Project: Neverbound (A Double Life AU fanfic)

15 - The Clock

Poem reading created and provided by roweterpsichore
https://youtu.be/0YZV6dV3zRs

Frightened and afraid, the clock the coward picked
But inside every broken clock was once something that ticked
Why to his home
Why his case was alone
And why his hands were shattered, never to be fixed

The clock, unable to save, could not be deferred
For shadows could make clocks, and so a fire burned
The last breaths of friends
Meeting with no ends
But the coward made a deal, so long as the clock never returned

"NO!" Bdubs cried out, stumbling over himself as he scattered to his feet, running towards the now limp body that flew to the side of the road. Blood seeped into the cement on the sidewalk, but even the smell of it was overpowered by the smell of destroyed buildings and rubble.

He already lost Skizz that day. He couldn't lose Keralis.

How the hell did a Warden get up here in the first place? Who knows. Well, someone knew, but it certainly wasn't Bdubs.

Without a care in the world for the amount of blood that would coat his clothes, he picked the upper half of Keralis's body up from the floor, raising him just so he wouldn't be laid on the hard cement. The blast of the sonic-shriek aimed directly into his chest should've rendered him dead in an instant. Instead, he had just enough life in him to speak.

"Bubb...les...?" Keralis strained, his once smooth Polish accent now hoarse and jagged. Bdubs couldn't even get through the first syllable of his words before he broke down in tears and held his friend ever closer. The blood filled his senses. He tried to ignore the innards falling to feel the outside air.

"You're gonna be okay..." he whispered, wishing the promise was made for Keralis. He heard the sound of someone running up to them, a familiar voice calling out.

Before this moment, Bdubs trusted this man more than anyone else. He was his mentor, a father figure to him.

"Bdubs!" The old goat called out.

"Doc!" Bdubs called back. Doc stopped in his tracks as soon as he was standing right beside them, getting the perfect view of the gory carnage before him.

"Pl-ease," Bdubs looked up at the German goat, his own voice broken down by his ever breaking heart. Tears ran down his face, smudging the blood and staining his clothes further in half-tear half-blood droplets. "You- you can do someth-thing, right? You can help him?"

Doc froze. He almost looked more petrified than Bdubs did. A third, unwarranted voice appeared.

"No." It said, its voice dark and condescending. Fading into the light was none other than a Watcher, sizable wings and eyes evenly spaced out across its body. Bdubs would've sworn up and down that the eyes on its wings were staring into his soul. Doc turned around in a panic, but a panic that told the brunette he wasn't afraid because he didn't know this thing, he was afraid because he knew what it could do.

"Please, just not him, anyone but him!" Doc pleaded, stepping in between the monstrosity and Bdubs. The shorter held his friend closer into his arms, forcing him to realize Keralis had stopped breathing ages ago. He still held onto him.

"They called for no survivors..." the Watcher said matter-of-factly. "You knew this was going to happen before I did."

"I know, but-"

"You didn't think to warn him?"

"Please, I ask for no one else, please!"

He wasn't, and never physically would be, but he might as well have been on his knees clasping his hands together and begging for mercy from a god who would never even know his name. The Watcher, by some stroke of luck, sighed in annoyance.