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There’s nothing there, nothing but the memory, but she feels the bile rise in her throat anyway.

She focuses her attention on the numbers on the doorframes as she passes – 242, 244, 246.

248 - Maxine Mayfield.

She pauses outside the open door, taking in the sight. Bracing herself, maybe.

Max is almost alarmingly pale, though the dark circles under her eyes have cleared, making her look a little less sick and frail. Her arms lay at her sides, the casts having been recently removed. She wears a white hospital gown.

Max Mayfield has always looked like a sad kid, from the time she first moved to Hawkins – but seeing her like this is something entirely different. Laid up in a hospital bed, staring blankly ahead, her irises a milky blue color that betray her lack of vision. She looks helpless. Broken.

As shitty as it sounds, it’s hard to look at her. She’s just a kid – a kid that Nancy should have protected, but instead sent her to die. And she did. She died.

You’re just a kid, a voice that sounds something like Nancy’s mom tells her. But it's not true. It hasn’t been true for a long time.

“Who is it?” Max calls, in the vague direction of the door, “You’re supposed to announce yourself.”

She sounds frustrated, like it's a rule she’s reiterated several times before. It’s understandable, wanting some level of control.

Nancy clears her throat. “It’s Nancy.”

The scowl drops from Max’s face. “Sorry,” she says hurriedly, “I thought you were Mike.”

Nancy blinks. “You thought I was Mike? Why?”

“Your footsteps,” Max explains, “They sound like his.”

Nancy remembers having her mom and dad’s footsteps memorized, always listening for them during late night phone calls. Her mom’s were delicate and quick, while her dad’s were heavy and sluggish. She imagines having to experience the world that way, listening to the cadence of footsteps.

She steps into the room, acutely aware of the sound of her feet on the tile. “Can I sit?” she asks, resting her hand on the back of the chair next to Max’s bed, waiting for permission.

“Yeah,” Max says, granting it.

Nancy sits on the edge of the seat, her posture perfectly straight. She's stiff, she knows. Hopefully Max can't tell.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Shitty,” Max answers, “and blind," she adds.

Nancy grimaces and gives a nod of acknowledgment before she remembers that Max can't see it.

“Sorry,” Max says, to fill the silence, “I’m just– I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be fine,” Nancy says, shaking her head.

Max sighs deeply. "I know that."

She's heard it before, clearly.

“Everyone misses you,” Nancy tries, “Lucas and the boys, and Eleven.”

“El,” Max corrects automatically.

“Right. El,” Nancy amends.

Since Max woke up —since El got her back, that is— everyone's been taking turns visiting, so she's almost never alone, unless she asks for it. While Max was out, Lucas practically lived in her hospital room. He's moved back into the Sinclair house now, though he still visits twice a day. Nancy thinks he'd still be at the hospital all day if Max let him.

"Can I ask you something?" Max asks suddenly.

"Yeah," Nancy answers, "Yeah, of course."

Max pauses for a moment. "Vecna, and the monsters, and just– all this Upside Down shit we've dealt with," she says, "I've never seen you back down. From any of it. I've never seen you hesitate for a second. You just grab a gun and blow their heads off. I mean, you're like a total badass. It’s like– Like you're not afraid of anything."

Nancy shakes her head, a surprised smile creeping onto her face. "Was there a question somewhere in there?"

Max exhales sharply through her nose. "How do you do it?"

Nancy sees the way Max looks at her, almost reverent. And it's a little silly, she thinks, until she considers herself from an outside perspective. She thinks of herself at fourteen, the quiet girl who kept her head down and had just one friend. The girl who everyone thought was a priss. If that girl had seen her older self, feet planted firmly to the ground, firing shots into a demogorgon's gaping mouth as it roared, she thinks she'd probably be a little awestruck too.

Nancy remembers the first time she shot a gun. Standing in a field next to Jonathan Byers, gaze locked on a beer can, spurred on by the knowledge that her parents would disapprove. She remembers feeling like she was outside of herself, watching this girl who looked like her and felt like her but couldn't possibly be her, because this girl wielded a deadly weapon with measured confidence.

When she stops to really think about it —something she hasn't had the time or energy to do in years, constantly in survival mode— she almost doesn't know how she does it.

But the girl who fell through a tree into another world, who trembled and cried out for a boy she hardly knew, was not fearless. The girl who watched Will Byers, her little brother's sweet best friend grip his mother by the throat was not fearless. The girl who looked Henry Creel in the eye was not fearless.

Nancy Wheeler is not, and has never been, fearless.

Max fidgets, noting Nancy's lack of response. "I hate the way he was able to control me," she admits.

There's no question as to which he Max is referring to.

"When– If he comes for me again–"

"We won’t let him," Nancy interjects, her gaze fierce enough that she wonders if Max can feel it.

"We both know," Max says carefully, "that neither of us can stop that from happening."

“Okay," Nancy allows, "you’re right.”

"If he tries to get in my head again," Max says, "I want to be ready this time."

"It's not something you can be ready for," Nancy responds.

Max's face scrunches up, and Nancy can almost hear that's easy for you to say.

So she takes a different approach.

"When he got to me," she says carefully, "he showed me things." She pauses, takes a breath. "Do you know about Barb?"

"Like– a little," Max says with a shrug.

"She was my best friend," Nancy says, "My only friend, actually. And the demogorgon took her. He took her, I mean, just like he took Will. Only, she died in the Upside Down. Scared and alone."

She recounts Barb's death with a flat affect, like an investigator listing the facts of a case, the way she's heard Hopper or Murray do. She's thought about it so many times she almost feels numb, but in the icy, pins and needles kind of way.

"We were at Steve's that night," she continues, "and Barb wanted to leave. She wanted to leave and I– I told her to go without me, because I wanted to go upstairs with Steve."

She pauses. Max doesn't react.

"That was the last time I ever saw her. Until Henry– he showed her to me, and she was–" Her voice breaks, she takes a breath.

Do you remember what you did, Nancy? Or have you already forgotten?

That's how she knows he was taunting her. He can see her thoughts, and her memories, and so he knows. He knows she didn't forget. He knows it hangs over her like a dark cloud and casts a shadow over everything good in her life.

When I kill someone, I never forget.

"It was awful," she says quietly, "and it paralyzed me. There was nothing I could have done, because that's what he does. He uses your weaknesses against you."

Max closes her eyes, tilting her head back for a moment.

"It was Billy," Max says, opening her eyes, "He showed me Billy."

Immediately, Nancy knows that Henry taunted Max in the same way he did her.

"You couldn't have saved Billy," she says.

"Maybe not. But I could have tried," Max says bitterly.

"You would have died trying," Nancy argues.

"I used to wish he was dead," Max says bluntly.

Nancy's protests die on her tongue, caught off guard for a second.

"Before Starcourt," Max explains, "Before everything. I hated him."

"Max," Nancy says gently, "Billy was–"

"He was an asshole, I know," Max finishes, "A real fucking asshole. That doesn't make it okay."

Nancy shrugs. "I don't know, I think I've wished my dad would drop dead a few times before, and the only thing he ever did to me was not give a shit."

Max's eyes widen and she lets out a startled laugh. Nancy can't help but smile as she watches the tension leave her face. But it comes back just as quickly.

"He wasn't a good person," Max says, "and he sure as hell wasn't a good brother, but–" she takes a breath, "I wanted him to be. So badly. And just– now he never will, I guess."

Nancy thinks, for a moment, of Mike. She wonders if he's ever wished for her to just be an older sister. It's not the same, obviously. She's not Billy, not some abusive creep. But she's not Jonathan either. Mike isn't at the center of her life the way Will is for Jonathan. He's never needed her to prioritize him that way. At least, it didn't seem like he did.

"Whatever, it's stupid," Max finally says.

"It's not stupid," Nancy responds immediately.

Max reminds Nancy a lot of Mike. High strung, short tempered, a habit of pushing people away. But things are different with Max. Easier. There's no guilt that lies just below the surface, that builds and builds until it feels almost insurmountable, so you keep it buried.

And really, how is she supposed to talk to Mike when she's pretty clearly the last person he wants to talk to? She feels powerless with him. She feels powerless all of the time now. Her brother just got dumped by his girlfriend and he refuses to talk to anyone about it, her own relationship with Jonathan feels destined to fail, Steve Harrignton is making plans concerning her that she definitely had no say in–

Oh, and the world is ending.

There's nothing she can do to make any of it better, because she's not a great sister, or an exceptional girlfriend, or some kind of hero. She's not even the person Max Mayfield thinks she is, she's just–

She's just Nancy.

But she can talk to Max. Max is hurting and she needs someone, and Nancy can talk to her.

Max's eyes are glassy now, tears threatening to spill over.

“Hey,” Nancy says gently, “It's not stupid, okay?”