bestfeature | for @keenely.

Aw, but he would be so touched to hear that you would want him there. Are you sure I can't tell him?

[ she wouldn't, but it's fun to tease. ]

I do know what you mean, though.
We would just need to help him find a healthy middle ground approach to certain things, that's all.
You know
somewhere between running away, and running head first into a solo battle against a swarm of demobats.
Although I do think his hospital stay might have been enough to help him put that together on his own.

Yeah, here's hoping.

At least Robin would be there to, you know, balance that out with her whole

everything

[ he adores her, he really does. ]

Her whole... habit of catastrophizing when presented with even the most mild threat?

[ nancy does too, honestly ]

Yeah. That's Robin for you.

It's good, though. I mean, sometimes I forget just how insane all of this is, but I don't think Robin will ever lose that perspective. We need more of that, I think.
We all balance each other out in different ways, like you said.

Which I suppose means I should switch out Harrison Ford for Eddie, too, huh? And merge our two hypothetical deserted islands into one.
But we both still get to pick three things.

What? No. Fuck Eddie. You keep Harrison Ford if you want.

Ummm, maybe I want Eddie on my island more than Harrison Ford now. I can change my mind if I want to.

I can't believe this is our foursome. What the hell.

Really? It seems completely normal to me.

Seriously?

No, absolutely not.

I'm grateful for it, though. Which sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true.

[ grateful to have friends again, yep. which is sad, but it's the truth. nothing like time spent fighting monsters in the upside down to make her realize how much she's isolated herself over the last couple of years. it would be unfair to blame jonathan entirely, but he certainly never saw anything wrong with keeping themselves closed off from most ( all ) people that were in their lives before they got together. it's a lot to process.

and she really, really does want to tell him that she's grateful to have him back in her life again, properly and not just adjacently, but she doesn't.. quite know how to navigate this. she doesn't know what's okay and what's poking at a subject they haven't revisited yet. because he gave her an eleventh-hour confession, and she had exactly four seconds to respond, but couldn't form the words for everything she was feeling in that moment before robin flailed her way back to the two of them. so his confession is sitting in limbo, and hers is tucked away somewhere in the back of her mind. being worked and reworked at least four times a day. ]

As much as I wish we never had to deal with the Upside Down again after last summer, I'm especially glad that you're in my life again, too.
We make a really great team, you know?

Yeah.

I mean last time, we were all split up six ways to Sunday.

It was nice to be on the same page at least.

[ being on the "same page" cuts a little close to the chest, considering the mess with the mindflayer was right around the time it started to feel like she and jonathan weren't on the same page anymore, but it's not like he could've known that. but it's, y'know. it's not wrong. this time around felt different. in a good way. ]

I'd be okay with never splitting up again, to be honest. I mean, I know Starcourt is basically ancient history at this point, but I still think about it sometimes because
There was a small stretch of time when Dustin really loved retelling the story of how you guys discovered the elevator that lead you to an underground base full of Russian spies under the mall, and every single time I would end up thinking about your eye, and your lip, and I would just end up feeling sick because it was
literally impossible not to put two and two together.
And I so could have used some backup against the Flayer at the hospital that night.

I know everything happens for a reason, but sometimes it's really hard not to wish some things were different back then.

[ oh. wait, no, only he's allowed to feel bad about his friends getting hurt, this is rude. ]

Hey, Nance.

It's okay. It worked out, right? And we got Robin out of it and she's, like, awesome. We learned and came up with better plans this time around.

Better-ish.

You are so not allowed to "hey, Nance" me on this one.
Because yes, Robin's great. Which is exactly why I hate that she went through that, too.

[ joke's on you, harrington, because this is nancy wheeler in a nutshell except it should be "... happened to me *or my friends* ..." ]

Sometimes it feels like we've all
Wait no
I'll just speak for myself.

I think I might've gotten too good at convincing myself that because I survived all of this so far, there's no reason to talk about it, or even think about it after. Because we can't change what happened, or how it happened. We can't unsee the shit we've seen. So it always seemed pointless to talk about it.
But I think that's exactly how he got in my head.

[ do you remember what you did, nancy? or have you forgotten?

no. not for one second. but she did get very good at shoving the memory so far down that sometimes it was very easy to outrun all the guilt she felt, yeah. ]

So... We don't need to talk about it, but maybe let me feel this one, for a little while?

for @keenely.

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