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“I never had the heart to hate you.”
Hawkins is finally at peace, covered with a sense of normalcy Will doesn’t remember seeing or even existing after he was twelve, one he only ever had in quiet moments, with the world locked out the door, in the intimacy of the Wheelers’ basement or the protection of Castle Byers.
He doesn’t feel it—the connection with the Mind Flayer. The everlasting tingle on the back of his neck, that followed everywhere he went, even if it was quieter all the way in Lenora, finally went away. He feels light, no longer jumping at every breeze, no longer recoiling at every cold touch. For the first time in what seems like forever, a hot shower washes away all the bad, cleans every trace of the cursed divinity that once stole control of him.
Renews him like a new burst of color does to a painting.
They left the Upside Down hopeful.
Henry was gone. So, was the future he showed him.
Will would never be without his family and friends.
Their deaths closed the last chapter in a story of hurting, but also opened a new era of safety for Will.
No more vessel. No more spy. No more builder.
In his mother’s arms, near his brother and his friends, like he was in the hospital bed he found himself in when he returned the first time, he was just Will.
Son, brother, friend.
Changed, perhaps for better, perhaps for worse, definitely forever, but Will.
Hopeful.
Of course, the universe didn't give him peace so easily.
Ambushed by the soldiers after crossing the gate, they were grabbed and pulled off the truck. Panic returns to the kids, imperceptible pleas between the barks of the men pulling at their arms. Human voices are replaced by the swish of spinning blades from the large helicopter looming above them. Multiple vans break through the precinct, surrounding tanks and military, leaving Will twice closed off from the rest of the world.
A human barrier as opposed to a dimensional gate.
When the helicopter sets down, Agent Stinson, in a formal black suit, heels clicking as she climbs down the stairs, a myriad of well-dressed individuals follow her. He still doesn’t know what agency they belong to. He was never shown proper IDs or badges. He was not approached, nor were any of his friends.
Only one thing mattered: they outranked Doctor Kay and were there to depose her.
In the midst of the mess—bureaucratic shouting between soldiers in suits and camo, teens protecting children while resisting arrest, a show of strength between two women on two sides of a war, weapons loaded on each side—it went off.
The Upside Down collapsed, exotic matter exploding and erasing the world that brought him so much pain. Kay’s soldiers stopped in their tracks, as if the reason for their lives had evaded them. If they existed to sustain what ruined Will’s life, to take his sister's, good riddance.
After finally dragging the evil scientist away, her soldiers fall in line under a new superior. Stinson introduces him to Hopper and to his mom, leading them to a secluded place. He soon starts barking orders to release everyone.
Lucas crawls near Max, Jonathan pulls Nancy in for a kiss, and even Robin and Vickie forsake propriety for proximity.
Jane is soon in Mike's arms, and all Will does is watch.
With the promise of further investigation looming over some of their heads, soldiers walk everyone home. Hopper and Jane, his mom, Jonathan, and Will stay behind.
Mike protests, but Nancy drags him by the collar—to both Will and Jane's amusement.
Interviews, a complete archive system, and a promise of neutrality are their priority. From Hawkins Lab in ‘94, only Will's scribble of the tunnels has survived, and NINA left nothing but a small number of tapes. To ensure normal lives for both of them, things have to be registered for matters of national security.
They have claimed the abandoned lab as their temporary base of operations, but Will refuses for any of them to be questioned there. Jane did everything to evade it, and he doesn't want anything that reminds him of doctors for years. Surprisingly, they acquiesce.
As November flows into December, the soldiers who marked Hawkins start their retreat. Quarantine is lifted. The wounds on the ground have healed, and the metal scrapes no longer are reapplied.
To everyone not in the know, it’s the beginning of the return to normal—a reason to celebrate.
For Will, nothing had been normal anyway.
They spend a full week discussing with the agents.
In the Wheelers' living room, he sits by her on the couch. Even to those strangers—soldiers, doctors, nurses, special agents—who know them only from confidential reports, files, and tapes, they are equated. Will can’t help but feel inadequate.
She is the one who was hunted, and she is the one who saved them.
But wasn't he prey too? Didn't he save lives as well?
What use is he for? What can he reveal his mother hasn't?
She is questioned about Doctor Brenner. She talks about her mother, how she was taken as an experiment, and that her Aunt Becky (whom Will didn't know existed) can say more. She mentions Kali ('Experiment Eight?' one questions, catching the look on their faces as enough reason to not interrupt again), leaving the lab. Who Henry was to them and what he became.
Jane omits much. She is smart—no mention of blood or connections to other worlds, gives a very surface-level dissection of her powers.
Will takes the hint and does the same. Nothing outside the buzzing on the back of his neck that used to come when they were close is said.
The fate of Doctor Owens seemed something lost to the winds, after all. Truth is whatever they decide.
The more detached from Henry they are, the more human they are.
Secrecy keeps them safe.
He retells the day of his abduction, from how he was followed to how he survived the week.
No mentions of snapping Demos or building tunnels.
Only claimed Henry was fixated on him, because he 'did not belong in this world'.
Let them figure out what that meant.
After the final interview, after the final soldier leaves, everything seems alright.
Hawkins is happier and prepared to jump and cheer for all the months of uncertainty and despair.
Although there is light, all is not over.
There's high school, still the same nightmare, where they are still that group of freaks. He is Zombie Boy, Lucas has no social cache left, Mike never had any, and Dustin's is below zero.
But things get better.
Hopper returns to his position as the Chief, evading mentions of his death under the pretense of Witness Protection—key testimony regarding threats of rogue commies on American soil, with reduced hours so Jane can have private education at home.
Mrs Wheeler returns from the Hospital. To Mike, Nancy, and Holly, a new routine emerges—slightly off, as Ted recovers, but the first in a series of rolls in a quest towards hope.
The FBI declares Eddie innocent. Wayne Munson leaves the trailer park for the first time since the earthquake. It doesn’t fix their relationship with the town and the jocks, but Dustin stands prouder, displaying Hellfire as a proud memory of a hero, not a contemptuous challenge of the status quo.
Max comes back some weeks later, medical expenses covered. She skips a lot of classes for physical therapy, but is pulling through. Doctors say she might always need the wheelchair, and her vision might deteriorate sooner, but she's a fighter and refuses to bow.
And for once, since the sixth of November of 1983, Will Byers is a child again.
They hang out all the time—trying to rescue the time others spent having fun, that they lost fighting for their lives. They play the new games at the arcade. They rent the latest movies, stuffing their faces with chocolates and popcorn. They go swimming at Lovers Lake, sunbathing on the margins, getting well-deserved tans. They climb the hills to sing, laugh, and cheer.
Will is happy.
He survived. He gets to live with his friends. He can hug his mother, brother, sister, and new father.
Will and the boys play DnD again, even including Max and Jane on occasion. Whether it starts as an apology to him or as a way for Dustin to honor Eddie, he doesn't know. Honestly, he doesn’t care. The Party is there. His friends are there. Mike is there. All is well.
In the seclusion of the group, Will forsakes spending days in silent fear. He talks, he jokes, he loves—loudly, he hugs and dances and exists, freely, no nights in blank praying he was born differently, like he used to, even before he was taken.
Most nights are joyful, spent between the warmth of wool blankets, with the glow of Star Wars movies over his eyes.
In others, the need to hurl when he fears another is in him wakes him up. The chill of winter shakes him and he fears he’s controlled again, or screams—as he fails to stop and loses Mike, Lucas, and Robin.
There's only so much walkieing Mike does to help. Just hearing his voice does.
Nightmares are irregular, varying in scenery, plot and weak point in which to stab, but they are here to stay.
As is struggle.
As is yearning.
For him. For his best friend.
A truth he couldn’t deny. A truth written into every corner of his mind. A truth he learned as easily as breathing. A truth painted in any piece he’ll ever make. A truth he knows is real, even though it’s just him who feels it.
No matter what lie he tells himself, how much he reduced him to a silly crush, to a stupid dream, to a Tammy. He knows the truth. He'll love Mike for as long as he breathes.
At least, that's how it feels most of the time.
Sometimes, he thinks he'll be able to move on. That he'll turn the page, write a new line, only for a hug or an ‘You're like the best artist ever’, ‘I got your favorites’, ‘I really missed you’ to reel him back in, like a naive bunny stupidly hopping onto a poorly marked trap.
He’s content with being his best friend. He tries to be.
He doesn’t cross lines.
Friends, no thanks. Best friends.
He has starved before. Friendship is love. He won't deny the abundance of it.
He learns to be conscious and tries not to notice: his nerdy laugh or the glint in his eyes when they plan new campaigns, the way he rolls his eyes as Max teases him, even though the smile grows in his face, or even the proud smile he gives Holly, ruffling her hair, before they bike to drop her off.
He notices.
Mike hugs her when he arrives at the cabin. They share a kiss in any minor interaction. When they turn to each other, their fingers interlock. Mike whispers things all the time, and she giggles.
He does nothing to trouble them, but standing next to her at breakfast every day, knowing that's who he runs to, even though he has no right to feel this way, when she saved his life time and time again, is a sweet kind of torture to endure.
Pain at the hands of his sister, whom he loves, and his best friend, whom he loves.
How could it be any different?
She is all. He is few.
She is one. He is second.
She is novelty. He is infamy.
Sometimes he thinks it’s his fault he feels this way.
Mike, who could never be his friend and her boyfriend.
Mike, who couldn’t handle them at the same time.
Mike, who every time they stand can only consider one.
Maybe they're not meant to be happy at the same time.
Maybe they’re not meant to exist at the same time.
Maybe only one of them deserves to.
The dance on the tightrope every time they’re together is hard to perform. When you’re trying to please everyone, every smile is just an act—a part you have to memorize as quickly as possible.
He won't be that person. He'll do his best to get over him.
But he needs to tell her.
This is his sister. Kind, protector, loving. Perfect.
If he is not honest with her, he won’t be able to live with himself.
They’re alone.
NYU keeps Jonathan busy since he was recognized for his portfolio, covered in photos of the Upside Down, so unique, wrapped in a curious layer of mysterious lights and odd natural landscapes. The plausible deniability of a forest in the middle of Indiana and a sky covered in toxic mist awards him some much-needed notoriety.
His brother can't handle being popular, which Nancy reminds at dinner every time they come back.
He’s happy for Jonathan.
If anyone deserves happiness, it’s him.
His mom and Hopper are dining out, enjoying some time together in public now that everyone has stopped asking about what he was testifying against, what did the commies do, why he needed to fake his own death.
The engagement is on the horizon; he can feel it.
She takes in his words, her beautiful dark brown eyes lifting from the comic—a Wonder Woman issue, how fitting. It’s identical to one Max gave her before they moved, when everything was still unsure. She shifts her position on the sofa, bringing the blanket further up her lap, then turns to look at him, and Will is reminded of her beauty.
Beautiful brown eyes that always shine with curiosity. Porcelain white skin, no longer rough from hiding, running, or crying. She started keeping her hair the same length as that adorable look she had in the summer of ‘85.
When he always felt alone, even surrounded by everyone.
“I guess I opted to envy you.”
She sits further back on the couch.
“I still am, I guess, at least a little bit.” Will can’t look in her eyes, because he knows she’s looking with kindness he doesn't deserve. “Envious, I mean. Maybe jealous is a better word?”
He tries to be brave, and he looks at her. She didn't expect this. She was never good at covering her emotions, so her face perfectly shows her heart.
Not hate, not disgust, just wonder.
“At first, all I knew was you helped save me.”
The worst week of his life always comes back in the same precise echoes.
The foggy air of the Upside Down, the trembling grip on Lonnie’s gun, humming softly to keep himself sane, but quiet enough to not catch their attention, moist glued to Jonathan’s old vest, shaking on the foreign version of Castle Byers and her—an angel in a pink dress warming his hands, telling him to hide, announcing his mother was coming to get him.
After a week of running and hiding and failing and trying, working so hard to breach contact, voice hoarse from how much he screamed for help, she came as his salvation. When all he thought was how much he deserved the Hell he was in, an angel was coming to save his rotten soul.
“And I was relieved when I was back. And I liked you. At least for a while. When you were this vision—not really real.”
No one likes being kept in the dark, but that’s how he felt back then. They were hiding a superhero, playing spy, enjoying a controlled adventure, while he was fighting for his life. She was the mark, the connecting piece, threading each recounted step of how they saved him together.
“If you weren’t real, then I wasn’t changed. I was the same. I could hide and forget all about it.”
He hid so much.
He hid how troubling his episodes were.
He hid their frequency from his mom.
He hid D’Artagnan’s birth from everyone.
He hid his dreams.
He hid his feelings.
He became so good at hiding them that they might have crawled inside him and combusted.
“I didn’t want to accept it, but I had changed.”
Trick or Treat, Freak!
“Everyone knew I did. They all treated me differently. Like I was going to break if I fell. As if I wasn’t used to mean comments and obnoxious pricks.”
Mike treated Will the same. Like he had ever since they met.
He loved him for that.
He only changed when she came into his life.
But he couldn’t hate for that.
“I felt I was going crazy.”
We can go crazy together.
“Mike said you would understand, and I wanted to believe him, but—”
She shifts to the side, offering space for him to sit. Will takes it. He looks at the glow of the television, side turned away from her, a hopeful barrier to his cascading words.
“I didn’t want to meet you.”
She interrupts him for the first time since he started rambling. “Why?”
“I felt you would take my place.” He breathes out, a wave of resentment and shame crawling underneath his skin. An itch aching to be scratched, but physically impossible to. “Like you had done it while I was away.”
He heard the recollection of events from his perspective many times. As good as DM and writer he is, the story always had something new—another feeling, another clue, another thought. Some parts were skipped in favor of others. But her, The Mage, never changed. The wonder in his voice and the glint in his eyes as he retold the steps never went away.
“Then you were back, and I felt you took my space and my friends and my—Mike.”
“Mike?” His name is soft on her lips, special and sweet. The name of a first friend and a first love. Precious, but not all-consuming. Not overwhelming. Not like it is for him. It’s a word weighted with the first person you ever grab onto, not with the pain and restraint of a boy who has to let go every time.
“He had you.”
His voice breaks at each word.
“You had the only thing I’d ever wanted.”
Will feels the tears coming, voice cracking as he speaks. He knows he’s an awful person, but he needs to be truthful this time.
“I got mad too.”
Will sneaks a glance at his sister. Part of him expected this to be a long monologue, one of those they have in a play, right before they die of madness or a broken heart. But she's offering him sympathy.
“When I saw him smiling at Max, I got mad. I used my powers so she’d fall off the skateboard. I ran before they caught me.” She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear as she says it, as Will imagines a girl who knew nothing but movies seeing another girl (a threat) trying to befriend the boy she liked.
He'd never do something like that.
He wouldn't have been so forward. He would've suffered in silence.
Maybe that's why she has him.
Maybe that's why he's alone.
“It’s different.”
Jane was good. She was always kind, except to Evil.
She’s the object of desire, not the yearner.
“How?”
Will hears the words that tangled over his heart, like the vines he once had around his neck, that pushed and squeezed until he felt himself bleed from inside.
Words that hurt but were never apologized for.
“His life started when he met you.”
After painting his heart out, after another instance of being hunted and almost killed, after the humiliation that was pretending your feelings are another's because your words are not the ones he wants to hear and haven't been for a long time, Will watched as they laughed.
On the back of a van, he cried. On the back of a restaurant, he buried it deep inside.
His sister regained her smile, achieved a moment of joy after months of grief, pain and trouble at school.
Oh, the sweetest of aches, to feel despair and delight at the same time.
Her mouth presses into a sad frown. “When you disappeared…”
“You had him from the beginning.” Will claims, because it's the truth. "Is it really that surprising? I mean, what was I? Poor, weak, queer Will Byers, just a stupid, childish friend, to his pretty, powerful, perfect girlfriend?”
Hot tears burn down his face, a mess of sounds clearing in his head like a carefully constructed, constantly revisited symphony. The fight in the rain when he said what he didn’t mean, and Mike bit back with his worst fear. His most shameful, disgusting secret.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!
Will presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, failing to hold whatever is last, tears or words, that long to come out. “I spent the summer after you came here just existing. I spent all my time looking at you, all of you. You had all coupled up. You all smiled together in your little duos. I only had him when it didn’t matter. I always… I was always just the trailer to entertain for a bit before the movie started. I was just lingering in the background like an unimportant extra.”
Her hand comes to grace his thigh, soft and gentle, while he presses further into his eyes, head vibrating, making him see a million closed shapes dancing.
“They all love you, Will.”
He shakes his head as she says it because it's not the same.
Will knew he was loved. By his mother, who ignored the unwanted claims and hateful whispers, never giving up on him while he was in the Upside Down. By his brother, who dragged a popular girl, the kind of people he’d always kept at a distance, into searching for him. And by his friends, who tried their best to rescue him, going so far as to commit treason to do so.
It was love, he knew.
But he wasn’t wanted. Not in the way he wanted to.
“Mike thinks you are the best of us.”
It's Hawkins. It's not the same without you.
“He thinks you are so brave and so talented.”
A real-life honest-to-god sorcerer.
“Will, is Mike the boy you have a crush—?”
He's just my Tammy.
“He’s not a Tammy.”
He’s quick to answer, before the question is even completely uttered. The words, every time he remembers them, feel dirty on his tongue. They always did.
He's just my Tammy.
As if Mike could ever be just. As if for Will he wasn’t all.
“You’re supposed to move on from your Tammy…” He exhales, hiding himself further into himself.
“Will. I love Mike, but I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to hate me.”
Can he blame her? If it were the other way around, he'd bear the same cross—sibling or boyfriend?
His arms come to rest over her hand, wet face looking at her. “I don’t hate you! I never did!”
He understood how she felt. How her powers isolated her. Just like his queerness did. He knew what that was like—to be pushed to the side, marked as odd, weird, a freak. The feeling of not belonging and of not deserving.
Some minds, it turns out, simply do not belong in this world.
How you needed to feel normal to survive.
The need to cling to anything that makes you feel okay.
Unfair of them, perhaps, to put that burden on the same protector, the same lovable nerdy boy.
"Not when I wanted to be any of you. When you were all couples for the summer, and even Dustin returned with a girlfriend, and I—"
Would fall asleep holding my own hand pretending it was someone.
Would tell myself that I wasn't going to fall in love when I already had.
Lenora was never as bad as Hawkins. Novelty (or incognito) was something to thank—he wasn't pushed aside for being Lonnie's queer son. Zombie Boy. The fairy, the fag.
They were confused as twins for so long. Every time, two voices rose inside him. One hating the comparison but not her, never her, the other craving for something that connected him to Hawkins, his friends and Mike (and despising himself for thinking of her like that).
“In Cali, with everything that was happening… even if for him I didn’t exist and you were his whole world, I never hated you. Even if I couldn't defend you from Angela, even if I was an awful brother.”
He didn't even let her see the painting while he was doing it.
Scared it would be poisoned in some way.
In the end, he guesses it was.
Pulling his knees up to his chest, fingers hooking at his wool, fuzzy socks, bringing them up. Even after everything, he still doesn't like feeling cold. At least, the fast beating of his heart as he confesses how awful he is warms him.
“You are a great brother, Will,” Jane reassured, letting her hand move up his arm.
“I’m not—”
“You are. You were. You always were.”
Jane drags the blanket over the two of them. The tears have stopped for now, and Will grins lightly at her. A gesture that she returns.
“You just wanted friends and a family. I know what it is. Be alone, need a friend…I ruined that whole day.”
“It was your birthday, Will.”
Will shakes his head; he does not want to go there. That wound is still too painful.
We’re friends! Just friends!
“You didn’t know," Will shrugged, watching the day before in his head. He spent the afternoon before consoling her, running his hand up her back, promising they'd fix the diorama, and that everything would be okay soon because Mike was coming. "You wanted to have a good day. You needed it. I- I should've respected that instead of sulking.”
“It should have been your good day, Will.”
He had drifted off to dreams of a happy birthday and long, deep problem friendship restoring hug—an easy fix to a complicated friendship, a prelude for a painting that might allow him to move on.
“I thought Angela was right. That I didn’t belong. I thought I was the monster.”
His chest tightens. Shivers at the image of that disgusting collar around her neck after they found her. Imagining everything he knows she went through, all the things she had to endure, to save them all, and think, because of Angela, a nasty girl with nothing but popularity, it turned her into a monster.
He was such a bad brother.
“You always cared for me.” Jane curls up next to him, and it's muscular memory how his arm finds her shoulder and pulls her closer. “You helped me. You stayed. You hugged me. You taught me how to paint for the di-o-ra-ma.” She spells it out, which earns her a chuckle. "You held me while I cried about Hop…”
Their bond was still weak when she moved in with them, but whatever heartache he was feeling was nothing compared to mourning a father—a good one, who didn't leave but was taken. They held each other on the couch, with the sound of whatever romantic movie they had rented washing away the loneliness of their lives.
"You were so kind. You help me made it again to show him."
They took a whole day to remake it—gobbling down popsicles just to keep the sticks, waiting in the sun for it to dry. Guiding her hand as she painted the figurines, while he tried gluing toothpicks to already-made little trees, made them more realistic by adding branches. She had barely kept her food down, wanting to finish dinner as quickly as possible so she could erase a bad memory with her family.
Joyce applauded when she was done, and so did Will. Hopper engulfed her in a hug (and Will chose not to say why it was important to do it, why a redo was definitely needed, refusing his mother with mentions of secrets between siblings, even non-blood ones).
"And I was mean… so mean to you that day. About Angela and Mike. I'm sorry.”
Maybe she was. Maybe he was. Maybe they were both projecting insecurities.
But you make her feel like she's not a mistake at all.
He could never lie to Mike. He didn't.
He's certain to this day she feels that way about him.
“Joyce was your mom and Jonathan was your brother… and you just gave them to me. After I took Mike.”
Will’s feet drop to the ground, hands on her thighs. “You didn't take anyone! You were new to everything. Of course, you needed his support every step of the way. It wasn’t fair to just let you ride, you needed the training wheels. We all do.”
Jane looks to the side, at a picture on the wall of him, Jon and their mother. “You had a family, Will. And love so easy. I wanted to be you.”
A part of him didn't believe her. What could he have that she didn't?
Mike. Comes the voice from the back of his mind. Before she was here, he had him.
“Papa wanted to use me. The others didn’t like me. Kali—” Jane stops, a subject that is painful to her, Will knows. She had to mourn the only piece of humanity she had from a world of monsters, human or alien. “She thought I had to do what she wanted. She gave me choices but said what to pick. Like I couldn’t choose not what she did, because her choice would be the good. But she would understand why I chose like you, Will… Every day I choose like you.”
Before he can sense it, her arms crawl over his neck, the smell of her strawberry shampoo invading his nose. It reminds him of the ice cream they got in Lenora when his mom took them to the boardwalk.
“You always understood me, Will. Better than Hop. Better than Mike. I wouldn't have survived Lenora or Henry without you.”
There's something in her eyes he can't quite pierce. A tiny spectacle, almost invisible to the naked eye, of either regret or guilt. He knew it well.
“I chose to be like you, thinking about your kind words and imagining your sweet eyes help me.”
Why would she ever need his eyes when hers were so kind and angelic?
“Mike is my boyfriend,” she reassures, which he would do as well, “but you are my brother. I love you the most.”
He scoffs, with a quiet giggle. “You don't have to lie.”
“Friends don't lie. Brother and sister don't lie, Will. I love you.”
Loved. He has a whole life to be yearned for. This love, now, real, mattered.
“You're the best sister I could ask for. I love you, too.”
“I am here, Will, for anything.”
He pulls her onto himself, hiding his face on her head, so he can cry more without having to maintain eye contact.
“I'm sorry that I want him to love me. I should just want his friendship. I'm sorry I’m an egotistical jerk who called you stupid just because he was dating you. I'm so sorry.”
Jane returns her head to the crook of his neck. “No. I'm sorry for making you feel like you were being replaced.”
“I'm sorry for not loving you instantly when that was all you ever wanted.”
“And I’m sorry for letting it take—”
She cuts herself off, her arms coming to grab him closer, leaning into his neck. He feels her nose press soft and needy against it, eyes shut together, wet growing around the rims. She grabs at him, tightly, murmuring apologies.
“Is all fine, Jane. We’re okay. I just need time. I’m not over but I will be.”
Maybe he won’t. But if she knows, it will be easier. It will give him a reason. If he can't move on for himself, he'll move on for her.
He owes her that.
“I-I opened it.” She mumbles, voice barely even a whisper.
Will thinks momentarily about the first gate, but—
“The door,” she continues.
He remembers a lost bike.
He remembers a chase home.
He remembers a golden chain that moved like it shouldn't.
That voice that longs to hate her rouses again—satisfied, accomplished. It wants to push and scowl and scream. It wants to take back what it feels entitled to. It wants to shout. It wants to hate.
He hugs her tightly.
Henry’s powers came from fear and rage. Will got them only because of love.
The choice is clear.
“Next time…” he starts, as he holds her face in his hands, the eyes of the scared children they both were looking into each other. “You get me Lonnie’s shotgun.”
“We fix it together, okay?”
“Together.” She answers back, head barely moving up and down, her fingers coming to steady themselves on his pulses.
As they hug, bonds are reformed.
All is well because he has Jane.
His sister.
A guiding star to help him move every step of the way.
Once he finds the sun, clouds won't matter as much.