[Flashback] Athazagoraphobia [Nina]

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

Jonathan had been walked by himself around the campus nearly the whole day. He didn’t have any classes to attend as it was a Sunday and most of the campus was closed, but there was a few select areas open for students to study and work. His head was buried in a medical book as he walked, studying for nothing. It actually had nothing to do with the classes he was taking at the moment, though it wouldn’t hurt. It gave an insight into how to perform surgery with less than operable tools. He would probably never have to put such uses into practice, but the more he knew the better.

He walked along the sidewalk not watching where he was going until suddenly, Slam! He had run into a less than solid object, but it was enough to stagger him back. Before he actually noticed what he had hit he heard the pound of several items hitting the ground, among them his book. His eyes cast down at the sidewalk immediately and he saw papers lying in chaos where there was once order. He looked up and caught eyes with a dark haired woman, but she wasn’t unfamiliar to him.

They were in a cellular biomedical class together. He knew her name though between the staring and the staggering from what happened it took him a moment to grasp just what it was. He stared at her awkwardly for a long moment as she pulled herself back together from the rough hit. “ I…Miss Stenet…” He stammered and leaned down to collect the papers and book he had dropped. He didn’t really know what to say beyond that.

A bundle of papers was collected in his arms, though not in the order they dropped in for sure. He offered the pile to her regardless, without even picking up his own book. He tried to think of something else he needed to say, but he was so awkward in these social situations. But he was supposed to say something, society required it, demanded it of him. “Just a walk?...” He twitched a bit frustrated and tried to collect his composure.” Sunday walk?.....How is your Sunday?” He managed to scrape out from the bottom of the barrel as he tried to get a wrangle on the situation.

He normally was bad in social on the spot situations when he wasn’t in control. Being a psychologist he never feared, he was already good at it. As one he had complete control of another but here, things were different….but it wasn’t just that. She was different. His mouth felt dry and he couldn’t figure out why but he was hating it for happening and slowly blocking everything he could muster for a warm conversation. She wouldn’t answer him, she’d walk right by….It didn’t matter…He could just let it go….Build those walls…and keep them up.

He rolled his lips under at that thought. Of course she wasn’t going to see him or acknowledge he was there, even though they had in class before for one thing or another, but most things involved study. This was outside of the classroom, in an uncontrolled situation and she was…Different. He rubbed his palms on his less than spruced slacks and waited for her to reject any verbal contact at all.

[Nina Stenet]

To say that Nina's mind was completely elsewhere when she exited the biology labs and hurried back to where she'd parked would be putting it mildly. She may have well been on a different planet entirely, given the amount of her attention she spared to her surroundings. Of course, it's partly that it's Sunday afternoon and the campus is practically deserted, so she didn't expect to see anyone anyway. Instead she not only sees someone, but knocks into them. Just barely able to keep her balance, she's less able to hang onto what she was carrying. "Agh!" she exclaims as it all falls to the ground.

Looking first at the papers on the ground, it isn't until the person she bumped into says her name that she looks and realizes she knows him. "Oh, um, Crane, isn't it?" she asks, having to fish in her mind a little bit to recall the name. They may be in a class together but they hardly know each other - he's kind of... weird, after all. Well, maybe not so much 'weird' as 'awkward', but... well, actually he's both, really.

Concerned by the idea that a breeze might choose this inconvenient moment to complicate things, she's quick to bend over and start gathering the papers she dropped. They'll be all out of order now, but that doesn't matter much - it wouldn't take her too long to fix that. What is important is to get all of them, so she works quickly. And she's quite grateful when she sees her efforts being aided by him - she returns that favor by picking up his book when the papers are gathered, handing it to him after he hands her the papers that he gathered, "Thanks! Sorry for that - I wasn't looking..." In fact, she failed to notice that he hadn't been looking either - they'd just been a collision waiting to happen, really.

With all the papers now back in her hands, she starts fussing over them, straightening the pile and making sure that they're all facing forward - they're all typed pages with a few charts and graphs, covered in marks and notes. His innocent question seems to throw her just a little, and she responds to it by saying, "Oh, um, no - I was just, you know, catching up on some of the lab work." While she's not as bold and confident as she will be someday, right now she's quite a bit more flustered than she normally is in class. And that had started long before she bumped into Crane.

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

Jonathan was expecting for her to just fix things and walk on by but instead she was talking to him, she was using his name. He stared at her, a look of loss and confusion on his face as to why they were standing here together. The law of action and reaction states that the force that they collided with was transferred evenly on both sides and dispersed. They had met like it was meant to happen in that instant, according to science. The universe was perfectly aligned to make that very incident happen, but he wondered why she was in such a hurry in the first place. Was she afraid that she wasn’t going to get something done for the week?

His mind studied and overanalyzed while she spoke but he was listening to her. “Oh.. He spoke idly and put one hand in his pocket after taking the book from her. Why did she feel the need to hand that to him? It was a gesture of kindness that confused him, he was beginning to understand better and better it simply wasn’t the case. As he stared into her eyes he slowly tried to pull the pieces together to make that fit, but he didn’t know enough about her.

Jonathan turned on the sidewalk and offered her the way she was walking. “Would you like the company?” He asked her with the again expected reaction of rejection, but it was worth the try to find out more. He had seen her around and seen how hard she was working. The field of study she chose was nothing that he would get too deeply focused upon but he was sure there was a reason why she had interest, the same that he had his own.

Though he was an awkward and extremely skinny man he was bold and confident on the outside. He knew what to expect but he would never show it to others. The whispers were there though, he knew what people said about him and what they always have. People avoided him because he was different, but he avoided them because they were all the same. Jonathan smiled at her and took the first step as to offer a bit more of the lead that he was going to go with her in that direction regardless. He was always a busy man, but in this case he had found something more interesting to take part in. There was something different about her, in a world where most would have cleared the pathway for the strange force…

She collided.

[Nina Stenet]

Okay, this is awkward - very awkward. And the way that he's looking at her doesn't help make it any less awkward... But her mind is full of far too many other things for her to dwell on the awkwardness for too long. In fact, she appears to be very distracted by something as she adjusts the papers in her hands.

And she seems to be a bit taken aback by his offer of company. "Oh, um..." she hesitates for a moment as her mind seems to fly off in all sorts of directions before she can figure out a response to that. "Well, if you want to - I'm just headed to my car," she finally decides is the right reply to that. Yeah, that's probably the best response. She thinks. Or at least either a firm yes or no wouldn't have been right and that's somewhere in between.

With her papers straightened out - or at least as much as they can be until she has a chance to actually put them in the right order, a task that would be much easier with the aid of a table - she gives a hesitant smile as she continues the way she was going before. A part of her - well, most of her actually - would rather that he didn't come with her, but then again she has reasons not to say so and she'll be able to manage anyway. She's just hoping against hope that his offer to join her is completely platonic, even though given the context she's strongly guessing that it isn't.

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

The whole time he had been standing there he expected rejection. It didn’t mean it had to be in a intimate way, it could have been in any way. People avoided him, it had always been that way and he didn’t expect it to be any different now. But she had seemed like she took another course. Of course he wanted to walk her to her car, but the thought of it was pulling him to a much darker place. It was a place that he wanted to put aside for the moment, it could wait, he could wait and see.

His moods and thoughts were fluctuating quickly and the longer he stayed next to her, the more frustrated he became. She’d never genuinely think anything more than someone annoying that ran into her and messed up her work. She was busy and on her way to something that people of her kind went to. He could keep her if he wanted to, he could drag her away and no one could ever find her. He had made things like that disappear from his life before, why would it be so difficult this time? He could keep her….He could destroy her….

The thought caused his muscles to tense but he quickly let it go as easily as it came. It wasn’t the time for that right now and it was better to keep her here. This was a place that she would freely go, he could watch her here. He could keep her here without her even knowing. Then she wouldn’t be able to hurt him. After all, she wasn’t genuine and never would be. But at the same time he felt compelled to do something for her….

He would.

“Ah, leaving campus..I was wondering If you…” he swallowed and halted his words as if something inside had reared back the reigns of his speech as hard as they could. It was a lump that was difficult to swallow but he kept his composure through the awkward moment. “Nevermind….I wont hold you up any further…” He retracted.

If she wouldn’t come to him he’d have to make a lure…and he already had something in mind. She’d be back in the classroom soon and he could do it then.

[Nina Stenet]

As he seems to start to ask her for something, Nina's eyebrows lift in curiosity. "If I?" she tries to prompt when he stops. Though when he starts up again by changing his mind about both completing that thought and coming with her, she can't help but be extremely relieved - though of course she's polite enough to keep that from reaching her expression. Instead she's quickly nodding and says, "Okay. I'll... see you around I guess?" Because she's bound to run into him again sometime, given that they're classmates - hopefully not literally next time.

Flashing him an overly quick smile, she doesn't wait to see if he'll change his mind as she continues towards her car - forcing herself to walk at a quick but not-too-quick pace. She'd like to get out of here as quickly as possible, but she doesn't want to look like she's doing anything more than happening to walk quickly. Of course, what he couldn't possibly know is that has absolutely nothing to do with him.

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

He stood there, a bit disheveled as she got back to her car to leave. He raised his hand in a final goodbye to her while his mind raced about what to do. Crane turned back down the pathway headed back into lab with her on his mind. The way she spoke to him was confusing, she acknowledged everything he said, listened and responded but in the end she still pulled away. She always would, everyone always would….And he could prove it.

He lifted his head as he went into the lab and began to prepare something for the next class. They were going over simple things this time of year, following a simple parasite through the human body and using different antibodies to corral and control the invasion. It was all done at the microscopic level and it wasn’t very difficult to understand, yet there were so few in the class still. The thought of passing the actual lab hadn’t occurred to him in this moment as he got inside and started pulling out microscope and tools, he had something bigger in mind. If he set it up ahead of time he could still do his own work on that day.

He rummaged through drawers and found his own slides. He was careful with each detail that he put in place; he needed to make sure everything was perfect. For the next 4 hours he stood hunched over a microscope and micro tools. A few people came in and did their own work but he paid them no mind, no one talked to him anyway. He didn’t need assistance with this, he just needed to make sure that she got the slide that he was preparing and the solution he was making. It wouldn’t affect her work, or the need to discontinue the project, or even get another specimen to work with. From what he knew about the experiment as long as it was in front of her she could do the task.

Once he had everything in place on the slide he put it in a safe area and allowed them to do their work.


The morning of lab he had arrived early and took a seat to go over his notes. He thumbed through several pages of chicken scratch that to some would seem like nonsense. But the pages made perfect sense to him and that was what mattered the most. He had no need to look over the experiment before it was conducted, it was easy enough. He had done a major part of it when he had set up something for Miss Stenet.

He rolled over the thought that he had actually done something for someone. It had been a long time since he had done that, but it wasn’t that he didn’t have his own motive. That was what everyone was after, but it this case he wanted her reaction. He wanted to crush and diminish anything that gave light against the possibility that he was right. He knew he was right and he was going to prove it today.

He spotted Miss Stenet when she came in but the professor came in next and his head went back to his notes. Once everyone had gotten their microscopes and were given the instructions on the experiment. When Miss Stenet has went to get the experiment materials and slipped across and down the aisle to where she had left. He slid the prepared slide onto the mechanical stage and locked it in place of the one that was on it. Afterward he had passed her like nothing happened and went to get his own work. Once he had collected everything he began to work.

It took several minutes before he looked up again just to catch Miss Stenet focusing her microscope for the first time. He rolled his lips and began to doubt if this was ever a good idea. Of course she wouldn’t realize it, why did he think she would? Even if she did what would it matter? She’d just do the same thing she did last time. It was all the same, people were all the same….She’d be afraid of him. On her slide he had created a solution carefully to make the antibodies move in place and be anchored to a particular point on the microorganism. When focused properly, as she surely would do….The antibodies would be placed in such a way as to spell “Boo” In neatly spaced letters. It took him hours to make sure it would work right. His eyes went from his lenses to her, trying to see her reaction.

[Nina Stenet]

To say that this class is a bit tedious for Nina would be putting it a bit mildly. While she may not have the real finesse with her gift that she'll have later, the labs that they're going through are still so easy that she could do them in her sleep. Maybe she should try to challenge herself by doing them without her gift? ...Nah, no need to give herself more work to do when she also has other classes in need of her attention. She didn't want to take it in the first place, but it's extremely required for the degree she's pursuing.

When she arrives, she's practically running on automatic as she collects the equipment and other materials needed for the lab as instructed by the professor, and doesn't really take any note that the classmate she bumped into the other day is present. Once she has all of it, she settles down to work. Hopefully she can quickly whip out this assignment and therefore use the saved time for other things. After carefully arranging everything in front of her, she starts to work on the lab assignment itself.

But only someone watching her very carefully might notice the subtle signs that she's not using her microscope properly. Though she adjusts the coarse focus properly, instead of actually turning the knob for the fine focus, she simply rests her hand there for a moment. And she's failing to sit up straight enough to be looking straight down the eyepiece, though only by a little, as she's merely putting her eye in the proper place but not actually looking.

Still, there's a reaction to the slide in spite of her improper microscope use. Her forehead wrinkles in confusion, and she removes her eye from the microscope to look at the slide directly for a moment before she puts her eye to the eyepiece again. Her expression grows even more confused and she sits up again rather quickly, staring at nothing in front of herself as if pondering something very deeply. Then her face shifts to a frown and she again looks into the eyepiece, but this time she's looking into it properly and her hand actually turns the fine focus as she's looking. And when she gets it into proper focus, she blinks at it for a moment in surprise.

And then she's suddenly covering her mouth, hastily suppressing a sudden laugh in an effort to not draw the attention of her fellow classmates to herself, and needing to look away from it for a moment to keep herself contained. But then, of course, she needs to look again to confirm that she actually did see what she saw, which only renews her amusement though at a more controlled level this time. Yep, it says 'Boo', all right. How in the world?

Well, she can partially answer that already - she already knows that her slide has been tampered with - and probably quite recently too. But by who and why? Especially since arranging the antibodies so precisely, while actually quite easy for her, would be extremely tricky for anyone without her gift or something like it. It could easily have taken hours, so whoever did it must have been quite determined to do so. And, realizing that, her attention drifts to her classmates and she scans through them for anyone showing any signs of watching her - surely whoever the prankster is wanted to catch her reaction to their handiwork.

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

Jonathan was trying to focus on his work, he shouldn’t look up at all, but he had went through all the trouble. What if she caught him looking? What then? What exactly did he mean by doing this in the first place? His hair stood on end as no answer came to his mind. He kept looking through his eye pieces until he finally convinced himself to glance in her direction. He knew she was looking and looking again. Maybe she wasn’t getting it, perhaps he messed up. But that was impossible, everything was so clear, it wasn’t his mistake.

Suddenly her eyes came up and a smile was written on her lips. Their eyes caught and his immediately went back down to his eye pieces and then back to hers. He felt so stupid, like a school boy fumbling with his microscope. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he should have been done by now. If anything she was probably turning to laugh at him. Hours of work wasted on someone that simply couldn’t understand the message or the meaning behind it. It seemed everywhere he turned he was running into that.

But somewhere, he hoped that she was different.

His eyes stayed on hers for a longer moment, just trying to give her the knowledge that it was he who did that to her specimen. If she had turned him down before she would do so again, but at least there was some concrete way now that he could prove that she would do the same thing over and over. There would never be any other choice she would make, because feeling anything for another human being simply wasn’t the reality of it. He could feel it inside….and he could see it in others.

She and every other would pick their way through this world avoiding the things that brought them out of comfort to things that didn’t. It was difficult to explain, but he knew it was the truth, he’d seen it. His whole career had been built around that feeling of what he knew was true. The world was acting upon the only thing that it knew how to do. With this knowledge he was going to do whatever it took to reach the top of his career, unfortunately that meant going through this glass and seeing her….But it wasn’t as horrible as he would outwardly confess.

His eyes went to hers again from his scope, the third time he’d looked.

[Nina Stenet]

When her eyes meet Crane's, at first Nina is sure that it was just a coincidence that he happened to be looking in her direction when she started trying to see who was looking at her. He certainly doesn't seem like the type to try that hard to get her attention - and whoever it was, they were certainly trying to get her attention - and besides he looks away so quickly that she's sure it hadn't been intentional.

But another more obvious culprit among their classmates doesn't present themselves, and it's only a moment later when she sees him looking her way again - this time more boldly, as if an admission. Caught even more by surprise that he's the one that did it, she can only give him an somewhat uncertain and what feels like a very lame smile back. She knows that she's flattered by the attention and effort, but... well, what does she do with that?

In the short term, the answer is simple: she uses the lab work that they're supposed to be doing as a way to distract herself from that question. Unfortunately, it really isn't a difficult one at all for her, so the assignment only takes her as much time as it takes to write down the answers - pointless busywork, really, though she can see how it would be helpful to the students without her gift. When that's over, she finds herself staring at her completed assignment pondering things completely unrelated.

The first thing to puzzle over is what exactly is meant when a guy writes 'Boo!' in antibodies to you. She's quite certain that there's no precedent in history for that! What she does know is that, except in the extraordinarily unlikely case that he has a gift like hers, it took a rather large amount of time. So what does it mean when a guy goes to great lengths to say, 'Boo!'? For a moment she has the frightening thought that he might have known what she did just before they bumped into each other, but no - that would be impossible. Several locked doors prove that idea wrong. In the end she has to conclude that there's no real intent in the message itself, which is probably more an indication that he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, but more in the presentation of it - that's the impressive part of it.

In the end, it actually only takes her a few minutes to decide what to do. Because, really, what's the worst that could happen? Finally setting down her pen on her assignment, she turns her attention back over to her slide. Very carefully, she uses the pin to open up the cover on the slide, and after setting that aside, she adjusts the microscope and begins to move the pin just over the surface of the slide while holding her eye to the eyepiece, as if making very delicate adjustments to it.

The truth is, of course, doing anything on that scale with a regular pin instead of proper tools is... well, not impossible, but implausibly difficult - like cleaning an ant with a toothbrush without hurting it. So she merely creates the illusion that she's using the pin while not actually letting it make any contact with the slide's contents. Instead that's a cover for what she's doing with her gift. Since her assignment is done, she spends the rest of the class period on the task, not looking up to see if Crane sees that she's doing something to the slide but assuming so. Just before the instructor announces that time is up, she carefully replaces the cover on the slide then cleans up her table - returning her equipment, putting the slide back where she found it, and placing her completed assignment on the instructor's desk on her way out.

Though she can't help but glance at Crane along the way to see if there's any sign that he's going to go see what she did to the slide. She's quite proud of her little masterpiece, after all. Underneath his message is a considerably longer one, in spite of the fact that she definitely didn't have nearly as much time to write it as he would have used. In a very clear, very neat arrangement of antibodies is a phone number. And all the zeros in the number have a face - a screaming face, to be exact.

[Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow]

When Jonathan actually caught her eyes he held them still, unable to look away as he didn’t before. There was a moment there that he felt his heart skip. The feeling made him immediately sick and brought up terrible memories that still haunted his mind. Was it too hard to believe that everyone had an ulterior motive? Was it too farfetched to believe that she looked in his direction and caught his gaze not to admire what he’d done for her but to see what she could gain from him? These thoughts were never far from his mind and as far as he had known in the world it was the truth.

But as he had come to know through all of his time in school everything required more testing. He couldn’t prove it upon one result; the same thing had to happen over and over again for it to even start to become substantial. Somewhere deep inside him he knew the truth, but he was a researcher, a scientist like Miss Stenet and he wanted to move forward with this. He knew that she had been laughing before, what she had been laughing at was still a mystery to him but she her eyes caught his she wasn’t laughing anymore. Her smile in his direction was weak and almost unsure.

Jonathan’s eyes went back to his own work and he focused on it heavily. He wanted all thought of what he’d done to be pushed from his mind and he would not look up again until his work was through. He completed the task of what needed to be done shortly after Miss Stenet had finished hers. He had not even seen her leave the room. There was a part in his gut that twisted even at the thought. He didn’t want to look up to be laughed at again, he was a fool for trying and wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to accomplish.

Whatever this was, it was fogging his mind. However, unclear things were he finished his assignment, turned the knobs back to their proper place on his microscope and put it up. He removed the slide from it and went to take it back to its proper place. He stalled in front of it and stared down at number 13, the tray he’d given to her. Without another thought he went back to the cupboard and got out his microscope again. He grabbed the slide and slid it under to bring it into focus.

Jonathan lifted from his eye pieces after only a moment to contemplate was he was seeing. He removed his glasses from his face and set them on the counter to get a better look. There in the middle of the slide was a string of numbers, a phone number to be exact with the zero’s screaming at him. Had she done this in the time they were given? She had to have done it in that time, anything else he would have known about. He lifted away from it and for a rare moment he was colored impressed. He would never say he couldn’t do it himself, but the amount of time and control that took was incredible. He took the slide, put away the microscope and shoved it into his pocket.

The string of numbers kept looping over in his mind until he nearly had it memorized. She had given him her number…An invitation to call her. His body shuddered at the thought but he covered it quickly by grabbing his glasses, book and moving out the door. On his long walk home he debated upon how he would call her, if he’d call her. What would he say? He could only imagine a long awkward silence on the phone. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, but he didn’t have a concept of what was supposed to happen either. As his mind jumbled and twirled he made his way home, to make his final choice on the matter.
He wasn’t afraid.
He’d call.

Just once.