Chapter Text
After seventeen painstaking years of his life, Will Byers was finally going to die.
He wondered how the world would react. Small town Indiana wouldn’t care — he’d already died before. This would be a relief, a mercy killing. Like euthanizing a suffering animal: putting some poor creature out of its misery. Will hadn’t been seen as human for a long time, and he had long ago swallowed down his opinion on it.
Better unheard, better unsaid.
Will Byers had died on November 6th, 1983. He’d gotten lost in the woods, and was missing for an entire week before they’d found him. Miraculously, he’d been revived from the brink of death, and tossed back into regular life, as far as the public was concerned. Officially, and on paperwork, his life has ended the same day he was found.
But his life really had ended the day he was lost in the woods.
Will Byers belonged to Death. He knew not what it was, or what it would be, but he knew what it wanted. He knew what it deserved. And he’d hoped it would be patient, for the amount of times he’d given up and survived because of it.
But Death is not patient. Death does not wait.
Sometimes, people don’t care to wait around for Death either.
The last thing Will remembered was shutting his eyes. Some other force did it, drooped his lids shut and wiped his mind clean. It was so strange: there existed no sound, and no thoughts, and no light, and certainly no explanation. But if Will could think, he’d likely think he was far too used to this feeling.
And then Will woke up underwater.
It was suddenly very cold. And suddenly his clothes were very heavy, and he had very little breath in his lungs. Will kicked, the way a farm animal kicks under the knife, if only on instinct. Damn his survival instinct, which he was far too weak to fight.
It all came flooding back to him. He’d been sent out with Mike on a mission to catch the radio signal from over the gate at Lovers’ Lake. It was presumably dangerous, and Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy had protested against it specifically, but eventually they assured them it would be safe for them to go. They’d come back in one piece each, and they weren’t planning on doing anything stupid.
Will had felt the sensation on the boat. A voice he would’ve silently ignored, one he would’ve refused to acknowledge, had it not just been Mike. Maybe not his mom, or his brother, or any other chaperone — but this was Mike, the one person to whom he told everything.
He’d told him — or rather, he’d tried. It came out as a sort of slurred mumble. When Mike had asked, “What?”, Will responded with a soft hum, eyes rolling back. Then, everything went black.
And now he was sinking into the depths below.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been under, but it didn’t feel as though it’d been over a minute. He wasn’t sure how he’d lasted that long: perhaps it was due to the fact that he hadn’t struggled on the way down. Whatever the case, he was squirming now.
And the air began to seep away.
The pounding of his heart was deafening. It was all he could hear. His ears ached from the water pressure, and the deeper he sunk, the more severe the pain became. Will kicked, trying to swim upwards, and realized he wouldn’t make it.
His shoes were tightly laced on. Those are what you take off in the event of drowning, right? His jacket weighed him down even more, proving to be difficult to maneuver in once he was immersed in icy lake water. Frantically looking at the ever-morphing shape of the small, dimly-lit boat above him, he cried out as though Mike might hear him. Maybe Mike hadn’t noticed.
Maybe Mike didn’t care.
Or maybe Mike had been taken too. Will turned as best he could in the deep, dark water, but from all angles, he appeared to be alone. Sinking deeper and deeper, feeling his oxygen run out.
Will was going to die.
And sickeningly, it wasn’t so bad.
He’d expected more inner turmoil. More of a protest. More there’s so much to live for and push through, you can do it and I don’t want to die. But his inner thoughts were a ghost town, a murky ghost town that was just as underwater as he was.
His thoughts swam, and his mind was an empty pool. He thought back to every moment he’d fought, and found himself wondering when it would finally be too much. When he’d finally let go. There was no one here cheering him on, so why bother?
Just let go, Will.
It wasn’t his voice. But it wasn’t just someone else’s.
It’s okay. Let go.
Will’s body jerked on instinct, and he sucked in a torrent of freezing water. He spluttered, coughing bubbles out at top speeds, his lungs attempting to force the intrusive substance out. And with it, the rest of the air left in him.
Will Byers’ life ended on November 6th, 1983. He died on November 13th, and joined the rest of the world again in the following hours. And here, Will was finally going to rest.
And it stung so deeply how quickly he began to accept it.
Will closed his eyes, and relaxed his body. He sank, feeling the cold draw of the depths below. Above him, he felt more than heard a splash, a disruption in the water, but he paid it no mind. He thought, for a moment, that he was finally safe. Safe from monsters, from humanity, and from life. And if there was a Hell, or a God which he had long since abandoned, he was going to burn for eternity. But for now, he hoped with all of his heart that he would be okay. And that the people he loved would be safe.
And then, Will Byers died.