#this series is just putting them through cathartic acts of violence and also healing sex and what about it

[fastcardotmp3]

Nancy Wheeler needs a steadier set of hands.

It’s a vital thing, the steadiness, and one which she’s prided herself on for a long time now, but in this moment? On this endless night? Nancy needs a steadier set of hands.

She stands along the wall, close to the door because it’s crowded beyond measure in the double-wide trailer that’s used primarily as a med center and because it’s hard enough to breathe during this conversation without direct access to an exit.

The fingers of her right hand tap against the side of her thigh, a discordant rhythm which her ballet instructors of her youth would have disparaged on the spot. Stay in time, Nancy! Don’t be so hesitant, Nancy! Did you forget how to count, Nancy?!

Her fingers tap, but the beat of her heart is not much better at keeping consistent time, so what is she meant to count along with? Where is the pace being set? Where is the music to guide her through this moment as her unsteady hands reach into the bag slung across her body and pull out a bottle of lake water, black as pitch and viscous?

Where is her partner in this pas de deux as the glass clatters with the uncontrollable force she uses to set it down on the table at the center of the room?

“Jesus Christ.”

“That’s our drinking water?”

“It looks like— like fuckin’ Venom.”

“What the hell is Venom, Henderson?”

“From Spider-Man? Symbiote alien from another planet and—”

“That’s our drinking water?”

Nancy stands against the wall.

She watches and she listens as they pass the bottle around, the glass face boasting Coca-Cola loud enough that it almost really does just look like a bottle of flat soda, and she chooses to let them bicker.

There was a time, some many months ago now, when Nancy would have walked in and at the very least pretended at enough confidence and certainty to convince everyone she had a plan and they would all be okay and they wouldn’t all die of thirst because the Upside Down and the entity controlling it has finally decided that direct action against their resources might be more efficient that sending monsters through the gates has been so far.

There was a time, indeed, when Nancy might have even felt such confidence, such certainty, but she can't remember that sensation now.

Not a sensory memory within her reach, not a modicum of cautious optimism born from a girl who had not yet learned the undeniable yearning of loss.

Nancy is here, as Joyce forces them all into some semblance of focus, kids and adults and the meeting of the two alike, but Nancy is also there.

Nancy is sixteen again, making a choice which changed her life, a choice she weighs in her hands during every moment of quiet, during every moment of noise too. If she had gotten in the car with Barb, would they have been able to outrun the forces of the Upside Down together?

Would Nancy simply have been dragged to her death with her best friend instead?

Is she fucked in the head for thinking both of those options may have been better than the reality?

“We need Max,” El is saying, arguing back against the sudden surge of insistence to fight. “When I can get through to Max, then we will have the upper hand.”

She says it a little stilted, a turn of phrase she's heard more than she's used, one which she likely only knows in this specific context.

Jonathan is standing beside her, close enough to offer visible support.

Eddie has a finger looped through the belt at Steve's waist, doing the same.

Robin sits beside Erica, Lucas on the other side of his sister, and Dustin pacing in the small space behind the couch.

Nancy leans against the wall by the door.

“We can't just wait around,” Steve shakes his head, almost in apology. “Vecna or— or the other thing, whatever's in charge at this point— it's making a play, right? That's what's happening? It's going on offense and we can't just keep playing defense, we have to actually make a play back.”

Nancy feels a headache brewing behind her eyes, clenches and unclenches her right hand in a fist to try and find something like stability. Fails at it.

“We've been holding our ground long enough,” Robin agrees with him boldly, “we understand how to fight back. If we catch him by surprise...”

“But can we? Catch him by surprise?” Lucas now, deep bags of grief under his eyes which Nancy understands all too well.

She wishes for him to never understand it as well as she does.

She wishes for a lot of things.

“He's baiting us,” Dustin shakes his head. “We tried that game with— with Max,” a thick swallow, “and he's mocking us with it. We should wait. We aren't ready.”

“It doesn't matter whether or not we're ready,” Nancy hears herself speaking and the way all those eyes turn on her is the sort of being seen she's avoided all her life.

Ever since she was a child, she hasn't been able to stomach people pretending to know her. Ever since she was a child it's been a form of control, a form of expectation, another set of rules she's had to conform to and she's goddamn tired of it.

She's really just so tired.

“It doesn't matter,” she shrugs, crosses her arms and grips at her biceps so no one can see the way her hands shake. “We'll never be ready, but if we wait long enough we will get weaker because we won't have water and we won't have food and it will be winter. He'll freeze us out before we can even try. It doesn't fucking matter.”

Things are escalating where the people of Hawkins are still trapped in the wasteland. In the midst of it, Nancy Wheeler finds catharsis, and maybe even hope. sequel to "that's just wasteland, baby!"

Ronance | 15.5k words | rated E

read on ao3

#MONTHS i have been working on this!!! MONTHS!! but she's DONE!! #dot fic #ronance #nancy wheeler #robin buckley #ronance fic #wasteland baby universe my adored it took a year but i have returned <3 #this series is just putting them through cathartic acts of violence and also healing sex and what about it