Chapter Text
The first two weeks felt like a daze. Half unreal, and half so visceral Steve wondered how he could take the overstimulation. The sharp pain of loss and fear and helplessness, fuzzed around the edges and washed over with the unreal dreamstate everything seemed to be veiled in. And maybe it was him, something in his head that was broken or misplaced. Because he could keep it together with the group, the kids reuniting a few days after the big fight, memorials and volunteering and sleepless nights at Max's bedside. He was fine then. Everything felt like it was fake, a hard plastic world and he was just some plaything being controlled by a really sadistic toddler living in the sky.
But at night, when he would go home, the rounded plastic edges would sharpen to serrated steel and cut into him in cold, harsh reality. Max was in a coma, eyes gone and surviving on pure spite. He’d failed to protect her, failed to save her. And Eddie was dead. Kind, stupid, heroic Eddie who Steve honestly barely knew and that somehow stung most of all.
He’d laid awake often enough, thinking about it, thinking about how Robin had been thrown into his life and he’d never even noticed her. How she was the best thing that had ever happened to him and it took one of the most horrifying experiences of his life to even figure out she existed. It felt, for a little while, like that was happening with Eddie. Like something - fate? Maybe that was bullshit, but what wasn’t? - had shoved Eddie into his life because he was meant to be there.
Ok, that was self-centered maybe.
But it had felt like that. Like he was feeling all the places in his life where Eddie would have fit, like he was reliving all those moments he regretted and how they would have been different if he’d had Eddie in his life earlier. If he’d gotten to know him. If instead of Tommy and Carol he’d had Eddie and Robin.
The cold reality twisted in his chest again, silence echoing in his perpetually empty house. Because the harsh truth was, he would never know what it would be like to have Eddie in his life. And that what-if, that possiblilty, hurt more than the loss of Eddie himself.
Selfish again.
Steve rolled over and pulled the covers further over his shoulder, tucking them under his chin and smelling the familiar comfort of his blankets.
Safe.
Sleep wouldn’t come. He knew that much. It hadn’t come for a while, not for any length of time. He’d get snippets here and there, waking up in a cold sweat feeling like he’d forgotten something. He usually stalked around his house checking all the lights, the stove, the washing machine, before crawling back into bed and fighting the niggling feeling of the forgotten at the back of his brain. The sun would rise and he would greet it with the flick of a chosen finger and a half-hearted scream into his pillow, before shuffling to the kitchen to shove something in his mouth and chew, swallow, sustain this godforsaken body that just wouldn’t die.
And he knew tonight would be no different, it never was. Something about the monotony was as comforting as it was infuriating, but it felt fragile and constricting at once. It was fear that kept him from changing it. Fear of…everything really. So instead he just laid in bed, waiting for sleep, if it deemed him worthy, the inevitable breakdown, and the sunrise which brought with it the responsibilities and escape to the most important things in his life.
He’d drive to the hospital first thing, relieve Lucas from his night watch for a few hours and watch the TV on silent, keeping his ears open for any change in the steady beeping of Max’s machines. The sound was burned into his brain, he was pretty sure his heart was in sync with its dependable rhythm even when he couldn’t hear it. Sometimes he had work midday and sometimes he’d have time to pick up Robin and they’d go to the school gym together. He’d find any reason to stick around, to follow Dustin home, to be with them, watching, until inevitably he would have to come home and start all over again.
Sometimes he’d drive around, not going home, trying to stave off the sting of reality just a little longer. And sometimes that turned into a kind of tour of the hot spots, a nighttime walk with the trusty bat that never left his side these days, and sometimes it turned into him screaming, deep in the woods, and hitting a tree or the ground, or an abandoned car, until his body felt empty and weak and tired. He always eventually found his way back home, to the stinging silence, and crawled into the familiar warmth of his blankets.
He hadn’t tonight, though he’d thought about it. But the weather had turned colder, even as it started to make its way into the second half of April, and the grass had a hard glassy layer of frost, even before the sun was fully set. He couldn’t bring himself to stay out in the chill that seeped into his bones too similar to the Upside Down. Maybe he should move somewhere warm, where the weather never left a cloud of your breath.
He wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
So it was still kind of early and sleep was still far off, and Steve could do nothing about it but roll over and stare at the diffused light from his backyard filtering through the frost over the outside of his window.
It flickered, stuttering Steve’s heart in his chest as he blinked his eyes to clear them, breath coming short and shallow. He was afraid of the dark now too. But he was torn between squeezing his eyes shut and pretending he hadn’t seen and getting up to look. A compromise then.
Steve stayed absolutely still, eyes locked open and chanting in his head over and over to the light to just stay steady.
It flickered again.
Steve tried to think it through like Dustin would, recreating his voice in his head.
Logically, lights flicker sometimes, right? The blue light filtering through his window was from his pool. So it could just be a disturbance.
But it wasn’t one light. It was a bunch of them that made the pool glow. And the flicker, the absence of light, it had been too controlled. Like they all when out and on at the same second. Like the light had been…blocked.
Steve stared at his window for hours, blinking as little as his eyes would allow, body tense. At some point he must have dozed off, shrieking awake with a practiced scream, strangled to silence as soon as he was able. The light hadn’t flickered again but his dream had been filled with the staccato rhythm of Max’s heart monitor matching the off and on of lights. There was something else, something in the very back of his head he just couldn’t quite remember. He could feel it slipping as he reached for it, his chest heaving as he tried to control his breathing. Something else, someone, far away. Running. Towards him? He could almost hear something like they were shouting to him. But the words slipped away and so did the figure and all he was left with was the empty, scared reality that he was powerless and nothing he ever did would make any difference.
Every night after that he faced the window, staring for the flicker of light, waiting for it. It felt inevitable, despite it not happening again even as much as he expected it. There was something about feeling in control, controlling his fear, that was why he looked. And though the flicker didn’t return, he’d notice other things, sometimes. Like the lack of frost on his window but the presence of it on the rest. Once it had been opened just a crack when he’d woken in the morning but he was certain it had been closed when he’d been drifting off.
There were other things too, after a while. Things that started to make him question himself, his sanity. Maybe Robin was right about the demobat rabies and they just took a while to set in. Because sometimes he’d come downstairs and find the record player spinning, the needle settled on the center as it waited to be flipped or changed. And sometimes he’d find the trash was emptied but he could have sworn he had procrastinated in putting it out. And once, just once, there’d been a dead raccoon left right by the sliding glass door leading to the backyard.
After that one he’d taken to patrolling his treeline before bed, knuckles white as he clung to his bat with shaking hands. He never found anything, even when he screamed into the darkness of the underbrush. He’d been answered by nothing but the chirp of crickets.
So ok, he was definitely crazy, and he should have told Robin, but she was doing kind of well actually, all things considered. Vickie did, in fact, like boobies, and Steve didn’t want to be the one to remind Robin that they were all fucked and the world was ending and there was a kind of soft quarantine up around Hawkins that meant people could leave but no one could come in and they were all probably going to die and, oh, by the way, I’ve started talking to something that may or may not live in the woods and bring me dead things.
Because ok the raccoon was a one-off. But there were other things after that too. And at first he thought maybe it was a cat, because there were mostly birds and mice and moles. Until there was a cat. And then a deer. A full-grown adult deer. Dead. In his backyard.
He hadn’t known what it was at first, coming home and seeing a dark shape by his back door, larger than any of the rest had been. He’d worried for a moment that it was a person - and maybe he felt something like hope until he’d squashed it because hope for what even? So he’d dug a big hole by the treeline and buried it next to all the other smaller piles of dirt from the other dead things that seemed to just appear around him, and he’d yelled into the underbrush again.
“Stop with all the dead shit! It’s gross and I’ve seen enough death already. Fucker!” The yelling helped. He didn’t know why he did it, or if he even really believed there was something out there. Honestly, it could have been a demodog or straight-up demogorgon and maybe it was coming for him next, working up to bigger and bigger prey. But the self-preservation that had fueled Steve for most of his life had been slowly leaking from some puncture in him somewhere and there was very little left for him to find a single fuck.
The dead things stopped after that. And maybe Steve should be scared about that. The fact that the woods had listened to him. Or, rather, something in the woods listened. But instead, because Steve was a broken, messed up thing, he started sitting outside in the evenings, pulling a lounger over to the tree line, lighting a cigarette - Robin hated that – and talking to the thing in the woods that seemed to listen.
At first, it was just talking to talk, to fill the silence and chase back the emptiness. The neighbors who’d lived in the big houses on his street had long since abandoned Hawkins, just like his parents, and there was never so much as a peep when he was out there. So he talked about Dustin’s ankle finally healing ok and Lucas still not leaving Max’s side and Robin spending more time with Vickie. And it was just that at first. Just talking to talk, just sound. But the feeling of talking without it being a burden, without it harming anyone, felt good. He started to enjoy that part of his evening. It didn’t make his home feel like that fake plastic dreamstate, but it didn’t feel as sharp as it used to either.
After a while, the talking about his day turned to talking about how he missed Robin and being the one person in her life. He was happy she was able to be herself and find someone who cared for her but he was also angry and lonely and lost and he missed her. At first, it stung, saying it out loud. But the more he did it, the easier it became. He told the trees how Dustin had lost some of his sparkle that day, how he’d gone from a child with wonder in his eyes to hardened and sharp and a little mean sometimes. And Steve told the leaves how he felt more like a failure every day. How he felt responsible for not showing Dustin how to keep his softness, how to not hate the world. He was guilty because he couldn’t teach him something he didn’t practice himself.
April was gone and May had long since begun when Steve cried in front of the underbrush for the first time. Lucas had refused to leave Max this morning, holding her hand and looking like shit. He hadn’t slept, refusing to leave and refusing to let doctors in the room. Max’s mom had signed the paperwork to take her off life support, she couldn’t afford the hospital bills. Steve knew the hospital wasn’t really charging anyone right now, he suspected she couldn’t handle the pressure. So he’d gone to bat, standing between Lucas and every adult in the hospital, refusing to let them do it. But he knew it was futile. He knew it was only a matter of time. But the look on Lucas’s face, the pain and fear, made Steve want to scream. So he’d convinced them to wait, to let everyone say goodbye first and do it tomorrow. It wasn’t enough, and it was just one more failure, just one more loss. He hadn’t realized how much hope he’d still had until it was crushed.
He’d said his goodbyes before the others arrived, keeping his tears in until he got home, running through his house, not bothering to take his shoes off or close the back door, and squatting in front of the tree line, forehead rested against the rough bark of the closest tree, tears spilling from his eyes.
“It’s not fucking fair! She’s fighting, I know she is! I can feel it! She just needs– fuck–” He punches his knuckles into the base of the tree, over and over, feeling the skin stretched thin over bone getting bruised, scratched, flaming. He was screaming, punching, sobbing.
After a while, the sun long set, and crickets resumed their nightly chorus, the tears dried in Steve’s eyes, voice hoarse and thin, hand too sore to continue. He’d fallen back at some point and was curled in on himself, head tucked into knees squeezed tight into his torso.
“I’d do anything–” Steve’s voice didn’t sound like him, a whisper tight and soft. He sent the words out like a prayer to the woods, to the trees and leaves and underbrush that had absorbed everything about him over the last month. He felt the silence speak back to him, anything.
That’s all he shared that night, too tired and sore and scared to say anymore, but he crawled into the lounger and sat and listened to the wind rustling leaves and rippling over the surface of the water in the blue glow of his pool. He closed his eyes, feeling a weight like pressure beside him, and hoped that maybe there was still kindness in the world.
Steve woke with a start before the sun, curled into himself on the lounger beside the treeline, grasping at the feeling he forgot as it slipped away. There was a chill breeze, harsher than when he’d nodded off, but he wasn’t cold. A blanket had been draped over him in the night, tucked under his feet and shoulders to keep it in place. It was the blanket from his bed, the one that was soft and worn from use and smelled safe. He knew he hadn’t gotten it himself, and he knew that even being crazy didn’t explain it, but he was tired and the lonely sharpness of failure and guilt stabbed heavy at his chest, so instead of questioning it he just grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders, sliding the back door open and closed and heading up to bed.
Surprisingly, he managed to fall asleep for the second time that night. Maybe it was the crying, or the screaming. Whatever it was, he was bone tired, in that way you are when you haven’t slept properly in weeks, which wasn’t far off either. But, for the first time in a very long time, he didn’t wake to the sound of his own screams or the shivering cold sweat or slipping memories of his dreams. Instead, there was a shrill ring from the phone.
He shot up, feet on the floor, and running to the phone before his eyes could register the sun was still below the horizon. He answered the call with a breathy hello? And was greeted by the frantic rambling of Dustin on the other end.
“Dustin! Dustin–dude, please calm down! I can’t understand a word- jesus christ - DUSTIN! Shut up!”
The line was silent.
“Ok,” Steve started slowly, willing his heartbeat to slow and the blood to stop rushing in his ears so he could actually fucking hear. “Please continue. Calmly.”
Steve could hear the rush of air over the receiver as Dustin took a deep breath.
“Max is awake.”
“WHAT?! How? I–”
“I was trying to explain–”
“Yeah, I got that, genius. Fuck–” Steve felt like the weird rounded plastic of the dreamstate was starting to cross with the sharp sting of reality and he didn’t know how to separate anything anymore. And, if he were honest with himself, he’d realize it had been happening for a while. But now everything kind of felt like a weird, murderous toddler’s playroom and he couldn’t think.
“--eve! Steve? Hello? Are you still there?” Dustin’s voice was irritated, but also frantic.
“Do you need a ride?” Steve asked on instinct, grabbing his keys and slipping on his shoes, not bothering to change clothes.
“Yes– please, Steve.” Dustin sounded small again, young and– maybe there was something like hope again.
The drive to the hospital was relatively silent. Dustin had explained that Lucas had called over the walkies, screaming at everyone to come to the hospital right now Code Red Dustin had jumped towards his bike, ready to ride the miles to the hospital, makeshift spear across his back. But before he was very far Lucas was crackling through the walkies again telling them Max was awake. So Dustin had biked back and called Steve. His ankle was killing him, even from the short amount he’d biked. He didn’t say anything but Steve could tell by how he favored the other leg. Lucas wasn’t responding anymore to the walkie, having told them the most important thing they needed to hear.
Dustin lived the farthest from the hospital so he and Steve were the last to arrive. Hopper’s SUV was parked illegally by the front entrance, Nancy’s mom’s car wedged beside it, parked perfectly between the lines. Steve pulled in next to it, barely rolling to a stop before Dustin was bolting, not bothering to close the door.
Usually, Steve would have yelled at him about that, but his mind was reeling from the emotional rollercoaster of the last 24 hours and he couldn’t bring himself to perform the false agitation when his heart felt filled with some sort of hope for the first time in a long time. So instead he just put the car in park, jumped out and closed the passenger door before jogging into the side ward of Hawkins General.
He’d been here often, nearly every day for two months at this point, but for the first time, he didn’t feel like he was walking toward the stench of death. There was a fullness, either in the air or in his chest, he wasn’t sure, but it was there. He tried to walk calmly, to not bother the other patients and nurses, many of whom knew him on sight. But after one too many expectant eyes reaching his, nurses who knew more than he did, he couldn’t help it. He broke into a run, abandoning the elevator in favor of the staircase and taking them two at a time. Images of Max, empty eye sockets bandaged and small, thin body covered in wires, waved in front of his eyes, taunting. He shook them away, focusing on finding the room and seeing for himself.
Dustin arrived at the door at the same time Steve skidded around the corner. There was something in his face, a piece of his old self maybe, that squeezed at Steve’s heart when he saw it. His hand was already on the door handle and he motioned to Steve with his head as he turned it and pushed it open, entering the room of their friend they thought would die today.
The scene wasn’t what Steve had expected – what had he expected? Maybe chaos? Shouting and yelling and laughing? The rowdy normalcy of a group of young teenagers. But they weren’t normal, none of them were.
Hopper stood by the door, head ducked low talking with Joyce. They both looked up as he entered, giving him a nod. Joyce gave him a tight smile but her eyes were soft and kind as always, reaching out to squeeze his elbow as they passed. Johnathan stood behind Will, who stood beside Mike, who stood behind El, their body]ies in a large clump. She was leaning over the bed, blocking their view of Max, but Lucas was on the other side, Nancy’s arm around his shoulders. He was holding Max’s small hand, face tight and streaked with dried trails of tears. For a second Steve was worried Dustin had lied or heard something wrong on the walkie, that Max wasn’t awake, that she was dead. The mood of the room wasn’t happy or celebratory, it was tired and worn out and heavy.
“Took you long enough, assholes.”
Max’s voice was barely a whisper, cracked and rough from disuse, but it was unmistakable. Something heavy popped in Steve's chest and he let out a choked sound as breath escaped his lungs. Dustin rushed over and slotted himself next to El, already rambling and asking questions a mile a minute. Mike put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head as Steve made his way around the bed to stand beside Nancy and Lucas.
He couldn’t make himself look at first, like maybe the visual wouldn’t match and he really was crazy and she hadn’t said anything and if he looked the dream would break and she would just be a corpse. He had seen her lifeless body so many times in his dreams, it was one of the only things that never slipped away. So as he circumvented the hospital bed raised high, thin sheets hanging from the corners, he looked at everything but where her face would be, listening. The rhythm of the machines, so familiar to him for so long, were beeping faster than they had for two months, the rhythm skipping every so often, speeding up and slowing down. The sound of life.
He forced his eyes to look up, forced himself to face it. To face her. And the guilt of his failure. But when he finally looked, eyes darting all around the bed and the hangers-on until finally, finally, landing on her face, he could feel the tightness in his chest stutter to a stop and restart. She still had covers over her eyes, facing forward and hands gripping El and Lucas. Her head was tilted slightly, like she was listening. But mostly, more than anything, he took in the flush of her cheeks, the upturned corners of her cracked lips. There was life in the rise and fall of her chest and the stutter of her heart over the monitor.
“You look like shit,” he said, reaching a shaky hand out to squeeze her toe through the light sheet. Max huffed out a laugh, breathy and quiet.
“I wouldn’t know, would I?”
There was a beat of tense silence before Steve barked out a laugh, wiggling her foot beneath his hand. The tense air dissipated like everyone could finally breathe, like they’d been waiting for permission to acknowledge how shit this whole situation still was. She was alive, but blind, one leg and one arm still cast after two months and probably pretty useless. But the permission to breathe had been given and there was a light acceptance in the air that this was the new normal and it was better than what could have been.
“Is everyone here?” Max directed her question to El, turning her head slightly to her right out of habit.
El looked around seriously, eyes finding each of theirs in turn before coming back to look at her best friend. She squeezed her hand and shook her head. Will nudged her shoulder gently, a reminder, things can no longer go unspoken.
“Not everyone is here.”
The smooth span of Max’s forehead scrunched in thought and her head turned, as if she would see if she just tried hard enough.
“Who’s missing?” There was a question under the question. Who’s dead?
Nancy spoke first.
“Robin.” She straightened up as she said it, looking at Steve. And yeah, it made him feel like shit that he’d forgotten his best friend, his platonic soulmate. He hadn't even thought about her in his race to get to the hospital. And it wasn’t that he didn’t care for her or want her here, he’d just genuinely forgotten. Like an asshole. Nancy looked at him with soft eyes. Sometimes there was a pity there. He hated those times. “Don’t worry, I’ll go get her.”
She squeeze around Steve as she left, patting his shoulder on her way out. Johnathan moved to follow her but she just shook her head and motioned for him to stay.
“Should I wait?” Max was facing El again, head tilted, ears open and listening.
“Wait for what?” Dustin was leaning forward, like if he got close enough, Max could see him. Lucas shoved at his shoulder, giving him a look. Lucas was exhausted, Steve could see it, but there was a thick layer of hope over the bags under his eyes and even the shove had been lighthearted.
But Steve was glad Dustin asked. As much as the kid was a pain, he asked the questions no one else wanted to, poked at the places no one wanted to look, believed in the people no one else cared about. They all owed a lot to his curiosity. And now, waiting with bated breath for the answer, he knew he wasn’t the only one wanting to know. What had they talked about before he arrived? Or had it been even before she’d woken up?
“Go ahead, Max. We’ll fill them in once they get here.” Joyce’s voice was warm and prompting. She’d stepped forward and put her arm around El’s shoulders. She was such a mother, to all of them, but he’d forgotten how long the two of them had spent together, how much of an actual mother she’d become to El. There was a familial comfort there, like a trust fall, and it made Steve both happy and jealous. He shouldn’t feel it, if anyone deserved to feel parental love and support it was supergirl, but that small, sour part of him inside wished he could push between them and take it for himself.
His hand found a familiar place on Dustin’s head, needing the touch, and for once he didn’t push Steve away, just shifted his weight so Steve’s hand slipped from his head onto his shoulder, leaning into him. And maybe that was part of why Dustin and him drifted towards each other more often than not. Neither of them had the big family at home, just each other. Steve felt like he collected them, his little family, and put them all together. But most of the time they paired off or found something more than him and left. He squeezed Dustin’s shoulder tighter to his side.
Max squeezed El and Luces’s hands and nodded.
“It’s not over,” she started, voice cracking as she tried to stabilize it, Dustin and El were nodding, as if prompting her to continue. She did, despite being unable to see them. “He had me trapped there, like a prison. But he’s hurt, like really hurt. He didn’t really show himself to me, almost like he didn’t have the energy, but he managed to keep me there and I could feel him–”
She broke off and cleared her throat, face turning to Lucas. He leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers, nodding so she could feel it. He whispered something, too quiet for Steve to hear. It felt too intimate, watching them. Fourteen years old and the weight of the world on their shoulders. Their resilience was astounding. Max pushed on, as she always did.
“I could feel him using me, taking my energy and getting stronger. I tried everything but it was– it was different than last time. I knew I wouldn’t escape.”
“But you did!” Dustin jumped in, enthusiastic as ever. Steve could almost hear the cogs turning over in his brain as he formulated a plan. But Max shook her head.
“No, I didn’t.”
There was a murmur around the room, a combination of gasps and questions and disbelief.
“I didn’t escape, because he let me go.”
“Let you go?” Hopper’s voice was booming and low compared to the whispers that had come before. It shook something deep in Steve’s bones, the sense of authority that kind of voice carried. He hadn’t talked to Hopper much since he’d come back from the dead (or Russia), but there was another depth to him now. A depth they had all acquired in the past few years.
Max nodded.
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Will stepped forward, fingers lingering on the back of his neck, eyes big and questioning, flying between El and Mike and Johnathan and his mom. Max shrugged. She seemed more physically expressive now than before. But maybe he was just used to seeing her more like a corpse than anything.
“Why would he just let you go?” Mike’s voice was pressing, skeptical. Will put a hand on his arm, softly and for just a moment, before letting it drop to his side.
“There was–” Max paused, face searching for El, as if needing reassurance they were all still there. “There was someone else. Like they took my place.”
“Like a trade?” Joyce’s voice wavered and Steve could see her glance toward Will, even as she tried to hide it. There was fear there, fear of losing him again even after all this time. Steve supposed that fear never really went away, especially when Will had been so close to death so often. Would that fear stay with her forever? With Will?
“Yeah, I think so.”
Steve’s head was spinning. He couldn’t put it all together. He wanted to feel happy, relieved, just knowing Max was alive and with them and out of the worst of it. But the familiar feeling of fear gripped him as he thought about Vecna imprisoning people in their minds, taking their energy and feeding off it. Was he getting powerful again? They barely survived last time – and some of them didn’t – how were they supposed to take him on again if he regained strength?
“Who was it?” Dustin again, asking the right questions. Who did Vecna have? Was it someone they knew? Someone they cared about? Was it someone more powerful?
El answered for Max, letting her friend rest with a hand on her shoulder, taking the mantle.
“Max does not know. I have offered to go into her mind to look, but that is… overwhelming. I will go alone.”
An outburst of sound as protests came from every angle. Steve watched Max as everyone began to argue, some about the idea in general, others about the specifics. El’s attention was on Hopper as he forbade her from doing anything and she yelled back, face red. Lucas and Dustin argued about the specifics, Lucas in favour of keeping Max as far away from Vecna as possible and Dustin arguing for the plan most likely to succeed, using Max as a piggyback again. It was chaos, and in the center, small and quiet and hurting, Max was crying. Silent and still, tears leaked from the sides of the covers on her eyes, her bottom lip pulled tight into her mouth, teeth digging into the broken open flesh there. Something bloomed in his chest, a familiar feeling of responsibility, protection. He squeezed her foot again.
“Use me,” he said to the room. His voice was lost in the din. He cleared his throat and spoke again, louder. “El, use me!”
Silence.
Sixteen pairs of eyes turned their focus to him. He felt a flush rise up his chest at the attention, shock and confusion mirrored back at him.
“That’s stupid, it doesn’t even make sense.” Dustin had long since left this side in his argument with Lucas and looked at him now with a scrunched nose and arms crossed over his chest. “You have no connection to Vecna.”
The din began again in agreement but Steve put his hands out to stop it.
“I can bait him, trust me.” He tried to keep his voice confident, strong, but there was a waver. Not of fear, he knew what he had to do. But a waver at the near admission to how close he could have been to being in the first batch of Vecna targets. Since March, he was a prime candidate, but he didn’t want anyone to know, not really.
“Then it should be me,” Hopper jumped in, standing next to his daughter, looking down at her.
“No offense, Hopper,” Steve tried to keep his voice light, even as the tight pressure gripped his heart. “But it’s better for someone to go who knows the layout and the dangers. You’ve never been there, I have. And before anyone else has any ideas, I’m the best fighter we’ve got-”
Johnathan snorted lightly before having the decency to look sheepish and hold his hand up in a truce.
“It just makes sense. El piggybacks off me and I can help protect her once she’s in there. It’s just a scouting mission, right?”
Dustin rolled his eyes and shifted his weight to lean more against the bed, opening his mouth to argue. Max beat him to it.
“You have to want to die.” The eyes left him and turned to her, streams of tears stopped and face clear of streaks. She looked angry, even with her eyes covered, Steve could feel it radiating off her. But there was something else there, something he was intimately familiar with. Resignation.
And he was aware, painfully, of what was needed to bait Vecna. He’d read Max’s letter, even before she was officially dead, and he’d read how much she wished she’d just die, how it would have been easier, how fighting became just too much. She’d written how she’d wished he’d been her brother instead and how guilty she’d felt to wish it. She’d confided in him how sometimes she thought he was the only one who understood what it was like to raise yourself, to teach yourself everything, to harden to the world and act how it expected you to just because it was easier than being honest.
And he knew, without a doubt, that if all Vecna needed to be summoned was self-loathing, he was a fucking buffet.
“So,” he said, clapping his hands together. “When do we get started?”