Interude - Two boys reflected

Two woke up in the ruins that once were his home. This was baffling, given his last memory was choking on his own blood.

He was certain he had been killed, murdered even. If only he could remember who did it. Yes, he was sure he had been murdered.

He could only recall the final moments when time itself seemed to shatter.

People say you see your whole life in the moment before you die. But all the dying boy saw was a butterfly.

His pain faded into numbness, and his thoughts slipped into the abyss. With his last breath, he cried out for help.

And the butterfly answered.

Will's funeral was marked by notable absences. His mother, his brother, his best friend - none of them were there.

Just like Will, they too had vanished.

Dustin, dreading the prospect of more funerals, took grim note. As an aspiring scientist, he had developed a keen eye for spotting patterns.

And this pattern was eerily reminiscent of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. A single disappearance, followed by a mysterious stranger bearing cryptic warnings. A realization that things were far from normal. Then entire families going missing. And finally, the discovery of a body, the first but probably not the last.

Mike had a knack for ruthless Dungeon Mastering.

Dustin dabbed at his eyes. Crying at a funeral wasn't wrong. Not even for a boy.

He had awoken, bare and bewildered, amid the ruins of the common room, a former gathering spot for special children.

The toys they had once used to harness and refine their powers were now missing. Wall paintings peeled off, revealing a growth of odd, alien vines. Everything was smothered in a blanket of green.

Even in darkness, Two's sight was unimpaired. In fact, it was enhanced—crisper, able to penetrate the dark, and something more. He could see life pulsating through the vines, radiating a color he couldn't name but instinctively recognized as the hue of life itself.

It was mesmerizingly beautiful, yet it stirred within him a sense of nausea, punctuated by an odd pang of hunger.

Where were the others? There should have been bodies strewn about. He knew he hadn't died alone. He was sure of it.

Fragments of gray ash danced in the air, some landing on his skin with a chilling tingle.

There ought to be a spare hospital gown, his size, back in his old room.

However, upon reaching there, an unsettling surprise awaited him.

Two's room had been repurposed into a storage closet.

"It's the weirdo's fault. Whatever she was fleeing from caught her, and now Mike's gone," Lucas declared, his voice a controlled blaze of anger.

"Weirdo?" Hopper queried gently.

For Dustin, it was like witnessing a bicycle crash. With each word, Lucas was unintentionally indicting them all—himself, Dustin, and even Mike, though Mike was currently missing. And it wasn't just Mike; his whole family was gone too. Dustin wished he knew more, but nobody was offering him any explanations.

Lucas spilt it all, piece by piece. Their search for Will, which led them to a peculiar girl with a shaven head. Their decision to hide her in Mike's basement, rather than informing the adults. The awkward moment when she nearly undressed in front of them.

"Stop, Lucas!" Dustin cut in, "You're making it sound weird."

"It was weird!" Lucas shot back, "Who does that?"

He then narrated how the girl had warned them about 'bad men' pursuing her, the danger they all faced if they spoke to anyone, and her connection to Will.

"Will Byers?" The sheriff sought clarification.

"Which other Will? She said Will was hiding," Lucas retorted.

"From the Demogorgon," Dustin supplemented. As disturbing as it was to reveal, it felt somewhat relieving.

"But the next morning, she simply said he was 'gone'," Lucas recounted, sounding defeated, "And then that evening, they discovered Will's body."

"And how did she know that?" The sheriff probed further.

"She has superpowers," Dustin stated matter-of-factly.

"I didn't mean it. I was just... so hungry," Two whispered, kneeling beside a lifeless body.

He'd encountered his first living person in the lab, and in his hunger, had ended the man's life.

It was the life-lights.

They didn't make him feel nauseous as they had before, just ravenous. Desperately so.

When he stumbled upon the man clad in a hazard suit, his instincts took over. He reached out with his mind, telekinetically grabbed hold of him, and began to siphon off his life-lights.

No amount of struggle from his victim deterred him. Not even the man's screams. And when someone tried to pull the man away by the rope attached to his suit, he ripped it apart.

It felt good. So good that Two couldn't stop until all life had been drained away. Not until he was left kneeling by a corpse.

But where had this man come from? Two desperately needed to know. His hunger was still gnawing at him.

Suddenly, he felt a tickle in his throat. Two coughed. Once. Twice, until a butterfly was expelled.

The butterfly fluttered down the corridor, then paused, seemingly waiting for Two.

"Do you want me to follow?" Two inquired, feeling slightly ridiculous for talking to a butterfly, no matter how odd the situation was.

The butterfly bobbed up and down. Taking that as an affirmative, Two began to trail behind it.

Both Dustin and Lucas found themselves grounded. However, at least they were serving their punishment together, at Lucas's place. When anyone tried to separate them, they kicked up a storm. Dustin feared if he lost sight of Lucas, he too would vanish.

Lucas sprawled out listlessly on the bed, while Dustin attempted to lose himself in a comic book. But his heart wasn't in it.

The exploits of the X-Men seemed a lot less interesting when you had encountered a real-life mutant.

The butterfly guided Two to the gate.

Then, in an unexpected turn, it fluttered back into him. It landed on his stomach and melded seamlessly into his flesh.

He felt he should've been more alarmed, but instead, he felt better when the butterfly was inside him. It was as if he inherently understood it was a part of him, just as he knew there were people on the other side of the gate.

The gate itself was a grotesque amalgam of writhing tendrils and membrane, pulsating with life—a life he could see, perhaps even consume, but it didn't look appetizing.

Not like humans did.

Yet he knew he couldn't pass through the gate. It was forbidden—another fact he knew without understanding how.

So, if he couldn't go to the people, he'd have to bring the people to him.