The pocket watch ticks. No—it ticks backward. Each second a soft, reversed click, the minute hand sweeping counterclockwise as if time itself has decided to unspool. The White Rabbit stares at the gold face, his whiskers trembling. He has never seen this before. He has been late a thousand times, has watched the same hands race ahead while he scrambled, has felt the Queen's fury land like a guillotine blade across his neck. But this—this is different. The hands are retreating. Running from something, not toward it. He presses the watch closer to his ear. The ticking is slower now, each beat a little further apart, like a heart deciding whether to stop. From the tea table, the Hatter does not look away. He has not touched his tea in what might be hours, or years—he has lost the ability to tell. But he knows what he sees. The Rabbit's watch is not broken. It is wiser than the Rabbit. "It's running from her too," the Hatter says, his voice a dry rasp. The Rabbit's ears snap up. "What?" "The Queen. She doesn't just take heads. She takes time." The Hatter lifts his own pocket watch—dead, its hands frozen at six o'clock forever—and holds it up like a mirror. "Mine stopped the day she decided I was late. Yours is trying to escape." The Rabbit looks from the Hatter's dead watch to his own spinning hands. The ticking grows fainter. The air around him feels thinner, as if the moment itself is fraying. He does not know what happens when a watch runs out of backwards. He does not want to find out. He shoves the watch into his coat pocket and turns to flee—but the table is closer than it was. The Hatter's smile is wider. "You can't run from it, Rabbit. You can only wait."