Chapter Text
“Wake up! Let's go, come on!”
The first thing Joyce registers after jolting awake is the muffled yelling coming from beyond the door to the bunk room that she and Hopper share. The big man at her back is already awake and alert at the noise, already pushing himself up from their bunk, yanking his discarded shirt back on to cover the stripes and bumps of the horrible scars he gained in Russia.
“Wait here,” he grumbles, not waiting for her response, moving hard and fast as he stomps out the door and into the room where all the kids should have been sleeping. Where Will won't be, because she let him sneak out.
“Shit!” She hisses, feeling dread coil into her gut, already knowing something is wrong. Joyce throws herself from the warm bed and shoves her feet into her boots, stumbling out after Hop as quickly as she can.
The basement is in chaos. Dustin, Mike, and Lucas are all clapping and yelling, pulling the older kids out of bed, urging them to get dressed and ready to go. Nancy is up and alert immediately, glaring at the three of them in confusion as Robin and Steve blink blearily from their cot, as Jonathan nearly trips to the floor from the blanket tangled around his legs.
Hopper turns at the sound of her frantic approach and sighs, but doesn't scold her for not following his orders- he knows better than that, by now. Jane stumbles over to them, grabbing at Joyce’s sleeve and rubbing sleep from her startled eyes.
“We don't have time for this! Get up, now!” Mike demands, his voice cracking with panic.
Joyce scans the room again. And again. Will isn't here. He isn't back. Oh, God.
“Alright, enough!” Jim thunders, his voice rolling through the room and stilling everyone, every movement. “What is going on?” He asks the boys, as calmly as he can- which isn't very.
“Will-” Joyce whispers, her hands shaking.
“Will’s been taken-” Lucas informs them, his voice thick with emotion. Joyce feels her knees give out from under, feels Jane catch her by the shoulders, feels her daughter in all but name and blood help her over to the couch to sit.
“Taken?” Hop asks roughly, glancing over at Joyce with worry written between his brows, before looking back to the boys “What do you mean, taken?”
“We followed Will, alright?!” Mike blurts, jerking forward a step and throwing his bag hard onto one of the cots, the metal legs scraping across the ground. “I knew that he was gonna sneak out, so I made Dustin and Lucas come with me- and we followed him!”
“Will snuck out? Wait- followed him where?” Hop asks, tone flat with suppressed emotion, slipping into soldier-mode, into the version of himself that has somehow managed to keep them all alive this long.
Dustin answers shakily, “We realized we were heading southeast and-”
“I recognized where we were once we hit the woods,” Lucas interjects, casting nervous glances at Mike, who is still breathing hard, his hands clenched in fists at his side.
“Where-” Hop tries again, audibly losing his patience.
“The lab!” Mike yells, sending a few of them back a step. He turns to send a glare at Joyce, a look she's never had directed at her by him, not in all the years she's known him. “He was meeting his boyfriend at the fucking lab!”
“Hey!” Hopper barks in reprimand, shifting a step over to partially block Joyce from Mike, but Jonathan is up now, and looking at her in shock.
“You told him he could go see this guy? Tonight?! Mom!” He croaks, shrugging Nancy's warning hand right off of his shoulder.
“He told me he was going! That was the rule I set- that he had to at least tell me if he was leaving! What was I supposed to do, Jonathan?! Handcuff him to the wall?”
“Yes! If it keeps him from being fucking kidnapped!”
“Slow down! Everybody just relax.” Hopper orders, his hands palm out as he makes direct eye contact with every one of them. Slowly, they listen. Everyone finds a seat reluctantly, save for the three boys who are her son’s dearest friends, who stand together across from Hopper, hands still shaking and jaws still clenched. Hopper tilts his head at them but they refuse to sit, shaking their heads, so he just sighs.
“Now. Will's… boyfriend, he took him?” Immediately they shake their heads again, as Hopper squints at them. “Then, who did?”
“The military,” Dustin whispers, a shiver running through his body. Steve reaches out from his spot sitting beside Robin on their cot and grabs ahold of his hand, squeezing it in support. Joyce drops her face into her hands to muffle her sob, knowing she's made a mistake, she's put her boy in danger, she- she fucked up. She vaguely feels Jane's hand come up to rub comforting circles between her shoulder blades. Hopper takes an unsteady step back and falls to sit on Joyce’s other side on the couch as he thinks.
“Explain. Everything.”
Mike starts, angrily scrubbing tears from his cheeks, “We realized he was heading for the lab. So at the fence, Lucas took us north and we climbed a tree to get a better vantage point-”
“We watched Will crawl under a part of the fence that was bent in- it seemed like he knew exactly where it was- like he's used it before,” Dustin adds quietly, moving to sit in the spot between Steve and Robin, the two wedging him in between them.
Lucas falls to sit on a spare cot, sighing tiredly, as he says, “He was a little bit away from the fence when the soldiers started yelling. They came up on him fast but he- he managed to throw his bag back over the fence before he fell-”
“They had guns on him,” Mike interrupts harshly, scowling and refusing to sit.
“Oh, God,” Joyce whispers wetly to herself, shuddering, feeling Jim's hand come up to join Jane’s on her back. She wants to push them both off, wants to snap and snarl and scream that she doesn't need to be comforted, that she needs to go find her son, that it's her fault that he's gone again.
“How many soldiers?” Hop asks.
The boys all look at each other, shrugging, frowning, before answering, “Maybe ten?”
Dustin adds, “They cuffed him and loaded him into a humvee- there were three, they all left at the same time. The Mac is the only place that makes sense for them to have gone to.”
“It was a setup-” Mike snarls.
“You don't know that, Mike!” Lucas snaps, noticeably trying to soften his tone at the end, like he knows Mike is just worried.
“Nothing else makes sense!” Mike argues, his hands shaking at his sides as he starts to pace.
“But why would he go to the lab at all?” Jane asks quietly, mostly to herself, in confusion.
Nancy jolts, interrupting the incoming explosion from Mike to ask, “You said he didn't run but managed to throw his bag? Did you ever find it?”
“Yeah, yeah! Here.” Lucas reaches behind him to grab the small black bookbag off the ground, tossing it over to Nancy's waiting hands. Joyce feels her agony and despair shift into familiar anger, into fury that her son is going through something awful on his own, again. She swipes the tears off her face and sets her jaw, straightening up between Jim and Jane, clearing her mind of anything other than finding Will. She hates that it’s a feeling that settles over her shoulders like an old friend.
Nancy leaves Jon's side to set the bag onto the coffee table and unzips it with a soft sound, prying it open to stare inside for a moment, her brows twitching down in discomfiture. Mike stomps over to glare down into the bag as well. Her pale hands disappear into the bag and withdraw a hardcover notebook, black canvas covering the front and back, no identifying markers.
“His sketchbook-” Jon half-sobs but Nancy flips it open and shakes her head sharply.
“No… no it's- I don't know… Dustin, does this mean anything to you?” She leans over to hand him the book over the table, his hands slightly steadier now that he has Steve and Robin pressed to his sides and their arms around his back. He sits back with the book in hand and skims his eyes over the neat, cursive writing, the sketches and diagrams, flipping a few pages in shock, his mouth opening and shutting but no words coming out.
“What is it?” Joyce asks, throwing herself up off the couch, out from under Jim and Jane’s hands, to pace opposite Mike, suddenly wishing she had listened to him before, wondering if she's made the worst mistake of her life.
Dustin stammers a few seconds before finally whispering, “It's… it's research-” His eyes flash up to meet Jane’s, sorrow and confusion building in his gaze. “It's Brenner’s research- all of it- on the Upside Down, which he called Dimension X, apparently.” He looks away from Jane, whose face has crumpled with emotion that she tries to stifle. Dustin flips through a few more pages, rapidly absorbing the information he finds. “E-everything we ever theorized- it's all wrong! What we thought we knew… this is… I need time to study it, to make sure I get it right, but this-”
“How does Will have that?” Jane asks suddenly, cutting Dustin off and drawing all of their attention to her instead. A silence fills the room that seems to crush them all.
“You said it seemed like he had been to the lab before?” Hopper questions the boys, who all nod.
“He knew exactly where to go through the fence. He- He wasn’t being careful,” Mike sighs roughly. “It was like he wasn’t worried at all- he was practically stomping through the woods the whole way there.”
“And he said he was going to meet his boyfriend?” Nancy asks Joyce, turning to her fully, her hands drawing the top of the bag shut idly. “Specifically?” Joyce stills her pacing and shrugs shakily, nodding.
“Yes,” she says wearily, ignoring the hard look Jon is sending her from his spot on the couch, arms folded and frowning hard. “H-He said they were supposed to meet at midnight, that they just-” She has to pause to bite her lip for just a second, a hand coming up to press at the base of her throat to stifle the sob that wants to rip its way out. “He said he needed to see him.”
“And now he’s gone,” Jon whispers, his voice breaking. Robin makes a scratchy sound in her throat as she bows her head against Dustin’s shoulder to hide her own tears.
“We're gonna get him back,” Joyce tells him, refusing to believe anything else, but Jon won't even meet her eye.
“Is there anything else in the bag?” Steve asks, eyebrows lifting. “I mean maybe he's been sneaking into the lab to look for stuff to help us with crawls?”
“The lab was cleared out in ‘84, Owens wiped it completely clean when they got shut down,” Hopper sighs, pinching his brow. Nancy shrugs a little, shaking her head, fingers playing with the zipper of the bag.
“Nothing else important-” She tries, but Mike leans over to snatch it off the table before she can stop him. “Mike!”
“Nothing else important?” He hisses as he digs into the bag and rips out a men’s white button up shirt, the fabric stained rusty red with dried blood, crusted together in spots with… something that Joyce tries her very hardest not to recognize, along with everyone else. Tumbling out of the embrace of the shirt comes a hunting knife, the blade clattering against the wood of the coffee table, deafening in the silence it leaves behind. Mike's fist is quaking, the shirt shivering in the air as he stares down at it in disgust.
“It was fucking set up,” Mike whispers again. “This guy has been abusing him, and lured him there! And we just let it happen!” Enraged, he hurls the shirt to the floor and turns to face Jane, though her own eyes are locked hard onto the shirt as Mike tramples it as he approaches her. “Can you find him?”
Jane blinks, whispering, “I… Yes. I should be able to, yes.”
“Good. You find him, and we’ll go get him.”
“We?” Hopper repeats, standing at once, glaring down at Mike. “There is no ‘we’ here. She finds him and I go get him.”
“Oh, that's bullshit!” Mike explodes, fighting back when Nancy and Lucas both lunge for him, pushing him back away from Hopper.
“No, no, you don't get to do this now, Wheeler- you pushed him today, you did!”
“So it's my fault that some fucking pedophile tricked him into meeting?!”
“Jesus Christ, that's not-”
“That's exactly what it is!”
“He said they're in love!” Robin blurts, upset and angry that they're talking about Will like this, like he's some helpless child incapable of making his own decisions. “You keep acting like you know this was a setup, but you don't know!”
“Oh they're in love, sure!” Mike scoffs, stumbling as Nancy grabs him harshly by the shoulder and shoves him down onto one of the empty seats.
“I don't know, man, he seemed… happy,” Lucas murmurs, looking to Dustin for support, who nods eagerly, his hands still clutched on the notebook. “Like, really happy. When he talked about him.”
“Does that look like fucking happiness to you?” Mike spits, gesturing to the bloody shirt on the ground, the knife on the table, that they've all been trying to ignore. “Does that look like love?!”
“That's not for you to decide,” Robin defends wearily, shaking her head.
Joyce doesn't know what to think. She hasn't known what to think ever since that shirt came out of the bag, since the knife clattered to the table. Her eyes stay locked onto the blade, shiny and clean, reflecting the overhead lights back into the air- locked onto the shirt, the size much too large to fit her son, the blood stains reminding her of the way he always used to spill his fruit punch on his white shirts when he was little, the way she always forgave him as soon as he looked up at her with those big round eyes and said ‘Sorry, mommy, it was an accident’.
“None of this matters,” she whispers. Hopper looks over at her immediately, striding over to take her by the shoulders, rubbing his thumbs over her sleeves comfortingly, but she raises a single hand and he backs off immediately, waiting.
“None of this matters,” she repeats, louder this time, cutting off the chaotic argument unfolding between all the kids around her.
“What do you mean?” Jane asks softly at her side, eyes wet but determined, her daughter who just wants to find her brother.
“Will is missing. I don't care if it was a setup. I don't care why he was at the lab. I don't care about who he's in love with! My son is missing. None of it matters! The only thing that matters now is finding him and getting him back.” Joyce glares them all down, daring them to speak up. She watches as Mike's mouth stutters shut, as his eyes drop to the floor between his feet.
Things move quicker after that. No one argues with her, no one questions the plan, once it's formed.
Hopper directs Jane to grab her blindfold and work on locating Will, assigning Robin and Steve to assist her. Robin sprints over to the record player to grab a set of headphones, while Steve and Jane head over into the corner of the room where he helps her sit cross-legged on a soft cushion and they work through the breathing exercises she's found to help her get ready for trips into the ether. Dustin is told to start working on the notebook, deciphering the information within. Lucas and Mike are told to prepare themselves; stealth clothes, gear up, and then try to remember every detail about the squad of soldiers that captured Will.
Nancy quietly asks Hopper if Mike should be allowed on the mission, citing his volatile emotions, but Hop just sighs and explains that if he doesn't let Mike come, he’ll just follow after them anyway and endanger the mission that way. Joyce agrees, whispering her approval, knowing that no matter how questionably he goes about it, Mike truly does just want Will to be safe.
Hopper tells Nancy to go start prepping a set of guns for him, and the girl nods, efficient and sharp and wise beyond her years. Joyce watches her walk away, feeling her heart break at the child soldiers around her, at the lives they've had stolen from them. Jim reaches a big hand up to squeeze on her shoulder, then follows Nancy to the weapons store room to get himself ready for one of their most dangerous missions yet. It's not like a crawl- minimal contact, no engagement, more reconnaissance than aggression. This is real now- this is war.
“Mom?” Joyce hears from just behind her, and on instinct she turns, arms already opening. Her son, her first son, falls into her arms without pause, even though he's still angry with her, with life, with circumstances beyond his control that he wanted to control. “I just- I'm mad, but I-”
“I know, sweetheart, I know. We're gonna find him, okay? Your sister will find him, and Hopper will get him back.”
“You don't know that, Mom-”
“You're right, I dont-” Jon snaps his head up to stare at her in shock, grief lining his face in a way that makes him look much too old to be barely out of school. But he is right, she doesn't know- she feels like she doesn't know anything anymore. “But I have hope. Will is strong, Jonathan. He knows we’ll come for him, he knows that. He's lived through such… awful things, year after year. He can get through this. And I know you're mad at me-”
“N-no, I-”
“It's alright, Jon. I'm mad at myself too. I don't know what I'm doing, to be completely honest-” They share a wet, incredulous laugh together, their hands clutching at jacket sleeves and arms. “I never know if I'm making the right choice, if I’m helping or hurting, if I'm being a bad mom-”
“You're not,” he interjects firmly, sending her a smile that's more grimace. “You're not a bad mom, you never have been. I just… this choice. Letting him…” Jon trails off, his emotions choking him as he glances down at the bloodied, messy shirt at their feet.
“I’m scared too, Jon. About all of it. But- but when we get him back, just try and… talk to him about it. He sounds like he's in love, honey. For years- years- he always swore to me he'd never fall in love. Never find someone that he wanted to be with. He's felt broken and wrong his entire life-”
“Like a freak-” Jon whimpers, his brows scrunching together hard as he palms his face, turning in her arms to hide himself against her- like he's ten again, and Lonnie is yelling in the next room. Joyce just holds him as tight as she can, and rests their heads together.
“Whoever this man is- we will figure it out. If it was a setup, then we'll take care of it, okay? …But if it wasn't? If this man loves Will, the way Will says he does… Then we need to let him live his life, Jonathan. But no more secrets. No more lying.”
Jon heaves in a shuddering, painful breath, and nods against her shoulder, sniffling into her jacket. They hold each other for a while, just breathing into the hug, just feeling each other, knowing the other is there.
They separate finally when Hopper stomps back out of the weapons room with Nancy at his heels, the huge man geared up with a bandolier stuffed full of supplies strung over his chest, a matching ammo belt at his waist, his more comfortable sleep clothes swapped out for night-black, utilitarian coveralls. He looks like a soldier- he looks like Death on a mission. Nancy follows him back to the center of the room and lays his shotgun and pistols out on the table, efficiently double, then triple-checking them for functionality and loading them up, sticking the extra magazines into the empty slots on his gear.
“Alright, Wheeler, Lucas- you’re both getting rubber rounds in your weapons- do not argue with me-” Mike and Lucas both glance at each other sheepishly and sit right back down on their couch. “I take point on this- you do not argue, you do not question, you do exactly what I say, when I say it. Sinclair, I want you up in the bell tower, you’re gonna be our eyes for entry and escape, got it?”
“Yes, sir.” The audible respect gets him a nod from their leader.
“Wheelers, you're with me on the advance team. Harrington, you’re gonna be wheels. Jane? You got anything?” Nancy and Mike share an indecipherable look with each other, the silent language of siblings that have been communicating over dinner tables with nothing more than their eyes for their entire lives, but there is explicit determination, readiness. Steve nods to Hop from his spot in the corner with Jane and Robin, turning back to the girls as the rest of the group naturally moves closer to the next step in their plan.
“He is scared,” Jane whispers, her voice calm and detached, eyes flickering back and forth under shut lids, hidden by her makeshift bandana, legs crossed beneath her, hands resting palm-down on her knees, finger tips twitching. Joyce feels Jon’s hand slide down her wrist to grasp her hand in his, squeezing it tight as she leans on him for support.
They’re going to find him, together. Jane is going to find him.
Will is terrified. That’s really the only emotion he can register currently, the only emotion he’s been able to register for a long while now. The ride in the humvee into town, the rumble of its engine, the jostle every time they drove over a pothole- none of it registered beyond sending fresh waves of fear up his spine. His tears have dried, at the very least, leaving a salty film over his cheeks- though the discomfort it causes is nothing compared to the pain of the zipcuffs still pulled tight around his wrists, the flesh around them an angry red, his hands tinged purple and headed rapidly towards tingling numbness. A few drops of blood have leaked sluggishly from his nose, so Will keeps his head bent down, letting them drop onto his pants and praying that none of the men in the vehicle with him notice.
It doesn't take long for them to reach the center of town, for the darker moments between the flickers of glowing streetlamps starts to feel familiar, the pattern of it something ingrained deeply from an entire lifetime spent driving these roads with Joyce after she got off a late night shift and picked him up from Mike’s house. His burning eyes raise just enough to stare out of the windshield from between the shoulders of the two front seats, blinking past the green hue of the tactical instruments embedded in the dashboard, to watch as the towering metal gate of the Military Access Control Zone looms into view ahead of them.
Will twitches in his spot on the middle of the back bench seat, his wet sneakers slipping across the metal floor pan, the squeak of it barely audible over the deep rumble of the humvee, but he's not the only one that hears it, that notices. The man to his left tilts his head back over to blink down at Will's quivering knees, eyes imperious in the dim interior. The blue of them is so different from Henry's, so empty that it makes Will feel sick to look at them, so he snaps his head back forwards and forces himself to watch as they drive through the gate.
The interior of the MAC-Z isn't as mysterious to him as the soldiers in town may have hoped, after having the scale and layout of it described so many times during their Crawl preparations. Still, seeing it in person is different, and Will finds himself completely overwhelmed by the amount of soldiers that march in their formations and lines and perfect uniform lockstep back and forth across the width of the enclosed area. They all part at once as the convoy of three humvees barrel into the space, squadrons of men shouted into standstill, eyes following after the vehicles as they pass.
Will wiggles in his seat slightly, dreading the inevitable halt, the hard hands and harsh words that await him, but the flush of fear that fills him when the humvees don't stop is more chilling, more discomforting. The huge wheels of the vehicles thud as they speed up and rumble over the ramp, the fleshy membranous surface of the center of the rift being burned open by men in shiny flame-retardant suits. They plow through the rift and he watches as the lead car immediately veers to the left, the car he's trapped inside of following after, as they tear off down the decaying road towards something he can't predict anymore.
Part of him wants to laugh, that he's ended up in the Upside Down anyway, that after all of this, he's closer to Henry than before, but the guns at the soldiers' sides keep him silent, biting his lip and dropping his face again.
“What?” The man on his left asks, shifting in his seat, the butt of his gun thudding against the metal floor. “Isn't this right where you wanted to be?”
Will ignores him, his shoulders bowing in to make himself smaller, as small as possible, to do his best not to brush up against the two men at his sides. With an irritated scoff, the man relaxes back into his own seat, but spreads his limbs out, widens his shoulders, his knees- pressing entirely along Will’s left side intentionally. He's doing it to make him uncomfortable, to get inside Will’s head, to push him closer to breaking- Will knows this.
As the cars push further into the Upside Down, as the flickering red lightning flares to life outside the windows, the rumbling thunder shivering through his body- Will prepares himself. Hopper had always known that the military was a threat to the Party, that there might come a time when their identities were compromised and the soldiers would come for them- so he'd prepared them all as best he could. He sat them all down and explained interrogation tactics, the kind the military liked to use when the stakes were this high.
“It won't be pain right off the bat in most cases… They'll start slow, build it up. The first thing they're going to do is make you uncomfortable… They'll wear you down.”
The man to his left shifts again, the ridge of his black, armored knee pad pressing hard into Will's leg, but he has no space to pull away, without pressing himself up against the side of the man on his right.
“The trick is to steel yourself immediately. Don't let them gain an inch. Prepare yourself for the worst. Don't think that just because you're kids they won't do it, because they will and they won't hesitate.”
Will forces his body to relax, sighs deep and full, willing the tension to bleed out of his shoulders, his spine, his legs. He more firmly brushes against the men but he tells himself it's okay, that it doesn't matter. They're going to question him either way, they're going to interrogate him, and hurt him when he doesn't immediately give everything up. Relaxing now is key. He just needs to listen to Hopper, just needs to follow his advice, and he'll make it long enough for… for someone to come get him. Because he knows they'll come. Not when or how, but he knows the rescue party will start forming the moment his mom wakes with the sun and realizes he hasn't made it back. He doesn't know what time it is, doesn't know if Henry is back at the lab pacing and angry- if he's angry and confused at Will for being late. If he's feeling abandoned- god, Will hopes he doesn’t feel abandoned.
He tells himself to drop it like a dog, as his swirling thoughts ratchet his heartrate back up. Breathe. In and out. Slow. Relax. Will leans his head back on the seat and sucks air in through his nose, no longer dripping blood, and out through his mouth, wiggling his jaw, sore from clenching his teeth. He doesn’t let himself think of what awaits him, of the people he loves left waiting for him. He just stares out through the windshield with flat eyes, ignoring the way the man at his left seems to start smirking as he watches Will retreat into himself, becoming an observer, suppressing his reactions. He’s lived through worse than this, he can make it through this long enough for someone to get to him, he can do this.
Through the glass, Will watches as they approach a sprawling campus of utilitarian buildings, the roofs barely visible over the height of the tall metal security fence, the shining coils of razor-wire atop them catching every flick of red lightning that licks across the sky. A rolling gate is sliding open, leaving just enough room for the drivers to skillfully slip the huge vehicles through, entering the main staging area of the compound, buildings spreading out in neat, uniform rows and sections, barracks and warehouses and watchtowers standing out among the rest.
Will jostles against the back rest as the car he’s in lurches to a stop, the killing of the engine leaving a stillness and quiet underneath him that suddenly makes everything seem much more real. He breathes through it, lets the fear sweep in and around and through him, letting it go once he’s felt it, refusing to let it linger when it isn’t useful to him. He can do this. The slam of car doors makes him blink, gasping quietly when the leader slides out of his door and latches a hand firmly onto Will’s arm, dragging him out as well. Will stumbles slightly once his feet hit the ground, his body feeling like it's lagging a second behind his brain, uncoordinated and unwieldy, like he’s operating it from some back room.
“Let’s go,” mutters the leader, hand hard on Will’s arm, just above his elbow, fingers digging into his skin over the sleeve of his hoodie. Will doesn’t react beyond a blink, letting himself be hauled along as they approach the biggest building, a warehouse-looking structure with lighter metal walls than the others, the roof made of opaque panels that bleed glowing orange light out into the dim-blue air of the Upside Down. Will has the strange thought of ‘that doesn’t belong here’ that he has to shake away as he’s dragged up some metal steps and through the door of the building. They move through an auxiliary room full of black rubber boots and coats hung on hookes, military neatness leaving not a thing out of place. Will observes as much as he can as he’s led through another door, this one opened by the swipe of a badge on one of the soldier’s hips, the little red light blinking to green before they pass through. The room beyond it is wide, scattered with work stations, lab-coated scientists tapping away at keyboards or swirling clear flasks of viscous liquids. None of them even so much as look up as Will is dragged between their desks, as he tries his best not to trip when the toe of his shoe catches on an edge of the metal drainage grates that run the length of the room.
It’s the glass cage at the back of the room that really draws his attention, that almost knocks him out of the little room he’s locked himself into inside his mind. There is a twelve by twelve room of glass walls that they swipe another keycard at to bring him into, and within that room is the cage. Floor to ceiling glass windows make up the enclosure, which is occupied by a huge tentacle vine, the base of it jagged and scabbed over with black ichor, like they cut it from its place of belonging to bring it here, to contain it. Will stares into the glass at it, watches as it lifts its tip to sluggishly move into the air, turning as if to look at him, like it noticed him as soon as he came into its proximity. Without leaving that back room in his head, he opens the door just a crack, just enough to whisper, ‘Ignore me’ to the vine, stifling a sigh as it seems to understand, lowering itself back down to rest atop its own mass.
“Hello, Mr. Byers,” cuts a woman’s voice, hard and aged, brutal in its clipped efficiency. Will’s eyes snap through the cage, looking beyond the glass to notice a short older woman, sharply dressed in her green fatigues, the stars on her lapel showing her advanced rank, though he doesn’t really understand what any of them mean. She slowly steps around the edge of the cage, coming to stand next to a table full of vials and white plastic bottles of strictly labeled chemicals, her arms crossed over her chest. “Or would you prefer I called you William?”
Will knows better than to respond. Hopper said that they should hold out as long as they can in silence, that if they are ever about to break, that only when they feel like they can’t go on- they should give their most basic information; name, date of birth, eye color, height, weight. The things that the enemy probably already knows. So he just blinks, just breathes slowly and deeply, just stands there. She seems to find that funny, as a soft huff escapes her, her eyebrow twitching.
“I’ll stick with William, then. I feel like I already know so much about you, and you don’t know us at all,” she says, as another man enters the room, similarly dressed in medaled fatigues, his dark skin catching the light of the fluorescents strung overhead. “My apologies for that, William. I’m Major General Doctor Kay. This is Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan. You’ve already gotten acquainted with Lieutenant Akers, here.” She motions over to the man still standing beside Will, his grip never loosening upon his arm. Akers shakes him a little, jostling Will into turning to look over at him, taking in the sharp line of his long, straight nose, his severe cheekbones, his narrow face.
“Nice to meet you,” Akers mocks, stifling a smirk that would probably irritate his superiors. This one enjoys the way he causes discomfort and pain, Will notes, as he stares without flinching into his dark eyes. He’s met sharks before and survived. He can survive this one, too.
“Now, William, we find ourselves in a bit of a bind here.” Dr. Kay spreads her hands out like she’s stumped by some grand philosophical question, taking a step closer to Will, gazing up at him. “You see, we have some footage from last night, taken at approximately twenty-three-fifty-nine hours. Right before midnight. The footage is of you, William… Somehow entering this dimension through a one-ton steel plate and returning about three hours and forty five minutes later. Seemingly completely unharmed.”
Her eyes dart down to the bandage on his neck, gaze flicking over to Akers in a silent command. His hand finally leaves Will’s arm, but just to reach up and rip the bandaid off, Will’s face twitching through the pain as he stifles his reaction. It’s just pain, it’s nothing he hasn’t felt before. Kay steps even closer and tilts her head to inspect the mark on his neck, eyes tracing over the distinct oval bruise, the deepening of the reddish purple where Henry's teeth had pressed hardest.
Will watches the thoughts swirl through her head but she doesn’t voice any of them, just nods and steps back- a quiet, “Huh,” leaving her lips.
“Now- it took us a day to identify you, but when we did, we realized some things. Sullivan?” Kay steps aside and pivots her gaze from Will to the lazily writhing tentacle inside the enclosure, as her subordinate steps forward to take over for the moment.
“You were living in Lenora, California with your family. Nice little house. Much nicer than the one you lived in before. Sorry about all the damage, by the way, but we didn’t have much of a choice, you see. We were hunting a dangerous fugitive and you- well, you and your family were harboring her.” He pauses to look between Will and Dr. Kay, who gives him a little nod.
“Before you returned to Hawkins eighteen months ago, there was a girl living there with you all.” Sullivan places his arms behind his back neatly, exuding perfect calm, as he stares down Will, who is sinking deeper and deeper into himself as he repeats Hopper’s instructions over and over again to himself silently. “Where is that girl now, William?”
He does not answer, just blinks and breathes. Sullivan’s lip twitches but otherwise, he doesn’t seem bothered, as he continues, “Fine. We’ll go back to the topic at hand. What were you doing in the Nether? How did you manage to get in? You don’t look like you could hurt a fly, let alone lift a two thousand pound sheet of metal. So? How’d you do it? Are you a little more related to that girl than anyone knew? There’s no documentation of you being one of those little lab freaks but, hey, anything can happen, right?”
Will is prepared for this, for the rapid fire questions, for bombardment of information and accusations, has readied himself for them based on Hopper’s words. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, doesn’t even let himself think of what he would say if he could, just stares at the vine and ignores everything else. He sees a look pass between the three of them but doesn’t know what it means, so he just breathes and breathes and keeps the door of that room in his head firmly shut.
“Luckily for us, there’s a pretty simple way of testing that theory,” Kay says, her tone sharper. Sullivan withdraws a small device from his pocket and seeks out a nod from Kay before he looks back to Will… and presses the button.
Will had prepared himself for pain, had prepared himself to feel so many awful things in this building, but there was no preparing for this. A noise like razor sharp fingers digs its way into his brain through his ears, raking open that door in his mind like it’s nothing. Will screams as the fear and pain flood in, overwhelming him wholly. The sound is like nails on a chalkboard, like the screeching of metal, like the rapid thump-thump-thump of wind through a cracked car window, the frequency pounding into his head in an unrelenting procession. Will tries to bring his hands up to cover his ears but his wrists are still cuffed together, so his body bows instinctively, trying to bring his shoulders up to shield them, but he can’t reach and it hurts and he’s still screaming.
There is no more dark room in the back of his mind for him to hide inside anymore, only a loud white light, excruciatingly painful as it swallows him whole. Will feels his legs give out, feels them crumple beneath him, his knees hitting the floor as he frantically presses his hands against his right ear and tries to shove his head against his upper arm on the left side. Wheezing in choking breaths, he fumbles back to press his spine against the wall behind him, feet scrabbling on the grated floor. His eyes wheel upwards as the noise digs deeper and he sees the three grown ups in the room with him. They’re standing back, watching, wincing slightly at the noise but showing no signs of the same agony that’s ripping through him. Dr. Kay and Sullivan observe with clinical coolness, maybe a glimmer of something meaner behind their eyes as they watch him squirm. Akers is smiling, openly and cruelly, eyes brightening with every sound torn from Will’s aching throat, every twist and shift of his body. Will bites his teeth down hard, stifling the screams into guttural groans, but refusing to give Akers any more satisfaction.
“Look,” Sullivan wonders, barely audible over the sound, over Will’s moaning, and the chittering shrieks emerging from within the glass cage at the center of the room. Will pants hard, the back of his head scraping across the wall as his eyes follow the gazes of the others, landing on the big tentacle behind the glass. ‘No,’ he thinks in despair, watching as the thing writhes along with him, shrieks with him, reacts to the very same pain as him, like it can feel it too. Because it can.
“Increase the frequency,” Dr. Kay orders, and Sullivan immediately turns the dial on his small device. Instantly, the sound gets worse, tunneling itself into the very center of Will’s brain, down into his spine and through his nervous system. It feels like hell, it feels like having his brain scraped out of his skull, and it feels even worse to watch through his tears as the tentacle flails and batters itself against the glass in response, matching his own helpless kicks and wriggling on the ground.
Kay makes a sharp gesture with her chin and Sullivan immediately switches it off, the sound instantaneously disappearing from the humid, filtered air. Will’s twitching body slumps halfway sitting up between the wall and the floor, his cuffed wrists falling to his lap as he pants and tries to bite back sobs. The sudden lack of noise in his ears is like being tossed into freezing cold water, a shock through his system that leaves him breathless. The tentacle has dropped as well, lolled against one paned wall of its cage, shrieks silenced along with the sound.
“Interesting,” Kay muses to herself, looking between Will and the creature curiously. “...I wonder-” She strides in three clipped movements over to the other side of the room where a small panel with buttons is mounted halfway up the wall. Without pause, she thumbs the big red button down, and watches as excruciating heat is flooded into the tank by overhead lamps.
The tentacle starts up its awful, scratchy chitters again, writhing against itself as squished down to the floor as it can get, no possible escape available to it. Kay watches along with the other two, as Will writhes with it.
His body locks back up as the heat rolls through him as well, as he clearly demonstrates his connection to the Upside Down, to the creatures that dwell here. He's managed to give up his most vital secret without them even having to break him mentally. Will grits his teeth against the pain, swallowing his screams back down even as it gags him, unwilling to give them the pleasure of hearing his agony again if he can help it. This isn't quite like the sound, which was unlike any pain he's ever experienced before. Burning alive, unfortunately, is a pain that settles over him almost like an old friend- painful, overwhelming, agonizing, but nothing new, not after everything he went through when the lab soldiers had burned the insides of the tunnels those years ago. He has a foundation of memory on which to rest as the pain ripples through him, as the sweat builds in glistening dewdrops across his face and seeps into his clothes.
After a few more excruciating moments of burning, Dr. Kay finally pulls her hand away from the control panel, the orange glow of the heat lamps fading out like a setting sun, leaving both Will and the tentacle drooping and disoriented.
“So this one's even more of a freak than the other-”
“Akers,” Kay interrupts firmly, bowling over his comment like he hadn't even opened his mouth. Will is helpless to the huff of a wheezing laugh that escapes his throat at the irritated look that crosses his face, just happy to see him being belittled. “Take our new guest to room three. Sullivan and I will be there shortly,” she orders the man, cold and detached from the fact that she's just tortured a teenage boy, like it meant nothing more to her than a way to facilitate access to new information.
Akers jerks a hard nod, his mouth a flat line of repressed anger that he's careful enough to not let show in any other way. Will’s head lolls against the floor, his neck and body feeling droopy and loose from the sudden lack of tension without the pain to keep him seized up. He watches as the tall man lumbers forward a few steps and stoops, roughly grabbing hold of Will's arms, scooping his other arm under his legs, and lifting Will like he's nothing more than a child, held against his chest in a mockery of the way Henry had carried him out of the lab last night. Sullivan holds open the door to the room for his subordinate, and Akers strides from the room without another word. Will’s head falls back to rest against the man’s bicep, his bloodshot eyes whirling over the room, gazing tiredly out at the scientists who just keep plunking away at their keyboards, swirling their flasks, pointedly ignoring the battered teenager being transported past their desks.
The man walks around the outside of the glass room, booted footsteps clanging quietly against the grated floor, jostling Will into a higher position as he nears a thick metal door with another black access panel. He balances Will against his chest, other arm squeezing him closer as his free hand swipes his security card, the little light blinking to green. He maneuvers them through the door, shocking Will as the man carefully avoids hitting his head against the door frame as they pass into the hallway on the other side. His eyes lazily fall to observe the grey walls, locking onto the heavily-reinforced metal door at the very end of the short hall, the fogged glass window set high into the steel. There’s something… about it. Something that tingles into his spine through the fog of post-pain that he’s lost in.
Before he can pick at the sensation, or reach out beyond his own mind to see what it is, Akers takes a sharp right turn and swipes them into a different room. He walks inside at an angle, blocking Will’s view of most of the room until they’re fully inside, with the door slammed shut behind them. It’s when Akers turns, that Will feels his heart stutter to a stop before it kicks back on at a breakneck speed, thumping wildly in his chest.
In the corner of the big square room, leashed to a ring bolted into the cement floor by a thick metal chain, lies a Demodog. Will stares at it with wide, aching eyes, as Akers walks into the middle of the room and roughly deposits Will onto the floor, practically tossing him down onto his side. Will grunts at the bruising impact but doesn’t look away from the Demodog, watching its shaky inhalations, the way it has mottled dark spots over its entire body, burn wounds leaving shiny, warped stretches over its shoulders and hips. It looks just as beat up as him, and he has a second to wonder if it felt the burning just now too, before Akers is kneeling down beside him. Will’s eyes cut over to the tall man warily, flinching away when a hand grabs at his ankle, fingers brushing against his bare leg underneath the hem of his jeans. Will lets out a little squeak, trying to pull his leg away, pressing his knees together firmly, glaring up at the soldier.
Akers’ dark eyes flick up to him, an offended huff puffing his cheeks for a moment before he chuckles, “Relax, kid.” The fingers reluctantly ease out from the leg of his pants as the man drags over another chain, the metal scratching against the cement, rattling against itself as he fits the band over Will’s ankle and snaps it together, chaining him to the floor just like the Demo. Will feels every inch of the man’s eyes scraping over his body as Akers stands, walking steadily backwards until he’s standing at a military ease by the side of the door, hands clutched together behind himself.
Will only manages to tear his eyes off of Akers, after a few long moments of waiting for him to strike unexpectedly, because of the Demo stirring across the room. Its chain hisses against the floor, links clinking as they shift, the creature sluggishly lifting its head to sniff at the air, its head turning slowly to face Will. It chitters softly, pleadingly, and its head drops back down like it can’t find the energy to hold it up. Will’s own head tilts as he shifts an inch closer, eyes crawling over its body to look closer. The dark mottling is bruising, deepening the color of its flesh in a way Will hasn’t ever seen on one of the creatures before, its burn scars twisting sections of its skin out of shape, leaving it shiny and swollen. His eyes drag down to the thing’s bony hips, squinting as he sees the faint yellow marking there, a naturally occurring aberration in the typically featureless pelts the Demodogs have. His jaw drops open wordlessly, throat bobbing as he thinks… thinks that it can’t be possible.
“Dart?” He whispers without thinking, but unable to care that Akers is watching him, can hear him, as the Demo hears him, too, and lifts its head once more, just a few shaky inches. Will breathes a gasp of disbelief, as the Demo sniffs the air again and its stumpy, bony tail wags weakly in recognition. Will can’t… he can’t believe this. Dustin had told him all about what had happened with Dart once Will had gotten out of the hospital after the events of ‘84- told him that he had lied to them about finding Dart at the school, that he had eaten Mews and escaped, but ultimately saved their lives in the tunnels by leading the pack away from where he and Steve had desperately clung to each other in fear. They had all assumed those Demodogs had all died, but Dart must have managed to crawl back through the gate before Jane sealed it.
And now, here he is, beaten and bruised and horribly scarred, chained to a concrete floor right along with Will, all these years later. Will shakes his head, unable to wrap his mind around it, panting as he collapses off of his elbow onto the hard, cold floor just like Dart does, the two of them staring over at each other. Will lets himself relax into the cool cement, the rough surface scrubbing at the skin of his cheek as he just breathes, just watches the rise and fall of Dart’s chest, picturing the tiny little slug he used to be… the way he was when he came out of Will four years ago, on that freezing Christmas day when he’d thrown him up out of his belly, right into the sink and walked back out to the dinner table like nothing happened.
He doesn’t even look away when he hears the door beeps softly as someone swipes themselves in, footsteps echoing and thudding as Sullivan and Dr. Kay both make their way inside, followed by another soldier clad in black gear, who immediately moves to stand directly beside Akers. The Major General strides forward to stand a few feet away from Will, coldly observing him lain out upon the floor, sweat soaked clothes and pallid skin, dark circles bruising under his eyes, his hair hanging limp and dark over his forehead, the little trail of blood he hasn’t even felt oozing from his nose, dripping down over his lips and chin.
“Anything new?” She asks Akers without looking away from the boy curled onto his side, staring over at the creature they’ve had in custody for a few weeks.
“He spoke to it,” he informs his superior, voice steady and loud in the room, the boy on the floor flinching at the sound of it. This, she does turn for, her eyes flicking over to Akers, his brows raised in question. “He called it ‘Dart’.”
She turns back to Will, assessing him differently now, as she asks, “So, you’re already familiar with our little pet? We caught him back in September- he was sniffing around the fence, searching out human food scraps from the garbage facilities. Isn’t that interesting? He didn’t seem as skittish or hostile as the other creatures we’ve encountered in this place, either- though we couldn’t figure out why. Made it easier to catch him, anyway, so I suppose I should be grateful for it.” Kay ambles around to Will’s feet, waiting for him to glance her way but he just keeps his eyes on Dart.
The only thing he can think is that it’s his fault, it’s their fault Dart is laying there beaten and broken, hardly able to lift a long-fingered, claw-tipped paw, their fault for feeding him candy and giving him a name. He… reminds Will of Henry, so suddenly that it brings tears to his eyes as he ignores the way Kay purses her lips, irritated at his lack of response. A creature meant for bloodshed, molded into the shape of violence and anger, only to be changed by the love of some human boy, healed into something that could love back.
“Well,” Dr. Kay sighs, nodding her head to the new soldier in the room, who ambles over toward Dart with a propane torch in hand, the creature chittering pathetically, unable to even move to seek safety. “At least your connection with the creature will make this part more interesting, right? More scientifically valuable. Brace yourself, William. We’re just getting started.”
Will’s screams rip into the air right alongside Dart’s frantic screeching, as the flame of the torch licks fire up his-their side, a new chapter of agony beginning for both of them.
Henry tires of pacing before the hour is even up, tires of glaring daggers at the rift, at the silence beyond it, the stark lack of William Byers in his arms as the time ticks on and on, passing one am with little fanfare. He had felt the burst of sour fear from Will right before they were set to meet and had assumed someone had caught him sneaking out, but then came the slamming down of the walls of Will’s mind, the utter and disorienting block on the link they usually shared.
Rage was his first emotion, burning through him like lava, like white hot, molten metal, as it filled his limbs and set his jaw cracking. Rage at Will, at himself, at the idea of not being able to see his boy, at the universe for keeping Will from him. Rage that very quickly burned off into the cool, humid air of the realm around him, as he thought of his boy, out there alone, facing the questions of his loved ones, facing scrutiny for something that Henry had asked him to do, for being with a man, being with someone that liked to hurt him, even if they weren’t even aware of the half of it. Curiously, sadness was his next flooding feeling, a strange twinge breaking through his chest, right through his heart, at the fact that Will had shut him out so wholly. He hasn’t felt like this in years, not since he was a boy himself.
It hurts, he thinks with a grimace, rubbing harshly over his shirt, a flicker of something darker licking up from underneath. ‘Find him, hurt him back,’ it whispers to him, the deep rumble of the creature he used to be, the version of himself that he’s let go, that William’s love has freed him of. Part of him fears that it will always reside there, in the deepest depths of himself, lingering in the shadows of his mind to find him in these weaker moments, to tempt him with the sweet bliss of violence. But Henry is stronger now, as he thinks of wide hazel eyes and sweetly arched brows, soft pouting lips, and happy sighs. As he thinks of his sweet William, his angel, the precious creature that has somehow chosen to love him and is happy to be loved back by something as warped as he is. He finds he can fight off the darkness with little more than a wave of his hand and a firm shake of his head.
It does hurt, but that is not William’s fault. His boy is full of enough love for Henry to share it with the boy’s family and friends, with his Party. He doesn’t need to hoard it, to tear William away from those he loves, to keep all of that love hidden and protected and all for himself. He loves Will too much to do that, loves that Will has made him capable of loving that much again.
So, he waits. He paces. Until he grows tired. Until the devil in his heart starts hissing again, starts whispering dangerous plans and bloody fantasies- until Henry has to fling his hand out and rip one of the trees at the edge of the forest apart, chunks of rotting wood exploding outwards with a great bang, flinging scraps of meaty vine and sharp branches into the air, the sound echoed by the rumble of thunder some miles away as red lightning crashes through the clouds overhead. As the detritus rains down around him, Henry breathes through the feeling of alone that rips through him. Will wouldn’t abandon him, would never run from him and hide, his boy wouldn’t leave him.
Henry gingerly steps over a particularly large chunk of tree, his dress shoes- stolen along with the rest of his small cache of clothing from a mansion over in Loch Nora- scuffing softly against the grass as he strides back over to the wall of the lab. There, he steps atop the little brick halfwall that separates the lab’s side pathway from the grass of the field, and sits on top of it criss-cross, ankles overlapping, breathing in as deeply as he can to blow it out again, resting his hands palm-up upon his knees. His eyes slip shut as he shifts some of the lingering tension out of his shoulders and spine, letting himself sink into the dark waves of his mind. He finds the cave, the most frightening place, the one that used to be impassible to him. Instead of the shadowy darkness that used to live there, the fear and pain, and loss of his humanity- he now finds the glow of William’s love.
Inside his mind, Henry softly walks down the sandy floor of the mine shaft, creeping out of the shadows, blinking over at what greets him. That innocent child version of himself is still there, his boy scout uniform still dirty and stained with his own blood, the gunshot wound through his palm like a biblical stigma, like the nail through the hand of Christ, weeping crimson tears. Even the body of the scientist still lays unmoving and broken, unidentifiable under the mess of meat that Henry had left of him. But in this new version of his worst day,, the day he lost himself, the silver briefcase lays unopened, locked and tossed into the dark corner, forgotten. In this new version- the way it's been ever since that first day he and Will had joined minds, had shared their love with each other- the little version of himself is not alone. Never alone anymore.
Little William Byers sits with him in the cave now, his knobby knees bumping into little-Henry's as the two boys sit across from each other and whisper, their hands linked- like Will doesn’t mind the blood from Henry’s hands getting onto him at all. They are around the same age, their faces softer, rounder with youth, their eyes only slightly haunted by the things they endured growing up, even as young as they appear here, but bright as they gaze at each other. A soft glow comes from William’s skin, just enough to brighten the space, to push the shadows back into the corners of the stone room, to light up little-Henry’s eyes as he stares over at William Byers like he wants to bow his head and pray to him, to his doe eyes and soft chestnut hair, to his sweet blushing grin at the attention. The Henry of now understands completely. He wants to pray to Will Byers just as badly now, every time the angelic boy sighs his name, or presses a kiss into his lips like a benediction- every time the boy does anything; his otherworldly beauty constantly stealing the breath from Henry’s lungs, just as it does now.
Henry walks a few steps closer, staying quiet even though he knows he won’t disturb the little memory-built boys, the two of them lost in whispering secrets and sharing soft smiles. He drops to the floor and assumes the same position he holds back out in the Upside Down, palms up on his knees, spine straight and loose, eyes slipping shut with one final glance at the embodiment of their shared love.
William wouldn’t abandon him. So, he won’t abandon William. Henry breathes deep, and sinks into their connection, into the hive, and begins searching, refusing to leave Will alone to face the consequences of their love without him.