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strangersteddierthings · 6 months

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No Regrets - Part Three

This one got longer than I expected, so it's only about Spring Break. We return to the apocalypse next part.

Part One🦇 Part Two🦇Part Three🦇Part Four🦇Part Five🦇Part Six

"-eve?"

Waking up again is disorienting. His head aches like the beginning of a migraine. There was something he was thinking about but it's fading quickly. A conversation in a boathouse...? That's not right. The boathouse was empty. The police had beat them there.

"Steve?"

No. No conversation in a boathouse. But there was a phone call. He knows he remembers that. Joyce had called last night. Her and Murray sharing a phone between them as Steve- Oh! Right. Steve told them he knew about Hopper in Russia.

"You have to go, though. Hopper is alive and waiting. And there's a demogorgon. Demodogs, too. You have to kill them all. Any connection to the Upside Down left alive helps Vecna. It's like having a tether to here makes him stronger."

"I can't just abandon El," Joyce sounds conflicted, and Steve gets it. He does.

"You aren't. You're going to be giving her back her dad. She's got Jonathan and Will and Mike. Argyle, too, if he wants to be there. Just. Just get them on the road and back here as soon as you can. If they don't leave soon than Brenner will-"

"Brenner? What do you mean Brenner? He's dead. Right? He's supposed to be dead."

"Yeah, well, he's not. He- I don't know the full details, just. I was just given an overview because, y'know, other shit was going down. But he makes El relive a lot of traumatic shit from her past and yeah, it gets her back her powers, but she's just a kid. She's just a kid."

"Her abilities, they aren't gone?" It's Murray who asks.

"No. She's just traumatized, in a different way. It was... it was Jonathan who said this, actually, to me. I mean, he hasn't said it yet, and if everything goes the way I want, he won't need to say it ever, but that's- sorry, that's not important. He said he thinks El blocked her abilities because she lost Hopper. An internal block, you know? 'Cause she couldn't save him with them, so what was the point of having them?"

"And you think bringing Hopper back will free her of that block?" Murray asks.

Steve can't help it. He laughs. "Hell no. I think years of therapy might, but having her dad will help. There's no way it hurts, right? Also, uh, you're the parent here, Joyce, so I'll let you decide what to tell her, but the big, awful thing that Brenner made her relive? It was a massacre. At the lab, when she was there. Another guy, another number, killed a bunch of the people there. It was El who saved the remainder. She stopped him from killing anyone else by opening the first gate to the Upside Down. She tossed him in and closed it. She's not a monster. Oh, that part you have to tell her. She's not a monster."

"Steve!"

There's more to the phone call, Steve knows he knows that but there's yelling and it's distracting.

"Steve!!"

"What?" Steve snaps, both with his shout and back into himself. He's sitting at the picnic in Forest Hills. Everyone is looking at him with varying degrees of concern.

"You okay?" Robin asks, "we've been trying to get your attention for a while now."

"What? Yeah, sorry," Steve says, distracted, standing up and looking around. Eddie's trailer is right there, and Wayne's truck is parked in front. He knows Wayne. Knew Wayne? He's in charge of the gardens at home base. A real green thumb, not that you can tell by looking at the trailer now. "You think that with Fred's death, they'll stop suspecting Eddie?"

"What? We don't know that they suspect Eddie," Dustin is quick to say, "I know he didn't do it, and so do you so-"

"Yeah, I know! I do know that, but Chrissy died in his home and then he ran. Of course, he's a suspect. But he was in jail last night. So. They can't suspect him still, right?"

Nancy purses her lips, giving Steve a look he knows isn't good. "Well, it will depend on when they apprehended Eddie, which we don't even know they did. How do you know he was in jail last night?"

"Good point. I don't, not for sure. But Wayne might," Steve says as he starts walking away. He can hear everyone at the picnic table shouting for him and scrambling to follow. Steve picks up speed, dashing up the steps and pounding on the door before anyone catches up.

"Steve, what are you doing," Max hisses, because she's the fastest and therefore the closest.

"I just gotta-"

"Can I help you?" Wayne Munson greets, voice even. Steve watches as his eyes sweep the group, pausing on Nancy before coming back to Steve.

"Hopefully. Uh, I'm a friend of- well, no that's a lie. I don't want to lie to you. I'm not Eddie's friend, but I want to be, and Dustin here is, so we just wanted to know if you could tell us if Eddie's okay?" Steve says. "You already talked to Nancy yesterday, but she didn't know that we, like, knew him. Have you heard from Eddie?"

Wayne eyes him with suspicion, which is fair, "I ain't heard from him."

"Please," Steve says, because he's got to try one more time. Either Wayne doesn't know for real, or he's lying because he doesn't trust Steve. He's not sure he'll be able to tell which is which, but he has to ask again, "I swear that we just want to help Eddie. Whatever happened to Chrissy wasn't his fault, I know that. I just need. I need to know he's not- not out there, alone and scared. Please."

Wayne stares him down and Steve refuses to look away. Wayne's eyes flick away from him to the single police cruiser still stationed nearby, then back. "Get in here."

He doesn't need told twice. Wayne retreats into the trailer and Steve follows. Immediately his eyes jump to where the gate will form. Currently it just looks like water damage on the ceiling, but Steve knows. No gate yet, but it'll be there tomorrow. Probably fully formed by the time Vecna tries to take Max.

Robin, the last one in, shuts the door behind her gently.

"I told her yesterday that Eddie didn't do this," Wayne nods his head towards Nancy but he never takes his eyes off Steve. "Didn't stop them from arresting him."

"Thank God," Steve breaths out, which is the wrong thing to say, given how quickly Wayne's face morphs to anger, so he quickly adds, "shit, I mean, that means, he was in police custody when they found another victim last night, right? That'll prove he's innocent."

Wayne doesn't respond right away. Instead, he takes his time looking at each and every one of them, lingering on Nancy before settling on Max. "You live 'cross the way, don't ya?"

Max looks surprised to be recognized. "Yeah."

"Did you see anything?"

"I saw..." she trails off, brows furrowing as she thinks. She looks from Wayne to Steve. He doesn't know what she sees on his face, but he watches as she steels herself, a decidion made, before looking back to Wayne and saying, "What I saw is whatever I'll need to have seen to help Eddie."

"You'd lie to the police for Eddie?"

Max and Wayne have a silent conversation following the question, judging by their stare down and raising and following brow lines. When Max does speak, she says, "I've lied to police for worse people."

"Huh," is all Wayne says as he settles back against the counter behind him.

"Thank you," Steve says, even as his mind starts to calculate. They'll probably keep him the full 48 hours, since there isn't evidence enough to charge him. Right? There isn't really any evidence. Except, perhaps, what Eddie might have told them. Shit. Would Eddie say anything? "Can you let me know when they release him? Whatever happened, whatever he saw, probably freaked him out. I don't want him to feel alone. I mean, we don't."

Dustin is looking at him now like he's grown a second head but Wayne. Wayne is looking at him like he's made a realization. Drawn some unknown conclusion that he must approve of because he nods. "Sure, son."

"You got pen and paper? I'll write down my number."

The silence from his friends is deafening and does not bode well for Steve. He just knows they're going to bombard him as soon as they leave the trailer.

Which is exactly what happens. They wait until they're back by their cars before starting in, though.

"Steve, what the fuck was that?" Dustin says.

"How did you know he got arrested?" Max demands.

"Steve, you are acting so strange right now," Robin says, worry painted across her face.

"Explain," is all Nancy says, crossing her arms.

Should he? Does he even know what's happening? No. Not really. He's got memories of a future that's bleak and dark and terrible and he doesn't want it to come true. Are they even memories? Did those events even happen? He doesn't know for sure. All he does know if he wants to do everything in his power to prevent it from happening though. He doesn't want to have regrets about.... about something.

"We don't win," he says. "We don't win this one. Or, we didn't? We might now. Things are different this time."

"What?" Robin asks.

Steve ignores the question, giving instead more of the information he knows, "Hopper's alive. Joyce and Murray are on their way to Russia to save him."

"WHAT?" he's not sure who asked. Maybe all of them.

"And El is- I don't know. On her way, I hope. But she won't have her powers when she gets here. Or maybe she will? If she believes she's not a monster and really is the hero."

"Steve, you are not making any sense!"

"I know!" Steve shouts and drops into a squat. "I know! I'm not the- the figure it out guy, or the plans guy, or whatever. I'm just the guy who knows things he shouldn't, and I can't tell if it's because I actually lived it, or if I was just given knowledge about it somehow. I know the Upside Down has a red storm that never ends, more democreatures that just gorgons or dogs, and that Vecna slash Henry slash One is a goddamn monster who opens a giant hell gate and causes the apocalypse."

"Whoa, whoa," Dustin sooths, and when Steve looks up, Dustin's got both hands up and approaching like Steve's a wild animal. He kind of feels like one right now. "Slow down and explain."

There's a lot Steve could say. Should say. Steve is kind and soft, even in the face of the end of the world, but he's also learning that he's a little ruthless. Not heartless, but enough that he can see where they are, where they need to be, and how to get there in the easiest way possible. His eyes flick to Max. "Chrissy and Fred. They were both seeing the guidance counselor. You've seen them both there, right Max?"

"I- yeah. Yeah, I have."

"And Nancy, you've got a hunch, right? You need to go to the library to check it out?"

She narrows her eyes at him but nods.

"Okay. So, uh, let's use that as proof. You and Robin go check out your hunch, and I'll stick with Dustin and Max. Take Max to see Ms. Kelley and see if she'll tell Max anything that connects them?"

"You already know what we'll find, don't you?" Nancy asks, and Steve shrugs. "You're right. I won't believe you. Not without this proof. So, we'll go, Robin and me. And when we meet up, I expect you to tell me what we learned."

Max is completely silent the entire drive, an exact opposite of Dustin who shoots off so many questions in a row that Steve can barely remember the first by the time he's onto the next. Not that it would matter, because Dustin doesn't pause between any of his questions or comments to let Steve answer anyway.

Max launches herself from car almost as soon as Steve pulls up to the curb with a loudly groaned, "finally" before she slams the door and bounds across the street.

"Steve! Are you even listening to me!?" Dustin has finally lost steam or ran out of breath or something.

"Are you done yelling at me?" Steve retorts.

Dustin lets out a really big sigh then says, "For now. I just- Let's start with this. How do you know that Hopper's alive?"

"Joyce and Murray confirmed it when I talked to them on the phone. They're supposed to be getting El and crew heading back this way while they go to rescue him, but I don't really know how that's going."

Dustin squints at him. "I thought you could see the future now."

"No. I saw the future, so like, lived it or something. And it's like... You watch Back to the Future yet?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so like, the part where his family starts to vanish from the picture? Because he made his mom want to bang him-?"

"That is a disgusting oversimplification of the plotline, Steve."

"-it's like that. Except I want to change the events because we definitely end up in the bad timeline."

"Okay. Say I believe you. You said we don't win this time. Explain that."

Steve sighs. "Can that wait for like, everyone? Explain it all at once?"

"What made it so bad you have to alter the course of all of human existence?" Dustin demands.

"The Upside Down breaks through, man," Steve says, "Like, toxic air and no more sunlight or blue skies kinda bad. Full on, end of the world apocalypse type shit."

"Shit. We, like, lose lose," Dustin says in a small voice Steve doesn't think he's ever heard Dustin use before he huffs and falls out of view with a click and the sound of squeaking leather. Steve watches as Dustin reclines his seat back so he can stare up at the ceiling of the BMW.

"Yeah," Steve says before they fall into silence until Max sprints back, screaming for him to drive before she's even got the door closed behind her and certainly isn't wearing her seatbelt yet.

They all converge at the school, and Steve tells them what Nancy and Robin learned at the library, then Max puts together the thread that connected Chrissy and Fred, and he has to watch, again, as she accepts she's going to die. She even looks to him, as if he'll confirm that with a shake of his head or a nod.

He just blinks back at her until she looks away.

They want answers he isn't ready to give. Not until tomorrow, after Vecna tries to take Max. Given how today has gone, tomorrow shouldn't be much of a change. Nancy and Robin will still go the Pennhurst, and Steve will take Max everywhere she wants to go, but this time he'll be ready. It's not too late, so the little music store down from Melvald's will still be open. Hopefully they have Kate Bush handy. He'll make sure Lucas has a backup cassette player and-

"Wait. Lucas should be told. He should be here. Why isn't he..." Steve trails off, trying to remember why Lucas would be here. He went to party with the basketball team and- and what? There's something he's missing. Something changed. His head hurts and the white noise is back, and it hits him so suddenly he sways and stumbles backwards until he hits a wall.

"Steve!" Robin gasps his name and rushes to hold him up. Dustin is at his other side just as quick.

"I'm ok," Steve says with eyes closed. He can't explain it, but he's changed something. He knows he has. Lucas is with them tomorrow, he remembers that, and there's this feeling that he should be here now. That he should have shown up at the school, but the reason eludes him. Slips from his grasp like he's trying to hold water. "It's- there was something that was supposed to happen. Something that made Lucas find us here at the school. I remember that. I- I almost hit him with a lamp. But he's not here. He didn't- something's changed. Whatever happened before didn't happen again."

"What, like, you changed the past?" Dustin asks.

The laugh Steve lets out is manic, even to his own ears. "I don't know! I can't remember! It's there, the why, but I can't reach it. It's faded, man, like the picture. It's faded."

"Okay, I think it's time we get some rest," Nancy says. "Dustin, you'll radio Lucas tonight and fill him in. Tell him Steve or I will pick him up tomorrow morning to join us. Let's go everyone, before someone does show up."

Nancy takes Dustin and Max, and Robin sticks with Steve. She doesn't even question his detour to the music store, just helps him find the Kate Bush tape. Doesn't even raise an eyebrow when he buys two cassette players, five blank tapes, and a tape recorder.

"Who is the mix tape for?" Robin asks him only once they're at Steve's house and settled in for the night in front of the fancy stereo in Steve's living room. Robin's called her parents already and told them she was staying with a friend, and they had leftovers for dinner from.

"Just in case. Now, shh," Steve says, and once Robin has properly quieted, he pressed record on the tape recorder and play on the stereo. He's already found the track he wants, so it's just a matter of waiting the song out, pausing the tape recorder quickly, then rewinding the tape. He goes too far back, so his finger just hovers over the record button until Running Up That Hill comes back on, and he repeats the process. Over and over again, until the hour long tape is filled with nothing but one song.

Robin watches him do it in complete silence. She doesn't move or shuffle until after he's paused the recording, stilling again once he hits record. He knows she doesn't understand why, but also that she doesn't need to understand. He knows that she knows he'll explain as soon as he's able.

He's just afraid to say too much right now. He can remember tomorrow; the Pennhurst plan, how it is supposed to go based on what remembers Nancy and Robin saying. Max will bully him into driving her around, and they'll end up at Billy's grave. He'll be ready this time, he already knows the answers they're seeking but he doesn't want to risk too much.

He has a plan. And it'll work. It has too.

Because he can't remember what happens after. Patrick dies, and there's... water? A lake? But why is Patrick at a lake in the dark? He isn't, is the thing. It's like there are two memories overlapping in Steve's mind and he doesn't know which is real. Or if either of them are.

There's a memory of... of Eddie? Eddie talking about Patrick floating but there's also a memory of hearing it on the news, Patrick found dead in his room, murdered the same way as Chrissy and Fred with no sign of forced entry in his house. Both memories feel real, but Steve doesn't know, can't tell, which is.

Robin and he falls sleep wrapped around each other that night.

@i-less-than-three-you @nburkhardt @afewproblems @skepsiss @apomaro-mellow @eddie-munsons-lunchbox @sirsnacksalot @livelifeliketheresnotomorrow @sageclipse @schnukiputz @mbloggotdeletedsothisismybackup @lumoschildextra @juleswashere3 @yet-still-more-banched @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @yearningagain @starlight-archer @chaosgremlinmunson @aol19 @goodolefashionedloverboi @gutterflower77 @moomkin77 @wonderland-girl143-blog @krazyperson @sevenmerrymagpies

#steddie #my fic #time travel au #apocalypse au #butterfly effect au #what was the conclusion wayne came to i hear you ask?#he can see how desperate steve is to help eddie and maybe thinks steves got a crush on his nephew #also where is lucas you might also be asking #Jason cant go on a dangerous manhunt if the man hes hunting is already caged so Lucas doesnt get roped into that #also i see yall questioning the steddie and trust me that it is. will be #just hes in yknow jail for now so steve can't exactly be climbing him like a tree yet. in the spring break parts.#next part however? well. youll see how the end of the world is going

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wibble-wobbegong · 1 year

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The Vanishing of Mike Wheeler

In this little post of mine i’m gonna be telling you the story of how Mike’s disappearance is gonna go in S5 through the perspective of the Hellfire DND game, which represents the Rightside Up/The Party’s POV, and an album which can be directly associated as the Upside Down/Henry’s POV of the same events, revealing how all of this is actually gonna go down in the show.

I know you guys all know what DND game I’m talking about, so I’ll introduce you to a little album called Under the Influence by Overkill from 1988.

In order to connect this album to the DND game, you have to look at the design of the cover here. The most prominent feature is the giant skull with horns and bat wings, right? When you go to look at the set up for Eddie’s DND stuff, there are two stickers:

Both of those have the exact same symbol: a skull with horns and bat wings. What makes these stickers unique is the lightning bolt behind them, which isn’t in the 1988 cover (the first time this mascot ever gets used). The only character we can directly associate with actual lightning is Henry. Yes, Will is sometimes associated with electricity in non-canon content, but Henry was literally struck by lightning in the show.

In the album, there are constant references to the invasion of the mind, being reborn, and there are a few mentions of needing to head for the light as well. This album is heavily coded as Henry’s POV, but it’s also tied to Eddie. That’ll be important for later!!

Character Establishment

Ok, so before breaking down the DND game itself, let me explain which figurines represent which characters really quick.

Mike is represented by his paladin, obviously. Same with Dustin and his bard. Lucas, although he isn’t playing right now, is still being represented by the ranger on the table. I believe the figure I’ve associated with El is a mage, which also lines up because Mike declares her to be the Party’s mage in S2. As for Max’s figure, I don’t have any idea what class that figure is meant to be but the figure is prominently blue, which is a color heavily associated with Max in S4. I don’t know much about DND, so maybe I just don’t recognize the class, or there isn’t meant to be a recognizable class because Max is a zoomer.

Now, as for Will, I hate this just as much as everybody else will but I think he’s being represented by the Vecna figure. For one, we know that Henry himself doesn’t really align with the description of the actual character of Vecna. More so, we never actually witness the Vecna figure attacking anyone. It’s implied, but the visual isn’t there which normally wouldn’t matter except that we do see the attack against one character; Mike. That attack doesn’t come from Vecna.

Most importantly, though, is the the design they chose for Vecna’s figure. There are many different versions they could’ve gone with but they chose the one where Vecna’s staff has the green in his staff. You know what that looks a lot like?

So, Will is being represented by the Vecna figure. Considering that this is all gonna play out in reality in the UD, that actually makes perfect sense because Will is sort of the Vecna of the UD, like how Henry is the Vecna of the RU. The’re opposites.

As for why the actual Vecna, Henry, is being represented by another figure is something that can only be explained through telling this story. Same with Eddie. So, let me dust off this book I found in the corner and show you what I’m talking about.

The Vanishing

So, the DND game is reflecting the reality of S5 when the party decides to go after Vecna. DND games have always been used to predict events in the pasy, as we saw with the ‘weird flowers in the cave’ coming true in S2 and Hopper’s cover-up story being exactly as described by how Mike and Lucas died in the S3 campaign. What I think it really important about this game, however, is the fact that the Hellfire game seems to be ending with a crawl. Crawls are used in DND to set up fights with monsters and take place on a set map, which is what the Hellfire Party goes through. There is a very deliberately set map for the end of this campaign.

It’s important to remember this, because 5x01 is called The Crawl. The Party is gonna be going after Henry pretty soon after Will/Mike reveals he’s still alive. I don’t think they’ll jump into it immediately, but in terms of episodes they’re either gonna be planning their attack or possibly setting it into motion in the first episode.

The meat of this section goes into two things; Mike’s dice roll and the third song from the album, Hello from the Gutter. After the Hellfire Party establishes that they’d fight Vecna to the death, the second scene is of Mike rolling the dice. Mike’s roll is actually given the same level of importance as Dustin and Erica’s rolls and it’s shot very similarly too. There’s one thing that all three of those scenes have in common, and it’s the color of their dice. Those are the only times the red-on-black dice are used. It’s not a matter of who gets to roll them, but rather what the represent. What the r-o-b dice are confirming is that this will be happening in the future. They’re inherently predictive of incredibly important events. Although all of this is predictive, these three rolls are the most important by far because they’re turning points in the story. So why is Mike’s included? Let’s really look at that scene. When Mike rolls his dice, we never see what number it lands on, unlike Dustin or Erica, but we know it’s low enough to ‘kill’ him. I’m sure you can figure out a number that would be low enough to lead to a death, a number that’s important to the story, and a number they couldn’t show us. One.

When we look at the result of Mike’s dice roll, something weird happens.

This is actually the first time we can confirm that the dark sorcerer is Henry, because that first image places the Overkill symbol directly above the dark sorcerer and even has the lightning bolt pointing directly at it. In the perspective of the RU, both Henry and Mike’s deaths are implied. Mike’s death is implied verbally and Henry’s is implied on the board. So, I’m actually gonna consult the lighting to explain this.

When you look at the lighting of this scene and compare it to the lighting for the other scenes of the DND sequence, this lighting is significantly darker with much heavier shadows. Many times throughout the show, we can associate the lighting of a scene changing into something darker with an illusion occurring. The perspective of the RU is being distorted. In actuality, both Mike and Henry are very much so alive. So what’s the point of having the paladin up while the sorcerer goes down? Look at where the paladin is standing. The paladin is in the shadow, in the darkness. The sorcerer is in the light. The darkness is showing the reality, where Mike is alive. The light is showing what the Party sees. Henry is associated with darkness and light is associated with Will. It comes together perfectly when you consider that our perspective of the events of Will’s vanishing in S1 is warped too. Just like how Will’s perspective was distorted then, it’s distorted again so he’s being shown Mike and Henry’s deaths, but Henry’s perspective shows the truth.

In that case, what actually happened? That’s where we turn to the album, which tells us exactly how and why Mike disappeared.

For the first two songs of the album, the perspective of Henry is established through lines like:

“Dirty little rumor, circulating round... / Spreadin' like the plague. in every little town / Capturing the spirit! and goin' to the head”

“From the fire to the streets / I've seen it all... / I've melted in the heat”

There are, however, lines that don’t quite line up with the idea we have of Henry. That’s where the connection to Eddie comes in. Obviously, there was a reason they decided to associate the album with Eddie rather than just placing it around in another way and that reason comes in when lyrics about being reborn start coming in.

“And then a brand new day! / A chance to be reborn / I've seen another way / No time to sit and mourn”

“Didn't want to sit and rot″

I’d like to point at that it seems like Henry’s body may very well have been rendered immobile due to being attacked by a molotov. Eddie’s dead body was left in the UD, complete with no consciousness yet not decomposed either. I’m not saying it’ll be permanent, but I do think that Henry may seek refuge in Eddie’s body by becoming the consciousness that inhabits it. That’s why Eddie is being so heavily associated with this piece of Henry; Henry is living in Eddie’s body. Henry is living through Eddie’s music taste much like he will be living through Eddie later on.

This is important because the song I mentioned at the very beginning of this is the song that tells us how Mike was taken. Mike isn’t stupid enough to separate himself on purpose and there would be too many people around to protect him if Henry just tried to force his way towards Mike. He needs something that would lure Mike away from the others so he can capture them in an illusion and get Mike alone.

This song is a call to a teenager, repeating the phrase ‘hello from our little hell’ over and over. The story goes and has someone who survived the gutter live to tell the tale and beckon the child to join him. He even tell the child that they’ve been expecting him. I think Henry had called for Mike in Eddie’s body and beckoned him away from the others, because of course Mike would follow Eddie if he thought he’d found him. Mike has seen 3 people come back from the dead, it’s not unbelievable that the same could happen for Eddie. Mike cares about his friends like no other, so if he needed to find Eddie he would.

This might seem like a reach, but then I’d like to bring your attention back to that shot of Mike’s paladin and the dark sorcerer. The paladin’s shadow reaches out and connects with the cultist who represents Eddie (or, rather, Henry in Eddie’s body). The cultist is in the light, but is connected to the darkness by the paladin’s shadow. Eddie is still, technically, Eddie in both the Party’s POV and Henry’s POV, except before Mike is taken he’s tricked into believing that Eddie is still Eddie inside and out, but the reality is that Eddie is only Eddie on the outside.

What’s most interesting is that I don’t actually think Mike was taken involuntarily. When I mentioned having a potential date for when Mike disappeared, I got that from @aemiron-main and his insight about the LOTR/ST parallels. One thing he informed me of was that a deal was made on April 6th to end the week of hell occurred. To set the timeline, the first death of S4 happens on March 22nd, then a week passes by and the show ends on March 29th. A week after that would be April 6th, leaving the hell that is the UD to rain on Hawkins. If Mike were to encounter Henry directly at his weakest, I think it’s very in-character for him to try and find a way to put an end to all the chaos and protect his friends, family, and Hawkins. Mike has always wanted to do anything he could to protect people, and he’s smart. If Henry wanted him for some reason, he would absolutely use that to his advantage somehow. Mike disappears after making a deal with Henry to put an end to the chaos and keep his family safe and Henry uses an illusion to convince everyone that both of them are dead.

The Experience

It doesn’t end there. Henry wouldn’t just end it because he has Mike, that makes no sense. He’s going to put Mike in a trance. Like I said, Henry doesn’t have the strength to maintain his own body and needs to recover. If he keeps Mike and doesn’t kill him, he can sap the strength from Mike slowly and consistently; those psychic connections give him power. He couldn’t kill Mike, because he’d need him for later but he could use that trance state to keep Mike in place and heal himself. How do I know this? The first song that details how this trance is gonna play out is called Mad Gone World.

“In a world gone mad and thriving in the boundaries of your brain / Imprisoned in a world solely created for the purpose of a crunch”

This line heavily implies the idea of a trance because it’s a world existing entirely in one’s brain, just like how the trance takes the world you know and puts it in a place only your brain can reach. Also, it’s a little funny, but the ‘world created for the purpose of a crunch’ is literally what the point of the trances is. He creates them so he can connect with his victims and kill them, crunching their bones. Lmao

“What ya see and what ya feel / Are nothing nothing real / A visionary climax! / An imagery so clear / Losing touch or reason / Both quickly slip away”

Again, more lyricism that equates to a trance-like state. We start to move more into what actually occurs during the trance, though. Mike slowly moves towards losing reason because he’s being put in a trance, and seemingly for a very long time.

“One million minutes... / One million nights / One million dreams I've had! / And a million fights / Livin' in a mad gone world / Livin' blind / Livin' with this worldly madness / Just a state of mind / Just a state of mind”

One million minutes and nights implies just how long Mike is going to be in this trance. It seems like Mike is going to be tranced for the two year time skip, which is why this album is from 1988 and not 1986. There’s also a great post here that explains why Mike being missing for the time skip makes sense narratively. A million dreams and fights implies undergoing tons of visions and such in this trance as well. Living blind is also a reference to the way that the vitcims’ eyes roll back when they’re tranced. And, all of this stuff is occurring as a state of mind to Mike because it’s happening in his head.

The other song that walk us through his trance are called Brainfade and Drunken Wisdom. They aren’t as extensive as the other songs, but Brainfade is all about accusing someone of being a liar, saying they’re “full of shit” and there’s also a short monologue that talks about Vegas and an RV which makes me think we’ll at least be getting a call back to the van and a memory with the actual Eddie and they’ll be intertwined. It could possibly be how we find out about how Mike is queer. Maybe he’ll relive the van scene and run out of the car and run to Eddie’s RV out of instinct and then find Eddie and confront another aspect of his queerness right after. Just a possibility.

The final song that details his trance is called Drunken Wisdom, and this song covers the other things we’ll likely see in Mike’s trance.

“Your bitchin's a bore / Don't wanna hear it no... more / So stop cryin' / Ain't feelin' nothing for you”

The first verse is all about getting someone to stop crying, that their bitching is a bore. That comes back to the way Mike doesn’t value his own feelings and believes his own opinions don’t matter, that his problems are lesser than.

“Sorry if I'm not as nice as you could be! / Why don't you take the time to see? / That the world! / Does not revolve around only you / And we got better things to do”

This addresses Mike’s selfishness and how he feels like an asshole for making things about himself sometimes. It’s about how he isn’t a good person and how there are more important things in the world than him, which is something we’ve seen him be insecure about before.

“Why don't we give you a call”

Direct hit! Mike’s lack of calls to Will and losing his best friend are here now too!

All of this would pile up on Mike, especially after years of going through it. That leads into our final trance song; End of the Line. It opens with a reminder that time has not stopped passing during all this. Then, we get this.

“On the edge, standing”

Well. I think we’ve seen this before.

“Time. Time after time / The end of the line / We stand and watch it fade away... / Sign of the time's the end of the line”

Yeah I think we get it. Mike’s gonna go back to the cliff. He’s gonna try to kill himself again. We got it.

“It's your move / So play... it right / Sometimes you get just one chance”

This’ll make more sense later, but I think that this is moment where the party opens a portal back to the real world and Mike has a chance. He can end it all, one way or another. This is the only chance he’s gonna get to pick.

“It's the end / It snuck up... / Quick and took you by surprise / The waiting's over”

The waiting is over. Mike’s made his choice.

The Rescue

Let’s take a quick step back to the Party’s POV. I don’t think we have any evidence of what happened during Mike’s trance, but I do think I can figure out who actually opened the portal and saved him. Remember the dice rolls? The r-o-b ones? There are two other ones.

This is clearly predicting El’s attempt at saving them, and it fails, but let’s look at it a little closer. Who are all the characters in this frame? We have Mike, Max, Henry, Eddie, and two skeletons. What ties all these characters together? They all exist within Henry’s mind one way or another, and the two skeletons are representative of Fred and Chrissy.

This is pretty much evidence of the fact that El is gonna go into Henry’s mind at some point and witness Mike’s trance. She won’t be able to free Mike or Max, but she will get to have her realization moment.

So who succeeds?

Here we have El, Dustin, Lucas, and Will. Only Will and Lucas are standing. Will and Lucas are the 20 that save Mike. Will makes sense, with his powers and such and him being Mike’s light, but why Lucas? Check this out.

Look behind Mike. Lucas is there. I think Lucas might’ve seen something that’ll hint to him that was he was seeing was an illusion. Lucas is gonna play a part in saving Mike because he’s the person who might actually know anything about what really happened. Assuming we’re getting the Mike/Will role reversal, then Lucas stays the same. The only person who wanted to find Will just as badly as Mike was Lucas (excluding Joyce). If Lucas thinks he can find Mike, he won’t stop, and he may end up going off on his own to do so or he and Will stick together because Lucas no longer has doubts about hoping.

So Lucas and Will are gonna be the ones to save Mike. Does Mike choose to go through the portal? Head First answers that.

“I push to the left, you pull to the right! / It's a stand off / Gainin' no ground / Outta the dark and into the lights! / It's a breakthrough / Startin' with sound”

Mike is going for the portal, dodging Henry’s attempts to push him to the left. He’s running out of the dark and into the light thanks to sound, which is exactly how Max escaped Henry the first time.

“Up down the front and side to side! / Code blue / We need it stat / I got the reason that makes you go! / Mid air / Suspended animation”

“It all ends with an all out dive!”

He makes it out, now suspended midair. Henry tried to kill him (code blue) and failed. It ends with a dive, just like how Robin, Steve, Nancy, and Eddie dove into the UD, Mike is diving out.

The problem is that this has brought Will to Henry. Overkill II is a whole beast on its own. It feels much more like a summary of Henry’s perspective on his relationship with Will than anything else, which is Gross. I won’t break down every single lyric because if you read it you’ll see what I mean and that’s also not the point of this post. It’s icky sticky bro

On a lighter note, however, I think we have a return date for Mike! Once again, I thank Em for telling me about these amazing LOTR parallels because April 7th is supposedly the date in which Sam and Frodo have their hospital scene after that week of hell (sorry I don’t remember the exact names and I think I forgot to tag the post he told me stuff in). Not only do the times line up, though there’s two years between the events for us, they also make sense with everything else we know about Mike and being in the trance during the time skip as well as the fact that April 7th is Mike’s birthday. That would be insanely significant, especially if that somehow ties into birthday gate.

Mike went missing on April 6th, 1986 and came home two years and one day later, April 7th 1988.

I know that was a lot, so thank you for reading!! There was a ton of info in here but it was so fucking fun to put together, so I hope it’s as cool to you all as it is to me :)

#overkill/dnd tag #mike hostage theory #mike wheeler #byler tumblr #I don't care if it's not 100% byler I think this is cool as shit so I want people to see it lmao #WHEN I FOUND THE LUCAS THING I WENT AHFEO{HBFONBF WEBGFU #same with a lot of this actually #i was going wild all week waiting to finally have the time to write this all out #my cage #it's open #im finally free #self reference

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