Chapter Text
Max drifts back into consciousness lying on the green couch in the living room that Billy used to hog during movie night before everything went to hell at Starcourt. Max wonders whether her memory has conjured a tiny coffee stain on the couch. Maybe Vecna just hates happiness and infected her Mom’s cheery flowered couch cushions with tiny Upside Down stains Max decides squinting at a grey smudge.
Max drags her focus off the upholstery and then blinks startled as Billy paces by snapping into the kitchen phone.
“She just passed out in the car on the way home from school and I can’t get her to wake up! She’s definitely got a fever, Susan. I don’t know, I thought she was ignoring me when I picked her up from school and now I can’t tell if something’s really wrong! How do I know if she needs to go to the hospital?!”
Billy spots Max with her eyes open on the return arc of his pacing and scrambles over. “She’s awake! Hold on!”
“Hey Maxine! Can you hear me? Talk to me shitbird!”
Max groans and tries to squirm away from Billy shaking her shoulder, “Leave me alone Billy, I’m sleeping.”
“You’re a goddamned idiot ’s what you are! Why didn’t you go to the nurses office or tell someone you were sick?!” He hisses covering the receiver. “Never mind Susan. You’re right, I’ll give her some Tylenol and make soup.”
Max groans and rolls over to burry her face in the cushions and falls asleep again. Why is Vecna making her live out the most boring and annoying things about Hawkins that she’d never bothered to remember?
Max suffers through a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup that Billy has somehow managed to make gloopy and then retreats to her bed to try to focus on El again.
She startles awake with a faint ringing still lingering in her ears. It takes a minute of squinting across her dark room to realize that she’s not at Starcourt.
“El please, I don’t know what to do.” Max whispers. “I dreamed, how can I dream if I’m still in Vecna’s head?” Not just any dream, but the familiar nightmare of Billy’s death. If Vecna was still around he surely would’ve found her there.
Max takes several quick breathes trying not to cry and then gasps out “Okay, good news: no Vecna. Bad news: no El and I really don’t know what’s going on. Am I- am I in the past?”
Max struggles for a moment to dredge up some knowledge of time travel and quickly gives up. Maybe she and Lucas shouldn’t have made fun of Steve for insisting that rewatching Back to the Future was educational.
“Fuck.” Max mutters and then flops back to stare at the ceiling then bolts upright again. If she’s not in Vecna’s memory prison, if she’s really somewhere in the past, then Billy’s actually alive.
Max scrambles out of bed, tripping as her foot tangles in the sheets and banging into the doorframe half-blinded by tears.
She runs for Billy’s room, afraid that she’ll finally find Vecna. She jerks the door open, waits half a second and no Vecna. Max flings herself onto Billy sobbing.
Billy wakes up shouting and flailing his stupid arms around like he thinks he’s gonna fight off a home invader. And maybe Max hadn’t thought this through but sue her for reacting emotionally when her brother is back from the dead.
“What the fuck Max?!” Max sobs all over her stupid big brother, clinging to him as he curses and then freezes in panic when he finally registers that she’s is crying all over him. “What are you- the fucks going on Max?”
And Max should really, really have taken a minute to plan this out because the lights are clicking on in the hallway and Neil and her Mom are both standing in the doorway.