WOOOOO MORE WRITING! Please, R&R!

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/*\

Blood had never much cared for his Role. The duties were boring, and the facade's were more than tedious. He had despised the paperwork from day one, and many a time it would perturb him to think about how much he'd gotten used to his...darker obligations.

However, if anything topped these annoyances, it would have to be the voice.

It was rude and scathing, and the accent made it almost unintelligible at times. It would fling insults at him left and right, but he knew that it never actually meant any of those things. Nonetheless, it had always been an unwelcome visitor in his mind, and right now, he could not remember a time when he resented it more.

Ya need to calm down. It said, Even if you did do something wrong, it's not like you'll face consequences. You're the greatest criminal Wonderland has to offer. You shouldn't feel so bad. Man up, boy.

Oh really? Blood drawled back, My sister won't visit me now. The servant went to who-knows-where and if Alice catches wind of it...Do you honestly think I can take a dragon?

A dragon? No. Her? Yes. The Jabberwocky's drivin' her nuts. Her sanity won't last much longer. Not that hard to kill an insane person.

...This is supposed to make me feel better? He asked incredulously.

Certainly not supposed to make you feel worse. It grumbled. Blood sighed. The older he got, the more the Role seemed to respect his feelings and decisions. However, he knew that it viewed him as weak in some ways. All because he wanted to stay himself. He quickly rolled off the bed onto his feet, wincing at the pain in his left leg. It hadn't been a bad wound - miraculously enough - but it still stung if he put too much pressure on it too fast. He hissed as he stepped forward, and looked out the window, the pain subsiding. He could faintly see his reflection in the window of the glass, and as he glared at the glowing green eyes before him, he couldn't push away the train of memories that would always flash through his mind. The memory of Vivi being taken away. The memory of the first time he looked in the mirror as a Role-Holder. The memory of his first torture victim, the memory of his first treason case. He was somehow forced to relive everything that had happened, to change him from an ordinary child to the monster he was now.

The faceless Blood, the original personality, could never, ever blame Alice for not wanting to be with him. Even as she was now, she was far too sweet and sunshiney and overall...innocent to be with such a man as him. The Mad Hatter on the other hand, was irked that he had not gotten what he wanted. As much as Blood hated the person he'd become, he'd also come to accept it, there was nothing he could do about it after all. This was who he was, though definitely not by his own desire. He'd had no choice in the matter.

Alice couldn't penalize him for that.

/*\

"It's this way!" The man declared confidently. Anyone who didn't know him would have zero doubt of his conviction, and follow him without any sort of hesitation, certain that he knew where he was going. However, fortunately, his companion had learned quite quickly that this conviction could only mean one thing: They were not going the right way.

"No," she responded mulishly, "It's this way." She tugged his sleeve to the left, and attempted to pull him in the correct direction.

"No it's not," he insisted, "It's that way." And he continued to point west, towards the mansion, even though the building was partially visible and they both knew that the mountains resided in a very different spot. She was about to tell him so.

"But-!"

"There's a short cut!" he interrupted, "There's a road behind the mansion, we can use it to go south and BAM! We'll walk straight into Alice's territory."

"..." The girl was speechless. Was this man truly as daft as he presented himself to be? She gave him an odd look, and he tilted his head at her.

"What?"

"We're supposed to be going north."

/*\

Pierce knew his way around the mansion pretty well. Unfortunately, the servants knew it just as well, if not better. Each entrance he could think of was manned by guards, and he was at a slight loss for what to do. It wasn't like he could bust down a wall or break a window, that would cause too much commotion and it would probably get him on Blood's bad side...well, even more so.

That was when he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye, the mouse spotted movement, and looked over the rosebush he was hiding behind. A maid had just opened a window, presumably to air out the room. It was only the second floor, he would have no issue climbing in. There was only one problem.

It was right next to the entrance that the two servants were protecting. The mouse's ears flattened. If he could just find some way to get rid of them...

Pierce took inventory of his immediate supplies. He had his gun, certainly, but if he fired he would give away his position. He had a few snacks, hardly useful in this instance. He had a small knife, a bottle cap, and...a bottle.

A glass bottle.

An idea came to mind, but it was admittedly stupid. There was no way it could work and yet...

Nothing better came to mind.

The mouse evaluated his surroundings, and found just what he was looking for. The flowerpots in Hatter Mansion were exceedingly sturdy. Nothing short of a bullet could damage them, and as he estimated the distance between himself and the pot...he decided he just might be able to make this work.

Carefully, he poked his head over the hedge of roses, and made sure that the guards were not looking his way. In fact, they were conversing, leaning against the railing of the stairs, and just in general were not paying attention. Perfect.

The mouse sized up his target, and with a flash of his arm, launched the glass bottle into the flowerpot, forty feet away. Crash! The guards stopped talking.

"What the f*** was that?" One of them growled, and Pierce listened to their boots click on the pavement. As they entered his line of vision, he circled around the other end of the hedge, and with their backs turned to him, lightly ran up to the building. It would not do for him to be heard.

Unwilling to take the risk that the door was locked, the mouse instead veered off into the grass lawn on the right. He jumped onto the sill of the first floor window, and leaped up to grab the frame of the second story opening. Just as he moved to crawl in, his clock stopped in abject terror.

"Hey you!" One of the guards snarled, "What do you think you're doing?!" Pierce whirled his head around, expecting to see the two guards pointing rifles up at him. However, the guards weren't even looking in his direction.

They were yelling at another servant.

"Why did you throw the bottle?" The faceless guard asked, irate.

"What are you talking about?"

And so Pierce swiftly entered the window as an argument commenced outside.

/*\

It hadn't taken long for Gowland to realize that his second-in-command had vanished. Boris was not a punctual person, not by any stretch. He was a cat, he didn't care about such things, but it was still unusual for him to make himself absent during a time of such need. The park was still going under major reparations, and he loved it almost as much as Gowland did, so where had he gone?

It didn't take a genius to figure it out. Everyone in the park, from the owner himself to the smallest child, knew that Boris adored the Foreigner, in the manner that cats take to people. Though he'd never admit it and rarely let it show, he had missed her when she vanished.

Gowland still remembered the conversation they'd had the day she'd disappeared.

It had been a morning period, and the Park Owner had finally gotten enough free time to justify a good long nap, but then it had happened. The energy shock hit him like a sack of bricks, taking him completely off guard.

When people obtained new Roles, two events occurred. The first was that, after a Role-Holder died, the Roles of their peers would notify them. They would be aware of the passing of the unlucky bast***, and then a wave of energy would roll out through the land, letting them know that a new faceless had taken their place.

That notification had never come.

Wait a second...Gowland had thought to himself, Could she...could she really have decided to stay? After all that fuss about going home?

No, that definitely wasn't right. The energy...it had felt far too enraged for it to have been a willing choice. Something bad had happened, something very bad, and after the wave had passed, the voice in his head - so uncharacteristically tiny and afraid - had affirmed his fear.

The rules have been broken. She's been trapped here.

And then the Cat showed up. He'd almost broken the door in his haste, and his claws dug themselves into the door frame as he spoke.

"Did you feel that?!" He questioned, "Alice, she's..."

"I know. The Role just said that the Rules were broken."

"So she didn't choose her Role?"

"No, she did not."

"...Poor Alice." And he left.

Those two words were all it took to receive Gowland's pity, not that Boris would ever know. Cats were fickle creatures, they did not bestow affection generously. The fact that Boris had expressed regret over the wave of anger and despair and betrayal...

He loved her very much, and it broke his heart to know that she was in so much pain. Someone had done something with Alice's vial, and it had completely eliminated any chance she had of going home.

"You know," The Park Owner had said, later on, after Blood's impromptu trial at the circus, "Maybe it was for the best. She wanted to go home for only one reason. That reason disappeared during her stay in Wonderland. She couldn't have been happy there." The cat looked up at him with disapproving eyes.

"But that wasn't his decision to make, now was it?" He'd hissed, and stalked away, heading towards the woods.

As much as Gowland had pitied Alice, he felt a little more sorry for Boris. In a world that treated life as trash, the cat had found someone he valued, and he was completely powerless to prevent or halt the suffering she had endured. How must it feel, to invest your clock and soul into someone, and be entirely unable to help in their time of greatest need?

So though Gowland was definitely in need of immediate assistance, he did not begrudge the cat his mission.

/*\

Poor Boris. Honestly, from what I've seen of the manga, I feel like Alice should have considered him more. His relationship with her was WAY healthier than the love/hate crap she had with Blood. Plus, Boris never tried to kill her. Please review! :D

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