Chapter Text
Wills Monologue.
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Two years after… we did the impossible. Okay, not just me, I had help. Mike. Dustin. Lucas. Max. Jonathan. Nancy. Robin. Vickie. Steve. Hopper. My mom. Kali.
The world is still here. Because of us. Because of her. Jane. People like to say she saved everyone, like that’s something you can put on a plaque or a textbook or a quiet speech nobody listens to. But they don’t know her. They never will. She put herself last for billions who didn’t even notice, for people who laughed at her, hurt her, hunted her. And she saved them anyway.
Every morning I wake up and try to tell myself it matters. That she mattered. That her death wasn’t just… erased. But most days I feel like it didn’t. Like she died, and the world went back to being the same people it always was. And I’m still here.
Vecna is gone. The Upside Down is gone. The Mind Flayer is… gone, people say. But it’s still in me. Not screaming, not controlling anymore. Quieter. Patient. Waiting. My thoughts can still freeze, like a deer in headlights, like a truck I know isn’t stopping. I don’t run. I wait.
I’ve never been the kind of person to explode. People misunderstand that about me. I don’t snap. I collect. Feelings, thoughts, memories—they stack up until they make sense, in a way only I can understand. Something always simmers underneath, waiting for its cue.
Through it all, it’s been Mike. He’s always been there. Every time I slip into the edges of my own mind, he’s the hand that pulls me back. It doesn’t make the thoughts disappear—they’re just quieter, patient, like the rest of the world is still too loud.
The Party scattered after everything. Lucas and Max took in kids for short stays. Dustin went to California to find Suzie. They travel, moving like it’s nothing. Mike and I… weren’t that simple.
It didn’t happen all at once. I was still learning who I was after all of this. Mike was grieving Jane. Together, we built her grave behind Hopper’s cabin, where Castle Byers used to stand. It felt… right. And awkward, because something new was starting between us, quietly, like a seed growing in cracks of what remained.
We told ourselves it was respect for her. That she’d want this. That she’d want us both to be happy—even if happiness looked like this. And I tell myself that when guilt comes creeping.
Mike feels it too. I catch him sometimes, staring a little too long. People would call that normal. But I know better. I know what it means, and I let it.
Even with the guilt, the heart wants what it wants. Mike and I—we drift, we fracture, and we always come back. He’s different now. Obsessed. Attentive. He watches, anticipates, adjusts himself before I even notice I need it. And I let him.
I hide things from him. Thoughts, urges, pieces of me I can’t let him see yet. Afraid he’d leave if he did. But he doesn’t. He loves the version of me I show him. And I let him love it.
He says, over and over, that he always knew we’d be together. When we were kids, he told Nancy it would be us in the end. She laughed. He didn’t. He never stopped believing. And I never stopped knowing he was right.
There’s a version of me that exists just for him. The one that loves him. The one he loves back. That’s my reality now. The one where he’s mine.
Except… it’s not entirely. Not when the world is still looking. Not when neighbors’ eyes linger and whispers follow.
And still… I let it be. Because I can.