Eleven reviews since my last update? I love all you people. 8D

bells-mannequin: Yeah, I didn't get what the deal was with there being barely any Bill Hawks in it. The corrupt politician/major villain of the game gets maybe a minute of screen time? What?

rArXdiNo3: If I actually had a choice between stealing Dimitri's fedora or Layton's top hat, I'd have to take the fedora. -is shot- I'm way too tall to wear a top hat, though, that might explain it. As for Clive's chapter, I'm not exactly sure if it's shocking, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

WriterCat: I actually had a debate with myself over whether or not to write this in first person. On the one hand, it makes it more effective, but on the other end, the POV changes every chapter might get confusing (plus I suck at writing first person anyway), so I opted for the third. Thank you for reviewing. :)

Okay, so I took my sweet time updating. And I didn't get this finished before my actually-difficult semester started. That annoys me, but basketball will be ending within the next few weeks, so I'll at least have some more free time to finish soon. :)

As promised, here is Clive's chapter. I love this guy, and even though he's a villain (no matter his motive, he did kidnap Bill Hawks and scientists, force the aforementioned scientists into the "future London", tricked them into thinking they were ten years in the future and had to work on a time machine to get themselves home, then made most of those scientists work on an evil mobile fortress that Clive later used to destroy quite a piece of London), he's one of those rare, self-redemptive villains that there really should be more of. And although Clive might not be my favourite villain (Dahlia Hawthorne for the win!) he's definitely in my top ten.

This one-shot is a bit larger in scope than the others. Whereas they merely dealt with the cause and the events before the time machine's explosion, this one deals more with the actual event and the aftermath. And it also introduces Clive's adoptive "mother," Constance Dove, and the reason why she adopted him in the first place. As a terrible judge of my own work, I'm not sure how well I did with this, but I seem to be doing well in your eyes so far, so I hope I don't disappoint.

The Child

There comes at least one time in everyone's life when their perfect, well-constructed worlds are shaken to their very foundations by some horrible tragedy or injustice, when the very universe seems to crumble down around them. These are the defining moments of a person's life, these make-it-or-break it moments, that send one spiralling into the bottomless abyss of human failure, insanity, and despair.

Some never stop falling. Many manage to claw their way out and pick up the pieces. And then there are those deluded few, the ones who mistake up for down, who believe they are pulling themselves out of the void, but are only falling more quickly and deeply than they could ever have imagined.

And really, that was how it all began for Clive, although he didn't quite understand what was happening at the time. Standing in the chaotic street, fighting against the subduing grip of a stranger, the whole thing had a sense of bizarre surrealism, like a strange dream that he would soon wake up from. Only Clive knew that it was no dream. The terror was real, and the flames that were devouring his home, his life, and his future with brutal savageness was real, as real as the asphalt beneath his feet and the wailing sirens that blasted through the smoky air.

Clive wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up in the street, or why his home was on fire. According to his simple, childish logic, the building had spontaneously burst into flames as he'd been going up the stairs. Well-versed in the rules of fire escape, he'd turned and headed back down the stairs at his first glimpse of the flames, out through the front doors and into the street that was already beginning to fill with panicked spectators. Clive expected his parents, who had been up in the apartment packing, to join him soon, but when the fire department and several ambulances had arrived with no sign of them, he had grown more and more anxious.

Then he had seen the stretchers.

There were three of them being loaded into one of the ambulance, covered with white sheets. One was slightly singed from the flames. Clive could see the outlines of people beneath the sheets, in the way they bunched together, rose, and fell, defining a nose, a mouth, feet. The repugnant smell of burnt flesh greeted his nose, and Clive, in a sudden revelation, realized what was beneath those sheets.

Past fire fighters and paramedics, through detached reporters and hysterical civilians, Clive had woven unnoticed toward the burning building in a slow, almost dreamlike fashion, not quite realizing what he was doing or the consequences of his actions. Smoke billowed out of the windows, lazily rolling across the sky in great black plumes, stinging Clive's eyes and throat, but he kept running, feeling as if some other force was controlling his legs. He almost reached the door when someone grabbed him by the back of the shirt, subduing him.

Clive, hysterical with fear, could only think about how needed to get inside, how he needed to find his family. He struggled madly in the stranger's grip as he was hauled backward down the street, away from the scene of destruction and chaos unfolding in what had once been his home.

"I need to go back!" Clive screamed, the tears pouring freely down his face now as he pulled against the stranger's grip. "My parents are still inside!"

Clive hadn't quite registered that fact until he spoke it aloud, the words horrible and so tangible that he could almost reach out and touch them. The true meaning of those words hit him with brutal force, and as if on cue, the top floor of the building collapsed in on itself. The panic-stricken bystanders let out screams of fear and dismay as the fire department began to withdraw its personnel.

"Let me go!" Clive screamed, trying to wrench free of the stranger's grip. "I have to find them before – before–"

"Pull yourself together, boy!" the stranger admonished him, tightening his grasp on Clive. "If you go back in there, you'll die too!"

"Don't say that!" Clive screamed, turning to attack the stranger, to force him to let go. It was only then that he got a good look at the top-hatted man who was so effectively subduing him. His ash-smudged face was oddly blank of emotion, except for his tear-filled eyes. Whether his tears were a result of the smoke, or from the grief that was already beginning to gnaw away at Clive's heart, Clive couldn't be sure. Either way, he stopped in his tracks and stared up at the stranger in shock.

"I'm. . . I'm sorry," the stranger murmured, a flicker of regret in his eyes, and it was only then that Clive noticed the man's voice shaking slightly. "I shouldn't have said that."

Clive felt his lower lip tremble, and there was a great groaning as another floor collapsed. "My parents," he whispered. "We. . . We were supposed to go on vacation. To the countryside." He had no idea why he was telling the stranger this – maybe the tears in the man's eyes had startled it out of him.

The man closed his eyes for a moment, his expression pained.

"They'd been saving for years," Clive murmured, feeling like he was babbling. "Years and years. We were going to leave tomorrow morning."

"Sh," whispered the man softly. "Don't think about that right now."

The whole building was beginning to collapse onto itself now, its groaning long, continuous, sickening. Clive turned to face the building, and the man instinctively tightened his grip on the young boy. Clive didn't want to run to the building – he was rooted to the spot as he watched his apartment begin to crumble in front of his very eyes. There was still no sign of his parents.

And that was when Clive knew.

He turned to run, to flee from the horrible, unchangeable truth of death, but there was nowhere to turn except into the front of the stranger's slightly singed, tea-scented shirt. He buried his face in the man's shirt to stifle the tears that began to well up in his eyes and burned his throat. At first, Clive thought that he was trembling solely from the effort of suppressing tears. It took him a very, very long time to realize that the stranger, too, was crying silently even as he tried to comfort Clive. When he finally spoke, however, the tremor in his voice gave him away.

"I'm so sorry," the stranger whispered. No hopeless, unfounded optimism, that life would continue as normal. Not for Clive, not for himself, not for the bystanders who flooded the street. This stranger knew, just as Clive knew, as the survivors would come to know, that their loved ones were dead, lost to them forever, and they would never be able to change that fact.

"My parents are. . ." Clive whimpered, but he couldn't bring himself to finish the terrible sentence.

It was only then that Clive surrendered himself to the tears that had been building in his eyes as he wept for his parents, and for how narrowly he himself had avoided death, in the comforting embrace of a stranger.

-X-X-X-

In the weeks following the explosion (it took Clive a long time to figure out what the cause of the fire was, although he and everyone else were still murky on the details) he was only a ghost of himself, an empty shell that went through the motions of life, haunted by memories and regrets. The psychologist who had been assessing the survivors of the explosion called it "survivor's guilt." Clive called it sadness. Such a simple, childish word, barely basic enough to cover the pain and grief that racked him day and night, yet there were no words to convey just how he felt. Clive had, truly, fallen into the infamous, bottomless abyss.

He might never have stopped if it hadn't been for Constance.

-X-X-X-

Constance Dove was an elderly lady who lived in the British countryside, the kindly widow of a banker and, therefore, the owner of a large wallet. She also happened to be Clive's new guardian, and the saving branch that his flailing hands had grasped before he fell any further.

At first, Clive's social worker had been pessimistic on the odds of Clive being adopted. As the social worker had pointed out, "nobody wants to adopt a smartass thirteen-year-old" (not that Clive was a smartass – that was just the stigma that teenagers carried). Yet, a month after the explosion, Clive found himself being led into a large, picturesque country mansion (his "new home") by the elderly Constance.

"I suppose you would like to see your room," Constance said, not as a question, but rather a statement as she led him through several fancy, crammed rooms. "It might be a little musty; it hasn't been used in years. And, if you don't like the furniture, we can redecorate it. If you feel up to it, of course."

After they climbed an ornate staircase, Constance stopped at the door at the top of the stairs. She opened it and stepped aside so that Clive could see his new accommodations. It was a fairly large, spacious room, but there were toys and books scattered all over the floor, slightly dusty from lack of use. The bookshelf, the desk, and the bed, on the other hand, had the too-clean look of a last minute dusting. The bedspread and curtains, freshly-changed, were a matching blue. It was a small photo, however, that caught Clive's gaze; a picture of an unmistakeable but much younger Constance, a man who could have only been her late husband, and a young boy of about Clive's own age.

"Dinner should be ready in about half an hour," Constance said, patting Clive absentmindedly on the arm. "You settle in here. Feel free to do whatever you want until then."

Constance gave him a warm, reassuring smile before padding back downstairs. Clive set his lone suitcase on the floor and walked over to the picture to examine it better. On closer inspection, Clive could discern some of Constance's features in the boy – they had the same smile, the same large eyes, the same curly, untameable hair. He could only have been her son. The little family stood in front of a lit Christmas tree, with evergreen boughs, ribbons, and blinking lights everywhere, their smiles large and brilliant. Clive could feel the love and joy radiating from behind the slightly smudged glass.

He didn't realize how long he stood there until he heard the door open. "Clive, it's time for. . ." Constance trailed off as she stuck her head into the room and saw what Clive was looking at. "Dinner," she said finally, glancing at the picture frame.

Clive turned to look at her, opening his mouth to ask the question that was on the tip of his tongue. There was a flicker of something nameless in her eyes, and he faltered. He sensed that Constance didn't want to talk about the picture, so he held his tongue.

"Okay," he mumbled instead, padding out the door. Although he couldn't be sure, he thought he heard Constance sigh softly as she closed the door.

-X-X-X-

Constance was a bubbly, energetic woman, despite her age and numerous ailments. Under her care, Clive slowly began to heal. Not quickly, not right away, not fully and completely, just a little bit. But it was progress, and Clive found himself come to love Constance as he would love a grandmother or an elderly aunt. She was no replacement for either of his parents, but she was certainly better than nothing.

Still, despite the presence of Constance, Clive, the husband and wife who worked for Constance, and the clutter that infected the whole house, the mansion had a hollow, empty feeling to it, an ambiance that went deeper than the many unused rooms and the ridiculous amount of space. It permeated not only the house, but those inside it. The emptiness was integral to the everyday life of its occupants, as if it were the sole reason for their existence. Clive wasn't entirely sure what caused it, but he thought that he had a pretty good idea that it involved the family in the photo.

His guess was further enforced by the fact that the boy was never discussed. Constance's husband would be mentioned in passing, but never their son. In the clutter of the house, there was not one other picture of him besides the one on Clive's dresser. He wanted desperately to ask Constance about him, and why he was never mentioned. Was he a shame to the family? Did he grow up as a criminal? Or did Constance simply just not like her son? (Clive doubted this; Constance liked everyone.) He knew that, whatever it was, the subject of Constance's son must be painful – still, the question gnawed away at him incessantly, until finally, he had to ask.

He chose a quiet moment, when he and Constance were alone. Constance was sitting in her rocking chair by the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket as she read, while Clive, pretending to do his homework, kept glancing up at her, trying to work up the nerve to ask the question that was burning at the tip of his tongue.

"Is the boy in that photo your son?"

The vague question, spoken in an almost inaudible whisper, seemed to almost slip out of Clive. The first thing he thought when he heard himself ask the question was, in a sudden panic, Please don't let her have heard that. But Constance, sharp as ever, looked up, lips pursed, eyes slightly narrowed as she looked at Clive. She contemplated him for a few minutes, then, quietly, without request for clarification, answered, "My son."

So, Clive thought, I was right.

Constance folded the corner of the page in her book so that she could return to it, then closed the book and turned in her seat to face Clive. Her eyes were sad, but she looked businesslike as she said to him, "His name was James. He was a sweet little boy, very adventurous, very active. Then there was the accident at the local school."

"The one I go to?" asked Clive, a bit confused.

Constance shook her head. "The original school," she corrected him. "The one you attend now is a replacement."

"What happened?" Clive inquired, unable to stop his curiosity from getting the best of him.

"Two students were fooling around with lighters in the hallway during class time," Constance began, closing her eyes momentarily as if to recall the incident. "The whole school was a firetrap. The government was trying to decide whether or not to close the school at the time. Anyway, the school caught fire. A few people died in the fire. . ." Constance's voice trailed off.

Clive could guess who one of those people was.

Constance fingered the arm of her rocking chair and rocked gently back and forth. Quietly, she pressed on, "The students were never reprimanded. The loss of James was made all the more devastating by that, and by the fact that I had just lost my husband to a heart attack about a year before. Without him, I didn't know what to do. I survived, but it was never the same after the accident."

"Constance. . ." Clive said, alarmed to see tears in Constance's eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Maybe that's why, as soon as I heard about the explosion, I was so intent on adopting you," Constance continued, more to herself than to Clive, ignoring his question completely. "When it happened, you were the same age as James. . ."

Clive could feel tears beginning to well up in his own eyes. He stood, crossed the room, and hugged Constance. There hadn't been much affectionate, physical contact between the two throughout the past few years, but Clive tried to convey everything he was feeling into that hug: his sympathy, his gratitude, his admiration, the fact that he would never leave her like James.

In his embrace, Clive could sense her frailty, and with a shock, he realized that Constance was old. He had known, of course, that she was old, but she had always struck him as more of an eccentric middle-aged woman with white hair than the actual, ailing senior she was. It suddenly occurred to him that he might never have the opportunity to leave her, that she might leave him – and the world – sooner than either one of them wanted.

Constance patted him absently on the arm, and after a moment of silence, she asked in true Constance-fashion, "Have you finished your homework yet?"

The moment finished, Clive returned to his books. But for the rest of the night, he couldn't shake the sense of foreboding and despair that had lingered after that one moment of understanding.

-X-X-X-

Knowledge did not equal acceptance. Clive learned that the hard way when Constance died two years later.

She slipped away in her sleep, according to the doctors. Natural causes. It meant nothing to Clive, except that Constance, the saving branch that he had caught a hold of after his parents' deaths, had snapped off in his grasp, sending him plummeting into the void again. He locked himself in his room for several days afterward, only emerging to use the bathroom and maybe nibble something before returning to solitude. The grief was mind-numbing, so much so that he spent most of his time lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling without taking notice of the tears that had soaked his face.

About a week after Constance's death, her lawyer (Clive hadn't even known she'd had a lawyer) came to discuss Constance's will (Clive hadn't known about the will, either). Her whole estate – a considerable sum of almost five million pounds – had been left to him. That was about all Clive, in his stunned and mourning state, could glean from the meeting. It was too much for him; the terrible loss, and the pathetic "compensation" that came with it, set him off crying again, and the lawyer had to hastily excuse himself for a prior engagement.

Two months later, Clive drove in to London for the first time in five years, for no particular reason. He needed to escape from the house, away from the emptiness that had only intensified since Constance had died, and it seemed only natural that he returned to his home town. He had no particular destination in mind, and merely drove around. It seemed almost natural that he should find himself on the street where he grew up, almost by accident, but it struck Clive that this had been his destination all along, and he just hadn't known until he'd arrived.

The buildings that had been damaged in the explosion had been repaired, and there was no sign of it having ever occurred. Clive wasn't sure what he'd been expecting – he'd had half an idea there might be a monument there to pay respect to the dead – but largely, the whole street seemed to be unchanged. He parked the car in front of what would have been his old apartment building. It and the neighbouring building, where the explosion had initially occurred, were the only things that had changed. Both had been completely torn down and rebuilt so that they looked cleaner and more modern than their neighbours.

A man with greying hair walked out of the condominium building that had replaced Clive's old home. Without quite knowing what he was doing, Clive climbed out of the car and called to the stranger, "Excuse me, but may I ask you a question?"

The man shot Clive a curious look but kept walking.

"Sir, I just have to ask. . . there was an explosion on this street about five years ago. Do you remember?" Clive pressed, hurrying after him.

"There was no explosion here," the man replied tersely, quickening his pace.

Clive ran after him so that he fell in step with him. "I'm sorry, sir, I really am, but you're mistaken. There was an explosion on this very street that destroyed two buildings. I know. I was. . ." He stopped, coughed, then added helplessly, "Five years ago."

"I'm sorry, young man," he replied, drifting away from Clive and eyeing him as if he were mad, "but there was no explosion in London five years ago. I should know. I've worked as a reporter at The London Sun for the past ten years. Now, if you would excuse me, I have to get to work."

This statement left Clive standing in the middle of the sidewalk, rooted to the spot by disbelief, as the man hurried on. A reporter at one of London's largest newspapers hadn't known about the explosion? Hadn't it received any coverage at all? As Clive stood there, mulling this question over, he realized that even though he had been there at the time, he hadn't even known that it was an explosion until he'd asked his social worker, who hadn't been able to give him any additional information.

It was then that Clive, remembering the fate of Constance's son James, was struck with a horrifying moment of realization. He climbed back into the car and drove himself to the headquarters of The London Sun, determined to do something – anything – to find out if his hunch was correct.

When he entered the building, he walked determinedly up to the receptionist, cutting in front of about five people in line, and hit the desk with the flat of his palm. "I'd like to look through the Sun's archives," he said to the receptionist, ignoring the protests from the people behind him.

She frowned up at him. "I'm afraid only employees of the Sun are allowed to access our archives, sir," she replied stonily.

Clive stared at her, uncomprehending.

"I'm sorry, sir, but if that's all–"

Clive shook his head and said, quite firmly, as if that was his intention all along, "Then I'd like to apply for a position here."

-X-X-X-

When Clive left the headquarters of the Sun ten minutes later, clutching an application form, he tried to tell himself that he was doing the right thing. In Clive's taxed mind, if he were to get the job at the Sun, he would be able to discover the cause of the explosion, and find out why it had been covered up, as it surely must have. He would be able to discover those responsible for the ten people, including his parents, who had lost their lives. He might even be able to drag the explosion up again after five years and punish the perpetrators of his misery. In his opinion, he had found a new branch to grasp, one that would enable him to climb out of the void he had fallen down for far too long.

But as Clive got into the car, a small part of him realized that he was still descending into the depths of the very abyss he believed he was climbing out of. He felt an urge to crumple up the application form and toss it out the window without taking it any further. He went so far as to lower the window and look out at the London street behind, the form clutched tightly in his hand.

Then Clive closed his car window and, carefully setting the application form on the passenger's seat, set off for home.