Chapter Text
Nancy thought to herself, she probably shouldn’t be driving right now. Never mind the general chaos in the streets -police sirens, abandoned cars, burning buildings- she just
couldn’t
get the shake out of her hands.
She felt at any moment like her hands might jerk to the side, sending the car careening into a tree or into a ditch.
But then she thought of Steve, sitting in the hospital with his hand on Dustin- poor, grief-stricken, traumatized, Dustin’s back. Steve, listening to Lucas’ long-subdued but ever-present sobs and hiccups. Steve, the first to hear the news of if-
when
Max got out of surgery. And she thought maybe this was a little more bearable.
A little less monumental of a task.
“Take a right up here,” Erica peeped softly from the back seat of her car. Nancy glanced up into the rearview mirror and nodded to the young girl.
So young.
She reached forward, fingers clicking onto the radio. To have
something
, something to fill the oppressive silence. It flicked to life to the station she and Robin had been listening to on the drive to the asylum. She swallowed hard. It felt like it’d happened a lifetime ago.
The directions Erica gave her were unnecessary, Nancy had been driving to and from Lucas’ house since she’d gotten her license. When Erica had indicated the first turn she didn’t think she’d be able to speak. So she didn’t. Each new direction she gave, Nancy just nodded, throat tightened shut in a way that felt permanent.
Robin leaned forward and fiddled with the radio station from the passenger seat.
Nancy grit her teeth at the static that fizzled between songs- so many radio stations broadcasting nothing.
She wondered if the Gates had knocked down the towers. Wondered, just how compelling of a story that could make. Then remembered anything she published would be lies, some government-approved bullshit that was
just
close enough to the truth for the people of Hawkins to buy it. Bullshit.
“You remember what you’re going to tell your parents?” She asked, unable to listen to her own thoughts a second longer. Erica took a few moments to pull her eyes away from the window to meet Nancy’s in the mirror. A sluggish delayed movement followed by a few blinks to a soundtrack of changing radio stations.
She has a concussion
, Nancy thought to herself,
a 200-pound psychotic hate-monger hick tackled her. She’s a child.
“I was with Lucas and the party when the earthquake hit. Lucas is in the hospital with Max.” She replied, her voice monotonous in a way it never was. Flat. Broken.
Another victim of… Hawkins? Vecna? The US Government? She’d lost track of who to blame. She blamed all of them. She blamed herself.
They never should’ve let her be there. But then- none of them should’ve been there. Not Erica or Lucas or Dustin or Eddie or Max.
Max.
Max who she hadn’t even been able to see due to the girl being stuck in surgery.
She blinked and tightened her hands around the wheel, willing the tremor in her hands to stop. Robin continued to fiddle with the radio and Nancy tried to curb the irrational anger that hummed in her chest.
She bit angry words down.
If you have PTSD, you may often feel on edge, keyed up, or irritable.
That was what the psychology textbook she’d read after smashing Bruce’s head open and watching him turn into a Lovecraftian horror had said.
She flicked her blinker on as she turned the steering wheel mechanically. It felt like a trivial thing now, as they drove by buildings with smashed storefronts and stolen goods. Something as small as a turn signal.
But then, it all felt trivial in the face of Vecna.
Static hummed angrily in her ear and her foot pressed on the brake a little hard as she came up to a stop sign.
“Robin,” She started, quietly, trying to force some flatness into her voice so it wouldn’t come out with the edge she felt, “Please just pick something.”
She failed.
Robin withdrew her hand, pulling it into herself without saying anything as the station played some top 100 hit.
It made her want to pull her hair out.
“Sorry,” Robin offered quietly. Nancy sighed, all the fight leaving her at once at the dejected tone of the girl’s voice, glancing quickly at Robin as she drove out of the city and onto the backroad to the Sinclair’s.
“Don’t apologize,” Nancy replied, “I’m just- on edge.” She said, forcing some of the tension out of her shoulders.
Robin said nothing, just nodded, and turned to lean her head against the window.
She’d never seen her so quiet. It made her want to scream.
__________
The sun was just starting to rise as they watched Erica be pulled into the house by ashen-faced, terrified parents. Nancy quietly, eyes trained on the house for several long moments even after the door closed.
After a few moments, she looked back to the steering wheel where her hands still gripped.
10 and 2.
Proper.
The only thing out of place was the blood splattered across her white-knuckle grip and the dark purple and red bruise on her wrist that peeked out from under her jacket.
She swallowed hard.
Robin spoke first, “Hey Nancy?”
Nancy nodded, eyes not moving from her hands. Her shoulders were high, tense, and tight to her ears. She breathed in deep, forcing the tension out of them. Forcing an artificial casualness into her posture. She had to keep it together.
She forced herself to look at Robin finally and found the girl staring at her.
She blinked, only able to hold Robin’s searching gaze for a moment before she looked back to her hands.
The car’s gentle idling was all she could hear. A loud wave of sound that threatened to overwhelm her adrenaline-tired, shock-addled brain.
“What is it?”
“I don’t-” She stopped so suddenly that Nancy looked at her. Quickly. Just paranoid enough to be scared that he was back. That he was taking Robin.
But Robin was just looking at her, chewing on her cheek.
Nancy said nothing.
“I don’t think I can be alone right now? The idea of going home and- and just sitting there. In the quiet. Alone. I don't think I can do it,” She sounded so scared. Her voice low and raspy and absolutely trembling, “Do you think-”
“Come over.” Nancy interrupted, unable to hear the rest of Robin’s anxious ramble. Not when she knew the answer to the question
Robin deflated in relief as she nodded, body sinking into the front seat of Nancy’s car as if that answer had finally taken the last of the fight out of her.
Nancy found as she turned back to her steering wheel that she was able to pry her hand from the wheel now, bones no longer atrophied around it.
She shifted the car into gear and breathed just a bit easier.
Just a bit.
__________
They’d gotten home to a frantic terrified Karen- much to Nancy’s displeasure.
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate her mother’s concern- it was certainly better than her father’s disconnected acknowledgment of her return.
She was just so tired. She’d wanted nothing more than to shower off the grime and blood and death from her skin but of course, Karen had questions.
Questions like “where have you been?” And “What are you wearing?”
Nancy had frozen, mouth wide and eyes looking anywhere but her mother.
What could she even say? She was so tired of all the lies. She’d been sick of them since Barb and Barb had happened a long time ago. She’d experienced so much trauma since. Lost so much more.
Then Robin stepped in front of her, all easy smiles and charming as she rattled off a long and meandering excuse that amounted to; “we were helping the kids with a D&D campaign, we owed them a favour- we were just happy to be there to keep them safe when everything happened.”
Because they’d heard what the hospital staff were talking about as they brought Max (safe, that’s what Robin said, a lie) in, a seismic event of unprecedented size.
In Indiana. What a fucking joke.
And Robin had insisted they were really quite exhausted and that they’d happily answer all of Karen's questions after they got some sleep while Nancy stared at the floor quietly, fists balled at her side and lips pursed.
She refused to acknowledge the visuals that lingered in her mind, created and planted there by Vecna.
Her mother, bones snapped, her eyes leaking viscous fluid. Holly, writhing and screaming as Demobats tore her apart.
She felt a hand on her bicep and she looked up quickly, blinking tears out of her eyes as they met Robin’s downward gaze.
“Come on,” Robin murmured, nodding her head in the direction of Nancy’s room.
Nancy nodded, unable to let speak.
When they went into her room Nancy stood around for a moment, looking down at the filthy military apparel she wore, and then to her bed.
After a few moments, she sat down on her floor.
Robin looked at her curiously but said nothing, just sat down across from her. It took her a minute to tuck her long legs under her, all sharp knees and clunky boots. The normalcy of it made Nancy ache.
She looked very small in her war-getup, the vest hanging loose on her shoulders. That stupid beret she’s made fun of in the store still clamped like a vice over her ash-matted hair.
It was all so- so childish. What had they been thinking? Putting on their war getups and marching into battle with shields and sawed-off shotguns. Max was in the hospital. Eddie was dead . He’d died for them. For Nancy. For this stupid fucking town. Because of her plan. Her idea. She’d used two traumatized teenagers as bait and was surprised when one of them did something stupid like sacrificing his life.
They were all just playing. Vecna had known . He’d been ready for them on every front and they’d all almost died.
Suddenly, Nancy was scrambling to pull her jacket off, tossing it in all its squalor off and across the room, out of her sight in a matter of seconds. Desperate to get it off of her skin.
Her heart was racing when she settled back into herself.
Robin watched her outburst with concern, so
so
quiet again.
She couldn’t bear the weight of their eye contact. Couldn’t bear the weight of being perceived.
She looked down at her hands, pale and shaking and covered in Eddie’s blood from when they’d been forced to pull Dustin off him.
She took in a ragged breath, reaching with her thumb to scrub the blood off of her knuckles.
She pushed at the skin roughly, only really succeeding in spreading the mess of dried blood across her skin.
She felt tears prickle in her eyes as she pushed harder, her skin feeling raw and sensitive where-
Slim hands covered hers.
She pulled in a shaking breath.
Nancy looked up to meet Robin’s eyes again, unable to avoid her gaze with her gentle hands engulfing Nancy’s smaller ones.
“How about we go wash it off?” Robin asked, like it was a suggestion. Like if she said no she’d sit there forever holding Nancy’s hands in her own.
“Okay,” She said softly.
Robin stood first, pulling her hands from Nancy’s own only for a moment to steady herself before she was offering her hand again.
Nancy took it.
It was a wonder that Robin already knew the layout of her house. That Robin was able to guide her to the bathroom and settle her down on the edge of the tub.
Nancy found the hours and days after the dust settled always felt the most unsettling. The most discombobulating.
She felt that way now. As she looked around her familiar surroundings in a daze.
She looked up abruptly when the sink turned on, rushing water filling the quiet between them.
Robin was running a rag in the water, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing-
“Robin?” She called out quietly, voice barely breaking above the white noise of running water.
Robin’s head jerked in her direction, starting at the noise.
“Sorry,” She murmured, wringing the rag out and turning the taps off.
The lack of noise in the echoing bathroom was just as jarring as the running water.
“Just making sure you’re still with me,” Nancy murmured in lieu of accepting the word.
Robin nodded, moving to crouch in front of Nancy. Their eyeline leveled and Nancy swallowed.
She felt like a small child like this, sat on the tub with Robin crouched in front of her. When Robin reached out and took her hands, rubbing the warm wet cloth across the back of her hands.
Nancy couldn’t help it. The tears she’d been holding in (First contained by the need to lead, second contained by the numbness spreading from deep in her stomach) finally came forth. Welling in her eyes and spilling down onto her cheeks silently.
Robin looked up from where she was dutifully cleaning the soot and blood off her hands and offered her a grimace-like smile.
“At least it wasn’t the Commies again, right? Because I don’t think I could handle looking at another bone saw.”
And Nancy couldn’t help the watery laugh she let out. Nancy couldn’t help the way the laugh devolved into a hiccuping sob.
She couldn’t help the way she clutched Robin’s free hand tighter as the girl rhythmically cleaned away the blood on her hands.
And as she watched Robin worked so carefully, is full of attention, and thought back to something Maurry of all people had said to her ages ago. Under a different roof while she fought through a different variation of the same fucking fight she’d been fighting for three years.
You’re young, attractive. You’ve got chemistry, history- plus the real shit; shared trauma.
What a decidedly odd memory to think of now, as Robin put more care into gently cleaning the blood off of her than anyone had shown her in months.
What was she supposed to do with that realization?