Hello, everyone. So. I haven't been updating my fics on here because of reasons (they're lame reasons, don't worry about it) for the past six months, but I'm going to try and catch up with everything. I won't be able to do it all at once, but I'll be doing my best. To see all the chapters I've added to multichapter fics, just keep going until you don't see this message at the top of the chapter anymore. Sorry about this!
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Chapter 1
Oh, of course Clockwork didn't look like Clockwork. That is, he looked like himself, or else Danny wouldn't have recognized him, but he didn't look like a ghost, or else Danny was sure the scene wouldn't be nearly as peaceful - or unbelievable - as it was.
He blinked a few times. Hard. The scene didn't change. Clockwork - or Clockwork's human twin - was sitting at the kitchen table with Danny's parents. Sipping tea.
Danny hadn't even known they had tea in the house.
As Danny stared, Clockwork met Danny's eyes and winked. Neither Maddie nor Jack, who was enthusiastically describing their latest ghost capturing invention (something to do with a modified leaf blower), noticed. So. Clockwork. Not Clockwork's twin.
What was happening? What was happening right now? Why was Clockwork here? Had Danny screwed over the timeline somehow? And if he had, why wasn't Clockwork just grabbing future versions of Danny's enemies to assassinate him again? Why was he talking to Danny's parents? In a human disguise of all things?
Thinking about it made Danny's palms itch and his heart speed up, and he wasn't the best at being subtle when he was anxious.
"Uh, hi," he said, loudly, putting on just a touch of teenage lackadaisical spin, "who are you?"
"Oh, Danny!" said Maddie. "You're home early."
Danny winced. He got detention often enough that his parents usually didn't expect Danny home for another hour. The ghost fighting didn't help, either. Of course, the ghost fighting was why he got so many detentions. That and stuffing Dash's locker full of FentonWipe. And being associated with Sam. He had to admit that was also a significant contributor to his detention time.
What had he been thinking of again?
Rather, what had he been avoiding thinking of again?
Right. Clockwork. His parents. Tea. His future doom. The potential end of the world, as initiated by him, personally.
"Uh, yeah," said Danny. "I guess I am. But…" He tried to gesture at Clockwork without pointing, which was rude enough that Maddie would comment.
"I was just describing our new Fenton Blow design to our new neighbor, Clark! Two new things at once! It's like it's double new!" Jack jumped up and picked up Clockwork's chair so he could turn it to face Danny. Clockwork continued to calmly hold his tea throughout the motion.
"Neighbor?" squeaked Danny.
Something that had been constant at FentonWorks for as long as Danny could remember was that it didn't have neighbors. The properties adjacent to FentonWorks weren't empty, exactly, but people didn't live there. One was a vacation rental that saw the most traffic during Halloween. The building on the other side was a community store where people in the area sold things they'd made. And the back lot was split between a haunted house attraction and a rare permanent Spirit Halloween store.
FentonWorks was maybe a bit of a tourist destination. But it wasn't as if normal, sane people would live anywhere near FentonWorks.
Clockwork was neither normal nor sane. Obviously. Still, even he had to hesitate at being next to Danny's parents.
What property had he bought, anyway? It wasn't like there were a lot of options.
Danny would not be able to cope if he'd bought the haunted house.
Why was he here?
"Yes," said Maddie, "he bought the place behind us. The costume store. We were talking about how he could make the costumes more accurate."
Clockwork cleared his throat. "Assuming that I will continue to manage the franchise is somewhat premature, but your work is truly fascinating."
Maddie smiled. "Oh, you're a charmer."
Jack laughed as well. "Almost as smooth as Vladdie used to be, huh?" He patted Clockwork on the shoulder. "Good times, good times! We're going to have a lot of fun!"
Oh god, were they flirting? Danny was glad he didn't have a much of a gag reflex since half-dying.
"If you aren't going to be running the Spirit store, what are you going to do?"
"Previously, I owned and managed an antique store. Worthy Antiques." A small smile playing around his lips, he took another sip of tea.
"From his name!" said Jack. "Clark Worth! Isn't that clever?"
Danny knew he didn't have any room to talk about pseudonyms, but that was… Wow. That was blatant. Of course, the whole thing was blatant. Still.
"Sell many clocks?" Danny asked, because he was an idiot and had some sort of death wish.
"A few," said Clockwork. "People do seem to like antique clocks."
"Why move to Amity Park?" asked Danny, taking a few steps over to the table so he could stand between Clockwork and his parents. Was the gesture futile? Yep. Was he doing it anyway? Yep.
"Issues with the local government. You seem to have it handled quite nicely here."
"That's true!" said Jack. "We've got the government in the bag down here!"
"Yes, we'll have to show you what they did when they hit us with zoning complaints of all things," said Maddie.
Danny was not hearing this. He wasn't here. This was some kind of impossible fugue state. Or a hallucination. Or a dream. It could be Nocturne. It wasn't like he was above using people's fears, conscious or otherwise, to mess with them.
But, if he could put his parents being weird aside (a task difficult bordering on impossible), then what did Clockwork mean by local government? Walker? Pariah Dark? Could Danny even take Clockwork's words as an analogy? He could just lie. It wasn't as if ghosts were bound to be honest.
"It is time for me to go now, unfortunately. Thank you for the company and the excellent tea."
"No problem!" said Jack. "We didn't even know we had it!"
"Feel free to drop by any time, it was lovely to have you over," said Maddie, reaching over to Clockwork's hands.
"That's very gracious of you. Allow me to extend the same invitation to you and your family," said Clockwork. He stood up, raising the empty teacup towards Danny in a sort of toast before putting it back down. "It was wonderful to meet you as well, Daniel."
"Yeah," said Danny. Then, grudgingly, "You, too. I can show you out."
"No need," said Clockwork. "I know the way." He gave them all a short, shallow bow, then left.
Danny looked at his parents.
"Wow! What a great guy!" said Jack, planting his hands on his hips. "Hope his business works out!"
"Twenty percent of new businesses fail in the first two years," said Maddie.
"But he's got experience," argued Jack. "And, who knows, maybe we'll be customers! Lots of haunted antiques out there, huh?"
"Yes… I wonder… Could we modify the Fenton Finder to determine what kinds of objects are most likely to be haunted…"
Before Danny could get sucked into whatever antique-related discussion his parents were about to have, he slipped away up the stairs. He needed backup for this. Lots of backup.
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"I'm sorry," said Sam over the phone. "Who?"
"Clockwork," said Danny. "You know, the one who sent us into the messed up future where I was evil and you were dead."
"His name was Clockwork?"
"Yeah? Did you– Did you not know that?"
"I've got him down in my book as Clockstopper," added Jazz, helpfully.
"Isn't that, like, a movie?" asked Tucker, fiddling with his PDA. "With a kid who can stop time?"
"It's the watch that can stop time," said Danny, distractedly. "Did I not tell you his name? I'm sure I told you his name."
"Didn't we lose half a day of time in there where we all died again?" asked Tucker. "I remember something about that."
How did Danny tell them about that and not Clockwork's name? Seriously. He had to get his priorities right. And figure out how not to break down and spill potentially traumatizing information whenever Sam and Tucker prodded him even a little.
(Was it a response to keeping a million secrets from everyone else? Probably. But lying had been invented for a reason. A million reasons. And one of them was not traumatizing your friends.)
He rubbed his face. "Okay, so, the guy's name is Clockwork. Clockwork. Not Clockstopper. He's the Master of Time. He actually helped me once, when Vlad gave you two ecto-acne. Well." His expression pinched inward. "Sort of."
"What do you mean, 'sort of?'" asked Sam, leaning forward.
"He, uh. Kind of unpersoned me. Or let me unperson myself. I'm… Yeah. Okay. More the second one. But he sent me off to do it. I'm actually not clear on how he undid it… What?"
"You know," said Tucker, who was now looking up from his PDA, "I didn't really question it when you brought back the cure at the time, but I really should have, huh…"
"Yeah, you're going to have to run through how you got unpersoned," said Sam.
"What do you even mean by unpersoned?" said Jazz, concerned. "Like in 1984?"
"Uh," said Danny. "I never read that. Does it involve time travel?"
"Danny…"
"He's dodging the question," said Tucker. "What did you do, Danny?"
Danny squirmed. "We're talking about why he's here."
"A conversation that would be much improved by telling us about your past interactions with him," said Jazz. She had produced a pen and notebook from somewhere.
"I barely interacted with him that time. We were only in the same room for, like, ten minutes, total. The part where I was the subject of a 'would you murder baby Hitler' question is much more relevant."
"Actually, why didn't Clockwork murder baby Hitler?" said Sam, somewhat indignant. "Actual baby Hitler. Not Danny."
"He didn't kill me, anyway, and future me wrecked the entire planet, as far as I could–"
"Wait, wait," said Jazz. "I'm still writing this down."
"You don't need to write this down."
"Don't worry, I'm doing it in code. Basically unbreakable. Just a minute…" She licked her lips, then, slowly, sounding out the words, she said, "Time… master…"
"Clockwork. His name is Clockwork. Why are you like this?"
"I think it's just how siblings are," said Sam.
"You're an only child," Tucker pointed out. "What would you know?"
"I've watched my cousins. It's basically the same."
"That's completely different," said Tucker.
"Okay, okay," said Danny. "I thought that maybe if Vlad had never become a half ghost, then he'd never have gotten ecto-acne, and he wouldn't have wanted to give you guys ecto-acne. Or have even been able to. So I asked Clockwork to send me back to his accident and pushed him out of the way."
"And then the butterfly effect meant that you were never born?" asked Sam. "Actually, no one born after that would have been the same as the people who were born after it in this world… Would they?"
Danny shrugged. "I didn't really look into that, to be honest. I was kind of distracted by, uh. Dad having gotten hit instead. I didn't really realize… Mom and Dad were like right behind him."
Jazz looked up at him in horror.
"It didn't actually happen," said Danny. "Or, uh, it hasn't've happened now?" What tense what he even supposed to use here?
"No, no, it isn't that," said Jazz. "It's just that they had no lab safety even in college. It's a miracle they're still alive. But does that mean Dad was a half ghost?"
"Yeah."
"And how did Mom take that?"
"Not sure, actually. They were kind of. Not married." He waited for Jazz to flip out. She'd freaked badly enough when it just looked like they might get a divorce.
Instead, she just nodded. "That makes sense," she said.
"It does?"
"Yeah, Dad's socially awkward enough to begin with. If he was isolated the same way Vlad was when he was sick, there's no way he'd be able to keep up a relationship. I don't think they were even dating at that point."
"Right, well, anyway, after I figured that out, I knew I had to undo it. A bunch of stuff happened, but I eventually got back to Clockwork and he reset it. So that's it. Whole story. Can we get back on topic?"
"Pretty sure you're lying, but whatever," said Sam. "But what do you expect us to do in this situation? It kind of feels like he could just wave his hands and… poof."
"Yeah, he was definitely not trying in that fight," added Tucker.
Way to be supportive, guys. Jeez. "I'm not going to fight him."
"Good, if you were, I'd be asking Jazz to check you for a concussion."
"I just want to know what he wants. Like, if he's here because I've screwed up the timeline again or what. But the guy talks in riddles - not literal riddles." Danny just knew Jazz would start calling him Riddle Master or something if Danny didn't clear that up fast. "But he doesn't give straight answers."
"At least we know he's not homophobic."
"Tucker, that joke was only funny the first ten times."
"It's always funny."
Sam cleared her throat. "And is that something we can do something about?"
"Yeah. Sort of, anyway. It's just… I know what my life is like. I know what I'm like. If I go talk to him alone, I'll miss something or say something stupid. But you guys actually pay attention to stuff. You think about things. I need you to come with me so I don't say something sarcastic and wind up on a cross-time road trip to learn about the importance of customer service."
"If we could stop you from saying dumb things, you'd have a lot less detentions," said Sam.
"So you're going to abandon me? Your best friend? To a ghost who's beaten him up before?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "Don't be so dramatic. I didn't say I wouldn't go with you. I'm just pointing out that you'll have to put in a little effort if you want us to be your time ghost lawyers or interpreters or whatever."
"I will! That's why I want you to come with me."
"Well, I'll come with you, at least," said Jazz. "I want to know more about this Clockstopper."
Danny squinted at him. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"I'll come with you, too," said Tucker. "But if we wind up on a customer service road trip, I will be blaming you."
"Well, yeah," said Danny. "That's a given."
"I can't go tonight," said Sam. "Family dinner. Tomorrow? Right after Danny gets out of detention?"
"You don't know I'll have detention tomorrow. I haven't gotten one yet."
"Sure, keep telling yourself that," said Sam.