END OF BEGINNING- a byler fanfiction/ stranger things s5

Without Me

Summary: El and Mike Have A Talk  

a/n: sorry not sorry about the random af playlist. 

Eleven might be my favourite autism-coded character ever

Word Count: 2,067

All the supernatural things have kind of only gone around me.

El and Will, they were at the centre of this, so it was weird that they weren't the ones who got the vision thing. Not that I wished it on them, it was just that I wasn't used to it. It made me kind of nervous, not being able to separate reality from fiction.

I wondered if Vecna was going to go ahead and target everyone, but two weeks after my weird vision thing, nothing else happened.

El was searching for Vecna everyday with her mind. She was getting more powerful everyday; she didn't even have to use a blindfold and static noise to go looking anymore, and her nose only bled sometimes, when she really pushed herself.

Everyone else had been kind of smothering me. My mom was now in on the whole supernatural thing, as were Lucas' parents. She didn't really understand all of it, but she felt better now to have some kind of explanation that didn't make sense but she knew was true. We decided not to tell her that Vecna was back though. We had to water down the story a bit in the first place, and telling her the evil wizard was back might be more than she could take.

Joyce took my mothers role in making sure I was alright at all times, insisting I stay with the Byers-Hoppers, so they could keep an eye on me. Lucas and Dustin asked me if I was okay all the time when they were over and sometimes even called on the walkies to check. I wondered if this was how Will felt, and I actually asked.

"Yeah, pretty much. Except for you, everyone treated me like I was a fragile object or something."

Weirdly, I felt bad. I know the smothering wasn't optimal, but maybe it made it seem like I didn't care as much because I wasn't acting like everyone else. I did care, so much, but there was a lot going on.

"Do you still feel him?" I asked Will.

He nodded. "All the time. I felt him when he attacked you. It was like he was taunting me or something. Like, he was telling me how useless I was to help. I really thought he was going to kill you."

"Well, he didn't." I thought about that for a second. "It's so weird. Why would he do that? Just to freak me out or what?"

"I don't know. Mike, what did you see?"

"I-um..." I had kind of lied to everyone about the visions. I could hardly make sense of them myself, I didn't need everyone else's speculation. I know that Will pushed me off a building on the vision, and then I relived a memory that I didn't remember until that moment. Then I saw Max and El, but they weren't the real Max and El. Then I saw- well, I don't even know what all of that was. I remember El screaming 'I know what you are!' But like, what am I? What does it all mean? What the actual shit is going on and why is Vecna such an asshole? "I don't really know."

"That's so weird. He'd just get you, but then you wouldn't remember and he wouldn't kill you."

"Maybe he just wanted us to know that he was back." I thought about it some more. "Why me though? Why not El or you, or someone he's targeted before?"

"I-I don't know."

We sat in silence wondering. We were in Will's room, keeping our distance from the roof now. I was technically staying in the guest room but I spent most of my time in here, talking to Will. It was nice to be friends again.