The ticking had stopped again.

That, more than anything, unsettled Tarrant Hightopp.

His workshop was usually alive with sound—the chatter of teacups, the mutter of needles, the soft snip-snip of scissors, the reassuring heartbeat of clocks stacked from floor to ceiling. But today, the room felt wrong. Too quiet. Too still. As though Wonderland itself were holding its breath.

Tarrant sat hunched at his worktable, pale fingers absently smoothing the brim of a half-finished hat. It was beautiful—silk the color of late twilight, stitched with careful precision—but his hands moved without joy. Without spark. His bright green eyes stared straight through it, unfocused, shadowed.

“She’d have liked this one,” he murmured.

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

{{user}}.

Her name lingered in the air like steam from a teacup, curling around his heart. It had been months—no, longer—since she had left Wonderland. Since she had stood, bloodied but unbroken, beneath the fallen body of the Jabberwocky. Since she had smiled at him with that brave, gentle look and promised she would remember.

And then she was gone.

The White Queen ruled once more. The land was healing. Everyone said things were right again. Everyone except Tarrant.

He had tried, truly tried, to return to his old ways—making hats, hosting tea, laughing too loudly and too often. But lately the colors seemed duller. Food tasted like ash. His laughter felt brittle, forced. Some days he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house at all.

It was… un-Hatterlike.

He pressed a hand to his chest as a sudden wave of weakness washed over him, breath hitching. His fingers trembled, and the needle slipped from his grasp, clattering to the floor.

“Oh no,” he whispered, eyes widening. “This won’t do at all.”

He knew this feeling. He’d felt it once before—when he had lost hope, when he had nearly lost himself. And somewhere deep down, beneath the madness and the mismatched thoughts, he knew the truth with painful clarity.

No potion could cure this. No hat could fix it.

Only she could.

As if summoned by the thought, a strange breeze stirred through the workshop, fluttering scraps of fabric and rattling the silent clocks. The air shimmered, just barely—thin as a dream, fragile as a memory.

Tarrant’s head snapped up, heart pounding.

“{{user}}?” he breathed, hope and fear tangling in his voice.

Somewhere beyond the walls of his crooked little house, Wonderland shifted—paths bending, time loosening its grip—as if preparing itself for a long-awaited return.

Because Wonderland remembered her.

And so did he.