Chapter Text
Nancy wakes up twisted around herself, tightly clutching her stomach and shoulder for protection. She is tense as ever, every muscle in her body flexed and taut. Her hair is nearly matted with sweat, the nearly curly mess of it tucked under the edge of her pillow, tugging slightly on the roots when she moves.
She becomes aware of the fact that she has a pillow.
This does not serve to relax her more, only sending her overactive brain spinning through horrific possibilities. Who intends on spilling her blood so dramatically that they would undergo the ordeal of finding her an actual deathbed? The thematic and obvious choice is The Nightmare but she hears no ticking clock, no distant music to warn her of his approach.
All she hears is her own breathing, short and scared. She surrenders to the childish urge to hide, turning her neck to shove her face into the pillow. It smells like laundry soap, as well as the sticky, chemical scent memory of hairspray.
Distant music filters into the edge of her consciousness and she freezes, but it is not a familiar song. She wonders, dazed, if the Huntress prepared this bed for her, but the singing is too tinny. Prerecorded. Nancy runs through the options, preparing to deal with this unprecedented threat. Could be the Ghost Face building a narrative around her murder, placing her in a bed like a prop at a crime scene. Or maybe The Cenobite playing tricks on her mind, manipulating her reality into a new, cruel game. Perhaps the Doctor has found a way to trap her in a hospital room. Or the Nurse. The Pig. The Hag. The Wraith, standing over her right now, waiting for her to realize the truth.
Nancy wipes her angry, silent tears away on the pillow, kicking off the blanket and sheet and leaping out of bed, jaw steeled and blood racing. Her pulse thrums loudly as she waits for the bell to chime, almost desperate for her killer to appear. She casts her gaze around the room, straining to look for any distortion in reality, the transparent edge of a hidden monster.
No bell rings. The air is still. All she can see are her belongings, carefully curated after a lifetime in this house. Jonathan’s jacket, stolen, lingering at the end of her closet. Her lanyard dangling on the corner of her vanity mirror: Nancy Wheeler Hawkins Post Employee. A funny dread slides along her spine. The room is exactly as she remembers it. Not a molecule out of place. Still trembling, still searching the room, Nancy starts to dare to hope.
“Hey, are you up yet?”
He isn’t up, not by the standards of his parents— he’s still on his bed, with one hand clapped over his mouth and the other digging into his knee so hard that his elbow and fingertips ache. He’s been cataloguing the room, counting his possessions. He never bothered writing up any kind of will. No nineteen-year-old video store employee would— well, that isn’t true, he could totally see Robin doing it. His heart pounds, soaring at the thought of Robin but anchored to his omnipresent dread. He stares at the door, grip around his jaw tightening. His nails press hard enough to bruise, to nearly draw blood. He waits for his father to leave so he can have his crisis, or whatever the hell this is, in peace.
“Steve,” slightly more insistent. “You up?”
All he can manage in response to that ridiculous question is a short, sharp laugh. Steve has been up for seven hundred and ninety two days. It floods back to him now in waves, overwhelming his senses and sending him sprawling for any form of comfort. He pulls his hands away from his mouth and his knee, wobbling as he stands, panicking as he walks. He can’t think straight, can’t keep his thoughts all neatly stacked. His body jerks without his permission, unused to walking and not crouching or running or hiding. Just— walking. He can set his own pace theoretically but he nearly falls every step, bare knees trembling, bare toes sliding along the soft carpet. Fuck, the carpet is so soft. He wants to stay in this dream forever, wants to mistake it for reality. He doesn’t care if losing it will be like getting dragged back down into Hell all over again. He’ll cherish the soft carpet and he will cherish the twinge of an oncoming migraine and he will even cherish his father, while he can.
He twists the knob and opens it, half-expecting a knife in the chest. More than half. His father stares, taking in Steve’s unwashed hair and wrinkled shirt and bare legs, taking an inventory of his parts and, unsurprisingly, finding him lacking.
“You look terrible,” says his father, devoid of any affection. Steve wants to cry, and to leap forward and cling to him like a child, and to kiss him on the cheek, and to grab his hand and check his wrist for a pulse. Is this real? The disappointment on Mr. Harrington’s face is real enough that Steve could cheer. “Did you go somewhere last night?”
“I don’t know,” he croaks, vocal chords shot after twenty-six months of disuse. Well, that isn’t true; he’s been using them to scream. Steve grins at his father, smile too wide, eyes too open. He feels fragile. He wishes his father would hug him. “Can I have a hug?”
“A hug?” In disbelief, the old man leans in towards his shoulder— and takes a deep sniff. “Are you on drugs?”
Nancy stands in the shower long enough for the water to run cold, soothing her scalded skin. Seeing as she recently became unemployed from two demanding jobs, both run by evil alien hiveminds, she figures she can allow herself the luxury of not caring how long she takes, or how hard she cries. It feels good — every sob is a reminder that she’s alive. That somehow, despite the odds, she fucking made it.
If it takes her another ten minutes just to work up the nerve to peek out of the shower curtain, well. Progress can be slow.
She doesn’t believe it, not really; she wishes that this life felt permanent. She wraps her hair up tightly in a small towel, leaving it atop her head, and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Her unscathed reflection astonishes her. There isn’t a single scratch on her body, not from the fight with the Mind Flayer nor from the thousands of hours getting beaten and tortured and hunted and killed. She passes a hand over her ribcage, tracing the muscles and bones. Remembering what it feels like to be hung on a hook, to be sliced, stabbed, shot, cleaved, throttled, speared, filleted. To be collected and sacrificed again and again, and wiped clean each time with only a concerned haze filling in the blanks, muscle memory retaining knowledge even when the muscles and the memories had both been rebuilt.
Nancy blinks, meeting her own gaze head-on. She sniffs but does not cry again. She fucking made it.
Steve drives to the video store without his license or his work ID or his sunglasses or his jacket. It’s a wonder he manages to remember pants. It’s another wonder he doesn’t crash his car, squinting at the mid-morning sun streaming in through his cracked, dirty windshield the whole drive. He leans out the driver’s side window at every stoplight like a tourist, taking in the sights of downtown Hawkins, the most beautiful place in the world.
Calling his parking job haphazard would be an understatement but at least he locks the car before stumbling towards the mecca that is Family Video, reaching out to grasp the handle with both hands, flinging the door open victoriously and scaring the shit out of a young couple looking through the clearance section.
“Sorry,” he gasps, heart pounding. Behind the counter, Robin Buckley, a vision in her ugly black khakis and Family Video-branded polo shirt, straightens up to look at him like he’s a fucking alien. Steve makes a beeline for her, striding right past the giant poster for Reanimator and purposely not acknowledging the shelf with copies of Nightmare on Elm Street. They’re staying fully stocked in anticipation of the sequel, obviously. Steve will probably have to quit before that one drops, because no way is he hocking Freddy merch to the masses. He’d rather go back to Scoops. “Sorry, sorry, I’m late.”
“Only by a couple hours,” Robin deadpans, although her usual snide coolness is ruined by the obvious curiosity. She’s too weird to be cool, which is probably why they get along.
“Don’t tell Keith.”
“Eventually you have to stop saying I owe you one and start paying your tab. Where’s your uniform?”
“Fuck, I forgot my uniform.” He fumbles through his pockets. “I forgot my wallet too. Shit!”
“This store is PG-rated, doofus. You trying to get us written up?”
“… Robin, I’ve got something pretty crazy to tell you. You gotta promise you’ll believe me.”
He watches the easy mischief drain from her bright eyes in a heartbeat, replaced by dread. That’s right, she’s still reeling from everything that happened at Starcourt— for her, that was recent. Steve has died nine thousand times since then, and the Demogorgon scares him about as much as any of the other killers. But he still feels bad for scaring her, so he shakes his head, saying quickly and apologetically, “No, not… none of that shit. It’s nothing like that. Okay. When was the last time you saw me?”
Robin gnaws her bottom lip anxiously, but he can tell she’s interested. This kind of freaky shit is exactly up her alley, so there’s a chance she even might believe him. They went through the hell of getting kidnapped, drugged, and tortured together; you can’t lose trust in a bond like that. And plus, they both worked retail. She says, extremely hesitant, “Monday…?”
“Right.” Steve inhales, suddenly nervous. “Okay, yeah, Monday. Well, it wasn’t the best day off I’ve ever had…”
When Nancy opens the basement door Mike and the others barely pay her any mind, too busy chattering away about some harebrained scheme. Lucas glances her way but quickly loses focus when Dustin throws his hands in the air, dramatically announcing, “I guess none of you even bothered to watch the science fiction masterpiece Dune or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Listen! I am telling you, it’s all practical! You think this is some amateur shit?”
Mike scoffs, rolling his head back to stare at the ceiling. Nancy wonders if he even noticed her come down here; to be fair to him, she usually doesn’t linger around for their incredibly geeky, pointless, circular arguments. “How could it be practical? You’re saying they shot all that in the desert?”
“Are you legitimately stupid? Like, were you born yesterday?”
“I never saw Dune,” Max chimes in, wide-eyed.
“We’re not talking about Dune! I’m talking about Star Wars!”
“I never saw Star Wars either.”
“What— okay, now you’ve gotta be pulling my leg!”
“She is. We watched Star Wars together, remember?”
“I’m gonna get Harrington to put Dune on hold for us and we’re gonna watch it right away. As soon as possible.”
“Tonight?”
“I can’t tonight, I’ve got to watch Erica.”
“Erica can watch Dune. Simple. Done.”
“What’s the age rating?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve personally heard fouler words from your little sister’s posse than I’ve ever heard from the silver screen. Erica will be just fine, for Christ’s sake, she dealt with the Russians, she can handle the sandworm!”
“Friday?”
“We’re calling Will and El on Friday, remember?”
“Saturday?”
“My mom’s making a special roast Saturday night, she’s been talking about it all week.”
“Cool, so we’ll go to yours.”
“I’ve tried your mom’s cooking, Dustin, and I’d rather pass.”
“What’s your problem, Max?!”
“Nancy, are you alright?”
It takes a moment of silence for Nancy to clue in, and catch up with the conversation. She opens her eyes, dragging her thumb across them to catch an errant tear. The four young teenagers are staring at her expectantly, with expressions varying from concerned to weirded out.
She gets it; she doesn’t usually come down here and listen to their stupid discussions. She’s happy Mike has friends but hanging out with them just feels like babysitting— usually. Right now, the pointless, pleasant conversation is like a balm to her soul. Nancy runs a hand through her wet hair, hanging limply over her shoulder. “Sorry, I… I zoned out.”
Mike frowns, watching her closely. “But are you good?”
“Yeah!” She nods weakly, blinking. “Yeah, I just missed you guys.”
Her little brother stares, clearly unconvinced. Then, because he’s her little brother, he says rudely, “You need to make some friends.”
Dustin, also clearly unconvinced, pipes up, “Whatever happened to ‘oh, your nerdy stuff is so lame, such a waste of time, losers’?”
Nancy grins. “I never said it wasn’t lame.”
Max and Mike burst into laughter, giggling helplessly— after a moment, Lucas and Dustin relent and join in. They go back to their sci-fi fighting, except Mike crosses the room to sit beside her. They don’t lean on each other, but he reaches over and pats her back. In return she musses up his long hair and then rests her hand on his bony shoulder, unspeakably grateful that she got to return to her boring life with her nerdy little shit of a brother.
“But they weren’t all real killers,” Robin says, clinging to every word from Steve’s mouth as she has been for the past hour. The customers must think they’re nuts, but Steve doesn’t really give a shit what the clientele of Family Video think about him. He’s rediscovering the euphoric taste of pre-packaged Movie Theatre Style buttered popcorn, halfway through one of the bags even though his staff discount definitely doesn’t apply on the food. He eats it by the handful, closing his eyes briefly to savour every bite. How could he forget how much he missed eating? Whatever ruled the hell world kept its victims hungry and cold and ragged and tired and thirsty and scared, depriving them of human connection and central heating and buttered popcorn.
Steve licks salt and butter off his fingers, eyes rolling back in his head. Euphoric doesn’t even sum it up. He asks, “What do you mean?”
“You said Michael was there.” Robin raises an eyebrow, excited even as Steve’s blood runs cold at the memory of Michael. He hadn’t thought that movie was scary at all but now he’s sure he wouldn’t be able to hear the soundtrack without shitting his pants. He’ll have to take a leave of absence when October rolls around. “Like, Michael with the mask?”
“Oh yeah,” Steve says through popcorn. “Michael, Freddy, that freaky chainsaw guy.”
“Leatherface.”
“Yeah, I think so. There were two of them. But, like… they were real, they weren’t— I mean, I know it sounds like I made it up—”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” dismisses Robin. Steve loves her, suddenly and intensely, for not once asking this whole conversation if his experience is honest and real. She believes him wholeheartedly without a shred of doubt, which is frankly insane because he’s not even sure that he believes himself. “I mean, some of them you recognized, and some of them you didn’t.”
“Well, by the end I knew most of them,” Steve puffs up his chest. “You kind of had to learn the strategies, or you were toast. Every time was different, your team was different every time. You didn’t know what to expect until, like, I would hear the music, or someone throws an axe or a knife, or you stumble onto a clock or a zombie or a bear trap, or this little fucking evil baby runs up and jumps onto your shoulders. Oh my god, Robin, this popcorn is the best thing I’ve ever tasted, are you sure you don’t want any?”
“Yeah,” she glances disdainfully at the popcorn. “That stuff is so stale.” Steve rolls his eyes and keeps eating. “I don’t think you mentioned a zombie killer. You mean the vomit queen?”
“No, the zombies weren’t actually one of the killers, they were, like, they belonged to this one guy and they would alert him any time they saw you, and they could come towards you and—”
A customer clears his throat, solidly derailing Steve’s train of thought, and they both turn to face him. “Excuse me, I’m looking for a specific movie.”
Robin, ever the paragon of perfect customer service, sighs loudly. “Man, can’t you see we’re busy?”
Affronted but also clearly caught off guard by her rudeness, the guy insists, “If you tell me what section it’s in I can go find it myself.”
Before Robin can bite his head off Steve quickly blurts, “What’s the movie?”
“Evil Dead,” says the customer, and in a rush of fondness, Steve remembers the poster hung up in Jonathan’s room.
Then he remembers something else, and his eyes bug out of his skull. Completely ignoring the customer, Steve whirls around to face Robin again. “Holy shit. Wait. I think I met that guy, the— the guy from Evil Dead! God, what was his fricking name, he was such an asshole—”
Robin demands excitedly, “Have you started writing this stuff down? You should write it down. Like, now.” She scrambles to yank her backpack from under the counter, retrieving a pink heart-shaped notebook that Steve is most definitely going to have to tease her about later. “Here, I’ll just write it down for you. Start from the beginning.”
Mike’s friends don’t stay the night to watch Dune or any other ridiculously long movie, filtering out one by one until the Wheeler siblings are left alone in the house. They end up sitting on opposite corners of the well-loved living room sofa, watching a TV show neither of them cares about. Nancy sprawls out, limbs thrown over the couch cushions without care— she missed sitting on comfortable things after so long being restricted to cold, uneven dirt and fallen logs. She missed the familiarity of home, and although she won’t bring it up again to avoid embarrassing them both, she missed her brother too.
Mike, on the other hand, sits ramrod-straight, hardly even leaning back. The perfect posture looks strange; he’s too lanky to sit nicely. Before Nancy can ask if he’s okay, he blurts, “Do you ever think about them?” Nancy narrows her eyes, and he clarifies, “I mean, I miss El and Will so bad it hurts. I— I think about them all the time, going to visit them. I’m sure you must miss Jonathan too, right?”
She should have guessed that Mike would bring up the Byers family, especially given its recent addition of Eleven. Since the move to California they’ve been understandably busy, and although Nancy was smart enough to know that Joyce and her kids wouldn’t visit anytime soon, Mike has been holding out hope that his best friend and ex-girlfriend will make the trip.
But the truth is that she doesn’t miss Jonathan. Nancy sits up, mind suddenly racing as she remembers a previously forgotten aspect of the Entity’s realm. Of course she hadn’t been the sole target of the killers; other survivors had been at her side. Without a team, none of them would have had a chance in hell at ever escaping. And there had been familiar faces— not just the Demogorgon, but Jonathan, and Steve too.
She doesn’t miss Jonathan because she’s reconnected with him a thousand times, even though she didn’t know it at the time any of the times. Nancy grips her knees tightly, breathing hard as she struggles not to drown in the abundance of forgotten memories, flooding back all at once now. How many times had she reconnected with Jonathan? With Steve? There was nothing else to do but talk while they awaited the next trial, and of course they sought out familiar faces in the terrifyingly alien landscape. The three of them gravitated to one another. They always had.
Mike taps her shoulder and the unexpected contact drags Nancy back to reality. She jumps, shaken, and then rises from her spot. “Sorry, I… Sorry, I’m fine, I just have to make a call.”