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Soft piteous sobs echoed across the barren, foggy expanse. He did not know where they came from, but he sought them out anyway, drawn to the wavering cries. He couldn’t open his mouth to call out, to seek them out. He simply had to resort to using his staff as a guide to find his way.
The fog was thick, sticking and clinging to his lashes; he needed to pause so often just to wipe the condensation from his face. He thought he spied something in the distance, but who could tell how far and what it could be. The minutes dragged on, him quietly working his way.
The sobs had reduced to whimpers, heart-stricken, rasping whimpers that caused his heart to flip flop uncomfortably beneath his ribcage. He knew them, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind. He needed to find them before long, before they faded away. He spied a glow nearby, the light refracting and breaking up the further from the source it managed to penetrate into the fog.
He first spied the feet, twitching in time to their owner’s whimpers. His eyes followed the lines of their legs up to a familiar boy, arms wrapped his torso, eyes squeezed shut, tears and snot dripping down his young face to plop on the ground. Ribbons of ectoplasm snaked along the ground away from wounds littering his body.
He tried to speak again, discordant words coming out, but it felt right to have this conversation in ghost speak.
‘Daniel?’
A green eye opened almost imperceptibly, bloodshot from his sorrow. He moved to sit up, shivering uncontrollably. His body was already starting to fade, his fingers, hands, and wrists fuzzy and unable to hold him up to sit. He slumped back over, unwilling to try anymore. ‘what,’ he rasped, looking up at the other ghost.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he shuffled closer to the young ghost, kneeling down, running a kind hand over Danny’s shivering frame.
‘I...don’t know,’ Danny said, squeezing his eyes shut, unbidden tears rewetting his face. ‘I was...out? On...patrol maybe? Where am I?’ he asked desperately, rubbing his face with his forearms.
‘You’re fading away, and I’m here to help you, my dear boy. But I need to know what happened. Try to remember,’ the older ghost urged. Danny needed to remember, otherwise he would fade away completely.
Danny shifted, uncovering a substantial jagged, oozing wound previously crushed up against the ground. ‘Someone...some people? attacked me?’ he asked, more questioning than sure if that was actually what had happened. ‘I was flying...up in the sky, looking at space,’ he said blissfully, closed eyes relaxing slightly. He jerked suddenly, as if acting out the past, ‘Then I hit the ground?’ He opened an eye slightly, looking confused at his blurry hands. ‘I think I’m dead Clockwork,’ he whispered, lifting his gaze up to meet the other’s.
At Danny’s revelation the fog lifted slightly, allowing Clockwork to see more than just Danny. His thermos lay dented some distance away. One side was crushed in as if Danny had clenched his hand while falling from the sky.
Clockwork looked down again at Danny, the young ghost looking hopefully up at him. ‘Can I come home with you?’ he asked, tears welling again. ‘I have nowhere to go anymore.’
Clockwork, without a word, carefully picked Danny up, minding his side, uncaring if Danny’s ectoplasm smeared and dripped down his cloak. He cradled Danny to his chest, pressing a chaste kiss to his forehead.
As Danny laid passed out and patched up in Clockwork’s bed in the tower, Clockwork sniffled as he scrubbed the boy’s blood out of his cloak. The boy had remembered enough to not fade away into nothingness, but he dreaded the boy finding out the truth. Clockwork had watched Danny fall from the sky, transforming one last time, in front of his horrified parents. He dropped the cloak, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, tears slipping down his cheeks.