#anyways I'm a hundred percent a multishipper even if I have the ones I like best and I think if done right stancy could be satisfying | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anthotneystark · 4 months

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And I’m split in half (But that’ll have to do)

In the end, she’d seen it coming.

In the end, he’d felt it like a train that couldn’t stop in time.

In the end, there were ghosts of people who were lost and ghosts of people they never got to be, people who had never existed and maybe never had a chance.

In the end, they say goodbye to what was, what could have been, and what died without them ever knowing.

They’d both been pretending for too long, both been fighting for something they couldn’t really believe in. She’d fought to push down the nightmares choking her, he’d fought to regain the normalcy they never got to taste before. He’d fought so hard to keep things good, clinging to the idea of them and clinging to the her that existed before her best friend was killed. She tried to push and pull and shape herself into the mold that he looked for. She bent herself into a person she never could have kept playing, but couldn’t get the words out from where they lodged in her throat.

She saw his pain, even with hers clouding her thoughts. She saw it in the way he didn’t swim in the pool, the way he kept it clean but couldn’t stand being in it.

He saw her pain in the way her smiles couldn’t linger on her face.

Dinners were never with his parents, too busy for him and unknowing of the turmoil in his heart. Dinners were never with her parents, something she didn’t want to subject him to. Dinners with parents only happened when they were the parents of the ghost haunting both of them.

In the end, the ghosts get to be too much. They come to a head with too sweet alcohol and too much noise. They come to a head with words that hurt worse than any fist. He leaves her there, but only once he knows someone else will watch out for her. Because he hurts, but he loves, he loves, he loves more than he hates himself even on his worst days.

He’s no stranger to anger, no stranger to loneliness and the ache in his heart. He knows himself to know his anger is a poison and it’s better if he’s alone when he’s trying to get rid of it. He’s trying not to be his father, trying not to be Tommy, trying not to be King Steve, who took that anger out on everyone who got in his way because that was all he’d ever known. He’s tried so hard to be better, but he feels all that anger boiling and pulling at the person he’s been building himself into.

He knows she’s hurting, knows she’s saying things she wouldn’t otherwise let out, but that makes it hurt worse because it means she’s thought about it over and over until it stuck there.

And then she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember and she can’t say the three words he needs to hear to fix the hole left in his heart. He can’t blame her, but he can’t not blame her just the same as he can’t blame himself, but he can’t not blame himself. It’s a vicious war in his heart and he feels so empty and hurt and angry that he walks away.

He wants to fix it, thinks if he can just apologize, even if he doesn’t know what he did wrong, they’ll be okay eventually.

He can’t though. Because she’s gone, because she can’t let the ghosts lie and he can’t blame her for that even if it terrifies him.

Except she’s gone, and then when she’s back she’s got a spark in her eyes and she can’t look at him for more than a glance. He’s already an afterthought.

He’s got bigger things to worry about that night, things bigger than him and bigger than her and bigger than the pain that still exists between them and the love that might have been there once.

She moves on, and it seems as easy as breathing for her to smile with Jonathan. She can’t see how much it makes him ache and he can’t bring himself to do anything but smile because he loves her and can’t just stop even if she’s moved on.

She’s been through enough and his anger isn’t enough to make him hurt her.

It’s like the year they spent together is just gone though and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t go back to who he used to be, not really, but he smokes and drinks and acts like some kind of authority to the kids who follow him around and he tries to act like his heart isn’t a black hole because falling apart isn’t an option. He tries to keep up a friendship, does his best to act like it’s enough, like he doesn’t dream about her every night, like he doesn’t keep fitting her into the plans he’d always imagined. He smiles as she holds Jonathan’s hand like he isn’t still picturing her there with him in a house with a picket fence and kids running around after them.

It's his dream, not hers, and he can recognize that, but he’s not ready to let it go yet.

He sees her mom in the grocery store and sees the faint recognition in her eyes before he turns away.

He knows she has to drive past his road to get to the Byers’ house but he knows without having to ask that she’s not thinking about him as she does it.

The pain never leaves, but he holds onto it even as he wishes it was gone. He holds onto it every time he sees her. It’s a cycle in his head. Aching longing, love, anger, pain, over and over and over again. He feels stuck, forever, like there’s no escape from it and time isn’t helping.

He graduates, the pain stays as his dad promises to teach him a lesson, as he knows staying means seeing her. He finds someone who makes the pain lighten up, but she can’t remove it completely. He gets dragged back into that world of monsters and pain and still dreams about her even as he reaches for the hand that’s right there with him.

In the end, that hand isn’t the kind of love he’d hoped for, but it’s enough to finally start stitching up the pieces of his heart. In the end, it isn’t really the end after all.

They still can’t talk, but he isn’t quite so lonely anymore.

They still can’t look at each other, but she smiles at him sometimes and it feels like forgiveness.

They still can’t be friends, but they’re bound together forever.

He watches her be left behind by someone she really does love, someone who loves her too even if he can’t stay. But he’s here with her and the anger is still there but it doesn’t feel like it’s choking him anymore. He stays busy and dreams of the things that used to be within his reach and doesn’t drag her back in because it’s not fair to her.

He loves her and wants her to be happy even if it’s not with him because that’s what she deserves.

He stays by her side as they’re dragged back into fear and pain, finds himself telling her that dream that he swore would go to his grave in the gentle sunlight and haunting shadows. He tells her and hates himself for it because it’s his dream, not hers.

He watches her hug Jonathan and turns away because as much as he loves her, wants her to have her dreams, it still hurts knowing it’s not going to include him.

So he walks away, lets her go, let’s her have her dreams because it’s the least he could do. He shoves his aching heart down further in his chest because he loves, he loves, he loved, and she’s got that piece of his heart, but maybe letting her go can be good for them both.

He walks away, a different soft, small hand linked to his by their pinky fingers, and as he breathes out, he lets go of the version of them that never existed, that never had a chance of finding a home in their lives.

That night, for the first time in years, he doesn’t dream of her.

(@sharpbutsoft - I got at least a very rough sort of something that came out! Thanks for the inspiration!)

#steve harrington #nancy wheeler #S2 stancy #kat writes #I had this written then I opened tumblr and my computer crashed and I had to rewrite the last half of it and I'm so mad #Listen I do love steddie but there's something so interesting about stancy and how they fit but they don't #There's something so important about the pain of losing something that never existed the way you built it in your head #and at the end of the day they were both teenagers trying to cope with horrible things and they both made mistakes because they're teenager #I do believe he really loved her and I do believe she tried to love him but couldn't deal with the trauma she'd been dealt #and that's not her fault but it's not his either it's just a shitty situation #anyways I'm a hundred percent a multishipper even if I have the ones I like best and I think if done right stancy could be satisfying #but with that said I don't know that I trust them to be done right

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