Fear stood around the corner, waiting for the students to be released from the test.

Piper exited the classroom first. He knew she would have gone as quickly as possible, in order to escape and relieve herself of the tightness in her throat.

He fell into step with her as she passed by. "Hello," he greeted her, nodding his head in her direction.

She looked up in surprise at his sudden appearance. "What...what are you doing here?" she said. She looked troubled. Worried about her grade, he quickly deduced from her anxious thoughts.

"You tell me."

She sighed, frustrated, turning her gaze to the ground as they made their way out of the building and spilled out onto the sidewalk with a number of other students. "I get more anxious on test days," she muttered. "It's like...I feel like I don't have a way out, because I have to be there, in class. It's worse than usual. Usually I feel like I have the option not to be there if I feel like I can't be...or the option to leave at any time if I need to."

Fear put his arms behind his back, ambling along next to her. "For what it's worth, you seemed to handle it better once you actually managed to get started on the test."

She shook her head. "Yeah, that's pretty normal. If I have something to distract me from everything...I do better." She sat down on a bench under a nearby tree, and Fear sat down next to her. "But," she finally continued, after a few silent moments. "It's been getting to where I can't distract myself as easily as I used to be able to."

"Pretending it isn't there...distracting yourself...It works for a while. It isn't a permanent solution. You need to..."

"Face it," she huffed. "So you keep telling me."

He shrugged, falling silent.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It was just a rough morning."

"I already know. You don't have to tell me. I know. And the rougher your morning, the rougher mine is. Don't forget, I carry all your fears with me as the day progresses."

She glanced sideways at him. "How do you have so much time to devote to my fears, anyhow? Don't you have to bring everyone else their fears? How does that all work?"

He gave her a small smile, before reclining against the back of the bench. "It's a matter of time. For you, minutes pass, sixty seconds each, consistently and continually. Time passes differently for me. It's a little more complicated. Each minute consists of a seemingly infinite amount of smaller moments. Each of those moments contains their own infinite amount of moments." He shrugged. "Which you probably can't comprehend...Just take comfort in knowing that I have all the time in the world to do my job and to visit the people I need to visit."

"Why'd you come back today? Or, you know, let me see you." She kicked at a clump of grass growing up between the sidewalk pavers. "I thought you wouldn't come back after last time."

Fear was silent for a moment, staring at his hands, folded in his lap. He didn't even know how to explain to her why he'd come back. Perhaps because, for the first time in years, he'd felt almost...human. Of course he wasn't, but it was nice to feel that way, sometimes. It reminded him of a time long gone, and of the things he'd given up in the past.

He sighed, giving Piper a small smile and shrugging nonchalantly. "Let's just say that...this job can get a little...lonely. And while I'm not exactly human, I still have human emotions. It's nice to talk to someone for once."