Chapter Text
It hasn’t yet been a month since everything went down when Robin says, “You never did tell me what happened in that vault.”
They’re sitting on the Buckleys’ roof, sharing a bottle of wine and watching the sunset. The wine’s courtesy of an unknowing Mrs Harrington, pilfered by Steve after Robin had complained one too many times about Ted Wheeler’s shitty taste in beer.
They haven’t bothered to pour it into cups, instead content to drink it straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth between them.
Nancy hums, swallowing her mouthful of wine, and holds the bottle out to Robin.
“I didn’t think you wanted to hear it,” she admits as Robin takes a swig. “You were… pretty mad at me.”
It makes her stomach squirm just remembering it. The flatness in Robin’s eyes, the short, clipped sentences she’d used when Nancy had spoken to her about her findings at Hawkins Credit Union.
Robin sets the bottle down between them. “In the moment, sure,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I was scared for you, Nance, you know that. But now, I mean—I wanna hear about it.”
Nancy hesitates. It’s not the clearest memory on a good day, and even the reminder of it makes her shudder. Getting locked in a vault full of toxic waste, choking on every breath she took, resigning herself to the increasingly likely possibility of dying in there—it feels surreal.
It kind of feels like it happened to a different person entirely. She was there, but not in her body—unable to do anything but watch helplessly as the girl who wasn’t Nancy slammed herself into the vault door in vain, acid burning in her nose and throat.
But Robin asked, and she knows that this isn’t Robin humouring her. Robin genuinely wants to know, to have all the pieces of the mystery, just like she did.
And, it occurs to her, she doesn’t actually know how much Robin does know. She had been there when they had discovered Joey’s body—she had been the one to find Joey, Nancy remembers, feeling slightly sick—and she had been there when Georgia Miller had been shot. Nancy had told her a little about Agent Marquez, her stomach turning over and over whenever she thought about Captain Rose’s sickeningly satisfied voice, mockingly thanking for bringing him right to him, and the pool of blood underneath the agent’s body at the mortuary.
Nancy fills her in. About Captain Rose, head of the US military in Hawkins, the Rose of Primrose Pharmaceuticals, using Home & Hearth as a cover to dump their toxic waste, and taking out everybody who threatened to uncover it. About the chemicals being filled by cement in the foundations of the houses Home & Hearth helped, which led to the people who lived in those houses getting dangerously sick. About Agent Marquez stuck in Hawkins, investigating with nobody to report to, sleeping on the floor of an empty house until he was murdered. About Rose shooting Joey, shooting Georgia, taking her to the mortuary to shoot her.
She talks about it with no sense of order or sequence, jumping all over the place as she tries to explain each detail without segueing off into a whole new sentence, and so it takes her longer than it should to reach the part where she’d broken into HCU and discovered the toxic waste. Maybe a little part of her is avoiding it, too, the memory of Robin’s anger afterwards burning in her chest.
Robin listens as she talks, a small frown on her face. She can see the puzzle pieces clicking together in her mind, the story unravelling.
“So this Captain Rose,” Robin says slowly when Nancy takes a break for another swig of wine. “He was following you? And he was the one to close the vault door when you went inside?”
Nancy nods. “He’d been hoping I’d die down there. And—god, I nearly did.” Her voice shakes against her will. She brings her knees up to her chest, swallowing hard. “I thought I was going to. I was close to passing out, and I could hear Jonathan’s voice in my head, telling me that this is exactly why I shouldn’t skip to the end of the book, but would you believe it was Higgins’ speech from graduation that spurred me on? Of all things?”
She tries to pass the wine to Robin, but Robin has gone stock still. The frown on her face has deepened.
Oh, shit. Is Robin mad at her again? The reminder that she hadn’t asked Robin along—and, shit, Robin had said she’d been terrified when she’d heard on the police scanner that Nancy had almost gotten herself killed, and now here she is, not only confirming it but giving her all the details.
“What do you mean?” Robin asks, finally. “That skipping the book thing. You said that before, at the Squawk. Jonathan said that?”
“Oh.” Embarrassment licks at her spine, and Nancy feels her face heat up. “Um, yeah. We—we had a fight, before this, about the houses. Or his house. I mean—shit.” She shakes her head. “Home and Hearth offered Jonathan one of their houses. We had a fight because I told him not to accept it.”
“The Home and Hearth that was knowingly poisoning people,” Robin says.
“That’s the one. I mean, I didn’t have proof that that house would put them at risk, so… I get it. He accused me of always skipping to the end of the book instead of living life as it comes, which… I do, kind of.” Robin’s still frowning. Nancy starts to panic. “He was just tired of living in a military encampment. I mean, I was shooting down his first hope in a long time.”
“But you were right. And even if you weren’t—he was willing to take that risk? To risk his family?” Robin pauses, and Nancy can see the cogs turning in her head. “That’s why you didn’t come get me. In case I didn’t believe you.”
“I didn’t want to drag you along on a hunch,” Nancy says, her voice pitifully small.
Robin looks at her, then, blinking, as though she’s just remembered they’re no longer in the midst of things. Her expression softens.
“You’d never drag me around, Nance,” she says, bumping her shoulder lightly into Nancy’s. “I’m enthusiastically beside you every step of the way.”
“I know,” Nancy says, because she does, now. She blinks hard, suddenly aware that her eyes are watering.
Robin gives her a lopsided grin. “Besides, you physically couldn’t drag me anywhere. You’re built like a baby bird.”
Nancy shoves her playfully. “Shut up.”
“See? That was, like, the ghost of a push. Actually, a ghost could probably push harder than that.”
“I wouldn’t need to push you. You’d trip over your own two feet first.”
Robin mock-gasps, miming being wounded, and Nancy laughs, feeling the tension begin to melt away.
I’m sorry, she wants to say, even though she’s already apologised for not coming to Robin when everything was happening. But Robin’s grinning at her, hair tousled in the evening breeze, the orange glow of sunset illuminating her face, and the apology abruptly catches in Nancy’s throat, a funny feeling flickering in the pit of her stomach.
She picks up the wine again instead, nearly empty now, and takes a sip. Robin holds out a hand when she lowers the bottle, and Nancy passes it over, watching as Robin tips her head back and swallows the last of it.
*
That night, Robin barely sleeps. The few hours she manages to grab are in intervals; her dreams are hazy, swirled together visions of Nancy locked away in a vault, choking on poison, entirely alone as she crumples.
Somewhere around 6am, she gives up on trying to get back to sleep and hoists herself out of bed. Both of her parents are at work, thankfully—the night shift at the hospital was always busy, even before Hawkins went to shit. They won’t be home for another two hours at least.
There’s a deep, unsettled feeling thrumming through her veins, an itch beneath her skin that she can’t scratch.
It’s barely been a month since Joey was murdered, a voice in her head reminds her. She tries to push it away. She doesn’t want to think about Joey, or the dread that had hollowed out her bones when she’d realised there was a body under the bridge. She can still feel his dead weight in her arms, his blood drying under her fingernails.
That was almost Nancy, too, the voice continues, nastily. And you nearly let it happen.
Except, no, that’s not right. The moment she’d gotten Nancy’s voice message, she’d turned on the police scanner, and when Nancy’s voice had come through it—frantic, panicked—she had rocketed for her bike and taken off towards the mortuary.
She had been right there beside Nancy every step of the way—until Jonathan.
It’s not guilt she feels, she realises, but a slow-bubbling anger, simmering inside her the more she thinks about it.
She knew Nancy had sounded off when she’d spouted that pretentious bullshit about the end of the book. Of course it had been something Jonathan said.
And it had almost gotten Nancy killed. Worse, it had almost gotten Nancy killed twice.
She’s started gritting her teeth. She forces herself to unclench her jaw, taking a deep breath.
It’s not your business, she tells herself. It’s unconvincing, even to her. But like—look, she’s not Jonathan’s biggest fan at the best of times. Maybe in another lifetime, they could have been friends, but she’d befriended Nancy before that could happen, and as Nancy’s friend, she is not fond of Jonathan. Hell, the only reason Steve isn’t on her shitlist is because he’s been her friend far longer than she’s known Nancy, and even he’s getting on her nerves with this bullshit macho contest over Nancy.
Steve’s defense—as much as she knows she’s biased, being his best friend—is that he isn’t Nancy’s boyfriend. If he wants to show off and try to one up Jonathan, well, whatever. She’ll just try to tune it out. Jonathan, though? Jonathan is dating Nancy. Has been for, what, two years? And yet he’s constantly trying to show off for her, too, trying to one up Steve, as if Nancy would ever even care about anything like that. Then if that isn’t bad enough, he’s apparently not supporting Nancy herself—to the point where he’s outright doing the opposite?
Accusing Nancy of skipping to the end of the book and not living in the present. Robin scoffs out loud. Maybe if he bothered to communicate, he wouldn’t feel like she’s skipping ahead. Maybe if he actually listened to his girlfriend, he’d be around to have her back. Maybe if—
Stop. She knuckles at her eyes, pressing against them until colours dance behind her eyelids.
It’s not your business, she reminds herself, dragging herself up to take a shower.
She repeats it to herself like a mantra as she showers, and again while she gets dressed, and again as she makes herself breakfast.
It’s not your business, she thinks firmly as she starts on the dishes, scrubbing the plate with such intensity that her hand hurts. The water’s too hot, scalding her skin, but she barely even notices, repeating it over and over.
It’s not your business, when she gets into Steve’s car as he picks her up for work, only partly listening as he complains about Dustin’s recent attitude shift.
It’s not your business, when she’s flipping through records in the radio booth, pettily avoiding any songs she knows Jonathan likes.
It’s not your business, when Steve drops her off at the hospital to visit Vickie, because even though any lingering feelings towards Vickie had fizzled out around the time the ground had opened up, she hasn’t had the heart to tell Steve yet—particularly not when that would mean confronting her feelings for a different girl, one who already has far too much on her plate and two meatheads fighting over her.
It’s not your business, when she swings through the rare patches of town that aren’t blocked off by the military, because it’s too nice a day to waste it trailing home this early, and—
Jonathan’s here.
Robin halts in her tracks. It’s undeniably him—she could recognise that shaggy hair from a mile away. He’s left some store ahead of her, walking up the street away from her.
He clearly hasn’t seen her.
It’s not your business.
The thrumming under her skin starts up again. Before she can think it through, she marches towards him, catching up to him easily and tapping him, hard, on the shoulder.
Jonathan turns around, frowning when he sees her. “Oh. Robin.”
Nancy’s voice on her answering machine. I’ve been scared too. I’ve just been trying not to think about it, and… it hasn’t been working out so well.
“Jonathan,” she says icily.
He peers over her shoulder, as if searching for someone. “Is… Steve with you?”
Irritation briefly overwhelms her anger. “No,” she says, and he relaxes, pivoting her right back to rage.
I’m not trying to get you to skip to the end of the book with me, Nancy had said, but it had really Jonathan speaking through her. I was doing you a favour!
“What the hell is your problem?”
Jonathan furrows his brow. “With… Steve?”
“No,” Robin snaps. “With Nancy.”
He blinks at her, clearly confused. “What?”
“All that ‘skipping to the end of the book’ nonsense,” she says furiously. “What are you playing at?”
He scowls at her, then, and she almost laughs in his face, because, seriously? “Frankly, Robin, that’s none of your business.”
“It is my business when it stops my friend reaching out to me!”
“You were there, weren’t you? It worked out in the end.” He sounds sullen, almost resentful, as he says it, as if he’s mad that she was there and he wasn’t, as if it wasn’t his own goddamn fault.
“You’re aware that she nearly died?”
“We’ve talked about it, alright? Can you not stick your nose where it doesn’t belong for five minutes?”
“Twice! Twice, Jonathan!” Robin explodes, any semblance of patience evaporating. “She almost died twice and you weren’t there!”
“Neither was Steve,” he says, childishly, as if that’s the fucking problem. Her blood boils.
“I don’t give a fuck about whether Steve was there—”
“Oh, sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Jonathan interrupts. “It’s not like he’s your best friend or anything.”
“I’m talking about Nancy—”
“We’re fine!” he snaps, rounding on her at last. “Nancy and I are fine, Robin! She doesn’t need you playing the hero!”
She sees red. They’re fine, but his words are the reason Nancy almost died, twice. They’re fine, but she had to kick in a door at the mortuary to find Nancy crumpled in a pile on the ground, barely conscious, looking so defeated, so unlike herself, that it still sends shivers down her spine to think about. They’re fine, but Jonathan wasn’t there, and Jonathan’s the reason she wasn’t there, because he got in Nancy’s goddamn head with his pretentious bullshit.
She punches him in the face.
It’s with such force that he stumbles backwards. His expression morphes from annoyance to bewilderment. “What the he—”
Robin flies at him again before he can finish. She knocks him to the ground, almost full-body tackling him, and takes advantage of him being caught off-guard to punch him again.
Jonathan, somewhat coming to his senses, tries to push her off of him, but she’s already going now, spitting with anger as she throws punch after punch, uncaring of where she even hits, only that they’re landing.
Her knuckles burn. Her hands ache. She can barely feel it. All she can think is of Nancy, her eyes weakly fluttering open, the fight entirely gone out of her, moments from death.
Arms grab at her, trying to haul her away, and she struggles away, kicking blindly in Jonathan’s direction. Something catches her ankle, stopping her mid-strike, and then she’s being hauled up alongside Jonathan.
Panic tries to overwhelm her, but the fury is stronger, and, not to be deterred, she rears herself backwards and headbutts him as hard as she can.
It’s at that point that she’s pulled away from him, yanked back so hard that it seems to ripple through her entire being. Her ears are ringing. Her vision swims.
Someone’s speaking to her, their voice muffled. She blinks, hard, and blinks again when her sight doesn’t clear. She can taste metal at the back of her throat.
She blinks, again, her head like it’s made of stone, and Jonathan comes into focus, Officer Callahan behind him. His face is puffy and bleeding. One of his lips is split.
Something cold clicks around her wrists, and when she looks down to see what it is, something warm and thick trickles down her lips. There are droplets of blood seeping into her shirt.
Handcuffs. There’s handcuffs around her wrists. She almost laughs, but then she catches sight of her knuckles, scuffed and weeping red. She can already tell they’re going to bruise later.
Chief Powell steps in front of her, blocking Jonathan and Callahan from her view. “I’m going to need you to take a ride down to the station with me.”
She already knows the answer, but. “Any chance I can turn down this ride, too?”
The corners of his lips quirk upwards, just for a second. “I’m afraid not.”