Even though his nerves were shot, he managed to roll his eyes at Nina’s brusk tone and pointed actions. Eugene would never admit it ( like, literally fucking never. He had a rep to maintain, alright? ), but he sort of appreciated how blunt she always was. Nina wasn’t going to baby him; she wasn’t going to sit him down and ask to hear about his life story, which would inevitably just make him feel fucking worse. Nina was going to be Nina and Eugene was going to be Eugene and that would be the end of it.
He let out a shaky breath, folding his arms across his chest in an attempt to stop the tremors ( or at least make them less obvious ) as she pushed past him. He watched her for a moment, trying to focus on anything other than the bullshit in his head, and almost couldn’t help the small smile that worked its way across his face.
“If I was going to get rid of a body, I wouldn’t get rid of it out here,” she snorted, completely missing his joke. “Bodies decompose much slower than you’d think in this temperate weather, so instead of bones it’d be more like hunks of rotting meat mixed with some dead leaves. If I was going to get rid of a body, there’s a nice mix of chemicals in the lab that would do the trick. And,” she shot him a look. “You would never know about it.”
She dug around for awhile, and couldn’t find her notes. Her annoyance began to turn to mild panic as she wondered if anyone would have stolen them. No, that was impossible. She cleared her throat and tried to keep her voice even.
Elswood was a prison on a bad day, and an even longer, even shitter version of high school on a good day – and both of those things meant that it was almost impossible to ever be completely alone unless you were in the bathroom ( and even then, some people here had no fucking boundaries ). Eugene was well aware of that fact – he didn’t fucking like it, but he knew the drill. Knew to keep his head in check, knew not to complain about personal space around other people when most everybody here considered his mere fucking presence an invasion of privacy ( like he had a choice in his own power or something people could be so stupid, honestly ), and usually he was okay. Not great, but not on the verge of freaking out 24/7, which was more than he could say for a lot of the others here.
Today, though. Today was hard.
Eugene had skipped his morning classes, not really in the mood to play “model student” ( not that he ever was ) and somehow managed to find himself out the front doors and at the forest’s edge ( no farther – it’s not like he had a death wish ). The only thought on his mind was home, where he could sneak a cigarette from his appa’s ever-present pack of Camels whenever he couldn’t stop the shake in his hands. His eyes were closed, trying to tune out everything around him, until the sound of footsteps nearby made him turn his head.
Nina’s Sinister Master Plan™ wasn’t quite ready to begin. Even after years of quiet observation, she didn’t trust anyone to tell about her ideas just yet, and telling the wrong person you wanted to break out of Elswood would ensure that you did not ever get out of Elswood. Plus there was the research: scattered, unfocused, not enough equipment or correct variables. But she was doing what she could.
It’d been a few weeks since the last time she’d made herself pass out in the forest on purpose, and so far there had been no lasting repercussions. That was to be expected, since her brain was so much brainier than normal. Instead of doing that again she would just go into the woods and retrieve her data and do more in depth analysis in her room. Then if Haneul was available they could do more memory tests on sleepwalkers.
She stomped through the forest, no reason to be quiet, her reasons for this particular project were all lined up and ready to go if anyone asked. Besides, people rarely questioned the resident super genius. She was lost in her thoughts when she heard Eugene’s voice first, then saw him standing a few yards ahead.
“Not here for you,” she said briskly, brushing past him. She stopped. Started again. Stopped. Then she dropped to her knees and started to dig through the dirt with her hands.
“In chess, pawns are the most numerous pieces. Symbolically they represent soldiers in war, armed peasants who marched into battle by the thousands. They are also the weakest. Many times, you will sacrifice your pawns early for movement across the board.”
-One of Nina’s schoolteachers, teaching her how to play.
I must be in the hospital.
That was Nina’s first thought, because when she opened her eyes the white lights were blinding. And in her experience white lights meant hospitals. They could also mean death, she reasoned, but that was something she wasn’t sure about.
Because she was Nina, and her mind was always sure to fire away no matter what was going on, her next thoughts all came in a steady jumble: Must have been an asthma attack; My lungs feel fine now. That’s good; My hip then? No, in fact my body doesn’t even feel bad. It’s my head, it’s all my head-
She sat up, blinking, rubbing the back of her neck. It didn’t take long for her to realize that this wasn’t any sort of hospital, it was nothing she’d ever seen before. Her throat tightened and she clenched her fists. She was terrified.
“Well, this is fucking dramatic.”
She was all alone in a white room, set up to appear as unsettling as possible. Her heart beat a little faster as she let it all settle over her: just a moment ago she’d lay down to sleep in her prison cell in Moscow, her cellmate Elina snoring noisily above her. And now she was here. Logically she was still in the prison somewhere, in another lesser known wing. She stayed still on the bed (didn’t want to appear to be making any sudden movements. She was sure she was being monitored), and her eyes searched for cameras, cracks in the walls, a way out.
“If you wanted me to join the nuclear program, you could have just asked,” she said cooly. “Or maybe this is your way of telling me I’m a spy now?” she snorted. Of all the Soviet cliches. “Can you imagine? I can barely run two laps with this bum hip of mine, and I’m being treated like a KGB stereotype in an American film,” she craned her neck to get a better look at the ceiling. There was nothing she could make out but sickeningly bright lights, and she closed her eyes tightly, massaged her temples.
“Or,” she swung her legs over the side of the bed slowly, telegraphing her movements. She was proud of how calm she sounded. “This is the beginning of some kind of experimentation. I’ll just say this: if you’re planning on chopping my head off and sewing it to my ass just to see what happens, please sedate me again first. I’m––”
The door swung open and she was quickly ushered out of the room. She walked along as straight as she could, but her hip was bothering her and stress from the fear was making her limp more pronounced. But she kept her head high, and resisted the urge to ask her new handlers to slow down.
For all she knew, she would be taking her last steps. She let her mind wander to her mother for a bit. Not her present day mother, who was devastated that her daughter had been arrested in Moscow in the first place, but maybe her mother circa her childhood, who always managed to feed her and buy her sweets every now and then, no matter how broke she was. That was comforting, and Nina felt her mind go someplace far away, to a nice park with pretty flowers and her mother tall and beautiful and smiling above her.
Another door. Now she was in an auditorium and people were being herded in like cattle, ordered to fill in the rows. Some of them whispered amongst themselves, some cried hysterically, others walked around as though they were asleep, and hadn’t awakened to this new world yet. Nina silently watched it all, taking in the foreign languages she heard (English, German, Spanish, Japanese), guessing the ages of all the people in the auditorium (late teens, early twenties. Just like her). She couldn’t hear another Russian speaker. So perhaps they weren’t in Moscow after all.
That thought scared her even worse, and she felt her arms trembling as she took a seat in between a boy with blonde hair who was crying and a girl who whispered “No. No no no. No nononononono,” over and over. And then the lights all went out and the movie came on.
Nina listened closely so that even now, years after the fact, she could recite the orientation by heart.
Once you’ve entered Elswood, there is no way out of Elswood for there is no need to leave.
She listened to the rules of the school and watched her new peers. They all looked terribly pathetic together, scared and cold and so disoriented. Nina herself was still trembling. She slid down in her seat some, willed the orientation message to ingrain itself inside her head. The boy with blonde hair began to cry louder and louder, and she carefully placed one hand over his on the armrest. He looked at her, startled, and she held a finger to her lips, letting her eyes flicker over to some of the people who had brought them in.
That sign was universal. Shhh. Quiet. Don’t let them hear you. He nodded and after a few more sniffles he calmed down.
After orientation Nina found herself limping towards another line, where she received a number, a room assignment, a handbook. She chewed on the inside of her cheek while she waited. Overnight she had traded one prison for another, and this one seemed to be even dangerous than what she’d been up to in Moscow. She would have to be careful.
It was her turn. A stone faced woman held out a heavy book to her with HANDBOOK boldly written on the front.
Nina grabbed it with both hands and nodded, looking the woman straight in her eyes.
Ten years of Elswood.
That was quite the flawless record - for many many things that he was neither proud or ashamed of. Konstantin was quite the presence now, even if maybe not the most sociable among faculty members or rather, according to his probabilities, the lesser. Not so much because he didn’t want to be around his colleagues and now students but because it was so difficult, to understand them, their minds and to withstand the noise and every behavior that grilled him. It was hard. Being around people. For a 6′5′’ tall man, he was told he didn’t own up to it. Truth be told, sometimes he felt as he knew as little as his proteges within the Academy Walls.
Much more given to the protection of his office or classroom, to their stillness and silence and the rules his students would have to follow - or back in his TA days that were but a year ago, where he could stay at the library undisturbed. The physicist was rarely seen anywhere but those places, not the most talkative either, if anyone would ask, he remained quite the “Serious Teacher” and people were afraid of him. If only they knew it was the classical - he was much more afraid of them than they were afraid of him. And yet he understood their world, the enclosed world that was Elswood in his own way and didn’t go against it. Even with powers that could might as well do so.
Speaking of said powers - as all of his classes were theoretical, Konstantin always made a point of never disclosing his abilities to any student, for it was much too dangerous. Still, one thing Grigori had told him was that not only a trained mind or body but trained skills make one whole. It is after dusk that he stays by the lake, appreciating the fact there are no students or faculty within his surroundings to train. He changes the lake’s colour to bright pink with a motion of both hands, talking to himself in his mother language still, keeping what Grigori would’ve called a “spell”. Around the borders of the lake, changes the grass foliage to soft blue fuzz. It is approaching steps that disrupt his concentration - and from the ring of blue grass around the lake, tendrils of violently red tall grass spark. Konstantin frowns intently at it, startled. “Careful.” He speaks stiffly, motioning his hands to reverse the changes. “Very dangerous.”
“Shhhh....” Nina said, and she was trying to be soothing, honest, but it probably came out harsher than she meant it to. It was a scene she knew very well: sitting beside someone in the library who was having a breakdown and crying during a tutoring session. Over the years, she learned that while grades could be the cause for tears, it was usually something much worse. Homesickness, depression, isolation. So day after day Nina picked up her fellow classmates, dusted them off, told them they would survive. She rarely told them it would be alright, because she didn’t believe that anyone could be alright in this environment. But she believed down to her core that they could all survive, so that’s what she told them.
“Shhhh....” she waited until the sobs broke off into soft whimpers. Then, in a firmer voice “Stop crying. It’s not hopeless. See? You’ve just missed a few steps. I’ll show you,” and she took out a clean sheet of paper and showed them step by step. And then they did another problem, and another, until the paper was all filled up and her pupil was nodding in understanding. A few minutes later they were gone and Nina was left to sit and listen to the clock tick on the wall and watch the students walk by, aimlessly as ghosts.
She took out another sheet of paper and started working on her own problem. The Beal Conjecture, another unsolvable problem. It started out easily enough: A^x + B^y = C^z. From there, it only got exponentially harder. She wrote out her proofs, stopped once to go search for a book in the library to quickly consult a theorem. She wrote through page after page, ignoring the cramp in her hand and the crick in her neck. By sundown she’d gotten it: a string of letters and positive integers that would probably make her a millionaire if she were on the outside. People paid good money to see the impossible done. She stuffed her things in her bag and thought she’d go to Konstantin. It was nice to share the small victories.
He wasn’t in his office so she took her time roaming around campus searching for him. His schedule dictated that he wouldn’t be turning in just yet; it was too early. Finally she found him by the lake, and it was only after he seemed a little startled that she realized what he’d been doing. The flashes of strange color rapidly disappeared as Nina approached.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you,” she said in Russian. Her expression was mostly neutral, but anyone who knew Nina could read the warmth in her eyes. She paused a moment, then said, “I solved another math problem today.”
A smiling blind boy and a stoic red haired girl come up to you after orientation, a white notebook given to you and reassurance that things aren’t all that bad, and that you’re welcome to visit them anytime soon for some instruction, reassurance, or someone to talk to. He babbles on and on about “dear old Elswood” and she instructs ( commands? ) you to take a look at the notebook you have in your hands before leaving, with the smiling one following a few minutes after.
You look at the cover as they leave—WHAT THEY HAVEN’T TOLD YOU: A STUDENT’S GUIDE TO ELSWOOD and shrug, didn’t staff already give you a handbook for this school? You figure that it couldn’t hurt to look and so you read, hoping that this would be better than the one you read previously. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? You’ve already been kidnapped and brought here, so there’s nothing that could really faze you anymore. Other than aliens. But still.
Eugene stumbled forward incredulously, like his own fucking feet were betraying him. He took the cookie from Nina’s hand before unceremoniously shoving all the snacks around ( he’s not gonna not sit on his own fucking bed ) and plopping down in the now-empty space. He took a tentative bite of the cookie, a part of him thinking that this is all part of some elaborate plan to poison him and throw his body in the forest, as the girls continued to chatter on around him. When he was about halfway through the cookie, he decided to speak up.
“So, I have a question.”
“When you guys planned this party, did you just. Forget to plan me into it?”
Nina made a disapproving noise when Eugene brushed all the snacks aside, grabbing onto one of those small individual boxes of heart shaped candies before it fell off the bed. They’d had a nice layout, and now Eugene was sitting where the pretzels were supposed to go. She watched him nibble at the cookie (her cookie, because she’d already mentally called dibs) and rolled her eyes.
“Relax, this is not how I’m going to kill you, trust me. At worst you’ll get a stomach ache from eating too many chocolates,” she paused when he asked his question, giving Rory an exaggerated glance. Honestly, he was the most forgetful person she’d ever met. And she was constantly surrounded by kids with artificially induced amnesia.
“A week ago, in the cafeteria. Remember? We all discussed this. You were there. Tell him Rory.”
Eugene couldn’t help but squint in confusion as he tried to register everything that was coming out of their mouths. Why were they so nonchalant about this? Did they break into his dorm? Had they been here for a while? Were they planning his murder or something? Were they getting fucking cookie crumbs in his bed?
He felt himself shaking his head as his eyes darted from the snacks to the girls to the laptop sitting in front of them and then back over again as he waited for a fucking lightbulb that was never going to go off. Their thoughts ( he didn’t peek that deep, just listened for snippets ) seemed to be about the same as the shit they were saying out loud, which didn’t help at all, so he finally just gave up and asked.
“What…what are you doing in here? How did you get in?”
“We picked the lock, it really wasn’t that hard,” Nina deadpanned. She sighed and pressed pause on the screen. “We decided this days ago, remember? Valentine’s day movies and snacks in Eugene’s room, on Valentine’s Day. You weren’t here so Slater let us in of course. Now, do you want a cookie? Because if you’re not going to eat it, I’m going to eat it.”
Eugene had a bio lab he had to make up, and the only free time his professor had for him to do it was after everyone else’s classes already ended – because that’s how he wanted to spend his evening. So it wasn’t until late in the evening, after the sun had gone down, that Eugene was finally able to drag himself back to his dorm. He’d skipped dinner, but he was pretty sure Slater had some shit stashed in the mini-fridge ( and if Eugene was really nice he might even heat it up for him ), but really all he wanted to do was flop down on his bed and go to sleep.
As soon as he walked through the door to see Rory and Nina giggling on his bed, he knew that the universe, apparently, had other plans for him. ( He also thought that the universe was a fucking asshole, but that wasn’t really anything new. ) He paused in the doorway for a moment, just trying to figure out if his eyes were fucking with him or not, before he managed to muster out a single word.
“That would be a big improvement. Or maybe even she gets with her other friend––the blonde girl who actually listens to her when she-” the door swung open and Nina opened her mouth to say hey to Slater, but instead there was Eugene. He looked perplexed, sort of annoyed, but that was usual for him. Before she could tell him to come in, he spoke.
“Eugene, thought you were never going to join,” she said. “Happy Valentine’s day.” There were just a few more cookies left, and Nina had already mentally called dibs on them but she just gestured to them. “Glad you could finally make it. We have cookies. But you’ll have to sit on the floor though, because the snacks are taking up the available space on the bed.”
“Yeah, of course he could get one, everyone loves the broody guy who hates everything. It’s like, it gives them more of a challenge, you know? Oh my god - who was this girl? Would I know her?” After a few seconds of acting overly curious Rory gave her a look, with an arch of her brow. “Okay, well I’m not gonna believe that. He must tell you everything. How else would you know about his secret admirer?”
Rory smiled, feeling honoured by Nina’s reply. How sweet of her - really. “Aww, I know what you mean.” She paused for a moment, wrinkling her nose. “I guess I don’t hate it, but I have reasons not to like it, never getting a card is one of them, also being single is another. But being here with you makes up for all that!” She nudged Nina gently and grinned.
“Ooh a love triangle, that never happens.” She replied sarcastically, but still with a chuckle. “Do you think it’ll be with his best friend or the nerdy guy who kept bumping into her earlier?”
Nina shook her head. “She was pretty new, so I’m not sure. Umm, dark hair. I think she was in Ignis. Can’t remember her name. I was helping her with homework and she asked me about Eugene, wanted me to introduce them. I never did though. If there’s one role I don’t want to play here, it’s matchmaker,” she shuddered. “Well, I don’t really care what he does as long as he doesn’t plan on bringing anyone in here soon. We have two more movies to watch after this.”
Nina popped another piece of candy in her mouth and looked at Rory in disbelief. “You’ve never been in a relationship? Why?” Not the most tactful way to say it, but that’s just how she was sometimes.
“I’m going to go with his best friend. Then there’ll be a dramatic fight between them. The bad boy and the...other bad boy.”
Nina stood outside of the lab, scribbling notes on a clipboard, cursing every now and then and marking out what she’d just written. She was nervous, though she’d never admit it, and she looked at her watch once, then twice. Haneul should be here any moment, and then they should get started. They’d need to be quick so as not to draw attention to themselves, but they couldn’t rush around either. That would also look suspicious. Right on time, Haneul turned the corner and approached Nina. She meant to say hi, but what came out was a nervous rush:
“You’re here, good. We need to get started right away. I’ve never done this before so I can’t tell you what’s going to happen exactly. But––but our test subjects aren’t in the best shape and they might react negatively. They’ll probably react negatively. I just wanted to let you know things could get uncomfortable.”
“Ugh, he does. These are not enough for three people, you’d expect him to be more considerate!” She grinned, lightly tapping her with the one on her lap. Plus they were flat, and Rory didn’t understand how he could sleep on such limp things. That could not be comfortable. “You really he think he got a date? And didn’t tell you? I don’t believe that for a second.“ She paused, looking over to her friend, a little confused by what she meant by that. “You mean the appeal of all the chocolates and how everything is all heart shaped and sweet?“
Rory couldn’t help but laugh at her reaction, how did she not see that coming? The moment these so-called actors locked eyes with each other it was bound to happen. “I told you!” She declared through her laughter, unwrapping one of the candies lying on the bed. “That would be great - bloody washing machine ate my last one.” She continued to laugh. “Do you think he’s actually gonna show or can I eat all of these?”
“He could. I know he acts like he can’t stand anyone but that doesn’t mean everyone feels the same. I know for a fact there was one girl a year younger than him that liked him. If he stopped scowling for a minute, I’m sure he could find a nice enough boy or girl to go out with. Besides,” she said, sort of as an afterthought, “he doesn’t tell me everything.”
“Not that,” she said with a snort. “I mean having an excuse to sit here with you watching this ridiculous film, feeling, you know,” she didn’t want to say the words normal, because by bringing it up it would remind them that their situation was very not normal. “What about you? You don’t seem to hate this holiday too much.”
Nina rolled her eyes when Rory started to laugh, and after a moment she joined in. “Okay, well then I’m going to predict a love triangle. They can’t be in love yet, there’s still half an hour left. Go ahead, eat them all. Serves him right,” Nina unwrapped a piece of candy and popped it into her mouth.
This was nice and exactly what she wanted to do this valentine’s. Just spend some time with her friend ( and possibly Eugene… maybe. If he ever returns ) watching some crappy movie neither of them had ever heard of before.
Rory chuckled, taking a few of them off the plate at the mention. “Who doesn’t show up to something planned in their own room? We have no reason to save him any.”
She shifted on the bed also, placing one of the pillows on top of her legs. “Oh yeah, I bet you a new sweater they end up kissing at the end of this scene too. I bet. You. This is no coincidence, Nina. And her dad is gonna go mad about it, of course.”
“He needs some new pillows,” she frowned. “Who knows what he’s doing now, probably wandering around like a small lost animal. Or maybe he got a date and just didn’t tell anyone about it,” she shrugged. “You know, I never really understood the appeal of this holiday but I’m starting to get the idea.”
“At the end of this scene? There’s barely any build up. No one does this in real life––oh,” she stopped short at the dramatic swell of the music, as the leading man swept up the woman in a kiss. “I suppose you’ll be wanting a grey sweater then, huh?” she smiled.
Nina shifted on Eugene’s bed before huffing and rearranging some pillows. A week ago they’d decided to observe Valentine’s day in his room with Rory, but they were on their third movie and he hadn’t shown up. Oh well.
“I’m not going to save him any cookies,” she said, wincing some. Her hip was bothering her a little worse than usual tonight, but most of the time she could ignore the pain with a distraction. And right now that distraction came in the form of cutesy Valentine’s themed snacks and a romcom.
“You know,” she looked at Rory with an incredulous expression. “The odds of both of them ending up at the same masquerade party and dancing together? Very small. Almost unbelievable.”
@ninamorevna I have portraits of him on the walls and my nightstand. Noelle was frightened of them at first but she’s used to it now. I pray to him every night to give me the strength to deal with questions like these.
What conspiracy theory do you genuinely believe in the most?
@ninamorevna that this place is run by tiny green aliens stacked on top of each other wearing trench coats. Seriously, take a close look at your teachers next time you see them.
Eugene didn’t really know what he was expecting, to be honest. Mercy? Pity? The light of God to come down and strike him dead where he stood so he wouldn’t have to take any of his fucking midterms?
Whatever he expected he really shouldn’t have been surprised at Nina’s response ( Or half-response really. She hadn’t even looked up from her laptop, which probably meant she was busy planning the destruction of all mankind or something ). And maybe he wasn’t, really. Maybe he was looking for someone to give him just enough of a negative to really push him over the edge and accept his inevitable failures.
So instead of plopping down in the chair across from her, instead of heaving a big heavy sigh and laying his shit out all on the table ( because when the fuck had he ever done that? ), Eugene ran an errant hand through his hair, shrugging his shoulders in what he hope came off as indifference.
“Uh huh,” Nina ignored him for a few moments, finishing up a line of equations, fingers flying over the keyboard. And...There. Another unsolvable problem, solved. There was no applause, no fanfare, no tenured position at some university where she could give a lecture on it. Just stillness, disrupted slightly by Eugene’s annoyingly anxious energy. She emailed the solution to a math instructor, and Elswood would do whatever it would with the findings.
“Come on, let’s go. I’m starving,” she closed her laptop and shoved it in her bag. Eugene always threw these little tantrums whenever he was getting behind on his schoolwork. And that was all the time. His main reason, Nina could tell, was his ridiculous refusal to ever ask for help. So for the past several months Nina had made a habit of badgering him about his work until he let her go over concepts with him. Sometimes he’d show up with just hours before a deadline, and then this would happen: the shuffling, the dismissive tone, the asking for notes. And if there was one thing Nina never did, it was let anyone look in her notebook.
“I hope there’s something good. Have you eaten yet? You should eat.”
