THE WALLS OF STARCOURT WERE EERILY silent, save for glass shards crunching under Eli's sneakers similar to packed snow. It was that quiet, the only sign of life being his own staggered breaths, that made his heart shrivel with fear.

He had no idea where Mike was, and their only form of escape had just skidded off for the rolling hills of the countryside. If the Mind Flayer were to return, Eli would be clueless and probably too weak to stop it. He wasn't El, after all.

"Mike!" His voice, strained with urgency and panic, sounded unfamiliar as it boomed. His head spun at the presence of no answers, half-expecting to hear the call of a raven-haired boy.

Eli trudged forward, screaming his boyfriend's name continuously, along with Max and El's. He was just about to cry out the brunette's name again when a small crackling made him freeze. His body thrummed like one giant pulse, his hands growing clammy as he waited.

The noise sizzled again, and he followed it with a mingled sense of curiosity and dread. His eyes eventually slithered to the floor, where Mike's half-destroyed walkie lie. The plastic covering had been torn off, exposing the metal skeleton and wiring underneath. It had been Dustin's persistent radioing he'd heard, echoed back to him through a poorly functioning speaker.

Eli's gaze shifted to his fingertips, rubbing them together and attempting to remember how they'd felt earlier. When electricity had been freely swimming between them. Maybe he could...

An abrupt, sharp prod in his neck made a brief squeak of pain slip from his mouth, his palm instantly whacking the layer of skin. A stronger grip of hands clawed at his waist, and Eli was being violently turned around to glare into a piercing set of blue eyes. Blue eyes he had hoped, prayed, he'd never see again.

"Dad..." his whisper petered out feebly, his legs buckling underneath him involuntarily. "What...?" His head throbbed as he moved to glance at his father's hands, the ones catching his seemingly-paralyzed body. There was a needle between his fingers, and a nasty smile to match the sting.

It was the last thing Eli saw before he was swept into a hazed darkness. When his eyes shuddered open again, he was in a small room with four boring walls that declared nothing of his location.

A TV set sat motionlessly in the center of the room, staring blankly at him. Eli could feel binds on his wrists and ankles, but his limbs were overcome with sudden fatigue he knew he wouldn't be able to escape anyway.

He fucking drugged me, Eli thought sleepily, wishing he could feel a wave of anger seep into his body. But he only felt a strange dizziness.

"What's going on?" He demanded, and that's when he heard it. Explosions, not too far. Close enough to make the walls rattle and his body clench with strange sensitivity. "What is that?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," Alan snaked into view, towering over his son with a stoic expression. "What's important is that you listen."

Eli flinched, and imagined he was back at home. A Bible was being thrown at him, and a belt was whacking the air with the ambition of it soon being his flesh. His vision blurred, and he wasn't sure if it was the drugs or the tears he could feel slipping over numb, paled cheeks.

"What do you want from me?" He pleaded, shrinking deeper into himself. Anything to avoid the fatal glow of those eyes.

"Nothing yet," Alan sneered, the toe of his boots dragging menacingly over the tile as he paced. "I've already gotten what I need from you right now."

"What?" Eli winced as a bright light flickered on the TV, his eyes slamming shut and a groan brushing past his lips. When his sight finally settled, his stomach turned queasy at the images before him.

Him standing in the center of a red circle of Russian soldiers, swamping them with vicious blue light. The distant rumbling and explosions persisted, and Eli almost imagined it was coming from the television, from him, as he killed those men. The video changed, still showing footage from Starcourt, only now it featured someone else.

Eleven, screaming in agony as her curled fingers slid something unforeseen out of her leg. The red car from earlier, flying across the food court as if it were made of lint.

"I knew I had to get away," Alan crouched, bringing his toxic gaze closer to Eli and causing the boy to whimper. It was like he was five years old again, crying because he accidentally broke a plate and his father had decided his punishment. "I had to get away so you could come back. So we could see your progress and," a single finger hovered over El's frozen face on the TV, stuck in a caterwaul of pain. "So we could see her."

White hot fury laced his insides, and this time he could feel it bubbling over his bones instead of nothing but drugged haze. He was no longer a child sobbing over a broken plate. He wielded it instead, ready to throw it at his father's skull. Eli's eyes darkened as they cleared and he made sure to meet Alan's gaze. "I'm going to kill you."

Alan only laughed. "I made you," he answered, the taunt in his voice making Eli nauseous. "You are the way you are because of me."

Eli closed his eyes, wondering if he was sweating from the abrupt heat seizing his body. He could still hear explosions, and the unmistakable screeching of the Mind Flayer. His friends were out there fighting the end of the world, and yet he felt like the only one locked in with a monster right now.

"Just let me go," Eli begged, his cheek sagging against cold tile as he tried to crawl onto fours. "Let me..."

"Your sisters know the truth about me now," Alan ignored Eli's weak attempts to move, clearly unthreatened by them. "They haven't told you? They will soon."

"Leave me alone!" Eli tried to yell, but it came out more as a strangled gasp. "I'll...I'll kill you," he repeated, grimacing at his exhausted limbs protesting any method of escape.

"You don't get it, do you?" Alan chuckled, the click of his laugh against whitened teeth making Eli bristle with rage. "I see everything. I know everything. And eventually, I'm going to use that knowledge to end you. And your friends."

"What the hell...is wrong with you?" Eli shivered, gasping out as his body crumbled back to the floor.

Alan's lips twisted into a demonic smirk, eyes devouring the sight of his son drugged one last time. "I'll guess you'll have to wait and see. And remember, little man, I'm always watching you."

No...The explosions at the battle of Starcourt hammered into his ears, growing louder as his body dissipated into darkness again. Until he was out, and Alan Brooks was nothing but a distant memory he'd have to pull at for the rest of his life.

When Eli stirred again, his body was pressed against a stretcher and he was being escorted out of the ruins of Starcourt. Flames danced around his head, and he could helicopter engines whirring loudly. The drugs had worn off, meaning Eli was conscious enough to be overcome with crushing panic that made his throat swell. And suddenly Alan Brooks wasn't just a distant memory.

He had been here. He'd seen him. He'd been hovering over Eli with that poisonous laugh, fingers holding the control of his life. Whether he'd make it out alive or not. Eli had always imagined he'd die with his neck trapped between the two hands of his father, which had finally squeezed a little too hard.

"What's going on?" Eli demanded, sitting up and ignoring the dizzy spell clouding his head. One of the medics beckoning him outside, no, a soldier, stared at him in horrified shock.

"Your friends are outside. Everything's gonna be fine, kid," his hoarse voice barked, and Eli was casted out into a sea of purple light. Rain slathered his skin and helicopters lights flew up and down the perimeter, momentarily swiping over his face and making his eyes squeeze shut.

"Eli!" It was the only voice in the world that could soothe him right now. Mike was running towards him, an inexplicable expression of gratitude wrenched across his face.

"Mike," Eli waved the soldier off and climbed down the stretcher, surprised to note his body had almost retained full strength again. Damn Alan Brooks and his weird drugs.

Mike's arms sprung around his waist, and despite Eli's strength surging back, he didn't resist collapsing into that grasp. The raven-haired boy knelt on the concrete with him, fingers stroking Eli's knotted hair in a panicked attempt to calm him. "You're okay! Oh my God, I was so scared! Eli, what's wrong? What happened?" He must've seen the despair on his own face, because tears sprung to Mike's eyes too.

"I...I saw him," Eli whimpered, a child-like fear consuming his body as he rested his head on Mike's collarbone. His wet eyes peered up into the Wheeler's amber ones, his lips quivering. "I saw him. My...my dad. He was here."

Mike's face colored into a ghostly white, and Eli realized he was afraid too. The Wheeler's arms tightened around him though, shielding him from the noises of grief and reunion and destruction whirling around them all. "It's okay. It's fine. He's gone now. I'm here."

Mike wanted to know what had caused Alan Brooks to return, and why he suddenly vanished again. But with a shivering Eli in his arms, nothing mattered less than those questions.

"Did we do it?" Eli asked into Mike's neck after another minute, almost inaudible. "Did we save the world?"

Mike smiled a little, despite the chaos unfolded in front of them. Despite Billy's bloodied and lifeless body left in Starcourt, next to the corpse of the Mind Flayer. Despite El, who cried alone in the rain at the absence of someone Mike hadn't noticed yet. "Yeah, yeah we did."

Eli shook again. "And I fucking missed it."

Mike had to laugh into Eli's hair. In a swamp of loss, Mike felt like he had just gained the entire world.

~

The sun cast its brilliant yellow light along the Byers house, filling the sandy front porch with heat. Eli Brooks watched the trees from Will's window, from a bedroom now empty and carved out instead of bursting with music and drawings and fantasy.

Will Byers paced back into the room, his worn sneakers thudding on the carpet announcing his arrival. "Just one more box. I'll be right back," he told the curly-haired boy, shooting one simple hazel-filled look that didn't really mean anything.

Different to their talk they'd have when he came back, which meant everything. 

"We should've had this conversation a long time ago, I think," Eli murmured with a tightly wound chest as Will shut the door.

There was singing of a certain taunt coming from the living room, where Dustin and the others helped pack boxes. Rene Campbell had finally returned from drama camp, and had spent most of her time ranting about missing the near end of the world.

But the door was closed, and it was just Will and Eli.

Eli imagined briefly, as he slid down to the old carpet to sit, that it was like how it used to be. The rest of the world could be forgotten, erased into a blank canvas while they just remained together.

"Yeah, we probably should have," Will agreed, joining him on the floor.

He swallowed, his mind suddenly drifting to rows and rows of black tapes and colorful binders with sketches. "What'd you do with all of it anyway?"

Will blinked hard, adjusting himself so that he sat cross-legged. He knew exactly what Eli meant, and Eli had learned that intuition was something incredibly sacred between people. And rare.

"I didn't have the space for a lot of it," Will answered, his tone laced with an edginess that bordered on grief and guilt. "I had to throw away most of it. Kept some of the mixtapes, though. My favorites."

Eli was surprised when his heart didn't burst, when his chest didn't cave with this immense loss. The tapes, Will and Eli's. The stories he'd written and given to Will. In a garbage bag, somewhere left to be forgotten but not in their minds. He had been given back the chapters of Will and Eli Electro, in case he ever needed them for a portfolio. But a lot of it was gone.

He thought with such history, his body would feel more for this. But it felt right, and he needed Will to know this.

"I think that's okay."

He needed Will to know everything.

"You already talked to Mike?" Eli rubbed his thumb repeatedly over his dampening palm. "He told me you guys have been fighting a lot recently. About me."

"Yeah. We talked yesterday," Will replied. "I think, really, I was more mad at life than at him or you or...any one person."

Eli nodded, trying to ground himself as he could already feel tears dizzily reaching the corners of his eyes. "You have to know, Will. That before this...before all of this, I really did feel something for you."

Will's eyes glimmered as they remained hovering over the carpet.

"I mean, it wasn't just something. It was love," Eli reclined a little, dabbing at his eyes with his knuckles and feeling that spike of awkwardness. "Or at least, whatever kind of love your tiny child brain is capable of at that age."

"I felt the same," the Byers answered earnestly, but Eli still knew him well enough to recognize what was hidden underneath. What Will didn't want Eli to see.

"You still feel it?"

Will closed his eyes, shoulders down in defeat. "I never got to explore that with you. That's something you and Mike have, and I can't help but resent it."

"I'm sorry," Eli was uttering the apology before he even knew its purpose fully. He just knew that Will Byers was a boy that deserved a thousand sorrys, most of them he'd never get.

Will shook his head and ducked it down to try to hide his wet eyes from Eli. They both felt small again, like they were back in Mike's bathroom that night. Right before it was all ripped away from them.

"You know, when I told Eve about my crush on Mike, there was this thing she told me. Something I still kinda think about sometimes," Eli sighed, suddenly wanting to laugh at the sound of himself.

A fourteen year old boy huffing and hawing like a man with fifty years of wisdom. Maybe that's just what this mess had done to them all.

"She said, 'I always thought it was gonna be Will'." He waited, watching those green-speckled eyes take that in. "And I told her maybe, but now I'm thinking part of me wanted to say 'Me too'.

"Because for years it really seemed like that. There's a reason you had so much you needed to throw out today. There's a history there. And...and maybe if this hadn't all happened...but, at the end of the day, it became Mike. Before I could even stop it. This whole thing has taught me that love isn't really a choice."

Will's expression crumbled a little, a flash of dissent. Eli figured the Byers boy must disagree, so he redirected.

"I mean, you can choose to keep loving someone, but that initial fall. That's a force you have no control over. The same way you couldn't control what happened to you, or how it took a toll on your brain. Your entire childhood ripped away."

"Eli," Will cut in, shocking him with the sudden noise after minutes of quiet listening. "I get it. I'm not mad anymore."

Eli rose his eyebrows a little, as if to say yeah?

"I'll always wonder what might've been, but it's no use," Will ran a few fingers through his hair. "What I really need to know is just that we still have something—"

"Of course," Eli didn't hesitate to stroke his hand against Will's shoulder. "Just because I don't have feelings for you anymore doesn't mean you stopped being my best friend. That doesn't all go away."

"It felt like it did."

"And that's my fault," Eli admitted. "You were going through so much, it was just easier to give you space and let myself get distracted with Mike. I should've been there for you more last Halloween. And in general."

"It's okay," Will murmured, and he knew he was being honest. "It's not like you weren't going through stuff too."

Eli pressed his lips together in thought, and this was the sudden wave of grief he'd been waiting to rock over him. He was saying goodbye to his childhood best friend today. Right now. After finally resolving all their muddled feelings, lost in translation over the years.

"I want you to be happy, Will," Eli spoke with fierce determination. "You've been through hell, seriously. We all have, but, I'll never forget what you were put through. How you were," he swallowed again, overcome with emotion. "How you were willing to die for us last November. A lot of us forgot about it, but I sure as hell didn't."

A tear spilled down Will's cheek, though he didn't bother swiping it away. He needed to remember all of this, if he was ever to be capable of moving on. "Thanks."

"And just because I didn't fall in love with you doesn't mean I don't love you," Eli fought back the whispers of his mind teasing him, telling him he was being silly. Cheesy. Sappy. Whatever. Words like that never existed before with Will, they shouldn't now.

"I love you, Will. And I'll always want for you what I found with him. But I can't feel sorry anymore that it wasn't you."

"Of course not," Will's voice wavered, but his resignation stuck. "I don't want you to feel that way. We'll all get past this. I just...I just don't want to go," his expression crumbled, followed by his body, and he began crying into Eli's shoulder.

Eli's arms snaked around Will's middle back, pulling him further against him. The bedroom glowed with afternoon light, and he shut his eyes and pretended how this image would look in a photograph. Framed by the white walls of a polaroid from Jonathan's camera.

Yeah, he really would miss this.

"I love you too, by the way," Will sniffled as he pulled away later, wiping at his nose and eyes messily. "And I am really, really happy for you and Mike. I'm just gonna miss you."

Eli smiled, staring right into those eyes that stared back and begging his sincerity would reach. "I'll miss you too."

They eventually left Will's room, and Eli refused to look back for a final glance and study those walls further. He had it all in his head and heart, he didn't need to.

"Hey," Mike found him outside by the moving truck, where everyone was getting ready for one last goodbye. The Wheeler's fingers traced small lines into Eli's as they dangled dangerously close to handholding. "It went well?"

"Yeah," Eli nodded, noticing how easily comforted he was by the presence of his boyfriend. It could be all right, he knew. "Everything that needed to be said was said."

Mike smiled, flashing a dimple Eli always adored. "Good."

Everyone poured out of the house, Joyce leaving last as she gave the house one final look before locking the door. Eli hugged her as she approached, overwhelmed by the sadness that shook his skin. This woman was basically his mother, the one that could actually be present and loving rather than a gray statue who plastered fake smiles while being driven by drugs.

He tried not to think about how, now that the Brooks kids had taken her off those hideous pills, his actual mother could finally be able to recover. Maybe show her children some of that light they'd always long for.

Brandy hugged Jonathan goodbye, the two teenagers bonding over their years of being angsty and antisocial together. Will cried against Lucas's arms, El cradled Max like it'd be the last time, and Joyce embraced Nancy with a glum smile.

When it came his turn to hug El, Eli imagined he was transporting every ounce of his silent support and admiration into her. "I hope California gives you the normal life you deserve," he told her. "We'll all miss you. You've done way too much for us."

El's cheeks spotted with dimples as she smiled, a trait she shared with Mike. "Thanks. It's your turn now."

His eyebrows wrinkled. "What?"

There was a brightness in her eyes, one she blinked away while her voice tightened with despair. "To keep them safe." She paused. "Please."

Eli had almost forgotten. With El powerless and thousands of miles away, it really was up to him. He was scared, still feeling out of control and racked with guilt about his powers. About what his father had said, and how the words haunted his sleepless nights. "I will. I promise," is all he said.

But El saw more. She was a lot more intuitive and perceptive than people liked to give her credit for. "Don't beat yourself up over it all," she urged. "If I did that to myself over what I've done, I'd be gone by now." Her tongue swiped over her lips emotionally. "You tell yourself the same thing I tell myself. You're not a monster. You just keep them safe."

He nodded, and he hugged again gratefully. El Hopper was truly one of the best people.

When the moving van finally trailed out of the driveway, and soon out of view, Eli didn't cry. It would come later, in sweeps like a reoccurring flood. But right now he only thought about the sun on his back, the friends he had biking and driving away, and the boy that stood by him. Always and through everything.

"So..." Mike leaned on his bike, eyes squinting against the summer afternoon with a smile that betrayed their situation. Eli did too. "My place, or yours?"

There was only one right answer.

"Yours. Definitely."

And they rode off together. Ready for whatever was next, and hoping the worst would only lie in their dreams now instead of in their reality.

So...that's it for part 3!

And yes, I really did wait right before season 4 comes out to finish. I am truly a master of procrastination, always.

Thank you all so much for the constant support, the comments, and your love for this story and its characters. It inspires me constantly. I hope you all have a great season 4 watch, and I will see you all soon to carry on Eli and Mike's story for part 4.

All the love! Happy season 4!