an insult in and of itself.
It’s like when Lonnie boarded up the hole in the wall, how despite Will’s begging and screaming, and pleading from the other side, his father simply couldn’t hear him. That was almost worse than before, than the way that his father would usually ignore him- because at least before, his father chose not to hear him, at least before, it was deserved, a choice Lonnie was making, a punishment dealt for the crime of being Will Byers.
At least before, it wasn’t a mistake that Lonnie couldn’t hear him. Or maybe this time, with the boarded up walls, it was a choice- maybe it couldn’t be a mistake, because Will is the mistake, maybe it was deserved. Maybe his father had known this when he boarded up the wall. Maybe he’d always known it, and Will was the ignorant one, blind to the error of his very being.
Will can still hear the screaming. It’s only grown in volume, in size, threatening to swallow him whole. It’s mixed with Lonnie’s voice now, the voices of those searching for him mingled with the voice of the person who’d gotten rid of him.
Lonnie had gotten rid of Will long before the upside-down, long before the boarded up wall, when he left all those years ago. Joyce would insist that they were the ones who’s gotten rid of Lonnie, but Will knew better. Lonnie was finally rid of him. And it’s a pity that Joyce and Jonathan couldn’t do the same.
Maybe they had. Maybe that’s why they weren’t home that night. Maybe his mother, and his brother were finally rid of him, in the way that like Lonnie, they didn’t come home that night.
Maybe like Lonnie, they left him in the upside-down. Instead of boarding up the hole, maybe his mother had taken an axe to the wall not to try and give Will an opening, but to try and create a hole, a hole in the wall and a hole in the family, tried to cut Will out of it.
But as Will runs through the forest, runs through the upside-down, he wonders if he ever really left- maybe Will never came home that night. Maybe he left them. Maybe he abandoned them. Maybe Joyce and Jonathan ran through an empty house, searching for Will. Maybe Joyce wouldn’t have needed to chop a hole in the wall if Will hadn’t torn through the wall first, trying to save himself- if he hadn’t torn through the family, if he hadn’t made Lonnie leave in an attempt to save himself.
The screams continue- people searching for him, people (Lonnie) finding him, spewing his name in a drunken rage. People caught in an eternal cycle, an eternal loop of looking for something that they’ll never find, and his father stuck in an eternal loop of finding something he’d never been looking for. The screaming of people who could never see him, mixed with the voice of the person who did know the truth, who always saw right through him.
They wouldn’t look for him if they knew what they would find. Lonnie knows what he’ll find. He’s always known. And as a result, he never had to look for Will, never bothered looking for Will- Will would simply appear when the door crashed open, jump out like a deer in the headlights, running into the light, hoping that maybe he could find safety in it, that maybe if he got close enough to the lights, somehow, the car wouldn’t hit him. He knows it doesn’t make sense. But just like the deer, he’s blinded.
Maybe if he got close enough to Lonnie. Maybe Lonnie only reached out because Will was too far away. Maybe if he put himself in Lonnie’s range, within his grasp, Lonnie would cease to reach for him, would stop grabbing him entirely because Will was already close and didn’t need to be pulled any closer. He doesn’t. Instead, it simply aids the swiftness of his grasp, it simply lets Lonnie pull Will in, grab him close, only to shove him away.
Will does appear when the door crashes open, rattling against the wall behind him, rattling off the wall in the same way that the screams do, when Will finds himself out of the forest and in his living room. And again, Lonnie doesn’t look for him.
Lonnie never needed to look, because he would simply see Will. He would see him for all he is- a mistake, a queer- and so when Will disappeared, Lonnie didn’t look for him, because Will knows that Lonnie knew why he was gone. He knows that Lonnie didn’t know about the upside-down, but that he knew that one day, the universe would correct its mistake, that Will would correct his own mistake, his own existence, that either by his own hand or that of fate, Will Byers would vanish. And so, just as quickly as he appears, he vanishes, bolting into his bedroom.
He was always good at hiding. But he can’t hide from himself, from his own name, still filling the air as the screams continue. People are still searching for him, Lonnie’s still found him- Will can hear the heavy footsteps and the heavier hollering. Deeper, more visceral than all the other screams, as if it somehow came from somewhere within Will himself.
And right as the screams get too loud, too numerous, like a wave, his own name and the weight of it, of him, of who he is, of what he is, crashing down on him, a deep voice rumbles from right behind him:
Just like Lonnie, Will can feel Vecna looming over him, the way that the air becomes coarse and tight, and heavy, burdened with the weight of his name. WIth the weight of him, of all that was inside of him now turned outside for everyone to see, so that they can stop looking. So that the search ends and the silence finally falls- so that he’ll stay here, forever.
But it doesn’t end. The screaming continues. The searching, the looking continues, because they still can’t see him, even though it feels as if he’s on display, as if his insides have turned outward. Blood drips from Will’s ears. It drips from his mouth, too, and his nose, and his eyes. It slides down the skin on this body, the smaller one, in Will’s bedroom, on the body that Lonnie- or Vecna, Will realizes distantly, has his hands on, digging claws into his shoulders, shaking them, the enraged face of his father resting in that heavy air, expelled from Will’s insides like the dust of the mindflayer was, mingling with Vecna’s stoic features.
The blood also slides down the skin of his other body, the one in the flower field, the one that Mike has his hands on. The one whose shoulders are being held, not grabbed, whose ears are bleeding as Mike calls “Will! Will!”
Mike’s the only person saying his name that Will can’t hear in the sea of screaming. And maybe that’s for the best. Because Mike’s voice is the only one he’d be able to follow. The only one that could have possibly risen above the noise, not by higher volume but by a lower one, not by harshness, but by softness, the only voice that could ever rival the screaming without screaming at all. The only voice that truly soothed away that pain, that made him feel like he wasn’t a mistake.
And Will knows, in his heart, that he doesn’t deserve that. Doesn’t deserve to escape, to hide, to follow that voice.
And, in what Will recognizes as a final mercy, as a selfish, undeserved relief for himself, he knows that Mike doesn’t hear him either. He knows that when Vecna sinks his claws into him and Will screams, Mike won’t hear him, can’t hear him, doesn’t hear him screaming Mike’s name out into the void. He hopes he doesn’t, at least.
But Mike does hear Will- finally, Mike hears him. He hears his bones crack. He hears his body hit the ground. He hears Will’s heart stop, the silence of its absence more defeaning than any scream Will could ever muster.
