Warning:

This chapter has been rated 9 (out of 10) on the Head-asplode-o-meter by the Temporal Mechanics and Wibbly-Wobbly-Timey-Wimey Association of Plots and Paradoxes (Formerly the M. McFly-Meets-Himself Debate Society).

Therefore any combusting or, indeed, thermically vectored/expelled organs due to the complicated nature of the plot points herein are solely the responsibility of those who dare read it.


Author's Note:

Thanks for reading, all of you. It's been a roller-coaster of reading reviews, pondering every single word people leave me, and either happy-dancing or rethinking the entire strategy. Once or twice I nearly took off and nuked the entire site from orbit, just to make sure, but in the end it all made beautiful sense. I just hope it does to you…

Thanks for coming along for the ride!


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Act VII: Writing the Past

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The Doctor looked up from the console, smiling at Watson. "Well? What do you think?"

"This is… your spaceship?" Watson said weakly. "You do actually have a spaceship?"

"Yes," the Doctor grinned. "And chairs," he added, waving a hand to the eager furniture behind him.

"Yes. Chairs. Yes," Watson managed, pulling himself up the incline by the railings, making it to the high chairs at the back before his knees wobbled and he fell into the nearest one. He decided to blame this strength malfunction on the slight lurch and judder of the decking beneath his feet. "Chairs. Yes. Good." He nodded professionally, watching the two men instruct and be instructed, working away at the bizarre controls. "Chairs. Yes."

"Relax, John, everything's fine," Sherlock said, pre-occupied.

"Oh good. Ok then," Watson nodded, his hands gripping the edges of the seat as he looked around the place. "You do realise this single room is bigger than the entire police box?"

The Doctor barked out a laugh of victory. "Ha haaa! Yes! Thank you!"

"What?" Watson asked dumbly.

"It's just-. Never mind," the Doctor said, still grinning madly.

Slowly, very slowly, Watson let go of the chair to look up, down, left, right - then back to the Time Rotor. "Is that… is that the engine, going up and down?"

"Sort of," the Doctor replied.

"Right. Um." Watson looked at the floor past his feet, considered the rumbling and jerking to it. "Are we going somewhere right now?"

"We are," the Doctor confirmed, turning to rest a hand on the console, looking at him.

Watson swallowed. "Where are we going?"

"To return this candlestick to the owner. Otherwise it won't get stolen from them and taken to the museum."

"And we won't steal it from the museum twelve hours after it goes missing," Sherlock put in quietly, pre-occupied.

"The first of our self-fulfilling paradoxes," the Doctor said with a nod.

"The first?" Sherlock queried.

"Oh yes," he grinned.

"The first what?" Watson said simply. Then he waved a hand at them. "Forget I asked, ok? Just… ignore me."

"Absolutely not," the Doctor scoffed. "You've been brilliant."

"I have?" Watson havered, about as confident as a blue whale eyeing up the dimensions of a child's paddling pool.

"Of course," he replied with a daffy grin. "Very human. Very heroic. Worthy of legend." He paused meaningfully. "Maybe someone should write about you two."

"Yeah, I'm not really a very good blogger," he admitted.

"I wouldn't say that," Sherlock muttered, pre-occupied with taking in as much detail from the Time Rotor console as possible.

The impossibility of Watson believing what he had just heard warred with every part of his brain that found it oddly agreeable, and it was a nasty but short battle later that found Incredulity the winner regarding Sherlock's unexpected yet indirect praise. Another short fight took place as Watson tried to consign it to the 'inadvertent' category of phenomena, but the blogger in him begged for it to have been completely premeditated.

What this resulted in was Watson simply blinking at the dark-haired detective, before shaking his head and looked back at the Doctor. "So… how did you find the original owner?"

Sherlock stepped back from the Time Rotor. "The initials AIC," he said simply. "This generator thing is old, older than it should be - and not from this planet, so, left here by someone who came here and went home without it, by accident perhaps. Something like this would have been a curiosity, something in the back of a run-down curio shop - something a man on his travels might see and take home as a gift for someone in his family. Handed down from father to son then, which makes it a family heirloom, so the three initials are Christian names, without needing a surname on the end. There's only one person answering all those initials, who might have had such an exotic trinket in their possession shortly before it was stolen from him and 'donated' to the Victoria and Albert in 1882," he said.

"And we're going to just drop in on them?" Watson asked. "But… that was 1882. That was… a hundred and twenty-odd years ago! They'll be long dead by now!"

The Doctor waved his arms wide in display. "Timeship," he said pointedly.

Sherlock nodded. "The Doctor does travel in time, don't forget."

"Wha-. Oh. So… Oh my God! Are we travelling in time now?" Watson demanded, gripping the edges of the seat again.

"Yes," the Doctor smiled. "We'll be landing in… Ooh, just about now." He turned and pulled at a lever, just as Sherlock grabbed the railing behind him.

The TARDIS gave a wheeze and a very sound bump made them all squeeze their hands more tightly to their individual ideas of security. The ship sighed, happy to be at rest, as Sherlock turned and headed down to the doors, the Doctor following.

"But - but… We can't just swan around here, in 1882!" Watson protested, running after them. The three of them stood by the doors. "What happens to the future if we touch something or break something or-"

"John," the Doctor said with a knowing smile. "I think we'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" he blurted, worried.

"Yes." He turned and pushed the door open, stepping out.

"Just don't break anything," Sherlock warned, with just a hint of teasing, before he followed.

Watson took a deep breath and poked his head out of the door, staring around at the alleyway. He hastened after the other two men and stopped dead, his mouth dropping open at the sight of a street half-full of people walking to and fro. Everyone appeared oblivious to the strange men on the pavement in front of an alley, from where some rather odd noises and lights had just escaped. Watson's eyes ranged around as if in need of a Lonely Planet for the city of Completely Knocked For Six. "Oh," he blinked. "This is… really 1882?" he breathed.

"Welcome to Southsea," the Doctor grinned. "Address?"

Sherlock pulled his phone out of his pocket, reading something. "Elm Grove. Number… 1, Bush Villas."

Watson pointed at his phone. "Excuse me, how are you getting a signal on that?"

"Tethered to the ship, John," Sherlock said, distracted, as he turned and grabbed the elbow of a passer-by. "Excuse me," he said sharply. "We're looking for a medical practice on Elm Grove."

The man freed his arm quickly, looking the detective up and down. Then he pointed behind him. "That way," he said, before hurrying on his way.

"Um - thank you!" Watson called after him. The three of them hurried down the pavement, and while two of them simply wanted to get a shift on, the third, shortest member was lost in the reality of being in the past. "This is weird," he blurted.

"How so?" Sherlock asked, pre-occupied.

"Well… we're in 1882. I keep expecting Colin Firth to appear out of nowhere in proper BBC costume drama garb," he said, with a small smile.

The tall Gallifreyan looked at him. "Fun, isn't it?"

"Bloody scary," Watson admitted. But then he grinned.

The three of them turned the corner, where the street sign welcomed them to Elm Grove.

"So you never did say - who is this owner?" Watson asked, as they found number one and went up the path, Sherlock rapping rather soundly on the glass of the front door.

"No-one important. He writes - or rather, will write, Professor Challenger stories," Sherlock said briskly. He knocked again and again until the door whisked open.

A young man looked out at him. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Ah, Doctor," Sherlock said, a wide smile plastered on his face. "I believe we have something that belongs to you."

The man, not quite as tall as Sherlock, his suit jacket missing and a stethoscope hanging loosely over his shoulder, simply blinked. "Me?"

"You, sir," Sherlock said, already putting a foot in the door and whisking past him, heading down the landing. "Come along, John, there's a story here worthy of your blog," he called over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry about this," Watson said earnestly, but the man shook his head.

"Don't be. I had a professor who was just the same," he said with a professional smile. "Come on in, then." He opened the door much wider and stood back, and the two doctors of differing disciplines and planets nodded gratefully, walking in. The man closed the door, pulling the stethoscope from his shoulder and bundling it in his right hand. "This way, gentlemen," he said, waving a hand out in front of them.

They walked along the landing until Sherlock's head poked out from round a doorjamb a few feet away, searching for them. "Hurry up, John. You have to see this."

Watson took a deep breath and walked on. He rounded the corner and took in the doctor's office, with its blinds and antique - new - desk, the chairs and the glass-fronted display case at the far end, all manner of accoutrements and trinkets on the shelves. He wandered up to the glass, looking in.

He gasped, putting a hand up to point at the object at the front. "Is that-"

"Lovely candlestick, isn't it? Rumoured to be one of a pair," the man said, coming into the room behind the Gallifreyan, closing the door behind them. "No-one's ever seen the two together, though."

"We're too early," Sherlock said suddenly. The other three men turned and looked at him. "We're too early," he reiterated, before looking back at the medical doctor and his smart 1882 clothes. "You haven't had any break-ins? Burglaries?"

"Erm… no, none at all," the doctor replied, his face a little concerned. "Should I be worried about one?"

Sherlock turned away quickly, his palms pressed together under his nose, thinking.

"When you say 'too early'," Watson offered, "do you mean it hasn't been… borrowed yet?"

"Exactly that," Sherlock agreed, his eyes going over the office so closely the furniture shrank back, muttering about personal space issues. "Wait… wait wait wait," he breathed, then turned on the only alien in the room. "We're not too early at all, are we? - Are we too early?"

"No," the Gallifreyan said wisely, but his knowing, fond smile was only too evident.

"Why? What have I missed?" Sherlock demanded with almost child-like eagerness.

"A little bit of fourth-dimensional stuff," he allowed. "And one thing you couldn't possibly have worked out with the data you had to hand."

Sherlock relaxed slightly. "Explain."

"You know how this one is all dark and deactivated?" the Gallifreyan said, producing the other, matching candlestick from his pocket. "Well… it can't stay like that. Can it."

"Well blow me down," the owner said incredulously. "The second candlestick! And I thought it was a myth! Wherever did you find it, sir!"

"That is a very long story," Watson sighed.

The man put his hands out for the generator. "May I?"

The Timelord handed it over and he took it carefully, going to the glass case and opening it, setting it on the shelf by the other one.

"The colours aren't the same," he noted. "The red and green has come off."

"Yes… it's just a candlestick now," the tall alien Doctor said. "The other one, though… That's more complicated."

Watson gasped. "You mean that's a generator too?"

"No," Sherlock realised. "It's the same generator. Earlier in its life."

Watson just blinked at him.

Sherlock frowned, and great tides of intellect and pure stubborn force of will were applied to the particularly knotty problem he had apparently stumbled over. "But that means… The other one, the one we found here first… it should be dark and useless too. Which means none of this can ever have happened!"

"Excuse me," Watson said quietly. "Could you-"

"Oh yes," Sherlock said with irritation. "Someone will break in here to steal a candlestick, believing it to be valuable because of the colours - but they'll leave the blackened one because they'll think it's damaged. They'll find out that they can't sell it as a single item but don't want to risk coming back to take the blackened one, so they'll give up and sell it to some misguided, helpful soul in the museum in London instead. The museum will analyse it, find out it's made up of metals they can't divine and simply give up and put it on display. One night, a grainjellian will accidentally be in the Victoria and Albert Museum and see it get set in the case, and call his boss - the man from the riverbank. He will call his friend the Judoon, offering him what he thinks is the universe's last lenticular alignment feed generator for a hefty price. The Judoon will contact someone who will also pay handsomely for it, and the deal will be set up. The grainjellians will go to 2011 to steal it from the museum, but the Doctor and I will have already not yet stolen it, so it won't be there. You know the rest," he snapped.

Watson let his mouth flounder.

"I say, that's extraordinary!" gasped the only man from 1882.

"Well," the alien announced, drawing everyone's attention. "You're mostly right. The only thing you don't know - couldn't know - is that there will be no dark, deactivated one. Because…" He moved to the case, opening the glass again and picking up the red and green bespeckled specimen. "When you turn it on, it does this really really neat trick." He turned it upside down, pressed a single green mark and then each of the red tips of the holders, and then put it back on the shelf.

The red tips pulsed, the green circles began to shine, and all four men watched with faces that ran the gamut from rapture to horror, as the working generator began to vibrate and hum.

"Should it be doing that?" Watson dared.

"Watch," the alien advised.

Four pairs of eyes witnessed the second, dark generator begin to buzz. The marks on the trunk, formerly green but now a sad and unremarkable black, flickered and started to pulse. The red tips followed suit, and barely thirty seconds later, the blackened, defunct version had been restored. They found themselves looking at two identical candlesticks.

The Doctor reached out and picked up the one on the left, turning it over and pressing at green and red tips. The noise died, the lights and power seemed to bleed off, and he put it back down.

They looked from one candlestick to the other, finding them both, once again, clean, shiny - working.

"Well I'll be damned," Watson whispered. "Did it just repair the other one?"

"It couldn't have done that - it's only self-repairing," the Doctor allowed, his hands in his pockets. "So, finding itself in a state unable to function - confusing its future self for its current one - it set about repairing itself. Only the self it repaired was itself from its own future - the 'other' one," he beamed. "Cool, eh? Now, when I put it in the bottom cupboard here…" He bent and opened the doors at the base of the display case, putting it on the shelf. He closed the doors and looked up. "…And ask our new friend here to leave it in there, the original one will get stolen a short time from now to end up the in museum, but it'll leave behind the this repaired one, still working. Our friend here can take it out and put it back on the shelf. When we return our deactivated one in reality a hundred and twenty-nine years but to everyone else only ten minutes go this afternoon, they'll both be here, ready to start the cycle for the first time. Again." He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket and it buzzed at the doors for a moment. "Locked."

"I think I have a headache," Watson sighed, straightening up and finding the local medical man watching them all.

"Extraordinary!" he managed. "Absolutely… mad! You're all mad as a box of frogs!" he exclaimed, but he was chuckling and running a hand through his thinning hair. "What a trick, sir! What a story there must be to tell!"

"It's easy to put together," Sherlock said dismissively, his gaze wandering the room. "The real question would be why you have the generator in the first place."

"Oh, my father gave it to me - a gift from the Dark Continent, I think," he said.

"Ah," Sherlock nodded, looking at Watson with a very satisfied smile.

"Well, let's all have a sit down and get to know each other, shall we?" the man said eagerly, waving a hand at the chairs in the room.

"We know as much as we need to know," Sherlock replied, definitely uninterested. Watson elbowed him rather sharply, putting a fist to his own mouth. 'Manners', he coughed into his hand. Sherlock's eyes slid to him, then the Doctor. The Gallifreyan raised his eyes at him rather pointedly. Sherlock gave a small sigh and forced his lips into a line that just about passed for a polite smile. "Fine. Let's," he said, making an effort to sound pleasant.

"How could you know about me? We've just met, sir," the doctor smiled.

Sherlock's right eyebrow raised a full inch, and Watson groaned, turning his eyes up in a plea for help from the Gallifreyan next to him. The Doctor simply shrugged.

Sherlock took a slight breath. "You're a doctor and a good one, but you don't have a lot of business so you scribble down your little stories and hope to see them in print one day because it amuses you. You've just split from your former classmate at the practice you two had in… Plymouth, and now you've set up here in the hopes of having a more relaxed working life, seeing as your previous partner drove you to distraction," he went on.

"Why, that's… absolutely right!" the man blurted. "However did you know?"

Sherlock smiled slightly, wandering to the desk and picking up a sheet of paper. "This isn't note paper or prescription paper, it's thicker, more expensive - you're writing a letter or medical essay, then. But it's not a letter, judging by the lack of an address block in the blotter and the absence of stamps and envelopes on your desk - and it's not a medical essay because you've screwed up and thrown away more than you've written," he said, pointing to the waste paper basket. "Prose, then. The name on the practice outside has one name on it but it was meant to have two - the painter managed to change the letters and space it out, so you thought you would have another investor but they pulled out. Why would you need an investor in your practice when you could have a partner? You don't want to take on a partner to help you out - why not? Because the last time you did you found him difficult to work with."

"I know how he feels," Watson muttered.

Sherlock ignored him. "You're a young man, this is your second business - but the first time you tried it would have been with someone you knew and could rely upon professionally - a former classmate or alumni, then."

"Yes! Exactly right!" the man grinned, shaking his head. "And how did you know I'd come here from Plymouth?"

"Simple. The opened letters on your desk - your former partner has written this new address on it and had them sent on - but the original address on the envelope was Plymouth," he said with a small shrug.

The man clapped his hands together, apparently overjoyed. "Stupendous, sir! Simply stupendous! And I don't even know your name!"

"Sher-"

"Sean. Sean - ahm - Jones," the Doctor interrupted quickly. Sherlock looked at him and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

"And my… blogger," Sherlock said, waving a hand to Watson.

"Blogger?" the man asked.

"Someone who journals the more exciting parts of my life," Sherlock allowed.

"Oh I see - like a Boswell?"

"Rather much, yes," Sherlock grinned suddenly. "My Boswell - Doctor John - um - Washington."

"Hello," Watson managed, shaking the man's hand.

"And Doctor Smith," Sherlock added, waving a hand to the Gallifreyan.

"Doctor John Smith," the Timelord nodded, putting his hand out and shaking his firmly.

"Well that's a fine thing!" the man chuckled. "Three of us doctors, eh? And you sir, you're not in the medical profession?" he asked Sherlock as the Gallifreyan stepped back.

"Oh no, not me," Sherlock said. "I'm a… consultant."

"Well, I say," the man said. "I really must hear this story over again," he said, waving to the chairs. "Please, sit down, gentlemen. Mr Jones - you must walk me through this amazing deductive reasoning thing you do - it's astounding, sir. But first - tell me everything about this incredible case of a missing candlestick."

"Will you turn it into a story?" Sherlock asked slyly.

"You know, I just might!" the man laughed, as the four of them sat.

"Then I don't know if I should," Sherlock said, rather more relaxed than he had sounded.

The Doctor leaned forward slightly. "Oohh, I think perhaps you should. It would solve our other little self-fulfilling paradox we have here," he smiled.

"You mean apart from the candlesticks?" Watson asked dumbly.

"Oh yes. There's also the small matter of me remembering having read books that haven't been written. Yet," the Doctor said to him from the side of his mouth as there was a knock at the door.

A blond female head appeared round the edge. "Oh, Doctor," said the young woman. "Mr Beeton just called, said he'd like to talk to you about offering you a submission for his Christmas paperback gazette, perhaps for next year, if you feel ready. And Mrs Winslow has had to cancel her appointment for this afternoon: you've no-one until four."

"Thank you, Miss Grant," he nodded.

She nodded and disappeared, closing the door again.

The man leaned forward, moving his name plate away from the front of his desk and clasping his hands together. "You know, I've been looking for something to write about that I can really get my teeth into," he confided. "Perhaps the absolute fantasticness of your story might spur me on, what?"

"Perhaps," 'Doctor John Smith' grinned, sitting back and deciding to say nothing at all until four o'clock.

"So, where do we start?" the man asked, looking at Sherlock and waiting patiently.

"Well, Doctor… Doyle, is it?" he asked, eyeing the name plate.

"I prefer Conan Doyle - but please, call me Arthur," he replied eagerly. "So, start at the beginning - and explain everything."

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FIN