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Demodogs have a way of disrupting the best laid plans.
They were crouched out of sight in the shelter of the radio station, on the verge of their climb up the radio tower when the pair of dogs appeared in their path. Lucas caught sight of them and with a quiet yelp dove back behind the pile of rubble they’d turned into a prep area. Steve couldn’t decide if this was bad luck or good–good that they hadn’t run into any other demos to this point, bad that these two were here, good that no one had been out in the open when they showed. Good that it seemed the dogs weren’t here guarding the tower or hunting for them–as far as Steve could tell they were just roaming, and that left options. Not great options, but options.
The group crouched as low as they could, muscles tensed for a fight or a run, trying to work out a plan of action in total silence. Steve ran the math.They had no idea when the Abyss would start lowering, could be now, could be in a few hours, but once it did the margin for error was small. El was getting into position, and in the meantime there was a very large tower to climb, and they had to be at the top when that other world in the sky started to drop, leaving very little time to sit and wait for demodogs to wander off. They could fight, instead. Demodogs were tough, but two was doable. But then there was the hive mind issue. Getting the dogs’ attention meant the possibility of getting a whole lot of attention from every nasty thing hiding (and not hiding, Steve thought with a glance at the vines sprawling everywhere) in the Upside Down. Attracting that attention here, to the tower, could very well be a death sentence, especially if reinforcements showed as they were climbing. Steve glanced at the kids (not really kids anymore). Dustin, Lucas, the others, they were still calculating. Searching for a plan that would account for everything and preserve the mission. There were too many variables. The math didn’t work. Steve had never been good at math. So Steve acted.
Steve nudged Jonathan’s shoulder. “Keep to the plan. I’ll catch up with you in a bit,” he ordered. He was on his feet before any of the others could process what he was about to do, or tell him not to, charging into the open in front of the dogs, whistling sharply, and sprinting off with them on his heels. Away from the tower. Away from the group.
Admittedly, using himself as bait to draw the dogs away was probably not his best idea. But hey, you do what you know. Muscle memory. (It did occur to him that his plan, if it could be called that, was disturbingly close to Eddie’s final stand. The one that he’d just told Dustin was so pointless and stupid.) And the dogs had taken the bait, eager for a snack. He’d cut across the far side of the field, giving himself a pretty good headstart, but it was still only a matter of time before they caught up with him.
Running felt good, his body in rhythm, blood pumping. No wormholes or visions or jealous boyfriends to think your way around, just a pure sprint. The hill fell away below him, and he was among the rows of skeletal houses before he heard the demodogs closing on him. Breathe in, breathe out. Think like an athlete. It’s just a sport like any other. He counted down. Three paces more. Stay where it’s clear. Plant your feet. Turn. Stab. One fluid motion–plant, spin, lift the spear-
Steve brought the spear around, aimed at the gaping maw, just as the first demodog leaped, propelling itself onto the blade with all its strength. They both hit the ground, toppled by the arrested momentum. The air went out Steve with a grunt. The demodog died with a shudder.
Steve scrambled to get his feet back under him. The second demo had pulled up short to avoid the tangle of metal and limbs and flesh, a momentary hesitation that kept Steve from an instant end. His spear was buried deep in the dead demo. Halfway to his feet, Steve pulled unsuccessfully on the weapon, managing only to shift the whole mass of flesh and send demo-blood oozing across the ground. The living demodog crouched for a pounce.
Three sharp rapid gunshots split the air. The bullets hit the demo in the ribs, staggering it. Nancy stood in the street, breathing hard from the sprint, cradling her rifle.
The demodog roared and turned toward Nancy, met by another burst of gunfire, pushing it back. Steve wrested his spear free from the corpse on the ground. He lit it with a small butane torch (never go into the Upside Down without a source of fire) that he’d produced from his pocket. Again a hail of bullets from Nancy pushed the demo back. The flames caught Steve’s spear. Nancy paused her assault. Seamless, like passing the ball. Steve lunged forward where the bullets had been seconds before, and ran the demo through the ribcage with his flaming spear. Like a play they’d run a hundred times. The beast burned and shrieked. More bullets. Another stab. A perfect pass. And the demodog died.
Steve and Nancy stood for a moment, eyes locked on each other, catching their breath and listening to the eerie echoing peals of thunder that characterized the Upside Down. A jarring calm after the brief furor of battle.
“I told you guys to keep to the plan and go on without me,” Steve pointed out.
Nancy smiled in that way she had, like she was about to dare you to something. “Well it’s a good thing I don’t listen to you.”
Steve grinned back. To be honest, two dead demodogs was nothing to sneeze at. It felt pretty good. A lucky victory to start off this crazy assault.
He glanced down at the remains. “You know, I really thought that fighting these guys would attract something worse-”
They were jerked through the air as if by invisible puppet strings, flying back from each other. Nancy crumpled against a fence and lay still. Steve hit the open street and rolled a little, dazed and a little winded but otherwise unharmed.
And there between them was Vecna. Alive and well, despite their best attempts. A vision of death itself, come to call them to account.
He seemed not to notice Steve, though he’d been aware enough of his presence to toss him aside like a broken toy. All his focus went to Nancy. With slow, purposeful, stalking steps, he advanced on her prone form. The claws of his hand extended, reaching indolently toward her.
Steve’s spear slashed across Vecna’s back, a wild swing, prompting a roar of pain or outrage. Still the blow glanced off, leaving only a shallow wound in the unnatural crags of his back. Blind terror and adrenaline fuelled Steve as he drew back the spear to strike again, knowing full well it wouldn’t be enough. The blow never got to land. Vines sprang up from the ground, grabbing Steve by the ankles and pulling him off his feet. He hit the ground hard, the wind going out of him. The spear rolled out of his reach, extinguishing the last of its flames. Flinging himself after it, Steve strained against the vines. There was still a chance if he could cut himself loose- Vecna caught him by the throat. Steve let out a strangled, gurgling gasp as he was lifted off the ground by his neck. He clawed futilely at the monstrous, viney arm.
Vecna pulled him closer, bringing their faces only a few inches apart, so that Steve was staring right into his eyes–the last part of him that almost looked human.
“Steve Harrington.” He said it slow, dragged out, as if he were reading back through a file of all the stolen memories of Steve that he’d collected. His grip tightened, forcing Steve to fight a little harder to breathe. “You burned me.” Images flashed into Steve’s head, Vecna’s projections forcing their way behind his eyes. Driving the demogorgon into the trap in ‘83, so Jonathan could ignite it. The tunnels in ‘84 when he’d tossed the lighter into the hub. The Creel house in ‘86, throwing molotovs with Robin and Nancy. And he felt it. Just for a second, he felt the hive mind burn. Flames biting at his skin, devouring, scourging. If he’d had enough air, he would have screamed.
Something like a smile crawled over Vecna’s face. “You think you’re not like them. Chrissy. Fred. Patrick. Max. You think you’re strong. That you can endure; Ignore; Outrun the truth about the world.” Steve fought to pull in another breath. He pried at Vecna’s arm, not even thinking of escape or fighting back, just of easing the pressure to make getting air a little easier. Then it was his own memories Vecna was drowning him with, each one painfully clawed out of him. Eddie’s mangled body. Bats gnawing on his stomach. A cold steel Russian cell. Billy’s fists against his face, then Jonathan’s. Nancy tangled in Jonathan’s arms (or was that memory pulled from her head?). A big house of empty hallways and locked doors, and Steve so small and so alone.
The edges of Steve’s vision dimmed. Vecna’s growl was out loud, but it was also in his head, deafening, echoing, inescapable. “An empty house for an empty boy. They will always leave you, always abandon you. You will always be alone because everyone knows that inside you is nothing. Nothing talented. Nothing special. Nothing to love. Just a pretty shell. A weak tool they will discard when it breaks.”
Steve’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his limbs stiffened.The memories cascaded into something more like a vision. He was in a long hallway–the base beneath Starcourt–running. Something was at his back, in a spreading darkness swallowing up the hallway, chasing him. Trying to kill him. Don’t look back. Just run. Faster. Then his hands were tied in front of him, and he stumbled. In less than a beat of his panicked heart, the hallway changed, and he was somewhere else. His parents’ house with dreamlike distended dimensions, grander than reality, everything huge and cold, stretching endlessly around him. But no windows or doors. The restraints binding his hands tightened. Whatever was chasing him was gone. Everything was gone. Just a neverending maze made out of the house his parents imagined. But the urgency remained. Get out. He frantically ran his hands over the walls, looking for a seam, an opening. Get out now. It was not a house at all. It was a magnificent tomb to seal him into, to be discarded and forgotten.
“You cannot escape it. You cannot run from it.” Vecna’s hand twitched, and Steve’s leg snapped. “Better to die here.”
The rifle blast hit Vecna in the back. Steve snapped back to reality. Nancy cocked the gun again, a little unsteady on her feet, a slight trickle of blood on the side of her face, a look like murder in her eyes as she took aim.
Vecna whirled, putting Steve between him and Nancy like a shield. His broken leg dragged across the ground and for a split second, Steve’s vision went black.
***
They hung for a minute, suspended in time. Nancy kept the gun raised, wishing away the tremor in her hands. When Vecna had showed her his history, there had been a moment, a rabbit caught in a trap… The gun did her no good as long as Steve was in the trap.
“Hello, Nancy.” His voice crept over her like ice burning against her skin. His very presence disrupted her gravity, threatened to send her spiraling downward. The memories of his visions rose up in her throat like vomit until she swallowed them back down, willing herself not to relive them.
“Still fighting?” Vecna tilted his head to the side, considering her with the ease of a well-fed predator eyeing prey. His eyes slid from her back to Steve, as if just remembering he was there. “Is this the one you wanted? The one you betrayed yourself for?”
The vision of Barb’s body slipped through her defenses, into her memory.
“Would you do it again?” He advanced toward her, just half a step, and she flinched backwards. “What would you trade for him this time?”
Steve’s back was to her. She wished she could see his face. If she could meet his eyes and hold on to him that way–
Vecna’s patience seemed to grow suddenly thin. “Why do you keep fighting? I will remake it all. Make it into something pure. But this-” He shook Steve slightly. “This is what you fight for?” Steve choked and pawed impotently at the vise around his neck. “This is what you would save? Your town is nothing. Hypocrites hiding in their smallness, their ordinariness. Insignificant. Like insects. Even they know that their lives are worth nothing. And this one.” He raised Steve higher so that his feet no longer dragged on the ground. Steve kicked a little, almost more of a twitch. “And this one. ‘King Steve’”--another stolen memory–”a petty ruler fit for a town of empty smiling shells of people hiding their petty corruptions.”
Nancy hated that the words wouldn’t come. Nothing she could do to stop him from killing both of them and no words to answer back his taunts. She just stood there and let them seep from him like toxic fumes. She could only choke out one word, tremulously: “No.” Like a lighthouse, as she drowned, the simple assertion that he was wrong. About all of it. About Hawkins. About Steve.
Vecna growled deep in his throat. “I want you to see. Before this is over you will see the truth purify your town as I remake it.”
More memories breaking through Nancy’s walls–the town splitting open, monsters pouring in, people dying. Her family dying. Her breath hitched.
Vecna sneered. “Until then, I’ll give you both a gift.” His arm moved like a snake strike, and his talons pierced through Steve’s stomach, just above his belt. “I’ll let you watch him die slow. Then maybe you’ll remember him.”
Steve dropped to the ground in a bloody heap. Nancy stood frozen, her eyes locked on the blood dripping from Vecna’s claws. It was like they’d gone straight through Steve into her, ripping her lungs out of her chest, pulling out her spine and leaving her paralyzed. She did move, though, just too slow. Her gun came up again, and she fired off another shot, sloppy and off-balance. But Vecna was already gone. For a heartbeat she thought about going after him. Continue the mission. Make him pay for everything he’d done.
She dropped her rifle and scrambled to Steve.
Blood had already soaked a dark circle across his abdomen. He was awake, teeth clenched, hands shakily resting over the wound in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding. His breath came in rapid gasps, shuddering against the pain as every inhale tugged at the wound.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Nancy pressed her hands over his. As if that would make the difference against the flow of blood.
Steve swore through gritted teeth. “That’s what I get for running my mouth. Jinxed us.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and tipped his head back. “I was right though. About fighting the dogs attracting something bigger.”
“Shut up, Steve.” Nancy struggled out of her jacket, and bunched it up against the blood. Watch him die slow, Vecna had said, but it wasn’t nearly slow enough. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
His eyes were wide. Terrified. Unfocused from pain. Already he looked pale. Not again, not again, not again, raced through her head in time with her pounding heart. And, like a dull roar in her ears, Not him. Not Steve.
The Upside Down was like the real world but empty, twisted, cold and decayed. Of course it would take Steve, of all people. It was the truest thing to its nature that it could do. He was antithetical to it. Of course it would snuff him out.
The glint of something metal caught her eye. The butane torch lay a few feet away, where Steve had dropped it.
Well, alright then. She’d be antithetical to it too. If the Upside Down was a frozen world trying to drown his flame, she’d be gasoline. And they’d blow the damn thing up.
Nancy darted to the torch and snatched it up. She held it up for Steve to see.
“We have to cauterize the wound.”
If possible Steve’s face got even paler.
She rushed to explain. “We need time–”
“Do it.”
He always trusted her so much.
Nancy knelt at Steve’s side again. She moved her jacket and peeled back his soaked shirt. Back in another life she’d done this before, under very different circumstances. Three puncture wounds. Ragged, alarming tears in his being. But small enough that this might just work. Steve twisted his bandana into a rope and put it between his teeth to bite down on. She thought about giving him her hand to hold onto, but figured that she’d better have both hands at her disposal. She passed him her jacket instead, and he gripped it like a lifeline, already white-knuckled. Nancy hesitated, torch poised over his skin. This was insane. She looked up at him, waiting for him to tell her to stop, that he had a better idea. He met her eyes and gave a small nod.
“Here goes nothing.”
She’d have nightmares about it for years. Her hands dark with blood. Tears on her cheeks. The sight of charring flesh. The smell. And Steve’s scream through clenched teeth. For months that scream echoed in her ears during even her waking hours before it finally consented to be confined to the nightmares.
Steve passed out just before she finished. Mercifully. She felt his whole body go slack under the hand she’d laid on his side to steady herself. Then it was done. The bleeding had stopped, so it at least worked that far. Shaking, she dropped the torch and stumbled away a few steps to throw up. A wave of exhaustion hit her. A labyrinth of impossible steps loomed ahead.
Unconscious, Steve looked smaller than she’d ever seen him. He looks half-dead, the voice in her head supplied, unhelpfully. He was pale, his face still twisted by the pain that had knocked him out. Bruises ringed his neck. The broken leg lay at an angle that made her stomach churn again. His hands were caked in grime and gore. The bandana was still in his mouth–she stumbled over and gently worked it loose. His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. She clung to that reassurance, both a step accomplished and a goal. Keep that beat steady. Stopping the bleeding was a stop gap, buying them time to get to a hospital. There was no telling what kind of internal damage had been done. He’s still slipping away from you. Just slower. Like Vecna wants.
If he died, this was all for nothing, All she would have done is fill his last moments with agony. Isn’t that all you’ve given him for years? All anyone’s given him in return for depthless courage and loyalty–suffering? Well, she was getting him out of here if she had to carry him on her back.
***
“Steve. Steve, you have to wake up now.” The words filtered through the haze of unconsciousness. She jostled him, so his head lolled to one side, not quite able to drag himself back to the land of the living yet. He was aware of her patting his face, but distantly, like it was happening to someone else. The slap brought him back with a gasp.
Sometimes Nancy’s face melted into such softness, like the last oranges of sunset, gentle and tender and full of such warmth. He hadn’t seen much of it lately, but it was there in her shaky smile as he woke. After all this time, that look still went right through him and hooked into his heart, like a harpoon.
“Well, that sucked.”
Nancy let out a staccato burst of teary laughter. “Yeah, it did.”
Together, they got him into a sitting position. He must have been out longer than he’d figured–Nancy, ever resourceful, had taken advantage of the opportunity to crudely splint his leg with a broken fencepost. He was incredibly grateful to have not been awake for that. The gratitude faded a bit when he realized what she intended for the other scavenged piece of wood. A crutch.
“We have to get back to the gate. Get you some help.” There was a note of sympathy and regret in her voice, tacit acknowledgement of what kind of experience this was going to be for him. But even in this, there was the glimmer of excitement that she got, entwined with her bulldog stubbornness, when she had a course of action. The look of a Nancy who thought she could fix something. He loved that look on her. Even if it was unlikely that she was right this time.
If cutting across private property wasn’t an issue (on foot in the Upside Down, it wasn’t), they weren’t really that far from the gate. Not that far, Steve tried to convince himself as Nancy got him upright and set out. Sure you’ve only got one good leg, and less blood than you’re supposed to, but you’ve done harder things. None that came to mind. But still. Not that far.
It was the most pain Steve had ever been in. No contest. Every step jarred his leg, even with Nancy under his shoulder keeping him upright, never letting his foot touch the ground. Worse was the wound in his stomach. Like there was a knife in his gut, slowly twisting, carving a hole into him, hollowing him out. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left. An empty boy… And every bit of him that got carved away left him so. tired. He was drenched in sweat, and he was shivering with cold, and he could feel Nancy sweating under his weight as he leaned more and more heavily on her.
It felt like he was dying.
This wasn’t the first time he’d thought he was going to die. It was the fourth. Or maybe third. Had he actually believed he would die in the Russian base? Now he couldn’t remember. The inevitability of Dustin and Erica saving him then was more real than whatever he’d felt. But at Lovers’ Lake, the Creel House… Those times he remembered the moments, short as they’d been, of lightning strike certainty that it was the end. Still this time felt different. The coldness in his limbs seemed pretty definite, settling in over him like a blanket of snow. You die, I die. That’s what he and Dustin had said to each other. He should have known better. There was no world where he had it in him to let Dustin die by his side.
The houses and yards around them gave way to businesses. Steve had lived his whole life up and down these roads, but trying to picture where they were–how far from the gate–he came up blank, his mind hazy, stuttering between ideas, memories, sensations. Anything to take him out of his body. Wooziness is not a common symptom of rabies. Robin would certainly have some choice words for him. In their more optimistic days of quarantine, they’d made plans. They’d talked about taking trips together. New York, London, Yellowstone–Robin had a whole list of places she wanted to see. Steve cared less about the destinations. And Robin had talked about college and helping Steve reapply so he could go with her. She had a lot of ideas for them.
Steve coughed and quickly wiped his mouth against his shoulder, hoping that in the blue netherworld light Nancy hadn’t noticed the blood flecking his lips.
Selfishly, he wished Robin were here. Safe of course. But here with him. Dying was easier with her. It was probably better that she was nearly a world away, not witness to the mess he’d made of himself yet again. But Nance was here--those ladies didn’t waste a second–having dived in after him again–an unambiguous sign–a pity that he’d never get to really figure out if it all meant something.
Steve was not a defeatist. He wasn’t prone to giving up. But sometimes you had to know when you were beaten. Sometimes all the determination in the world wouldn’t make a bit of difference, only drag out the suffering. Sometimes all you could do was duck your head and shield your face from the blows as best you could. Sometimes you had to face your fate and make a decision about what to do with the time left.
Dustin’s panicked, desperate face from the lab haunted him though. Die here and that’s what you’re doing to him. So one foot in front of the other. Or one awkward hobbled hop after another. Even if with every step it feels like someone’s chopping at your leg with an axe. Even if you’re more tired than you ever remember being. Even if it would be so much easier to just lay down and spend a few last moments with Nance. Don’t let it happen again. Please. Please don’t let it happen again. Not you. One foot in front of another.
The sight of the gate looming in front of them, shook Steve loose from the stupor he’d slipped into so that he could mechanically drag himself forward. A spike of renewed energy, a blind little flash of belief that maybe there was a chance. He felt Nancy laugh more than he heard it.
“We made it,” she said, breathlessly. They hadn’t really spoken the whole walk here; they’d been pouring everything into just moving. But in those three words he heard the reflection of all his own doubts. He laughed too, slightly giddy with hope.
They were ten feet from the gate when he pulled up short. On the other side was the Mac-Z. The military. Almost certainly waiting for them: they hadn’t exactly been subtle coming in.
“Nancy-”
“What are you doing? We’re almost there.”
“I can make it from here. You’ve got to head back to the others now.”
Nancy shook her head. “No, not yet.” She wasn’t surprised by his suggestion though. He could hear it in her voice. She’d been considering this before he had, asking the question of what to do when they got here while he was just focused on keeping on his feet. “I’ll take you through first. Make sure you’re safe.”
“If you go through there, you’ll get arrested.” He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know.
“So will you.”
“And they’ll take me to a hospital, which is kinda where I want to be right now.” It’s my best shot at surviving this. But he didn’t say the last part, didn’t like the way it sounded, certainly didn’t want Nancy to think of this as a Hail Mary.
“So I’ll go with you,” she insisted.
“Yeah, but you won’t. They’ll throw you in a cell somewhere. We both know that’s not where you need to be right now.”
“Steve-” Nancy looked up at him. She was still holding him upright, their faces closer than they’d been since– And her eyes were huge, written with a million fears, some of them for him but many not.
Steve swallowed hard. Keep going before you cave. Be a man, and let her do what she needs to do. Don’t ask her to hold your hand.
“Holly needs you now. Go save her.” That’s where Nancy needed to be. Where she wanted to be, leading the party, saving the kids. Where he wanted her to be.
Still Nancy hesitated, one arm wrapped around him keeping him afloat, the other hand going to her gun in anticipation of that future fight. Steve pulled himself out of her grasp, shifting his weight on to the crutch.
“Please. We made it; I’ll be okay. I need you to do this. I need you to take care of Dustin and Robin and the others for me. Who else is gonna do it: Byers?” He smiled to take the bite out of his words (and to hide the tremor in his voice).
Nancy nodded, ever made of iron. Triage requires a special kind of bravery, and he loved her for it.
She started to turn away, and he found himself calling her back for a second. “Nance-” Not changing his mind. But if this was the last time, he wanted to say…something. “Before you go-”
She cut him off. “No. We’re not doing that. You’ll tell me later.” Steve nodded. More likely they wouldn’t, even if it all worked out. They weren’t very good at having those talks.
Then she kissed him, quick and decisive as her finger on a trigger. It staggered him, quite literally. Her hand was tangled in his hair, pulling his face down to hers, and her eyes were squeezed shut in a wish or a prayer or a memory. For a heartbeat Steve was 17 and dumb and full of misguided belief in the world. And then he was 21, scarred and bleeding and holding on to hope like a weapon. He breathed her in. He wondered if she could taste the blood on his lips. He tasted an unreachable, impossible future on hers. If these were his last moments, maybe this wasn’t such a bad way to go.
Nancy pulled away. If she could pour a thousand unspoken things into a single look; if he could only read them all… “Don’t die,” she said, firm like a promise or a prophecy.
They separated.
***
It was probably for the best that Nancy arrived at the last minute. When she came jogging up to the rest of the party there was a flash of initial relief across all their faces. Then the scanning, confused gaze, as if maybe Steve was hiding behind her, followed by mounting panic. The unasked question resounding, ‘where’s Steve?’ And then it was all cut short by the mindflayer rising from the ground. When a giant hive-mind controlling spider is attacking, you don’t have to answer hard questions or justify your choices or explain to someone just how close to death the most important person in their world might be. Instead you can shout a quick “he’s fine, just had to turn back” that you hope is only half a lie, and you can start fighting for your life, which is easier.
Nancy charged in, guns blazing, to be the leader they’d come to rely on. Fearless, fire and gunpowder decisions. Someone had to bait the monster into the canyon, so she did. In echoes only she heard, Steve tried to beat her to the punch and volunteer. He was always trying to be between the monster and everyone else. Well, he’d already done that once today, so now it was her turn.
Did it help that Vecna was already bleeding when El arrived? Had Nancy and Steve contributed more than a distraction? She hoped so. And she hoped that it hurt.
When Joyce cut off Vecna’s head, Nancy held Barb in her head. This was for her. For her and for Eddie. Because it was unthinkable that she might add a third name to that list. Then Vecna was dead, and the children were freed, and Holly was in her arms. It was a victory she hadn’t quite believed possible. At every fierce insistence that they pursue Holly there had been flashes of her vision of Barb’s body. The despairing part of her heart, she now admitted, had just been determined not to bury another empty coffin. Like Barb’s. Like Eddie’s. (Not Steve. Steve, she was sure, had always believed they would save Holly.) Every moment spent plotting their attack on Vecna had been haunted by the sight of the empty lawn at the Creel house where she had expected to find his body. They didn’t win. Not completely. They never had. And you still haven’t, a voice in her head warned. Not if…
Then the questions descended. Nancy held Holly tight to her chest as she told what had happened with her and Steve–the dogs, Vecna, the blood, the trek back to the gate, sending him through. She told it in as few words as she could. Certainly there were a few key details, horrifying and… otherwise, that she left out. But it wasn’t half lies this time. And as she spoke she felt the eyes going to the blood on her clothes, knew that they were listening to every quaver in her voice. They could feel her fear. Dustin gripped his spear and stared at Vecna’s body, like he would have killed him again if he could have. The blood drained from his face as Nancy spoke, like his life was wrapped up in Steve’s and even the possibility of it fading might bring him down too.
“I got him to the gate and there was military on the other side so I couldn’t take him any farther, and he told me to go back so-”
“Is he okay?” She didn’t know who asked it. She was outside herself, clinging to the reality of Holly’s heartbeat against her chest, real and safe and here, to keep herself from spiraling.
“They’ll take him to the hospital-”
“Is he okay!?” Dustin. Demanding. Pleading.
On their way to the gate, Steve had gotten so heavy, leaning on her more and more. Deadweight. A horrible word. And there’d been pain in every little sound he’d made. Like he was pulling apart. But he was so quiet, no little jokes or humor. What did he try to tell me? And he’d been so insistent that she leave. And I kissed him. Would I have done that if I really thought that he was going to be okay?
“I don’t know,” Nancy whispered.
“Geez, Nance,” Robin snapped venomously. “I knew you were heartless from the way you’ve been stringing him along, but I at least didn’t think you’d leave him for dead.” It was more vitriol than Nancy had ever heard from her.
Dustin flinched like he’d been slapped.
The air went out of Nancy’s lungs. Some part of her had braced for this reaction from them, but she’d expected it reversed. Dustin had been so angry lately, she’d been prepared to take a few hits. And of course Robin would be worried. This was worse. Dustin looked ten-years-old again. He looked like someone had just cut off his leg. Robin looked like she might stab Nancy. Nancy hugged Holly tighter.
Mike leaped up to defend Nancy but too late–Robin was already charging away, as if she would fight her way to Steve by herself if none of the others followed.
The adrenaline was fading. Joyce and Jonathan and Mike were doing their best to wrangle the group and get the kids moving. Steve would have been helpful. Robin would have been helpful. Nancy felt as if she’d turned to stone. The height of the danger was past and she was left with the weight and the weariness on the downward slope to the consequences of it all.
***
Getting arrested was worse than Steve thought it would be. It came at him in a barrage, faster than he could process in his current condition. Soldiers were swarming him the second he was through the gate. He couldn’t even stand on his own–how many guys did they need to take him down? The make-shift crutch, clearly a threat on par with their machine guns, was wrenched away from him, and he went down hard on his side, torn-up pavement biting into his arm. A sound embarrassingly like a yelp escaped him. Max and Vickie were there, already under arrest. At least they’d spared the farce of handcuffing Max. Steve was glad about that. Soldiers were flipping him over, onto his stomach. It felt like being rolled onto a knife. A hot knife. Max was screaming his name. It’d be awful to die in front of Max. To make her watch something like that again. A knee planted in his back, his arms were twisted behind his back, cuffs put on so tight they dug into his skin. What did they think he was going to do? Then he was being hauled up, onto his knees. Which, with the state of his leg, was just about as bad as being forced into the ground.
The chaos of the arrest subsided, leaving Steve swaying and fighting his way back to the mildly tortuous equilibrium he’d managed to achieve on the journey across town. A few soldiers were gathered around him, blocking Max and Vickie from his view. The head military lady… Dr. Kay? Stood in front of him. It took him a moment to drag himself back out of the haze of pain to realize he’d been asked a question.
“Where’s the girl?”
“What girl?” Might as well play dumb since people usually assumed it of him anyway.
She humored him. “Eleven.”
“Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just out for an evening stroll.”
The soldier to his right backhanded him across the face. Steve groaned and spit. No blood. A good sign.
“The Russians hit harder.”
It sounded good. A brave front (and it did make the soldier mad). It would have sounded better if it wasn’t half-gasped and slurred while he swayed, kept up only by the iron grip on his arms.
Right out of the gate, I’m super confident, but I’m also like an idiot.
The soldier kicked him in the stomach.
He didn’t know that pain could literally be blinding. The world shrieked around him. Every muscle gave out, and his face was on the asphalt. One sense overwhelmed everything else–the world shrank down to that blaze of pain threatening to consume him from the inside out. He tipped over the edge and experienced what followed in an onslaught of half-perceived sights and sounds, buffeted between them like waves in a stormy sea. Hands pulling at him, rolling him over. Unintelligible barked commands. “Steve!”--Max’s voice. A gasp, his own. Remember to breathe. Boots around him. “Please! He needs a hospital!” Max again–or Vickie? Tires over gravel. A string of curses– definitely Max. If words could kill. His hands uncuffed; they weren’t moving; wasn’t he moving them? Hate to do this to Max. Glad that she’s here–that I’m not alone. A stretcher. Straps against his arms. “Doesn’t matter. Get him stable.” Someone crying. Darkness crawling up over him, like sinking into a lake. More commands. More shouts. “Steve!” Was he floating? No, carried. Maybe they’d let him float away. Harsh faces in his face. Not Max. Not Nancy. Cold. A truck door slamming shut and now the darkness was around him.
And he passed out.
He woke in the hospital twice. The first time was a weightless haze. The world was static. He didn’t feel much of anything. Maybe he didn’t even have a body anymore. They were talking to him but it was hard to make sense, hard to make himself care enough to listen. Feeling nothing felt good. And he was so tired. Why did they want to talk to him? Trying to listen made him heavy, and it was so much nicer to be weightless, to drift away into the white noise. Maybe he could always feel nothing from now on.They were insisting though, trying to tell him something. A few of their words caught, like scattered papers blown against a fence. Something about needing a second surgery. Something about his leg. Did he still have legs? The room was full of light. He got the sense that they wanted him to nod so he nodded, and he kept nodding until someone–a doctor–put a hand against his face to stop him. Then he was sinking back into haze and sleep.
The second time he was just lucid enough to want. Through the drugs he was only half aware of the hospital room around him, but he knew it was empty and in some indiscernible abstract sense he felt sure that someone should be here by now. The mission should be over.
“Henderson? Nancy?”
He tried to sit up, struggling against the intense gravity pulling him back into the bed. The blankets tangled around him. His arm was wrapped in something. An IV. He reached to pull it out and was stopped short, his other wrist cuffed to the side of the bed.
“Robin! Dustin!”
Steve made another attempt to sit up, urgency rising in his chest. The door flew open and two harried nurses rushed in trailed by a soldier, his hand resting on his holstered gun. The nurses came on either side of Steve, insistently pushing him back down.
“Lie down, lie down.”
“Where are they? Why aren’t they here?”
“You’re going to hurt yourself more.”
He fought their ministrations, stared down the soldier with an addled idea that he could fight his way out. The drugs were strong enough for him not to care how the metal bit into his skin as he tried to pull his hand out of the cuff.
“Nancy!”
One nurse pushed him down by the shoulders.
“Where are they!”
The other nurse prepped a syringe.
“Dustin!”
They sedated him. He sank down again and passed into disturbed dreams of Russians and truth serum, and IVs and handcuffs turning into vines that dragged at him and burrowed into his flesh.
***
The party was, of course, arrested the second they came back through the gate. That was inevitable. They were pulled out of the trucks, hands zip-tied behind them. Max and Vickie were there, and Nancy noted with alarm the teary haggard look on Max’s face. Holly and her friends were pulled away from them and whisked away to who-knew-where. Control and separation. Guns trained on them. Alarming. Stressful. Humiliating, in a way. But none of it unexpected.
El was unexpected. Disappearing in the chaos. Reappearing, ethereally, in the gateway as the Upside Down began to tear apart. Nancy’s heart stopped. Mike was fighting his way toward El. He didn’t make it to her. The hole in the world crumbled and was gone, El with it. Dustin was screaming. Beside Nancy, Will was sobbing. Jonathan had tears down his face. Then it was over, and they were being pulled out of the street. No time to feel the aftermath of yet another loss.
(It was afterwards that Nancy ran through the scene in her mind and saw the seams. She saw it in Hopper and Mike’s faces. Not the devastation she expected, just grief that covered over something else. Something knowing. And she wondered if she’d really seen what she thought she saw.)
They were shuffled off to a large blank room and tossed in together. Within the hour the guards returned and took Joyce and Hopper away. Then they entered purgatory with nothing to do but wait. Waiting to see what Joyce and Hopper could negotiate. Waiting to parse the vacant lost look in Mike’s eyes. Waiting to hear if the kids were okay. Waiting for any word of Steve.
The guards wouldn’t speak to them at all except to give orders, no matter how much they begged for information on the world beyond their makeshift cell. Max had to be the one to confirm for Nancy (with wide eyes and a pale face and a haunted look) that they’d taken Steve to the hospital. But she learned nothing more. Not anything about how he was being treated or how he was doing. Not even any assurance that he was still alive.
He might not be alive anymore.
People can just blink out of your life. Gone. For now or forever. Barb, waiting by the pool and then gone. Fred, stepping away and never stepping back. Holly, vanishing like a dissipated dream. Her father, perennially absent in every way that mattered. Jonathan, much the same, retreating into isolation or California or a cloud of smoke. El, the ephemeral girl, come and gone, come and gone. (Was she dead this time? In her gut Nancy didn’t believe it). All of them, a fleeting force in her life. But Steve…
She’d thought when they’d broken up that he’d fade out of her life. But he always seemed to be there when it counted. Constant. Rooted. True like the seasons. Him dying was unthinkable and all she could think about. The ground had disappeared beneath her feet, and she was in free fall.
They waited for hours and hours. Each of them on their own time slept fitfully for an hour or two and then woke. Nancy tried not to, but exhaustion won out. They were given water but not food. They were also given a bucket. Joyce and Hopper did not return. The guards changed shifts, and they barraged the new ones with the same questions again and were again given only silence. More hours.
The room, their prison, was in essence very much like the Upside Down that they’d just destroyed–a place without time, cut off, answerless, futureless.
Through the endless night and day, Nancy would have broken down if Dustin hadn’t beaten her to it, hurling himself at soldiers whenever they appeared, screaming insults and abuse, begging and demanding in equal measure to see Steve, to get even a scrap of news about him. Nancy channeled the dregs of her energy into that last command Steve had given her: take care of Dustin and Robin. Which had been meant in terms of ‘keep Dustin from getting eaten by a monster’ (well, mission accomplished there), but ended up translating to ‘keep Dustin from pissing off the United States Military so bad he gets shot.’ Calming Dustin, reassuring him, was out of the question. The experience of loved ones dying was far too real to both of them for him to swallow any platitudes. Steve might be dead. They both knew it, and nothing she could say would convince him otherwise. But she could pull him back from the guards. Put herself on the rack and be the one to ask for news again and again because she could do it without picking a fight or screaming. Even though each time she asked about Steve and got stonewalled it just watered that seed of despair in her heart. So redirect Dustin. Send him to pick a fight with Murray instead–Dustin had never liked Murray, largely because Steve didn’t (had Steve noticed that little gesture of love even when he and Dustin were fighting?). Make sure Dustin got water. Get him to sit down and sleep.
Robin wouldn’t accept any of that from Nancy. Wouldn’t be redirected when she was calling the guards morons. Wouldn’t accept any task or discussion. Wouldn’t look at Nancy if she could help it, and when she couldn’t help it froze Nancy with an icy glare. When the guards were out of sight, and Nancy backed off, Robin sat a little ways apart, with Vickie but hardly noticing her, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed on the floor. If Nancy didn’t know any better she would have guessed Robin was praying. Then again, atheists and foxholes and all that.
At some point in the interminable waiting, Jonathan came to check on her. It was kind of him. This was a reversal of the first time they went monster hunting when Will came home and Barb did not. Now her sister was found, and his was lost. (Did he believe El was dead? Did he see what Nancy saw in Mike’s eyes?) He lay a gentle, quiet hand on her shoulder and sat beside her on the ground. It felt like the young days of their friendship. If that hand was a little stiff because of who he was comforting her over, she didn’t hold it against him. She didn’t expect that many years of jealousy to dissipate in just a few days. And she was glad that he didn’t try to tell her it would be all right. He just sat with her for a while so they could worry and grieve together.
Despair builds up slowly. Like flakes of snow. When that gray blanket forms over you, you can either go numb and succumb or scream and rage and fight your way out of it. Nancy had tried both over the past few years. Each minute that passed was a flake, creating a growing conviction that no news was bad news. The guards would just have told them if Steve was okay. So should she rage or succumb?
And then, without warning or ceremony, the door to their prison opened and a soldier swept in, like a wind sending the flakes flurrying. He was here to take one of them to see Steve, a goodwill gesture to further the negotiations being worked with Joyce and Hopper.
The discussion erupted around Nancy. A renewed press for information–would they be getting out soon? Where were the kids, were they all right? What was happening with Joyce and Hopper? What was Steve’s condition?--again met with a refusal to engage. And then a debate over who would go–they all would have let Dustin go, but the soldier insisted it could not be a minor, prompting profanity from every minor in the room. Robin was met with equal resistance. Apparently some bridges were burned in the night, and likely in her time as Rockin’ Robin. Murray offered to go as the only ‘true adult’ and was shouted down on all sides.
Nancy sat in silence with the question in her head. Was this to convince them he was okay or to give someone a chance to say goodbye?
Then all eyes were on her as it became clear that she–fearless leader Nancy–would be the one to go.
Quiet stifled the hospital room, punctuated by the soft disconcerting beeps of the monitors. Steve was asleep. He looked small and pale, a little faded, as if Nancy had left part of him behind in the Upside Down. He was grimy, which seemed odd in a hospital. Blood and dirt streaked his face. His hair was in the worst state she’d ever seen it in, dirty and limp, and probably with its own share of blood in it, both his and the demodog’s. At this point shouldn’t someone have cleaned him up more? The soldiers must have been minimizing the hospital staff’s contact with him. The arm that wasn’t hooked up to an IV and monitors was cuffed to the bed. Not a hospital restraint either. A regular metal handcuff, cinched tighter than necessary. It had left its mark on his skin. Nancy’s own handcuffs had been removed when they pushed her into the room. Robin had talked to her once (only once) about being held by the Russians. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but it kind of made me really mad that they were so misogynistic that they didn’t beat me up. You can drug me and tie me up and definitely would’ve killed me but because I’m a woman you can’t interrogate me? You have to save all that for Steve? Steve was unconscious, stitched together, leg broken, but sure, he was the one who needed to be chained up. Always an extra share of insult and injury for him.
Nancy dragged her feet forward, cautiously, like stepping over vines. She brushed his cuffed hand with her fingertips. She slipped her hand into his. It was dry and cold, but uncomfortable-hospital-room-cold, not dead-cold. She felt the familiar callouses. She rubbed her thumb across the back of his hand, studying the knuckles that were not clenched white against pain. Gently, she squeezed. He stirred slightly.
“Steve. Steve, wake up.”
His eyelids fluttered, and then he came awake with a slight start. His head jerked back, and for a single disoriented second his eyes swept the room wildly, until they came to rest on her and his whole body relaxed again.
“Nance. You’re here.” Sleep (and maybe pain–Nancy couldn’t tell) hung heavy in his voice still.
“Yeah, I’m here.” I’m here now, when it might easily have been too late.
“The others? Are the others okay? Holly?” He made a move like he was going to try to sit up to look for them; Nancy stilled him with her free hand on his knee.
“We got her. Holly and her friends are back.The others are okay. We’re all okay.” Another half lie. There would be time later to raise the question of Eleven, her disappearance, Mike and Hopper’s despairing face for the soldiers and guardedness behind their backs. That was not a conversation for where soldiers might overhear, she was convinced. Let Steve have the simple answer for now; let them think she was just protecting him. “Kali didn’t make it,” she amended.
His brows knit together. A moment of grief for the girl no one really had the chance to know. The girl who never got to find herself a part of something real.
Steve refocused on her. “And did we do it?” he pressed.
Nancy nodded. “Yeah. Vecna’s dead.”
“You’re sure?” Because last time they hadn’t been. They’d come so close and fallen short.
“Yes. The mindflayer too. And the Upside Down is gone. It’s all over. It’s finally over.”
He sagged back into the pillow again, closing his eyes for a second. Against the pillows the fluorescent lights revealed the bruises on his neck.
“And are you okay? How are you feeling?” Nancy asked.
Steve seemed to take stock for a minute. “Yeah, I’m great. They’ve got me drugged up pretty good.” She could hear it in the slowness of his speech.
“They let me talk to a nurse for a minute. She said you had two surgeries. They gave you blood. You’re gonna be laid up for a while, but should recover fine.”
Steve nodded along. “How long has it been?”
“About thirty hours I think.” He’d spent most of that unconscious, she was sure, but he still looked exhausted, full of shadows. “I would have come sooner but they arrested us as soon as we came through the gate. They had us locked away, and they wouldn’t tell us anything about you. I wasn’t sure–” she caught herself. No need to relive all the things that had gone through her head.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything either. I think. It’s kind of a blur, honestly.”
“Robin and Dustin wanted to be here too. They only let one of us come, and I think those two pissed them off too much.”
Steve smiled for the first time. “And you didn’t?”
“Too busy doing your job and keeping Dustin out of trouble I guess.”
“Robin’s the one you really gotta watch.”
I at least didn’t think you’d leave him for dead.
Nancy’s face fell. Steve, fuzzy either from the drugs or weariness, didn’t seem to notice, but did nothing to extend the conversation. The moment stretched between them, drifting from ease into waiting. Guilt wrapped itself around Nancy’s throat, constricting like a snake.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” she blurted.
“What?” It jarred him back to alertness.
“I shouldn’t have just left you there at the gate. I just abandoned you-”
“You didn’t aban-”
“I left you there and you could have died-”
“Nance-”
“And you would have been all alone. You would have died alone and I abandoned you just like he said I would.”
She’d invoked him and it hit like a gut punch, the air knocked out of the room. Steve’s gaze fell from hers. Regret gripped Nancy. This was selfish. Making him relive whatever Vecna had stuck inside his head, making him deal with her own self-reproach. He nearly died and you’re making it about what a screwed up person you are, Nancy’s internal editor chided.
Steve cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I didn’t know you heard that.”
She nodded miserably. Her head had still been spinning from the fall, but she’d heard every word. She’d heard him taunt Steve about how he’d end up alone, and she’d left him behind anyway. What was wrong with her?
Steve shifted a little, restlessly. Any remaining grogginess had cleared from him, replaced by a tightness in his expression, some pain he was hiding to pay for that additional clarity in order to have this conversation with her.
“You don’t-” He sighed. “Don’t worry about what he said. I’m not.” Her expression registered her disbelief. “You know… Vecna lies. Or he’s just…wrong. Like, having powers and weird vine claw things and an army of bats doesn’t exactly make him a great source of life advice. And sure it got to me a little when he was shoving visions in my head-” he paused. It had gotten to him more than a little, it was clear. There was a thorn there, stuck deep inside him, something that would take time to dislodge. Nancy wondered if Vecna’s taunts had sounded a little too much like Steve’s dad. Then Steve pulled up a small smile and shook the haunted moment off with his characteristic grace (bleed, scream, cry, get your head and heart broken, then tell a joke and leap back into the fray for more). “But I know who I’ve got in my corner. I mean, Vecna can see in my head and maybe he is right about me. Maybe I’ve… got no future or whatever. But I know he’s wrong about you guys. You, Dustin, Robin, Max–I know you.”
“But I did leave.”
“You didn’t abandon me, Nance. You got me to safety–you did a little field surgery on me and then practically carried me halfway across town. I’m alive because of you. And what would you have done if you’d stayed? I- I wasn’t even alone because Max was here, and if you’d have stayed you would have ended up exactly where Max was: back at the Mac-Z while I was here.” His words were coming out rushed and excited, tripping over each other in that familiar way he had when he was completely whole-heartedly earnest, that way that meant so much to her.
“I know you especially, Nance. You’d never abandon anyone. Like you didn’t abandon Barb. Like you didn’t abandon me when I went through the gate in Lovers’ Lake. Like you couldn’t abandon Holly just to walk an extra six feet with me. You never stop fighting for people. That’s one of the things I love most about you.”
One of the things I love most about you. He said it unapologetically. People said that kind of thing all the time without it meaning anything. Without it meaning being in love. That wasn’t the case here, and they both knew it. She guessed he was just too tired to play the game of pretending to hide what they both knew.
She stiffened and dropped her gaze.
Steve flicked a glance at the window. The guard that had escorted Nancy stood there with his back to them, Steve’s designated guard nowhere to be seen. Beyond the soldier Nancy could see a nervous looking nurse waiting. No telling when this conversation would be cut short. This had been meant as a proof-of-life visit (in both directions) and that had already been accomplished.
(Absently, Nancy considered and dismissed the idea that they might let her visit her parents. They were keeping this contained.)
Steve cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “Listen, Nance, I- we should…” He closed his eyes as if gathering himself. In doing so he couldn’t hide the tiny grimace of pain that came when he moved. “About the kiss…”
“Oh.”
She’d pretty effectively pushed that elephant in the room out of her line of sight. Apparently not his. He was determined to get this out, like if they didn’t discuss it now, they never would. Not a bad instinct, considering the unfinished conversation that still hung between them 18 months after the fact. Her fault, she supposed. It had been hers to answer.
Steve continued doggedly. “I know that it was a um…intense moment. And you’re with Jonathan-”
“I’m not.”
It pulled him up short. “What?”
“We broke up.”
“I- umm… when?”
“At the lab, when we were trapped in that room.”
“You just thought, what, that drowning in melted building was a good time to talk about your relationship?”
Nancy sighed. She didn’t owe him an explanation. Not exactly. But if anyone could understand it, maybe Steve could. Maybe she needed to tell him. “You know you hear these stories about people in these life or death situations or going through these terrible things and when they get there they think, you know… it’s okay. Because they’re there with the right person. The person they’re supposed to be with. And Jonathan and I, we couldn’t get out and we thought we were gonna die and he had this ring but it was so clear all of sudden that this… wasn’t it. We aren’t the right people for each other. When it ends, we’re not supposed to be the ones standing there together. I think maybe we love each other, but we just don’t fit.”
Steve was studying her, suddenly tense and guarded. “I’m sorry.”
Nancy laughed shortly. “You don’t have to be. We weren’t happy. You don’t have to pretend that you didn’t see it. You more than anyone.”
He pursed his lips. He still looked apologetic, as if he had to apologize for recognizing that her relationship was doomed before she did. They sat in silence for a minute while he digested this. She realized that she’d been holding his hand the entire time. She didn’t pull away.
Steve waded forward, even more cautiously than before. “Well. Still. With Jonathan or not, I just wanted to say that, I know that the kiss wasn’t…I know not to read into it. So you don’t have to worry about that. It was a ‘I hope you don’t die” kind of kiss. That’s all.” He shrugged a little, not meeting her eyes. “That’s fine.”
Did he want it to be that? Did he want her to leave him in peace with just that?
Nancy shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.” She picked at the edge of his blanket so she wouldn’t have to look at his doubtful eyes. “I know that we never…talked about what you said. Back before the quarantine. About your dream. About me.”
“I’m not an idiot. I can read between the lines and figure out that almost two years without an answer is a ‘no.’” He smiled, that soft little smile that he’d given her the night they truly fully ended things the first time, that smile that had–she could admit now–haunted her a little since. It’s okay, Nance. Maybe there was a little bitterness, a little resentment in him about it, but not now in the worn little pocket of time created by the hospital room. Today he was one step back from the edge of death, and it was all yearning and heartache.
She chewed her lip. When they’d broken up in ‘84 she hadn’t noticed the little tear it left in her. Or she had but she thought it was something else. Something for Jonathan to fix. That certainly hadn’t worked out. But that spring break, walking through the woods in the Upside Down, the tear had gotten larger, even if she’d been trying to ignore it since.
“Maybe it wasn’t,” she said, almost in a whisper. She didn’t meet his eyes. “A ‘no.’ For me it wasn’t. It was an ‘I don’t know.’”
“I kinda think that’s the same thing.”
It stung her unexpectedly. He was offering to close the door. It was written in every line of his face; he wanted to close it in the way that he’d wanted to stop hobbling along on his broken leg as she’d dragged him out of the Upside Down. Why couldn’t she just release him and stop forcing him to stand on broken bones? Because you know what you both lose if you do, whispered a voice that usually was drowned out by red pen recriminations, and you know that if you keep going, there’s a gate that takes you home.
“I don’t- You told me that you needed a thump on the head and then you could figure it out and start to crawl forward. I’m not sure that when you talked to me I’d had my thump on the head yet. Just… since that night–since Barb–I’ve spent this whole time, even when there weren’t actually monsters around, fighting. And sometimes it’s like I don’t even know who I’m fighting or what I’m fighting for, I just know that if I stop I’ll drown. Like I’m underwater, and I can’t see where I am.” She paused, studying his hand in hers. “But now I think everything’s about to be over and maybe I’ll finally be able to look around and figure out where I am and what all this was for and… what I want.”
Nancy let herself look at Steve’s face again. He was staring off at the corner of the room. His walls were up. Why shouldn’t he be guarded? Half that time she was fighting hadn’t she been fighting him? He made no move to speak, so she forged on falteringly.
“And I think maybe I just need… a little time. To figure it out. What I was fighting for.” He turned back, and she met his eyes, those stupid, gorgeous, broken-heart eyes. “Can you give me just a little time?”
He didn’t believe her. She could see it. Too many bruises, too many scars, weighing down that weary heart, pulling it away from her. She’d finally stretched that line on his heart too far, and it had snapped.
“Yeah. I can do that.” The flickering flame inside her flared up. What do you do with such indestructible faith? How are you supposed to face that when your own heart is troubled waters? “But Nance…” The walls of a few seconds ago were gone; it was one of those times when his face revealed his entire heart. He let her see the wound in a way he hadn’t done in years, and there was a strength to it. A line being drawn. “If you decide that’s not what you want–I’m not what you want– you have to promise to cut me loose. If I have hope, I’ll spend a lifetime waiting for you.”
She couldn’t imagine her father saying something like that to her mother (he wouldn’t think to, and if he did it wouldn’t be true. She knew that). She couldn’t imagine Jonathan saying it either (and hadn’t she only waited two months for him sophomore year?). But when Steve said it, it was like a vision, not ripping into her mind, like Vecna’s visions, but blossoming. A whole life with Steve. A house full of his light and warmth. Some kids. (Maybe not six. But who would she be without Mike and Holly? And if Dustin was practically a brother anyway…four kids…) Someone for her to come home to. A real partner, ready to study with her in a library or unholster a shotgun for her or to dance with her. Someone to chase after life beside her. (She’d never dragged him anywhere. In her meaner moments, clinging to a different withered dream, she’d thought of Steve as puppy trailing after her, but that wasn’t really it. It was a special kind of lockstep. A mirror impulse to hers to fix the problem, to take up a weapon and fight, that always put them on the same path.) She could picture that life for the first time and could see even her wilder dreams and ambitions growing from its soil.
In all the adults in her life–her mother, Joyce, Hopper–hadn’t it really been their isolation that made Hawkins into a trap for them?
“I promise.”
***
Over the coming days and weeks, as they were released from the military’s custody, Nancy would watch from Steve’s side or from the hospital hallway. She’d watch as Lucas wheeled Max into Steve’s room, and she cried into his shoulder, and he held her. And as Dustin made himself the expert on Steve’s charts and argued with his doctors and made himself a general nuisance. As all the rest of them made their visits to check on Steve–even Hopper giving Steve a little emotionally-stunted hand on the shoulder.
After he was released from the hospital, Steve went to stay with the Hendersons for a little while, until he was back on his feet. He refused to move back in with his parents, even temporarily, and Claudia had insisted before Dustin could even suggest it. In that time Nancy would learn that Steve was possibly the favorite person of every Henderson, including the cat whom she found asleep on his chest on more than one occasion. And when Robin brought over what must have been a hundred movies to watch to help him through his convalescence and Nancy joined them, she watched their easy intimacy, Robin’s head against his knee from her seat on the floor, the seamless exchange of snacks, the rapid fire trading of jokes that somehow interwove perfectly with the flow of the movie. And Max and the boys would circle and converge on Steve on various pretenses to spend time with him, all feeling a little too old to be open in their idolization of him but doing a poor job of hiding it. Trapped indoors, Steve even got roped into a D&D campaign. Mike created a character for him, which Nancy could have informed him was one of the highest expressions of affection Mike gave. During the quarantine she hadn’t really thought about the little life Steve had woven around himself, seemingly without meaning to. It had seemed like survival. Now it seemed like a garden.
In those passing weeks, Nancy would watch other things too. Max’s mom chatting with Lucas’s parents so that she could give her daughter privacy without really taking her eyes off her. Mr. Clarke and Erica and Dustin huddling over notebooks exchanging theories. The slow regression of the military presence as their searches for traces of Eleven or the Upside Down petered out and the stubborn reassertion of Hawkins life pushed them out. The school reopening and Holly and her friends returning, changed but not in the ways Nancy would have feared. Joyce’s hand in Hopper’s as they pretended to grieve and maybe also really grieved. Mike’s furtive gaze that kept darting to the woods at any movement, steely with hope. Her mother, finally home from the hospital, spending hours in conversation with each of her children, relearning them, and rewriting something in the pattern of their household. But gravity pulled Nancy back to watching Steve, the beating center of whatever this new growth from the ashes was.
She would watch and weigh it all in her heart.
Nancy hadn’t thought of Hawkins as beautiful in a long time. Not the town itself. Not the people. Even before the monsters, it had cracked for her. The past four years had left scars on the town and uncovered far older scars. But Nancy could see the beauty in scars, like the ones her mother declined to cover with makeup. Scars were where something had healed. Scars were a victory. Once she admitted that, Nancy started to recognize the beauty again. Because if healing were beautiful, there must have been something in the essence that was beautiful, there all along even hidden by the wounds.
She felt the future shifting before her. Kaleidoscopic. It wasn’t the track she’d felt stuck on for so long. It wasn’t a singular dream either. Maybe it was Hawkins. Maybe it was somewhere else–Chicago, Boston, LA, Iceland. But maybe she was starting to see the common colors making up every different vision. The people–the person who would need to be in it to make it all feel true.
Her weeks of watching would turn to months.
It was in May, when the new growth of spring was transforming into the fullness of summer, that Nancy showed up at Steve’s door with her answer. When she kissed him this time, it wasn’t in the shadow of the Upside Down, spurred by the fear that he might die. It was in the broad light of day, confident in the promise of the abundant life to come.