Girlhood, you learned early, was something other people were allowed to practice.

It lived in sleepovers and painted nails and whispered crushes under blankets. It lived in softness you were never taught to keep. Hawkins Lab had not cared if you liked pink or how to braid hair or how to sit with your knees together. They cared that you could move objects with your mind. That you could hear thoughts that weren’t yours. That you survived. To them, you weren’t a name. You were a number, and that painful reminder will always rest on the tattoo you have on your wrist. 003.

So you grew up sharp. Useful. Quiet in the wrong ways. You got your personality from the mall that Robin snuck you to, piecing together your own persona from windows and girls in huge groups, laughing.

Steve Harrington loved you anyway.

He loved the way you flinched at loud noises and the way your hands curled when you were overwhelmed, like you were holding something invisible together. He loved you like a person who didn’t need you to be anything else. And that scared you more than monsters ever had.

Because loving Steve meant standing in the long shadow of Nancy Wheeler.

You didn’t mean to go to her. Not at first. But the ache had been sitting under your ribs for weeks now—this gnawing sense that you were missing something everyone else had received at birth. You watched Max and Robin and even Nancy move through the world with a confidence you didn’t have, like they knew the rules and you were improvising.

Nancy Wheeler defined girlhood in your mind because she had once defined Steve’s.

So you knocked on her door with your heart in your throat.

She didn’t look surprised to see you.

Instead, Nancy handed you a mug of tea and sat across from you at the kitchen table like she’d been waiting.

“You don’t hate me,” you said quietly, the words tumbling out before you could stop them. “Do you?”

Nancy blinked. Then she smiled—small, tired, real. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

The tension you’d been carrying cracked open in your chest.

“I don’t know how to be… normal,” you admitted. “I don’t know how to be a girl. Everyone else makes it look easy and I feel like I’m always pretending.”

Nancy studied you for a long moment. “Being a girl isn’t a checklist,” she said finally. “It’s not softness or toughness or knowing what to do with your hands. It’s choosing yourself, even when you’re scared.”

You swallowed. “Steve loved you.”

“I know,” she said gently. “And he loves you now.”

The jealousy you’d been ashamed of loosened its grip, replaced by something warmer. Understanding, maybe. Or permission.

“You don’t have to become me,” Nancy added. “You just have to become you. And Steve—he didn’t fall in love with a version of you that fits better. He fell in love with the truth.”

Later, when Steve finds you sitting on the hood of his car, knees tucked to your chest, he doesn’t ask where you’ve been. He just stands between your legs and presses his forehead to yours.

“You okay?” he murmurs.

You nod, then shake your head, then laugh softly at yourself. “I think I’m learning.”

He smiles like that’s more than enough. Like it always has been.

“I’m terrified that Dr. Kay is going to catch me one of these days, and it’s all going to be the same.” you said, shaking your head

“And so that makes you scared for the future that we always talked about.” Steve said, finishing your statement

And he was right. You were terrified you’d never get to go on that roadtrip you 2 had always spoken of, or that you’d never be able to give him his “6 little nuggets” because you’d be locked up in a lab.