Work Text:
The only benefit of working eight hour shifts is that no matter who you happen to be hired by, they’re forced to give you a break. And for Pizza Cookie, that break happens to be right now, 3:00 PM on the dot.
The shop doesn’t have a proper break room, so instead she slides past the register, backpack in hand. The dining room’s empty at the moment—perhaps she could get some studying done?
Her phone rings.
So much for studying.
The caller ID reads Croissant Cookie, which throws her in for a loop. Sure, she and Croissant text on occasion, but she’s never called her before.
Whatever. She’ll answer anyways.
“If you want something, call the store phone. I’m on break.”
“What?” Croissant asks, clearly caught off-guard. “No, I know, I wanted to talk to you, Pizza.”
“Oh really?” Pizza says, deadpan. “Never would’ve guessed.”
There’s a snort on the other end of the line.
“Look—normally I’d text you this sort of thing, but it’s really hard to explain, and I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“I work customer service. I’ve seen shit.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but…”
Croissant’s voice falls flat. Pizza kicks her feet up on the counter as Croissant struggles for the right words to say.
“You know how I work for the TBD? The Time Balance Department?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, so like, we found uh… We found an anomaly.”
“Define anomaly.”
Croissant sighs. “You’re not gonna believe me.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Another pause.
“So… I may or may not have discovered myself in an alternate timeline.”
“Okay.”
“…And said self has like, ascended into godhood or something, and is able to control time at her? Their? Its? I, whoever I am, am able to control time at my beck and call.”
“Sounds pretty dope.”
“How do you just—“ Croissant starts, muttering under her breath. She decides to not question Pizza’s ambivalence any further. “Basically, this alternate universe me really wants to go to the pizza shop.”
“Yeah, sure,” Pizza says, pulling back her phone to check the time. “As long as this cookie isn’t plannin’ on spitting gum under the tables, I have no problems with ‘em.”
Pizza Cookie would soon find out, however, that she had quite a few problems with Timekeeper Cookie. Problems much bigger than wads of gum under tables, in fact.
The first meeting between the two goes well enough. Sure, they float, but there’s a guy who’s name is Vampire who orders from here all the time and does the exact same thing.
“Did you know that you have this very job in 90% of the alternate timelines I’ve scoured?” they ask, sitting on their scissors. The scissors have a name, but Pizza’s already forgotten it.
“Really,” Pizza says, keeping her voice flat so she doesn’t mistake her response for interest.
“Indeed!” the timelord (God, what was this—Doctor Who?) chirps, smiling. “Most people have tons of different occupations across various timelines, but you are practically identical in every one!”
“Neat.”
Pizza puts her helmet on, placing multiple pizzas on the backseat of her bike.
“The only other job I’ve seen you take up is as a sandwich maker at Sandwich Cookie’s shop,” Timekeeper says, disregarding the fact that Pizza’s foot is inches away from the gas.
“Cool. I got deliveries to make. See ya.”
Pizza sighs. Good lord. No wonder Croissant warned her about them—they sure are a handful.
“Hey! I wasn’t done talking to you yet!”
Pizza’s eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets.
Right next to her, in the left hand lane, Timekeeper rides their time scissors.
“Is that even legal?!”
“No idea!” they say, without so much as a care in the world. “I’m already a criminal in the multiverse, so it doesn’t really matter either way.”
Pizza affixes her eyes to the road. She is not going to get in an accident because of this cookie.
“Look, if you’re not gonna get off the road, at least stop following me around!”
“Not until we finish this conversation!”
Do those scissors run on gas? Or do they run on something that’s yet to be discovered?
Sighing, Pizza accepts her fate. As long as they don’t act weird around the customers.
Being followed soon becomes commonplace. Timekeeper doesn’t work at the shop—they don’t need the money, apparently—but sometimes they’ll carry a few pizzas on their lap, or tell Pizza about how the shops are going to change in twenty years.
Pizza’s okay with that. The situation isn’t ideal, but it’s workable.
What Pizza does not consider workable, however, is them showing up at her apartment, unannounced.
“Hey, Pepperoni!” they say, kicking their legs to and fro as they float up to their window.
“How the hell did you find my address?”
“I’ve known it for the past hundred years.”
“You know that’s creepy to people who don’t usually live that long, right?”
“If you want creepy, you should see what I look like under the eyepatch.”
“No thanks,” Pizza says, pulling the blinds down.
For a moment, there’s peace. But only for a minute.
“Come on! I just wanna talk to you!”
The words come out garbled from the wormhole they open in the middle of Pizza Cookie’s bedroom.
“What the fuck?” Pizza asks, trembling. She keeps her sights set on Timekeeper, unable to stop her shaking.
“Aren’t you going to ask how I got in here?”
“I’ve learned to stop asking questions when it comes to you.”
Pizza whips around to get back to her studies.
Propped against the wall, her phone displays a YouTube video. It’s something about chemistry, from what Timekeeper can gather. Pizza squints at the video, then pauses it, then exchanges glances between it and the paper she’s making her calculations on.
“But then—how do the—ugh!”
Frustrated, Pizza presses too hard on the table, the lead of her mechanical pencil snapping. Realizing that her anger won’t get her anywhere, Pizza slumps against the desk, defeated.
“Why can’t the prof just teach this in class?!”
Timekeeper, perched on their Sonic Embroider (Pizza finally got around to asking them for the name of it again), leans in to inspect Pizza’s work.
“Want me to teach you?”
“You? Teach me? I’m not looking to become a TBD employee.”
“Oh, I’m well aware,” Timekeeper says, hopping off the Sonic Embroider and using their feet for once. “I just so happen to know this concept, and I’d rather not hear you whine much longer.”
“Geez,” Pizza huffs, “thanks.”
“You’re most welcome! See, you need to start by looking at the problem at a different angle…”
Pizza isn’t quite sure how, but they made the concept make sense. It took a while (and a lot of questions), but soon enough, she’s breezing through the work.
“I know I said it earlier, but—“
Pizza looks around.
Timekeeper is nowhere to be seen.
And that’s how things end with Timekeeper.
She ends up asking all around, but no one’s seen them, not even Croissant. Her private tutoring session is the last time Timekeeper Cookie was seen by anyone.
“I really thought they were going to stay,” Croissant says, biting into her BLT.
“Me too,” Sandwich says, nodding. “They stopped by my shop like, all the time. Ordered BLTs the same way you do now, Croissant.”
“I guess some things never change…” Hero mutters, looking out the window.
Pizza follows his footsteps, looking out the window as well.
They’re not there.
Why was Pizza hoping they would be?
Months pass. The semester ends. Pizza managed to pass Organic Chemistry without having any more panic attacks.
The manager’s son broke his nose or something, so she ends up at home earlier than expected. Unsure of what to do with herself, and with no classes until later this month, she kicks back on the couch, scrolling through Netflix.
“Eureka!”
Pizza jolts upright, startled by the sudden whirr of the Sonic Embroider in her living room.
“Timekeeper Cookie?!” she asks, clutching onto her blanket, “What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, did you think I was gone forever?”
“Yes?”
“Whoopsie. Maybe I should’ve left a note?”
Pizza doesn’t think that would have helped much, but, for her, the past is in the past.
“What were you doing all that time?” she dares to ask, still frozen on the couch.
“Looking at other Pizzas.”
“Actual pizzas? Or other me’s?”
“Other you’s. Since you’re all so similar, I just had to know what the differences between all of you are, and I finally got it.”
“Okay… so what’s the difference?”
Timekeeper floats over, forcibly ripping Pizza’s blanket off of her. Even though she’s fully dressed, Pizza scrambles as though she’s been caught red-handed. With the blanket off, Timekeeper places an index finger over… her chest?
“Your heart.”
“What?”
“I went to the same moment where I left you—in the middle of your Organic Chemistry homework, in case you've forgotten—in hundreds of different timelines,” Timekeeper says, perching atop the couch’s backrest. “In every single one but this one, you denied my help.”
“Okay…. And that means?”
Timekeeper smiles.
“See, the thing about you, is that you were equally as annoyed by my presence in every other universe. But in this one, you accepted my help. You swallowed your pride and allowed yourself to be vulnerable. And I like that.”
Pizza doesn’t know what to say. She didn’t try to intentionally impress Timekeeper back then, she was just pushed against the wall! Anyone would’ve accepted the help… wouldn’t they?
“Because of your kindness, I’ve decided that I will be remaining in this timeline for awhile.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Oh, come on,” Timekeeper groans, “can’t you be a little more enthusiastic? I chose you! Hello! I’m a God! And I chose you! You’re like, set for life!”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Pizza looks back to her phone, pulling up her blanket.
“…”
“…”
“You know that means I’m gonna start living in your apartment, right?”
“What?”
Timekeeper does a somersault, hopping down from the couch.
“Don’t worry. You’ll learn to love me!”
They strut into the kitchen, acting like they own the place.
“Hey—what do you mean live here?! Don’t take my stuff—get back here!”
They jump out of a tackle with a swift maneuver of the Sonic Embroider.
This is exactly why Pizza Cookie rented alone in the first place.