The middle-aged man wobbled to the stairs of the crooked home, carrying a worned down photo in his hands. The howling wind shoved at his sides with its cold streaks. His tired legs were numb and wobbly, but he had to do this.

Loneliness was worse than death. And if it didn’t work out, he could at least know he had tried.

He finally reached the door then. It was knarled and chipped, its once white paint paled and covered in frost. Releasing one of his hands from his photo, he knocked on the door, hands shaking, his body shivering from the declining temperatures.

The door opened with a creek, and the man let out a thankful breath. There was a women there. Her form was shiny, eyes fully black and inhuman. The man thought he saw a pair of translucent blue wings twitching out from her back.

“What do you wish, mortal? If nothing, leave me be.” Her voice was as cold as the ice itself, a sheet of snow covering you. Suffocating you.

The man drew up his wits and steeled himself. He had stalled long enough. “M-my son,” he said, teeth chattering, “I wish to have my son back, alive, safe forever, with me. This is him, oh fairy.” He handed the photo to the fairy, careful not to touch her skin lest be burnt.

The man watched warily as the fairy searched the photo, tilting her head this way and that. “Clockmaker.” The man gave a confused look. She explained, “You are a clockmaker, yes?”

He quickly nodded. “Yes. Y-yes I am.”

She handed the photo back to the man. He shivered as a breeze traveled by; he closed his eyes as it grew colder, thicker, choking. He coughed, eyes opening wide. The air around him was warm and more inviting than the cold land he had once been in.

The chimes of clocks, accompanied by a mewing yawn, brought him back to reality. He looked around and saw him.

_Then that is what he will be—your greatest gift and creation._

The fairy’s words whispered in his ears, but the man was too distracted by the beautiful sight before him. It didn’t cry, maybe because it seemed to not have tear ducts. The man picked it up and cradled it in his arms.

The cat walked over, looking up curiously.

The man had tears in his eyes as his child touched his cheek with a warmed metal hand. Beneath the child’s chest, also made of the same metal, there was a tick, and another.

His heart was no doubt beating, but as a clock.

_Tick._

_Tick._

“Wonderful, just absolutely wonderful,” the man carried the infant to his desk and laid it down gently, “Don’t you think so Figaro?”

The cat meowed, after jumping up to the desk to investigate the child further. He hissed when the child reached towards him, not babbling, but instead letting out a screeching noise. Metal against metal.

The man laughed at that, joyous once more after a long time of sorrow. “We’ll have to fix that, my Ticking Child, but oh, we also will have to get you some clothes.”

He sighed. Picking up the child again, he smiled. The infant copied his actions, the metal around his mouth shifting with another horrible screech until he gave a gaping smile of sorts with his mouth.

“Oh, my Pinocchio!”

***

**_17 Years Later_**

“Father! Father!” Pino ran down the staircase, careful to avoid the random buttons and gears littered and forgotten, by Geppetto of course, not Figaro or Pino, who stepped on them so many times it hardly even hurt anymore.

But then again, Pino couldn’t feel pain.

He found his father in his workshop, busy on yet again another project that he would soon discard after losing interest. “Ah! Pinocchio! What do you have for me today.”

Pino gestured to the pamphlet in his hands. “Can I go to school, Father?” He opened it to a page with smiling children playing with steam-powered robots. “Look! There’s people like me there too!”

Geppetto gave Pino a sad look. He took the pamphlet out of his metal son’s hands carefully, as though he was afraid to hurt him. Which made Pino confused—Father couldn’t hurt him.

“I don’t think that’s the best idea. You’ve been learning so much here anyway, you don’t need to go.”

Pino frowned, the oil that he put on every day silencing the usual metal creak. His father painted his metal shell, or skin, every month so it would not wear. He almost looked like a real boy with his glass, green eyes, his pink lips, and scratchy pale complexion. But of course, Pino knew he was quite the opposite—a geared creature made by man. By his father, more specifically.

“Father,” he said slowly, seeing Figaro come inside from the backyard from the corner of his eye, “I want to go to school. I _need_ to. I wanna meet people my age and play. I’ve never played with anyone else besides Figaro, Father!”

The clock in place of his heart ticked loudly before letting out a loud _dong! _Geppetto sighed and leaned back in his chair. The father and his son had a silent moment, Pino glaring at, the metal above his eyes scrunched down, and Geppetto, with a soft look in his eyes, thinking.

Figaro meowed, then turned back to go outside. Bored already.

Geppetto straightened suddenly. Pino stepped back as Geppetto stood and placed both of his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Alright, Pinocchio, alright.”

Pino beamed, his heart kicking up into a fast paced whirring. “Really!”

Geppetto couldn’t help but smile at Pino’s excitement, but he soon sobered and turned serious. Pino stopped his cheering, and the whirring of his heart slowed. Geppetto stared straight into his eyes. “It will not be what you want it to be; what you think it is. Do you understand, Pinocchio?”

Pino nodded, but of course, he couldn’t grapple the situation fully. Though he had grown up, his mind still hadn’t fully developed as a normal boy his age was. The level that he was on was around six years and younger. That was caused by the constant shielding and pampering of Geppetto, but again, Pino could grasp that.

“I understand,” he stepped back and bolted to the stairs, “Now I’ll get my stuff ready! Do I need to bring my book for our lessons?”

Geppetto sat back in his chair, weary. “No, you’ll be doing something far more advanced than I would like at your new school.” Geppetto turned to look at his son, but Pino was already in his room, sorting through the clothes he would wear and not.

The man shook his head. Pino wouldn’t be able to bring anything to where he was going. The only school that would accept someone his age: Javern’s Academy for Boys. If pained Geppetto to even think of that place. The amount of bullying that he had endured there still wounded him; all because he loved to create, and tinker with geared gadgets.

He thought of Pino, made of those very same things, and ignorant to the hate and spite of the world. Geppetto had known that the boy would carve for the outside world soon enough, but he had hoped that it might not happen.

Geppetto sighed again and turned back to his clock. Figaro entered again, a mouse in his mouth, and set to eating the dead creature after plopping in the leg space that Geppetto’s desk allowed.

He could only hope that his boy would be safe there.

Could only hope.