Work Text:
She’s in her bathroom, brushing her teeth for the first time in a few weeks when her phone starts ringing obnoxiously. She shuts off the water wondering who the hell would be calling her this late. It's almost one in the morning on a school night. Well not a school night for her, really. She picks up without looking at the name above the number.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to call,” the voice is muffled and Nancy instantly recognises it as Robins. “I need help, Nance, please.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. I got hit I think,” she pauses, interrupting herself with a sob. Her voice is coloured is with pain. “I-”
“Where are you? I’ll come get you and take you to the hospital, yeah?”
“No, no! You can’t take me there. I’m not supposed to be driving this late.” Nancy can picture a wince.
“Whose car do you have?”
Robin’s end goes quiet for a moment, only broken by her sniffles. “My mom’s - she's going to kill me if she finds out, Nancy. I just needed to borrow it for an hour, she gave permission, but I didn’t tell her when I was going to take it out and now-”
“You don’t need to explain yourself, just tell me where you are so I can come get you, okay? We can figure it out from there, yeah?” Nancy’s pulling on her shoes and a jacket as she speaks, grabbing the van keys off of her side table. “It’ll be okay.”
“I think I’m on the Miller-Brown corner. Please hurry. It hurts.”
Her eyebrows furrow as she makes sure the door is shut behind her before getting into the van and starting it up. “What hurts?
“I don’t know. Everything.”
“Okay, just stay on the phone with me, keep talking. Can you do that for me?” She gets a watery ‘yes’ in response.
xcxcx
The drive takes less than fifteen minutes (probably because Nancy is going well over the speed limit). Robin’s car is a little hard to spot as it's been pushed into the edge of the woods, one of the headlights is broken and the other is covered partially by leaves. Nancy parks the van, leaving it running, before rushing out to help.
The door of the driver's seat is caved in, but the backseat door looks like it took the brunt of it. An alarming amount of blood is splashed over the windows. “Robin!?”
“Nancy!” Robin whimpers back, sniffling again. Nancy rushes to the driver's seat, noting Robin still belted in. Their eyes meet as Nancy assesses the situation. She bites down hard on her lip.
“Close your eyes and look away,” she instructs gently through the cracked window and waits to see Robin do as she’s told. When she does, Nancy gets to smashing the window the rest of the way, wincing when the glass sprinkles down onto Robin's bleeding forehead. She reaches into the car, careful of the shards still on the window sill, and pushes some of the glass off of her carefully. “Okay. I’m going to tell you what you have to do, alright?”
Robin nods slowly, eyes sparkling in the low light, filled with tears.
“First you need to unbuckle yourself. I can’t reach it from here,” she waits for the tell-tale click before continuing. “I’m going to help you out of the window. Not sure if we’re going to be able to get the door open easily. Looks like the back took the brunt of it. Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s just get this over with,” Robin grits out. It’s a process to get her out, between pained grunts and the awkward tilt of the ditch. Soon enough, however, Robin is out and holding onto Nancy for dear life. She’s shushing her gently, gripping her waist and petting her hair. She seems okay for the most part, save her head and probably her ribs.
After what seems like hours, Nancy brushes the hair away from Robin's wet cheeks and lifts up her chin gently. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital now? We can go back to my house and check you out. But if anything serious I will be taking you there,” her voice is stern, but not unkind.
“Fine. Just whatever you do, just stay please,” her eyes are pleading with Nancy. As if the thought would ever even cross her mind. (It hadn’t.) Nancy helps her stand, getting them both up and into her car. She puts Robin in the back, allowing her to sprawl out across the backseat. As if she had the heart to say no to her.
She strips off her jacket, handing it back to her to staunch the bleeding coming from her head before getting ready to take off. Robin's hand grips Nancy's wrist tightly until she relents and allows Robin to hold her hand. The position is a bit awkward, but Nancy thinks she’ll be able to handle it for the drive back.
She’s right, but her arm is aching by the time she pulls into the driveway. She’s quick to kill the engine and get out to help Robin, wasting no time. Her sweater is no doubt going to be stained red until the end of time, which makes her purse her lips a little, but the bleeding is basically stopped and she decides that that is way more important than her poor sweater. It was time for a new one anyways.
She helps her from the car, and Robin is trying to wave her off, (“look I’m not even shaking anymore am I?” “just in case”) but Nancy is persistent. She eventually compromises, allowing her to walk by herself as long as she can help support her with an arm around her waist.
She can feel the strain everythings taking on her body as Nancy leads her up the Wheeler’s staircase and into her bedroom, straight to the bathroom. Robin winces as Nancy’s hand slips too far up along her ribs. She mutters an apology, letting her go and directing her to take a seat on the edge of the tub.
Robin does as she's told, watching as Nancy pulls out the first aid kit from under the sink, and then as she leaves. Robin gets up after she hears Nancy descend down the stairs to take a look in the mirror. Her face looks awful, the blood coming from a thin but long gash across her forehead. She lifts her shirt to reveal deep blue and purple bruising crisscrossing the left side of her ribs. Nothing looks or feels broken, she doesn’t think. But then again, her brain is fuzzy and her vision isn’t all that clear after all her crying.
Her head swims a little as the realisation that she just got hit by another car finally kicks in. A hand flies up to cover her mouth just as Nancy appears back in the doorway, holding a glass of Robin’s favourite juice (apple) in one hand, and in the other a package of crackers. Her tears started up again as Nancy set the items down, leading her back over to the tub and having her sit once again.
“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, you’re safe now,” she takes Robin's free hand in her own.
“They, they hit me Nance! On purpose! And then they just left me !” She bursts out, and Nancy frowns, pulling her into a hug instead of keeping solely their hands clasped.
“I know sweetie,” she murmurs while Robin tucks her head into the crook of Nancy’s neck. “But you’re strong. You pulled through didn’t you?” Robin's hysteria was rising faster by the moment until it got to a point that Nancy had to pull Robin back from her neck to get her to breathe with her. “Let me take care of you. Then we can go to bed. We don’t even have to actually sleep, alright? We can just lay there if you want.”
“Alright.” Robin wipes her face aggressively, brushing away tears and making some of the dried blood trails flake off onto her clothes. Nancy gives Robin the cup of juice, and she sips at it while Nancy starts to clean and disinfect the wound while trying not to re-open the bleeding once again. She doesn’t feel like it needs stitches, so she gingerly wipes a healthy amount of Vaseline along it. The next step is taking a few butterfly bandages to hold it closed.
“There,” she tips Robin’s face side to side to check her work and make sure that there aren't any more open cuts on her face. She finds one on her collarbone, however, and treats it almost the same as the head wound, but chooses a regular bandaid to cover it instead. She slowly moves down Robin's body, checking for bruising and bleeding. Robin doesn’t even get her a chance to ask her to lift up her shirt before she's doing it on her own.
“This is it. Lots of bruising. But I'm pretty sure nothing's broken at least.” Nancy isn’t sure how to check for breakage, or cracks at that, but nothing is sticking up through Robin's skin so she deems it acceptable and lets Robin pull her shirt back down. She gives her the pack of crackers so Robin can nibble on one.
The last thing that Nancy does is Robin’s hands, her knuckles in specific, as the right one is covered in micro cuts from the glass. She washes them out and leaves it at that, taking Robin's hand and bringing it up to her mouth. She presses it lightly against her lips, longer than is acceptable for a friendly gesture, eyes locking with Robins. “All done.”
“Thank you,” Robin whispers, pulling Nancy back up for another hug. They stay like that for some minutes, until Nancy breaks the silence, mentioning something about heading to the bed. Robin relents, letting Nancy help her up, head spinning. Nancy shuts off the bathroom light and turns on the lamp in her room, then sits Robin down on her bed before rummaging around for some sleep clothes that might fit her. She hands them over and steps back into the bathroom for Robin to change, waiting for the okay while changing into a new pair of pyjamas for herself.
Once she hears Robin mutter something about being done, she joins her back in the bed, the both of them laying up on the pillows. They are silent, just laying there and enjoying each other's company. Robin reaches out to entangle their fingers as Nancy clicks off the lamp. For a second Robin can almost forget about her mom's car in a ditch with Nancy laying next to her. Everything almost seems okay. Almost.