Chapter Text
Darkness. In front. Behind. To the left. To the right. It’s all around Tempus. There is nothing but darkness. Even as Tempus moves her pale hand in front of her face, she cannot see it. Not even an outline. Do I even exist here? The thought leaves as soon as it appears as she reaches her hand out to her arm to feel a solid object.
Nodding to herself, she looks around the mass of darkness hoping to see something that would help her understand just where she is. There are multiple places she could be: I could be dreaming, but it's rare for me to actually dream, I could of accidentally gone to a different timeline, but it doesn’t feel like one, I could maybe-
Tempus’ thoughts get interrupted when a bright white light flashes in front of her and without thinking, she rushes forward towards the light, hoping to find something that will get her out of this place.
And it does. She’s no longer in the darkness, she’s no longer alone, she’s with her fellow council members in their meeting room.
But there’s something different about them.
They’re faces are blurry. They shouldn’t be. Tempus knows they shouldn’t be. But she doesn’t know why they are.
Still she walks over towards them though. First, she walks to the leader of the council, the protector of space and lifts her hand to greet him but he doesn’t react. Strange. Tempus then tries to speak,
No sound leaves her.
She tries again.
The same thing happens.
A feeling the Watcher of Time hasn’t felt in a long time starts to surface; fear.
She rushes towards the twins of nature. She tries to speak to them, to get their attention, but just like the Protector, they don’t react to her.
Her last hope is the recordkeeper of civilization but even when she tries to speak to the youngest member, he ignores her just like the others.
Each of their faces getting more and more blurry and distorted.
Tempus is starting to get scared. She knows she isn’t the easiest to get along with and usually she likes being alone but no one has ever ignored her before. Not when she tries to start the conversation on the rare chance the Watcher wants to speak.
But none of them want to speak.
What’s going on?
Tempus couldn’t find an answer though as she hears the doors open, the room shifts, the faces become blurrier, and a new person is in the room. Sitting in her meeting chair.
Before Tempus could even start to try to understand what’s going on a distorted voice comes from their leader but Tempus couldn’t make a word out no matter how hard she tried.
By now, Tempus knows something is wrong, she’s embarrassed it took her this long to figure that out. She must be rusty after so long but that doesn’t mean she won’t try to leave. It’s probably just a time anomaly messing with me.
So that’s what she does, or, tries to achieve. Every time she leaves the room, she gets warped back into the room and the interaction replays, she tries to interact with the others but her hand just went through each member.
Now, instead of fear, Tempus is starting to feel anger, a familiar emotion.
Currently, Tempus is letting the meeting carry out, even if she doesn’t know what they’re saying. It’s better than letting it restart at every failed attempt. She compromises to herself.
But as she was waiting, something different happened. A word became clear. Just a single word but because of that word, everything became clear to the Watcher.
And the word? The word still makes Tempus flinch.
“Suspension.”
She hears clearly from their leader.
She had deduced it was a dream rather than a time anomaly. Whilst her anomalies can cause situations that aren't real, they can’t be as thorough as they are in this.
Now she’s sure it’s a dream rather than a time anomaly. Time anomalies cannot speak.
But she didn’t expect her dream to be about when she got suspended from the council. It happened nearly 1000 years ago, why is she dreaming about it now?
Tempus doesn’t want to dwell on it as she leans back against the wall. She expects the wall to catch her obviously, it’s a wall, even in a dream, a wall is a wall.
But, turns out this wall isn’t very good at being a wall.
She fell through the wall.
A scream doesn’t leave her as she falls into the darkness again. She knows nothing can actually hurt her here so she doesn’t bother with trying to protect herself. She watches as the box that was the room starts to become smaller and smaller, she doesn’t care there, she crosses her arms and watches it.
Something blue flashes to the side of her, Tempus doesn’t move her head to look what it is. She couldn’t care less about what her dreams want to show her now. She just wants to wake up and forget about this dream. Forget about the others. Just, forget.
Her eyes close, she can’t see her white hair flickering in front of her face anymore. Everything now is truly dark. She is alone again.
That’s until she hears a child whimper.
Tempus’ eyes snap open and she tries to look around the darkness to see who made that noise. She knows no child. She has stayed away from them the best she could. Why is a child here?
She couldn’t dwell on that thought as the blue flash from earlier blinds her for a second. When she opens her eyes again, she sees a small child no older than four staring down at something.
Tempus tries to move over to the child. She’s never seen this child before so she wants to know who this child is but she can’t move. Her body isn’t listening to her.
Before Tempus could let out a noise of annoyance, the young girl turns around and blue eyes lock onto blue eyes.
Tempus then wakes up.
–
She’s sweating when she wakes up. Tempus never sweats. She’s a snake so how the hell is she sweating.
Tempus tries to understand what the hell just happened but she doesn’t understand a god damn thing and the sweating isn’t helping.
Falling back onto the only piece of furniture in the room, a couch, she lets out a tired sigh. At first she thought it was a dream. The part with her old council members definitely felt like a dream after she realised it was a dream rather than a time anomaly.
But the girl.
The girl felt like she was staring at Tempus, not through her like most her dreams are on the rare occasions she got them.
That part didn’t feel like a dream. That felt real; like she was actually there rather than an observer.
Tempus wants to dwell on the fact of her dream for longer but she feels herself getting tired once more even though she had just woken after who knows how long she slept for.
She can’t remember the last time she stayed up for more than a couple hours at a time. She really has become a useless Goddess.
Turning onto her side, she grips an old pillow one of the nature twins gifted her multiple lifetimes ago.
It still smells like her.
Is the last thing Temus though before the lull of sleep pulls back in but hopefully for a dreamless sleep like many before. She can only hope it will be, her mind is cruel to her after she shut everyone out all those years ago.
–
Somewhere else, a young girl is crouching down in front of a gold pocket watch. Her blue eyes stare at the watch in amazement; she had never seen anything that gold before.
“M-mama say gold is… m-mon… m-money…” the girl whispers to herself, watching the watch slowly tick.
Reaching down, she tries to pick the watch up. She wants to show it to her mother. To show her that the young girl can help her. But as she reaches down, her hand grazes past a thorn, breaking her skin.
She lets out a small whimper at the sigh of her blood running down her hand. She cradles her hand to chest and tries to not let out any more painful sounds. Mummy doesn’t like me making noise. The thought helps her calm down. She doesn’t want to be an inconvenience to her mother.
But then she feels eyes on her. Thinking it’s her mum, the girl turns around to face her but instead she sees a girl floating. Her white hair all around her and blue eyes staring into her own.
Then the girl blinks and the floating girl disappears. Not thinking about it, she turns around to the watch to pick it up but she lets out a disappointed noise when she sees her own blood on the watch.
Quickly, she reaches down towards the watch and picks it up. She can feel it vibrating in her hand as she uses her shirt to try to clean the blood off the watch's face and her hand; she doesn’t think anything about it though, she’s never held a watch before. The girl didn’t even know they came this small.
Once the majority of the blood is gone, the girl runs back into the house with a smile on her face. She can’t wait to show her mother. She just knows her mum will be proud of her for finding this watch. She just knows it.
“Mu-mummy!” the girl shouts, trying to find her mother. She finds her where she thought she would: passed out on the sofa.
The girl walks over to her mother, making sure to not hit any of the bottles on the floor, they make a lot of noise and she shakes her mother slightly. “M-mu-mummy. Wa-wake u-up.” She shakes her again, but she doesn’t get a reply.
The girl lets out an annoyed sound before shaking her mother roughly. This finally got a reaction but it wasn’t what she expected. All her mother does is roll away from her and mutters, “go away, Jackie…” before she goes back to sleep again.
The girl named Jackie stares down at her mother once she stands up. She wants to be mad. Cry that her mum is ignoring her. Do anything to get her attention. But nothing has ever worked. Nothing has ever given Jackie the attention she craves from her mother.
So she grips the watch tighter, well as much as her little hands can hold the watch, before turning on her heel and storming to her room.
She walks past the molding and peeling wallpaper to make it to her room. She walks past the cloth put up before falling onto the mattress on the floor. She curls up just like she saw her mother do on the sofa but instead of the empty bottle her mother has, she has the watch in her hands.
The watch ticks in her hands, Jackie watches the minute hand ticks slowly, She can’t read clocks. She doesn't know what the clock is telling her. She can’t even tell her mum if the clock is correct.
Jackie pulls the clock towards her chest instead of her teddy bear but she can’t fall asleep. Even at her young age, she can’t sleep early or easily, she doesn’t get how her mother can fall asleep so easily.
So Jackie lays there, waiting for either her mother to wake up so she can show her the watch or she falls asleep unwillingly. She desperately wishes to show her mother the watch after all.
And it seems luck is on Jackie's side. As the watch's ticking starts to slowly let Jackie drift off to sleep, she hears movement coming from the living room and a bottle falling to the floor.
Jackie scrambles off her mattress, pushing it slightly in her rush to see her mother. When she gets to the living room she sees her mother sitting up on the sofa rather than laying down, a clear sign that she’s awake.
Her face lights up at seeing her mother sitting up rather than laying down. The smile widens and she makes her way over to her, “m-mummy! I-I-I hav… have some-somethin’ t-to show yo… you!” she happily exclaims, missing the annoyed look and scowl she gets from her mother.
“Go on.” is the short response she gets back but that’s more than enough for Jackie to smile brightly and show her mother the watch.
“I-It go-gold!”
Her mothers eyes look at the watch then back to her daughter. She doesn’t say anything as she plucks the watch from Jackie’s hand. “Gold..”
“Mmhm! W-well… I-I thi-think.” Jackie keeps her smile but watches her mother’s reaction. She knows her mother will be happy with what she found but her mother can be happy then turn sad very quickly. Jackie doesn’t know why.
But her mother reaches over and pats Jackie’s dirty blond hair, identical to her mothers. And Jackie’s smile becomes even larger than it was before.
Then her mother utters four words, “I’m proud of you,” and Jackie wants to cry and hug her mother. She's never heard those words come from her mother before and she’s feeling a lot of emotions now. Jackie knows their good words. Her mother did say them with a happy tone but she’s never heard them before.
“I… good…?” The young girl asks her mother weakly, like she’s scared to get praised again.
But her mother just nods, “very.”
Before Jackie could hug her though, she stands up and makes her way over to the door. “I’ll be back. You know the rules.”
“Y-yes!” Jackie nods and stands up straight.
Her mother nods towards her before leaving the girl in the house alone but that didn’t bother Jackie, she made her mother happy. That’s all that Jackie can think about.
In happy skips, Jackie makes it back to her room before falling back onto her bed. She reaches over towards her teddy and holds it above her. “I-I made… I m-made mam-mama happy!” She brings the teddy back down to her chest before holding it close. “I made… I-I made mama… happy.”
Jackie closes her eyes and for once, falls asleep with a smile on her face, knowing she made her mother happy rather than annoy her again.
And for once, has a happy dream with her mother being with her.