Hey, sorry for posting this so late in the day. I've been sick since last Friday, and I'm still recovering. I was unconscious for most of Sunday and Monday, sadly... Hopefully I can actually do what I want to with this remaining week of vacation...

Thank you for reading, and happy new year!

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Chapter 176: Hugging Time

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As soon as Danny was out of the area he thought of as 'immediate proximity to the Core,' he lost his ghost form, and as soon as he lost his ghost form, fatigue hit him like a truck.

He had a tiny internal debate.

He'd been listening to the Ancients' conversation as closely and carefully as he was able, and although it had been interesting, it had also been depressing, and not at all comforting. This version of Clockwork, Lord Heh, really didn't know him. He didn't even seem to know Danny's name. The conversation had also confirmed that Lord Heh was different than Danny's Clockwork. He was a lot more standoffish with Nephthys, for example, and he was a lot more... something. Or a lot less something. Danny wasn't quite sure how to describe it. More reserved, less humorous, though that wasn't all of it.

Less... confident, maybe? Less comfortable? Less outgoing? Stiffer? More nervous? Danny didn't know. 'Different' was just about the most solid label he could put on the mess.

Still, he was Clockwork, even if he wasn't, even if was layered, and had two faces at the same time and everything was wrong. Even if he was a stranger, he was someone Danny knew, someone he trusted, someone he loved. Clockwork was Clockwork, and Danny needed something right now, something that he couldn't readily put into words. Maybe Jazz could, but he doubted it. Love, stability, safety, or the illusion thereof, but something else, too. Maybe. Maybe it was just all those three together.

Danny flung an arm around Clockwork's neck, and buried his face in his chest. This way, Danny didn't have to see the other Ancients looking at him, and he felt very slightly less threatened. Clockwork shifted his arms to accommodate Danny's new position. Danny could feel both layers, as well as see them. It was weird, seeing and feeling both Clockwork's robes and gloves and his bare skin. Danny shifted again in response, moving so his cheek rested on Clockwork's collarbone.

Or... pseudo-collarbone?

Did Clockwork maintain a skeleton? Danny wasn't sure. He'd never asked. Some ghosts didn't, especially if they hadn't started out human.

Either way, his body or subconscious, or whatever abruptly decided this position was good enough, and he fell asleep.

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Heh knew as much about human children as he did about ghost children, and in the same way. That is to say, he had a great deal of theoretical knowledge, and essentially no experience.

Children who were both human and ghost at the same time were a different story. He had no information about them at all. He did not think that any had existed, up until the present. To be sure, there had been liminal spirits before, though they had been few and far between, and, especially outside of the part of the Infinite Realms considered coterminous with the human planet, liminals were all but unheard of. There had been one or two who changed their appearance like this. Both of them were long gone by now, of course, with humans only remembering them in warped oral histories, and even ghosts beginning to forget what they had been.

Neither of them had been children. One of them had been a truly old human woman, a crone of over a hundred years of age, who had been a witch, though she had not usually practiced at the same scale as Inanna. She had made herself liminal. The other had been a man of late middle years who had been in precisely the wrong place at precisely the wrong time. Or in precisely the right place, at the right time. They had made reasonably successful existences for themselves, before Ti-Amat, also called Tiamat, and Tam-Tum, and Tamtu, and Tehon, and Tet, and Ummu-Hubur, and Pseudo-Naunet, Salt Woman, Great Lady of the Deepest Deeps, Shining One, Mother of Dragons, Brewer of One Thousand Poisons, the First and Great Dragon, She Who Avenges the Death of Abzu, Lady King-God of the Infinite Realms, decided that they were in some part to blame for the death of her husband, and ordered them hunted down and killed.

Heh had not been one of the Anunnaki at the time. In fact, the Anunnaki had not even been called the Anunnaki. Many things had changed since then, though some problems, such as Kingu, Ti-Amat's former general, and his supporters, managed a depressing persistence.

One thing that had not changed was Heh's ability to take care of children. Inability, rather.

This was illustrated, to the vast and apparent amusement of Nebet-Het, and to the slightly better-hidden cheer of the other two, by Heh's failure to disentangle himself from the boy upon arrival at Long Now.

The child was asleep, and still, it was as if he had Heh's power of foresight. When Heh tried to remove the child's arms, he only held on tighter, or gripped with his legs. When Heh tried to phase him off, the child would phase with him. When Heh stopped time, and tried to move him between moments the child demonstrated the ability to move there as well, although considerably slower.

It chilled Heh to realize that the child might very well have some part of Heh's abilities, particularly foresight. Lady Ereshkigal had suggested as much, after all.

There was nothing for it. Heh would have to wait for the child to wake.

He resolutely ignored Nebet-Het's ribbing (it was gentle enough) and sat down on the gnomon of one of his sundials. He did not have much in the way of furniture, or comforts. The closest thing he had to a luxury, other than his candles, and his reed garden, both of which served other purposes, was his oven, which had been a gift. He rather liked his oven. The concept of 'baking' was one that interested him, though he rarely indulged.

Perhaps he would have to change that, if Nebet-Het kept worming her way into invitations. Some additional furniture might distract her from his oven.

Meanwhile, the child was nuzzling into Heh again, both of his arms around Heh's neck. It was quite distracting. Heh could tell that the child wanted something, he could feel the child's core humming with it, but he-

Something occurred to Heh. He did know a lot about child ghosts, after all.

But, no. Surely not. That was ridiculous. Heh must simply be misinterpreting the child's signals due to his inexperience.

Nu drifted over.

"Yes, yes," said Heh, brusquely, "I am aware, he is a rare breed."

Nu raised an eyebrow, but did not comment on Heh stealing what he was going to say. "He seems a cunning child," said Nu, in the same tone as one might call a human child sweet. "I have seen a great many, you know. Spoken to them. Children like to hear stories of distant lands, often more than their parents do."

Heh said nothing.

"What do you think of Ereshkigal's proposal?" continued Nu. "Would the child have made a decent king?"

Heh suppressed a wince. He had seen that future in the split second before it died, never to be. "He would not have been the worst," he said. "Better than most, even. But he would have been horribly unhappy, and he would have hated us, and he would have tried to return to his proper time as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The Realms would not have suffered, exactly, but..."

"The king is the land," finished Nu, sagely. "Just as well, then, that no one would accept an unknown king, no matter how hard the Lady Ereshkigal pushed for it."

"She did not exactly push for it."

"No. She knew we would refuse?"

"Hm. Perhaps." She knew the Anunnaki would refuse this time. Heh suspected Ereshkigal was looking forward to pressing quite a bit harder a few millennia on. Even Ereshkigal did not fully understand time, did not realize that the child's future may never come to pass.

Sometimes, Heh wondered if he really understood time. Despite what he had once been, despite being the next best thing to a personification of time, he was always finding new quirks in his powers, new ways for the timeline to twist around itself and stabilize. He found new weaknesses, and ways for the timeline to fall apart, too, of course.

A case in point... Heh looked down at the child. Well, it wouldn't hurt to try that, would it? The worst thing that would happen was that the child would wake up, and Heh wanted that.

Heh loosened control of his core, offering up a small amount of energy to the child.

Despite all the objects already shedding energy inside the child, he drank down everything Heh offered eagerly. Then, all at once, the child relaxed, practically melting in Heh's lap, and started to purr. Deeply.

"Oh!" said Nebet-Het. "He's purring!"

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Nebet-Het had been keeping an eye on Heh for a while. She was the Master of Death and Change, the latter being something even the Dead could not avoid, and she'd long thought that Heh was overdue for it.

She liked Heh. He could be funny, when he wasn't depressed, and he was kinder than his reputation, when his Observant overlords let him be. So, given any say in things, she wanted the changes Heh underwent to be positive.

It was slow work. Heh actively resisted her efforts.

Still, there were some fruits. Nebet-Het was fairly certain that Heh had a secondary Obsession. That was good, he needed something more in his life than keeping the wheel of time turning and running the Observants' errands. The oven didn't count.

Heh's lair was a good example of why he needed something else. It was a huge place, and there was nothing in it that was just there to comfort Heh. The oven didn't count.

The child was a great opportunity for change. He clearly cared about Heh. He cared about Heh a lot. It was probably obvious to everyone but Heh. That rather suggested that in whatever future the child had come from, Heh cared about him, too. That, in turn, suggested quite a lot of change on Heh's part. In the future.

The old stick in the mud might have some hope after all.

Or, maybe, the change was happening right now. Nebet-Het could have laughed out loud at Heh's face when the little liminal spirit started purring. Child ghosts did that. Heh really should have expected it, or at least predicted it, but apparently his tendency to miss details in his faster reads of the future, combined with his rather harsh picture of himself, had combined to bamboozle him.

Really, Heh looked like he had been hit over the head with a club. But, a nice club. One he needed. It wouldn't be kind of Nebet-Het to snicker.

So, instead, she focused on the child, who really was a pretty little thing. He'd be even prettier cleaned up.

"Oh!" she said, hiding her teeth behind a raised hand. "He's purring!"

"Why?" said Heh. He sounded scandalized, and possibly a little frightened.

The looks the other Anunnaki gave him were somewhat incredulous.