i know the end

✧

BEFORE YOU READ )

this is what you've all been waiting for. and all i can say is that this is a massive, madness of a chapter. there's so much happening that i could barely keep up with it while writing it so if you guys have to stop and take a break while reading, i totally understand. (is this dramatic? i feel like it might be. future me is this dramatic?)

i'm gonna make these quick for you.

this chapter contains blood, graphic gore & violence, body dysmorphia, death, childhood trauma, loss of loved ones, madness, insanity, rue makes a... choice, the final breaking point, no breaks whatsoever, emilia davis, rue can't get out of the void (which has been foreshadowed since day 1), under pressure lyrics, IT references, arcane references, bye-bye rue's left hand, henry creel, conan gray references, rue's insecurities, the failure of sisterhood, the fall of rue newby as we know it, all girls eventually turn into their mothers, vecna #mansplains and #manipulates, rue is still an unreliable narrator.

rue newby is literally stronger than me, this is her moment. the world is against her (i am the world)

proceed with caution besties, this one is... something.

When it comes to madness, there is a boiling point. It's not something that would appear out of the blue suddenly, but rather something that is building and building and building. Like a glass of water spilling over a countertop, it will not end until someone tries to stop where the source of water is. It is a conflict that doesn't stop running.

For years, Rue Newby has been putting all her efforts into trying to quell it, trying to stop it. She doesn't understand that the repression only makes it all worse, and the boiling point will continue building and building, becoming more corrupt than before until there is a dam breaking point.

Everything repressed to this moment, finally, finally breaks. A turning point, the final straw, a dam breaking and flooding everything built below it. Total chaos and annihilation. And somewhere within that insanity, that madness and horror, there is triumph, destiny, and there is bliss.

There is darkness for one long, agonizing minute, restraints curled around her arms and ankles, pulling her further and further into the abyss, where the echo of Max Mayfield's cries of Rue's name become lost within the void.

Rue Newby can feel herself scream, and it burns her throat, making it raw. She starts to cough and choke, losing her breath, and now a taste of metal infiltrates her taste buds. She can feel the ache in her lungs, the taste of blood in her mouth from screaming, but she cannot hear herself.

When she screams, it is silence that spills from her mouth. Every shout, cry, sob, and whimper is muted, slowly losing itself within the endless and eternal void of twilight.

Rue closes her eyes tightly, the stars radiating from the back of her eyelids offering her a feeling of warm security and comfort. She imagines herself stargazing for a bit, lying on the grass on a hill, the warm summer breeze kissing her skin.

Rue's eyes flutter open again, and she's no longer sitting in the dark. For a brief second, she believes she has miraculously found her way out of the void where Ricky and Dani are clutching her tightly, saying words of encouragement in her ears as she battles to regain her breath.

When she opens her eyes, however, she is blinded by daylight rather than welcomed by the full moon's dazzling radiance. Everything feels clouded, and her head begins to throb maliciously against her skull.

There is a presence, cold and off-putting. It only grows stronger, weighs heavier as she remains in her place.

Something is watching her.

Rue feels her surroundings blindly, wincing when her fingertips are sliced with tiny shards of glass. The ringing in her ears begins to fade while her hands dance around her, touching everything and anything, growing familiar with where she is.

Rue can make out the sounds of music. It was low, and she strains her ears to hear it, brows furrowing in focus. It was catchy, upbeat and familiar.

It was Under Pressure.

Turned away from it all like a blind man

Sat on a fence, but it don't work

Keep coming up with love,

but it's so slashed in torn

Why, why, whyyyy?

The sound of it makes her hurl into spirals of panic once more. Rue tries to speak again, but nothing other than a hoarse and strangled moan escapes past her lips.

When Rue blinks away her blindness, she sees double. And through blurry tears, she realizes she's sitting upside down, hanging from an automobile's passenger seat by a seatbelt. She's in a car, ruined and tipped over, and dark black, alarming smoke leaves from the dented hood.

Love, love, love, love, love

Insanity laughs under pressure

We're breaking!

"No..." she whispered, spotting the pooling blood above her. It stains the roof of the car a dark, almost black, red. A horrifying sense of deja vu settles in her bones, making her shudder, "No, no, no, no."

There was no stopping the tears. No stopping the sudden rush of panic, her hands trembling as she scrambles to click off her seatbelt. It hurts to breathe, and she feels the doors of the car begin to close in on her as she refuses to glance toward the driver's seat.

Can't we give ourselves

one more chance?

Why can't we give love

that one more chance?

The seatbelt clicks and Rue crashes to the ground. Broken glass shifts under her weight and movements, and she can feel that summer sun. It shines brightly, however that comfort it once brought her is no longer there. Instead, it feels like rays burning against her skin. It wasn't warm - it was hot, too hot, and now there was sweat coating her skin, mixing with blood, dirt and tears.

Why can't we give love,

give love, give love, give love,

give love, give love, give love...?

Rue tries to keep her head down, and she lets her hair curtain over her face. Don't look up. Don't look up. Don't look up. Don't look up. Don't look up. She chants to herself, her eyes locked against the growing pool of blood beneath her hands.

In the corner of her eyes, she can spot a blurry figure of her mother's left arm and her gold bracelets sparkling against the sun. Beneath the bloodied jewellery, she sees the inked-out numbers on her wrist, and Rue goes against her own rules and looks up.

Cause love's such an

old-fashioned word

And love dares you to care

for the people on the edge of the night

There is no doubt that Emilia Davis is a nightmare in the form of a daydream. She's truly an angel woman, so perfect. Too perfect. And even while dirt, blood and cuts coat her skin... she's so pretty. But Rue guesses every daughter thinks their mother is pretty deep down.

But it was Emila as she died. Emilia was in her light blue shirt and brown skirt, only now the blue to her shirt was stained dark red from blood and dirt.

Rue slumps forward, feeling like a child all over again, and she lets out a subconscious sob. "Mom?" She whimpers, her voice weak and pitiful.

I'm so pathetic, Rue thinks, because this woman has shaped her world into an endless wheel of pain and devastation, and she still calls her mother. Rue still wants her comfort, her love, her hugs, and her calming whispers. She wants everything her mother can give her, even if it will never be enough to fill that hole in her chest.

Rue's supposed to despise her.

Yet no bone in her body can muster up any hatred against her.

Deep down, under dozens of layers, Rue's still a little girl who loves her mommy, and all she wants is to have her back.

But not like this.

Not when her breaths grow shallow, and her blue eyes lose light.

And love dares you to change our

way of caring about ourselves

This is our last dance. . .

It's all a nightmare repeating itself. Rue is well aware of it. But she cannot help it when she grasps her mother's hand, and it's still warm to the touch, and the pulse is weak. "Mom..." Tears coat her cheeks. "I miss you."

You're being stupid, Rue tells herself as she cries over her already a dead mother. Like before, she's trying to wipe away all the blood from her face, lying to herself that everything will be fine as she rests her head on her mother's chest, hopelessly trying to find a heartbeat. You're so fucking stupid. Get up.

This is our last dance. . .

Rue sits up and puffs out a lame breath of air. She has to remind herself that this isn't true, it's not real. This already happened. Emilia's already dead. Her mother is gone.

This is ourselves...

Under pressure

Rue bites back the urge to punch the radio into static silence, and she starts to crawl away from her mother and towards the broken window, hoping to find a way out of this nightmare.

A shadow shifts in the corner of her eye, making her freeze all movements.

A hand grabs Rue's wrist.

The action was fast and reckless, where nails scratch her skin and a tight grip on her hand. Horrified, Rue's eyes snap toward what's supposed to be an unmoving body. The iron tang of blood hangs heavy, her heart sinking as she stares at her mother's eyes staring back at her, frozen in a look of terror.

A spider crawls out from between her lips, shiny and black, with a red-orange hourglass pattern on its abdomen. It makes Rue shudder in horror; rooted in her place, the grip on her wrist continues to tighten.

Under pressure...

She watches her mother's skin start to pale, turning into a marble white, rotting under the sun. Dead eyes track her movements, a rattling gasp coming from the dead body when Rue tries to pry her hand away.

"No!" She cries. Whimpering when her mother's grip only tightens around her wrist. Nails start to dig into her skin, puncturing the flesh, and blood starts to fall. "No! Let- let me go! This isn't real! You're... you're not real! You're already dead!"

Emilia was grinning.

Pressure.

Every tug away from her hurts. The nails just kept on digging deeper, creating crescent-shaped slits on her wrist, tearing the skin further when she tries to tear it out of her mother's grasp, creating deeper gashes.

Rue tries to scream. Waves of gray fright roll over her, and she has the curious sensation that she's floating, that burning ache where she's being watched.

Rue feels bile start to crawl up her throat at the sight of all the blood she was losing, how it coats her hands and her mother's. It was everywhere. Her shirt and pants were soaked in it, Emilia was covered in it, and it had splattered all over the front of the car, pooling on the ground.

Rue can't scream. Her lungs don't have enough air in them to manage a scream. The pain becomes blinding, but the terror Rue felt was worse, and with one final yank away, she managed to be free, scrambling out of the car from the broken window, leaving behind a trail of bloody hand prints on the pavement.

She cannot stop the wails from slipping past her lips, clutching onto her bleeding wrist, hoping to stop the oozing blood. That's not my mom, I don't know what that is, but it's not her.

Her entire body trembles under the sun. She can't think, she can't breathe, and can't see past her blurry tears. Her cries are swallowed by the swaying trees at the side of the road, where no one comes to her rescue, and she can still hear the quiet shuffles of her dead mother from inside the wrecked car.

This is a nightmare. It has to be. It can't be real. But the horrific sight in front of her remains. Squeezing her eyes shut, Rue takes a deep breath.

It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It wasn't real.

A buzz beneath her skin begins to burn, hot enough to make her wince in pain. Turning her palms up and eyes snapping open to glare down at her hands, she sees a golden hue glow against the blood coating her hands, still pumping out from the wounds on her left wrist.

Rue cradles it to her chest, feeling the hot blood roll down her chest and soak into her clothes. Her wrist throbs in the same steady beat of her heart. And when she looks up, her head spins, and she can't remember if she crumbled to the ground so close to the car or if she had been further away.

Rue scrambles to stand, feet clumsy and mind hazy. Her movements are drunk-like, and she stumbles once on her two feet. Rue starts to take a step away from the wrecked car, where she can see her mother's blonde hair peek through the glass.

A hand struck out from the window, shattering it.

Rue flinches, tripping over her feet and landing on the floor again.

She begins to crawl away from the car, running away before she can get on her feet. Rue watches glass slice the skin of her mother's broken arm, then tear at her clothes as the woman starts to climb out from the window.

Her limbs are twisted and broken, all in the wrong direction and her head is horribly slumped as if it's been snapped out of place and hanging by the skin.

There is a sick sound of snapping bones that surround the air, and something that's caught between a horrified shout and a strangled moan comes from Rue's mouth as her throat closes up on her. Her eyes are wide in terror, watching the broken bones snap back into place on their own.

Emilia tears the silver trophy from her side and lets it slip between her bloody fingers. It lands on the ground with a clutter, denting at the sides as she shines under the sunlight.

Gore spills from her side, splashing against the floor like it would in the horror movies Rue watches with Will. Hot tears prick her eyes, and she scrambles away from the monster she once called her mother.

"After everything I've done for you..." The monster snarls, voice garbles, terrible thing. She takes slow, taunting steps toward the girl on the ground. "After everything I've sacrificed for you... and you leave me to die alone."

"No," Rue shakes her head, and she feels as if her heart might explode, "No, I- I didn't leave-" she chokes, still trying to crawl away.

Her hands touch warm gravel, her eyes squinting at the sun that shines behind the monster, creating an ironic halo behind her mother's head. Palms smack against the pavement, soft hands eventually dragged against the jagged ground until adrenaline finally flood her body, and she is on her feet and running away.

She runs into the trees at the side of the road, looking back over her shoulder, needing to see where her mother is, and as a result, she runs smack into a large elm tree.

Stars shot and corkscrewed through her head. She falls to the floor as if poleaxed, blood trickling from her right temple. When Rue lands on the ground, she expects herself to land on the grassy floor, on top of rocks and sticks or even mud. But instead, her back smacks against hard, tiled floors.

Her mind swims in a deep haze for about twelve seconds. Then she manages to get back on her feet again, her movements slow and slurred. A groan escapes her as she raises her right arm to her aching head, black spots in her vision.

Then, she remembers why she has run full-tilt into the elm tree in the first place and looks around.

Rue doesn't think her heart has ever been beating so fast before. She thinks it might just stop at any second. She feels it everywhere, the fear. Her eyes have to blink to grow used to the sudden darkness, an empty and abandoned lobby slowly coming to focus. That fear continues growing and growing, like a tumour that decays Rue's mind until it is worthless.

It quickly clicks that she isn't standing in any random lobby, but rather the same one her father has taken his final breaths in. Hawkins Laboratory. And the moonlight shines through the massive windows the same way it had that night, but there is no sign of anyone else. She continues turning, working her way slowly through a complete three hundred and sixty degrees.

The lobby is still empty, yet she can't shake the feeling of someone watching her.

Her wrist still throbs, reminding her that this sick nightmare was somehow real, and blood drips from her fingers onto the floor, creating a small puddle. The sound of it echoes in the silence, the steady- drip drip drip- dark red splashing on the ground.

Rue doesn't know where to go. She turns to the entrance of the lab, but the doors are blocked with old wooden planks, preventing her from getting out as the moonlight finds its way into the room through the cracks.

"Rue," Raspy and vicious growls echo from the hallway, "Why do you run from the truth?"

She feels flabby corpse fingers caress the side of her neck. She whirls around, her hands going up, and her heart skips a beat when she finds no one behind her.

Rue spots a shadow start to grow, coming from the hallway, where the doors have been torn off their hinges. She feels her breath trap itself in her throat, making her choke against a sob.

"Don't be afraid," Someone whispers in her ear.

When she recognizes the voice as her father's, she whimpers, tears welling up in her eyes once more. The child within her is relieved to hear him, the tenderness of his voice, the warmth of his touch as he gently rests his on her shoulder while the shadows creep and expand.

"Look at me, Rue," He says, pushing his hand on her shoulder, hoping to turn her around. "Please, I want to see you. It's been so long."

Rue remains still, shaking her head as she refuses. Her eyes are squeezed shut, tears rolling down her cheeks as she hears him grow desperate. But she doesn't look at him, fearing that whatever version of him stands behind her will ruin the few memories she has left of him.

"No," but she wants to, "I can't."

He drops his hand, "Don't you miss me?"

"I do," she almost cries, "But you're not real."