Chapter Text
The demogorgon does not die quietly.
It dies inside Will.
The moment stretches thin, like skin pulled too far. The world folds inward with a sickening intimacy. Will doesn’t see the monster lift, he feels it, a pressure blooming behind his eyes, rattling in his chest. The eternally red-tinted view of the demogorgons and the terrified faces of his friends engulf his vision.
His breath locks in his throat. Will feels the strain in his own joints, in his own ribs, like the monster’s bones are threaded through his body.
Bones snap. Shoulder. Neck. Back.
Something deep and central that gives like a branch under a boot.
Not metaphorical. Not distant.
The sound travels straight through his spine, each break echoing where his own joints should be. The demogorgon thrashes, claws scraping uselessly at the air, its shrieks tear through the air. He tastes blood and copper and something rotten, flooding his mouth as the creature’s panic flares once before collapsing into nothing.
Cold rushes in, submerging him like being dropped naked into freezing water.
His knees buckle, and slowly his vision becomes his own once more. Firelight stutters across blood drenched pavement, red, orange and wrong. His hand instinctively wipes the cold, wet liquid dripping from his nose. He doesnt blink. For a moment, all he hears is his heartbeat, blood thumping in his ears.
Then the noise returns all at once.
“WILL!”
Mike’s voice breaks through the haze, too close, too real.
Will blinks, but the afterimage lingers. He is aware of his body again in pieces: his fingers numb, his scalp prickling, his heart punching his ribs like it’s trying to escape.
The military base around them looks like an open wound.
The air is thick with smoke and burned chemicals. Crumpled, unmoving bodies litter the streets and the tears into the Upside Down gape like mouths. Red light and black shadow chew at each other inside them.
The sky over Hawkins has turned wrong, bruised and feverish.
He clenches his fists until his nails bite his palms, trying to anchor himself in something that isn’t… whatever that was.
He looks down at his sleeve, stained dark crimson with his blood.
“Will, hey, hey—” Mike is in front of him, hands up like he’s approaching a skittish animal, and the thought makes Will’s throat constrict so hard he can’t swallow.
Mike’s eyes flick down to the blood. Then back to Will’s face.
“Will…are you okay?”
Will nods, the motion small and practiced.
From several yards away, his mom makes a sound that isn't quite his name. It pulls his attention sideways, sharp and involuntary. He sees her scrambling up from the pavement, palms slipping on ash and broken grit, movements clumsy with urgency. She stumbles towards him, regains her balance, and keeps going. She doesn’t look anywhere else. Not the fire. Not the soldiers. Only him.
Mike takes a half-step closer. Too close. Everything is too close, heartbeat too loud.
Will stiffens without meaning to.
It’s small, instinctive. The same flinch he’s been living with since he was carried out of the upside Down, coughing up black water and rot.
Mike stops immediately, hands still up.
“Okay,” Mike says quietly. “Okay. We’re cool. We’re cool.”
Will’s mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
The pain is still there, echoing through him in aftershock, each one making his stomach turn. His joints ache like they’ve been bent the wrong way and put back without asking.
He knows, dimly, that he fought through it because there was no other option. Holding on while it thrashed and broke inside him, teeth clenched against the shared pain, against the instinct to let go and collapse. There were no thoughts about mercy or horror or what it would mean afterward. He only knew that if he loosened his grip, even for a second, people he loved would be dead.
That knowledge sits heavy in his chest now. A hollow, sinking feeling.
Because knowing something is dangerous doesn’t make ending it easier. Survival still leaves a taste in his mouth he can’t swallow. Because the part of him that understood what needed to be done is the same part that’s still shaking over it.
How do you explain that you didn’t do it so much as you felt something in your chest open like a door, and the monster’s body answered?
How do you explain the pain, flashes of panic as their bodies churned midair?
How do you explain that part of you… knew how?
He swallows hard. His throat is raw, like he’s been screaming for hours.
“I—” Will manages, voice thin. “I didn't—”
“I know,” Joyce says, a few feet away. Her voice is so brittle that it makes something inside Will twist. She takes one step forward, then another, slow like she’s afraid he’ll shatter if she moves too fast.
Will doesn’t want her close right now.
Not because he doesn’t want her.
Because he does, but he can’t stand the thought of her touching him and feeling how cold he is.
Mike glances back at Joyce, then at the burning street.
“We have to get out of here,” he says, tone resolute, steady if not for the slight wobble at the edges.
Will looks down at his hands, eyes drawn inevitably to the dark stain.
Mike’s gaze follows the movement. Then, he looks away.
“What about the others?” Joyce asks, voice tight. “Lucas was still in the tunnels. And Robin and Murray, they were taking the kids out of town. We need to know if-” She stops, like she doesn't want to finish the sentence.
“They're ok” Will states, still not meeting their gaze.
Will swallows.
“There was … more than one”, he breathes, a furrow building between his eyes. Mike kneels slowly to Will's eye level.
“More than one…what” he asks, Will finally meets his gaze, noting the dancing flames of the surrounding wreckage reflecting at him.
“Demogorgons,” he says quietly. “There were three of them.” Saying the number makes his stomach churn again.
“One here,” he continues, nodding vaguely towards the broken shape cooling on the pavement. “One in the tunnels. And one near Murray’s truck.”
His mother’s hand flies to her mouth, a quiet gasp escaping. Mike’s gaze was unflinching, an expression close to wonder crossing his face.
“You’re saying you—”
“I didn’t see them,” Will interrupts, a little too fast. He shakes his head, trying to explain something that still doesn’t have words. “But through them, like before.”
He hesitates.
“I could feel them,” he admits. “Moving as one, but I could pick each one apart. They were going to reach Robin first,” he adds, voice barely above the crackle of fire. “The truck was tipped over. They wouldn’t have been able to run. And Lucas… he was cornered in the tunnel.”
Mike exhales slowly, “So you… stopped all three of them.”
Will looks away first, jaw tight and nods stiffly.
Mike lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, shaky at the edges. “That’s—” He cuts himself off, searching for the right word. “That’s kind of incredible, Will.”
Wil’s shoulders tighten.
“You didn’t panic,” Mike continues, exuberance leaking into his words. “You figured it out. You saved them, you saved all of us.”
Saved.
The word sinks heavy and cold in Will’s chest.
“I didn’t have time to think,” Will says quietly. “It was just instinct.”
Mike nods, still energized.
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. You just stopped three of them at once,” Mike says, breathless. “That’s just …wow”
Will swallows hard.
Will’s head throbs again, the dull ache behind his eyes pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“I don’t think I could’ve stopped,” he admits. “Even if I wanted to.”
That gives Mike pause.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Will searches for the words, and finds only fragments.
“Once I had them,” he says slowly, “it was like… letting go wasn’t an option. Like if I loosened my grip, they’d just snap back into place and keep going.”
Joyce inhales sharply.
Mike’s brow furrows, admiration dimming into concern. “But you did stop them.”
“Yes,” Will says.
He doesn’t add at a cost. He doesn't mention the pain still radiating through his bones.
Because Mike is looking at him like this. Proud, relieved, clinging to the idea that this means Will is stronger than the danger, not closer to it.
The fire crackles loudly behind them.
His mother closes the distance slowly, resting her hand against Will’s arm.
“You stopped them. That’s what matters.”
Will nods again, shaky, automatic.
He doesn’t tell them how it hurt. He doesn't tell them he felt more than the physical pain, he felt their panic, their fear.
The cold inside him shifts, goosebumps still raised on the back of his neck.
It isn’t leaving, It’s settling. Like an animal curling up in a new home.
Will’s stomach rolls again, but this time it’s not just nausea.
It’s the memory of the demogorgon’s last second… and something threaded through it.
A faint tug.
A far-off chorus, like a thousand tiny voices turning their heads at once.
Will stiffens.
He can still feel the creature’s dying panic, fading now like a bruise, but there was more layered into the sensation. A deep satisfaction.
Not the demogorgon. Something else that had been looking through it. Or someone else. He shivers.
Mike notices that, too, and his eyes widen slightly. He shrugs off his jacket, holding it out.
Will pulls back automatically, then catches himself.
Mike’s expression tightens.
“It’s not—” Will starts, but his voice cracks and his chest squeezes so hard he has to swallow the rest.
It’s not you.
It’s me.
It’s what you saw.
He forces himself to take the jacket.
The fabric is warm, still carrying Mike’s body heat. Will wraps it around himself like armor and feels how wrong it is that he needs warmth this badly.
He looks over to his mother, who is watching him with a look that makes his skin ache.
The tears behind them pulse.
A gust of air rolls out, smelling of wet earth and decay, and the flames flicker low for a heartbeat, as if something exhaled.
Mike grabs Will’s wrist, and this time Will doesn’t pull away. Mike pulls Will to his feet.
“Radio station,” Mike says. “The Squawk. We regroup there like we planned. We get everyone there and figure it out.”
He nods, because Mike needs an answer, and because it’s easier to follow than to think.
They move.
Joyce keeps close, close enough to reach him.
As they hurry past a collapsed barrier and the broken husk of a military vehicle, Will keeps his gaze down so he won’t look at the tears too long.
Because if he looks, he can feel them.
He can feel the Upside Down pressing against the thin skin of this world, hungry and patient.
He can feel the places where reality is stitched too tight.
And worse than that, he can feel the faintest, coldest malice sliding along his spine, as if the thing on the other side has turned its face toward him.
He swallows it back, throat burning.
Don’t be a problem.
Don’t make them look at you the way they looked at him.
Mike squeezes his wrist.
“Hey,” Mike says under his breath, just for Will. “You saved me.”
Will’s chest aches.
He doesn’t answer.
Because he can still feel the demogorgon’s bones snapping, echoing inside his own. Because saving Mike felt exactly like killing something helpless, and that thought makes him want to crawl out of his own skin.
They reach the edge of the base perimeter, where the red light thins and the ordinary dark tries to return.
For a second, Will thinks maybe the tug in his head will fade with distance.
Instead, it sharpens. A familiar cold.
A shape he has been running from since he was twelve.
Will stumbles.
Mike catches him. “Will?”
Will’s eyes sting. The world goes slightly out of focus, like a camera lens trying to decide what matters.
In the thin space between heartbeats, he hears something that isn’t a sound.
A thought that isn’t his.
A presence leaning close to the inside of his mind like a hand on glass.
There you are.
Will gasps, a shiver runs across the back of his neck.
Somewhere beyond the tears, Vecna smiles.