Chapter Text
The Upside Down doesn't change. Three years of coming here and Nancy's stopped expecting it to make sense. It just is. Grey light filtering through spore-thick air. Vines carpeting the ground like dead nervous system. The constant low hum coming from everywhere and nowhere.
"Northeast bearing, one hundred meters." Dustin's voice behind her. Steady. Confident. He's got the modified compass—the one he and Eddie built that actually works down here.
"If my calculations are correct—and they are—Hawkins Lab should be dead center of the Upside Down's structure."
"We know, Henderson," Steve says.
"I'm just saying, if we can find something interesting over there, where it had all begun—"
"We might actually figure out how to close this thing permanently," Nancy finishes. She's heard this theory six times in the last two days. It makes sense. The lab is where it started. Where they first opened a gate in '83. Where Eleven went in. Where it all began. If they can find something, some clues over there, maybe they can take a step forward to defeating Vecna once and for all.
She glances back.
Jonathan is three paces behind her. Camera around his neck. She's asked him before why he brings it down here—there's nothing worth photographing in the Upside Down, just rot and death and grey. But she knows the answer. It's not about photographs. It's about having something familiar. Something real from their world that he can hold onto when this world gets too heavy.
Three years together. Long enough to know him. To love him. To be terrified of losing him.
His hand goes to his jacket pocket. Quick check. The cassette tape is still there. Should I Stay or Should I Go written on the label in handwriting she could identify anywhere. Cramped. Careful. The first mixtape he ever made, when he was twelve, for Will.
He catches her looking. Gives her a small nod. I'm okay.
He's not okay. She knows he's not okay. He had the nightmare again last night—the quarry, the body bag, the three days of looking—and he woke up gasping at 3 AM and pretended he was fine. She didn't push. There's a time for pushing and a time for just being there. Last night was a being-there night.
"Nancy?" Jonathan's voice. Quiet.
She turns. He's stopped walking.
"What's wrong?"
He's looking at the ground. At the vines. "Something feels off."
She's learned to trust his instincts about this place. Jonathan has a sense for the Upside Down that the rest of them don't. Maybe it's because Will spent a week here in '83 and some of that sensitivity rubbed off through proximity. Maybe it's just that Jonathan notices things other people miss.
"Off how?" she asks.
"I don't know. The vines. They're—"
The ground explodes.
Vines everywhere. Erupting from below. Wrapping around Nancy's legs before she can react. Around her arms. Pulling her down hard. Her rifle goes flying. She hits the ground and gets a mouthful of spores and rot and then the vines are dragging her.
She can hear Steve yelling. Dustin screams. She twists her head and sees Jonathan reaching for her, hand extended, mouth open saying her name—
Then the world drops away.
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When Nancy comes back to herself, she's alone.
Still in the Upside Down. Still on the ground. But Steve, Dustin, Jonathan—Gone.
She scrambles to her feet. Her rifle is ten feet away. She grabs it. Checks the chamber. Scans the area.
"Jonathan!" Her voice sounds small against the hum. "Steve! Dustin!"
Nothing.
She knows what this is. She's been through it herself. She knows what it feels like when Vecna takes you. The mindscape. The trap. The place you go when he's decided it's your turn.
He's taken them somewhere she can't follow.
Her hands shake as she searches for Jonathan's bag. It's on the ground where the vines pulled him. She opens it. First aid kit. Extra ammunition. Water bottles. And—
The Walkman.
The cassette.
She pulls them out with shaking hands. The tape is the one Jonathan always carries. The original from when he was twelve. Should I Stay or Should I Go written on the label. The ink has faded from years of being in his pocket. The case is cracked on one corner from being dropped too many times.
She knows this tape. Jonathan played it for her once, late at night in his room in Hawkins after everyone else was asleep. Explained why it mattered. Why he kept making them. Why music was the language he used when words failed him.
It's something that connects all of us, he'd said. It gets through when nothing else does.
Nancy puts the headphones on. Her hands are still shaking. She presses play.
The Clash fills her ears. Tinny and distant through the old Walkman speakers.
Darling you got to let me know,
should I stay or should I go.
She looks up.
Twenty feet away, Jonathan is standing completely still.
Steve and Dustin are beside him. All three of them frozen. Eyes open but not seeing. Gone somewhere Nancy can't reach.
She holds the Walkman. Turns the volume dial as high as it will go.
The music gets louder in her ears.
And twenty feet away, Jonathan Byers' eyes jerk skywards as the vines wrapped tighter, and tighter…