A/N So here's the end. I think I've finally got Uncas and Alice out of my system for a while. For a while.
Alice landed on her feet in a haze. The screaming had stopped and it appeared that nothing was amiss. When Marie suddenly appeared beside her, gasping and horrified, only then did things come together once more.
They were climbing the cliff yet again, having only just left the Huron village. Magua leading the way with his knife and tomahawk tucked safely away but easily accessible in accordance with the impending chaos.
"Alice!" Marie gasped, clutching Alice's arm, trying to breathe, "What have you done?"
Alice was quite frankly amazed that her crazed decision worked in her favour (arguably) to land her in the right few minutes of the past.
She grabbed Marie's hand, overcome with relief,
"You're alive! It worked!"
"Alice, li-listen, I remember how it works. We have-" She stalled, breathing deeply, her body countering an obscure trauma, "We have to die!"
"What?" Alice instantly let go of Marie and stepped away. Marie almost fell over as Alice was pushed forward without her.
"No, I-" she stammered, "I don't understand. What about Uncas?"
"As I said, you can't change history. If I died just now-" A deep, uncompromising breath, "-then that's inevitably how I go. Same goes-ow!- for Uncas."
"That can't be true! I have to-"
"Alice! Dying will send us home! I was right there…I could touch it." Marie then ran out of breath. Her eyes pleading.
"But..." Alice whimpered, "Chingachgook..."
Marie didn't bother with a response choosing to let Alice figure it out on her own.
"I tried so hard..." Alice mused again, no longer feeling as if she were on solid ground. She had literally come to die. No more, no less.
"Alice?" Marie asked softly, still clutching her gut, "I can't endure that again. Please...please don't make me endure that again."
Something in the way Marie closed her eyes and didn't look at Alice while pleading for her 'life' made Alice's resolve shake in its boots. Time was too complex for her. For anybody. Everything appeared to be interlinked, no matter what she did, it had effects on everything and if not on everything then everything else.
The moment was fast approaching. Two deaths were imminent. But what of her? She knew nothing of her own demise unless she chose too?
Alice had a fleeting memory of her moments before Uncas pulled her away from the falls the night before. Away into his arms. Away from a fate she thought suited her best – a thoughtless jump.
Ahead, the catastrophe had begun to unfold. Uncas was fighting his way towards them with the same fierce determination as before that was losing its ferocity with each blow he gave.
Magua moved from them on cue, taking his place on that little stage of a cliff face. He had armed himself - just as before, his knife bobbing in accordance with his defensive stance.
It was devastatingly obvious how inferior Uncas was as a warrior (despite his skill) in comparison to Magua. The older man looked calmer and more ready. Wisened by many more years of warfare.
Alice felt her tears welling up, the vision before her becoming blurred. She took one instinctive step forward but remembered Marie.
When she turned, Marie had no words to offer. She seemed to have accepted her end now, harrowing though it was.
Soon a blood-curdling scream erupted and was followed by a thin, metallic slide. When Alice turned in horror – it all happened again.
She surged forward,
"Uncas!"
Then Marie's screech halted her dead on so that she almost fell over her skirts. Marie was on her knees and at the feet of a shocked Huron, the knife still protruding from her gut. Just. As. Before.
Alice made for Marie but backed away in a hurry when all arms but Marie's reached for her. Marie was dead before her eyes a second time. The necklace crumpled into the crook of her neck and was suddenly nothing more than that.
Uncas! She spun on her heel, deciding that Uncas was all there was left. There was still time. She started running before she was even fully turned around but she was yanked back rather suddenly. Her wrist was caught in a hold of iron.
"No!" was all the Huron told her and not unkindly. Only firmly, steering her away from harm and back to her dead friend.
"Alice!"
Alice turned in despair, catching Uncas' desperately apologetic eye before Magua did the final deed, pausing in a brief moment of lethargic recognition. Uncas gasped in a horrid way before simply tumbling over the edge. Magua watching him without as much as a shove.
"NO!" Alice screamed so loudly her voice cracked, "NO! NO NO NO!"
Again! I can do this!
She dropped to her knees, yanking the necklace from Marie in wild hysteria.
"Girl!" someone yelled angrily before a complete and desolate darkness consumed her. It lasted so long she feared she'd never get out. She was whole but in darkness. Darkness though she swore her eyes were open.
Then she awoke, the blinding light making her fall without pause. Crawling to her feet she searched for Marie who was just ahead, gulping hard as if she were a fish out of the water. When she turned to Alice, her eyes were red and blood shot, the veins all but popping out.
It only took a moment for Alice to realise that this time, time had placed her mere minutes before everything unfolded for a third time.
Magua was already poised on the cliff edge with Uncas stalking towards him.
Alice was about to move without thought, choosing to just rush it – throwing everything off course if it meant that Uncas could just escape without having to go through Magua.
She knew the backlash was inevitably going to cause her a lot of guilt, but Marie was her second choice now and she knew it as she stared at Alice clutching a wound that had yet to appear. She was crying already, a steady pain apparent on her face and in her eyes. Her soul looked as if it was on its knees.
Ahead, a Huron turned with a thoughtful look on his face and gazed at Alice a short while before saying something in his native tongue. No sooner had he finished his sentence than did another strong hand take hold of her wrist.
Alice gasped in terror at the contact, her eyes meeting hard and relentless eyes that held no hope of letting her go any time soon.
A familiar cry of pain made its way to her ears and she turned to face it in slow horror. Marie was on the ground, this time her death seemed slower. She lingered on her knees a moment longer, clawing at the chest of the man who killed her. The man who looked shocked at his own actions as he always did and yet – like so many others – aware that he had somehow committed this same action before but without understanding as to how it was possible.
Then Mare simply toppled over, her last power of will was to tear the necklace from her throat and toss it over the edge.
Alice watched it go in a numb anguish. Reality was shutting down around her. She had nothing and soon the memory of the night before, Uncas making love to her, was back as a saving grace. It kept her safe somehow. Something to hold onto for she had lost. Chingachgook was never going to know how all this had come to pass.
She managed to look at Uncas as he looked at her. He didn't call her name.
Alice forced herself to watch him die, desperately prying her wrist out of the grasp that held her in place.
With that, Uncas died.
Alice went devoid of all emotions. She was floating above that now. She watched as Magua wiped his knife clear of Uncas' blood with a loincloth that was impossibly clean despite his bloodied hands.
Alice felt herself moving, floating even, towards the oblivion she felt was waiting for her. Back, again, in that strange stupor of a moment where she felt that if she jumped, she'd simply disappear into the fray and come out the other side, untouched and alive.
She knew, after hearing what Marie had told her, that her instincts were right. She turned her gaze to the ghost of New York. Where the city was surely to be, was an endless canopy of life and beauty instead.
A beauty that could kill you. Ethereal in its splendour.
The fall wasn't so far down when she looked but it would certainly kill her. Somewhere below she could see the blob, barely discernible, where Uncas had landed.
Just jump, Alice. You do have a choice. There is no karma. There is no backlash. Simply yesterday, today, tomorrow.
When she turned back to consider Magua one last time, she found him already looking curiously at her. He seemed taken with her, as if he didn't quite understand what it was he was looking at and as a result he reached for her. Lowering the threat of his knife to offer her his hand instead. He gestured for her to come back to him, a strange promise of safety in his wiry arms.
Jump, Alice.
She didn't jump.
She did step, though, and elegantly.
OooOoooOoooO
"Alice…"
Darkness.
"Aaaalice."
Alice felt herself stir, feeling creeping back into her body starting with her fingers. An awareness of her own heartbeat and steady breathing brought her slowly round to the feel of a soft breeze on her face. Her cheek felt scrunched and was beginning to her hurt where her bone rested on a hard surface.
"Wake up, Alice, God dammit!"
Alice blinked and rose almost without hesitation at the authority of the demand. Her skin peeled from the surface with a sticky saliva that had glued the corner of her mouth to the table.
"Marie?"
"No, Dolly Parton, actually."
Alice frowned, unsure of what she had experienced was a dream or not. Marie seemed so unchanged and so unaffected with her face resting in the palm of her hand as if she were bored.
"Where are we?"
"Look around." Marie gestured to their surroundings – the cafeteria as it was when they disappeared. Clean and clinically white.
"Right where we started," Marie finished dryly.
Alice dropped her hands into her lap and sat awkwardly while Marie considered her with a quiet curiosity.
"I'm sorry," Alice said softly without meeting her eyes, "I-…yeah."
Marie took a deep breath, shrugging,
"Yeah."
"Are you alright?" Alice enquired tentatively, unable to keep her eyes from Marie's waist.
"I think so." Marie rubbed her belly, "I've got this weird throbbing – it doesn't go away. Like my insides are trying to realign themselves? It's an odd feeling."
"I tried, Marie." Alice felt the tears coming – slowly, they fell, tear by tear rolling down her cheeks, "I tried so hard."
Marie didn't move to comfort her. She watched Alice dissolve into herself, hiding her face in her hands. Deeply ashamed by her actions and lack of result.
Marie watched her cry for what felt like a life time. When Alice looked up, seeking some kind of reprieve for her torment, she found Marie nodding at her in some kind of silent acknowledgment.
Alice understood that Marie was hurt by her decisions in their adventure and she had every right to be. Alice couldn't imagine the pain she'd put her friend through to rescue a man who was destined to die. She knew she'd be haunted by Marie's expression in her last attempt; her eyes and their red horror.
"It's alright, Alice," she told her finally.
"Is it?"
Marie didn't answer her immediately, looking at her in the eye for a long while – deciding upon the truth.
"It will be."
She got up, wincing slightly as she did so, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She was about to walk away when she paused, feeling her jean pocket and pulling out a horribly familiar site from within and dropping it onto the table.
"I can't get rid of the damn thing. I thought I was done with it when I chucked it over the Goddamn cliff. But no." She scowled at it, "You can have it."
"Marie-"
"I don't want to see it again."
"Marie, I'm sorry about Nathaniel too…"
Marie stalled a second time but didn't answer. She walked away with a finality that told Alice that they wouldn't be addressing this part of their friendship again. It would be a stain in their lives. It would never be forgotten but they would never endeavour to revisit it. Mistakes were made that were hard to forgive. Alice wasn't sure whether she'd ever be truly forgiven.
She resolved to throw the necklace in the fire when she got the chance.
She collected her stuff with a lethargy she wouldn't shake for the rest of the day. She wasn't going to study. She was going home, dammit.
When she left the cafeteria and stepped into the sun, it was as if to do so for the first time. She blinked into the blinding rays, closing her eyes to feel the warmth.
When she opened them, she had to blink back her surprise when she found Marie talking to a tall, very striking and very familiar man.
Marie caught Alice's eye and spared a small, if not an ironic, smile before returning her attention to the man at hand.
Alice wiped away a stray tear and began an odd walk home.
She turned an empty corner and stumbled to her knees after having tripped over a crevice in the paving. Too tired, too utterly finished, she began to cry.
"Miss?" A deep, baritone voice the washed over her like water.
Alice wiped a desolate, desperate tear away from her face and tried to get up in a hurry, embarrassed by the company.
"Yes, I'm fine. I'm fine – don't touch me – I'm-"
When Alice finally looked upon the young man's face, she almost fainted.
"Miss?" he asked again, concern etched on his fine features, "Are you sure you're alright?"
Alice paused, looking at Uncas in dumbstruck awe.
"I- I am, yes."
She felt herself begin to smile; a broad, stupid smile that seemed to be reciprocated albeit slightly more puzzled on her companion's face.
"Are you?" She asked him and instantly felt stupid at the question, remembering that he hadn't experienced the same chaos as she. But he obliged, shrugging,
"I felt a little odd this morning…" he frowned, straining to find words before giving up and looking at Alice thoughtfully, "But I know your face. Can't quite place how but we've met before, haven't we?"
Alice nodded slowly, feeling relief flood her bones, her soul slowly rising to its feet,
"Probably."
Don't forget to leave a review. Again, I've re-written this ending a few times. Hope it works.
Also, I think what happens is when I get too excited, I think faster than I can write and then I get way ahead of myself and everyone else is like "WHAT THE FUUU Is GOING ON!"But yeah. Review!
And thanks for the support. This community is cool :)