Hi everyone! Welcome to the Kenny's newest fanfic!
As I have searched this site, I found many stories that dealt with all the Companions one after another, one in each chapter or each part of the text etc. However, I have yet to find one dealing with all the love intrests. The reason for this is simple: Those who ship pairing A usually don't like pairing B so much and so on, and then there's those who don't like seeing the Doctor shipped with anyone at all. Now, I can not say to have never participated in a shipping war (I am, for instance, a rabid Shinji/Rei fan), but as far as DW is concerned, I think most of our lovely protagonist's possible love intrests were intresting people. Let's say he has a good taste in chicks.
Therefore, this FF will adress a different pairing in every chapter. So, there should be something for everybody. I hope you all enjoy reading this!
Disclaimer: Me no ownie.
Notes: "Ushas" is what most novels/extra-canonical materials give as the Rani's name.
In those fleeting Days that remain
01: [Never Wanted To Dance]
"And what happened next?"
The young man then known as Theta Sigma looked up from the chaotic mess of wires, crystals and metal he had been tinkering with until now to look into the direction that his best friend had been alluding to, only to revert his slightly confused-looking glance to said friend's fiendishly grinning face.
The two teenagers – Not that they were actual teenagers in the sense of being, well, in their teens, tough the word was fairly accurate in each and every other sense attached to the word, including their appearances – were quite a pair to behold: To a stranger, they might have appeared to be each other's exact opposite. Both of the boys who were working on small pieces of mechanical handiwork with varying degrees of success stuck out like sore thumbs if compared to their classmates, however, they did so in very different ways:
The one who had diverted his friend's attention, a, by the standards of his race, youngster named Koshei, was known to be a refined, extraordinary individual destined to succeed, suave, polite, cultured, yet cunning and always dressed in elegant black robes with the occasional bit of white here and there. He was fairly attractive, as well as an adept conversationalist, so skilled, in fact, that his voice was considered deserving of the adjectives 'hypnotic' or even compelling.
He had soft, round features surrounded by neatly-cut dark-brown hair, his bangs occasionally slightly parting over his forehead, accompanied by deep blue eyes that seemed to contain an entire universe with in, reflecting a devious, vast intellect and something akin to the fires of the end of the universe lurking in their depths.
His friend, nicknamed Theta Sigma, looked far from refined – He was dressed in the colours of their chapter, all right, nonetheless, many of his fellow Prydonians might have objected to the mismatched patters that contained these colours – He shamelessly wore a loose-fitting robe with diagonal stripes over a plaid tunic, decorated with a broad belt with polka dots – his wardrobe was so hard to look at that few people actually noticed that they were, in fact, red and orange, if he didn't point it out, as the gratuitous blue accents on his technicolored robe made it even more dizzying to look at.
When called out on it, he would always reply some variation of "What's wrong with my outfit, hmmmm? I like my outfit!" That 'hmmm' was a verbal tick of his – another significant one was his habit to randomly say the wrong word when exited, which he argued was just a testament to his intelligence – according to his own words, he had yet to learn how to talk as fast as he could think, so things we're "bound to get mixed up on the way".
This justifications should be more than enough to describe his personality – he was pretty blunt, his eccentric quirks only matched by his idiosyncrasies – Many knew him as a gloomy, grumpy loner with a rebellious streak who was more likely to befriend themore open-minded teachers than his fellow students, best described as wise beyond his years or belonging to the kind of people who were never truly young – in truth, that unapproachable front was only a result of his frustration of living on a planet where a bit of grumpiness and arrogance were almost part of the etiquette, a defence mechanism of a soul that had always dreamed of the stars, yet had been glued to the surface of a planet whose residents hardly considered anything beyond its atmosphere worth knowing about.
Another manifestation of his silent protest were his grades – He had long since stopped caring about them and barely scraped through anything that did not particularly challenge his intellect or catch his personal interest, mocking the system with occasional displays of his true abilities.
However, the way that those who knew him well described his personality diverged greatly from the way it was commonly perceived to be – His best friend Koshei, who had probably known him since the nursery, would characterize him as brilliant, childish and hating to lose, a set of traits that he shared and in fact were what had drawn them together. The teachers he befriended saw great potential in him, and a classmate called Drax, a bubbly, cheerful individual who shared a loose friendship with the inseparable duo, mostly or at least partially motivated by gratitude, as the two resident oddballs diverted the attention that would otherwise have fallen on him, described Theta Sigma as a loyal, honest friend one could place one's trust in despite of his…uniqueness.
Another way to describe him was to call him a short, yet lanky boy with deceivingly delicate looking features and slightly over chin-length pale, sandy-blonde hair.
As the two of them were by far not your average pair of adolescents, being Time Lords and geniuses and whatnot, their conversation topics and activities were not average either: The deep conversations about the meaning of life, the purpose of the universe, sweets and the deep connection linking them had started when the first of them learned how to speak, tough none of them could recall who that was – Both had agreed that it had most likely been Theta Sigma as he was the one with the linguistic talent. It was a deep bond they shared, incomprehensible even to their small circle of friends – one could say that they loved each other, in an abstract, greek-philosopher-ish way, the way one loves a book or a piece of music, viewing each other like a scientist looked upon the universe, with endless fascination, deep admiration and something strikingly similar to never ending horror – each of them knew the other better than he knew himself and would yet perceive him as an unpredictable enigma at the same time.
As kids, they used to run and/or climb across the landscape, playing 'explorer' for a bit, challenging their own limits, and occasionally, each other's. Now, they spent their time working on complicated experiments, sabotaging each other's attempts to do so, or both.
Nonetheless, sometimes they would do the one thing that the vast majority of male youths in the Universe do sooner or later: Talk about girls.
They did not do this very often, since none of them was exactly a natural romantic – Koshei was charming enough to entrance any girl he desired, but they tended to bore him relatively quickly, which meant that they were discarded at a comparable speed – his friend had sometimes berated him for it. In a dark hour, he had replied that he simply wasn't able to find what he was looking for, theorizing that he did not know what that was in the first place – He'd never known his mother and had found himself feeling a certain… restlessness within himself ever since his first day at the academy. Theta Sigma, on the other hand, had pretty much the opposite problem – He was fairly honest and opposed to getting himself a girlfriend just for the sake of having one, and while he was not optimistic enough to think he would one day come across "The One", he did want the person he would give his hearts to be someone special.
Still, intelligence like his was occasionally delivered with a lack of social skills and Theta unfortunately was one of these less-than-lucky recipients – Oh yeah, he was brilliant with any sort of science, but then again, this did not automatically imply that he was as much as good with people.
When that trampoline woman once suggested that he had never had a girlfriend as school, she hadn't been too far from the truth.
Romantic matters were one of the fields where he was absolutely beyond any help, a hundredfold thicker than the walls of the glass dome surrounding the citadel.
Yes, they did talk about girls, and this was one of those moments.
However, Theta Sigma wasn't quite getting that.
"Well, what do you think happened, hmm? I walked here and started working! Putting up all these cabinets was boring if anything ever was, but it did attract my attention to the fact that we, the oldest civilisation in this Universe, are still using such primitive screwdrivers!
I was about to ask Drax for an idea, as tinkering had always been his forte, but now I've finally found my muse. My project for our tech course will be called "The sonic screwdriver"!
I tell you, in a few years, half of Gallifrey will have one! No more assembling cabinets! I hereby declare that the staff of the Prydonian Academy will have to think of less boring punishments for their students! Tough I must admit that I took some of my inspiration from and useful gadget called 'Swiss army knife' my mother once told me about. She-"
"Theta Sigma, did you just say 'sonic screwdriver'? Who on Gallifrey would want a sonic screwdriver?"
"Me, for example. I mean… cabinets!"
"Never mind the 'screwdriver' bit. That's actually a pretty good idea. Could almost be one of mine. But sonic? Theta, Theta, Theta, if you want that thing to be of any use, I heavily suggest that you use lasers."
"Sonic is safer. What if it blows up on me? I want to keep my hands; they are, you know, pretty handy."
Koshei chuckled. "Good luck… But honestly, can be go back to the interesting part. Now that you mentioned 'hands', you said you were holding hands with our delightful Miss Ushas."
"I wouldn't call it holding hands…"
"From what you said, it sounded as if she was about to kiss you."
"…She was?"
"Theta… tell me you didn't just leave her standing there!"
Koshei didn't have to wait for his friend's reply to know the answer to his question – Theta's dumbstruck expression told him more than enough.
"Typical…"
"I guess this explains why she went back to calling me a pest this morning… "
"Yeah…"
"Maybe I should apologize… "
"I don't think that will do much good. You know Ushas. There are few things apart from the contents of her petri dishes that she does regard with anything but disinterest at best and contempt in every other case, and I fear that includes me… " Koshei sighed.
"I've always been one of her greatest admirers, you know… " He absentmindedly fiddled with his own handiwork. "Finally a girl who has something in her head, maybe the one who has what I've been looking for all the time, and she just has to think of me of nothing but a source of mild annoyance… "
He straightened himself up. "Well, keep working on your screwdriver-thing. And don't you dare doing it half-heartedly!"
"Why?"
"…Simple. Theta Sigma, you are beautiful. An interesting person if there ever was one. That I must admit, I've always envied you a bit. But you could be much more than that. You could be brilliant. No, that's not quite grammatically correct. You are brilliant. It is time that you showed this to the world."
"You honestly want to tell me that's the reason?" Theta responded, his voice laced in teasing disbelief.
"One of the reasons." Koshei corrected, with a dangerous gleam in his eyes and a thin, fiendish smile on his lips. "You were correct to think me neither that innocent nor that selfless. There is personal gain involved – It's simply no fun without you doing your best. C'mon, no one else around here is a real match for me… well, except maybe Ushas. However, her areas of expertise are clearly chemistry and biology. The tech course is entirely our battlefield. "
"I wouldn't underestimate Drax if I were you."
"Don't make me laugh."
"You're laughing already. And anyway, what are you building there?"
"Oh, you're going to love this. This is something truly useful, another of the many, many uses of dimensional engineering."
Koshei rose from his desk, grabbed whatever structure he had been tinkering with, playfully tossing it into the air just to catch it again and spin it around in his hand.
"Matter compression device. Pocket-sized. I still have to think of a fancy name for it, but that doesn't mean you can't have a little demonstration beforehand…"
"….Koshei… didn't you say something about matter compression?" Theta Sigma asked, speaking as well as the giant yellow pillow that was filling the room and pressing him to the wall let him.
"Well, this is certainly not a complete success… but I guarantee you that it would at least be smaller on the inside if you were to rip it open."
"It was average-sized on both in- and outside a few seconds ago…"
"It was mine. I can do with my pillow whatever I like!"
"…Yes, whatever you like, as long as I don't end up pressed against a wall afterwards… Be glad that you didn't shrink yourself or anything like that."
"Why? Would you have stomped on me if I had?"
"Koshei, this isn't helping… let's find the door…."
"I think I found the window!"
"Gaaah…." Both boys appeared to be quite relived as they finally felt some fresh air on their faces – This did not change that they had a giant pillow behind them and, more importantly, between them and the door.
"Hey, isn't that Ushas down there?" Theta noticed.
"Yes it is! Hey Ushas!"
"Do you hear us?"
The young woman did indeed hear them.
She was wearing a long dress that, despite its intricate structure, didn't offer the observer's eye much to hang on to, a side effect of its dismal, wan, dark grey colour.
Her long, straight, dark brown hair had a similar effect, heavily hanging of her head like a plant in the process of wilting. Her features were either to strong or too sharp to be considered beautiful, but undoubtedly fitted the rest of her appearance.
She turned around, glaring at her fellow students with nothing but disdain, before simply turning around and leaving.
Thanks for reading^^ I got the idea for this bit mainly from that little allusion in "Mark of the Rani", a funny comment in 'End of the World', and a few equally funny, screwdriver-related comments in "The Doctor Dances" and "The Christmas Carol". I just added 1 and 1 together XD This turned out to contain waaaay more of the Master than I had planned to, but I don't think anyone minds, since he is awesome. As funny as our perpetually annoyed mad scientist may be, she's only half as funny without the Master's fruitless attempts to flirt with her. (fruitless isn't the word... more like epic fail/epic backfire. Very poor Master, they used to wipe the floor with him back in the classic series.) The rest of this fic will be definitely more serious, tough.
Next up: 02: Susan's Grandmother: [Soundless Midday]