Work Text:
Robin’s finger presses down on the power button as hard as it can, but the phone does nothing beyond reflect her image back to her with a black screen. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she gripes. “So much for water resistance…”
And really, it is her fault for dropping it in the puddle in the first place, but it’s the last thing she needs right now. Pocketing the phone with a frustrated growl, Robin looks around, trying in vain to find something, anything, that she recognizes. But all of the buildings look rundown, abandoned, foreign.
She’s officially lost.
She’s lost and it’s all Steve’s fault.
Robin winces at the thought, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. Because it really isn’t Steve’s fault, even if he is the reason Robin’s out roaming the streets. It’s not like he just left home and decided to get himself abducted. He left home to go to work. Robin left twenty minutes after him.
Maybe if she’d gone with him, he wouldn’t be missing and she wouldn’t be walking in the rain trying to find him. Or maybe they’d both be missing. Or maybe they’d both be dead. It’s a spiral of thoughts she’s had over and over again in the last three days, something she can’t shut off no matter how hard she tries.
It hasn’t helped her so far and it doesn’t help her now that she’s lost in a part of town she’s never been in before. But her feet move, one in front of the other, taking her down the street and maybe eventually back to something she knows or someone who can help her find her way again.
The sprinkle of rain bears down on her, this time accompanied by a roll of thunder, and Robin feels like crying all over again. About Steve, about the rain, about being lost. She feels helpless in a way she isn’t used to, naked and wounded without the constant presence of her best friend at her side.
As the thunder rolls again, she makes a promise to find him or die trying. Because living without him isn’t an option.
Head ducked to keep the water out of her eyes, Robin nearly finds herself walking into the open door of a car, pulling up just shy of the collision and staring at it for a moment. “Hey, are you okay?” a soft voice asks from the driver’s seat of the car, and a young woman, maybe Robin’s age, sticks her head out.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Robin hastens to answer before shaking her head with a despaired chuckle. “Actually, no, I’m not fine. I’m very lost and my best friend is missing and my phone is busted.”
If her mind was clearer, Robin would have felt guilty for dumping all of her woes on a stranger, but there isn’t space for other thoughts. It’s just Steve, phone, lost, Steve, over and over and over again. There isn’t even space to lament about the fact that she’s soaking wet from the rain at this point.
“I could give you a ride somewhere?” the woman offers. “Get you back to something familiar?”
It’s a tempting offer, and it would solve one of Robin’s many problems, but something makes her hesitate. Something being Steve’s voice in the back of her mind reminding her about stranger danger. “I shouldn’t,” she says. “I’ll get your seat all wet and I don’t want to put you out when you don’t even know me. I’ll find my way eventually.”
The woman looks at her with a raised eyebrow, but her expression isn’t necessarily unkind. Mostly it’s curious. “I’m Chrissy,” she introduces herself as she extends a hand. “And you are?”
Manners override sense and Robin shakes Chrissy’s hand. “I’m Robin.”
“Great, now we know each other.” Chrissy’s smile looks genuine enough and Robin could really use a win, or a new supporter, or something. She feels like she’s drowning all alone.
Robin laughs, just for a second. “Yeah, I guess we do.”
“So…. About that ride?”
Which is how Robin ends up in the passenger seat of Chrissy’s little car, heat on full blast as she rubs her numb fingers in front of the vent, trying to dry and warm them at the same time. She hadn’t even realized she was shivering until she was out of the rain. “If you can just get me to, like, Coulton, I can find my way from there.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Chrissy replies as she makes a left turn.
With at least a partial plan in place, Robin gives herself a moment to relax, to recollect her thoughts and figure out her next move. She realizes far too late that she should have been watching where they were going instead. Buildings have given way to the surrounding woods before Robin so much as looks out the car’s window. Once she does, she frowns. “I might be lost, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the way to Coulton.”
Chrissy spares a glance in her direction before moving her eyes back to the road. “It’s not,” she confirms. “We’re not going to Coulton.”
Ice floods Robin’s veins as she stares across the middle console, trying to put together a puzzle she doesn’t have all the pieces for. “Where are we going then?” she asks carefully, eyes never leaving Chrissy.
A delightfully delicate smile lights up Chrissy’s face, but she doesn’t look at Robin again. “We’re going to go see Steve,” she explains. “We’re nearly there.”
Robin’s heart beats in her ears as she tries to make sense of the words, of what’s going on. It only takes her a moment to reach her conclusion. “You’re the one that took him.”
Chrissy laughs, and Robin thinks it would be a pretty laugh if she weren’t terrified out of her mind right now. “No, that wasn’t me. That was someone else, a friend of mine. We work together.”
It’s probably fucked up, the way Chrissy makes it sound like she’s talking about a regular day job when she’s talking about kidnapping people. And maybe Robin should be trying to find a way out of the car, but all she can focus on is finally getting to see Steve again. Once the two of them are together, they’re sure to find a way out. They are two halves of the same whole, better and smarter together.
The car turns right, onto a path mostly hidden in the trees, easily missed unless you know where to look. “He’ll be so happy to see you, you know,” Chrissy talks to fill the silence. “He says your name a lot when he’s asleep.”
Robin doesn’t think Steve will actually be happy to see her, to know that she fell for the same trap he apparently did. But she’ll be happy to see him, to feel him, to know he’s alive and okay. She tells herself that’s the only reason she doesn’t try to jump from the car, to run away and find actual help.
In reality, she knows that even if she did manage the jump, she’d be lost in the woods without any supplies except a busted phone. She would be dead by morning with the turning of the weather. Instead she sits calmly in the passenger seat and waits for the car to roll to a stop.