Lost to Time (BFDI/TPOT AU) (CANCELLED, REWRITE IN PROGRESS)

Chapter 3

Upon walking down the hallway, Winner looked at some of the pictures on the wall.

Some were decorative paintings, and some were photos of some of the team members. There were pictures of every TPOT contestant (including The S!) a few pictures from reunions of the contestants, and then there was a group photo with all of The S!'s team members.

On the back there was a date. 3/12/20XX.

This was a couple days before Clock had disappeared. And it was the most recent photo they had of him before he left.

Winner inspected the photo more. Clock looked completely normal in the picture. He was smiling and everything. Clock was a person who it was easy to tell if they weren't very happy just by looking at them. Or at least for Winner it was that easy.

Clock was very clearly smiling in the picture. So that wouldn't have meant that he was dissatisfied with his life or the competition and ran away, proving Ice Cube's theory wrong. This led Winner to assume that Clock had been kidnapped.

Winner was very saddened by this, but thought that there's not much of anything you can do about something like this 70 years later, and especially with no leads on who did it. Everyone had moved on without Clock, who was likely long gone.

Winner had also accepted Clock's sudden disappearance, but one part of them felt incredibly sad, or as if something was very wrong, when they were reminded of him.

Winner felt tears start to well up in their eyes, but they then decided to put the picture back and continue down the hallway to stop thinking about something that happened 70 years ago.

They had already come to terms with Clock's dissappearance a long time ago, and so had everyone else.

Winner decided to check on Rocky and see how he was doing.

After 70 years, turns out Rocky had a life-threatening disease. It wasn't contagious, so other objects could see him and not risk getting it, nor can he get sick from other objects he comes in contact with.

However, the disease at hand was terribly dangerous for Rocky's tiny immune system, so nowadays he has to be hooked up to a life support machine and stay in bed all day. And he can't just be recovered and not have the disease when he comes back. When Rocky dies from it, which he eventually will, he won't be able to be recovered. Rocky could die any second, so it was made normal routine to check on him regularly.

Winner opened the door to see the usual. Poor Rocky was lying in bed, hooked up to life support, doing things on his tablet, which he also used to communicate with what he wants since he can't speak. The room was exceptionally clean, since the disease Rocky had also made him unable to barf, so he just sat there in silence.

As usual, Winner was relieved that Rocky was fine for now, or at least compared to what he's going through. "Heya Rocky!" Winner waved to him. "Are ya feeling okay?"

Rocky's hearing and sight were pretty messed up from his condition, so it took him a while to notice Winner. Once he did, he did what he normally did when he's excited. He made a happy noise, did a big smile and wiggled his stubby legs. Winner was one of his favorite people, so he was very excited to see them.

Winner was also glad to see Rocky as well. Every time Rocky did this when he saw something he liked, it made everyone's heart warm as it was so adorable.

Except this time, Rocky started crying midway through doing his little excited dance.

"Nonono, don't cry! I'm right here! What's wrong?" Winner closed the door behind them and went towards the side of Rocky's bed.

After several seconds, Rocky sniffled, picked up his tablet and started typing. After a bit of typing, Rocky pressed a button and a Text-to-Speech voice said from his tablet; "I miss Clock. Is he okay?"

Winner was surprised that Rocky would remember Clock, even more so at this exact moment.

Winner didn't exactly know what to tell Rocky. Winner knew that Rocky was feeling sad and was just a little kid, so they didn't want to tell Rocky exactly what happened, because that might have made him cry again and be sad. However, Winner felt bad about lying to him and making up something else instead of the truth.

But, the truth is, Winner didn't exactly know the truth yet either. No-one did.

"Rocky, I'm sorry, but we don't know what happened to Clock... he might not come back."

Rocky started to cry a bit again. Winner tried to comfort him. "I'm so sorry about this Rocky, but sometimes things like that happen, and it's best to accept that. Do you want me to try and cheer you up?"

Rocky then again picked up his tablet and started typing on the screen he could barely see through his own tears. Once he finished, a Text-to-Speech voice spoke, "no thank you."

"Oh. Sure thing. Do you want to be left alone right now?" Winner replied.

Rocky pressed a button, and his tablet said in the same TTS voice, "Yes."

Winner felt bad for him, as they knew that it would get lonely for him if he's left alone with just his tablet as usual, but Winner didn't want to pester him any longer. (Rocky's age was around 9 in object years)

"Ok, bye then."

Winner then walked over to the door and left.

Winner continued down the hallway, and decided that they were going to just watch TV. But, as they made their way to the living room, no matter how hard they tried to not think about it, the same question floated around in their mind, "What actually happened to Clock?"

Winner had tried to tell themself that it was a lost cause and that there was nothing that could be done, but one part of them still believed that they were close to finding out what happened, and that Clock could still be alive.

Eventually, Winner had approached the living room. But they didn't sit down and watch TV. They instead went up the stairs that led to the 2nd floor of their house. Then, they went up the ladder that led to the attic.

Winner wanted to find out what happened, and look for anything that could possibly point to what actually happened.