Twelve Years Later: Shadows Searching
by Futuramakid and Anthiena
DISCLAIMER: WE OWN NOTHING.
A/N: This is set in the alternate timeline set up by Life Finds A Way, so if anything seems off to you, check that story out and it'll probably be answered.
Mistakes. People make them-human, ghosts... some find their mistakes overlooked, others fatal or nearly so. To live sometimes is to hurt... something that he, as Fenton could not handle and he, as Masters, handled one side far too well. One put this sin... aside. The other fell into an abyss. That abyss ended up nearly swallowing the world until this abyss was averted for the past. This, however, did not end the existence of one who had lived for hurt. Instead, I chose to close away that hurt. To give a near empty mind to a creature that surely did not deserve it...
An old man watched satisfied from his home in the Ghost Zone. Much had changed in the last while... but it was for the better.
"The girl made a wise use of the privilege afforded her... All is as it should be...There will never be a disasteroid incident... The young Miss Gray will not become a threat to our kind... Daniel will head onward to his own destiny... and there will no longer be a homeless girl or a lost man in his shadow... It is all resolved... Everyone shall live. Life... found a way."
"There are still ways things go off roads, as I know you are perfectly aware, Master of Time," came a clear, pretty voice. In the clocktower was a young-looking ghost woman with purple hair afire, fair skin, green eyes and gentle eyes.
"There are ways, yes... but such courses would be foreshadowed... and thus far... the ends are good."
She laughed. "I can feel the wrongness in here that can smash all the progress, you forget. I do not come as devil's advocate, though. The watched one has something of mine... and his... servant has another."
"Phantom is under control... pending a humane method of... disposal."
"...which is why you brought me here. He cannot be truly disposed of... humanely. But I can make him... not dangerous," she spoke.
"Indeed," he replied, drifting to the thermos' current place, and lifting it... He could feel it shift in his hands, the Phantom was restless...
She smiled. "This is my penance, for the ring and crown enabling Pariah's rise... I made them and therefore him... and I will hamstring another not much different from him. After all... I am the Mistress of Emotions."
He raised a hand... and the ways out all sealed. If things failed, he dared not leave Phantom an easy method of escape...
"Are you ready?"
Her face was grim. "I am."
He opened the thermos... and wished he had any sort of god to pray to. The creature released was not much of a man anymore, the damage on his clothes reflecting his state of mind, coincidentally. He didn't see Clockwork, he saw her and he tackled the woman, who was unresisting. "Psyche, so good to see you..."
Clockwork watched on... ready to take action if need should be.
"You... know me." She sounded unsurprised with a note of boredom.
"In the biblical sense, yes... and I will know you again... and again..." He leaned in closely, licking her face. "...and again."
"Funny... I planned on doing almost the same and opposite of what you intend on doing to me... to you." She grasped his head and energy danced visibly around her hands, fingers on his temples. The face went slack and Phantom seemed to slowly collapse upon her, resting his head on her chest, like a true lover might. Psyche, after a time, pulled herself away, letting the creature roll off her to lay on the ground. She placed a hand on the not-quite a man's shoulder and his form changed, to something like a human. His fangs remained. Yet in other ways, he resembled Danny Fenton with a few touches of Vlad Masters. A homunculus of kinds, perhaps.
"He has little access to his powers, I could not seal them all away and no real memories now. His emotions will be quite changed. I hope this will satisfy the Observants for you."
He nodded...
"I can keep him... safe. Safe and away from any possible... reminders."
I turned the very thing he planned and used it on his mind. I will have to live his memories. His emotions. But this would have been this way when his destruction came. I could not allow all this and his death to hit me. And so, his life begins...