Archive of Our Own ^beta

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea,

where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.

— Bram Stoker

It’s been a year since Eddie died. They don’t talk about it, just like they don’t talk about everything else. Robin shows up at Steve’s with a six pack in her hands at nine in the morning and he doesn’t even question it, doesn’t say a word as he opens up the door just a little wider to let her in.

A whole year, and ladies’ man Steve Harrington hasn’t so much as looked at anyone else.

She can still see Eddie’s ring on his finger. The one Eddie managed to push there as he made his vows, laughing through tears, bleeding out in Dustin’s arms. It hadn’t been a conventional wedding, and Eddie had passed out for good almost as soon as he said, “I do,” but Steve had still carried his husband out of there, and he hadn’t looked back.

There was no real funeral. They buried him at the top of a hill with a cross to mark the spot, though they carved it full of pentagrams and some of Eddie’s favorite lyrics. (Among other things.) His necklace hung from the grave, slung carefully around the top and the left side so it couldn’t be removed, and they put Jason Carver behind bars and went about their lives, gates closed.

Dustin hadn’t left his room for days.

Steve hadn’t left his for weeks.

Robin knows it’s crazy, but as she sits there with Steve on his couch, Eddie’s vest freshly cleaned and wrapped around his shoulders, she thinks that maybe they were always heading here—for an unhappy ending. The thought makes her tremble, so she takes Steve’s hand and she threads their fingers together and she makes one tiny little wish as the clock strikes 11:11, and she whispers Eddie’s name.

“I don’t like that you buried me,” Eddie says, which sends Robin screeching from her peaceful field of wildflowers into the burning Upside Down again—Eddie’s room, specifically, still bloody and messy, just like him. Eddie’s been haunting her dreams for a year.

“Hey, man,” she says, letting out a breath, trying not to show how happy she is to see him. Every time she falls asleep she worries he won’t be there anymore, and then she’d have to find a way to live without him, just like Steve, and she’s not ready to live without Eddie Munson just yet.

“I don’t like that you buried me,” Eddie says again, frowning harder now. Robin sighs, taking his hands and helping him down off his squatting post on top of the closet.

“What else were we supposed to do, huh, Eddie?” she asks. “You were twenty when we lost you. There wasn’t a will or goddamn funeral instructions to follow. None of us thought you wouldn’t make it out.”

Eddie snorts, not letting go of her hands. The ring on Steve’s hand is still missing from his, even in her imagination.

“Of course I wasn’t going to, Buckley,” he snarks. “I’m the fucking Freak. The astonishing miracle that the King of Hawkins High fell in love with me in three days, or the parts of me I let him see anyway, doesn’t make me any less of a disposable side character. I was never making it out of there, not when you all had been together for years. I was just comedy relief while Steve and Nancy figured their shit out. I bet the producers cut out every kiss Stevie and I ever shared.”

Robin swallows down her bullshit reassurances. She knows he’s right—they’re the queer kids; they don’t get to be happy with main characters. They get one-off love interests who don’t actually matter and they don’t get to live very long, especially not in horror flicks, which their lives have been since ‘83.

She hates how much he’s right.

“Tell me what you’d rather we’d done,” she says. “How did you want us to take care of your body? Because Steve wasn’t leaving you there, man. He promised you forever and he meant it, even if you weren’t around for that long. There is no him and Nancy, because any feelings he had left for her disintegrated the moment he saw you, and we all know it. I don’t know why you’re fighting it so bad.”

“Because I’m a bitter young fool and I’m fucking dead, Buckley,” Eddie snaps, then backs off, his face crumpling. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That was mean, I’m sorry, I just—I wanted you to burn me, ya know? Wrap me up in bandages and send me off on a boat. Blaze me up in hellfire. Make my death a spectacle the way everything in my life was, just—hopefully a little prettier.”

Robin’s body aches. Her heart most of all.

“Okay,” she says, taking his hand. “I’ll talk to Steve.”

Eddie sighs, pulling away.

“Nah,” he says, fading as she starts to wake. “Don’t bother my husband with this. It’s not his fault. He won’t dig me up, anyway. Besides, I suppose burials are for the living. It’s not like us dead are around to complain.”

She bolts up in her bed to unbroken darkness. She slams her hand down on Steve’s bedside table until the clock turns on, telling her it’s 4:53 in the fucking morning, and she drags on her jeans and she brushes her teeth and she trudges out the door with her head still in a fog, and it’s not until she’s reaching for the keys she had to come back in for that she realizes one of Eddie’s rings is on her finger.

It’s not Steve’s.

She doesn’t call up Steve first, because that would be cruel. She doesn’t know what it means yet. She doesn’t call up Nancy, because Nancy would treat it like a hoax of her imagination and say they just need to let him go. Nancy didn’t love Eddie the way they did, never had the chance to, wouldn’t want to risk it. And she sure as fuck doesn’t call Dustin, because if she does and she’s wrong and she breaks his heart again Steve will never forgive her, no matter how much he loves her.

People don’t get forgiven for hurting Steve Harrington’s kids.

So she calls up Jonathan. Because they care about Steve, even if they’re too proud to admit it, and they care about her, even if they’re too shy to admit it, and they’ll believe her if she says she thinks Eddie isn’t quite lost yet. She dials up Jonathan Byers’ number and prays to a god she doesn’t believe in to make them pick up.

That non-existent or at least very vindictive and bitchy god answers.

(Too late.)

“Hello?” Jonathan mumbles, clearly half-asleep and half-high, and Robin’s heart swells at the sound of their voice, along with the hope that she can’t seem to stop from growing, no matter how hard she tamps it down.

“Hey, Jonny,” she says, trying to keep her voice low. “Look, I’m so sorry to call you this early, but—oh, fuck it. I think Eddie might be not gone and I don’t wanna tell Steve because I think he might kill himself if I’m wrong.”

Jonathan is quiet for a moment. Then, there’s some shuffling and a few thumps, and they say, “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Open the window for me.”

Robin does them one better. When they get there, she’s already dropped out and onto the ground, dragging them out of her backyard and off into the streets, because there are no monsters out there to kill them anymore, because all the monsters died with Eddie.

Poor, sweet, brave Eddie.

(Her heart hurts all over.)

“So,” Jonathan says, perched beside her on the road. Ever since Steve married Eddie and subsequently lost him, they’ve all been a lot more open about who they are, terrified of running out of time. Jonathan’s pronouns were the first thing to change, a soft voice around a nervous question. Robin’s been trying her best to adjust to being teased about girls by people who aren’t Steve, but it’s still kinda weird, even though it’s also kinda nice. “Why do you think Eddie’s alive?”

Robin shakes her head, her leg bouncing fast enough to be a blur. Jonathan watches it, their mouth set in their signature sad frown. They’ve always reminded her just a bit of Eeyore.

(She sleeps with a stuffed donkey next to her pillow. She stopped when she was thirteen, then picked it back up when the world ended the first time. Suddenly growing up didn’t seem so tied up in leaving childhood behind, not when she knew it meant losing innocence to cynicism instead.)

“No, I don’t think he’s alive, he’s definitely dead, dead as a doornail, Nine Inch Nails,” she rambles, and Jonathan takes her hand and squeezes. “But I’ve been dreaming about him every night since he died and fuck, I know it sounds crazy, Jonny, but I made a wish the other night and now his ring is on my finger and it’s one of the ones he was buried with and I don’t know how else to explain something like that.”

Jonathan reaches out in question and she gives them her other hand, letting them inspect the ring. She’s glad they don’t try to take it off, because she thinks she might cry if they did. It may have only been on her finger for a day now, but it feels like it’s been there forever, because when you marry Steve you marry her, and she thinks that maybe Eddie Munson’s been crashing her sleep and her sleep alone for a reason, and Steve Harrington just might be it.

“Okay,” Jonathan says, not calling her insane, not even looking like they want to. “Okay. So Eddie’s maybe possibly not completely gone. Got any ideas?”

Robin laughs and it’s the worst sound she’s ever heard.

“No,” she confesses, a sin worse than murder. Jonathan lets go and her hand drops. Everything feels grey. She just wants to go home. “No, I’ve got absolutely none.”

Jonathan insists they call Nancy. Robin kind of hates them for bringing their queerplatonic-best-friend-lover-person into everything, but she also kind of gets it, because she does the same thing with Steve. So she tells them to hold off for a bit and promises to meet up with them on her lunch break, and Steve is waiting for her when she gets home, wearing his yellow sweater that he refuses to let her wash, jeans that definitely have bloodstains in them, and Eddie’s vest, because it’s just a part of him now, a second skin. Robin makes some tea for the widow at her kitchen table and kisses his cheek as she passes him by, mustering up all the fake cheeriness she can and hoping he doesn’t notice the difference.

(Not that Steve’s been noticing much of anything these days.)

On their way to work, Steve stops the car by Eddie’s grave. Robin is used to this by now, because this is what Steve always does, every morning, whether he’s going to work or not. His kids have been calling him lately, not for any real reason but still asking inane questions, like if he has any eggs they can borrow when what they mean is have you been eating. Robin thinks it’s quite sweet, in that roundabout way that all horrifically tragic things become sweet the longer you have to forget the trauma that caused them.

She doesn’t go up with him. She’s learned he likes to be alone with Eddie in these moments, as if they can still be together if Steve’s just allowed to pretend. If she squints real hard she can almost see the man himself, sitting on the cross and kicking up his legs now and again, grinning down at Steve like not a day has gone by since their wedding—or his death.

(Same difference, and isn’t that the worst thing about all of it?)

The walkie talkie beeps and Robin nearly jumps five feet in the air, but still manages to pick up and answer, albeit with shaking hands.

“Hello?” She presses her hand to her heart and counts the beats there, desperate to prove she’s still alive, even to herself.

“Jonathan told me what’s going on,” Nancy says, apropos of nothing, and Robin kind of wants to punch her perfect teeth out. Robin loves Nancy, she does, but she kind of hates her too, because Nancy broke Steve’s heart so badly that she’s pretty sure he never quite recovered from it. She remains amazed and slightly baffled that Steve can stand to be friends with someone who apparently thinks he’s bullshit. Nancy can say she doesn’t believe that all she wants, but drunk words are sober thoughts and Steve cries a lot when he’s drunk, and he never blames Nancy, which kind of makes Robin want to kill her even more.

“Great, so glad your person blabbed to you before I gave them permission,” Robin says, making sure to lace the words with sarcasm. She can practically hear Nancy rolling her eyes.

“I’m guessing you haven’t told Steve,” she says, and now it’s Robin’s turn to roll her eyes, glancing out the window to make sure her best friend hasn’t left his husband’s grave just yet.

“No shit,” she hisses, rolling up her window for fear of being heard. “God, Nancy, do you know what it would do to him if I gave him that hope and it didn’t work out? We wouldn’t have a Steve anymore. And if you’re the one who wants to take away Dustin’s mother, by all means, try and do so, but I will beat you to smithereens with his nail bat if you so much as look like you’re even thinking about it.”

Nancy clicks her tongue.

“I just wanted to confirm,” she says, sounding displeased. Well, Robin doesn’t give much of a fuck if Nancy’s displeased, thank you very much. She herself is fucking furious. “You don’t have to murder me. And Steve is not Dustin’s mother.”

It’s a stupid clarification that no longer rings true. Sure, Steve’s been acting like the Party’s mom for years, but it was always just one of those jokes that’s kind of true but no one’s gonna mention it, until suddenly Eddie died and Dustin wouldn’t stop crying for “Dad” into Steve’s shirt, mumbling “Mom” in between his whimpers once he’d calmed from sobs to weeping. And when Dustin started calling Steve that casually, seemingly without meaning to, the rest of the Party wasn’t far to follow—Max, then Lucas, then Will, then Eleven, and finally Mike. Steve doesn’t need to go out into the world to get his Winnebago and six kids; he’s got them all right here already.

“Yeah he is,” Robin says without reiterating all of that, because she’s pretty sure it makes Nancy uncomfortable to think that she once dated a mother of six, one of whom is her little brother, and while Robin doesn’t care much for Nancy’s comfort these days she certainly cares about her best friend’s happiness, and she needs to get Eddie back if Steve’s ever going to move on from all the shit they went through. And to do that, she needs Nancy. “Anyway, that’s not the point. Have you got any ideas hidden in that giant hair of yours about how we can bring Eddie back?”

It’s mean. She’s being mean, and she knows it, but she’s sad, and she’s angry, and she needs someone to blame, and grief doesn’t let anybody think clearly.

Nancy sighs, like she’s used to this by now. Robin’s been distant from her since Eddie died, though she hasn’t snapped like this for awhile.

“No, I don’t,” Nancy says, but she at least sounds like she’s sorry about it, even if she also sounds like she’s tired of this call. “But I’ll ask around. Can I tell El? She might be able to help.”

Robin heaves a sigh as dramatically as she possibly can and fights the urge to bang her head against the dashboard, instead sliding all the way down in her seat. Steve’s heading back towards the car now, looking lost.

“No. Gotta go, bye.” She hangs up just as Steve gets in the car, fingering the guitar pick of Eddie’s necklace, now around his neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, when he catches her staring. “I just—I don’t know. It felt like it was screaming at me to take it.”

It was. Eddie’s been complaining about his necklace being left there to be swept away by the elements for a very long time.

“It’s alright,” Robin says, leaning across the counsel to peck Steve on the cheek. She takes his hand and leaves their fingers threaded together in between them as Steve starts the car up again, his eyes still glassy and raw. “It suits you.”

(The necklace, she wants to clarify, but can’t bring herself to speak. Not loss.)

Steve has a panic attack in the romance section of the Family Video, so Robin puts the CLOSED sign over the door and sits with him, her hands over his on his knees as he tries and fails to breathe.

“It’s alright, you know?” she tells him as he sobs. “It’s alright, Stevie. It’s alright. I’m here.”

Steve cries harder.

He’s not, she knows he’s thinking. Eddie’s not, so it’s not. And yeah, he’s right, okay. She’s not going to even try and argue with him, because he’s fucking right.

The world is ending.

“Okay,” she says, moving to sit beside him. She puts her head on his shaking shoulder and she lets him take her hand and squeeze it too tight and she loves him more than the world will ever care to know. “Okay, we’ll just stay right here. We’ll stay here on the ground until you’re ready to stand up again. Okay, Steve? We can stay here. We’ll stay here together. I’ll stay right here with you.”

He squeezes her hand a little harder. Any more and he might break her fingers, but she’d take the pain if it meant a little bit of his went away for a minute.

“I want him back,” he says. “I want Eddie back. I want my baby back.”

It takes everything in Robin not to burst into tears right there.

“I know,” she says, wrapping him up in her arms like that could ever keep the monsters from taking him. “I know. It’s okay. It’s okay, Stevie. I’ll make it okay.”

It’s more of a promise than he’ll ever know. She saw him three years ago and her entire soul sighed like she never thought it could for a boy, smiling, Oh, there you are, until she was forced to talk to him, not in love but loving him more than she’ll ever love anything or anyone else. The world is burning up and Steve is at the center of it, her best friend, her soulmate, lashed in chains and screaming.

She takes his hand and she holds on tight, and she doesn’t let go.

She won’t let go.

Dustin shows up at their door at three in the morning. It’s technically Steve’s door, if you want to get petty about it, but Robin’s been here since Eddie died, and that’s a damn long time, and also not very long at all.

She opens the door and Dustin’s blinking through the rain, holding an umbrella that’s a little broken and covered in cartoonish rubber duckies. She lets him inside and he dumps his backpack on the welcome mat, dropping his umbrella down and not even bothering to wipe his feet.

“Where’s Mom?” he asks. Robin shrugs, watching him stumble out of his shoes and shuffle towards the counter. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

(That’s probably not a bad assumption.)

“It’s three a.m.,” she answers. “He’s asleep.”

Dustin rolls his eyes.

“We’re all fucked in the head, forgive me for thinking the nightmares might’ve kept him up,” he snaps, then flushes red, his shoulders slumping. “Sorry. That was mean.”

Robin shrugs. It’s not like she expects nice these days.

“It’s okay,” she says, putting his sneakers next to Steve’s by the door and wandering over to the counter, leaning across it towards him. “Tell me, Dusty, was that little speech maybe a quick and not-at-all subtle recap of someone else’s night? Maybe… yours?”

Dustin’s face crumples like a blanket fort caving in.

Robin wraps him in her arms without a second thought. Steve may not be here, but damnit if she can’t play the cool lesbian aunt for a night.

“Hey, hey, Dusty, it’s alright, it’s okay, it’s alright, honey…”

She eases him down onto the floor, kissing his head a couple times. Dustin cries like the world is ending, like it hasn’t already, like the monsters are still coming for them. But they are, aren’t they, they’re just invisible now, and inside their heads, unkillable and inescapable. The monsters moved out from under their beds and inside their closets and into their chests and they make it hard to breathe as they try and try to think about something else, anything else, anything other than the sound of all their loved ones snapping into dust and floating away.

“It’s not alright,” Dustin whimpers, clutching the back of her shirt which is actually Steve’s. “It’s not alright, Robin, he’s gone, Eddie’s gone, my dad’s gone and I can’t—I can’t fucking breathe—”

Robin shoves his face into her chest, muffling his wails, but it’s too late and Steve is already scrambling down the stairs, looking like even more of a mess than he did twenty minutes ago when she put him to bed.

(She should’ve known he wouldn’t sleep. He is his son’s mother.)

“Dusty,” Steve gasps, and something in the air breaks.

(Something in the world.)

“Mom,” Dustin gasps right back, then launches himself into Steve’s arms, knocking the breath right out of him. Steve buries his face in Dustin’s hair and rocks him back and forth, wearing a baby blue sweater that looks clean enough and doesn’t have any blood on it for a change. Robin curls up against the counter, watching her best friend and his best friend fall apart like the world will care enough to pick them back up.

(It won’t. It never does.

The world does not care about the people it breaks.)

“I miss Dad,” Dustin sobs, and the whole thing just rubs Robin the wrong way, the idea that life just isn’t fair, the fact that Eddie’s seat was empty at graduation and they didn’t even list his name in the In Memoriam section of the yearbook and she doesn’t have any pictures of him with them, just pictures of him miserable and hiding behind that wonderfully freakish smile, just waiting for somebody to love him. And now there’s no proof that anybody ever did, because Eddie Munson is dead and he is buried in the town that wanted to kill him and every day she wakes up at the ass crack of dawn to go climb up the hill of his grave to wash it of desecration so Steve won’t see the awful, terrible things people still think about his unrewarded hero of a husband.

Steve Harrington, famous for his dyslexia, has now read all six books of Lord of the fucking Rings. He has blasted Black Sabbath and Metallica for days on end, even as his migraines worsen. (But not “Master of Puppets.” Never “Master of Puppets.”) He has learned “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” on Eddie’s old guitar, his fingers blistering so badly they bleed when he washes them. He has fallen asleep holding the bloody vest of a man buried six feet under. Steve Harrington has loved, and loved hard, this man that haunts Robin’s dreams, this martyr that was sent back to the wrong half of a whole.

Eddie Munson is a father who deserved more time with his kids.

“I know,” Steve is saying now, running his fingers through Dustin’s curls. He still looks like he hurts, but like he hurts less when Dustin’s around, because Eddie loved this kid and Steve loves this kid and he had brought them together when the world seemed like it would never start moving again and he held Eddie as Steve married him and as he left them for the last time and the sky got a little bit darker and Steve will always need him, just a little bit, just to prove to himself that Eddie was once here, that the boy he loved was once alive and loved him back.

Steve needs Dustin like the moon needs the earth when the sun’s not around anymore.

“I know,” he says again, kissing Dustin’s head. “I know, honey, I know, I—I miss him too.”

Dustin sniffs.

“I know,” he mumbles. “The whole earth is screaming with it.”

Robin rushes to put her hand to her mouth to silence her cry at that. Steve has no such shame, tears spilling over as his face crumples completely, though he tries to hide it in Dustin’s hair, fisting his hands in the back of his hoodie.

“Oh, Dusty, honey,” he sobs, brittle bones shaking. “I’m so sorry for all of it.”

Dustin shakes his head.

“It’s not your fault,” he rasps. “It’s not your fault, Mom,” and they just sit there, rocking back and forth, until the sun comes up.

Robin pulls them off the stairs and onto the floor, covering them with blankets and putting pillows under their heads. Then she climbs up to Steve’s bedroom and collapses onto his bed, tugging Eddie’s vest around her shoulders and hugging it until she falls asleep.

The clock reads 5:39.

She rises at 6:53.

(Both in the a.m.. There is no mercy for Robin Buckley, nor her charges.

The world was not made to love them.)

Robin Buckley is burning up from the inside, and Eddie Munson is not helping.

“Stop pacing,” she tells him, coughing as she stamps the joint out. “That’s my brain you’re scraping your muddy shoes all over.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but stops. He tugs at the hem of his Hellfire shirt and looks down at his feet.

“You buried me in this, right?” he asks, so small in her fucked-up head. “My D&D shirt? I can’t—I can’t imagine being buried in anything else. I gave so much of my life to that shit, that stupid, stupid shit, my stupid, meaningless life—”

“Hey,” she snaps. “Cut the crap, Munson. Your life meant everything to us. To me. And it sure as hell meant something to Steve and Dustin. They’re still grieving you, man. It’s been a year and they’re not getting much of anywhere. That’s why I need to bring you back.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh.

“No,” he says, waving her away. “No, there’s no bringing me back, Buckley. I’m dead and gone, there’s no changing that. True love’s kiss just ain’t gonna work here.”

Robin sighs, pushing herself up off the bed.

“Don’t you think I know that?” she says, wandering closer. He stumbles back but she just keeps on moving until she’s locked him in a corner, throwing her arms around him and holding on tight. “Don’t you know I’ve spent a year mourning your gay, autistic, ADHD ass? Don’t you know we’d do just about anything to get you back, even reopen the gates if that’s what it took?”

Eddie shoves her off.

“No,” he snaps right back. “No, don’t you dare unleash hell on the world again in my name. I’ll fucking kill you, okay, Buckley, do you hear me? Unlock the doors to let me out and the monsters will follow. The monsters always follow, songbird. Always.”

Robin watches him crouch down on the floor, sticking his hair in his mouth like he used to do when he was alive and nervous. The world’s a much worse place without him, even if sometimes his spitty hair would smack her in the face when he turned his head. It’s her fault for sitting next to him on the couch, anyway. She misses his stupid spitty hair.

“Steve never thought he’d make it past twenty,” she says. “He used to talk about those six kids and a Winnebago like he’d never reach it, even though it’s a ridiculously simple dream. But now his twenty-first birthday’s rolled around and he just sort of sleeps through most days, even when he’s walking. You died and you took Steve Harrington with you, Eddie. Like it or not, til death do us part wasn’t in your wedding vows, and it wouldn’t have been even if you’d had time for more than just the I do’s. My best friend loves you, Eddie Munson, and I’ll tear you from hell myself if it means you’re around to make him smile again.”

Eddie’s eyes aren’t shiny with rage anymore, but rather something else.

(It’s too deep to even name.)

“Three days,” he rasps. “We knew each other for three days, Robin. You think I’m so stupid as to actually believe he fell so hard for me in three days that he’s still crying over me after a year? No. No way, man. Steve’s not that stupid. I’m not that stupid.”

Robin shakes her head. Her bones aren’t the only thing in danger of breaking.

“You and Steve were together for three years,” she says, and watches Eddie’s face crumple in one go. Strike. “You were together before he met me. You were together since bullshit. You were together for so long that you forgot how not to love each other in public. You loved each other like the world might spare you if you just held on tight enough, and that belief carried you through until bats tore it, and you, apart. You loved each other so much you had the same blood, the same tears, the same sweat and the same favorite songs and the same clothes and the same stims. The same scars. You loved each other so much you almost convinced the universe to let you go on existing happily.”

Eddie’s rocking back and forth now, his hands on his knees and his empty ring finger out for all to see. A lock and a key, one needed to nudge open the other, one wanting to touch while the other one holds back.

Love isn’t that complicated, unless you make it so, and Robin has no interest in pushing happiness away. She wonders what Eddie would give to have happiness come running back to them now that it’s been banished.

(Just like him.)

“And then you stopped running away,” Robin whispers. “And the universe caught up to you. God, Eddie, why? Why did you let the universe catch up to you?”

Eddie’s face twists up into something ugly and awful and horrible. She never wants to see it again, and she knows she’s going to have to every single day for the rest of her life if they don’t get it together and fix this shit.

“I don’t know.”

Eddie pushes it out in one breath, hoarse and shaky and terrible. Robin collapses to the ground before him and watches him rock; back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The lullaby carries on, and it sounds like a cruel god setting down his playthings for bedtime. It sounds like happy people realizing they aren’t happy. It sounds like death finally coming for hope.

“I don’t know,” Eddie mutters, tears dripping down his cheeks without any ragged breaths to accompany them. Somehow the silence is scarier. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Tick, tock, little songbird.

“I don’t know.”

Jonathan is waiting for her by Eddie’s grave when she finally gets there, at two a.m. with Steve passed out upstairs at home. (She gave him some melatonin. He hasn’t slept well in a long, long time.) They give her this look, like she’s a sorry sight for tired eyes, and she drops to her knees and wraps herself around them, because life is all too short and love is all too heavy.

“Hey,” she mumbles into their chest, and Jonathan kisses her hair, hugging her tightly back. “Sorry I’m late. Steve wouldn’t stop crying.”

Jonathan hums.

“Couldn’t, you mean,” they say, and Robin sighs, rolling down off of them and onto the grass.

“Yeah,” she says. “Couldn’t.”

They stare up at the stars together, Eddie’s grave smushed between them. The world seems so small from down here, and yet still so big, and still so mean.

(The world is a mean, mean place full of mean, mean people. The world does not reward bravery or kindness. The world is a rigged lottery and kind people never win.)

“Someone took his necklace,” Jonathan says, clutching her hand too tight. (She likes it that way.) “I don’t know who. Or when. We’ll probably never get it back. I’m sorry. Don’t tell Steve.”

Robin makes a wish on a shooting star. She’s so full of wishes—pretty girls, no Upside Down, happiness—but she only ever really wishes for one thing: Eddie Munson, safe and alive and back in Steve Harrington’s arms.

“Steve took it,” she says, and Jonathan’s grip on her hand loosens. “He felt like it was his. He’s not wrong, I mean—he and Eddie were—are—something special. Always have been. They deserve better than what the universe gave them. Or—took, I guess.”

Jonathan rolls over onto their side, pressing their hand into the grass. She takes their cue and rolls over too to face them. They put their hand over hers and squeeze.

“I miss him,” Jonathan whispers. “I didn’t even know him and I miss him. It’s like—he would light up Will’s days, and Will always seemed to be having the darkest days. I know why now, but I—I didn’t then, and Eddie did, because Eddie could see and Eddie knew, and I just wanted—I just wanted somebody to be there for my little brother in the ways that I couldn’t, in the ways that I can’t, and now—now he’s so sad all the damn time and I catch him out here some nights, muttering under his breath, praying to a god who’s not there. I miss Eddie, Robin. I miss my little brother’s hero.”

Robin wants to cry, but she’s run out of tears.

(Just like the world’s run out of time.)

“And your hero too, now, I bet,” she says, and Jonathan sighs, so painful and so deep, and they say, “Yeah. And my hero too.”

(Life is empty, empty, empty.)

Max is at Wayne Munson’s when Robin stops by. She’s not sure how much Wayne knows about his nephew-son’s widow, but he always asks after Steve when she stops by, wondering if he’s doing alright. She wants to say, How can he be when look at you, but that doesn’t seem fair, so instead she bites her tongue and she puts on a smile and she accepts the tea he makes with shaking hands, arthritis setting in early in the aftermath of tragedy.

“Hi, Maxxy,” she says, brushing a hand through Max’s hair, and Max bats her fingers away, scowling at the table, though she can’t see it. In her wheelchair, she looks small and tired and restless, but no less riled up and ready to fight.

“How’s Mom?” she asks, because Steve is all anyone cares about these days, and honestly, that’s all well and good and earned. He deserves to be the one who’s worried about for once.

“Doing his best,” Robin answers, because the kids don’t believe her when she tries to lie and say good. Wayne comes back to the table with two mugs, looking extra tired (he probably hasn’t slept in over twenty hours due his shift, and also the grief of losing a child; that too) and humming in a low rumble what was probably one of Eddie’s favorite songs. The whole world is haunted by him, it seems, even if it’s only Robin who can still hear his voice.

“Why’d you come today, child?” Wayne asks, making sure to meet her eyes. It takes a hell of a lot of effort not to just stare right through people these days, and Robin knows that, so she makes it easy for him, looking away first to grab Max’s hand under the table. “Not that you’re not welcome, of course.”

Robin shrugs.

Your son’s dead, she thinks, and I’m the queerplatonic life partner of his devastated husband; what do you think I’m doing here? But that seems harsh and it won’t get her anywhere so instead she says, “Just to say hi, Mr. Munson. And to check in. It’s been a year.”

Max’s hand goes still in hers, done tapping out Morse code. (Are we there yet? Is it over yet? Are we safe yet?) Wayne sighs, looking back down into his coffee, taking a sip and wincing as he burns his tongue but only drinking more, as if the pain is his only reminder that there is life left to be lived. She kind of gets it, she does, because she keeps having to replace the bathroom mirror when Steve tries to punch his own reflection, and her own hurt is kept in the beaded bracelets on her wrists, named for all the people she still has left to love, those who have been lost cut up and gathered in tiny bowls on her window sill. She hasn’t told Steve about Eddie’s, because he doesn’t need that shit in his life, doesn’t need any more shit in his life after all they’ve been through together. Nobody needs that much suffering to know that life is too short to be arguing over the little things when love is right there, infinite and ready to be celebrated.

Steve and Eddie’s is the kind of love that doesn’t get to be celebrated, because the world would rather they hide it away in the shadows, but one day Robin will drape a rainbow flag over Eddie’s grave and she will make people see that the sun has always been inside of them, just waiting to be let out into the cloudless sky.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Wayne Munson says, adopted parent of a dead boy who didn’t deserve it, leaving behind a world of people who did. “People keep telling me it’ll get better with time, that it won’t hurt so bad eventually… But they’re wrong. They’re always so, so wrong, I’m—I’m a fucking mess without him, and I always will be, even as the years go by and everybody forgets about my son outside of the legend of him being a Satanic cult leader who murdered people one summer in the 80’s. No one’s gonna remember my boy for who he really was, not even you kids, once you get out of here and move on with your lives, but I’m—stuck. I’m stuck here, where he got stuck, and I ain’t ever leaving, because he ain’t ever coming back.”

Robin wants to cut him open and spill everything she knows into him—everything Eddie’s ever thought and heard and seen, everything he’s ever been, everything he’s ever loved, until Wayne Munson knows it all, until he believes in the power of happy middles over happy endings. She wants him to sleep easy again, to know that Eddie is alive in her dreams and she will love him so hard and so well that the world won’t need to remember him, because she’ll live happily enough for the both of them. Two hearts in one body, both broken but still bleeding, coming together to make one messy whole.

Robin has Steve Harrington’s name written on her heart. So does Eddie. Surely that means they aren’t so different after all.

“Sometimes I think I see him out my window at night,” Max says so softly, and something in Robin breaks a little further because of course she does, because they are heroes and heroes don’t get nice things. “But it’s always just a tree. Or a fox or a shadow. Or a car or a cat or a plastic bag, tumbling in the wind. But not him. Never him. Never Eddie. Never Dad. Just—meaningless crap, crap that still gets to go on existing, when he’s buried six feet under at the top of a hill without any music or sunlight or love. He’s gone, and we’re here, and it makes me want to rip my own bones out from under my skin.”

Robin clutches her hand a little tighter. Wayne just sort of stares into his coffee, as if maybe it has the answers for him that some dickish god won’t give.

“I don’t know, kid,” Wayne says. “I don’t know how to move on from—well. But whoever took him from us, I hope they’re burning. I hope they keep on burnin’ til there’s nothing left of the universe but time. I hope they pay.”

Make him pay. She can see it, looking back now, that Steve had wanted to kiss Eddie then, that Eddie had wanted to say what might’ve been and would turn out to be goodbye, and that they couldn’t, because they’re both boys and the world is too fucked-up to not care. So instead they’d just nodded, tried to say the words with a gaze, but it wasn’t enough, and it will never be enough, and the monsters that killed him will never really pay, and Robin wants Eddie back, she realizes, not just for Steve or for Dustin or for Wayne frickin’ Munson, but for herself. Robin Buckley, who was only just starting to have friends like her, who she could complain about girls to and have it not matter. Robin Buckley, whose soul is stitched to Steve Harrington’s in some irreplaceable way that can’t be undone, unlike real stitches on real wounds, which keep opening up and bleeding all over Steve’s couch when he throws a fit and tears open his torso again trying to get to his heart to cradle it in his hands, trying to join his husband beyond the grave, trying to heal himself from the inside out. (It’s not working.) Robin Buckley, who deserves more than what she’s been given.

Robin Buckley, who’s done being grateful for just having a goddamn life. She doesn’t want a life. She wants a good one.

“Me too,” she says, so quietly as the fire eats her up inside, and then she stands and she kisses Max goodbye, and she nods Wayne Munson her thanks, and she heads out into the godless world, and she dares it to strike her down.

Cowards shouldn’t get to live when heroes don’t. She may not know much, but that—that, she knows.

That, and that she loves Steve Harrington enough to cheat death at its own game.

Robin doesn’t think of herself as an angry person, but when Nancy Wheeler knocks on her and Steve’s door at one a.m. on a Monday night, the rage comes so quickly and so sharply that she’s nearly knocked off her feet with it, this IT’S NOT FAIR that screams through her like a banshee’s cries through catacombs.

“What do you want,” she deadpans, honestly uninterested outside of that small little part of her that still loves Nancy like the closest female friend she’s ever had, like the part of Steve that still loves Nancy because Robin is an extension of Steve in all the ways that matter and Nancy Wheeler is therefore a part of both of them, albeit an unwanted part. (At least on her end. And maybe a little bit on Steve’s, too, if he ever actually dared to be honest with himself when the lights were off.)

“I want to help,” Nancy says, and Robin hates her, just a little bit, just enough to open the door and let her in.

Steve’s sitting at the foot of the couch, legs splayed out and hair all fucked-up from Robin tugging at it while he had a panic attack, trying to add enough pressure to make him feel grounded again. He’s slightly woozy and kinda drunk and he smiles when they come in, giggling to himself.

“The world broke me,” he beams up at Nancy, flinching when she tries to touch him. “The world broke me, Nancy. Isn’t that funny? I always kinda thought it would be you.”

Nancy’s face screws up with hurt, but her hurt is not Robin’s job, so instead she squats down beside Steve, grasping his shoulder and his face and trying to smile sweet enough that he smiles. His hurt is her job. His life is her life.

Steve’s heart is Robin’s heart.

“Stevie, baby, how much have you had to drink, do you remember?” she asks. She knows he can chug when he’s left alone, and the two minutes it took to answer the door was two minutes too long. Steve snorts, holding up four fingers and then dropping one, then putting it back up and sticking his thumb out, too.

“That many,” he says confidently. “You called me baby. Eddie used to call me baby, you know? And big boy. And princess and sweetheart and baby girl. Eddie called me so many things, Robin. Said it was because I mattered so much he needed to remind me in a million different ways. I wanted to keep him, Rob. I called him honey and baby and sunshine and sweetheart, too. I called him Bambi. I called him so many things because he mattered so much it was like the sun came up every morning depending on whether he smiled. I wanted to keep him, Robbie. Why couldn’t I keep him?”

Nancy turns away, pressing her hand so hard against her mouth her knuckles go white, blinking back tears and choking on a sob. Steve frowns, looking up at her, and whispers sweet and innocent like a child, “Why’re you crying, Nancy? Did something sad happen?”

Nancy fights her shaking shoulders, forces them tense and still, plasters a manic smile on her face and turns around to squat down on Steve’s other side, careful not to touch him this time.

“No, no, honey, of course not, everyone’s fine,” she says so softly, as if she can save him by lying. “How’re you doing, Steve? I know things haven’t been… easy.”

Steve nods absentmindedly, turning back to Robin. He takes her hand and she kisses his forehead, gently scratching at his scalp. He hasn’t showered in days but she loves him too much to deny him anything, least of all comfort.

“Since my husband died, you mean,” he mutters unhappily. “Since my Eddie died. Since Eddie… since he… since…”

Steve bursts into tears.

“I’m sorry,” he wails as Robin shushes him, wrapping him up in her arms and rocking him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have brought him down there with us, I shouldn’t have left him alone, I shouldn’t have not been there—”

Robin forces his mouth into her shoulder, muffling his stupid and unnecessary apologies. None of this is his fault.

“No, no, Steve, this isn’t your fault, honey, none of this is your fault,” Nancy says, curling in a little closer and brushing a string of hair behind his ear. He shudders at her touch and she pulls back again, clutching her heart like it’s the one that’s broken and not pretty little bullshit Steve Harrington’s. “Eddie’s death is not your fault.”

Steve shakes his head, mumbling into Robin’s neck. She pulls him back by the hair, stroking his cheek, and says, “What was that, dingus?” and he says, stupid—

“Yes it was. I didn’t take care of him in high school, didn’t help him fit in, didn’t help him graduate, didn’t bring him up with me or bring myself down to him and I just, I just, I kept on being an asshole even after I knew him, even after I loved him, didn’t tell anybody, didn’t show him off, didn’t even manage to convince him he is worth something—”

He breaks off again, chomping down on Robin’s upper arm. She lets him, kissing his forehead and rubbing his back, catching Nancy’s eyes over her best friend’s head and smiling sadly.

“You did everything you could, Stevie,” she murmurs, kissing his neck. “You found him in that boathouse. You protected him from that fucking psychopath Jason Carver. You didn’t leave him alone to die, Stevie, you made his life worth living, and yeah, it was short, but you’re the reason it meant something, don’t you know?”

Steve sniffles. He pulls his head out from its hiding place under her arm and blinks up at her owlishly, all soft and broken and bleeding out on the living room floor.

“Really?” he mumbles, wiping at his face with his sleeve, and Robin smiles, kissing his head and nodding to Nancy to help her get him up off the floor.

“Really,” she says, and takes him up the stairs as slowly as he needs, tucking him into bed. He’s got one of Dustin’s hoodies there, and one of Robin’s flannels wrapped around his pillows. He buries his face in it and makes grabby hands at the air. Robin finds Eddie’s vest halfway under the bed and hands it to him, and Steve curls around it like it’s the earth and he’s the O-Zone and nothing’s gonna hurt them, not even the world burning up due to climate change.

Robin leaves him there, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” playing softly through the stereo, and she guides Nancy back down to the kitchen. She sets her up on a stool at the kitchen counter, rummaging through the cabinets for two mugs, and she makes them both a cup’s worth of chamomile tea, because she hears it heals grief.

(Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Everything. All of it. It’s bullshit.)

“So,” she says, taking a sip and setting her mug down on the counter with a too-loud clank. Nancy stares blankly at the marble, like maybe it can tell her something that prick of a god up there in the crying sky won’t. “You want to help.”

Nancy blinks, lifting her head so slowly she might as well be a robot. The kitchen is silent, and dark, because one of the lightbulbs is faulty and Robin hasn’t gotten around to changing it yet and she’ll be damned if she’s the reason Steve has another panic attack today.

Nancy’s face twists up again, but she draws her shoulders back and forces her face under control.

“Yes,” she says, flat and borderline cold if not for the way her voice shakes, her jaw threatening to snap apart with sobs. Robin hates her less than she did an hour ago, but doesn’t love her any more. “I want to help.”

Robin hums.

“Okay then,” she says, tracing the rim of her cup. “First things first—you don’t tell Steve. Got that, Wheeler? My soulmate doesn’t hear a word about any of this.”

Nancy looks tired.

“Yes,” she says, fading. “I’ve got that.”

Robin swigs her whole tea in one go and throws the mug in the sink, where it clatters terribly. Nancy winces.

“Great,” Robin says, heading for the stairs. “Take the couch or go home, I don’t care. I’m going to bed.”

“Say hi to Eddie for me,” Nancy murmurs. Robin laughs, and it’s awful.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.”

“You let that bitch near my baby girl.”

Robin sighs. She knew this was coming long before the headaches started up. It’s why it’s four in the goddamn morning and she’s finally dreaming, because she’d tried her absolute fucking hardest not to fall asleep so Eddie “Born To Love And Protect Steve Harrington” Munson wouldn’t get the chance to yell at her, but, well. Robin is a weak-willed girl when it comes to sleep, and the world started spinning the moment she started up the stairs. She’s surprised she even made it to the bed.

“Yeah,” she says. “I did. She wants to help, Eddie. She wants to help you. And Steve.”

Eddie glares. He hops down from on top of the dresser and stalks a little closer.

“Not good enough,” he spits. “I don’t want her help. I was there when they broke up. I know what she said to him. What she did. She destroyed my princess, Robin. From the inside out until he wasn’t him anymore, but still the most him he’d ever been. She fucking ruined my Stevie, and I don’t like killers coming near my man.”

Robin gets the feeling. She made that feeling.

“I know,” she says, because Steve is her man too, in all the ways that matter. “I know, Eddie, I know, but—what if she’s the key? What if we need her? She’s my friend, even though I kind of hate her sometimes, and Eddie, you—Steve needs you. I could never forgive myself if not forgiving her was the reason we didn’t get you back.”

Eddie is hollow-eyed and small. A child masquerading as a man.

She loves him so much.

“What if you can’t save me, Buckley?” he whispers, staring right through her. “What if you try and it isn’t good enough? What if I’m stuck here, in your head? What if I never see him again? What if he never sees me?”

Robin reaches out and wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him even though he doesn’t hug her back. Eddie Munson will be her gift to the world, even if the world is an ungrateful bitch that doesn’t want her kindness.

“I will spend my whole life trying to love him better,” she promises, feeling Eddie soften against her. “If you can’t. I will love him until the sun burns out. I will love him until the moon crumbles apart. I will love him until the earth swallows me whole. I will love him, Eddie. I promise I will love him for you.”

Neither of them points out the impossibility of that. They may both love Steve the same amount—infinitely, endlessly—but it’s not nearly in the same way, and someone who loves Steve will never be enough to replace someone who was in love with him. Still—

Slowly, very slowly, Eddie’s arms come up and curl around her waist.

“I miss him,” Eddie murmurs, burying his face in her shoulder. “I miss him so much, Robin. I know I’m supposed to be the one who’s dead, the one who’s missed, but—fuck, Robin, I—I miss him like my heart’s gone out of order.”

Robin blinks back tears.

It has, she thinks. It has, because it’s in his chest, not yours, and he’s trying so damn hard to keep it beating, even though the silence is always too goddamn loud without you to babble over it.

“I know,” she says instead, confesses, “I know. I know, Eddie. I miss him too.”

The truth is never what we want it to be. They were not made for happy endings.

(Honestly, Robin’s not sure why they were made at all.)

Robin comes to with Steve’s fingers carding gently through her hair, her head on his chest and her hand on his stomach. She nestles in a little closer, happy in his warmth, and tries to distract herself from the horrible possibility that Eddie might really be dead and not coming back this time, not even in her wildest dreams (up high).

Steve knows she’s awake, no doubt, but he doesn’t make her move, instead kissing her head and mumbling something. She doesn’t hear it, but she murmurs back, “I love you,” because that’s always the right answer for everything.

(Even “What do you want for breakfast?” if the way Steve hugged her afterwards was any indication.)

“How are you doing?” she asks her soulmate, this widowed mother of six, and he shrugs, turning and burying his face in her hair. She wraps her arms around his waist and promises she’ll love him forever.

“Everything’s so cold now that the sun’s gone out,” Steve answers, and Robin nods, blinded a bit by the golden rays coming in through the windows. “I wish he was still lit up.”

Robin leans up and kisses his cheek. She wishes that too. She knows she should find a way to move on without Eddie, but the world never gives us enough time to figure things out. It just keeps on spinning, and we just keep on living, and we can’t do anything to make it stop, not even for a second.

“I keep coming back to this empty house and thinking he’ll be there to make it home,” Steve mumbles, squishing her hard into his chest. She wants to keep him forever and ever and ever. “But he never is. And now all those dreams I had about living past twenty are gone, because there’s no point in living without him.”

Robin kisses his chest.

There’s me, she wants to say. There’s Dustin. And Max, and Lucas, and Will and Mike and Eleven and all the other wonderful people who love you. Also Nancy. But she knows it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, none of them are enough to make Steve happy the way he was with Eddie.

(And isn’t that the fucked-up truth.)

“I can live for us,” she offers instead, rubbing her thumb back and forth across his hip. Her arm is being crushed under his scarred side but she won’t dare ask him to move. “Both of us. You can rest now, sweetheart. Not forever, not so I lose you, just—sleep, baby. I’ll be right here when you wake up. I’ll try to make it a little less cold and a little more home. I love you so much, Steve Munson. Stay with me.”

Steve turns and kisses her on the corner of the mouth. She knows they’re never going to be apart again. (Even if he moves, she’ll buy the house right next door, and she’ll still stay at his most nights. He’ll let her, and happily.)

“Okay,” Steve mutters, sliding down to bury his face in her chest. If it were anyone else it would be awkward, but this is the other half of her soul, so it’s not. “Okay. I can do that.”

Robin kisses his head, pulling at a few greasy strands. She’s never been good with her hands, but she does her best to weave them together into a tiny braid.

“There, my little Jedi,” she murmurs. “May he be with you—always.”

(May peace catch up to them eventually.)

She takes herself downstairs after Steve falls back asleep, exhausted all the time these days, even though he doesn’t actually do much of anything. She is too, but she doesn’t get to sleep, because she needs to be around to take care of him.

(Besides, whenever she does sleep, all she can see is his dead husband, yelling or crying or, sometimes, worst of all, not making any sound at all.)

There’s Nancy, at the kitchen counter, right where Robin left her. She kinda thought she’d go, once Robin had taken her sobbing best friend up to his bed and chewed her out, eventually abandoning her at the kitchen counter. But no, here Nancy is, still at that same kitchen counter with a mug in her hands, a tea bag thrown over the side.

Jonathan is with her, and warmth fills up Robin’s chest at the sight of them, even though Nancy’s pinched brow still leaves her shivering slightly.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Nancy says when Jonathan waves. “I let them in. They’ve been here since four.”

Robin hums, slipping herself into Jonathan’s arms and burying her face in their neck. Maybe none of them sleep either.

“I do and I don’t,” she answers. Jonathan squeezes her shoulder. “Look, Nancy, have you got any ideas yet?”

Nancy sighs, twirling her tea bag around.

“You’re not gonna like it,” she says. Robin rolls her eyes.

“Whatever. I don’t like much of anything these days,” she says. Nancy frowns. “Lay it on me.”

Nancy sighs again and mumbles something into her mug. Now it’s Jonathan who frowns.

“Louder, Nance.”

Nancy takes a deep breath, squeezes her eyes shut, and says, “I think we need to tell the kids.”

Robin has killed monsters. She can kill her best friend’s ex. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

(That’s a lie. Killing Nancy would be the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, and she’s helped Steve tear his screaming child from his father’s body as the world shook apart beneath their feet.)

“No,” she spits, gritting her teeth rather than sinking them into Nancy’s throat. “No, we’re not telling the goddamn kids.”

Nancy purses her lips.

“We have to,” she reasons, as if Robin’s fucking stupid and doesn’t already fucking know that. “They’re smarter than us, Robin. I get why you don’t want to tell Steve, and I get why you don’t want to tell Dustin. But come on—you and I both know that they’re our best bet for getting Eddie back, and if time is a factor here, then we can’t waste it. We can’t take the risk that we’ll run out, because if we do and we didn’t let them help us, they will not forgive us, Robin. We will lose those kids and we will lose Steve too.”

That’s not true, Robin thinks, her heart beating like a war drum, furious and bleeding. That’s not true, they’ll love us through any and everything, they already have, Steve will never leave me, Steve could never leave me, we are the same person so we can never be separated that’s the whole fucking point I was made with him in mind we are one soul in all the ways that matter.

Out loud, she says, “I don’t know when you lost your faith in them, Nancy, but I sure as hell don’t think they’ll let go of us that easily.”

Nancy heaves out a breath, dropping her face into her hands. Jonathan glances back and forth between them, cupping their mug in both hands, looking like they want to say something but haven’t quite figured out what that is yet. Well, too bad, because they don’t get the chance before Nancy’s shaking her head, saying—

“I don’t know what I did to make you hate me, Robin, but whatever it is I’m sorry.”

Fuck you.

Robin’s festering fury bubbles over.

“You hurt him,” she whispers, curling back and hugging herself, a child retreating from something their parents can’t protect them from. “You hurt him, so you hurt me, and you broke him so badly that sometimes I think he’s still just a few cracked pieces who’ve gotten too good at pretending they’re a vase. You filled him up with flowers and then you let them rot and die even as he watered you and showered you in sunshine and loved you so much he forgot to love himself. And then you pushed him off the window sill, sent him hurtling towards the ground, and stomped all over him in your stupidly arrogant heels, not understanding that he was already so willing to shatter for you. You called him stupid, called him worthless, called him nothing, spit it all out in one word and now he doesn’t trust anybody anymore, not even himself, because how can you trust love when the first one you ever had was bullshit?”

She spits the last word, feels it burn in her belly and lets it cool as it leaves her mouth, wondering if this is how Nancy felt that night. Now, Nancy looks like a wreck, a few tears slipping down her cheeks as she stares at nothing, her mouth dropped open just a touch, her hands trembling around her mug.

Jonathan mumbles something and looks back down at their tea, not daring to say a word.

Robin’s fire goes out, as all volcanoes do after they erupt.

“I don’t hate you, Nancy,” she says. It’s not even a lie. “You’re my friend. I want you around. But you hurt him. So you hurt me. So I don’t trust you, not anymore. And I’m not letting you tell those kids about the ghost in my head.”

She has a migraine. She thinks maybe Eddie’s crying up there.

Jonathan clears their throat.

“Fine,” they say, standing up and heading for the door. “Then I will.”

Robin lunges to stop them, but they grab her by the wrist and kiss her forehead, and that makes her stop dead cold.

“You don’t have to like her,” they whisper. “You don’t even have to trust her. But you have to accept when she’s right, Robin. And Nancy’s right. We’ve gotta tell the kids.”

Robin sobs.

Jonathan drops her to the floor and leaves, and then it’s just her, her and Nancy, both unravelling slowly, like a child’s knit sweater left to strays.

Eventually, she and Nancy lie back on the living room floor. They could sleep on the couch, and Robin’s been spending most of her nights curled around Steve in his bed anyways, but for some reason she can’t make herself move from the floor tonight, stuck there beside Nancy, Nancy who she loves, Nancy who she hates, Nancy who hasn’t ever really looked inside herself and blamed the bad parts there the way Steve is always doing to himself. And that’s why Robin’s mad, really—not because she thinks Nancy’s a terrible person, but because Nancy’s lack of apology for what she did makes Steve apologize for things he didn’t.

“I don’t hate you, Nance,” she says again, because it feels like Nancy didn’t hear her the first time. “I just… He still blames himself. He’ll always blame himself, even if you actually apologized and told him it wasn’t his fault, which you never will. I know everyone thinks Steve Harrington is this invincible being who’s a little stupid, obsessed with girls, and too invested in his hair, but he’s not. He’s a scared little boy that nobody ever really loved quite right, and then Eddie came along and adored him without conditions or questions or demands, and Steve didn’t know he was worthy of that until Eddie proved it to him. Steve didn’t know people could want him around just for him until I showed up. Steve Harrington was empty for a long time, until the two of us filled him up, and Dustin made sure that glass never spilled. But you took his empty glass and drank from it until he didn’t have any blood left in his body, all his love gone away, and then you dropped him on the pavement and watched him splinter into a million pieces, and you never even bothered to say sorry, acting like you were in the right because you were hurting. Well, newsflash, Wheeler—grief isn’t an excuse to be a bitch.”

Nancy’s cheeks color with shame. She reaches out and takes Robin’s hand, squeezing too tight.

“I know,” she whispers, rolling onto her side. “I was just a stupid kid back then.”

Robin shakes her head, pushing herself up off the floor and wandering up the stairs.

“I don’t care, Wheeler,” she says, tired in her very bones. “I was a kid once, too, and I never ruined someone’s life.”

She knows Nancy’s probably thinking something along the lines of You never had anybody in your life to ruin. Lucky for her, she keeps her mouth shut.

Robin climbs up and up and up until she gets to Steve’s room. (Steve and Eddie’s room.) She collapses into bed beside him and kisses his neck. He curls towards her, wrapping her in his arms as she presses in, and, just like that, she’s home.

“Mmm, R’bin,” he mumbles. “Luh you.”

Robin tangles her fingers in his hair and kisses his forehead.

“Mm,” she answers. “Stevie. I love you, too.”

Eddie’s lying on the bed beside her when she gets to dreaming, in the spot where Steve’s supposed to be. He’s curled into the same position as his husband, too, except his arms are loose around Robin, meant to hold someone bigger. More muscle, soft stomach, somebody with a flat chest and strong shoulders. Somebody lovely, somebody living.

She wants to love him better than the world has.

“Hey, Eddie baby,” she murmurs, rolling onto her side and taking his hand, squishing it in between their chests. Eddie hums, not opening his eyes. “How’ve you been?”

“Dead,” he says. “How’s my Stevie?”

He brushes his thumb over the back of her hand and curls his fingers around her shoulder, tugging her in closer. He kisses her forehead, gentle and sweet, and it makes her smile.

“Dead with you,” Robin says, because it’s the truth, much as she hates it, and Eddie kisses her forehead again. She can taste salt on his cheeks from hard nights and lonely days.

“And our kids?” he asks. Robin’s heart aches at the thought that he’s never going to hear them call him “Dad.”

“Taking good care of their mother,” she assures, kissing his neck. Eddie’s chest moves slightly with his laughter, a welcome sound in the midst of all the horrible silence.

“That’s not a joke anymore, is it?” he mutters. Robin kisses his heart, closing her eyes. She misses having this kind of peace with somebody alive.

(Steve is an empty battlefield, now. Nothing but haunting, endless silence, and the occasional cry of a soldier dying too slowly.)

“It never was,” she says. “But—yes, we’ve stopped treating it like one.”

Eddie hums.

“You’ll take care of him too, won’t you?” he whispers into her hair. “The love of my great young life?”

Robin slides their bodies together until they’re locked too tightly to move.

“Of course, my darling,” she says. Something about death’s made her soft. “I always do.”

(She wakes up in an empty bed. She wanders downstairs and Steve is cooking pancakes, talking to empty air. He’s wearing a hideous pink apron that reads Mamalicious and is covered in lipstick prints. Robin plasters herself to his back and kisses his shoulder.

“I love you,” she says over the Beatles on the record player. “I love you. I love you so much, Stevie baby.”

It’s the only thing she knows will never be a lie.)

The kids are, understandably, pissed.

“What the hell, Buckley?” Dustin shrieks. “My dad’s been fucking—in your head this whole time and you never thought to like—fucking tell me???”

Robin opens her mouth to answer but Dustin is, of course, not done—

“And why the fuck haven’t you told Mom about all of this?” he screeches. “He would’ve told us! Why the fuck are we at Nancy’s house when—”

Jonathan smothers him with their hand.

“Lay off it, dipshit,” they say, somehow gently. Dustin bites their palm and they frown, pulling away and shaking out their hand. “Of course she didn’t. What do you think Steve would do if it turns out we can’t get Eddie back?”

The answer bangs them all back into silence.

Kill himself.

Dustin’s face goes slack. Robin watches him remember.

(He’d been the one to find Steve, the first time. Cut up in his bathtub with ten pills and a bottle down. He’d called Robin, who’d called 9-1-1, and they’d sat there together, the two of them, in the waiting room, and Robin had called Eddie from a payphone because Dustin hadn’t known him yet, Steve’s happiest secret, and she’d said, “Better get down to the hospital, Munson. Your boyfriend tried to kill himself,” and Eddie had gotten arrested for speeding on the way over and she’d bailed him out with her cut of the tip money from Scoops and Eddie had cried in her arms about it, but ultimately quieted when he saw Steve sleeping on the bed, alive and not yet well, kissing his pulse point over and over and over, just to be sure he was still there.)

“Oh,” Dustin says, and his voice cracks. Robin draws him in and kisses his head. “Okay. Okay. We won’t tell Mom. What do you need us to do?”

Nancy stumbles down the stairs with her arms full of books. She drops one and tries to catch it, which sends all the others tumbling down. Will helps her pick them up, along with Eleven, while Mike watches on, whispering worriedly to Lucas, who sits with his hands on Max’s wheelchair like he always does nowadays.

“We need you to figure it out,” Nancy says, dumping the books on the dining room table. “Like you always do. You’re smarter than any of us, and we know it. And nothing motivates you like your mom, so—figure it out, please. Figure it out so we can bring Eddie home.”

Robin blinks. That… was not what she expected to come out of Nancy Wheeler’s mouth.

Maybe she does listen after all.

“Okay,” Dustin warbles, still sounding off-kilter like the world isn’t holding him up quite right. (It isn’t; he’s supposed to have two parents, not barely one.) He wipes at his eyes and stumbles towards the table, picking up the first book. “Okay, let’s, uh—let’s figure this shit out.”

Jonathan claps him on the back.

“Atta boy,” they say so quietly, and Dustin’s breath hitches, but when he speaks again, it’s steadier than ever.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s save our dad.”

They slave for hours, but come up empty. Will falls asleep draped over Jonathan, and as soon as they’re out, Mike follows, squishing Eleven between him and her siblings. Max allows Lucas to carry her up the stairs, waving to them all, though it’s more like at the door. Nancy curls herself around Jonathan’s feet and then it’s just Dustin and Robin, alone at the kitchen table.

Robin takes one look at his shining eyes and tugs him up out of his chair.

“Come on,” she says, as gently as she can. “Talk a walk with me.”

They leave a note on the table, because they’re all traumatized as fuck and they can’t go anywhere without telling somebody or else a Code Red will be called and they’ll all be up for weeks with nightmares and paranoia. It’s even worse because it’s not like they can get therapy, what with half of them being poor as hell and the object of their terror being a very supernatural entity that they’re all quite forbidden from discussing. (They signed fancy government papers and everything.) Sometimes Robin wonders if their codependency is just because of the Upside Down, if they’d have met at all if this stupid bitch of a monster hadn’t dared to haunt them, but then she looks at Steve and her whole body relaxes, that sigh leaving her soul all over again,  oh, there you are, and she knows, somehow, that they would’ve found each other either way.

Now, she and Dustin walk until they find a bench lit by a streetlight that doesn’t flicker. They sit down and Dustin pulls a chocolate bar out of his left pocket, then a Swiss Army knife out of his right.

“Protection,” he says when she raises her eyebrow, and her whole body kind of sinks at that, because in what world should fifteen-year-olds feel like they need to protect themselves from empty streets? In what world should adults be afraid of the dark?

(None, but in this one, they are, because this world sucks.

This world is yours, by the way, just thirty-five years younger.)

“Your dad gave that to you, huh?” she says. “I’d say it was Steve, but… we all know your mom would never let you have something like that.”

Dustin huffs. It’s almost a laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, nearly smiling but not quite. “Eddie showed up on my birthday with this in his hand. Wrapped up in a Queen t-shirt and everything. Best birthday present I ever got, not because of what it was but because of what it meant. That he wanted to protect me even if he wasn’t around, that he trusted me enough to offer me something dangerous, something that could get him into trouble. It mattered because it was from him. Because he loved me, and I loved him, and this was proof of that, something I could hold in my hands and know deep in my soul, even if the whole world hated us and wanted to cut the strings that tied us together. Because that love, that bond, that was—that was ours, and when we were together, suddenly the shitty world, it, well… it didn’t mean shit.”

Robin hums. She wonders if any of these kids ever had birthday parties, before the Upside Down happened. Before life happened and tore them all apart.

“It’s okay to miss him,” she says, even though he probably already knows that. “I have him in my head, I talk to him every night, and I still miss him. It hurts everywhere sometimes, the guilt and the sadness and the anger all mixing up until I can’t even feel it anymore, just a splayed-out body of terror and tragedy, someone with a best friend who’s a widow at twenty in a world whose sun doesn’t shine bright enough to chase away the darkness, not anymore. No, not anymore, not at all.”

Dustin nods, as if he’s heard her. But he’s just staring straight ahead and she’d bet anything (if she had anything left to bet) that he’s heard none of it, too depressed to think, too angry to know. They are broken people, and they ran out of glue long ago. There is no fixing people like them.

“It’s his birthday today, you know,” Dustin says so quietly. “I found a ring in Steve’s sock drawer. I found one in Eddie’s, too—before all of this. Eddie Munson would’ve turned twenty-one today, with a husband and six children who love him, and instead he’s… instead he’s buried at the top of a hill with a fucking cross to mark the spot, as if any kind of memorial could ever make him something remembered, as if this town hasn’t graffitied his grave and celebrated his death like he really was the murderer he was finally proven not to be. Nobody cares, though. We lost a father and Steve lost the love of his life and nobody cares, not really, because Eddie Munson is dead, and it’s all my fault.”

Robin shakes her head, touching his shoulder. Everything’s so sad all the goddamn time now. She’s so fucking tired of it.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, her hand creeping up and combing its way through his hair. “None of this is your fault, Dusty, darling. Chrissy Cunningham still would’ve died. Vecna still would’ve gone after Max. Eddie still would’ve followed you down into hell. None of this is your fault, Dustin Munson. None of it at all.”

Dustin shakes his head, the tears falling now and falling fast.

“I’m dating Lucas,” he says. “I’m dating Lucas, did you know that? And Lucas is dating Max, and Max and I are best friends. I like boys. I like boys and girls because that’s something you can do and I know that because Mom likes boys and girls, likes Eddie, and that’s okay. And I wanted to tell them. I was going to tell them, Mom and Dad, Steve and Eddie, my heroes, but—but then the monsters came and they took him from me, from us, and now—now I’m dating a boy who gives me butterflies and treats me nicely and who loves me and loves me and loves me and I can’t even fucking tell my parents because they’re both dead, even if one of them is still walking around.”

Robin blinks back her own tears, tugging him in.

She thinks maybe she hates everything.

That’s been happening more and more these days.

“We will get them back,” she says, promises, even though she knows better than anyone that you can’t promise things like that, but Dustin just keeps on staring at the ground, knife and chocolate in his hand, the bitter and the sweet of life.

“I don’t know why you told me,” he says. “About Dad. Because I’m no better off than Mom, if we can’t save him. I’ll end everything to see him again.”

Robin kisses his head, holding him a little tighter, as if that’ll stop him from slipping away. You can’t hold on to a ghost.

“Please don’t,” she murmurs. “Then I’ll have lost all three of you.”

Dustin turns and buries his face in her chest. She wants to hide them all away in a bunker where the bad things can’t touch them anymore.

“Okay,” he says, muffled and shaky. “I’ll stick around as long as Mom does.”

A few more days.

Robin kisses his head, again and again and again.

“Don’t leave us,” she whispers. “Don’t leave me.”

It’s a plea she’s never allowed herself to say.

Dustin doesn’t answer, but she hears him anyway.

Sorry.

Jonathan’s waiting for them when they get home, smoking a joint on the steps. They help Dustin inside, handing him off to Nancy, and then they turn back to Robin, who swallows down the past twenty-four hours of torture and throws her thumb back over her shoulder.

“I’ve gotta—it’s time for me to go,” she says, skin itching with the need to touch Steve’s. She doesn’t know how she’s managed so long without him. (It’s been a whole day.) “Stevie, my Stevie, I’ve gotta—I’ve gotta go.”

Jonathan nods vaguely, stamping the joint out on the cement and crushing it with their shoe. Robin wants them all to be clear-minded and sober for the rest of their lives, so they can have as long as possible together, but she knows better than to ask that of a group of traumatized children and their equally-as-traumatized keepers.

“Ya know, he was gonna graduate,” Jonathan says, and Robin freezes, already turned back towards her car. The whole world caves in around her with that one sentence, and she whirls around to look at them, her heart sinking to her stomach and making her feel nauseous. Jonathan looks back at her with pitying eyes, as if they know exactly what she’s thinking and their heart is breaking too.

“Yeah,” they mutter, standing and walking down the steps towards her. “Nancy told me. She’d been tutoring him, and apparently he was on track to pass all his finals. Barely, but still. And then… Well. You know what happened then. But he was gonna be up there, walking across that stage and flipping off Principal Higgins. He was gonna make it, finally.”

They stop right in front of her, rocking back on their heels, their hands stuffed in their pockets. Their eyes search her face and stop on her mouth, hanging open in surprise, and then they smile, this sad little thing that burns her up from the inside.

“Yeah,” Jonathan murmurs. “‘86, baby,” and something in Robin breaks.

“Oh,” she murmurs back. “I… oh.”

And then suddenly she’s crying and Jonathan is holding her and she’s so fucking tired because Eddie and because Steve and because they deserved better than this and because—

“Shhh,” Jonathan whispers, brushing a hand through her hair. “Shhh, shhh, Robin, it’s okay, well, it’s not okay, but—I’ll take you home, sweet girl. Don’t worry. Don’t worry about a thing, honey. I’ll take you home. I’ll take you home to Steve.”

She thinks maybe she says thank you, but she’s not sure. All she knows is that one moment she’s being helped into Jonathan Byers’ van, and the next she’s curled up in Steve Harrington’s arms, safe in bed with her soulmate, watching Jonathan close the door behind them and thinking, fuzzily, Dear god, please be kinder.

(To me.)

“I think maybe it’s because I love Steve,” Eddie greets her with when she comes to in her dream bed, still wrapped in the clothes he died in. There’s blood everywhere, like he won’t stop leaking it even when she’s not around, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain, so she doesn’t think about it too hard, standing up and heading his way. She presses his face in between her hands and he lets her hold him, his hands coming up to cup her hips. She loves him so much she burns with it, and it’s still not enough to mean anything.

“Or maybe it’s because Steve loves me,” Eddie’s saying now, his mouth right by her ear, “or maybe it’s because we love each other. I’m not quite sure. All I know is that I’m not completely dead because I’m here, and my wedding ring keeps burning, and, dead or alive, I love Steve Harrington more than life.”

I know, Robin thinks, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing him tight. She presses their bodies together, pushing up on her tippy-toes to hug him just right. She only gets a few minutes with him a night, and that’s more than anyone else is getting, and she will use them, goddamnit, she will use them. I know, I know, I know.

“I know,” she tells him. Eddie kisses the side of her head, then pulls away, grasping her hands in his own.

“No, seriously,” he says, squeezing hard. Something stings her thumb and she pulls away, hissing, her eyes widening at the burn there. Eddie holds up his left hand and shakes it, his wedding ring blazing reddish orange. “I think maybe—”

Robin wakes up and Steve is sobbing beside her, crying out for his husband in his sleep. Robin looks at his wedding ring, fingers twisted around his pillow, and it’s burning bright, brighter than anything else in the room. She looks down at her thumb and there’s a burn there.

“Holy fuck,” she whispers, then slides back down beside her soulmate, pressing his head to her chest until she falls back asleep, still rubbing the warm blister on her skin. “Holy fuck.”

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

— Mary Elizabeth Frye

Robin rolls out of bed when the sun is just barely peeking through the curtains. Steve’s bedroom is more his and Eddie’s bedroom, filled with metal memorabilia and white curtains covered in bats and blue wallpaper with clouds on it and a pale yellow bedspread that matches Steve’s sweater and a worn white bunny with pink insides for ears and a nose that’s been rubbed so many times it’s frayed and smudged stuffed between the pillows. She pulls herself from Steve’s arms and he whimpers, frowning his sleep, so she kisses his forehead and heads back downstairs in his t-shirt and pajama pants, because they’re platonically married in all the ways that count.

The whole house smells of pancakes, because Jonathan is still there, standing at the stove with a shirt covered in pancake batter that might also be Steve’s. (Which is fine, because to be honest, Steve seems to like to share all of his things with anyone who needs them, and Robin used to think it was because he was just an extraordinarily sweet and selfless guy, and he is, but then she found him asleep one night on the couch clutching a hoodie borrowed by Max and a hat returned by Dustin and a watch stolen by Robin and realized that Steve just liked having pieces of them around, things that reminded him that they loved him just as much as he loves them, because Steve is a sweetheart and Steve is an idiot and he has trouble recognizing those sorts of things a lot of the time. But that’s okay, because Robin will always be around to remind him. She is not leaving this stupid man, not even if god himself tells her to. He can talk to her middle finger if he has a problem with that.)

“Hi,” she says. Jonathan looks up at her and blinks.

“Hi,” they say back. “The kids think they found something.”

She raises her hand, flicking her burned thumb.

“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

Jonathan smiles at her, a little sadly like they always do. They open their mouth, probably to say something else, when Steve comes stumbling down the stairs, clutching his chest and breathing too harshly.

“Rob,” he gasps, reaching for her. She’s there in an instant, grabbing his arms and helping him down to the floor. “Robbie, baby, help—help me—”

She clasps his hands and squeezes as tight as she can. Steve pulls his knees to his chest, pressing his back hard against the wall as Jonathan turns off the stovetop, leaving the pancake batter sticking to the pan as they wander over, squatting down beside Steve and reaching out for his hair.

“Can I touch you, Stevie boy?” they ask. He nods, so they bury their hand in his hair, tugging just a bit. “Okay. Thanks. You’re safe, you know. Here. At home. With me and Robin. We’re not gonna let anything hurt you, okay? I swear on Dustin’s mother—well, that’s you, so—nevermind, I swear on all good things that we’re not going anywhere, okay? Nowhere at all.”

Steve shakes his head too fast and Jonathan grips his hair, pulling it gently until he stops.

“Hey, no,” they say. “Bad for your head, remember?”

Steve nods, rocking back and forth. His eyes are empty yet somehow wild, staring right through the both of them as if there’s something there to stare at, when Robin knows for sure there’s not.

“You weren’t there,” he mutters, his voice too dry. Robin needs to start watching his drinking and eating habits more often. It’s her job to keep him alive for his kids. (It probably shouldn’t be her job; no, scratch that, it definitely shouldn’t be her job because it’s Eddie’s job, but she’s still here and he’s still not, so—so this is what they’ve got. Right now, this is what they’ve got.) “You weren’t there, Robin, Robbie, I woke up and you weren’t—you weren’t there. You’re always there. You’re always, always there.”

Robin leans in and kisses his cheek.

“I know,” she says. “I know, and I’m so sorry. I needed to help Jonny with something, but I shouldn’t have left you all alone up there. That was my bad, Stevie. I’m sorry.”

Steve turns and curls himself into her chest.

“‘S okay,” he mumbles. “I love you, Robbie.” She grips his hand. Eddie’s ring is burning on hers, and Steve’s is starting to glow the closer and closer she inches the metals together. Steve lifts her head from her neck and she jolts just the slightest bit, pulling her hand back until the rings go cold again. He’s too smart and too scared not to question it if he sees.

He looks up at Jonathan, a red-eyed mess of grief, and he says, “Why’re you here?”

It’s not mean. Steve doesn’t really have it in him to be mean, not anymore. He’s too afraid of falling back onto his throne.

Jonathan runs their fingers through his hair, their eyes so sad. They were just children when they tried to kill each other.

“You’re my friend,” they murmur, and Robin’s breath catches in her throat. “I care about you. I maybe even love you, man. I definitely do, on the days that I’m a little bit braver.”

Oh my god.

Steve sniffles.

“I’m sorry for Nancy,” he says miserably. “She was—she was always s’posed to be with you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Jonathan hesitates, then reaches down and squeezes Steve’s hand.

(It’s a big step.)

“Hey, hey, none a that, man,” they say. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. We shouldn’t’ve—we shouldn’t have treated you the way we did, or done what we did, ya know, it’s—it’s messy. Love always is. But you’re—you’re a good guy, Stevie, and you deserve somebody to love you. Somebody really awesome. Somebody who loves you back.” They sigh, just the smallest sound in the biggest room. “I’m sorry he’s gone now.”

Steve nods his head absently, lolling back onto Robin’s shoulder. He’s holding Jonathan’s hand too tight, but they seem to have no intention of letting go.

“He made me feel warm inside,” Steve mumbles, and Robin watches Jonthan press a hand over their mouth, blinking really fast. It’s too much, she knows; the tragedy of Steve Harrington has always been too much. “I didn’t know how to love before I met him, you know? I thought it was all favors and compromises and sacrifices and shit. But Eddie never really expected anything of me. Just—just wanted me to be there when he came home at the end of the day, and—I can do that. I could do that.”

Jonathan turns away. Robin kisses Steve’s head.

“I know,” she murmurs. “I know, baby. I—”

“Love’s supposed to make you happy, Robbie,” Steve says, his eyes slipping shut again. He sleeps too much these days, but she can’t make him stop, because even when he’s awake he’s exhausted. It’s like he doesn’t want to be here anymore, which. Well. He probably doesn’t. But Robin doesn’t like to think about that, not too hard. Steve squeezes her hand.

“Huh,” he says. “Who knew?”

Me, Robin thinks, as she and Jonathan help Steve back up the stairs and into bed. I knew that. Because you make me happy, and I love you.

She kisses his forehead as she pulls the blankets back over him, and she hopes he’s dreaming sweet dreams.

I love you, brave boy. Now please, please get better, so you can love me too. Again.

Jonathan takes her hand as she leaves the room, squeezing it once and then twice.

“I’ll call Nancy,” they say. Robin sighs, wrapping her arms around them in a sad little hug.

“Yeah,” she says, boneless. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Max knocks seven times before Robin manages to get to the door.

“Finally,” he says, shoving her aside and wheeling on in. Lucas follows with an apologetic look, pulling Dustin behind him by the hand. Mike trails after them, arms crossed over his chest and scowling, with Will just after him, smiling just the slightest bit with Eleven on his arm, Nancy shepherding them all through the door.

“Sorry,” she says, sounding out of breath. “I don’t know how Steve does this all the time. I always want to kill them all, like, thirty seconds in.”

Robin can’t tell you why she does it, but suddenly she’s throwing herself around Nancy’s neck and waist and holding on for dear life.

“Oh,” Nancy breathes, then buries her face in Robin’s hair and hugs her so tight she can practically feel her ribs break. (She’s not complaining.) “Hi, Robbie.”

Robin kisses the side of her head as she pulls away, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her towards the table, where the kids have dumped their backpacks and books. Jonathan’s there too, looking tired and confused, but then Nancy presses herself up into their side and they smile, just a little bit, like since she’s there the world’s fucked-up-ed-ness matters a tiny bit less.

It’s the kind of love Robin has with the mess upstairs. It’s the kind of love Robin wants back, if she can just muster up enough magic to drag this stupid metalhead from his unearned grave.

“So, what’ve you got?” she asks, clapping her hands together as softly as she can. They need Steve asleep for as long as possible—not that that’s a problem these days. He can’t seem to stay awake long enough to eat sometimes. Robin’s starting to wonder if all those brain injuries have finally caught up to him.

(Steve still can’t hear in his left ear.)

Dustin points at Eleven.

“Jane said she knew something,” he says. “We didn’t really have time to hear what.”

Max rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, because you dragged us all out of bed with your ungodly shrieks at the ass crack of dawn, saying that we needed to get over to Mom’s house or the world might end on us again.”

Dustin frowns, opening his mouth to answer when Lucas, in the middle of them both, grabs one of each of their hands and slams them down on the table (though not too hard).

“We all did some annoying things this morning, but we all want to save Mom, so I suggest that you both just sit down and shut the hell up—”

“We’re already sitting down—” Max and Dustin say—

“—before I break the TV and tell Mom you did it,” Lucas finishes, glaring his partners down. They both pout, but turn their heads back to the table as Robin pinches the bridge of her nose, taking three deep breaths and muttering, “You love them, you love them, these are your soulmate’s precious children and you love them,” because damn, is she starting to get what Nancy said about wanting to kill the little twerps.

“Okay,” she finally says, pasting on a phony smile and turning towards Eleven, who blinks curiously up at her. “Jane, sweetie, can you tell me what the morons didn’t let you say?”

Eleven frowns.

“They were very worried,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to make sense of something in that smart little mind of hers. “They argue because they are afraid. Will says I woke up screaming and crying, that I was cutting Mike’s hand with my nails.” She frowns harder and turns to Mike. “I never apologized for that. Sorry, Mike.”

Mike pats her head, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“That’s alright, El,” he assures her. Will wraps an arm around her shoulders and she looks back up at Robin, calloused hands splayed out on the table, and she says, “I looked inside One’s mind.”

Nancy sucks in a breath, turning and burying her face in Jonathan’s neck. They lift a hand and brush it through her hair, as if that kind of soft touch can make everything okay, and who knows, maybe it can, because Robin’s soulmate’s husband is six feet under and not getting up to give her Stevie soft touches anytime soon. And that’s the real tragedy of it all, isn’t it—fighting a war for no reward but trauma, your one nightlight stolen by the endless blackened deep?

“Okay,” Robin whispers, holding Dustin’s shoulder too tight. It probably says a lot about his fucked-up mental state that he doesn’t even try to shake her off. They’ve always been good at that, their little trauma-bonded family—holding on too tight. (To things and to people.) “Okay. Okay, what did you see?”

Eleven frowns again. It’s kind of all she ever does. Which is too bad, since she’s a kid and kids are supposed to smile, because adults work super fucking hard to keep all the things that would make them frown away from them, but Robin guesses she and the others didn’t do a good enough job at keeping the bad things away.

(It’s the kind of thing that makes Robin hurt inside, when she stops moving long enough to think in full sentences.)

“I saw his childhood,” Eleven says, pulling at the tablecloth with nervous fingers. Both Mike and Will reach out for one of her hands, steadying her, and she stares, straight through the table, as if back there again, never escaping the darkness that awaits them even when the lights are on. Robin hates the world for what it’s done to them, and for what it hasn’t, too. “From back when he was human. From back when he was Henry. His mother was telling him a story.”

Robin’s breath catches in her throat. Dustin pats her hand and she chokes on the exhale.

“Okay,” she says, reminding herself that she has to be the adult here. (God, Steve really undersold just how hard parenting is.) “What was it about?”

Eleven bites her lip. Robin wants to take it back, but she can’t. It’s either this or they lose Eddie.

It’s either this or they lose Steve.

“She told it to him every night,” Eleven says, her brow creased in concentration. Robin wonders how much she has to keep up there, this tiny child who knows so little and so much all at once. “A fairytale about two lovers. Two boys—Awillasé of the Sun, with brown hair and freckled cheeks, and Rayanüe of the Moon, with olive skin and hazel eyes. They met when Awillasé was only a golden ray and Rayanüe was only a silver beam, but the closer they became, the faster the world spun. Soon it moved quick enough that the lovers could meet twice a day, once at sunrise and once at sunset, just to touch. They longed for each other more often, but they asked for too much, and soon they spun the earth so far that day became night and night became day until suddenly they couldn’t tell who was who anymore. Awillasé reached for Rayanüe and Rayanüe reached for Awillasé, but it was useless. They were torn apart and they crashed back to the screaming earth, falling stars with no one to make a wish upon.”

Will is crying now, silent tears dripping down his cheeks. Mike reaches across Eleven’s back and squeezes his shoulder. For some reason that only seems to make Will cry harder.

(It’s the kind of thing that Steve would know but Robin will never figure out. He could fail every class in high school three times over, much like his dear beloved husband, and he’d still be smarter than her in a million ways. Intelligence is not measurable—at least not in society’s chosen units.

After all, Eddie was one of the smartest people she ever met, and he never even graduated. Fuck the American education system, honestly. Fuck the world. Fuck it all.)

“Rayanüe died on impact, crashing into the earth so hard he created ravines everywhere, Pangea splitting into seven pieces. Awillasé tried, but he couldn’t heal him, so instead he cried until all of Rayanüe’s graves were filled to the brim, the oceans borne of his grief. This went on for a year—every day Awillasé would rise from his bed, and he would cry, and the sky would mourn with him, raining until the whole world was covered in flowers and trees and grass, the kind of paradise made for the happiness that had inspired it, the memories Awillasé still dreamed of. But he never dreamed of Rayanüe. Because instead, the earth did—Wyvienna. She heard him crying and she held his lover in her head, and she talked to Rayanüe’s soul, alive despite his body’s death, alive because Awillasé’s refusal to let him go meant Rayanüe’s refusal to be let go of. Two lovers, held together by a kind friend, the one who could build the bridge to reunite them, if only she tried hard enough.”

Dustin closes his eyes, dragging a hand down his face.

“Shit,” he whispers. Lucas grabs his hand and squeezes, hard, and Dustin shuts up again, drained of any will to fight. Max, beside them, holds his head high, but his hands are shaking on the kitchen table, and Robin wants to wrap them up in a million blankets and make all the bad things go away.

(Why, oh why, do the bad things never seem to go away?)

“So Wyvienna pulled fire from her very core and she lit up all the flowers and the trees and the grass. She burned the whole paradise down, even as Awillasé kept on crying. And she dug through the ashes until she found Awillasé’s ring, made of the star he and Rayanüe had become together, and she retreated back into dreams and she asked him if he still had his own ring, made from his own half. And he did, so she took them down to her core, and she burned them away into nothing, and the earth slowed back down again. They would only touch at sunrise and sunset, like before, but it was enough. Now that they knew what emptiness truly was. So Rayanüe rose once more and Awillasé held him twice a day, and death could no longer touch them. The oceans remained, scars, a reminder of their endless loss, but the lovers no longer cared. They matched, they said. Sun and Moon. Moon and Sun. Lover and loved. The earth had tied them together with red string, and it could never be undone, no matter where their bodies lay. Their souls would live on, together for all eternity, just so long as they loved each other—and that was impossible to stop.”

The room falls silent when Eleven does, all the tapping and rustling suddenly gone. It’s as if they’re all afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid to disturb whatever peace those two immortal boys have found, fictional as they may be.

(Amazing how much and how deeply we feel, isn’t it, for people who aren’t even real? How hard we grieve, for the pixels we have to bury, when the people who pretend to be them are still walking around?)

After an eternity, it feels like, Jonathan coughs into their hand.

“Jesus Christ,” they say, and Nancy laughs, though it sounds kind of wet, and Dustin shrieks, “What the fuck was that?” and Lucas answers, “A love story, Dustin,” at the same time that Max says, “A fucking crackpot’s weird-ass mommy issues, obviously,” and Mike drops his head onto the table and Will wipes at his face and says, “Guys. Guys. Hey, guys!” until they all shut up and look at him, blinking stupidly as if they’ve been living in a bubble this whole time and he’s just popped it with a nail.

(Robin doesn’t know why they all look so surprised. He’s called Will the Wise for a reason.)

“It’s the answer,” Will says, just a little bit stunned, it seems, from how quickly they all stopped to listen to him. Robin knows that look—it’s the look of someone who’s still learning that they mean something to other people. That someone would care if they went missing. (She’s seen that look on Steve’s face far too many times to not have it memorized by heart.) She wonders how they could possibly convince him—that kind of shit goes bone-deep, and it doesn’t get dug out in a day, or even a decade. “Didn’t you hear the story? The earth. Robin. She’s the bridge. She’s the answer. Vecna died, but Eddie died with him, and that isn’t right. Something in the universe must’ve known that, because it saved Eddie, the only way it knew how—it gave us Robin. It gave us the answer. Robin, Robin—”

Will turns to her, and his big eyes are so filled with hope that she feels her knees wobble at the thought of disappointing him. He reaches out and he taps Eddie’s wedding ring, still safe and sound on her finger, the thumb burn there still warm.

“Robin,” he says, so carefully like it’s a prayer. (And who knows, maybe it is. Maybe she’ll answer.) “Robin, can you go get Steve’s ring?”

Nancy’s breath hitches. Robin stares, then blinks real hard, snapping her hand back to her chest.

“Yes,” she rasps, then clears her throat, already darting towards the stairs. “Yeah, I can do that.”

The climb up to Steve’s room feels longer than it ever has, but Robin makes it. It feels like she’s won something, like there’s a prize at the end of all this pain, and she finally gets to lay eyes on it when she reaches the top of the stairs, beaming down at her wondrously brave Steve Harrington in all his perfect, snoring, drooling glory.

This is her person.

“Hey there, soldier,” she murmurs, sauntering in and squatting down by his bedside, next to his head. “Ya dreamin’ sweet dreams?”

Steve frowns, his whole forehead wrinkling. He blinks awake, just slightly, and gazes at her, searching the room first for someone he doesn’t find.

She’s getting so fucking tired of being the only one who can see Eddie Munson.

“I don’t think the world wants me to have nice things, Robbie,” Steve murmurs, reaching up to tug on her hair. She takes his hand and kisses it, slipping the ring off his finger and onto hers, and it’s the final proof of how tired he is that he doesn’t even notice, just hums and rolls over and gives up again.

“I do,” she says instead of lying to him. “I want you to have nice things. You deserve nice things.”

Steve shrugs, curling into himself and Eddie’s vest. He’s threaded the yellow sweater through it so he can hug them both at once and no matter how hard he shakes them they can’t come apart. She’d walked in on him sewing them together with red string the other day and she’d had to stumble into the bathroom and turn on the sink for five minutes just so Steve wouldn’t hear her crying.

Here’s a secret everybody knows—Steve is not the only one who’s lost in a world without Eddie Munson. For only knowing him a few days, it’s shocking how hard Robin finds it to live when he can’t.

“I had him,” Steve mumbles into his pillow. Or maybe it’s Eddie’s. Wayne had shown up with a box of Eddie’s stuff a week after the funeral, saying it was full of the kinds of things that a married couple like them should’ve shared, the things they kept together whenever they were over at the trailer and uncaring of the world outside, and Steve had hugged Wayne with the box squished between them like Eddie’s ghost always would be, and Robin had gone through the treasure chest with him and held Steve as he sobbed into the cheap, priceless belongings of the last person he’d ever love.

“I had a nice thing,” Steve says, his eyes fluttering closed as she brushes his hair off his face. It’s grown out since Eddie’s death. She tries to cut it, when he lets her, but sometimes he looks in the mirror and he sees somebody else’s face and she has to pull glass out of his knuckles at the kitchen table, so she tries not to bring it up. “I had a nice thing, and the world took him from me. Why’d it do that, Robbie? Why does everyone I love get taken from me?”

Robin swallows, sitting down beside him. She hopes nobody comes up to check on them. This moment is for her, and her boy, and them alone and them only. Just soulmates, just best friends, just a widow and his aching wife.

She will take his arthritis from him if it means he can walk longer trails. She will take his cataracts from him if it means he can still see starry nights. She will take his dementia from him if it means he can still remember when they were happy.

She will take all the bad things and she will carry them forever on her broken back if it means he doesn’t have to.

“I’m still here,” she tells him. “I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere. Your friends are still here, and they’re not going anywhere. Your children are still here, and they’re not going anywhere. We’re still here, Stevie. We’re not leaving you.”

Steve cranes his neck to nuzzle into her hand, then drops back down and sinks into the mattress even deeper, as if the whole truth of everything has exhausted him into a faded mimic of a person. Honestly, on the worst days, even Robin can’t stop herself from believing it’s true.

“Nobody ever leaves,” Steve says, and it breaks her fucking heart. “But they all go eventually.”

Before Robin can succumb to tears, she escapes from the dim dark cave that is Steve’s (and once Eddie’s) bedroom and she jogs down the stairs, thrusting out her hand with a gasp, rings out and blazing bright for all to see. The burns will scar, and she’s glad for it.

“Got it,” she breathes, and collapses into sobs as Jonathan dives to catch her, gathering her to their chest and kissing her head as Nancy shepherds the kids out the door and into the car, glancing back worriedly every now and then.

“We can’t go,” Robin whispers nonsensically, curling her fingers tight around Jonathan’s jacket. “We can’t go, Jonny. We can’t prove him right. He won’t survive it.”

Jonathan frowns at her, their eyes swimming with questions, but Robin’s run out of answers.

“Come on,” she says, pulling herself up and tugging them too by the hand. Nancy left the door open for them. All they have to do is walk through it.

Eddie’s waiting.

“Come on,” she says again, trying to breathe right as they start the car. “Come on, please, please, please.”

EDDIE MUNSON, the stone says. LOVED.

It had been Steve’s idea. Wayne had cried when he read it. Dustin hadn’t done much of anything.

Grief makes monsters of us all, whether they be sad, angry, or numb. Grief turns us all into bitter old fools.

Robin wants her fool to smile again. That’s why she’s here.

That, and to dig up a fucking body.

Jonathan sticks the shovel in the ground, then steps back, making way for Robin to wrap her hands around the handle. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore the way the crunch of dirt sounds all too close to the crushing of well-adored bones.

We have to dig him up, Eleven had said, sounding terribly, terribly sorry about the whole thing. His soul has been living in Robin. He needs to have a body to come home to.

He does, Robin had wanted to scream but didn’t. It’s Steve’s.

Instead, she had stayed silent, and now, here she is, digging up a fucking grave.

Suddenly, her stomach pitches. She wrenches away from the shovel, retching, gasping desperately, reaching for Jonathan as they reach for her, trying to steady herself before she falls. Dustin steps forward, worried, but Robin waves him off, shaking her head, shoving away from Jonathan and bracing herself with her hands on her knees.

If her stomach weren’t so empty she’d have already thrown up.

“It’s okay,” she rasps. “I’m okay, it’s okay, I’m okay.”

She’s not. Steve makes all her days brighter and since he’s died it feels like the sun has gone out and she’s broken all her flashlights and she doesn’t want to stumble around in the dark anymore running into things. She is not okay. Nothing about this is okay.

But god. Fucking. Damnit, she will not fail him.

Not again.

She hadn’t seen the bad signs. She hadn’t asked the right questions. She hadn’t gone with his husband when he’d said he wasn’t a hero with that twinkle in his eye that he always got when he was thinking that he wanted to be.

She hadn’t protected Steve Harrington’s heart. She hadn’t done her goddamn job.

She will not slack off again. She can’t just quit her life’s purpose. That’s not how soulmates work.

Robin starts reaching for the handle again, her vision still blurry, when a gentle hand wraps around her wrist and pulls her back.

“No,” Nancy says, pressing her against Jonathan’s chest. “No, Robin, stop. Let me do this. Take the kids back to the car. Go, Robin. Don’t look at this. I’ll take care of this. Let me do this.”

Robin shakes her head, tearful and mad. Jonathan holds her back, gentle arms that suddenly feel like Vecna’s vines all over again as she chokes out Nancy’s name, then Steve’s.

They don’t sound right next to each other. They’ve never sounded right together.

Nancy pushes her back again, softer this time, firmer this time, kissing her head.

“Go,” she says, something wild but also somehow stupidly calm in her eyes. “Go, and don’t look. I didn’t love him, okay, I couldn’t, but I can do this. I broke Steve, but I can fix this. This is my chance to fix it. This is my chance to do something right for once in my goddamn life. This is my chance to give Steve Harrington something real instead of bullshit, okay, and I will not waste it. I didn’t love Eddie Munson, Robin. I can survive seeing him dead. I can do this for the boy we both love. I can do this. Go. Go, and don’t look back.”

Robin goes. She hears the crunch of the shovel digging into the ground again and she picks up the pace, Jonathan helping her down the hill. She gathers the kids into the car and she watches from way down below as the silhouette of Nancy fucking Wheeler digs up the body of Eddie goddamn Munson from his once-final (not) resting place.

She sits there in the car, and she counts off happy memories on her hand, because it gives it something to do that isn’t turning the key in the ignition and driving right back home, where she can stay and wonder for the rest of her days and regret everything she’s ever done but at least she wouldn’t have to know the look on Steve’s face when she told him that they’d tried and it just hadn’t worked.

At least she wouldn’t have to kill her best friend.

The digging lasts for what feels like forever. They play every song on Eddie’s mixtape for Steve twice over, and every song on Steve’s mixtape for Eddie three times more. Robin holds Dustin in her arms and she can hear him whispering his father’s name, pretending she’s the brilliant boy he lost to vines and bats and hate. Life is cruel and the world is not kind and she is not Eddie Munson, but she will let his son pretend she is for as long as he goddamn needs.

(Even if it’s forever.)

Finally, Jonathan comes and knocks on the window.

“It’s alright,” they say, softer than clouds. There’s something in their eyes like sadness, but with Jonathan you can never tell, because it sort of always seems to be there. “It’s alright, Robbie, kids; you can come out now.”

Mike scrambles out of the car first, reaching back for Eleven and Will, who wear twin expressions of silent fear, the dread of failure weighing into them like stones. Jonathan gathers the three of them close, nodding to Robin, who drags herself out of the car with screaming knees and a pain in her side from the steering wheel, pulling Dustin up under her arm and keeping a careful hand on Lucas’ shoulder as he starts to push Max up the hill. Nancy waits for them, patient, looking grim and tired and beautiful beside the dug-up body of their beloved Eddie Munson.

He’s… fine.

He’s still, still as the ocean in a painting, and he’s cold when Robin touches his pulse point and his sides are still fucked to hell when she lifts his Hellfire shirt to check, but they’re scarred over now. His skin is smooth and unblemished, his hair still soft and full, his nails still painted black. (Steve’s are baby blue.) She had expected maggots, bones, parts of him missing and chewed off, something rotting and ugly and horrible. And she knows that’s how he should be, as far as science goes, but he’s… fine.

Eddie looks exactly like he did the day he died. As if time had stopped just for him. As if his grave was just a place to store his body until he was ready to live again, rather than the final resting place it was meant to be. A nap in place of an endless night.

The truth settles into her like Steve once did—inevitable, inescapable, something precious and to be protected.

We’re going to save him. He’s going to be okay.

Eddie Munson is going to be happy.

Tears spring to her eyes and she nearly topples with the sudden vertigo.

Eddie Munson is going to be around to make Steve Harrington happy.

Jonathan wraps an arm around her waist to steady her and she leans into their side, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington get to have a happy ending.

It’s the kind of thought that makes her broken heart burst with joy. She doesn’t believe in god, but if she did, this would be the moment she’d thank him.

Her soulmate is going to be happy. He might even smile at her.

“You okay?” Jonathan murmurs against her ear, and she nods, pushing herself upright and reaching for Nancy’s currently empty hands.

“Matches,” she rasps, still swaying. “Please.”

Nancy scrabbles through her jacket pockets, but Max beats her to it, holding out a box. He grins, something whip-thin and dangerous. Robin would ask where he got them, but she’s too busy trying to stop shaking as she tugs the rings off her hands and strikes up the first fire, setting the rings to burn with a kiss.

“I’m so sorry, Stevie,” she whispers. “Please forgive me.”

The rings blaze bright, brighter than they ever have before, and Robin enjoys a solid two seconds of the spectacle before a piercing pain shoots through her head and all she can say is, “Oh. Shit,” before she drops like a puppet a child’s done playing with, caught gently in Jonathan’s waiting arms as the world goes black.

Eddie Munson is freaking the fuck out.

Robin can feel it, in her head, but she only lets herself wince, crossing the bedroom on unsteady legs as it shakes and rocks under her, the details going blurry and changing rapidly, too fast for her to see. She takes step after step after step until she reaches the corner where he’s curled, rocking back and forth with his knees to his chest and his hands fisted in his hair.

She kneels down in front of him and she puts a hand on each of his knees and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him. She’s bringing him home.

“I love you,” she tells him, slowly, because Eddie Munson is terrified and she is not the one here who knows what it’s like to die. “I love you so, so much. In fact, I’m gonna love you until the stars burn out, and so will he, so I need you to trust me, Eddie, and take my hand.”

She lifts one from his knee and holds it out, palm up and open. His eyes snap up to her, the rocking slowing but not stopping. His fingers stay firmly tangled in his curls, like they’re glued there, like he can’t bear the thought of moving them. Robin swallows and tries not to panic about the floor disappearing pixel by pixel from underneath her feet.

“Marriage is supposed to be a life together,” she says, and Eddie blinks. Her heart ticks up with hope and she smothers it. You can’t let shit like that get out of hand. “Not a death. You’re meant to be with him forever. Always. As long as time keeps going on, you’re supposed to be with him. Maybe even longer than me.”

That last part feels untrue, because what is a soul without its other half, but she’ll say whatever shit she needs to say to get him out of here. They can yell at each other later, when he’s alive, and breathing, and warm enough to touch.

“Steve needs you, Eddie,” she says, stretching out her fingers. The rocking’s almost stopped completely. “Your husband needs you. Your kids need you. I need you.”

Robin thinks maybe she was made to love him. Him and Steve, her sweet and wonderful boys, her heroes, her lovers in all the ways but how society wants them to be. The people she loves best in all the world, the people she was chosen personally by fate to save.

They’re her best friends.

“It’s all gonna be okay,” she says, as soft as she can muster. “You hear me, darling? It’s all gonna be okay. That’s the truth this time. I promise, Eddie, I promise that’s the truth this time.”

Eddie pulls his hands out of his hair. He reaches, distantly, for her fingers.

Come on, she thinks, wild. Come on, just a little closer, come on.

He stops, an inch from her skin.

“Dustin?” he whispers. “Stevie?”

He blinks at her, a child awakening to bloom.

“You?”

Robin laughs.

Everything’s gonna be okay.

“Yes,” she says. “Dustin. Stevie.”

She smiles.

“Me.”

Eddie reaches out, ring burning. Her heart beats, and for a single, profound moment—

His does too.

“Okay,” Eddie whispers. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

A breath, a grin, and just like that—

He takes her hand.

The world spins. The sun meets the moon at the edge of sunrise. They touch skies, and the earth rejoices.

Love is a feeble, wondrous thing.

Eddie jolts awake, and suddenly time starts up again.

“Fuck,” he gasps, and Robin laughs, something deep inside of her finally breaking loose. Eddie shakes his head, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck, that was fucking—”

“Dad?”

Eddie looks up at Dustin and it’s like watching a compass needle stop trembling, at long last finding North. Eddie Munson looks at Dustin Henderson, and suddenly all the dust settles in a house that’s finally ready to be a home.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, kid.”

Dustin blinks.

“Hi,” he says, dazed. “Fuck, hi.”

Then he throws himself forward and Eddie’s reaching out to catch him, wrapping entirely around him and blinking back tears, his face crumpling with the weight of everything they’ve been through as it finally catches up to him.

“Fuck,” he rasps, pulling his face from Dustin’s hair and kissing his head, squeezing him tight. “Fuck, kid, I thought—I thought I was gonna be stuck away from you forever—”

“No.” Dustin somehow buries his face into Eddie’s chest even deeper, as if searching for the heart there, making sure it’s still beating. Robin can’t say she doesn’t understand the impulse. “No, you can’t, we can’t, Mom can’t—”

Eddie closes his eyes. It’s like he’s in pain, but his body seems to be just fine.

“Fuck, Stevie,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Max blurts, his face even paler in the moonlight. “Shut the fuck up, oh my god, oh my god, Dad—”

Max stumbles forward onto Eddie, and then Lucas is crying and following, and soon enough Mike and Will and Eleven are all just a blubbering mess on the ground, wrapping around a living man. Eddie keeps gasping out their names, touching their heads, their arms, their hands their necks their chest their chins—

“We did it,” Robin whispers, letting Jonathan help her up from the grass. She clutches at them like they’re the last lifeline she has to this aching, aching world, even though her true anchor is at home, in bed, sleeping in restless fits until they bring back the one person who brings him peace.

She’s brought Steve Harrington peace.

The thing inside of her that’s been rustling around looking for answers—Dustin calls it her heart—finally sputters to a stop. It goes quiet, contemplating, waiting to be taught a new beat. Something easier. Something happy.

“We did it,” she says again, watching Nancy help Eddie up off the floor and down the hill towards the car, the kids still wrapped around him, refusing to let go. Jonathan kisses her head, wrapping an arm around her waist and grasping her hand in the other, walking her down to the car.

“Yes,” they say. “Yes you did. And just past midnight, too. Like a real witch and everything.”

Robin lets out the smallest laugh, the sound shaking her chest free of debris. She leans into them and closes her eyes.

“We did it,” she whispers. The stars twinkle overhead. “We did it.”

Life is not over. Eddie Munson has risen. The sun will going on shining.

She squeezes into the car onto Jonathan’s lap and she smiles into their neck. Her hands are bare and her heart is full.

The world ended a year ago, but that did not stop them. They are still here. They are still loved.

Steve’s birthday still came.

The lights are all off when they get home, and it’s enough to make Robin’s heart sink to her stomach, even without that tell-tale flicker. She wanders in deeper, heading for the stairs, Dustin following behind her, Eddie tiptoeing just after. She shoots them a look and they stop, not moving any further as she pushes Steve’s bedroom door open with a creak.

“Stevie?” she murmurs. “I have a surprise for you.”

Don’t like surprises, she imagines him saying. Used to. Before… before. Not anymore.

Instead, silence greets her. She peeks further in and finds her soulmate is nowhere to be found—not on the bed, not in the corner, not by the window. She blanches, bile working its way up her throat, and reaches for the nail bat by the door, pressing her aching feet forward.

“Steve?” she calls. “Stevie?”

But there’s still nobody there, nothing to be seen, until she creeps all the way to the window and sees the pool lights are on, the water glowing slightly golden, Steve Harrington sitting on the edge with his feet in, his shoulders slumped, looking like a ghost already.

Robin’s heart stops in her throat, thumping hard enough she chokes.

“Fuck,” she breathes. “Fuck,” and then bolts for the door, shoving past Eddie and Dustin for the stairs.

“Everyone stay in the goddamn house, okay?” she whisper-shouts, scrambling for the back doors. Eddie goes to follow her, and Dustin too, but Robin whirls on them with some wild, crazed look in her eyes and they stop, deadset, in the middle of the living room. “Seriously, do not move a fucking muscle. Stay inside until I bring him in. Do not move, do you hear me?”

Eddie’s nostrils flare, his eyes still locked on her, Dustin’s arm shaking in his grip.

Do you know what the fuck you’re asking me? he seems to say, his jaw clenched so tight it has to hurt. Do you know what you’re keeping me from?

Robin shoots him a glare.

Yes, she answers. And you know full well I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t life or death.

That had been the circumstances under which they’d separated last time, and it’d ended in death. She won’t make that mistake again, but her soulmate is out there by the pool, thinking about Barbara Holland and blaming himself for her death and wondering if it’d be such a bad way to go, and she will not make Dustin find him again. She will not let Steve claw his way to heaven only to realize that Eddie’s no longer there.

She will not let him go gently into that good night. Not when he’s got so many people who love him right here.

I’ll protect him, she promises. I’ll bring him home. I brought you home, didn’t I? Didn’t I save you?

It’s that, it seems, that keeps Eddie back. That, and the way Dustin’s biting down hard on his arm, blinking back tears for his mom. That, and the hand Nancy’s put on his shoulder, reading Robin with all the ease of a sister in arms. That, and the boy sitting on the edge of the pool, the cliffside of living and not living, the sole reason any of them breathe at all.

That, and the girl trembling in front of him, begging him to trust her.

Okay, Eddie says, stepping back, pulling Dustin with him, letting her go. Okay. I trust you.

Robin goes.

I trust you, songbird.

Robin Buckley is in love with Steve Harrington.

Not romantically, because. Well. Girls. But platonically, soulfully, endlessly, she adores him. Robin will spend the rest of her life with him, whether they’re married or siblings or decaying in the rotted ground side by side. She will exist beside him so long as time keeps running on, always in the rocking chair next to his, two halves of a whole coming together to be at peace once again.

She presses her forehead to his and something in her rattling, aching bones settles.

So she’s not so worried about what happens to her if she doesn’t manage to pull him back from this ledge. She knows she’ll just follow him over it.

She’s just as much of a hypocrite as Dustin and Eddie. She’s never cared very much about saving herself in the face of saving Steve Harrington.

Because Robin Buckley loves Steve Harrington. So much so that that word feels meaningless compared to the warm, sweet mess she holds inside of her for this man. Love is fleeting. Love is temporary. Love is running away.

Steve is coming home.

(She wonders if that’s how Eddie feels, too. And Dustin. And every other goddamn human on the planet because Steve. Steve Harrington.

Her soulmate.)

So she’s not scared. Just a little shaken. Just hoping that the coroner will know to leave them tangled up during the autopsy, because they have all the same parts inside anyway.

They are the same person.

Which is why she knows he won’t drown in the pool.

“Hey,” she says, dropping down beside him. “You aren’t thinking of leaving us here all alone without you, are you? Your kids, Nancy, me? I don’t want to have to cancel the party I was going to throw you.”

Steve just keeps on staring into the yellow-blue water like it has all the answers in the universe. Robin knows it doesn’t, though, because all the answers are inside the house, and their names are Dustin and Eddie.

Except one, of course. Because she’s right here, and she’s named Robin.

She’s a bird. She’s uncaged. She’s free.

She’s hope, and she’s all for him.

“You don’t throw parties,” Steve mumbles, finally. “You forgot my birthday last year. I just kind of figured you’d forget again.”

Robin shakes her head, shoving the guilt down. Now is not the time.

“I’ll never forget again,” she says, reaching out and locking their fingers together. If he’s going to jump, he’ll have to take her with him. Just like everywhere else. “I promised, remember? Your birthday is the most important day of the year, dingus. It’s the day the world became just a little brighter, because my favorite person in every universe was born.”

It’s true. She knows it’s true. He’s her favorite, inside and out. There is not a single thing she’d change about him.

Not even the things she hates. Not even his pain.

Steve stares down into the pool where an innocent girl died and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

She loves him enough to defy Death himself.

She loves him enough to dig up a body.

She loves him enough to keep his husband safe in her head for months, even as it hurt and hurt and hurt so bad.

She loves him enough to be kind to him.

He’s not bullshit.

“I’m so tired, Robin,” Steve says. She knows he’ll never leave them. He’d tear his way out of heaven with the guilt of it. “I just… I’m so tired.”

Robin smiles, switching the hand in his with her other one, reaching up to card her fingers through his hair. He leans into her touch, curling towards her, making himself small. It’s something she’s seen him do a thousand times, but this is the first time it really breaks her heart.

She’s going to lose him one day.

She holds on a little tighter.

But not today.

“I know,” she says, as softly as she can. “I know, I know, baby. But if you can just stay awake long enough for me to give you your birthday present, I promise I’ll let you sleep. Just a couple steps, I know you can make it. Just a few more minutes and we can lie down together, alright? Just a little while longer, and you can rest.”

Finally, finally, Steve looks at her. In that moment, they’re just two strangers, looking into each other’s eyes.

It strikes her, suddenly, that Steve is the kind of man who doesn’t know how to love without losing.

But then he blinks and her soulmate’s back with her again, nodding slowly.

“Okay,” he mumbles, letting her help him up. “Okay. A couple steps. A few more minutes. A little while longer. I can make it. I can keep going. I can stay awake for you, Robbie. Just a little while longer.”

Robin allows herself three tiny, tiny tears.

“Okay,” she says, wrapping herself around him as they head towards the house that will never be home. She wants to be his home the same way he is hers. She hopes one day he’ll look at her and know he’s safe. “Okay, come on, baby darling. Onward, right? Onward. We’ll make it together.”

One foot in front of the other, and Robin will save him.

Steve steps into the house, and Robin stands, the earth, watching the sun catch sight of the moon for the first time in centuries.

“Hiya, Stevie,” Eddie cracks with a grin, and Steve stares, and stumbles, and bursts into tears.

“Eddie.”

This time, when he falls, love is there to catch him.

“Happy birthday, baby girl,” Eddie says, with all the reverence of a priest bowing to their god, and at the shudder that rumbles through Steve at the words, Robin ushers all of the others from the room. Dustin lingers in the doorway, waiting for permission, looking past her towards his parents, and Robin takes pity on him and lets him back inside. Nancy and Jonathan close the door to the kitchen behind everyone else, and Robin helps Dustin to the floor, the two of them sitting quietly in the doorway, watching true loves reunite.

This is the stuff of fairytales. This is the kind of nice shit that doesn’t happen to them.

Robin thanks whatever up there chose to grant her a miracle.

Outside the window, a single star twinkles.

Robin winks back.

“Thanks, Bambi,” Steve sniffles, tugging Eddie even closer. Eddie sinks to his knees, holding Steve around the neck and the waist while Steve wraps his full self around Eddie’s healed-over abdomen, pushing his face into their matching scars. “I love you, you know that? I love you, I love you, I love you. I wanted to die when you left. I wanted to give up on everything and just go. I wanted to disappear and never come back.”

Eddie doesn’t gasp like she expects him to. Instead, he buries his face in Steve’s hair and breathes in deep, like he’s reminding himself he’s there. Like he’s held Steve’s ghost a thousand times, but this is the first time it’s felt real.

(Because it is real.)

“I love you too, Steve Harrington,” Eddie Munson says, promises, breathes. “I love you back, I love you then, I love you now. I love you always, I love you forever, I love you here. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I ain’t ever stopping. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I’m not going anywhere. I love you, I love you, I love you, princess, sweetheart, baby girl, home. I love you, I love you, I love you, Stevie, and I will never, ever, ever break your heart like that again. I promise.”

He pulls back, just slightly, and he grins real big and wide, pressing an empty hand to Steve’s cheek. His wedding ring is gone, but Robin can still see the vows shining in his eyes and she knows, she knows, she knows they don’t need anything to prove that they’re meant for each other. That they’re it, what most of the world spends all their lives looking for and never finds.

They’re soulmates.

(It’s okay. Robin knows you can have more than one. Eddie’s name on Steve’s heart does not mean it was written over her own.

If anything, hers is bigger.)

“Hey, Stevie,” Eddie says, still beaming that stupid beam. He’s so wonderful it’s not even funny. Steve whines at the light, but lets Eddie move him, cradled for once without the fear of dying. Eddie laughs, loud and wet, and he says, “Hey, Stevie, marry me.”

Robin’s heart drops out of her chest, but for the first time she’s not scared of it. She knows it’ll come right back. She knows it’s safe in Steve’s hands.

Then Steve laughs, and her heart boomerangs, and she’s so warm she might as well be made of love.

“We already did that,” Steve says, pushing himself up in Eddie’s arms. He leans against his chest and tucks his head into the crook of his neck, soft and sweet and whole again. “You’re my husband, Eddie. Fuck that, fuck it all. You’re my life.”

There’s a broken sound beside her and Robin suddenly sees that Dustin’s crying, trying and failing to cover it up with his hand. So she wraps an arm around his shoulders and presses a kiss to his head, and she whispers—

“Magical, isn’t it? Seeing your parents in love?”

Dustin nods, tears slipping through his fingers, a child gone to war and come home.

“And happy, too,” he whispers. She watches him take in happiness and hold it like a precious thing, something that might slip away at any moment if he dares to take his eyes off it for even a second.

She hopes, she prays, she swears it will never be taken away from him. Not for good. Not anymore.

They get to be happy, now.

“I know,” Eddie’s saying, pressing his and Steve’s foreheads together. “I know, sweetheart, I know. But come on, marry me anyway. Marry me again. Marry me in the backyard, with fairy lights everywhere, at sunset, without blood on our hands. Marry me with everybody watching, your soulmate, your ex, all our kids. Marry me when we know forever is a long, long time, and not just a few minutes away from ending.”

He pulls Steve up and he kisses him, pouring every ounce of love he can into this stupid, sacrificial man.

His man.

“Marry me, Stevie,” Eddie Munson says. “Please, please, marry me.”

Steve blinks. Dustin cries. Robin waits.

Eddie smiles.

“Marry me, lifesaver,” he whispers, and Steve nods, and cries, and kisses him.

“Yes,” he says, laughing, tearing his heart in two. It’s splitting open from all the happiness trying to spill out of it. Robin doesn’t need to stitch it back together, not this time. They’re home.

They’re home free.

“Yes,” Steve Harrington says, the love of Eddie Munson’s lives. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Eddie beams, and Steve cries, and Dustin says, “I think we’re okay now, Robin,” and Robin thinks, Yes. Yes.

Yes.

And then, suddenly, there they are.

Steve and Robin.

Robin and Steve.

Soulmates, sitting on the roof.

Sometimes when she’s sitting next to Steve, Robin feels like everything in the world has led up to that moment. Like every atom, every star, every speck of dust has come together to make the world just for them. Like the whole damn universe conspired and whispered and fought so every tiny little seemingly meaningless event could happen, so that they could be here.

Steve and Robin.

Robin and Steve.

Soulmates, sitting on the roof.

Best friends.

Robin reaches out and takes his hand.

“Eddie went to call Wayne,” Steve says, squeezing her fingers. She recognizes him now. “I didn’t—You could’ve told me you’ve been dreaming about him.”

Robin shrugs. It doesn’t seem important anymore.

“No I couldn’t,” she tells him, because they’d made a promise once to always be honest.

(It was sometime around when Robin told him she liked girls on the floor of a dirty-ass bathroom in the Starcourt Mall and Steve had laughed himself to tears and beamed and just as she was about to have a panic attack had looked up and said, the happiest she’d ever seen him up to that point, “I’m dating Eddie Munson,” and something between them had locked into place. Yes, yes, it was sometime around then, she’s sure. Back when they were still semi-alright, and the world didn’t seem too big or too small, but just right, just there.)

Steve tilts his head. She waits for him to get it, and she knows he does, because his eyes go all wide and all sad, but she says it out loud anyway, just so he knows for sure, just so she has another excuse to say she loves him.

(Not that she needs an excuse.)

“I knew that if I told you, you’d start hoping,” she tells him. “And I knew that if I was wrong, or if we failed, or if something else went wrong because something always does, and he died a second time, you wouldn’t survive it. You barely survived the first time, Stevie, and that’s only because Dustin found you in time and wouldn’t stop crying once you woke up and you told me you’d never let him lose another parent if you had anything to say about it, but I still held you as you cried yourself to sleep every night, and I took you back to bed when you sleep-walked to the pool, and I found the cigarettes and the pill bottles you tried to hide from me and I threw them all away. I knew you were trying to be, because you always are, but Stevie, you weren’t okay, and I was going to lose you, and soon, and then I’d die too, because Steve, darling, you and I, we’re not something that can be torn apart. It’s both of us or it’s nothing. When we fade, eventually, like everyone does, I will go with you. We’ll burn together, and they’ll mix our ashes, and we’ll go back to the stars just like we were always meant to—you, and me, and the infinite love between us.”

Steve blinks. She thinks he might start crying soon, so she reaches out and touches his cheek, smiling even though she hurts inside.

He’s worth hurting for. Always has been.

“You’re mine, and I’m yours,” she promises, patting his cheek before pulling away. She gets to work untying her shoelaces, tugging them out knot by knot, cross by cross. “You’re the sun we all orbit around—Dustin’s Saturn, Eddie’s moon, my earth. We are the heroes, and we get to be happy, now. We were brave, and we didn’t give up, and we didn’t run away, and this is our reward.”

She undoes the final x and lifts his hand from his lap, tying the red string around his finger. Then she hands him the second tie, holding out her hand and waiting for him to make it official.

She’s his wife. She’s his soulmate. She’s his forever, in all the ways that matter.

Steve Harrington gets to have his happy ending now, and Robin Buckley gets to be a part of it.

“Because you’re mine,” she says as he pulls the knot tight, “and I’m yours,” as he smiles at her, “and that’s all we’ll ever need,” as he takes her hand.

She leans over and kisses his forehead.

“I love you, dingus,” she says, and a shooting star passes by overhead, but this time Robin doesn’t make any wishes. Instead, she keeps her eyes on Steve Harrington, and she feels her heart beat in time with his, and she thinks—

Yes. This is it.

Her dreams are black, but that’s alright. When she wakes up, Eddie Munson is still there.

It turns out the world is so much brighter with him in it.

Robin’s not afraid to sleep anymore.

She bounds down the stairs towards him, his hair in a ponytail hanging over half-done pancakes, and she plasters herself against his back. He turns, in her arms, and he takes her face in his hands, bumping their noses together with a grin.

“Welcome home, Eddie,” she says, and Eddie beams.

“Yeah,” he says, and kisses her forehead. She pinches his arm, and he pinches hers. (Adorned with a new bracelet, happily proclaiming Eddie’s name.) They’re real, the two of them. Here. Home.

Loved.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, as they pull apart to make room for Steve, who nuzzles in. “Yeah. You too.”

Robin’s not afraid to wake up anymore, either. There are still good things right here.

Dustin squeezes his way in between them too. He traces the scars on Steve’s wrist and says, “I don’t know if we’re alive or dead, but whatever we are, I’m really happy we’re all here. Together, I mean.”

Eddie kisses his head. Steve squeezes his shoulder. Robin smiles, as wide as she possibly can, and she lets her heart fill up and burst open, because even if it gets broken again at least she’ll know it was because she had enough love in her life for it to break.

EDDIE HARRINGTON, she imagines on a tombstone somewhere far, far off in the future. DUSTIN HARRINGTON on another. ROBIN HARRINGTON third in line, on the right side of the man himself.

Steve leans down and kisses her hair, and she thinks, We’re all gonna be okay.

This is the way sunlight feels.

Write the truth, she’ll tell the mason, and he will.

STEVE HARRINGTON, the stone will say. LOVED.

There are darknesses in life and there are lights,

and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.

— Bram Stoker