A/N: Vansell please chill, please get a hobby, please get a counselor to feel more confident in yourself and your achievements, um *sighs*
I am embarrassed this is on the internet I swear to god
It has admittedly been a good few hours since dinner, and the day has evolved into one that makes the circumstances of sharing a room rather uncomfortable. For that reason, locking oneself in a corner has to be moved into going outside — thankfully in half-decent weather — to avoid the lack of conversation. Or worse, actual conversation.
Theta has taken to skipping rocks, which doesn't work very well in a moving river, but takes his mind off things nonetheless. What is he talking about it doesn't help anything. If at all, it keeps your mind honed in on exactly what you were thinking because the body is now rhythmically occupied and reliant more on muscle memory than actual thought and is therefore—
"Hey. You."
Vansell appears from behind, one of the only scattered few out of doors at 21:00. He could be evil if he wanted, a perfect sort of villain with just the right amount of finesse and chill introduction to balance out the studious mind and self-proclaimed superiority. His hair is never out of line, forming somewhat awkwardly to his scalp. But with the amount of egotism underneath, it doesn't exactly matter.
"Vansellostophossius." They claim Vansell's full name suits him better for its snobbishness. To their delight, it always pisses him off. "What do you want?" The rock falls into the water with an uneven sploosh, Theta's field of vision unhappily interrupted by the appearance of Vansell's robed body. A sort of red bruise kind of welt spreads halfway the diameter of his neck, a telltale mark of what hit him in the middle of a night. A poor shot, Theta could argue, but it hardly matters now.
"Have any idea how I got shot?"
The blond innocent shrugs. "Good question, although I'd bet on walking into a tree. Can't really have a good sense of direction with that big head of yours."
Ironic Theta is flirting with the possibility of being drowned in the river either he or Koschei was nearly drowned in by somebody quite like Vansell. He finds it oddly amusing.
"Hilarious, Theta Sigma."
"I do my best." Theta perches on the edge of a boulder, letting Vansell have his show of being bigger and meaner and in control of the situation, but he isn't really. Not exactly.
He clasps his hands behind his back like he's training to hold some grand position of power. It looks hilariouson his short frame. "I have reason to suspect it was your boyfriend. So do many people."
Theta snorts. "So you got a council of people to try and determine the origin of a thorn in the neck? How do they figure?"
Vansell taps his head. "It's all in here." He moves closer to Theta, looking either slightly amused or entirely confident in his claims and very far from impressed. "You two aren't the only ones who can perform telepathy."
"Well, I hope not."
"You can tell me the easy way or the hard way."
"Totally make a villain."
"Who, me? I thought my head was too big."
"Fair point." Theta attempts looking confident and mocking while sitting properly on a rock without a care in the world as Vansell continues leaning too far in, like he's going to fish around in Theta's head for the information he's already claimed to know.
"Tell me. Did Omega Xi try to kill me or not?"
"Well he certainly wasn't trying to kill you, but I wouldn't put it past him."
Now would be a good time to have someone tell him to shut the hell up before he's dumped in the river.
"I didn't think so. Which actually tells me more than you think.
"Do you understand the implications of the information you are withholding?" he starts pacing, looking occasionally to Theta, sometimes to the ground. "I am the victim of armed and chemical assault very close to the internal jugular vein, and had the venom been in a high enough quantity, would have prevented me from surviving in the state I am now. This goes by risk of suspension and likely expulsion, excluding the yet-unknown motive. You would be likely suspended for retaining information regarding to this assault. If you tell me now, I'll let you go."
"As it turns out, the consequences of withholding information of assault don't reach suspension."
"It does in attempted murder."
"Unfortunately, you're nowhere near dead, so good luck with that."
He stops pacing for a second to smile. It looks rehearsed. "Only takes a blood test."
"Care to elaborate?"
He shrugs. "Dimethyl mercury takes months for symptoms to appear. I have the grounds to get a test done, they'll find it, then get it out long before then. In a high enough dose, it would kill me otherwise."
"Then I go tell whoever you complained to you injected it yourself." Theta stands up.
"But you don't have any grounds for that accusation."
He taps his head, mocking Vansell. "It's all in here, thanks to you. Push comes to shove they can use the mind probe."
"But do you really want them to?" He steps closer to Theta, once. "Do you really?"
Theta shrugs. "Why not? The actual stuff in your system has cycled itself out by now, you complain about dimethyl mercury poisoning, I come prove it was attempted suicide. Sounds like more of a pain in the ass for you than anyone else."
He holds out a hand all of a sudden, like he's waiting for Theta to shake it. He doesn't. Vansell drops his hand. "If, like you say, I'd make such a great villain—"
"I never said 'great'."
Vansell smiles. "If I'm such a villain, I might have some ulterior motive. I might not, of course."
"Feel like telling me?"
"Absolutely not."
Vansell turns on one heel, walking back the way he came, nose pointed ever so slightly in the air. The attempted dissociative smirk on Theta's face melts, beginning to think. "Can you give me a hint!?" He shouts, knowing very well nothing at all is going to come out of it.
Vansell doesn't turn around. "Maybe if you didn't smack me in the face with a textbook!"
He can't tell if that's a legitimate statement or a hint. He starts running.
21:24 and Theta isn't back yet. Koschei has irrationally satisfying total jurisdiction over both rooms now, gleefully not turning on the lights until the very last rays of sun disappear from the window. It bugs Theta.
He turns the wall camouflage back on, allowing for the blank expanse of plaster to pretend to appear, very uncharacteristic from the other three walls covered in some kind of information. He's beginning to wonder how nobody's pointed this out before.
Someone pounds on the door only twice, which is certainly not Theta and probably not anyone else in the Deca or what have you. The Deca. What a concept. It's essentially dragged down to Rallon and Millennia taking over the corner, with Drax and Mortimus popping in wondering if they're going to fail the semester and fiddling around as Vansell tries to overlord everybody with the help of Jelpax, leaving Ushas to wonder aloud what the world has come to while Theta and Koschei do their own thing, hogging the coffee table.
Koschei opens the door, not knowing exactly what to expect, but certainly not Vansell striding in and shoving him backwards in the process. He kicks the door closed behind him, grabbing Koschei by the shirt front in two fists, one of them holding something sharp and silver Koschei cannot identify.
"Tell me why you shot me in the neck within fifteen seconds and I'll let you go."
Vansell's breathing has escalated, expression half-crazed and half very, very calculated. Koschei's eyes flick across the wall for any idea possibly tacked to it, drawing exactly one blank and one map scribbled on by Magnus and Theta. "Who says it was me?"
Vansell releases one hand to punch Koschei across the face, pain now blossoming form his cheekbone. "I was there."
Koschei restrains his arms from shoving Vansell back, experienced enough to know the silver pointed thing is not just pointed. "You couldn't see me properly."
"Fine. Your boyfriend tells me it was you who shot me, now tell me why or you will regret having not."
Koschei takes the slightest of tentative steps backwards, tactically trying to give himself enough room to strike Vansell with a limb, but he notices. Vansell shoves him three steps and into the wall, pinning him down with two fists and invasive breathing. "You really want to tell me now."
"If you were paying any fucking attention, you would have noticed the venom was non-lethal." Vansell slams him against the wall again, head knocking into the drywall.
"Could still be. You get one more chance." He shifts his right forearm to Koschei's throat, tilting his head up uncomfortably, Vansell's head drawing uncomfortably nearer. Koschei swallows against the limb that only presses harder. "You fucking ape".
Every bit of his brain screams for him to not say it before the idea even reaches his tongue, delusional pain in his head and his cheek egging him on over the fear of being strangled. "How dare you address me in that way?" He smirks for a brief instant, determined to choke out the last bit. "I'll have you know I'm from the noblest chapter of Gallifreyan—" Vansell sweeps his legs out from under him, plunging an elbow into his stomach before he hits the ground.
"Do you really think I'm going to take that?"
Koschei starts almost panicking internally, kicking himself mentally for trying something like that, wondering why he isn't getting off the floor or yelling for help or… moving. The only thing he can actually control is breathing. And thinking, kind of. It's becoming muddled and distant, as if the connection between his independent thought and nerve endings was being separated. Like transcending, but worse, because nothing is going anywhere. "No."
Vansell doesn't take his eyes off Koschei's, staring almost further than the surface level, trying to pull something out through the pupils by ocular intensity. "You understand?"
"I understand." Koschei repeats without hesitation, absently feeling terrified at Vansell kneeling next to him, bringing his fingers to Koschei's temple. He doesn't know why he's saying it. He doesn't know why he's breaking through his mental barriers that have been hastily thrown up, however well-rehearsed. He doesn't know why Vansell is even here, apart from revenge for having his life presumably almost taken.
If he didn't know any better, he would regard the brief hesitation of… whatever he's anticipating… to be kindhearted. "It's not you, technically. It's your position."
"My—"
"Don't try talking." Vansell takes a deep breath. "It's going to hurt."
The first thing that is brought to the forefront of his head is hypnosis, just the idea, and the knowledge it's been applied only partially, so he's still completely aware of what's going on. He can't say anything of his own accord, can't physically move, but his will remains the same, and the knowledge of its invasion upon very uselessly prominent.
It's like feeling an anthill crawling around under his skin, seeing Vansell strolling around the trees in Koschei's head, kicking over cubes at will. He's trying to find the why, and the why is hidden, and he can't be trying very hard to find it. The thing in his head turns around to face the mental version of Koschei properly, moment of misplaced sympathy completely dissolved. If you can call it sympathy. He picks up a cube at random and slams it on the ground. It erupts almost painfully, throwing the memory into a slightly sped-up projection in front of everybody.
It's one of the days Theta was sleeping over at Oakdown over the break, and they're sitting next to the bookshelf. Snow comes down in flurries, cousins sit everywhere on furniture and the floor, singing something he can't make out for the speed the pictures move across his head. Theta comes and sits next to Koschei, having their knees slightly overlap and looking almost nervously from person to person, combined knowing the names of about four in total. At some point, Koschei decides to curl his fingers around Theta's in every attempt to cheer him up. Vansell stands on a blank spot in the floor and looks them over skeptically with a fraction of disgust. He makes it look so… so stupid Koschei almost regrets it now…
Which is completely irrelevant to Vansell being there because he was never really there and really who cares if he was but he's there, condescending, and Koschei would not be this… embarrassed, to give a word, if the memory was still locked safely in his head. And if his head isn't safe, then nowhere is.
"Not really sure why that gets its own cube, but whatever suits your fancy, I suppose." He physically forces his hand halfway into a tree of cubes, causing some short of electric jolt in his brain. Then again, that's all thoughts really are.
The cube in his fist is not the why, not even remotely related. He doesn't know why all these memories with Theta in them are giving him so much discomfort having them revealed. It's not like much is exactly a secret anymore, but there's something about Vansell rooting through his mind without holding back that makes them less than they were before. A kind of imitation, or cheap idea from long ago you laugh at now but was world-changing years ago.
"This might be amusing." Vansell snarls, sort of mentally kicking back his feet and relaxing to see the events unfold.
It's 02:42 and the three of them are outside, running at breakneck speed around the side of the building. It was a bit cold that day, but not cold enough to deter even Ushas. "Ten seconds!" Theta shouts in the air, voice intentionally obscured beyond recognition.
"I ORDER YOU TO STOP!" some unfortunate soul caught up in the mess demands.
Ushas doesn't even try masking her voice. "You'll have to run faster than that, Runcible!"
Theta almost trips on a rogue rock, steering Koschei and Ushas varying degrees away from it as they follow. Somewhere along the mess, Theta grabs Koschei's hand from behind him as became habit in ludicrous displays of running. Vansell rolls his eyes at them, Koschei-of-the-present inclined to tell his past self to knock it off because it looks dumb.
The squealing of pyrotechnics behind them erupts through the air, with a loud bang sending blue and purple streaks through the sky. They woke up over half the school that night, at barely twenty-five years old.
It all stops abruptly, no sensation of fading or buffering to trail into the second firework.
"I'd stick around, but I'm only interested in how you got out of trouble. Which probably isn't in that cube."
Koschei knows how they did, but the explanation is lost in his head somewhere. It refuses to appear before him, maybe too focused on Vansell's every move.
He moves down two trees, keeping up the half-hearted pretence of looking for the motive of being attacked with a blow gun at 03:15. The next memory he finds is one Koschei didn't try keeping hidden away, as the only person who would really walk around in his memories was Theta. And so Vansell gets to invade that time in the zero room and Koschei wishes now he could actually kill him, but can't because he is stuck in a state of half-hypnosis screaming for him to stop perverting his brain. Vansell can hear the screaming. His nerve endings are just functional enough to register Vansell sitting on top of him, cutting off enough of his breathing ability to further mellow out his physical vigour.
A total of eleven fragments of memory pass through by the time Vansell actually finds the complete hour of Magnus leaving, watching the whole production and acting a mock boo-hoo-ing as Magnus leaves. "You seriously put yourself through all this to get Magnus out the building?"
He didn't exactly expect this to happen.
"Fair point."
Vansell simply drops it off, looking around the further dismantled forest with a look of regret in leaving, almost. Koschei can't even get any thoughts across properly, the simultaneous hypnosis and memory venture causing mental feedback that gives the one-two-three-four a sick pulse. Vansell doesn't seem to hear it.
"Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" Vansell gazes around a slightly fragmented tree, marvelling at the array of sizes in cubes.
"You know, it was a pretty bad thing you did." He begins with over-exaggerated arm gestures and facial expressions worthy of a thirteen-year-old. "Magnus could have gotten in a lot of trouble, and so could you. Which you will, of course, but not yet. Magnus will too, provided he isn't dead already.
"And you did try to kill me."
Vansell reaches in and grabs a slightly off-colour cube that's an amount bigger than a lot of memories, tossing it between his hands, trying to produce a reaction from Koschei before almost laughing at him. "Oh, right.!You can't do anything. Here, let's look at this one, then."
The cube drops to the ground and would have shattered in the physical world, but instead has them pop out in a mound of snow they can't feel overlooking a cliff Vansell can't be daunted by. Vansell drags Koschei along by the arm, which he doesn't have any need to do at this stage but can anyways, taking him right up next to Theta eyeing the cliff and about to be screaming at Koschei.
"Pity he didn't really jump off. Would've made my life easier." Vansell drags Koschei down to sit and watch the whole scene again. "I'd love to see your reaction to this now, but it would be too risky inside your pitiful head. I suppose I can thank you for trying to kill me, as this will certainly be worth it in the long run."
And it's back to the screaming conversation, Theta almost falling, his facial expression so much more prominent right up close than it was from back in the snow. "Look at that. Huh. I don't even think he cares about you." He laughs once, forced. "Well, he was going to shoot you."
Koschei convinces himself that statement is untrue, so untrue, false, but the hypnotised part is conditioned to agree with everything Vansell says. "He wouldn't regenerate, either, how sad. Bit of a waste of a Prydonian if he did. Well, if he wasn't a waste of space anyways."
Koschei of the memory runs and tackles Theta to the ground, giving cause for Vansell to make some sarcastic "Woah now," noise. Theta begins being dragged away, the rest of their exchange too quiet to hear from this distance. "You know, if I didn't know any better, he was out here to kill himself. Not get dragged through snow."
Then it dawns on him. "I know what this is! This is before the zero room! Okay I need to see this again for continuity."
The subdued mental strain will increase a hundredfold later, but for now it remains but a sharp needle in the back of Koschei's head, the rest of his mind willing to watch the entire thing again.
Five minutes into it again, Vansell brings Koschei right to the edge of the cliff, having their feet dangle over the abyss. "Now, Koschei, I need a little favour from you for science. I've no idea what happens if you die in a memory other than the fact you don't really actually die. And we might as well, while we're here." Vansell looks tired, a state Koschei faces with no sympathy. "By 'we', I mean I'll observe and you'll do the actual experiment. How lucky."
Koschei cannot help but plummet to the ground in the same way Theta would have if he succeeded on that actual day. He isn't awake when Vansell stops the telepathic link and leaves him on the floor, creeping out far quieter than he came.
###
It takes Koschei a full second to remember everything, turning his pained groan into silence and freezing his limbs. There is breathing about as close as there was before. Someone has his wrist. Vansell's still here, he just jumped over the edge and nothing happened and now he's going to be
"Koschei." Not Vansell. But he still won't open his eyes. "Koschei it's okay, you can open your eyes."
Koschei is still frozen still but twitching, Theta sitting back up and trying to give him some sort of space to not smack heads with him, because it may take a while for his eyes to properly open. "Theta." He can speak. He's probably just inside another memory where Theta is, maybe jumping off the cliff did something
"Yeah. It's me." Koschei still doesn't open his eyes, shaking his head nervously, starting to sweat. It's just a memory and Vansell's going to be here and
Theta takes his fingers off Koschei's pulse, something telling him Koschei must be alive if he's breathing. His hair's brutally ruffled and sticking out everywhere, shirt twisted awkwardly and showing bits of skin in places it wouldn't normally. In any other circumstance, Theta would find this a certain amount attractive. Given the circumstances, he has a stronger urge to check his vitals as opposed to evaluating chemically biased aesthetic.
"What the hell did he do to you?" Theta tries brushing the hair back from Koschei's forehead, but the brush of contact only makes him flinch. "You can open your eyes, it's okay."
Koschei's breathing speeds up once, twice, three times, Theta pursing his lips in anticipation of him screaming, but he doesn't. Koschei opens his eyes after the fourth breath. His dilated pupils contract in the glow of the lamp. They fly all over the room, connecting invisible points Theta so desperately needs to see, pausing on the clock, and finally on Theta. He can feel the panic edging away in shavings from his mind, his own brain trying to send out as much calm as he can muster.
"How did I get here?" The sound of his voice is coated in a puree of tree sap and year-old stale bread, dripping out of his mouth in futility.
Theta doesn't dare move from the wall, afraid of falling off the tightrope, frozen in place because nanogenes will not solve this problem. "You were on the floor, so I picked you up and—"
He doesn't finish the sentence as Koschei violently slams his eyes shut, all of a sudden clenching fists into his hair and banging his forehead against his knees silently, like he's just remembered something.
"Koschei what…" his voice trails off, the pounding of head into knees not matching anything he's seen before, tears threatening to spill over despite the fact Koschei doesn't really ever cry.
Theta swallows his massive amount of guilt, curling up behind Koschei and gently pulling his head away from his knees. This only elicits a strangled groan of some kind of pain, knees coming down on Theta's fingers anyways. "Koschei you need to stop doing that."
"But it'll stop." His voice is completely changed from what it was, lost its tone in favour of strangled noises of the throat. Tortured, one could say.
What will stop? he doesn't reply with words, telepathic inquiry attacked midair and thrown away from his brain. Can I see?
"NO!" He nearly screams, startling Theta into banging his head against the wall and nearly swearing, but not for anyone's benefit.
"Koschei—"
"You can't see." He whispers, knuckles turning whiter than they are already, fingernails no doubt unprotected by hair.
Theta has no idea what to do besides physically wresting Koschei onto his back, attempting to keep his knees down and hands out of his hair, but is met with enough screaming to wake up half the dormitory.
"GET OFF ME."
Theta obliges, rolling off the bed and onto the mattress, watching his roommate bury himself in blankets until he is seen by nobody.
"Please stop hurting yourself."
The pile of fabric does not respond, leaving Theta on his knees to ponder what on Gallifrey to do next. So he starts talking.
"Remember the time we dragged Ushas out in the middle of the night and started lighting fireworks? And Runcible—"
All at once Koschei unearths himself from the fortress of blankets. His breathing is drawn-out and erratic still, and it looks like he's about to beat himself in the head again. Theta still has absolutely no idea what to do, and it bothers him to no end.
Koschei opens his mouth as if to say something, and wrenches his entire face shut to think better of it. It is best described in anger Koschei starts clawing at Theta's back, trying to pull him back from the mattress, saline tears he so rarely cries staining his face. His hands grab Theta in a whirlwind of kicking and less than quiet breathing, pulling the flesh and blood next to him. His legs wrap around Theta like a vice, arms wrapping around his chest in their impromptu angled position. He refuses to let go as Theta lifts and pulls them under the blankets, Koschei's head coming to rest on Theta's chest.
It takes Theta, constricted and clamped in too many places as it is, to understand why. Then Koschei starts tapping on the mattress in four, eyes screwed in concentration. The tapping matches Theta's pulse. He's filling his brain with a different four if it may, in any sense of the word, help.
The only limb Theta can operate properly is his right arm, not that he knows what to do with it. The only possible thing he can recall from his life is Koschei dyeing his hair blue. So extremely slowly, feeling every nerve ending in his fingertips, Theta touches Koschei's scalp. He doesn't react. Theta starts running his fingers through messy hair, deciding it's all he knows how to do in a situation such as this, and it might be working.
"I'm not letting you go," he says, maybe out of character, but it's 3 in the morning and it's the truth and maybe Koschei actually needs to hear it.
Koschei cries, but not in the sense he did some nearly fifty years ago. Theta would run away from the scared sound if he could, but he stays where he is, absorbing the occasional muffled shrieks into things that will dampen them. Koschei sends out confused bursts of things Theta isn't going to try fitting into a chronology, trying to brush Koschei's mind with good things. This planet says interpersonal sentiment is a weakness in essence, confusing the brain and causing constant distraction and the compromise of many aspects of life. Theta has decided Gallifreyan politicians are full of shit.
Theta would think Koschei has begun settling down just when his breathing picks up again in sheer recollection, entire words and sentences beginning to form in the air. Theta doesn't think he knows he's doing it. He probably doesn't.
Koschei is stuck in his own brain trying to run away from the mess. Try as he might, he can't block it all out or open his eyes without it all being far too vivid and bright and terrible and for the thousandth time he's jumping off the cliff and then Theta is and Vansell's standing there laughing and the snow gets colder and colder but it's blazing hot and eventually it all blurs together in a kind of heat and cold at the same time and he's still aware of Theta having his hand on his head or something like that and isn't sentiment ridiculous and really it's stupid and holding hands isn't a thing and he's really stupid and immature and what's even serious about Theta anyways because he doesn't care and he's failing something or other and they're both far too melodramatic and should both just die because they deserve it because Koschei tried to kill Vansell and he's so much better and thinks it's all so funny because it is and what even is drumming he always has a headache there's something seriously wrong happening and it needs to stop and
"Koschei." It's just his name, his other name, the one that isn't picked or assigned and a secret for the best of them but Vansell knows it now and there is no escape ever. "Koschei, tell me what to do." Not-Vansell asks, watching the distress come over Koschei in waves, giving less and less time for air.
Theta doesn't dare poke anywhere near Koschei's mind, almost completely out of ideas. Theta gently turns Koschei on his side to face the wall, matching every curve and angle of Koschei's body with his. He is at a complete loss for what to do with the arm he lies on, draping the other over Koschei's stomach to pull him in closer. He conjures a picture, a feeling, a thought of an entirely peaceful sleep in his brain, making it match them presently, coursing it through an imaginary nervous system of telepathy into Koschei's feet and legs and back and head.
Koschei wakes up sweaty and dehydrated, opening his eyes to see an unkempt Theta mixing something officially bottled and labelled in a cup. He doesn't notice Koschei staring at him, all odd-angled clothing and messy hair and damp patches that came from probably Koschei.
A/N: All of my characters have some issue or another I'm just really bad at making normal things ok