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For a moment, Karen Wheeler feels like the last person on Earth. The house goes from raucous and trembling with activity, like it might buckle the walls until they break, spilling out into quiet suburban streets, to eerily still in the space of a breath.
Logically, Karen knows, the silence isn’t a portent of disaster, not since, only hours ago, a strange little girl with short-shorn hair stood shoulder to shoulder with her children at the precipice of a gaping, interdimensional maw and sealed shut literal the gates of hell.
Still, it’s two in the morning, and Ted is dead to the world in his Barcalounger, and Karen Wheeler can’t stop staring into the last dregs of tea in her mug, and the corner of the tea bag breaching the surface, and thinking about how it so perfectly encapsulates all the things she’s spent the last three years missing, only judging the world around her on the basis of what things she could see.
Karen goes down to the basement. She skips the third step on the way down, only to have the fourth step creak underfoot, but it doesn’t matter anyway, since the assembled gaggle of teenagers are as dead to the world as Ted, only for much better reason.
Karen from yesterday would have woken up the girls, herded them safely away from the coed sleeping arrangements. But Maxine’s cheek is slumped so innocently on Lucas’ shoulder, a streak of chocolate running from the corner of her mouth that could be mistaken for blood, mixed between other cuts and scrapes. There’s a piece of popcorn sticking out from Dustin’s unruly mop of hair, and a trail spread out across sleeping bags that leads back to El’s hand, dipped into the bowl, fresh artillery clasped in loose fingers, an assault that ran out of steam before it could launch. Mike and Will sleep peacefully on either side of her, the first love and the pseudo-sister they each nearly lost.
Karen watches them for a moment, the rise and fall of their chests. She remembers Mike, and Will, and Lucas, and Dustin being five, then seven, then ten. She remembers gap-toothed smiles, and skinned knees, and wishes so deep it aches that their traumas could be so simple again. In sleep, they look young, innocent and untouched by the things that go bump in the night, and the adults who should have protected them from ever needing to face those monsters alone. Karen wants them to sleep forever. She doesn’t even care about the junk food spread out in crumbs on her floor.
She checks on Holly next, her little body curled at the center of Ted and Karen’s bed. Her sleep is restful and deep, seemingly the only child in Hawkins to escape without getting pulled into the nightmare of the Other Place, or whatever nonsense word Sherif Hopper used to describe it.
The Sheriff, who is asleep in Holly’s room, on an old blowup mattress he refused to capitulate to Joyce, who’s insistence he take the bed instead as the more grievously injured party was dogged, but ultimately unsuccessful. Karen suspects, had they had a double to spare, they would have just as soon climbed in together. As it was, Karen and Joyce set the mattress directly underfoot of Holly’s narrow twin bed, so one ill-timed turn in the throes of a nightmare would land Joyce in his arms anyway.
She contemplates their relationship, Joyce and the Sheriff, as she goes through the motions of her nighttime routine. She takes out her earrings, runs a brush through her hair, applies a layer of cold cream across the aging skin of her face and pulls until the wrinkles at the center of her forehead smooth, until the skin under her jawline lies flush. She stares into brown eyes and sees someone so profoundly tired looking back, and for what? For a loveless marriage, and more children than she planned, and a pilates outfit that highlights a pouch of belly fat no amount of exercise will change since breaking forty.
Karen is too sick with herself to keep staring at dark circles. She turns out the light and watches with satisfaction as the darkness swallows her reflection whole.
She isn’t sure what possesses her, but on her way back to her bedroom, Karen stops outside Nancy’s door and quietly turns the handle. It’s Nancy, of all her kids, that breaks Karen’s heart the most. Nancy, who never had the unbreakable spirit of childhood to fall back on when the world turned upside down. Nancy, who’s always been old enough to know better than to hope.
Overhead, the light is still on, so the view Karen has of the five people piled into a bed that can barely accommodate three is unchallenged. There’s a sudden ice in Karen’s veins, a dread that sinks like a stone to the pit of her stomach.
This isn’t like the kids downstairs, an unintentional melding of bodies as exhaustion overtook them, all too high on the swell of their victory to bend to the rules of personal space. This intertwining of hands and limbs and breath is intentional and intimate, a desperate bid to hold onto something so nearly lost.
Nancy sleeps on Steve Harrington’s chest, with Robin Buckley pressed at her back, Jonathan Byers’ arm draped over her waist, and Eddie Munson’s fingers in her hair. They’re piled so close, Karen can hardly tell where one body gives way to the next, where Steve’s shoulders eclipse between the spread of Eddie’s thighs, where the fan of Eddie’s hair where he’s slumped on his side against the headboard becomes Robin’s, or which arm across Steve’s chest belongs to Jonathan, and which belongs to Nancy. All she grasps clearly is the love and reverence in every touch, regardless of whose hands are on who.
Steve’s shirt is shoved up, Nancy’s fingers snaked under the fabric to grasp reassuringly at warm skin. His scars shine sliver-white in the light, still fresh enough to have the visceral pink sheen of new skin. They’re ragged and puckered, something not quite a puncture, and not quite a gouge. They remind Karen of shrapnel wounds, and Steve shouldn’t have scars like these. He’s only a kid.
Except that he isn’t, Karen reminds herself. Somewhere along the line, Steve Harrington’s grown into a man, just shy of twenty, the same age Karen’s brother was when he was drafted into a war that never sent him home.
But wasn’t Michael only a kid, then, too? Like Steve, and Eddie, and Jonathan, and Robin. Like Nancy, who Karen’s only ever wanted to have a better life than she did, who’s suddenly old enough to buy guns and hide them in her bedroom, old enough to die fighting a battle the world should never have asked her to be any part of.
Jonathan shifts in his sleep, like his longing is such a bone-deep thing, it acts independently. His arms wrap tighter around Nancy and Steve, and Steve returns the bid for contact in kind, turning his face to press into the curve of Jonathan’s neck, chapped lips skimming the skin at his throat.
Whether it’s the movement beside her, or the quiet gasp that slips past Karen’s lips at the unabashed intimacy of the moment, something rouses Nancy. Her eyes flutter open, and staring down the length of Steve’s chest, she catches sight of Karen hovering in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” Karen stammers, her quiet words cutting like blades through the silence. “I shouldn’t be here. I’ll go.”
“Shit,” Nancy breathes, but Karen doesn’t falter. She retreats from Nancy’s room like she’s trying to outpace a monster.
Unfortunately for her, it’s a talent at which Nancy is more adept.
“Mom,” Nancy says, tentative, the sound of her socked footfalls against the linoleum muffled, but still incredibly heavy.
Karen has no memory of entering the kitchen, of even making her way downstairs, but she’s stood at the sink with a glass in her hand, passing a washcloth around the rim that isn’t even wet. Karen can’t stand dishes in her sink, the way food will crust onto plates, and forks, and spoons, and bowls unless she’s the one to do anything about it. They left them unwashed tonight, having far greater troubles to attend to, but a part of Karen isn’t surprised to find herself back here, contending with a mess she actually knows how to fix.
“Look, whatever you thought you saw, you didn’t, okay?” Nancy says. “It isn’t what you think.”
Karen’s heart sinks. She sets the glass down and turns to look at Nancy. Her eyes are big, and wide, and filled with absolute terror. She holds her body stiff, spine straight, shoulders hunched, not quite to her ears, but enough to betray the effort she’s putting into seeming unafraid.
Would Nancy look this way, petrified and out of her depth, if this were Joyce Byers’ house? Would she be tripping over herself to offer Joyce excuses? Or would Joyce have turned out the light with a besotted smile and let Nancy fall back into the safety of rest, the only acknowledgment of what she’d seen the knowing looks she’d offer them the next morning, and the sheepish expressions she’d get in return.
Karen doesn’t have to consider the answer very long. She can’t stand the distance between them.
“I love you.”
She has Nancy wrapped in her arms, and Nancy is frozen in shock, but even stiff and unresponsive, Karen can’t bear to let go.
“Whatever it is or isn’t, it doesn’t matter,” she whispers into the halo of Nancy’s hair. “You’re my daughter, and I love you.”
She does pull back then, braces Nancy by the shoulders, so she can look her in the eyes. “I am with you. Wherever life takes you. Whatever’s going on. I want to be there for you. And I’m so sorry that I haven’t been.”
Nancy's eyes go wide. “No, mom,” she says, but even before the denials come in earnest, Karen is already shaking her head. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Except Sheriff Hopper knew,” Karen says. “And Joyce Byers knew. Her kids were in trouble, and she knew it so deep in her bones it nearly ate her alive. And I’ll never have the words to apologize to you for that. Or Mike. All I can do is promise to be here now.
“And I am here,” Karen vows. Nancy tries to duck her head as Karen watches her brown eyes swim blue, but she won’t let her. “Nancy, I’m here.”
Nancy breaks. The sob that rips from her throat is inhuman, and her weight falls heavy in Karen’s arms. Nancy sinks into her chest, buries her face in the curve of Karen’s neck, and sobs like the world is ending. Karen can’t hold her own choked cries back, can’t help but meet Nancy tear for tear. She cradles Nancy’s head, pets her hair like she used to when she was young.
The dishes stay unwashed in the sink.
Robin is in a drowsy half-sleep when Nancy crawls back into bed. The overhead light is on, and she sees the bleary, blotchy red on Nancy’s cheeks, feels the way she burrows deeper into the curve of Robin’s chest, like she wants to make herself as small as possible and disappear inside.
“Hey,” Robin murmurs softly, pulling Nancy’s hair back and placing a soft kiss against the shell of her ear. “Are you okay? Where’d you go?”
“There was just something I needed to do,” Nancy replies. It’s evasive, her voice as thready and broken as her face would imply.
Exhaustion pulls heavy against Robin’s eyes, wars with her concern. “Is everything okay now?” she asks.
Her eyes pull shut, but she feels Nancy nod against her skin. “Yeah, it is.”
Nancy guides Robin’s arm around her waist, so the tips of Robin’s fingers brush a bare patch of Steve’s skin, and sinks into the warmth of her.
“I’m glad I have you,” Nancy whispers. “All of you.”
Robin opens her mouth to agree, but sleep takes her with the words caught in her chest.