My Number One (001/Henry Creel/Vecna x Reader)

Make Me Behave Like a Cannibal

I stared at the boy and noticed he was crying, whimpering...

"Who are you?" I asked, stepping closer.

He curled up further into the corner, looking fearfully from me, to the Demodog, and back to me again.

"What's wrong? Why are you crying?" I said softly, kneeling down on the floor in front of him.

"I'm-gonna-die-in here," the boy managed between cries. He was shivering, too.

My mouth fell open. "No, you're not going to die! Why do you think that?"

"The Demogorgon," he cried. "It's after me."

"What's the Demogorgon?"

"Like that," he said, pointing at the Demodog, "but bigger."

"How did you get here?"

"He Demogorgon took me here," he whispered.

"Nothing is going to hurt you," I said, holding my hand out. "Come with me."

He cowered away from my hand, though, looking at it as if it was covered in poison, and shook his head.

"Why won't you come with me?" I asked gently.

"It's dangerous out there."

"I'll protect you." I turned back around, focused on the door of the shed, reached out my hand, and blew it open with my mind. "See? I have power against the monsters."

The boy looked horrified, and he whimpered, but he didn't cower away, instead shifted towards me a bit. I held my hand out to him again, and this time he took it.

I stepped outside the door first, but before I had the chance to take the boy with me, I was snatched.

The monster that had snatched me into the Upside Down was back, and just as it pulled me away again, I heard the boy scream, "Demogorgon!" so I then knew its name.

*

The next thing I knew was waking up in a dark, dark room. The Upside Down was always quite dark, but it took a few moments for my eyes to make out anything. When they did, though, they focused on a familiar face in front of me.

Henry.

He looked mad. "What did you think you were doing?"

"There was a boy!" I exclaimed. "Another person in the Upside Down! Hiding in a shed!"

"I KNOW," Henry shouted. "I followed you there!"

"What?" I blinked. "Why are you so angry?"

"You should've left him alone!"

"Why?! He needed help—he was crying!"

"SO WHAT? THAT'S OUR FOOD."

All of a sudden my heart felt as if it leaped into my throat, and I wanted to throw it up. He couldn't be serious. "What?" I whispered faintly.

"We need to consume the energy of other people to gain their power. It doesn't come from thin air."

"That's sick," I said, stumbling backwards. "You're sick in the head."

"It's not like you haven't eaten it before. If I'm sick, you are, too."

"Oh my god," I said, choking on my own saliva. "You didn't feed me that, did you?"

"It's for your own good!"

There was nothing left for me to say. How could I argue using logic, how could I get through to someone who was so messed up and deluded in the head?

I just looked past him at the exit of the basement and began to walk over to it, but Henry grabbed my arm. "Where are you going?"

"Away from you," I said, trying to shake him off me.

"But you understand, don't you? You understand why I fed it to you, why it's okay?"

I opened my mouth and scrunched my eyebrows together. "No!" I said incredulously. "Of course not!"

"But wait, then," Henry said, grabbing my other arm, too. "I can't let you go until you understand."

"Yes, you will."

"No," he said darkly. "You might leave me."

I said nothing. Of course I was going to leave him. This had gone too far. I had made too many excuses for him. The fact that I was even going to go as far as to excuse the murder of every person on the planet apart from ours was insane. I was insane, too, and he was the one driving me to be.

I focused on his hands and removed them from my arms using my mind. It was surprisingly difficult—he must have been the strongest person I had ever used my powers against. I then made a run for the door. Directly behind it was a staircase, and I began clambering up it, Henry chasing after me. Halfway up, he managed to grasp my waist and pull me down into him, holding me there. I glanced behind my shoulder and hit him with my mind. He fell down a few stairs, but then once he caught his breath, used his powers to pull me down, too. I realised I needed to walk up the stairs backwards so I'd still be able to look at him and use my powers against him, although I would have to move slower. As I did so, I kept my focus on him the entire time, holding him in place until I reached the top and bolted round the corner to find my way to the nearest portal to the Rightside Up...the normal world.

I knew he'd be running up the stairs the exact moment I released him from my grip, so I had to move fast. The fact that I didn't know my way around the house but he did put me at a disadvantage. A burst of luck made me take the right direction and I found the staircase that led to the second floor. Once there, I knew exactly how to reach Henry's bedroom, so I did, and made a dive for the portal.

*

In the Rightside Up, I landed in the normal version of Henry's childhood home, which still wasn't very normal compared to other houses. It was very dated, dark, and completely abandoned. Afraid that, in a very unlikely case, Henry would actually jeopardise his gained powers and follow me out of the portal, I kept running, even down the street once I got outside.

What was next?

It was only when I began to slow to a walk, and the survival adrenaline faded from my system, that my real emotions started to trickle in.

I had just lost the only person I had ever loved. The only person who had ever loved me.

It felt like grief. Did the man I love even exist if he had been this evil monster all along? I had loved the lie he had sold me. The lie that he was human, that he had so much as an ounce of humanity inside of him. I felt as though being isolated with only him, in a realm where only he and I existed, I had become desensitised to his evil ways. Back in the real world, seeing people living their lives through the windows of their front rooms, and driving their cars down the streets, I only then felt the full extent of his psychopathy. He was willing to kill every single one of these people. If any of them heard what he was saying, they'd want the death sentence for him. How had I allowed this? How had I excused this?

Now where was I to go?

Surely he'd start to enact his plan now. He'd have nothing else to do without me there.

I'd have to do what I told myself I wouldn't: go back for Eleven, so we could stop Henry together.