#flayed!nancy

God damn Nonnie you know I love flayed Robin au

I'm actually working on a piece of art for it, though my Dead Dove has taken over the brain space I was using.

I always like to imagine Robin following a similar timeline of being initially Flayed in s1, so the concept of her being flayed in s5 got me thinking. One thing I've thought about are the little spores of Vecna in the air of the upside down, and after being there for a certain amount of time, you don't have a choice on whether or not you've been maybe just a little flayed.

There is a fic that someone posted in the Ronance tag that was, honestly, one of my favs that I've read that kind of plays with this concept, the only one I've seen like it so far. It's been hidden in a collection, unfortunately.

Essentially the exposure to the upside down starts changing the teens on a physical level, starting with their indifference to cold temperatures, followed by a lack of need for food, and completed with a kind of slowly spreading awareness/telepathy of the minds and thoughts of the people around them. In the fic, Nancy could know what anyone was thinking/could experience what they were feeling within 100 mile radius of herself which is double what it had been the previous month.

I really like the idea of them being infected by the underground, and how it might be changing their DNA, how the 'hive mind' translates over to the human world. A different version of being flayed entirely while retaining some of the core elements. It would be interesting to see, then, how they responded to Vecna when he came back for his final shot. Maybe the way they were effected by the Upside down created something new, something similar to the monsters of the upside down, but not subservient to their creator. I imagine the three surviving teens would be the first to experience these changes and maybe Jonathan and Dustin experience it on some level, even if they weren't exposed for very long.