Chapter Text
Six years had passed since graduation in Hawkins, Indiana. It was 1995, and the party was spread out across the USA.
Will Byers was living in New York, working as an artist and trying to find his footing. Most of his time was spent on small projects and commissions, nothing that paid much, but it was work he cared about. He didn’t mind the arrangement, staying in the spare room of Jonathan and Nancy’s apartment while he figured things out.
When his mother called, worried as always, he gave her the same reassurance every time: “It’s not a big deal yet, but I’m learning. I like what I’m doing.”
Even through the phone, he could sense the quiet judgement of his gruff but well-meaning stepfather.
Steve was still in Hawkins, deliriously happy with his wife, Jenny, and their firstborn, a boy named Danny after his father and his middle name Edward after the man who saved his life. “Life’s good,” Steve would often remark, holding Jack in his arms to Mike who would feign interest, whenever they would see each other at the new Melvlad’s cafe.
Robin lived in New York too, not far from Nancy and Jonathan’s place. She’d never really been able to stay away. She and Nancy worked together, officially as journalists, though in practice they were closer to private investigators. Jonathan usually turned their stories into low-budget short films, which ended up finding an unexpected audience on the British channel, Channel 4.
Dustin was in Boston, still studying at Harvard. Mike liked to joke that it was only a matter of time before Dustin took over the world as a theoretical physicist. He had just started his PhD and was lecturing first-year students part-time.
Despite all that, he was still dating Stacy, his girlfriend from that last summer in Hawkins. The relationship was tense and often draining; especially for Mike who had to hear about it on the phone regularly. It was held together more by history and familiarity than happiness, but Dustin hadn’t quite found the courage to walk away yet.
Lucas was on the road most of the year, playing professional basketball. The schedule was demanding, but it was the life he’d worked for. Max travelled with him when she could, balancing her own career as a sports physiotherapist. When she wasn’t rehabbing injuries or analysing movement, she was usually thinking about the ocean, surfing was still the one thing that fully switched her off from the monsters from years ago.
He proposed quietly, away from crowds and cameras, on a stretch of coast Max loved. She said yes without hesitation.
And this is where we find our storyteller, Mike, short for Michael, staring at a wedding invitation with a short note from Lucas.
“Take some time out of the damn press tour to answer your phone! I need you on that altar with me, I can’t let Dustin and Will take over” the note read.
Mike hadn’t really moved on. He was still in Hawkins, living with his parents and writing. He wrote constantly stories, novels, scripts, anything that would let him stay in his own head a little longer.
Without telling him, his know-it-all younger sister Holly had sent his first manuscript to a handful of publishers. It was a story about a girl who discovers she has supernatural powers. “I honestly never thought it would go anywhere,” Mike admitted to his mother, still slightly stunned by how quickly it had taken off.
Within a year, he was writing the third novel in a series, developing a movie series, and branching into new genres. In the six years he had stayed in Hawkins, he only left for the stupid press tours his agent made him go on and to guest speak at the school once a year to seniors, his pain role was to spread positive propaganda about the town. “I love Hawkins,” he would say to the bored students. “It’s home, and it’s where my heart is.” He cringed hearing himself say those words every year knowing his home and his heart was so much farther away.
He thought about her every day. His girl, his person, his soulmate. It never got easier, but he had grown to accept her choices.
In the Icelandic countryside, 20 minutes from Reykjavik, there was a small cottage where a young woman lived. The town had grown fiercely protective of her and her young daughter, now five, with bouncing black curls and pale porcelain skin.
The woman had arrived years before in dirty clothes, with a small bump and begging for a job. The town held her together, gave her a job, a home, and treasured her.
When asked her name, she said it without thinking, knowing she couldn’t use Jane Hopper anymore. The government would surely have some trigger on that name.
Elle Wheeler. El for short.
She worked in a small café as a waitress at first and now was the lead baker. Her daughter, Joy, was starting school and every day made her way to the bakery. They would arrive back at their cottage by 5 p.m. and cook dinner side by side, watching some cartoons or singing. El would sit diligently after that with Joy and complete her homework with her, bathe her while singing show tunes, and read her stories at night. Recently, she picked up some novels Joy was too young to understand, but someday she would. For now, El just read them herself every night.
On her down days, which usually happened when Joy was at school and she was off work, she would visit him. Watch him for a while. She watched through the void as he opened what looked like fan mail but was actually a wedding invite and went to the sofa and sobbed. She watched as he picked up a photo of her and cried more, and she herself began to cry as he said, “It should be us too.”
It was at that low moment she did something so out of character. She picked up a pen and a postcard, wrote down his address on Maple Lane, and scrawled a short message. In a haze, she walked to the post office and sent it before doubting herself. “What if he doesn’t want to hear from me?” she wondered, her heart pounding.
——
About three weeks later, his mother’s voice echoed from upstairs, sharp and demanding. “Who the hell do you know from Iceland!?”
Intrigued, he pushed away from his computer and climbed the stairs, his curiosity piqued.
The postcard in his hand was stunning, depicting two or three cascading waterfalls. On the back, a simple yet poignant message read: “The White Cottage, Skógar, South Iceland… I am sorry and I love you.” He stared at the image, disbelief washing over him, and knew he had to call his agent. He was going to Iceland.