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Characters: Irving Braxiatel (

trechier) and Bernice Summerfield (

brandyhabit)
Location: The Collection
Time: after merging
Summary: Waking up in a merged reality is crazy.
Warnings: Swearing and cliches and other terrifying things?

Benny burst through the doors of Irving Braxiatel's office in what some might call a huff. She did not care. She did not care for the calm and pleasant walk to his office. She did not care for the ease of moving around. Well actually, she cared for them a great deal. It was just rather maddening when you expect otherwise and you are treated like a mad woman for questioning the status quo.

"Braxiatel. I've come to have words with you!"

She paused at her phrasing. Who the hell talks like that? She didn't, she knew that. Even Jason created smoother dialogue than that in The Seven Tentacles of Sin. The fact that she even was aware of what accounted for dialogue in anything Jason wrote was a matter disturbing in its own special way and not to be addressed at this point in time. No, there were far more pressing matters.

"Let me redact and rephrase that to be as clear as possible," Benny said with a wave of her hands.

The morning had not been what she was expecting. From the moment Peter woke her to the moment Adrian came and took him to school it had all seemed so dream like. She wasn't sure if it was a cruel dream. Stop it Benny. You're scaring him. If Benny weren't so knocked over by the morning she would've had some retort for Adrian at that, she would've been fast enough to cling onto Peter and keep him home for a very long time. She wasn't though. She didn't realize she was really awake until after the door had shut behind Adrian, after she finally moved to go out the door and catch them, after she had seen the two of them disappear into the bustle of the Collection. Human and non-human, happy, smiling, looking at her like she was mad, Jason so beautifully and stupidly confused when she hugged him out of the blue. She had done a bang up job this morning of convincing quite a few people she was out of her mind.

"I will put this as eloquently as I can manage. What the HELL is going on here?"

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"Ah, Bernice," Braxiatel said, because there was really only one way to greet Benny when she was distressed, and 'Ah, Bernice' was it. He closed his folder - Braxiatel had strong intuition about how long any given conversation with Benny would become - and got to his feet out of manners and perhaps some self-preservation instinct that wanted him ready to run.

Then again, his self-preservation instinct couldn't be that strong, as he strode up to Benny, arms spread wide in greeting. "How good it is to see you!" he said, suicidally blithe. "How can I help you this fine morning? I trust everything is in order?"

Edited 2010-05-21 03:17 (UTC)

Benny moved her mouth to respond, but found in the face of that blithe smile of his she couldn't properly word the flood of emotions coursing through her right at this moment. It was what academics liked to call the urge to wipe that smug look off of Brax's face in the most violent and satisfying ways possible. Or perhaps she was the only academic who called it that.

She balled her hands up in fists at her side, resisting the urge to follow through with that urge. Instead she took a deep breath, trying to find her calm and rational voice.

"No, everything is not in BLOODY order, you - !"

What came out might be described better as shrieking than anything calm or rational. Considering the situation however, she thought she should be applauded. Her mind was still cycling through quite a few colourful terms to call him, although she couldn't settle on just one.

"If my question wasn't a complete giveaway to that fact. So I'll ask again: What the HELL is going on here?!?"

"Dear me," Braxiatel said, dodging behind Benny to shut the door. If she was going to bring the house down, he would rather limit the damage to his quarters. He turned around to face her, smile still smooth.

"Shall I take this to mean you're finally back? Wonderful! I was beginning to worry it would never happen."

Somehow, Braxiatel managed to change his position so that his back was no longer to the door. He was sure she would calm down when she realized everything was safe and right again.

"It would be absolutely wonderful if you would stop talking around me and answer the question. I know that is a lot to ask of you but - "

She stopped processing the fact that he had just shut the door.

"Are you shutting the door so people don't hear!?!"

And the shrieking was back. Good, bloody fantastic in fact. She hoped she'd pierce an eardrum along the way.

Braxiatel winced, putting his hands over his ears and taking a step back. Volume was reduced over distance, after all. Usually, anyway. He said, "Yes, Bernice. I realise that we generally assume that Peter got his glass prison-shattering scream from his father's side, but I'm really beginning to reconsider that assessment. I don't think either of us want Ms Jones coming in here and asking us what's going on, do we? Now, if you'll just calm down, I can explain everything."

And he thought Darkel gave him a headache.

"Are you saying I'm not calm? I should get a badge for how cruking calm I am being, all things considered."

Let Ms. Jones com down. Let the entire Collection come down. There was only one person she was concerned with at the moment. Well, two, but Adrian had whisked the first away and she was very terrified at how much she might have scared Peter with her clinginess this morning. He was safe, he was with Adrian, Adrian was safe. She repeated the thought in her mind like a mantra, forcing herself to calm.

"Fine. I'll be calm," she said through gritted teeth, "if it will get you to give me some explanation I'll be a bleeding monk."

"Now, Bernice." Braxiatel suspected that putting his hands on Benny's shoulders and telling her to relax wouldn't work. In fact, he had a rather distinct feeling that hypnotising her wouldn't work either. All he could do was be as calm as possible in reply to her. "What have I been saying would happen inevitably?"

She blinked at him, her rage dying down the smallest bit as realization struck her. She found her way to his couch and sat down.

"Merging."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. It was a fact. It was in Brax's - no Broderick's - silly brochure. It had been what he was going on about for weeks.

"I expected more fanfare, I think," she said with a laugh, although it was more exhausted and hollow than she cared to admit. "An explosion maybe, some fireworks, a supernova, a ceremony, a handshake and a pat on the shoulder, something. I didn't just expect to wake up and..."

...and have the world she had spent far too long in disappear like a dream when she woke up.

"Budget cut," Braxiatel said. "They couldn't afford the special effects."

He walked over to the plush leather sofa. Braxiatel sitting there was an open invitation to Benny to sit down herself, to get her bearings. To recover her sense of place and, more importantly, time.

Benny gladly sank down into the soft leather beside him. His furniture was always much nicer than the furniture in her office. That had been by her own choice though. An uncomfortable sofa suited her professional needs far more than a soft and luxurious one.

"I should have words with them. Special effects are extremely important."

She had missed this sofa, she had missed sitting in it like this, she had missed coming to visit Brax so freely and not worrying about the officers watching them or the walls that were always listening.

"How will they get their ratings back?" Braxiatel had half of a memory of sitting on this sofa, of reaching out to touch her hand in sympathy. He had half a memory of terrible things they had done to her. Histories erased and rewritten.

Gently, he asked, "Have you spoken to anyone else yet today?" Some part of him was concerned that she would have dragged in some of the damage from the bad timeline. Damage to Peter or to Beverly. The things that would have mattered the most to her.

There was an odd sense of deja vu as she sat with him. There was a line she should say about asking him not to tell Jason, but no the script was reversed now, wasn't it? Now Brax was going to ask her to do the same. She could feel it in the weight of his question.

"A few people, nothing very substantial. They probably thought I hadn't properly slept off a hard night, from the looks they gave me."

She felt herself stuck somewhere between bitter and grateful, which felt like such an odd place to be. The people she had spent the last months of hell with were replaced with ones who didn't have a clue what happened. Horrors were erased as well as heroism and bravery and other beautiful words which no one would ever want to force on someone they love.

"Don't worry, they're yours, Brax," she smiled wryly as she said it to him, still not quite decided on where she stood. But everyone was safe, everyone was safe, Peter was safe and home and with her. Except she scared him this morning. She would need to work on that. It was hard not to scare him though when she was rather terrified in her own right.

"I'll have to do another complete search through the archives to see if any artefacts are missing. I'll also scan for any inconsistencies in personnel. I was just on the vidphone with Broderick, so he's fine, but you never know what might bleed through with situations like this." He was already planning to send out contacts to look at the Axis's progress and reputation in the sector. He would not risk a repeat of what had happened to them. He had to keep everyone safe. He had to hold time to the promises it had made him.

She couldn't help but laugh. How bloody typical.

"Your concern is really overwhelming, Brax. Thank you."

She pushed herself up to a stand.

"I will try to keep myself from ruining your perfect universe."

She moved to storm out the door, but stopped short as her hand reached the door knob. Where was she going? To go get Peter? What if Brax was right, what if she did somehow project onto him everything horrid that had happened.

If she left this office right now, she knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself from stealing Peter out of his school and not letting him out of her sight and probably making everything oh so much worse. So she stood in limbo still, stuck between two worlds, and stuck with the man responsible for saving everything she cared for or destroying all the people she fought so hard with for so long. It was hard to know which was which. Her head was spinning.

Braxiatel's blitheness was cut through. In a distant, detached sort of sense, he could reason out why she was angry with him, but he was disturbed by the illogical nature of her response. Everything was better now. Shouldn't she be happy?

The unfathomable minds of alien beings.

Looking at the back of her head, Braxiatel said, "I thought you would want this."

How was she meant to respond to that? How could she possibly argue with what he was saying? Even she couldn't voice why this all felt so wrong.

"I want..."

What did she want? She stopped herself as soon as she thought she knew, scratching out the thought and mentally sticking something else over it that still didn't quite fit. She repeated this over and over and over again until she stopped and turned around and smiled at Brax, doing her best to stop it from being shaky. The same way she had watched Brax learn how to keep his hands from shaking in another lifetime.

"I want to see your new bronze bulls."

She wanted to see what it took to rewrite history and flatten Daleks and make this new and disturbingly ideal Collection. She wanted to see something new and interesting and distinctly non-human. She wanted to get out of his office and stop thinking about how much longer it would be until she could take Peter home again.

She desperately held onto the hope that if she could just stop thinking she would figure out a way to seal up every bad thought before it had a chance to make an impact on this new world order.

Braxiatel rose again. He had learned the art of lying twice: once, in his youth, where he built himself up as a perfect reflection of what people wanted to see, and again, when he composed himself as the picture he wanted others to see in him. Portraits, though, could be burned, and mirrors could be shattered. The destruction pained him. It would have been unbearably cruel of him to tell Benny that he could see right through her.

Braxiatel opened the door for Benny. He had a choice in how he would answer her, blithe tone and kind words or kind tone and blithe words. With a smile that said he saw nothing wrong with her composure, Braxiatel said, "Whatever you want."

"Good. It should be whatever I want."

Her words came out forced, petulantly almost, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince him.

"They're not going to try to stampede over me as well, are they? If they do try I will be rather cross, very cross in fact."

She waited outside the door for him to lead her to wherever it was she needed to go to see the bulls and the new Collection and whatever he had that would convince her that she was right not to fight for the world she had left.

"Certainly not. They're really quite peaceful, when unprovoked." Braxiatel set his pace to that of a stroll as he navigated the Mansionhouse's corridors. It had taken him a month to get used to his freedom of movement, his freedom from surveillance and intimidation. It had taken him less than a minute to once again act like he was in control, like he was always in control. He only hoped that Benny could soon feel comfortable at home again.

Braxiatel guided Benny down the Mansionhouse steps. The weather was beautiful, on Braxiatel's command. Over the green pastures, large bulls with hooves and mouths of bronze grazed, apparently at ease. There was no sign of the breath of fire they could wipe out their enemies with. Braxiatel wore a proud smile, one that would be terribly familiar to anyone who knew him: he was very happy with his acquisition.

Benny noticed Brax's smile and forget herself or her reservations about their current situation for just that moment. It had been a long time since she'd seen that smile, a long time since they had made a new acquisitions versus watching all their hard work be destroyed.

"You're very pleased with yourself."

Despite herself, Benny couldn't help but admire the bulls as well.

"So how do you expect to explain where these came from?"

"I have acquired the impossible. It's something to take some pleasure in, I think." Braxiatel sighed through a smile. Relief. History would keep its promises to them all. Perhaps he should encourage Benny to get back together with Jason, to be certain that Keith and Rebecca would come into existence. It wasn't exactly what he wanted for Benny, but if that is what time intended...

Breaking his mind away from the future, Braxiatel gave Benny his best enigmatic smile. "I don't expect to. I won't tell anyone, and everyone will make up the rumours for me. Genetic experiment or the genuine articles, as-of-yet undiscovered alien species or future descendants of present-day bovine... the gossips and theorists will come up with much better cover stories than I ever could."

Benny rolled her eyes at Brax, yet she couldn't contain her smile. This was the sort of thing that made her want to come here in the first place. The silly and hard to explain thrill and joy in something that so few people in the universe could really understand. She missed this. She missed the sheer ridiculousness that was their lives.

"Oh, you would say that, wouldn't you?"

She looked over the pasture at the bulls and had the sudden urge to get closer to the bulls. She looked up at Brax.

"Can we get closer? I mean, they're not going to I don't know, make me into a Benny barbecue or something if I just get in a teensy bit closer, are they?

"If you like. As I said, they're peaceful, and they certainly wouldn't hurt me." Arrogance and confidence. Two things he had pushed himself to project during his imprisonment, two things, he knew, he had faltered in showing. He needed to give that sense of security back. Braxiatel was never afraid and always in control, so he smiled, arrogant, and strode out to the Khalkotauroi showing no signs of fear. And if Braxiatel was safe, would he allow any harm to come to his favourite archaeologist?

Of course not.

Braxiatel held a hand out to one of the giant bulls, slow and careful without showing any signs of actual cautiousness. When the bull was content with that, he ran his hand over the side of its face.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" he called back to Benny.

"You do enjoy showing off, don't you?"

She enjoyed seeing him show off again, if she were being in a horribly honest mood. Everything was feeling very much like how it used to be so thoroughly quickly she hadn't even noticed. She wanted to pretend away all that horror that she hadn't even realized she had come here angry at him, angry and confused...but how could she be those things when there were great big bloody bronze bulls right there.

She came up next to Brax, following Brax's lead and petting the bull with him.

"Oh, you're not so scary, are you?"

Her voice took on an almost cooing quality as she ran a hand over the bull's side, tilting her head just so as she tried to make eye contact with this impossible creature.

"I'll have to bring Peter and Jason down here one day. Peter will love it, and Jason..."

She was smiling, although she felt something moist somewhere in the corner of her eyes. She swallowed, still smiling.

"And Jason better bloody love it, right?"

Braxiatel glanced over to Bernice, eyebrows raised, smile playful. "Are you sure it's a wise idea to introduce anyone named 'Jason' to khalkotauroi, Professor Summerfield?"

She paused for a moment and then finally laughed.

"Fair point. Try not to train them to burn him on sight if you can. I don't think I have any magical potions left to protect him."

That would be a good way to make it look like an accident. Braxiatel glanced over to Benny, his hands slipping into his pockets. He pulled out a lump of sugar (how did that get there? slight of hand) but hesitated before offering to the bulls, eyebrows creasing and a slight frown on his mouth. This was an expression that Benny got to see more than anyone: Braxiatel was perplexed. So rare was it for Braxiatel to be uncertain about something that, when he did suddenly come across something he didn't know, he became as confused by his own ignorance as by the point of confusion itself.

"Benny. I know horses care for sugar lumps. Do bulls?"

Benny stared at him for only a second before she burst out laughing. Even in her wildest dreams, she couldn't quite capture what things would inspire that rare moment of confusion from Braxiatel. She tried to pull herself together, but when she looked at him and saw that confusion still there, she burst into another fit of laughter.

She took a step back, ducking her head down and holding up a hand as if to tell him to stay back. She swallowed the last of her giggles, and then looked back up at Brax, the echo of laughter still in her eyes and her smile and her voice, her face slightly flush from the effort of it all.

"I'm sorry. I really, honestly, don't know. There really is only one way to find out."

And with that she confiscated the sugar cubes from Brax, and approached the bull. At this point, after everything if she was doomed to die death by mythical creature, well then screw the entire bleeding universe.

Braxiatel dreamed of long hours of uncertainty where Bernice's laughter fortified his strength. He couldn't be hurt by her mockery here. He stood back and watched her, this old friend of his, the brave feeder of mythic bulls.

"We've been through too much, and I know you too well."

He had just considered how to murder her ex-husband. The thought had been unbidden and quickly passed over, but it was there. Braxiatel couldn't afford to worry about his own thoughts. Keeping them away from the rest of the world was effort enough. What would Benny think, if she could see the ideas that moved through his head?

He regretted that he could not tell her the dreams he'd been having. It would be better if she had someone else who understood and had lived the whole thing out with her, but he couldn't tell her that the dead timeline was still alive in his head. Bernice needed to be able to let the Occupation go, and for that, Braxiatel would have to do everything in his power to show her that it was completely over with. He just had to hope that he had balanced the scales properly, and that isolation was better than knowing about the bad history that still lived on a step sideways in reality.

"Oh good," said Braxiatel as the bull licked up the sugar lump. "They do. Watch your fingers."

"Don't worry, he's smart enough not to try anything." Benny scrunched up her face at the bull and started using a cutesy voice reserved for small children and adorable animals. "Who's a smart mythical creature that shouldn't even be here? You're a smart mythical creature that shouldn't even be here. Yes you are, yes you are."

Benny tilted her head as she watched the bull eat from her hand, it's tongue tickling at times and causing a small involuntary hiccuping laugh to emerge. She bit her lip and looked looked over at Brax. With one last look at the bull, she turned her attention fully to Brax, attempting to grab his wrist and open his palm so she could have him feed the bull, too.

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