Author's Note:
Clockwork fic! I've gotten rather fond of Clockwork recently, possibly because I've been planning a Clockwork cosplay for a while now.
This prologue is quick and drabble-y so that we can get to the meat of the story. I've always thought human!Clockwork could be very fun.
Mental Tick
(or: The Boy Who Leaped)
A fanfic by Pseudinymous
Outside of Time
The endless ticking is sometimes numbing, sometimes soothing, and sometimes enough to drive one insane.
Clockwork's mind worked just like his namesake. It would tick forwards, one bit at a time, but of course the ticks didn't need to be in their proper order - that was how he saw the time stream in his mirrors, how he knew everything that was and everything that would ever be. He had what he called a mental tick, and it went on as loudly and clearly as the throngs of a grandfather clock stuck on twelve.
He'd had the mental tick for as long as he could remember. Clockwork didn't hear it with his ears, for it was not a sound that could ever be said to be heard, but it was there nonetheless. He theorised that it was made by the endless, inevitable progression of time, with little regard for whether that progression was forwards or backwards. Perhaps even left or right.
…
Clockwork was pensive, today.
As a child, his parents had thought him insane - the psychologists too - but he'd proven them wrong in ways they would never be aware of. Sometimes he had the forbidden urge to travel back through the time stream and pay them a visit, but doing so would have been very wrong indeed. Even reliving some of the more definitive parts of his youth would be wrong, as he would have to leave his post to do that.
… Tick.
Wrong, of course, was relative. The Observants didn't understand that, but Clockwork did. And the outside of time, his clock tower… well, that was rather good at looking after itself. It wasn't as if anything ever changed where time didn't flow.
He deserved a break. And when you got down to it, Clockwork had all the time in the world.
Tick.
