Chapter Text
Lena (6:34 pm): can we talk later? I have something I need to tell you
Arthur (6:35 pm): We can. Are you excited?
Lena (6:35 pm): I’m already here. I wanted to get the best seat.
Arthur (6:36 pm): The class starts in 30 minutes. Are you crazy? I know you have a thing for my brother but wow
Lena (6:37 pm): your brother is like a brother to me, come on, I’m trying to be supportive. I’ll see you at the coffee shop after class?
Arthur (6:37 pm): I’ll see you there ;) let doctor Leclerc know we’re going out
Charles can’t breathe. He’s walking to his office, whispering “Welcome to physics of the universe, my name is Charles Leclerc,”
No. No. No. No. No. “I’m Doctor Charles Leclerc,” will he ever get used to it? You just got your doctorate, and you didn’t sleep for a year, you deserve it.
What’s the point of having a doctorate? Someone will probably humiliate him anyway, they will ask a complicated question that he doesn’t know the answer to and it won’t end well. He will probably just hyperventilate.
It’s his first day at the job. He just got it. He also just got his Ph.D., so everything is new. Everything is making him panic. It doesn’t help that his ex-girlfriend is teaching Communication somewhere in the building across from him. He has some of her stuff to return, but he threw them away when she broke his heart.
Not helpful.
He sees Lena in the crowd, and she smiles at him. Great. He’s less nervous now.
She nods, and he keeps his eyes on her as he says:
“Hi, welcome to Physics of the Universe, I’m doctor Charles Leclerc, how are we feeling today?” and he hears a few “good” or “alright” among them. “I won’t lie, I’ve been studying physics for over ten years now, and I just got my doctorate, so we’re all in this together. Last semester I was one of you, so I know how hard it must be to make everything work at the same time, and how stressed you guys must be, lord knows I am, but we’ll help each other out, right?”
And Lena gives him a big smile. Getting closer to students always helps - his mentor used to say. Don’t push them away, pull them closer, but show them property.
“Now, I understand you guys had an introduction to Physics of the Universe last semester, the ones who didn’t you can either study two subjects at the same time for this class, or I recommend you to find your way to the administration and ask for a transfer for that subject and I’ll see you next semester,” a few people got up and left. “For those of you who stayed, a list has been sent to you. We’ll be reading four books this semester, and we’ll be filling out a total of two thousand exercises throughout the course. If you think this is going to be a theory class and that you won’t have to do math, you can also get up and leave, by the end of the semester I’ll request your list of exercises and I’ll be checking them one by one, this will be worth thirty percent of your grade, so if you think you won’t do it there’s absolutely no point in being here,”
Another two people left. Lena was looking at him the whole time. She grew up with Charles, she has a pretty decent idea of how hard he studied to be there, but she never thought he would be “one of those teachers”. Holy shit does she even have time for two thousand exercises?
Charles raised his head.
“Now, the first topic this semester is momentum and gravitation , then we’ll be talking waves, followed by cosmology, and the last topic will be geophysics, now, what’s the importance of momentum?” Lena immediately raised her hand.
It wasn’t fair to the others, but she didn’t care. She had studied Charles’s books for a year before that class, just for fun. Arthur asked her the day before when the three of them were having dinner together, that she didn’t go full “Hermione Granger” on them, but that didn’t last. She wasn’t there to be humble, she was there to support Charles and to learn from his best friend’s brother everything he had to teach her.
“Thanks for being here,” Charles says when she stops next to his desk. She had stayed behind to talk to him once the classroom was empty. A few people came to talk to Charles before her asking for extra material, and complementary book titles. “How can I help?”
“I was working on the Kepler problem at home because I had nothing better to do, but I couldn’t come up with the correct answer, I was hoping you could help me,”
Charles nods. She gets a couple of sheets of paper from a folder and puts them in front of him. It takes Charles two seconds.
“Yeah, so the radius is squared,” he explains, marking a small 2 in her formula. “Try again,”
She exhales. “Are you kidding me? I spent three hours trying to solve this,”
“Common mistake, Lele, it’s alright. You can text me next time so you don’t spend that long fixing a mistake that there’s no fixing,” he says.
“Can you check a few others? I’m not confident I did it right,” she asks, taking a second folder out of her purse. It’s so thick that Charles widens his eyes at her.
“It’s gonna cost you a cherry pie,” he says. She laughs.
“I’ll do anything if you help me,” she says. “Oh, yeah, Arthur and I are going to the coffee shop, do you want anything?”
“No, thanks, just make sure he’s back before midnight, classes just started, you can sleep there if you want,” Lena nods.
“Thanks, doctor Leclerc,” she says, joking and Charles laughs. “See you later,”
Charles leans against his chair and stares at the empty room. She was the last one to leave. Nothing bad happened. Yet. Nobody asked him a question he didn’t have an answer for, so he’s good. He’s fine.
He has two classes for Introduction to Physics and Math for Physics the next day, and he’s tired, but he wants to make sure everything is in order, so he stays in class, a couple of books in front of him, a notebook full of things he knows he can fix.
Lose the tie, they don’t care.
Smile more, maybe?
Talk about the 2016 Universe/Simulation debate from the AMNH
Lena texts Arthur the moment she leaves Charles’s desk behind. Everything outside is quiet, everything outside is dark. It’s so cold that she hugs her torso, bringing the jacket closer to her body, and she walks away from the room.
Lena (9:15 pm): I’m leaving the campus
(to Artie) Lena (9:23 pm): I love you
“Yeah?” Charles answers when Carlos calls.
“Wanna grab a few drinks? Tell me how the big day was? Maybe we could go somewhere and you could find someone,”
“Don’t start with the relationship talk again, man, I’m fine, Louise broke my heart and we move on, but not now,”
“You told me this would be your year,” Carlos says, turning right. “On New Year you said mate this will be my year."
“Yeah, but it’s the second week of January, I still have fifty left,” Charles says. “Plus I think I’ll go to the grocery store, I have nothing for breakfast tomorrow,”
“Your choice, man,” Carlos says. There’s a loud noise when Carlos stops talking, and Charles raises his head, staring at the back of the room. It’s late. Everybody already left.
“I just heard a noise,” he says, on the phone. He’s frowning.
“Maybe it’s an alien, or a ghost, uuuuuuh,” Carlos jokes.
“If it is I’ll pay you a drink,” Charles says and hangs up. He gets up, leaving the room. When he gets outside the figure is coming out of the building across from his, a hood over their heads, not a single inch of skin showing.
“HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” He yells, but the figure is gone, running as fast as they could from the building, without answering Charles’s question.
Louise’s building. Great. He walks to it when he notices the only light on on the entire floor is the one in her room. He knows it’s her room because it’s where the old Communication professor used to teach her classes, and he used to walk there to pick Louise up after their classes.
You must be kidding me.
The campus is empty, the big doors are open and every other classroom door is also locked. That’s policy. Every professor must lock the doors on their way out, and then the janitor would come by around ten to check it and lock the main building.
He gets to the room in no time, and the only thing he sees when he gets to the door is a pair of shoes on the floor, from a person sitting there.
“Listen, I don’t know what you-” he says, as he walks in, but the figure in front of him makes him stop. “NO, NO, NO, HEY, HEY,”
He runs to Lena, taking off his jacket and covering the point where a bullet hit her, right on the chest.
“Hey, Le, stay with me, hm?” He asks, pressuring the wound as hard as he can. “Hey, wake up, come on, wake up,” he can’t feel anything. He can’t feel his arms, he can’t feel his legs, he doesn’t know where his phone is, but he dropped it somewhere. His hands are already full of blood, and he brings her body closer, hugging her with one of his arms as he uses the other to blindly look for his phone. “Don’t leave us, please don’t leave us, don’t leave him, hm, it’s okay, help is on the way, it’s alright, you’ll be alright,”
He finally finds it, and he drops the device once, his hands are shaking, he’s covered in blood, his phone screen has blood everywhere he can barely see it, and he dials the number.
“Emergency Medical assistance, how can I help?”
“My- my student- my- Lena Alarie just got- got shot, we’re on the second floor of the east side of the building near the library at the Sorbonne Currie campus, you need to send someone now, she’s unresponsive, she’s bleeding, her blood type is A negative, you need to send someone,”
“Sir, you said she got shot?” the woman asks. “The emergency is expected to arrive in three minutes, can you give me more details?”
“She’s my- oh, god, she’s my brother’s best friend, she- she stayed longer to ask for help in an exercise, you need to send someone-” he’s panicking. Panicking won’t help, but there’s blood everywhere. He can’t stop it. “Le, come on, talk hey, hey, please talk to me,” he begs, his lips shaking. “Please don’t leave him, he loves you, you know that? He told me. He never dared to tell you, but he loves you, you can’t leave him, Le, you can’t-”
“Sir, could you tell me your name, please?” the woman on the line asks.
“Charles Leclerc, I teach at the university I heard a noise and I came to check, and she was- she- where’s the emergency, it’s been so long,” Charles asks. He might need an ambulance for himself.
“ET one minute, sir,” the woman says. Charles drops the phone and he hugs her, and he can’t do anything. A fucking Ph.D. and he can’t do anything.
“Please don’t do this to us, he loves you, and you’re our family, don’t do this to us, Lena,” he begs one more time.