Chapter Text
You have no idea
Buried down deep
And out of your reach
The secret
We all vowed to keep it
From you
In sweetness
April 18, 1992
Hawkins Memorial Hospital
Nancy Wheeler walked down the hallway of Hawkins Memorial’s maternity ward with a little wicker basket tucked against her hip—spring flowers wrapped in crinkled cellophane and a ridiculous balloon that read “Welcome Baby” and bobbed, knocking gently into her shoulder every few steps.
It was a warm afternoon outside. She’d noticed it the second she stepped out of her car—the air slightly warmer here in Indiana than Boston this time of year.
She hadn’t been back in town long; she’d gotten in last night. She wouldn’t be staying much longer either, already entirely too eager to leave this hospital, this town, and return to her apartment in Boston.
She stopped in front of the room that matched the number the receptionist had written on a slip of paper. She looked between it and the plaque outside the door several times, like she needed to make sure she wasn’t about to barge in on some couple that was not her closest friend.
Her triple-checking gave her just long enough to hear Steve laugh. And yep—no denying it now. She was in the right spot.
The laugh was older, a little deeper, but it was still Steve. Still that big, warm sound that filled up space like he couldn’t help it. Nancy missed it; hearing it through her landline wasn’t the same as being surrounded by it. But missing Steve’s laugh wasn’t enough to bring her back to Hawkins. She didn’t do “just because” visits.
Like today: Nancy was here for a reason. Today was flowers, balloons, and a baby.
Nancy exhaled, arranged her face into something brighter than she felt, and pushed the door open.
Steve looked up immediately, eyes catching hers. He stood beside a little plastic bassinet, shoulders hunched in that instinctive way people got when they were trying to protect something fragile. He looked practically the same as the last time Nancy had seen him—just more tired. Nancy might’ve said he looked as exhausted as when they were teenagers out hunting monsters.
Though he didn’t look as exhausted as his wife.
Jennifer was propped up in the hospital bed, her blonde hair messy, not a trace of makeup, and wearing the happiest expression Nancy had ever seen on her—happier even than the day she married Steve. She smiled at Nancy as she stepped in.
“Hey,” Nancy said, and her voice came out warmer than she felt. “I brought—” She lifted the basket, then the balloon. “A whole thing.”
Steve grinned. “Jesus, Wheeler. You trying to bribe the kid into liking you already?”
“Well, it’s for Jennifer.” Nancy shot back, very pointedly walking toward the woman and setting the flowers down on the stand by her bed.
Jennifer laughed quietly. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
Nancy leaned carefully over Jennifer to hug her, mindful of IV lines and tenderness and the way Jennifer’s body still looked like it had a baby inside it. Nancy hugged Steve next—brief but tight—excitement for her friend bleeding out through her touch.
Then, inevitably, she looked down.
The baby was impossibly small. A tiny bundle, face scrunched in a frown, eyes closed. A striped hat covered most of it’s head, but some dark hair peeked out at the top. A newborn, if Nancy had ever seen one.
“So?” she asked, drawing the word out in excited curiosity.
Steve smiled bigger, if that were even possible. He cleared his throat and swallowed—a tell Nancy knew meant he was trying not to get emotional.
“Little girl.” he said, voice full of awe.
Jennifer chimed in from the bed. “Wrapped around her daddy’s finger already.”
Nancy smiled down at the baby—Steve’s daughter. What a crazy concept. Steve was a dad.
Steve cleared his throat, gesturing with careful hands. “Do you—uh. Do you want to hold her?”
“Yeah,” Nancy said immediately, glancing at Steve before returning her gaze to the baby. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Steve picked up the baby with ease, no hesitance in the way he held her between his hands. He looked like he was made to do this. He bounced her for a second, smiling at her, then handed her to Nancy.
The weight of the baby was almost nothing. Her tiny body fit into Nancy’s forearm like she’d been designed for it, and Nancy found herself understanding what all the fuss was about.
The baby’s eyes fluttered open for a second—dark, unfocused—and Nancy smiled down at her.
“Hey,” Nancy whispered, “Hi.”
Steve watched her like he was watching a miracle happen in slow motion, his mouth a little open, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or cry.
Nancy smiled at Steve. “She’s cute,” she said. “Has your nose already.”
Steve scoffed. “Thank God. My nose is perfect.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Your nose is aggressively average.”
Nancy huffed a laugh, and the baby shifted slightly.
Nancy glanced up at Steve, then Jennifer. “Does she have a name yet?”
Steve and Jennifer looked at each other.
It wasn’t the quick, casual glance of people making sure they were on the same page. It was full of meaning, like they were about to announce something sacred.
Jennifer nodded at Steve. A quiet go-ahead.
Steve exhaled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, she does.”
Nancy looked up at him again, pausing as she ran the tip of her finger over the baby’s cheek.
Steve’s eyes started to get teary—surprisingly, the first time since Nancy had entered the room. He looked at the baby, avoiding Nancy’s eyes.
“Her name’s Robin.”
For a second, everything in Nancy’s head screeched to a halt. And then it hit her like a bruise you forgot you had until someone pressed their thumb into it.
Nancy’s eyes snapped to Steve’s face. He looked like he was trying to hold it together, like he’d forgotten he could’ve chosen any other name. Nancy’s gaze shifted to Jennifer. Her expression was tender—sadness threaded through it.
She looked back down at the baby. The baby who didn’t know what she’d just been handed.
“Hi, Robin.” she whispered, and her voice came out more cracked than she’d meant it to. She swallowed hard, trying to rid the tingly feeling in her throat—the real thoughts she had. Instead, she smiled. “That’s… that’s a great name.”
Steve laughed, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stop any real tears from falling. “She would be insufferable to know I named my firstborn after her. She’d probably insist we call her Robin Junior.”
Nancy laughed, and it made Steve feel more comfortable joking about Robin.
“Oh God. I mean, can you imagine? She’d never shut up. She’d show up to every birthday with a banner that said ‘My Namesake’.”
Nancy let out a strangled little laugh, the image a fond one. “She would.”
She blinked quickly, trying to force back her own tears—focusing instead on the baby’s tiny eyelashes, on the dry skin across her tiny hands, on anything that wasn’t the memory of a tall, quirky girl with beautiful eyes and a mouth that had never stopped moving.
For the next half hour, Nancy stayed in that room and pretended she was fine.
She listened to Jennifer talk about labor like it was a war story. She listened to Steve describe the moment he’d seen the baby and realized his life was complete. She nodded and smiled and made jokes when they were needed.
Eventually, she handed the baby back, Steve taking her eagerly and nuzzling his cheek against hers.
She hugged Jennifer again. Hugged Steve again. Steve’s hand squeezed her shoulder in a silent gesture, and Nancy knew they were both carrying the same melancholy.
“Just, make sure you only tell her the good stories, okay? She doesn’t need to be burdened with everything we know.” Nancy said quietly before she left, eyes on the baby.
Steve nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
—————————————————————————
By the time she got outside, the warm spring air had started to cool into a refreshing dew, the way it always did this time of year. Nancy got into her car and turned the heater on—always one to get cold, and the time spent at the hospital had only made her feel more chilled.
She drove to her mom’s house on autopilot. She didn’t even remember turning down Maple Street, too lost in her own thoughts.
Karen opened the door before Nancy could knock, like she’d been watching through the window.
“There you are.” Karen said softly. “Did you get pictures?”
Nancy’s mouth twitched with a smile. She had definitely been watching for her. “Of course you’re asking that first.”
Karen smiled eagerly and motioned her inside.
Vecna and the Upside Down had done something to all of them, even the ones who hadn’t known the full story. Nancy still regretted keeping things from her family—from her mom—especially whenever her eyes caught the jagged scars across her chest and neck. At first, her mom had taken to wearing turtlenecks and scarves even when the weather didn’t call for it. Five years later, she wore whatever she pleased. Nancy would even say some of her mom’s outfits were more risqué nowadays. She supposed a divorce might do that.
Nancy reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a Polaroid, and handed it to her mom, who took it with glee.
“Oh,” Karen breathed, and her whole face softened into that maternal glow most women got when seeing a baby. “Look at her. Oh my God. Steve’s nose.”
Nancy laughed. “I said the same thing.”
Karen shook her head, smiling at the picture like she was trying to memorize it. “She’s perfect.”
And then—of course—she asked the question Nancy knew she would. A perfectly normal question, one Nancy had asked herself.
“What did they name her?”
Nancy felt the silence—the tension hanging in the air—while she worked her mouth, tried to get it to say the name.
“Robin.”
Karen’s smile faltered before it shifted into something gentler. Sadder.
Her hand came to Nancy’s back, warm even through the fabric of her shirt. Her mom touched her a lot more after everything happened—made sure she held and touched all of her kids more, after coming so close to losing them.
Nancy had tried to avoid it at first, not wanting the comfort, not feeling like she deserved it. But her mom had come close to dying too, and just because Nancy had lost one person didn’t mean she wanted to push her mother away. Her mom had slept in Nancy’s room with her for nearly three months after that final battle. Nancy wasn’t sure whose benefit it was for.
“Well,” Karen said softly, like if she spoke quietly enough it wouldn’t trigger something in Nancy, “that’s a beautiful way to remember her.”
Nancy stared at the Polaroid in Karen’s hands, at the baby’s face. Thought about the name she shouldn’t have, but did—because Steve was sentimental like that.
Nancy wasn’t upset that Steve named her that. She knew why he did. Knew how much he loved Robin. But still, Nancy couldn’t help thinking: that baby shouldn’t be Robin. She should be held by Robin. Doted on and bragged about to anyone who would listen, because Robin would be so proud of her just because she was Steve’s. Robin should’ve gotten to meet her.
Suddenly, Nancy couldn’t do it anymore.
The tears came quickly, her face crumpling in that pathetic way she was always self-conscious about. But she couldn’t care right now, because it was just her mom here—and her mom had seen her cry about this several times before.
Karen didn’t say it’s okay, because Karen had learned that sometimes it just wasn’t. She only pulled Nancy into her arms and held her, the way she did every time Nancy cried to her about Robin.
Nancy cried into her mom’s shoulder, the display of emotion probably too big for an adult woman to be making. Five years was enough time for the world to expect you to be done with it. But five years was apparently not enough time for Nancy.
She cried for their Robin—the Robin who had stood in the middle of the ruins of Starcourt with her shirt full of blood and her eyes too bright, talking too fast and too much for Nancy at the time. The Robin who had chipped away at her defensiveness and became her friend. The Robin who didn’t exist anymore.
She cried for the baby Robin in Hawkins Memorial, who would grow up hearing stories about a girl she was named after—a girl who would never get to meet her, a girl who existed now only in photographs and in the way Steve still brought her up like she was still here, like she still knew them.
Nancy pulled back after a while, swiping at her cheeks with the heel of her hand, embarrassed and raw. “Sorry.” she whispered automatically.
Karen cupped her face, thumbs brushing away tears like Nancy was a kid again. “Don’t.” she said firmly. “Don’t apologize to me for losing someone. For loving someone.”
Nancy’s throat tightened again. She nodded because that was all she could manage.
—————————————————————————
Later that night, when the house had gone quiet and Karen and Holly had gone upstairs, Nancy lay in her old bed staring at the ceiling.
The wallpaper was different now—yellow flowers instead of the pink stripes she’d had as a teenager. The need to replace it driven by the demogorgon that had torn through the Wheelers’ upstairs. But the rest of the room looked the same. Her mom had tacked and hung Nancy’s old posters and photo boards back up, despite Nancy telling her she could just turn the room into a proper guest room. The mostly familiar shape of the room should’ve comforted her. Instead, it felt like being haunted by her old life.
Her suitcase—the obvious indication she no longer lived here—sat on her dresser, half-unpacked. Beside it was a small envelope she’d tucked into the bottom of her bag before leaving Boston. Stuffed there quickly, before she could second-guess herself.
She knew what was inside, having pulled the contents out and stared at them more times than she liked to admit: a Polaroid, and a letter. Things she’d kept even when moving from Hawkins to Boston, like relics—worried that if she lost them, she might lose the last thread tying her to that version of herself. The version of herself that had been held together by a girl who talked too much, laughed too loud, and looked at Nancy like she was something that mattered.
Nancy stared at the envelope for a long time. It was late. She knew what the letter said. She wrote it, after all. Still, she couldn’t deny the pull to read it once more—to pull out the photo and see Robin’s smiling face staring back at her.
She got out of bed, snatched the envelope, and climbed back in, making sure the covers were tucked around her tightly before she opened it.
Then, as she had so many times before, she read.