Vecna was leaning against the wall in a small pool of his own blood, his raspy breath the only sound in the room as the trio stood before him. Hopper could see the young man that Number 1 used to be in the days of the lab in the thing's blue eyes staring up at them, but for the life of him he couldn't consider him human anymore. He couldn't consider him the Number 1 that Nora once knew as her brother. But Nora was staring right at him, tears in her eyes and jaw clenched and he stared right back at her, eyes never straying to Hopper or Joyce.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Nora asked, the first thing that was said since Vecna crumpled to the floor beneath her hands.

The creature chuckled, a pained and hoarse sound that made the Chief's hairs stand on end. "There is a price to pay if you want to survive in this land, Number 6."

"I'm aware." The woman responded. "I was here for six years."

Joyce and Hopper exchanged a glance when Vecna hummed and closed his eyes, leaning his charred head back to rest against the wall.

"I didn't know that." He eventually said. "The Master told me you were dead, but you and Number 7 were always resourceful children. I shouldn't have been so surprised when Max revealed you to me. How is Number 7, anyway? Did he not want to come and see his brother again?"

Wincing, Hopper had to hold himself back from reaching out to his daughter. Number 7 was a sore spot for Nora. Her closest sibling, her companion for the longest time. Even he hadn't been told much about the boy, not even his name despite the fact that Nora told him they had given each other names after a few months in the Upside Down. He had been the one to come up with Eleanor, but Nora refused to call him anything other than Number 7.

Nora clenched her fists and took a step forward, almost trembling in fury.

"Never mention Number 7 to me. Never say his name, when you are the reason he had to bring us to this hell. Number 7 is dead! And it's your fucking fault."

The conversation wasn't going anywhere conductive and they only had a limited amount of time. Already one Demogorgon had attacked and Hopper didn't want to be here to fight more, not to mention that Vecna himself was running out of time considering his wounds. He would be dead soon, and they had more important things to talk about.

"The master you mentioned, is that the Mind Flayer?" Hopper asked, stepping forward to stand beside his daughter. "The Shadow Monster? Is he the reason you've been killing people?"

Vecna's eyes never moved from Nora, there was no indication that he had even heard what Hopper had said, and when he spoke, it was Nora he addressed:

"Please tell your companions to remain quiet." He told her. "I am still weak to the Master's commands and only your presence here is keeping them alive. They should not bring attention to themselves if they wish to live."

The trio exchanged looks, mulling the thing's words over until Hopper nodded and took a step back, allowing Nora to take control of the interrogation. The young woman took a deep breath and turned back to her former brother, meeting his eyes to keep his attention on her.

"Who is this Master?" She asked.

"He is the God of this place, I believe Max and her brother fought him in a large room a while ago. I saw it in her mind. Mind Flayer is an appropriate name, I suppose."

"And he's the reason you've been killing people?"

"Yes." Vecna coughed, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath to push the pain away before turning his eyes back up to Nora. "When I arrived here, he found me and we made a deal. He would ensure Number 11's death and I would be protected from the creatures of this place, and in exchange I would serve him when he attempted to conquer the other world, the one we came from. Of course, he also told me that you were already dead. He lied, and so I no longer serve him despite his attempts to take over my mind."

"That's why no one's died in the past few days?" Nora questions, a crease in her brows as she looked down at him in confusion. "Because Max's mind showed you that I was alive and that the Mind Flayer lied?"

"I have a mission!" He rasped. "The Master knows this! He knows that even here, in this hell, I have not given up. And he lied! To manipulate me into his war."

"Mission?" The young woman whispered.

Hopper stayed silent, but he wished he could call out to her, to reassure her, to remind her that he was here and that she was safe. Or as safe as she could be in the Upside Down, but she was alive and so was El. Number 1 had failed and now he was going to die, and Nora and El would go home and spend the rest of their lives being happy.

"That's what you call it?" She continued, her face contorted in disgust. "The brutal murder of your siblings? Your family? The children that loved you? And still now, all you want is to kill me and El!"

"I saved them!" Vecna snarled, leaning forward even as he clasped a hand to his shoulder and tried to suppress a wince. "I freed them! From the horror of that place, from the terror of Papa's experiments!"

"I AM FREE!" Nora bellowed, taking another step until she was practically bent over the slouched figure on the floor. "Eleven is free! Number 8 is free. The others are fucking DEAD"

"Yes." He whispered in response. "Dead. No longer tortured by those that pretended to care for us. No longer forced to torture others and suffer night after night of horror stories. They are free, they are safe. You have no idea what I saw in the minds of those around us, Number 6. The perverted things, the awful things that those people had done. The prisoners they made me torment, the soldiers that 'protected' us, the scientists that monitored us."

Still in the background, quiet and unmoving, Hopper couldn't help but think about how messed up this man's childhood had to be for him to have slaughtered eight children and call it saving them. A psychic in a room full of madmen would go madder than all of them and for the millionth time in the past three years, he cursed Dr Brenner's name.

"Our brothers and sisters were too good for this world." Vecna continued, eyes still boring into Nora's. "They were too good for a life like ours. So I saved them. I gave them oblivion."

There was only silence once he finished his speech. Joyce and Hopper remained quiet as requested and Nora was simply staring down at the man with no emotion on her face. She finally had her answers, she finally knew why her siblings had to die, and while Hop agreed with the idea that no one should ever suffer as those children had suffered, he couldn't grasp the conclusion that Vecna had come to. That he had to kill those he loved to save them.

Then again, Hopper had never gone through what they had. Eleven and Nora told him stories, but he was well aware how censored they were and it was something that kept him up at night. The knowledge that his little girls had been tortured for years, physically and mentally, would one day destroy him.

Finally, Nora reacted.

She lowered herself into a crouch slowly so that she was more level with the man that was once her brother and looked into his eyes.

"Oblivion is better than endless torture." She conceded, her voice having softened considerably. "But there is never any way to know if it is endless. I am happy now. Eleven is happy. We have friends and we have a father who looks after us, who teaches us and who loves us. Truly, not like Papa did. We have people that listen to us, that care when we are hurt, and that we can care about too. And despite the 18 years of torture and pain, if I could live my life again, knowing what waited for me here, I would do it all with a smile on my face."

Nora sniffled and a red hand came up to wipe a tear away from her cheek. Vecna was looking at her with a pensive look on his face and for the first time since they had entered the room, he looked towards Hopper and Joyce, considering them.

"I have a name." She whispered, and Number 1's eyes turned back to her.

He smiled, a surprisingly sweet thing on such a grotesque face. "Yes?"

"Eleanor. But everyone calls me Nora."

"It suits you. You love Max and those around her?" Nora nodded and Vecna dropped his hand from her cheek, closing his eyes tiredly. "Then do what you must and go. They need your help against the Master."

Beside him, Joyce gasped and took a step forward and Hopper had to throw a hand out to restrain her. Regardless of Number 1 and Nora's newfound peace with each other, the Mind Flayer was still trying to get Vecna to kill them and he didn't want to draw attention to themselves. But those words had sent a jolt through his entire body. The kids were in danger? How? They were supposed to stay home!

Sending a panicked took behind her, Nora met his eyes and he knew they had to leave immediately. They had to end this.

Without hesitation, the young woman fetched her axe from the floor and came to stand before her brother once more, pausing once she was poised to strike. Number 1 looked up at her, those blue eyes digging into hers one last time.

"Number 7." She said to him. "His name was James."

And then she swung.

Robin and Lucas were down.

The boy was still fighting, propped up against a pile of bodies still arming his slingshot and taking down enemies, but his leg was mangled and he couldn't stand. His trouser leg was drenched in blood and his ankle was twisted at an angle that made Eddie queasy just looking at it, but Robin was unconscious, laid beside him with thick rivulets leaking from the wound on her neck and the back of her head, and try as he might, Eddie couldn't see her ear among the mess.

All of them were injured.

Half of Steve's face was mangled from when a Demodog had jumped him before Nancy could get a good shot, but he was still stood at Lucas and Robin's feet, fending off anything that got too close to them. Max's shirt was torn and she had a claw mark stretching from her clavicle all the way down to her elbow. Eleven had blood pouring from both nostrils and her hands shook whenever she took down another opponent, and Mike beside her was holding his gun in one hand, his left shoulder having been dislocated. Will's spear had been snapped in half and he now held each part in both hands, using them to bat Demodogs and Flyers to the side or stab them.

Eddie himself had a sprained ankle and a gash on his side, and he imagined it would heal to show the same flower shaped scar that Nora had.

But they were alive, and they were still fighting the dozens of monsters around them. They had downed most of them now and the lake had turned into a mass grave. They used the bodies to their advantage, creating a little hole for the more injured to lay safe in, climbing on top of a pile to get some high ground, using a hill of corpses as shields.

It had been almost half an hour. No more monsters were coming out of the forest or appearing on the horizon, but Lucas and Robin were down and they were all losing blood. They were all tiring, and Eddie prayed that Nora, Hopper and Joyce would arrive soon to provide some reinforcements. Especially Nora. He couldn't imagine not seeing her again.

Shaking his head to clear the bleak thoughts from his mind, the young man took another swing, hitting a Demodog right in the face and sending it to the floor. He took a step back to prepare for the next one, standing dangerously close to the gate and clipping a Flyer on the wing, the spikes of his mace ripping the thing to shreds.

Then a hand clamped around his ankle and he screamed, twisting around to dislodge himself and take a swipe at whatever had grabbed him, only to freeze in shock.

It was a white gloved human hand, pushing it's way through the gate.

Sparing a quick look around him, Eddie caught Will's eye and the boy nodded to him, promising to cover him as the young man knelt down and grabbed a hold of this new wrist, and he heaved. As expected, a whole person emerged from the gate, wearing a white hazmat suit and blessedly carrying a military grade assault rifle in his hands, covered in a plastic bag just as theirs had been.

The man nodded once to him, uncovered his weapon and immediately jumped into the fray, stepping away from the gate and sending bullet after bullet at any monster within sight. Another hand emerged from the crack in the ground and Eddie once more leant down to help a second man out, then a third.

And suddenly they were going to be ok. Suddenly there were twenty armed soldiers fighting with them and Eddie could have cried in relief. They weren't going to die here. They were going to beat these sons of bitches back and they were going to close the gate.

Eddie watched as a few of the newcomers grabbed a hold of Lucas and Robin and began dragging them back towards the gate, away from the fight and to somewhere they could hopefully get medical attention. Only once the duo was gone did he re-join the fight, more determined than ever now that they had a new hope. What had just a minute ago seemed like a horde of creatures too powerful to survive now just looked like a string of lost puppies, and Eddie laughed maniacally as an overhead blow sent a Demodog to the dirt.

"Fire!"

Will's shout had the young man's bloodlust recede and he wasn't the only one whose attention was drawn. Max, Eleven, Nancy and Eddie all turned their heads towards where the teen was pointing, only to find a billow of black smoke rising from the trees, getting closer and closer to the treeline that borded the lake. The forest was on fire, huge portions of it and if Eddie looked close enough, he could actually see that some of the orange in the sky wasn't the sky at all, but rather a raging inferno.

Those that noticed all let out breathless laughs, exchanging looks to see if they were all thinking the same thing.

Nora was coming.

They hadn't waited to see Number 1's head fall to the floor. They hadn't even spared a moment for Nora to wipe the splatters of blood off her face. They had simply run.

Down the stairs and out of the broken window, where Hopper had led them straight to one of the lab's trucks and proceeded to hotwire it. Vecna's last words had sent them into a frenzy and now they couldn't do anything but try and get home as fast as they can.

Joyce and Hopper had jumped straight into the car but Nora had climbed into the open back, keeping an eye on their rear in case the Mind Flayer decided to take revenge on them. Finally, after two excruciating minutes of them shouting at each other while the Chief fiddled with the wires, the truck burst to life and they were off, speeding up the neatly mowed lawn and smashing through the fence.

"Close your windows!" Nora shouted back at them.

"Why?"

"I'm going to burn this place to the fucking ground."

As soon as Hopper and Joyce complied, the young woman positioned herself on her knees as far to the back of the truck she could and let loose. She flung her arms out in front of her and a torrent of fire emerged to engulf the trees before she moved each arm out to the side to spread the flames. They covered her entire arm from the shoulder, burning the sleeves of her shirt, but they reached twenty feet on either side of the truck.

The trees didn't stand a chance. The heat alone blasted those closest to smithereens and they were so close together that the fire spread quickly, reaching from tree to tree until Hopper had to slam his foot against the gas just to escape the flames. Great billows of black smoke rose high into the sky, and Nora hoped that the Party hadn't been stupid and crossed into the Upside Down, but if they had, then they would know she was on her way.

Only when the forest ended did Nora let go, falling forward onto her hands as she panted at the effort and wiped a small trail of blood from her nose. Crawling back towards the front, she stood to look over the hood just as the car dipped and rolled down the banks of the lake, and she had to contain a cry of dismay.

In the middle of the lake was carnage.

There were hundreds of creatures, Demodogs and Flyers dead, some in large mountain-like piles while others were dotted all around the lake bed, but still she could see a couple dozen alive, snarling and snapping at the figures stood around the gate in a circle. Her friends.

She could see Max's red hair, Eddie's curly locks, Dustin's cap. All of them were there, covered in red, fighting back the monsters that were still alive, still desperately trying to get to the gate before they closed it. There were also government soldiers, dressed in those white hazmat suits like when she had first come out of the gate, and Nora could only be thankful that the Party hadn't had to fight alone.

"Get down!"

Hop's warning came just in time and Nora fell to the floor just as he ran over a Demodog, making the truck tremble violently. Three more of the things died under their wheels before they screeched to a stop by the gate.

Immediately, Nora was on the ground throwing fireballs at any remaining Demodog within reach.

"Nora!"

"Go! We got Vecna!"

Steve grabbed Max by the arm and dragged her over to the gate, pushing her through. Nora, Hopper, Joyce and El created a tight ring around the portal as Steve ushered everyone in one by one and the soldiers protected them, until finally it was just them.

"Let's go!"

One of the suited soldiers wrapped an arm around her waist and they jumped forward, taking a deep breath just before their heads crossed over into the lake.

Kicking her legs, Nora allowed the stranger to help her swim to the surface, where half a dozen large boats waited for them. She could see her friends being plucked from the water and lifted onto each one by unfamiliar arms, and she looked down to find the last few soldiers behind her, Hopper and El holding up the rear. He was dragging her up to the surface while she was focused on the gate below them, her arm out in the familiar pose and the orange glow slowly shrinking on the lake bed.

Her head finally breached the surface and she took a large gulp of air, blinking the water out of her eyes. Looking up, she saw a man in a military uniform reaching down for her, and beside him was a familiar face.

"Dr Owens?" She gasped as the soldier lifted her up onto the boat.

Steve, Eddie, Mike and Max were already waiting there, panting and grimacing, holding their wounds as they caught their breaths. She exchanged looks with all of them, reassuring herself that they were alive and well before turning back to the scientist that had been waiting for her the first time she crossed the gate, just as he was now.

The man smiled, a bright and reassuring sight after the events and discoveries of the day, and Nora allowed herself to relax, knowing that the gate was closed and Number 1 was put out of his misery.

"Hey, Nora. How are things?"

"Shit." She replied. "What are you doing here?"

"I called them as soon as I realized Chrissy's death was caused by the Upside Down." Hopper said as he fell over the side and into the boat.

Eleven had been lifted up just before him and Nora jumped forward to embrace her. She was trembling, with fear or exhaustion Nora didn't know, but she wasn't letting her little sister go.

"That was like five days ago!" The young woman cried. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"You weren't supposed to get involved."

"Well maybe we fucking wouldn't have if we had known the government were handling it!"

"I know." Hopper responded as he clasped a hand over hers on El's back. "And I'm sorry."

"Alright, folks!" Dr Owens interrupted. "Looks like we got everyone. We need to get these kids some medical attention so let's go!"

Shouts sounded across the multiple boats and they were suddenly in motion, speeding towards the shore where Nora could see multiple ambulances and official looking cars with sirens waiting for them, along with what looked to be half the town. Pulling Eleven down with her, Nora shuffled onto the floor and laid beside the others, grasping their hands and clutching at their shirts to reassure herself that they were all there, they were alive and they would be fine as soon as they got to the hospital.

Steve was breathing shallowly and the water had washed a lot of blood off of his face, enough for her to clearly see the giant agglomeration of scars that covered half of his face, just narrowly avoiding his left eye.

"I'm ok." He whispered, seeing the tears in her eyes. "I'm good. We'll be fine."

"It'll scar." Nora warned and the man huffed a weak laugh, letting his head roll back onto the floor.

"That's fine. The ladies love a badass."

"Oh absolutely." Dr Owens called, and the group turned their heads to see him smiling down at them. "My friends at the FBI have already come up with a perfect story painting you all as heroes that took down the serial killer that was threatening the town, at great peril to yourself. They'll be all over you."

"What about me?" Eddie asked.

Dr Owens looked down at them with a raised eyebrow. "I assume you're not asking about the ladies?"

Blushing, Nora readjusted her position. She had half climbed on top of her boyfriend to reach over and grab Steve's arm, she had a leg thrown over his waist, his arm was clutching her waist tightly and their faces were inches away.

"Nah, I think he's got that covered." Mike retorted and the group burst into a fit of hysterical giggles.

The scientist allowed them a moment, until the boat finally came to a stop at the shore before responding.

"Not to worry, Mr Munson. By sundown everyone in Hawkins will know that you had nothing to do with these tragic murders and are in fact just as much of a hero as the rest of them."

The paramedics were then on them, jumping onto the boat and hauling Eddie and Steve out in pairs to be laid onto stretchers while the others were helped down . There were camera flashes, there was shouting, there were people running and milling around urgently as the citizens of Hawkins stood to the side gawking. One woman screamed when Eddie came into view, but Mike, Max and Nora converged around his stretcher and whispered reassuring words as he was carried away, sending glares into the crowd.

By sundown, Dr Owens had said. By sundown, this would be over, Eddie would be free and there was nothing else for them to do. His team and his friends from the government would deal with it all, they would cover everything up just like they had done before, and everything would be fine.

The gate was closed, they were safe, and Nora allowed a tear to slip down her cheek at the closure.