A/N
Oh, this is stupid of me. I've got writers block on my other stories so what do I do? I start a new one, that's what! Very clever. Not.
Ok, so here's the deal. I don't know if this story will ever be more than a one-shot, I wasn't even planning on posting it but then figured "what the hell". If you read this and like it; I'm not adversed to adoption... though I'm not fond of it either. But if you feel you want to continue it, PM me and we'll talk. Not that I think anyone will, but just in case.
Currently it's set in fairytale-land and it's all about Alice (my OC version of Alice in Wonderland) and Jefferson. I've taken aspects from "Once upon a time in Wonderland" but I've also tweaked it and made it my own version.
If you like it = review.
"Back again, I see."
Jefferson jumped slightly and swirled around only to relax again. "Oh, it's you."
"Indeed I am me, who else would I be?" The girl grinned and took a few steps forward, closing in on the distance between them.
"The Queen's men." He shrugged as the girl inched even closer. "I'm afraid I'm not exactly on her best side at the moment."
"Why?" She finally stopped right in front of him, their bodies so close that they could feel each others breaths on their faces. "Did you steal something again?"
"It's not like the Queen was using it." He defended. "And I have a buyer who most definitely will."
"Thief." She grinned even wider, not at all perturbed. "The Red Queen would have your neck."
"At least it isn't the Queen of Hearts, who would have my head." He grinned equally wide back at her. "Though I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. They won't catch me, see if they don't."
"No one ever does." The girl nodded, agreeing. "A thief you may be, but a good one at that. All slippery and quick. I suppose you'll be leaving now then?"
"Well." Jefferson pretended to think it over, hand on chin and tilting his head. "The Hare did invite me to tea."
"Oh, and we mustn't decline the Hare his tea, must we now?" The girl gasped as if this was the most atrocious thing to do. "As it happens, I too was invited."
"Were you now?" He looked surprised at the coincidence though the glint in his eye gave him away. "Well, a few more hours couldn't hurt."
"What of the Queen?" She tilted her head.
"I don't think she was invited."
"No." She smiled. "She never is."
Jefferson had been a traveler between worlds for as long as he could remember (which in fairness wasn't that long; he never bothered to remember much, it wasn't the past that mattered so much as the present, he always said) and he had seen many strange things and met upon many strange people. Wonderland was among the strangest yet it had always been a bit of a favourite; not so much because of the land, but because of Alice.
Alice wasn't born in Wonderland, rather had stumbled upon it by accident when she was small and had simply never left. When he asked about it she simply said "my life before wasn't living, but this here is a lively life" and that was that. She never elaborated beyond that and he never asked; everyone is entitled to their secrets, it's what makes it so much fun.
He wasn't too clear on what exactly Alice did in Wonderland, she seemed to merely wander, but she was always doing something or other. When he first met her, on his second trip to Wonderland back when he was a young teenager, she had been sitting right in front of his door. With her legs crossed in a meditative state right in front of the doorframe she was singing, of all things.
"…little children, The time's come to play,
Here in my garden of shadows.
Follow sweet children, I'll show thee the way,
Through all the pain and the sorrows.
Weep not poor children, For life is this way,
Murdering beauty and passions.
Hush now dear children, It must be this way,
To weary of life and deceptions.
Rest now my children, For soon we'll away,
Into the calm and the quiet.
Come little children, I'll take thee away,
Into a land of enchantment.
Come little children, The time's come to play,
Here in my garden of shadows."
He didn't know what children exactly she was singing to but it gave him goosebumps listening. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once and he couldn't move. And then, once she was finished, she simply turned her head and asked him what he thought of her voice as if she'd known he was there all along. Later, he'd speculated that she had been waiting for him, sitting where she was, but had never asked. Unbidden she had latched on to him and announced herself his guide and she'd stuck by him the rest of his visit, and then the visit after that, and the one after that… she always seemed to know when he was there and she never let him down.
Wonderland was dangerous though, and Alice had a knack for making enemies, as well as friends, at the most inopportune moment. The Queen of Hearts wanted her head, for what she never said, but the Red Queen seemed to think of Alice as her baby sister, spoiling her rotten. That damned Caterpillar, the boss around the Undergrowth, had a price on her head but his best bounty hunter, the former Knave of Hearts, viewed the girl as an apprentice of sorts, teaching her tricks and skills whenever Jefferson saw them together.
Yes, he'd seen many strange places and met many strange people, but Alice was by far his favourite. Although he'd never tell her that.
A tea party with the Mad March Hare and the Doormouse always ended in chaos, actually no, it started and lasted in chaos. And it was always amped up further by Cheshire showing up; alternating between trying to eat the Doormouse and stealing all the sugar cubes.
Alice loved it. One had to learn to duck fairly quickly and the cherry pastries were lethal but otherwise it was brilliant. The Hare had been catering this tea party for near a decade now and he didn't seem inclined to stop any time soon; there was always someone in the mood for tea somewhere, right?
"Would you like some milk, Alice?" The Hare asked politely.
"Just a drop or two, if you please." She held up her cup. Politeness was ever so important in Wonderland, it could mean the difference between keeping your head and loosing it (in the literal sense), even in the face of a mortal enemy was politeness to be preferred above all else.
The Hare geared up, standing on top of his chair, and lounged out with the milk decanter. The milk was spattered all over the table but Alice managed to catch a few strands into her cup before saluting the Hare in thanks.
"Oh, what a waste." She heard a sigh to her left and turned to face her sometimes-friend-sometimes-frenemy Cheshire. "Such good milk, all gone."
"Don't be a martyr, Chesh." She rolled her eyes. "Have some lemon tarts."
"Tarts!" The Doormouse yelled in agreement and flung some over from her side of the table.
Jefferson laughed, in a slightly unhinged way as in all thing things Jefferson, and caught one in his mouth.
"Whoop, ten points for the Hatter!" Alice cheered while the Hare banged two tea trays together like a cymbal, not at all caring that they were breaking.
"All this cheeriness is too much for me." Cheshire sighed again, apparently in a mood today, and whisked off into nothingness.
"Well, someone got up on the wrong side of the litter today." The Hare harrumphed, as if insulted, and stuffed a spoon into his mouth.
Their decade long tea party was catered on top of not less than fifteen different tables, all in a row, placed in a half open grove right by the road. Anyone passing, be it the Queen's guard (the Queen of Hearts that is, the Red Queens land didn't stretch this far east of Snuff) or the Tweedles, were invited to join. After all, politeness is key, and you can't be fighting your enemies while having tea at the same time, it's simply rude; therefore you had to wait until the tea party was over to fight, which it never was. As such; no fighting between enemies in the grove or in the immediate area.
Which is why, when a gaggle of the Queens guard could be seen approaching on their horses further down the road, nobody panicked.
"Ooh, look." The Hare stuttered in excitement. "Company."
Alice giggled as he tried to see the guards as well as keep his eye on his tart, thereby going all criss crossed, and they all waited for the men to ride up to them.
"Hello, gents." She greeted, all cheers and niceness. "Care for some tea?"
The man in the front climbed of his horse and removed his helmet. It was no one they recognised; then again, they barely recognised each other on a bad day so that really wasn't saying much. Besides, the Queen of Hearts had so many men, she never seemed to run out.
"You loons, sitting here as always." The man spoke with a cruel laughter but stopped as he heard Jefferson laugh along.
"Drip drop, goes the tea." Jefferson started, grinning like a mad man, and the guard looked unnerved. "Drink it by the tumtum tree."
"Ever the party shall go on." The Hare jumped up on the table, scattering cutlery everywhere, and kicked away a muffin for every word he spoke (or rather screamed) at the guard.
"Until there is no one left to sing this song!" Alice finished the rhyme by pitching her tea cup toward the still seating guards who all ducked in fright, before the inhabitants at the table all burst into manic laughter.
The guard looked at them like they were crazy, which really… it's not like they were hiding it or anything.
Jefferson stood up and walked over to him, probably slightly closer than the guard was comfortable with, and held out his hands. "Cherry pastry?"
The man smiled uneasily before accepting the small treat and then walking backwards, rather quickly, from the Hatter and mounted up on his horse again. "Can't stay, apologies, errands for the Queen and all." He looked rather relieved saying that and then they were off again.
"Humph, at least the Red Queens men always stay for tea." The Hare seemed greatly perturbed at this, as if by not staying they had offered great insult.
"Cherry?" Alice smiled at Jefferson as he walked back to his seat. "And he seemed such a promising guard."
"Yes." The Doormouse stood up with her hand mockingly at her heart, as if saying goodbye to a good friend. "A great loss."
They all wiped away imaginary tears before bursting out into giggles again. After all, he can't have been a very smart guard if he didn't know that Cherry was lethal. Everyone else knew. Well, the ones sitting at the table did. So really, only four-five people.
Whatever. He had been rude. And rudeness is simply not tolerated, this is Wonderland after all.
Alice had been in Wonderland for a very long time. So long in fact that she couldn't really remember how long. She had a distinct impression of a before, before Wonderland, and in her deeper dreams and daydreams she could see it but it never bothered her. Wonderland was her home now; she knew it like her own heart, and her heart knew many things.
Upon first arriving in Wonderland she had gotten on the wrong side of the Queen of Hearts. The Queen had offered her something and she had declined. Alice lost her head the day she declined. Or rather, lost her body. She knew where her head was, it was her body that was gone. The Queen had ordered the axe to fall, which it did, and for the longest time Alice only had her head. The Queen had kept her, like a bust, on a mantelpiece in an empty room for quite some time and during that time the only visitor she had was the Queen. Eventually the Queen ordered her head back onto her body and a few (rather many, actually) stitches later Alice was whole again. This time the Queen offered the same thing, only instead of threatening separation between body and head, she threatened separation between body and heart.
Alice spit in her face, stole a sword from one of her guards, chopped the Queens own head off and then ran like crazy. Naturally the Queen got herself sewn back together rather quickly but she seemed to take her new dashing scar as somewhat an affront and had been after Alice since. Some people really knew how to hold a grudge.
Shortly after Alice met the Red Queen, ever so different yet the same as the Queen of Hearts, and the two got on splendidly. The Red Queen was equally as dark and manipulative as the first Queen Alice ever met but somehow it was not the same. She thought Alice was adorable, being barely nine years old at the time, and treated her as a sister. Alice knew, if she had nowhere else to go, the Red Queens castle would always be safe.
She had not stayed with her new friend for too long though, eager to see more of this fantastical Wonderland, and had wandered off into the wilderness. She made new friends and new enemies along the way and earned a bit of a name for herself and so had she lived her life for years.
Eventually she stumbled across stories of a doorway that had no house and she got curious. Determined to find out more she tracked it down and had decided to keep a watch on it to see what would happen; it was a doorway after all, so it stood to reason that someone or something would come through at some point. Because everything had a point in Wonderland, and if you knew how to read the world correctly you could figure them out, those points that seemed to elude others. Even the nonsensical and meaningless had a point if only to be nonsensical and meaningless. As such, a doorway, being a doorway, would have to be a door. Possibly a window. Maybe a shoe. Expect nothing and believe in everything; that was the way to live in Wonderland.
And so Alice waited. And waited. And waited some more.
And then the waiting was over.
And Jefferson fit right in with this strange world and its wonders. And, perhaps more importantly, he fit right in with her.
Jefferson had asked her. Not intentionally or planned or really thought through. It just slipped out. But then again, he had always been the impulsive type.
"Come with me."
They had known each other for years, loved each other even. But they had never given much thought to it; it simply was so, no fuss about it. They were roughly the same age, although Alice could never be to sure how old she was as time was temperamental in Wonderland, and had roughly the same interests. Roughly. They had kissed. Nothing spectacular, nothing expectantly, it just seemed natural. Personal space was never an issue for them, they were always touching when they were together; holding hands, Alice hopping onto his back without a care, hanging of each others shoulders, fiddling with the others' hair… never ending touching. It was simply natural to move on to further areas.
They couldn't imagine life without the other. True love, the Doormouse had sighed all starry eyed before biting the Hare in rabid rage for stealing her ginger fudge. They didn't argue.
He had asked her. They were walking; Alice was skipping along to the trumpet flowers as they played their music, all the while dodging the dragonflies shooting fire from above. They were heading nowhere in particular, just walking along the road. Jefferson had watched as Alice swirled to a high note and it had just escaped his mouth; no permission whatsoever from himself, it just jumped out.
He didn't regret it. He wanted it.
She hadn't stopped dancing. At first he thought she didn't hear it. Then she twirled over to him and grabbed his hands.
"Only if you dance with me right now and promise me that the madness will never end."
Madness. Love. Same thing.
The Rabbit dug another hole for her, just like the one that had brought her to Wonderland in the first place. He owed her for getting his family back to him from the Queen of Hearts' dungeons during a casual break-in while she was bored. Jefferson traveled through his hat. Alice through her rabbit hole.
She didn't say goodbye. She hadn't the first time around either.
The first thing she saw as she tumbled and climbed and fell all at the same time out of the rabbit hole, was Jefferson waiting for her, hat on head and smile on face.
"Welcome to the Enchanted Forest."
The Enchanted Forest was very different. Both from Wonderland and from her birth place. There were trees everywhere!
Jefferson guided her patiently toward his house, a hut really, as she pointed and demanded explanations for the most inane things. Then again, this was a girl that had basically grown up in Wonderland, to her there was no such thing as "inane".
At last they reached his house/hut.
"What is this?" Alice paused, intrigued. "It is a house! With windows! Look, even a doorway! The most house-iest house I've ever seen!"
"Not a word." He said in a sing-song voice before gesturing before himself. "This is my house."
"You have a house?" She seemed very confused by the idea.
"Yes, it is right in front of you."
"But you said house." She repeated.
"Yes?" Jefferson asked, wondering what she was on about.
"House. Not home. House." She looked at the hut, then back at him, then again at the hut. "Why bother with a house if it is not your home?"
"Well, it's not like I've ever spent much time there." He shrugged as if that explained everything.
"So bother with it? If you don't spend time in it and it's not your home?" She scrunched up her face, rather cutely he thought. "What a waste of a house."
"It's not a waste! I do live in it." He briefly wondered why it was such a big deal but shook it off. "Just not that often."
"But if you do live in it, why isn't a home?" Was it just Jefferson or were they going around in circles?
"I just… it's just… everyone has houses!" Trust Alice to throw him off so completely, she'd always had that effect, but then again, that's why he liked her so much. He was never bored with Alice around, and boy does he hate boredom.
"Hm." She studied him like she didn't trust him then turned back toward the disputed house. "I suppose we'll just have to make it 'home' then." She said with finality and then skipped up to the building and invited herself in.
Jefferson stood there, flabbergasted with open mouth, feeling like he'd lost an argument without actually realising they were having one before shaking himself out of it with a goofy grin. He was really glad she was here; it was already feeling more of a home.
Jefferson still had work to do, still had objects to steal/find/locate/liberate, whichever fitted the bill, and so his life continued much in the same fashion it had before but with one big difference. He had someone waiting for him.
He never had that before. Sure, someone was always waiting for his services, but never for him. Yet Alice waited. Always. She spent her days in his house/hut, befriending his neighbours, waiting for him.
She kept herself busy too. Every time he left and every time he returned; the house looked different. Small things really; a flowerpot here, a table cloth there, maybe a colourful doormat one morning, and so on. She even started on a small garden outside the house, mostly herbs, but still. Slowly but surely she was making good on her promise to make it a "home".
He sometimes worried that she'd get bored, having basically grown up in Wonderland where things were always changing and always in motion, but it had been nearly a year and she showed no such signs. She had taken to the Enchanted Forest much like she probably had Wonderland; in stride and comfort.
Jefferson slowly found himself wishing his trips to be shorter, his errands faster, just so that he could come home to her all the quicker. It wasn't the house that made the home, he speculated one day, but the person waiting on the other side of the door. She was his home.
Alice loved the Enchanted Forest. Adored it, really. It was so unusual from everything she had known previously.
She loved the homemaking she was doing too. In Wonderland you didn't get to do a lot of homemaking, mainly because whatever you changed tended to change again eventually and you never knew what the day held in store when you woke up in the morning, it was too full of wonders and fantastical events to able to get that cosy "home" feeling you'd normally expect. But in the Enchanted Forest? Everything had an order, a place, a routine even. Sure, unexpected things happened, it always does, but they weren't nearly as unexpected as what you'd see in Wonderland. She quickly got the hang on life in this new world and though it was so very different it was amazing.
She made a point of not just staying inside the house all days, rather she left to explore and see this new world. She followed the path to the nearest village; discovering the marketplace, which she loved, and met all these new people, again so very different from Wonderland. To begin with, they were all people, not talking animals or objects with sentient minds. And they were friendly, though some lacking that politeness she had come to expect, and she made it part of her new routine to speak to anyone who spoke back and get to know them. This was also very useful in order to gather information and to hear news of what lies beyond the village.
This new world was equally as big as her old one and though she felt rather at home in Jefferson's house and its immediate surroundings she was still curious about it. Curiosity was, in effect, her superpower; it's how she always lived and it hadn't let her down so far. Maybe, when Jefferson got back from his latest job, he could show her around a bit more.
Speaking of which…
"And the gallant knight returns!" Jefferson thrust open the door and jumped inside with flourish. "Did you miss me?"
Alice grinned and dropped the dress she had been sewing onto the floor, not caring if it got dirty, and rushed up to him. With a running leap she jumped into his arms and hugged him dearly and tight before letting up and looking him in the face, their noses so close they nearly touched.
"Not at all."
Jefferson gave a playful grimace. "Oh, you wound me."
"If so then you deserve it." She kicked him lightly in the chin, not a mean feat considering she was standing on her tippy toes. "You said three days. It's been a week."
"Yes, I did, didn't I?" The grimace this time was real and he hugged her tighter. "Complications, boring, not important, I'm home now."
"Are you." She smiled hopefully. "Home, I mean?"
"Oh, yes. I am." He gave her the brightest smile she had ever seen, making her fall all that much more in love with him. "This is home."
She giggled and wrapped her legs around his waist, leaving the ground completely, and gave him the sweetest kiss she could manage.
"That it is, my madness, that it is forever."
A/N
If anyone is wondering, the song Alice was singing when Jefferson first saw her was "Come little children" from the movie Hocus Pocus.