Chapter Text
There’s a hole in the curtain around the hospital bed. Nancy can’t think how it could have gotten there. It’s eye-level. Which is odd. Waist-level would make more sense. A nurse carrying something through the room, moving from bed to bed, could have done it. Or with some scissors, cutting a length of bandages, reaching for something else on the tray next to them. A mistake. Now a tear in the fabric.
Nancy stares at it.
Eye-level.
“Nance?”
Nancy squints.
Part of the curtain’s pushed aside. Blue fabric bunches up.
Robin exhales when she sees them. Her eyes go first to Holly, who’s asleep, finally, who wouldn’t go to sleep without Nancy staying with her, without Nancy getting on the bed and sitting back against the pillows and pulling her close and whispering you’re okay, I’ve got you, you’re okay, I’ve got you.
Robin takes in the clothes the hospital gave Holly to put on, and the bandage wound around her wrist where her arm rests limp on Nancy’s chest. There’s an IV in the back of her hand.
When Nancy breathes in, she feels the weight of her little sister’s body.
When Nancy breathes out, she’s heavier.
“Bad?” Robin asks, quiet.
“Sprain.” She smooths a few strands of hair by Holly’s forehead, the same area she’s been stroking since they settled like this. If she stops, Holly will wake up. “And dehydrated.”
Robin doesn’t say anything a moment.
“Are you okay?”
The answer is she has her own IV in her arm and a few other things going on, none of which are worth mentioning.
“Do you see that?” Nancy asks instead.
“See what?”
“The curtain. The hole.” Nancy’s hands are busy holding Holly, soothing, clutching, so Nancy nods at it. Robin only pushed part of it aside, so she can still see it. See through it, to the wall. “Right there.”
“Uh…” Robin shifts in her periphery, investigating. “Yeah. Sure.”
“How do you think it got there?”
“Um. I don’t… Unfortunate encounter with a knife, I guess?”
Nancy thinks about that. It’s not impossible. Few things are. She’s learned that much.
“Can you tell the nurse, if you see her?”
“The…”
“So it can be fixed. Somebody should fix it.”
“Um. Yeah. Sure. Hey, did you want a—a drink, or something? Like a, a soda, from the vending machine, or a coffee? Shit. I should’ve brought you a cup of… They cut me off, I’ve had four, but I—Maybe you can’t until you’ve got your—your fluids up, a bit.” She huffs. “Guess I’m special. They just gave me an ice pack and a juice box and set me free.”
Holly shifts, her head adjusting its spot on Nancy’s shoulder. Nancy shushes her. Redirects the motion of her fingertips at her hairline, the soft skin of her forehead.
You’re okay. I’ve got you.
“Can you believe that? I’m allowed to… to go home. Just like that. Those assholes were trying to stuff us into their Humvees a few hours ago, ready to wipe us out. And then…”
Holly settles, and so does Nancy.
She focuses on Holly’s breathing. On her warmth. On not moving.
“They’re calling it another earthquake. Heard a couple doctors talking. Guess people believe what they wanna believe.”
A weight on her arm.
Fuck.
Nancy flinches, head snapping around-
It goes away.
“Sorry—Sorry, you were just—Sorry.”
Nancy stares. Her heart’s pounding.
She swallows, and it feels like she’s forgotten how.
“Robin.”
Robin gives her a look that could be a smile or could be a grimace.
“Hey,” she says. Nancy watches her take a breath. “Can I get you anything?”
Anything.
Too many possibilities.
She tries to think, and it goes as well as the swallowing did.
“Everyone’s… going home,” Robin says. “Or asleep, I think, Max isn’t allowed—Lucas is with her. Steve said you were still…”
In the bed.
Holding Holly.
Wearing her jeans, jacket, boots, all filthy. The melting room, the dirt, the slime and sweat and blood.
There’s a blanket draped over their legs, two pillows bunched up behind her. The hospital air is cool, and it’s quiet. Her watch is broken. It must be late. Her eyes are dry. Muscles tight—arms, shoulders, neck. Her head weighs more than usual. Earlier, she tried closing her eyes.
Holly suspended in mid-air, terrified, reaching for her.
Her mother lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
That room filling up with white slop.
Holly getting sucked back into the Abyss.
A sharp grunt catches Nancy’s attention. Pained.
Robin’s lowering herself into the chair Nancy vacated a few hours ago. She’s stiff, wincing.
“Sorry.” She drops the last couple inches onto the seat, as if her ability to control the movement ends at a point. “Did something to my ribs. Somewhere in all the running-for-my-life. Or the fighting-off-a-monster. Or the almost-getting-thrown-in-a-military-prison. No idea.”
Robin’s hurt?
“S’fine. Hot shower and I’ll be—hm—totally fine.”
“You should go home. Lie down.”
“Think if I do that, I’ll never get up again.”
Nancy thinks she recognises the cadence of a joke. What she doesn’t recognise is Robin.
Half-wearing her gear from their trek into the Abyss, camo pants and boots. Somebody’s given her a maroon scrub top. Her hair’s loose. She looks like she needs a shower. And a haircut. And a nap.
She’s pale.
She’s looking at Nancy, and she looks like she’s seen a ghost.
Nancy’s stomach starts a slow, spiralling drop.
“We won,” Nancy says, of all things.
“I know.”
“We’re fine.”
“I know.”
“You can go home.”
Robin doesn’t blink. Her eyes shimmer under the shitty sterile fluros of this shitty sterile hospital.
Nancy keeps her sister in her arms and Robin in her line of sight. Her hands are tingling. Her stomach settles somewhere by her ankles.
“Okay,” Robin says, like it’s some kind of decision.
“Okay,” Nancy says back, like she agrees.
////
The day after they halt the destruction of the planet and escape an alternate dimension through a wormhole where one of their own sacrifices herself to ensure it can never happen again, Steve drives her and Holly home from the hospital with Def Leppard on the radio, humming along. Nancy turns it off. Decides against ejecting the tape and tossing it out the window.
She has blisters on her feet. Patches where the skin’s rubbed raw.
She didn’t tell the doctor who rushed through his assessment of her after Kay and her goons handed them all off to emergency services and disappeared, and she didn’t tell the nurses who checked on her and Holly in shifts through the night.
“You ok?” Steve asks, when they’re standing on the driveway together, Holly’s hand wrapped in Nancy’s.
What a sight they must be.
“Yeah,” says Nancy. She looks to Holly. Squeezes her hand. “Say thanks.”
“Thanks, Stevie.”
Steve smiles. He’s supposed to be helping his mom with the disaster zone that is her backyard, or catching up on a good month’s worth of sleep, and he’s here, driving and humming and smiling. Nancy can’t look at him.
Holly goes down to sit with Mike and the others in the basement. Nancy should be there, too. She should check on him. Feed him. She doesn’t have experience with a dead girlfriend but she does have experience with dead friends. Someone has to help him.
Instead she limps past the congealed pool of their mother’s blood on the kitchen floor and the gaping hole in the dining room ceiling and makes it up to the bathroom and locks herself in and slowly, slowly peels her boots and socks off her mangled feet and tells herself This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing.
She stands in the shower and watches the water circling the drain change from black to brown to clear. Avoids her reflection and wonders if it’s safe to set a fire in the bathtub, if that’s an acceptable means of disposing of the ruined clothes she’s made into a pile on the tiles. Doesn’t.
“Hey.”
Nancy looks up.
She’s in the kitchen waiting for the coffee pot. She’s got shorts and a top on and her feet are bare. Air touches the blisters, tender. Her skin is shower-warm. Her hair damp.
Robin’s standing in front of her.
How did she get here?
“Sorry,” Robin says. “Was trying not to scare you.”
Nancy looks at her and wonders when someone like Robin Buckley could ever make the list of things she ought to be frightened of.
“Need a hand?” she asks, looking past Nancy to the counter.
“No,” Nancy says, without knowing what she’s been asked. “I was…”
She scans for clues. Microwave. Stovetop. Coffee pot. Coffee.
She wants beer. Or wine. There’s an open bottle in the fridge that her mom hadn’t finished. And her mom will be in hospital at least another week. Nancy doubts she’ll notice if her leftovers go missing.
“Allow me,” Robin says, stepping around the blood on the floor.
“I can do it.”
“It’s cool, I was-”
“I said I can do it.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Nancy tries to think.
The refrigerator.
She needs the refrigerator.
“Could you-” Her voice breaks. She clears her throat. “The milk?”
“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Robin spins, pulls the carton out of the fridge with a flourish. Hands it over like it’s some trophy, or a diamond necklace on display in its case. “Premium cow juice, madame.”
Nancy faces her mug, and a glob of curdled milk plops into it. Hot black coffee splashes over the rim onto her fingertips where she’s holding it in place. It burns. She watches it happen without moving.
“Oh—crap-”
Robin steps in—confiscates the carton and steers Nancy towards the sink, shoves her hand under the tap.
This is nothing, she thinks, watching the flow of cold water over her fingers, Robin’s hand on her wrist. Nothing.
Robin stays at her side. Eventually she shuts the water off, but doesn’t let Nancy go. Nancy keeps looking at her red finger.
Wine would never do this to her.
“You okay?”
Nancy turns her head and accidentally looks Robin right in the eyes. Care and warmth and kindness. It’s Robin. It makes her feel small. Useless. Fragile.
She starts to shake. She takes her hand back. Puts a step between them and looks away. “It’s nothing.”
“And if I were inquiring like, broadly? About your… general wellbeing?”
Nancy reaches past her for the carton, to tip it out and trash it and get a notepad and a pen and write milk at the top. Robin reaches, too. Together they knock it off the counter.
It falls, slaps onto the tiles, spoiled milk spurting on impact.
Nancy watches white liquid make patterns on the floor. Watches it turn pink. Mixing with the blood—splatters and spots all the way on this side of the kitchen. Kind of like the melting room. Kind of like nothing is actually over at all.
Jesus.
Why did she prioritise coffee over cleaning up?
“Shit,” Robin says. “It’s okay, let me-”
“I’ve got it.”
“I don’t mind, just, where’s your…”
Nancy leaves Robin to the cupboards under the sink. Fetches a bucket and a cloth from the laundry but can’t find gloves. Thinks about going to get some or sending the boys to the store to do it, get them out of the house—sorry everything’s fallen apart, would you like to run an errand for me?—but can’t waste time letting it all set even more than it already has.
She gets on her knees in front of the biggest patch of blood, where her Mom had laid the longest after the creature cut her open, and gets to scrubbing.
There’s so much of it.
She presses the wet cloth into the middle of the mess and all it does is multiply.
“Nance…”
Robin’s standing next to her. Sneakers and jeans in Nancy’s periphery.
She wrings out the cloth and makes another pass at the same patch. Then does it again. And again.
Her knees start to hurt from the hard tile. The stench of blood and bleach makes her want to gag. She swallows. Wrings out the cloth and doesn’t look at the frothy pink water. Blood’s supposed to be liquid except this isn’t, anymore. It’s like the milk, left exposed to the air too long. Maybe there’s other things too. What else did her mother’s body spill? Sweat. Tears. Nancy tries to remember her biology lessons. It cut open her throat. Saliva.
Nancy swallows again.
She’ll do the cupboards next, and the other side, where the splatters and the milk is.
It’s thinning.
It’s spreading, like she’s moving it around as much as soaking it up.
It’s on her knees, sticky and warmed up by the water. She inches back to avoid it which marks a new patch of tile where her knees land so she inches back again and it follows her again.
She’s making it worse.
Her wrist hurts. Everything stinks.
She’s going to be here for hours.
It’s fine. She’ll get rid of it and then she has to—to think about the hole in the ceiling.
Shit. There’s a hole in the ceiling.
Maybe the house isn’t structurally sound. Maybe none of them should be here.
“Hey,” Robin says, and it startles her. “I can help, Nance. You know? Put me in, coach. I, uh—hm-”
Nancy glances at her.
Robin’s stiffened, arm curled around her front. Eyes creased.
Right. She’s hurt.
“Well,” Robin says, strained, “guess I can’t join you down there. But if you have a mop I think I could do some damage with it.”
Nancy very briefly tries to picture it.
Robin, in her kitchen, mopping up blood and milk. Her mother’s blood. Hell, her mother’s milk.
Her family. Hers. Nobody else can deal with it. Holly can’t and Mike can’t and her Dad can’t and her Mom can’t so Nancy will. She already is.
“I’m almost done.”
“You’re—Nance, you’re kind of not.”
Nancy stands on stiff legs. Weird spots dance in her vision a second. She needs a fresh bucket.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Nancy mutters.
“So are you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You just—You don’t have to do all this on your own, you know.”
“I can do it.”
“No, I know. I know that. But I’m here, too, and Steve’s-”
Nancy hefts the bucket off the floor and turns in the direction of the-
She slips—bare foot sliding on suds and blood.
Her stomach lurches-
“Whoa-”
Robin grabs her arm, steadies her.
“Shit, okay, Jesus—Last thing we need-”
The bucket sloshes, inertia making pink suds splash out.
Nancy freezes. Pants with her feet planted on slick tiles. Afraid to move.
The shaking comes back.
She nearly did that. Nearly crashed onto the tiles and spilled disgusting water everywhere and broke her ankle or her wrist to go along with the cuts and bruises and blisters and then what? Then what would she have done?
Embarrassment engulfs her.
When did she get so fucking stupid?
“Alright,” says Robin, firm now. “How about you give me this, and-”
Nancy wrenches her arm free. The bucket sloshes again.
“Don’t.”
“I’m totally happy to-”
“I can manage soap and-”
“Nobody expects you to-”
“Robin—fuck off.”
Nancy shoves her—hard. Plants her hand in the middle of her chest and pushes.
Robin stumbles. Her sneaker squeaks on the edge of the mess and she catches herself, grunts, eyes wide. She goes still, until she moans and curls in on herself a fraction, holding her injured side.
Nancy grits her teeth. They’re wasting time. The blood’s gonna start drying again. Nancy needs to keep going and Robin needs to stop looking at her like that. Like she doesn’t know what to do. Like she did at the hospital—like Nancy’s some ghost to stare at, some phantom.
“You want to help?” Nancy says, unwilling to become a spectre. “Go home.”
Nancy watches Robin absorb that. Watches her not say anything.
She looks at the kitchen, the floor, the door, Nancy, the floor, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.
Then Nancy watches her leave.
////
When the kitchen’s spotless and the boys are downstairs and Robin’s still gone, Nancy finds something dark and strong in her dad’s liquor cabinet and takes a swig straight from the bottle.
It burns going down, until it’s warm. All across her chest and further, her fingertips tingling. Her eyes water. It’s good. It’s okay. It’s better than nothing.
She downs a couple more mouthfuls, and she puts the bottle back, and she carries the warmth with her when she leaves it behind.
////
Holly doesn’t attempt to sleep in her room, and Nancy doesn’t ask her to.
Nancy catches her drifting off on the sofa in the basement between Mike and Steve. Puts the newspaper she’d been not-reading for over an hour on the side table and stands to rest her hand on Holly’s knee. The contact makes her jump, which makes Nancy’s stomach twist.
“C’mon,” she says. “It’s late. I’m going to bed, if you want to lay down somewhere that doesn’t reek of boys and pizza.”
Steve takes exaggerated offense to that, but Holly doesn’t notice. Her eyes have already fallen closed again, her arms extended towards her big sister. Wants to be carried. Nancy’s throat thickens.
Steve sits up.
“I’ve got her,” Nancy says.
She pulls Holly’s half-asleep form to her, lets her legs hug her waist and guides her arms to fold around her neck. Slips an arm underneath her and around her to heft her off the sofa, body heavy with tiredness and trust.
Neither of them have set foot in Holly’s room since getting home. Not since that monster sent a monster to take her. Nancy wonders if Holly would want her own pillow or blanket or stuffed animal. She skips it.
“Here,” says Steve, once they’re in Nancy’s bedroom—it startles her. She didn’t realise he was following them.
She watches him switch her bedside lamp on and pull the covers back so she can lower Holly onto the mattress, rest her down and tuck her in. She doesn’t stir. Nancy releases a breath. Good.
“You okay?” Steve asks, quiet.
Nancy wants to tell him to stop asking that.
She nods, instead.
Wants nothing to do with the bathroom—two showers is enough for one day—so she lays straight down next to her, curls herself around her with her elbow braced on the pillow. Traces a line back and forth on her hairline, a gentle stroking of her forehead, like she’d done all night at the hospital. Like their mother used to do when they were little, and couldn’t sleep.
“I can sit with you a bit, if you want to sleep,” Steve says.
Nancy swallows back a sudden lump in her throat.
“I’m fine.” And she looks to him, when she notices him moving—about to turn off the lamp. “Leave it on.”
He stops. Him and the shadows under his eyes, the stubble on his cheeks. He gives her a rueful half-smile and leaves the door ajar on his way out.
Nancy listens to him go downstairs. Listens to the basement door open and close. Listens to Holly’s breathing. The house settles around them, creaking and groaning. It’s quiet.
Nancy watches Holly sleep and listens to the sound of nothing.
It sounds like the roar of a Demogorgon crashing through the house.
Her mother smashing a bottle on the countertop to use as a weapon.
Holly screaming.
Holly screaming.
Holly screaming.
A door slams downstairs, and Nancy freezes. Strains, trying to be sure of the sound.
Blood roars in her ears, which doesn’t help.
She can’t get her breathing to slow down. Or her heart. Or the possibilities piling up in her mind at light speed.
She curls herself around her sister, hand on her arm, thumb running the same pattern over her temple.
Soon a cold sweat is soaking through her top and her mouth’s dry and her eyes burn from staying open so long.
She peels herself away. Gets up. Can’t risk waking Holly. Doesn’t want to leave her, either, but-
You’re in your house, with your brother and sister, and everyone’s dead and you’re freaking out over nothing.
She uses the bathroom, for want of anything else to do. Splashes water on her face. Leaves the tap running and takes a breath and swallows and swallows and spins and vomits into the toilet. Retches and groans, trembling. She didn’t eat at the hospital, didn’t eat the sandwich she made herself when she made one for Mike and Holly, didn’t eat the pizza Steve brought with him for dinner—her stomach empties fast, which leaves her to heave out nothing but spit and bile and snot.
When she stands, her legs feel hollow. All of her does.
Nancy finds it quieter than feeling full, and finds the quiet to be a relief.
////
Steve sets up camp in the living room without asking, or being asked.
Nancy finds him on her way downstairs that first full morning they’re home after the hospital and the almost-end of the world and halts on the second-last step, staring.
She’d figured he might stay, but in the basement, with the other boys, their sleeping bags and junk food and comics. Not here, on the couch, by himself. In the middle of the house.
He’s got one arm slung over his eyes, socked feet stuck out the end of the blanket he’s pulled off the back of the couch, the one her Mom naps under when she watches her soaps. His mouth’s open.
For God’s sake.
“Steve,” she whispers, moving to him. “Steve.”
He stirs. Mumbles nonsense.
Nancy kicks him in the leg.
“Wha—Jesus—Nance, what-”
“What are you doing?”
“I was sleeping, is that—is that not allowed?”
“Nobody asked you to do that.”
“To… sleep?”
“If we wanted a guard dog, we’d get a guard dog.”
He groans. Stretches. “Y’should get a dog. Dogs are great.”
“You didn’t have to… to be here.”
Steve sighs, blinking himself to alertness. “Yeah,” he says, clearer now. “I did.”
Nancy wants to argue with him. Tell him to worry about something that actually merits it. To get back to the basement and see if he can coax more than two words out of Mike or make sure Will hasn’t had another panic attack. Leave, maybe, and go check on Robin.
She does think about it, what she’d say. Except her mouth’s dry enough to leave a bad taste behind, and her eyes itch, and the rest of her aches dully from the vomiting. She feels like she’s underwater.
She’s not entirely sure he’s here.
She’s not entirely sure she’s here.
“S’early,” Steve mumbles, caught in the process of attempting to sit up. He squints at her. “What’re you doin’?”
“Whatever needs doing.”
The kitchen stinks of bleach, near-gleaming in the light. First task: open the windows.
“Probably taking Lucas to the hospital today, for Max,” Steve says, dragging himself onto a stool at the counter. He slouches, watches her fight with one of the windows where the latch is rusting shut. Second task: fix the windows. “If you want to come with. See your folks.”
“Dad hasn’t woken up yet.”
“Yeah. People… Sometimes they can like, hear people, or something, I think. If you wanted to sit with him.”
“Holly might want to.”
“Bet Max’d love to see you.”
“I don’t really know Max.”
“Nance.”
“I have things to do.”
“… Like what?”
Nancy bites back the urge to say something about the windows.
“Not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a hole in the ceiling.”
“Right.” Steve glances at it. “You going to hit up the hardware store? And the library?”
“Library?”
“Since you’re learning how to be a carpenter and all.”
“Steve.”
“What?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Steve rolls his eyes. Gets off his stool and rounds the counter to where she’s considering breaking the window with her bare fist if it means achieving the fresh-air thing.
“Let me try.”
“I can do it.”
He bats her hand out the way. “You’re gonna break your fingers.”
“It just sticks, it’s stupid-”
“It’s fine, I can—There, see? You’re welcome.”
Nancy ignores him.
Until he’s back on the stool, cradling a coffee and pushing frosted flakes around a bowl with his spoon, glaring at the front page of the newspaper he’s fetched off the front lawn.
HAWKINS REBUILDS AFTER KILLER QUAKE
“Doesn’t it piss you off a little bit?”
Nancy looks up from the piece of toast she doesn’t want.
What she wants is something in her mug that isn’t coffee. The fridge-wine. Something else from the cabinet in the living room. She’d have to have a boring conversation with Steve if he saw her substituting scotch for orange juice.
“Nobody’s ever going to know what they did,” Steve says, stuck on the newspaper. He goes to have a mouthful of cereal and abandons it, spoon clattering into his bowl. “That doctor lady and Vecna. All of them. S’like they get away with it.”
Nancy clutches her useless beverage.
“Vecna’s dead,” she says.
El impaled him on a spike inside the Mind Flayer.
Mrs Byers cut his head off with an axe.
“Nobody’s ever gonna know what we did,” Steve says then, as if it bothers him almost as much.
Nancy tips the contents of her plate into the bin and her drink down the sink.
Says to him, “Good.”
She goes to head to the basement and make sure the others are okay. Steve stops her with a hand on her arm.
“Hey,” he says, voice careful. “Nance-”
“What?”
“You look… like shit. Did you get any sleep?”
“I’m fine.”
“You didn’t eat anything.”
“I’ll eat when I feel like it.”
“You should-”
“I’m a big girl, Steve, I don’t need you to-”
A scream cuts her off.
Sharp and blood-curdling and chased by another even louder and longer.
Upstairs.
Holly.
Nancy bolts.
Flies up the stairs two at a time and bursts into her room with her heart in her throat.
Holly’s scrambled upright in a mess of bedcovers and pillows like she’s trying to get away from something, screaming and screaming and-
“Holly!”
She’s staring at the end of the bed, gripped by terror. She’s pointing at nothing.
Nancy’s heart seizes.
She woke up alone.
“You—It—It was-”
“Hey—Hey-“
“I thought—I thought I was-”
Nancy gets on the bed and pulls her onto her lap. Holly won’t look away from the other side of the room.
“I know-”
“It was-”
“I know, babe—It’s okay, I got you-”
Holly gasps, hysterical, clutching at Nancy’s arms, shirt, shoulders. Nancy feels the sting of her fingernails at her neck. She tightens her hold, cradles the back of her head.
“I for—I forgot—where I wa—I forgot where I was-”
“You’re home, you’re okay-”
“It looked like the house—It looked like his-”
Nancy’s eyes fill with tears and her bones rot with shame. She blinks it away. Stupid fucking time for that—this is about Holly.
You let her wake up alone.
Nancy shushes her, rocks them both where she’s sitting askew on her bed crushing their bodies together like she can absorb even a fraction of the fear making Holly’s breath rattle. Take it away. Make it her own.
“You’re okay,” Nancy says again. She kisses the side of her head, rubs her back. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Don’t leave again, please don’t leave again…”
“No, I won’t, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. You’re okay. Shh…”
It takes another minute. Holly’s hysteria soon dissolves into quiet sobs, Nancy’s shirt damp against her chest where her tears have sunk in. Her arms start to ache, and her back.
“C’mere, babe,” she murmurs, scooting back onto the pillows and pulling her into her lap. It’s both more and less comfortable, and Holly curls against her, sniffling and shaking. “I’m here,” Nancy tells her, softly. “We’re all here.”
A light thud next to her alerts her—proves her right. Steve. He places a glass of water on the side table with a furrowed brow.
“She got a fright,” Nancy says quietly, over Holly’s head. “She’s okay.”
Steve hums in understanding. Crouches beside the bed with a soft expression. “You know,” he says, clearly directed at Holly, “I got a fright when I woke up this morning, too.”
Holly sniffs, listening.
“Your sister scared the bejesus out of me. Woke me up by beating the crap out of me. And she looked like, so spooky. Look at her. With those eye bags. Like a little zombie lady.”
Nancy can’t find it in her to protest any of that. Steve gives her a small smirk, joins her in waiting for Holly’s breathing to slowly settle to something semi-normal.
“Want me to stay with her?" Steve asks. "You were going downstairs.”
Holly stiffens in her arms—Nancy’s shaking her head before he’s even got all the words out.
“No,” she says. “No, I’ve got her. But—can you go check on Mike? He needs to—to have breakfast.”
Steve softens. Nancy knows him well enough to know when he’s identified a losing battle. He spares them a quick look, and nods, and goes to do as she’s asked.
Nancy presses another kiss to the top of Holly’s head. Hopes she can’t feel how her own heart races, pounds, how her pulse is pumping hard enough to disorient her.
She was hoping she’d never hear her sister scream like that ever again.
Wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry,” Holly whispers, shrinking even further into Nancy’s hold. “I’m sorry I-”
“Hey, no. No way.” Nancy pries her off her chest gently. Finds her tear-streaked face and her bloodshot eyes. Wipes her cheeks with her thumbs. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Okay? Not a thing.”
Holly’s face crumbles. She sniffs and she nods and folds back into Nancy’s hold, and Nancy lets her, rocking her gently.
“I want Mom,” she whispers, the words wet, and Nancy feels her heart crack. “I wish—I wish Mom was here.”
Nancy squeezes as tight as she can without hurting her.
“I know,” she says, forcing the tremor out of her voice. “I know you do.”
////
Steve fetches pizza for dinner, like it’s all any of them eat now. Nancy wonders if she’s supposed to make sure Holly’s eating vegetables, and figures there’s tomatoes and peppers and mushrooms on one of them, so who cares.
She fetches a bottle of Mountain Dew out of the fridge and manages a glass of bourbon and Coke for herself in the process.
She drinks it fast, picks at a slice of pepperoni and listens to the boys debate the perfect pizza toppings. Mike eats one and a half slices, which is good enough, and Holly sits deep in conversation with Dustin about something. It’s nice to hear nonsense swirl around them, white noise for the underwater feeling. Nancy doesn’t participate. When it’s time to discard all the pizza boxes she takes the opportunity to fix herself another drink and drinks it standing at the sink, staring out the window.
She misses her mother. And her father, in a way. Their presence, their routines, their voices moving through the house. What Nancy wouldn’t give to hear them arguing. She annoys herself by wanting it, so tries not to.
Robin doesn’t appear.
Everyone else is here, except for Max, who Lucas says should be allowed out of the hospital sometime next week, and El, who’s dead.
Robin should be here. It’s wrong that she isn’t.
Nancy ignores the unbearable obviousness of the wrongness, until she has to redirect her energy to ignoring the guilt lining her stomach at being the reason for it. Doesn’t have the energy to do both, it seems.
Probably she deserves that.
////
She gets a lot of reading done. Silly mystery novels, mostly, including one she’d started weeks ago and can finally pick up and finish.
She lies next to Holly while she sleeps with her bedside lamp on and a book in her hands, the house silent around them, save for the TV warbling quietly downstairs or someone coming up to use the bathroom.
She’s not a fan of it, she decides quick. The night.
But. She gets a lot of reading done.
////
Somewhere near two in the morning she runs into Dustin, once.
He’s sitting on the floor by the bathroom door, tiredness clear in the slump of his shoulders. The light above the staircase is on, casting shadows.
Nancy hasn’t seen much of him, but he’s been here a lot. She aches for him immediately—sweet, silly Dustin—and tries to tamp it down. She’s not sure she can handle another person to be responsible for, as much as she might want to. He has a mother. Why isn’t he at home with her?
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting.”
Nancy figures he’ll have a lot more to say, and it turns out he doesn’t.
“You?” he asks.
The question surprises her.
I live here.
I needed to pee.
I don’t sleep anymore.
He’s holding a folded bath towel and some pajamas and an overall air of… patience?
Nancy looks at the closed bathroom door, and to him. She can hear the shower running.
“You can use our parents’ bathroom if you want.”
“Nah. Thanks. He’s probably almost done.”
She looks at the door again. Thinks about it.
“Mike’s in there?”
“Yeah.”
He’s showering. Finally.
The thought fills her with relief, and the relief fills her with sadness.
“That’s… That’s good,” Nancy manages. “And you’re…”
Dustin shrugs one shoulder. He’s looking blankly at the bannister, the stairs disappearing down on the other side.
“He didn’t want to be alone.”
Nancy’s throat tightens. Her eyes fill. She blinks it away.
“Oh,” she whispers.
The water’s stopped, and the door cracks open a moment later. Lucas.
Dustin gets up and hands him the towel, the pajamas. They’re Mike’s. They’re for Mike.
“Thanks,” Lucas says. He glances at Nancy, nods a quiet acknowledgement. And he disappears behind the door again.
Dustin looks at Nancy.
Nancy can barely see him.
Thank you, she thinks. She doubts he’ll be able to hear her.
She squeezes his arm on her way past, which is hopefully louder.
////
Steve makes as much of a routine out of facilitating a daily hospital trip as he seems to be doing with sleeping on their couch.
Nancy wants to yell at him about having his own home to go to, or how she’s perfectly capable of driving if driving needs to be done, until she realises that if Mike and Holly and Will and Lucas are clambering into his car, and Nancy doesn’t because her Dad’s in a coma and she can’t look at her mother without wanting to die, and Dustin’s spending the day with his mom, and Robin’s never coming back after how Nancy treated her, then Nancy will have the house to herself. She’ll be alone. It’ll be quiet. Peaceful.
She does laundry.
Washes dishes.
If she’d gone to the hospital she could’ve convinced them to let her Mom come home.
She drinks coffee, until she wants something else. Isn’t fussy about it. Stands in front of her dad’s little drinks cart and mixes something with the last of the Coke from the big bottle Steve brought with the pizza the night before and has no choice but to skip the Coke when she makes the next one. After the third, it stops burning. It’s just warm. Warm and quiet.
She sits on the living room floor with the bottle and stares at the silent TV.
She drinks until she’s hungry, and sits until her ass goes numb.
The room tilts when she stands. Her lips are going numb. She puts the bottle on the coffee table. It thunks onto the carpet. Nancy frowns at it. Tries to pick it up. Knocks it out of reach. Leaves it.
She can hear her breathing in her head.
Her dad’s record player is next to the TV. Nancy thumbs through the records stacked in crates under it. Stops on Springsteen. Her Mom loves this one.
The opening bars of Born In The U.S.A. crash into the living room. All the dead space fills up. Nancy closes her eyes. Tips her head back.
Yes.
Yes!
How many times has she heard this song, this album? How many times has she watched her Mom dance around the house? Holly, as well, the two of them jumping and air-drumming and singing? Not a care in the world? Not a single, solitary thing to keep either of them up at night?
Nancy imagines joining them. Bounces and wiggles and scream-sings and plucks another bottle off the cart and drinks and spills and dances until the room spins and she has to sit down again.
It doesn’t stop spinning when she sits.
Weird, to be underwater and spinning. She’s never been much for swimming.
She lies down. It helps.
Brings the bottle to her lips again and…
Oh. It’s empty.
She pouts at it, and it doesn’t magically refill itself. She tosses it aside, watches it roll across the carpet.
Sings at the ceiling, loud as she can. Holly’s voice. Her Mom’s. Mike and her Dad. She cackles, her impersonation of her father too much to bear. Shit.
She’s parched, all this singing. She grips the arm of the sofa and hauls herself to her feet.
The carpet bucks her off. Catches her.
She takes the hint. Stays where she is, on her belly, thirsty and floating.
Springsteen keeps spinning, and so does the room.
Nancy closes her eyes and surrenders to seasickness.
////
Nance? It’s me.
Steve said to use the key under the…
Oh. Shit—Nancy.
Hey, you okay? Nancy?
Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes for me?
God, what… How much did you…
Alright. It’s, it’s okay, let’s… Easy does it-
Ow, freaking—Son of a-
You gotta help me out here a bit, okay? I can’t lift you.
Nance?
Nancy?
////
Mike says Holly can sleep with him. He says it quietly, like he says everything lately, but it’s more words in one sentence than he’s said in the past week all put together, a week of Holly sleeping in Nancy’s room, Nancy’s bed, and Nancy not, but holding her tight all the same. Guilt sluices through her at the thought of having neglected one sibling for another—Holly being younger, Holly needing her sister, Holly being Holly.
Mike is fading before their eyes.
They should all drag their mattresses into the basement and never leave one another’s sight again.
Holly gets up and wraps her arms around Mike’s hunched frame, slouched and slipping away in his spot on the basement sofa.
“Thanks,” she says to him.
“Sure,” he croaks.
When it gets dark Nancy helps her move a couple things into Mike’s room—just down the hall if you need me, she says, pointless—and skips her evening routine. Uses the bathroom without bothering to brush her teeth, or shower. Gets into bed. Wishes she had a lock on her bedroom door. Or a gun.
Wishes someone were up here with her. That if she has to lie in bed alone and wait for the night to be over, she could do it with someone else next to her.
And if she can’t do that, she could at least go downstairs and drink until she’s learned how to swim.
Steve would probably have something to say about it. He’s set up on the couch yet again. Nancy had hoped he’d be gone by now. It’s her fault he isn’t. She can’t imagine him finding her passed out on the floor, having to pick her up and deposit her on the couch, would’ve made him feel better about leaving her to her own devices.
She can hear him watching the TV on low, some action movie. Tries to appreciate the white noise of it. Pretends it’s her dad or her mom or Mike, a football game or a documentary, and lies on her bed and listens to explosions and gunshots and screams.
She rolls onto her side. Breathes in. Breathes out. She left her bedside lamp on. Stupid. She turns it off. Turns it back on.
She should try reading her book.
She could shower. Eat something?
Her mouth fills with saliva.
She rolls onto her other side. She can feel her pulse in her stomach, a heavy throb, an unease. In the distance, the TV keeps exploding. She squeezes her eyes closed. Then forces them open. Stares unfocused at her bedroom wall, her closet door.
Downstairs, the noise continues. Bombs and bullets.
She blinks, and it’s not the same.
She’s squinting. Focusing. Aiming.
Can feel the butt of the rifle Murray gave her wedged against her shoulder.
The pressure of a trigger under her finger.
The jolt of recoil.
Her heart stutters, and the stuttering makes her cough.
Something else explodes, somewhere behind her. More shouting. Men. Soldiers. Kay’s men—yelling, falling, running. Bleeding.
Bang.
She can hear them.
Bang.
See them.
Bang.
She can’t stop coughing.
One after the other after the other.
Steady.
Aim.
Fire.
Nancy falls—topples. Crashes onto the ground on her hands and knees, hacking, gasping, rattling. Her fingers dig into the dirt. Her body bows. Bullets pop and crackle around her. She shudders. The ringing in her ears intensifies—the chug of a magazine emptying, the clink of spent bullet casings. She ducks.
They’re shooting back.
They’re shooting back and if they can’t make it into the Upside Down the world’s gonna end and Holly’s gonna die all because she couldn’t do her job-
Nance.
She has to—They have to keep moving, they have to keep—She has to keep shooting, she has to keep killing. If she doesn’t kill them, they’ll kill everyone else.
Fucking hell, where’s her gun?
Nancy-
Sweat drips down her front. Her lungs hurt.
“Nancy!”
Robin’s voice.
Robin can’t be here.
Robin’s too good to become a killer.
“Nancy—Hey—Look at me. Look at me-”
Nancy’s head is pulled up, gaze torn away from the dirt and dark and damp to—to Robin—Robin with wide eyes, Robin focused, Robin scared, about as scared as she’s ever looked fuck fuck no-
The ringing in her ears intensifies.
You already failed.
You’re a murderer and it didn’t even matter.
“No,” she chokes. “No, what, no-”
Another noise, like—like static, like water-
“Shh—You’re okay, you’re okay—Nance—Babe-”
“We have—The soldiers, we have to—Because Holly-”
Another explosion. She flinches. Where is her fucking gun?
“Robin-”
“Hey-”
“Get down, get-”
“No, hey-”
Shoving, gripping, pulling—Christ, they’re going to get shot.
“You’re not there. You’re not there. Look at me. Nancy.”
Her fingertips ache from digging into the ground. Dirt under her nails. Dirt under…
Nancy blinks.
Her eyes refocus, slow.
Carpet. Soft.
No dirt. No ground.
She goes still. Her pulse and lungs and blood continue to thrash and wail but Nancy freezes.
Something on her face—that’s—that’s not imagined. Her hair’s fallen—she shakes her head, starts to sit up-
“It’s okay,” Robin says, her forehead grazing Nancy’s and her—her hands, it’s her hands, holding Nancy’s face, thumbs on her cheeks. The husk of her voice is low. Soft. Close. “It’s just me. It’s me. Everything’s alright.”
Nancy blinks again.
Blinks at Robin.
At the carpet.
At the side of her bed, by her shoulder, and when she sits up some more, at her bedsheets, which are tangled around her legs.
“I don’t…”
Her voice comes out hoarse. Her mouth is… wet, excess spit and panic. Her nose is running. She’s not crying. But she’s not not-crying.
“You're okay,” Robin tells her, for the hundredth time, and her hands are still on her face. Her thumb strokes a soft line across Nancy’s cheek, and Nancy feels the contact like a balm. “Just breathe.”
She doesn’t know anything about what’s happening right now, but she knows everything’s so, so much quieter with Robin Buckley’s hands on her face.
Nancy leans into it—the balm, the quiet. Her eyes close. Warmth spreads down into her chest. It’s like the bourbon, except it tastes better.
She takes a shaky breath in, and lets it out.
Robin keeps whispering.
That’s it. Just breathe. Everything's okay.
Another voice reaches her, nearby—impossible to ignore.
“What’s going on?”
Nancy’s eyes snap open.
Holly.
Nancy straightens, wipes at her face. “I don’t—She can’t see me like-”
Robin’s already nodding. “I know, it’s okay. Steve’s gonna-”
“Hey munchkin,” comes another voice—Steve. Because of course Steve’s here, too. “Sorry about the ruckus. Nance is just…”
Nancy looks over her bed in time to see Steve stepping into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.
“Nance. Just focus on me, okay?”
Nancy looks at Robin.
Her hair’s pulled into her usual half-ponytail. Denim jacket and flannel. She’s not wearing any makeup. Dark smudges under her eyes, face pallid, freckles stark in contrast. Pale lips. Nancy watches her tongue dart out to wet them.
“Still with me?” she checks.
Nancy has her hands on Robin’s wrists, and now Robin’s hands lower to rest on her shoulders. Nancy finds herself staring at Robin and reaching for her face. Her fingertips touch her chin, light. Slide to cup her jaw. Her skin is a little tacky. Warm. Robin.
For some reason, Nancy thinks of Springsteen.
“You’re here,” she says.
Robin smiles. A fragile little thing.
“Sure,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Nancy bows her head and sniffs with her hands fisting in the flaps of Robin’s jacket like a tether.
“I, uh…” She stops. Isn’t sure what she’s trying to say. “Sorry. I don’t…”
“Heard you fall out of bed,” says Robin, like it needs saying.
“I was… in Murray’s truck. Shooting at the…”
“You’re not.”
“It was like a memory but it was all…”
A new voice reaches her.
“You okay?”
Nancy’s head jerks around.
Steve’s back, stood in the half-open doorway, looking as concerned as Robin does. Did he even knock?
“She’s all good in the hood,” Robin answers for her. “Right, Wheeler?”
Nancy manages a nod, feeling cotton-headed.
You’re in your room, she tells herself, thinks of the carpet again, against her toes, her knees. Robin’s hands on her face, head, neck. You’re in your house.
A tremor rocks through her, adrenaline abandoning her in a vicious taper.
No bullets. No bodies.
“I’ll… get you some water,” Steve says, and the door closes quietly before she can tell him not to bother.
She doesn’t need water. She needs… She doesn’t need water.
Nancy stands up slower than she means to. Robin helps her untangle her feet from the blankets she brought with her when she lost her mind a little bit.
“What are you—doing here?” Nancy asks, because she keeps having to ask people that.
Like everyone else, Robin doesn’t really answer.
“Currently, contemplating how to build a life on your bedroom floor.”
It’s too absurd a statement for Nancy’s brain right now. She doesn’t respond.
“I, uh…” Robin clears her throat, and Nancy thinks she hears some embarrassment to it. “Think I’m gonna need your help here.”
Nancy blinks dumbly at her.
Robin’s kneeling on the floor in front of Nancy, and now she’s got her hands splayed on the carpet like she’s stuck there. Why’s she…
Her ribs.
“Oh. You can’t-”
“Not really.”
“Yeah—of course. Here.”
Nancy crouches to take both her arms, helps her stand in as straight a line as they can manage. She winces, which Nancy figures would be the worst of it, until she moans, swallowing a yelp.
Nancy frowns at her, gripping her arms. How’d she even get down there to begin with?
“Robin…”
“It’s fine,” Robin says, expression tight. “Just, uh—y’know.”
“You should go back to the hospital.”
“Hard pass. Thanks so much. What?” she adds, to Nancy’s look. “I told you—it’s just bruising. Rest, relaxation, etc. The end.”
“Have you been resting?”
Robin cocks an eyebrow at her. “Have you?”
“I’m different.”
“Alright, how?”
Nancy doesn’t answer that. Waits for Robin to steady herself properly, and uses the opportunity to do the same. There’s an off taste in her mouth. Her head aches.
“I’m good,” Robin mutters, only half-convincing.
“Good,” Nancy mutters back, only half-listening.
She runs her hands down her front, straightens her pajama top, her sleep shorts, and pretends she can’t feel Robin’s eyes on her, Robin’s concerned gaze, just as acutely as she’d felt her hands. She doesn’t feel anything, she tells herself, and doesn’t need to, either. She’s just tired. And there isn’t anything Robin Buckley can do about that.