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With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept

Chapter 7

Summary:

ruh roh

Notes:

Warnings for blood and gore and horror themes as well as self-harm.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Nancy watched from the window in the common room as Barb walked out onto the sidewalk and away from the hospital. She had an evening class that she was willing to skip if Nancy wanted her to stay, but with midterms just around the corner, Nancy insisted that she go. They’d walked to the ward door together, to the locked gate that Nancy wasn’t permitted to pass through, and before she said goodbye, Nancy had asked, “Everything that happened, how did you get past it?”

 

Barb stopped, buttoned up her coat and told her, “Honestly? I didn’t. I think about him and what happened in that basement every single day. I don’t think I’ll ever put it fully behind me, it’s part of who I am now, but it’s not all that I am. I’m going to keep living my life for all the girls that didn’t get to live theirs” — she reached out and held Nancy’s hands — “and you deserve to live yours, too. Don’t let him steal any more of you away.” 

 

As Barb walked out of view, Nancy thought about everything that had been stolen, in this life and the other, all the parts of her that had been chipped away at by violence and loss and trauma. There was a sense of hope here, though, a feeling that there was this future just waiting for her to step into it. The inverse of all the ways she could never step out and be free of Hawkins. But there was so much she couldn’t imagine walking away from— Mike and Holly, Steve and the kids, Robin. 

 

Robin. 

 

“Hey, Nancy.”

 

She turned from the window and saw the girl with Robin’s face standing there in her candy striper uniform. “Hey,” she answered.

 

“How are you doing?”

 

“I’m…I’m not quite sure, to be honest.” 

 

“That’s pretty understandable. I’m Ronnie, by the way. I realized I never actually introduced myself.” She offered her hand and Nancy shook it.

 

“I know, I asked the nurse about you,” Nancy said, and then realized she was still holding Ronnie’s hand because it felt so natural in her own. She let go and immediately looked away when embarrassment took hold.

 

“You asked about me?” Ronnie asked, taking a few steps back to give Nancy a little space, and when Nancy braved a glance at her she could see the pink in her cheeks. 

 

“Yeah. Sorry if that was overstepping. She only had good things to say about you, if that makes it any better.” 

 

“No, no it’s fine. It’s good even. It’s—” Ronnie paused and began fidgeting with the necklace Nancy hadn’t noticed her wearing, pulling the pendant out from beneath her collar and spinning back and forth between her fingers and thumb before saying, “On Friday nights they play movies in here. They’re usually pretty bad and the popcorn is always a little burnt and there’s soda that’s never quite cold, but I was thinking maybe…if you wanted to…that I could…I mean I’m not scheduled for volunteer hours or anything but I could come in anyway…if you wanted me to…to watch the movie…with you. Maybe?” 

 

It was so painfully Robin—the uncertain rambling and the busy hands—that Nancy’s heart broke in her chest. Ronnie was just looking at her with those blue eyes she loved so much, waiting for an answer. She let go of the necklace and started wringing her hands instead and Nancy saw that the fine chain held a little silver bird.

 

Looking defeated by Nancy’s silence, Ronnie said, “Or maybe that’s a stupid idea—”

 

“I’d love to.”

 

“Yeah?” 

 

It was reckless, maybe, muddying the waters further when nothing was particularly clear to begin with, but this girl was here smiling at her and she wasn’t Robin, but at the same time she also was. The harsh dichotomy of realities tied together by the subtle blush across freckled cheeks. 

 

Nancy reached out and began adjusting the necklace around Ronnie’s neck so that the clasp was in the back; she wasn’t even sure when they had gotten arms length close again. She held onto the bird pendant with its spread wings and felt the briefest whisper of clarity. She flicked her eyes up to Ronnie’s face and said, “Yeah.”

 

“Good! I’m glad that you want to, but I mean if you didn’t actually want to that would be okay, too, ‘cause maybe it’s weird of me to ask since you have so much going on right now and sitting through a predictably lame movie with bad snacks with someone you don’t even know probably isn’t high on your list of priorities so you don’t have to say yes just to be nice ‘cause I’d still think you were nice even if you said no and—wait, are you laughing?”

 

Nancy bit her lip to stop the giggles and said, “I’m sorry, you just remind me of someone I know and it’s nice.”

 

“Someone who also doesn’t know when to stop talking and rambles on like a giant dork? Are you like…a magnet for the socially inept?”

 

“It’s cute, the rambling I mean. I like it. I’ll save you a seat on Friday,” Nancy said and watched the blush darken on Ronnie’s cheeks.  

 

*

 

The sun crept lower until it was swallowed up by the city skyline outside Nancy’s hospital room window; the early darkness of October that signaled that winter was on its way. She spent it in a kind of limbo after Langer told her to take the night to herself and rest, neither here nor there between her two perceived worlds, laying on the firm bed but also seeing and hearing what was happening in Hawkins when she closed her eyes. 

 

“Shouldn’t it be working by now?” she heard Robin say outside their bedroom door.

 

“I don’t know, all I have to compare her progress to is a handful of rats and a rabbit. It worked fast on them but I have no idea how the serum will be processed by an actual human. Changes in metabolism, absorption rate, compatibility, there are so many factors. It could take hours before it starts working or…”

 

“Or what, Dustin?”

 

“Or it could not work at all. Has her fever come down at all?”

 

“No.”

 

“Shit.”

 

Nancy saw the door open and Robin came back in holding a fresh cool washcloth that she placed on Nancy’s forehead. “Come on, baby, I need you to fight this,” she said as she sat down on the bed and started running her fingers through Nancy’s hair. 

 

*

 

Nancy woke up sweaty and breathing heavily the next morning. She’d been having a bad dream, a terrible nightmare of being in the Upside Down version of the basement. Cold, slimy vines held to her chair while Vecna used the razor-sharp claws on his hand to slice and peel thin strips of flesh from her bare arms and thighs. He dropped them one by one on the floor. It didn’t hurt, though; she felt no pain as he slowly flayed her. She just watched as the bloody pile on the concrete grew with each piece of her and started to reform into something new— a mass of skin all jumbled together like a patchwork quilt. 

 

With a flick of his wrist and a curl of his hand, Vecna crushed the bones in her right arm one at a time until it just hung there useless, a series of pops and snaps she heard but couldn’t feel. Again with the other arm, and then each leg until it was only the vines holding her dismantled limbs together. The shapeless thing on the floor grew sharp angles, elbows and knees that stretched into arms and legs. She heard her ribs snap in succession like someone twisted a sheet of bubble wrap and her lungs struggled to breathe inside her collapsed chest. She watched as the thing sprung a rib cage, bones pressing out against taut skin. 

 

She knew there was less and less of her left with every passing second. The pile of parts was shaping into something recognizable, something like herself. Vecna was molding it like modelling clay with his mind, pushing and pulling until his creation stood up slowly. And then with a final wet popping sound, everything went black for a moment until Nancy found herself standing naked and looking back at the crumpled body she’d just left behind, still strapped to the chair, all exposed muscle and sinew and empty eye sockets. She looked to Vecna and with a final squeeze of his fist, he crushed what was left of her old form into a slurry that oozed from the chair and covered the floor in red gore.  

 

When he relaxed his fist again, it wasn’t the clawed hand of Vecna; the scarred monstrosity was gone along with all the vines. All that was left was the blonde-haired man, Harvey Cameron, opening his hand to reveal the razor blade necklace. He put the chain around Nancy’s neck and the blade rested harsh and cold against her bare skin. The man walked away, leaving the basement door open behind him. Nancy took the blade between her thumb and index finger then pulled it across her chest and winced in pain as it sliced her skin. Then she followed the man out of the basement and up the stairs to a brightly lit doorway above.    

 

It had only been a dream, but waking from it and finding herself in her hospital room only reinforced its meaning— that this was her reality, painful and messy, but true. She reached down and fumbled with the corner of the mattress until she felt the pills she’d stashed under it instead of taking and popped two of them in her mouth, swallowing them down dry. And then she called for the doctor. 

 

*

 

“I want to go home,” Nancy said a short while later when her parents had joined her and Dr. Langer in her room, “with you and dad.”

 

“I know, Nancy, and we want that, too, more than anything. But first we need to be sure that you’re better and that you’re here to stay,” Karen said. 

 

“It’s not going to be easy, Nancy, you have to take it one step at a time,” Langer told her. “You’ve already taken the biggest step, you faced your past and you’re still here with us, but now you have to start ridding your mind of those things that support your hallucinations. Do you understand?”

 

Anxious, Nancy grabbed a fistful of her shirt and just looked back at him. 

 

“There are things in that world that you cling to. For your delusion, they’re safe-holds. But for your mind, they’re traps. We have to break those down.”

 

“Fighting the monsters?”

 

“That’s part of it, yes, that gives you something to physically direct your anger onto, but I’m talking about those things that you want there. The things that keep you going back.”

 

She squeezed her shirt harder, her knuckles white around the starchy fabric. She knew exactly what kept her in Hawkins even after all this time, what she missed this very second even as she contemplated everything she’d ever known. “My family. My friends.”

 

Langer nodded. “That’s right. When you had a momentary awakening a few years back, it was them who pulled you back in and they’ve kept you there ever since.”

 

Ted came to the bedside and put a hand on Nancy’s knee. “They’re not really your friends, sweetie, or your siblings or your…your partner, they’re just tricks keeping your mind from recovering and getting healthy.”

 

“You have to do whatever it takes to convince yourself of that, Nancy. Whatever it takes,” Langer told her.    

 

Whatever it takes, Nancy thought to herself. 

 

*

 

Nancy got out of bed and got dressed, Robin’s side was already empty and she could smell breakfast cooking downstairs. She peeked out the window and saw that Steve’s car was gone, it was still early so it seemed likely that he’d been out patrolling all night and hadn’t returned home yet. A quick check in Mike’s room found him snoring softly. It was good. She made her way downstairs quietly, avoiding the places where the stairs squeaked, but she didn’t head for the kitchen. Instead, she tiptoed to the basement and descended those stairs just as quietly. 

 

Dustin’s make-shift lab was still set up, the demodog still sedated and chained to the post in case it was needed again. Nancy found what she was looking for, slipped it into her back pocket, and returned to the main level of the house. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, she almost walked right into Robin, who was coming out carrying a tray of various breakfast foods— French toast, an omelet, bacon, orange juice and Nancy’s favourite tea. 

 

“Nance! I didn’t hear you get up, I was just coming back to check on you,” Robin said, setting the tray down on the kitchen table to free up her hands. “I didn’t want to wake you, figured you needed all the rest you could get, but thought you might be hungry when you woke up.” 

 

“Yeah, I…I guess I needed the sleep.”

 

Robin held her hands, running her thumbs back and forth over her knuckles, and asked, “Are you feeling any better? Did the antidote work?”

 

She looked so hopeful, standing there in the morning light just waiting to hear that everything was okay and normal again. Nancy was thinking about how Robin told her it was her mother who taught her how to cook, that they used to have family dinners together every week and loved trying out new recipes. She’d always found it odd that she’d never met Robin’s parents even after all this time, that they’d just up and left town with the first wave of fleeing townsfolk in the spring of ‘86 and been okay with Robin staying behind, that in the three years that followed they hadn’t come back to see her once. And Robin would just say that they were overseas somewhere, finally doing the travelling they’d always talked about, and would come visit when they made it back to the states. It was odd to her before, it was another piece of the obviously abnormal now. 

 

“Nance?”

 

“Sorry, I guess I’m still pretty dazed, but, uh…better.”

 

“No more Dream Warriors hospital nightmare?”    

 

Nancy just shook her head.

 

“Well, we still have the demodog all tranqued out in the basement in case it didn’t work and we need more parts.”

 

This time all Nancy could do was offer a little nod. 

 

“Why don’t you come sit down and eat? Your poor brain needs energy for clearing out all the mental baggage from the last few days.”

 

“Yeah. Okay.”

 

Robin turned to pull a chair out and Nancy stepped behind her, wrapping her arms around Robin’s waist and nuzzling into the side of her neck. She shouldn’t have, it would only make it harder, but she breathed Robin in, the scent of her skin and shampoo mixed with the sweet and savoury smells of the breakfast she’d been cooking. She held her close and closed her eyes and let herself feel the way Robin relaxed against her, the way they fit together so perfectly like two people in love ought to fit. 

 

Robin let out an easy sigh and said, “It’ll be nice when you’re all better and this is all behind us.”

 

Nancy swallowed the lump in her throat and let go of Robin with one hand to reach for her back pocket. She kissed Robin right at the soft spot where her neck met her shoulder, whispered, “I’m sorry,” and sunk the syringe of sedative into the opposite side of Robin’s neck. 

 

She was out before she even registered what had happened and Nancy caught her before she hit the floor. 

 

Nancy took care in getting her down to the basement — making sure she didn’t hit her head on the stairs on the way down — which was maybe redundant all things considered, but it was impossible not to care. She cared as she ripped off a strip of duct tape and stuck it over Robin’s mouth and she cared as she fastened Robin’s ankles and bound her hands behind her back with thick zip ties. She cared, and it hurt, but she did it anyway, and left Robin laying on the basement floor.

 

In the kitchen, she ignored the meal Robin prepared for her and started on the dishes, an irrational need for the space to be tidy even if she knew it benefited no one. She heard the front door open some time later as she rinsed the soap suds off a frying pan. 

 

“Robin? Nance? You up?” Steve called out from the foyer. “Sorry I was gone so long, there was some weird shit going on down by the power plant, military trucks parked out back and demodog screams coming from inside. Stayed out there all night with Lucas trying to see what the hell they were up to. Guys?”

 

Nancy kept quiet, holding the pan under the running water.

 

“Hey there, sane girl,” he said when he walked into the kitchen and saw her. “I’m guessing that Dustin’s antidote worked since you’re up and refusing to let a mess stay messy? Where’s Rob?”

 

“Yeah. I’m better now.” Nancy tried to sound halfway believable. “She’s downstairs.” 

 

Steve nodded and automatically picked up the dish towel and began drying the dishes sitting in the rack and putting them away. “So that settles it then? We’re, uh…we’re real, right? We should probably finish off that demodog and haul it out of the basement then.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Are you up for that? I mean, you must want to be the one to take it out after the hell it’s put you through the last few days. Talk about justified revenge, that thing almost made you believe that your life isn’t real.” He reached around her to put a plate in the cupboard. “It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so fucked up, all of us just figments of your twisted imagination” — he leaned in close again to grab another plate — “can you imagine?”  

 

Nancy answered by bringing the frying pan down on his head. 

 

Steve caught himself on the counter as the plate shattered on the floor, raising a hand to his head and checking for blood. “Nancy, what the hell—”

 

She hit him again and knocked him out cold. 

 

It was harder to get him down to the basement carefully, but Nancy found she cared less about that as she became more confident in her choice. She used a length of rope to tie his hands around one of the floor to ceiling posts and left him slumped against it. 

 

There was a little pile of syringes on the lab table, and Nancy filled one with sedative and put the cap back on the needle. She made her way up to Mike’s room, hoping to catch him while he was still sleeping. 

 

She wasn’t that lucky, though, and when she pushed his door open, she found him pulling a hoodie over his head. 

 

“Jeez Nance, don’t you knock? I’m glad to see that you’re out of bed, but you’re almost as bad as mom with the barging in unannounced,” Mike said. 

 

“Do you ever remember her being happy? Mom?” Nancy asked him, remembering all the silent family dinners when their mother would spend more time sipping her third glass of wine than eating the meal she’d prepared. When their father would eat and then get up and leave his plate behind on the table while he retired to the television without so much as a word of thanks. 

 

“What? Nancy, are you okay?” Mike asked, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. 

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“To shoot up the demodog with more drugs then go keep watch on the powerplant with Dustin. I heard something downstairs, is Steve back? Did he fill you in? Lucas woke me up over the radio with the details. Seems pretty likely that they’re fucking around with these new monsters there and we don’t want to miss anything.”  

 

“No. You’re not going anywhere,” Nancy said, blocking the doorway with her small frame. 

 

Mike scoffed at her and tried to shift her out of the way but she held her ground. “Look, I know you go all paranoid sister when I go patrolling, but this is important, it could be the answer to whatever caused this whole thing so I need you to move.” 

 

Nancy shook her head. “You’re going downstairs with the others. It’s the only way I can get past this and get better.”

 

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.” 

 

She took a few steps toward him, uncapping the syringe she held inside her sweater pocket with one hand. 

 

“Nancy? You still look kind of sick, maybe you should get back in bed. Where’re Robin and Steve?” 

 

She kept approaching and something about her expression made Mike back away. He was afraid of her, she could see it easily. 

 

“What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”

 

In one movement she pulled out the syringe and lunged for him but he spun out of her grasp and went for the door.

 

“Jesus Christ, Nancy!” Mike said in the hallway, holding his hands out in front of him to try and keep distance between them. “Robin! Steve! I need some help up here!”

 

It wasn’t how it was supposed to go, but Nancy pulled the revolver from her other pocket and said, “I need you to come downstairs with me.”

 

Mike responded by darting into their parents’ old bedroom and locking the door behind him. “What are you going to do, Nance, shoot me?”

 

“Not unless I have to,” she said, trying the doorknob anyway. 

 

“Just stop for a second and talk to me! You’re hallucinating, whatever you’re seeing isn’t real.”

 

“I know. You’re just part of the trap that’s keeping my mind here.”

 

“Nancy, listen to me, I’m your brother! That hospital and those people there, they’re what’s not real.”

 

Nancy aimed at the doorknob and fired a shot. The door swung open but when she went inside she didn’t see Mike anywhere. The door to the en suite bathroom was closed, though. She tried to open it and was frustrated to find another locked door. 

 

“You can’t hide, Mike. This would be easier if you’d just cooperate.” When she got no answer from the other side, she shot that door open, too. 

 

Mike was backed against the far wall, looking like a scared little boy, like the little boy who’d snuck downstairs when Nancy and Barb were watching scary movies and then spent the next two weeks creeping into Nancy’s room in the middle of the night to sleep on the floor beside her bed because he was too scared to sleep in his room alone. She’d put on an act of being mad about it, telling him it was his own damn fault for watching the movie when he’d been told to stay upstairs, but then she’d pass him one of the stuffed animals from her bed and make sure the blanket and pillow were there for him again the next night. She used to be the person he came to when he was afraid, now she was the person he was afraid of. She shook her head and reminded herself that none of those memories were real. 

 

“Look at me, Nance, I’m right here. You know that I’m your brother and that I love you. Somewhere deep down inside you must know that’s real? That all of this is real?” Mike said.

 

Nancy lowered the gun but approached him. “Sure it is. ‘Cause what’s more likely to be real, a sick, traumatized girl in an institution, or a girl with super powers who’s had to help a group of us kids save the world again and again from monsters from an alternate dimension? That’s ridiculous.”

 

“Nancy—”

 

“It’s insane, all of it. Being so fucked up by a man that fighting actual monsters and having my best friend be killed by one was a better option than facing what happened. But not anymore. He doesn’t get to take anymore of my life.” 

 

This is your life!”

 

“No. It’s not.” 

 

Mike grabbed for her, knocking the gun out of her hand and sending it sliding across the tile floor out of reach. He missed the other hand, though, and she swung around with the syringe and jabbed it into his arm. He was able to spin away before Nancy injected the full dose, stumbling under the effects of the sedation but not going down fully. 

 

“Let’s go, that’s enough wasted time,” Nancy said, picking up her gun and pressing it to Mike’s back. 

 

He did what she said, too out of it to fight back, and after falling down the last of the second set of stairs, Nancy had him in the basement. She secured his hands and ankles and taped his mouth; it was easier if she couldn’t hear them pleading.

 

A flash and she was in her hospital room with her parents and Langer around the bed.

 

“It’s okay, Nancy, don’t stress yourself,” Langer said.

 

Her mother put a supportive hand on her shoulder and said, “Honey, just take your time.”

 

“Make it as easy on yourself as possible. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

Another flash and she was back to looking at her captives.  

 

Robin and Steve were both beginning to stir, Nancy could see the panic fill their faces when they realized that they were trapped. She knew the feeling, waking up unable to get free, thinking it was all just a bad prank, that it couldn’t actually be happening. It was, though, because it had to, because there was no other way. 

 

Even with the tape across her mouth, Nancy could make out Robin calling her name as she struggled on her belly with her hands behind her back. Steve managed to get to his feet even with his hands tied around the post and was bleeding from a small cut on his forehead. Nancy tried to remain detached and told herself over and over that it wasn’t real. None of it was real. Even still, she wouldn’t look at Robin’s face as she stepped around her and made her way to the other being starting to wake up—the demodog. 

 

Its body was wrapped tightly with a chain and secured to another support post, its legs and stinging tail immobilized. Nancy removed the carabiner and the heavy chain fell away as the dog realized it could move its limbs again. It stood up and its lotus mouth peeled open as it took a few slow steps, claws tapping against the floor. It saw Steve first and went right for him. 

 

Tethered to the post, there was nowhere for Steve to go. The dog leapt and he kicked it hard in the side of the head. Undeterred, it whipped back around and threw itself full-force at Steve, bulldozing right through the post in the process and snapping wildly at the splintered pieces of wood. Free from the post but with his wrists still tied together, Steve pulled the tape off his mouth and called to Nancy for help. The dog stayed fixated on him. 

 

Nancy considered just leaving, going back upstairs and waiting until it was all over, but the doctor told her she needed to see it through. She needed to watch this monster in the basement destroy the things her mind created to escape from the trauma of a very different monster in a very different basement. So she backed herself up until she was tucked under the stairs and watched Steve dodge an attack by the demodog’s tail stinger. 

 

“Nancy!” he called. 

 

“Nancy,” her mother said, sitting on the edge of the bed and reaching for her.

 

She jumped up and out of bed, leaning into the corner of the room, telling herself she was doing the right thing but feeling a surge of doubt. She banged her head against the wall and wanted it all to be over. 

 

Her mother joined her cautiously, concern on her face. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. Whatever it is, it’s not real, remember? Just keep concentrating and it’ll be over soon. I’m right here to help.”

 

“Nancy, help!” Steve shouted as the surroundings shifted back, landing a kick to the dog’s ribs. Robin was thrashing around on the floor, desperately trying to get free to help him. 

 

“Hello? What the hell is going on down here? Are you dickheads bringing back basement wrestling?” It was Max at the top of the stairs, back a day early from her trip. She caught sight of Robin and Mike and started running down. “Oh fuck! Guys!”

 

Nancy reached through the step from her spot under the stairs and grabbed Max’s foot, tripping her and causing her to tumble the rest of the way down. It made her feel ill, seeing Max fall like that. This was supposed to be the way to healing, but it hurt, seeing who she’d always thought of as her friends and family in peril and knowing it was her doing. Max didn’t waste time, though, she scrambled over to Robin, pulled a pocket knife from her jacket, and cut the zip ties from Robin’s hands and ankles. She did the same with Mike. 

 

Robin pulled the tape off her mouth and immediately ran for Steve and the demodog while Nancy kept watching, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. It was getting harder and harder to watch. 

 

A flash and she was on the tile floor in the corner. Barb was coming into her room, Langer had called for her earlier that morning, thinking that her presence would have a grounding effect during this process. She crossed the room and knelt down in front of Nancy.

 

“I don’t…I don’t know,” Nancy said as Barb’s hands settled on her shoulders. 

 

“Nancy, look at me.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Barb held her face instead and said, “I believe in you. You’re a survivor, you can do this. You’ve already survived so much. I know it’s hard, but you’re so close.” Nancy’s parents and the doctor stood close by. 

 

Nancy shook her head free from Barb’s touch and the basement came back. Robin was using Max’s knife to cut through the rope on Steve’s wrists and had just managed to get him free when the dog jumped at her from behind. Steve pushed her out of the way and the dog landed with its feet on his chest, knocking him to the ground as its claws sunk into his flesh. He screamed in pain, trying to push it away before it closed its mouth around his head. 

 

“Steve,” Nancy muttered. 

 

Mike came to his aid, grabbing a piece of splintered wood and hitting the demodog with it. It turned and struck at him with its tail again and again as he jumped back and dodged its attacks. His feet got tangled up in the chain that had once restrained the dog and he tripped. The dog went for him with its mouth open wide. 

 

“Mike!”

 

Robin got to it before it got to Mike. She’d found Steve’s old nail bat on a shelf and brought it down on the creature’s back. The rusty nails tore it’s skin and splattered black blood when she pulled it free. But before she could hit it a second time, it slashed its claws across her belly and Nancy saw the red spreading through the tears in her shirt. 

 

“Robin!” 

 

Nancy banged her temple against the white wall of the hospital, trying to feel anything other than the pain ripping through her chest as the uncertainty tore through her mind. She didn’t know what was right anymore. 

 

“No, no, no!” she cried.

 

“Nancy. Nancy, you have to fight it. You’re too good to give in now, you can beat this thing,” her mother said, kneeling next to Barb and holding the side of Nancy’s face to stop her from hurting herself. “Be strong, baby”

 

Barb took her hand and Nancy squeezed. “I know you’re afraid, Nance. I know the world feels like a hard, scary place because horrible things happened to us. Things that no one should ever have to experience. But you’ve got people here that love you and will be here for you always.”

 

Tears were running down Nancy’s cheeks and she just kept holding onto Barb’s hand, like it was the only thing keeping her tethered. 

 

“I love you and have all the faith in the world in you. I’ll always be with you,” Barb said, and Nancy believed it fully. Barb had been with her every single day for nearly six years, in every choice that she’d made and action that she’d taken. In every laugh and every sob. In every part of anything that made her the person she’d become. 

 

Her mother stroked her cheek and brushed away her tears with her thumb. “Sweetie, you’ve got such strength in your heart, I know you do, you just have to dig deep and find it. Believe in yourself, you know who you are,” she said.

 

Nancy looked at her mother, at her teary-eyed father, at her best friend—these wonderful people who loved and believed in her—and felt something shift inside her. She loved them so much, the happy parents she’d always wanted and the friend she thought she’d lost forever, and it was true, she did know who she was. She knew where she belonged. 

 

“You’re right,” she said to her mother with a sad smile, “thank you.” 

 

Karen looked at her warmly and Barb smiled and gave her hand an extra squeeze. But then Nancy closed her eyes for a moment, wet her lips, and said, “Goodbye.” 

 

The smile fell from Barb’s face and Karen looked horrified as she said, “Nancy, please, no.”

 

The last thing Nancy heard was Barb calling her name before she was back in her basement, getting up from the floor, and coming out from underneath the stairs. 

 

Everything was chaos, Mike and a bleeding Steve were keeping the demodog at bay while Max pressed a towel from the laundry basket to the wounds on Robin’s belly. Armed with a new sense of clarity and a loaded handgun, Nancy walked up to the dog without hesitation. When it turned and screamed at her, she shoved her gun directly into its open mouth and fired, blowing a hole through the back of its skull. It collapsed to the floor, still twitching, but she fired two more shots into its head and it fell still. 

 

Mike stared at her, eyeing the gun in her hand, and Nancy didn’t blame him for being wary. She set it down and looked around the basement at everyone. Her eyes landed on Robin and she broke. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

 

Robin managed to stand up with help from Max, wincing as she did, and just said, “Nancy?”

 

Nancy nodded and was taken by surprise when Mike ran to her and pulled her into a hug. “I’m so, so sorry,” she repeated.

 

“It’s over, and we’re…mostly okay,” Steve said, wiping the blood off his forehead. 

 

“No, you’re not,” she said as she let go of Mike and reached out to gently touch one of the spots on his chest where the dog’s claws cut in. 

 

“I’ll be fine, Nance.” 

 

“Robin?” Nancy said in a broken voice, eyes locked only on her. “I’m so—”

 

“Sorry, I know. Come here,” Robin finished for her. 

 

Nancy went to her, head lowered like a guilty dog trying to appease its owner, but Robin just wrapped her arms around her. “It’s not your fault, baby. Whatever drug or toxin that thing was dealing packed one hell of a punch and did exactly what it was supposed to, made you doubt what was real.” She pressed a series of quick kisses to Nancy’s temple. 

 

Nancy clung to her but tried not to put pressure where she was hurt. “You need a doctor,” she said when the hug ended, carefully lifting Robin’s tattered shirt to see the extent of the injuries. The bleeding had already slowed considerably. 

 

“Steve and I will go get patched up, but you should go rest. You’re still burning up with that fever and look like you might pass out any second.”

 

“No, I need the antidote before I do anything else. I…I didn’t take it last night,” Nancy said sheepishly.

 

“The vial’s upstairs,” Robin told her, relief in her voice. 

 

They made their way up the stairs, leaving the demolished basement and dead demodog behind for the time being. Robin drew up another dose of antidote and bravely injected it into Nancy’s arm herself and everyone seemed to breathe a little easier. 

 

Max looked at them all standing around the kitchen and said, “Does someone want to explain what the fuck happened while I was gone?”

 

*

 

The antidote worked quickly and as the morning passed, the memories of Nancy’s other life faded away into nothingness. Robin ordered her to stay in bed while Steve drove the two of them to the doctor to have their wounds dressed. They came back a short time later with fresh stitches and bandages and Robin joked that one upside to living in a half-deserted town full of monsters was the short emergency room wait times. And then Robin just laid with Nancy in their bed, stroking her hair and rubbing her back, and reassuring her that everything was going to be okay. 

 

The window was cracked just a little, just enough to let in the cool October air. From outside, Nancy heard a songbird singing by itself in the distance— a pretty little whistle. The breeze caused the blinds to sway softly; the rays of sunlight filtering through the slats and dancing over the bed where they were curled up together. It flitted across Nancy’s face, and she just rolled and buried herself further into Robin to keep it out of her eyes. 

 

At the same time, a doctor in a white coat shone a penlight across the fixed, vacant eyes of a girl sitting in a chair beside a hospital window. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Langer said to Barb and Nancy’s parents, “there is no response at all. I’m afraid we’ve lost her.”    

Notes:

That"s it! It"s finally over. You can decide for yourself what you think is real. Thanks to everyone who actually stuck this one out, I promise I"ll write something less horrific next time 💜

Notes:

I don"t know how many chapters this will end up, four is a guess.
Leave me your words, I am attention-starved