IT WAS ONLY FITTING that if Eleven's sealing of the gate had prevented the world from ending, its reopening by the Russians would be the catalyst that triggered the re-emergence of the dark forces that had been banished to the Upside Down for what felt like not long enough. All their efforts to protect a town that didn't want to fathom the notion of anything unordinary from a supernatural threat – one that had against all odds helped Amara to realize that she wasn't the one who needed to change – it was all back no sooner than it had left. They had to get out of the bunker, they needed to forewarn their friends, but could they even make it back in time?

        "Shit, this is bad," Steve declared, bathed in the fluorescent lights the machine was emitting. "This is really, really, bad."

        "That's the gate you told me about, right?" Robin inquired of Amara, holding out a sliver of hope that the Russians were merely excavating a cavity within the earth to destabilize the town, which she was sure had to be better than the resurgence of a doorway between their world and an alternate dimension. But deep down she knew that it was exactly what she presumed it to be.

        "I really wish it wasn't," Amara responded, snapping herself out of her paralyzed state and making her way to the door behind them, the first to guide them down the set of stairs back to the comms room before any of the scientists could so much as glance in their direction. "But it is."

        "I don't understand. How could they have found out about it?" Robin questioned, jogging to keep pace with Amara.

        "Nancy told me that if the Russians ever found out about the gate, they wouldn't consider it a mistake," Amara hastily explained, recalling the account the girl in question had detailed to her about her and Jonathan's successful endeavor to obtain justice for Barb a few days after their battle against the Upside Down, the one she had so foolishly believed would be their last. "Looks like she was right."

        "But why here?" Robin asked next, still wrapping her head around what she'd just witnessed. "Couldn't they have just done this in Russia?"

        "Maybe it's easier to open a gate somewhere it's been opened once before," Dustin speculated, too wondering the same thing. "Either way, this is bad. Like end-of-the-human-race-as-we-know-it bad."

        "We have to warn them," Amara stated in reference to their friends who weren't in the know of what the five of them had unearthed, the friends they'd originally journeyed to the comms room to broadcast their location to. But now the group understood that they weren't the ones who needed to be saved, not when the world was at stake once again. "Dustin, do you know which channel they're on?"

        "Last I checked, channel ten," Dustin relayed, the quintet now back in the suspiciously vacant comms room. "Let's just hope they're not all busy sucking face or something."

        "Um, Steve?" Erica interposed, the first to notice that they were the only occupants of the room. The only evidence that Steve had fought and won against a Russian guard was a streak of dried blood on the grated floorboards. "Where's your Russian friend?"

        As if on cue, the entire facility was encompassed in scintillating red lights and wailing alarms to match the dread that rushed through their systems. The din was so sudden that Amara instinctively brought her hands to her ears, but it wasn't as if the Russian base was designed to accommodate the sensory needs of people like her, especially when she was one of five reasons the alarms were sounding in the first place.

        "Shit," Steve was the first to break from his motionless stance, rushing to the door they'd first entered and prying it open before he or anyone else could advise him that it would only give their location away. Immediately, a congregation of Russian soldiers detected him and demanded that he halt – he couldn't slam the door fast enough. "Shit. Go, go, go, go, go!"

        The five of them practically flew up the steps, Amara guiding Erica onwards with an iron grip on her clammy hand. In the case that they ended up captured – which was becoming increasingly probable – Erica and Dustin were her priority and she refused to let anything happen to them, even if she had to sacrifice herself. It was the least she owed to them, Erica in particular, after landing them in such a perilous position.

        "Move! Let's move!" They burst through the door at the top of the stairs, Steve urging them along. Dustin wrenched open the door to the main control room, freezing in his tracks as he and the others came face-to-face with a cluster of scientists who appeared to have paid no mind to the alarm system blaring in the background until now. The five of them were cornered with scientists and soldiers closing in on both flanks, but the formers of which were unarmed and that gave them an advantage.

        It took Erica's clamor of, "Let's go, Curly!" for Dustin to make a beeline for one of the stairwells leading to the machine, the others hot on his trail. Amara swore she had never sprinted so quickly in her life – not from the Demogorgon at the Byers house or the Demodogs in the junkyard and the tunnels. Her heart was palpitating erratically and her calves were screaming in protest but she didn't let up, not for a second. She could faintly hear the cries of the Russian soldiers above the collective blaring of the alarm and the machine and it only willed her to move faster.

        Dustin barreled into a scientist in a hazmat suit with a screech, the action so abrupt that it permitted the rest of them to pass. Still clutching Erica's hand, Amara tore past their adversary while she could, Robin and Steve in her wake. They were in close proximity to the beam the machine was ejecting, the device that was tearing the world apart as they ran for their very lives. To make matters worse, their friends above the surface were still clueless about their whereabouts let alone their discovery.

        "Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!" Dustin had nearly pitched himself headfirst off of a dead end, the quintet much too close to both the precipice and the ray of energy for comfort. They had reached the very end of the facility and were overlooking a bottomless chasm, the atmosphere of which was pervaded with those particles symbolic of the Upside Down. God, Amara despised those particles, just as much as the machine that had brought them back into their world. "Holy shit! Holy shit! Shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! HOLY SHIT!"

        "GUARDS!" Erica screamed, catching sight of an entourage of Russians pushing their way past the scientists on the catwalk. "Go!"

        "This way!" Steve hollered, directing them down the last of the catwalk and ramming into a scientist similar to how Dustin had. The five of them made it to the bottom of the stairwell, finding solace in the entrance to what looked to be an electrical compartment, fighting their own exhaustion. By now there was a stitch in Amara's side and her feet likely had blisters, but she kept going – for her family, for her friends, for the kids she had promised to protect.

        For the people who loved her even during the times when she didn't love herself.

        "Oh shit! Oh shit!" Two Russian soldiers had emerged from an archway beneath the catwalk, seeking to corner them. Thinking quickly, Steve propelled a heap of steel barrels into their path, granting them just enough time to make it to the exit. The Russians were approaching fast, keen to capture the five intruders before they slipped through their fingers but the five of them were even more determined to ensure that at least some of them were able to escape and spread the word about the Russians opening the gate.

        "Come on, come on!" Amara practically blasted the door open, ushering her friends inside. The last to enter, Steve threw his weight against the door in a feeble effort to hold off the Russians attempting to bust it down. Amara felt her heart sink at the notion that there was no exit in sight – they had enclosed themselves and had a limited amount of time before the Russians would succeed in applying their collective force to open the door.

        "Help me, come on!" Steve pleaded, unable to hold the door shut on his own for much longer. Robin didn't hesitate to join Steve in what they all knew was a losing battle. A ray of hope came in the form of a grate to the vent system Erica had unearthed, but it was tarnished by the notion that some of them would have to surrender themselves in order for the others to flee. Amara made to join her best friends in ensuring that Erica and Dustin would escape, but Dustin clamped his hand over hers before she could so much as take a step in their direction, not ready to lose more than he was already prepared to.

        "Amara... please... " he whimpered, refusing to let her go. The pounds of the Russian soldiers on the door were only increasing tenfold, and they had seconds before they would all be apprehended if they didn't move.

        "Here! Come on, let's go!" Erica strained to lift the grate, promptly diving in, but Amara and Dustin remained stationary. Deep down, they knew that Robin and Steve were offering themselves as bait but they weren't ready to accept anything less than all of them escaping together. True friends didn't leave anyone behind.

        "Come on!" Dustin urged, gesturing for Steve and Robin to follow. He was still grasping Amara's hand as though she'd join Steve and Robin if he released it. The worst part was her co-workers weren't asking for her help – they wanted her to flee just as much as Erica and Dustin.

        "Go! Just get out of here!" Steve yelled. He and Robin were both pink in the face from the strain of resisting dozens of Russian soldiers, an effort they wouldn't be able to put up for much longer.

        "No, I'm not leaving you guys!" Amara protested, but she nevertheless allowed Dustin to guide her to the vent. The four of them stood on opposite sides of the room, so close yet so far away from one another; Amara's best friends were prepared to sacrifice themselves and she wasn't there with them, plowing her weight against the door long enough for Dustin and Erica to escape. But her younger friends needed her more than Robin and Steve did, and she wasn't going to let them flee on their own.

        "No! Just go get some help, okay?" Steve insisted, he and Robin now using the last of their strength to request that they get out of there. Amara and Dustin couldn't waste that, even if it pained them to leave behind two individuals who were so dear to them. "What are you doing?! Go!"

        "I won't forget you!" Dustin promised. He meant it entirely.

        In what could have been her last moment with Steve and Robin, the two people who knew and valued her more than anyone, Amara had so many regrets. They weren't supposed to die down here; they were meant to sling ice cream and poke fun at Steve for being unable to score a date and watch Back to the Future together and serve Erica as much free ice cream as she damn well pleased. They weren't supposed to go their separate ways, not when they'd endured thick and thin together – unreciprocated affections and identity crises and unfair wages and an ongoing battle against a supernatural domain. Amara had never been good at communicating her thoughts nonverbally, but Steve made up for it by being completely vulnerable with her. Even with his face red and glistening with perspiration, he hid nothing in his facial expression as he made eye contact with her.

        It's okay.

        With a heavy heart, Amara and Dustin sealed the grate over their heads moments before the door gave out. Not wasting another second, they and Erica scurried through the vents and out of sight, leaving their friends behind.

AMARA WAS AN EMOTIONAL WRECK.

        She had lost all concept of time but wagered that she, Erica, and Dustin hadn't slept a wink, too preoccupied with navigating their way through the maze of vents beneath the corridors. They were blindly rounding junction after junction, intercepting one ventilation fan after another, cluing Erica in on everything they'd been through in the past, which she was taking in surprisingly well. Although it was mostly Dustin who was doing the explaining; Amara couldn't rid her mind of how fearful Steve and Robin had appeared in what she was sure were their final moments together. To make matters worse, they understood her thought process when she was overwhelmed and how to mitigate it while Dustin and Erica didn't, so she was back to her old habit of bottling everything up.

        Dustin could see through Amara slightly better than Erica, though it was mostly because they'd known each other longer, and attempted to reassure her that they would eventually make it back to the elevator and return with help as Steve had instructed them to. He had his suspicions about Amara returning Steve's feelings as emphasized by how distraught she seemed, but even he knew that it was unwise to bring up the matter when they had more important issues at hand.

        Even so, it wasn't as though Amara was a cheesy movie character who had been separated from the person she liked before she had the chance to tell them and therefore was committed to saving Steve for the purpose of finally admitting how she felt about him. On the contrary, she wanted to rescue Steve and Robin and break them out of the underground bunker and close the gate again and maybe figure out her feelings when the world wasn't ending. That option sounded far more appealing to her.

        " ...So, when we set fire to the hub, we drew the Demodogs away so El could close the gate," Dustin concluded his exposition, utilizing his screwdriver to disassemble the circuit box adjacent to the latest fan obstructing their path, Erica's headlamps providing him the illumination he required. "But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for."

        It undoubtedly was a lot to take in, the concept of alternate dimensions and faceless monsters and telekinetic girls, but even more of a shock for Erica to find out that her brother of all people had been entangled. "By 'we,' you're including Lucas?" she questioned skeptically.

        "Yes, of course," Dustin responded, bemused as to why Erica was choosing to focus on that particular segment of information.

        "So, all that shit you told me, Lucas was there?" Erica persisted, her eyebrows raised in a mixture of suspicion and amusement.

        "Yeah."

        "My brother, Lucas Charles Sinclair?"

        "He was there," Amara broke her silence with a quiet whisper, propped against the wall across from Erica. "How do you think I met him in the first place?"

        "I don't know," Erica answered, the flashlights taped to her helmet reflecting off the silvery walls of the vent. "But the point is, I don't believe you."

        "Wait, so you believe everything about El and the gate and the Demodogs and the Mind Flayer," by now Dustin had paused his task of dismantling the circuit box, facing Erica fully amid his confusion. "But you question your brother's involvement?"

        "That's correct," Erica clarified. In spite of her anxiety, Amara couldn't help but crack a smile for the first time since they had split up from Steve and Robin. Dustin took notice of that and smiled in return, affectionately nudging her arm before getting back to work on the circuit board.

        "Makes total sense," he mumbled, squinting his eyes in concentration as he continued unscrewing the bolts from the circuit cover. "But congrats on being able to make Amara smile for the first time in hours."

        Amara was no longer smiling, subconsciously picking at the chipped blue varnish on her nails, a memento from her and Nancy's girl's night a week ago after they'd gotten out of work. Amara hadn't seen Nancy or anyone other than her four companions within the span of the past week; she wondered if they were looking for them, or just assumed that they were busy with work or something. But then again, she and her fellow Russian bunker infiltrators hadn't reached out to anyone else about their mission, so perhaps they'd doomed themselves. Communication was supposed to be a two-way street.

        "Um, you need help with that?" Erica interrogated, cognizant of how long it was taking Dustin to simply extract the cover from the circuit board.

        "No."

        "Well, I mean it's taking a while, so – "

        "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock," Dustin snapped, rolling his eyes. Though he didn't want to acknowledge it out loud, Erica posed a valid point: this had to be the fifth or so fan they'd encountered throughout their journey through the vents.

        "All right, so if we don't find a more efficient method to stop these fans, we're never gonna find help, and your ice cream buddies are screwed," Erica stated matter-of-factly, daring her two companions to argue otherwise.

        "Don't say that, please," Amara beseeched. She was well aware of the fact that they had been slogging through the air ducts for approximately nine hours but refused to lose hope that two of the strongest people she knew couldn't hold it together long enough for them to save them. "I can't lose them. Either of them."

        "Well, look at that, now you've made her upset again," Dustin's skin was beaded with sweat from both how compact the vents were and his aggravation at Erica's bluntness. "With that attitude, they are screwed. Jee-zus!"

        "I'm just being realistic," Erica persisted, checking her watch. The actions of defending her insensitivity and glancing at her watch mirrored Amara so much that she momentarily let her thoughts wander from what Robin and Steve were enduring and she faced the girl. "I mean, we've made it about point-three miles in nine hours. Then we had to walk three hours down that tunnel, so I'd estimate about ten miles back to the elevator, which should take approximately twelve-and-a-half days."

        Erica was Amara – a younger, sassier, non-disordered version of her. She didn't realize how she hadn't seen it all this time; the short attention span, the haphazard manner of explaining things, the tendency to come across as annoying but prove useful in the long run, the refusal to back down when she was determined, and most recently numerical prowess. Perhaps that had been the reason why Amara had the best luck at persuading Erica to stop soliciting free samples as well as getting her to sign onto their deal, because like Erica she was blunt and to the point.

        Maybe Amara's autism wasn't the culminating factor that determined who she was. Maybe her personality traits, from her impulsivity to her memory were already there, but her diagnosis simply amplified them. Maybe that was why Erica reflected her even if she didn't too have autism.

        "Did you just do all of that in your head?" Dustin gawked, having calculated the math in his head to find that it matched up with her speculation.

        "I'm good with numbers," Erica justified, shrugging her shoulders.

        "Holy shit," was what Dustin said next, his eyes widening at his own realization. "You're a nerd."

        Erica scoffed. "Come again?"

        "You... are... a... nerd," Dustin repeated slowly as though Erica hadn't fully processed his deduction. It was quite alike to Amara's in that she was a nerd and had found that Erica was far more similar to her than she'd originally thought, but she remained silent so as not to add fuel to the fire.

        "Okay, you'd better take that back, nerd – "

        "Can't put the truth back in the box," Dustin shook his head almost too cockily. If Erica was Amara, then Dustin was most certainly Steve – the devil-may-care attitude, the overblown ego to match the voluminous hair, the tendency to act before thinking, the unwavering loyalty, the sense of security they both provided. She prayed that he and Robin were as okay as they could be.

        "But it's not the truth," Erica insisted, narrowing her gaze.

        "Let's examine the facts, shall we?" Dustin was almost enjoying this too much, and it took Amara gesturing at the circuit for him to remember the job he still needed to complete. "Fact one: you're a math whiz, apparently."

        "That was a pretty straightforward equation – "

        "Fact number two: you're a political junkie," Dustin continued, reminded of Erica's knowledge and support of the free-market system, a notion most ten-year-olds weren't familiar with. Both the math equation and capitalism were concepts that Dustin and Amara were fairly acquainted with, but Erica had to stick out like a sore thumb among the kids her age.

        "Just because I don't agree with Communism as an ideology – "

        "Fact number three: you love My Little Pony," Dustin punctuated his statement by seizing Erica's backpack, suspending the ponies emblazoned on it in front of her for effect.

        "And what does My Little Pony have to do with this?" Erica challenged, snatching her backpack away from Dustin. Even Amara didn't understand how the two were connected, but that may have been because she'd never watched the show before.

        "Ah, let's recall the ponies' latest adventure, shall we?" Dustin hummed almost wistfully as if he'd rather be curled up with his cat watching the show than stuck in the air ducts beneath a Russian fortress with a girl who rejected his claims of evidence that she was a nerd. "The evil centaur team and Tirek turns Applejack into a dragon at Midnight Castle, and then Megan and the other ponies have to use Moochick's magic to defeat his rainbow of darkness, saving them from a lifetime of enslavement. All the pink in the world can't disguise the irrefutable fact that centaurs and dragons and castles and magic are all standard nerd tropes. Ergo, My Little Pony is nerdy. Ergo, you, Erica, are a nerd."

        Amara had never seen My Little Pony that way, and apparently neither had Erica. "And how do you know so much about My Little Pony?" the latter contested in a last-ditch effort to uphold her argument.

        "Because I'm... " at long last, Dustin had finally unscrewed all four bolts and pried open the circuit box, "a nerd." Yanking the wires from their position with a sharp crackle of electricity, the fan abruptly powered down and ceased revolving, granting the three of them access. There would undoubtedly be more fans to come, but now they were one step closer to obtaining help and saving their friends.

        "Let's go... nerd," Dustin beckoned, not bothering to wait for a response before being the first to venture onwards. And Erica didn't bother to hide her scowl at his back, frustrated that she'd lost an argument for once in her life.

        "Don't take it personally," Amara assured Erica, too ducking under the fan's blades. She was still wracked with guilt for leaving Steve and Robin behind, but she couldn't let it get in the way of persisting as they would have wanted her to. "Dustin loves proving he's right, even if he isn't."

        "Hey, I heard that!"

STEVE WAS PRETTY SURE he was going to die. It was only natural that his face was just as desecrated as the previous two battles against the Upside Down he'd partaken in, scarlet welts blossoming across his skin to match the contusions from his past scuffles. His ribs were bruised and possibly fractured, and he found great difficulty transferring air in and out of his lungs. What had started out as a longshot attempt at cutting himself and Robin free from the binds affixing the two of them had failed abysmally as he and the aforementioned girl were now sprawled out on the floor, praying that their friends would make it out alive even if they couldn't.

        There was so much he wished he'd turned around while he had the chance. Among those was befriending Robin earlier on.

        "Do you remember, um, Mrs. Click's sophomore history class?" Robin brought up tentatively. If her hands weren't bound together she'd likely be threading them through her hair.

        "What?" Steve questioned, not following along completely. He didn't remember, but then again there was very little about his high school experience worth remembering.

        "Mrs. Clickity-Clackity," Robin smiled reminiscently and it dawned on Steve that she was reliving the past just as much as he was. "That's what us band dweebs called her. It was first period, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so you were always late. And you always had the same breakfast. Bacon, egg, and cheese on a sesame bagel. I sat behind you two days a week for a year. Mister Funny. Mister Cool. The King of Hawkins High himself."

        Steve felt a growing pit of resentment in his stomach, understanding the message Robin was trying to convey to him. That his popularity guaranteed that she knew everything about him and he knew nothing about her, or even her to begin with. Her sophomore year – his junior year – was when he had cemented his status as King Steve, the basketball star who hooked up with a new girl every weekend and looked down upon those who didn't share his status or wealth. It was also the year he met Nancy and realized that he could be so much more, that he could be brave and selfless even if all of his instincts had been telling him to flee that night in November of 1983. It was the year he cut off Carol and Tommy H. from his life and strived to make amends for everyone he'd hurt in the past, and yet he never bothered to meet Robin until a month ago.

        As if reading his mind, Robin whispered, "Do you even remember me from that class? Do you remember Amara?"

        He didn't – or he didn't remember Robin. He'd met Amara that year in the alleyway by the movie theater, where she briefly overcame her fear of interacting with others for the sake of getting the message across to him that Nancy hadn't cheated on him. And he'd ignored her all because he would've had to admit that he'd been wrong, something he wasn't mature enough to do at the time. But after that, she faded into the background until he lost Nancy and sought her advice, only to learn that she needed someone just as much as he did.

        But it was all bullshit, wasn't it? Everything he touched turned to dust; Nancy, his future, his friends, who he wasn't even sure were still alive. Amara. God, Amara...

        "Of course you don't. Not me, at least," Robin took Steve's silence as an answer. "You were a real asshole, you know that?"

        "Yeah, I know," Steve muttered. He felt such remorse, because he missed out, didn't he? He was spending what were probably the last moments of his life with Robin, a girl he'd dismissed as a band geek despite being close with her best friend. He was going to die alongside her just as he was getting to know her.

        "But it didn't even matter. It didn't matter that you were an ass," Robin's voice quivered before she could stop herself. Only she and Amara understood just how much Steve had affected her sophomore year of high school, and no matter how much her best friend insisted that she loved her for who she was she still felt like she didn't belong anywhere. Was this how Amara constantly felt? Robin would be under the impression that the world wasn't made for her, have a good cry, lean on Amara for support, begin to heal, and fall right back to square one upon hearing someone utter a homophobic comment. Amara accepted her, but she was Amara. Who else would? "I was still... obsessed with you. Even though all of us losers pretend to be above it all, we still just wanna be popular... accepted, normal." All things she would never be.

        "If it makes you feel any better, having those things isn't all that great," Steve knew that now. It had taken Billy dethroning him in a week, letting go of Nancy, and befriending Amara and a bunch of kids to come to terms with that. And he was so much happier now, way more than he had ever been as King Steve. "Seriously. It just baffles me. Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it's all just... bullshit."

        Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

        "You can't imagine my surprise when 'Mara told me one day last year that she couldn't study with me because she was going to watch Star Wars with you and Dustin," Robin spoke again, nearly shaking with laughter. "My first reaction was, King Steve, watching Star Wars? That would upend the social hierarchy!" She was full-on laughing now and it was so contagious that Steve couldn't help but join in. "She never hated you – I mean, she never paid attention to you until last year, but she was never the type to fawn over you or anyone for that matter. So when she started hanging out with you more, I was convinced that you had an ulterior motive, especially since you'd just broken up with Nancy."

        Steve had never seen Amara as a rebound from Nancy; he'd always viewed her as an addition to his life that he wished he'd had earlier on. Dustin had pointed out the possibility of her being a good match for him as early as December of last year, an idea he'd immediately shot down ("What the hell, Henderson?! I just broke up with Nance!"). He hadn't intended on falling for her, and he certainly didn't plan on tarnishing her like everything else in his life.

        "At first I thought she'd succumbed to that pretty boy Harrington charm or whatever it is, but I was wrong," Robin resumed, her voice solemn once more. "I know the look of someone who has; it's this stupid glazed look in your eyes and rosy cheeks and an inability to stare at anything else." Robin understood that look more than Steve would ever know. "But Amara was never like that. She was always just... happy, like you saw her and cherished her for who she was. And then she told me that she told you about her autism, and it all made sense. Now that I think about it, I haven't been fair to you. I keep judging you for who you were in the past when you've been nothing but accepting of Amara these past few months."

        "I don't blame you," Steve rasped, his throat aching from the effort of speaking. Because she was correct – he hadn't noticed her at any point throughout high school. It was purely by chance that he even knew Amara, let alone was friends with her. "You're right – I was an asshole. I'm surprised Amara doesn't hate me for all the shit I've said in the past; half the time I expect her to just suddenly get up and leave me like everyone else, because it's no less than I deserve. You had every right to resent me."

        His voice was so small and something poignant struck Robin. Maybe it was the act of Steve accepting Amara that had led her to finally gain confidence in herself and her abilities. While she loved Amara for who she was, she was Robin. Having a white, straight, non-disordered, former professional asshole with a history of degrading remarks like Steve Harrington tolerate you was a sign that not only could people change, but society could as well. Could he...

        No.

        "I don't think I ever resented you," Robin took a leap. Heart pounding, stomach twisting, hands clammy... was this how Amara had felt back in December? When she'd made a decision that could have ended her friendship with Steve no sooner than it had initiated? "I think... what I really wanted was to be you."

        "You mean... be popular?" Steve tried. He wasn't grasping her apprehension. Now's the time to stop, Buckley, the nasty voice inside her head warned, get yourself out of this mess before it's too late.

        But she didn't listen, because she deserved nothing less than acceptance. And what better place could she find it than in the person who had accepted Amara? If he didn't tolerate her she didn't doubt that Amara would deck Steve the moment she returned to unfasten their binds, but if he did... it would only cement Robin's belief that he was right for her best friend. "No, Steve," she murmured, her voice trembling once again. "I wanted to be you. Because if I was... then maybe she would have stared at me."

        "Who?" Steve queried, still lost.

        "Tammy Thompson," Robin revealed. God, what the hell was wrong with her? She couldn't take it back now, the secret was out, and it was only a matter of time before the whole town knew. "I wanted her to look at me. But... she couldn't pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair. I didn't understand, because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor. And you asked dumb questions. And you were a douchebag. And – And you didn't even like her and... I would go home... and just scream into my pillow and Amara would have to listen to all of it. And you've been such a good friend to her and you're even growing on me, but it's not an easy thing to look past."

        "But Tammy Thompson's a girl," Steve pointed out, still not getting it. Had she gone too far?

        "Steve," Robin whispered. Prayed, even.

        A beat of silence, and then, "Oh."

        "Oh," Robin echoed, her head slack against the floor and eyes directed towards the ceiling. She didn't have any way of gauging Steve's facial reaction, not when they were restrained back-to-back.

        "Holy shit," Steve gasped. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit –

        "Yeah," Robin mustered the strength to speak again. "Holy shit."

        Yeah, she'd definitely gotten her hopes up. He was just going to leave her like everyone else and tell the town about her once they escaped and her parents would find out and disown her and she'd be alone, because that's all she ever would be. How foolish did she have to be to believe that Steve Harrington of all people would accept her when he had a well-documented history of homophobic comments? Telling Steve was a mistake. She was a mistake. That's all people like Robin and Amara were, wrenches in the cogs. That's all they would ever be.

        But then the extraordinary happened.

        "I mean, yeah, Tammy Thompson, y'know, she's cute and all, but... I mean, she's a total dud."

        Robin was taken aback, for Steve wasn't demeaning her for liking girls but making fun of the particular girl she'd liked. That had to mean he accepted her, right? "She is not!"

        "Yes, she is," Steve insisted, unable to fathom that Robin had liked Tammy Thompson of all people. "She wants to be, like, a singer. She wants to move to, like, Nashville and shit."

        "She has dreams," Robin defended weakly, more relieved than anything else.

        "She can't even hold a tune. She's practically tone-deaf. Have you heard her?" Steve chortled. "All the time. You see me now tonight – "

        "Shut up."

        "You see me... "

        "She does not sound like that."

        "She sounds exactly – that's a great impression of her," Steve contended, practically wheezing amid his laughter.

        "She does not!" Robin disputed, laughing hysterically. "You sound like a Muppet."

        "She sounds like a Muppet," Steve shot back. "She sounds like a Muppet giving birth."

        Robin burst out laughing once more, releasing years of internalized trauma. Fuck the world and all that it represented, for King Steve wasn't a homophobe. He'd accepted her, just as he had with Amara. He'd shed his homophobic and ableist views amid a time when they were still very much rampant. The downside was that Amara wasn't there with them, bearing witness to Robin's coming out and Steve's tolerance, but there would always be time for that if they were lucky enough to escape.

        "And if you could hold me tight – "

        " – We'll be holding on forever!"

        "Exactly!"

        "I know!"

        It took a full minute for their laughter to subside, but the smile never wavered from Robin's face. It was cathartic, letting all of it out; Robin felt as though an invisible weight had been lifted from her chest, and she understood all at once how Amara had felt in the aftermath of disclosing Steve of her diagnosis. Because it was Steve – he didn't have autism and wasn't attracted to the same gender, but he was far more tolerant than most individuals. The world needed more people like him.

        "Thank you, Steve," Robin beamed even though he couldn't see her face. He hoped he could hear it in her voice, though.

        "No problem," Steve reassured Robin. If there was anything that being friends with Amara had taught him, it was that his greatest strength came not in physicality or popularity, but in being a good friend to those in need. "I'm guessing Amara knows?"

        "Yeah, she does," Robin informed Steve. "She's known since the very beginning. You're actually the first person I've told other than her."

        "Wait, so is that how you two became friends?" Steve queried softly. "She mentioned that you were also the first person she ever told about her autism... "

        "Yep," Robin sighed, trilling her lip. "I never had many friends growing up. Even my bandmates already had friends of their own. I was actually friends with Barb for some time – you know, Nancy's best friend, who I know definitely didn't die from a chemical leak, but she eventually ditched me for Nancy and I was alone again. But Amara didn't have friends either because she didn't want any. It was part of her whole goal of trying to be invisible, because who could blame her? I figured we'd make the perfect team since we're both outcasts, but she's become so much more to me than that."

        It was strange hearing about Amara from Robin's perspective, especially from before he'd met her. He could almost envision her traipsing through the unforgiving halls of Hawkins High, shoulders hunched, nose in a book to give off the impression of being a loner when in reality she wanted nothing more than to have friends. All while he'd been a pretentious douchebag, the one she held so much fear in her eyes when facing down for the first time. He liked to think of Tina's Halloween party as where they'd first met, not the alley, for this reason.

        "But Steve... who she is around you is just baffling to see," Robin went on. "I don't think I've seen her smile this much in like, ever. And part of it is those kids you both hang out with, but it's mostly you. I mean, it's just stunning to think that the guy my old crush couldn't stop staring at could have such a positive effect on my best friend, and I didn't want to admit it because it would've gotten in the way of my own doctrine. But it's all thanks to you that she's grown into who she is now, dingus."

        That couldn't be right, could it? All Steve ever did was hurt the people he cared about. He was the reason he and Robin were trapped hundreds of feet underground. He left Amara, Dustin, and a literal ten-year-old to fend for themselves. Nancy left him because he would've gotten in the way of her future ambitions. Even his own father thought him to be a disappointment and frequently called him that to his face.

        How could he be the reason why Amara had been so happy over the last few months when he couldn't be happy himself?

        "No," he shook his head, tears threatening to spill over his cheekbones. "That can't be it... she just thinks she needs me because I actually bothered to see her when no one else would. But she doesn't – all I ever do is drag her down. She'll be just fine without me up there."

        "Steve, that's not true," Robin stated firmly, shaking her head. "I heard you two the other night in the elevator. She was scared, and she needed someone, and you were there for her. And I saw how she looked when she and the others escaped – she wasn't ready to leave either of us behind. You don't drag her down, Steve, you lift her up."

        "There's no point in telling me this," Steve contested, his eyes screwed shut. "We're just going to die down here anyway."

        "No, we aren't. The others will make sure of it," Robin insisted, shifting her head a fraction to face Steve as best as she possibly could. "We're going to make it out of here. We're going to put a stop to all of this. And when we do, you need to tell Amara how you feel."

        "What?!"

        "Come on, Steve! It's blindingly obvious that you like her," Robin snarked. She hoped that being stuck in a Russian fortress of all places would help Amara get over her qualms about being in a relationship, but if it didn't she was going to give Steve the push he needed. "And it's not my place to say, but I'd wager that if you told her, there's a good chance she might return your feelings."

        "You think so?" Steve asked. He'd been so preoccupied suppressing his feelings through flirting lousily with girls he couldn't remember the names of and reminding himself that Amara deserved far more than he could offer to even consider that she might feel the same way. But Robin, her best friend, was imploring him to finally act on his emotions. He'd accepted both of them when few else did – there were very few people Robin could say the same about. Perhaps it was time for him to come to terms with his own self-worth.

        "Yeah, I do," Robin reiterated, positioning her head back against the floor. "Just, promise you won't forget about me, okay?"

        "As if anyone could forget about you, Robin," Steve chuckled, his mood finally improving. They were going to make it out of there. They were going to close the gate and send the Russians back to their home country. And he was finally going to tell Amara that he liked her after months of obscuring his feelings. "When we get out of here, we're finding you a girlfriend."

published to quotev: 1/2/23
published to wattpad: 11/9/24

AUTHOR'S NOTE

i fucking hate this country

but hope i did okay with robin's coming out scene! i know it's not the same as the bathroom but i still wanted to write it because i adore steve and robin's platonic chemistry. i'm straight so i don't have the same grasp on robin's internal turmoil that i do with amara's so i hope i was able to deliver somewhat! robin's going to have her own love interest come season 4 i can't wait for y'all to meet her

until the next update,

lydia xx