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The way how people said there’s quiet after storm proved itself to be very true after Vecna had been defeated and Upside Down had been destroyed.
People were careful, wary in Hawkins for weeks after the military left. As weeks turned into months, people slowly adjusted, and eventually smiles emerged, laughter. Normality.
Still, you were still stuck in how world had twisted and turned and nobody would ever know about it. Every new person you’d meet in the future, you would never be able to tell them about the demons inside your head, how you still saw nightmares about almost being killed by a Demogorgon. The weight of such secrets was crushing.
You were sitting at the memorial park often, staring at the statue with names of those who perished engraved into it. And every time you looked at it, you could see it over and over, how El stood at the gate as you all tried to get to her, before she disappeared and the world stopped. Flashes of everything that had happened in the Upside Down before that, everyone you had lost, every horrible near death experience you had gone through.
You barely noticed when a shadow passed you, and only snapped out of your thoughts when your shoulder was nudged and you turned to look at the person who had sat next to you.
“Hi,” Nancy mumbled, smiling slightly. “I thought you could want company.”
You blinked at her, before sighing. “I might not be the best company right now, though.”
Nancy was silent, staring at the ground for a moment, but eventually she spoke again, “Monthly anniversaries tend to do that.”
You bowed your head. “My mother can’t fathom how is this such a big deal to me, and it kills me how I can never tell the truth about it all to her.”
Nancy nodded. “It was hard for me too, to keep it from my parents.”
You closed your eyes, feeling a tear making its way into your eye. After a moment, the first one of them fell on your thigh, and you choked out, “I feel so alone.”
“You’re not,” Nancy replied instantly, putting her hand on top of yours. “I’ll always be here.”
“But everyone is leaving, including you because new period is starting, and—”
“I quit,” Nancy interrupted you. “I quit Emerson.”
You fell silent, snapping to look at Nancy. “What? Why?”
“I tried it and concluded it isn’t what I want from my life,” she sighed. “I don’t know what I want yet, but it also means I won’t leave. Not yet, at least.”
You were at loss of words for that. Emerson had always been the one thing Nancy had wanted from her life, and now she had thrown it away because suddenly she didn’t feel like it. Her words sounded so surreal after knowing what she had wanted for the past seven years you had known her.
Nancy smiled slightly, wrapping her fingers around yours. “I also don’t want to be too far away from my partner, when I know they need me.”
You took in a shaky breath. “You’d… stay for me?”
She nodded, before leaning her head against your shoulder. “I want to see us happy in a year and not in a decade.”
So there you sat with her, looking at the statue together, a little more hopeful that maybe one day things would turn out just fine for you too.