When Alice first fell down the rabbit-hole, she looked up. She looked up past the opening in the earth, she looked up past the ground that her fingers failed to grab hold of, she looked past bookshelves and pianos and things that weren't supposed to be in a rabbit-hole but certainly were, and she saw the sky. It was just a blue blur; a circle that represented a world that was no longer hers' to inhabit. (Looking back on it, perhaps it never was.) A blue blur that got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared, like it was never there at all. She was left, as we may recall, reeling on the floor of a room much too big for her.
When Alice woke up, she looked up. She looked up past the chaos around her, she looked up past the glass panels that tempted her with freedom, and she saw the sky. It, even now, was just a blue blur, except this time her head was already reeling. She tried to sit up, to move at all to try to make sense of what was going on around her. How many times had she done this? She felt like waves of wake and sleep had passed over her already like clockwork; she rose like the waves before crashing back down into her depths, back to her world of peaceful slumber. At the same time, however, no memory from this cycle of sleep and wake remained in her mind. She tried to sit up again, but something was stopping her. She looked around, her head rolling to the side as waves of throbbing pain squeezed her skull like a headband. Everything was blurry. She squinted; she could make out the painfully grey walls around her, and the glaring white light above her made everything seem almost angelic.
Almost. Yelling could be heard from the other corner of the room, muffled like it was behind a doorway. It had just now occurred to Alice that other people existed in this topsy-turvy place. She wanted to turn her head, to see those other people and what they were yelling about in a place like this, but she couldn't. She couldn't bear to move at all, like doing so would shatter the lulling atmosphere of the place and plunge her into a much harsher reality. Her hands… She couldn't move them. They were strapped down to the table she was on. Or was it a bed? She couldn't tell. There was a clock somewhere in the room, she had decided. She heard it echo from behind her. Tock, tock, tock, gong. Over and over again like it was counting down to something. How long had that been going on, again? It felt like forever. Alice began clicking her tongue along with it. Click, click, click, gong. She wasn't sure what exactly else there was to do, and her mind certainly didn't recognize any danger nearby.
She looked at the wall again. There were beds alongside it; awful, metal beds with poor mattresses and straps to hold some poor soul down. Alice tilted her head. Was she that poor soul? It certainly felt like a mattress under her, and it certainly felt like straps were holding her down. But then again, she couldn't see what exactly was under her. She closed her eyes. It could be… a pillow. Or a cloud, she thought. A book, a feather even. (She giggled to herself at that last one. A feather, of all things!). She began to list all the things that it could be, all the odd, impossible things that it could be but wasn't. Always listing the impossible. Impossible beds, impossible people… Impossible things. She bit her lip. Long ago, she had listed six impossible things. Shortly after she had found herself facing the reality of all of them. Was that why she was here? She remembered coming back from Underland. She relished every detail of her time there, as if it was a dream that would slip away if she didn't constantly remind herself of exactly what had occurred. She wasn't one to call something impossible (not anymore, at least), but the entire experience had seemed so… Magical. It was magical, she reminded herself. It wasn't like the world that she had came back to. Perhaps her time there had distorted her memory of her time here, because here was certainly not as good as she had expected it to be. She believed, in that moment that she drank the Jabberwocky's blood and returned home, that she could do anything. She might have been able to, even, if others were not so set against her.
Her shipmates weren't the dashing crew that she had heard about in books. They were no longer the men who knew and respected her father. They were just men. They were awful, and vile, and just so wrong to her. Her, the female captain. They had called her a loon on her first day on the ship. They had called her other things, too, but they were best left unspoken. On their first voyage, her first mate was the one calling the shots and mapping out where they were to go. She tried to interject, tried to somehow grab the helm of her crew and steer them in another direction, but they simply laughed off her ideas as mere suggestions or womanly trifles. Alice had faced much worse than this. She had faced a Jabberwocky. She had practically dethroned a particularly bloody red queen. She was not going to just stand there and let others take the lead because she was a woman. And so, she had decided that their disrespect was only because of her being new. She was just new! Respect had to be earned, and she was certainly willing to earn it. She was determined that they would warm up to her, that they would eventually regard her as the captain she was. With this in mind, she retired to her study for the remainder of the trip. She planned and watched from the sidelines of her ship, and she waited for a chance to prove that she was worthy. She had not given up. No, she thought, she had just planned a different route for her destination.
This was around the time that Absolem had begun visiting her. In her study, late at night, when only those who needed to be awake to steer the ship were up. At first, he appeared as just a blue blur in the corner of her eye that would disappear when noticed. She had written that off as a symptom of a life at sea with the most deplorable of people. But then, it would happen again. In front of her this time, just beyond the glass doors to her study. She didn't believe her eyes at first. A blue butterfly? She had seen blue monarchs, ones with blue laced with black at the end of their wings, but not one so blue through and through, and certainly not one so big. And then it hit her. Everything, once again, hit her. Her memories penetrated through the maps and trade routes she had made; they penetrated through the wooden cage she had shut herself in for all those months. She remembered. She remembered the Hatter, and the Dormouse, and the White Rabbit, and she remembered everything so vividly and so quickly that it seemed almost impossible that she ever could have forgotten it before. How could she have? She had locked herself in her study so often that she had almost forgotten that there was a world outside the ship at all. For the first time in a while, she left the study and went outside to the edge of the ship. She ignored the words of her crewmates that suggested that she should slip over the rail. They were so meaningless to her. She was the Jabberwocky slayer, after all. She smiled for the first time in a while as she stood, staring off into the horizon. The butterfly sat on her shoulder.
The butterfly. Alice's eyes wandered to the ceiling again. The sky was almost the color of him, now. It was such a pretty shade of blue. She could almost swear that he was there, blending into the sky above, watching her. Was he why she was here? She closed her eyes. What could she remember? What was there to remember? There were so many questions that she had, manifesting into a fog that clouded her mind. She couldn't think. She couldn't move. The butterfly had landed on her shoulder. That was when it started, wasn't it? She didn't see him that much on the first trip. In her down time between voyages, she had balanced planning and research with daydreams about him and all the others. They kept her going, kept her excited for the next voyage despite her crewmates and their harsh words. At the same time, though, they were the harsh words that kept her going. Every word was another sin, and when she proved that she was able to lead her ship like the captain she was it would be a day of reckoning. She would astound them and then she would take her place as the captain of the ship. She would fulfill her unspoken promise to her father. The butterfly became much more apparent on this trip. He would follow her, and although she tried to speak with him she got the impression that she was a waste of his time. ("Why come here at all, then, you stubborn butterfly?" She had asked him once, to no avail.) Still, he kept coming back and so she kept talking, despite the fact that he never responded. It was nice, just to let it all out. Besides, she liked to pretend that his silence was agreement. It became a pattern, then; every day after dinner but before bedtime he would come around, and she would let him into her study and they would sit and talk. The days moved quickly and they went to their destination and were on the way back when it happened; they were attacked by pirates. The crew had made a mistake in believing that they could outrun them in their own territory. Alice knew better. She left her study to go to her first mate's side. These pirates were not attempting to chase them down. No. They were trying to corner them. She had tried to warn her first mate of this, grabbing his arm with one hand and the wheel with the other.
"Look at the formation of the ships!" She cried, pointing. "They are blocking off all directions except one. Their ships are slower than ours so they wouldn't be able to catch us like this. They wouldn't have chased us this far knowing this if they didn't have a plan!" The first mate paused, mulling her words over. Alice thought surely he would listen, before she was suddenly waved away.
"Get her out of here, someone!" He called.
Her crewmates- or more accurately his grunts, were more than happy to oblige to this, despite her protests. They quite easily lifted her away from him and were in the process of dragging her off to their quarters as they laughed. Alice squirmed in their grasp, but there was nothing she could do. She tried to peer into the distance to see where they were going, but she could see nothing. The sky had turned navy blue, almost black, and rain poured down on the back of lightning. The waters were rough and the ship rocked precariously back and forth, threatening to turn over with every wave that hit them. One particularly large one hit the boat, knocking nearly all of the crew to the ground with the exception of the first mate, who stood clutching the wheel of the ship for dear life. Taking the chance that she had she bolted away from the men who held her, running back to the helm just in time for the ship to crash into the jagged rocks that had hid from them in the darkness. She ran face-first into the chest of her first mate, both of them getting knocked onto the hard floor. She raised her hand to her face- she had landed and rolled to the side just hard enough to hit her head, and the blurriness and rocking of the ship threatened to knock her out completely. Her nose was bleeding. Her face was throbbing, and it seemed like the sky itself was opening up above her. Was this it, then? Was she to be taken by pirates, without even proving herself? She shook her head. She couldn't give up. She wouldn't. Rolling onto her hands and knees, she grabbed the wheel and began to stand, using it as a crutch until her entire body was slumped against it. Perhaps it was her hitting her head, perhaps it was determination, but she cleared her mind and focused on the sea before her, and saw a path through the rocks. Another wave hit from the side, and the pirate's ships were moving ever closer by the minute. She clutched the wheel so hard that splinters threatened to break of and embed into her hand. She was the captain, and this was her ship. Her and the wheel were one. She began to turn, aiming for the small gap in the rocks where the other ships wouldn't be able to follow.
"Are you crazy? What are you doing?!" Alice didn't look back, she didn't match the yelling with her own. This was her chance.
"She's going to take the side of the fucking ship off!" Another voice. She ignored it. She moved forwards. She could make it.
The shouting behind her seemed to condense into a being; a mass of shouting and anger that towered behind her. But she had faced much worse. She was the Jabberwocky slayer and she would not fall to a crew of pirates, nor to the words of her shipmates. She was stronger than them. She was strong enough to be a captain.
As soon as the rocks appeared they were gone. She cleared them without a scratch, and kept sailing until she could no longer sense the pirates behind her. Her hands loosened their grip on the wheel, before letting go of it completely. She breathed. Ragged, exhausted breaths. Her hair, slick from the rain and the humidity of the storm, clung to the side of her face. She turned to look at her crewmates, proud of what she had done. She had proven herself. She was the captain. She was greeted with a fist to the side of her face. She hit the floor of the ship, landing hard on her side.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" He shouted. "Did you really think this was your ship?" He stood above her. Her crewmates had gathered themselves and were standing above her now, too. It seemed like they were surrounding her, like they were trying to make her feel small. She felt smaller than she did when she first crashed down into Underland. They were all above her now, shouting and cursing and calling her various obscenities. They formed a circle around her, and the circle of their heads bordered the sky. It was a deep blue, deeper than the blue of Absulum or the blue of the sea. It was enthralling. It was all she could see.
When Alice woke up, she was back on the land. She was in a dark room. She looked out the window to the side of the bed she was in, her hand moving to push back the curtains that blocked the window. The sky was dark. She looked over to the left, to the grandfather clock that ticked and tocked there. It was morning, but the sky was so dark. She closed her eyes, relaxing into the mattress below. Her jaw was throbbing. She could feel the veins pulsing throughout her face. She tried to relax, to try and think what had happened. The first thing that came to mind, the first thing that came to comfort her, was the Hatter. She smiled as she thought of him. His colorful demeanor and makeup lit up the darkness behind her eyelids. She tried to think further- the hatter was always welcome in her mind but she did have more serious matters to attend to. The ship… Something about the ship? And the darkness, and the storm, and the rocks. Her first mate. His face came unwelcomed. That bastard. He had hit her, hadn't he?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a door opening. She quickly sat up, looking around the dark room. Her first mate. It was her first mate.
"Here she is." He said, motioning. "She has been… Acting strange lately. Hysteria, I believe. She has insisted that she is a captain of a ship."
"Is that all?" Another man said, entering behind her. "It doesn't really sound like hysteria to me." Alice was speechless. Hysteria? She hardly saw how acting as the captain of her ship warranted hysteria. Her face contorted into that of disgust.
"I am the captain of the ship!" She cried. Both of the men looked at her. They looked at her like she was some sort of animal, something that shouldn't be capable of speech. "That is my father's ship. My name is Alice Kingsley, and I own that ship!" She said, turning to inspect the man. She could barely make it out in the dark, but he looked like he was wearing a white coat. A doctor…?
"As you can see she's very emotional." The first mate continued, going on like she was a mere trifle. "There is… Something else. She has been…" He leaned in, like they were sharing some sort of secret, but his whisper was loud enough for anyone in the room to hear. "...Speaking to butterflies. It's very disturbing. That, and physical violence. You can see she hurt herself…" He gestured to her face.
"I… I have not been talking to butterflies, I have been talking to Absulum!" She blurted out. She knew, somehow, that it was a bad idea but she was too angry to mull it over too much. "I didn't hurt myself, he did!" Her voice was nearly a yell at this point.
The man who was presumably a doctor frowned, walking over to her bed. He leaned over, feeling her head with his hand. Alice scoffed and jerked backwards.
"I'm not sick." She growled, her voice returning to it's usual calm. She did feel hot, but she was sure it was because of her injury on the ship. She certainly wasn't hysterical. (It could be said that she was mad, she thought. But all the best people were.) The doctor frowned.
"Of course not deary." He said, turning back to his first mate. His expression confirmed the fake tone in his voice. He didn't believe her! The two men returned to their conversation like she wasn't there at all, talking of institutions and the "symptoms of hysteria" that she, apparently, "obviously exemplified". Alice couldn't help but look on with a flabbergasted expression. Certainly this wasn't her reality. This was nothing like what she had dreamed. It was impossible. She mulled over that word in her head; this was not the good impossible that she had been used to hearing, the impossible things that reminded her of her father or the impossible things that she would prove to be quite the opposite. This was a bad impossible, a heart-stopping impossible. A nauseating impossible. She looked around the room. Was she really here? Perhaps this was some new room in the Underland. Had she returned? She shook her head. No, this was nothing like Underland. It was worse.
The sound of the door opening again grabbed her attention; more men were coming. Men in white garb who looked more like security guards. The doctor turned to her.
"Now Alice, if you will just stand still, these men would like to take you somewhere." The doctor smiled. It was hardly a welcoming smile. He looked at her like she was a child, or like she was some toy. Somewhere else in his eyes, she saw something else. A hunger, maybe. He looked mad, and Alice had a lot of experience determining what was mad and what was not. How could someone be both so comforting and yet so terrifying? She shook her head. The men were approaching closer by the second and she did not have time to weigh the probability of him being mad or not. She looked to the left; darkness, the grandfather clock. She stood.
"I'm not going anywhere!" She said, backing up into the corner. She looked around again; she couldn't possibly get past her first mate and the doctor and his workers.
"Now Alice," He began, putting his hand up as if that would calm her. "I'm sure we can figure everything out once we check you out." He said, motioning for the guards to move quicker.
Alice looked around one final time. To the right, this time. The sky was dark outside the window, and she could hardly tell how far she was from the ground. It almost looked like the ground below went on forever, like the rabbit-hole. Almost.
"No," She said, backing up into the window. "I'm not going anywhere!"
And with that, Alice jumped through the window.
The ground never came. She was falling- falling like she did down the rabbit-hole, falling like she did out the door of that strange room in the Underland. She had always been falling, it seemed. But she never hit the ground this time. Instead, she sprung awake. She would have sat straight up had the straps on the bed not been there to hold her down. It was only when she hit the mattress again did she close her mouth- Had she been screaming? She tried to look around, but a hand now held her head down on the bed.
"Now now." A face obscured the sky above her. She squinted, the features of the doctor's face coming into view. The mad look in his eyes was only exacerbated from the way his head hung above hers, his short black hair dangling down a bit. He looked greasy.
"Excitable, prone to fantasy… Textbook case of female hysteria." He said. Alice tried to open her mouth to speak, to do something. She wasn't supposed to be here. She was supposed to be on her ship, she was supposed to be a captain, she was supposed to do the impossible. She tried to yell for help, but her voice turned into a cry of surprise and pain as a needle slipped into her neck. She squirmed, her knees bending as her body tried to move away from the needle, the doctor, all of this. The world began to blur again. Tick tick tick gong. She squinted, before shutting her eyes tight, as if that could get her away from the reality she was facing. The ticking of the clock rang louder and louder, her head throbbing with every tick. Her mind was cloudy. It was always cloudy nowadays. Tick tick tick gong. She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness again, and in a final act of defiance she opened her eyes, trying to look at the sky above one last time. But all she saw was the doctor's face, and the blue butterfly that sat on his shoulder.
A/N: Okay. So, i've been working on this for a few hours and my brain is fried. I've never written fanfiction before or really any fiction outside of school projects, so I hope this isn't complete trash? Didn't exactly have an editor either haha. Anyways, please review! I'd love constructive criticism. My goal here is to really just write something better than the movie tbh, I was SO disappointed when Time ended up not being the villain that I wanted, which pretty much motivated this entire thing. He'll enter... Soon :)
Thanks for reading!