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Max was annoyed at Dustin. No, it was more than annoyance; it was frustration. The party was fractured without El, and they were supposed to stick together, help each other deal with it, but he was rarely with them anymore.
He was especially avoiding her. Whenever they made eye contact, he quickly looked away. She wasn’t even sure he had said more than a small ‘welcome back’ since she woke up.
And yeah, Lucas had said that’s what he had been like ever since Eddie’s death, but Max really thought they had learned from her how catastrophic the consequences of pushing your friends away could be. But Dustin definitely hadn’t.
So that’s why she was currently outside his door on her third bout of knocking - to confront him about his distancing. Not because she missed him.
Because The Party needed him, and lately he hadn’t been there. It felt even more incomplete without him. Without his squeezing hugs and dumb jokes. Without his contagious laugh and his ability to make everything seem a little less shitty all the time. Okay, so maybe Max did miss him a little.
But it was more than that. She couldn’t help but recognize the look in his eyes. The guilt and the grief. The way he looked as though he thought he didn’t deserve to be near them. She recognized it because she had seen the same look in her own eyes after Billy’s death, and she needed him to know that his mind was playing tricks on him.
Her mind still played tricks on her too, sometimes. It tended to do that when you spend almost two years alone, stuck only with your thoughts, while at the same time running through a telepathic serial killer’s mind. It was all still a little confusing to Max.
The point was that it helped to talk about it with someone, and Dustin seemed to have held it in for far too long.
So Max would knock on this stupid door forever if she had to. She had nowhere else to be. She had plenty of time to wait for Dustin to open it so she could convince the dumbass to let them in - let The Party help him.
Max had convinced Steve to drive her to the Henderson household. Dustin wasn’t pushing him away. But apparently, he had done that before they defeated Vecna. Now they seemed closer than ever - almost attached at the hip. In fact, Steve was supposed to hang out with Dustin today, but Max had asked if he would be willing to let her steal him for the day, and he agreed immediately when she told him why.
If Steve had been able to get Dustin to let him in again, she could do the same. Repair his friendship with The Party - with her.
Steve did ask her if she wanted him to go with her because: “Henderson is a bit rough around the edges lately, especially when you push him to talk about what’s troubling him”. Max just gave him her best ‘I’m familiar with the strategy’ look and told him she could handle herself.
So he just helped her get the wheelchair out of the van and drove off. Well, she did have to shoo him off before she pushed herself up to Dustin's door. Steve had wanted to stay there until she was inside, but Max insisted that he go.
If Steve was still there when Dustin opened the door, he could easily just send her away with some bullshit excuse of a headache. She could see it in her mind. Him saying it hurt too much, and that he was tired, so maybe they could hang out another day - she had used that same excuse before - but this way he had no choice but to let her inside because where else would she go?
Dustin opened the door just as she was about to knock for the sixth time.
He looked horrible. His curls were sticking out in every direction, and if it weren’t for the dark circles under his eyes, she would assume he had just woken up. He looked absolutely exhausted. A deep sadness was apparent on his face. Okay, so yeah, Max definitely missed his smile.
“You’re not Steve,” he said, confused.
“Nothing gets past those observant eyes of yours,” she teased, and her heart sank when, instead of answering back with a ‘hahah very funny,’ he just sighed.
“You just missed him. He sends his regards,” she tried again, but still all she received was an unimpressed stare.
They were at a standstill - him in the doorway and her outside in her wheelchair - just looking at each other for a while.
“Sooo, are you gonna let me in? It’s freezing out here,” she finally said, and at long last, that got a response out of him.
“Yeah, sure, I seem to have no other choice,” he mumbled and moved to the side to make room for her to steer her wheelchair inside.
Max didn’t need the wheelchair full-time anymore. Her arms were pretty much back to normal, and though her legs were still not as strong as she’d like, most days she could get around fine with crutches. Today, however, they had felt a bit more like jelly than normally, so she had opted for the wheelchair.
They only just made it to his room when he asked her if she wanted something to eat before he disappeared, seemingly to prepare that food, before she even got the chance to answer him. She had a feeling he knew why she turned up to his house unannounced and tried to delay the conversation as long as possible.
Whatever, she thought, he couldn’t avoid her all day, especially not when she wasn’t planning on leaving his house before getting to talk to him.
She decided to look around his room to kill time. Not that it was an unusual thing for her to do.
She used to love going around his room, looking at all his nerdy toys, going through his closet to see his cool t-shirts - though she would never admit to his face that she thought they were cool -, and saying hi to Yurtle.
But what she used to love the most was reading through all his notes on his desk. Dustin wrote every little thought he had on paper, and Max enjoyed reading them.
Whenever she visited, she loved going through them to see what he had been up to since her last visit. Sometimes it would be ramblings about a comic he’d read, and sometimes it would be a detailed analysis of whatever topic he had decided to give his attention to that given week. Either way, Max loved reading those little notes.
Call her nosy, she didn’t care.
Snooping through his notes was something she did before Starcourt - Before Vecna. But that was all over now, and they were supposed to get back to some form of normalcy, right? Max felt it was a good thing to pick up again.
However, when she got to his desk, there were no notes scattered messily on it like there used to be. It was tidy, and a thin layer of dust covered the surface. She opened the drawers to see if he had shoved his last notes into one of them. She wanted to figure out when he had stopped writing, although a part of her knew it was sometime after Eddie’s death, sometime after she entered her coma.
She didn’t find any notes. She did find a letter, though. At first, she was sure it was the one she wrote to Dustin before Vecna got her. She was relieved to see that it was still sealed, which meant he hadn’t opened it.
But upon closer inspection, she noticed that the name on the envelope wasn’t Dustin; it was Steve.
For a second, she was confused as to why Dustin had the letter she wrote to Steve, but then she looked at it, really looked at it, and that definitely wasn’t her handwriting. That’s when she noticed that the letter was just the first one in a whole stack. She picked them up and flipped through them.
Steve. Mom. Lucas. Mike. Will. El. Suzie. Robin. Nancy. Erica.
Some part of her had a pretty good idea of what those letters were. Though another part was refusing that thought steadfastly, desperately searching for some other logical explanation.
Until she got to the last letter.
Max.
And she knew. She knew without a doubt what those letters were going to say. But her mind couldn’t wrap itself around it - didn’t want to.
She knew Dustin was walking around with some of the same thoughts and feelings as her, but this was one of the things she had hoped he hadn’t had to deal with.
She couldn’t imagine bright-eyed, curious Dustin wanting to leave the world when there was so much left for him to explore.
Max was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear Dustin’s footsteps in the hall.
“I can make us some-” he started, and she whipped her head up from where she had been fixated on her name on the envelope to look into his eyes. All she saw was his panic.
She had to know, though. She had to know for sure. Maybe her mind was coming up with worst-case scenarios, and he had a perfectly normal, not heartbreaking explanation for those letters.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked, clutching the letter tightly in her hands like he would snatch it from her at any given moment.
“Oh, um, that’s just, y’know, um, a failsafe! Like your letters,” he rushed out.
She could sense he was lying, the way he stumbled over his words. She knew him well enough to know his tells. But still she decided to take the bait, wanting to see where he was going with it.
“What, did Vecna target you too, while I was out?”
“No, not that, just, y’know, Hawkins split open, and, um, the military kind of took over, and then we decided to go against them and search for Vecna on our own, so we were kinda in danger all the time, I guess.
"Not to mention all the panic over Hellfire. Jason apparently publicly called out our names in relation to the club, so everyone thought the earthquakes were our fault. It took a couple of months for that to calm down. I wrote those as a precaution, just in case, y’know?”
He looked at her, eyes begging her to believe him, and held out his hand for her to return the letter to him.
It was a good explanation. It made sense. But she knew he was lying. His voice was too high, and he was talking too fast. It made her angry that he was lying to her face. Especially when he knew she was probably one of the only ones who could relate to him about this. It made her want to force him to confront it in some way. He would have no choice if he knew she knew what was written in the letter - if she just read it.
So she channeled her inner zoomer and pushed herself to the bathroom as fast as she could.
“Shit!” she heard him yell just before he gave chase. But since he hadn’t been prepared for her to rush away, he reacted too late, and she locked the door just in time for him to bang his fists against it.
“Max, come on, give it back, it’s not what you think.”
She didn’t answer him, barely even heard him over the rushing in her ears. She tore the envelope open and held the letter with shaking hands.
“Fine! If you’re reading my letter, then I’m reading yours!”
Max paused. She wanted to tell him not to, but it would be hypocritical of her to stop him from reading her goodbye when she was currently holding his in her hands. She heard him stomp away from the bathroom door. She didn’t hear him return.
She took a few breaths and started reading.
Dear Max
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for so many things, mainly for not being able to save you. I should have come up with a better plan. It all went to shit. Eddie’s dead. You’re in a coma, no closer to waking up, and Vecna’s missing. And I feel like they’re all looking at me for answers, but I don’t have them. It makes me feel so useless. I don’t know how to find Vecna, and I don’t know how to get you to wake up. I’ve read every medical book about neuroscience I could get my hands on, trying to figure out if the doctors have missed anything, but there’s nothing. I’m sorry.
Of course, he was blaming himself. Max had seen that coming. But none of it was his fault. She couldn’t help but feel a surge of affection at him burying himself in research to try and help her. This cruel world didn’t deserve him, though it would go under without him. She wished he knew that.
I’m sorry I haven’t been by to visit you much. I want to. I really do. But I can’t handle seeing you in that hospital bed. You remind me of Eddie, the way you’re so still - so lifeless. I’m being such a shitty friend, and I should be there by your side like Lucas is, but I just can’t. I’m sorry. I think Lucas might hate me for it. But I just can’t see that devastated look on his face when I can’t do anything to help.
She would never blame him for staying away if seeing her was causing him pain, and she doubted Lucas had hated him or expected him to fix everything.
I think I get now why you pushed us away. I get so angry when I see their worried looks - when they try to tell me how I should or shouldn’t feel. I don’t want their comfort. I hate how easy it seems for them to forget about him. I have yelled at them and said things I didn’t mean. I wouldn’t blame them for hating me. But I just want to be alone.
Max had a feeling that was why he was still pushing them away. Maybe he felt like he didn’t deserve their friendship because he had been mean to them in his grief. Which was bullshit because Max had been in that same boat, and they had welcomed her back with open arms when she woke up.
I’m sorry I kept bothering you when you wanted to be alone. I thought I could cheer you up or get you to open up. Now I see how annoying that was.
No, he hadn’t been annoying. The only annoying thing about his perseverance during that time was that she couldn’t get herself to let him in.
I get the guilt… But Max, you shouldn’t have felt guilty. Lucas told me how you thought you deserved to get hurt because the reason you didn’t help Billy was that some part of you wanted him dead. Not to speak write ill of the dead (actually, I don’t give a fuck about that because everyone seems to have no problem slandering Eddie right now), but Billy was an ass. He hurt Lucas and Steve. He hurt you. No one blames you for wanting that abuse to end. You shouldn’t blame yourself either. When you wake up, I need you to stop feeling guilty. You don’t deserve that guilt.
Max let a quiet sob escape her. Yeah, maybe she really had needed to hear that. That guilt never went away. It just lingered with her in Henry’s mind. But reading this was just one step closer to letting it go. She wanted Dustin to let go of all his guilt too.
I almost read your letter before writing this one. But I didn’t, because you’re not dead, and I know you’re gonna wake up.
I’m sorry I won’t be here when you do.
And there it was. Up until that sentence, Max could have been fooled into thinking that the letter was truly just a failsafe - a way for him to say all the apologies he never got to say out loud in case they didn’t survive whatever battle they found themselves in. But that sentence sealed the deal. He wasn’t planning on surviving.
I’m just so exhausted. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t wanna deal with the nightmares. Or the guilt. Or the angry stares in the hallway. Or the way The Party and Steve (especially Steve) look at me like I’m already dead.
I know you’re all gonna be fine as long as you have each other. El and Will are back in Hawkins. So promise me you’ll stick together? You don’t need me anymore. You haven’t for a long time, I think. But that’s okay, people drift apart. I’m not really worth missing anyway. It has been an honor to be in The Party.
No, we wouldn’t be fine, asshole, she thought. They needed him - had never stopped needing him. How long had he felt like they didn’t need him without saying anything? It made Max wonder how many times he had hidden any negative emotions behind a smile.
She didn’t know if he was reading her letter. But some part of her hoped he was, so he could realise how much she cherished him. Another part kicked herself for not letting him know before everything went wrong. It might have helped him.
I hope Vecna is defeated when you wake up, so you don’t have to fight anymore. But if the bastard isn’t dead when you wake up, I hope you get to personally drive a spear into his heart or kick his balls (kick extra hard for me, okay?)
When it’s all done, you deserve to finally be happy. So, move far away from Hawkins. Take Lucas with you. He really loves you. Take El, Will, and Mike (yes, even Mike), and everyone else we care about, and run. Go be safe and live out your life, please.
There it was again. Those plans that didn’t include him. Max felt her heart break at the fact that he wasn't imagining himself with a happy ending. She hoped he saw himself in that happy ending now that Vecna and any Upside Down business was gone. She would make him believe in that happy ending somehow.
Goodbye, Max, it was a privilege to call you my friend.
Love, Dustin.
The tears were flowing freely now. She hated that she’d been right. That Dustin had thought the world would be better without him in it.
But even more than that, she hated how much it hurt to read someone’s last goodbye. She hated that she had almost subjected all her loved ones to that same feeling.
Max allowed herself a few minutes to collect her thoughts before unlocking the door. She half expected Dustin to sit right outside, ready to yell at her or snatch the letter and tell her to leave. But he wasn’t there when she opened the door.
Instead, she found him sitting on his bed, knees against his chest, with puffy red eyes like hers. In his hand, he was holding her letter, still sealed. He hadn’t read it.
She stood up on shaking legs, climbed onto the bed with him, and put her head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, after a while.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve been feeling so guilty about not being there for you when you were in the hospital, and on top of that, I almost left before you could even get a chance to be angry at my absence, and I've been avoiding you instead of confronting it.”
“Dustin, you really think I would have blamed you for pulling away from everyone? I did that first, you know.”
“I guess, but I still feel shitty about it.”
“Well, I forgive you. That shittiness only stays if you let it, so cast it away.”
“Okay,” he chuckled. She wanted them to stay there forever with that small chuckle and forget about every other negative thought swirling through their minds. She wished that there weren't other things they needed to talk about.
But they had all day, and they could sit for a while and just enjoy that they were both still here, able to have those difficult conversations.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, he nudged her and held out her letter for her.
“Here. I didn’t read it,” he said.
“You should,” she said, and he looked at her with uncertainty swimming in his eyes, and she shrugged, “it’s only fair. I don’t mind. I want you to actually.”
Just a few days ago, the thought of any of them reading her letters was mortifying. But now she knew Dustin could benefit from reading it.
He carefully unfolded the letter and started reading. She didn’t even need him to read aloud. She had every sentence memorized. She had it for all the letters she wrote. She didn’t have much else to do in Henry’s mind than think of all the things she wrote to each of them.
Dear Stalker #2 Dustin
If you are reading this, it means I’m dead.
He looked up at her once again, searching for permission to keep going. She nodded at him encouragingly.
It wasn’t your fault. I have to get that out of the way first because I know you will find some way to blame yourself. You did your best, Dustin, and I’m grateful that you tried.
It feels weird writing this right now when I can feel your eyes boring into my back.
Anyway, I’m sorry. I’ve never been good with apologies, but the regrets are piling up, and I know this is the last chance I have to say sorry.
I’m sorry we ditched you at Weathertop when you got home from Camp, and I’m sorry for thinking you were lying about having a girlfriend. Suzie seems really cool.
But the thing I regret the most is pushing you away. No matter how much I snapped at you or yelled at you, you never stopped seeking me out, and it annoyed me so much because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to feel shitty, and having you near made it all seem a little less shitty. You have no idea how many times I almost opened up to you guys and told you how much everything hurt. But I didn’t think I deserved your comfort.
I used to think I finally convinced you to stop caring about me. But seeing you now, doing everything you can to prevent this Vecna guy from killing me, I definitely thought wrong.
I’m really gonna miss you, Dustin.
I’m gonna miss hanging out at your house while you show us your latest invention, and we get tummy aches from all the snacks we eat. I’m gonna miss being the only ones left awake during sleepovers and hearing you ramble about whatever movie we watched that day. I’m gonna miss seeing you attempt to beat my high score on Dig Dug. I’m gonna miss listening to you bicker with Lucas and Steve. I’m gonna miss hearing you talk about scientific things I won’t ever dream of understanding. I’m gonna miss your goofy jokes. I’m gonna miss laughing with you.
I’m gonna miss you.
But wherever I end up, just know that I'll be right there with you. With all of you. So don’t ever stop inventing things. Keep rambling about movies even if you’re the only one awake because I'll be there somewhere, listening. Keep annoying Lucas and Steve. Keep being curious, keep learning. Keep telling those dumb jokes. Keep being your dorky self.
The world needs you, Dustin. It needs your bright smile and your brilliant mind. It needs your caring heart and your passion.
Don’t ever change.
Goodbye, Dustin.
Love, MadMax
Dustin set the letter down and turned to her with tears glistening in his eyes.
“I changed. I’m sorry,” he said, and her heart sank because that wasn’t what he needed to take away from that letter.
“No, you grieved. There’s a difference. The Dustin I wrote about, he’s still there, buried beneath the hurt. He’s not gone. We just need to dig him out.”
“We?”
“Yes, dumbass, we. I’m not letting you deal with it alone. None of us is. But you need to let us in, Dustin.”
All he did was nod, but that was enough for Max. She pulled him in for a hug, and he melted in her embrace, and Max wondered how long it had been since he had let himself feel any comfort. She suspected it had been a while.
“You know, what I realized today?” she said after a few minutes of them just holding each other.
“No?”
“Written goodbyes suck.”
She had never been more serious. It felt much more final written down - like you weren’t giving the reader any chance of saving you.
“Yeah, sorry,” he replied.
“It’s okay, just-” she had to know, “do you still feel it sometimes? The urge to give up?”
Some part of her knew the answer, because you didn’t keep those letters if they weren’t still a little relevant.
“No!” he exclaimed, but relented when he looked at her raised eyebrows, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I feel it,” she replied, because she did sometimes, and it would be stupid of her to beg Dustin to be open about it if she wasn’t also sharing.
“What?”
“Yeah, sometimes after nightmares or during sleepless nights, my mind starts lying to me. It makes me feel like I don’t deserve to be here and that it would be easier to just end it.”
She looked at him, and the look in his eyes told her he felt the same.
“But it really helps to talk about it. I usually call Lucas, sometimes Steve. They’re good at talking you off that ledge. I think maybe you should let Steve know when you feel like that.”
She saw the panic in his eyes at that.
“No, and please don’t tell Steve I’ve ever felt like that.”
He had barely been ready to let her know. In fact, she had kind of forced him to do so. It wasn't surprising that Dustin wasn't eager to tell Steve about those thoughts yet.
“Okay, I promise. As long as you promise to let me know when your mind starts lying to you at least?”
He promised, and he made her promise to let him know too. He made it clear that they were in it together. And it felt nice to be able to share that pain with someone who understood.
She wasn’t a snitch, but if she felt even for a second like she wasn’t enough to save him, she would call in Steve or his mom. She didn’t care. He might hate her for it, but she would rather he be alive and hate her than gone.
Max had almost forgotten that she still had his letter in her hand. When she tried to give it back, he refused and told her to keep it. He told her to think of it as a physical promise that he wouldn’t ever write another goodbye. It wasn’t him promising to never say goodbye. It was him promising to at least let her know in time to help him.
She told him to keep her letter too. So he could read it if he ever started doubting how much he was loved.
“I kind of thought you would be the last one of us to want to give up,” she said after a while.
It was true. In her mind, she couldn't fathom him ever having such dark thoughts.
Before everything, he had been laughter and joy itself. You could take one look at him and know everything would be okay. Dustin Henderson's smile was bright enough to light up the entire world.
It hurt to think it had been stolen from him. But she was determined to bring it back.
“Yeah, well. Trauma has a way of turning everything, for lack of a better word, upside down,” he joked.
“Dumbass,” she said, and shoved him playfully. She had missed that joking tone and those dumb, silly jokes.
“Hey, you missed a lot of movie releases while you were gone. Do you wanna start catching up? I have a lot of snacks that are sure to give us the tummyache of a century. We can have a movie marathon sleepover?” he asked, hesitantly, and she hated that he was even doubting her answer.
“I would love nothing more,” she answered, and he gave her a relieved and happy smile.
There it was - that blinding smile that could rival suns - the smile she had missed so much.
He wasn’t healed. She wasn’t either. But for once, it felt like it was actually possible for everything to turn out okay - for both of them to get a happy ending.