Chapter Text
Will Byers knows Eleven.
He knows her the way you know a legend that’s been repeated so often it starts to feel realer than a story. He knows she’s the girl who saved his life more times than he can count. He knows she has superpowers. He knows she was raised in a lab, that grown men in white coats turned her childhood into a series of tests and numbers. He knows that Eleven isn’t a name.
He knows all of that.
What Will doesn’t know is Jane.
He doesn’t know her favorite color, or whether she prefers mornings or nights. He doesn’t know if she likes cartoons or old movies like Jonathan, if she hums when she’s bored, or what she does when she can finally be alone with her thoughts. He doesn’t know what makes her laugh, or what makes her quiet in that particular way that means something hurts but she doesn’t have the words for it yet.
And that scares him more than he wants to admit.
Eleven has technically been in Will’s life for nearly three years now, and yet, somehow, she’s always felt just out of reach. Like a story passed between him and his friends rather than a person he’s actually known.
When Will came back from the Upside Down, pale and shaking and barely real himself, they told him about her. About a girl who could flip vans and snap necks with her mind. About how she’d fought monsters while he’d been lost, how she’d closed a gate between worlds by herself. While Will had been trapped, screaming in the dark, Eleven had been fighting alongside his friends.
She was a superhero in their stories. A miracle. A weapon.
And Will had listened, nodding along, trying to stitch together a sense of gratitude for a girl he’d never met.
Then she disappeared.
When she came back, it was different. She wasn’t just the girl who saved the world anymore, she was Mike’s girlfriend.
By then, the world had already learned how to move on without Will. Or at least, that’s how it felt.
The summer of 1984 had been the first real chance Will had to know the girl behind the stories. To sit beside her, to talk, to maybe become something like friends. He’d imagined it, imagined the three of them together, like before everything broke. Him, Mike, and this unknown girl.
Instead, Mike and Eleven clung to each other all summer long, ignoring all of their friends.
Will didn’t blame them. Not really.
But it still felt like a loss.
Every time he watched them walk ahead, fingers laced together, laughing in a way that excluded him without meaning to, something in Will tightened painfully in his chest. He’d lost time, lost innocence, lost a year of his life to another dimension — and now it felt like he was losing his best friend too. Along with any chance of knowing the girl who had saved him.
Eleven had remained a mystery. A presence. Someone always there, but never quite with him.
And now, somehow, she was going to live with him.
California felt unreal. Too bright. Too open. Hawkins had always been heavy with shadows, with memories that pressed close. Here, everything was wide and unfamiliar, like a blank page Will didn’t know how to fill.
What scared him wasn’t the move itself, it was what the move meant.
Because here, there was no Max to drag Eleven through shopping malls and teach her how to be a normal teenage girl. There was no Lucas to crack jokes until she laughed without thinking. No Dustin to explain the world to her with unfiltered excitement. No Mike to anchor her, to give her something that resembled an ordinary life.
Here, there was only Will.
Will, who knew monsters and fear and loss — but knew absolutely nothing about her.
He wondered if she felt the same distance. If she knew how little he understood her. If she saw him the way he saw her: as someone important, someone powerful, and yet strangely unreachable.
Will spent the first months in California doing his best impression of normal.
He went to school. He unpacked his boxes. He smiled when his mother smiled and said he was fine when she asked, because his mother had already lost enough. She had lost Hopper. El had lost him too. Maybe that was why they had clicked so quickly, grief recognizing grief, even when neither of them knew how to say it out loud.
Will watched as his mother and El found a strange comfort in each other. Joyce would tell stories about the former chief, sometimes funny, sometimes painfully tender, and El would listen with an intensity that made it feel like Hopper was still in the room with them. Sometimes Joyce even took El out on little outings, the mall, a diner, a walk through town, just the two of them. Will never complained. He told himself it made sense. They both needed something solid to hold on to.
Jonathan had clicked with El right away too.
His brother had been forced to leave behind everything that had started to feel stable for the first time in his life: his hometown, his friends, his career. And Nancy. Jonathan didn’t talk about her much, but Will noticed the way his brother lingered by the phone, the way his shoulders tightened every time a call ended, but Will could tell they missed each other so much.
Jonathan and Eleven were similar that way.
Like El, Jonathan had left behind a life that had finally begun to resemble something normal. Someone who made them feel safe. Someone who made the world feel less cruel.
When the Wheelers called, Will made himself disappear.
He’d pass the phone to Jonathan first or to El, and retreat to his room or the backyard, pretending he had something else to do. It felt easier that way. Let them talk to the people they missed. Let them pretend, for a few minutes, that distance wasn’t real.
Talking to Mike had become… impossible.
Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it. Their conversations were stiff and careful, full of pauses that stretched too long. Will never knew what to say anymore, and Mike didn’t either. It was nothing like before, nothing like the nights they’d spent talking into walkie-talkies until they fell asleep, voices crackling through the static, sharing everything and nothing all at once.
Now, the radio sat untouched most nights. It was useless here.
Sometimes Will stared at it anyway, fingers hovering just above the dial, wondering when exactly things had changed. Wondering if they could ever go back.
But the answer always felt the same.
Monsters. Alternate dimensions. Fights. Possession. More fights.
That was the summary of Will’s nights.
When he wasn’t dreaming of a dark place filled with rotting life, he dreamed of a towering shadow that stole his control, hollowed him out from the inside. Other nights, it wasn’t monsters at all, but arguments, sharp words thrown at his family, from his friend, things he wished he’d said before leaving Hawkins. Guilt tangled itself with fear until he couldn’t tell which one woke him up anymore.
There wasn’t a single night he didn’t wake drenched in sweat or shaking from the cold. Nights where the light had to stay on, where his chest felt too tight to breathe, where he barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up. His body remembered things his mind wanted to forget.
But none of this was new.
He’d had nightmares since he was younger. Back then, though, the monsters hadn’t been real. Or maybe they had been — maybe he was the monster now. A boy shaped by things no one else could see, by a world that refused to let him go.
Four months after the move, on a night when sleep refused to return, Will slipped quietly out of bed to get himself a glass of water. The house was silent, heavy with the kind of quiet that pressed against your ears.
That was when he heard her.
A soft, broken sound from down the hall.
El.
She was crying into her pillow, her breath uneven, her body curled in on itself like she was trying to disappear. The sight of her like that sent a sharp pull through Will’s chest; it was instinctive, immediate. Before he could talk himself out of it, he crossed the room.
He sat beside her and spoke softly, the way Joyce used to do when his nightmares were still new to her. Whispered reassurances, gentle words that didn’t need meaning to work. Just presence.
El woke with a gasp, eyes wide, locking onto his face as if grounding herself there. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They just stayed like that, sitting in the dark, really seeing each other — not as heroes or burdens or afterthoughts, but as two scared kids trying to survive.
Time stretched. Or maybe it disappeared entirely.
“Stay,” El whispered finally. “Please.”
So he did.
Will slid into the space beside her, careful at first, until the distance between them felt unnecessary. He curled himself close, and slowly, her fingers found their way into his hair. His hand rested against her shoulder, warm and steady. They soothed each other without words, matching breaths, grounding themselves in something real.
They fell asleep like that.
And somewhere between waking and dreaming, it hit him.
Maybe it hit her too.
Because after that night, nothing felt the same.
They were closer — not loudly, not obviously, but in a quiet way that mattered more. A shared understanding, built not on explanations, but on recognition.
Because here, in California, there was only Will and Jane.
Will, who knew monsters and fear and loss — but knew almost nothing about her.
Jane, who knew monsters and fear and loss — but knew almost nothing about him.
And maybe that was enough.
Maybe knowing that they had both survived the dark was all they needed to begin finding their way out of it, together.
Will was halfway through breakfast when the phone rang.
Joyce got up immediately, wiping her hands on a towel as she crossed the kitchen. Will barely paid attention — it was probably someone from her telemarketing job again, another overly cheerful voice asking about long-distance plans or magazine subscriptions.
So it caught him off guard when she didn’t hang up right away.
“Jane, sweetie!” Joyce called from the hallway a moment later. Her voice softened instinctively. “Mike is on the phone for you.”
Mike.
Even after months of distance, even after awkward calls and worse silences, the name still hit Will square in the chest. Something tight and sharp settled there before he could stop it. He glanced up just in time to see El’s face light up — really light up — her eyes bright, her whole posture changing like someone had flipped a switch.
It was rare for Mike to call this early. Especially on a school morning. Especially when he was supposed to see her in just three days.
Will didn’t need to think very hard to understand why.
He suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.
He stood, rinsed his plate in the sink, and retreated to his room under the excuse of getting ready. The door clicked shut behind him, and the first thing he saw was the painting.
The painting.
It leaned carefully against the wall, colors vivid, lines deliberate — something he had poured weeks of quiet effort into. Something meant for Mike. Will had spent hours perfecting it, losing himself in the brushstrokes, telling himself it didn’t mean anything more than friendship. Telling himself that his heart racing every time he imagined handing it over was just nerves.
Mike was finally coming. After almost a year.
He was supposed to come last Thanksgiving. Will still remembered the disappointment curling low in his stomach when the trip was canceled — some emergency with Mike’s grandmother. He’d swallowed it down immediately after seeing Jonathan’s crestfallen expression and El’s barely hidden heartbreak. Compared to that, his own feelings had seemed selfish. Unimportant.
So he’d stopped himself from hoping.
Especially after the phone calls grew stiff. After Will’s long letters — full of drawings and feelings and things he didn’t know how to say out loud — were answered with short, polite replies. After the fight they never really talked about. After Castle Byers.
Maybe, Will thought, they’d fall back into place like before.
Or maybe it would be just as awkward as everything else had been.
He didn’t let himself decide which scared him more.
The drive to school was quiet. Too quiet.
Argyle’s pizza van rattled along the road, the radio playing softly. Will noticed it before anyone said anything — the way Jonathan kept glancing at El in the rearview mirror, the way her jaw was clenched tight, her hands balled into fists in her lap.
El looked angry.
That was new. Especially after a call from Mike.
Before Will could ask what was wrong, she turned sharply toward him.
“He is not coming,” El said, her voice sharp with something between anger and hurt.
“W–what?” Will stammered. “You mean… Mike’s not coming here for spring break?”
El looked away, swallowing. “He has bad grades,” she said quietly. “His mom is very angry.”
“Oh.”
The word fell flat and useless between them.
Disappointment flooded Will’s chest all over again, heavier this time, like his body had memorized the feeling. He turned toward the window, pressing his hand to his mouth. He would not cry. Not here. Not in front of everyone.
Jonathan broke the silence.
“Jane,” he said gently, trying to sound hopeful, “I could book the three of us a flight. I’m sure Mom would be okay with it.”
El snapped her head up, frustration flashing across her face.
“No,” she said firmly. Then softer, almost ashamed, “I do not have a passport.”
Of course she didn’t. With her past, even paperwork was a battlefield.
After a moment, she added, “You should still go. You and Will.” Her voice wavered just slightly. “Mike will be happy to see him.”
Will’s heart jumped painfully at that. The thought of Hawkins — Lucas, Max, Dustin, Mike — rushed through him like sunlight after months of gray. Home. Familiar laughter. The chance to pretend, just for a little while, that nothing had changed.
And then the thought of leaving El alone in California followed immediately after.
No passport. No Mike. No Hawkins.
He shook his head before he could second-guess himself.
“She’s right, Jon,” Will said quietly. “You should go. See Nancy.”
Jonathan hesitated, clearly torn.
“I’ll stay here,” Will continued, glancing at El. “With Jane. In Lenora.”
El looked at him then — really looked at him — surprise softening the anger in her eyes.
And for the first time since the call, the tightness in Will’s chest eased just a little.
Three days later, they stood at the airport.
Will realized, with a strange jolt in his chest, that he had never been separated from Jonathan for this long — or this far away. The thought made his throat tighten. He hugged his brother fiercely, arms locked around him like he was afraid letting go would make the distance real.
Jonathan hugged him back just as tightly. Then, without a word, he pressed a kiss to Will’s temple — something he only ever did when Will was upset, when words weren’t enough. It almost broke him.
“Call me, okay?” Jonathan murmured.
Will nodded, unable to trust his voice.
After the final goodbyes, Argyle drove them home, the van rattling and humming like it always did. El sat in the back seat, staring out the window, shoulders slumped. She’d been sulking ever since the airport — ever since yesterday, really. The phone call from Mike, the disaster at school, and watching Jonathan fly off toward something better had clearly taken a toll on her.
Will understood.
Thinking about school made his stomach twist.
At first, they’d managed to stay under the radar. No friends, but no bullies either — which had felt like a small mercy. But eventually Angela and her friends had noticed them. They’d laughed about their different last names, asked why siblings didn’t match, pointed out everything that made them strange.
After a while, their interest in Will faded. He knew why. If you didn’t give bullies anything, they eventually got bored.
Eventually.
El never managed to do that.
No matter how many times Will told her to ignore them, she walked straight into Angela’s traps every time. It wasn’t her fault — Will knew that. Growing up locked away from the world meant she didn’t have the instincts, the unspoken rules everyone else seemed to know.
So Will stayed quiet while they laughed. He apologized to El over and over,bshe was the one who defended him the most, even when she didn’t fully understand the words they were calling him. He hated that about himself. Hated the way he froze every time. The way his body betrayed him, locked him in place.
Yesterday, more than ever, he’d wished he could be someone else.
Max, with her sharp tongue. Dustin, with his clever comebacks. Mike or Lucas, brave enough to step in front of El and shove Angela to the ground if they had to.
Anyone but himself.
Now, back home, all Will could do was help El build back her school project. They sat at the small kitchen table, glue sticks and colored paper spread between them. El worked carefully, her brow furrowed in concentration.
She was humming.
Will recognized the tune, something he’d heard on the radio earlier that week. The sound made him smile before he could stop himself. Less than a year ago, El hadn’t known any songs. Now she hummed one on her own, absentminded and comfortable. It felt like progress. Like proof that things could still change.
“He wrote letters,” El said suddenly.
Will looked up. “Who?”
“Mike,” she clarified. “He sent letters to tell us he could not come. But… they did not arrive.” She frowned. “So he called instead.”
That explained the early morning call.
“I am mad,” El continued, pressing a piece of paper flat. “He does not co-communicate well. He waits too long. He does not say what he feels.”
Will swallowed. He knew that feeling too well.
She hesitated, then looked at him, eyes uncertain. “Do you think… Mike loves me?”
The question landed heavy between them.
Will didn’t answer right away. He chose his words carefully, like stepping through a minefield.
“I think,” he said slowly, “Mike cares about you a lot. He’s just… bad at showing it sometimes. Especially when things are hard.”
El studied his face, like she was searching for something honest there.
“He should try harder,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” Will agreed, voice just as soft. “He should.”
For a moment, they sat in silence, side by side, the hum of the house wrapping around them.
The thought of Mike not saying he loved El weighed heavily on Will. He, who had poured every feeling he could never put into words into a painting for Mike, felt the ache of helplessness all over again. Millions of thoughts, things he would have said if only he had the courage, swirled through his mind. And now Mike, someone who had always been so guarded with his feelings, had El here, hurting, without a word to reassure her.
Will exhaled slowly, trying to calm the tightness in his chest. He couldn’t fix his relationship with Mike, but maybe he could fix this — maybe he could do something small for El, something to remind her she wasn’t alone.
“Hey,” he said carefully, voice low, hesitant at first. “We should do something… just the two of us. What do you think?”
El looked up from the paper she was folding, a spark in her eyes. A small, genuine smile appeared on her lips — the kind that made Will’s chest tighten in a different way, one that had nothing to do with fear.
“We should go to Rink-O-Mania,” she said, voice bright with excitement, almost bouncing in her seat.
“Yeah,” Will replied, letting his own excitement shine through, trying to keep up. “I’ll tell mom.”
Roller skates in hand, they approached the booth, nerves buzzing through Will’s veins. He tried not to look at the rink too closely, worried he would run into someone from school — worried that even here, far from Hawkins, they couldn’t escape the past.
Once they stepped onto the rink, though, all of that melted away. Music pulsed, lights spun across the polished floor, and the sound of laughter swirled around them. Will felt himself lighten, just a little, as El grabbed his hand and pulled him forward.
For what felt like hours, they skated together. He twirled her gently, she laughed freely, and sometimes they crashed into each other, giggling until their stomachs hurt. Will’s chest swelled as he heard her laugh, so pure and unburdened, and he realized he hadn’t seen her like this in months. The way her hair caught the light as they spun, the way her eyes sparkled when she was genuinely happy — it was breathtaking.
Eventually, Will went to get them something to eat. The smell of pizza and popcorn made his stomach rumble, but nerves still tingled under his skin. As he paid for their snacks, a voice cut through the rink over the speakers:
“All right, everyone! This next song is dedicated to Jane, the local snitch!”
Will froze.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Before he could even react, he saw her.
El was frozen in the middle of the rink, small and vulnerable under the spotlight. Angela and her friends surrounded her, grinning cruelly, like predators circling prey. Panic slammed through Will’s chest. Not again. Not her.
Spotlights snapped onto El as music blared through the speakers, amplifying the humiliation. The other students began skating around her, mimicking the hand movements she had made at school — the same gestures she used when she had powers. Will’s stomach churned. If only they knew what she was truly capable of, he thought, their laughter would vanish in an instant.
He tried to reach her, weaving desperately through the crowd, but the rink entrance was blocked. He could only watch as El covered her ears, trembling, looking around desperately for him.
“Wipeout!” someone shouted — and then, a chocolate milkshake hit her unexpectedly. Cold, sticky, and heavy, it tipped her off balance. She fell to the ground with a thud.
“El!” Will screamed, ignoring every startled glance and open mouth around him. “EL!”
But she was gone. The only trace of her was the puddle of milkshake spreading across the floor. Panic surged. His heart raced, hands shaking as he pushed past bodies, searching desperately. The crowd had grown denser, and the rink suddenly felt like a maze.
Time stretched. He had no sense of it, no idea how long he ran. And then — a scream. High-pitched, sharp. Not El’s, but he followed it instinctively anyway.
What he saw froze him.
Angela lay on the floor, screaming, tears and blood streaming down her face from a nosebleed. And standing over her, steady and unflinching, was El — holding a roller skate in her hand like a weapon. Her stance was calm, controlled, every movement precise.
“Shit,” Will whispered under his breath. Relief, awe, and a surge of protectiveness hit him all at once.
He rushed to her side, taking her arms gently, helping her to sit on a nearby booth. She leaned into him immediately, burying her face in his neck, trembling slightly. Will stroked her hair and rubbed her shoulders, the same way he had done on nights when nightmares had kept her awake. He could feel the tension in her body slowly release as she clung to him.
They stayed like that, side by side, the chaos of the rink continuing around them. People stared. Some whispered. Paramedics tended to Angela nearby. And yet, for Will and El, none of that mattered.
His mom didn’t ask about their day.
That alone felt wrong.
She moved around the kitchen with distracted efficiency, her brow furrowed, her attention clearly somewhere else. At first, Will told himself it was Jonathan — that the house still felt too empty without him, that she was just adjusting to the quiet the way Will was. Jonathan’s absence echoed in every room, a silence that didn’t quite settle.
Dinner passed like nothing had happened.
They sat around the table, forks scraping against plates, Joyce asking about homework and schedules in a tone that was just a little too normal. El barely spoke. She stared down at her food, pushing it around without eating much. Will watched her carefully, searching her face for something he could respond to, something he could acknowledge without opening a door he wasn’t ready for.
But nothing felt safe to say.
After dinner, Joyce finally stopped pacing.
“I need to tell you both something,” she said, voice tight but careful. “I just found out I have to go on a work trip. Alaska. It’s last minute.”
El looked up immediately, confusion flickering across her face. Will felt his chest sink.
“Alaska?” he repeated. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Joyce said quickly. “It’s only for a few days. I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t important, I promise.”
She kept talking — about conferences, about work obligations, but Will stopped listening somewhere in the middle. His mind snagged on the word important. Mom never left unless she had to. Never left her kids alone unless something bigger was pulling her away.
Jonathan was already gone.
Now his mom too.
Will didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t ask the questions pressing against his tongue. He just nodded, because that was what he always did when his mother looked this worried.
Joyce hesitated, eyes flicking between them. “I don’t like leaving you two alone,” she admitted softly. “Especially now.”
“We’ll be okay,” Will said automatically.
El nodded beside him, but her hands were clenched tightly in her lap.
Later that night, they stood in the doorway as Joyce packed her bag. She hugged Will first, long and tight, like she was trying to memorize him.
“I’ll call,” she promised into his hair.
“I know,” Will whispered, though the words felt thin.
Joyce turned to El next, pulling her close, murmuring reassurances Will couldn’t quite hear. El clung to her longer than usual. Will watched, heart aching, knowing that Joyce was the one person who could comfort El in a way he still didn’t know how to.
When his mom’s bedroom door finally closed, the house felt too big.
Too quiet.
They didn’t talk much after that. There didn’t seem to be a need.
They went to bed together without discussing it, like it was the most natural thing in the world. El crawled under the covers beside him, curling in close. For a while, they just lay there in the dark, listening to each other breathe.
Then El started to cry.
Not loudly. Not all at once. Just quiet, broken sobs that shook her shoulders.
“I feel like a monster,” she whispered finally.
The words hit Will hard, knocking the air from his lungs.
He didn’t answer.
Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know how. Because anything he said would feel like a lie, he knew that. Instead, he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her tighter, grounding them both in the warmth of something real.
He knew that feeling too well, that's all he felt during his possession.
“I hurt her,” El said, voice trembling. “I didn’t want to… but I did.”
Will swallowed. His hand moved slowly, steady against her back.
“I think Mike would be scared of me,” she continued, barely louder than a breath. “Maybe he already is.”
Will closed his eyes.
She talked about Mike for a long time, about missing him, about not understanding why he couldn’t say the things she needed to hear, about how lonely it felt to want something so badly and not know if it was being returned.
Will listened.
He always listened.
And when her words finally ran out, when exhaustion pulled her closer to sleep, Will stayed awake.
The room was dark except for the faint glow of the streetlight outside, shadows stretching across the walls like things with intent. El’s breathing evened out against his chest, slow and steady, her fingers still curled tightly in the fabric of his shirt as if she was afraid he might disappear if she let go.
Will didn’t move.
He held her like he was holding a part of himself, fragile, familiar, irreplaceable. His mind wouldn’t slow down the way his body begged it to. Thoughts circled endlessly, heavy and sharp. About monsters and mistakes. About how easy it was for the world to decide what someone was and never bother to look deeper.
He didn’t have answers.
He only had the certainty that if El was a monster, then so was he — and that neither of them deserved to be hunted for surviving.
Sleep eventually took him in pieces, shallow and restless.
When Will woke, sunlight spilled across the room, pale and too bright. For one terrifying second, he thought he was alone. Then he felt the warmth beside him, the steady rise and fall of El’s chest.
Relief washed through him.
Careful not to wake her, Will slipped out of bed. The house was quiet in the way it only was when his mom wasn’t home, empty, echoing, unfamiliar. He pulled on a sweater and padded into the kitchen, deciding without really thinking that he would make El breakfast. Something normal. Something grounding.
He slid waffles into the toaster, the smell already beginning to fill the room.
Then the doorbell rang.
Will frowned. No one was supposed to be here. His first thought, absurdly, was Argyle — maybe he’d forgotten Jonathan was gone and was too high to remember. The bell rang again, louder this time. Sharper.
Angrier.
A cold feeling crept up Will’s spine.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and walked toward the front door, each step slower than the last. When he opened it, the world seemed to tilt.
Two police officers stood on the porch.
In an instant, everything crashed back into him at once; the rink, the spotlight, Angela’s bloodied face, the roller skate heavy in El’s hand.
El.
Not beside him. Not here.
“Is this the residence of Jane Hopper?” the taller officer asked, voice neutral, practiced.
Will’s heart slammed violently against his ribs.
“Yes,” he said, the word coming out thinner than he meant it to. “She— she lives here.”
The officer nodded, glancing at his partner. “We need to speak with her. And with her guardian.”
Will swallowed hard. Mom was in Alaska. Jonathan was gone. The weight of that settled heavily on his shoulders.
“She’s asleep,” Will said, trying to keep his voice steady. “My mom’s out of town.”
The officers exchanged another look.
“May we come in?” the shorter one asked.
Will hesitated for half a second, long enough for fear to bloom — then stepped aside he had no choice.
As they entered, Will’s gaze flicked instinctively down the hallway, toward his bedroom door. Toward El.
He didn’t know what they were going to say.
He didn’t know what was going to happen next.
But as the toaster popped loudly in the kitchen, filling the silence with a jarring normalcy, Will knew one thing with absolute clarity.
He wasn’t going to let her face this alone.