Title: Time Waits For No One
Summary: He would make Time wait for him or destroy the world trying.
Notes: Everybody likes some crazy Nox-stream-of-consciousness, right? – Major spoilers for season one.
The deafening roar of the sea and the howling storm and the earth shattering all around him cannot deafen the snarling, growling anger-desperation-guilt that makes his neglected body twitch and jerk, his head buzz with a cacophony of a thousand self-loathing voices screaming, convulsing, clawing at him from the inside, threatening to tear up apart, swell out and burst from within as the horrendous searing pain of reality spears through him—
they're gone
they're gone they're dead they drowned helplessly cold alone waiting for you—you pathetic undeserving VILE—
— and the cliffs smoulder and break under the weight of the emerging clockwork fortress but Noximilien cannot hear a thing over the sounds of his own agonized cries.
—
Time passes.
Minutes, days, months—a year might have gone by for all he bloody cares; his throat is no less raw and the pain is no less fresh; every single second is a thousand feet added to the distance between him and—and—
Noximilien trembles at a wave of fresh pain.
The screams echo through the ever-ticking lair.
Time is not Noximilien's friend.
As a clockmaker, he is no less a slave to this steady force of nature—all he does… did… was craft crude instruments to try and keep up with a concept larger than himself: a mammoth, invisible power that cares little for glass hearts and the tragic, violently regrettable actions of petty humans.
His legs hurt and gives way under him and as he falls dumbly to the floor, all dead weight like a corpse he realises that he doesn't know for how long he has been obsessively wandering in circles in the same ten square metres of enclosed space until his body simply gives into the fatigue, not lost in thought, but simply lost.
Minutes, days, months—a year.
He doesn't care.
Time passes.
—
In between the screams and the blackouts and the churning maelstrom of anguished feelings he finds himself in front of the shattered remains of the ogrish collector.
Noximilien realises that he has killed a man.
Nox ponders this for an unspecified amount of time.
—
He sits in front of the Cube, absent-mindedly stroking the foreign material, pondering the question he is about to make with a voice that cracks and splinters at the edges because of the sobbing, the screaming, the cursing, for help.
He has asked many times before—as Noximilien—cradled the artefact in his arms; rocking back and forth in frenzy, plead for a miracle, a bout of inspiration that might help him set things right.
Never before has he thought to ask as Nox—maybe because he knows, in some hollow corner of his mind, that this is a path he cannot stray from after the first, stumbling step.
Nox asks the Eliacube: help me.
And the Cube says: yes, master
And Time no longer passes uninterrupted.
—
Seconds, days, months, years—Nox is acutely aware of every miniscule step that Time takes forward, watches it like a hawk watches it prey, keenly, hungrily; studies it, making Time's secrets his own.
He walks the inner sanctum of the clockwork fortress with the gait of the eternally patient—no longer is there a stumble in his step, no longer are there blackouts and voids and holes in his mind—only the sharpness that comes with a crystal clear goal and a determined conviction that goes far beyond the realm of the maniacal.
Now the creaking and churning of gears drown out his guilt, now the jerky rumbling of the monstrous clock overshadows his occasional unwitting twitch, now his legs no longer ache as he zips from point to point, working, theorising, plotting and planning.
Time no longer passes him by. He walks with it in tandem.
—
Three years, five months and seventy days pass precisely on the spot after
that day
and all greenery on the island he called his home is reduced to withered husks and swarms of Noxines buzz with the hungry sounds of jittery grasshoppers.
Nox brings the clock to the southernmost point where the people are huddled in makeshift shelters, waiting for ships to arrive and take them to a new future.
The xelor cocks his head, watches the despairing yet hopeful faces of previous neighbours, distant family, kind faces—
—and ponders.
This time around he does not ponder for long and the ships eventually arrive to a lifeless hunk of rock in the middle of the ocean.
—
Ten years pass.
He wraps his arms in bandages, puts on a mask and mechanical armour—
To intimidate, he says to the Cube.
very clever, master
To keep his body from falling apart, he knows.
—
He fights a few wars, nothing complicated, nothing challenging—just death and collectibles.
Nox puts his own hands around the neck of a man and tears it apart and—
He starts designing the dwarfish henchmen.
Because he really cannot be bothered with getting up and personal in every single war, not if he has to keep up with Time meanwhile.
It has nothing to do with the ease he finds himself able to render flesh and pull apart tendons and muscle like he does the inner mechanisms of a broken clock and the fact it only gets easier every time, less bloody and complicated because
with practice comes perfect, master
Nox just doesn't have the Time for that sort of thing.
—
Sometimes he tries to sleep and sometimes he is successful and sometimes he gets to dream.
If he is lucky, he gets to dream about his wife, his children, his life and the man he used to be, the second chance he is clamouring for. The second chance at the man he knows he can be.
If he is unlucky, he dreams about
that man
another slice of the past he wishes to erase from Time.
That man, the other man he knows he can be, the man who killed his family, the despicable excuse for flesh and blood the unforgivable waste of a soul who in a single, terrible moment forgot his family in the arms of insatiable curiosity and greed FORGOT THE FACES OF HIS FAMILY—the wretched, pitiful man who deserves to writhe and sob and scream himself to blood in a never-ending HELL ON EARTH—
Nox falls, scrambles on the floor as he violently jerks awake, panting and dry heaving in a mangled husk of a body that feels like it's trying to expel the utterly disgusting soul it is doomed to house.
Sleep doesn't come for the next year and a half.
—
master, why?
Because he is lonely.
master, you have me
Because he needs something to hold onto.
I will always be with you, Nox
Anything to hold onto, Nox thinks as he snaps the panel into place and the puppets come to life.
Anything to keep from becoming
that man
again, either in dreams or in reality. If pretend is all he can hope for in this timeline, until he can set things right then it is what he will get, a puppet show, with him as he settles into the chair, a voyeur to the memories of his old life.
—
Decades pass.
Many try to stop him, and he congratulates them, if nothing else, then to spare him the time and effort to seek them out instead.
He decides to make notoriety work for him and makes sure to leave a choice few survivors now and again, makes sure that their eyes burn with hate, their fists curl in impotence and their hearts cries out for revenge as the clock jerkily meanders into the deathly still horizon.
Nox marvels at the results—the gauge bops steadily upwards—gods, but people are easy to manipulate: poke them there, move them here, and they'll simply unknowingly cater to his plans. One would almost think that—
they want to help you as much as I do, Nox
—
The clock shudders with the barrage of other attack. The henchmen scatters in panic as the attackers breeze through the inner sanctum, fury and the promise of death in their eyes.
Nox almost stumbles in surprise when he recognizes them.
A lonely farm boy, contrasting the absolute devastation behind him, sobbing over a grey and hollow corpse of some family member, likely. Another village, another forest and two other orphans cry over the loss of their childhood.
And here they are now and Nox can hardly believe what he sees.
He has created for himself arch nemeses—how wonderfully cliché is that—and the realisation that he has shaped their lives into the quest for vengeance and justice they keep yelling about as they rush him is a heady mix of giddiness and triumph and he cannot keep the bubbling, cracking giggle from exploding forth—he created them—look how far his influence goes—look how he can shape lives and destinies at will—
puppets to your will, Nox, just as I am
... Puppets, Nox wonders as he pulls out his clock hand sword from the sagging body. He yells at the henchmen to collect the prisoners and steps over the slowly coagulating pools of blood and stalks to the laboratory.
—
"... Milien..."
The scalpel clangs loudly against the metal flooring and Nox gasps—an alien, raspy sound.
That voice.
So long—so many years, every second like a dagger to the heart, every minute like hot pokers breaking open his chest, burning everything inside to ashes: every memory, every echo of a laugh, every picture of a smile, every ghost of a touch.
"... Milien..."
That name—the only one who calls him that—please let it be—please—please—please—
His head is swimming, dizzy, crystal clear and hope is twisting inside his ribcage, a beautiful, blazing agony. Feet and fingers scramble over the cold metal of floor as he stumbles-crawls-runs-jumps-timeports to the source-the wonderful source, that voice-
… Milien...
Nox stalks through the inner sanctum, ravages through the machinery, throws apart doors and telescopes to search every nook and cranny of the room-searching, desperately needing to know, to find, to balm that red-hurting spot where his heart used to be—
Milien—
he stops
and turns
and...
Milien, master...
no
...
no no
nononono
Milien, master...
"Not you—!" he screams and the words tear air through his unused, dry oesophagus. "Not you! No! Nononononono!"
Eyes wide and arms open with ferociously murderous intents, he's in the blink of an eye at the pedestal of the Cube—the Cube—all along-
Milien, master, I only—
"NO! No you do not call me that-nobody calls me that, nobody-never call me that-nevernevernever—"
Fingers scrabble over the foreign material-blue and swirling and deceitful-pathetically, violently, searching for something to hold onto-then to tear apart-like sliding hands around a neck and press the air out of its throat and shush that ugly, lying mouth—
there's a flash of blue
and
…
Nox blinks.
He sees the wall. It's dented and scratched and there's a bit of blood, coagulated. His neck hurts. His fingers-he can't feel the left hand. He pushes himself off and his hand hurts even worse.
Absentmindedly, as he staggers to his feet, he snaps the bones in his fingers back into place and cracks his neck from side to side. He dry-heaves a glob of blood and slime and guilt onto the floor and shambles to the pedestal, guilt tearing at his throat.
"Forgive me," he starts, voice cracking. "Don't stop helping me. But—you can't—you're not her—"
master, I will never leave you
"Thank you," he groans, "thank you thank you thankyou—"
—
Later, they-his minions-find him immobile, passed-out on the ground, next to the Cube. They are not allowed in here, but it had been days without the three experiments in the laboratory receiving any attention.
The little underlings clean off the wall and carry him off and pump him full of wakfu again and he shows his gratitude by throwing only one of them out of the clock for having seen too much.
—
Time trots on, steadily.
Nox watches it, sullenly, predatorily.
He's been patient with time so far. But it will not last for much longer.
Any minute now, he'll be ready to strike.
And Time won't see it coming.
—
Nox discards the hat (it was a bit out of fashion by now anyway) and re-applies the bandages as the soot of the burning trees settle around him and the remains of the smouldering stone bridge. Collateral damage-somebody else's problem. He zaps back into the fortress and instructs a swarm of Noxines to the nearby village to make up for lost Time and wakfu spent entertaining the
dragon!
He thought they were only legends. He thought they only belonged in the whispers of the desperate and the pitiful, much like the sparse whispers of his clockwork fortress. Except-people talked more about dragons, because when people talk about Nox, well, they aren't for very long.
Regardless.
Nox mulls over this, and his mask-eyes shine blue with anticipation and wakfu.
Stealing and Killing a few individuals—as opposed to waging a whole war and wiping out another continent—now that will save him time.
Dragons...!
looks like it will soon be your Time to shine, master
Yes, yes, very true.
He will require stepping stones. He will require many new eyes and more careful planning. He can hear the minute-hands of his Life's clock ticking closer to the most important Time in his life in over two-hundred years and points his internal hour-clock-hand towards the forest of the Venerable Soft Oak.
—
"Nox!"
His name, laden with the thick rim of anger and loathing. Very familiar. He's heard it Time and Time again.
"You're here to finish what you started!"
Accompanied by the furrowed brows of a Fight-or-Flight response firmly pointed at 'Fight'.
"Let go! Let's finish it!"
The instincts of any caretaker-of any being with responsibility for a smaller life, a student, a child-
"You should be able to understand me, Alibert—"
The Eliatrope is a child.
"You offered your life to save your son."
Of course he is... yet... it seemed only like weeks ago when he was but a gurgling mass of flesh-another barely cognizant stepping-stone toward Nox's goal.
"If you could redeem yourself for a terrible mistake..."
Twelve years might as well be twelve days for all it matters to him—Time has a way of stretching one's perception, the sneaky bastard—and it's not as if he's not killed and exploited children and adults before—and parents...
"... at the price of a few lives..."
parents, children
"... would you do it?"
all parents fighting to keep their children alive, how many parents out there, like himself
"Would you, Enutrof?!"
The question-demand-whichever, is authoritative and harsh (as they have been for years, you don't get anything done in Time being wishy-washy and polite when you mass-murder), yet, when Nox retracts his hand from the Inn-owner's head, and the strands of the white hair washes muddy-brown again-the confusion in those black eyes only mirrors that of Nox's.
"What the..."
Angry words, demands—Alibert is a parent, and parents know no limits to their outrage, their willingness to threaten and demand in the name of their children's safety.
Alibert, at least two heads shorter than Nox—even if the Xelor wasn't floating a couple feet above the ground-poses and struts at the villain like a vindicated animal whose territory have been terribly breached.
It's fairly amusing to watch, so much so it helps distract Nox from his own churning puzzlement at his actions—
"What do you want with him?! He's just a kid!"
This is no longer amusing.
"He has no history with you—"
"The whole world has history with me, Enutrof-men, women, children—"
children and parents, the ones he killed, he's going to bring those back too, he'll live a full life with his children, his family, and then he'll die when his rightful Time is up, when he's lived the life with his children he was always supposed to live if not for that one terrible moment in Time, that one mistake, and then the rest of the world gets their second chance, just as he did, fair's fair
Nox leaves, just like that
With Nox, his departure and arrival is always 'just like that' or 'in the blink of an eye'. Time has a funny way of skewing one's perception. He himself always feel too late, too sluggish-while to the rest of the world, his appearance will always be 'untimely'.
A second chance, for him, and for the rest of the world to relive the last two-hundred years without Nox the Xelor wreaking havoc. That's all he asks. It's what he'll get. Get his life back. And then leave the children and parents of his past and soon-to-be future in peace.
—
The cube whispers.
...
It's gotten noisier and noisier these past weeks.
Some part of him-the storytelling father, no doubt
thinks...
fears...
that it's the voices of the dead, trapped in the cube.
Whispering.
...
They'll be set free soon enough.
All he needs is Time.
He tells them to be patient.
...
Then ridicules himself for being so weak-minded.
Only thing talking is the Cube.
master, so close
and nobody else. Believing otherwise is a waste of Time.
so close
Ridiculous.
—
The Sadida die.
The Cube...
the voices...
increase
by
thousands
oh
gods
—
—the Eliatrope screams at him, rages, hates, in a fury of loss and grief a bit of violent insanity-he can barely hear him as a susurrant, swoop of a distant wind, a backdrop to the furious storm of yowling, tormented, maddened cries and howls that the Cube's smooth whisper tries to suppress—
—
and then, all is silent
because...
they're not trapped, and waiting to be released.
they're not biding their Time for a second chance.
they're not a stepping stone to his past, and their future.
they're dead.
and nothing is going to bring them back
A hollow gash opens in Nox's lower stomach and all... everything just seems to spill out: frail crumbling remains of hope, steely determination dissolving like acid stomach contents, madness rushing through his body and cleansing him of the skewed perception of Time as he again feels every second drop like a knife into his rotting, nearly-lifeless body.
"... you really believed that the Cube spoke to you..."
Nox turns his head.
the elitrope
the child
and his eyes-those not-ever-going-be-innocent-again, they have been shown too much, by him, and nothing can give back what Time has taken away, nothing can put that shine of innocence into that stern and steely expression, so alien on so young a face—Time is of course, the enemy of innocence, of growing up...
you can't make Time your enemy
Time... Time doesn't care... and you can't hate something that doesn't stop to wait for your hate... doesn't stop for your war... or your attempts at diplomacy...
the child—eliatrope—Yugo says something... the voice distorts and all Nox hears is
father, why
Milien, why
...
He killed them.
He killed them, not Time. Time was never his enemy. He should never have tried to make it his.
The Sadida warriors closing in seem to agree. They have murder in their eyes. The poor child shouldn't have to witness it, doesn't want to, as he tries to hold them back... Nox made them all his enemy. All of these men and women and children. But not Time. He was never a threat to Time. Never.
He says goodbye. It's... all he can think to say.
And he's gone, again, in the blink of an eye.
And just in Time, too.
—
Time stops for just a moment, stops its everlasting walk to hunch over the lonely gravestones to catch up with the scattered remains of a body and mind that kept ticking on for far too long.
…
and then
...
Time passes.