406. My Little Soda Pop

406 / my little soda pop :3

"Not to be a wimp," began Robin conversationally, "but can I maybe sit in the car for this visit? 'Cause this is gonna totally and royally suck."

"It'll be fine," said Nancy reassuringly, keeping her eyes on the road and ignoring Robin in her passenger's seat.

Robin sighed and turned her head out the window. "I just can't stand to see those doe eyes of Eddie's break again. I really, really can't."

"At least he can drink himself into feeling better," said Steve around a mouthful of potato chips, raising the six-pack of beer Eddie had requested from Lucy yesterday.

"That's what my mom does," added Max dolefully.

"Why don't we give it a trial run?" suggested Robin. "Uh, 'hey, Eddie! Good news first this time. We got you some Dustin-approved junk food and that six-pack you requested. Oh yeah, and we found Vecna—only the bad news is that he's in that other, darker, much scarier dimension that we told you about, and the gate's closed, so we have no way of getting to him. Like, he's entirely shut of to us, so basically, you're screwed—and, no, no, no, I know you were already screwed, but now you're doubly—triply—screwed.'"

In the brief silence that followed, Lucy puckered her lips in thought.

"Maybe we don't put it like that," she said. "How about... 'we're one step closer to finding Vecna than we were the last time we saw you!' That's what's important."

"See, Robin?" said Steve, gesturing from the back of the station wagon to his girlfriend in the middle seat. "A positive spin can make all the difference."

Suddenly Nancy slammed on the brakes. "Oh... shit."

Everyone leaned forward to get a glimpse of what had Nancy's blood running cold, and Lucy felt her stomach drop to her toes at the sight of a dozen cop cars, cameras, reporters, and onlookers flooding the shore of Lover's Lake. Boom mics hung in the air overhead of the sheriff, who was addressing a panicked crowd. Caution tape surrounded the area.

"Maybe there was another convict hiding in the house nextdoor to Eddie," muttered Leo, narrowing his eyes at the sight.

Nancy parked the car and they spilled out of it as quickly as they could, heading as close as they could get to the crime scene without crossing the yellow tape. Officer Callahan and Sheriff Powell stood before the reporters; the sheriff read off a notepad in a pacifying voice.

"...the Roane County Line received a call," he announced evenly, "a little after midnight, reporting a homicide out here on the lake. Officer Callahan here and myself arrived first on the scene. We made our way to the shore of Lover's Lake about ten yards from that house you see behind me. It was there that we found the victim—an eighteen-year-old senior from Hawkins High, Patrick McKinney."

"Shit," Leo cursed, and he lost his footing, stumbling back a step; Lucas had gone slack-faced at the name.

"His limbs—his body, uh, it was disfigured—"

"He was on the basketball team," Lucy whispered at the bewildered expression on Steve's face. "Patrick. Shit. He's... shit."

"There was an eyewitness on the scene, who we have now in privacy..."

"Shit is right," murmured Robin, watching Sheriff Powell with narrowed eyes.

Then Sheriff Powell straightened his spine and retrieved from Officer Callahan an image, holding it away from the crowd initially. He drew in a deep breath, then said, "We have also identified a person of interest."

"No," hissed Dustin at once. "No, shit, shit, shit—"

But despite Dustin's curses, Sheriff Powell turned the picture around to reveal their worst fear. "Eddie Munson," he announced. "We encourage anyone with information to please come forward."

"Oh man," muttered Steve. "This is not good. This is really not good."

Sheriff Powell finished his debrief by announcing the town hall meeting would be open to civilian questions and he would answer them all at two o'clock, but now he had work to do; the reporters still flooded him as he walked away, but he returned to the crime scene behind the yellow tape and did not look back once.

Before anyone could speak, Dustin's radio staticked to life. "Dustin? Can you hear me? Sugar Plum Fairy? Anyone?"

"Eddie, holy shit," said Dustin; the group gave their backs to the reporters and huddled around the radio for privacy. "Are you okay?"

There was a slight pause before Eddie's panicked voice returned. "Nah, man, pretty goddamn far from okay."

"Where are you?"

"Skull Rock. Do you know it?"

"Uh, yeah, that's near, um—Cornwallis, and, uh—"

"Garrett," finished Steve, energized; he started walking before Eddie could even reply. "Yeah, I know where that is."

"Hold tight," Dustin told Eddie. "We're coming!"

Their trek through the woods was decent, given the circumstances, and Lucy had definitely had worse hikes to make (i.e. through the secret Russian underground bunker last summer), so she did not have much to complain about; the walk to Skull Rock was familiar to her, anyway. Steve and Dustin, however, found many things contestable over the course of the hike.

"It's north," said Dustin, holding up the map. "I'm positive. I checked."

Steve rolled his eyes. "You do realize that Skull Rock is, like, a super-popular make-out spot?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Yeah, well, it wasn't popular until I made it popular! I practically invented it."

"That was a joint effort," said Lucy scornfully as she swatted a leaf out of her hair.

Steve pointed back at her like she made a great point. "Yeah, so, I'm positive that Luce and I know our way to Skull Rock better than you, and that this is the wrong direction."

"Steve," said Dustin, as Steve broke off from the group and began to head east. "Where are you going? Steve!"

"Stop whining," he said over his shoulder. "Let's go. Trust me. And don't roll your eyes at me, Henderson—"

"He's an idiot," muttered Leo, as Dustin hustled to catch up with Steve and lead the group together. Robin and Nancy kept side by side behind Lucy and Leo, and Max and Lucas were the furthest back, deep in conversation. It was, Lucy realized with a jolt, the first time she had been alone with her brother in... a long time.

"I don't know how you put up with him," Leo continued, kicking a branch out of his path and keeping his eyes on the ground. "Arrogant, idiotic prick... And I know he uses hairspray to get that height. I know it."

Lucy laughed against her better judgment. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were the one of us with a crush on him."

Leo rolled his eyes hard enough that Lucy was sure it was audible to the other side of the world. "I think I would genuinely rather fall off a cliff."

"Duly noted," she said, nudging him with her elbow.

They walked a few more steps in silence. Leaves crunched under their feet, the wind rattled through the branches overhead, and the rest of the group murmured among themselves behind them. It was the first remotely calm moment she had had with her baby brother in months, and it made something ache in her chest.

"You know," Lucy said softly, "you've been pretty hard to put up with, too."

Leo stopped kicking at branches. "Yeah," he muttered. "I know."

She blinked, surprised by how quickly he had conceded. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, jaw shifting like he was chewing on the words.

"I, uh... I shouldn't've blown up at you. Or Dustin. Or... basically everyone." He exhaled through his nose. "It's just—everything's been weird. And I didn't know how to deal with any of it. So I guess I just... took it out on the wrong people."

Lucy stared at him, guilt and relief thrashing around in her chest. "Leo..."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Whatever. It doesn't matter anymore."

"It does matter," she said gently. "Of course it does. You're my brother."

Leo's mouth twitched into something Lucy could have taken as a smile, if she didn't know better. "Dustin said the same thing. Yesterday. In the... you know." He gestured vaguely. "Victor Creel's house."

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "You guys actually talked? My plan worked?"

Leo rolled his eyes but nodded all the same. "We, uh, made up. Or something close to it. I apologized for being a dick, and he apologized for being a know-it-all, but neither of us are going to change, since, y'know, that's just who we are. We'll just have to put up with it better."

Lucy let out a quiet breath of something that felt a little like hope. "I'm glad."

"Yeah. Me too." For the first time in a long time, he actually looked at her, and Lucy saw her little brother instead of the varsity basketball player. "I know I've been... gone. Or mean. Or both. But I'm trying. I swear I'm trying."

Without thinking, Lucy reached out and hooked her arm around his shoulders, pulling him close for a side hug as they kept walking. He pretended to protest—"Ugh, Lucy, we're in public"—but he did not pull away, which made her grin even harder.

"Hey," she said softly, "I never stopped being your sister. Even when you tried to ditch me for the basketball cult."

"Okay, relax," Leo muttered, but his voice was warm. "It's not a cult."

She shot him a disbelieving look.

He exhaled a laugh. "Whatever."

Ahead of them, Steve glanced back, catching the tail end of the half-hug before Leo shoved his hands back in his pockets. Steve raised his brows at Lucy in a silent question, making sure everything was okay.

Lucy nodded, still unable to stop smiling.

Leo saw it too and groaned. "Great. He'll probably take credit for this, too."

Lucy laughed, bright and genuine. "Sorry, little guy. You already apologized; no take-backs anymore."

Leo muttered something indecipherable and kicked another branch—but this time he did not move away from her, not even an inch; and for the first time all year, walking through the woods toward Skull Rock, Lucy did not feel like she was losing her little brother anymore.

"Oh, boom!" came an arrogant voice from up front, and Lucy and Leo lifted their eyes to see Steve crouching through a bush to arrive at Skull Rock. "Bada bing, bada boom. There she is, Henderson. Skull Rock. In your face, man—in your stupid, cocky little face."

"It doesn't make sense," Dustin muttered as the others walked up next to him. "That doesn't make sense..."

Steve mocked him, rolling his eyes. "Even with it staring you in the face, you can't admit it. You just can't admit that you're wrong, and I'm so right. I'm so right they're going to rename right to Steve Harrington."

"And he's humble, too," scoffed Leo.

Steve mocked him as well. "Buttheads. Both of you."

"I concur," announced Eddie's voice, and everyone turned o see him come out from hiding. "You, Dustin Henderson, are a total butthead."

"Jesus," said Dustin, rushing forward to embrace Eddie, "we thought you were a goner!"

Eddie hugged him back, looking pale-faced. "Yeah, me too, man. Me too."

The group settled down at Skull Rock, Nancy giving Eddie his brown paper bag of food and beer, and he tore into it; then, once his stomach was satiated and he had a beer in hand, he finally told them what he had seen last night when Patrick died on the lake. It sounded too similar to what had happened to Chrissy—much too similar. Vecna's attack.

"When I got to the shore, I tried calling you guys, but, uh, my walkie was busted. So, uh, I did the thing that I do now, apparently. I ran."

Nancy watched him closely, taking in every one of his words. When he finished, she said, "Do you know what time this was? The attack?"

"Yeah," he said at once, going to unfasten his wristwatch. "No, yeah, I know exactly what time it was. My walkie wasn't the only thing that got soaked."

He tossed the stopped watch to Nancy, who caught it, then glanced down at the face as Robin peeked over her shoulder.

"9:27," she confirmed.

"Same time our flashlights went kablooey," added Robin.

"Which means... what, exactly?" said Steve, crossing his arms.

"That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick," answered Nancy. "Which means we're one step closer, we know how Vecna attacks."

"And where he attacks from," said Lucas.

Max raised her eyebrows, thinking aloud. "So now we just need to sneak into his lair in the Upside Down and.. drive a stake through his heart."

"If he even has a heart," added Lucy sadly.

"A stake?" repeated Steve, furrowing his brow. "Is he, like, a vamp—Is he a vampire?"

Max shot him a look. "It was a metaphor."

"Idiot," muttered Leo.

Eddie raised his hand. "A bullet would work on him, right?"

"I say we chop his head off," said Lucas.

"Yeah," said Nancy, shaking her head, "I'd say all of the above, but we can't do any of that until we find a way into the Upside Down."

Max sighed. "We need El to get her powers back."

"Everything was, like, way easier," agreed Steve. He looked to Eddie, gesturing vaguely. "We had this girl, she had superpowers—"

"—superpowers," finished Eddie, nodding, unamused. "Yeah. You mentioned her. Hey, uh, Henderson's not, uh... cursed, is he?"

The others glanced back to see Dustin pacing back and forth through the clearing before Skull Rock, muttering to himself, his head shaking at an alarming rate.

"Cursed?" said Steve. He scoffed. "No, no, he's fine. Mental? Absolutely."

Suddenly Dustin raised his hands into the air and screamed. "BOOM!"

Everyone spun on the spot, startled, and Dustin zeroed in on Steve, pointing at him; he stepped closer and closer, whispering as he did it: "Bada.. bada... boom."

Steve glanced at the others, then looked at Dustin as though he were crazy.

"I," said Dustin, "was right. Skull Rock was north."

"Seriously?" said Steve, getting angry. "You're serious? THIS is Skull Rock, okay? You're totally, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong. Right now!"

"Yes," said Dustin challengingly. "And... no."

"Oh my God." Steve put his face in his hands.

Dustin held up a compass from his back pocket for everyone to see. "This worked correctly when we left the Wheelers'. It was correct when we got in the car on Kerley, but it started to slip the further east we went. Now, it's way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn't wrong. The compass was!"

"So you're using faulty equipment," said Steve, gesturing madly. "Dude, you're still wrong!"

"Except it isn't fault." Dustin grinned. "Lucas, Leo, do either of you remember what can affect a compass?"

The two of them paused only briefly to think, then said together, "An electromagnetic field!"

"Sorry," said Robin, brow furrowed, "I must've skipped that class?"

"In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field," explained Dustin excitedly, "the needle will deflect towards that power. So either there's some super big magnet around here, or..."

"There's a gate," finished Lucas, and Dustin pointed to him, grinning.

"But we're nowhere near the lab," said Leo, crossing his arms. "That can't be right, dude."

"But what if, somehow—there's another gate? A gate that we don't know about! It'd have to be smaller, way less powerful—"

"Snack-size gate," said Robin.

"What?" said Steve. "How? Why?"

"No idea," said Dustin. "All I know is that something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we've seen anything like it, it was a gate."

"If it is a gate," interceded Lucy curiously, "does that mean.. there's a way to Vecna?"

"That's the hope," confirmed Dustin. "A way to get to Vecna, and a shot at freeing you two from this curse."

He was looking between Max and Lucy, and the others followed his gaze; Lucy shifted beneath everyone's attention and ignoring the prickling sensation on the back of her neck.

Then, without warning, Dustin began to leave—he headed back the way they had come from, a pep in his step.

"Where are you going?" demanded Steve. "Hey, hey! Eddie's still a wanted man; we can't just go for a hike in the woods!"

Dustin held up his compass with fervor. "This little steel capsule might be the key to saving three people: Max, Lucy, and Eddie. What say you, Eddie the Banished?"

Everyone turned to him. He had crouched beneath Skull Rock, eyes darting between everyone, but now he sat stock still, staring at nothing in particular.

"I say you're asking me to follow you into Mordor," he replied in a low voice, "which, if I'm totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea. But, uh the Shire.... the Shire is burning."

The others turned their heads back to see Dustin bouncing on the balls of his feet with glee. Eddie stood fully and began to follow him, sighing with resignation.

"So Mordor it is."

Accepting defeat, they all began to follow Dustin now, heading back in the direction they had come from; Steve and Lucy, sporting matching expressions of utmost confusion on their faces, hung back and exchanged a glance.

"What is Mordor?" they muttered together.

The sun had sunken well beneath the horizon by the time Dustin stumbled to a stop. He had been sweeping through the woods with an incredible fervor, exhilarated that he might be proved right; the others struggled to keep up, and—much to her dismay—Lucy was on the verge of ruining another pair of Converse to supernatural causes.

The only reason Dustin stopped at all was not for the others to catch up—it was because he physically could not go any further without jumping headfirst into Lover's Lake. They crowded around him, breathless, and gazed at the water's surface.

"Your compass still going bazoinko?" Leo asked Dustin, scowling at the water.

"Yup," said Dustin with a glance down at it. "More than ever."

"I thought these woods were familiar," said Eddie dolefully. "Lover's Lake."

Dustin shook his head. "This is... confounding."

"There's a gate in Lover's Lake?" clarified Lucy, bemused. "I don't understand. How can that be possible?"

But Nancy was perhaps the only one who understood. "Whenever the Demogorgan attacked, it always left an opening. Maybe Vecna's the same way."

"Yeah," muttered Steve, with the air of someone who knew he was about to get into some deep shit. "Only one way to find out."

A couple yards up the shoreline, Eddie tore a tarp off the boat he had stolen from the boathouse outside Reefer Rick's place. He had left it here after Patrick was attacked on the lake the night before. Now, he and Steve worked together to push it out from the shore and hold it still so the ladies could step inside.

"Here you go," said Steve, and he and Eddie held up their hands for Robin to keep her balance with as she stepped inside; she opted to press down on their heads instead. "Yeah, that works too."

Eddie hopped in behind her, then turned to give Nancy a hand inside. "Wheeler."

"Thanks."

"Luce," said Steve, raising his hand to give Lucy as she made to step in too. "Only if you promise not to get seasick on us."

She rolled her eyes and followed the others in, the boat wobbling beneath her feet. She made to give him a snappy retort but before one could come, she heard the strangest sound in the distance: Discordant bell tolls, chiming from somewhere around the lake.

She looked over her shoulder, her blood running cold, and stood with bated breath, waiting for Vecna to appear—but nothing else followed. She wondered if perhaps the five bell tolls would be all he taunted her with now.

When she turned back toward the others, she saw Eddie holding a hand up to block an affronted Dustin from entering the boat.

"It's better this way," Nancy was telling the kids. "You guys stay here with Max. Keep an eye out for trouble."

"You keep an eye out," replied Dustin hotly. "It's my goddamn theory!"

"You heard Nance," said Robin.

"Who put her in charge!?"

Robin smiled, knowing she was riling him up. "I did."

"Compass?" Nancy extended an impatient hand toward Dustin, who glared for a moment, looking as though he were on the verge of whining; he reached into his pocket and then dropped the compass into Nancy's palm. In return, Steve threw Dustin's backpack at him.

Robin and Eddie picked up the paddles to take off from shore; Steve gave them a little push and then hopped into the boat with them.

"You said four!" exclaimed Dustin.

"Sorry," Steve whispered back at him, sounding anything but.

"Bedtime at nine, kiddos!" Robin called to the shore.

"And seriously," added Lucy, "stay out of trouble!"

Dustin flipped them off, but they were too far away for Lucy to care. She instead turned her head and looked out onto the lake, a foreboding sense of fear overtaking her for reasons she could not quite explain.

Robin and Eddie paddled out as far as they could, groaning lightly at the effort. Nancy kept her eyes glued to the compass for any signs. Steve and Lucy sat with their eyes peeled across the water, doing the same; though Lucy was not quite sure what she was looking for in the first place.

Then Nancy sat up straight. "Woah. Woah, woah, slow down. Slow down, guys."

They had reached the center of the lake, just about. Robin and Eddie pulled in the oars, and they all circled Nancy, looking down at the compass face. The needle spun out of control, flickering against the glass; it could not decide where North was, fighting against itself furiously.

Suddenly the radio crackled to life—Dustin's voice insisting to know why they had stopped, what was going on. His demands grew fuzzy in Lucy's ears, though, and she looked around, trying to find the kids at the shore—but they were not where she had left them.

They were gone.

Lucy blinked hard, leaning forward as if that would sharpen her vision. The shoreline rippled strangely, stretching and bending like heat mirage. The kids were gone, the trees were barren of leaves, and even the shape of the shoreline looked wrong.

"Lucy?" Steve's voice came from somewhere close, but it felt far away, as though she were hearing him from the bottom of a deep swimming pool. "Hey—hey, you good?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but the world pitched.

The oars clattered from Eddie's hands. Robin said something high-pitched, panicked, that Lucy could not hear. Nancy stood up so fast the boat rocked. Every sound—every voice—was suddenly suffocated under the low, gut-deep gong of bells.

Five of them.

She felt each one like a shockwave against her ribs. Her breath caught, and suddenly she understood that the first round of tolls had been a warning. Now she was really in it.

Before she could do anything—before she could move—something cold curled around her ankles. She jerked her feet back instinctively, gasping, but the boat felt as though it had sunk inches deeper into the water.

She looked down to the bottom of the boat and saw black. It was not water, and certainly not from Lover's Lake. A thick, viscous shadow climbed around her shoes, threading upward like smoke tugged by invisible fingers. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears.

"No—no, not again—" she whispered, but the words came out strangled.

"Lucy?" Robin's face came into view, pale and frantic. "Lucy, talk to us."

But Robin was not looking down at the black tendrils. None of them were panicked at the realization that their boat was about a minute away from sinking. None of them cared about the inky black tendrils curling around their feet, ready to drag them to hell.

The last bell toll hit, deep and final, and her vision snapped to darkness.

Lucy blinked hard, her chest tight with panicked, heavy breaths. She could not quite get enough air into her lungs. When she opened her eyes, she was relieved that her vision had returned; that she was still on a boat in the middle of Lover's Lake—she was still with her friends, not under Vecna's curse. She had just barely escaped it.

Relishing in the sense that she was safe again, Lucy turned away from the horizon and froze to see the boat was empty. Robin was not sitting in the bow with her oar across her thighs; Eddie was not chewing his nail on the seat next to her; Nancy was not holding up the compass to guide them to the gate; and Steve, worst of all, was gone entirely.

The boat was empty. Lucy was alone. The surface of the lake shimmered perfectly as though this were how it had been all along.

She drifted in perfect silence, spinning slowly in place like something unseen had caught the boat by the hull and was letting it twirl freely. Lucy's stomach churned with nausea and perfect anxiety.

"Steve?" she called, voice cracking. "Robin? Guys?"

Her breath fogged the air in front of her, though she didn't feel any cold on her skin. She crawled toward the edge of the boat, heart thudding, gripping the sides hard enough her knuckles blanched.

There was no shore around her anymore. No trees, either. The moon had disappeared from the sky and taken the stars with it, leaving behind only a blank, endless, gray horizon, stretching in every direction as though the world had been erased. All that remained was Lucy.

Then a warped bell toll echoed across the water, vibrating through her ribs. She stumbled back. There were five in total, each one louder than the last, until she thought her ears might bleed.

She whipped around, pressing her hands to her ears to protect them—and the boat lurched violently, throwing her backward. She hit the floorboards hard, breath knocked out in a choked gasp.

Without warning, the water split; the grandfather clock erupted upward, dripping black water, its wooden frame warped as though it had melted and reformed. The golden pendulum inside swung back and forth with a slow, sick rhythm, each tick sinking claws into her spine.

Lucy stumbled backward and fell against a wall that shouldn't be there. The floor beneath her feet solidified from wood paneling into metal lockers, white and stained and humming with fluorescent lights.

She blinked, looking around, squinting against the harsh lighting: it was Hawkins High, the lockers and endless hallways familiar to her by now. She was leaning against one locker in particular and pushed off of it to regain her balance, panting, looking around nervously; she knew the other shoe would drop soon, but was uncertain of where it would come from.

Then, finally, a sound other than that of a clock's dissonant chime: A familiar voice, one that had Lucy turning to face it with a disbelieving glow on her face.

"Lucy?"

Leo stood at the far end of the hallway. The voice was faint—thin, like it traveled down a long, hollow pipe. Lucy whipped around.

He looked normal, just like her little brother. His backpack was slung over one shoulder, blond curls frizzed from the humid Hawkins springtime breeze, expression somewhere between irritated and worried—his usual mix.

But something was... off. His outline flickered, a subtle lag in the air around him, like he wasn't fully loaded into the world or something.

"Leo?" Lucy breathed, taking one shaky step forward.

He did not move to meet her, but instead just stood there, hands shoved into his jacket pockets.

"You okay?" His voice was flatter this time, much more dull, like he was asking out of obligation.

Lucy's throat tightened. "I—I don't know. Where are we? What—what is this?"

"High school," he said simply, shrugging. "Where else?"

He tilted his head, watching her; he was not moving to meet her in the middle, like she was.

Lucy swallowed, hard. "Leo, something's wrong."

He blinked slowly. "Yeah. You."

Lucy furrowed her brow. "What?"

He pushed off the wall, walking toward her for the first time; he softened and shook his head. "Hey, hey—breathe. It's fine, Lucy."

Lucy's chest hitched; she moved to meet him in the middle of the hallway now. "I thought— This doesn't feel right—"

"Yeah, I know." Leo rubbed the back of his neck, looking unusually awkward. He had stopped walking, but still felt the same distance away from Lucy that he had been before. "Look, I've.... I've been meaning to talk to you, Lucy. I haven't exactly been the best brother lately."

She shook her head, confusion drowning her now; she had spoken to Leo just today, they had made up. Why would he have more to apologize for?

"And I'm sorry," he said quietly. "For being a jerk. For checking out. For acting like you're—"

He stopped short, like he was searching for the word, avoiding her eyes suddenly.

Lucy nodded encouragingly. "Like I'm—what, Leo?"

Something shifted in his face almost imperceptibly: there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and a glint in his eyes that was too dark to be familiar to Lucy.

"Like you're too much," he finished.

Lucy's smile fell. "What?"

Leo gave a soft laugh, but the sound rang wrong, like something doubling under his voice. "I mean, come on, Lucy. You really don't see it?"

Her stomach curled and she took a step back, shaking her head. "Leo, that's not... that's not funny."

"Funny?" He tilted his head, the movement sharp and unnatural, like his joints were not bending right. Nothing about his movement was normal now. "Oh, trust me. I'm not laughing with you."

Lucy shook her head again, disbelief written across her face. "You're... you're not Leo."

He stepped forward, matching her retreat now But his expression didn't change; still soft, still brotherly. The voice behind it, though, deepened, became more grating than before.

"I'm trying to help you, Lucille," he murmured. "You cling to people who keep leaving. You expect them to hold you up when you can't even hold yourself together."

"Stop," she whispered.

"You break," he continued. "Over and over. And then you wonder why everyone grows tired."

Lucy shook her head, tears burning hot. "Leo would never say that."

"Oh," he said, and now the smile finally stretched too wide, splitting across his face wrong. "But these are your thoughts. Not his."

Without warning, the fluorescent lights exploded above them in a shower of sparks; the lockers melted into rotting wood; Lucy screamed and ducked her head to shield it from falling debris. The hallway was collapsing like a stage set falling apart; Lucy ducked out of the way of a falling air vent and began to do the only logical thing she could think of.

She sprinted away from Leo.

The layout of Hawkins High, while falling apart at the seams, was still familiar to Lucy; she tore through each hallway, her heart hammering out of her chest, and searched for the exit to the school. All around her, locker doors collapsed, desks flew out of classrooms, water foundations exploded in showering rainfall. Lucy weaved through it all, pushing her legs to go as quickly as they could, until the entry hall to the school was before her.

Grunting, she shoved the front door open and spilled across the threshold, but what she found on the other side was not the Hawkins High parking lot.

It was a void of red, the shattered illusion of a house floating overhead and taunting Lucy to come forward.

The sky was the color of blood, illuminating with lightning every time Lucy took a step forward. Panting, she gazed around at the surrealism of the place. Pillars made of twisting red vines suspended mangled bodies midair like trophies. Over one of them hung a disfigured front door, the stained glass rose glowing in the red light.

All of these things were familiar to Lucy. She had seen them in Max's drawings; she had pieced them together to recreate this very place.

She remembered Max's words from that very morning: "He seemed surprised, like he didn't want me there."

Lucy swallowed thickly, her lungs still aching in her chest; she could not tear her eyes away from the bodies hanging on the pillars. Chrissy, Fred, and now Patrick. Two more pillars sat empty.

It did not take much imagination for Lucy to know who they were waiting for.

Before she could gather her wits enough to keep running, the discordant voice from before surrounded her. "What are you doing here, Lucille?"

"No," she muttered, almost on instinct; she turned to see Vecna approaching. Her first glimpse of him.

He towered over her—human-shaped, but only in the way a nightmare tried to mimic something familiar. His body looked grown rather than built, a grotesque knotwork of flesh and vines and muscle fibers that pulsed faintly, as though something rotten was still trying to live beneath the surface.

His skin was not really skin at all. It was grayish and slick like something left too long in water, stretched over bulging cords of tissue that twitched on their own. Exposed nerves spiraled down his arms and legs like living roots, glowing faintly with a dull, poisonous red.

His chest rose and fell in slow, rattling breaths. Each inhale sounded like something scraping up the walls of a coffin.

As he moved toward her, wet, stringy vines dragged behind him, fused into his back like parasitic extensions. Some curled and flexed like they were tasting the air. Others dragged along the floor with a sickening squelching sound.

He leaned in, studying her, head tilting too far to one side—far past what any neck should allow.

When he spoke, the voice didn't only come from his mouth.

It came from everywhere, vibrating through the red world around them, reminding Lucy that this was his mind she was in. He had control over every last piece of it. Including her.

"You should have known," he said, in a way that made her think he was taunting her. "People like yourself, Lucille... they do not get happy endings. You leave people behind."

"You're not real," she whispered, almost to herself, looking to the sky as though she could pray her way out of this. "You're not real. You're not."

"I am as real as you've made me," he told her. "Your thoughts, Lucille, they are mine. Your doubts belong to me. Your failures and your fears—all of them are what have brought me to you."

Lucy shook her head, her heart beating in her throat. She tried to back away but she felt his vines begin to curl toward her ankles.

"You like to pretend," he informed Lucy, his voice echoing through her mind. "Everything is held together by you, Lucille. But what happens when you are alone?"

Her breathing, shallow and quick, grew louder in her head. She pressed her hands to her ears, head shaking, eyes wet with tears. "No, no, this isn't real, this isn't—"

"Aren't you tired?" He spoke persuasively, as though trying to convince her now to join him rather than force her to. He lifted a hand and traced it down her head to her collar. "Tired of holding everything together? Tired of being the perfect daughter, the perfect sister?"

"No, no," she jerked her head out of his grasp and glared as hardly as she could, her chest rising and falling with pants. "Shut up, I'm not perfect! You—you're not real!"

His voice dropped to a whisper as his vines enclosed around her legs. He raised his hand once more, and this time, he held it right over her face.

"It is time to let go."

"Shaking her isn't helping!" Eddie was screaming now, and with the amount of panic on the boat, it was a surprise it had not capsized now.

Lucy stood in the very center of it, stock-still. Her eyes were rolled back into her head and bloodshot. She gazed up at the sky, frozen, stuck in her mind, despite Robin's forceful grip on her shoulders.

"Lucy!" she tried again, rocking her back and forth regardless of Eddie's doubts. "LUCY! Lucy, wake up—oh, shit—"

Steve cursed at the top of his lungs, his hands gripping his hair in panic. His eyes widened only further and the alarm on the boat grew ten times in size as Lucy's feet slowly left the floorboards and began to levitate above them.

"NO," said Steve, lunging forward as if he could stop her; he grabbed her waist and tried to weigh her back down to the floor. "No, let go of her, PUT HER DOWN—hey, Lucy, hi, sweetheart, look at me—no, NO—"

Nancy's hands shook as she watched Lucy ascend. "No, no, no—shit, shit, shit, what do we do—?"

"We need music!" screamed Robin. "We need MUSIC—"

"We're in the middle of a lake, ROBIN!" Eddie cried back. "Where the hell are we supposed to get music?!"

Steve put his hands back on his head, racking his brain; he cursed aloud again and ran his hands down his face. They only had a matter of time left, and he knew it. "Okay—okay, okay—SHIT—"

He looked up at Lucy, at her trembling hands, at the blood trickling from her nose—and, completely out of ideas, Steve did the only thing he could think of.

"Uh, we're—we're, uh, running with the... shadows of... the night!"

Robin stared at him, breathless. "Are you—?"

"Oh my god," exhaled Eddie, watching Steve with wide eyes. "He is."

"It's our only option!" Nancy grabbed Steve's shoulder, eyes glued to Lucy overhead. "Keep going, Steve! Keep going!"

Steve stammered, unsure of the lyrics but certain that the time he spent listening to Pat Benatar in Lucy's car would make up for it. He searched his mind and kept going—loud, off-key, and with a terrified kind of panic to his voice that made it shake and pitch upward.

"Surrender all your dreams—uh, to me tonight... Uh, they'll—they'll come true in the end!"

Vines slid snake-like up her calves, tightening, pulling. Her ribs shook with each shallow breath, the red air tasting metallic and heavy; she could not fill her lungs.

"It is time," Vecna whispered, voice curling around her skull like smoke. "Time to stop pretending. Time to stop fighting. Time to let go."

The vines jerked her closer. Her feet left the ground. Her head tipped back, throat tightening as if invisible fingers were already wrapped around it. She felt his tendrils curling further up around her body until they reached her collar.

"Everyone leaves you, Lucille," Vecna crooned. "Your father. Your mother. Your brother—"

"Leo hasn't left me!" Lucy choked furiously, clawing at the vines around her neck.

Vecna smiled slowly, sickly, raising more vines to restrain her hands.

"You truly believe that?"

The ground cracked beneath her. The red world pulsed. She could feel her heartbeat in her teeth.

"STOP!" she coughed, fighting against the vines all over. She struggled against his grip.

Vecna's face curled into the closest thing to a smile. He reached for her again—and then a faint sound rippled through the red world. Something off-key and ridiculous.

"...shadows of the niiight—"

Lucy's eyes flew open.

"What?" Vecna turned his head sharply, something like confusion flickering across the dead blue of his snake eyes. The sound echoed again—louder, warbling through the red fog like a beacon.

"So baby take my hand—"

"Steve," gasped Lucy weakly.

Vecna snarled, vines tightening with violent urgency. "No."

Lucy's heartbeat surged against the vines suffocating her, and the slightest flicker of hope returned to her, cutting through the desolate desperation of the Mindscape easily. Over Vecna's shoulder, a window opened. Lucy could see her friends surrounding her on the boat, panicked; Steve kept singing, voice cracking on nearly every note.

"—it'll be alllllll right!"

Lucy felt her feet touch the ground again. A gust of air swept through the red world, rattling the vines and shaking the shattered image of the Creel house surrounding Lucy. She struggled against the vines again and found them looser than before.

Vecna reared back, enraged. "YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE ME."

But Lucy could hear the song clearly now; she could hear the tremor in Steve's voice, the absolute terror woven into every word.

She shoved back against the vines and ripped one hand free. With a scowl, she tore free her legs and feet, then threw the vines aside and stumbled fully to the ground. She was not certain of what she was supposed to do from here but knew that she needed to return to the real world, get back to her friends; she could still see them in the distance, the little window to reality where Steve was crying out Pat Benatar lyrics and the people that cared about Lucy were desperate for her to return. She had to make it back to them, no matter how impossible it seemed.

Lucy ran. It was the only thing she could do. Steve's voice echoed through her exhausted head; her chest racked with sobs and pants of effort. She put one foot after the other and, tears running down her face, she tore into the direction of Steve—of home—and ran from Vecna.

Faintly she registered his anger. Beside her, vines erupted out of the ground, attempting to restrain her, to keep her from making it home, but Lucy kept running. She had no other choice but to keep going. Vecna roared after her and she imagined he would not take lightly to being ignored, so in lieu of a response, she wrenched her hand behind herself and stuck up her middle finger, panting and groaning with effort.

And then everything sucked into blackness, and Lucy was not quite sure if she was dead.

Via Chatter

Most unserious Vecna rescue of all time