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Robin has always loved language.
There’s something so beautiful about it. That structure. That security. The rules and the complexity and the reward of holding conversations, no matter how meaningless.
Language is strong and sturdy. It’s the link connecting one person to another. It’s wonderful proof of history. The language evolves with the people. New words are added when necessary. It’s functional and long-lasting.
So Robin has always taken on the challenge of language with a glint in her eye and a smile half-hidden.
Robin has also always loved asking questions. Questions are useful. Hardy. Ever evolving and shifting and adapting, using the fundamental bricks of language to convey them. A string of words to ask something all the way from simple, to impossibly complex.
Science is born from questions is born from language. Philosophy, too. Everything.
And, ah, there it is. The word that slips out every now and again.
Everything.
What a deceptive word.
A lie. A trick. A traitor of a word, because no , not everything is born from language. What of the distant galaxies? What of the delicate flutter of butterfly wings? Those things were not created from language, only named by it.
It’s Robin’s favorite question; the intersection of her two most loved things. A question about language, but one more open ended than the pronunciation of a word in a foreign tongue. A question of creation, a question of reality.
What is ‘everything?’
Oh, it’s a puzzle. A riddle, for sure. A word that encompasses too much for its own good. A word that bit off more than it could chew. A word overflowing with meaning, abused by the mouths of careless people.
She has no idea how to solve it.
***
“Mom?” Robin asks. She’s just a fourth grader, her hair in a messy cloud around her head as she looks up from her homework.
“Mhm?” Her mother barely glances at her from where she sits, doing the crossword.
Robin hesitates before she says it. Normally, words come flowing out so fast she can’t hope to control them, but this is her question . The big question. The one that’s plagued her for so long she can barely remember when she first asked it. She feels it in her mouth, aching to be asked, to be voiced for the first time. But Robin holds it in. It needs to sound just right , or her mom will laugh it off and just continue her crossword, leaving the question heartbroken. And this is her question . She won’t stand for it to be beaten into the dust by a cold laugh.
And it’s the hesitation that draws her mom’s attention. Her eyes peek up over the newspaper, eyeing Robin gently, with that probing look only a mother can achieve.
“Birdie?” she prompts. Robin sucks in a breath.
“What is everything?”
Robin winces. No, that wasn’t right. Not really. She can’t figure out exactly what question she wants to ask, and it’s infuriating. Language has never failed her like this.
Her mom quirks an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Everything,” Robin says softly. “What is it? So many people say it, but what does it mean? What is it?”
Her mother’s brows curl together, forming little wrinkles on her forehead. A little frown etches her lips.
“Well…” she starts. “I’m not sure. I suppose it’s up to the person who says it.”
And, oh, isn’t that something? It’s an answer, but not one she likes very much. Language is solid and useful. Yes, words can have different meanings in different settings, but those make sense. Not ‘everything.’ No, ‘everything’ shouldn’t be like that.
It goes against the word itself, which implies every single thing. Everything .
Her mother goes back to her crossword. Robin tilts her head back to her homework, but her concentration is lost. The answer has only sprung more questions, and there’s simply no way she’s going to finish her math now. She’ll get no sleep, barely eat her dinner, too caught up on the questions nestled in her mind. Her mother will worry, for sure. And her teachers will tut as they write ‘F’ at the top of her papers for the next few days. But that doesn’t matter.
She still hasn’t answered her question.
***
The day is sickly, so warm Robin might just die. She lies on the grass, staring up at the great expanse of blue shining between leaves and branches above her. She’s drenched with sweat, and churning with anxiety. For one, she’s about to voice her question for a second time. For another, sixth grade starts the next day.
But right now, that last one seems distant. She’s lying next to Barb in the heavy heat, her hands slightly sticky from long-gone ice cream. They have each other, have had each other for so long, Robin believes it’s finally time.
So she clears her throat and whispers, “Barb?”
“Yeah?”
Robin turns towards her, abandoning the crystal sky for her friend’s glasses. Barbara, looking slightly confused, turns too.
“I have a question,” Robin says. Her voice is shaking a little.
Barb smiles. “Shoot.”
Like before, Robin hesitates. The sticky question fills up in her mouth, pushing and pushing for her lips to part so it can be released. Robin sits up, curls her knees up to her chin and wraps her arms over her shins.
Barb sits up too. “Robin?”
It’s so painstakingly similar, Robin wonders if she’s back in her living room with her mom, asking a question that doesn’t get answered.
“Hey, Robin?”
“What is everything?” The question slips from her mouth so quick she wonders if she dreamed it.
Barbara makes a soft, considering noise, rests her chin on one knee. Her hand picks a dandelion and twirls it by the stem.
“Can you elaborate?” she asks. “I don’t really know how to answer that.”
Robin sucks in a breath, tries to make the words in her brain make sense as they come out. “Like… the word? What is it? The word ‘everything,’ I don’t think it’s a good word.”
Barb just laughs, and Robin’s heart sinks. She can almost see her question deflate before her, punctured by the laugh.
“You’re so strange, Robin. You know that?”
Robin smiles, the curves of her lips feeling foreign on her face, the whole thing completely artificial.
“Yeah.”
And they go back to lying on the grass, Barb voicing her anxieties for the following day. Robin doesn’t hear much of it. She’s too busy cradling her question in her arms, tending to its bruises, trying to figure out how to inflate it back to its former glory.
***
Robin settles on asking her questions in the mirror.
She waits until the world is silent, then slips to the ground, sitting on her carpet and staring at her twiddling thumbs.
She does it on weekends when her mom is away, working. She does it in the dead of night, as her mother and the rest of Hawkins sleep. She does it when she’s home from school, sick, and her mom’s gone to the store to get her some soup.
It becomes the only thing that brings her question back to life. She rambles for hours, staring into that mirror. She makes herself questions someone else might ask, and answers them with well-versed speeches. She builds up her arguments, finds the right combination of words that seem to almost exactly convey what she’s trying to say.
Robin’s question grows stronger with each moment of preparation. It becomes strong and even more complex and confusing, surpassing the little wonder she crafted as a child.
With each passing day, her question becomes unbearable, aching to be shared outside of that little room, aching to be known beyond just herself and the girl in the mirror. Every time she speaks in class, she feels it bubble up, feels it slip into the crevices of her mouth. Her rambling answers become her way of keeping it inside. If she just keeps talking, perhaps the question will stay back.
It works, and the question whines. It yowls from the cage she keeps it in. It thrashes against her ribs, her skull, trying to find a way out.
But who’s there to tell? Not her mother. Not Barb, who abandoned her the moment prissy little Nancy Wheeler looked her way.
So Robin is left alone with her question, repeating it in dozens of forms, and never once getting an answer.
***
If there was anyone Robin never expected to share her question with, it would’ve been Steve Harrington.
But she’s got to admit, he’s not half bad. Their days scooping ice cream together, cracking Russian code together, and being drugged together have certainly created a bond between them.
Even so, Robin doesn’t even make the conscious decision to ask him. The bars of her question’s cage are corroded with drugs, all her poorly assembled filters smashed by it. So the question just slips out.
“Hey, Steve?” she mumbles. A pleasant smile is pasted on her face.
“Yeah, Robin?” he says.
This time there’s no hesitation. “Do you ever think about the word ‘everything?’”
Steve, miraculously, doesn’t laugh. “Huh?”
“Everything,” Robin repeats. “Everything. I think about it a lot.”
All her speeches seem too hazy to recite, so her drug-addled brain merely ignores them.
“How come?” Steve asks.
Robin hums. “Because it’s a horrible word.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
They sit there in silence for a couple moments.
“Cause like…” Robin says. “It’s too big, y’know? Like there’s-” a little giggle escapes her lips, “-there’s too many things. It doesn’t make sense, so it’s a bad word.”
Steve pauses before answering.
“Huh.”
Distantly, Robin feels her question shrink at the response. Not again , it whimpers, not again, not him too.
“I guess.”
And suddenly, Robin could kiss him. A loud laugh bubbles up in her throat and her whole face stretches into an expression of glee.
Steve continues, “I guess, yeah. ‘Everything’ is a bad word.”
The dam within her breaks.
She babbles and babbles and babbles until she’s forced into silence. And, no, her question hasn’t been answered, but for once she’s voiced it and hasn’t been ridiculed. It’s progress.
***
Nancy Wheeler, as it turns out, is nothing like Robin had thought she would be. She’s no best friend stealer, or perfect girl from the perfect family with a Reagan sign in the yard. She’s an excellent shot and frighteningly observant and strangely okay with forging official documents so that she can speak with a known murderer.
Robin is, frankly, quite taken aback. And very intrigued. And suddenly very bad at controlling her tongue because before she knows it, she’s asking her question.
It’s as they walk through the forest in the Upside Down, wandering away from the lake off to do something that could hopefully save their lives. Steve and Eddie walk some twenty feet behind them.
“So…” she begins. Nancy looks over at her, her soft eyes searching. “Do you ever think about the word ‘everything?’”
Nancy shakes her head. “No? What do you mean?”
Robin searches for her arguments, for her practiced responses. She has over a dozen just for that one question alone, but suddenly, under the piercing gaze of the girl beside her, they’ve abandoned her.
“I mean… the word, ‘everything.’ It doesn’t make much sense to me, and never has,” Robin explains. Nancy stays silent, letting Robin finish her thought before adding anything. Robin is infinitely grateful for it. “It’s impossible to use. You can’t refer to every single thing in the universe, there’s just too much. Any word that has so much meaning is useless because almost no one really means every thing when they say ‘everything.’”
Nancy nods slowly.
“I see what you mean,” she says. “But I don’t know if that’s what the word is supposed to mean.”
A warm, glowy feeling sparks in Robin. Someone is engaging in this conversation . The conversation she’s held so many times with herself.
“But that’s the thing!” Robin exclaims. “The word itself says ‘every’ ‘thing.’ It can’t mean anything else, because that’s what it says. The word is a perfect description of itself.”
Nancy frowns, considering.
“So when people say ‘everything,’ they’re using imprecise language!” Robin continues. “You can’t say ‘everything is ruined,’ for example, because not everything is ruined! There’s distant dust clouds in outer space that haven’t been altered by whatever you’re talking about, and some perfectly good blankets somewhere, so no, not everything is ruined.”
Nancy laughs, and Robin turns her head towards her instantly. Social cues aren’t her thing, and receiving a laugh hasn’t been good before. But Nancy has this glint in her eye as she looks at Robin that makes the laugh seem different than the one Barb let out.
“I didn’t expect to like you this much,” Nancy says. A gentle smile soothes the alarmed feeling within Robin.
“Me either,” she whispers. Eye contact feels like too much now, so she sets her gaze to the forest floor, watching for vines.
Nancy bumps into Robin, just enough for their shoulders to touch.
“Really,” Nancy says. “You’re interesting. And very smart.”
Robin doesn’t reply. She doesn’t really feel capable of producing words, anyway.
***
Nancy’s rather positive response to her question emboldens Robin. Her question no longer feels like a secret, hidden within her and saved only for those she trusts most. She feels safe enough among this group to share her question. And so she does.
“Why do you think we say the word ‘everything?’” she asks.
The chatter of the van stills as they think. Nancy, Robin sees, looks back at her from the front seat. They share a smile.
“Why do we say anything?” Erica shoots back. “Just in general. Why bother thinking about a specific word?”
Dustin considers. “No, no. Robin has a point. Why do we say ‘everything?’”
“Right?” Robin says. “I mean, words evolve and develop as our need for them grows. So why do we have the word ‘everything’ if there’s too many things to reference?”
“Why are we talking about this, exactly?” Erica asks.
“Would you prefer talking about the fact we just stole a van and are on our way to get a shocking amount of world-saving supplies from a somehow-legal store?” Robin replies.
“Fair enough.”
“Hm,” Dustin hums. “I actually don’t know how to answer this one, Robin. Why do we say it?”
Robin leans forward, eager. “Exactly! We use it so often, we barely consider it. But it’s such a big word. One word shouldn’t be allowed to carry as much meaning as ‘everything’ does.”
“It kinda reminds me of the whole ‘we aren’t the center of the universe’ debate,” Dustin says.
Max frowns. “Wasn’t that a religious debate?”
Dustin shrugs. “Well, yes. But it feels similar, in some way. Like, everyone just assumed the Earth was at the center of the whole universe, that everything was related to us.”
“Right!” Robin exclaims. “And you just used the word ‘everything’ correctly, too, in a situation where you’re referring to literally everything .”
“This is getting too philosophical for my taste,” Eddie groans, leaning back. He covers his eyes with his forearm. “Wake me when we get there.”
They ignore him.
“So, like, take for example the phrase ‘everything is ruined,’” Robin says. “Pretend you’ve just said it after dropping your dinner, or something. There’s something wrong with that statement that proves the point we’re trying to make.
“Every single thing has not been ruined by the action of you dropping your dinner,” she continues. “Your food is on the ground and can’t be eaten, and maybe some pasta sauce has gotten on your grandma’s antique table cloth, or something, so now those two things are what you deem ‘ruined.’ But that’s where you’re wrong. The word ‘everything’ is inaccurate in that situation because only a couple things have been damaged by your dinner being dropped. There’s a plant somewhere doing just fine. There’s a galaxy out there that hasn’t been altered in the slightest by that action. Not everything is ruined, so you can’t say ‘everything is ruined.’”
Dustin nods frantically. “Right! There’s too many things in the universe for them all to be ruined by you dropping your dinner.”
“Maybe…” Nancy calls from the front. Robin turns to her, watching Nancy’s expression shift as she thinks over what she’s about to say. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the word ‘everything’ isn’t meant to be literally everything. Maybe it’s like poetry. Maybe it isn’t necessarily supposed to say exactly what it is.”
***
For the first time since she was very young, Robin’s question doesn’t feel as urgent.
She doesn’t feel it clamoring to be released, to be asked. She doesn’t feel it thrashing against the walls of its cage. It’s quiet.
And not the kind of quiet that comes after it’s been wounded. No, for once, she’s been given an answer — a real one — and she doesn’t quite know what to do with it. The question mulls it over, repeats the words of Nancy’s response so many times she’s not entirely sure she believes she understands them any more.
If anything, Nancy’s answer scares her. Poetry is made of words, words aren’t made of poetry. Emotion can be captured in a word, but emotion is universal. Words are supposed to have meaning; true, solid meaning. The meaning can shift due to circumstance, of course, but the very notion that a word can create its own meaning, can be something alterable per person , frightens her.
Language evolves with people. Language links people together. Language is a question is science. Language is something beautiful, yes, but it’s structural and reliable. It isn’t supposed to shift under your feet, it isn't supposed to let each individual decide what it is.
If language is the link between people, what use is a language with words that each person chooses?
How can ‘everything’ be something different for everyone?
***
It’s a bit of a cruel joke, Robin thinks, that mere hours after she’s been given an answer to the question she’s nursed for her whole life, she’s being choked to death by otherworldly, apparently sentient vines.
What a joke .
Robin’s eyes flicker around the dim staircase, watching as Steve and Nancy fight at the vines. The world is getting hazier, lines sharper, shadows darker. Her body has given up the fight, and now all she does is watch as her oxygen depletes.
She’s waiting for the flashes she’s heard come before death. When you watch your life go by in an instant, all those years condensed into a single second. She’s waiting and wondering if those flashes will show her the true answer.
Will Nancy’s theory be proved? Will Robin’s? What if she doesn’t answer her question? What if she dies, here, and now, never having known?
Her question. Her question . It flutters in her chest, making a half-hearted attempt to be uttered just one time, just one last time.
Instead, the vines release.
***
Robin holds it together in the hospital the same way she held it together at Barb’s funeral. They sit there, a bubble of silence bouncing between them as if the frantic sounds of the hospital can’t reach them.
She sits beside Steve, with Nancy on his other side. Across from them is Erica and Lucas, both with tears slipping down their cheeks.
The doctor comes out of the door they sit by, and suddenly Steve is on his feet.
“Well?” he asks.
“Your friend is alright,” the doctor replies. “We’ve got him all patched up, and we’ll be able to take you in just a moment.”
Steve eases slightly at the news. “Can I see him?”
“No, I apologize,” the doctor says. “Family only.”
Before Steve can protest, the doctor has walked away, and they’re left alone again.
“Unbelievable,” Steve mutters.
Robin’s voice is even raspier than usual when she responds. “Half the town’s injured right now, Steve. Her priority can’t be you right now.”
Steve frowns, pacing back and forth with irritability.
A crackle registers from Lucas’s bag.
“Guys?”
“Henderson!” Steve exclaims. He tugs the walkie out and begins to speak, kneeling next to Lucas and Erica. “Your doctor won’t let us in, but we’re out here. We promise.”
Robin leans forward, placing her elbows on her knees and looking down at her clasped hands. The sound of the conversation in front of her gets drowned out by her own mind.
Somehow, she registers the seat next to her filling, but it isn’t until she feels a soft hand on her back that she notices by who.
“Hey,” Nancy whispers. “You okay? We never really checked in after the vines.”
Robin wills herself to speak. But her throat feels clogged with the threat of tears and all the words she wishes she could say. So instead she just opens and closes her mouth, her jaw clenched and nothing but silence escaping.
Nancy seems to understand anyway.
“Can I hug you?” she asks.
Robin nods slowly.
She feels gentle arms encase her softly.
“You’re okay.” Robin nearly cries at her words. “You got out. We’re out. We’re safe.”
And Robin can’t help but think about how untrue that is. She’s safe, yes. But Dustin’s in there with an injured leg, and Max is in some hospital room with her life teetering just on the edge, and Eddie… Robin’s safe. Nancy’s safe. But they aren’t all safe.
Without her permission, a single tear crawls out onto her cheek.
If this is part of everything, Robin doesn’t want it.
***
As if sensing her shift in attitude, her question doesn’t attempt to get her attention.
Robin, so full of anger and fear and exhaustion, is glad about at least this.
Following the hospital visit, Nancy drives them around and around town, dropping everyone off in their respective homes.
First Lucas and Erica, then Dustin, then Steve. When they get to Robin’s, it’s just her and Nancy, and the silence is almost crushing.
Robin swallows, trying to wet her dry throat so she can say goodbye, and thank you. It doesn’t work. She settles on a jerky nod instead.
She goes to the front door and finds it locked. The key under the mat is gone, and so is the one she keeps in her pocket. Hammering on the door proves useless.
“Mom?” Robin shouts. Her voice cracks halfway through, and she’s suddenly trying to remember the last time she had a drink of water. “Mom, are you home?”
No. Wherever her mom is, she’s not at home. Fear and despair and everything else become too much, and now she’s sinking down, she’s sitting on the steps of the porch, she’s bawling like a child.
Robin doesn’t pay attention to the slamming of a car door, or the hasty footsteps coming up her driveway. She can only think about how everything went wrong, and how horrible this is, and how tired she feels.
Nancy sits beside her and wraps an arm around Robin’s shoulders. She’s crying, too. They’re sitting there in the dark of night, illuminated only by the headlights of Nancy’s car, with tears flowing freely down their faces, wrapped up in each other.
Nancy says something about taking Robin to her own house, that her parents won’t mind, that she can call her mom from there. It’s all Robin can do to nod.
The car ride is a blur. Mrs. Wheeler’s frantic questions are a blur. Going up to Nancy’s room, shutting the door, dressing in pajamas too small for her lanky frame, it’s all a blur. Robin can’t feel much right now. She has no idea if she’ll remember this in the morning.
She just lets herself drift off to sleep, held in Nancy’s arms.
***
As she goes about the following days, Robin’s question reappears.
She’s exhausted, and constantly plagued by walking nightmares, but it does come back.
Her mom, she discovers, was out looking for her that night. She calls home and when her mom answers the phone, she bursts into tears all over again. Nancy drives her over, and when they part, there’s something new there. Robin wonders if it’s poetry, if it’s everything.
They all meet up to bring donations to the high school. Nancy’s hand brushes Robin’s, and she wonders if it’s everything.
Robin watches Nancy folding clothes and wonders if it’s everything. Robin sees Nancy placate a crying child and wonders if it’s everything. Robin feels Nancy’s smile spawn warmth in her heart and wonders if it’s everything.
***
Some time between the cracks opening and Nancy breaking up with Jonathan, Robin and Nancy grow closer.
It’s mending, in a way. It feels like a breath of fresh air, a salve placed on burning hands. They find themselves partnering up when the gang goes to repair the cabin in the woods. They link arms when they go on walks. They check in daily and help one another when they’re feeling down.
When Robin notices that tremor in Nancy’s grip, she whispers strange facts until Nancy’s laughing again. When Nancy sees the distant look in Robin’s eyes, she pulls her in and holds Robin to her chest until she feels more present. The bond they share is beautiful and frightening and something Robin can’t quite assign a word to.
Two months after their sudden friendship, Robin finds herself climbing up to Nancy’s window closer to dawn than dusk. Nancy sits at the edge of her bed, eyes puffy and red from a nightmare.
When Robin taps on the glass gently, Nancy startles, then smiles.
“Thank you for coming,” Nancy whispers once she’s pulled the window up. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She did, but Robin couldn’t care less. Not when Nancy sounded so distressed over the phone, trying to keep her sobs down so she didn’t wake her family. This isn’t the first time they’ve fought the night terrors together. Robin knows what to do.
Nancy stares at her, confused. Robin stares back.
“Well?” Robin says. “Are you going to invite me in? I can’t enter your home without an invitation, after all.”
The comment makes a flicker of a smile blossom on Nancy’s face.
“Come in,” she says softly. Robin grins and puts her feet through the window, grabbing Nancy’s hand for stability.
Despite her slow, careful crossing into the room, Robin still manages to find a way to land on the ground. Nancy has to stifle a giggle.
“Hey, don’t laugh at me!” Robin says. “Remember, it took me six months longer to learn how to walk than all the other babies. It’s a miracle I managed to climb up to your second story in the first place.”
Nancy bites at her lip, suppressing a smile.
“I know, I know,” she says, helping Robin to her feet. “One day we’ll find a way to get you in here without waking up half the town.”
Robin just pulls her into a long embrace. They rock softly together, Nancy’s face hidden in the crook of Robin’s neck.
“It’s like we’re dancing,” Nancy mumbles. Robin nearly snorts.
“Oh, well, that’s on the list of things I can’t do.”
Nancy pulls away, staring up into Robin’s eyes with disbelief. “You can’t dance?”
“I’ve barely reached ‘novice’ level in walking, what makes you think I’m going to try doing something with as much coordination as dancing?” Robin replies.
“If anything, it requires less coordination. All you have to do is move slowly in a circle,” Nancy says. She pauses a moment. “You really can’t dance?”
“I think I’d know if at some point I’d been taught to dance.”
Nancy hums, bringing her arms up from Robin’s waist to her shoulders. “What if I taught you?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
“There’s no music.”
Nancy shrugs. “Do we need it?”
Robin doesn’t answer.
“Rob?” Nancy prompts. “If you don’t want to, we can just lie down. Whisper about something stupid ‘till we fall asleep.”
“No, no!” Robin says. She pauses. “It’s just… are you sure this is what you want to do? Slow dance to the sound of the wind at two in the morning?”
Nancy’s smile turns sad, almost. “Yes. That sounds perfect. But only if you want to.”
Robin reaches up and brushes a lock of hair from Nancy’s face. “Yeah. Sure, I want to.”
“Good.”
Nancy pulls her closer to the center of the room, kicking a few things off what she’s apparently deemed their dance floor. Robin’s always found Nancy’s room fascinating, and now, as she glances around, she thinks this is when she likes it best.
Nancy’s lights cast an almost pink glow around the room. The street lights from below add a tint of orange, the stars and moon above contributing a hint of silver. The wind, warm and slight with the summer, makes Nancy’s white gauze curtains flutter. Robin can’t think of anything more perfect than this moment.
Finally, Nancy decides she’s cleared enough room, and comes to stand in front of Robin.
“Alright,” she whispers. “We can start.”
Robin just nods.
Nancy takes Robin’s hands in hers. “You put your hands,” she rests them on her own waist, “here. And I put mine,” she loops them around Robin’s neck, “here. All we have to do now is sway with the beat.”
“Uh, Nance?” Robin says. “No music, remember?”
“Right.” Nancy bites her lip. “Then just follow me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Slowly, Nancy begins to rock. Robin follows her, as instructed.
Nancy puts her head back by Robin’s neck. Robin’s finger rubs soft circles on the small of Nancy’s back. It’s quiet. Perfect.
“I’m going to start moving in a circle now, okay?” Nancy says.
“Alright.”
For once, Robin doesn’t trip over her own feet. It’s somehow so easy for her to follow Nancy’s footsteps. Nothing goes wrong. She doesn’t end up on the floor, a tangle of limbs.
It’s so refreshing, so new, Robin feels her whole body relax. An unregistered tension she’d been carrying for who knows how long just… slips away. Anxieties, pressures, guilts, fears, they all dissipate into the air, fleeing from such a lovely feeling. Robin still can’t name it, but it’s there and it feels good .
Nancy sucks in a shaky breath.
“This is nice,” she murmurs.
“Mm,” Robin hums in response.
Nancy pulls her head back to look up at Robin.
“What?” Robin asks.
A soft, contemplative, something flashes across Nancy’s face. The something, the feeling she can’t name, flies into the air, electrifies it. Robin feels it all around, this something between them.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” Nancy says.
“For what?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You,” Nancy repeats. “For being here. For being here every other time, for holding me through whatever I need. I don’t know how I’d be able to live through these past few weeks if I didn’t have you.”
Robin chuckles lowly. “Oh, well… I guess it’s the same for me. Steve’s great and all, but there’s only so much he can do for me. I think you’ve been saving me the last couple of months, maybe not my life, but me . If I didn’t have you I’d be an emotional train wreck, I don’t think I’d sleep even a little bit, which is actually kind of how I live during finals, but I just can’t imagine living like that for months and months and-“
Robin’s ramble cuts off at the press of Nancy’s lips against hers, and suddenly the feeling she’s been noticing in the air has a name. It fills her up, pours from Nancy to her, until she’s heavy as an ocean and light as a cloud.
Robin pulls back. Not because she dislikes it, but because Nancy has just given her the greatest gift of them all, and she simply must look her in the eye.
Her question has an answer. The cage shatters, and together, they find their way out of Robin’s body.
Nancy’s right. Nancy’s been right all along, because yes , everything is poetry. Everything is a feeling, meant but not said. Everything is Nancy, and this is what her mother meant all those years ago.
Everything depends on the person, because Nancy is not everyone’s everything. Nancy is Robin’s everything.
And, yes, Robin can see it. She can see everything before her, because doesn’t Nancy’s smile radiate the light of the sun and the moon? Aren’t fire and ice and everything in between encased in those eyes? Isn’t her body the home of history, of ancient descriptions of thrashing oceans, of long-past storms that echo in silence?
Robin pulls back to observe everything. To feel the hundreds of black holes stored in Nancy’s being drawing her in like it’s something inevitable. To see all the priceless gems twinkle in Nancy’s heart like some great wind chime. To witness the glory of the girl before her as if she drank starlight like milk from the sky, as if she could weave something real and solid from the dainty strings of brilliance.
Robin pulls back and doesn’t regret the lack of warmth on her lips for even a moment. Not when she beholds such a deity, such an angel. Not when she catches sight of her girl’s soft smile. Not when Nancy has become Robin’s everything.
Everything. Robin holds in her hands everything.
“Robin?” Nancy whispers. Her hand curls onto Robin’s cheek, wiping away a tear she hadn’t realized had been released. “Was that okay?”
And, because Robin doesn’t trust herself not to burst into full-on sobs if she tries to speak, she just goes in for another kiss.
Robin feels full for the first time. Feels complete. Her question is gone, dancing somewhere among the stars.
Her question’s got it’s answer, and she’s got her girl.
Somehow, her mind manages to pull her body back again.
“Thank you,” Robin says. Their eyes meet, and Robin sees everything again. “Thank you, Nancy.”
“For what?”
Nancy’s eyes glint in the gentle light. Her lips rest in the sweetest of smiles. Robin observes it all, the entirety of the universe wrapped up and held in her arms.
“Everything.”