I say at once, I suck in summaries, but here goes... *deep breath*

Over 1½ century (no idea how the Time is down here, but have heard that a few days on Earth could be several months in Underland!) passed in harmony in the mysterious and wonderful Underland after Alice Kingsleigh defeated the Jabberwocky, and the Red Queen got banished to the Outlands.

However, a new threat is growing hastily in the shadows deep inside the Outlands. A threat, there shall end up being more dangerous than first assumed. New persons, good and bad, will show up, forgotten memories will be fatal for some... loyalty will be doubted, friendships will form and break, and in the end, they realize cooperation is their only way to survive. Will Selene have the muchness to join this cooperation as the new Underland Champion, and hopefully save them all before it's too late?

Remember! This is a Mad Hatter/OC pairing. Don't like, don't read!

Character info: To get an overall idea of how my OC looks like; google Caterina Scorsone, and except from a few changes, keep everything just as it is.

Name: Selene "Tinke" Brown.

Age: 23.

Birth and Place: 3. December 1987 - 9.34 pm near Moscow, Russia. Moved to London as very young with her family.

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius.

Eye colour: light to deep blue.

Appearance: 172 cm, slim and fair skinned. Her hair is just about chest-length, and is currently dyed a dark red. Normally it's a dark brown.

Personality: To new people, she can appear introvert, silent, careful and suspicious, and not interested in making friends. But under the skin and her stubbornness, she can be a bit sensitive, but is very purposeful and a really sweet and caring person, there worries a lot about other people, especially the few friends she has. It's hard for her to trust new people, because of her past.

(h t t p : / / vicmackey . trakt . tv / images / people / 11482 . jpg ) (A portrait of Selene with her normal hair colour. Copy and paste, but without the spaces. Full links, annoyingly, can't be pasted here at FanFiction . net)

(...)

It was the first days of September. The last of the late summer latest litter of blackbird fledglings finally jumped from the edge of the old nest, and after a nosedive with a pair of feverishly flaps of its small wings, it soon set off towards the horizon like its older siblings.

Selene Brown had watched the nest through her window in her room, ever since the mother bird had laid the eggs. Remembering the first tiny sounds from their small beaks, and the mother blackbird coming to soothe them. Though surrounded by many other children at the orphanage, the age hierarchy was everything from toddlers and pre-teenagers, she never felt like she belonged somewhere. She was the oldest among the children at the orphanage with her 22 years old, and therefore acted like a reserve mother for the other children.

Her room was small and reminded more of a prison cell. There was nothing else than a bed of iron with an old mattress and a thin blanket, a small dresser and a half-shattered mirror on the wall. Sitting in the windowsill with her bare feet on the long board with her, her arms were hugged around her knees. The sunlight reflected in the golden locket around her slim neck. She sighed low but sad, as her hand closed around the golden pendant, and sank the lump there suddenly had appeared in her throat.

The orphanage laid in calm nature surroundings, and was established in an old restored manor from the middles of the 1850's. This meant old red bricks, black roofs and white windows and doors. The three-winged main building lay with its front out to the wide driveway, there went out to the highway leading to the city about 2 kilometres away.

Finally getting up from the windowsill, she threw on her black thigh-length hoodie with ¾ sleeves but left it unzipped. Leaving the room and going down the stairs with rapid steps, she went to the leader's office.

She peeked into the room and saw him sitting by his desk. Jackson, the leader of the orphanage reminded more of a homeless older man mixed with a caveman with his long and messy grey beard and dirty clothes. You would think he was in the middle of his sixties, and not the early fifties as he was.

Hearing activity by the door, he looked up and his cold grey eyes narrowed. "What do you want now, crane?"

"I'll go for a walk… just so you know."

"Whatever. Just be home before…"

"6 pm, I know." She cut him off, before closing the door again.

The ten minutes it took her to walk the short distance to the city felt much longer. Her long hair blew gently in the afternoon wind, as she came to a small café just outside the city. After entering her feet led her automatically over to one of the back tables, where she sat down. A few minutes later, another and quite chubby woman with short and curly dark hair sat down opposite her. There stood the name Liz on the name sigh on the right side of her blue waitress uniform.

"Nothing new?" the other woman asked. "Did any of the couples today consider you?"

Selene shook her head. "It was Penny Seymour, Lucas Hall and Bonnie Aldo there left today. And you perfectly know, that no one wants to adopt someone like me. With my past and that…"

"Rubbish, that happened so long ago. You're so unfairly beautiful, smart, stubborn, maybe a bit too serious at times, but you know how to make it on your own. They must all be out of their mind, if they didn't even think of adopting you." Liz said optimistically.

The weakest hint of a smile appeared on Selene's lips, but it quickly vanished again. Her fingers fiddled subconsciously with the locket under her t-shirt. Liz's smile faded now as well.

"Have you heard anything yet?" Liz asked with a hint of sadness.

Selene's fingers closed around it, as she sighed deeply. "The 10th of June she turned 4. I haven't given her a proper hug for 3 years, because I'm not allowed to. Not even at her birthdays, which are the only times a year, where I can be together with her… and if Jackson takes this last opportunity away from me, as he threatens to do…" a weak headshake cut of her. "Then I won't know what to do. She's my only reason to still stay live. Without her, my life is meaningless..."

Liz put her hand on top of Selene's collected ones on the table. "Sel, you need to go and see a psychologist. You have so many problems in your mind, which you need to speak to someone about."

The red-haired woman looked at her, now with serious eyes. "You know I cannot afford that, while I live at… that place. And I save up the little money I find for a birthday present for Lily every year. Just because I'm not with her, I would like to give her a real present now and then…" Her eyes softened and dropped. "What if she forgets about me and who I am?"

"She won't, Selene. Don't think like that. You gave her that locket with a picture of you and your name, and her name and birthday." Liz said. "The bond between mother and daughter is stronger than you think. You could be away from her in 10 years, and you would still know exactly who she was, and she would know who you were. I know it's very hard, but you need to stay strong, both for Lily and for yourself."

Selene looked at her for a moment, but then the weak smile from before returned, a little more visible.

"How dare you answer me back!" Jackson bellowed, as he slapped her again. This time now with such power that Selene fell to the floor, where she curled into the smallest ball with her arms around her head in a try to protect herself from the round of kicks and hits, there in the next second got hurled at her.

Though fist after fist hit her over and over again, Selene didn't scream or yelp. This was not the first time she had been exposed to this. You could say that she was rather used to it. In all the 12 years she had been living at the orphanage, 10 of them had been affected by continuously beating. Every time something went wrong for Jackson, or some of the children didn't behave like he wanted them to, he always took it out on Selene. He was completely cold and without the slightest hint of regret, when a much younger Selene crying had begged him about to stop during one of the first rounds of beating. Hitting was his favourite way to get his frustrations out of his system, and couldn't care less if it hurt her in any way.

"You bitch, whore, scum!" he yelled several other offending names at her, but didn't slow down his beating. Of a man his age, he was in quite good shape. "Who would ever want to have someone like you in the family?"

Gripping a handful of her hair, he pulled her up from the floor and smashed her against the wall. Her face was slightly bruised, her bottom lip split, and her bare arms had got some nasty purple and blue marks after the many hits.

Jackson still had her hair in his hand, and wasted no time in pulling it roughly upwards and from side to side, like hoping he would rip the scalp of her. But Selene didn't even blink and no hint of tears was to be spotted in the dark-blue eyes. She knew that if you showed weakness, then he would only continue. After a minute or two, and after nearly 20 minutes in this hell, Jackson finally stepped back into a good distance from her, but a second later his hand came right back and collided with her already red cheek. His dead grey eyes were blazing with the unknown fury.

"I don't want to see you at this orphanage ever again. You hear me, brat? You no longer live here!" Jackson hissed. "You have five minutes to pack, before I kick you out!"

Selene stood up and wiped the blood from her lip off in the bottom of her t-shirt. "I have waited for you to say that for 12 years, Jackson!" she spat before she stormed out of the office, up the stairs and back into her room.

Gripping the sports bag under the bed, she ripped open the drawers in the dresser. Only the long top drawer contained her sparse amount of clothes, which mostly was something she had found in the clothes container at the local recycling centre. Only owning a few t-shirts and three pair of pants, which were very worn and on the edge of discarding. Two of them had some big holes by the knees, and one of the t-shirts had lost its one sleeve. Only her socks and underwear had she bought from new. Thank god, that there had been washing facilities at this horrid place.

Emptying it all down into the bag, she went for the second drawer, which was of whole other content. A little white and weirdly proportioned teddy bear with a green bow, and a light-maroon coloured book with a dark flower pattern on the front. There were two necklaces tied around this book; one in silver with a small hollow heart pendant in a swirly design, and the other necklace was a double leather string with the pendant of a small silver plate a black rune engraved. It looked like a path, there parted into three different ways. It was the rune for protection. It had been her deceased parents' protection necklaces, and the only items, next to the book, she had left of memories.

After putting it into the bag as well, she took the long black flashlight in the bottom drawer and some new batteries she had stolen from Jackson's office. Then she found the secret saving hidden under a loose board under her bed. At least she had enough to survive a week. Though it pained her to use the little money, she was starting to save up for Lily's 5th birthday present, on herself. A spring knife with a black handle was also hidden under the board, and it got stuffed into the pocket of her jeans. The knife was one she had confiscated from one of the other children, there thought of it as a toy.

Zipping her hoodie, she swung the bag onto her back like you would do with a rucksack, whereupon she left the room and went down the stairs. Unfortunately, Jackson stood by the foot of the stairs and blocked the way.

"Go away, Jackson." She spat.

"Don't talk to me like that, crane!" he bellowed and his hands went for her neck, but her hand dug into her pocket and found the spring knife, which flicked open and was held warningly towards him. That move made Jackson stop on the spot.

"You stay away from me!" she hissed through gritted teeth.

"Remove that from my sight, you mischief!" his hand reached out for the knife, but in the next second there sounded a howl of pain, as Selene cut him deeply across the palm.

Jackson recoiled and while he was distracted of his bleeding hand, Selene put the knife back into her pocket and managed to get past him and out of the front doors. She ran over to the mess of old and carelessly thrown bikes, found one her size, and threw herself into the saddle, just as Jackson appeared in the doorway.

"GET BACK HERE!" he commanded.

"GO TO HELL!" Selene yelled back, before setting off and flew down the driveway without looking back a single time. Her only wish was to get as far away from that place and him as possible, before something worse than the cut would happen to him.