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I wrote a thing!
In a fandom I don't believe any of you are familiar with, alas. "The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock" is an occasional segment in the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast. It's a sort of comedy steampunk time-travel adventure, with a strong strain of affectionate Doctor Who parody, some charmingly inept fake English accents, and pretty much canonical queerness. It's very silly and occasionally poignant, a tone I hope I've captured in my fic.
Here is a list of all the Tick-Tock segments, and here is where you can download them. If you listen to everything it's about three hours worth of material. Give it time to grow on you; I didn't like the early episodes but the character and the format both get much more interesting. If you want to skip some of the dead wood, I'd recommend listening to "Electric Rivalries" (TAH #31, the best of the early Tick-Tock bits), "Hey Caesar" (TAH #100, introduces some recurring characters and helps the next, excellent episode make more sense), "Mrs. Parker and the Doctaparatorious Paradox" (TAH #120, guest starring Karen Gillan, who played Amy Pond on Doctor Who), "Horse Play" (TAH #154, in which Colonel Tick-Tock memorably meets Casanova), and most importantly, "Confederates" (TAH #174), which is the basis for my fic.
The Colonel Tick-Tock I envision looks nothing like the ridiculous Colonel Blimp figure from the Thrilling Adventure Hour graphic novel, which you can see at the link above to the list of episodes. Judging by other characters' reactions, he's actually dashing and attractive, so in my head he looks a lot like Captain Owen Triggers as played by Nicholas Jones in the old BBC series Wings; images at the linked post.
Title: Time Enough
Fandom: The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock (from The Thrilling Adventure Hour)
Characters: Colonel Tick-Tock/Bob McCrumbs, some special guest stars
Rating: Teen
Word count: 2473
Summary: Colonel Tick-Tock and Bob McCrumbs make history right (sort of) and discover something that's been there all along.
Notes: This can also be read here at AO3.
"Blimey, it's you!" Bob wiped his fish-scale covered hands on his apron. "I haven't seen you for almost three weeks!"
"Really? Sorry, darling, I must have misremembered when I left you." The Colonel smiled guilelessly, like a spiv about to explain that those chickens fell off the back of a lorry, honest, constable.
"I thought you'd gone forever."
"I wouldn't - "
"Who's this, then?" Mr. Tompkins, the owner of the fish and chips shop, squinted suspiciously at the newcomer. "We don't open for another half hour. And why'd he call you 'darling'? I'll have no fairies in this shop."
"My name is Colonel Tick-Tock."
"Colonel, eh?" Tompkins squinted even more squintily at Tick-Tock's uniform, which the Trick Clock's Chrono-Adjuster had turned an appropriate shade of khaki for 1944. "Colonel in what, the Women's Land Army?"
"Trick Clock, my dear, would you put this fellow into time suspension? And rewind him a bit so he won't remember me."
"Certainly, Colonel Tick-Tock." A shimmering, translucent bubble formed around Tompkins.
"Thank you. Now, Chips, as I was saying, I wouldn't do that to you. Well, I would; in fact I will, because Her Most Royal Majesty gets awfully swiffy if members of the Chrono Patrol form personal attachments to their confederates, but I wouldn't do it without warning. When I have to leave you behind, you'll know. Almost certainly."
"Thanks, that's really cheered me up."
"Jolly good! I want you in fighting spirits, because Her Majesty has ordered us--well, me--to leave this terribly dreary era. Time's going awry in 1895, darling, and it's up to us to put it back on course. Trick Clock, if you please."
Bob crossed his arms and frowned. "What if I don't want to go?"
"Don't want to go? You're not timesick, are you? I was sure I'd given you all the inoculations."
"Maybe I don't like being misplaced for three weeks. Especially when you said you were only popping out to the thirtieth century for a gin-and-Marswater and you'd be back before I knew it. I thought I was your friend! Or confederate, anyway, since you keep saying you can't have friends."
"Chips, darling, I am sorry. You know I'm terrible at remembering dates. There are so awfully, awfully many of them."
"You didn't even ask if I wanted to come to the thirtieth century! So maybe I don't want to go to 1895, either."
"Did you want to go to the thirtieth century? I thought you were tired after our little fracas with the Time Flies."
Bob sighed and looked down at the fish he'd been scaling, which looked back at him with dull, blank eyes. He wondered how many fish he'd looked in the eye over the years, and how many were still to come. "I always want to go with you."
"Capital! Then come with me, darling." Colonel Tick-Tock took him by the shoulders and gave him that fond, coaxing, irresistible look he was so good at. "But quickly. Time is the one luxury we ought to have, but never seem to."
"Yeah, all right. Let me just . . . " Bob removed his apron, washed his hands, and cleaned a couple of fish scales from his spectacles.
After an un-moment's journey through the time hole, he found himself inside an elaborately furnished Victorian hotel room. A man and a woman were helping a plump, daintily dressed, yet haggard man pack a Gladstone bag. " - the train, Oscar," the man was saying.
"Not so fast," said Colonel Tick-Tock, whose uniform tunic was now red and covered in epaulettes and frogging. "Oscar Wilde's due to be arrested in ten minutes. I'm afraid he's not going anywhere but, eventually, Reading Gaol."
"Don't meddle," said the man who wasn't Oscar Wilde. The man who was Oscar Wilde sat down on the bed and put his face in his hands. "This is no business of yours."
"History is always the business of the Royal Chronological Patrol, as you well know, Christopher Marlowe."
Marlowe spat on the thick French carpet. "The Royal Chronological Patrol can get knotted. Linear lackeys! Chronological cowards!"
"Who are these people?" Bob asked. Every head in the room turned as though no one had realised he was there.
"Some of continuity's most dangerous, if charming, foes," the Colonel answered. "Christopher Marlowe and Greta Garbo of the Queer History Brigade. Kit, Greta, this is my confederate Bob McCrumbs."
Garbo nodded silently, her eyes limpid and oddly tragic considering she held several pairs of gentleman's silk underwear--Wilde's, Bob supposed--in one hand and some kind of time gun in the other. Marlowe, who had tousled hair and a small, piratical beard, quirked up an eyebrow and smiled slowly and warmly. Very warmly. "Bob," he said. "As in nine bob?"
"Let the lad be," Colonel Tick-Tock said hurriedly.
"I'm all right, Colonel. What do you mean, nine bob?"
"Why don't we talk about it over dinner, sweetheart? In Paris, since for poor old Oscar it's either France or prison. I know a fantastic little - "
"I don't want to go to prison," Wilde said from the bed where he was still slumped. "I want to write plays and stroll along the Champs-Élysées. And be with Bosie, though he hasn't even sent me a letter, the thoughtless beast."
"We are not the foes of continuity," said Garbo, looking defiantly at Colonel Tick-Tock. "We are the foes of historical injustice."
"The trouble with historical injustice, dear girl, is that it's historical. It can't be fixed, not without everything else in the timeline going wrong."
"You would say that, wouldn't you?" Marlowe snorted. "What can you know about what Oscar's going through? He's had to tell lies all his life, even to himself, and now that the truth's out they'll send him to rot in a stinking hole."
Wilde made a keening noise.
"I know as well as either of you. I grew up in the nineteenth century."
"I thought you were born in 2094," Bob said.
"2097, my dear. But I grew up in the 1870s. My father was in the Chrono Patrol too, you see. He still is, as far as I know. Haven't seen him since Tangier in 1958. He was young then, not married yet, there was nearly the most awful mix-up before he happened to mention his surname. But I digress," the Colonel said abruptly as Marlowe grinned and nudged Bob with an elbow. "Oscar Wilde has got to be arrested. It's history. Sorry, Oscar darling."
"And your word is law, is it, Tick-Tock? Overconfident as always." Somehow, from a pocket in a pair of very tight, very un-Elizabethan leather trousers, Marlowe produced a device like a torch but with lots of glowing lights and buttons.
Colonel Tick-Tock laughed. "Silly boy, you know the Queerifier won't work on me! Our differences are ortho-historical, not sexological."
"It's not meant for you." Marlowe spun, flicking a switch on the device, and a beam of lavender light shone in Bob's face. "Will you be quite so devoted to ortho-historical chronology when your pretty companion finds himself newly in favour of our cause? When he pleads with you to save poor Oscar?"
"I prefer the term 'confederate.' And really, Kit, you know perfectly well that members of the Chronological Patrol are sworn to avoid emotional entan- "
"Is something meant to be happening to me?" Bob asked. "Apart from a bloody light in me eyes?"
Marlowe switched the beam off. "Look at Colonel Tick-Tock, Bob. Look closely at his broad shoulders, his manly chest, his tapering waist, his deliciously narrow hips, the luxuriant curve of his - "
"Steady on, Kit - "
" - never mind, you can't see it from that angle anyway. Now raise your eyes to his sensitive face, his soft mouth perfectly capped by his elegant moustache. Look into his warm hazel eyes and tell me what you feel."
Bob shrugged. "What's this all about? I don't feel any different."
"Buggery!" In Marlowe's voice, it sounded less like a curse than like someone invoking the name of a god. He banged the Queerifier against a table. "Power must be running low."
Garbo shook her head, setting her bobbed hair swinging. "You always forget to charge it. If - "
"Oscar," said Colonel Tick-Tock, who'd gone to sit on the bed next to Wilde. "I oughtn't to tell you anything, but . . . you'll survive prison. And a hundred years from now people will remember you as a hero."
"As a martyr, you mean." Wilde lifted his head and tried to smile. "How odd that a most devoted sinner should end up a saint."
"Will you wait here until the police come, darling? For history's sake?"
"If I must."
"A hero." Tick-Tock kissed Wilde lightly on the mouth; Bob stared down at the carpet and blushed. "Thank you."
"Congratulations, Tick-Tock. Another victory for the dark satanic mills of history as they grind us to powder. Long live lies and oppression! Are you proud? And speaking of lies," Marlowe said, giving Bob a long look before turning back to the Colonel, "how is your wife?"
"Constance is very well, thank you, and enjoying 1902. Or was it '03? Possibly '04. The Trick Clock will remember."
"My wife's name is Constance too," Wilde said. "What a peculiar coincidence."
"Not, er, precisely a coincidence, my dear. Let's say she failed to learn from her mistakes. As I, when I was younger, failed to learn from yours." Colonel Tick-Tock looked as abashed as Bob had ever seen him.
"You never told me you had a - "
"No time for that now, Chips. Kit, Greta, will you leave of your own accord or must I ask the Trick Clock for assistance?
"You are a cruel man," Garbo said, her voice vibrant with grief. "Poor Oscar."
"I take no pleasure in this! Well, sometimes I do, but not today." Colonel Tick-Tock glanced at Wilde, who was staring forlornly at his half-packed Gladstone, and dropped his voice. "Oscar's sufferings will make people--people like us--angry in all the years to come when they will need to be angry. He will be a martyr. If he escapes to France today, he'll be nothing but a comic playwright. Kit, you at least must understand me. You know all about the publicity value of a tragic end."
"You've won," Marlowe said shortly. "Don't ask me to agree. Come on, Greta, there's lots of work still to be done."
"Then I shall see you both again soon," Colonel Tick-Tock said as they stepped through a time hole and vanished. An echoing answer of I hope to see your Ninebob again soon lingered in the air a moment.
"Why does he keep calling me that, Colonel?"
"Er - " In the pause, there was a loud, policeman-ish knock on the door. "No time to explain! Trick Clock, time hole to December . . . "
"November 8."
"November 8, 1944. Courage, Oscar! Goodbye!"
Instantly they were back in Mr. Tompkins' fish and chips shop. Mr. Tompkins was still motionless inside his time suspension bubble.
"Well," said Colonel Tick-Tock. "What an adventure, eh? Jolly thrilling." He glanced around the shop without ever meeting Bob's eyes. "And now here you are, Chips darling, home again. Back to your life. And your fish. How lovely."
"Was it true what you said? About people needing to be angry because of Oscar Wilde?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry. I only know that it's the way it happened. And because it's already happened, it has to happen. Chrono Patrol oath and all that, what?" His mouth turned up in a feeble imitation of his usual bold smile. "I once made a highly unauthorized excursion into an alternate timeline to see the premiere of Wilde's Le secret de Lord Fairfax in Paris in 1901. Marvellous play. Greatest scandal of the season."
"Oh."
"That timeline would have turned out differently in all kinds of ways. I couldn't let it happen here and now. I had no choice."
"You're not cruel," said Bob. "But what you do is cruel, sometimes."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
"I suppose I ought to be going," Colonel Tick-Tock said at last. "Mustn't drag you away from your work any more. I'll leave you to it. Trick Clock, please - "
"No!" This wasn't Colonel Tick-Tock's usual Toodle-pip, darling, see you soon; he was leaving forever. Heart pounding, Bob put a hand on the Colonel's once again khaki-covered arm. "Don't go."
"But you're angry with me."
"No, not - yes, but - ." Words failing, Bob held on more strongly to the Colonel's arm. "Not as much as all that. Not forever."
"Dear old Chips. You've been a good fr- . . . a good confederate. But all this chronological chaos wears on a chap. You'll get fed up. Better to say goodbye now. And I'm sure that deep down, you're eager to resume your normal linearity. Do normal things. Meet a nice girl, get married, that sort of caper."
A nice girl? Bob, half-bewildered and half-comprehending, shook his head. "You're wrong. I don't want to do normal things. Not any normal things. I'm, I'm not normal."
"But . . . the Queerifier! You said you didn't feel anything."
"I said I didn't feel anything different. I've always - and when I look at you, I feel - "
"Oh, my dear." For the first time since Bob had known him, Colonel Tick-Tock looked surprised. "Why didn't you say?" He extended the arm Bob was still clinging to, and smiled, and Bob stepped into his embrace.
"I thought you didn't fancy me." He fastened his arms tightly around the Colonel's waist, which was indeed tapering and manly. "Why would you?"
"All this and modesty too." The Colonel's lips brushed Bob's jaw, and then his ear. "I'll show you exactly how much I fancy you," he whispered. "It's going to take a very long time."
"I thought there was no time."
"There's time enough."
For you, maybe, Bob thought. Not for me. There can't be enough for me. "Colonel, let's - "
"My name is Nigel."
"That's a nice name."
"It really isn't. But I shall like the sound of it when you say it."
"Ni- " The rest disappeared under a heated kiss. Bob wasn't used to kissing. Getting right down to business was the way of things, in his experience. But Nigel kissed as though kissing was the business, and also as though much, much better acts were still to follow. "Nigel, not here. I want to be somewhen we haven't got to worry about policemen. Somewhen I can kiss you on a street corner if I bloody well feel like it."
"Excellent idea. I know a delightful hotel in the 2030s. Beds the size of a cricket pitch and baths like swimming pools."
"Baths! Oh, Christ, do I - "
"There is a slight scent of haddock, darling. Never mind, we'll soon set that right. And then - " His hands sketched promises on Bob's backside.
"Ohhhh."
"And then we'll make time stop."
Here is a list of all the Tick-Tock segments, and here is where you can download them. If you listen to everything it's about three hours worth of material. Give it time to grow on you; I didn't like the early episodes but the character and the format both get much more interesting. If you want to skip some of the dead wood, I'd recommend listening to "Electric Rivalries" (TAH #31, the best of the early Tick-Tock bits), "Hey Caesar" (TAH #100, introduces some recurring characters and helps the next, excellent episode make more sense), "Mrs. Parker and the Doctaparatorious Paradox" (TAH #120, guest starring Karen Gillan, who played Amy Pond on Doctor Who), "Horse Play" (TAH #154, in which Colonel Tick-Tock memorably meets Casanova), and most importantly, "Confederates" (TAH #174), which is the basis for my fic.
The Colonel Tick-Tock I envision looks nothing like the ridiculous Colonel Blimp figure from the Thrilling Adventure Hour graphic novel, which you can see at the link above to the list of episodes. Judging by other characters' reactions, he's actually dashing and attractive, so in my head he looks a lot like Captain Owen Triggers as played by Nicholas Jones in the old BBC series Wings; images at the linked post.
Title: Time Enough
Fandom: The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock (from The Thrilling Adventure Hour)
Characters: Colonel Tick-Tock/Bob McCrumbs, some special guest stars
Rating: Teen
Word count: 2473
Summary: Colonel Tick-Tock and Bob McCrumbs make history right (sort of) and discover something that's been there all along.
Notes: This can also be read here at AO3.
"Blimey, it's you!" Bob wiped his fish-scale covered hands on his apron. "I haven't seen you for almost three weeks!"
"Really? Sorry, darling, I must have misremembered when I left you." The Colonel smiled guilelessly, like a spiv about to explain that those chickens fell off the back of a lorry, honest, constable.
"I thought you'd gone forever."
"I wouldn't - "
"Who's this, then?" Mr. Tompkins, the owner of the fish and chips shop, squinted suspiciously at the newcomer. "We don't open for another half hour. And why'd he call you 'darling'? I'll have no fairies in this shop."
"My name is Colonel Tick-Tock."
"Colonel, eh?" Tompkins squinted even more squintily at Tick-Tock's uniform, which the Trick Clock's Chrono-Adjuster had turned an appropriate shade of khaki for 1944. "Colonel in what, the Women's Land Army?"
"Trick Clock, my dear, would you put this fellow into time suspension? And rewind him a bit so he won't remember me."
"Certainly, Colonel Tick-Tock." A shimmering, translucent bubble formed around Tompkins.
"Thank you. Now, Chips, as I was saying, I wouldn't do that to you. Well, I would; in fact I will, because Her Most Royal Majesty gets awfully swiffy if members of the Chrono Patrol form personal attachments to their confederates, but I wouldn't do it without warning. When I have to leave you behind, you'll know. Almost certainly."
"Thanks, that's really cheered me up."
"Jolly good! I want you in fighting spirits, because Her Majesty has ordered us--well, me--to leave this terribly dreary era. Time's going awry in 1895, darling, and it's up to us to put it back on course. Trick Clock, if you please."
Bob crossed his arms and frowned. "What if I don't want to go?"
"Don't want to go? You're not timesick, are you? I was sure I'd given you all the inoculations."
"Maybe I don't like being misplaced for three weeks. Especially when you said you were only popping out to the thirtieth century for a gin-and-Marswater and you'd be back before I knew it. I thought I was your friend! Or confederate, anyway, since you keep saying you can't have friends."
"Chips, darling, I am sorry. You know I'm terrible at remembering dates. There are so awfully, awfully many of them."
"You didn't even ask if I wanted to come to the thirtieth century! So maybe I don't want to go to 1895, either."
"Did you want to go to the thirtieth century? I thought you were tired after our little fracas with the Time Flies."
Bob sighed and looked down at the fish he'd been scaling, which looked back at him with dull, blank eyes. He wondered how many fish he'd looked in the eye over the years, and how many were still to come. "I always want to go with you."
"Capital! Then come with me, darling." Colonel Tick-Tock took him by the shoulders and gave him that fond, coaxing, irresistible look he was so good at. "But quickly. Time is the one luxury we ought to have, but never seem to."
"Yeah, all right. Let me just . . . " Bob removed his apron, washed his hands, and cleaned a couple of fish scales from his spectacles.
After an un-moment's journey through the time hole, he found himself inside an elaborately furnished Victorian hotel room. A man and a woman were helping a plump, daintily dressed, yet haggard man pack a Gladstone bag. " - the train, Oscar," the man was saying.
"Not so fast," said Colonel Tick-Tock, whose uniform tunic was now red and covered in epaulettes and frogging. "Oscar Wilde's due to be arrested in ten minutes. I'm afraid he's not going anywhere but, eventually, Reading Gaol."
"Don't meddle," said the man who wasn't Oscar Wilde. The man who was Oscar Wilde sat down on the bed and put his face in his hands. "This is no business of yours."
"History is always the business of the Royal Chronological Patrol, as you well know, Christopher Marlowe."
Marlowe spat on the thick French carpet. "The Royal Chronological Patrol can get knotted. Linear lackeys! Chronological cowards!"
"Who are these people?" Bob asked. Every head in the room turned as though no one had realised he was there.
"Some of continuity's most dangerous, if charming, foes," the Colonel answered. "Christopher Marlowe and Greta Garbo of the Queer History Brigade. Kit, Greta, this is my confederate Bob McCrumbs."
Garbo nodded silently, her eyes limpid and oddly tragic considering she held several pairs of gentleman's silk underwear--Wilde's, Bob supposed--in one hand and some kind of time gun in the other. Marlowe, who had tousled hair and a small, piratical beard, quirked up an eyebrow and smiled slowly and warmly. Very warmly. "Bob," he said. "As in nine bob?"
"Let the lad be," Colonel Tick-Tock said hurriedly.
"I'm all right, Colonel. What do you mean, nine bob?"
"Why don't we talk about it over dinner, sweetheart? In Paris, since for poor old Oscar it's either France or prison. I know a fantastic little - "
"I don't want to go to prison," Wilde said from the bed where he was still slumped. "I want to write plays and stroll along the Champs-Élysées. And be with Bosie, though he hasn't even sent me a letter, the thoughtless beast."
"We are not the foes of continuity," said Garbo, looking defiantly at Colonel Tick-Tock. "We are the foes of historical injustice."
"The trouble with historical injustice, dear girl, is that it's historical. It can't be fixed, not without everything else in the timeline going wrong."
"You would say that, wouldn't you?" Marlowe snorted. "What can you know about what Oscar's going through? He's had to tell lies all his life, even to himself, and now that the truth's out they'll send him to rot in a stinking hole."
Wilde made a keening noise.
"I know as well as either of you. I grew up in the nineteenth century."
"I thought you were born in 2094," Bob said.
"2097, my dear. But I grew up in the 1870s. My father was in the Chrono Patrol too, you see. He still is, as far as I know. Haven't seen him since Tangier in 1958. He was young then, not married yet, there was nearly the most awful mix-up before he happened to mention his surname. But I digress," the Colonel said abruptly as Marlowe grinned and nudged Bob with an elbow. "Oscar Wilde has got to be arrested. It's history. Sorry, Oscar darling."
"And your word is law, is it, Tick-Tock? Overconfident as always." Somehow, from a pocket in a pair of very tight, very un-Elizabethan leather trousers, Marlowe produced a device like a torch but with lots of glowing lights and buttons.
Colonel Tick-Tock laughed. "Silly boy, you know the Queerifier won't work on me! Our differences are ortho-historical, not sexological."
"It's not meant for you." Marlowe spun, flicking a switch on the device, and a beam of lavender light shone in Bob's face. "Will you be quite so devoted to ortho-historical chronology when your pretty companion finds himself newly in favour of our cause? When he pleads with you to save poor Oscar?"
"I prefer the term 'confederate.' And really, Kit, you know perfectly well that members of the Chronological Patrol are sworn to avoid emotional entan- "
"Is something meant to be happening to me?" Bob asked. "Apart from a bloody light in me eyes?"
Marlowe switched the beam off. "Look at Colonel Tick-Tock, Bob. Look closely at his broad shoulders, his manly chest, his tapering waist, his deliciously narrow hips, the luxuriant curve of his - "
"Steady on, Kit - "
" - never mind, you can't see it from that angle anyway. Now raise your eyes to his sensitive face, his soft mouth perfectly capped by his elegant moustache. Look into his warm hazel eyes and tell me what you feel."
Bob shrugged. "What's this all about? I don't feel any different."
"Buggery!" In Marlowe's voice, it sounded less like a curse than like someone invoking the name of a god. He banged the Queerifier against a table. "Power must be running low."
Garbo shook her head, setting her bobbed hair swinging. "You always forget to charge it. If - "
"Oscar," said Colonel Tick-Tock, who'd gone to sit on the bed next to Wilde. "I oughtn't to tell you anything, but . . . you'll survive prison. And a hundred years from now people will remember you as a hero."
"As a martyr, you mean." Wilde lifted his head and tried to smile. "How odd that a most devoted sinner should end up a saint."
"Will you wait here until the police come, darling? For history's sake?"
"If I must."
"A hero." Tick-Tock kissed Wilde lightly on the mouth; Bob stared down at the carpet and blushed. "Thank you."
"Congratulations, Tick-Tock. Another victory for the dark satanic mills of history as they grind us to powder. Long live lies and oppression! Are you proud? And speaking of lies," Marlowe said, giving Bob a long look before turning back to the Colonel, "how is your wife?"
"Constance is very well, thank you, and enjoying 1902. Or was it '03? Possibly '04. The Trick Clock will remember."
"My wife's name is Constance too," Wilde said. "What a peculiar coincidence."
"Not, er, precisely a coincidence, my dear. Let's say she failed to learn from her mistakes. As I, when I was younger, failed to learn from yours." Colonel Tick-Tock looked as abashed as Bob had ever seen him.
"You never told me you had a - "
"No time for that now, Chips. Kit, Greta, will you leave of your own accord or must I ask the Trick Clock for assistance?
"You are a cruel man," Garbo said, her voice vibrant with grief. "Poor Oscar."
"I take no pleasure in this! Well, sometimes I do, but not today." Colonel Tick-Tock glanced at Wilde, who was staring forlornly at his half-packed Gladstone, and dropped his voice. "Oscar's sufferings will make people--people like us--angry in all the years to come when they will need to be angry. He will be a martyr. If he escapes to France today, he'll be nothing but a comic playwright. Kit, you at least must understand me. You know all about the publicity value of a tragic end."
"You've won," Marlowe said shortly. "Don't ask me to agree. Come on, Greta, there's lots of work still to be done."
"Then I shall see you both again soon," Colonel Tick-Tock said as they stepped through a time hole and vanished. An echoing answer of I hope to see your Ninebob again soon lingered in the air a moment.
"Why does he keep calling me that, Colonel?"
"Er - " In the pause, there was a loud, policeman-ish knock on the door. "No time to explain! Trick Clock, time hole to December . . . "
"November 8."
"November 8, 1944. Courage, Oscar! Goodbye!"
Instantly they were back in Mr. Tompkins' fish and chips shop. Mr. Tompkins was still motionless inside his time suspension bubble.
"Well," said Colonel Tick-Tock. "What an adventure, eh? Jolly thrilling." He glanced around the shop without ever meeting Bob's eyes. "And now here you are, Chips darling, home again. Back to your life. And your fish. How lovely."
"Was it true what you said? About people needing to be angry because of Oscar Wilde?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry. I only know that it's the way it happened. And because it's already happened, it has to happen. Chrono Patrol oath and all that, what?" His mouth turned up in a feeble imitation of his usual bold smile. "I once made a highly unauthorized excursion into an alternate timeline to see the premiere of Wilde's Le secret de Lord Fairfax in Paris in 1901. Marvellous play. Greatest scandal of the season."
"Oh."
"That timeline would have turned out differently in all kinds of ways. I couldn't let it happen here and now. I had no choice."
"You're not cruel," said Bob. "But what you do is cruel, sometimes."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
"I suppose I ought to be going," Colonel Tick-Tock said at last. "Mustn't drag you away from your work any more. I'll leave you to it. Trick Clock, please - "
"No!" This wasn't Colonel Tick-Tock's usual Toodle-pip, darling, see you soon; he was leaving forever. Heart pounding, Bob put a hand on the Colonel's once again khaki-covered arm. "Don't go."
"But you're angry with me."
"No, not - yes, but - ." Words failing, Bob held on more strongly to the Colonel's arm. "Not as much as all that. Not forever."
"Dear old Chips. You've been a good fr- . . . a good confederate. But all this chronological chaos wears on a chap. You'll get fed up. Better to say goodbye now. And I'm sure that deep down, you're eager to resume your normal linearity. Do normal things. Meet a nice girl, get married, that sort of caper."
A nice girl? Bob, half-bewildered and half-comprehending, shook his head. "You're wrong. I don't want to do normal things. Not any normal things. I'm, I'm not normal."
"But . . . the Queerifier! You said you didn't feel anything."
"I said I didn't feel anything different. I've always - and when I look at you, I feel - "
"Oh, my dear." For the first time since Bob had known him, Colonel Tick-Tock looked surprised. "Why didn't you say?" He extended the arm Bob was still clinging to, and smiled, and Bob stepped into his embrace.
"I thought you didn't fancy me." He fastened his arms tightly around the Colonel's waist, which was indeed tapering and manly. "Why would you?"
"All this and modesty too." The Colonel's lips brushed Bob's jaw, and then his ear. "I'll show you exactly how much I fancy you," he whispered. "It's going to take a very long time."
"I thought there was no time."
"There's time enough."
For you, maybe, Bob thought. Not for me. There can't be enough for me. "Colonel, let's - "
"My name is Nigel."
"That's a nice name."
"It really isn't. But I shall like the sound of it when you say it."
"Ni- " The rest disappeared under a heated kiss. Bob wasn't used to kissing. Getting right down to business was the way of things, in his experience. But Nigel kissed as though kissing was the business, and also as though much, much better acts were still to follow. "Nigel, not here. I want to be somewhen we haven't got to worry about policemen. Somewhen I can kiss you on a street corner if I bloody well feel like it."
"Excellent idea. I know a delightful hotel in the 2030s. Beds the size of a cricket pitch and baths like swimming pools."
"Baths! Oh, Christ, do I - "
"There is a slight scent of haddock, darling. Never mind, we'll soon set that right. And then - " His hands sketched promises on Bob's backside.
"Ohhhh."
"And then we'll make time stop."
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I had to look up nine bob though.
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I'd like to write something else in the fandom, though I'm in a bit of a writing drought at the moment. I'm also waiting to see whether the last few episodes of the Thrilling Adventure Hour will bring another Colonel Tick-Tock segment or whether "Confederates" will turn out to be the last one.