Chapter Text
Year 1
Always. Forever .
In year 1, they learn what that means.
The moment they reunite is sweeping, romantic, all-consuming. The kind of moment they’ve waited so long for.
She thinks maybe they forgot in the barrage of obstacles that stood in their way, to think what it may be like to actually be together . Ace was just a concept for her for so long, one she wanted desperately, one that she ached for, but one she had never experienced before. Because sure, she’d had relationships. Parker, Nick, Owen, Gil, Park.
But they were…different. Or at least, this feels different. This feels both new and exciting and also old and familiar. This feels like settling into something and also experiencing it for the first time.
This kind of love…it’s different. When Ace tells her he loves her for the first time, the actual words, they are lying on his bed, skin cooling, foreheads pressed together like they can’t bear to be separate for even a moment, and that’s when he says it.
“I love you, Nancy,” he breathes. She holds the words to her heart, tucks them into herself forever, leans over and brushes her lips against his in the softest kiss.
“I love you so much,” she whispers back.
It’s the first time she’s said that to a man. And something in her, something she couldn’t explain, knows that he’ll be the last she’ll say this to.
Always. Forever .
It’s a forever thing. It’s always. He’s the one.
It’s never been a forever thing before. But it is with Ace.
And Nancy, for the first time, imagines all kinds of things. Imagines their future, together. All of it. Their last life, spent together. Life has surprised them enough, this is something she holds on to.
Nancy and Ace exist in a bubble of happiness. In a day of goodbyes, Nancy is both surprised and relieved to note that there is very little actual exiting happening. The Claw is not going to be transferred in ownership for some weeks, and nobody seems in a great rush to leave. Nick breaks up with Jade, for a reason he doesn’t seem able to explain. Cameron gets into a different school, explains to George that he can’t turn this opportunity down, and she is not nearly as disappointed as Nancy has seen her before. They scavenge through the remnants of the Historical Society, spend time at Icarus Hall, hang out at Nick’s apartment.
And the complaints start approximately three days into Nancy and Ace’s burgeoning relationship.
They start, of course, with George.
“Jesus Christ , Drew, polite company!”
While there is a retort on the tip of Nancy’s tongue about how polite the company was being highly debatable, to say this would have meant disconnecting her lips from Ace’s, and that was something that was increasingly infrequent. Evidently, gone were the days of her leaning over his shoulder, and now they were in the era of her sitting on his lap, her legs slung across his.
Finally, Ace lifts his face from Nancy’s, pressing a few barely there kisses down her neck, and helps her turn to face the crew, who look a mixture of annoyed, delighted and exasperated.
She leans back into her boyfriend (her boyfriend ). “Something to say, George?”
“Hell yeah. Had I known the annoying pining and longing era would give way to the superglued PDA era, I may have objected a bit more to the whole curse-breaking thing.”
Nancy scoffs, lifting a hand to stroke her fingers through Ace’s (incredibly soft) hair while she speaks, while he lays his chin on her shoulder.”
“We’re not that bad.”
Even Nick scoffs at this, hiding it behind his hand. “Hate to say it, guys, but you are.”
Ace inclines his head slightly to press a kiss to Nancy’s cheek, which makes her blush and her friends roll their eyes.
“We aren’t always together.”
Bess makes a noise of protest at that, and for the first time, Nancy notices how far away their friends are seated from she and Ace, as if they’re poised to leave if things turn too…coupley.
“You know how much I love you two being in love, but I don’t think you two have gone longer than a bathroom break since the curse breaking. And after said bathroom break, you reunite as if one of you has just returned from war.”
“And speaking of bathroom breaks,” George interjects. “Want to know the reason we hang out at Nick’s and not Ace’s? It’s because the last time we hung out at Ace’s, I found a pair of handcuffs in the bathroom.”
Nancy is pretty sure both she and Ace turn scarlet at that, and she makes a note to put those handcuffs in a more subtle location as soon as they get back.
“We’re adults. We’re in a relationship. We’re in love.”
George scoffs, but Nancy can see the softness in her eyes, and she knows George, in her own prickly way, is happy for them too.
“Well, when you go home before us tonight, could you ‘be in love’ more quietly? Pretty sure the entire building has been sleeping with earplugs lately.”
The months slip into each other, and every day, Nancy waits for the bubble to pop. It’s like living in a constant state of honeymoon. She’s happy, so blissfully happy. A kind of happy she’s never felt in her life. A kind of happy that doesn’t feel real, and she fears that bubble popping every single day.
But it doesn’t, not in those months.
Eventually, the leaving becomes real. Nancy and Ace hug George goodbye, and she’s positive there are real tears in George’s eyes as she gets on the plane bound for Washington. They tell her how incredibly proud of her they are, how she’s going to come back a lawyer, how she deserves this.
Nick leaves for LA with Tom Swift, and the process repeats. They ask him if it feels like a fresh start, and he says no, he already got that.
Both times, Ace holds Nancy as she cries.
They’re her soulmates, never gone for good, and Nancy knows this.
Something in her also knows they’ll be reunited sooner rather than later, but the goodbyes still hurt.
Especially when she knows sometime, in some form, she’ll have to say goodbye to Ace as well.
Year 1 also teaches her about letting go. About knowing she can let go and survive. About knowing it’ll come back.
It’s a long lesson, a hard one. An extended lesson, as she helps Ace write applications to undergraduate programs. She’s absurdly proud of him, so proud she could burst, how strong and smart and ambitious he is.
They write application letters in motels between Sin Eater quests, with takeout containers precariously balanced on the beds.
He blushes sometimes and tells her that she shouldn’t be so confident he’ll succeed, and Nancy tells him it’s not a guess, it’s a surety, and until he believes it, she will believe it for both of them.
Year one is blissful. Year one is purposeful. Year one is a beginning in so many ways. They make sure Ace applies at schools in both Washington and LA, as well as in Maine, for his mother’s sake. His relationship with his father only improves very slightly, but progress is progress.
It hurts, though, to see Ace take his father’s barbs and she knows some part of him believes it. Every time they leave Shabbat dinner, she runs her hands through his hair, breathes into his neck how strong he is, how kind he is, how capable he is. She wants to help more. He says her being there is enough.
Ace gets early admission to undergraduate at his choice of schools, as many as he applied to. The same day, Nancy frees the last Sin Eater.
Blissful. Transformative. Almost unreal.
Almost unbelievable to come from I can solve this mystery without you and but you did it anyway and how could you try to change me to him spinning her around a motel room, tears on both of their faces. To Ace laying Nancy down on the bed, laying kisses over every inch of her face, kissing away her tears.
To whispered, reverent whispers.
I’m so proud of you.
I love you so much, I love you forever.
You’re the love of my life.
You’re incredible.
You’re everything .
They call their friends after, tell them the news, and it feels like they’re all together again. Bess says as much. If Ace picks a university near George or Nick, it’s “time to reunite the Drew Crew!”
Nancy can’t think of anything she wants more.
Her cheeks hurt from smiling. She falls asleep smiling, in Ace’s arms.
There’s a peace inside her that she has never known. As if all her past lives have settled, have gone to peace. As if the world is now a little gentler, a little kinder. It’s a feeling that settles over her, that she tucks inside her with the first I love you , next to her heart.
Two weeks later, as she might have known it, the bubble pops.
Or at least, it feels like it does.
She misses a date. Not only does she miss a date, she gets caught up in a case, and she doesn’t answer. Ace texts her, calls her, but she barely looks away from her makeshift murder board for the day.
In hindsight, it’s small. There have been things, even recent things, that she has done to him that were undeniably far worse. But he’s angry.
More than that, he’s scared.
And she…she does what Nancy Drew does. She gets defensive, she fights back, her brain shifts into accepting what it always felt to be an inevitability.
Eventually, she’s going to be too hard to love. It’s going to be too much, and he’ll leave.
It was just a matter of when.
They yell, and he says he’s going out for a walk, but she knows what that really means.
Seven months, nearly eight. That’s how much time she got, how much blissful happiness she was allowed. That’s how much forever Nancy Drew gets.
So she curls into her huge, empty bed at Icarus Hall, and it’s fitting, because empty is all she feels. She feels ripped apart, open, and exposed. She lets the tears slip down her cheeks, feels the hurt she deserves, and her ears try to listen, to memorize the sound of nothing. Because that’s what she is now, what she’ll have to get used to.
She listens for an amount of time she’s not even clear on, tears slipping down her cheeks, hearing her body shake with sobs, feeling the tremors and letting the waves crash over her.
Her heart cries out for Ace, Ace, Ace, but her brain tells her she should have known better.
And then she hears it. Doesn’t even comprehend at first, but hears the unmistakable sound of Florence’s engine cutting off in her driveway.
He’s probably just coming to get his things, her mind jeers. He’s not staying. He’s not even going to look at you .
It makes sense. Historically, it makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is the pair of arms that wrap around her from behind, the warm body that slips into bed and pulls her to him. The lips that press into her cheek, the soothing hand that runs through her hair.
“ Baby, please don’t cry ,” the voice says, and Nancy is scared to turn, scared to hope.
But it’s real. Haltingly, she turns to see his face, soft and sad, with tears on his face too. Slowly, she lifts a hand and brushes the tears from his cheeks.
“You came back,” her heart pounds frantically. “You’re here. You didn’t leave.”
“Of course I did,” he says, leaning forward. His warm lips kiss the tears off her cheeks, and she can feel her insides righting, knitting together again.
“Everyone leaves,” she gasps out, burying her face in his chest. He’s solid and warm and real , and she can hear his heart beating. Her eyes slip closed. “I thought…I thought you finally thought I wasn’t worth it.”
“Oh sweetheart ,” she hears, and feels him gently hold her cheeks, turning her eyes to face him.
“There is never anything that would make me leave for good. Always, remember? Forever.”
She nods haltingly. She’s never known Ace to lie, not ever.
Forever is something Nancy Drew will have to come to believe in.
That’s year one, too. It’s healing. It’s changing. It’s the beginning. It’s a journey, and it’s theirs .