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The Causeway | Tuesday Afternoon

One minute, Nancy was nailing a board to the side of Hopper's cabin with Jonathan, trying to figure out what his friend Argyle was doing out in the woods (gathering mushrooms, obviously) and, more importantly, why things with her boyfriend felt so stiff and weird, even if she really, really wanted to believe they were okay.

One step around the corner to get more nails and suddenly, Nancy was falling. If she'd had the breath to do so, she'd be screaming -- not just from sheer disorientation, but because this was supposed to be over. He was gone, right? They'd done it?

And here she was, anyway, landing harshly at the end of a...bridge? On an island, by the looks of things, with a castle up ahead. Nothing was...squelching, or throbbing, and the sun seemed to exist, but --

You know, all of that didn't help as much as you'd think it would have, as far as Nancy's utter confusion went.

At least she still had her hammer? It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing as she looked around at her new surroundings and called out a hesitant, stupid-feeling, "Jonathan?"

Anyone?

Goddamn it.

[totally super-duper open! ETA: if you are worried about such things, Nancy and Eddie's thread is chock-full of spoilers for the season 4 finale of Stranger Things!]

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Eddie was kind of pissed walking around, what with those stupid angels covering his sneakers and the cuffs of his jeans with powdered sugar. Totally messing with his vibe. He was actually trying to head off the island to avoid the little things.

That's when he saw a familiar face holding a hammer. "Wheeler?"

Or someone who looked like Wheeler?

Oh, okay, so maybe she was dead?

That was the likeliest explanation that her mind was presenting as Nancy turned at the sound of her name spoken by a familiar voice she thought she'd never hear again.

"Eddie?"

"Wheeler!" Incoming tackle/hug, Nancy.

"How --?" was as far as Nancy got before she was being tackle-hugged. And as weird as this was, and as disoriented and confused as she was -- Eddie, you were getting hugged back so hard.

He was solid and breathing and here and...not what she had been told. Unless, you know, something really bad had happened to Nancy, in which case she guessed she should just be glad it was so quick and painless that she didn't even know what happened.

"Where are we?"

"Maryland," Eddie replied, not letting Nancy go just yet. "The weirdest Maryland ever. God I can't believe you--I thought you guys were dead!"

"We all thought you were," Nancy told him, pulling back just enough to actually put both hands on Eddie's face, like she was trying to prove to herself she actually was seeing him, here. "Dustin said...."

Did it matter what Dustin had said, if he'd been wrong?

(Also: Maryland? Like...like, Maryland? The state, Maryland?)

"I was in pretty rough shape when Dustin left me," Eddie admitted. "I thought I was dead."

It had been a very close call, which was something he didn't like to focus on too much. It was bad enough looking in the mirror at his body post-bats.

"But I got, like, sucked up into a gross portal and ended up here. I thought Hawkins got Vecna'd and I just got lucky."

"Hawkins got it pretty bad," Nancy admitted, shaking her head and actually looking around a little more now that she had, like, accepted it as reality that Eddie was here. That actually made it a little better, honestly. Especially since he knew where here was.

(She still wasn't letting her hammer go too far.)

"Like...really pretty bad. It's what he showed me, for the most part," she elaborated quietly. "Hawkins is in rough shape."

Which meant she was just going to duck forward and renew that hug, Eddie, because she was so glad to see you.

"God, Nance, I'm sorry." And wasn't that a kick in the gut, to learn he nearly died only for Hawkins to get wrecked anyway? "Is everybody okay--wait, what about Max?"

Nancy kind of suddenly didn't trust her voice. Between seeing Eddie -- alive Eddie, whom she had already mourned -- and the confusion about how she'd ended up here and the last week in its entirety...plus Max --

"She's alive," she offered after a moment, managing a little shrug and a wobbly half-smile. "Barely. We got him, but -- not before he'd started with her."

Nancy knew she didn't need to explain much more than that. Eddie had been right there with Chrissy. He knew what that meant.

Eddie nodded solemnly because, yeah, he knew better than anyone what that meant. The fact that Max somehow survived it was beyond his scope of understanding.

(Of course, he didn't take the girl with magic powers into account.)

"I tried to get back," he said, not wanting her to think he went back to being the coward who ran away. "But this place--this place is weird. Almost Hawkins weird."

Sure, Fandom had multiverse and time travel, but he had yet to have seen gross demon things with a hive mind.

And that was why Nancy was keeping her hammer, thank you! At least until she could get her hands on something with firepower.

"This is Maryland?" she replied, circling right back to that now that they'd established that Hawkins was fucked and Max was in dire condition. Cheerful! "That's...weird on its own. And I didn't think Maryland looked so, like, European."

"Oh. Yeah, never really thought about that," Eddie said, looking back at the castle. "But, uh, that's not the weirdest bit, and I'm not sure if I should ease you into it or just rip the band aid off."

That got an actual laugh out of Nancy, who had just noticed a kind of weird detail, in fact, now that she had the capacity to take in the details rather than the broad 'what the hell' strokes. "Rip it off, Eddie."

Because she was wondering if it something to do with the...chalk? on his cuffs and shoes.

Edited 2022-12-20 18:29 (UTC)

"How would you feel if I told you it wasn't 1986..." And of course there was a dramatic pause because he was Eddie Munson. "...and that it was 2022? Well, almost 2023, it's December."

Somehow the December thing was striking Nancy as extra weird? Like, no, it was the end of March, Eddie. Easter was later this week. Her mom had already bought a ham that was probably going to be forgotten.

Oh, god -- Mom. Holly. Mike. Whatever, she could think about them later. No time right now.

"We're in the future?" she asked, dropping her voice as she glanced around. "What -- how? Is this -- it's not a trick?"

"If it's a trick it's the most elaborate trick I've ever seen," Eddie said. "Like Kubrick and the moon landing elaborate."

Eddie, you damn well knew Nancy didn't know about that conspiracy theory.

He pulled his phone out of his coat pocket and handed it over. "Look, I've got a little computer phone thing, it's totally the future."

Nancy gave him a hesitant, curious look (and eventually, she wanted to hear more about how Stanley Kubrick had something to do with the moon landing, because what?) before reaching for the phone.

"It doesn't feel like Vecna did," she admitted, before giving a little start thanks to getting the screen to illuminate. "Oh, shit, look at this thing!"

And there it was, right under the time: December 20, 2022. What the hell?

"Pretty cool, huh? All the music I've ever listened to is in there." Of course that's what he used his phone for. "And it's how I keep in contact with my employees because apparently I manage the bowling alley here."

And people said he needed to graduate high school to get a job, pfft.

"Employees? Listen to you," Nancy replied fondly, passing his phone back. "You're gonna have to show me where I can get one of those, if I'm stuck here. No getting back to Hawkins, huh?"

She trusted that he'd tried, of course, but...that really sucked to hear.

"Not that I can tell. The 1986 thing makes it difficult," Eddie said, putting his phone back in his pocket. "Apparently people get stuck here a lot. Just a big nexus of weird. No Upside Down though. At least not yet."

"That's a relief," Nancy noted, figuring she should be grateful for small favors, there. "And I guess it's better to be stuck here than...you know, whatever else."

Dead. She was just blatantly not using the word dead, that as all.

"What's on your shoes?" And maybe the ground, in general?

Eddie looked down at his feet. "Powdered sugar. There's these little angel thingys farting it out everywhere."

It was natural to assume it came out of their butts, okay?

Okay. Okay, she could deal with being in the future (even if Nancy kind of wondered if she was going to wake up and think this was all a really weird dream), but --

But little angels farting powdered sugar?

"...what?"

Because that was even kind of weird for Hawkins, honestly. Less, like, obviously gross? But definitely more random.

"Dude, I couldn't make this stuff up," he said. "Well, I could, but I didn't."

If he made it up it'd be a lot cooler and hardcore than powdered sugar angels. Gross.

"All sorts of cutesy shit has been happening lately." Well not over the weekend but Eddie had conveniently been blissfully unaware due to some very strong weed and cheap beer.

"And that's normal for here?" Nancy checked, because it didn't sound normal for anywhere. "The cutesy shit?"

But again -- she'd take it over anything squelchy.

"Oh yeah," Eddie said with a nod. "And, like I said, everyone is super nice. It's actually very off-putting after getting used to being an accused murderer."

"Yeah, I'd have a hard time trusting that," Nancy noted, and she would, indeed, have a tough time trusting how people here were just...really nice. And she hadn't even been accused of murder by all of Hawkins! "I wish there was a way to talk to people back home. They're gonna worry. I didn't even -- like, it wasn't like with you, I don't think. I was just talking to Jonathan, and then -- poof, here I am."

She held up her hammer, a little rueful. "We were doing some repairs." Like, she didn't even have a hammer for a makeshift-weapon reason. (Not originally, anyway.)

"Yeah, they're going to freak out for sure," Eddie said. "Unless you got replaced by a clone or something."

Which was unlikely, considering Eddie was considered dead back in Hawkins.

"...I actually don't know whether that's better or worse," Nancy decided, eyes going wide.

On the one hand -- clone.

On the other, though, Jonathan and her mom and siblings (and everyone else) might find that more reassuring than her sudden disappearance?

But also. Also. There was just a lot of information going on at once, and this part had just caught up to Nancy. "Wait a second, how long have you been here?"

Because she was pretty sure it should only have been a few days, right?

Eddie did some quick math in his head. "Uh...six months? God, that's a long time."

"I saw you like, not even three days ago," Nancy replied, shaking her head. "You've just been...stuck here? Alone? Or, well, with these nice people and your employees, I guess."

Still, that had to kind of suck. (And now Nancy realized why Eddie had been so glad to see her.)

"Hey, I totally got laid, I haven't been alone." He had just been mostly alone. "Though, to be fair, we had to go to his place because I'm currently sleeping in the manager's office at the bowling alley."

There were a few things to unpack there (including a suspicion that she'd had that had been validated), but Nancy was going to stick on, "Oh, Eddie. If I'm stuck here, we're getting an apartment."

Like, with a kitchen and a bathroom (maybe even two!) and no bowling balls.

Eddie broke out into a smile. "We are, are we?"

"Well, I'm not sleeping in a bowling alley for six months, that's for sure," she replied, returning that smile.

And she'd need somewhere to work out of while she tried to figure out how to get them both the hell home.

Look, Jon had been checking that the angels weren't making too much a mess of the grounds, and when you heard someone calling your name...

"Hello?" he called, wandering over to the causeway. "Is...I wonder if I can help you with anything."

Eddie had run back to the bowling alley to clean out the manager's office so Nancy could sleep there later -- chivalry wasn't dead, everyone! -- and Nancy had lingered after being assured that it was a really small island and she could get her bearings without him (and without getting lost.)

But she'd still kept her hammer. Call it an abundance of caution.

"Um, hi," she called, putting a hand over her eyes like a visor so she could peer over at the...skinny British man? Sure, why not. "I think I'm good? But thank you. I just got here. Hi."

That was...astoundingly awkward, for Nancy, but to be fair, it had been A Day.

"Oh. I, um. I thought you were calling me. I'm Jon. Jonathan Sims." Because it wasn't like Jon was any less awkward.

"Did you...I don't know if you meant to be here or just ended up here."

"I did not mean to be here," Nancy told him with a little laugh that maaaaaaaaaybe verged on slight hysteria. "I'm sorry -- I was just back in Indiana, and my boyfriend -- his name is Jonathan, too, that's who I was looking for -- was right here...."

She indicated the space next to her, waving her hammer, and sighed.

"I'm Nancy," she added, remembering her manners. "Wheeler. It's, um, nice to meet you."

Polite to a fault, this one, once she had established that Jon seemed pretty harmless (and Eddie had told her everyone here was super-nice.)

"Oh, um. In that case, I'm sorry. You're in Maryland now. Sort of. That is, over there," he pointed to the other side of the causeway, "it's Maryland. Here it's an island called Fandom. It tends to be odd but mostly harmless."

Powdered sugar angels ran by cackling.

"Mostly."

"So I'm learning," Nancy remarked, watching the angels run by. "Those are okay? I shouldn't ---"

She waved her hammer at him helpfully, because she would happily get powdered sugar all over herself if those things were dangerous at all.

"Er...so far they've just been annoying and messy. They'll most likely be gone tomorrow. Yesterday it was lights strung everywhere and cocoa and blankets in the morning. There's something different every day until Christmas. Erm...best to check the water every day before you use it. Sometimes it's eggnog or wine."

He was babbling, wasn't he? Look, infodumps were one thing he was good at.

Nancy was, in this moment, incredibly grateful that she'd already been told it wasn't March here, since every day until Christmas initially sounded like a lot until she remembered.

"Sometimes the water is eggnog," Nancy repeated, staring at Jon.

Eddie, what the hell were you doing not mentioning that?

"I mean, thanks for telling me," she hastened to add, blinking off her surprise as best she could.

Edited 2022-12-21 01:01 (UTC)

"It was already eggnog once this year," Jon assured her, "so it probably won't be that again. But, erm...well, yes. Always best to check this time of year."

What else, what else...

"Oh! Do you...erm. That is, if you haven't got a place to stay, there's a hotel in town, or a couple blocks of flats. I'm the manager for this one," he pointed behind himself, "so, um. Well I know we've got vacancies. The hotel's the next building. I'm not sure about the other, but I can point you their direction if you'd rather. Oh, and the bank in town can probably get you money from wherever and whenever you're from."

Look, he wasn't judging, but she dressed more like his mom than anyone nowadays.

Well clearly Jon's mom had bitchin' taste, thank you.

"Wait, is the money different in 2022, too?" Nancy asked, not ready for this new development. "Eddie -- my friend Eddie's here, he runs the bowling alley, I guess? -- already kinda briefed me on, like...how it's the future. And he showed me a little computer music phone thing."

She held up her non-hammer-wielding hand, miming holding a cell phone.

"But he didn't say the money's different?"

It wasn't that different, but Nancy definitely wasn't ready for, like, Apple Pay.

"Oh! Well, if you're from Earth and not too long ago, then...I think the US currency changed a little? And of course there'll be modern dates. I had to go from pounds and euros to dollars. But mostly don't worry, it should be fine."

He eyed her hair. "You're...um. You seem as if you're probably from sometime in the 1980s, then."

"1986," Nancy replied, a little dry, and a lot skeptical. "This...happens a lot, then?"

Like, just because Eddie had gotten here before she did not mean that Nancy had even remotely considered the possibility that people from all kinds of times were here.

"A bit, yes," Jon answered. "There are people from the past and the future, and other worlds entirely. You shouldn't be too badly off, although computers have come a long way since then."

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The Causeway | Tuesday Afternoon

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