Chapter Text
There are bells in Clockwork's tower, but Dan has never heard them ring.
It's not something he's ever been curious about, either. The clock tower is full of excessive machinery with no discernible purpose, and when his jailer is not busy badgering Dan for conversation he can often be found employed in its maintenance, waving his staff at rusted chains and gears to dispel those vagaries of time, ensuring the inscrutable mechanism continues to smoothly churn.
Ticking, groaning, rattling—the clock tower was never silent or idle.
Presumably some of that complexity labored in service of the clock face at the tower's height. Through that massive round window Dan could consult it for the time, if he so chose, though its passage was essentially meaningless to him in this tower where nothing ever changed except his jailer's moods. Apart from that one demonstratively gainful mechanism, however, there was plenty that seemed useless: glowing gears spun midair, attached to nothing. Chains stretched vertically from one fathomless void to another, taut and straining with sourceless weight. That the clock tower contained bells which never tolled was just one more unremarkably useless feature, meriting no more contemplation than any of the Ghost Zone's other improbable, nonsensical architecture.
Until one day, when an unfamiliar creaking preceded the sudden and sonorous gong of a bell, unnerving the future’s former scourge of the Ghost Zone.
Several months prior, Clockwork had freed Dan from the thermos without explanation—a prisoner removed from solitary confinement to wander the yard. Dan suspected that by Clockwork’s reckoning he was far from qualifying for parole, though admittedly this hospitality was a significant improvement from Dan’s last stint in Walker’s care.
Relief came secondary to resentment. He still had to see Clockwork’s face, after all.
In the months following his release, Dan darkened the tower’s shadows and periodically ravaged its mechanical innards to test the limits of Clockwork’s patience. In retrospect, a competition of endurance with the Master of Time was doomed to failure. Dan had only existed for a meager ten years (or thirty or seventy, depending how he counted), and Clockwork had millenia on him. The Timekeeper simply disappeared whenever Dan decided to destroy the tower’s delicate glowing machinery. Nor did Clockwork need to punish him—the consequences carried their own rebuke: chains snapped with tension and thrashed him like brutal whips, and mechanisms collapsed unpredictably when load-bearing beams were compromised, striking Dan as they fell or crushing him beneath their weight. He could have avoided the worst of it had he simply become intangible, but he ached to inflict violence with his own two hands—an impossible feat, were he not tangible himself.
No matter how he destroyed the tower’s mechanical innards, Dan never could breach its outer walls, and Clockwork always repaired the damage afterward. Standing wearily amid the tower’s wreckage as he awaited Clockwork’s inevitable return, Dan relished in the silence with mixed feelings: to vanquish time was a kind of triumph, yet the tower’s silence was unnerving, unnatural and rare. A deeply lonely absence of sound.
Without internal structure to differentiate it, the tower’s resemblance to the thermos at those times was inescapable.
One memorable outburst was brought to an abrupt halt by the weight of a massive gear collapsing on him, consigning him to the burning rubble below with a roaring scream. The impact stunned him, crushing him with breathless pain. When he’d recovered his senses he phased through the rubble and crawled to a corner, trembling pathetically with aftershocks.
When Clockwork returned as he always did and set the whole machine to rights again, each gleaming fixture restored to its former state and place, the only remaining evidence of Dan’s rage was his own scrapes and bruises, and the scorch marks on his own clothes. Weary and weakened, his vision faded in and out as Clockwork collected him from the floor and carried him to the bedroom set aside for him all those months ago. Dan had refused to sleep there out of stubbornness, and only now that he was too injured to object did he suffer to be laid to rest there, amid the purple drapery and obsidian walls that twinkled like stars.
Since then, Dan has begrudgingly taken the bedroom as his primary haunt. The drapery muffles the clock tower’s incessant ticking to a tolerably distant din, and the bedding is sinfully comfortable, stealing him away to dreamless sleep with an ease he hasn’t felt for decades.
Also, Clockwork never bothers him there, so napping is a reliable way to find reprieve from the infuriating sight of his jailer’s face.
Nestled there in comfortable repose, Dan is shocked upright by the bells’ sudden song. After the first gong subsides, the rest of the bells join in rising volume with surprising harmony. Dan has never known them to chime with such mild melody, or indeed at all without his having had a hand in it. He’s only ever heard their clamor in the midst of destroying the tower, dissonant clanging shrieks and gongs announcing their collapse into a bed of chains and gears.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee, Dan thinks, a snippet of forgotten prose from his distant past, and another wave of unease washes over him as he floats from the bed and ventures into the hall, pushing the drapes aside to emerge into a different kind of darkness lit with a verdant green glow.
The bells are louder out here, and Dan winces with irritation. He’s heard much worse in the tumult of his own destructive tantrums, but the bedroom’s silence has spoiled him, made his ears sensitive to such disturbances.
Why are the bells ringing? Is it like a dinner bell, clamoring for Dan to subject himself to Clockwork’s company? It might as well be, he supposes, because he can hardly sit by and be at ease while this unprecedented clamor rattles the clock tower’s foundations. Consulting Clockwork is the only way he can discover the reason for the disturbance.
Is Clockwork commentating on Dan’s recent habit of sleeping for long hours, cheekily turning the entire mechanism to the mundane purpose of an alarm clock? Dan sneers at the thought. If Clockwork takes issue with Dan lazing around, then Dan has a few choice words for the Timekeeper on the subject of his confinement. Perhaps he’ll go back to destroying the tower once a week—futile and self-defeating as it’s proven to be.
He has just arrived at the possibility that the bells’ chiming could simply be a random behavior on the part of the tower—apart from his former habit of periodically destroying its mechanisms, Dan could lay no serious claim to any detailed knowledge of how it all operates—when he arrives in the viewing room where Clockwork spends most of his time.
Down here, the bells’ clamor is distant enough that Dan hears Clockwork perfectly when he looks over his shoulder with a mysterious smile and says, “Good evening—or perhaps I should say, good morning?”
Dan narrows his eyes. “So it’s midnight,” he surmises. A relevant detail, though not a particularly elucidating one. Why this midnight, of all the nights he’s been here? “I doubt that’s the only reason the bells are ringing.”
Clockwork turns around fully to face Dan, folding his arms with his staff tucked against his chest. He tilts his head gently, raises a brow. “You mean to say you don’t know?”
Dan bristles and mirrors Clockwork’s stance, his fingers digging into his forearms. “I don’t recall getting any advance notice of the occasion. What, then? Is it a death knell? The sentence for my crimes finally handed down by the Observants? Will you be doing the honors?” he icily inquires. He is certainly well-rested enough for a fight. But can he go toe-to-toe with the Master of Time in his own domain? Dan’s muscles tense with anticipation, and he privately admits that he doesn’t like his odds.
“No.” Clockwork purses his lips, like Dan’s ignorance truly puzzles him. “I simply assumed you already knew—given how little you think of the occasion.”
It only makes Dan angrier to know he’s fallen short of Clockwork’s expectations, of all people. Has sleep laden a fog over his brain, worn away the sharp edges of his cunning? He racks his brain for what this ‘occasion’ might be. There aren’t many dates that stand out in his mind as significant.
“The anniversary of the Nasty Burger explosion?” he guesses. He liked the date well enough this many years on for being the crucible of his creation, but perhaps Clockwork thought he would dislike it, since now it also marked his shameful defeat at the hand of his younger self.
Clockwork lifts a gloved hand to his smiling mouth. “Would you like a hint?” He drifts aside and opens his arms to gesture expansively toward the viewing screens. Despite himself, Dan is curious, and he steps forward to take a closer look.
The circular screens serve, at the moment, as windows into the lives of the denizens of the Ghost Zone. As beings born of intense emotion harboring irrational grudges from their miserably shortened lives, ghosts are generally a volatile bunch. Dan has caught Clockwork spying before, and even if he hadn’t known it from experience, the ghosts he monitors can often be found scheming, making mischief and mayhem, and fighting one another like cats and dogs for dominance in the ghostly pecking order. They are not, generally, beings capable of prolonged repose.
(Hence Dan’s resentment at being forced to while away his hours under Clockwork’s supervision doing nothing.)
And yet every ghost on every screen is doing little enough to rival even Dan’s impressive amount of nothing. Even a few natural enemies, whom he would sooner expect to go for the throat than tolerate one another’s company, are engaged in civil conversation. One screen shows Aragon and Dora sitting peacefully in the grand dining hall of their castle, the table laden with a feast fit for a king. Another screen shows Technus drinking tea in Skulker’s sitting room, of all things, when Dan was sure they hadn’t gotten together for a few more years yet. He strokes his beard in contemplation of that strangeness. The stillness.
When has the Ghost Zone ever been this... calm?
“Ring any bells?” Clockwork inquires, smiling with unconcealed amusement.
Dan sends Clockwork a withering glare. “You’re not funny.”
Clockwork moves in his periphery, and Dan tenses, anticipating an attack—but the Timekeeper only gestures again with his staff, reorienting the viewing screens to a new perspective: the human world, awash with snow and lights.
Above them, the tower’s bells stumble upon a series of notes that even Dan is capable of recognizing, despite going ten blessed years without hearing a single miserable carol.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
Dan’s black heart seizes with an intolerable mixture of conflicting negative emotion. On the one hand: the twenty years Vlad Masters spent alone after the accident, heir to a fortune and eligible bachelor on the receiving end of many expensive but thoughtless gifts, given out of obligation or for some ulterior motive on the part of the giver. There were parties, occasionally. All politics—celebrities and legislators vying for donations or endorsements. And through it all, he never had the company of the woman he desired, nor did he receive any of the gifts he truly wanted. On the other hand: fourteen years of Danny Fenton’s family life, characterized by the most inane controversies over the supernatural—for all that the Fentons devoted their life to the study of ghosts, despite never having seen one until their son became one. At a time when every other child’s family seemed content to bask in the season of giving, Fenton family bonding died in hypocrisy on the hill of skepticism.
“It’s... Christmas,” Dan says slowly, stunned by his own disgust and displeasure into answering the game Clockwork has made of his confusion.
“You may not remember,” Clockwork concedes at last, “but before you brought the Ghost Zone to heel, the Christmas truce was a longstanding tradition which prohibited ghostly hostilities.”
Dan vaguely recalls breaking up the occasional Christmas celebration in the Ghost Zone, and severely punishing any seasonal greetings spouted in his presence. Casting his mind back further, he recalls that Vlad had enough dealings with the Ghost Zone throughout the years to become passingly familiar with the tradition—enough to plan around it, though he never participated in the festivities. Though he was half-ghost himself, Vlad never sought community in the Ghost Zone. He saw its residents as useful agents to carry out his will, each with powers suited to different purposes—but he saw none of them as potential companions, and he saw no place for himself in their world beyond how he might entice or threaten them into servitude.
Suddenly hoarse, Dan only answers, “I remember.”
“Hmm.” Clockwork waves his staff, and the viewing screens change again. Johnny 13 and Kitty come into view, nursing warm mugs and cuddling on a couch—even the incessant drama of their break-up/make-up routine has been put, improbably, on hold.
“If you know I hate it so much,” Dan grits out, “then why are you showing me this?”
“I don’t mean to antagonize you,” Clockwork says lightly. “This is merely part of my job.”
Dan scoffs with disgust, averting his eyes from the schmaltzy display. “Spying, you mean.”
“Time bears witness to all things, regardless of whether I’m personally watching.” This distinction clarifies little, but Clockwork has already moved on: “Since I respect the spirit of the agreement, I like to help where I can.”
“... With the bells,” Dan realizes, his wits finally returning to him from whatever dark corner they’d crawled off to die in. “They mark the start of the truce.” Now that he considers it, ghosts have little other reason to keep track of the time, beyond anniversaries of personal significance.
“My apologies. I didn’t expect them to startle you.”
Dan bristles. “They didn’t,” he snaps.
“I considered informing you ahead of time,” Clockwork admits, “but I was unsure you would appreciate the reminder. You’ve also been holed up in your room for several weeks, so there never seemed an opportune moment to discuss it.”
Dan grinds his teeth. He would indeed have appreciated a little forewarning, but there’s no denying he’s been avoiding Clockwork. For whatever reason, the other ghost has been scrupulous about respecting the boundary of the bedroom’s threshold. He has never crossed it—with the sole exception of the time he carried Dan across it and put him to bed.
Unclenching his jaw, Dan testily ventures, “Then do you have anything else you’d like to get off your chest, while you have me?”
Clockwork taps his chin thoughtfully, as if carefully weighing his words against Dan’s impatience. Dan has control over very little, but he relishes this, at least: his ability to withhold his presence, his time, and his attention from a ghost who in all other respects has all the time in the world. Dan can’t help wondering how Clockwork will approach the challenge of speaking as succinctly as possible, given the Timekeeper’s penchant for meandering speech and speaking in riddles.
“If you’d like me to bring you any books to read,” Clockwork says, which is the last thing Dan expected him to say, “then you would do well to let me know before this afternoon.”
Dan stares, baffled by this statement’s specificity coming so far out of left field. Despite his commitment to remaining incurious in matters regarding his captor, this begs too many questions not to ask at least one.
“... And why, exactly, is that?”
Given leave to speak further, Clockwork explains, “There is a ghost in my acquaintance who curates a library. Tonight, he will break the truce and be apprehended by Walker to serve out his sentence.” He smiles and lifts a hand, as if to say, you see? “It would prove difficult to borrow a book from him from the inside of a cell.”
Dan’s brows draw together, confounded by the mundanity of the problem Clockwork is describing. “You’re the Master of Time. Is there some reason you can’t just take a book while he’s gone?” Not that he has any literature in mind, or even wants Clockwork to bother bringing him anything. But he has to ask.
Clockwork’s smile twitches wider. “That sounds like an excellent way to ensure he never loans me a book again.”
Dan throws his hands up. “Then steal whatever books you want!”
Clockwork chuckles, poorly concealing his amusement with a hand. “You’ve spent a long time imposing your will on others,” Clockwork points out. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that oftentimes, it is easier to just ask nicely.”
Dan rolls his eyes in disgust. For ghosts of their caliber, asking nicely is pointless. Why settle for companionship, when you could have compliance?
Clockwork continues, “Regardless of our differing views on this point, I stand firm on mine. So please let me know before this afternoon if you’d like me to borrow a book on your behalf.”
Dan hadn’t thought much of the offer when Clockwork made it, preoccupied as he was with the reasoning behind it. But he considers it now. Clockwork has made few demands of him—the idle suggestion here, the occasional conversation there—and offered even less. The only thing Dan could possibly want is his freedom, and that’s obviously not up for discussion. But Clockwork has correctly identified Dan’s boredom, and is offering to alleviate it—and not just by badgering Dan with conversation. A book is arguably a source of conversation that does not involve Clockwork—one between Dan and the author instead of his captor.
It is a challenge not to deny his desire out of sheer stubbornness, but as long as Clockwork doesn’t clock that he’s actually quite eager for something to read, Dan won’t have to lose face by asking.
Dan shrugs expressively and waves a flippant hand. “An old school murder mystery, I guess.” He is still nursing the indignity of failing to recognize the wintry tune of the tower’s chiming bells, until Clockwork spelled it out for him with scenes from a commensurately wintry wonderland to drive the point home. Dan can hardly engage in verbal repartee with his captor if his mind is so woefully weakened from lack of stimulation.
Clockwork hums in acknowledgment. “How do you feel about Agatha Christie?”
When memories from his younger self elicit only vague recognition—unsurprising, given he never finished high school—he consults Vlad's instead. These memories are fractured, unlike Fenton's, each a single-hued shard from a formerly-complete, resplendently colorful stained glass tableau. He lifts one such vignette to the light to examine it: a pleasant autumn evening, rain gently rattling the manor's windows, a book in hand as he sits before the fireplace, and for a short while, he is transported from his lonely life into a realm of intrigue.
“She’s fine,” Dan grunts, turning toward the stairs to begin the trek back to his room. He could fly there—but the bells still softly sing, their sonorous echoes bouncing from wall to wall in such a way that Dan suspects it would have a destabilizing effect on flight. Having a solid surface beneath his feet makes him feel less liable to be blown away like a leaf in a gust of sound.
“I’ll leave it outside your door,” Clockwork says, returning his attention to the viewing screens.
Dan doesn’t thank him. But later when he rouses from his nap, Dan finds a copy of Murder on the Orient Express floating placidly outside the door to his bedroom.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
— For Whom the Bell Tolls, from "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" by John Donne (1624)