Chapter Text
Robin was exhausted. That didn’t really seem to cover it, but she was too tired to put into words the full body and mental toll that brought her to this point.
One minute she was in euphoria. Her back smacking down into reality on a shitty twin size mattress, covered in weird stains and smelling horribly of teenage boy. Then, she was in panicked agony, watching her new friend’s eyes roll to the back of her head.
Nancy.
The entire trailer erupted into roarous screams and pure chaos. Robin felt like everything was going in slow motion. Sound muffled. Her heart raced. Her smile and her stomach turned upside down immediately after it had turned right side up. She felt like crying and throwing up. She felt, for maybe the first time, like she really couldn’t handle this God-forsaken alternate universe she stumbled across just last year on a silly soviet witch hunt with her surprising, new found best friend she wasn’t quite best friends with yet at the time.
Robin’s eyes found Steve. Across the expanse, in the shadowed mirror of their world, Steve’s face was an exact replica of her own. Just with obnoxiously stupid hair.
As their eyes met, Robin was suddenly able to muster a strength she didn’t think her goofy, obnoxious, nonchalant self was capable of.
There was Steve, her best friend, holding a shaking Nancy Wheeler, with unadulterated terror in his eyes.
In that moment, Robin knew that Steve wasn’t going to be capable of peeling himself away from Nancy, his first love, and doing whatever they needed to do to bring her back to them. It would have to be Robin. Russian code breaking, massive band geek, multilingual, fiercely loyal, clumsy, hyperactive, too smart for her own good- Robin Buckley.
Over the past few days, Nancy Wheeler had been the biggest surprise that Robin never saw coming. Truly saying a lot, considering she was now best friends with Steve “The Hair” Harrington. To Robin, Nancy was prissy, perky, and narcissitically smarter than everyone in whatever room she walked into. Sure, she was also perfectly polite. Sure, she never seemed to pay much attention to the social hierarchy of Hawkins High and Robin guessed that was pretty cool. Sure, she smiled at everyone she happened to make eye contact with. But she was a priss. Robin just couldn’t shake that preconception in her head.
Then she actually hung out with Nancy Wheeler, albeit, kind of against both of their wills.
Robin was regrettably familiar with troops of police lights flashing ever since Starcourt. Even before that, when Will Byers and her former friend Barb, who she saw less and less of because of none other than Nancy Wheeler, went missing. That was the Hawkins she came to know. Bouts of madness between typical small town quiet. She supposed it had been quiet for too long.
It was with no surprise, and mild annoyance, that she rolled her eyes as Steve slowed his car and then abruptly stopped when he saw Nancy amongst the chaos. Next thing Robin knew, she was hanging out with her code cracking crew and Nancy Fucking Wheeler, trying to solve two gruesome murders.
With an aburptness that not even Robin Buckley could keep up with, she was whisked away with the quiet tenacity of one Nancy Wheeler. Robin should have guessed that the editor of the school paper would have the same quick instinct as a snake lunging for its prey.
Nancy was a conundrum. She was the smart, pretty, Queen of Hawkins High. She was atop a pedestal that no mere mortal high school student could dream of reaching. She was also quiet. Attentive. Nancy could slip through the cracks and hide if she wanted to. A somehow perfect balance of chess club nerd and cheerleader. Nancy Wheeler was neither, but she could be in both if she wanted to be. Instead, however, Nancy was part of the school paper. She was always observing people, always fiercely invested in telling the truth. Maybe that was why Robin kind of hated her. She would never be able to tell her truth, at least not in Hawkins.
It didn’t take long, but now Robin almost felt bad for using the school paper as a mat beneath her chair in the music room for whenever she needed to drain the spit valve on her melophone.
It didn’t take long, but now maybe Robin sorta, kinda liked Nancy. At least, at some point, her brain started saying Nancy instead of Nancy Wheeler. Which probably meant Robin was starting to see her as a person and not an untouchable entity amongst the high school royalty.
Robin didn’t get Nancy alone on purpose. She was just challenging Steve’s patriarchal overprotection towards women like she always did. The thing she knew Steve both detested (in a “God, my best friend is so annoying” type of way) and appreciated (in a “I want to keep being a better man” type of way). Robin loved that about him. He had become like a brother to her, but somehow their bond felt stronger than that. Platonic with a capital ‘P’, but soulmates none the less. It was because of this that Robin began to think maybe Nancy Wheeler wasn’t so bad. Maybe she deserved a chance. Maybe they could even be friends some day.
It was in the library that Robin realized Nancy deserved a chance, not because of Steve, but because of her own merits. Nancy was smart and even though Robin rambled to the point she could visibly see Nancy’s annoyance, Nancy never told her to shut up. Robin realized then that Nancy wasn’t just polite in the way that good girls are supposed to be. Nancy was nice, and good, and pretty, and oh man, she shouldn’t let her brain go there.
Unfortunately, Robin started to understand how Steve could have loved Nancy and why he possibly still did. Robin understood it a little more than she was willing to admit when Nancy hovered over her shoulder and smiled at her after they found information on Vecna using the library pressreader.
“Robin!” Eddie was waving his hand in front of her face for an amount of time Robin wasn’t sure of. “I’m kind of freaking out here, Buckley. We need to do something!”
Eddie looked panicked. The kids were arguing about what needed to be done.
They didn’t have time to bicker. Robin at least knew that.
She sprang up with a ferocity that one wouldn’t expect from the laid back, but jittery, band geek. “Eddie, where are your tapes?”
“What,” Eddie questioned, taken aback by the sudden charge taken by his newly found friend.
“Your tapes, Eddie. Now,” Robin said assuredly. She was exuding a quiet confidence, her hands free of their normal fidgetting.
“Um, in my room.” He pointed towards the back of the trailer and followed as Robin headed straight there.
She moved to his dresser and started going through the stacks of cassettes until landing on a specific tape. “Eddie Munson! I knew you were secretly a softy,” Robin excitedly hugged him and ran back into the living room. All the kids stopped dead in their arguing.
“Max, I need your walkman.”
“Robin, you don’t even really know Nancy. Do you think you can just guess her favorite song,” Dustin looked at her incredulously.
“No, but I know the only music I saw in her entire room was this album and a few others. And I think I know her well enough to make an educated guess.”
Everyone was silent.
“Give me the walkman Max. I need you guys to trust me.”
With the steady hands of a surgeon Robin put the headphones around her neck and took the tape from its case, placing it with hurried gentleness into the player. She closed it and handed the case to Max. Agent Provocateur by Foreigner.
Eddie and the kids looked at her with worried fascination.
Robin pushed down the fast forward button, shoved the player into her front pocket, and latched onto the rope suspended between the dark dimension and their own. The rope that tethered her to Steve and Nancy.
She really wished she would have taken gym more seriously. It was embarrassing enough having to climb that damn rope in the first place. This was for Nancy though. Her sweet, smart, incredible new friend: Nancy Wheeler.
Robin pulled herself up with all her strength until she got her body halfway through the gate. Now, with some experience, she pulled her legs up and let the newfound gravity bring her right side up into the upside down. It was probably the most coordinated movement she’d ever accomplished in her life. Nancy would have smirked if she could see it.
Robin crouched down in front of her friends, making eye contact with Steve’s dreadful stare. She took his hand, “don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
She pulled the walkman from her pocket and pressed play. She quickly checked to see if the tape had made it to the song she thought, and hoped, was the right choice.
Robin could hear the end of track 2, and as it transitioned into track 3 she took the headphones and smoothly placed them over Nancy’s ears. She turned the volume up so that anyone within ten feet could hear the upbeat music start to play over the static hum of the dark dimension.
I Want to Know What Love is by Foreigner.
Robin held onto Steve, but took Nancy’s limp hand in her free one.
It had been almost a minute and nothing was happening. Nancy hadn’t started floating in the air yet, which Robin took as a good sign, but she was starting to panic.
Everyone was eerily quiet and Robin couldn’t take it anymore.
“Come on, Nance. I know you’re in there. I just need you to hear me. To hear your friends. I need you to use that big journalist brain of yours and listen like you always do. We can’t do this without you,” she paused. “I don’t want to do this without you.”
Robin let go of Steve and wrapped her arm around Nancy’s back. She placed a clammy hand on her thigh.
With a delicate alto, Robin began to speak-sing, like Johnny Cash, along with the music radiating from the headphones.
“I want to know what love is… Want you to show me… I know you can show me.”
Robin's heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest. In pain. In preemptive loss. In realizations she was not prepared to have in this extremely inconvenient moment. She wasn’t sure.
Nancy’s body seized and Robin held on tighter. She wouldn’t let her be taken. Not like this.
Then Nancy went limp and Robin took the hand grasping onto her leg and brought it to her face. Her eyes were so close but looked so impossibly far away. They were a void more terrifying than any gate to the upside down Robin had ever seen.
Her eyes closed and Robin knew in her core that it was over. Nancy didn’t get sucked into the air. Robin and all her friends didn’t have to suffer through watching someone they love have every bone in their body snapped into unnatural positions. They didn’t have to see Nancy’s beautiful stone eyes get clawed away from the inside. They didn’t have to see her turn from her small but tenacious form into an unrecognizable, mummified, and grotesque version of herself.
But Robin could feel it. She could feel the lifelessness of her once vital friend. She could feel the way her body went from battle-tense to completely limp. Her heart ached as she opened her eyes and saw the listless repose of Nancy’s face.
She would never again see the crinkle above Nancy’s brow as she pieces together clues. Never again would she see the smile of triumph when Nancy was right about something. Never again would Robin get to stare into her determined, but doe-like eyes.
If her heart was broken already, now the pieces were being stepped on and shattered like glass at every realization her brain began spiraling through.
Robin closed her eyes again. She tried to imagine those perfect, piercing irises. She tried to stop herself from wishing she had stared into them more and for longer when she had the chance.
Robin took a deep inhale. She wasn’t sure what had happened. Maybe Nancy’s heart just couldn’t take it. Maybe she gave up before Vecna had the chance to take her with him. Robin didn’t know. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.
She laid her forehead against Nancy’s and began to cry soft tears. The kind of tears you can’t stop from slipping out.
Then something incredible happened.
Nancy’s hand tensed around Robin’s arm. They opened their eyes into each other’s as Nancy sucked in a dramatic breath.
“Robin?”
“Oh my God, Nancy,” Robin said exasperated. She took the other girls face between both her hands, scanning her eyes for something Nancy wasn’t sure of. “I thought we lost you. I thought I lost you.”
Nancy was pulled into the most wonderfully crushing yet soft hug she’d ever experienced. She couldn’t do anything else but hug Robin back.
It felt like seeing land after months lost at sea. It felt like feet touching down on the beach after thinking you would never feel it again. It felt like your family waiting for you with an assuredness that you were going to walk through the door any minute no matter how much time had passed. It felt like coming home and… It was everything.
Suddenly noise began to filter into the moment. People were screaming. Some were crying. Nancy was pulled from Robin into Steve’s arms as he sobbed gently.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he reassured both her and himself.
She met his eyes. “Thank you.”
Nancy pulled back and grabbed both of their hands. “Thank you both for getting me out of there.” Her eyes flitted between the boy she once loved and the girl she wasn’t quite sure what she felt for yet.
Friends. We’re friends now, Nancy thought.
Robin was the first girl friend she’d had since Barb.
With that thought, her time with Vecna all came flooding back and she squeezed both their hands tighter.
Steve squeezed her hand back. He’d become such a better person since they were together, but talking was never his strong suit. Nancy knew that, but also didn’t want to assume she knew him as well as she used to. She didn’t know what this new Steve was like. Maybe he was a ‘talking about your feelings’ guy now.
Then she looked over to Robin, who had so much concern written over her face. A look that reminded her of Barb, in a way. Robin wanted to protect her, that was clear. Though it wasn’t in a way that Steve or Jonathan wanted to protect her. With a single look it felt like Robin wanted to take Nancy’s heart in her hands and take it away from the world that so often tried to crush it.
Nancy didn’t have time to think about it though, because Robin was bringing them all up to their feet. “Let’s get you out of here. We can talk about all of this when everyone is rested.”
“Man, it’s about time! I thought you guys were setting up to have a slumber party and paint each other’s nails over there,” Eddie joked from across the gate.
“Oh shut up Munson, you probably have more nail polish than I do,” Robin retorted.
That got an honest to God laugh from Nancy. Then everyone started laughing. The pain and worry finally dissipated from their little bubble after that.
“Alright, alright,” Eddie asserted. “Let’s get out of here already.”
Nancy looked at Steve, then at Robin, and squeezed both their hands.
“You ready Nance?” Robin stared at her with worry again.
Nancy let go of Steve’s hand, but held onto Robins for just a few seconds longer. “I’m ready.”
“Then ladies first,” Robin insisted with her dumb little smirk and gestured toward the rope.
Nancy chuckled and smiled at her before taking the burlap material between her hands. She looked back one more time.
“Be careful. We’re right behind you.”