Chapter Text
Prologue:
Date: November 1989 Subject: The End.
This is me. Standing in front of you all—or, I guess, just standing in front of me. I have nothing left to hide. Not tonight. Not after everything.
I wrote this down , because i don`t want the events to be forgotten.
Soon there will be morning and everything will be revealed... I can`t wait for this night to end.
The walk was painful, it hurt, but some part were beautiful and bright. As a smile... I write this walk trough life, as if i could record everything at the time, because i have them in my mind with every sound, every breath, every silence, as clear as had happen yesterday.
The good part began one day in kindergarten, then the years passed in an instant, and the dark times caught us while we were still playing, watching the dice thrown as if by fate: It was a seven or not?
So let`s rewind and play.
The Wheeler Tapes: Restricted
Date: November 1984 Subject: The Week the Lights Went Out
(Sound of a tape recorder clicking on. Heavy breathing. The squeak of a basement chair.)
Not so long ago, my best friend—the guy I’ve been with all day since the first day of kindergarten—disappeared for one fucking entire week. The adults called it a missing persons case. The guys called it an adventure. But I needed to record this, to get the truth out of my head before it eats me alive.
Will is back. I keep saying it to myself, but it still feels like I’m waiting to wake up. Last year... last year was a nightmare I couldn't scream my way out of it. When Will went missing, it wasn't just that a friend was gone. It felt like a part of my own shadow had been ripped off.
Lucas and Dustin... they were great, but they didn't get it. They were looking for a teammate. I was looking for my heart. I remember standing out in the rain that first night, shouting his name until my throat was raw. I didn't care about the cold or the rules. I just kept thinking about that night in the driveway—the last time I saw him—when he told me his fireballs didn't hit. He was being honest with me. He’s the only person who doesn't make me feel like I have to 'act' like a leader. With Will, I can just be Mike Mike, the one who used to swing in kindergarten
Everything I did—finding El, hiding her in the basement, dealing with the bad men—it was all a map leading back to him. People think I was obsessed with the mystery. I wasn't. I was obsessed with the silence in his empty bedroom.
And then... we saw the quarry. When they pulled that body out of the water, the boy who looked just like him... I felt the world stop. I wanted to die too. I really did. What was the point of a world where Will Byers didn't exist?
When Troy and James cornered me at the cliff and told me to jump... I didn't just do it to save Dustin. For a split second, looking down at that water, it felt like a choice. A choice to go where Will was. If he was in the ground, I wanted to be there too. I was ready to let go. I was scared of how easy that decision felt. It terrified me that I was so willing to end everything just because he wasn't there to walk home with me. El saved me, but the truth is, I had already jumped in my head.
Saving the world? Fighting a Demogorgon? It feels like if I don't have Will, nothing else in Hawkins—not the games, not the party, not even El—feels like it’s in color. It’s all just grey static.
He’s safe now. He has to be. I’m not letting him go again. I’m never letting that silence come back."
(The tape hisses for a few seconds before clicking off.)