Chapter Text
When Danny arrived at Clockwork’s tower – Long Now, Clockwork had informed him, was his lair’s actual name – he’d expected his visit to go much as the last two had. He’d show up, Clockwork would snark at him about future knowledge and how, no, Clockwork was not going to help him fix whatever minor problem Danny had run into earlier that day with time travel, Danny would snark back about he didn’t have problems, or knowledge, for that matter. Then, Clockwork would say something about Danny being fourteen (he wasn’t, anymore, which Danny would also snark about) and the state of the education of young ghosts (nonexistent, as far as Danny could tell), and tell Danny that if he was going to hang around and harass him, he would do so productively, with some combination of minor chores or lessons.
Danny wasn’t entirely sure why he’d come the first time. He’d just seen Long Now in the distance, while checking on something else in the Ghost Zone, and he’d flown over to investigate. He’d had the vague idea of thanking Clockwork more formally for his help with the ecto-acne incident, but after starting to banter, it had slipped his mind. Then, the second time, he’d been surprised to realize that he felt… He wasn’t entirely sure how to describe it. ‘Comfortable’ was overstating it, just a little. Secure, maybe?
It was a little like the feeling Danny got when staying over with Great Uncle Charlie that one summer before he’d passed away. Except without the obligations that came with a family connection or the worry that Clockwork would, well. Die. Since he was already dead.
Or, was he dead? Some of the ghosts he’d met didn’t really seem like they’d ever been human , and Danny didn’t know if Clockwork was one of them or not.
Anyway.
Danny had expected this third visit to go like the first two, but it wasn’t. Instead of kicking things off with a sarcastically teasing joke or dig, he stared down at Danny with an entirely unreadable expression. Really, it was unfair, because Danny was pretty sure Clockwork would bring up Danny shattering all the mirrors in that one department store during his most recent fight with Ember and he had come up with some good responses.
“If you are going to continue to make yourself at home in my lair, it is time for you to be made aware of which places within it you ought not to try to visit.”
Danny raised an eyebrow. “Afraid I’ll break something delicate?”
“Yes. Yourself.”
Danny spluttered, but followed quickly enough when Clockwork swept away dramatically.
“I’m not going to break myself.”
“Daniel, may I remind you of how you came to be half ghost?”
“Too soon.”
“You make dozens of similar jokes yourself every week.”
“Yeah, and you make a dozen clock jokes, and I don’t–” Danny cut himself off. “Okay, maybe I do make clock jokes in front of you.”
“One may set their watch by them, in fact.”
“The key is timing.”
Despite Clockwork’s words, the first place he showed Danny was a room full of delicate, paper-thin glass tubes, each full of a differently colored vapor. Apparently, things like it were used to tell time in the further reaches of the Zone. Next, was a set of rooms full of equipment that would corrode or degrade in normal atmospheres, and wouldn’t like Danny’s breath at all, some pieces of which were so precisely calibrated and delicate that a single human hair could throw them off to an unforgivable extent.
But after those…
Well. He probably should have expected some of it. Clockwork was keeping Dan in here, too, after all. Even if he wasn’t a habitual prison warden, it didn't mean that he wasn’t keeping any other time-line-ending entities locked away in the basement.
It was the stuff that threw Danny off, though. Cursed grandfather clocks that would age you backwards if you annoyed them, or ones that would replace your insides with gears if you touched them. Rooms that were entirely made of gears - gears that would eat you, and that neither humans nor ghosts could phase through. Water clocks that could call the sea at high tide, flooding the rooms they were in. Portals that led all over the Ghost Zone, and usually to the most dangerous of areas. A sundial, rescued from Pompei, that would whisper of volcanoes, that would make you dream of volcanoes. Forever. Until you threw yourself into one. Paradoxes in various states of knotting or unraveling. An hourglass that would start to turn any ghost that touched it to sand, unless they could overcome the effect with sufficient willpower and sense of self.
Finally, though, they came to a stop in front of a pair of arched double doors, etched with unfamiliar symbols.
“This location,” said Clockwork, making no move to open the door and let Danny see inside, “is quite possibly the one most dangerous to you.”
“Why?” asked Danny.
“Because it cannot be locked, and because of where it leads.”
“Why can’t it be locked?” asked Danny. “And where does it lead that’s that bad?”
For a long moment, Clockwork didn’t answer. He simply stared at the door. “A long time ago,” he said, finally, “before I came into my powers, I was an aspirant to an order known most commonly as the Observants.”
“What did they observe?” asked Danny, deciding to ‘sit’ in the air, one leg bent close, the other swinging. This sounded like it'd be a long story.
“The future. The singular future.”
“But there are lots of different futures, aren’t there?”
A very thin smile graced Clockwork’s face. “Yes. So, you can understand why I and the Observants had the falling out we did. However, by the time I understood the error in their doctrine, I had already sworn several oaths to them, some of which are still binding even today. Thus began our rather contentious relationship, such as it was. This door is the result of an old bargain I made with them, and an entry to a passageway that leads from Long Now to the Observants’ lair, the Panopticon.”
“They named their lair after a prison?”
“They, much like Warden Walker, are preoccupied with rules. They have been known to try and imprison certain powerful ghosts, when doing so suits them.”
“Okay, that’s sketchy,” said Danny, “but that doesn’t make it especially dangerous, does it?”
“The Observants tried you in absentia and ordered your execution when they saw the possibility of you becoming evil in the future, prevailing on my oaths to force my participation.”
“They what?”
“I cannot imagine that they would have changed their ruling since then, but their own oaths prevent them from trying to kill you directly. However, were you to be in their own domain, they would not be so bound.”
“They’re the reason you sent Box Lunch and Skulktech after me?”
“Yes. But that is not the only reason traveling through this passage may be dangerous to you. To begin, the only way out is through.”
Danny swallowed down his other questions about why the Observants jumped right to having Clockwork kill him. “So, if I went in, I’d have to go the rest of the way, then turn around and come back through to get back?”
“Correct,” said Clockwork. “I and the Observants have also placed various obstacles within the passage, to prevent one another from freely using it.”
“Because you can’t lock the door.”
“Our bargain unfortunately prevents us from doing so.”
Danny nodded. “So, what’s in there?” He was sort of curious to know what kinds of obstacles could stop or slow down Clockwork.
“A variety of things. As I have particularly targeted the Observants, and the Observants have particularly targeted me, someone without any notable temporal powers, such as yourself, would likely be able to pass through relatively intact. That does not mean there would not be effects.”
“I’m not going to go through it,” said Danny. “You can see that, right? I mean, why would I go somewhere full of people who want to kill me?”
“I can see many things,” said Clockwork. “Not all of which show your decision-making skills in the best light.”
“The portal was a one-off.”
“And yet, you turned it on twice.”
“When I didn’t remember how much dying sucks! Come on, I’m not going to go in there, I’m just curious about what you have keeping the Observants out.”
“And what they have keeping me out.”
“Well, yeah. You’re, like, a time god. I’m not sure what they could have on you.”
Clockwork sighed, which was a fascinating process that somehow involved the pendulum in his chest. “The first obstacles we erected were mirrors. Halls of mirrors, to be precise.”
“You both used mirrors?”
“For myself, it was what I had on hand. For the Observants, I suspect the same, although I do not know. We were not on speaking terms, as you may imagine. Naturally, our halls of mirrors operate on different principles. The Observants mirrors each show a different possible future - but to leave their hall, one must pick one and step through it, which then forces that future to come to pass.”
“That– wouldn’t that make the future, um…” Danny trailed off, uncertain how to phrase his question. “Wouldn’t that make it so that there’s just one future, until it all happened?”
“Not quite,” said Clockwork. “Although the Observants would argue that there is always only one future, unless a ghost with the power to do so changes it, the effect of their mirrors is more along the lines of a geas, primed by the subject choosing their future. Only concerted outside effort would allow a change of fate - they could not by their own actions avert it - but it would be possible.”
He paused, then. “My mirrors are, in some ways, the exact opposite of theirs. Instead of a potential future, my mirrors present possible pasts. Should any mirror be touched, the traveler will experience the memories of that past. Something that causes the Observants quite a headache, considering their view of the past is even more rigid than their view of the future. Beyond the mirrors, I have also created an hourglass puzzle. Before you make a comment about point and click games, I will note that many of the component hourglasses cause effects not dissimilar to the curses on the clocks I showed you earlier today.”
Danny closed his mouth, then decided it wouldn’t hurt. “It does sound like something that would work well in a point and click puzzle.”
“I am sure. But its purpose is to slow down any Observants who attempt to cross over, not to entertain them. As for what else they have… You must remember, they have ways to counter me, and we are on poor terms.”
“I kind of guessed that from the whole ‘obstacles’ thing,” said Danny.
Clockwork actually chuckled, just a little. “Poorer than you’d think. Although it inconveniences them far more than it does me, they have placed their end of the passage in their dungeons, symbolically locking me away as well.”
“Wow. That’s petty,” said Danny. “So you don’t know what they have?”
“Not with any certainty. The last time I checked, they had added a device which extracts secrets and transmits them to whomever you would least like to have them. As they do not have secrets as such, they are largely unaffected.”
“And you’re not affected by your stuff?”
“The puzzle is very simple, if you know how it works. My mirrors reflect how I see time in the first place. The Observants’ obstacles, however… To pass through them weakens me. There is, after all, no one who could free me from the mirror-geas, and being held to a single timeline is…” He made an expression of distaste. “And I have a great many secrets that the Observants cannot be privy to. As I said, however, someone like yourself could pass both sets of obstacles. Not unchanged, but ultimately intact.”
That was the second time Clockwork had said something like that, and Danny’s eyes flicked back and forth over Clockwork’s face, trying to read his intentions. He couldn’t.
Like, he hadn’t really expected to, but…
“Is this, like, something I need to know for the future, or…?”
“As we have been discussing, there are multiple futures.”
Danny squinted at him. “That sounds a lot like when Mr. Lancer pretends he doesn’t know what’s on his own quiz.”
“He is choosing not to tell you, not pretending that he does not know. There is a distinction.”
“Uh huh,” said Danny, dubious but sensing that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of Clockwork. “Is that it, then?”
“No. You haven’t seen the gardens yet.”
“How bad could gardens be?” asked Danny, aggrieved.
“You ask that, when you have faced Undergrowth?”
.
Danny was surprised, a little, at how much he remembered from that exchange. But then, jokes aside, he was pretty good at retaining information that was immediately relevant to his physical wellbeing.
Well. After the accident, anyway.
Regardless, he did remember it, and, remembering it, stared through the bars of his cell at a set of doors identical to the ones Clockwork had shown him, all those weeks ago.
Danny wondered if he was being used as bait, or if the Observants somehow didn’t know that Danny knew. Or if they were really just that stupid.
Assuming they were stupid after– after everything was, in turn, stupid itself, but Danny couldn’t help but wonder. In between clumsy attempts at plotting an escape. Clumsy, because he really wasn’t at his best. At all.
He didn’t know anyone who would be, under these circumstances.
He glanced up at the huge tower in the center of the prison complex. The Observants really had modeled their lair after the proposed prison. It would be funny, if being watched constantly didn’t make escape so difficult.
Anything he did, then, would have to be based on speed rather than stealth. He’d have to run across, or fly across… Probably run, at this point. Flying took energy he didn’t have. So did running, though…
Phasing through the bars wasn’t going to work. He’d tried before, right after they’d dragged him in here. They’d been rendered phase-proof, even to his human form. He didn’t know how to pick locks - the skill was sort of redundant, when you could walk through walls - and he didn’t have anything to pick it with, either.
Which left… What? Waiting for the Observants to open the door for him? They might not ever do that. They were ghosts, after all, and there weren’t any regulatory bodies around, dictating the treatment of prisoners. There wasn’t really a reason to let prisoners out, except maybe for trials, and Clockwork said they’d tried Danny without him even there, before.
On the other hand, Walker had let prisoners out. He’d even fed them. Although, Danny suspected a lot of that was because things like that had been in his book of rules before he’d died.
Would they come to stop him if they saw him trying to escape? Probably, if they thought he had any hope of actually getting out. But if they did that, would they open the door, or just blast him through it?
Or, wait, maybe he could get the lock open. Locks had something like pins in them, didn’t they? And pushing them out made them line up, somehow, so could he do that with ice? He rubbed his hands together. As beaten as he was, he should still be able to make ice.
He pulled himself away from the corner he’d wedged himself in and prepared to painfully crawl over to the door.
But, as it turned out, he didn’t need to figure out how to open the door. A group of three Observants descended from above, stopping right in front of his cell. They said something, but Danny wasn’t listening. His vision had tunneled. He tensed, ready to leap forward.
One of the Observants opened the door, and Danny shot forward. He didn’t try to attack, tried to stay out of the reach of their claws. He didn’t have to fight. He just had to get to those doors.
The only way out was through. They could follow him, but, eventually, they’d come out on Clockwork’s side. And Clockwork– Clockwork wouldn’t help him with time travel, wouldn’t change the past or tell Danny the future, but, surely, he’d protect him from the Observants, if only he reached Long Now. He’d told Danny about the passageway, after all.
He evaded the Observants by a hair's breadth, tumbled, put on a desperate burst of flight, reached the doors, and yanked them open. An Observant grabbed the back of his collar and tried to pull him back, but Danny threw an elbow backwards into what would be, on a human, the Observant’s gut. The Observant’s grip loosened and Danny fell forward.
The doors shut behind him with a thud.
Danny laid there for a minute. Two. Then, reluctantly, he pulled himself up off the floor.
The only way out was through. That meant he had to actually go through. That meant moving.
He got to his feet. Once he was out of the Observants’ area of influence, he’d feel better. Probably. He was… pretty sure that he healed faster than this, usually. There had to be something environmental causing that, right?
The room was small and long. It definitely felt like a hallway that had been sectioned off. There was a door at the end, made of stout, riveted metal. Mostly made of stout, riveted metal. In the center of it was a large, crystal orb.
The door had no handle.
Okay.
Okay.
It wasn’t like there were any instructions here, but Danny could get things from context. Sometimes. He stumbled over to the door and put his hand on the crystal. It started to glow. Then, Danny had the disconcerting feeling that he was being… paged through, somehow. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the door swung open.
Anticlimactic.
He stepped through into dazzling light. Danny blinked, hard, trying to get his eyes to adjust faster. When he did, he found himself surrounded by mirrors.
It was hard to tell their true dimensions, but they extended upward, into shadowy darkness, and the reflections within them were reflected over and over again, in a dizzying array, each mirror showing more and more variations.
Because it was clear that the mirrors weren’t reflecting Danny as he currently was, but Danny as he might be, and then the mirrors reflected reflections in mirrors, and they became stranger and stranger.
His evil future self - red-eyed, blue-skinned, and fire-haired - stared out at him from too many mirrors for him to be at all comfortable looking at them. But he wasn’t the only possibility by far. There were versions of him as an adult, wearing a Fentonworks-branded jumpsuit. Others were wearing suit- suits. Business suits, that is. Phones in hand, rings on fingers… One or two mirrors that he could see contained versions of himself that looked homeless. Another was in a futuristic astronaut suit, but he couldn’t see anything else of him.
Danny wrapped his arms around himself. He didn’t want to touch any of the mirrors by mistake. He’d dive through whichever was closest if he thought the Observants had come in after him, but if they weren’t… He wanted to be very careful about what future he chose. After all, he didn’t know if Clockwork would help him with the mirror-geas, even if it was possible.
He shuffled through, slowly, trying to keep track of where his feet were.
The astronaut… That was tempting, more than tempting, but there was so much he didn’t know… He should, he thought, try to pick a version of himself that was closer to his current age. That way, he wouldn’t be giving up what was, effectively, his free will for as long a time.
More Dannys went by. Heroic-looking ghost-hims with new patterns on their jumpsuits and fancy technology - or, sometimes, collars around their necks. Sharp-toothed and eerie creatures with shadows that stretched even outside the mirrors. Dannys in prison uniforms, both human and ghost. Some wore the same uniform he’d seen on the Observants’ prisoners. One particularly disturbing mirror showed Danny an Observant. Another showed a blob ghost.
Nothing he wanted.
There was a Danny with a thick, white beard, and medieval-looking armor and jewelry. And, there, a Danny in chiton and cape, a Greek sword belted at his hip. This Danny looked like he was asleep standing up. That Danny had cat ears and a tail. Another floated in water, with a mermaid’s tail and long, swirling hair. Yet another had oversized fangs and icy horns. Then, a Danny wearing a burning crown.
Danny couldn’t even imagine how some of those futures would come about. Maybe if he knew what secrets had been revealed… He’d have to ask Clockwork when he got out.
He paused, examining the floor. So far, the hall had been mostly straight, but… He looked up, and a new Danny faded in, out of invisibility. This Danny didn’t look much older than the current Danny, but he was in chains, and his red eyes had something wild in them.
Danny turned away.
More Dannys. A Danny that wore a dress and long hair. A Danny wearing a Nasty Burger uniform and a cast on his arm. A Danny wearing a GIW uniform. A Danny in an ectoplasm-splattered lab coat. A Danny with a case under his arm and a lanyard around his neck, one that claimed he was working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Two Dannys in the same mirror, one human, one ghost, one wearing a cape, one wearing loose, comfortable clothes. Two more Dannys, with who was wearing what reversed.
He was getting more Dannys that were close to his age. Still too many that looked downright evil, but he hoped he was on the right track.
He passed a Danny wreathed in Undergrowth’s flowers, then one curled on the ground and sticky with something black and starry. A Danny wearing a Venetian mask and some kind of high-collared black robes grinned at him. A Danny wearing a gray mechanics jumpsuit seemed to stare at Danny judgementally. Then, a funeral urn.
Maybe he wasn’t on the right track.
He looked over his shoulder, and dozens of eyes, blue, green, and red bored into his. He shivered again, and looked forward.
A Danny with blood and ectoplasm smeared all down his front. It didn’t look like his. A Danny with a white stripe through his hair. A Danny with burnt skin and a lightning scar. A Danny who looked like he was five years younger than Danny.
Weren’t these mirrors supposed to show the future?
Maybe the Observants had changed something?
Ugh, why couldn’t one of these just show him in his Casper High gym uniform or something? Something that would show that even if the crystal had blabbed his biggest secrets to the whole world, things would still be okay.
A human Danny with needle marks all up and down his arms. A ghost Danny with a gag over his mouth and bound hands. A Danny that looked like he’d been starved. A Danny with an eyepatch. A Danny covered in so many stitched scars he looked like Frankenstein. A Danny wearing a suit that made him look like a mini-Vlad.
A Danny with Clockwork’s cloak wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket.
Danny stopped. Leaned closer, examining the face for any signs of aging. Were his eyes usually that bright, even in ghost form?
The reflection smiled at him, then pulled up the hood.
It really was Clockwork’s cloak, not one made to fit Danny. Danny could see that it was too big for him, that it had the same wear patterns as Clockwork’s.
The only other difference Danny could see was that this Danny didn’t have any of the injuries that the real Danny had. He licked his lips. Eyed the unpromising reflections ahead of him.
He didn’t know what having Clockwork’s cloak implied, exactly, but it was an easy enough prophecy to fulfill. He just had to get to Clockwork.
Danny closed his eyes and stepped forward, into the mirror.
It felt cool, for a moment, like stepping through water. But after that… nothing. No sense of a geas or other control.
He opened his eyes… to yet more mirrors.
Right. Clockwork’s mirrors.
He smiled. Halfway through. He could do this.
He could do this.