Work Text:
Karen could remember this feeling as if it had happened yesterday. Lying in a hospital bed, the only entertainment being the beeps of monitors, no way to block out the all-encompassing anxiety that came with having children. Only, at least the last two times her children had been here, in her arms. No, the last time she’d really felt like this, like her heart had been torn in two with one piece of it endlessly suffering, was with Nancy. All because that damned car had blown through the stop sign and straight into Ted’s newly purchased Cadillac and sent Karen into labour nine weeks too early. Karen didn’t think babies could be that small, and she’d never imagined her baby to be born as anything but healthy. And so, despite having not slept in god knows how long, Karen couldn’t bear to take her eyes away from her daughter, just in case it would be the last time she ever laid eyes on her.
And now, now, Karen could barely look at Nancy. Because lying in a hospital bed with jack shit to do led to thinking, thinking about how her daughter hadn’t even asked how Karen ended up on the kitchen floor covered in her own blood. How she had shown up with that girl whose missing posters were plastered all over town and demanded the girl follow Holly through that portal without even wondering what the hell it was. How she and Mike’s faces had fallen after seeing the name ‘Henry’. And how, out of the corner of her eye, Karen could’ve sworn Nancy had walked in holding a shotgun.
The icing on the cake was the fact that as soon as she had put all the pieces together in her head, Karen’s first thought was ‘now it all makes sense’. The way her two teenagers would suddenly became very unexplainably clingy at the same time. The panic attacks, the nightmares, the whispered conversations even though she knew Mike and Nancy never really talked. And maybe before she could’ve written it all off. Because Mike lost Eddie, and Nancy lost Fred, and all of Hawkins lost any sense of normalcy. Of course her kids weren’t normal, no one was normal anymore. But now, with too much time to think, the realisation dawned on Karen - her kids hadn’t been normal for years now.
“Mom…” the sound of her daughter snapped her back into reality. Karen studied her, looking for something she had been missing this whole time. “Are you hurting? Shall I call someone?”
Karen began to speak, but the stabbing pain that tore through her throat quickly stopped her. She bit at her lip, desperately trying not to show any sign of it. She reached for the pen, failing to grab it from shakiness and fatigue. Nancy gently pressed the notepad and pen into her mother’s hands. Karen absolutely hated all of this, the feeling of flashing forward to fifty years in the future where her children would have to care for her.
How long have you known? She wrote down, giving Nancy as much of a stern parental look as she could muster.
“Known?” Nancy played dumb. Of course she did, she’d spent the past year playing dumb. “Known what?”
Everything.
Nancy inhaled a sharp breath, her eyes searching for some kind of excuse that would make all of this go away. Karen almost wanted it, just to sleep easily. But Holly was gone, and Karen would never sleep again, so to hell with excuses.
Nancy seemed to come to the same conclusion. “It all started when Will went missing. W- well, it actually started way before that, but that’s when it started for us…”
Nancy’s explanation was long, and mumbly, and hard to follow. But Karen didn’t need to get bogged down in the details of what childish name they’d given these monsters, or who was in what place and when. Nancy was watching Karen carefully, looking for some kind of reaction after rattling off the craziest story ever told like it was nothing. Probably expecting questions, or sympathy, or anything but-
How could you not tell me?
“I- we had to sign so many contracts. They would’ve put you in prison, or worse.”
You told Max. Robin. The Sinclair’s little girl. A fucking private investigator. No more lies.
“…I don’t know.” Nancy lied. Karen’s face felt flushed with anger. She could always tell when Nancy was lying, she wasn’t very good at it, so how on earth had all of this gone over her head for so long?
“I- I am yo- your mother.”” Karen paused to take a breath, even the feeling of oxygen going down her throat hurt like hell, but if it got through to her daughter then it was worth it. “How could you not tell me?-”
Nancy stayed silent, not meeting Karen’s eyes. Her face was expressionless, or maybe it was an expression Karen couldn’t quite place. She looked… angry. And the memory of Nancy holding that shotgun like she knew what to do with it flashed into Karen’s mind again, and suddenly Karen struggled to remember a time when Nancy didn’t look angry.
“I- I don’t know who you are anymore.” Karen realised. “Oh my god, I don’t know my own daughter. Where did my little girl go?”
Nancy stood up, and left. And Karen was once again left alone with the beeps of the monitors and her own thoughts.
Nancy didn’t need her, that much felt clear. And maybe Karen was kidding herself these past few years as she tried to convince herself over and over again that her eldest, now adult daughter, still did. Nancy had chosen not to go to college because she was too busy fighting monsters, not because she needed her mother. How naive had Karen been to believe that? But all this time she could’ve helped, could’ve done something that make her children’s lives even just a little easier if only Nancy had…
Karen was getting sick of realisations.
“Lucas? It’s Robin. A demo is headed your way, I repeat, a demo is headed your way, you need to get Max out of there now.”
She could’ve helped years ago. She could’ve done something years ago. But there was only now.
Karen begged the universe to give her kids a break, and hoped Nancy had left the hospital entirely. But little Lucas Sinclair was still here, even if he wasn’t so little any more. She had watched that boy grow up. Come to think of it, she had known him even longer than she’d known her own son, the Sinclair’s having brought him home from the hospital a few months into Karen’s pregnancy with Mike. She had to do something, what kind of mother would she be if she didn’t? That was a secret to motherhood no one had told her before she had her own kids: once your a mother, it felt like damn near every child needed your protection.
One blown up dryer and a bunch of dead ‘demos’ later, and Karen finally felt a small weight lift off her shoulders as she watched Lucas hold a now-awake Max. Mike had joined the group shortly after, and he looked so much older now, too. He’d been as nice as he possibly could to his hurt, confused, and honestly terrified mother. But just like Nancy, he had a job to do. A job that didn’t involve her.
Karen slowly made her way back to her own bed, fantasising about a universe where none of this had happened, and wondered how many times her kids had done the same thing.
Something snarled behind her, and Karen turned to find a damaged, burnt, angry creature gearing up to pounce on the person who had foiled its plan. Karen scanned the hall for anything she could use to fight it off, but the little movement she’d done today had wiped her out. This was it.
This was her whole life. For some reason, she’d always expected more.
Karen yelped as she was barged aside from behind, regaining her sense to find the short, curly-haired girl she loved more than she ever thought humanly possible between herself and the dog-like monster. Karen’s mind was racing. This was all wrong. She should be protecting her child, not vice versa. But her body disagreed, shaking tremendously as she tried and failed to get up and do something. All she could do was watching as the dog pounced at Nancy, and Nancy jammed a piece of broken dryer in the creatures heart. It fell limp at her side.
Nancy looked down at the monster, and then at metal in her hand, and then at her mother. And then she did something Karen really didn’t expect.
She burst into tears. “I don’t know who I am, either.” The feeling of uselessness washed away. Ever since she got to hold her too-tiny, too-sick baby for the first time, this was the part she was good at. The part where her children needed no one else but their mom. “I want the old me back, too.”
“I didn’t mean it.” Karen scrambled to her daughter’s side, letting Nancy wrap her arms around her neck even though, quite frankly, it fucking hurt. “And… and I know I was wrong, when I asked you why you didn’t tell me. I know what you were too afraid to say.”
Nancy’s hug got tighter. “You were the first person I told.”
“I should’ve believed you.” Karen squeezed her eyes shut, imagining a world in which this conversation never had to happen. “I’m so sorry.”
“I- I don’t like the way I am. I don’t like that I can use a gun. I don’t like being covered in scars, and feeling scared all the time, and- and alone all the time. I want this to be over. But what if it’s never over? Even if all the monsters are dead, what if I’m like this forever?” Nancy cried.
“Then I’ll still be here. Forever. Okay? Like I should’ve been before.” Karen promised. “But, Nancy, you have always been a fighter. Since the day you were born. I know who you are, Nancy. You are the same strong, smart, death-defying little girl you always have been. And even if you don’t like it, I love it. All of it. Even the scars.”
“Even though they’re from monsters, and not slicing my hand cutting vegetables?” Nancy laughed through tears.
“I can’t believe I just pegged you as clumsy. Are you kidding? My daughter’s a damn superhero.” Karen smiled. She knew who her daughter was, but she couldn’t wait to get to know her better.