'The Student'
By Indiana
Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane [NOT Scriddler]
Synopsis: Maybe he shouldn't have pried, but it was obvious the student needed help. It seemed like it would have to be his. (Trans Jonathan Crane)
Edward wasn't certain it was proper, but nobody else seemed to care.
He was a TA for a computer science course, hard at work on his Master's in his spare time. Being a TA largely meant marking a great deal of assignments, and Edward had already seen far more of them than he had ever wanted to. In doing this work he had noticed the steadily declining grade percentage of one particular student, and he had sent her an email asking to meet him in the university centre to talk. He had decided against looking into the university records to discern her appearance and instead sat patiently in the corner he'd said he would be waiting in.
When she arrived, ten minutes late, he did recognise her from class somewhat. He'd thought of her as something of a slacker, but he still thought it his responsibility as a TA to have a little chat with her.
"Good afternoon," he said warmly. He couldn't see her face, or much of her at all, really. She was firmly enveloped in a thick hooded sweatshirt and jeans that seemed a size or two too large. The skin on her nose was pale and pinched. "Thank you for coming."
"Why did you want to see me?" she asked. Her voice was so quiet Edward almost didn't hear her. He leaned forward to do so better and she took a step back.
"Helena, I'm sure you've noticed you aren't doing very well in class."
All he got from her then was a twisting of her joined hands, which he was a little surprised to see were much thinner than they should have been.
"You're going to lose your scholarship," Edward continued. "Are you having trouble understanding the course material?"
"No," she whispered. Edward folded his hands together and lowered his voice.
"Forgive me for asking, but is there something going on at home, Helena?"
She seemed to look up sharply beneath the hood, though she said nothing.
"I'm just trying to help," he said, as soothingly as he could. "I would hate to see your studies grounded by something that may have a solution you haven't seen yet."
Still she said nothing, and unfortunately Edward was not very patient. "Helena, do you understand how serious -"
"Do you really want to help me," she interrupted, and he was unnerved to hear the heavy tang of bitterness in her muted tone. This sounded very grim. And it might be something Edward was not qualified, nor equipped, nor even permitted to handle. He tapped his thumbs together.
There had to be a reason for the clothes and the grades and the bitterness in her voice. And he needed to know what that was.
"I do," he said calmly, looking into the glint of her glasses.
"My name is Jonathan," she said, only slightly louder than anything else, and Edward frowned.
"Your name is... Jonathan?"
She moved away from the table. He almost didn't hear her muttered, "Never mind," as she turned and left. Edward picked up his laptop bag and slung it over one shoulder, lips thin. He'd missed something. Something important.
/
Once at home late that night he made some inquiries into his preferred search engine and was a little confused by what he found. It seemed Helena had a condition in which there had been an error in the womb and she had been born with the body of a woman but the brain of a man. Upon further reading he discovered she was not only potentially in danger from her family, but from herself. He had the strong suspicion what was visible of her gaunt skin was such because she was starving herself in an attempt to prevent the onset of puberty. That must have been terrifying, he thought. It must have seemed a countdown of sorts, with nature furiously pushing to have its way.
He frowned at himself. No. No, he'd thought of all that the wrong way. Her... his name was Jonathan, and he was a man. He knew very little about this student at all, but it seemed to him a logical reason for the poor grades would be the tremendous psychological damage dealt by such a major condition. He was unsure if his support, such as he could offer it, would be of any help at all, but he'd gotten himself into this and he was determined to see it through.
He saw her – him, he saw him again in a few days' time, sitting near the back of the room with his hands tucked into his sleeves, and Edward wondered why his parents seemed to have no care for this situation. He could understand that it was hard to come to terms with, initially, but… surely a parent wouldn't hold a biological mistake against their child?
He watched the hooded figure carefully throughout the class, and as soon as it ended Jonathan got up to leave. Edward had to eschew so much as a farewell to the professor in order to catch him. He almost lost him in the throng, and in his desperation to catch him hissed, "Jonathan!"
He paused immediately, looking behind him, which gave Edward enough time to close the gap between them. "I'd like to talk to you," he said in a low voice. "If you don't have anywhere to be. I have something for you."
"All right," Jonathan said, still in that negligible voice, and they went back to approximately the same corner as the day before. Again Jonathan did not sit. Edward remained standing next to him, filing through his laptop bag for the paper he'd printed off. It contained a list of websites he could access and facilities on campus he could contact for help. He handed it to Jonathan, who looked at it for a few moments before shaking his head.
"I know you may have already looked into these resources yourself, but –"
"It's not that," Jonathan interrupted. "It's… nobody can know."
Edward tried to spin out the likely meaning of that statement. It had to be the parents. Edward could do a little something about that. "They go through your computer?" he asked. Jonathan nodded, and Edward swung his leg over the bench in front of the table.
"I can help you," Edward told him. "You just need to trust me with your laptop for a little while."
Jonathan hesitated, then put his backpack on the table and removed the computer from the back half. It was old, but Edward had never seen a computer he couldn't influence.
Edward then gave Jonathan the fastest, most thorough lesson on computer security he possibly could, and it was here he was treated to the true depth of Jonathan's intelligence. He listened well and asked thoughtful questions, and Edward was struck by some measure of regret. He could have been the top of the class if not for the condition that, through no fault of his own, could be so entirely distracting and discouraging. After he had finished a few hours later, Edward turned the page of resources over and wrote his email address on the back.
"Send me a message if you need to talk to someone," he said, and he stood up.
"Thank you," Jonathan said, staring at the paper. "But why are you helping me?"
Because the fact you're willing to trust a complete stranger so much tells me you have nowhere to turn, was the first thought on his mind. But Jonathan didn't need pity. He probably didn't even want it. So instead he just shrugged.
"Why do I need a reason?"
/
Jonathan was not much for talking, so what ended up happening was that he would ask to meet in one of the communal gathering areas, at a table in the corner. Jonathan would sit with his back to the rest of the room and Edward would sit opposite him, and Edward would mostly talk to himself while Jonathan listened. Or maybe he wasn't listening. It was hard to tell a lot of the time. It didn't really matter whether he was or wasn't; the purpose of these meetings was just to let Jonathan know there was someone who accepted him as he was.
It took a few weeks but Edward did eventually learn his parents were a large portion of his problem, which he could commiserate with, though he did have to stem the urge to set that knowledge off into a jumping-off point to complain about his own parents. They weren't Jonathan's problem, and he already had enough of those.
One afternoon Edward was buying coffee before one of their meetings and it occurred to him that Jonathan might like one as well. He had a notion that poverty had a heavy hand in Jonathan's ability to maintain such a low body weight without arousing suspicion. When Jonathan joined him at the table Edward offered him the sandwich and coffee he'd procured for him. It was very, very difficult to read Jonathan, given he never removed the hood and his large glasses obscured most of his face, so Edward was going to have to guess what he was thinking.
"I know what you're doing to yourself," Edward said. "And I understand why you're doing it. But listen. The effects are going to last forever. You're going to do damage to your body you can't take back. I know you hate it right now. But future you? He isn't going to. Future you is going to have learned to love himself. You always have to think of him, today."
Jonathan brought the sandwich into his lap and very slowly unwrapped the cellophane. "Do you love yourself?" he asked. Edward put down his marking pen.
"I try to," Edward answered. "I can't do it all the time. Nobody can do anything all the time. But it helps. You can't depend on other people to care about you, but you can usually depend on yourself."
"Usually."
Edward shrugged. "Like I sad. Can't do everything all the time."
From then on, if Edward gave Jonathan a sandwich he would eat it, but only if Edward did not ask him to or look at him while he did it. Sometimes Jonathan would just put his head down on the table and go to sleep for a while, and Edward did have to wonder what went on at home that led Jonathan to feel better sleeping on a table in front of a near-total stranger than in his own bed. But Edward did not ask for any information Jonathan did not volunteer.
The most interesting thing he had told Edward was that he had no interest at all in computer science; his parents had demanded he study something in-demand, and he had done so, at the cost of increased misery to himself. What he truly wanted to do was study psychology and ultimately become a professor of such, and Edward wished he had some wisdom to impart but the plain fact was, without knowing the circumstances of his home life he really could not. He only had rote commiserations that he hoped meant something to Jonathan. They seemed to, else why would he keep asking Edward if he had time to meet?
They had continued these meetings since long after the first semester ended and with it ended Edward's tenure as Jonathan's TA. He had made his way into Jonathan's account only once, to find that he had just about given up altogether. This pained Edward, though he did not blame Jonathan. He was being forced to live someone else's life. Edward did not bring up what he'd seen; it was not his business, after all. The one time he asked after Jonathan's long-forgotten backpack Jonathan just shrugged and didn't answer.
It was one of the times Edward wished he could actually do something about the situation, as opposed to just semi-existing on the edges of it.
One evening near the end of the semester Edward was working diligently through a backlog of assignments he had neglected when Jonathan, whom he'd thought had been sleeping, said, "I don't know if I can keep doing this."
Edward looked up from the tangled mess of an exam he was mired in. "Of course you can," was all he could come up with. Jonathan lifted his head from atop his arms to look at him.
"You don't understand."
Edward put his pen down. "I don't. But you have to remember future you."
Jonathan put his head back down. "I don't think there's going to be one."
"There is," Edward told him. "Jonathan… don't make decisions when you're sad."
"I can't remember a time I wasn't," Jonathan mumbled from inside his sweater.
"But there will be one," Edward said.
"It's taking too long."
It was then that Edward realised this was probably a time he should just be listening. "I know," he decided to say.
Jonathan didn't contact Edward for another meeting after that.
/
A semester and a half later Edward was sitting in the corner he'd frequented so often, hacking away at his thesis, when he felt someone watching him. He looked up. There was a young man standing there, about as tall as Edward, wearing orange plaid which went horribly with his rust-coloured hair. Edward stared at him blankly for a moment.
"Can I help you?" he asked. The other looked down at the table.
"You don't recognise me," he said.
"No," Edward told him. "I have things to do so if you're finished – "
"It's me," the other interrupted. "Jonathan."
Edward, to his credit, had never actually seen Jonathan's face, so he hoped this had not been taken as offensive. "I was wondering what happened to you," he said.
"Only good things." He held his hand out with great hesitance. Edward took it firmly and shook it. "Thank you," Jonathan said.
"Thank you." Edward was fully aware of how difficult it must have been to trust him with the secret and, in the end, Edward had effectively just been present. Jonathan had been the one to do all the work.
Jonathan nodded and turned to leave, and Edward called to him, "Jonathan."
He looked behind him.
"You made it. Congratulations."
Jonathan just smiled.
Author's note
I know this is out-of-character but the point of it wasn't really to be in-character. It's just for anyone who needs it. If you're struggling, please keep hanging on. You can do it.