"nothing ever lasts forever."
ˏˋ°•*⁀➷
STEVE, CASSIE, AND COLBY LEANED UP AGAINST THE COUNTER IN THE BYERS' KITCHEN. The kids were seated around the kitchen table, and Jonathan was mumbling incoherent words to Will, who was laid on the couch. Hopper was on the phone with someone (Colby hadn't bothered to pay attention to who it exactly was). However, the chief seemed very upset.
"I don't know how many people are there!" he yelled into the phone. "I don't know how many people are left alive!"
There was a pause as he listened, and then he yelled again, "I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper!" he calmed down. "Yes, the number that I gave you, yes. 6767... I will be here." He slammed the phone into the wall and turned around.
"They didn't believe you, did they?" remarked Dustin with a raised brow.
"We'll see." sighed Hopper, glancing down at the ground.
"We'll see?" repeated Mike in disbelief. "We can't just sit here while those things are on the loose!"
"We stay here, and we wait for help." grumbled Hopper, before heading down the hallway where Joyce had locked herself in her bedroom. From what Colby had learned from Mike, Bob had been killed at the hospital, and Joyce was traumatized. Josh had been unnaturally quiet, staring at the table blankly.
"Josh." Max Mayfield was the first to speak up, looking closely at Josh's face.
"What's up?" he croaked out, narrowing his eyes at the sudden attention he was receiving from her.
"You're bleeding." She reached out, hesitating, before running her fingers lightly over his skin right below his eye. He winced, and she immediately pulled back.
"Sorry." she breathed out.
"It's fine. Thanks for telling me." he pursed his lips. Josh got up, heading over towards the kitchen. Steve and Colby followed him excitedly, high-fiving each other.
"Harrington." greeted Josh as he ran the cloth under the tap. "Martin."
"You like Max!" Steve exclaimed cheerfully.
Josh wheeled around, his eyes wide. "What- no, no. I do not."
Colby smirked. "You do."
"You're wrong. Me-me and Max are just friends, that's all." Josh explained frantically, trying to keep the boys' voices down. From the way his eyes went wide and his hands began shaking, Colby immediately knew that he definitely did like Max. Of course, it could be him being heartbroken over his father's death— Colby couldn't tell.
"Bullshit!" exclaimed Steve. Josh slapped a hand over his mouth.
"Harrington, you need to learn when it's appropriate to yell and when it is not. And what about you and Cassie? You seemed pretty flustered around her-"
"Listen, that's different." Steve insisted, pulling Carter's hand off of his mouth. "She's hot, alright? You can't blame me for that one."
"You're such a perv." scoffed Josh bitterly.
"What the hell does that mean, Harrington?" Colby's jaw dropped. "You have a crush on my-"
Steve shoved Colby's shoulder to shut him up. "I do not. And what about what she was talking about before? You like Nancy?"
"Does it matter?" Colby narrowed his eyes at Steve. "Me and Nancy are friends, that's all it is."
Steve rolled his eyes and the three boys turned around as Dustin began shouting. He looked irritated, and was taking it out on Mike, who stood before the table with a small contraption in his hands.
"-The chief's right on this." said Dustin loudly and solemnly. "We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own."
"Demo-dogs?" repeated Max, furrowing her brows together. Colby wondered how he'd never seen her before— she must've been a new student, considering he'd never seen the boys hang out with her either. And then it hit him; Max Mayfield must have been the girl Dustin and Lucas had been stalking at the arcade about a week prior.
"Demo-dogs." affirmed Dustin, motioning with his hands. "It's like Demogorgon and dog. Demo-dog. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words, you know-"
"Okay!" huffed Max impatiently, widening her eyes at Dustin as if he were insane. Steve grimaced from beside Colby.
"I mean," Dustin continued, a little bit saddened, "when it was just Dart, maybe..."
"But there's an army now." finished Lucas, staring at the ground. Colby took a moment to look at him; personally, Lucas was Colby's favorite party member. He was laid back and inviting. And of course, his headband style was intriguing to Colby.
"Precisely." sighed Dustin. Dustin was Colby's second favorite member of the party. Of course, he didn't lay down the specifics of who was one through five, but Dustin was happy enough knowing he was somewhere in the top three.
"His army." muttered Mike, looking up at Dustin with slightly widened eyes.
"What do you mean?" queried Steve, turning to look at Mike with interest.
"His army!" repeated Mike, looking around at everyone standing before him. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too!"
Mike raced out of the kitchen and, very confused, everyone else followed after him. Colby took a second to look around at the walls, which were covered in pictures of some sort of vine-looking trail. They headed into Will's room, where Mike grabbed a picture of a large monster standing in a field.
"The shadow monster," mumbled Dustin, taking the picture into his own hands.
"It got Will that day on the field." nodded Mike, staring with a small smile at Dustin. "The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."
"And so this virus," said Cassie, tilting her head, "it connects him to these tunnels?"
"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything!" confirmed Mike, nodding his head vigorously at Cassie.
"Woah. Slow down, slow down!" Steve ordered. Colby smiled lightly— it wasn't rare for Steve to be confused, although he did notice a change in Steve. While he still seemed like a total idiot, the douchebag, popularity of him had washed away. Like Cassie said, maybe it was from the babysitting.
"Okay," sighed Mike, turning over his shoulder to explain everything to Steve. "The shadow monster is inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, so does Will."
"So, would these Demo-dogs feel that pain, too?" Colby raised a brow. "Are they all connected?"
"Yep." said Mike. "It's like Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind."
Colby nodded with interest. He was glad he had an interest in science, because this sure was interesting to him. He wondered if it would be as interesting if he wasn't, as Jayson sometimes called him, a "nerd." An unbearable one, at that. Of course, Jayson had been wearing one of Colby's Superman shirts, so he couldn't really be talking.
"Hive mind?" repeated Steve, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Don't hurt yourself too much trying to figure it out." mocked Cassie, and Steve narrowed his eyes at her.
"A collective consciousness." explained Dustin, grinning at Cassie. "It's a super-organism."
"And this," Mike stabbed the paper with his pointer finger, "this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."
Dustin's mouth opened and his eyes widened as he looked up from the drawing that he had in his hands. "Like the mind flayer..."
Mike, Josh, and Lucas all looked up at Dustin, excited beyond belief. Lucas even snapped his fingers at Dustin, as if he was telling him that he was spot on with his observation. However, Cassie, Colby, Max, and Steve (who hadn't played D&D) looked at each other stupidly.
"The what?" they said in unison. Dustin, groaning at his friends' lack of D&D knowledge, led them back into the kitchen, pulling a big book out of his backpack. It was all about Dungeons and Dragons. He flipped open to one of the pages, pointing to a creature in the middle.
MIND FLAYER
Colby grimaced at the sight of it— it was a pretty ugly creature, and if that was what was controlling the Upside Down, he sure didn't want to encounter it.
"The mind flayer," panted Dustin excitedly. Nancy approached them with her arms crossed over her chest, and she took a stand beside Colby.
"What the hell is that?" questioned Hopper from behind the group, re-emerging from Joyce's bedroom.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension." spoke Dustin brilliantly. Colby assumed that it was one of the only times anyone would ever listen to anything he had to say about D&D, especially the older kids. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."
Colby winced at the unbelievability of Dustin's explanation. While he did believe that there could be a real monster connecting the vines, Will, the dogs, and just about everything else from the Upside Down, he didn't believe it to be from Dungeons and Dragons.
"Oh, my God," groaned Hopper, "none of this is real. This is a kids' game."
"N-No, it's a manual," stammered Dustin, pointing down at the book, "And it's no for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"
"Analogy," corrected Lucas with a cough.
"Analogy?" repeated Dustin, astonished at Lucas' correction. "That's what you're worried about? Fine! Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."
"Okay," Nancy interrupted Dustin's rant by leaning forward to examine the book, "so this mind flamer thing-"
"Mind flayer." corrected Dustin with a hint of a smile. Nancy seethed at him.
"What does it want?"
"To conquer us, basically," shrugged Dustin, his tone far too casual for Colby's taste. If Dustin truly did believe that the mind flayer was behind all of the chaos in Hawkins, who was to say he wouldn't find a way to enslave everyone in that room? Who was to say he wouldn't spread from Hawkins? "It believes it's the master race."
"Like the... like the Germans?" Steve snapped his fingers together, and Colby shook his head at him.
"Nazis, Steve." he corrected, and Steve stared at him blankly for a second, taking in the weird looks he was getting from everyone.
"Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis."
"If the Nazis were from another dimension, sure." nodded Dustin enthusiastically, shaking the disapproving look off his face. "Uh... it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread and take over other dimensions." added in Mike, leaning forward against the table.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it!" said Lucas, bringing a much more serious tone into the discussion— the tone Colby was looking for. It brought a sense of realism to whatever they were talking about.
"That's great." panted Steve, turning from the table and taking a few steps away while also running a hen through his hair. "That's great. That's really great. Jesus!"
"Okay, so," Nancy leaned over the book once again, "if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything," she picked up the book and began walking around with it, "then if we kill it..."
"We can kill its entire army." finished Colby, looking down at his hands and missing the glance that Nancy sent him.
"We in." agreed Dustin.
"Theoretically." Josh raised a hand, another party member once again bringing them back into reality.
"Okay, great," mumbled Hopper, taking the book from Nancy. "So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"
Colby reminisced on what Lucas had told him when Will had gone missing— the smallest boy in the party had chosen fireball over protection (whatever that meant). However, after he chose the spell, he was taken into the Upside Down by the Demogorgon. So maybe it was better to play defense. If Colby knew anything about D&D (which he didn't).
"No, no." chuckled Dustin, before growing serious, cowering under the glare that Hopper sent him. "Uh... no fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because... because zombies, you know, they don't have brains and the mind flayer it... it likes brains. It's just a game... it's a game."
Colby sent Dustin a weird look as Hopper slammed the book back down on the table, saying, "What the hell are we doing here?"
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup." whispered Colby, although it was louder than he previously imagined, because Hopper immediately wheeled around. It seemed at first he thought Dustin had been the one to say it, but his eyes landed on Colby, and they widened a little.
"We are!" he defended.
"How are we gonna stop this, even if they come?" protested Mike, narrowing his eyes up at the chief. "You can't just shoot this with guns!"
"You don't know that! We don't know anything!" retaliated Hopper, sounding more and more unsure of himself.
"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab!"
"And we know the monsters are gonna molt again!" added Lucas desperately.
"And we also know it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," said Dustin, tapping his fingers off the table rapidly.
"They're right." croaked a voice from the hallway. It was Joyce, who looked paled and beyond upset. "We have to kill it."
Hopper approached her consolingly.
"I want to kill it."
"Me, too." Hopper assured her. She tried to speak again, but he cut her off. "Me, too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No." agreed Mike, turning to look at the couch. "But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore." spoke up Max, joining the group that was standing beside Mike. "That he's a spy for the mind flayer now."
"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."
˗ˏˋ 'ˎ˗
Mike had taken Hopper out to the Byers' shed in the backyard while the rest of the group waited for orders. Colby peered out of the window while Hopper dragged a bunch of items out of the shed and threw them all out into the yard.
When Hopper came back into the house, he looked at Steve, Nancy, and Colby, pointing at them. "You three go tape up the shed walls. Don't leave an inch uncovered. But I wanna talk to you," he pointed at Colby specifically, "first."
Colby clenched his jaw, following Hopper out into the yard while Steve and Nancy gathered tape and cardboard to bring out to the shed. When they were outside, Hopper stopped right outside the backdoor.
"Your dad misses you, you know that?" Hopper put his hands on his hips, as if he were mad.
"Does he really?" scoffed Colby, looking at the ground. "He shouldn't. You can tell him that."
"Kid-"
"Listen, chief, you tried your best to get me back to him." he muttered, almost incoherently. "He doesn't want me. I'm a terrible person, and he shouldn't want me."
Hopper's face fell a little, and his hands slid off his hips as if he weren't expecting Colby's words to emerge from his mouth. "Come on, buddy-"
"I'd better go." Colby pointed to the silhouettes belonging to Nancy and Steve, which were headed towards the shed. "The sooner we can kill this thing, the better, right?"
Hopper nodded absentmindedly, watching as Colby jogged over to the shed to meet up with Nancy and Steve. Steve was standing on a ladder, getting the higher parts of the shed, while Nancy worked on what she could reach.
"Hey, Colb." she greeted, smiling kindly at him.
"Martin, come on, get to work." Steve clapped his hands together. "This is a twenty minute job!"
"Three people taping up an entire shed, really?" Colby raised a brow, taking the roll of duct tape from Nancy. "And in twenty minutes."
"I'm an overachiever." shrugged Steve, resuming his work. They taped in silence, Colby trying to his best to ignore the conversation with Hopper. He didn't need advice from the chief. He didn't need him to take pity on him because of who his mom was.
"Hey," Nancy said, speaking to Steve. "What you did... helping the kids... that was really cool."
"Yeah," shrugged Steve nonchalantly, "yeah. Those shits are real trouble, you know?"
Nancy grinned at him. "Believe me, I know."
It wasn't long before everyone entered the shed to help them put scrape around the walls to cover everything that Will's subconscious could possible recognize. Colby took one last look around the shed, trying to spot any open areas, before exiting with everyone but Joyce, Hopper, Mike, and Jonathan.
When they were in the house, Colby sat against the kitchen wall, watching as Dustin stared out the window towards the shed. Steve was in the other room swinging his bat with Lucas and Cassie watching him, bored. Josh and Max were seated in the hallway on opposite sides, and Nancy stood beside Colby on the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. Colby glanced up, straightening against the wall as the lights began to flicker rapidly. He stood up, walking over to the window with Nancy. The bright lights in the shed were flickering as well.
"Is that him?" Colby asked Dustin, motioning towards the shed. Dustin nodded quietly as Cassie put an arm around Colby.
It was quiet for a while after that, and the kids inside the house decided to occupy the kitchen. Colby sat at the kitchen table with Max and Josh, trying to block out their obvious (to everyone but them) flirting.
The back door burst open and Hopper, Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan all entered. Hopper put a piece of lined paper on the table and began scribbling lines and dots down on it. Morse code.
"What happened?" asked Dustin urgently as everyone swarmed the table.
"I think he's talking." answered Hopper, finishing his drawing. "Just not with words. Hey, kid, can you read this?"
He looked up at Colby, and Colby feigned his calmness as he leaned over the table, narrowing his eyes down at the paper. "H...E...R...E. Here."
"Will's still in there." Hopper panted, tapping the pen against the paper. "He's talking to us."
Joyce nodded wordlessly, and Jonathan headed to his bedroom. He was back a few minutes later with a boombox and some tapes. "Will's favorite song."
The people in the shed went back out, although Hopper took one of Dustin's radios so he could communicate with the people in the kitchen. Colby was the translator, seated beside Dustin, who was putting the dashes and dots on a piece of paper for Colby to look at. Every few seconds, the radio would go off with a different letter.
"C." said Colby to Nancy, who was writing down all the letters on a piece of cardboard with a red crayon. Impatiently, Colby tapped his fingers against the table and ran a hand through his hair. Another radio message came through.
"L." he looked up at her, and she nodded.
"Dash, dash..."
"O."
"Dot, dash..."
"S."
"Dash..."
"E."
"Dot, dot..."
"G."
"Dash, dash, dot."
"A."
"Dot..."
"T."
"Dash, dash..."
"E!" exclaimed Colby, looking up at Nancy. "What'd you get?"
They all crowded around Nancy. Colby peered over her shoulder, looking at what'd she'd written down on the piece of cardboard. Although he shouldn't have had time to in the moment, Colby admired her handwriting. His was terrible.
"Close gate," he murmured, "close gate? What the hell does that mean?"
Suddenly, the phone began ringing from the wall where it was attached. Everyone jumped up, and Dustin was the first person to reach it. He picked it up and slammed it back against the wall. However, it didn't stop ringing. Out of frustration, Nancy picked the entire phone up off the wall and threw it on the ground, breaking it.
"Jesus, Nancy." muttered Dustin in disbelief. "Do you think he heard us?"
"It's just a phone." shrugged Steve, although he sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else. "It could be anywhere. Right?"
"That thing is smart, though." said Colby quietly, trying not to imagine what is was capable of doing.
The most Colby had ever been up against was the Demogorgon. And the mind flayer, as Dustin described it, seemed to be a million times more powerful than the Demogorgon ever could be. So what would they do if the mind flayer found them?
Colby turned when he heard a loud roar somewhere in the distance. He, and everyone else, sped to the window, although they couldn't see anything past the tall trees blocking their view.
"That's not good." whispered Josh, wincing a little as he tried to crane his neck to see past the trees. The door opened and Jonathan came in, carrying an unconscious Will.
"Hey, Jonathan." Colby grabbed the boy's attention. "Do you still have my tennis racket?"
Jonathan nodded, pointing to his bedroom. Colby followed his directions, and sure enough, propped up against his wall was the worn-out and broken blue tennis racket that Colby had used to try and injure the creature he'd fought the previous year. He wasn't sure how effective it would be, but he thought it best to try anyway.
When he reentered the living room, he saw Nancy and Hopper holding rifles, Lucas holding his wrist rocket, and Steve holding his bat out in front of them. All of them were looking or aiming towards the front window. Colby swallowed his fears, tensing up as he heard a rustling sound outside in the bushes. The roaring and growling was getting closer until they heard some sort of guttural sound outside the other window. The snarling moved back to the front window, once again scaring Colby out of his wits.
There seemed to be a fight occurring outside of the window, until the Demo-dog's screeching ended altogether with a small whine. Then there was silence.
And then the front window crashed, glass spraying everywhere as the body of the Demo-dog soared through the living room and landed in the corner of the room. Everyone backed away from it fearfully. However, Hopper moved closer, trying to get a good look at it.
"Is it dead?" asked Max quietly. Hopper kicked the beast with his foot, and due to its lack of response, everyone assumed that it had been killed by some outside force. What had killed it?
Then, the front door creaked and everyone turned back towards it. Colby raised his racket out in front of him, his heart in his throat. The lock chain came undone— they weren't locked in anymore. Somehow, whatever it was on the other side of the door had opened it.
Then, the door slowly opened. Colby's eyes widened and his heart resumed beating normally as he saw who it was, recognizing her from the blood flowing from her nose. She looked different, but she was the same altogether— Eleven had returned home.
˗ˏˋ 'ˎ˗
Mike and Eleven met in the middle of the room, embracing with shaky sobs and breaths. Colby couldn't tell who was more heartbroken.
"I never gave up on you," Mike assured her shakily, "I called you every night. Every night for-"
"353 days." finished Eleven, shaking her head and smiling at him. However, Mike seemed shocked at her revelation. He furrowed his brows together, tilting his head to the side. "I heard."
"Why didn't you tell me that you were there?" he questioned, even sadder."T-That you were okay?"
"Because I wouldn't let her." answered Hopper, and Colby clenched his jaw at the chief of police. He'd been keeping El with him. He had taken her in. He stepped forward. "The hell is this? Where have you been?"
"Where have you been?" returned El, just as angry as he was. However, he didn't seem so angry when he pulled her in for a hug. Colby looked away.
"You've been hiding her." accused Mike bitterly, glaring at Hopper. "You've been hiding her this whole time!"
He shoved Hopper forward, and Hopper quickly turned around, grabbing the front of Mike's shirt. "Hey! Let's talk. Alone."
He dragged Mike into Will's bedroom, leaving El to watch them sadly. They could hear Mike's loud voice echoing through the house.
"I don't blame her! I don't blame her! I blame you!"
Colby shuddered a little at their argument, before turning back to El and smiling at her. She looked at him, smiling back.
"Hey, El." he said, putting his chin on her head as she ran into him with a hug. "I missed you, y'know that? I bought all these... these damn Eggos hoping you'd come and visit me one day."
El pulled away from him, her eyes watering a little as she tilted her head. "Eggos?"
"Eggos, yeah."
"Can I have some?" she asked. Colby assumed she must've been hungry— if she wasn't at Hopper's, where had she been staying?
"Yeah, sure. You can have some." he nodded, moving aside so she could greet her other friends. She embraced Dustin and Lucas and talked quietly with them.
Nancy approached Colby, grinning at him. "I didn't know you kept Eggos for her?"
"Of course I did." shrugged Colby, returning the smile. "Hey, she liked them."
Nancy shoved his shoulder lightly, before they both turned, seeing Joyce lead El into Will's bedroom, where he was laying. Nancy took Colby's hand and squeezed it softly, as if reminding him that she was there.
El and Joyce headed into the kitchen, where El approached the price of cardboard that Nancy had written on previously. They entered the kitchen slowly, craning their necks to listen to Joyce and El's conversation from afar.
"Do you think if we got you back there, that you could close it?" Joyce asked her, and Colby had to assume she was talking about the "gate."
El, whose nose was still bleeding, looked over at Joyce solemnly. She didn't speak for a few seconds, but it was obvious she was calculating if she could or not. Finally, she said, "Yes."
Hopper and Mike rejoined the group, and Joyce talked to Hopper about the possibility of El closing the gate. El seemed very up to it. Hopper, on the other hand, definitely didn't.
"It's not like it was before," he sighed, seeing as he'd gotten a firsthand experience of seeing it up close. "It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs."
"Demo-dogs." corrected Dustin quickly.
Hopper sent him a weird look. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I said, uh, Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass-"
Hopper, who was clearly at the end of his rope, interjected, "How is this important right now?"
Dustin turned around, staring sadly at the table. "It's not. I'm sorry."
El looked up, and the confidence that had remained in her expression since she arrived grew stronger. She'd grown out her hair, one thing that was quite obvious to everyone in the group, and she'd taken on some sort of punk look. "I can do it."
Hopper shook his head. "You're not hearing me."
"I'm hearing you. I can do it."
"Even if El can, there's still another problem." spoke Mike, who, shockingly, was agreeing with the chief. It seemed as if their argument in Will's bedroom had managed to create some peace between them. "If the brain dies, the body dies."
Colby's brows raised above his eyes— the brain was the mind flayer. The body consisted of everything it was apart of. The dogs, the vines-
"I thought that was the whole point." said Max, shaking her head in confusion.
"Will's a part of the body." said Colby, looking up at Mike. "If she can close the gate and kill the army, she'll kill Will, too."
"So what do we need to do?" asked Joyce, who looked terrified. "How do we make Will not a part of the body?"
She led them into Will's room, which was cold. The window was open and there was a fan blowing in Will's face. He was laying on the blankets rather than under them.
"He likes it cold." mumbled Joyce under her breath, taking in the same scene as Colby.
"What?" queried Hopper, furrowing his brows together.
"That's what Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold!" Joyce rushed over to the window, slamming it shut. "We keep giving it what it wants."
"If this is a virus," said Josh from Will's bedside, "and Will's the host, then..."
"We need to make the host uninhabitable." finished Jonathan, nodding along.
"So if he likes it cold..."
"We need to burn it out of him." said Joyce with gritted teeth, staring down at her youngest son's body angrily.
"We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time!" Mike added in helpfully.
"Yeah, somewhere far away." agreed Dustin from beside Mike.
Hopper sighed, picking up Will's unconscious body and looking at Joyce. "You can do it at my cabin. Come on, I'll give you the directions..."
˗ˏˋ 'ˎ˗
Colby sat inside with the kids and Cassie while Jonathan and Hopper took Will to Jonathan's car. Steve and Nancy were outside searching for heaters and other objects to heat up Will.
"Do you think they'll be able to do it?" asked Max quietly, looking at Colby. He assumed it was because he was the oldest— he didn't have much else under his belt.
"It's not like the mind flayer can instill super strength in Will," he replied promptly, clearing his throat at the sudden question. "As long as they tie him down, they'll be able to warm him up in no time. I think..."
Nancy strode into the house with a heater in her hands. She stopped when she saw Colby laying on the floor beside the couch. Colby looked up at her sympathetically, only to see the same emotion reflecting in her eyes.
"Come with me." she pleaded, waiting patiently for his response. "We need to be there for Jonathan."
Colby sighed, looking at the kids. Cassie gave him a nod; he could go with her. Colby smiled lightly at her before getting up off the floor and following Nancy out to Jonathan's car.
They started up the driveway, Colby turning around in his seat to watch El and Mike say goodbye. Hopper waited patiently for her, standing by his car.
˗ˏˋ 'ˎ˗
Eventually, the Byers, Colby, and Nancy found Hopper's cabin. It was located almost in the middle of nowhere, but when they entered, Colby was surprised as to how nice it was. He would've much preferred to live there than Laurie's house— if ever given the option.
Joyce leaned down, plugging in the machines. "We can do it here."
Together, they got Will laid down on a bed in the middle of the room. They zip-tied his hands and ankles to the bed, making sure he couldn't move. Colby and Jonathan threw some logs into the fireplace while Nancy and Joyce set up the heaters.
Finally, they finished the setup, staring down at it confidently. Jonathan looked over at his mom, a little scared.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked her, his voice wavering a little.
Joyce clenched her jaw. "This thing has had Will long enough. Let's kill the son of a bitch."
Nancy lit a match and threw it in the fireplace. Jonathan, Colby, and Joyce turned on the heaters. After they were done, Colby pulled his sweatshirt off and discarded it somewhere behind him, almost mindlessly.
It took a while for Will to wake up, but when he did, he began gasping for air. Everyone else in the cabin was sweating already, although the reaction that the mind flayer inside of Will had made Colby jump back, startled. Jonathan sat up, grabbing the sleeve of Colby's shirt in terror.
"What's happening?" panicked Will, trying to free himself. "It hurts. It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!"
Colby let an expression of terror cross his face. As he looked over to Nancy, he saw a similar reaction from her. Almost instinctively, she grabbed his hand and pulled he (and Jonathan) closer to her.
"Let me go! Let me go! It hurts!" screamed Will, although his voice didn't sound like his own. The aggression in it made Colby shiver.
Joyce stared down at her son with nothing but rage in her eyes. She reached forward and turned up the heat, only making Will's screams louder. Jonathan, terrified, yelled, "Mom!"
"No!" she shouted back, over the noise of Will's bloodcurdling screams. Jonathan buried his head in Colby's shoulder, and Colby hung his head, as if it would block the noise out.
"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!" shrieked Will painfully.
Colby's head was pounding, even though he shouldn't have been as affected as he was. His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, and he thought if it beat any faster he would seize. Seeing Will torture himself on the bed made him suffer.
"It's not working!" Jonathan cried out. "It's not working! Mom, are you listening to me?"
"Just wait!" retaliated Joyce, ignoring his pleads.
"You're killing him!"
It sure seemed like it, but Colby's eyes widened as he saw the blackened veins in Will's neck. They raised gradually to his neck. Colby stopped Jonathan from moving forward pointing to his neck.
"His neck! His neck! Look at it!" he screamed, and Jonathan jolted backwards as Will's seizing became stronger and stronger. In fact, he broke free of one of the zip-ties. Joyce raced forward to pull his hand back down, but he wrapped it around her throat instead. Colby and Jonathan jumped forward together, trying to pull Will's hand off of Joyce's neck, to no use. He was strangling her and there was nothing they could do.
That was until Nancy grabbed the fire poker and jabbed it into Will's side. Out of pain, he rested back, letting go of Joyce's neck as she heaved in a deep breath. However, Will's seizing only got worse as his face blackened and shook.
"Get the hell out of my son!" screamed Joyce in Will's face as Will's body shook harder and harder. Colby wasn't sure if he would make it— until he screamed and a black mist burst out of him and the cabin through the front door. Nancy chased after it as if disappeared into the night. As for the people in the cabin, they unplugged everything and put out the fire in the fireplace.
As Joyce and Jonathan leant over Will's body, Nancy grabbed Colby's arm and pulled him out into the cool night, giving the family some time together.
"You know this was thanks to you, right?" she muttered lowly. "The idea to get it out of Will's body? If you hadn't reminded us-"
"No, it was Mike." laughed Colby uneasily. "I promise you, I just spoke up."
Nancy wrapped her arms around Colby's neck, and he pulled her closer as they hugged on Hopper's front porch, cooling down from the wind.
jack
i love szn 2
anyway i finally developed a schedule for my uploads!! every tuesday and friday
(6/14/22)