Chapter Text
Danny’s body felt like it was being crushed, and the man was hardly conscious enough to understand why. The pain that seared through his sides hurt worse as he woke up, the numbness of sleep fading as his panic set in.
He gasped for breath, but the stabbing agony in his ribs made him cry out. Danny couldn’t remember the last time he felt this bad, and that was saying something when he had been ripped apart by the ghost portal twice. His lungs burned with each breath, and his head pounded like he had broken through a brick wall with it. Danny tried to recall the events leading up to the moment he woke up, the events he believed caused his unconsciousness, but the only thing he could really remember was screaming and Vlad Masters face.
Vlad’s pale blue face inches away as he yells at Danny, the words getting eaten by the loud noise that surrounded them. He couldn’t remember what he was yelling, or why. Danny couldn’t forget how warm Vlad felt against him, but he was sure that was just because of their opposing cores.
Still, that small memory wasn’t enough for him. Danny needed to know what happened, and where he was. He had a good idea where he was, but that only caused more confusion that his aching head didn’t need.
Despite his body's protests Danny managed to open his eyes, and sit up. His ribs protested but he needed to move and get his bearings. He wasted no time getting onto his feet and immediately regretted it as the room around him spun in a way that let Danny know that if he didn’t move slowly from then on he’d never be able to eat again without throwing up.
Dizziness hit Danny like a train, making him grab a wall in order to support himself. The green brick began to crumble under his hand, but as soon as he took his hand away it stopped.
The room around him was familiar in the same way the rotted remains of a castle was familiar to its previous inhabitants. Danny knew the layout around him but the walls were broken with large pieces missing, and the large pendulum that had once swung by the very window Danny had been laying under was stopped. He had never seen Clockworks tower in such disregard, and that was all Danny needed for his overactive imagination to turn full throttle.
“What happened here?” He asked, half expecting an answer from the tower's master. When no answer came Danny knew he was alone. Clockwork had pulled Danny to his tower a number of times, but this was different. The time ghost was always there to explain what was going on, and what needed to be done. This time Danny woke up alone and injured, without any way of knowing how long he had been under or why.
As he tried to push himself forward, to walk out of the ruins of the small room Danny realized how injured he actually was. He nearly fell as he stepped down, and if he had been able to ignore a twisted ankle while standing up because of his ribs, how bad was everything else?
The man cast his gaze down to his own body, horrified to see the familiar white and red shirt stained with large crusted brown splotches of what he could only imagine was his own blood.
His pants were ruined by tears and burns that revealed the damaged skin underneath. There was a long line of stitches on his right leg that he had no recollection of getting, nor did he recall getting the bandages that wrapped around his head. There was no doubt in his mind that he had a concussion, and he was even sure he had a few sets of broken ribs.
He had burns on his arms, but they looked old. They were mostly healed with little to no scarring thanks to his ghostly healing factor, which only made him ask one of the many questions that was on his mind.
“How long have I been out?”
There was still no answer, but this time the halfa was expecting it. If Clockwork wasn’t there when he’d wake up then there was no reason he’d be there now. Something was keeping his host away, and he needed to know what it was.
With a tentative step Danny moved forward out of the room and into the main landing of the tower. He was relieved to see he didn’t have to climb down the monstrous staircase that extended upwards past Danny’s field of vision, but he cursed the few stairs he was going to have to climb down.
“At least there’s a railing.” He mumbled to himself.
As he descended down to the main floor of the tower he began to notice more and more damages done to the building. The mass amount of clocks that the owner had been given from Danny over the past few years were all broken, the glass shattered in some and others were gone along with the piece of the wall that held them in place previously.
Danny was just glad to see the Kit-cat clock that he had gotten Clockwork from his grandparents yard sale was still safe and sound, aside from a bit of scratches on its side. He still remembered the day he gave it to Clockwork, expecting the serious ghost to simply thank him as he always did when Danny gave him a joke clock. Unlike with the others the time ghost was visibly excited about that clock, saying he was always fond of cats when he was alive.
Although that was the only time that Clockwork had ever mentioned his life before death, it was still a defining moment in their friendship. While there was still a lot of work to be done in their friendship Danny felt comfortable knowing that he’d still have friends after his own death when his human body would give in to the ghost side and he’d be stuck in the ghost zone like so many others.
The other person Danny knew he would have was Vlad.
While their friendship started in a rough place, possibly the roughest place a friendship could start out in, it had blossomed into something the halfa cherished just as much as he did with Tucker or Sam. He and Vlad had made a truce years prior after they had to work together to stop an elemental ghost that had kicked both their asses and destroyed half of Amityville.
Danny had made a speech about not giving up on protecting his family, Vlad had made a speech about no longer letting himself be alone, and after they had rocked that battle the two of them had become inseparable. Danny had been there for Vlad to make sure the man wasn’t by himself and Vlad stopped trying to get Danny’s mom to fall in love with him.
Vlad had done so much for Danny in those few years after their truce, like teach the younger halfa math and how to cook. Danny burnt his toast once in front of Vlad and the man had taken a whole day off from his mayoral duties and fiendish plots to teach Danny how to make enough dishes that he’d never starve.
“This may sound cheesy coming from a ghost, little badger, but ingredients have no soul. It’s us, the one in charge of combining the ingredients, that must bring the spirit of the food. Once you do that it will taste wonderful, and then, well, then you could have anyone you’d want. After all, the way to a person's heart is through their stomach. Just ask your father.”
The memory made Danny’s chest ache. It was that day that Danny began to fall for the older man, the much older man. Danny never said anything, and luckily enough neither did Vlad, but even then Danny’s heart raced at the memory of Vlad laughing when Danny crushed a tomato he was trying to cut.
Where was Vlad, Danny wondered. The older ghost wouldn’t have let Danny out of his sight if he knew he was injured. Danny once got the flu and Vlad had nearly called in an army of doctors to make sure he was alright, if he knew Danny felt like he was going to crumble along with the walls of Clockworks tower with each step down the staircase Vlad would throw a fit worse than when the Packers lost the Superbowl.
Vlad wasn’t next to him when he woke up so he had to have been in a different room in the tower, but even when Danny called out to him there was no answer. The sense of dread Danny felt when he first woke up returned, crawling up his spine until he shivered. Vlad was fine. He was probably just waiting for Danny in the main room with Clockwork trying to figure out how to defeat the newest threat they were facing. He’d probably hug Danny tight against his chest when he saw him and only let go when he’d remember that the younger man was injured. Danny would get to feel the warmth of his one sided crush’s body and think to himself how worth the pain was to feel something that made him so happy.
Danny hurried down the stairs, ignoring the pain in his ankle or the stretching of the stitches. He wanted to see if Vlad was okay and there was only one way to do that, he needed to see him himself.
But when Danny got down to the main floor of the tower there was no Vlad. There was no Clockwork either. The main room was empty aside from the broken clocks that littered the floor and a single untouched wooden door with a note taped to it, and a medium sized wooden box sat in front.
The closer he got to the door the sicker he felt. Danny knew something was wrong, he knew something terrible happened and that reading that note was going to make it all come crashing down on him. He knew that Clockwork was giving him a job to do in order to fix whatever happened, but as he got closer and reached his hand out to grab the note the desire to ignore the door and note grew greater and greater.
His fingers curled around the thick paper, and with a shaking hand he brought it close enough to read.
Dear Daniel;
I realize that you have many questions, and that I have fewer answers to give you. I wished that I could be there in person to explain it all to you but while bringing you to safety I was injured in a way I am struggling to recover from. My body is healing slowly, and I cannot see you until I am well enough again to move from my chamber. That being said, I offer you an apology that I know is not enough.
Those bumbling fools in white had built themselves a time machine and were determined to go back in time to when your parents had built the first proto type and destroy both that and the research that created it. Instead of going back in time, however, they destroyed the segment of time between the moment they had set their time machine to and the moment they turned it on. I could only save you from the destruction, and I apologize for that. There was nothing more I could do, Danny, and there are no words that I could write to show you how much guilt I feel for not being able to save them, for not being able to save him.
I wanted to be able to save everyone you care for, but I was helpless as time started to unravel. It was a miracle in itself that I was able to save you, and while I did so in order to save someone I view as a friend I must confess that I need your help now more than ever.
While I know you need time to process what has happened, and what is about to happen, I need you to go through the door and attend the University of Wisconsin with your parents and Vlad Masters in order to ensure that the proto portal is built.
I realize this must be a shocking development for you, as I am sure you recall how important it is to not change things in the past, but Danny I’m afraid to tell you that there is no longer a future. There is only a past and a present until enough of the future is built that I can begin to see it again. I need your help for that.
I had assistance in compiling a few items you will need for your new life, including your ID and enough money to get you by for a few years in a bank account I had set up for you. There are clothes I hope suit your personal taste, and a few items to prove that you are from the 80’s. I even had them procure a motorcycle for you, as I recall you mentioning how much you love riding yours.
Once I have healed enough I will come visit you to go over what needs to be done, but I have grown weak again just by writing this letter. Once you pass through that door you will have one week until school starts, and I hope that is enough. It is all I was able to give you.
Danny, I truly am sorry. If there was a way that I could fix this all for you I would, even if it meant my own destruction. I know how much your family and Vlad meant to you and I wish there was a way I could do something, but there isn’t. I can only offer you a new life and pray that you will find happiness in this time as well.
Good luck, Daniel, and I shall see you soon.
Signed; Your friend, CW
Danny wasn’t sure when he had started to cry, but by the end of the letter there were tears falling onto the page. His family was gone. Vlad was gone. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, everyone, they were all gone. He was the only one left aside from Clockwork who was out of commission and there was nothing he could do but ensure that it didn’t happen again.
Clockwork expected him to attend a school he didn’t know, with the younger version of his parents and try to start again? Was there any starting again when he couldn’t even remember the end of his life? If Clockwork couldn’t do anything, there was no way Danny could and the thought was enough to make Danny’s breath hitch in a choked back sob.
He crumpled the note in his hands, and threw it as hard as he could at the door only for it to bounce back and fall at his feet. What could he do? Even as he asked the question to himself he knew. He was going to go through that door into what he assumed was his new dorm room and cry, and after that he was going to find his parents and Vlad in their college days and do exactly what Clockwork asked.
He had a week before school started, so maybe he wouldn’t go out and find them right away. He could allow himself to mourn for as long as he needed before he was forced to see the younger faces of his family and Vlad, as long as he didn’t need longer than a week.
Who was he kidding, Danny Fenton never had the time he needed to do anything.
Danny opened the door and was immediately hit with the smell of smelly socks and sweat. This was definitely a boys dorm.