AN: This is an old idea I'd been kicking around. Just a snippet of something really.
It wasn't like him to worry unnecessarily on things. He wasn't like the others; he didn't spend his time thinking on regrets or ambitions. He didn't think on much at all.
Because time to him was like breathing. It flowed steadily and it never changed and he'd follow his routine of steadily watching the ebb and flow of it.
Time to him was comforting. The other ghosts withdrew from it, came to either curse it or forget it. It never mattered how the others would react, time wouldn't slow or stop for them. Time wouldn't make them feel better.
It was comforting because time was predictable and it was monotonous and his job, while not easy, was a comfortable trap he let himself get ensnared in.
Time once made sense.
Then one day it hiccuped. It threw off his routine and he'd searched every cog, every machine every part of his domain to better understand the anomaly.
What he found was a boy, half ghost and half human and confused and shaken. Things became more complicated more difficult since then but he would not lie to himself, it was different now. Fun.
He'd put on an air of reluctance as he'd help. Would draw many parallels for the boy, to get him to see how intricate time really was. Every time the boy would be gracious and he'd see his company off, knowing the half ghost would return again.
He'd note the time and wave goodbye and would settle back into his duties. Only pausing to watch one f many clocks abound, he'd watched a million clocks before but this time he truly watched it, counting down each visit, startled to find himself feeling an old feeling he'd not felt in eras.
Impatience.
Each space of time grew shorter and his patience with it. Sometimes he'd stop, fearful that time itself had stopped only to sigh when the hour or day would pass.
Time was painful now. The clocks too loud, the day too long the minutes too many. He was restless now, often wandering the edges of his reach, no longer checking but to have something to do. He would wait.
The kid would be back in a year.
A year had never felt so long.
The teen would be back in a month.
Months had too many days. He tossed all the calendars out.
The man would be back in three days.
Only in the last few days of waiting did he ever feel like he had control again. Because now he would walk faster, no longer aimless or impatient.
Time had meaning now; one he'd never understood before. He was standing at the opening now.
Danny would be here in five minutes.
The swell of last week's walking seemed to have caught up to him because he suddenly felt tired.
Four minutes.
His shoulders slumped, his breathing evened.
Three minutes.
He could count the seconds but it never helped, never calmed this feeling.
Two minutes.
Maybe he should back up, not stand too close to the opening. Not make it seem like he'd been waiting too long.
One minute.
The only thing he felt, standing there and feeling his body relax slowly was the odd feeling that all ghosts and humans felt, why they hated time and he could understand now what it was.
Anticipation.