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Steve dies in the Creel house in the fight against Vecna. It sucks, and it hurts, and they grieve, but they keep fighting.
Then Robin disappears.
It's been three days since the ground split open. Everything's still fresh, their wounds not yet healed.
There's no note, no goodbyes. They check her house, then Steve's house, then all the possible spots they can think of—nothing. It's as though she's just up and vanished.
Nancy, though. Nancy has a horrible, twisting feeling in her gut that she knows where Robin went.
She goes alone. Perhaps it's silly, not telling anyone. If something happens to her, they won't know, but... if she's right, she doesn't want anybody else there.
The Upside Down is quiet, eerily so. Henry's gone, at least for the time being, and she's lucky that she doesn't come across any democreatures. Still, she's careful, avoiding the vines that snake across the ground, looking over her shoulder every so often.
The Creel house stands still and silent. It looks the same as when they'd left it—when she'd had to force Robin out of it, dragging her out as she'd kicked and screamed and sobbed.
Please, Nancy thinks. Let me be wrong, just this once.
She walks into the house, side-stepping the vines. Slowly, she makes her way up the stairs, hardly daring to breathe.
Steve still lies crumpled on the floor, his axe abandoned not far from him. Vines snake over his body, and the floorboards are darker where his blood has spilt and stained them. They hadn't had the time to extract him, then, not when they'd still had to fight Henry, and then there'd been the 'earthquake', and the clock chime, and they'd had to flee.
And next to Steve—
Nancy can't help the gasp that punches out of her. Her legs buckle, threatening to give out, and she just about manages to catch herself on the bannister to stop herself from falling to her knees.
Robin's slumped next to him, her back resting against the grimy wall. The vines are wrapped around her, too, but differently to how they are with Steve. With Steve, they're almost draped over him, claiming their prize, but Robin—they seem to cradle her, holding her against the wall, wrapped around her waist, her wrists, her legs, her neck. There’s a vine that looks like its embedded in her chest, plunged into her ribcage.
Her eyes are open, rolled into the back of her head, as if in a trance, and despite everything, she looks... peaceful.
Steve had died fighting, despite the clear agony he'd been in. He'd fought against it the entire time. The signs are still visible—the smeared blood on the floor, the discarded axe coated in grime, the wounds on his body.
Robin's all but untouched. No sign of a struggle. No weapon lying nearby. One hand outstretched to entwine fingers with Steve's.
Nancy had rightly guessed she'd go to find Steve. That much had seemed inevitable. But she'd assumed that she'd gone to retrieve him. To—to bring him back, to bury him properly, not... not join him.
*
“She's dreaming,” El says quietly.
It had been a risk to bring El here. Nancy knows firsthand how much Henry wants her dead, and his absence isn't enough to inspire confidence in there being no attack attempt.
But she couldn't just leave her there, all cold and alone in the Upside Down. Not another friend.
El had come without complaint. They hadn't told anyone this time, either. El, at the least, had seemed to sense the urgency in her features and had let her lead her quietly to the Creel house.
Nancy wets her lips. “Dreaming?”
El nods slowly. She's sitting opposite Robin, her eyes closed. She's gotten good at this, using her powers; her nose is barely bleeding.
“Then…” Nancy hardly dares to hope. Her chest feels tight. “She's... alive?”
For a moment, El doesn’t reply. She looks over at Nancy, opening her eyes, and there’s such a profound sadness in them that the tiny flicker of hope inside her extinguishes itself in a second flat.
“She… has a heartbeat.” El sounds hesitant, her lips curving downwards in a small frown. “The vines… they are letting her sleep. Letting her dream.”
There’s another pause. Nancy doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand what El’s trying to say.
“So we can help her,” she says, and it doesn’t come out as a question. It comes out as a plea. “We set her free, we can—we can take her home, right?”
“Nancy…”
“She’s not dead,” Nancy insists, voice growing louder. “You just said she has a heartbeat. That she’s dreaming. We can save her!”
“The vines are keeping her alive.” El’s voice is so soft now that it’s barely above a whisper. “That vine in her chest has wounded her badly. She will bleed out before we can get back to the surface if we take it out.”
“So we cut the vines,” she says impatiently. “We can get help, we can—”
“Nancy.” She stops short, looking back at El, who blinks up at her with big, brown eyes, suspiciously wetter than they were a moment ago. “It’s embedded next to her heart. If we wake it in any way, it will pierce right through and kill her.”
Nancy deflates completely. She sinks into a sitting position next to her, opposite where Robin lies so still and so silent, and a furious rush of emotion crashes over her.
Robin knew. She knew what she was doing. She knew the effect it would have on all of them, especially after just losing Steve, and she… and she…
Barb. Steve. Now Robin. Friend after friend after friend lost to the Upside Down.
“She dreams of him,” El whispers. A tear slips down her cheek. “I saw it. When I tried to go into her head.”
Something inside her breaks. Her fingers itch for a trigger. “Do we… What do we do?”
“I think…” she trails off, swallowing. “I think this is what she wanted.”
“So we just… leave her?” Anger swells in her chest. “We just let them have her?”
El looks back at Robin, at where her hand is linked with Steve’s, and is quiet again for a long moment. Nancy wants to scream. She wants to shout. She wants to shoot something, and burn this wretched place to the ground, and see it all reduced to ashes.
Nancy’s crying now, too, sharp sobs trying to choke their way out of her throat. “I don’t want to lose her too.”
“I think…” El starts, gentle now. “I think that she’s already dead, Nancy. Just… her body has not caught up yet.”
A sob cracks through her. Her vision’s blurring with tears, but she scrabbles to touch Robin’s free hand, smoothing her thumb over the back of it. It’s cold, so cold, and she slides her hand to rest against her pulse point, feeling the slow, rhythmic beat there.
“Her dreams are happy.” Nancy sniffles, turning her head to look at El again. She’s standing, now, hesitant, but her voice is strong. Sure. “She dreams that they are alive together, and nothing is coming to take that away from her. She’s… She is happy, in the dream.”
“I don’t want to leave her here,” Nancy chokes out. The grief is so strong it feels suffocating, choking her, and she’s gasping for air as she manages to continue, “I don’t want her to die in this place.”
El places a tentative hand on her shoulder. “You’re not leaving her to die. You are letting her sleep.”
She nods, gasping out another splintered sob, and finally lets go of Robin’s hand, trying hard to swallow the wounded noise that seems to claw its way from her throat as she does.
“It won’t hurt?” she manages, meeting El’s sad gaze again. “He won’t—Henry can’t use her as like a, a puppet, or—”
“Nothing can hurt them,” El assures her. “It is like… a safe pocket. Kind of like a happy memory.” She pauses, thinking. “She is kept safe by the love. The dream. Nothing can hurt her there, just like in real dreams.”
“And if something… if something finds her and the vine—the vine pierces—” Nancy can’t finish the sentence, squeezing her eyes shut. Hot tears drip onto her cheeks. Will it hurt, she wants to ask, to clarify, but she can’t get the words out.
El must understand her, though, because she takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. “It will feel like falling asleep when you are very, very tired.”
Nancy starts crying again, then, as though she can’t physically keep it in, the sadness pouring out of her in soft, stifled sobs. “Okay.”
Her hands tremble as she reaches out to close Robin’s eyes, but she closes them, and then lets El gently steer her away, crying softly.
She lets herself glance back, just once more as El slowly heads down the stairs. At Steve, tangled in the vines, and at Robin, resting so sweetly against him. From this angle, she can’t see Steve’s wounds, nor the blood, and it looks as though they’ve dozed off together, just like how they’d looked the night before the battle.
“Goodnight,” she whispers, even as her heart clenches in her chest. “Sweet dreams.”
Nancy follows El down the stairs of the Creel house, leaving Steve and Robin to sleep so soundly, together, undisturbed, at long last.