Kate Hopper thought she'd finally had everything taken from her.
With her father gone and her sister all the way across the country, she truly didn't have anything left. Since her father's death eight months before, she'd broken up with her boyfrien...
She knew it wasn't the aftermath of Hawkins Lab, not the night that she'd been attacked. Not the night that he'd let all those people die, where he'd let the Demodogs ravage all of those people. No, this had been the night that Henry, that Vecna had killed all those people. All the other numbers, the children that had been alive prior to Henry's massacre of them. All of the people that worked at the lab. Anyone and everyone that got in his way was a victim, and she couldn't, she wouldn't stand around for that.
She had to get out of here, now.
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Steve had no idea how long he'd been shaking Kate for.
"Kathy, just stay with me," he shouted, holding her by the head.
That's what he'd been doing since he'd noticed she'd fallen into her trance. He hadn't stopped shaking her, calling her name, begging for her to come back to him. There hadn't been any type of response, any proof of alertness or awareness in her being. It was just like Max in the graveyard all over again, except now it was much, much worse.
Kate was about to become the next victim of Vecna, and Steve had no idea how he hadn't picked up on such a thing.
He didn't care what he had to do to get her back. He couldn't lose her. Not like this. Not right now. She wasn't allowed to die. Everything in his entire being hurt knowing that Kate might die just because they didn't have a cassette tape with one of her favorite songs on it with them right now. He wasn't going to sit here and watch her levitate into the air, watch her limbs snap in half, watch her eyes get sucked back into her skull. He wasn't going to hold what was left of her in his arms as he felt the life leave her body after she'd finally fallen back down to the ground again. He refused to let Kate die. He wouldn't break his promise. He had to save her, he had to. Hopper would come back to life just to murder him if he knew Kate had died under his watch, especially if it was in a way like this.
He'd almost ripped his voice raw as he screamed for her to snap out of her trance. With each plea, he became more and more desperate. He needed to see her eyes again. Her eyes, not the electric blue color they currently carried. "Stay with me, okay?" He looked back up through the gate, finding Erica still standing underneath it. "Whatever you guys are doing up there, hurry up!"
Erica ran down the hallway and into Eddie's room where everyone else had started searching for songs that Kate would like. The only reason she had gone so fast was because she didn't want to get yelled at by Steve again. Even after the incident with the Russians, she had never seen him act that way, and she almost couldn't blame him: she didn't want Kate to die, either. "Steve says you need to hurry!"
"Yeah? No shit!" Dustin shouted, shuffling through some of Eddie's cassette tapes in his bedroom.
"We're trying," Max said, a sense of urgency in her voice. "We can't find anything!"
"Seriously, what is all this shit!" Robin shouted at Eddie, throwing cassettes at him.
"I don't know, what are you even looking for?" Eddie shouted in return.
