Chapter Text
When two weeks pass and the city's attention shifts to something else, the Harringtons finish the act and leave without looking back.
She doesn't think they'll be back.
An hour after that, she opens the door to his room. The spare key he gave her is a hard-to-ignore weight in her pants pocket.
The room is as ugly as she remembers it, but a thin layer of dust covers each of his belongings, and that, even when it hurts because it's a reminder of his absence, is comforting.
The Harringtons have not been in his room. Good.
She takes a deep breath. A big part of her feared what the Harringtons might have done in his space, with his things. She feared walking in and seeing everything in boxes, discovering that something was missing. But everything is there, just as he left it.
That thought is what makes her hesitate to come in, what makes her doubt what she's come here to do. Maybe she should keep everything exactly the same, like a memorial or something, but that's stupid, Steve would tell her that's stupid. They don't need a memorial because Steve is alive, and he's coming back, and then they're going to remodel this stupid room to something he really likes.
(Or maybe she'll get him out of this house. Maybe she could hide him in her room, he liked her room, and then they'd save up enough to rent a place together because codependency sucks, and they can't be apart again. Robin wouldn't stand it. She can't stand it— )
Steve would tell her to do whatever she wanted with his room, with his things, if she thought it would ease the pain in their heart. Self-sacrificing idiot, he would regret that so much when he returned to find his room ransacked.
A beige sweater is tossed carelessly over the back of the desk chair. Robin takes it in her hands and briefly buries her face in it. Steve had a polo shirt the day he disappeared, but she doesn't remember if he had a jacket. She hopes that, wherever he is, he won't be cold. Steve had begun to hate the cold since Starcourt: Scoops Ahoy, the Russian base; it was always cold.
A post-it note on his desk, hidden among magazines, catches her eye. With a trembling hand, she pushes the magazines aside and picks up the paper. She reads it over and over until the words are burned in her mind, every little curve of his handwriting memorized to the point where she thinks she could mimic it. She reads it until her eyes burn with the need to cry.
No marching band practices this Tuesday.
Pick up Robs.
It's not a significant thing, because it's not. But it's Steve wanting to do something for her, showing that he cared about her, no, that he cares, because Steve is alive, and she'll fight anyone who says otherwise.
And that, that's not hope talking, it's..., It's something Robin, as his platonic soul mate with a capital P, knows.
Steve is a fighter, a force of nature, and although he takes more hits than he gives, he always, always gets back up. He is stubborn like that. Nothing could stand in his way. He would fight God himself to get back to them.
And he had to go back, because he knew the kids, Robin, were too easily distracted, their survival instincts were terrible, and somehow they could be super smart yet super dumb. He had to know that without his supervision, they would surely trip and break their necks or something silly like that. They needed him.
And it wasn't just that they needed him, they wanted him there. He knew that, didn't he? he had to know. They loved him, Robin loved him and—
God, she missed her dingus.
She left the note exactly where she had found it and carefully put on his sweater. They, all of them, were going to need something to make the waiting easier.
He would be back. Sooner or later, he would be back. And Robin was going to wait for him, but now, she had to ransack his room.