A/N:
wow that last chapter
was pretty long
this one is like
1000 words shorter
(a poem, by me)
((with absolutely no structure))
(((see this is why I write novels not poetry)))
The all-day public student laboratories are finally made accessible to those in fifteenth year and above, something Ushas has been itching to get to for a good three years. It didn't take much to download the entirety of the next three years' worth of biology classes onto her slate, an entire library available to use that not many people visit. It's mostly textbooks.
Canoodling, nah. Learning the progressive reconstruction of a species, now that's…
Theta and Koschei stand huddled together only slightly suspiciously in the back corner of the room, consulting what appears to be a low-level medical encyclopedia. This can, and will, only spell trouble. However harmful to her health associating with these two is, she shuffles her way around half-ring tables decked out in mostly unused equipment.
Theta tries to feign innocence once he notices her, not doing a very good job of shooing her off. Koschei continues meticulously measuring out something, pouring drops in and out of its container to maintain exactly 25 millilitres.
"This better be good," she says, in some ways feeling responsible for the general welfare of the two. In other ways, she wants to join their sneaky endeavours.
"Oh, it will be." Theta sprinkles some sort of powder into their solution. "That's it, then?" he asks Koschei in a lowered voice, who nods in return.
"You wanna join us, Ushas?"
"Doing what?" she flips Koschei's slate around, scanning down the page for what could be one of three things. Temporary stomach relaxant, temperature reduction, and "Are you serious?" she looks up at both of them, the ultimate motive of her entering the room in the first place mostly lost by now.
"Don't worry, we're not trying to give Borusa a neon tongue this time." Koschei puts a final drop of something in their concoction.
"This time?"
Theta punches Koschei in the shoulder, giving him one of those looks Ushas decides could invoke telepathy if they tried hard enough.
"It didn't work, but apparently we gave him a headache."
Ushas grins. "Don't you normally?"
Theta folds his arms. "We try."
In standing across the table from them, it almost feels like she's shoved up against a wall in a room full of people in chairs watching a play. Like she can be there if she wants to, but all the proper spots have been taken, and it might be more comfortable to leave.
A little standing never hurt. "So who's the lucky recipient of this idea?"
"Drax." Koschei produces his own container from somewhere and slowly pours the solution into it.
"We're in a prank war, him and us. I think we started it," Theta says.
"We dumped him off the bed when he was taking a nap, second year."
"Are you going to spike his drink with it?"
Koschei addresses her properly for the first time. "Not bad! You could join us!"
Now everyone in their chairs are staring at her, and so are the people on the stage, and she hasn't heard the question someone's telling her to answer. "So long as I'm not the one in trouble."
Theta smiles reassuringly. "No, that's my job."
Koschei and Theta seat themselves across from Drax as if they do it every day. Drax — mostly limbs and ears with a bit of teeth and acne thrown in over peachy gaps — reacts like they're holding a bomb. Ushas pretends to not know anybody and very intentionally sits beside Theta.
"So I hear you're into tinkering, Drax. Any good?" Koschei picks at a head of broccoli, tapping his foot against the ground in time with all the ones in his head. He's never particularly cared for broccoli.
Drax shrugs. "People like to think so. Fixed a robot bat once." He smiles at his own achievements like everyone of this age tends to do, taking a bite of mashed potatoes and sitting back a bit. Theta knows for a fact the robot bat was more of a toy than anything else. "Your turn, then?"
"For what?"
"You know what."
Koschei shrugs, looking over to Theta in an expired gesture to keep their antics a secret. That was their initial goal, but after the incident with the ashes in the middle of the hallway, the notion became irrelevant.
"I've actually lost track." Koschei nudges Ushas under the table, who in turn nudges Theta, who then accidentally bumps his cup of orange juice, spilling not enough orange to cause damage but still enough all over their section of the table. Drax leaps back as everyone thought he would, Ushas proclaiming some exclamation of their usual idiocy, Koschei scrambling to pull a napkin out of the dispenser while apologising to the person two seats down from Drax, pulling Drax himself into the apology, which gave Theta the opportunity to pour a small vial's full of solution into his cup.
After returning with a hyper-absorbent cloth in the most disgruntled state she can muster, Ushas settles back down into her seat, staring the most conspicuously at his glass out of the three of them.
"Sorry about that," Theta says for the fifth time, sticking the vial back in his pocket. "So tell me about the bat."
Drax, after three minutes of suspicious, idle conversation, finally contemplates the contents of his drink. Koschei looks around the room, nodding his head slightly as if wanting desperately to make a sarcastic comment on something and physically holding himself back. Ushas figures it must be verging on painful, for the number of things he and Theta have decided are hilarious one-liners in the middle of class…
Drax doubles over barely a minute later, making a noise on par to that of an overweight, dying water fowl and runs out of the room in frantic search of a toilet.
Two hands smack together directly in front of Ushas's face, bending her back for a startled moment. The person slightly assaulted by the orange juice stares back at them with a very concerned look that could very well run to authority about it.
"You two are…" Ushas shakes her head, sending out a puff of contemplative carbon dioxide, "something else."
"And we don't intend to stop, dear Ushas," Koschei hails to his friend, triumphantly taking a gulp of his own juice.
###
"Do you think Time lords are even allowed off Gallifrey without an official reason?" Theta asks one night, climbing trees in pyjamas for its own sake. Technically, it's only against the rules if you're caught outside past curfew.
"We're allowed around Kasterborous without time travel, I think."
"Political capital of the universe? Sounds like that would get old fast."
Koschei swings himself a branch above Theta, halting the movement upward until he goes up or Theta goes down. "Certainly if you're one for travelling."
Theta snorts unceremoniously, delicately placing his shoulders over a fork in a branch, crossing his legs to match the frame. "I can barely manage two months at Lungbarrow at a time, nevermind popping back the rest of my life."
"Think you'll go renegade?" Koschei hangs facedown on the branch above, legs dangling barely above Theta. They've gotten longer.
"Oh, yes."
Koschei idly taps his fingers just below his chin in the unconscious four. A slow four; kind of a dance.
Theta points to it, if only to feel the weight of his whole arm collapsing in on his shoulder. "That tapping of yours, by the way. Have you not figured it out yet?"
The fingers stop on three. "No. Why?"
"It's obvious once you get it, really."
"Theta!"
He bites his tongue between a grin, watching the boy that will likely fall out of the tree if he isn't careful.
"What goes one-two-three-four all day and night without end?" Theta spreads his arms to the sky, willing the answer to spell itself out in the dark.
"Thete, I will knock you off the branch—"
"Your heartbeats, moron!"
A pause. Then, "Oh. Oh, shit I'm an idiot, Thete don't even look at me."
Laughing, Theta stands up and starts tapping on Koschei's forehead. "Ain't it funny?" Koschei covers his face with his hands.
"Cut it out!"
Theta complies, propping his head on the branch, just above Koschei's.
Koschei lets his eyes peek through his fingers. "My heartbeats, huh?"
"I'm fairly confident."
Koschei halfheartedly smacks him on the top of his head, both of them too busy smiling like everything is too hilarious to try and rationalise the precariousness of being on a tree.
"What was that for?"
"For being so damn smart."
"Well you can't be the genius all the time."
There's a long, sleepy silence, a breeze rustling the trees and worming its way through the fabric of clothes. Theta can tell Koschei's nodding off despite barely being able to see through the night, but however peaceful it is sleeping in a tree can't be any good.
"Koschei. You're falling asleep." And starting to faLL OFF THE BRANCH NOPENOPENOPE
"Theta?"
"Yeah?"
Koschei sounds just about as disgruntled as is appropriate for anyone being folded over a branch, secured only by the idiot across from you digging his fingers into your calves. "Why am I upside down?"
Theta shrugs. "Aesthetic?"
###
Koschei sits in a large armchair in the corner of the commons, next to Theta. It dwarfs him. "Halogens?"
Theta rolls his eyes. "Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, Astatine, Helmholtzium."
He made a mistake in group thirteen, and Ushas nearly started choking.
"Noble gases?"
Theta releases some cross between a sigh and a grunt. "Heeneearkurzeernuuoh."
"Somehow I don't think that's correct."
It's then Ushas notices the near-transparent wire, wrapping around the floor and walls of their corner. Her eyes follow the wire around the room, no longer focusing on the accuracy of Theta reciting the order and mass of half of the atoms known to existence, attempting to find the end of the trail. Someone's foot stops it in the middle of the floor. It's the kid with the two mechanical legs. Koschei starts noticing too, if only from Ushas's head zipping around the room. Two small boxes are installed almost directly above Koschei and Theta on the wall, gone largely unnoticed by everybody. He nonchalantly points about twenty degrees left of Ushas, invisible line following an invisible wire to reveal Drax hiding under a chair on the opposite side of the room. The Foot still securely on top of the wire, she pretends not to be concerned while watching him out of the corner of her eye for any amount of movement.
"Is anyone even paying attention?" There could be any number of things in the boxes above their heads — most likely dimensionally transcendent — quite possibly diluted phosphoric acid from the previous stint pulled on Drax. She wouldn't put it past him to put contracting glue in it.
Theta clues in to current events, following the wire to the boxes before getting to radon. "Oh. Whaddaya know?" Theta stands on his chair to reach for one of their rigged boxes, looking at it with some fondness. "Thanks, Drax!" A few people start paying attention at that, their little inadvertent fanbase. They have learnt by now to not settle within a certain radius of them, with the exception of one pretentious buzzcut sixteenth-year.
Ushas takes a breath. "Theta, how long has the ordeal with Drax gone on for?"
"About fourteen years, but only technically," Koschei replies in his stead, standing up. "More like four." Theta hands him the cube. Ushas can see Drax frantically tugging at his end of the wire as Koschei detaches the cube from the wall. He breaks the wire out of its mechanism, tossing it to the floor.
Koschei runs across the room, just barely dodging one badly positioned table to lie on the floor in front of Drax.
"What can I do f'r you?" Koschei can practically taste the facetiousness.
He props his chin up with one hand, holding the cube in the other. "I don't know what's in this cube, but it could end up dumped on either one of us." He holds out the hand from his chin in front of Drax. "I propose a truce."
Drax sets his jaw. "You gonna help me pass exams?"
Maybe if you spent less time wiring suspicious boxes, you wouldn't need the help."
Drax shakes his hand, banging it inadvertently against the bottom of the chair. "Now d'you mind moving?"
###
Koschei developed an aversion to marshmallows the last time he was offered one in front of a bonfire, which he believes to be quite justified, even after a decade. He shakes his head in decline this time, watching the eldest cousin in attendance dancing around a bit too excitedly with a flaming stick on fire. Nobody else seems to be foreseeing a timeline where the forest burns to the ground, all setting marshmallows on fire either intentionally or while trying to turn the white sugar golden brown. There are only two others who decline the beckoning marshmallows, also sitting in the back row of boulders and logs having some kind of irrelevant debate on what sounds like income equality of Scendles.
Koschei doesn't have a raging desire to be here, but was dragged along by the marshmallow waitress for looking "kinda lonely" and "in need of some fun". She hasn't said a word to him since. Which is typical in a House of a hundred cousins, even with a fifth of them eating burnt sugar and gelatin around a burning pile of wood.
A shirtless boy stands and grabs the spear from the guy who was dancing, black hair contrasting his expanse of pale skin shockingly similar to Koschei's. A hundred cousins and they all look too similar to bother telling apart.
"We don't have a bucket of water, idiot. Don't start dancing around with that." Mostly everyone else continues talking with one another, unconcerned. Neither of the flaming stick wielders seem to be volunteering.
Koschei weaves past two chattering girls withstanding the weather phenomenally in the below-average expanse of clothes they wear. He approaches the slightly archaic rusty bucket, mumbling something along the lines of "I'll go". He doesn't know if the two stick wielders even heard him, but they'll put two and two together someone didn't just decide to sneak up and steal an empty bucket. Normally, people just toss in a single-use fire extinguisher. Apparently the fringes of southern Great Endeavour still operate in the dark ages.
It's difficult to tell which direction the river is in, with both suns set and an entire forest of uniform oak trees. He goes right, if only to avoid the shirtless guy now demanding the marshmallow stick and complaining about how he can't very well eat a raw one. None of his cousins make any sense. If they did, he might not have missed the offhand remark about probably leaving the bucket at the House.
The sounds behind him are all jovial exchanges and friendly conversations he could never understand. Half of them are so forced the air around them could suffocate something, and the others make all the participants out to be of one mind and body in fluid motion.
Marshmallows can't even be raw. They are an oddity of sentient species with too much time on their hands; pointless cylinders of glucose and gelatin that don't do anything beneficial. It'd be more helpful to roast chunks of meat or vegetables over a fire and gain some kind of nutrition, but then it wouldn't be half as fun.
Nobody notices he's left, which is just as well. He didn't want to be there anyways. It's not very…
Fun. Even the more complex non-sentient species have some kind of fun, some amusing exercise every now and then with each other for no point. Potentially harmful in the long run, generally useless, but worth the momentary enjoyment and memories gained thereafter? Well technically if science were considered "fun" people would actually get something productive done, but sitting and talking and giggling and burning wood and eating compressed sugar and dancing around with flaming sticks about to set the whole forest on fire?
Koschei's foot just barely hits the side of a pretentious rock, its stubborn placement enough to bring the bucket crashing to the ground and bouncing a little. Koschei stares at them both, mere outlines in the dark, teeth clenched together and lips in a scowl. How dare the rock. The rock will never know pain, never be subject to the unintentional condescending chortling of ninety nine cousins, never silently lug a bucket a third of its height through the dark woods because of a stupid bonfire and burnt gelatinous sugar.
The rock doesn't reciprocate Koschei's ranting, nor does it move out of the way or nod its head in agreement. It also doesn't point him in the direction of the water Koschei's supposed to know the location of. He peels his resentful foot off the ground, accidentally kicking the bucket without trying very hard to ignore it, mumbling something about the fallacy of fun while bending over to pick it up. The stars mock him, twinkling light years away and producing just enough light for him to see roughly where things are maybe, but not enough to give him any kind of further information.
He can barely hear his cousins, too, but everything's hard to hear over all the noise in his might turn around to look for the river the other way if it weren't for the bitter thought of running into his beloved family again. Joke's on them; fun isn't embracing life. It's making death come closer with poor nutrition and fire hazards.
There's a small part of his brain telling him to calm down and he doesn't have to go get water and doesn't even need to be there, irrational spite taking over and whining. "Get over yourself," he grumbles, welcoming the change in noise. Maybe that's why people talk to themselves. "You have fun, too, moron." The silence is bigger after every pause, filled nonetheless with a crackling sort of pace, bucket thumping against one knee, bigger inhales and exhales trying to match the rhythm. "Always gets you in trouble, I think."
He has the rhythm all worked out in his head, mental cues falling in time with everything around him, except maybe the rustling off to the left. And then the added tiny footsteps.
The entire rhythm collapses, breath held, stars probably laughing at him now with the complete lack of detail in front of him. The other thing has stopped too, blending in with a multitude of trees that could house any number of carnivorous beasts he didn't think about. In a whirlwind of needing to exhale and fight versus flight just not adding up, Koschei launches the infernal rusty bucket at the invisible thing and runs like hell the way he was going.
Every sense is trained stupidly behind him, trying to piece together any kind of sound or smell that might tell him what's behind, except his useless eyes. They are replaced by outstretched arms, palms and fingers being assaulted by twigs of branches and leaves. All association with the colour brown has been scrapped in favour of useless dark grey WHY DOESN'T THE BUCKET GLOW OR SOMETHING?
His feet jump from potential footfall to potential ditch, miraculously supporting the weight weaving through trees that are just getting closer together and harder to see. He can't block out the pounding feet and the primitive mouth-breathing and the infernal noise in his head, ears screaming at him to shut up and listen. His lungs, yelling as brought upon by his elbow having far too much association with a tree, would beg to differ.
Screaming like a banshee is only going to summon everything, be it a tafelshrew or tiger or Omega himself. If he is transported to the antimatter universe, he's blaming dear old House Oakdown.
Slowing down is a bad idea, but hitting trees is a worse idea, and there could very well be nothing behind him but there could be something or it could be a friendly thing or maybe a tiger what force has made him recall the tiger his ears are useless his nose is not having anything to do with anything and he might die. Only one way to find out. Feet connecting themselves haphazardly to sticks and rocks, arms bending inward much farther than they had before, Koschei lets his head whip around for under half a second.
Pointless.
One second? A very helpful blur of BLACK AND GREY.
He grazes a tree with his whole right side, thrown on an angle and slowing down a fraction, arms windmilling forwards and backwards to keep him upright. Maybe if he turns. Less head movement?
He remembers a sharp right and not looking in front of him and a moment of exaggerated relief, nothing is actually following him.
A/N: Sometimes I'm all nostalgic and think "oh I wanna reread this chapter! The good ol' days!"
Some days I am so done with every character in this darn thing I just want to BEAT THEM WITH A SPOON
And that's a fun fact about myself