Disclaimer: don't own.

Summary: Dee and Dum have killed Alice in their attempt to steal her heart, but even foreigners can be replaced. A woman who brought herself up on the streets on the rule "use or be used" has killed her saviour and his love. She wants to die. They ask her one question- "Then won't you give us your life?" The life that she isn't using. Devi Marigold agrees.

Genre: Romance, Crime.

Characters in this chapter: Dee and Dum, Julius, Ace.

"Dee and Dum," is what the brothers told her, once it was all over. She'd jumped out of the window of the place at their words, only to find herself on the top of a tower and miraculously unharmed. But whether or not the fall would have led her to her death, it was all the same to Devi. After all, she'd already lost what made live worth living. Devi was now just a living corpse.

"Jackal," she introduced herself in return at the other end of their gazes. "Call me Jackal. It'll be my name from now on."

"Nope!" the flat refusal greeted her cheerfully.

What? Devi turned her attention on the blue-eyed of the twins. Why? The only reason she was accepting their orders was because of her old friend, her reason for living. If they wanted her to never bring Jackal up again as if he was a stranger to her, she had every intention on disobedience. And they should know that.

Dee turned away to stand at the edge of the tower, peering into the distance. "That name doesn't suit you." His eyes, turned towards the sun, shone dully, as if rather than her, it was him that was a living corpse. His brother quietly watched on.

The man turned on his heel with a dull thump, and their eyes met. "Don't you think a name like Alice suits you much more?"

Devi stayed mum. Probably, the name Alice referred to the outsider previous to her.

At that moment, footsteps sounded out from the direction of the open stairwell. A man with luscious blue locks stomped the rest of the way up until he reached the platform. "Ah." He took in her standing next to Dum, and Dee standing of to the side, his blue eyes steadily filling with enough annoyance to feed a horde.

The tension was dispelled from the air in an instance as he sighed and muttered, "This again."

"Clockmaker!" Greeting him cheerfully, Dee stepped over the curbed edge and joined the man below the entrance. "We've got a new arrival we want you to approve! You'll do it, right?" The smile he gave the man glittered in innocence.

"Won't you?" Away from her, the red-eyed brother siddled up to the man's other side. With twin smiles, the twin men silently pressured him.

Devi just silently watched this, feeling like so much luggage. But she'd signed up for this even without knowing their characters', so if she wanted to blame someone it'd have to be herself.

Just then, words floated absently in the space from behind the man. "Julius? Who're you talking to?"

There was genuine curiosity in the lighthearted voice. A red boot clomping down onto the platform soon joined the sound and he came into view.

The man who'd just entered wore a tattered brown cloak, clipped to broad shoulders. At his waist casually hung a broadsword with a red hilt—woven out of bamboo, Devi guessed. He gave off a powerful presence, if Devi ignored the refreshing smile on the young man's face.

At that moment, the twins she'd been so impressed by started screaming- "AAAH! It's Ace!" In synchronization they jerked away from the entrance and jumped behind her like two scared rabbits.

Devi felt her guard go up in response.

The man with blue locks glanced at his friend and carelessly said, "It happened again. Another foreigner was guided to this place." The disapproval in his words didn't need to be mentioned.

"Oh? We haven't had a foreigner in so long, and already one is here?"

Despite his somewhat unwelcoming words, the young man grinned happily when she met his eyes.

"Back away from our foreigner!" Twin cries insisted, and suddenly she had the twins hanging off of her shoulders like they were a tree's branches.

The intruder's gaze didn't waver even an inch from her own.

She shrugged. "You heard them. I'm these two's foreigner." Not the man's who was coldly observing them, or the man's in the tattered cloak now locking eyes with her.

Of course, this could change at any time. The only one who'd earned her loyalty was Jackal. Since he was dead, that meant she owed it to absolutely nobody right now. Hell, should she even accept the name change the brothers were trying to lay on her? After all, in the end, she really wanted to keep Jackal's.

"Huh?" The guy tilted his head. "That irritates me a lot for some reason." He started laughing, looking not in the least frustrated.

While he was distracted, Dum took a moment to whisper, "Let's make our leave."

A glint of silver sailed through the air and cut into his space.

Dum, dodging it, landed softly onto stone a few meters away from her and Dee.

Amazing.

Devi, though not especially good at fighting, still had been in more than her fair share of scraps. Her reflexes were polished to a human's utmost limit, and yet the moment she'd been made aware of the knife, Dum had already dodged it.

That's why it was amazing.

But that made worry bubble up in her. If she did leave the brothers eventually, with their skill as it was, would she be able to? She thought it was likelier they'd cut her down before she could.

"Leaving now already?" The grinning figure wearing a tattered cloak called out, one knife balancing between his knuckles. "But you only just got here. Stay for a while! Julius is very hospitable, you know."

"No. All of you leave." Coldly, the man still standing in the doorway ignored his friend's wishes.

"You mean me too? Julius, how mean~" the man laughed in response.

Devi's face became a mask of disbelief as Dee gently tugged her behind him. If she hadn't seen the intruder do it, Devi would never think he was the type to attack people like that without provocation. The air he gave of was just completely refreshing even combined with such blood thirsty acts. There was no doubting the power in his frame, but the thought he'd use it nefariously-

"What...is this place?"

For the first time since coming here, Devi finally showed an emotional response. Maybe she wasn't that corpse like, yet.

The man they called Ace heard her and replied cheerfully, "We're in Wonderland."

Wonderland. Devi guessed, in many ways, it was a place above wonder. As Dee reflected a thrown knife with the butt of his axe, she thought she should really polish her skills. Even if she was no match against these inhuman people, it was a disgrace that she should be protected by those she'd given her life to.

As Dum entered the battle with a wide swing of his blade, parried by Ace, Devi made a mental note of it.

In the end, the battle was only broken up when a fed-up Julius shot his gun in the air and Ace stopped trying to murder everyone. Because he'd been trying to murder everyone, that much is clear.

"We'll get you next time!"

Spouting these stereotypical words, the brothers hurried along with her down the stairs until they were out in the sun again.

The twins still didn't calm down, and ignoring the idylic looking town of the side of the tower, they led her out onto a path into the countryside.

Only here did Dee and Dum lower their pace. They also started taking their anger out on the country side.

"Ah, that xxxx!" Dee swore, slamming the bottom of his foot into a tree at the side of the road. "Making us look so bad in front of Devi." Dum, sobbing, drove the blade of his axe into one of the baked bricks of the path.

They were both blatantly ignoring her, for all the red-eyed brother acted like his mood was because of her.

They were also acting much, much more childish than Devi had ever expected. Where were the dead-eyed siblings she'd met at that scene with Jackal and his lover? Where were those she'd known would kill her were she stood, and had turned her into a quivering mess?

Devi thought back to the fight against Ace. Ah, they had still been there after all. But the grave atmosphere from before was still missing. She felt less like she'd be cut into ribbons if she disobeyed them. That was despite her knowing they were frightfully dangerous, inhuman, and that she'd never be able to defend herself against them, if there came such a time.

"But more importantly," Dee said, turning from the tree and meeting her gaze. "We should finish the conversation from back then."

"Almost forgot," his brother hummed, and heaved his axe onto his shoulder were it rightfully belonged.

"You're Alice's replacement," Dum spread his hands apart in explanation.

His brother went on to say, "Alice was a foreigner. She was veeeery important to us."

"But someone led her astray, so she couldn't give us our heart even though she told us we had it."

"There was nothing else brother and I could do."

Dum's voice grew monotonous, "We- we took sister's heart. Brother and I were gentle when we slid into her chest with our axes."

"She didn't feel a thing," supported Dum glumly.

"Her heart disappeared into a thousand pieces not a moment later."

Their story told, the two just stared off into the distance, the childishness faded from their faces.

I'm reminded. Flashing back to when she'd done that to Jackal and his lover. How she'd come to the understanding it was the only proper thing to do, and then to die for. She'd made herself a tomb because even after that, the world was still to use and be used and she wouldn't be able to handle it.

We're birds of a feather. Looking at these two young men to who she was their sister's replacement, she couldn't help feel this more.

The realization would be tragic for them then, she was sure, when they came to know a person couldn't be replaced.

She laughed dryly in her mind. Heh, or I'd have already done it.

For the rest of the way, all three of them were silent, locked into their own minds.