Large eyes too weary and shadowed for his pixie-like face stared at Azrael as if fighting to comprehend the words. Why was this apparently omniscient person trying to understand--- and help--- him? "Will. I'm Will." He murmured automatically in a voice that shrank in on itself. Then the prior question aggressively shoved his moment of docility aside. A clawed fist of fear grasped his heart and squeezed. "What? What do you mean gateway?" Will asked, his voice strangling halfway through with rising panic. "There's nothing inside me! It's just--- it's just---" Fresh tears spilled down his cheeks and the boy was helpless to stop them.
Though he wanted to believe he had not known, was that true? Had he not known that evil was buried within him for the past year and a half? Of course he had been aware of a dark ichor running through his veins. Its stain blanched his skin and burrowed into his dreams. It pressed against the cage of his ribs and flooded his brain with dark thoughts. What other explanation could there be for months spent vomiting immature demodogs into the bathroom sink, the fact he was the only one to fall into the Upside Down, that it had relentlessly pursued him over time and space, the cold that the Mind Flayer left inside him, his constant sense of brokenness... of course the evil was inside him. It had been all along.
Will swallowed the sob beating on his adam's apple and firmed his chin. He wasn't a baby. He would be strong the way he had always wished people saw him. "Almost two years, I guess. I thought... I thought it was going to go away. When Eleven closed the big Gate in my town. But it didn't." Tears still gathered in his eyelashes but the boy kept his head up and face grimly composed. "I've been like this since I went there the first time. It was different then, though. A monster took all of me, not just my mind. And when I came back... I've been stuck between."