Chapter Text
Max was really happy to finally have someone to talk to. After who knows how long stuck in Vecna’s mind by herself, she was going crazy. But now Holly was here too. She would take anyone else to talk to instead of the blank echoes she’d come to rely on when she wasn’t running away from Henry.
She gave the young girl a tour of her cave, which she’d outfitted with all manner of furnishings from other memories. It wasn’t too bad. The only thing she couldn’t smuggle through the entrance of the cave was a bed so she had to sleep on the most comfortble rock she could find. “So you’ve been here all this time” Holly asked in disbelief. She didn’t blame the girl’s confusion. In the real world she was lying in a coma.
“Near enough” she nodded. “Before that I was trying to map this labyrinth of a maze. I got pretty could at tracking down all the shortcuts. I don’t get to go out too often lately, knowing Henry is keeping an eye on me. But he won’t come in here. Not sure why. I stopped caring after a while. But he keeps the path through my memories guarded pretty tight.”
“Your memories? I thought you said this was his mind” she asked.
“It is” she nodded, gesturing to one of the chairs while she perched herself on a rock. Once Holly was seated she explained “when I first got here, I was in his memories. I didn’t realize it was a memory at first. But considering I didn’t recognize the room I was in, I knew it wasn’t good.”
*
The first room she woke up in she figured out was Hawkin’s lab. She recalled the descriptions from her friends of how it looked. The children’s play area in a sterile Enviroment was eerie, even without the dead kids in hospital gowns. She saw the numbers on their arms and deduced this was where Eleven had been raised. She didn’t want to imagine her growing up in such a horrible place.
She ran for the exits immediately, only to find herself in a school next. Not just any school, however. She was in the past. At least thirty years in the past. She walked the halls and heard students calling out names including Joyce Byers and Harrington (Steve’s dad, she assumed). It was surreal walking the halls next to the teenage versions of adults. She never saw Henry hear though. He must be in a different part of the school.
She checked each of the classrooms and doors along her way, looking for the exit. She figured out the actual exit doors weren’t going to cut it in this maze, so she went exploring. She found a young Jim Hopper smoking a joint in a science room. She was half tempted to snap it from his lips just to get a reaction. But she figured out nobody here would notice her. She was invisible to them, intangible even. She could interact with objects, but any contact with the people would phase through them like they were fog. She still walked around them out of habit though.
*
Holly listened to Max’s account of the school. “Wait, so…were my parents there too?”
“Sure” she nodded.
“what were they doing” she asked curiously.
*
Max stood in the doorway of the room that would become the AV club, staring with mild curiosity as a young Mr Wheeler felt up a young Mrs Wheeler while thrusting between her legs rocking the table they were sitting on. Her moans echoed around the room and Max glanced out into the hall wondering how nobody heard the girl’s screams as she came over the boy’s dick.
*
She hesitated before answering. “Just…hanging out. You know, like you would with your friends” she said vaguely.
Holly nodded, appearing satisfied with that answer. “So how did you find your way out?”
“Well, after…I’m not sure how long, I had just about circled back around to where I started” she explained, recalling how she ended up back in the lap. “But then I heard her.”
“Who?”
“Kate Bush.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
Max smirked. “Oh yes. A very good friend. I followed her voice and I found a path had hadn’t before. It took me through my memories. Or rather, my memories from the moment Henry made contact with my mind. When he attacked me, like he did with you.”
*
Max remembered how she found her way into the classroom when she first started getting nosebleeds, realising this was when Henry chose her. It was just before she started getting the headaches, weeks before she realized Vecna had cursed her. She looked up from herself, sitting at that desk, and glimpsed him in the window watching her. She clenched her fist and marched over to him, but he was gone. So she turned and followed the music out of the room.
*
“Henry only sees the bad memories” Max explained. “But if you look hard enough, you can find the good ones too.
*
Max had been walking through echo after echo, facing her trauma with every step. But she clung onto hope as she followed the sound of her favorite song, charming her broken life as she retraced her steps.
But each bad memory had an echo of a good one lingering somewhere. She crossed through a doorway and found herself in her trailer. She looked outside when she heard the dog barking and found her past self feeding the dog. She knew this moment because she looked across the park and saw Eddie leading Chrissie into his trailer. This was just before Vecna killed her. She didn’t realize she was going to be one of the last people to see Chrissie alive.
She turned away from the window, following the music. But along the way, she saw the narrow corridor leading to her bedroom. There was doors either side of her, one to her mom’s room and the other the bathroom. It was a small trailer.
She walked long and heard voices coming from the room on her left. She peered inside and found herself looking into another memory. This one came later. It wasn’t one of her finest, but it made the red haired girl smile. It was after she was saved from the curse the first time. It was Mike’s basement, where they had regrouped following the cemetery incident. Everyone had been super worried about her and been taking shifts to watch her all night. She got so frustrated she crawled into Eleven’s old sleeping area where Lucas had joined her. Then Dustin had caught them and she agreed to let him join them. She watched herself let the boys spit roast her while she wore those headphones, music blasting in her ears. Listening to the boys babble and grunt and whimper while they had sex with her, it turned out that was for the best. “Gross” she muttered, but couldn’t help the smile or the tears falling down her cheek.
A gasp escaped the gap in the room on her right. She turned and curiously poked her head into that room. This was seemed to be an outlier. She recalled this memory immediately, but it was months earlier. But then it counted as a bad memory because it was days following Billy’s death. She had been a mess. She had been crying while pretending to be fine in front of her friends. Then she had found El in Will’s old room reading a letter Hopper had written her. She found her crying, so they wept together.
Only this moment wasn’t the crying so much as the comforting. She saw the two of them on the bed, naked and kissing, their bodies entangled intimately. Tears flowed from their eyes while they made out, sobbing between kisses. Max remembered it was an emotional time for them both. They were saying goodbye. This was the last time I saw her, she recalled.
No, not the last time.
She stepped away from the door, closing it to give the two girls some privacy. She continued down the corridor to her bedroom where Kate Bush was still leading her. She looked around, wondering where she was going next. Her eyes fell on the mirror above the desk. She walked over and found it was cracked, like it had been fore. The glass was split in two.
When she sat down, however, she found two reflections looking back at her. In one half she saw a replay of one of her nights having sex with Lucas. She immediately felt guilty because she was so emotionally distant by that point it wasn’t passion or love she was feeling. She had been numb, using him to escape her own head. And yet he was always there for her, making love to her while she ran away inside herself. But her guilt intensified when she saw the other reflection, the other half of the mirror showing her that last time she saw El. She had found her in her mind, inside a memory she when she was happiest (her first kiss with Lucas). She had found her and they had kissed and then they were fucking at the snow ball. Full on having sex inside a memory until Vecna showed up to interrupt.
Seeing those two moments side by side suddenly brought to light what had been weighing on her for so long. On one side there was Lucas. On the other there was Jane. Two people she care so much about. One was her boyfriend. The other was her best friend. And yet her heart ached for them both and was breaking because of them both.
*
Holly noticed Max had zoned out in the middle of telling her story. “Are you okay” she asked with concern.
Max lifted her head. She was still wrestling with that moment she’d been confronted with in that memory. At the time she felt guilty. She had cheated on Lucas with El, after all. But then she wasn’t sure if she felt the same about her. But it didn’t stop hurting. She had missed her chance to escape and now she was trapped. And every night she was tormented by that ache in her chest. She missed them. Both of them. She would toss and turn in her sleep wondering if she’d ever see them again. Then she’d walk to the opening next to her and scream in anguish and rage, despair and grief.
She was alone. She and a boyfriend and a best friend once. Now she was alone.
It finally hit her that night when she screamed and cried herself into a whimpering ball. She loved them. She loved them both and she was never going to see either of them again. Not even in her memories now that Henry had blocked them from her.
She wiped her cheek and composed herself. She looked Holly dead in the eye. “I had resigned myself to door two. But now that you’re here, door three is back on the table again” she said reassuringly.
She wasn’t sure if that was true. But she had to believe there was a chance. A chance to find her way back to her body. Back to Lucas. Back to Eleven. Back home.