Chapter Five: The Master of All Time
The Master of All Time. The title sounds so eloquent, so powerful, so forceful and intimidating. Even though Clockwork did not choose the moniker, the ancient ghost does nothing to stop the name from spreading. Most of the time Clockwork does as he pleases with the time stream. He sees the various paths and the alternate futures, and because of his unique perspective Clockwork is capable of making necessary sacrifices for the greater good of all, of accepting the short-term suffering of people if it means prosperity in the long run. He is, quite simply, much more farsighted than the humans and ghosts that he privately swears to protect and is constantly forced to answer to.
There are only a handful of people who know the oath that Clockwork keeps, who know how he chooses to preserve and protect the world he cares so much about, and that is simply because Clockwork cannot allow himself to grow too close to anyone. Love is beautiful and friendship makes people capable of extraordinary things, but for Clockwork, such has always been a weakness. He has the power to alter the destiny of the entire world with a wave of his hand—if he ever cares too much, if he ever loves someone more than the duty he swears to uphold, then there is always that possibility that he will sacrifice the world for the sake of one, that he will choose the happiness of an individual over the happiness of all, and for Clockwork, such a choice is unacceptable.
Or at least it was until the day that Danny Fenton fell under his care. The boy is incredible, courageous and kind and filled with a brilliance that is impossible to put into words, and although he has as much potential for darkness as any, he also has the potential to do great good. The child is not perfect—sometimes he hurts others without intending to do so, sometimes he makes the wrong choices—but it simply makes Clockwork like Daniel more. The boy is a hero, but he is still part human; thus, he is still allowed to be weak and to make mistakes, which means that he is precisely the type of being that Clockwork can never be.
It would have been easy for the ghost to be jealous of the boy, but that is not in his nature; instead, Clockwork merely finds that he wants to spend more time with the boy, to learn more about him and to protect him more than nearly anyone else that he has or will encounter during his long afterlife. Although this didn't seemed dangerous at first, the ancient ghost now wishes that he maintained the distance between him and Daniel that they first had when they met almost three years ago, if only because it meant that the boy would not be here now. Clockwork, after all, is the Master of All Time. He is not supposed to make mistakes, but in the end he did when he chose to do something for Daniel that will do for no one ever again: he chose not to look at the boy's future out of respect for who the child is and because Clockwork feared what he might do if he saw something in that future, something necessary yet painful that Clockwork might want to change but shouldn't. Clockwork chose to have faith in the boy and his choices, to have faith that Daniel would be capable of fixing his own mistakes and would be able to handle the problems that life handed him, and to have faith that his time altering powers would not be needed again. He had already interfered so much in the boy's life, and although he didn't regret that decision (it was, after all, for the benefit of the world), he didn't want to do it again if he could help it.
Even so, it shouldn't have mattered. The boy did everything right on the day of the C.A.T., and on that last day when Clockwork chose to take a glimpse at the boy's fate, all was well. It should not have changed simply because Clockwork stopped himself from checking on Daniel's future on a regular basis. The boy should have been fine—there was no darkness on the horizon in the world's timeline when he gazed into the future, and the huge impact that the boy had on that should have made it evident as to whether or not there was a problem with Danny's own future even if Clockwork wasn't directly observing it. Yet even though Daniel continues to do what is right in the future, even though he pushes forward and never stops doing what is noble and what is honest and good, Daniel is not and likely never will be completely happy and whole again. Mentally, a part of him is shattered forever, and all of that could have been avoided if Clockwork had simply done his job and checked on Daniel as he is meant to do.
And much as the ghosts call him the Master of All Time, Clockwork is not in complete control of the time stream. He cannot alter the past all the time—the cases are limited, dependent upon potential paradoxes and time displacements—and because of his personal involvement in this case, he actually can't change the past. It creates a paradox that is impossible to truly resolve—after all, how can the Master of All Time change a past he refused to see when it was still nothing more than a possible future?
He tried to fix it, even so. He removed that part of Daniel's life, used Desiree to take a piece of the past and lock it away inside of him and the others. If he couldn't change it, then he could at least make them forget, make the time as nonexistent as possible so that perhaps the boy could still be happy and whole.
It was a fool's wish, however, a fool's desire, and deep down Clockwork knew that even then. The boy was always going to come to him, always going to ask to find out about his past, and the only thing Clockwork has really done is given the boy a chance to prepare himself for what's to come, or rather, what has already been. And Clockwork knows now that whether he respects the boy or not, he needs to watch his future as carefully as any other. The day he finally admitted such to himself was the day he saw that Daniel would come to him after his fight with Desiree, and now, at long last, here he is.
It is now time for Clockwork to correct his mistake.
"Why?" Danny asks after Clockwork confirms his belief, and the ghost sighs as he shifts between forms. "Why did I want you to change the past? Why couldn't you change it?"
"I don't have unlimited power, Daniel," Clockwork explains as he twists the knobs on his staff, the closest thing the ghost has to a nervous habit. "I couldn't change the past without creating an irresolvable paradox, since the fate that befell you came of a mistake that I made. As much as I wished I could change it, I could not. What happened that day was painful, traumatic, and it is a wound you will never truly recover from. I hoped that having Desiree alter the memories of you as well as your family and friends would be enough, but it wasn't, and wishing for her to alter the time stream entirely would not have solved your problem—it merely would have created divergent universes, one in which you were still suffering and one in which you were not. Erasing your memories was the best I could do, if only because it meant that you would be given the time to prepare yourself for the knowledge of the past you've now lost. I'm sorry, Daniel."
"You don't need to apologize," Danny tells him. "From the looks of things, I was the one who came to you and asked you to change my past."
"I am well aware of that, Daniel, and am not apologizing for such," he replies. "I am apologizing for not paying careful attention to your future. After you took the C.A.T., I checked your future for the last time. I believed that all was well, and since I still had a general view of the future, if not yours specifically, I could tell that you remained a force for good. I assumed that such meant you were safe."
"I was an arrogant fool," he cursed bitterly as he shifted into an old man. "Because I no longer watched your future, I could no longer alter your past if something actually happened to you. Although it seems as if time is fluid, there is a fixed present, the moment we exist in right now. The past and future can be altered, but only to an extent unless one wishes to create multiple universes, and then the future has only been changed in one timeline, not all, and so somewhere you still would have been suffering. Thus, the past can only be altered indirectly, or by someone who has the foresight to prevent the past from coming to be when it is still the future. Since I chose to ignore your future out of my well-meaning yet misguided respect for you, Daniel, I could not prevent the horrible future that has now become an unalterable part of your past."
"I—I don't understand," Danny admits slowly, and Clockwork chuckles gently.
"It's okay," he says. "You don't have to. Just know, Danny, that I made a mistake, and that I feel as responsible for your fate as you feel for the fate of those that you fail to save from the ghosts who attack your town. I may have attempted to fix it as best I could at your request, but clearly they were not enough."
"It's not—I mean—maybe it's working a bit," shrugs Danny. "I'm not sure. But there's just—just this sense of everything being not quite right, and there's this pain when I go ghost—" he pauses, clutching his chest "—that I just want to go away, or that I at least want to understand. And there's this song that's stuck in my head all the time now. Jazz says that my mom used to sing it to me when I was a baby and stuff, and—well—I don't get it, really, but I don't even care about that part so much. I mostly just want to stop flinching when my friends and family touch me. I want to be able to protect the town with a clear conscious and not worry that I did something awful during those three weeks that I just can't remember, or that I lost a fight because of a stupid mistake. As long as I don't know what happened to me, it's going to eat at me in little ways, and . . . I don't know. It might be worse. It might not. I don't know what happened, but from that image it doesn't look good."
"Are you sure you're prepared to remember?" Clockwork asks, knowing that despite what the boy claims he doesn't actually want to remember but feels obligated to do so out a sense of responsibility and duty. Even though Clockwork asks the question, he already knows Danny's answer since he's been carefully monitoring Danny's future once again, and more to the point, he knows that unlike some of the others whose memories he had Desiree tamper with, Danny will be able to handle it.
Yet as Danny thinks about it for a moment, he can feel his chest tightening and the beginning of an anxiety attack. The song is growing louder inside his mind, screaming for some kind of release, and as Danny recalls the image of himself from Clockwork's screen, he wonders if he did something terrible. He must have, he thinks, for what else could drive him here?
"I . . . I hurt someone, didn't I?" he whispers, his voice quaking.
"Not in the way that you think," says the ghost slowly as he shifts into a middle-aged man. "Someone was hurt because of what happened to you, but it was not because you turned evil. You simply . . . You made a careless mistake, Daniel, as did I. I should have watched your future, just as you should have heeded your friends, your sister, and I when we told you that you needed to tell your parents the truth."
Clockwork's words instantly bring the conversation that Danny had with Lancer just yesterday to mind, where the old teacher spoke to him about his greatest fears, and at that moment Danny begins to realize what he's forgotten, what must have happened to him. The pain makes sense now, as does the fear, the flinching, the anxiety and the cold, distant fog that is hanging over him even now. He still cannot completely believe it, and knowing this, Clockwork floats over to the wall before grabbing something.
It's a medallion, and it shines brilliantly despite the dim light, the two letters on it glowing ever so slightly. "The wish that Desiree granted to remove your memories and to alter those of your family and friends . . . I had her use one of my medallions in it in case you needed your memories returned. All you have to do is touch it, Daniel, and the wish she granted for me, the wish that you would forget those weeks, will end. Whether or not you also choose to hand the medallion to your friends and family so that they might remember the truth as well is up to you, but . . . I would advise against it."
For a long moment Danny stares at the medallion, a part of him screaming that he should not, cannot take it. He knows that the harmless looking artifact will destroy him the instant his fingers brush across its cool surface. He knows that he will remember something so horrifying that when he originally came to this tower he begged Clockwork to undo it or help him forget, and, suspecting what that something is now that things are slowly being revealed to him, Danny is even more afraid to touch it.
"I don't . . . I don't want to know," Danny admits, and he's shaking badly as a cold sweat breaks out across his ghostly flesh. "I know that whatever it was, it was . . . " he pauses, trying to find the words, but in the end he can't and he merely shakes his head, skipping this part since he knows that he does not need to say it. "But I need to know the truth. I can't keep living this way, I mean, unless you think that whatever happened to me is so bad that it'll drive me to, well. . . to turn into him."
There is no need to specify what Danny means by that—it is always the same one, always the same fear, and sitting in a room nearby is a thermos that Clockwork has never shown to Danny because just as there are some truths Danny can handle, there are others the boy cannot, or at least not yet.
"No, Danny," Clockwork says calmly. "You'll still be the hero, regardless of what happens now, but this will change you. It will alter the way you look at your friends, at your family, and at your life, and no matter how far ahead I gaze, it is clear that this part of your past will always haunt you. It's not the kind of thing that one can ever completely move on from."
Desiree's own words echo in his head, then, about how some memories leave wounds so deep that the scars will never heal and will never truly be forgotten, and as Danny stares at the medallion, he slowly forces his hand towards it. "Okay, then. If I won't hurt the people I care about because of this . . . then I guess I can live with it."
Reaching out, he takes the medallion from Clockwork, yet Danny does not scream. Rather, as the memories flood back, he clutches the piece closer to his chest as his breath begins racing. His body trembles and he is paralyzed to the spot as he falls to his knees, shaking and sweating. If Clockwork thought it might help the boy, then he would hug him, but he knows that touching Danny right now is the worst thing he can possibly do. He has to let the boy suffer through his past, and unfortunately, Danny must do it alone.
A/N: So, as promised, another update this week, and in the next chapter you'll finally get to find out just what memory Clockwork erased à la flashback style (but I'm guessing that a lot of you have figured it out already by this point). That chapter will probably be posted in a few days since I've got most of that one edited, too, but I'm also going to be very busy over the next few days so don't take that as an ironclad guarantee, 'kay?
And although I'll probably restate it at the beginning of that chapter, I'm going to warn all of you lovely readers right now that the next chapter is very dark, very gruesome, and has a few graphic descriptions and scenes that are likely going to pushing my 'T' rating a bit, so if you have trouble reading or dealing with that sort of thing . . . yeah. Consider this a warning. The first part of the chapter will make it very obvious what happened to Danny if you haven't figured it out already, so if you can't stomach that sort of thing, then you may want to skip to the end once you know where it's going. I admittedly held back a little bit since I know my tolerance for it is crazy high and somewhat abnormal, but still. Might be a bit tough to read.
In any case, I hope you guys enjoy the holidays, and if you have a little free time, then please review! ;)
'Til next time!