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It’s not the first seizure that Lucas has watched Max have. Hell, it’s not even the tenth or the twentieth, but it’s by far the worst.
By the time Max starts breathing again, Lucas feels like he’s going to be sick. It takes everything he has to not throw up on his shoes — and then he’s too aware of his shoes: the checkered Vans Old Skools that Max had given him for his birthday two years ago, the ones he had said were “tubular” just to make Max roll her eyes and wrinkle her nose and laugh and — nope, the more he thinks about Max’s smile and her laugh when she looks dead on the floor just a few feet away, the more Lucas is positive he’s going to be sick.
Lucas doesn’t even realize that he’s moving until he feels Steve’s grip on him get tighter, holding him firmly despite how hard he’s fighting against him. He has to get back to Max, and Steve is just an obstacle blocking his path forward.
“Lucas, stay ba—”
“Breathing,” Lucas manages to sputter out.
His eyes are locked on Max’s limp form on the ground. He’s not even sure if he’s blinked since Max’s seizure started, then stopped, since her breathing stopped, then started again.
“Is she breathing? Is she breathing?! NANCY?! IS SHE BREATHING?!”
He watches as Nancy presses her fingers under Max’s jaw, searching for her pulse, counting each faint thump. Her fingers brush against the birthmark under Max’s chin, and something just burns in the pit of Lucas’s stomach. Max has always hated when people point out her birthmark, hates when attention gets drawn to it.
“Stop,” Lucas spits. “Stop! Don’t touch that! Don’t touch her!”
He strains against Steve’s hold on him, trying desperately to get free. He’s pretty sure that he stomps his foot down on Steve’s toes and, kudos to Steve, he doesn’t even flinch. Instead, Steve just alters his grip, hooks his arms under Lucas’s and yanks him back further.
“Lucas, you have to stop! Let them help her.”
“Please,” Lucas begs, and he’s not even entirely sure who he’s begging to. To Steve, to get him to let go? To Nancy and Vickie, to get them to just answer him as they wipe the foamy spit from Max’s lips and search for a pulse in her neck? To Max herself, to get her to just open her eyes and come back?
If he thinks about it… If he really puts his mind to it, he’s pretty sure he’s begging to Max more than anyone else.
“Please… please just wake up… please… Max…”
—
Time doesn’t feel real here.
Wherever here is.
Sometimes it’s painfully silent, to the point where Max can’t even hear the echoes of her own footsteps. Sound just seems to dissolve in this place. She screams and the sound is just gone by the time it should reach her ears.
Hell, half the time Max has to wonder if she’s gone completely deaf, if Vecna took her ears as well as her eyes because everything is so goddamn dark and silent. Sometimes Max just has to wonder if she’s even still alive.
And then there are the moments that are so unbearably, horribly loud that Max instead wishes she was deaf, wishes she was dead. It’s a roar of static, a waterfall of cacophonous noise that just never seems to stop. It rushes in like a tsunami, hitting her hard enough to bring her to her knees. And to fall to her knees here feels like falling for an eternity.
When she lands (or, rather, when she experiences some facsimile of a landing), it’s with a terrible, tremendous force. It’s like being dragged under a rip current and being jostled inside Billy’s speeding Camaro and wiping out hard on her skateboard all at once. It’s like being pulled in every possible direction, like being crushed under the weight of the world.
And now? Now, this is the worst that the static has ever been, the loudest it has ever roared into her ears despite every attempt she makes to block out the noise. It rattles deep in her chest, making it harder and harder to draw a breath. She feels like she’s suffocating under the weight of it all, her lungs constricting until there’s nothing left to breathe.
She feels the static of the noise deep in her bones, like pins-and-needles dialled up to the maximum and then pushed even further. Her hands go numb under the roar of noise, legs give out, and god, it would be so damn easy to just let the static wash her away, give in, and let herself fade.
But for as much as the static hurts — god, does it hurt like hell — this static hell is the first time she’s able to really hear it.
Hear them.
Hear him.
And it’s not exactly like it was way back then, when Vecna first grabbed her, when she saw through the darkness and back into Hawkins, where Steve and Dustin and Lucas were all around her in the cemetery. It’s not the exact same, but hell, Max doesn’t have a whole lot to compare it to, and it’s close enough. Instead of seeing it in the distance, far off in this strange void, it’s like the images are flashed right into her eyes.
She blinks once, sees Nancy, hair more curled than it was the last time she saw her in the stolen Winnebago. She looks frantic, and her words sound rushed. They’re not very clear, and Max has to admit that she doesn’t understand most of what she hears — something about a pulse? something about eyes rolled back? — but she can tell by her tone that whatever’s happening isn’t good.
Another blink, and there’s the redhead from her bus. Vanessa? Violet? Something with a V, she knows that much. She looks just as frantic as Nancy does, sounds it, too. Her voice sounds a little further, just a little more out of reach. It’s harder to grasp her words, but she makes out just a few, scattered like puzzle pieces that she can only feebly try to put together.
“— on her side, she’ll — wait, give her —”
Max clutches her head in her hands. Her fingers tug at her hair, like maybe that will bring her some relief from the deafening roar. She’s on her knees, and she can feel the dampness of tears on her cheeks. She finally gets some air to her lungs, but it feels stale and forced, only able to come in gasps that she feels like she has little control over.
“Vickie, is she—”
(Vickie, that’s her name, Max thinks distantly.)
Robin’s voice is the furthest away so far, but she recognizes it instantly. She can hear the waver in the way she says Vickie’s name, buzzing with nervous energy the way it had when they’d run through the three phases of their plan to take down Vecna. The image of her that Max gets in her eyes is fuzzy, but Robin looks different. Her hair looks… blonde? Maybe it’s a trick of the light, another way for Max’s brain just to mess with her senses, but Robin looks different from the last time she saw her.
“She’s breathing—look, her—see?”
Dustin. Max blinks, draws in a sharp breath. He’s closer, nearer to her, somewhere off to her right but still unreachable. His hair is definitely longer, much curlier. He looks worn and exhausted, fading bruises around his eyes. What happened to him? She blinks again, sees him pointing at something. At her? Can he see her?
She only gets a split-second look at Steve — tired, he looks tired, but there’s an unmistakable look of shock written on his face — and she only hears his voice briefly, faintly, hardly any more than a whisper of “Holy shit, look—”
And then there’s Lucas.
Lucas.
Max has always hated all of those sappy clichés, but goddamn if they don’t feel fitting now. He’s there like a beacon, a lighthouse in this dark, unending void. He looks older, like he’s aged since those last few moments in the attic of Henry Creel’s house when he held her in his arms, begged her not to go…
Lucas.
Air rushes into Max’s lungs like a wave. She struggles to her feet, struggles to grasp at the darkness for leverage, and she runs. She runs as fast as she can even though her legs are numb, though they tremble under her weight. Her footsteps don’t make a sound and the roar of static is starting to fade, starting to get quieter.
She blinks. Lucas looks further away, and she can’t— she won’t let that happen, won’t let the world slip out from beyond her grasp again when it feels this close and this far. She runs. She runs and runs, like she did back then, when she watched her body from a distance, floating in the air above Billy’s grave. It’s a further sprint this time around, and it feels like it just won’t end.
Lucas.
Her muscles ache, straining from the sprint. Static fades from the air around her and it feels like it settles back in her bones, her every nerve ending alight and burning, buzzing like she’s been electrocuted. Blink. Everyone’s there. Everyone’s watching her, like they’re looking right into this hollow void she’s been stuck in for so long, like they’re waiting for her just to find her way out.
Front and center is Lucas. Always, always Lucas.
“Come on— come on, Max! Max!”
—
The radio speakers in the WSQK basement fizzle, then POP! A shower of sparks cascades down, nearly catching Dustin’s jacket before Robin yanks him out of the way. The sound of Kate Bush’s voice becomes warped, shifting in pitch once before…
Silence.
Steve keeps his grip tight on Lucas, keeps him on the other side of the room from where Max is, where Nancy and Vickie are turning her over onto her side. She’s slumped against the floor still, her nose still bleeding slowly and the remnants of foamy saliva still slipping past her lips. But Lucas can hear it now, can hear her.
She’s breathing. Thank fuck, she’s finally breathing.
The rise and fall of her chest is slow, shaky, but it’s there.
Now Lucas feels like he’s the one that isn’t breathing. His heart thumps hard in his chest, beating so painfully against his ribs, he’s sure that it’s going to bruise him from the inside out. Steve’s grip loosens just slightly. Lucas’s sneakers squeak against the floor. He strains against Steve’s hold, his breath held in his throat.
“Come on,” he mutters, his chest tight. “Come on, Max, come on.”
He inches closer. Nancy brushes a lock of hair back behind Max’s ear, and she seems to shiver from the touch. Her breath comes in sharp, sounding painful as it leaves her lungs. She sputters, mouth moving just slightly, another line of drool falling from her lips to the cold floor.
“Come on, Max,” Lucas tries again, gritting his teeth.
He watches Nancy take her hand, feeling for her pulse. Come on, he thinks again, over and over and over. He pulls once again and manages to get free from Steve’s grip. He’s not letting anything stop him from getting back to Max’s side, not for another second.
He falls down to his knees right beside her, moving before he even realizes it. His hand scrabbles for hers, fingers intertwining and squeezing tight. His heart sinks when he doesn’t feel her squeeze back — and while he knows now that her “squeezing” his hand before had been from the seizure and not her, it’s still more heartbreaking than he cares to admit aloud.
Lucas’s other hand reaches out to wipe the blood and saliva from her face with his sleeve, and he lets his thumb brush over her cheek, cradling her face in his hands. Pale and fragile, like a porcelain doll, he thinks.
“C’mon, Max,” he murmurs, not caring how desperate he must sound. He squeezes her hand again, squeezes his eyes shut tight, and wills himself not to cry.
He focuses on the sound of her breathing, sharp and shaky but consistent. His thumb brushes across her knuckles slowly, more to soothe himself than to soothe her, admittedly. He can feel Nancy and Vickie still lingering close by — he’s seen Max have cluster seizures before, and in the back of his mind, he knows that’s why they’re staying close, not just to be of comfort, but to be there just in case.
Footsteps shuffle behind him. He keeps his eyes closed. His ring finger brushes over the lifeline on Max’s palm — he’s never believed in any of that astrology-psychic stuff (at least not beyond El’s capabilities) but he has to believe that her lifeline is long, that it doesn’t end here, that it doesn’t end without him.
Because if it does? If this is it? If he risked life and limb to get her out of the hospital before the demodogs found her, only for her light to be snuffed out in the basement of the radio station, bloody and listless on the floor? If that’s the case, Lucas won’t let her go alone.
He can’t do another year-and-a-half of watching her fade away. He won’t.
“Holy shit.”
Steve’s voice is a whisper behind him, but he still doesn’t open his eyes to look, can’t bring himself to, doesn’t care enough to. Max’s hand is still limp in his, that’s all he can focus on, can spare the energy to think about.
“Look, holy shit, her eyes—”
“—they’re clear, holy shit.”
It was Dustin’s statement that drew Lucas from his spiralling thoughts. His eyes snap open and he turns his head to look so quickly that his vision spins and blurs at the edges. He has to be dreaming, has to be imagining the things that Dustin and Steve, and now Robin, too, are whispering about. There’s no way. It can’t be…
But his vision clears, and he meets Max’s gaze.
He meets Max’s gaze.
The sinking feeling in his stomach soars. Butterflies flap their wings wildly in his chest, flutter against his ribcage. He’s dreamt about this. He’s had so many dreams in the last year and a half that Max’s eyes would open, that he’d see them again, the way they were before Vecna — that crystal-like blue-grey that practically sparkled in the summer sunlight back before the Battle of Starcourt had dulled them. He’s dreamt that he’d watch her eyes crinkle at the edges and she’d wrinkle her nose when she laughed at his shitty jokes again.
“...Max?”
His voice is barely a whisper. He can’t bring himself to speak any louder, to risk breaking this fragile moment.
Max blinks, eyes clear and bright. Her gaze stays locked with his.
Her hand squeezes his.