CHAPTER 1: CHOICE
Original story by Kitty-Gone-Crazy02. Check out her page here (on DeviantART): d-e-v-i-a-n-t-a-r-t-.-c-o-m-/kitty-gone-crazy02
Cover art by thebigblackdevil5. Check out her page here (on DeviantART): d-e-v-i-a-n-t-a-r-t-.-c-o-m-/thebigblackdevil5
The flow of time is never too certain; there is always the element of possibility, the chance in which whatever might occur might not occur, and whatever might not occur might occur. There is no certainty in life, and there is no life that is certain. There is only time, flowing like an ocean; wild, unpredictable, and unbridled, completely out of control from any outside forces.
Any forces except me.
Throughout the age of humankind, I have been called many things. Some have called me Chronos, some have called me Kali, some have called me Mahakala, some have called me the Norns, and the will continue to give me names until their species is eventually replaced, and their successors will continue to name me, but I have a name of my own.
My name is Clockwork.
I am the one who controls time, corrects its course, and sees it fulfill the way I see fit; free of agency. I do not take my duties in light or with libertine; my goal is to create a time fit for all life to prosper without interference or allow any species to come extinct before its time.
In my time, I had intervened once to stop an anomaly bent on destroying all life forever; an entity that called itself Dark Danny. To stop him from coming about, I had made myself an ally with his past self, a boy half-ghost who had named himself Danny Phantom, to bring about his defeat.
While the battle had worked out in my favor, and in the favor for all humankind as well, there were still dire consequences that would have happened should I not have gone with my specific plan to ensure mankind's survival. There were, are, and always will be many different outcomes that would have shifted the course of history any new way.
Come with me, and view one such possibility as it could, but never will, have been.
First, let us view the event in which this possibility derails. During this point in time, young Danny Fenton had used his powers to acquire a set of answers to a standardized test known as the C.A.T., giving him an easy pass to this not-so-easy test. Though many know him as a hero, this act shows that even those who would be called heroes are no infallible beings.
His peers disapproved of this action, but they are not alone in the knowledge of his possession of the answers. His act of thievery and imminent act of deceit also reached to the attention of a teacher named Mr. Lancer, the one tasked and entrusted with the answers to the test.
With his suspicions reaching the young Danny Fenton, they soon also reached the attention of the rest of his family: Jack Fenton; his father, Maddie Fenton; his mother, and Jazz Fenton; his sister. Wishing to convey his concerns, the teacher organized a meeting with the family to discuss the situation. His two most trusted friends, a young man named Tucker Foley and a young woman named Sam Manson, sought to join this meeting as well; hoping to sway their judgement from Danny.
However, what no members of this party were aware of was one particular danger of their choice of meeting place: The Nasty Burger. At this particular moment in time, the restaurant was dealing with a faulty vat of special sauce, with the vat set to explode.
There was only one aware of this fact: The guilty Danny Fenton. Hoping to spare any lives from being lost from the blast, the half-ghost child made his way to the fast-food restaurant, hoping that he could be able to save his friends and family from a horrid and terrible fate.
Using his powers of flight, the boy managed to arrive outside the Nasty Burger, but with little time left on his hands. With the vat sure to explode at any given moment, there was surely no time to save all of them, leaving him down to a question which was surely impossible to answer:
Who would he save?
Perhaps Maddie Fenton, his mother, who brought him to life?
Jack Fenton, his father, who gave him an example of strength to live by?
Jazz Fenton, his sister, a family member that he could confide in?
Tucker Foley, his best friend since as long as he could remember?
Or Sam Manson, the girl that he harbored some intimate feelings towards?
The choice is not easy to make, much less even consider. How does one weigh one valued life against another, and forsake the rest in favor of only one? Not many humans have had to been forced into this choice, but it is the choice that Danny Fenton has been forced into this day.
The clock begins to run out for him; the seconds that pass in his mind are seconds that could be spent saving one of the 5 lives to be rescued. He does not know which life to choose, and he doubts himself, fearing what consequences would come from whoever he chose.
With little time, left, however, his choice soon was made. There was no more thought behind his actions; only pure movement to reach the life he chose to save. Changing his body to become intangible, moving through the solid walls of the building, the child had chosen which life to save, and that life was...
Sam Mason, the girl he reserved some of the most personal feelings for.
Swooping in and snatching the young woman in his arms, Danny carried Sam to a safe distance, keeping her far from the blast. Though every fiber of his being did not wish to view the explosion, knowing well what would come as a result of the blast, there was some force within that led him to watch anyways.
And, so, the two watched as the Nasty Burger exploded. While they might not have seen the fate of the became the Fentons, there was undoubtedly a heavy sense of disgust and sorrow within both their hearts; loathing on how innocent people had befallen an undeserving fate. Now, Danny Fenton is without a family, and he is alone to mourn them.
Or, perhaps not, as Sam Manson would offer some of her own empathy for his time of need. After all, she, too, knew and loved all those within as well, and shared his pain in their loss. At least, now that they are together, they can share their pain as one; not alone in their suffering.
Following the deaths of his loved ones, Danny Fenton was soon found without a home. Aiming to give him a home and still continue to stay close to him, Sam Manson begged her parents to allow him to stay with them, adopting him under their roof. The Mansons might have had plenty of wealth to make sure that he would be well-off, and their hearts did feel for the orphaned child, but the idea of having a boy and girl of the same age together in their home was not too appealing to the parents.
Eventually, though, they had given into their daughter's pleas, and had taken in the lone Danny Fenton under their roof, despite their concerns over any premarital activities that could occur. Of course, being only teenagers, these activities came along anyways, but moreso out of attempts to help Danny stave off his own pain.
Aside from these other activities, not much has changed in their lives. Danny Fenton is still the half-human/half-ghost superhero Danny Phantom, and Sam still acts as his assistant in many of his crusades against the attacking undead. With one less partner in the absence of Tucker Foley, the battles become much more difficult than before, with the lack of a tech-savvy teammate, but Sam still tries to fill that hole as best as she can.
Soon, however, there comes more change along the way for their lives. Despite all the good that Danny Fenton has done for the city of Amity Park by way of keeping it safe from any attacks by ghosts, the lack of a family still burns at him and leaves him deficient in the love he needs in his own life. He refuses to reach out to the Mansons, and, though they are not the best at it regarding him, they are still willing to try.
Feeling his emotions get the better of him, Danny soon finds himself failing in his grades and losing contact with others, and his connection with Sam Manson deteriorating as well. Even those who would go out of his way to do nothing but bully him, like Dash Baxter, find no more pleasure in harassing him, not that their popularity would be done any good by bullying a recent orphan.
One day, in the halls of Casper High School, Sam Manson sought to address some of these issues, hoping she could find a means to pull his life out of the downward spiral it was stuck in.
"Danny? Can I talk to you?" Sam asked.
"Ugh... What is it, Sam? I just want to be alone right now." Danny said.
"That's the problem, Danny. All you ever want to do is be alone. You barely talk to any of us at all anymore. The only time when you're willing to even speak to me is when we're fighting a ghost, or you wanna do it, and you'll just quiet back down when it's over."
"I just... I just want some quiet sometimes, Sam. I need it sometimes."
"Well, 'sometime' is starting to become all the time with you. I'm getting pretty sick of this, you know."
Realizing that she was beginning to lose her temper with someone that she should not be losing her temper with, Sam calmed herself from continuing her angry rant, needing to take a peaceful approach for this dear friend of hers that has had no sense of peace for months now.
"Look... I understand, Danny. I know things aren't easy for you. But I'm trying to help. You've got to let me help. Goddammit, Danny, you've got to let me help. I love you, and I'd do anything to-" Sam began to say.
"You 'understand'? You 'understand'? Do you really, honestly, think that you can understand what the hell I have to go through in life now, Sam?" Danny asked.
"Okay, you're right, I don't know. I can't imagine what it'd be like to have my parents die on me, that's a lot to take in. But I'm trying my best to-"
"No, no, no. That's not the main thing I have to live with. Tell me something: When you look at me, what do you see?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do you see when you look at me? What do you think of me?"
"I think of you as my boyfriend. What kind of a question is that?"
"How about as a reminder of a conscious choice you made to save one life over others? Choosing one life of someone over the lives of your own family? Remembering how you left everyone else to die, when you could have easily saved any one of them instead? Wondering if you made the right choice at all? Because that's what I see when I look at you."
The meaning of these words left Sam without any of her own words to reply with; leaving her silent in thought and emotion.
"I don't want to think about that. I want to love you the way I should. I want us to keep on fighting ghosts like we always did. But I can't do that. I... I can't deal with anything right now. Everything just... hurts." Danny said.
"Then if you won't talk to me, will you at least talk to someone? Please. I want you to get some help. Nobody can handle what you went through alone. This isn't something you can just do by yourself."
"Watch me."
Then, without any more word or thought, Danny Fenton turned his back to his lover, making his own way down the halls of the school, in search again for a moment of solitude. He hopes that the isolation he puts himself in will give him the time and place he needs to find the answers to his internal dilemmas, hopes that he will at last lose his guilt.
He hopes, and he may come close, but he is not so successful.
Conversely, Sam Manson was left without any progress on helping her significant other find the peace he needed. She was not sure whether she could indeed give him the peace that he so desperately needed, but there was certainly little to nothing that would stop her from trying.
She hopes, and she may come close, but she is not so sure she will be successful.
