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Nancy hadn’t been sleeping well.
She hadn’t slept well since 1983, but after Vecna, the nightmares ramped up, and it was rare if she got more than five or six hours a night, and it was never consistent. This particular night, she woke up for the third time, and she decided to get a glass of water.
She peeked in on Holly as she went, unable to get the images Vecna had shown her out of her head, but the little girl was sleeping peacefully, curled up with her stuffed giraffe. Nancy let out a breath and shut the door gently behind her, moving further down the hall, where she stopped short. Mike’s door was shut, but there was a sliver of light shining at the ground, and she could hear soft sobs coming from inside the room. She suddenly had a memory from years ago, long before the Upside Down, long before any of the horrors of the world had hit yet.
Nancy, age 10, slowly opened her eyes. It was still dark outside, so she sat up, yawning, trying to figure out what woke her.
She heard a cry from down the hall, and she climbed out of bed, padding down to where her brother was. The door was cracked, and she heard soft whimpers coming from inside the room. “Mike?” she whispered. “Mikey, are you okay?” She crawled up next to him on the bed, wrapping her arms around him. “Shh, it’s okay.”
Mike gasped and sat up, breathing heavily. “Nance--Nancy?”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “It’s okay.”
“I--I had a bad dream,” he whimpered. “I’m scared.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“Stay?”
“Of course, Mikey. I’m your big sister. I’ll always be here.”
She hesitated for a moment, then knocked gently on the door. “Mike?” There was no answer. She knocked louder, called his name again. “I’m coming in.”
He wasn’t on his bed this time; he was next to it, sitting against the wall with his knees curled up to his chest and tears on his cheeks. She shut the door quietly and made her way over toward him--her breath caught when she saw the splintered remains of Mike’s guitar scattered across the floor and the pair of scissors in his hand.
She crouched and sat down next to him. “Why don’t you hand me those?” she said gently, reaching her hand out for the scissors.
He handed them to her without a fight, not meeting her eyes. “I wasn’t--I wasn’t gonna--do anything, you know, bad, I just--” His face screwed up in pain, a fresh sob ripping from his throat. “I was gonna cut my hair.”
Oh. Nancy thought back to first semester, when Mike would come home upset nearly every day of the first two weeks, lonely and struggling in a new school. He wouldn’t ever talk about his classes, or even his friends, like he used to. And then suddenly, he came home one day, chatting her ear off about a new D&D club and a new group of friends, and suddenly he wanted to learn guitar and grow his hair out long, much to their mother’s disdain, but she let him do it because Mike was happy again. She thought back to Eddie’s funeral, and Dustin’s comment that Eddie was the only one nice to him or Mike, and suddenly it made sense. “The guitar, too?”
He nodded, sniffing. “I smashed it--obviously. This morning. Mom cried, kinda freaked out, but she doesn’t--I don’t think she knows what to do with me anymore.”
“Yeah.” Nancy laughed bitterly. “Me either. She keeps trying to get me to talk, but like, about what? We can’t tell her any of this. And even if we could--” She breaks off, but she knows that Mike knows what she means.
“It’s so fucked,” he said, slightly hysterically, through his tears. “Everything, it’s just--it’s so fucked up. It’s not fair. I just--” His voice broke. “I can’t believe he’s gone. He wasn’t supposed to be a part of this shit, he wasn’t supposed to--I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Nancy put an arm around his shoulders, and it broke the dam. Her little brother leaned into her side and sobbed, loud, ugly cries, and she hugged him tightly, rubbing his back gently and whispering to him. He was right--it wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. Not the deaths, and not the kids that were left behind to deal with the fallout.
His sobs eventually evened out, and they sat silently in each other’s arms for a while, until Nancy sat up. “You really want to cut it?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah. I just…it hurts too much. Mom doesn’t get it.”
She nodded. She understood that. “Alright. Come on.”
He furrowed his brow as she stood up. “Where are we going?”
“Downstairs. You wanna cut your hair? Fine. But you’re not doing it on your bedroom floor.”
“It’s, like, three in the morning.”
“And?” She held her hand out impatiently. “Come on, as long as we’re quiet, we won’t bother anyone.”
Which was how Nancy found herself at her kitchen counter at three something in the morning, a towel around Mike’s shoulders and a pair of kitchen scissors in her hand (“They’re sharper than the ones from your room, Mike, just trust me on this--”).
“Are you really sure you know what you’re doing?” Mike asked doubtfully.
“No, but does it really matter? I’ll just cut some of the length off, then you can have mom fix it tomorrow or something.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Nancy took hold of a lock of hair and made the first cut, deciding not to mention the fresh tears on Mike’s cheeks. “Did I ever tell you about the time Barb and I tried to make dresses out of the curtains when we were little?”
“You what?”
It was a stupid story, and honestly not even that funny, but it had nothing to do with interdimensional monsters or danger or nightmares, and by the time she’d finished cutting her brother’s hair, he was laughing and she was smiling right alongside him. The cuts were choppy and uneven, and they did end up waking their parents, but it was the first time in a long time Nancy had heard Mike laugh, and it was probably the first time she’d smiled in a long time, too.