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jackdraw-spwrite · 6 months

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Funerary Rites, Chapter 6

Words: 3334 Characters: Clockwork, Danny Warnings: None

For Ectoberhaunt 2023, Day 23 - Magic

Nothing happened.

Nothing Danny had feared, anyway.

The chill of the water was sweet on his tongue, soothing on its way down his throat. It felt like respite, like clarity, like lemonade on a hot summer day after too long outside.

Danny drank until the cup was empty, and then he refilled it and drank some more. He drank until the crystalline sweet of the water washed away the film on his tongue and in his thoughts.

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Or some of it, at least.

Finally, he set the cup back on the countertop with a clack. He hadn't realized how thirsty he'd been.

"Thank you," said Caretaker.

"I didn't do it as a favor to you," Danny said.

"Of course not," soothed Caretaker.

"I would never do you a favor," Danny said, bristling. "I would have to like you for that."

"I see."

"I don't. I hate you."

Caretaker said nothing.

The words should have had an impact. Danny expected them to. Caretaker had been terrifying as he swung seemingly at random between anger and sorrow, the only constant the way he reacted to Danny's fear.

And now, even that had vanished.

"I'm afraid of you," tried Danny again.

There was a minute flinch, but nothing more.

"Have you had enough water?" Caretaker asked.

Was Caretaker ignoring what Danny had said? Danny bristled, took a breath to snarl another insult–

and let it out in a sigh instead. Without responses, hurling insults at Caretaker just made him feel like a little kid.

"For now," he allowed.

Caretaker nodded. "There is still the matter of food."

"No," said Danny.

"No?"

"I mean–" Danny made a wordless sound of aggravation. "I mean, the bread."

"No bread?" Caretaker asked, brow furling.

"No, I. You said there were consequences."

"There always are."

"You just don't know them, sometimes," Danny said, tone acidic.

"Precisely. It is why–"

Danny interrupted him. "And let me guess, you also don't know the consequences for the bread. Conveniently."

"Baking is an art, child. Of course–"

"Of course you won't tell me? Of course you're just going to feed me platitudes until I don't know which way is–"

"Daniel," said Caretaker.

Danny stopped.

Caretaker sighed. "If you would let me finish?"

Tightly, Danny nodded.

"Baking does not produce precise results each time, even for humans. The yeast used, the humidity and temperature of the day and oven, the age of the flour: all of these and more shape the bread humans bake, and not all of them are easily accounted for."

Caretaker placed his hands flat on the table, staring down at the patch of wood still wet from the tea. "It is why skilled human bakers work by feel, as well as by weight. It is why we work by feel as well as by weight."

Caretaker thumbed a surviving scrap of dough, dyed darker by the tea. "But through technique, we can reach something consistent enough. Even in Faerie. Even with the additional complexities our food provides."

Danny fought back the “consistent enough for what?” that wanted to launch itself from his throat. With Caretaker's patience evidently thin, he didn't want to trample on it.

For now.

"So you can tell me what bread will do?" he asked.

"I can tell you what this bread should do, if we make it correctly."

"Not all bread?"

"Not all bread has the same ingredients, even in your world."

Danny had probably known that. He wished he'd gotten more sleep. His brain felt threadbare.

"Okay," he said.

"You wish for me to tell you what the bread might do?"

"Yes," said Danny.

"I will tell you, if you do not purposely disturb the kneading this time."

"Fine." There were other ways to ruin bread, after all. And he wouldn't have to eat it. He hadn’t promised that.

Caretaker's mood lifted considerably with the agreement, and before long he was back to hovering over Danny's shoulder as Danny worked the dough, offering tips.

"If you keep your touch light and quick, it will stick less to your hands," he said.

“Really?” Danny tried it.

It did not.

“Like this,” Caretaker said, and demonstrated.

“You’re cheating,” accused Danny.

“Skill is often mistaken for such.”

Danny huffed, but began kneading the dough again when Caretaker pushed it back towards him.

When, eventually, the dough stopped sticking quite so much to Danny’s hands. He suspected it was less skill and more the kneading being done. When he pulled his hand back it would eventually, reluctantly, peel away.

Danny pushed it a few more times, and then dropped the entire glob into a bowl Caretaker held out for him, which Caretaker then covered and placed near the fire.

Not too near, though. Caretaker fussed with the placement in a way that put Danny in mind of a little old grandma.

"Okay," Danny said after Caretaker had found a satisfactory spot. "You said you'd explain."

"So I did."

Danny waited.

"I did not say when," said Caretaker. He held up a hand before more than a snarl could form on Danny's face. "However, you could offer something in exchange for me telling you within the next five minutes."

"I don't want to give you anything more. I already filled my side of the bargain." Danny frowned. "Twice."

"Twice?"

"This was already in the contract, wasn't it?"

"Food served to me between my departure from and return to the human world must have any and all consequences of consumption explained, if I request it, to the best of your ability?" Caretaker quoted.

"How do you remember that?" Danny asked.

"It is a skill. But no, it is not in the agreement. Right now, it is only food in potential. I would not be forced to explain it to you until I served it, and then only if you asked."

"Okay, fine. Once, then."

"You didn't specify when," said Caretaker.

"I didn't think I needed to," Danny said, frustration building again.

"And with someone other than myself, such assumptions could seriously hurt or kill you."

Oh. Right.

Danny swallowed. There was…that was a lot to think about. Especially right now.

He shoved the idea to the side to deal with when he was home. Or never. Possibly never. Preferably, even.

"Okay, okay,” Danny said. “If I give you something, you have to tell me, starting when I give it to you."

"Acceptable."

Danny gave Caretaker his water cup.

Caretaker's countenance cracked into a grin. "The bread," he said, and stopped.

"What?" Danny asked, outraged.

"Has,"

"Wait," Danny said, eyes narrowed.

"Several," said Caretaker. His smile grew.

"You said 'within five minutes' when you were suggesting what I could give you to get the explanation now."

"Ingredients," said Caretaker, encouragingly.

"But I only said 'starting now,' didn't I?” Danny asked. ”I didn't put a time limit on the end."

"Which results in?"

"You're saying it super slow to mess with me."

"Several consequences."

Danny huffed, blowing some hair out of his face. "You want me to make another deal, right?"

"Wheat," agreed Caretaker.

Danny looked around the kitchen to the sound of Caretaker saying "brings," "an," "element," and "of." The fireplace was still lit, flames low and steady. The tables and counters were still mostly clean, the only mess from the previous ill-fated attempts at bread.

"The hearth," said Caretaker.

Danny went over to it, and knelt. So close, the warmth of the flame melted under his skin, chasing away the morning cool of the kitchen.

"Hospitality," said Caretaker.

The kettle was set to the side. It was heavy with water when Danny picked it up, weighing it in his hands and in his head.

"You would need to explain the tea, if you offered it and I asked," Danny said. "And, you want to give me the tea."

And tea was mostly water. Whatever consequences were in it, they'd probably be less than what was in the bread. Assuming the whole food…thing made sense.

Which it probably didn't.

"And companionship."

Danny ignored that. "I'm not going to promise to drink the tea. That would be dumb. But you're probably not going to let me just say you can make it."

Danny thought so, at least.

"Salt," and "intensifies" passed before he came to a conclusion. Caretaker could be trying to lead him down a path Danny didn't want. He probably was.

“Flame.”

Danny bit his lip. Trying to think of anything else was like trying to catch wind with his hands, though. Now that the idea of the tea was in his head, it was hard to think about other options.

“Purifies, refines, transmutes. Extracts.”

"What if I said I'd listen?" Danny asked.

Caretaker cocked his head, eyes glimmering with interest.

"And, um. If I had a problem with it, I'd tell you why?"

Caretaker tipped his head.

That was probably a yes.

"If you explain the consequences of eating the bread, and you do it at…" Danny frowned A normal pace? That could probably be misinterpreted.. "If you space your words like me, in this conversation…wait."

Caretaker waited.

"If you explain the likely consequences for me if I eat the specific loaf of bread that we're making, and you do it by timing your words like I'm doing now, and you start the explanation within a minute after I ask, then I'll listen to your explanation about the tea and explain to you what my problems are with it. If any exist."

Caretaker was silent. Expectant.

There was something Danny was missing.

"I won't refuse to drink it until after I've heard the explanation?"

"Finally," Caretaker said, shaking his head. Darn.

"I won't refuse to drink it before I've heard the explanation," said Danny.

"Yeast," Caretaker nodded, and held out a hand.

Danny shook it.

"Good job," Caretaker said. "There are still a few holes in that agreement, but it's much more tightly phrased."

Danny ignored the praise. "The explanation?" he asked.

The corners of Caretaker's eyes wrinkled in approval. "And good attention to detail. Very well, let me set the water on to boil, and I will explain."

The kettle was refilled, then hooked to hang over the fire. Caretaker gestured Danny over to a pair of chairs a little ways away, and when Danny sat he steepled his fingers.

"Bread," Caretaker said, "this bread, will reinforce the roles of host and guest between us, and the rules of hospitality."

"Didn't you say those were really complicated?"

Caretaker smiled. "They can be," he said. "It would be difficult indeed for you to fill the role of a guest correctly, without the required knowledge. But there are reasons for our traditions. It will help you to fulfill the correct actions for your role."

"Help?" asked Danny, trying to fill the word with the skepticism he felt.

"Yes, help."

"Define help."

"Very well done," Caretaker said, corners of his eyes wrinkling in pleasure again. "English is such a treacherous language. I could have hidden quite the trap within that word."

"But you didn't?" asked Danny.

"I did not. The help would be a nudge. You could ignore it, were it even strong enough to notice."

Danny frowned.

"There is another option," said Caretaker. "If we shared it, if we broke bread together, instead of me serving it to you, then it would build camaraderie between us."

"Which would…?"

"It would simply make our conversations less strained. I believe you have noticed the conflict."

Noticed? Danny had been fostering most of it.

Not that Caretaker didn't deserve it.

Danny was silent as he thought. He didn't really like either option. But if that was all they did, then they were what he'd asked for. Neither would bind him to Faerie.

"How long does it last?" asked Danny.

"It depends," said Caretaker, then at a sharp look from Danny, added, "but guest rights and responsibilities end when the guest departs. The bond of broken bread will linger longer, but even those who do so together for years will find its influence faded after only a decade or two."

Faded after a decade, but not gone. A decade or two.

Danny didn't want to feel companionship for Caretaker. He especially didn't want it to last.

"The host thing, then."

Caretaker raised a brow. "Are you sure?"

Danny paused. "Maybe?" he said.

The kettle chose then to begin whistling, and Caretaker stood. "Do not feel rushed to decide," he said. "You will be free to choose the one you prefer when we eat."

And with that, he attended to the tea.

"I was thinking we would garden while the bread rose," said Caretaker, still chipper. "The gardens are in disrepair, after all." With a fluid motion, he poured the tea into first one cup, and then the other.

"Sorry," said Danny. He even was, a little. He’d forgotten how Caretaker used to play with him when he was little and lost and scared.

Caretaker didn't respond. Instead, he set the teapot back down and turned away to fiddle with some herbs.

Danny wondered if Caretaker was pretending he hadn't heard. Was it a mistake to apologize to fae? He couldn't remember.

"Here," said Caretaker, and placed a sprig of…something on one of the saucers before pushing it in Danny's direction. The other two, he placed on his own saucer.

Danny pulled the tea closer and looked skeptically into his cup. The liquid inside tinted the inside with a warm brown, still transparent enough to see clear through to the bottom, and Danny was put in mind of the green tea they served at the Chinese place his parents would take them to as a celebration sometimes.

Gosh, he wanted egg rolls. Rice. Some orange chicken, or sweet and sour soup, or…

Danny swallowed. He really didn't need to think about food right now.

The tea was something he could focus on. So close to it, the vapor rising off the surface curled warm and thick under his nose. It was filled with a hodgepodge of aromas that combined into something herbal and sweet and tangy.

Danny opened his eyes again, and discovered that Caretaker was using the sprigs to stir his tea. The motion would have been fascinating to watch if it didn't evoke the image of the world's largest and most undesired spider doing the same.

"Why are you doing that?" Danny asked.

Caretaker looked up, the ghost of a smile still on his face. "Stirring my tea?" he asked.

"With the sticks, yeah."

"I didn't want to serve you the tea with them already infused," said Caretaker, as though that explained anything.

Danny felt irritation start to fizz under his skin again. "Fine," he said. "What does the tea do?"

"Oh," said Caretaker, and the smile melted away. "I had forgotten."

"You forgot what the tea does?"

"No! No, something else..." He trailed off. "I am able to tell you about the tea."

Danny wanted to ask what Caretaker had forgotten. How could it possibly be hard to remember Danny was out of his depth?

He didn't.

Instead, he turned the cup in its saucer as Caretaker explained.

"It should give you hope, and a little vitality–an infusion like this is weaker than the herb itself, but it also can extract some things better than others. The balance changes."

"Hope and vitality?" Danny asked.

"You are afraid. And you are tired. But, not much hope."

"Because it's an…infusion?"

"Among other reasons. Hope can be a heady thing indeed. I find I prefer a more moderate amount in my blends."

Danny leaned forward to take a deeper whiff, or perhaps a sip.

Caretaker's hand folded itself around his wrist, and Danny stopped.

"That is not everything."

"What else, then?" Danny asked. Confusion warred with revulsion in his head. He pulled his arm out of Caretaker's hand.

"The hope is given by snowdrops, the vitality by amaranth."

"And? Are they poisonous or something?" Danny didn't even know what those were.

"Not when properly prepared."

Danny did not want to be playing a game of 'poison or not.’ Unfortunately, the universe didn’t seem to care.

"Are they properly prepared?"

"Yes," said Caretaker. He managed to look almost offended at the suggestion. "I would not violate guest right so lightly."

"Okaay."

"There is also coltsfoot."

"Um."

“It should not be poisonous in the quantity present.”

“Um.”

"Yes?"

"Shouldn't be poisonous?"

"Most medicines are poisons, too," said Caretaker. "In sufficient dosages. This one I thought you'd like."

"But I'm not sick," protested Danny.

"And yet you seek a remedy for your parents' predicament."

"That's different," said Danny.

"Is it?" Caretaker took a sip of tea, and closed his eyes. "Ah. Coltsfoot brings justice."

Danny frowned. "You said it was poisonous, though."

"In sufficient quantities."

"Why would that be poisonous?"

"Justice? Poisonous? I suspect you have little wish to discuss such philosophical questions when you are so poorly rested."

Danny didn't even want to discuss philosophy things when he was well rested. “I don’t see what that has to do with poison, though.”

“If you drink only a cup, it will not poison you.”

“What about two?”

Caretaker smiled. “Even the whole pot should not poison you. I drink this daily. It is one of my preferred teas.”

“And…it wouldn’t be more poisonous to me than you?”

“You’re smaller,” pointed out Caretaker. “That, among other things, would affect it. But I can see no reason it might harm you. If I could, I would not be serving it to you.”

Danny nodded. That…made sense. There was the contract.

Then he frowned, recounting. "So it’s…vitality, and hope, and justice?"

"And morning."

"Morning," said Danny. That was odd, but…it was morning, right then. It was probably some kind of fae breakfast tea thing. He was pretty sure Jazz had kept some kind of breakfast tea in the kitchen at one point.

"Yes," said Caretaker. He'd closed his eyes again as he took another sip. "Mostly morning, in fact."

"Okay," said Danny. "And what does that do to me?"

"It helps you morn. Encourages it. Waters it, like a vine."

"Which iiiissss…. It's not anything weird, is it?"

"Humans morn. Most humans morn."

"....Huh."

"And I have morned for a long time."

Danny made a polite little noise of comprehension, not sure how to tell Caretaker that he didn't think he was the best measure of normal.

"And that's all?" he asked.

"It should ease thirst, and perhaps wet your lips. And clothes, should you make a mess. And it will warm you where it touches you."

"It will?"

"It is warm." Caretaker indicated the steam still rising from Danny’s cup.

"Oh."

Danny contemplated the tea for a moment more. But it really didn't seem like there was anything terrible in it. And Caretaker was drinking it, so it couldn't be too poisonous. And of the things he'd listed, only the morning seemed odd.

Danny probably could just eat bread for his whole stay here, and drink water. But if he was going to eat bread, something like this was a lot less…substantial, probably. There was a lot less plant in it, at least. It might be a good way to figure out what eating the bread would be like, when he eventually did.

So.

Danny brought the cup to his lips, and it was bright and floral.

He took a sip, and another.

He set the cup back down, and thought, trying to feel at the hope, or the justice, or the–

There was a void in his chest. There was a void in the world, great and desolate and terrible. Danny brought a hand to his chest, only peripherally aware of the ragged gasps he was taking as he looked up at Caretaker through suddenly wet and stinging eyes.

Caretaker looked back, a faint and rueful smile on his face. His eyes were shining with unshed tears.

"As I said, it is mostly mourning," Caretaker said. "It is a stronger blend than most prefer. But one, I think, well suited to a funeral."

#danny phantom #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite #danny phantom dp #clockwork dp #ectoberhaunt23 #funerary rites fae au

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jackdraw-spwrite · 6 months

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Funerary Rites, Chapter 5

Words: 3435

Characters: Danny, Clockwork

Warnings: None

For Ectoberhaunt 2023, Day 18 - Unravel

The kitchens were on the ground floor of the house, or the basement depending on how one looked at it; one side emerged from the hillside into a small garden, while the other was buried deep in the earth. The house itself was pale in the early morning light but accented with dark shutters. It sprawled along the hillside, larger by far than the kitchens below.

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They entered the little garden together, and then the cool shadows of the kitchen.

Caretaker gestured to a bench near one of the doorways. "Take a seat there."

Danny did.

Like most things in the kitchen, it was made of stone, and cool enough to bring a chill to Danny's arms. Somewhere, Danny could hear water running.

He watched as Caretaker ventured deeper into the shadows and re-emerged with a glass he offered to Danny.

Danny took it. The weight of it played in his hands as though full.

"It's water?" he asked.

"Yes," said Caretaker.

Danny frowned into the glass. Sniffed. The fluid inside was clear.

It smelled cool and sweet, though perhaps that was the kitchen. The room smelled chill and earthy, but sweet air wafted in from outside the open door in a perfect complement that brought to mind fresh streams and warm days.

Unlike his tongue. His tongue felt sticky and stagnant in his mouth, and he remembered that he hadn't brushed his teeth last night. Or this morning.

Ick.

Danny stuck out his tongue a little, and swirled the water in the glass again.

It almost sparkled, clear and sweet and tempting. Suddenly, it was difficult to think of anything but the sweet chill of fresh water on his tongue.

Danny didn't like sudden urges to indulge in things. He pulled the glass away and looked up.

Caretaker was fiddling with the doors.

"What are you doing?" Danny asked.

"I am opening the kitchen up," said Caretaker.

With a thunk and a rolling noise, an entire part of the wall moved sideways, exposing the archway that was on the outside of the house. Light swept in, though with the early hour the kitchen's furthest corners were scarcely more lit than before.

"Isn't there magic to do that?" Danny asked.

"There is a certain satisfaction," Caretaker said, pausing to repeat the action on another arch, "in working with one's hands. It is why I enjoy baking, and the creation of food."

"Oh," said Danny, looking back down at the glass in his hands. Even in much brighter light, the liquid inside was still clear and colorless.

"And gardening," added Caretaker, more softly.

Danny looked back up, and Caretaker was staring at him.

"Um." said Danny.

"Yes?"

Danny mentally fumbled for a question. Why are you staring at me was too hostile to use if he was going to keep pretending that he wanted to do this. As was is this really water? Did you poison this? and how much poison would need to be in here for you to say it wasn't water?

"Why is everything a mess if you like gardening?"

Caretaker looked as though he'd been slapped.

Internally, Danny winced.

"That–I," Caretaker said.

It was the first time Danny had ever heard him stumble for words. He almost stumbled physically, too; his shoulders sagged under an invisible weight as Caretaker slumped, steadying himself against a table.

His head bowed.

"I suppose," Caretaker said. "That question is only to be expected. Especially from you."

Caretaker’s eyes were hidden beneath his hood. Even so, Danny felt their weight.

For a breathless moment, he froze.

Whatever Caretaker meant about the question being expected, Danny hadn't expected this reaction when he'd asked it.

He hadn't expected anything, too busy flailing for a question that wasn't as loaded as are you poisoning me that he’d blundered directly into a worse one.

Quietly, carefully, Danny set the glass to the side. At the faint click of it against the stone, Caretaker's head snapped up enough to meet Danny’s eyes.

They didn’t move away.

With the doors open, it was bright enough to see their garnet red. Bright enough to see them burn.

The chill of the stone crept up Danny's spine.

"It has been difficult," said Caretaker, slow, "to manage, alone."

He didn't blink.

Danny broke first. He looked away, to the brightening landscape outside. In the little garden just outside the kitchen, the plants had resolved into distinct shapes and leaves; there was a large mound he thought might be sage, and another that seemed a bit like lavender. There were smaller plants, but his family had always emphasized defensive herbs over the culinary.

"How is your water?" asked Caretaker, drawing Danny's attention back to the kitchen. He’d drawn himself back up, as though the moment had never happened.

"I haven't had any," Danny said, and picked it back up.

"Why not?"

Danny paused. He still didn't know how to ask if it was poisoned. And that was assuming Caretaker really couldn't lie. The glass was cool and inviting in his hand. The light gathered in its depths rippled with the water.

"I got distracted, I guess," he said.

Caretaker had promised not to allow harm to come to Danny while he was here. He couldn't have poisoned it. Equally, he couldn't have given Danny something he hadn't poisoned but knew was dangerous.

The water should be fine.

Danny tilted the glass.

It still made him nervous. Like there was something…

"You said we could make a pie?" he asked.

"I did."

"Not some kind of witch of the woods baking me into a pie, right?"

"No. Child, your water…"

Danny set it to the side again, a new plan forming in his head. "I changed my mind," he said. "I don't want water."

"What do you want?"

To go home, offered the part of him that lacked self preservation instincts. He ignored it.

"Um," said Danny.

"What about tea?"

"Okay," said Danny.

Caretaker nodded.

Shortly afterwards the kitchen was lit by a fire, crackling away beneath a kettle. Caretaker busied himself opening cabinets and pulling things out, wiping off surfaces so industriously that Danny began feeling awkward just sitting there.

Danny pulled at his pant leg. He wanted to get it out of the way, but he also didn't want to take Caretaker's help. After some fiddling, he knotted it into his sash so it at least wouldn't trip him. But with that taken care of, silence descended once more.

…

He was trying to act cooperative.

"Caretaker," Danny asked. "Is there something I can do?"

"Just mix until it's roughly combined," said Caretaker. "No more dry flour left, and no more water.”

Danny had his hands buried in a mass of flour, water, and weird-smelling goo in a large bowl. Bits of it had stuck fast to his hands, and he stuck out his tongue at the sensation.

And the looks. He squished his hands closed and watched things squelch in the bowl. He did it again, and the goo oozed through the gaps in his fingers in neat little streams.

"Ewww," Danny breathed, delighted. He hadn't realized making bread was like this.

He mushed it again.

Soon, the mass was rough, and Caretaker looked over his shoulder before pronouncing that Danny should dump it out onto the counter and knead it properly.

And then demonstrated, when Danny said he didn't know how.

Once Danny got the hang of it he found it was soothing, in a weird way. He could press the dough with his hands and pull at it and roll it together and squish it, over and over again. When, slowly, it started resisting more and sticking to his hands less, it was satisfying. Even if it was still sticky.

There were a bunch of clinks and clatters and other noises from the rest of the kitchen, but it didn't seem too dangerous or important, so Danny let himself be drawn into the rhythm of kneading the dough. With each squish and pull, some of the tension woven through him faded.

He was still trapped. He was still stuck with a dangerous fae he knew far less than he thought he had, and for most of a week, all to save his parents’ lives. He hadn’t forgotten that. It was impossible to forget that.

But…if all he was expected to do was stuff like this…

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Clink.

Danny looked up. There was a small ceramic cup on the counter. Above it, Caretaker looked at him from where he'd set it down.

"Um," said Danny, and looked down at the dough.

"For when you're done with that. You're getting close."

That didn’t help the knot of dread that had reappeared in his stomach. Thoughts of his earlier plan resurfaced. How did you mess up dough? He didn't know. He knew you could burn bread. His parents were many things but 'distractible' was one of them and 'good at baking' was not.

…throwing it on the ground would probably work.

Splat.

"Oh no," said Danny, failing utterly to sound concerned.

On the floor, the dough lingered flatly for a defeated moment before slowly pulling back in on itself, like an alien creature.

Caretaker was silent.

Danny looked up at him.

His eyes were wide, still pointed at the space where the dough had been. Then he visibly shook himself.

"That should be cleaned up, and another loaf started."

Danny looked after his back in disbelief as Caretaker bustled off in the direction of the flour. That was it? That was all?

It couldn't be.

Danny hadn't even managed to sound convincingly sorry to himself. His Mom or Dad would have sent him to his room. Caretaker had been surprised, sure, but.

But he’d also been calm.

Danny stared down at the dough. It had flattened on impact, but now it was peeling its edges from the floor, drawing itself inwards and back to a rounded shape.

Danny's throat felt drier than before.

"Come," said Caretaker from behind him.

Danny startled.

Caretaker didn't comment. There was a clunk as he set the bowl back on the work table before speaking again. "The dough will stick to the floor if we leave it there, and it is difficult to clean."

Danny didn’t move.

"I will show you where to dispose of it, if you pick it up."

Still confused, Danny did, and followed Caretaker outside to the compost bins. The sun was well up now, though the little herb garden still lay in shadow. Danny lingered, tracing his eyes over the paths he could see through the untended fields that lay below the house.

Caretaker had said it was hard to do it alone.

Danny could see why. He didn't know much about gardening but that was probably a lot of space to use. But it was confusing, too.

Wasn't Caretaker a lord of some sort? Even if the title was stupid and pretentious and Danny hated it on principle, it was still a title. Why would a lord be gardening alone instead of getting other people to help? Why do it at all, if he had trouble with it?

Was it shameful to get gardening help, or something?

…Was Caretaker even telling the truth about being a lord? Danny hadn't seen any servants around, except maybe the weird fae in the night. Lords were supposed to have plenty, right?

And the weird one had been in the garden, too. Did Caretaker's servants only come out at night? Did he only allow them to?

Something clinked in the kitchens, and Danny headed back in. He didn't want Caretaker coming to check on him.

"You didn't have your tea," said Caretaker.

"Oops," said Danny, and reached for it, knocking it over and spilling the tea over the floured table.

"Oops," said Danny again, unconvincingly.

In the ensuing silence, the cup rolled towards the table’s edge. Caretaker stopped it with a touch. He was frowning.

"Child," he asked, "Is something the matter?"

Is something the matter?

Danny’s facade shattered like the cup hadn’t.

"Is something the matter?" Danny repeated, slightly hysterical. "I didn't sleep last night, and the only food or drink I can get is probably drugged. And you're asking me if something is the matter?!? There was a fae in the garden last night and you're asking me if something is the matter?!?"

Danny stared at Caretaker, chest heaving.

Caretaker looked back, eyes widened before narrowing dangerously. "What was in the garden last night?" he asked, voice soft.

"A, um. A fae," Danny said, abruptly concerned for the maybe-servant. What if they were just trying to get some flowers? Danny would look at people, too, if he realized they were watching. Especially if he wasn't supposed to be there. "Don't you have servants? I, um. Maybe it was one of them?"

"I have no servants, child."

Danny's veins turned to ice.

"What was the appearance?" asked Caretaker.

Danny swallowed. "They had a white cloak.” He no longer felt as bad for the servant that wasn't.

"A white–how long?"

"What?"

"How long was it?"

"Really long," said Danny. "Um. They were in the bushes so I couldn't see, like, their feet. But it went out of sight."

Caretaker relaxed. Danny couldn't see why.

And then he pulled down his hood, and Danny could.

"Oh," said Danny.

"Yes, 'oh.'" agreed Caretaker. Without the shadows of the hood, Danny could see the way his eyes were wrinkled in amusement. Danny could also see his long, white hair. "I think, perhaps, I should hang this up," he said, tapping the little gear clip that kept his cloak closed.

He pulled it from his shoulders and moved to the entryway to hang it on a hook.

With his back to him, Danny could see that Caretaker's hair reached to his calves. Unlike the night before, it was tied back instead of loose, held at the nape of Caretaker's neck with a scrunchie. Probably not a scrunchie, Danny amended mentally. He was pretty sure those had plastic, and Caretaker had made his opinion on that abundantly clear.

Danny looked down to the spilled cup of tea. The puddle had spread all the way to the dough, where he could see the pale amber staining it on the bottom. Some of the puddle had gone the other direction, too, and was now dripping onto the floor in a parade of tiny splashes.

Danny felt a twinge of guilt.

"Why do you refuse to drink?" asked Caretaker.

The guilt vanished. "I'm not refusing to drink," said Danny.

"Child," Caretaker warned.

Danny plunged onwards. "If you gave me water, normal water, I'd drink it."

"I did, and you did not."

"You gave me drugged water," said Danny.

"I did no such thing," said Caretaker, and circled the table so he was across from Danny, frowning down at him.

"Fine," said Danny, even though it was nowhere close to fine. "If I had drunk that stuff, what would it have done to me?"

"It would not have bound you to this place."

"That's not answering the question."

Caretaker stiffened. For a moment that felt far longer than it probably was, he stared Danny down with his head back, anger scrabbling for purchase on his face.

Danny drew back, and the anger evaporated from Caretaker's face, replaced again with sorrow.

"You are afraid," he murmured. "I keep forgetting that."

Gently, he worked the dough loose from the countertop, and it was only then that Danny noticed how deeply Caretaker's too-long fingers had sunk into it.

When he returned from disposing of the dough, Caretaker picked up a little rectangle of wood and began scraping at the paste left behind. As he did, he spoke.

"The rules of food and drink are complex and many-layered, here. I cannot tell you the precise mechanics of water here, just as you could not tell me the precise mechanics of electricity in your world."

Danny frowned at the reminder of his parents.

"It is a scholar's topic, child. And a topic of debate, at that."

Here, Caretaker paused to look at Danny, considering.

"But I can tell you this much: the waters of this world will not bind you."

But…there was more than just binding, wasn't there? Danny wracked his brain, trying to put a name to his unease. But catching the thought was like grabbing smoke; every time he tried it slipped away, dispersed all the more by the effort.

"I don't know," Danny said, finally.

"What don't you know?"

Danny blinked. He'd forgotten the thread of conversation.

"I don't…" Danny bit his lip. Why hadn't he slept?

But he knew why.

"What were you doing in the garden last night?" he asked.

"Gathering flowers," said Caretaker.

“You weren’t spying on me?”

"No."

"Then why did you look up?"

Caretaker stared at him. "I imagine it is a common reaction to being stared at, even among humans. Would you do differently?"

Danny looked back down at the empty cup, feeling embarrassment flush his face. That was a more than reasonable explanation. He’d even thought of it, earlier.

Caretaker sighed. There was the scuffing of feet on stone, and then Danny heard him kneel beside him.

He looked up.

"Daniel," Caretaker said. "I know that you are fearful. I know that this has been…hard, for you. But please, do not make me force you to drink."

"You would," said Danny, dread pooling in his bones.

"My hand would be forced," said Caretaker. "By the terms of our agreement. Dehydration, severe dehydration, is unambiguously harm."

"You could break it," said Danny.

"Break–" Caretaker hissed. "I would do no such thing."

"But you could," said Danny.

"You don't know what you're suggesting."

"I think I do."

"Then do tell.” Caretaker said. He stood. ”What happens when a fae breaks their word?"

"I–" Danny broke off. His parents had mentioned it once or twice, surely. At some point over the years they must have. They talked about the fae so much.

But Danny had always tuned them out.

"You are lucky that you suggested that to me," said Caretaker. "Almost anyone else would find a way to bestow upon you an equivalent harm to the one you so casually suggested."

"What–"

"Think," and Caretaker’s voice was dark like thunder, "if I could break the bindings of my word so easily, why should you trust our agreement to keep you safe from me? Am I a cruel monster, kept at bay by chains of ink?" Caretaker's snarl crawled up his face. "Or am I going to save you despite them? No matter what it costs me? Do you want me to save you by endangering you, even as you act as though I will keep you safe from myself in doing it? Which am I? Decide."

Danny shook his head angrily. "No, you decide. You're the one who keeps switching between awful and, and–" Danny frowned, reaching for a word that danced beyond his grasp.

“Understanding?”

“No.”

“Kind?”

“No! Stop forcing words on me!”

“Safe?” Caretaker asked, and his voice was deadly soft.

“N–” Danny choked. “No,” he said, quiet, and drew his arms around himself.

Caretaker’s answering silence was louder than words alone could be.

Some time later, Danny looked up at the click of ceramic on stone as Caretaker set a cup on the table before him.

He looked back down.

“It is only water,” said Caretaker, voice still soft.

“I don’t want it.”

“By now, that matters little. You need it.”

“I don’t want it,” said Danny again, glaring up.

“Are you a child?”

“You seem to think so.”

Caretaker made a noise of aggravation. “It’s difficult to treat you otherwise when you act like this.”

“You mean, not doing whatever you want?”

“I’m trying to avoid forcing you to drink.”

“It seems pretty forceful to me!”

“Are you so certain that you have a good grasp of the situation? You’re dehydrated and exhausted.”

“It’s good enough to grasp this,” said Danny, and upended the cup on the floor.

“You–” Caretaker visibly calmed himself down. “Daniel–”

The use of his name was like dumping water on him–if he were a grease fire.

"You want me to drink?" Danny exploded. He was furious. "You want me to drink?"

"Yes!"

"Okay!" Danny snarled, and seized the cup. He marched over to the spring of water that trickled down into a basin and shoved his cup beneath the stream just long enough to fill it.

Then, fury still bubbling beneath his skin, he tossed it back into his mouth, and swallowed.

#danny phantom #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite #danny phantom dp #clockwork dp #ectoberhaunt23 #funerary rites fae au

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jackdraw-spwrite · 6 months

Text

Funerary Rites, Chapter 4

Words: 3367

Characters: Danny, Clockwork

Warnings: None

For Ectoberhaunt 2023, Day 11 - Dread

It was almost sunrise when Danny gave up on sleep.

The brightening sky swelled the racket of birdsong already outside his window, and Danny dragged his hands over his eyes with a groan. He wanted his bed. He wanted his room and whatever normalcy could be said to live in the Fenton household.

He wanted sleep.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

He did not want this. He did not want these strange blankets, these strange rafters under a strange sky, and he wanted to confront the day less than that. In the hollow hours between dusk and dawn, dread had taken root in his belly and now it tangled itself there and slithered up to gnaw at his sternum.

But it wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

Resentfully, he rolled himself out of bed, feet landing on the cold floor. Danny grimaced, and fought the urge to pull them back into bed, to curl up and delay the day.

And Caretaker.

Danny grimaced. Maybe that one could wait.

He padded to the window, and found the trees were still monumental shadows in the pre-dawn light. He turned–and his stomach constricted.

There was something dark at the door.

There was something dark on the inside of the door. Inside the threshold.

He'd thought himself safe.

He'd thought, he'd hoped that no one could get inside as long as he was treating it like a bedroom. He'd assumed that with how poorly he'd slept, he would at least get a warning, hear something, even if he didn’t see.

He hadn't.

Caretaker could have opened his door at any time.

He had.

The roots of dread in Danny's gut grew thicker.

If it even was Caretaker. There was the other fae, after all. The one he'd seen with the white cloak in the garden.

He thought he'd been awake. But he hadn't noticed the door opening. If it even had been the door. What if the dark shape was alive? What if it had crawled in through the window?

One step, two. The thing didn’t move. Three, four, shut the door.

The door was already shut.

Fix, six, pick up–

And Danny’s hand touched cloth.

It was cloth.

It was clothes.

Danny found himself back on the bed again, one leg pulled close. He rested his chin on his knee, eyes still locked on the patch of dark on the floor.

It was just new clothes.

Danny waited until his heart calmed and the room brightened enough to make out details before he evaluated the clothes that had appeared in the night. In the long minutes he waited, his mind whirled between the revelation that his room wasn’t secure, wasn’t safe, and wondering how he hadn’t heard or seen the door open when he’d barely slept.

But eventually, the room brightened enough to see.

The floor this time was no less cold, but at least it matched the cold in his gut and and his fingers. Danny pulled the pile apart into shapes, and the cloth slid easily across itself, smooth like water in his hands.

It was…similar, to the previous day’s.

When he finally fumbled the tie on the sash into a knot minutes later, it was after considerable difficulty. The fabric had slipped through his fingers a number of times, and even with the building dawn, the clothes themselves were still dark and hard to see.

Now that they were on, the sensation like water hadn’t faded. They were smooth as silk against his skin. One of his pant legs slithered down a little, and Danny hiked it back up and tightened the knot on the sash. He could figure out what he’d done wrong when he could see better.

And then–

Then, there was only the door.

Caretaker was older, in the morning light.

It was in his stoop, in his cheeks drawn thin. And it was in the wrinkles that had smeared across his face in the night. In places, they folded into deep creases like a crumpled cloth as he looked down at Danny.

But still, none were as dark as his scar.

However deep his wrinkles were, his scar was deeper. However dark, it was darker. It still tore down his face in a jagged line, and his sagging skin only made it longer, though longer still was the stare he gave Danny.

Caught in the doorway, Danny shifted on his feet.

It was barely dawn. The sky was still brightening, and the night's blacks lingered in pockets. They coiled in the overgrown mess of plants and swam in the shadows of Caretaker's hood.

In Danny’s head, they writhed, spelling out the shape of the previous night’s refrain: What did Caretaker want?

Danny wanted to ask.

Danny needed to ask.

But it was as though his tongue were frozen in place, like the dread rooted in his stomach had grown up through his neck and fastened his tongue to the floor of his mouth with tendrils of ice.

What did Caretaker want?

“Greetings,” Caretaker said. His voice hadn’t changed with his age. But then, It never had.

“Morning,” returned Danny.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Caretaker.

“No.”

“No?” The creases in Caretaker's forehead deepened. "Did you find your accommodations uncomfortable?"

Uncomfortable.

Danny stared at him. Incredulity sparked through his mind.

“You snuck into my room.”

“Snuck–the clothes?”

“Yes, the clothes!” Danny pulled at his shirt.

“I just placed them inside the door so you would find them,” said Caretaker. “I would be a poor host if I didn’t provide you with clean clothing.”

“I–” Danny cut himself off, throat working.

The thing was–it made a certain degree of sense. Fae were concerned with manners, and with being good hosts. Even his parents would admit that. And if Caretaker had just placed them inside…

“You just placed them inside?” Danny asked. “You didn’t go in? Didn’t do anything else?”

Caretaker tilted his head. “I opened the door, and I closed it. I saw inside the room, and made sure that you were safe.”

The ice that had been banished from Danny’s mouth crept along his arms instead.

“You made sure I was safe?” he asked.

"I agreed that no grave harm would come to you for the duration of our agreement. I expect you remember that," Caretaker said, frowning.

“How did you make sure I was safe?”

“Would you like a list?”

“Yes.”

“I made sure to keep others from realizing your presence here, on our journey. This hut is well within the lands that I control, and well-protected. You saw the hedge, and the gate.”

“I don’t mean those,” said Danny. “I mean when you opened the door.”

“I checked that you were present and unharmed,” Caretaker said. His face was even, grave.

“But you didn’t go inside,” Danny said.

Caretaker paused a moment before answering, and Danny began wondering if this was it, if that had happened, if he’d woken up at just the wrong time if he’d have seen Caretaker looming over him in the night–

“I did not set foot inside when I was placing your clothes there last night,” said Caretaker.

Danny swallowed. “While I was asleep, you mean.”

“You seemed relaxed. I did not verify that you were asleep.”

“Relaxed,” Danny laughed a little hysterically under his breath.

He found that hard to believe. He didn’t feel relaxed at all now. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be relaxed again, at this rate.

“You feel unsafe?”

“Of course I feel unsafe!”

Danny stopped himself. He hadn’t meant to raise his voice. Manners. Fae cared about manners. “Sorry.”

Caretaker inclined his head.

The moment passed, and it was then that Caretaker spoke.

“That you feel unsafe–do you doubt my ability to protect you here?”

"I–" Danny hesitated. He thought of the bells in the study, the silvered gate, and the ease with which Caretaker had ignored his parents’ best efforts at resistance in their own home.

He thought of the fae in the night.

He thought of the shelter of Caretaker’s cloak.

Neither yes nor no felt right in his mouth. Danny swallowed. "I don't know."

A sigh escaped Caretaker. "That you do not feel safe is–" he stopped himself. "It is a matter to address later. You must be hungry."

"I'm not," said Danny. The hunger pangs had faded in the night.

"Even if your worries have eaten your appetite, you should eat something for your health." Caretaker said, and stepped from the cover of the entryway onto the path.

"I don't want to," said Danny.

"The journey yesterday was long, child. And you have not eaten since before it."

"Because of you.”

"Because of me?” Caretaker asked. “You refused dinner yesterday. That was not my choice."

He turned and began walking. His boots tapped against the paving stones.

Danny trailed after him. "I only needed dinner in the first place because you stole the food I brought," he said.

"You needed it?" Caretaker's voice was sly. "You were hungry?"

Danny’s stomach lurched.

"No,” Danny said, quickly. "I meant that I didn't have what I needed in order to have dinner. If I needed it. Which I didn't. Because you stole it."

Caretaker stopped, turned. "I will not let you poison yourself while you are in my care. And you know how I feel–"

"Poison?"

"They are coated in the plastics that are poisoning the human realm."

Danny filed away the stilted phrasing for later–seriously? 'The plastics?'--and homed in on "Are? You still have them? Give them back."

"No."

"You don't even eat 'the plastics,'" Danny said, imitating Caretaker's weird way of saying it.

"I certainly do not."

"You know what I mean!"

"And what is wrong with fresh food? You haven't even seen it."

"You said it came with consequences."

"So does the ‘Hill’n’Dale P.B. n’Choco D-Lite. With added iron’."

"Why did you say it like that."

"It is its name."

"You don't say mine," said Danny.

Caretaker gave him a sharp look.

Right. Caretaker didn't even like exaggerations.

"You don't say it often," corrected Danny with a roll of his eyes.

"That," said Caretaker, pausing at the top of a small stair, "is because your name is important. I would not give it freely. Not everyone listening cares to make themselves known, even in the human world."

Danny took the stairs after him. "So you don't hate my–"

There was unexpected cloth beneath his foot, an unexpected tug at his waist, and then a very unwanted trip in the direction of the paving stones.

Caretaker caught him before his hands could.

"Get off me!" Danny snarled.

Caretaker did, retreating until he was barely in arms' reach.

Danny ignored the expression on his face in favor of looking down with a scowl. "It's these stupid pants," he said. "They won't! Stay! Up!"

He tugged at them with each word for emphasis, fabric audibly snapping taut with the last.

"They are not meant to trip you."

Danny whipped his head up to glare at Caretaker. "Well they're pretty good at it! You know what's not? My pants."

"You know why you do not have them."

"I don't, actually. I just know what you told me."

"I do not lie, child."

"You keep saying that."

"Regardless," said Caretaker. "Your belief or disbelief in questions of my nature does not resolve the problem."

"The problem of you stealing my clothes? And food?"

"The problem," said Caretaker, "of your clothes impeding your movement. Worn properly, they would not."

"I'm sorry I'm not wearing your stupid clothes up to your standards," snarled Danny. "It's just that I've never worn them before and they didn't come with an instruction manual, you see."

Caretaker tilted his head. "Would it be so odious for me to show you?"

"What," said Danny, who was running on far less sleep than he wanted and was nowhere close to taking the SATs.

"Your clothes," said Caretaker. "I could show you how to wear them, so that they do not impede you. It was not my intent for you to trip."

“Well they did. Trip me, I mean.”

“And if I showed you how to wear them, they would not,” said Caretaker.

Danny barely heard him.

Behind Caretaker, the sun was lining the ridgeline of a roof in honey.

It was atop one of the square buildings through the trees from yesterday, and, abruptly, Danny realized the path they were on led there.

Now that they were closer, it looked like a house.

Caretaker's house?

For a moment Danny was arrested by the thought of what might wait for him there. If he might get chucked into a big pot of stew because of some loophole he hadn't spotted. If Caretaker would turn him into bread, or whatever the nursery rhyme was.

"May I fix them?" asked Caretaker, and Danny remembered they were having a conversation.

"What's wrong with the way I put them on?" asked Danny in lieu of answering.

"A number of things," said Caretaker. "May I?" He knelt.

Danny didn't move, except to bite his lip. "Why can't I just fix this myself?"

"Because the knots require a certain skill to tie."

"I can't just use regular ones?"

"And," added Caretaker, "the folds you must make also require some measure of skill."

"You gave me clothes that are hard to wear?"

"Not by our standards. But for a human–yes."

"Why?"

Caretaker's face contorted again, too quickly there and gone to see properly, much less interpret. "A good question," he said. "You could say I had forgotten that you would not know."

"Why would I know? I'm not a fae."

"Do you recall me claiming otherwise? But there is a certain expectation which I did not account for. I apologize."

"You apologize? Does this mean I can get my clothes back?"

"It means what I have already offered–that I would be happy to show you how to wear them."

"That's a no, then." Danny sighed, and sat on one of the steps, out of the range of Caretaker’s hands. One of the legs of his pants had fallen enough that it covered a foot, and Danny frowned at it. That explained tripping, at least.

There was a rustle, and Caretaker arranged himself beside him in a flutter of cloth. Several minute arrangements of the folds later, he stilled.

Danny pointedly scooted a few more inches away from him.

"Becoming familiar with them today will aid you tomorrow," Caretaker offered, seemingly ignoring the slight.

"And what am I doing tomorrow?" asked Danny. "You never said last night. Actually, what am I doing today?"

"There is a forest path," said Caretaker. "We will be following it elsewhere."

"Where elsewhere?"

"As for today, I thought we might start with preparing food."

"Preparing–what?"

Caretaker didn't respond immediately, instead looking out at the trees. Dawn had reached their trunks, and when he followed Caretaker's gaze Danny could see scattered patches of golden light in the forest floor they guarded.

"What food?" Danny tried again.

Caretaker hummed. But it was only after the gold had crawled some distance further down the trunks that he spoke.

"Your mistrust confuses me," Caretaker said. "But I will attempt to accommodate it even so. Even food you make here will have consequences that food from the human world will not. But you will be able to take part in its making, and humans have a talent for thresholds."

He finally looked away from the forest edge and back to Danny. There was a slight frown creasing his face, but the deep lines that had etched it earlier were starting to fade in the morning light.

Danny waited for him to elaborate.

"I don't know what that means," he said after it became apparent that Caretaker would not.

"You don't?" Caretaker's frown deepened again. "Your parents are hunters. Did they not teach you this?"

"The only thing they told me about your food was not to eat it."

"But they did teach you of thresholds."

"Yeah," said Danny. Belatedly, he realized actually admitting that might not be the best idea. "Maybe," he amended.

If Caretaker thought anything of the correction, he did not voice it. His eyes returned to the light on the trees, and for a time the only thing between them was birdsong and the soft breeze of a summer morning.

Danny took the time to think.

Regardless of whether Caretaker's claims about being unable to lie were true, Danny's parents had been careful to teach him that there was more than one way to lie. Even if a fae couldn't lie with words, actions could deceive in other ways.

But…that meant he could do it, too, couldn't he? He could lie with his actions, and whatever weird thing Caretaker had with lying…

Maybe he wouldn't care. Maybe…maybe he wouldn't even know.

It couldn't be obvious.

But maybe it didn't have to be subtle, either. Whatever was going on with Caretaker, it was at least clear that he was dedicated to the appearance of caring about Danny. If Danny played into that, instead of fighting it…

Maybe he could pretend.

"If," Danny wet his lips. "I helped make food, what would it be?"

Just because he helped make it didn't mean he would have to eat it. He could throw it away. He could mess up and burn the food and pretend it was an accident.

All he had to do was play along.

Caretaker looked at him with an expression that was uncomfortably like relief. When he spoke his voice was soft and full of longing.

"Bread," he said. "I would have us make bread together. Syrups, from the flowers and fruits which will not bind you. There are petals that I have candied that would only give you a certain lightness in your step, and could be made to leave you with the moon's last light.

"We could make a pie, if you wished. The milk and the eggs of faerie are laden with enough memories and sense of home that you would be tied here, if we used them. But we could make do with other things. There are nuts, and grains, and the plants do not remember as the hares do. The trees can be convinced to give freely of their fruits, and there are a great many things in the garden. We could fold its meats into dumplings and steam them so that they would burst with sweet flavor on your tongue."

Caretaker's hand lifted in a fluttering, half-aborted motion.

"It is not much. I wish to give you more. So much more. There are heartier things, toothsome ones which could give you strength and cheer and surety. You would love them, I am sure. The cream–But it is light fare that meets your demands. And the work could be light together, and glad. And you could be reassured."

"Oh," said Danny, off balance again.

Caretaker wasn’t done.

"Or we could make rolls. I know how to make them as soft on the inside as cotton down, and we could have them with tea. Some of the blossoms in the garden are sweet. You've not had drink since yesterday, I know."

That was true.

"I've never had flower tea before," Danny said.

Caretaker tilted his head. "You could try it."

He didn't really want to.

"Can I have water?" Danny asked.

Caretaker brightened. "Yes." He stood in a single, fluid motion, and held his hand out for Danny to take.

He didn't want to. But if he were going to play at being cooperative, he probably should.

Danny reached up, and took it.

Caretaker's hands were still ungloved, still uncanny, more like too-large harvestmen than anything human. But his skin was dry and cool to Danny's touch, and his brass nails pressed lightly into the back of Danny's hand as he stood, and then Danny was up.

The trees across the meadow were almost fully lit, now, and the light had shifted from the molten orange of daybreak to a cooler yellow.

"There will be water in the kitchens," said Caretaker. "It is only a short distance more."

Danny nodded, lifted the cloth of his pant leg off the ground, and followed Caretaker in.

#danny phantom #ectoberhaunt23 #dread #danny phantom dp #clockwork dp #funerary rites fae au #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite

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jackdraw-spwrite · 7 months

Text

By Storm, By Claw, By Sanguine Moon

Chapter 2

For Ectoberhaunt day 19 - Claw (originally for Phantasy Phest)

Words: 6729 Characters: Maddie Fenton, Jack Fenton Warnings: Body horror (of the skin breaking, bone cracking variety)

Once again, this fic is a collaboration between multiple authors! The others are: @akela-nakamura, @datawyrms, @seaglass-skies, and @five-rivers.

Read it on AO3 or below the readmore:

The rain didn’t let up.

All through the night it poured, and Maddie wondered if she should revise her estimate of the weather controller’s power or intelligence downward. Or both.

On the other hand, maybe this was a concerted effort to wear them out before the eclipse even happened.

The power at Fentonworks was still out, despite their best efforts and their nearest neighbors (who were admittedly further away than average - some people just couldn’t stand the slight inconveniences that came with advancing science) being just fine. The sunrise had also found Maddie with a rash at her joints. Some damp must have gotten past the waterproofing. Or maybe the sweat-wicking layer wasn’t up to snuff anymore. Once the power was back on, she’d have to wash the whole thing and check. As for Jack, he’d been complaining of a sore back off and on all morning.

“Try it now!” called Jack from where he’d wedged the upper half of his body into the electrical maintenance box that the city had installed between them and the power grid when– Well, it had hardly been their fault, but the city didn’t see it that way.

Maddie flipped the main power switch in the circuit box back and forth. “Nothing!” she called.

“Hey, Mom?” called Danny from near the door. “We’re going to Tucker’s, since they have power, okay?”

“Okay,” said Maddie, distracted, waving over her shoulder even though she knew he wouldn’t see her. “Have fun!”

“Okay, this time, I’ve got it!” said Jack. “Go ahead!”

Jack had not got it, and now Maddie could hear him grumbling. “Maybe we ought to switch,” she suggested.

“I’m going to the library!” yelled Jazz, not waiting for an answer before slamming the front door behind her.

Really. What were she and Jack supposed to do about that? Well. They’d have to talk eventually. During dinner, maybe?

“One more time, Maddie, one more time!”

Maddie flipped the switch again. This time, the power turned on, and she smiled with relief. At least something was going right this time.

“Great job, Jack! Now we can check the Fenton Devilry Detector readouts!”

They went down into the lab, where the machinery was still gradually humming to life. Monsters frequently had many natural defenses against observation, going far beyond mere camouflage, so Jack and Maddie had to be as clever about finding them as they were about catching them. Some monsters could only be detected by the oldest technology, others by the newest. Some required brand new inventions.

Jack and Maddie could hardly spend all their time monitoring all that equipment all around town, though, so they’d automated their detectors, and made machines to monitor their machines, and programs to collate the data. It was all very complicated, and sent their electricity bill through the roof. It was worth it, though, to know that even creatures that could only be photographed on archaic silver plate couldn’t evade notice because of it. Especially because the monsters like that had to be full of hubris that they’d never be caught. But they would, one day.

Because the Fentons were prepared.

However, it turned out that such a system didn’t hold up well against ordinary human vandalism, storms, or even time. For example, a machine that operated a polaroid on a timer, then took a picture of the resultant polaroid to send back to the Fentonwork’s servers had many points of failure. As such, Maddie wasn’t surprised to see that the main screen was covered in red OFFLINE notifications.

But visual monitoring wasn’t the only kind. They had others, as well. Things akin to seismometers but for certain kinds of magic. They had microphones and EMF readers but these were not what Maddie was looking for. Maddie was looking for something specific.

Through hard-fought trial and error, she and Jack had discovered something critical: Magic didn’t behave like light. It didn’t, precisely, behave as a gas either. But that analogy was closer.

Magic left traces. Magic built up, and magic lingered. They might not be able to watch everything across the city, but when they needed to look for evidence of foul play, they could compare readings in the local ambient magic.

It was this system, that Jack had named the Fenton Devilry Detector, in honor of his ancestor, whose writings had given them the foundation for its construction, that Maddie and Jack rebooted now.

There were no overnight readings logged, an unfortunate consequence of their lab being offline. But the system had been functional right up until the power outage, and what the graphs showed was unmistakable.

“It’s centered right on the house,” said Maddie, tracing the massive spike in detected magic with one finger. Although, calling it a spike might have been inaccurate. Magic levels around Fentonworks in particular, and even Amity Park in general, had always been high, and had been building gradually for months - no doubt due to the monsters that used it finally recognizing Jack and Maddie as a threat. This, though… This was far in excess of even that. This was a sudden, severe change that, if Maddie was reading this right, had pulsed in time with the storm overhead.

It could only be an attack.

An attack, not only on Jack and Maddie, but their family.

Maddie picked at her lower lip, already trying to determine the best way to safeguard her children. Keeping them both home until they figured everything out would be… Well, it would be ideal, but the government wouldn’t see it that way, and from historical evidence, neither would Jazz and Danny. (Especially, Jazz, right now. After last night’s fight, Maddie had no idea where she stood with her daughter.) And whoever had attacked had clearly known about Fentonworks, and had known how to get around at least some of their protections. Talismans might work, if they could get the kids to wear them… Capturing the monsters would be better, but despite Jack’s confidence, they couldn’t count on that yet.

She itched at her elbow.

At least the kids would be safe during the day.

Jack groaned loudly, and started vigorously scratching his stomach. “I don’t know about you, Maddie, but I think some water got into my suit. It’s definitely not sensitive skin safe anymore, oh boy!”

“I have noticed some itching this morning,” Maddie frowned. “I was hoping it was only my suit that had failed. If yours has too, it might be a materials issue. Why don’t we set these aside for testing?”

“Don’t have to ask me twice!” Jack said, cheerful despite still itching at his stomach. Maddie pulled out two new jumpsuits for them, checking to see when they’d last been inspected and had their various protections redone.

Jack pulled out several pieces of testing equipment. He had to pause a couple times to rub his back against the corner of the wall like a bear scratching on a tree. Maddie frowned and hurried to get Jack a new suit. She could feel the itch spreading as well, and had to stop herself from starting to scratch at her neck.

She passed Jack his new jumpsuit, and went to go change in the small decontamination chamber’s locker room. She took a bag in with her, and placed her defective suit inside. Whatever was wrong with it, they didn’t want it to get even more contaminated before they had a chance to analyze it, and they didn’t want whatever had caused it to break down to spread.

Also, they’d been up all night, and they needed to sleep. Leaving the damaged jumpsuits and trusting they’d just remember which ones they were was just tempting trouble.

Maddie inspected her skin. There was a slight rash, but nothing terribly alarming. Still, better to be safe than sorry. She picked up the Fenton Decontamination and Exfoliation Wash, a body wash she and Jack had developed that was designed to purge negative magical influences. It itself contained ‘magical’ substances, but, well, decontamination procedures were never perfect.

For more severe cases of contamination, for example, being struck directly by an effect, or ensnarement by one of the more infectious monsters they knew to exist, there were other measures. Some simple, if tedious, like smudging or ritual purification, others… more dangerous, if not less necessary.

It was important to plan for such things, in as dangerous a line of work as they had chosen.

She lathered it over the first the rash, and then the rest of her body. Something had gotten through the protections of the suit enough to irritate her skin at the joints. It was likely trace amounts had found their way elsewhere, and she just hadn’t reacted yet.

It was best to be thorough, with these things.

The wash stung as she rubbed it into the irritated skin, like aloe vera on sunburn.

She stepped out of the shower, patting her hair dry. Jack was still in, and she decided to wait for him. As tired as she was, she didn’t want to touch any of their more involved projects. This wasn’t the first time she’d pulled an all-nighter, but she and Jack hadn’t slept much lately. Preparations for the eclipse were taking longer than they’d expected. Tools disappeared or were misplaced. Plans were miscommunicated or derailed by distractions. Rather, that’s what seemed to be happening on the surface.

Not for the first time, she wondered if someone was interfering deliberately. Or rather, how many were, and who.

Some of the monsters they’d gotten ahold of had told them things in an effort to weasel out of what was coming. Nothing that could be trusted implicitly, of course. Every monster was a practiced liar, even the ones that couldn’t. Especially the ones that couldn’t.

(There were ways to lie, she knew, while technically telling the truth.)

But enough to wonder, especially about certain more active members of the infestation creeping in this town.

Like Phantom.

Her eyes wandered up to a poster she and Jack had pinned to the wall a few weeks ago. It had been part of a presentation they’d made hoping they could convince the children that monsters, especially fairies, especially that one that loitered around the school, no doubt hoping to find easy kidnapping victims, weren’t to be trusted.

The poster featured a mock up of what their research suggested fairies of that type really looked like under the glamours. The small monsters appeared pretty and harmless, but that appearance was much like the lure of an anglerfish, designed only to draw in victims.

Fairies were small, ugly, insectoid things. Their bodies were segmented, covered in hair-like filaments and exoskeletal plates. Their mouths were grotesqueries that fused canine-like teeth with oversized mandibles. Their wings, instead of being brightly patterned, were likely drab, tattered things, possibly even covered with oily, beetle-like wing cases. Instead of hands, they had long, scythe-like claws that lacked an opposable digit entirely. Even their large eyes, so good at conveying innocence, were in truth more like the bulging, compound eyes of a fly.

Without magic and humans to deceive with it, fairies would be no better than cockroaches. Small, useless things, scuttling in the dark.

But they did have magic, and they did use it to trick humans. Especially human children, which even so-called fairy tales agreed were their favorite prey.

The fairy in the poster was a fairy like that, drawn in detail by Jack and labeled lovingly by Maddie. Jazz and Danny had barely looked at it before dismissing it.

(Her kids had been so dismissive of their work, lately. Everything she and Jack did was met with disbelief. They were nearly scornful of it.)

Maddie sighed and turned away– Then froze. She’d thought– But, no, it had just been a warped reflection in the glass of one of the older computer monitors. They really needed to find a better place for that.

Before she could start to compile a list of better places, Jack came out of the shower, towel wrapped around his head. She smiled. She remembered when Vlad taught them how to do that, back in college.

“Man,” said Jack. “I’m beat. Makes you wish monsters knew what bedtime was, huh?”

“Now, now, Jack,” said Maddie playfully, “if they knew what bedtime was, they wouldn’t stay out where we could catch them half as often.” She patted his shoulder and hid a wince as her suit dragged painfully against the rash at her shoulder. “Let’s get to bed. We’ll be ready to take on all the monsters in the world when we get up.”

Maddie was not ready to take on all the monsters in the world when she woke up. She must have strained herself much more than she’d thought before bed. She hadn’t even run for all that long. But clearly, her muscles disagreed. They protested as she reached for her alarm clock, and she contemplated simply returning to sleep.

But that had never helped with muscle soreness in her experience, and she wanted to catch at least some of the remaining afternoon light, sodden as it was. The work was worth it, of course. But Maddie had never taken well to nocturnal hours on the occasions they’d been required. She’d always been more of an early bird than Jack, and daylight had always made her feel more balanced. She left both her earplugs and her sleeping husband in the bedroom and padded downstairs.

The bottom floor was deserted. The house was quiet with the door to their bedroom shut, and light filtered through the windows in the living room. The couch with its soft cushions was inviting, but Maddie went up the stairs to the roof. There, she settled on the damp edge of the cornice and took a sip, waiting for it to return life to her body.

The kids were probably still out. Maddie could see that Jazz’s car was gone, and Danny loved spending time with his friends.

Despite the stresses of the last day, Maddie smiled. That boy and his friends. They really were as thick as thieves, always out doing something or other. Or in. She couldn’t quite understand the appeal of shooting demons in a video game when you could be going out and doing it in the real world, but she more than approved of the sentiment.

She itched at the crook of her elbow, then pulled a face. Rubbing already irritated skin would only make it worse, even with the soft lining of her jumpsuit.

She finished her coffee, then did some stretches to help with the soreness before returning downstairs. She was hungry, and Jack would be too when he woke. Maybe she could order out Chinese?

She certainly didn't feel like cooking—she could admit, to herself, that she wasn't great at it. She idly opened the drawer with all the local menus, and started digging for the Chinese menu. Her fingers, she noted, ached slightly with the movement.

In fact, she was still pretty sore all over, the stretching having only helped for a short while.

Ah, well. It would fade. It always did. She shook some stiffness out of her joints and dialed the place.

A few minutes later, she went back upstairs to nudge Jack awake. It always took him a little bit to drag himself out of bed, and if he started now he might be downstairs by the time the food arrived.

Maddie didn’t bother saying his name as she pushed open the door; she’d never seen Jack wake to a sound for as long as they’d been married. Instead, she opened the blinds, pulled the blankets down, peeled his sleeping mask off, and–

…frowned.

There was a rash around his eyes. More, it didn’t look like any rash she’d ever seen.

She shook him.

“Bwuh,” Jack said, face screwed up as he grappled with wakefulness.

“Jack,” she said. “There’s something on your face.”

“Sleeping mask,” he said, and tried rolling over.

She didn’t let him. “Jack,” she repeated. “I think the rash is getting worse.”

"Feels worse," he said. "Think'm dying."

"Jack Fenton, you are not dying."

"How do you know," said Jack. "I hurt all over."

"So do I. We're sick, Jack. Not dying." She hoped.

"Brave woman. Steel will. S'no wonder I married you. Be a fool not to."

Maddie sighed in exasperation and fondness. That was Jack for you, still complimenting her while claiming to be on his deathbed.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she said.

"It got me you."

"Jaaack," Maddie said. "Fine, you flatterer. What do you want?"

"Five more minutes?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm setting a timer." Maddie got up to leave, and paused in the doorway. "If you're not up by the time dinner gets here, I'm eating your orange chicken."

A few minutes later, Maddie heard the stairs creak under Jack's feet. A few moments later he appeared in the kitchen doorway, slumped dramatically against the frame.

"Maddie," he said. "I think we've been cursed."

Maddie put another glass away. "Why?" she asked.

"No illness could lay Jack Fenton low like this," he said, too strained to say it with his usual excitement.

"Except for the flu eight years ago," Maddie gently reminded him.

"That was pixies."

"Mmmm," said Maddie, unwilling to start that argument again while nursing a full body ache. She’d checked. Multiple times. It had been the flu, and not anything supernatural.

"And this feels too sudden. And so soon after the attack on our generator..."

"Mmmm," Maddie said again, but with a much different tone.

Jack had a point. On the other hand, running around in the rain at all hours was a much more mundane explanation. They weren’t as young as they used to be. And while their suits should have protected them from the cold and damp, they already knew the material had failed to protect them in at least one way.

"Maybe," she said at last. "Why don't we run those tests once the food gets here? The kids aren't home, so we could eat in the lab."

Jack laughed, but there was a pained edge to it. “Yeah, no Jazz to scold us, huh? Ah. Hah.”

Maddie pressed her lips into a thin line. “Hopefully, they’ll be back soon,” she said, rather than addressing what Jack was clearly thinking. With how upset Jazz was, it was more likely that she’d give them the cold shoulder than scold them.

Or maybe not. It was becoming apparent that she didn’t know her daughter as well as she’d thought. Either of her children, really, she reflected, thinking back on some of Danny’s… odder behavior, recently. She didn’t understand it at all.

They really needed to have that talk.

“Right!” said Jack, finally managing an exclamation point. “To the lab to figure out what felonious fairy is behind our feeble feelings!”

Oh, Jack. He always knew how to cheer Maddie up.

Down to the lab they went.

Usually, the lab felt welcoming. It was as familiar and lived-in to Maddie as the living room upstairs. Usually, the clean lighting, clutter, occult diagrams, and metal tables were just as much a comfort as the dozens of experiments plugging, percolating, or maturing away on the tables. It always felt like protection. It always felt like progress. Progress of knowledge, of their bulwark against the things that stalked the night.

But tonight Maddie felt all of the weight of dirt, concrete, and metal overhead, pressing down, as if to bury them alive.

Ominous and suffocating.

Like a coffin.

Maddie took a deep breath. She hated being sick.

“Ooh,” said Jack. “This is a bad curse. We’ve got to figure it out right away!”

"What makes you say that?" Maddie asked.

"Queasy," said Jack. "And I think my claustrophobia is kicking in. I forgot I had that, after that one time we had that abandoned mine dropped on us."

"I'm feeling that, too." Maddie frowned. But what would trigger those memories? Why would a curse give them a rash and a mild case of claustrophobia? Maybe the creature that cursed them just hadn’t been very strong. Or maybe the curse had been stronger, but their protections had deflected most of it.

Or it wasn't a curse. They hadn't confirmed it yet, after all. And there was more than one way for monsters to hurt humans.

They pulled the suits out of storage. Preparations were interrupted by the arrival of food, but shortly they had takeout boxes at one table, and their compromised suits on another.

(As Jack said, if those monsters thought they’d be stopped by this, they had another thing coming.)

Jack, eagerly following his theory, was assembling their collection of more occult and mystical devices. Most of them would have limited utility in examining the suits, but… Maddie sighed, fondly. Jack would get everything sorted out. From outside, his process might seem chaotic, but he always got fascinating results.

Maddie, for her part, had on her set of magnifying goggles and was going over the inside of her suit inch by inch, starting with the edges and seams. With gloves, of course. While she was assuming the cause of the rash was irritation due to water getting inside the suit lining, assumptions didn’t rule out other causes, like unexpected chemical reactions, or even the curse Jack was so sure of.

So far she hadn’t found any tears. If there weren’t any, she’d take samples of the inner lining to test for common skin irritants. That would be truly tedious work. There were enough chemical irritants in the world that it was quite possible that she’d never figure it out, and have to leave it as a mystery… Unless it also happened to another suit. That would be an unacceptable mystery, and a real danger to herself and Jack.

“Maddie!”

“Hm?” said Maddie, looking up. She experienced a moment of vertigo, and raised her hand to remove her magnifying goggles. “What is it?”

“Look!” He pointed, and Maddie traced his finger to the Fenton branded All-Things-Thaumaturgy Amplified Quantifier.

Maddie inhaled sharply. “Is that…?”

“That’s the reading for the suit,” said Jack, gesturing with the modified microphone attached to the Quantifier. He pointed it at himself, and the line on its graph leapt into the stratosphere. “And that’s me.”

Maddie cursed softly under her breath. “Let me take a look at my readings,” she said, rolling her chair over.

They were the same.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” asked Jack. “This isn’t an instant curse. This is something that’s stuck, and stuck hard.”

Maddie leaned back in her chair, musing over the readings. There was an urgency building in her, but she had to think. Curses were dangerous, wild things, governed by the will and wording of the one who cast it. Curses that didn’t show up immediately, that stuck and built, were especially dangerous—and unpredictable. They weren’t easy to get rid of, nor were they easy to understand.

They had to be methodical about this. They had to find out the nature of the curse, and who cast it. She steeled herself, and looked back at her husband.

”Alright,” said Maddie, “we can narrow down the kind of curse… or at least diagnose the symptoms. From there, we can cross-reference cures, loopholes, and probable perpetrators with our library.”

“Well, feeling awful is one,” said Jack. “Plus the claustrophobia.”

“Maybe a cave or tunnel based creature, then? Like with the mine?” Maddie shook her head. “That doesn’t line up with the storm. And I don’t know why something like that would give us rashes of all things.” She set her elbow on the work bench and leaned forward. “Speaking of which, I really don’t like the look of the rash around your eyes. If we can’t figure out the cause, soon, we might have to focus on stopping the spread.”

“Rash around my eyes?” repeated Jack. He walked over to one of the sinks, and peered into the mirror. “What rash around my eyes?”

He jolted a bit, when he looked into the mirror. The rash had spread, past the rounds of his goggles. It drifted down his cheekbones, climbed his forehead, and was thicker around his eyes themselves. Concern shot down Maddie’s spine—she hadn’t realized how bad it’d gotten. It still didn’t look like any rash she’d seen before. It wasn’t red or inflamed, but it was undeniably a rash. The fact that it had gotten worse, despite showers and new suits, was alarming.

“Oh,” Jack said, blinking in the mirror. He snapped on a new glove, and gently touched the rash. “This is not a good look! Is this a reaction from the curse’s magic with our suits?”

Maddie hummed, even as she grabbed a sterile swab, and a new set of gloves for herself. She stepped over to Jack, running the swab over the rash before putting it into the sterile test tube.

“Maybe,” she said finally. “Take a sample from your goggles, and let’s see if there’s an environmental factor—this rain has been relentless.”

Jack did so, with much less of his usual gusto. Maddie couldn’t blame him—she felt tired and weighed down. Despite having slept for so long, and barely doing anything in the lab, she felt she could easily take another nap.

She couldn’t. They couldn’t. With the eclipse coming, and a curse to solve, they didn’t have time for more sleep. If they couldn’t fix the curse by the time the eclipse arrived, everything they’d worked for would be lost. This was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity!

They had to keep moving, to figure this out.

“Some dastardly monster thinks they can stop us,” Jack muttered, not able to get his usual volume. “A curse has never stopped a Fenton, and it won’t now.”

Maddie smiled to herself, even as she ran tests on the sample she’d taken from Jack’s rash. They wouldn’t be stopped.

Whatever evil being had cursed them, they’d soon regret it!

The curse was harder to pin down than expected. Usually it was a place that was afflicted with these sorts of monsters- cursing actual people took much more power and nefarious intent.

Even so, curses generally exerted their power through something. Effigies. Inscriptions. Sound. Blood. Sometimes more than one. If they could find that part of the curse, destroy that part of the curse, then the curse would start to unravel.

But they hadn’t found anything. Not yet.

At least they had been able to rule out the whole family being a target. Much as Jazz and Danny did their best to duck lifesaving checks, they got enough readings to feel a weight lift from their hearts. It was bad enough that some foul beast was after them without it threatening their children.

Danny’s readings were still uncomfortably high, but not in a new way. Jazz almost seemed like she might also be a target, but her contamination levels plummeted while theirs crept higher. Neither child was struggling with itches or food going foul in their mouths, a huge relief. They could put their whole attention on solving the curse much faster when not at risk of endangering the kids further.

A few days later, Maddie sighed as she took the final step down into the lab, and immediately headed into the corner to peel her wet jumpsuit off.

The rain was heavy today, coming down in fat, icy droplets that sank into the jumpsuit's cloth and stayed there, chilling the skin. By the time she'd finished setting up the battery of traps in the park woodlands, she'd felt icy herself and had been hard pressed to keep her hands steady against the cold.

The curse had made them allergic to the Fenton patented anti-moisture, sweat-wicking formula for sensitive skin, which wouldn't be a huge problem–except it was how they'd waterproofed all their jumpsuits. They'd had to switch to unfinished jumpsuits without the coating–and therefore, without the wet weather protection.

Needless to say, Maddie was looking forward to warming up.

A hot decontamination shower and a toweling later, she reached for a fresh jumpsuit–and froze.

The skin of her arm hadn't changed much from that morning. It was still the same scaly, angry red that covered most of her extremities. But there was something off about the movement of her forearm.

Slowly this time, Maddie repeated the action, making sure to watch her forearm as she did.

There.

It was smooth.

Not the skin. The skin was still rough from the rash. But beneath it–beneath it. Her forearm was smooth.

Maddie was a woman of science, but she was also a woman of action. She trained regularly, she kept herself fit enough to keep up with the human wrecking ball that was Jack. She fought using any number of weapons but liked staves especially, which gave her exceptional muscle development in her forearms.

She fluttered her fingers, and the back of her forearm remained motionless.

Maddie was a woman of action, and her forearm should have had enough muscle definition to see the individual muscles controlling the extension of each finger.

Should have. Usually, did have.

It did not.

Eyes could be fooled, especially while cursed. Instead of making assumptions, she let science find the truth.

The scanner showed dense plates of tissue forming beneath their skin.

They made a grocery run before the curse worsened. They didn't know how bad it would get, after all, and this way they wouldn't need to worry about food for a little while.

Jack was silent in the checkout line. Maddie felt stares prickle at her skin and pretended not to notice the way the cashier's eyes darted to the rash crawling up Maddie's cheek.

When they left, the rain was still coming down in a quiet rush. The sensation of droplets trailing down her face flared into burning when they made contact with the rash. With Jack unable to be as boisterous as he normally was, it felt like they’d lost the sun twice over. The burning pain was an unwelcome substitute in the gloom.

There was something watching them from reflections. It skittered in the corners of their vision, always careful, never quite slow enough to properly see. Or to shoot at.

Maddie saw the nebulous shadow of it in her peripheral vision as she soldered some final details on another set of traps, and pretended she had not.

Belatedly, she felt the hairs of her neck prickle.

She set the piece she was working on to the side, and reached for another, concentrating on the corners of her vision hard enough to make her eyes ache. After a moment, she eased her thumb off the on switch. She didn't need to stab herself with a fully heated soldering iron while trying to finally get a good look at the thing cursing them.

Quietly, she mimed continuing with her work, setting aside a few more pieces as she waited. It shouldn't have been convincing, but the shadow lingered. Apparently, it could be fooled. Good to know. She could make out more details, now. Too many appendages, too long. Huge, larger than she was.

A smear of red where the eyes would be. Similar, then, to Phantom's true form.

Maddie thought of her gun, holstered at her side.

Maddie thought of empathetic magic, and their research on how it might work. On how they thought that something projecting an image elsewhere might still be vulnerable to harm done to the reflection.

Finally, Maddie thought about the curse.

In one smooth blur she dropped the soldering iron, grabbed the gun, took aim, and fired at the thing cursing them–

And was left lightheaded from the sudden rush of adrenaline, arm out and gun pointed at–

At the charred divot in the sheet metal armoring the walls of the lab, directly in the center of her own head's reflection.

Nothing.

It was nothing.

But–if Phantom or something like it was channeling this magic through reflections, through their reflections, maybe that was something.

Maybe it could be disrupted.

They covered mirrors, painted the stainless steel of the laboratory walls, even hid glass.

It didn't work.

The first time it happened, they thought it was a fluke. A result of improper weapons safety due to their single minded focus on the curse. Jack had placed one of their newer weapons on the table, a thing of gleaming metal, automatic aim, salt and iron ammunition, and an alert function. It was as yet unnamed, but compact and efficient. It was a favorite of Maddie’s.

But Jack had placed it down, and Maddie had found herself catching a glimpse of a red laser, hearing the humming whine of the auto aim—and she ducked, just in time for the weapon to lose its target. Just in time for it not to fire.

Jack had been horrified. He’d checked the weapon over a dozen times, and nothing had seemed amiss.

They concluded it was either an accidental slip that had primed the weapon, and something possibly needing adjustment in its targeting code.

They moved on with their research on the curse.

The hair on Maddie’s head came off in chunks.

At least, the hair that didn't thicken and stiffen until she had a twin set of antennae emerging from her forehead.

They kept the blinds closed. When a package delivery came, Maddie signed for it with her hood up.

The second time it happened, it was something simple. She’d needed a break from their research, from the headache she genuinely couldn’t tell if it was from the curse or from the stress of it. She couldn’t think straight, and as much as it rankled, she knew she’d be useless in doing more research.

She’d pulled out some simple protections and a couple of small net projects. They needed nets of various sizes for the upcoming eclipse, and while Jack liked to show off with the large ones, Maddie did enjoy weaving together the smaller ones.

The net itself was itchy against her skin, but it was made of a new weave of fibers, embedded with near gossamer iron and silver. There was also a new mix of herbs she’d had some luck with, but she needed to mix up more to soak the net in.

With the net on her lap, and the various herbs around her, she’d begun to mix.

And had managed to spill some of the garlic, sage, St. John’s Wort, and yarrow mixture on her hands and down her arms.

It had taken her several moments of frustrated clean up for her to realize what was happening—and for the pain to kick in.

The mixture was burning her, and where she’d touched the net felt raw and prickly.

Her stomach sank as she moved robotically over to the sink.

Just how deep did this curse run?

Breaking mirrors was bad luck. Fortunately, it was unnecessary when you had a sandblaster. It even worked on steel.

The third time, Maddie clutched the toilet, thinking, thinking, trying to think of what she might have eaten, what she might have done to feel like this. They’d barely been out of the house. It had to be the curse again. Was this it? Had it been taking her through this horrible transformation only to kill her like a stomach bug? She hadn’t eaten anything she didn’t eat all the time.

The ingredients. Pasta, tomatoes, onions, garlic–

Garlic.

Like in the mixture that had burned her so badly only a few days ago.

Jack's hair was wiry, and too stiff. Too thick.

They had only two leads. What was happening to their reflections and what was happening to themselves. They didn’t want to let the curse run its course, didn’t want to see the form it ultimately took, so, when covering or defacing the mirrors didn’t work, they studied them.

When viewed straight on, their reflections seemed… not normal, not with what was happening to them, but not otherwise supernaturally altered. But from the corners of their eyes, they were more. More changed. More alien. More monstrous.

Maddie and Jack designed new machines, new tools for measurement, new methods. They compared the readings of mirrors that were reflecting them to mirrors that were not. They set cameras to record their reflections. They argued and built and tested and…

And all they knew for sure was that mirrors were involved somehow.

Entering the kitchen was like walking headfirst into a wall of acidic fumes. They had to throw out some of the herbs with tongs, and their eyes and noses burned for hours after.

Among all their tests, all their increasingly frantic research, the house became a minefield. Weapons began to track them with increasing frequency, alarms went off when they entered the house or the grounds. It felt like every fifteen minutes they got a new alert on their phones, on their equipment about monsters in their house.

No matter how many times they searched, or how well, they never found a thing.

No one but themselves.

Jazz was out of the house for hours at a time. Danny had become a shadow, fluttering in and out at odd times.

Maddie tried, several times, to talk to her daughter but it seemed something got in the way every time. A new alarm would go off, or a weapon would malfunction and start to aim, or Maddie would forget and reach for something and feel the burn of herbs or certain metals.

As the days went on and the curse worsened, so too did things around the house. Every protection they had built into the very walls of their home was now a weapon against them.

Maddie feared they were running out of time.

Maddie scratched absently at the rash covering most of their bodies, and felt skin slide.

Her hair didn't.

Her hair didn't, and through it she could feel the texture of the flesh sloughing off, suddenly too loud, too wet, too much too much too much.

When she emerged from the shower, her arms and hands were segmented. Behind her, the shower looked like a crime scene.

(After that, they had to shut down the internal alarms—they were nothing but a never ending shriek, and neither she nor Jack could figure out how to make it stop targeting them but still protect their home.)

They did research. Not the scientific kind of research that they liked best, but delving through old and unreliable secondary and tertiary sources, trying to pick out strands of truth from among the razor-wires of misunderstandings and outright fabrication. Some books, Maddie hadn’t picked up since Danny was born.

One had ‘good’ fairies. That other had humans inadvertently casting curses on their family members. The one she’d just discarded had talked about monsters that had once been human, when Maddie knew that was impossible. None of their data supported such a transformation.

But it didn’t matter what their data supported when this was happening to them. When their appearances were so warped that they’d resorted to communicating to their children solely through notes and text messages. When so many of the protective wards they’d built up around their more sensitive or more dangerous equipment made them shy away.

They were desperate. It showed.

They tried dozens of cutesy neopagan countercharms. They worked through purification rituals with limited or even singular attestation. They pulled out screwdrivers and hammers and systematically removed and broke every mirror in the house and the MAV, despite the years of bad luck common wisdom claimed they should get with each one.

It didn’t work. None of it worked.

When Jack's eyes began to bulge from his sockets, growing until they were the size of tennis balls, it was no longer a surprise but a horrible confirmation: Phantom had cursed them to become like him.

It was a foul, monstrous trick befitting a wolf in child’s clothing like Phantom. They knew they weren’t monsters, not ‘fae’, but whatever magic it had woven was enough to convince their own eyes and tools. In a home primed and ready to fight off all foul creatures of the shadows, that was no small danger. There were safeguards they could no longer safely disable.

At this rate, they’d be unable to even stay in their own home.

#danny phantom #maddie fenton dp #jack fenton dp #ectoberhaunt23 #day 19 #claws #cw body horror #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite

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jackdraw-spwrite · 7 months

Text

Fine, Chapter 5

Words: 3033 Characters: Clockwork, Danny Warnings: Graphic description of a bad gear :(, body horror

No preview snippet today because we're starting with some body horror.

Read on AO3, or below the readmore:

The metal of the wall was smooth at Danny's back, and warm where his suit was cut away. The sides of the slot cupped his spine perfectly, and it matched its length as well. He could feel the top of it at the base of his neck, and the bottom at his tailbone.

There was a snick, and his spine was pinned neatly into place.

It was painless. It was curiously secure. When Danny tried to turn his head, he discovered his neck was immobile. But his eyes could move, and these he used to look at Clockwork. Questioning, devoid of panic.

"Synchronization is a delicate process when it's done so quickly,” explained Clockwork. “Immobility will keep you safe."

Oh. That made a certain degree of sense.

Danny tested his other movements, and discovered he could also move the fingers of his right hand. He wiggled them at Clockwork. Obligingly, Clockwork took it and gave it a squeeze.

Danny would have smiled at him if his mouth hadn't been locked into position. He tried to smile with his eyes instead. He wasn't that experienced at it, and briefly worried that he didn't do a very good job. But Clockwork seemed to understand regardless. He hummed again in response, soft and familiar before rubbing tiny circles on Danny's hand with his thumb.

Danny tried humming back, but it was like he was missing traction, spinning, lost. Like that part of him had been rendered silent, too–

And then something made contact.

It would be reasonable to assume the process of synchronizing with Long Now would be a jarring one, when it was driven by metal on metal contact. It would be reasonable to assume there would be scraping, especially if one were unfamiliar with the mechanics of gear works.

Neither was the case.

There was a click as a gear made contact with his spine (except it wasn't his spine, was it? There was something else with a sensation that he couldn't quite name) but the pressure it exerted was gentle at first. There was no violent catch like a bike shifting gears too quickly. It pressed, smooth and sure. It pressed harder, and Danny felt the pressure flow through him, through all of him from his head to his toes, before it began to ease.

Something settled. He couldn't say if it was inside him or out, and then the pressure faded.

Another click, a ratchet behind him and contact. Pressure like a cresting wave radiating from his back.

Settling.

Click.

Clockwork was watching him intently, still holding Danny's hand. He had woven his fingers together with Danny's and now he was fluttering them so they rose and settled back on Danny's skin in a quick staccato, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap.

Danny squeezed in silent thanks.

Settling. Click.

Another ratchet.

Pressure.

It felt like resting in a snowbank during a winter storm. Cozy and soothing and safe. Quiet, except the faint patter of falling snow.

Except here, there was a different sort of song, and that song wasn't discordant anymore.

Danny's eyelids fluttered.

Settling. Click.

If he listened carefully, he could hear the sound of the gears synchronizing him as their teeth beat the air. And yet the pressure was still gentle, still soft.

Settling. Click.

Pressure. The thrum of belonging. The song of time crashing into him over and over like it was rocking him to sleep. The rise and fall of anticipation in the air in time with him. Or him, in time with it.

The pressure steadied, dropped, became a slight and reassuring tug.

And then, with a feather-light brush farewell, it vanished. The pins holding him in place released, and Danny slid to the floor.

He wanted to protest. He felt like he'd just been dumped out of the world's most comfortable bed, but his mouth was still stuck open. He twisted his face into a deep frown, too sleepy to be embarrassed about it.

"I know," said Clockwork. "It is pleasant to be so synchronized, but we do have repairs to make."

He touched the back of Danny's neck again and his spine released, falling back into its usual curve. His jaw clicked as it returned to flexibility, and Danny eased it closed the rest of the way. He rubbed at it near his ear, but it didn't ache.

The sudden absence of peace did, though. It had washed over and through him with each additional step of synchronization, until it felt like part of him, like purpose and belonging and like he was a part of it and the lack felt, felt–

Danny looked back, eyes lingering on the slot that had so gently held him.

But Clockwork was right. They did have repairs to make, and enough of the pleasant hum of synchronization was still with him to drench the world in honey.

Or oil. Was it oil, now?

He took Clockwork's offered hand and clambered back to his feet, and Clockwork helped him back to the bench. Danny's legs felt as solid and stable as chains beneath him, and he clutched at Clockwork for support. When they reached the bench, Danny let himself fall to it with a thump.

He closed his eyes, rested his head against Clockwork’s shoulder, and spent a while just listening.

To himself. To Clockwork's mechanisms. And to the song of Long Now, which cascaded from the open door like a lullaby. It wrapped around him like another blanket and cloaked him in security.

"Daniel?" asked Clockwork.

Danny hummed. It earned him a chuckle and stroke of Clockwork's hand through his hair, which he pressed back against. He hadn't felt this at peace in months. It was like a joint that had been just out of place had popped back in, except the joint was his nerves. Instead of feeling worn and ragged, they felt soothed. Calm.

The relief was dragging him towards sleep.

"I'm going to remove the rest of your panels now," said Clockwork.

"Mmmm," Danny agreed. Where had Clockwork's cloak gone?

"You will need to stop leaning on me."

"Mmmm?"

"You will catch your teeth on my shirt, without the panels keeping them safe."

Clockwork worked quickly, gently, and with ease born of long practice. Soon, there was a jigsaw puzzle of panels set to the side and Danny's arm and hand lay open on the table.

Like this, the wires and gears and rods within seemed almost to spill from his arm. The strange depth within him was gone and without it, everything it had contained had little elsewhere to go than out.

Danny’s fingers and hand were a dizzying collection of rods and wires and other things. They bent weirdly, curving outwards even as they ran to his elbow in ruler-straight lines if he tilted his head just so. The articulation of each joint was incredibly intricate, and Danny couldn't help but imagine what it was like moving, even if looking at it–at any of it–made his eyes feel a little funny.

Clockwork moved to the panels around Danny's elbow, and then up his arm. With deft movements and soft tugs, the pile of panels grew. So, too, did the distance between the parts of his hand and arm. Or, maybe not?

Danny squinted, turned his head to the other side.

Gears that had started touching had stayed touching, even as the space between them had. Unfolded? Relaxed? Shifted, halfway between a holographic poster and an optical illusion. But no matter how he looked at it, one thing remained the same: Danny's arm was splayed out on the table, a huge mess of brass rods and wires and gears.

It looked like a maze. It looked…Danny’s lips quirked.

“It looks like we have quite the task at hand,” he said. “And arm, and elbow.”

A puff of air from Clockwork made Danny's hair flutter.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," he said.

And Danny was.

He hadn't really expected that. But sitting here next to Clockwork, with the song of Long Now thrumming in his ears in time with his gears and light streaming in from the garden, it was hard not to feel better.

He was safe here, even if he couldn’t, shouldn't, wouldn't want to stay. Here, he knew, Long Now would take care of him.

Clockwork would take care of him. Was taking care of him. The gentle tug and click of Danny’s panels was reminder enough of that.

The ever-present song of Long Now surged comfortingly around him, and Danny felt his eyes flutter.

His head was growing heavy.

Clockwork’s shoulder was right there…

Danny almost let his head fall back against it before remembering why it was a bad idea. With effort, he straightened his head and tried to focus.

Clockwork set a final panel of skin on the rest of the pile with a faint click that Danny felt as a tingle of sensation at his shoulder. Then, he turned to examining the bared machinery of Danny's arm.

With an index finger, Clockwork traced the lines of the wires. He hovered just above them, following them up and down, up and down as Danny watched.

Clockwork fell silent, deep in concentration.

Quietly, Danny pulled a face. He desperately wanted to disperse the nervous energy he felt at such close attention, but he also didn't want to disturb Clockwork’s concentration. The conflict was making him feel a little antsy.

Finally, Clockwork seemed to come to a decision. He reached for a pair of tweezers and grabbed one of the wires in a motion like a bird hunting for worms and then the comparison was driven from his mind because–

"That–pinches."

It took a moment for Clockwork to remember Danny was there. He paused before he pulled his head up from focusing on Danny's arm and even then it was more a tilt of the head than looking at Danny.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"I just, um. Didn't expect that. Can you? Could you, when I was touching your gears?"

"Yes," said Clockwork, the fondness in his voice unmistakable.

"What did it feel like?" Danny asked.

In answer, Clockwork touched one of Danny's gears with a careful finger.

"Oh," said Danny.

It felt a bit like pressure on a fingernail. Distributed, with little sense of specifics. But it was also indisputably there.

Danny reached out with his own hand, but Clockwork stopped him.

"Not all of them will be pleasant," he warned. "Remember that your arm is broken."

Danny stilled. Clockwork returned his focus to the intricate workings of his arm, tracing wires over and under one another, following chains of gears until–

"Here," said Clockwork. "Do you see it?"

Danny ducked his head so he could see what Clockwork was showing him.

It was a tiny thing, about the width of Danny's pinky, but it was about where his wrist had been. Perhaps a little farther up his arm, towards his elbow. It was nestled deep in among a chain of other gears and hard to see because of it, but the problem wasn't, once Danny could spot the gear at all.

He stifled a hiss.

The gear was warped horribly, the disc of it bent almost at a right angle. There were impressions in it that looked almost like bite marks, and its teeth were mangled. One was almost sheared off.

"What are you going to do?" Danny asked, feeling a little queasy.

"Fix it," said Clockwork. He tapped one end of the chain. "Does this hurt?"

Danny winced. "Yes."

"Then the damage isn't isolated to just that region. I'm going to try the rest of the way down your arm, to see where it ends. Tell me when it begins hurting."

They continued like that for a while, with Clockwork lightly testing what did and didn't hurt when he pressed on it. It sucked, but Clockwork never put a lot of pressure on anything, never made the contact anything but brief. And in the end they were left looking at a piece of Danny's arm surrounding the bent cog about as long as Danny's hand.

Danny’s stomach was tying itself in knots.

There were dozens of gears that had hurt when pressed. A few gears linked to wires in his fingers had teeth that were visibly smeared.

"How bad is it?" asked Danny, futilely. It was bad. It had to be bad.

"Worse than it would have been if it had been repaired quickly. There is a great deal of secondary damage to fix, now."

Danny's shoulders hunched, his dead arm flopping a little with the motion.

"However, I have repaired far worse damage, even to my own person. I will need to recast some of these, but most can simply be heated and hammered back out, or have their teeth welded."

Clockwork looked at Danny then, and even the accustomed creases of his frown were soft to match his eyes and tone.

"Everything here can be repaired, Daniel. There is no permanent damage."

It was clearly meant to be comforting. Danny wasn't sure it was, but he nodded anyway. The motion was jerky. Robotic.

Clockwork lingered on Danny's face for a moment longer before returning to his arm. He traced a circle in the air around the damaged part.

"Once I remove this we will be able to return some of your panels temporarily. You'll be able to lean on things without worrying as much about your gears, that way."

Things, Danny thought, meaning Clockwork. He couldn't pretend he didn't want to.

He kind of just wanted to curl up in general. The image of his mutilated gear kept floating to the top of his mind’s eye, and the idea of everything around it running into it, bending around it and going crunch…

Danny grimaced, and tried to pay attention to what Clockwork was doing.

Clockwork extracted the set of gears from the rest of Danny's arm in deft and delicate motions. He used tiny screwdrivers and similarly-sized tweezers to pick apart screws and extract shafts, and arranged them all on a soft cloth in neat columns.

Danny watched.

He could feel what Clockwork was doing, in pinches and flutters and tiny little twists, and while it didn’t feel bad it still felt–strange.

It felt strange.

He’d thought that once they were detached from him, he’d stop feeling anything from the gears. Instead it was like a thousand ghost-touches along surfaces he didn’t even know he had, like wind whispering along his arms, or ants marching in lines over his skin.

“This may hurt,” said Clockwork, and snaked his fingers beneath an entire section of gear wheels before lifting them in one big chunk.

It did hurt. But it was a deep and lingering kind of ache, and when Clockwork rested it upside down on the table, the ache ebbed. Clockwork set to untangling the mass of gears on the underside with the same movements he'd used earlier, and Danny left him to it. His arm had hooked his eyes once more.

The cavernous hole beneath the gears was exposed, now. And there–

It was only more machinery. More joints and wires and rods and other things Danny couldn't name, even if he could recognize some of them.

But it was more machinery.

Machinery all the way down.

Machinery, all the way through.

He'd known. But with the way the center of his arm had been so tightly woven of cords and other things, he'd been able to imagine bone somewhere underneath it all. Bone and flesh and muscle and brass growing around it like a shell, like hair or leaves or, or.

He hadn't been completely wrong. He could see a slip of something long and smooth and solid in the window left by the gears Clockwork had removed.

Clockwork moved back, and it shone gold in the light of the workshop, solid and smooth and–and cold.

It was brass.

He was brass, and ice, and crystal, all the way down. All the way through. Cold things. Machine things.

Dead.

…

Danny shook himself.

Clockwork had already finished dissembling all of the group while Danny had been distracted. There were columns of shining parts now, set so each piece rested in its own space. Like this, they seemed more like the random collections of parts Danny would find on a lab table back at Fentonworks than part of Danny.

"We will want to protect the other components of your arm while we work," said Clockwork. He tweaked the position of one of the gears.

Danny felt something flitter just on the edge of sensation and resisted the urge to rub at a wrist that wasn't there at the moment. "We?" he asked.

"You will want to know how to maintain yourself."

"If this ends up permanent," said Danny.

Clockwork looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. "You are curious."

With that, he began bundling the remaining parts of Danny's arm together again. He coiled loose wires into loops and secured them with ties. He folded things in so they lay closely together, if not neatly. In places, he wove cloth between parts of Danny's arm.

"As padding, and to keep them separate while the gears are absent," he explained. Then, "Do not worry. I would never use anything prone to dust."

And finally, after another lullaby-intoxicating fastening of Danny's panels, he was left with the odd sensation in his left arm of being at once stuffed, and compressed, and entirely too exposed.

Clockwork let Danny slump against him as he pulled himself back together.

And then there was nothing left before them but the set of little gears from Danny's arm.

"This one first," said Clockwork, and selected a gear wheel of moderate size. The shaft running through it was long and thin. "The pin is bent, see?"

Through lidded eyes, Danny watched the gear wheel spin unevenly between Clockwork's fingers. There was a tug at his senses as it did, a hint of friction overshadowed by a deep and uneasy movement that made his stomach twist from side to side with the pin.

"How do we fix it?" Danny asked.

"The forge, and a press."

#danny phantom #danny phantom dp #clockwork dp #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite #ectoberhaunt23 #23 day 11 #calm #body horror #cw body horror

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jackdraw-spwrite · 7 months

Text

Fine, Chapter 4

Words: 3065

Characters: Danny, Clockwork

Warnings: Body horror of a sort (character has been given machine insides they do not want)

"Best, I think, to begin with myself," said Clockwork, and brought his exposed forearm close enough for Danny to look.

Danny blinked. He’d expected–

But this was easier. More comfortable.

Wrapped in Clockwork’s cloak, tucked against his side and now with his other arm in front of him, Danny felt surrounded. Protected. Safe.

One step off from a hug.

Read the rest on AO3, or below the readmore:

And one step from a hug was a good place to confront what he didn’t want to see. He took a breath. tk-kt. Tried to take one.

And he looked down to the fate he was trying to avoid. Looked down to the mangled and tortured analogy of flesh and like a trainwreck Danny found himself transfixed by the sight.

Only…

Only it wasn’t.

Countless tiny gear wheels turned smoothly in their places, trailing up Clockwork's exposed arm and out of sight. A battery of rods were aligned in perfect parallel, the quick flick of delicate floral engravings the clearest sign that they were moving at all. Yet those flicks were with a synchronicity that made the entire assembly almost dance in place.

And beneath, there were more gears, more teeth.

There were ratchet arms and springs and countless other things Danny couldn't put a name to and beneath that there was a metal plate cut through with swooping holes and through them–

Through them there was movement.

The shadows danced. Intentional. Graceful. And above all: impossible.

"What," said Danny.

“What?” asked Clockwork, and Danny didn’t need to look away to hear the smugness of his tone.

“There’s too much stuff. It shouldn’t fit.”

"Clearly, it does."

A flash of irritation bolted through Danny at that. "Fine. It shouldn't fit."

“Shouldn’t it?”

Danny’s throat made a frustrated grinding noise that he’d only ever heard Clockwork make, before. He looked up, and the frustration must have been clear in his eyes because Clockwork relented.

"You have noticed that lairs do not obey euclidean geometry.”

"Yeah," said Danny, who only recognized the word because of Sam’s brief HP Lovecraft phase. He had noticed that lairs were weird, space-wise.

"Why should we be any different?"

He glanced back down to think. "Because. Um," Danny trailed off.

One of the gears near the surface moved oddly. Only some of its edge had teeth, and as it rotated it drove the smaller gear nestled beside it in spurts of movement. The uneven rotation made Danny's eyes do something funny.

Clockwork said something.

"What?"

"Would you like to touch it?"

"Isn't that dangerous?" The gears were moving quickly. And they seemed delicate, like if pressed too hard they might break.

He didn't want to break Clockwork.

"If it were going full speed, yes."

Before Danny's eyes, it slowed to a crawl.

He reached up, then hesitated. Even slowed, it seemed so fragile…

The reassuring pressure of Clockwork's hand left his head. Shortly afterwards, Clockwork's hand reappeared from the corners of Danny's vision.

"Here," said Clockwork. "Like this."

And he brought a single finger down to touch the gear. It rotated against Clockwork's finger, unbothered. In the gaps between Clockwork's fingers, Danny could see the odd teeth continue in their path, and a slice of the other gear it was driving.

"That doesn't hurt?" Danny asked.

"Not if I'm gentle."

Clockwork pulled his hand away, and then pressed lightly on Danny's skin.

"I am only using this much force," he said.

"Oh."

Danny brought his hand over the hole in Clockwork's skin and then gingerly down.

Down.

Metal, and Danny nearly withdrew.

"No," said Clockwork. "You’re not pressing too hard. Do you feel that?"

Danny did.

Beneath his finger, the metal was smooth. It was a little warm to the touch, just like most metal had been since he’d come into his ice powers. And Danny could feel it move against his skin. He could feel tiny, regular vibrations as it did: the voice of some other part of Clockwork extending through the structure of his machine.

It reminded Danny of a pulse.

And yet that was not the thing that most grabbed his attention. That was the curious, contradictory welcome of it. That was in the feeling of it feeling him reaching, and of it reaching back. Like fingers, intertwined.

Like comfort.

Like ho–

Some thoughts were too dangerous to finish.

Some time later found Danny tucked more deeply into Clockwork’s side in a pronounced lean. He was still preoccupied by Clockwork’s gears.

"It tickles," said Danny, wondering.

After he'd become comfortable with the first gear, Clockwork had removed a second panel to expose delicate chains, a maze of tensioned wires, and several more gears that danced just below the surface.

There was a set of gears interlaced in a chain, one end moving so fast it seemed robed in a honeyed gleam, and these were the latest thing to capture his attention. Danny brushed his fingers just above them, feeling the faint breeze they made with the speed of their movement but being careful not to touch. Unlike the other gears, Clockwork had said these might hurt if Danny disturbed it. So he did not touch.

But he could get close enough to feel the air getting pulled along. Close enough, apparently, to feel a tickle.

Clockwork's hum pulsed a little louder.

Clockwork replaced the panels he’d removed with methodical clicks. As he did, he explained what he was doing.

"And here," he said, "I'm hooking this spot around this wire here, do you see that? And then I pull at the same time I push" –snap– "here."

Danny made a noise of comprehension.

He'd been too distracted to pay much attention to how Clockwork was reattaching Danny's panel, before. From the outside, without the almost hypnotic pressure, it was easier to pay attention.

Like this, it was interesting. And soothing, in a different way that Danny had a hard time putting into words. And complex; the movement of Clockwork’s hand was hard to follow at points. He bent his fingers with inhuman flexibility and the dexterity of a craftsman, and they worked together in a dance.

He was doing it all one handed, too, and that made it more impressive. Danny wondered how he’d learned, and why.

Oh.

Clockwork had to do it one handed, didn’t he? It wasn’t like there was someone else who could help. At least, not now.

…Had he ever had anyone to help him, like he was helping Danny?

And the last connection locked into place with a snap.

This was it. Danny braced himself, mind picking up speed at what might lie beneath his own panels, at what it would mean–

"One last thing," Clockwork said.

He opened the door of his chest, reached in, and pulled out a tiny, intricately engraved key. This he inserted into the lock at the right of his door and turned. There was a snik layered on itself a hundred times over from every part of Clockwork: his arms and head and chest, even his tail.

Serenely, Clockwork replaced the key.

Danny’s mind slammed to a halt, then lurched in another direction entirely. Was that a lock? What did it lock? The panels? Why? How, when Clockwork’s panels were smooth as porcelain?

What escaped his mouth was, "I thought that lock was for your door."

"It's for the rest of me," said Clockwork. "It is best that access to my internal geometries remains difficult."

"Oh," said Danny. His thoughts were picking up now, and curling outward in question marks. Who would be trying to access Clockwork’s internal geometries?

"Do not worry," said Clockwork, interrupting Danny’s rapidly accelerating train of thought. He brought his hand up to caress a shape nestled in the hollow just above Danny's sternum. "You have one as well. I will lock you before you leave."

He turned and busied himself neatening the workspace back up, leaving Danny’s train of thought to careen off track and tumble to a stop.

He had a lock.

Danny touched the hollow above his sternum, just as Clockwork had. Tentatively, as though he were touching Clockwork’s gear wheels again and not something solid, not something built to withstand force.

But it was solid.

It was cool to the touch, not warm like Clockwork's gears were. Yet the solidity of it, the weight and thickness were surely metal.

It was a little circle; Danny could feel the curve of it under his finger, the jagged line of the keyhole at its center. Above and below it were tiny shapes with straight edges that came to soft points. Triangles. There was texture on them, something rough and that made his finger want to slide one way and not another, and Danny wondered what it was. What it meant. If there were words there, or etched patterns like Clockwork's curlicue botanicals.

For that matter, what did he look like, right now?

Maybe he could look in a mirror before this was over. Before he left.

And then there was the cloth. Again, there was Danny's arm beneath.

He fiddled the hem in his fingers. He hadn't really gotten a good look at what lay inside before he'd panicked and Clockwork had covered it. But he could remember the shine of something machined, something complicated twitching just out of time with the tower.

Danny lingered a moment more. He wanted to spend more time not thinking about this. But he was curious. He was curious, and his hand still ached.

And the only way was through.

Danny pulled it back.

With a rustle of fabric, the covering fell away.

Danny's first thought was that it looked like Clockwork's.

His second thought was that it didn't.

The edges of his skin, his panels, they were the same. They had the same porcelain edges, which his skin met with the same strange line. Even the inside of his arm was similar, the mechanisms within a labyrinth of rods and gears and wires where their shadows weren’t too deep to see.

"They're big," Danny said with a frown. Much larger than Clockwork's were.

"You are young," said Clockwork. "Children grow."

"Smaller?"

"It will not be your gears that grow.” Clockwork hummed. ”Besides, I think they suit you."

They suited him.

Danny stared into his arm. Even ignoring how large they were, his gears weren't like Clockwork's. They weren't unlike his either; they were brass. It was just that where Clockwork's were intricately engraved, Danny's were feathered with frost. The filaments deeper within were rimed in white, and in a few scattered places he looked less like metal at all and more, much more, like ice.

Tentatively, he reached in, only to be stopped by Clockwork.

"Not at full speed," he said.

"Oh," said Danny. "How did you…?"

"It is a skill."

Danny wouldn't be able to do it, then. Not now.

"You would need to partially disengage your arm.” Clockwork explained, paused. Added, “I will need to fully disengage it to repair it,” and placed one hand on Danny's shoulder.

The shoulder Clockwork had said he would need to access.

It felt–it was–hollow.

Danny was hollow.

His tongue felt sticky. Clumsy. Pulling it from the roof of his mouth was harder than it should have been, and when Danny spoke, that felt clumsy too.

"Okay," he said.

Clockwork squeezed in an affirming gesture, and pulled away again to work. There were tugs and snaps as he pulled something loose. And then there was more pressure, deep and radiating down his arm like a sunburst and a clunk.

His eyes were still locked on the exposed machinery of his arm. It went still.

Danny stilled, too. The sight of his gears so still plucked sour notes in his stomach. There was something huge and awkward bubbling in his chest, and for a moment he imagined a stray gear blundering through delicate machinery before he forced the thought from his head.

He didn’t look at his shoulder.

He didn’t want to look.

Danny had come here hoping to have Clockwork fix his arm. He'd been filled with dread at the prospect and still had forced himself to come. He hadn't even wanted to think about being made of clockwork and he'd still pushed open the doors, still set foot inside. Still stayed.

And now that he was sitting here with a panel off and staring at his own insides, the second part no longer seemed quite so bad.

But the first part seemed real in a way it hadn't, before.

Clockwork would fix his arm.

Fix it, because Danny needed repairs.

The idea echoed in his head like it was hollow and it occurred to Danny that it probably was, that all of him was hollow and full of echoes bouncing round and round and–

There was pressure as Clockwork cradled Danny's head, brushed a thumb through his hair slowly. It was a motion measured with the tick of seconds and it was utterly regular, utterly precise. Danny could feel the weight of the beat, now that he was paying attention. It felt like pressure. It felt like anticipation.

It felt just slightly off from Danny's own time. He felt a frown flicker at his face at that, and–

"It still frightens you," said Clockwork, voice tinged with sadness.

"Yeah," Danny said, his quiet.

There wasn't any real point in denying it. There was no one here to win over with false bravado. No one to impress who would find it impressive.

"But you want it done."

"Yeah.”

"Then," said Clockwork. "Like this, there are ways to keep you calm."

"I can manage," said Danny.

"I know that you can manage. You have managed far worse. But you will need to be still, and your arm will be unresponsive."

"I can manage.”

Clockwork paused. Bowed his head so that it rested on Danny's.

"Is it so terrible to save yourself the panic? It will not change what must be done, only make it more awful for you. And more dangerous. Surgeons use anesthesia for a reason."

"I don't–I want to see what you're doing." Even if he also really, really didn’t.

"You will be able to."

"I will?"

"I will not blind you, Daniel. Only calm you, so that you can see what I'm doing with clear eyes."

Danny leaned his head against Clockwork's shoulder, thinking. Clockwork's head was a reassuring pressure at his temple, and the cloak still hung around his shoulders in a comforting embrace.

Just like Clockwork's arm, returned to wrap around him in a hug.

Danny's life was full of day to day anxieties. Whether he'd done his homework, whether he'd forgotten it. What Vlad was up to, how much sleep he'd get. What Valerie was up to, and Danielle. What his parents were up to…

The list went on.

The point was, Danny was used to playing calm in stressful situations. And he was pretty sure he'd be able to grit his teeth through this just like he'd grit his teeth through the last several weeks. Like Vlad’s schemes and the latest broken bones and disappointed lectures from his parents. Like the deep and lingering ache of every electric shock he got keeping Amity safe.

He could handle it.

But was it so terrible, to save himself the trouble? What would Jazz think?

Jazz would agree with Clockwork, probably.

Danny closed his eyes. "It won't make me more, um. Changed, right?"

Clockwork was silent. The hand holding Danny close flexed, though not painfully. Clockwork was always careful.

"Clockwork?"

"There are many futures, and many choices leading to them."

"Um."

"It should not."

"...Okay."

Maybe 'should' shouldn't have been good enough for Danny. Maybe he should have asked more questions, especially when he was usually so full of them.

But the way Clockwork's grip shifted, the way he clutched Danny close, the slight wobble to the pitter-patter ticks in his chest: these things made it hard to doubt too much that Clockwork was genuine.

"Thank you," said Clockwork.

Danny hummed reassuringly in answer. It was a mechanical sound, and he wondered what part of him was making it, and how. If it was like the part that made Clockwork's hums.

And then there was a tug at the top of his spine, or just to the left of it, and the feeling of a panel coming off.

Danny's hum rose into a questioning register.

"Shhh," Clockwork hushed him. "I am only bringing you back into time."

There were more clicks, each one resounding across his back and into his bones. It felt like if he opened his mouth they might spill from it like notes from an old record player.

There was a tug, and Clockwork pulled Danny from the bench. Danny struggled to his feet under the guiding gesture. His legs felt wrong, too light and too heavy at once. But he didn't have time to find his balance before he was guided to a slot in the wall.

It was shadowed. The curve of fine gear wheels within were barely visible from the light filtering into it, but Danny could see more than one. They sat side by side in the hidden space, each one moving faster than the last so that while the first moved at a stately place, the wheel at the far end was nothing but a blur.

"Um, Clockwork?" he asked.

"Yes?" responded Clockwork, and trailed a finger down the back of Danny's neck in a way that should have made the hairs there stand on end. Something clicked in a way that drove his back ramrod straight.

His mouth had been open to ask about the slot, and so he heard the noise of the alignment magnified from his mouth.

It shouldn't have been so, so–

He tried to speak, and discovered his jaw was locked into place. He reached out for Clockwork's hand and caught it.

Clockwork gave it a squeeze, and turned him around so his back was facing the slot. Like this, he could see Clockwork's face, and beneath the persistent scowl he could see the shadow of affection. Of the same care that had drawn him back to Long Now again and again.

Clockwork let Danny's hand go and cupped his cheek.

"All things in Long Now become synchronized in time. You know that. You've experienced it. This is only a faster way. It doesn't hurt."

And he pressed Danny into the slot.

#danny phantom #danny phantom dp #clockwork dp #jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite #ectoberhaunt23 #23 day 9 #robots

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jackdraw-spwrite · 7 months

Text

By Storm, By Claw, By Sanguine Moon

Remember how I said stay tuned for a sequel to Stargazer, Moonweaver, Net? This is that sequel! You can also read it here.

This was conceived of for Phantasy Phest, but written for Ectoberhaunt 2023: Tabletop.

This fic was a collaboration! The authors are @akela-nakamura, @datawyrms, @seaglass-skies, @jackdaw-sprite, and myself.

“The sky goes dark, and a cold wind rises. In the distance- thunder, growing closer! The forest goes quiet, holding its breath.” A heavy pause, then, “Suddenly the wind howls! But you know you can’t seek shelter. There is something lurking in these ruins, and if you aren’t careful. It. Will. Find. You.”

A low whistle breaks the atmosphere sharply enough that not even the very real wind rattling the equally real windows can bring it back. Tucker shoots a glare Danny’s way, slowly lowering his hands from where they’d been wiggling dramatically in the air. All it gets him is a sheepish grin and an apologetic shrug. He pushes his glasses up his nose with a huff, ignoring Sam’s snickering, and turns his glare back to the screen in front of him.

“Anyway. Roll for perception.”

The rattle of dice was followed by a couple of groans and a soft yes! from Jazz.

"Okay, what did you guys get?" Tucker asked, peering at the dice on the table. "Oh."

"I think we can safely say I don't know what's happening," Danny said at his expression.

"Yeeah. Sam?"

"Twelve."

"Jazz?"

Jazz bounced a little in her seat. "Twenty one!" She knew playing a ranger was a good choice.

"Okay, okay.” Tucker took a deep breath and looked back at his laptop. “As the thunder rolls like great wheels in the sky, the wind whips at you. It flattens the grass around you in vicious ripples and grabs at your clothes. The ruins stay motionless around you, unmoved by the building storm.

“And yet, beneath the keening of the wind in your ears, you hear something else. It’s rhythmic, sharp. Repetitive. And it sounds like–

“Snap. Snap. Snap.”

Tucker smiled.

“Sam,” he said. “You see that it’s coming from a ragged banner, fluttering in the wind.”

Sam frowned in thought.

“You,” Tucker pointed at Jazz, “see a little head poking around one of the fallen pillars. It's got a beard, and its hair looks kind of weird."

"What do I see?" asked Danny.

"You're staring at the sun, I think." said Sam.

"You’re not the DM,” said Danny. “Tucker?”

“The sun is no longer visible,” said Tucker. Before Danny could gloat, he added, ”You’re staring at where it was.”

While Danny pouted in betrayal, Jazz was mentally rifling through the manuals she’d read as research before playing. Something small and bearded, and it had weird hair. Or something was wrong with the hair. Or something was in the hair?

But there weren’t that many short bearded races eccentric enough to do any of that.

She hazarded a guess. “Is it a gnome?”

Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Roll for knowledge nature.”

That was a yes! And Danny had said she didn’t need to read everything to be prepared.

It was not a gnome.

It was something smaller and weirder called a grig, and as Tucker described it escorting them from the (apparently cursed) ruins, Jazz looked out the window.

The rain was still pouring down outside, dense enough to make white cloud the farther houses on their street and gather in mist along the ground. Water streamed down the glass in rivulets, leaving the image of the street distorted.

The reflection of their room in the window was warm by comparison, all yellows and creams and scattered paper.

And a little bit of green.

Jazz smiled back at her brother in the windows’ reflection, not letting on that she'd seen the subtle iridescence of his eyes. He'd tell her when he was ready, and until then she'd just be supportive. And patient, even if she could feel a horde of questions burning in the back of her mind.

“The grig sits on a log and pulls a doll-sized fiddle from his pack,” said Tucker, and Jazz returned her attention to the game.

“He puts it to his chin,” and Tucker mimed holding a fiddle to his chin –

“I thought that was violins,” said Danny.

“Danny, I am going to commit some violins,” said Tucker.

“Never mind.”

“He puts it to his chin,” repeated Tucker, “And begins to play. And it’s beautiful.”

He consulted his laptop and fiddled with some keys. With a decisive tap on the spacebar, music began to play. Tucker spoke over it.

“The music fills the air like raindrops on leaves. Slowly, it grows to a musical crescendo and you find your spirits bolstered, your burdens lessened. It’s as though there’s air beneath your feet and you could –almost– begin to dance. But he stops after just a few more chords and chuckles under his breath.

“‘Nah,’ the grig says. ‘I won’t do that to ya.’”

“Do what?” asked Jazz before she could help herself.

“Ya don’t know, miss?” Tucker said, still in the grig’s voice.

Oh right. This was supposed to be in character. And Jazz was playing a ranger. “Maybe?” She reached for her dice, rolling them between her fingers. They were, she had quickly discovered, surprisingly fun to fidget with.

“Knowledge nature,” Tucker suggested in a stage whisper.

Jazz straightened in her seat and rolled the d20, watching as it settled. “Eighteen?”

“They’re good enough musicians to weave spells with their music like bards, and can trap people in dances for hours. They do it as a prank, sometimes.”

Jazz remembered the siren from a few months back and winced.

“Thank you for not doing that,” she said.

“It just didn’t seem like it’d be funny enough,” said Tucker, back in character.

“Wow, reassuring,” said Sam.

Tucker smiled.

“And that’s less reassuring,” Danny commented. “I roll diplomacy for him to not do that. Twenty five.”

“What do you say?” asked Tucker.

Danny thought before responding.

“That was some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. You’re very talented. Where did you learn to play like that?”

“You’re right it’s a talent! Everyone in the clan’s got music in their bodies, right down to their feet,” Tucker said. And then he switched back out of the grig’s twang. “He puts his legs together and rubs, and they fill the air with a deep hum. His wings tremble from the effort and the sound.”

“That’s not a trick I’d ever manage,” said Danny. He sounded impressed.

“Not you! And not those lepre-cons,” said Tucker in the grig’s voice, snarling on the last word.

“Leprechauns?” asked Danny.

The start of whatever Tucker was going to say was cut off with a crash as the basement door was kicked open with a heavy thunk immediately followed by Jack Fenton’s booming voice. “Did somebody say leprechauns?!” He charged into the room, swinging some kind of… something vaguely resembling a gun, forcing Sam to duck and earning a yelp from Danny as he dove under the table.

Tucker was quick to pipe up, slapping a hand down over the monster manual in front of him. “Nope! No leprechauns! No, uh, sir. Not here!”

Maddie’s voice trailed into the room more slowly than her husband’s, followed by the woman herself. “Now, dear, you know the Fenton Fae Fryer isn’t ready to use yet!”

Danny’s hiss of “The what-” went ignored.

“But it will be! Soon! And those monsters won’t know what hit them!”

“That’s right dear! Now, kids, remember to stay inside after dark this week- I know, I know it’s raining, but the rain’ll let up eventually, and with the eclipse coming up you can’t be too careful!”

Sam looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped when she caught Tucker shaking his head at her. She sat back in her seat with a huff.

“Darn right!” Jack chimed in from where he’d finally set the huge weapon down on the kitchen counter. “This is a huge opportunity for hunting! All those monstrous meddlers will think they’re too strong to bother hiding like the foul fiendish felons that they are!”

“We’ll remind them why humans drove them into hiding in the first place!” Maddie chimed in. “Oh, I hope we can keep some captive specimens too, there’s so much to learn! The small ones just fall apart so easily, we can barely do even a single test…”

Jack squeezed his hand into a dramatic fist. “Of course we’re gonna capture ‘em! We’re gonna grab those ghastly goons or my name’s not Jack Fenton!”

With a whoop, he punched the air.

Jazz had been glaring at her parents, shoulders tense, but something twitched in the corner of her vision. When she looked, Danny’s reflection in the window was haunted. A pit formed in Jazz’s stomach, and her heart sparked with anger.

Danny was one of the ‘small ones’ in his other form. She didn’t think they’d managed to catch any like him. She didn’t think he would still be here if they had, but–

“Now, Jack. We’re not guaranteed to have success just yet,” her mother said, but she was smiling at Jack’s cheer. “We haven’t finished baiting everything. And without first-hand data to back up our research, it’s just that much harder to hunt efficiently, much less decide what bait is effective. Knowledge is power, of course!”

“And we’ll have plenty to work with soon, baby! We’ll catch one this time for sure! Maybe one of those ‘fairies’ that keep tricking the kids–”

Jazz shoved her chair back with a horrendous screech and slammed the fist still holding her dice down on the table, ignoring the one that went flying off across the room and the brilliant flare of lightning that had the overhead lights flickering. “No. No nono, no. You are not doing this tonight!

“Maybe, just maybe, for once in your life you should try to understand instead of just finding better ways to kill people who never did anything to you!”

"Jazz," said Maddie in a tone of forced patience, "they aren't people. These things are monsters, even the small, pretty ones."

Danny had sunk so low in his chair that his chin was level with the tabletop. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

"Especially the small pretty ones!" shouted Jack.

Danny flinched.

A bibliophile, Jazz had read the words ‘shaking with rage’ dozens of times. She’d always thought it was a turn of phrase. A metaphor. A literary device. But here she was, physically trembling. Not all of the static on her skin could be attributed to the lightning outside.

“Have you two even bothered to confirm that?” she asked. ”Or have you just gone around committing atrocities for the fun of it?”

“Don’t you take that tone with us, young lady! We’re just trying to keep you safe!”

“You’re not trying to keep anyone safe with your awful, deranged experiments! I don’t know how you even call yourselves scientists!”

Thunder crashed, as if it had only been waiting for her cue.

She looked between their shocked faces. Heaved one breath, two, and ran up the stairs towards her bedroom.

Maddie ran after her. “Jasmine Marie Fenton!”

Jazz whipped around and almost snarled at the look of indignation on her mother’s face. Static jumped to her hand from the doorknob as she reached for it, but she didn’t flinch. Instead, she squeezed it so hard she was surprised it didn’t come off.

(She was fairly certain the few dice she still held in her other hand had fractured. It was too bad. She’d liked those.)

“Do you two even hear yourselves? ‘Especially the pretty ones?’ ‘The small ones just fall apart so easily?’ You want to see monsters? Take a look at your reflections!”

WHAM.

Jazz looked at the darkness in surprise. She hadn’t expected the door to slam shut quite like that. It had rattled the windows with a force she’d felt in her chest. And then there was the darkness.

Oh. It was a power outage.

In the sudden quiet, Jazz heard her mother’s footsteps returning down the stairs, and then muted conversation. The front door opened, then shut.

She took the three steps to her window, and peered out. Her parents were standing on the front stairs, headlamps strapped over their hazmat hoods and their arms full of pre-loaded net-launchers.

They were still going hunting, then. After all that.

Jazz turned from the window before either of them could look up at her watching them and get ideas about whether she regretted her words. She didn’t.

As she followed Jack out onto the street, Maddie sighed. “That girl, I swear. I don’t know where she gets these ideas in her head…”

Jack sighed. “I think it’s just a phase, Mads. Kids and the internet these days, you know?”

“Maybe,” Maddie said. She looked up at Jazz’s window before she turned her attention back to her husband. “Either way, I’m not thrilled with her tone. We’ll have to have a talk.”

“That’s the spirit!” Jack bellowed, grinning wide. “She’ll see that we were right, soon enough. Everyone will, after we catch one of those dastardly fae! Or a hobgoblin! Or a vampire! Or a sidewinder! Or a dragon!”

“Yes, dear. But first we need to figure out what took out the power, and…” Maddie narrowed her eyes at the still-dark Fentonworks building behind them. “That’s strange. The generator should have brought everything back online by now.”

“I bet it was those dastardly gremlins! Well, if they think they’re gonna stop us from wrapping them all up in triple-strand hemp braid reinforced by silver-iron alloy, pinning them down with steel-jawed monster-chompers, or canning them up tight with the Fenton Thermos, then they’ve got another think coming!”

Lightning continued to flash overhead, bright enough to see color, and for the puddles and windows around them to flare brightly with reflected light. The ozone and charge in the air, combined with the strange lighting and lack of normal city noises conspired to give a magical cast to the night.

Magical meaning dangerous, in Maddie’s vocabulary.

Usually, she wouldn’t leave the children home alone with the power off, but lightning alone wouldn’t knock out the electricity at Fentonworks, and they’d monster-proofed the backup generator to within an inch of its lifetime warranty. Whatever was out here was their responsibility to deal with, as monster hunters. Jazz, Danny, and his friends would be safe, behind the wards of Fentonworks. This was for everyone else. For all the citizens of Amity Park and the wider world who had been convinced that the supernatural didn’t exist, who were vulnerable, unprotected, unaware of the dangers they faced constantly.

Even if Jazz couldn’t appreciate that.

“This way!” cried Jack, shaking her from her partial reverie.

She shook her head before following him. That was a bad habit to get into while on a hunt. But then, fighting with her children had always unsettled her.

She followed Jack across the half-flooded road. It would take days for things to dry, even if the rain let up.

But the rain would let up sooner or later. This storm may or may not be natural in origin, but they had good evidence that there was at least one creature that could manipulate the weather in the region. No such creature would allow clouds to reduce the amount of power it could gain from basking under a Blood Moon, much less a Blood Moon that was both a supermoon and a blue moon.

That only made it more important to catch whatever this was. As excited as she and Jack were about the opportunity presented by the carelessness of monsters and the loss of their illusions, the lunar eclipse would be a dangerous time indeed. Reducing the number of monsters present even by one would make everyone much safer.

Jack skidded to a stop and fired one of his nets. Its weighted edges wrapped around the glass sides of a bus shelter.

“I think I really got it this time!” said Jack, bounding forward as Maddie covered him. Nothing was going to sneak up on her husband on her watch.

On the other hand…

“Jack, sweetie, I don’t think there’s anything in the bus stop.” Her goggles, which had been treated with their Fenton Paranormal Peeper Powder (not for direct use on eyes) (patent pending), weren’t picking up so much as a glimmer.

“Not in the bus stop! Down there!” Jack pointed at a storm drain just under the overhang of the bus stop shelter.

Gun ready, Maddie approached it.

The shadows between the grate bars gave way to the pale glare from her headlamp, throwing the inside into stark relief. The light sliced across water-stained concrete walls, reaching down until it met light.

The water at the bottom of the drain was stagnant, the drain so full of rotten leaves that they piled above the water in places, outlined in the brilliant white of her headlamp and bright enough to leave scribbled lines dancing in her vision.

The only motion Maddie could see in it was in her own face.

“Nothing,” she sighed. Chasing mirages again. And wasn’t that a metaphor for life?

“Oh,” said Jack. His face appeared alongside hers in the water. “Sorry, Mads, I really did think I saw something.”

Maddie patted him on the shoulder and surveyed the surrounding street. The light from her headlamp bounced off of the mirrors of parked cars and the windows of nearby businesses. All dark.

But a few streets over, there was still light, still power.

“Maybe you did, but something interested in electricity is going to go that way.” She pointed. “Let’s sweep these streets.”

Jazz didn’t sleep until her parents made their way home, defeated.

She didn’t know if it was worry for them, as they ran around in a lightning storm, or if it was fear for everything else that could be out there that kept her awake.

But if she had to guess, it’d be the latter.

Omake:

“Well, uh. I guess game night’s over?” Danny asked. He was still under the table, having hidden when Jazz started yelling.

With a thunk, Tucker’s head met the table next to his laptop. It was followed by a swish, a rustle, and the clatter of dice falling to the floor. The room was still pitch black, only the occasional flicker of lightning casting any light.

“Well,” Sam sighed. “At least your house is never boring.” Danny let out a dry laugh, missing most of its humor.

“I could use a little more boring.”

“Good luck with that,” Tucker said, his voiced muffled by the table. Danny sighed, having not yet moved.

Good luck, indeed.

Stay tuned for more!

#jackdraw-spwrite #jackdaw-spwrite #lunar moth fae au #jazz fenton dp #maddie fenton dp #jack fenton dp

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