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Father Brown is fairly confident that he can correctly identify everyone in Kembleford from a distance of thirty yards, even when their back is turned. He’s always had a knack for it, long before it came in handy in his current line of work (leading St. Mary’s or solving murders, take your pick), but he’s only gotten better in the last few years. That’s how he knows as he turns his bicycle off of the lane that he’s approaching a stranger.
Said stranger still hasn’t turned around, though Father Brown suspects from the slight tensing of his shoulders that he knows perfectly well he’s being observed. He’s too busy examining the grass in front of him with the sort of intensity Father Brown wishes Inspector Mallory would learn to employ at crime scenes to care.
He’s the sort of man who would make Mrs. McCarthy cluck her tongue—fretfully or judgmentally, depending on her mood that day. His hair is cropped close to his head, and nearly the whole of him is eclipsed by a leather jacket. And when he finally does turn around, when Father Brown is barely ten feet from him, Father Brown knows that haunted look in his too-old eyes all too well.
Not old enough for both wars, probably, Father Brown thinks, but certainly old enough for one.
“Hello,” he says cheerfully as he dismounts. “Were you stargazing last night, too?”
“Something like that,” the man says, returning to his inspection. “What did you see?”
Without waiting for an invitation, Father Brown joins him. The man looks him up and down in a cursory way that reminds him of the first time he met Inspector Sullivan before pulling a long, silver, wand-like device from his pocket.
“What’s that?”
Technology has always fascinated him, but he’s never seen anything like this before.
“Sonic screwdriver,” the man replies, as if he’s answered the question when all he’s done is confuse Father Brown further. “What did you see?”
Father Brown barely hears him. He’s more preoccupied with the blossoms sprouting from the bush at the man’s feet.
“It’s April,” he says softly to himself as he plucks one small bud from the dirt to look more closely. “But the dog rose doesn’t bloom like this until June at least.”
The man’s brow knits together. Then, he aims the little silver device at the flower. Father Brown jumps when it buzzes, but it doesn’t, as far as he can tell, do much of anything.
“Ah,” says the man. He must be able to decipher some sort of reading from his device. “Right, thanks for the hand. Who owns this land?”
“It’s the Turner farm, but it’s just Mrs. Turner, now.”
He gestures over the hill to their left towards her house, but before he can open his mouth to ask why that would be important, the man takes off. Without really deciding to, Father Brown yanks his bicycle upright and hops on. He catches up with the stranger right as he reaches Mrs. Turner’s door.
The man sighs. “No chance you’re going to let this alone, is there?”
Father Brown merely smiles the bland sort of smile he turns on Inspector Mallory when he’s weaponizing politeness. “She’s part of the parish.”
“Of course she is.”
The man knocks. After a minute or so, Father Brown reaches into his pocket for the lockpick set he appropriated from Sid a year or two ago.
“Allow me,” he says.
The man lets out a disbelieving laugh. “What sort of priest are you?”
But before Father Brown can pick the lock, the stranger points his sonic screwdriver—whatever that means—at it. After some more faint buzzing, he reaches forward and opens the door.
“What is—” Father Brown begins, but the man sweeps past him and into Mrs. Turner’s foyer without giving him a chance to finish.
Father Brown hastens after him. Mrs. Turner would be far less surprised to find Father Brown in her house unannounced than the stranger—he has a bit of a reputation for turning up in odd places, after all.
The sitting room looks much as it always has. Father Brown spent a fair amount of time there after Mr. Turner died, mostly making pots of tea and helping organize the flower bouquets. Of course, back then, there hadn’t been a body sitting in Mrs. Turner’s chair.
Unfazed, Father Brown eases himself to his knees beside the body and pulls out his stole. Meanwhile, the man buzzes his sonic screwdriver. It’s easy enough to shut the noise out while he works—he’d done enough of that during the Second World War, thank you very much.
“Looks as if Mrs. Turner’s died of old age,” the man says, mostly to himself, looking down at the screwdriver again.
Father Brown wants, very badly, to ask what sort of device can open doors and determine cause of death, but that’s not important right now.
“Only that’s not Mrs. Turner,” Father Brown says, tucking his stole away into his cassock as he rises. “Mrs. Turner is barely thirty. Not exactly a likely candidate to die of old age.”
But his voice slows as he’s speaking, because the little details are coalescing as they always do at the close of a case. Because he knows the ring on the dead woman’s finger, just as he recognizes her dress and the mole at the corner of her mouth.
“But—” Father Brown frowns, his eyes roaming the old woman’s face.
It’s like looking at a childhood photo of a friend you’ve only known in adulthood, searching for the small similarities. He’d done that with a photo of Lady Felicia once.
“But that is Mrs. Turner. She wore this dress to Mass this morning.”
Father Brown gets the sense that if he follows this line of thought, he’s going to open a door he can’t shut again. But he’s never been very good at stifling his curiosity. The flowers, Mrs. Turner—
“It’s as if there’s something…wrong with time.”
For the first time, the man grins. His smile is wider than Father Brown might have imagined, and it makes him look at least half a decade younger. Something about it is infectious—Father Brown smiles right back.
“Oh, I like the clever ones.” The man stares intently at him. “Are you really a priest?”
“Father Brown,” he introduces himself in reply, holding his hand out to shake.
“I’m the Doctor.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Are you really a doctor?”
At that, the Doctor actually laughs. Father Brown wouldn’t have guessed it, but he has a pleasant laugh—deep and full and warm, the kind that makes you want to laugh along. He would, ordinarily, but he’s hyperaware of poor Mrs. Turner and the fact that whatever killed her is beyond his comprehension.
But, apparently, not beyond the Doctor’s.
“You kept asking about what I saw last night,” Father Brown says. “Something fell from the sky—only it didn’t look like a meteorite. I thought it might’ve landed on—”
The rest of his sentence is drowned out by a boom that actually rattles the floor enough to knock Mrs. Turner’s teacup off of the table next to her. It shatters on impact with the floor. To Father Brown’s amazement, it then reforms and flies back into place before shattering again—and again, and again, and again.
“There’s your meteorite, Father,” the Doctor says with that same grin. “Come on, then!”
He all but bounds out of the room. Father Brown remains for a moment, watching the teacup loop, and then hurries along after him.
The crater, which has enveloped poor Mrs. Turner’s garden, wouldn’t have looked out of place in the First World War. Father Brown suppresses a shudder at the thought of that sort of destruction happening in Kembleford and joins the Doctor standing at the edge, peering down.
“There’s nothing there,” he says. “But how can that be? We heard the crash.”
He glances sideways at the Doctor, who has gone very still. He’s staring down into the crater, but something tells Father Brown that he’s not actually seeing it. Father Brown remembers that glazed-over look from the military hospitals where he’d been assigned and the trenches long before that. He places a gentle hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, careful not to startle him, and waits.
Finally, the Doctor blinks and rouses himself. “It’s a time grenade.”
“A grenade?” Father Brown asks, taking an instinctive step back.
“Not like that. Still deadly, eventually—” said with a jerk of his head back towards where Mrs. Turner’s body is sitting in her chair— “but not like you’re thinking. And anyway, it’s not there. It’s looping, just like the teacup, but the grenade itself is missing. Someone must’ve moved it after it crashed last night.”
“Mrs. Turner might’ve rung the police,” Father Brown suggests. “They might’ve taken the, erm, time grenade back to the station.”
The Doctor turns swiftly on his heel and heads for Mrs. Turner’s shed. When Father Brown doesn’t follow him, he pauses. “Are you coming or not?”
“But the station is back this way!”
Without responding, the Doctor keeps walking. Father Brown follows after a moment of deliberation. If the Doctor is right, the time grenade has been in the police station for at least ten hours. A few minutes’ detour to an old shed is hardly going to hurt.
It doesn’t surprise him that the Doctor walks right into the shed. It isn’t as if this is Father Brown’s first time breaking and entering, so he follows without hesitation.
“What’s a police box doing in here?” he asks.
Surely he would’ve heard if they were building a new one. Mrs. McCarthy goes to all the town meetings and always has something to say about Inspector Mallory’s budget. Besides that, there’s very little point to having a police box in a shed. And this one isn't even the proper color.
“Look at us, actually blending in for once” the Doctor says, running his fingers down the wood of the door, almost as if he’s stroking a horse.
He produces a key from his pocket, unlocks the door, and takes a step inside. Then, he pokes his head back out to smile at Father Brown.
“Come on, then! I think you’ll like this, Father.”
Father Brown steps into the police box—and into an entirely new world. His breath catches in his throat at the sight, so he stands in the entryway for a long moment, drinking it in.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, jumping a little when his voice echoes. “No—it’s a vehicle, isn’t it? She’s beautiful.”
The Doctor flicks a switch on the most massive console Father Brown has ever seen—not that he’s seen many, mind—and the door flies shut. Father Brown takes the hint and approaches the center, still marveling at the lights and the colors.
“You’re really not going to say it, are you?”
Father Brown stares at him.
“Usually, people can’t help themselves. It’s bigger on the inside.”
Father Brown raises his eyebrows. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy.”
The Doctor grins again. “You may want to hold on to something.”
Father Brown grabs ahold of the console. It’s warm underneath his hands, like an engine, like a living thing. He grips it tight as the ground pitches beneath him once, twice, three times as the Doctor bounds in a circle, twisting knobs and throwing switches.
One thing is clear: there’s meant to be more than one pilot. Father Brown doesn’t get the chance to ask about that, though, because after less than a minute, the Doctor checks the screen in front of him, nods once, and steps back.
“You can let go now.”
As much as Father Brown would love the chance to snoop around the ship for a bit, there are more pressing matters, so he leads the way back outside, this time into weak Kembleford sunlight. They really have moved.
“Extraordinary,” he breathes, looking back at the police box.
“It’s a TARDIS—that’s time and relative dimension in space.”
Again, he’s left with more questions than answers, but before he can ask the first question, he hears a familiar voice.
“Father! We’ve been looking all over for you!”
Bunty breaks into a run at the sight of him, leaving the young woman beside her behind—someone she met in France? Father Brown smiles. He hasn’t seen her since she got back from her traveling. (“Gallivanting, more like,” Mrs. McCarthy had sniffed only this morning, even as she put the finishing touches on the strawberry scones she’d baked to welcome Bunty home.)
“Bunty! It’s good to see you.”
Bunty, momentarily distracted, looks the Doctor up and down approvingly. “Who’s your friend?”
Bunty’s companion catches up, somewhat winded, just in time to cluck her tongue disapprovingly. “Penelope!”
Something about the way she says it makes Father Brown pause. While the Doctor introduces himself to Bunty—who, Father Brown is sure, is perfectly delighted to make his acquaintance—he stares at Bunty’s friend.
“Mrs. McCarthy?” he asks at last.
They’d only met once Father Brown had been assigned to St. Mary’s, so he’s never seen her this young, aside from a glance at a wedding photo once, but he’d recognize the disapproving twist to her mouth anywhere.
“Oh, thank God!” she says, her hands fluttering by her sides. “I didn’t think anyone would recognize me like this.”
“I recognized you,” Bunty points out.
“I wasn’t this young then!”
Bunty opens her mouth to continue the argument, but Father Brown cuts in. “You’re getting younger?”
Mrs. McCarthy nods frantically. “Every hour or so, I catch sight of myself and it’s like another year or two has gone!”
Father Brown glances askance at the Doctor. That certainly can’t be good, and the tightening of the Doctor’s mouth confirms it. He reaches into his coat and withdraws the screwdriver again. Mrs. McCarthy swats at it when he aims it at her and begins to scan her.
“What on Earth is that?” she asks.
The Doctor turns to Father Brown. “We need to get the grenade.”
“Grenade?” Bunty and Mrs. McCarthy demand in unison.
Predictably, they follow along as Father Brown and the Doctor head for the police station. Father Brown knows better than to try to warn them off, even though he has an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach that this could very well be more dangerous than their usual escapades.
To Father Brown’s immense relief, Sergeant Goodfellow is behind the front desk. He never has quite as much luck with anybody else. His friendly smile fades as they get closer and Sergeant Goodfellow doesn’t react to their approach. In fact, he doesn’t react to anything at all.
He’s taking notes, which isn’t unusual. But he’s not usually so absorbed that he doesn't look up when the door opens. Warily, Father Brown approaches, the Doctor at his elbow. He watches in horrified silence as Sergeant Goodfellow scribbles. His handwriting is usually a little difficult to make out, but Father Brown can't read this note at all. He's copied it a dozen times or more, and his pen has ripped the paper to shreds. The ink is staining the desk beneath it. Still, when he reaches the bottom of the page, he starts at the top all over again.
"Sergeant?" Bunty asks, horrified.
He doesn't look up from his work, even when Mrs. McCarthy tentatively tries to get his attention as well. The Doctor doesn't bother buzzing him with the sonic screwdriver. He sets his jaw and looks away, even as Mrs. McCarthy and Bunty converge to try to get the sergeant’s attention.
"You said you know the inspector?"
"Yes," Father Brown says.
He sweeps past the front desk with only a quick glance back at poor Sergeant Goodfellow, trapped in a loop that is every bit as endless as Mrs. Turner's teacup. Inspector Mallory's office door is shut, but he very rarely locks it. Father Brown would ordinarily at least stop to knock, but he gets the feeling that, ironically, time is of the essence here.
"Inspector?"
Inspector Mallory looks up, relief sketched over his features before he manages to school his face into the annoyance that Father Brown usually provokes.
"I'm quite busy, Pad--who's that?"
The Doctor pauses for the barest of moments to wave at Inspector Mallory before busying himself studying the box on the inspector's desk. Father Brown leans over as well. The little device inside reminds him more of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver than anything else he's ever seen. It's hardly a grenade in the traditional sense, although perhaps that should not be surprising.
"Is that it?" Father Brown asks.
It's caused quite a bit of trouble already, but he can't help but be curious. Living in Kembleford hardly affords the latest and greatest in technological trends and it's not like a priest's salary is enough to allow him to go out and fill the gap.
"That's it," the Doctor says grimly.
He has the same look in his eyes he'd gotten back at the crater in Mrs. Turner's vegetable garden. For the first time, Father Brown finds himself wondering if, perhaps, the Doctor is a veteran of a very different war than the one Father Brown had initially assumed.
"Why isn't the inspector affected?"
Inspector Mallory, predictably, splutters. "Affected? Who are you?"
The Doctor pulls a pad of paper out of his jacket and hands it over. "Scotland Yard."
Father Brown raises his eyebrows--the paper had looked blank to him, but Inspector Mallory straightens his shoulders more than he ordinarily does. "Of course. I was wondering when you'd show up. We found that in Mrs. Turner's garden."
The Doctor squints down at the grenade, ignoring the inspector entirely. "And Bunty," he points out. "Although--she told me she'd just been in France. Is that right?"
“I just got back this morning,” Bunty says, taking a tentative step into the office.
Mrs. McCarthy pokes her head in as well. “And who, exactly, authorized you to build another police box?”
Inspector Mallory actually puts his head in his hands. “And who’s she?”
“What does France have to do with anything?” Father Brown asks amid the confusion.
“And you,” the Doctor says, commanding Inspector Mallory’s attention again. “When did you get assigned here?”
“When I died and was sent to Hell,” Inspector Mallory snaps sarcastically. “A few years ago. 1953.”
Father Brown frowns. Something about that sentence—
“A few years ago?” the Doctor repeats.
Inspector Mallory nods. “Yes. They do teach you to listen when people speak at Scotland Yard, don’t they?”
“1953,” the Doctor says.
“But that’s not right,” Father Brown says. “It’s 1953 now. You’ve been here for more than a year—it had to be earlier.”
Inspector Mallory pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb. “What can I say? Every moment here is an eternity.”
The same sort of sense of wrongness from Mrs. Turner’s farm settles around Father Brown like a blanket—or a funeral shroud. There’s something wrong with time.
“Father, I need you to think. Something you ought to know the duration of. A baby, an anniversary. Something like that.”
It takes him a moment to find his voice as the pieces fall into place. “Sid.”
The Doctor stares expectantly. “What about Sid?”
“He was put in prison,” Father Brown says.
“For a crime he didn’t commit,” Bunty adds, crossing her arms and looking pointedly at Inspector Mallory.
“When?” the Doctor asks.
“1953,” Father Brown says.
“How long was he there?”
“A year.”
Behind him, the penny drops for Mrs. McCarthy and Bunty as well. They grab each other’s hands.
“When did he get out?” the Doctor asks softly.
“This year,” Father Brown replies. Then, dazedly, “1953.”
The color has drained even out of Inspector Mallory’s face. “But that’s—”
“It’s worse than I thought,” the Doctor says.
He sprints out of the office, pushing past Mrs. McCarthy and Bunty, who are still clinging to each other. Father Brown follows him back out into the street, accidentally slamming the office door on Inspector Mallory.
Now that he’s paying attention, everything is odd—the butcher is slicing into the same ham over and over again, the girl playing hopscotch throws her stone in precisely the same place each time, and the young man straightening his bike after a fall keeps testing the bell. Ding. Ding. Ding.
“But what does it mean?” Bunty demands once they’re all panting in the sunlight outside of the TARDIS.
Well. Everyone but the Doctor, who seems to do an awful lot of running.
“Bunty, what year is it?” the Doctor asks.
“1962,” she says promptly. Then her brow furrows. “But—no, that’s not—”
“It is,” the Doctor says. “It’s 1962, everywhere but here. You can see through it because you’ve left.” He turns to Father Brown. “Father. How many people leave Kembleford?”
Father Brown shakes his head. “Not many.”
Every so often, the local papers worry that the young people will desert small towns in the Cotswolds for London, but St. Mary’s parish is larger now than it’s ever been. And even when people do leave—
“They come back,” Father Brown says quietly. “They always come back.”
Even Flambeau shows up once a year or so whenever something valuable inexplicably finds its way to Kembleford.
“What are you saying?” Mrs. McCarthy asks, her voice hushed.
The Doctor uncurls his fist, revealing the time grenade again. Mrs. McCarthy stares at it as if it’s going to explode. Then again, Father Brown isn’t completely sure that it isn’t going to explode.
“That’s what a time grenade does. It—” He growls in frustration. “Human brains! How am I meant to explain?”
Human?
Father Brown can tell from the look on Bunty’s face that she’s thinking exactly what he’s thinking, but it’s Mrs. McCarthy who puts words to it.
“Human brains. As if you don’t have one of those yourself.”
The Doctor scoffs. “I’d never manage.”
Father Brown wants to ask what sort of brain the Doctor has if it’s not a human one, but that’s not the point right now. “What does a time grenade do?”
The Doctor stops to think for a moment that seems to stretch into eternity, the ding of the bicycle bell echoing in the background.
“Every single person’s timeline is filled with infinite potential,” he says at last. “Every time you make a choice—yes or no, left or right, right or wrong, anything—you close off a portion of that potential. You’re never in a position to make that exact choice again. Yes, you can go back and go right after you initially turned left, but that’s a different choice—you’re deciding to change your mind.”
He’s pacing now, his hands—and the time grenade—buried in his pockets. Father Brown glances sideways at Mrs. McCarthy and Bunty, who, like him, are simply staring, too overwhelmed to even ask a question.
“That potential is a weapon, if you know how to use it. There are entire species that survive off of it. But it’s like I said—with every choice you make, there’s less of it. So if you want to harvest it, you need to get clever.” His face darkens. “Clever, like a time grenade. Toss one, and you create a time loop—usually a year long, give or take, over a few square miles.”
It clicks. “So everyone gets to make all of the possible choices,” Father Brown says slowly, still piecing things together. “For the last nine years, we’ve lived 1953 on repeat, making different choices every time.”
The Doctor grins. “I knew you were clever.”
“But what about now?” Father Brown asks. “It’s not as if Mrs. McCarthy chose to get younger.”
“Though she would if she could,” Bunty points out, earning herself an elbow in the ribs courtesy of a now-teenaged and significantly less restrained Mrs. McCarthy.
The Doctor’s smile fades. “It’s not perfect. Time isn’t meant to loop like this, so after a while, things start to break down. A few people get away, people who manage to leave, like Bunty, or who don’t enter the loop until it’s gone a few times, like the inspector—Father, why aren’t you affected?”
“What do you mean, ‘a few people get away’?” Father Brown replies.
“Why aren’t you affected?”
Mrs. McCarthy pipes up, sensing that Father Brown isn’t going to answer. “Father Brown has been at St. Mary’s for decades.”
“What do you mean?” Father Brown demands.
He doesn’t raise his voice often, but it’s not often that every single person in Kembleford is threatened.
“A few people escape,” the Doctor says at last. “The rest—fuel.”
Bunty snatches Mrs. McCarthy’s hand again, but the Doctor drifts past both of them as if he can’t see them.
“You’ve been here the whole time, but you’re not affected. Do you always investigate when something odd happens?”
Father Brown nods. “Always.”
The Doctor brightens. “Then we might have a chance.”
He grabs Father Brown by the hand and starts tugging him towards the TARDIS. Mrs. McCarthy makes a protesting noise in the back of her throat.
“What are you going to do?” Bunty asks.
“If Father Brown was present when the time grenade landed, I should be able to find it and set the whole thing right.”
“What about Father Brown?” Mrs. McCarthy asks.
She can’t be more than sixteen now. Father Brown’s stomach flips—much longer, and she’ll de-age right out of existence in front of their eyes.
“He’ll be fine,” the Doctor says. “Probably.”
“Probably?” Bunty protests.
Father Brown shakes the Doctor off and takes one of her hands in his. “Stay here and look after Mrs. McCarthy. I’ll be all right.”
He can’t be sure of that, and the skeptical look on Bunty’s face shows that she agrees with him, but he can’t be sure of much of anything with the world gone sideways.
“I suppose that ship of yours can travel in time, then?” he asks, turning to the Doctor.
The Doctor’s grin is the only answer he needs. Father Brown takes one last look at Bunty and Mrs. McCarthy before stepping back into the TARDIS. It’s somehow just as shocking the second time and just as beautiful.
This time, Father Brown approaches the console without being asked. “Who would create that weapon?”
The Doctor doesn’t look up from his work flipping switches and adjusting dials.
“It’s a horrible thing,” Father Brown continues, “stealing people’s choices.”
After all, choosing is meaningless if, the next time around, you have to choose differently. It’s a destruction of free will of the kind that doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Your lot created the atom bomb,” the Doctor points out. “That’s a horrible thing.”
He’s not wrong. Father Brown still remembers the numb horror of hearing that news broadcasted. Of course, shamefully, it had been followed by relief caused by the certainty that the war was over and done, that no one would dare keep fighting after that.
The Doctor raises his eyebrows. “What, you’re not going to tell me the world’s a safer place now for it?”
Father Brown settles himself on the one seat in the entire room. “I don’t believe it is. All that power in one person’s hands—how could it ever be safe? And all those dead—the children.”
The Doctor’s eyes flicker shut. Father Brown sets his umbrella against his leg.
“There was a war,” the Doctor says at last, reopening his eyes. “A war of greater scale than you’re capable of comprehending.”
The corner of Father Brown’s mouth twitches despite himself. He’s already seen two wars of greater scale than he’s capable of comprehending, after all. And besides; most war, regardless of size, is incomprehensible. Father Brown chooses not to point that out—if Doctor had seen even a fraction of what Father Brown did during his own war, he knows that already.
“We—my side, my—my people, that is—we lost ground faster than we ever thought possible. So they—we—had to get creative.”
The Doctor finally stops moving and just stands, bracing himself against the console as if his legs will just give out beneath him if he lets go. Father Brown regards him with a silence honed in the St. Mary’s confessional.
“I hated it,” the Doctor says at last. “But I’ve never been able to—”
He cuts himself off, still not looking at Father Brown. Slowly, he unfreezes and starts flipping switches again. Father Brown eases himself off of the chair and walks over to peer over his shoulder.
“Is it over?” he asks after it becomes clear that the Doctor isn’t going to finish his sentence.
“Yeah,” the Doctor says with a humorless bark of laughter. “Yeah, it’s over. King of the hill, me.”
He holds out his hand so matter-of-factly that Father Brown places his hand in the Doctor’s without even thinking about it. The Doctor places it on what looks like a piece of blue coral stuck in the console.
“Don’t move,” he orders.
Then, with a groan, the ship lurches beneath them. Father Brown braces himself with his umbrella and thinks about the first time Sid had driven him in the Rolls without Lady F present. Thankfully, this isn’t quite as intense, despite the fact that they’re traveling a far more interesting road than the ones through Kembleford.
“Right. Thanks for the steering,” the Doctor says when the TARDIS shudders to a halt. “Stay put. It should be safe in a few minutes. I’ll let you know, if I can. If I can’t—”
“If you can’t?”
Father Brown steps swiftly in front of the door, blocking the Doctor’s exit.
“If I can’t, just wait for a tick before you go poking about. An hour or so should do it. If I’ve done my job, the time grenade will have been destroyed, and you get to go on to 1954.” He shrugs. “Not a bad year, all things considered. Polio vaccine.”
He raises his eyebrows. Father Brown considers him for a long moment before stepping out of the way. The Doctor throws open the door, tosses a grin over his shoulder, and springs out into the night, slamming the door behind him.
Father Brown lasts approximately a minute before he opens the door.
They’re in Mrs. Turner’s destroyed garden once again. But there’s an underlying chill to the air, the kind that only comes in the fall. With a start, Father Brown realizes that he hasn’t felt that kind of chill in a long time—perhaps the time loop affected the seasons as well?
“Are you all right down there?”
Hearing his own voice echo almost makes him jump straight back in the TARDIS, but Father Brown eases the door shut behind himself instead. He recognizes the figure standing at the edge of the crater, but it’s odd to see it anywhere aside from the mirror.
The Doctor’s voice floats up from the crater. “Never you mind.”
It’s thin and strained in a way that Father Brown doesn’t like. The other version of him—the man standing at the edge of the crater—must not like it, either, because he pauses for barely a moment before seating himself on the edge and sliding in.
Without thinking about the consequences, Father Brown follows his counterpart.
The Doctor is kneeling in the dirt, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Father Brown assumes that the time grenade is hidden in his grip, because there’s a faint blue glow emanating from between his fingers. His entire body is shaking, and in the glow, Father Brown can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Hello,” he says.
His counterpart stares for a moment before his ingrained politeness kicks in. “Hello.”
The Doctor looks between the two Father Browns with what Father Brown thinks would have been exasperation, had he had enough energy to be exasperated.
“Whatever you do, don’t touch,” he says after a moment. “I’m dealing with enough paradoxes right now, thanks.”
On the last word, he lets out a small, wounded noise. Father Brown drops to his knees beside him. When he reaches out to steady the Doctor by his shoulder, the Doctor jerks back out of his reach.
“Don’t.”
The other Father Brown frowns. Predictably, he’s distracted enough by the Doctor’s distress to not ask questions about his clone. “I can get help.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “Won’t help.”
The light intensifies and he gasps, curling in on himself. This time, Father Brown successfully holds back the urge to support him, though his hand is left hovering uselessly a few inches above the Doctor’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
The Doctor opens his trembling fingers to reveal the time grenade. “I’m absorbing the Vortex energy. Should—ah—stop the time loop.”
The other Father Brown, to his credit, doesn’t miss a beat. “But what will that do to you?”
The Doctor laughs, though it turns into a sharp inhale of pain at the end. “Finish the job.”
Something cold settles in Father Brown’s stomach, and from the look on his face, in his counterpart’s, too.
“There must be another way.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “Used to be, you’d spread the load over a couple of time lords. But it’s just me, now.”
He curls in on himself again, head hanging down between his shoulders. Father Brown makes his decision in an instant. Before the Doctor can properly protest, Father Brown grasps hold of his shoulder.
The pain is immediate, all concentrated in his head. Sometimes, he knows, Mrs. McCarthy gets migraines bad enough to banish her to bed for entire afternoons, despite the fact that there’s choir rehearsal or an unfinished sermon to prod him about. His last coherent thought is that, if those are even half as bad as this, she is cemented as the strongest person he knows.
Then, someone grabs his hand, and the pain recedes.
Father Brown drags his eyelids open. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed them.
“Did that work?” the other Father Brown asks mildly.
The Doctor’s breath is shaky when he responds. “Oh, you really are clever. Use a paradox to break the loop. But you couldn’t possibly know that would work.”
Father Brown stares down at the rather odd sight of him holding his own hand. The duplicate smiles broadly.
“No. But I wasn’t about to let you die,” he says. “After all, it appears that we’re friends in the future.”
The Doctor smiles. “Yeah. I ‘spose we are.”
“What now?” Father Brown asks, raising their clasped hands.
The Doctor’s shrugs. “Ah. Still a paradox. I imagine, when you let go, you’ll assimilate into one another, resolve the paradox. Well, that, or you’ll explode.”
Both Father Browns nod thoughtfully. There’s not much for it, Father Brown supposes. It’s not as if they can sit here at the bottom of this crater holding hands for all eternity. They come to this conclusion at the same time.
The other Father Brown tips his hat with his free hand. “Well. Here goes nothing. Lovely meeting you.”
Father Brown smiles. “And you.”
They steel themselves, and then they break apart. Thankfully, there are no explosions. Father Brown’s vision goes fuzzy for a moment, and when it clears, the other version of him is gone. Or perhaps he is gone. That’s a question that could keep the philosophers going for centuries.
It takes them quite a bit of time to scramble their way out of the crater. When Father Brown finally manages it, he flops on his back and stares up at the stars, which suddenly feel quite a bit closer than they did before. The Doctor collapses next to him.
“So what now?” Father Brown asks.
“I’ll be off,” the Doctor says. He pauses for a minute to think something over, then continues. “Unless you’d like to come with me. I could use a brain like yours.”
For a moment, Father Brown is more tempted than he cares to admit. The universe is vast, and he’s been curious all his life. But—
“I need to check in on everyone—Mrs. M, Bunty, the sergeant—”
“All fine, I’d think. I can’t feel the loop anymore.”
Father Brown shakes his head. “I’m needed here.”
The Doctor turns back to the stars. “Right, yeah. Of course.”
Father Brown traces the little dipper with his finger, which makes the corner of the Doctor’s mouth twitch.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “it can help, sometimes, to talk.”
The Doctor laughs. “You want me to confess, Father?”
“If you’d like to think of it like that,” Father Brown says. “But it doesn’t have to be confession. It can just be unburdening yourself to a friend.”
The Doctor’s eyes go distant, and Father Brown thinks he is actually going to speak. Then, the moment passes, and the Doctor sits up.
“I don’t think I can. I’m not ready. Not yet.”
Father Brown nods. “I understand.”
The Doctor clambers to his feet, then helps Father Brown up as well. They stand there in Mrs. Turner’s garden for a long moment before Father Brown holds out his hand for the Doctor to shake. He does, the smile back on his face.
“Look after yourself, Father.”
Father Brown smiles. “I don’t think I’m the one who needs to look after himself.”
The Doctor turns away, back to the TARDIS. Father Brown can’t help himself.
“If you ever find that you’re ready, I’ll be here. St. Mary’s.” He smiles. “1954.”
The Doctor grins. “Maybe.”
Then, he steps into the TARDIS and shuts the door. Father Brown watches until it vanishes, and begins his walk to the presbytery and the new year that is, at long last, ahead.