Someone to Watch Over Me by Ella Fitzgerald

Murray drove Nancy home after the vodka tonics wore off.

The murky sky, still thick with snow clouds, was becoming a deeper blue in the small hours of the morning. Nancy estimated it to be around 2 am, and was gratified by how close she was when, looking down at her digital wristwatch, the numbers read 2:04.

The roads were too icy to drive faster than 30mph, but Nancy stared at the light in front of the car as if she were the one driving. There was no point in putting the radio on, or making scattered small talk about the quality of his tyres or the weather conditions. Whether too drunk to care, or too familiar with Murray to bother, she didn't hide her grey-tinted tears. He'd seen her cry so many times he wondered if it was worth buying the girl some waterproof mascara. He'd seen her drunk a lot, too- her one remaining coping mechanism that wasn't throwing herself into detective work. And man did the girl know how to throw everything she had into a case. It was unlike anything Murray had ever seen. She would lose track of time, skipping meals, barely taking bathroom breaks, and working with drawn blinds under a white desk lamp for so long, she didn't know whether it was night or day. Because it was the stops in-between cases that gave her headspace to think, and her every thought would turn to grief for her best friend, or get sucked into a Jonathan-shaped vacuum. Only, now there was room in Nancy's brain for those memories, and blood alcohol levels high enough to get sucked in, without the power she relied on when sober to struggle against the tidal wave.

She'd only started to drift off when Murray pulled into her driveway, taking the door off child lock. Nancy broke their silence by thanking him.

"Sorry about…"

"Hey," Murray put up a hand, "I've seen the same, and done worse, don't fret." Nancy smiled at his weird, philosophical way of speaking. A gust of wind blew against the car in the silence that followed. As if to check she was still in the passenger's seat, Murray turned to awkwardly glance at Nancy. She wasn't taking the cue to leave, both her hands were nowhere near the car door handle. He was about to ask her to get out of the car, when in an adolescent huff, Nancy threw her head in her hands.

"I don't know what's wrong with me!" She started crying, again.

Murray frowned with one eyebrow, "you're… kidding, right?" This reaction seemed pretty textbook of a broken heart to Murray.

"No, no. No, I'm not that girl." Nancy resisted so firmly, Murray felt like he needed to hold his hands up, "I don't wallow in self-pity because I broke up with a boy," she insisted, "I don't. I think it's just…" The man waited patiently until her Smirnoff-addled thoughts could come up with the next word. It's just… hormones, tiredness, tipsiness, stress, he expected to hear- expected her to play it down, wave it off, and laugh at herself. But he was set straight when the next thing Nancy said struck such a familiar chord with him, he couldn't respond.

"I think it's just that I don't… have anybody."

And it had only just dawned on him how right she was. Since Barb had died, and Steve was out of the picture, and since Jonathan had left for NYU, he hadn't seen her with one single person. She hadn't taken one phone call. No one seemed to care about her spending her days with a single, middle-aged, borderline alcoholic. Odd, considering everything that had happened in Hawkins.

"What about your parents?" Murray asked, gently, "what are they for?" This was something he was genuinely curious about. For all the months they'd worked together, she hadn't mentioned her parents. Every time he suggested she call to let them know where she was, she waved him off and mumbled that it was fine. Murray surmised it was something along the lines of emotional neglect, possibly the usual 'suburban-dollhouse' front. Nancy had the trademark characteristics of an oblivious victim of the 'don't cry, you'll wake the neighbours' generation.

"My mom's hardly ever home anymore." Nancy huffed, "and my dad… he…" Nancy's large eyes glazed over, mournfully. Murray shifted uncomfortably. But why 'uncomfortably'? He'd seen her cry, before, yes, but with a tense lower lip, frowning with soft wrinkles across her forehead. Pessimistic, cynical tears that frustrated her much like flies bothered someone trying to eat a sandwich outside. He'd never seen her like this. A slow, painful realisation took its grip on her, and Murray couldn't do anything but sit and wait for her to cry again. Except, Nancy wasn't sad anymore. She was indignant, straightening in her seat, turning her full body to face him, "h-he didn't even ask me when Jonathan left… after Barb's death, I mean…" The sudden movement made her head spin, and she rested it against the headrest.

"He didn't even ask me."

"Ask you what?"

"Anything," Nancy whispered thoughtfully, "he didn't ask me anything."

'How are you?', 'Can I help?', 'Do you want to talk about it?'

Barb was gone. Steve couldn't have had better intentions, but he only ever wanted to cheer her up. Those questions were always 'Jonathan' territory. Who would ask her those questions, now?

After another heavy minute of the wind trying to tip the car over, Nancy found her words again. Her wide eyes stared at the dashboard in an empty way.

"I hate feeling like I'm all I have. It's not… enough."

"Take it from me, okay, kid? The number one rule in life-"

"-never interview a suspect with a glitter pen?" Nancy raised an eyebrow, a wry smile flattening her top lip. The reference was a nod to their first week working together, where she came unprepared, and in a flustered panic brought her old pencil case she'd used in tenth grade. The bright colours and fluffy pens with animal prints on them made studying trig graphs bearable, sure, but she would never forget the disgust in Murray's face when he asked if the pen she'd been using was, in fact, banana scented.

"…okay," Murray took a breath, holding up a second finger, "the number two rule in life… Don't ever contemplate your life when drunk, stoned, or hungover… or sober."

"So… never? Got it." They shared tired smiles, and Nancy groped for the car door handle, "night, Murray-"

Nancy was halfway to shutting the car door when Murray stopped her.

"Parents… do their best." Nancy froze, ducking her head below the roof of the car to see him, "That's what the psychiatrists and the teachers, and the social workers say, right? That's true. But the awful truth behind that truth is some people's best just isn't good enough. Then it becomes your job to compensate for… whatever your dad didn't do, or didn't know how to do. Aaaand, the truth behind those two truths… is that it blows." Turning the engine off, he removed his glasses, polishing the smudges with a silk sheet he'd gotten out of his glove box. "Nothing's wrong with you, Nancy. You're upset because you're right- you don't have anyone right now, and you have got a lot to compensate for, and it's not fair." Murray wasn't theatrical, or harsh, but matter-of-fact, and his uncharacteristic sensitivity caught her off guard. The gentleness in his voice wasn't even sarcastic when he added, "but, you're wrong about not being enough."

He was right. She was alone, in a house full of people who didn't speak to her. Nancy was famously prickly with her mother, but it hadn't dawned on her until now how much she'd excused her Dad. He wasn't like Jonathan's dad or Steve's dad. He hadn't left them. He didn't constantly tell her what a disappointment she was. What did she have to be angry about? The fact that he didn't speak to her? It felt like something pathetically small, not worth being angry about, certainly not worth resenting someone over. But Murray was right. He'd made her feel validated, responsible, and empowered in the space of a minute. He'd seen her cry, talked to her, infuriated her, made her laugh. When a crushing thought passed over Nancy, it sobered her more effectively than if she was plunged into an ice bath.

Murray was more of a dad to her than her own father.

"Nancy?"

Nancy shook herself from that thought, "yeah?"

"I'm freezing, shut the door, and go away." Nancy rolled her eyes and slammed the car door, smiling. The interior light switched off, but she could still see Murray's silhouette, holding up a hand to wave. She waved back in kind. As he pulled out of her drive, she tightened her coat around her waist and felt the bones in her fingers as she did so. A new warmth circulated her body, now. A softer, less critical voice that whispered maybe she was enough for herself, and maybe she would be fine.

Too drunk to climb up to her bedroom window, even though she'd left it unlocked for this very occasion, Nancy decided to risk being caught through the front entrance of the fortress. She clumsily fished through her bag- shoving her pocket notebook between her teeth to empty the overpacked space. She had started unzipping the side pockets of the bag when the distinct sound of clopping heels against their concrete path came up behind her. Nancy turned to look. The notebook fell out of her mouth.

"Nancy?" The whites of Karen's eyes shined in the dark. Nancy looked her up and down, and in this freaky Friday alternate universe they were living in, Karen tightened her coat around herself defensively against this inspection, much like Nancy had done the first time she'd tried getting away with a mini skirt in 7th grade.

"Mom? What are you doing home so late?"

"I had my dance class, I didn't tell you?" Nancy's eyes were then immediately drawn to Karen's over-the-knee, black boots. Her brow raised as Nancy asked her mother exactly what kind of dance class. As she was mentally preparing herself for a disturbing answer- just on the off chance Karen actually was having a mid-life crisis, and spent her Sunday evenings learning how to entangle her legs around a pole- Nancy kept fixating on the state of her makeup.

"Oh, I don't dance in this," Karen laughed too hard, "I uh… I keep my shoes and clothes there, I went out drinking with some girlfriends after it finished." Nancy always knew she could lie as well as the next 'rebellious suburban girl'. What she didn't know was that being a good liar wasn't passed down from her mother. Karen scratched her neck and laughed. Deep coral lipstick smudged just outside her lip line- bridging her cupid's bow. It would have gone unnoticed by Ted, maybe even by Mike. But assessing the small facts had been her life for the past year. Maybe it wasn't incriminating enough for a confrontation right this second, but Nancy was tired, drunk, and upset- never a great combination for self-restraint. She looked her mother up and down, despondently- and maybe still looking for some redemptive clue. Nothing. The more she looked, the more sense it made. Karen couldn't walk in heels that high, and her coat's v-neck showed no hint of thick layers underneath. She didn't usually wear that much makeup, and her hair looked as though she'd paraglided home… Like someone had run his hands through it, half pulling out the clasp. On top of all that, the look of surprised embarrassment on Karen's face when she'd seen Nancy standing on the drive. Nancy hadn't seen that look since Mike and his friends used her bra to win a public water balloon contest.

The look had only just worn off and was covered over with a forcedly jovial smile. That smile was the most incriminating thing.

"What? I'm not too old to have fun, am I?" Nancy found her keys, and opened the door, letting it fall on Karen behind her. Vodka still made her head feel heavy, and she clumsily kicked off her shoes, not bothering to wipe them, or leave them in the shoe rack. She shrugged off her coat and left it on the floor for good measure. Karen followed the shoes and coat into the kitchen like breadcrumbs. Nancy was drinking directly from the tap, letting the cool water drip down her chin, and onto her clothes. Karen was so shocked, she'd forgotten she was on the defensive, sidling passed her daughter to get a glass out of the cupboard. She told her in an authoritative whisper that if she wanted water, she'd drink it out of a glass. At that, Nancy whipped round with a look so sharp, it made Karen take a step back. "Does he have a car?" She whispered, venomously, "you still can't drive, so he'd need a car, right?"

"Nancy-"

"-I'm not an idiot!" She'd been backed into a corner of the kitchen cabinets but tried shoving passed her mother. Karen didn't move or make any attempt to pacify Nancy. In the state she was in, it would have been like trying to duct tape the faucet of a running tap.

"I know you're not." Defeated, Karen sighed into her hand.

"So? Is he well off? Good job, good education, good-"

"-Nancy, can I spea-"

"-what's his name?" The question threw Karen off, and she replied seriously that she didn't see why it mattered.

"It matters!" Nancy finally broke out of her whisper, and Karen hushed her in a panic. The following ten seconds were spent listening for movement upstairs. When Karen was satisfied Nancy hadn't woken anyone, she visibly unclenched. Her secrecy, whether hypocritically or not, made Nancy's top lip curl.

"Tell me…" Nancy pressed, "his name."

"Billy Hargrove."

All the air in Nancy's lungs shot out like an unplugged inflatable armband. 'You've got to be kidding me', her face spelled out. Max's brother? The meathead from California who beat Steve half to death? That Billy Hargrove? She couldn't mean him… he was a year older than her. Karen didn't have to look at her face to know that she would never look at her in the same way again. So she didn't open her eyes, only felt the rush of air as Nancy moved passed her, making her way up the stairs, and closed the latch on her door. The moon shined off of every reflective surface in the dark, quiet kitchen. The cupboard where they kept the glasses was still open. On the shelf underneath the taller, more uniform 'guest glasses', there was Mike's red plastic cup. She didn't know a lot about Star Wars, but she knew it was Darth Vader's mask on the front of it, the black pattern had faded over time. She'd bought it for him on a whim when he was ten, and he hadn't drunk juice out of anything else, even now, out of habit. Holly's special grown-up mug was right next to it. It was the first cup she drank out of that wasn't her baby beaker. Karen bought her a pink, flowery glass, but she wouldn't have it, because it wasn't yellow. Karen loved her daisy-chain-souled daughter. She loved that her favourite colour was yellow.

Ted snored loudly from their bedroom. The fact the sound travelled downstairs made the kitchen feel so much quieter.

Karen slowly shut the cupboard door, covered her face, and wept.

So! Murray and Nancy… didn't know this was going to be a chapter in and of itself until I started writing it… but here we are!

I've got a real affinity with these two- and just any platonic, healing relationships. I don't know why, I think the psychology behind non-romantic attachments is just… so fascinating to me. And here we have a wise, wonderfully strange Murray, who sees a lot of himself in Nancy as his protege. But then, there's still this conflict, because Murray has lost his kid in custody, so in a sense, he feels like he's 'failed' his own kid (probably why he was so committed to Barbra Holland's case when he was introduced in the show.) Now he sees Ted's obliviousness to his daughter, and wants to help her come to terms with it.

Then there's Nancy, who's just lost the only person who understood her, and now feels the absence of it, not having 'shared' trauma anymore. I did think Nancy was a bit overly harsh on her mum in the series, but Karen's got her own issues- being ignored by a husband she married essentially for 'security'. I know it's Max's family that's the most dysfunctional, and then there's Jonathan's dad, Steve's parents who are absent in every sense of the word- it's easy to look at the Wheeler family as the 'normal family'. But that's what I love about Nancy's speech in S1- she unpicks this suburban facade and calls them 'the nuclear family'.

Being ignored, while not nearly as scarring as being abused in any way, is still really hard to deal with.

(Like that scene in the breakfast club, when Andrew asks Allison what her parents do to her- and she responds with 'they ignore me'. He doesn't shoot back 'they ignore you, that's it?' He just nods sympathetically, like he really understands how deeply awful that is… Friggin' love that film!)

I imagine therapy involves a lot of that- acknowledging that it's wrong, unfair, and wasn't your place to make up for neglect as a kid, but then realising that it's still your responsibility as an adult to compensate… Anyone else think Murray would have made a great therapist?

Speaking of therapy- sounds like a good idea for Karen. Bless her! I would say that things will get better for everyone, but that would be an abominable lie, I'm afraid ;-)

But anyway- rant over! This chapter had to happen for character purposes, but I hope you enjoyed it!