Who I am was not my plan

Flown so long, I've forgotten how to land

In the light, I am blind

I feel like I'm losing my mind

- Montaigne

February 12, 1994 - Boston, Massachusetts

Robin is a terrible person.

She's pretty sure of it.

There's a part of her that is so fucking glad Steve fell in love with Eddie — well, there's a bazillion reasons she's so fucking glad Steve fell in love with Eddie, and most of them are because Eddie is gentle and kind and so loud with his love, and Steve deserves someone who sees him and cares for him and loves him so loud it leaves everyone around them with a buzz in their ears.

No, Robin is pretty sure she's a terrible person because she's so fucking glad Steve fell in love with Eddie because Eddie is very decidedly not a girl.

And she doesn't think she'd know how to handle watching Steve love another girl more than he loves her.

And he would.

He would love another girl more than he loves her if that's how things had gone, and even though that isn't how things had gone, it could have.

It could have.

There was a time — sometime between Starcourt and the first few months after Vecna (before Steve had admitted to her that he might not understand his own emotions at all, which also coincided with Robin beginning to notice he was starting to look at Eddie the way she'd seen him look at Nancy, the way she'd seen him look at herself once upon a time) — where she'd had a myriad of not-so-nice feelings festering in the darkest parts of her being that reared their angry serpentining heads every time Steve talked about wanting to fall in love and have a partner and a family, because how dare there be someone out in the world just waiting to be Steve's soulmate, his world, the most important thing in his life? Robin was the most important thing in Steve's life, and she knew it because he told her so and she knew it because she felt the same way. Steve was the sun which her universe revolved around, as she was for him, and it was good. Nobody had loved her the way Steve loves her before and she was selfish and brazen and maybe a little cold sometimes and she wanted to keep that for herself.

She wanted to keep Steve for herself.

There was a sick part of her during that time desperately wishing she liked him the way she was supposed to, the way every other girl she knew did, so desperately that, in the dead of night, alone in the pitch-black quiet of her bedroom, when the darkest thoughts in the deep recesses of her mind knew Robin wouldn't be able to avoid giving them an audience, she would ponder the prospect of giving it a try — try liking him and maybe it would trick her brain into thinking it was true.

The really sick part, though? Those thoughts weren't even coming from a place about herself. It'd had nothing to do with the shame and the fear she'd felt as she'd struggled with the notion of liking girls. It had everything to do with the prickly hurt in her gut every time she imagined Steve falling in love with a girl, falling out of Robin's orbit by being pulled into another.

So when Steve finally admitted that his feelings for Eddie had become quite a bit more than a lingering crush, when they finally, finally figured out their shit, sure, she'd been happy for them — she'd been goddamned overjoyed, but there was also that prickly feeling in her chest again but this time instead of hurt, it was relief.

Relief, because she'd never have to know what it was like for Steve to love another girl more than he loves Robin.

Because Eddie is, very decidedly, not a girl.

"Robin," Nancy mutters into her pillow, "Stop it."

"Huh?"

"You're gritting your teeth so bad I can hear it."

Nancy rolls towards her and shifted until Robin is tucked against her, her forehead pressed against Nancy's collarbone, Nancy's chin resting on the top of her head.

"What're you thinking about?" she asks.

Robin pauses, then shrugs. She knows herself well enough at this point to be certain that if she opens her mouth to answer Nancy's question, she won't be able to control what comes out, and she's not certain she wants to voice everything she'd been thinking.

Not yet, anyway.

So Robin shrugs, which turns out to be satisfactory enough for Nance because she just nuzzles her cheek against Robin's hair and tightens her slender arms around Robin's shoulders.

"Lemme know when you want to get up, 'kay?" Nancy says, "We've got plenty of time."

Robin nods, slipping a hand around Nancy's waist and under her shirt where her skin is warm and soft and smooth.

Her eyes blink open.

She hadn't even realized that she was awake. Not really, anyways.

Well — obviously, she'd been awake. She'd been thinking — a lot — but her dreams can be the same way, so sometimes it's tricky to know when she's passed through that nebulous state between asleep and awake.

She's definitely awake now, though, and the sun is just starting to rise, light barely breaking through the cloudy sky. Robin can hear cars whooshing by outside Nancy's window, the first of the morning commuters trying to beat Boston's coming rush hour.

"You know," Nancy says, the sleep almost entirely gone from her voice, and there's something delicate to her tone, like she's choosing her words even more carefully than she normally does, "Every time I talk to Steve, he tells me that we're being stupid…y'know, for not, like, actually dating or whatever."

"Yeah?" Robin replies, rolling back to her side of the bed and pretending that Steve hasn't said the exact same thing to her countless times over the last eight months.

"Well…do you think he's right?"

"I…I mean, okay, first of all," she starts, pushing herself up and balancing her weight on her elbow, "Steve is an asshole and he's a total glutton for punishment and I kinda think he enjoys how much he misses Eddie so I don't really put too much weight into his opinion on this stuff. Also, in case it wasn't clear, I haven't dated or wanted to date or thought about dating anyone besides you in-in-in I don't even know when. I want to date you."

"I also want that," Nancy says before Robin can ramble too much.

"O-okay…and I'm…I'm in Washington still?"

It comes out like a question.

"That isn't…I mean, it doesn't have to be a problem," Nancy responds, and Robin can tell she's nervous by the way her gaze shifts away from Robin's eyes to dart around her room, "I think maybe we were both assuming it would be a problem, like, by default, I guess, but maybe we're wrong."

"Wait — did Nancy Wheeler just admit that she's wrong?" Robin feigns astonishment (because Nancy gave her the opportunity and she just has to take it), "Phone the presses, this is a major historical event — it needs to be documented."

"Shut up," Nancy rolls her eyes, though she smiles despite herself and Robin can't help a grin, "Are you gonna date me or not?"

"Obviously," she shoots back before she can overthink the exact, perfect response.

They're both quiet.

"Cool," Nancy finally says.

"Cool," Robin repeats, falling back onto the bed.

Again, quiet.

"Are you thinking about calling Steve?"

Robin scowls.

"No," she lies, "Thinking about how soon is too pathetically soon to try to get in your pants again. Steve lasted all of five minutes, so I think I just need to beat that."

Nancy doesn't respond for a second and Robin starts to wonder if she yet again managed to both overlook and overstep a boundary in one fell swoop, but then Nancy says, "Still thinking about Steve, though."

Robin feels her mouth drop open just a smidge, but when she looks Nancy's way, she notes with some satisfaction that her cheeks are a little flushed.

Eventually, they do get out of bed.

They get out of bed and get dressed and Nancy drags Robin out into the biting chill of an early February morning to a cafe she swears by (and for good reason too, it was quite excellent), and then they were on the way to the Museum of Fine Arts.

Robin has been to the Museum of Fine Arts before, but not in years. It's actually a decent museum, and Robin prides herself in being a tough critic (perhaps unnecessarily so sometimes), so that's saying something. It's still decent for this visit too.

Nancy brings her in through the rear entrance so she can go to the gift shop first, and Robin tries to not overthink the way Nancy remembered that weird preference of hers (she finds a deck of cards with assorted post-impressionism paintings on the backs for Steve and a pack of Degas magnets for their already crowded fridge door) and then they embark on a slow stroll of the museum.

They conclude with the contemporary art wing because it's the one Robin was most looking forward to, the style she'd enjoyed learning about the most in her art history classes at college.

Sometimes, Robin looks back on her time in college and feels something like regret. She hadn't been sure she even wanted to go to college and, truthfully, she doesn't really even know how she ended up there. Well — that's not true. She knows it happened because after her parents died, her Gran came to Hawkins and tried to ruin everything, tried to sell Robin's house and get rid of all her parents' stuff and take Robin with her back to Michigan, and Robin had refused. In the end, they'd struck a deal: Robin got one more year in Hawkins, one more year with the only people on the planet who knew what she'd gone through, who knew the truth, and Robin had spent it applying to any college that didn't sound like a total nightmare to attend so she wouldn't end up stuck in Michigan with Gran.

She hadn't expected Steve to follow her, and she certainly hadn't expected that he'd turn out to be a psychology super-genius (which is only kind of an exaggeration and still kind of absurd to her) and decided that he needed a freaking doctorate. That hadn't been the plan, although Robin hadn't had much of a plan to begin with.

That's the thing — Robin isn't exactly a planner. She doesn't tend to think about things before she does them, doesn't consider the consequences, the after, so if she ends up getting herself into trouble or finding that she's unhappy…that's kind of on her.

Besides, Robin doesn't think she's unhappy, nor does she think she entirely regrets going to college.

College had given her independence and freedom and Books and Balderdash and the opportunity to safely explore her sexuality that she never would have had in Indiana (and probably not Michigan either, for that matter), and Steve had eventually followed her there and wherever Steve is, Robin knows she'll be okay.

On the other hand, it had also forced her to question far too many things about who she is — her integrity, her intelligence, her passions.

College is kind of a bullshit institution, Robin sometimes thinks. Who honestly believes that an eighteen-year-old has the mental capacity to decide accurately what they'll want to spend their entire life doing? Robin is a completely different person now than she was at eighteen — she's been, like, six different people since then and none of them had a clue what to spend a whole lifetime doing.

Steve is one of the rare few who had gone into college knowing exactly what they wanted, the bastard, and he'd excelled at it too. Sure, on paper, he hadn't done quite as well in his courses as Robin had, but he'd built great relationships with his professors and been passionate about all his classes, and in the end, he was accepted into every PsyD program he'd applied to.

He's so nerdy about psychology too, which Robin can't help but adore, always coming back from class going on and on about what he'd learned.

It turns out he's actually a total dork about things he cares about — his plants, Star Wars, their kitchen (he's the resident chef of their apartment, and while he'd given Robin free reign over the rest of their apartment for decorating and all that, the kitchen is his dominion and he has a freaky sixth sense for when she's been in there doing something she shouldn't), not to mention that she's seen him stay up for eighteen straight hours to finish a puzzle. Robin has her own goofy interests she obsesses over too, but Steve's passion for psychology and the way he can channel it into something bigger than just a hobby is one thing that Robin can't relate to, and it's what she'd been searching for during those four years in college and had never been able to find.

Art history was the closest she'd ever gotten, which is precisely why she'd wanted to make it her major, but, like with everything, she took too long to decide and then it was too late to change it again and now she's stuck reciting her old art history coursework from memory whenever the opportunity presents itself while she sits on a stupid BA she barely remembers earning.

It's why she doesn't go to museums very often — not that she doesn't like museums. She loves museums, but walking through the Museum of Fine Arts is forcing everything from school back to the forefront of her brain and it's making it harder and harder for Robin to ignore all the voices in her head telling her that she's unhappy with the direction her is current life taking her.

The MFA's contemporary wing is alright — not the best she's ever seen, but that has more to do with how the collection's layout could have been done by a drunk toddler than there being anything wrong with the collection itself, and maybe she's a little louder than she intends when she tells Nancy just as much because she gets a few dirty looks from other museum patrons. Nancy mutters, "Jesus Christ," before walking away from her completely.

Before Robin can follow her, an older man wearing a grey three-piece suit who had been standing only a few feet away from her lets out a little snort as he shakes his head.

"Sorry," Robin nods in his direction, vaguely aware that not everyone will immediately understand the healthy balance she's struck between enjoying the world around her and engaging in a running commentary about everything she sees.

He waves her off, though he does take a step closer.

"Do you work in the industry?" he asks, "Or do you just make a habit out of disparaging other people's work wherever you go?"

"Uh," Robin chuckles, the question managing to catch her off guard for a second, "What's right between both and neither, because…that."

He raises a questioning eyebrow.

"I have a business degree. I had wanted art history, but figured it out too late in the game for the timing to work out so I kept it as a minor. I did a shitty curatorial research internship that kind of turned me off to the entire field at the time, which I now get was stupid because there was a lot wrong with the internship and the work really wasn't one of them, but I was twenty-two and stupid so—"

"How old are you now?"

"Twenty-six."

The man laughs.

"So four whole years less stupid, then, right? So what is it that you do now after snubbing curation?"

"I manage a couple local bookstores in Washington — owners let me do a rebrand of their ancient store a while back and it put us on some list in a travel journal. It made them a bunch of money and they wanted to use it to open a second location and they let me take the lead. We ended up partnering with a local coffee shop in Seattle. It's pretty sweet."

"Hmm," he nods, and Robin decides to flatter herself by deciding that the small change in his expression reflects as least a marginal amount of impressed, "And that ended up being your calling."

"I dunno about calling, but I'm having a good time. I'd rather be working with actual art — not that books aren't art, but, like, this kind of art."

"So your opinion on the presentation here?"

"I stand by it, if that's what you're asking. It's not bad, just outdated. Like, I just know whoever did this has to be a million years old."

"Would you say I'm a million years old?"

"Wha-I…"

Robin pauses, turning away from the painting she'd had her eye on to look up at the man and the gotcha sort of expression he's wearing.

Robin screws up her face.

Fuck.

This guy definitely organized the collection.

"Shit…I'm—"

"For the record," he continues, still not looking all that offended, "I'm not that old, but you are right that I'm very out of practice."

Robin only blinks, the train of thought usually running circles around her brain completely derailed and out of commission.

"I had to let go of my curatorial chair for this particular facet of our museum," he goes on, "which is all I'll say to you because I don't trust twenty-somethings with gossip of any kind, but he managed to poach all of the curators who worked beneath him and left me with his workload while we find replacements. Hence…"

He gestures around at the space before turning towards her again. He looks her up and down with an appraising look, then holds out a hand.

March 8, 1986 - Hawkins, Indiana

Robin couldn't think.

She felt numb, frozen, like when her mom makes ice cubes with fruit that float solidly inside.

Made.

She used to make them in the summertime. She wouldn't make them this summer, though, because she was dead, and so was Robin's dad.

Robin's parents were dead.

And that was why Robin couldn't think.

Because her parents were dead and Vecna apparently wasn't so what was even the point?

Two days ago now, Robin and Steve had found her mom and dad's car half-destroyed in one of the fissures splitting Hawkins in four, and with it, she'd found confirmation of something she'd been vehemently denying since she'd climbed out of the Upside Down and returned home to see her house miraculously still standing but with no one inside.

Now, she couldn't stop thinking about it — what was it like? How did it feel? Did it hurt? Was there any chance that they fell through to the Upside Down, that there was a hope of recovering them?

Robin didn't know.

But she knew someone who might.

"Where's Lucas?"

"Why?" Steve asked, looking at her suspiciously.

He was worried about her, kept trying to tell her that she was acting weird.

Duh.

Her parents were dead. Of course she was acting weird.

Plus, when Robin wasn't helping figure out how to stop the Upside Down from leeching any further into Hawkins, she was at Hawkins Memorial Hospital surrounded by all kinds of people who had actually managed to survive the decimation of the town, and that probably wasn't helping her at all. Bad for morale or something like that.

Max and Eddie were still in the hospital, still alive, though apparently barely so.

Dustin tended to bounce between Eddie and Max's rooms, while Steve had firmly planted himself in Eddie's and refused to leave — hard not to get invested in someone's life after you've saved it, Robin supposed.

"Max's room, I think," Dustin supplied from the chair beside Steve's when it had become clear Steve himself wouldn't be answering her question.

Robin got to her feet and started the walk down the hall to Max's hospital room, and Steve followed a moment later.

"Rob," he called, "Robin!"

Robin ignored him, lengthening her strides until Lucas, sitting on a wooden bench outside Max's closed room, came into view.

"Lucas," she said.

Lucas looked up.

"Jason, he...he's dead, right?"

"Y-yeah," Lucas replied, and Robin saw his quick upward glance at Steve, searching for an explanation in his face.

"How?"

"Wha-"

"How did he die? It was the gate, right?"

"Robin," Steve protested, and she felt his hand fall onto her shoulder, "C'mon. Let's...let's not do this today."

"Right?"

"Yeah," Lucas nodded.

"Did you see it?"

"Oh, Rob," Steve said, a choking noise of protest, "Please."

"Well, did you?"

"I-I...um-" Lucas stopped, frantically shaking his head before he scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Wh-how...what was-what was it like?"

"Robin, you need to stop."

She saw Lucas's eyes widen as Steve's grip on her shoulder tightened, as he tried to pull her away, but she turned against the pressure.

"Lucas," she said, "Please."

Lucas's lips parted for a moment.

"It was...it was quick, I think."

"But-"

As Steve finally succeeded in tugging Robin away, a nurse emerged from Max's room and gave Lucas an encouraging smile that he seemed to take as an invitation to return to his post at Max's bedside, and then he was gone.

February 12, 1994 - Boston, Massachusetts

It's been almost eight years since Robin's parents died, since they were, from what she can gather, ripped in two from the inside out as they were caught right in the middle of an evil, supernatural fissure that tore through Hawkins, Indiana.

They were coming home from a date night, listening to the blues.

Robin misses them.

Obviously she misses them, but sometimes she wonders if she might be missing them wrong, or poorly, or something. She'd figured that missing them would feel like a hole within her, a parent-sized gap that couldn't be filled no matter how hard she tries. In actuality, it doesn't feel like that. Not to Robin, anyways. It feels more like…she doesn't really know. Maybe it feels like missing a close friend she fell out of touch with and looking back to remember lives that had once been completely intertwined, carrying on separate from the other.

That's just it, though, their paths aren't carrying on because they're dead. They're completely, irreparably, permanently dead, and Robin is alive and breathing.

Sometimes Robin wonders if the weird relationship she has with the deaths of her parents may stem from the way those horrible weeks in March had played out, because it had been "killing" Vecna, followed by learning her parents were dead, followed by learning Vecna wasn't, followed by being Vecna'd herself, followed by actually fucking ending things for good.

Even anniversaries of everything are weird because…well, last year, for example, it had first been wow, seven years today since mom and dad died almost immediately followed by holy shit, seven whole years without even a whiff of the Upside Down, that's the longest it's been since it went a million years without gracing the planet with its lovely presence!

Kind of whiplash-y, in Robin's opinion, and the latter tends to get more attention (though Joyce and Hopper, the closest thing she has to parental figures these days, do call her every year on the former anniversary to check in and make sure she's doing okay, which she does appreciate). Looking back, Robin thinks that maybe the triumph, the joy, the peace of mind of knowing — truly knowing and not just hoping — that everything with the Upside Down is finally, totally, completely done might have managed to overpower the grief and fear and confusion of losing her parents.

Is that wrong of her?

She doesn't know.

After they died, Robin's mom's mom — Robin's Gran — came down from Michigan. She was still the Buckley's executor, their will not yet accounting for Robin being a legal adult (which Robin was secretly grateful for).

Gran had kind of made things harder, Robin thinks.

She's not all that emotional, very stern and no-nonsense, so when she came to town to take care of the Buckley's effects and move on, she meant it.

It's seven years nearly down to the day since Robin's Gran sold the Buckley's home in Hawkins. It took a long time to sell, or so Robin was told because she hadn't exactly followed the process as it unfolded other than keeping an eye out for how much it was going for because she knew she'd be getting that money someday (the day she turns thirty, to be exact — screw her parents and their stupid will forcing her to get a job and start a career when she could be doing all that shit with her meager inheritance for some back-up support instead of bringing a damn calculator with her when she goes grocery shopping).

Gran had held an estate sale as they were in the process of selling her parents' house, which had been equal parts weird and sad, and at the time Robin couldn't help but think it wasn't what her parents would have wanted. They probably would have wanted their belongings donated to shelters or maybe recycled into clothing or some other hippie crap Gran didn't have time for, but their will apparently hadn't gone into the specifics, and ultimately it all needed to go. Gran had let her keep her favorites out of all her parents' belongings, and for now, they live in a small storage unit in Michigan where her grandmother still resides — she's in a nursing home, now (of her own accord which is entirely within character).

Her health has been declining over the past year or so, which is par for the course, Robin supposes, when you're seventy-eight, but she's not sure what role she's supposed to play in it, or if she even wants to. Taking care of Gran in her old age was supposed to be Robin's mom's job, just as it would have been Robin's job to take care of her mom many years down the line.

Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children. It's true from an evolutionary perspective, but also an emotional one as well. Sure, Robin lost her parents, but she was always going to experience that someday (though it would have been nice for it not to have been so sudden and tragic). Gran wasn't supposed to lose her daughter. Robin thinks maybe she might not have acknowledged that enough.

Luckily for Robin, at least where Gran's health is concerned, her mom has a brother — younger, so he's kind of an idiot, but he's more of an adult and more closely related than Robin, so the responsibility is falling onto him, and Robin doesn't need to be anything more than dumb, twenty-something, and figuring out her shit as she goes.

As has been the case today.

"Nancy," Robin says as she flies down the concrete steps of the museum, "I can't fucking believe it. I have an interview with the Museum of Fine fuckin' Arts tomorrow."

"What did he say exactly," Nancy replies, shorter legs carrying her after Robin in long strides.

"He said that there's curator positions open for the contemporary wing and that if I was interested he would interview me for it."

"He said that?"

"It makes no fucking sense but that's what he said. Granted, he also said that I'm grossly under-qualified, which is fair, but then I said does it help to know I speak seven languages, and he kinda just stared at me a second, and then he said it may and then he walked away."

"Holy shit," Nancy replies.

"Holy shit," she repeats.

"Well…do you want the job?" she then asks, and Robin can't help a laugh.

"Nance, I'm like ninety-nine percent sure this is my dream job. I mean — I won't know until I'm doing it, but, like, I'm pretty sure."

"Well, okay then," Nancy says with an air of finality, "We'll need to get you prepared. How does your resume look?"

Robin's eyebrows fly up.

"From Boston? Completely out of sight."

Nancy stops in the middle of the sidewalk, turning around so quickly that Robin nearly walks into her.

"You don't have a resume with you?"

"Why the fuck would I have a resume with me, Nancy?" Robin exclaims, "Might I remind you why I'm here, again, because it was one hundred percent to get in your pants and zero percent to change my entire career path."

Nancy doesn't respond for a moment, her lips quirking up as her cheeks flush ever so slightly. Then she shakes her head.

"Okay," she says, turning away from Robin and continuing her brisk walk down the sidewalk, "That's fine. We'll stop at the library on our way back to mine to write up a resume, and then we'll get into the interview prep."

Because Robin can't help herself, she asks, "Any chance we can pencil my thing in?"

"We'll see."

Robin cackles, elongating her strides until she can catch Nancy's hand in her own, her grin widening when she squeezes back.

song lyrics are from Losing My Mind by Montaigne

author notes:

1. i literally made a whole jstor account to find out what the MFA's exibitions were in 1994 just for, and i cannot stress this enough, ONE THROWAWAY PIECE OF DIALOGUE THAT I DIDN'T END UP INCLUDING! AHHHH

1a. also i have a massive bone to pick with the mfa for not installing the baby head statues until 2008. google 'mfa baby heads' and tell me robin wouldn't adore them

2. the 5 stages (or Kübler-Ross) model of grief was introduced in 1969 in Kübler-Ross's book On Death and Dying. The model gets more and more criticism each year (mostly for not having a ton of emperical support), but it's by far the most well-known conceptualization of grief

3. nancy absolutely would carry a copy of her resume with her "just in case" and because she likes to find ways to sneak her SAT score into the conversation