Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Javic dragged his father’s body as far as he could. He counted three sunrises in total before his traitorous legs gave way from under him, letting him keel over into the soft earth with a noise that made his ears ring. He wasn’t sure if there were still crickets around, or if his ears were trying to trick him out of his loneliness, but the only thing that mattered was the ground was still too soft. He was too close to the sea and Boeshane and vultures diving at him as he fixed his father’s body onto a stretcher and began to pull. 

He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords felt like they’d been cut so he gritted his teeth, tried to block out the tattoo of his headache and the jumps of his stomach, and put all his energy into conserving his water levels and trying not to cry. 

Sleep wasn’t an option, not when every time he shut his eyes the dried blood on his skin began to smell like the beach as they defended it, falling like flies with his mother sobbing over his father and Grey nowhere to be seen. 

It was his fault. He lost Grey, he failed his father and he let his mother walk into the waves to never come back. It was his fault for not dying with them. The daleks had taken everything else, why not his life? It wasn’t of much use to him now. 

He let his eyes fall for the first time that day to his father, skin pale but by no means unblemished, nose forever leaking a line of blood dried in place on his lined face. He was dressed in combat issue leather and cotton, a blaster strapped to his thigh. He made Javic want to plug his nose and vomit until he felt so empty that there were no feelings left. 

Franklin Thane had not been the kind of man who would’ve wanted his son to get up and continue no matter how it burned. Franklin had been reliable and opinionated to a fault, not a bad person but a weak one, and had likely been so uninterested in a world without himself in it that he wouldn’t have ever thought this far. But in that moment, Javic let his brain convince himself his father would want him to keep going, that if he didn’t go anywhere he wouldn’t ever find Grey, and that his mother was still with him. She’d called him a survivor once. 

Javic pulled his father’s blaster free with a shaky hand and stuck it under his shirt between the thin fabric and his sweaty skin. Then, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and began to move forwards. 

In his ears, the calls of the invisible crickets cheered him on. One more metre. Five more elbow movements. Just until that boulder. 

At the boulder in question, he succumbed to his humanity and manoeuvred himself to lay on his back, face visible only in the starlight and surrendered to his fate, just for the night.  

It wasn’t like there’d be something to fight for in the morning. 

—

When Javic woke, someone was sitting on the boulder. He was a little taller than Javic himself, except where Javic was bloody the stranger was streaked with ash, his free arm scarred pink and raw, while his other arm was held up in a makeshift sling from both his shirt sleeves. His hair had been shaved down so it was just a thin layer of brown fuzz and Javic’s attention was immediately drawn to his brown eyes, curious and wide and deep. His eyebrows were pinched, perhaps in pain. 

“Hullo,” the stranger said, offering him a hand. “I’m Theta.”

The stranger—Theta—sounded like he wanted to be happy, but his intentions had been worn thin to the breaking point so now he only spoke for the sake of it. Still, his touch was the realest thing Javic had felt in days and it was like his central axis had readjusted as he stood.

His father’s blaster fell out of his shirt, landing in the dust with a pathetic thud and the sinking reminder of what Javic had done. He stared at it, swallowed and then bent to pick it up from the dust. Then, he held out the hand without the gun and offered it to Theta. “Nice to meet you. I’m Javic Thane.”

He probably looked exactly what he was: slightly small for his age, unwashed, scruffy and dressed in a shirt a few sizes too big. His hair was scruffy on the best of days, an unremarkable dirt brown next to his clear blue eyes. 

Theta screwed up his nose. It looked a little too big for his face, but Javic imagined he’d grow into it. “I’m not so sure nice is the right word.” He stared at Javic with a kind of concentration that was both comforting and intimidating. “What’d be nice would be if daleks didn’t exist, and then I’d never have met you at all.” 

Imitating nonchalance, Javic took a moment to reply, his vocal cords beginning to give up on him. “Obviously.” He paused, eyes dropping to the gun in his fist. “They killed my father.”

“They killed Gallifrey,” Theta retaliated. He snapped like a feral animal who’d just opened a wound. It made Javic wonder why he had bothered acting civil if he was just looking to bring someone down with him. 

Javic narrowed his eyes, voice scratchy. “They got Boeshane too. Get off your high horse.” 

At that, Theta snapped, jumping off the boulder and standing a hair’s breadth from Javic’s face, his whisper more powerful than a shout. “They got everything. Everyone. It’s just a patch of charred earth and a ghost city painted in blood. It’s just me left. Do you know what that feels like?”

“Yes!” Javic yelled, voice breaking, far less subtle. If it was a fight Theta needed, he had more than enough ammunition. “I couldn’t save any of them. I lost my brother, I watched as my mother…” He felt like he’d cracked. He felt so alone, even as Theta stood close enough for their noses to touch. He missed the crickets in his ears. He didn’t have enough energy to maintain this argument.  “I not only failed my father when he was alive, I just left his body to rot on a dirt track to save my own skin. You’re the first living person I’ve seen in days, and I can never go home.” He set his jaw. “So forgive me if I’m too crass, and I’m sorry for your loss, but you want to kill the daleks? Me too.” 

Theta turned, his nose bumping into Javic's as he moved, then stepped back and offered him a flask. His face was unreadable. “You sound thirsty.” 

Seeing it as the peace offering it was, he grabbed the flask from Theta and glugged it back with little care. Once he was done, he wiped his mouth and registered Theta’s curiosity. “What?”

“You’re not normal, are you?”

That made Javic’s eyes flash. “You’re not either.” 

This seemed to be the answer Theta wanted, as he perked up a little, the last of his rage fading from his cheeks, then furrowed his eyebrows. “I’m sorry about your father and… everyone else. I heard Boeshane was peaceful.”

Javic swallowed. His throat felt wet after the absence of water for so long. “I’m sorry about Gallifrey.” He offered no compliment of Gallifrey, which he’d only ever heard of by eavesdropping on his parents. 

Theta dodged the statement expertly with a curt, “Javic?”

He raised an eyebrow, looking the lanky boy up and down. His shoes were unique, but at least he had shoes. (Javic didn’t. Theta’s brand of chaos seemed more organised than Javic’s.) 

Theta continued. “Javic, do you want to come to London with me?” Then, as an afterthought. “You’d have to put your gun away.”

Javic shook his head in response. “No. It was my father’s.” He took another sip of water, “Anyway, what’s in London?”

His companion grinned. “I’m glad you asked. It’s only the most famous and magical kingdom ever.” He began walking in the direction of the Sun, pausing and staring at Javic when he didn’t immediately motion to follow. 

Javic picked up the pace, the dust unfriendly on his raw feet, but enough of a niggling pain to distract him from everything else. “Have you been before?”

“No,” Theta replied begrudgingly, rather aloof for a small bundle of ash and fabric, albeit with a posh accent. “But I’ve read about it, and I memorised its location from the star charts for my astronomy paper.”

That explained it. “You studied astronomy on Gallifrey?” 

Theta seemed to be equal parts shocked and curious. Javic amended his earlier statement: Theta was nothing if not a curious soul in damaged packaging. He knew something about that himself, he only had to tighten his grip on the gun and the dust between his feet became sand, the smell of his own dried blood amplified and much more sinister. 

He felt as if he were choking on an imaginary smell, and then on his own guilt. What kind of son remembered the smell of his father’s body more vividly than his laugh? 

“…Javic?”

Taking a deep breath, he feigned normalcy. He had no idea what Theta had been rambling about, only that he’d been doing it passionately. “No, on Boeshane…” The word threatened to choke him, to drown him in the blood of his neighbours and in the grief in his mother’s eyes. “We don’t study more than the essentials, and not when you’re my age.” He tried for a light-hearted tone, searching desperately for a dark corner in his head to shove the last four days. “But I always wondered what kind of magic was in the stars.” 

“Not magic,” Theta said gently, the hand not in the sling on Javic’s shoulder since he didn’t know when. He spoke as if Javic was his mother’s china in danger of breaking, and maybe he was. “Big balls of hydrogen and helium.”

Javic realised his fingers had gone to the trigger of his father’s gun, and moved it off. He attempted to shrug the cloud of heartache off, then pretended not to hear the quiver in his voice as he took another step forwards. “Tell me more about the stars.” 

—

They made good time, but ended up stopping before London when Javic’s feet started to leave bloody tracks and Theta—previously unconcerned by his array of burns and out-of-service arm—claimed they had to stop for the night. A man with an excited sheepdog told them they were in Cardiff, and insisted on seeing them to the town hall which had been set up as an emergency shelter. 

When they arrived, he called over a member of the local sisterhood who introduced herself as Novice Hame. Javic was too tired to properly perceive her, but after Theta had begun another of his characteristic babbles and she’d forced a mug of something spicy with a kick in it down him, he’d been able to identify that she was old enough to be greying and had abnormally feline features. 

She diagnosed that Theta’s arm wasn’t broken, just the shoulder dislocated, and bandaged up Javic’s feet. She stitched up his eyebrow too, then gently scrubbed at them with a wet rag that came away mostly red, but they drew the line when she asked if they wanted to see her colleague to talk. The very idea of reliving those memories for a stranger made Javic feel sick, but yet again Theta’s silver tongue saved them and before long they were huddled up on a mattress under a scratchy quilt, dressed in clean shirts that smelled of nothing in particular. (If he breathed in deep enough, he could imagine the smell of the beach as it had been before and the odd odour akin to spearmint his brother had always radiated.) 

“Javic,” Theta whispered, undeterred by the other mattresses surrounding them. Their occupants were mostly asleep, but even the presence of strangers was enough to make him paranoid, especially as Theta had made him stow the gun under the mattress. Its lump dug into his stomach, and it’s mere presence was becoming a scary form of comfort for him. 

“Theta.”

“You don’t have to be scared. It’s you and me against the world, alright?” 

The sentiment made him feel less alone, despite the absence of crickets and the darkness of the hall, but even then he knew Theta was being too trusting. It seemed to be an odd character flaw for someone who’d witnessed the full wrath of the daleks firsthand. “Don’t make any promises. You have no idea if you can trust me.”

His companion made a hmph noise and if Javic weren’t on his front and Theta weren’t on his back, he’d probably see him pouting. After a pause, Theta said something unexpected. “I think I’m the one who shouldn’t be trusted.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He regretted it even as he offered, his own demons rearing their ugly heads at the mere suggestion. He dug his nails into his palm. 

“Go to sleep, Javic,” Theta said, and he let himself drift off. 

The last time he did this, he’d been alone and though there was still no Grey or Father or Mother (not only that, there’d never be again), there was a Theta now, and Javic had a good feeling about London. 

—

He woke to the warm glow of sunlight seeping in through the poorly-drawn curtains in the town hall. At first, the light was all he registered, then the boy who had managed to throw an arm and leg over him while asleep. 

And he was snoring. 

“Theta,” he hissed, wriggling out from under his cocoon of limbs. “Theta, wake up, you lump.”

Theta opened one eye, brown and sleepy and as endearingly annoying as everything else about him. “Not a lump.”

Javic groaned, still wrestling with his friend’s abundance of limbs. He was like a humanoid octopus. “Sure you are. You’re a lazy lump, and you snore.”

“I do not,” he hissed back, deeply offended. Someone on a neighbouring mattress shhhed him. He lowered his voice. “And you’re hardly better. Look at that bed hair.” 

This could easily have gone on for another half an hour, but Javic reached out for his single strand of maturity and finally managed to detangle from Theta. “Come on. Let’s go.” 

Theta looked genuinely befuddled. “Why are we going?”

Javic retrieved his gun from under the mattress, and stood to his full height. “To get to London.”

“I know where. Why?”

Javic grabbed Theta’s arm and helped haul him up. He could feel the cold of the stone floor through the bandages on his feet, and he was aware of the limited protection his pressed white shirt and patched-up trousers offered. “Well, we can’t stay. It’s too cold.” 

Theta rubbed his eyes. “It’s meant to be. It’s good. It means the effects of the siege of Gallifrey are wearing off.” He watched Javic fold up the quilt and tuck it under his arm. “That’s theft. And you dodged my question.”

“Fine,” Javic hissed, exasperated. “We can’t stay because Novice Hame will be too kind and we’ll begin to trust her and we’ll talk to her friend and then she’ll realise she can’t fix me and the daleks will find us and-“

“Alright,” Theta interjected. “I see your point. But, Javic… you’re not broken.” 

This got him thoroughly ignored, which Javic felt Theta deserved if he was going to be so kind and enthusiastic and sound so certain when he lied like that. He was relieved when he looked back and saw Theta still following him out of the room and into the daylight. 

Javic could grow to love Cardiff, he could tell that despite the stiff breeze and harsh yet lilting accents. However, he would not let himself. He had enough to handle trying to look after himself, let alone Theta, and if there was one lesson he’d learnt from his mother, it was never to love something so much you couldn’t live without it. 

It was hard to think about her, the way she’d looked as she stroked his father’s hair, forever destined to be slightly greasy, so deep in her grief that she had drowned herself in it. 

In fact, thinking was so hard that it was probably best he kept it to a minimum, even if feeling wasn’t much better. 

“You’re going the wrong way,” Theta called, and Javic turned on his heel. Theta looked worse for wear in the daylight, his arms not visible under all the bandages Novice Hame had insisted upon. 

Javic began striding purposefully in the other direction, only to hear Theta interrupt him again. “Javic. Javic!” The other boy shouted as he fought to keep up. “Still the wrong way. And we can’t walk to London. What about your feet?”

“They’re fine! I’m fine!” Javic all but exploded.

Patiently, Theta waited for him to calm down before suggesting, “We should at least find you some shoes.”

Javic glowered. “That would be more stealing. I thought that went against your strict moral code.” 

Theta sighed, but it was a half-growl. “Any moral code I had burned with Gallifrey.”

“What happened at Gallifrey?”

This earned him a full growl. “What happened at Boeshane?”

The sand turned red, he didn’t say. I let my brother go, let my mother go, let my father go. Everyone died, and I feel like I did too. 

Instead, he marched off towards the town hall again, ignoring the creak of the door, and instead of re-entering the room with the mattresses, he returned to the small chamber with the bins of the clothes he briefly remembered from the night before. He found himself a pair of shoes, and him and Theta two oversized coats—one brown, one blue—then breathed a sigh of relief when Theta was still there upon his return. 

Theta took the coat, and watched as he hobbled around awkwardly putting on his shoes. It was odd to Javic even then how old and melancholy Theta looked for a young person, brown coat billowing behind him. 

His companion took his hand forcefully and began leading him in what could only have been the direction of London. He hadn’t held anyone's hand since Grey, and the very prospect was a waking nightmare in which the ground swallowed Theta up.

He realised, somewhere down the track to London when Theta’s hand felt like it was welded to his with sweat, that he should confide in Theta about Grey, and the rest of it. If he was scared away, then it’d be a lesson to Javic, but Theta was all he had. Besides, he had asked, and Javic didn’t want to die with nobody to look for Grey, whose small figure and raggedy mop of hair he craned his neck for at every new turn. 

“The daleks arrived quickly.” He spoke quietly, but with enough force that Theta looked up at him questioningly. “They’d always passed over before, but today was different. I’d never seen them use bullets before, but this time they did. There were… special daleks, with rifle attachments that flew higher and scouted the situation with bullets to incite panic. That was when Father told me to take Grey and run.” He sniffled, and realised his cheeks were wet. “But I let go of his hand. I let go of his hand and by the time I noticed my home was just a sea of bodies and battlecries, so I ran. I was a coward with just enough guts to come back and see how badly I’d failed my father.” He took a deep breath. “And then I told my mother about Grey, and she just… went. Into the ocean, smeared in blood, and I never saw her again. And I waited… for Grey or for her, but the vultures came and I had to get my father away before they picked what I had left clean.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He glared at Theta. He wondered what secrets he was hiding about Gallifrey, how it was he knew how he was feeling immediately. “I think it was. All of them. I couldn’t even be enough for my mother to live for.” 

Theta paused, then spoke, squeezing Javic’s hand. “You’re enough for me. As long as you’re breathing, I’ll stay here.”

“You barely know me,” Javic protested, slightly horrified. “That’s not safe for you, did you hear what I just told you properly?” 

“We’re all that each other has left! Don’t you understand?” Theta’s breath was ragged. “I need something to fight for, and I’m damn sure not fighting for myself.” He looked as though a cloud had just passed over him. “I first saw a dalek when I was five years old. I was the only one from my class to survive the attack. They told me how lucky I was. I believed them, but I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t lucky.” Theta’s grip became tighter. “They called it the catalyst. They emptied the prisons. All these impossibly old myths and legends, relics of a bygone age under Gallifreyan lock and key, released if they agreed to kill daleks. They thought they could contain it, that they didn’t need anyone else. They were fools. I don’t know what you’ve heard about Gallifrey, but you should know they thought they were so incredibly smart. And they were. But pride corrupted them, just like purity had corrupted Skaro.”

“Skaro?”

Theta tried to smile. It was an ugly ordeal. “The daleks had to come from somewhere. Skaro is their homeland. A wasteland. Marshes. They’re squid-like things, but something went wrong and they evolved… corrupted sentience. And then they had a shot at the industrial revolution.”

“Blacksmiths and guns and stuff?” 

“Yeah,” Theta assented, “except they moved way faster than everyone else. Everyone but Gallifrey. And nobody knows how they did it, because it seemed one day they were squids and the next they were in those caskets claiming land in the name of the daleks. We were fighting a war on two fronts, and even victory looked bleak. Scientists in the labs, soldiers on the border. My parents were scientists, but they died all the same. They bombed the university.” Theta seemed oddly detached from the memory of his parents in comparison to Javic. “Red grass. That’s what was left. Red grass in a ring where the building was. My friend, Koschei, used to dare me to cross it. Gallifreyans didn’t put much stock in superstitions, but we were just seven years old so we decided it gave you bad luck. Maybe if I hadn’t crossed it, we wouldn’t be here.” 

The joke missed its target, and Javic swallowed awkwardly. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

Theta shrugged. “That bit isn’t so raw. My mother was called Penelope, I think, but it was the elephant in the room that was my childhood. I had sisters and a brother, though, and grandmothers. And Koschei. I’d stay at school during the week and with one of them at weekends. At school, I spent every moment with Koschei and he was…” Theta paused. This one was still an open wound, Javic thought.  “Well, he’s dead. He didn’t like following orders, even less so than me, so he hit detonate on himself and their expensive equipment. He was… he wasn’t content, towards the end. More so than the rest of us. He could hear this sound in his head that nobody else could. But he was Koschei, and he was all I really had because by then… It was treason, what my grandmother did, but she didn’t want my younger sisters to suffer, and they were almost academy age. So she arranged to have my uncle take them away, except that was the day the main road was attacked. They didn’t find bodies, but my brother was already a prisoner of war so… it was just me from then on.”

Theta spoke of his siblings with an old sadness, with experience, and Javic wondered if he’d ever sound like that about Grey. “And then… then… it burnt. They spent days painting everything in gasoline, waited for the daleks to take the bait and had us set it alight. People burning in the streets, just expected to lay down their lives. And they did. The daleks shouldn’t be coming back from that, but the Gallifreyans definitely won’t. And I helped light the matches. I helped my home burn, and then I couldn’t do it, Javic… I couldn’t die with them. I ran to the tunnels where me and… and Koschei used to play, under the academy. And I made it out, and then I waited for a sign, for another survivor, but I didn’t find one. So I started walking.”

Javic lifted his free hand and wiped Theta’s face. The other boy sniffled. 

“It’s alright,” he said, trying for confidence, “we’ll slot our broken pieces together and fix each other.” He squeezed Theta’s hand. “Besides, the only way is forwards.”

They may have been orphans in all meanings of the word, but they weren’t alone. For then and forever. 

—

London was surrounded by a wide, cold moat on all sides, but the queue to the boats was at least manageable, the masses deterred by the Sun winking out above. Their ferryman—who introduced himself as Wilf—was a man long gone grey and hard, but with great pride in himself and his city which he carried in his responses to Theta’s insistent questions.

“Aye,” he told them with a knowing air, “we’ve survived all the gods have thrown at us here in London. Many a creature comes looking for trouble, but we send them on their way. The children of this generation can’t see it, but I do. My granddaughter thinks it's all stories, but I’ve stared a dalek down its plunger and told it no.”

Javic gave Wilf a withering look. Wilf was far too kind and far too keen to speak about the daleks for him to really believe the extent of his tall tale. As someone who ran, ran and survived like a coward with the worst kind of luck, he knew he would bear the mark of Boeshane for the rest of his pitiful existence, and if Wilf could not feel the shadow of his encounter making sand of his bones, he was either unbelievably fortunate or foolish. 

This, at least, threw Theta off balance. “Didn’t it blast you?”

“Just a flesh wound,” Wilf reassured, a defensive air to his tone. Javic glared at him from behind unkempt hair, one lock dried with blood. He picked at it, wary of Wilf’s gaze and answering shudder as he did so. “Are you alright, son?”

Angry at no person present, Javic shook his head. “No flesh wounds.” He tapped his skull, sharply so that it hurt. “It's all up here.”

“I’m sorry,” Wilf said gruffly, detached but sincere. “I’m not… I know why two boys would be heading thisways alone, full of queries and hate. It's not my place, but you look out for each other, alright? If we don't stand up and laugh about it, nobody else will chase away our ghosts for us.”

Javic stared sordidly into the murky grey moat. His reflection glared back, as if his guilt had been given a vessel with which to force him to atone for his failure. He shouldn’t be here, not with Theta who’d already resumed his question game and had promised it wasn’t his fault. Not without Grey, who had been the adventurer between them. Not as an orphan, his mouth tasting distinctly metallic and his dreams plagued by vacant eyes. 

The time dragged immeasurably, Wilf’s motion with the oars becoming rhythmic and Theta’s voice white noise until his hand dropped onto his shoulder to gently jerk him from his haze as Theta thanked Wilf for the trip. 

“I owe you,” the brunette called as he pulled Javic across the port and towards the foreboding London border. Javic gulped at the soldiers’ pristine red uniforms, and diverted his attention quickly from their rifles before he imagined sand underfoot. He let his attention wander to the booth Theta was drawing them to, and the operator with glazed green eyes behind his rectangular eye-glasses. 

“Business or pleasure?”

Theta took charge. “Neither. We’re refugees.” 

This gathered the operator’s interest. “Oh? I needn’t ask from what, but from where?”

“Boeshane,” Theta said quickly, then shot Javic an apologetic look. Javic squeezed his hand. Gallifrey was a secret he was happy to keep for his friend.

The operator offered them assurances of his heartache at the destruction of another allied kingdom, but as an up-and-coming expert in receiving apologies Javic was unconvinced. Regardless, he listened to the balding gentleman prattle about aid points throughout the kingdom and not spending all their allotted notes at once because there were only so many tax pounds allotted for dalek relief. He sounded so adult-like and bitter about the last point that Javic felt he was back in his kitchen listening to his parents at the dinner table.

When he was finished, Theta bundled their papers under one arm and led Javic behind the stall and across the drawbridge, and then they were officially in London.

It was an instant cacophony of sound and smell and colour, so that Javic’s first thought was to how the kingdom’s walls managed to contain it. It was houses with thatched roofs and open windows adorned with floral curtains, it was children with scarecrow hair and patches on the knees of their trousers, it was broad accents Javic couldn’t understand and the smell of someone’s breakfast making his stomach splutter alive. 

But most of all, it was the way Theta grinned at it all, hair rumpled by the wind and dark eyes wide as miniature moons. It was the way time slowed as the other boy raised their joined hands to dance with joy, as if something inside Javic knew what this memory marked. 

Javic stole another glance at Theta, his countenance so open that it threw him off-guard, and he buried the butterflies in his stomach with a stern thought. 

“Hey, boys,” a friendly voice called from behind them, and Javic stumbled and turned. Theta kept clutching his hand, and Javic let him. 

“Hullo,” Javic addressed the stranger, looking up and down the sturdy figure with dark hair and a refined uniform. The stranger’s accent was reminiscent of his own, and it made him ease up slightly. 

The stranger caught onto it too. “From Boeshane?” Javic and Theta nodded. “I’m sorry, for whatever you’ve lost. I’m not going to pretend to understand, but I want you to know it gets better.” 

Theta raised an eyebrow. “Thanks?”

This was met with a chuckle. “I’m Jack. I’m stationed here with the military.”

Cautiously, Theta offered Jack his free hand. “Theta. And this is Javic.”

“Those are unique,” the soldier returned, shaking Theta’s hand politely, and then shaking Javic’s. “Do you boys need help finding food or shelter? Or jobs, I guess, if you want to dedicate your life to shooting daleks like me.”

Theta frowned. “I’m not of age.”

The soldier shrugged. “In London, everybody willing to fight is of age. It’s the only way we can keep going.” He met Javic’s eyes. “Still, at least let me find you somewhere to stay.” 

—

“Mornin’.” Theta poked Javic and was swatted away playfully. He pushed his face close into Javic’s, just because he knew it annoyed him, and whispered louder, “Day twenty-three in London.”

Javic bared his teeth at Theta, and pushed him off while the other boy giggled. “Shut up, Theta,” he said, dragging out the vowel sounds. “We have to get to work.” 

This got Theta whining, bunching up the quilt around him as Javic rolled out of bed and searched for his day clothes, and the gun under the floorboards. Theta stopped once Javic entered the en-suite and pushed the door shut, but it still took the pair of them an hour to get ready and down to the docks.

“My favourite helpers,” Wilf called, approaching speedily and clapping Theta on the back. Theta’s eyes twinkled as he began to recount the plot of his odd dream to Wilf, who laughed in all the right places. 

Javic pushed up the sleeves of his oversized blue coat and picked up one of the vegetable crates. As he began to load Wilf’s boat, The TARDIS, he watched as in his peripheral vision, Theta animatedly spoke to all the other workers on the docks about everything and nothing, gesticulating merrily. Sometimes, he’d look back and catch Javic’s wandering eyes and give him a smile that was as warm as summer. 

That smile was the only excuse as for why Javic never once chided Theta for his incapability at working, even when Wilf gently redirected him towards the boat Javic had begun repainting and Theta’s only contribution was to dip his brush in the paint. 

The thing was, Javic knew Theta was the smartest one there. He knew all about equations and microscopes, just not about labour. Thankfully, nobody seemed to care, but they were a package deal: there was no Javic without Theta, and this new development was scaring him. 

After the Sun had sunk below the clouds, Javic lay on his back next to a spread-eagled Theta on the moored TARDIS . His friend charted the constellations with his finger, voice as energetic as ever even in the semi-dark. 

In the moonlight, Theta was even more striking than normal, for it was his hard edges and solidity that were his best features. 

“Javic,” Theta murmured. 

Javic perked up and rolled onto his side to face him. “Mhm?”

“What if,” Theta whispered tentatively, like they were conspirators, “what if I never return to Gallifrey?”

Cocking his head to one side, Javic considered this. “We’ll have to go back one day, I suppose. Make sure the memories live on in us.”

“It’s just that I know there hasn’t been a dalek sighting since Gallifrey and that’s new territory for everyone, but… I can’t let my whole kingdom die with me, can I? That’d be letting them win.”

“I know,” Javic sat up. “We’ll make a pact, then you can’t change your mind.” 

Theta sat up too. “Alright. We can use Wilf’s penknife. He gave it to me to cut the frayed ropes.” 

Javic had ended up being the one to cut the ropes, but he simply nodded and watched as Theta recovered the item, then drew a long slit across his palm, which immediately began to pool red. 

Holding his breath, Javic offered his palm and bit back a retch as the knife sliced a line into his cool palm. Before the smell or the sensation made him back down, he grabbed Theta’s hand and clasped their cut hands together. 

Theta grinned, looking a little manic with the knife still open in his other hand, but he smiled right back. When he finally let Theta go, his palm was smeared with both of their blood and tingling. 

The next day, they both boasted matching bandages, and Javic tried and failed to banish those butterflies from his gut. 

—

Javic would never tire of watching Theta, the way he rushed around madly and thought about the consequences later. Even if he was the one who had to patch Theta up, figuratively and literally, it was worth it for the lopsided grin he would receive. 

The London festival of Christmas was fast approaching, and Theta had thrown himself head first into the traditions. There was a noted change in the city, beyond the layer of snow decorating the streets. Most were more cheery and playful, erecting friends from the fallen snow. Others were less involved in the spirit of the season and in something more holy, which had initially shocked Theta and his Gallifreyan principles which allowed for no being higher than themselves. 

Wilf was very keen on the festivities, and the latest item on his list for Theta was ice-skating. The older man had taken on a fatherly role for his favourite employee, and although Javic resisted him at every turn, he had become somewhat of a confidant for him too. He never forced either of them to talk, and his daughter couldn’t cook to save her life, but he never insisted that Javic was a good person, which was something Theta and his boundless optimism- even in the face of his bleak past- refused to take back. 

Wilf was warm-hearted but also fair, so it stood to reason that even Theta couldn’t skive off forever. The two boys had been reassigned to the fishmonger's shop, for while Wilf and his associates did take stragglers like Javic and Theta across the moat to the city, they were officially fishermen and not ferrymen. Theta thrived working the social end with customers, while Javic completed miscellaneous activities like cleaning and restocking. 

“And that’s closing time,” called Leo Jones, who was responsible for them and the shop. He could be as immature as Theta, but he had an air of professionalism. “Good work, boys. You go enjoy your celebrations.” 

“You too,” Theta returned emphatically, and Leo rolled his eyes. The older man had a two-year-old, Keisha, and she’d caused havoc with her screaming in the shop on many occasions. Theta had proven his ability to charm anything if he rambled long enough with passion on her most effectively. 

The boys had a routine for once their shifts ended, and it was well polished. They’d run down the streets to the lodgings house holding hands and sharing their stripy scarf, then Theta would shower while Javic set up a fire. Kindling was stolen newspapers and wood chippings from Leo’s carpenter friend. After that, they’d swap, and warm themselves until they could brave the harsh London weather again. Theta was remarkably resilient for someone used to a carefully controlled climate, but Javic had grown up on the beachfront. 

Everything in their room smelled faintly of fish of course, and it reminded Javic of Boeshane in a way that was still sometimes a stab in the chest, but mostly more of a gentle hug. Sand was soft, after all. 

With the curtains drawn, sitting in front of a fire in their adult jackets and with damp hair, Javic felt like he saw the real Theta. Staring into the flames, unsure if he wanted to tame them or let them burn him, Theta was unguarded in a way not even devoted Wilf got to observe. 

Theta towered over Javic, not just due to a recent growth spurt, but also in soul and spirit. It haunted Javic when he lay in the dark with Theta’s head on his chest, the fact that his friend was not just a survivor, but morally good. His trials had only helped shape a better person. 

But Javic? He’d kill for Theta as soon as he’d die for him, if not sooner. 

“Javic?” Theta looked very sincere and wise with the flames reflecting off his face. There was a scab on his earlobe. 

He smiled back. “Theta.” 

“Let’s go ice-skating.”

This meant stamping the fire out with their boots, huddling back together in the trusty scarf and rushing past Londoners until they reached the moat, bustling with people and their happy voices. More than often, they received stares and tutting. 

Javic had never seen snow or ice before Theta or London, and he had his doubts about it holding the weight of this many people, whatever Theta’s science said. 

Clearly it showed, because Theta insisted on lacing up his skates for him, in order to reassure him. “It’ll be alright,” his companion swore, untangling himself from the scarf and wrapping its whole length around Javic’s neck. “I’ll protect you. Not that there’s anything you need protecting from, but still.” Theta then stepped back onto the ice of the moat effortlessly, his brown eyes never leaving Javic’s blue. “Trust me?”

Javic took a step without looking, trying to imitate Theta and stumbled instantly, but Theta caught him and let him grip him as he got himself upright. 

It was a long and painful process. The wind nipped at his nose, and flapped their scarf around his head wildly. Javic never stopped holding onto Theta, but with practice he could glide along without tripping up. He got cocky and tried to speed up the pace only to tumble spectacularly and fall flat onto the ice, dragging Theta down with him. 

Onto his front. 

Which wasn’t unusual at all. They shared a bed. Javic stole glances and smiled at Theta’s back, hugged him for a millisecond too long and pictured his face when he closed his eyes all the time.  

Theta’s face was so very close. He could feel his breath on his cheek. Their noses bumped. 

Theta blinked slowly. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Never better.” 

Gripping firmly, Theta pulled him up and towards his chest, for the first time unsteady in his own skates. His face was flushed pink, as were the tips of his ears. 

It was the cold, Javic decided. They were both so cold. But…

“Theta? Why do you have a double heartbeat?”

His friend rolled his eyes and stepped back slightly, seeming to gather his thoughts in the new distance between them. “It’s a Gallifreyan thing. An old myth. My grandmother told me that while we only have one heart, it beats not just for us but for the people who choose to share it with. It’s a phantom rhythm, from a scientific viewpoint, something about us being naturally very cold.”

Javic forced a laugh. “Cold. How romantic.”

He felt the cold linger on his nose, and bit the inside of his cheek. 

—

The following spring, a curfew was introduced in their district after the body of Sally Sparrow was found hanging from her washing line. The murderers called themselves the Angels, from the sinister notes attached by knives to the bodies of their victims. 

Javic hadn’t known Sally, but Theta had in passing, and the whole affair left a dismal cloud hanging over their days. Wilf insisted on their bringing Javic’s gun around with them, and Leo had his own stashed under the till. 

Everyone had an opinion on the Angels, each more far fetched than the last. The only eyewitness account came from a young girl called Jenny, and she had described a tall figure with a cracked grey clay mask, who had forced her unconscious with a fist in her mouth. 

It was easy to guess why Jenny had been spared. At a glance, she was petite and blonde with big eyes and all the charm of a six-year-old. She was also very spunky and known for scrapping with the other children in the small school that was Francine Jones’ dining room. Jenny was not a liar and she had imprinted on Theta like all the other small children, thus assigning him the duty of minding her. 

“I’m not scared,” she told him, sitting atop the counter with her arms folded and her nose running. “If we see an Angel, Javic can shoot it.”

“Violence is not the answer, Jenny,” Theta insisted as he drew the blinds and Javic took inventory. “You’d have better chances if you ran.”

The small girl frowned at him, but desisted when she saw his expression. “Alright.” She twirled a golden lock around one finger. She was easily distracted. “Do I look like Goldilocks?”

“Who?” Theta asked, looking to Javic who shrugged, bemused. 

“Goldilocks! She ate the bear’s porridge, and broke their chair and-“

Javic interrupted, earning himself a glare as he lifted her up from the counter and placed her on the floor. “Haven’t heard of it. But she doesn’t sound like a good role model.” He coughed. “Stealing… is very bad. Obviously.” 

Seemingly impressed at his parenting skills, Theta beamed at him and ambled over to take Jenny’s hand in his. 

Jenny took it, but screwed up her nose. She looked very much like Theta. “Boeshane must be boring.” 

“Uh-huh. Come on,” Javic chided, trying to herd them towards the door. He tried to focus on the task at hand. “We have to get you back to the barracks before curfew.” 

Ever since the murder of her sole guardian, Jenny had been staying with the soldiers until the streets were safe again. They were all fond of her and she was spoiled, but it was a point of annoyance for Theta. 

Happily skipping along between them, Jenny recounted the tale of Goldilocks until she was fast asleep despite the broken chair and her burnt tongue, and darkness crept into the air. Everyone at the barracks was happy to see the boys, clapping them on the backs and thanking them for their services. 

To Theta’s annoyance, Jack was there in his crisp blue uniform and patted Javic’s back before sending them on their way with a shiny coin. It was generous of him, but Theta would only scowl and redirect the conversation. 

“I don’t like soldiers, Javic, you know that,” Theta sighed into the dark, his hair now long enough to fall onto his forehead when he huffed. “He… he kills things for a living, Javic. That’s how he made that money.”

“He killed…” Javic didn’t dare to say the dreaded word in that context. Thoughts of daleks still made him smell blood. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I don’t know how Jenny takes all of this so well. She’s so young.” Theta shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his brown greatcoat. 

Javic playfully jostled Theta’s shoulder, ignoring the rush it gave him. “Yeah, and we’re what… nine hundred?” 

“You know what I mean! I just…”

Javic closed his eyes for a second. He managed not to react to the scene of carnage he saw there. “I know, Theta. I know.”

His companion furrowed his eyebrows and looked up. Black was bleeding into the sky at an alarming rate. “We should run.” 

Nodding, Javic took the excuse to grasp Theta’s hand and begin running like he was being chased. He heard Theta laugh breathlessly, their feet pounding on the stone. 

All of a sudden, he felt Theta stop and lurched to a halt, almost tripping over his own feet. He raised his eyeline and watched the approaching shadow as it came into focus. 

An adult, lanky in build and with no visible skin, but two dark eyes staring emotionlessly from slits in a smooth mask that looked like it could be made of stone, stopped a short distance from the boys. 

“I’m armed,” Javic called, baring his teeth. His voice sounded small even to him. Theta squeezed his hand. 

The figure took another step, and removed its hand from behind its back, cocking a gun with a sinister click. “Me too,” came the deep voice, “shall we see who is the better shot?”

“No.” Theta evaded Javic, who was trying to shield him, with a practiced skill at the task. Javic reached slowly for his gun, in his coat pocket.  “You don’t have to do this. Whatever you want, we can help you. My name is Theta, and I-“

“Don’t care,” intoned the Angel. “You’re Gallifreyan, though. I care about that. I’ll kill you for it, in fact.” 

It happened fast. Javic saw a finger on the trigger of the gun and only thought to defend Theta. 

He felt it enter his shoulder. He heard himself scream, then Theta. He felt the second bullet in his calf, and he sagged to his knees then onto the ground, his metaphorical strings cut. 

He watched Theta’s face, frantic, his fingers stained crimson with… oh, Javic’s blood. 

Through his scream, or Theta’s, he heard a distant shout. Good. There was hope for Theta. 

Javic would’ve preferred to kill for him, he decided in that excruciating minute, than to die like this, cause Theta this pain. 

With that decision he was gone, lost to the dark void of his own subconscious, until pinpricks of light pierced the dark curtain and he awoke feeling distinctly like he’d been carved out inside. 

The next thing he felt was a familiarly coarse hand wrapped around his. 

“Theta,” he croaked, and his friend broke into the worst grin Javic had ever received. It wasn’t a snarky or toothy or self-deprecating grin, like when someone mentioned Gallifrey or the daleks. It wasn’t mischievous or happy or bemused, as if Theta were telling a story. 

It was a grin that made you wonder who’d died. It was strained and stretched thin, like it was the only thing keeping Theta together. 

Javic didn’t know what to think about the implications of that grin. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” Theta spluttered disbelieving, some of his familiar flush returning to his cheeks. “I’m fine. You’re…” Here, he swallowed, and with it went the light in his eyes. “You were shot, Javic. You’ve been in surgery for hours, and under anaesthetic even longer.”

“Oh.” Javic looked down at himself, at the tight bandages around his calf and the mess of white patches and tape on his shoulder. He could see the outline of black thread in his shoulder through them. “But you’re fine. That’s good.”

Theta didn’t look fine, if you looked past the ghastly smile. He had bags under his eyes and his hair was scruffy. His voice was low when he spoke. “It’s not good. Don’t you get it, Javic? It should’ve been me.” 

“Would you want it to be you?” Javic gestured towards his wounds, but his friend looked down and away in a sharp motion that discouraged questions. “I wouldn’t.”

His companion barked with laughter, making Javic wince. “Obviously.” A cloud seemed to lift from Theta as he slouched back on his wooden chair, dropping all pretence so his face was as blank as a sheet. Most of the surroundings were obscured by curtains surrounding the white bed and its white quilt and the room’s white floorboards. 

The silence persisted for an unknown length, until a nurse drew back the curtain and began taking Javic’s vitals by unentangling his hand from Theta and checking his pulse point. She was young and pretty in a severe, no-nonsense and pristine apron way. She didn’t give her name, just that Javic was in an army hospital courtesy of his guardians, a word which she threw at him heavily. He took the hint and didn’t protest, or look up to see the protest that would be written on Theta’s face, just listened to her use words he didn’t understand and demand that he stayed in bed here for monitoring. 

After she left, Theta shifted from the chair to sitting on Javic’s bed. He watched him with an open expression of curiosity, and something deep that Javic wouldn’t understand until much later. 

Carefully, as if one of them were made of glass, Theta put his palm on Javic’s bare chest. It was cool and solid, just like the hard tone Theta used when he finally opened his mouth. “I’m sorry. It…” His voice didn’t break, he just paused, unblinking. “It was nice to meet you, Javic. I never knew I could meet anyone like you.” He exhaled. “Thank you, Javic.”

Theta leaned down, and Javic met him halfway. It was less a kiss and more a brush of lips, but it was Theta and it was everything Javic had hoped for, however cautious and slow. 

When Theta pulled away, he had to withdraw an arm from behind Javic’s back slightly guiltily, and ran it through his hair. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped himself. 

“Theta,” Javic began, but his friend had already stood up and made his way towards the drape, one hand positioned to part it so he could escape. “I’m glad I met you too, you lump. You… you’ve made me want to be a better person.”

The other boy never turned around or showed he acknowledged Javic’s comments, simply ducked under the partitioning drape and disappeared from sight. 

Javic’s chest felt even more hollow, after that. 

—

Each day that followed was more painful than the next. 

He didn’t stop looking for Theta, behind the nurse when she came to check on him or Jack the one time he brought Wilf to visit. He looked still as he stood in the mud outside the hospital, discharged, and on every street corner he passed on his way back to the lodgings house. 

The room had been rented out to someone else, an unsympathetic pair of young women with lips painted blood red and little time to indulge a broken boy. The man behind the desk had a box containing a few of their items—newspaper cuttings, the rusting penknife Javic had swiped from the docks, a comb—but no gun, or either of their coats. 

Theta was truly gone, vanished as if he’d never been there. Leo’s sister Martha greeted Javic at the till of the fishmonger’s, Jenny sitting atop a stack of crates swinging her boots and humming sea shanties. 

“Where’s Theta?” the young girl had asked, and Javic had shook his head. She’d dragged him outside anyway to play with her marbles in the low light, but nothing was the same. 

Even hard-working, loyal Wilf was as dumbstruck as Javic, but he tried to help ease Javic’s mind in his own gruff way: with extra work assignments at the docks. 

Busy body, clear mind. Javic wished. 

But there was a Theta-shaped hole in the life he’d carved for them both in London, and Javic wasn’t cut out for socialising with fishermen, or babysitting, or studying foreign traditions. 

He knew what he was cut out for, and that’s how he found himself at the barracks sipping watered-down mead with Jack in front of a crackling fire. The older soldier was still as well-groomed as ever, but crinkles were beginning to form at the edges of his eyes and his resting face was conflicted. 

It was a dull, grey day. Utterly forgettable, if not for the betrayal he made there. But there was no longer a Theta to stab in the back, and he’d only be returning the favour anyway. 

“I want to enlist in your unit.” 

Jack clapped him on the back, unaware of his inner turmoil, and smiled at him, as if it had been a long time coming. His smile was soft and comfortable, but Javic recognised the strain behind the action from his own appearance. “You’re sure? You know we’re being deployed on an active mission next week.”

He nodded. “I know. But… I can fight. I want to fight.” It had been a long time coming, this irresistible urge to take up arms. To kill daleks. Jack’s unit were going looking for answers, for what happened, for Gallifrey and Skaro and all the rest, and that was Javic’s place now. He needed closure like he needed oxygen. He needed to seal this wound before his new one made him bleed out. 

—

They had been at the outpost on Skaro for six months when it happened. 

Skaro was exactly as Theta had described, soulless and murky and wet, with hidden depths beneath the congealed surface revealing old caverns, and mile upon mile of charred terrain laid to waste. Everything moved, the states of matter you took for granted were in flux there- the ground shifting under the pressure of boots and the vultures rearranging the boneyard every time the cartographer drew a map. 

The camp was set up in the outskirts, where the ground was still dead, but not slick with mud and nature’s grease. It was a shorter walk from it back to Clom, an unremarkable rural kingdom with a flat landscape, than it was to the heart of Skaro, and Gallifrey beyond that. 

Javic had only been allowed to Gallifrey once, and he’d returned to the camp and thrown up in the aftermath. He recognised that pain as both picking at the old scab that was Boeshane, and old sympathy burns for Theta. 

His old friend’s people had clearly been a creative race, with grand feats of architecture sprawling across the city, but none so impressive as the Citadel and its biome dome, the beautiful home of Gallifrey’s scientists. It had still smelt bleached, even under the ash and the gasoline that lingered even now in the back of Javic’s subconscious, alongside his own waking nightmares. 

It had covered absolutely everything, the thick layer of ash, and you could never get it off your fingers once you’d bent to touch it, its particles working into your skin to irritate it. Theta had never seemed that bothered all that time ago, streaked with it like battle scars. But he and Theta were of different stock, one from the bloodstained beaches and one from the red ring of grass where no ash dared to settle, as if it really were cursed. 

Gallifreyan culture had clearly been rich with myths and tales of old. Early in their deployment, Javic had poured over copies of the carvings from the catacombs, of beasts with fangs and shape-changing mirages. 

It was a coincidence which escaped the unit’s historian that the claws matched the deep ruts in the prison walls, and the scales in the catacombs were venomous to touch. Gallifrey was written off as a treasonous nation too reliant on its oral traditions to keep its young in line, but Javic knew better. 

Of all of them, he had met a Gallifreyan. He had known Theta, and having known the repressed boy who’d talk about anything to deflect a direct question, Javic found himself in a position where he knew the secrets his unit was working to uncover. 

He knew that all the stories were real, that Gallifrey had once been the prison and then the battlefield of creatures of legend. He knew how it had burnt, and this he knew it was not his secret to share, so he lived his little half-existence and kept his head down. 

Jack was a benevolent captain, and his fondness for Javic kept him running errands rather than patrolling Skaro or Gallifrey, citing Javic’s bout of nausea as his excuse. The days were often monotonous, a blur of male posturing and pulling at tough jerky strips with your teeth. Javic came to rely on cold broth and the lump of his gun through his bedroll, reminiscent of long ago and far away. 

His work consisted of much travel between Skaro and Clom, where their military were scowled at for meddling but Javic had charmed himself a circle of traders who’d make an exception. He used a stick in the moist ground to map the stars on the route, and ignored the faded scars on the underside of his feet, but largely he spent the days alone and the nights fighting to stay awake so as to evade his memories. 

That was how the bad habit began. He was sitting amidst the shrubs in one of Clom’s blank yet characteristic fields, and he turned to his side and saw Theta, as he remembered him with short hair and grey smudges on his cheekbones. 

Theta was pulling at blades of grass with a knowing grin, humming, then looked at Javic and said, “I’m not real.”

It was so like Theta, that blunt sentiment, that it made Javic ache. “I know. I’m not sure I care.”

He reached out and the fractured memory dissipated, but inside an old flame was flickering. 

The fire spread, over two months, and it burnt out in spectacular fashion on the day Gallifrey was set alight for the second time. 

When Javic arrived at the scene, it was already burning. It wasn’t real fire, the kind you sparked from a flint stone, but the orange clouds produced by explosives. 

To a soldier, that was worse. To Javic, it was treason. 

Only one army around here had these kind of explosives to hand, and it was his unit, not the small battalion that patrolled Clom’s northern border.

The whole thing had felt thick with anticipation and fear, and the wrenching sensation in Javic’s gut that this could not be happening to him again. He had danced his way through the dead grenades and shrapnel, clutching the pile of papers he’d been sent to fetch from Clom’s courtroom, until he found the sea of bodies. 

His whole unit, blown to pieces and bloody bodies, and as he stooped down next to the worst sight of all, he dropped his papers and fumbled for his gun. 

Jack was dead. Jack was a mess of dark red splatters, and had a metal shard embedded in his neck. 

Javic had been hanging by a thread held together by that man, and now it had snapped. He physically growled, unable to prevent the action, and fired a shot to the sky. 

His eyes were filling with angry tears, but his reflexes weren’t dead so he raised his gun at the sound of the movement, and looked upon Alex Hopkins.

Hopkins was older than Jack, balding and greying, but with only a few wrinkles and uneven stubble. Recently, the lines on his face had been becoming more pronounced, and as the unit’s historian his attitude had been groaning more and more morbid. His eyes were dark and his eyebrows pulled together, his arm quivering as he held a grenade in one of his fists. 

Surrounded by debris and corpses, everything was drowned in ash and the air tasted like it. You could not see further than a few metres in either direction for the dust clouds, and Javic was a little underwhelmed by the man who was responsible. 

“Hopkins,” Javic said slowly, taking great effort to maintain a level voice and steady hand, “think about this.”

The man shook his head. He had a broad Cardiff accent, and the way he stood it was like he was curling in on himself. “You don’t know what’s coming, Javic. You don’t know the secrets I uncovered down there. If… if what I saw was real, we’re better off dead than at the hands of Gallifrey’s beasts.”

Standing, Javic inhaled deeply, then immediately regretted it. “I know. I know, Hop- Alex. It’s alright. They’re not here anymore. They were freed.” He tried to take a step, but Hopkins waved the grenade threateningly. “Alex-“

“No,” the older soldier choked forcefully, “do you think I came this far to spare you? If you know what they were holding in those folks, you should be grateful. This ends, now.”

Javic squeezed the trigger before he had time to talk himself out of it. 

He was a good shot, he hit his mark and Alex went down with fingers poised to remove the pin from the grenade. Javic almost went down onto his knees too, the weight of his action crushing him. 

He’d killed a man. But it wasn’t that he was worried about. He had valued his own life so much that he’d killed a man… his unworthy, blood-soaked existence should not have meant that much to him. 

Lost in his head, he took a moment to register heavy footsteps behind him and, hardened, he raised his gun again. 

There were tear tracks on his cheeks, his head was pounding and everything felt inverted, but there would be no going back from firing that shot. 

Through the smoke emerged a heavily-decorated figure, dressed in a newly ashen army uniform that matched Javic’s own. If there was any doubt, the stout figure addressed him in a London accent, as his unit filed in behind him with heavy duty military armaments. “Are you Captain of this unit?”

The newcomer took everything—the bodies, the smoke, the smell—in his stride with one sweep of his green eyes across the battle scene. His nose twitched as he spoke, and he exuded self-importance. “Well, sir?” he asked impatiently. “Speak!”

There was a moment of indecision in Javic’s mind before he lowered his gun and spoke, painfully aware of all the eyes on him in his current state. “Yes, sir. I’m… I’m Captain Jack Harkness of this unit.” He saluted jauntily. 

The officer nodded. “I assumed as much. We are with the London army, as you are I also assume.” He continued at Javic’s nod. “We heard your shot, sir, and deviated from our course. Please allow me to assist you in returning to London for reassignment.”

He spoke callously, as if he was not standing next to a massacre. As if it were only to be expected. As if life moved on. 

Javic coughed. He tried to recall how Jack had spoken when encountering his colleagues. “Thank you… kind sir. Your, uh, assistance would be good.” He reached up and wiped his wet cheek. “If I could have a moment alone before we depart?” 

He received a curt nod and dismissal of the London unit, then a quieter murmur of, “I understand, of course, how delicate a nature the work in Gallifrey and Skaro was. Take your time, Captain Harkness.” 

Javic felt even more alone knowing those soldiers were waiting behind the curtain of ashy cloud than he had over Jack’s body, and he wanted to throw up. 

Boeshane: dead and bloody. Gallifrey: dead and ashen. There was some irony there, probably. Something to be said about his luck. 

He had a few items to recover: Jack’s paperwork from under his bedroll, a cartographer's copy of the catacomb carvings and a bottle of brandy from the mess tent. 

The silence was thick and heavy when he rejoined the officer and his unit, and when he looked back at Gallifrey vanishing in the thinning clouds he bit his lip. After consideration, he slowed and hung back a few metres behind the unit, then stopped and stared at Gallifrey with a sense of finality as his feet began to set in the Skaro sludge. 

As the smoke encircled the Citadel in the distance, Javic was unsurprised to see Theta appear before him with his hands in his coat pockets. 

Javic bared his teeth at Theta, who remained ever unfaltering. “Why did you kiss me if you were going to leave me?” 

His companion said nothing, but that was alright. His quarrel was not with this hallucation of Theta, not really. 

He turned his back to Gallifrey and Skaro, to Theta. With each step, he picked up the pace. 

If there could be no Javic without a Theta, that was alright too. There was no Javic now, only Jack. 

—

Dear Javic,

Do you remember our walk down to London, when we first knew each other and being covered in blood was not just a metaphor? I do. I was asked yesterday at university (I keep pinching myself) what the strongest memories of my life were, and why. 

Koschei: his death. My sisters: their laughs. You… you and me against all the odds on that endless road, inseparable in that tiny lodgings house, and beyond. 

Javic… I would like to see you again. I would like you to come with me on an expedition around the kingdoms to uncover the secrets buried there, with the stars as our map. 

We promised not to turn our backs on Boeshane or Gallifrey. Let’s keep it, alright? 

Keep this promise with me, Javic. What doesn’t kill us, well… it can’t kill us. 

Write to the London University of Science and I’ll find your letter. 

Best wishes,

Theta

P.S. This is all a bit formal, but I’m still me. Promise. 

P.P.S. I guess paper works as a filter for my more disastrous speech patterns. Nice to know. 

Theta,

Don’t come looking for me. You won’t like who you find. 

I am only telling you this because I loved you, and if you were to ask, in the flesh not in a cowardly letter, I might break. 

And I doubt you’d be willing to piece me back together this time. 

Yours,

J

J,

I’m sorry. 

Kindly, 

T