This chapter was written for Dannymay 2021 Day 3: Portal.
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Bad things happened when Vlad came to Amity Park. For that matter, bad things happened wherever Vlad was. It was part of what made Vlad Vlad. Some part of his otherness, some twist of the shadow-fabric he was made of that left rot and ruin wherever his hem brushed. Of course, Vlad was never affected by this misfortune. In fact, he seemed to suck the luck out of everyone around him. Like a vampire.
Along with sanity. But that was a given for the others, even partial others, like Vlad. Or Danny.
But Vlad didn't even try to hide or ameliorate the effects he had on people, didn't try to keep them safe, to make their lives shine like the precious lights they were.
(Danny drummed his fingers on his chest and wondered, if, perhaps, it would feel less empty if Clockwork let him become a jewel box.)
But that was the way Vlad was, and Danny felt him enter Amity Park like nails on a chalkboard. His skin started to itch. His teeth hurt. Pressure pulsed in his head like waves of heat coming off asphalt. Being human, being real, was too tight, too heavy. It would be so easy to slip into the cool waters of the Dream and cut through them to wherever Vlad was.
No. He couldn't. As shown time and time again, that would just exacerbate things. No matter what Vlad did, it would be worse if they fought, especially if there was anyone there to see it. Like what had happened with Jazz…
Danny was beyond lucky he'd been able to snap her out of whatever Vlad had done to her, but she still was quite right. The Vultures had actually apologized on Vlad's behalf, after that.
(And wasn't that strange, standing in the Dream on ground covered by bones and feathers, the Vultures on a dead tree, speaking as one. A thing of terror, apologizing for their ward. For pain suffered through Love. For lines crossed.)
Still. He had better… supervise Vlad, for a lack of a better word. Make sure he wasn't getting up to anything. He'd go as a human – as himself.
He sighed and splayed his hands out on the table.
"Something wrong?" asked Sam, who had been making a complex sigil out of her fries and ketchup.
"Vlad's in town," said Danny. "I—"
The doors to the Nasty Burger were thrown open with a bang as Jazz came running in. She ran halfway through the store, to weak protests from the employee behind the counter, and skidded to a stop in front of their table.
"Vlad's here," he said.
"You saw him?" asked Danny, concerned. "Did he try—"
"No," said Jazz. "I can just—It's like he's under my skin, and I—" She made a sound of frustration and gripped both sides of her head with clawed hands.
"Hey," said Danny, gently, grasping her wrists. "It's going to be okay. I'll take care of it."
"Okay," said Jazz, breathing deeply. "Alright. I shouldn't have freaked out like that."
"It's okay," said Danny. He looked back to his friends. "Anyway, I'm going to go see what he wants, okay?"
"I'm coming with you," said Sam, standing.
"Me too," said Tucker. "Sort of. Halfway."
"You really shouldn't," said Danny. "You know what happens when we get together."
"Which is why we want to back you up," said Sam. "As long as he stays physical, there's stuff we can do."
Unless Danny was prepared to do something incredibly inadvisable, there wasn't much he could do to stop her. "Okay," he said. "Just… be careful. If it looks like it's going to turn into a fight, you need to leave." He didn't want them to get anymore spiritually messed up than they already were.
"We know, we know, you give us the spiel every time," said Sam.
Yes, and Sam ignored it every other time. Danny shook his head. "Alright, let's—"
Danny was promptly interrupted yet again, this time by his parents rushing in wearing… He could loosely call them clothes.
"It's retro night, baby!" shouted Jack.
It was not retro night. There was no such thing as retro night at the Nasty Burger.
"I'll take care of them," said Jazz.
"Thanks," muttered Danny, sliding out of the booth. "Come on, let's go out the back."
The alley behind the Nasty Burger was fetid in a way that made Danny's shadow lift from the pavement and float on the air. Something that inhabited rats skittered in the corners at Danny's presence and ran for a storm drain. He breathed shallowly.
"Which way?" prompted Tucker.
"He's actually coming this way," said Danny, frowning, debating facing him in this alley, just to see the disgust that would surely paint itself on Vlad's face, paper-thin mask that it was.
Reality rippled, the surface tension that kept the Dream from bleeding in snapping. A miasma rose from the ground. Vlad stumbled into the alley, clutching at his face, which was melting. No, transforming. No, stretching. No, layering over itself a in dozen sickening ways, all the masks Vlad wore flickering over whatever truth he had all at once.
"Help me," he grated. His words felt sick, diseased.
"Guys," said Danny, fighting back the urge to vomit, "run."
"No!" shrieked Vlad. "Help me!"
And sanity fractured like glass.
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Whatever Danny's parents had done to stabilize Vlad had worked, to a degree. It hadn't fixed the underlying problem, which Danny could still feel slinking through the Dream. It also didn't fix whatever he'd done to Sam and Tucker, although it had kept it from progressing further.
Danny took a slow, angry breath and ran a mental count of the lives stored inside his chest. They were there, all of them. Whatever happened to Sam and Tucker, they wouldn't die.
But Danny knew there were fates worse than death.
His fingernails left half moon impressions on his palms as he clenched his fists. The Dream roiled with his fury, the force of it enough to keep Vlad's diseased thoughts away.
"Daniel," croaked Vlad. "Cure me."
"That's what Mom and Dad are trying to do."
"Find a cure for me," said Vlad, as if he hadn't heard Danny at all, "and you'll find a cure for your precious little friends."
Danny stilled. "You did this on purpose."
Vlad laughed. "Of course, I did, my dear boy. What value is a simple human mind compared to those such as we?"
Any rage Danny had felt up to this moment paled in comparison. The mirror over the sink cracked down the middle, never to show a true physical reflection again. He hated—
A concerned tug at Danny's throat jolted him from his thoughts. Clockwork. Clockwork would know what to do. He turned, and without a second glance at Vlad, strode bodily into the Dream.
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It took Danny even less time than usual to find Clockwork, and, when he did, he immediately found himself at Clockwork's center, deep within the castle that was his metaphor. Dozens of Chains were fixed to Danny's collar, each of them completely taut, holding him perfectly immobile, the embrace of a relieved but panicking parent. Clockwork's emotions, too vast for Danny to fully comprehend, were transmitted directly through those chains, microscopic vibrations raising gooseflesh on Danny's skin. A wordless noise both distressed and pleased wound its way from Danny's throat, continuing to echo long after he'd run out of the breath to maintain it.
Clockwork's avatar cupped Danny's face in its hands, long fingers almost completely encircling his head. There was more of Clockwork in it that there usually was.
"Clockwork…?" asked Danny, weakly, confused and overwhelmed by the sudden flood of affection.
Poor little one, whispered the avatar, this is what happens when matters are not properly attended to. The Vultures should know better, should take care of him properly… It pressed its forehead to Danny's, startling a squeak from him.
Danny, reflexively, brought his hands up to clutch at the avatar's robes.
My poor child. What are they thinking, letting him run around so ill, so that he might infect other children?
Clockwork saw Vlad as a child, too. Not surprising, considering how ancient Clockwork must be, but good to know.
That emotion! It was only a shadow, and even so-!
"Emotion?"
Hatred, hissed Clockwork's avatar.
The collar around Danny's neck constricted, a tighter, more Loving, more comforting, hug. Danny gasped, although breathing here was psychological rather than physiological. The cloth of the avatar's robes began to wind up Danny's arms.
Even the pale, human shadow of it is not something you should experience, my child.
Danny didn't like being that angry, but—
Even the concept of it is too much, too heavy. You should not have to bear it. I should not have overlooked it. The avatar's hands moved to the back of Danny's head, pressing his face against its shoulder. It must hurt you so, murmured the avatar, carding fingers through Danny's hair. Fear not. I will excise it. All of it, even the idea of it shall not touch you, shall not sully your thoughts.
The avatar stepped away.
"Wait!" shouted Danny, panicking.
Not being able to hate? Danny had mixed feelings about that, but he doubted he'd be able to talk Clockwork out of it, not with how damaging Hate could be. In the end, it wouldn't be that much of a loss. Not being able to understand that it existed? Not being aware of hate at all? Being unable to understand that, sometimes, people would go out of their way to hurt one another?
That was dangerous. That would render him unable to even begin to comprehend vast swathes of human history and humanity.
"If I don't know what it is," said Danny, "if I don't know that it exists, how can I protect myself against it?"
A gust of wind blew through Clockwork's sepulchral hall like the sigh of a giant. It is my duty to protect you, my child.
The sheer possessiveness of the words lingered on Danny's skin. He wanted to lean into them but held his imaginary breath.
But very well.
Danny let himself relax, slightly, even as the avatar walked to somewhere he couldn't see, its silent footsteps giving him no clue as to where it was. With only the constant, regular hum and tick of Clockwork's gears to stimulate him, it was hard for Danny to stay vigilant. He found himself drifting, his thoughts wandering.
Did his hatred of Vlad cause him pain, as Clockwork said? What was it going to be like, to not be able to hate at all, rather than just not being able to Hate? Would he still be angry at Vlad? He hoped so. The man deserved it.
Two points of frigid cold touched the back of his head, contracted into a single point, and pulled. Danny felt something within him come free, and he sagged as much as the chains would allow him.
The avatar walked back into view, and Danny recoiled from the thing he was carrying, clasped in a long, silver pair of tweezers. "Is that," started Danny, before he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "Was that in me?"
Yes, said Clockwork's avatar, lowering it into a small, jeweled box. Danny felt relieved as soon as the lid closed on it and he was no longer forced to look at it. At the same time… Fear not, said the avatar. I could never destroy something of you. It will be remade into something more useful.
Danny nodded as much as he could and shuddered. He felt… dirty. Unclean. Just remembering what he'd felt, what he'd thought… It left a deep sense of wrongness.
Come, said Clockwork. I have just the thing for that. You are due for a bath. A cleansing, inside and out.
The metaphor of the chains fell away, leaving just the one, usual, slack one. Danny knew Clockwork could call them back at any time, that, in truth, they had not gone anywhere at all.
"What about Vlad?" he asked, twisting his hands around the hem of his shirt. "And my friends? Can you help them? Please."
He felt Clockwork examine him appraisingly.
Perhaps the bath can wait for another day.
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The mirror was a portal, tall and wide as a door, glassy surface gleaming with otherworldly light. The edges were crimped, filigreed, flared. Beyond the reflection, Danny could just make out the suggestion of movement.
It is not real, said the avatar, putting a hand on Danny's shoulder, but a might-have-been.
"But I can find a way to fix things in there?"
The avatar did not answer. A prickling feeling rose up inside Danny, settling in his stomach. Somehow, this felt similar to when he'd eaten the mirror with the bad future.
It is, confirmed the avatar, briefly nuzzling Danny.
"Why?" asked Danny, just a little horrified.
Is it not satisfying to complete two tasks at once? I told you, back then, that our next task would be to remove those presents that seek to exclude you.
Danny didn't understand.
You will. Clockwork's avatar paused, as if thinking. This is what the Vultures should have done for young Vladimir, although they would have accomplished it differently.
"Oh," said Danny, trying to wrap his head around that.
Clockwork's avatar nudged him forward. Follow the chain when you are ready to come home.
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Danny wasn't connected to anyone in this might-have-been world. It was odd, watching every eye slide off him as if he wasn't even there. If he wanted to interact with someone directly, he'd have to put a lot of force of will into it.
It was strange. Other than that, everything here seemed perfectly real. Not imaginary at all. The sun shone. People spoke to one another. The grass crunched under his feet.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison lay before him in all its questionable glory.
He'd have to find Vlad and his parents. They had rented a small lab space for their experiments with the Dream and research into the others.
Normally, he'd follow his connection to them to find them, or the disturbance Vlad made in the dream, but neither of those things existed, now. Not yet. Danny didn't exist yet.
He could just wander, try to seek out questionable lab space, but the university's campus was large. Normally, he'd ask for directions, but…
Yeah, the no one being able to see or hear him thing really didn't allow for that.
But there was one other thing he could try to do, one other thing he could try to sense. Their experiments. They should send waves across and through the Dream.
He let his eyes drift closed and walked blind across campus. When he opened them, he was in a lab, watching his parents and Vlad working on a kind of magic circle, inscribed with runes.
A portal, intended to let humans directly access the Dream. A portal that had created Vlad, all because he leaned too close, watched too closely, seen too much, became something else, changed.
Something like anger stirred under his skin. After this, his parents had continued to experiment, continued to try to reach the Dream, to create a weapon against the others, and in doing so both doomed Danny himself and Amity Park by making what amounted to a highway for the others to come to the real world.
But they hadn't intended to do that, he knew. They'd been trying as best as they could to fix things. Had been trying to defend the world the best they knew, portal or no portal. And speaking of the portal… If others could damage human sanity, if Danny, small and weak and almost-human as he was, could damage human sanity, then how much more could a direct link to the Dream do? Discounting, of course, that normal dreams could lead to the Dream… That connection was more tenuous. Filtered.
His anger was a distraction from what was really bothering him.
These people, they looked like his parents. They were his parents. But… they weren't. There was no attachment there. Nothing. It was like looking at empty shells. No Love.
It was distressing.
He watched, waiting, making note of the symbols and the placement of the ritual objects and the technological enhancements. There had to be something here that would help explain why Vlad was having such a hard time, while Danny had transitioned to his present existence without much problem.
He leaned over his not-mother's calculations, then his not-father's, made note of the differences. Looked at the fire, the knife, and the carved cylinders. Some of them didn't feel quite right. One of them had been nudged out of alignment by a soda can put down by not-Jack, shifting the circle, making it bigger. Could that be something?
Vlad leaned over to examine the circle, and, at the same time, not-Jack pushed a button on the tape player, which started chanting. Danny could feel the hole boring into reality before the first syllable was finished. They'd made the portal both too well and too poorly.
Danny reached for Vlad and pulled him back, out of the way of the opening portal.
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Danny may have made a mistake.
He'd saved Vlad from becoming other. In doing so, he'd changed things, altered this entire make-believe world. The way the story was progressing was no longer the same as his own. Which meant that it might be useless for collecting clues for fixing Vlad, Sam, and Tucker. Mostly Sam and Tucker.
(He'd help Vlad if it wouldn't hurt his friends, he didn't hate the man, not anymore, didn't desire his suffering. But his friends were, of course, his main concern.)
But he couldn't just leave. He'd made note of all the flaws in the portal, but that wasn't in any way conclusive, wasn't a guarantee.
And, in the meantime, his not-parents and not-Vlad had continued working on the portal, which they hadn't shut down, unlike in the proper timeline. Or had it been disrupted by Vlad? He didn't remember the exact sequence of events. His parents had never been clear.
But the portal was on, it was working, and it was wrong. Everything was wrong. The portal was in a class of things that should-not-be.
Just like Danny, in this world. He… With the portal, and the way things were going, he shouldn't exist here, the butterfly effect would keep him from being born, and he was becoming painfully aware of that fact. Literally painfully. It was starting to hurt, being here, a throb in the back of his head.
Or was that the portal?
Either way…
(He couldn't shake the suspicion that he was breaking things just by being here. Everything was going wrong. So many little accidents.)
(Or was that the portal?)
He kept watching.
It had been… a while, now. It was easy to lose track of time like this, with no one to talk to. Days? Maybe? He'd been drifting, which should have been troubling.
Maybe he should go back. Cut losses.
(Besides, it was disturbing watching his parents flirting with each other. And Vlad. Even if they weren't really themselves.)
Then his parents wheeled in a… What was that? He walked closer. This was about the same size around as the pillars that had done this to him.
Danny would never forget those, after all.
Something hummed inside him, picking up a kind of resonance between the active portal and the pillar.
The ground fragmented beneath his feet.
Reality followed soon after.
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He found himself nowhere with nothing. Only nowhere and nothing.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.
What had he done? He'd, he'd destroyed a world, he'd—
There was a gentle, but insistent tug on his chain. He followed it home.
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He clung to Clockwork's avatar, gasping, as if he was the only real thing in the world. His emotions were too much, too great, uncontained and roiling. They battered him like a stormy sea.
It's alright, it's alright, comforted the avatar. It wasn't real, and now it never will be. All those worlds where you would not be. All gone.
No. No. No. Horror buzzed in his brain. He couldn't have destroyed so much.
Never were, continued the avatar, Clockwork apparently oblivious. All disproven. Paradox. You could not be and yet you were. You were in the places you were not. So, now you exist, in all these places, in everywhere that could be, and always will. It stroked Danny, brushing away tears. Only one more to go, until you never were not, my beloved child, until you always were mine, as you were meant to be.
Danny keened into the robes of Clockwork's avatar, distraught. Wind ruffled his hair.
Considering the point in time in which you were placed, said the avatar, Vladimir will be well again.
Danny looked up, hopeful for the first time in hours.
Mostly. The underlying cause has been removed. You should bring the rest to your… progenitors. They are at least competent in this area.
Danny nodded vigorously and attempted to extract himself from the avatar's grasp. He was unsuccessful, although the avatar did adjust its grip on him.
You have had a difficult day, it observed. It then presented Danny with a cookie.
Confused, Danny took it.
A gift, said the avatar, Clockwork having evidently returned to his normal laconic mode.
"What's it made of?" asked Danny, suspicious.
Love. What else?
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"How do you feel?" asked Danny.
"Weird," said Sam. "But okay."
"What was it like?"
Sam shrugged. "It was like…" She waved her hand. "Watching a thousand different movies of my life, but they were all wrong. Like if they were crappy biopics done fifty years after I died or something."
"Speak for yourself," grunted Tucker. "I just got a lot of sand. So, so much sand. And sun. Do I have a sunburn?"
"No?" said Danny. "You look fine."
"Ugh, I forgot you were white. You don't know what sunburns look like."
"I'd argue," said Sam, "but you're not wrong." She fell back against her pillows. "I just want to sleep."
"Same," said Tucker. "I never want to see the sun again."
"We'll make a goth of you yet," joked Sam, tossing a pillow at him.
"Okay," said Danny, backing away. "Should I get the lights?"
"You don't mind?"
"Sleep well," he said. He hoped they would.
(Because he would not.)