the truth is hiding in your eyes and it's hanging on your tongue

[collector]

Characters: Benny and Benny
Location: The Braxiatel Collection, Brax's office
Time: Vaguely some time after talking to Romana.
Summary: Over tea (of course) Bernice attempts to torment Braxiatel about Romana, because she is a very bad person. A terrible one! This conversation is hilariously tragically derailed when Benny completely misunderstands what Braxiatel says, but since what he was saying wasn't completely honest, her misunderstanding was in fact her getting the truth. Braxiatel failing at comforting people ensues!
Warnings: Benny turns 'paying respects' into a euphemism.
Notes: It was a debate between "Decode" or "Wednesday the Third" for lyrics. Mel chose "Decode." Also, this was just meant to establish what Brax would tell Benny about Romana and Narvin for future reference. But then they had to completely misunderstand each other. Way to miss the point.



To the music of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade Suite, Braxiatel poured them each a cup of tea, the plate of crumpets, Turkish delights, and assorted delicacies between them. The grandfather clock ticked quietly away beside the new mirror he had brought in that week. Today, their table was at the front of the room, rather than near the left. This was because he had moved his writing desk. The pattern of the alcoves had also changed, and one of the Leviathan Graff statues seemed to have altered his posture to swing a sword over his shoulder instead of clasped in both his hands.

He couldn’t help himself rearranging the place from time to time. It helped him organize his thoughts.

Braxiatel smiled at Bernice and sipped his tea.

Bernice looked around the room as she took a sip of her tea.

“You’ve rearranged the place again,” Benny noted, and then pointed to the mirror near the grandfather clock, “and that, is that new?”

She knew it was all ready, but she still had to ask, because she still wanted to hear his exposition regarding the piece.  It was almost like a game they played, each new item would receive an appraising glance and a question concerning if it was new.  It was an oddly familiar routine, and as stifling as Benny found routine, this one was, for lack of a better word, nice.

Bloody hell, how Benny hated that word.  Nice.  It reminded her of men who enjoyed moving in washing machines and exchanging keys and leaving behind toothbrushes as some subtle mark of territory.  Yet this nice was rather nice.  Actual nice.  Warm, comfortable, non-suffocating nice, without emphasis or cringes or rolled eyes or any of that nonsense.

She took a sip of her lovely tea, accompanied by the lovely music and lovely finger foods and it was all very quaint and very home and it was amazing how quickly she fell back into feeling comfortable in this routine, how she only occasionally looked and expected for Anson or one of his men to be hovering someplace close by.  It was nice - really good nice - to be home again.

“It’s from the Yunnan province on old Earth. Supposedly, it once belonged to the Yellow Emperor.” Braxiatel’s smile neither confirmed nor denied this rather fantastical suggestion, which of course meant that it could be entirely true or he was just having her on. And she’d never know either way. “It’s said that in his time, the specular and the real world existed together, and people moved freely from one to the other, like Alice through her looking glass. Then the people of the mirror waged war on the humans, and so the Yellow Emperor overcame them with his magic and bound them in their mirror world to mimic and reflect reality. But one day, the spell will fade and the mirror’s people will break free. In the days before that hour, we shall hear from our mirrors the sounds of war.”

He glanced back to the mirror, sharing a look with it, and then returned his gaze to Bernice. “So I decided to set up an early warning system in my study. Just in case. You should try the Turkish delights, they’re wonderful. I had them brought in from Turkey with an Ecumenical throne I just acquired. The one from Constantinople.”

Braxiatel was wearing that smile of his, the one Benny always wanted to wipe off as soon as she saw it surface.  Years of exposure made her nearly well practice at handling it.  She couldn’t stop the instinctual exclamation of, “Get out!” despite all those years.

Benny quickly picked up a Turkish delight and put it in her mouth to prevent her from saying anything else before she could think.  She swallowed quickly and then took a sip of tea to wash it down.

“Turkish delights, Ecumenical thrones, all you need now is a Holy Grail to store your marbles.  That is why I’m here, isn’t it?”

Braxiatel adopted a hurt expression. “Bernice. Would I invite you to my study under such pretenses?”

Benny took another sip of her tea, her face completely deadpan.

“Yes.  Yes you would.”

“Well,” Braxiatel said. “Now that we’ve finished watching a 20th century adventure film, I thought we might get on to the real research. If you’re up for it, I have a file on my desk on the matter.”

A well-organized, indexed, prepared file. Not that he had been planning on springing this on her, of course. He just happened to have some free time one day and compiled the data. Just in case it came up.

Benny looked at Brax, studying him while she took another sip of her tea.

“Not that watching the film went without incident.  I wasn’t entirely expecting company for the film, and someone you knew as well.  That was quite a surprise, don’t you think?”

Braxiatel hid his discomfort with the subject behind a bland expression and the edge of his teacup. “It was something of a surprise to find Romana there, yes. I can’t say I’m surprised she was at your wedding. I’m beginning to think half the universe may have attended.”

He steeled himself for whatever Benny was about to throw at him now.

Benny couldn’t hide her laughter.

“Oh it’s Romana now, is it?  What happened to Lady President?”

Benny delivered the title in her best Irving Braxiatel accent, waiting in anticipation for his response.

“Am I meant to be defending the use of my leader’s title, or am I meant to be defending the use of her name? I really can’t tell.” He was pleased to find that his reply came off as more mild and dispassionate than irritable and defensive. The less discomfort he showed, the less Bernice had to work with.

“Something Irving Braxiatel can’t tell.  Just when I think the universe won’t find new ways to amaze me.  Although, it was very, very amazing to see you so...hmm...I don’t know what the word is exactly.  Deferential perhaps?  No, that’s not good.  Don’t worry, it will come to me.”

Benny took another bite of the Turkish Delight.

“You really are absolutely right though, these things are gorgeous.  But what word is it?  Oh it’s somewhere on the tip of my tongue, don’t worry.”

Braxiatel steadfastly ignored Bernice’s ribbing. “Romanadvoratrelundar is the President of my planet and my people - my President. I was - am - a Cardinal, an office which directly answers to the President. I showed her the respect she is owed from me.”

Each word was delivered precisely. Perhaps too precisely, on the edge of being clipped.

“Defensive!”  Benny said as she took another bite.

“Not the word I was trying to think of, but it fits for the very moment right now.  I can’t recall ever seeing you quite so defensive.  I’m starting to wonder if perhaps there is something more there, or perhaps respect is just another code word.”

Benny stood up and rested on the edge of Brax’s chair.

“Tell me Brax, do you pay the same amount of respect to all your Presidents on Gallifrey, or is The Lady President a very, very special case?”

Through a great effort of will, Braxiatel stopped himself from edging away from Bernice. Instead he took another sip of his tea. “I give all Gallifreyan officials the respect they are due. Are you going anywhere with this, or am I just going to be denying your implications all through tea?”

Benny’s smile broadened, looking suspiciously like a Cheshire cat as she inched closer to Brax.

“Call it simple curiosity.  Anyway, I have no doubt you do pay all Gallifreyan officials the respect they are due.  In fact, I’m absolutely positive that Coordinator Narvin could back up that statement completely.”

Narvin’s name evoked an immediate and irrepressible flash of distaste in Braxiatel’s expression, only tucked away when another swell of the orchestra soothed Braxiatel’s irritation. Braxiatel would say that Coordinator Narvin wouldn’t know respect if it dressed up in Kadenwood leaves and danced for him at Otherstide, but the meaning would probably be lost on Bernice, and it might not guide the conversation the way he wanted it go. “Yes, you did mention that you’d met the Coordinator. How do you find him?”

Braxiatel also elected not to say that Bernice’s ex-husband occasionally reminded Braxiatel of Narvin. That was just disturbing on multiple levels.

Benny considered the question for a moment, noting Brax’s flash of distaste but not commenting on it immediately.

“Coordinator Narvin.  I’m not entirely sure quite yet, although he is rather official, isn’t he?”

Officially in Braxiatel’s bad books, as of milennia before Bernice was ever born, certainly. “I suppose he is. The Coordinator of the CIA is a high-ranking position, though his is an appointed rather than elected office. His predecessor died a year or so, relative to his place in his time stream. Vansellostophossius, one of the Doctor’s friends from school.”

“So the Lady President appointed him personally, I imagine?”

Braxiatel couldn’t hold back his rather undignified snort of disdain. “Hardly. Narvin and the Madame President are not allies, even if they are on the same side. Though I think he’s finally started to respect her, now that he has to risk dying for her. No, Narvin was a CIA appointment. The High Council usually lets the CIA manage its own affairs, presumably because they could have any given Councillor thrown out to the dogs with the secrets they know.” After all these centuries, a scathing denouncement of the inner workings of Gallifreyan politics remained reflexive to him. “Vansell was our junior, so I can only assume that Narvin was happy to finally get the job.”

“I take it then that you don’t think too highly of the High Council.”

Benny paused and laughed at that as she took another sip of her tea.

“Highly of the High Council?  It’s a bit - well no, not really.  Anyway for someone who finds it so important to show his Lady President all the respect in the universe, you don’t seem especially respectful of the Gallifreyan High Council or the CIA.”

While Bernice had him there, Braxiatel refused to admit it. “As I said: I give people the respect they deserve. The Celestial Intervention Agency and the High Council, as a rule, deserve little.”

“And who - besides your Lady President - deserves your respect, might I ask?”

“Really, Bernice.” There was no point trying to keep the scowl off of his face now. “It has been centuries for me. I can’t be expected to remember every Cardinal worth listening to, can I? Lord Matthias is competent enough. He hasn’t made Cardinal, though. And some of the Chancellery Guard are good people. Andred.” He tried to keep the sadness from his voice as he recalled Leela’s late husband. “And Annos, and, I think, Hallan, by the end of things.”

“So the most you can think of are a couple of vaguely adequate people.  That doesn’t seem to be at quite the level of respect I saw you display for your Lady President.”

He had been thoroughly backed into a corner. He knew it, Benny knew it, and denying it any further would just make it worse for him. “I was trying not to say as much, but quite frankly, most people on Gallifrey don’t deserve respect. Romana is one of the few who do.” He tried to defend his position, which was not objective, by presenting alternate subjective opinions to give his position the look, at least, of objectivity. “The Doctor has great respect for her as well, though he has never shown respect in the more traditional methods. And if even Narvin, who is adamantly opposed to her policies, can come to respect her, I think it’s a fair case for why Romana deserves my... deference or whatever you want to call it. She is my President, and the greatest President Gallifrey has had in... in a very long time. In as long as I can remember.”

“The greatest President now?”

Benny smiled at Brax, smiled in a way that was almost smug, but not quite there just yet.  It was a smile to match the smile he had started their day with, and she was oh so glad she had wiped that smile from his face and could now assault him with a smile far worse.

“Brax,” Benny said, leaning in, a look of concern on her face as she felt his cheeks.  “I believe you’re blushing.  I wasn’t aware your people were even capable of that.”

It was a lie, he wasn’t blushing, but she had a fair idea at this point that he may have felt quite respectful towards his Lady President.

“I am not,” Braxiatel said. At least he was fairly sure he wasn’t. There was, after all, nothing to be blushing over. Something in her gesture was uncomfortably familiar, as a phantom of a crueller history. But he had tried not to let his experiences influence his response to physical contact. That would be irrational. With a ruthless, steel-heeled boot, he trampled on the quiet curl of fear at the back of his head. He was safe. The Collection was safe. Bernice was his friend. Klarzen and Anson and Bertram were all dead. “Now do please unhand me, Bernice.”

The worst thing about living with archaeologists, Braxiatel decided, was that they could never refrain from digging up the past.

Bernice frowned.  Something in the way he said that seemed far different than his usual flustered response.

“Unhand you?  I didn’t realize I was handling you in the first place.”

She moved back to her own seat and picked up her teacup.

“All this talk of politics, I think I will have to do a bit of research on it all myself.  It’s extremely fortunate for me I have so many primary sources at my disposal thanks to the Plane.  I will have to start utilizing that, I think.”

She looked up at Brax from behind her teacup as she took another sip, wondering over him and his past.  There was talk of exile as well, although it wasn’t a subject she cared to bring up.  That topic was Brax’s, and only Brax’s, choice.  If he hadn’t told them - well, she would trust his reasoning.  Besides that, the Doctor himself didn’t have the greatest history with his own people, so an exile was nothing to be overly concerned about.

Braxiatel’s violent suppression of his fear had done some good to harden the rest of his resolve, and it was easier to disguise how uncomfortable he was with the idea of Bernice sifting through his history. Especially as one of those she might go to for information would be Narvin. There were so many things that Narvin knew about Braxiatel that he would rather Benny never have a notion of. His mind strayed over one of the secrets; a brief wince of pain, ever so slight, flashed over his face. The whisper of that name had been so close to him of late that the pain of not thinking of her was almost a permanent sore, an open wound pressed into again and again, perhaps by someone else’s steel-heeled shoes. It was all Narvin’s doing. He had to pry into it. He had to make Braxiatel suffer for the sacrifices made. But the tea helped Braxiatel forget a bit, and he pushed his mind on and away from that topic.

“Do be careful of your primary sources. Most of them are going through trying situations of late, and that does affect the memory.”

Benny sat up a bit as she saw Brax wince in pain.  She stared at him, wondering what to do.  She remembered a memory that she was told wasn’t even real anymore.  She remembered him holding her hand and comforting her and brushing a hand softly against her cheek.  She wasn’t sure what to do now though, as he seemed quite needy of his personal space.

She paused, before pulling her chair around so it was next to his, and reaching out to subtly - as subtly as she was able to do anything - grab a hold of his hand.  She used her other hand to take another sip of tea, placing it back on the table, her tone as normal as possible to offset the physical contact.

“Yes, there was talk of a civil war.  I don’t recall ever hearing of a civil war amongst the Time Lords.  I didn’t think your people were much for that sort of thing.”

Braxiatel glanced down at her hand on his, surprised by the contact. He wondered if something in the subject was upsetting Bernice. The Occupation had had an effect on her, and he often worried about how to help her recover from it. If physical contact was what she wanted, then he wouldn’t pull away. “We aren’t. We haven’t had one in quite a long time. The situation is... very unusual. Of course, I’m not familiar with many of the details. It all happened after I left.”  As if he didn’t have ways of getting news from Gallifrey.

“What sort of thing usually causes your people to get into such a conflict in the first place?”

Brax hadn’t pulled away, so she took this as indication enough that she had made the right choice.  Coming out of what little he saw of the Occupation only to find that his home had been thrown into a civil war was a great deal for anyone to handle, even Irving Braxiatel.

“Well, it isn’t too difficult, just... very unlikely. They almost always centre around the Presidency, though the two leaders aren’t always would-be Presidents. One, however, invariably is. Someone first has to have a very strong idea of what must be done, which is rare for us, and then, even rarer, someone else has to have a strong enough idea that opposes them.” He wanted to explain the situation to Bernice, but he didn’t know if he could without showing other weaknesses. “As I understand it presently, someone dictatorial has tried to usurp the Madame President’s position, and as this individual is ruthless and careless, the rather more moralistic Romana has been put on the defensive. Thankfully, Romana had the sense to scramble the Imprimaturs and stop this from becoming temporal warfare on Gallifrey itself, but it will still be a nasty battle.”

He tried to speak of it distantly and suppress all of his concern for Romana, for his home.

“What are Imprimaturs?”

“It’s a part of our minds and of the time ship technology that allows us and our ships to travel through time.” Braxiatel could not resist the slight smile that slid over his expression. Here he was, his ship around him. The Imprimatur was part of the bond between Braxiatel and his ship. “As Romana scrambled them all, no one can use time technology and turn it into a time war.”

“Does that mean the Doctor and his TARDIS have been sucked back into this war?”

Braxiatel laughed. “No, no, the Doctor... it’s hard to say. Synchronicity isn’t my strong point. But I believe he was in another universe all together when the Imprimaturs were scrambled. He and his ship are quite fine. As, for that matter, are me and mine.”

She smiled, relieved for both of them.

“I’m glad for that at least.  It wouldn’t do for the Collection to lose its fearless leader twice in - “

Benny stopped.  It wouldn’t be twice, would it.  There was never a first time because he was never locked away in his rooms while fascists overran the Collection.

She picked up her tea to take another sip, but her teacup was empty.

“Bloody hell, where did all that go?”

She leaned forward to pour herself another cup, her hand not quite leaving Brax’s just yet.  One handed tea service was something she would have to add to her impressive credentials at the end of her name if she could pull it off.  Bernice Summerfield, PhD, FGAS, OHTS.  It was always good to have some letters to add to the end of an academic paper, letters were very impressive indeed.

Braxiatel turned his hand over so that he could link his fingers in Bernice’s. “Bernice.” He watched her carefully, almost all of his attention on her. That was something important from him. Bernice was given it more than anyone else. “You may speak to me of it, if you like. You can tell anyone you like, obviously. I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you. But rather...” He realized he was stumbling, and that irritated him. He should have perfect control over his words. “I mean that I remember it, too. So if you talk to me about it, I’ll understand.”

He wanted her to feel free to open up to him, to tell him anything, because he knew something of humans and he knew something of Bernice and that sort of thing tended to make them and, more specifically, her feel better. But how could Bernice speak to him freely when he locked and sealed his own secrets, isolated them to keep them contained?

Benny stopped short, spilling some of the tea all over as the shock of what  Brax just said came over her.

“You remember?”

She ignored the tea dripping on the floor, she ignored the burning sensation, because she felt quite numb to anything else besides Irving Braxiatel in that moment.

Braxiatel was alarmed by her response. He pulled out his silk handkerchief  and began to dab at the tea on her arm. He would have suggested something for the burns, but he knew that, when alarmed, Benny could be difficult to drag to somewhere safe. “Yes, of course I remember. I’m hardly going to forget.”

“But you said it never happened, you said it would be better to forget - “

Benny was surprised to see Brax dabbing at her arm, but still wasn’t processing things completely.

He remembered.  He remembered all that had happened and - it wasn’t just her.  It was hard to remember how to breathe in that moment, so she took careful breaths.

“Bernice.” Braxiatel spoke clearly, calmly, trying to break through whatever confusion had taken control of her. “I only meant that I wanted you to move on from it, to not dwell on it. To not let it overtake you. But I’m happy to talk to you about it if that’s what you want. I want to help you.”

“How do you remember though?  You stopped that time line - I don’t...”

Benny tried to organize her thoughts, but organization was never her specialty.

“I don’t understand, Brax.”

It was the simplest truth.  She didn’t understand.  She didn’t understand how he remembered.  She didn’t understand how he just told her so casually. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t told her earlier.

Braxiatel turned Benny’s arm over to get a better look at the injuries. His fingers brushed over the skin gently, measuring the damage of the heat. No bad burns, from the look of it. Some cold water would solve that problem easily enough, and perhaps a patch of analgesic and mild healing-accelerates if the stinging bothered her. “My mind has the psychological and mental faculties to store hundreds of thousands of different histories, though more than a billion or so would be pushing it. Besides that, I was part of the chain of events that undid it. I have to remember, to preserve the line of causality that has brought us where we now are. You remember it, don’t you?”

He has to remember because he undid it all.  He remembered a dinner party that went horribly awry.  Although he didn’t remember it the same way she remembered, and then...

Benny swallowed, nodding.  Yes, she remembered.  Of course she remembered.  How could she not?

She was startled to find his fingers against her arm.  She hadn’t even noticed him move to check on her.  Because she had spilled the tea.  She probably made a mess of his carpets.  That would be coming out of her pay.

“I think I misunderstood,” she finally said.

She was so desperate to cling onto the hope that he remembered the same world she remembered, that she jumped to the wrong conclusion.  Whatever he might have known of it was stored away with hundreds of thousands of possibilities.  Nothing more than a vague dream somewhere, she thought.

She remembered a time when his hands were shaking as he picked up his tea and how absolutely terrifying it was to see Irving Braxiatel shaking.  She clenched her own hands into fists, because she had some idea that maybe her hands were shaking now.

How bloody embarrassing.  She would have to add basket case to her credentials.

Bernice Summerfield, PhD, FGAS, BC.

Braxiatel looked at Bernice carefully, his eyes flickering over her face, the movement of her muscles, the tenseness, the - fear? despair? He didn’t know. Bernice was his... his closest friend. A true friend. And he still could not read her, because he was distant and alien. “Bernice?” Human skin was so warm. Her pulse beat so slowly. “What’s the matter?”

It was a stupidly human idea, but he didn’t pull away because he thought that even if his mind could not reach hers, perhaps if his fingers did, it would help. Humans put so much more weight on physical contact than his own kind did. He wondered if you could be untouchable and still touch someone, or if any moment of contact immediately broke down that wall. Thousands of years and he still couldn’t understand the intricacies of people and what passed between them in the seconds that they lived.

Benny wiped around her eyes with her free hand as her other hand was occupied with Brax’s now.  However clumsy his attempts were, she still found comfort in having someone to at least hold her hand, despite how cliché and cheesy the sentiment might be.

She smiled through whatever this was, because that’s what she always did, smile away problems until they vanished.  The only problem this one hadn’t disappeared like she wished it would, because she couldn’t let it go.  Her entire life was dedicated to discovering and preserving lives history had forgotten, so she should hardly be surprised.

“I just forgot to remember to forget is all.”

She let her fingers find comfort in his as she stared down at the puddles on the floor below.

“I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?  I feel most people wouldn’t be surprised.  It’s what you get when you invite Bernice Summerfield in, isn’t it?”

She laughed and it was forced, and she thought now might be the time to make an exit before she completely humiliated herself, but she couldn’t make herself move, perhaps because it was better to be humiliated than to be alone with herself and with people who knew even less of what was than Irving Braxiatel.

With a careful and gentle gesture, he pulled Bernice to her feet and guided her over to his desk. He sat her down in his office chair, then pulled open his drawer and pulled out a box of healing patches. Braxiatel took out a patch and handed it to Benny, overcome by the bizarre idea that she would prefer to do it herself. “You don’t have to forget. The urgency I put on that before was a matter of... trying to make sure the transition went well. Now that’s it’s done with, I don’t think it matters what you remember.” He was bending over to better examine her arm. If she didn’t stop him, he would very likely end up pulling her into his quarters so she could run her arm under the cold water. In his peculiar way, he needed to focus of this practical thing to help him work through the parts he couldn’t quite understand.

Braxiatel angled his head so he could better see her face. “What did you misunderstand?”

Benny let herself be led over to his desk.  She looked at the bandage in confusion for a second, before realizing Brax meant for her to put it on herself.  She was oddly glad he meant that, although she wasn’t sure why.  Perhaps it had something to do with being trusted to handle herself.  She almost told him that it wasn’t so bad and he didn’t need to go to all this trouble over a small burn from spilled tea, but she thought better of it.

She stopped however, and couldn’t help but laugh.

“I have permission now to remember.  Thank you for that, Irving.”

What was she doing?  She closed her eyes, and opened them again, smiling.  “I shouldn’t snap at you, I’m sorry.  What good would remembering anything do at this point.  I know, it might help convince Bev and a few others that I am as mental as they all suspect.”

What good came from remembering a life never lived.  It was hard enough adjusting all ready, if she stopped to remember everything they had all been through together...

She cleared her throat, looking at Brax.
“I misunderstood your meaning, when you said you remembered.  I was so caught up in political intrigue, barely got any sleep last night imagining all the ways you might pay respect to Lady Presidents.”

She bit her lip and then flashed Braxiatel a cheeky smile, hoping that would be enough perhaps for both of them.  She didn’t need to be reminded of how wrong and how alone she was about a lost moment in time.

But it wasn’t enough. Braxiatel knew well enough how much trouble he had with the personal and the emotional, but that was why it was even more important when he could see it in front of him. He could understand the depth of the injury, though he could not understand its shape or cause.

But he was trying. With his hands still on hers, hands that carefully measured pressure and strength so that he did not by accident snap her bones, he was trying to help her. “You’re the only one who remembers all of it. You must feel...” He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to think of the right words. Slowly, he lowered himself into half of a crouch, so that they were more easily eye to eye. “You must feel like you’ve been locked up and isolated from everyone but the monsters of your bad dreams. Shut in a closet. Alone in the dark.” Braxiatel did not wear a smile to lie to her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand.”

Benny could feel the tears again, although she didn’t move her hands from his.  She merely bowed her head down, still trying to find a way to at least smile to hold it together, but she had trouble doing even that much.

“I thought you remembered like I remembered.  I thought you remembered all the things that happened, that we saw, and I felt so much relief for a few fleeting seconds.  And then it was all gone again.”

She sniffed, then cleared her throat, before looking back up at Braxiatel.

“But you’re wrong.  It’s not simply monsters from my bad dreams.  It was real, even if I am the only one who knows that or understands that.  No matter how much you turn back a timeline, it still happened and I still know it was real.”

Braxiatel thought about secrets and he thought about lies. He thought about all the things he never wanted her to know, and he thought of why he didn’t want her to know them. He was bound in deceit, down to his bones. Why was he keeping this secret? It was to protect her. And now he realized that he hadn’t understood her at all. “I can’t remember as you did. I only lived that one month. And then I made it stop.”

His voice did not fall from his control. Never, ever lose control. Never again. But it became quiet without him thinking of it, into something only a little more than a whisper. “But my psychological and mental faculties are different from yours. And I have been having such terrible dreams.”

Benny’s heart skipped a beat at that, and her grip on Braxiatel’s hand might have gotten tighter.

“What kind of dreams?”

“Dreams of things I know cannot have happened. For a month, it was just what I remembered. The end of the time line. Its last dying throes as I lived through hours I had known before. And then the next month, it was... confinement. And isolation. I thought those were just nightmares. I was only dreaming.”

For a brief moment, Braxiatel wondered if she would shout at him, and if shouting would mean she was in less pain than before. He hoped, if she did, that it helped her. He hoped that whatever she did next, it was for the best.

“But the dreams won’t stop.”

“You remember it, too.  I mean really really remember.”

She thought she should shout at him, but the flood of emotions muted that impulse.  She felt relief and betrayal and so much happiness and despair simultaneously.  There was only one thought that beat through the swell of emotions.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She was surprised at how quiet and small her voice came out.  Perhaps because anything else might break the moment, only to realize that this only was some horrible wonderful dream.

It was always that question. Why didn’t you tell me? He had asked it before himself, had broken on that question, had fallen before an oracle and nearly shattered. Why didn’t you tell me?

He could hear another speaker, almost drowned in her own sobbing. Because you never asked.

Braxiatel did not drown out his words in his despair. He just watched his best friend closely, trying to analyse his way into knowing how to make her happy. He said, “I didn’t want to scare you. To... to suggest that that history was still there, still able to make its mark on us. I wanted you to feel safe, and happy. I wanted...”

He wanted to wipe the thought of it even from his own mind. But then, he was Irving Braxiatel, universal collector. He would never willingly forget a thing. He wanted to remember and let everyone else forget.

“It isn’t quite like remembering. But every night, a little more of it comes to me. So I know.”

It wasn’t like remembering. It was like living through it, and doubting, and fearing, and hating phantoms with all of his two hearts. And with every moment more he lived of it, his conviction to spare them from it at any cost grew. The most important thing in the world was to save his Collection and his people from these monsters that plagued his sleep.

Benny closed her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around what he was telling her.  She opened them again, her focus completely on Braxiatel.

“What did you dream of last?”
It was a cruel question, cruel to both of them, but she had to know.

It was like a blow against the barriers that kept his mind in place. He was a labyrinth of walls, of partitioned thoughts, so he could think of so many different things all at once without stopping what he was doing. The walls sequestered the different parts of his mind, and they held it up, careful structures that maintained the balance, let him function as practical, methodical and precise.

He almost flinched. But he didn’t. He was Irving Braxiatel. It was a dead time line, and he was in control. “My Yeames. And When Did You Last See Your Father. Burning in the courtyard. I could see it out my window. Vosta Dankasta turning it to ash with a firebrand, on their orders.”

Vosta would be dying soon. The disease would take him, histories mirroring each other. There was nothing Braxiatel could do.

Braxiatel separated the facts from the pain, so he could think of what might have been without feeling what he might have felt from it. They were safe. Vosta’s passing was a natural thing. And everything was fine.

Benny could almost remember that day, but then there were so many days with so many losses, it was hard to catalogue them all.  The smell of burning papers and book bindings and canvases still came back to her from time to time though, the same way the smell of pewter from broken sculptures still seemed to resonate in places it shouldn’t.  It was a sense memory and a phantom and when she would take another breath the smell would be gone.  Her mind playing tricks with her yet again.

“Philistines,” Benny said almost jokingly, almost, but not quite.

“I was curious how far along you were.  I think I murdered a man before you reset it all.  I can’t remember if I was about to or if I already had.  Intention is the same as action though, and the only reason I wouldn’t have is because...”

Because of this.  Because of Brax breaking the rules and fixing the game in their favor.

“So it’s just as good as murdering him whether I did or not, or whether he’s alive now or not.  It’s the same reason I can’t quite bring myself to completely forgive Bev yet for things she’ll never even do.”

Braxiatel thought, in a carefully partitioned way, of the Imperiatrix Romanadvoratrelundar wiping out her enemies, ruthless and cold. He thought of the War Queen of Gallifrey. He thought of the Doctor learning to believe that the means justified the ends. And he thought of something ghostly and white, still buried in the depths of the Collection’s structure. A hidden possible future.

“I understand.” He knew that Benny could be made into a monster, with a little bit of work. Kill her son. Give her a terrible organization to hold onto. Isolate her and break her and twist her mind.

You could make anyone a monster if you put enough work into it. Anything was possible. Braxiatel didn’t blame others for what they might do or might have done. He did not see possibilities that way.

It was true, too, that terrible people could become kind and good if given a different life. You couldn’t hate people for what they might do in another history. You couldn’t forgive them for it, either. “I don’t feel the same way. But I understand.”

Dreaming through it, it was much harder to think of Anson as a mere possibility. It was much harder to be academic and clinical, to not feel hate. Braxiatel suspected that living through it would create a similar result.

Bernice nodded.

“I’m trying not to think that way, I really really am, but it’s hard sometimes.  A fascist dictator who will kill millions upon millions for absolutely no reason I can look on objectively and consider that he might have a chance to be something better.  Yet someone I live and work with who just got caught in something so much larger than all of us, I still don’t know how to forgive.”

She was supposed to be above these things, she was supposed to view time and history objectively.  It was her job.  Yet she couldn’t even do that much with the people closest to her.

“You saw it. Lived it. Felt it.” Hidden under the edge of his shirt sleeve, a scar marred the skin of his wrist. “It’s hard to be academic and objective when you’ve experienced it for yourself. That is, simply, the nature of life. Of possible histories. You can’t blame yourself for it.”

“I can’t blame Bev though either, can I?  Just like I can’t get angry at Jason for not remembering something he couldn’t possibly know.”

Yet she did blame Bev, and she did get angry at Jason, and she did cling to Peter far more than she really should.

She looked down at her arm and the slightly askew bandage.

“I burned myself, didn’t I?  Bloody hell.”

She sighed.  She would be better.  She was going to be better.  She just...was terribly impatient with how long the entire thing was taking.

As they say though, a watched teapot doesn’t boil, and a watched Bernice Summerfield doesn’t automatically became stable once again.

“Do you want to run it under cold water? My bathroom is close to the study.” Braxiatel left to the imagination exactly how complex, convoluted, large, and prone to being rearranged Braxiatel’s rooms were. The answer, of course, was ‘very.’

“That would be the clever thing to do, wouldn’t it?  Oh all right then, lead the way.”

It was best that Brax lead the way, anyway.  She didn’t want to find herself locked in a cupboard or on a rooftop or something else equally outlandish but extremely possible.

Braxiatel stepped away from Bernice, rising from his crouch in a fluid movement that didn’t reveal how much his bones ached from holding that awkward position. There was one less lie holding him together, and he could not tell for now if they were better or worse for letting it go. Braxiatel's smile was as fluid, and he offered Benny his arm. “Then shall we go to my quarters, Professor Summerfield?”

One less secret. But the worst was still in his head. Braxiatel took his best friend's arm in his and walked with her to find cold water for warm wounds.