Worlds Turned Upside Down: Will Byers x Reader

Chapter Twenty-Two: Truth Hurts

In the Byers' house, articles about the Hawkins Lab and it's origins litter the coffee table. Joyce, Hopper, Mr. and Mrs. (L/N) sit at the kitchen table. "Look, we gotta go through this again," Joyce says, a lit cigarette resting between her index and middle finger.
"I told you everything that we saw," Mr. (L/N) responds grumpily, him and Hopper have repeated their tale multiple times for Joyce and she still isn't satisfied. Even Mrs. (L/N) doesn't understand why Joyce continues to request the details of the story again and again.
"Oh, gosh. Tell me again," However, Joyce Byers, if anything, is persistent. So, to please the woman, Hopper gives in.
"Upstairs or downstairs?" He asks. Mr. (L/N) sighs and rests his forehead on the table for a few seconds before lifting it up again. It's gotten dark outside and it has been a pretty tiring week, everyone here is most certainly sleep deprived.
"Upstairs," Joyce puts the cigarette into her mouth and takes a long drag of it.
"There was a laboratory. It was where they must do experiments or something, and then there was..." Hopper also has a cigarette sitting in his hand whilst he speaks. He inhales, bored of his own story, "There was this kid's room."
"How do you know it was a kid's room?" Joyce asks, annoyed that Hopper's glazing over certain things and isn't going into as much detail as she wants.
"More like a prison," Mr. (L/N) adds in.
"So why would you think it was a kid's room, then?" Joyce turns to both men during her question, aiming it at the two of them.
Hopper isn't a man who likes to repeat himself, so speaking to Joyce right now feels like a chore, "Because, I told you, the size of the bed, there was a drawing, there was a stuffed animal—" Joyce widens her eyes due to this new information.
"You didn't say there was a drawing,"
"Yeah, there was a drawing of a..." Hopper trails off, forgetting what he'd saw. He turns to Mr. (L/N) for help, thankfully the man remembers.
"An adult and a child," (Y/N)'s father says reminding the man. Hopper snaps his fingers as he remembers.
"It said '11' on it," The Chief adds.
"Was it good?" Joyce asks. Mrs. (L/N) really doesn't understand the relevance of all this information. She honestly, like her husband, just wants to go home and get some sleep. The smell of the cigarettes are giving her a headache and making her a bit irritable.
"It was a kid's drawing, Joyce. It was stick figures," Hopper says, irked by the woman's countless questions. Joyce sighs and stands up. The drowsy group watches her go to a table and retrieve a piece of lined paper. She returns to the kitchen table and slams the paper down. On it is Will's drawing of the wizard shooting green fireballs alongside his friends' characters.
"Wasn't Will," she sits back down, takes another drag of her cigarette, and gestures to the drawing which she had placed directly in front of Hopper. The adults observe it and realize that it is pretty good for a twelve-year-old. Hopper rises from his chair with a look of realization. He heads for the living room.
"Earl," he says quietly, making his way over to the couch. The other adults begin to stand up and make their way over to the man, "Earl said he saw some kid with a shaved head with Benny," Hopper speaks slowly so his words are more clear. Hopper and Joyce sit below the alphabet lights while the (L/N)'s just stand around the table, bending over as to better see the contents spread out on the surface, "Now, I pressed him, he said it might be Will, but maybe..." Hopper begins shuffling through the papers spread out on the coffee table.
"Wait...maybe, it wasn't?" Joyce asks, not really understanding where Hopper is leading them.
"Look..." Hopper picks up the article he was searching for and holds it close to him and Joyce, the other couple shuffles over so that they can see it as well, "This woman, Terry Ives, she claims to have lost her daughter, Jane. She sued Brenner, she sued the government...now the claims came to nothing, but what if..." He stares off, breathing heavily from all the information he's been rapidly spilling out, "I mean, what if this whole time I've been...I've been looking for Will and (Y/N)...I've been chasing after some other kid?" He gives everyone in the room a sober look. They all stare at the article, not really understanding what this all means. Are they close to finding their children or have they been getting farther away from the truth? Does all of this somehow connect and maybe they're on the right track? Only time will tell.