Vanya is sitting on one of the ancient-looking infirmary cots, swinging his legs and staring into space. 

A girl in scrubs is sitting across from him. She looks up. "Oh, hey, you must be Marcy! I'm Marian, the, uh, new school nurse." For some reason an upperclassmen from the Shanghai enclave is standing across from her. "This is my apprentice, Wen Qing," she adds. "I think that covers everything, you guys can head out now." 

"There's a school nurse now? I thought they gave up on sending adults in here."

"There's apparently one exception to that and last year's nurse survived, like, an entire month." Marian says this with no particular intonation. "Anyway. Vanya, did you eat lunch? You are clearly really undernourished and that's not going to be helping with anything." 

"I don't like the food." 

Why is the school nurse a mundane instead of a wizard with a healing affinity and four enchanted weapons?!?? Also, Vanya, what the fuck. Does he not have the thing where being hungry makes you want food? Does having your life force drained make everything taste like it's rotten?

"Try reading a book while you eat so you don't have to think about the taste," she says, since it's at least better advice than "become a wizard combat medic".

"Is there any way of getting him, uh, food that tastes better and isn't hard to eat? ....In the hospital we'd give people who have trouble eating enough calories meal supplements to drink, like Ensure, but I don't have that here." 

Shrug. "Not that I know if. If you think it'd help, I suppose we could start pooling our vending machine tokens for him. Anyway I have to go, have a shop assignment to work on. Marcy, any questions?" 

"Yanli's affinity is the food, she has a seasoning that makes the food... it doesn't taste better but it's"-- she visibly gropes for a word-- "moreish? You can't really stop eating it."

"That," Larisa says, "would be amazing. I'll find her later. Marian, Wen Qing, thank you so much for your help - Marcy, someone'll be by at the end of work period to find you, are you going to the library -?" 

Shrug. "Library's fine." 

"Bye Larisa! Yeah, library's good. Do you have a space or should I see if ours is free?" It might be full of upperclassmen or Philadelphians.

"Yeahthat'sfine," Vanya said in a very quiet voice, hunching into himself. 

That was not actually an answer to her question but she can try the Boston/Philly room first. She moves to the door and says "Okay, follow me?" Marcy has never seen a horse girl movie, but if anyone else here has they will recognize her voice and body language as "horse girl tentatively trying to get a grumpy horse to be friends". 

Vanya does not notice her body language because he only looks at the floor, but he does follow her. 

Whatever works. She leads him up to the library, rapidly switching focus from Vanya to anywhere a mal might be hiding and back to Vanya, because it's pretty clear she has to be alert enough for them both.

They make it to the library without incident, though Vanya seems to find the walk tiring; he's dragging his feet a lot more by the end, and stumbles on the stairs. 

(He has, in fact, not eaten anything at all since dinner yesterday, and he may or may not have drunk any water, he can't remember.) 

The convenient think about walking lots while lightheaded and constantly wishing he were dead, is that it builds a lot of mana. 

Watching for mals won't help if he falls down the stairs. ". . . Do you need to lean on me." 

That would be so humiliating. 

"No," Vanya mutters. 

- and then stumbles, and ends up leaning on her anyway. 

He appears to have been mistaken. That's fine; she can look for mals while being leaned on. 

Vanya is trembling a bit by the time they reach the library. 

“I - I need - somewhere quiet,” he mumbles into Marcy’s shoulder.

The reading room is up on the mezzanine and she's not sure Vanya has another flight of stairs in him. She leads him to an armchair away from the main clusters, near an entrance to the stacks. "Is this okay or do you want to go upstairs and see if our reading room is open?"

"S'okay here."

Vanya collapses into the chair and curls up into a ball. The THING is happening again, where it feels like he can't breathe and everything is made out of DOOM and also he's tainted and damaged and he doesn't deserve to exist even if he wanted to exist which he doesn't. 

Marcy grabs another chair and drags it over to where she can face Vanya and see into the stacks, that being the direction from which danger is most likely to come, and makes a mental note to put it back at the end of work period. She has no idea about the Thing and wouldn't know what to do about it if she did. 

"Do you have your math homework? And your textbook?" she asks, because that's a known and well-defined task.

"...Yeah. Did some of it." Vanya starts halfheartedly digging around in his backpack, which he dropped on the floor. 

Yup, that sure is a bunch of calculus. "Can you teach me this stuff? My classes haven't gotten to it yet." 'Bright-eyed and curious and wanting to learn things' is just about the easiest affect to do.

"- Oh. Uh. Sure. So have you learned quadratic equations yet in your classes...?" 

"I can graph them and factor them but can't find the zeros if they don't factor."

Rebecca approaches - carefully, she's been hanging out with New York but people probably can tell she's not actually one of theirs - and waits to be acknowledged.

Vanya has all of his calculus notes spread out on the floor and is deeply absorbed in figuring out how to explain it to Marcy. The hard part of this is mostly figuring out how to not be incredibly distracted by feeling awful constantly. 

He is super not going to succeed at noticing anyone quietly hanging out nearby waiting for acknowledgement. 

Checking the perimeter for mals also works for spotting classmates. Who is--oh no, it's pajamas girl. Marcy has been carefully avoiding the mundaneborns because they're almost certainly doomed and she doesn't want the temptation to spend resources she can't afford on trying to fix that. Marcy looks back at the calculus for several seconds and then back up.

Pajamas girl hasn't gone away and appears to want to interact with her and/or Vanya in particular. Well, at least Marcy can find out her actual name, it's not like she's still wearing pajamas.

"Yes?" she asks a bit tersely.

"Hi, sorry if this is a bad time, um, somebody told me his affinity was music? And mine is too? And I wanted to - maybe talk about music? But maybe you are busy with math and we can just - meet later, I've been eating with New York?"

Vanya sets down his notes and pen. 

"....Your affinity is music too? What songs do you know?" 

"Oh, that makes sense, have fun," by which she means, oh, gatekeeping you is Vanya's job and he has done it, great. She keeps working on the math because she doesn't know anything about music.

"Probably too many, I'm going to have to learn Latin! But spellwise, uh, I have a lullaby that always worked on my baby sister and I miiiight have turned a bit of Hamilton into something that killed a little mal one time and I have a book of Latin song spells I got from the void and I don't know how to tell if the ward one works well...?"

"I speak Latin," says Marcy, not looking up.

Vanya is looking actually kind of engaged again! 

"- I can probably help you figure out the ward? I know Latin too. Did you sing church music when you were little? Church music is actually really good for spellwriting inspiration even though Jesus doesn't exist and if there's a God he probably wants us all to die horribly." Vanya says this very conversationally. "Anyway, sorry - what's Hamilton?" 

Vanya has a good set of languages and good theological opinions and is good at explaining math and this makes doing his homework much nicer than it would have been otherwise.

"Hamilton is a musical about the Founding Fathers!" says Rebecca, who will apologize to God for not challenging him on that one later. "And yeah I know a lot of church music, I love church music. - uh I don't know how I'm going to do at Latin so please don't try to teach me any other languages besides that and English right now."

"Right, of course I'm not going to accidentally start you on other languages? ...Um, do you mean the Founding Fathers of America? I'm...really curious what a musical about that would even look like and which part of it would be good for killing mals?" 

"A lot of people die in the musical actually! Most of them from like bullet wounds so I improvised a little since I didn't like have a gun. I'm not actually sure I remember exactly how I changed it."

Vanya blinks at her for a moment. 

"...Want to sing it for me?" he says finally, shyly. 

"I do know the whole thing! But lots of it isn't for one voice."

"- Wait, you have concert song-spells? ...Sorry, as in, spells that need more than one person singing in harmony, I mean?" If so then that's SO IMPRESSIVE. 

"- I don't think most of it is magic, it's just a - show?"

"Oh! Wow. I - didn't really get to see very many shows, before...this. That's neat. Um, do you know how to write melodies down on sheet music?" 

"Yeah, my voice teacher taught me to do melodic dictation! We hadn't started on harmonic dictation yet."

The terminology isn't entirely familiar, and Vanya squints at her. "Harmonic dictation is, um, writing down chords?" 

(He does look thoroughly absorbed, and less miserable than he has at any other point in Marcy's presence.)

"Yeah! It's on the AP music theory test so I was going to get to it later on."

(It's so good that Vanya is enjoying himself! Hopefully this experience will strengthen his will. Meanwhile his homework is getting done, probably not to an A standard given how new the concepts are, but well enough and with carefully shown work so he can improve on it later if he wants. Calculus is cool.)

“Ooh, do you know a lot of music theory? That could be really helpful for spells. I, um, didn’t get any instruction in it before I came here…”

Vanya’s eyes dim; his whole body sort of droops. 

"I know music theory! Not the whole AP exam's worth but like some."

Vanyel is now DISTRACTED, and has to spend several seconds dragging himself back to the here-and-now. 

"I - sorry - oh. Yeah. You could tell me some of it?" Maybe he can arrange it so that she will talk and he won't have to try to keep up. 

"Sure! Um, I think trading is normal here, do you wanna teach me spells for it -?"

Vanya immediately shrinks and looks SO sheepish. 

"Oh! Right - of course - sorry, I didn't mean..." He trails off into a mumble. Takes a breath. "What sort of spell? I've got one for exploding mals, if you want that." 

"That sounds really good!"

"Sure! Uh, the original's in Russian and I did a translation to English that works but I don't love it yet, it's less mana efficient and the prosody's not quite right - want me to show you how I do translations for songs, it's a bit different than for spoken spells, you can get away with being less literally but you really have to get the syllable emphasis right for the melody..." 

Vanyel is running very low on energy at this point, but this is the most interesting conversation he's had about song-spells in multiple months and he's not going to miss it for anything. He digs out paper and gets to work on finishing his translation, narrating the process to Rebecca (without, of course, actually mentioning any of the Russian words or writing down the letters where she can see.) 

"Yeah I want to know how to translate magic songs!"

Vanya shows her his translation and explains the various choices he made! He's clearly very good at this, and very practiced, though he's also getting exhausted enough that he's a bit sloppy and not exactly clear in his explanations. He keeps getting distracted by noticing a line he doesn't like and then spending the next two minutes mumbling under his breath and scribbling notes while he tries to figure out something better. 

Eventually, after a few more tweaks, he seems satisfied or at least less actively dissatisfied. He offers to demonstrate - not on an actual mal, of course, but he can cast it with next to no mana input and just set a bit of paper torn from his notebook on fire, to show her that it works for real. 

She appreciates this, and copies down the English version.

"You sound super tired," she says. "Did you not get enough sleep last night?"

"I never get enough sleep," Vanya says tonelessly, without making eye contact. "Want me to demo it or not?" 

"Yeah I do but do you want me to lullaby you if you wanna go to bed early tonight?"

......Vanya stares blankly at her, because he has no idea to respond to that, and he tries to think of an answer and fails and after about ten seconds of awkward silence he randomly bursts into tears. 

Oh no did she say something wrong?

Marcy has been alternating between math, perimeter checks, and quick glances to make sure Vanya is still where she left him, but now her head whips up and she shoots Rebecca 0.5 seconds of instinctive death glare before realizing that she might need Rebecca to stick around and explain or apologize or something rather than running away. "Hey, what's the matter?" she asks Vanya softly. "Do you need anything?"

Vanya is sobbing and shaking hard enough that his first attempt to answer comes out utterly incomprehensible. 

He takes a shuddering breath and tries again. “Not - her fault - my fault - sorry sorry sorry -“

"You don't have to apologize; you haven't wronged me." She guesses it's possible he wronged Rebecca somehow while she wasn't paying attention even though that seems pretty unlikely.

"Is it - bad here to offer things like that -"

"What did you offer? I was focusing on the homework," Marcy mutters to Rebecca.

"He seemed tired and I said if he wanted to go to bed early I have a lullaby spell - it always worked on my sister -"

Vanya makes a valiant effort to pull himself together enough that he can speak comprehensibly. 

"S'not - not bad - was really kind of, of you -" 

And then he curls up in a ball and goes back to sobbing even harder than before. It's definitely starting to attract some attention in the library. 

"Do you want a hug?"

Mumblemumblesomething but at least it sounds vaguely affirmative? 

Hopefully that helps and Marcy doesn't end up with a reputation as someone who helps Chicago muggleborns and crying people.

Hug!

Normally hugs from strangers are not very helpful! However, it's hard to feel like Rebecca is a stranger when they've just spent the last many minutes talking about MUSIC THEORY, and also she's just - comforting. 

Vanya leans into the hug, his sobs trailing off into quiet sniffles. He really hopes Rebecca isn't feeling like this is her fault, but if he tries to apologize again he'll just start crying again, and also he's very very tired. 

Hug hug hug.

The bell for the end of work period sounds. "Oh, I have language lab - um - can I find you again another time?"

Oh good, Rebecca made the right move. Marcy finishes up the problem she's currently on and packs up Vanya's stuff and waits for Cassie or Larisa to come relieve her. 

"Yeahsureseeyoulater," Vanya mutters into his folded arms. 

Tristan is the one who actually comes to find her. 

"Hey - sorry I'm late - Cassie had an incident working in the shop, it'll be fine but I need to– damn it, is he even up for going to class?" 

"I'm sorry!" says Rebecca, but she's cramming her stuff into her makeshift bag.

"Wasn't your fault," Tristan says - on automatic, he has no idea what happened, but he does know that this inevitably happens about once a week. "Come by our table later if you want to, er, know more." 

"Okay, thank you." And off she scurries to go out of the library with Zeke and split off from there to language lab.

"Sorry, he was having a good time talking about music and she said something nice that landed weird. Um, we mostly finished his math homework, it's not done but it's probably B or C material. Vanya, do you want to go to class with Tristan?" Please don't be in worse shape than when she picked him up . . .

Oh no, he really doesn't want to get Marcy in trouble with the enclave. She's so nice. 

"Yeah," Vanyel manages, dragging a sleeve over his face and then shoving papers into his backpack. "I'll go to class." 

And then he pauses, and starts to look up to meet Marcy's eyes and ducks his head. "I - sorry I got distracted - the homeworks isn't due till Monday. Want to - go over more calculus stuff, later?" 

She's going to have two new languages to study. Calculus is useful for artificing and spending more time around Sacramento is good. "Sure. Maybe on Sunday after breakfast?" That way she'll have had a day to cram German after her first class on it and will have a general sense of how much work it's going to be, and also it's far enough away that if it wasn't a sincere or wise-in-hindsight offer he can accidentally-on-purpose double-book himself.

"- Yeah, sure, sounds good." 

Vanyel ducks his head, and heads off with Tristan.