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there at the end of the road, you will be seen. It will be as nothing has ever been before, words made beautiful in how they are directed at you, hands made skillful in how knowingly they reach for you, eyes delighted by how they understand you.
- E.L.
“Steve? Do you copy?”
In any other timeline—and OK, maybe this one, too—it would be fucking embarrassing for Nancy to be radioing her ex at 10:30 PM. But she’s tried his phone three times—a phone that was, as one among the lucky half of Hawkins—still working earlier today.
No answer, now. Not on the phone, not on the radio.
It’s the day after the end of the world, and Nancy can’t sleep.
She knows that, eighteen or not, she’s not allowed out of the house—Mom is still flipping her lid every ten minutes about how they still can’t reach Mike and oh, God, what if that’s connected to this?
Nancy could tell her the truth. It’s never been more tempting, because the truth is all around them: splitting the streets, rising in smoke. Nancy could tell her the truth, but she doesn’t think it would help.
They didn’t make it back to the Winnebago. They got out on the wrong side of the trailer park—not something you could make a decision about, when molten gates were grinning wider, ever wider.
They almost didn’t make it back at all.
Nancy shimmies out her own window, down the side of the drainpipe like she’s living life in reverse, tracing the steps of what she used to have and want and be.
You’re there. You’ve always been there.
She presses the memory back, back, like it’s an enemy she’s facing down and not—not a whole life on a silver platter.
(Except it isn’t a silver platter, either. Just a golden boy beneath the grime of life and death, all eyes and heart.
All hers, for the asking. The answering.)
Shit. She comes down hard on her ankle. Going to track Steve down has nothing to do with all that.
She’s just worried. Worried about a friend. And sure, he has Robin, who’s probably the reason he hasn’t answered the phone. He’s probably holed up at the Buckleys’. Or maybe he’s at the Hendersons’, carrying Dustin through yet more grief. But Nancy hasn’t been able to get the image of Steve, dying, out of her mind for hours, now. And she hasn’t been able to beat back a dozen memories of conversations, either, but there is one in particular that stands out: the one where Steve admitted he was still in pain from the absolute carnage the bats had wreaked on him.
Here's the worst part. He told her that before the grueling final mission—before the end—
They ran, or came as close as they could to running, with Steve half-carrying Dustin. Dustin was fighting and crying, croaking Eddie’s name even though his voice was all but gone. Nancy was crying, too, but she couldn’t attribute it to grief. She couldn’t attribute it to anything, not with her gun still hot in her hands, and her heart louder in her ears than almost anything else.
They were right-side up now, but it almost didn’t matter. They didn’t know how wide the gates would spread.
They didn’t know if they’d saved anyone.
Max is like the little sister Nancy never had. Holly is the little sister she does. She thought she lost Holly, trapped inside her own unspooling brain, and then she came to and hatched a hell-bent plan and now—
Now she’s lost Max.
You didn’t have any rights to her. You barely knew her. There’s a voice to taunt her, but it isn’t Vecna’s—it’s her own. The deep-buried bones of honesty she’s left to rot amidst so many lies.
Tell Eleven, Vecna ordered, and it was like he knew—like he recognized—how ironic it would be for Nancy to tell anyone anything before it was too late.
Standing by the hospital bed, his fists clenched, his bruised face shining with tears that wouldn’t stop falling, Lucas said,
I asked her to promise.
There’s a silence much bigger than the rest of them—all these unauthorized visitors in a ghost-empty hospital room, the patient stabilized in her dreamless sleep, the doctors and nurses racing off to attend to the next dying man, woman, or child.
Finally, it’s Dustin—Dustin who speaks up, whose voice is as hoarse as Lucas’s. Nancy’s known them since they were in the third grade, and she’s seen and heard and felt them change.
(She’s lost them too.)
Promise what? asks Dustin.
Lucas presses his hands over his mouth. The sob that heaves out of him passes through them all like a shudder, like a goddamn freight train.
That she’d assume the risk.
I don’t know what I’m doing, Max said shyly, taking the gun from Nancy. Holding it up to her shoulder almost tenderly, like it was something made for love instead of violence. Show me?
Max is almost dead and the Party that Nancy used to scoff at when she was young and bitchy (in all the wrong ways) and short-sighted is fractured like—like Hawkins itself, and Steve isn’t answering his goddamn phone.
You’re there. You’ve always been—
She knows better than to start her car. Too much noise. Streets still fucked up. Everyone’s leaving.
We’ll wait till the government comes, was her dad’s comment. They’ll tell us how to handle this. House still standing.
And we have to wait for Mike, Mom pointed out, the horror-stricken look on her face flavored with a particular element of who the fuck did I marry, as it very often was.
So. They’re going nowhere. And Nancy’s going to find Steve.
She knows where he lives. Knows he moved out of his parents’ house right after graduation, didn’t leave things in a good way with his dad.
(Knows his dad only in photographs, only in passing. She didn’t fit into Steve’s world the way he tried to fit into hers, when they were together. She didn’t take a lot of time to figure out why that might be, already so convinced that she was—just getting by? Doing him a favor? Who the hell knows?)
This is how the past played out: Steve, lonely in polyester, and Nancy, covering graduation for the school paper and not looking him in the eyes when he passed right by her. It was cowardly of her for half-a-dozen reasons, one of which was that they had talked that last semester, had tried to make things right in the return to normal that everyone thought, after two rounds in the ring, might just stick.
Then came the summer of the mall, of her fated internship, of—of all of that shit. Jonathan by her side that time, Jonathan’s arms around her at night, but only when they were…in action. Jonathan’s not a cuddler.
Shit. She doesn’t know why she’s replaying the mixtape of her relationship—her relationships—right now, intertwined with all the interdimensional mindfuckery that’s never really over.
Astride her bike (last seen in the Upside Down, last ridden alongside two friends and a ghost, last chances drifting past them on the wind), she grits her teeth and tucks her chin down. The smell of burning is unavoidable, sharp in her nostrils—sick and salty because of what’s been burned.
Blood and earth and time and space and brick and board and—
Everything.
There’s a light on in Steve’s apartment. Nancy almost falls off her bike in relief, before she remembers that optimism bears too high a price for anyone in Hawkins to pay, these days.
He could be dead. Eddie bled out from the bats, and sure, that went quick (not quick enough, says the cruelly honest voice in her head), but Steve’s been bleeding for days.
She takes the steps two at a time. He lives over a takeout joint, which everyone else who remembers the days of King Steve thinks is a real comedown. Thinks, or thought—it’s obvious that no one cares now.
It takes her what feels like another hour to actually work up the courage to knock.
“Nance?”
“I’m sorry. I—” There’s probably something a little inadvisable, maybe even a little wrong, about running across a town on fire to make sure someone you—you care about still exists in the same state you left them in a few hours ago.
Or maybe it’s the only thing that makes sense.
“You OK?” Steve asks.
She’s never been to his place. Mostly she’s just struck by the color of the light around him: honey-gold, nothing like the blue-white glow, the pulsing red beast-hearts of the place that’s come to consume them all.
I want you to tell her…everything.
“Yeah, just—climbing the walls. You know.” She loses her train of thought (several trains) when she sees the way he moves. Stiff, strange. Like an old man. “Are—Steve, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says. “You just, uh, you want to come in?”
“Yeah.” She does. The night’s closing in like a fist. “So you can tell me what the hell is going on.”
He leads the way, and waves a hand, a tiny flicker of his old impetuous charm. “Nothing to be worried about. I’ve got the lanterns going because the electric keeps going in and out. Y’know.”
“Have you…heard from your parents?” She has to ask.
He flicks a glance over his shoulder, very ha-ha, Nance, good one. “Yeah, I called. They’re in Montana. I got through to Dad's secretary. They’re not coming back. But hey, I guess proof of life put their minds at ease.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy says softly, feeling like after all this—after fighting for their lives and failing to win for Max, for Eddie, for twenty-two people and counting (for dozens more than that, in years past)—she’s still finding ways to wound Steve needlessly.
He turns to face her fully now. His hair’s a bit limper than usual, but he’s washed his face. She can see the scrape along his jaw, but the raw ring around his neck is all but concealed by a pale strip of bandaging.
“It’s fine, Nance,” he says. “My family’s here.”
Remember the dream I told you about…
“So.” She decides to go for crisp, assertive, so that she doesn’t go to him and ask him to take her in his arms, like she’s been treacherously considering since—well, since he offered his heart in the blue dark above Lover’s Lake, beneath the shadows of the world-not-theirs. “You said there was nothing to worry about. What about the bites? You’re not still bleeding, are you?”
Steve is fiddling with one of the gas burners on his narrow stove-top. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not totally devoid of gray matter between the ears. Just most of it. I went to the hospital, today.”
Nancy breathes that sigh of relief, now.
“Oh, good.”
“Depends on what you define as good.” There’s something sharp in his tone, something bitter, but it’s folded quickly away. He turns, his grin blinding-bright even in the lantern-glow, set like a gem in his weary face. “Tea?”
“You make…tea?”
“It’s just boiling water,” he says. “I can hard-boil eggs too, you know. But yeah. Whenever Robin comes over, she wants tea.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Nancy’s taken up a perch on the ratty mustard-colored couch, a piece so far removed from the pristine lines and leatherbound furniture she glimpsed in the Harrington home that she almost has to open up a new category in her brain for Steve’s Home Decorating Taste. “Sit down. Please. I want to hear about the hospital.”
“Ordering me around in my own house,” Steve says softly, and holds her gaze a moment too long as he says it. “OK.”
He joins her on the couch, at a careful distance, drawing up one leg to his chest. He’s wearing track pants, striped Day-Glo green down the side. One of his socks has a hole in it.
Nancy is sitting almost—primly. She hasn’t thought of herself as prim in a while, except in the past tense, and critically.
“I rolled up, said hey, I’ve got some gnarly gnaw-marks, what can you do. And they patched ‘em up—twenty-seven stitches, and then they pumped me full of rabies shots. Guess where those go.”
“Do I…want to?” Nancy grimaces in sympathy.
“In the stomach. Yeah. Tough shit.” He shrugs, that stiff half-movement again. Anyway, I’ve got to swallow like eight pills for potential infection aversion, for a few days, but other than that...well, I came home.”
“What about your neck? What about...everything else?”
“Oh yeah. The source of your concerns about my general—mobileness. Mobile-something.”
“Mobility.”
“Thank you, Ms. Valedictorian.”
“I’m not going to be valedictorian.” She’s—she’s not even sure they have a school anymore, so she’s not really going to be anything.
“Huh.” His smile is softer now. “I can’t move worth shit because they saw what a hash getting dragged around by some demo-bats did to my back. So I’m wound up like a fucking mummy, and I can’t lift my arms past, like, elbow-height.”
“It must hurt.”
“My back? Nah, that’s just like. Small potatoes. I cried like a baby when they put the needle in, though. I'll tell you that.”
“I don’t think demobats have rabies,” Nancy mutters, sympathetically. She knows he’s bluffing. Trying to distract her from how much he’s really suffered, along with the rest.
“I don’t either, but I didn’t have a good reason, you know? For why they wouldn’t. I’m sorry, doctor, these are the special-edition bats, the ones that’ll just tear your fucking throat out if they get half a chance.” He stares at some lost point much deeper than the crook of his knuckles, resting on his knee.
Eddie.
Nancy passes her hands over her face.
“I’m just…” She’s a liar, yes, but she’s not lying about this. “I’m glad you’re OK.”
The moment stretches out for a while. The flames devouring the kerosene-soaked wicks cast dancing shapes on the walls, the low ceiling, the domed screen of the television. There’s a stack of Family Video tapes beside it. Nancy’s tempted to break the connection, to get up and pace, to sort through his shit and ask him pointless questions.
Run and hide.
I want you to tell…everything.
“Why did you come, Nance?” When he’s soft like that, she doesn’t think she can take it. Doesn’t think she knows what it is she’s running from, when it comes to him. Doesn’t know why.
“I couldn’t get through on your phone.” That was because he wasn’t home, of course. She knows that now. “And the radio…I just. I keep thinking, we didn’t make it. Me and you and Robin and Dustin and…we didn’t make it. We didn’t do a damn thing as it was.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re not a very good liar, Steve.” She meets his eyes. A dangerous proposition. “I was there. We didn’t kill him, and—” She can’t bring herself to say Max’s name.
He doesn’t say anything, now. Not even her name. He’s biting his lip, though, and maybe that’s because he’s still in pain, or maybe he wants to say something he knows he shouldn’t.
Hell, Nancy wants him to say it. If he asked to hold her, she’d let him.
“I should go,” she says, catching herself. There’s a world outside this room, a world outside of Hawkins. She pushes up from the comfortable, slouching depths of the couch.
Steve gets up, too. “OK,” he says. “Thanks for coming.”
He always lets her go so kindly.
Maybe it’s because he can’t bear to ruin the last moments they share.
(She’s understanding him a little too well, these last couple days.)
“Try to get some sleep,” she says, like that’s a realistic option for any of them, especially him.
“Yeah,” he says, with a patented Steve Harrington eyeroll. There’s something so—conspiratorial about it, like they’re both having a joke at his expense, and also the rest of the world’s. “Just need to figure out how to wash the Upside Down out of my hair, first, or I’m going to be burning the rest of my pillowcases.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, a little stupidly, before remembering the thing about his arms. “Oh—right.”
“Yep. The nurses weren’t too concerned about the state of my best feature, clearly.” He ducks his chin. “Left it as-is. Or, you know, they were a little preoccupied with blood transfusions and bone setting and third-degree burns.”
Max. Max. Max.
Nancy shakes away the voices—the promises of a bleaker future than any of them can survive.
“I’ll do it for you.”
“What?” He goes totally deer-in-the-headlights. Eyes wide. Mouth a little agape.
(The way he gets shocked, when people do nice things for him, was something she hadn’t—hadn’t known about, when she first fell for him. Afterwards, when she’d fallen too far, she didn’t…appreciate what it meant.)
“I’ll wash your hair for you, Steve,” she says. “What? Am I not allowed to know the Routine?”
Even in the mellow, lazy light, she can see that he’s flushing. He has such fair skin, you can read a lot on it, if you’re actually trying.
(Nancy’s trying.)
“It’s classified.”
“We used to…” She leaves that hanging. “I could smell it on you, you know? Faberge and Farrah Fawcett.”
Now he’s red. “Oh, God. I dropped the Fawcett. Ask Robin. No, actually don’t.”
“It’s fine.” Her turn to grin—a little small, not quite shy. “I was going to take the secret to my grave, but you know—we’re kind of all already there.”
Steve’s sink is wedged into his kitchenette at the most awkward angle possible. The only way for this—plan—to work is for it to not really work at all. Still, Nancy hasn’t backed down from numerous gunfights with interdimensional leviathans, so she’s certainly not going back on her word to Steve.
And OK, maybe they didn’t account for how it’s actually going to feel, when Nancy’s flush against him, his shoulder pressed to her ribs, her hands twisting in his hair. She works quickly, and Steve is quiet, elbows on the edge of the counter, bent as far forward as he can manage with his limited range of motion. As it is, Nancy’s still on her tiptoes because she’s so much shorter than he is, and if she’d managed to ignore that in the past few days it’s impossible to ignore now—
She grazes the thin skin behind his ear with her fingernails and he shivers.
“Sorry.”
“Um.” He clears his throat. “It’s fine.”
“I’m almost done.” It’s so much more—well, it’s just more intimate than she thought it would be. She’s never done it for anyone else before, and now she’s wrist-deep in soapsuds and the most famous head of hair in Hawkins. It’s funny, and kind of charming, and kind of…something she can’t think too much about, because the last time she had Steve’s hair rucked up between her fingers she had her mouth on his.
She turns the faucet on extra cold when she rinses out the soap, for both their sakes.
Steve actually flips his head up like he’s in a Finesse commercial, and water goes everywhere. Nancy isn’t even pissed—she’s just laughing, speckled with water droplets, as Steve smirks rather sheepishly.
“Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. Usually have a towel.”
“Use your shirt,” she commands, in a pretty businesslike way given what she’s telling him to do. “You don’t want to wet the bandages: that was like, half the point of this.”
It’s as if he didn’t quite comprehend what she said, or something, because he just stands there, waffling.
“Uh, Nance? Same problem. Can’t lift my arms or I’m going to shred all the gauze.”
Oh.
Nancy bites her tongue. “I could—”
“Nah,” he says, grabbing a towel off the refrigerator door. “Better not.” He clears his throat again. “You don’t need to see all this.”
She takes the towel from him and he stoops so she can make a few aggressive passes with it, wringing out most of the water. If she accidentally pulls too hard, he doesn’t mention it.
“When you say all this, you mean your stitches? I’ve seen a lot of shit at this point, Steve. I don’t think I’d be terribly alarmed.” Why is she going here?
“It’s fucking ugly,” he says. “And it’s going to heal uglier. Oh, well. Not the point, right? I guess I’m just a vain little prick till the end.”
“Steve—”
“No, seriously. I let my mouth run away from me.” He stands up, taking the towel from her and managing to sling it over his shoulder with an expert snap of his wrist, not having to move his arm higher than his elbow. “Appreciate the ministrations, anyway. I’ll pick up the phone next time you—I mean, assuming—obviously you don’t have to call.”
“Steve—”
“They’re pulling together a bunch of donations down at the gym tomorrow,” he says. Apparently that means they still have a school. “You want to, uh—I was thinking of getting some stuff together. If I can make it up to Loch Nora I’ll have a shit-ton. Gonna clean house.”
“That sounds good,” Nancy says, finally able to get a word in edgewise.
(She needs to go now. She’s going to kiss him if she doesn’t.)
“Good.” His eyes somehow close the distance between want and need—they always have. For Steve, they’re kind of the same thing. “Pick you up at ten?”
Nancy takes it all in—the warm light, the cramped space, the books (few) and records (many) and the plant in the corner that looks a little parched. Most of all, she takes in the boy in front of her—
No. She can’t pretend that Steve Harrington is just a boy anymore.
“Goodnight,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”
It’s not really running and hiding if you keep coming back.