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unfinishedslurs · 8 months

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Nancy's GBF (ghost best friend)

IT'S OCTOBER QUICK POST GHOST BARB FIC

She dreams about Barb every night.

She’s dreamed about her before, of course, but ever since Vecna died it’s different. She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t cry. There’s no blame placed on Nancy’s shoulders, no shrieking accusations about how it should have been her instead.

She’s a silent figure. Unmoving, unfeeling. No matter how far Nancy reaches, or how fast she runs, she can never get close.

Eventually, she comes into focus, and it’s awful because she seems younger than she ever did in real life. Her best friend died a child, closer to her little brother’s age than Nancy’s own now. The red shade of her hair, the exact outfit she had on, it’s all things she forgets in the waking world. But for these few minutes she can have Barb back. Even if she can never hug her best friend again, or exchange secrets, or laugh together, she still has this.

When she wakes up, it’s with tears on her face.

“Nancy?” Jonathan asks groggily, still half asleep. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Later, when he tells her he was accepted to Lenora Hills, she’ll wonder if she could have saved their relationship if she hadn’t started lying too.

Two months after the dreams start, Barb speaks.

“Nancy? Nancy, it’s so cold. I don’t like it here, Nancy, please–”

In that moment, Nancy can finally reach out and take her hand.

She wakes up shivering and automatically checks her surroundings. Mike bursts through her door when she shrieks, her mom not far behind him.

They both try to ask her what’s wrong, but she can’t answer, too busy staring at the dead girl in the corner.

“Nancy?” Barb asks, pool water dripping down her chin. “What’s wrong with me?”

She tries to ignore it.

She’s having a mental breakdown of some kind, that’s fine. It’s to be expected, really. She’s been struggling keeping up with school, and the end of the world, and breaking up with Jonathan. Of course she’d see Barb around every corner. Of course she’d be cold all the time. Of course. And everyone knows the first step of having a mental break is to not feed into the delusion.

She checks with El and Will, just to be safe.

They both look confused when they open the door, which makes sense. She and Jonathan have been split up for a month, she hasn’t exactly been around. Still, they accept her inside without question.

“I need you to make sure Henry isn’t back,” she blurts out as soon as the door shuts behind her. Both of them rear back in tandem, and something clatters in the kitchen.

“Nancy?” Jonathan pokes his head around the corner, bewildered. “Are you okay?”

“Jonathan!” She feels herself flush. Why didn’t she think he’d be home? She knows he doesn’t have a job anymore, and his friend Argyle went back to California a while ago. Where else would he be?

“Nance, you’re pale,” he says, like she hasn’t noticed. As if her mom hasn’t said the same thing a hundred times in the past few days. He reaches out to guide her to the couch, and flinches back as soon as he feels her bare skin. “You’re freezing. Let me get you a blanket.”

She turns and looks at the kids as soon as he’s out of sight, noticing the way Will is rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “I’m sorry, I’ve been having weird dreams for a while, and lately it’s gotten…worse, I guess, and I need to make sure it’s not him. It doesn’t feel like him, but I need…I can’t…”

El’s face turns into something determined, and oh, Nancy hates asking this of her. But if Vecna isn’t really dead, if they can get a headstart on his next plan, well. The sooner the better.

Ten minutes later the three siblings are sitting across from her, El tying a blindfold around her eyes as a blanket sits on Nancy’s shoulders. It doesn’t do anything to help, of course. It’s nothing like when Will was possessed but the mindflayer. The heat doesn’t bother her, no matter how many times she brings a spare blanket to add to the pile on her bed or turns the shower faucet to its highest setting. In fact, she can’t feel it at all.

“Close your eyes,” El commands. “Focus. I need to be able to see inside you.”

She grimaces, involuntarily glancing at Barb in the corner. The past few days she’s been weeping nonstop. More than a few times, Nancy has cried with her. Now, though, she looks around the Byers’s new place curiously.

Nancy shuts her eyes.

“Don’t shut me out,” El reminds her gently, and then light floods her vision.

Barb, always Barb. When they were kids they would push each other on the swingset and dare each other to climb trees. The last time she saw her, reassuring her she’d be fine before following Steve upstairs. Vecna daring to taunt her, as if she could ever forget what she’d lost.

A million memories, some she’d almost forgotten. And then it’s over too soon.

El rips the blindfold off, breathing heavily. Jonathan hands her a tissue for her nose, looking at Nancy with so much concern it feels like it’s going to kill her.

“What did you see?” Will asks frantically. “Was it him?”

El shakes her head, confirming what Nancy already knew deep down. “It wasn’t him.”

“Then what was it?” Jonathan asks, eyes still on Nancy. She raises a shaking hand to her face, and it comes away wet.

“Nothingness,” El finally says. “And then sadness, and cold, and dark. And a light. There was a light, and a hand, and then there was warmth and feeling again. But the feelings are bad. They are not Henry, but they are not good.”

“So she’s real?” Nancy’s voice cracks.

“What? Who’s real? Nancy, what’s going on?” Jonathan asks. WIll just looks at her, concern in his big eyes.

El tilts her head. “I think so? But I do not know her. I can’t see her like you can.”

“Who is ‘she?’” Jonathan demands. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

“I actually have to go,” Nancy says, almost stumbling as she stands up. She takes a moment to fold the blanket Jonathan gave her so kindly. He’s still trying to get her attention, but she brushes him off as she heads out the door and to her car.

“Nance, please, I know we broke up but I still care–”

“I know!’ She says, whipping around. Barb watches curiously from the corner of her eye. “I know you do, and that’s great, really, but it’s none of your business. I didn’t even think you’d be here, so…”

“Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know, Jonathan, California?” She snaps. He rears back. “Isn’t that where you’re going anyway? Just– stop acting like this is any of your business! We broke up, we’re done, I don’t… I don’t want to talk, Jon! Just leave it alone.”

“Nancy…” he reaches out, and Nancy takes a step back. Barb appears between them in an instant, and his hand passes right through her. He jumps, swearing and turning pale. Nancy feels herself gasp, feeling warm for the first time in days in that split second before he pulls back.

He watches her silently, with those big eyes she’s always been weak to. She doesn’t have anything to say to him, or maybe she has too much to say. Either way, she gets in her car silently, driving off and leaving him standing in the rearview.

For once, she doesn’t startle when Barb jumps into existence in the front seat.

“Byers, huh?” She asks, something like humor in her voice. She always sounds distant now, like she’s underwater, or whispering from across a field. But Nancy understands what she’s saying. She always will.

Barb sighs when she doesn’t answer. “At least his brother’s alive, I guess.”

That makes Nancy laugh, a harsh cackle that would make her jump if it came out of someone else. “Yeah,” she agrees, speaking to the ghost of her best friend for the first time, “At least Will’s alive.”

It’s not like having Barb back. Not really.

She’s bitter, and angry, and she screams and yells and cries all the time. Sweeps her arm across Nancy’s desk like she’s trying to break something, and only gets angrier when she can’t. Yells at Nancy sometimes, which she knows she deserves.

There’s the blame for her death of course, which is nothing new. She’s been having nightmares about that for years. But then there’s the other stuff. The weird questions, like, “Why did you bring me back? Why couldn’t you let it be?”

When she asks about it, all she gets is Barb turning away from her.

“Nancy? Naaaaaaancy. Nance, are you listening to me?”

She turns her head and almost shrieks to see Robin staring at her, almost nose to nose. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve been trying to get your attention for, like, forever minutes,” she complains.

Nancy looks at Steve. “It was, like, forever,” he confirms, staring at her intensely. “You okay, Nance?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “It’s been thirty seconds,” he deadpans.

Robin flops onto the floor. “Forever.”

“I’m starting to think getting you guys high was a mistake.”

“You say that every time. It’s not even your weed.” Steve yanks the dying bud out of his hand, taking a drag that has to be mostly ash at this point and putting it out on the ashtray. They don’t do this often, or at least Nancy doesn’t join them often. She’s not fond of the floaty feeling the weed gives her, preferring alcohol if she’s not going to be sober. But Eddie asked her to come, and Steve and Robin prefer having more people around if they’re going to get high. Something about what the Russians gave them.

She hasn’t seen Jonathan here since they broke up, but she thinks that’s less about them not inviting him and more about everyone trying to give them both space.

Nancy’s gaze has already wandered back to Barb. It’s been a quiet day today, which makes her nervous for tomorrow. But at least during quiet days she can seem semi-normal in front of her friends.

“Nancy? Seriously, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she tells Steve, not bothering to look away from Barb. She looks from Nancy to Steve, this new, older Steve she’s seeing for the first time, and pretends to gag herself on a finger. The pool water that never stops coming out of her mouth splatters silently on the floor. Nancy doesn’t laugh.

“Hey.” Steve moves in front of her, slightly wobbly as he sits cross legged across from her. She can barely see Barb past his hair. “Yanno, Jonathan asked about you.”

“What?” That breaks her from her trance.

“Yeah, he said he was worried about you. I asked him why he was asking me and not you, but he said you didn’t want to talk about it. But he was, like, really worried Nance. So, like, is everything alright?”

“Do you ever dream about dead people?” She blurts out.

All three of them go completely silent, staring at her. She laughs nervously. “Never mind! Never mind, that’s weird. Wow, why did I ask that? I think I took too many hits. Where’s your bathroom?”

“I mean,” Eddie says, after Steve doesn’t answer, “I dream about Chrissy all the time. How could I not? Shit was a real life nightmare, of course it made its way into my dreams.”

Steve shakes himself. “I guess I dream about Billy, but that’s different. I mean, it’s still a nightmare, but it’s not like…” his hand drifts unconsciously to the faint scar on his forehead. “It’s not about the Upside-Down, I guess. It’s not the same as my other nightmares.”

“I have dreams where people die all the time,” Robin declares, scooching herself across the floor until she can lay in Steve’s lap. “They suck.”

“Yeah, but are any of the dreams ever…weird to you guys? Like they’re not normal nightmares? Like they’re there all the time, just staring at you, and you try to reach for them but you never can?” She asks desperately.

The three of them look at each other, and shake their heads.

“Cool,” Nancy says, palms sweating. “Me neither.”

It’s raining when Mike storms into her room while Nancy is trying (and failing) to do college prep. “What is wrong with you?”

Barb starts laughing, a gurgling, chilling sound that Nancy heard once and made her summarily decide to never make a joke again.

“What are you talking about?” She asks, eyes flitting between Mike and Barb. “Get out!”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he accuses. “You’re not even looking at me!”

“Maybe I just don’t want to see your dumb face.”

“Fuck off!”

“Michael!” Their mother hollers.

He rolls his eyes. “Ugh, sorry!”

#stranger things fanfic #nancy wheeler #barbara holland #ghost barbara holland #nancy's gbf au #barbs got JOKES in this frankly nancy should have laughed at them smh #the idea of barb coming back somehow to see how nancy has changed since she died is so intriguing to me #in my mind vecna dying released the spirits he was holding and somehow nancy's freshly reawakened regrets were so strong she like #summoned barb somehow instead of letting her rest or whatever #so thats what barb means when she asks nancy why she couldn't let her go #this doesn't happen with anyone else bc uhhhhh reasons. i am no longer taking questions at this time #or maybe max is going through the same thing #OHHHHH THAT WOUD BE SO FUN TO WRITE I LOVE NANCY AND MAX PARALLELS

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