Author's Note: Thanks for reading, I got my account up and running now, so posting on here is a few days behind posting on AO3. This chapter is short, but the next one will be longer. Hope you enjoy! I love reading comments and I try to reply when I can.
Also a side note: I used to be YourFavoriteContractor, so I'll be polishing and re-uploading some of my older stories soon, but if you see them twice it's because I can't get into my old account for some reason.
Thanks and enjoy the mini chapter.
The screaming was unbearable, the sirens and the car alarms, not to mention the crying. The crying of children was the worst.
Danny held his head and looked around. There were fires everywhere, of the buildings in the area half collapsed. The sky was gray with ash and smoke, people coughing and crying and screaming.
He groaned and pushed himself up from where he had been taking a dirt nap in the park, not that there was much left of the park. The trees nearby were on fire, a green ghostly fire which made the world around it look even more gloomy and dark. Danny stood fully and held his chest, he hurt and he felt so terribly weak and tired. He needed answers though so he pressed forward.
"What happened here?" he frowned, his legs weak as he looked around, then paused and looked down at himself. "Was… that a dream?" he asked himself as he saw that he was 21 again. Had traveling back to the accident been a dream? If it was a dream, was it some sort of subconscious effort to fix whatever this mess was? Why couldn't he remember what had happened, and more importantly how did he let this happen?
He reached for his core to transform, planning to fly over the town and figure out what was happening but paused as his body seemed to fizzle and shift around the edges flickering in and out of existence.
"What!?" he gasped as he looked down and his hands seemed to fizzle out like static before returning. "What's going on?" he said.
"You've died." said a familiar sage voice. Danny gasped and looked up seeing Clockwork floating in front of him. The time ghost had adopted his childlike appearance as he watched Danny struggle with what was going on.
"I… what?" Danny asked, he touched his chest, realizing that he didn't feel the familiar beat of his heart or rise of his breath. "Dead?" he said. He hadn't even noticed, how could he not have noticed something so obvious?
"We don't have a lot of time." Clockwork said as he surveyed the area. "To answer your first question, this is the dream, but also a vision of the future. Your plan to come visit me in your current present and that is also your past will end in failure." He warned. Danny frowned and looked back down at his body.
"So… I died… so that's how this future happens." He said as he looked around at the burning buildings and trees again, not quite able to tune out the sound of screams in the distance. "If this is a dream… How did I return to the past… and why then? Why the portal accident?"
"Your memories will return slowly and everything will become clear." Clockwork said, a statement which didn't help Danny at all.
"Are you ever not cryptic?" Danny frowned as he looked at the ghost, lamenting that nothing ever seemed to be straightforward with him.
"No. Everything is as it should be, information will come with time, your path ahead will become obvious. However, answers cannot be given at this time." Clockwork said as he aged and shrugged. Danny sighed, he should be used to Clockwork's ramblings by now, but it was still frustrating to parse out his cryptic advice.
"Why can't answers be given at this time?" Danny asked, folding his arms definitely as he looked at the ghost who smiled as he aged again.
"Because it's time for you to wake up."