Love Is A Battlefield (A Stranger Things/Steve Harrington Fanfiction)

Chapter Eighty-Two: Runnin' Up That Hill

"Does that usually happen?" Max asked. I took a second to look behind me before facing forward again.

"Not in my experience, no," I replied, "Which hopefully, is a good sign."

I led the way into the Red fog and she followed after me, allowing me to slip my hand into hers once again.

"I know you didn't have much of a choice," She said as we looked around the haze, "But thank you for being here."

"I'd be here, even if it was up to me." I assured her.

As we walked, the ground beneath our feet became squishy and wet...it was a texture that I remembered very highly.

"Its like the Upside Down." I reported. A flash of white lighting went off, drawing our gaze forwards towards a spiky forest in the middle of a thunder storm. It looked very similar to Will and I's visions of the Mind Flayer, and the closer we got to the center of the forest, the more I began to recognize the floating debris as Victor Creel's house.

The clock was flying through the air above our heads, and my eyes instantly zeroed in on the stained glass rose door.

"What are you doing in here?" Vecna's voice questioned.

"Shouldn't you know the answer to that?" I called. "I thought you were calling the shots."

Something squished under Max's shoe, and we both looked down to see dozens of Spider egg sacks. Max had stepped on one, and Spiders suddenly began streaming out from it all around our feet.

"Come back to me."

We backed away from the spiders, only to have my back run into something hard. I slowly turned around to see that directly behind me, tied to some kind of weird tree with freaky Upside-Down Vines, was the distorted, mutilated body of Fred Benson. I gasped, turning my head to see that Max was standing beside Chrissy in an identical situation.

"How do you like them, Max?" We both turned around to find Vecna on the other side of us. I rushed forward to stand in front of her, but Vines began to slither up from the ground, wrapping around my feet in order to hold them in place. More shot out, wrapping around my wrists and pulling my arms back.

"MAX, GET AWAY FROM HIM!' I screamed.

"Would you like to join them?"

She tried to run, but with a wave of his hand, another vine caught her around her foot and tripped her, knocking her down into the much. 

I began fighting against the vines harder than I ever had before, tears welling up in my eyes out of pure fear that I was about to watch one of my kids die and I would once again be powerless to stop it.

The vine pulled her backwards, backing her up to one of the trees and beginning to secure her there, just as Freddy and Chrissy were.

"NO!" I screamed. I ripped an arm out towards her, and much to my surprise, the vine that was attached to it was yanked from the ground. Vecna looked at me in shock and the other vines tightened around my limbs. I brought my free hand to my other one, using it to pull the dethatched vine off of my wrist.

I looked up again as I heard Max begin to choke, one of the vines wrapping itself around her neck. Vecna took his attention off of me, moving to stand in front of her. 

I grabbed my trapped fist in my free hand, using the strength of both of my arms to pull the one free. The vines fought back twice as hard, but surprisingly, it didn't matter, because the vines snapped free again, leaving both of my arms unobstructed. I tried to run forward, onto to fall on my face due to my still trapped feet.