strangerThings oneshots

passenger side

passenger side

seventhe

This is how Nancy Wheeler learns her choice is irrevocable, now: standing over Will Byers' body, sweat dripping down her face - the screaming, Jonathan sobbing, the screaming - Joyce shrieking Will's name over and over again, noises no mother should make - no child should ever make (this is no longer Will; this is dark and deep and wretched and she will never sleep again); standing slick and terrified beside this twisted bed, and the hot poker in her hand. This is how she declares her commitment. This is how she is brought into the family: ceremony and absolution, as she declares herself one of them, and the marriage kiss is the hissing of the scald-glowing poker into Will's flesh.

---

Of course it is Nancy, practical and pragmatic Nancy Wheeler, who gets them through those moments after the shadow monster flees Will's throat, after Jonathan radios his raspy order. It is Nancy who breathes, seconds and hours later, when the screaming has stopped; her ears still bleed, her eyes feel hot and will not focus. Her hands are trembling symbols in the air, her nerves still flayed raw. But it's Nancy who sets herself to take stock of Hopper's cabin: it's Nancy who wraps Will and Joyce in a plaid blanket, who scatters the burning wood, who sets a glass of water in Jonathan's shaking hands.

Joyce - Nancy realizes she'll never be able to say Ms. Byers again; the photograph in her head, lined stark black-and-white with the hoarse screams of a shadow inside a child, of Joyce holding Will, has shattered that separation: there are no titles now. Having witnessed this, she is now part of this small family, Byers as well as Wheeler; there is no Ms and dear, simply Joyce, and Will, and Nancy, and Jonathan: a knot of talismans. Joyce is holding Will and rocking, and Nancy isn't sure which is keening louder. Sitting beside them, Jonathan shudders, his hands reaching for their shoulders - then pulling back, then reaching out again in a spattered pantomime.

Jonathan broke, Nancy remembers.

She does not interfere. Instead, Nancy takes the radio, relays their information, learns what else has happened. She finds the small bathroom, and runs the tub - lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, but Will is clammy and white with sweat, and it can't be comfortable. She leaves him scrubbing, and finds a drawer full of cast-off clothing. It looks ridiculous on Will, long sleeves flapping, but it's dry and Will is silent. It's Nancy, practical Nancy Wheeler, who hands Will a mug of hot cocoa (the packets conveniently right next to the microwave).

---

Go, said Steve, and Nancy had gotten in the car as if it had been so obviously the right thing to do; instinct, pulling her along, Jonathan's hand in hers an anchor-tug; it's only later that she wonders, why am I here? Joyce is tying Will to the bed, and Jonathan scrambling at the walls for electrical outlets. This is a Byers thing and she feels sorely out-of-place - how presumptuous of her to think she could help, could play any part in this? She's an outsider here, her role solely to bear witness. Nancy remembers the bitter days last year, wrapped in a blanket and waiting for something , and wonders again how long she will need to wait. This family is a three-strand braid, already tightly-woven: and even though Steve said go, and Jonathan's grasp said stay, Nancy isn't sure why she went.

Later, when the room is a dark gaping whirlwind and her every sinew is strung tight with fear,clutching to the walls and crying, all of her nerves telling her to run away - dark lines tracing out Will's skull, his skin tight as he clutches and screams; the sound itself splays terror across her face and down her spine - later, when Jonathan is screaming in futile anguish and turns, grabbing her so fast she startles, sobbing rage and grief into her shoulder, clutching her like she is the beam holding up the entire cabin of the entire world - then Nancy knows why.

The clutch of his sweat-slicked fingers against her cotton top is nothing like the gentle motions of their night; his mouth, moving against her skin, is nothing like his murmurs. Her hand at the back of his head, holding him close, fingers in his hair: this is nothing like that last gasped moment when he pulled her close and she felt stretched to infinity, reaching heaven - this is nothing like that. Jonathan's arms around her are screaming tight and his own voice is choking despair and this is nothing, nothing like that moment of incandescence - but this, this is part, this is why she is here.

---

Nancy settles them all on Hopper's various couches and chairs, packets of hot cocoa for all, and finds herself standing over the sodden linens. They are damp with sweat, and dark with soot, and tangled-taut such that their streaking looks like letters, spelling out the story of the struggle, writing the tale of a monster with no name. She has always been the pragmatic one. She should find the laundry, she thinks; take care of this problem before it becomes one.

She turns, surprised to find Joyce beside her, staring down at the bed. Neither needs to speak; they are nearly beyond words and titles, now. Neither needs to speak of the need in Joyce's eyes, that last desperate call for aid at the end of all things, and Nancy reaching towards the fire. Nancy knows, instinctively, that they will never speak of it; she has seared silence into them all, and these ashes can be scattered.

"Nancy," Joyce murmurs. She is so small, so slight, and fey with it; Nancy can barely compare this radiantly exhausted woman with the howling creature from before, so far beyond her own grief and sorrow, lit full of her own determination like a phoenix.

She holds Nancy's glance a moment too long - the thank-you she will never say - and then tilts her head, coy and almost-smiling, except that her eyes are huge, wide and dark. "I have two sons," Joyce Byers reminds her, and the smile breaks open, a little bit sad and a lot of understanding.

---

The sheets smell old-fresh, as if they've seen a few winters; but the mattress is still soft enough and dry, dry, clean and dry: no sticky-stranded tendrils, no sweat-tight stiffness, nothing but soft cotton and the smell of soap. Joyce and Will are tucked away for the night; the loft bed is high in a corner, tucked under the rafters. Nancy and Jonathan sigh into it, collapsing into one another's breath.

It is this, the gentle clutch of Jonathan's fingers against her skin; this, the tug as she pulls his shirt over his head. This is why she's here. The way his hands are still shaking, the tremor only noticeable against the soft skin of her breast; the way he gasps when she takes his face in her hands. The way his hands spell words on skin, tracing her spine until she no longer shivers. Her name, " Nance," the broken gasp of it; the way Jonathan isn't truly willing to believe - as he rocks inside her, gentle, pushing, moving - that any of this is real.

She can still his hands, can convince him with her mouth that yes, they're here, they're all here, it's okay. And Nancy reaches out, and he's there in the dark underneath her fingertips: and this is why she is here, too, to keep her own shadow monsters from screaming out her mouth.

This is how Nancy Wheeler slips herself into the warp and weft; this is how a family is born, jagged and broken, tied with scorched thread and knotted patches. All of their torn pieces, their holes, their gaping screams: this is where she sits down, where she belts herself in.