STEVE HAD ALMOST forgotten about Kate whenever he'd woken up the next morning.
She had almost scared him at first. Whenever he'd checked his surroundings, making sure the kids were all still okay, that Kate hadn't been killed in the middle of the night, he'd done a double take whenever he saw the flash of light-colored hair. He frowned slightly whenever he saw her sitting on the floor and leaning against the couch, using her jacket as a blanket—she had to have fallen asleep at some point.
He carefully navigated his way around the kids, Robin, and the furniture, not wanting to make any loud sudden noises. He grabbed one of the blankets from the other side of the room that Nancy had pointed them toward the night before, carefully putting it over her as a layer other than the jacket.
Steve remembered when she'd changed so much.
He didn't have a problem with it, especially not at the time. He was just worried about her, even now. He remembered that night when her father had died and he'd taken her and her sister back to his place, trying his best to take care of them even when he'd received a monster concussion. On the car ride home, there had only been the occasional sob, sigh, maybe a tear, but never a word.
Once they'd gotten inside his house, El had immediately passed out on his couch, and Steve had put a blanket over her, carrying her to the guest bedroom. He'd tucked her in, taking off her shoes before pulling blankets over top of her and turning out the light, closing the door behind him.
When he'd walked into his room that night, he remembered finding Kate sitting on the corner of his bed, her back facing the door. She hadn't said anything, only staring at the window. Whenever he'd walked around to her, finally seeing her face, she'd looked so empty. She'd looked so lost, defeated.
It had absolutely broken his heart.
She'd acted so much different whenever Sara died. Granted, that had been whenever she was eleven years old, but she'd still acted so different. Whenever her sister had died, her biological sister, she'd cried so much that by the time the funeral rolled around, she'd only been able to stare off into space.
He hadn't known what to expect, really, but he hadn't expected her to be so quiet.
"Hey," he'd said, trying to grab her attention. "Hey, Kathy."
She shook herself out of her stare, turning to look at him. Her eyes were glazed over. "Yeah?"
"Hey," he'd said, sitting next to her and putting his hand on her arm. "I've got to take a shower, but I... I didn't know if you wanted to go first or not."
After a moment or two of staring at him, she'd sighed, nodding her head as she'd wiped her face and sniffled. She'd taken herself to the bathroom after going through one of the drawers in Steve's dresser, specifically the one she'd claimed a long time ago, and took a change of clothes with her.
Whenever she'd walked out, not even bothering to close the door behind her, he'd only sighed.
Back then, things had been so different. If he would've known that she was still as heartbroken as she was back then, he wouldn't have let her go to New York City by herself. He wouldn't have let her bear all of it by herself, even if she absolutely refused the hell she needed sometimes. He wouldn't have let her push him away, wouldn't have let himself get with those other girls.
He didn't know if he could ever forgive himself for what he'd done.
Nancy and Robin had gone to work on the next part of their plan, leaving Kate, Dustin, Lucas, and Steve to read all of the newspaper articles they could find about Victor Creel and the murders of his family.
Kate, who currently sat on a box next to the television, could only watch Steve carefully as he paced around the room.
"Okay, be honest. Uh... You guys understand any of this?" he finally asked, still pacing as he stared at the article in his hand.
"No," Lucas said.
"Pretty straightforward," Dustin said.
"Oh, straightforward, really?" Steve said sarcastically, giving him an annoyed look.
"What's confusing to you?" Kate asked, her eyebrows furrowing together. She knew that his dyslexia must've been kicking his ass right now.
Before Steve could answer her, however, Dustin started to explain things more thoroughly. "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."
"Yeah, that's assuming he was cursed, Henderson, which we don't even know." He rubbed his forehead with his hand. "How can Vecna have existed back in the '50s? It just doesn't make sense."
"Far as we know, Eleven didn't create the Upside Down. 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."
"Okay, okay, but if a gate didn't exist in the '50s, how did Vecna get through?" Lucas asked.
"Oh, and how's he getting through now?" Steve asked, pointing to Dustin.
"And why now?"
"And why then? Just pops out in the '50s, kills one family, and he's like, 'hey, I'm good.' And poof, he just disappears. Just... gone? Only to return thirty years later and start killing some random teens?" He looked back down at the article, his eyebrows still furrowed together. "No, I don't buy it."
"The only thing connecting these murders is the way they were killed," Kate said, scanning over her article. "Victimology is completely different."
"What?" Steve asked, confused.
"Okay, first set of murders, you have a family, right? Familicide, minus the father, obviously. Two females had their bones twisted and their eyes popped out, and the son fell into a coma for a week before dying. Still with me?" she asked, looking to Steve. Whenever he hesitantly nodded, she continued. "Okay, now we have Chrissy Cunningham and Fred Benson. Both families spared, other than the immense guilt and trauma they now have, but other than that, completely spared. Fred's the first male to immediately die, too. If this is the same person, the motive's changed completely." She paused, shaking her head. "And why now? As far as we know, this shit's been coming around for a couple of years, why all of a sudden now? Something... pushed Vecna to start doing this again."
Steve sighed, starting to pace again after she was done. "See? Straightforward, my ass. You know, honestly, Henderson, a little humility now and then, it wouldn't hurt you."
"Sorry," Dustin said softly.
Kate normally would've been paying more attention, have quicker answers and replies, but she found the polo shirt that Steve was wearing was much more interesting than the questions that they were asking. She didn't think she'd objectified him this horribly since his last swim meet. There was no way he wasn't working out still if his arms looked like that, right?
Steve sat down in the chair across from the couch, crossing his legs and giving Dustin and Lucas "the look" that he normally gave them whenever he was annoyed with them. Kate pressed her lips together to contain her laughter—he'd turned into even more of a mother since she'd been gone.
Kate looked to the two boys, who were already focused on something else: Max. She turned her head to find her still sitting at the desk in the back corner, writing something.
"Any idea what she's writing?" Dustin asked softly, almost as to not disturb her.
Steve looked up, readjusting himself so he could turn his head to look at her, too.
Kate had an idea of what Max was doing, even if she didn't want to admit it to herself. She didn't dare say it out loud, mostly because she didn't want to say how she knew such a thing, could recognize it without really knowing for sure.
She had written letters to everyone whenever she was thirteen. Kate knew it had to have been right before school got out for the summer just because she'd done it a week after Sara's two-year death date. She'd written letters not because she was scared that something was going to happen to her, just like it had Sara, but because she hadn't known if she could take much more of it. She'd written one to her dad, mostly pointing out how she wished that things could've been different between them. She'd written one to her mother Diane, saying all the things she wished she could've said but she couldn't because she wasn't there. She'd written one to Jessica, one to Kim about how she wished she could've gotten to know them better. The one most important, though, and the one that had hurt the most, was the one that she'd written to Steve. At the time, she'd written him a letter about how she wished she could've been better for him. That's how all of them had ended up, but Steve's was the one that mattered most to her. Even now, they still sat in a box in her dorm room back in New York.
That was why Kate thought she understood Max much more than anyone else in that room.
"Did she sleep?" Dustin asked, still looking to Max.
"I mean, would you?" Lucas asked in response.
Before anyone else could reply, the door leading up to the first floor of the house swung open, and Nancy and Robin came down the stairs with a file each in their hands.
"Okay, so... we have a plan," Nancy said.
She and Robin passed their two files around, letting everyone look at them.
"Thanks to Nancy's newspaper minions, we are now rock-star psychology students at the University of Notre Dame."
"I'm now Ruth."
"And I'm Rose," Robin finished.
"Ruth?" Steve asked, looking to Nancy with a confused look on his face. She certainly didn't look like a Ruth.
Nancy gave a shrug and a tightlipped grin.
"Nice GPA," Dustin said, investigating the file.
"Thanks. So we called Pennhurst Asylum, told them we'd like to speak with Victor Creel for a thesis we're co-writing on paranoid schizophrenics—"
"To which they said no," Robin explained quickly.
"But we landed a three o'clock with the director."
"Now all we have to do is charm him and convince him to let us talk to Victor."
"And then maybe we can rid Max of this curse."
"Yeah, uh, about that," Steve started. "We've been doing our Victor Creel homework, and, uh..." He cut himself off with a sigh. "We got some questions."
"Lots of questions."
"So do we. Hopefully, Victor has the answers."
"Wait, wait, wait a second. Uh... Where're ours?" Steve asked, closing his file shut and motioning between him and Kate.
Nancy, however, gave them both an odd smile, almost as if she didn't want to answer the question.
Steve, Kate, Nancy, and Robin went upstairs to Nancy's room to talk about the plan.
"Nancy, you're outta your mind if you think I'm babysitting again," Steve said, tailing behind her as he spoke.
"Okay, first of all, they're not babies anymore. And Max is in real danger. She needs people around her."
"I know, but why does it always have to be me?" As he spoke, he began to get more animated with his hands.
"Oh my God, you have a Tom Cruise poster!" Robin said, running into the room. She turned to Nancy, almost smirking. "You have a Tom Cruise poster."
Kate followed behind, pressing her lips together as they quirked upward whenever she'd seen the poster in question. She could only assume that was the reason she'd dated Steve back then was because he'd almost made it his personal mission to be the real-life Joel Goodsen during junior year. He, however, had very obviously grown out of that phase.
"That's... old," Nancy said, digging through her closet. "It's just—"
Robin giggled as she started going through Nancy's belongings on the bedside table. Kate only watched her, trying not to laugh. "Rob, what are you doing?"
"Can you please not touch anything?" Nancy said, close to snapping.
"I just—I can't do anything here, Nance. Neither can Kathy. I—Maybe we can be helpful with this asylum director dude. I don't know. I could turn on, like, my... my charm. Kathy—"
"Not the kind of charm we need."
"Ouch," Steve said, somewhat hurt as he turned away from her.
"No, I just..." Nancy sighed. "Look, I did a little digging last night, and it turns out this Dr. Hatch is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Harvard visiting scholar, okay? This is a lifelong student of the world, and if we're gonna win him over, we're gonna have to convince him we are too."
"Take Kathy, then!" Steve said, pointing to the girl in question. Currently, she leaned against Nancy's dresser next to Robin. "She's actually in college and—!"
"Actually, I'm with Nance on this one," she finally said. When Steve gave her an unconvinced look, she shrugged slightly. "Oh, come on! What if something happens to any of the kids and none of us were there to help? I'm not leaving them alone." Kate looked at her watch to check the time—she didn't want to leave them alone for too long. "Now, if one of you needs me, I am going to sit downstairs and make sure Max's eyes stay where they're supposed to be."
Whenever she left the room, her footsteps thumping down the hall and stairs, Steve turned back to look at Nancy. "You're not taking her because you want her to stay with me."
"I'm not taking her because she wants to stay," Nancy reiterated. Whenever he gave her an annoyed expression, she sighed. "Look, we've got one shot to convince Dr. Hatch that, like him... we are true academic scholars, and Kate doesn't want to go."
"Holy shit. There's a little ballerina in here," Robin said, biting her lip to contain her excitement about the music box she'd picked up.
Steve and Nancy exchanged glances.
"Academic scholar? She's giving you an academic scholar vibe? Yeah."
Robin slammed the music box shut, the music cutting off with it as she sighed.
"No, but..." Nancy held up a skirt and a dress she had, moving to where Steve and Robin could both see the outfit in question. "She will."
Robin, however, only looked horrified. "Oh, please, tell me you're joking."
Kate, Lucas, Steve, and Dustin had stayed behind with Max while Nancy and Robin went to Pennhurst to learn more about Victor Creel.
They tried to find something else to do while they watched Max, but it was hard not to stare. She still hadn't moved from the desk in the corner of the basement, still writing her letters. Kate and the boys watched carefully, just in case something happened to her, just in case she needed something from them. They didn't know how to grasp what she was feeling, and they certainly didn't want to disturb her.
Kate hadn't talked to Max in a while. When Kate lost her father, Max lost her stepbrother, Billy. While Kate hadn't loved the guy, partially because he had nearly beat Steve to death and tried to take out Lucas, she partially understood (at least more than the others) something about losing a sibling. She'd sent her, just as she had everyone, letters back and forth, but she and Max both were terrible at sending letters and responding to what the other one had to say. Kate figured Max was bad at responding she was herself: she just wanted to push everyone away.
This time, however, Max wouldn't be able to push the four of them away, even if she really wanted to.
"I know you guys are staring at me," Max finally said, barely turning her head to acknowledge them.
Kate quickly looked down at the newspaper article she was reading about Victor Creel, suddenly acting interested in it as the other three boys mumbled half-assed responses.
"What, sorry?" Steve asked, taking a ball in his hand and throwing it at the ceiling repeatedly.
"You said you needed something?" Lucas asked, scrambling to pick up a magazine.
"Just hanging out." Steve had already fixated his gaze above his head, and Dustin grabbed another book on the table to read.
"How you think your eyes boring into the back of my head is protecting me from Vecna, I don't know," Max said, getting up from her chair and walking over to them. The group of four still fixated on each of their tasks, Lucas, Dustin, and Kate reading while Steve still threw the ball at the ceiling. "You can look at me now."
"Thank you, sorry," Lucas mumbled as the rest of them mumbled apologies of their own, putting down what they'd picked up in a short matter of time.
Max sighed, splitting the stack of envelopes she had in her hand and sticking one out to Kate, Dustin, Steve, and Lucas. "For you, for you, for you, and, um... you." She hesitated on the rest of the stack she had, handing it to Kate. "Oh, and, um... give these to Mike, El, and Will. If you can ever get a hold of them again." Kate opened her mouth to say something, but Steve opened his envelope, about to pull out the contents before Max flipped out on him. "Hey, woah, what are you doing? No, don't—that's not for now. Don't open it now."
"Oh, okay," Dustin said, investigating the envelope in his hand. "I'm sorry. What is this?"
"It's, um..." Max hesitated, almost as if she didn't want to speak it into existence. "It's a fail-safe. For after. And if things... i–if they don't work out."
Steve and Kate exchanged worried glances as Lucas spoke. "Wait, woah, Max. Things are gonna work out."
"No!" she said sharply. "No, I don't need you to reassure me right now and tell me it's all gonna work out, because people have been telling me that my entire life and it's almost never true. It's never true." She scoffed slightly, her eyes slightly glazing over. "I mean, of course this asshole curses me. Should've seen that one coming."
Kate looked back to the three boys on the couch, almost waiting for their responses. She knew it wasn't the time to argue with Max about that. They didn't have enough time.
She saw a lot of herself in Max, especially at that age. It scared Kate half to death. Max was so close to the girl that didn't want to live anymore, that wished she could swap places with her sister. The connection was close enough where Kate, as she stood in front of her now, was worried about Max's own well-being.
Max grabbed a walkie off of the table, seemingly investigating it. "If we go to East Hawkins, will this still reach Pennhurst?"
"Of course," Dustin said. "Yeah."
"Wait, why are we talking about East Hawkins?" Steve asked. When no one answered him, only staring at him in anticipation, he started shaking his head. "No. No. No!"
Max, however, didn't listen, walking out of the basement with her backpack on her back as the rest of them followed her, grabbing whatever supplies they thought they might need as quickly as possible.
"Max," Steve called, running after her. "Max, seriously. Seriously, I'm not joking. I'm not driving you anywhere."
"Steve, if you think I'm going to spend what is likely the last day of my life in the armpit that is Mike Wheeler's basement, then you're out of your mind. So either take me where I need to go or you're going to have to tie me down, which is technically kidnapping of a minor. And if I live to see another day, Steve, I swear to God, I will prosecute."
Kate couldn't blame her for that—she couldn't think of a teenage boy's basement that she would have wanted to stick it out in during the last day of her life.
When they reached Steve's car at the end of the driveway that sat in the cul-de-sac, Max tried opening the back door, staring at him down when it didn't open. "Open the door."
"Uh, no," Steve replied, completely unconvinced. Max must've been out of her mind if she thought he was actually going to take her somewhere right now.
"I know a good lawyer."
When Steve gave her even more of an unconvinced look, turning to Kate for some type of support, Max didn't break her gaze away. Kate raised her eyebrows, giving the slightest shrug—it was almost like she was agreeing with her and thought they should go. She, obviously, wasn't going to fight Max on this one.
Steve scoffed, taking the keys out of his jacket pocket. "Henderson, that super walkie of yours better reach Pennhurst."
When Dustin tried to sit in the front seat, Kate gave him an odd expression, making him quickly move out of her way. "Nice try."