Talitha woke, dragged herself downstairs, and fixed herself breakfast. Besides, she was the only one around to do it. She peeked out the window to see what kind of day it would be. The sky looked dark, a deep, dusty orange. It would be a day for staying inside.
Pulling the curtains closed again, she paused to listen to the sounds that came from the other side of her door.
Thunk.
Something hit the transduction barrier.
Talitha put a flashlight into her bag, along with her books and assignments, just in case the sky would grow any darker. It sounded like a storm was brewing out there.
The days were growing jumbled again, just as they had sometime before, some time she could not place. She knew that someday things would not go as planned, and someday that would be fixed, leading to the looping, dizzying mess she found herself living out each day, not knowing how many times she had before.
She grabbed her bag and dashed across the small plaza, jumping over the looser cobblestones until she reached Bernadette's house.
The door opened and she slipped inside, stealing a glance at the sky.
It sounded like a battle was brewing up there.
She wondered what her father was up to as Lady Vatusia rounded up her growing collection of children and sent them on their way.
They ran toward the Academy, robes billowing in the wind.
Bernadette wondered if they'd have to stay there soon, where there were bunkers and disaster plans that were slightly better than "duck and cover".
Talitha said that she'd rather run away then stay at the Academy. She wanted to fix the TARDIS and run away, anywhere. She was terrible at running, always tripping over things, but she was getting better. She was starting to take after her Cousin in that way, and the boy had been trouble.
Bernadette had told her that she'd follow her friend wherever she went, although they'd have to take little Angelo with them. She couldn't tell if that had been a lie or not, just to make Talitha feel better. Gallifrey was a wreck, but it was home.
They slowed once they reached the Academy, stopping briefly to nod to the Chancellery Guards, who nodded back. Bernadette urged Angelo on when he spent too long eyeing the guards' uniforms, a mix of boyish excitement and jealousy in his eyes.
They parted ways.
But there was something lingering in the air, a disturbingly familiar sense of dread that made them wish they never left their homes or each other. The feeling stalked Angelo through his daily recitations, into his classes, and every second of the day. Some of the day's levity, such as Gualtier accidentally setting a sleeve of his robes on fire during chemistry class, dispersed the tension they all felt. It was something difficult for a child to place, but some knowledge of it was imparted through the instructors' stuttering voices, an omnipresent undertone of fear.
Regardless of what happened before or after, it was an unnaturally cloudy day when a particularly inopportune fixed point in time came to pass. The transduction barrier was thick, the thickest it had been since a certain wild-eyed man was sent to Skaro in a vain attempt to stop that cloudy afternoon from coming to pass.
It was that afternoon that most consider to be the beginning of the Last Great Time War.
Teachers ushered their students into the lower levels of the school buildings, setting loose a barrage of questions, an endless stream of where-are-we-goings, when-will-we-go-homes, is-this-something-to-do-with me-almost-shooting-Wendalases, can-I-get-my-blanket-from-the-dormitories, and should-I-be-scareds.
Bernadette looked behind her as she descended the stairs, watching as the dim sky was lit with laserfire so bright that it turned the heavens gold. Doors closed, and all was dark.
Screens chased the shadows away with their light.
"Computer, draw me a picture." a child whispered. A group of their friends gathered around to watch, critiquing the creativity of the artistic artificial intelligence.
They tried to distract themselves. It wasn't as if they had not been in such a situation before, or so part of them thought.
Bernadette called out for Talitha, and Talitha replied, a comforting presence in the corner of Bernadette's mind, until the psychic chatter of the Academy students grew to thick to pick out any single voice from the crowd. She stood, alone in the throng, until Angelo found her.
"I wasn't ready for this." Angelo said. "And now I'm afraid."
"No one is ready for things like this." Bernadette replied.
"I'm not ready." he repeated, eyes wide and on the verge of tears. "I know what they say about looking out windows at times like these, but…" He ran a worried hand through his rust red curls until Bernadette held him, letting him sob things she didn't understand. "I want my mom back." he cried. "And I want my dad and I want them here not me there but I'm going to go and I don't know if I want to…"
He was quiet for a moment again as he wiped the tears from his face. "I want to go home."
"We'll go home after this."
"I didn't mean your house." he snapped. "I want to go home."
"I know."