They had all decided to camp out in the basement of the Wheeler house that night, to keep an eye on Max and to try and find out everything they could about Vecna.
It wasn't going well - Max had been sat at a desk for the most part, writing page after page of god knows what. Steve, Dustin and Lucas were going over pages and pages of information about the Creel family and what happened to them, hoping something useful would come to light and the whole situation would be solved. Eve was sat in the corner, head against the wall, her eyes never leaving the back of Max's head. It bought her comfort to just see her doing a normal task, as if none of this was really happening.
It reminded her a lot of the time Max had a paper due, but Eve insisted on her coming over. Max was sat at the desk, writing page after page, needing an A, and Eve spent the whole three hours messing around and distracting her. It was funny, and it was a simpler time. It was weird to think about how fucked up life had become since then.
Max could feel Eve's stare on the back of her head, opting to never turn round to check - she'd notice how Eve didn't like eye contact anymore, and every time they managed to lock eyes, Eve was quick to look away and crawl back into her shell.
Max never really discussed it with anyone, but Eve coming back from conversion therapy was absolutely horrible for her - the person she loved now hated being in the same room as her, and she hadn't even done anything wrong. It was annoying because she couldn't blame Eve, and she couldn't blame herself - a part of her wished she could just blame herself, so that way it would be easier to get over.
She felt awful when she stopped visiting Eve - it hurt her too much to see Eve ignore her day after day, lying in bed and staring at the wall. She couldn't imagine what it was like for Steve. The boy still insisted on giving her updates, the last one was about three months prior to this whole situation spiked up - Eve had finally had a conversation with Steve that lasted more than a minute.
She couldn't imagine how lonely Eve felt, not until now. Max was surrounded in a room of people all ready to help, but the one person she needed couldn't even look at her.
"Okay, be honest, uh..." Steve began, walking up and down the room while staring at a newspaper article, "you guys understand any of this?"
"No," Lucas sighs.
"Pretty straight forward," Dustin then answers, making Eve look over at him for a second, before her head was back against the wall, looking at Max once again.
"Oh, straightforward, really?" Steve asked sarcastically.
"What's confusing you?" Dustin then asked - he sometimes forgot that not everyone was extremely experienced with dungeons and dragons, or the upside down in general, so he often came off as patronising, "So far, everyone Vecna has cursed has died, except for this old Victor Creel dude Nancy found. He's the only known survivor. If anyone knows how to beat this curse, it's him."
"That's assuming he was cursed, which we don't even know," Steve then argues, looking back down at his paper, "how can Vecna have existed in the '50's? It doesn't make sense."
"As far as we know Eleven didn't create the Upside Down," Dustin said, "she opened a gate to it. The upside down has probably been around for thousands of years. Millions. I wouldn't be surprised if it predated the dinosaurs."
"Dinosaurs? What are we-" Steve began, shaking his head.
"Okay," Lucas cut in before another argument could break out, "but if a gate didn't exist in the 80's, how did Vecna get through?"
YOU ARE READING
voyager // max mayfield
Fanfiction"Eve Harrington, you're a complete and total idiot." - Stranger Things Max Mayfield x fem!oc Seasons 2-4
