First off I would like to say hello and thank you to everyone who is reading this. Welcome.
And I have something I want to make clear: this is not a Cardverse fiction. The theme of cards is heavily involved, but this is a fic based on Alice in Wonderland, the original work by Lewis Carroll. The characters from Hetalia will not be in the Suits nor roles they are in in the Cardverse because the Cardverse is not involved with this at all. the sole similarity is the fact that the characters are in suits.
I have tried to use a lot from the original work. Many of the same ideas and subtext can be found in this fic. The work of Carroll was about a girl growing up and hopefully this fic will carry on that theme, plus the theme of being lost in the great inescapable system. I'll do my absolute to write this fic to the best of my abilities, and in return I ask, dear readership, that you enjoy.
Feel free to PM me or leave a review if you're confused by something.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or Alice in Wonderland.
Alice is beginning to get very tired of lying in her bed.
Since her arrival in hospital she has been permitted to do very little else. At first she felt privileged to have a private ward, as she would not be required to enter into polite conversation with an optimistic neighbour nor have her own awkward advances scorned by a sour, pessimistic neighbour. Alice is accustomed to being on her own, but not like this. What is the use of being on one's own when one cannot enjoy the solitude? If she could work on the mountain of work from university, or read one of her books, or engage in some other pastime she enjoys then the lack of company would be heartily welcomed. But she cannot.
Over the course of the two weeks she has spent in this gloriously private ward, the solitude has become isolation. With nothing to do but watch the television mounted upon the wall in front of her bed and no view of the outside world except for a few bars of light creeping across the floor of white tile, Alice has become very dull.
So very dull, she agrees with herself, staring at her blue-black arm, the muddled white of the cast covering the other and the needle of the drip she underneath the skin of her left wrist.
The TV drones in the background. Should she care to look up, Alice will see the picture of a beautiful young woman wearing a pleasant smile and a headscarf in a loose fashion that allowed a few strands of smoke-black hair to stray across her cheek. Should she care to listen, Alice will hear a newscaster describing the murder of this woman, a promising pre-med who was apparently loved by all who knew her , or all who cared to speak to the journalists about her stabbing Alice might think with a roll of her eyes, had she been listening. However she is not listening, so she is ignorant of the fact that the fifth anniversary of this woman's death has passed and her killer is still at large.
This afternoon seems doomed to join the other nine she has spent conscious in this hospital, passing in a stupid, sleepy haze, broken only by the twice daily visits of a doctor who appears as bored as Alice and the twice nightly visit of a nurse to refresh her painkillers.
"Why is it," she addresses the ceiling "One feels exhausted after a day spent doing absolutely nothing? Should I not be buzzing with energy? Or is my body using the energy to repair my…my…blast it, what did the car do to me anyway?"
The car had been a white blur when it hit her. The whole unfortunate affair was much too fast to avoid- for Alice at any rate. Believing herself to be safe on the pavement she had not been wary of the driver losing control behind her. In fact she had not known she had any company on her walk home from the university, not until the company had veered onto the sidewalk, struck her, thrown her a modest distance and sped off once the driver realised what he or she had done. Alice is willing to bet it was a he; in her experience men rarely take responsibility for accidents.
When she had first awoken to dreary reality, the doctors had explained a long list of injuries the car had inflicted. Many abrasions, bruises, a ruptured vein for which they had inserted a device called a 'stent', which was something like a metal straw that prevented her vein from collapsing to Alice's understanding, a broken bone in her right arm and a few more details she cannot remember. Her left arm has been locked up in a heavy cast of white plastered bandages. The cast has not done much more for her than become very troublesome in the bathtub, necessitating the use of a white sheet of plastic around it while she bathed herself with the help of a nurse who laughs at every word spoken between them.
"If I ever meet the bastard who landed me here I'll take a pipe to him." she decides. Alice derives most of her entertainment in hospital through a series of fantasies that are more and more complicated each time she revisits them. For example in one world she recovers, but must lose her broken arm lest the rest of her body be consumed by a terrible gangrene. The doctors fit her with an advanced robotic arm, equipped with protective equipment and weapons to ensure Alice has a better chance of defending herself from accidents. She leaves the hospital and hunts down the man who ran her down, then tests her arm's abilities on the man. Lately this world is the popular escape.
In all likelihood if Alice did indeed meet the man who had hit her, then left her in the street for a pedestrian to find half an hour later, she would only berate him for his actions then press charges. At best she will receive some kind of cash compensation then be expected to be satisfied.
She glances at the table beside her bed. There sits a book, lent to her by the library cart pushed by a dumpy old woman who trembled so badly with the effort to push it, Alice is always tempted to offer her the bed. The book is thick. She has not read it before and is not likely to finish it. Inside, the pages are solid text broken by very few conversations. This book is meant to satirise a subject she has not quite identified and where she thinks it might be poignant and clever to include one, there are no illustrations. She brushes away the notion of a fresh attack upon the dull contents, dismissing it as another way to waste her time.
Alice is disgusted to find herself staring at the clock, willing the hands to pass quickly and strike the four, when her doctor is due for the afternoon check-up. Surely she is not so desperate for a conversation she wishes for her bored, cold doctor? She scoffs, both at the thought of the grey doctor and at herself for wishing for his companionship.
And yet when the knock at the door comes, at a quarter past four, Alice cannot help but feel a thrill of relief the doctor is coming after all.
"Yes?" she says, intending it as permission to enter.
Unexpectedly, it is not her doctor that opens the door at all. Instead it is an exceptionally tall woman, who has to duck under the door to get through. She is dressed in a white coat, a standard silver doctor's watch hanging from the pocket, and a pair of white trainers. Her hair at first appears white in the sunlight until she moves away from the bars cast upon the walls from the blinds, then Alice realises her hair is a pale blonde, not quite white. There certainly is a lot of it. The braid she has bound her hair up in is frayed in several places, little spirals of not-quite white dripping over her shoulders. The woman's face is striking, one because of her slightly larger-than-normal nose and two because of her beauty. There is something rather regal and intimidating about her and at the same time, something very inviting.
One more thing: this woman is hurt. Her left hand is bandaged up.
"I must apologise for my lateness," the new doctor says and checks her watch, on which the numbers are reversed "A meeting overran."
Alice stares for a good few seconds before it occurs to her the new doctor awaits a reply "Well I'm not in any pain because of it."
"Excellent. I imagine the main cause of your pain would be the silly driver who thought it fit to mow down a perfectly respectable-looking young girl and leave her bleeding in the street. Silly man. Let's hope something exceedingly unpleasant happens to him, da?"
Distracted as she is by the absence of her doctor, Alice has not noticed her new doctor has an accent, perhaps Russian or Polish. As the doctor scrawls down a note on a clipboard, Alice searches for a name tag. The new doctor is unlabelled.
"Shouldn't you be wearing a name tag?" she asks.
"Probably." She glances up briefly and makes another note. Her eyes are violet.
"Who are you?" Alice is suddenly indignant. "What happened to Dr Jaeger?"
"His son's birthday is today."
Alice persists "What's your name? Are you really a doctor or did you just sneak in to antagonise the patients?"
"Antagonise? I am not antagonising you I am evaluating your condition, which the hospital would not allow anyone but a doctor to do. Give me your arm please."
She obliges. The doctor gently examines her arm. The room is filled with the scratch of the pen for a moment, then she stows the clipboard inside a pocket that should not be big enough to hold it comfortably. "The hospital has recommended a special treatment for your condition Ms Kirkland. If you'll just put these on (she hands Alice a pile of clothes she recognises as her own, from home) then I'm going to take you to a specialised ward where we'll begin the treatment."
"I'm not going anywhere with you until I know your name."
The doctor smiles. "Ah, how rude of me, I forgot I had forgotten to mention my name. It's Braginskaya. Now please, the team is waiting."
For the second time that day, Alice begrudges a wave of relief. She feels it upon hearing Dr Braginskaya had brought a wheelchair. Her legs are still somewhat wobbly having only been used to carry her to her private bathroom and back. Being dressed in her own clothing has made her much more relaxed, although she has no idea how the hospital got it.
"How did you get my clothes?" she looks down at the shorts and the tank top she struggled into moments ago and wonders why they didn't get her something warmer "Did my brother bring them?"
She bites her lip at the thought of her brother stealing into her apartment with the spare key under the mat and pawing through her belongings, rifling through her clothes to choose the most inconvenient outfit he could piece together.
"No, he didn't. We haven't heard from your family yet, although we tried contacting them when you first arrived. I'm sure they will reply soon."
Alice shakes her head "They won't. Can I have a blanket please? I'm not dressed that warmly."
To her surprise, the doctor takes off her own coat and drapes it over Alice. "We don't have the time to fetch you one right now. Take this for now, and we'll get something more suitable after the treatment has begun." She slips the clipboard out of the pocket and stows it inside a second jacket she wore underneath the coat.
Dr Braginskaya rolls her down a bustling hall, full of nurses and gurneys and family members following doctors. The smell of blood introduced itself to Alice in the agonising moment of consciousness directly after she was hit. The smell waves to her from several doorways as she is pushed past. After a few glimpses of patients far worse off than her, Alice choses to look ahead and ignore the whispers and the sobs. She finds herself speaking again.
"What is this treatment? I wasn't aware anything could be done for broken bones and cuts apart from a cast and stitches."
They turn a corner which is much darker than the last hallway.
"The treatment is difficult to explain. It is better that you experience it for yourself, rather than me describing it for you. Trust me this will be very helpful to you."
Eventually they arrive at a brown door. Alice guesses they are very deep into the hospital, as she has not seen anyone else in a while and she can no longer hear the whir of life support machines or the moans of those less fortunate than her. Dr Braginskaya opens the door onto a room Alice suspects she might have once visited in her nightmares.
In the centre of the room stands a table equipped with straps to hold down a recalcitrant patient's arms and legs. A little table stands next to it, holding a row of shiny instruments honed for slicing and cutting. Alice surveys the empty room, observing the darkness and sinister details with increasing alarm. "You really are a madwoman who sneaked in, aren't you?"
Dr Braginskaya chuckles "I promise I am not. These instruments are not for you. Whoever had this room last must have forgotten to clean these up after their session." Her bandaged hand rests on Alice's shoulder for a moment, than she sweeps into the room and shoves the table into a dark corner.
Alice stands up with some difficulty. Refusing Dr Braginskaya's offer of help, she manages to reach the table and leans on the edge.
"I'm going to give you a prescription now. It is very important you keep these nearby in case of an emergency." The doctor presses a large jar filled to the brim with multi-coloured pills into her hand. "The instructions are inside the lid."
She regards the pills uneasily. Whatever is wrong with her, it must be serious to produce this amount of medication to treat the condition. Even as she examines them, she is sure she can feel a pain in her side growing, and her arm aching. The room doubles and blurs in front of her eyes. Her legs tip to the side. The doctor's arms wind around her and stretch her out carefully upon the table, slipping the pills into the pocket of Alice's borrowed coat.
"I feel faint." she addresses the ceiling. In the background, there is a ripping noise, rather like paper being shredded. Her right arm feels much lighter suddenly "I suppose one would feel rather faint after a bout of exertion if one has not moved for a time."
"You are fine." says Dr Braginskaya.
There is a rustle of leather and Alice finds when she attempts to lift her arm to clear the hair out of her eyes, she cannot. "Could you get the hair out of my eyes?"
The doctor does.
"When does the treatment start? Where is this team you were talking about?" asks Alice, although she could not be less interested at this point as she realises the overhead lights are shining right into her eye, which is very uncomfortable despite their weakness.
"You'll see them soon."
Alice feels a flipping sensation in her stomach. Her body becomes very heavy and it feels as if her waist and wrists are supporting her entire weight. Blinking, Alice opens her eyes. The table has been turned upright. A few feet beneath her, the ground has dropped away in a circle about five feet wide. Her body is aligned with it. If the straps- yes it is the straps holding her upright- were loosened she would slip through into the deep black shaft yawning at her. The doctor stands in front of her.
She reaches over the hole and slips a cold, sharp object into Alice's pocket.
Her breathing grows shallower. "What is this?"
"A tad frightening I imagine." the doctor has secured her to the table and turned it upright, so that if even one of the straps now holding her slips Alice is likely to fall into the abyss. "I would not worry. If you keep your wits about you and pick your companions carefully, Alice, you should succeed."
Dr Braginskaya snaps her fingers. The four straps fall away. Alice falls into the dark before she has time to scream.
This story will feature a great many of the original cast of the Carroll books. It's going to be too damn easy to guess who is who, but then again Wonderland is more about nonsense than it is mystery. A free internet cookie to anyone who can tell me who Dr Braginskaya is from the landslide of obvious clues they have received. Anyone?
