Hello everyone, before I begin this chapter I just want to clarify a few things before this story goes on any further. As you know this is my first fanfic, and I don't want to stop writing a potentially good story just because it might not be constructed well enough. As I've stated a couple chapters earlier, I will be creating at least 2 or 3 volumes of Alice and Jenkins's adventures, each no more than 20 chapters. Seeing as how this story is progressing, I'd say about 3 or so chapters and this volume will be over. If any of you want to suggest something different, or are not interested in reading the separate volumes I plan to write, let me know either through PM or a review. As I don't want to waste your time or mine in writing something that will ultimately end in failure. I began this fanfic after my beloved and I started coming up with our own interpretation of the games as we are both huge fans of the franchise, and that may be one of the reasons this story in itself is a bit disorganized, I apologize to any of you who found it annoying or unappealing. I love writing, literature and creative writing are things I find great pleasure in besides drawing and painting, so I will continue to work hard to become a better composer not only for my benefit but for you the fans. I am eternally grateful for those who have stuck through this story all the way until now, you are my reason for moving on, if it wasn't for you, I would have given up on this project long ago. Thank you, and if any of you desperately want me to extend to the following volumes, I will do so, and if not, then I wont. Either way, this was a great experience for me in getting my content displayed to the rest of the world and having the pleasure to have it praised so much. Sorry for making this intro so long, I just had to get these thoughts and ideas out to you before it was too late.

His tiny feet crunched leaves and twigs beneath them as he trudged through the wood looking for his friend who could've been hiding just about anywhere in these thick forests. Her soft childlike voice rang through the branches giggling and teasing him, it felt as if she was concealed in every direction.

"You have to find me first Roy!" More giggling was heard echoing in the breeze. He spun his head over and over again looking for her. He couldn't handle dragging his feet through this unforgiving terrain much longer, and soon out of desperation and frustration, tears began streaming down the boy's face. "Katherine… *sob* Katherine my feet hurt, let's head back already!... You're going to get hurt and then we'll get in trouble!.." he cried out wrapping his frail arms around himself as it has started getting cold, the sun was tucked away behind the clouds again and the droplets of water and hopelessness were to soon descend. Silence soon fell and no word came from her sweet lips or the delicate sound of her gentle steps were heard. His eyes darted side to side waiting for a response.

"Katherine?..." he called out. "Katherine?!" he called out again louder.

"Katherine if you don't come out right now I won't play with you again!" he shouted, his voice echoing all around him. A loud snap and crumble were heard not far off, her girlish scream followed soon after.

"AAAHHH!"

"KATHERINE!"

Alice slid down a slippery slope that crumbled towards a lower level of another chasm they found, Jenkins's shout rang all around them as she did.

"Oww.." she murmured as she slowly stood up and rubbed her posterior in pain, but what hit her the hardest was the sharp pang of confusion as he shouted her name out loud the moment she fell. She made her way back up the broken off ground to Jenkins's level and faced him, his face was pasty white, and his eyes were wide as if he's seen a ghost.

"Jenkins?... what… what happened?" she asked filled with concern as she stepped closer and narrowed her eyes inspecting her delusional companion. He was panting lightly, slowly coming to as he fished out his handkerchief from his coat pocket and bringing it to his face to wipe his brow. He blinked his eyes rapidly to squeeze out the last of the flashback from his vision. Alice had to place her palm on his shoulder and nudge him slightly to shake him back to reality… if you could ever classify Wonderland as such...

"Wha... What happened?..." he mumbled as he turned to face her, her expression was filled with worry and confusion, with a slight bit of fear.

"You… you just called me Katherine." she replied, he still stared at her with that dazed and empty gaze.

"I… I did?"

"Yes…" she replied slowly raising a dark eyebrow. "Who's Katherine?" she asked. He paused to choose carefully what he was going to say next, either give away his whole childhood story, lie, or simply dismiss her question.

"uh… Uhm…"

"Well?"

"It's… no one special… just a name that popped into my head." he stammered.

"Jenkins you're a terrible liar."

"I'm not lying!.." he raised his voice, his face flushed. Alice shook her head in disapproval with a stern look on her face.

"Jenkins if something is troubling you then just come out with it. You can tell me anything, I won't judge."

"It's nothing! Look we're wasting time, we need to find that last puzzle piece. We've come this far from finding pieces in places they shouldn't have been, the bottom of a cliff, behind a statue guarded by a pawn that almost bit my face off, and don't even get me started on the one we found sunken to the bottom of that cesspool…" he sneared with a shudder at that last remark.

"You still smell…" she added. He glared back at her with a snort.

"Well at least I dried off, for all we know that could've been a water closet for the guards once before…" he replied with a shake of the head trying to walk ahead of her. She reached out and stopped him grabbing him by the arm.

"No wait, you still haven't told me who Katherine was."

"I told you it's not important!"

"Yes it is, if her memory is causing you so much distress I have every right to know! I'm trying to keep you safe, this Wonderland relies on both of our ability to stay mentally stable. Whatever memory you have of her, whoever she is, might uncover some truth about what's happened here." she said as she stood before him. He looked at her with stern eyes before sighing and turning his head away bracing himself to recollect his thoughts of his former friend once again.

"...do you really want to know?..." he asked in a deep miserable tone. Alice nodded sharply with a faint hint of excitement.

"Very well…" he said as he cleared his throat and continued to walk forward slowly, Alice following close beside him listening intently.

We walked side by side calmly all around the spacious castle chamber both looking for the last puzzle piece, and recollecting Jenkins's hidden memories. As he spoke, I could clearly see the hurt and regret in his eyes, his tone was quiet and almost ashamed of having to reveal such deep secrets and memories to someone like me. I wanted to tell him that there was no need to feel that way, when I myself kept shameful and macabre memories as well. Either way, I couldn't take my eyes off him, only for a few moments to see where I was going so as to not trip, but we trudged along the crumbled debris slowly, taking our time, giving him enough of it to remember all he could. This girl he spoke of, her memory had been weighing him down for some time, by the sound of it. I held no power over my vocal chords, I couldn't speak, all I could do was hear him as he recited his childhood to me, at least, all that he could recollect.

"When I was a young lad at about the age of six, I lived in a rather large mansion, kind of like yours, but slightly bigger. My father was always away, exploring the countries overseas, making treaties and business proposals to ambassadors and government leaders from said countries so mysterious to me at the time, and still unknown as I've never had to chance to leave Europe. I've only really visited France and Germany once or twice in my lifetime. My father and mother had two children, my younger brother and I. My father was involved with another woman before my mother however, they had a daughter, but unfortunately she died when she was born as well as her mother… When my father remarried to my mother, they had us. We grew up in that large estate, we owned horses, milking cows, a few sheep, and four dogs, two of which weren't allowed inside to guard our livestock. My brother and I were born with polar opposite personalities, he was the strongest, most reckless, most charming and cunning out of the both of us. Mother always favored him over me. I was born weak, socially inept, and much too small for my age, but I made up for it with great intelligence, much more than my brother had.

In school I was often harassed and abused by the other school boys, and more often than not he had to step in and fight them off for me. My mother disapproved of my lack of strength to fight off my own enemies but praised my brother for being there for me. She was never really a warm lady, she yelled at me frequently and forced the prospect of perfection down my throat, saying I not only had to be the smartest in my class but be strong, social, cultured, skilled, and many other attributes that fit a perfect gentleman. Intelligence was all I could really own up to besides having morals, something my brother was never too good at having himself. My mother had many acquaintances from her business in producing fabric for women's clothing, one of them was the father of a young girl named Katherine… He too was wealthy as us, owned a large home in the outskirts of London, his wife was young and her daughter inherited her radiance and grace. She was angelic, she had hair so long it cascaded down to the small of her back, shimmering, golden, like the sun. Her eyes were the brilliant blue of the seas, or at least, paintings I've seen of it from different parts of the world where it's not so grey. She was small and frail, but appropriately so since she was a young girl, not a boy like me. We met one day when her family visited our estate, my brother tried to play with her and make her laugh but she found him distasteful and annoying, which made me force myself to stifle my laughter when I saw them. When she found her way towards me, I remember clearly, she took my hands and said I looked like I needed to warm them because they were so cold. Unbeknownst to her, it was just my dreadful circulation of my bloodstream to my palms. When I beheld her divine beauty I almost had to steady myself from fainting, she was… the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life… We played together often after that, she always ignored my brother to come and spend time with me everytime her parents came to discuss business matters with my mother. We became so close we were practically inseparable… and I told her once… that when we were to grow older, that I would marry her, and she said she would say yes. I even recall one day hearing my mother and her father discussing our relationship and agreeing that we should one day marry to conjoin the wealth of both families, at the time I didn't fully understand the severity of what that could've done for both our families, we could've become part of the elite society and become official aristocrats. However… that ceased to become a possibility after what happened later on…"

As I listened to him speak, we began to shrink down to fit into a small crack in a wall to make our way into yet another chamber of the castle, this one we haven't discovered yet, and maybe where the last piece remained.

"One day… one fateful day… Katherine and I were playing in the woods. She coaxed me to follow her in after being specifically told to never go there alone or unsupervised by an adult. She wanted to play hide and go seek. It was the day before I had to begin my apprenticeship with Sir Anderson, and the day my mother scolded me for getting my clothes dirty… I was talked into it in the end, not only because she was very persuasive but because it was the last I was ever going to see of her again… and that day I decided I was going to confess my feelings for her, even if I was only six years old, I still felt like I needed to tell her… even if she wouldn't take me seriously. That day, she ran off too far and I searched all around the forest to find her, she seemed near, everywhere I went I heard her voice, I heard her laughter… she was driving me insane!... Then… suddenly everything went quiet… I couldn't hear her anymore. I stopped to call out to her again begging her to come out and return home with me, but all I heard was the chirping of birds, the howling of the wind and a faint sound of thunder. I smelled rain, I began to get desperate and I started to cry. Suddenly I heard a loud crumbling noise not far off, and her scream… I ran towards where the sound came from and what I found was... " he paused… we were standing right in front of the last piece, it glowed golden and just anticipating for us to grab it, but we couldn't move, I had to hear what happened next…

"She… she slipped on some loose earth and fell into a ditch. A very steep and sunken ditch. She was stained with dirt, her dress was torn from the fall, her hair was a mess, her arms and legs were bruised, her right leg was bloody and bent at an awkward angle. All I could hear were her sharp cries of pain, her dreadful sobs, she was in too deep for me to help her up, I had to call for help, but I was crying to hard myself to do anything. Finally I called out to her that I was going to be right back, I was going to fetch our parents to pull her out. I ran back to the house as fast as I could, when I did, her father and my mother both began yelling at me and drifting further and further in rage. Finally they decided to postpone my punishment for this later and they rushed some of our servants to help. A whole group of adults including my mother rushed into the woods. An hour passed by and finally, they came back carrying her back to the house as fast as they could. They tended to her wounds, cleaned her up, gave her a change of clothes, and injected her with some laudanum to take away her pain as they set her broken leg back into place. As I observed, still crying, my mother pulled me aside into another room and gave me the worst beating she's ever given me. She slapped me five times, and bent me over to lash my behind forty times. She then sent me to grab my blanket and pillow to go sleep in the stables. It was the worst day of my childhood." I listened with deep disgust and horror at his miserable story. Not even I dared to imagine living in a home where my own parents treated me like that. I wanted to wring that hag of his mother's neck! I balled my fists as he continued to tell the last of his story.

"Years passed, my apprenticeship, as I remember it was all a big blur. I can't remember much of it other than the fact that Sir Anderson was one of the kindest men I've ever had a chance to work with. He was a jolly, generous, patient and understanding man, he was almost like a second father to me. During my eleventh year of apprenticeship, I was seventeen at the time, I was carrying back some fresh goods from the marketplace to the master's house for supper, when I stumbled upon an unrefined young lady with filthy, slightly torn clothes that showed way too much of her skin, her dirty blonde hair was a mess, two of her teeth were missing, and she seemed to be inebriated. I tried to get away from her but she kept clutching to my coat asking me if I wanted to spend the night with her and earn her at least a shilling or two. I yelled at her to leave me alone and ran all the way back home. Upon my arrival, I told Sir Anderson what had happened in the street and he looked down in shame. I asked him if he knew her or something and he replied that some years back, Katherine's father gambled away all of their wealth in an unwise investment. Her mother died of tuberculosis around the same time and they were left penniless. He mentioned that their situation turned for the worst so quickly that it left her father desperate and almost wild with rage and self loathing. He became an alcoholic and constantly harassed his daughter, asking her for some money whenever he got drunk. She became tired of him and escaped their empty mansion that was now worth no more than dirt. She had nowhere else to go and go sucked into the filthy dark streets of the poorer side of London where she became a prostitute. He said that nothing else was known about her whereabouts except that she worked evenings around this part of town and was one of the most beautiful of their group. When I heard the terrible news I almost wanted to vomit… I wanted to run back to her and yell at her to stop whatever she was doing this instant.. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me and how much I missed her when I was gone, I wanted to tell her how much I loved her!... I wanted to beg her to come away with me, that I was going to make everything alright… that she didn't need to do this abominable career any longer… I wanted to help… but there was nothing… absolutely nothing I could do to help anyone… I never saw her again… and now… I don't know whether she still lives or is dead somewhere in a gutter like piece of garbage that was thrown away…I didn't have the energy to reprimand Sir Anderson about not telling me, but later on he confessed he didn't know until recently when he heard it from a colleague that used to work for her father who apparently stumbled upon her a few times in the streets. I sank deeper into depression… it took me time aplenty to recover from discovering this tragedy." he said. We stood there quietly once he finished telling his story. He didn't look at me, he stared blankly at the puzzle piece not far off still patiently waiting for us to take it. I didn't know what to say, I couldn't come up with anything close to appropriate for this. All I could really do was step closer to him and embrace him. I couldn't come up with any soothing words of consolation, all I had to offer was my supporting embrace. Thankfully however, he seemed to accept my token of affection and embraced me back tightly. That alone was what he needed to lift his heavy heart.

After all that happened, we finally let go and looked at each other expectantly. Finally I managed to speak.

"So… should… we head back? We found the last piece of the puzzle."

"Indeed. We should be heading back. Our journey is far from over, and I desperately want to go home as soon as possible." he said, his voice back to normal yet still somewhat somber. We walked towards the piece together, and reached towards it as it vanished into mystic dust. After a deep breath, we turned around and headed back to the puzzle to solve it.

The pieces we collected were set on the ground before the puzzle. We took a step back and witnessed the pieces growing back to size and fitting within the spaces of the incomplete puzzle. It was mismatched, so now we had to set it back to its original formation.

"Up. Left. Down. Right. Down. Left."

"Right. Down. Left. Down. Right. Up."

"Down. Left. Up. Left. Down. Right."

"Left. Up. Right. Up. Left. Down. Left"

Complete!

We took a step back to admire the finished puzzle. It was a picture of all the chess pieces we encountered so far. A Pawn, a Bishop, and Knight, and a Queen. Two were left, and only one was going to be able to come back from the grave, the other sacrificed itself for me once when I stumbled upon the Red Queensland. When we finally pieced it together, automatically a drawbridge descended down and fell before us to reveal a brand new doorway. Jenkins and I beamed at each other and made our way to it.

The entrance was dark and a bit humid at first. We had to be careful where we were going, there were some areas that seemed like ground but weren't.

"Do you see anything?" he asked.

"No, all I can make out are just steps and steps of broken off levels of ground floor." I replied still feeling around for where to step next. Suddenly we beheld a dim glow not too far. It seemed to be emanating from a lower level up ahead. When we reached the precipice, we looked down to where the ground was cut off and dropped down to a much lower level of ground. We were standing on the edge of a steep cliff, looking down at what appeared to be…. a door… a normal sized wooden house door, with a faint green light coming from it. We looked at each other before finally dropping down to meet up with it. When we made contact with the ground beneath us, we peered at the doorway. To me it was completely strange, but to Jenkins, it seemed all too familiar. I turned to look at him.

"Does… this door seem familiar to you?"

"Y-Yes… it looks like… the door of Doctor... " he trailed off, slowly walking towards it. I tried to stop him but he just looked at me and said, "This might be a new memory for me… come… let's find out together." he said calmly as he took my hand. I gave him an unsure gaze before finally walking with him towards it. He reached out to grab the handle of the door, and, with a gentle turn and pull, we slowly entered the mysterious opening that would soon lead us to the next checkpoint in Jenkins's unpredictable broken memories and mental stability.

Holy crap this was a long chapter, the longest I've ever written so far. Hope you guys enjoyed a tidbit of Jenkins's past, maybe that will shed some light later on in the story. Anyway, please don't forget to consider what I wrote earlier, it's important for me to know what my followers will want to see in the future. Alice: Madness Returns belongs to American McGee and Spicy Horse, this fanfic is for entertainment purposes only. I'll be back very soon with another exciting chapter folks. See you all again soon!