Brighton Rock

6

He couldn't stand that stupid girl. He hated her more than he'd ever hated anyone, and he couldn't think of a great many people he didn't hate. But there was something about her, how plain she was, useless, naïve, insignificant – something about all that which made his skin crawl. She was a niggling annoyance he couldn't get rid of, a fly he couldn't swat; even the time he thought he had to himself she destroyed, calling up out of the blue with her concerns. Maybe it was useful of her to inform him of those women sticking their noses in his business, but he wasn't worried about them. They wouldn't be able to affect his plans, strange as they were. He was sure he knew much more than they did, he had the significant advantage. He only hoped Lily was right about not being followed. No doubt she wouldn't know she was being followed if someone stalked her right to her bed and strangled her. How he'd love to strangle her and stop her from ever saying another word…

He paced up and down the tiny, industrial bedroom of the underground squat he inhabited with his fellows. Three of them out at the pub, as usual, drinking themselves silly. It was why he had all the big ideas, why he was going to seize control of Brighton. Once he had Brighton he could move in northwards on London, and once he had London he had the whole country. Even he didn't know what kind of influence he'd be able to exert with the whole United Kingdom at his disposal. He could stop the obscene hippy fad, ban popular music, get rid of dancing, be the Oliver Cromwell of the modern age…

His attention was caught by a spider crawling along the wall, dipping briefly behind a yellowing shred of torn-away wallpaper. He hated that wallpaper. He slammed his hand on the wall and squashed the large spider dead, smirking to himself afterwards with icy mirth. Peeling back the paper he eyed the spider's corpse, a leg still twitching. Carefully, he reached up a thumb and forefinger and took the spindly leg between his digits, ripping it from the body and flicking it to the floor. He liked spiders, liked the way they made other people so uncomfortable, made them itch and tremble, liked the way Lily had shrieked when she thought she saw one on her dress and begged him to get rid of it. He had smacked her on the arm, claiming to have killed the bug which had never really been there. It had been the only thing which got him through the mundanity of their 'first date', 'first date' trying to establish exactly what she had witnessed outside of the bank that morning a few weeks ago…

He'd have the boys go pick up those girls shortly, after their barmy pub lunch was done. Pick them up, carve them a bit – though the boys often objected to any violence of that kind towards a female. Said they lived in a man's world and women oughtn't be brought into it, oughtn't suffer for the sins of their husbands or fathers. But if they were an inconvenience they were an inconvenience as far as he was concerned, and just like a bug they needed to be squashed.

Damp inched slowly across the ceiling from the corner with the leaky pipe. Morgan kept saying he'd fix it, but the lazy old sod had never gotten around to it. If there was one thing he hated, it was lazy people. The things that mob could have accomplished with somebody else at the helm, somebody other than Morgan, someone like him… as soon as he got rid of Morgan, he couldn't wait to share his plans for Brighton with the rest of those dossers. Then they'd realise that he was the true visionary, the only one who wanted out of their small-time rackets, the only one who saw the potential.

Lucky he had his gift really, he thought, kicking over a chair in his frustration at Lily. Lucky he could see what was going to happen, what to change, how to do it. The consequences would come much later, a century down the line. He knew he'd be dead by then – unless he lived to be 118 – and didn't care about Brighton's destruction after he was gone. As long as he had the city in his grip while he was still around to see it, before he left that world to venture into the hellish afterlife he knew awaited him (an eternity of damnation at the hands of God, he was sure) – as long as he lived enough of the good life while he could still physically enjoy it, he should rather like that nobody else would get to reap what he had sewn. Not for long, at any rate. He knew how much he was going to destroy and loved the destruction almost as much as the raw thrill of the violence he enjoyed. There were few pleasures as simple and satisfying as giving some so-and-so a good carve. Slice right into their skin with his razor, just like his father had done to him when he was a boy. Before his father kicked the bucket, that was… the police never could work out what, exactly, he had tripped on when he fell all the way down the stairs that day…

Vinnie Morgan's days were done. Finley Fletcher's days were coming, and they were going to be a damn sight more fruitful, even if he did have that insufferable girl attached to his arm. She'd love it if they were joined at the hip, if she could handcuff him to her, make sure he could never get away. But maybe Lily would have an unfortunate accident and fall down the stairs, too. It brought him some relief to decide upon that course of action, already seeing it in his mind's eye, the secrets of time spilling out in front of him: there she was, he envisioned, sprawled out and broken, a messy, mousy heap at the bottom of the very same stairs leading down from the road into flat 38C. He looked at the floor in person right where he was standing and saw her ghostly corpse, an echo of their interwoven futures, there at his feet. Bruises on her neck, blood on her face making her nearly unrecognisable; it was the only time he had felt even a streak of pleasure from looking at her.

It really was a rotten pit in that cellar. He couldn't wait to escape from it and live in the kind of luxury that Speyer, the invert, was somehow afforded. Everybody knew his 'nature', his perversion, it made Baby sick to his stomach to think about what Archie Speyer got up to with other men. His revulsion for fornication in general came to a vomit-inducing peak when faced with the backwards breeding of those sinners. The nerve of them to try and gain a presence in Brighton, in his city, filthy soldiers abandoning their wives and going to war to knock boots with any innocent lad who took their fancy. He couldn't stand the monstrosity. It was against everything he knew to be good and true, and he had every idea to quash this 'uprising' before it had a chance to take hold in his streets.

Again he kicked, smashing a hole in the wall and the plaster; no doubt Morgan wouldn't be happy about that, would try to make him fix it, but he was the boss now. He'd get out his razor and cut Morgan a new one, chop him into pieces, let him bleed for hours. But when would those rotters be back from the pub? When would they be able to deal with these troublesome girls who knew too much about everything, the one his mind's eye was unable to anticipate? The ones who had hidden Bertie Fink from him?

The boy made up his mind at that moment. He would go gut them himself, stalk them through the streets. He could take them by surprise, slash them each across the neck, stab through the temple for good measure, like a butcher in the business of curing fine meats, or the Ripper returned. It was no different, really. He picked up his coat from the stand where it hung but was caught dead in his tracks.

It was an awful sensation he hadn't experienced for a great many years, since before his father's death. Frozen in place he was rendered, by some extranatural force, utterly unable to turn around. What felt like invisible hands closed themselves around his windpipe, like they were reaching through the skin, fat and muscle lining his throat and cut off his air supply directly, from within. The girl, he realised, the one who had prevented him from slicing Bertie Fink's throat in half with nothing but her mind. But he couldn't turn to see any assailant, nor had he heard a single sound in his up-and-down, fervent pacing, planning his next move as well as musing upon how he was going to dispose of Lily Watson in the future.

His knees collapsed beneath him as his mouth rattled, spit forming at the corners of his lips as he was left unable to speak, swallow, cry out, or defend himself in any way. How was this fair? At least with a razor you knew where you stood. You saw the glint of it in the moon, heard the flick of the blade, felt its hot, sharp edge rip your flesh to pieces – of course he'd been carved before and knew exactly what it was like, the scar on his left cheek wasn't the only one inflicted upon him in his eighteen years. He fell to his knees and thought the blood vessels in his head may slowly be popping one by one, vivid colours and splotches filling what little his eyes could see as the air ceased to get to his lungs. Was he going to die? He buckled. His chest felt like it would collapse. It had gone quicker than he thought being choked would go, expecting it to last for what felt like silent decades of panic. But it was the opposite, Baby wasn't sure he had much time to think about it before he found himself capable of doing anything other than desperately trying to claw the non-existent hands from their tight position around his oesophagus. The last thing he felt was smashing his head against the wall as he toppled sideways and blacked out.

"I can't believe he'd kill her," said Clara with a hollow quality in her voice, sitting on the edge of Baby-Faced Fletch's worn out, sweat-stained cot bed. His bedroom was more like a prison cell, with only one thing attached to the wall: a black-and-white photograph of a young woman on her wedding day, the half of the picture with the groom torn away and leaving a craggy edge behind. She laughed and cut into her half of a modest wedding cake. It looked like it must be his mother with his father ripped away. "The poor girl…"

"Why does it get to you so much?" the Doctor inquired. She was leaning against the wall, watching Fletcher's unconscious form in the wooden chair Clara had seen him kick over as she had crept into the cellar apartment. She had floated telekinetically so as not to make a sound, witnessing him pacing up and down muttering things to himself about his grandiose plans for Brighton and the rest of the country. "I mean, we've met lots of murderers before. Why this one, potential murder?"

"It's just… I don't know. She's school-age. She'll be eighteen when he kills her. She could be a kid at school, and to get trapped in a runaway marriage like this? Killed just two years later by a man who doesn't care about her at all? It just… I want to help her. She's an innocent."

"Most murder victims are." Clara's eyes wandered to the gnarled, shiny skin on her left arm. The decades-old lightning wound from Esther's electrocution as she attempted to choke Liam Kent to death. Choking out Finley Fletcher brought back vivid memories of that attempt, but it wasn't as had to stop herself in this case. She wasn't a killer, after all, and Lily Watson wasn't dead yet. Far from it. She may have made a slew of bad decisions, but Clara knew there was still a chance. Looking at the scar she hardly noticed anymore, though, made her think about her vow to protect all of her Echoes. Protect them with her life if it came to it. It was the same inclination she felt for Lily.

"Do you know if we've changed anything yet?"

"Still fluctuating. It's bleak down here, huh? It's like a prison. And no pictures of naked girls on the walls? That's not what you come to expect from a teenage boy. I'm sure you had tons of pictures of naked girls on your walls when you were eighteen."

"You're wrong, actually," said Clara, "I have a very vivid imagination. And dad made me get rid of them all. Said they were 'objectification.'"

"Nice to see you're such a die-hard feminist." Clara shot her a glare, but the Doctor only smirked.

"Don't be homophobic."

"I'm Clara-phobic."

"Very funny. I guess you're right, though. There's not even a desk to write on in here." The only furniture aside from the bed was a very old wardrobe with one door broken off, a crucifix hanging from the one remaining doorknob. It contained what little clothes Finley Fletcher owned. "…What do you think it's like to be in love with someone who hates you?" The Doctor opened her mouth to reply but Clara interrupted again, "And don't make a joke this time."

"…I don't know. It's never happened to me. I don't fall in love easily enough for it to be non-reciprocal. I guess I've been on the receiving end of affections I'm not quite as passionate about before, but I've never hated any of them."

"What makes people do stuff like this?"

"I don't know, Coo," the Doctor said sympathetically, "I don't necessarily understand the inner workings of your species enough to say with any kind of conviction why some people become evil and some people don't. We've been together for half a century and I still wouldn't hazard a guess at what you were thinking at a given moment."

"Really?"

"Well, yeah. Why? Are you saying you always know what I'm thinking?"

"No, but you're some ancient alien genius. I'm not. I'm just a girl."

"Nobody's 'just' anything. I bet you Lily Watson thinks she's 'just a girl', too. That's what everybody thinks. I've always thought it's extraordinary how no one consciousness is identical to another, even, say, your Echoes. I've not yet met an Echo who I can say was exactly like you. The minutiae of life even work to distinguish you and Ravenwood. But that's what I find so endearing about you – humans, I mean. The way most of you are so convinced of your own insignificance, when I don't believe there's anything insignificant about any of you. I love showing that to people. It's why you make the best companions, not too caught up in yourselves to enjoy the wonders of the universe, even a narcissist like you."

"You were doing so well at being charming, too."

"It's one of the things I like about being in a school. No wonder Old Twelvey used to lurk around when Ravenwood taught. Showing all those kids that they really do matter, despite what society wants them to believe."

"I think he's waking up," said Clara. The Doctor uncrossed her arms and stepped forwards from where she was leaning on the wall. Fletcher stirred in the wooden chair, tied to it with a length of rope Clara had found underneath his bed; she dreaded to think what he had been planning on using that for. She sort of wished they'd put a bag on his head, or something. Might've scared him into cooperating with them a bit more since they weren't exactly the most intimidating pair.

His icy blue eyes blinked open, casting an unfeeling gaze over them both. Bruises were already beginning to form around his throat from his telekinetic assault; she'd probably been too aggressive but didn't have an awful lot of practice suffocating people. In fact, she was sure she'd only done it less than half a dozen times, rendering her very unpractised. He glanced between them silently and then spat at the Doctor's feet.

"Eurgh!" she jumped away in horror.

"Didn't anybody ever teach you not to spit at people?" Clara snapped at him, doing her teacher-voice. She had had to tell many teenage boys off for spitting since for some reason they seemed unable to help themselves (personally, she had always found it quite repugnant.)

"Perverts like you don't count as people, I reckon," he said darkly. He was too cocky for his own good, still thought he had an advantage in lieu of having all the relevant information. So what if he knew her name? That was just basic telepathy. Wasn't nearly enough to scare her.

"And there's the famous Finley Fletcher homophobia."

"It's Baby," he said coldly.

"Maybe you should be less of a gobshite if you want people to call you by a stupid nickname," Clara persisted.

"Like what? Like 'the Phantom'?"

"Exactly," she said, "People call me that because I'm not a jumped-up little arsehole."

"You have no idea who you're talking to."

"I think I do. I think I'm talking to a pathetic little boy who's too big for his boots, who wants more than he's ever going to get," she said, "Someone who's already plotting how to murder a girl he hasn't even married yet."

"She's pathetic. She won't amount to anything, anyone can see that. Best she does is help me achieve my dreams. That's all a good wife should do, help out her husband," he said, "You inverts won't understand that, though."

"Uh-huh."

"So you know about her," the Doctor began to speak, nodding at Clara, "But what do you know about me? Y'know, in your 'mind's eye', or whatever?" Fletcher silenced, eyeing her up and down. She met his gaze and held it with a degree of authority Clara rarely saw in her, or any of the Doctors. It was only a glimmer of the part of the Doctor which made armies turn and run at the mention of her name. "Do you know my name? Aliases? Where I'm from? What I am?" Nothing. "Guess not. You see, you're a low-level telepath. You get inklings of the future, little kernels of information about people you've only just met, that kind of thing. You can make educated guesses about what might happen, who to manipulate and when to get what you want. But that's small fry compared to me.

"I'm not even from this planet. I'm from a world millions of lightyears away which died eons ago, and the reason you can't really see anything about me and my future is because I'm too big for a tiny brain like yours to understand. Clara's a human, see. An extraordinary human, obviously, but a human. I'm twelve-hundred years old and I've defeated armies, destroyed planets, saved galaxies. You're just some kid with a gift he's using for evil; you got a bit lucky, but you're tearing apart reality with your own malignant ambition."

"It's not possible to be from another planet. It's ridiculous."

"You see? Tiny brain versus incomprehensible, borderline-omniscient alien. If this is a battle of wits, you can't win. I can see time as well. I'm a Time Lord. I can see everything, every point in the universe, and I know what can and can't be changed, too. But we're sworn not to interfere; you're too stupid to know better, taking advantage of things you don't understand. We were in the future just living our lives-"

"Your lives are abominations."

"Shh," the Doctor put a finger to her lips, "The grown-ups are talking now, Finley." He was not happy about being patronised. Clara watched him closely and noticed he was slowly trying to work his way free of the ropes around his hands – she'd keep him in the chair telekinetically if he did manage to get out, though. After all, they'd already searched him and taken his second straight razor. There was no way he could draw back a fist and punch out the Doctor before Clara could stop him. "As I was saying, we were living our nice, abominable lives in peace, in the year 2064. And then Brighton ends up destroyed, which I'm sure you know but don't care about."

"How did you get here if you were in the future?"

"Oh, y'know. You just ruptured space-time and caused enormous temporal shifts to spring up across the city, dragging things from the past to the future where they don't belong. Couple of old bikes, a rockin' pirate radio station – and all those extreme anti-women, anti-gay attitudes you've got tucked away in your nasty mind. Your old-fashioned family values don't have a place in the 2060s, and certainly not in Brighton. Not to mention your schemes to murder that poor girl, which we know about because you were suspected of foul-play and nearly arrested for it."

"I'll make doubly sure not to mess up then, now you've told me that."

"Baby, you're not going to be able to make sure of anything in a while. I just thought I'd give you the courtesy of explaining to you what you've done and why you're being punished."

"Punished? I'm just tied up. You ain't got no authority."

"On the contrary, I'm the only person with any authority when it comes to people who decide they're gonna screw up history. There's temporal monsters, Reapers, circulating out there, waiting to crawl out of the woodwork and devour anything they see as a threat to the progression of time. That's the consequences of trying to break a fixed point in time, you destroy reality, existence itself, kill millions of people. And for what? For a get rich quick scheme? To buy parliament and push your agendas into law? Stopping women getting equal pay, stopping them from getting the right to an abortion? Stopping gay people from getting married? In Brighton?

"Brighton's actual destiny is to become the queer capital of the UK, you know. A nest of left-wing politics, protests, demonstrations-"

"Gay bars," Clara interjected for a moment.

"Exactly," Thirteen nodded, "Gay bars. I mean, we're married and they let us teach jointly in a school. I bet you hate the idea of that, us, educating people. Teaching them that it's okay to be gay."

"It's disgusting."

"Thanks, I'll take that into consideration the next time I go down on her," Clara muttered.

"I'm gonna be sick…" Fletcher complained. "This is my home, you know. You're trespassers, you've broken in. If I got the bobbies on the blower you'd be sent to prison for this, and for what you are. Marriage, for you folk – marriage is holy. In the eyes of God. God would be sick just like me if you ever tried that kind of union."

"Every time people say shit like that I really do wonder if they've ever read the Bible," Clara argued with him, "Because I've read it, and it doesn't actually have any of this hate-talk in it people like you like to cite. If you really cared about Christianity you'd know it teaches to love everyone regardless of your differences."

"I been to church on Sunday every day of my life."

"Then you obviously haven't listened to a word they've said."

"You oughta break out your Playboy collection so he can see all kinds of exciting 'abominations,'" the Doctor joked, "You have all those girl-on-girl editions."

"How would you know? Have you been looking at them?"

"No," she said defensively, "I just… I've seen them."

"Sure you have. You've just 'seen' them."

"You keep them under the bed! Sometimes I need to look for stuff that's under there!" she argued. Clara continued to pretend like she didn't believe her and the Doctor eventually just shook her head, annoyed. "Whatever, Clara. Whatever."

"You done with you little squabble?" Baby snapped at them.

"Shut up," Clara told him sharply.

"You can't stay here forever to stop me from doing what I like."

"We won't need to," the Doctor resumed her spiel, "You're too much of a risk to leave alone."

"Whatcha gonna do? Kill me? You don't have it in ya."

The Doctor stepped towards him and leant down, meeting his gaze directly.

"You're going to wish I'd killed you. I hate to make anybody suffer, but I've got a surprising knack for cruel and unusual punishments. And a fair few telepathic abilities of my own, ones which make yours look like a cheap carnival attraction. Baby, when we leave this awful cave very soon, you won't know your nickname. You won't know your real name, you won't know Lily Watson's name, you won't know where you are, who you are, you won't have your perverse views of religion, you won't be scheming to get rid of Archie Speyer, and you won't be a threat to Bertie Fink. In fact, the way with these delicate operations is that you might not even remember how to feed yourself or go to the toilet alone. You'll be empty. You'll be empty, but everybody else? Alive. Safe. I don't like to do it," she reached up her hands and pressed her fingers to his temples, "I don't like to do it at all. I'm not going to be able to look at myself in the mirror for weeks or look Clara in the eye, but sometimes things just have to be this way. And you've had your eighteen years; if you got it your way, Lily would only have eighteen years as well. It's kind of a trade-off. Besides, Lily's devoted to you. Chances are she finds you here, a bona fide vegetable, and she'll want to take care of you. She'll be by your side every second of every day making sure that you, her precious Baby, stays alive and well." Finally, Finley Fletcher was getting scared, tried to pull away from the Doctor, frantically craved an escape now that he finally believed that she outmatched him a billion times over. "But y'know. Maybe Lily will help you to learn who you are all over again, maybe that sweet girl will rub off on you and you might become the perfect gentleman. Everyone deserves a girl like that, don't you think? Although, even if she does help you through all that, even if you do remember your personality, the telepathic capabilities of your mind will be locked off forever. You'll never regain them. If you do remember, you shouldn't squander that gift like you squandered this one, and know that I'll be keeping an eye on you from now until you're stuck in a coffin in the ground."

He began whispering something very fervently then, a low prayer of some kind, but then the Doctor closed her eyes and Clara witnessed Fletcher's roll back inside his head. They turned white and his leg twitched, mouth still moving with the hushed ghost of the prayer he had been struggling to recite. If there was a god up there, Clara doubted that Finley Fletcher was getting much of a look-in.

It didn't take long for him to go limp in his chair, at which point the Doctor dropped her hands and straightened up again, looking into space. Neither she nor Clara spoke for a while.

"…You had to do it, sweetheart," said Clara, who had purposely not asked the Doctor what her plan was in the fear that it would be something she couldn't stomach. As it was, she didn't like what had happened to Finley Fletcher, but failed to see an alternative aside from actually killing him or locking him on the TARDIS forever. Preventing his telepathy was the best course of action.

"I bet you can't stand me right now."

"I knew who you were when I married you," Clara said, getting up from the bed she had been perched on all this time, "I've never thought that you'll have to stop making difficult decisions just because you have me in tow. It was what needed to be done, okay? Did it work? Is time repaired?"

"It's… repairing. A work in progress. But yeah. The ripples have stopped." Clara touched Thirteen's arm lightly. "Doing that really knocked me for six."

"Let's go. Before his cronies get back, whoever they are. There's more than one bedroom down here and it isn't his name in the phone book, so…" She paused and waited for the Doctor to move, which took longer than anticipated. Clara took her hand and tried not to look at the vegetative body of Baby-Faced Fletch, who had for a time been Great Britain's most notorious gangster. "What is this place, anyway? It's weird having an underground flat here."

"It's, uh, an air raid shelter," the Doctor said, straining to think straight as Clara pulled her gently towards the stairs and the exit, "Reinforced. Probably against nukes. Wouldn't work, obviously, I can't smell any lead in the walls. Cold War hysteria, though…" She didn't go off on her usual mini-lecture about what the Cold War was like in that specific year, disorientated and feeling the resentment she had told Fletcher she would feel immediately after destroying his mind. Clara wasn't angry at her, though; the Doctor didn't need her wife to act like she hated her when she was already full of enough hate towards herself sometimes. All the Doctors were like that, though.

Clara picked a few soggy chips out of her newspaper-wrapped portion, stinking of salt and vinegar. The Doctor had lost her usually enormous appetite and was sitting on the floor, zoned out and melancholy. They were inside a police box, sheltered from the rainstorm but away from people, both against the wall and opposite each other with their feet out. Clara wasn't really feeling her chips anymore, and the hunger left from her unfinished kipper had subsided after just a few bites. She left the damp paper in her lap and looked at the Doctor.

"Weird place for a date, eh?" she said, trying to lighten the mood. The Doctor said nothing. "…I thought there's supposed to be police officers in these things?"

"No, the police put criminals in them when they're waiting to take them to the station. They don't have constables sitting in them twenty-four-seven 'just in case.'"

"Oh. You know… I kind of expected it to be bigger on the inside. I suppose after so many years of going in and out of the TARDIS, you just expect it to happen."

"When Reapers showed up after Rose saved her father's life, this is what the TARDIS was like. Hollow and empty, like a movie prop. Damn phone didn't even work."

"…Do you still want to stay in the 60s for a while?"

"Not really." Clara paused to watch her for a few seconds, but the Doctor wasn't giving much attention to anything happening outside of her own mind. So, Clara picked up the portion of chips and moved so that she was sitting next to the Doctor rather than opposite her. "You're sitting in the puddle coming in from under the door.

"I don't care," said Clara, though she did care a bit because muddy rainwater seeping through the fabric of her dress wasn't a nice feeling. "I don't really know what to say to make you feel better this time." And she usually had such a good track record of figuring out the right thing to say to the Doctor. "Sometimes we have to choose the lesser of a few evils and just… try to accept that it was the best thing to do. Have a chip." The Doctor took one but made a face after biting into it.

"Tastes like cold vinegar. They're drowning. The newspaper will tear at the bottom."

Clara shrugged, "Oh well." The Doctor finished the chip regardless. "At least Lily will be okay."

"What was it about her that got to you?"

"I don't know, I just… feel a responsibility."

"This is your GCSE exam anxiety coming out sideways. That's my favourite thing about you; you care so much about people. Even people you barely know, and those kids at school. If you think that wiping his mind was the only option, then… urgh. I should've talked to you about it first…"

"No need. I trust you. We would have just debated it for a while and drawn the same conclusion. You know what they say; it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"Y'know," the Doctor leant back against the wooden wall of the box, the rain and wind from the storm making it shake, "It is kinda sad we can't have kids of our own." Clara was startled. They had not talked about children, not like that, for a very, very long time. "Don't give me that face, I just mean you'd be a good parent, that's all. I've still got Jenny as my number one parental priority; I still consider her a bit of a tearaway."

"A chip off the old block," Clara composed herself slightly.

"Nice idea, though? Like, raising somebody. Getting them when they're fresh, new. Haven't done that for a thousand years. And even then, Time Lords don't really do the whole childhood-thing. Not in the same way humans do."

"I dunno. Mickey and Martha have always made it look like a lot of work. And so do you, since Jenny never listens to anything you say." The Doctor laughed.

"Worthwhile work. Don't you think the same about Oswin?"

"Oswin's not growing up or progressing. It's a battle just making sure she's okay, Adam and I both know that too well. Maybe it's for the best. What if we had a kid that turned out like Finley Fletcher? Some psycho? How much of that is to do with his upbringing and how much is just… him?"

"Not the nature versus nurture debate," the Doctor smiled, "Next you'll be wondering why you turned out bi."

"I know why I turned out bi."

"Why's that?"

"Because everybody is hot."

"Wow. You've cracked it."

"Thank you. I have a vested interest in sexuality. You know, professionally."

"'Professionally'?"

"You know what I mean."

"Not really."

"What is the solution to the nature versus nurture debate, then? If you know so much?"

"Oh, jeez," she leant back in thought, "You're testing me, wifey. I'm not exactly an authority when it comes to psychological concepts. I'm just not super interested in brains. Like, they're grey and slimy – what's the fuss? I don't know what made Finley Fletcher the way it is. Maybe it's to do with the way we categorise behaviour and create our own moral taboos. Who says murder is wrong, after all? People do. That's why we think it's wrong." She paused and Clara didn't speak. "Not that I'm saying murder is right, obviously… let me sleep on it. Do some reading. Then I'll get back to you with the answers to all your psychology questions."

"Sure."

"…How are you feeling?"

"Exhausted."

"Do you know how we're going to get home?"

"We don't belong here. We should be returned via a temporal shift at some point soon. Failing that, I guess wait a few hours and call the TARDIS. Sooner the better, though…"

Sooner the better was right. No sooner had she said that than the rainfall instantly stopped outside. Clara had never heard rain end that abruptly, it normally petered away – if only for a few seconds. But the storm seemed to completely disappear, sunlight came flooding through the rectangular windows of the police box, and then the very walls began to fade around them. It was like being in the TARDIS as it disappeared, only if the TARDIS left her behind and didn't make its characteristic thrumming sound. Like when the Vespas had come out of nowhere and the Doctor had almost been hit by a vintage care, the police box vanished, and they were drenched in the sunlight of a bright, summer's day, sitting right on the pavement with the Palace Pier in view nearby.

Tourists flocking the area gave them a strange look and nearly tripped over Clara's legs as she hastened to get back to her feet, holding out a hand to help the Doctor up, too. It was strange how those shifts never felt like anything.

"Oh, wow," said the Doctor, "Can you believe that? Like I made a wish, or something."

"Uh-huh. Would you just-" Clara grabbed her elbow and again had to rescue her distractible wife from being crashed into. This time it wasn't by anything so deadly as a car, however, but instead by a young boy on a skateboard. The Doctor was nearly knocked over but proceeded to spin around to get a better look at this boy, who didn't even apologise for nearly running them down.

"Hey – did you-!? Did you see that, Coo!?" she exclaimed.

"The kid? Yeah, you didn't, that's why-"

"No, he's on a hoverboard! Hoverboards aren't – they-" She just spluttered while Clara dropped her cold, rain-spattered chips into the nearest bin. What was the date? Was it really 2064? Were they back where they belonged? There was nothing different about that stretch of promenade from when they had walked along it yesterday, even the exact same ice cream vendor could be seen nearby, the same rainbow bunting and banners getting ready for Pride Month (and Clara could cry tears of joy seeing Brighton return to the gay utopia it was supposed to be.) The only error was a kid on a hoverboard. She took the emergency backpack from the Doctor and drew her foldable tablet out of it, which immediately re-established its connection to the internet.

And there it was on her news app, the date: May 31st, 2064. A Saturday.

"It's the right date," said Clara, already googling 'hoverboards.' And what a marvellous thing she did find, on a Wikipedia page no less. She nudged the Doctor in the back to get her attention and began to summarise: "It says here that hoverboards were first put into commercial use, after a lot of argument about how safe they were, in 2058. Six years ago. Invented by… jesus."

"They were invented by Jesus?"

"They were invented by Brighton-born inventor Charlie Watson. Watson. That means that by stopping Lily from marrying Fletcher-"

"…We've invented hoverboards a few decades too early?" the Doctor finished her sentence.

"It, erm… seems that way. Is that bad? Do we have to go back in time again?"

"No, it's… it's okay. Some things are always bound to change; you can't iron out all the creases. It's like in Flashpoint."

"Or, you know. Back to the Future."

"Yeah," she laughed, "This time we really have gone back to the future..."

"Mmm… and do you know where I want to go? Home. We could even finish what we started yesterday afternoon," Clara said wryly, taking her hand after putting her tablet away. The Doctor liked this idea a lot, and thought it was just the thing to lighten the mood after a bleak few hours; together they walked along the sun-bleached promenade, Palace Pier shimmering in the sea behind them, finally able to enjoy Brighton for what it was always meant to be.