Summary: Clockwork's living her best life, which is mostly just working herself to death. Cue the midlife crisis and a much-needed vacation with her three best friends.
This fic was born out of a desire of my favorite time master taking a vacation(and subsequently adopting a baby alligator for some reason) and a desire to work on my dialogue/banter and make it more natural. So please give feedback!
disclaimer: nah.
"You should take a vacation," Pandora says as she applies a coat of nail polish on Clockworks nails. Said Time Master attempts to wave her off with a dismissive hand before the Goddess of Hope prompts her hands back down.
"I will," Clockwork says as she inspects her hand, "In a-"
"Year or two." Nocturne finishes for her, jutting his lips out in annoyance at his overworked friend. "You've been saying that since you've taken this job."
"Well obviously, I've been busy." Clockwork replies, taking a quick glance at Dan peacefully playing Smash Bros Ultimate, she teasingly snarks "Have fun losing to Wario."
Dan doesn't say anything back, only flipping her off before he returns to playing.
Nocturne glares at her, "I know what you're trying to do, it's not going to work." He grits out between his teeth. He's known Clockwork far too long and the games she plays. "Pandora," comes the whiny drawl, "Help me out here."
Pandora continues to paint Clockwork's nails while she speaks. "As the humans say it, I am going to shoot straight from the hip. You need a vacation and you know it. Clockwise never wanted you to work yourself like this. He would have made you take a long vacation by now and take care of yourself. Do you think he'd be proud of his little timepiece killing herself like this? Do you think he wanted this for you?" She pauses as she dips in the bottle for more nail polish.
"It's not like I've tried that before." She grouses, carefully looking away from Pandora. "She senses how her friend carefully squeezes her hands and attempt to joke it off. "I mean I'm still here arent I?"
"For how much longer?" Pandora asks, "How much longer until you fade out from this stupid fucking job with unapproving, ungrateful bosses? From not caring about yourself?"
"I'll take one eventually."
Both Pandora and Nocturne call her out on her bullshit. "Liar."
The three are now at an awkward silence and both fortunately and unfortunately, Dan has the uncanny ability of breaking such silences with the most uncomfortable questions.
Such as right now.
"Who's Clockwise?" He asks, apparently having only tuned in for that part of the conversation.
"No one." Clockwork forces out through her teeth. "Go back to playing your game."
Dan puts his hands in the air in faux innocent. "No need to get touchy princess, I just asked a simple question." He points out unhelpfully, either not noticing or simply not caring about how Clockwork's body tenses up or how her hands shake furiously. "Don't take your anger out on me because your pals are telling you what you needed to hear."
Before she thinks she blurts out, "Did you listen to Sam and Tucker before you decided to cheat on the CAT and cheat them out of their lives?"
As soon as Dan's face pales to a ghostly white, she shoots a hand over her mouth to prevent more of her vindictiveness from spilling out.
Shes broken one of their unspoken yet most sacred rules: Never use the IncidentsTM to hurt each other.
There is no chance to say sorry before Dan teleports away from the three.
Pandora and Nocturne turn and face the Time Master, who immediately shrinks in on herself from misery and guilt.
She's in for it now.
After a lengthy lecture from her two best friends about how its absolutely not okay to hurt her friends like that- She used to think that her father would be the only one in her afterlife to bring her to tears with his "I'm disappointed in you" lectures, she was proven utterly wrong tonight-Clockwork begins her search to find Dan.
To her surprise, it doesn't take her long to find him as he's sitting on top of the Citadel. She floats up to where he is and stealthily tries to sit right next to you.
"I can sense you, you know," Dan says, effectively throwing out any pretense of stealth. He gently pats an empty spot next to him, silently inviting Clockwork to sit down next to him.
She does so, ready to apologize to him but before she does so, Dan holds a hand up to stop her. "It just threw me off because it came from you of all ghosts. I expect that from the Observants but not you," He says, "I don't really want an apology from you. " He doesn't bother looking at Clockwork to know that she's visibly distraught. "You feel bad about it and that's fine with me? Not to say that I'm okay with you beating yourself up about this, ya know? You just don't like making people sad and you have a really terrible habit of apologizing for everything that's wrong even when it's not your fault and you have an awful habit of making yourself seem more of an irredeemable ghost when you make a shitty mistake?" Dan rambles, hands awkwardly gesturing as he tries and fails to make his point. "You're fine and I forgive you. That's what I'm trying to get at with this."
Suspicious, "Just like that?" She asks out of uncertainty.
"Just like that." He repeats after her.
"That's impossible." She sputters out, "Forgiveness isn't that easy."
"Right now it is." Dan asserts.
"Not as far as I know." She says softly, staring at her gloved hands blankly.
Dan raises an eyebrow at her, not liking the various implications of that statement. "I'm not sure what you mean by that and I don't think I'm going to like what that means when I do find out. For now, let's go back inside and watch The Office. It's chilly out here."
"I thought you don't get cold easily." She says dumbly.
"You're right, I don't. You do, on the other hand, Princess." He points out, noting how she's trembling from the chilly air outside the Citadel. "Also, it's a crime for you to be out here with your nails halfway finished."
Currently, Clockwork is watching the time streams. Theres nothing particularly interesting or anything that catches her eye. She looks over to see Dan buried underneath a blanket, somewhat halfway asleep.
"Can I ask you a question?"
Dan's sleepy, half lidded eyes slowly snap over to her. He takes a second to focus his eyes and attention on her before he smartly replies, "You already did Honey-bunny but go ahead."
"If you could go anywhere-"
"NASA."
"You didn't let me finish my question."
"I already knew what you were going to ask." Dan says, "I love NASA, I'll gladly kill an Observant to go there."
"I might just let you at some point," She jokes, smiling at how Dan's eyes glow dangerously at the thought of his wishes finally coming true. "Not today though." The warning comes right as he eyes his clawed hands and starts to sharpen them.
Over exaggerating his disappointment, he throws a hand to his forehead, pretending to faint. Dan cracks an eye open to see if he manages to get a chuckle from the Time Master, instead seeing a hesitant smile tug at the corners of her mouth.
He'll take it.
Turning over, Dan asks "Where would you go?"
"...I don't know."
"Can we watch Endgame?" Nocturne begs, his voice taking on a God awful, unnaturally high pitch whine, similar to a crying dog. As Clockwork fixes a strong glare at the dreamer, it only fuels him more, "Please?"
"It's the only one we haven't seen yet," Pandora adds on, pulling Dan close to her chest. Silently, she cues him to pull his puppy eyes.
Clockwork wonders to herself if the puppy eyes to help their begging. Right now, Dan's face is pinched tightly as if he ate three large lemons and several plates of Fenton Toast.
"You can't say no to this face!" Dan exclaims, words slurring from Pandora accidentally squishing his cheeks in an odd attempt to sound more childish.
Is it working? Clockwork doesn't think it's hard to make someone childish any more childish than they already are.
Eyebrow arched, she slowly enunciates "No."
Carefully, she watches her friends faces fall before they bicker and complain. "I have paperwork to do, unlike some of us." She grounds eye, aiming her stink eye at Nocturne, grumbling nonsensically about how paperwork was boring.
"You always do it at the last minute," Pandora says. "Come watch Endgame with us."
"I don't like Endgame. It's boring, the score's flat, the ending is underwhelming." Clockwork explains as she lists off all of the things she doesnt like with the movie. "I want 2012 Avengers and Shawarma back."
"2012 Avengers are dead and they're never coming back."
"No," she begins, "They were dusted. Besides, Endgame isn't canon."
"Then what's canon?" Dan asks.
"Anything that Marvel doesnt mess up horribly."
"If you sit through this 3 hour of a snoozefest with us, favorite snacks included, you can watch whatever you want no questions asked." Nocturne offers.
Pretending to mull it over, "Anything?" Nocturne nods. "Fine, let's get it started."
Ignoring Pandora, Dan and Nocturne's victory high fives, she shouts, "I'm only doing this for food. I hope you know this."
"Whatever!"
Whenever the Observants come, Clockwork knows it's best to clear her schedule for the rest of the day. Her employer's words are cruel, cutting and vindictive to the heart she so proudly wears on her sleeves, she doesn't bother trying to force herself to observe the time streams after a visit from them. It leads to more mistakes and more cruelty she's become used to.
"Are you even listening?" Observant 1 harps, squinting its eye in annoyance.
"I am." She answers dejectedly, resting an arm on her staff and slightly buries her face into it. (Sometimes she fools herself into thinking she's huddled into her father's warm and portly arms, shielding her from these clods.) "I just think it's wrong to doom an entire timeline because a few people have the capacity to commit terrible evil. There's always a chance they can do amazing things."
Observant 2's cloak bristles angrily, "You're not seeing what we see!"
"That's kind of my job." Clockwork says truthfully. "If we did everything your way, no one would be alive.
"Then maybe they shouldn't be. The world would end in chaos anyway-"
The Time Master groans in frustration. "No, it wouldn't you obtuse eyeballs."
"-just look at Phantom over there!" One of them gesticulates over in Dan's direction.
"I've done nothing wrong this time around, keep my name out of your mouth, you goddamn reject Mike Wasoki's." snaps Dan, narrowed eyes slowly sliding over to the two Observants. "There are ghosts here that trying to be productive, that's your cue to get out."
"What are you going to do about that thing's existence?" She knows from countless arguements about Dan that they expect her to erase his existence but she knows that she will never be able to raise a hand to do something soo heinous and inhumane against someone she considers a friend.
Raising an eyebrow in faux innocence, "Oh Dan? He's his own ghost who's free do to as he pleases."
"Are we starting with this insolence again from the same girl who constantly makes the same mistakes over and over again with so much blood on her hands-
"Because you threatened me." Clockwork hisses.
"A broken condom who got her father killed, who has proven herself time and time again to be a worthless burden and a waste of everyone's time and resources."
Their words break through the heart she wears on her sleeve. She senses her eyes tearing up and she aggressively wipes her face into her sleeve as to not give them the satisfaction. "We all know what I am, no need to bring it up again." Her voice remains strong but she remains well aware that by the time her employers leave, she'll be a broken mess of guilt and desperation. "There's a door for you to observe. I have work to do."
"You can ask that more politely." 1 snips, its voice scratchy with spite. "Your father raised you with manners, didn't he?"
'Are they serious?' Clockwork thinks to herself; seeing that the two still floating in her tower, she sees that they are indeed serious. Repressing a sigh, "Can you-"
plop!
One of the observants keels over, its hands covering its eye in what Clockwork assumes to be pain with Dan sitting where he was proudly holding a Nerf gun. He aims it at the other one, ready to shoot again if need be.
"She said get out." Dan warns, voice low and dangerous, teetering on the edge of mania. "I have more where that came from if you don't leave now."
Deeply disturbed by Dan's threat, the two superiors vanish away from the citadel.
"You okay there?" Dan asks.
It takes her a second to process what just happened. Once she does, she slowly sinks to the floor, legs splaying on the floor, hood covering her blotchy face as her breath quickens too quickly for her liking. The floorboard blurs and then she sees black and is pulled towards something soft and warm.
"It's not true what they said about you." She recognizes Dan's voice and offhandedly wonders that he has never been this soft with her. His arms are tight around her with no way to escape. Of their own accord, her arms wrap themselves around him, pulling her closer into the comforting hug. Her shoulders tremble, she bites her tongue to keep her cries down with slow and shallow breathing.
Clockwork was never a fan of breaking in front of others.
Running his fingers through her unruly hair, Dan whispers, "It's okay to let go."
"I'm fine." Clockwork whispers back.
"You're a terrible liar."
On the contrary, no she's not.
Hunger is a very fickle thing with the Time Master. Very rarely is she a ravenous woman, hungry enough to scarf down anything in her line of sight and more often than not, she's a reef shark who eats very infrequently and opportunistically.
On most days it's difficult to get her to eat a proper meal.
That's what Dan would say if he hadn't figured a way to get Clockwork to eat a meal or two. With a white plastic bag full of food in his hand, he slowly tiptoes towards the preoccupied Time Master, grateful that she's so consumed with her current project that she doesn't notice him.
Dan postures himself right next to Clockwork, clearing his throat and offering the bag of food to her. She suppresses a flinch as she turns around to see what he wants, pleasantly surprised by the food he held out for her. Slowly, she takes the offered food before Dan stops her, "How about we eat outside away from this stuffy citadel you call home?"
She shrugs, summoning two bags next to her. "Okay."
A toothy smile rewards her as Dan opens a portal to a grassy field where the stars hang over them. The two sit down to eat their meal in much deserved peace, merrily chatting about nothing in particular.
Moon hanging above them, its milky light illuminating Clockwork's skin and warm smile she shines at Dan. "Thank you." She says, eyes glimmering with sincerity in the moonlight.
Dan nods, happy that he was the reason she smiles this time around. "We'll do it again tomorrow night."
"Why don't we do it every night?" Clockwork answers cryptically, her gaze transfixed on the empty and open field.
"What do you mean?"
Clockwork doesn't immediately respond, instead, she gives him a large rucksack. "Let's leave."
"What do you mean leave?" asks Dan. "Where would we go?"
Turning her head around to face him, he can see the slightly manic look in her eyes. "Somewhere, anywhere. As long as you're willing to come with me."
"Okay."
I think this might be one of my favorite fics to work on. I crave validation, so if you like it, validate me by dropping a review!