Work Text:
“Nancy, you can’t escape from me.” The deep growl echoed around her, curling around her feet and floating on the red air. “Nancy…”
She felt the terror rise in her again, sharp and poisonous. Sweat beaded at her temples. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears.
“Go… go away.” She meant to scream the words out, a warning, but they came out as a whisper, drowned by the staccato ring of a clock.
“Nancy…” The voice rang out again, closer this time and she took off running, arms pumping and feet flying over the ground. Tendrils of vines reached for her. Red mist swirled like living shadows. Things skittered in the corner of her vision and her breath whistled in and out of her lungs as she ran.
“Nancy!” With the sound of the voice again, she put on a new burst of speed. It rang out again, loud and echoing and she screamed, batting at the air around her as if she could ward it off. She stumbled, thrown off balance and thumped heavily to the ground, a squelch echoing around her.
She sobbed, holding her hands over her ears as the voice came again, screaming “NANCY.” She huddled closer to the ground, uncaring of the spiders skittering under her feet, desperate to just be as small as possible. She heard the voice again, felt the scream well up in her throat and then she faltered. She pulled her hands away from her ears. That… that voice wasn’t Vecna. That voice was familiar, it was…
“NANCY!” And then the dream fell apart.
Nancy started up out of sleep, feeling the night air hit her sweaty face. There were hands on her shoulders, shaking her and a voice. The voice she heard in her dream was still speaking, repeating, “Nancy, Nancy, hey, hey, wake up, you’re alright.”
It took another moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light of her bedroom. A streetlight, glowing orange in the gloom of early morning filtered through the window. It hit a strand of fiery hair on a pale cheek and Nancy let out a breath.
“Max.” She let her head droop forward and then lifted her hands to run through her hair. The feeling of that clinging red mist was stuck on her skin, hitching it into goosebumps. With every breath, more and more awareness came back to her. She remembers now; she had offered for Max to bunk down on the floor with her tonight because none of them were comfortable enough to let her go back to her house. Dustin had said something about her being too far away.The Wheeler house had become an informal sleeping spot for as many people as possible, after everything. Robin was bunking down in the guest room tonight and Lucas and Dustin slept in the basement on the regular. It was reassuring more than anything else. Nancy had meant to stay awake longer, keep an eye on Max, but she had drifted off.
“Oh thank god, you’re awake. Holy shit… I’m sorry I had to grab you, you were yelling and thrashing around and I didn’t think…”
“No, no, you did… you did the right thing.” She breathed, pushing herself back slightly further on her bed. The touch of her sheets grounded her a little more to the present. Max is still watching with concerned eyes, but she’s taken her hands from her shoulders.
Abruptly, she’s embarrassed. Having nightmares is a personal thing to her. Better to have everyone think she’s not having them at all than for someone to see her sleep-vulnerable and shaking over a dream.
The one time she had had a nightmare in front of someone, it had been Jonathan. He had woken her up with a soft touch and an anxious voice but she had shaken him off and stormed out of the room. She had slept on the Byers’ couch and been awoken by the sun streaming in through the windows and the smell of bacon in the kitchen. Jonathan had given her an understanding smile when she walked in that made her feel about two feet high. She hadn't eaten anything and called her mom for a ride home.
“Nancy?”
She shakes off the memory, hands spasming convulsively in the sheets. This isn’t Jonathan in front of her or her mom or Steve. Max is just a kid, a kid who saw the same thing she did, saw worse, and Nancy is acting like she’s falling apart.
“What- what happened?” Max is still wearing her headphones around her neck. “Was it… was it a nightmare? From Vecna?”
Nancy concentrates her gaze on the dangling cord, stark against her shirt.
“I just… it was just a dream. I w-was back with Vecna, in the red… place and he was chasing me.” She gripped the sheets a bit tighter, twisting them. “I thought your voice was his, until I realized.” She tries to muster up a smile, ready to say it’s no big deal, let’s just go back to sleep when she catches sight of Max’s face.
It’s concerned but more than that, it’s… haunted. Her face, a pale moon in the dark of the room, pales further. Nancy watches her hand drift to her Walkman, trembling just slightly.
“You didn’t… you didn’t mention before that you were there.”
Nancy stays quiet. Max fiddles with the wire to her headphones.
“I just… no, nevermind.” Max makes to slide off the bed, but Nancy stops her with a touch to her arm, light as she can.
“No, hey, wait a second.” She grabs Max’s hand off her headphones, to keep her there but also just to hold. Max’s hand is thin and cold and freckled, not callused like hers but still strong. Nancy hasn’t held hands with another person since Jonathan left. Before that had been Steve and then long before him had been…Barb.
A flash. Rotted vines. The lip of the pool digging into her hands. The empty gaping sockets of Barb’s eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly to banish the vision. When she opened them, it was only Max in front of her.
“I wasn’t… in the red place that long. I was… somewhere else and then I was there… and then Vecna took me and showed me who he was.” Nancy’s voice trembles a bit in places but not as much as she’s still feeling in her heart.
“That’s when you saw the Creel House and Henry and everything?” Her eyebrows furrow but her hand clutches back.
“Yeah, it was. I wasn’t… in the red place like you were. He… I don’t know if he wanted to kill me, so much as show me… and stop us from leaving.”
“But you’re still dreaming about it.” It’s not a question, just an observation. Nancy still almost flinches.
“I don’t… I mean, yes. But I don’t know why. The first thing I saw was worse, much worse.”
“What did you see?” Max isn’t looking at her, she’s staring out the window but Nancy still feels eyes on her.
When it becomes clear that Nancy can’t answer, Max says, “I saw Billy… before I went to the red place. He… uh he said a lot. That I was relieved he was dead. That I was happy. That I… wanted to be dead like him.”
Nancy’s gaze snapped to Max, quicker than lightning. Her grip around her hand tightened.
“Max… is that…” She just drops her eyes to the bed like she can escape whatever she sees in Nancy’s.
“It’s… uh… it’s sort of true. He hated me and I hated him. I said in my letter I thought that we could maybe be friends one day if he lived but I don’t know if I really believed that or not. I think what Vecna said was true and I can’t… handle it, Nancy.”
“Max…”
“It’s… Vecna gets in your head, tells you everything that you... that you most dislike about yourself. And Billy’s death… I was angry and sad and scared but I also… I was relieved a-and hap-happy b-because he was a-a-awful to me and-“ Max broke down, tears dripping down her face, sobs ripping through her chest.
Wordlessly, Nancy pulled her close and wrapped her arms around her, holding her tight. Max clung back, arms clasped around her back, tears muffled in the crook of her neck.
Max let herself cry for a few minutes, just enough for Nancy to feel a wet patch begin to spread on the shoulder of her pajamas. She patted Max’s shoulder as she sniffled.
“Jesus, sorry. I-I guess I needed to do that or something.” Max drew back, swiping a hand under her eyes. Nancy lets her pull back, understanding the need for space. She’s the same way.
“Max, don’t apologize.” She catches her gaze, holding it firmly. “You saw something awful, something terrible.”
“So did you.” Max’s eyes are red and watery but her voice is stubborn. Nancy shakes her head.
“And you just saw me have a nightmare. I think we’re even.”
There’s silence for a few minutes after that. Max continues to fiddle with her headphone cord. Nancy watches the sky lighten out the window. Their hands are still joined in between them on the bed. Nancy can hear birds chirping outside, a delicate morning sound that makes something in her ache. It reminds her of spring and of summer, waking up early to a bluish dawn light, a second of peace before reality rushes back in.
“I didn’t think about you.” Max’s voice breaks the early morning stillness.
“What?”
“When… when Vecna had me in the mindscape, he was… he had something wrapped around my neck and I could barely breathe.” Nancy squeezed her hand tighter. Max had told them all a little about what happened but not in any detail. Steve had made Dustin stop asking questions when he saw how pale Max had been while reliving it. Nancy wishes Steve were here now to make her stop, to wipe that fragile look off her face.
“Not until I heard the song and I saw… I saw all of my friends. Lucas, El, Dustin, Mike. I don’t remember seeing Will or Steve or Robin. I don’t remember seeing you. And I wanted to. You’ve.. You helped me so much, you saved my life. You’re so… cool.”
Nancy felt her heart warm. “Oh, stop.”
Max shakes her head earnestly, braids flopping from side to side.
“I’m serious, I tell Mike all the time. You’re so strong and powerful. I’ve… shit, I never ever thought I would say this to you but you’re like… who I want to be.”
Max is blushing furiously as she says this. Nancy feels like Max just kicked her square in the chest.
“Max… I’m not perfect. I’m… I don’t have it all figured out at all. I’m- I'm not a role model.” Nancy feels like someone is filling her chest with rocks, like there is a weight pushing down on her lungs and shortening her breath.
“I know, I know but I don’t want- I don’t want to feel this shame or guilt anymore. It’s eating me up. I just want to be strong like you.”
Nancy feels a cold feeling open up in the pit of her stomach. Strong like her… no shame or guilt. How could Nancy tell her every part of that was a lie? That Nancy hadn’t stopped feeling shame or guilt since Barb disappeared. That she’s not strong just because she doesn’t cry in front of people. Nancy feels like the weakest person on Earth sometimes, held together at the seams by some deep urge that screamed, “I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anything, look at how good I can be, how strong, how assured, how selfish, because I’ve always wanted to be those things, haven’t I?”
She feels her breathing quicken in time with her racing heart and sees Max look at her in alarm.
“Nancy?”
“Do you want to know what I saw before Vecna took me to the mindscape?”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me.” Max scrambles for her hand again, her face shuttering into real concern.
“No, no I need to tell someone. I need to tell you now because you don’t know what I’ve done.”
Nancy is cut off by Max interrupting, her voice a bit frantic, “If this is about what I said, then I’m sorry, I take it back, I shouldn’t have said it.”
“Max,” She sighs and then steels her voice, firm. “It’s not your fault. I want to tell you because you should know that I’m not perfect, okay? I’m not untouchable, I’m not impervious. No one is. I’m not mad at you”
Max nods miserably, looking for all the world like she doesn’t believe her.
“Just… listen okay?” Nancy lets herself take a deep breath, trying to regain control over her panic.
“I don’t know if you know everything that happened in 1983, when Will disappeared, but I had a friend that disappeared as well.”
Max’s wide eyes seem to suggest she didn’t know this so Nancy nods and goes on.
“Her name was Barb. We had been friends forever, since we were little, and we did everything together. When I started dating Steve and he invited me to a party, I begged for Barb to be invited too. We were… we were being stupid teenagers. Swimming in the pool, drinking beer, smoking. It was the night after Will disappeared and sneaking out like this was the first rebellious thing I had ever done in my whole life.”
Max continued to watch her, eyes blue and clear. She gripped her hand harder.
“Barb cut her hand open and went inside to patch it up. She came back out while I was…going upstairs with Steve.” Nancy feels her cheeks get hot but Max doesn’t waver, she just nods.
“Barb went back out to the pool even though I told her to go home. I told her to just leave me there and then I left her alone.”
She can feel the tears physically welling up behind her eyes but she can’t stop, not now. The pressure on her chest tightens. She knows it’s the beginning of a panic attack, logically but it feels the same way Steve’s weight felt over her the night Barb went missing. The same way Jonathan’s weight felt over her that night at Murray’s. The weight of expectation. Of shame.
“I-I was upstairs with Steve and Barb was… she was right outside. But it didn’t matter. Her hand… the blood… it attracted the demogorgon. It took her into the Upside-Down, not even 100 feet from us.” She can feel the tears pouring down her cheeks, hot and bitter.
“W-we didn’t find out until later that she had been murdered by the demogorgon that night in the Upside-Down, right in Steve’s pool. She died and it was my fault. She died and I didn’t save her.” She lets go of Max’s hand to swipe at the tears on her face.
“Nancy…” Max whispers but Nancy holds up her hand.
“Vecna took me to Steve’s pool, the Upside-Down version, blue and choked with vines. And he showed me Barb. She was dead… rotting in that pool. He made me look at what I did.”
“He showed me Billy, ripped apart by the Mindflayer.”
Nancy glanced to meet Max’s gaze, her own grief and anger reflected back at her.
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“And what happened to Barb was yours?”
Nancy is so tired. And she says as much to Max.
“It’s been three years since Barb died. I thought that taking revenge for her would be enough to put her ghost to rest but Vecna destroyed that idea in one second. I’m… it’s still with me and I think it will be forever.”
In so many ways, Nancy is still the girl she was in 1983, an open wound of grief and fear and pain and guilt. By the clock, she’s not 16 anymore, but deep down, somewhere close to her bones, she doesn’t think she’ll ever grow past it.
“So what, we just live with it? The guilt? Forever?” Max looks desperately at Nancy like she can find the answers in her eyes. Nancy holds her gaze and her hand, still.
“I don’t… have any answers. For god’s sake, I just told you I still haven’t gotten over Barb and the part I played in that. I don’t think it’s bad that we will remember them forever. But you can’t repeat my mistakes, alright? You can’t seal yourself away from people and expect to get better. You have to talk to people, to your friends, to me, to Steve, to Robin, even to Eddie Munson, if you want.”
Max laughs, even while she’s brushing a tear off her cheek and Nancy echoes her, even if the sound is choked by a few tears. God, she misses Mike. She hasn’t seen him, heard from him, since he left for California and all this crazy shit started. As much as she wants him far away from the danger, she wants him here with her too. Selfishly. If he were here and they were having this conversation, he would be his little asshole self and make her laugh so she didn’t have to cry.
Max’s face screws up and Nancy brings her hand to her shoulder. “Hey, hey, what is it?”
“I don’t… it’s not the same as you and Barb. Billy and I… maybe I couldn’t have saved him but I couldn’t even grieve for him right.”
“You grieved for him exactly the way you should have. Whatever you felt was right because it was how you felt.” Nancy emphasized each word with a squeeze of her hand. There was a beat of silence and then…
“You sound like the counselor, Ms. Kelley,” Max said with a snort, lifting her hand to wipe the last of the tears from her face. Nancy lets herself laugh. It’s okay if they end this talk now. The sun is rising outside higher and higher and she can hear her mother moving around in her room down the hall. Max squeezes her hand again and Nancy looks back at her and smiles.
“You’re not gonna feel like this forever, Max. You really won’t. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, okay?”
“Not the bravest, huh? Who has the top spot?” She smiles weakly trying to tease but Nancy just shakes her head with a smile.
“All of the names on my list have been through at least one encounter with a creature from an alternate dimension.”
“You’re the bravest to me. Well, you and El. And Steve. He’s really brave.”
“I have to make a case for Will.”
“Oh, Will! You’re so right.”
The conversation isn’t over, it’s really just started for them both, but conversations like this can belong to the transient time between night and day when some truths can still be avoided. For now, they can leave Nancy’s room together, go downstairs and sit with their friends. Steve will drive over for breakfast, even though he says he’s only there to pick up Robin and Dustin and Lucas will drag themselves out of the basement. They’ll pick the chairs next to Max and monopolize her attention with their antics. Steve and Robin will bicker, her mom will cook, her dad will complain. She will miss the others who aren’t there and ache for their return. She will think of the others who can’t come back and feel them like a phantom limb. She will smile at Max, who is laughing at a joke at Steve’s expense.
Nancy Wheeler will face the morning sun and hope for the future.