One of the under-appreciated aspects of the Academy, in Theta's opinion, is the lack of snow. Ever. Theoretically it could snow on occasion, but not enough to keep the entire population of the building inside, buried under something like a meter of it. Lungbarrow is positioned in just the right place to ensure all forty-five cousins end up with too much social time on their hands.
Theta sits on the floor, as do many of the smallest cousins, trying to sip lukewarm liquid out of a cup clutched between his hands. He is not, by any stretched, shielded from the occasional jostling of others. They should technically be siblings, since they all come out of the same Loom. Then again, nobody assigns relations to dolls made from the same machine.
One of the fortunate elders sitting on one of the couch ends has retained the same fed up look for the past ten minutes, only pretending to ignore the conversations of the people beside him. "Old man Quences should really have this figured out by now," they groan, head rolling onto the back of the couch.
"We don't have weather control this far north, Satthaltrope." Even if it's only Innocet beside him, Theta inches his limbs further together, trying to minimise his total volume to shy away from the voices. "And besides. It's warm enough in here."
"Don't other Houses have that all over the property?" the kid above Theta snarls. He is very precariously seated on the arm of Satthaltrope's couch, allowed to sit by their shoulder like a bird so long as he doesn't fall off. Theta doubts either of them would care if he fell off on Theta.
"Yeah, on Wild Endeavour, Glospin." Satthaltrope speaks to the snarly kid like they do everyone else: superior, bored, and mildly annoyed. Glospin loves it. "And those godforsaken purebred Prydonian cottages popping up all over the place."
"I'm a Prydonian!" Theta shouts almost directly upwards, receiving a bemused smirk from Satthaltrope.
"I know."
"Prydonians are stupid," Glospin declares in much the same tone, folding his arms over his chest. Theta could easily pull him by the leg and topple him over spectacularly, but not without breaking Theta's back in the process.
"There's no need for that." Innocet — the best of Theta's fabricated family — stands, Theta now with a couch and a cousin towering on either side of him. She manages to find enough space on the coffee table to sit across from Satthaltrope, fixing them in place with a glare. "Prydonians are most often Lord President."
"Yeah, Lord Presidents that won't give us weather control," Glospin says in a voice that can't help but make anyone listening roll their eyes.
"Glospin, shut up, you're nine years old." Innocet manages to deflate the kid's ego by a fraction.
"Rassilon's a Prydonian, and I bet he wouldn't appreciate being called stupid." Theta unwisely stands up now, the attention of at least ten other cousins now drawn to the tiny argument before them. Being huddled together for warmth two days in a row does not lend itself to much excitement.
Satthaltrope's drive has not been stopped by Innocet's stop corrupting young children glare, the smirk turning to Theta. "You don't look like Rassilon to me."
The people listening around them react in half-finished laughs and forced-down smiles, turning away from Theta's poorly shocked expression. Innocet's the only one who looks like she'd vote for unanimous peace in a single House.
"You don't actually look like anyone," Glospin says, mustering up the spunk to smack Theta in the shoulder. "Blond hair, white as glue, scrawny."
"Where did you learn the word 'scrawny'?" Innocet tries, cut off by Theta's dignified
"I was just loomed that way!"
By now most of the congregation has taken notice, many in the back not trying to keep down the chuckling and bemused snorts that come with watching nine-year-olds defending themselves. Theta looks at them all. Glospin's right. They all look similar, but definitely not like Theta.
Satthaltrope nods slowly with a clearly bit back smile, gesturing to his general scrawniness. "Then something went wrong there."
"Leave him alone, Satthalt—"
"Everything went normal! I would know, I was there!"
Glospin laughs almost out of character, having not yet begun mimicking that strand of Satthaltrope's mockery. "Nobody can remember being loomed, stupid."
Theta furrows his eyebrows, a small crowd waiting for the rest of the impossible story. There's some instinct telling him to lie, but it's probably just the multitude of people staring at him. "Well I do. Some of it," he mutters, big toes beginning to work their way towards each other.
"Describe this momentous event to us, please." The smirk has returned to Satthaltrope's face, Glospin trying and failing to match it. Everyone has gone quiet for the most part, a few whispers back and forth caught between friends.
Theta remembers all of it, in truth: the terrifyingly quick ripping apart, the feeling of moving everywhere but still stuck in the dark, being nothing more than a scattered thought or two, then the sticking back together piece by piece and wondering how all the pieces found each other so perfectly. Like a caterpillar in its cocoon, body ripped and melted and stuck together again, brain intact the whole time. Not that he's gong to tell.
"It was dark," is all Theta can sputter before everyone except maybe three people laugh in some way, turning back to whatever they were supposed to be doing, leaving Theta to the judgement of Satthaltrope and his minion. Both of them appear about to say something, but Innocet stands up and whisks Theta away by the hand before they can say it to his face. He can hear "You're in the wrong House, kid!" above everyone else's conversations before Innocet pulls him out of the crowded room.
"Isn't the heating…" Theta trails off as a flame blooms inside a jar, held between Innocet's hands. They are both huddled on her bed, braving the cold over the crowded living room.
"When you've lived here for thirty-four years, you'll learn a few tricks."
Theta stares at the jar and Innocet's apparently unharmed hands, feeling the warmth spread out of the top. "Why is it so red?"
"Oh, shellac, charcoal, strontium, and potassium chlorate. Three of these things are on the property. Usually." She takes him aback, slightly, thrusting the jar with FIRE into his hands. He has to lean just slightly to avoid falling into Innocet, combating the dip in the mattress she makes. "You are not in the wrong House."
Theta shrugs, still inspecting the shockingly red fire as it just passes the lip of the jar like a flicking tongue. "Nobody else is this white," he mumbles. They all have fantastic bronze skin, many with thick black hair so dark it shines purple.
Innocet has a patch of darker skin on her face, pooling on her right cheekbone and trickling down almost to the corner of her lip. Not a lot of people have that. "Satthaltrope's the only one with green eyes. They're only saying that to make you feel uncomfortable and out of place. Everyone has differences. If we were all the same, we would be clones."
He shrugs again. His internal motivation seems unable to provide energy for much more than passive gestures and low-volume statements. "But I'm a lot more different than anyone else." It's not like they were saying anything new; he's always known that much. He scowls at the fire. "I probably am in the wrong House."
"Look, Theta. Satthaltrope and Glospin only get their power from putting other people down and telling lies. If you don't believe them and ignore what they say, they can't hurt you."
Theta scowls at Innocet in exchange for the fire. "You sound like a grown up!"
Innocet pauses in her speech, trying and failing to make eye contact. "I want to be a psychologist when I grow up. You know, thinking and emotions of other people and stuff. I'm practising."
Without losing his accusatory exasperation and grip on the flame, he replies "Am I good practice?"
Innocet shrugs, which Theta doesn't think is very fitting for a psychologist, even if he doesn't know really what they are. "I don't know if I'm doing well or not. Am I helping?"
Theta regards the jealous hands holding the jar, fingers that only know years of wishing they were wonderfully pigmented like everyone else's. "I guess." She's not really. His skin's going to stay that way. And his hair. Until he regenerates in a hundred years or so.
Innocet dubs him the slightly uncomfortable recipient of a cousinly hug. "Good." She gives him a smile that still looks grown-up, taking the fire jar from him. "Believe me, Satthaltrope's been picking on everybody since he popped out of the looms. We all want them to regenerate into a kind old lady who knits us all scarves."
"Them and Quences." Their ever-absent Housekeeper, wrinkliest of the cousins.
Innocet's smile fades ever so slightly, still molded into a grown up's. "He needs to fix the heating."
###
"You looked like you swallowed a lemon whole." Koschei sidles up to Ushas, surrounded by fellow ten year olds positively bubbling with excitement.
"Everyone's acting like they've never seen a TARDIS before when all but Drax lives far enough away they must have taken one to get here."
They are currently the only two not chattering uncontrollably and wandering around the control room, excluding the professor in training far too inexperienced to control a room full of excited ten-year-olds. Why exactly the pilot left, nobody remembers or even cares.
"We are going to the Museum of the Last Ones. That's probably making everyone more excited than normal."
"True." One student is currently trying to operate some mechanism, unnoticed by the professor in training.
"Is that Theta?" Koschei strains his neck to see him properly, and sure enough,
"I'm pretending not to notice." Some kind of low bong sounds through the whole room, emitted from everywhere. Ushas folds her arms and sighs impatiently, Koschei grinning at the idiot being forcibly dragged away from the controls.
"But I know how to fix it! It's only the—"
"You stay right there." The professor in training with hair that used to be done up properly turns on a heel to attend to Magnus, who is now pretending to shoot everybody.
Theta mumbles something about the monitor at the ground, scuffing one foot against the woven metal.
"Since when did you read about TARDIS mechanics?" A bemused Koschei asks, Ushas behind him trying not to laugh at Theta.
"Since social studies got really boring." The last word is said in a whisper as an unsurprised Professor Bulek enters with some mechanical device.
"Would everyone kindly find a spot of the orange rail and remain silent?" Everyone immediately follows orders, under the glare from their much taller professor. They all look expectantly at the pair in authority, except Magnus. He's taken to scowling so hard at the professor in training it hurts the jaw muscles to look at.
In all her disheveledness, said professor in training beams at the whole room as if nothing could possibly be wrong. "We will be taking off in under two minutes, and it would behoove you to stay still for the flight."
Even Ushas looks mildly perplexed at the not-yet-professor, glancing at Theta to confirm she's not alone.
"What does 'behoove' mean?" A voice squeaks form the ring of students, springy dark curls and tiny frame shying away from the collapsing facade of their superior. Professor Bulek does nothing to assist the situation, absorbed in repairing whatever Theta claimed to have been able to fix with a bit of poking.
"It means it would benefit you. Help you. I mean, the TARDIS could be a bit wild while flying so if you stay in the same spot you won't get hurt."
The silence that follows is punctuated by whispered questions of Where are we going? and What's Professor Bulek doing? and a single So I wasn't actually going to fix it… muttered by Theta.
Ushas provides him with a slightly awkward pat on the back that nearly pats Koschei in three places in transit across his back. "Don't worry. No ten-year-old can fix a TARDIS."
Theta, of all things, sticks his tongue out at her. "It looked like the monitor just wasn't on."
"Silence, please," Professor Varek calls from the centre of the room, pulling a lever. The ship's hum turns into an excited whir, the order of silence no longer functioning in a room full of Prydonians.
"Alright YES, you may all look around individually, but STAY IN THIS EXHIBIT." It didn't take much for the brigade of children associated with the most troublesome chapter to tire out both Professor Bulek and his apprentice (who everyone was told to address as Xandra). Both of them uttered at some point a desire to get more sleep.
Ushas, on the other hand, is having a field day. "It's a WIRRN THETA LOOK AT THE—"
"Ushas, it's a giant bug." In a number of decades, he'll wonder how he managed to be disgruntled about a real live wirrn, but at the moment it remains a giant bug. Ushas grabs him by the forearm, dragging him closer to the glass case.
"You don't understand, it's a wirrn. These things are practically invincible and they lay eggs in cattle and sometimes people and then they take overthe host body. So they're all still part cattle or part person but still completely wirrn." Koschei turns a slightly greener shade of pale at the idea of having an egg laid in him and turning into a giant bug. Most everybody walks right past the nightmarish thing, but Ushas looks excited as any normal being on Otherstide. Not that anyone in their right mind would give her a host-eating bug as a gift.
"That would be nasty in a fight." Magnus tries to look tough at the wirrn suspended in time, which doesn't work at a third of the height of a bug. "It's got really long arms."
Ushas gives Magnus a dirty look. How dare he consider fighting the last surviving wirrn ever? "And semi-opposable digits once fully developed."
"Can we leave the bug please?" Koschei half-whines half-begs, giving the wirrn occasional sidelong glances in case it decides to lay an egg in him.
Ushas nods. "There's a zarbi right over—"
Koschei violently shakes his head. "That's another giant bug. What about the last of the flubbles or the," his brain feels suddenly devoid of not bugs. "kitten?"
Ushas rolls her eyes so far Theta is mildly concerned they will fall out of her head, reluctantly walking directly past the last ever zarbi and onto a friendly-looking thing in a smaller box.
"This exhibit doesn't make any sense. Shouldn't all the bugs or all the Andromeda system be in one place, not… whatever that is?"
"I would not be here if it were all bugs," Koschei declares, approaching the last ever
"Fruzin. They were kept as pets on the Cirranin homeworld, but nearly everything on that planet was destroyed in a war." Ushas peers into the glass from the side, clasping her hands behind her back in an attempt to either look smart or look grown up. "This museum is also the size of a planet, so they use teleportation things to get around. They set up rooms like this so you get to see a bit of everything in one spot."
Magnus sighs much louder than any Time Lord would naturally, itching to skip on to the next one. Reading is never his idea of a good time.
"I saw more bugs on the other end of the room." Ushas tells him without looking up, and Magnus immediately takes off in search of large beasts to contemplate attacking.
"I wonder how they get in to save the animals." Theta tilts his head slightly to the left, looking at an orange and black striped creature on four legs. "In the middle of a war, are they going to throw someone in to collect the last of some species or what?"
Koschei shrugs, skimming the description underneath the striped creature but focusing mainly on the thing itself. "They have time-freezing technology, so that could work. Ushas probably knows." He looks from the description to the creature again. "Sol III. Before they went and made colonies everywhere."
"Tiger." Theta smiles. "They all have such easy names for things. Fish. Tiger. Bird. Bug."
Ushas appears behind Theta as if summoned by scientific inaccuracy. "Those are actually just names for animals in general. Like tafelshrews and rovies are both rodents."
"Oh." Ushas walks off again, ponytail swaying with overinformed sass. "We should go see the whale." The proboscis monkey is just not as majestic.
"Theta!" Koschei hisses, checking to see if Ushas heard what she would call a 'terrible idea'. "We're not allowed to see the whale."
Theta grins. "It's not like they're going to notice us. They're sitting and talking."
"But…" Koschei searches the air for a good argument. "What if we get lost?" Not a good argument.
Theta peers around the corner. "I can see the whale from here." Koschei continues to look defencive. "Oh, come on. Just for a minute."
Koschei takes one last cautionary glance towards the two fatigued chaperons, pulled by the hand to the end of the room without giving an answer. Theta knows it anyways.
It's an odd experience even for a ten-year-old to grasp, running through the very last of species from all over this corner of the universe without giving them some recognition. It's a spectacular thing seeing the last of a species, but having a planet full almost makes it irrelevant. Someone is bound to see them, but the whale looks so massive from back here Koschei has found he doesn't care if they're caught.
While the room with too many bugs and a tiger is all sandy tiles and glass chandeliers, the whale's room is a sleek black mixed in dark blues, tanks full of water surrounding the whale in a great circle. Theta smiles way up at the whale that will never move again, tracing the ridges of blues and greys with his eyes. "Now imagine riding that underwater."
"I wouldn't be able to breathe."
"Pretend you could breathe, idiot." Theta doesn't take his eyes off the whale. "It's so big."
"It could eat us."
"It's a beautiful creature." He turns to Koschei. "And it only eats little shrimp things."
Koschei might be put off by Theta's sheer fascination with an immobilised animal, if it weren't for the fact he hasn't seen any living thing even close to this size in his short life.
"Its full proper name is a blue whale. I told you they were easy-"
"THETA SIGMA AND OMEGA XI!" Xandra's voice cut through the murmur of students. Someone told.
"Theta we should go back now," Koschei sputters. Without a word, Theta grabs him by the hand again and starts running the rest of the length of the blue whale.
"We just need to hide and come back when they can't possibly see us," he hisses, sprinting full tilt as the prospect of Xandra trying to hunt them down increases.
Their feet smack against the tiles, a noise that must be carrying back to the room with too many bugs and a tiger.
"Aren't we just going to get in more trouble?"
They finally pass the huge tail, speeding into the next hallway. "Do you trust me at all?"
Turning a sharp left into a sandstone corridor, looking back to see if they're being followed, Koschei screams in response.
Theta claps a hand over Koschei's mouth, hesitating to turn around for the barely fading shock on Koschei's face. He draws his hand back, sucking in a breath and holding it. Someone's footfalls begin clicking against the floor angrily, passing their blue whale. Theta spins around like he's ripping off a bandaid, eyes taking a split second to adjust.
He nearly screams himself. "It's Torvic." Same shock of red hair, same ghostly pale skin, same construction of body parts.
Koschei's increased breathing isn't just from the running, frantic head shaking as it forces out words. "The eyes. His eyes weren't like that."
The bright orbs could be emitting acid, staring them both down, frozen in time. As if they put them in there.
"They've got clothes on..." Theta says, taking a tentative step towards the paper thin black sheet. "So they can't be an animal."
Koschei grabs Theta's hand, trying to keep him from the frozen, angry being. The footsteps come closer and closer, but there's no use running from the prisoner before them.
"We must be in here, too." Koschei whispers. "Last of the Time Lords."
Theta grins at Koschei, a stark contrast to the tortured not-Torvic behind him.
"I bet it's Rassilon."
The footsteps halt. "And I'll bet Rassilon wouldn't appreciate you two gawking at him in a glass box." Xandra locks one hand around one arm each, dragging them away from the scary anybody to the living everybody.