Work Text:
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
Clint watched the clock as it valiantly tried to complete its duty, only to snag at every second, falling back into the same place it would always be stuck in. He didn’t know when it had broken. All he knew is that one day, it had been ticking and reliable, and on another, useless junk upon the wall. Still, a broken clock is right twice a day.
He laughed at that, but it quickly died off.
Tch-tch-tch-tch. How long had it been up there like that? How long had it taken him to notice? Tch-tch-tch-tch. How long could he leave it up there before growing crazed at the constant, stuttering ticking? Tch-tch-tch-tch.
2:42. Some average hour, some average minute. Perhaps an unaverage day. Maybe it was hurt. Maybe it simply gave out. Maybe it went as far as it could before curling in on itself. Maybe it screamed.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
He felt it. The irritation.
He couldn’t leave the clock. A heavy weight had slipped into him sometime between sitting down and seeing the clock, and it had grown so strong that it completely pinned him. His thighs were nailed to the seat, his forearms to the armrests. His head had become stuck slightly tilted back, a metal pole jabbed down his neck and spine to keep him in place. He was immovable. Fragile. There was the instinct that if he moved even a centimeter, his body would fracture into miniscule pieces, slowly sliding away from him and cascading onto the floor.
He was stuck with the clock. Tch-tch-tch-tch.
He didn’t know where it came from. It appeared one day and he never said anything. He learned to live around it, and he learned to live with it, and he learned to consider it an irremovable piece of his life. There was never the thought that someday it wouldn’t be the same – that one day he could wake up and it would be broken, and he’d never see it happen. One day whole, one day not. Behind the scenes. Hidden until too late.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
He began to burn. Get ahold of yourself, he wanted to say, but the same heaviness that drove nails through his bones and metal down his back had stapled his jaw shut. He could only watch, watch, watch the same broken thing try so hard to be as normal as it used to be; could only glare with each set of failures. Give it up. You don’t work anymore.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
You’re broken.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
The clock did not care for his despise. It felt the loathing stare, perhaps, but it struggled on, like this would be the one second that it would make it past, and everything that just happened could be left behind. Tch-tch-tch-tch, it tried, don’t give up.
Time has already moved on without you.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
No one’s waiting for you on the other side.
Although...Clint was here, wasn’t he? Trapped by other forces, but here. Watching. Waiting. Seeing every time that it almost pushed through, witnessing every step back. Forward, back, forward, back. Wavering at the edge. Determined enough to try again, too tired to follow through.
...floating. Pushed back and forth by something out of its control, desperately seeking the balance it needed to return to life as it was before. Grasping for the opportunity to escape. It wasn’t the clock’s fault – it had done what it was meant to do, what it was made for, each and every day, each and every hour, each and every minute. It had done so until something else had come along, gleeful and cruel, playing with its food. The clock was stuck in the middle of those two hands. Forward, back, forward, back.
The nails and rod and staples loosened, then recollected in his heart. It pumped blood through his veins sluggishly. Tiny pins of metal joined the cells and platelets.
It wasn’t the clock’s fault.
Tch-tch-tch-tch, it begged.
You could have told someone.
Tch-tch-tch-tch. It did. In the ways which it knew how.
I’m here, he said, and ripped himself from his seat, invisible holes dripping invisible blood, and he stumbled forward to the wall on staticky limbs. I’m here. I’m coming. He reached forward and tore it off the wall, feeling the weak vibrations of that brave second hand, ripped the battery cover off, and –
The clock was silent.
Too late.
He held the corpse of the clock in his hands for several, several seconds. The metal disappeared in a bright burst, leaving him hollow and aching. The clock was silent. No more trying. No more failing. Just silence.
Absence.
His fingers trailed lightly over the back. Was this what he got for understanding so late? Pushing away so early? That beginning hatred had cost him. No, not hate, but a twisted fear. He’d been scared for the clock. It had been terrifying. And now it was gone.
Silence.
I’m here.
Silence.
His phone rang on the counter, piercing through the silence. A phone that held only the number of one person, a special person. A person who had been sent to voicemail over and over. A person whose calls had rung and rung and rung.
His phone was ringing. There was a clock in his hands. He was hollow and aching, but a tentative drum started in his heart.
Tch-tch-tch-tch, the clock had needed him to answer.
Rrrrrng, rrrrrng, rrrrrng, the phone asked him.
He dropped the clock gently onto the seat. The hands wiggled slightly from the fall before becoming still. He went to the counter. He picked up the phone.
Rrrrrng, rrrrrng, rrrrrng, it beckoned. He followed.
Silence.
“...Clint?”
Drumming. Sparks. Going forward again.
“Hey, Nat.”