Chapter Text
Nancy floats through the morning in a fog, through breakfast, barely responding to Mike’s taunts, her mind focused entirely elsewhere. She’s lucky, in a way, that she’s lived this day so many times—she can basically sleepwalk through the beginning of it.
It’s only after she realizes that Barb has asked her the same question three times that she finally forces herself to pay attention.
“Say that again?”
Barb shoots her a sideways glance as they roll up to a red light.
“What is going on with you, Nance?” she demands.
Nancy plasters an innocent smile on her face. “It’s nothing, really. Just . . . thinking about the test.”
Barb’s glances remain suspicious until they arrive at school, when she yanks the parking brake up, turns to Nancy, reaches over, locks the passenger door and says, “There is no way you’re that worried about Chem. Now, spill.”
“It’s nothing,” Nancy insists, but Barb’s glare wears her down, and she relents. “Fine. It’s not about Chem.”
“So it’s about Steve.”
“Steve who?” Nancy asks, bewildered. “Harrington? Of course not.” She hasn’t thought about Steve in months.
Barb frowns, the look on her face matching Nancy’s. “So you didn't meet up with him for one night and you’re already over him?”
It comes to Nancy in an instant, the fog surrounding her evaporating as she remembers where she is, and who she’s talking to, and the last thing Barb remembers, which is Nancy’s thwarted plan to meet up with Steve at Dearborn and Maple. “Shit,” she says, under her breath.
“That!” Barb cries, pointing. “What is going on? Nancy Wheeler, do not lie to me.”
Nancy twists her mouth. She hasn’t lied, not exactly, but she also hasn’t once told Barb the truth, not since she saw her dragged into the woods by a monster. Partly to protect her, but also because of all the people in her life, Barb, her most grounded friend, is the least likely to believe her.
But Barb doesn’t need to know everything. And Nancy has missed their late night chats, tying up the phone line until her father picks up the living room extension and tells her that he has important calls to make too, you know.
“It’s not Steve,” Nancy tells her conspiratorially, leaning in close.
Barb’s eyes widen. “But it is someone.”
Nancy pauses and then says, all at once, “I spent last night in the woods with Jonathan Byers.”
Barb’s mouth drops open.
“And after, he came back to my room,” she continues, unable to stop the smile from appearing on her face.
Barb’s mouth drops open even further. “Nancy.”
“I know—I know,” she says, reading Barb’s questions in her eyes. “We were looking for his brother. The one who’s missing. Will and Mike, they’re friends. I thought I could help.”
“And? Did you find him?”
“No, but—we will. We found some clues.”
Barb looks skeptical. “And what about being in the woods looking for his brother meant that he ended up in your room at the end of the night?”
“We cut our hands in the woods,” she explains. “We just wanted to get cleaned up.”
“Your hand looks fine.”
“Mine—mine wasn’t that bad,” Nancy stutters out, clenching her fist to hide the lack of wound, but Barb is already talking over her.
“And weren’t you meeting Steve in the girls bathroom yesterday? What happened?”
“I didn’t think you’d be one to defend Steve,” she says, feeling slightly offended for some reason.
Barb sighs. “I’m not. But . . . you only told me about Steve on Saturday, and you know I knew it had been going on for longer than that. And now it’s like you’re this whole new person, doing new things—new boys. I just wish I knew what was going on with you, that’s all. I feel like you’re moving on, leaving me behind.”
The guilt Nancy has pushed down since the night she’d realized Barb had been taken (over and over again) rises to the surface. She’d thought she’d been keeping her friend safe, but it isn’t monsters and other worlds Nancy needs to worry about when it comes to Barb—it’s simple friendship, and how she’s been neglecting it, for longer than she’s been living this day.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy says, and means it. “I never meant for you to feel that way. You’re my best friend, Barb. No boy could ever compare. If you weren’t in my life . . . I don’t know what I’d do.”
It’s a lie, but one she’s fine with telling. She knows exactly what she would do—is doing. She’d make sure Barb was safe, every day she possibly can.
“Okay, Nance,” Barb laughs, rolling her eyes a little, but Nancy can tell she’s touched. “So,” she says, leaning back in, “Jonathan Byers? Are you guys even friends?”
Nancy twists her mouth, the question echoing through her memory. “It feels like it’s been forever,” she says, a truth Barb will never understand, “even though it hasn’t been that long at all. And I know Will’s missing, and that’s the most important thing but . . . ”
“But . . . ” Barb says, leading.
“I really like him,” she says simply. “More than like. He’s just . . . ”
Nancy presses her lips together. She can’t put it into words, as much as she wants to, their days and nights in the woods something fragile, something indescribable, even to her best friend. “He’s really great,” she finally says, which feels inadequate, but enough for Barb, who’s shaking her head.
“Well I can tell you like him more than Steve, at the very least,” she sniffs as she opens the car door.
Nancy can’t disagree.
Nancy can feel Barb’s eyes on her back as she walks toward where Jonathan is carefully hanging Will’s poster, steeling her heart against what she knows is coming.
He looks up at her, his expression wary. Nothing like his careful, steady gaze of the night before.
“Hey,” he says, and despite all her preparation, the way he’s guarding himself against her cuts deeper than it has in some time.
“Hey,” she says back, taking a deep breath, closing her eyes for the briefest of moments, and vows, for the millionth time, to do whatever it takes to get out of this day, if only so that she never appears a stranger to him again.
“Nancy?”
She opens her eyes. “Can we talk?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Barb watching them closely. Nancy gives her a little wave as they walk away.
“So we both went to this place,” Jonathan says as they drive down the road away from the school, dead leaves eddying in their wake. “But we didn’t find Will.”
“Only because the monster came back through,” Nancy explains. “And I don’t know how we stop that from happening. I shot that thing three times, and it still kept coming. It just . . . made another hole in the world.”
“So we find another way,” he says, his hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough that she can see the white in his knuckles.
Nancy nods. She doesn’t know what they’ll do yet, but they’ll figure it out. Like always.
He glances over quickly as they come to a stop sign. “So we figured out it can escape a bear trap. Did anything else happen?”
For a breath of a moment, Nancy thinks about telling him everything—her frantic ride to his house, the monster, the quiet conversation on her bed, what happened after—but she knows the only person who would gain any comfort from it would be her.
“We figured out what time my day ends?” she offers, instead. “I didn’t know for the longest time. It’s midnight.”
He’s as shocked as always. “You didn’t know what time your day ends?”
Nancy shakes her head, smiling to herself. “You said that yesterday.” This, at least, she can tell him. “And, like I said. Midnight. We tested it and everything.”
“Midnight,” Jonathan repeats, his eyebrows knitting together, the way they do when he’s puzzling something out. “And if we don’t find Will by then . . . ”
“Then we keep trying,” she says simply. “Until we do.”
They keep trying.
They search through the woods, alternating running and hiding, the monster stalking relentlessly behind them, Jonathan eerily able to tell when it comes through. Once, Nancy thinks she hears a whisper of a voice responding to their hushed, frantic calls, but when she investigates the little fort they come across in the woods, it’s empty. Jonathan is more subdued than ever that night, explaining Castle Byers to her as they put themselves back together in her room.
Nancy knows, still, that there’s no purpose to it, that he doesn’t need to climb onto her roof, through her window, to sit on her bed and wrap their hands carefully, all their careful ministrations rewound within hours, but as it was the first time, she can’t find it in her to care.
She wants to move on, to live her life, but until she can, she’ll take the brief moments, holding them in her heart like the days in the woods.
They haven’t kissed since the first night, but she finds herself watching him, knowing that somewhere inside him, there’s a boy that kissed her back.
“He has to be at your house,” she tells him. “That’s the only place we haven’t searched—because we never make it there.”
“So why don’t we just start at my house?”
“Do you really want to nail a bear trap into your floor?” He looks like he’s considering it, and she won’t lie, she’s almost at the point where she’s about to try it.
“So what do we try now?” he asks.
She chews her lip, musing out loud, “I thought about drowning it, but attacked Barb when she was right by the pool, so I think it can swim . . . ”
“We could set it on fire,” Jonathan suggests.
Nancy’s eyes widen.
They do their best to prepare against burning down the entire town, clearing the area around the tree of leaves, digging a firebreak before the light goes completely.
Nancy throws one last shovelful of dirt to the side, completing the circle, and wipes the sweat off her brow, sticking the shovel in the ground. It feels solid in her hands, like she could really get a good whack going if she swings it, and she wonders if they should swap out the axe for a shovel in the future.
Something to consider, if this doesn’t work.
She hopes against hope it works.
Next to her, Jonathan throws his own shovel down, the bear trap already secured into place, the bucket full of kerosene hanging precariously above.
They exchange a wordless nod, and take their positions, knives ready, rope and lighter in hand, weapons tucked under arms, bodies taut, ready to run.
Their eyes locked together, Nancy presses down with her knife, Jonathan matching her movements exactly, the blade slicing through barely registering at this point, the blood sticky and familiar on her palm, and counts her breaths down, waiting for the moment she knows is coming.
The monster steps through the tree.
It all happens in quick succession—Nancy yelling, “Now!” as she yanks hard on the rope, upending the bucket and dumping the kerosene as the bear trap snaps shut, Jonathan flicking once, twice, at the lighter before it catches, flinging it forward as the monster goes up in flames with a fwoomp, letting out a harsh, shrill scream, and they both dash forward toward the tree, neither taking the time to look back.
If it survives, it’ll come after them.
If it doesn’t, maybe they’ll make it.
Looking back won’t change a thing.
She pushes through, the tunnel as unforgiving as ever, Jonathan only seconds ahead of her. Nancy emerges on the other side, the only sound in her ears her own ragged breath as he pulls her to her feet, their eyes locked as always. They wait, for a moment only, but nothing is chasing them—nothing yet.
“Run,” she says, the word muffled by the falling ash.
They run.
The house comes into view, Nancy looking behind them far too often, nothing in the distance and some kind of breathless feeling rising in her chest, while Jonathan, running full out, reaches the front door before her and throws it open.
She’s a few steps behind, but she can see the way his shoulders crumple, the stagger in his step, and she knows, she knows, but it’s the way he says, “Will?” that makes something in her heart snap, as he takes the last few steps forward, enfolding his brother in his arms.
Will is pale, his clothes dirty, his face screwed up against the tears streaming down his face, and Nancy is struck by just how small he looks, but he’s alive. She breathes out shakily, knowing that it’s not over yet—they still have to get out of here.
One small, selfish part of her mind wonders if this is it, if she’s done enough. If she’s going to wake up tomorrow to a day where Will is saved, where Barb picks her up in the morning with a different smile. Where Jonathan will know her.
Only one way to find out.
“We have to go,” she whispers, tugging on Jonathan’s elbow, still wrapped tight around his brother, then smiles as Will looks up at her. “Hi, Will.”
“Nancy?” He looks confused. “Is Mike here?”
She shakes her head, wanting to explain, knowing they don’t have the time. Jonathan looks out the door, to where the front yard is ominously silent. He kneels down.
“Will. That thing—we think we hurt it, but . . . we gotta get out of here. There’s a way out, the way we came in. We have to run. Can you do that?”
Will nods, quickly, seriously.
She turns, clutching the rifle in both hands, and steps cautiously out onto the front porch, scanning the front yard for movement.
Something creaks beside her.
Nancy turns, choking on her inhaled breath, as the monster steps forward, reaching out one of its massive hands.
There’s a roaring in her ears, and everything goes black.
Nancy wakes up cold.
“Oh my god,” she says, out loud.
“We found him,” she tells Jonathan, having dragged him into his room, still panting from her bike ride over and her rushed explanation. “I died—but we found him.”
He’s staring at her, wide eyed. “You—we—what?”
“We found Will,” she says, grinning, and finds that she’s crying, tears running down her cheeks.
He’s still for a moment, then moves all at once, pulling her into his arms, the best hug she’s ever gotten in all her days, crushing her to him so tight she doesn’t know where she ends and he begins.
“We found Will,” he repeats, breathing the words into her ear, then tenses. “Wait . . . ” He steps back, still holding onto her. His eyebrows are raised. “You died?”
Nancy shrugs a little. “It had to happen eventually. And it was quick. Not like when you died.” His eyebrows raise even higher, and she cuts off his question before he can ask it. “But we know now. And we know where Will is. We have everything we need.”
It takes some time before Nancy finally admits that they may, in fact, not have everything they need.
It’s not that they can’t get to Will—they do, almost every time now.
It’s that they can’t get back.
She’s died, seen Jonathan die, seen Will die more times than she can count, the monster tumbling out of the ceiling, or ambushing them only steps from safety as they run back through the woods. She wakes in her bed each morning, each rush of cold air chipping away at her certainty that saving Will is the key to everything, to letting tomorrow come. They’ve tried every variation they can think of—waiting until just before midnight, sprinting back toward the world, even finally setting up the bear trap in the hallway outside Jonathan’s room, over Joyce’s panicked confusion at the kerosene soaking her carpet.
They’d burned down the house, and still hadn’t gotten Will out in time.
Some tiny, traitorous part of her wonders if it would be easier to go back to how things used to be—studying flashcards in the hallway, taking the Chem test, telling her mother she’s going to the vigil, losing herself to the simplicity of a life she’s lived thousands of times, but then she sees Jonathan, remembers the hard, blazing look in his eyes, the way his breath catches each time he sees Will, and she knows she never could.
But she can’t keep throwing herself at a problem that no amount of trial and error seems to solve.
She can’t go back.
But she can learn from the past.
“So, what exactly are we doing here?” Jonathan asks, taking his last few steps at an almost sideways run as she pulls the front door of the library open.
“Studying,” she declares, and strides forward with purpose.
He stays quiet as the librarian directs them to the reading room, as she sorts through the various drawers, but asks again as she settles into a familiar chair, “No, really. What are we doing here?”
“We know the monster came from the lab,” she explains, nodding toward the microfiche opposite hers. “We need to know more about it. Maybe we can learn something. Something that can help us.”
He looks at her skeptically, not trusting her fully yet—it usually takes until sometime in the afternoon before he accepts what she tells him without question—but he takes a seat, and starts reading.
There’s something refreshingly familiar about the feeling of the knobs under her fingers, the act of doing something she hasn’t done in ages, since even before she got caught in her neverending day, not since freshman year history. Sliding through article after article, realizing they should have done this a long time ago.
“We should have done this a long time ago,” she says out loud. “The lab has been doing some seriously messed up shit.”
Jonathan doesn’t respond.
Nancy leans over, peering around the microfiche. He’s sitting very still.
She frowns. “What is it?”
“There’s another missing kid,” he says, through gritted teeth. “Will wasn’t the first one.”
Nancy stands so quickly she almost knocks over her chair, rushing around the table as Jonathan keeps going, his voice tight. “There was this woman, she filed a lawsuit, said they did all these terrible things to her . . . and that they kidnapped her daughter.”
“When was this?” she asks, reading as fast as she can, the article undated.
Jonathan shakes his head. “I don’t know . . . nothing I saw says she ever got her kid back.”
Nancy feels a pang of sadness for this woman, her child lost forever. At least they know where Will is. “I wonder where her daughter is,” she says, something nudging at the edge of her memory, before it hits her, realization coming like an electric shock.
“Oh my god,” she gasps. “Mike has a girl in the basement. I completely forgot!”
“He what?”
Nancy grabs her things and leaves the library at a run, explaining as Jonathan chases after her, a step behind, “It was forever ago . . . I was home, and he’d skipped school and he was showing this girl around our living room, and it was so strange, it was like she’d never been in a house before. He said he found her in the woods.” She yanks the car door open. “What if she’s the missing girl? What if she’s been at the lab this whole time? And when the monster escaped—”
Jonathan finishes her sentence, “—she got out too.”
Nancy takes the stairs two at a time, hammering on Mike’s door, rapid fire knocks that silence the voices within. “Mike, I know you’re in there! Open the door.”
She can hear whispering, and some thumps, the closet door opening and then slamming shut. Nancy rolls her eyes at Jonathan, wondering who they think they’re fooling. She knocks again.
“Just a second!” he yells, muffled.
“Mike,” Jonathan says, pounding twice on the door with a closed fist. “Let us in.”
The door creaks open slowly, revealing her bewildered-looking brother. “What . . . are you two doing here?”
Nancy shoulders past him, to where Lucas and Dustin are standing in front of the closet, trying to appear casual. “We need to talk to her.”
“Talk to who?” Dustin squeaks, his voice betraying his attempt to appear innocent.
Mike rushes forward, trying to block her access to the closet. “We don’t know who you’re talking about.”
She gives him a look. “We just want to ask her some questions. I think she might—”
“She knows about Will,” Lucas blurts out, cutting her off. “And she has superpowers.”
Dustin reaches out, shoving him backward. “I thought we weren’t telling any adults!”
Lucas gestures toward her and Jonathan with a sardonic expression. “They aren’t adults! Look at them.”
Nancy frowns as Mike scoffs, as Lucas and Dustin begin to bicker.
“Guys,” Jonathan says, his voice cutting through the rapidly escalating argument the three of them are engaging in, their voices getting shriller by the second. “If you’re right, and she does know about Will, then we need her help. We think she might know about the monster.” He shoots a quick glance at Nancy, who isn’t so sure they should be revealing that key bit of information, but it distracts the boys enough that she’s able to shove past them and slowly open the closet door.
The girl is sitting on the ground, knees to her chin, her face in shadow from the clothes hanging overhead. She looks exactly the same as the last time Nancy saw her—shaved head, wan face.
Nancy can’t believe she forgot about her.
“Hi,” she says softly, crouching down.
The girl blinks at her.
“Her name is Eleven,” Mike says. “El for short.”
“Hi El,” Nancy repeats dutifully. She has a million questions for the girl, but she asks the one she wants the answer to most, if only to get it out of the way.
“Do you remember me? We met . . . before.”
The girl—Eleven—looks at her, her eyes serious, and then slowly shakes her head no.
Nancy isn’t surprised by the answer, but she had to be sure. If anyone was likely to be stuck in the same repeating day with her, it’s the mysterious girl from who knows where that her brother has been hiding.
“When did you meet her?” Mike demands. “There’s no way you could have—”
“Shut up, Mike,” Nancy bites out, not taking her eyes off of El, and asks her next question. “Do you know about the thing that escaped from the lab?”
Eleven’s eyes widen, and almost imperceptibly, she nods.
Next to her, Jonathan lowers himself to the ground. “Can it be killed?”
“We’ve tried everything,” Nancy adds.
“She doesn’t really . . . talk.”
“Bad,” Eleven says.
Nancy asks Lucas, who’s hovering behind them, “What do you mean when you say she has superpowers?”
“She shut the door from across the room. And locked it.”
She looks back at Eleven, who couldn’t look less like a superhero if she’d tried. “Is that true?”
Eleven stares back at her, an inscrutable expression on her face.
“What about where it’s hiding, that other place? The one that’s like here but . . . not.”
Nancy half-expects Mike to interrupt again with another question, but he seems to be stunned into silence.
Eleven nods again, more emphatically this time, and says, “Will.”
“We know Will’s there,” Jonathan says. “Nancy, she . . . ” He trails off, glancing over at her quickly, then back at the boys.
She knows what he’s asking.
Nancy closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and makes a decision.
“I’m . . . stuck. In this day. I’ve been living the same day over and over again for . . . longer than I can remember now. Nothing I do has worked to make tomorrow come. For a while I thought it was finding Will, but we found him a while ago and nothing has changed. And we can’t get him out of that place.” She shrugs a little. “We keep dying.”
“You what?”
She turns to see Mike staring at her, his mouth dropped open. “You found Will?”
Nancy grimaces. She has to deal with this.
“Just, see if you can get anything out of her,” she says under her breath to Jonathan, then pushes herself to her feet, walking slowly over to where Mike is still staring.
“You’re messing with us, right? What you just said, that’s not true.”
She sighs, wearily. “It’s true. I’ve been living the same day for . . . well, a while now.”
Mike frowns. “It’s called a time loop. Did you seriously not know what it was called?”
Nancy glares at her brother. “I was actually pretty busy trying to save your friend, so no, Mike, I didn’t know.” She breathes out in a huff, exasperated, remembering why she had never told him in the first place—she didn’t want to have this conversation. “It doesn’t matter anyway, you won’t remember tomorrow.”
“You should have told me that you found him, I could come with you, maybe I could help—”
“No,” she states, placing her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t want you getting anywhere near this, it’s dangerous—”
“He’s my friend—”
“Mike!” she almost yells, remembering that her mother is home and that she snuck Jonathan in and there’s a strange girl in the closet, and lowers her voice. “I know you’re worried about Will. But we’re doing everything we can to save him. And hopefully El will tell us what we need to know to actually do that. And one day, when I finally get out of this . . . time loop thing, I will tell you all about it. But I need you to stay here.”
“El needs to come with us,” Jonathan declares from behind her, with the world’s worst timing.
Mike makes a noise of outrage, and Nancy closes her eyes, pinching her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
“If she’s coming, we’re all coming.” He gestures to Lucas and Dustin, who nod urgently.
“You’re not coming,” she insists.
Mike, El, Lucas, and Dustin manage to fit, with room, into the back seat of Jonathan’s car, once they’ve moved the shovels, the axe, and all the rest of their supplies.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan apologizes, as they place the last of the gear in the trunk. “But she just kept saying Will, and she grabbed my hand and started dragging me towards the door. I really think she wants to come.”
“She’s just a kid,” Nancy says, sorrowful, but if Lucas is to be believed, El is more than just some kid.
“She is.” Jonathan shakes his head, slamming the trunk shut. “But, if she does have . . . powers, then maybe she can help. And . . . if she doesn’t, then when everything resets, she stays at your house, and she’ll be safe. They’ll be safe.”
Nancy nods, distracted, watching the kids wrestling with seatbelts through the rear windshield. She’d wanted to protect Mike from all of this, but here she is, dragging him right into it, even as she knows she could have never kept him away, not once he’d found out where Will was.
She feels Jonathan’s hand slip into hers, gripping it tight.
He’s never done this before.
She glances up at him slowly, out of the corner of her eyes. He’s watching the kids too, the expression on his face sad, almost haunted, but determined. “They’re going to be okay,” he says, almost to himself, half-hope, half-promise, but then he looks over at her. “So is Will.”
Nancy gives him a small smile. “And what about us?”
He smiles back, bigger than hers. “We’re always going to be okay. We have you.”
Nancy sets the boys to digging the circle around the tree once they reach the woods—they haven’t burned down the woods once that she knows of, and she’ll be damned if this ends up being the first time. (That it’s also nice to get a break from shoveling, she doesn’t mention.)
She watches them for a moment, to make sure they know what they’re doing, then pulls Eleven aside, tucked into a copse of trees a few feet away.
“Hey,” Nancy says. “I just . . . I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you back at my house.”
Eleven watches her carefully.
“You don’t have to come with us, really. I don’t want you getting hurt—”
“No,” El says, insistent. “I can help.”
It’s the most words in a row Nancy has heard her say, which makes her feel better, for some reason. “Jonathan told you everything already, right? About how we find Will, about the monster? About how it comes into our world? The tree?”
She nods, and says, “The gate.”
Nancy nods back—it’s good to have a word for it—then hesitates, deciding there’s no reason not to ask. “Do you really have superpowers?”
Eleven stares at her, unblinking, then looks down. “My fault,” she whispers.
Nancy frowns. “What do you mean?”
She doesn’t get an answer, as Jonathan walks up to them, sighing heavily. “They’re having a leaf fight.”
Nancy looks over to where the boys are, in fact, having a leaf fight, then back to Eleven, who has a hopeful look on her face. Nancy jerks her head. “Go on.”
Eleven runs over, not looking back.
They watch the kids play in silence for a few moments as the light goes. Nancy can’t remember the last time she did anything that carefree—not even counting since she got stuck. It’s been years.
“It’s like they forgot about Will being missing, for a second,” she remarks, offhand. “Must be nice.” She realizes, as the words come out, that Jonathan might take it the wrong way, but she can see his crooked smile from her sideways glance.
“Yeah,” he says, with no malice in his voice, “must be nice.” If anything, he sounds hopeful.
Nancy steps a little closer, close enough that if he reaches out, he could slip his hand into hers again. “We are going to save him. Maybe not tonight, but . . . if we learn something from Eleven, then . . . tomorrow. Or the day after. Or . . . whenever it happens. But it will happen.”
He laughs a little. “You sound so sure.”
“I’m not,” she admits. “I have no idea what’s happening—this is all new to me. I didn’t even know it was called a time loop until today. But, I’ll know more tomorrow. And then I’ll tell you.” She grins up at him. “Thank you. In advance. For listening.”
Jonathan smiles, then turns to her, looking thoughtful. “Have I ever thanked you?”
“What do you mean?”
“For . . . all of this. For Will. For everything. I’m sure running through the woods every night isn’t exactly your idea of fun.”
“I don’t think so?” she muses, twisting her mouth. “But you don’t have to thank me.”
He looks at her sideways, moonlight slanting across his face. “I’m pretty sure I do. I wouldn’t be here without you. I’d be . . . doing whatever it was I was doing before. You’re the reason we’re here. The reason we’ve gotten this far.”
Nancy fixes her eyes on the ground, realizing why they’ve never talked about this before. “You make me seem better than I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was selfish,” she says, and shakes her head at his scoff. “Really. At first, I was trying to save Barb. And I did. I made sure that she wasn’t anywhere near here when the monster came. And only then did I start to think about Will. And then I realized that maybe that was why I was stuck, that saving him was the key to everything. So then it was for selfish reasons. I was doing it for me.”
“Nancy—”
“But lately, it wasn’t even that. I’m still being selfish, but for different reasons. I wanted to get out of the loop, but it wasn’t just for me.” She feels strange, saying the words she’s been thinking for so long out loud, but he won’t remember anyway, and more than that, she wants him to know, even if only for these waning moments of the day. She looks up at him, her gaze steady. “I did it for you,” she says simply. “I did it because you only really know me today, but I’ve known you for years now. And I want you to remember me, and remember everything we’ve done together—will do together.” She almost keeps going, but stops there, leaving the last words unsaid. I did it because I love you.
She doesn’t expect a response, but when Jonathan slowly slides his hand into hers again, Nancy feels a surge within her, straight to her heart. He looks more than a little confused, but like before, there’s hope too.
“I know,” he says. “I think . . . I want that too. I’m not glad that my brother is missing, but I’m glad I know you. Even if I can’t remember it, I still know. None of this makes any sense, but . . . ”
She turns to him, and when he kisses her it feels like coming home.
As they walk back hand in hand to where the kids are continuing to throw leaves, Nancy feels strangely at peace. She knows it won’t last, that there are terrors and obstacles in their way, but with Jonathan (and Eleven, who looks up as they approach) at her side, she feels, perhaps for the first time, that they might be able to handle whatever that place throws at them.
She makes one more half-hearted attempt to persuade Mike and the others to stay behind, but the defiance in their eyes has her backing down before she can really start. Instead she hands them shovels and the baseball bat, making them promise to hide at any sight of the monster.
“We promise,” Mike swears, and she can hear the lie, but she can’t fault him. She knows what it’s like, to want to save a friend.
“Just stay safe,” she sighs, pulling her brother into a quick hug. She knows that even if he doesn’t, he’ll be fine tomorrow, but as annoying as he can be, she doesn’t want him hurt. Mike bears it for longer than she would expect, before squirming away with a sidelong glance at Eleven.
Nancy leaves them glancing at each other, walking up to Jonathan, who’s standing next to the tree, axe leaning against his leg. He nods at her, knife held loosely in his right hand, lighter in the other.
“Remember,” she says, taking her position across from him, “wait for the monster to come through.”
“When it gets caught in the bear trap—”
“—I dump the kerosene.”
“And then,” Jonathan flicks the lighter open.
“Straight through the gate, avoid the vines when you come out the other side.”
“Will’s at my house.”
“We grab him, and we run back here.” Nancy feels the need to add, for the sake of the kids, “And no one gets hurt.”
Jonathan smiles at that, grim. “Anything else?”
She shakes her head, even though there is something else, the one thing she’s left unsaid from their conversation before. She’d held back, but here, on the precipice of leaping into the unknown once more, she’s not sure why she did.
“Ready?” he asks, glancing at her, at the kids.
Mike nods, his hands twisting on the shovel, looking simultaneously eager and terrified, Dustin and Lucas behind him, their faces mirroring his. Eleven’s expression is steely.
Nancy starts to count.
“One.”
“Two,” he continues, his eyes locked on hers, and the determination she sees in them almost takes her breath away. She doesn’t know why she would ever hold back, not with him always standing across from her, and makes up her mind.
“I love you,” she says, and slices the knife across her palm.
Nancy doesn’t know if he heard her, doesn’t see his reaction as her head jerks toward the tree at the sound of the monster stepping through, faster than it ever has, like it was waiting on the other side, waiting to strike.
She yanks on the rope in front of her, kerosene splattering down as Mike moans in fear, and from behind them, she hears a familiar voice.
“Nancy?”
She whirls around to find Steve Harrington, beer can in hand, confusion on his face, illuminated by the flames that engulf the monster as Jonathan lights it up.
“What the fuck,” he breathes.
It’s almost too much to handle, Steve showing up when he never has before—but with the kids, they’ve been louder than usual all night, and she hasn’t stopped to consider the party taking place just yards away in ages. Nancy thinks about knocking him out, a quick jab to the head with the butt of the rifle, but Jonathan is pushing the kids through the gate, and she can’t leave him here, not this close to the monster.
She grabs hold of Steve’s wrist, grimaces, and pulls him into the tree.
“Jesus, what the hell was that?” he yelps as he falls through, landing with a thump on the ground.
“Shut up!” Nancy snaps, in unison with Jonathan.
Steve shuts up.
She pauses for a moment, taking stock of their surroundings. Four kids smeared with ash, Steve with slime in his hair, Jonathan looking wary. No monster, yet. Nancy grabs the baseball bat from Dustin and shoves it into Steve’s free hand, the other still desperately clinging to his beer, one last shred of normalcy.
His eyes are wide.
“If you stay here, you’re going to die,” she tells him. “Swing at anything that isn’t us.”
They start to run, Jonathan leading the way, a reluctant, muttering Steve a few feet behind, Nancy pressing the kids onward from the rear. Eleven strides forward with silent purpose, but the boys stop far too frequently to stare at the strange world they find themselves in.
“Keep moving,” Nancy hisses.
Mike lets out a shout as the house comes into view, breaking into a sprint that has him reaching the door steps ahead of Jonathan, Lucas and Dustin only seconds behind, bursting through the door and freezing at the sight of Will standing in front of them.
“Mike?” Will says in a tremulous voice, and then he’s swarmed by his friends, a giant hug that almost ends with all of them on the floor, if not for Jonathan keeping them steady. Nancy hangs back with Eleven and Steve, her heart pounding.
She has no idea how they’re going to survive what’s coming next.
“What . . . are you guys doing here?” Will asks, eyeing Eleven warily.
“I have no idea,” Steve replies.
Nancy crouches down next to Eleven. “This is usually where things go wrong,” she says quietly. “Can you tell if that thing is coming?”
Eleven’s eyes lose focus, unblinking. She nods, once.
Nancy breathes in, looking over at Jonathan, who’s hugging Will like he hasn’t found him countless times already—which he hasn’t, she reminds herself. He catches her eyes flicking toward the door, and releases his brother. “We gotta go,” he says, and tightens his grip on the axe.
“Go where?” Steve asks frantically, having decided now, apparently, was the moment to begin to lose his shit.
“Back,” she says, pushing him toward the open doorway.
She turns to do the same to Eleven, when Steve flies past her, landing in a crumpled heap in front of the boys, the baseball bat rolling across the floor.
The monster is standing in the doorway, blocking their only way out.
“Shit.”
Nancy scrambles toward Jonathan, trying to maneuver Eleven behind them with one arm, trying to lift the rifle with the other. The boys raise their makeshift weapons, encircling Will like an honor guard, but Nancy fears that it won’t be enough, that the seven—no, eight, Steve back on his feet, having reclaimed the bat—of them don’t stand a chance against the monster.
They’re so close.
They have to try.
The monster takes a menacing step forward, and Nancy is taken back to that night, that first night, Barb and the woods and Jonathan, the night it all really began. But she knows more now, is no longer alone, has spent every day since trying and failing to get to this point, and as she aims the rifle she does it with the weight of all the days she’s lived.
She fires once, twice, the bullets thudding into the monster, jerking it backwards, but not enough to stop it as it comes relentlessly toward them.
Eleven steps in front of her, her arm inexplicably outstretched.
Nancy reaches for her, to pull her back, then stops because something is happening.
The air feels charged somehow, like the moment before a lightning strike, as Eleven jerks her head to the side.
The monster goes flying.
“Holy shit,” Nancy breathes.
Lucas crows, “I told you she has superpowers!”
From against the wall, the monster stirs, and Nancy sees Jonathan dart forward out of the corner of her eye, swinging the axe down with an audible thunk, startling her into action. She raises the gun, but it’s too late—the monster is moving again, throwing him across the room with a single swipe of its arm, roaring as it does so, its face peeling open like a nightmare.
Someone screams and it’s only when she inhales a ragged breath does Nancy realize it was her.
The monster stands over Jonathan, its face open, lethal.
She rushes forward, and to her surprise, she’s joined by Steve, whirling the bat and swinging, connecting with something hard enough that Nancy hears a crack, even as the monster jerks around again, sending them flying in eerily similar arcs, Nancy landing in a heap on the floor.
She crawls across the room, checking on Steve—still breathing—and crouches next to Jonathan, pushing at his shoulder until he rolls onto his back, and like so many other things tonight, she’s done this before. She’s almost too afraid to look, to see if there’s blood pooling underneath him, if she’s doomed to have him die in her arms again, but as he coughs, she presses her hand to his side, and it comes away clean.
Nancy only gets a moment to breathe out in relief as the monster roars again, staring directly at them. Mike and Lucas and Dustin plant themselves firmly between them and the monster, brandishing their weapons fiercely, but even as Nancy screams for them to stop, they’re thrown into her corner, joining the growing pile.
Only Eleven and Will are left standing, two tiny figures against the goliath of the monster.
Eleven steps forward—a girl, alone.
She reaches her arm out again, her nose bleeding freely, her entire body tense, but it’s clear that whatever superpowers she does possess aren’t enough to stop it.
Nancy closes her eyes, preparing to wake up in her bed. At least she learned something today.
But the blow she’s waiting for doesn’t come.
Nancy opens her eyes.
Eleven’s hand is outstretched once more, but it’s the hand by her side that Nancy focuses on.
Her other hand is being held by Will.
He’s as pale as she’s ever seen him, but there’s something in his face, a strength of some kind, the strength that kept him alive in this place, and as he grimaces with effort, lifting his own hand, and Eleven screams, the monster rises up into the air, silhouetted by the eerie light coming through the open door, some kind of shadow looming over them, the ash spinning around them in a whirlwind.
And like it never even existed, the monster disappears.
Joyce screams when she sees them, as they come staggering through the gate that has inexplicably opened inside the house, her missing son—covered in ash, nose bloody, Eleven shadowing his every move—throwing himself into her arms as she sobs into his hair.
Before Nancy knows it, there are sirens screaming up to the house, Hopper storming through the door, more emotional than she could have ever expected the man to be. Through it all, Jonathan doesn’t let go of her hand, separating from her only when they load Will into an ambulance, hopping up beside him, the look on his face a promise.
She rides to the hospital in a police car, a nasally voiced officer asking her and Steve and Mike questions they don’t have the answers to, Steve giving her meaningful glances that she can’t quite interpret. Eventually, she closes her eyes, leans her head against the cool glass of the window, and tunes everything out until the car jerks to a stop.
In the ER, they bandage her hand and clean the various cuts she’s picked up and call her mother. Nancy can hear the increasingly raised voice on the other line and wonders how many speed limits Karen will break on her way to the hospital.
Once they release her, it’s there, in the waiting room, that Steve pulls her over to two chairs in the corner. She knows she owes him some kind of explanation, but she was almost hoping she could get out of it until her day resets.
“So,” Steve says, “you’re stuck in a time loop, huh?”
Nancy can’t even begin to respond, she’s so shocked.
He looks at her sideways, eyebrows raised, and shrugs. “I heard you and Byers talking in the woods, I’ve seen Twilight Zone, I know what a time loop is.”
“You were spying on us?”
Steve scoffs, offended. “I wasn’t spying, you guys were being really loud. I just wanted to see what was going on, and then all of a sudden something was being set on fire. What was that thing, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of monster. I don’t know if we’ll ever really know." She pauses for a moment, then continues, “We’ve never made it out before. I don’t know if we ever would have without you.”
Steve tosses his hair, a move that seems designed to cause her heart to flutter, but after all these days, just leaves her feeling slightly fond. “Oh you know me, Nance. Always happy to help.”
She smiles at that, then almost without realizing she’s doing it, glances back over her shoulder to see if Jonathan has emerged. When she turns back, Steve’s expression is fragile, and there’s sorrow in his voice when he says, “So I guess that’s why you didn’t want to go to my party, huh.”
Nancy leans closer, placing a gentle hand on his forearm.
“I did,” she tells him. “In the beginning. And it was fun. But . . . ” She pauses then, thinking of all the reasons she never went back, but in the end, how there was only one that really mattered.
“I didn’t belong there. I never did.”
Steve nods, with resigned acceptance. “I heard you say you loved him. I can’t beat that.”
She’s saved from having to respond to that by Jonathan walking into the waiting room, on her feet, running and throwing herself at him before she even realizes she’s doing it. She can feel the exhaustion within him, but when his arms tighten around her, his hand placed carefully in the same spot as always, she clings to the thought that even when the day resets, she at least had this one moment.
When he pulls back, it’s to her that he says, “We did it.” There’s a smile she’s not sure she’s ever seen on his face before—relief and joy and disbelief all at once.
She nods, her own smile growing. “He’s okay?”
“He’s fine,” Jonathan says, and then to the boys, already halfway out of their seats, “Eleven too. You can go see them now.”
They disappear down the hall, sneakers slapping against the linoleum, Mike in the lead.
She’s about to follow, but Jonathan has crossed the room, stopping in front of Steve’s chair, where he’s trying and failing to hide that he’s been watching the whole scene play out.
“What’s up?” Steve asks warily.
Jonathan glances quickly at her in askance, to which she nods. “He heard us in the woods.”
“According to Nancy, we’ve never gotten out of that place before. And I’m not sure it would have ever happened without you,” Jonathan says. “So, thank you.”
He holds out his hand for Steve to shake.
Steve tries to stand too quickly, almost knocking the chair over, but he shakes Jonathan’s hand solemnly—and then does that thing boys do, pulling him into some kind of half-hug, leaving Jonathan looking surprised, but gratified.
Nancy shakes her head.
“So um, I’m glad your brother’s okay, but I’m gonna head out. See if I can get Officer Useless to give me a ride home—I know my parents are out of town and all, but I’ll never hear the end of it if I ditch tomorrow, and it’s almost 2 in the morning.”
Her heart skips a beat.
“Gotta get some sleep before first period,” Steve continues, unaware that Nancy’s world has just stopped.
“Say that again,” she mumbles, through numb lips. She thinks she may have stopped breathing.
“Sleep, Nancy. It’s important.” Steve looks at her like she’s gone crazy.
“Nancy?”
“What time is it?” she demands.
Steve points wordlessly behind her, Nancy whirling around to find a clock on the wall.
Which reads 1:47.
“It’s after midnight,” she breathes, and suddenly she’s crying.
She wants to jump up and down, to run around the room, to scream and shout and yell, but somehow she’s frozen. She can see the moment Jonathan realizes, his eyes widening as she finally finds the ability to move, throwing herself back into his arms, crushing him against her, if only to keep herself from crumpling to the ground, letting go enough to press a searing kiss to his lips, the first one that she knows he’s going to remember.
“What was it?” Nancy asks, breathless, once she finally releases him. “Was it the monster? Will? Something else?”
All he can do is shake his head. “I have no idea.”
She’s about to protest, to insist they find the reason, but Nancy finds she can’t stop grinning, her face starting to hurt from the pure joy of it all. It doesn’t matter.
It’s after midnight.
“We did it,” she says, and pulls Jonathan back into a hug, snaking an arm out to drag Steve in as well.
“Okay,” Steve demands, “what is going on?”
Nancy wakes up stiff.
She’d wondered if she’d been dreaming, that she’d made it past midnight only to wake up in yesterday again, but her body is screaming at the memory of their trip through the woods, their fight against the monster. Her palm aches underneath the thick bandage, every beat of her heart echoing across the slash on her hand.
But she also can’t stop smiling.
Her mother takes pity on her and Mike and doesn’t make them go to school, fretting over their cuts and bruises, even as she grounds them for a week for sneaking out and getting themselves hospitalized.
(“But we found Will!” Mike had protested.
Karen had simply shaken her head. “No buts, Michael.”)
Mike keeps eyeing her carefully when he thinks she isn’t watching. She can’t decide if he thinks it’s cool or not that his sister was caught up in something unexplainable, and almost wishes she’d found her way out of the time loop on a day he hadn’t learned about it. Almost.
Nancy spends her day wondering about the implications of the previous night—Will and Eleven, that shadow looming over the house, if they had, in fact, burned down the woods; and unlearning the to-do list that has become second nature—shooting practice, trips to the surplus store, ditch digging.
Jonathan.
She finds herself missing him in a way she’d never really considered, that he wouldn’t always be by her side, each and every single day. She doesn’t even know where he is, the phone at his house ringing non-stop. She assumes the hospital, but knows what would come of asking her mother to give her a ride, so instead she stares out the window and makes half-hearted attempts to study for the chemistry test she’s going to have to make up now.
It’s half-dark, around the time she and Jonathan head into the woods, when she sees a pair of familiar headlights pulling around the cul-de-sac. She’s halfway out the window, her grounding be damned, when she hears the doorbell ring.
(Of course he wouldn’t know to climb onto the roof—he hadn’t done it yesterday.)
She descends the stairs slowly, hearing her mother’s bright tones contrasted with Jonathan’s rumble, and by the time she reaches the landing, she can make out the words her mother is saying.
“Just have her home by ten,” Karen says with a smile, and Nancy cannot believe what she’s hearing, but she breathes her thanks as she runs past, shutting the door firmly behind her, and then she’s finally where she wanted to be all day.
Jonathan looks like her, face bruised, hand still wrapped in gauze, and somehow, despite everything—or perhaps because of everything—she feels almost shy as she stands in front of him.
She’s never done this before.
For all her wishing, for all her wanting, to have Jonathan know her—remember her—is so strange, so unfamiliar, that for a moment when she steps forward she almost wonders if she’d dreamed it all.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she says back, and she knows that she didn’t dream it.
And then his arms are around her, warm and strong, and for what feels like the first time all day, Nancy lets go of the breath she’d been holding.
“I told your mom Will wanted to thank you for finding him,” he explains as they walk toward the car.
Nancy frowns. “And he didn’t want to see Mike?”
He gives her a sideways look. “Oh, I mean, I’m sure he does. I just . . . wanted to see you.”
“Oh,” she says, blushing.
She watches him carefully as they speed down the road, the events of one day enough, it seems, to change the Jonathan she’s known for ages. Lacking the worry for Will, but also somehow surer of himself, the weight that had been pressing him down missing, his head held high.
Her eyes narrow as they pull over on a familiar stretch alongside the woods. “What are we doing here?” she asks. “We did save Will . . . right?”
“Yes,” he reassures her as he opens the door. “But we left a bunch of stuff behind. I don’t think we should leave it in the woods.”
Nancy pauses as the idea sinks in.
“What?”
“It’s nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I’ve just . . . never had to do this before. Clean up my messes.”
He laughs a little at that, leaves crunching under their feet. Without the urgency of finding Will, without the threat of the monster lurking within the trees, the woods feel strangely comforting, both new and familiar all at the same time.
She still kind of wishes she had a gun, though.
“So what was today like?” Jonathan asks.
Nancy thinks for a moment, unsure of how to describe it. “Different,” she says, eventually, which is an understatement for the ages. “I’m usually halfway through trying to kill a monster by this point in the day, and instead, I studied for Chemistry.”
“That’s a good thing though, right?”
“No, it is,” she agrees, but there’s more to it than that. “It’s just . . . strange that things aren’t going to reset. There’s no going back. Everything that happened, actually happened. I wanted so badly to see tomorrow and now that it’s actually here . . . ” She trails off, not even sure how to put it into words. “Everything I'd been waiting for, I can actually do. I can cut my hair. I can talk to you—so many things that I've wanted to tell you, but never did.” She twists her mouth. “And now that I can, I don't even know where to start. If you even want to hear them.” She shrugs a little. “It's okay if you don't.”
Jonathan stops walking, Nancy slowing to a stop beside him. They’re at the little copse in the woods from last night, the place where he’d kissed her and she’d spoken every word that was in her heart, standing side by side.
“I didn’t believe you, at first. Yesterday. But even when I didn’t, I knew I could trust you. I know it’s only been a day for me, but I’m glad—that it’s over. That you’re here. Because now I get to know you tomorrow, too.”
He takes a breath.
“Last night, you said you loved me.”
Nancy glances up at him. He’s looking straight ahead, like it would be too much to meet her gaze at this moment.
“I did,” she says quietly. And then, “I do.”
He looks at her then, and she can see everything of the boy she knows, has known, and so much more. “I meant what I said too. I don’t remember any of it. But I will remember now.”
Nancy nods, her eyes bright.
He turns to her then, taking her hands into his carefully, mindful of the cuts on their palms, the scars they will leave an eternal reminder of the day she finally escaped—the day they finally lived.
“I don’t love you,” he says, but he’s smiling, and Nancy feels like her heart might burst. “But ask me again tomorrow.”
When they come together, it's not like any of the times they've kissed before—there's a promise for the future, and despite her history with the concept, she feels like she could live in this moment forever.
Jonathan picks her up for school the next morning, the leaves having finally given up and fallen from the trees. Barb waves at her, frowning a little in confusion, as they walk across the parking lot. Steve nods at them, before running to catch up with Carol and Tommy.
Will is coming home from the hospital. Eleven is going to stay with Hopper until they find her family. (Nancy reminds herself to point him toward some articles he may find helpful.) Mike is going to be the annoying little brother he’s always been.
And so it goes.
Jonathan slips his hand into hers, and she can almost see her future stretching out before her, some of it mundane, some of it beyond what she could even imagine, and she can’t wait to take it as it comes, day by day.
“So, what happens now?”
Nancy shrugs. “I have no idea.”