Content Tags: Platonic Sobin, major character death, grief, depression, major character undeath
Inspired by this beautiful art by @tarraing
When they found Steve, broken and bloody and scraped raw from the bats, all Robin could think about was that Steve's favorite sweatpants were ruined. She'd never understood those things or how someone so obsessed with fashion could wear them, but he'd always loved how comfortable they were. She razzes him about it every time he wears them.
Now they're ruined. Dirty and ripped.
She can hear Nancy ordering them to help her and Eddie freaking out but it's all just white noise to her right up until the moment everything comes flooding back in and the world has never been louder. Her breathing is deafening like she's trying to breathe for both of them.
Steve isn't breathing but somehow she still is.
One moment she's stuck watching Nancy Wheeler try to patch her soulmate back together the next she's doing it for her so Nancy can start CPR. Eddie has stopped freaking out, she is dimly aware of him standing behind her, hovering because he doesn't know how to help. Doesn't know if there's any way to help.
Robin knows she's talking but it doesn't matter what she's saying. She doesn't think Steve can hear her. How could anything she says matter when her best friend isn't there to hear it? But she can't make herself stop, just in case.
But Steve never hears her. Nancy pushes on his chest and forces air into his lungs until her arms are shaking and she doesn't have enough strength to move his chest anymore. Then Robin takes over even though she has no idea what she's doing. Even though Nancy and Eddie are trying to tell her it's no use, that they need to go.
Like she could leave him here.
Then she's kicking and screaming because they're trying to pull her away. She's biting down on Eddie's ringed hand and kicking out into Nancy's ribs. She's not leaving, she's not. She can't do that to Steve, would rather lie down next to him, take his hand, and let the bats find her than leave him behind.
The last thing she sees before someone knocks her in the head is Steve's eyes, open and empty and staring right at her.
When Robin wakes up she's surrounded by people, but no one says a thing. She sees Dustin, red-eyed and empty standing in a corner across from the couch she's been placed on. Max won't look at her, Erica is glued to her side, Eddie looks lost, Lucas is trying to keep a siff upper lip for his sister, and Nancy looks like a block of steel. Steve isn't anywhere to be found.
But then again, Robin knew that. She'd know if Steve was her because their hearts beat as one, but now her chest feels empty. It's Max, brave, scared Max, who breaks the silence. Robin doesn't hear it. Doesn't listen as people start explaining plans around them. Can't channel the righteous fury she sees in Nancy and Max, or the barely concealed fear in Eddie and Erica, or the building weight of responsibility growing in Lucas and Dustin's too old eyes. All she feels is empty.
She's going to do whatever they want her to do because she knows it's what Steve would do. Knows without a shadow of a doubt that if she was the one lying dead in the Upside Down he would be on a war path in her name, so she needs to do the same.
When she launches that last fire bomb into Vecna's ugly head, it's a hollow victory.
Everyone else survives. The Byers move back to Hawkins. The town starts to rebuild. The big bad is gone for good.
But it doesn't mean anything to her. She lies in bed most days without saying a word. She lets her parents dote on her, listens passively as they try to remind her of the college acceptance letters waiting for her on the kitchen counter. Manages to sit up and smile just a little when Eddie brings Dustin and Erica by to see her. Cries with the two of them tucked under her arms, all three of them aware of how vulnerable they feel without a strong pair of arms wrapped around their other side.
Robin asks Eddie to hang back one day and makes a request. The next day he comes by with a clean needle and a pot of ink and Robin sits motionless as he engraves a sunflower inner her wrist, somewhere she'll always be able to see it.
She always swore to Steve that she would never get a tattoo, too freaked out by the possibility of an infection, but those fears feel so distant now that the worst thing that could happen has come to pass.
She catches Eddie with one of his own to match the next week.
A month goes by. She doesn't leave the house, even when Dustin comes by to beg her.
Then two. She can tell her parents are starting to really worry. They've given up trying to get her to think about college and started trying to get her to think about therapy.
Then Five. She started going to work again. She puts on her Family Video vest and thinks about Steve. She walks through the door and imagines Steve leaning over the counter. Keith turns on Back to the Future and she goes home with a panic attack. She doesn't speak unless it's necessary, but she's trying to move forward. She knows it's what Steve would want for her, even on the days when it's not what she wants for herself.
And then Six months pass.
There's a tap at her window.
She ignores it, at first. She refuses to go to a shrink, there are too many things she can't say to the ones her parents recommend, and she won't accept anything from those government goons who turned her best friend into a soldier. Into cannon fodder. Instead, she writes letters.
She sits down at her desk once a day and pours her heart out to Steve. She lets herself pretend for a few moments every day that he's just been dragged away by his parents for a few months. He's out there somewhere in the world, relying on her to keep her updated on the kids and the drama at work and herself until she can go out and join him, wherever he is. Some days she writes about nothing at all, some days she rages at him for leaving her behind, sometimes she speculates about their future, where she goes to college wherever he is, and they get an apartment and two dogs. She seals every one in an envelope, tucks them in a drawer, and lets herself breathe in that perfect fantasy for just a moment. It's the best part of her day, and nothing can tear her away from it.
Except the tapping doesn't stop.
And Robin lives on the second floor.
And everyone she knows would just come through the front door.
She turns, so slowly, toward the window. The glare from her bedside lamp makes it impossible to see anything through it, but she doesn't need to.
There are fingers, claws, forcing their way under the sill. She sucks in a sharp breath as they curl upward, crashes to the ground as they start to pull.
She's scrambling back, getting ready to scream and make a run for the walkie she leaves on silent on her desk to call for help. To warn the others that their monsters are back before it mows her down.
But then the window gives way and she stops. Stops everything.
Because the thing in her window is wearing her best friend's face. It's wearing his hair and his moles and his stupid fucking sweatpants.
And at the end of the day it doesn't actually matter what he looks like. It doesn't matter if there are new hinges in his jaw to show off new, shark-like teeth. It doesn't matter mater if he can't say anything besides a hissed, garbled rendition of her name. It doesn't even matter when he latches onto her wrist, right above that little sunflower, and sucks, taking just enough blood to make her light-headed.
Because she can feel his heartbeat pounding along with her own, perfectly in sync.
Because she's not alone, anymore.
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