"Oh, how I have imagined this very moment, Eleven," Vecna purrs, a manic set of eyes glinting, a curl to his mouth.
El raises another hand, as Vecna takes a straining step forward, gliding to the floor slowly as he commands his own power.
"Stay. Back." El forces out, eyes wide and a trickle of blood leaving her nostril.
Vecna smiles. "Do you think I don't realise they're there?" He darts a glance to the door, still held shut firmly in place, "that your ants have been trailing behind you? All this time, I have known, Eleven."
His smile grows wider at El's panic.
"Do not touch them. This is between you, and me."
Vecna flares in anger, "yes, it is. And it still will be when I decimate them, one by one. Do you think you can really overpower me?"
"I have, once," El grits out, voice dripping venomously, "and I will again."
Vecna stops, and then disdainfully laughs, creating a current of unease that rips through El's body.
"Are you sure?"
Scenes of when El was anxiously ruminating over her powers, how unreliable they had the potential to be, the pressure of her friends' plight and their need for El… The scenes all burst into colour before her, and she takes a step back, dread and nervousness creeping back.
Vecna moves closer with El none the wiser, vision focused on what was apparently before her, "oh, El. You don't believe you can win, not this time, do you?" He whispers, and the words tangle up in El's brain.
She feels a fissure, a break in the corner of her mind, and it starts to bleed.
El shakes her head, "no! Y-You, you lie."
"But it's just the opposite. I tell the truth. You should know that by now, no? I told the truth then," El sees the rainbow room, One whispering to her about Papa, and El sees One walking towards her before their first battle, as if she is reliving the past memory.
"Everyone… is just waiting… Waiting… for it all to be over."
One's eyes then lock with her, and he morphs into Vecna, scales erupting and vines sliding across and into place, eyes fading to a murky white.
The door snaps open, and Vecna strides forward. El is hoisted off her feet in a fit of power, leaving her reeling in a confused daze.
"And I tell the truth now."
Vecna moves close toward her ear, El noticing as Max stumbles through the opened door in shock.
"You want to know why? Because it'll be over for your friends soon enough," his lips crease in a smile so very near her that it raises goose-bumps along her neck, and she shivers in disgust, "in fact, I know just where to start."
He flings El and she cracks her head solidly against a wooden post in the attic, and crumples beneath it.
Her eyes open blearily, and she sees a body sailing through the air, a scream and whipping red hair.
She hears a cacophony of shouts, and people rushing in.
"Max!" The desperation of Lucas' voice makes El's heart stutter. "Max!"
El crawls, pulling herself out of her position, head turned upwards.
She watches Max's arms snap in tandem.
El's mouth drops, and she howls in pain, "get away from her!"
She flings her arm, grunting in effort and eyes squeezed shut.
It is silent, and then another snap rings out in the air, deafening in its ugliness.
Vecna uproariously laughs.
"Seems your anxieties were not without reason." He says gleefully.
No. No, this is not happening. El's mouth drops, tears falling from enlarged eyes.
Max hits the floor, unmoving.
"Guys, we need to step in. I haven't heard anything, not a sound, for a while now," Nancy whispers.
"Me neither," Max says, worriedly.
"It's still locked from inside though, right?" Lucas argues quietly, and Max nods, "what if we mess everything up by going in?"
Steve vouches Nancy's suggestion, "whatever's happening in there, I think silence is a very bad sign." His eyes lock with Nancy's, and the group solemnly turn to stare at the door.
"Move guys," Steve says, motioning Eddie and Dustin just behind, each yielding heavier weapons, with the additional clonk of Eddie's guitar slung on his back, and the rest comply to Steve's order to give them space.
Nancy touches Steve's arm, "what are you doing?"
"Um, using force?"
"Are you crazy? How long will that take?" She shoves past the three of them, taking out a gun, aiming it at the lock on the door, "stand back, losers." She smiles good-naturedly.
She fires.
Will, Jonathan and Mike have finally arrived at the Creel's, with a lacklustre of confidence finally escaping them.
"I really thought you'd got us lost then, Jonathan." Will says, relief flooding his voice.
Jonathan chuckles, and restlessly shuffles on his feet, "honestly? I felt lost for the tiniest second. I don't know why we didn't also make copies of the map they made back at Eddie's place. Feels a little dumb in retrospect."
"Well, we're here now." Mike says.
"Yeah," they each breathe a sigh of discontent.
Suddenly, Will feels a shiver rush up his neck, and he feels a surge of intense emotion. Emotion that was not his own.
Vecna.
"El needs us," Will looks them both dead in the eye, "right now."
"What? What's going on?" Mike asks, voice shaking.
"I-I don't know. Not exactly. It's just. Vecna's happy, like he's got everything right where he wants it. Like he's winning."
"Shit."
Jonathan pulls at Will's arm, "let's go."
They all tread carefully up to the gate and squeeze through, trying to remain invisible lest an Upside Down monster notices them.
Once they get to the stairs, they hear a ringing gun shot.
They gasp in surprise, and then race upstairs to see a few of their friends charging into the attic.
They run on in after them.
Will barges right into Eddie, who turns around in shock, eyes alarmed.
Will looks over the side of him.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Eleven's little pets finally facing me in the hopes of saving her. What exactly were you waiting for? Had such high hopes that she'd win? Against me," he says, imitating an expression of surprise.
"Well, dead wrong."
And then he flings Max, Lucas, Dustin, all of them across the room in quick succession, growling.
El is curled up on the ground, eyes glazed over in a very tucked-in corner of the room, hands twitching, as her arms lie in a form of a self-hug as she cries in a very hushed, downtrodden way.
"Dustin!" Steve shouts out, and then he lights something up, hurling it at Vecna's head, making a direct smashing hit.
Vecna seethes, fire burning a line across his chest, and thus grips a hand in the air. Steve pulls at his throat, nothing visibly there, choking.
Eddie comes in rushing and hits at Vecna's side just before he's also thrown, weapon banging across the floor.
Vecna's expression changes, something more sinister and ominous appearing to fall across, wiping the mania and excitement.
And then he spots Will.
A sensation slides across Will's mind, suspiciously familiar and drenching Will's soul in revulsion.
His body moves, not of his own volition.
Will screams, and his eyes widen in terror, realising what Vecna was doing.
How he was calling on their sick connection, a hive mind that Will was intrinsically linked to, still – never having been broken.
And Will turns, his good hand grabbing at the strap wielding a knife on his person.
Without thinking, without knowing, he slides it out. He makes a clean cut to his wrist.
"WILL!" Mike wails, watching everything unfold in such a little span of time to put a stop to it.
He knocks the weapon out of Will's hand, and it scatters to the ground as a drop of blood drips from Will's finger.
Will weakly stumbles to the floor as the connection breaks and goes back to a state of dormancy. The cascade of Vecna's terror that is being unleashed on his friends rages on, yet he's unable to do anything but stare at the red blossoming across the incision.
Mike puts a load of pressure on it with a tear of rag from his clothing.
"Will, Will!" He says, but his voice feels tinny and far away, despite being right next to him on the floor.
Vecna's going to win, Will thinks despondently.
And then his vision circles round back to El.
Not if Mike can help it.
"Mike," he starts weakly, "leave me. Help El, find her. She's in there. She's the only one who can save us."
Mike shakes his head, grip growing tighter on Will's wrist.
"Mike, please." Will gripes, eyes burning into the pair locked right on his, seeing a glistening of tears as Mike's face falls into despair, but also into a rough acceptance, as he nods and lets Will's arm fall.
"Keep pressure on it." Mike states, voice unbegrudging but breaking at the end in unrifled sadness.
He moves toward El quickly, grabs her, "El! Please, come back to us. We need you. I need you," Mike iterates with deep sentiment, "El…"
"You can fight this."
"You can fight this." A disembodied voice floats into El's mind, where she is holding herself against the floor, bodies of her friends lying screwed up at every section of the attic.
"You are nothing." Vecna hisses, but one fact begins to stop escaping her.
"El, come back…"
Vecna's body, it looks…
Muffled. Wrong word?
Muted?
El gets up, painfully.
Mike watches, El's eyes still unseeing, as she moves in a very disjointed manner.
Vecna laughs at her, once again, "you seemed keen on giving up, I think you should stay that way…"
She reaches out a hand, and as Vecna's eyes widen, shocked, the hand glides right through where she is seeing Vecna stand.
His chest dissipates and then reforms.
"He's going to kill us."
El blinks awake to reality.
She gasps, heaving into Mike's chest as she falls into him.
"El!"
He's. He's alive?
She looks around, friends battling, and most concerningly, some really struggling.
They're all... alive?
A fury so deep, so painful and igniting, it spills over El in waves.
She bellows, "VECNA!"
Vecna becomes distracted and Eddie darts forward yet again, making a powerful arc in the air with his guitar, smashing it into Vecna's side who then stumbles.
Vecna comes back to grips, grabbing at Eddie's hair, pulling him up as Eddie mutters an 'ouch, ouch, ouch' in pain. Beseechingly, Vecna offers a comment with a wide grin and cackle, "Eleven. Good hallucination, I hope?"
El derisively laughs in a way that surprises Vecna. She swings a hand out, but this time. Oh, this time…
It does not do nothing.
Vecna loses his grip on Eddie, who then mutters as he rubs at his head.
Meanwhile, Vecna slams against a wall, then is slung into a viper-like grip, and is dragged across the floor in a mad pattern toward El. Max, Lucas and Dustin all sidestep away quickly from where Vecna is pulled, with gashes on their heads and faces, complete with bruised sides and hands.
"Yes, El!" Dustin yells.
"Get the bastard!" Lucas concords.
Vecna's dragged right in front of her, right where she wants him as the light will leave his eyes.
El goes for his throat herself, a blackening grip of fiery, boiling, tip-of-the-iceberg wrath, as Vecna struggles against her, milky eyes widening by the second.
El's eyes go bulging red in contrast.
He gasps out, "I-,"
His neck snaps in a final squeeze of a painful choking hold (and with the slightest nudge of her power), where he's given no pretence of a warning before the end.
No chances.