Chapter Text
Nancy gets a lot of nightmares.
That's not anything new - she's sure the others do too. Have, ever since this all started.
The content of the nightmares is new, though. She hasn't had a nightmare about Barb, admittedly, since she loaded Vecna's chest full of lead, and it's been a long time now since Demogorgons were the villains of her nightmares rather than just side characters. For most of the last year and a bit, her dreams had been full of the earth tearing open and swallowing everyone whole - her family, her friends. Steve, Jonathan, Robin. Sometimes she'd come across one of them, the way they came across Eddie - bleeding out, one of the kids screaming for them.
Now it's just that day, though. That moment. Not the slathering jaws of the Mind Flayer, not watching Steve and Dustin nearly get crushed, not the fire and the pain and not seeing Holly taken by that thing - so many things that could have gone so much worse. So many people who she loves who could have died, and it's not any of that.
Because she understands what happened up there, in a world beyond their own. She understands why it went the way it did, even if sometimes the answer was just 'luck'. It's when they came back down to Earth that the world stopped making sense.
El disappears, and the world feels like it goes numb. She wants to grab Mike, pull him back, tell him he's just going to get himself shot, but she'd just get herself shot doing it. She wants to cry, or scream, or yell about how unfair it is, but -
Hadn't they all been prepared to die for this, one way or another? Maybe El was lucky to get out early, hopefully painlessly. They're all next.
"Shit," the military doctor swears - Kay, Nancy thinks? "That was your little bomb, right? Taking out the wormhole, or whatever?"
Nancy's insides squirm at the thought of this woman reading their plans, but - but they didn't stop them. The plan worked. What good will that information do her now?
She tears through her own mind, trying to work out if this is a problem. She can only assume Erica and Mr. Clarke got away, somehow, because they're not here - god, but Max didn't. She knows it's probably not rational to blame Vickie but she can't really help herself.
She looks up at the doctor again and realises she was actually expecting an answer, staring at their group with increasing anger - she'll lash out if she doesn't get one, shoot someone or -
(Like they're not all dead anyway.)
"Yes," Robin says, voice a little shaky. "The bomb was on a timer, to give us time to get out. The exotic matter was all that was holding the - the wormhole, in place. It's gone, and so are they."
"Other brat must have spilled the beans," Kay grunts. "Fine. We have other options. Lieutenant, start the clean-up here - we're moving out tonight, back to home-base."
"Wait," Robin says, and Nancy can't seem to do anything but stare at her. Mike is sobbing, somewhere, and Holly is with him, and some of the others are getting pulled away, and she can't stop staring at her. Why does Robin having to die with them feel like the shittiest, stupidest part of all of this?
She knows why, but she'll never get to say that. Not that she would have anyway.
"Wait," Robin says again, louder. "Wait, you - you should let the kids go. The little ones. They - they have families, and there's lots of them, and it'll be way too much fuss if you kill them all and like sure, fine, we're stupid adults who got involved in stupid shit and tried to break into your base or whatever so you can get away with shooting us but killing the kids is really way more trouble than its worth!"
She's wrestling with the soldiers the whole time, but they don't look particularly bothered. Nancy wishes she could just shoot them, but they're taking her weapons as Robin speaks and all she can do is look.
"She's right," Nancy says, somehow. "She's right. Most of them weren't even involved. You told their families you'd protect them, who knows how many other people they told about that - you can't cover that up."
Kay finally turns her eyes towards Nancy. She looks amused, raising an eyebrow at the number of weapons the soldiers are removing from her body.
"Oh, please," she says. "We're not killing any of you. Why would we? There's nothing left here for us."
Kay turns around, starts walking towards one of the trucks as the soldiers pull her over to a post and start tying her there - Lucas and Murray are next to her. They're just - what, going to leave them tied up here? Fuck off? After everything?
"Oopsie," Kay says, turning round. "Wait, that's really stupid. Shoot them all, actually. Start with the pathetic little blonde one."
Robin is shoved to the ground, and before Nancy can even think a bullet goes through her head, and -
It usually goes something like that, basically.
There are parts of it she understands. The way El shouldn't have been able to even stand with those emitters pointed at her, Hop's account of Kali's "death" after the fact, the way she'd just disappeared from the truck completely - she hopes those two are doing okay, wherever they are. She wonders, sometimes, how much the others have worked out, but she'll never say a word about it. It was a clever plan, and she can respect that.
She's pretty sure it worked, too - if they'd thought there was any chance El was still alive, all of them would be prisoners right now. To be tortured for information, to be used as bait - they'd be too useful to let go.
But she has no clue why they're still alive.
Her, Hopper, a few of the others - they killed soldiers. Openly. They broke into military facilities, they knew insane amounts about classified operations.
Honestly, she doesn't know why Hawkins is still there. They've all seen too much, all heard too much - Hawkins should have ended up a crater in the ground, the result of a terrible 'accident' at the lab or something. Instead, it was all over the news for months - city finally released from lockdown, strange sightings, conspiracy theories.
The best she has is that Dr. Kay and her mission weren't actually sanctioned. It explains a lot - the comparatively pretty meagre force that was present in the city, the way they didn't seem to care about the existential threat or the other dimensions. It raises even more questions, though - how could a rogue faction of the military ever get away with something like that? Everyone knew it was happening, it wasn't a secret - what lies would have been told to superiors? Why wasn't anyone else sent to check? Why hasn't anyone been here asking questions since?
Nancy doesn't know why she's alive, doesn't know why the people she loves are alive, and it haunts her.
From beside her bed, her alarm clock starts to go off. She reaches over with a sigh and shuts it off.
"Yeah, mom, it's all good here," Nancy says into the phone.
It feels so much worse lying to her mom, now. Her mom, who's every bit the hero she's ever tried to be. Who faced a Demogorgon to save her daughter, who saved her friends' lives.
Maybe Nancy's just been lying too long to tell anyone the truth anymore.
"College is great," she continues. "I mean, our sub-editing module is boring, but the module on interviewing this term is actually really interesting, and there's been some great guest lecturers."
If she's stuck lying, at least she's good at it.
"I'm glad," Karen sighs. "Mike seems to be doing a bit better, recently. He's talking about going to college, doing a course in writing - I think it suits him."
It does. She's pretty sure Mike, at least, has worked out some of the truth. The upswing in his mood was - precipitous. She's happy for him, and a bit worried he's going to go around telling everyone.
"Yeah, he seemed better when I was leaving," Nancy says. "Holly's still handling it weirdly well?"
"That girl is made of steel," her mom snorts. "Honestly, whatever genes it is I gave you to go around with those guns of yours, I must have given them to her in spades. I mean, she has nightmares sometimes, she comes crying to me, but - even that's pretty brave, I think. Braver than I ever was."
Braver than Nancy ever was, as well. It took the threat of death to get her to actually talk to Jonathan, and he's probably the person she's been most honest with maybe ever.
"And you?" Nancy asks. "How are you doing, mom?"
There's a pause. Maybe it's not fair, asking her mother to be honest with her, but -
Nancy can never go back to being that stupid 16 year old who hated her annoying family, especially now that her mom's kicked her dad out. The Wheelers - her Wheelers - killed monsters and saved the world and gave everything they had. Sometimes she thinks the greatest gift she got out of all of this was getting to actually meet her own family.
"I'm getting by," her mom says eventually. "I think Joyce and Jim might be moving away, which is - I mean, I'll miss them. But it sounds like Murray might actually be getting a place here, and Scott's still around, so there are still people who - who understand."
For a second, Nancy almost thinks of telling her mom she should talk to Steve. But -
She doesn't know why she agreed to that stupid meet-up. Okay, well, she does know, she knows, she knows she was looking at Robin and the world felt warm and hazy and beautiful and she wasn't thinking, but still. She's cut herself off for a reason, and getting her mom and Steve to start hanging out isn't going to help.
"I've made some pretty good friends here," Nancy says, instead. "Even though they don't know about all of it. You should - you deserve to be happy, mom."
Her mom laughs a little, and Nancy feels like dirt.
"Okay, okay," she says. "I'll let you go, anyway. Enjoy college, darling."
"I will," she says, gripping the phone tight. "Bye, mom."
The phone rings flat, and she puts it back down, and she doesn't cry. She walks back into the main room instead, stares up at the wall.
Nothing she has pinned up would be terribly incriminating, if she ever got raided. The story is this: she's been struggling. Her family has been struggling. Money is tight, and everything is difficult, and it's all the fault of all the stupid shit that happened in Hawkins, and after all of it don't they deserve something in return? Some money, somewhere to live, something? So that's what she's looking for - someone to ask. Someone to tell, to their face, what they deserve.
It's a good story, because:
- It's kind of true. She could use some money, and so could her family with Ted out of the picture, and they do deserve more. They saved the world.
- It lines up pretty well with the investigations she's actually doing. There are very few discrepancies, and those are easier to cover.
- If she does get found out, the solve is simple from their perspective - just give her the money. She has safeguards in place to make sure they don't just kill her, information set to go out, and that makes sense with this story too - she knows how dangerous they are, but she just wants some compensation. For her family. It's easiest to just give her the money and let her walk away.
It isn't true, obviously, but it'll work. Probably. It's dramatically less risky than using herself as bait for a monster the size of a city block, which might be an unhealthy bar to have but it's what she's got to work with.
Anyway - most of what she's got up makes sense with that. She's managed to track down a lot of Dr. Kay's past, as well as some of the soldiers working for her. She's got a lot on Hawkins Lab, and Dr. Brenner, and how that all got set up.
She's put work into hiding the stuff that makes less sense. She knows something happened with the U.S.S. Eldridge, and all of that is in code, in invisible ink, written over newspaper articles about Will's disappearance.
She hasn't written the words 'Project Rainbow' down anywhere, in any way. The night she'd read those words had been - terrifying. She shouldn't have been able to do it. Months of planning, expensive forgeries funded by fraudulent student loan payments, and there's still no way she should have been able to break into that archive.
She stopped paying attention to 'should' a long time ago, though, and she knows now that Project Rainbow is what links Kay and Brenner, and Henry, and El, and that it started before Henry was even born. It makes her sick to her stomach. How long, till they make another little Creel boy? Or worse?
Nothing is ever just over. Maybe for the others, but not for her.
It ends up being a long day. She's looking for angles on Kay, right now - she can't probe too close, can't tip anyone off, but she can prod around the edges. Not her actual faculty advisor, but some people who were in that department at the same time as her ("I just think that science writing needs to become a more fundamental part of journalism - these developments are shaping our future!"). Not her family, not even distant family, but maybe their neighbours ("Oh, we're just trying to build up data on family relationships, the erosion of the family connection - it's an important survey.")
She made some progress. She thinks she can swing an invite to the University of Texas department where Kay did her phD, if she keeps pushing. Slowly. Carefully. The world isn't ending right now. She has time.
Nancy doesn't know what it says about her that she keeps on ending up here in the evenings, though. Beyond the obvious, that is.
"Damn," says the woman who just took a seat next to her at the bar. "What's a pretty thing like you doing here? Ain't really the scene for college girls looking to experiment, you know."
Her hair is almost entirely cropped, and she has a grin like a shark. She doesn't know what it says about her that she always ends up here, because sometimes she hates how people look at her - like she's some delicate thing. There's too much blood on her for that.
She wonders sometimes what it would take, to make that stop - if she cut her hair even shorter, would they be able to see her? If she took off the makeup, trimmed the rest of her nails? It's not that she wouldn't, not that - there's too much riding on her looking presentable, is all. Friendly. Appropriately effeminate.
"She's a regular, actually," Fiona says, appearing from behind the bar as if by magic. She does that a lot. "Unlike you these days, Bee."
The woman - Bee, apparently - blinks, looks a little ashamed.
"Sorry, Fi," she says. "You uh - I mean, did you hear - "
"Yeah, yeah, Elizabeth turned out to be just as much of a bitch as we all figured," Fiona says - she's rolling her eyes, but there's a hint of softness there. "Just don't take it out on my other customers, alright?"
Bee turns back to Nancy - her smile is still all teeth, but it's a little softer now. Nancy's read a lot about romance, about sex, about eyes drawn to lips - she doesn't (does) know what it says about her that hers are always drawn to the teeth.
"Sorry," Bee says, shrugging. "Long week."
"Me too," Nancy shrugs, leaning forward on the bar a little. "Bad break-up, huh?"
It's hardly more than an hour before she's got Bee shoved up against the wall in the toilet, tracing her own teeth over her neck. Maybe that explains some of it, really - she hates not being seen, but a part of her really likes making people see.
"Crap," Bee breathes out, hands bunched in Nancy's shirt. "Fuck, fuck - wait, shit."
Nancy stops, wends her fingers over Bee's cheek as she pulls back a little. Her brain is buzzing, some mix of the alcohol and the closeness and the way she can feel Bee's legs trembling a little.
"I'm waiting," she says, feeling herself smile a little.
"I - I can't," Bee says. "I - it's soon, and I thought I could but I'm just - I can't."
Nancy sighs, leans back against the opposite wall of the cubicle.
"That's fair," she says, blowing a little bit of hair out of her face. Maybe she could get away with cutting it even shorter. "I think I freaked out the first - I don't even know how many times, actually, a girl tried to bring me home from here. Just kept thinking that they weren't - um. This other girl I knew."
Bee snorts, and Nancy can't help but laugh a little too.
"Been there," she says. "Not an ex, though?"
"Nah," Nancy shrugs. "I was - too late, I think. She's with another girl, now."
"Damn," Bee says. "See, I totally had you pegged as like, small-town Indiana or something, but what kind of small town in Indiana has three lesbians?"
Nancy chokes out a laugh.
"I don't know," she says. "I think we flock, maybe. More small city than small town, though."
She thinks of Will, and of the way Steve and Jonathan look at each other sometimes, and the way her mom still totally hasn't twigged that Murray and Mr. Clarke are dating.
"Yeah," Bee grins. "Wanna get out of this toilet, then?"
Robin screams as they riddle her body with bullets. Nancy claws, and gasps, and she can't do anything until she's suddenly landing on the wooden floor with a painful thunk, gasping for breath and tangled in her sheets.
The alarm starts going off, right above her.
She thinks the nightmares are good, sometimes, after a night like that. It reminds her what she's supposed to be focused on. Just a few seconds more, lying here on the floor, and then she'll shut the alarm off and get back to it.
"Shit," Robin's voice comes from the doorway. "I mean, I figured you weren't a hundred percent above board, but this is actually kind of concerning. Are you okay?"
Nancy bolts upright, and sees Robin Buckley standing in her flat.