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CHAPTER THREE got arachnophobia?
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
NADINE USED TO LET spiders crawl across her bare arms, their eight legs scurrying up and down her pale skin. She'd place them on the knuckle of her middle finger, and they'd often creep around to her palm, or perhaps making themselves at home on her usually painted fingernails. Then, after they got bored of the limited playground that was Nadine's hand, they'd make their way up her arm, scuttling across every scar, every freckle, every vein, until it reached the sleeves of her shirt and she forced it back on her knuckle again. It'd do the same little dance up her arm, its tiny legs tickling her skin, again and again, until she got disinterested and let it outside. It was a sort of routine for her—she'd used to be scared of the arachnids, and letting her fear prick her way across her skin made her pulse race and her palms sweat—and one that Louise Vidal absolutely despised.
Nadine's mother hated spiders—when she saw one, she'd often go into a shrieking frenzy and try to stomp on it with her high-heels—so when she'd come into her daughter's room and see that her miracle girl had made her bare skin a playground to the deplorable creatures, she'd often crawl back into her room and blot the world away. Louise could never understand where she'd gone wrong when it came to her angel, why she was so different, and Nadine could never understand why different was such a bad thing.
Her childhood habit had made it so she could picture all sorts of spiders clearly in her mind, making them a reliable image to bring forth in case of illusion emergency. It was effortless for her to bring spiders to life, which made it effortless for her to freak people out. And now, standing here in the Hargreeves' living room, subjected to five bewildered stares, she was seriously thinking about bringing the arachnids out again.
They were all here (well, the ones who were confirmed alive, anyway). It took Nadine's tense brain a moment to match their faces to their identities, because it had been so long since most of them were in the spotlight. The burly man wearing the trench coat and the turtleneck must've been Luther. Diego was the one dressed in a bizarre outfit, all leather straps, currently polishing one of his signature knives with a cloth. Allison was easy for Nadine to recognize—she looked identical to her character, Ruby, who was the star in the movie Nadine had watched on the plane—and just as beautiful as she had been as a teenager. And Klaus was the man sitting on the floor, with his hair sticking out in all directions and clad in a kooky outfit, all necklaces and feathers.
That left Vanya. She was the smallest of her siblings, a dwarf to their giants. Her hair was tucked into a bun and she seemed to be shrinking in on herself, her eyes darting around like she wasn't sure she was supposed to be here. Or maybe she was trying to make herself invisible.
After a moment of staring and nothing else, Nadine taking in the faces of the Academy and the Academy taking in her unexpected appearance, Diego Hargreeves, one of Nadine's idols, flipped his knife into the air, caught it, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
