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She’ll do anything to protect you, no matter the cost. Never backed away from a challenge or a threat. She’ll offer you unconditional forgiveness without asking for it for herself.
Ace has always felt at home in the woods, the quiet in them far more peaceful than the silence of his own home. He is good at sitting in silence and letting the surrounding nature speak to him in its own way, on a wavelength most people never take the time to tune to. Walking through the woods of Nancy’s memory weave, not only is it unsurprising that her forest is dark and blueish but it’s comforting.
This is who Nancy is, someone who’s always gone searching in the darkness. She may be horrified by the sins of her soul but she doesn’t see what he sees. That the scars of her past have strengthened her resolve to go looking in the darkness. She’s so consumed with guilt she doesn’t recognize how comfortable she is with uncovering the ugly truths in her life. If Ace ever had to pick one thing about her, it’s Nancy’s scars that he loves the most. Because they are what have made her so unafraid to follow her instincts and seek out justice. He admires her ability to live fearlessly. The way she never gives up– whether it’s a powder volcano or a friend.
He follows their death curse like a lifeline to find Nancy in the most predictable of positions. She’s curled comfortably on her knees in this forest of doubt and combing through August’s journal doggedly searching for clues. She’s never willing to give up searching for the truth no matter the pain it causes her. She’s given away pieces of herself over and over without keeping score. She gave away a piece of herself to protect him, even when he’d never asked her for it.
Somehow darkness always finds me.
Nancy tears through August’s journal because it’s all she can do. Despite the horrific realization that her entire being has been tainted by evil across lifetimes, there’s an underlying sense of relief that she’s trying not to process. She’d been floundering for a way to define the undeniable pull she felt toward Tristan but being told it was predestined love had instantly felt wrong to her. She knew she had real feelings for him but the idea that they had been assigned to each other by the universe seemed ill-fitting. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Nancy had known in her soul that Tristan was not the person she’d cross time and space for.
She sits on the frozen ground grateful for a private moment to take in the full weight of her soul’s sins, but naturally that moment is all too brief. Her soul pulses beneath her chest and like a homing beacon it draws Ace right to her. At least any questions that remain between them can be put to rest now. All of her scars have been laid bare and if there had still been any hope for redemption in his eyes it must surely be gone by now. The pain she had caused him was obviously a symptom of the greater evil buried deep within her being. She would always leave a trail of chaos and destruction across her lifetimes.
You said it was unforgivable.
Ace can’t blame her for the bewildered look she gives him. It must feel like whiplash to her but he can feel the weight easing from his chest as simply as if he’d released a balloon into the air. He still carries his own scars, the guilt and sorrow of Alice’s death will hang heavy around him for a long time. But the burden of anger doesn’t have to. Nancy’s carrying scars from multiple lifetimes and he’ll be damned if he’s going to add to them.
How wrong he’d been, about so many things. It was impossible for anything Nancy did to be unforgivable. He could be mad at her, or scared for her, but he could never forsake her. Nancy may be covered in scars and surrounded by darkness but she herself was light, truth, and beauty. She was what lit their way through the woods, charging into the unknown with grit and determination.
Your decision to call the Sin Eater on my behalf was an act of love…. I forgive you, Nancy, with everything I have I forgive you.
Nancy doesn’t understand how he could look at her now, of all moments, and just forgive her and it’s utterly maddening that he does it in a way that’s so simple and quiet and Ace. As if the only thing it took to create forgiveness was to just decide to. If her past lives were mired in inhumanity, what sort of grace were his past lives filled with?
I know you’ve been pummeled by life.
I think you always were, Nancy.
You’d do anything to protect this town.
She has a feeling he’s forgiven her in every lifetime.
There’s no separating them. I can’t erase the past if I burn August’s soul, I burn Nancy’s too.
Standing on the precipice Nancy’s ready to burn these sins from her very soul, scarring it beyond repair. She dangles in the air as her connection to Tristan pulls at them both, jerking and gasping when their souls begin to separate and all Ace can do is stand and watch. His own cursed soul still unwaveringly tied to Nancy, anchoring them together. Seeing the way their smoky tendrils curl around each other just reopens his wounds that were barely healed to begin with. It’s a stark reminder that no matter where they go or who they’re with, he and Nancy will forever be connected by the curse that drives them apart.
The bond between Nancy and Tristan snaps in two and just like that, Ace and Nancy are left alone on the bluff. This place has always held a tragic place in Nancy’s life but it feels significant to Ace too. As if he was always meant to be here with her. Nancy falls to her knees and instinct pushes Ace forward, standing at the edge of the flames that surround her.
No, please don’t! The Feuris could hurt your soul too.
She’s already taken enough from him and he shouldn’t be here right now. She’s put him in enough danger, caused him enough heartache and she hates the way he’s looking at her right now with the same desperate need to make sure she’s safe that he’s had every time she’s put them in jeopardy. The evil in her soul has drawn darkness to her time and again, and it’s made too much collateral damage out of her loved ones. If this is her final stand she needs to do it alone. He can blow his whistle and leave her to her demons.
Ace, no! Stay back! Save yourself!
She’s on the ground gasping in pain and still she’s trying to push him away, but Ace sees it for what it is, what it’s always been. When she ran from his apartment, denied him details about their curse, all of the passive aggressive bickering and accusations they’d thrown at each other since– it was all an act of love. The desperate all-consuming need to know that the person you’ve chosen to love beyond reason will be safe from harm no matter the cost to yourself. He almost can’t bear the idea that she still thinks he has a choice. As if they haven’t been acting on their feelings for each other all this time and he’s only a dead man walking.
I’m not leaving you.
The curse continues to pulse between them as Nancy watches Ace step through the flames of the Feuris. She can feel her soul burning inside her and she doesn’t want this for him. She groans as he kneels beside her and folds her into his arms. All this time they’ve been so painfully careful to avoid such an intimate embrace and here he is throwing it all away. He doesn’t have to be here, he doesn’t have to suffer the way she is. She’s shaking in his arms and she comes to realize it’s because he’s shaking too as his own soul is ravaged by the flames. She doesn’t understand why he won’t just leave when it’s in his power to do so.
Real love isn’t dying for each other!
Ace clutches Nancy against his chest as the flames begin to burn him from the inside out and it feels so much more intense than his Nancy Scar. For a moment he wonders if this isn’t how it was always meant to end for them. Their cursed lifeline pulses again but something has changed. The flames licking at their souls have followed the path that binds them and is burning through their tether. His breath hitches and he hugs Nancy against his shoulder as he reaches for his whistle, gambling on whether they can survive just one more second while their lifeline gets weaker and weaker. This must be the end because it’s all flashing before his eyes.
That’s what friends do, they show up.
Just cause I’m mad at you, doesn’t mean I’d want to lose you.
I couldn’t lose you.
All this time you thought there was no separating you from it, you just proved that wrong.
I need to save Ace’s life.
Watching you die almost killed me.
You were destroyed! You weren’t you!
He has a feeling they’ve saved each other in every lifetime.
~~~
Mysteries are everywhere. And who knows? Sooner or later, I’m sure one of them will lead me back here.
Nancy feels rather perfunctory as she packs up Icarus Hall. In the few short months she had lived there it had never exactly felt like home. Home had been the Historical Society, which was now a construction site. Home had been The Claw, which was changing ownership at the end of the week. Home had been Carson, who was preparing to welcome a new baby into the world. As Nancy packed up these pieces of her life she marveled at how much bigger her home and her heart had become. How parts of her were about to scatter across the globe as Bess set off on her expedition, and George began law school, and Nick started working for Tom Swift.
There was only one piece of her left unclaimed. Ace had disappeared quietly after talking to Bess about the effects of the Feuris and no one had heard from him in the past week. It’s not like any of them had ever considered the implications of reincarnation before but there was a decidedly heavier sense of mortality in knowing your entire being only had one life left to live. Though she wishes he’d have stuck around long enough to process what they’d experienced together, she understands his need to take space. Packing away her notebook, her gloves, her beanie, she contemplates the unsolvable mystery of him and tries to breathe through the empty feeling in her gut.
If Tristan had taught her anything it was never to take your fate for granted, so she knows it’s time to move forward, even if she has to do it alone. There’s an electric charge that runs through her whenever she begins a new mystery and it’s hovering now just beyond her reach. She’s packed and repacked a dozen times but she can’t help but know that she’s left something behind. She double checks that her flashlight is working for the inevitable moment when she’ll have to navigate through the darkness on her own.
Have you forgiven yourself?
He’s trying, but he can’t help but be upset with himself for the time that he’s lost to fear and anger. He needs to let those feelings go now, mostly because it’s the only way forward. He spent the drive to North Carolina picturing Alice driving along with him. She had seemed like the kind of person who lived her life without any fear. Following her own path with no regrets, she’d been able to cross over peacefully despite not having enough time. But on the way back to Horseshoe Bay Ace considered the connection he’d felt to Alice, the kinship that was based on their shared amiable approach to life.
The thing is, it’s my last life, too, and I need to live it without regrets.
He started to picture Nancy driving along with him, filled with a sense of purpose and urgency even when she was still. It wasn’t enough to live life without regret, it also needed to be lived with ambition. Now that he's committed to the idea of medical school, Ace feels an electric charge within him as he begins planning a path forward.
There’s something exciting about having a mystery of his own to solve, but not before he gets an answer to the question that’s been on his mind since the Feuris. He’s sure that he saw the curse burning, but can’t say for sure that it was completely eradicated. From the research he’s done, and strict warnings Bess has given him, Ace knows that there’s no half-assing a death curse. If any part of it remains it will still kill him. But living in the unknown a second longer is only going to kill him anyway.
Because no matter what, the mystery of who you are will never end. And I know that the next clues will have to take you on the road. So do mine.
And just like that, the piece of her that’s always been guided by him touches ground once again after drifting for so long. She knows she still has to go, but at least she’s found the first clue to the mystery of herself embedded in his eyes. All of the time they’d spent apart has led them to this moment, to each other. Even if they end up on separate roads for a while, Nancy knows that they’ll always be able to find their way home now.
But… will you solve this part of the mystery with me?
He’s never felt quite like this before, confident and comfortable. But the joy he sees in her eyes when he announces his plans for school fill him with a feeling of love unlike any he’d ever imagined. All this time he’d been trying to demonstrate his feelings through dutiful acts in service to her, but the one that spoke loudest was when he acted in service to himself. They may be stronger together but he knows now that no matter where they go they’ll never be apart. They will carry a piece of each other, letting it guide them home.
Always. Forever.
She feels the last of their walls crumble away, no longer separated by fear and self-doubt. Holding each other close the world rights itself on its axis and Nancy has a sense of True North again. With Ace in her arms she feels like she can solve every mystery of the Universe.
Are you scared?
Of course he is, but knows there’s no going back. He’ll never let himself be controlled by fear again. No mystery in this world is a match for Nancy Drew.
Are you?
Yeah, but I’ve never let that stop me from finding the truth, so…
She grips him tightly and pulls his whole body against hers, unable to stand another second apart. He responds instantly and as their lips meet it’s not with a swell of pent up emotion but rather a deeply felt sense of love and care. This moment is a quiet, private one that fills them with relief first before joy begins to bubble up. They giggle into each other’s mouths as all of the pent up longing, and anger, and trauma melt. This feeling is lighter than they ever thought possible and he spins her around the room in a dizzying mix of kissing and laughter. Their scars are fading into soft faint marks that may always be a part of them but will no longer define who they are.