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“Pick up, pick up, pick up.” Robin mutters into the phone, tapping her foot impatiently and scuffing the toe of her trainer against the pavement as she listens to the phone ringing.
It rings to voicemail. Of course it does.
But, Robin is nothing if not persistent! Or maybe she’s just being naive… at the moment, it doesn’t really seem to matter. She’s had enough drinks to put her in good spirits and she can’t help but feel like it’s going to be alright this time, maybe she really will be able to fix things, all she needs to do is try Nancy’s cell again, and maybe her girlfriend will answer this time instead of just letting it ring.
Robin can feel her cheeks flushing red, whether from cheap beer or the cold night air, she can’t tell. In fact, her entire face has probably gone bright red, like a strawberry. Nancy rarely ever blushes but when she does it’s something soft, heat seeping to her cheeks and tinging them pink, as she’ll duck her head down so that her hair falls into her face, and she’ll let out a small breathless chuckle as if it will somehow hide her flustered state. Robin adores Nancy’s blush. She also misses it more than she can even begin to explain. She misses Nancy, she really does.
But that’s alright, because she’ll see her again soon! Robin is hit with a wave of certainty which reassures her. In fact it almost overwhelms her, giddy excitement churning in her stomach, as a laugh bubbles up inside her and spills from her lips and into the night air. Honestly, Robin has definitely exceeded her usual level of weirdness by this point in the evening, so probably sounds more than a little crazy, sitting alone on a park bench with a ringing phone, laughing about nothing. Luckily though, she’s alone, so even if she does seem crazy then at least there’s no one to witness it.
Robin starts, glancing around in surprise, as she hears a robot voice speaking.
“…please leave a message after the tone. Beep.”
Oh. Right! Stupid Robin, getting so distracted that she forgot about the phone call she’s trying to make. It’s alright though! It’s getting kinda late, Robin was at the bar for way longer than she’d intended to be, so Nancy’s probably just gone to sleep. She must be snuggled up under the thick duvet in their double bed, even though she almost always overheats in her sleep and ends up kicking the duvet off her in the middle of the night. It’s happened more than once that she’s ended up accidentally kicking Robin, causing her to promptly fall out of bed.
Robin should probably stop calling since she knows that Nancy will be annoyed if she’s woken up. So she goes to hang up, but ends up fumbling the phone instead. It drops to the floor with a sharp clatter.
“Stupid.” Robin mumbles, clenching her hand into a fist and hitting it against her head as hard as she can. Her knuckles and skull both throb from the impact, so she does it again. It becomes a distraction, a rhythm almost, something to keep her thoughts at bay - a system that manages to keep her feeling numb almost as well as alcohol does these days.
Until suddenly, someone wraps their finger around her wrist, catching her fist before she can hit herself again. Robin’s heart flutters with hope, because it must be Nance who’s shown up to let out a fond huff and roll her eyes and lecture Robin about what an idiot she’s been before driving her safely back to their shared apartment.
Robin believes that this is what’s going to happen enough that her head snaps up, only for her happiness to shatter when she sees who it is. Because it isn’t Nancy who’s come. It’s Jonathan Byers, studying her with an odd expression on his face which is just a smidge too close to pity for her liking.
“Go away.” Robin says, peevishly, jutting her chin out and fixing her eyes intently on him in the way that seems to weird most people out.
Jonathan doesn’t flinch or shy away, like she’d hoped he would. Instead, he just shakes his head and takes a seat next to her on the bench.
“Did Nancy call you to come and get me?” Robin asks, still clinging onto a shred of hope.
“You know that she didn’t.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Steve called and you’d disappeared. He would have come himself, but he was with one of the kids and he said it was urgent, so you’re stuck with the next best thing to him, I guess.”
Robin doesn’t know what to say to that, so she elects to stay silent for once. It’s difficult, of course, because there’s just so much to say, and there are so many thoughts rickrocketing around her head, and she just knows that if she opens her mouth then words are going to spill out like blood from a wound.
“It’s alright.” Jonathan says after a while, in a tone that’s softer than usual, “I know you don’t like me all that much. But I just want you to know that I’m here, alright? If you need to talk about it with someone then I’m willing to listen.”
“I don’t not like you.” Robin shoots back. “And there’s nothing to talk about.”
“We could talk about Nancy. If you’re ready to, that is. Also, you don’t need to lie, it’s obvious that I annoy you.”
“It’s not you.” Robin admits, reluctantly. “I just- I hate that you’re both so happy.”
“Me and Steve?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think I deserve him either.”
That surprises Robin a little. Steve loves people like it’s breathing, so she’d assumed that had probably had even a little bit of a positive impact on Jonathan’s crumbling self esteem. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case. Jonathan doesn’t elaborate on what he’d said, though, and Robin doesn’t ask him to.
They sit awkwardly next to each other on the park bench in silence for a while.
Robin folds her arms around herself in a way that can sometimes make her feel just a little less lonely. If it was just her right now, then she’d close her eyes and focus all her energy into imagining that it’s Nancy giving her a hug instead of just her folding in on herself in an attempt to hold herself together.
A ghost of wind scatters a pile of leaves in front of them. Robin’s grip on the hem of her shirt tightens, and she scrunches it into a ball in her fist. Her fingers twitch with the urge to rip it to shreds. Actually, she wouldn’t want to rip her shirt because she’s wearing it so that would be pretty inconvenient, but she’s currently filled with the overwhelming desire to break something. That’s what Nancy’s always talking about;breaking things, whether it was the system or something else. She’s a hurricane of a person, but Robin loved being able to sit in the eye of the storm and witness her whirling around life.
“It’s alright, y’know.” Jonathan tells her, tentatively, as if she’s an explosion just waiting to go off . “You can at least try to be happy, even without her. Nancy wouldn’t want you to keep doing this to yourself.”
It’s such absolute bullshit that Robin can’t help but let out a snort of laughter.
Nancy has always been a brilliant journalist, loving nothing more than curling up on the couch with a flask of coffee, and scrawling in her mauve notebook for an hour or two. She’d absolutely back Robin up on this.
“You don’t have to keep on hurting. That isn’t what she’d want.”
Robin shakes her head. “I do.”
Jonathan just doesn’t get it. His eyes widen slightly as he shoots her an inquisitive look. “Why?”
“Because I have to prove it to her.” Robin says, and it comes out all small and sad - even she can hear just how pathetic it sounds.
“Prove what?” Jonathan prompts, eyebrows creasing together in concern.
“That I was… that I am in love with her. That she’s everything, and I’ll do anything, anything, if she’ll just come back home and let me love her again.”
“Robin.” Jonathan says, voice cracking, as - to her absolute horror - tears start spilling out of his eyes. “You know she can’t do that. You know that.”
“No.” Robin mutters, more to herself than to him, “No, no, no. Nancy’s coming back, I know she is. I mean, she loves me, she told me that so many times, I can’t just stop believing that. She wouldn’t- she wouldn’t just leave me.”
“But she did.” Jonathan whispers. He doesn’t make a move to hide his own tears. Instead he shifts closer, so that he can nudge his shoulder against her hers. “That was her choice, Robin. You have to accept it.”
“No!” Robin bursts out, sharply, scrambling to her feet and almost falling over in the process. “She… she’s… stop it! You’re wrong!”
Jonathan gets to his feet too, but he doesn’t make a move to step towards her. It’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t, Robin is seething with bitterness right now, and she knows that if he got any closer then she’d probably punch him or something else stupid.
Jonathan’s shoulders are shaking now, and there’s no way he’ll be able to blame it on the cold weather because silence sobs wrack his body, and his face has crumpled from crying.
Robin can’t bear to look at him because watching him cry makes him even harder to hate. So she turns her face away, looking out across the desolate park, instead. But then her gaze catches on the cold, black metal of a lamp-post, and she shudders as memories flood back to her. Nancy must have lost count of the amount of times she had wrapped her hand around cold, black metal. And yet whenever she defended them all from supernatural monsters, she seemed more than at ease handling guns, finger staying steady on the trigger.
Robin always knew about the one shotgun that Nancy kept, stashed safely under their bed. She figured that it was just a precaution, that was a product of leftover paranoia or PTSD. She’d never dreamed that it was Nancy’s way of planning ahead.
Part of Robin can’t stop wondering about when the other girl first made up her mind; when did she first decide that she would use that gun to take her own life? Did she hesitate? For even a split second, when she was alone in their bedroom, did she think of anyone else and regret what she was about to do? Or did Nancy just go through with it in the same way that she followed through on all her plans - with an almost disconnected efficiency, and not a hint of hesitation?
Robin startles, as she feels a featherlight touch skate over her cheek. She blinks, and more tears slip out, trickling down her cheek, before Jonathan frowns and gently wipes them away again with the pad of his thumb.
Robin crashes into him, burying her face in his shoulder, her tears soaking into the fabric of his jumper. Jonathan wraps his arms around her and holds her tightly. She sinks into the hug, into the reassurance that she craves, even if it’s feeble and she already knows it won’t last for long enough to steady her.
Eventually, she gets to the hiccupy stage and Jonathan rubs her back in a soothing motion, rocking her back and forth ever so slightly like she’s a little kid who needs to be calmed down.
Then, when Robin’s tears dry up and her breathing finally evens out, his grip on her loosens and she takes a step back, scrubbing at her tearstained cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I miss Nancy.” She mumbles.
Jonathan nods. “I know. I do too.”
“Why did she have to kill herself? We both survived so much, and she seemed fine afterwards, and we were really happy together, and then… why? Why did she choose to die?”
“I don’t know.” Jonathan whispers, brokenly. “She never told me, either.”