𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝚈 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙳? ⇢ ʙʏʟᴇʀ

a broken compass

As he had woken up that following Sunday morning after a full evening of fictional rabid dogs and the soft beeps and glitchy sound effects that filled the arcade in town, Will Byers had risen from the couch he'd been sleeping on with a sore back and a subconscious worry for his dark haired best friend. He didn't have the gall to question why Blue had been awake at such an early hour in the morning, but then again, Will wouldn't have wanted Blue to ask him about his nightmares either.

Regardless of whether Will was actively thinking about the nightmare he'd had or not, the dark images seemed to continue to plague him in the daylight. Joyce had come to get him not too late that morning, and even as Will had watched Blue's home drift off further and further as the car pulled down the street and out of sight, the boy could still imagine those twisting, violent roots and branches, crawling upwards and wrapping around his calves and knees with the strength of forty men.

Will imagined, if Blue hadn't woken him up when he did, that he would have been swallowed whole by the forest in no time. He usually abandoned the though quickly once he got to that point, his gaze roaming around his surroundings in search of something else to think about. Will couldn't have imagined that his nightmare was anything more than just that; temporary and imaginary and nothing to be afraid of. It was imaginary, only a mere violation of his brain's unconscious sense of peace. There was one thing the boy was wrong about: it was most definitely not temporary, and as Will poured through the first half of the next week, drifting in and out of consciousness in his classes from the lack of sleep, the nightmare would follow him, dancing across the backs of his eyelids like tattooed violence.

That following Wednesday, Will had trudged out of his house like a zombie, running on an unacceptable amount of sleep, if any at all. Every joint in his body felt stiff like his limbs had been pried off and reattached while he was sleeping, and the soft tint underneath his eyes confirmed the restless nights he'd been experiencing. It almost seemed like as Will approached the finish of his second full week of being home, Blue was growing a bit more open, a bit less physically exhausted and soft spoken whereas Will seemed to be turning inwards, growing more tired by the day.

He hadn't had the heart to bring up the night before to Blue when he had climbed the stairs that morning to find the boy pouring himself a bowl of cereal. He looked well rested, oddly enough, as Will hadn't fallen asleep until the light outside had started to grow brighter, and even then, enough light had begun to dribble into the basement that Will could see the gentle trembling of Blue's shoulders. Will hadn't had the heart to ask him that following morning how he was feeling, or if he had really been crying. He hadn't had the heart to do anything about the situation, knowing very well that if he was in Blue's place, he would have wanted to be left alone. That was Will's problem, as he laid and stared at Blue's back, remaining still as though he was frozen stiff: he wasn't Blue.

Yet through the week, he continued to feel like he was draining. There was nobody to blame for this but Will, and he knew that. He only wanted the nightmares to stop, like some part of him felt as though they weren't just meaningless dreams. His anger, his hurt, his confusion and his lack of knowing seemed to grow into something on it's own. Will had remained silent for the majority of the drive to school that late Thursday morning as Jonathan has pulled the family car up to the school's front curb, overlooking the front lawn and watching the students clamoring in from the parking lot, towards the front doors.

At this point, Will thought, who was to blame for the way he was feeling? His dreams were dreams and nothing more, but the forest lived inside of him, vines and roots climbing up around his lungs as the days went by and he couldn't remember. Could he even blame himself any more? He could, and he would, but was it really the right thing to do?