Chapter Text
Michael Wheeler knew very few things for certain in life. He loved even fewer. He knew the games were illegitimate and cruel. He knew every year, as he, and everyone around them, continued to watch them, that they were implicit in its success. He also knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
People are reaped. Kids are reaped. All but one dies and the world continues to spin. His world has continued to spin so long as his family remains a possibility but never singled out.
“Shh shh shh, Holly it’s okay, it’s okay,” Mike reassured his sister, whose face was streaked with tears, her porcelain features softening as he spoke. He supposed his mother was better at this sort of thing. “Mum!”
“What if it’s me, Mike, I can’t—I can’t be brave like how they are on the television, I won’t—I won’t make it Mike I—”
His eyes tightened with the weight of growing sadness before locking onto Holly.
“It won’t be you. Holly listen to me, your name is in there once. Once. You are brave. So brave for even existing. And luckily, you only need to be brave enough to line up this afternoon and watch the announcement.”
Holly sniffed silently.
“Don’t even watch the announcement, watch me,” Mike paused in a delicate thought. “Watch Nancy.”
Holly smiled at this, sisters always seemed to be closer. In the usual cases
“But Nancy—”
“What’s this about Nancy?”
They turned to see their mother, who immediately scooped Holly into a tight embrace, ruffling Mike’s shoulder length untamed hair with a small smile. They were a whole family, even with just three of them, if you saw them in these little moments.
“It’s just a day, Holly. Just a day.”
Leaving Holly’s room, Mike checked his watch and started to rush out. Pushing through the living space, the door nudged Ted Wheeler’s right foot and he shot up from his recliner in pain.
“Michael.” He groaned and shook his head sternly. “What did I say about the door problem, son?”
“Sorry!”
His father gave him a look up and down, eyes landing on his hair, and scoffed.
“You’ve got to cut your hair, Michael, you’re starting to look like—”
“Like what, dad?” Mike shot back.
“Like you want to have an even bigger target on your head.”
Mike paused for a moment, letting the silence ruminate and hopefully swallow up his father and his ambiguous words. He loved him, really. He hated the things he insinuated sometimes.
“I’m going out.”
Painting was a pastime Will believed he would never give up. Everything he created, every stroke and every shape was meticulously placed to create something purposeful, or simply just beautiful. Will stood back from the paper, studying the swirling blues and yellows, as if the colors themselves were telling a story he was just beginning to understand.
Nothing was really left uncertain, nothing out of place.
Art was art. And art replicates life. But life is life. And life doesn’t replicate anything. It’s the one thing left unpredictable and out of Will’s control.
“It’s beautiful Will,” Jonathan noted, snapping a picture of Will standing by his artwork. The sun shone brilliantly on both the painting and Will with a radiance not fitting for a day like this. “You’ve got a thing for this type of stuff, you really do.”
“Thanks, Jonathan,” Will said, hesitantly. He studied his older brother for a long moment, committing every detail of him to memory, already bracing himself for the changes a few weeks would carve into his face. Jonathan smiled at him sadly.
“It’s okay to feel scared,” Jonathan said quietly, the sadness in his smile deepening but never quite breaking. “It’d be stranger if you weren’t.”
Will swallowed, his fingers curling into the fabric of his sleeve.
“You always make it sound simple.”
“It’s not simple,” Jonathan replied. “It’s just… necessary.”
He rested a steady hand on Will’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to carry all of it at once. Talk to me, yeah?”
“You’ve got it harder than the rest of us this year, Jonathan,” Will sighed, brushing Jonathan’s hand off his shoulder and pulling him into a hug to hide his dismal face.
Jonathan let out a soft breath that almost passed for a laugh.
“Take care of mum, will you? Don’t let her spiral?”
“You know we’ll be fine. We’ve managed before.”
Jonathan left with one last squeeze to Will’s shoulder, and the space he’d occupied seemed to hollow out in his absence. It didn’t remain empty for long. The back door creaked open and their mother stepped out, already wringing her hands as if she could twist the worry from them. Strands of hair had slipped loose around her face, and her eyes moved too quickly—past Will, toward the road, toward nothing in particular.
She was always carrying something heavy, some quiet, invisible weight. But today it pressed into her shoulders harder, sharpened the lines around her mouth, turned every small sound into something that made her flinch.
“Hey Will.” Her expression shifted with his watchful eye and her hands came up to ruffle his hair. “Hairs grown longer this year, huh?”
He nodded silently, absentmindedly reaching to touch his hair. The familiar bowl cut had once suited him—neat, practical, boyish—but at seventeen it felt like something he’d outgrown.
“Just… keep your head down today, Will.” Joyce’s tone laced with worry. “We all will. We all should.”
“I will,” he reassured, arms folded and hands gripping the sides of his arms. He already knew the routine—head down, shoulders squared, voice measured—moving through the world carefully, never loud enough to draw notice, never bold enough to let anyone glimpse the avalanche of thoughts he kept buried beneath the surface.
“I’ll be back.”
He crouched and began packing away his brushes with careful hands, sliding the rolled painting into his jacket’s inside pocket as though it were something fragile and living.
If he couldn’t order the world beyond the page, he could at least protect this small, beautiful one.
“67.”
“67?”
“67.”
“67.”
“Yes. 67.”
“Your name is written on 67 slips in the reaping?! That’s—”
“A lot. I’m aware,” Will scratched the back of his neck, feeling the tickle of the grass beneath him, and gazed up at the sun in all its golden, effortless loveliness.
“It’s more than a lot. It’s crazy. Crazy,” Mike started, rolling onto his stomach and propping himself on his elbows to face Will. “I mean, are they all from—”
“I used them to request extra food,” Will interrupted, voice low. “Mum’s always giving it away to us, and Lonny used to practically eat two portions every meal.”
He swallowed, the weight of memory pressing down on him. Mike eyed him carefully, watching his eyes gloss over for a second before focusing again.
“Then later Jonathan…was able to help us out and I didn’t have to request again. So how many ‘Mike’s’ are in there?”
“Twenty,” Mike swallowed and Will twitched in surprise, turning his head to find Mike already watching him, eyes sharp and unreadable.
His unfortunate odds were because of reasons quite different to Will’s. Considering he was Mayor Ted Wheeler’s son, there was no serious issue of food supply for his house, though still quite dire. Mike’s odds were the result of his own mistakes—being in places he wasn’t supposed to, all in the name of science, then giving attitude when he got caught. Their father could only straighten him out so many times.
Will remembered one incident clearly: Mike had snuck off to the big dam in the middle of town, trying to gather data for one of his experiments. When he was caught, he’d muttered something about the authorities being “mouth-breathers.” Not just a careless insult—given the context, it carried weight. Five of the slips in Mike’s odds were probably the result of that incident alone. The others were probably from other ambitious experiments with electricity.
“It’s just another year, just another reaping. Another game,” Mike spoke, his trembling tone betraying him.
“I’ll miss Jonathan.”
“I’ve missed Nancy.”
They paused in reflection, sharing a knowing look between one another. A look they shared countless times. Being best friends for almost a decade had given them these sacred little moments of understanding where they knew each other so well that words would have only gotten in the way.
The moment lingered longer than either of them intended, and Will jolted his head away, a sharp current snapping through him, the charge of that shared look crackling under his skin.
Mike cleared his throat, leaning his head back on the grass.
“They’ll manage. They have been managing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Holly’s been having nightmares about the whole thing,” Mike sighed. “And shes only in there once.”
“Still a scary chance.”
Will took a breath.
“Mike, do you reckon the games will ever… I dunno, stop?”
Mike’s breath hitched and he instinctively checked their surroundings. Having a mayor as a father meant he was always acutely aware of the things he was a part of, his proximity to the Capitol and to President Creel.
“I think… someday, someone’s going to have to fight it, they’ll have to,” Mike said gently.
Will let out a quiet huff. “That’s kind of insane.”
“Yeah,” Mike admitted. “It is.”
Another pause. Then, softer, almost amused at himself.
“But if the world does go to hell over it…”
Will glanced at him.
“We go together,” Mike finished. “Crazy together?”
Will didn’t hesitate. “Crazy together.”
It was a reckless thing to say. Dramatic. The kind of promise boys made when they still believed they were untouchable. Maybe in that moment, they were.
Will scanned the lines of people, their heads bowed, mouths pressed into thin, obedient lines—Mike nowhere in sight.
It was the hair that gave him away. Black and unruly, impossible to tame even on a day like this. Will’s gaze snagged on it instantly, relief and dread tangling in his chest.
They were seated by age groups. Up front, younger children clung to their families; further back, the older ones sat straighter, quieter. Joyce bent to press a lingering kiss to Will’s forehead before taking her place, her worry draped over him like a second shirt. Normally, Jonathan would be seated with the nineteen-year-olds, facing his final year of eligibility with tight-jawed resolve.
But nothing about this year was normal.
Jonathan moved toward the stage, climbing the steps and taking his position at the far left of the podium. His eyes fixed on District 5’s Capitol escort. She looked like a different woman every year—new hair, new colors, new smile sharp enough to cut glass.
Nothing like the woman he knew. Before, she was quieter. Smaller somehow. Outgoing and deeply profound. A presence at dinner tables and school events, folded into ordinary life. Up there, beneath the Capitol seal, she was something else entirely, lacquered and luminous, all performance and polish.
Will started toward Mike, ready to wedge himself beside him, to anchor himself to something familiar before the dread swallowed him whole—
A peacekeeper’s hand struck his shoulder.
“Sit in your assigned place.”
Will glanced at Mike—ten seats away—close enough to see the tightness in his jaw, far enough to feel the distance like a wound. He swallowed whatever protest rose in his throat and took his seat. The Reaping would be starting soon.
“The first tribute, from District 5,” her off, nasally voice rang out.
Mike watched with a strange mixture of disgust and something dangerously close to gratitude. Up there, Nancy was spectacle—powdered, polished, reduced to posture and presentation instead of everything she truly was. It was a humiliation dressed up as honor.
And yet—
She was safe.
This was his sister, after all.
And every year since she’d turned fourteen and stepped into the role of District 5’s escort, this had been the only occasion he saw her—elevated above them, unreachable, untouchable.
Then again, he suspected Nancy felt it too. The narrowing of herself. The careful folding away of the parts that didn’t glitter.
He wondered if, when she looked out over the crowd, she ever searched for him the way he searched for her—just to remember who she had been before the Capitol painted her gold.
Mike wanted to look at Will.
She twirled her fingers around the slips of paper in the massive ballot ball with an overexaggerated degree of suspense.
Mike wanted to look at Will.
She dug under the pile of papers more, fishing for one.
Mike wanted to look at Will.
Jonathan stood with uncomfortable stiffness, a posture pulled too tight, eyes constantly darting from the audience to Nancy and back to the ground. She would read the slip of paper soon, and with it would come the beginning of his responsibility to the new tributes—guiding them the way his own mentor once guided him.
Winning hadn’t released him. It had only reassigned him. Five years out of the arena, and it still felt as though he had only been granted an intermission.
Will dragged his gaze away from Jonathan and fixed it instead on something familiar. Something steady.
Mike.
Will wished, desperately, that Mike would just twist his head to the side—just enough to notice him the way he had sought him out before.
He never turned.
Mike felt it too—that pull, that almost-ache in his neck to look sideways. To meet Will’s eyes. It would’ve been something steady to hold onto, something grounding in the suffocating order of it all.
But it was easier to keep facing forward.
Easier not to risk what might be written in the other’s expression.
Easier not to see fear reflected back at him.
“Alright, I’ve chosen!” Nancy gleamed on stage before her eyes focused on the name on the paper, turning to Jonathan before going back to the crowd.
“Will Byers!”
In an instant, every ounce of fear surged through him, cold and clarifying and utmostly brutal.
Mike didn’t remember deciding. He only knew he was already moving, the words leaving him in one clean breath, faster than thought—
“I volunteer.”
It felt less like bravery and more like instinct.
He would stand in front of him. He always had.
He watched Nancy’s face crumble, the polish slipping, something raw and sisterly breaking through the Capitol shine.
He watched the peacekeepers seize him, hands iron-tight as they dragged him toward the stage.
He watched his mother go pale in the crowd, one hand pressed to her mouth. He watched his father shake his head once—sharp, disbelieving, already calculating the fallout.
He couldn’t watch Will.
“A volunteer! That’s—” Nancy regained her composure. “Wonderful!”
Will couldn’t hear anything but Mike’s voice reverberating through him, drowning out the crowd. He couldn’t see anything but Mike, standing on the stage, shoulders squared, jaw set, staring straight ahead.
Refusing to look at him.
Refusing to realise what he’d done.
Will’s mind reduced itself to one word.
Mike.
Mike.
Mike.
Mike.
Over and over, like a prayer he didn’t know how to finish.
Mike, that was supposed to be me.
The thought hit harder than the announcement ever could.
Mike, you don’t always need to protect me.
But Mike had never understood that. Or maybe he had—and chose to anyway.
Will watched as Nancy gasped as she unfolded the second slip, manicured fingers trembling just slightly. For a heartbeat, her expression didn’t change—trained, polished, Capitol-perfect.
Then she read it.
A crack splintered through her voice as she spoke the name, each syllable dragged across something breaking inside her.
“Holly Wheeler.”
The last name seemed to echo louder than the first.
Wheeler.
And for the first time since stepping onto that stage years ago, Will noticed Nancy didn’t look like an escort.
She looked like a sister.
He had learned from Lonny that to be loud was to be vulnerable. But he had learned from Joyce something different. That fear could sit in your throat and you could speak anyway. That bravery wasn’t the absence of shaking—it was choosing to move while you were.
And a best friend had once told him, half-joking and wholly serious, that if the world ever went to hell, they’d go crazy together.
Crazy together.
Will stood before he could reconsider, before silence could swallow him whole.
“I volunteer as tribute.”