"Off with your head!"
The Jabberwocky twisted his neck so he was looking up, his eyes widening, and he tried to shift to counterattack, but Alice was already speeding towards him.
The wind was whipping through her hair, making it dance like fire, and she sliced the vorpal blade down.
The Jabberwocky roared, his tail whipping out and hitting her right in the back.
There was an explosion, then nothing. She was still flying, and her hair was still dancing. Colors sparkled across her eyes, and it briefly occurred to her that she wasn't Alice. At least, not the Alice everyone had expected today. Not the Alice they had needed.
The battle wasn't over yet—she hadn't even hit the ground—but somewhere in her, she knew that she wouldn't slay the Jabberwocky on the Frabjous Day. Her body was telling her that.
She'd lost the battle. The Red Queen had won.
She hit the ground. Blood streaked the dirt and her limbs crumpled. She was certain that she had broken something, but her body was blissfully numb. She should have been desperately grasping her sword and getting up, but she couldn't move, and if she had been able to sit up to look at herself, she would have seen the vorpal blade, the greatest hope for the Underland, lodged deep in her collarbone, impaling her in the only part of her body that hadn't been armored.
The blood from her collar bloomed in a lovely red flower, growing by the moment. If the Hatter were there, he would compliment it, but insist that it should be white to be truly beautiful, not red.
Her mind was already slowly fading away, and she could vaguely feel blood pooling around her.
"Alice!"
She only just grasped the fact that the Hatter was beside her, green eyes huge and only getting huger, blending in with the blur around them. Sound was spread unevenly, as though one ear had issues hearing and the other didn't. Was he touching her? She really couldn't tell… "Ha…"
Her eyes rolled to the sky, and she faintly realized that she was dying. She wasn't going to wake up after she faded. If her wounds didn't kill her, the Red Queen would cut off her head. And everyone else's heads. She wouldn't see her mother or her sister ever again, and her only friends would be decapitated and dead by the time she woke again, if ever.
The Mad Hatter would be dead.
"…Sorry." She thanked God that she couldn't feel the undoubtedly monumental damage done to her body, then started fervently praying for her friends and family's safety. "Not enough… muchness."
Darkness bloomed in red, and Hatter's response was lost in it.
---
The Underland shifted uncomfortably, feeling panic rising to the surface as events quickly spun out of the Oraculum's schedule and into a whole new direction. With the tear in the fragile fabric of its eccentric but delicate truth, Underland could feel its magic unraveling and sparking everywhere, undoing all its plans and efforts. A disconnect grew, and suddenly, Underland couldn't monitor the passing of Overland's time and adjust its own to keep things properly aligned for the champion. Overland started ticking away, letting the hours start to pass, and Underland could swear that Overland was blowing a raspberry as it did so.
Underland scrambled to predict the events again, trying to sew together the last semblance of order in the world made of madness, but soon, it had to give up. The blooming events were unpredictable.
The interesting thing about the Overland and the Underland was that, in Above, order is maintained and reality goes by a strict set of rules, called 'physics', and in the Below, while reality had it's rules, they were loose and full of loopholes, a world governed by the mad. But, in a odd paradox, Overland had no plan, no Fate. No Oraculum. Overland gave its inhabitants free reign of the direction the world would go, whether it be into the ground or to the stars, while Underland carefully plotted out every event its mad little citizens would be involved in, and made sure that those events were followed.
Underland made a risk by bringing in the Overland girl, but it didn't realize how big it was.
The Above girl had defied Fate.
From now until she was gone, Underland couldn't plot out exactly how things would go.
The very world itself cried out and struggled to keep from unraveling, all while Outland laughed, Overland slipped away, and Reality and Time divided and floated off with their own choice of world.
---
Hamish Ascot liked to think that he was a reasonable man. When his parents asked him to do something, he did it. When a friend asked for a favor, he was willing to accommodate—within reason, of course. He had spent his whole life quietly learning and molding himself to take over his father's work when he grew up and to marry a respectable woman to have children with. He had used his time as a teenager, instead of flitting off with starry-eyed girls in hopes that they were of looser morals than his future wife as other boys did, to learn how to be an excellent business man and a good, strong husband.
He was more than a little frustrated that his assumed fiancé hadn't put as much thought into all this as he had.
Two hours. Two hours, they had been waiting. She had just left him standing there like a complete imbecile in front of all their guests to run off into the garden, not even giving him the courtesy to say yes. Because of course she would say yes. Their parents had agreed, and so it had to be. Alice Kingsley may have her head in the clouds and may be a little odd, what with her talk of men in dresses and women in trousers (ha! A woman in men's clothing! Preposterous.), but she must know of at least that inevitability.
Honestly, he wasn't particularly eager to marry her himself. He figured that affection would come later on in the marriage. She was beautiful to be sure, and her breeding was good, and his father approved mightily, but she seemed so foreign and disengaged, and not in the properly aloof 'I am of a higher standing than you so I'm going to prove it by not paying attention' way. Who knew? Maybe he would get used to it, or maybe she'd grow out of it. Maybe he would come to like her babbles of flying and men in dresses. Maybe he could come to love her eventually.
But before he could come to love her, he had to find the wretched girl first.
"Father, I believe I should search for her," Hamish said primly, holding himself as straight as a pole and privately dreading having to walk through the forest for his stray fiancé in his good shoes and clothes. Nonetheless, this was what was expected of him—boldly going after his poor confused wife-to-be and leading her home with his steady, kind hand. Stuff from the trashy romance books his mother loved reading so much.
He mentally berated himself for thinking such awful thoughts about his mother.
"I think that that is a good idea. Find Alice and please bring her back to the party before she gets anymore lost than she must be," his father said, looking up from his quiet calming of the increasingly worried and agitated Helen Kingsley. Alice's sister seemed to be getting rather worked up herself, but for some reason, her husband seemed rather smug and relieved. Hamish couldn't imagine why and brushed it off as a figment of his imagination.
"Very well, Father. I shall send for a search party if I do not find her in an hour," Hamish said in the lofty tone his mother had taught him to use, groaning in his head. Keeping a light smile on his face, he turned and walked into the maze his fiancé had run into, easily making his way through to the hills beyond. As a young boy, he used to play with his friends in the maze and among the hills and trees. The slightest whisper in the back of his head wondered why he had stopped doing that—the fun had never diminished—but his cultured mind squashed the idea before it had even formed. It was improper for a man to play in the maze or the fields, except perhaps if he had a particularly young child, which Hamish did not have. (He'd probably have one soon with Alice if his mother had anything to say about it.)
As he started walking up the hill, even as his nice shoes were scuffed and dirtied, he couldn't stop the smallest smile from coming to his thin lips. He had missed walking alone across the land; nowadays, it was all parties and business…
He squashed the thought again, scolding himself for inappropriate urges.
A twisting tree came into view, and he could have sworn he heard something behind it. "Ms. Kingsley?" Oh, wait. He shouldn't be so formal with his fiancé, should he? After all, she'd soon be Mrs. Hamish Ascot… "Alice?"
He walked to the other side of the tree, only to see nothing but a big rabbit hole in the roots. (That was actually an unusually large rabbit hole. Someone could fall down there!) He scowled, turning to look around. "Alice! You truly must come back to the party—everyone is starting to worry that you may have fallen!"
There was a huge groan that made Hamish jump in place, spinning around to see where it came from. Another groan sounded, this time obviously coming from the rabbit hole.
He stared down at the black circle dumbly for a moment.
Oh. Oh dear, was someone down there? Had Alice actually fallen? Oh dear oh dear, she could be seriously injured…
Not quite sure what to do at first, Hamish slowly knelt by the rabbit hole. "Alice?"
More groaning.
He really didn't want to go down there in his nice clothes. He'd get dirty.
Hamish repressed a sigh. He had to go get his fiancé. It was the only gentlemanly thing to do.
"Wait a moment! I shall try to come down."
He gingerly stuck a foot in the hole, only to see that it dangled. That was odd. Rabbit burrows shouldn't be that big.
He frowned, then awkwardly grasped the roots of the tree and edged into the rabbit hole. Soon he was completely submerged, and his feet still dangled.
Oh well. He was probably a foot off the ground or something.
He let go, expecting to hit ground in less than a second.
He sincerely regretted his decision.
A/N: This is a little something I thought up, and since I've been making so much romance fanfiction for one fandom, I figured that I should stretch a little and try out a couple different fandoms and pairings so I can sharpen my skills a little. (That, and I love the dynamic between Alice and the Mad Hatter. There's obviously something going on between them, yet there's just a little something that keeps them apart--the Hatter's madness? They're not ready for a serious relationship? They had time constraints in the movie and Alice flitted off before anything could happen? I find that writing about stuff makes me understand them better.) So yeah. I'm making a little Alice in Wonderland story.