Work Text:
Danny woke gasping, a searing pain radiating through his neck. His hands went up, fingers seeking, the chains bound around his wrists jingling like bells, beads of hot wax sliding down his arms. A heavy collar was wrapped around his neck, cold and comforting. The upper part cupped his chin and jaw and curved to touch the base of his skull. The lower part flared to rest on his breastbone and shoulders, distributing its weight.
It was unexpected. So much so that, for a long moment, Danny forgot he hadn’t expected to wake up at all.
.
Mr. Lancer would be stunned if he could see Danny now, curled up in a floating armchair in Clockwork’s extensive library and reading a history book thicker than his palm was wide. True, he’d probably be more stunned about the location Danny was in than the book, but once he got over the levitating books and green glass and gilt lanterns, he’d probably ask Danny why he hadn’t done his readings for class, if this was what he read in his free time.
Well. Danny wondered the same thing. He hadn’t found a really satisfying answer. It wasn’t as if Danny wanted to be a fifth year senior, left behind as his friends went off to college. The only thing he could think of was that ghost history seemed so much more relevant than whatever he was supposed to be learning about in school. He was never going to hold down a proper job in the real world, but stuff from Ghost Zone history kept jumping out at him and trying to kill him.
Although he wasn’t reading about something that was likely to kill him this time.
He ran his finger under the relevant passage, reading it again. At first, he’d thought it was an exaggeration or something local, but now…
He floated up out of the chair. Clockwork rarely gave straightforward answers, but he did give answers, if Danny asked the right questions.
At this time, Clockwork would be working in the viewing chamber. Danny knew the way without even paying attention, his eyes still on the book, reading onwards in case he had misunderstood, or the answer was written nearby. He knew the halls of Long Now well enough not to worry about bumping into walls.
“Clockwork,” he called out, as soon as he reached the viewing chamber, “why is it that the Ghost Zone is so different in old books? Like, I thought it was talking about a Realm at first, but this makes it sound like the whole Zone had trees and fields and…”
He looked up and trailed off, belatedly realizing that Clockwork wasn’t alone. Undergrowth, of all ghosts, was sprawled across the room, vines trailing up the walls and picking at the stonework.
“You can’t say he didn’t ask, now, Clockwork,” said Undergrowth in his awful, hoarse voice. “Go on, tell him.”
Danny floated back, cautious. He didn’t think Clockwork would let Undergrowth just attack him, but he didn’t know for sure. Sometimes the rules Clockwork operated by were… incomprehensible.
“Tell me what?” asked Danny.
Clockwork sighed heavily, a very put-upon expression on his face. “The Infinite Realms did indeed look and behave differently in the past.”
“Why?” asked Danny.
“Yes, tell him why, Clockwork,” said Undergrowth.
Clockwork glared at him. It was a subtle expression, but Danny could identify it. “Very well. The reason is Pariah Dark.”
Danny rocked backwards. “I thought the stuff about him destroying the Realms was, like, figurative?” He hadn’t realized Pariah had that much power. He might have hesitated more before going to fight him.
“Much of it was,” said Clockwork. “But the cause of the destruction was not so much Pariah’s power, but his lack of responsibility.”
“A responsibility that now falls to you,” interjected Undergrowth.
Clockwork hissed, a ghostly reaction that Danny had never actually seen from him before. “We agreed that would be his choice.”
“Um,” said Danny. “What?”
“Explain it, then,” said Undergrowth. “Properly.”
Clockwork turned his back on Undergrowth, deliberately. “There is a rite that is meant to be performed by the King of Ghosts. One that nourishes the Realms and provides a connection to the Infinite. It is a rite of blood and sacrifice, whereby the king must bleed for his kingdom and become its voice, although in days when it was properly maintained, year after year, the price was a small one. Pariah Dark felt that it was beneath his dignity to submit to the Infinite Realms in such a way, and so he refused to do it, even as they decayed around him, the damage to the lands only accelerated and equaled by what he inflicted upon the people.”
“And it’s gotten worse since he’s been in the sarcophagus and couldn’t do it even if he wanted to?” guessed Danny.
“Indeed. We Ancients thought that the chances of Pariah ever performing the ritual were low enough that the potential good was far outweighed by the harm he was doing, and so, we imprisoned him.”
“Okay,” said Danny, slowly. His eyes flicked to Undergrowth. “So, why does he think it’s my problem all of a sudden?”
“Because you defeated him, in an accepted challenge made before witnesses, having led an army–”
“Everyone keeps calling it an army,” said Danny, “but it was just a bunch of people who showed up. I think you need a little bit more organization to be called an army.”
“Then what would you call it?” asked Clockwork.
“I don’t know. A mob?”
“Having led an army,” repeated Clockwork, “to fight his to a standstill. Such a feat falls under the law of conquest.”
“Which is…?”
“You have the right to the throne, boy,” said Undergrowth, annoyed, “and with it, the responsibility to the Realms.”
“Wait, really?” asked Danny, looking to Clockwork for confirmation.
“Indeed.”
“Wow. That’s an even worse system than a random woman in a pond lobbing swords at people.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I guess I’m… I mean… How much worse is this thing going to get? With the Zone, Realms, however you want to say it, falling apart?”
“Is it not bad enough now?” demanded Undergrowth. “There is nowhere for my children to grow freely.”
Clockwork hummed. “It will not happen quickly, by how you measure things, Daniel, but the islands will crumble, taking with them the last coherent societies. Doors will cease to form and begin to fail. New ghosts will cease to come into being. Old ghosts will fade. Eventually, even the Realms, the dimension itself, will… starve.”
“That’s not good,” said Danny, feeling slightly ill. Didn’t his parents show him a simulation where the destruction of the Ghost Zone destroyed their reality as well. The dimensions, universes, whatever, were bound together.
“It is not.”
“So… How, uh. I’ve got to bleed for this? You said it wasn’t very much.” He didn’t mind bleeding, or else he wouldn’t be a superhero. “I guess I’m okay with blood sacrifice or whatever, if it’s going to literally save reality?”
“It was not much when the ritual was completed regularly,” corrected Clockwork. “Small sacrifices may delay the end, but to prevent it and redress Pariah’s sins would require a much greater one.”
Danny was getting a really bad feeling about this. “How much greater?”
“The way that the sins of kings are often put right, even on Earth,” said Clockwork. “With an execution.”
“Oh, wow,” said Danny. “No wonder you didn’t want to say anything.”
“Daniel, do not rush into this decision,” said Clockwork, reaching out towards him.
“I’m not going to rush into dying,” snapped Danny, floating back. “Give me a little credit.” He paused, somehow embarrassed. “That is what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Killing me? Just, I don’t know, standing me in front of a firing squad, or going after me with one of your decorative scythes, or–” he gestured at Undergrowth, “--using me as fertilizer?”
“The traditional method is decapitation by sword,” said Clockwork.
“That’s so much better.”
“There will be benefits for your pathetic world as well, boy,” said Undergrowth. “If ghosts can be satisfied here, they won’t seek out portals.”
“Do not make your decision now,” said Clockwork, before Danny could respond to Undergrowth. “Go home. Think about it. It will take much longer than a human lifetime for the Infinite Realms to fail entirely. A dozen human lifetimes, easily.”
“But not too long,” growled Undergrowth. “In a year or less, even your sacrifice will not repair what has been broken, and our ends will be assured. That is what I came to discuss.”
Clockwork grimaced. “Indeed.”
“But no pressure?” said Danny. He laughed, because what else could he do? He wiped at his lips, which had somehow gone sweaty despite him still being in ghost form. “I– I have to go.”
He flew away from both Undergrowth and Clockwork, fading into invisibility with his desire to be not there. He didn’t know what to do with any of that.
.
For another week, he continued to not know what to do with it. He didn’t want to go back to Long Now, even if he was pretty sure Clockwork wouldn’t pressure him one way or another. Nocturn replacing his dreams with visions of what the Ghost Zone used to look like didn’t help. The Observants crowding into his room one night to give him the world’s worst presentation didn’t help either.
Even ignoring the part where he’d have to die, there were holes in the explanation he’d been given.
What did help, surprisingly, was careers class at school.
Danny had sat through it before. And failed it. Which was one of the reasons he was still here.
But as he clicked through the assignment, a survey of people working different kinds of jobs, none of which Danny would be able to actually do, he…
What was Danny going to do with his life, anyway? The only job he could really conceivably do was ghost hunting with Fentonworks, and he didn’t think he could stand working with his parents indefinitely. He hunted ghosts for free, anyway. Charging people for saving their lives might have been normal - Sam had pointed out the entire medical profession - but he couldn’t do that when the way he saved lives was still technically illegal. And it wouldn’t have been heroic.
What was more heroic than saving reality itself?
Clockwork had gone out of his way to say that no one Danny personally knew now would be alive when the world ended. But at the same time, that implied there would be people. People who wouldn’t even get the chance to become ghosts.
He wasn’t suicidal or anything, he just…
He went back to Long Now as soon as school ended.
.
“Clockwork?”
“I am here, Daniel.” Clockwork drifted out from behind a grand clock face a story or two up, his tail curling mistily on the balcony beneath him. “You have come to ask an important question.”
“Well, as long as it’s important,” said Danny.
Clockwork watched him placidly, patiently. Danny licked his lips, and turned to study a cuckoo clock hanging near his elbow.
“It’s worse than dying, isn’t it? I mean,” he continued quickly, “ending. Fading. Passing on, whatever you want to call it. You wouldn’t have– Just dying wouldn’t have been bad enough for you to not ask me to do this. If me just dying would save an entire dimension, you would have asked that, right away.” He looked back up at Clockwork.
“Perhaps not right away,” murmured Clockwork, eyes half-lidded as he examined Danny. One of his hands wrapped loosely around the balcony’s railing. Danny wondered why he even had that. He could fly.
“You would have asked, though, and Undergrowth, Nocturn, and the Observants and the rest of them, they wouldn’t have cared.” Danny shuddered internally at the memory of the Observants’ analog slideshow of reasons why he should let himself get killed. “You couldn’t have convinced them to wait until I asked the right questions, or to actually respect my choice about whether or not to do it unless there was some kind of catch.”
“Many would consider dying a sufficient catch.”
“Clockwork,” said Danny, frustrated enough that it came out as half a growl.
This time, Clockwork looked away. “The sacrifice must be made willingly.”
“And?” pressed Danny, knowing there had to be something else.
“It is not a metaphor.”
“What isn’t?”
“Connecting to the Infinite. Acting as the voice of the Realms.” Clockwork held out a hand, and a luminous thread of ectoplasm bloomed above it, fraying at both ends and looping into itself. “The Infinite Realms, the Ghost Zone, has a will of its own. A will that has been silenced for as long as Pariah Dark has reigned. It will not release a new voice quickly.”
“So I’ll be… Overshadowed? How will that work if, you know.” He made a slicing motion at his throat. “Will it be just my head? How will that work without lungs? Actually, I know that not all of you guys have lungs, so how–?”
“Telekinesis, Daniel. Remember, you came to ask these questions. Do not hide from the answers.”
“Sorry,” said Danny. He threaded his fingers together, stalling, then flew up to join Clockwork on the balcony. “How does it work, though?”
“If the Infinite finds you worthy, it will heal you,” said Clockwork.
“And then overshadow me?” Simple death would be cleaner than an unknown amount of time being overshadowed. Thinking about it, he didn’t like the idea of something that wasn’t him walking around in his body until it got tired of it, but even with that, existing had to be better than… not.
“Possession would be a better term.” Clockwork drummed his fingers on the balcony railing. “You have connected with the Infinite before.”
“No I haven’t,” said Danny. He felt like he’d remember that.
“You have. Once. In the portal.”
Danny twitched, the memory of electricity racing up his arm, the portal beam shooting straight through his chest. “Oh.”
The hands on the grand clock face ticked. Seconds passed.
“Would it feel like that?” asked Danny. “All the time?”
“Perhaps,” said Clockwork. “I cannot read minds, and I see no future where you tell me.”
“Why… are you even telling me this? You’ve got to want the Ghost Zone to, you know, not have an apocalypse, and it’s not like I’d have figured this out by myself.”
“For the same reason we were willing to seal away all chances of saving this world with Pariah Dark.” Clockwork gave Danny a very thin smile. “Some trespasses are not to be contemplated, no matter the extremity.”
.
Danny breathed in, then out. These breaths might be the last he would ever take, and he savored them. The incense smoke swirled in dizzying patterns on his exhales, filled the depths of his lungs as he inhaled.
A gauzy, transparent cape hung from his shoulders, twinkling with captured starlight. The rest of his clothes were stately and black, with silver fittings. Mourning clothes, Clockwork had said.
He would not wear the Ring of Rage or the Crown of Fire. Those artifacts were too tainted by Pariah’s actions, and he didn’t want the power in the first place.
Even so, his outfit, his… regalia, was incomplete.
Clockwork held up one end of the chain, and the elegant cuff attached to it. The other end snaked into the shadows in the margins of the room and disappeared. It was one of four. The other three rested on a nearby low table, along with the smouldering incense. “These are shadow-forged, and they have no key. They are designed to close and never open.”
“Sounds like something hard to test,” said Danny.
Clockwork’s lips twitched upward. “It is,” he said. “Even if you should change your mind, these will stay with you, once you put them on.”
Danny bobbed his head in understanding, but didn’t make any move to take the cuff from Clockwork. “Pariah didn’t have anything like these.”
This time, Clockwork did laugh. “He could not countenance shedding a few drops of ectoplasm once a year. Do you think he would ever bear a visible sign that he might owe an obligation to someone else?”
“Not really,” said Danny. He licked his lips, then held out his left wrist, not quite looking at Clockwork or the cuff. “I don’t think I can…”
“Ah,” said Clockwork, floating slightly closer. “Of course.” With one hand, he held Danny’s hand, gentle, and with the other, he snapped the cuff in place.
Danny shuddered, a tingle racing up his arm and down his spine.
“Wisdom,” intoned Clockwork. He turned to the table and picked up the next cuff. Danny let his left hand drop to his side and gave Clockwork his right. The links jingled and clinked against the stone floor. “Justice,” said Clockwork.
For the next two, Clockwork knelt, his tail coiling in on itself as he bent his back. “Courage,” said Clockwork, just as Danny’s foot twitched back by reflex.
He blushed. “Sorry.”
“The point of courage is not to be without fear.”
“I know, I know, that’s such a cliche,” said Danny, still blushing.
“There is a reason for that,” said Clockwork, already bending over Danny’s other foot. “Temperance.” He floated back up. “May these virtues guide your hands and your path.”
“Mhm,” said Danny. He rubbed his right thumb over the silver surface of the left hand cuff.
“I will wait for you at the altar,” said Clockwork, briefly resting his hands on Danny’s shoulders. “Come when you are ready.”
There was a joke there, about weddings and runaway brides, but Danny couldn’t quite bring himself to make it. He nodded.
.
The room was full of ghosts, because something like this needed to be witnessed. The chains trailed behind him, the unseen ends moving to disappear under the feet and tails of the crowd between glances. Candles floated everywhere, acting as both illumination and crowd control - even ghosts didn’t like to be burnt, and the candles clearly delineated the space where the spectating ghosts were supposed to be.
The far end of the room was raised, a set of stone steps leading up to a sort of stage. On the stage was an eerily white altar, and to one side of the altar was Clockwork, holding a sword whose blade had been polished to a mirror shine.
Danny took a deep breath and started walking.
.
Danny’s chest pulsed with something that was not his heartbeat, and his hands stilled. They fell to… armrests. Armrests… He was in a chair? He was sitting.
The thing in his chest pulsed again, more urgently, sending electric pins and needles down one arm, and his eyes fluttered open. He was sitting on the stage, in the same room, looking out over the same ghosts. Candles rested on his shoulders and legs, and as he watched, more settled on his arms, now that they were still.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Clockwork, hovering to one side, the sword no longer in his hand. He wanted to call out to Clockwork, to say something, to ask about the candles or the throne, because they hadn’t discussed either, when they were making preparation, but he… couldn’t.
There was another pulse, painful, this one seeming to come from inside and outside him at the same time. He licked his lips. He could taste blood.
“At long last,” he said, and the words weren’t his, weren’t ones he had chosen. They tore from his throat like they were made of razors. “I can speak.”
His lips stretched in a smile. Something wet ran over them. The pulsing pressure was increasing, both inside and out. He felt like he was being compressed, his senses blurring.
“Let My first edict of this new reign be that Pariah Dark, the traitor who betrayed Me, be cast down in entirety. Let nothing praising him or his works remain. Let his name be a synonym for ignominity and shame. Let it be forgotten. And My second edict…” Danny’s voice trailed off as his tongue licked at the bloody wetness. “Let every honor be reserved for this new king, who has faced Me with dignity, thereby saving you all.” His laugh sounded oddly distant to Danny. “Reserved, because it will be much time indeed until he shall enjoy them. Isn’t that right, Clockwork?”
“That is correct,” said Clockwork.
Danny laughed again, though he could barely hear it. His head ached with pressure, and his chest and arm burned almost like they had in the moments immediately after his accident in the portal. There was something else, too, a sort of enormity opening up inside him, pulling close, promising pain if it touched, with the sincerity of memory. The only thing he could feel for sure was the cold, anchoring weight of the collar holding his neck together.
“Then what are you waiting for?” he asked, very faintly. “Call the scribes. I have been thinking up edicts for hundreds of years!”