A/N: A very, very large shout-out to RedVoid for putting up with my consistent rambling and offering advice, and to iznihs for all of their kind reviews!
Warning: Violence, gore, spoilers for important parts of the game's story. Personal loss, grief, and guilt are also explored.
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The Evil Within, nor do I own the lyrics to any songs that might appear. The name Alice Liddell and her family belong originally to Lewis Carroll, with her appearance drawing heavily from American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns. This is a nonprofit work.
"I see a bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning. I see bad times today.
Don't go around tonight. Well, it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise."
— "Bad Moon Rising," Mourning Ritual
It happens so quickly that there is no time to think. One moment he is in front of her, watching her eyes widen in fear, and, the next, she has shoved him with all of her might towards the wall; brittle and cracked with age, it gives way beneath his weight. As he stumbles through, Sebastian watches Alice duck beneath Ruvik's outstretched hand, nimble and barely avoiding a touch that, judging by the murderous intent on his face, would have been deadly. She bolts, slamming the door behind her, and Sebastian is quick to follow suit. He has encountered this phenomena before, knows that being caught when Ruvik is prowling about only ends in disaster. The two of them almost collide in the hallway, and then they dash into the next room, the library, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where he hides in a cupboard and she ducks beneath the table. They make it with only seconds to spare — Ruvik is inhumanly fast, and he enters the room just as Alice curls up, tucking all of her limbs as close to her body as she can.
Ruvik pauses in the doorway, eyes scanning the room, searching, hunting. He knows that they are here, but, despite all of his power, he is weaker in this house than anywhere else, and cannot pinpoint their exact locations. He has decided that, plans or no, Castellanos is simply in his way. The girl belongs to him, just as the boy does, and time and time again he has come so close to his goals, only for that bumbling fool to interrupt him. As for Alice, well . . . There is more than one way to shatter her resolve. His footfalls are soft, padding quietly as he paces the length of the room, peering around the pantry door to see if they are lurking within. When that proves futile, he turns on his heel, stopping between the table and the cupboard. If he is silent, he should be able to hear their breathing, yet no unusual noises reach him. The Haunted shuffle about in the next room, the beams creak with rot, but there are no panicked huffs, no muffled sounds.
"Little mouse," he murmurs, an old endearment from his childhood. Hadn't Alice always been the best at hide-and-seek, continually besting him when they played? She could find him in an instant, yet, no matter how long and hard he searched, he could never discover the hiding places she balled up into. Once, after he had given up, she had appeared from a nook he would never have seen, tucked away as it was beneath the stairs, and he supposes that she has kept this skill through the years. "Come out, little mouse. My patience grows thin."
Beneath the distorted mahogany of the table, Alice's heart stutters as the familiar moniker passes his lips. Little mouse, she thinks, just as it was. Lizzie started it, didn't she? And then Laura, sweet Laura, who turned it from a taunt to something sweet, a pet name of sorts. Ruben was last, and only started using it after my father found me "all curled up, like a mouse in a hole." Despite the sudden warmth in her chest, the urge to stand and tap him on the shoulder as she had always done, she remains still. This is no game, and the consequence of being caught is no longer childish teasing. She knows that he means to kill Sebastian. A shard of glass near her hand catches her eye. Alice studies it, watches the dim light reflect and glow, and makes up her mind.
The sliver bites deep into her hand when she grabs it; without truly thinking, spurred by years of honed instincts, she slides from under the table, stabbing downwards as she does, through his foot, through the floor. Her sudden appearance has startled him, and she takes advantage of this to sprint away, back towards the stairs. Laura's room. He won't want to set foot in there, and he won't want to touch her things. It's the last room on the left before the master bedroom she recalls, and ducks inside, surveying quickly for any places she can conceal herself. She spots a large crate of rotted linens. As speedily as she can, she lifts them out, careful not to unfold or wrinkle the fabric, and burrows into the chest, piling them back on top of herself.
Meanwhile, Ruvik stand and studies his foot with curious detachment. The wound doesn't hurt, and the glass dissolves at his whim. Still . . . she had attacked him. If she had come quietly, perhaps her punishment might not have been so severe, but now . . . Run quickly, little mouse, he muses, and hide away, for when I find you, I will teach you the meaning of pain.
Sebastian watches with bated breath, biting back curses as he waits for their tormentor to leave. Stupid girl, he thinks, but he is more worried than angry, and a familiar fear has begun to rear its ugly head. He has lost Myra and Lily, and that had almost destroyed him. To lose her, when he has only just begun to realize how much she truly means to him (The marks, he remembers, those damned marks the bastard left on her, like she's some fucking prize) would probably finish the job. Kidman and Joseph are missing, and he can't find them, and now Alice is engaged in a lethal game of tag. The three of them have always been his responsibility; he knows that he has failed Oda and Kidman, and he will be damned if he fails her, too. But he knows that to move now is guaranteed suicide, so he remains as still as he is able, until Ruvik has disappeared.
Once the blue aura is gone, he steps out of the closet, looking around to be certain that he is truly alone, that this is not some trick to lure him to his death. When the colors of the room stay normal, he sighs, rubbing his face roughly with his hand, the cold metal of his wedding band a stark reminder of what is gone and promises broken. He searches through the kitchen and finds nothing of any true value: more of that green gel that fades at the touch, a few scattered bullets, and a syringe. In the pantry, however, he halts in his tracks, eyes riveted on the strange contraption at the back of the room. A head sits on the table, skin and skull removed to expose the top half of the brain, and an odd machine with a large vial of some reddish liquid looms behind it, an arm tipped with a grotesque needle extending from it to hover over the grey mass.
He studies the charts, swears when he realizes how intricate it is. This is something that Alice would make easy work of, but she is not here, and he will have to make do. He presses the button on the machine next to him, listening as Ruvik's voice permeates the air, cold and methodical.
"Electrode placement C-4; stimulation of the cingulate cortex, the hope center. Assailing the hope axis improves domination of the subjects will, but . . . domination is not enough."
The chart marks the 'hope center' as a large, yellow area towards the top, so Sebastian positions the needle and flicks the lever, hoping for the best. Apparently, he is not quite on the mark; the machine delivers a shock that has him recoiling away, snarling obscenities under his breath. His second try is more successful. Once the needle is inserted, the fluid begins to drain from the chamber, and the sound of a lock releasing resonates from the main hall. Upon inspection, he finds a large door under the stairs with two similar locks, and feels something akin to disgust when he realizes that he will have to hunt down two more machines and repeat the process to open the door. Since it's looking to be their only way out, he squares he shoulders and strides off, throwing a quick glance up the stairs as he goes.
Hang on, Liddell. I'm coming.
Fuck.
If it had not been for the man who had seen her while she had been peeking out of the chest, searching for Ruvik, Alice might have been able to stay hidden. She might not have been forced to fire her gun, drawing the attention of every one of those things on the upper floor. She might have been able to creep away, undetected, and reunite with Sebastian. Unfortunately, this is not a world of mights, and she is cornered, again, the axe her in hand shattering when she embeds it into a woman's skull. Her face is streaked with blood and chunks of bone and flesh, the once pristine shirt splattered with crimson, and some of it is her own, from those strikes she had not been able to dodge completely.
Fucking shitty world full of shitty monsters like some shitty horror flick.
Now, like the icing on a cake that she does not want, Ruvik enters the room; there is nothing remotely friendly in his gaze, nor in the way that he stalks towards her, cloak billowing around his knees. With a simple touch of his hand, the heads of the remaining creatures explode, showering her with more fluid, though none of it seems to land on him. Alice feints to the right, but Ruvik is there, and, before she can change direction, she skids into him, fighting for purchase on the slick floor. His hand is around her throat then, pressing, suffocating, crushing her airways as he forces her back so the shelves dig painfully into her spine. There is a faint sizzling noise and the gore is removed from her clothes, skin, and hair, but any relief there might have been at such an act is snuffed when he forces his thigh between her legs, pinning her between himself and the unforgiving bookcase.
"Did you truly think you could hide from me?" It is a whispered snarl, and his eyes are furious enough to cause her struggles, for the moment, to cease. "That I would not find you, when I know everywhere you may have thought to hide?"
Spots dance in front of her eyes; she claws weakly at his hands, seeking release, and he watches her cruelly. "Ruben," she wheezes, "stop. Please." A flicker of surprise dances across his face, gone as quickly as it comes, and his grip slackens enough to allow her to breathe, though she is still trapped. Chest heaving, each breath burning her bruised throat, she stares at him, startled that he had shown that small glimmer of mercy. The hand around her neck shifts, and he caresses the skin like a lover would. Ruvik leans closer, burying his nose in the hair that hangs beside her face, inhaling softly to catch the scent that brings him back to childhood. Cinnamon, cloves, spiced and fragrant, the strands soft enough to be mistaken for silk, so unlike Laura's.
He craves. And what he wants, he takes.
But first, she must understand the price of disobedience. After a moment of consideration, he takes her to the place that will cause her the most grief, and leaves her there to suffer.
"Lizzie, Lizzie! Look, watch what I can do!"
The eldest Liddell daughter glances up from the dusty tome in her lap, starting from her seat when she sees her sister balanced precariously on the back of their father's chair, arms spread for balance, one leg bent at the knee to hold it off of the fabric. Their parents have gone to the Church to attend to some business, after which the four of them are expected at the Victoriano estate for dinner, and she has been left in charge of the home. If either their father or their mother were to enter, they would flay her alive for paying so little attention to Alice that she was able to climb the chair. Lizzie stands, dropping the book to the floor, and moves quickly to Alice, reaching her just in time to catch her when she teeters and falls, a small 'oof' escaping her when she collides with Lizzie's chest.
"What were you thinking?!" The scolding begins as soon as Alice's feet are safely on the ground. "What if I hadn't been here?"
Alice regards her with some surprise. "I would have gotten hurt, I suppose," she replies matter-of-fact.
Lizzie sighs, shaking her head in adult-like resignation. "I won't always be here to catch you, Allie. Please be more careful in the future."
"Sure you will," Alice chirps, voice as irrepressibly cheerful as any child's. "You're my sister, after all, and you say that no force in the universe can ever keep us apart!"
The room is a ghost of its former self. Everything in it is waterlogged, rotting, books swollen and mold creeping up the walls, yet Alice can still make out the fleur-de-lis print of the wallpaper, the horrid plaid of her father's favorite reading place. She knows that, on the table at its side, there will still be marks where she and Lizzie carved their initials one rainy day, that there is probably still the remnants of red nail polish on the rug where they had knocked the bottle over. She can still remember the way her mother's hands had covered her mouth when she saw the stain and the way they had worsened it with polish remover, can still hear her father's baritone laughter as he reassured her mother that it was a hideous rug anyway and they had probably added some charm to it.
Unable to stand on legs that have turned to something rather like Jell-O, Alice slides down the wall, staring blankly ahead of her. Home. But there was nothing like that in this empty shell with only the faint echoes of sorrow reverberating through the halls. Once again, she feels the smoke scorching her lungs, smells the acrid stench of burning upholstery, and her stomach roils. There is just enough time for her to twist onto her knees, and then she is retching, bile and the remnants of a meager breakfast splattering against the splintered floor. She staggers to her feet when she has finished, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, and stumbles towards the door, stopping when a voice whispers from behind her.
"Welcome home, Allie."
No. No. No. No. No. Against her will, she turns, and sees the very thing that has haunted her nightmares for years. Lizzie is in front of her, only it cannot be Lizzie, Lizzie is dead and buried in a casket in the Krimson City Cemetery, Lizzie whose casket had to be closed because her body was too badly damaged, Lizzie who had barely looked human, according to the police in charge of the case. This Lizzie is cold, pale, one eye gone, the socket glistening red in the watery light, dress torn and blood on her thighs, wrists and ankles chafed and raw, a necklace of crimson splashed across the slender column of her throat.
The specter draws closer, pallid fingers pressing against her cheek, and, when it speaks, the voice is papery and thin. "We've been waiting."
