Chapter Text
Hawkins, Indiana was a town that certainly had its quirks. For some residents, they believed those quirks to be living on a rather unfortunate pipeline or an animal of some kind that was stealing kids. To those like Nancy Wheeler, it was the kind of evil that rots the very heart of a place. More specifically, it was host to an evil lab, a host of tortured psychic kids, and a dimensional rift that brought through monsters beyond your wildest nightmares.
Maybe that’s why she got out as quickly as she could.
It has always been Nancy’s plan to make herself something bigger than Hawkins, but after the events of her senior year, she felt antsier than ever to get out. You can only see the world and all of your loved ones cower in the face of an unfathomable danger so many times before you just want a smidgen of peace.
So once Hawkins had settled down as much as was seemingly ever possible for that town, she focused on moving away, leaving this behind.
By the time she had graduated, she found out that Jonathan had been lying about applying to Emerson College. At first, she was furious. After all, she was planning her whole life with him and he had been lying to her for months.
She wanted to break up with him and she did, for a couple of days, before she realized that she didn’t know how to be by herself. She had had Steve, and then Jonathan immediately after. She loved them both in their own way, but more than anything she loved the way they made her feel about herself. Like she had some kind of purpose, some usefulness or desirability.
Without that she felt like she was floundering, unable to feel strong or confident. She knew it made her a bad feminist, or maybe just a weak person, but she just didn’t want to be single. So she got back with Jonathan.
And she gave up her dream of going to Boston to go to the Emerson campus in California.
It was just as nice, she assured him (and herself) as she packed up their stuff and prepared for her move across the country. He (along with Joyce and Will) returned to California before the summer was over, leaving her to spend her last childhood days in Hawkins with the rest of the people she cared about.
She spent time with her Mom and Holly, she even dragged Mike out of the basement to spend some time with her while she still could. She drove the rest of the kids around, taking extra care to spend time with Lucas as he was still mourning his comatose girlfriend. Funnily enough, she took a trip down memory lane and spent some time with Steve. They had both grown up a lot since their freshman year, and now that he seemed to understand that she wasn’t interested in him that way he seemed content to be her friend.
It was nice, and it felt almost like old times. They rented the stupid movies she liked and he pretended he hated, they talked about nothing and drove out to lovers lake- only this time it was just to feed the ducks.
Oh, and this go around he came as part of a matching set.
Robin Buckley.
She hadn’t really known her before that year, but the Vecna situation had bonded them impossibly quickly. She was like the close friend that Nancy had been missing in the years since Barb died. It was nice to have a confidant again, someone to have sleepovers with and drag to go shopping with her. There was a key difference between Robin and Barb though, which laid primarily in the fact that there had never been anything other than sisterly tension between her and Barb.
With Robin, it had been different. They had never voiced it, and aside from one drunken kiss that Nancy was half conceived was just a dream they never acted on it. After all, what would be the point?
She had Jonathan. She was leaving.
Robin was staying in Hawkins.
She said it was just to have a cheap place to stay while she worked on her screenplay, but Nancy knew there was more to it.
The monsters in Hawkins drove Nancy away. For Robin, and Steve too, it seemed to do the opposite. They had trauma bonded to each other and to this town, either out of the urge to protect it or some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Nancy sometimes wondered if it made her a coward for leaving, or if she was just running away from her problems. Either way, it was too late to change her mind.
So a cool fall day she left Hawkins behind and with it everything her old life had been.
She left behind Robin, Steve, and her family. She left behind the kids and the Hawkins Post and the old Byers’ house.
She tried to leave behind Nancy Wheeler.
At Emerson, she tried to be someone different.
This Nancy was cool, and casual, and didn’t have any sort of dark past. When people asked she was just from “a small town in Indiana you’ve never heard of.” When they asked about her family she said they were perfectly normal and perfectly happy. When they asked about her love life, she just said that she and Jonathan were High School sweethearts.
The truth was, being away from Hawkins didn’t change who Nancy was. She didn’t get any better. She put on a happy face every day, applied her makeup just right, and wore what she thought she was supposed to, but none of it changed that she wasn’t over what happened.
And worse, none of it changed that her current reality wasn’t all that much better.
To be fair, she wasn’t chasing monsters or watching her loved ones die so she supposed there was improvement there.
At the end of the day though she was just as unhappy as she had been when she was still at home.
She wasn’t as passionate about journalism as she was supposed to be. She got good grades, she was editor in chief of the Emerson Herald, she was in their literature and publishing society, she did everything she was supposed to.
But to her journalism seemed like just another bullshit way of lying to people. No one wanted good, honest stories. They wanted to be comforted, and the newspapers wanted to scare them so they bought more. It was a shitty consumerist cycle that made her feel like there was no such thing as real journalistic integrity.
By the time she graduated, she felt like she was trapped by her degree and experience in a field she hated.
On top of that, things between her and Jonathan were far from peaches and cream. She had moved to California for him, leaving her family and ambitions on the other coast. Even with that, they drifted apart. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, at least she doesn’t think so, but it’s like he doesn’t love her the same way he used to. To be fair, she’s pretty sure the same could be said for her. They care about each other deeply, they are there for each other when it counts. But the spark is gone. The spontaneity, the romance, the passion, it’s all sort of faded over time until it’s like they’re roommates.
They make small talk at dinner, they sleep beside each other but half the time he may as well be a stranger.
If he’s not high, he’s focused on school or his photography or Argyle (who he has remained friends with all this time) or his family.
She doesn’t blame him. He’s been through even more than she has, with his existing family issues and his brother wrapped up in the darkest parts of this whole thing for so long. She knows he’s doing his best, that he’s trying to be the best boyfriend he can. And she loves him for everything he is. But that doesn’t change that she’s not entirely happy.
She had planned to break up with him. She was about to graduate, and she was determined to change her life somehow. To shake it up a bit before settling in for the rest of her life. This seemed like the best way. It would be good for him. It would be good for her.
She picked out a date, she practiced a speech, she prepared, and then…
He proposed.
What?
That hasn’t been a part of the plan. Any normal person with half a dollop of common sense would say no. Nancy would have told herself to say no looking in from the outside. The only issue was that she didn’t.
Before she could stop herself, she said yes. He hugged her and span her around and she smiled and she cried and the whole nine yards. They had dinner at the Byers’ and told everyone. They were overjoyed, of course, because to them it felt like the natural conclusion of a years-long relationship.
To Nancy, it seemed like maybe it was a sign. That she had been wrong to think about breaking up with him.
She thought at first she said yes because she couldn’t stand to break his heart, and yes that’s part of it. But she also couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. Couldn’t stand the thought of ending this and being completely stranded.
She didn’t know how to be without him. No one else would ever understand what they had been through. No one else would put up with the periods where she couldn’t stand to talk, or the fact that she still had to sleep with a nightlight.
She realized that if Jonathan was good and patient, it must be her that was the issue. She just needed to get this hesitation out of her system and then she could settle into marriage. After all, she did love him. As much as she loved anyone, anyway. They could be happy if some things about her just changed.
If she was honest with herself, she was fairly positive she knew what those things were.
Nancy had gone to a therapist once, for a handful of weeks, at Jonathan’s advice. He had started going their freshman year, and he liked it. He couldn’t talk about all of the Eleven and Hawkins’ lab stuff without having to worry about being hospitalized. But he talked about his family, and their relationship, and the ‘killer on the loose’ in the small town that had taken his brother and traumatized him beyond belief. Nancy saw that it worked for her, so eventually, she tried it.
She found that it didn’t work for her. He had thrown out words like depression and PTSD and to her, it felt way too much like he was saying there was something wrong with her. It felt like he wanted her to admit to something that she didn’t want to.
So, when it got hard she stopped going.
She lied to Jonathan for a while about still going before admitting that she just didn’t enjoy it and ignoring the deep frown he gave her.
Even if they didn’t talk about it, even if she knew Jonathan didn’t blame her, it stayed between them like a heavy fog. There was this mutual understanding that something with Nancy had changed after everything. Maybe it was after Barb died, or maybe it was after they attempted to save the world for the millionth time and realized that it was inevitably fruitless.
She grew into a woman full of despair.
It made things harder for people around her, she’s sure. It made things harder on Jonathan.
If she could just get over what happened to her if she could just move on then everything would be okay again.
She had thought about it for years but decided that it was finally time.
The best thing she could do would be to go home.
She had to go back to Hawkins.
It would be the first real-time in years that she had stayed in Hawkins for more than a couple of days. She had stopped by with the Byers’ for holidays, and come by for Mike’s high school graduation, but she had always found a reason to hide or leave early. Being there made her uneasy. It made her scared. It was the only time where she felt like she ever had to think about what she was- about who she was.
So, as a woman of logic, she tracks that thinking back and realizes that if she takes the time to keep thinking about it eventually she’ll have that epiphany. She’ll embrace the past or let it die or whatever shit a life coach would tell her to do.
So, she’s staying for the summer.
If she goes home and faces her demons, maybe a new shiny Nancy would emerge. One that was ready to handle marriage and that could make Jonathan love her again the way that he was supposed to.
So with an explanation to Jonathan that she was going to get her mom to help plan the wedding and goodbyes to the whole Byers clan, she was off. The flight back home felt simultaneously too long and painfully short, and as she arrived at Indianapolis airport she noticed her hands were shaking.
She pulled her suitcase along until she saw her Mom waving dramatically over at her. Beside her was Holly (who was now 10 years old and so much taller than Nancy remembered) holding a sign with her name in big letters and Mike who looked like he would rather be anywhere else. So, about what she expected.
She approached them and was immediately enveloped by a hug from her mom, which pulled a little smile out of her.
“Hey, Mom.” She said as best she could considering the hug was sort of crushing her windpipe.
“Oh, I’m so happy you’re home! Ugh, and you’re engaged!” She pulled away to hold her face in her hands like she was inspecting her.
“You’re just glowing. My baby girl, all grown up. I’m so proud of you.” She said, pausing to take her in before dropping her hands and smiling.
“Alright well, we better get going. I have a pot roast waiting for us at home! Though if you prefer we can order pizza from that place the Miller’s used to own, I know that was always your favorite. Mike, why don’t you help Nancy with her bags?”
She looked over at Mike and caught him at the end of rolling his eyes.
“It’s just one bag, Mom. She’s got it.”
Karen opened her mouth to protest but Nancy butted it to stop the system from escalating.
“I’ve got it, Mom. Really.”
Karen nodded and offered Nancy the chance to say her hellos to her siblings before she began to guide them out of the airport. Nancy naturally fell in step with Mike, as Holly was occupying their mom with some questions about how the airport worked. She supposed curiosity ran in the family because only a moment later Mike spoke up.
“So you’re really engaged to Jonathan, huh?”
“Yep.” She says, looking over at him with a ghost of a smile on her face. “Why, are you and El next?”
“El and I are just friends.”
“Really? I thought we got over this ‘not liking Eleven’ thing while you were still in middle school.” She jokes and he frowns deeply in that way he seems to do more and more every time she sees him.
“I’m serious. We were. But not anymore. Not for a while. You might know that if you ever came home. Or just called. Or remembered any of us existed at all, actually.”
Before she got the chance to respond he stormed off, walking ahead of their mom to where their car was. Her mom looks back at her and shrugs a little before mouthing ‘teenagers’ and offering Nancy her arm to loop through her own.
She took her mom’s arm with a little smile, though it felt admittedly more forced than she wanted it to. What Mike said hurt because she knew he was right. She didn’t know him. Or Holly. Or even her mom. She knew she had to abandon Hawkins, and she abandoned them in the process. She had guilt-tripped herself about it privately, but to know they truly do feel it too… it hurt. Her heart felt twisted up in her chest the whole ride back to their house.
The town passed by their window as they drove, and she noted that everything was almost identical to the way that it had been. The High School was still there, and so was the family video and Melvald's. It was like every street had been forgotten by the sands of time. Even the inside of her childhood home was untouched. The same pictures sat on the mantle (with a few additions) and in her bedroom? It was like the day she left.
It still has her flowery bedsheets, the Tom Cruise poster, all the music she loved at 16, and all of the clothes that weren’t good enough to take to college. Looking into that room sucked all the air out of her lungs, and she had to pause for a minute in the doorway before actually stepping into the void. When she did she felt a steady pressure on her chest, like she was a scared kid again.
She shook the thought from her head as best she could, hauling her suitcase up onto the bed to unpack.
She’s an adult woman now. She’s graduated college. She has a job lined up at a good newspaper, she has a fiancé, she is absolutely nothing like she was before she left here. She doesn’t need to let it affect her. She tells herself she’s above it.
She decides to leave the suitcase unpacked a little longer anyway, just in case.
She ate dinner with her family and managed to get herself tucked into bed before the suffocating feeling of familiarity settled over her. Laying in that room all she could think about was how Barb had stayed there before she died, or how she had laid awake there with Jonathan too terrified to try to sleep for fear that something would come get them. She couldn’t stand it. So, despite the gnawing truth that it was even more dangerous out there than it would be in here, she decided to take a drive.
She found the keys to her parent’s car and snuck into the garage still in her pajamas and slippers, backing out and taking to the empty streets.
The more she drove the more agitated she became, frustrated that this repetition of her childhood roads didn’t seem to break. Out of this frustration, or maybe just the general fury she seemed to have for the world, she laid her foot on the gas. Pressing down more and more until she was carelessly going 100 in a school zone, knowing no one was out enough to endanger anyone.
The windows were down and the wind caused by her speed tossed her hair everywhere, giving her the only real semblance of freedom she’s felt in some time.
She thought maybe she might crash. She paid it no mind.
That is, until she saw red and blue lights behind her, signaling her to pull over.
Shit.
It was the middle of the night!
Since when was the Hawkins police half competent, much less so hyper-vigilant? Of course, they couldn’t stop human experiments or solve missing kids cases but they could give her a ticket for driving fast at night. Of fucking course. This would go over great with her mother.
She slowed down and pulled over despite her urge to just keep going, anxiously tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited for the officer to walk up. Their face was just a shadow in the night, and she couldn’t help but think they walked with an almost comical level of swagger. She sighed and tried to create some half-ass excuse as he approached her window.
“Is everything okay, you were going al- holy shit. Nancy Wheeler, is that you?”
His voice hasn’t changed a smidge from when they were teenagers, and she recognizes him as soon as he opens his mouth. When she shifts her head to get a better look at him she sees he looks about the same too, just a little more mature and sporting an attempt at a mustache.
“Steve, I had heard you were working for Hopper but I didn’t realize you were an honest-to-goodness cop.” She sort of jokes, feeling the little twist of guilt as he looks at her.
When she moved away, they tried to keep in contact.
They wrote letters and called, but before long it was just a glaring reminder of what she has gained and what she had lost. It became too hard, so nearly 3 years ago now she stopped responding. It wasn’t long before the messages stopped coming. She regrets it, truly, but by the time she realized that it was too late to just pick up the phone. Now, facing him again, she felt sort of like a child who's been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.
He sort of smiles at her, looking over his face like he’s not quite sure it’s her.
“Yeah well, someone’s gotta keep the kids around here safe. It’s always been us anyway, so I figured I may as well get paid for it.” He said, leaning against her car slightly as he continues talking.
“What’re you doing back in Hawkins? I thought you were doing the whole west coast super journalist thing.”
He said it in a friendly, joking voice, and she could see that even if he was mad he wasn’t trying to give her hell about it. Not tonight at least. She was grateful for that.
“It was time to come back.” She swallows thickly before continuing, hoping her next words come out excited instead of facetious. It’s hard to control when it’s a fight just to force them out.
“Jonathan and I are engaged. My mom wanted to help plan the wedding so, here we are.”
His eyes widen a little in surprise before he offers her a smile.
“Hey, that’s awesome! Congratulations! Byers finally got up the nerve, huh?” He jokes, a for a moment she feels a kind of warm nostalgia in her chest. There was a time when he would have been the first person to hear about her engagement. There was a time when it would have been him. It’s nice to know that he’s at least in the loop now. It heals a little part of her she didn’t know was damaged.
He seemed to get a little nervous suddenly, doing that little eyebrow scrunch he always used to do when he was trying to come off cool and casual.
“We’ve gotta celebrate, for old time's sake. Why don’t you and me- oh and Robin, of course, she’s still in Hawkins too- do something sometime? Just get a bite to eat or go see a movie or something. Could be fun.”
Her heart jumped a little at Robin’s name and then twisted painfully at the realization that she was still in Hawkins. She had always wanted to get out, the same way Nancy had. It was devastating that she had stayed, both because it meant Robin never got what she wanted and because it meant she would have to face her this summer.
That wasn’t something she was ready for.
Not after everything.
She realized that Steve was waiting for an answer and pushed that thought down for the moment to figure out whether or not she wanted to do this.
She felt herself torn in two directions, and could almost see the split in the path her life would take (at least for the next couple of months) depending on what she said.
She could say no, or give him some noncommittal answer and avoid him for the rest of the summer. She wouldn’t have to face her fears or her past. She wouldn’t have to face Robin.
But then what?
She’d spend the summer alone, isolated and bored. Wasn’t that the opposite of what she was here to do?
What was the point of coming home if not to face her demons? In this case, ‘her demons’ were just herself and her own mistakes. She could handle that… right?
“Yeah, I’d like that.” She said, flexing her hands on the steering wheel. Her body was itching to leave even if her mind ordered her to stay.
“You still have my house phone number, right? Just call me and let me know, okay?” Her voice sounds a little terse even to her, and Steve seems to catch on that this is a lot for her. She wishes it wasn’t. She’s ashamed to admit that it is. But he doesn’t make her actually say it, just nods and strums his fingers against her window trying to expel some energy.
“Alright, will do. Get home safe.” He says, taking a step back but not wavering his gaze from her face.
“And Nance? It’s really good to see you again.”
With that, he turns around and heads back to the cop car leaving Nancy to let out a long, slow breath before slamming her hands down on the steering wheel.
Fuck.
She ran her hands through her hair in irritation before starting the car again, driving off at a considerably more normal pace.
The drive home this time felt less relieving and more painful, a heavy weight resting on her chest as she realizes that she was going to have to do what she came here for.
When she gets home she sneaks in the window the same way she had as a teenager. She pulls off her coat and tosses it onto her desk before collapsing onto her bed, trying as hard as possible to force all of her thoughts out of her mind. (If she had to try particularly hard to stop thinking about Robin, she would never admit it.)
The next morning she gets up, has breakfast with her family, and then tries to find ways to occupy the rest of the day. She drives around or talks to Mike’s friends if they come over. Despite her temporary disappearance, they seem willing to take her back into their fold. Mike seems a little icy around her still, which she understands. She would be mad too if she had been left alone with their parents for years. The rest of the party seems to bear no resentment though, especially El who just seemed happy to have more girls around.
After a little prodding, they told her about Steve being the new second in command to Hopper, and about how Robin still works at the family video. When Nancy raises her eyes in surprise, they all immediately jump to defend her.
“She’s just working on her screenplay right now. It’s like really, really good.”
Lucas says, to which Dustin nods vehemently and adds,
“It’s like Star Wars meets Cannibal Holocaust but in that art film style she likes.”
They all nod in agreement, causing Nancy to smile and hold her hands up in surrender.
“I didn’t even say anything!“ she says, unable to resist the urge to tease them.
“But it’s good to know that you guys still love your old babysitters.”
The whole lot of them erupts into the same complaints that they were NOT their babysitters that they did when they were 13.
Some things never change.
She laughs, a real genuine laugh, and makes some weak excuse about leaving them alone so she can go think about this new information.
Since she found out Robin was still in town, it took up a lot more of her mind than she had expected it to. Knowing she was around… it made her think about that summer. It certainly wasn’t the first time it had crossed her mind since then, but it was the first time those memories felt palpable.
The summer before college, when Jonathan was already gone, she spent a lot of her time with Steve and Robin. After their Vecna encounters they were bonded irrevocably. For her and Robin, that bond was in a way she hadn’t experienced before then or in the years since. They spent pretty much all of their time together, going swimming or driving around. They watched all the movies Robin liked and Nancy made her her own mixtape. They had sleepovers all the time, and Nancy thinks she confessed everything she’s ever held inside to her.
Her guilt surrounding Barb.
Her mental health issues, though at the time she didn’t know that’s what they were.
Her fear that the world would always be this scary and confusing.
Her confusion over her feelings for Robin.
She and Jonathan were dating at the time, though they teetered in ‘will they won’t they’ territory. Her feelings for Jonathan weren’t what her feelings for Robin were, though.
She tried to blame it on a trauma bond, or the fact that Jonathan was gone and Robin was the only person left around that she really trusted. No matter how she pointed fingers though, the same thing remained true.
She had romantic feelings for Robin. She wanted to hold her hand and introduce her to her parents and all the stuff that she hadn’t felt excited about with Jonathan. To be fair, when she was getting together with Jonathan it was during the maybe end of the world. But wasn’t the world sort of always ending? So why did Nancy want to spend the end of it with Robin?
She decided that it was just a part of her human nature to be curious and confessed to Robin that she thought maybe she just needed to get it out of her system.
So, she kissed her.
And she kissed her some more.
And they spent practically the whole rest of the summer with their bodies entangled in Robin’s bedroom or the pack of Nancy’s station wagon.
Neither of them had any illusion that this would be forever. Nancy still had a boyfriend, which she added to her list of things to repent for if she ever got back into believing in God. She figured she should probably add ‘homosexuality’ to that list too, though when she was with Robin she couldn’t help but think that something that heavenly couldn’t possibly be sinful.
The rest of the summer passed by far too quickly, and before either of them was ready for it it was time for her to go away to college.
There was a silent but mutual understanding that this was the end for Nancy and Robin. They couldn’t ever be just friends, and they both knew there was no future for them.
One night, huddled close together under Nancy’s floral covers she accidentally let it slip,
“I wish you would ask me to stay.”
Robin let out a little breath, and Nancy could practically feel the remorse radiating off of her.
“I wish that I could ask you to stay, too.”
She says, pulling Nancy a little closer. They were so close she could practically hear her heartbeat, and she always wondered if Robin could feel the exact moment her heart broke. They fell asleep that night with tears soaking both of their faces.
Two weeks later, it was time for her to leave for California. It was a whole affair, with all of the party, Steve, and her family coming to see her off. Robin came too, of course, looking so noticeably tormented that even Mike noticed and made a joke California wasn’t ‘far enough away for Nancy not to find a way to nag.’ Robin had just faked a laugh, knowing he couldn’t have been more off base.
Nancy didn’t know it at the time, but Robin already knew she was pulling away. She saw the way she flinched or winced or something whenever Jonathan was brought up. She saw the guilt in her eyes when she brought up her coming back to visit. And then, of course, there was the note.
Nancy didn’t want to leave Robin without something. She knew she owed her that much. And she couldn’t bring herself to actually say the words to her, so she did what she did best: she wrote them down.
She sat at her desk for hours, trashing half a notebook full of paper before settling on her final message to Robin.
‘Rob,
As you have probably already guessed, I’m writing you this letter because there are a few things I want to make sure I say while I still have the chance. As you know, I am a little bit terrible at saying what I mean, but it’s important to me that you hear certain things from me.
First of all, I need you to know that you mean the world to me. Everything that happened this summer has been wonderful, and scary in the best way. I know that because it ends here, it may seem like it wasn't real. It was. To me, it always was. It’s important to me that you know that. Everything that we did, everything that we were, I will never regret a single moment of it.
If I could go back, even knowing that having to leave now would break my heart, I wouldn’t do a single thing differently. I wouldn’t erase a single moment of time I got to spend with you. I know that I’ve been difficult in the past and that you deserve to hate me for leaving, but I hope you don’t regret the time we spent together. I hope that you look back on it fondly. I hope that you think of us from time to time, even if it’s just in your weirdest, wildest dreams.
Secondly, I wanted to apologize. I think at the very least I owe you an apology for the fact that I’m leaving. I know that we both understood that when fall came I would have to go, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’m sorry that we didn’t have more time together. I am so fucking sorry, Robin.
I wish I could stay. Do all the things we talked about. But I can’t. I think we both know why. Knowing I don’t have much of a choice doesn’t make me any less heartbroken that I have to leave you.
Not one day goes by where I don’t think of you. I don’t think that will ever change.
Goodbye, Robin Buckley.
I’ll miss you.
Love always,
Nancy Wheeler
p.s Take care of Mike for me, will you? I know you’re already looking out for Steve, so I hope one more dork won’t be too difficult to manage.’
When she had handed it over, quickly putting it into Robin’s jeans pocket as they hugged goodbye, she hoped the tear stains had already dried up. She hoped she read it. She never did find out, though she did see her patting her pocket protectively as Steve hauled her up into a big bear hug.
So yeah, her relationship with Robin was complicated. Looking back now, she knows she made a lot of mistakes. But Robin was never one of them. The only problem is that she’s not sure that the feeling is mutual. Or that Robin ever forgave her for leaving and not calling. She would understand if she didn’t. But even if she hated her, she needed to see her again.
So, she planned to go by the family video.
She would pretend to just rent a video and if Robin happened to be there well.. what a crazy coincidence! Nancy would pretend that she didn’t even know she worked there and was definitely not going there just to see Robin even though they haven’t spoken in four years. That would be crazy! One day, about five days after arriving, she decided it was finally time. After all, Steve had already called her and they agreed to hang out sometime in the next week, Robin included.
She needed to get ahead of this thing.
So, she practiced her surprise face in the mirror and curled her hair up just right for what she told herself was just her first appearance out and about in Hawkins since coming back. If she wore a little extra makeup and a nice blouse well, she’s just being ladylike!
But when she got to the family video, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t face her. She wasn’t ready.
Three separate times she drove past that store, fully intending to go in.
She didn’t. She didn’t the next time either. Or the time after that.
It would take her 2 days and four separate journeys over to that side of town before she finally actually parked her car in the parking lot. She spent a good handful of minutes fixing her reflection in her mirror before finally telling herself to stop being a child and got out of the car. She walked up to the front door, and as the loud bell jingled- she spotted her.
She was leaning over the counter, helping a customer seemingly pick between two movies. She glanced up at the door absently and averted her eyes back to the movies before seemingly realizing what she had just seen. She stopped her sentence mid-word as her eyes snapped back to Nancy, surprise evident on her features. She looked her up and down, leaving Nancy feeling a little fidgety. She looked just the same as she had then, and she lets herself wonder absently if she has noticed how different Nancy looks. A part of her wonders if Robin will even recognize her.
“Nance?”