Author Notes: Someone had to write that Alice through the Looking-glass AU for Team Jabberwock
Nash opens his eyes to a field divided into squares by a number of green hedges and promptly starts swearing up a storm. He knows this dream all too well.
There is no point staying here. You must fulfil the right requirements to wake up from the land of the Looking-glass. Nash heaves himself up with a burble, hating himself a little for the sound, and drags himself towards the far side of the field. His claws catch a little on the neatly trimmed grass and Nash takes particular pleasure in digging his claws in, tearing it up as he passes through.
The Jabberwock, despite the name, is not a particularly majestic creature in motion. Nash whiffles through his ill-formed jaws as he tries to keep in mind that his right leg is his left and vice versa in this topsy-turvy world. At least he can set things on fire with his eyes. Nash clambers over the hedge that separates the First Square from the Second; little curls of flame licking around the crushed branches he left behind.
The Jabberwock is not a chess piece. As such, there is nothing impeding Nash from making a straight path right through the squares. Destruction lies in his wake: the railroad in tatters, the rushes around the river crushed ignominiously, and Humpty Dumpty's wall both crumbling and on fire. That's the best thing about being in Looking-glass land; pushing Humpty Dumpty off his wall and watching him smash with a pitiful wail. Nash burbles happily to himself as he leaves the Sixth Square, and then hates himself for making that noise again. At the Seventh Square, Nash sees the Jubjub Bird and the Bandersnatch tussling playfully with each other off in the distance. It's not often that Jason and Nick both show up in Looking-glass when Nash is already here. An unfamiliar feeling runs down his spine.
Nash is half expecting it when he sees the small figure blocking his path on the Eighth Square. The white queen's hat fit loosely over the small head, half covering one eye.
"That loose bitch, giving away her crown to any fucker that reaches the Eighth Square," Nash snarls, jaws snapping impatiently.
"That is the rules of the game," the figure says calmly. It is the boy from the cabaret earlier that day. The one Nash had kicked. The one who had dared to talk back.
"Not that it matters." The corner of Nash's mouth curls up. "Ain't no queen that kills the dragon. That's the knight's job."
"No, it is the boy's." The blade glints dangerously in the boy's hands as he flourishes it between them.
The Vorpal Sword.