Chapter II: Flower Power! (POV) - Time

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

So, I'm not dead - though it did feel like it for a few weeks there. I am now a University Graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. Thank fuck that shit's over. Currently looking for a years worth of experience supervised by an accredited clinical psychologist so I can do my Ph.D (which is needed to become a Clinical Psychologist in England). I'm looking to have everything I currently have uploaded plus two more at least at the end of act 2 by the end of that year of experience. The LiS fandom will probably have trickled down to just me and NothingYouCanProve by then, but I promised this shit would be finished and it damn well will be.

On a more specific note, this chapter was ridiculously hard, not to write, but to edit. Trying to stop Chloe from saying hella was nigh bloody impossible. It's so integrated into my mental voice for her that it keeps popping up without me thinking about it and I keep mentally growling and muttering cursewords under my breath while I erase it. Also, this is the first deviation from the original game. The cat doesn't talk in the game, but I played Alice: Madness Returns a while back and thought the talking cat might be fun.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

"Woah."

The mosaic preened. "Why thank you. I do so often get compliments on my form." A couple of the cats making up the nose start to groom themselves. "Though it has been awhile since the last visitor came by."

I blinked at the thing. "You're a lot of cats."

"I am indeed." It crooned, "The Maker saw how solitary my kind were, and he ensured that we would never be alone."

"The Maker..?" Max chimed in, joining me in peering curiously at the mosaic cat. It made balancing a little difficult, but I forced myself to lighten up on her a bit. If she wanted to look at the cat, then she'd damn well get to look at the cat. It was fucking hell on my spine though.

"The one who made this place, this nightmare, and all of us within it. The Great Jefferson." The vertical cats eyes blinked, and all the pictures within them blinked together. That was weird.

"Jefferson made you?" Max gawked at the cat(s?) in totally adorable joy. "Wow. Did he do something special to make you, y'know, alive, or did it just happen?"

The cat(s?) shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea. One moment we were not, the next we were, along with everything in the Gallery."

"Wow." Max said again, still gawking.

I grinned. She really was cute when she was all happy.

She shuffled and the movement sent a twinge of pain up my spine. I did try to keep the squeak of pain quiet, but Max heard me and turned her head to look at me. "Chloe, are you- Oh, no! Did I hurt you, I'm sorry, what can I do-"

I cut her off before the babble could really get going. "I'm fine, Maxie. Just my back aching a bit."

"Oh, okay. Do you wanna sit down, then?"

Well, it'd let Maxie keep talkin' to the cat and I could not hurt so much, so... yeah. Good idea. "Sure, Maxie. Just over there'll be okay."

The cat tilts its head and a few of the cats in the pictures slide with the motion, flopping onto the walls. If we could hear them, I'm pretty sure they'd be meowing angrily. "Oh my. You are injured?"

"Yeah," I grunt. "One of the weird fucking wall hand things got me."

"Ah, yes. The Grasping Darknesses. A metaphor for the less sordid parts of civilization, and their ability to drag others into their shadow. Do you have a flower yet?"

I groan. I knew those things were fucking important. "Yeah..."

"May I see it? I do promise I won't try take to it from you."

I shrug and pull the flower out of my bag. It looks pretty much the same, but I think it maybe lost a few petals? I can't really tell. The Cat's eyes narrow and it stares at the flower and it feels like it's looking into my soul. I very quickly decide that I should take the utmost fucking care of this flower possible. Whatever it is, it's linked to me somehow.

"You are indeed hurt, but there is a simple solution."

It pauses, blinking at us. I swallow a growl of frustration and try to be direct without pissing this thing off. Also wondering how the plant told the cat that. Can the plant do that mind talking thing? Telephonesis or whatever? "Okay. What is it?"

"The Warriors of Mercy. You must seek them out and ask their assistance. They are bound to aid you, so the asking will be enough, unlike some of the other portraits around here."

Max frowns and scrunches up her nose. "The Warriors of Mercy? I don't think I know that one."

"One of the Maker's lesser known works, yes. You may recognise them by their garb and their transportation, that of the white metals and red flashing orbs."

I join Max in the confused frown. "Their what? I don't- oh, you mean EMTs."

The Cat shrugs. It's kind of hilarious. All the little cats jump up at once. Fuckin' d'aww. "Perhaps. Return to the Grasping Darknesses and take the other door. You will find the Warriors in the wing there."

Max and I both speak at the same time. "You want us to go back there?", "But the door's locked!"

The Cat shrugs, sending its shoulder-cats up in little Mexican waves again. "It will be no longer. Your way will be clear."

I wave vaguely at my leg. "And you're sure they'll be able to do somethin' with this?"

The cat nods. "Yes."

"Ugh. Okay. I guess we'll go."

"Excellent," The Cat croons. "Then hurry. The Gallery has not had visitors in a very long time, and we will all find you most... enticing."

"Seriously, I fucking hate this corridor," I mutter, dodging past another shadowy arm trying to make a grab for my ankles. Max just chuckles and shakes her head, keeping her arm wrapped tightly around me.

The other green door was unlocked, just like the cat said, so we push it open and walk right in. This 'wing' of the gallery was just as dark as the last one. Meaning the general wing, not the shadowy corridor. Most of it was photos of carvings and statues and shit like that. Max pointed at one with a grin - an ancient looking stone guy sat in a diner booth - apparently the 'Last Diner', before looking away and peering curiously at another one. Not sure if that was a pun or not. Probably, if Max liked it. Love that girl, but her sense of humour is- oh fuck! The stone guy moved! He fucking moved! I growl at him, and his head turns as he stops staring at Max and starts staring at me instead. I shiver a little, but at least he's on me and not her now.

We skitter hastily past him and up to another turn. The left corridor kept straight for awhile before disappearing off to the left. The right went straight and then stopped at another wall. The door there was red. "Hey, Maxie. Let's try over there. The Cat Bastard didn't give us decent directions," And I didn't think to ask "So, we gotta get nosy here."

Max nods. "Okay." She supports me over to the door and I push on it. It opens easily. Booyah. Go me and - aww. It's just a storage room. There's a bunch of crates straight outta Crash Bandicoot, a few actual statues, and a bunch more pictures on the wall. "Do you think the picture is in here?"

I shrug again - another pang of pain, fuckin' ow. "Could be. We'd better check, just in case."

So, she helps us in, and we head over to one of the crates. Didn't even need to spin-attack it - or use a crowbar- as the top comes right off. The box was entirely filled with dirty, uh... "Max?"

"Yes, Chloe?"

"What're these things called? They're the painter boards, right?"

She nods. "Yep. They're called Palettes. You put paints on them, mix paints on them. They're pretty cool. Makes you look like a real artiste." She puts her hand up the way everyone does when they do a shitty French accent. Fuck, I hope the French don't know about that. Mom and Dad wanna go to Paris some day and they do that shit too. If they do that when they get there, there's gonna be all sorts of shit going down.

"Good to know. Thanks Maxie, always a trove of useless, but interesting knowledge."

She beams, ducks her head as she blushes. I chuckle and keep looking for a picture of paramedics. Nope, nope, photo of a building, photo of three buildings, photo of a hot chick with a guitar, photo of a topless chick with a guitar - oh. I tilt my head. Damn, girl. Work that Stratocaster.

Max nudges me and coughs deliberately.

I shake my head and tear my eyes away from the picture. "Yeah, Maxie?" I flash her a roguish smirk.

She just chuckles and shakes her head fondly.

The rest of the room was pretty clear. "Our picture's not in here."

"Apparently not."

We turn to leave and the already low lights flicker out. Something rumbles behind us and my stomach drops into my feet. Which was kind of inconvenient, 'cause I was already having trouble using the damn things.

"Run." I say, and boy, do we fuckin' run. Even hobbling three-legged, we make pretty decent time. We slam the door shut behind us and keep going, only looking back when we get at least halfway down the opposite (left) corridor. The door looks like it's cracking as whatever was rumbling slams into it, over and over.

Yeah. We should probably run more.

We take the next left and go through another red door, this time ending up in a proper gallery space. There's a bunch of standing partition thingies with curtains on, and another door in the back. This one is green. I turn around and close the red door, gulping when it vanishes to be replaced by a weirdly empty display area. It looks like someone set up a place to hang something and then... well, didn't.

I mentally shrug. At least the storage room monster can't follow us anymore.

I turn back to look at the rest of the room. Max is practically quivering with anticipation under my arm. It's kinda painful, to be honest, but the look on her face is totally worth it. I let her drag me over to the nearest set of wall-curtains and she tries to open them with the annoying little cord to one side.

Nothing.

She gives a little sound of frustration and yanks at it again.

Still nothing.

I leave her to it, mentally, anyway, and start looking around the room. If the curtains don't open, there's gotta be something to trigger 'em, right? If Maxie wants to look under the curtains, then I'm gonna find that trigger. Unfortunately, this room has marked fuckin' lack of helpfully labelled big red buttons. Guess Jefferson read the Evil Overlord list.

Suddenly, I feel a slight tap on my shoulder - the one opposite Maxie. I twist my head around, trying to peer behind me without bothering Maxie, and spot a new thing. It's... a stick figure. Huh. "Did not expect to see one of those in a gallery."

Max hmms. "Hmm?"

"There's a stick figure. Looks like someone drew it on a wall with chalk or something."

She almost whirls around, completely unbalancing me and it's everything I can possibly do to actually stay upright as I cartwheel my arm like a lunatic and bend my spine in ways that it really shouldn't go. "What? Where? Wh- oh. There. Can we..?"

I let her drag me again, over to the picture of the stickman. "Heya Henry."

"What?"

"Nothing. What is it, anyway?"

She gives me an arch look. "It's a stick figure."

I groan. "Well, yeah, I knew that. I just thought that you'd know what it was called, what with your encyclopaedic knowledge of this dude's stuff."

She shrugs. "No idea. I don't think it's a picture of his."

The minute she says that, the lights flicker and a familiar blob of photo development fluid appears below the wall. We blink and it shapes into words. 'Want to play?'

Huh. "Do we wanna play?"

Max beams. "I think so!"

Again, almost instantly as she finishes talking, the lights flicker, and the blob changes again. 'Check the curtains. Come and find me!'

Max grins happily. "Hide and seek! I love hide and seek!" She did. And she was good at it, too. Came with being small and sneaky and too fucking patient. She could cram herself into the tiniest, spine-crushing space possible and stay there for hours without making a sound. Drove me, mom, and her parents crazy. Dad loved it. Lunatic.

So, off we went to one of the curtains. I had no idea why she'd picked this one, but hey. I trust Maxie. Admittedly though, when she opens the curtains and we find a photo of Max, suspended to a ceiling by a rope around her ankle and with blood pouring down her face from her slit throat, that trust does... wobble a little. It's a disturbing photo, to say the least.

Max gasps and buries her face into my chest. "Oh god, Chloe." She stutters out, the fear in her voice slightly muffled by my clothes.

"Don't worry about it, Maxie," I try "It's just this place fuckin' with us. You're okay, I'm awesome-" She giggles. "and everything is gonna be fine. Just, try again."

She nods, and we head over to another set of curtains. The cord for this one is on my side, so... "I got it."

I yank the cord, and get an eyeful. The photo is of a naked woman, leg perched on a bathtub, razor in hand. There's a moment of ogling before the woman shrieks, and I feel the flash of pain of a slap to the face before the curtains slam shut.

We both stare in silence for a second or two before moving the hell on.

The next set of curtains, mercifully, opens to show the stick figure. The thing looks like it's grinning in delight. There's another flicker from the lights and more development fluid appears below the stick figure. 'You win! Now turn around and collect your prize!'

We turn around.

I sigh in relief. The warriors of whatever was now on the wall, in the mysterious display area where the door used to be. Max beams. "We found it!"

"Yep. We sure did. Awesomesauce. Let's go... do whatever so I can get fixed up."

We hobble over to the portrait and look into it. It's not bad, I guess. Three paramedics were leaning over a body on a stretcher. One had his hands on the body's chest, the other two were looking at various medical doodads and whatchamacallits. "So... what do we do now?"

One of the paramedics suddenly looks up. "Diagnosis and condition?"

Wow. Dude had a ridiculously cool moustache.

"Uh..."

"Come on, come on, I've other patients to attend to!" I mean... fair point, dude.

Max points to my ankle. "My friend is hurt. Can you help her?"

The little paramedic skitters up to the edge of the frame and peeks over it like it was a cliff and he was trying to work out what was at the bottom. It's very wobbly. Weirdly, every time he wobbles forward, he almost seems to... pop out of the photo a little. Just a little though. No freaky cellophane lady-like shit around here. As I'm thinking, I realise he's giving me an arch look. "I can't move you, miss. You're going to have to come closer."

I blush and scoot forward - presenting my ankle for inspection, sah! - looking up at the dude to see his reaction.

After a few seconds, he nods decisively. "You need to water your plants."

I open my mouth to reply, then... wait. What?

"Our... plants?" Oh. "You mean the roses?"

His 'you're an utter fucking idiot' look would be the envy of schoolteachers everywhere. I root around in my pockets and pull out the blue rose. Max, after a second, pulls out her red one. "So, we water them? And that'll help my ankle? Where do we even get water?"

He points. "Yes. And you might want to try the vase in the corner."

The what? I follow his finger and turn to look. Okay... that wasn't there before. There's a vase, clear glass, thick and rounded at the bottom and gradually thinner towards the top. Why does shit keep appearing and disappearing around here? Haven't these idiots ever heard of object permanence? I turn back to thank the paramedic for the entirely fucking bizarre advice, but the photo, and the entire display area, had vanished. "Oh, come on!"

Max eyes me in confusion. "Chloe? What's wrong?"

I jab a finger accusingly at the empty space. "What's wrong? What's wrong?! Things keep appearing and disappearing and moving and vanishing and shit's just getting totally fucking weird! Why can't you make sense, gallery, huh?"

Max's confusion turns very solidly to amusement, and she smirks at me the entire length of my slightly deranged ramble-rant. Really, this had been frustrating the fuck outta me for a while now. Honestly, even I was astonished I'd made it this long. I didn't react well to... being confused. Max was just unflappable by anything other than people being mean to her, but I just punched those people, so she spent most of her life being unflapped by anything. I totally envied her that, but I'd take whatever confusion, frustration, or anything else I needed to to keep her happy.

Eventually though, my rant trails off and Max says "Feel better now?"

Weirdly, I did. "Yep. I feel great."

Max chuckled and dragged me over to the vase. "Go on. Put it in then."

"Phrasing."

Max gave an eyeroll that would've had every middle child in eyeshot glaring in envy, but since we were the only people in the room, it was up to me to react to it. "Wow, Max. So glad you appreciate my amazing jokes."

She glared. "Put your flower in the vase already, Chlo'."

I did hesitate. The last time I tried to drop the flower, it hurt like hell. I'm no rat, but pain was a pretty good motivator not to do something again, even for a badass like me. But hey, the photo said so and the mosaic seemed to trust it, so... I put it in.

Phrasing.

We both watch as the water level sinks rapidly and the flower starts to... grow. Where I couldn't tell the difference before, I now knew that petals had gone because they were literally regenerating in front of me as the flower drank it's fill. Totally. Freaking. Awesome.

I reach over to pick the flower out of the vase. The moment my hand touches it, I realise that my ankle doesn't hurt anymore. In fact, nothing hurts at all. Frankly, I've never felt better.

"Damn."

Max frowns up at me. "What? Did it not work?"

"No, it worked. It really, really worked. Just... kinda worried about why it worked, I guess." Which was fair enough, in my head. I mean, it was a flower that hurt when I put it down and healed me when I put it in water. If I was gonna freak out about something in this magical mysterious other world we seemed to have gotten tossed into, this was probably one of the fairer things. Even more than the appearing-disappearing tricks.

"Well, then don't be worried? So long as we keep finding water-"

"-and that's gonna be totally a cinch in a gallery" I mutter under my breath, interrupting.

She continues without acknowledging my interruption at all. "-and don't drop the flowers, we'll be fine, right?" She's very positive and upbeat about this, huh? Gotta admit, I don't get it at all, but eh. I'll live with it.

"Fine, alright then. We'd better get back to the Cat, dude's probably wondering what's taking us so long."

Max nods and gestures over to the green door still in the corner, away from everything else in the room. I was honestly surprised it hadn't disappeared too. Trapping us in here would be par for the fucking course with this place. "Shall we try the door?"

"Well," I drawl, "unless you got any other exits stashed in that camera bag of yours, we've got no other options. So, yeah. Why not?"

We walk over, open it, and step through. We're back in the shadowy corridor. The one with the grasping whatevers on the walls. I turn around to look through the door, and it's just the corridor to the storage room again. I groan. "This fucking place."

Max chuckles and opens her mouth to say something, but before she can speak a word, there's an ear-piercing screech of pain off in the distance. Max's face contorts in alarm. "That's the Cat!"

We turn and run toward the other door. Well, she does first. I follow her after a second of wondering why the hell we were running toward the terrified and painful-sounding screams of danger. Max was probably just concerned. Me, I was just trying to keep Maxie out of trouble. Or at the very least make sure I was getting into it right alongside her.