I was going to leave it there and pretend to be dead forever, but I am a selfish being. Hello, I'm alive.
Glospin didn't make it far enough to kill me, obviously. But I'm old. My skin sags, my hair is white, my muscles are shot, my bones ache, my eyes take too long to focus. He can't reverse it, either. Fundamentally I suppose it's some deep-rooted vanity that makes me so irritated. That and the knowledge I will not be able to run for fifty years. Convenient for Quences, and for the fiancée, and any beast trying to eat me. I really am stuck. In between teaching myself entire classes to scrape past school, I have tried manufacturing something to reverse the effects. Nothing has worked.
Surprisingly, I am still lacking a death wish.
It would logically seem within all our best interests to go our separate ways, but then, I am a selfish being. If you can find a way to keep my physicality from deteriorating, then I will take freedom for as long as I can. I look forward to it.
Say hello to Ushas for me. Or, you know, say hello to your boss, mail guy. If you have a boss.
Yes I know I'm talking to myself.
Theta Sigma
###
Theta stands on one side of the roof after a lot of internal debate Innocet would no doubt overhear, if she were still present. In fact, she'd heartily take part in the debate and make him more agitated than he is already.
They liked deciding on exact days when they were somehow still relevant, and this was the highest in importance if there ever was one when they still shared a bed. The first day of the last two years before Theta is to be sent off into getting married all proper and orderly, neat rows of census records to follow. Well, they would be orderly if people in general didn't think him to be dead, but then Blyledge doesn't actually care about his physicality. One day, Theta Sigma can pop up again.
His arduously-packed suitcase sits on the polar opposite side of the House's roof, silently mocking him from its place in the pitch dark sky, moon above barely a sliver. The twentieth day of the final month of what would be the break were they still in school (properly), 00:00 on the roof.
The suitcase mocks him because he has not had a direct word from Koschei in years, and he could very well be off the planet by now. Or plain just not coming. He doesn't like it, but he could be sitting on a roof all night waiting for a dead man to show up in a TARDIS and drag him away.
He has his useless offline slate with him if only to tell time, screen brightness turned up only enough to throw a soft glow to his chest and no further.
00:04.
He's never been a fan of waiting, the action so opposite to that of the running he's done since taking a glimpse of everything that is and was and ever could be in all of space and time. After watching his best friend kill another boy to save… one of them. Their first encounter and neither of them can properly remember what even happened.
One memory runs into another and he remembers the day he promised to find the noise for Koschei wherever it might be.
They could do that in their TARDIS.
There was the day somewhere after that he stayed up all night with Koschei trying to re-teach an entire class a week before exams were to begin, the motive behind deciding to skip sleeping entirely that night unquestionably absent. Only something he'd do naturally for his friend and didn't wonder why until a while later. They skipped sleeping a number of times after that, learning things again. Something else they could do in their TARDIS.
He can see inside his mental TARDIS, which must mean his eyes are closed or he's hallucinating into the sky, hearing small noises of machinery starting up artificially. A small touch of his immobility. He paces down open crates of memories that have been stowed without his knowing. They do that.
He almost falls lies down and falls asleep for all the silence, but someone moves. He would have jumped down from the roof would it not have killed him, and maybe moved a bit faster and taken the suitcase if the person he saw were actually Koschei. He can't have regenerated by now… or could he?
Theta can't hear any thoughts coming back despite the number he's screaming out into the air quite against his better judgement, if it could be anyone out there waiting for him. At the exact time and the exact place?
He comes walking through the relatively small stretch of land faster than he anticipated, slowing down as drastically as he can speed up in a rotting body when he sees whoever it is before him. They're obviously not Koschei. A bit shorter, leaning against a tree, an umbrella stuck in the ground in front of them despite the lack of rain. His eyes are still dazzled by the light inside to see them clearly, but they either have a dress or a robe on and smile disconcertingly in the dark.
"Who are you?" he asks them a bit harsher than the situation calls for, but he has no qualms in blaming his curdled voice box.
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough." The accent sounds from somewhere far away. He can tell, by now, she's a woman.
She doesn't say anything else and Theta doesn't know what else to say, but can't very well turn around and leave her lazily trailing a hand along the outside of the property line passive-aggressively. Her dress looks like it's been patched up from the styles of multiple planets all at the same time. Her shoes are beaten up yet still laced relatively pristine white, a five-pointed star on each side. Her hair is done up perfectly despite the patchwork, twisted into an elegant heap on her head that stays in place with some miraculous force.
She stops her pacing back and forth. "This is the twentieth day of the last month of the last break, right? Would be embarrassing if I missed…"
"How the hell do you know that?" he asks, stepping up as close as he dares to whoever she is.
"Oh, Theta Sigma." She shakes her head quickly and sticks out her tongue before chuckling to herself. "That name sounds funny on the tongue. It's been a while since I've used it, but I can't very well—"
"If you don't explain what you're doing out here in the middle of the bloody night I'm going to have to inform the Housemaster, and it wouldn't do well to be out here when he's angry."
She pouts, squatting on the ground and propping her hands on her fists. "Okay okay okay. Sheesh, you were edgy."
"I was edgy?"
She passes it off with a wave of her hand, shaking her head. "Nononono shush. Listen." Her whole body shudders for a second, hair still sticking in place. "Would've been soooo much easier just to break out of the time lock now but it's really hard to get back in. BUT," she holds up a finger to silence Theta's impending protest. She looks at him funny, as if every muscle in her body needs to move but it has all been contained to dialogue and facial expressions he can't see clearly. "Hold on you are Theta Sigma?"
"Yes."
"I thought so, but it's been a good couple thousand years, oh I've said too much em," she stands up with a quick clap of her hands, pausing to grin at them and apparently deciding against their comedic properties. "Tell him your name, would you? Describe me in detail." She looks at her raggedy dress that is actually very well put together for what would fall under the category of 'patchwork'. She sighs a moment, lifting her arms out to the side like a very lost dancer.
"Tell who?" He tries assuming as tall a posture as he can, but doesn't think he'd be much of a deterrent for how very disordered the woman acts. He should report her, having no idea who she is, but feels a sort of requirement to be involved in nighttime rendezvous of a chronologically transcendental type.
He can't see well in the dark, but he's almost entirely certain she winked at him. "Oh, you'll see him again. He even showed up on time, didn't he?" she places her hands on her hips, expression shockingly similar to something he's seen before and can only place a slow minute and a half later.
"Oh, I need to stop saying 'he'." She grins lopsided, curtsying to Theta. "Tell him your name for me. Now hasn't this been fun?"
Theta finds himself smiling or falling asleep, and it can't really be the latter. "Who are you?"
She claps four times in response, already walking away to wherever her TARDIS is hidden. He doesn't see her escape the treeline, and in the dark he can't tell if it's disguised as an oak tree. Knowing him, it probably is.
###
Nobody was going to sleep that night. Not even the quiet ones, or the studious ones, or the least of the troublemakers. The now-official Time Lords have some unspoken sanction to make noise into the night, celebrating their "proper adulthood" and glorying in a future devoid of forced education.
Vansellostophossius sits in the corner, almost trying to recreate some position in the Deca. He exists in authority with a handful of honour students, discussing politics in a holier-than-thou fashion. Jelpax is nowhere to be seen around him. Good on them.
Drax has clearly had too much to drink, shouting obscene congratulations at everybody. At an unfortunate moment in time, he discovered the urge to put back on the formal billboard of a headpiece, whapping a few unfortunate souls in the head with it.
Mortimus dances with the small crowd in the corner, moving in what could be described as grace compared to what everyone else does.
Jelpax is off to the side talking with a girl. The girl seems quite interested.
Koschei stands on the wall, nearer the scattered food and drinks table than the mass of people dancing, telling himself to not consume alcohol this fast, because something adverse will probably happen. As if there aren't a good number of people not paying attention to this rule.
Vansell surprises him by getting off his seat at some point, and making his way over. He still retains the air of a great jerk, every feature and every joint placed to irritate Koschei. Maybe it's unintentional, maybe it's just the way he looks, but Koschei can't stand it. Vansell swallows. Leans with his back on the wall, next to Koschei. And he doesn't talk for a while.
"Omega Xi."
Koschei tries not to respond, looks around for the catch or the joke or the trap. Shockingly, he can't see one from here.
"I'm sorry."
Koschei's face contorts itself into at least four disparate expressions at once, smeared across the air in turning to verify it is, in fact, Vansellostophossius beside him. To his shock, Vansell looks fractionally intimidated by Koschei's face. "What?"
"You out of everyone knows I probably can't force my throat to make that sound again."
He could try. "I don't get it." Koschei internally prepares himself for some kind of fight involving extreme measures of defence, as is only customary in his little brain.
Vansell needs to take a few deep breaths, and makes a habit of not looking directly at anything. "I envied you. You and Theta Sigma and Ushas founded the Deca and I wanted it." He swallows. "I needed to get you in trouble, you shot me and I got scared, I got scared so easily after Obraeon. So I did something very wrong, and I recognise that now." Vansell extends one arm in front of him, gently, palm open, waiting for another one to shake. "Can we part on decent terms?"
Koschei blinks as if his eyes might clear and reveal Vansell is nothing but a tired imagining, some odd disfigurement of reality. His eyes are working. He's awake. Vansell stands before him just as he normally looks; flat hair, pristine robes, pointy nose tilted up just a bit. And he's… apologising?
What shocks Koschei the most is he actually considers it. He looks from the hand in front of him to the brain that controls it, trying to pick up some sense of deceit from his brain. His brain reveals nothing. He tries telling himself Vansell is capable of honesty and truth, that people change and their childhood doesn't have to shape their life. Koschei could even, by taking his hand, help him. Theta would probably forgive him. In the twinge of absence the thought demands, one memory is brought up, one with all three of them in it. Except Vansell wasn't actually there. It's Vansell's fault for years of discomfort in his own damn head. And for Magnus. And Irving the vortisaur.
Koschei doesn't take his hand. "You know, a couple months after you… attacked me, I nearly died. I was falling to my fucking death because of you, and you're going to stand here asking to part as friends?"
He might say the best part is how Vansell looks genuinely guilty. The whole situation feels more uncomfortable than anything else, and he wants it to be over.
"I know. There's no reason for you to forgive me, but here I am asking for it."
Someone's watching them, now. A few someones. His political buddies. Koschei squares himself. Something in his head tells him to kill Vansell. Smash his nose into his skull, twist his head on his neck, pinch the windpipe until he croaks. He might do it.
"Many religions of the cosmos believe in one of two final destinations after death: Heaven or Hell. And some deity will come to judge all life on the planet and determine where they ought to go. If, one day, this all turns out to be true and we are standing side by side in Hell for all our misdeeds and faithlessness," Vansell gives Koschei the smallest hint of a lopsided smile. "I still won't shake your hand."
So Vansell retracts it. "Perhaps one day, if we're both reincarnated into a less pretentious race?"
"Perhaps."
Vansell doesn't move for a moment.
"Would it really kill you to apologise again?"
Vansell smiles awkwardly at the wall opposite. "I'm afraid it would."
"Oi, Koschei!" Jelpax gestures with their head at him. "Come over here."
Koschei physically holds his arms to himself as he walks away from a scenario with a very different, very plausible outcome in another universe.
Jelpax's braid is back together, intentionally uneven ends sticking out in places until the end is about the width of a pencil.
"Look, I know we weren't really friends, and mainly because I hung around Vansell." Koschei nods. "It was… it was good for me to stop."
"I'd have to agree with you there."
Jelpax is just tall enough they have to bend down a bit to have a secretive dialogue with Koschei. "Remember the stunt you pulled with Magnus?"
Koschei raises his eyebrows. "No. Not at all."
They exhale sharply. "You people never change." They hold out something smallish, bent wires spidering out of a small disc. "Drax told me to give this to you, as he expected to be 'incapacitated' at the right moment."
Koschei takes it. "This is the—"
"Cloaking device. They leave the TARDIS bay open."
Koschei looks down at the thing. "Can't really get expelled now."
"He says to please return it safely at some point or another."
Koschei laughs a bit oddly. "I'll tell him I'll try." He smiles at Jelpax, the beats of four shouting an increasing command: run.
A/N: Missy was so much fun to write tho