Chapter Text
Everything happens wrong.
Steve charges, because of course he does, swinging the bat. It connects, but instead of impact there’s a feedback crack that throws him sideways like he's nothing. He doesn’t get up.
“STEVE!” Robin screams.
Nancy runs for him.
Diana grabs Robin’s arm. “We have to shut it down. Now.”
She looks at her like she's being split in half. Then the ground bucks. Diana gets thrown back. Hard. Her head smacks against concrete, a crack is heard, and the world goes sideways.
For a second, just a second, she hears something else. A whisper. Her name. Not Robin’s voice.
She comes back to herself with Robin shaking her violently.
“Hey, hey, don’t you dare, look at me!” she says, hands framing Diana’s face like she’s afraid it might fall apart.
Her face is smeared with dirt and something darker. Blood. Not hers.
Nancy’s dragging Steve away, yelling for him to stay awake. The thing is anchored now. Tendrils sunk into the transformer casing, drinking. Diana pushes herself upright, vision swimming.
Robin grips her jacket like she’s anchoring her to the ground. “No. Don’t even think about it.”
“There must be a manual cut,” she states hoarsely. “Inside the control box.”
Robin stares at her, “That’ll kill the power.” already knowing.
“It’ll starve it.”
“It could also...” Her voice breaks. “electrocute you.”
Diana doesn't answer. She understands anyway.
“No,” she says again, louder. “No, no, no. You are not doing this.”
“Robin, please.”
She shakes her head, furious, terrified hands still gripping Diana like if she lets go again, something worse will happen. “You don’t get to be brave tonight.”
She grabs her by the front of her shirt now, forehead pressed to hers. Like this, Diana can't read Robin's face, but she already knows what she's saying. “I already almost lost you once tonight. I'm not letting that happen one more time.”
The thing shrieks again. Louder. The town below dims.
Nancy shouts, “We’re out of time!”
Robin freezes, then, reluctantly, lets go. She looks wrecked. Furious. Terrified.
"I hate this town,” she whispers, “I’m going with you.”
The control box screams when Diana forces it open. Metal shrieks, sparks fly like angry insects. The smell hits first, hot plastic, ozone, something burning. Diana’s hands are shaking so badly she has to brace her forearm against the casing just to keep them steady. Sweat runs into her eyes, blurring everything.
Robin plants herself beside the command table, feet wide, like she’s bracing against a wave. Her jaw is locked so tight it hurts.
“Just tell me what to pull.”she says. Not loud. Not panicked. Like if she raises her voice, she’ll lose it.
Diana squints through the sparks, heart pounding in her throat, and points with her chin. “That lever. The blue one. On three.”
It crawls into their bones. Diana’s teeth chatter uncontrollably, jaw aching with the effort of staying conscious.
“One,” she says.
The thing turns. Not fast, definitely not startled. It chooses to look at them. Looks at Robin. At her angel.
Robin’s breath stutters. Her fingers curl tighter around the lever, knuckles going white. Tears spill over, silent and furious, carving clean tracks between soot down her face. She doesn’t wipe them away. She doesn’t look at Diana.
“Two.”
For half a second, Robin hesitates. It’s the same space as the hallway. The same gap as the dark. The same moment where holding on and letting go mean the same thing.
Robin squeezes her eyes shut.
“THREE!”
She pulls. The world explodes into light.
Diana doesn't remember hitting the ground a second time. There’s no impact, no pain she can isolate, just absence, like the floor rose up and erased her mid-thought. But she remembers Robin screaming her name like it’s the only one she knows. She remembers the loud hum cutting off mid-note, like a strangled breath, and then silence rushing in to replace it.
The thing collapses into itself, screaming without sound, dissolving into ash and steam folding into itself like it was never meant to hold a shape at all. The lights of Hawkins die completely. Darkness.
Diana wakes up to red and blue lights bleeding through her eyelids. Her ears ring more than before. Her body feels wrong like pieces of her didn’t land where they were supposed to. Robin’s kneeling beside her, hands tangled in her hair, shaking, covered in a mixture of sticky blood and lukewarm ash like she clawed her way out of something alive.
“Stay with me,” she begs, words breaking apart as they leave her mouth. “Please. Just.... stay.”
Diana tries to lift a hand. It doesn’t cooperate. So she smiles instead, crooked, uneven, the right and left halves of her face not quite agreeing with each other.
“Hey,” she murmurs. “I’m alright.”
Robin’s breath catches when she sees the smile. It doesn’t convince her. Nothing could.
She laughs anyway, a sharp, breathless sound, and presses her forehead to Diana’s like she’s afraid space itself might pull them apart again.
“I swear to God,” she sighs voice wrecked, “if you ever do something that stupid again...”
Diana smiles weakly. “You’d miss me.”
Robin huffs, half-sob, half-laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “I would.”
The waiting room smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee. Like something tried to be clean and failed. The clock on the wall is stuck between minutes, the second hand twitching uselessly, as if it gave up halfway through the night.
Robin hasn’t sat down.
She stands near Diana’s chair, arms crossed, weight shifting from foot to foot like if she stops moving, something will catch up to her. Diana’s knees are pulled to her chest. Her ears still ringing. Every fluorescent light feels too bright, even with closed eyes. Her head is leaning against Robin’s hip. Robin’s hand stays there, the older girl holding Diana's head like it may fall from her neck. Steady, protective, fingers threaded lightly through her hair like she’s afraid Diana might tip over if she lets go.
Steve sits across from them, arm in a sling, jaw clenched while a nurse tapes gauze near his hairline. He winces, then recovers quickly.
“Chicks dig scars,” he mutters.
Nancy doesn’t laugh. She’s got a thin split lip and ink stains on her hands from where her ink pen ruptured. She keeps replaying the night out loud, testing versions of the truth until one sounds safe enough to survive.
“This stays between us,” she says finally, voice low. “If this gets out...”
“They’ll call us crazy,” Steve finishes. “Yeah. Been there.”
A doctor finally calls Diana’s name. Robin moves immediately. Too fast leaving Diana to fend for herself from the sudden lack of support.
The exam room is small and too bright. The doctor is calm in that practiced way that makes Robin’s stomach knot anyway.
“Mild concussion,” he says, flipping a page. “You’re lucky. No bleeding, but you’re going to be dizzy for a bit. Headaches. Light sensitivity.”
Robin nods at every word like she’s taking notes she’ll never forget.
“And,” the doctor continues, “you’ve got a fracture in the right ulna.”
Robin’s breath stutters.
“The ulna?” Diana asks faintly.
“Forearm bone,” he clarifies pointing at his own tanned forearm. “Clean break. We’ll get you in a cast.”
Robin swallows hard. Her hand tightens in Diana’s hair without meaning to.
“I...” She clears her throat. “That's... It's my fault.”
The doctor looks up through his glasses. “Excuse me?”
Robin shakes her head, words tumbling out before she can stop them. “I let go. I should've, I should’ve held on. I shouldn’t have...”
“Robin,” Diana cuts in, irritated despite everything. “Stop.”
She turns her head carefully. The movement sends sparks through her skull, but she ignores it.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Robin snaps back, then immediately softens, horrified at herself. “I mean, you’re not fine.”
“I am,” Diana insists. “Mostly.”
The doctor coughs gently into his hand. “You’re also going to need to take it easy. No strenuous activity. No loud music.”
Diana’s eyes widen. “What?”
“And,” he adds, “your Walkman didn’t survive the fall.”
Robin watches Diana’s face like she’s bracing for tears. Diana stares at the broken plastic on the tray, alongside the book Mr. Hauser lent her, looking a bit bent. The cracked casing. The totalled headphone jack.
“You’re joking,” she says quietly.
Robin opens her mouth. Closes it.
“They’re putting my arm in a cast,” Diana continues, voice flat. “But that is dead.”
Steve leans in from the doorway, trying, and failing, to read the room. “Hey. Silver lining?”
Diana looks at him.
“Cool,” he says. “Now you don’t have to take notes in school.”
She blinks at him. Once. He gestures to the gauze that a nurse is wrapping around her arm, preparing for the cast.
“I’m left-handed.”
There’s a beat.
Steve winces. “Of course you are. Really walked into that one.”
Nancy snorts before she can stop herself.
Robin almost laughs. Almost.
Back in the waiting room, Robin still doesn’t sit. The cast is bright white against Diana’s sleeve, heavy and unmistakable.
A man in a uniform asks questions. Calm ones. Boring ones. Nancy answers. Steve nods. Diana follows along. Robin watches the floor like it might open up and swallow her. The lie settles over the room like dust. When it’s done, the man leaves, satisfied. Robin finally exhales.
Steve tries to lighten the mood. Fails. Nancy squeezes Robin’s shoulder through the car window before she leaves with some guy around her age. “Call me if anything changes. Anything."
Robin nods. “Yeah. Sure.”
Steve hesitates with his keys, then looks at Diana, still leaning on Robin in the backseat, cast weighing her down. “Hey. You did good. Both of you.”
She doesn't feel good. The hospital disappear in the distance. The night closes in.
Diana and Robin don’t talk at first.
The streetlights buzz overhead, back to normal, pretending they didn’t flicker like dying stars a few hours ago.
Robin finally breaks the silence.
“I thought I lost you.”
Her voice cracks.
Diana stops looking out of the window. Robin does too. Steve's muffled soundtrack is playing.
“You didn’t,” she says.
Robin shakes her head. “I mean... back there. In the dark. I couldn’t hear you for a second.” Her hands tighten around her seat belt, which she hadn't realized she was holding in the first place.
Diana remembers it now. The exact hollow moment. The cold where Robin’s hand used to be when her hands slipped apart.
“I was so mad,” she continues. “Not at you. At everything. At this stupid town that keeps trying to eat the people I care about.”
Her hands are shaking. She stuffs them into her jacket pockets. Diana watches her. Says nothing.
They sit on the curb outside the house. The porch light is off. The windows are dark. The place looks harmless now, like it’s been innocent all along. Neither of them moves to unlock the door. Neither is ready to go in.
Robin leans forward, elbows on her knees fingers laced together so tightly her knuckles pale. She stares at the crack in the sidewalk like it might answer her first. “I joke a lot,” she says quietly. “You know that, right.”
Diana nods. The concrete beneath her palms is freezing her fingertips at this point.
“It’s not just because I’m funny, although I really am,” Robin adds, the corner of her mouth twitching. “It’s because if I stop joking, my brain goes… places.”
A beat.
“But,” she continues, voice firming, “for God’s sake, let’s not do this again. Like, ever.”
Diana swallows. Her eyes trace a dark stain on the pavement, oil, maybe. Or something older.
“I keep thinking,” she admits, “what if next time we’re not fast enough?”
Robin turns then. Not the quick glances she’s been stealing all night to make sure Diana’s still upright, still breathing. This one is deliberate. Searching.
“Then we make sure there isn’t a next time,” she says. “Or we’re faster. Or smarter.”
She exhales through her nose, steadying herself. “... Or we don’t do it alone.”
The words settle between them. Diana nods once. It feels like agreeing to gravity.
The house is asleep when they finally go in. No creaking floors. No shadows moving where they shouldn’t. Just familiar walls pretending they haven’t witnessed worse.
Diana sits on the bedroom floor, back against the bed, the single lamp turned low. Her head still feels too full, like it’s stuffed with cotton and echoes. Robin shrugs off her jacket slowly, careful in a way she wasn’t earlier, revealing a bruise blooming purple along her ribs.
She notices the stare. “Ow,” she says belatedly. “By the way.”
Diana laughs weakly. It fades almost immediately.
“I didn’t tell them everything,” she says.
Robin doesn’t ask what. She already knows.
“I didn’t either,” she admits. “Some things are… not ready.”
She sits beside Diana on the floor, close enough that their shoulders almost touch, not quite. Silence stretches, not awkward, not empty. Just heavy.
“You ever think about leaving,” Robin asks softly, “and feeling guilty about it before you're even gone?”
Diana doesn’t answer right away.
“All the time.”
Robin smiles. It’s small and sad. Relieved to not be alone in it. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Me too.”
Outside, a car passes. Somewhere, down the street, a radio plays faintly through an open window a song neither of them recognizes, which somehow makes it easier.
Robin reaches out and links her pinky with Diana's. It’s childish. Very Robin.
“Okay,” she says. “Rules.”
Diana raises an eyebrow. “Rules.”
“One,” Robin begins, squeezing lightly. “If anything weird happens again, we tell each other first.”
“Agreed.”
“Two: no solo hero stuff.”
Diana hesitates. She thinks of Steve’s grin, Nancy’s pen, the woods closing in.
“…Agreed.”
Robin nods, satisfied, but not done.
“And three,” she adds more quietly, “we don’t let this place change who we are.”
That one takes longer.
She squeezes her finger once, then lets go.
They get into bed without ceremony.
The mattress meant for Diana is already shoved against the wall, serving no purpose. She crawls in anyway, careful of her arm. Robin turns onto her side, back facing her. Robin doesn’t hug her, doesn’t call her Angel, doesn’t say goodnight.
Diana says all of those things silently.
She turns once more, checking Robin’s breathing like she’s a sick child, counting the rise and fall until it evens out. Only then does she relax.
She smiles to herself, and falls asleep without dreaming of the dark.