Chapter Text
Max gasped for air, struggling against the thick vines and trying to squirm away from Vecna’s clawed hand over her face as he did something terrible with his powers. The force of his rage a scorching physical pressure on her bones and a hollow hole like her most grieving despair growing in the pit of her stomach. Somehow she new that it that despair that was the beginning of a new gate between the Upside Down and Hawkins.
As Max started to rise into the air again, she felt guilty how glad she was that El was here, that Lucas was with her on the other side. “At least I’m not alone,” her mind whispered, even as she felt the guilt and grief rise that she was going to do to her friends exactly what Billy had done to her.
She prayed that she’d bought enough time, that she hadn’t fucked this up too, that her friends would be safe. “Please,” she begged silently, “Let El make it out. Let the others kill Vecna and save Hawkins. If I’m going to die here let it be enough, let me be the only one.” Vecna’s grip on her tightened and then - he flinched.
He flinched and the world trembled around them. Max had a desperate moment of hope, wondering if in some miracle, they were actually going to survive this. The vines loosened for a split second and Max caught El’s desperate gaze as she wrenched one arm free.
The strange ringing in Max’s ears sounded like the notes of a screaming electric guitar. For a fleeting moment it summoned the memory of peering into Billy’s room as he blared Scorpion and Metallica and hyped himself up for a date. Max took advantage of the flare of strength from the positive memory and the loosened vine to heave in a quick gasp of air before Vecna’s grip and the vines went tight again.
Vecna sneered down at her and his fury came down around her like a fist and her arm snapped. The world fragmented in her pain, time moving in strange jagged moments, and the red sky tinting yellow and staticky.
For a brief moment as she saw El fling her arm out with a shockwave of power and tears in her eyes. Max heard her own scream echoing loudly and the sound was overwhelming as it crashed together with the ringing in her ears. All the sounds blending, El’s scream of protective rage - screaming electric guitar - Billy’s laugh at the music blaring - a clock chiming. All of it ringing and the shockwaves of pain and sound and rage collided in a cacophony of notes.
The world trembled with waves of distortion. Little snapshot fragments of time as Vecna stumbled back with wide eyes, El was reaching for her, and Max was falling- falling into the void, spiraling into Vecna's hollow despair and the music and the waves.
Vecna flinched and the world shook and Max fell through it and- she woke up.