Chapter Text
Duncan doesn’t bother to be quiet as he bumps around in the walls. These are the deep walls, the walls that only look in on mechanical closets and the janitors’ quarters. They’re all out sweeping at this hour, Duncan is sure, not only because it’s before the station’s official hours, but because he memorized the schedules back when he was ten and newly here, in the station, with his uncle.
Duncan’s memory of that time was hazy, to say the least, shrouded in cigarette smoke and lit only by the scented beeswax candles that had long since become unusable.
He doesn’t miss the memories.
He shakes his head as if to clear it and stands up a little straighter. He has what he needs from his uncle: lessons on the clocks and lessons on how to steal. All his other prized things come from the Before: Before the fire, and Before his uncle came into his life. He’s not even sure the man was his uncle. He’d never seen him before, Before the fire that consumed… everything. Duncan’s everything.
But the clocks are so precious to Duncan that he can pretend that they always belonged to him, and in a way, since he’s replaced so many of their parts and wound their springs so many times, they do belong to him now.
Again, Duncan shakes his head and turns instinctively to avoid a pipe that sticks out from the wall. It’s hard to see, but Duncan has done this every day for five years. He knows his way around his environment by now. He knows the clocks, too, knows instinctively when they need to be wound and when a gear is too rusty to continue being used. He knows the clocks like the back of his own hand– better, even– and that’s why he stayed in the walls, despite the ever-present darkness and the lack of fresh food: the clocks need someone to care for them. Someone who knows them, better than the person knows himself.
Finally, the light that streams through the numbers in one of the clocks begins to shine. It comes from a light above a toymaker’s shop, a light that illuminates the artisan-made sign above the door that reads:
Lemony Snicket
Fabricant de Jouets
And then in smaller letters beneath, something Duncan can’t read. He thinks it might be English, and since he never learned English, it makes sense; still, Duncan’s curiosity pricks every time he sees it.
Still. His job is not to know what the toymaker’s sign says. It is to wind the clocks and make sure the toymaker knows what time it is.
Right away, Duncan can tell that this clock needs very little care, and thank the powers that be for that: Duncan hates this particular clock.
(Don’t get him wrong, it’s beautiful machinery; it’s the clock’s proximity to the grouchy old toymaker that puts him off from it. The faster he can get on to his other clocks, such as the one in the main terminal, before people begin to flood the station, the better.)
Duncan sighs and clicks his tongue. His watch face gleams in the light that streams delicately through the numbers of the clock; he checks the arms’ placements in conjunction with his little ones; nothing needs to be wound today.
His tools rattle quietly as he turns his back on the clock and starts off into the darkness for another clock. The darkness feels fluid around him as he moves through it to the next clock.
This one has frosted glass numbers that allow less light through than the toymaker’s clock, but it’s beautiful in its own way. This one Duncan has to oil the gears for, and he curses to himself when he realizes how little oil is left. It’s become harder and harder to come by, since “the War”, as the adults of the station refer to it as, started. Duncan thinks it’s all a little ridiculous.
He turns his back on this one, too, and starts off up the stairs to the hanging clock in the middle of the atrium. Every day, he thinks to himself that he should change his routine and start with this one, so that no one sees him wind it, and every day, he finds himself unable to tear himself off of his usual path to the toymaker’s clock. It still gets wound like all the others, it’s just a matter of when.
Duncan often lovingly refers to this clock as his “gilded beauty”, and he thinks this is no less true today, in the golden light of the sun. To get down to it, he must place the handle of his toolbox between his teeth and climb down a short ladder, where there is a small, cage-like space, and four clock faces to work with. Synching up the ticking of the second hands is his favorite thing to do to this clock, as he can hear them reverberate around him as he does each one.
He drops down into the cage and sets his toolbox down on the metal floor. Being quiet is the hardest part, as everything around him is made of echoey metal, and often the janitors are starting to mop the floors below him right about now. The janitors don’t know he exists; they only know that they don’t ever have to wind the clocks, and that’s enough for them. Duncan likes their little arrangement nicely as well.
He figured out long ago that the clock faces each of the cardinal directions, back when he actually cared about the cardinal directions; now, he just fixes them all the same. Sometimes, it’s nice to know which one he’s working on, but not often.
Today, yes, but not often.
The north one, he remembers, faces the florist’s shop. He can see her now through the nine, fixing an arrangement she probably planned to sell that day. The north clock face needs a slight wind (it’s a few seconds slow), but he’s able to quickly move on.
The east clock faces the entrance to the station, and it is through the numbers of that particular face that blinding, angelic light filters. If he angles his head just right through the five, he can see a small crowd of people, dressed to the nines, standing outside, obviously waiting until the station’s doors are unlocked by the Master. The east clock has a gear that is beginning to deteriorate, so Duncan takes down the small number carved into the side into his little notepad that he keeps in his toolbox for such an occasion and vows to look in his gear stache later for one that will fit.
The south, obviously, faces the other side of the station’s atrium; a small novelty bookstore, in particular. The bookshop has one usual occupant: a boy about Duncan’s age, perhaps a bit younger, with longish, dark, curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He sits in the front window and reads, sometimes sipping from a mug from the coffee shop right next door, sometimes with something shiny in his hands. He isn’t there right now, though Duncan finds himself wishing that he would appear from nowhere. Sometimes, in between his rounds, he likes to come down here, stare through the three at the boy in the window, and make up stories about who he is and where he’s from.
Duncan shakes his head and moves to the next face. He isn’t there, and even if he was, Duncan doesn’t have time to spare staring at him right now. He needs to get on with his morning round.
The west face is nothing special. It doesn’t face anything particularly interesting, except the expanse of shiny tile that covers the floor below him and the large wall that separates the atrium from the platforms. The west face is fine, too, and Duncan prepares to grip the toolbox in his teeth and begin his climb again when he registers movement out of the corner of his eye.
The boy . Duncan had been wishing for him to appear, and voila : here he is. He looks especially dashing today in a long, brown coat and his usual glasses– dashing ? He’s not– it’s not as if Duncan finds him handsome . He scoffs to himself, at himself; he’s sure the boy is some sort of annoying academic, someone who probably knows three languages ( and can tell you how wonderful you look in all of them ), someone who’s stuck up about the kind of books he reads, the kind of coffee he drinks ( the kind of people he dates ).
Okay, so maybe Duncan has a minor crush. But it’s not like said crush is ever going to know he exists. Right?
Duncan shakes his head again. He can come back later and daydream about the boy; right now, he has a job to do, one that cannot be ignored for some silly, handsome boy with pretty glasses and soft-looking hair.
Not right now, anyways.
The next clock is in the Station Master’s office, and Duncan must hope that he isn’t in it right now. There is a cell in the Master’s office that occasionally holds some poor child (some older than Duncan, some who can’t be older than ten, the same age Duncan was when the fire split his life into the Before and the After). The cell gives Duncan the shivers, because if he were ever caught in the walls without his (now late) uncle, he would be placed (thrown) into it and carted off to some state-sanctioned orphanage the next day. Duncan can’t imagine his life without this routine, without his clocks, much less a life in some insect-infected chateau in the countryside where there are no walls to climb into and no clocks to wind. It makes him shudder even here, in the safe darkness of the ceiling above the atrium.
The Master is not in his office, and there is no child in the cell in the corner, when Duncan approaches with his toolbox. This consoles him a bit: if the Master isn’t in his office, he can’t see Duncan through the glass face of the clock built into the wall; ergo, he is safe, and will be safe until he’s forced to exit the walls for food.
The Master’s clock is stubborn. In fact, Duncan hates it almost as much as he hates the toymaker’s clock, if not equally, for different reasons. The Master’s clock does not like to be wound, and it doesn’t like to have its gears replaced, even though it needs that sort of treatment often. Today, though, it simply needs a bit of oil. Duncan gives it barely enough, just enough to keep it running smoothly, but just little enough that he still has a bit of oil left for his last clock.
Duncan smiles to himself in the darkness. His last clock is, by far, his favorite: the large, weighted clock in the tower that looks over the city. When the boy isn’t being interesting, Duncan will come up here and stare out at the city, just to watch the automobiles putter and the people rush around and make shapes from the clouds.
Light floods Duncan’s vision as he climbs the metal stairs up into the clock tower. Here, there are two faces, one that faces the street in front of the station (Duncan can see all the people from earlier, now standing in a larger crowd), and one that faces out towards the Eiffel Tower. They’re both massive: the hour hand alone is twice the size of Duncan, and the second and minute hands are even larger.
Still. He loves them. They may be bigger than anything else, but they’re still Duncan’s clocks, and he wouldn’t trade them for the world. Their machinery is small and set at the bottom of the clock, so it’s serviceable, and Duncan moves to the face that looks out on the street first.
This one is a minute behind, so he takes a moment to fix that, smiling to himself when the people below begin to check their watches and align them, too. A little child waves up at him– or rather, up at the clock face– from where he stands gripping his mother’s hand tight. A pang of something painful shoots through Duncan’s heart, but he brushes it off.
Just because his own mother didn’t love him enough to stick around doesn’t mean he needs to project that onto every little kid he sees that looks like him.
He moves onto the face with the better view. This one is fine, and Duncan is grateful for that: he’s tired, hungry, and he wants to get out of the light and down into the atrium clock before all these people start to flood into the station.
The darkness is thick and almost tangible as Duncan walks back through the walls to his apartment. He needs to eat, even though he’s pretty sure there’s nothing there to eat; he might as well look, and put down his toolbox while he’s at it, just in case there is something there and he doesn’t need to risk being thrown in The Cell.
He passes the toymaker’s clock on his way and something catches his eye. It’s–
“But Papa ,”
It’s the boy . The boy from the bookshop.
“It’s final,” the toymaker says. Duncan recognises his voice, even though he can’t see the grouch. “You stay here today, Klaus.”
Klaus . It’s beautiful and fits him perfectly.
“But–”
“Stop that!” the toymaker snaps. The boy’s– Klaus’s – face falls. “Someone has been stealing Violet’s toys, and I need you to find out who.”
Klaus huffs and crosses his arms. “That’s not my problem.”
Duncan looks away just in time. Smack .
“You know better. Your sister spends hours every night working on these toys, and you will respect that by catching the thief, do you understand?” Klaus mumbles something Duncan doesn’t catch. “I said, do you understand ?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good. Stay here . I’ll be back in a bit with breakfast.” Klaus and Duncan watch the old man leave; Klaus scoffs and mumbles something, probably mocking the old man.
Duncan realizes that this is his chance. He can strike a deal with this boy much better than he can strike a deal with the toymaker; besides, he’s starved for friends. Klaus looks like he’d make a good friend. He looks smart and kind, and something in Duncan really wants to get closer to him–
Before he can even reason with himself, he’s bounding down the stairs that lead to an entrance to the ventilation system, and therefore a grate through which he can leave the walls and step out into the rest of the station.
He’s cautious during this part: he doesn’t want the toymaker to come back too soon, but he doesn’t want to wait any longer. Finally, he gathers his courage and pushes on the grate.
Klaus’s head snaps to the grate and Duncan pauses. Slowly, carefully, he presses the metal further out and watches Klaus’s brow furrow and his head tilt, and finally he manages to free the grate and step out into the corridor.
Klaus moves instinctively away from Duncan, though even from this distance Duncan can sense a bit of curiosity in the way he shifts, in the way his hands go to the telephone near the entrance.
“Wait!” Duncan says, and Klaus’s hands pause. “Please don’t– I’m not going to hurt you.” To prove so, he puts his hands out in front of himself and moves carefully into the light. Klaus’s head tilts to the side and he allows his hands to fall back into his lap. “I just– I’ve been watching you for a while now.”
“That’s not creepy at all,” Klaus says.
“Not–” Duncan sighs– “not like that. I’m Duncan, I live in the walls.”
“Again, not creepy.” Duncan sighs again. “It’s just weird, is all. Why have you been watching me? Where?”
“You sit in the bookstore in the atrium and read most days, right?” Klaus nods slowly. “I sit inside the clock. The big one in the middle of the station. I’m the person who winds the clocks and takes care of them.”
“Why?”
“Why do I take care of the clocks?”
“Why do you watch me?”
“You’re– interesting.” He has to stop himself from saying handsome as he stands up straight and lets his hands fall back to his sides. “Listen, I need your help. You don’t like the toymaker much, do you?”
Klaus hesitates. “I’m supposed to,” he says, “but… you’ve probably seen it. He hits me.” Duncan’s heart stutters and Klaus narrows his eyes. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I steal the toys.” Klaus fixes him with a piercing stare with bottomless chocolate eyes. “I need them to fix the clocks. All the little gears in the toys are the perfect size for the smaller clocks, like that one.” He’s lying through his teeth as he points to the clock above his head. He can only hope that Klaus can’t tell. “And… and I don’t have any money. I promise if I did, I wouldn’t steal them, but…”
“You mean the station master doesn’t pay you to wind the clocks?”
“Technically, yes, but I don’t know how to cash the checks. And technically the checks are in my uncle’s name.” Klaus hums once, a short beat, and brings his thumb to his mouth to bite on his nail.
“I’ll make you a deal.” Duncan allows a small smile to flicker across his face. “I’ll get you the toys, so you can keep the clocks in order, on one condition.”
“Anything,”
“You let me into the walls and be my friend.” Duncan smiles wider and nods. “Great. Come here.” Duncan looks down the hall where the toymaker left off to, sighing when it was clear. “Don’t be shy. I don’t bite.”
Duncan hums and steps inside the small shop. This place is filled with anxiety (the old man’s snores echo in his ears), and though Klaus’s presence does something to dispel that, it still puts him on edge.
“Why don’t… why don’t you come into the walls now?” Duncan asks nervously, folding in on himself a little.
Klaus hums and frowns. “My foster father– the toymaker– he’ll kill me if I bolt right away. Why not tomorrow?”
Duncan tries to not show his disappointment.
Obviously, he fails. “I’ll bring you some coffee and a pastry,” Klaus offers. “Tomorrow morning, I mean. Papa won’t want me to do this job for long, I’ll bet.”
“Tomorrow… eight?”
“In the morning?” Duncan nods and mirrors the smile that comes over Klaus’s face. He tries to ignore the deep dimples that pierce his cheeks, sweet and soft and natural. Duncan feels the inexplicable urge to move closer and… kiss them? Maybe. He can't tell. “See you then. You should go.” Duncan had almost forgotten how much danger he was in by simply being in the shop, and if that was how the toymaker treated his own grandson, what would he do if he caught Duncan in his shop?
Duncan darts back across the corridor into the safety of the darkness behind the grate; Klaus flashes him a hesitant, closed-mouth smile that makes his coffee-colored eyes crinkle sweetly and the dimples reappear, shallower this time; Duncan mirrors it for a split-second, face warm, before it drops off of Klaus's face entirely.
"What are you smiling at?" The toymaker turns to the darkness that shrouds the grate, but Duncan is safely behind it and has scooted back so that he, too, is covered by the safety of the shadows.
"A mouse," Klaus lies easily. "Sweet little thing. Disappeared into the grate. I think you scared it off." Klaus plucks a small, blue, mechanical mouse out of one of the baskets behind the toymaker's countertop.
The toymaker grunts noncommittally and drops a brown paper bag on the counter.
"No coffee?"
Klaus's nerve in front of a man who hits him astounds Duncan. He's confident, almost arrogant, caramel eyes steeled in resolve that he will not give in to the abuse.
"No. You're becoming addicted to the stuff. Best to have a morning without it, I think."
"And fall asleep in the middle of the day like you?" Again, Duncan turns his head away at just the right moment as the toymaker winds up to smack . When he turns back, Klaus is holding his cheek lightly. "What? That's how the thief gets in, you know. He waits until right around lunchtime, when you're snoring away, and he makes off with whatever he wants. And anyway, you can't be addicted to coffee any more than you can be addicted to milk."
"Read that in one of your books?" the toymaker sneers. Klaus nods. "All the more reason to keep you here for the day. You'll survive for one day without your coffee and your…"
"James Joyce," Klaus finishes, examining his nails.
"Kids these days. Don't know anything about hard work. All you know how to do is--"
"Think for myself?"
A third time-- smack .
"You know I'm right. The only reason you don't like me hanging around the bookstore and the cinema is because you want me to listen to you for everything. But that's stupid."
"Those American novels have been putting things in your head." Klaus narrowly avoids a thump on the skull. "You need real, French friends."
Klaus scoffs, but doesn't say anything. The toymaker moves out of Duncan's line of sight and Klaus sends a smile right at the grate (dimples soft and sweet, no more than slight dips in his cheeks) that Duncan can't help but copy.
Duncan shifts in the darkness so that he can stand and move away; as much as he would like to stay, his stomach is going to start rumbling soon, and he doesn't want that to be the reason he loses his only friend.
A friend!