Be warned, long AN, but there's a purpose. I'm answering review questions/requests. Alright. So after this, I'm going to continue with the AlicexWhoever one-shots where they have kids, because - even though a lot of those already exist - they're quite fun to write, even if they don't turn out to be my best quality work. However, I don't know which Role-Holder to pair her with next. Suggestions? Anyways, leave a review or two and let me know if my writing is getting better. :3
Also, to the guest who asked how I decided what the children as mentioned above look like, so far I imagined them all to be girls. Karmic consequence for how pervy the men were with Alice ;P As for the names, I kind of just decide what would sound nice. Ari's full name is Aramis Liddell, as Ace has no surname. Aramis was actually on my mother's baby name list when she was pregnant with me, and I remembered her telling me that when I was deciding. As for Lily, I've just always liked that name, and it goes well with Dupre, as Alice probably took Blood's name when they married.
To Tia who requested artwork of Dragon Alice at the beginning of Old Role, I'm very sorry to say, I'm a crap artist. I can't draw worth a hoot x.x I'm sorry!
To GhibliFan, regarding your request...maybe. "Red", despite being one of my more favorite pieces, was a little out of my comfort zone. That being said, that was entirely the point. I felt both quite happy and nervous with it, so maybe.
To everyone else who has ever reviewed...THANK YOU SO MUCH! You have no idea how much that means to me! I never thought so many people would want to read my writing, so again, THANK YOU!
Now, without further ado, the story!
/*\
His life had been a simple one. He didn't interact with other people, he did not worry over trivial things. He worked, would occasionally leave to get supplies and food, and work some more. Sometimes an assistant would show up, bring him more work, and keep him an hour's worth of company. That was it, and though he was not particularly happy, he was content.
And then she showed up.
At that point, his life became a little more...active, than he'd have liked. This girl, who had literally fallen from the sky onto his doorstep, was not an unpleasant companion. Seeing as the rest of this world so unlike her own was completely drowning in civil war, she had needed a safe place to stay until she got her bearings. He was reluctant at first, to allow her presence within his home, but looking upon this terrified girl - who had absolutely no relation to the Role-Holders he so detested - well, he might have been misanthropic, but he was not so cruel as to leave her to fend for herself.
His was the only neutral realm, and he knew that if he were to expel her immediately, she would probably die. Normally, this would not particularly perturb him - she had no clock, it wasn't his concern - but she was an Outsider, one who had not wished herself here. She would not be reincarnated, and he viewed it unfair to allow her only life to end when she was clearly an unwilling guest of Wonderland.
So he let her stay, and even gave her the only bedroom within the tower, as he slept primarily at his desk, tired from a long day of endless work. For a time, she had been his assistant, making coffee, retrieving spare parts, and buying groceries. She even did a good deal of the cooking and cleaning. For the first time, he was actually able to finish his work and take a break from his Role, and he was able to actually sleep in the bed he now shared with her (not at the same time, mind you), as opposed to passing out on the desk and waking up with his glasses imprinted on his face. Thanks to her, he had the ability to relax.
However, as more and more periods of free time showed up, she wanted him to do things with her. He would not have found this so objectionable had it not been for the fact that the faceless citizenry absolutely could not stand him. No one liked a person who dealt with the dead, and so on the first few outings, she listened in complete appallment to the slurs and murmurings directed at him. He had long since learned not to let such ridiculous things bother him, but her? It made her livid. She had actually gotten so angry on his behalf, that she even picked a fight with several Mafia goons, people who would not hesitate to hurt her, as these particular gang members did not belong to the Hatter. She had been so very lucky that Julius was not as helpless as many believed him to be.
But then, someone had to do the clock collecting before Ace showed up.
This girl was too innocent and naive to truly understand the prejudices and carelessness of Wonderland, and to his complete and utter hypocrisy, that was one of the many things he had liked about her. Unlike him - who saw so completely how awful the place truly was - she viewed the beautiful illusions. In many ways, she did not see the reality of Wonderland, and thanks to the dream demon, it had stayed that way for a while. It was part of the reason he had insisted so often that she choose to go home. While he wanted her to stay just as much as Ace or the Hatter or even Peter, he realized that she should not sacrifice herself, her hopes and dreams and innocence, for the likes of any of them. She should not give her only life to people who had been and would be replaced a countless number of times.
Then the Hatter had acted upon the selfish impulse of all selfish impulses. He broke the vial and trapped her in Wonderland.
Then she had been bound to her Role.
/*\
When Alice had become the Jabberwocky, Julius did the best he could to visit her, and try to offer consolation for the atrocity that the Hatter had committed. However, with the loss of her assistance and the increase of territory battles, he simply was not able to offer himself up as a stable friend, and so that duty had been left to the Queen of Hearts, who could obtain free time whenever she liked.
It was a wonder that he'd ever gotten enough time with the woman to actually manage to woo her.
/*\
It had been years, since Alice had taken her Role, and she had fallen in with the Role-Holders accordingly, performing her duties as she was required. However, somehow, she had not lost her kindness or happiness, the glow that had attracted each and every man - even a couple women - to fall at her feet. She was just as sweet and strong and beautiful as the day she had first arrived at the Clock Tower, panicked and demanding he tell her how to return home.
Today, so much later, they had set up an arrangement. Julius's work wasn't really destination-specific. He still had to manage Clock Tower Plaza, though it was small it was still technically a country, one that he headed, but it didn't require as much work or effort as if he led the Mafia or ran the Amusement Park. So for six months each year, he lived at Jabberwocky Tower with his wife, and when he was not there, she visited him weekly with Holly.
It was still a wonder to him, that a cynical, misanthropic hermit like himself had actually built a family with a woman he quite adored. They'd had a girl, with long blue hair like his, but her eyes were bright aquamarine, like her mother's. She had sharp cheekbones - something she'd inherited from him as well - and excruciatingly pale skin that Alice did not believe to be healthy. She had long lashes, which she could have gotten from either parent, and a tiny nose, exactly like Alice's. Her ears stuck out a little - Alice called her their little elf - and she was probably the most nervous child he had ever met.
Like Alice, Holly was a dragon, and so she had all the same sorts of powers that her mother did. The issue with that was that those powers were emotion-triggered, and Holly was afraid of almost everything.
It wasn't nearly as bad as it used to be, when she was younger she couldn't even bear to look at a mirror. As she's gotten older and started to understand more things, her fears have steadily diminished. However, some were still very much a problem.
Julius had been - surprise, surprise - working at his desk during a day period when he heard screaming coming from outside. It almost sounded like Holly, but that couldn't be right. She and Alice weren't due to show up for hours. Just to make sure, the Clockmaker stood up, and looked out the window.
What he saw did not make him happy.
The Clock Tower was an impressive piece of architecture. It not only functioned as a usable building, but it was an actual clock as well. Two clock hands rotated around the tower, counting the minutes and hours on twelve pillars decorated with Roman numerals, and his daughter was clinging for dear life to the minute hand.
/*\
Immediately, Julius threw open the window, and jumped into the sill. It was very, very lucky that the minute hand had just reached his office. Gingerly, he stepped onto the metal plate. It would be too bad for words if the hand shook and Holly fell.
She couldn't fly yet.
She was still deathly afraid of heights.
Before taking his next step, the Clockmaker observed the child a little more closely, every single limb she had was wrapped around the tip of the clock hand. Her arms and legs were both crossed around the metal, her tail had curled around it five times, and her wings provided something of a cocoon. She had stopped screaming and was staring pointedly down at the metal, her hair creating a curtain down to her side. The vertigo was getting to her. That wasn't good.
Quickly, though softly, Julius crept across the clock hand. When he was about halfway there, something occurred to him. Where was Alice? He looked around, and saw nothing. No dragon, no Alice, she clearly was not present.
That meant this was all on him.
He got a little closer, with all the stealth of an assassin, and when he was about a quarter of the clock-hand away he started speaking.
"Holly," He stated, just loud enough that she could hear him. The last thing he wanted to do was startle her.
"D-Dad?" She stuttered, cautiously raising her head up. The sheer terror in her eyes made him want to start panicking, but right now, he had to stay calm.
"Holly," He repeated, in a quiet and stable manner, "I need you to stand up. Can you do that?" Immediately she shook her head,
"No," She moaned into the metal, "No, if I stand up, I'll get dizzy and fall." She whimpered. Great. Julius inched just a bit closer, but he didn't want to risk going much farther.
It would not end well if the clock-hand snapped under his weight.
"Holly," He started again, "I can't go any further. You need to-"
Creak!
Another minute had passed, and the hand moved, just a little, but enough for the child to shriek and cling to the metal harder.
Julius was so not cut out for this.
Again, he called the girl's name.
"Holly," he got her attention, "I know you're scared, but you need to stand up and walk a few feet. I can't get any closer, I would if I could." He attempted to reassure her, "If you can make it just a couple feet, I can catch you, and I will take you back into the tower."
Never had the Clockmaker been so grateful for his skill in stoicism. He felt just as panicked at the little girl hanging off the edge of the minute hand. He was absolutely terrified. If Holly fell, she wouldn't survive, and like her mother, she did not have a clock. If he let the little girl know that he was scared too, she just might refuse to do as he said. She might decide to wait until her mother showed up.
There was no telling when Alice would get there.
The girl looked up at him, her eyes getting just a bit teary,
"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I'm really scared."
"I know," he tried to think up a good response, but it was quite difficult, considering the type of person he was, "Just trust me. Just make it two steps, and I promise I will catch you. Be brave." She looked up at him, and took a deep breath, and she mumbled something under her breath, and Julius only just barely caught it.
"I am fire, I am death." He'd have smiled if impending death was not an immediate threat. Then the little girl, very slowly, unfurled her wings, and placed both hands steadily on her perch. She was slowly rising up, and was finally standing straight when the clock hand moved again. She gasped, and trying to steady herself, she looked down. Oh no.
"Holly, look at me." And she did. "Just keep looking at me, and walk." She did as she was told, and as Julius said, she only needed two steps before he was able to grab her hand, and pull her up into his arms. "Now close your eyes." And just as stealthily, he walked across the length of the clock-hand back to the window of his office.
That had been the most stressful two minutes and forty-nine seconds of his entire existence.
/*\
For a few moments, Holly did not want to let Julius put her down, and he could empathize. Heights for his daughter were roller-coasters for him, an ironic fact certainly, but it was a fear that she was not yet ready to overcome. Soon, she had calmed down enough to allow her father to set her on the ground. He kneeled beside her on the floor of his office, and spoke.
"Where is your mother?" Was the first question out of his mouth. Holly looked up at him, tear-stains running down her face.
"She's still at the other Tower, I think." Holly answered, "All week she'd been trying to teach me how to teleport, and I was starting to get the hang of it. We were working on it today when I got distracted, and I landed wrong." She hung her head, ashamed, her hair almost completely covering her face.
"You got distracted?" She nodded,
"The fire showed up just as a bunch of strange people came in the door. It distracted me, and I ended up on the clock hand." That made Julius pause. Strange people?
"What did these people look like?" She scrunched her eyebrows at him, clearly puzzled,
"I don't know. They were faceless, and I only saw them for a second." He sighed. She was only six, but he knew she had a better memory than that. However, through the panic of the past few minutes...
"Can you try to remember a little better?"
"Hmm..." And she squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would enhance the memory. Apparently it worked, "They were all dressed in black clothes, I think, and-" But that had been all that Julius had needed to hear.
Alice's - and so by default his - enemies had shown up at Jabberwocky Tower.
/*\
Holly was a little frustrated. She knew she wasn't much of a dragon - what dragon was scared of heights? - but she was annoyed that, as soon as she told her father about the weird faceless, he had immediately sent her to her bedroom.
Holly felt she was smarter than either of her parents gave her credit for. She knew how upset Dad had been when he'd crawled out onto the clock-hand to save her. She could smell the panic radiating from his person, because - she suspected - he'd been scared she would fall.
She had caught that exact same air of distress when she told him about the faceless at the other tower.
As she padded slowly to her room, she continued thinking. If she'd caught precisely the same scent, then it meant he was feeling the same emotion as before. When they were outside on that evil clock-hand, he was terrified. Similarly so, he was scared over the faceless dressed in black.
But it was only a guess.
Well, she thought to herself, It doesn't really matter. Mom is a dragon, and on the off-chance she needs help, Dad is more than capable of handling it. Satisfied with these thoughts, she stepped into her room, and closed the door behind her.
She thought about crawling into her bed, but she was still fairly rattled. She'd had quite an eventful day. Maybe spending some time in her treasure cave would help.
So she opened the door to what was formerly her closet, a little smaller than the one at Jabberwocky Tower - her parents had refurbished a storage room and made into a bedroom for her - she forfeited the oil lamp her parents had given her, she blew a bit of fire into the air, and made it do the cool sparkler thing her mom had shown her. Specks of light zipped around the tiny space, and she completely buried herself underneath the shining mass of her treasure hoard. She suspected that many of these things were quite useless - completely broken clock parts, random bits of scrap metal, some silverware - but they glittered in the light in an all to appealing manner, so she'd kept them anyways.
She had just gotten comfortable and had been starting to doze when something occurred to her.
Jabberwocky Tower was a long distance away.
Dad did not get scared for no reason.
It would be hours until he got there, and if Mom really did need help...
As young as she was, even Holly knew he wouldn't make it.
/*\
Julius, armed to the teeth, was racing through the woods. Holly didn't know this - and if they were lucky, she wouldn't for a while yet - these were the people who had attempted to kill her mother, oh so long ago.
He knew Alice was a much better fighter than she had been before, however...
If they had managed to shoot her once, it was all too possible that they could do it again.
Just then, a burst of flame appeared in front of him, and the Clockmaker skidded to a stop. Was that...?
"Dad!" Holly exclaimed, "You won't make it! There's not enough time! Come on!" And she offered her hand out to him. Julius approached the girl,
"Holly, what are you doing? I told you to go to your room." She glared at him in a disturbingly similar manner as her mother.
"Didn't you hear a word I just said? You're not going to make it. I can teleport you and then go back to the Clock Tower. Now come on!" She exclaimed, holding out her hand again, but the Clockmaker was still irritated.
"The last time you teleported, you ended up on the tower's minute hand." Again, the little girl glared, and apparently channeling the Mad Hatter, she spoke.
"Actually," She retorted, "The last time I teleported, I landed in this very spot, trying to offer my help. Now are you going to continue wasting time, or will you just let me teleport you to the Tower?" By the end she was growling, and her tail was lashing. The Clockmaker weighed the pros and cons, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that the six-year-old was right. He took her hand, and she closed her eyes.
"You know how to teleport other people right?" He asked, as the flames started to materialize.
"Nope." She answered, and the two people promptly disappeared.
/*\
Luckily for Holly, she managed to land both her father and herself safely two feet from the door of her primary home. As the flames vanished, she could hear screaming, gunshots, and draconic growling. The people in the plaza had gone inside, hiding within the chocolate colored buildings. For once, the streets were silent, and it started raining just a tad. As the noise from the tower continued, it was clear that the faceless were not winning.
"Holly, stay here." The Clockmaker ordered, and brandishing a longsword - wait, what happened to his pistol? - he immediately entered the building, and it wasn't long until the screaming and gunshots died down.
In the meantime, Holly had gotten quite bored, and was sitting on the steps, counting the cracks in the cobblestones. It felt like forever since it had gotten quiet, but soon - at least before she started lighting things on fire - her parents returned from the top of the tower, and met her at the door.
"Holly!" Alice exclaimed, Julius dodging her whipping tail. The woman scooped her daughter up into her arms. "Your father told me what happened. Are you alright? Were you scared?" And not waiting for a reply, she tucked the child's face into her shoulder. "I knew I should have taught you how to fly before now."
/*\
In spite of her more irrational fears, Holly had never been frightened by fire. In fact, her fascination with this particular force of nature worried her parents for more than one reason.
She was playing with a candle when her parents informed her it was time for bed, and that she needed to put the stick of ever-melting wax away. Put out, she extinguished the tiny flame, and retreated to her room.
"So today was eventful." Julius stated, changing into his nightclothes with his wife already in bed. "You need to be more careful, especially with Holly." He murmured, slipping underneath the sheets and getting comfortable. Alice simply glared at his back.
"And what makes you say that?" She challenged. Julius sighed. He was too tired for this.
"She landed on the minute hand of the Tower, Alice." He said gently, "You'd have noticed those faceless gang members two miles away, what had you so preoccupied?" And he pushed a bit of stray hair out of the woman's face.
Damn, she thought, He's spot on.
"You know me too well." She mumbled, and sighed, moving her shoulders so that she could get comfortable.
"So?" And she met his eyes. This lasted for almost a whole minute before she looked away.
"Well, remember the conversation we had the other day, about whether or not Holly would like a sibling?"
"She said she'd rather have a cat." Julius recalled, and Alice smiled tiredly,
"Yeah, well," and she made eye contact with the man once more. "She's getting a sibling whether she wants one or not."
Oh.
Sh*t.
/*\
I imagine dealing with a pregnant dragon isn't exactly a walk in the park. But yes, I am doing my best to answer questions and get back with requests, but it's a little difficult when I have to hunt down those questions and requests in the reviews. If possible, could you please PM me these things? That way I can get back to you in a more timely fashion? Anyways, LEAVE SOME REVIEWS!
Please.
-Static
P.S. If this sucks, it's because I wrote it at 2:00 A.M.