Chapter Text
Hawkins, Indiana | November, 1987
Nancy's ears are ringing.
Too much noise tonight. Bullets, hers and others. The shouts of the soldiers dragging them out of the truck. Doors slamming, boots pounding pavement. Mike's screams. The ungodly groan of the gate as the Upside Down was ripped apart, El still standing in its maw.
For a moment everything was quiet—when the gate first disappeared, when they all absorbed the fact that she was gone—but then the noise began again, in earnest. Mostly shouting now. Orders. The thuds of bodies against bodies as the soldiers separated them, shoved them in different directions.
Nancy hadn't even noticed the cuffs coming on, but when she tries to bring her arms back up to fight, she realizes that her wrists are ensnared behind her. A soldier's hand closes around her upper arm and pulls her forcefully. She briefly considers struggling harder, dropping like a stone or kicking as hard as she can, but she's shellshocked. El's gone. Mike's still screaming.
She turns her head to look for him but the soldier keeps pulling, and there are too many bodies moving between them for her to get an eye on him. Her stomach twists. Wouldn't it be cruel fate for her to finally get her little sister back, just to lose her little brother just as quickly?
She doesn't have time to dwell on it. The soldier drags her to the guard station that flanks the inner gate and nudges the door open.
"Sit tight and don't make trouble."
The soldier shoves her with both hands, hard, and she falls roughly to the floor of the guard station. Before she can get her bearings, she feels the tight snare of another pair of handcuffs, this time around her ankles. Fuck. She twists around to look up at him, a primal, animal kind of panic rising in her throat. Arms and legs bound, with a faceless man above her—
But he doesn't linger. The soldier turns and shuts the door behind him. Alone now, the sudden silence is almost as jarring as all the noise. Nancy painstakingly sits up and looks around, taking stock of her new surroundings. The station is just a small cube, probably four or five feet long on all sides, with a desk and some radio equipment taking up one wall. It's windowed all around, but the windows are laced through with chickenwire—not something she could smash through, if she tried.
She takes a steadying breath and tries to access the cold, logical part of her brain, the part that takes over when her friends are in danger, when she has a plan to execute. She knows somewhere in that logical place that everyone is still in danger, that they still need saving. Mike is somewhere out there, inconsolable. She didn't even see where Holly or the other kids went. And what had even happened to Steve and Robin, who'd been in the cab of the truck? Her mind is spinning out of her control. It's a feeling that she's not used to.
The door opens again, breaking her from her spiral.
"Alright, man, I'm going, you don't need to shove—"
Nancy blinks, and suddenly someone is on top of her, knocking the wind from her.
It's Robin. Nancy can't get a good look at her, but she doesn't need it. She knows from the flash of sand-colored hair in her eyes and the smell of Steve's cologne, the one that Robin stole from his nightstand a year ago with no intention of returning it.
Robin is also cuffed at the wrists and ankles, and consequently has to flop like a fish to get off of her, eventually settling on her side beside Nancy. The soldier who deposited her says something over his shoulder—play nice, you two—and shuts the door behind him.
"Oh, thank god," Robin rasps, twisting awkwardly to a seated position like Nancy. "I didn't see you when they pulled me off the truck, and I thought you were—"
"Same," Nancy says. "Are you hurt?"
"Wrists and ego are bruised. Otherwise fine. You okay?"
"Yeah, I think so."
Nancy basks in the temporary flood of relief that comes with having Robin beside her, unharmed. That's one loved one accounted for, at least. Just a half dozen to go.
They scoot around to sit with their backs to the wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the door. Outside, soldiers continue to speak loudly to each other. Nancy strains her ears but she can't hear the voices of her friends, which terrifies her.
"How lame is it that we've beaten countless interdimensional monsters just to get caught up by some U.S. Army Stormtroopers?" Robin finally says, breaking the silence.
"Very." She tries to muster a smile, feels herself wanting to reach out, to ease the anxiety that she can sense rolling off of Robin in waves. It falls a little flat. Nancy's scared, too.
Her mind still feels sluggish, but she's not stupid. She turns through the possibilities, knowing the most likely outcome. They've been caught. There's no running from this, no fighting their way out. El's not coming to save them. The sun will rise on all the bodies littering the MAC-Z soon, and someone will be held accountable.
She feels the taste of bile in her mouth. How many of those bodies belong to Hopper, and how many belong to her?
Robin seems to be thinking about the same thing. Nancy can see her studying her from the corner of her eye, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
"They're probably pretty pissed at us," Robin says, her voice high and nervous. "At you. Especially. Sorry. Just saying."
"You're not wrong."
Robin's eyes dart around, at the door, the chickenwire windows. She's running through the same escape calculus that Nancy had before. An equation with no solution.
"There's gotta be a way out of here. There's gotta be—"
"There's not, Robin."
"Come on, Nance." Her voice breaks a little. It's an odd dynamic, Nancy giving up for once.
"I can't keep running from the things I've done."
Robin says nothing, watching her with a mix of confusion and something like fear, so Nancy continues.
"Back when Vecna had me in his trance, he showed me Barb's body," Nancy says, staring at the thin chain linking her ankles together to avoid Robin's gaze. "For so long, that guilt ate me alive. Because I knew it was my fault, but I kept running from that fact. I thought that if I just blew the story open, I'd fix everything. But it didn't fix anything. She was still dead."
"That wasn't your fault, Nancy—"
"It was, though," Nancy answers, matter-of-factly. "Partly, at least. She wouldn't have been anywhere near a Demogorgon if not for me. That's not the point, though. The point is that I had to face it head on. The guilt."
Robin frowns. "What are you saying?"
"I don't know," she sighs, after a long pause. She sees them now, sliding past her eyes like a film reel. The men she shot. Probably killed. It already feels like a thousand years ago somehow. "I just mean, whatever comes next... I'm ready."
"Whatever comes next," Robin repeats, staring pointedly at the ceiling. Her voice sounds strained, like she's trying not to cry. "What, like federal prison?"
It's not a joke but Nancy laughs dryly anyway. She's starting to feel lightheaded. Whether from the fading adrenaline or the lack of sleep over the last few days, she can't be sure. "Yeah, maybe."
"Well, I promise to come visit. Assuming I'm not in there with you."
"Wanna be cellmates?" Nancy smiles and bumps Robin's shoulder with her own.
Nancy thinks she sees Robin's cheeks flush, but has no time to confirm; at that moment, the door swings open again, admitting a trio of soldiers. The soldier in the center is a woman with closely-cropped hair and the stars of a general on her lapel. Nancy immediately recognizes her from their initial siege of the MAC-Z.
"You must be Nancy Wheeler," the woman says, her eyes dropping to the bandolier of shotgun shells looped over Nancy's chest.
"You must be Dr. Kay," Nancy answers, recalling their pre-Beanstalk briefings where Hopper had warned them to be on the lookout for her.
"Glad we can get introductions out of the way." Dr. Kay glances at one of the soldiers flanking her and nods. "Let's chat somewhere more private."
The soldiers haul her outside (over Robin's protests, which are violently shut down) and towards a large field tent. As they cross the MAC-Z, Nancy turns her head wildly, searching for signs of the others, but finds none. The best case scenario she can imagine is that they've all been split up into separate holdings spaces for the time being; the worst case scenario is too painful to consider, so she forces the thought down, focusing instead on whatever Dr. Kay has in store for her.
The tent is lit by an ugly fluorescent bulb over their heads and empty but for a single metal table in its center. Dr. Kay sits down at the table; the soldiers push Nancy into the seat across from her and then back away, lurking somewhere behind her in the shadows of the tent.
"Where did you take my brother and sister?" Nancy bites, not waiting for Dr. Kay to speak first.
"They're detained and safe," Dr. Kay answers briskly, clearly uninterested in Nancy's concerns about her siblings. "That's not what we're here to discuss."
"What's left to discuss?" Nancy half-laughs, a bitter sound. She knows she's pushing harder than she should, but she's so tired, and now that this scowling woman is sitting across from her, having caused her and her loved ones so much pain, she's so angry. "It's all gone. Blown up. Isn't that what you wanted?"
"Far from it."
"So you wanted El," Nancy says.
"She would have made my job a lot easier, yes," Dr. Kay says. Nancy has no reason to believe her, but something about her brusqueness feels trustworthy. "If she's really dead—and forgive me for considering that a big if, for now—then all of this is far from over."
"How?" Nancy pushes back. Her head is starting to pound. "We killed Henry. We destroyed the bridge."
"Another big if," Dr. Kay says. She opens a thick manila folder on the table in front of her and flips it around to face Nancy. "These are the final notes recovered from Dr. Martin Brenner's laboratory before his death. Assuming his theories are correct, then destroying the 'bridge,' as you call it, did nothing to Dimension X, where you found Henry."
Nancy pauses to absorb this information, staring at the figures and diagrams on the page and understanding none of them. Her headache now feels liable to split her head in two. Could they really have failed?
Did El die for nothing?
"Why are you telling me this?" Nancy finally asks, exasperated.
"I have a proposal," Dr. Kay says.
For a moment, it feels like all the air's been sucked from the room. They stare at each other, unblinking. Nancy's stomach twists. She does not need to hear what Dr. Kay's proposal is to know that it will change everything.
"The way I see it, this can go one of two ways," Dr. Kay continues. "First way is through the courts. You and Jim Hopper have got the blood of American soldiers on your hands. The rest of your friends aided and abetted at best, conspired against the U.S. government at worst. No one will believe your stories about another dimension and a shadowy monster. You'll be lucky to get out of prison in your seventies."
She pauses to let Nancy consider this. Her mind is spinning again, but it's just like before, in the guard station. She knows she's right. This situation is a far cry from the Hawkins Lab exposé she published all those years ago; there's no whistleblowing their way out of this one.
"What's the second way?" Nancy croaks.
"All of this goes away," Dr. Kay says, reaching out and shutting the folder between them. "We pack up, leave town, and the citizens of Hawkins have no idea how close to hell their little town was. You and your compatriots all submit to a gag order. Never speak of any of this to anyone again, and everyone can go back to their normal lives."
"That's it?" Nancy says flatly. She knows it's too good to be true. "No trials, no prison? Everyone goes free, no strings attached?"
"Everyone," Dr. Kay deadpans, "but you."
The air goes out of the tent again.
Nancy tries to sound firm but her voice shakes. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to work for me," Dr. Kay says. She folds her hands calmly in front of her. "Help me tie up the loose ends. I've got a file on you and I know what you can do. I also know you'll do anything to protect your people. Is that right?"
"That's right," Nancy whispers.
"We end all of this, together," Dr. Kay continues. "And if you do as you're told, and keep your mouth shut, then your siblings and your friends get to live long, happy lives."
Nancy wants to answer but her mouth is too dry. She opens and shuts it. In the silence, she tries to see the picture that Dr. Kay is painting—of more secrets, more bloodshed—and feels like she might cry, but forces the tears back, refusing to show them to her adversary.
"Why me?" Nancy finally says, once she feels sure that her voice won't waver. "Why not Hopper? He's a soldier."
"You think you're not?" Dr. Kay asks, matter-of-factly. "A soldier's just someone who's willing to pick up a gun and use it."
Nancy's mouth feels dry again. She can think of no way to counter this logic, so Dr. Kay continues.
"Eleven, and all of the monsters you've faced, are just the tip of the iceberg. The rabbit hole goes so goddamn deep it'd make your head spin. But I'm not asking the world of you. A few clean-up missions, some discrete tasks. Then you get to forget all about this, too."
Nancy swallows and sees Dr. Kay's eyes flick down to her throat, catching the movement. This unnerves her, but she pushes on. "If I say yes—and I'm not saying yes, I'm just asking—what happens then?"
"Here's how this will work." Dr. Kay procures a new folder, thinner than the first, and places it in front of Nancy. "You'll go home with your friends. They'll believe that you're all getting off scot-free. It's very important that they believe that you believe this, too."
Dr. Kay opens the folder and removes a single piece of paper. Nancy pales. It's a copy of her original acceptance letter to Emerson, an offer that's long expired now.
"How did you—"
"Not important." Dr. Kay is not a patient woman. "You'll go home, enjoy the holidays with your family. You'll tell them that you've petitioned for spring admission to Emerson and you're already enrolled. In January, you'll leave Hawkins."
"To go where?"
"You'll fly one-way to Boston. Alone. When you land, you'll buy a ticket to Macarthur Airport, Long Island, New York."
"And then?"
"I'll be in touch when you land."
"That's it?" Nancy bristles. "You want me to leave my family and jump on a plane on your word alone?"
"I'm afraid you don't really have a better option, Nancy," she says, more gently than she's spoken all night.
And it's the truth.
"So what'll it be?"
Nancy can feel Dr. Kay's eyes boring into her, can feel the gaze of the faceless soldiers behind her. No escape. No other options. Just yes or no.
She can almost see the two paths unfurling before her, stretching into the dark corners of the tent. She imagines saying no and it physically pains her, the thought of being hauled away to the kangaroo court that Dr. Kay no doubt has in store for them. Never seeing Holly or Mike or her parents again. Or maybe seeing them from behind a plexiglass barrier, if she's lucky. Hopper, Steve, Jonathan, Robin—they'd all be fucked, too. The young kids might get off easier, but the harm would be done nonetheless.
And then there's the other path, more uncertain, but with a light at the end: she could say yes. She could pick up the gun again. She could do as she's told. Maybe she can protect them all, one last time, and finally, finally be free from this nightmare. A little more blood for a lifetime of freedom—how could she not take those odds? Although she has no guarantee that it will end the way Dr. Kay promises, it's still something. A glimmer of hope. Something to strive for.
"Can I ask for one thing?" Nancy finally says, breaking the long silence.
"Maybe."
"If something happens to me," Nancy says, "can you just make it look like an accident?"
"An accident?" Dr. Kay repeats.
"I mean, don't just—you know—disappear me." She'd tried so, so hard not to cry, but the tears are slipping free now. She thinks suddenly of Barb and the tears come harder. "Let my family have a funeral. Make something up. And don't make them wonder what happened to me for the rest of their lives."
Dr. Kay mulls this over for a moment, studying Nancy's face. Whatever she finds there seems to satisfy her.
"We've got a deal."