A/N: *Divided Loyalties attacks with fire*
Things I did not do: rewrite that entire novel ok bye
Theta didn't notice it last time, Quences's ticking clock. It's the antique type: one large circle with only twelve hours marked, three hands circumnavigating the surface once a minute, hour, half a day. It hangs on the wall directly behind him, marking every second with the potential to drive whole nations insane with its tick, tick, tick. In a way it promotes conversation, any tiresome topic more melodic to the brain than its ceaseless pounding. This ticking could, in the right place, motivate the small talk that leads to a terrorist attack on Arcadia, all fitting into Chaos Theory as comfortably as Theta sits in the big chair. The only thing missing is somebody distant enough to engage in small talk with. Quences just doesn't fit the bill.
Theta tries to coax his mind from the ticking, but the clock has nestled itself in the rafters of his brain and decides to sleep in its new nest. The present is awoken from its catnap, arching its back before walking away on its four paws like nothing happened. "I don't understand."
"There is no other feasible way to work around this."
"'Feasible' being the operative word?"
"There is nothing feasible in politics. Especially when one is breaking the law."
"As this family enjoys reminding me on an annual basis."
Quences is out of regenerations, and he will not end on a thirteenth life. Quences didn't need to tell Theta that for him to figure it out. He comes from a family of criminals, it seems.
"The government has never been quite… ethically inclined."
"I thought higher-ups were so confident in their history they passed this stuff off as a hoax?"
Quences shakes his head. "'Higher-ups' have no love for their history. It's why they keep repeating it." He sets down the cup of tea he was drinking, hand shaking in the way it does when Death isn't far around the corner. Like the body starts to fear what's coming and tries to warn the mind. But there's nothing it can do. "It could pass."
"You don't sound very convinced."
"I'm not."
The clock fills their silences.
"My Junior qualifications are in two years."
"I'm sorry."
Theta smirks. "No, you're not."
"So you think it benefits me to have you hiding about the House every day of the year?"
"You can just as easily send me back once it's over."
Even Quences's breaths fear Death. "It's not that simple. I can get away with not Looming another cousin. But they will still screen you for the so-called 'virus' a few years after the fiasco ends. Call yourself what you like after that; people will think you were screened anyways."
Theta lets four ticks of the clock go by, for old times' sake.
"What if they just screened me?"
"The Decree of Rassilon is still in the constitution."
"Nobody edits the constitution."
"Dromeians do."
"Yeah, well, they're Dromeians."
"There is nothing else I can do."
Theta picks up his dusty golden jar, the peacekeeper of his conversations with Quences, always listening from beside his foot. The thing they have in common. "I believe you." He tries deciphering the impressions in the glass one more time, an impossible feat he always put off to another day. He tosses it to Quences. "You didn't get thirteen, thanks to the same government. I don't need a fourteenth."
Quences doesn't look surprised at Theta's knowing. He looks surprised at the jar. His limbs no longer feel the need to fear Death. "I tried running away." His creaking fingers clamp onto the lid with every stored up motivation they have, whole arms vibrating as they loosen the seal. Theta doesn't help him. "They took two lives off." His voice is strained, his whole body is strained, contorting to fit the motions for his wrist to turn the lid. The clock tells of how long it takes to open, a perpetual activity only punctuated by success or eventual death.
Theta rises from his chair, for a moment stuck between leaving nature to its course and interfering with the jar's fate. He steps, and he bends before the old man, prying the jar of life from his fingers and breaking the lock before the clock ticks six times. Tiny wisps of gold escape their confines. "Better be quick."
###
Ushas sits on her high-backed chair as is only tradition, sporting well-kept robes and the signature ponytail. But she has fallen to the cushion in a slouch instead of the poise of the arm, tears silently streaking the skin of her cheeks. Only half of her face is illuminated, tinted a shade hellish from the deep crimson hue of night.
They all sit where they're supposed to, a habit worn as the wagon tracks on a dirt road. Jelpax has assumed the role of Senator: the tallest, the calmest, the eldest, the wisest.
"'Rallon has been taken. I forgive you all for not noticing, because we all take leave for days at a time with little explanation. I ask your forgiveness in return for what I am bound next to do. There were three ransom notes following his disappearance, appearing on my desk in three mornings. I don't know who sent them, and I don't know why, but I know it's not some cruel prank because they got Rallon to write it. I would leave them for you to see if I wanted you all to follow me. Quite simply, they threatened to kill Rallon after four days of my absence, and one more child they could coerce like myself for every day following. If I go now, they will spare Rallon in place of another life force to serve their sustenance.
'I know the chances of them keeping their word are slim, and I will likely be killed as a result. I might go on a tirade of moral dilemmas and psychology if I didn't already know you have the entire scenario mapped out in all its possible paths. I hope to see you all again, quite soon. You won't even miss me.'"
Jelpax lets the paper drop, swinging wildly in free fall before crashing to the ground. They take a deep breath. "I'm going to read the next one, before we all start arguing over who took them."
"She mentions it," Ushas forces out, "in that one." Nobody knows how many times she read them over when she found them both, and will never know precisely why she found the motivation to seek out Millennia in Rallon's absence. Someone with no knowledge of Ushas would call it "unrequited love". They would be wrong.
"'Some of you are so, so brave — you were born that way — which is why this letter will arrive the second I take my leave. Time Lords all fantasise of swooping in and saving the day, like all the tales of our childhood. At least, our lot has. It is my dying hope you have all broken the laws to come rescue us both in another universe where I am a little more selfish. Perhaps you all might one day, and release us both from the never-ending game.
'The Celestial Toymaker was out of game pieces, so he started collecting more. Time Lords were a natural choice, so durable and changeable. He likes us so much, he bet his weary body for Rallon's in checkers. You're all smart, I grant you, but this man has been playing games since the universe before ours. He always wins. He let me pick any game I wanted in my agony, and I regret choosing checkers out of sentimental vengeance. I lost, and I still live. I get to live as his doll until I run out of lives, or until somebody comes along and kills me. My free will exists for a little longer. Enough to say goodbye.
'I want nothing more than to be brought back home. But none of you are good enough, however you may protest, to beat the Toymaker. Think about me and Rallon when you play checkers. Win for us. I'll miss you all terribly.'"
For shame, none of them look at each other. Jelpax stands in place, torn between sitting down and keeping the dim silence in balance. Not even Vansell makes a noise.
Theta Sigma kicks the underside of the coffee table. Without a doubt, somebody has woken up to what they hope isn't a gunshot. He is the first to hurdle the piece of furniture and stomp away, dispersing their Deca-gone-Hepta. They all watch his back storm to the stairs, an excuse to focus on something, waiting for the bomb to set off with bated breath.
He might wake up the whole dormitory, he might break a hole in the wall, he will do something drastic, and nobody bothers trying to stop him.
The last they hear as his shadow disappears up the staircase around the bend is a poetically symphonic, beautifully pondered, "FUCK."
"How civil."
Ushas sniffs. "You can shut the fuck up, Vansell."
"Please," Koschei echoes.
Nobody moves in a silent minute of reverence, a gap in productivity in life only rivalled by sleep. Koschei feels as if conscious in a dream, but argues in a whisper it's probably dehydration.
Jelpax draws in a shaky breath. "Who missed Rallon, here?" Ushas raises her hand unapologetically, scanning the remaining five like they all do for another arm. Koschei might have, once, as much as a redundant adjective or a fifth shade of oceanic blue.
"Who even noticed something off about Millennia?"
Koschei decides to leave.
Theta Sigma is hunched in a wooden chair, idly flicking the screen of his slate in pauses of frantic, swooping eyes. The bluish tint of the screen lights up every jagged edge of his face, overhead lights not to be bothered with in times of urgency. Koschei takes advantage of the empty bed as somewhere comfortable to physically exist, turning on the wall lamp for some illumination. The yellow glow grazes Theta's toes, which curl back as if whipped.
"What's the light for?"
"What's the slate for?"
Theta exhales with enough restraint of will to implode a crustacean. "Data banks here say the Toymaker's just a legend. So we can't call the authorities on him without sounding like we're making shit up." Theta turns off the screen, letting the device fall to the ground. It doesn't break. "That leaves one option."
Koschei might exclaim in futile despair with a safer roommate at hand. Give a nice speech, full of reasoning and encouragement. "That leaves no options, Thete."
"I don't think you get it." Theta stands, and he leans on the wall, but just enough to appear one tier short of threatening. "We're it. The seven of us are the only ones in the goddamn universe who can help those two, and half of us won't lift a finger."
Koschei stands himself. "You walk in there and you'll be killed or worse, and in the impossible chance you do make it out, your glorious welcome home will be charges of illegal interference, unregistered TARDIS piloting, and probably skipping class if someone invites Borusa to the trial."
Theta stops leaning, and he takes a casual step, but even his bones quiver. "So you're saying it's right to let them decompose with no free will?"
"I'm saying you can't run in there and commit suicide trying to help them!"
"But if there's a chance, if we can get enough people on our side, people from other planets, then we are obliged to try!"
Koschei takes a deep breath of incredulity, and barely holds down a shout. "No, we're not!"
Theta shouts for him. "Then you're the one killing them!"
"I'm the one keeping you from killing yourself!"
"And am I somehow worth more than they are?" Theta tries invading the outer bubble of his personal space.
"Theta! You! Will! Not! Live! Through! Finding! Them!"
"THERE HAVE TO BE PEOPLE WHO WILL SIDE WITH ME, WE'LL TAKE HIM DOWN-"
"YOU CAN'T FIX EVERYTHING!"
Theta, bound first and foremost to the primordial synapses that govern him, balls up one dominant fist and punches Koschei across the left of his jaw. Something bleeds, an instinctive hand flying to the throbbing impact, the taste of iron exploding around his tongue.
"You know I'm right," Koschei works around the blood.
"Of course you are."
"Going to hit me again or go apologise to half the dorm for waking them up at 01:00?"
"Neither." Theta removes himself from the room in the same storm he entered it by, slate still blank on the floor.
Their fights always instill paranoia, a sensation Koschei only fully put a name to now. He stands inside the bathroom doors, listening to a single shower running, and doing nothing but listening. He's taken a seat on a counter, opposite side of the wall, shielded from the steam billowing above and underneath the stall he can't see. Logically, he should be incredibly unconcerned with a shower. It's a great course of action in washing off excess emotion, full of routine to focus on and soap to clear the head. But it is their own construct of fights to throw verbal attacks and follow up with structural nervous assessment of their actions. That and problematic sex.
He spent hardly five minutes in the room full of the stark loss of Rallon and Millennia, two entities well silenced by the constant lights of a bathroom facility and the uneven patter of water hitting the ground. His back is turned to the mirrors that could host any number of the imagination's creepy quirks. There's a tiny bit of his consciousness expecting Death herself to show up under Theta's accusations of Koschei's indirect double homicide, but the thought has deformed and stretched as his brain and body grew. It's been 88 years since he saw her. 88 long years.
He listens for the water's pattern to shift into uniformity, which it is having a hard time doing. It's always being obstructed in different places or stored up and released in waves. He lets the grumpy part of him that doesn't want to be sitting on a counter in the bathroom for no reason commandeer his thoughts for a while, full of sour nothings and mean talks. He even considers turning over his paranoia for sleep. The grumpy thoughts mean nothing useful as they always do, not that it ever feels that way at the time. He revels in his complaints of how uncomfortable the counter is, how bright the lights are, what he could be doing instead. And it's all Theta's fault.
Seven minutes go by at least, the incalculable more-than-five and less-than-ten, and he let the water achieve its uniformity without moving himself. The unease in his stomach increases, a fun trick to keep down and ignored, the structure of long showers and the implications of unmoving occupying his mind for a good while. He even lets the thoughts drift into the air for cherry picking and organising. Theta can't hear them. He's not that good a telepath.
At the probably ten-minute mark, the voice of paranoia kicks him in the gut, shock of the blow throwing him off the counter and into small steps around the thermal polished stone floors. The lights overhead never turn down and may never turn off, stuck on a setting bright enough to keep the best of them awake in the mornings. The consciousness agent is predominantly the mass of students milling inside with their odd smells, whatever the lights make claims to.
Third shower from the front end. Completely random. "If that's Koschei, you can please find your own shower."
Koschei stops walking, stops breathing, in a long second deciding it better to do both. "I'm not here for a shower."
"Then sod off."
He stops in front of the door. "I don't trust you."
"I am literally taking a shower."
"You don't take showers when you're in a bad mood."
"Well maybe I just needed a shower."
"That is the least convincing line I've heard you deliver this week."
Theta grunts. "What could I possibly do in the shower that requires convincing against?"
Koschei folds his arms at the partial door, waging a tiny war of wills in going in for strictly paranoiac reasons or not. "A few things."
"Such as…?"
"No clue, but the fact you're continuing this conversation is an indicator." A portion of his sentience tells him he's stupid, he opens the door and walks through the squareish area devoted to decency.
"Don't you dare."
Koschei pulls back the curtain, getting water on himself for the opportunity to see Theta gripping the side of his left bicep too tight for normalcy. "Stings in the shower, doesn't it?"
"You know, I've never done it properly before. Now seemed a good time."
Koschei shrugs. "Fair enough."
"Now really do sod off."
Koschei, now with many quantised opinions of his sentience crossing the floor to the verdict of I'm stupid, he walks into the shower fully clothed. "Nah." He leans against the opposing wall, of anything glad he did not wear socks.
Theta looks him up and down once. "Have the laundry systems been sabotaged?"
"Don't pretend this isn't exactly what you would do." Koschei folds his arms, feeling the water seal the clothes to his body, waiting for a protest from Theta he will only immediately argue against.
Theta doesn't speak. He counts down from three in his head, releasing the pressure from his arm to welcome the cleansing sting. He blinks hard like it might change something, and leaves Koschei to himself and his heavy clothes.
Koschei peels them off and takes a shower himself.
A/N: this one's officially The Angst Chapter