the thing i must remind myself is that the reason it was so fast and easy the first couple of times i wrote a pilot script is that i had absolutely no clue what i was doing, and the resultant scripts were uh. bad. they were bad.
writing this latest pilot script felt a bit like wrenching all the bones out of my body through my nail beds, but the completed first draft is-- well, honestly it might still be bad.
Title: I fell so deeply for you that night in Hell
Rating: T
Pairing: Robin/Nancy
Words: 1,217
Summary: “Nancy,” Steve croaked, his voice wavering over her name. She looked at him, and the sight she saw was the final blow to her splintering heart, shattering it into a million little pieces. The same devastation Nancy felt was reflected at her in his hazel eyes. He was crying, too, and it struck her that she had never seen Steve cry before. “Nancy, she’s gone. You have to let her go.”
Day 1 of Ronancetober: Upside Down
Read on AO3
“Nancy!”
That voice screaming helplessly for her was the only thing her mind could focus on. It wasn’t the mission, Henry, or the vines currently wrapping around her own throat that consumed her thoughts. No, her sole focus was on the girl who quickly wriggled her way into Nancy Wheeler’s caged heart. The girl who found a chink in Nancy’s carefully crafted armor and managed to work her way around it until it made room for her, too. The girl who was dying before Nancy’s very eyes.
They all were on the cusp of death, and Nancy was going to die with the fact that she never vocalized these feelings she harbored. She watched as those cerulean blue eyes she often got lost in, like a ship at sea going off the course of its intended destination, rolled back into Robin’s skull. Her chest, which had been heaving for breath, had come to a stop, and the limbs that had been fighting against the vines had gone limp.
No, no, not again. You can’t do this to me again. I can’t lose anybody else.
Nancy cursed the Upside Down and all it had taken from her. Barb, her childhood, her innocence. It couldn’t take Robin from her, too. Even if she managed to escape the vines, she wouldn’t survive if Robin was gone.
As if some higher power heard her thoughts, the vines suddenly slithered away, releasing the three teens from their grasp. Nancy and Steve fell to their knees, gasping for oxygen that they had been deprived of for who knows how long, but Robin dropped with a sickening thud .
“No, no, no,” Nancy rasped, her voice hoarse from her airways being blocked for so long. She scrambled on her hands and knees to get to the other girl. Nancy rolled Robin onto her back and cradled her face delicately in her hands to assess her injuries. Blood dripped down her face from a wound on her forehead, thick bruising around her throat from the vines, and she still wasn’t breathing. “Robin, wake up. Please, you have to wake up.”
She dipped her hand down to Robin’s neck to feel for a pulse, an overwhelming sense of dread overtaking her when she didn’t feel the rhythmic thrum beneath her fingertips. Acting on instinct, she started giving the taller girl CPR, vaguely registering Steve’s presence next to her.
“Come on, Rob, stay with me,” she whispered. Tears were freely streaming down her face, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care that Vecna was just through the door a few feet away from them, ready for the takedown. She didn’t care that Hawkins, the whole world, could be destroyed in a matter of minutes because she didn’t want to live in a world without the breath of fresh air that was Robin Buckley.
Nancy went through the motions: chest compressions, rescue breaths, check for breathing, repeat. She didn’t know how long she had been going at it, but again, she didn’t care. That is until she felt a firm hand grasp her shoulder to pull her away from the task at hand.
“Nancy,” Steve croaked, his voice wavering over her name. She looked at him, and the sight she saw was the final blow to her splintering heart, shattering it into a million little pieces. The same devastation Nancy felt was reflected at her in his hazel eyes. He was crying, too, and it struck her that she had never seen Steve cry before. “Nancy, she’s gone. You have to let her go.”
“I– I can’t, Steve,” she sobbed, feeling the last little bit of her resolve completely crumble. His strong arms pulled her into his chest, letting her break down in his familiar embrace. Nancy, who had never quite felt whole to begin with, had never felt this utterly broken. “How can I let her go when I never had her to begin with?”
Nancy wasn’t sure how in a matter of a few days her life had taken such a dark and twisted turn. For the first time in years she had opened up her heart to the possibility of happiness, friendship, and what could have very easily been love if it wasn’t already, and now, that was being ripped away from her again. Because of her plan. She had led them to this hell, and Robin was left as the collateral damage.
Why her? Why did it have to be Robin? It should have been me.
“Well, that’s simply not true,” a voice that wasn’t Steve’s mumbled. A voice that Nancy would recognize anywhere even with it being far raspier than usual. A voice that she didn’t think she was ever going to be able to hear again.
When Nancy pulled herself from Steve’s embrace to look at the body laying beside them, she was met with those eyes that no longer felt like getting lost at sea, but a beacon to help bring her home. The breath of fresh air that Nancy realized once it was almost too late that she couldn’t live without.
“Oh my God, Robin!” Nancy cried, clutching the hand that was closest to her like a lifeline. She helped her sit up, careful to avoid her injuries. With her free hand, she brushed a blood-soaked strand of hair out of the taller girl’s face. “I thought I lost you.”
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than these slug vines to take me away from you, Wheeler,” Robin smiled, that same cocky, self-assured smile that at first irritated the brunette, but soon became one of her favorite things. “You were wrong, by the way.”
“Wrong about what?”
“You do have me, Nance. You have since the library,” she whispered.
The tender look in Robin’s eyes, and the way her gaze kept darting down to Nancy’s lips, was all the invitation Nancy needed to finally, finally, close the distance between them. Their lips softly brushed, the kiss tasting of copper, iron, and salt, but Nancy wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was a promise that they were here , they were together, and not even death itself could pull them apart.
“I hate to break up the love-fest,” Steve teased, pulling them out of their bubble. “But, uh, Rob, now that you’re not dead, we kind of have an interdimensional, dark wizard to kill.”
“Nice to see you, too, doofus,” Robin chuckled once she pulled away from Nancy’s lips. She reached a hand up to ruffle his hair, which was quickly batted away by a disgruntled Steve. “You guys ready to flambé this total douche bag?”
Nancy and Steve gave an affirmative nod and they all got to their feet, preparing for the fight that was about to transpire. Nancy with her shotgun in hand, Steve with his axe, and Robin with her Molotov, stood in front of the door that would lead them right to Vecna.
Before stepping into the unknown territory Nancy reached down to hold Robin’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze and repeating the words she spoke before they had entered the Creel house.
“We got this.”
The smile she received from Robin in return gave her the courage to take the next steps forward to end this nightmare once and for all.
And then, just like that, summer was over. Regulus was going back to Hogwarts, and James was not.
James was moving on with his life, following his dream of playing Quidditch professionally, and Regulus was left with ghosts of the memories they’d made. He thought of James any time he heard the Muggle music the older boy had been so fond of. He thought of the nights they snuck out of the castle and danced in the moonlight by the Black Lake. He thought of James and the happiest days of his life every time he wore his favorite jumper, the one that was worn soft and still held the faintest hint of James’ woodsy scent.
i'm supposed to be sleeping (went to bed like an hour ago) but i spent a decent chunk of today working on chapters 5 & 6 of as a friend and now my brain refuses to shut the hell up about it. which means that instead of being unconscious i've just spent 20 minutes rewriting the [first morning back at the bunker after everyone knows] scene on my phone, and i genuinely hope that it is actually as funny as it currently seems to my half-asleep brain.
truly cannot overstate the benefit of taking a few days off from looking at a creative project when you've been focused on it for a while. last week when i finished this star trek spec i was convinced the whole thing was an awful, unsalvageable mess.
well i just read it through, and while there are a few minor things that i need to adjust, it's????? mostly good????? and entertaining?????????
