AN: Holy Christ in a hand basket! It's 2015 people! 2015! Jesus, time flies! I hope you all have a very happy New Years! Thanks for the all the lovely reviews! Especially from you anonymous readers! They definitely made me smile! I'm glad I could brighten up some of your guys Christmas (Scorpi Claus! Ha!). I didn't have a very exciting Christmas either.
And as promised, here's another chappie for you guys! Prepare for an uber long and super boring chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns.
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away
You've gone away, you don't feel me here anymore.
Broken ~ Seether feat. Amy Lee
~ An hour or so Earlier ~
"It's okay to admit that you overreacted."
"But I didn't."
"It's just me here, you know. You don't need to feel embarrassed or anything."
"I know. Still doesn't mean I overreacted."
"Doesn't mean you didn't either."
Bunny let out a groan as he rubbed the bridge of his muzzle with his paw.
They were slowly making their way through the many dark hallways of North's domain, somewhere near the Russian's grand library. The pooka held a small lantern in his paw that dimly lit the path ahead of them while Tooth, and a couple of her little fairies, hovered next to him. She was trying to get him to see the "error of his ways", finally getting the time to properly lecture him as if he wasn't already well aware of how much he screwed up tonight. And not just with what he had done, but with what he allowed to happen.
Which somewhat brought him to where he was right now. At a loss for anything better to do other than sit around and wait for Jack and Alice's return, Bunny decided to get off his furry hide and volunteer for hallway patrol. It wasn't necessarily a very riveting task (far from it, in fact), but it gave him something more productive to do for a while. Tooth tagged along a little too enthusiastically, if you asked him, and it didn't take long to figure out why. Tooth just wouldn't be Tooth if she didn't try and sneak in a tiny lecture or two while Bunny was busy trying to do something else.
"Can we not talk about this now?" He asked irritably. "I'll fix everythin' once they get back...If Frost is still breathin' that is."
Tooth gave him an unimpressed scowl and slapped him on the arm. "Don't say things like that, Bunny! How bad would you feel if he didn't come back breathing, huh?"
Bunny opened his mouth to throw back a witty remark, but his ears drooped before he could at the sudden mental image of Jack laying on the workshop floor, bloody and broken with gaping wounds from all the malicious creatures that inhabited Alice's deranged world. He pulled a heavy grimace and stopped walking down the long hallway so he could turn towards Tooth.
"Oh bloody hell, woman. Now why'd you have to go and say a thing like that? You know I'm never serious when I talk 'bout Frostbite."
"Of course I do," she sighed. "I'm just worried about them."
Bunny watched as Tooth brought up her feathered arms in a self-hug, visibly deflating right in front of him. He felt his heart go out to her, knowing that she must be worried about her Baby Tooth above all else. There was no other sure fire way to put a damper on the Tooth Fairy's bright, joyful spirit, than to rob her of her precious fairies. Bunny himself felt naturally protective of his Easter eggs, especially after the big Pitch fiasco two years ago, but he couldn't even begin to imagine what it must be like to literally have a piece of himself lost or stolen.
"Yeah, I am too," He mumbled, giving her a sympathetic smile. "They'll be back before you know it though. Safe and sound."
"I really hope you're right."
"Pfft, of course I'm right. Aren't I always?"
Tooth scoffed and rolled her eyes, making Bunny snicker.
"Now stop naggin' me," He demanded with a playful scowl before he started walking again. "You're givin' me a headache."
Tooth let out one of her wind chime laughs. "Ha! That's definitely calling the kettle black. I'm just trying to help. You know that's all I ever try to-"
"Shhh!" Bunny interjected harshly out of nowhere as his ears perked up in attention.
Not noticing the pooka's sudden alertness, Tooth's jaw dropped at Bunny's seemingly rude brush-off before she glared hotly at him with her hands on her hips and her feathers puffed out in annoyance.
"Don't you shush me!"
"Shhhhhh!" Bunny did it again more insistently with a paw held up to his mouth. "Do you hear that?"
Tooth blinked at him. She focused her hearing on the area around them, but it picked up on nothing except the own hum of her wings. She barely resisted the urge to slap his arm again. Did he not realize yet, that not everybody had super, amazing rabbit hearing like he did?
"Hear what?"
Bunny didn't reply as he looked towards the dark path behind them with a hardened expression on his furry mug. His ears twitched again at the approaching sound.
Footsteps.
A pair of shoes clicked rhythmically against the stone floor. Bunny's advanced sense of hearing could pick up the foreign ring of the footsteps, able to decipher through pitch alone, that they were produced by a stranger. They weren't nearly heavy enough to match North's thunderous stride, and they couldn't be Alice's either. She was still in Wonderland as far as he knew. He didn't think they were Pitch's either. His...whatever he wore on his feet, never made noise. A soundless foot tread was a Boogeyman job requirement. It allowed him to easily slip in and out from underneath a slumbering child's bed and plaguing their sweet dreams with nightmares.
Bunny immediately fell into a defensive stance, his paw reaching behind his head and pulling out his boomerang with practiced speed and grace while Tooth looked at him in alarm.
"Yeah, I heard you," Bunny spoke out into the shadows of the hallway once the footsteps drew close enough. "I heard you coming from four hallways over. I know you're there so you might as well come out and show yourself!"
He peered through the darkness and held up his lantern higher to see the figure now lurking just down the hallway from them. It wasn't impossible to see in the hallway, thanks to the tall windows that lined along the wall, streaming in moonlight from outside, but the darkness at the other end of the hallway seemed unnatural. Almost as if the shadows were purposely cloaking the figure.
It answered the pooka's command though, partially revealing that it was actually a man...or at least, at first glance it seemed like one.
The figure stepped into the meager lighting of the hallway, standing just on the edge of a sliver of moonlight, pooling in from a nearby window. His body was tall and gangly, cladded in typical human clothing; black trousers, a slightly worn, white dress shirt, and a poorly stitched, gray waistcoat with a red tie. He had his hands tucked neatly behind his back with the shadows of the hallway still obscuring his face.
There didn't appear to be anything more to the man, least of all anything threatening, but there was a noticeable change in the air, one that made Bunny's fur stand on end.
"Who are you!" Tooth demanded in her fierce, queenly tone, obviously feeling just as unsettled as he was.
Darkness seemed to pool deeper into the hallway, making the little flame in Bunny's lantern flicker and a chill breeze through before the figure finally answered.
"My, my, my," A deep, unnatural voice echoed through the hallway. "Aren't you a pretty bird."
Tooth gawked at the random comment before glaring again. "I said, who are you!"
The two spirits stood with their hackles raised, ready to launch themselves into another fight while the man only continued to lurk in the shadows. It was only when that putrid smell of hot tar assaulted Bunny's sensitive nose that he realized what they were up against. He looked at Tooth from the corner of his eye and jerked his head back.
"Tell your fairies to go get North. I think we just found our second snot-horse wrangler."
Tooth nodded, quickly shooing her fairies back down the hallway and waiting until the speeding feather balls were out of sight before turning towards the intruder again.
The man stepped forward then, coming to stand fully in the moonlight.
His face, much like the rest of his body, was crudely stitched together and corpse-like, his skin a deathly blue-grey color. He had a black, ooze-dripping beard with matted brown hair at the top of his head. It was swept back neatly to reveal rheumy, milky-white eyes with heavy, black circles under them. His face was long and hollowed out, giving him the attractive appearance of one of those Hollywood movie zombies. The silver moonlight encasing him in an even paler lighting, definitely didn't do anything to help with his morbid complexion.
Tooth and Bunny stared at the stranger before turning their gazes at each other, both looking to see if the other recognized the undead creature lurking the hallways of Santoff Claussen. Neither of them did though. He was completely alien to them.
Bunny found that he hated the cool, collected expression on the intruders face. There was anger on his own, obviously, and lingering spite from the earlier attack on their friend's prized domain, but Bunny couldn't help feel a nagging sense of familiarity underneath it all, whenever he looked at the intruder. He knew for sure that he had never personally encountered him before (who could forget a face that ugly?), but there was just something eerily familiar about him...like Bunny should know him somehow.
Tooth, on the other hand, only glared at the stranger with her small fists clenched and her feathers rolling up in warning. "Are you one of Pitch's creations?"
The creature threw his head back a little and laughed. It was a dark, bloodcurdling sound that made Tooth almost regret asking. "Don't lump me together with that spineless rat!"
"But Pitch was the one who-"
"He may have pulled me out of the decaying ruins of that girl's pathetic delusion and brought me here, but I govern myself! His ridiculous plans were taking too long! Careful planning means nothing against that girl! We're doing things my way now!"
Bunny scoffed at the braying creature, giving it a bitter smirk while pointing at it with the end of his boomerang. "You're pickin' a fight with the wrong spirits, mate. I suggest you turn around now and crawl back into whatever slime hole you slithered out of."
"Silly childhood afflictions," The undead man shook his head, tsking. "You can't even realize what's happening. Not even when its dangling right in front of your faces."
"What's happening?" Tooth followed up with.
Bunny gazed at the strange being with a scrutinizing look. He could feel his frustration mounting as that bothersome sense of "Don't I know you from somewhere?" kept tugging on his focus. It was almost driving him crazy, not being able to get a handle on his own thoughts. It was as if it was calling out to him, teetering just outside his reach. He knew it was in there - the memory that would tell him who this man was, but he couldn't...It was on the very edge of his mind, the very tip of his tongue. Something so...disturbingly familiar...he just..
Something...
Then, it suddenly clicked. Hitting him full force and out of nowhere, nearly knocking him breathless. The lantern still in his paw slowly slipped from his slackened grasp and fell to the floor, shattering against the stone floor and killing the flame. Tooth jumped at the harsh noise.
Bunny's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open as he stared completely flabbergasted at the creature. All his memories and those secondhand tales told to him by a closed off Alice, came rushing back. Tales of the horrific siege that nearly broke her and casted her into permanent oblivion, and the monster that caused it all.
The Dollmaker.
A violent shudder ripped through him as the pooka seethed, rage and utter hate now coursing through his veins.
"You!"
Tooth looked at her friend in worry. He was practically trembling now, with his ears pressed back against his head and his eyes sharp enough to cut through stone. She could understand the apprehension, the sudden rise in adrenaline at the possibility of another battle, but she had no idea where this anger came from. He had the most wrathful, most terrifyingly intimidating expression that she had ever seen, on his face.
"Bunny?"
Forgetting the man standing across from them, she reached out a hand to grip his shoulder. She tried to anchor him back to the present, back to her, but he was gone before her hand could even come close. His rage hit its boiling point without the Dollmaker having to do a thing to set him off. It was just the inconceivable fact that the monster who attacked Alice, in both Wonderland and the real world, was now standing across from him, that caused him to lash out. The pooka knew it wasn't truly the same horrible man now standing within striking distance, but the disgusting creature represented him in spirit and bore a close enough resemblance for Bunny to completely lose his cool.
In hindsight, lashing out was a stupid thing of him to do, but how many times had he looked back on his past with Alice and wished he could have just five minutes alone with the abomination that lit Alice's life on fire and watched it burn along with her family? How many times did he feel the blistering urge to hunt down every single shred of evidence that the wicked man had ever existed, and then destroy it for ripping away his little half-pint from him? How many times did he look upon the jaded, cynical person Alice had become and wonder how things could've been different for her if the Liddell family had never crossed paths with Angus Bumby?
Too many.
"Bunny!"
He heard Tooth's panicked voice call out to him as he dashed down the hallway, but he ignored her. Tooth was always that little voice in the back of his head that spoke up when he was about to do something stupid. She was his voice of reason, but Bunny was beyond rational at that point. The way the Dollmaker stood there at the other end of the hallway, acting cool as a cucumber without a single qualm, as opposed to Bunny's rage, it only served to drive him crazier.
His emotions blinded him, he would admit. When he drew close enough to the Dollmaker with his boomerang brandished and ready to take the monster's head off, the abomination countered with unbelievable speed, even for a pooka. One moment, Bunny was ready to execute his attack and club the monster in the head, and then the next, there was a searing pain in his stomach and he was falling flat on his back. He let out a groan as he sat up and looked at the creature from the ground, his mind two steps behind as he stared blankly at it.
The Dollmaker looked down at him with a blank expression before smirking. Then, almost out of nowhere, the monster began to grow in size. The shadows converged around him and his mis-stitched body filled up the open space of the large hallway. Black ooze began to bleed from his now empty eye sockets, running down into his matching beard and dripping to the floor. As he grew, he finally pulled his hands out from behind his back. They weren't fully attached to his body. They floated around in mid-air, connected to his body by only a few stings while his long fingers, with jagged nails on the ends, reached out for the fallen pooka.
Bunny's eyes widened at the advancing hand and he moved to jump away, but the giant hand was quick, snatching him up and clenching him tightly in its grasp.
"Hey! Let me go!" Bunny thrashed madly in the Dollmaker's giant grip.
The Dollmaker let out a low chuckle as he watched the rabbit squirm between his fingers. The spirit clawed at the dead flesh wrapped around his middle, even tried biting it at one point, but the monster only shook him up like a can of soda pop. Bunny let out another groan as he felt his brain rattle around in his skull before the Dollmaker took him and threw his furry body against a nearby wall. All he remember after that was a thick pain radiating in the back of his head, and his eyelids suddenly becoming too heavy to keep open. His body then slumped forward and he succumbed to the darkness eating away at his consciousness.
Tooth broke out of her shocked stupor and moved to help her friend. She let out a battle cry and launched herself towards the towering monster with her wings and fists up, but the Dollmaker didn't so much as glance her way before backhanding her violently.
"Filthy pigeon," He spat as Tooth was sent sailing back into the furthest wall at the end of the hallway.
When she impacted, her wings took the blunt of the damage and she let out a pained cry, that sounded more bird than human, when the sensitive base of her wings connected with the unforgiving stone. She shut her eyes tight as her body immediately sank to the floor. She could sense the Dollmaker moving closer to her and could hear him chuckle as he looked at her stunned form.
"Here," The Dollmaker called down to the fallen fairy, tossing Bunny's stripped boomerang holster and a stuffed rabbit into her lap. "A rabbit for a rabbit. Do make sure Alice gets that, won't you my dear?"
Tooth practically growled at the towering monster, defiantly pulling herself up from the floor with a wince before leaning back against the wall. The toy rabbit and Bunny's holster slid off her lap as she stood and hit the floor with a soft thud.
"Tooth!"
At the sound of her name, the fairy gasped as she looked to her right and saw a familiar golden glow coming towards her from the connected hallway and heard the pounding footsteps of North and his small yeti army coming to their aid.
"Nicholas!" She screamed as soon as he was in sight, pointing towards the Dollmaker. "Stop him! He's taking Bunny!"
North took one look at the giant creature holding a limp Bunnymund in his hand, and immediately charged towards the departing monster with his swords raised. The Dollmaker watched North come at him for a few moments before scoffing at how pathetic he found the man's efforts. He slowly shook his head and pulled the pooka closer to him as he moved back further into the shadows. Then, just as North finally came within striking distance, the Dollmaker dissolved into a large puddle of sizzling ooze and sunk into the welcoming shadows of the dark hallway.
The puddle was gone in an instant while the shadows swallowed up every inch of the Easter Bunny with it.
~O~
Jack fixed the Russian with a stunned look, holding his arms out.
"What the hell, North? Someone broke into here twice in one night?"
"Is not my fault!" He protested. "Was too fast, even for Bunny! It swooped in and snatched him before anything could be done!"
"Where is he? Where was he taken?"
"You think we would still be here if we knew?"
"Well I don't know! We just got here!"
Alice blocked out their inane bickering as she stared down with blank eyes at the toy rabbit in her hands.
It was her rabbit of course, the one she treasured as a child. The one given to her by the most famous rabbit in the world, the Easter Bunny himself. Every single stitch and stain was exactly the same, but she couldn't stop herself from shaking her head in complete denial. It just couldn't be her rabbit. It was impossible. She had lost her rabbit more than a hundred years ago, back when she was still human. That fat, greedy lawyer of hers, Mr. Radcliffe, had taken it from her when she was released from Rutledge (Or...had she accidentally forgotten it?) and she had never gotten it back. She had looked for it for a while, during her last few days as a human, but in the end, she wasn't able to find it. She grieved for the loss of her rabbit, almost as if it had been a living, breathing person. It had been the only thing to survive the fire other than herself. It had been her prized possession. It hurt to have lost it, but the raw pain scabbed over eventually when she reunited with Bunny.
Though she had her original Mr. Bunnymund back, the old toy had, and always would, symbolize the good in Alice's childhood. It always represented her floppy-eared guardian angel, even during those years she couldn't remember him. She would always take comfort in the worn fabric of her rabbit and find a sliver of peace in its sentimental value, even when she couldn't remember entirely why it was so important to her, or who had given it to her.
She stared into the rabbit's lone button eye, hanging precariously from its face by a single string, and felt her heart pound fiercely in her chest as a million questions boiled inside her skull. Where was Bunny? What sort of monster had taken him? Was he alright? Could they get him back somehow? They were questions she needed to know, but was terrified of the answers.
"Guys!" Tooth finally cut in, stepping between the two, white-haired spirits. She barely resisted the urge to completely bite their heads off. Bunny was missing, she was injured, and Alice was practically catatonic with the way she stood so still, with her back turned towards them and her dark hair hiding her face. There was no time for pointless squabbles. "Stop it! This isn't doing any good! We need to do something! We need to send out search parties, alert other spirits, track down Pitch, and-and...I don't know! Do some other stuff! Something other than yell at each other!"
Jack looked in between North and Tooth with an exasperated frown before looking over at Alice. He blinked in her direction, seeing the way she was still standing deathly silent. "Uh, Tooth-"
"This isn't how we should do things! Bunny's the one who bickers at inappropriate times! Our whole group's balance is off! We need to find him and fix things!"
"Tooth," North tried to interject while he and Sandy looked over at Alice too.
"We have a missing friend here! We need to get organized and stay focused and-"
"Tooth!" North shouted.
"What!?"
The Russian gave her a stern look while holding a finger up to his lips in the universal gesture for silence before pointing towards the dark-haired spirit. Tooth mouthed a silent "Oh" as she watched Jack slowly approach Alice from behind.
"Alice?" Jack spoke up tentatively, barely resisting the urge to poke her with his staff. "You okay?"
Alice didn't respond. She only continued to stare down at her rabbit with her heart aching and her mind racing. Her emotions and distress were just barely held at bay by her logical thinking as she investigated the mystery of Bunny's abduction inside her head. There had to be something she was missing. This wicked plan couldn't be orchestrated by just Pitch Black. It just didn't make any sense. Out of all the guardians he could've chosen, he kidnapped Bunnymund? There was no significant link between Pitch and Bunny. From what Alice has been told, the Boogeyman regarded the Easter Bunny with the same cold indifference as he did with all the guardians, except for maybe Jack Frost and the Sandman. His hate for those two seemed to be on a few levels higher than the others.
What would Pitch's motivation be for taking Bunny? Argumentatively, there wouldn't be one, or at least, a good one. And not to mention her rabbit. That blindsided her more than anything. There was no way Pitch could know the sentimental value behind such an old, ragged toy. No matter how much spying he did in her head. If there was one thing Alice was good at, it was burying things. Burying them so deep, they could never resurface again.
"I see you got my message."
Everybody in the workshop jumped when a new voice suddenly rang through the air. Their heads snapped up to look at the wide space above them, void of all its usual sparkling confetti and floating toy prototypes. They looked until their eyes landed on a tall figure standing atop the colossal Globe of Belief, with his posture straight as a board and his hands held neatly behind his back, just like before. The globe beneath his scuffed shoes had ceased to rotate and the few, little lights trapped underneath flickered wildly, almost as if sensing the utter evil dripping off the creature in waves.
Alice gasped as her eyes met his own smug, milky white ones - nearly dropping her rabbit.
"Dollmaker!?"
"Who?" Jack questioned, looking between a shocked Alice and the apparent zombie standing on top of North's globe.
"It's the demon!" North shouted. "The demon who took Bunny!"
The inhabitants of the workshop immediately broke out into a flurry of movement. Weapons were drawn and defensive stances were taken as they prepared themselves for battle. North picked up his dual swords from the floor while his yetis armed themselves with a whole variety of swords, maces, and axes, seemingly pulled out of nowhere from behind their furry backs. Tooth snatched a dagger from a nearby yeti, ignoring the way he garbled at her indignantly, while Jack's staff glowed a brilliant blue and bright dreamsand gathered between the Sandman's tiny fingers. Alice pulled out her own Vorpal blade, but kept it firmly at her side. She didn't like the way the Dollmaker was looking at her. The rheumy eyes of his more humanoid form never once left hers as he stood on top of the globe with an ironic half-smirk on his rotting mug.
"Well now, isn't this a party?" His smirk widened as he spoke in that sickly, two-toned voice of his. He pulled his arms out from behind him and clasped his bony hands together, rubbing them in anticipation while his lifeless eyes scanned the odd group of spirits and mythical creatures below. "All boastful bark and sharp objects. Nothing has changed since last time, I see."
"Give us back Bunny!" Tooth screeched.
The Dollmaker regarded the colorful fairy with a look of disgust. The bright colors of her feathers made him want to vomit. "Piss off you feathered rat. My business is not with you."
He only had eyes for the lovely Alice Liddell.
Tooth let out a raged cry and started hovering in the air, despite the pain in her wings. She was ready to charge the creature standing on top of the globe, but she was stopped in mid-launch when one of North's large hands reached out and wrapped firmly around her tiny foot. She struggled against his hold with swinging arms and frustrated whines, her wings doubling in speed to try and pull herself free, but the Russian did not release her.
"No, Tooth!" He commanded in his serious voice. "We must keep our heads! We do not fully know what demon is capable of."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Tooth knew North was right, but she found herself unable to keep calm. Not with Bunny's kidnapper standing right above them. The other guardians felt the same, and even the yetis and elves. They all stood a little taller with weapons in their hands and determined scowls on their faces, ready to attack as soon as their leader gave them the order.
Alice stared up at the figure on the globe with unrestrained rage. Her hand clutched her Vorpal blade so tightly, the intricate designs of the handle dug into the skin of her palm and her knuckles turned a ghostly white. The Dollmaker watched her with silent interest, too bewitched by the fact that he was finally standing on the same playing field as his "arch nemesis", to look away. His attention was only diverted from her when one of the spirits stepped up next to her. It was the scrawny, pale one. He reached out and rested a hand on the young woman's arm, saying something to her in a low tone. Alice didn't reply but she placed a hand on top of his, seemingly letting it linger for a split second longer than necessary, before gently pushing it off.
The movement was subtle, but the figure on the globe caught it anyways. The Dollmaker felt his smirk widen at the sight.
Well now, what was this? A new little paramour, Alice? He wondered to himself as he eyed the white-haired juvenile. Perhaps somethings have changed.
How cute.
Alice took another step closer to the globe's control panel, at the very edge of the balcony. She fixed the Dollmaker with a scathing glare. "Mark my words, Monster. I will put you back in the ground where you belong, and this time, I'll make sure you stay there!"
The Dollmaker let out a hateful laugh, showing off a row of sharp, jagged teeth. "Foolish brat! Haven't we stood on similar grounds like this before? You vowed to destroy me and derail my beautiful train, but your vow has gone unfulfilled! My train may be in ruins and you may have defeated me once, but I still live! You haven't accomplished anything! You've just given me a brand new playground, Alice!"
Alice let out a bitter laugh of her own. "And a new assortment of nifty toys, I hear. Your new friends mean nothing here, Dollmaker! Take a good look around!" She gestured to the armed spirits standing around her. "I also have a few new friends and they don't take Bunny's abduction any more lightly than I do!"
"You're damn straight we don't!"
"Resheno! You've made grave mistake, Demon!"
"Give us back Bunny or else!"
"We're in the real world now, Dollmaker," Alice smirked coldly up at him, despite her growing inner pain. "The rules have changed!"
"You think things have changed?" The Dollmaker smirked back at her with just as much malice, enjoying the way his vantage point made them all look small and insignificant in comparison to himself. "How have they changed, Alice? Because these ludicrous, fairytale apparitions want you to join their little team, hmm? Do you truly believe that this new title of yours will somehow save you from becoming the useless, hollowed out shell that you were always meant to be? Everything you touch shrivels and dies, Alice."
The green-eyed girl practically shook with anger as her angry scowl deepened.
"It's almost impressive how stubborn you are; clinging to such false ideals and dead end hope for so long. You should've just accepted your fate back in London. You should've just let the train take over. You should've embraced the ooze!"
"The ooze is nothing but pollution, Dollmaker! I'd rather die than allow myself, or anybody else, to fall victim to such corruption!"
"The ooze could have been your savior!"
"I am my own savior!"
The Dollmaker scoffed at her. "Clearly nothing has changed from our last encounter. Your thick, little head is still filled with ridiculous delusions. Delusions that you'll amount to something valuable some day. Delusions that you have a purpose on this earth. Delusions that you'll be able to stop yourself from becoming the one thing you've always been destined to become; a mindless, diseased whore."
Alice, unaffected by the nasty name calling, opened her mouth to reply with an equally foul-mouthed insult, having been called far worse when she was human, but she was cut off when North suddenly ushered her back behind him with a thick, tattooed arm and moved forward before she could react.
With long, determined strides and harder-than-steel eyes, the Russian bounded angrily up to the very base of the globe's control system and pointed one dual sword in the Dollmaker's direction with a deathly serious expression on his bearded face.
"Don't you ever, ever call her such a disrespectful name again, or you will have me to answer to," North threatened, his voice containing a slight trepidation of barely restrained anger. He knew without even having to look, that the other guardians behind him stood a little a taller, promising the Dollmaker the same thing with their own hardened expressions. "Now this is final chance, demon! Give us back Bunny and return back to where you came!"
The Dollmaker regarded the Russian with an annoyed frown before suddenly replying with, "Derzhat'sya podal'she ot etogo Ruski svin'i. This doesn't concern you."
At the monster's random ability to speak fluent Russian, North gawked at the Dollmaker's words while Tooth let out an offended gasp on her friend's behalf with her feathers bristling in anger. Jack looked in between the two with a frown, not quite fluent enough in North's native tongue yet to catch what the Dollmaker said.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and assume what he just said, wasn't very nice," He said aloud.
"This doesn't concern any of you, except for Alice!" The Dollmaker snapped as he pointed at the guardians with one of his long, broken fingernails. His milky white eyes trailed across each of their faces before focusing in on Alice's. "And if you don't wish your furry friend to be skinned into a bunny rabbit floor rug, you'll make sure it stays that way! Call back your lemmings and fight me yourself, girl!"
Alice finally snapped. She let out a scream and launched herself over the workshop railing, disappearing within a cloud of blue butterflies and dust that traveled up and along the surface of the globe, heading towards the Dollmaker. She reappeared inches in front of him with a swift strike of her Vorpal blade that caught him in the arm when he moved to dodge it. His shirt and skin ripped open to reveal black ooze underneath, causing it to stream down his arm, but the Dollmaker didn't so much as blink. When Alice pulled her arm back and readied herself for another attack, his arms reached out faster than a striking cobra and grabbed hold of the raging woman. With one quick, painful jerk of his hand, he manged to twist the wrist that Alice was holding her weapon with. She let out surprised yelp, her fingers instinctively releasing the handle of her blade. The knife hit the surface of the globe before sliding down the slanted surface and falling off the side of the globe, landing somewhere on the ground floor of the workshop with a distant thud.
With Alice now relatively disarmed, the Dollmaker gripped both of her wrists tightly, with unnatural strength a newly formed being like him shouldn't have had, before pinning her hands between their bodies with one arm while his other swooped down and wrapped around her narrow waist.
"If you harm him, I will murder you!" The struggling spirit screamed right in his face.
The demon only smirked again as his eyes traced over the features of his enemy's pretty face. They trailed all the way down her eyes, nose, and mouth until they reached her smooth, pale neck. His grip on her body tightened as he fantasized what her soft skin would look like covered in that oh-so seductive red color he desired to see her drained of.
"Mmmm, just as deliciously feisty as I remember," The Dollmaker purred sickeningly as he grabbed her face and held her chin in his palm before pulling her struggling body flush against his cold, lifeless one. Alice shivered in disgust at the feel of her body being pressed so intimately against that wicked bastard's. She renewed her struggles and fought to wedge her hands free.
"Hey! Get your hands off her!" Jack shouted furiously.
The Dollmaker ignored the annoying ice sprite, deciding to make a show of his dominance over Alice. She belonged to him now, his perfect little doll. They would soon learn this and realize that she was, and always had been, nothing but a lost cause. While still holding her chin firmly in his hand, the Dollmaker brought his face down to Alice's and obscenely dragged his dripping, black tongue across her skin. He dragged it slowly over her cheeks and mouth, leaving behind a thick coat of saliva. The disgusting violation caused the girl to shudder and whimper at the burning ooze of his beard as the monster lapped at her face like a sick dog.
All the guardians balked at the Dollmaker's shamelessness and utter audacity, none of them quite sure how to react to such a move. North let out a furious growl and stalked forward with his sabers held tightly in his hands, ready to take someone's head off, but stopped dead in his tracks when a flash of gold suddenly shot past him, nearly blinding him with its brightness.
The Dollmaker let out an inhuman roar as a perfectly aimed, dreamsand harpoon hit him square in the chest, impaling him straight through his black flesh. Surprised, the spirits still standing on the workshop balcony all looked behind them to see a certain golden spirit floating above their heads.
The Sandman looked more livid than any of the other guardians have ever seen him. His tiny fists were clutched tightly at his sides with his shoulders squared and a deep frown on his round face. The dreamsand floating around him flared along with his mood, almost like real flames, making the small spirit ten times more intimidating than any of his friends thought he could be.
As the eldest guardian, and one of the oldest spirits in existence, Sanderson could take a lot. So much so, he was practically the embodiment of "slow to anger, quick to forgive". In his position in life, he needed to be. He could take being ridiculed and poked fun at for his size and appearance. He could handle being the "voice" of reason in a heated four-way argument with his friends. He could take being hit, kicked, tossed around, and even shot in the back with a nightmare sand arrow. He even managed a controlled display of anger after coming face to face with his own murderer, Pitch Black.
But not even the painful memory of his own death fired him up as much as witnessing the sight of Alice being so blatantly violated by a disgusting abomination right in front of his eyes. Bunnymund would've never stood by and just watch it happen, and neither would he. Sandy wanted that creature's hands off her, immediately. Then, he wanted the monster to plead and burn for ever thinking he could get away with attacking the workshop, kidnapping Bunny, hurting Toothiana, insulting North, putting his hands on Alice, and underestimating the Sandman.
North let out a loud, triumphant laugh. "Nice shot, Sandy!"
The Dollmaker roared furiously as the dreamsand harpoon impaled him through the chest. He picked up a struggling Alice and raised her above his head before literally throwing her over the side of the globe like a sack of rocks, inciting Jack and Tooth to drive immediately after her and lift her back up on to the balcony.
With another vicious roar, the Dollmaker ripped the harpoon from his chest, letting the black ooze seeping from his shirt sleeve corrupt the golden sand, turning it to oily sludge. Then, he fixed Alice with a hateful, rage-laced glare before his eyeballs grew entirely black and boiling ooze begun to bleed from his now hollow eye-sockets, dripping down the front of his sweater vest, and on to the top of the globe, causing the solid wood to hiss and smoke.
"You insolent little bitch! You will never see that overgrown rodent alive again!"
And with nothing else, The Dollmaker dissolved yet again into a puddle of dark ooze, disappearing from sight beneath the carved wood of the globe. As soon as he was gone, the little lights stopped flickering and the globe slowly started to rotate again.
"Search the grounds!" North immediately commanded, pointing towards his yetis. "Make sure demon isn't hiding in workshop!"
The lead yeti gave his boss an obedient salute before garbling to his brothers in their yeti language. All at once, they raised their weapons above their heads and ran off to start their patrols.
"What the hell was that thing?" Jack asked.
"It's not one of Pitch's creations."
"How was it able to get in here?"
"Where did it come from?"
"Why did it take Bunny?"
Alice stood with her back towards the guardians again, only half listening to the numerous questions they fired off at each other. They scrambled for answers, but Alice already knew they wouldn't find any here. That was how the Dollmaker operated best. Just like his real world counterpart, the Dollmaker was careful when it came to his plans. He would allow himself to gloat and torture his victims while he waited for things to fall into place, but he would never actually reveal any true aspects of his evil deeds until they were already set into motion. He had nearly destroyed all of Wonderland by the time Alice finally put back together her fragmented memories, leaving her just barely enough time to stop him. One second longer and Bumby would've won and Alice would've been...She didn't even want to think about what would've happened to her if things had gone in Bumby's sick favor. The dry saliva on her face made her shiver violently at the mere thought.
"How does he know Alice?"
Alice's eyes snapped open at the question.
"Yeah...how does he know you?"
"Who is he, Alice?"
"What aren't you telling us?"
"Who was that man?"
Alice's pain and despair peaked and finally boiled over, causing an onslaught of emotions to hit her at once. "That man!? That man!? That was no man! That was a monster and I'll tell you exactly who that monster is!"
~O~
"You oozing sore of depravity! Children wearing numbers around their neck, as if they were breeding livestock!"
"It's a symbol of their pedigree."
"You brute! They can't remember who they are or where they come from!"
"I could've made you into a tasty bit! Clients out the door waiting for a piece from a raving, delusional beauty with no memory of the past and no sense of the future...you're mad! Just like you're sister!"
"Don't speak of her! You didn't know her!"
"You're sister was a tease. Pretended to despise me. She got what she wanted...in the end."
"And that noise wasn't Lizzie talking in her sleep."
"Oh no! Poor Lizzie!"
"Indeed? A hysterical woman, former lunatic, roaring outrageous accusations against a respectable social architect and scientist? My God, Alice. Who would believe you?"
"You monstrous creature! Such evil will be punished!"
"By whom? By what? Psychotic, silly bitch. Your madness will be punished. Now leave! I'm expecting your replacement."
"You raped my sister - murdered her! And killed my family to cover up your crime! You will pay!"
~O~
They all stared at her in silent horror as Alice spilled all her deep hidden secrets and unbridled hate for the monster who ruined her life. She stood before them, exposing the true facts of Bumby's sick nature, his crimes, the poor children who served as his victims, Alice's family, the night of the fire, Lizzie being raped and strangled, Alice's confrontation with Bumby at the station, the train...Alice pushing...Alice killing Bumby.
None of them knew what to say.
Not that it would've mattered otherwise though. Alice didn't want them to say anything. She turned away from their slack-jawed faces, no longer caring what they thought of her. Her frustration, worry, and pain had finally busted free from her control and she turned towards the only thing she felt she could rightfully project her anger on. She looked up at the huge, open skylight on the workshop's roof and glared at the shining moon floating peacefully up in the clear sky.
"This is your doing, isn't it! It's always been you! Since the very beginning, it's been you! You brought that despicable monster upon my sister! You brought upon my family's demise! You did it all so you could have me!"
The other guardians stood on the sidelines, giving each other panicked looks as Alice screamed at the Man in the Moon.
"Why are you tormenting me!?"
Jack quickly stepped forward and rested his hand on her shoulder "Alice-"
"Get off me!" She screamed, harshly ripping her shoulder away from him before turning to look back up at the moon. "Was my family not enough for you? Are you so ruthless that you would destroy one of your own creations just to drag me back down in the dark? Is that where you want me? Am I no use to you otherwise? Well then tell me, Mighty Man in the Moon, how am I now? Am I broken enough for you now!?"
The moon remained silent, forcing Alice to bellow like a child throwing a tantrum.
"Give him back to me!"
She suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.
"Alice!? Alice breathe!"
She could hear Jack's voice somewhere in the back of her mind, but his pleas were only white noise against the raw ugliness that tore its way through her heart and mind.
Bunny was gone because of her.
She said the most despicable thing she could think of, right to his face, all for a petty sense of satisfaction that wasn't all that satisfying in the end, and now he was gone.
He was taken from her by the same monster that took her family.
Another loved one, gone.
Alice barely felt the sharp pangs in her knee caps when her legs gave out from under her and she fell to her knees. She stared wide-eyed and breathless down at the ragged stuffed rabbit in her shaking hands. Her vision began to blur and her cheeks became wet as tears streamed down them. It wasn't until she blinked and tiny dewdrops of moisture blossomed across the worn face of her beloved toy rabbit, that everything came crashing down.
And when it did, Alice was no longer aware of anyone else in the room.
"My true punishment has finally come, hasn't it?"
She shut her eyes tight against the heart-throbbing devastation that racked her suddenly fragile body, and wrapped her arms tightly around the old toy as she felt her limbs go cold and the color red erupted behind her eyelids.
She opened her mouth and screamed her pain.
AN: Okay, I lied. That was a little interesting. I really wanted the guardians to see how truly disgusting the Dollmaker was. To see how infinitely worse he is compared to the Boogeyman. Pitch, despite being manipulative, isn't necessarily a very sick individual. Or at least, not in the same sense as Bumby/Dollmaker. Even when angry, Pitch still holds his cocky class. I imagine Bumby being a zero-to-hundred anger type of person. You know, charming doctor one minute - sickest son of a bitch ever the next.
The Dollmaker has two forms in this story. The first one is how we see him in Madness Returns, ooze dripping from his eye sockets and beard. That's his "Shit's going down" form. His other form, which is how it is described in this chapter; a zombie-like version of Dr. Bumby. This is the form he takes when he's in a neutral state of mood and mind.
Also, SO SORRY about the Russian in this chapter. I probably totally butchered and insulted the Russian language. What the Dollmaker says to North is basically "Stay out of this Ruski pig". I did my best to get close to that in this chapter. Sorry to any Russian fans I might have out there.
Anyways, Happy New Years suckers! :P*
~Scorpiofreak~