Work Text:
Time sets out his tools, and waits.
At the snap of a finger, a tick of the clock’s second hand, a young man appears. The lanky form, the full-body sprawl — for a moment Time’s breath catches.
Then it falters, as his eyes focus. He brushes away the inexplicable disappointment and begins his work. That, at least, is familiar. Not so much the physical motions — hands sweeping along chins and brows, the metal edge of his burin digging creases and laugh lines — but the steady rhythm of duty and waiting tasks. These are things Time knows.
There are many he doesn’t.
○
Inside his tower, Time watches from behind the face of the clock, follows its hands crawling backwards toward midnight.
Outside, the sky is dark. Time misses the light’s company, its absence the silent end of a telephone line. Below, the streets blaze with the activity of a people still unused to the day.
Time had been there when the sky first brightened. He had woken with the light, his heart beating in time with the newly-ticking clock. He does not know what had come before. He only knows that the tower’s bell chimed.
There was light, and there was Time.
○
The Guardian walks the streets of Dixing, the sear of the Lantern replaced nightly by a burning drive.
For ten nights he strode through busy markets and packed bars, trying to remember the face he is looking for. He has passed by the clock tower many times, gazed up at its lonely spire and felt its pull. He knows he is connected to it somehow. That the clock turns, and he burns.
Tonight is the first time he sees the door carved into its side. And looking up, the shadow of a figure looking back.
He knocks.
The bell chimes.