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September, 1986
“So, Nancy… where do you see yourself in five years?”
Nancy picked at her sleeve. A part of her didn’t believe she’d be alive in five years. Nightmare after nightmare, where the monster got her. And it wasn’t like a child’s bad dream where her mom could check underneath her bed and in the closet and promise the monsters weren’t there. Because they were. They always were. He always was.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
Nancy spent so long believing the monster in her head would get her one day. And it did, one day, and then another day, and another, until she woke up with a Walkman over her ears and in her mother’s arms. And for once, she really could believe her mom when she told her the monster was gone. He was gone. Her friends had saved her. He was really gone.
But either way, a monster would get her.
“Nancy?” Tara pressed.
Nancy let out a small hum. “I don’t know. Finishing college, I guess. Journalism.”
“Emerson.”
“How’d you know?”
She smiled, and pointed to Nancy’s chest, the Emerson logo printed on her T-shirt. “Oh. Right.”
“You’ve wanted to be a journalist since the year after Barb died, right?” she asked, as if she didn’t already know.
There was always a part of Nancy during these hours that resented the fact that at some point she’d poured her heart out to this woman, about everything that had happened to her. It must’ve been a weak moment. She liked Tara, she wasn’t the way Nancy expected a therapist to be. But Nancy wasn’t the type of person to talk about her feelings to her own mother, let alone a stranger being paid by the government to listen.
Nancy replied with a nod.
“Nancy…”
“What?” Nancy mumbled.
“Remember the rule?” Tara said. The rule. That stupid rule.
If you don’t want to talk about something, then tell me instead of shutting down.
Nancy straightened her posture, sucking in a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t wanna talk about the future.”
A monster was going to get her anyway. There was no point. And she wouldn’t want to waste the government’s precious money on a pointless conversation.
“May I ask why?” Tara asked.
“It just feels like a monster is going to get me before we can get to five years in the future.” Nancy told the half-truth.
“There are no more monsters.”
Nancy shifted her gaze away from Tara. “Fine. But it’s a dumb conversation to have in therapy, anyway. I wanna be a journalist, I’m going to college for journalism. Everything worked out. Will work out.”
“I don’t need to hear about the details of your future journalism career, Nancy.” Tara said. “But I do need to help you get to it.”
“What does that mean?”
“You haven’t been like this in six months. Since the week after Sattler’s Quarry.” she said, too fucking perceptive. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Nancy bit. “It was Barb’s birthday yesterday, okay? That’s all.”
“Okay. It’s okay.” she smiled, again.
“You don’t think so.” Nancy muttered. “You want me to be all happy and talk about my stupid future as if I have one.”
“It is my job to want you to be happy. And whether or not you have a future is entirely up to you.”
“No, it’s not! I know what you’re gonna say, okay? It was her birthday, it’s a significant event that can bring back trauma, etcetera, etcetera.” Nancy said. “But it’s always gonna be her birthday, isn’t it? It happens once a year, and so do all those other dates that… ignite something in my brain and make me…”
“Harm yourself?”
“Duh.”
“The goal isn’t to stop those events from ‘igniting’ something, it’s to find a way to cope with it.” Tara explained. “You know that thing annoying people say about depression? ‘Everyone gets sad sometimes.’?”
“Yeah?”
“As misguided as those people are, they are right. Everyone gets sad, you’re not going to stop getting sad sometimes.”
“Good to know your job is redundant then.”
“But the reason those people are misguided is because they don’t feel it as intensely as you do. Barb’s birthday will come every year, but I should hope that maybe next year, while you’ll probably still be sad, you won’t resort to your current coping method for it, right?” she said.
“Those people are misguided because they’ve all lived perfect lives.” Nancy replied. “Maybe if Barb’s birthday meant something to them, they wouldn’t be so ignorant.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not.” Tara said. “In fact, I think some of them say it to justify their own bad coping mechanisms. You aren’t so different from them, Nancy.”
Nancy scoffed. “I don’t say ‘everyone gets sad sometimes’.” she mocked.
“No, but you don’t allow yourself to get sad sometimes.”
“Yeah, and why isn’t that? I spent a year pretending like everything was fine. And then it all blew up, and I thought it was for the best. I got the Lab shut down, and Barb got a funeral. And then… and then it didn’t work. It just got worse and worse for years.” Nancy squeezed her arm, willing tears not to fall. “I was better off before then.”
“I think it got so bad so quickly because it had festered. And it wasn’t over. You were feeling all that pain all while Starcourt happened, and then Vecna. It was a lot of terrible experiences all on top of the other, all while dealing with SATs and college applications. It didn’t allow you to take a breather.”
Nancy breathed a laugh. “You saw what happens when I take a breather.”
“Yes.” she leaned forward, an intense, dedicated look in her eye. “So let me help you.”
September, 1991
“Nancy…?” Robin flicked on the light, to which Nancy curled up tighter. “You okay?”
“No.” Nancy whimpered.
“Okay.” Robin knelt down by the couch, her hand hovering hesitantly over Nancy. “Why not?”
“I… I don’t know.” Nancy realised. “We had a good day yesterday.”
“Yeah, we did. Barb would’ve loved it.” Robin smiled. “You did so well.”
“But I failed.”
“Failed?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Nancy didn’t have the energy to explain what Robin already knew. And what Robin would try to argue with her on. “Robin…”
“Yeah?”
Nancy ripped her hand away from her knees, reaching out blindly for Robin to take it. She did, gently rubbing circles around Nancy’s knuckles, pressing her lips softly to Nancy’s shaky hand.
“It’s okay.” Robin whispered. She let go of Nancy’s hand, and for a moment Nancy was falling again. But she came back. Robin always came back, after popping in the VHS tape of all those recorded sitcom episodes, with the TV remote in one hand and Nancy’s hand in the other. “Let’s get through one episode, yeah?”
“Can’t.”
“Twenty minutes, plus commercials.” Robin pulled Nancy against her.
“You’ll just make me do another after.”
“Yeah.” Robin agreed. “And you’ll get through that one, too. And the one after that, and after that, and however many we need, right?”
“How do you know?”
“You always do, Nancy.” she smiled. “When was the last time you haven’t?”
“…Five years ago.”