(I really wanted to have my apocalypse ronance fic done by Halloween and that's simply not happening, so have this little guy instead <3)
ronance; horror filmmaker!Nancy; future fic; 1k words
Over the course of the ‘90s, a collection of unconnected but similarly themed horror movies are made and released.
Minuscule budgets and narrow theater releases, they don’t go very far at first. In fact, they don’t go anywhere for a couple of decades, only gaining traction with a DVD release and a flash in the pan of a cult following.
They aren’t sequels of each other, these movies, but they have a great deal in common to the point where in the early 2010s an online community starts connecting not just themes, but also characters whose names may not align even though their stories do, a haunted town or house or swimming pool which might as well all be the same version of Hell.
Each cover boasts a promise of fake blood and big screams but never gets across the great deal of sincerity tucked between cuts in the film strips, no, it’s up to audiences to find that.
And eventually? They do.
No one knows who N.W. Holland is, the name listed as director and writer and producer and on and on endlessly into the credits, a pseudonym from the looks of it and one which stopped being used around the new millennium if IMDb is to be trusted. They talk about them though, this mysterious figure who made four films which are considered life affirming or changing to any number of fans.
They debate gender and political affiliation and whether or not they went to film school or just figured it out on the job. They talk about the tells in their writing and try and find them in newer movies with different directors, trying to catch their mystery in the real world beyond those four films.
They seek and search and wonder and bite each other’s heads off and still all the while…
All the while Nancy Wheeler stays in the shadows.
“You have to do it.”
“No, I don’t,” she shakes her head definitively, leaning against the kitchen counter in a modest two bedroom home in central Indianapolis.
“Come on, Nance!” Robin laughs all sharp with disbelief, the sheaf of papers clutched in one hand fluttering in the wind created by her gestures. “Look at this! I mean look at it.”
“I’ve seen it,” Nancy shrugs, turns to set her mug down and give herself a refill from the carafe behind her, effectively turning her back on both Robin and this conversation.
The sound Robin makes in response is a familiar one, that sort of fond frustration when Nancy is being intentionally obtuse about something coming out in a huff of air.
“Nancy.”
“It did what it was supposed to!” Nancy says with no shortage of indignation, but she also knows, no lacking in anxious unsteadiness either. “That’s why I let you read it, because it’s— it’s a final product as-is.”
“You and I both know that isn’t true,” Robin says, gentler this time, holding those endlessly heavy pages between them like they weigh nothing.
Although, Robin has always been good at that, hasn’t she? Taking Nancy’s baggage for what it is and storing it securely and carefully on her shoulders?
Robin Buckley is a thing of wonder, the way she wormed into Nancy’s heart and life, made a cozy little home there long before Nancy herself even realized. It was like waking up, the day Nancy started to understand what they were, years behind the times as far as Robin was concerned but finally having gotten enough of the rot out of her system by way of four movies about a best friend lost too soon and the girl who failed to save her.
(The horror of the final girl, that's what the forums call it. Nancy just calls it Hawkins.)
Nancy loves her and Nancy knows her and being known in return is something she is still, twenty-five years on, learning to cope with, but it’s just.
“It’s been fifteen years since I made a movie, Robin,” she exhales, heavy as she slumps back against the counter again with her arms crossed like she’s sixteen and protecting her soft bits again. Maybe she always will be.
“It’s been fifteen hours since you wrote one,” Robin drops the screenplay on the table to her right in a punctuating smack! of a sound.
“I just had to get it out of my system,” Nancy breathes down towards her feet, even as Robin steps closer, steps into her space, steps right up in front of her, “it’s not like the others, I don’t need to say this one out loud.”
“Nance,” Robin breathes, guiding Nancy’s gaze up to meet hers with hands on her cheeks, thumbs tracing just beneath her eyes, the thin frames of her glasses. “This is the one you need to say out loud the most.”
Nancy’s eyes sting. Her arms unwrap so her hands can fall to grip at Robin’s waist.
There’s a community online who would likely agree, but it’s not their opinions which Nancy cares about in this moment. Just Robin. Just the way Robin sees it in black and white right there on the page, typed on the same typewriter she’d used on the first one in 1991.
“It’s been so long, it’s so obvious I haven’t written in so long.”
“Sure,” Robin shrugs, wiping a stray tear before it even makes it to Nancy’s cheek and smiling like there’s joy to be had here, “but that’s the point. I can see it, all that time between the last one and this one.”
“Because this one isn’t as scary?” Nancy scoffs, but Robin just holds her more firmly and leans in until their foreheads touch.
“Because in this one you forgive yourself.”
Nancy cries. She sobs, standing in the kitchen of the home she’s built with this woman, just an hour from the town where her childhood was stolen from her, but a joyful home despite it all.
She breaks down and lets herself be held on this day, because what they both know is that it’ll start tomorrow.
There is a community online that’s been searching for more stories from N.W. Holland for decades, and they’ve never found them because they didn’t exist.
One year from now, a script folded and paged through and dog eared will turn into exactly what they’re looking for, but it will take some time for them to realize.
It’s finally her story, complete in its resolution and its forgiveness, after all.
It’s only right it finally bares her name.
71 notes
·
View notes
Gamzee: Why did he grubnap you anyway
Shit, you've been asking yourself that as long as you've been here.
What you remember of the night you got brought, the Sufferer Redeemed asked you not a whole motherfucking lot worth remembering. Some shit as easy as chatting on the street, about your lusus and your hive, your name and your hatchsign. Some shit more confusing, about dreams, and what a troll is and who they are, and what you thought about the hemospectrum, and about souls and spirits and ghosts.
You recall answering best you could, but you'd been eight sweeps and growing and hungry and more interested in the food he had out than in how he looked at you. Shit's been rough the colder your blood goes since the empress fell long the fuck ago, and you only remember one thing standing out at you--how you saw his fine food and his rings in gold and candy red and his crown that he stole and he took it from you, WHAT YOU SHOULD BE BY BLOOD AND HATCHRIGHT--
He'd been looking past you, when you pulled your stare away to look up at him, and for a second he'd been froze and still, showing teeth and wide, red eyes. Not at you, but somewhere past you in the dark. And then he'd taken name and sign and hive from you, and stowed you away like a wriggler sneaking a treat in their pocket.
You would've heard the door open if some motherfucker came in behind you while you talked, you know you would have. So it's been a real hell of a mystery all the sweeps you've been here, what he was looking at.
Downright motherfucking mysterious.
You were just about chill with it, for a while there. You got chill about a lot of stuff. And then a couple perigees ago the head conciliatrix caught you in your sopor and cut you off cold, and a lot of shit you were cool with has started niggling and biting at you again.
It's enough to send a motherfucker out of his damn thinkpan, just sitting in the conciliatrium and thinking and THINKING on shit. So when you saw everybody move and hustle around one of the reading blocks, like they only do when the emperor's up late, you only needed the ghost of a push from one half-whispered thought to send you up on your feet and moving.
You weren't called for, and you know it--you'll figure that out once you get inside. But first, there's a big, mean-looking motherfucker at the door, shorter than you but a whole lot wider. So it seems like you gotta use whatever dim spark of thinkpan you've got and figure a way to get this motherfucker to let you in.
Gamzee: Intrude
==> Play soft and harmless. Time to try what you've learned.
==> Play proud and pushy. Nobody denies the emperor's palemates.
==> Tell the truth. There's no law you can't come talk to your emperor.
==> he's sle⁇py an※ slow tæΨ£ his t⸘roat out
[START OVER]
29 notes
·
View notes