A/N: I somehow felt it was necessary to make this chapter 6422 words. It just really doesn't split well.
Theta picks up his feet for yet another flight of stairs upwards, in a nostalgic sense wishing for the little curled turrets in the first quadrant. It was almost like a castle. He has it hammered into his head be glad Mort isn't on the top floor as he passes one… two… three doors and approaches the first one on the left. There was a small room reassignment he and Koschei miraculously got to avoid, making some comment about Rassilon knows what Koschei was brilliant enough to make up for the both of them.
Three knocks. "Oi, Mort!"
"Yeah?" he shouts from behind the door, only half a welcome to open it but not a full statement of confidence everything is going to be presentable upon entry.
Behind the door is Mort's attempted art project still sitting right smack in the middle of the floor, currently being plastered with glue, unfinished bits of paint nearest the base. This kid cannot stay on task for the life of him. "You do know moving that to the corner would help everyone immensely?"
The statue perfectly blocks any normal access to the bed, the desk, and the window, any Gallifreyan attempting to exist around them requiring light footwork. "You know, sometimes I wonder how you're even Prydonian."
"I do too," he replies, dipping two fingers into a pot of glue and starting to rub what would be shoulders, Theta guesses, but doesn't entirely know.
"Aren't you supposed to use a brush or… something?" Not that he knows any better. Or anything about art to begin with.
"Nah. This adds texture."
"But it's shoulders. Aren't they kinda flat?"
"But not that flat. This isn't a formal piece."
Theta regards the reddish-orange-somewhere-blue-but-mainly-grayish-white statue of a Time Lord - or something of the sort - seeing Mort's tan-coloured hair peek out every now and then. It has not been combed all weekend, most likely. Theta clears his throat. "Um anyways, we got Ushas, Drax, Koschei, and I all working on that bloody math assignment. Do you wanna come over?"
"Over where? Because I'm not going to the commons again after—"
"No, not the commons." Theta begins wondering what kind of glue Mort's using and if it will result in his fingers sticking together permanently, or some similar amount of time. "We're in my bedroom."
"You mean Koschei's bedroom."
"You know, technically, it's mine. His has the table in it."
Mort rolls his eyes. He wipes glue off on a dry part of the statue and squeezes the rest out of his fingers on the bottom of his robe. "Whatever. Sure." He takes off his robe and tosses it dangerously close to a tube of paint. "Although don't tell me we're going to be up doing math all night."
"We can get into the kitchen, but we've mostly procrastinated the entire way through."
"It's a pretty bullshit assignment, though. How are we all in the same class?"
Theta shrugs. "They run out of linear material and throw us all in a pot. Easy."
Mort closes the door behind him, sticking his gluey hands in the pockets of a pair of paint-stained, multi-coloured jeans. Miraculously, the shirt he's wearing is still pristine white, save a fleck of red on the neckline. "Not when you're older than half of everybody, who are all smarter than you."
Theta pulls through the door, not waiting to see if Mort is right behind him or not. "I doubt it should be mandatory."
"It's not in the Patrex Academy."
Theta laughs silently for a second, out of convention or the amusement of societal designations. "Only ten years to go."
"Eight for me."
Theta skips the last two steps, perfecting the art of not hitting the wall before landing a good couple of feet away from it. "Not so long ago I was prowling a forest, waiting to be shoved in front of a schism."
"The schism."
"There could be more than one."
Mort tosses one arm around Theta's shoulders, giving him that ain't-it-sad face that could get him into a lot of trouble one day. "Not on Gallifrey, there isn't. You can't go renegade."
"Hypocrite."
"Oi! Who says I'm taking off?"
Theta smirks, sticking his tongue between his teeth and putting one hand on the door knob. "Drax."
Theta and Koschei have merged to become one joint mass of body amongst the mess, everyone else their own respectable island, among charts and calculations that have been printed out for some form of visual clarity. It makes mapping everything else faster. If people would stop MESSING AROUND WITH THE PILES, that is. It's gotten rather run-of-the-mill by now, but not any less mock gag-invoking since nearly thirty years ago. Thirty years? Have they been huddling like this that long?
Rassilon have mercy. Drax heaves a sigh, blowing a sheet of calculations that should have been pitched to the other side of the double-room long ago, throwing Ushas off her spot on the page. Drax looks up at the clock, then at the master map of this planet's calculated travels over the years and the distance to completion thereof.
"D'they have alcohol in the kitchen?" Drax asks the room at large, primarily Not Ushas, who doesn't have to look up before saying "No" in voice that used to get everyone to shut up, but has lost its power in time.
"We pulling an all-nighter?"
"Yes," Mort supplies from two meters to his left, sharing that conspiratorial telepathic-in-its-own-way form of whacked communication between a sculpting historian and a freelance mechanic. "And Hamlet's maybe ten minutes in your skimmer. Seats four."
"It'll do five."
"You're going to overload it," Ushas tells them both in as stern a voice as she can muster. She has something of a flashback of the number of times she's told people what they're doing is Generally A Bad Idea in nothing but a knee-jerk reaction.
"Mechanic says it ain't going to." Drax holds out an arm to Mort, who grabs it harder than necessary with a noise that can only be described as success under impossible odds. Not that anything has been accomplished. "Come on, Ushas. Only take us half an hour round-trip."
Ushas shakes her head, dragging herself to her feet. "Well, I'm not taking the chance of being locked in here with these two at one in the morning." She blinks multiple times at Theta and Koschei, already regretting the decision. "Yeah, no, I'm coming."
Gingerly stepping around piles of paper, Drax convinces Theta and Koschei solely by a hand gesture to get over here already. "'alf an hour. Promise."
Four decades ago, this trip would have been exhilarating and a lot more comfortable than it is now, and should be for anyone behaving in their right mind. It's become almost second nature to be able to avoid getting caught exiting the premises on Drax's skimmer for Mortimus, making up excuses on the fly should he get caught, and scouting well-worn passages during the day for any sign of it being thought about otherwise.
Currently, Ushas is placed between Theta and Koschei by request of Drax, who admittedly took Mort with him into the store so there wasn't even a need, other than the nostalgic just like old times routine, but with more unwelcome sexual tension. 'Unwanted sexual tension' is a redundant clause, in Ushas's book.
"It's just occurred to me now," Theta says. Ushas can tell it occurred to him a while ago.
"What has, Theta?"
He leans his head against Ushas's shoulder, delighting in how she squirms just a tiny bit after all this time putting up with them. "Twenty-seven years to the day."
"Oh Gallifrey do NOT START."
"Has it really been that long?"
"Koschei what did I just say?" It takes much more control to snap menacingly at someone when you've got a stupid blond head on your shoulder that happens to belong to the lover of the person you're trying to look menacingly at.
"You said 'Oh Gallifrey do not start', which hardly makes any grammatical sense and stopped being threatening a good two decades ago, dear Ushas."
Ushas drags a hand down her face, trying to expel the possible directions this conversation could go in. "I don't want to hear it."
"Haven't you already?"
"YES. TWICE."
"So it can't hurt, can it?"
"DINOSAURS WOULDN'T DO THIS TO ME."
"They wouldn't do you, either."
"Theta Sigma." She breathes, shaking her head. Sexual beings are beyond her sympathetic range of comprehension.
"I've heard that one before."
"I WILL HURT YOU BOTH."
Theta turns to face Ushas easier, who has all but covered her entire face with her hands.
"With what?"
Koschei leans in the opposite way. "Theta's made it rather painful before."
Ushas falls over on her back, knocking her head somewhere on the skimmer, waiting for Drax and Mort to hurry up. "I am so done."
"Makes it easier for—"
There's an impressively long, high-pitched scream originating from roughly four blocks East from the empty lot they parked the skimmer in. It is followed by its immediate silence. Gradually, but only in a manner of twenty seconds, do the number of voices begin multiplying, rising up and above and around the buildings they escape very near out of. Theta leaps to his feet in a shot, without a second's hesitation running full-tilt towards the main road.
"Don't you dare!" Koschei begins running right after Theta, yelling for him to turn around and stop what he's doing and he can't do everything or save everyone or
Mortimus runs out the back of the shop. "What the hell is going on?"
Drax appears at his side with five cans of whatever that doesn't matter now. He tosses them onto the skimmer, turning to Ushas.
"Where're them two?"
"Theta ran off soon as he heard screaming."
"Shit," Drax mutters, looking suddenly sharply at Ushas. "What d'we do?"
She doesn't speak, starting up the skimmer and ignoring the strands of hair that have somehow come undone from the tie at the back of her head. "They can't get far if we've got this."
"Who says we'll even be able to get in there?" There is an unmistakable glow coming from down the street, greater than that of turning the street light on a brighter setting.
Ushas nods them both on the disc that's already getting too small. "We have to try."
"THETA SIGMA I COMMAND YOU TO STOP MOVING!" Koschei screams ahead of him, but it can't work against the tides of people rushing outside, jostling each other, yelling for loved ones to stay inside or get something ready or lock the doors or run. He would try hypnosis if he could get close enough, but there's no chance at all of it working with all the noise and the people and the panic and the are they setting things on fire "THETA!"
He elbows and shoves and just about punches his way through people, running out into the middle of the street to try and get a clearer path to run through, but only starting to lose the back of Theta's head in the crowd. He has always been able to run faster. His legs are that bit better and stamina is just that much greater, but Koschei is running on adrenaline and chemicals mean nothing because they can escape Hamlet and go back to the Academy if they get back to the skimmer and why does he have to be heroic.
No, this isn't heroism. This is idiocy.
What can he even hope to accomplish? Unless he's got a weapon or an entire fire truck, there is absolutely nothing Theta can do to hold back the yet-to-be-determined arsonists.
A skimmer flies over his head, Drax hanging off the end, shouting something behind him and pointing to the ground. In the second of sidetracking it takes, Koschei slams into someone's back, falling to the ground and almost getting swallowed up by the feet fleeing from the fire. The ringing in his ears accompanies the incessant tapping that's started getting uncomfortably noisy and uncomfortably quick in the space of two minutes, still separate entirely from circumstance, but altered in some capacity by environment.
Koschei pulls himself back to his feet, running and shoving for barely thirty seconds before breaking through the line and into an empty moving ring of don't come any further. People dressed in red, intentionally ragged, torn formal robes hold staffs of fire, periodically setting lawns and buildings ablaze while others hold some kind of weapon trained on the crowd they oppress. They all have painted faces, black streaks resembling rivers running from eyes to neck, elaborate high-ranked headpieces marring any good view of who they are individually other than a very big problem.
Someone grabs him from behind, taking a fistful of arm and jamming him into the crowd. He turns to face a frantically breathing, very dark-skinned man with something hanging between his teeth. "You a Prydon, kid?"
Koschei nods, glancing back and forth an everywhere looking for ThetaThetaThetaTheta
"Then get the hell out of here."
"But—"
"You better run." The man disappears, leaving Koschei to walk in zig-zags through the crowd of people, dodging crying loomlings and screaming adults and people vomiting on the side of the road. He tries to scream Theta's name but it is almost completely drowned out from all the other screams. They're not special. They aren't different. They are exactly like the residents of Hamlet, but smaller and more desperate and a long way from home.
The skimmer flies overhead again, lower than before and getting dangerously close to the buildings of the North side of the street. Drax holds his arms out in a failed attempt to reach him, Koschei ignoring the summons because he needs to find Theta and that thing can't even get low enough to touch him.
Koschei is, at some point, hit in the back of the head, sending his balance off for a bit too long and invoking that slight amount of nausea sending people to the side of the street. He keeps uselessly barrelling through hoards of people. It only occurs to him less than a minute's run from the end of the border that there are, in fact, more roads than one.
He runs in front of a woman carrying a baby and a toddler, behind someone crouched at the side of the road, yelling at people to keep back. Someone else lies on the sidewalk, pressed to the side of a building, gold wisps of light Koschei hasn't seen in real life before starting to leak from their eyes and fingers and ears. The dark begins engulfing everyone, the fire from behind casting long, long shadows from buildings and people and the side of the road here is elevated and Koschei can barely see the stone wall he runs into but he can see people being herded away from the main road and feel blood running down his cheek and knuckles peeling now but he can't tell because he's already wiping blood from his eyes and someone starts yelling at him but his head is now screaming and threatening to split open and he starts throwing up but he can't feel it really but has the sense to bend over properly and the blood doesn't blend in with his robes sitting on his bed at the Academy.
"WE CAN'T LAND, DRAX, THERE ARE PEOPLE IF YOU HADN'T NOTICED!"
"THEN LAND ON THE ROOF!" Ushas clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip, hair loose and ravaged by the wind, no condition to be commandeering a skimmer in… Theta is going to get a very long, very vulgar talking-to as soon as they find him very alive.
"Have you lost Koschei?" Mort asks in the quietest tone he can above the yelling and noises of people. Only a fraction of them have managed to escape yet. An alarming number of them remain on the main road: the widest and the most direct route out, also being slowly engulfed by fire.
Drax mumbles "Bloody fell over and didn't get up soon enough."
She doesn't realise she's not breathing until her body gasps for air, for a moment taking her eyes off the course.
"Breathe, Ushas."
"Yeah thanks, Mort."
She sees what could very well be them, somewhere South of anyone else that could be them, the idea of the pair of them having not yet found each other making it all the more impossible than it was already.
Mortimus crouches on shaky legs, trying to see as far as he can into the gang of any number of those burning the place down, nearly falling over in the process but managing somehow to see just enough to conclude "They're going for the Academy."
"What?" Drax takes his eyes off the road before them. "How d'you know?"
"It would be a lot more efficient to start fires all over the town, not just down the main road."
Drax looks from Mort to Ushas with huge eyes, scratching the back of his head like he does when he's trying to think straight. "We need to go back before they do."
Ushas shakes her head. "Not without Theta and Koschei."
"If you can't find them within two minutes, we need to go."
"Not you, too, Mort."
"WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!"
Ushas forces herself focus again, breathe normally, whatever, in the process of trying to jam her hair back and pulling some out of her heating forehead. She steers up from the buildings and higher into the sky, not able to find them, not able to land, looking, looking, looking.
"I can't see."
Mortimus nudges her over, taking the controls as soon as she lets go, refusing to look at anything but the ground now scattered with golden dying that will just become engulfed in fire as it moves closer…
"You know them." Mortimus attempts a comforting tone. "They're gonna walk back, no problem."
She doesn't say anything, cursing Theta's stupid brain and trying to telekinetically summon them with enough force to wrestle an adult sheep to the ground. She very consciously takes another breath.
There is a blond head accompanied by a slightly charred, now bare, arm, hanging uselessly at its side. The matching unburnt one moves in the direction perpendicular to the main road, huddles of people nodding and silently following the orders that don't come with words. At least, not anymore.
The head looks down the street both ways, searching for someone or some people or something, once resting on the outline of Koschei huddled against a wall, trying to self-assess a head wound.
Three.
Two.
One.
"Theta!" he tries yelling, phrased almost as a question. He pulls himself up and ignores the pain quite professionally, listening to the yelling and fire noises for a shot of adrenaline. The burned, blond person actually responds and begins running towards him. Somewhere, Koschei misses the time between seeing him start walking and his being present. Theta pulls Koschei's head fractionally from the slightly bloody shirt.
"Of course you ran after me, idiot."
Theta begins cutting a strip off the bottom of Koschei's shirt, twisting it together in a sketchy sort of bandage maybe? The fingers on his arm out of commission still work in bits, strong enough to hold weak fabric in place. "I'm the idiot? Have you seen yourself?"
"Not entirely."
Koschei stares him down, mentally screaming DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH over and over before Theta picks it up or acknowledges it, which he doesn't do until he ties a knot in the fabric at the side of his head. He gingerly matches his forehead on Koschei's bleeding and bandaged one, muffling the sounds of people.
I'm getting people out of the town through the east exit. I'm helping.
You were IN A FIRE
I WAS NEAR THE SIDE OF THE FIRE PICKING UP A KID THAT COULDN'T WALK ANYMORE. I WAS HELPING.
YOU COULD'VE DIED.
AND THE KID WAS GOING TO DIE.
He immediately pulls back from Koschei's forehead, not letting any thought in or out, but not stepping back far enough to be so completely cold and guarded. He replaces his head with five fingertips. They're going for the Academy and aren't going through all the side streets. They came in from a few but that's their main goal.
And what are you going to do about it?
I'm staying here until everyone's either safe, dead, or out of town. Are you helping?
Koschei is only slightly aware of being breathing quite heavily, trying to dismiss it in favour of remaining upright off of adrenaline. "Theta Sigma, you can't really be thinking of undermining a pack of terrorists and having a hundred people run to the same location. They're going to figure it out and we'll all end up dead."
Theta's hand falls again. "Someone has to do it."
"You don't."
He purses his lips, shaking his head. "Are you helping?"
"If there is nothing on this planet that would dissuade you."
"Run South to the border between the main path and the road and start calling people in this way. Tell them to keep going Northeast until they find the road out, it'll end at a shuttle to the nearest city. Tell them to keep along the perimeter to avoid the fire. Normally they can run in the Academy but that's where the arsonists are going, so."
Theta flashes a grin, turning to walk away again.
"Where are you going?"
He spins around briefly. "The other side of the road. Now get going."
Koschei watches Theta retreat into tomorrow's ashes, and blurts out "I love you," in his last allotted second of hesitation. Theta probably doesn't hear him.
Ushas jumps off the skimmer before it hits the ground, rolling onto the grass and running towards the front doors at full tilt. It's barely two in the morning, still pitch black outside, but there will still be a reply from the main office if she pulls the right lever. She's seen it done before in advanced astronomy and a couple times in emergency medicine.
Tingles of impact fire up her legs as she pounds over the grass, hoping for rain as she doesn't slow down adequately to approach the main doors but doesn't care. She pulls the right switch on the first try. "You've got half an hour before they burn it down!"
"Burn it… who is this?"
"Is that… Professor Traesys, I just came back from Hamlet. There's a terrorist group burning it down all dressed in… formal robes like a show against the government and they're coming here."
Mortimus appears behind her. "I can bear witness. So can Kappa Phi. There are at least fifteen of them."
"Can you provide any proof of this threat? Sounds rather extreme for a ploy to get back in the school."
"Sir, I am Delta Psi taking twice advanced xenobiology in your class, I am begging you to open the door."
It unlocks. They run.
It takes far too much verification of events to actually act on their claims, which makes all logical sense in a situation where the claims are definitely false. But not when they are definitely true. Mortimus supplied his brain as a primary witness after Ushas failed to surrender her own memories of panic.
Within five minutes, the alarm was sounded, a message simultaneously sent to the nearest city and the Capitol.
Within fifteen, troops began unloading out of TARDISes appearing in the back and streaming around to the front, forming a defence pattern around the school. Ushas, along with Drax and Mort, were each provided a cup of tea and place to sit inside the office as short-term compensation for shock, which is promised to be further acted upon once the crisis resolves. Which realistically isn't going to be in very long. You get a hundred fifty armed first-responders against seventeen people with torches, and the army wins.
"Do you think they've made it back yet?" Mort asks both of them, leaning slightly against Drax on the bench made for two that seats three, the only one sipping his tea. Ushas chugged it all while probably burning her mouth for the next two days, and Drax has set it down completely in favour of "plain water, thanks."
"Maybe Koschei's still lookin' f'r Thete."
"One of them would be dead by now, knowing Theta."
They remain silent, vaguely hearing orders being shouted from outside. "Thanks, Ushas." Mort sighs, taking another sip of far-too-sugary chai.
"D'you think we'll get in trouble? Or is there some kinda cancelling out with running off and filing an attack threat?"
"We're not Dromeians, Drax," Ushas mumbles, peering into her empty mug and being disappointed for the third time there isn't anything in it. "We can't get away with anything."
Another pause as staff walk around looking perturbed, apparently taking no notice to the exchange nobody can see outside. "I think they were anti-government extremists." Mort says, looking rather artisty again, sipping his tea with the delicacy of a butterfly. "Unchaptered. Maybe a bunch of biological bastards."
Ushas, completely weaned off adrenaline, still buzzing but rather impatient and just wanting Theta and Koschei to show up with a stupid comment about something, does not have time to put up with slang. "Shut the hell up, Mortimus."
"What did I do?"
"You're worse than Drax and Vansell's hypothetical love child, nobody cares, quit throwing your ideology on people."
Mortimus regards her, who refuses to look at him at all, becoming irrationally intrigued with the nameplate on the Headmaster's office door.
"The hell was that?" Drax half-grows in incredulity.
Ushas puts her cup on the floor to stop her looking in for more tea. "Sorry. That was… politically incorrect."
Mortimus blinks. "Didn't know it was."
Ushas is fixated on her grounded cup. "Yeah, sorry. Stressed."
Mortimus nods.
###
Koschei doesn't know how much time has elapsed when the official-looking arrive show up overhead. People are still here, still making their way to the East exit, but there can't be anyone living around where the fire has been contained. Hamlet was not entirely defenceless. Most go out with nothing, some clothes burned, some being held up by the will of others. Koschei wonders why they chose to lie in such an unprotected, low-tech part of the planet. While the Academy sits maybe three kilometres away, but as was just wonderfully demonstrated, has not done much in the way of protection. Other than, of course, getting the Capitol involved.
He collapses onto someone's front steps, house undoubtedly empty by now, letting his head rest against the railing. The pain of everything seeps back in with every circulation of blood. Feet are sore. Legs are gelatin. Stomach doesn't have enough food but doesn't want any. Arms hurt, scraped in places and something else in others. Neck's been strained. Throat's starting to lose it from all the yelling. Head… not even going to start on the head. Theta's shirt-bandage has been dried on more securely than the knot's been tied, blood still sticky, but not seeping out anymore, which is a plus.
A white sort of mist begins descending from the sky. It isn't not lethal but it's certainly not all that healthy. It will act like water, shrinking and dousing the flame until all that remains is ash and small tongues of flame that will choke and die in time. He vaguely wonders how fast Ushas alerted the Academy of a sad, futile attempt at wreaking havoc, an event that will most definitely be censored from any news outside of word of mouth. Else someone might be inspired to try it again.
There are no bodies he can see on this stretch of street, an immense comfort to Koschei, now smelling the white mist he might actually choke on. Choke and die, lie near the conveniently burned ashes of Time Lord upon Time Lord he's realising now were probably all either unchaptered or Prydonian. The people with fire certainly weren't. They shot selectively, too. There were very few well-dressed people fleeing the town.
He wonders if Ohila made it out. Or if she's away at some shining Academy.
He begins contemplating his hypocrisy after a few seconds of almost starting to cough as effect of the mist. He should have very well joined the terrorists if he hates the government so much as a practice.
The thought exorcises itself from his searing headache as he starts hearing someone else choke about thirty meters from his steps; the corner of the street. "There you are," it chokes, voice raspy and strained almost beyond recognition. Almost. Theta approaches him with an arm stretched out, one leg bent on the bottom step. "We need to get out of here. Might choke to death."
He moves his head to the side and begins coughing, arm still out.
Koschei stands himself up, putting one hand on Theta's opposite shoulder, starting to walk away from the mist and into the surrounding bundles of trees. He's too tired to run any more than he has.
"You've lost your voice," he croaks out himself. A bit clearer perhaps, if anyone had anything to say about it.
"Can't be much worse than yours." Theta's burned arm rests precariously at his side, limp and angry red and desperately in need of work but somehow he is not complaining.
They keep ahead enough of the mist, only wisps of it reaching beyond the calculated radius of the fire. Koschei slides his hand down to sit in Theta's as they step into the unmarked tree line, silhouetted in the white mist settling behind.
"Lucky you're not dead," Koschei says, sitting Theta down on a fallen log without much protest or resistance. Theta automatically holds out his arm, amount left of the sleeve already jammed back onto his shoulder. The bright colour on the side of his arm tapers off faster than Koschei thought it would.
"It's not that bad. Take a pill and it'll be gone in half an hour."
Theta coughs into the other arm, making tiny jolts run through the one outstretched. "We're rather lucky, I think."
"Please, don't do that again." Koschei curls Theta's fingers in on themselves, holding them there a bit longer than necessary but nobody's counting the seconds. "Run off and try to save the world. You'll end up dead."
"I don't want to save the world." Theta is burnt and sweaty and far too tired and dirty and it is painstakingly beautiful. "I only wanted to save people. Some people. People with better lives than me who have better futures to live. Like if I can save other people, my life is worth living because it's creating more life for other people."
"That doesn't mean you have to jump into a fire!" His voice goes high at the end, an argument about death having the potential to sound more strained than it need be with two hardly-present set of vocal cords.
"That's the same reason I didn't want you to follow me, but you did."
"You never said anything about not—"
"Because we could save worlds together, Kosch. Pull each other out of the fire, too. Why not start here?"
He sighs. "You speak grand words, Thete."
"Doesn't make them less true. We're Lords of Time, we can do anything."
"Not without a TARDIS." Koschei stands up, holding out an arm for Theta to take, out of some kind of reverse encounter.
"We'll find one." He stands up himself, smiling sadly at the ground and kicking a rock. The mist, by now, will have cleared. "Eventually."
"Wouldn't put it past you to steal one and take me with you." Koschei takes his hand again, sometimes still fascinated at the concept of physical touch in so innocent a way and wondering why the Time Lords don't put it into practise more.
"It's a fun experience, being stolen. I'll give it that."
"I wouldn't call it being stolen if you asked for it."
Theta bumps playfully into Koschei, wondering briefly how he can possibly be doing so with the number of dead behind him, never to blink or breathe or experience anything or exist at all again. It is rather beautiful to see someone regenerating amid a fire, golden blaze mixing with the red-orange-yellow combustion and blending into one substance, fire not being matter and therefore unable to be stopped by matter recreating itself. Eventually the gold withers and dies, the body burned underneath it caught in a state of nearly regenerated, almost there, but unable to complete itself because the matter has been burned away in gold sparks.
"Like leaves turning turquoise before falling off."
"I forgot you can read my mind."
"Only when it's this quiet."
Koschei pauses. "We're breathing in the dead."
And it was beautiful.
###
This is exactly how they end up sitting on a riverbank with Mortimus and Drax and Ushas, sipping alcohol in the middle of scheduled class under the pretence of what used to be a math assignment (that has been excused for all of them). Their explanations are all quite short after leaving out all the personal bits, potentially embarrassing bits, and any commentary on the morbid beauty of death or the complex rambling of hypocrisy. Despite the theoretical bond that may have formed over a relatively shared traumatic experience, they all keep silent the parts that would later be considered some of the most important pieces. They are left drifting in the mind to be forgotten and only remembered at brief reunions starting with the line Hey, remember the time we went for a drink and nearly got roasted instead?
Eventually Rallon and Millennia show up, heard already some version of the story, nothing left for them to drink but river water since a long time ago. The collective review of the morning's events faded quickly into small talk. And long silences. And pretend intrigue at the light conversations of others. The dead begin their way worming into their heads, screaming for help before being doused in fire, watching people being shot down and stunned into unmoving as they either run away or hover far above.
The soft hum of whatever gave the drink its point only vaguely distracts from death, making a few extra words slip out and laughing easier. They're not drunk, but distracted. They only tell random bits of information to their visitors, sometimes in the wrong order for fun or because they forgot some detail that was necessary to interrupt the story with.
Rallon secretly hopes Jelpax and Vansell might show up. Koschei aggressively hopes they don't.
Eventually Rallon and Millennia disappear for lunch or some class or something, leaving the five of them with too much excused time and too much to think about. It's Drax who first suggests swimming, stripping down to a pair of boxers and jumping into Lethe with a sort of cut-off splash with the bottom being so shallow. After a significant amount of intentional splashing, Mortimus falls in next, followed by Theta making a joke about getting very hot in the recent past, Koschei telling him it wasn't funny, and Ushas telling them both a thing or two about making funny jokes.
While they were allotted the day off to recover, maybe sleep, they all naturally took advantage of this, rebellious as they believe themselves to be. Running on no sleep, and not enough food, it took only seven minutes for something to start going badly. Drax pretends to try and drown Theta for some indiscernible reason, Koschei retaliates by punching him in the face, Ushas tries to break it up and only gets hit by someone, Mortimus tries to pull from the other side and eventually gets dumped in the river again and comes up choking violently.
By then the hastily-flung, unthoughtful insults have begun firing. Even Ushas, normally everyone's favourite unbiased third party, slips into the pattern of bickering, Mortimus the only one with sense to get out of the water before anyone can start fist fighting and trying to drown people again. It would be a very advantageous trait to be able to remove oneself from the conversation and look at how futile they all sound. Might save a lot of hassle. Three minutes after Koschei hit Theta slightly harder than intended, Jelpax, dressed neatly in their robes, emerges from the trees and happens upon the four of them. Mortimus looks actually the most composed, the rest of everybody soaking wet in the middle of a river that's slightly too cold and looking two shades shy completely out of it.
"You know, soaking wet people in underwear is sometimes considered erotica, but you lot look more like a bunch of wet fluzzles than anything else.
"And who asked your opinion?" Drax shouts from the river, watching Jelpax sit down on a rock and roll their eyes.
"Millennia, actually. She figures you guys went a bit nuts."
"We watched half of Hamlet burn an' you don't doubt we're nuts?"
"You're stupid, Drax!" Theta shouts, still spitting out water.
"If you could all can it, that'd be lovely, thanks." Jelpax says. They watch them all pitifully shove each other around, water making all their moves lethargic and awkward to keep track of.
"Ushas, you have a shred of common sense, could you come up here at least?"
Ushas glares at Koschei again before crawling out of the water and retrieving the rest of her clothes. Mortimus mutters a 'thanks' Jelpax can't hear from across the bank as Ushas pulls her jeans on wet.
"How much have you all had to drink?" Jelpax enquires of Mortimus, who currently sits with his hands on his knees, cross-legged and looking like he'd rather be Cerulean than where he currently is.
"Not actually a lot," Mortimus says, managing to shut Ushas up with a look as she tries and explain further. "Although there's been some short-term psychological trauma recently infested that's caused a lot of dumb ideas and no vocal filtration."
"Oh for crying out loud KOSCHEI JUST GET OUT OF THE WATER."
"ME?"
"ALL OF YOU, HOW ABOUT?"
A/N: This entire thing was 100% Not Canon, wow