Hawkins has a way of pretending it’s calm when it really isn’t. The earthquakes stopped, the gates patched over, the smoke cleared — but the air still feels charged, like static before a storm. Everyone knows the danger isn’t gone, just hiding.

Jonathan learned that the night everything went sideways.

He and Will had been helping Hopper, Nancy, and the others close off the last contaminated zone near Forest Hills. It was supposed to be routine, just clearing debris and torching anything that twitched. Jonathan kept Will close, refusing to let him out of arm’s reach. They all thought it was safe.

Then the ground split — just a hairline fracture, nothing like before — and something crawled out. Not a demogorgon, not a bat, something half-decayed and half-adapted, like Vecna’s leftovers had been trying to grow teeth again. It went straight for Will. They always go for Will.

Jonathan didn’t hesitate. He shoved Will behind him and took the full force of the creature’s lunge. Claws tore down his side, jagged and fast, and its weight slammed him into broken concrete hard enough to crack bone. He remembers Will shouting his name. He remembers warm blood. He remembers thinking he couldn’t let the creature sink its teeth in, no matter what.

Nancy shot it dead before it could get a second strike. Will helped drag Jonathan out. Hopper carried him the last stretch. He doesn’t remember much after that.

Now Jonathan’s stuck on the couch in the Byers’ temporary home in Hawkins, wrapped in stiff bandages that burn against every breath. His ribs are fractured. His side is stitched in a zigzag pattern that looks like a map of every bad decision he’s ever made.

He hates lying still. He hates being the reason everyone hovers.

At night, when he pretends to be asleep, he hears them.

Joyce whispering anxiously: “He shielded Will with his whole body. He could’ve died.”

Nancy arguing softly but fiercely: “He shouldn’t even be moving. He tore the stitches yesterday just sitting up.”

Will, voice tight with guilt he thinks he hides: “It should’ve been me. It was coming for me.”