A/N: Another TV Tropes-inspired one. This one's too long to quote in full, but is on the film's main page; part of it is in this story's summary. Right after Alice's last chat with the caterpillar.
Alice noticed that she'd been treating Wonderland's prophecy like her marriage 'proposal' at home. Someone had decided for her—and here it wasn't even a person, it was a nebulous concept.
She wasn't sure if that made it better or worse, actually.
Once she realized that…well. Both were destinies that she'd decided she did not want. The choice in both cases seemed simple enough. Ignore it all. Run away. Pretend hard enough, stay sane enough, and they'll see the madness themselves and find someone better suited.
"You're not hardly Alice," the caterpillar said.
Alice could be her mother's Alice, that man's Alice, and marry and live reasonably ever after. She could be Wonderland's Alice, the prophecy's Alice, and go out to fight the Jabberwock. She could be her father's mad, impossible Alice and…that was a nebulous concept again; all her father really wanted was for her to follow her own dreams.
Which Alice am I?
She had the ability to be any, she realized with a bit of a start. And perhaps that was all the prophecy was. This is a path; this is where it will lead you. Less of a granite corridor, more of a map. If Alice fights the Jabberwock with the vorpal sword today, then she will slay it. If Alice marries the man back in her own world, she will live the life her mother has planned for her—which was just another prophecy, really.
Or she could stop thinking of the story-paths laid out and figure out what she wanted.
Alice smiles. That's not quite what either of her parents would say, but she feels it takes the better parts of both philosophies.
Well, she thought, for she had only ever stopped talking to herself aloud,I certainly don't want to marry Hamish, so that's one world figured out. And I can't very well leave all these people with the Red Queen. That's not the Alice I want to be either.
I want to be mad, impossible Alice, and that means fighting for what I want.
Alice walks back to don her armor. There is a helmet, though no one looks like they want her to put it on. Alice doesn't want to put it on herself, and it takes her a moment to realize she's trying to look like the warrior from their illustrated prophecy, blond hair free and flowing.
She taps it twice, then tries it on.
The helmet doesn't fit. It cuts off her peripheral vision, is so heavy it puts her off-balance, and is generally a hindrance not worth the minimal protection such a thing would provide from the Jabberwock's jaws.
She takes it back off and shakes her hair out. No prophecy will determine her life, neither because she follows it blindly nor because she forces herself to subvert it. She's off to fight the Jabberwock, not play along with something or rebel for the fun of it.
She strides out to face the fate she chose.
