Happy New Year! Thank you to everyone who sent me well-wishes. I am feeling much better now. :)

Jeptwin: Yep, Danny needs all the hugs and love.

Shadow Kat-Lyn: Yeah, I like portraying Clockwork as just a little bit of a disaster.

mangageek3: Thank you! I mostly started writing those because I was so hungry for that relationship. I'm really happy other people like it, too.

Anne Camp: He'll get some time. Clockwork will make sure of it. :)

DarkFoxKit: Hopefully you'll get your answers in this chapter. :) (The purring is nice, isn't it?)

MsFrizzle: Never feel guilty about not reviewing! Everyone has their own stuff going on IRL. The only reason I can write so much is because I'm only part time. Most of what I write I do intend to use later, though sometimes I forget about it. Yeah, Clockwork was between a rock and a hard place when he went to the Observants for help, and he definitely needed their help. Thing is, at this point they're abusing their power over him, so... Whether or not it's better is a matter for debate.

fictionaddiction1: Unrelated ghosts can share energy, it's just easier and less stressful if a bond is there. The purring does show contentment.

tmcgh: I'm glad you've liked the story so far! I hope it continues to entertain.

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Chapter 177: Paradox Layer

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After a while, the child had relaxed his hold on Heh enough that Heh could hand him off to Nebet-Het and go hide in his workroom. Well, Nebet-Het supposed that analysis was somewhat uncharitable. She would allow that he did have to figure out where the child had come from, but leaving his guests alone in his bare (save for a giant, nonfunctional sundial) courtyard was not precisely hospitable.

Civilizing him would take time yet. Time. She smiled.

"What are you smiling about?"

No need to embarrass Heh. "Oh, only about how this little one out-thought Inanna," she said. "Lied to her face and stole her regalia right off her back. A cunning little one, and you'll be cherished, too, hm?" she said the last to the child, who was asleep. "What does he dream of, Zaqar?"

Zaqar had a hand on one of his horns, and a sour look on his face. "Nonsense and fluff, bells and spinning badges of bronze and brass. It's all in gibberish, of course." He scowled. "He keeps finding me. How can he do that?"

"Well," said Nu, "he did outwit Inanna."

"Are you saying I'm as much a fool as she?"

"No, but she was a clever fool. Speaking of Inanna's weapons," Nu pointed at the child, "we have not discussed it, but he has eaten them."

"It looks like it," agreed Nebet-Het.

"Should we remove them?" asked Nu. "I am surprised they are not degrading his form already, but I suspect it is because his form is so unusual. I cannot imagine that it is healthy, even so."

Nebet-Het had not really thought about it. She had not any sense that the child was in immediate danger, either of death or ending, though there were changes taking place inside of him.

She shrugged. "Do you think we should try to remove them?"

Heh flew back into the room at high speed. "Do not do that!" he snapped, pointing at them. He withdrew the finger a moment before the pointing reached the point of rudeness. "He will be able to remove them himself, when he wakes." He paused again. "It won't be long, now." Heh left again.

Nu frowned, and floated back, crossing his arms. "I hate it when he does that," he said.

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Heh had narrowed down the timelines the child- no, that Daniel could be from. He had narrowed them down a great deal, to two major branches and several minor ones. He had found versions of Daniel in several of the timelines. Before he could narrow down the timeline further, he would need to talk to Daniel.

It surprised him, but even without the need, he wanted to talk to Daniel. Some of the things he had seen... There were golden futures in those timelines. Dark ones, too, of course, there always were. But. The little snatches of Daniel's life Heh had been able to look at were...

Heh had, for a while now, had the vague suspicion he was developing a secondary Obsession. He had done things unnecessary to the overall integrity of the timeline and the continuation of existence. He had spent hours, sometimes days, in a row thinking of things that, from the viewpoint of his original Obsession simply didn't matter. They were little things. Stopping a war here, saving an alien baby there, slipping a note under someone's door, burning down a forest. That kind of thing. But little things added up.

That was why he was lingering over the golden futures.

Really, in terms of the time ticking on, there was no difference between the golden futures and the dark ones. They both existed, after all. But Heh wanted the golden ones. He wanted the ones with the happiest endings. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps he was just tired of looking at the sad ones.

He paused in his work. No, not the happiest endings. The most happiness in general. The best timeline.

An ache started in his core. He really was developing a new Obsession, curse it all, and such a frivolous one, too. He couldn't afford the distraction from the all-important task of preserving the timeline. If only he could nip it in the bud. He would have to look into ways of doing that, once he was done here.

Daniel would be waking soon. Heh should decide what to ask him. How he came to be here, what he was doing back in his own time, the next several ghost kings, what he saw when he looked at Heh.

How he knew Heh. What Heh was to him.

That kind of thing.

Heh left his workroom, closing the door securely behind him.

"He will be waking up soon," he told the other Anunnaki. He flew over to Nebet-Het and held out his arms. "May I?"

Nebet-Het raised an eyebrow but handed Daniel over. Heh shifted so he was sitting on air.

Daniel mumbled, sleepily, and rubbed his cheek against Heh. A few minutes later, he stirred again, and inhaled deeply. Then he yawned, widely, displaying white teeth. He blinked several times, and looked up at Heh, muzzily.

"Grandfather?" he asked, uncertainly, slurring the English word. He looked around. He waved an arm at the room. "What's going on?" He dropped his arm into his lap and collapsed back against Heh. "Hnnoooo," he said. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "What time is it?" he asked, rather indistinctly. "Like, the year?"

Heh told him.

"Oh." Daniel sounded disappointed. He took his hands away from his eyes, which were slightly bloodshot. "Can I go home now?"

"What is he saying?" asked Zaqar, in Sumerian.

"Later," said Heh. Zaqar grumbled.

Daniel looked down. "Okay."

"Daniel," said Heh.

He looked up again, "Hm?"

"I am trying to make preparations for you to go home, but I need to ask you some questions so that I can determine which timeline you are from."

"Okay," said Daniel, "but can't you just tell? Like usual?" Heh could almost feel the confusion radiating off of him.

He suppressed a grimace. Perhaps in the far future, with a greater amount of real experience, he could do that, but now? Today? Oddly enough, he felt an edge of guilt for disappointing the child.

"No," he said, shortly. Daniel wilted, and the guilt doubled. Heh considered running time backwards, and trying for a different response, but decided against it. "When you woke up, and said 'grandfather,' who did you think you were talking to?"

Daniel blushed deeply and looked down. "You," he said, fidgeting. "You let me call you that, sometimes, it- it's kind of like, um, a nickname? I know you don't really know me, here, and, um, oh." He had just noticed that he was sitting on Heh's lap. That is, he had just noticed he was lying on someone who essentially saw him as a stranger. His blush deepened to a red so dark it was almost luminous, and his earlier embarrassment turned to mortification.

He flashed into his more ghostly form (where his blush was a literally glowing green) and quickly flew off of Heh's lap. He hovered a few feet away and wrapped his arms around his newly-formed tail.

"Sorry," he said.

Heh could practically feel the glare Nebet-Het was giving him. Upsetting children was considered bad luck. Generally, because ghost children were capable of a great deal of chaos and destruction and were often even pettier and more willing to hold grudges than their adult counterparts.

Heh reached out, took Daniel's sleeve, and drew him back. "It is fine," he said.

Internally, though, Heh was not fine. Grandfather. That implied things. Certain things. Not necessarily that he was a father, but things about his relationship with Daniel. Heh had never considered acquiring a child, though watching how parents and children interacted often made him feel... something. Heh had to admit, he was not terribly 'in-touch' with his emotions.

Daniel's aura flickered, and he returned to human form. He almost fell. Heh had been prepared for this, of course, and caught him. The floor was quite a ways beneath them. Daniel would not have died, but the result of the fall still would not have been pleasant.

Heh floated back to the gnomon, where the other Anunnaki were still resting, and put Daniel down. Perhaps Nebet-Het's oft-repeated complaint that he needed more furniture actually had a point. A bench of some sort would be useful about now.

"Sorry," said Daniel, more faintly than before. "I'm sorry. I'm just- Everything has been so messed up lately, and I just-" He made a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry." He sniffed a little, then straightened. "I did help, though, didn't I? Before?"

"With Inanna? Yes. A great deal of damage could have, and likely would have, been done if you had not delayed and weakened her." Heh took a moment to glance at those 'could have been' futures. "Yes. You helped a great deal."

Daniel's smile was shaky, but genuine, even if it did flatten itself back into a nervous line a moment later. "I'm sorry for freaking out on you like that. Just, I've been through a lot of stuff, lately."

Heh nodded, gravely. He needed to ask Daniel about what that 'stuff' was, but there was one thing pressing on his mind a little more urgently. "Daniel," said Heh, "do you see anything unusual around you? Anything out of the ordinary? With me, or my appearance, perhaps?"

Daniel blinked, then nodded. "Yes," he said. Then he made a face. "You keep saying you can't read minds, but I was just going to ask about that." He blinked again. "Should, um. Should I talk in Sumerian? So, um, Lady Nephthys- I mean, so that Nebet-Het and um. Um. Lord Zaqar and Lord Nu can understand? I can, you know."

"That's not necessary," said Heh. He wanted to ask questions he did not want the others to know the answers to. The three of them would glare and sulk, of course, no one sulked quite like the powerful, but that would be the extent of it. "What is it that you see?"

"It's hard to explain," said Daniel, shooting an uneasy glance at the three watching Anunnaki. "It's like..." he trailed off, then returned his gaze to Heh, and examined him intensely. "It's like you look like two different things at the same time. Like you're layered on top of yourself. One layer is what you usually look like, but the other one looks... Older, I guess. More Egyptian-themed." He raised his hands and rubbed his thumbs against his fingers. "I can touch it, too, and it feels... weird."

"Hm," said Heh, thinking.

"Why is it- why are you like that?" asked Danny. "Is it because of a paradox, or something?"

Heh looked up sharply at the question. It had been unexpected. Daniel seemed to have a distressing knack of avoiding Heh's predictive abilities. "I believe so," answered Heh, finally, deciding it would be better to be open with Daniel. "I think that you are from a future in which a future version of myself convinced a past version of myself to change my appearance. However, your future also requires the timeline in which I did not change my appearance to exist. Hence, you see both timelines. Of course, that is only possible because only my appearance has changed between them."

Surprisingly, Daniel seemed to follow this. He nodded, and said, "I thought it might be something like that. You've been trying to teach me- or you will be trying to teach me- about different kinds of paradoxes."

Heh readjusted what he was looking for in the timelines again. He was getting closer.

"So, how did you come to be in this timeline?"

Daniel shrugged. He looked frustrated. "I don't really know. I thought I might have fallen through a random natural portal, but the timing was weird, and this is kind of far back, isn't it?"

"It isn't unheard of. I have had to retrieve airplanes from the cretaceous."

"Yeah, but- Wait, like, airplanes, plural?"

"Yes. The engines of one particular model of plane, combined with the overall shape of that plane, created a resonance with a certain area of the Infinite Realms which drastically increased the likelihood of far-past portals opening." Heh frowned. It was not like him to volunteer information. "However, in your case, it sounds as if there were other things happening as well."

Daniel nodded, but also shrank in on himself, his shoulders going up, and his fists clenching. "I was fighting Dan. Dan is... complicated. And before that, someone who could do portals kept trying to kill me, and- Well. Not someone. One of the, uh, mercenaries he sent told me who it was. And I guess it is sort of obvious it would have to be him in hindsight. And he's the one that let Dan out, too." Daniel stopped after that sentence, looking surprised and confused. Then he scowled. "Oh, yeah, the similar core thing."

"Who is trying to kill you?" That would be a significant data point.

Daniel sucked in his lower lip. "I mean, I guess you'd already know, anyway, or you'd find out, but... Is it a good idea to say?"

"If I believe the timeline will be damaged by my knowledge, I will ask Nisaba to remove my memory of it. In the meantime, I do need to know."

"Issitoq," said Daniel, before half-cringing, as if expecting an explosion.

"Why is the junior administrator for the fifth jurisdictional region of the Observants trying to kill you?"

"I'm really not sure. I think it might be because he doesn't like half-ghosts. Either that, or because he thinks I'm going to destroy the world, but I'm not." Daniel looked up at Heh, earnestly, eyes big. "You helped me stop that."

The ache in Heh's core had spread to his head. Finding the correct timeline was going to be much more complicated than he had hoped.