Chapter Text
Nancy was twelve when she lost her brother and father.
Nancy had been hanging out with Barbra. She had gotten home a little late, and was worried about her mother was going to be mad at her and ground her for an entire month.
Instead she came home to find her mother sobbing on the floor.
A car accident, is what her Mother told her. It was a Sunday night, and Karen had wanted her husband, Ted to do something fatherly with her son. Mike didn’t have many friends, and ever since his “gifts” emerged when he was seven ,his parents kept him indoors whether possible, so Karen suggested Ted take Micheal to the big arcade in Indianapolis they had seen advertised on TV.
The two never made it back. A tanker truck had smashed in them. The truck had exploded, leaving only identifiable remains and a melted husk of slag.
Something in Nancy died when her brother and father did. She went through the motions of everything a girl was supposed to, She even babysat Micheal’s friend Will so his older brother could work to supplement their mother’s pay from the miserly Donald Melveld. But it didn't change the fact that the number of times she fealt geniunly happy dwindled to a handful of times a month. That she and her mother didn't talk about the comics and the toys and all of her brother's stuff that had been left untouched since that day, while everything but Ted Wheeler's Lazy Boy and a few other possessions had been donated, taken by family members or sold to Pawn Shops and thrift stores.
Let as the years slipped by, Nancy found herself dreaming of her dead brother. She dreamed of him dressed like a soldier, fighting and killing, sometimes even dying with an empty rifle in one hand and a broken sword in the other In one dream, he was dressed like a knight from that Dungeons and Dragon game he liked. A few times she dreamed of a little girl, a princess with a shaved head locked away in a tower, and a redheaded girl with freckles hiding beneath her bed, dreading the howling of a pair of wolves.
Once she dreamed her brother was dressed like Richard Eagen from the old movie about the Greek heroes who died at Thermopylae Pass. Clad in bronze armor and a crimson cloak, with a wolf pelt slung across his shoulders, and a sword in hand, her baby brother looked every inch a king and as handsome as her crush Steve Harrington.
He would embrace her and tell he had returned home, to take his throne, to defend his people as a King and soldier should.
Nancy hated that last dream the most because she would awaken at five in the morning crying, for she knew her little brother was dead and he was never coming home.