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roping-riding-wrangling · 2 months ago

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Little Black Train

Previous Chapter

After several minutes of silence, interspersed with your father’s sniffling, he finally speaks up, “you were a fat baby. 11 pounds. Grandma Mary loved pinching those chubby little cheeks till they were bright red.”

Your response is to squeeze him tighter, encouraging him to keep going.

“I keep thinking about what I’d do if it was us,” he says, “If you were the one I was burying tomorrow.”

Summary: Y/n and Bob look through some scrapbooks, she goes monster hunting, and trauma dumps just a bit

Words: 4k

Warnings: Fem!Newby!reader, guns, funeral, mentions of death (including matriarchal and death of a child), swearing, mentions of Jonathan's creepy stalker photos

The living room is quiet. The whole house is quiet. There is a sense of mourning that exudes the walls, as if they know there is no place for joy here. They hold a deep reverence for the boy they never met, and as far as they know, never will.

But you know better. You know better than to hold a wake for a boy still alive, who’s false body will be lowered into the ground tomorrow.

Its late. Too late for your dad to be awake, yet there he is. You walk into your room and he sits on the bed, holding a scrapbook of baby pictures. A scrapbook that doesn’t contain anything past age 13. You can tell he’s been crying, his cheeks are still wet and his green eyes are contrasted against the red in his sclera.

You shift from foot to foot in the doorway. You pull at the sleeves of your jacket that you’ve yet to take off. He looks up at you and for the first time in a long time, you feel his age. His salt and pepper hair, the slight wrinkles on his face, the way he slouches from years of being hunched over a workbench. Bob Newby is by no means an old man, but he’s certainly not the young man who used to run circles around you.

You know, though, that as he stares at you, he only sees the little girl he cradled in his arms until you fell asleep. The kid who, unlike most 5 year old girls, came home covered in mud every day inexplicably. The child who ran into his room anytime you had a nightmare or the darkness was just a little too dark. His little buddy.

Perhaps Benny’s death and Will’s impending funeral have made you both a little more aware of each other's mortality. You sit next to him on the bed and put your arm around him and place your head on his shoulder. It reminds you of how you comforted Jonathan mere moments ago in the car.

You look down at the page your dad has opened. It's your first birthday party. Your dad holds your tiny body aloft, rubbing his nose with yours. You each have giant grins on your faces. In the background, your mother sits. She wears a bored expression, party hat tilted atop her head. She’s admittedly very beautiful, and you’ve inherited all her ugliest flaws. You hate how much you see of her in the mirror.

Your dad is clearly not focused on the woman who abandoned you both. He looks instead at the focus–you, always you. Your dad has done everything for you, a sacrifice that you will never dismiss.

Your response is to squeeze him tighter, encouraging him to keep going.

“I keep thinking about what I’d do if it was us,” he says, “If you were the one I was burying tomorrow.”

“What would you do?” you ask

“That's the thing,” he answers, “I don’t know. I try to picture losing you and I just get so sad I can’t think. Like, my brain stops working. I think that's just how it is, though. When a parent loses their kid, they lose their function. I remember seeing you for the first time and thinking: wow, this is my purpose. So, I lose you and I lose the purpose.”

He kisses the side of your forehead. “You’re my purpose, buddy. Don’t ever forget that.”

You kiss his cheek in return. “You’re my best friend. I don’t care how lame I sound. I’m lucky you’re my dad.”

You sit and pour over the scrapbook together, sharing wet laughs until the wee hours of the morning. You’ve nodded off against your dad’s shoulder too many times and he slaps his thighs before standing up, jerking you awake.

“Alright buddy,” he yawns, “I’m off to bed. Goodnight, love you.”

“G’night,” you say, already under the covers, “Love you too.”

–––––––––

The funeral is the next day and though you know the truth about Will’s apparent demise, it doesn’t change the fact that you are attending a funeral for a little boy. A little boy whose brother you’ve come to care for like your own sibling. You dress in a simple black dress, your dad wears a wool sweater over his dress shirt. You arrive early to the funeral, at your father’s insistence on punctuality.

You see Jonathan and his mother, but there’s a man with them you’ve never seen before.

Jonathan makes eye contact with you and slips away from them. You walk away from your dad, who is trapped in conversation with Mrs. Withersbee. Jonathan’s state keeps deteriorating, you notice. He looks even paler than yesterday and his eyebags are even more pronounced. You wonder if he got even an hour of sleep last night.

“Hey,” you pull him into a hug. You’ve noticed over the past few days that he always sinks into your touch. You can feel him relax, even if just slightly. You pull away and nod at the man sitting next to his mother. “Who’s that?” you ask.

“Lonnie–my dad,” Jonathan says with a barely contained sneer.

Your dad joins the pair of you, finally free of Mrs. Withersbee. “Jonathan?” your dad holds out his hand, which Jonathan takes in a firm handshake. “Mr. Newby.”

“I’m sorry about Will. We’re here if you guys need anything,” your dad says.

“Thanks,” Jonathan nods at him.

You depart from Jonathan with a comforting squeeze of his shoulders. As you walk to find a spot, your eyes scan the crowd for Nancy. You spot her and recognize her brother from Dustin’s group of friends. You try to recall his name, Matt or Mason or something–you know it starts with an M.

She doesn’t look your way, instead her eyes are practically locked onto Jonathan. Anytime you look her way during the ceremony, you can clearly follow her line of sight to the boy. An unreadable emotion is displayed on her face, or perhaps its several different emotions bubbling up to the surface.

Your dad’s arm is heavy across your shoulders. You appreciate the extra warmth he gives you against the cold November air.

The casket is lowered into the ground. It's a very sobering moment as you realize that even if they aren’t dead, very soon you could be at Will’s real funeral. Or Barbara’s, or Eleven’s. You glance at the other teens. It could be they’re funeral too. They’re a year younger than you and though it's not a huge gap, but you still feel protective of them.

After the ceremony, you slip away from your dad and grab Nancy’s hand. She lets you guide her silently to Jonathan’s car. He’s waiting for you with a piece of paper.

You and Nancy come up on either side of him as he shows it to you. The three of you sit down on the ground. “It's a map,” he begins his explanation, “This is for sure where we know it’s been.”

Nancy looks impressed at his collection of the information. Both of you’d assumed that this would be something to be done as a group. Your eyes dart between the map, Jonathan and Nancy. You wonder if this is part of the reason he got so little sleep or if he had done this because he couldn’t sleep.

You look back at the map. There are three Xes on it.

“So that's…” Nancy trails off

“Steve’s house, where Will’s bike was found, my house,” Jonathan says, pointing at each X

“Huh,” you say, “they're all really close. And look how close Will’s bike was to Benny’s?”

“Exactly,” Jonathan says, “It's all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing is, it’s not traveling far.”

“You wanna go out there?” Nancy asks.

“We might not find anything,” Jonathan says.

“I found something,” she responds.

“We have to try.” you say

“And if we find this thing, then what?” Nancy says

Jonathan responds resolutely, “We kill it.”

You and Nancy look at each other, a question in both of your heads: kill it with what?

Jonathan is already standing and offers a hand to Nancy who takes it, who then in turn helps you up from the ground. The two of you follow behind Jonathan as he leads you to a car you don’t recognize.

“Cover me,” he says before squatting down and unlocking the door with a knife. You and Nancy huddle around the boy, looking around to make sure no one sees you.

“Are you crazy?” you ask

He doesn’t answer you, just opens the door and begins on the glove compartment.

“Who’s car is this anyway?” you ask again.

“Lonnie’s” he answers.

“Oh.”

He opens the glovebox and pulls out a gun. Nancy looks at and scoffs, “Are you serious?”

“What?” Jonathan says, “You wanna find this thing and take another photo of it? Yell at it?”

“This is a terrible idea,” she says.

“Jonathan’s right. We need to get rid of this thing. This,” you gesture to the gun, “is our best chance.”

“We could tell someone.” she glances warily at the gun.

“Who would believe us?”

Nancy looks up at Jonathan, trying to convince him, “Your mom would.”

“She’s been through enough,” he argues.

“But–”

“Nancy,” you grab her arm, “do you really want to bring more people in on this? This thing’s dangerous. The less people involved, the better.”

She bites her lip, thinking it over. You and Jonathan look at each other, then back at her.

“Okay.” she says.

–––––

In the car, your dad talks again about the AV club. “Scott–Mr. Clarke–was telling me that the ham shack caught on fire. Totally random, just burst into flames.”

“It wasn’t a prank or anything?” you ask.

“Nope. Just poof! Melted.”

“Weird.”

–––––

At home, you search through the shed for something to fight against a life-threatening monster with. Your dad doesn't have any traditional weapons around, but you do find a big pipe that could come in handy. You don’t want Jonathan to be the only one armed. You throw the pipe into your trunk, then go back inside. Your dad is on the phone in his office–where all the tools are.

You slink inside and he raises an eyebrow at you. You mouth “Screwdriver” to him. He opens a drawer and you come around to pick one out. You find the biggest one you can and give him a kiss on the cheek. Outside his office, you stick the screwdriver in your jacket pocket. You grab your bag and keys and jump into your truck.

After popping a Beatles cassette into the tape deck, you drive to the address Nancy gave you. It's not too far from where you live, but most definitely in the nicer part of town.

You pull up and Steve is outside talking to his girlfriend. You can’t see him, but her face is strained, awkward.

“Nancy!” you call out to her, “C’mon!”

“Sorry Steve, I gotta go.”

She runs to your car and throws the bat she’s holding in the bed of the truck.

“What’d he want?” you ask, driving away.

Nancy drags a hand down her face. “I don’t know…he wanted to see a movie, but obviously…”

“You can’t,” you finish for her.

“Even if I could…I don’t know if I want to,” she says.

“Oh?” you say.

“Its just…He was such a dick the other day. He got mad at me when I went to the police about Barb. He freaked out because he was gonna get in trouble with his parents for having a party–drinking and stuff. Barb is missing and all he cared about was that he was gonna be in trouble with mommy and daddy. And I know he’s a good guy, he apologized–just now– but I don’t know. It still stings.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. whatever, we have bigger things to worry about.”

“Yeah…have you ever shot a gun before?” you ask, genuinely curious about the girl.

“I’ve never even held one.” she laughs, “You?”

“No. Benny was gonna teach me after I graduated, take me hunting and everything.” you say.

“You were really close with him, huh?”

“Yeah. He was a family friend for ages. He actually helped me get this,” you gesture to the truck, “piece of shit up and running.”

Almost as if to spite you, the truck makes a groaning noise.

“Is that normal?” Nancy asks nervously.

“Oh that,” the grumbling stops, “It happens sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”

“Right…” she says.

You pull off the road and drive into the grass at the edge of the woods. Hoisting yourself up on the bed of the truck, you grab the pipe and the baseball bat, tossing the latter to Nancy.

“Nice catch,” you say.

The two of you walk to the clearing that Jonathan described. He’s already there, shooting at glass bottles–and missing terribly.

“Do you think he knows he’s supposed to aim for the cans?” Nancy says to you, loud enough for him to hear it.

“You see the spaces in between the cans,” he retorts, “I’m aiming for those, actually.”

“Then you’re a perfect shot.” you say, setting down your stuff.

Jonathan looks to Nancy, who is already standing right next to him. “You ever shot a gun before?” he asks. You and Nancy look at each other and laugh at having just had the exact same conversation. Jonathan looks between the two of you, perplexed.

“Sorry,” Nancy says between giggling, “No, have you met my parents?”

Jonathan looks to you and you shake your head no.

“Yeah, I haven’t shot one since I was ten,” Jonathan says, “My dad took me hunting on my birthday. Made me kill a rabbit.”

“A rabbit?” Nancy says.

“Yeah. I guess he thought it would make me more of a man or something. I cried for a week.”

You picture a ten year old Jonathan crying while holding a gun, standing over a dead rabbit. It makes sense that he would cry over killing something so small and defenseless. He’s intensely protective, so of course he wouldn’t want to hurt something that isn’t doing any harm.

“Your dad sounds like a peach.” you say sarcastically.

“Yeah,” he scoffs, “I think he and my mother loved each other at some point, but I wasn’t around for that part.”

Nancy holds out her hand and Jonathan hands the gun to her. She aims and lets out a breath. “I don’t think my parents ever loved each other.” she says.

“There must’ve been some reason they married each other.” Jonathan says and she rolls her eyes. “My mom was young. My dad was older, but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So they bought a nice house at the end of a cul-de-sac and started their nuclear family.”

“Screw that.” Jonathan huffs.

“Yeah,” she closes one eye, “Screw that.”

She squeezes the trigger and hits the can dead on.

“Woah!” you gasp.

She blushes and offers you the gun, which you take. It's oddly heavy in your hands. You line up in front of a can and square yourself up.

“I uh, I never really knew my mom,” you say, raising the gun, “She died a few years ago. What's crazy is I didn’t even know her family existed, but they all acted like I was the prodigal son. The truck is her old shitbox. They insisted I take it. Her husband has two lincolns.”

“Oh.” Nancy says.

You can remember every little detail of her funeral. Her husband–tall, graying hair, and dark brown eyes. He had wrinkles around his eyes and wore half moon eyeglasses. Her son looked like the perfect combination of the two of them. Though he’s younger, he stood at eye level with you. You would have balked at the similarities between the two of you, if you’d cared. He smirked as her husband pressed the keys into your hand and insisted that she would have wanted it, that you deserve it.

The months that followed that interaction were filled with painstaking labor and frequent stops at the auto shop. Benny taught you everything you could ever know about taking care of a car’s engine, but the radio was all your dad. The damn thing had a tape jammed in it and your dad spent an entire day sitting in the hot Indiana sun, carefully fiddling with the radio, not just getting it to work, but also getting the tape out in one piece.

It was almost sunset when he got it to work, you were replacing the serpentine belt and heard his triumphant laugh, then the voice of Woody Guthrie sing, “You silken bar-room ladies, dressed in your worldly pride. You’ve got to ride that little black train thats coming in tonight.” You both cheered as the song played.

The irony of that moment just now hits you, and you have to hold back a laugh as you realize that possibly the last song your mother heard was a song about the inescapability of death.

You suck in a breath and squeeze the trigger. The kickback surprises you with its power, for how small the weapon is. You don’t hit the can, instead the bullet lodges itself in the stump it rests upon.

“You better hang on to this,” you hand Nancy the gun, “You’re clearly the best shot.”

Again she blushes under the praise. You grab the pipe and Jonathan grabs the bat. The three of you stand at the edge of the woods. They seem so daunting, especially knowing what's in there.

“Onwards?” you say to the others.

“Onwards,” they respond in unison.

––––

You’ve been walking in circles for over an hour and haven’t found anything. You walk a few paces ahead of the others, occasionally hitting at the ground with your pipe. You turn around and walk backwards while facing the two younger teens. “Have you guys seen anything yet?”

“No,” Jonathan says.

You turn back around and walk further ahead.

“You never said what I was saying,” Nancy tells Jonathan.

“What?” he says what you’re thinking.

“Yesterday, you said I was saying something and that’s why you took my picture,” says Nancy.

You cringe, remembering the invasive photos of the girl.

“Oh, uh. I don’t know” Jonathan explais “I guess I saw this girl, trying to be someone else. But for that moment…it was like you were alone, or you thought you were. And, you know, you could just be yourself.”

Apparently Nancy disagrees because she says, “That is such bullshit.” “What?” Jonathan stammers.

You don’t hear their footsteps anymore, so you turn around to see them stopped and facing each other.

“I am not trying to be someone else. Just because I’m dating Steve and you don’t like him–”

“You know what? Forget it, I just thought it was a good picture.”

Jonathan walks past you, Nancy hot on his heels.

“He’s actually a good guy,” She yells at him, “the other day, with the camera he’s not like that at all…he was just being protective.”

You can't help but wonder when Nancy had changed her mind and forgiven Steve–or if it was a ruse for the sake of fighting with Jonathan.

“Yeah, thats one word for it,” Jonathan scoffs.

“Oh and I guess what you did was okay?” she retorts

“I never said that,” he yells over his shoulder.

Nancy pushes on the topic, “He had every right to be pissed–”

“Does that mean I have to like him?”

“No.”

They huff at each other for a moment. You can clearly pick up on some tension between them–romantic or otherwise. Jonathan takes a breath and picks his next words carefully, “Listen. Don’t take it personally. I don’t like most people. He’s in the vast majority.”

Nancy doesn’t let the conversation end there. It's like she wants to fight. “You know, I was actually starting to think that you were okay. I was thinking ‘Jonathan Byers: maybe he’s not the pretentious creep everyone says he is.”

That gets Jonathan riled up again, “I was just starting to think you were okay. I was thinking ‘Nancy Wheeler: Maybe she’s not just the same suburban girl who thinks she’s rebelling by doing exactly what every other suburban girl does, until that phase passes and they marry some boring one-time jock who now works sales and they’ll live out a perfectly boring little life at the end of some cul-de-sac. Exactly like their parents, who they thought were so depressing. But now hey, they get it’”

“Jonathan!” you yell at him and chase after him as he storms away. Nancy follows behind you and the three of you walk in silence. You stand in the middle of the two, a buffer. For hours, you explore the area from Jonathan’s map. You walk well past sunset and each pull flashlights from your bags. The forest is ten times creepier at night. It's a new moon, so the only light comes from the flashlights you carry. Every crunch of a leaf or snap of a twig nearly gives you whiplash from how hard you swing your head.

A low whimper sounds to your right and you turn your head immediately. Nancy stops, having also heard the noise.

“Are you tired?” Jonathan mocks but you hold up your hand. “Shut up,” you say.

“What?” he asks, offended.

“Shut up!” you whisper-yell at him.

Nancy looks over to you, then off in the distance “I think its over–”

The noise comes again, louder this time. “There!” She shouts and begins walking towards the sound. You and Jonathan trail after her to find an injured deer.

“Oh god,” you say.

“Its been hit by a car,” Nancy says, kneeling down, “we can’t just leave it.”

The doe whimpers again and Nancy holds the gun out as if to shoot it, her hand shaking and lip quivering. Jonathan gently says to her, “I’ll do it.”

“I thought you said…” she trails off.

“I’m not nine anymore.” he states and takes the gun from her.

The three of you stand and Nancy turns to you, facing away from the doe. You pull an arm around her and she grips your jacket, seeking comfort in you. Shielding herself from the reality the deer has to face.

You close your eyes in anticipation, but are no gunshots to be heard, only a dragging sound. You open your eyes to see the doe being pulled into the darkness. You lean closer to see a trail of blood left behind. “What was that?” you ask no one in particular.

You follow the trail through the trees. No one dares to say a word until the trail ends. But there is no deer and no monster at the end. It just…stops.

“Where’d it go?” Nancy says.

“I don’t know,” Jonathan answers, his gun up, “do you see any more blood?”

You shine your flashlight all over the ground but find nothing, “Not here.”

The three of you split up to cover more ground. You point your flashlight all over, but find nothing. No blood, no bones. It's like the deer disappeared completely.

“Y/n!” you hear Nancy yell from afar, “Jonathan!” You turn around and head towards where you heard her. You shine your light towards where she is, but there’s nothing there. Suddenly a scream resounds. You run hard, your legs burning. You push past it, never dropping your pace. You hear Jonathan yell her name from farther away. You call out to her too, practically willing her to appear.

The scream doesn’t leave your mind. It’s blood-curdling, heart-stopping. You keep running, but trip over something and crash face first into something hard. Pushing yourself up, you try to blink off the dizziness. Looking down, you see a rock right where your forehead landed. You turn to see your foot is caught in and your heart drops when you see Nancy’s bag on the ground. You hurriedly untangle yourself and push yourself up. Jonathan nearly knocks you into the ground again as he barrels forward.

“Where is she?” he looks at you, eyes pleading.

“I don’t know.” you say “Nancy!”

“Nancy!”

All you hear is a scream in response.

Taglist: @ucannotcompare

#where you lead #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington x newby!reader #steve harrington x reader #stranger things #stranger things rewrite #thank you so much for the kind responses so far #this was such a fun chapter to come up with a song for #Y/n Newby my cringefail queen

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