Work Text:
Friday, April 1st, 1994
Recently, Nico has been having strange dreams. Inexplicable in their nature, full of faceless people who look just like her, who look right at her - through her. They were making it hard to stay asleep, and the lack of even her usual meager dealings of sweet unconsciousness was making it rather hard for her to focus.
Odder still, was that she remembered them in the first place, the last time she had remembered a dream before a few weeks ago was a recurring nightmare she had when she was 7. She still remembers the pitless feeling of falling.
Nico knew insomnia very well, she was, much to her own chagrin, a young creeping socialite in the art world, and creativity is the hobgoblin of little minds. She was also well storied in the near hallucinary quality it brought to the world around her. She found she liked it, the technicolor smoke and mirror quality her own mind shrouded the world with. Nico made good art, some of her best work, really, when she'd been up for 36 hours without respite. But the body needed to sleep eventually. Even if the mind was, indeed, unwilling.
Unfortunately for her, sleeping pills didn't quite work on her how they were meant to. But, she found other ways through to a dreamless sleep. It was the kind of dead man's sleep that Zeke had taught her, that she found the most effecticent, fueled by bromfed, lasting no more than four hours. It wasn't a fix, but on those nights, she didn't dream.
What a beautiful thing it was, not to dream.
Two days ago she used up the last of the bromfed. But she'd been so caught up in her midterms - especially the exquisite corpse - that she hadn't been able to get off campus in that time. The longer she went without sleep, the harder it became to sneak out of the dorms, making it so she couldn't slip in, or out, much less trek to one of the pharmacies in Wisteria, because, of course, there weren't any 24-hour pharmacies in Piano Row. It was truly sisyphean.
Last night, her second night without sleep, Stevie had talked her into trying out some hippie-dippy sleep aid, something she'd learned from a magazine or one of the Senior girls - her bet was Ash Fischer, she seemed the type. The only thing it accomplished was making Nico throw up right before 1st hour and thus made her feel so violently ill she spent the morning in the infirmary, missing all her classes until after lunch.
She just had to stay awake until 3:15 and then let herself be carried with soft hands to the end of the day, when she could finally collapse into blissful nothingness. Even if she knew for a fact that sleep deprivation was a very effective type of torture.
Then at lunch, Stevie told her that Dolly Pazniak broke up with her boyfriend and was too sad to go to the show by herself, so she gave Stevie her Orwell’s tickets. Frankie and the Masks, Stevie’s favorite local band, were playing tonight, so, thusly, a change of plans was in order. The new plan was, she and Stevie would meet up in Grant’s Ville, where Magnus’s dying industry lay in wait, and on the way back they'd stop at a pharmacy. Nico could even get some new lipgloss. It was fool proof.
There is something to be said, she supposed about the best laid plans of mice and men.
•-•-•-•-•
Arlington Arts is eccentric. That much is true. It's a small school with a smaller staff. A ratio of 25:67. The brochures assure that they hire only the best artistic educators in the city. Large swathes of the aforementioned staff, however, seem to have been hired to drive Nico up the wall. Her fellow student body isn't much better.
13 students.
Including her, there are 13 students in Nico's acting class. The majority of which seem to hate her. You may ask what evidence Nico has for this. But, while Arlington Arts may be a school for creatives, that doesn't stop it from being cutthroat. Quite the opposite, it's full of teenagers after all.
She wishes she'd taken Storytelling with Stevie, but no, she had to choose Acting. Sue her for wanting to have something to talk about with her Grandfather on family dinner nights other than her non-high society approved nightly jaunts around the city.
Professor Yakigawa is young, in his late twenties or early thirties, and half the upperclassmen hall in her dorm have a crush on him. Nico doesn't get the appeal. Neither does Stevie. Yet another example of why Stevie is the best roommate.
Professor Yakigawa also happens to be her staff mentor. Every student has one, charged with guiding them for their entire academic tenure at Arlington. There's a salon every other Wednesday, after schooling hours, where the student body meets with their mentors, and their mentors other mentees, for guidance and critique. Nico, due to Yakigawa's young age and recent arrival to the school, is his only mentee. She's also skipped her last two salons.
Not on purpose, of course - she really had meant to attend the first one she missed, but then she’d fallen asleep on a couch in the English hall waiting for Stevie. Nico had slept right through the salon - and dinner. One of the janitors had to come and let her out. It was truly rather embarrassing. The second salon, on the other hand... Is it really her fault if Matt needed her because he had dragged home a stray? Probably not. No, definitely not. She was only being a good friend.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or, as it was known earliest, the descent to hell is easy.
Ever since she missed the second salon, Nico’s been dreading Professor Yakigawa calling her out on it. She's trying to keep alert, so she can get out of class first, in the hope that he won't go through the trouble of calling her back into the room if she's already gone, adrift in the city. She's watching the clock with eagle eyes. But Nico's tired, bone tired. She wants nothing more than to crawl back to her dorm and sleep, but then she'll miss the performance, and that would let down Stevie. So, she'll just have to chug a redbull in the taxi.
The bell rings, and Professor Yakigawa's voice calls out, "Thank you everyone, you are dismissed."
Nico finally stops holding her breath and starts jamming papers into her bag.
"Faraday, stay please."
A few of the upperclassmen snicker at her misfortune and Nico wants to scream at them. Perhaps Stevie's assertion that a lack of sleep makes her a bit… snippy was correct. She sinks back down into the worn velvet auditorium seats as everyone else filters out of the room. When the double doors screech close - which doesn't make Nico flinch, she's learned better - Professor Takigawa clears his throat.
Nico looks at him, she's 8 rows back from where he stands downstage.
"Would you mind if we spoke in my office?"
Yes. Yes, she would.
She needs to leave campus in the next 15 minutes if she wants to have any chance of meeting up with Stevie at Orwell's. Doors close at 5. She needs to stop by her dorm, knick a few cans from her stash of Redbull and grab her trench coat. The one she'd worn home to the Tower once after getting it in a thrift shop, only to immediately decide to never wear it around her grandfather again after he said it reminded him of a coat her grandmother had in the 70s. But, it was the only coat she had in her dorm, and Orwell's was located in the south end of an old meatpacking plant, and therefore, constantly freezing.
Right now, it's 3:15 and the traffic on the Selis Bridge into Carventi is always bad on Fridays. Even Stevie's plan to cut the last quarter of her Choreo class and leave at 3 was cutting it close. She feels trapped by time - not that that's exactly a new feeling.
Professor Yakigawa has an expectant look on his face.
She can't afford to be looked at too closely. Not by Mr. Yakigawa, not by the rest of the staff. Especially not by the board. The closer they look, the better they'll see the fissures. The better they'll see how strange she is. And then she'll never get to come back to Arlington Arts ever again.
"No sir, I wouldn't."
She cringes at how formal she sounds as the words fall from her lips. This isn't fucking SinAnne Prep. He isn't one of the slough of top-notch foreign tutors her grandfather hired, it's Arlington Arts, she doesn't need to act like a poor little rich girl at Arlington Arts.
She follows Takigawa out through the wings, through the half-hidden-in-the-gloom door up to his office. The stairs are wooden and ancient, creaking underfoot. When they round the corner after the landing of his window lined study Nico is nearly blinded by the stark difference from the dimness of the auditorium. The room itself is longer than it is wide, situated above the costume vault. She knows that there's a door, hidden in the paneling of the wall that's covered in old theatre programs, which leads out onto the lower catwalk. She's had lunch with Stevie on the catwalk before, back in October. It was incredible.
He takes a seat in a worn leather armchair that reminds her of her grandfather's record-lined den back at Fahy. She takes the low-lying couch across the way, whose color is reminiscent of the covers of those old Good Housekeeping fashion magazines that Miss Holmes collects. Her satchel bag is balanced in her lap, jostled by each bounce of her leg, hoping against hope that this will be over with quickly.
"I just wanted to ask why you've missed my last two salons. You've never missed one before."
Nico hesitates, weighing momentarily what to tell him. She hears someone laugh in the commons through the cracked open window behind her and it makes her want to cover her ears with her hands. But she doesn’t, just like she doesn’t fidget with the rings on her hands or yank at the clip-ons in her ears or bring the silver ankh around her neck up to her mouth so she can refamiliaize herself with the cold smooth feel of it against her teeth. She plants a hand on her knee until it gets the picture and holds still. She knows better, she is better. She’s Nico Faraday and she is better than movement without purpose.
She has 11 minutes to get the hell out of dodge, so to speak, there was no point in her beating around the bush.
"Yes, sorry about that Mr. Yakigawa. One of my friend’s has been going through a difficult time. I've been helping them out quite a bit recently and I lost track of time. I'm truly sorry."
Straight to the point. Causal but remorseful. Generic enough to be true, enough of a lie to make him not look at her like she's crazy. Perfect.
"I see,” he believes her, hook, line and sinker.
Thank god.
“I'd like you to come in-" He flips through a planner on the sidetable next to him, "Next Tuesday, so that we can talk about your progress."
Nico can’t believe this went so well, "Excellent, that sounds great! Thanks Mr. Yakigawa."
She gets up from the couch quickly, trying to make her exit in a hasty but orderly fashion. One engineer boot-covered foot catches on the edge of the ancient thread bare carpet, and she eats shit, her nose exploding in pain, the contents of her book bag now strewn across the floor.
Professor Yakigawa, in quick turn, helps her up from the ground, leading her back to the couch, he's shoving a box of tissues at her and telling her to pinch the bridge of her nose and lean her head back.
Nico begins shoving tissues into her nose as she listens to Yakigawa shuffle around on the floor.
He mutters, "Jesus Christ," under his breath.
Nico's too focused on trying not to get blood on her last good top to notice what Yakigawa is upset about. It might be the blood, she doesn't know. She's rather distracted by the feathery bits of mascara sticking under her eyes from them watering when her nose began to bleed. But wiping them away would require a free hand, which she does not have, holding quickly soiling tissues to her nose as she is.
"Mr. Yakigawa, it really is fine. I can pick up my things."
Her professor is silent
"Mr. Yakigawa?"
Nico tilts her head down just slightly, feeling blood rushing out from her nose, threatening to drip down her chin. He's looking in the sketchbook. The very one she's been using to depict the strange and disturbing things she sees in the unwaking world. Drawing the dreams helps. Or, well, it helps her get them out of her head at least.
“It's for my exquisite corpse,” she lies without missing a beat, swallowing around blood.
Mr. Yakigawa hums and shuts the sketchbook, “Of course.”
He doesn't believe her.
Fuck.
What is she supposed to do?
If all else fails, deny, deflect and run.
“Well, Mr. Yakigawa, I'm glad we could smooth everything over, but my grandfather is expecting me home.”
Yakigawa pauses, having now brought himself off the floor.
Yes! Yes!
Bringing up Gramps was a good call. Remind him who her family is. She's Nico Faraday, and as much as it hinders her, sometimes having a famous guardian was a godsend.
“Your name is your weapon and your clothing your shield.”
This is what Nico gets for watching so many of her grandfather's old detective movies
“Miss Faraday.”
Zeke always says run if you have to. Sure, he was talking about the parties Nico had an awful habit of ending up at, but this was close enough. Tangential.
“Yes sir?”
There's too many ways this could play out, possibilities branching out behind her eyes. It makes her head spin. Nico can’t afford to have a panic attack right now. She scrambles off the couch when Yakigawa takes a step closer to her. She wishes she could abandon her bag and deal with the consequences later, but she needs her wallet for cab fare.
She can feel the clock ticking down in her head. She has no time.
She has no time.
“I think we-”
Nico stumbles back, ankle catching on the leg of the couch, she tries to catch herself on the ancient built-ins and-
The room is dark, clouded with the scent of incense and cheap perfume, it's enough to choke the air out of your lungs.
The woman leers over you, her eyes a burning shade of amber, boxing you against the bookcase. Her hands drifting over your lapels and then your shoulders as she brings herself closer in towards you.
“C’mon dear, it won't hurt.”
Her breath is acrid and smells of cigarettes and sulfur.
No air makes its way to your heaving lungs, you feel as though you're about to suffocate.
The woman grabs at your collar with one hand, lips coming closer as her free hand drifts downwards and-
Nico is hyperventilating. She can't breathe. She can't fucking think.
It's terrifying.
A hand comes to help her from the floor. Closing around her arm.
No- No- No- No- No- No- No-
She screws her eyes shut, blocking out what she sees.
It's not real, it's not real. It's not real.
There's blood in her mouth. It tastes like hers.
“Miss Faraday?”
Mr. Yakigawa stands a few feet away from her shelter in the nook between the couch and the north-facing wall. Wait… when did she fall?
He looks concernedly at her.
There’s a question that Gramps asked her often when she was young. Making a game out of the rules which kept her life - their lives - afloat.
What do we do, Mały Tygrys, when we are backed into a corner?
Deflect?
Exactly.
“I’m fine,” she insists, throwing every ounce of force that she has behind her words.
She tries to sound insulted that he would insinuate that she wasn’t. Which isn’t all that far from how she feels, behind the dread building itself to a crescendo in the pit of her stomach. The easiest lies to tell , after all, are the ones that are closest to the truth.
“You’re still bleeding, I think you should go to the infirmary.”
Nico forces herself to stand, “I’m fine,” she repeats.
Her bag is still on the floor between them.
“Miss Faraday- Nico, please.”
He’s scared. Not of her, but for her. She can use that.
“When all else fails, Neeks, run.”
In a smooth line of movement, she snatches her bag from the floor and makes a run for the office’s main door, the one that leads out to the upper balcony and the grand spiral staircases, which curve down below into the lobby of the auditorium. The door bangs hard against the wall when she flings it open, sounding off like a shotgun blast.
Her footfalls on the old oak of the stairs echo in a high off-key pitch, blood dribbles down her face. Adrenaline bleeds through her veins. Nico’s been running around Magnus since she was a little kid, this is a cake walk.
Professor Yakigawa follows after her, hot on her tail.
“Miss Faraday!”
She hoists herself over the railing and lets herself tumble to the floor 10 feet below. Her ankles hurt but that can be dealt with later. She forces herself to her feet once again and runs out the double doors, down the auditorium's front steps and into the commons.
The auditorium’s double door clang open.
“Miss Faraday, wait!”
Nico thinks, momentarily, about running back to her dorm for her trench coat, but then the bell tower on the Muse rings out the half hour. What are a few hours of cold at Orwell’s compared to a dressing down by Mr. Yakigawa, or a meeting with the board? If anything, the cold will help her stay awake.
She uses what momentum she has to round the art nouveau fountain in the middle of the common green, dodging the last dregs of her fellow students on their way off of school grounds. Her hand skims the worn marble on the fountain’s lip, nails scraping on the stone. Something dark fissles momentarily at the back of her skull, she pushes it away from herself as harshly as she can. She is Nico Faraday, she reassures herself, and she files her nails to careful points and paints them every color she can get her hands on.
She is Nico Faraday.
She is Nico Faraday.
She is Nico Faraday.
The makeshift mantra repeats in her head as she makes it past the school gates and out of Arlington Arts. Nico stumbles her way down lower 45th street, panting for breath as she paws at the sleeves of her borrowed sweater, she had found it in a shoebox in the back of one of the guest room’s closets back at the penthouse. Flashes of hands and eyes and camera lights flair and bleed behind her eyes. She feels somewhere between nauseous and whoozy as she hails a cab.
When she collapses in the backseat of the taxicab, she mumbles Orwell’s at the cab driver, sinking into the wornout leather. Shouts and yelps and cycles of cacophous conversation. Her ears ring with the weight of the noise. She cringes back, further digging into the leather seat, hands on her ears trying in vain to block out the wailing. Her fingernails dig into the skin of her temples.
There was a musical technique, perfected in the 1960s, called the wall of sound.
That’s what this is, a wall of sound.