Chapter Text
The day was sunny. That’s what hurt Mike the most about the funeral.
It wasn’t the line of people dressed in black, all of whom hugged him and told him how sorry they were for his loss. It wasn’t the sobs of Joyce, gasping and uncontrollable. It wasn’t even the moment they lowered the small coffin into the ground, the mourners tossing daffodils—his favorite—into the grave, before the groundskeeper began to shovel the dirt back up.
No, it was a gorgeous day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun was so bright, beads of sweat dripped into Mike’s eyes. A soft breeze flew through the cemetery, taking green leaves from trees with it. It would have been an absolutely perfect day if not for the fact Mike was watching them bury his best friend since he was five years old.
He stood at the gravestone as the groundskeeper finished his work, packing the dirt firm. The rest of the funeral party had already drifted away to allow the family a moment alone. There was Joyce, still sobbing into a yellow handkerchief. There was Jonathan, clearly trying not to cry, trying to keep it together for his family. Hopper, the stepdad, Jane, the stepsister, all quietly crying. And Mike, because even though he wasn’t family, he might as well have been.
William Jacob Byers, the headstone read. 1971-1988. A loving brother, son, and friend.
Mike had a flash of him bashing his head against the stone until he woke up from whatever horrible dream this was. He would wake up and he would be in the basement with Will on another sleepover, and would roll over to find him sound asleep. In the morning he would hug Will so tight the oxygen would squeeze out of his lungs and Will would croak what’s going on?
This wasn’t a dream, though. It felt like a dream since three days ago when Mike walked downstairs for breakfast to find his mom dabbing her eyes with a tissue at the kitchen table. When she grabbed his hand, even though she hadn’t done that since he was a kid, and told him in a quiet, hushed voice, it’s Will.
A heart condition. No one knew about it, and his doctors had never tested him for it, and he showed no symptoms, so how would anyone know? It was natural causes, just an unfortunate thing.
So many of Mike’s memories were tied to Will’s heart. When they used to share the bed during their elementary-school sleepovers, laying his head on Will’s chest. When Will came back after The Bad Week, Mike threw himself at Will just to hear his heartbeat to prove he was alive. The way Mike’s fingers would find Will’s pulse automatically when Mike would grab his hand to drag him across the arcade or through the mall.
And Mike’s heart would always react in turn around Will, beating fast and feeling all squeezy.
So of course. Of fucking course one of Mike’s favorite things about Will would be the thing that killed him.
The Byers-Hopper family all laid one last daffodil on Will’s grave. Hopper first, muttering a simple, “Rest easy, kid.” Jane didn’t say a word, just wept silently. Then Jonathan, telling Will to “draw something cool for me, okay?”
Then it was Mike’s turn. The family stood behind him, waiting to hear what Mike would say. Everyone always said Mike had a way with words. English was his best subject in school, after all. Everyone wanted to hear what beautiful eulogy Mike would come up with for his best friend, something rivaling Shakespeare that would comfort the family all a little.
But Mike couldn’t think of any words to say, because there really were no words to describe Will and what he meant to Mike, right? There wasn’t a single word in any language that could sum up everything that was Will Byers.
God, was. Everytime Mike remembered he now had to think of his best friend in the past tense now just felt like a knife to the neck or a bullet to the brain.
“Bye, Will,” Mike whispered. He felt bad about it. Will deserved better than that. But the only thing Mike really wanted to say was something he couldn’t say out loud.
I love you.
—--
Mike had to go back to school on Monday. His mom had let him take a few days off to cope with the shock, but he couldn’t stay home forever.
So he went to school. He didn’t bother to comb his hair or brush his teeth, munching down a single piece of toast.
The pain started as soon as he crossed the threshold into Hawkins High. Mike and Will always walked into school together. They had every day since they became friends, and except for The Bad Week when Will wasn’t there,, it hadn’t changed. Even as people whispered and joked about how “close” they were, they didn’t stop.
But Mike was alone, watching as his classmates stared at him. Usually, he would stare right back, freak them out until they turned away. He didn’t bother. Let them watch me.
Eventually, he made it to his locker, meeting Dustin, Lucas, and Max. Lucas was the first to greet Mike, wrapping him into a large hug.
“How are you doing?” he asked quietly.
“Fine,” Mike lied, looking out the side of his eye so as to not meet Lucas’s gaze.
He wasn’t fine. Why would he? Every day for the past week he woke up to emptiness. An empty room at the Byers’ house a mile away. An empty voice on the airwaves of his walkie-talkie. An emptiness in Mike’s soul he didn’t think would ever get filled.
“We miss him too, dude,” Dustin said. “I know it sucks. It was like this with my Dad. but it gets easier. It still hurts, but it gets easier.”
You were six when your dad died, Dustin. Not seventeen with over ten years of memories.
Mike usually wasn’t a bitch. Grief does funny things to people, he supposed.
He turned to face Max, steeling himself for a sarcastic comment from her. That was their relationship. She would make fun of his face, or his hobbies, or everything, really. Then he would retort back an equally-unkind thing, and Lucas would tell them to cut it out, you’re both almost eighteen, Jesus Christ.
Max’s face softened, looking at Mike with an expression he had never seen on the usually fiery girl. Pity.
“Are you taking care of yourself, Mike? You don’t look healthy.”
“But that’s my natural state, right?” he snipped at her. “You’re going to follow up with something about how I always look like an emaciated Victorian child or a sentient skeleton, like you always do.”
Max took a step back. “Jesus, Mike, do you think so low of me that you think I’d make fun of you while you’re grieving?”
“It’s not any different than the way you usually treat me,” Mike snipped. “So just say the punchline again. I can take it.”
Max muttered something in Lucas’s ear before turning around and storming away. Lucas looked to face Mike.
“Dude, she was just trying to be nice. You don’t have to be so mean to her.”
“She was going to say something rude eventually, that’s how she always is.”
Lucas slammed his locker. “Always is? Or just to you because you aren’t nice to her either? Mike, I know you’re sad about Will. We all are. But that doesn’t give you permission to be rude to my girlfriend.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t care about me.”
“She does, deep down. We all care about you, dude.”
“None of you do. If you really cared about me, you would understand how I’m feeling right now. You would understand I’m not interested in being ‘nice’ because the nicest thing in my entire life is fucking gone!”
Mike turned his back on his friends and stormed down the hallway, the eyes of the Party (and twenty other students) staring at him with laser sharp precision. Mike headed down the hallway, turning towards the gym and going out the door there. He didn’t feel like going to school.
Mike kept walking until he made his way under the bleachers of the football field. This was one of his and Will’s spots. Where they would go when they wanted to hide away in gym or cut class for a period. Sometimes Will would light up one of his cigarettes even though Mike always told him they’re gross, dude, and Will would smirk back and say you’re just jealous because they make me look cooler than you.
Mike always secretly wanted to bum one off of him. Him and Will already shared everything: secrets and gossip, drinks and snacks, clothes and beds when they were little. What was one more thing to share? He wanted to know what Will liked about smoking so much. Feel the filter still damp with Will’s spit, inhale from the same source until his lungs and Will’s lungs were filled with the same stuff.
Mike slid down to the grass, staring up at the graffiti’d bleachers. Decades worth of high school drama was scribbled on the underside. Steve Harrington wz here, RB + VD, Tigers basketball rock!
One time, Mike and Will snuck out to their spot to find a sharpied MW+ WB under one of the bleachers. Mike had run his fingers over the ink, long since dried. Do you think this is us? He had asked.
Will rolled his eyes. Probably a joke. You know what people say about me. It was true. Ever since elementary school, rumors had swirled that Will was…queer. It was a favorite target of the bullies in Will’s life, who would kick dirt in his face as they called him fairy and pansy. Mike would always push them away, help Will off the ground, brush the dirt off his pants.
As the boys got older, and their friendship still stayed strong as after, the rumors started to attach themselves onto Mike too. One particularly nasty rumor swirled after homecoming sophomore year that Mike and Will “hooked up” outside the gym. It wasn’t true, obviously—Mike had a girlfriend at the time.
Will never said anything about the rumors, if they were true or not. Mike assumed they weren’t. Will would have told him if he was gay, after all. They were friends, they didn’t keep secrets from each other. And anyway, Will had gone out with girls to dances before. He clearly liked them too.
Mike kept inspecting the scribbled graffiti. Will pulled out a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and flicked the lighter. I’ll come by tomorrow with some rubbing alcohol or something. Wipe it away.
You don’t have to, Mike had said quickly. It doesn’t—it doesn’t bother me, if it doesn’t bother you.
Will had raised an eyebrow. It can be, like, a friendship thing, Mike continued. We’re going to be friends forever.
Someone wrote the initials in a heart, Mike.
Hearts can be platonic!
Will had sighed, but he never wiped it away. The heart and initials still stared overhead like a constellation only the two of them knew where to find.
One, now.
Mike started to cry. He just wanted Will back.
—
A month had passed since Will died.
Mike felt like he was sleepwalking, drifting in and out of his life. He woke up. He went to school. He would go home. Sometimes he would go to the Byers’ house, but not often. He found the absence of Will was too much to bear. There were still bits of him around—his faded yellow sweatshirt still slung on their kitchen table, his drawings hung up on the walls—and sometimes, Mike could pretend Will wasn’t really gone. He was just out for an errand or something, would pop in with his large smile and bright eyes and everything would be ok.
Mike tried not to pretend that much. It only hurt worse when he stared at the door, and Will never opened it.
Mike watched as the rest of the Party started to act more like their old selves. There was still flashes of sadness in their eyes sometimes, but they started to crack jokes again, and make plans. Go to the movies. Go to the arcade.
Mike wanted to scream at them. How could they just act normal when Will was fucking dead? How could they go out and about and act like normal teens when one of their own was gone?
He hated his friends. They shouldn’t act like this. They needed to be grieving forever, that was the only appropriate way to remember someone as incredible as Will Byers. They were moving on as if Will had never existed. Even fucking Jane, Will’s fucking sister, started to act more like herself. Smiling more often.
His Mom was worried. She was always asking Mike if he wanted to talk to a professional, someone who specializes in this sort of thing. He turned her down every time. Nancy worried too. She had started taking Mike out for little things—ice cream, new comics, saying you can talk to me about anything, you know. I babysat for you both. I miss him too.
But Mike couldn’t get ice cream without remembering Will, how he would always get one scoop of strawberry topped with Reese's pieces, which sounded disgusting but Will always swore by it. He couldn’t buy new comics knowing he couldn’t discuss them with Will afterward, trading them between themselves. And he couldn’t talk to Nancy without reflecting on him and Will as kids, little elementary schoolers who would have sleepovers every night and share their lunches and play pretend in their backyards.
Mike was sleepwalking. He would never wake up, and he was okay with that.
Until biology class.
—-
As was to be expected, Mike’s grades had dropped. Even though there was only a few months left in the school year, Mike stopped turning stuff in. He skipped about three to four classes a week. His teachers were sympathetic at first, giving him extensions on assignments. But now they kept threatening summer school for him, otherwise you might not pass your classes this year and might get held back.
Fine by Mike. it meant he wouldn’t have to go through a graduation ceremony, watching an empty seat and a spare diploma go untaken.
Mike stared out into space in all of his classes. English, once his favorite, had become a nap period. History, his second favorite, was reserved for him taking the hall pass for a “bathroom break”. Really, he just wandered around Hawkins High, trying not to think about the empty seat next to him in that class that had Will’s drawings inscribed into the wood.
As usual, Mike zoned out in biology. Mr. Phillips droned on about the nervous system, using his pointer to gesture to various spots on a map of the human body. The brain, the nerves.
Then, he pulled a weird instrument. A beam with a long hook, wires sticking out the bottom. He reached into a small cooler and pulled out a pair of severed frog legs, attaching them to the hook.
Mike looked at Mr. Phillips for the first time in weeks.
“In the 18th century,” Mr. Phillips said. “An Italian doctor named Luigi Galvani touched exposed frog nerves with different forms of metals. He discovered when he touched the nerves, the frog’s leg would twitch.”
Mr. Phillips then proceeded to do so, touching one of the wires to the frog leg. As predicted, the frog leg kicked out. Mike stared, mesmerized.
“This was a hugely groundbreaking discovery, as it set the framework for the creation of early batteries. It also became a scientific curiosity, known as galvanization, with entire theaters being set up for people to watch other animals such as sheep, oxen, and even some human subjects to undergo the experiment and presumably, come back to life.”
“However, the experiment is best known today for being the inspiration of Mary Shelly’s classic novel Frankenstein, where of course, a mad scientist resurrects a creature made of corpses using electricity."
To illustrate his point again, Mr. Phillips tapped the frog leg again, as it twitched.
Wheels were turning in Mike’s head. Electricity. Conduction. With enough electricity, how much could something be shocked back to life? If he still had nerves, could it be possible…to reanimate the dead?
Could he bring back Will?
—-
Mike stopped skipping his classes, but he didn’t start doing his homework. Instead, he would go out to the library every day, Monday through Friday, and peruse the science section. Books on electricity and electrical engineering. Human anatomy and physiology. Physics. History.
He learned about Robert Cornish, who placed deceased patients on a see-saw while injecting adrenaline and anticoagulants into them. Supposedly, the experiments were successful on dogs, but not human subjects.
He learned about Giovanni Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani. Aldini continued his uncle’s experiments with electricity, but on the bodies of criminals. As Mr. Phillips had mentioned, these experiments were treated as spectacles. People would line up in fear as the bodies would have their muscles clench and their eyes open.
A plan began to form. If he connected Will to a large enough power source, and pumped him full of adrenaline as the electricity hit, it might be able to shock him back to life. Like a defibrillator. Will had only been gone for two months, his body was probably still intact enough for it. He could get metals and stuff from the junkyard. Adrenaline from Epi-Pens from the pharmacy.
But he hit a wall when he started thinking about a power source.
He wasn’t strong enough to move Will, so the power source would need to be brought to him. A generator might be powerful enough, but he couldn’t move it. Car batteries, he wasn't sure how to acquire.
He tried for a week to figure out a solution, but he just couldn’t. Anything he came up with had a flaw. There was a hole in the quilt of every plan he tried to sew.
He gave up. Without a power source, there was no way to bring Will back. His hope dissipated, and Mike started sleepwalking again.
But in true Mike Wheeler fashion, he finally got his idea on movie night.
He didn’t want to watch a movie, but the party had invited themselves into his basement with tapes rented from Family Video and three large bags of popcorn. They crowded around, Dustin, Jane, Max, and Lucas squeezing onto the couch. Mike chose to sit by himself on the armchair. He had always sat with Will during movie nights. He couldn’t betray that tradition.
“I’m fine,” he grumbled, as Dustin slid the tape in. “I’m just not feeling movie night tonight.”
“Mike,” Jane said gently, leaning over the couch to take his hand. “We only see you at school, and then you barely talk to us. Your mom calls my mom, worried about you. Just one night, hanging out like we used to.”
It’s not like we used to, Mike thought. Will isn’t here.
“This will be good for you, man,” Lucas said. Max nodded in agreement—she had refused to say a single word to Mike since their argument a couple months ago.
Reluctantly, Mike leaned back in his chair. The credits flickered, and upon seeing the title of the film come into view, he nearly had a heart attack.
Back to the Future. A movie he had seen with Will, back in summer 1985.
That was a bad summer for them. Mike had his first girlfriend—Will’s stepsister, Jane. He had been blowing off Will a lot to hang out with her. There were some fights. Some cruel words shouted at Will in the rain. Will ended up going three weeks without talking to Mike. The longest they had ever gone without speaking to each other.
As summer faded into fall, Jane broke up with Mike, saying she wanted to be “just friends” instead, and Mike had immediately biked to Will’s house to tell him the news and apologize for being a bad friend. They didn’t go back to their usual selves right away. That took a few more months of Mike essentially waiting on Will beck and call. Buying him treats when they went out, always letting him pick the movie or the music. Eventually, Will forgave him, and they were best friends again.
Mike still kept taking care of Will though. He always would, until he couldn’t anymore.
Mike clenched the armrest throughout the movie, trying not to think of Will too much. As soon as he realized what movie it was, he wanted to storm out and hide in his room and try not to cry.
He knew if he did that though, his friends would follow and worry about him. It was easier to suffer through the movie, then send them back home.
So Mike suffered, trying not to inhale too sharply when a joke that he remembered made Will laugh was told, or a moment that made Will gasp occurred. Jane kept sneaking looks at him throughout the movie, like she knew what he was trying to suppress.
The climax of the movie happened, the titular moment where Marty goes back to the future. The Delorean, the clock tower, the lightning strike. The only thing capable of generating enough energy to send Marty back.
The lightning strike.
Maybe that was the solution. Maybe lightning could be the power source Mike needed so badly. If a big enough storm happened, if Mike could use a lightning rod of some sort to transfer the electricity back into Will, maybe that would work. Maybe that would bring him back.
Mike smiled.
The next day, he went to the junkyard to collect scraps. He yanked out copper wires from appliances. Metal poles from a broken trampoline. He needed to find a place to hide them. His Mom would check the basement and his room. He didn’t want to tell his friends what he was trying to do. And he certainly couldn’t tell the Byers. He couldn’t give anyone false hope.
There was only one place he could think of that no one would check.
His heart twisted the entire time he walked to Castle Byers, his footsteps following the same familiar pattern. He hadn’t been there in years.
When he got to the Castle, he found it in a state of disrepair. One wall had been completely knocked over, the old bundled twigs laying on top of a stained, molding mattress. The wood had gone rotten with worms, mushrooms emerging from cracks in the sticks.
Mike didn’t know how Castle Byers had gotten like it, but seeing it in such a horrible state felt like Will was dying all over again. Will, Mike, and Jonathan had built it the day Will’s biological dad left them. Will had painted the sign, all friends welcome, and Mike had donated a door made from some scraps of fabric from his Mom, and Jonathan handled the nails and hammering. For five years, it was Mike and Will’s spot. Dustin and Lucas never went in there. It was the only place that was just for Mike and Will.
Mike thought of hot summer days laying next to each other on the mattress, flipping through comic books and staining their skin with popsicles. He thought of them hiding all their halloween candy in there, so their parents and siblings wouldn't steal it.
He thought of that comforting squeeze in his chest every time he hung around Will, the squeeze he first noticed on a day in Castle Byers. It was spring break, 1985, and Will had fallen asleep on the mattress next to Mike, his sketchbook clasped firmly in his hands.
Will’s hair had fallen over his forehead and in his eyes, and Mike felt an urge to brush it out of the way. He slept peacefully, his chest rising and falling, Mike resting his head on top of Will to hear his heartbeat. There was just something about the way Will was laying that day, a feeling Mike couldn’t put into words. All Mike knew was that he cared for Will in a way he didn’t with anyone else, and the squeeze in his chest confirmed that.
But the squeeze had been gone since Will died. And Castle Byers was gone too.
So Mike decided to bring them both back. He spent a week fixing up Castle Byers, putting his resurrection research on hold until it was fixed. He needed a place to hide the scraps, and if all went like he hoped, he needed a spot to hang out with Will again.
—-
Mike finally had everything he needed—wires for the conduction. Epi-pens shoplifted from Melvald;s to provide adrenaline. Everything except an actual storm. And of course, this was all lining up at the one time the usually tornado-strewn Indiana decided to have perfect weather every day. Mike would wake up, scanning the newspapers for the weather reports. Nothing but sunshine and clear skies every day. The occasional shower of rain, but never any thunder or lightning alongside it.
Finally, after one month, Mike was sitting at the table for dinner with his family. The radio was on, playing the local pop music station. It had been raining on and off the entire day, wind whipping the trees a little rougher than usual.
The song—”Where Do Broken Hearts Go?”— cut off, interrupted by a crackling, robotic voice.
“This is an emergency alert system. A severe weather warning has been issued for: Roane County. Seek shelter immediately.” To punctuate the warning, a distant rumble of thunder boomed.
This was it. This was the only time until God-knows-when for Mike to try his plan.
He scarfed down his food and ran upstairs. Knowing his parents wouldn’t let him go on a bike ride during an active thunderstorm, Mike instead swung himself out his window and climbed down his trellis, grabbing his bike from behind the trash cans.
He pedaled as quickly as he could to Castle Byers. Flashes of lightning had started to glare through the night sky, but no solid bolts yet. Once he made it to Castle Byers, he grabbed his tools: wires. The pole. Epi-pens. A shovel.
The cemetery wasn’t too far from Castle Byers—another reason it made a perfect hiding spot—and Mike trudged through there in the now-pouring rain. Careful not to slip, he clambered up the gate and threw himself into the slick grass. Picking his flashlight back up, Mike roamed the graves until he found the right one.
William Jacob Byers. 1971-1988. A loving son, brother, friend.
A fresh pair of daffodils had been placed on the grave, the plot now covered by green grass. Mike vaguely remembered Joyce telling him once that Hopper went by every week to replace the flowers and tidy up.
Mike placed a hand on top of the gravestone. “Hi Will,” he said. “I’m going to get you back.”
And he started to dig.
He pierced the shovel into the earth, pressing his foot as hard as he could into the blade. Converse sneakers were not the best footwear to don for digging up your best friend’s body, but Mike tried his best. He grunted and groaned as he started to shovel up piles of dirt.
Slowly, the coffin was unearthed, six feet under. Mike couldn’t tell where the rain on his head and the sweat from his face started and ended. He dropped into the plot, pressing his hand against the smooth wood of the coffin for a second. Then he smashed it in with the shovel, the wood splintering apart, fracturing like the lightning in the sky.
Mike carefully pulled the lid off, and there he was. Will
Admittedly, Mike didn’t think about the actual viewing my friends body part of this operation. The Byers had a closed casket, but Mike assumed Will still looked like his usual self. Floppy chestnut hair, constellations of moles across his body, bright hazel eyes dotted with flecks of green.
Will didn’t look like that. His clothes were still on, the khaki pants and yellow flannel Mrs. Byers chose for him. And his hair was still intact in patches here and there. But his skin was mottled with patches of greens and browns, small wounds and cuts from bug infestations seeping out. Parts of the flesh had rotted away—Will’s forearm, thigh, hand—revealing bone. Several of his fingers had been scraped of muscle entirely, a stark yellow skeletal finger in their place.
One eye was still closed. The other eye had rotted away as well, an empty cavity, a black hole with flecks of skull around it. A large chunk of his cheek was missing, acting like a window into Will’s rotting, decomposing mouth.
And the stench. Worse than any trash delivery or moldy food Mike had ever smelled. The smell wafted up into Mike’s nostrils.
For a moment, Mike had second thoughts. He couldn’t see Will like this. He couldn’t bring Will back like this. Bringing his friend back as a sentient, rotten corpse. That seemed too cruel.
But the possibility of having one more conversation with his best friend, looking into his eyes—eye?--one more time, feeling that familiar squeeze in his chest one more time. That was too much to turn down.
“Sorry, Will,” Mike said, and then he began.
Reaching outside the grave to grab his box of supplies, Mike grabbed a knife he had taken from his kitchen and began making the bloodless incisions. Two on either side of Will’s hips. Two on each of his heels. One at his neck. Each incision was taken from one of the books Mike had read, discussing a man named Andrew Ure who participated in the galvanizing experiments. Each incision was chosen to reveal the best optimal nerves, and sure enough, there they were. Tender white tendrils weaving themselves in and out of what muscle and bone were left.
Then, Mike grabbed metallic rods, nestling them alongside the nerves. Those were attached to the wires, which Mike had wrapped around the long pole. That would be his lightning rod.
Finally, Mike uncapped the epi-pens and stood just far enough from Will that he hopefully wouldn’t get electrocuted as well, but close enough he could inject the adrenaline as soon as the lightning flooded Will’s system.
The wind howled louder than ever, the largest boom of thunder yet clapping overhead. Still, no lightning.
“Come on!” Mike yelled. “Strike already, Goddammnit!”
That seemed to summon something from the heavens, because a blinding light flashed in front of Mike’s eyes, whiting out his vision entirely. Mike could feel all his hairs standing on end, as a crackle began. He covered one eye to see sparks of electricity flowing down the wires and to the rods.
Now!
As soon as the sparks entered the rods, Mike plunged down with the epipens, pressing them into Will’s tender flesh. He had just enough time to toss them before Will’s body began to twitch and seize entirely. His fingers and toes curled like he was shivering from the cold, his chest rising and falling like he had just run a marathon. Will’s serene expression shifted into a tight grimace, teeth chattering.
And then, Will’s body went still. Mike fell to his side, gingerly placing his palms on Will’s sunken chest.
“Come on,” he said, as he began to pump. He had no idea if this would work—if his plan even had worked.
It had too. It had to have worked, because if it didn’t, then it meant Will was truly gone. It meant Mike couldn’t take care of him anymore. Mike couldn’t keep hoping and dreaming and wishing anymore.
“Will,” Mike choked, as he pumped faster and faster. “Wake up. Please. Will, I can’t have all of this been for nothing, please, Will, Will, Will”.
But Will’s body remained limp.
Letting out a dry sob, Mike collapsed next to Will’s body, grabbing one hand. “I’m so sorry, Will,” he gasped, running his fingers over the exposed phalanges of Will’s hand. The storm had started to cease, the thunder more distant now, the wind and rain starting to calm down.
Mike tucked his knees up, placing his face into them so he didn’t have to cry in front of Will. He knew it was useless—Will was dead, he couldn’t see Mike cry—but Mike had always told Will he would be the brave one for the both of them.
A twitch occurred in Will’s hand. Mike looked up.
Will still lay there, dead as ever.
Just some leftover sparks. He’s not there. He’s gone.
Then, another twitch. And a clench.
Still holding on to Will’s hand, Mike leaned over to inspect Will’s face. It remained still.
Then, a sharp gasp, as Will’s mouth opened, sucking in oxygen. A shuddering rise and fall of Will’s chest.
“Will?” Mike asked, so quietly.
A bright hazel eye fluttered wide open.