Someone is shaking Theta awake without a touch of familiarity, which nearly sends him into a panic.
"Oh for heavens sake, calm down," a woman hisses, trying to shush a confused Theta while trying not to wake everyone else up.
"Hmm?" The clock on the wall reads 02:24. "Who're you?"
The woman sighs. "A relevant party." Theta has no idea what 'relevant party' means and would like to go back to sleep. "I need you to follow me. Your friend's asking for you."
Theta is pulled to his feet either voluntarily or not, vision starting to clear as his brain makes more sense of... Whatever this is.
"Which friend?"
"Omega Xi. He's had a nightmare."
Theta is well awake now, aware of the hand on his back and cold hallway floor under his feet. If he didn't know any better, he would start running.
"What kind of nightmare?" As if he doesn't already know.
"I'm sure he'll explain it to you."
The woman opens the door down the hall without knocking, turning the muffled noise into full-blown screaming and someone else almost shouting. Despite only three other people in the room, it looks like chaos: Omega clamping his ears shut and screaming on a bed, a man in pyjamas beside him clearly at his wit's end trying to calm him down, and the boy who was asleep two nights ago sitting up against the opposite wall, very scared-looking.
"Look, okay, Theta Sigma's here now. You wanted to talk to him, right?" The man looks at Theta as if he knows exactly what to do and isn't doing it.
Omega's screaming is reduced to a sort of flailed reaching as Theta walks over to the boy, trying not to look a bit scared and fearing for his physical well-being were he to attempt hugging him now. "Death was here," he manages in a voice hoarse from screaming, speaking the phrase itself nearly sending him into more hysterics.
"What do you mean?"
He looks at Theta more earnestly, constantly glancing to the unoccupied bed a metre left of him. "Death was in here. She talked about..." He looks at the two eldest in the room, ignoring the frankly terrified child at the other end of the room. "She talked about Torvic and and and and how he died and says she made a deal with you in the future and it's all my fault now and—" he aggressively hugs his knees, hiding his face from the rest of the world. The other people seem to have heard this story before.
"He's had a nightmare and just needs you to calm him down," the man tells Theta. Like he knows anything.
"Did you have a bad dream?" Theta asks him in as gentle a voice as he can muster, sitting at the end of his bed.
Omega shakes his head without lifting his face, gripping his legs tighter.
"Omega, death isn't a person," the woman tries in what she probably thinks is a kind voice. "There was only Zeta Omicron in this room before I was."
Omega only shakes his head again.
"I saw her, too." Zeta has not spoken before now, every head turning to face him in some sort of shock. He points shakily to the bed Omega kept glancing to. "She was over there, but didn't talk to me." The adults are incapable of forming a complete sentence to explain this.
The man looks like he's considering finding a new job. "Okay. Okay. Death was here, she's not now, she isn't coming back, and we can all go to sleep. Does that sound good?"
"That didn't sound very nice," Zeta says for all of them. "And Death says she'll come back for Omega once he's older."
The man looks about to speak, but is interrupted by Theta. "Omega, you don't count as older until you graduate anyways. You still have loads of time."
Omega unfolds himself and grabs onto Theta in the blink of an eye, a kind of desperate attempt to stay connected to the ground and not be sucked up to wherever Death is. He holds on so tight it almost hurts, fingertips digging into Theta's back and chin pressing into his neck.
Eventually the two grown-ups leave, deciding Omega has calmed down enough to leave them all in the same room. Omega stops hugging Theta a while afterwards.
"Was that really Death?" Zeta Omicron asks them, looking a deal more relaxed on his end of the room.
"I'd say so," Omega replies in a voice betraying the wild appearance of his face. "But Theta probably doesn't believe us."
"Of course I believe you!" Theta stares Omega straight in the eye, making himself look as determined as possible.
There is a silence, in which they all feel like they hold the greatest secret in the world, broken by Zeta. "Are you going to move in here now?"
Theta's brain wildly decides Zeta looks most like an acorn with hair instead of a hat. "Yeah. The people in my room are boring anyways."
He doesn't exactly want to sleep in the bed next to Zeta in case Omega wakes up screaming again, but can't bring himself to occupy the bed Death was on yet. Omega Xi isn't the only one with nightmares.
None of them turn off the light.
###
"BOOM! YOU'RE DEAD!
"No, you're dead!" There is a large thump, probably belonging to one of the voices Delta Psi can just barely not pick out from behind the wall. She went with Theta, mostly to escape the three sets of eyes asking her questions, and is now wondering why she would leave the sanctity of her room in favour of… whatever this is. Or why she was invited in the first place.
Theta opens the door to reveal Zeta Omicron lying on the floor behind a tipped over bed, throwing a pillow across the room at Omega Xi jumping from one bed to the next and barely missing the ceiling.
"Oh hi, Delta Psi!" Omega shouts, jumping off the bed and falling flat on his hands and knees, creating the thunking sound of previous repetitions.
"You can call Zeta Omicron 'Magnus'," Theta says. "That's his real name. Well, Magnussianellrontang, but that's a bit of a—" Omega hits Theta in the face with a pillow, point-blank. Omega is promptly hit back.
"Just… call me Ushas," Delta mumbles, jumping back as Magnus turns to face her.
"Hello, Ushas," he manages in an uncharacteristically calm voice, betrayed by his exhilarated smile. He turns almost instinctively to dodge fire from Omega.
"What exactly is the point of this game?" Ushas asks Theta, wondering whether she should stay right in front of the door or move to the other corner of the room and risk getting hit. Someone has fashioned what looks like a sort of nest with a blanket and pillows in that corner, giving it a somewhat safe appearance.
"Magnus calls it the War Games. If you get hit in the head or a heart, you have to sit in the trench and count to sixty, and if you get hit anywhere else three times you need to sit in the trench and count to sixty."
"And if you get stabbed!" Omega yells, attempting to jump Magnus and missing.
"Yeah, if you get touched by someone's hand in the back or the chest you're stabbed and have to sit in the—"
"Trench and count to sixty. Got it."
"OI! LET'S RESTART!" Theta yells a bit too loud and too close for Ushas's preference. To her amazement, the two actually listen to him.
They all run to a bed, Ushas automatically assigned to the one that's been tipped on its side.
"ThreetwooneGO!" Theta shouts again. Ushas ducks immediately, wondering how long it's going to take a professor to show up or for the neighbours to complain. Maybe they already tried.
There is a lot of running around and thumping she doesn't see, part of her wanting to run outside and stab somebody and most of her wanting to go back to where it's quiet and where she doesn't have to try and pretend stab people for fun. Theta suddenly appears over the top of the bed, handing her a pillow. "Throw this," he hisses, running out to the rest of his smaller-than-they-make-it-seem bedroom. She peers over the top, flinging the pillow at the first target she sees.
"I didn't mean at me!" Theta retaliates, shuffling over to the red duvet trench.
Magnus begins running after her with a yell that can only be described as faux-homicidal. Ushas lunges forward, nailing him in the stomach with an awkwardly placed hand. He staggers downward, clutching his stomach, making a terrible pained noise.
"He's just kidding, Ushas. And get in the trench, Magnus!" Omega shouts, jumping off the bed again.
It took Borusa a solid ten minutes to find them, immediately ceasing the wild excitement Ushas found in assaulting others with pillows. They were marched to his office and stuck together on a bench, the uneasiness in the pit of Ushas's stomach getting increasingly more intense.
Magnus seems the least uneasy with this arrangement, cheeks still pink from the exercise and entire body fidgety to keep moving. While a thousand ways this meeting could go wrong swam in Ushas's brain en route to Borusa's office, Magnus went around trying to stab people without him seeing.
"We'll be quieter next time, sir." Theta decides for all of them, various degrees of vigorous nodding echoed in the rest of the party.
"And how did you four even manage to get the bed into that position?" The hands folded atop the desk still taller than them holds their behaviour in checked balance alone.
None of them speak, Ushas fidgeting at the silence. Even though she has absolutely no idea how they managed to do that. Theta is unsurprisingly the one to speak, putting on the most serious of faces and addressing Borusa with some kind of melody attached. "Great teams make impossibilities come true."
Everyone is now staring at Theta, whose face has gone an interesting shade of pink. None of her cousins change colour.
"Did you just sing?" Omega asks him, none of the children seeing the amused expression on Borusa's face.
"It's a long story," he mumbles, earning a pat on the back from Magnus. Henceforth Ushas sticks around, despite the horrific trip to Borusa's office, if only to one day hear the whole story.
###
"It's fine."
Theta scoffs, setting his slate beside him on the Bed Where Death Was. "Omega Xi. You've had a headache for the past year and a half, it can't be 'fine'."
The headache-riddled Gallifreyan in question furrows his eyebrows, turning back to his assignment without another word. He mumbles "I'm okay," to himself loud enough for Theta to hear. Magnus has disappeared to who knows where, priding himself irrationally on his ability to sneak up on people without them noticing. They agree these War Games have gotten a bit overboard, but never have the heart to tell him so.
"No, no you're not." Theta walks over to his best friend, shutting off the screen of the slate balanced on Omega's lap for him. Despite being only nine and with barely an idea of how to look composed, Theta manages to pull it off, folding his arms directly in Omega's line of sight, providing no other relaxed route for his eyes to go.
"Come on. We're going to the nurse."
"I said I'm okay, Theta!" He looks back at his work, trying to ignore the figure demanding he go to the nurse for what he knows is a completely pointless reason.
"You're yelling. You don't yell when you're okay."
"Whatever," Omega mumbles, ignoring the very obvious time tot towering barely a foot over him.
"You have to go to the nurse!" Theta almost shouts, giving cause for Omega to stare back up at him, snapping the small resolve of defiance he had built.
"Why?" he demands, starting to reach the same volume as Theta, eyebrows drawn together.
"Because…" Theta feels like he's verbally running into a wall, and wishes he knew more words. "There's something wrong with you!"
Omega doesn't say anything, standing up to face his friend properly. Theta's cheeks go a tiny bit pinker than before, realising what a lack of words did to his best friend. He only barely begins to stutter out a "that's not what I meant" when Omega speaks on top of him.
"I know." His eyes move to the ground, feet shuffling towards the door without another word.
His feet start running soon after, leaving Theta to either stand confused with an extra slate in his hand or run after him. He's never really been good at standing still.
The door opens barely four seconds after it's slammed closed, admitting one more person into the nearly abandoned hallway. Omega's running down the hall of bricks and dormitory doors, turning the corner as Theta makes it halfway. Knowing the Academy, Omega is going to run into somebody else. Knowing Omega, he's probably going to make it wherever he wants to be without someone stopping him.
"Omega, wait!" he shouts for better or worse, tearing after him as fast as his legs will carry. Omega doesn't answer or turn around, taking a sharp left at the small band of older people coming towards them. That's the hall that goes upstairs and outside.
Most people are thinking about going for dinner right now, either herded in packs or given freedom of their own discretion. Omega keeps running for the doors, weaving through students that can't be bothered to involve themselves with the habits of the very young. Theta's running faster than Omega, but not enough.
The doors that open flood yellow light into the white-lit halls, drawing Theta's vision into a concentrated point somehow still focused on the back of Omega's head. Theta wears shoes but Omega doesn't, a factor Theta thinks makes him run faster and Omega thinks makes his feet stronger. Theta can barely see for the glare of the low suns but he keeps running, knowing he'll run into Omega eventually…
Theta is overcome with a strange instant of a weird sort of anger and overprotectiveness, springing from the ground to loop his arms around Omega's chest before they both hit the ground quite painfully.
Omega shrieks underneath him, arms starting to jolt back, trying to get the weight off of him. "GET OFF OF ME THETA," he yells, voice made hoarse and uneven and only an angrier version of the voice calling for him after the nightmares.
Theta does not oblige. "YouknowIdidn'tmeanitlikethatOmegaI'msorry," he sputters, in part wanting to keep holding on to his middle so he won't run off and also wanting to spare his torso more beating.
"I SAID GET OFF!" If people were out here, they might look over, but Theta doubts they all care because they're all Time Lords anyways and aren't supposed to interfere with the affairs of others.
"There's nothing wrong with you I'm sorry," he says again, somehow trusting Omega enough to get off him. Omega doesn't run away like Theta thought he might.
"Yes there is," Omega growls, determined to look at the ground instead of Theta, ripping deadish reddish grass out of the ground. "I have a headache," he speaks with solemn conviction, as if pleading guilty for murder in a trial everyone knows the verdict of.
"What kind of headache?" Theta takes part in this ritual grass ripping, watching Omega for some indication of maybe about to run off into the trees beyond. He seems intent to sit and rip grass.
"It's like…" he makes a sour face at the ground. "I dunno. It's probably nothing." He tosses freshly deceased grass into the space between him and Theta.
"Tell me."
Omega dares a glance up, immediately returning to his patch of Gallifrey. "It's like there's… well it doesn't hurt so it's not really a headache but…" he rushes out the final "there's this kind of noise."
"Loud noise?" Omega shakes his head, getting dirt into his fingernails. "High noise? Whiny noise? A squealing tafelshrew?" Omega does not show signs of amusement at this hypothesis, leaving Theta to believe it's pretty serious after all.
"It's still sorta quiet and low so. Unless everyone has some kinda noise in their head and I'm just…" he trails off, not hearing Theta confirm his futile hopes.
"I wonder where it's coming from," is the first thing out of Theta's mouth, invoking a confused expression on Omega's face that is still trained on the ground.
"It's coming from my head."
"No, I mean it needs to be from somewhere because you're the only one with noise in your head. We should go find it."
Omega finally takes his eyes off the ground, trying to find a joke in Theta's words that isn't there. After a while of silence where Theta wonders if he should say something else or perhaps suggest going in for supper, or simply if time has suddenly halted save for basic life functions such as breathing and Theta is the only one with cognitive ability, Omega throws grass on him.
Theta throws grass back.
Then instead of going to dinner they're running around a patch of field, mercilessly tearing grass out of the dirt and hurling it at each other, nobody seeming to notice this event transpiring because they're all inside like they're supposed to be.
It isn't until Theta sees a distraught-looking professor emerge from the door they ran out of before his laughter settles down in favour of a hiccup of guilt. Omega rushes up to his side before the professor can hear them properly, ignoring the yelling emerging from their elder. "I don't know all of my real name, but it starts with Koschei. Call me that."
Theta grins. "Koschei. Sounds better than Omega."
"Really?"
He snorts. "Of course it does. There could be a thousand people with 'Omega' in their name on Gallifrey but you're the only Koschei."
The professor looks downright perturbed at them, towering over the grass stains and dirt. "Care to explain yourselves?"
In a less-than-dignified march back to where they ought to be and a surprisingly brief outdoor lecture on responsibility, Koschei has fallen back to looking nervously at the ground and avoiding eye contact, footsteps morphing from a carefree sprint into a lowly shuffle.
"Hey." Theta whispers, straight-backed professor ahead of them not hearing him or only pretending not to. "As soon as we're older, we're looking for that noise of yours."
Koschei smiles a bit, still looking to the grass, but smiling nonetheless. His eyes reach sideways. "Promise?"
"Promise."