Chapter Text
Jex- Past
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there existed a race of multi-dimensional beings, who thought themselves superior to others in every possible way. They were the architects of the greatest innovations in the universe, capable of traversing the bonds of time and space. They called themselves — The Time Lords.
Their shining world, Gallifrey, was a planet of crimson skies and silver-leaved trees, its twin suns casting long shadows across spires of glass and gold. To outsiders, Gallifrey seemed the pinnacle of civilization, a place where every child was born into the promise of eternity. But behind the gleaming towers of the Capitol and the carefully cultivated image of order and perfection lay a society riddled with hierarchy, tradition, and pride.
Or- in the words of Jex of house Kaelitharun, it was an entire city of snobby pricks.
She never really had much of a desire to come to the Capitol, with its awful elites and stifling traditions. Never saw herself as one to put on those ridiculous, ugly, robes, and listen to speeches inside of the citadel, or contribute to the mind-numbing drivel about how they were superior to everyone else. In fact, she had never had any plans of ever even studying at the Academy, not only because she did not see the merit in the pomp and circumstances, but simply for the fact that no one had expected someone of her status to be admitted there.
The house Kaelitharun were a house of tradespeople, composed of farmers, builders, and artisans. They lived in a village, far away from the Capitol, where the culture was as different as night and day. Growing up, Jex had always seen the elites at the Capitol the same sort of way one may look at dressed up monkeys at the zoo. Strange and entertaining in a way that you’d get when you had only seen something like that once before. But ultimately pitiful, as the creatures had the saddest sort of life, to be dressed up in a pretty cage.
Because what could the Capitol be, if not for a gilded cage? Jex could never imagine it. The people she knew in her world were exactly how she imagined all life should be. With families that called each other by names, rather than some ridiculous title, and gathered for events like dinners, and birthdays. Here, they had culture and real traditions, like the Hearth-Feast, a glorious celebration that occurred twice a cycle, when the twin suns of their planet aligned. Time Lords of several of the surrounding villages would gather on the longest days for a night of fun and festival, as the children performed dances for the elders, and families contributed to one central stew that symbolized their shared accomplishments over the year.
Education and lectures couldn’t be avoided, as one Time Lord of the capitol had made his fame long ago by deciding that every Time tot was to get the same sort of education, so that everyone could contribute fully to the majesty of Gallifry. And while Jex sat the same lectures as any children of the higher houses at the learning houses that they were required to attend, she also grew up learning other traditions. Children often learned the tales of their own history through story circles, a spoken tradition passed on from elder to young. This was how she first heard of regeneration; from the Tale of the Phoenix child- a tale of the first Gallifryian to discover regeneration, in the form of a child who moved to close to the sun, but instead of burning, they were born anew. Not the drivel she had been fed in the houses of learning, of that some dust brained Rassilon had been the one to invent it. As if something as glorious as regeneration could be invented by one man.
But here was the thing about Jex. She was curious, far too curious for her own good. And because information was never the sort of thing that the Capitol had thought to restrict- even from the villages and those who the elites thought as low lives, she had all the information available in the universe for her to learn.
As a very small child, before even the first dregs of a writing system had been shown to her, Jex had been absolutely fascinated by the concept of regeneration. Her father was a repairman in the local regeneration center, where villagers often recovered after they changed their faces. She found the fact that the energy that was capable of bringing one back from the brink of death and healing any ailment, yet was dangerous to any non-regenerating Time Lord absolutely intriguing. Once, while trailing after her father at work, as children in the village were apt to, she had even gotten to witness a regeneration in all of its glory.
After that, she had been hooked.
It was clear to anyone in the village that the young Tot had a gift. She absorbed the information like a sponge, and could recite facts on the intricacies of Gallifrian genetics before most her age could even do the most basics of temporal maths. She couldn’t help herself — her hands itched to unravel things, to see how they worked and then re-weave them. Not machines like her one-day husband, the Mechanist would, but the very patterns of life itself.
She was several decades into her pursuit of this knowledge- not yet old enough to attend an academy proper, or be assigned to start learning a trade, yet old enough that the adults left her alone with minimal supervision, when the wasting sickness came. Nothing fatal — not to Time Lords, who could endure much — but it left children weakened, threatening to collapse their bodies before maturity. Regenerations before you reached maturity were often considered an impossibility, so the possibility of death of those infected was very possible. Capitol medics ignored it; the children of the High Council weren’t often allowed in the sort of scenarios that would require them to regenerate, so why bother finding a solution to why children couldn’t do it? And more importantly, what were a handful of village-born children compared to the concerns of the High Council?
Jex, who had grown up sharing stories and skipping through each other’s houses as if they were all their own, refused to watch her friends suffer. She set up in a corner of the community plaza where so many of their traditions were held- with scraps of discarded genetic equipment she had begged, borrowed, or outright stolen from traveling healers. For weeks, she experimented, using the knowledge she had absorbed from her obsessive studies into the field of genetics, and did what most adults in the field struggled to- she applied her knowledge. She studied the regeneration matrix of the sick children, saw the flaws, and began weaving new stabilizing sequences into their bio-fields.
When her first treatment worked — when a boy who had nearly lost his body was able to regenerate and live to laugh again — the entire village hailed her as “The Weaver.” Word spread. Too far, too fast.
By the time the Capitol heard of her, rumors had grown: a village-girl tampering with regeneration, reshaping biology. Such things were supposed to be restricted to elite geneticists in the Academy, not some Kaelitharun nobody stirring broth in the outer districts.
A delegation came — robed, haughty Time Lords, flanked by cold-eyed clerics. They did not come to praise her. They came to see if she had broken the Law.
Jex stood before them, unflinching, in the same clothes she wore to stir broth and work the fields with her mother. She explained her work simply, without embellishment, without apology. She wasn’t trying to make herself important. She’d just done what needed doing when no one else would.
And that was what made her dangerous.
The High Houses argued furiously. Some wanted her sanctioned for stepping beyond her station. Others, grudgingly, admitted that her insights were unprecedented — elegant even. After all, at least she was from a named house. The house Kaelitharun had not taken part in politics in many generations, but there was a history. Ultimately, they compromised in the only way Gallifreyan politics ever did: they contained her.
Jexirienne Kaelitharun was given a place in the Academy. It was presented as an honor. A low born child, from a village with a name that no one would remember. The youngest admission to the Academy in seven generations- she was one to look out for, was one to befriend. But Jex saw the ruse for what it was- a cage.
The High Council did not like the fact that such a mind had come from anywhere outside of the walls of the Capitol. But she had been able to do what some geneticists had dedicated multiple lives towards and failed. So her usefulness outweighed her danger.
Her work would be studied, regulated and ultimately controlled. She was forced away from her village, her family at such a young age that they would be able to shape her into the sterile mold of the Capitol.
Oh, she had wanted to protest- especially as she was forced into the tight robes and forced under the stuffy rules- what do you mean she couldn’t tell people her name? But the Council had foreseen her protests, and it was made very clear to her that any aid that the village got when times were hard was now contingent on her full cooperation.
So she endured. And as she entered the Academy, and was subjected to the haughty looks and insults of her classmates, she decided that she had a new goal in life- to show these high born freaks exactly what a village girl could do.
She had already been put on the path to greatness by the Council marketing her as a genius at her young age. They’d even named her, taking the name gifted to her by her village, and presenting it to her as a title of her own. The only one of two named students at the academy, and certainly the only one of her age. So she would take the prize that they had unwittingly given her, and use it to carve out a path all on her own.
She, The Weaver, would become greater than the lot of them. Greater than any of them would ever imagine.