Work Text:
020. Artwork
- October 1st, 2009 –
Being a trial student at the Academy does come with its conditions. In addition to attending classes, Crona has also been assigned weekly check-ups and therapy appointments with Stein and Nygus, to make sure that he’s remaining mentally stable during his school days.
While Stein’s appointments have more to do with Crona’s physical condition (his malnourishment and internal injuries, the black blood’s toxins and how they affect his chemistry), Nygus’s are more focused on his psychological condition (how he’s been feeling, dealing with his memories, coming up with better ways to “deal with things”).
By the third week of therapy, Crona isn’t sure he’s improved much…or at all. The first appointment had consisted of him only vaguely answering Nygus’s questions about his background (and by the end he’d almost scratched his own forearm raw due to his nervous tick). The second and third were not quite as nerve-racking, but still intimidating; more Nygus talking than him talking, telling him that the feelings of discomfort he’s having have names like chronic social anxiety and disassociation and body dysmorphic disorder; telling him not to be scared, not to worry, because with medicine and therapy, all of these things are fixable. (Though, Crona’s not so sure how he feels about that…since he’s never been any other way, it sort of sounds impossible.)
The fourth is appointment better, or at least much less scary and daunting. When Crona walks into the nurse’s office, Nygus is waiting for him, and a blank sheet of paper and two pencils are placed on the table in front of his seat.
“As a part of your intake, I’m going to have you draw some pictures,” she explains once he sits, jotting something down on her own clipboard. “They’re just to help me get to know you a little better, okay?”
Crona tilts his head, nervous. “Pictures?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what kind of picture to draw before you start.” Nygus makes steady eye contact with him. “Is that okay?”
Crona isn’t sure he knows what she means yet, but he tentatively reaches for one of the pencils and pulls the sheet of paper closer to him, nodding solemnly.
“For the first one, I want you to draw a picture of a house. As best you can.”
Crona freezes, pencil clenched in hand. Picturing the only house he ever knew, the dark and creaky place he used to live in with Medusa, makes him feel itchy and nervous, and sort of sick. Makes him feel like she’s still out there waiting for him, like this is all a dream or a hallucination and—
“D-does it have to be my house?” he blurts out, staring harshly at the blank sheet of paper.
“It can be any house.”
When did his heart start beating so hard? He shuts his eyes, his rapid pulse kind of scaring him. Breathe, he can hear a little voice telling him, one that sounds a lot like Maka’s… You’re not there anymore. You are here.
Crona opens his eyes, begins to etch his nails into the wood of the pencil.
“I’ve only ever lived in one house,” he says, “I um, didn’t like it there much…I don’t like to think about it…”
Nygus still looks calm as ever.
“You can draw an imaginary house if you want to,” she tells him.
Imaginary? Crona puts the lead to the paper, and tries to think. To “imagine,” as she put it.
But he’s seen all kinds of houses before. There are shacks, there are apartments, there are mansions…plus all the different kinds of architecture, gothic, Spanish, modern, and a variety of heights and depths and square footage. His hand starts to tremble, and he stares at the harsh whiteness of the paper, and feels stuck.
What kind of house does she want? What if she doesn’t like the house I make?
Think, think: he’s broken into houses before, late at night; those were most of the times he ever saw houses that weren’t Medusa’s. Some houses have hardwood floors, and some have carpet…and blood always sept into the carpet more than the wood…some have tall walls, some have short, and some walls can be broken down entirely by his black blood, leaving ruins in their midst…
Walls can be made of stones or bricks or cement, right? What do I choose? He taps the pencil on the paper erratically. And which wall do I draw first? How many bricks should there be? His arm twitches, sweat beads on his forehead…and then there are roof types, too, and chimneys, and different styles of windows, and porches and doorsteps and doorbells, and, and, and…
“Do you feel like the academy is your home now?”
Nygus’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. Crona focuses on her face, or of what he can see of it beneath the bandages. Mostly he can just see her large, ice-colored eyes.
“Well I um, I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he says, to her question.
He pauses for a moment to look around the nurse’s office, at the yellow walls and the pure white cots and the cabinets full of medicine. This is the first room he remembers waking up in on his first day here, being observed by Stein before being transported to that lonely dungeon. He spent time here, and then down there, and then he got to be friends with Maka, and has spent the rest of his time at the Academy with her.
And being friends with Maka does sorta feel like a new home.
“I think so, yes,” Crona says. “This place is my home.”
Nygus smiles; or at least, Crona can see the way the corners of her eyes crinkle beneath the tape.
“Then why don’t you draw a picture of your room here at the academy?” she suggests.
“As best you can.”
Now that he has a clear image of the room in mind, Crona’s able to get to work. He closes his eyes first, recalling how his dingy room looks when he’s standing in the doorway; the texture of the floor tiles, the height of the brick walls, the placement of the furniture, the places where the light shines in through the glass window. When he opens them, he begins sketching very carefully, erasing and starting over if the work isn’t just right; lines must be perfectly straight, shading must be perfectly even, details like the fabric of the comforter and the weaving on the lampshade must be perfectly accurate. He’s nervous, but he’s trying really hard, and he’s going to be observed and judged for this, so it has to look exactly the way it does in real life, that’s what she must be expecting…
At one point, Nygus looks up at the clock on the wall, and then looks back to her clipboard and clears her throat. Crona freezes.
“A-am I taking too long?” he asks, staring wearily at the unfinished drawing. Please give me another chance, I’m sorry it’s not done--
“Take as long as you feel like you need to.”
‘As long as he feels like he needs to’ ends up being a slow, winding, additional forty-five minutes. And Crona’s hand is beginning to cramp a little as he finishes the last of the wood-paneling on the bedpost. He wipes away the eraser shavings, careful not the smudge the lead, and then gives a small little sigh, holding the paper out to Nygus like a peace offering.
“There.”
She takes it from him, the literally life-like rendition of the DWMA dungeon, and her eyes grow wide like she’s stunned.
“Wow.”
Crona shifts in his chair. “Is it okay?”
“You’re very talented.” She stares at it for a while, and her eyes crinkle again. Then she puts the drawing on her clipboard, placing another blank sheet in front of him. Oh, there’s more? Crona thinks, a little dreadfully.
“I’m impressed, Crona. Where did you learn to draw like that?” she asks, making a note to herself.
The times he used to draw before, Medusa used to make him draw bodies. Organs, peeled back skin, torn blood vessels, just like those illustrations from the simple story about killing people. It was all just practice, she’d said, for what he’d been born to do…and sometimes, when he got really into it, he even used his own black blood to paint them, it was like ink, and it was permanent…
“I’ve always known how,” Crona mutters.
He feels like a knot is tying in his stomach. You shouldn’t be thinking about those bad things, not anymore…
He glances around the room again; Maka isn’t here to distract him from the memory of Medusa standing over him as he painted diagram after diagram, throwing him back into that room if the artwork wasn’t good enough…although maybe if he closes his eyes, and pictures Maka smiling at him…
He takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes. As he exhales, Medusa starts to leave his head, and Maka appears.
Warmth begins to spread across his skin.
“Crona?”
Nygus pulls him back into focus.
“Are you ready for the next drawing?”
“Oh.” He picks up the pencil, nodding resolutely. “Yes.”
“Now, I want you to draw a picture of someone of the opposite sex.”
He pauses, and his legs close a little.
“A-a girl you mean?”
Nygus nods, eyes doing the crinkle-thing again.
He pictures Maka in his mind immediately; one of the only girls he’s ever known, and the nicest at that. He starts to draw her on the paper, focusing on the details of her he’s stored in his memory…the way her skirt folds over her legs, the stitching in her vest, the little curve of her waist, her thin wrists, her big, bold eyes…she’s so pretty, easy as sunshine to draw, so comfortable a memory that he can recreate her in this little book, he smiles and feels warm all over as he focuses on her image…
When he’s done, nearly another half hour later, he shows Nygus.
She looks very happy.
“You should show this to her,” she says, and Crona thinks she sounds happy too. “She’d think it’s beautiful.”
He ducks his head, blushing. Maybe…or maybe she would think it was weird…
“I don’t know about that.”
Nygus stares at the picture a moment longer.
“That’s all the time we have for drawing today.”
She takes the drawing from him. Then she reaches over and pulls a large, spiral-bound sketchbook out of a drawer in her desk.
“But if you’d like,” she says, slipping his drawing of Maka into the book, and then placing the book on the table. “Maybe you could keep drawing before the next time I see you.”
He perks up a little, at that. He stares at the book.
“If you feel up to it, draw anything that comes to mind, and put it in this book. How’s that sound?”
The sketchbook is beautiful. The cover is shiny, bronze, and covered in vines; the paper inside is thick and expensive. He picks it up and holds it to his chest.
“I can have this?” he says, his cheeks coloring.
“Sure. You don’t have to bring it back or show me the drawings, if you don’t want to. But it may help you keep your mind off things. If you’re ever feeling upset, you can draw a picture.”
He nods, and smiles. This reminds him of something Maka has told him before…
“Could I maybe write poems in here, too?” he asks. “I-it’s just that, Maka tells me that I should write poems when I’m upset.” He tugs at one of his sleeves a little. “It helps.”
“Of course. That’s a great idea, Crona.”
He leaves feeling like the fourth therapy appointment was more than just better.
(+)
Maka has been helping Crona in all of the classes they have together, doing homework with him in her special corner of the library, or in his room.
A day after his appointment, as they’re walking to his room to do homework, she notices the fancy notebook he’s been carrying with all of his regular books, and tells him it’s nice.
“It’s a sketchbook,” he says. “Nygus gave it to me.”
Maka smiles. “I didn’t know you could draw,” she says, nudging him in the arm affectionately.
“Only a little,” he says, modest.
After about an hour or two of studying, Maka starts to fall asleep on Crona’s bed where she was reading, tired from the long day of extra resonance practices, her books open and sprawled out on the comforter. The sun is setting, casting a gold glow on the bed, and once Crona glances over at her sleeping form once, he finds that he can’t stop looking.
Maka let her hair down earlier, so now, it’s pooled in soft, sleek strands on his sheets. In the sun, her skin looks like it’s literally glowing, and her lashes are fanned across her cheeks and she looks so peaceful, chest rising and falling with her breath.
Then she makes a noise that sounds like a whistle and snore, though it’s quick, and probably the cutest snore he’s ever heard. He blushes and smiles; it’s kind of dorky and she does it at night sometimes too, and it always reminds him that he’s not alone in the bed when he can’t sleep.
Since when did he get so lucky, to have her in his life?
Without looking at her anymore, his heartbeat fluttering fast, he slowly reaches over for the sketchbook on the desk. He opens it up to a new page, and glancing shyly over at her, begins to copy the angel who’s somehow crash-landed in his bed onto the page. She really is beautiful, on paper, and in life…
“You do realize how pathetic and creepy this is, right?!”
Crona gasps and the lead of the pencil snaps as Ragnarok bursts out and thuds his full weight on Crona’s head.
“Ragnarok, please,” Crona begs hoarsely, miserably, “S-she’ll wake up, p-please be quiet—“
“Hey, Maka!” Ragnarok screeches, “Crona here’s gone all voyeur and he draws you while you sleep! Next thing you know he’ll be following you to the sh—“
Yelping, Crona uppercuts Ragnarok before he can say anymore, and then quickly rips the paper out of the sketchbook, crunching it and throwing it under the desk. The weapon lets out a dramatic wail as he slips back beneath Crona’s skin, and Maka’s now woken up at the commotion, rubbing her eyes.
“Sorry to wake you.” Crona shuts the sketchbook, pushes it to the side, and places a textbook in front of his face to act like he was reading it. “Ragnarok doesn’t have an inside voice.”
Maka yawns, sitting back up on the bed.
“It’s okay.” She looks around at her books, and then at Crona.
“Maybe you should talk to Professor Stein about a way of getting rid of him,” she says with a lazy smile, only half-joking.
Crona feels a bulge of blood pulse at his back, but gratefully the skin doesn’t break, and Ragnarok holds his tongue.
…With his foot, Crona nudges the crumpled up sheet of paper on the floor further away from the two of them.
(+)
Later, they’re taking a study break. Maka is sitting on the desktop, and Crona in the chair. She’s braiding and unbraiding her hair, telling stories about how she and all her friends met. Crona is listening, and watching her deftly moving fingers with intrigue.
At one point, at a natural pause in her words, she eyes the sketchbook curiously.
“So what kind of things do you like to draw?” Maka asks.
“I’ve only drawn what Nygus told me to draw, so far,” he explains. “And, there’s only one picture.”
She looks like she wants to open the book, but he knows she won’t ask. And the drawing of her, hidden just there beneath the cover, feels like it’s irritating him, like a rash that won’t go away.
He’s nervous about her knowing that he (now, apparently) draws pictures of her; but, at the same time, he’d give her anything, if she asked…She’s done so much for him lately, staying in his room every night, holding him while he sleeps, holding his hands, hugging him close…
“You can look at it,” he says softly. “If you want to.”
“Really?” she picks it up and puts it on her lap. “Are you sure?”
“Well, it was sorta your idea.” He slips his fingertips beneath his sleeves, scratches at his forearm. “You always tell me that it helps to write a poem, so when I told Nygus, she suggested I keep everything in a book.”
Maka is more eager to see his artwork than she probably should be; not so much because she’s expecting it to be a masterpiece, although the poem she’d read of his was extremely moving, but more so because art is often an insight into a person’s innermost thoughts.
When she opens the book, she’s more than surprised to find that the first and only drawing is none other than the splitting-pencil-image of herself, pigtails, plaid skirt and all.
“Wow, Crona...”
And it’s so realistic. Any ordinary person must’ve had to draw something like this while looking at her as a reference, but he didn’t, it was all from memory and he even knew how to shape her eyes, how to draw her smile, what her proportions were, the exact way her gloves fit…
As she holds the image in her hands, she thinks that this is one of the most romantic things she’s ever seen.
It simultaneously dawns on her that he must not even realize that.
Watching her stare at his picture is like watching an accident happen; he doesn’t wanna look, he knows he doesn’t ‘cause he’s nervous, but he has to know what she thinks, the feeling is clawing at his chest. She’s voiced her approval and she looks very touched, her eyes are lit up like fireworks and she wears such joy so well that it makes him wanna pass out at the sight.
“Nygus asked me to draw someone of the opposite sex in therapy, and I,” he stops, the rush of blood to his head a little too dizzying for a moment. “You’re the first girl I thought of.”
“Can I keep this?” She reaches over to hold his hand, tangling her fingers in his and then squeezing solidly. She makes eye contact with him hopefully, eyes still shining.
“Of course."
Crona swallows, flustered by their hand contact, and then quieter, shakier, but sure, staring at their tousled hands, he mutters,
“You can have anything, Maka.”
He would give anything to see her eyes light up in front of him like they just did, over and over and over.
…And Maka, staring at the picture, is having a really hard time with that urge to kiss this innocent boy now.