El felt her heart stop for a moment. She remained motionless, frozen, unable to move her body. In front of her stood the person she loved more than anything. Max, dressed in her hospital gown, her hair once tied back, now loose, flying in the wind. Behind the redhead, chaos reigned—the Upside Down had engulfed the town of Hawkins, the place where El had grown up, where the brunette had met the redhead, where the two girls had grown so close that it couldn't be a platonic relationship. This town was overwhelmed by the infamous tentacles of the Upside Down and fire. This grim spectacle was behind Mayfield, but it wasn't this dismal scene that concerned El; it was the redhead.
The girl had her arm raised, much like El did when using her powers. The redhead was hunched over, and her gaze was vacant, as empty as Billy's when he was possessed by Vecna. At this realization, El felt nauseous—no, it couldn't be possible, Max couldn't be possessed, not her, anyone but her.
As she stared at the other girl, tears in her eyes, she felt something trickling from her abdomen. The brunette lowered her head to this sensation and was shocked to discover a large bloodstain on her shirt, the red contrasting starkly against the white fabric. At the sight, El felt her head spin, and the nausea that had been present since the beginning of the encounter with her best friend intensified.
Her tears were now flowing freely down her face, and the pain from the injury she had sustained suddenly surged, causing her to double over, collapsing onto the ground. Her head now rubbed against the grass of the hill where she lay. It was a few moments before the girl heard footsteps slowly making their way towards her. The brunette made a tremendous effort to lift her head and saw Max's feet drawing closer. El cried harder and harder as the redhead approached. Then the footsteps stopped, the silence contrasting with the scene of chaos unfolding before them was slightly interrupted by El's sobs. The brunette fixed her gaze on Max's feet, which were covered in strange black veins, evidence that the redhead was indeed possessed by the monster Vecna.
The monstrously transformed feet were replaced by a knee that pressed into the ground, crushing a few flowers in front of El's head. A hand settled on the younger girl's chin, lifting her face. The brunette's teary eyes locked onto Max's icy blue eyes, not the same blue she had seen during their sleepovers; they were cold, freezing El's breath, which caught as she saw Max's sorrowful face, also overrun with black veins. Silence enveloped the scene, allowing their gazes to meet.
Max's usually emotionless face since the beginning of their encounter formed a smile, one that El might have found rather charming if they weren't in an end-of-the-world situation. The redhead opened her mouth, exhaling onto El's frightened face and spoke in a voice far too hoarse for her. "Hello, Eleven." At these words, the tears that had stopped began again.
Max ran her other hand over her cheeks to wipe them, but it didn't reassure El, who knew very well that it wasn't Max's action, but One's. "Come on, stop crying, Eleven. Aren't you happy to see your best friend alive?"
The brunette's breathing quickened at that sentence, struggling for air. She tried to get up, but the pain from her worsening wound pinned her to the ground, causing her to collapse, her chin still lifted by Vecna. The girl in front of her began to laugh at her reaction, terrifying El. It wasn't Max's angelic laughter, but a dark, dreadful laughter, worse than in her nightmares.
Vecna noticed the horror on El's face and made the redhead smile even more. "Come on, Eleven, you can't be horrified by Maxine's laughter, you like her, don't you? You like her far too much for just a friend, don't you?" El's already dire state worsened with that statement. Why had this guy decided to possess Max? Jane didn't want to harm the girl, even if it wasn't her, she couldn't. It was too much for her.
Her thoughts collided in her head, getting tangled everywhere, when she felt a pain beyond anything she had experienced so far. Her head, wet with tears and sweat, lowered towards the source of this pain and saw her abdomen punctured, a huge open wound on her body, Max's hand just in front of this abominable injury. After this realization, the girl's vision became blurred.
Her body collapsed to the ground, her head released from Max's hand, all her limbs began convulsing, her sobs turning into screams, tearing through the heavy silence of chaos. Her vision darkened, diminishing.
In the distance, she heard a piercing scream and hurried footsteps drawing closer and closer. "El!" It was Mike's voice. El tried to scream at him to leave. If she hadn't survived Vecna, the boys wouldn't even live a second, but she could only manage screams that she herself couldn't identify.
The girl felt her mind drifting, seeing only a distant light, her mind getting closer and closer, but she resisted. She didn't want to go there. If she did, she would die. She couldn't die. Not after everything she had done. She couldn't leave them, not Hopper, not Will, not Mike.
As she fought with all her might not to move towards the horribly enticing light, she heard a voice. It wasn't Vecna's horrible voice, it wasn't Mike's frightened one. It was angelic, gentle, without any terror. "El." The brunette's heart raced as she recognized whose voice it was. "Max!" The girl screamed. She didn't know if she was screaming in real life or in her subconscious, but she was screaming the name she so desperately wanted to shout. "Max, Max, where are you!"
Suddenly, the light vanished, her vision was completely black, her pain slowly killing her. There was nothing left. She couldn't do it. El couldn't do it. She was going to die. She was going to die by the hands of Vecna, who had possessed the girl she was in love with. Well, without admitting it to herself, she was in love with Max. And if the redhead was dead, then El would do everything to find her in the beyond.
