Chapter Text
Robin doesn’t think about Nancy Wheeler again until the summer of ‘85. Not really, except for the incident where her relationship drama was scrawled all over the marquee of the movie theater in bright red paint.
It takes a summer working alongside Steve Harrington himself, being tortured in a basement, and fighting a Cronenburgian abomination for the fate of the world or whatever for Nancy Wheeler to come back on to Robins radar.
“Robin?” Steve said, snapping Robin back to attention. His brows were drawn together now, looking at her in concern.
In the two weeks since Starcourt he’d had to do that more often. It was odd- she usually was so on edge during every interaction (as a precaution, out of fear) that she felt almost scatterbrained without anything to hide. It was like rediscovering herself. As if that drugged heart to heart on a bathroom floor had relaxed something in her chest that had been wound up her whole life. Or maybe it was just the first symptoms of her impending psychological breakdown.
“So…” Robin drew out, aimlessly spinning on Steves suspiciously unused desk chair.
Steve looked up from where he was fiddling with a rubiks cube he’d swiped from Dustin, an eyebrow cocked into an expression he’d totally stolen from her.
“When did Nancy Wheeler turn into a total badass?”
Steve blinked at her, the non-sequitur confusing him for a moment. Then he snorted. “What happened to ‘she’s a priss’?”
“Hey now.” Robin said, sitting up a little straighter. She pulled her legs up from their casual splayed position and perched, crosslegged, on her chair. “Opinions given on the floor of a dirty public bathroom aren’t admissible in this court. Besides, that was before I realized she was the second coming of Sigourney Weaver.” She didn’t give that label out lightly.
Steve, who was in the middle of receiving a Robin Buckley crash course in movie appreciation, nodded in thoughtful agreement. “Nancy could definitely pull off the jumpsuit.” He agreed.
God I wish , Robin thought to herself.
“Hm? Did you say something Rob?”
Fuck. Had she said that out loud?
“What’s with all the questions all of the sudden?” There was no hint of accusation or suspicion in his words, but they still made Robin flinch. Questions like that were dangerous- they always led to topics she wasn’t willing to talk about. She waited for the familiar swell of dread that always accompanied increased scrutiny- but when it came, it lacked teeth.
Steve Harrington already knew the darkest skeleton Robin had hidden in her closet. She didn’t have to be afraid of him reading too much into her comments and mannerisms when he already knew the truth.
Robins knee-jerk anxiety, on the other hand… she’d have to work on that.
“I saw the girl Hawkins High voted 'Most Likely To Succeed' unload a clip into an extra-dimensional hell demon- excuse me if I'm curious." Her hands fluttered and she forced them to settle on her knees. She cleared her throat awkwardly. "But- uh, I get it if you don't want to talk about her, I mean-"
Steve snorted. "Nah, it's fine. I'm mostly over everything with her and Jonathan anyway. Nancy is a better friend than a girlfriend anyway."
Robin swallowed the retort that leapt into her mouth- something about how that was a pretty low bar, considering Nancy didn't seem to be a very good girlfriend to begin with. Steve, for all that he talked a big game, had been pretty transparent in not being entirely over his ex-girlfriend.
“Nancy got dragged into this stuff pretty early on.” Steve gestured vaguely, as if that would somehow encompass the enormity of the government conspiracy bullshit they’d both been dragged into. “When the Byers kid went missing, I mean. There was no way Mike was going to stay out of it. Which meant there was no way Nancy was going to stay out of it. Especially since Barb was… yeah.” Steve shot her an apologetic glance.
Robin grimaced. The official announcement that Barb was dead and that the government had covered it up was like being sucker punched. She would’ve appreciated some warning, but she supposed other than Steve, no one remembered that she used to be friends with Barb. Whatever. She’d add it to the pile of things she’d tell her therapist, if she found one that wouldn’t throw her in Pennhurst the first time she mentioned the ‘Russians under the mall’.
“So she’s been doing this for two years?” Robin said.
“Yup.”
“Huh.” Robin was impressed, despite herself. A common emotion concerning Nancy, she was finding out. “I’ve only had to do this once and I feel like a crazy person.” How the hell had Nancy managed to stay on the Honor Roll while all this was going on? Who had time for homework when inter-dimensional portals threatened the very fabric of reality? Who had the time to date not one, but two boys while all this was going on?
Nancy Wheeler, apparently.
“You get used to it.” Steve shrugged. He twisted a random section of the rubiks cube, scowling at it when he only managed to disrupt the section of solid color he'd painstakingly gained of the last hour.
“Did you know Wheeler could shoot like that when you wrote that shit about her on the movie theater in town?” Robin asked, fascinated.
Steve's eyes widened. His eyes flickered back and forth, as if he were revisiting all the times he’d witnessed Nancy unleash incredible violence on eldritch monsters from the beyond. His fingers tightened on the rubiks cube.
“Oh my god I could’ve died.”
Robin took a second to remember the way Nancy had looked, putting bullet after bullet through the windshield into Billy Hargroves chest. The way she’d looked in the aftermath, her expression still severe and alert, had stuck with her. That and the fact that Nancy Wheeler had a jawline that could cut glass.
“Remind me to add a retrospective ‘You Suck’ tally to your score.” Robin said, shaking those thoughts from her head and laughing at Steve when he made an indignant noise in reply. She moved the conversation away from Nancy Wheeler, turning to safer topics.
She was still learning the limits of this new relationship dynamic she had with Steve, tentatively exploring the limits of his tolerance for her… everything. She hadn’t found them yet, but she felt, bad girlfriend or not, telling Steve his ex was a babe was maybe a step too far.
Robins impending psychological breakdown was polite enough to wait until the end of summer. Working at Family Video with Steve all day, shooting the shit and pretending everything was normal- that kept the nightmares at a low simmer in the background of her life. When school came around she had to drop to part time, the disruption of her routine brought her night terrors back in full force.
Between barely sleeping and the inherent stress of senior year, Robin felt strung out. Isolated. With Steve graduated, she spent most of her day keeping to herself among classmates that went through their day to day in blissful ignorance.
Dustin and his crowd of misfits were around, but she was an upperclassman most of them didn’t know that well so they kept their distance- unless she was behind the counter at Family Video. She saw Nancy in the halls occasionally, always speedwalking somewhere with an intense look on her face. Robin would stop and watch her go, biting her lip as she fretted over whether she should try to talk to Nancy about what happened over the summer.
Between the stories she heard from Dustin and Steve and what Robin saw with her own eyes, Nancy just seemed so cool. So very unlike the girl she’d scoffed at on the floor of the Starcourt bathroom.
Robin wanted a little bit of that self-assuredness for herself. She wanted to know how Nancy got through every day after three years of Hawkins bullshit when some mornings Robin could hardly drag herself out of bed. Robin wanted to know how Nancy could stare death in the face- and make death blink first.
In the end, Robin didn’t approach Nancy at all. Without Robin bridging the gap, their paths barely crossed for all of the fall semester or winter break despite the fact that they spent 8 hours a day in the same building. That didn't mean the other girl was ever far from Robins mind- something that eventually made its way into the dreams that terrorized her nights.
Robin was in the bunker again. She was in the bunker listening to the thick, meaty sound of a bone saw cutting into flesh. Steve had screamed at first, his head slamming back into hers as he jerked and writhed. He screamed until his voice gave out- when the sounds finally cracked in his throat he broke down into wrenching sobs. The ropes that bound them together went taut and slack with the way he convulsed, cutting Robins breath short. The sounds he made were so wretched they sounded inhuman. She tried to speak, to scream, to beg them to stop but she couldn’t make a single sound. She could only listen to Steve being taken apart behind her.
Steve's cries cut off abruptly. His body went limp and his head lolled back onto her shoulder. Something warm and wet was dripping down her spine, originating from where she and Steve were pressed together. Robin couldn’t tell if he was dead or if he’d just passed out.
It didn’t go like this before- they’d escaped the last time, before the Russians had started maiming Steve. Last time, they’d just been smacked around a bit. Robins breath quickened in her chest, praying that she woke up soon. She knew she was dreaming and she knew what would happen if she didn’t wake up-
One of the Russians was in front of her, now. He looked like he’d butchered an animal. His hands and forearms were streaked with gore, and Robin could see the bright scarlet red of arterial spray across his shadowed face. The saw blade held at his side was dripping loudly onto the tile.
Please please please - Robin was crying now, shaking her head as the saw came down on her own leg. Robin watched with horror as her flesh melted at the touch of the blade, sloughing away as it melted into the slurry that Robin had witnessed the Mind Flayer command-
The door of the bunker slammed open, bouncing off the concrete wall with a loud bang. The man with the saw looked up, scowling and opening his mouth to yell at whoever was interrupting. Another bang. Robin flinched as blood spattered across the back wall (and a few stray droplets hit her face) as a hole appeared between his eyes.
Robin turned to look, her face wet with tears and snot and blood. She let out a heaving, grateful sob when she saw the short silhouette of Nancy Wheeler and her pistol standing in the doorway.
“Are you alright?” Robin sniffled as Nancy bent down to look her in the eyes. Now she knew this wasn’t real- there’s no way Wheeler would take the time to ask such a stupid question. How could Robin be okay? Her leg was half liquefied and Steve might be dead-
Except Steve wasn’t at her back anymore and her leg felt and looked fine. It was just her and Nancy in a small bunker surrounded by dead Russian agents. Nancy reached out and cradled Robins face, pulling her gaze away from the bodies on the floor. A few more tears squeezed themselves from Robins eyes as she let herself lean into Nancys touch, savoring a moment that never happened with a girl who didn’t know her.
Nancys thumb brushed along Robins cheekbone, wiping a droplet of blood away from her eye. She smelled like gunpowder and newsprint, an amalgam of the smell that haunted the offices of the Weekly Streak and the freshly discharged pistol at her side.
Robins subconscious didn’t prompt Nancy to speak more, perhaps recognizing that this comforting illusion would be shattered if she stretched the limits of credulity. Instead, Nancy just held Robin as she started to cry again and kept watch over her as she broke down.
When Robin woke up, she hadn’t sweat through her sheets or fallen off her bed onto the floor. Instead she felt… tender. Like her dream had been poking at a sore spot she hadn’t even known was bruised and had offered a much needed catharsis.
She tried to examine the ache in her chest, trying to tease out why her mind had conjured such a twist ending to her usual night terrors.
Steve would die to protect his friends- with Robin counted as the newest addition to that number. Their harrowing adventure (and subsequent bathroom heart to heart) had proven their loyalty to each other. He was always in her dreams, there in the basement with her- always trying to protect her and suffering for it.
Nancy was a new addition. Very rarely did anyone else besides Steve feature in her personal horror show- on a few terrible occasions, Dustin had been the one tied up with her. Or Erica. Those nights always ended with her hunched over the toilet, retching as she recalled Russians taking the kids apart piece by piece while Robin could only listen in frozen horror.
Never had she imagined anyone rescuing her.
It made sense, Robin thought hazily to herself as she flipped her pillow. The cool fabric felt soothing. If there was anyone who could bust you out of a Russian black site...
Robins feelings towards Nancy were rapidly complicating themselves. It was frustrating, especially since Nancy herself didn't seem to have to expend any effort or even interact with Robin to twist her emotions into knots.
Really, when it came down to it… Nancy was someone who would kill to protect her friends. Robin desperately wanted to prove that she was worth the protective instinct Nancy seemed to have in spades. Maybe then she would stop feeling so scared all the time. If Nancy Wheeler had Robins back there wouldn’t be a thing left in Hawkins that could scare her. Interesting how her mind interpreted Nancy Wheeler with a gun as ‘safe’.
(Robin tried to resolutely ignore the voice inside herself that wondered what, exactly, she brought to the table if she was too much of a coward to die for anyone and too much of an uncoordinated wimp to offer any sort of protection herself.)
Robin sighed, frowning as she remembered the blank, irritated look in the other girl's eyes as she asked “Who are you, exactly?"
Nancy Wheeler wanting to protect Robin Buckley? Please.
She turned onto her side, shutting her eyes and trying to drift off again.
Maybe this time she’d be rescued by a cute girl who actually remembered her name.