A/N: Shoutout to margie-me, you're pretty rad. (Don't worry I'm already done composing this darn thing it'll all be up).
This one's not 5000 words it's only... *checks document* 4583. Great.
*checks document again* OH IT'S THIS CHAPTER ok yikes
Also can someone tell me where the horizontal line button went? It disappeared.
It was the promise of mostly translated, legendarily classic science fiction entertainment from Sol III that got Theta downstairs with unforced, genuine glee. The ridiculous cocktails of over-concentrated carbonated juice was just a bonus.
They're going to be in so much trouble if someone finds out (which undoubtedly, somebody will), having this much tangled wiring and an entire TARDIS sitting in the commons past curfew breaking at least four rules. They bought off Drax with three months of acquiring necessary parts to build his own skimmer. He tried telling them if they're going through all that trouble, they may as well watch the entirety of Star Wars inside the TARDIS and have no need to wire up the pocket dimension already there, but Theta waved him off with juvenile triumphance at their pillow fort.
And there they sit, just about cuddled with Ushas and just about avoiding Magnus in a very educational night of shouting at the screen's inaccuracy.
"It's definitely pantheism!" Koschei argues to the end credits of part four.
"No it's not— Why did you even arrive at the obvious conclusion?" Theta and Koschei have been having the same argument at approximate half hour intervals over the "force", and shockingly Ushas isn't blatantly annoyed by it. "The force is prominently present in humans with a few exceptions, but not the rest of the sentient species. It's genetic!"
The entire saga is automatically queued, and nobody will be bothered to get up and skip the credits to any of them. "With so many genetic anomalies? That's not going to happen unless it's extremely new to the gene pool or the recipients have been exposed to something to mutate it. The force is suppose to be ancient and barely short of transcendental. Therefore,"
"Therefore you two," Magnus takes a swig of grape-açaï-pineapple, "are missing the bigger picture."
Ushas gasps. "What a shocking twist!" She winks sideways at Koschei, lowering her voice ineffectively, "but I'm definitely Team Pantheism. Theta's got no idea what he's talking about."
"Hey! I took bio 35!"
Magnus grins. "But did you pass, is the question."
Theta hits him in the leg, attentively watching the screen with a pretentious flourish as the only one able to read Sol. "I just won't read the prologue."
Koschei pats him on the opposite shoulder. "We literally just watched three movies prologuing this." He doesn't remove his hand.
Theta ignores his allegation, pretending to not notice his body scooching closer as he samples the every-fruit-we-could-possibly-find. It only takes a shoulder and a hand to manage it now. "During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armoured space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet". He can feel just a hint of Koschei laughing a little, as if from far away.
"The most obvious part is Koschei can read about ten words of Sol, but his facial expression has changed three times in the last paragraph." Koschei sticks his tongue out at Ushas, of all things, then gives Theta a kiss on the top of his head so fast nobody quite catches it.
Except Ushas. "Honestly, I'm surprised you've lasted three movies without being indiscreet."
"They breathe indiscreetly," Magnus adds flatly, not taking his eyes off the screen.
"Says the one who asked for an assault rifle on his fifteenth birthday."
"We do NOT TALK ABOUT THE—"
"EVERYONE SHUT UP IT'S STARTING." Theta yells, still trying to make up his mind about the every-fruit-we-could-possibly-find.
"We've been talking over it any—"
"SHH." Although you can keep being indiscreet.
###
Someone forgot to switch the stabilisers on. To be honest, Koschei blames Drax. He suspects Drax blames him.
Jelpax was nominated captain of the TARDIS, seconded by Theta, which was unanimously agreed to be a better idea than the rest of the available options in their crew of six.
This has resulted in Ushas, Drax, Mortimus, Koschei, Jelpax, and Theta hurtling through spacetime in an attempt to pop out a mere two planets down. Seven to twelve years of flight study, all culminating to this: A fantastic display of attempting to stand upright.
"CAN WE NOT LAND FOR A SEC AND FIX THE THING?"
"YOU CAN'T LAND IN THE TIME VORTEX!"
"WE CAN'T LAND ANYWAYS IF IT AIN'T FIXED!"
"WOULD YOU ALL SHUT IT?" The room is thrown into silence for about five seconds as Ushas tries to explain a more logical approach. Until their temporary Type 41 hits a sort of cosmic boulder and everyone except Theta is reunited with the floor.
"I think we're near Jaxiddel now. More or less."
"That's fantastic, Theta, but—" But what, nobody knows, as Mortimus slams his head on the control tower.
"MORT!"
"Cool it, Drax, he'll be fine." Jelpax says, managing to get on their knees. Koschei holds on to a metallic fence around the edge of the control room for dear life, steel an odd contrast to the reddish carpet. Not that he notices at the moment, but he will.
After a fair amount of groping for handholds and smacking into things, Jelpax and Theta almost simultaneously pull themselves onto the control panel. One of them slams the stabiliser on properly, the other steering haphazardly out of the vortex, presumably towards Jaxiddel. The room finally stops throwing everyone around.
"And you guys are how old?" Jelpax demands of the room in general, as if they hadn't also just stopped flailing about the place.
"Yeah, and how many times have you done one of these assignments?" Koschei with a bleeding something and bruised everything asks from his half-bent-over-the-railing position.
They fold their arms. "This is number three."
"And there are three of us on trip one, yeah?"
"I'd say we did pretty well."
Jelpax rolls their eyes. "We haven't landed yet, you know."
Everyone minus Ushas the part-time medic ("It's not that bad, Drax") scramble towards the controls, executing a ten-times rehearsed manoeuvre. They manage not to crash.
Before their short-lived round of applause ends, Theta runs across teh room and slams into the door, like he's escaping a prison cell of a hundred years. Koschei finds him barely five metres from the door, taking an overdramatic deep breath, arms lifted halfway to the sky. He is clearly resisting the temptation to run off into the neat rows of young trees.
"The air's thinner. The trees here are actually a hundred years old, they just never get any bigger." Theta talks to the air behind him, which he knows Koschei has already occupied. He can't be bothered to turn around and see, of course. Not when there's an entirely new planet in front of him. "Which is interesting, because Jaxiddel has the—"
"largest collection of hard copy sources of information in the constellation. You've been on about it for a week and a half now." Theta's shoulders slump just a fraction, air escaping though his nostrils in a drawn-out breath.
He finally turns back around as Jelpax comes up behind them, visibly acting the elder despite the fact they're a cosmic blink in age difference. "And they told me you two were smart." They send the pair back inside with one look. "Not allowed outside until everything's been evaluated and everyone's been accounted for."
"Yes, senpai," Theta retorts not kindly, dragging the tips of his shoes on the ground to make clear everyone knows he is not returning by his own will.
"Say I landed on Magla and you both asphyxiated." Theta walks past them, head barely bowed in a rare display of submission. "What then?"
###
The control room has been decked out in a patchy collection of blankets and cushions, a statement to the cold locked outside and Drax's applaudable hacking skills. Jelpax is the only one more than mildly concerned something is going to happen, but even their superior demeanour can't dampen the ambition of a handful of smart-ass wanna-be renegade Time Lords.
They all type away, spread around the console and makeshift wiring under blankets they don't really need, all drinking ice water scavenged from the minimalist kitchen. Who needs to empirically study a species when you have access to the information already?
"Can they check what we've looked up?" Mortimus asks from next to Drax, the first one to voice the question everyone was thinking.
Drax shakes his head, eyes trained on the screen in acute concentration rarely seen on him. "Nope nope NOPE NOPE NO…"
"Drax…" Jelpax warns, opening piece of the heavy pause that follows. Theta is the only one that doesn't seem to care, still mindlessly drabbling away on the slate. Without looking at what he's doing. Or really anything in particular, for that matter.
Drax perks his head up, looking around the room to verify more than one person is eyeing him more than cautiously. "Oh no fine, I got it. I got it…" he mutters in the general direction of Jelpax.
Mortimus, whose faith in Drax can only be contended with Jelpax's lack thereof, begins the idle somewhat relevant chatter again, organising this section and referencing that.
In a room with six people, a private conversation is everyone's conversation, and the proximity of telepathy is just short of socially unacceptable. So it's down to primitive keystroke transmissions to determine why Theta Sigma isn't typing properly.
ΩΞ: You okay?
ΘΣ: Not particularly, but I'm functioning.
ΩΞ: You're just slamming letters into a document.
The slamming slows, then stops, then proceeds in updated refinement at an extreme pace.
ΘΣ: Freezing cold hard-copy database of Kasterborous and even their government tops Gallifrey's.
ΩΞ: So it's climate or living rights, apparently. And I thought you weren't into politics?
There's a long pause wherein Koschei feels obliged to maintain the façade of studious paraphrasing, which Theta has disregarded for a good while. He can see the sudden frantic, angry typing unfold and knows it's one of those days. Not that any kind of day has a title except one of those.
It's a short two lines that show for the multi-paragraph tangent Koschei was expecting, but in and of itself implies quite enough.
ΘΣ: They have space-time travel tech here, too.
Theta makes eye contact with him, so direct Koschei is beginning to wonder if the rest of the room can feel it.
ΘΣ: We could do it.
Koschei sighs, running a hand through his marginally uneven hair, which needs a wash. In the span of two months, he was suddenly assigned a psychology project he did not sign up for. But of course he's doing it without hesitation.
ΩΞ: It's not that simple.
ΘΣ: But we could.
ΩΞ: You know we can't.
ΘΣ: Why not?
ΩΞ: Because neither of us are trained enough to operate any space-time vessel without reliable backup, are in one of if not the most guarded and secure cities on the planet and therefore won't be able to acquire one in the first place, and will end up with a large party of Time Lords on our tail in under the relative hour. It's impossible.
ΘΣ: I know.
ΩΞ: We can explore the city.
It's a feeble attempt at consolation as compared to the universe, but it has to do.
Theta doesn't reply, seeming to be back at tapping away on his bit of the sociological report.
"So who's making dinner?" Ushas asks the room but mainly Drax in a kind of attempt to find some way to shut up his narration of technological prowess to Mortimus.
"We can go into town and pick something up. I can guarantee it's better than this TARDIS's," Jelpax says.
"With what currency?" If a question could be oxidised into a slap upside the jaw, Theta would have just succeeded in delivering it.
"Standardised to Kasterborous in all major cities." Jelpax shoots back. "Anything goes, but they prefer exact change."
"Shall we go, then?" Ushas asks Jelpax as she addresses nobody else.
Drax looks up with a bit of a start. "Wot, only you and them?"
Ushas already has a coat on. "Only takes two, Drax."
Thirty minutes later, Theta wanders around the snow-covered forest outside, not eating his small pot of stir-fry.
"So this is as far as we're going to get?" Theta asks of the air-plus-Koschei, fiddling with his biodegradable fork, staring off into the dusty white valley below there jagged slope.
"For now." Time Lords don't hold hands in the manner humans do, but Koschei is still approached with the urge to do something like it to keep the amalgamation of unpredictability and a terrifyingly large part of his own history within arm's reach. This urge is presented instead with an "Eat something, please."
If smirks could be acidic. "Coming from you."
"You're the one who keeps reminding me, don't forget."
"You need to eat." Tendrils of steam float into the air before them that are knocked together by frozen breath: an unattractive, homogeneous muddle.
"At least a mouthful, Thete. Then you can kick it over the side of the cliff or something."
After a good moment's contemplation filled with a decent view of the clouded grey sky, Theta stabs his fork into the pot and brings it to his lips. He chews barely twice before swallowing, turning on his left heel without thinking of taking another bite. He's still holding the pot.
###
Koschei lies in a hammock attached to the console and the steel fence, barely twenty meters from the door, and doesn't know whether or not to check who just nearly slammed it. One would expect someone walking out of a room with three other sleeping people in it to close the door quietly. He sits up just enough to scan the room, counting shifting bodies. Three more? No, two.
For crying out loud, Theta. Don't slam the door. Does he slam doors on sleeping people? No, no he's not that stupid. Unless he was preoccupied with something more important, which would be… what?
"Was that Theta?" Ushas asks him through the dark. Jelpax remains asleep, probably.
"Yeah. Probably out inspecting alien plants 'cause they're alien."
"I wouldn't put it past him."
Koschei lies back down. Honestly, he's probably run off to the city to gawk at aliens and try to steal a time machine, which will leave the rest of them obligated to bail him out of custody. He takes one more look around the room. Six coats are draped in vague places. It's freezing outside. Below freezing, in fact.
Koschei waits for five seconds. Then he rolls out of his hammock, skirting around Ushas with some interesting choreography.
"Where are you going?"
Koschei throws on somebody's coat. It's probably nothing. "Making sure he has proper gardening equipment," he grumbles, closing the door quietly behind him.
The cold slaps him in the face immediately, but not hard enough to stop any Gallifreyan with a plan from running out in a t-shirt. The sky is still visibly indigo, illuminated by a handful of stars much closer than the rest in the distance.
He doesn't know where Theta went. His footprints are obscured between the tiny, stupid trees that won't keep any snow on them, Barely a metre taller than either of them. He can't have gone far. "Theta!"
Nothing.
Koschei tries to unearth some hidden slalom abilities from the Day With the Marshmallows, swatting at wimpy branches sprouting from trees once placed in an ornate grid. They used to farm the tiny timber for all it was worth before growing synthetic paper in a lab.
He weaves through trees as they thin out and grow smaller, favouring of sheets of rock buried under thin layers of dirt. Part of him wonders why in hell he thinks it's logical running aimlessly through a forest because Theta didn't put on a coat. Koschei didn't even bring an extra one.
His footsteps trail haphazardly out of the trees, printed into the snow as they slow down in five points. The snow has started soaking into his shoes, freezing to his toes and running chills up his calves.
Three breaths.
"Theta!"
There is silence. Koschei is being pulled in both directions, fatigue and wet feet insisting Theta has probably gone back into the TARDIS by now.
And from the distance, in a tired groan of absolute contempt, "Go away!"
Running again. Which could be interpreted as narcissism in many cases, but quite frankly Koschei doesn't care, because he recognises the sheets of rock impossibly close to the trees, the way it slants slightly downward, the meandering of a biodegradable fork. Stupid, stupid, stupid, "WHERE ARE YOU?"
"TURN AROUND. RUN THE OTHER WAY." There. There he is, standing a meter from the cliff, shivering uncontrollably because it's at least ten below freezing and still snowing. He shakily points an arm at him, holding… no.
"DON'T COME ANY CLOSER."
Koschei stops in his tracks, slowly raising his hands in front of him. Cautious. Unarmed. Theta's hair is exploding with the ghosts of relentless mental shouting and a terminate dichotomy, the food he didn't eat plain in his face.
"Theta…" He needs to run. Run right at him and drag him back inside, because it's coming up to this point Koschei realises how much he actually requires the fucking idiot.
"Not wondering why I've got a gun right next to a cliff?" He opens his mouth as if to smile, in quick succession clamping it shut to growl. "It's actually a coulee, for the record. DRIED-UP LAKE, NOT A CLIFF."
"WHY DO YOU HAVE A GUN, THEN?" Koschei yells, throwing his hands in the air and letting them fall down again.
"Because you care so much."
"That's usually considered a good thing, Thete." He tosses the nickname of a nickname into the air, possibly trying to draw some reaction and kicking himself because everything draws a reaction.
"I SAID DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!" He clumsily switches arms, sneezing once before continuing. "Do I need to list you reasons why or do you get it enough?"
Koschei runs his hands through his hair, pulling a few strands out in the process. "I'd like a list, please!" The fact he is stuck to the spot in fear of being shot down by his best friend says something. What, he's not entirely sure. Something to do with mal-assignment of homicide.
"NUMBER ONE." Theta thinks long and hard. He has it all aid out, perfectly scripted and rehearsed as he always does, but it can't get out. "You know what? You know what I don't even care NOBODY ACTUALLY CARES"
"I CARE."
Some people romanticise suicide, claiming its tragedy is beautiful and educational in its own way. This is not what that is. This isn't even close to what that is.
Theta throws knives into Koschei with barely a look, matching one tentative step forward with two hands now balancing the gun. "I'll do it."
Koschei shakes his head. "You can't." He tries another step, trying to close their gap of twenty metres. Theta takes a tiny step sideways, still shivering violently. "Please. Oh my God, please come back."
"You're an atheist."
"We're all atheists. We're an entire race of Gods." Koschei tries holding out one arm as if it will summon him, but only pushes him a tiny bit closer to the edge. "Tell me what I have to do."
Theta takes a deep breath, for a scary moment stopping the weapon from shaking. "I already told you."
"If you think I'm going to leave you, ever, you have never been more wrong."
Theta squeezes his eyes shut, quivering under the constant pressure. "I don't want you here."
"Then kill me."
Theta gives him a death glare, shakily holding the gun with both hands. "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU KNOW. SINCE DAY ONE, OMEGA XI."
"YOU THINK I DON'T REALISE THAT?" He dares to close his eyes for longer than a blink, an entire second and a half, and Theta didn't move in the dark. "Look. You are brilliant. You're a glorious anomaly of the entire race who can fix bloody well anything, can stand literally anyone for hours without complaining — which nobody else can do — got a tafelshrew stuck in a time loop at the age of twenty, and you're damn well the best thing that's ever happened to me. Your cousins suck. But they don't have to be your family."
He might thank God Theta lowers his arms a fraction, were he not such an atheist.
Then curse Him all the same for bringing one of Theta's arms back up to his head.
Koschei runs flat-out, sprinting at the boy who he didn't have much doubt would actually kill him if he could. The snow almost flips his feet out from under him, Koschei stumbling too close to the edge of the cliff, and the bloody coward doesn't do a thing but hesitate. Koschei tackles him without mercy, prepared to break Theta's wrist to get the gun out of his hand. He doesn't need to. The limbs he twists and back he flattens with his knees move through the air like a rag doll, folding and falling at Koschei's fingers.
"You bastard," Theta grunts.
"Worst of them all."
Theta vomits into the snow, and only then does Koschei actually agree to feel something properly. In a scenario like this, he'd expect to be crying. In the first scenario of his life he'd actually see reason to be crying, he's not. The runny sick from Theta's stomach trickles down the snow, containing not enough food for it to run and far too much diluted poison the brilliant moron of a chemist whipped together in passable simulation of alcohol consumption. He kept it all choked down and threw up every single mental wall he had, until now. Koschei can feel the crippling defeat that runs out of his brain, a vast stretch of future represented only by coexisting torment and dull void. Koschei knows the void. His was perhaps brighter, and smaller, and much easier filled.
Koschei can feel the void scraping at the sides of his head, begging to break in and eat away at his brain until he wants it to leak out his ears if it means the end.
Theta has stopped vomiting, liquid eruptions turned into raspy heaving, arms and ends of hair dampened by the contents of his stomach. It is disgusting. And Koschei will drag this body through the snow for miles if it means it will still breathe. He doesn't let go of his arm, but rolls off Theta's back to let him turn away from the yellowish mess. Which means he cares a little.
"You're my list." Theta croaks, letting himself fall onto Koschei in general, slumped with just his feet dangling over the edge. "Technically." Koschei locks his arms under Theta's armpits, pulling until every bit of him is away from it. He is so cold.
"Yeah, and you're mine."
###
Theta wakes up in a zero room, suspended in the air by some force of will. Koschei's, probably. The room is filled with wisps of thoughts that aren't from Theta, telepathic enhancement announcing just about everything in the little octagon.
The beast has awoken. Koschei speaks into Theta's head, positioned with his eyes closed at the back corner of the space.
Beast?
Have you looked in a mirror lately? Something in his head tells him to be nicer, and Theta can probably hear that little voice, but Koschei is too frustrated to care.
Theta lifts an arm painfully slowly, running it through his hair once and dropping it to the air below. He looks at his middle, barely expressing any surprise in their telepathic ambiance. He barely expresses much.
I'm in a sheet. And clean. Theta sighs mentally like one might sigh while asleep and changing sides to sleep on. I think I can complain about sexual assault.
Only saved your life.
I didn't ask for that, either.
Koschei opens his eyes, levitating himself to lie in the air forty-five degrees and five metres below him. Theta is superficially silent, blunt thoughts of death running around in unspecific clauses and concepts. At the centre of all things, he didn't really want it. Nobody at their core adamantly desires death.
I stuck you in a bathtub and found a sheet.
I was naked.
And covered in vomit, alive.
Theta floats higher and higher, rotating himself to face the ground. He lets go. For one second of reaction time he is falling, the sheet that was wrapped and tucked around him hazardously dishevelled and tangled, halted by Koschei.
Theta looks at him properly for the first time, tucked above the floor, most parts bitter with a grating of kindness. Or maybe Koschei's imagining it.
How long have I been out?
Less than an hour.
Damn it. Theta thinks a bit of a smile, out of context. He contemplates how tired Koschei looks in raw objectivity, and there it is. Guilt.
I think I'm supposed to do something. The boy in the corner either deliberately thinks or just happens upon, picking out details on Theta's ankle to have something to focus on besides the face.
I thought saving my life was a thing.
I thought you didn't want it.
Or something.
A whole minute of failed attempts at starting a better sentence passes, disrupted by a soft, or likely just exhausted, I don't think I was going to shoot you, really.
Koschei defies all his instincts to shy away from the greatest threat in the room, focusing adamantly on the spot directly between Theta's eyes. I never doubted you would.
Theta spins around to curl in on himself, No… intentional velocity circling back around to Koschei. It wasn't a real gun…
The concept of some form of love and its applicable futility fizzles about in the room's corners, concepts passing too quick for words but always coming back to a naval cavity in Theta's midriff.
Koschei drifts towards him, pretending not to be noticed by Theta, who is very aware of him. He aligns himself to match every bend and angle of Theta's sideways position, an impossible sort of symmetry, one foot apart.
You have approached the terrible beast? Theta raises his eyebrows a small bit, waiting for a response he doesn't know how to predict.
Koschei stretches out his arms, trapping fabric between his fingers, and pulling Theta up against him. Hold still. I'm going to do something sciencey.
He pulls Theta and his sheet until they are all touching, bracing himself for some violent lashing or screaming or the impossible spontaneous death he's been paranoid of for an hour. He wraps his arms around Theta, fitting his head to the bend and curve of his shoulder and neck. It doesn't come.
Theta tries and fails to come up with a retort to the exact scientific explanation that is lacking here, every one getting shorter and washed away by too many things for one head to contemplate at the same time. He eventually latches onto Koschei like a lost child, arms and legs spidering around Koschei until they lock him in place.
Koschei's lungs are only a bit constricted, but he doesn't care, and Theta Sigma cries in a sheet.