Work Text:
Tick
Amelia Watson sits at the foot of her bed, knees curled up to her chin, doing her very best to make it stop.
Tock
But no matter what she tries, no matter how hard she hides, it’s still there, always, from everywhere around her, from within her own mind she hears it.
Tick
A simple sound, one wouldn’t bat an eyelid at, but for the detective it was so much worse, it makes her want to punch out all of the clocks nearby, even though she knows that would do nothing considering she has done so on a few occasions before.
Tock
Every time she hears it she begs the gods for it to stop, she never considered herself a religious type, but if it meant silence, she wouldn’t mind praying.
Tick
She doesn’t understand, everything should be better now, both Ina and Gura are safe, no ancient gods to threaten their very existence, there is no more danger, there hadn’t been for the past two years, since Amelia managed to finally save Ina from the grasp of the Ancient Ones.
Tock
She finds it quite ironic really, she managed to save Ina from the voices in her head that would make any man go mad, yet she herself is stuck with something inside her own mind.
Tick
She pretends she doesn’t know what the source of the sound is, and maybe she can keep doing that forever. But the truth is she knows, she knows very well, what and why it is doing this.
Tock
She also knows she could make it stop at any point. At a great cost but it isn’t out of her reach, she contemplates the thought for a moment, as she always does, before rejecting it, yet this time it won’t go away so easily it seems.
Tick
She remembers the night she figured out what the sound was, the look of terror on her face must have been hilarious, she thinks. She remembers looking at her notes again and again wishing she was wrong, hoping she made a typo somewhere, and that the conclusion she came to was simply a mistake. But try as she may, she never found any inconsistencies, and despite holding on to the tiniest shreds of hope, she knew deep down that she was right, she usually was when it came to investigating.
Tock
She often reminisces to when she was still early on in her attempts, when she was full of hope, full of determination, full of love each time she saw her face again. But as time went on, or rather it didn’t, she felt as if she was losing a portion of herself every time she even as much as looked at that damned device.
Tick
Yet every single time, as she would look upon Ina’s still body, she would still wind it up, and hearing a sound similar to the one stuck in her head now she would simply appear back at the start. always the same: a Tick followed by a
Tock
She knows the sound is the clock attempting to communicate, or at least that’s what she believes it is. Just as Ina’nis had her own cursed being looming over her existence, maybe this was Amelia Watson’s God.
Tick
She also knows how to appease this frustrated God of hers. Ever since she figured out what the cause of the sound was, she knew exactly what to do to make it stop. But she never could. How could one even attempt to make a decision of this magnitude.
Tock
From her calculations, she figured out she was stuck in the loop for approximately 13 years, give or take a few months. Repeating the same three days, for thirteen god forsaken years.
Tick
And as much as she doesn’t want to believe it herself, she knows what’s truly plaguing her mind ever since she finally escaped the loop. Of course, she realizes a portion of it is the clock’s influence, but she also recognizes that quite a big fraction of this is her own disgusting desire.
Tock
She misses it.
Tick
Despite all the pain she has gone through, she became addicted to it. To the feeling of having a purpose, to the feeling of adrenaline in her veins, each time she was in a near death situation.
Tock
She holds the clock close to her, with a grip so strong she is seconds away from breaking the damn thing, her knuckles white from the pressure, her fingers so close to simply winding it up and going back. She stops herself at the last moment.
Tick
Every second the ticks, and the tocks get louder, the clock must have noticed her uncertainty, it commands her, it begs her. If she gives in, it's over, she’ll be right back at the start. And yet that doesn’t really sound that bad all things considered.
Tock
She grabs the device again, holding a power close to a gods in her hand. She looks at it with a pained expression, relieved, her fingers move slowly, intimately, moving the hands of the clock in a direction a normal clock shouldn’t move, a Tick and a Tock and then
Silence