Here's the next chapter! Enjoy!
"Mom...it's me...Michael. I'm here."
"No."
"Breathe!" Karen remembered Nick yelling. She remembered being escorted on a cot...was it for Nancy or...
"The ambulance is on its way!" she remembered Giana also yelling.
"It's going to be alright, darling," one of the doctors told her that one time. "Stay with us."
Two flashes of both of her children crying as newborns appeared as she then saw Nancy's drawing and remembered her saying, "I drew a sunflower!" Sunflower...
She remembered her siblings, John, and Jen holding her back before a nurse gave her a sedative before remembering the last two moves for the combination. Four to the right...two to the left...
She remembered a gunshot, then the rainbow. Rainbow...
Then her ex-husband saying, "Four-fifty." Four-fifty...
Many images flashed into her mind so fast...breathe...sunflower...rainbow...four to the right...two to the left...four-fifty.
"MOOOMMYYYYY!" she remembered that girl yelling...sunflower...four to the right...two to the left...breathe...four to the right...two to the left...
Sunflower...rainbow...breathe...four to the right...two to the left...four-fifty.
Breathe...sunflower...rainbow...four to the right...two to the left...
Four-fifty.
Mike gasped and removed the sleeping mask from his eyes quick, his nose bleeding as well as his mom's. "Breathe...sunflower...rainbow," she muttered. "Four to the right...two to the left. Four-fifty." Now that he had seen everything, he knew why she was muttering those words. The adults around him were quick to hug him and say comforting things to him after such an intense experience...
...
All of them were in the kitchen now, the blood from the boy's nose wiped away and Nick asking his nephew, "So then it just repeated?"
He looked a little confused, never hearing of that word before. "Re-peat-ed?"
"Like it kept going in a circle," Jen answered him.
"Yeah, you keep seeing the same thing over and over again," John added.
He nodded, looking solemn as he told them all, "She kept showing Nancy."
All of their eyes widened, Nick's and Giana's watering. "N-Nancy...?" Giana asked in a shaky voice.
He nodded again. "She was still...alive. I was with her. We were in the room together." Their breathes hitched, his aunt beginning to cry, making him feel sad.
"Th-the rainbow room?" He remembered the painted rainbow next to the door of the room they...and Terry, were in, so he nodded. Giana began to break down, her husband letting her cry on his shoulder for support. Nick sniffled and wiped his tears, his wife hugging him for the same reason.
"Well...what did she look like?" he asked him.
Mike felt deeply sad for the both of them, but remembered what she looked like. Her light-brown hair was longer than when he first saw her and she was a bit taller. "Older."
His uncle sniffled again, rubbing his nose. "How old...?"
He tried to think. "How old was she...when she..."
"Four."
"A little older, then." Nick looked down and rubbed his face, looking very depressed as Jen whispered things to him.
Giana looked down with her pink eyes still streaming some tears and sniffled. "Those bastards..." she muttered under her breath.
John rubbed her hair and whispered, "It's okay, honey-"
She got away from him, giving him an angry look. "It's NOT okay! Those men have LIED to us about my sister's children! How the hell is that OKAY?!"
Nick looked at her with a somber face and replied, "Listen, Gia, I'm JUST as pissed off as you are, but let's just keep ourselves together for Mike, alright?" She sniffled again and looked at the boy in question, who looked just as forlorn as everyone else was. She sighed deeply and took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry, Mike."
He shook his head at her. "It's okay." He tried not to cry himself as he realized something. "I think this is why Mom wanted to talk."
Giana wiped her tears and sniffled once again. "To...to show you Nancy?"
He looked at his mom back in the living room, still rocking on her chair, muttering what she always muttered, and looking at the TV so blankly. He didn't think she showed him all of that just to prove that he had an older sister. He looked back at the adults and answered, "I think she wants me to find her."
...
Mike came upstairs with his aunts and uncles before Nick opened the door to Nancy's room. They all entered in, the boy looking around at all the soft pink that coated the walls. Everything seemed so tidy and there were a few stuffed animals on her bed and her drawers. Giana grabbed one picture of Nancy and talked to the rest of the adults about whether or not this was a good picture of her. Once they've all agreed, she handed him the picture. He took a good look at it. It was just Nancy herself outside, probably near here, having some of her long hair pulled back as she wore a pink, long-sleeved shirt, a blue skirt, knee-high socks, and black Mary-Janes. She was smiling in the picture and her hands were behind her back.
"I'm giving you this picture so that you have a...reference to her, okay?" Giana said to him. He looked up at her and just nodded.
...
He got the sleeping mask on again as he sat on her bed and tried to reach her. The adults were silent as they saw his nose bleed. Suddenly, he looked frustrated and took it off, sighing heavily and looking at the adults. "Did you find her, Mike?" Nick asked him.
He shook his head and answered with a frown, "I'm sorry." The adults looked saddened by this, making him feel worse. However, Giana got close to him and rubbed his arm.
"It's okay, sweetie," she said to him softly. "Can you find her again?"
He shook his head once more as he looked down at the picture of Nancy. "I'm...tired."
The adults nodded, Nick saying, "Okay, bud." He stood up and continued, "Where'd you like to lay down? I mean, I could say that you can rest in...your sister's room, but..." He chuckled a little. "Pretty sure you don't want that." Mike actually agreed with him on that. It looked too...girly for him.
...
Eventually, it was nighttime. Mike had woken up in his mom's room, still having the picture of Nancy in his hands. He sighed and held the picture up to look at her again. This girl was supposed to be his older sister, right? Maybe that's what screwed him up earlier, since she was younger when this picture was taken. He took a deep breath and placed the picture on his chest, closing his eyes and trying to reach to her. Flashes of the rainbow room came to his mind before he saw Nancy happily playing with him when he was extremely young. He had taken a better look at her face, smiling as she handed him a large green toy. She giggled at him when he was playing around with it before looking up at Terry, possibly. And with that...
He finally got there, opening his eyes and seeing the darkness. He heard fire popping and moving, making him turn back to see someone with short and shaggy platinum-blonde hair look over it. He looked puzzled. She didn't look like Nancy, but...he'll have to try.
He walked towards her slowly and said, "Hello...?" The stranger didn't respond in any way and continued looking over the fire. He gulped and then asked, "Nancy?" He finally got close to the stranger, seeing from behind that she wore a black leather jacket and gray skinny jeans. When he got close, she looked back, the boy seeing the pearly-white skin and sky-blue eyes of his sister with ashy-black eyeshadow.
His eyes shot wide-open, the boy gasping hard as his nose bled only a little. He found her...he finally found her. He knew his aunts and uncles would want to hear this.
He got out of the bed and ran out of the room, shouting, "Aunt Giana! Uncle Nick!" He then ran across the hallway. "Uncle John! Aunt Jen!" He stopped yelling when he heard the adults yelling downstairs. He felt tense, but wondered what they were yelling about. He slowly went downstairs, the yelling becoming more clear to him.
"...don't know, John!" Giana yelled.
"How the hell are we going to know where she is if he finds her?!" John yelled back at her.
"I DON'T KNOW, JOHN!"
"CALM DOWN, YOU TWO!" Jen shouted at them. "Can we not wake Mike up by yelling?" He heard all of the adults sigh before he finally went to the entrance of the living room and peeked over, seeing that his mom was still watching TV while the adults were in the back.
Nick rubbed his face and said, "Well, we can't call the police because they'll think we're lunatics."
Giana nodded. "Right."
"There's still the case of knowing where Nancy IS when Michael finds her with his...power. We have no idea if he could SEE where she is." The boy frowned at that.
"We can just ask him when he wakes up, okay?" Jen suggested to him. He sighed and rubbed his temples.
Suddenly, Giana's eyes flickered. "Wait...maybe we can call the police." That made the boy's blood run cold while the adults, especially Nick, looked shocked at his suggestion.
"Are you CRAZY, Gia?"
"Nick, listen to me. Remember when the police chief and those two women visited us last year?" His look of shock dissolved as he nodded.
"Yeah...they tried to talk to Karen and asked us about Mike and Nancy."
She nodded. "We could call them. Maybe they'll help us track Nancy."
"If Mike can't see where she is," Jen stated.
John sighed. "Can we trust them though?"
Nick glared at him. "That police chief showed his badge and ID. I'm sure he can be trusted."
While the adults came to an agreement, Mike felt so...awful. Hopper and Terry have been taking care of him for a year. To have them call him to help...no. They couldn't. This was his new home...right? It was so weird to him that he was now having mixed feelings about calling this place home. His mom was here, his aunts and uncles were nice to him, and he even has a little cousin. But...for some reason, this didn't feel all that homey to him. Why?
He looked at his mom, who was still watching TV and muttering what she usually muttered, and whispered, "I'll find her." She stopped her muttering, but kept her eyes on the TV. Suddenly, he noticed the adults close to him, making his breath hitch. However...they walked right by him like he wasn't there. He was completely puzzled before he looked at Karen again...seeing her nose bleed a little. He looked very shocked at this, but then remembered that she had another power to make herself disappear...maybe she did that to him so he could go and find Nancy. He thought she couldn't do that due to her condition, but she still communicated with him through her mind, so...
He sighed in relief before seeing a light flicker to the front of the door. He followed that and went to the coat rack, seeing a couple purses and hung up with a coat. He looked around, making sure none of his aunts and uncles were around, and then dug into one of them. He pulled out a brown wallet and opened that up to see Jen's driver's license and some money. He grabbed the money before digging into the other one, pulling out a red wallet and opening it up. It had Giana's driver's license in it as well as some more money, so he got that out. He then grabbed his jacket and his bag, putting them on. He shoved the money and the picture he had of Nancy into his bag before opening the door and leaving.
...
The adults upstairs, going to get the slip of paper Hopper gave Giana, stopped when they heard the door open. They all looked back with wide eyes, Jen asking, "What was that?" Suddenly, they assumed the worst, that Mike was leaving...alone.
"Shit!" Nick muttered under his breath as he and the rest of the adults ran back down. They all shouted off-sync, "Mike!" They kept calling his name, Nick looking out the front door and the others looking around the place.
The blood dripping down Karen's nose continued going down, now past her lips, as she muttered, "Four-fifty. Breathe...sunflower...rainbow." Just then, "Action News 8" came on, the "8" put on emphasis and twirling around.
Michael had eventually tracked her the way he did and got on a bus to Chicago. He sat alone and close to the window, looking through it as it rained a little outside. Though he was going to Chicago, he had no idea where exactly to go when he gets there, so he looked at Nancy's picture and closed his eyes again. She was in front of that trash fire, right? He eventually saw a dim and mucky community of dirty and homeless people. So he needed to go through there.
Once he would get through there, then he would see a dirty, graffitied building. Inside that building were four other strangers: an African-American man with a long black braid warming his hands over the fire, a guy with a blonde and red mohawk with dark tips looking over it, an African-American woman with large fuzzy hair sitting on a stool with a hunch and looking at it as well, and a girl with punk-rock hair smoking and sitting down in front of it. Nancy, the girl with the short, bleached hair, went up the stairs with a little girl with long blonde hair in pigtails, wearing a pink, long-sleeved shirt and small dirty jeans. That's what the interior looked like and she wasn't alone...just like his mom.
He opened his eyes and wiped the blood coming down his nose. He knew where to go and what to expect. He took a deep breath as the bus crossed the Illinois-Indiana border, hoping that this will all be worth it.
Once the bus stopped in Chicago, the freckled boy put the picture back in his bag and got up to get out with everyone else. He stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around. He was awed at how bright the city was and how big the buildings were. However, he needed to find Nancy, so he took a deep breath and walked the way to the slums.
As he was walking, he walked past many adults, young and old, and faked a smile to blend in with them. He walked past a couple of cops, not getting into eye contact with them and going about his business. He passed a group of people to a building with art inside. He walked through a crosswalk and looked up at one large building. He never thought buildings would be so big. He smiled as he noticed that he was getting close to the slums.
Suddenly, a man in a suit bumped shoulders with him hard, making him stumble back and look at him. "Watch it, dumb kid," he told him rather aggressively.
He glared daggers at him and said, "Mouth-breather." He then looked and moved on forward into another crosswalk.
...
He got near an abandoned shop before looking to see if there were any cars coming. When there wasn't, he crossed the road and finally entered into the slum he was supposed to go through. A bunch of dirty and homeless people were there, doing things like warming themselves up near a trash fire, smoking, talking, and just minding their own business in their tenants. Mike honestly felt so tense and uncomfortable being here since some of these people were looking at him, some intimidating.
Some got out of his way before he reached to a maniacal man that was laughing. He looked at the boy straight in the eye and said in a singsong voice, "They're deeeeeead~." He walked past him quickly as he continued laughing. "They're dead! They're all DEAD!" He laughed very hard, making him run to get out of this place. It didn't help that what he said made him feel more anxious than before.
Finally, he walked up from the car tunnel and saw the graffitied building not too far from him. He gulped and approached it slowly. There were a bunch of strangers in there, so he had to be prepared. When he reached the door, he opened it and got inside. The interior was just as graffitied as the exterior was and he heard people, possibly the strangers he found in his vision, talking. He closed the door behind him and walked through.
He finally saw the strangers still around the trash fire, enjoying each other's company. "Maybe you can do stand-up, Axel," the girl with the punk-rock hair told the guy with the mohawk. "I think there's a spot about, like, a few blocks away." Mike's anxiousness began to rise with every step he took, wondering if he should say something to the strangers or not.
Suddenly, the guy called Axel noticed him, looking eyes with him and grinning. He stopped, seeing the rest of the strangers look at him. His anxiousness rose once again. The guy grinned, putting his hands in his pockets and saying, "Well, well, well...what do we have here?"
The girl with the punk-rock hair began to rise as the African-American woman got off the stool and asked, "What's he wearing?" She walked with Axel, looking over Mike's appearance, and continued, "You some kind of nerd?" That made a couple of the strangers laugh. He looked puzzled, not knowing what that last word meant.
"Listen, nerd, there isn't any sciencey stuff to discover here," the girl with the punk-rock hair told him. "So you can go on back to your school now."
He sighed, walking towards them slowly, and told them, "I'm looking for my sister."
Axel circled around him and teasingly asked, "Aww~, you're looking for your sister, Carl Sagan?" Of course, Mike had no idea who he was. "That's soooo sad..."
Now he was feeling irritated by him, but he continued, "I saw her here."
As he dug his hand into his bag and grabbed the picture, the African-American man stopped crossing his arms and said, "Ah-ah-ah!" The freckled boy stopped. "Hand out of bag, slow." He gulped, feeling a bit intimidated by how he presented himself.
He did take out the picture slowly, as commanded, before Axel said, "Gimme that shit." He snatched it away from him and looked at it, his grin disappearing. "What the hell...?"
The African-American woman looked at the photo as well and looked both shocked and curious. She grabbed it from him and stated, "Looks like a younger Nancy."
Mike nodded. "That is Nancy."
Everyone looked up at him with wide eyes, Axel's having a sharpness to them. As the woman showed the two other strangers the photo, Axel asked, "How'd ya find us? Who else knows you're here?" He got closer to him, but he stood his ground.
"No one," he answered.
He scoffed. "So what then? Ya do some nerdy shit and POOF! Ya come here with a picture?"
"Axel, stay calm," the fuzzy-haired woman told him. "He's just a kid."
He looked back at her. "Yeah, a kid that can get us all killed!"
"Didn't Nancy say that she had a little brother?"
"Yeah, but does he look ANYTHING like her?" The woman didn't answer before he faced the boy again. "Let me tell ya something, Carl." He then let out a pocket knife, making him stiff as he got more closer to him. He stepped back. "I'll ask again and if I do it again, you'll start losing things." He pointed the knife right at him, making him more tense. "Maybe I can get ya a little haircut first." There was no way Mike was letting him hurt him.
"Ax, come on, put down the knife!"
He ignored her. "How...did you find us?!"
Mike clenched his fists, concentrating his mind as he answered, "I saw her here."
He then aggressively grabbed him by his collar, the fuzzy-haired woman exclaiming, "AX!"
He ignored her again and yelled, "That's not an answer, you little shit!" This would mean he had to fight back somehow. Suddenly, he saw him looked shocked at his knife before looking down at his arm. He then looked terrified and exclaimed, "JESUS!" He threw his knife down, continuously screamed, and frantically moved away, wiping...something from his body. "GET OFF! SHIT! SHIT!" The punk-haired girl looked amused by this, the African-Americans looked at each other in concern, and Mike had no idea what he was doing, looking very, very confused.
Suddenly, a girl's laugh caught everyone's attention, looking up to see no other than the girl with the short and shaggy bleached hair leaning on the railing. Not only was she wearing the leather jacket and skinny jeans Mike saw her in, but she also wore a white tank-top underneath the jacket and black combat boots over her jeans. Mike gasped...knowing that was Nancy herself.
"You still need to work on your dancing skills, Ax," she told the guy with the mohawk as she descended down the stairs.
He looked pretty mad at her and slapped the side of his head. "I told ya to STAY OUTTA MY HEAD, Nance!"
As she reached to the ground floor, she walked towards them. "So, we're threatening kids now? That's great..."
Axel pointed at Mike and stated, "He knows about you and thinks you're his sister." She looked concerned.
"He had this," the punk-haired girl told her as she handed her the picture. She examined it closely and looked very surprised to see her younger self. She then looked up at the boy, who walked closer to her. Black hair, brown eyes, freckles...plus, a weird feeling in her gut...it could be him. At the same time, she was never the one to take a statement as truth straight away.
"Where did you get this?" she asked him.
His heart was racing due to finally meeting with his own older sister. Even so, it seemed like she didn't recognize him. He tried to relax himself and answered, "At Mom's."
"Your mom gave you this?"
He shook his head. "She showed me you..." He pointed at the picture. "...in our dream circle."
Axel scoffed at that and scratched the back of his head. "'Dream circle?' Sounds like a schizo to me."
Dream circle...it did sound crazy. "Who gave you this?"
He sighed. "Aunt Giana." Her eyes widened at that name.
"Aunt Giana?"
"What, ya know that name, Nance?" Axel bent down to pick up his pocket knife, but Mike looked at that and used his power to have it fly right to his hand. That surprised everyone, especially Nancy. "Holy shit..." He just did that with his mind, right...?
He looked at the knife and slowly bent it back down, looking at his sister again and handing it to her. "I saw you. We were in the rainbow room together." She grabbed the folded knife from him and still looked surprised. She scanned his face again. Again, black hair, brown eyes, freckles, pale skin-plus, his mind power...she hasn't seen him since he was, what, a toddler? Only one thing could really prove to her that it was him, that this boy was her long, lost little brother.
"Show me your wrist." He nodded as he rolled the sleeve of his jacket and showed off his branded tattoo to her.
M11.
She gasped, feeling a wave of different emotions crash onto her. She smiled as she pulled down one of her gloves a little and showed him her branded tattoo, "N08". He saw and read, "N-O-Eight."
She chuckled a little. Her eyes began to water as she continued smiling. "Michael."
He looked up at her, feeling so relieved that she knew it was him now. "Nancy." She then pulled him into a hug, him returning it. She sniffled and kept her hug for him tight. In that moment, no one around them mattered because they were finally reunited as long, lost siblings, and they were beyond relieved that one another were alright.
Stopping here. What do you guys think? Any typos or mistakes I might've missed?
Nancy finally makes a full appearance! I was waiting to get to here (well, this is ONE of the things I've been waiting to write out), to get to where Mike reunites with Nancy! Hope I wrote their reunion well! They deserve it.
The poor Bertuzzis though...they've only known their nephew for less than 24 hours and he's left them...but it's for good reason.
So, Axel calls Mike Carl Sagan. I heard he was popular back then, so I decided to have him call him that because of his appearance.
Can I tell you guys something? When I first finished this chapter, I thought it was weird that I was reaching the limit with the Wheeler siblings reuniting. So, to make sure I had no pacing issues, I wrote the rest of the episode in three more chapters. All seemed to reach close to the limit too, so that means everything's evenly paced. That meant that I can finally release this chapter without any worry! That also means I have the rest of the chapters for this episodes done too, but I'll just release them every two days so that everyone gets the time to digest one chapter.
With all that said, follow, favorite, review, and I'll see you guys in the next chapter!