InsaneJournal

NANCY & MIKE WHEELER

“We are normal fucking people, Nancy.”

WHAT: Nancy wants to help, Mike disagrees on the how
WHERE: House of Hawkins
WHEN: Beginning of Wild Vallo plot
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Complete!

The actual disappearances that Vallo was already notorious for were still occurring. That’s why when it became known that El had disappeared on them, Nancy’s heart very nearly tore into two. When she found out this was the other kind of portal shenanigans, she… well, she was still upset, but El could be brought back, she was certain of it. But, Nancy wasn’t normally the kind to sit around and not do anything, and honestly, she wanted to go. She almost put her name down before realizing there was someone she should really talk to first.

So, she came back home, excusing herself from work early, in search of her brother as she walked through the door. “Mike?”

“In here!” Mike called from the dining room. With so few of them left in the house, the dining room was no longer used for dining. It was now the home of the massive medieval “Vallo Village” that Mike and El had been working on. In the absence of any action he could take for El, Mike had begun very determinedly painting a miniature he thought she might like for a character to go on this board. They’d get her back. They’d stop all this portal bullshit, and when they did, he and El would get back to work on their little village and everything would be fine.

Nancy followed his voice into the dining room, but paused at the doorway. Of all people who had so far existed in the house, she knew her brother the most, naturally. And she knew from the set of his shoulders as he hunched over the table with his miniatures that he was trying so hard not to think of El’s disappearance into another world, and doing anything to keep himself busy.

She almost regretted asking him this but she knew that he would be even more pissed if she left without telling him anything.

“I wanted to talk to you about the portal,” she said, walking into the room, cutting straight to the point. “I think I should go with the rescue team.”

Mike set the miniature down just for the sake of looking up at her like she’d lost her mind. “Why in the hell would you think that?” he asked, just in case the look hadn’t made his opinion clear. “That’s insane!”

Nancy dropped her bag on the floor next to the sofa, so it would be easier for her to gesture with her hands. She raised them like the answer to that question was right there in front of him. “Because someone should! One of us should!”

“Why?” Mike stood up, because this was clearly not the kind of argument you could have from a chair. “We are normal fucking people, Nancy. You’re a pretty good shot, but there’s gonna be a dozen people with superpowers and magic going on that trip. What are you gonna do besides get yourself hurt again? Or worse?”

“Okay, you don’t know that.” It was a weak argument because so far even if she did really great in particular fights, it was usually out of sheer luck. “And we don’t know if there are going to be enough hands. Maybe… maybe I can…” Her words petered out before she could finish any thought. Because he had a point. What could she do that anyone else couldn’t already?

Mike could tell she felt just as helpless and frustrated as he did. That was enough to take the snap out of his tone.

“Look, I want to go after her too,” he said, quieter than before—tired, even. “We’ve lost everybody else except the three of us, and we’re used to us being all we can count on. But it’s not like that here, and I don’t want to risk you to save her when there’s plenty of other people who are just as powerful as El is, or more, to solve this.”

Nancy brought up one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. The stress of dealing with both managing a house with its bills with just the three of them as well as Vallo’s portal bullshit (the two of them had ended up in the other world the first time this shit started to happen) was starting to give her a low throbbing behind her eyes.

“I feel fucking useless.”

“Me too,” Mike admitted. “And it fucking sucks.” He’d felt for a long time that in Vallo, even more so than on Earth, El was the hero and the best he could do was support her. She was never going to need him, not really. If she did need help here, for anything serious there would always be a million people who were more useful than he was.

“I wish we were superpowered save-the-day kind of people. I want to be able to do the rescue myself, be her hero for a change. But that’s just not who we are, not here.”

Nancy dropped her hand and then dropped herself onto the sofa, a spot closest to her. “Then what do we do?”

Mike came over to plop on the sofa beside her. “We cheer on the heroes,” he said. “And we…I don’t know. Make sure she comes back to a clean house and all the hugs we’ve got in us.”

He had a point. Being a cheerleader wasn’t entirely bad, but Nancy was just not the kind of person to sit around and do nothing. But Vallo was probably more dangerous than Hawkins, even if they had a slew of people who were all powerful beings.

“I guess while the stronger ones are on the other side, we do have to take care of this place, make sure those gigantic ants don’t make their way in.”

“Somebody’s got to,” Mike said. “And maybe you can help me get some more shooting practice in?”

The truth was, Mike just couldn’t stand the thought of losing his sister. Everyone else was gone. El was maybe in danger on the other side of that portal. The idea of Nancy putting herself in danger too, when she didn’t really need to, was just a little too much for him. They needed more practice being heroes before they went jumping into another bloody fray.

“Yeah, sure.” It had been a while since she had actually gotten some practice runs herself. Nancy had taken up more shifts at the library when she found herself with more free time just so she could get them all free of bills easily and with money to spend on leisure.

After a pause, she reached up to mess up Mike’s hair, before letting her arm drop on his shoulders. “What are you making by the way?”

“This?” Mike asked, nodding to the three-dimensional map that was slowly eating the dining table. “We’ve been calling it Vallo Village, ‘cause we based the street layout on an old section of town. It’s for…a game we might never actually get to play, I guess.”

It had been hard to find the heart for gaming with Dustin and Eddie both gone. All his D&D lately had been DMing for the little kids at the shop on Sundays.

“El and I started making the map just for something to do, practicing our paint skills and whatever. But I went ahead and started writing some stuff for it anyway, because…I don’t know. It’s not a real village without people in it and a story around it.”

“Yeah, obviously,” Nancy said, giving a small nod. Once during their childhood, she indulged in this type of fantasy with him, playing out scenes that were very Dungeons and Dragon-esque before they even realized what that was. Over the years, they had naturally grown to find their own circle of friends, with completely different social circles, and they had argued more than anything until Hawkins’s weird shit brought them together again. She missed Robin and Steve and she knew he missed his friends too (and so did she) but she was still very glad to still have him here with her.

“Hey… maybe I can join you in the next campaign you and El do?”

Mike looked up from the map, surprised. “You’d want to?”

He hadn’t even thought to ask her. He’d always thought Nancy had gotten too cool for stuff like that. She was popular, he was a nerd. They didn’t have hobby crossover. But…things were different in Vallo. Maybe that could be too. The thought of it brought a little smile to his face despite the circumstances.

“If you wanted to…sure. We’d be glad to have you.”

“Yeah!” Nancy said, nodding again, with a little more excitement this time. Because honestly, she said it to help cheer him up, but she found herself actually looking forward to this. “I want to do this. Create a character, come up with stats, join the campaign. Be gentle though, I’m basically going to be a newbie at this.”

“If I can DM for 7-year-olds, I can definitely DM for you,” Mike said with a grin. “Wanna look at the PC–er, player character miniatures? Sometimes that helps with getting a character concept together. You just can’t have this one.” He nodded to the one he’d just been painting. “That one’s for El. When she gets back.”

Not if. When.

Nancy did not miss the use of “when” over “if” because she knew she’d be back too. There were plenty of people in Vallo that would make sure of it. “Yeah, for sure. Want me to order some food first? Chinese or pizza?”

They could probably afford one night of indulgence, right? Mike had tried to be careful about money since they’d lost Hopper. He didn’t think of Nancy as a real adult; she shouldn’t have to take care of them. But if she wanted to get takeout just this once…

“Let’s do Chinese,” he said. “I’ll show you how a character sheet works over egg rolls.”