The following night she walked around her home, distracted by memories that she didn't want to keep. She'd awoken at roughly midnight by the sound of screaming, and had bolted up. Afterwards, she'd felt sick and couldn't stay in bed anymore. She'd walked around, but more and more did her own world become alien to her. She heard the screaming again, and this time, it was disturbingly familiar, and even more disturbingly close.
She wandered into the family room, the one room in the house that had really been unchanged, despite the fact that it had burned the most. She picked a point and stared at it, and two little children appeared in front of her, aged nine and playing jacks. "I knew you'd win, you always beat me," the boy laughed. His sandy blond hair was worn just long enough to brush his collar. She fingered her own shortened locks, finally growing back, and wondered why she'd awoken in Rutledge's with her hair chopped off halfway through.
"I get more practise, I've told you," laughed the girl, scooping up three and catching the ball. Faith stared at the two of them, and became slowly aware of the fact that she wasn't the only one. Jeremy, aged eighteen and tall, reclined on the couch, his eyes fixed on the two. Once she became aware of him, he looked up, grinning slightly.
"Cute kids," he said, unmoving. The two played on, oblivious.
"Yes, quite," she said. Was this normal, having conversations with your dead brother? No, it couldn't be. Jeremy was dead, he had to be. She'd seen him, seen the firemen dragging him out. She was gonna be hysterical in a few minutes, if she didn't get a hold on herself. But it was Jeremy... oh, oh lord. She reassured herself that it was just some hallucination, brought on by the crazy events of the day; that he would go away after a few minutes. Instead, he stared into her eyes, and she knew that he was real. Silently she began to hyperventilate. Oh god, she was cracking up.
"Kind of remind me of someone we knew," he drawled. She laughed quietly, outwardly unbelievably calm, still not quite believing what was happening.
"Yes, they do, don't they?"
He looked over at them once again, then back at her. "So, how's Wonderland's rescue going?" he asked. At her blank expression, he smiled. He did that quite a bit. "Forget?" he asked. She nodded. "You were rescuing Wonderland from the White Queen, weren't you?"
"No, I don't think that's quite right," she replied, frowning.
"Of course not," he said gamely. "Then it must have been that old Countess. Always knew she was a troublemaker."
She shook her head again. The side of his mouth quirked in a grin. He knew perfectly well who it was.
"Well then, who were you rescuing Wonderland from, Faith?"
"I was rescuing it from... from someone, I know that." He laughed.
"Wonderland only had two real enemies, you know." His voice was light, but his eyes had become quite serious all of a sudden. "You've gotta remember who, though."
"Two? No, wasn't there just one?" He paused, thinking.
"Depends on how you look at it," he finally said. He was quiet. "Faith, you're part of everyone in Wonderland, you know that. That's because Wonderland IS you."
She nodded. Wonderland was her. Maybe that's why she hadn't been there since the hypnosis- because she wasn't herself. Her self was lost somewhere.
"Now that's settled," he said cheerfully. "Now, who're you saving it from?" He sat up a bit, crossing his legs under him. When she couldn't answer, he leaned back. "Tell me a story," he said. "Tell me a story about Wonderland, like you did eight years ago. We're eighteen now; did you notice?"
She laughed and nodded, and started telling one. Once again, toward the middle it kept getting darker and more demented, and he kept urging her on. She stopped and listened to the little girl seated on the floor saying a rhyme. "One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, lock the door, five, six, throw the sticks, seven, eight..."
"OFF WITH HER HEAD!!" a woman yelled. Faith saw the blade of a spear coming down at her and she threw herself aside, landing with a thud a little ways from the kids. She shook her head rapidly, and saw Jeremy, looking down at her and rather confused.
"This is wrong," she moaned. "This is very wrong."
The little girl had continued on with her story, not seeing Faith clumsily sitting less than four feet away. "And then the Queen of Hearts told them to cut my head off!" she said to the little boy. His eyes widened, as did Faith's.
"The Queen," she whispered. "The Red Queen."
Jeremy nodded, looking up at her. "And you know why you have to fight her, right?"
"To heal Wonderland," she said. He nodded again, but it was more of a disappointed half nod. She remembered back to what she and Halden had talked about. "To heal Wonderland... and myself." Big nod.
"Great job," he said, his grin a mile wide. She stared at him, suddenly unable to return it.
"This is wrong, Jeremy. This is really wrong."
"Why?" he was confused all of a sudden. "How is it wrong?"
"Jeremy, you're dead," she said in a strained voice. "You died in the fire. That little boy, sitting there, he's gonna die the day before his tenth birthday. You shouldn't be here, you're dead..."
Jeremy sighed and leaned his head against the back of the couch. He patted the cushion beside him, and she walked over and sat down, staring moodily at the children. "Faith, in your mind, I'm still alive and as a part of you as anything else. It's like... argh, I'm not entirely sure how to explain it," he said, with a quirky, frustrated grin. "You know that I'm dead, but I don't stay that way for you."
"Why?"
"I think it has to do with a little promise I made the month before the fire. You remember? I promised you I'd always be there for you after you almost drowned."
"You saved me," she remembered, thinking back to it. "Mum told us not to go too far out into the river because of the undertow. I went too far and you pulled me out."
"And I promised I'd be there whenever you needed me."
"And when I was in Wonderland..."
"With only a pompous kitty and an erratic bunny for company..."
"I remembered your promise..."
"And that you needed me then."
Even if she hadn't been conscious of it at the time; in truth, she'd forgot his promise about three months after Reynald had arrived in Rutledge; she probably had realised her loneliness, and had called on him.
"I missed you," she said quietly. "I thought you'd forgotten."
"Nah," he said, taking her hand. "I'm your big brother, born a whole two minutes ahead of you."
She laughed. "Yeah, big whoop there."
"You resented it at age nine."
"Well of course I did," she said, laughing. "You exerted your seniority all the time."
"So, whatever became of your good friend the Countess?" he asked, changing the subject. Faith frowned.
"I killed her."
"How?" he pretended to be surprised. He was convincing, but she knew him too well to be fooled.
"It was in a fight. She was trying to eat me, I believe. She ate the Mock Turtle, Cook and Baby," she said, sadly.
"And who were they?"
"Well, the Mock Turtle had been around since Alice's time. Cook was this young man, great cook, but used way too much pepper for my tastes. And Baby was this little old lady that was so old and so tiny that Cook was carrying her around all of the time."
"Gross! She ate an old woman?"
"She would have eaten me too," Faith pointed out. "She was bonkers!"
"What did she tell you?" he asked. "That really made you think?"
"She told me that I wasn't ever satisfied with anything that anyone else thought up," she remembered. He nodded.
"Did it make you think?" She nodded. "How?"
"Well, I'd told a lot of people before then that I didn't like the way things were being done," she pointed out, "whether there was a real problem with the idea or not. I didn't do that so much afterwards."
"I'd love to go over the entire roster of villains with you, but I think you can figure that out on your own." He looked around. "They really haven't changed anything here, have they?"
"They changed your room," she said quietly. His head snapped over to look at her.
"They did? How?"
"It's not a bedroom anymore," she explained. "It's empty."
"Whatever for?" he seemed to be indecisive about whether to be insulted or just very confused.
"The original plan had for it to be a... a rec room, of sorts. There'd be a TV, a stereo system, a dartboard... just loads of stuff. But it didn't feel right to me. I couldn't enjoy anything in there, 'cos I knew that you weren't there to enjoy it with me."
"Aw, that's rather sweet, if you think about it," he said thoughtfully. "If our situations were reversed... yeah, I'd feel wrong about doing the same for yours."
If our situations were reversed... Maybe we saved the wrong one... It was a miracle anyone survived that fire. Something pushing her away from the spot where the beam would have fallen. It had missed Jeremy, too, but only just barely, and he'd been on the floor, choking too badly to speak anymore.
"How did it feel," she asked softly, almost afraid to know, "when you called for me but I didn't turn back?"
"Some questions are better left unanswered," he said, uncharacteristically shortly. She looked up at him, and he sighed. "I felt like you'd betrayed me, I guess. I kept trying to tell myself that you didn't hear me, and that you thought I'd escaped."
"I did," she said quietly, but as she talked, she got faster, and more hysteric. "I prayed that you'd escaped, I prayed so hard, Jeremy. Then I got out and the fireman looked at me and I saw his eyes and I looked around and you didn't get out in time. I fell down... then one of them went in and came back out and he had something in his arms and I couldn't tell what it was and they all gathered round but they said it was hopeless and they couldn't wake him up..." she couldn't go on; it hurt too much to say.
Jeremy sat there, staring at the fireplace. He didn't speak for a while.
"I wouldn't have gone insane if you'd lived," she said, finally trusting herself to speak again. "I thought that you'd betrayed me too, and Reynald only encouraged that thought when he realised it could hurt me."
"He... used me against you?" his voice quavered. She nodded, struggling to hold back tears. He shook his head, brushing away a few tears of his own, and laughed. It was shaky though, and forced. "Can't expect much less from that bastard," he said cynically. "And when I thought he couldn't possibly sink lower..."
"There's no limit to just how low he'll go," she scoffed. "There'll be no rock bottom for him."
He nodded. "So. How much help have dear old Kitty and Halden been?"
"...Kitty?"
"Off course. The Cheshire Cat. Cheshire Kitt Mara Danlor-Wend, the eighth."
She thought. The man- she knew him so well, and she had met him a grand total of twice. And he knew her, too. She wondered just how well she knew him after all. Those amber eyes; they'd flashed gold in the fading light at the cemetery. Weren't they gold, anyway? The face, it was nice, but it was all wrong. His face shouldn't have even been human. She tried to place it, and thought back to the Cheshire Cat in the table. Yes. That was right, not his human face.
"D'you remember?"
"Halden said it would be a gradual thing, not all at once," she countered. Jeremy shook his head.
"This is Wonderland, Faith. If you remember one thing about it, everything else is gonna follow. You're not cured."
"But I should be," she said, frowning. He shook his head again, this time a bit more emphatically.
"No- you left off halfway to sanity, Faith. You have to finish the journey in order to be a hundred per cent cured."
"But I can't get there while I'm still under the drugs' influence."
"Yes you can."
"How?" her head snapped up, and he met her eyes calmly.
"I can take you."
Her hand reached for his, and stopped. "But how? You're dead."
"I'm in your mind, Faith. I can take you back to yourself."
"I can't," she said, in a suddenly dead voice. "It's gone." Jeremy frowned.
"What d'you mean?" She stared into his face.
"Don't you remember what all the adults used to tell us? How it came at seven and left at seventeen? Seventeen was when Alice lost it because she was hypnotised. Nobody's been able to go back after they turn seventeen."
"That's because nobody's saved it yet."
"But it's too late for me, Jeremy. I can't go back."
"Yes, you can." She looked up. "I can take you there."
"How? What's the point?"
"Because you got so far, Faith. And the hypnosis is wearing off. The reason none of the others could get back was because they had no way to get back. I'm your bridge there, Faith." He looked earnestly into her eyes. "Trust me."
She nodded.
"Take me there, Jeremy. Take me back to Wonderland." His usual grin broke out, and he extended his hand. She took it, and suddenly it seemed as though they were moving in fast forward. The raccoon darted in, the children didn't notice... the fire; it started burning. It encircled them, consumed them without touching them, and she clung to Jeremy's hand, watching the ceiling beam fall and nearly hit her, and she saw the brown streak shove her out of the way and vanish. Then they were back in the stone chamber, and she saw herself run up. Jeremy looked at the doors and tried one, then dashed out, slamming it as smoke poured in, thicker than the smoke from the family room. He choked and fell, and she dashed in, colliding with him and falling. He yelled for her, but it got lost in the smoke and his choking.
Jeremy screamed and screamed and she wanted to join him but it stuck in her throat. The other beam crashed down, stirring up the dust in the room with the smoke. Jeremy was trying to choke out her name, but he couldn't get the sound out... Then she saw herself leave, and she felt Jeremy's betrayal. She had been a foot away from him. The fireman came in, a wet rag at his mouth, and found Jeremy, and picked the limp body up.
Then they were in Rutledge's, and she watched herself responding to Doctor Levan, and then one day he didn't come back. Instead there was a new doctor that she instinctually didn't like or trust. Reynald.
She saw more years pass, faster, and she saw the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit in her cell, talking. Then the doctors sped past, Hamilton Davidson Farush Jacobson and all the others. Then Halden, and suddenly she was whooshing through a void, and Wonderland was before her.
She wandered into the family room, the one room in the house that had really been unchanged, despite the fact that it had burned the most. She picked a point and stared at it, and two little children appeared in front of her, aged nine and playing jacks. "I knew you'd win, you always beat me," the boy laughed. His sandy blond hair was worn just long enough to brush his collar. She fingered her own shortened locks, finally growing back, and wondered why she'd awoken in Rutledge's with her hair chopped off halfway through.
"I get more practise, I've told you," laughed the girl, scooping up three and catching the ball. Faith stared at the two of them, and became slowly aware of the fact that she wasn't the only one. Jeremy, aged eighteen and tall, reclined on the couch, his eyes fixed on the two. Once she became aware of him, he looked up, grinning slightly.
"Cute kids," he said, unmoving. The two played on, oblivious.
"Yes, quite," she said. Was this normal, having conversations with your dead brother? No, it couldn't be. Jeremy was dead, he had to be. She'd seen him, seen the firemen dragging him out. She was gonna be hysterical in a few minutes, if she didn't get a hold on herself. But it was Jeremy... oh, oh lord. She reassured herself that it was just some hallucination, brought on by the crazy events of the day; that he would go away after a few minutes. Instead, he stared into her eyes, and she knew that he was real. Silently she began to hyperventilate. Oh god, she was cracking up.
"Kind of remind me of someone we knew," he drawled. She laughed quietly, outwardly unbelievably calm, still not quite believing what was happening.
"Yes, they do, don't they?"
He looked over at them once again, then back at her. "So, how's Wonderland's rescue going?" he asked. At her blank expression, he smiled. He did that quite a bit. "Forget?" he asked. She nodded. "You were rescuing Wonderland from the White Queen, weren't you?"
"No, I don't think that's quite right," she replied, frowning.
"Of course not," he said gamely. "Then it must have been that old Countess. Always knew she was a troublemaker."
She shook her head again. The side of his mouth quirked in a grin. He knew perfectly well who it was.
"Well then, who were you rescuing Wonderland from, Faith?"
"I was rescuing it from... from someone, I know that." He laughed.
"Wonderland only had two real enemies, you know." His voice was light, but his eyes had become quite serious all of a sudden. "You've gotta remember who, though."
"Two? No, wasn't there just one?" He paused, thinking.
"Depends on how you look at it," he finally said. He was quiet. "Faith, you're part of everyone in Wonderland, you know that. That's because Wonderland IS you."
She nodded. Wonderland was her. Maybe that's why she hadn't been there since the hypnosis- because she wasn't herself. Her self was lost somewhere.
"Now that's settled," he said cheerfully. "Now, who're you saving it from?" He sat up a bit, crossing his legs under him. When she couldn't answer, he leaned back. "Tell me a story," he said. "Tell me a story about Wonderland, like you did eight years ago. We're eighteen now; did you notice?"
She laughed and nodded, and started telling one. Once again, toward the middle it kept getting darker and more demented, and he kept urging her on. She stopped and listened to the little girl seated on the floor saying a rhyme. "One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, lock the door, five, six, throw the sticks, seven, eight..."
"OFF WITH HER HEAD!!" a woman yelled. Faith saw the blade of a spear coming down at her and she threw herself aside, landing with a thud a little ways from the kids. She shook her head rapidly, and saw Jeremy, looking down at her and rather confused.
"This is wrong," she moaned. "This is very wrong."
The little girl had continued on with her story, not seeing Faith clumsily sitting less than four feet away. "And then the Queen of Hearts told them to cut my head off!" she said to the little boy. His eyes widened, as did Faith's.
"The Queen," she whispered. "The Red Queen."
Jeremy nodded, looking up at her. "And you know why you have to fight her, right?"
"To heal Wonderland," she said. He nodded again, but it was more of a disappointed half nod. She remembered back to what she and Halden had talked about. "To heal Wonderland... and myself." Big nod.
"Great job," he said, his grin a mile wide. She stared at him, suddenly unable to return it.
"This is wrong, Jeremy. This is really wrong."
"Why?" he was confused all of a sudden. "How is it wrong?"
"Jeremy, you're dead," she said in a strained voice. "You died in the fire. That little boy, sitting there, he's gonna die the day before his tenth birthday. You shouldn't be here, you're dead..."
Jeremy sighed and leaned his head against the back of the couch. He patted the cushion beside him, and she walked over and sat down, staring moodily at the children. "Faith, in your mind, I'm still alive and as a part of you as anything else. It's like... argh, I'm not entirely sure how to explain it," he said, with a quirky, frustrated grin. "You know that I'm dead, but I don't stay that way for you."
"Why?"
"I think it has to do with a little promise I made the month before the fire. You remember? I promised you I'd always be there for you after you almost drowned."
"You saved me," she remembered, thinking back to it. "Mum told us not to go too far out into the river because of the undertow. I went too far and you pulled me out."
"And I promised I'd be there whenever you needed me."
"And when I was in Wonderland..."
"With only a pompous kitty and an erratic bunny for company..."
"I remembered your promise..."
"And that you needed me then."
Even if she hadn't been conscious of it at the time; in truth, she'd forgot his promise about three months after Reynald had arrived in Rutledge; she probably had realised her loneliness, and had called on him.
"I missed you," she said quietly. "I thought you'd forgotten."
"Nah," he said, taking her hand. "I'm your big brother, born a whole two minutes ahead of you."
She laughed. "Yeah, big whoop there."
"You resented it at age nine."
"Well of course I did," she said, laughing. "You exerted your seniority all the time."
"So, whatever became of your good friend the Countess?" he asked, changing the subject. Faith frowned.
"I killed her."
"How?" he pretended to be surprised. He was convincing, but she knew him too well to be fooled.
"It was in a fight. She was trying to eat me, I believe. She ate the Mock Turtle, Cook and Baby," she said, sadly.
"And who were they?"
"Well, the Mock Turtle had been around since Alice's time. Cook was this young man, great cook, but used way too much pepper for my tastes. And Baby was this little old lady that was so old and so tiny that Cook was carrying her around all of the time."
"Gross! She ate an old woman?"
"She would have eaten me too," Faith pointed out. "She was bonkers!"
"What did she tell you?" he asked. "That really made you think?"
"She told me that I wasn't ever satisfied with anything that anyone else thought up," she remembered. He nodded.
"Did it make you think?" She nodded. "How?"
"Well, I'd told a lot of people before then that I didn't like the way things were being done," she pointed out, "whether there was a real problem with the idea or not. I didn't do that so much afterwards."
"I'd love to go over the entire roster of villains with you, but I think you can figure that out on your own." He looked around. "They really haven't changed anything here, have they?"
"They changed your room," she said quietly. His head snapped over to look at her.
"They did? How?"
"It's not a bedroom anymore," she explained. "It's empty."
"Whatever for?" he seemed to be indecisive about whether to be insulted or just very confused.
"The original plan had for it to be a... a rec room, of sorts. There'd be a TV, a stereo system, a dartboard... just loads of stuff. But it didn't feel right to me. I couldn't enjoy anything in there, 'cos I knew that you weren't there to enjoy it with me."
"Aw, that's rather sweet, if you think about it," he said thoughtfully. "If our situations were reversed... yeah, I'd feel wrong about doing the same for yours."
If our situations were reversed... Maybe we saved the wrong one... It was a miracle anyone survived that fire. Something pushing her away from the spot where the beam would have fallen. It had missed Jeremy, too, but only just barely, and he'd been on the floor, choking too badly to speak anymore.
"How did it feel," she asked softly, almost afraid to know, "when you called for me but I didn't turn back?"
"Some questions are better left unanswered," he said, uncharacteristically shortly. She looked up at him, and he sighed. "I felt like you'd betrayed me, I guess. I kept trying to tell myself that you didn't hear me, and that you thought I'd escaped."
"I did," she said quietly, but as she talked, she got faster, and more hysteric. "I prayed that you'd escaped, I prayed so hard, Jeremy. Then I got out and the fireman looked at me and I saw his eyes and I looked around and you didn't get out in time. I fell down... then one of them went in and came back out and he had something in his arms and I couldn't tell what it was and they all gathered round but they said it was hopeless and they couldn't wake him up..." she couldn't go on; it hurt too much to say.
Jeremy sat there, staring at the fireplace. He didn't speak for a while.
"I wouldn't have gone insane if you'd lived," she said, finally trusting herself to speak again. "I thought that you'd betrayed me too, and Reynald only encouraged that thought when he realised it could hurt me."
"He... used me against you?" his voice quavered. She nodded, struggling to hold back tears. He shook his head, brushing away a few tears of his own, and laughed. It was shaky though, and forced. "Can't expect much less from that bastard," he said cynically. "And when I thought he couldn't possibly sink lower..."
"There's no limit to just how low he'll go," she scoffed. "There'll be no rock bottom for him."
He nodded. "So. How much help have dear old Kitty and Halden been?"
"...Kitty?"
"Off course. The Cheshire Cat. Cheshire Kitt Mara Danlor-Wend, the eighth."
She thought. The man- she knew him so well, and she had met him a grand total of twice. And he knew her, too. She wondered just how well she knew him after all. Those amber eyes; they'd flashed gold in the fading light at the cemetery. Weren't they gold, anyway? The face, it was nice, but it was all wrong. His face shouldn't have even been human. She tried to place it, and thought back to the Cheshire Cat in the table. Yes. That was right, not his human face.
"D'you remember?"
"Halden said it would be a gradual thing, not all at once," she countered. Jeremy shook his head.
"This is Wonderland, Faith. If you remember one thing about it, everything else is gonna follow. You're not cured."
"But I should be," she said, frowning. He shook his head again, this time a bit more emphatically.
"No- you left off halfway to sanity, Faith. You have to finish the journey in order to be a hundred per cent cured."
"But I can't get there while I'm still under the drugs' influence."
"Yes you can."
"How?" her head snapped up, and he met her eyes calmly.
"I can take you."
Her hand reached for his, and stopped. "But how? You're dead."
"I'm in your mind, Faith. I can take you back to yourself."
"I can't," she said, in a suddenly dead voice. "It's gone." Jeremy frowned.
"What d'you mean?" She stared into his face.
"Don't you remember what all the adults used to tell us? How it came at seven and left at seventeen? Seventeen was when Alice lost it because she was hypnotised. Nobody's been able to go back after they turn seventeen."
"That's because nobody's saved it yet."
"But it's too late for me, Jeremy. I can't go back."
"Yes, you can." She looked up. "I can take you there."
"How? What's the point?"
"Because you got so far, Faith. And the hypnosis is wearing off. The reason none of the others could get back was because they had no way to get back. I'm your bridge there, Faith." He looked earnestly into her eyes. "Trust me."
She nodded.
"Take me there, Jeremy. Take me back to Wonderland." His usual grin broke out, and he extended his hand. She took it, and suddenly it seemed as though they were moving in fast forward. The raccoon darted in, the children didn't notice... the fire; it started burning. It encircled them, consumed them without touching them, and she clung to Jeremy's hand, watching the ceiling beam fall and nearly hit her, and she saw the brown streak shove her out of the way and vanish. Then they were back in the stone chamber, and she saw herself run up. Jeremy looked at the doors and tried one, then dashed out, slamming it as smoke poured in, thicker than the smoke from the family room. He choked and fell, and she dashed in, colliding with him and falling. He yelled for her, but it got lost in the smoke and his choking.
Jeremy screamed and screamed and she wanted to join him but it stuck in her throat. The other beam crashed down, stirring up the dust in the room with the smoke. Jeremy was trying to choke out her name, but he couldn't get the sound out... Then she saw herself leave, and she felt Jeremy's betrayal. She had been a foot away from him. The fireman came in, a wet rag at his mouth, and found Jeremy, and picked the limp body up.
Then they were in Rutledge's, and she watched herself responding to Doctor Levan, and then one day he didn't come back. Instead there was a new doctor that she instinctually didn't like or trust. Reynald.
She saw more years pass, faster, and she saw the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit in her cell, talking. Then the doctors sped past, Hamilton Davidson Farush Jacobson and all the others. Then Halden, and suddenly she was whooshing through a void, and Wonderland was before her.