Chapter Text
‘Tick Tock’ says the Heart of a Clock
Chapter 1: The Game Begins
“…let me warn you about something. Every game has its rules. And those rules are cemented the second you start to play.” – Alice in the County of Hearts Wonderful Wonder World, Chapter 1: Welcome to Wonderland
“Death paused, as though considering, before it nodded. ‘Very well,’ it said, ‘and if you win, you shall not die.’ […] ‘You win.’” – The Magnus Archives, Episode 29: Cheating Death
“How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!” – Alice In Wonderland, Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole
---
When Jon opened his eyes, he was lying on his back in a field of flowers. There was a dazzling assortment; Arum Lilies, Japanese snowballs, rosemary, bluebells, primroses, lilacs, daisies, dandelions, marigolds, tulips of all colours… They stretched around him in every direction, far into a distant blue horizon of a sky that was dotted with the most perfectly white, fluffy clouds he had ever seen.
It was quiet, the only noise the soft rustle of the flowers as they bent in a light breeze. Jon could almost imagine they were whispering to each other as he slowly sat up and looked around, his own long black hair loose and catching the same breeze as it blew around his shoulders. It wasn’t cold, rather it felt warm and welcoming, kissing his cheeks and forehead even as it furrowed.
“Where on earth am I?” Jon said aloud, pushing his feet under him. His trainers were dirty, layered in muck and debris. His trousers were torn at the knees and his attempts to dust them off as he stood proved futile, though he did manage to pick off several shredded pieces of black, plastic film that clung to him with static.
His green corduroy jacket had a hole in it. A big one, right over his heart. When he stretched his neck to look over his shoulder, he found that side had a matching hole as well. Both holes were surrounded by a large, brown stain.
Jon’s brow furrowed further. He wondered how that had happened. He felt through the hole with his fingers and spread the fabric aside to inspect himself. A white, thick knot of scar tissue stuck out from the brown expanse of his chest, but there was no sign of a recent wound that he could see. Very odd. He would definitely need to investigate that, but the first step to that would be figuring out how he got there.
“What sort of a place is this, anyway?” Jon asked himself, because there was no one else around to ask. It was, after all, a very odd place for a man to be wandering around in, let alone to be asleep in. Had someone put him there? He closed his eyes and tried to think back to before he went to sleep.
Terrible things. Fires and graveyards and mud and war and sickness and slaughterhouses and gardens of flesh instead of flowers. He opened his eyes and gasped, grasping his chest over the scar tissue and holding on as he staggered and fell to his knees, crushing a lily under him. He stared at the torn white petals as he tried to catch his breath and understand what he had seen.
As he calmed down, he rationalized. The images had a fuzzy, faded quality, and besides that he couldn’t recall anything especially bad happening to him. Dreams, then. Nightmares. He had been asleep after all. He needs to know before that, what had happened before, what had brought him here… or who? Did someone… had there been someone else? Who were they?
“And for that matter… who am I?” Jon mumbled to himself, looking up again to stare at the horizon again. He was quiet for a moment and then, with a note of surety and triumph, announced, “Ah, that’s right. I’m Jon.”
He squinted. “Jon… something.”
He blinked, still focused on the horizon, and then startled when he saw a figure walking toward him from a great distance. Jon scrambled back up to his feet, straining his eyes to see who it was. They were tall and broad shouldered, and as Jon looked at the figure something stirred in the back of his mind, reminded of something. Someone.
“Martin,” the word felt strange on his tongue at first, so he repeated it. “Martin that’s… Martin. Martin is my boyfriend. Martin. MARTIN!”
Without a thought, Jon began racing across the field, heedless of the flowers he was crushing underfoot as he went. Faster and faster until the figure in the distance began to define itself, and only when the face was close enough to discern did Jon slow and frown. This was not Martin, but as he grew close Jon realized he still recognised him.
“Peter Lukas!” Jon snapped, suddenly full of anger. “What have you done with Martin?!”
The man before him was tall and broad shouldered, yes, but his face was lean, eyes pale blue and flat above a regal nose. He had a full white beard that ran up into his hair that was pulled back into a tiny white bob of a ponytail. He was wearing fancy black trousers and a red and black checkered waistcoat with a golden watch chain leading out of his breast pocket.
“No?” Peter Lukas said, cocking his head to one side curiously. His nose twitched. “I’m Peter Rabbit, messenger of the Queen!”
Jon’s scowl dropped into something more confused. “Peter… Rabbit?”
“Obviously,” Peter said, smirking as he pointed to his head. “Do I not look like a rabbit to you?”
Jon looked back up to Peter’s head and was startled again to see the sides of Peter’s head twitching. A second later, two white rabbit ears sprung up to point straight into the air like exclamation marks.
“What,” Jon said faintly as he took a step backward. Peter closed the distance fast and grabbed his limp hand. Jon tried to pull it back but Peter held firm. “Let go of me!”
“You must be Alice!” said Peter, his voice jovial as he dragged Jon closer and bent to press a cool kiss to the back of Jon’s hand. “Pleased to meet me, I’m sure.”
“I- I most certainly am NOT!” Jon snapped as he finally got his hand back and cradled it to his chest as though it had been burned. Actually, now that he looked at it, it did seem to have been burned before… not that this was the time for speculating. “And my name is Jon. ”
“Jon-Alice, of course,” Peter nodded and spoke again while Jon sputtered indignantly. “Not that names matter as much as the parts we play. You’re still just Alice to me, and I am just the White Rabbit to you.”
Peter smirked and winked as though he were sharing a joke, but that only made Jon all the more frustrated and stubborn.
“No. No, I recognise you, you’re Peter Lukas damn it!” Jon stomped his foot. “I know I haven’t seen you in a while, something happened to you but… but I can’t remember…”
Another bolt of pain lanced through Jon’s head and he clutched it, bending in on himself. It was hard to think. Why?
“Did… why can’t I… did something happen to me ?” Jon mumbled, hardly noticing Peter moving until he was beside him, putting a firm arm around his back and pushing him along through the field back the way the rabbit-eared man had come.
“How about you come along to tea with me and the Queen?” Peter suggested. “Everything’s a bit better after a spot of tea, don’t you think?”
“I… yes but… no… no!” Jon dropped down under Peter’s arm to the ground and crab walked backward and away from him. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
Peter clicked his tongue. “Well, I can’t say stubborn Alices are unusual I suppose. If you wanted to be carried you could’ve just said so.”
“I do NOT want- HEY!” Jon swore and kicked as Peter leaned down and scooped him up in a bridal carry and began walking. He didn’t seem to care how much Jon struggled and screamed at him, only holding tighter until Jon finally calmed himself down.
“There now, that’s a good Alice,” Peter praised and adjusted his hold so Jon was sitting up more. “You can hold me around the neck to feel steadier.”
Jon’s eyes narrowed and he slowly let his arm circle Peter’s neck. He reached up with his other hand and encircled one of Peter’s rabbit ears.
“Want to touch? Bold of you. Yes, I know we rabbits have exceptionally soft- AAAAUUURRRGGH!” Peter howled as Jon crushed the ear in his grip and yanked as hard as he could. Finally Peter dropped him to the ground and Jon quickly put distance between them as the man began to literally hop around, holding his ear and squealing in pain.
“Ow! Ow! That’s not fair! Not fair at all!” Peter wailed and pouted like an eight year old and Jon scoffed.
“That’s what you get for manhandling someone without permission!” Jon scolded.
“I thought Alices were supposed to be sweet? Awful thing you are,” Peter grumbled and smoothed out his ears again before fixing him with a sour look. “Fine then, stay here for all I care. If you won’t come to tea, I suppose I just won’t tell you where you are, and YOU can’t make me! Ha!”
“We’ll see about that!” Jon said, eyes flashing. “Tell me where we are?”
“The Outskirts,” Peter replied in monotone, and then froze like a deer in headlights. He stared at Jon with his mouth moving soundlessly for a moment, and then paled. “How did you do that?”
“Well I simply…” Jon trailed off and frowned. “I’m not… sure…”
“Well…” Peter took his own step backwards now, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “If you want to drag any more answers out of me, you’ll have to catch me first!”
“Hey, wait!” Jon called but Peter was already dashing away, making great leaps over the flower beds, much further and higher than a man ought to be able to, as though the earth had the gravity of the moon. Jon tried to follow, running as fast as he could, but from nowhere a thick mist rose from the flowers and obscured them, the man leaping away, and then even the bright blue sky.
“No… no no no this…” Jon swallowed and slowed, looking around him and finding nothing but fog. The breeze was gone, and his voice echoed strangely. He knelt down, felt the ground, but found no flowers or grass to touch. He stood again shook his head slowly. “This can’t… I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I want to go back to Martin.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Peter’s voice came from behind Jon, and he jumped when he was grabbed from behind.
“Let me go!” Jon yelled as one thick arm held him like iron to the broad chest behind him. “Let me G-ACK!”
A glass vial was forced into Jon’s mouth as he yelled, and a sickly sweet liquid poured down his throat like oil. He coughed as he was released and spun on the spot, only catching a glimpse of Peter sliding the vial into his waistcoat pocket before hopping away into the mist again.
Jon wanted to follow, but his stomach felt queasy and his head pounded. He hugged himself and slammed his eyes shut, shivering violently and prayed that when he opened his eyes he would be somewhere else, anywhere else…
He opened his eyes, and he was.
The mist was gone, as was the field. The air was still, but the surroundings had changed completely. He stood on the grey and white cobblestones of a wide, circular courtyard ringed by a flagstone wall. The wall was interrupted by pillars at regular intervals, each topped with the emblem of a Spade from a deck of playing cards.
Jon turned on the spot and then stumbled backward as he saw in the center of this courtyard was a very, very tall, stone tower. Along one side were windows, each shaped like Spades to match the emblems on the pillars. At the top of the tower was a perfect cube-shaped structure topped with a pointed roof, and on each side of the cube was a massive face of an analog clock. The clock faces didn’t have numbers, only grooves where numbers ought to be, and long brass hands that pointed to them. Though as Jon slowly walked around the tower, he noted that none of the clocks read the same time.
“Curiouser and cur- ahem. Curious and even more curious,” Jon corrected himself as he finally found himself facing a spade shaped door at the base of the tower.
The door itself was wood, but painted black, and upon it hung a stark white sign that read in curling script: ‘ CLOCKMAKER’S RESIDENCE, INQUIRE WITHIN ’. Beside the door hung a bell, bronze with a long string hanging down from it.
Jon hesitated, but lacking other options (he hadn’t seen any doors leading out of the courtyard in the outer wall) he walked to the door and reached for the bell.
Between one blink and the next, another, smaller sign appeared next to the bell. This one read: ‘ PLEASE KNOCK ’.
“But why have a bell if not to ring it?” Jon asked himself and reached out to pull the string anyway. The bell shook… but didn’t ring. Broken? Jon tugged on the string again.
This time a small, black spider fell out of the bell and onto Jon’s hand. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Jon flailed his hand wildly to shake off the spider, eventually slamming it against the door where the vile thing finally fell off and, regrettably, was still alive enough to scurry out of sight between the grooves in the cobblestones.
While Jon stood panting and recovering from this fresh horror, the door to the clock tower opened. Jon looked up to see another face he recognised, black and beautiful with eyes so deep and dark one could lose themselves in them. He wore a midnight blue sweater with white flecks that looked like twinkling stars.
“Don’t follow instructions well, do you? That’s a pain,” said Oliver in a pleasant, if exasperated voice.
“Oliver Banks?” Jon asked in disbelief.
“Oliver the Clockmaker,” Oliver corrected, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching as he looked Jon up and down. Jon huffed.
“But you look like- urgh never mind. I know who you are.”
Oliver blinked. “Do you? I suppose that will save some time if that’s true. Oh… wait I see. You’re the new Alice, aren’t you?”
“I’m Jon,” said Jon.
“Jon-Alice then. Fine, come in then,” Oliver made to turn back into the tower and gestured for Jon to follow him. Once again lacking options but at least feeling safer with Oliver than he had with Peter, Jon did so.
Inside of the tower was a wide, high-ceilinged room encircled by a winding staircase that rose in a gentle spiral until it vanished through a hole in the ceiling. The center of the room was a mass of complicated wooden and metal gears of all sizes and shapes, clicking together in a grinding symphony. The ones at the base half disappeared into the floor and the ones at the top into the ceiling, giving the impression that Jon was only looking at a very small part of a much larger and even more complicated device.
Jon was so taken with watching the gears that he forgot Oliver entirely, until the man clearly his throat loudly and clapped Jon on the shoulder, steering him to a corner that seemed to be set up for tea time, a tidy wooden table and chairs on a spade-shaped rug. On the table stood a simple yet elegant bone white tea set, hot black tea already steaming from the cups.
Jon let himself be steered into his seat, but left the tea untouched even as Oliver drank deeply from his.
“Alright. So how much do you remember right now?” Oliver asked after he swallowed.
“Well I… I don’t remember how I got here, exactly. I was chasing Peter, but he was odd, he had rabbit ears.”
“Ah, Peter,” Oliver nodded. “So you know who Peter is?”
Jon glared at nothing. “He’s a vile man.”
Oliver nodded again. “Seems right. And you know me, you said?”
“Yes I… I think…” Jon squinted, mindless reaching for the teacup and holding it in his hands. It was warm. “I think you brought me back to life, once?”
“Really? Wicked,” Oliver hummed, licking a stray drop of tea from his lip. “And that also makes sense. Bringing people back to life is what I do, after all.”
“It… it is?” Jon frowned. That didn’t seem quite right, but he didn’t know enough about his own past to dispute it.
“Sure. But let’s focus on you for now. Anything else you’ve remembered so far?”
“Just… my name and…” Jon absently took a sip of tea and Remembered. “Martin! My boyfriend, Martin! I have to find him. I was with him just before I… fell asleep? I think… ow, urgh, why does my head hurt so much…”
“Alright, that’s enough, no need to hurt yourself. Better to just remember things when you’re ready for them,” Oliver smiled and patted Jon’s knee. “It sounds like you haven’t been here long, then. Did you spawn here?”
“Did I what?!”
“So that’s a yes. Wow, haven’t been a First Contact in a while. I did wonder what that new room was about,” Oliver gestured to the stairs and Jon followed his gaze to a wooden door set into the wall halfway up the stairs to where they vanished into the ceiling. The door was emblazoned with the symbol of an Eye.
Jon’s head throbbed again. He looked away.
“So did you want to make this your Home Base?” Oliver asked. “You can change your Home Base whenever you want as long as you haven’t changed it in the last three days.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Jon asked, still trying to think around his headache.
Oliver pursed his lips. “Well, you have to have a home base somewhere so we’ll leave it here for now. You can change it later if you make friends with someone else.”
“Why do I need a home base?” Jon asked, completely lost. Oliver was quick to explain.
“You can rest there, keep Gifts displayed, use the desk to write letters… normal stuff like that.”
Jon rubbed his forehead. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on. I just want to go home, alright?”
“Oh, yes, that,” Oliver set down his teacup and looked at Jon seriously. “Do you have your vial?”
“My what?”
“The thing the White Rabbit made you drink out of?”
Jon’s brow furrowed as he tried to think back. “I… no. No, he took it with him. Why?”
Oliver hissed between his teeth. “Well, that’s unfortunate. You’ll need that to get home, so you’ll have to find him and get it back. That will be your First Task then.”
“But I don’t know where he is!” exclaimed Jon.
“That’s alright. The White Rabbit might go all over Wonderland for his job, but his home base is in Hearts Castle, so if you go there you should be able to find him eventually. Of course, there’s plenty of murder-happy folks in that direction, but you should be fine.” Oliver shrugged, but Jon felt a wave of uneasiness.
“Sorry, murder-happy…?”
“Eh, you’ll be fine. Most people wouldn’t kill an Alice, especially not on his first day. Hm, but the Knight might so… watch out for that one, I guess. You can stay here for tonight in your home base, and tomorrow you can go to Hearts Castle.”
“Why can’t I leave now?” Jon asked. “It’s still daylight.”
“Is it?” Oliver asked. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Jon snapped, standing up and striding back to the door, flinging it open… to find the courtyard beyond pitch black. Stars dotted the sky like they dotted Oliver’s sweater, and he could hear crickets chirping.
“But… I could have sworn…” Jon’s brow furrowed as Oliver came and shut the door again.
“That’s alright. Time here is a lot different than the places Alices come from,” Oliver smiled. “Like I said, you can rest here tonight and tomorrow you can find the White Rabbit.”
“And then get back to Martin,” Jon said resolutely. “Alright, fine. What are you going to be doing, then?”
“Me?” Oliver tilted his head. “I have work to do. Got six broken clocks in last night.”
“Six broken clocks? That… sounds like a lot?” Jon asked, though he really lacked a frame of reference.
“Hm, yes, a few. Casualties of the war. Seems they got in the Way of the Knight of Hearts, not that the Knight ever really knows what his Way is. Oh well, I’ll fix them anyway. No sleep for me I’m afraid.”
“Causalities of… war? You’re at war?” Jon asked faintly and then stumbled as a wave of exhaustion came over him. Oliver tutted and let him lean against his side to steady him.
“That’s alright, I can explain in the morning,” Oliver soothed and helped Jon to the stairs and up them, step by step until they arrived at the Eye-marked door. It slid open at Jon’s touch, and beyond it was a simple room with a wooden plank floor and white plaster walls. A smooth white wardrobe and chest stood against the wall in one corner, a simple yellow writing desk and chair in the opposite, and tiny twin-sized bed pushed up underneath a small, spade-shaped window. The bed was draped with a comforter in Jon’s favourite shade of green, and looked exceptionally warm and comforting at the moment.
“You’ll be alright,” Oliver said, voice low and rich as he pushed Jon into his room. “You can rest here as long as you need.”
Then Oliver left, shutting the door quietly behind him. Jon teetered to the bed, then paused and climbed up to stand on it, peering through the window.
From here, he could see over the courtyard wall to a sprawling, moonlight forest beyond. It stretched on into the distance, but if he looked very hard he thought he could see lights twinkling on the horizon. …it certainly didn’t look that dangerous. Maybe he shouldn’t be accepting what Oliver says at face value.
What sealed the deal was when Jon realized that now, set into the wall of the courtyard, was a arched gateway and a glimmering yellow path beyond leading toward the trees.
Jon crept out of his room and peered over the edge of the staircase. Oliver sat in the same corner they had sipped tea in earlier, though now it had been redecorated into a kind of work space. Shelves of clock parts of varying sizes stood in a square around the bench he worked at. Jon watched him for a time, but it seemed all very normal to him, just a man doing the meticulous work of fixing pocket watches.
Jon very slowly and quietly made his way down the stairs toward the door, frequently looking back at Oliver, though the man seemed quite engrossed in his work and didn’t look up even once. When Jon reached the front door and heaved it open he took three steps out into the night before he heard the guttural noise of wolves howling. He froze and a thrill of fear ran up his spine.
Then, without preamble, Jon felt a giant set of eyes focus on him. As though he were on stage before the whole world. As though a child the size of the earth was holding him squirming in front of a magnifying glass. Jon quaked and stumbled back into the tower, slamming the door behind him.
The wolf howls ceased. The feeling of being watched though, didn’t. It lessened, but not enough to shake it entirely. Jon turned to Oliver, who was still working on his clocks and seemed to hear nothing.
Jon raced back up to his room, shut the door, and dove under the green comforter. He didn’t think his heart would stop racing long enough to let him sleep, but the moment his eyes shut he was already gone.
*
“They say here that dreams are scarier than hell because they end,” a woman with white hair and dark skin and too many eyes whispers. “But I wonder if we will agree with them?”