Chapter Text
Nancy can’t quite believe that it was only a year ago that they were fighting one monster, proud of themselves for taking down a single demogorgon. Now, Jonathan’s firm grip on her hand the only thing keeping her going as a group of three chase them through the ashen woods, all she can think is, we were so naïve.
They had done their part, smoke erupting out of Will, heat ebbing out through the patched-up windows and splintered door, sweat cooling on brows, their fragile group holding onto each other, waiting, waiting for confirmation that Eleven had succeeded.
The lights grew brighter, blinding. And then—blackness.
“Is that it?” Joyce had asked, her voice swallowed by the dark. “Was that it?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan replied, looking around, finding Nancy’s eyes, his own glinting in the moonlight streaming in through the boards.
“She couldn’t close it,” the Chief’s voice crackled over the walkie talkie.
“Run.”
She doesn’t know where Mike is.
Her mother, her father. Holly.
It’s just the two of them now.
They’d lost Joyce and Will, swallowed up in the mist as they ran from the car, wrapped around a tree as they swerved to avoid the monster that had stepped through a gate that had just appeared in the middle of the road, a line in the fabric of the universe. Jonathan called for them, desperate, but Nancy had silenced him, fearful of what could hear them, fearful for what could find them.
They’d made it about a mile, through the empty fields of Hawkins, trying to get to a phone, a house, to assistance of any kind, the walkie talkie unresponsive, silent in her hand. Nancy had placed her foot down, feeling the firm, frozen ground beneath her, and then gasped as her next step trod on ash, disintegrating under her weight, an eerie blue light surrounding them.
“What? Where—”
“No,” she choked.
The Upside Down had come for them, no gate, no tree needed to crawl through, swallowed into its unending desolation.
“Nancy—is this, are we—” Jonathan asked, his hand around her wrist, fear creeping into his voice.
A sound from behind them.
“We have to go,” she’d said, pulling his hand into hers. “We have to go now.”
They ran.
They skirt the edges of the woods, spotting monsters from a distance, sprinting across the disintegrating landscape as they are slowly, methodically, chased down. Escaping, each time. Just barely.
Nancy wonders if they’re being toyed with.
She wonders if everyone else is dead.
She doesn’t know how long they wander, hours, days, maybe. Time seeming to pass in fits and spurts.
There’s water in the Upside Down, which is probably poisoning them, but they drink it anyway.
She can’t remember when they last ate. Breakfast at Murray’s, maybe. She’d smiled around her eggs.
She wonders if Murray is dead too.
They take shelter in a treehouse in Loch Nora (“Have you ever seen one climb?”), clinging to each other there, trying to stay as quiet as possible, breathing shallowly with their lack of protection, hoping their presence will go unnoticed until they can find their way back to the real world, the real Hawkins, the world without the monsters lurking below them.
“What do you think happened?” Nancy whispers, broaching the subject for the first time, crawling back from where she’s been peeking over the edge. Only one now, the other two monsters disappearing into the shadows, presumably to find the others, if they’re still alive, or reinforcements. Nancy doesn’t know which is worse.
She collapses, her back against the wall, her legs stretched out toward where he’s sitting, mirroring him. Her foot pressed against his thigh.
“If Eleven couldn’t close the gate . . . my mom, she said it was coming for everyone else, that’s what Will told her.” Jonathan shakes his head. “I guess it found us.”
Nancy feels the all-encompassing fear, the fear that has accompanied her for the past year, its presence ever familiar alongside the weight of what they’d gone through. She grits her teeth, pushing it down, looking to Jonathan for reassurance, but his face is blank, haunted. Nancy realizes—he’s never been here before.
He may never leave.
“I really . . . ” Jonathan’s voice falters. “I really thought we were gonna make it. Will was gonna be okay. My mom . . . . she wasn’t going to have to worry anymore. We—”
“We?” Nancy asks, her chin lifting as she regards him.
Jonathan makes an attempt at a smile, which dies before it reaches his eyes. “You and me.”
Something in Nancy’s heart clenches.
She pushes herself up, moving silently until she’s sitting next to him, taking his hand, interlacing his fingers with hers. It’s the hand with the scar, and she feels it, a hard ridge across the palm. She squeezes tighter, needing the physical reminder of their previous ordeal, of how they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do. Clinging to it, to the hope, that they can still get out of this somehow.
“What about you and me?”
Jonathan flexes his hand in hers, pulling her closer. Holding her tighter.
“I dunno,” he admits, his gaze hovering somewhere around his knees. “I . . . didn’t think that far ahead. I was just hoping we’d survive the night. But . . . ” he trails off.
“We’d be happy,” Nancy blurts out, decisively. “All of us. We’d go to prom, and to college, and . . . ”
“Please don’t make me go to prom,” Jonathan says, looking down at her. Nancy laughs, a little desperate, leaning her head onto his shoulder.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it to prom.”
Jonathan exhales. “No.”
Nancy tilts her head up, her gaze finding his, the careful way he’s regarding her making her want to cry. He smiles, bittersweet, but the lack of defeat in his face is what makes her raise her head higher, pressing her lips to his.
He doesn’t kiss her back at first, Nancy opening her eyes to find him looking at her, uncertain. “Jonathan,” she says, softly, and the sound of his name is enough, it seems, to bring him back to her.
When he does kiss her there’s a finality to it, like he knows this could be the last time they ever do this, even though the first time was such a short time ago, the knowledge of which makes Nancy want to scream at the unfairness of it all. They should have had longer—months, years. A lifetime. But if this is the end, she’s glad she had him, even if only for the moments she did.
Her hands are in his hair, and she hadn’t even realized she’s pressed against him now, up on her knees, his hands slipping under her shirt. Nancy wonders if the monsters can hear them, and then represses the urge to laugh, which they would definitely hear.
“Nance—” Jonathan mumbles against her lips, and Nancy feels the loss of him as he pulls away from her, holding her at arm’s length. He turns his head, alert.
Nancy stays silent, trying to control her breathing. She cranes her neck to look over the edge of the platform, balancing herself with a hand against Jonathan, wondering what he’d heard.
Five. Full-sized. Faces—or lack thereof—turned up toward them.
Nancy inhales a gasp, her grip on Jonathan tightening. “Shit,” she hisses.
Jonathan isn’t listening, shushing her with an outstretched hand. “Do you hear that?” he asks, his head cocked to the side. “Is that—”
It’s muffled but it’s there, a “Hello?” coming from the walkie talkie, almost as if the person on the other side is a whole dimension away, which Nancy realizes, could be the case. “Nancy? Jonathan?”
Another noise penetrates Nancy’s consciousness through the hope bubbling up inside her, a scrabbling sound that takes her a moment to realize is coming from the tree below.
“The dogs,” she says, realizing. She grabs onto Jonathan’s arm. “The dogs, they can climb.”
She’s barely said it when one’s head appears in the empty doorway.
They both lunge away, Nancy lashing out with her foot, catching it in the jaw, or where its jaw would be, if it had one. It falls, knocked off balance.
They can’t stay here.
Jonathan grabs the walkie talkie, but whoever it is is flickering in and out, their messages lost in the chaos. He presses it into her hand.
“Go, whoever that is, Mom—Steve, whoever. Go. Find them, get out of here.”
“Jonathan, no, what—”
“Nancy.”
He says her name like it’s an explanation. Like it’s a reason.
He kisses her hard, fast, his eyes searing, fixed on hers.
And then he’s gone.
For the space of a breath, Nancy is frozen.
“No,” she says out loud, breaking the spell, forcing herself to the opening, looking down to where Jonathan has jumped, sprawled on the ground in between the monsters looming above.
He isn’t moving.
“Get up,” Nancy breathes, forceful.
There’s no way he can hear her, but he does.
He’s on his feet in an instant, sprinting across the field behind them, monsters in pursuit.
“What was that—Nancy? Do you copy! Where—”
The voice on the walkie talkie cuts off.
Nancy ignores it, her eyes focused on Jonathan as he disappears into the mist.
She breathes in.
A shot rings out.