Entry tags:

fandom: doctor who, pairing: doctor/master, year: 2008

Doctor Who: the naming of things (Part I)

Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Word count: 13,045
Pairing: Koschei/Theta
Summary: How to become the Master.
Notes: Contains suicide and other unhappy things. Picks and chooses canon with abandon.

the naming of things

{Part One | Part Two}

On the first night, Koschei is homesick.

He's been assigned a double name just like everyone else: Psi Epsilon, a statistic that trips over his tongue. His true name is buried somewhere in the middle of his chest, in the space between the reality of his left heart and the potential of his right, under the stifling dark robes. He wants to dig it out and speak it, and in the morning his new schoolmasters will ask his name; Psi, he'll say, and Koschei, and the whole class will laugh when he blurts further that it's what his mother calls him. Called, he conjugates dutifully, called in the past tense he'll never revisit even when he's a Time Lord. He can nearly see that mocking future and he flushes hot and cold, curled up in one of the endless statistical bunks provided for Initiates.

When he closes his eyes he sees the whirl of the Vortex, blueshifting into the possible. He'd stood there amid flickering fires that cast no heat, and he'd never known how to feel homesick before but what he looked on was vertigo, the unknown; Koschei clinging to the skin of the world and so frightened. He keeps his eyes open now and stares into the close forgiving dormitory darkness, trying to ignore a faint but insistent little headache throbbing at the base of his skull.

Someone is crying.

It's a choked-up snuffling little sound, determined not to be heard. Koschei feels a weird flare of kinship -- they're all Prydonian here, of course, but this is different -- the little gulping breaths might have been his, except they're two bunks down. Without warning Koschei is a good deal less homesick. The words he mouthed at the Induction Ceremony come back to him, spoken with more ringing authority inside his head than he managed aloud: I will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts. Koschei isn't entirely clear yet on what the Ancient Law of Gallifrey has to say on what justice or honour are, but he knows intimately the sickly injustice of being far from home, so up he gets. Pads across the cool floor until he reaches the source of the barely-there noise, and insinuates himself into the bunk.

The sniffling stops abruptly, and this other boy starts up. In the dimness it's impossible to distinguish colours, but Koschei can see that the bunk's occupant has a mass of fine light hair and features that have defined themselves into stubbornness. The boy swipes the back of his hand across his face, puts his chin up, and hisses, "What are you doing here?"

It's exactly what Koschei would have done, exactly. Something starts expanding in his chest. He wants to blurt out, Don't worry, you are not alone. It would be appallingly forward. He says, "Overheard you. Sorry."

The other boy's chin stays set but the rest of him relaxes a little at the apology. "Sorry," he echoes. "I didn't mean to keep you from sleeping."

Aware of being on the brink of some emotional chasm opening up beneath him, Koschei says simply: "I was having trouble anyway."

They look at each other. The chasm closes, the Vortex fades, the darkness seems less pressing and unfamiliar, and for the first time in his young life Koschei is visited by the heady sensation of understanding, and of being understood.

"Theta Sigma," the boy offers. Holds out a hand stiffly.

Awkward but unwilling to let the moment go, Koschei takes it. "Psi Epsilon," he says, but the feeling of being unexpectedly caught in a safety net won't leave him, and it's Theta Sigma, this not-a-statistic, who's unwittingly made him feel it. He adds, "But it's Koschei, actually."

It's not his real name but a real name and Theta Sigma's hand goes very tight clasped in his. Koschei doesn't want to leave. Just by crying this boy has let Koschei know he's not alone, let Koschei feel like the strong one.

If he's the strong one, and he stays, it must be for Theta Sigma's benefit. Syllogism.

He doesn't actually ask, but Theta Sigma doesn't make him leave, and eventually they fall asleep curled up together. In the first dawn light Koschei awakes and creeps back to his own cold bunk, where he falls asleep again feeling wonderfully transgressive with a grin on his face. He knows it's going to be exactly like this for months yet.

---

It's not.

The assignation theta sigma is in strict correspondence to social rank, and while Koschei is from a family of good standing -- he wouldn't be here at all if this wasn't the case -- the psi says it all, really. Lowest possible place of Matrix filing, and he'd probably have been bumped all the way down to omega if it wasn't for the obvious reasons that no one was given that tag in the filing system.

Theta Sigma is in the second group, starting with the eta students. Koschei's in the third group, starting with tau. There's no insinuation as to levels of ability, as such, involved in these divisions. There's no real reason Koschei shouldn't seek out a fellow student in a different division; no real reason but a particular sort of paralysis born of subtle social stigma and a sort of perverse pride. Koschei might catch Theta Sigma at meals -- except that switching tables is somewhat frowned upon, and by the time Koschei gets up the courage, the other boy has surrounded himself with friends and hangers-on, like he's the nucleus of some social atomic mass -- or he might catch Theta Sigma at lights-out -- except self-consciousness has caught up to Koschei with a vengeance and he can't imagine trespassing into someone's personal space like that again.

So there it is: Koschei watches this boy and memorises him from a distance. High forehead, light hair, arrogant tilt to the chin, easy smile. It would be so simple to step in, be an electron in Theta Sigma's orbit. But Koschei cannot countenance that.

Instead, he works very hard. He does his geometry sets in record time; then he works out how to do them very slowly, with the greatest possible precision and no margin for error. Ten out of ten, every time. Koschei learns how to manipulate the equations so they'll always come out with happy numbers. In the second year, they learn their home galaxy's great poetry forms from throughout history. Koschei entertains himself by converting iambic pentameter into binary, into quadratics, back again. Ten out of ten.

He sheds the dark Initiate robes and wears the scarlet, which does nothing to alleviate the general impression he suspects he gives people of being a black-and-white ghost with stupid hair. He fetches and carries for the older boys, as is expected, and even the knowledge that all the other students his age are fetching and carrying too does little to stop the upwelling of resentment. His professors merely tolerate him, having no reason to believe he's anything but just clever at the beginning exercises. And everyone else bores him.

Koschei, a decade old, only one one-hundredth of his way through his projected lifespan, can feel the world growing small.

---

Good marks earn free time. Koschei begins spending the afternoons he's granted alone out of doors. The Academy, situated as it is in the foothills of the Mountains of Solace and Solitude, affords a fantastic view of the valleys below, of the Capitol glittering in the distance. Sometimes Koschei sits on some half-forgotten terrace watching the double sunset. Binary. Gallifrey's system is odd in that, rather than a main sequence A star and a dwarf B, it has instead two main sequence stars of relatively small volume, orbiting one another at exactly the right distance and velocity for their gravity wells to form a symmetry rather than tear each other apart. Koschei likes that.

---

One afternoon he takes a tablet of prototype TTC schematics out to his favourite courtyard, all in his head and thinking of the fiddly little additions he would make to a sleek modern Type 45 TARDIS. He's so involved in considering the logistics of a remote-activated security system that he doesn't notice his normal study bench is already occupied until he's almost upon said occupant. Blond hair. Chin tucked in over some data pad.

Koschei is absurdly relieved to see that up close, Theta Sigma looks nearly as ridiculous in the vivid Prydonian robes as he does. Theta Sigma looks up. For a moment his eyes remain faraway and unfocused; then he smiles, a beam that lights up his small face and makes little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Koschei, isn't it?"

They've only talked the once. Theta Sigma will have heard anyone else call him Psi Epsilon. And yet.

"That's right," Koschei says, sitting down with all the grace he's learned so far. "And you're Theta Sigma."

"The only other theta is Omicron, and he prefers that," the other boy replies. "I think," he adds, leaning forward conspiratorially, "Omicron believes a name like that is dignified. Sounds a little bit like Omega, doesn't it?"

Koschei doesn't know the boy in question, but he feels safe in saying, "Only if you're half-deaf and have a death wish."

This prompts a burst of laughter. "Exactly! So it's just Theta, please." Theta's face becomes serious. "No one else calls you Koschei. Am I overstepping ...?"

Koschei feels again that peculiar sensation of his chest expanding. "No, not at all," he says. "Theta." Worries his lip a little. "I don't suppose you'll keep it."

He says things like this -- thoughts fully-formed inside his mind and only half-stated -- and is given blank looks. Theta's isn't; it's thoughtful. "I suppose I'll want a name that's not dignified unless it needs to be, which Theta never is. Maybe a title. Like the Castellan."

This time it's Koschei who laughs -- giggles, really, and he can only hope with time they'll turn at least into rolling chuckles -- and says, "Yes, I don't think the Castellan's ever had a name."

They laugh about this together, although it's not really that funny. Really it's relief, shared. Koschei knows Theta never does this with any of those orbiting hangers-on. He's different. He's different and safe in the knowledge of this, he shows Theta the TTC schematics he's working on. Theta wants to know if this TARDIS can make tea, and whether it's allowed to have a zeppelin hangar, since he's quite fond of them at the moment. Koschei thinks stasis chambers might be a good idea. They lean together shoulder-to-shoulder and finally, finally, it's the way it's supposed to be.

---

On a warm evening full of meteor showers Koschei slips quietly out of the dormitory and onto a terrace. Theta is sitting there already. He gives Koschei one of those distracted and slightly irritable looks at being torn from the spectacle in the sky before his brain catches up with his eyes and he favours Koschei with a glowing smile. "You knew I'd be out here," he accuses.

"I like watching the sky," Koschei says simply.

The silence wraps itself around them, each of them in turn wrapped in amateurish psychic projections. In class they're starting to work with their developing minds. Koschei doesn't want to share his mind with anyone, the stupid small headaches or the secret grand thoughts, but now while Gallifrey tears through a burning storm of meteors, it doesn't seem so frightening.

"When I was very little I wanted to be a train conductor," Theta comments unprompted into the silence.

Koschei doesn't say anything to that. The random fact hangs unprotected between them, and it's enough.

---

Almost overnight he starts growing like mad. He hates it at first, having this stupid impermanent body be so out of his control. Then Koschei notices that while Theta has turned into a creature made entirely of elbows, he's filled out, energy settling and all his floppy hair suddenly dashing rather than silly.

So almost overnight Koschei learns how to capture his own cloud of Gallifreyan-shaped electrons. It's very simple: smile, like Theta does. Koschei tries it in a mirror a couple of times until he gets it right, smiling up, chin tucked in, like he's sharing a secret. Theta does it better, because of the way it makes his face glow, but Koschei makes up for it by giving his own the slightest edge of a smirk, and just like that the other students come, moths to a flame. He's brilliant and he learns to strategically not mention his brilliance at all, so that they hang around hoping some of the brilliance will rub off on them. Koschei knows it won't. He looked into the Vortex and he saw his own singularity, and only one other person on this whole silly planet might have seen the same thing.

But he doesn't let this shifting group of people go. He likes the attention.

---

Theta is messy.

Naturally, the moment they're moved to an upper level, Koschei and Theta apply to be roommates. No one is surprised, and Koschei is dimly aware that some heated debate might have gone on upstairs before the request was granted, but here they are. Now Theta's things get everywhere. Old clocks, his tea set, endless incomprehensible handwritten scribbles of equation and observation, a gramophone, silly bric-a-brac from the detritus of space.

Theta is very good at taking said bric-a-brac -- any spare parts will do, wires and bits of string -- and constructing them into elaborate little time-flow analogues that are completed mere seconds after Koschei has finished some time experiment, and for credit, too. At first Koschei is bewildered by this behavior, as he wouldn't have otherwise thought Theta particularly capable of maliciousness. Then he notices Theta watching him for that burst of anger, gauging it like any other phenomenon, and he understands.

He learns, in the days following this revelation, how to build a spare-parts time-flow analogue himself. And he makes Theta's experiments explode. And he has the pleasure of watching the fury on Theta's face turn to dawning understanding turn to a rueful smile. They do it again, and again, and for some long while their free time is spent on ever more elaborate time experiments and disruptions. In a growing lifetime of intellectual challenges, they're collectively the best.

---

Until they blow up part of the South Wing.

---

"We're going about it all wrong," Koschei announces.

Theta's lying on his bed, hands folded demurely, staring at the ceiling. "Let me guess," he says. "Professor Borusa's punishment illustrates the fundamental injustice at the centre of Time Lord society, in direct contradiction to the Laws of Time it wishes to uphold."

"Shut up," Koschei says. "I'm serious."

"All right." Theta sits up. "Do tell."

"Well." Koschei fiddles with the cloth of his robe, a habit he's picked up from Theta. "We are to above all uphold the Laws of Time, correct?" Theta snorts softly, looking impatient, so he goes on, "These laws being in place so that the integrity of the fabric of the space-time continuum is maintained, and the causality of the Universe is kept in line. But --" he leans forward "-- what, exactly, decides which bits of spacetime are the correct ones?"

"Rhetorical question?" Theta enquires.

"No. Work with me here."

"Matrix records," Theta says. "Extensive observation. Analysis."

"No," Koschei says. "Failing marks, Theta Sigma. What actually determines correct causality?"

Theta frowns a little. "The Time Lords."

"Exactly." Koschei goes back to fiddling with the hem of his robe. "It follows, therefore, that Time Lords have the power to determine what exactly the normal course of history is. We have the knowledge of the universe locked away in the databanks at the Capitol, and what do we do? Plagues and murders and genocides still happen to all the lower beings, and simply because some Time Lord somewhere observed the aftermath and doesn't want one little paradox."

Theta listens to all of this very closely. "You've been thinking about this," he says. Koschei very deliberately gives him the duh look, which he knows gets on every single one of Theta's nerves. Not this time. Theta merely nods and says, "Rebuttal later. Go on."

Koschei sucks in a surprised breath; but then, anyone else would have snapped him down for blasphemy by now. "I did the calculations," he says. "The quantum sets we've been given? They work well in theoretical application to history. I'm well aware that changing an entire planet's continuity would have a ripple effect, but isn't that the point? 'With justice' -- it's our purpose to go out and make the universe more enlightened."

"To what end?" Theta asks. "Changing the universe -- not knowing what would happen -- you do away with one plague and the next moment some rival time-aware race might be at Gallifrey's doorstep demanding an equal share."

Koschei's lip curls. Disappointment tries to insinuate its way through him, but Theta's mind has never let him down yet. "You're talking like one of them. Like any other old fool who's confused stability with stagnation and is afraid of losing the power he has."

"No," Theta says, and there is disappointment in his voice; that he doesn't bother to disguise it is somehow shaming. "If we start acting like gods for the lesser beings, they will become gods too, but without the Laws of Time to safeguard them. Imagine the universe then."

Being proved wrong -- and by such a silly argument, all pathos but still right -- rankles. Koschei grits his teeth. "What if it was small things? Not just preventing paradoxes, but setting little things to rights?"

" 'What if'," Theta echoes, the beginnings of a smile curling his lips. "All right then. We'll do an experiment, hmm? Forget the quantum applications. We'll set history to rights a theory at a time."

---

And so, a game: they adapt it from a chess variant played during the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. They even call it chess, first as a convenient shorthand, then as a sort of code. Still adolescents, they need their sleep, but they take it in quick hard doses, three or four hours a night; the rest of the time they lie awake, squished together in one bed with their fingers flying over data pads of complex equations in six dimensions. They alter the course of the Feoh Empire. They chance the composition of a methane planet to support carbon life. They build military bases or tear them down. They change clauses in the Shadow Proclamation. The room becomes cluttered with models of wire or string; they conduct little self-contained experiments, then disrupt them. All the while they keep score, but not against each other; never against.

---

There is one thing the Academy fails to teach them.

Among all the physics, art, history, music, lies a terrible gap: application. It all comes down to the same thing, really, at least as far as Koschei's been able to bring logic to the situation. Until at least the end of their first century, no Gallifreyan is given the least indication how to use both mind and body for a single end. A body, Koschei sees, is regarded as a sort of inconvenient receptacle for the mind, a thing which must be tolerated and occasionally recycles itself when the warranty starts running out. It's an entirely absurd view, Koschei decides after much consideration of the matter; their extremely resilient and effective biology alone counters this attitude most eloquently. More importantly, a mind is firmly a part of a body, and the two communicate. Often.

Without permission.

Koschei notices it slowly, and with growing panic. It doesn't start one day, it merely insinuates: the feeling of expansion in his chest bubbling all the way up to his brain. So that he flushes or drops things when Theta walks into the room. So that when Theta quite reasonably goes to spend time studying with other people, Koschei feels something strange, akin to rage. So that when he and Theta are arguing some point and get up in each other's faces and he can feel Theta's warm breath on his cheek and their eyes lock, his body starts behaving the way it would if it didn't belong to him at all; that flush again, all his limbs shaky. Koschei knows it's only the firing of particular synapses in his brain, certain chemicals sneaking their way through his body, but he can't control it, and it scares him.

The one thing that keeps him from losing his head completely -- hah -- is the observation that Theta seems to be suffering in exactly the same way. Blushes, fumbling words, and that habit of running the thumb of his left hand over his lapel whenever he's nervous.

"We'd better do something about this," Koschei announces one evening.

Theta looks up from his work. "No," he says, and his voice is somehow thin with panic. Uncontrolled. "It's a developmental stage. It will go away soon." He swallows thickly. "I could request a room change --"

"No," Koschei snaps. "I will not leave you simply because -- because this --" He takes a deep breath. His body belongs to him, not the other way around. "We don't run away from problems, Theta," he says. "We fight them. We master them."

"How?" Theta asks.

"I'll think of something," Koschei promises.

---

In fact the solution is simple. If the body is a temporary house for the mind, it is the mind's to control. If the body is doing the controlling, that body is faulty. A better one merely needs to be provided.

Koschei's aware there is a certain ... unorthodoxy to this approach. No one is supposed to regenerate within their first century, so Koschei researches the why of it. Because it is dangerous. Because it is medically unsound. Because it is just not done. But nowhere can Koschei find examples of proven dangerous aftereffects, because the mere warnings have kept everyone from trying. More and more, the caution against young regeneration smacks of the spurious tales about Time Lords who commit suicide and come back as the opposite gender. Koschei won't be a woman. Koschei will finally be in control.

And maybe, some small treacherous part of him whispers, maybe if he's different, but Theta still hasn't reached a solution -- maybe he'll have a handle on the situation and he'll finally just be that one little bit better -- maybe Theta won't suggest leaving ever again.

Koschei closets himself in a classroom in the lower levels, where no one, not even Theta, is likely to find him, and considers the best approach to his solution. Carefully controlled circumstances, or getting the thing over with quickly? The first option appeals to logic, the second only to fear; there will therefore be no dramatic jumping from the Academy's tallest tower. No snapping his neck. Blood, that's the trick. Koschei is sure it will hurt, but if he's careful, it won't be enough to put him into shock. Not at first. Not until he's constructed his next self in his mind and all his atoms are switching around.

This decided, he wastes no time allowing this one treacherous body, which wants to stay alive, to seize his mind and weaken his resolve. Instead Koschei makes sure that this classroom has floors that are easily scrubbed and then goes looking for something suitably sharp. A knife would be best, but no thing so crude as a knife exists within the walls of the Academy. Instead he stops by his room -- leaves Theta a scribbled note, surprise for you, room 6b, sunset -- and collects a radiation register with a suitably sharp edge.

In the deserted classroom, he sits -- no sense in standing, not when he might fall over -- and brings the edge up to his neck. His stupid treacherous body is shaking with adrenaline, but with will alone he steadies his hand enough to pull the edge down through his carotid artery without it shaking at all. Deep, done. He even feels a moment of absolute stillness.

Then pain.

Koschei learns with horrible stunning swiftness the difference between the theoretical and the actual. There is nothing intellectual about this; it isn't like fire, not like a cut magnified a thousand times, not like any simile, it simply is: his body grabbing hold of his brain, vision going black and blood pounding terrified out and it hurts too much to scream, that's good, because it would come out something else entirely and these last few moments he can't panic can't can't needs to think needs to be clever charismatic controlled all these things he nearly is and can be if he only does it right.

There is nothing higher; his fervent pleas likely fall on a deaf uncaring universe. And still: Better, better, please just let me be --

Then the rush.

Koschei is lying on his side. His head hurts, a faint insistent pounding that has nothing to do with his hearts. The blood on the floor is very bright and the world is spinning, the world is hurtling through space and his hearts are racing and every part of him hums with excess energy. He pulls himself to his feet, gasping and laughing, a quiet rolling chuckle that makes the small hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. His robes are an appalling mess.

Yes. First. New robes.

The corridors go whirling by him -- he hears students coming and squeezes himself effortlessly into an alcove -- dashes out again and finds himself in the automatic laundry. The robes he's wearing, besides being crusted with blood, are baggy across the shoulders now. Fingers fumbling for being too quick, he snatches some likely robes, switches them up, tosses the bloodied ones in the queue running through the 'in' side of the laundry. Now. Next. Theta.

He dashes back out, leaps up stairways until it occurs to him that all this running about is a spectacular waste of energy and he continues up still quickly but with a bit more style. One floor, two, he's nearly there, and he enters their room with a sweeping gesture and a grin.

No one there.

Koschei frowns for a moment before seeing the note on Theta's bed and remembering. Silly. He'll have to go back down all those stairs. He turns to go and catches sight of himself in the hanging mirror above their door.

Sharper features. He tilts his head this way and that. Shorter hair, pale ginger; that's a change. A certain angle to his chin, much like Theta's. Dark eyes, almost no distinction between iris and pupil. He tries a grin; it's nearly a smirk, stunning, edgy and convincing at once. Koschei presses his fingertips to the glass, leaving little red-brown smudges behind. There's a thumbprint of dried blood on his forehead. Blood. All over the classroom and that's where Theta --

He's out of the room in an instant, the door slamming behind him.

As he goes back down, all the life in the Academy below him rises to meet his mind, first like snowflake kisses and then like pillows, rubber balls, thrown bricks, hammers. Koschei stumbles. He nearly falls down the stairs and that's funny, that's hilariously ironically amusing and his new laugh fascinates him and the thoughts of everyone at the Academy and further still bombard him relentlessly. He skids past the classroom door and can't stop laughing, a hard gasping laugh full of tears.

Theta grabs his arms.

Theta seizes him and shakes him and says, "Koschei," and Koschei clutches at him gratefully; Theta's eyes are almost perfectly round and he's shaking like mad. Koschei laughs hysterically against the crook of his neck and rasps, this new voice hoarse with terror, "Help me."

Something must happen then. It hurts worse than the sharp edge to his neck did; this is inside his mind. But Theta is steadying his body, pulling him along until he comes blindly and follows his friend up unseen stairs, through winding ways he can no longer recognise, and all the while he clutches at Theta and at Theta's slender threads of thought, scared and determined and the only lifeline he has. And then it's quiet.

Koschei looks around carefully. A pinkish-gray room in soothing tones. He's sitting curled on the floor with Theta's arms tight around him. His jaw aches from clenching his teeth, and tear tracks are drying on his cheeks. New. He swallows hard.

"Better?" Theta asks with unaccustomed gentleness, drawing back a little and studying his face.

"Zero room," Koschei says. Clears his throat and tries again, not hoarse anymore. His voice is smooth, could be a drawl if he wasn't frightened. "This is a zero room. Clever."

Theta's gaze doesn't waver. "You killed yourself." No reproach. No question. A statement of surprising fact.

"No knowledge without risk," Koschei returns.

"You might have spared yourself the mess and found some poison," Theta says, a peculiar tightness creeping into his voice.

Koschei shakes his head. "I needed to be awake and unable to fight it."

"Stupid," Theta says. "Stupid." His hands tighten on Koschei's shoulders and then he's leaning into him, face pressed to the crook of Koschei's neck, trembling just a very little, and everything switches back into place: Koschei's the strong one. He can feel the raw potential of this new body, the sureness of it, the conviction of his cleverness and control. It will be all right.

"You're going to be in a lot of trouble," Theta points out, a little muffled.

Koschei laughs this rolling new laugh of his. "I look forward to it."

{Part Two}