nancy's smile softens at that, smaller this time. less performative.
for a moment, she just watches him. the fading sunlight catches against the edges of his profile, warm gold cutting through the scars that exhaustion had left behind on all of them these past few years. it's strange sometimes, how easy it is to forget that this is steve harrington standing beside her. not king steve. not the guy she'd once thought she had entirely figured out at seventeen. just steve. steady and earnest in a way that sneaks up on her every single time.
"you always say things like they're facts," she says quietly, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. "like the universe personally called you to let you know i'm gonna be okay."
her fingers tighten slightly around the sleeves of her sweater before she looks back out over hawkins. the town still looked wrong in places if you stared too long. cracked and stitched together badly. kind of like all of them.
"i don't even know what making it through looks like anymore." she admits after a beat. "everything i planned for feels... far away now. like it belonged to somebody else." then, in a softer voice, "but i think maybe the scarier part is that i can't picture leaving this place without feeling like i'm abandoning everyone."
she glances back at him then, studying his expression carefully. "do you ever feel that way? like if you finally let yourself move on, something terrible's gonna happen the second you stop looking over your shoulder?"