Our Time Chapter 4

For the rest of the day, the raven haired teen was left to try and figure out how to go about this new life of his. He immediately planned to get his ghost powers back, but after a bit of thinking, he realized that this is exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be a normal kid with no ghosts to fight. The teen scratched that idea for the moment.

By the time school let out, he was more than happy to have something to do other than think. Danny headed towards his house like he had done so many times back in his world, but found himself walking a different path. Walking down the sidewalk that lead to an unknown destination just seemed right to him. After a few minutes of walking, he came upon a large restaurant.

The building was rather large and the sign hanging on the front stated the place was called "V&D's Diner". The outside was a bright white framed in many places by silver paint. The windows were large and had stain glass designs of fall trees. The teen shivered as a gust of chilled wind blew through town. He almost forgot it was turning to autumn rather quickly. Steeling his nerves, he walked through the door.

The interior was a refreshing modernistic style and the place buzzed with business. Many of the kids from school were already there sitting around white top tables chatting and looking over the menu. The stunned teen walked towards the back where memories told him Vlad would be. It reminded him of the Nasty Burger from his dimension.

"Daniel! It's good to see you showed up. I was starting to worry you forgot." A strong voice called out as the boy walked into the kitchen. Vlad was working away on the stoves making orders. Go into the back room, I prepared a uniform for you.

Danny quickly walked through the kitchen and into the room that Vlad had gestured to earlier. The teen found himself in a small room only slightly larger than a janitorial closet. A uniform hung from an opened locker. The teen tossed his book bag into the metal compartment and stated stripping off his school cloths. The uniform consisted of a tight long sleeved purple shirt that had the V&D logo on it and a pair of nice black dress up pants. The boy took a few seconds to admire how good it looked on him before going back into the kitchen to talk to Masters.

"Just what I though." Vlad hummed to himself as the teen rejoined him. "Okay, since it's your first day, I'll put you on wait staff. Just go take orders, give them to me, and deliver food. Make sure to smile." The man rushed to say as he cooked some eggs and pushed the boy out the door.

The teen was suddenly in a room filled with hungry people and had no job experience what so ever. He took a couple nervous breaths and started walking around from table to table asking the standard questions he remember being asked whenever he and his family had gone out. For the most part, the customers were nice and the orders were fairly easy. After a few hours of that, he had gotten it down and was working at a faster pace.

When nine o'clock rolled around, the diner emptied out and it was just Vlad and him left to clean up the mess. The teen took a seat after wiping down the last table and gave a gleeful sigh. "That was hard." He confessed.

Vlad was still cleaning up the kitchen. He shouted out of the now open door. "You did a great job for your first day though." Danny stretched out and sat back in the chair. He was left staring at the ceiling that had been painted a soft silver color. "I'll be done cleaning in here in a minute than we can go home and relax a bit."

"Alright, I'll just go change out then." The teen forced himself out of the soft chair he had occupied and made his way through the rather small kitchen. The boy struggled with his locker for a few minutes before admitting that he had forgotten to learn his locker combo and. "Uh, what's the combination for my locker?"

The silver haired man had just dried his hands and was on his way over to the small back room. "Honestly Daniel, You'd loose your head if it wasn't attached." The man laughed. He went into the room and undid the lock for the teen, making sure to show the boy the combo.

The two men rustled around in the room and started to strip. Danny was a little uncomfortable as the man changed while he was in the small room watching him. A heat crossed his face and a tenseness unnerved him. He hastily tossed on his cloths and bolted out of the room with his bag in tow. His heart was beating fast and a cold sweat had broken out across his brow. "What was that about…" Danny questioned as he fell down into the chair he had sat on prior.

"That my boy, is your memory coming back." An ominous voice echoed through the small diner. The raven haired teen snapped his head up and looked around to see who was producing this unexpected response.

Clock Work appeared out of nowhere. His long white beard slowly melted away to a baby face as he materialized. "Why are you here?" Danny said stunned to see Clock Work out of his castle.

"I'm here simply to check in. I must admit, this plan of yours was a rather good one. No turf troubles between the ghosts and humans, no problematic poltergeists, no dilemmas." Clock work slowly turned into a middle aged man and floated around admiring the small restaurant. "Quite a nice set up really."

"Yeah, it's nice I get it." Danny replied just a bit annoyed. "What was that you were saying about memories? I haven't really remember anything since this morning."

"That's where you're wrong. You see, the body remembers quicker than the mind. Just like earlier, you remember where this place was, even though you didn't. You see, your body is remembering things quicker than you are. In this time line, you are not only great friends with Vlad Masters: you are in love with him here." The ghost floated into the kitchen and gave the set up a good look. "Quaint."

"What, I'm not in love with… that just grossed me out!" The teen protested. "It's awkward enough just being friends with him."

"It's true. You have been in love with him for about a year now in this time line. He slowly won your heart over. Though, you have as of yet told him this." Clock Work found a small piece of cake preserved in the fridge and dug into it. "Rather good cook he is…"

"That's… that can't be true." Danny paced around and kicked a chair halfway across the room. "How, how did it come to that?"

"Since Vlad was always around to take care of you and your sister, your parents devoted more of their time to ghosts. They quickly got used to it and ignored you two. Your sister became rather independent while you were left clinging to Vlad. He saw you as his own child and has been watching over you more so than your parents. You practically live with him here." Clock Work paused to finish off the cake in his child form and cleaned up his mess. "At first, you just mistook a family love as a personal love, but it blossomed forth from that. Quite a beautiful pure love though. Though you never acted on it and you just kept it to yourself."

The teen plopped down in a booth and buried his head in his over worked hands. "This can't be… I can't be." The teen sulked. "I'm disgusting."

"Quite the opposite. It's been ages since I've seen such pure love." The ghost commented, changing from thumb sucker to beard adorned. "Well, my analysis is done. I'll take my leave. Farewell ghost boy. I hope to see you soon." Clock Work disappeared into a large clock that materialized behind him and as soon as that circular pathway closed, time resumed as normal in the diner.

Vlad walked out of the back room and up to Danny. "Well, shall we go home? I'm sure you have some homework that needs to be done." The two of them closed up the diner and walked to Vlad's oversized house in the chilled night air. They didn't talk and Danny kept his distance trying to forget his conversation with the time master, hoping it was nothing but lies.

"I'm going to take a quick shower before I do my homework. I smell like the diner." Danny said as he headed over to the bathroom. Without realizing he was doing it, he took off his shirt and tossed it on the floor as he headed through the living room towards the bathroom.

"Daniel, I've been meaning to ask you." Vlad quickly said as he picked up the discarded shirt. "Those scars on your back… when did you get them?" He walked up to the teen and bent down to exam the sensitive slashes.

"I got them yesterday." Danny said before realizing that in this world it was a rather odd occurrence that he was hurt. Before the teen could come up with some half witted excuse as to why he had them Masters spoke.

"That dream you told me about. Was it really a dream?" Vlad mulled as he ran a finger gently over an old scar on the boy's shoulder.

"What are you talking about? Of coarse it was just a dre…"

"No Daniel. Tell me the truth. Was it really just a dream? Are you a Danny from a different world or time line?" The man grabbed a hold of the boy's skinny yet toned arm.

The teen stayed quiet and stared at the older man. After a few minutes of silence the boy finally spoke up. "I'm Danny, the one and only. It's just, I grew up in one time line, and came to this one. I'm still the Danny you know, I have the same memories and the same thoughts and feelings." The teen riddled out. He felt ridiculous for telling the man that. There was no way he'd understand.

"I thought so." The silver haired man said after a long time of just staring at the boy's scars. "So, you have the same feelings? Are you sure?" Vlad's dark blue eyes locked on to the teen's sky blue ones.

"As awkward as it might be, I still do." The boy yanked his arm out of the older man's grasp. He turned and walked towards the bathroom. "Every last memory and feeling resides in me. No matter what my last life was…" He retreated into the bathroom and slammed the door.

The teen took a few breaths to steady himself then started to strip. He was about to turn the shower on when Vlad's voice rang out through the door. "Where you… the one who saved me all those years ago?"

Danny didn't have the heart to tell him that he had done it for selfish reasons. The teen just turned on the shower and tried to wash off the worries of the day. He let the warm water rush over him as he calmed down and let the events slowly slip away.

Unfortunately, the teen had to come out after he was finished. He was greeted by Vlad, who had changed into a large t-shirt and sweat pants and let his hair down, and a large mug of hot chocolate. He groaned, hot chocolate was one of his favorite treats. How could the man be so nice to him?

The two men sat down in the neat living room to chat. Vlad wasted no time and jumped right to questioning the boy. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It took me a while to remember that in this world we were so close. Not to mention the you from my time line really made me worry about it. It's just, most people wouldn't exactly understand this situation."

"What was I like in your time?"

"You were… not like here. Not at all. You were mean, greedy, you did what ever was necessary to get what you wanted. We fought all the time. Most of these scars and bruises are from you actually." The teen sipped his treat.

"Why did you save me in this time line?" Vlad asked as he settled into the plush purple couch.

"It's not an answer you want to hear." Danny gulped down a mouthful of chocolate goodness. "Next question?"

"What do you feel for me? The here me?" Vlad pried.

"I…the me from this line loves you. More then a parental figure. I love you…" Danny admitted. He was nervous of what would happen if he said it, but he felt like it needed to be said.

"My Danny loved me?" Vlad sounded slightly choked up about it. He sat back in the couch and just stared at the wall across the way. "He loved me?" His hands fidgeted as he took in the new information. He couldn't believe this turn of events. Tears started to roll down his cheeks. "Why, why couldn't he have told me sooner? I loved him… loved him too." Wet salty tears poured down his face and he man shivered.

The teen felt horrible for this turn of events. He put down his mug and wrapped his arms around the crying man. "Technique, I love you. I guess I still love you." Danny said as emotions that he wasn't used to welled up inside him. He felt himself quickly get taken over by regained memories of this dimension.

"It's…not quite the same." Vlad huffed out. "You aren't him, not matter what."

"I am him though. Give it another couple days. The me from the old time line will just disappear and the me from here will be back whole." The teen held the older man just a bit tighter. "I promise you, it's really me."