So here it is, guys. The massive OC chapter. This is really just my version of how this happened. Things that weren't ever explained, really. Things that in my mind made sense. Like my headcanon that Rozen isn't a great helper to the Rozen Maiden. And other things...

I hope you like it guys. Holy hell, this is actually legit long. 4000 isn't nothing to sneer at!

So, yeah, have fun! I'll be back, and don't worry, Laura's only around to move the story forward! Shinku/Jun romance coming up soon! Along with Sui/Sou sisterly feelings that will shatter your heart to pieces if I can write as I can imagine!

This chapter has been rewritten.

Jun thought he had never found himself in such a strange situation.

The three of them were sitting around a small table Tomoe had brought down, eating curry with rice. Jun had about a million different questions flying around his head, but he wasn't sure if he should ask any of them! Neither Tomoe nor Laura were speaking, which made Jun pretty uncomfortable about starting blurting out questions.

When they were all about halfway through their meal, Laura started speaking, startling Jun a bit. He more like jumped in the air and almost dropped his curry.

"In this world, there are various things unexplainable by science just yet. Maybe one day they'll be, but, since I was born until now, one thing still hasn't. That is what I've learned to call the "Gift of the Dollmaker". Most people do have it, but at a very low level. Some other people have a bit more of it, and make plushies and iconic characters… Both Walt Disney and the creator of the Barbie doll had these characteristics. Then there is another level of this gift. Very few have it. By very few I mean one person every 200 years at least. You have to understand that all dolls have life in them. But these dollmakers are the only ones capable of truly making a living doll. The Rozen Maiden are a prime example of these dolls, when compared with all the others."

Jun thought of his old toys that Shinku had awakened once. There was a clear difference.

"In 1327, the Renaissance period of history had just started. People everywhere, doctors and artists and musicians were flocking to Paris, it's capital. One of the families that traveled there was the Rozen, an English family. There was Joseph Rozen, a doctor, famous world-wide for his techniques. They said that if you brought a corpse to him that still hadn't cooled down, he might be able to bring it back to life. Like the gift of the dollmaker, this man had the gift of life. The gift of being able to cure people.

Elizabeth Rozen, coincidently, had the gift of life as well. But her area of expertise was people's minds. Many said she was, in truth, a mind-reader, but she always knew what to say to dissuade them from those ideas. After all, she was adored by everyone, and always knew exactly what to do in every single situation.

They both met back in England, and got married. They had had a son, whom they named Thomas. This young man, born of such wonderfully skilled parents, had the gift of the dollmaker. His dolls were so life-like, even at a young age, that people expected them to just start moving!

However, and this is important, no matter how skilled the dollmaker is, no matter how alive his dolls are, he by himself cannot wake them up. Only an equivalent gift of life would be able to do that.

A few years later, when Thomas had just turned seven, his mother got pregnant once again. Everyone that met her always said: "Oh, after Thomas, your next child will probably be just as wonderful!"

And she was. While Thomas had his father's blue eyes and his mother's blond hair, the little girl that had just been born had her mother's green eyes and her father's brown hair. Even as a little newborn baby, she made everyone feel marvelous when she looked at them with her big, green, shining eyes.

So it was a great surprise to everyone when Elizabeth shouted: "I think there is another one!" Everyone in the room, from Joseph to the doctors to little Thomas, was cooing around the little girl… And suddenly there was another one on the way.

The second girl looked exactly like the first one… Except she didn't. She had exactly the same features, but she looked completely different! While the first girl looked like a little angel, the other one… Well, she was a completely normal baby!

The "little angel" ended up being named Alice, the name her parents had decided on long ago for if they had a daughter. The second girl… She was me. Laura Rozen."

Laura made a little pause, as if waiting for the whole information to sink in. Both Jun and Tomoe were listening eagerly.

"Anyway, in 1322, we traveled to Paris, as I mentioned before. Both I and Alice were 5 years old, while Thomas was 12. In the meanwhile, he had become a great dollmaker, and flocks of girls followed him anywhere he went. Alice… Well, she was Alice. What else might there be to say?" Laura sounded a bit bitter. "She had two people gifted with the gift of life for parents, of course she would be wonderful. I guess no one simply had any idea of how wonderful she would be!

You have probably heard this a hundred times already, but Alice was more sublime than any flower, purer than any gem and without a touch of impurity. And she really was. It was like God had decided to bestow an angel on this Earth. Around her, no one could feel anything bad. It was like she had the gift of warming people's hearts.

She also had the gift of awakening dolls. They made a perfect match, Thomas and Alice. Whenever people saw them together, there would only be compliments. It was like they had been made to fit together. Both of them had this aura of light around them… like they were on a superior level. Like gods, perhaps."

To Jun, this sounded a lot like the description both Shinku and Souseiseki had made of "Father".

"But, Laura, what about you?" he asked.

"Oh… I… I wasn't really anything special. Both my father and my mother had spent all of their powers creating Thomas and Alice. I was, and I still am, perfectly normal!"

Neither Jun nor Tomoe thought that being alive for almost 700 years was normal, but neither said anything about that.

"Anyway, I would usually help my brother with his dolls. For as good as he was creating them, he was a failure at sewing! I wasn't much better but I really wanted to be useful, so I learned. I sewed the dolls dresses, and the inside of their boxes. It was all I could do.

So, I started this story back in 1327, and that's where I am going now. That year, a horrible disease took over the world, and both my mother and my father died.

But, it was okay, you know? I had Thomas and Alice, and I loved them with all my heart. We were okay, financially, he made a fortune selling his dolls! We lived happily, the three of us, for two years. Then one day, my sister was awfully agitated. She was making something in Thomas workshop! Both I and my brother were dumbfounded. When she came out, she was holding a ruby shaped like a rose in her hand. She quickly gave it to my brother, telling us that it would make a doll made by Thomas turn human. She grabbed my hand and dragged me off the house, all the way to a park. She told me something bad was going to happen to her. She told me she might die. And she gave me a small box, with seven different stones inside, all very round. Amethyst, emerald, jade, lapis lazuli, ruby, rose quartz and diamond. I couldn't understand what she meant with all that. She also told me a lot of things about those stones and the rose, which I'll explain later.

A couple months later, both I and my brother had completely forgotten all about it. Alice was as perfect as ever… And everything was fine… Until one day, Alice was kidnapped. What the kidnappers wanted, neither I nor Thomas ever discovered, for they were found dead, just as Alice.

Neither I nor him knew what to do anymore. Alice was our light, our everything. She was our angel, she was the angel of Earth! For a month, we survived because we had caring servants. One day, I was able to recover. My brother never did. Even after he regained control of his life, he became obsessed with one thing:

What Alice had told him about the rose. And what Alice had been telling both of us about souls. About how souls don't really disappear… They only get lost. And become something dark and sad and pitiful.

So he thought, and don't ask me his reasoning, that if he created a most perfect doll and gave it the rose, it would call Alice's soul back, and everything would go back to the way it was.

His first try happened while we were still in Paris, in that big house full of memories of dead people. He was still mourning and that doll… She was dark like the night, pale like a ghost, and with eyes as red as blood. To me, she looked like a fallen angel, and I couldn't pity her more. Her name was Suigintou, the Mercury Lamp. And for as beautiful she was, she wasn't even near Alice, so my brother didn't even finish her! I put her on that shelf myself… The poor thing."

Laura stopped to wipe tears that had been forming for a while now. Tomoe took the chance to clean the table. When she returned, Laura continued.

"Anyway… Paris was a sad place for us. Too many memories of Alice. So we left the country… And we went to Rome!

Oh, I loved Italy! Such a beautiful place, with it's fountains of sweet water and it's gardens full of colored plants! There was a gentle breeze in the air that always seemed to carry music! Unfortunately, when I lived there, pizza still hadn't been invented. We brought everything in my brother's workshop with us, and that included Suigintou. But she stayed in her box… Anyway, Rome was where my brother designed and made his second attempt at Alice, while looking at canaries outside our window. The doll he'd made this time, Kanaria, the Canary, was like a little ray of sunshine. However, my brother thought, birds didn't care for others. And that doll wouldn't either. So Kanaria went inside her box and we moved away again.

We went to Amsterdam. There were so many flowers there! Sometimes, I just couldn't believe my eyes! It was there that Thomas had a burst of inspiration. Alice had a twin. Me. So maybe, the trick to creating the perfect Alice was to give it a twin! His plan was to create two girls with long brown hair and green eyes, just like us. Of course, things went wrong. For starters, he only had one pair of green eyes left, and for my brother to make eyes… He could take a week to make one! Two weeks to make a pair! In the end, he ended up using a green and a red eye for each, saying that he would change them later. As you can notice, he totally did. Then, there was a day so hot, that staying inside those stone walls of our farm was impossible. So he took his table outside, and kept working there on one of the twins. Only when taking her back inside did he notice her hair had gone various shades lighter. But both Suiseiseki, the Jade Star, and Souseiseki, the Lapis Lazuli Star, managed to get completed. When I asked him why he'd decided on those names, he wasn't able to tell me. I just thought it was plenty of weird, with the box Alice had given me and everything.

But… I was still alive. How could he make two dolls become Alice? So I put them inside their cases and off we went. I don't think we stayed more than two months in Amsterdam. We decided to go back to London, our hometown. I was 13, while my brother was 20. Everyone received us marvelously.

It was there that my brother created his fifth attempt at Alice… Shinku, the Crimson Ruby, a downright tsundere. She would appear mean and snobby, but on the inside she would be gentle and sweet enough to melt your heart.

Of course, Alice wouldn't be that doll either. Alice was gentle and sweet, even on the outside, and she didn't have the power to be mean. So little Shinku went inside her box, and we, tired of the aristocratic society of London, moved once again, this time to a far place in Russia…

We moved to Moscow. It was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen! The snow sparkling everywhere made it seem like we were inside a dream! We were covered in fur from head to toe, but I think we were happy, while we were there.

But my brother missed the sun, the light, the laugher and the strawberries… HinaIchigo, the Small Strawberry, was created there, a little girl, childish and lovely, innocent as Alice had always been. However, for as innocent Alice was, she wasn't naïve as that child, and she wasn't childish either! From the moment she'd been born, Alice always seemed so much more mature than any of us…

When I was 15 and Thomas was 22, we moved to Germany. While we were travelling there, I got sick. Both I and Thomas thought it was the same disease that had taken our parents. I had never seen him more scared, and he'd cry and pray day and night. Three months after we arrived to our new house… I got better.

Thomas apologized a thousand times, and I never really understood why… Then, he made his last doll, for he has never made another one ever since.

He looked at me, and saw me as I was at the time. A sad, little girl that had been dragged around Europe on her brother's whim. I think it was only then that he realized I had lost Alice too.

He made me a friend. Not Alice, just a doll, just a girl, just like me, with flaws and imperfections. He named her Kirakishou, the Sparkling Snowdrop Crystal. That was also when we decided to settle in Germany. In was a nice country at the time, and we lived in a large house in a little village. They had a name for it back in those years… Feudalism? Yeah, I think it was something like that.

One of the things Alice had told me about the ruby rose was that if it was broken, each of the pieces could bring a doll alive, just like Alice used to be able to. We both agreed it was the best thing to do, and my brother separated the rose in it's seven petals.

All of the dolls, except Suigintou, still incomplete, were given a petal, and my brother wound five of them. I, myself, wound Kirakishou. Although we now call them by their Japanese names, we used to call them by their German names, which sometimes were really long and weird. Kanarienvogel, Jade Stern, Lapis Lazuli Stern, Reiner Rubin, Kleine Beere and Schöner Schneeblüten Kristall. Suigintou would have been Mercury Lampe, had she been awake.

We were happy. There was music in our house, and flowers in our gardens, and books in our shelves, and strawberries all over the village. Each doll and it's role in our life, and for a little while, everything was okay. You could feel the magic emanating from those six dolls, and I guess a bit of it even seeped inside Suigintou. One day, I went inside the storage room to find her suitcase toppled on the floor, her body fallen out. That was also when I carefully picked her up and put her on a shelf back in my brother's workshop, in hopes he'd finish her one day, for we had a single petal left, waiting…"

Laura took a break, taking a long drink from a glass of water.

"There are demons in this world." she continued "They were people once, who found their home in dark magic. I guess our home gave out strong magical energy too, because not a year had passed when we woke up to find a man sitting in our living room.

When he saw us, his body morphed, and in front of us was a rabbit. You know who I'm talking about. Laplace. That rabbit.

Well, for as happy as we were, my brother still hadn't forgotten Alice in the least. And Laplace loved games. So he proposed a bet against my brother. A bet he wouldn't be able to refuse.

"Shall Rozen win, I'll bring Alice back to life. Shall Rozen lose, Laura will also be called to the other world."

Laplace said he could even choose the game, which made my idiotic brother feel like he was in control, and he took the bet.

Chess was the chosen game, and my brother was spectacularly defeated. Well, he did have my death looming over his head, so he couldn't think straight.

As my brother cried over his stupidity, I was the one who noticed the loop-hole in Laplace's bet.

"You said "Shall Rozen win"" I told him "Well, my name is Rozen too, so I can take you on this bet as well."

Somehow, and sometimes I think this was all part of his plan, I won. So I and Laplace reached an agreement. Well, more like Laplace said his pretty words and I didn't have any choice but to agree. Laplace loved games so much, he decided to create one for the dolls.

The Rozen Maiden would fight against each other to become Alice, trying to steal each other's "Rosae Mysticae", which was the name Laplace gave to those petals. The one who managed to have all seven pieces of rose would become Alice. On the other hand, neither Rozen would be able to die until the Alice Game was over."

"Well" Jun thought "This explains how in the world she's still alive."

"The memories of the Rozen Maiden were modified, for two exceptions. Kirakishou was like if in a safe zone, for she already had a medium. Me. She got to keep all her memories from our time together and with the other Rozen Maiden.

Suigintou was a trickier case. She didn't have a Rosa Mystica, so Laplace couldn't do anything to her! What ended up happening was that her memories of the other dolls were just as the other dolls remembered it, modified by Laplace. Her own memories of herself only hadn't been messed up with.

This was also when my brother began his habit of disappearing and only appearing after everything had been said and done. Dolls fighting to death? Don't expect him. Dolls needing repairs after fighting to death? Oh, look, there he is!

He probably did this out of guilt for his dolls. We both knew that even if a Rozen Maiden managed to destroy all of her sisters, she wouldn't become Alice! Alice would never be able to kill someone, let alone her own sisters! But before Laplace could erase their memories and scatter them out in the world, I opened the box Alice had given me and gave a single stone to each of them. They became their artificial spirits, who would protect them.

Years passed, and I showed no signs of getting older. Both I and Kirakishou had to move every three years or so, or people would start getting suspicious. In every house I'd get, I'd remember to find a place to mount my brother's workshop, so he could come home whenever he felt like it.

He never really did.

One night, in 1436, when I was living in London, something crossed my mind. Something Alice had said, long ago in that park in Paris.

"Every seed has the potential to become a flower."

I didn't understand what it meant. At least, not until I came across Suigintou's Rosa Mystica, still on my brother's workshop. It had somehow morphed. Instead of a petal, it now looked a lot… Clumpier. Like if a seed. That was when I understood what she meant. If I could turn every seed inside them into a fully-fledged flower… They would probably become human. All of them. Neither of them would become Alice, but… She was dead. I had learnt that a long time ago.

Centuries more passed, and I found myself back in London. Everyone I had ever known was long dead, and my family was twenty generations ahead of me. I was almost discovering how to make those seeds grow. One night, I was up late, when I heard noise coming from my brother's workshop. It seemed as though, as time moved forward, Suigintou had been gathering energy. It was now 1803, and she had lived all those years seeing herself in those dark rooms while her sisters were pampered by my brother… This mixture of reality and lies made her a very sad doll. That night, she just crawled to her clothes, and into the mirror. I was baffled. I didn't know what to do! I had seen Shinku and Souseiseki fighting over London a few nights ago, but now I just didn't know what to do anymore!

I was no dollmaker. I wasn't Alice either. I was completely powerless. That was when I realized I needed help.

But my brother was gone, Alice was dead… Then I remembered. A guy my brother had taken as his apprentice when we were in Paris… Maybe… Maybe he knew something!

Of course, a few minutes after remembering this I remembered he was probably dead by then. But when I went out, the next morning, I saw him. My heart filled with hope, until I saw who was by his side. Laplace. Of course.

When I returned home that night, I saw my brother. Just like me, he hadn't change a bit. He was entering the same mirror Suigintou had, and had the last Rosa Mystica clutched in his hand. That was when Suigintou received it, and became a true Rozen Maiden. Of course, all she wanted to do was see her "Father"… I waited for a fortnight in front of that mirror, but my brother didn't reappear. However, I had learnt something. Now that Suigintou had her Rosa Mystica as well, the only thing stopping the Alice Game from really starting was Kirakishou.

So we both ran away, across the Ocean, to a small group of islands… Japan. We stayed in Hokkaido for years, hiding. Until Kirakishou told me one day that HinaIchigo had been wound, in a small town in Kanto. We quickly came here as well, waiting for more news.

One day, I woke up and my brother was downstairs. Before I could say anything to him, he had once again entered the mirror and was gone. He left a box on the counter. Inside was Suigintou, finally complete.

I took her to a church and waited in the shadows. A girl came, calling out for an angel to hear. Apparently, Suigintou did, and a medium bond was formed. That same night, me and Kirakishou met Barasuishou. Enju had created her based on my brother's designs for Kirakishou. How he got them, I have no idea, but I'd bet on Laplace.

Anyway, as you two know, there was a great battle and Barasuishou was destroyed, along with Enju. And of course, after the battle, my useless brother appeared, repaired the dolls, said something witty and went somewhere again.

And so, I decided this was the right time for me to appear. All the dolls are wound, and Souseiseki and HinaIchigo have lost their Rosae Mysticae. And for as much as I'd like to just hand those two pretty little stones to you, the world doesn't work like that."

"Wait, so you mean you can wake them up!" asked Jun.

"I thought I'd just said I can't! The Rosae Mysticae have a will of themselves! They have rules and laws! I can't do anything." Laura paused for a bit. "But that doesn't mean nothing can be done. Souseiseki and HinaIchigo… They will just have to earn their Rosae Mysticae back."