Introduction:

Okay so here's the thing. This is mostly based on the actual books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, not any of the movies, so some of the characters and events are likely to be unfamiliar if you've never read either. As a result, I've listed the roles everyone is playing at the bottom along with a few notes about things that might need explaining. Feel free to ignore them if you're not interested.

Overall however I should also mention that the books deal a lot with identity and it's clear that Alice isn't sure of her own. Reading X, the strange rapport both Kamui's have with identity intrigued me and so inspired me to write this. :P

Oh and the chapter titles are the lines from the refrain of the song "Just a Dream" by Carrie Underwood. I know that the song is about something completely different but those particular lyrics struck me when the song came on and it seemed appropriate to use them here.

Anyway, shutting up now and getting to the story!

.

.

The first thing Kamui noticed when he woke up was that the clothes he was wearing were definitely not his. He would never wear white knee high stockings and blue culottes or any other color culottes(1) for that matter. The white button-down seemed like one of his own at least, though the matching blue blazer over it certainly was not familiar, nor was the black ribbon around his collar, ending in a loose bow. He wondered how these clothes had found their way onto his body and noticing the sunflowers blooming brightly around him, wondered if Yuzuriha had to do with this. This was a strange prank though, even for her to play and the wind blowing through his hair seemed just a little bit… off.

He stood up, too short to see over the enormous sunflowers while sitting down and was shocked to see that he was in a field full of them, the brilliant yellow contrasting happily with his blue clothing as if he were the sky they sought to turn toward.

Where the hell am I? He wondered, wracking his brain to see if he ever remembered going to or even seeing a place like this in his entire life.

Just as he was drawing the conclusion that he must be in some sort of illusion, he heard a rustle in the flowers and turned quickly, powers ready, prepared to fight whoever appeared. He immediately relaxed though as he recognized Subaru several meters away.

"Subaru!" he called out brightly to the Sumeragi.

Wait. Were those… rabbit ears?

Subaru stopped, but not at the sound of Kamui's voice, and pulled a pocket watch out of his velvet waistcoat.

Pocket watch? Waistcoat? Suspicious would be an understatement, Kamui felt.

"Oh my, I'm late!" Subaru cried in obvious alarm, showing more outward despair than Kamui had even seen him show while reliving his sister's death in the dream where they had met.

"Late for what? Subaru!" Kamui cried out as the man turned away from him and began sprinting through the sunflowers. Kamui ran after him, trying his best to keep up but having trouble thanks to his smaller stride and difficulty maneuvering through the thick stalks.

"Subaru wait! Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry?"

Subaru threw him a look over his shoulder, acknowledging him for the first time. "To grant my wish of course."

"What… wish?" Kamui panted, still trying to keep up but falling further and further behind. He soon lost sight of Subaru and fell to his knees, trying to catch his breath.

As his breathing slowed Kamui realized he could hear voices. Two women's voices to be precise and he turned to see Hinoto and Kanoe kneeling around a campfire not far away. Hinoto was dressed in her usual white robes, although they seemed less… clean here and from a distance, the loops in her silvery hair looked like mouse ears rising up from her head. Kanoe was wearing a strange dress with ugly black feathers adorning it. Her mannerisms however suggested that she felt it was quite beautiful and was proud of her unique outfit. Kamui hesitantly approached them but neither of them seemed to notice, they were completely engrossed in whatever they were doing. After watching for a few silent moments he realized they were playing with dolls. Dolls that he realized with a sickening feeling were little replicas of the seals and the angels as well as other people he recognized, such as Kotori. They were having the dolls run in circles around the campfire, over and over again and were giggling madly as they did so.

"Do you know, do you know how ineffectual you are?" Kanoe giggled to one of the dolls, obscured from Kamui by the flames she was guiding it behind.

Hinoto laughed. "Do you even know what that word means Kanoe?"

"Of course I do silly." She suddenly tossed one of the dolls into the fire and even though it was just a doll, just cloth and plastic, Kamui felt like throwing up at the carelessness of the movement. "We have a veritable cornucopia of characters here." She declared. "But there's a surplus. They're getting hard to keep track of you know."

"That's true." Hinoto agreed and tossed another doll into the flames. Kamui jerked when he realized it was the Kotori doll but forced himself to stay still even while her long golden brown locks sizzled and crackled and the nauseating scent of burning plastic filled his nose.

"Who do you think will win the race?" Kanoe asked, giggling again.

"Me of course." Hinoto assured her.

"What?" Kanoe seemed insulted. "But you're not even running!"

"I don't have to. I can't you know. I can't stand up. But it's okay- they can." She smiled down at the dolls and Kamui knew he had never seen the smile on the princess's sweet face before, had never seen her look at something with such cruel intention flaring in her eyes.

Kanoe huffed. "That's not fair. Besides, since you ARE an invalid, doesn't that just mean they can get rid of you easily too?"

Hinoto glared at her sister over the flames, dropping the dolls. "That was a low blow, Kanoe." She stood up and Kamui suddenly wondered if she had just been lying the whole time or if he was imagining things. He watched Hinoto stomp off into the woods, wondering how or if she knew where she was going then was surprised when Kanoe seemed to finally notice him and addressed him.

"It's pointless you know." She said, resuming the mad little race with the dolls.

"What do you mean?" he asked, afraid to step any closer.

"Without her, the race will never finish."

"Oh… I'm sorry?" Kamui offered condolences he wasn't sure were merited.

"It's okay. It's not a race anyone was going to win anyway." She tossed another doll into the flames and Kamui quickly backed away, not wanting to find out what she meant, choosing instead to continue moving in the direction he had seen Subaru go earlier.

Wandering through the same woods he had seen Hinoto disappear into as well, Kamui felt a growing sense of unease. The forest seemed unwelcoming, a chilling change after the bright and happy field of sunflowers and he wondered if it was really getting dark out or if the closeness of the trees and their interlocking, enclosing branches were simply shutting out the light. Kamui was just beginning to wonder if he was lost and should try to find his way back out before he was forever trapped in this forest of gloom when he came across a strange sight in the midst of such darkness. Two people were having a tea party, lit by an eerie unnatural light whose source he couldn't quite identify, only knew it was somewhere in the trees above them. He decided not to think about it too much and approached the pair.

"Um… hello." He said hesitantly.

One merely gave him a cold stare from behind her glasses and he suddenly noticed she too had rabbit ears, but not soft white ones like the ones Subaru had inexplicably sported. No hers were mechanical copper ones that occasionally twitched with the empty sound of metal against metal. Her companion however gave him a relaxed smile and Kamui felt a little calmer, thinking he at least seemed more normal.

"Hello." The man replied, tapping the brim of his hat in greeting. Only then did Kamui notice that the top hat shimmered wetly and was translucent.

"Your hat… is it… is it made of water?" Kamui asked incredulously.

"Why yes, yes it is." The man beamed.

"But what's the band of silver around it?"

"That would be mercury!"(2) The man answered, joy dripping off his tongue as droplets of the hat dripped into his dirty blond hair.

Kamui tried not to recoil too obviously. "Um… okay. Have you seen a guy with rabbit ears and a waistcoat come by here by chance?"

"I'm afraid you're interrupting our tea party." The man replied cordially.

"I- what?"

"Our tea party. You are interrupting it. Come back later." The man waved him a way nonchalantly.

"But I- look this is important! And it'll only take a second for you to answer yes or no! It took longer for you to tell me to go away dammit!" Kamui was growing frustrated. "I don't have time for this!"

"Of course you don't have time. No one can ever have time. It's not something you can hold now is it?"

"What? But you can have things you can't hold…"

"Can you? Can you even have the things you can hold?" The one with the mechanical ears asked quietly.

"I… of course you can… Whatever. The point is you have time to tell me whether or not you've seen the person I'm looking for!"

"No, we haven't got time any more than you have." The man with the watery hat replied.

"You're just sitting here in the middle of nowhere drinking tea! You've got all the time in the world!" Kamui cried, clenching his fists at his sides.

"That's not very much is it?" The man sipped his tea serenely, unperturbed by the implications of this statement.

"What the hell? Just answer you bastard!"

"No, no, no time I'm afraid. You shall have to leave." The man shook his head and the woman sipped her tea without a care.

Kamui was fed up now, hating himself for feeling so confused, so he approached the table and slammed a hand down on it near where the woman sat, rattling the numerous tea cups scattered across it. "No! I'm not leaving until I have an answer!"

At once another head rose from the other end of the table and Kamui realized there had been a third person asleep with his head on his arms, his pale purplish clothing and hair blending in with the tablecloth.

"Beware the jabberwock." He said, his voice as soft as a mouse's footsteps, his gaze falling sleepily on Kamui.

"What?"

"Do you have the vorpol sword?(3) You might defeat it with that."

"You mean the shinken?"(4) Kamui asked, bewildered by this sudden change in conversation. "What the hell is a jabberwock?"

"The jaws that bite, the claws that catch… all things it doesn't have but things it can do."(5) The person said enigmatically, i.e. unhelpfully.

"What the hell are you talking ab-" Kamui froze as he heard a whirring sound in the trees directly above him. He looked up and his eyes met the source of the glow.

"Beware the jabberwock." The woman said, sipping her tea calmly.

Kamui backed away silently, resisting the urge to turn and bolt, afraid that that would only incite the beast in the trees.

.

.

As promised, a list of who's who and a few explanatory notes. Feel free to message me should anything else need explaining. :P

Kamui = Alice obviously :P (As I said in the intro, this isn't just because he's the main character, it's because of the identity issue.)

Subaru = The White Rabbit (The White Rabbit always fascinated me in the book. He's sort of a beacon to Alice for her to follow but keeps running off. Subaru's disappearance in Volume 16 made me think of this.)

Hinoto = The Mouse (Not to be confused with the Doormouse. In the book, Alice meets a Mouse early in her adventures in Wonderland who helps her at first but runs off later when it gets offended by something.)

Kanoe = the Dodo (One of the most foolish characters even by Wonderland standards. This seemed to suit her. :P)

Satsuki = The March Hare (Okay she's always running off to meet Yuuto for tea in the series- it was too perfect to make them this pair.)

Yuuto = The Mad Hatter (Again, the obsession with tea made him fit this scene.)

Nataku = The Dormouse (The Dormouse drifts in and out of sleep a lot and seems generally out of it all the time. I think this was meant to be a play on words, the stem "dorm", being the same as that found in "dormant" and "dormitory", meaning sleep. Linguistically, he's a sleep-mouse. I considered using Kakyou for this but made it Nataku instead, mostly because Kakyou appears later as someone else. :P)

BEAST = The Jabberwock (Notice the lack of y at the end of that. This is because Jabberwock is a noun; Jabberwocky is the adjective- this detail often gets confused. )

.

Notes:

1. Culottes = knee-breaches

2. The term "mad hatter" comes from the fact that many hatters in the 18th and 19th centuries suffered from mercury poisoning. Here I mostly just used it because I liked the imagery of a liquid mercury band around a hat made of water and thought, meh maybe it likes Yuuto too? :P

3. The vorpol blade is a direct reference to the poem Jabberwocky, in which the creature was killed with such a sword.

4. Kamui thinks Nataku is referring to the holy sword.

5. "The jaws that bite, the claws that catch" Is also a line straight from the poem and I wanted to point out here that despite its name, BEAST doesn't have jaws or claws although it is still a dangerous entity.