Chapter Text
Year 5 is gratitude.
After Temperance, after being swept into Ace’s arms with no sense of breaking glass, Nancy had thought she knew gratitude. But year 5 is different. Year 5 teaches her to cling tightly to what is around her.
After living in Maine nigh on her whole life, Nancy likes to think she’s used to cold weather. But Boston is a whole different game. The frigid wind whips against her face, she futilely lifts her scarf to shield her cheeks but it’s blown out of her hands before it can have any effect.
She’s almost grateful for it today, though. The doctor had scheduled a visit, unprompted, after her 32 week ultrasound. She feels massive, whale-like (Ace objects, but he’s biased, she tells him), but so far it has been a fairly smooth pregnancy. Appointments increase towards the end, she’s read, but she’s a detective, and being asked to come in, coupled with the furrowed brow of both her doctor and the technician at the last ultrasound, is enough to send her heart into overdrive.
Ace insists it’s likely nothing, that he’ll meet her there, that they’re just being cautious. But Nancy has a feeling inside her. Something is different. Something is wrong.
Ace tries to reassure her. The fact that he can’t come today, the fact that the has an exam, is weighing heavily on him, and she knows it. She tells him she’ll call as soon as he’s done, but she can see how worried he is. He’d held her for hours last night, neither of them sleeping, and as much as he strokes his hand up and down her back and assures her, promises her nothing will be wrong, he’s worried too, and they both know it.
She slips a hand over her middle, and is rewarded with a tiny kick. It coaxes a smile from her. Trying to assure her too. Like their dad.
She taps her knee up and down, up and down in the waiting room, trying to do Bess’ weird breathing thing to calm her racing heart. It does nothing, as she might have known, so she tries to let her thoughts drift. Anything for a distraction. Thinking of Bess makes her think of her friends, and she allows her thoughts to wander.
Addy and Bess are still together, but have been decidedly more off and on than any of the other couples. Bess is a hopeless romantic, Nancy knows this, and she also knows Bess is happy with Addy, but sometimes she catches her looking at George and Nick or Nancy and Ace with a sort of wistfulness in her expression, her eyes following them with a hint of jealousy.
Nancy is ridiculously grateful for Ace, her sweet, kind, understanding Ace. They fit better than she could have ever thought she’d fit with anyone, but relationships are work. That’s what she tries to tell Bess, but it never seems to sink in. They did not just fall together and effortlessly make it work. It’s a strange mix, because Nancy is so, so invested in this relationship and is, unlike too many other relationships, trying to put the work in to make sure it lasts. She worries sometimes that Ace has become her relationship coach, but she really does try, harder than she has tried at most things, to make sure she’s there for him too. That means leaving early from work sometimes to make sure she’s home when he is, though she could easily put in another few hours. It means her spending a painstaking afternoon thoroughly researching Jewish meals, and running to her Dad’s house so she and Ryan could practice baking. Carson had stayed too, under the command of both of them needing “supervision”. It’s work, yes, but it’s also more natural than anything has ever been for Nancy.
She has never thought twice about marrying him, never. He is her person, her best friend, the person she is more sure than anything that she wants to spend the rest of her life with.
She thinks maybe Addy is not Bess’ person. Maybe she is. But then, wouldn’t one know these things?
George and Nick know it. They know it like she knows it, no doubt this time. And the second proposal, it is what the rest of their relationship is. It is a continuation. They plan on getting married before Nancy and Ace ever do, but that’s fine with her.
There was no room for doubt. There was that time, that horrible time in the middle of a death curse, where she thought she may never be with the person she loves. Where she thought she may have to settle for a love that is only okay for the rest of her life. Like George and Nick must have thought they’d moved on, that they could be happy with others. It can happen, Nancy knows it. Carson taught her that, but she thinks George and Nick are like her and Ace. There is no moving on, not really.
She thinks maybe love doesn’t have to be so intense, but if it isn’t, maybe it’s not the same love she and Ace share. That George and Nick share. That Jade and Nick did not share.
So when Bess is again lamenting Addy’s apparent lack of commitment, she doesn’t find much commiseration among her friends. George holds up a hand and shows her engagement ring. Bess’ eyes swing to Nancy on the couch.
“I’m already kinda committed,” Nancy jokes, indicating her middle.
Bess huffs out a breath. “I just feel like we should be in a different place than we are. I mean…I’m in it. Why isn’t she?”
“Do you know she isn’t?” George asks. “Have you asked her?”
Bess looks at George as if she’s insane. “I can’t simply ask . I’d just know. And I…” her eyes shine with tears. “I don’t think I do.”
“Bess. You’ve been together for years. She loves you. Talk to her.” Nancy indicates between her and George. “Even we were once young and in love. And despite now being old and practically married, we still have to talk to our guys.”
Apparently her method of distracting herself is effective, because they have to call her name twice, but Nancy’s heart starts pouding anew as she’s led into an exam room.
It’s when they ask if her husband is at work, that’s when she knows. That’s when it all slams into heart-pounding, blinding color and she knows .
There’s something wrong.
Because they wouldn’t ask if they didn’t expect her to need him.
Not like she doesn’t, not like she doesn’t on a daily basis, but here specifically, she needs him. Because it’s something bad.
She dials his number shakily, and she knows he hears the terror in her voice when she tells him to hurry. She hears him huffing as he runs, knows it is remenicient to him as it is to her of the time she heard pounding on her door, and opened it to “you do have feelings for me”.
They thankfully give her a moment when he arrives, when he sweeps her into his arms without a word, and she doesn’t even bother lying, telling him she’s fine. She doesn’t ask about his exam, apologize for making him leave. She simply clings to him, sweaty and still gasping for air, and she feels just that little bit more safe.
When they tell them it’s the baby’s heart, if she could form a thought, she’d think it both fitting and ironic, because wasn’t that what she was always worried about? That hers was too cold, too closed off, and isn’t it funny that now she’s ruined yet another innocent heart?
And ironic, as well, because she can feel her own traitorously alive heart begin beating in double time, tipping into a slow motion freefall to her feet.
And maybe they say things, maybe there are words like surgery and NICU and immediate intervention tossed around, but Nancy wouldn’t know. If she could feel anything, she wouldn’t be able to move past Ace’s arms tightening around her, and hearing him whisper in her ear how this is not her fault, not her fault, not her fault.
But it is. And nothing he says will make that untrue.
Thankfully, the doctors seem to realize she isn’t hearing them now. They schedule an appointment with a high-risk specialist, and she’s distantly aware of Ace leading her out, of him buckling her in the car and taking her home.
She thinks it funny. For weeks, this child’s existence was a dark secret, a mistake to be covered. And now the thought that this child may not be here turns the light out on her world.
Ace is her anchor, her tether to the earth. As she flings herself headlong into danger, into her own head or the world around her, he holds her hand, he fights with her, he keeps her grounded to the world.
But now he’s trembling beside her. He whispers all the same things, but she feels him shake. He strokes her hair, but she sees the wobble in his hands. He wipes her tears, but she sees the tears on his own face. He’s terrified. But at least they can be terrified together. Their joined hands cover her belly, as if love alone could fix their baby.
The desperation in her for her to be okay, please be okay is like nothing she has ever felt. She’d go through any torture imaginable, lay her life on the line in a single second if it meant her child would not suffer. And the thought of her baby, the piece of her and Ace, still on an exam table…cold, alone…nothing that Nancy has ever or will ever see would be as horrific.
She’s sure she’ll never sleep again, never trusts herself to, because what if she wakes up in a pool of blood, the future decided for her? But somehow, some way, sleep wraps its tendrils around her, makes the world a little hazy, a little foggy, until her mind drifts off without realizing it.
And the next thing she sees is blonde hair, a pink dress, a smile she was never allowed to keep in life.
“Mom,” she breathe and Lucy Sable smiles. Nancy barely sees it before she feels warm arms close around her, breathes in the scent that feels foreign and familiar at the same time.
“You’re back,” Nancy whispers. Lucy brushes a hand down her cheek.
“One problem solved, little one, but a new one arises.”
They both cast their eyes down to Nancy’s belly, and unconsciously, Nancy runs a hand over it.
“You’re scared.” It’s said like an observation, neutral, like it’s written all over Nancy’s face. She suspects it is, she’s never felt fear quite like this before.
It’s an observation that doesn’t even merit a response, but Lucy’s eyes narrow, looking at Nancy quizzically.
“You blame yourself.”
A scoff escapes. “I don’t see many others to blame here.”
Lucy wraps an arm around Nancy and it makes new tears spring up, because it feels warm. It feels motherly.
“You can’t do that, not again,” Lucy whispers.
“What?”
“Think every bad thing that happens is because of you. Nancy…” Lucy places her fingers under Nancy’s chin. “There is so little bad in you, and so much good. And you,” she taps Nancy’s nose, like an infant. “You are the only one who doesn’t see it. Your friends, family, your love…they all see it. They all know it. And…”
She joins their hands together, covering the baby, who gives one strong kick, making Lucy smile. “This one knows it too.”
The gentle wind clears the tears from Nancy’s cheeks, but more spill. “Believe it, my sweet girl,” Lucy whispers. “Believe me. Trust.”
It’s an ache in her chest, a physical ache, like something inside Nancy is fighting to free itself. Like something is trying to break free. Like she has to let it go.
“What if…what if the worst happens?”
Lucy’s mouth quirks in a small smile. “Then it will still not be your fault. And you will be surrounded by all the love you always were. All the love I always wanted for you.”
Instead of dread, warmth spreads inside Nancy. Warmth that feels a lot like love. The love she has for Lucy. For Carson and Kate and Ryan. For George, Bess, Nick. For Ace. And for her baby.
And when she wakes up, that love is all that remains.