CHAPTER FORTY-NINE.
4x08: Papa

"SAM! Just stay with me!" Lucas begged, desperate and miserable. His hands were cradling the sides of her head, trying to get to her—trying to get to her eye level—but Sam's eyes were still rolled to the back of her head. "Stay with me, okay?!"

Everyone else was turning Eddie's trailer inside out, frantically searching for a way to save Sam from the waking nightmare she was trapped in. They were all yelling at each other, because there wasn't a single person who wouldn't be completely destroyed if something happened to Sam Hughes.

"We need to fucking hurry up!" he heard Max yell, from somewhere further in the trailer.

"Yeah, no shit!" Dustin screeched right back.

"We're trying!" Auggie desperately called from another room. "We can't find anything!"

"Seriously, what is all this shit?!" Robin cried.

"What are you even looking for?!" Eddie snapped.

And Lucas was about to lose his shit, honestly. He'd gotten better at controlling his temper over the years, but that was attributed to having Sam there to calm him down. Now Sam was gone, or something fucking close to it, and the one thing he'd been fearing more than anything recently was playing out right before his eyes.

A furious tear fell down his face. "FLEETWOOD MAC! GO FUCKING GET FLEETWOOD MAC!"

"Why would I have Fleetwood Mac?!" Eddie questioned from his room.

"THEY'RE SAM'S FAVORITE, DIPSHIT!"

Lucas had never yelled at anyone like that. Ever.

But Sam was in Vecna's trance, and Eddie didn't fucking have Fleetwood Mac.

"We need real fucking music, Munson!" Steve cursed, and he hadn't been malicious like this in a while either.

"THIS! IS! MUSIC!" Eddie bellowed angrily.

Lucas let out a small cry, almost a whimper. Hands still cupping Sam's face, he tucked her fly-away hairs behind her ears. "Stay with me, Hughes," he whispered, a broken thing. "Just stay with me. Please."

Sam didn't move in the slightest bit.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Tears properly fell down Sam's face now. Everything she'd witnessed throughout the trance Vecna (Henry?) was putting her through flooded out of her the second her mother said Diane Reynolds aloud. The thought was unbearable, and a part of her still didn't believe it. Diane Reynolds could be a common name, right? Maybe that wasn't Sam's mother who said it. Maybe...

But fifteen-year-old Alice looked just like Sam. But Sam never knew her grandparents on her mother's side, because her mother said they were an older couple who passed before Sam was born. But Sam had to receive her powers from somewhere, and where else than the Creel family?

And Sam's entire life was a lie.

She wondered if her mother ever planned to tell her about the true origins of their family—if she never got the time to because of her death. She wondered if her dad had known, or if even Stephanie had known. She felt alone from all angles, and she'd never felt more like an utter imposter.

Sam Hughes, who could easily become Sam Creel with one dangerous step.

She rapidly blinked past the tears, rubbing them away again and agitating her eyes. Her fist was still bleeding and hurting profusely, but that was the absolute least of her worries. The scenes Henry (Vecna?) was showing her weren't tormenting visions, they were honest memories that tormented her a million times more.

The scene shifted again.

The building was familiar.

Sam was back in Hawkins National Laboratory.

It wasn't like anything Sam had witnessed though. She only remembered the type of walls, and the way each room was formatted similarly. She had been in multiple of them when Will was possessed, but wherever she was now was unlike all the rest.

When she thought things couldn't get worse, they did.

Sam stood near the entrance of the closed room. Before her, a young boy was strapped down in a treatment chair with leather buckles. Instantly, she recognized him as Henry. He was just as young as she'd been seeing, leading her to believe this was where he ended up right after murdering his mother.

There was a man curled over one of Henry's strapped-in arms. A needle buzzed electrically, coming in contact with Henry's skin. The man was giving Henry a tattoo, and Henry in the chair winced and grimaced painfully.

Sam moved to get a better look at the entire scene. She discovered that the man was not any plain scientist—he was Dr. Martin Brenner.

With a fearful jolt, Sam realized where this was going.

Brenner wiped young Henry's tattoo when he was finished. The clang of the tattoo gun echoed when Brenner set it down on a metal tray. Finally, now that Brenner's hands and arms were away from Henry's skin, Sam had a clear vision of what Henry's new tattoo was.

001.

Sam stuttered, choking on a breath.

Henry was Vecna was 001 was Sam's uncle was—

"All done," Brenner said. He finally met Henry's hesitant eyes. "Not so bad, was it? See? There's nothing to be afraid of." Then, "Is there, Samantha?"

Sam's eyes magnified fearfully, hands shaking more furiously before. Her heart dropped. She felt paralyzed, unable to take her gaze off of Brenner.

Brenner finally looked away from Henry, and now to Sam. His entire eyes—the scleras, the irises, the pupils, everything—had turned from their natural state to an electrifying crystal blue.

Like uncle, like niece.

This wasn't a memory anymore. This was Vecna.

"Why don't you take a seat?" Brenner-Vecna asked, in his distorted, gravelly tone.

Sam flinched minutely, only for a few seconds. Then she let her instincts kick in.

She startled backwards, and, quicker than she'd ever done anything before, she turned on her heel and booked it out of the tattooing room.

Because this quadrant of the lab was unlike anything Sam was used to seeing, she struggled to work out where to go. She knew this was where Brenner would keep the kids he experimented on. In the distance, she heard the faint sound of children desperately screaming for their life. Fluorescent lights flickered overheard, whirring and buzzing whenever Sam came near. The only familiar sight she saw was dead corpses and blood splattered on the pristinely white tiled walls.

Her chest constricted terribly with that constant, unrelenting cold.

Something horrible happened here.

Sam turned down the next hall and ran. She'd never run so fast—not when Brenner and his men were after Eleven, not when she was being chased by a Demodog, not when Sam was trying to evade a flayed Billy. This was so much bigger than any of what came before, because Henry was the source of all those gut-wrenching events. And he was right here.

Sam sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her. Her chest was on fire, her mind was on fire, her legs were on fire. She didn't breathe, she just ran.

When she saw an exit door, she sped up impossibly.

The amount of speed Sam ran with had her throwing her body right into the door. Still, she didn't dare pause. She flung open the double doors with as much force she could muster.

But she ran into an entirely new scene of her own.

Suddenly, Sam ran right into her old house. Her first house. The house she shared with her mother, father, and Stephanie.

It was just like she remembered it. It still never failed to provide Sam with nostalgic warmth. It was colorful, and it was retro, and the walls were lined with pictures of the Hughes family—only, some of the pictures Sam expected to see didn't even exist yet.

Sam was met face to face with her mother. Diane Hughes, Alice Creel. She was younger now, something Sam knew because Diane was standing in front of a young baby's crib. This baby had hair so light that it was barely visible, and they had sparkling green eyes.

The baby was Sam.

Across from Diane was Dr. Brenner and two guards flanked on his side. Diane held up a furious glare, protectively stood in between Sam and Brenner. In her arms, she held a gun.

It was the same gun Sam first ever practiced with.

And now it all really did make sense.

Growing up, Sam was quick to notice that Diane Hughes was constantly on edge and paranoid about things Sam couldn't even begin to fathom. She forced her young daughters to shoot guns in case anything happened to them. In case anything attacked them. Diane would always get so worried, until Anthony Hughes would show up and dispel all of his wife's anxieties. Sam's dad was the light when Diane was lost in the darkness, the hope in a desolate world. He reminded her that she was still bright. She could still be bright.

But Anthony wasn't here right now.

It was just Diane, her gun, Brenner, the two guards, and an oblivious baby Sam.

"Just hand her over, Alice," Brenner said, in an annoyingly calm voice. "She'd do in better care of me, I assure you."

Diane's eyes narrowed angrily. She held the gun firmer. "Don't call me that."

"Running away from your past isn't doing anyone any good," Brenner said. He nodded back at Sam's crib. "History will repeat itself. The youngest born of the Creel lineage. You know how that story plays out."

"I do," Diane agreed, scowling. "And I will protect her from that life for as long as I can, even if it's the last thing I do. The only family that will define her will be the Hughes family. She's not a Creel. She has better things in her than that."

Sam's expression crumbled, and she took a few steps closer. She hadn't seen her mother in so long—she'd always been so beautiful, so heart-warming. She missed her so much. Her heart broke as she thought about Diane fighting and fighting that cruelty alone, trying to keep it locked away from her children. But it all ended up being for nothing, because Sam was witnessing the scene right now.

"It's no use." Brenner shook his head with a sick smile. "Samantha is special. That's something you've never been able to handle."

And Sam—baby Sam—started to cry in her crib.

Above the crib, the lights began flickering.

"I'll tell everyone about Henry," Diane threatened, her tone dangerous. "They'll come after him, and then they'll come after you, and don't you dare"—she aimed the gun more furiously—"think for a second that I'm bluffing."

"You've already kept the horrible secret for thirteen years. What does that say about you, Alice?"

Diane's eyes turned scary, and her hands were eerily steady as she pointed the gun right for Brenner's head. "That I won't think twice about putting a bullet through your head and refusing to keep it for any longer."

Brenner merely frowned. "Think about your brother. You don't care about how that would affect him?"

"He's not my brother," Diane spat. Then she took a few steps closer to Brenner, not faltering once. "Get the fuck away from my baby, or I will murder you like he murdered our mother."

One-year-old Sam cried, and Diane refused to stop holding the gun, and Brenner finally had the nerve to look fearful of what Diane was capable of. Of what Henry's hell had done to her over the years.

Sam couldn't stand any of it anymore, all of this inside of her, all that she was figuring out. She sniffled brokenly and turned for the door she'd just exited out of—

Only to find that it was boarded up by wooden planks.

"No," Sam choked, barely audible.

She ran forward and analyzed the boards of wood, mind working in the hasty fashion that it always did. She grabbed onto the diagonal plank across all the horizontal ones. She began pulling and yanking at it furiously, trying to break free.

"Son of a bitch!" she cried, voice cracking and angry tears falling.

Sam pulled forcefully, straining all her weight backwards. Finally, she gathered enough strength to yank nails from the wall so that the wooden plank was removed. She threw it to the ground quickly before she tried doing the same with the other wooden boards—there were four remaining, and she had to act fast.

"Fuck," Sam strained, holding the next wooden plank with a vice-like grip. She was throwing her entire body back, desperate to remove the board from the wall.

"Samantha..."

Sam froze up in terror at how nearby Vecna's voice sounded. She slowly glanced behind to find that her mother, Brenner, the guards, and baby Sam had disappeared.

Instead, he was there, in his natural and true form.

Like everything else that had gone down, it was unlike anything Sam expected. Max had tried describing what he looked like to everyone, but none of her poor descriptions could have prepared her.

Vecna was barely human—more of a humanoid than anything. He didn't have flesh, hair, or any distinctive, real features. He was gray, although it looked like his body was covered in vine-like substances of his own that were red. It was as if someone had taken a skeleton and covered it in singed muscle. He didn't have a nose either, and his body was wrinkly. His eyes were that same, all-encompassing blue she'd seen from Brenner-Vecna.

He was disgusting.

"What are you doing, my precious niece?"

Sam felt the returning urge to vomit. She desperately whipped back and faced the boards of wood. There was a new, furious desperation—so overwhelming it had electricity zapping at her fingertips. She began using her powers to singe and weaken the wood. The next plank was being ripped off of her front door much more quickly than the first.

"It's not time for you to leave," Henry said, his footsteps and voice growing closer.

Sam sucked in a terrified gasp, glancing back at her uncle quickly before she hysterically tried prying off more planks of wood. Lightning buzzed in her veins, and she used it to her advantage so that she was able to singe and char the wood. She combined her powers with the rapid shaking force of her body to peel a third wooden board off.

"Now you see who you truly are, your destiny. Now you see the truth and betrayal of your wretched mother..."

She let out a small yelping exclamation as she crouched a little lower toward the bottom plank. An electric blue field zapped around Sam's figure, and when her hands latched onto the wood, the electricity transferred onto it as well. Brown wood turned black. Sam heaved greatly.

"Now that you've seen where I've been..."

With each passing second, she could hear Henry's footsteps impending closer. Sam let out a frustrated and panicked curse as she tugged on the bottom plank harder. It refused to let up. She pulled up from the crouch and attempted to use all her body weight acting against the wood.

"I would very much like to show you where I am going."

The plank and wall continued knocking together as Sam let out strained pants and grunts. Finally, her power strengthened, and she yanked off the wooden board. She didn't have time to remove the top plank, nor did she need to, because she was short enough to evade it.

Quickly, Sam kicked at her front door, because her bleeding fist had officially endured too much pain. The door was forced open with a strong burst. She ran through the exit quicker than it was considered humanly possible.

But she never ended up exiting her old house.

Sam was back in the tattooing room.

She whimpered in alarm, looking to the right in search of an exit. When she looked to the left, she shuddered out a gasp at the sight of young Brenner with fully blue eyes.

"Take a seat, Samantha."

The lights above flickered at a rapid pace, causing Sam to crane her head up. Then, all the electricity turned off so that she couldn't see a thing. She panted heavily, in and out, and she was scared. She was terrified. It was a kind of fear that made her miss Corey, and Stephanie, and her dad, and her mother. She just wanted to be held, reassured that everything could be okay again.

Sam—childishly, so childishly—wondered where her saviors were. She thought surely there was someone meant to help her.

But it was only herself. Just like how she feared it would end up.

Electricity surged in her veins. Sam used her abilities to return the power back to the room. The lights above buzzed before they were finally turning back on.

Only for Sam to find herself strapped into the treatment chair that Henry once sat in.

There was wet writhing below, and Sam cried in horror. This time, it wasn't buckles that kept her in the chair—it was chittering, black tentacles from the Upside Down. They were wrapped around the entirety of her arms and legs.

Sam shouted out of panic, immediately starting to thrash like mad. She had to get out, she had to, she had to, she had to. She tried using her powers, but her hands were bound and restricted from even moving an inch. She tried using the last of her remaining strength, but it was a feeble and impossible attempt.

She was stuck here.

Sam suddenly heard a low growling. She looked up from the living vines to find that Henry was at the other side of the room, taking up a menacing stance.

She writhed harder.

Vecna began walking up to Sam, breathing heavily.

More tears filled Sam eyes, as the realization settled in that she truly was unable to get out of the chair. She couldn't run anymore, and she would never be saved. Vecna/Henry/001/Sam's uncle was finally going to catch up to her, and there was nothing to be done about it.

She really did begin to cry then.

Vecna finally reached Sam's treatment chair, silently making low sneering noises that had her inhaling sharply. He stared at her analytically. He put a mangled hand on either arm of Sam's constricting chair. The creature leaned down, closer to her, tilting his head silently. The only noises were Sam's small cries and the squelching of Henry's vines.

Distantly, a clock ticked.

"I... want you... to tell... Eleven..." Henry peered down at Sam, inches from her face. He brought his left hand—elongated with talons for fingers—up only a hair away from her. "I want you to tell her... everything you see..."

Vecna let out a guttural gurgle as his claw-like hand began moving again. Sam's gaze focused on it with wide eyes, body shaking wildly with anxiety. He was holding the palm of his spindly hand in front of her face. Her reeling mind tried processing what was going on until—

Vecna's head tilted up quickly, eyes darting to the ceiling. Against Sam's will, her head did the same. She gasped heavily, only seconds before the more horrifying visions ensued.

The decadent Creel house being split in half by an ominous, red entity. The old wood caving in. The red light spreading and growing.

It was a Gate. It was a red, illuminated Gate. It started growing from the floor of the Creel attic. It started sucking everything in and continued growing throughout Hawkins.

"No!" Sam shouted desperately. Her instability had all the lights and electronics erratically coming alive.

The Gate on the roof of Eddie's trailer was growing too. The trailer park was being destroyed by a blinding red light shooting up from underneath the ground.

Suddenly a clock chimed as the Gates continued to expand. Watergate was caving in as well, sucking in all the water from Lover's Lake and elongating itself.

"Pl—NO!" Sam begged, tears streaming down her face.

The Gate caused by Fred's death ruined the road he perished on. The black concrete crumbled, the red look taking everything over. Black vines crawled out from it.

The clock chimed again.

All of the Gates were flashing quickly in Sam's mind, overwhelming her brain and creating a massive headache greater than the migraine she'd experienced before.

"Tell her..."

"NO!" Sam screamed.

Hawkins was being destroyed completely. All the neighborhoods were becoming extinct as the four Gates expanded throughout the town.

The clock chimed again.

"...everything."

All four Gates rapidly expanded and converged at the town square, creating an earthquake-like effect, an explosion that almost appeared as a volcanic eruption.

Flashes of the grandfather clock—where it all began—flickered through like terrifying images Sam couldn't stop. It was a movie she never wanted to watch.

Finally, the clock chimed a fourth and final time.

"NO!" she sobbed—

With a gasp, she woke back up in the real world.

Sam immediately began to fall, towards the floor of Eddie's trailer. Lucas startled at the sight of her waking up, without levitating or anything. He shot forward as she continued going down. He caught her before she could fall, gently guiding her to the ground.

Sam started retching on the floor. She was gagging, hyperventilating, crying, and thoroughly traumatized.

"Hey, woah, woah, woah, woah," Lucas muttered, ignoring everyone's gasps and sudden panicked attention on Sam. All he could focus on was her. "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."

Lucas urged her to stop forcing herself to be sick. His hands moved, holding Sam into his chest. He brushed her hair from her face. She wasn't throwing up anymore, but she was heaving, barely managing any air in.

"It's okay," Lucas repeated, voice wavering. "I'm right here. I'm right here."

Sam seemed to register the sound of his voice. It was like she woke up from a nightmare, finally meeting his eyes as tears silently spilled down her cheeks. Her breathing was starting to slow, but not by much.

"I'm right here," he whispered.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Time passed.

It was the next day now—Thursday, March 27. Officially six days that all of this had been going on.

They recuperated back at Max's trailer instead of staying in Eddie's. Sam had vomited on the floor, first off, but she just couldn't bear being in there, seeing the Gate for any longer. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw a constant loop of everything Vecna showed her. She wanted to throw up again, but she tried listening to Lucas's voice in her head so as not to make herself.

Besides brushing her teeth and drinking water, Sam had only gotten one break—when they needed to disinfect Steve and Auggie's bites from the bats. It was a chaotic mess that had lightened Sam's heart just a tad. Steve had to be pinned down on the couch by Nancy and Auggie because he wouldn't stop thrashing. After that was done, they moved onto Auggie, who kept kicking Steve and Eddie in the chest due to the pain in his ankle.

She'd been filling everyone in on what she saw since.

Everything.

They now knew that Vecna started off as little Henry Creel, son of Victor Creel, who wreaked havoc on the entire house and family. They now knew that Henry Creel was actually 001, Dr. Martin Brenner's first lab experiment, who led to a multitude of other kids being tortured because of him.

They now knew that Alice Creel was actually Diane Hughes, Sam's mother. They now knew that Sam was the niece of Vecna.

They now knew all the flashes of future visions he showed Sam.

"He... showed me things that haven't happened yet," Sam told them in a quietly hoarse voice. She was drained physically and mentally, and it felt like a crushing weight that lingered on her shoulders. "The most awful things. I saw... a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins," she confessed, so weakly that they had to strain their ears to hear. "Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this... this giant creature—with... a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn't alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then..." Sam's voice broke, "he showed me Aunt Kat. And... Steph. And"—tears ran down Sam's face again—"Corey. And they... They were all..."

Her voice broke off. She couldn't finish.

Dead. They were all dead.

Sam exhaled shakily, trying to clear the tightness of her throat. Trying to stop wetting her face in pitiful tears.

"Okay, but... he's just trying to scare you, Sam," Steve tried comforting her. He only used her real name when he was entirely serious, and it showed in the look on his face right now. "Right? I mean... it's not real."

"Not yet," Sam whispered, finally looking up from her trembling hands. "But there... there was something else. He showed me Gates. Four Gates. Spreading across Hawkins. And these Gates, they looked like the one outside of Eddie's trailer, but—they didn't stop growing. And this wasn't the Upside Down-Hawkins," she choked. "This was our Hawkins. Our home."

Max suddenly spoke up from where she was leaning against her doorframe with crossed arms. "Four chimes," she said. "Vecna's clock. It always chimes four times. Four exactly."

Sam let out a broken puff of air.

"I heard them too," she admitted.

She heard Auggie make a choked noise from his spot in between Steve and Eddie on the couch. "You drew four pictures, Sam," he added, eyes piercing into her.

Sam's entire expression crumbled. She willed herself not to cry more, looking back down in her lap. She didn't want to see the looks on anyone's faces—what was probably disappointed and upset and the realization that Sam wasn't who they thought she was.

This was all her fault.

She'd let everyone down.

"You two've been telling us his plan the whole time," Max muttered.

"Four drawings. Four kills," Lucas realized. "Four Gates. End of the world."

Dustin inhaled sharply. "If that's true... he's only one kill away."

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Eddie panicked, running his hands along his face. "Jesus Christ!"

Steve cursed under his breath, the discovery finally sinking in. He quickly turned his head to Max, ordering for her to try reaching the Byers again. It was pointless, because the line had been busy all week, but she attempted anyway.

Sam put her elbows on her thighs, her face in her hands and just clenching at her scalp. With her eyes closed, the visions Vecna showed Sam played on repeat. It was horrible, and it was also a form of punishing herself. This was her fault, and she needed to face what she would inevitably cause.

"This isn't your fault, Sam," Lucas murmured brokenly, reading her mind as if he was the one with powers.

Sam shook her head in her hands. "It all makes sense," she rasped, voice muffled.

She finally looked back up at them with a crushed expression.

"It all fucking makes sense. I was never a lab experiment, but I somehow have powers. Brenner said it was because I was the youngest born of the Creel lineage, just like Henry. My mom was always worried something was going to attack me one day for no reason. It used to drive me crazy, but..." But look what happened now. "And I never wanted to think about it—because I would always tell myself everything was fine—but my mom used to be... weird sometimes. Weird with me, in a way she wasn't with Steph. I knew it was probably because Steph was her favorite, but why wouldn't she be? Wouldn't you be wary of me too if I was an echo of your psychotic fucking brother?"

That was a part of her childhood that she never talked about.

"I can control electricity, just like him—in a way that doesn't happen with El," Sam's voice grew wobbly with each heart-sinking correlation. "And the Creel house..."

Sam couldn't meet anyone's eyes anymore.

"It felt like home," she confessed. "I couldn't figure out why until now."

The tension significantly increased in the trailer, everyone (besides Max, trying to call the Byers) processing how much Sam's ancestry was starting to make sense. She heard Nancy curse softly from where she stood next to a sitting Robin.

Suddenly, Max was slamming her phone back on the wall with a frustrated huff.

"Anything?" Dustin asked, eager to take his attention away from what Sam revealed.

Max shook her head wryly.

"No. Rang a few times, then went to busy signal."

"Um," Auggie shrugged, "maybe you punched it in wrong. Try again."

She refrained from rolling her eyes. "I didn't punch it in wrong."

Auggie sputtered, almost offended. "Well—y—I don't know—"

"I think she knows how to use a phone," Erica said, and she actually did roll her eyes.

"I'm just saying," Auggie defended, "she could've typed it in wrong."

"Yeah, you never know." Steve's shoulders rose contemplatively.

But then the busy signal droned again, and Max was putting the phone back up on the wall a little too harshly.

"Same shit," she exhaled, walking back to where everyone was.

Lucas frowned. "How is that possible?"

"Joyce has this telemarketer job. She's always on the phone."

"Yeah, but this phone's been busy for, what, three days now?" Sam said, sounding more sure than she had in hours. Her fist (no longer bleeding or in pain, considering the punching of glass occurred in a trance) clenched over her chest. "That's not Ms. Byers. Something's wrong."

"She's right," Nancy agreed. "It can't be just a coincidence. It can't be. Whatever's happening in Lenora is connected to all of this. I'm sure of it." She stared out of the trailer in the living area. "But Vecna can't hurt them. Not if he's dead." She turned away from the window to face the group with determined eyes. "We have to go back in there. Back to the Upside Down."

Instantly, Eddie spluttered wildly, Auggie almost burst out into sobbing at the thought, and Steve shot up from the couch.

"Woah, no, no, no. What?" Steve protested.

"Oh, fuck no," Auggie whined.

"Nope," Eddie shook his head. "Nope!"

Steve began walking closer to Nancy, a desperate face on his features. "Let's think this through, okay—?"

"What is there to think through?" Nancy snapped.

"We barely made it out of there in one piece." Steve gestured wildly at all the older teens, including himself.

Nancy shrugged carelessly. "Yeah, because we weren't prepared! But this time, we will be—we'll get weapons and protection." Auggie threw himself back on the couch miserably, while Eddie contemplated suicide right next to him. "We'll go through the Gate, we'll find his lair, and we'll kill him!"

"Or he'll kill us," Steve argued.

"Sam survived!"

"The only reason she did is because he wanted her to!" he snapped in a contesting manner. "He's not scared of us!"

"And for good reason." Robin stood up off from the floor. "We were wrong about Vecna—Henry—One—Uncle Creel—sorry, what are we calling him now?"

"One," Lucas and Dustin said.

"Vecna," Erica and Eddie said.

"Fuck-face?" Auggie suggested.

"Henry," Sam corrected them all.

"Right." Robin sighed exasperatedly. "We've learned something about Vecna/Henry/One/Uncle Creel/Fuck-face. He's a number, like Eleven—only a sick, evil, male, child-murdering version of her with really bad skin. And he's Sam's goddamned uncle—only not awesome, and he's totally evil, and he uses his powers for the greater bad rather than the greater good! But, my... my point is, he's super powerful! He could turn us inside out with a snap of his fingers. It's not a fair fight."

"So then why fight fair?" Dustin suddenly suggested, gaining their attention. "You're right. He's like Eleven and Specks. But that gives us an upper hand. We know their strengths—and weaknesses."

"Weaknesses?" Erica echoed incredulously. "They don't have weaknesses."

"No, he's right," Sam said. Sometimes it was like she and Dustin shared the same wavelength frequency. When one started a thought, the other could finish it. There was rising hope on her features that was rare to find on her these days. "When El and I go into the void, we go into these sorts of trance-like states. The same could be true with Henry."

Lucas grinned at her. "That would explain what he was doing in that attic."

"Exactly!" Dustin cheered, nodding to both of them. "When he attacks his next victim, I'll bet you he's back in that attic, physical body defenseless."

Steve raised judging eyebrows. "Defenseless?" He gestured to his neck, his torso, and Auggie's ankle. "What about the army of bats?"

"Right. True/" Dustin tilted his head in acknowledgment. "We'll have to find a way past them. Distract them somehow."

Eddie began to stand from the couch as well. "And, uh, how do we do that, exactly?"

"No idea—"

Eddie sat back down on the couch with a roll of his eyes. Auggie scoffed. "That's great, Curly. That's really great."

"—but," Dustin ignored Auggie with a pointed look, "once they're gone, he doesn't stand a chance. It'll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin."

"That all sounds good in theory, but there is no pattern to Vecna's killings," Robin said with an apologetic shrug. "I mean, at least not one that I can decipher. We don't know when he's going to attack next. We don't even know who he's going to attack next—"

"Yeah, we do."

Robin fell silent. All heads turned to Max, who had spoken up from the doorframe she leaned against. Her arms were crossed around herself, like she was trying to appear smaller. Her expression was that of begrudging knowledge.

"Am I missing something?" Auggie asked. "Did Sam draw a little stupid person in one of those pictures that I couldn't see?"

Max shook her head, although timidly.

"I can still feel him," she confessed. "I'm still... marked. Cursed. I ditch Kate Bush, I draw his focus back to me—"

"Nope!"

Sam had shot up from the chair she'd been sitting in.

"Max. You can't." She marched up to her best friend, a pleading note to her voice. "He'll kill you. I would rather fight him with no powers, completely unarmed, and him out of his trance than let you sacrifice yourself."

"I survived before," Max said softly, trying to convince her. "I can survive again."

Sam's face fell, shoulders deflating too. She desperately looked to Lucas, hoping someone else would back her up and refuse to let Max do this. Lucas was only frowning at her, and Max was speaking again before anyone else could.

"I just—I need to keep him busy long enough so that you guys can get into that attic," she said. "And then you can... chop his head off, stab him in the heart, blow him up with some Lucas explosive... I, honestly—I really don't care how you put this asshole in his grave. Just... whatever it is... whatever you do..."

She met Sam's eyes, and stakes raised between them.

"Try not to miss."

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Sam couldn't convince anyone to change the plan. Lucas communed in Sam's anxiety, but he also fully trusted Max.

It wasn't that Sam didn't trust Max—it was just that a very bad feeling was swarming in the center of Sam's chest. Every time that happened, nothing good came out of it.

And a part of Sam really understood Max. She knew that Max wanted to make up for all the chaos that had ensued because of her by acting as bait for Vecna. She knew, because it sounded more like a plan Sam would come up with.

All of this went to explain why they were now crowded around a large table. Eddie was claiming he had a spark of an idea that might be able to help them stop Vecna; Sam had said they were hopeless if Eddie was the one with the idea; and Auggie had snapped something sassy at her for it. Now Sam was hanging back instead of sticking with the clump. She watched them from afar as they listened to Eddie's apparent trust-worthy plan.

"Check this out," he said, slapping down an ad book flipped to a particular page. "The War Zone. I've been there once. It's huge. They got everything you need for, uh... well, uh, killing things, basically."

"Do you think fake Rambo has enough guns there?" Auggie snarked, adding another movie reference to the tally board.

"Yeah." Robin pointed down at the ad with judging eyes. "Is that a grenade? I mean, how is any of this legal?"

"Well, lucky for us it is, so..." Eddie shrugged, wearing a mischievous smile. "This place is just far enough outside of Hawkins. As long as we steer clear of the main roads, we oughta be able to avoid cops, angry hicks, and, uh"—he side-eyed Sam—"vindictive ex-boyfriends."

Sam rolled her eyes from afar, though no one was paying attention to her, because she wasn't crowded around the table like the rest.

"If we're trying to avoid angry hicks, maybe we shouldn't go to some store called the War Zone," Erica sassed.

Nancy sighed. "Normally I'd agree, but we need the weapons, so I think it's worth the risk."

"Me too," Lucas said, nodding.

"Yeah, but is it worth the time?" Dustin asked, and Sam was seriously contemplating if they shared the same mind. "It'll take all day to bike there and back."

Auggie huffed impishly. His arms were crossed as he leaned against the table to give his ankle a breather.

"Who said anything about bikes?"

"What, you got some sort of car we don't know about?" Steve asked, raising an eyebrow. "Thought you couldn't drive."

Auggie straightened up off the table so that he and Steve's faces were inches apart. "It's not exactly a car, Harrington. And it's not exactly mine." Then he shared a look with Eddie, long enough that Eddie got the hint. "But, uh... it'll do?"

Eddie grinned back at him, agreeing. "Hell yeah, it'll do." Then, "Hey, Red, you got a ski mask or a bandana? Something like that?"

Everyone faced Max, who still had her arms crossed. At being addressed, she suddenly put on a contemplative face. They watched as her eyebrows rose, and her head tilted with an incoming idea.

And Max's apparent idea was somehow exactly why Eddie ended up wearing her Michael Myers costume mask from Halloween in eighth grade.

Auggie and Eddie were the two that led the group, considering they were the only two who knew what the plan was. It made Sam terribly anxious, because they were the two that she probably trusted their intelligence the least. Apart from Steve.

Together, the group of ten crept out of Max's trailer and hid at the side of it. Sam watched as Auggie and Eddie had silent conversation, but she was convinced they actually weren't, because Eddie was wearing a mask that covered his entire face.

Eddie gestured with his hand for them to start walking forward, and Auggie began leading them toward the supposed destination.

They jogged, legs bent, looking over their shoulders constantly out of paranoia. It didn't matter where they were going, they had to be vigilant no matter what. There was a target on 4.5/10 of their backs—the wrong person catching them out and about could end horribly and ruin their entire plan.

As they picked up the pace towards the planned destination, Sam noticed that Auggie was limping painfully the entire time he led the group. He was going so slow that Eddie passed him up. It made Sam suddenly feel guilty, some of her pettiness dissipating. She thought about the horrors he probably endured in the Upside Down, especially since he was the newest to any of this out of the group.

That was her fault he got dragged into this too.

They picked up the pace, and unfortunately Auggie lagged behind, but that was okay (for the most part), because Eddie knew where to go too. They hurried behind a couple sitting outside on lawn chairs next to their traveling trailer. Sam suddenly had a horrible guess about what they were going to do, and she urged to speak up about breaking the rules, but Max would've probably shot her down.

Sam grumbled under her breath and followed everyone. She tried making sure she was at the very back, because she didn't want Auggie to feel bad about falling behind—she had to endure a horrible limp once, and it made her feel like a piece of shit weighing her friends down. If she could try and prevent Auggie from feeling that way, she absolutely would.

Eddie ran to the side of the trailer where the redneck couple were not on. Then he checked every window along that side until he shifted the last one; it slid an inch. He reached up and pulled it open as wide as it could.

Eddie heaved himself up and was slipping through the window before anyone could say anything.

"Oh, jeez," Sam muttered. "We have to draw lines somewhere, people."

Max glanced at Sam. She opened her mouth to—

"I know what you're about to say." Sam stuck up her pointer finger to cut Max off. "Do not say it."

Max sighed, doing a poor job at hiding her amused grin. "Well, fine. I won't. But you're still gonna have to do this anyway."

"I can't even reach up there," Sam said, a little childishly, but it was true. She couldn't. Honestly, Dustin and Max couldn't either, but Lucas had already helped the former up and was currently doing the same with the latter.

"Here" He held out a hand for Sam to take. "I'll help you up."

Sam exhaled finally, blowing a fallen piece of her hair away in the process.

She walked over to where Lucas kneeled, one thigh facing the sky. Sam took his hand (though she didn't think that part was necessary, because he hadn't done the same with anyone else) and used it to heave herself up on his knee. She worried about being too heavy for Lucas's leg to endure, so she quickly gripped the frame of the window to try climbing up.

Just when Sam realized she was also too unathletic to get up there, Eddie—no longer wearing the ridiculous mask—was peeking his head out like a little asshole and offering an outstretched hand. He was a little asshole for it, because the look on his face said so.

Although, begrudgingly, Sam did accept his help.

Then Lucas was jumping into the trailer, and Auggie right after that.

Next thing Sam knew, Auggie was limping all the way to the front of the trailer and sitting in the driver's seat. He unzipped a bag that Eddie had brought for him and pulled out a pair of pliers, sticking them in his mouth. Steve came up behind Auggie, leaning on the driver's seat as Auggie grappled blindly for wires underneath the steering wheel.

Auggie then began cutting the handful of wires he'd accumulated.

"Where'd you learn how to do this?" Steve's voice sounded, so close to Auggie's ear that Auggie felt his breath against it.

"Well," Auggie forced his head to stay forward so that he could properly focus while he worked, "I didn't have a dad to teach me baseball or how to fish. I just had a mom with... unconventional aspirations for me. Hot-wiring was one of them." He continued using the pliers to cut the rubber casing off two of the wires; then he began touching them together. "I told myself I wasn't going to do shady shit like this—wasn't ever going to look like 'trailer park trash'—but now, well... I found out other dimensions exist, and my best friend is the niece of the leader of this apparent dimension. So—what's a little grand-theft auto?"

Steve let out a little huff, a few inches from the back of Auggie's head.

Then Robin was coming up behind Steve, hands on his shoulders and peering behind the older boy.

"Uh, Auggie?" she asked. "I'm not sure I love the idea of you driving."

Auggie finally glanced behind, and just like he anticipated, Steve's face was only inches away. He forced himself to act unaffected.

"Oh, I'm just starting this sucker. Harrington's got her." Auggie grinned, then leaned impossibly closer towards Steve's startled expression. "Don't you, pretty boy?"

Steve immediately began sputtering in bewilderment, face aflame, but Auggie ignored his incoherent attempts at speaking and Robin's amused grin. He turned back around to the wires, finally connecting them correctly.

Suddenly, the engine started. "Up Around the Bend" by Creedence Clearwater Revival began playing from the speakers. Auggie grinned in excitement, facing Steve and Robin to see they were sharing his expression. Steve held his shoulder proudly, jolting Auggie a little—

"HEY!"

Auggie flinched his gaze to the side, noting the hillbilly wife that owned the trailer, Meryl Dixon, slammed her hands against the trailer door angrily. Her husband, Nash Dixon, was trying to pry the door open, only to find out that Eddie had locked it.

"THEY LOCKED THE DOOR!"

Auggie glanced back at Steve, mischievously eager, but Steve only looked thoroughly panicked.

"Shit!" Steve cursed, tapping Auggie rapidly on the side. "Go!"

Auggie quickly threw himself out of the driver's seat, and instead into the passenger's seat. He watched as Steve jumped over the back of the driver's seat so he could sit down in it. Auggie thought it was unnecessary, but he didn't really care, because it was really attractive.

Steve mumbled something to himself to incite confidence about driving a trailer for the first time. Then he whipped his body to address the back.

"Everybody, hang on to something!"

"Oh my God!"

"Let's go! Let's go!"

"Drive, Steve! DRIVE!"

"Go, go, go!"

Steve put the gear shift into drive, and he listened to all of their requests. He slammed his foot on the gas, and he fucking drove.

Sam opened the window on the other side and stuck her head out the vehicle.

"We're really sorry!" she apologized. "I promise we'll return it later! It's for a better cause!"

"SAM!" Lucas yelled exasperatedly. He grabbed her by the back of her jacket and wrenched her back inside the trailer. "You're wanted too, they're not supposed to see you!"

"I couldn't just steal without apologizing!"

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

They were steadily on the road now.

Key word: steadily.

The drive had certainly started off very chaotically, and Auggie was grateful this wasn't actually their trailer, because Steve had definitely damaged a good bit of it in the process of getting away.

Now Auggie felt much calmer. "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor was playing lightly from the radio; he was able to hear it better considering he was still sitting up in the front with Steve.

"How's it handle?" Auggie asked, eyes on Steve while Steve's were on the road.

"Not half bad." Steve shrugged. "Considering that this is a... house."

Auggie laughed softly, nodding even if Steve wasn't looking to see. His grin was fond, and it was something he couldn't help himself from stopping anymore when he was around him. Every time Auggie just thought about him, there was a giddy feeling erupting in his chest. It was pathetic, but it was real.

When Auggie faced the front, trying to console himself, Steve spared a glance to the side and was momentarily dazed by Auggie's smile.

"Yeah, it's..." he continued speaking, wanting to keep that grin on Auggie's face forever, "it's silly, but I... I've actually... I always had this dream that I'd have this really... really big family."

Intrigued, Auggie slowly glanced over to Steve again. The older boy was now distracted by his own ramblings, and it was an endearing thing that had Auggie feeling terribly gone for.

"How much is really big?" Auggie asked, scared.

"Oh, you know. A full brood of Harringtons. Like seven, eight kids.

Auggie cursed vehemently. "Shut up."

He looked to see Steve fighting the uptick of his mouth.

"Oh my God, shut up. You're fucking with me."

"I'm fucking with you," he agreed, and Auggie wanted to strangle him for it. "But still. Radiant girls with pigtails or bows. Rascal boys with two front teeth missing."

"As long as there's not fucking eight, Jesus Christ," Auggie hissed.

Steve laughed, amused by Auggie's indignation. "Come on. I feel like I've already had some practice."

He gestured towards the back, where half of the party members resided. Sam, Dustin, Lucas, and Max were unaware of this, of course.

Auggie nodded as Steve watched him with tender grin. "Fair," he admitted. "That's fair."

Steve chuckled fondly, a little more so to himself. "And I'd also imagine... that every summer, I figured us Harringtons, we would pack into something like this, and... just see the country. You know, the Rockies, Grand Canyon, maybe Yellowstone." He glanced once at Auggie, who was so obviously listening intently. "End up in some beachside town in California. Spend a week parked in the sand. Learn how to surf or something."

It sounded great. It all sounded really, really great. But for some reason, Auggie still found his heart breaking a little. Steve was painting his perspective of a perfect picture, and Auggie slowly realized there wasn't any way for him to fit into it.

He couldn't give Steve kids—not biologically, at least. There wouldn't be radiant girls and rascal boys like Steve was dreaming of.

Fuck, Auggie couldn't even be a Harrington. It wasn't like he was allowed to get married to any person of the same sex any time soon. He lived in a cruel, hateful world, and it hadn't truly hit him how much that stung until now. Growing up, he'd always known he'd been attracted to... essentially everyone. It never bothered him—not necessarily, because he'd never imagined having a future with anyone. There wasn't anyone to imagine a future with.

Now he did have someone in mind, but there wasn't even a chance they could be together.

Auggie figured, that even if same-sex couples could be accepted, Steve Harrington would never want him.

What a cruel fate, loving someone you know could never love you back.

"That... sounds nice," Auggie managed, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

Steve looked at Auggie again, eyes soft.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Auggie said tenderly, voice so vulnerable it wavered. "Your, um... your future wife is gonna be lucky."

Then Auggie was forcing himself to look away, and Steve's eyes were widening out of panic.

"Wait—what? I d..."

But what was Steve going to say to that? What could he have said that wasn't totally insane and was actually realistic?

He exhaled sadly, and he turned his eyes away too.

"Fire and Rain" continued playing, filling in that deep silence.

From the back end of the trailer, Sam turned around in her seat at the little dining area. She watched Max, who was at the very back of the trailer and sitting on the cushioned couch. She was completely turned, her head glancing out the window so that Sam could only see her red head of hair.

Carefully, Sam stood out of her seat and slowly managed her way to Max.

"Hey," she muttered, trying to get Max's attention, but not trying to startle her.

Max turned her head over with a raised eyebrow. When she saw it was Sam, she paused her Walkman and let her headphones hang around her neck.

Sam opened her mouth to start talking, but Max was rambling before she could even get to it.

"Look, I really don't want to keep arguing about the sacrificing-myself-to-Vecna thing," Max said, shaking her head. "We don't have time to form any other plan, okay? And even if we did, we wouldn't know the odds we'd be up against. I do," she stated, and by this point, Sam had deflated with a sigh. "He uses my memories against me. But... only my darkest memories. Same with Chrissy and Fred and probably Patrick. I'm guessing it's what he did to you too, right?"

Sam's mouth frowned to the side.

She exhaled out her nose.

"Right."

"It's like he only sees the darkness in us," Max contemplated. "So... I'll just run in the opposite direction. Run to the light. And maybe he won't be able to find me there."

"And how, exactly, do you plan on doing this?"

Max sighed, a small thing. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "But it's my mind. Not his, right? So I should be able to control where I am. I just need to... push him away, find a happy memory, and hide there." She met Sam's stare. "Hide in the light."

That was a good idea. A nice one. In theory, at least.

"Well," Sam started quietly, "I actually didn't come to argue with you."

Max's eyebrows furrowed.

"You didn't?"

"No." She shook her head ruefully, because she wished she had. "I... think I have a way to help you, you know, stay safe in your mind."

"A memory?" Max wondered, confused.

Sam shrugged. "Not really. It's... I can't let you go alone, Max."

And Max's brows were pulling closer as she understood less. Sam was admittedly making no sense, but that was what tended to happen when she was nervous about something. It was seen on display right now.

"I'm going into the void again," Sam said, trying to sound firm, but there was an underlying hesitancy. "If Vecna's going to be in your mind, I want to be there too. I want to protect you."

Max slowly comprehended what Sam was saying, her lips parting slightly.

"Oh," she worked together, but then it really hit her. "Oh. Oh, absolutely not, Sam. Not a chance in hell."

"Max, you are going to be in hell," Sam urged, but she kept her voice quiet because she hadn't revealed this plan to anyone else yet. "I can't just—be okay with that."

"You almost died the last time you went into someone's mind."

"Because it was flayed."

"You don't know that."

"I don't not know it!" Sam protested.

Max shook her head incredulously.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I don't care, Max," and Sam really sounded desperate now. "I can't—Finding out everything that happened to you when I was gone—when Vecna attacked you... I can't feel like that again. I don't know if I've ever been more afraid in my life, okay? If I'm there with you, in your mind, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can fight, and I can distract him—that way they can kill his physical body. As long as I get some sort of hit on him, I'm okay."

Max's eyes narrowed, covering fear with anger. "You won't be able to fight anything if you get as weak as you did back then."

"I'm not—that vulnerable anymore," Sam argued. It felt like she had this debate a lot. "I had just started using my powers, and I didn't know what I was getting myself into."

"You're an Empath," Max reminded her. "All of those dark memories aren't good for you. Just stubbornness can't combat that."

"Maybe," Sam relented, "but you just said you're going to control what you see. You said you're hiding in the light. What if you doing that keeps me safe too? Or, strong enough to keep you safe."

Max sighed, a sad and expectant thing.

"Sunshine," she said, "you can't protect everyone."

Green eyes met blue.

"I have to."

Max shook her head again, apparently believing Sam didn't. Although, she seemed to realize that Sam wasn't letting up on this. When she put her mind to something—especially something that involved helping others—the likelihood of talking her out of it was nearly nothing.

But Max could try.

"You didn't even do it by yourself," she pointed out. "You had help from El."

Sam frowned, a little defensively. "I still did it. Which is pretty impressive considering the amount of experience I actually have."

"We don't have time to make anything near a sensory deprivation tank."

"I know," she admitted. "While you guys are at the Creel house and they're in the Upside Down, I'm gonna stay here and use the radio for static. I'm just gonna... have to do it, you know?"

"But you don't... know how to do it...?"

"I didn't know how to force a prediction either, and I still managed that to find Fred."

A little too late for that though, weren't you? a small voice in her head sounded.

Sam tried shaking the thoughts away, eyes squeezing before they reopened to see Max's defeated expression. It was never easy, having two best friends who were both impossibly stubborn about impossibly different things.

"Well—" Max looked around desperately, trying to find another reason that would make Sam cease. "Lucas. He's never going to let you after what happened last time."

And that part... might be true. It was the one factor Sam actually hadn't found a solution to. Lucas was just as stubborn as them.

"If it'll save you, he might," Sam said.

"Might," Max repeated with a humored huff. "You don't even sound confident about this."

Sam sighed. No, she really didn't.

Convincing Lucas to let Sam risk her life for the millionth time?

Well, it was a harder task than most. Harder task than anything, maybe.

Without even meaning to, Sam's gaze started looking away from Max. She was naturally drawn to Lucas, like her eyes were forever a magnet leading to him. She stared at the back of his head, as he was oblivious to the fact she was even staring. A part of her was grateful, because she had been a little pathetic about him recently.

Everyone called Sam their light, but hers was Lucas. She didn't even really know if she could shine without him—she'd never had to know, and she didn't want to find out. All she wanted to do was stand as close as she possibly could to him. Even just that would be enough.

"You realized how you feel about him, right?" Max broke Sam out of her daze, and Sam had to blink rapidly to refocus. "Please tell me you did. You had to have."

Sam sighed. She'd never been discreet with her emotions. She had no clue how she was going to hide these all-encompassing feelings from Lucas—she couldn't even hide them from, well, anyone else.

"Yeah," she admitted. "Did you know?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "I think you've always kind of loved him."

Sam closed her eyes, groaning a little miserably.

"Great," she deadpanned.

"Why was that sarcastic?" Max asked, tilting her head closer to Sam. "Isn't it great?"

"It's... too great," Sam started, and she sounded a little scared. "It's too good. He's too good, and I can't hide this. I already feel so much, so with him it's..." She didn't know how to finish that sentence. "I feel it in my shoulders when I breathe, and when he talks it feels like the whole sky talks—like, without him, the world's just quiet. And I can't stand quiet. And there's a piece of him in me, and... and it's so weird. I know it's weird, but it just doesn't stop. The feelings I have for him... they're just a constant. They were always going to be a constant."

Sam didn't know why she sounded so sad about that.

Maybe it was because it was truly settling in that she'd never felt like this for another person before. She didn't have the experience to be equipped for this. Not with Justin—especially not with Justin. Justin, who she wasted months on just because she thought the right thing to do would be giving Justin what he wanted.

So why should Sam deserve Lucas now? It was a mircale she got to have him in her life at all. Lucas knew her, all of her, all of the time, and she'd forgotten that people could. He treated her like she was precious, when Sam knew she certainly wasn't. He made her laugh like no other, even when Sam probably shouldn't be doing so. He annoyed her, and she annoyed him, but they were always entertaining interactions that kept her occupied for hours. She loved what he loved, just because he was the one loving them, and she had a creeping suspicion this went both ways.

"It's not weird," Max muttered, a small but genuine smile on her face. "I think it's kinda beautiful. Why would you ever want to hide it?"

Sam sent one more terrified look back at Lucas before she was meeting Max's eyes again.

"I'm afraid he's scared of me." There were fault lines in her voice, ready to shake her apart.

"If anything, he's scared for you," Max said, recovering from Sam's confession rather quickly. "And you know why that is?"

"Why?"

"Because he's crazy about you." 

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Published: February 3, 2024
Re-published: October 30, 2025

BAILEY YAPS...

I've never let a character down like I have Samantha Hughes and for that I'm so sorry🫩

Like the second part of the Vecna trance just hit me in the heart so bad I didn't realize how much I put her through man and she's just a baby and genuinely execute me

Speaking of. Diane Hughes/Alice Creel is honestly such a complex and round character and it honestly hurts a little that this whole series we're told she was this perfect amazing immaculate mother but it's because it was from Sam's perspective. But in Henry/Vecna's perspective she's flawed and imperfect and not the best mother and a "traitor." But in both stories she's just trying her best, and she wants to stop a cycle of abuse for her children, because she was born full of love—a love that she passed down to her children.

Also this is such a small thing but Sam started calling her "mother" in her internal dialogue when it used to be "mom," which just shows the emotional disconnect she's starting to feel from Diane. It's why Anthony is referred to as "dad" for Sam, but Daniel is referred to as "father" for Corey. A fun flayedcrank fact for you all

And then it's very interesting to me that Sam never once commented on how Diane could act a little oddly at times, and even admitted to being treated differently by Diane than Stephanie was, because she's that insistent on repressing her unhappy memories. The childhood she knows is a gilded image of sunshine and perfection. Her parents are dead, and what she remembers from her childhood is all that's left of them, so why would she remember anything that didn't fit that image?

But yeah circling back to how complex of a character Diane is: I think she would have really struggled with Sam, because she knew what Sam was the moment she found out she was having a second kid. Diane hates Henry, and she hates the supernatural, but Sam is her child, and Sam is such a beautiful soul, so there would a huge mental battle. Especially when Sam's intelligence would show, or when Sam would make the electricity flicker, or when Sam would show a side of herself that was more dark/negative/upset/broody than the bubbly/kind image she portrayed.

(I think that's also why it's so instilled in Sam to keep up the bubbly/kind image, even if Sam may never confront this truth. Her mom probably ensured Sam was the caretaker we know her to be now, but Sam would never contemplate that anything is ever another person's fault but her own. Especially not her dead mother.)

((I forgot how hard I cooked with this plot))

ALSO (bc I guess I'm really yapping today lol) let's talk about this quote: "Diane would always get so worried, until Anthony Hughes would show up and dispel all of his wife's anxieties. Sam's dad was the light when Diane was lost in the darkness, the hope in a desolate world. He reminded her that she was still bright. She could still be bright." because if you squint that's literally Hughclair

Anyway I would say the break in the angst was Stauggie being insufferable (positive), but then Auggie had to have his damn spiral about Steve's perfect picture. When he's literally apart of the picture. Whatever

When I'm in a He Fell First, She Fell Harder competition, but Samantha "It's... too great. It's too good. He's too good, and I can't hide this. I already feel so much, so with him it's... I feel it in my shoulders when I breathe, and when he talks it feels like the whole sky talks—like, without him, the world's just quiet. And I can't stand quiet. And there's a piece of him in me, and... and it's so weird. I know it's weird, but it just doesn't stop. The feelings I have for him... they're just a constant. They were always going to be a constant." Hughes is my opponent so I lowkey just leave

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