While being provided a map was all well and good, one thing Theta Sigma would like is a periscope. The school is divided in four sections to separate the youngest from the eldest, which is considerably effective. This does not, however, increase the visibility of an eight-year-old weaving through a crowd.

Everyone else in his class was led directly from the dormitories to breakfast and then to class, which was a very insightful decision, on par to that of having printed maps in places around the campus. Theta, now faced with a corner of the wall that looks no different from the other corners throughout the hallway, has regretted missing this train of students for some time now.

He internally questions himself for what feels like the hundredth time, straining to pinpoint why exactly why he snuck outside at 21:00 to sleep in a barn. All he can remember about that night is a couple of staff trying to coax him out of bed, a lot of screaming that later turned into plain whimpering, and not enough sleep to sustain him for his first day of school.

Theta musters up a teaspoon of aggression, pushing off the orangey-tan walls. They look like they're made of bricks, but they can't really be. It's probably just decoration. He shoves his way into a line of boys who don't see him coming. One of them mumbles an "oh, sorry" that Theta ignores in favour of sprinting down the hall, trying to find room 1-208, which is nowhere near 1-209 for some reason and—

"Do you need some help?" Theta's shoulder is grabbed from behind and he tries to shake it off, legs making a break for it and body not following. "Woah, woah, woah." The hands will not let him keep running and Theta is forced to turn his red face and messy blond hair to his captor, who is clearly holding back a grin on his round head at the spectacle.

Theta folds his arms over his chest, map balled in a fist, breath far from calmed down. "Let me go."

"What room do you need?"

"I said let me GO!" Theta tries ducking out of the older boy's grasp, feeling some unique flavour of panic in his head that is missing its name. Students around them look down on Theta as if he is cute, which he is most definitely not. He's being held against his will, which is probably against the law.

His captor gives an exasperated sigh. "I've been here a decade longer than you have, kid. I can help you."

"I DON'T NEED HELP."

"You're going to get lost and miss your entire first class on your first day. That's not very good."

Theta is about to retaliate and continue squirming, until the concept of logic plants itself in his head in a very tired fashion, and gets him to quiet down a bit. He evaluates the expectant expression of his captor, hearing the bell toll to start the first class. He's already late. "Room 1-208." Theta acquiesces, much to his elder's satisfaction, who pats him on the back.

"You're not that far off. Follow me." The older boy keeps a hand between Theta's shoulder blades to keep him from running off, a gesture Theta would normally duck away from, if it didn't mean he'd be forced into holding the boy's hand or something.

One ungratified minute of being marched down the hall later, Theta is presented with room 1-208, which, as it happens, is not that far from 1-209. The boy knocks four times on the door, but opens it without a response, which sort of defeats the purpose of knocking to begin with. The enrobed professor halfway through an illustration of what is most likely an umbrella looks expectantly at the pair of them, pen still poised on the electronic board.

"Kappa Tau?" At once, every student in the room turns to face Kappa Tau and his small companion, which only makes the companion in question look more disgruntled. A black-haired kid looks downright panicked at the sight of them, but it could just be the thickish eyebrows.

"Sorry, Professor. Theta Sigma here got a bit lost on the way. I'm just bringing him to class." Theta is subject to one more ill-received pat on the back as the professor lowers her pen.

"Thank you. There's a seat for you beside Delta Psi, Theta Sigma."

"Thanks, Professor," Kappa Tau says, stepping out of this classroom. Which leaves Theta — finally free of captivity — in everyone's line of sight. He scans the room for this Delta Psi in question, wondering to himself how on Gallifrey he's supposed to have everyone's name memorised after one look in the untempered schism of time and space itself. He almost voices this stark opinion, then spots the sole empty desk in the room. His smoldering face might hopefully conceal the embarrassed nature of his shuffle.

A new, blank slate sits on the mahogany tabletop, next to one bored-looking Delta Psi slouched on the desk. Her black hair falls around her body at a length surprising for that of an eight-year-old, eyes trained on the leaf now being drawn beneath the umbrella. Her current demeanour is closer to that of someone who might lock you in the closet for breathing incorrectly than allow you to sit next to her, whatever the professor says. She notices his intimidation, giving some motivation or another to sit up properly.

"Welcome to the bored corner," Delta Psi whispers, now looking casual but just as intimidating.

Theta doesn't say anything, just nods. He should probably pay attention to the narration overlaying the leaf, umbrella, and now icicle illustrations on the board, but it's just…

"Are you smart? The smart ones don't talk much."

Theta shrugs, trying to think of the most impressive bit of information he knows and only coming up with a foggy account of a river and a dead boy. A dead boy is that what sleeping in the barn was about? How did the boy get… dead?

"You don't need to look so stressed. We're only learning about seasons."

Theta snaps back to Delta Psi, who has given clarity to the drawings on the board and looks far more interested in the unresponsive boy beside her.

"Professor's name is Kettoo, in case you didn't know. And she's teaching us everything so you won't get lost again until lunch."

Theta nods, again, looking away from Delta and to the rest of the room, startled to find the panicked black-haired boy glancing back at him nervously. He looks oddly familiar. Professor Kettoo has since moved on from illustrating representations of seasons to talking about the weather, still ignorant of Delta Psi whispering in the corner.

"Do you know that kid? He's been looking around for you this entire class. Well, I think he's looking for you. Probably is."

Theta shrugs, struggling to find some recognition of the boy until the desperate look on his face brings back the dead boy. He was there too. Did he kill the boy? Is he going to kill him next?

Delta scoffs. "You and your face. Is he some kind of arsonist?"

Theta shakes his head more quickly than normal, turning back to Delta Psi, perhaps the safest point of focus in the room. He's not going to ask what an arsonist is. "I met him yesterday," he whispers, resolved to not say more on the topic.

"You speak!"

Professor Kettoo looks in their general direction, shutting them up for a solid minute. Theta has fixed his attention on the board in front of him, outwardly determined to learn about seasons instead of talking to Delta Psi about arsonists in class.

"I don't really think he's an arsonist."

The boy in question continually glances back at Theta, which is getting a bit distracting, and Theta might complain to the professor if there wasn't a murder victim involved.

###

Despite his moderately low interest in talking all through the first morning of classes, Delta Psi is sitting next to Theta Sigma for lunch, if anything for a lack of someone else to sit next to. And the unanswered question of who the possibly-an-arsonist boy is, and the simple fact everyone else in the class is overly fond of professor Kettoo. In Delta's opinion, everyone should already know the five seasons by this age, not have them painstakingly explained on a board.

"I'd much rather study animals," she tells him between bites, the angle of her back making Theta feel like he has a hunch. "There are tons of them running around my House. Some are easy to catch. One of my cousins dissects them and sometimes lets me see." Theta looks down at his food, trying not to imagine the innards of a trunkike. Never in his life has he desired to dissect a bird.

He swallows the bite already in his mouth, thinking the hardest about mashed potatoes than he has in his life. "Aren't plants better to… dissect?"

Delta tilts her head almost ninety degrees, scanning him in a way she has twenty times this morning. "Seriously? I'm not Cerulean."

Theta shakes his head, looking back at his food that has somehow evolved to become more lumpy than it was before, when he feels a tap on his shoulder. He immediately flicks his head to see who it could be and is met with the frantic stare of the boy from before.

"Hey, aren't you—" Delta starts, cut off by his turning on one heel and running away. She shrugs. "Weirdo."

Theta takes one last look at his intestine food and decides to run after him.

They don't get very far, admittedly, stopped at the door by a supervising staff member that could possibly just be an older student looking for extra credit, turned around and marched back to their seats. Well, Theta's seat that the other boy is told to sit next to, giving Delta ample opportunity to conspicuously observe him from across Theta.

The boy doesn't have any food, angle of his face and proportions of his bones making it believable he hasn't had any in three days. He alternates between looking wide-eyed at Theta and cranking his neck around the room, paranoid.

"What's your name?" Theta asks him once the irked staff member returns to their post, immediately drawing the boy's complete attention to him. Which is a bit daunting, as his eyes won't seem to reduce themselves to a normal size. Probably the eyebrows.

"Omega Xi," he rushes out, looking over his shoulder and across the room and back to Theta. "But you can't tell."

"Tell who?"

"Anyone!" he shout-whispers, leaning in closer. "You remember me, don't you?"

Theta nods, recalling a number of scattered images of blood and a river and a fire. "You and I were there when Torvic—"

"SHH!" he insists, giving Delta Psi cause to peer over Theta's back.

Torvic?

"What are you two talking about?" She enquires loudly, turning Omega Xi's partially calmed down eyes back into wide paranoia.

"It's okay." Theta tells him, later questioning the meaning of 'okay' more in-depth than mashed potato. "She won't tell anybody."

Delta vigorously shakes her head, leaning in as much as socially acceptable to figure out who this kid is. Omega Xi doesn't look like he trusts her.

Instead, he whispers into Theta's ear "They're going to find me and put me in jail."

Much to Delta's annoyance, Theta whispers back "But nobody knows if we killed Torvic. We don't know if we killed Torvic!" There are brief flashes and a whole lot missing. As if someone handed them a vague sentence and expects them to produce a feature film portraying the event exactly. It's hard to know what to do with it.

Omega Xi only shakes his head, eyeing an uncomfortably close Delta Psi. "Can I have that apple?"

Theta nods, and barely three seconds later, Omega Xi has gone running off with his apple.

"So what's the deal with that kid?" Delta Psi demands, eating an apple of her own. "I don't think he's eaten anything."

Theta has had no time to craft some kid of believable alternative to 'we burned a murder victim together', and ends up sputtering "We're cousins."

"You are not. You don't look anything alike."

He tries to look even the smallest bit defencive. "I don't look like any of my cousins."

"And what do they tend to look like?" She raises one eyebrow, a skill Theta is fascinated by but won't attempt on his own. That and lying. "Okay, he's not my cousin." He looks at a spot on the table just as uniform as the rest of the surface, made of something he doesn't know. He doesn't know a lot. In terms of the whole universe and the whole of time, he knows nothing at all.

"So who is he?" She nearly shouts, Theta reflexively getting her to 'SHHH'.

"I don't know I met him yesterday before initiation okay!?"

She frowns, and goes back to her apple. "You could've just said so."

###

It is a combination of fatigue, feeling still overstrung by looking into the entirety of space and time itself, living an entire day surrounded by all kinds of other people and information on top of the vivid, nonsequential flashes of Torvic that got him to creep out of bed. It's as if the story was tied to a firework, sent off into the sky by morning, and only now are the pieces falling to the ground, burnt around the edges.

He won't try and find the barn again, part of him wondering how he even got there in the first place. He walks past three sleeping peers in beds — two opposite and one beside him — wrapping himself in a blanket. He loops it to cover his hair so nobody knows it's him. Getting caught sneaking out twice in a row would not do much good.

He knows Omega Xi is all the way at the end of the hall, their assigned names apparently used for convenient sorting and filing if not anything else. The hall outside is dark and not patrolled by someone older, most of them assuming the eight year-olds won't try something sneaky. It takes some effort to control the blanket hanging over everything and trying to unwind itself, the strategy of sliding along the floor with two corners of it under his feet starting to look like a bad idea.

The only thing motivating him enough to continue is the knowledge Omega Xi is most definitely still awake, if he's got the same kind of pictures running through his head. Theta turns the door handle of room 1-1-7, holding his breath for another reason he doesn't know. His brain contemplates how full of unawareness life is before seeing Omega Xi about ready to tackle him.

He is poised at the end of his bed with a pillow, hair and eyes wild, breathing uneven and jerky like he's been crying. Which, Theta thinks, he probably has. Only one other person shares Omega's room, who has wisely positioned himself as far from him as possible, the boy with the pillow not seeming to care if anyone is woken up or not.

Theta takes a deep breath and moves the rest of the way into the room, closing the door a bit louder than he'd like behind him. In the hopes he might be recognised in the dark, he lets the tangled blanket drop to the floor and braces himself for impact. He squeezes his eyes shut, but nothing rams into him like he thought at least a pillow might, a reassessment of the room informing him Omega has jumped off the end of his bed without a sound and is just sort of looking at him.

Theta doesn't dare move much closer, stuck assessing the face in front of him as his entire plan of action has been lost. If he knows one thing, it's that Omega Xi has had about as much sleep as Theta.

"What do you want?" Omega asks him in a hoarse whisper, throwing the pillow onto his bed in what Theta hopes is a gesture of nonviolence.

In this moment, Theta resolves to think through all his future plans. "I… I dunno…" it comes out mostly all at once. "But it doesn't look like you can sleep and I can't sleep because we killed Torvic and yeah…" Omega doesn't look paranoid at the sleeping roommate potentially eavesdropping, which could mean a few things. He doesn't say anything for a while, the silence pushing Theta almost right through the door. "I'll just leave sorry I um—"

Omega runs over to where Theta hesitantly backs away, throwing his arms around him a little more vigorously than feels comfortable stuck against a door, with a sniff. Theta only makes sense of the fact now Omega has been crying this whole time, which doesn't do much good for Theta now because he doesn't know what to do with crying people or with hugs. At all.

"It's okay," he sputters, wondering what to do with his arms and some instinct placing them awkwardly on Omega's back.

"I killed Torvic," he heaves, still in a whisper, refusing to let go of an uncomfortable Theta.

"Well… well he was going to kill you first, and you're nicer than he is so this option is better." Theta can barely get any clear thoughts anywhere, focusing mostly on the door hinge in his back, the hair near his nose, and the weight of Omega not keeping itself up all the way, but somewhere along the line the idea of maybe moving might help appears.

"You should get out of the door," Omega mumbles just loud enough for Theta to use up a second figuring out what he just said.

"You're a bit in the way." As if physically pushed, Omega runs across the room and jumps into bed face first, back still heaving up and down sporadically. Theta is caught between the urge to run away from a crying boy he doesn't know how to handle and attempting to handle this crying boy, a fundamental part of his brain telling him running away from crying people is not good, whatever anyone else says.

Theta drags his blanket uselessly over to where Omega lies, leaving it on the floor and standing awkwardly in place for a moment. The hugging is either helping or distressing, and Theta can't tell for who, but if it makes Torvic less of a thing than normal for Omega, it might work for him.

Theta doesn't know how he manages it with any precision, but he curls up next to Omega with his arms around his back, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he feels. Omega eventually hugs Theta, too, in a way banishing the nightmare of being awake. It's an awkward tangle of arms and tears and Theta refusing to acknowledge the fact he's scared of sleeping in new places, but Omega finally goes to sleep and that was really the whole point.

Theta can't bring himself to leave, even with the shallow breathing of a sleeping Omega and the threat of getting in more trouble for not sleeping where he's supposed to. Ten years down the road he'd never admit it, but Theta has discovered he really likes hugs.