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All he can see is white. The whites of her eyes, trembling, the familiar blue nowhere to be found. Steve isn’t sure why he keeps shaking her. It isn’t going to do anything. He knows it isn’t going to do anything.
The world feels like it’s tilting. Is it tilting? Steve isn’t actually in the world right now, so maybe this one is different. Maybe it tilts. The burning sensation from where the bats took a chunk out of him is flooding his body, his lungs are burning, his face, his—his eyes are burning, and his face is wet.
“Nance! Nance—Guys, find a radio or something, Robin, she likes—!”
Steve looks up. Robin isn’t moving.
“Robin?”
She’s looking straight at him, but her eyes are wrong. They’re wrong. Her eyelids flutter, the rest of her body unnaturally still, and the burning is everywhere now, the world is spinning, and Dustin is right next to her, and Steve blinks and so are Max and Lucas. So is Eddie. All standing in place, their eyes…
“Oh,” Steve whispers. Nance, she’s…
When he looks back at Nancy, her eyes are trained on him. They’re as bright and blue as ever. “You can’t save them.”
Steve can’t help but laugh. It isn’t real. Oh, thank god, it’s only him. It’s only him.
Nancy suddenly grabs his arm, her voice growing deeper as she speaks. Her hand digs into his flesh, her grip so tight that he thinks she may rip his arm off completely. “You can’t do anything. You can’t help them. But I can help you.”
“That’s what you call it? Killing kids who have already suffered enough?”
Her face twists. It actually kind of helps that Steve has black spots floating in his vision. One second, it’s Nancy. The next, it’s… Well. Not. It makes his next move easier.
Steve socks him in the face and yanks his arm away, running as soon as he breaks free of Vecna’s freaky clawed hand. He flings the trailer door open, running down the stairs into… His living room.
“Oh, fuck you,” Steve says, and keeps running, straight past his mother and father as they scream at each other, out the back door and past the pool where Barbara floats, dead and rotting. Running into the woods isn’t the greatest plan, but this guy can make anything turn into anything, right? None of this is even real. He’s probably already floating.
So he runs. He runs, fallen sticks scraping and sticking into the bottoms of his feet, and if he can still bleed in here then he’s probably leaving a trail of blood behind him but he doesn’t stop to check. He’s gonna make this asshole work for it.
“You knew I never loved you,” he hears, and trips into Tina’s bathroom. The lights are harsher and more yellow than he remembers, making Nancy look vaguely sick in their reflection.
He turns away from the glass. “You’re not her,” Steve says, swinging at Nancy’s pretty face, and she takes the hit without flinching.
“You knew,” she says. “You knew I was vulnerable and you took advantage of me. You were so afraid of being alone that you would do anything. Even stay with a girl who would never love you.”
“Shut up,” he mumbles, turning to try the door, but it’s locked, and Nancy is right behind him, and he can hear his heart pounding in his ears, and the smell of sweat and alcohol is overwhelming.
“Nobody will ever love you. But it’s okay, Steve. You don’t have to keep trying.”
It’s impossible to escape her, the bathroom as small as it is, and even when he looks away he can see her in the mirror. Her mascara is still running down her face. He can hear her breathing, even with the music from the party floating in. The music sounds weird, though. Raspy. Wasn’t Tina playing mostly, like Duran Duran? It sounds more like Suzanne Vega. And it doesn’t sound like it’s coming through the door, but…
Nancy meets his eyes in the mirror. “You’re tired of it, aren’t you? There is nobody who loves you. Nobody who needs you. You dread it, living your whole life alone.”
There’s another voice, right in front of him. It’s faint, but he can hear it.
…seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time. There’s nothing you and I won’t do…
He’d know that voice anywhere.
“That’s why you always go first. That’s why you went back inside to save me and Jonathan. Why you went outside at the junkyard. Why you stayed behind with the Russians. You think that if you die for someone, at least they will love you in death.”
…dream of better lives, the kind which never hate…
There are Solo cups on Tina’s counter. Spilled beer. Hand soap. A bigass stone vase.
…state of imaginary grace…
“Your suffering is almost at an end.”
As Nancy transforms, Steve grabs the vase and slams it into the mirror as hard as he can. Glass shatters, something warm and wet dripping down his arm, and it’s burning, everything always burning, but he can see it. Vecna’s red soup mind world. Tina’s bathroom begins quaking and Steve dives through the mirror, landing in something soft and slimy, rolling through muck and scrambling to his feet as quickly as he can. Max described this place pretty well, though the red soup smells like blood. She didn’t mention that part. It’s all here, though, the clock, the staircase, and he keeps running, looking around for any clue of where to go.
…comprehending the race had long gone by…
Something catches his ankle and he falls, faceplanting on the ground.
“Where are you going, Steve?”
He looks up as the vine around his ankle starts dragging him back, trying to find anything he can grab onto, and that’s when he sees it. It’s him.
Steve looks like he’s dead. He’s floating, halfway between the Upside Down and the real world, Eddie’s vest fluttering unnaturally in wind that isn’t there, and suddenly he can hear the music, like someone dropped the needle on a record inside his head. That’s why it sounded wrong.
Eddie is playing the guitar, Lucas and Dustin crouched anxiously over the amplifier, Max and Erica drumming on Eddie’s counter. Robin stands on a table, holding desperately onto his shoulders, and she’s singing right into his ear, her terrible, raspy, perfect little voice wavering as she sings, “ I’ll stop the world and melt with you…”
Vecna is still dragging him through the soup, but he’s not dead yet. Steve flails, swinging as hard as he can to one side, and he manages to flip onto his back. It hurts like hell, but he can see where he’s going now, and even while his back gets shredded and black spots dance in his eyes he can see the vine… tentacle… thing around his leg. It’s thin. He can do this.
…You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time…
“VECNA!” he yells, “Hey, asshole!”
…There’s nothing you and I won’t do…
Steve grits his teeth. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” He’s almost to the pole… thing. With the bodies. God, Max downplayed this shit. He might throw up. If he’s going to escape, he needs to do it now.
“Oh, I know, Steve. It’s time to stop lying to yourself.”
…I’ll stop the world and melt with you…
“Dying is the best thing you could do for them.”
The shit Eddie’s playing doesn’t sound anything like the song. Erica and Max have no sense of rhythm. It’s a mess, but Robin’s voice is like magic, and it works, somehow, with Nancy’s desperate cries in the background. She’s calling his name. Steve slams into the pole, and two more little vine fuckers come out of nowhere, and it’s now or never.
…The future’s open wide…
He flings himself forward, grabs the vine around his leg with both hands, and pulls.
It gives way, ripping apart between his hands, and the world shakes. Steve scrambles away, just barely avoiding the other vines, and then he’s looking at himself again, running toward the sound of Robin’s voice and the cacophony of the idiots he always knew he’d die for.
“Steve, please,” he hears Nancy shout, “Come on! You can beat this asshole!”
“Please, Steve,” Dustin yells, “Shit, is it working?”
“Keep talking to him,” Max says, “Steve, if you can hear us, please, he’s lying! Steve!”
Robin grabs his face, now, her arms reaching as high as they can, balancing on her tiptoes on Eddie’s side table, and she sings, “ I’ll stop the world and melt with you, you’ve seen the difference, and dear god, Steve, please don’t die —”
“Robin, keep—!”
“ And it’s getting better all the time! ’
Fuck Vecna. He doesn’t know shit. Steve keeps running, even as the world crashes down around him, and even as he can feel tears slip down his face he almost feels like laughing, because he was wrong.
Steve’s almost there. He hears Robin loud and clear, like they’re sitting on her bedroom floor, like he’s trying to take a nap and she’s gotten bored so she decided to make noises right into his ear until he gives up on sleep and entertains her. He sees Lucas and Dustin, hands on each other’s shoulders, clinging with desperation like Max is on an arcade machine about to beat their high score. Max and Erica are focused, drumming and shouting his name at the same time, making the kind of racket that would normally drive him up the wall, and there’s Eddie, staring up at Steve’s body, making up the notes as he goes along, playing like there’s nothing else in the world but Steve and his guitar.
Nancy speaks softly, but he hears it anyway. “Come on, Steve, please. Please don’t leave me like this.”
…There’s nothing you and I won’t do, please Steve stop floating please, I’ll stop the world and melt with you, duh na na don’t dieeee, I’ll stop the world…
He was so wrong. He’s not gonna die. He’s gonna live for these idiots.