A/N: See this all seems overdramatic if nobody gets the nuances
Which nobody is
Because nobody's analyzing a damn fanfiction
Theta has gone off into a closet to study as he's done in the past, different from the days he'd have to literally re-iterate the entire lesson to Koschei or review something for the hundredth time thanks to the headache deal, and so he has let him be. A form of nostalgia emerges as he sees the walls approaching, familiar classrooms lying beyond and familiar bits of forest even further. The average height of person decreases rapidly as he finally passes the invisible dividing lines between the four quadrants of the campus, making his way into a slightly older area than he had been in the past. Well, only recent past.
He slows down to pass the Gallifreyan Language Arts room, taking one deep breath of the happy sort of musty smell emanating from its open door. In all the years, the smell hasn't changed a bit.
If he were ever to face Vansell again, he decides, he must have some kind of reverse-hypnotism. How far the heat of the moment would take him is another question entirely, but the "crossing the bridge when we get to it" phrase that has plagued many a Time Lord in a state of procrastination offers itself seductively to the idea of maybe just losing control. A bit.
Then it would be Morality and Theta and things getting in the way telling him no, rather unkindly, but what is unkind against the cruel? Justified cruel? Natural want for revenge? Revenge on the noise? But what has it actually done, in truth? Existed? Everyone wants to exist.
The twenty-year-olds believe themselves to be mature to some extent. Top of their division of classes, attached to little pods of peers with the same names as they, according to the trend. There has been a bias approaching to where your first name lands in the alphabet it originated from, putting Omega at an unbeknownst last. Theta is majestically unattainable in another universe. They say the ethical stupidity of Time Lords is getting better by generation, but in all truth it has become worse.
Fewer regrets, then.
Koschei props himself against the wall in a closet, door wide open, tempting the occasional explorer. It's not far off a main hall, people coming down here to turn into maybe dormitories, but Koschei's not paying enough attention to get into character. If a character even exists here.
He pretends to study, looking confused at the slate and glancing up once or twice, tapping notes onto a blank screen and looking like he's trying to find something around the hallways. Makes it appear his question is rather urgent and the kids will actually be able to answer him when he asks. If the kids show up one at a time, without a professor about. Ah.
It takes barely three minutes for all these factors to present themselves in a very round, very colourful student, carrying a hard-copy book and slate at the same time, with clear purpose. Good.
"Excuse me there uh…" he waves vaguely at the child, who stops amid the brown-black floors to look back at her elder. Koschei taught himself hypnosis, really, taking a leaf out of Vansell's book and applying the theory of telepathy as a whole.
"Y-yes… sir?"
"Oh no, don't call me sir." He smiles arbitrarily, throwing the intent in the dirt with the hard stare at two pupils. "Call me Beta."
"Call you Beta."
Number two. Nobody is given the name Alpha at the Academy, which is perhaps what started the discriminatory hierarchy of the younger generation, Beta now the highest rank Koschei can pull out of his meagre Omega.
"Can you count down from fourteen for me?"
"Fourteen... thirteen… twelve… eleven…"
"Stop."
She stops. "Good. Now, walk in two circles around me."
"Two circles around…"
"Obey me."
Without a word, she paces in two scarily accurate circles around Koschei, not having a reaction even as she's blocked by the one she's supposed to walk around. He can feel a small amount of pull from the mid-front of the girl's brain; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Perfect. "Now stop." She stops in her tracks, glazed eyes pointed at Koschei. He gently lets go of the pull on her brain, painting a lost sort of face back on perfectly.
"Sorry, can you tell me where the cafeteria went? I haven't been down here in a while."
She points, slightly confused, perhaps slightly conscious of will for too much of it and not understanding hypnotism. Chances are she won't tell. Chances are good on the young for the exact fear Koschei had of Theta telling.
"Thanks."
###
His brain is so worked out and wrung dry, it soaks up every stray thought like a hyperactive sponge. So he can hear the nervous kid coming before he feels the tapping on his shoulder.
"Uh, Omega Xi, isn't it?"
Koschei doesn't want to move from his relaxing little corner of the hallway, serenity between a broom closet and functional society of dust bunnies. It's Koschei who looks down on the weaselly boy in a too-big robe in the metaphorical sense, glare of an exhausted skipper of class overruling the standing up of a good boy. He better have a painkiller. "I hope so."
The boy inhales, pausing to think, strenuously trying to define the sarcasm in Koschei's voice. "Uh, yes. Well, um, it's Borusa. He, uh, he's your professor, right?"
"Unless he's turned himself into a bat."
The boy swallows. Run away, you irrelevant gnat. "Right well, he wants to speak with you. In his office."
Koschei blinks tiredly, letting a deep breath cycle through his lungs before making any effort to speak. "In the middle of class?" The boy nods at least five times in quick succession. "What about?"
"Uh, well…" It appears Runcible has tried morphing into a haywire security camera, scanning everything his eyes will manage in no logical order. "There's been a report about something urgent. You're involved." He clamps his hands behind his back. "But he wouldn't say why," he blurts out, "I know nothing he just told me to come get you and—"
"Who made the report?"
"I, I dunno, Borusa didn't—"
Koschei is on his feet in a second. "I said, who made the report?" He is about to apply a bit of the suggestive telepathy he's learnt, but his head recoils in another throb of ache.
"'The informant wishes to remain anonymous'," he squeaks, the vivid picture of him recoiling at the sight of Koschei is only a little bit amusing.
Koschei scoffs. "You definitely know."
The boy shakes his head as rapidly as he nods.
Koschei grabs him by the front of his robes, slamming him against the wall behind. "WHO WAS IT?"
"Ididn'tmeantoIwasjustwalkingpastandhecameinallsneakyand—"
"WHO?"
"Theta Sigma," he squeaks. Of course it fucking was.
Koschei lets him go, and shrugs. "Okay, fair enough." He runs past the squirrelly boy, down the stairs to where the eight-year-olds sleep, the best way he knows how to get outside.
Koschei finds the vortisaurs easier than he thought he would, all of them safely tucked away in their pens for the fall season. There's been some debate to how humane it is to keep such a time-sensitive creature stuck in a single dimension of time, but the claims are always "we feed them energy straight from the schism" and "they can adapt naturally to any dimension of time" and "none of them have died yet". Flying lessons don't restart for another month, the greatest excitement for a twenty-year-old. Soon as thirty hits, academia suddenly give you no more time to bother with these things.
"Hello," he whispers. The leathery indigo beast seems to hear him, or probably only reacts to the time rushing through his veins. The Time Lords here are the perfect meal for a vortisaur: every carcass they age and digest regrows itself twelve more times. "What's your name, then?" Koschei delicately opens the half-existent glass door it is locked behind, searching for a nameplate.
It's stuck to the back wall-ish of the pen, frosted into temporally confused glass. "Irving. Hello, Irving." Twenty-nine more line up beyond and beside the pen he's in. Irving doesn't tell him anything, beginning to strain against the barely-there rope around its neck. "Sorry." Koschei lifts the loop around the beast's neck, letting the trained creature take a few steps into the world. Koschei closes the door to its pen, now fully solid and smooth. It wasn't the pen caught halfway out of reality. It was Irving.
Koschei lets his feet drag through the sweet orange grass as it waits for him, basking in the sudden burst of sun that peeks out from the sort-of-cloud cover. He extends a hand to Irving, feeling the rugged skin on its side and above its spine. They do feed them well. "Up we go, then."
Koschei plants two hands on the creature's back, springing into the air and swinging one leg over just behind its shoulders. Irving hardly teeters to the right, and Koschei tilts forward to link his arms under its neck. Irving routinely bends its back to accommodate the weight atop it, settling into a well-practised rhythm of preparatory stances. "Come on, Irving."
Irving gallops away from his cell in a surprisingly smooth pattern, throwing itself into the air, bursting its wings open, and beating them through the air away from the grass. It flies in a circle as it ascends, waiting for some instruction of where to go, no doubt seen by somebody through the Academy windows already.
"Just keep going up," Koschei says aloud this time, noise softened in the rush of his body moving through the air. The suns have disappeared behind another grayish cloud, throwing the sturdy walls he flies beside into a dim shadow. Koschei waits for the floors of students locked indoors to crumble into smaller spires and dormitories, letting him see the horizon beyond. Koschei leans left, away from it, to the river Lethe and the forest much smaller from above.
Irving dips the way Koschei's body threatens to slide off, turning its tail to the building as the first couple drops of rain fall on its head. Koschei grins. He peers at the trees below, small silvery-red splotches among breaks in foliage. He should be able to see Lethe when Irving crosses over it.
It starts spitting, then drizzling, then raining, the frequency of drops increasing exponentially as he climbs higher and higher still into the air. Koschei's shirt sticks to his back, his pants have been soaked through, his hair drips, and he loves it. The drops quit multiplying shy of a downpour, thrumming into his skin, hurtling to the edge of the river below.
Koschei pulls on Irving's neck, lifting his face to the sky in an impossible journey to console the mourning god letting her tears fall to the rocks. Irving squawks at him in a way reminiscent of a purr.
"A little rain never hurt anybody!" Koschei squeezes his eyes shut as water pelts his face, hearts thrumming wildly in anticipation and the sensation of hanging somewhere near vertically above the water. "Just give me a few more seconds."
He can't see anything but clouds now, swirling greys between rapid blinks to avoid the rain. He hesitates, and Irving begins to slow his ascent. His hands twitch but he can't do it. His hearts scream their dissent or sing their appraisal, he can't tell, and in closing his eyes they get louder. It's his mental noise again.
He breathes a long, slow, sigh, blocking out the jerky movements upward as his entire body is forced to relax. His knees untuck, his legs dangle, his fingers grip for dear life in the second before a wing's thrust from Irving sends them tumbling apart.
He plummets so much faster than he rose, letting himself scream only once. His body twists to try and see where he's going, eyes trying to focus somewhere in the spectacle of nature swimming before him. His lungs try and suck in another useless breath of air, but nothing will go in, and the panic of watching the ground appear overrides all his previous consolations of it's okay, it's almost over. He finds the breath in him to scream again, river below starting to take on details of movement from the rain. He will die in the same place he was supposed to die forty four years ago.
Irving screeches from on high, the beast trained to maintain the young, stealing the instinctive orders from Koschei's head and reaching his clawed feet out to catch the falling passenger. Somewhat.
The blunted claws snatch at Koschei's body, sending his vision flying in one direction and another, buffering and buffering his descent until he hangs above the water in too-tight feet of leather. Koschei's neck hangs to the side, muscles screaming against their assault. It feels like his hearts might run from his chest.
Irving lowers him to a friendly distance above the water, letting Koschei's spasming body roll from its curled toes into Lethe. Koschei doesn't keep his eyes open, but he holds his breath. There's something in him ordering his lungs to give up their air supply, and something else ordering his legs to kick their way to the surface of the water.
His legs win.
Koschei was forced into the office chair after an unfair game of hide and seek, where there were too many people seeking and Koschei was not allowed to change out of his wet, muddy clothes.
"You do understand the rules regarding use of the Vortisaurs, correct?"
Koschei decides he is allowed to be incredibly unprofessional, and glares at his wet shoes. There is some satisfaction derived from getting Borusa's other desk chair and carpet wet and dirty, and it offsets the perpetual discomfort spectacularly.
"Would you like a glass of water?"
Dripping enough water for a number of glasses thank you very much, Koschei keeps his arms folded and refuses to respond.
"Do you know why you're here?"
Koschei tries not to kick the desk, like he's wanted to kick everything he's come across since Irving. "Theta Sigma tipped you off."
"Theta Sigma, after bringing to light a case of… convoluted… attempted suicide, reported an incident of significant abuse inflicted by the same person. By protocol I need you to confide in this claim's accuracy."
"It might help if you told me what I'm supposed to confide."
Borusa folds his hands on the desk, looking very serious indeed. The dead-looking potted leafy plant in the corner of his office offsets this demeanour. He brings his voice to a more 'sympathetic' level, as if sympathy might help solve the problem or suddenly motivate Koschei to reveal his life secrets. "Theta Sigma was very distressed when he told me there was an encounter between you and Rho Lambda, in which he physically beat you and put you under hypnosis in order to harmfully invade your memories."
"And he asked to remain anonymous?"
"He did."
Koschei scowls. "Bastard." Borusa opens his mouth to speak, but Koschei cuts him off. "Is this why you don't teach telepathy at this school?" Borusa tries to look confused instead of providing insight. "I bet it is. I'm not the first. Continue."
He sighs either impatiently, or as a form of agreement, or as another attempt to appear sympathetic. "Omega Xi, your word carries the most testimonial weight in providing an accurate account of this event."
"Can't you just use the mind probe?"
"That would only be more harmful in your current situation."
Koschei actually kicks the desk. It makes a rattling noise. "Not on me, on Vansell. Rho Lambda. Whatever you call him. Hypnosis can't beat the mind probe."
"I'd like your word first."
Koschei rolls his eyes. "For crying out loud. Yeah, 'Rho Lambda' waltzed into my dormitory and attacked me, but from his general history, we all should've seen it coming."
"Can you guess any motive for his doing this?"
Koschei shifts in the chair for maximum water coverage. Even throws his leg over the arm rest. He gives Borusa a wide-toothed, very sarcastic smile. "Why don't you go ask him?"
Borusa must have some breathing handicap for all the prolonged exhales. "Using the mind probe is only authorised in serious crimes, and is best not used on adolescents. If you give us some notion of a motive, we can spend less time looking blindly and direct the search at something for minimal time using the apparatus."
"So some kid comes and fucks around with my head enough I literally jumped off a vortisaur past the elevation of terminal velocity and you want to minimise time spent using a mind probe?" Koschei stands up and slams the desk with his hands.
"Omega Xi,"
"If you're digging through his head anyways, I'd love to maximise your time."
"Revenge is not as satisfying as many make it out to be."
Koschei turns and slams open the door, striding out into the hall. "Save your philosophy!"
###
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO TELL, THETA."
Theta gets up from the table, walking over towards the mattress as is their usual placement should a fight ever break out. Dumping acid on the floor is not optimal, and while the sanity exists, there will be some order. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, opening them to properly see a damp Koschei partly crusted in mud. His mouth doesn't want to speak, lungs deciding themselves too important to try and formulate a way to respond. "I had to." Koschei doesn't even bother refuting his words. "All thanks to Magnus."
"Oh, so it is my fault!" He marches to their table, still dripping water in places. He glares at the gradient of leaves, frozen in time from life to death, as if they're Theta. "We need to stop making fucking leaves, Thete."
"It's really not your fault, Koschei. It was a wise decision at the time, and it turned out badly, but you can't go around with this! If he gets to you again—"
Koschei slams the table. "He always gets to me again! He's in my nightmares, still in my memories, I can hear his voice in my head along with the noise and yet you have the audacity to give him ample opportunity to come after me again!"
"I—"
"Not only that, he will, he WILL TELL where Magnus is and he'll be hunted after and we've no way of communicating with him or whatever the hell's going on, yet here you are doing your almighty 'right thing'! WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?"
"YOU CAN'T NOT REPORT ASSAULT, KOSCHEI!"
"I DID JUST FINE MYSELF, THANKS FOR NOTHING."
"But the thing is, he can't very well do it again for a long time. He could be expelled for this!"
"One scenario in retaliation to a physical assault in extreme circumstances, hardly expelled."
"Suspended, then!"
"HE WILL STILL TRY."
"How can you know that?"
"Because he's been in my head!" Koschei starts walking forward, in mixed reminiscence of the time he was here, maybe mirroring it exactly and maybe trying to have exactly the same effect but not really meaning it. "He's hypnotised me into doing exactly what he asks while marching around my brain, leaving a mark on everything he touched and believe me." He's walked right up to Theta now, but Theta didn't back up into the wall. That's because he's in front of a bed. "I would know."
Theta pauses, then nods slowly. "Okay." He places hands on either shoulder, in a way going to push him back but not having the ability somehow to push him back. Not any more. "Okay."
"Okay what?"
He takes a defiant breath, staring directly back down at Koschei in a way that he never did, adding one more tick on the list of "maybe Vansell would have backed off if I did _"
"You would know. You're right. I'm wrong, aren't I always?"
"Oh get lost."
"No. No, you're right. Vansell gave me two options. Not telling would have gotten you pegged for murder, and you'd probably be home by now. He didn't tell me the other one, but it would keep you here. Okay I am a SELFISH BASTARD THAT PUT YOU THROUGH HELL AND I AM SORRY. I'M SORRY I'D DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING AGAIN."
"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?"
"BECAUSE I LOVE YOU." The silence lasts for two seconds, at most. But it's been years. "It sounds so ugly but there's no other way to describe it, and just—" He covers his eyes with his palms, blindly facing the ground. "I love you and I'm so selfish I put everything in Vansell's hands just to keep you here and I messed up so much and the only way to fix any of it was to give it to someone with more power." He removes his palms from his hands, and Koschei has stopped looking quite so angry. "But I swear—" he sighs. "I swear on whatever the hell makes swearing so important he won't touch you again."
Koschei doesn't seem to know what to say.
He counts one two three four four times. Theta swallows more than normal.
"I guess…" Koschei feels the most obligated to say something exactly specific more than he has in his life. He wonders what Vansell might see if he said so. Vansell would probably laugh. "I need to change," he croaks. Any other day it would be a simple solution to avoiding more talking, but it dawns on them both at perhaps the same time this fact has been compromised.
"Should I… leave?" Theta asks, taking a step back that instantaneously clears the air around them.
Koschei drops his eyes to Theta's feet, then back up for a second before looking away smallest of smiles twitches across his face. "I… I guess not?"
The silences are horrendous.
"I mean it's fine, I can leave—"
"No, don't… bother. I guess."
They make eye contact for all of half a second, but it's enough. Koschei starts making some sort of amused noise, caught between a giggle and ironic chuckle, frozen before his simple task.
Theta follows soon enough. "We're ridiculous," he says, turning and walking to their little table, back turned.
Koschei peels off a wet shirt. "I can't argue there."
"We'll always find something to argue about, don't worry."
The laughing noises peter out as quick as they came.
A/N: yikes