Archive of Our Own ^beta

The twin suns of Gallifrey were dipping low in the rusted sky as the day dimmed and faded away. The red grass swayed in the gentle gloaming’s breeze; the whisper of stalk on stalk carried all around like a lullaby song or a cicada’s last call for the night.

Theta was squatting on the forest floor, eyes fixed hard on whatever he’d found among the leaves and branches and patches of red grass. Ages, it had been. Ages enough that his friends had come to find him to make sure he hadn’t gotten into too much trouble. Ages and an amount of focus which Ushas would have thought impossible for Theta to achieve; and when they all finally found him, he didn’t look up to greet his friends or greet them like he usually did, or really even acknowledge that he’d been found. He simply continued to stare.

About half of the Deca - the ones who had the day off from the endless responsibilities put upon them at the Prydonian Academy and who were willing to spend an unknown amount of time looking for Theta in the woods (well, them and Vansell for some reason) - had gathered further back from him to whisper among themselves.

“Let’s just humor him,” Koschei said. “He clearly thinks he found something interesting, so let’s not immediately crush his dreams.” But then again, Koschei had always been sweeter to Theta and more willing to apologize for him than anyone else in their group.

“He’s probably just fixated on another flower or something equally as ephemerally meaningless.” Ushas, as they'd all quickly learned in the long time they’d known her, didn't mince her words. She was harsh and flat with them, and often as hurtful as she could be, but it didn't mean she didn't care about the other Decas. She just cared about them in her own special little way. Probably.

Rallon snorted. “He probably came up with some nonsense metaphor about how it represents us or Gallifrey or — or —”

Ushas shushed him, because none of them had gone along just to rile Theta up.

Drax grabbed some of the autumnal debris off the ground and adopted his best impression of their friend. “Don't you see, dear Koschei, this leaf represents the two of us! There's two on one stem because we're so close and they're red because —”

Koschei snatched the leaves away from him and crushed them in his fist. “ He doesn't sound like that,” he hissed.

“And I'll fistfight anyone who says anything bad about those leaves or my dear, dear Koschei.” He pretended to fix his hair like Theta did. Ushas had to put a hand on Koschei’s shoulder to keep him from saying anything uncouth.

Unfortunately for Koschei's pride, it really was a pretty fair impression of their friend. Consequence of friendship, perhaps, or Drax’s somewhat infuriating habit of seeing everything.

“This is taking too long. I'm not breaking curfew any more because you're spending more time making fun of one another than collecting Theta Sigma.” Vansell strode up to Theta and crouched next to him. “What's this?”

This, in this instance, was a ugly looking thing. Like a metal worm made of crudely crushed tin foil and clay. It was uneven, lumpy, and anything but organic. Vansell frowned and looked between Theta, the strange litter, and Theta again. He was enamored with it, apparently.

Theta felt around in the grass until he found a stick. “I don't know, but I haven't seen anything like it before.” He pointed with his twig at one end. “That's the mouth. That,” the other end, “is a second mouth. This one has teeth, though. I don't think it's an indigenous creature on Gallifrey, so I don't know what it's called.”

All of that sounded like nonsense to Vansell because, even if all of those words plausibly could go in that order, this was clearly some time tot’s art project that had been thrown out. He reached out to pick it up, but got swatted away with Theta’s stick.

“Don't touch it!” Theta said. “I think it bites.”

“You think it bites,” Vansell repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“Most things bite,” Theta confirmed, a certain serious and experienced tone to his voice. It was a wonder that that boy hadn't died yet.

Vansell sighed and stood up. “It's getting late. We should all be getting back, lest we get into even more trouble.” They should have brought Magnus or even Jelpax. It figured that the ones who'd trek through the woods to break curfew and pull Theta away from his weird fixation would be the ones who either did not care about even appearing to follow the rules or the ones who held absolutely no sway over Theta. These people were absolutely exhausting sometimes.

“Go back without me. I want to see if it's nocturnal,” he said.

“Why don't you put it in something and keep it in your dorm? That way, you can search it up in the library to see if it's already been documented. If it hasn't, you can write a whole report on it.” That from Koschei, who was only standing a few paces back now.

Theta sighed like it was obvious. “But I actually care about observing life in its natural environment.” Unlike Ushas, was the unspoken yet widely understood meaning. The memory of her last study was still uncomfortably fresh in their minds.

“I am here too,” she said, indignant.

Theta spun around to face them for the first time. “You didn't all need to come!”

“It's only five of us,” Rallon assured him. “We're not going to make a whole thing out of it.”

“Even if you were gone for a concerning amount of time,” Koschei grumbled.

Theta frowned. They were overreacting. It really hadn't been that long.

“Did you even realize you broke curfew?” Drax asked, despite being the only one there who wouldn't have to worry about it. “We were trying to reach you, but you weren't answering any messages.”

He huffed and crossed his arms. “Well it doesn't have to be your problem. I'm quite capable of taking care of myself.”

“Come on. Time to go.” Koschei hoisted him up by the arm and laced his hand through Theta's so that he couldn't drag them back to look at the weird life form. He ignored the sad, irritated look that his friend was giving him and the way Drax elbowed Rallon and pointed at their hands, thinking he was being all subtle and smart.

“But the life form!”

“I'll get it,” Vansell said. “Which end has no teeth?”

Theta pointed sadly. “I don't know what it eats yet.”

Ushas tapped her foot. “It has teeth; it can chew. If this takes any longer, I'm feeding Koschei to it for dragging us out here.”

“They're not sharp enough for that.”

“Me?” Koschei cut it. “Why is it my fault and not Theta's? He's the one that came out here!”

“We're not kids. If he wants to come look at aliens in the woods, he can do that without us.”

“Thank you, Ushas!” He beamed.

“You agreed to come along!” Koschei insisted. Leave it to geniuses to always find the most meaningless ways to argue.

Vansell shook his head and picked up the litter by the ‘end with teeth’ so that it couldn't whip around and bite him. He rejoined the others and held it up to show them that it was securely in his grasp and that they could get a move on and leave.

Theta still didn't seem happy with the arrangement, but that was fine, since Vansell was still annoyed with him for ‘borrowing’ all of his charts on the movements of planets in Orion and then setting them on fire.

“Is everyone good?” Rallon asked. He was doing his best to mimic Magnus’ authoritative, please-stop-arguing-for-once voice and the Decas all took the hint and backed off.

And then the worm thing whipped itself around and attached the toothless end onto Vansell’s face. He shrieked.

Vansell scratched at it and barked out some order to help him or get it off of him or something that they couldn't quite understand, though the gist was clear.

Rallon was there in a moment, trying to pull the thing off of him as the only one who really seemed useful in that scenario.

Ushas was giving quick suggestions of what might make it release, all the while standing back clear.

Theta, meanwhile, had pulled his hand out of Koschei's and was furiously taking notes on his data pad. “I should have known that the teeth weren't for flesh. They were clearly too dull…” He glanced up and back down again, writing down quick and likely incredibly inaccurate guesses at the muscular structure (if that was even what it had) based on the way it failed around on Vansell's forehead. Really this was a great learning opportunity.

If only he could figure out why it had attached itself. Was it draining blood? He hadn't seen any teeth on that side, but it was possible. It hadn't been searching for a specific body part, so it didn't seem to be anything with the brain. If the thing really was made out of metal, that meant it was at least semi-robotic, but whether that meant it was searching for electricity, oil, or other robot parts or if it was draining something for an organic element or itself… He had so many questions.

There was a great big thump then of a body falling into the soft forest floor. A breeze of air that gusted past Theta's ankles. Then more yelling. He looked up from the data pad. Vansell was on the ground.

The problem with sorting your life in such a way that your only friends were geniuses and outsiders was not that you were lonely (Theta often thought he’d be so much more lonely among a hundred or even a thousand boring people than he was among his nine strange and clever friends) or that you were simply too genius to ever have fun. The problem wasn’t even that they were all cold and heartless, no matter what people may have thought of them. The problem wasn’t the constantly growing list of misdemeanors or enemies or things which probably ought to have been misdemeanors but which hadn’t been named as such yet because nobody had thought to commit them before. The problem wasn’t even their dangerous pastimes.

The biggest issue with being so used to the Deca was that they all got so wrapped up in learning that they all forgot to be annoyed with one another when there was a cost to that knowledge.

The metal worm creature detached itself from Vansell and sluggishly slithered away from his body. It made for the base of the nearest tree, but Ushas stomped over and ground the heel of her heavy (uniform non-compliant) boots into it until it was distinctly very dead.

“I swear, Thete. You’re going to be the death of all of us someday,” Drax said jovially as he passed him on the way to Rallon.

Theta hesitantly got down next to Vansell, checking for any movement or any sign of a pulse and, finding none, knitted his eyebrows together in worry. That was bad. That was really bad. They were still in school, and that meant that this was a bad screw-up. Worse than a screw-up.

Rallon saw his face and put a hand on his shoulder. “Junior Time Lord, remember? He’s fine.”

Theta nodded, but there was a horrible pause where nothing happened. Vansell was lying there doing nothing while Koschei and Ushas casually scraped the worm-paste off her boot and into a jar like nothing was wrong.

He began to wonder just what that worm had done when, sure enough, Vansell’s body began to glow warmly. Brighter and brighter he got, and then, as quickly as it had begun, it dissipated and a new face was looking up at Theta, rather cross.

-☆-👁-☆-

“How did it feel?” Ushas asked. If any of the students had noticed Vansell’s shiny new face (and at least some of them must have with how different he looked) none of them had brought it up directly. Par for the course, Theta thought. They’ve finally gotten used to us. Koschei, on the other hand, just assumed that nobody cared, or perhaps dared, to ask.

Ushas had been hounding Vansell nonstop since they’d all met up that morning, switching between demanding a description of how regeneration felt and how the worm’s attacks had felt with such speed that he hardly knew which one she was interrogating him about anymore.

Rallon was telling Millennia the whole tale, presumably emphasizing his role in it, and she was enraptured.

They’d all forget any of them had even been at fault in a few days. The Deca. Friends until the end.