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Robin wasn’t stupid.
She was many things — loud, pestering, a bit annoying, passionate, hopelessly in love with a straight girl every other week — but she wasn’t stupid. Steve would disagree with that, but he couldn’t really talk, now could he? With his three crushes on three guys in three or so years who were either dead or jackasses — and sometimes both! — he was absolutely no better than her. (Stupid, idiot Steve Harrington. The straightest bisexual ever.) But even so, sitting on the Wheeler’s front porch steps after the final battle with Vecna, she felt like an absolute idiot with no thoughts in her head left to be held on to.
They had won, and she was glad for that — immensely. The moment she escaped that desert dimension, she was in Vickie’s arms again and felt safe for the first time that year. She had felt horrible about basically ignoring the girl for weeks coming upon the final battle, and even before that when they 'mutually broke up' (Vickie found out she had a crush on Nancy by actually listening to one of her rants).
The worst part, as everyone agreed, was El — the bright girl with a brighter future — sacrificing herself for a fight that wasn’t hers to win nor lose. They all mourned her for months, Mike especially. He was unresponsive for the following weeks, his first ask to Max was where Jane was, which ended in another week-long shut down. He only truly opened up when Jonathan and Robin ambushed him, insisting he go out and hang with the remaining party; actually do something before he had to return to school after the unacceptable amount of sick days he got.
Every time she saw Mike, curled into himself and looking like he was sinking without anything to grab a hold of, she felt vaguely ill. She had loved El, even if she didn't know her that well, but she certainly was not the only person they lost.
Robin lost so much that night. More then she could name. If she were to make it a list —
For one, she lost her best friend.
Steve didn’t make it past the radio tower. That might have been the worst pill to swallow after she climbed out of the upside down — that she survived longer than him. As the top of the structure collided with the small, wrinkled gap in the top (Bottom? Middle?? God, this alter dimension still really confused her for how often she and her group explored it.) of the upside down, he slipped. Fell right off after one last desperate grip to the edge. She screamed as she reached out for him, and Jonathan dived forward to grab his arm after a moment of being frozen in place — but he couldn’t. He was already gone.
Then it was Nancy.
Oh, Nancy. Nancy might have been worse.
When she volunteered to go as bait, to put herself on the line for them — for her — she felt both amazing and sick at the same time. She, quite honestly, didn't know how to feel at that moment — or any moment after it. Robin had wanted to pull her back and smash their lips together in a mix of dirt and blood and tears and everything else that goes into love, yet she'd also wanted to grab her hand, turn, and run the fuck out of there. But she hadn’t. She let her go, and she’d let her get crushed by that fucking monster.
She thinks, however, that Will was the worst of them all.
Terrified and thoughtless, she had told Joyce to follow the others, and that she’d stay back with him while he fought Henry from outside. She heard shouting, and screams, and sounds that would haunt her for years. And then she heard crying. Right next to her, in her ear.
She turned, and the boy she’d grown to care for had a metaphorical-invisible-bullshit hole in his stomach and was crumbled on his knees.
The tears were almost instantaneous, holding the boy as he sobbed and curled into her like she was the only thing keeping him up. When Mike had been the first out, he had burst into a sprint seeing his best friend on the ground with her, falling to his side with hovering, confused hands.
He had asked her what happened, and Robin managed to get out, “I don’t know,” between her tears, yet when Wheeler’s eyes fell on the area he kept holding and pressing on, he paled— and looked ready to throw up. She didn't catch much of what he said, between her hiccups and his damp, bloodshot eyes, but she knew she heard, 'hive mind,' and that made her want to shriek and yell and blame this all on everyone but Will and Nancy and, God, even Steve.
All of this — the deaths, the suffering, the tears and cradling cold bodies, was because she had wanted a goddamn summer job. To pay her bills when her dad was struggling, she got this. She’s got Steve “The Hair” Harrington being her best friend. She's got Nancy Wheeler as her two year long crush. And she’s got holding a dead sixteen year old boy in another dimension.
She never wanted to get impaled by a fucking Mind Flayer more than that moment alone.
Despite the deaths of two out of five of the Wheeler’s, they made the decision to stay in Hawkins. Robin had visited once, earlier that day, to see Mike and Holly, and maybe even Karen if she was mentally stable enough.
The moment she and Max — the closest person to Holly that wasn’t a twelve year old — had walked in, saw the multitude of pictures frames on fire places and shelves turned onto the face — she fought the urge to walk back out. But, Holly had run up to her and the fiery girl, hugging her like she was the anchor on a runaway ship.
So she stayed.
She stayed and watched Holly color her sister with her punk-ass pink sweater and gun, and her brother with some D&D thing she couldn’t remember the name of, and her mom with a broken glass and slash of blood across her nightgown — which, after Robin registered what that part was, she gently took the crayons and paper away from the girl.
Mike came down a few hours later, looking years older than he actually was. He saw Robin first, paused in his step at the sight of Holly smiling brighter than anything in that house had been in the past months, then made a beeline straight for Max — collapsing into her.
She hadn’t even bothered rolling her eyes before she returned the boy's hug, a not-frown-not-smile settled flat on her lips. Robin turned back to Holly, giving them privacy. She felt like she was intruding on something she wasn’t allowed to see — even though they were doing it in the middle of the living room.
She let Holly read, sitting quietly at her chair, staring blankly at the fridge for the next hours. And then she left. No goodbye, no hug, no wave. She got up, told Holly her drawing was good, and left.
Not really, though.
Robin sat on the front steps, waiting for a girl who was never going to come home — for a girl who’s not too forgotten to think about, but not close enough to recognize her face. She waits, maybe until her dad picks her up, or maybe until Mrs. Wheeler comes out and tells her she has to go home because it’s too late for her to stay any longer without getting too cold.
Then she’ll get up, go home or hop in the car, and sit straight at the distance — hoping that she’ll catch a glimpse of curly brown hair, or a pink sweater, or maybe even those killer eyes that she fell so in love with. Or maybe she'll hope she sees nothing but the sky, clear and blue, to spread out her thoughts and feelings on a clean slate. She isn't exact on the answer yet, but she's quite sure she'll figure it out when the time comes.
Nancy would know, she thinks. Nancy would tell her exactly what to think, and how to go about her day. Steve would probably make some stupid joke about Robin being dumb in love with her, and Will might slouch at that. Robin would probably nudge her friend's side, maybe wrap an arm around the younger boy beside her, and smile at Nancy as she always did.
She forced herself to stop thinking about them — thinking about how Steve would be such a good comfort for her right now, how all the friends she'd lost over the years for this world were the only ones she wanted with her now. Her mind drifted to Barb for a moment, and she had the strange urge to sob.
But she didn't. Robin wouldn't sit on the Wheeler's steps, crying over dead people, waiting for them to come back like a dog. Friends, yes, but dead nonetheless. Maybe that made her rude, not wanting to cry over someone in case of being seen as weird. She never really understood her train of thought — they always ended in a dead end or a train crash. She wasn't stupid, even then, as often as it felt like the opposite.
Yet even then, she was still many other things. Maybe one of them counted for something.