Sorry for posting this so late! The quarantine has stolen my sense of time and day. D:
Hope you guys are staying healthy. Enjoy the chapter. :)
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Chapter 189: The Mirror and the Lens
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"Wait," said Clockwork, sitting up and pushing away Danny's hands as Danny tried to tuck him in to bed. "Wait. I need- No, you need- argh." He held his head in his hands.
"What's wrong?" asked Danny, retreating into his cloak just a little. Clockwork was acting more normal, now, but somehow, that only made him more worried. "Are you- Are you hurting? Are you in pain?"
"No, no, no," Clockwork shook his head. "The mirror and the hand lens. Did I say this already? You might need them. Might. At least, they could be useful. I need to get them." He struggled to fly again.
"I'll get them," said Danny, trying to push Clockwork back down. "I'll get them. I promise. Just... Stay here, please? Go to sleep?"
"You'll get them?" asked Clockwork, sagging slightly.
"Yes," said Danny, nodding. "Just, please, Clockwork. I'm worried about you."
Clockwork nodded, and finally relaxed. "You shouldn't need to be," said the old ghost to the ceiling.
Danny didn't know what he could say to that. He lightly tapped his powers and settled weightlessly on the covers next to Clockwork. He didn't want to leave while Clockwork was still awake.
After several long minutes, Clockwork sighed, and closed his eyes. Danny waited another few minutes, then floated off the bed and walked to the door. He paused, looking back at Clockwork.
"You wouldn't let me out if this was a bad idea, right?" he asked the door. Well, the lair. Asking just the door would have been silly.
He didn't get any kind of answer, so he went out, and wound through the halls and up and down staircases until he got back to Clockwork's workroom.
The state it was in really was disheartening. He nudged some of the broken glass at the door, and winced as it spun off impossible rainbows, refracting light in patterns that defied the laws of physics.
Right. He remembered how picking up that one shard of glass earlier had made his fingers go numb. He should probably try to avoid touching the broken time-manipulating devices as much as possible. Yeah.
He flew into the room, staying well above the wreckage on the floor, and skirting the twisted hulks of the larger instruments and the broken tables. Danny scowled, offended at the destruction. He wondered how long it would take Clockwork to rebuild it all.
Some of the things were hard to look at, and not just emotionally. They looked wrong, and left weird imprints on the backs of his eyes. Many of the things glowed, and the shadows were all too deep or too shallow. Time bunched up in lines and shivered.
Danny was quite sure that he had spent too long searching, but also no time at all.
Alright. Just looking and not touching wasn't working. The piles were too deep, too layered, and the materials themselves were making it hard for Danny to tell what he had looked at, what he hadn't looked at, and what he might have looked at in an alternate timeline that was getting impressed on his brain by the broken temporal microscope.
Wait, what?
He hastily backed out of the room.
It took a few minutes before Danny was at all sure of reality again. He needed some kind of system to sort through all of this. Maybe he could start to clean it up, too. Organize some of the pieces.
He took several tables from another room, arranged them just outside the door, and labeled them with pieces of paper taken from the library. One table would be for things that were mostly metal, the second would be for large pieces of glass, the third would be for small pieces of glass, the fourth and fifth would be for big pieces and small pieces of mirrors respectively, the sixth would be for circuit boards and other things that looked like modern technology, and the last would be for anything he couldn't identify.
Since touching anything with his hands, gloved or not, sounded like a bad idea, Danny's telekinesis was about to get a workout. He sat in front of the door and telekinetically pulled pieces out to him, before flying them to the appropriate table.
He found the lens first, a magnifying lens only an inch or so across held in a silver loop with a bone-white handle. It took him another hour of sorting to find the mirror. The mirror was a long oval, half a yard across and about a third that wide. It was tray-like, with handles on each side.
Danny sighed, and stood up, stretching. The search had taken a long time, and he still wasn't done with the cleanup. He stared tiredly at the room. He didn't want to do any more. After the chase through Long Now, and then this, he was getting tired again. Not sleepy, yet, but tired.
He went back up to Clockwork's room.
Ghosts like Clockwork rarely slept, but when they did, they could sleep for a long time. A really long time. Danny didn't expect Clockwork to be awake, and he wasn't. Hopefully, he'd sleep away whatever was bothering him. Or, at least, Nephthys would come up with something by then.
He put the mirror and lens down on Clockwork's desk, and sat down. It felt weird to be idle, after how insane and busy everything had been, after all the up-and-down action he had been through. Yes, he'd had a break in Mattingly, but he'd been recovering from surgery. It wasn't really the same.
Part of him wanted to run off and do something. But he was just...
Exhausted.
He was exhausted.
But he was also bored. That was not, perhaps, the best combination. He started thinking about things that he would rather ignore.
Like how he was apparently the King of the Infinite Realms. He slouched in his chair. He didn't feel at all kingly. If he was going to be forced to do this, he wanted a different title. A less intimidating one, thanks. Since he doubted he could get out of the thing altogether, he wanted at least that much.
But he didn't want to think about it.
How would it affect his parents' trial?
No, he didn't want to think about that, either.
He wished he knew what his friends and family were doing. It felt like it had been forever since he had seen them. Way too long, in any case. He wanted to see them. It would have been really nice to see them, and a lot of his anger at Dan for wrecking Clockwork's workroom came from not being able to. He was more disappointed about it than he wanted to admit.
His eyes drifted towards the mirror and the lens. In theory- But he probably couldn't get that to work. Clockwork had shown him a lot of what he did, but Danny was still inexperienced, lacked the vast majority of Clockwork's abilities (thank the Ancients), and the viewing apparatuses Clockwork generally used were usually more complicated.
Still. It couldn't hurt to try.
He pressed his hands together and made a ball of light. He placed it in the air above Clockwork's desk, and then started on making a stand out of ice for the lens. He molded it around the lens's handle and put the light above it so that it would shine on the mirror.
Shadowy scenes played out on the surface of the mirror, which was better than he had expected, actually. He adjusted the lens, so that they came into focus. Dinosaurs. Large, feathery ones.
Well. All of time and space was a very broad category. He was surprised he had even gotten Earth.
He had no idea how to change the scene.
A soft laugh escaped his lips. He had run up against the edge of his expertise already. That was... kind of sad, actually. But expected.
He amused himself, playing with the distance and position of the lens, and that of his little light. Different images, some recognizable, some confusing and uninterpretable, danced across the mirror.
Nothing he recognized from his own life, of course, none of his friends or family. But it was distracting. He needed the distraction.
He moved the lens farther away, and, instead of a new or altered picture, he got a three-dimensional projection of lines. Strings, full of loops. Timelines.
They were knotted, towards one side. A paradox. Huh.
He approached it with the tip of his finger. It was just a little one. Maybe he could untangle it for Clockwork, save him the work. He'd seen Clockwork do it. He'd even helped a time or two.
He pinched a line and prepared to pull.
"Perhaps not," said Clockwork, his hand closing around Danny's wrist. "Gently, now."
"Sorry," said Danny. "I thought- Sorry." He slowly let go of the string. He looked up at Clockwork. "Sorry, did I wake you?"
"I'm... not sure." He absently patted Danny on the shoulder, staring into the distance. "I think I was dreaming."
"That's good?" he said, smiling. "Do you feel better?"
"Maybe." Clockwork pinched the bridge of his nose. "I still can't see properly. I feel blind. I-" He broke off, shaking his head, and settled on the edge of his bed.
Danny joined him. Clockwork leaned into him, and Danny leaned back.
"I'm sorry, Daniel," said Clockwork.
"It's okay," said Danny. "Are you feeling okay? I mean, otherwise? With, uhm..." He didn't know how to phrase this delicately.
"With what?"
"Mentally?" said Danny, cringing.
"At the moment. I cannot say what the future will bring. Obviously." He shuddered. Danny could feel it.
He couldn't imagine being able to see like Clockwork, and then not.
Danny pushed up against Clockwork in a kind of half hug, trying to give him tactile comfort.
"It was good of you to try that," said Clockwork. "With the paradox. But I do not believe it would have been... I do trust you, but..."
"I understand," said Danny.
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Dan paused, looking at the building. He frowned. Scowled, really.
He didn't recall encountering this building in his own timeline, but, then, he had destroyed a great number of places, including some similar ones. They all blurred together after a while.
"What's wrong?" asked Nephthys, flying back to join him.
"Has that always been there?" he asked, pointing.
"Always?"
"You know what I mean."
"Things drift," said Nephthys. "You know that." The tone of her voice was just shy of gentle. "Even someone like me can't remember all the orbits. Clockwork seems to, but I think he cheats."
That sounded like the old meddler. He always cheated. But Nephthys was like Clockwork, and he didn't put cheating past her, either. He looked at her suspiciously.
"Did you plan on this?"
"On what?"
"Coming this way. Did you do this, show me this," he gestured at the building, "on purpose?" He paused, angrily. "Is this even the way to where Memento is?"
"Well, it's the fastest way to the spring of the Lethe, which is where she resides," said Nephthys. Her clothing had begun to repair itself, but also to change. Her veil now hung across her face, and Dan could only make out the merest shadow of her expression. "Obviously, I don't know if she is there at this very moment. I'm not Clockwork."
Dan turned his glare to the building. "Did he plan this?"
"No," said Nephthys. "We made sure he couldn't see the timeline where Issitoq sent Daniel to the past. If you think he could plan beyond that point, five thousand years ago, you are sadly mistaken. He wasn't even sure he could get a timeline where Daniel existed in any form, let alone you."
"But he did manage it."
"He did."
Dan continued to glare at the building.
"I'll wait for you," said Nephthys, "if you want to go in."
"Aren't we on some kind of time limit?" asked Dan.
"Not really," said Nephthys. "Issitoq has been chased off, and Long Now will keep Clockwork and Daniel safe. The trial won't begin until Daniel is found. We get to set our own timetable."
"What trial?"
"You hadn't heard? Your parents' trial. For breaking the first Taboo."
"They ended someone?"
"They built a thing that could make a ghost relive their death, and then used it on Daniel."
Honestly? Dan wasn't all that surprised. Whatever. It wasn't like he cared what happened to them. He sneered.
"You sure you changed me?"
"Are you seriously asking me that?"
"Sorry, I mistook you for someone actually competent."
For a moment, the only sound between them was the whispering wind of the Ghost Zone. Dan found himself regretting the words. He had somehow managed to forget what Nephthys was, and that he, to his disgust, wasn't exactly in top condition.
"Look, either go in or out. Don't act like the cat you thought you needed." Nephthys tilted her head, her smile faint and blurred behind her veil. "That you maybe do need."
Dan spluttered, trying to find a comeback, realized a good comeback would only get him into deeper trouble, and turned, pushing open the doors of the humble (if ridiculously purple) church and stalked inside.
It was dim, but not dark. Candles and natural glow provided the only illumination. Five rows of pews lined either side of a path leading up to an altar. Behind the altar was a cross, plain, and, surprisingly, wooden. As in, material plane wood. It didn't glow.
Dan crossed his arms and scowled up at it. He wasn't here because he wanted to be. He was just waiting to cool off, so he didn't get himself killed by the closest thing in existence to a goddess of death.
Making his location all the more ironic, he supposed.
"Excuse me, can I help you?"
Dan did not startle at the unexpected voice. He was simply getting into a more advantageous position. That's all.
He stared down his nose at the wispy little man. If he wasn't green, Dan would describe him as grey. Even for a ghost, he was insubstantial. The broom he held in his clawed-but-wrinkled hands had more presence than he did. Dan quickly filed him as not a threat.
"Are you the priest, or whatever?" asked Dan.
"Me? Ha, no," said the little man. "There's no priest here. Never has been. I'm just the caretaker."
No priest? "What's the point of all this, then?"
The elderly ghost tilted his head. "Well, some people like to have a nice quiet place to sit and pray, and it's always possible that a priest might come by one of these days."
"Yeah? And when was the last time anyone came in here for that?"
The caretaker smiled. "You did. Just now."
Dan recoiled from the very thought. "No, I didn't."
"Ah. Are you here for confession? You can still sit in the confessional, and talk, if you'd like. It helps some people." He pointed at a large cabinet pushed into a corner. Again, it was made of real wood, not the ghostly variety.
"You think I'm just go in there and talk to myself like some kind of lunatic?"
"No, no. Not to yourself. To God." The caretaker nodded firmly, as if he had just said something of great wisdom and value. "There's a difference, you know!"
Dan rolled his eyes, but the caretaker didn't seem to notice.
"I've got some more sweeping to do," he said, hefting the broom. "But you take all the time you need, young man."
'All the time you need.' Whatever. He glared around the room. He didn't need any time. Didn't get along well with time.
This was stupid.
He flew to the door, but paused and looked over his shoulder, thinking. Moments stretched into minutes.
He turned.
