i.
"Why don't you leave?" Gleaming, too-sharp teeth ask him, moving in the darkness like the fraying edges of a nightmare. He doesn't know the answer, really so he adjusts his glasses, hoping that that it means something.
"I didn't know cats could smile," He retorts-And the words are wrong somehow, not something he was supposed to say. "Servants of death do," The Cat replies anyway in the dark, tail swishing. "All of them do, no matter how hard they fight it."
"Which way do I go?"
The Cat pouts, as best as it's able-And then vanishes from the street, from outside the whore-house it was standing.
He waits.
A voice, exhausted and horribly amused appears to his ear and whispers: "They all lead to the same path."
"Where?"
"To the King."
ii.
He's walking through blood-puddles, through decrepit cinema parking-lot grounds, ivy creeping over a nearly unrecognizable carriage, with bones of an old horse sleeping on the ground.
The lot is empty, vast and vaguely medical in the way it has appeared before him this time; Strange, how in life the things that are supposed to save end up being instruments to destroy.
He passes by a large table, cluttered with charred chairs made of wood, such as those which might belong in a schoolroom. Taking a seat, he waits. For what, he's not sure.
iii.
"You need to pass the cake around, then cut it-That's the point of a looking glass cake," An exasperated cook says to him, shaking his grizzled hair out of the way. "?" Says Sebastian, and he watches the mark hang curiously, politely in the air before him before dissipating like smoke.
If you were outside of it the glass, then roles would be reversed, he wants to tell the lion cook.
iv.
"What is lost can never be returned," A sleepy child, who couldn't be possibly older than nine says, pulling his head out of the tea-can that innocuously reads 'New Moon Drop.' "Whether it's me or someone else, it hardly matters."
He says to the child that he will fulfill his promise, no matter what.
"I'll hold you to that," The child says seriously, blue eyes widening and waking into something colder, sharper. "In return, I will fulfill mine." He offers to him a too-big blue ring, which he accepts.
As he does, the parking lot fills with the scent of death and dreams.
v.
"Mind the baby," The Duchess says to him, shoving a bundle of blankets into his arms. Her eyes are red, burning red and he wonders if The Cat would like them.
Her cook is shaking far too much red iron into the pot of organs, he thinks-And he sneezes.
(His arms are empty but for blankets; it was hope that she nursed instead of a child.)
vi.
"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date," He's saying now, running. He's not sure what he's late for, but he remembers the child with the ring and the tea-can.
He knows that reaching the king is vital.
vii.
The Black King is made out of the sky, with hair like a night-lit sky and skin colored the perfectly peach clouds of sunset. People take him for granted, as he's always held a position to be always there. He wears mourning-clothes today, and watches the Duchess go by in her casket, dead by his own doing. (Hearts mean death, Diamonds mean greed, Clubs are for health, and Spades-Spades are for duty)
"She was my Aunt, you know." He says conversationally, and turns to show that both eyes are closed.
viii.
The King gazes over the bright lights of London, his heart pounding a steady one-two-three in his rib cage as he sits in his throne, just outside of the border of where the battles take place. The main objective is to order and avoid capture, he knows this. "Knight to F5," He calls, and Sebastian complies with grace, extermination coming to those who seek harm to the King.
(Death comes swift, for Knights do not follow rules.)
ix.
The King doesn't have the safety that Alice did, by being trapped inside of a bottle. He struggles in the sweeping waves of destiny, trying to stay afloat. Eventually however, he sinks in the water, drowning.
Sebastian knows that this always has to be the case; that he has to rescue him. At least these tears did not come from the king.
x.
The King is trapped inside of a house of cards, a courtroom. "Guilty!" The verdict comes, again and again. But he stands proudly, gazing up at the blond boy in the judge's seat, clad in white. "Those clothes do not suit you," He tells him with disdain at some point, and Sebastian agrees.
"What does it matter?" Alois shrugs, and claps his hands. "Guilty," He sings like the damned, and the silent woman with white hair opens her mouth obediently.
xii.
The King is sentenced to a fate worse than Death. "Remember your promise now," he tells his servant, "I've always told lies with this eye." he points to the eye that shines with a different contract than signed. "Remember, and fulfill. That's an order-An Order."
Sebastian can only helplessly agree, then watch as the woman with white hair drags the king over to the edge of another cliff, to send them both toppling into the seas of fate.
xiii.
He decides to not sleep any longer, despite his wound. There are more important things than sleep.
Edit: For that one favorite reviewer who doesn't have an account, and who is so very kind to me when he or she reviews-Black Alice Butterfly was a very old, old account, and I wanted to give a sort of good-bye to my fans on there. Black Alice Butterfly was-Well, when i still dreamed. And then I began to spell dreaming backwards, and here we are. Hopefully my writing has improved over the years as well... (That would be embarrassing, if I hadn't improved over all this time.)
Please get an account, though? It's incredibly frustrating when I can't express how grateful I am to you.