Part One: The Return: Prologue

A familiar wheeze resounds through the half-melted halls of Gallifrey’s Citadel, drawing the Time Lords out from their broken shells of complacency.

Like before, the Chancellory Guards come to investigate.

Also like before, the Blue Box materializes, leaving streaks in the vision of the unwary who look upon her before she’s quite dressed.

Unlike before, the Lord President comes to greet the owner of the Box, wearing skinny jeans, a hoodie. The Sash of Rassilon rings his shoulder and waist; a week’s worth of stubble graces his short chin.

He waits for the doors to open, unwilling to give even an inch, a single meter to the Box’s owner in this instance.

The two doors creak; stout boots fill his view. He moves up. Trousers, tweed and dress shirt follow. Soon a whole body with hair and everything escapes the double entrance.

There is a bowtie, he realizes, shuddering. The thing is green with red stripes.

“Did you just come back from fucking Christmas or something? You look like a donkey’s arse.”

The owner of the Box just smiles, his sunken green eyes taking in the shining length of the Sash and the bedraggled man upon whose shoulder it hangs from.

“Not exactly, but close enough. Let me guess… you stole it from his cold dead hands,” the owner of the Box murmurs as he smacks a hand across the Lord President’s back then grips him briefly by a bicep.

“No. he gave it to me. As a birthday present. And, oh look,” the Lord President says, waving off his guards long enough to glare. “I’m bigger than you. Get in my belly.”

“Not hardly. But then, I’m usually the one playing bottom, at least in the fanfics.”

The man who is Lord President rolls his shoulders and smirks.

"You mean those... things where you get pregnant with my love child whilst I deal with my repressed issues by slaughtering all the cute fuzzy animals? Perhaps we should discuss exactly which of us would over a cuppa?”

The owner of the Box smiles and waves his arm in the direction of a scorched hallway.

“Lead on, Koschei,” he says, stuffing a jelly baby in the closest guard’s gaping mouth as they walk hand in hand toward the Lord President’s rooms.