A/N I'm re-posting this chapter just to quickly say that I made a trailer for this fic which you can find by following a link on my profile page.

Also, I'm going on holiday tomorrow for a week, so the likelihood of chapter 7 being out around then might not be possible, though hopefully I'll be able to bring my laptop with me to start writing it!


ALICE SAVES WONDERLAND


CHAPTER 6


Alice was still lying on her back amongst the damp fallen leaves. She could feel a headache starting to form around the site where the back of her skull had made contact with the ground. Lack of food and surprise were causing her head to spin.

"Who are you?" she demanded, stupidly.

Her brain, a compilation of ideas of rules and order and logic was struggling to cope with anything but the basic questions. In an act of almost self-preservation Alice's whole world, curiosity and all thought processes had shrunken down to encase this one man in front of her.

Focus on anything else and she'd go insane.

No. She snapped at herself harshly. Don't even think that.

The stranger was still looking off into the distance, and his silence gave Alice a brief moment to think. She had many faults, but being stupid wasn't one of them. It was late at night and the dim glow of the moon and the ethereal lights of Storybrooke provided only minimal lighting. How convenient; how easy, then, that this man should have crossed her path when he had been most needed.

Had he followed her from the hospital? Waited for her out in the darkness?

The last thought made her shudder and she scrambled to her feet quickly.

The movement must have caught his attention, because his head moved and his eyes flickered to her face. The shadows of the boughs of trees slipped across his pale skin as easily as running water. Now that she looked at him fully, there was a cliché sense of foreboding to the long coat, dark eyes and heavy brows.

"Who, me?" he asked, in return to her question.

Alice folded her arms. "Is there anyone else here?" she asked, her voice like battery acid. His answer had been mocking, not honest. His evasiveness was making her edgy.

Trust no one.

"In woods like these you can never be sure."

"It was a rhetorical question."

"I know."

She glared. He gave her a slightly unbalanced smirk. What had happened to the serious, haunted man who had stopped her from following the white rabbit? This was like an entirely new person.

A thought occurred to Alice and her stomach dropped.

"You didn't escape from the mental hospital too, did you?"

He laughed. It was quiet in the woods and the sound carried long after he had fallen silent. "No. Is that where you came from?"

"I'm not crazy."

"That wasn't what I was asking, though the vehemence of your denial is interesting."

She resisted the urge to glare at him again, or snap some kind of insult back. Whoever this man was, no matter how much pleasure he seemed to garner off of irritating her, no matter how little she could trust him, he still had the answers she needed. "The mayor locked me up there because – because –"

Alice stopped.

You'll see the irony of this in time, Miss Liddell.

She'd been locked up under the guise that she was insane. The irony that Regina's comment implied was that she hadn't been insane – that she had been the only sane one. Why? What had she seen – what did she know – that warranted her lock down? It was like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.

Alice thought back to that dim, hazy conversation she and Regina had had in the early hours of the morning outside of her flat. The mayor had said something about 'the other world's taking note of her', and with the white rabbit's presence – logically - it could only be Wonderland.

But it's a storybook. She thought to herself, feeling sick. It's a story written for kids. A twenty eight year old woman just doesn't get caught up in that kind of thing.

But no.

There was evidence – hard, solid evidence – beyond reasonable doubt, that proved that somehow, a world existed beyond the one that Alice knew. It was impossible, incomprehensible; but somehow logic had pointed to the illogical.

Alice felt a knot in her chest unravel. She looked the man straight in the eyes. "If I asked you to tell me everything about a curse that may or may not have been placed on this town, what would you say?"

"I'd ask you where you heard about a curse on this town."

"The mayor."

Something sparked in his eyes. It looked like hope, or excitement. It wasn't something that Alice would ever put on her resume, but she had always found it easy to detect the finer points of someone's weak-spots.

They stood with several meters of space and darkness between them. The wind occasionally stirred dead leaves on the ground and ruffled his coat (and coldly caressed her skin through the thin pj's she was still wearing). Storybrooke was a distant and partially blocked view through the dense trees behind her.

Somehow, Alice wasn't scared. She trusted implicitly that this man would tell her everything she wanted to know because he wanted her to know. There was something desperate and wary about the way he was looking at her now – like a dog who had been beaten and starved its whole life and was now being offered a pound of juicy meat.

"Why would Regina tell you about the curse and then lock you up in a mental institute?" he asked, suspiciously. "That makes no sense."

Alice's mind made a quick calculation and a wry smile crossed her face. "You think maybe she set me up to talk to you?"

"It seems the kind of thing Regina would do."

"But it's not the kind of thing I would do."

He raised an eyebrow and Alice felt a knife twist in her heart. "Not anymore, anyway" she amended. "I would be rotting in a cell right now thanks to her."

Something dark crept into Alice; something savage and vindictive and vengeful.

She knew once she'd gotten the answers she needed here she would go after Regina. There was a cold, uncaring clarity to that idea. She would tear her down from her position as mayor, rip Henry from her clutches; flay her of every last dollar in court and make sure she went to jail. It wouldn't take much. A judge to take the case; witnesses to testify. Nothing a few well placed bribes and a little blackmail wouldn't garner.

Alice had been a key piece in Regina's chess game. Losing her meant making a dangerous enemy. It had been a stupid move, really, on the mayor's part.

"So," she asked, folding her arms. "What's this curse?"

His eyes flashed. Somewhere in her thought process the intensity of her feelings had pushed her closer until they were less that a meter apart and she could see the precise way his eyes slid from serious to teasing. It was a jarring transition and Alice couldn't believe that he wasn't a little crazy - it was also slightly magnetic and captivating, the way his mood swung. A slight thrill ran through her and Alice hoped this wasn't proof that she was one of those women who were turned on by unhinged men. "I could tell you, but I doubt you'd believe me."

"At this point, I'd believe anything."

"And if I told you that the sky was green -?"

She shot him a withering look and moved to step away. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying riling her up – that much was obvious. "Ah, ah, ah," he held up a finger. She stopped backing away automatically. "But the sky is green, Alice. In other worlds – just not in this one. If I'm going to tell you about the curse, you need to wrap your pretty little head round that."

"Other worlds," Alice repeated. She said it slowly, forcing herself to sound disbelieving if only on the principal that she wanted to highlight that she, at least, wasn't the crazy one. But there was a part of her that was unwillingly curious and intrigued. She had never been beyond Storybrooke in her life, and the small, very human part of her that was fixated with money and power latched onto the idea of exploring numerous other worlds. He must have seen the thought written across her face, because he smirked. "This world is one of the more boring one's, I'll admit."

"Can you just give me the straight facts about this curse please?" she asked, impatiently.

His smirk widened. He reached out and tugged on the end of her blonde hair. ("Ow" she hissed.) "Your hair wants cutting," he said, watching her face with ill-disguised glee as the anger boiled up inside of her.

She swatted his hand away impatiently. It was like talking to a child. No, it was like talking to the most infuriating person in the world. "If you're going to waste my time then –"

The change in his demeanor was so abrupt - so sudden - that Alice had to blink rapidly to make sure it had happened. "Waste your time?" he asked, very quietly. His face was utterly blank, his eyes shuttered and devoid of their previous mirth in a way that made the air around them drop twenty degrees. "If you knew time like I did, Alice. If you knew twenty eight years of wasted time…" He was walking towards her now, and Alice found herself backing away until her heel hit a tree root and she fell to the floor abruptly. He followed her down, crouching in front of her with an arm canted lazily across his knee in a way a father might kneel before a child to scold them. Alice could feel her heart beating rapidly, a bruise blooming in her lower back. The man leaned in closer. "…what's a few minutes? A day? What's wasting a little more?"

He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small, brass pocket-watch, swinging it in front of her face like a hypnotist. "Ever noticed how time doesn't move here, Alice? No? Of course you didn't. That's part of the curse."

"What is the curse?" she pushed, but her voice was quiet and pathetic and slightly hoarse.

He grinned. "All in good time, Alice. All in good time. I like this. I like that someone else might know…but at the same time –" his voice dropped off and he shrugged and suddenly he seemed almost…normal. "I was good, once….I mean –" he stared into her eyes, seriously, "I tried. I could still try now – but maybe there's not much of a point."

Alice half didn't understand what he was saying, half understood. She carefully pushed herself to her feet, aware of his eyes on her through out the whole, clumsy movement. He didn't stand with her; his face level with her thigh after she had straightened up and she backed away quickly.

The physical space between them lessened the tension in her gut perceptibly, and she didn't want to over-analyze what that meant. "We're not like children's story book characters," she said, quietly. She wasn't sure why she was reassuring this man that had both managed to frighten and infuriate her with an astonishing expertise. "There's no definitive good and evil. There are grey areas."

He laughed and shook his head like she'd said something funny and straightened from his crouch. "Maybe."

They were quiet for a moment. Alice realized that he wasn't going to tell her anything – for now, at least. She was confident that he wouldn't be too hard to crack though - she could start with exploiting that vulnerability to be good, for a start.

He was watching her with a similarly unreadable expression.

"What's your name?" Alice asked, finally, by way of goodbye.

He smiled, but it wasn't a real one. Alice realized that he'd shown many emotions since she'd met him, but happiness hadn't been one of them.

To be fair, she hadn't exactly been little-miss-sunshine either - captivity could do that to you.

He glanced up into the starry night sky and then back at her. "Jefferson," he said, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

She nodded. "And if I needed to find you…?"

"I'll find you," he promised.

That was suspicious and worrying and overly ambiguous, but she didn't push it. He had worn her down and she didn't have the energy to fight. "Okay."

"Okay," he returned.

She hesitated – he grinned. "Sea-View apartments are that way," he said, pointing to her right. "Walk for five minutes in that direction and you'll come to Jack and Jill's grocery store on the edge of town."

"Thanks," Alice muttered, heading in the direction he'd indicated at. She'd only taken a few steps when she whirled round quickly. "Wait a second, how did you know where I lived –"

But he was already gone, and all she could see was a small clearing of leaves and dark trees.


A/N Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been in Kenya for three weeks, and I should have written a message for you all warning that that was the reason for my lack of updating on this story, but my mind was so full of so many different things before the trip that I completely forgot to – sorry!

Regarding this chapter, I know that Jefferson's not really this crazy (at this point in his life) in Once Upon A Time, but I absolutely adored Sebastian Stan's portrayal of crazy-Jefferson in Season 2, so I decided to mix that in with the slightly more sane Jefferson. It made an interesting blend.

Thank you for all your lovely reviews – I'm so flattered that you're all enjoying this story, and it was great to come back from Kenya and read all of your comments.

Last Of The Lilac Wine