He lasts ten hours.
He’s a puddle of sweat and tremors when he grabs Nancy’s hand and stutters out something like a plea. Something in Nancy’s chest is jagged and painful. She hates watching people die. Even if they are complete assholes. Dustin and Lucas hang back the entire time. They are so silent when she reaches for the gun
Robin beats her to it, though. She opens her mouth as though to tell her to look away, but thinks better of it. Nancy watches and waits. Despite herself, her eyes slam shut when Robin pulls the trigger.
It seems like a long time before Lucas wordlessly brings over a shovel, even longer before Nancy takes it. She stabs at the ground with it angrily, silently. She gets a splinter. She stabs her own toe. She almost does it again when Robin’s hands wrap around her elbow and her hand. "Nance,” she’s saying. And it's so soft. “Stop.”
She’s pretty sure Robin's the only person who could get her to let go.
Robin finishes digging the grave with smooth, slow movements. Nancy watches her dip lower and lower beneath the earth, until it’s just the top of her head that’s visible. Lucas and Dustin help her roll the body into it, and then they cover it up together. Stare at the freshly overturned earth. Nancy wants to throw up. She doesn’t realize she’s shaking until her teeth clatter. She tenses up all her muscles and wills it to stop. It happened again. It’ll all happen again.
Robin reaches out and takes her balled up hand in her own without looking at her. Slowly, she unfurls it so she can touch her palm to Robin's.
*****
This is the fourth bed they’ve slept in together. (Not that she’s counting.)
It’s not a discussion or a thing. When they find a place to squat in that happens to have a bed, they use it. She sleeps on the right, Robin on the left. She always faces away from Robin, curled up on her side, wondering if Robin can feel Nancy's heartbeat through the mattress or if it’s just her.
She suspects Robin's as afraid to touch her as she is to touch Robin, although she’s not sure if it’s for the same reasons. People die, people die, people die, she keeps thinking, especially when she feels that pull towards the taller girl. Sometimes, though, it seems inevitable. Sometimes when they gasp awake from their nightmares it seems impossible not to reach out for the other person in the dark, impossible not to pull the other person in. They seem unable to keep away from each other in sleep.
This time, though, she curls into Robin because she wants to, not just because she feels like if she doesn’t she’ll fall apart. If she cries, they don’t talk about it.
And if they wake up pressed together, her nose in the crook of Robin's neck and her hair in Robin's mouth, they don’t talk about that, either.
*****
Of all the things Nancy expected out of today, being held at gunpoint by an angry dark haired girl with a bum leg was not one of them.
She knew they shouldn’t have stayed. It was obvious someone had been living here recently; she’d pointed out the fresher food in the kitchen and the pile of blankets at the foot of the bed, as if the nail gun booby traps and lines of broken glass guarding every entrance weren’t enough. But no, they just had to wait out the storm here.
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All That's Left Behind - ronance
FanfictionShe spots a girl who is definitely not Max on the side of the road, surrounded by the walking dead. She could keep going, she doesn't have to help this stranger. But she stops. She supposes in Max's absence she needs someone to protect. Robin is on...
