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Ace’s breath catches in his throat as Bess sets out the ritual, the risks laid out like cards waiting to fall. He doesn’t like it – it feels too risky, too uncertain, like they’re simply solving one problem by creating another.
The last few months have been… strange. That’s one word, he supposes. A life raft to stick a hundred other things onto. A slice of the unfamiliar wrapped up in take-out and game nights and a thousand slivers of the supernatural worming themselves together into one erratic whole that feels a lot like family – or at least the family he’s learned never to expect.
He stuffs his hands into his pockets, clutching the bear figurine tucked there tight in sweaty fingers. He’s used to risks – they all are. But this feels wrong, too much, and he doesn’t know how to voice it. How to tell them there has to be another way. Not when Nick is nodding and George is looking sceptical but convinced, and Nancy stands up proud and determined as the dawn, and declares that this is how they solve the problem.
Nancy always thinks that the riskiest option is how they solve the problem.
And Ace used to think that was what made her so interesting – special, the bright gleam of a star that he can’t take his eyes off. But the longer they do this (the more he watches her) the more he’s realised that it’s not the risk, the lure of adventure, the promise of the unknown that draws him to her. It’s her. The soft smile, the furrow between her eyebrows when she’s thinking, the way she says his name, all blurred edges and hard angles. It’s the way she puts her hand on his shoulder and leans over to see what he’s working on. The way he can tell it’s her entering a room just from the tread of her boots and the scent of her shampoo.
It’s every tiny detail that stacks up into a whole that has his heart in his mouth beating triple time against the way he wants to pull her close and kiss her.
But that feels terrifying in a way that ghosts and curses and rituals and magic can never compete with. A slipped missing a step coming down the stairs feeling, that sends his breath from his lungs and his pulse racketing in his ears at the thought of coming clean, admitting to her what he feels, what she means to him.
And dammit if his own tongue-tied confusion over this new surge of feelings for her doesn’t lead him to nod with the rest, bury his fears that this isn’t worth it, that there has to be another way. Sink down a little in his chair and frown as Bess hands out shopping lists of ingredients for each of them.
He hangs back a little, paper clutched damply in his hand as he moves to where Nancy is frowning at her phone.
“Hey, Nance, do you really think this is the best way?” His voice sounds rough in his ears, locked up with too much emotion and a bucketload of uncertainty that keeps him always on the backfoot when he wants so desperately to move forward.
“Hmm?” She spares him a glance, still half frowning at her phone and an array of incomprehensible gifs he can see Ryan has sent her.
“The ritual, the banishment – I know The Road Back are dangerous, but this feels like too much.”
“Too much to get rid of the people that killed Celia?” Her gaze is knife sharp and entirely focussed on him now, and he fights to hold her eye, to try and make her understand.
“Don’t get me wrong, I want to see them pay for what they’ve done, but this feels too risky for us.”
“If you want to sit this one out Ace, no one’s forcing you to join.” She turns away from him, an effective dismissal. Her tone is hard but there’s something soft and hurt just beneath the surface that tells him what her words can’t. The hardened exterior belying the quiet pain that his leaving would cause.
“You know that’s not what I mean Nance,” he reaches for her and for a moment his fingers brush the soft wool of her coat and he hears her breath catch in her throat and he can feel the words he’s locked up tight wanting to rise up.
And then her phone beeps with another message from Ryan and she steps away and the moment dissolves like smoke on the water, leaving him holding onto nothing but air.
*
The misgivings build like blocks waiting to fall as Ace collects the things on his list. As he drives Bess out to see a woman about a mirror. As they pool their findings like loose change on the table between them all, and set up for the ritual as though it’s a regular Tuesday night.
It’s not. The itch under his skin, the fear that paces like a caged animal in his chest, the words bitten back too many times to count.
Bess begins the chant and Nancy’s fingers feel cold in his, and he keeps moving forward as though some part of him has decided that all he can do is just get through it. That maybe the fear will turn out to be unfounded, that this will work, that Nancy’s bulldog determination will see them through in one piece.
But then the wind whips up and the candles flare brighter and the look on Bess’s face changes from uncertainty to outright fear and the mirror at the centre of the circle glows an alarming shade of orange as the surface swirls like a maelstrom that widens, stretches, reaches for them.
Ace stumbles back a step, but Nancy’s fingers slip from his. An uncertain teeter on the edge of moving forward as though she wants to peer down into the depths, tip herself forward to see.
He shouts her name above the roar of the wind, the whine of the static that crackles in the air around him. She glances back over her shoulder at him and it feels as though everything moves in slow motion.
Her foot catches on the edge of the widened circle of the mirror and she tilts forward, seems to catch herself, eyes widening in fear, mouth an oh of surprise. And even though he knows he can’t really, couldn’t possibly tell over the scream of the noise around him, he swears that it’s his name on her lips, the shape of the a, the slide of the c, the breath of an exhale on the e.
For a breathless, endless moment as he snatches at the air for her fingers as she tilts, as his fingers brush hers but not enough to catch, as the air sits heavy in his lungs and Nancy whispers his name as she tips. For that moment Ace thinks he can make it right.
And then time seems to snap like a rubber band, taut as the line between his heart and her. And Nancy falls through the churning surface of the mirror and out of sight.
*
“Bring her back, get it open, bring her back!” It takes a long moment for Ace to realise that the voice screaming is his. He falls forward in the silence, scrabbling on the floor for the mirror and clutching it tight.
But it’s not his face staring back at him, not the reflection of the rest of them pressed in close to see.
It’s Nancy. Bewildered, searching around her on the floor of a room identical to this one, but alone. She calls out, but the sound never reaches them, and Ace screams her name in return but she doesn’t seem to hear.
He turns terrified eyes to Bess once more, “bring her back, open it back up!”
“I can’t.” Her words feel like a knife in his chest. The tracks of her tears more confirmation of the truth than he can stomach.
“What do you mean you can’t? There has to be a way. We just opened the portal, you have to get it open and bring her back. We can’t leave her there, it’s Nancy!” As though her name is all the explanation any of them might need. As though the fact of her alone is enough, never mind the string that’s tied around his heart and choking his lungs because it’s Nancy and he needs her back.
“It was a one time only ritual, you can’t open it back up again. I’m sorry Ace, there’s no way to bring her back.”
Ace can’t accept that, won’t accept that. Feels a furious restless rage surge through his bones with the need to do something. His hands feel numb on the edges of the mirror, but he clutches it like a lifeline and watches as Nancy gets to her feet, dusts herself off, and begins to move, to try and find her way through the nightmare she’s found herself in.
*
Ace watches.
He can’t help it.
To not watch would feel like a betrayal. Feel like abandoning her. Like leaving her to the isolated prison she’s found herself in. Because that’s what it is, really. That’s what they were going to do – use the mirror to send The Road Back to a mirror dimension, empty save for them. Where they couldn’t harm anyone, where they’d be secure. Where they’d be trapped.
He watches as though Nancy might be able to feel his eyes on her, the promise that she’s not alone. Even as she fights her way through the books in the Historical Society, the stash of artefacts they’d found at Icarus Hall, the warehouse at the Hudson’s dock filled with a cache of dark items and heirlooms.
Falls asleep with the mirror clutched in his hands, slides through each day like a sleepwalker, as though the watching will keep her safe, as though if he takes his eyes off her the mirror will crumble to dust in his hands and she’ll be lost.
*
Days slip into weeks, months, years, and Ace keeps holding onto that last tether as though it’s the only thing keeping him afloat. Moves through life like a sleepwalker. Life on pause as he waits. Waits. Waits.
*
“Ace,” Bess’s tone is hesitant, wary, the uncertainty that gilds the words an irritation that presses on the bruise of Nancy’s absence. Ace rubs his thumb along the edge of the mirror, the gilt long since tarnished, and spares her a glance.
“I think – I think I might have something.”
It feels then as though the world has stopped (although for Ace the world stopped two thousand three hundred and seventy four days ago) stuttered to a halt and left him waiting on the exhale. As though if he just holds his breath long enough, waits patiently enough, holds onto that string in his heart that ties to her, she’ll come back to him.
“What do you mean?” He stares hard at Bess, desperate for there to be no ambiguity, to understand in simple constructs exactly what she’s saying. But his gaze can’t stray away from Nancy for long, moving about the kitchen of the house on River Heights as she makes herself breakfast – French Toast, it’s always French Toast on a Saturday.
“I mean,” Bess is careful with her words, as though stepping across a minefield, uncertain and afraid but filled with determination. “That I think I have a way to get her back.”
The edges of the mirror press hard into Ace’s palm as he holds his lifeline tight and whispers, “tell me.”
*
It takes several weeks to assemble everything they need, and each minute, each hour, each breath, presses on Ace like a stone. But Bess is careful, determined, wants to make sure there are no errors, no room for this to tip sideways into despair again. And Ace can’t blame her, not really, when it feels like the hope of it all is what’s keeping him alive.
They need more people this time, need as many beating hearts that love Nancy to keep the portal stable, to keep it open, to bring her home, and Carson and Ryan say yes before Bess has even finished explaining. The hole Nancy left in her wake – the quiet devastation that lingered between the two men as they had clutched each other in the weeks after she disappeared enough to make Ace feel less alone in his grief.
They were all hurting in their own ways. Desperate and bound together in their individual griefs. And Ace is grateful for their steady presence now. Carson’s hand on his shoulder, Ryan pushing a mug of coffee into his free hand as Ace keeps three fingers against the edge of the mirror, half an eye on Nancy even as she carries on oblivious in her isolated world they made for her.
Bess outlines the steps of the ritual, the parameters that will see them through this whole – more, the beating heart of them returned. She doesn’t even bother asking who will go through to bring Nancy back, just looks at Ace with tired eyes full of hope and sadness, the guilt that has pushed her on these years they’ve been without Nancy, that have held her in a vice the same as Ace.
And then there is nothing to do but see it through, and Ace has to take a breath and put the mirror down, step away and hold himself steady as Bess begins the chant.
*
The fear that holds him tight when the surface of the mirror begins to shift like the surface of the sea almost paralyses him. It is too close to before, long fingers of the past reaching back to catch him and hold him tight against moving now.
But Carson’s hand in his is steady and Ryan’s voice is full of hope, and Bess stares at him like she knows he can do this, and it makes the fear recede just enough to move.
He takes a step, and then another, and is poised on the precipice ready to jump when Bess speaks quietly only to him.
“Remember the whistle, and you’ve got the string.” He pats his pockets to reassure himself as much as her. “We’ll be here, and we’ll get you out, but remember we can only keep it steady for fifteen minutes. Start the timer as soon as you’re through.” She looks for a moment as though she might reach for him, but keeps herself in check, hands held tight in Ryan’s and George’s. “We can’t lose both of you,” she adds softly.
Ace nods once, and takes a deep breath as he steps through and drops like a stone.
*
His head feels fuzzy when he lands on the hard stone floor, palms scraped raw from the fall. It’s quiet here, too quiet. He rolls over, stares at the bare ceiling where the surface of the mirror should be, and tries to keep his panic in check.
Bess had warned him he wouldn’t have any visible way out, it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong, it just means he needs to get a move on.
He starts the timer and gets heavily to his feet, he needs to find Nancy. It’s Tuesday, which means she normally heads to the library.
Ace runs.
*
The town is eerie without the usual perpetual rumble of noise. He can hear the sea clearly for once, even here so far inland, a soothing rush that feels like it’s whispering to him to hurry, hurry, hurry.
He tears through the streets, the stoplights still flicking through their colours even with no drivers to see. Takes a left, and shoves through the doors to the library.
“Nancy?” His voice feels too loud in the silence, but he hears a book land with a thump somewhere further back.
He weaves through the stacks, calling to her over and over, until suddenly around the end of one, she appears.
“Nancy,” he breathes.
She looks sick, white as a sheet, fear and grief holding her captive. She shakes her head.
“You’re not real.”
He can’t help a laugh at that, doubles over to catch his breath, but barely looks away before his gaze is drawn back to her – like a magnet, like a compass, his true north.
“I really am.”
She shakes her head and backs away a step. “No, I’ve thought you were here before, and you never have been. I must be imagining this again – the isolation has gotten too much.” She frowns and turns as though to leave, but then glances back as though she can’t bear to take her eyes from him either.
He starts towards her but she stumbles back another step, hands out as though to ward him off. He catches her fingers with his, presses her hand to his chest to feel the wild beating of his heart.
“Nance, it’s me, I’m here, it’s real.”
She stumbles a step closer, face crumpling with tears as she stares at him.
“Ace, it’s really you?”
“It’s really me,” he thumbs away a tear from her cheek, a sob rising in his chest at the reality of her beneath his fingertips. He’s dreamt so long of holding her, talking to her, kissing her…
His gaze flicks to her lips and she follows him, tongue darting out to wet her lips as she twists her fingers into his top and drags his mouth to hers.
“Ace,” she murmurs his own name onto his lips and he draws it down deep, swallows it whole, presses his fingers to her jaw to tilt her face to his and feels the wetness on her cheeks from the tears.
“Nance, god Nance,” he feels incoherent at the touch of her after so long deprived, of the dreams and the wishes and the hopes he’s tucked in his heart all these years until it felt like it was stuffed to the point of bursting with everything he feels for her.
He drops a kiss to each corner of her mouth, to the top lip and the bottom, her cheeks, her closed eyelids. “You’re here, you’re real.”
“I’m real?!” She laughs but the sound is broken, “you’re the one that just appeared out of nowhere. How?..”
She breaks off and the reminder of the world beyond is enough to jolt him from the moment he’d been lost in, with her jaw cupped in his hand and his fingers tangled in her hair.
“Later, but for now I need to get you out of here.”
He strokes a thumb over her cheek and leans in for a chaste kiss, her lips drawing him in until he’s gasping and laughing and god he doesn’t remember the last time he laughed.
“Stop distracting me, I’m trying to rescue you.”
She laughs again, and it’s bright in the quietness of the world around them, a twist of sound that feels like he’s swallowed starlight.
He fumbles the string from his pocket and loops it around her wrist, ignoring her raised eyebrows. His eyes catch on the stopwatch at his wrist, and the handful of seconds left, and his stomach lurches. It’s fine, it’ll be fine, there’s time. He ties the other end of the string to his own wrist and then loops his arm around her waist.
He tugs his whistle free from his pocket and blows it, three sharp blasts that feel as though they’re swallowed by the stacks. But he has to trust that they reach the others, that they know, that they see, that they can bring them home.
But even if they can’t, he’s found her, she’s here.
He draws her in again and she opens for him eagerly, and she’s real, she’s real, she’s real.
He feels a sharp jerk behind his navel, Nancy buffeted in his arms, and he grips her tight, he’s not losing her now. The wind feels like it’s trying to tear them about but he only holds her tighter, and she fists her hands into his shirt and clutches right back and maybe just maybe it’ll be okay and they’ll make it out and –
*
He comes to on the floor, his face stinging from a long thin cut from a shard of the broken mirror lying in pieces all around them.
Them. Nancy is still in his arms, tied to him with string, looped around his heart and his wrists and his hands and all he wants to do is bury his face in her hair and sob.
But the others are there, and they’re crying and touching and proving to themselves that she’s real, that she’s here, that she’s safe.
She reaches for them and Ace’s hands feel bereft with the lack of her, but then she turns, her smile bright as the sun as she beams at him, reaching, hands in his hair and her lips against his own as she murmurs to him, “you came back for me.”
“Nance, I never left, you just couldn’t see me.” He glances at the pieces of the mirror, his hands feeling momentarily bereft without their reassuring weight, and she eyes them and him speculatively. But then she wraps his hands tight in her own, the string still tying them together, and kisses him again, and Ace knows deep in his bones he’s never letting her go again.