Ao3 story (Why would you ever kiss me)

Part 16

They practically lived inside the hospital.

The doctors told them it was an aneurysm. A brain bleed caused by high blood pressure. But Will knew better.

Your fault.

El was in a coma. But to everyone else it was him who was in a coma. No one knew what it meant. And Will couldn't bring himself to confess all that had happened. How could he tell them that it was El in danger? Someone so integral to saving the world? How could he look Mike in the eyes and tell him that this situation was so much worse than he thought? Nothing Will could say would ever absolve him of this guilt. Nothing.

Will sat on a chair in the corner of the hospital room. Trying to hold in tears as he stared at his feet.

I've been so selfish.

His mom was crying over him and he had the audacity to think she only loved him out of obligation.

"My baby..." She whispered, her hands shaking as she brushed them through El's—his hair. Jonathan was a wreck, too. His eyes were red from crying. "P-please, wake up honey. We're all w-waiting for you."

The nurse told them that the coma was a good thing. That El's brain was healing in the best way that it could from the severe trauma it had undergone. But Will knew better. He knew it in the way the cold presence sat in his skull. Unfulfilled. Rageful. Too small to do what it wanted. And Will knew that the rest of Vecna must've been in her head. Doing damage as he pleased. Fighting to get out. To be free.

She's keeping him in to protect me. She's in pain and no one knows it but me.

A day had passed and his mother hadn't left the room once. Sometimes she would sit in a catatonic sort of state, or she was up and pacing, or crying, or holding the hand of one of her sons, the conscious one and the unconscious one. Will felt so brutally shaken by the display. He didn't even feel real. Everything was a blur since the night he left.

I never should've run away.

Hopper had held Will for a solid ten minutes when they reunited. Apparently they'd been looking for Will and El since the moment they realized that they were both missing. Of course, when they went to Dustin's, neither Dustin or any of their children were there. His mother had assumed the worst, and he had made that assumption true.

All. My. Fault.

Mike cast occasional looks his way every now and then. Each one more conflicted than the last. To average them all into a single expression, Will would have to describe them as guilt. Mike had said some rash things to him. To "El". And for the first time, Will felt bad for El in a truly different way. Everyone counted on her to fix everything. To save them. When she was unable to do that, she left everyone feeling helpless. She herself wasn't allowed to be helpless. Because she's the hero. Will wasn't a hero. He never really has been. The look Mike had given him last night was evidence enough of that. Thinking about it was almost too much.

I couldn't do anything. And what could I have done? Gone into her mind? Imagined something better?

Yeah. You could've actually tried. You have a useful gift now. But you chose to be useless. Coward. Coward. Coward—

As he sat in that stupid chair, Will was tempted to right yesterday's wrongs and try to get into El's mind somehow. But his intuition told him that it would only cause her more pain. Unless El willingly lets go of Vecna, my interference might just tear her mind apart. And something in him just knew it would never work. Max's situation was different. He'd created something from nothing . Complete darkness. El's mind would be complete chaos. And touching—barely grazing her mind with his would connect the disjointed pieces of Vecna in both of their heads. Then El would be keeping all of that monster in her brain.