per·il

noun

serious and immediate danger.

All standing in Will's room, looking at his cold, unconscious body looking corpse-like, they stared, trying hard to figure out exactly how to keep him alive at the end of all this. Letting him die was not an option, and letting the Upside Down take over Hawkins -and further- was not an option either. In the end, it was ultimately up to Joyce to make the decision, which was not a decision at all.

"He likes it cold..." Joyce mumbled, but everyone heard and it felt the chill run up the length of their spine. They all knew what she was talking about, and it wasn't the cold that made them shiver. "It's what Will kept saying to me," she explained when Hopper asked what she meant. "He likes it cold."

"We keep giving it what it wants!" Joyce shut the bedroom window and Emilia was relieved. Not because they were figuring out a possible option to save Will, but because she realized she was freezing. Jonathan stood behind her in the door way, and she pressed her side against his.

"If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then..." Nancy began, and her voice made Emilia fight the urge to grimace.

What happened? Emilia couldn't stop thinking about it, in every moment of silence it crept right back in.

"Then we need to make the host uninhabitable," Jonathan strode to the bedside, leaving Emilia chilled for more than one reason.

Nancy spoke again, her sentence redundant, "So if he likes it cold..."

"We need to burn it out of him," Joyce finished fiercely.

"We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time," Mike added.

Emilia and Hopper made eye contact; they knew a place. As Dustin mentioned it had to be a place that was far away; far from the central base of Hawkins Lab, Emilia and Hopper both knew. The cabin where they hid El for the last year was ideal; on the outskirts of town with no distinguishing features in regards to its whereabouts, it was unknown to Will and did not need to be covered top to bottom in cardboard. All they needed was heat, and some way to tie Will down.

"Emilia knows the way," Hopper told them as they rushed out to the car. Nancy and Steve went looking for heaters that were tossed from the shed earlier in the night, while Joyce and Jonathan went to the car.

Emilia felt awkward, like she wasn't supposed to go with them. "I can just give them the directions..."

"No, we can't risk not finding this place," Jonathan said the words to be encouraging, but they didn't come off as such. They came off as if she was only there to navigate, but she tried not to take it personally. No one protested as Nancy climbed into the passenger seat with as many electric heaters that she and Steve found, but Emilia didn't know why she was coming with them.

They arrived at the cabin a half hour later, even with Jonathan speeding and Emilia no protesting once against it; though cars still made her nervous, speeding when it was absolutely necessary didn't. the cabin was bone cold, no one having been there and the windows busted open for a few days now. Immediately they began their set up, and Emilia began building a fire. Once the flames crackled to life and began to eat at the kindling, then the logs were added and the place began to warm. They cranked the electric heaters and Emilia felt hot for the first time all day.

It wasn't long before everyone had stripped their winter layers off, clad in sweaty t-shirts with precipitation slicking their hair. Then Will woke up, and the thing inside of him was not happy with the new conditions. The shouting began, the carnal screaming of fury and fear all at once. The unavoidable perils with taking the monster out of the child were showing; his skin paled, dark black veins began to protrude from his neck.

Jonathan screamed that they stop, that they were killing him, but Emilia knew that he would break first. She gripped his hand and pulled him away, but he yanked free from her and began to untie Will; but Nancy caught sight of those veins furthering up the neck of Will, reaching his mouth when an infernal battle cry escaped his lips. But Jonathan's slight untying of the restraints was just enough for whatever beast was inside Will to break free from them.

Joyce clambered onto the bed and tried to restrain Will on her own. Controlled by those dark forces, Will had a strength in him that no normal child could have. He reached up with his free hand and began to strangle his own mother. Jonathan jumped to his mother's aide, trying to break free Will's guillotine grasp, but it was no use. The monster was fighting with its last and strongest defence.

Emilia stood in horror, frozen and unsure how to remedy the situation. It was Nancy who figured it out, grabbing the fire poker from the coals in the bottom of the hearth and jammed it against Will's side, the white hot pain showing on his blackened face. His grip was released, and Joyce backed away gasping for air.

Emilia caught Jonathan, who stumbled backwards in the chaos, holding him for just a moment until he regained his bearings. Just when things seemed to get no worse, things got better. The black mass inside Will emerged from his gaping and screaming mouth, the scene straight from a horror movie and it made Emilia recoil; it would search for another person, would it come for her? She cowered, shaking with fear but unable to move. Maybe if she stayed still enough it wouldn't see her.

It escaped through the door, blasting into the sky and disappearing at once.

Nancy rushed out to make sure it really left, Emilia remained on the floor, hands behind her, eyes wide. Jonathan and Joyce rushed to Will, to see if he survived the vicious exorcism that had been done unto him. Scrambling to her feet when she saw Will was in fact still alive, Emilia crawled over to the radio. Gripping the device in her sweaty palm, she pushed down the button, "Hopp?"

"Hopper are you there?" she repeated.

She got a reply, "Yeah, kid, we're here."

"It's time. Close the gate," Emilia told him with a firmness to her voice.

Suddenly she was pulled into an embrace, and at first she didn't know who it was. Until the jutting boniness gave her away, Emilia hugged Nancy back simply because they survived this. They made it through another horror story, they had saved Will, and now they simply had to wait for the confirmation that El and Hopper had closed the gate. Then things would go back to normal, right?

But as Emilia hugged Nancy, thankful that everyone was still alive -save for Bob- she realized that things would never go back to normal. There was no coming back from this, at least not for Will; what would become of a child who was haunted by monsters from another dimension, who had been possessed and the cause of so much chaos? No, Will would never be the same after this.

Emilia squeezed Nancy with a bit too much vigour. 

Ugh Wattpad makes me save GIF's to my computer now to upload them, and it's clogging up my Documents, and half the GIF's don't work. Why Wattpad, why do you do shitty updates that make things worse?

Question of the Day: Where do you think they will go from here?