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It’s a movie.
It’s not. It’s not a freaking movie and she’s no paid actor and neither is Steve and neither are they with their bulky monstrosities pointed down at them.
Robin blinks and it’s all still there, very much haptic and real, her sweaty forearm brushing against Steve’s, skin that feels smoother than she thought it would considering all the scrubby hair that’s growing there and it’s not like she ever thoughtabout how touching him there would feel like, it’s not like she wants to think about it now, it’s just—
There’s a potentially deadly weapon pointed at her and chances are high they won’t ever see any of Steve’s strange kiddo friends again; she’ll never see her parents again either, will never ride her bike again, will never set foot out of Hawkins, will never kiss a girl outside of a silly truth-and-dare game, will never tell anyone she’s—
So, for all the things Robin may never do, finding some comfort in being close to Steve like this in what is most likely the last stage of her way too short life isn’t something she can bring herself to feel embarrassed about. It’s not like anyone will ever know. She'll take that one to her grave— if they even bother to dig one for her.
That tiny piece of comfort that consists of knowing he's here, with her, is ripped away from her as they roughly grab her by the arms and pull her upwards, away from Steve.
Fuck. They're gonna kill her now, aren't they?
Robin's heart is the first to teeter, then her legs follow suit.
The truck teeters a little in its lane and though Robin’s stomach lurches instantly, there’s no proper fear there to accompany its downfall, not yet. Her hand flies to the door handle all the same, an automatic motion so she won’t topple out of her seat and smash her face against the grimy window. But it’s not the first reckless driving maneuver she’s witnessed Steve act in and she trusts him to get it back under control, of course she does. If he managed to teach her the basics of driving a stick car (which he did, less than a year ago), he can handle any kind of automotive challenge.
What happens outside of the vehicle, though, is a whole other story.
It’s out of Steve’s control entirely, out of hers too, and the second the tires stop screeching and the driver’s cabin stops shaking, Robin’s body understands that, her heart rate picking up in an instant. The dull thud of it clambers into her ears, nestles there deep into the auditory canals, faster than the men in camouflage can even move around the scene. For a moment, it’s all she can hear. She wishes they could just lock the doors, close their eyes. Perhaps hide in the foot well with the revolting, foul smell soaked into Steve’s clothes cocooning them.
"Fuck." Steve’s voice pierces through the clamor at last. He slams his flat palm against the wheel and— "Shit, Rob, we need to—"
What? She almost asks. What is it they need to do? They can’t do anything, can they?
They’re sitting side by side, two mice in a trap that’s on the verge of snapping shut and squishing them, this time not exactly backed against a wall, but close enough. The windshield, cracked and smeared in Upside-Down dusk and dried monster slime as it is, has left enough glass uncovered to let Steve drive and therefore it’s also enough to show what’s happening now. What’s about to happen.
Unable to detach her gaze from the men closing in on them, their guns out in sight, their faces grim, Robin stretches out her hand over the middle console. Steve’s fingers, more calloused and warmed from holding onto the wheel, weave into hers. The hollows between his fingers are a bit sticky, from monster goo or sweat or both; Robin doesn’t mind so much now, it’s a piece of Steve, either way.
It’s a small comfort right now, but it’s comfort all the same.
Until their doors are ripped open, almost simultaneously, and they’re ripped apart, hands losing contact as they're being commanded out of separate doors. Foreign, sturdy fingers dig through the thin sleeves into Robin's forearms now, knuckles and what very well may be the shape of a firearm pressed against her sides, fractions of her body which are sore as it is from the events of the past days. Holy shit. The second Robin closes her eyes, she's back deep beneath the earth, shoved through gray airless hallways that never appear to end — so she tears those eyelids right back open.
Back into what she knows for a fact is the present, Robin can’t help but trip over her own feet; they're not in the slightest prepared to match their relentless pace, not after three days without proper sleep and hours spent climbing and running. She yelps, more out of surprise than actual pain. At least, they don’t let her fall; they haul her right back up, as though she weighs nothing. Is nothing. But she's okay. It's okay. It's… yeah. It's fine.
Which Steve can’t see from the other side of the truck, of course. His voice lifts itself over the vehicle and affray with only barely a second delay.
"Hey, hey, man, don’t— don’t touch her—"
Steve roars her name.
He’s stretching the two syllables so far that they become almost unrecognizable. An indignant sound, quickly turning desperate and breathless as their steel-toed boots kick him in the gut and he sags back against the metal wall, wet hair sliding over his eyes. It’s the last Robin sees of him before she’s dragged out the door, kicking and screaming and scratching and using every insult she’s ever collected.
They laugh at her.
Their voices are not Russian and neither are their uniforms, but their tone might as well belong to the same people. It’s the same harsh, clipped one. For all their rivalry, Russian and American soldiers are ultimately exchangeable, Robin thinks. With their barked orders, with the way they grip her arms and not let up even as… even as her body barely puts up any fight. On the outside, she’s almost limp, paralyzed by indecision.
On the inside, however, Robin knows she’s screaming. Cursing them and every other guy in military dress code that has ever put his hands on her in every language she knows.
Her throat is sore, screamed raw in that distinct way where Robin almost expects shredded layers of her own skin to curl up in the back of her mouth. That never happens, or as far as she can tell, it doesn't. Something else does. It sounds as though someone else’s throat is being shredded instead.
Steve
Robin's fingers itch to fly to her ears, block out the worst of it. The black belt or rope or whatever else they’ve used to tie her wrists in front of her stomach forbids it and so Robin rolls uselessly on the floor like one of the overgrown earthworms she used to collect in her little yellow plastic bucket as a kid, trying to find a position where she’ll be able to press the shell of at least one ear flat to the cold ground. She never finds it.
Steve’s hoarse, ragged screams find her instead.
If she can hear him, can he hear her, too? Her voice? If she tried to give him something soothing, whatever that may be? Robin decides to test it by lifting her head a little, straining her neck, opening her mouth. She’s rarely ever out of words, but now — as she pictures Steve’s face, covered in radiant maroon and swollen black — all that makes it outside is a pathetic, hideous sob.
If she’d just kept her mouth shut two days before today, Steve and his strange kiddo friend would still be stewing over the fact that Cyrillic letters don’t line up with Latin ones. Without her, Steve wouldn’t be dying right now. Because it sounds like— like he is.
Robin will have killed him. Oh God, no. No—
It only registers with Robin for what purpose they’re roughly wrestling her oddly pliable arms behind her back as she hears the muffled click of something cold closing tight around her wrists. And not even then — as she realizes she can’t fucking move her arms — actual panic surges through her limbs.
It should. It really should.
Around her, each time Robin’s gaze jumps to cover another inch, friend after friend is given a similarly unfriendly treatment. Though she can’t catch a sign of any more handcuffs, whatever that means.
It’s all so dark and yet so bright, with the stupid searchlights exposing them all. To Robin’s own surprise, it’s only as they haul Steve’s squirming body to her side of the tarpaulin that her pulse spikes, suddenly a frantic, unforeseen thunder in her throat and against the metal confinement behind her back.
He’s falling. The tower. He’s going to—
It’s only as they nearly smash his face against the tarp to pat down his legs and shove her body next to his that Robin’s feet do a weird little dance on the wet concrete. As if they suddenly contemplate fighting the armed men in his stead.
"Rob?"
Steve sounds as though he’s slurring. The tarp is what’s to blame, surely. Makes his voice a stranger to her ears. Right? They didn't punch him again, did they? Knock out some of his teeth? Though that didn't happen last time either… right? Robin wants to change her spot from one cheek to the other, to maybe catch a fleeting glimpse of part of him because he sounds— strained. Injured. Fuck. No. Not again.
"Robin, are you—"
"No talking."
Even though Robin wasn’t the one to say anything, not that she can remember at least, a palm is shoved against the back of her head and pushes her face deeper into the engine-oil-reeking tarp. She can only assume the same thing is happening to Steve, judging by the muffled groan vibrating through the texture.
"Steve," she whispers, so quiet she barely hears herself.
Don’t be hurt. Don’t be dead at the bottom of that tower. Don’t be a fucking illusion.
This time, no further manhandling follows. If they didn’t hear her, Steve most likely didn’t either—
Except, an elbow nudges the side of her shoulder, the touch lasting no longer than a second. The blink of an eye, except Robin keeps hers closed now. Unwilling to be faced with the inescapable tarp and the uncertainty of what’s happening behind their backs. Even if it means it's taking her straight back into the endless hallway.
Following shortly after, the motion repeats itself once more. A flick of the bone. Resembling a knock. Again. Again.
Oh
How many short knocks have it been already?
Four? Shit, she should’ve focused on—
A pause.
H
Another quick knock. Pause.
E
This time, Robin puts more effort into counting. Three more. Pause.
R
And another short one. No more.
E
Robin exhales against the tarp, everything slowing down a tad.
She’s so fucking glad that after the events in Spring ’86 Nancy insisted they all learn Morse code basics. And she’s even gladder Steve paid attention.
He’s here. Alive enough to remember Morse code.
There’s no corpse beside her. That’s reassuring.
There may be a corpse tied to her back.
Or no, not a corpse. Steve’s corpse. Which makes it not only a corpse, but a body, a person. Not that any other unresponsive someone wouldn’t freak Robin out. A corpse stays a horrible thing, no matter whose it is. But she knows it’s Steve’s and— that being said, there’s a chance it’s not even a corpse at all.
Robin clings to that slim chance. It’s one of the few things motivating her to keep screaming for help instead of dissolving into useless, frantic sobbing. Because who would enjoy being attached to a corpse?
Okay, no. Not a corpse. She needs to stop calling it that. It’s not a that at all.
It’s Steve.
And he’s not dead. He’s still warm. As far as Robin can tell. The back of his neck. And whenever she grants her vocal cords a second to relax and clamps her own lips shut, she imagines hearing faintly wheezing but relatively steady whooshes of air close by. May only be the ventilation system. May just as well be Steve taking his last breaths.
Hope dies last, isn’t that what they say? What a stupid phrase. If Steve dies (in case he hasn’t already, and she’s tied to a corpse—), Robin’s not sure there will be any hope left to die. Because if he goes— she’d be all alone down here. Which is a selfish truth to think, especially on what may be the brink of death.
But… in case her Grandma’s right about God, that one won’t want Robin in his holy gardens anyway. And if the last year wasn’t enough to redeem Steve in the eyes of God, Robin guesses there’s a chance they’ll see each other again in whatever is the appropriate opposite. Hell?
Sounds too harsh— but will they have a choice?
Against Robin’s back, the corpse — which is, in fact, not a corpse, mind you — stirs.
Something’s happening around them. Behind them.
Something that appears to have little to do with the military. The pressure against her back eases. Tentatively, Robin moves, turns a few inches without being held back. Next to her, she senses Steve do the same. He stumbles into her side and if Robin were the type to bet, she’d claim he did it on purpose. Here. Warmth makes her blood tingle, like half the times when Robin, sort of abruptly, is overcome with remembering how much she loves that guy.
Everyone — the soldiers who caught them, but Steve now too — stares ahead, Steve’s lips an inch parted, like he’s about to say something. Robin scans his face first. Every abnormality her eyes can track has been there before they headed into this battle, if she's not mistaken. No obvious traces of fresh blood, no welts, not even a flush. Good.
Or maybe it’s only good because she expected worse.
He looks worse off under the grilling lights.
Robin’s seen girls her age in these standard mall bathrooms touch up on their already immaculate makeup more often than she could count. And she guesses she sees the advantage of the light now. It glosses over nothing. If your makeup sustains here, it’ll work anywhere.
Here, now, the lights are not in Steve’s favor.
Sticky, sour nausea crawls up Robin’s throat once more only staring at the map of multicolored bruising, matching the prints of knuckles against the deformations. To scramble and bend over the toilet once more, however, would be rude and gross and wouldn’t lead anywhere anyway. She can’t remember when her teeth last chewed on something that wasn’t the inside of her own cheek or a piece of icky old popcorn.
It’s probably for the best that there’s nothing left to heave up. It’s probably for the best because Steve’s bruises are not the point Steve’s trying to make, which is worse somehow. He may even be unaware of how awfully clear violence is painted across his skin. Because he is far too busy pouring out his stupidly big heart to her. His feelings. For her.
Truth serum, huh.
Robin can’t decide if it’s that or the inescapability of the situation itself that makes her want to explain herself.
Maybe it’s just that it’s become unbearable to see him suffering.
Steve suffers quietly. He's good at that.
Robin can see it in the way his eyes widen slightly, the lips still parted, the visible spike of the pulse in his neck. His cap sits askew, close to falling off, and even though his hands — unlike hers — are technically free, he doesn’t reach up to change a thing about it.
He only… stares. Stands and stares.
It’s what they all do. Well, most of them.
Robin can’t say she knew the girl with the superpowers well or, like, at all, apart from the obvious. But even in the back of her throat air becomes rare the second the storm picks up and erases her along with the gate, along with every last proof that this hasn’t just been one incredibly elaborate, prolonged nightmare.
Steve stumbles into her side.
This time, Robin thinks, it wasn’t planned or intentional. It takes her wobbly legs by surprise. They buckle. The dark, wet concrete rushes first into her knees and then into her chest as she folds once more, nearly smacking her forehead in a puddle.
Balance is a tricky venture with your hands tied behind your back.
She’s never had her hands tied before. Same goes for her feet.
Which… arguably isn’t an original lack of experience for a seventeen-year-old girl. And it explains why Robin thought this was a thing that would stop bothering her the second Dustin cut her restraints. At the moment, it had.
There’d been other things to worry about.
It’s only as the paramedics outside the fuming, dying mall frown down at her wrists that Robin pays them any mind herself.
Stark, ruby lines snake around her skin and veins. As though the restraints were never cut, only switched color, so that they could fool her. Make her carry them around and out of that bunker, keep them alive, maybe forever. This thing she could’ve never imagined and will never be able to forget.
It’s not an injury — if she can even call it that — you receive in a mall fire, but if someone asks, she’ll say that that’s where she got it from. Then again, neither are the traces of punches scattered all over Steve’s poor face. Steve, who’s being treated only one ambulance over, which is good. Means she can see his back. Watch his back. This by now excessively familiar triad of white, navy and red. Means she can wonder whether his wrists bear similar marks.
If they’re matching even in that regard.
"Match my breathing," Steve says, holding her face in his hands. His palms that still smell like something rotten. This time, that's not what nearly makes Robin gag.
She’s on the ground— how did she get here? And why? When?
Her knees dig into the gravel, pebbles imprinting on her kneecaps. Something wet soaks into her pants. The simmering discomfort of it is overridden by a much sharper, much more life-threatening realization. She can’t— where has all the air gone? And her hands— she gasps for at least a shred of oxygen— where are her hands? She can’t see them and what’s worse, can’t feel them.
What did they do with her hands? Did they take them?
—the bone saw?
At least they didn’t take Steve’s, too.
His are holding her face, so they can’t have taken his.
"Robbie," Steve pleads, desperate now, digging his thumbs into her cheekbones. Into— ow. Robin recoils. There’s something there— on the right side of her face—
"Shit, sorry, I'm sorry—" The burn dulls. "But I really need you to breathe, Robin. Can you? Can you match my breathing? Can you breathe with me?"
Exaggeratedly, Steve drags air through his nose, shoulders lifting alongside, then opens his mouth to let the air escape again in an audible exhale. Steve wouldn’t ask that of her if it wasn’t necessary, right? Robin copies him on the second try, as best as she can, even if the air particles burn and smell weird, as if she’s inhaling smoke straight from the source. Her snot-clogged nose and her sore throat bring her close to suffocation.
She coughs, falling behind Steve’s patient rhythm.
"Keep going," he encourages.
"…can’t."
"Sure you can," Steve insists, clutching her face with a small, strange frown dug into his brow. "If you can speak, means you can breathe, too."
It’s logic she can’t fight.
And she could fight Steve, but she doesn’t particularly want to. Well, not without her arms, anyway—
Her arms.
They’re still gone. Shit.
Her chest — or rather everything on the inside of it — contracts and no, no, Robin doesn’t want to be without her arms, she needs them. Can’t Steve see that? Can’t he understand where she’s coming from? Wouldn’t he freak out if—
"Robin?"
Steve pats her cheeks and she manages to fall back into the somewhat same cycle of breathing. It helps. In terms of regaining the ability to speak more than one syllable in a row.
"My— my arms—"
"Your arms?" Steve falters for a moment, but then suddenly his frown smooths. Like he understands her. He usually does. "Rob, they’re okay, they’re here. Here, behind you."
And he reaches behind her. Vaguely, Robin tracks the warm brush against her skin. There’s something there, some part of her that feels equivalent to a limb covered in flesh and skin. And if Steve says so… she trusts him. He’s not given her a reason not to.
"They’re cuffed, that’s why you can’t move them, okay?"
Robin’s skin still crawls with how wrong, how scrappy her body feels, but she nods. Okay. Hair slips into her left eye, tickles her retina. Okay, makes sense. She remembers—
"Vickie’s looking for something to open them wi—"
"Vick’s here?"
"Yeah." Steve nods and brushes the irritating fraction of her hair out of her face, tucking it back behind her ear. "She’s here, she’s okay. A bit overwhelmed maybe, but hey, who’s not?"
"Don’t leave," Robin rasps, though he’s shown no sign of planning to thus far. If she could grasp his sleeves' hems, she would. But she can’t hold onto anything right now, quite physically, and that’s a scary thing to realize.
"Hey, hey," Steve murmurs.
Grasping her shoulders, he pulls her forward and pushes himself closer, far enough to let her see how intact his stupidly familiar face is. For his standards. There's still that little cut on his cheek Dustin's apparently somehow responsible for — she has yet to hear the whole story about that. Their foreheads plonk against each other and Robin's eyes see him as he is now. Her mind, however, sees the version of him that falls, mouth twisted in an open scream he’ll never finish. Or the one with the black eye and the crusted blood beneath the nose, the one that can do little more than wheeze and grimace.
"’M not gonna leave, Rob," he whispers. It’s not very convincing considering he almost did only today.
"You could’ve left," Steve says, peering over at her face. He could be a ladybug. Because of all the black bruises dotted on his swollen, florid cheeks. Or a rainbow fish with its scales painted in watercolors.
Robin huffs, nudging his shoulder with her own. The stretcher they’re now both perched on wobbles and it's truly risible, but they both flinch in sync. It’s not a falling elevator, but it rattles and shakes and for a split second it’s close enough. Instinctively, they clutch each other’s hands. Then, as the ridiculousness of it all dawns on them both, they break out into hysterical, breath-robbing laughter. Their hands don’t part again.
When their laughter fades and there’s no further word from him, Robin frowns.
"Um, you should be glad I didn’t leave. I’m the reason you’re still in possession of all ten fingernails."
Robin expects him to laugh because that’s what she does. She makes people laugh, whether she intends to or not. Steve said so herself. And she’d prefer to keep on laughing about this than treat it any other way. What’s the alternative? Not one she likes.
But Steve still does no such thing.
Only stares at her with those oddly serious eyes.
Their last serious conversation they had mere hours ago on a dirty bathroom floor and it’s where she spilled her biggest secret. Her only one, really. What’s she gonna spill now?
"Would you have left me, dingus?"
"No," Steve says in an instant, sounding nearly offended she’d question it. "’Course not."
"So why would I have?"
"It’s different," he insists with a firm shake of the head.
"It’s not," she holds against him, squeezing his hand. "Face it. You fucked up. You’re stuck with me now, dingus."
Steve smiles, like it’s not a totally awkward thing to say. Like— like it’s the best thing to happen to him.
"Alright. Then you’re stuck with me, too."
"You’re stuck with me, birdie."
Robin scoffs at the silly nickname, not the words. The words themselves warm her up, ease the spasms in her gut, because she knows he wants to mean them every time he says them, even if he sucks at making sure he'll be here to stick to the promise. Ultimately, the words stand no chance against the unbidden pictures pushing back to the front of her memory. Robin presses her forehead firmer against his, hoping it will banish them all before they can gain color.
Granted, Steve didn’t choose to fall off that tower.
It’s maybe the only one out of the reckless maneuver repertoire he’s gathered throughout the years she cannot hold against him. As for the rest—
"You idiot."
Steve pulls back a little, his tense face noticeably softened. The tight corners of his mouth have grown more pliable, almost lifted towards his eyes at this point. What used to be white in them has taken on a pale pink; Robin notices it only now.
El. Right. As horrible as it all is— she’s glad in a way that the military presence thwarted any stupidly sacrificial rescue stunt a free Steve may have pulled.
"I’m sure you’re right… but why?"
"Y’know I love you, right?”
He nods, still as clueless as before if the crinkle lining the patch between his brows can be taken as proof for anything. "I know. I know. Don’t give me that look, Robs. I know. But—"
"—but you really need to stop doing that."
Steve falters in his tracks, the clean dressing dangling between his fingers, the old one half-peeled off his stomach. Though furious red has long been replaced by a softer, healthier pink, Robin still can’t bear to look at it any longer than a handful of seconds. It still turns her stomach every single time. Not necessarily the wounds themselves, they're better now, but the memories— those bats eating at him, chopping his flesh with their fangs, their tails looped tight around his neck…
"Stop doing what?" he asks, as clueless as ever.
Mentally, Robin gives his mind a shove. They may not be as mind-melded as the party believes them to be, but her face is still an open chart to him whenever she wants it to be. Steve’s eyes flick over it now, then his own scarring stomach, then back to her. Robin bites her lip. He sighs, sets down the gauze.
"What was I supposed to do, Rob? Someone had to dive down there, investigate the ga—"
"I know," she mutters, fiddling with the scratchy end of the roll of gauze, looping it around her own ring finger, again and again and again. Until the upper section of her finger starts to turn milky white. "I know that. But it can’t always be you, dingus. There has to be a… oh, I don’t know, just…"
"Knowing what I know now," Steve says slowly, reaching out to gently uncoil the tight string of gauze from her finger. "I would do it again, I guess. ’Cause I mean, the alternative? Would’ve been you or Nance or… Eddie, and—"
"You can’t bear not being the one to protect others," Robin finishes for him, voice bitter.
It’s as much one of his most endearing qualities as it is one of his most annoying.
Steve shrugs, avoiding her eye. "Yeah. I guess. That’s not a bad thing, is it?"
"It is if you’re risking yourself in doing so!"
"Fine. Whatever."
"No," Robin snaps, slapping him on the fingers as he tries to take the gauze from her once and for all. "Don’t whatever-me, Steve. I’m serious. You can’t—" Her voice cracks. Fuck. "—die on me."
"Hey. Robbie. Come on, I wasn’t even close to dy—"
"That’s a lie and you know it."
"You do know if you die before me I’ll follow suit and haunt your ass, right?"
Steve snorts, softly shaking his head before bringing their foreheads back together once more, skin firm enough against skin that this ugly stench can go nowhere but straight into Robin's face. "Not planning on going anywhere right now."
This time, she thinks, he’s telling the whole truth.