Always Protect What is Mine
A/N: Spoilers for Retrace 75. I know this is really late, but I wrote this ages ago and never got around to uploading it. This is just my take on what Alice may have been feeling when Oz sent her away. Enjoy - or don't, it was heartbreaking.
As always, the characters and original story does not belong to me.
Alice screamed at the sound of the gunshot, reaching out to Oz with her fading limbs as he fell, Raven's bullet impaled in his chest. He fell to the earth with hardly a whimper, too shocked internally by Jack's treatment to even notice his external wounds. Shaggy Hair began muttering to the traitor Raven, his words meaningless as Oz lay on the ground, bleeding, eyes filled with shock before they became accepting – too accepting, it seemed that after all his effort in carrying his own burdens, he was once again reverting. Alice was filled with anger at the thought of that, and pushed her body up, intending on giving Oz the lecture of his life, how dare he pull such strange faces in the middle of a crisis?
"Oz!"
Oz, stared at her in shock – or was it fear? Alice paid him no head as she ran to him, cheeks flushed with anger and fear for him, "STOP MAKING SUCH A WEIRD FACE, YOU IDIOT", and stumbled as two of the Death Gods blocked her path, only to be intercepted by the Clown, "Alice-kun, take care of Oz". As if Alice needed help or advice from the Clown, but she kept on running towards Oz anyway, kneeling gently before him, still deciding if he needed his cheeks bitten or a slap on the head. "Oz", she started and he looked towards her, eyes filled with such love, sadness and despair and she felt her breath catch.
"Alice, you... can't... stay with me anymore."
Her body felt light, like air, and she realised that she could in fact see through her entire body, 'My body is disappearing?' she thought with despair. She looked in fear towards Oz, and he was still smiling in that stupid way, and she wondered why he was doing this to her? Why would he send her away now, what would she become? "Why?" She pleaded, in answer to her question, Oz sent her a memory, a precious, precious memory of... Oz, her friend, her saviour, her stuffed rabbit Oz. She remembered the pain of trying to protect him and failing, the world and most especially him. And with that, she understood why she was being sent away, but still she resisted, reaching out her hand, pleading with him to stop, similar to what he may have done when she put the scissors towards her own throat over 100 years ago. "No, Oz", she began to plead, stretching her hand out to reach him, to make him stop, "O-" was all she managed before her body became light and she faded away. Her last thought being that like her, Oz would always protect what was his.