Secrets.
To me life was a secret. But not as in 'a secret life'. Life itself was a mystery to me. Somehow it started and when you got adjusted to it, it would somehow soon end.
It's easy reflecting on secrets when you're nothing more but a voice inside a head.
Alright, even in that case it's hard.
Life was a mystery to me and keeping secrets, keeping quiet, wouldn't definitely change it for the better. Sometimes I guess I should have told... I just should have told... someone...
"If you have it you want to share it; if you share it you haven't got it."
Back home I probably would have given the wrong answer to that one. On Gallifrey the right solution to this riddle would have been "monogamy" (search me why; I figured that the only strange things which you kept passing on were rare diseases and cheap jokes).
Years later I heard the same sentence but with a different answer: a secret.
The answer was a secret; which is funny when you come to think about it.
Apparently a lot of things sound funny when you come to think about it when you find yourself trapped in the weakening body of an old Time Lord who might not win his struggle against you invading his memory and his mind.
But time will tell. It always does.
If life kept a secret from you, there was 'time' as a solution. Time always tells. It can't keep secrets; at least not forever. Time knows patience; time can wait. Time is always waiting for the right moment to snap at you; always watching, always waiting.
I had kept my secrets. I hadn't talked. I hadn't fought. I hadn't protected myself neither did I dare to tell my father that Koschei had come between my legs.
I knew that I had disappointed it. And I was grieving; I didn't know why but I was grieving.
My world was turning upside down and inside out; good wasn't bad but neither was bad good. Koschei scared me; I felt small beads of sweat protruding from my skin as soon as I'd catch a glimpse of his mad grin. I felt that I needed to keep away from him.
But not because I was scared of him hurting me once again. I knew that he would come and deal with my body as he pleased whenever it would cross his mind. I wouldn't be able to shield me from him. But I knew that I had to shield something...
I lay in my bed; my ankles knotted together pathetically with a piece of rope.
I was anxious. I was scared.
Ms Reprics words kept echoing in my head. I hadn't dared to touch my abdomen more often than it had been necessary. I didn't wonder that my clothes wouldn't fit like they used to do but I was glad enough that they concealed most of my deformed body. I felt so ugly. Well, I guess, in fact I was ugly. And I felt as bad as I looked. I was ugly. I was disgusting.
I stared down at my swollen abdomen while pressing my hands down against the cold sheets; I felt sweaty and feverish. I hadn't been able to sleep during the past nights due to the pain in my back and the rising uneasiness. I felt my abdominal wall stretching around the growing tumour; night after night I became more and more anxious; I would wake up whimpering and tossing and turning, smashing the palms of my hands against my chest. Though Ms Reprics had me advised of doing so, I never dared to actually hit my enlarged abdomen. I'd never heard of bashing as a form of medical treatment. And I couldn't believe that tumours got thereby better. In fact I feared that the malignant neoplasm that kept growing in my body would spread if I'd accidently manage to disaggregate it.
I felt my hands reaching for my lower abdomen and I stroked my stretch marks covered skin absent-mindedly.
I felt so ugly. I felt terrible.
A word came to my mind; a word Ms Reprics had used as she'd caught Koschei snogging me in a small storeroom.
She had glared at me and mumbled the same word over and over again.
"Attaint" she had called me. "Attaint."
And after that, of course, she had hit both Koschei and me with her cane and shooed us away from the room she locked up right after the incident.
I had looked the word up with Koschei; somehow it hadn't meant much to me. She had called me a disgrace, an eyesore, a stain or a shame before. And things that had sounded much, much more worse in my young and innocent eyes, too.
And yet it dawned on me that "attaint" was actually the worst. It indicated stigma.
In her eyes I was nothing more but an insult to our highly developed species itself.
Being an attaint meant not only being a disgrace; it justified others looking down on you. It was not only a stigma; it was bound to stigmatize you.
I had never talk to Koschei about my rising uneasiness; the dwelling malaise. I knew that I couldn't trust him. And I knew that I never should have.
Koschei was bound to hurt me, I knew that. Sooner or later he'd hurt me seriously and probably more gravely than I would ever have imagined.
It was no secret. I was doomed to fall. I was doomed to lose.
Or at least it felt like this when I heard the window opening behind me.
"I don't want to see you!" I shouted into the night air after turning my head around; I had instantly sat up and bended my knees while staring at the starry sky where a head would appear soon. "Go away!"
"Oh, you don't have to see me, Theta" replied Koschei chuckling and a mad grin appeared in my window frame right before a pair of glistening amber-coloured eyes. "It's rather dark, I expect, you won't even see me."
"Koschei, keep away from me!" I yelled at him with my remaining strength. My hands had clutched at my stomach unnoticed. I was standing at my door, glaring back at Koschei. I wouldn't let myself get forced into something once more. And most of all I wouldn't let him force himself into me ever again.
"I said go away!" I screamed and tightened my grip on my own clothes.
My hearts were pounding like mad. I was somehow instinctively agitated. I sensed it. I felt it. I had to do... something. It couldn't stop right there, I couldn't let it all happen. I just couldn't!
Koschei crawled into my room over the window sill and dropped to the floor.
"You don't mean it, Theta" he replied while chuckling "and I know it. You can't send me away. You want me to be with you. Forever..." He arose from the ground as my hands searched for the door handle in the dark. "You won't keep me away. At least not for long. You want to play with me. You've always wanted to play with me. All these games that had scared your father. All the things he knew I'd do to you when he wasn't around... oh, it scared him. It scared him so badly that he would tell you to tie your legs together, didn't he? Tell me he did, Theta, tell me he did! He was the one who'd scare you, not me. He frightened you at nights while I was the one to comfort you. He turned tables. He could have been your guardian. But instead he'd been your guard."
"I don't want to hear it!" I yelled at him and finally got a grip on the handle. I flung it open and tumbled out into the corridor. "Get out of my life, Koschei! And don't you ever dare coming back! Get out of here!" Koschei's back was rested against the door frame. He smiled at me viciously.
"Oh, you can't keep me out of your life, Theta" he replied while shaking his head smilingly "I'll always be a part of you. I'll always be inside of you."
There was mumbling at the end of the corridor and small lights flickered as doors opened and students, which had currently had a rude awakening due to some other student's shouting, gathered around slowly.
"Koschei!" I yelled at him "Get out of my life."
Koschei straightened up a bit as he felt other student's eyes on him. "Try running, Theta" he grinned like made, his grin becoming broader every moment "You've always been good at running. I'll give you a head start and... we'll see..." He chuckled as I stood in front of him, frightened to death. I was unable to move and would only flinch as Koschei moved forward and touched one of my clenched fists. "Run" he ordered "Run for your life, Theta!"
My instincts kicked in and I turned around, rushing through the murmuring students, which would pave way for me as soon as I'd come near them.
Attaint meant stigma. You don't touch those who'd been stigmatized.
The students wouldn't dare to touch me; they kept away from me as much as possible under the circumstances.
Koschei behind me was still enjoying himself, his laughter echoed around the corridors and hallways.
"Run, Theta! Run"
I rushed through the gates of the academy and breathed the cold night air in deeply. I ran. I kept on running. I ran as fast as I could and wouldn't stop, I wouldn't turn around to see if Koschei was following me. I knew that he'd catch up with me soon anyway.
The bulge in my body hurt. I tried running, I ran as fast as possible. But it hurt. My legs seemed to jerk in a strange way whenever I felt the stinging pain in my lower abdomen.
But I couldn't be stopped by that. Nothing could stop me.
I ran. From Koschei. From Ms Reprics. From the academy.
I felt tears trailing down my cheeks as I reached hills I hadn't set foot on in years, as I rushed through small forests, the leaves of the silver trees rustling gently above.
I kept on running. And I'd never stop, I'd never look back, I'd never...
The path in front of me was enlightened as the supernova above me celebrated its awakening. Indescribable colours bursting out, swirling through the endless black velvet space and small sparks of pure energy emerging from a dying planet's last spectacle.
I sobbed barely audible and turned my head up slowly, while ensuring that I wouldn't slow down. I was lucky to be on one of the highest mounds around right now, watching the breathtaking collision of a million billion energy enriched particles that would protrude the most beautiful occurrence there was to find in the whole universe.
And I wish I could have enjoyed it. I wish I could have stopped.
I wish I wouldn't have neared the houses so soon. I would have wanted to stay there a while longer. I never wanted to go that fast, I never wanted to come near the housing estate.
I never wanted to reach our neighbours houses.
And I never wanted to arrive at my parent's house, covered in sweat and panting, reaching for the doorknob and twisting and turning it flustered before collapsing against the yielding door and stumbling into my parent's living-room when someone had left the lights on at night.
No, not like that at all.