Disclaimer: Alice in the Country of Hearts belongs to QuinRose and various others that are not me. This story is mine, please don't redistribute without permission.

AN: I am IN LOVE with Alice in the Country of Hearts and all its subsequent series and stories. It is my new goal in life to learn to read Japanese, purely for the purpose of being able to play shojo dating sims. I regret nothing! I just finished reading "Alice in the Country of Hearts: The Clockmaker's Story", and I am now convinced that Alice and Julius are meant to be. This fluffy little ficlet might be head canon that happened off screen during that story arc, or it might just be pure fanfiction, you choose. Either way, please enjoy!

The Clockmaker and the Clockbreaker

Alice dreamed of her grandfather. It was a dream that perhaps came of living in a clock tower, surrounded by broken clocks. Or perhaps it came of caring about so many people whose hearts ticked instead of beat. And it most certainly came of caring about so many people who were so casually homicidal towards each other; for how much longer could she expect to see them dancing amongst each others' bullets and blades without seeing on of them fall…?

It was a dream of a memory, one buried far longer and deeper than the hazy, illusive, half-formed thoughts of her sister could ever claim. Alice fell into herself, into her mind, into a place so deep even the Nightmare could not follow. She thought she heard him calling her name from somewhere far above, but she was dreaming, dreaming…

Alice was a small girl, no higher than her mother's skirt. They had been to visit grandfather at his grand house on family estate. She had not known much about her grandfather; there had not been time. That stately, stern yet kindly old gentleman with his wing-like mustache and his beard that always smelled of pipe smoke had always seemed beyond her reach. She remembered his brown satin waistcoat embroidered in rich bronze, with the gleaming golden pocket watch on its chain tucked into the right hand pocket, and how he would reward her smiles with a butterscotch candy and a pat on the head before her mother sent her off with her sister to play in the garden. She had not known him, but she had loved him with all the childish abandon of innocence.

Alice had always been delightfully mystified by her grandfather, and enchanted with the mysterious golden treasure of the pocket watch, which he would pull out every so often and click open, examining the time from down the crooked length of his nose with a gravely 'harrumph' while tugging at one quivering wing of his mustache. It had seemed a terribly occult and mysterious artifact, delicate and powerful, one of great complexity and importance, though the meaning of the hands moving around the face was alien and unintelligible to her then. It was the center of who he was to her, the way in which she related herself to someone so very different, yet so very important in her life.

However, on this occasion, grandfather was not wearing his brown satin waistcoat, for he was not dressed at all. He was still abed, and the room did not smell of pipe smoke, but of laudanum and sickness. The golden pocket watch lay abandoned upon her grandfather's night table, its chain coiled in a neat heap of glinting links like a miniature pile of gold coins within a dragon's horde, just like in the fairy stories her sister read to her. Her mother stood beside the bed where grandfather lay, talking quietly with him, her shoulders shaking now and then.

Alice did not understand why all this was so, but it had come into her small head to examine the pocket watch herself. She covertly reached up and wrapped her small, pudgy hands around the golden boon, pilfering it with all the stealth a three year old could manage – which wasn't much.

"No Alice!" her mother shouted at her in a strained, watery voice. "Don't touch that!"

Mother rarely raised her voice and it startled Alice. She tried so hard not to drop the precious device, but her fingers were short and pudgy and clumsy, and the gold slipped between them like the last grains of sand through the neck of an hourglass. She watched it fall slowly, so slowly that she should have had time to reach out and pluck it from the air, except that she was moving slowly too, as though time were crawling by instead of rushing, prolonging the limited moments before her grandfather's watch should detonate against the unrelenting floorboards.

There was a crunch and a tinkling, as glass and gears fairly exploded from the timepiece, raining through the air in the dying daylight from the window like sparks from the fireworks Father had brought back from the Orient. The trickling time flowed back in, and the precious pocket watch lay at her feet, destroyed.

The very next day, her grandfather's heart gave out.

The household had broken down in quiet sorrow. Mother, robbed of her father by the corpse in his bed, clung to the shattered pocket watch and wept for it in his place, inconsolable in those few precious hours before she had to replace the impassive, implacable mask of Mistress Liddell, and she had no room in her precious time of grief to tend her daughter. Alice was left alone and confused to watch as the tearful maids and stoic butlers had made their way through the estate and, one by one, stopped every clock in the house.* It had made little sense to her then, this death ritual signifying the end of time, but in her child's mind, she could not help but connect her destruction of her grandfather's treasured pocket watch.

Each still hand on each inert clock face glared accusation at her, just as the shattered clock face of the pocket watch had glared and accused, as her mother scolded and struck her hands with a switch, and all around her the gears and springs and shards of glass glittered and shifted, sparks of fire reflecting the burning of the setting sun. She fell through them, grief and regret burning holes in her heart that would take years to fill.

"I'm so, so sorry, Grandfather!"

And as she fell, she grew, and Peter White was pulling her down through the earth, down, down, until she landed alone within the Clock Tower. Surrounded by clocks, she reached out, promising herself that she would never break another, not another clock, not another life...

"Alice! Don't touch those!" Julius shouted at her, horrified as her finger brushed the polished gold and glass.

She drew her hand back, frightened and repentant, but it was too late. The clocks all around her began to shatter outwards, creating more metallic fireworks that fountained forth, breaking as time broke and slowed once more, so that she had all the time in the world to watch Julius gasp, watch his eyes grow wide, then tighten with pain. His hand came up to grip his chest, and she could only watch as he fell through the glittering cascade, his dark, silky hair and the long tails of his frock coat fluttering skyward around him as he plummeted towards the unrelenting floorboards.

He was gone before he hit the ground, and all that remained of him was a shining golden pocket watch, cracked and broken, its crevices and etched filigree filled in with dripping blood. She fell towards it, grief and regret ripping open old holes and filling them with fear and sorrow.

"I'm so sorry, Julius! I'm so, so sorry Julius! I won't touch the clocks, so please! Please, don't be…!"

"Please!"

Alice startled upright in bed, breathing hard, tears streaming down her face. She looked around wildly, confused for an instant, before she recognized her surroundings. She was in her bed, in her room in the Clock Tower, still in the night period in which she'd fallen asleep.

It should have comforted her, for it was only a dream within this dream she was having, but the cold foreboding in the pit of her stomach would not leave her. Without a moment's hesitation, she threw back the covers with shaking hands and, forgetting her dressing gown and even her slippers, fled her room. She dashed through the clock tower, her thin night dress fluttering behind her, her nerves screaming at her to make sure, make sure, just make sure!

Julius was in his work room, seated at his desk. The time period was night, so his frock coat hung from a peg on the wall behind him, and he'd rolled up his shirtsleeves so that he could work unimpeded. He was realigning the delicate gears of one of his clocks when Alice burst through the door in this nervous state. He blinked up at her through his spectacles, too startled by her sudden appearance to remember to don his customary sour scowl. When he saw her stricken expression, how pale she was, the way she trembled, his countenance became grave and he stood.

"Alice?" he asked her, his stern tone edged with alarm. "What is it? What's the matter?"

Before he could move, she had dashed around his desk, and he was forced back a step from the force of her approach as she flung herself against him. Her hip bumped his desk, and gears and springs and small silver tools scattered as she pressed her ear to the warm solid wall of his chest. She shivered there, listening to the catch of his breath and the vibrations of his stammered monosyllables of surprise, feeling the soft, smooth satin of his green waistcoat and the sharp, scratchy threads of gold embroidery. He smelled like mechanical oil, and her mediocre coffee, and like a man. And there underneath it all, she heard it, quiet but sure.

Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc.

It was steady and sure. It never wavered, never sped or slowed. It wasn't a human heart. It was a clock, and it would keep its faithful rhythm, unchanging until the day it stopped. And it hadn't stopped, even though she was touching the man in which it ticked, holding him carefully as though afraid he might break in her clumsy hands. Afraid that one day they might all break, all her odd, annoying, endearing friends in this strange land of bullets and blades and flying time and incomprehensible rules and so, so much wonder. But for now…

Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc. Tic. Toc.

A tightness she hadn't before noticed flowed out of her along with a shuddering sigh and she relaxed against him. And realized that nearly a full minute had passed, and she was still pressed tightly up against the Clockmaker, who had gone very still under her touch.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. But somehow, be it from embarrassment, or from an inability to relinquish the comfort of his warmth and the steady ticking, she could not find the strength to pull away from him just yet. "I… had a bad dream…"

"You had a bad dream?"

His tone was tight, with a veneer of scolding, as though she should be too old for these kinds of antics. But there was also worry mingled in as well, a kind of frustrated concern, as though he cared, but didn't know how to help her. She smiled ruefully to herself. She wasn't a clock, and not nearly so easily fixed, and so she imagined that he wished she'd be well without needing it, because he couldn't give it to her.

"A bad dream… about breaking clocks… and the day my grandfather died…"

Color flooded her cheeks as she heard aloud how unsubstantial her fears sounded, and became fully aware of the way she was behaving. This wasn't Ace or Boris or Peter, who would be delighted if she suddenly pressed her head against their chest – who had actually pressed their heads against her chest in the past, apparently to listen to the alien sound of her heart, or so they claimed… this was Julius, and there was no way…

A light, hesitant touch ghosted over the back of her head, and she blinked, nonplussed, as she felt Julius awkwardly arrange his arms around her. One hand carefully cradled her head, fingers dexterous and slightly calloused from working with such delicate machinery threading carefully in her hair. The other hand came to rest between her shoulder blades, and it was hotter than a brand through the thin material of her night dress. Carefully, as though he feared she would break, he built a gentle fortress around her with the warm strength of his arms and the strong line of his body, and the unwavering tic toc of the clock in his chest. She turned her face into that sound, pressing her forehead against his chest so that he wouldn't see her face flaming brighter.

"All clocks break, Alice," he said quietly. "They're fragile, it's their way. Someone will break them, or they will rust, or wind down from wear and tear. Clocks aren't meant to last forever."

"I know, Julius," she said. "But it still frightens me."

She pulled back slightly so that she could look up at him. His pale cheeks were tinted pink, and the furrows in his brow were more pronounced. He was clearly uncomfortable in such close quarters, but he didn't let her go in her moment of need, and though it made his cheeks darken further, he met her gaze unwaveringly through the glint of his spectacles.

"I know that everyone in this country believes that people are replaceable. I know that you fix their clocks and they are reborn as new people." She shook her head. "But it's not the same to me."

Julius looked at her for a long moment, thoughts flashing behind his eyes, his expression mysterious and unreadable.

"You're the only one who's irreplaceable, Alice," he told her, his usual stern tone faltering. She thought he'd tack on that she was irreplaceable because she was an Outsider, but for once he remained silent on the subject. "The people of this country merely role holders and the rest are faceless. If we die, someone else will come forward to fill our roles. You know that. No matter what happens, you won't be left alone."

Alice bit her lip, aching to hear him speak so casually on the subject. He was the Clockmaker, the undertaker of the Country of Hearts, but she knew that wasn't why he could speak so easily of death, of others or his own. It was because no one here valued their lives the way they should.

"Why don't you understand, Julius?" she begged him as fresh tears formed in her eyes. "For me, no one can replace you!"

She watched as the words washed over him like a physical wave, making him rock back slightly. His eyes darkened and his breath stilled on his slightly parted lips. She stared at them for a fascinated instant, noticing for some reason how soft they looked.

Her attention was stolen from her illicit observation by the feel of the rough pads of his fingers trailing out of the lacework of her hair to trace the line of her jaw. His hand cradled her face as his thumb came to rest below the swell of her lip. When had his face drawn so close to hers? She could feel his breath start again against her face, the sensation scattering electrical tingles like diamonds, sharp and shining down her spine and along the planes of her skin.

He's going to kiss me.

The ridiculous thought flashed through her mind for a mere instant before she batted it away. Julius was a serious, goal oriented man, and though he was far kinder and gentler than anyone gave him credit for, it seemed clear that he was not the sort of person that would take any interest in a silly girl like her, so clumsy and disruptive, who couldn't even make a decent cup of coffee.

She was still internally rolling her eyes at herself for indulging in such odd ideas about the Clockmaker, when his chin tilted up, blocking her view of his eyes. Her gaze fell on the impeccably polished clock pendant affixed at his throat where a neck cloth should go. A moment later she discovered that his lips were even softer than they looked, when he pressed them lingeringly against her forehead.

"Clocks break, Alice," he murmured, pulling her head into the crook of his neck so that she could not see his face. "You can't shoulder that responsibility yourself. Even if every clock in the Wonderworld breaks, it's not your fault, and no one would blame you. So stop worrying so much." His arms tightened slightly. "And don't cry. I don't know what to do when you cry."

Alice smiled in spite of herself and pulled out of his firm, if awkward embrace. He couldn't know the guilt her memory and dream had carried, so he couldn't know how his words made the accusing glare of the broken clocks blur and fade in to obscurity, and how his careful, gentle touches had chased away the cold of the shattering metal and breaking glass, and how she was a little bit disappointed that he hadn't kissed her mouth.

"Thank you, Julius," she said, letting her hands linger against his chest for perhaps an instant longer than they should have before she pulled away and they separated. "I… feel better now. You… I just…" She shook her head, dispelling her unwarranted embarrassment at his kindness and chasing all the strange notions about soft lips and budding feelings of warmth to the back of her mind so they could grow in secret without confusing her. "Just… thank you."

He nodded curtly, and sent her back to her bed with a gruff 'good night'. She hurried for the room, her eyelids already growing heavy, now that the adrenaline of her dream had given way to a leaden blanket of exhaustion.

"Good night, Julius," she said, smiling her gratitude sleepily over her shoulder before she departed.

She had done it from across the room, so she didn't notice the way his eyelids drooped over his dilated pupils, wouldn't have felt the slow, silent sigh that escaped him, and couldn't have heard the way the clock in his chest, ever so steady, sure and unchanging, faltered and stalled for a tick at the sight of her sweet smile and the way that indecent gown clung to her gentle curves as she slid between the shadows and the moonlight beyond the door before it fell shut.

He stood their for many minutes after she was gone, staring at the spot where she'd stood by the door, his mind hazy, his chest aching, his hands itching to touch, just once more…

Eventually he found his way back to his desk, sat down, picked up his tools and tried to turn his attention back to the broken clock. Yet it wasn't long before the tools clattered back down on to the desk, the clock forgotten as the memory of Alice in his arms would not let him be. Resting his elbows on the desk, he hid his face in his hands and closed his eyes so that the sight of the world around him would not intrude upon the remembered sensation of her warmth and softness…

"You're losing your edge, Clockmaker."

Julius opened his eyes to discover himself standing in the gray, misty neverwhere of the Nightmare's realm.

"You," he sneered, perturbed, as he looked up to see Nightmare floating above him in that smug, egotistical way of his. "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Well done with Alice," Nightmare replied, ignoring his negative reception, "You've well and truly taken her mind off of returning to her own world, at least for the moment. Her sister is the furthest thing from her mind right now."

Indeed, Nightmare could see her from his high vantage point, and all she had room for in her dreams right now was soft lips, and the smell of mechanical oil and burnt coffee, and the steady, rhythmic tic toc tic toc tic toc of a certain clock.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Julius said, turning his frown upon the shifting mists. "I'm too busy to trifle with you tonight. I'm behind schedule."

"You didn't look all that busy to me. You looked like a man whose clock was about to break with longing."

"I wish you'd stop spying," Julius groused, crossing his arms.

"It can't be helped. I'm a nightmare," he smirked darkly, bending so that Clockmaker could not avoid his face. "All the deepest, darkest parts of your heart are laid bare to me."

Julius scowled more deeply and turned his back on the Nightmare. He didn't reply for a long time.

"She's set on going back to her own world someday," he said quietly at last. "The vial is nearly full. There's no point in getting attached."

"What a shame it's too late," Nightmare said. When Julius whirled around, fierce denial on his lips, Nightmare interrupted him with an upraised hand. "For me as well," he said wistfully. "It's only to be expected, after all. She's an Outsider, for certain, but more than that, she's… she's Alice."

Nightmare watched her shifting in her sleep, drifting in dreams that confused and enticed and ignited her. Even so, that old fear still festered insidiously beneath the surface, inside the holes burned their by guilt and sadness, caked in the crevices and etchings along the lines of her bright, otherworldly soul. The poor girl feared nothing so much as a broken clock. What the people of this world accepted as easily as tea and time shifts, she railed against with all her being. Broken clocks meant death, both in her world and in theirs, if in radically different ways.

What irony, that the girl feared breaking clocks more than anything, yet she had no idea that she was toying dangerously with the clocks of men all over the Country of Hearts without ever meaning to. His own steadily ticking clock had faltered a time or two in the face of her earnest defiance and contradicting vulnerability. He wouldn't mind breaking for her…

But of all the men that had unabashedly thrown themselves at her feet and offered themselves to her in any capacity she should desire, it was Julius alone who had broken through into the darker parts of her soul, the places that lay even deeper and darker than the secret knowledge about her sister, and which must be brought to air and light before her heart could heal.

"The Clockmaker and the Clockbreaker," Nightmare murmured, earning a curious and hassled glance from Julius, who clearly wished to leave, but could not until Nightmare released him. Nightmare cast thoughtful eyes upon him. "Julius," he murmured, his customary smirk falling away to expose a serious expression. "You're the only one who can hold her here. Don't let her go."

"Don't be ridiculous," Julius snapped through clenched teeth. "I don't have the right or the power to curtail her freedom."

"Julius, please. Don't let her go."

Julius opened his mouth to say something scathing, but in the blink of an eye, the Nightmare realm was gone, and he was back in his work room; alone with his broken clocks and the quiet laying thick as a coat of dust against the stone walls of the tower.

And, inexplicably, alone with Alice.

She could be anywhere. Anyone in this world would welcome her enthusiastically, ecstatically. But it was his roof she chose to sleep under. His food she chose to cook, his rooms she chose to clean… his arms she chose to run to when she was frightened…

His fingers twitched, sending a small screwdriver rolling across the desk. It was the only outward sign he allowed himself to express of his sudden ardent desire to slam through his work room door, fly through the tower and burst into her room as she had into his; to take comfort in her as she had in him; and more, to pin her down to her bed, cover her body with his, trap her here with him to drive away his solitude; to hold her, touch her, please her, love her, so much that she'd forget that strange and distant world beyond his reach and look only at him…

Julius closed his eyes. Then he opened them. He adjusted his spectacles, picked up his scattered screwdriver, and bent once more over the open clock on his work desk.

He couldn't do any of that. Even if he had the confidence, the means or the audacity, even if it were right and appropriate, he couldn't bind her to someone like him. Alice deserved… she deserved so much more.

But he could fix broken clocks. He was the Clockmaker, and he would fix any clock within her sight, real or imagined, memory or dream; he would hide their shattered ugliness from her sight and send them away whole and ticking.

And if she should, somehow, choose to stay… if she should somehow choose what which he desired…

Pale cheeks flaring pink, Julius scowled and bent back to his work with renewed purpose.

Fin

*Stopping the clocks in the house at the time of a family member's death is an old Victorian custom; it was thought that at death, time stood still for the deceased, and a new existence began in which time did not exist. To let a clock continue ticking within the household was bad luck, because it was thought to invite the spirit of the dead to remain, and haunt the living forever. Stopping the clock allowed the dead to move on to their next life. Other such customs included covering mirrors and portraits of the deceased, so that the spirit would not become trapped within them.

AN: So that was my first fic for Alice in the Country of Hearts! I got inspired and wrote it in about two hours, so if it sucks, that's why, and if it was great, well, I'm a genius. Please let me know which it is with a quick review! I am hoping I will eventually get to write a sequel to this, so if you enjoyed, please look out for more! Thank you for reading!