Ganbri's mind had been awake all night but, when he opened his eyes, he felt fully rested.
The dreams had started to change, the rooms around them altering abruptly or introducing sounds that didn't belong and Berran had explained that it meant he was waking up. Hannes vanished first, like a cloud of smoke drifting off into mist, and Ganbri woke a few minutes later. They laid awake side by side for some time, waiting for Berran and Kahlia.
Hannes didn't say much. Even during an entire night of sharing dreams, he barely spoke. But his eyes didn't miss anything. Since meeting them, Ganbri could always feel the presence of Berran's mind and felt that there was nothing he could hide from it, and he felt the same way about Hannes's eyes. When Hannes turned onto his side so that he could look at Ganbri's face, Ganbri felt the urge to pull up his blanket and hide beneath it.
"They call you the Star because you glow?"
"Pretty much." Ganbri nodded. "They thought I was their god."
"Weren't you?"
The question threw him off and Ganbri found himself simply blinking. Hannes's eyes watched each blink as if he understood them to be a language of their own.
"I don't see any problem with being a god," Hannes said, as if he was answering some statement Ganbri never made. "As long as you're good. People are going to make gods no matter what. It may as well be a real one."
Ganbri stammered over his answer, trying to find words that sounded responsible, trying to think of what Banni would have said. "I don't think anyone should have that kind of power."
"I don't think we should be fighting a war," Hannes answered easily and without hesitation. "Shit happens."
And with that, Hannes turned onto his back again, sighing and staring at the ceiling.
Banni had said that people would call him the Silence one day. Ganbri had joked that it was because he was so quiet, but he knew it had to be more than that. No one becomes known as a god of war for not talking much. He thought of the calculating look in Hannes's eye and the enormous rifle he kept so close. He imagined that the people Hannes was sent to assassinate never heard a thing.
"You're young," Hannes added in a barely audible murmur.
Ganbri's first instinct was to argue that, insisting that twenty-seven was considered a proper adult by most people, but then he remembered that he was with Time Lords. He'd heard Hannes and Berran referred to as the "kids" or the "boys" when he knew full well that they each had a century of history behind them. He must have seemed like a baby to them.
Kahlia woke up next. She stretched her limbs out in the bed and gave them both a lazy wave. Without a word, Hannes got up onto his knees while Kahlia stretched and sat up, moving her legs to one side so that Hannes could sit with his back against them. She started running her fingers through his hair, gently massaging his scalp while he closed his eyes and neither one said a word. Ganbri knew a well-practiced routine when he saw one.
Ganbri wanted to ask what she was doing but, the second his mouth opened, Kahlia's eyes shot him a look that told him to wait. So he waited.
After several minutes, Kahlia bent forward and kissed Hannes on top of his head, her hands sliding from his head to his shoulders, gently pushing him forward. Hannes got to his feet, grabbed his rifle from the corner of the room, and slipped out the door with nothing more than a nod of his head.
"That means 'see you at breakfast'," Kahlia whispered, black lips stretching into a smile.
"What was that about?"
She sighed. "Hannes is a little different. He can have problems coping with things changing all the time. When he was little, I used to hold him in my lap and run my fingers through his hair to help him calm down, and it just became part of his routine." She smiled at the memory, looking down as if she were imagining a little boy in her lap. "When things get a bit much for him, he goes back to his memory of the morning and it helps him kind of reset."
Ganbri frowned. "Has he, you know, been checked out by anybody?"
"We're in a war," Kahlia answered with a shrug. "We have some ideas but it's not like we can make an appointment with a professional when everyone on the planet is trying to kill each other. As it is, we just try different ways of helping him get by until we find ones that work. He's smart. He knows what he needs. We just have to make sure that we're listening when he tells us."
"Do you believe what the Doctor said about him? About us?"
Kahlia shrugged again. "I wouldn't have if I heard it before you came here. But now I know that he was right about me. He said I would become the Nightmare and I did in your world. Now we're all dead there."
They decided not to wait for Berran. Kahlia said that he tended to sleep longer than everyone else and that he'd find them when he woke. They decided to part ways to dress and wash for the day and they would meet up again for breakfast.
Ganbri decided to check in on J.J. on his way back to his room. He found the door unlocked and the room untouched. The bed looked too perfect for Ganbri to believe that J.J. had even sat on it. He found the same thing when he got to his own room. The note he left was lying on the blanket exactly where he'd left it.
He popped his head back out of his door and spotted a pair of soldiers down the hall. "Hey," he called out to them. "Have you guys seen my friend? The Alreesh?"
One soldier chuckled and the other shot her a sharp look. "Yeah, we saw him," she answered.
Ganbri hesitated to ask his next question. "Was he . . . did he look scared?"
"No," the soldier answered quickly. "He was okay. Really, he looked good."
The other soldier stepped forward. "Tell you what," she said with a smile. "We're just about to start our next patrol. If we see him again, we'll tell him you're looking for him, okay?"
Ganbri thanked them and told them where he'd be, then stepped into his room. It wasn't until he was halfway through getting dressed that he realized that they had smiled and spoken to him like they would to a child. It made him feel small and frustrated, especially because he knew that they were entirely right. Not even his resume meant anything here—in the Academy, during the Great Time War. Everyone in that building knew more and had done more than he had in his entire life probably several times over. At home, he always brushed his fathers' attitudes off as them being over-protective parents but here he really felt it for the first time, and he knew that he was just a kid who was in over his head.
Ganbri found Kahlia and his brothers together in the mess hall. Ganbri tried to imagine it as the school cafeteria it had once been, imagining books instead of guns and robes instead of armour, but it proved harder than he thought. Whatever the Academy once was, it was a military base now.
Hannes and Kahlia sat side by side at a table with Berran on the other side of it, the space beside him set up with a small metal box and a water bottle that had clearly been put there for another person.
"You're up," Ganbri said as he sat down.
"Yeah, thanks for waking me," Berran answered with a scowl and sarcasm thickly applied to his tone. "It was really nice to wake up completely alone and realize that all fucking three of you took off without me."
"You always sleep late," Hannes answered, scowling right back.
"Okay, but Ganbri didn't know that!"
"Don't pick on him."
"I'm saying my feelings are hurt, Hannes. You're supposed to acknowledge my feelings."
Hannes's spine straightened, and his eyes pierced through Berran like arrows. "Don't fucking pick on me either."
Berran opened his mouth into a shocked expression. "I am communicating."
"You're being an asshole," Kahlia interrupted. "You're older than both of them, Berran. You're supposed to be setting an example."
"You sound like Dad."
Hannes looked up at something behind Ganbri and quickly moved over in his seat, squishing up against Kahlia to leave space next to him. Ganbri glanced over his shoulder and spotted J.J. approaching their table. He sat down next to Hannes with a word of thanks and opened the bottle of water in his hands.
"Everybody alright?" he asked, taking a sip.
Ganbri frowned a little. J.J. looked refreshed, and he barely glanced at the strangers beside him before making himself comfortable. He didn't tense and shift away when his shoulder touched Hannes and his eyes drifted around the room with mild interest rather than caution.
"They didn't give you food?" Berran asked, opening the ration box he'd been given as though to offer its contents.
"They told me not to eat that," J.J. answered with a shrug. "Might make me sick. They told me to wait for a bit while they figure out what's safe for me."
Ganbri hadn't even thought to look at his rations yet and opened his own box. The items inside were processed and dehydrated, condensed into efficient and easy to store little rectangles. He carefully lifted out one that was a deep green and took a slow bite. It was terribly dry and hard to chew but, after watching Kahlia for a second, he realized he was supposed to take a sip of water with each bite. As soon as he did, the horrible substance in his mouth turned into something flavourful and pleasant. It reminded him of almonds and spinach, with a slight sweetness to it.
J.J. nodded towards it. "Is it good?"
"It's different," Ganbri answered. "But it's not bad."
J.J. nodded again and glanced to his right, finally noticing Hannes's intense eyes were still looking at him. "Hey."
Hannes smiled at him. "Hu'ate ouvi ahn."
"No shit," J.J. answered, his eyebrows going up and looking impressed. "Gur ahje mi'ahl?"
Hannes's smile spread into a grin. "Ko alhr. Piktu grathi en."
Ganbri frowned in confusion. "What are you doing?"
"He speaks Alreesh," J.J. answered, grinning wide enough to reveal all his teeth. "He doesn't even have an accent. I don't know anyone other than your parents who speak Alreesh. Jack doesn't even speak Alreesh. Hu alhr tiunde."
It was strange to hear J.J. speak in his own language. Ganbri had never heard it before. The TARDIS had always translated everything he said and Ganbri had only just begun getting used to hearing J.J. speak with an accent. Watching such unusual words and sounds slipping from his mouth so easily and naturally felt surreal and he found himself wondering how long it had taken J.J. to learn English.
"What did the first thing mean?" Ganbri asked.
J.J.'s golden eyes turned towards him curiously. "'The sun sees you'," he answered, an odd little smile on his face. "It basically means 'good morning'."
Ganbri tried to mimic the sounds he had heard, finding it more difficult than he thought to transition between the breathy vowels and the guttural, rolling r's. J.J. corrected him on the words once and offered some tips on his accent. He got a nod of approval on his third attempt, but Ganbri suspected that J.J. was just being kind, not wanting to embarrass him in front of his older siblings.
"Kevin's been trying to learn," J.J. commented. "He's shit at it but he tries, bless him."
"Is Kevin your husband?" Hannes asked immediately.
J.J. looked at him, still smiling faintly. "No, I'm not married. We kind of live together though."
He'd been smiling since he sat down and Ganbri was starting to find it unsettling. He had expected J.J. to be exhausted and worn out from a night of anxious pacing, but his muscles were relaxed and his eyes were energetic.
"Did you sleep?" Ganbri blurted.
"Yeah, I got a few hours."
"Where? You didn't use your bed."
J.J. raised an eyebrow. "I wandered around a bit and I found somewhere else."
"But you don't know this place. And you don't have your meds."
J.J. frowned, looking confused and maybe even irritated. "Is there a problem?"
"No," Ganbri answered quickly. "I just . . . thought it was kind of weird."
He felt his cheeks flushing then, feeling embarrassed for being annoying. It shouldn't bother him to hear J.J. speaking in his own language and it definitely shouldn't bother him to see J.J. looking well rested, but it did. He kept feeling like he didn't know things that seemed obvious to everyone else and, especially right at that moment, like he was the youngest, most immature person in the room.
If J.J. noticed, he didn't show it. In a split second, his eyes turned back to the others at the table and the faint smile had returned.
"Alright, somebody teach me something in Gallifreyan."
Ganbri stayed quiet for that conversation too. He knew a lot of Gallifreyan, but he wasn't well practiced in it. As Hannes, Berran, and Kahlia gave J.J. phrases and words to repeat, Ganbri practiced them silently as well. He didn't want to say anything out loud in case Berran made fun of him for his accent or Hannes pointed out that he'd used a word incorrectly. He focused instead on eating his breakfast and pretending that he didn't find the conversation interesting.
After a few minutes of listening to J.J. struggling to not roll his r's, Tokrah entered the mess hall. He strode over to their table, smiling and holding a tray on the flat of one hand as though he were pretending to be a waiter. When he reached their table, he stepped up beside J.J., bent forward slightly and held the tray out in presentation.
"Something a little less poisonous for the gentleman?"
Ganbri watched J.J.'s eyes light up with amusement as he took the tray. Then suddenly Berran's hand smacked Ganbri's arm, followed immediately by a thump that he quickly understood to be Kahlia kicking Berran under their table. He looked at them both questioningly but Kahlia shook her head at him and flicked her hand in a gesture that told him to never mind. Ganbri frowned, decided that Berran must have been about to say something unkind, and turned his attention back to the scene before him.
Whatever Tokrah had brought J.J. to eat looked strange indeed—strips of something pale and wet, with blue and grey marbling all over it. J.J. carefully picked up a small piece and put it in my mouth, chewing for only a few seconds before nodding his head.
"That's good," he said happily.
"Excellent," Tokrah answered, then quickly turned his eyes to Ganbri and each of his children in turn. "Don't any of you eat it. You eat that uncooked and you will be sick for days, understand?"
"What is it?" Berran asked, leaning forward for a closer look.
"Shaanting," Tokrah answered simply.
By the looks of the faces that the other three made, Ganbri figured it was safe to assume that 'shaanting' was not considered good. His curiosity over the dish was immediately replaced with repulsion and he stopped looking at it so closely.
"Move over then."
Ganbri shuffled over, squishing up against Berran to make room for his father, and Tokrah sat down beside him. No sooner had he done so than he snatched a small piece from Ganbri's ration box and took his bottle of water for a sip. When Ganbri looked at him, attempting to make an offended face, Tokrah just grinned and winked at him, and he couldn't help but grin back.
Hannes leaned a little closer to J.J., speaking quietly as though he were delivering bad news. "Shaanting is like a kind of mammal that lives under the ice rivers. And they eat—"
"You know what it is?" J.J. interrupted him, and then also dropped his voice in a similar way that Hannes had just done. "It's fucking delicious." Then, as if to make his point, he ripped off another piece and put it in his mouth.
For a second, Hannes looked disturbed, but then his face broke into a grin and he chuckled nervously. Tokrah and Kahlia quickly chuckled as well, as if to let Hannes know that it was supposed to be funny, and then Hannes laughed.
J.J. had swept all of his hair over to the left side of his head, leaving the shaved section on the right side, and his wound with it, completely exposed. It looked healthier than it had the day before, but Ganbri never realized just how far the actual wound went before. His eyes traced the red line all the way past J.J.'s ear and tried not to remember what it looked like when it had peeled away from his skull on Kahlia's ship. He also noticed, for the very first time, that he could see silver strands hidden among the sea of black.
"So, I have to run something by you two," Tokrah announced, reaching across the table to snatch a portion of Hannes's breakfast next. "The void gates haven't been opened in decades and they haven't been maintained at all. We can get them up and running but it would mean putting more people on it than I care to during a time when we have a lot of work to do. I wanted to ask, as a personal favour to me, if you would consider staying one more night."
Ganbri felt a sudden surge of excitement and Berran smacked his arm again. "Do it," he muttered under his breath. "Say yes."
Ganbri looked over to Hannes and Kahlia, noticing eager looks in their eyes too. Hannes even gave him a quick little nod to back Berran up. J.J. wouldn't like it, he knew. He didn't like being in strange places or being around strange people and he probably wanted to get home as quickly as possible.
But he wasn't frowning.
J.J. still looked relaxed, casually eating the strange meat that had been provided him. He was looking at Ganbri, as though he were also waiting for an answer, but the thought of staying didn't seem to be concerning to him. He had slept and he was in a good mood . . . Maybe he'd go for it?
"We don't want to cause any problems," Ganbri answered slowly. "One more night should be okay, right?"
J.J. nodded without hesitation. "Should be fine."
Ganbri fought the urge to ask him why he wasn't arguing and decided to just take the win. This would be his only chance in his life to see the Academy or to spend time with other members of his species, let alone his own siblings. He wasn't ready to leave them yet.
"Excellent," Tokrah said happily. He reached across Ganbri to take a piece of food from Berran's ration box, only to have Berran quickly pull it away.
"You could get your own food, you know?"
"I'm pretty sure that is mine," Tokrah answered quickly. "Along with everything else that you have worn, used, and consumed in the last century, thank you very much." Berran rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh, but he pushed the box forward again anyway. Tokrah snatched a piece out with a victorious grin. "So they've got equipment for doing tattoos around here, you know."
That caught Kahlia's attention. "They do?"
"Yeah. We took artsy electives too."
J.J. frowned. "Tattoo equipment. What do you need tattoo equipment for?"
"For baking scones," Berran answered without a second's hesitation.
Tokrah waved off Berran's comment with an irritated shake of his head. "The kids have been talking about getting matching tattoos for years now. I told them they could do it if we ever got our hands on the proper equipment for it."
J.J. smirked. "Are any of you trained artists?"
"I'm trained to handle explosives," Berran answered quickly with an irritated tone. "Hannes is a fucking sniper. If we didn't have steady hands, we'd be dead."
"Okay, but can you draw?"
Berran made a face. "I don't really need to."
"What the fuck do you think a tattoo is?" J.J. laughed and shook his head. "It doesn't magically design itself."
"He can write," Kahlia cut in. "It's just gonna be writing. The boys can do that."
"And it doesn't have to be perfect," Hannes added. "A little personal touch is good."
"A little personal touch is good," Tokrah agreed, nodding his head. "You going to stay with them, Ganbri?"
Ganbri opened his mouth to answer yes, but quickly stopped himself and looked nervously to J.J. "I wouldn't want to leave you alone," he said quietly.
J.J. shrugged, not looking up from his food. "I'll hang out with the Master. I've got a chance to get some firsthand knowledge on Gallifreyan warfare. There's a lot to learn. I'll be fine."
Ganbri narrowed his eyes a little. He'd known J.J. for almost his entire life and he knew exactly how to read his body language. His relaxed presentation wasn't fake but why? He thought about what they'd been told the day before, about their fears coming from their other selves. J.J. had been told that his fear would change and Ganbri wandered if he had taken comfort in that, taking the statement to imply that he was safe now. Ganbri supposed that would be nice to hear if he had been J.J. and maybe that was all it took for him to let go.
He remembered the question J.J. had asked him—was there a problem? No. He supposed there wasn't. Something strange had happened, even before that morning. Ever since they'd come back from Kahlia's ship, he felt like J.J. had changed. Ganbri knew that he had changed as well. They were both different people than they were before, but that didn't mean it was bad.
Kahlia, Berran, and Hannes all seemed to like Ganbri the way he was now. They seemed to like J.J. the way he was too. That meant they were okay, right? Different wasn't bad. Different wasn't broken.
"You'll find me if you want me, right?"
J.J. met his eyes, that golden gleam looking too warm to feel like the same person. "Of course," J.J. answered, smiling a little as though he thought the question were silly. "You guys have fun and I'll catch up with you later."
Tokrah grinned at the group, looking thoroughly pleased. "This is nice," he said happily, reaching across the table again to steal another piece of food from Kahlia this time. "I'd like to do this again. We should meet up again for dinner."
"Are you going to bring your own food then?" Berran asked with a scowl.
Tokrah shrugged and stole another sip of water from Ganbri's bottle. "Probably not."
"You sure you don't want some of mine?" J.J. teased, holding out a piece of the strange, pale meat.
Ganbri watched the way smirks spread across both Tokrah's and J.J.'s faces, both clearly amused. Tokrah had warned them that the meat would make them sick raw, but he also knew how ridiculously stubborn his father could be when challenged.
"I wouldn't want you to feel left out."
Tokrah actually reached for the meat, only to have it ripped away from him when Hannes grabbed J.J.'s wrist and pulled it away.
"Ba, no!" he said loudly, a completely horrified look on his face. "That's not funny!"
J.J. seemed to think it was though. He was still chuckling when he put the piece of meat into his mouth and chewed it. Tokrah assured Hannes that he wouldn't really eat something that made him sick, but the concerned look didn't leave Hannes's eyes for several more minutes.
Not long after, J.J. finished eating and Tokrah announced that they were leaving. J.J. promised to meet them again by dinner at the latest and hurried off after Tokrah, leaving Ganbri alone with his siblings once more.
"Well, that's a bit of a dick punch, eh?"
"Berran!" Kahlia scolded immediately.
"What?"
"Fuck off," Hannes growled at him.
Ganbri looked at the three of them in surprise. "What?"
Berran's face broke into a wide grin, his eyes practically sparkling with mischief. "Really? What do you mean what?"
"Berran, shut up," Kahlia hissed at him again. "Can you just keep your mind to yourself for once?"
"My mind—what the—" Berran stammered over his words, eyes wide and hands help up like he was helplessly confused. "No one at this table needed telepathy to know fucking anything. That could not have been more obvious."
"What are you talking about?" Ganbri persisted.
"Don't tell him," Kahlia cut in. "It's none of our business and Dad would be pissed."
"Then maybe he should have tried a little harder to be discreet. He barely stopped short of strapping a neon sign to his chest."
Ganbri looked back and forth between Berran and Kahlia. Her scowl at him didn't soften and Berran seemed to be a lot more bark than he was bite, so Ganbri doubted that he would say something after Kahlia explicitly told him not to. Ganbri looked to Hannes for help instead.
Hannes made eye contact, then quickly looked away with an annoyed expression. "They're fucking."
Ganbri just about laughed at the suggestion but the look that Kahlia shot Hannes told him that she didn't think it was laughable.
"Who? J.J. and—"
Hannes nodded.
"You shouldn't have said that, Hannes," Kahlia muttered with another shake of her head.
Hannes shrugged.
"Ganbri doesn't care," Berran cut in, finally turning his attention on his own meal and picking out a piece. "If J.J. doesn't want to tell him yet, he just has to pretend that he doesn't know. No problem."
Ganbri frowned, a little thrown off by how certain they all seemed. "I don't know, you guys," he said slowly. "I don't think J.J. would think he has to keep something like that a secret from me. Besides, I don't think he'd be doing stuff with someone else when—"
"When he's got a super weird relationship with another guy that everyone knows is weird but he insists on pretending it's not a thing? Yeah, it sounds like he's really open and clear about his relationships."
Kahlia shook her head again, her lips pursing together slightly. "Berran, you're such an asshole."
"Ganbri gave me permission to go in his head," Berran insisted loudly. "You gave me permission, right, Ganbri? I was in there all night. I can't help that I know everything. If you guys weren't such shitty telepaths, then I wouldn't have to do everything myself and this wouldn't be an issue."
Ganbri thought carefully over their words while he ate. He supposed it made some sense. J.J. always slept a lot better when he was with someone and he looked like he'd slept well. But why wouldn't he just say so? Did he not want Kevin to find out? J.J. used to tell him everything.
"I shouldn't say anything, right?"
All three of his siblings answered in unison with an enthusiastic, "No."
They took their time finishing their breakfast, chatting casually about shared interests and things they hoped to do. Then they set off to explore the Academy together and dug through what remained of their people's culture.
They tried to work out the purposes of equipment they found, poked through notebooks left behind by teachers and students who had long since been gone, and Kahlia even tracked down a staircase that Tokrah had told her about. They ducked underneath and looked up at the underside, finding three names carved into the stone. Ganbri recognized two as the true names of his fathers and Kahlia said that the third was a friend of theirs when they were children. Most people who found that carving probably didn't know what those names meant because the infamous people attached to them grew up to have titles instead of names, and were known to most only as the Master, the Doctor, and the Rani.
At one point, Hannes became upset. Ganbri didn't know what upset him or how the others had even noticed, but Berran suddenly announced that they needed to take a break. Ganbri sat on the floor beside Kahlia and chatted quietly with her while they waited. Berran sat with Hannes far enough away that they couldn't hear them, and Ganbri watched as Berran tried different ways of comforting his brother. At first, he simply leaned against him but seemed to quickly change his mind and tried rubbing a hand on his back instead. Then he touched his fingertips to his thumbs in a rhythm and had Hannes copy him. Eventually, he settled on running his fingers along the stone floor, tracing out patterns while Hannes watched him.
"The same things don't always work," Kahlia explained in a hushed voice. "Sometimes he's soothed by touch, but other times it makes it worse. Same thing with sound or visual stimulation. We never know what will work. Berran is really good at figuring out which techniques are calming because he can sense Hannes without being too invasive."
"He's a very strong telepath," Ganbri commented.
Kahlia nodded. "Dad says he's the strongest he's ever seen. He's better than me, even though he's so young. Dad said that dream-walking was the hardest part of training for him, but Berran just started doing it on his own about ten years ago."
Banni had called him the Whisper. Ganbri thought about what he knew Kahlia could do with her own powers, what Tokrah could do when he was angry, and what Banni could do with his Beast, and shuddered at the thought of what someone more powerful than any of them might be capable of.
Hannes was mimicking Berran's movements now. His eyes were transfixed on Berran's hands while he brushed his own fingers against the stone in unison.
Ganbri's mind went back to the carving under the staircase, imagining three children grinning and whispering excitedly as they scratched their names into the stone, hoping not to get caught. Anyone who saw them would have scolded them and told them to go back to class or wherever they were meant to be, with no idea of who they were really talking to—who they would grow up to be.
He watched Berran and Hannes gliding their hands over the stone, one brother simply helping the other. He wanted to see them that way. He wanted to see them as the young men that they were—brothers who slept in their big sister's room and teased each other over crushes—but Banni's words seemed to echo through his mind.
The Whisper and the Silence.
Gods of war.
Whoever they were now, Ganbri knew they would be unrecognizable to the people who eventually took on those titles, just as Kahlia was unrecognizable as the Nightmare. Just as Ganbri felt that he and J.J. were becoming unrecognizable too.
Berran and Hannes stopped their movements and talked quietly to one another for a moment before getting to their feet. Berran announced that they could go, and they carried on with their exploration.
It was late in the afternoon when Kahlia led them to a heavy door that had four guards posted outside of it. Ganbri looked to her questioningly and she smiled.
"You wanted to see your dad, right?"
Ganbri stammered a little, unsure how to react to the unexpected question. "Yeah, but . . . Tass said—"
"The guards will take orders from me," Kahlia interrupted gently. "I can't let you go in alone but, if you want to see him, you can see him."
Ganbri hesitated. Why did he want to see him? What was he hoping to achieve? He didn't really know. But he'd felt like he was an imposter only pretending to be Ganbri ever since the moment he stepped off of Kahlia's ship and this version of his father had had a chance to see who this new man was. He felt that there must be something he could tell him.
Ganbri nodded his head, not quite finding the strength to use his voice. Kahlia smiled again, patted his shoulder, and stepped forward to talk to the guards.
Berran and Hannes stepped forward on either side of him.
"Are you sure?" Berran asked quietly. "That crazy son of a bitch tried to kill us all."
"And the planet," Hannes added.
A heavy weight slid down into Ganbri's stomach and he barely managed to whisper his reply. "In my world, he succeeded."
Despite knowing that the Academy was a school, Ganbri expected to see some kind of dungeon or prison cell. Of course, it wasn't. The room that the Doctor had been confined to appeared quite comfortable. It was bigger and better furnished than the student dorms that Ganbri had seen, so he felt certain that it must have been a teacher's lodgings. The Doctor was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding an open book in his hands.
"I wasn't expecting company," he said simply.
There were four more guards stationed inside the room, but Kahlia waved them out. Seconds later, the door closed, and Ganbri found himself face-to-face with a withered and aged version of his father in a room that no longer existed with his dead siblings at his back. He felt a surge of emotion, bubbling up inside him like words that were fighting to escape. The only problem was that he didn't know what those words were.
Banni smiled at him kindly, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. "You are so young to be faced with all this. Truth be told, it wouldn't be any easier if you were older but at least you would be old enough to understand that life is unfair."
"I'm starting to figure that out."
"I don't have much else to teach you about life than that," Banni answered slowly. "What did you come for?"
"My friend." Ganbri gestured to the door behind him, then gestured at his own head, tracing his fingers along where the scar ran on J.J.'s head. "Is he . . ."
"He'll be okay," Banni answered with a nod. "Eventually. Probably."
"You called him the Fleshcloak."
"So will many others." He paused and shrugged his shoulders. "Again, probably."
"When?"
"If it happens? Many years from now."
Ganbri thought of those strands of silver he'd seen in J.J.'s hair.
"He doesn't have many years left."
Banni smiled, opening his mouth like he was going to speak, and then shrugging his shoulders instead. "Then I must be wrong. After all, what happens in one universe doesn't always happen in another."
Ganbri felt himself getting angry, frustrated that he still couldn't find what he was looking for. "Why did you try to destroy Gallifrey?"
"To end the war."
He knew that already. That wasn't it. That wasn't what he wanted to know.
"Why didn't you go to the others for help? You could have worked together."
Banni chuckled and shook his head. "The Master is brilliant, I'll give him that. Tassiel and Jinnar are smart and determined, yes. The three of them have been working together since the war began and they've come no closer to ending it. Do you think I would have attempted such a thing if I thought there was another way?"
"But you were wrong."
"I wasn't. The war is still going, all these years later."
"Why did you—" Ganbri's voice caught in his throat. He choked on the words, feeling like they were squeezing the air from his lungs. His eyes watered up so quickly that he didn't have a chance to wipe them before a tear broke free and landed on the stones at his feet.
He felt Berran step forward more than he heard him, and he held his hand up to stop him. He didn't want anyone else to do this for him. He could do it himself.
He took a deep breath and tried again.
"Why did you try to kill yourself?"
Banni's eyes took on a sad look and quickly turned away. "You heard what I had to say at the time," he answered quietly. "I don't need to tell you more than that."
"No, you do," Ganbri answered firmly. "You do. You need to cut out the vague bullshit and you need to explain it to me. Everyone in that room knew what you were going to do—even J.J. knew what you were going to do—except for me. I'm your son and I didn't know that you would ever do something like that, so it matters to me and I want an explanation."
Banni's eyes turned to the floor. He took several slow breaths, seemingly lost in thought. When he looked back up, his eyes were glistening with a thin veil of tears that he refused to let fall.
"When we were boys, your father and I came to this school together," he said, smiling a little despite the pain in his eyes. "They took us to look into the Untempered Schism as a part of our initiation. When the Master looked in, he heard the drums for the first time. You've heard about that, I assume? You know what it did to him?"
He'd heard. The drums tortured Tokrah for almost his entire life, driving him to madness. The Master became a monster, infamous across the universe, with that drumbeat spurring him on at every moment. The Master in this world still heard it, though it seemed the madness had left him.
"I didn't hear drums when I looked in," Banni continued, his voice low and strained, as if each word pained him on its way out. "When I looked in, I saw the mark I would leave on the universe—in others too—and it was everything I feared it would be. Time itself told me that I was a disease. I was destined to hurt everyone I ever loved and to leave this world much worse than it was when I entered it. I cried. I ran away. I kept running away after I grew up, trying to keep my distance so that I couldn't do these awful things I'd been told I would do. It all happened anyway."
Ganbri frowned at him, taking on the weight of his words. He wanted to argue. He wanted to say that wasn't true. But Banni believed every word he was saying and Ganbri knew that nothing he could say would possibly convince him otherwise.
"Did you know that I was the first Time Lord to come into contact with the Daleks?" Banni began again, that strange, sad smile of his spreading a little further. "Unevolved and still planet-bound, I found them. I made enemies of them. I continued making enemies of them until they made enemies with our entire species and each new generation of Dalek was raised to fear and hate Time Lords until they rose up against us. The Daleks never knew what a Time Lord was once, and then I went to Skaro, and then the Time War happened." He stopped for a moment, as if giving Ganbri time to absorb that information. His eyes glistened more, watering enough that he hurriedly wiped them, but the sadness in his eyes was replaced with anger. "And when the war that I caused became too much, I tried to do the only thing I could think of to stop it. The price was so high and I was afraid, but I had no choice. I just wanted to stop the spread of the disease I had inflicted upon the universe. But when I stole the Moment, and I prepared to do an unthinkable thing for the good of all creation, do you know what happened?"
Ganbri swallowed hard, his throat feeling swollen. "What?"
The Doctor smiled and tears began to escape his eyes. "The Time Lords called out for help, begging to be rescued from me. And they did it by sending a signal to the only person in existence that they thought might be able to stop me—a four-beat rhythm through time, straight into the Master's head."
Ganbri's eyes widened, the swelling in his throat increasing to the point where he felt like he couldn't breathe. Banni chuckled at his reaction.
"Did he never tell you that I did that to him?" he said, shaking his head with an expression that suggested amusement. "No, he wouldn't. Even now, if you asked him, he would deny that it was ever my fault. He's spent his entire life listening to the distress call of our people, over and over again—save us from the Doctor—and he's never taken a moment to acknowledge that none of this would have ever happened if I simply wasn't here."
Ganbri stared into his father's eyes and tried to find the lie, but he saw no dishonesty. Somehow, being told the truth hurt worse than being lied to and Ganbri tried hard to stay strong. He waited for the feeling to pass, for his voice to come back to him, but it didn't. Every second he spent looking at that face felt worse than the second that came before it.
Ganbri turned and left the room without a word. He wanted to walk and just keep walking, run even. He wanted to storm through the endless halls of the Academy, until his legs were too tired to carry him further.
"Ganbri!"
He didn't get very far.
"Ganbri, wait!"
He didn't stop or slow down, but he heard their feet running to catch up with him. Berran reached him first, grabbing hold of his arm to pull him back. Ganbri barely had time to turn around before Hannes had wrapped his arms around them both and pulled them in tight. Seconds later, Kahlia appeared beside them, wrapping her arms around them too.
Ganbri didn't notice until he was being held so tightly that his entire body was shaking. It felt hard to breathe. He felt irritated that they were holding him still when all he wanted to do was run away, but then he remembered watching Berran with Hannes, using his telepathy to find out what his brother needed most. He knew it was no coincidence that Berran had been the first to grab him or that he suddenly didn't have anything to say.
So he gave in to them. Ganbri stood there and shook and tried to breathe and let his brothers and sister hold him while he tried.
After a moment, Berran started instructing him quietly. "Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Slowly. In. Out."
Hannes and Kahlia were following his lead and, for a moment, Ganbri felt like the three of them were breathing for him. He closed his eyes and let them, waiting for his lungs to catch up and learn how to imitate them. When they finally did, he felt the arms gripping him start to relax until he was able to let them fall away and he could stand on his own.
When he started walking again, the others followed him. No one asked where they were going. No one argued that they shouldn't go. When they came across guards, Kahlia ordered them away. When they stepped onto the sand, no one said they should leave.
Kahlia stopped after a few feet. "I'm going to wait here," she said quietly. "I think it's for the best if I don't look."
No one questioned her decision.
Berran went first. Ganbri didn't know what he thought might happen, but he figured there would be something dramatic. There wasn't. Berran stood, silent and unmoving, for a long moment. When he turned and came back, Ganbri saw him smirking.
Hannes went next. He was silent too, though that was less surprising. Ganbri watched his back slump and his limbs pull into his body as though he were frightened. For a moment, he wondered if one of them should go to him and pull him away, but then the moment passed. Hannes's spine straightened, making him stand tall and, when he let his arms relax at his sides, Ganbri saw his hands were curled into fists. He wasn't smirking when he turned around, but Ganbri saw a fire in his eyes that wasn't there before.
Ganbri hesitated before he took his turn.
From the moment his feet touched Gallifreyan ground, he felt as though he were reaching out for something. He felt the connection of other Time Lords, he stood on the path that his ancestors stood, and he tried to get answers from the people he thought might have them. It wasn't until he had heard Banni speak that he realized there was no person who could tell him what he needed to know. Everything that any one of them had to say came through filters of their own fears and insecurities first. Anything they said was only a reflection of themselves and Ganbri didn't need to see who they were.
He needed to see who he was.
The Untempered Schism stood before him, cold and lifeless, yet it seemed to call to him just the same. He was a Time Lord and this was his planet. The Academy was as much his as it was his fathers' and to gaze into the Untempered Schism was as much his right as it was any Time Lord's who had come before him.
Ganbri took a deep breath and summoned his courage. He stepped forward, leaving footprints in the sand as he walked. The light of the Schism pushed against his eyes and he felt the cold emanating from it, leeching the warmth from his skin.
He paused to look behind him, to look upon the faces of his siblings. None of them told him to stop or come back. None of them told him to look. They simply waited to see what choice he would make.
So Ganbri chose to look.
