DP- Father Time
What if…. Clockwork was around far longer than Danny knew….
~
Life was a parade, and Clockwork had the best view. He was the master of time, he knew all of what was and what wasn’t. He saw the threads of every timeline, and took the best each had to offer for the most people.
He had pride in his work, and an annoying habit of always being right. How could he be wrong when he knew the future. He knew every future. This was one of the major reasons he was irritated when someone, namely the Observants, decided to tell him how to do his job.
They saw what was laid out in front of them. They saw what he laid out in front of them. They were spectators that clung too tightly to their oaths to merely watch, while cheating at the motion in the same breath. They acted so haughty but thought nothing of turning around and demanding Clockwork do this or that for them.
Clockwork would generally avoid having to deal with them by agreeing ‘something’ needed to be ‘done’ and then go back to doing what he wanted in the first place. Observers they might be, ancient even, but they did not have the power to watch his every move. He directed things in the right direction, the way he always had with or without their say so.
The future he had been keeping an eye on was swiftly on its way to becoming the present. The thrill of it put a smile on his face. Frankly it had been a while since he’d been so eager for anything.
He’d be busy, but time was such a controllable thing for him.
Making a portal to the moral plane, Clockwork floated through, remaining invisible. The house was the cozy sort, and deceiving normal though he knew it wouldn’t be for long. The hideous space like craft structure wasn’t yet protruding from the roof like an unwanted appendage. The glowing Fenton Works sign wasn’t out front yet either.
The contamination was present however. It was still in low, nearly unnoticeable amounts, but that was still double what was generally found in nature. At least in normal places that weren’t consecrated grounds or otherwise filled with abnormal levels of death.
This really was no place for children.
Unseen by the two small occupants in the room, he observed as a small boy was seated at the kitchen table, watching nervously while his older sister knelt on a chair at the counter, carefully pouring juice into a sippy cup. It was a small task, but not one such small children should have been dealing with unsupervised.
“Almost done, Danny.” Jazz said, turning to look at him with a smile. She only just barely noticed the way the chair wobbled, and didn’t notice how it stilled right after, Clockwork holding out an unseen hand to steady it with his telekinesis. It might have been a small thing, but it was unnecessary to have a timeline where the small girl fell off her chair and cracked her head on the counter. She would end up fine, and with seventeen stitches. Her younger brother, terrified of climbing on the kitchen chairs for the following five years.
It could be skipped.
It might have been meddling, but after the burden these two would end up growing up with, he saw no reason not to show them occasional good fortune.
Jazz climbed down from the counter, a sippy cup and small plastic cup in each hand. She set them on the table before running back to the counter to grab the peanut butter sandwiches she’d set on a paper towel.
It was lunch for two, and both were so young they didn’t see anything wrong with this scenario. It was perhaps wrong to interfere, but Clockwork saw a future that depended on both of them. Young Danny was going to be immensely important, and he would always cling to his sisters unwavering support.
There were too many futures where accidents harmed these children before the proper timeline could come into effect. Some where one or both children died before puberty even. That could not be allowed to happen, not if he wanted the most ideal time line.
The problem with that was that there wasn’t always someone present to protect them. Meddling be damned, he was not going to have the future suffer for such a small reason.
“I found extra new books in my closet!” Jazz said, as she climbed onto her chair at the table. “I’ll read to you after we eat!”
Danny was small, and possibly should have still been in some kind of booster seat at the table. Instead, he sat on a phone book, and even then was too small to do much more than see over the table. He didn’t talk much. Whether he was too small, or delayed in his milestones, Clockwork wasn’t sure.
For all his infinite knowledge, child care wasn’t something he would have put on a resume of his skills. Leaving a few books around for the children was easy enough, but care was something rather different.
Danny ate silently, his feet kicking to show his good mood. Neither child seemed worried about the fact that their parents were locked away in the basement, oblivious to how much time was really passing.
As the keeper of time he could understand that, but he didn’t think it an excuse to not have proper priorities in place.
“You can pick the book, okay? One of them has planets on it.”
Danny’s smile grew, eyes nearly shining with excitement.
“We’ll start with that one.” Jazz promised.
Clockwork hovered, deciding he could leave them for the time being. It was a shame that little Jasmine had to be so responsible but the accident had been avoided. Today was a success for the timeline.
At least they didn’t have to worry about the food from the fridge attacking them just yet. That was a set period of time that Clockwork was not actively looking forward to. The Fenton Parents were quite the extraordinary inventors, but they were rather lacking as parents. It was a shame that even in the best timeline possible so far, the pair had never really realized it.
~
While some might have called it interference, Clockwork didn’t see it that way. Since he didn’t need to ask permission of anyone to do his job, he used his judgment, as always.
At best he could visit the Fenton children every couple of weeks to check in or prevent something terrible from happening. At worst, he was there often. The record so far was needing to show up eight days in a row to either prevent a stressful near future, or to just plain take care of the children in some other way.
The tasks he could do invisibly and unobtrusively were the easiest to handle. The ones were he couldn’t avoid being seen where… questionable.
The one night he slid into Danny’s room, even the ticking of his own clock stuttered at the sight of the small boy crying into his pillow after a nightmare. He was going to have a few stern words for Nocturn.
He lifted the child up into his arms, cradling him against his shoulder and maintaining his adult form for this venture. The last thing he needed was to shift into his child form while holding a child.
For Danny’s part, he didn’t bat an eye, just continued to cry softly. He was still small enough that he didn’t care about the stranger in his bedroom. He only cared about the comfort he was getting and the rocking back and forth motion.
This interaction would cost him nothing. Tonight, Danny would be soothed and as he grew older, he would forget this moment ever happened. It would fade into dream-like memories.
“Those scary things can’t hurt you, little King to be.” Clockwork muttered, wiping at the tears falling down Danny’s face.
Blue eyes looked up at him owlishly, lips still wobbling from his fright.
“You just need a distraction.” Clockwork whispered, not wanting to wake anyone in the house. It likely would have only been Jazz though. The Fenton parents were either in the basement or out attempting to hunt what wasn’t yet a problem in Amity Park. He hadn’t bothered to look, he only knew enough to know he wouldn’t be seen or interrupted.
“Nn..” Danny reached up to tug on the hem of his hood.
“Yes.” Clockwork said, ectoplasm filling his palm. The glowing ball snatched Danny’s attention away in an instant, the child reaching for it only to be pulled away. “Not yet. Touching it isn’t safe for you yet.”
Danny stretched again, sniffing back tears as he attempted to reach for it a second time. Instead, the ectoplasm split apart into a dozen little pieces. Each floated up towards the ceiling, rearranging themselves into rough star shapes.
“St-!” Danny pointed up at them, a smile slowly spreading across his little face.
“How about you keep these for the night?” Clockwork asked, “They’ll keep the bad dreams away.”
The toddler was enthralled, head tilted back.
Clockwork laid Danny back down in bed, tucking him in and kneeling at the edge of his bed. “These will watch over you, okay?”
“Nhnn.” Danny’s smile remained, he only spared Clockwork another peaceful look before he looked back up at the ectoplasm stars. Normally, the exposure probably would have been unhealthy but the children were exposed enough. This little bit wouldn’t do any harm. He’d checked.
For several long minutes Clockwork watched him, the child’s eyes blinking slowly. Sleep was tugging at him, but his desire to look at the stars was strong.
“There are scary things out there, little King to be.” Clockwork said softly. “But there are plenty of good things out there too if you look.”
Danny pointed up at the ectoplasm again, the green light spread across the room.
“Goodnight, Danny.” Clockwork said, knowing it would only be minutes before the child’s eyes closed for a much more peaceful bout of sleeping.
~
Not for the first time, Clockwork found himself surprised by the very future he had already predicted. Knowing the future and living through it in the present were incomparable. Emotions were vast, every ghost knew that in particular. Emotions overflowed for them, and while Clockwork knew he would care about the children, feeling that affection first hand was overwhelming.
The disdain he felt for the ghost hunting Fentons grew as their lack of positive parenting became evident. It wasn’t just their ghost hunting focus that was getting on his nerves, though it hadn’t happened yet, but their poor interactions with their own children.
It shouldn’t have been up to Jazz to take care of her little brother. She went as far as to drop him off at daycare by herself before walking to school alone. Once or twice Clockwork would appear, invisibly hovering beside her to make sure she got to both places safely. Once he’d pulled her and her brother out of the way from being clipped by a car, and twice since then he stopped time momentarily to hold the red lights and let Jazz cross the street on her little legs.
It was frankly outrageous that no one seemed to notice the dangers these kids were constantly in, or the neglect they suffered. All the same, even he could only meddle so much, and he was far more than he realized he’d need to.
As much as he tried to stay out of sight, some occasions were impossible. When he needed to apply baid-aids to both of Danny’s knees when he fell on the concrete steps outside of the house, or when he appeared behind Jazz as a spectral terror to scare away a young man who was following the little girl to the corner store with awful intentions in mind.
The last one had almost been a disaster when Jazz turned around and looked up at him, then at the young man running away as fear gripped his heart.
“Thank you.” Jazz said, though she didn’t quite understand what she was thanking him for. She turned around, marching right back to the corner store with dollar bills in her change purse.
“You’re welcome, Jazz.” He muttered before fading away from sight. Even while being among his predictions of possible outcomes, it was a strange reaction from the little girl who’s parents ranted about ghosts. The blanket acceptance for receiving help.
He didn’t know where her kindness came from, but it was imperative that she passed it on to her brother. She was small, but she was smart. She was reading at a second grade level already, and wrote on the wall calendar what days the bills were due. She was responsible beyond her years, not out of want but necessity.
If Clockwork helped distract Danny for a while so she was able to read or make sandwiches for them, that was their collective business, just the three of them.
“Mr. Ghost.” Jazz blinked up at him one afternoon. She was fidgeting and ended up dropping her gaze to her feet. “Can you help me lift the bottle?”
“The…bottle?” He stared at her. Danny ran towards them, running through Clockwork and falling onto his hands and knees with a laugh. The small boy kept trying to grab Clockwork's ghost tail and was endlessly thrilled by not being able to touch it.
“Yeah, for the dirty clothes. I read the directions but i can’t lift the bottle. It’s heavy.” Jazz said, holding out a hand for Danny to help regain his balance.
“Yes. I can help you.” Clockwork said. It was easy to be proud of these children, and quietly infuriating that it was necessary.
It wasn’t just that Jazz had learned to be so self sufficient, it was that Danny knew to stay by his sister. While Jazz tossed their clothes into the washing machine, and Clockwork helped Jazz measure out the detergent, Danny sat on the floor nearby playing with a spaceship that Jazz had made for him out of paper plates, duct tape, and plastic straws.
These kids were growing up with only occasional visits from their parents while living in the same house.
“Thank you.” Jazz said when they had finished.
“You’re quite welcome, Jazz.”
It was almost sad how the Fentons had no idea there was a ghost in their home. Until they did, or until they suspected something was strange.
Danny was little, and didn’t know who he was supposed to share things with, or what he was supposed to keep secret. When he started to talk about his flying friend, his see-through friend, the Fentons over reacted.
Clockwork might have had to stay out of the house for a few weeks, but he still watched carefully as Jack and Maddie searched the house, Danny’s room in particular. Ghost hunting was their obsession and they took a toddler at his word.
When he finally started crying over his parents too loud, nearly volatile search, Jazz lost her temper.
“He just has an imaginary friend! It’s not real! Not everything is a ghost! Ghosts aren’t real!”
“Now, Jazz.” Maddie tried to soothe her. “If he says he saw-”
“He’s a baby! All you talk about is ghosts. Of course his imaginary friend would look like a ghost, but you aren’t finding anything, are you?! Ghosts aren’t real!” She took Danny’s hand and stomped off to her own room where they could play in peace, away from the whirling alarms of ghost gadgets.
It was the stance the small girl would take for years. Ghosts did not exist, while she knew very well that they did. She chose to protect Clockwork over letting her parents know that there had been a ghost in the house.
It was however, a reminder to Clockwork that he was becoming a little too complacent. He was being seen a little too often. Danny couldn’t know about him until the time was right, but Jazz was more than capable of keeping quiet.
He continued to tuck Danny in after a nightmare and a night of glowing ectoplasm stars on the ceiling. He also continued to help Jazz when something was just a little out of her means, but otherwise did better to stay hidden.
Even invisible, Jazz often knew when he was around. It had Clockwork smiling at the future where she would be in full control of her liminality. The kids were growing to be quite capable.
~
In theory, Clockwork had been looking forward to the day where Danny became a halfa. It was the start of so much, the next checkpoint of the most favorable future. It was a sure thing now, but Clockwork’s own emotions were wavering the day in question. Watching Danny head down into the lab with his two friends trailing behind him had him feeling sick. Yes, Danny would become a halfa, and someday he would become king, but now, this day, Danny was going to die.
Had there been another way, Clockwork would have considered it. Instead, all he could do was be present, watching invisibly as the child he’d helped raise was killed and born anew in the same breath. It was the most terrible thing he’d seen in recent memory.
It was difficult not to immediately rush to his side. To offer to teach him how to use the new abilities he’d just gain. He saw the fear on Danny’s face, and saw the cold air puff between his lips. Danny didn’t yet know what his ghost sense was. He didn’t know Clockwork was in the very same room with him. This was the start, and like always, Clockwork would be watching. He would do what he was able to keep the boy safe, and winced at the months it would take before Jazz caught on to what was happening.
Her brother becoming a halfa was not in the realm of possibilities that she was expecting but she would be his support, well versed by that point that their were both good and bad ghosts.
Someday, Clockwork might tell Danny how long he’d been in his life. Someday, Danny might forgive him for his rough half ghost beginning and letting things fall where they were meant to. He didn’t revel in Danny’s struggles, but those struggles were what would make him a fitting king.
Soon he’d get to introduce himself to Danny, and his first task for the boy would be a harrowing one, but he knew what Danny could do when he tried. Until then, Clockwork would watch the parade from above, his pride in the Fenton children immeasurable.