AN: Sorry there hasn't been an author's note the last two chapters I kinda forgot because I've just been uploading while waiting for my Rozen Maiden episodes to upload. Go Shinku! w00t!

Shinku: Thank you. sips tea

Anyway, warnings: fluff, the power of lurve, WTFripoffofthesecondendofTenchinTokyo

Disclaimer: Have I mentioned lately that I don't own Alice in Wonderland?

Well, I don't. Review please.

Chapter 7: In Which Feelings Are Discovered

"Are you...the White Queen?" Alice asked.

"Yes, but who are you?" the White Queen asked.

"The Golden Star of Hope, your majesty." Alice said, setting Edward down to curtsy.

"Wonderful!" the White Queen clapped her hands in delight. "And you have such a handsome cat!"

Alice fidgeted. "Actually, that's-"

"It's me, your majesty." Edward said. "Edward Eldritch."

The White Queen gasped in horror. "Oh, Edward. She did this to you, didn't she?"

Edward bowed his head. The queen smiled at him. "It doesn't matter." she said. "It's an easy enough spell to reverse."

She pointed her finger at Edward and said an incantation.

His limbs lengthened, his paws grew into hands and feet, the fur retracted, being replaced by skin and clothes everywhere but his head, where it grew longer, silkier, and bound itself into a ponytail. His face changed, widening and growing until the features fit the face of a young man and the only trace of feline in him was in his eyes.

Then he stood and put a hand to his head. He felt his face, his hair, and looked over his body in amazement. After a few minutes of this, he jumped up and bowed respectfully to the White Queen. "Thank you, your majesty."

The queen giggled. "Think nothing of it, Edward." Then, to Alice, she whispered, "Take care of him."

"Wh-what?" Alice asked, blushing.

"Oh, please. I'm old, not dead. This boy is crazy about you." The White Queen told Alice, jerking her thumb at Edward.

"Y-your majesty!" Edward stammered, also blushing.

The queen giggled impishly again. "And you see? There's the proof!" Then she immediately sobered up. "Now, we have to hurry out of here. The Queen of Hearts may know even now that I've come out of hiding. That was as long as the spell I put in place to make it unplottable was made to last. Now she'll know where to find us if she should happen to look at a map."

"What will happen to this place?" Alice asked, following Edward and the White Queen as they walked briskly toward the entrance to the tomb.

"After we leave, the ice will recover the pool. Erzebet will revive, and the Queen of Hearts won't be able to come down here unless she solves the riddle properly. If she tries any other way, the spirits in the water will make her drown." The White Queen said, blasting the door open. They were transported to the surface, and even as they watched, the ice re-covered the pool, and Erzebet's burnt body began to regenerate.

"What happens if she solves the riddle?" Alice asked quietly.

"She won't." The White Queen said. "She's terrible at riddles. That's why she's doing all this. She lost in a riddle-solving contest to me a longer number of years ago than I'd care to admit." The queen said with a comforting smile

"She's doing this...because of a game?" Alice asked.

"Yes. We played against each other in a riddle-solving contest, and she's hated me ever since."

Alice's legs buckled, and she fell into Edward, laughing hysterically. "So," she said between laughs, "this, this 'Queen of Hearts' took over Wonderland, had Helen Spiderwick, the Mad Hatter's Dinah, and ten women from my world killed, forced you into hiding in a tomb, made the March Hare drive herself insane, turned Edward into a cat, and any number of other awful things, all because she's a sore loser!?" she laughed again, soon starting to sob into Edward's chest.

He blushed, but stroked her hair and murmured soothing little nothings in her ear. Suddenly, he tensed, and she looked up. The White Queen was pale and drawn, but still looked determined and extremely regal, and in front of her stood the Queen of Hearts, the face that mirrored Eleanor's twisted into an evil, smug, superior smirk, the insane eyes wide and gleaming with hatred and anticipation and bloodlust.

She turned to Alice, and suddenly the face wore that same crooked smile Alice had grown up seeing. Eleanor's smile. She held Eleanor's arms out, smiled her smile even bigger and coaxed in Eleanor's soft, flute-y voice. "Come on, Al. It's alright. I'm here now."

But the look from before stayed in Alice's head, that look just short of being the epitome of evil. 'That's not Ella,' Alice thought. 'She'd never wear a look like that!' "You're not my sister!" she yelled.

The Queen of Hearts sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that. Well, if you're not with me, you're against me, and I just can't have that, considering who you are, miss Golden Star of Hope." she threw an orb of black magic at Alice.

Alice gasped, but before she could try to defend herself, Edward pushed her away and took the hit. He flew back several feet, slammed into a tree, and lost consciousness. At the same time, the Queen of Hearts, imprisoned the White Queen in an energy draining cage to prevent her from helping out in anyway.

Then, the Queen of Hearts smirked and magicked up a sword, stalking toward the prone inventor to finish the job.

Alice rushed over, trying to revive him. "Edward. Edward, please. You have to wake up. Please. I love you." she kissed him, just as the Queen of Hearts went to strike.

The aforementioned howled in pain and staggered away, nearly dropping her sword.

"Of course..." the White Queen murmured. "Alice!" she called from her prison. "The Queen of Hearts draw her power from instilling fear and hatred in others. As long as you stay strong and keep your heart open, she can't touch you! Think about it, Alice! Nothing can break the bonds of love you shared with your parents and sisters, not even death! The love they had for you still lives on in your memories of them! And Edward would obviously die before letting you get hurt! Isn't that so, Alice? Think of everything your family gave for you, everything Edward is willing to give for you, and stay strong!"

"Silence!" the Queen of Hearts shrieked, making the cage drain the White Queen's energy at a faster rate. She screamed in agony as the energy was practically ripped from her body.

But it was too late Alice had already heard. Her eyes dimmed in thought, and one hand went to her heart. Her parents, so sweet and quirky. Mom, always with a plate of fresh, warm, chocolate chip cookies and a kind word, and Dad, who had never hesitated to fix his girls' cars and hearts whenever either broke down.

Eleanor, with her powerful manner and strong, artistic hands, who had once taken a kendo bokken to the head of some creep who'd tried to snatch Alice, and whose aloof, attitudal exterior had hidden a soft, caring artist from the world.

Rosemary, who had helped vandalize yearbook pictures of the old classmates Alice couldn't stand, who had convinced her that some of the guys she broke up with weren't worth crying over and mimed her father's stuffy business associates behind their backs to amuse her bored little sister.

And Edward, who's smile made her heart leap to her throat and sent butterflies racing around her stomach at ninety miles an hour, who had helped her on a mission that would have been overwhelming if she'd had to go it alone, and whose companionship had helped heal some of the pain of losing her family.

'Yes,' she thought. 'The White Queen is absolutely right. I have the one weapon the Queen of Hearts just can't seem to understand, and I've had it all along. There was never any need to be frightened of her.'

She snapped back to reality, looking as though she'd just grasped some deep, fundamental truth. She ran toward the Queen of Hearts, knocking the sword from her hand and pinning her hands behind her back before evil queen could formulate a defense. "That," Alice murmured, "is something the real Eleanor taught to me. Now, why don't you give up? You're not really evil. Somehow, I can sense that under all the hatred and arrogance, you have a basically good heart."

The Queen of Hearts shrieked. "Let go of me this instant!"

Alice rested a knee on her back in the classic police take-down position. "I won't.

Not until you realize this: you're hurt, and angry, and feel like the whole world is against you, and I understand that, but...that doesn't make it right to go around carelessly destroying lives! I felt the same way just after the fire, because it didn't seem fair to me that other people could still laugh and smile after I had lost everything I had to live for...but at times like that, you just have to put the pieces back together and move on. Throwing a temper tantrum isn't going to make things change."

The Queen of Hearts let out a small sob, and Alice helped her to her feet and hugged her. "We can never forget the hurt we've experienced in our lives, but because we're human, in time, we learn to live with it and move on. You've been letting your anger and hurt control you for so long. Aren't you ready to try and move on?"

The Queen of Hearts fell to her knees, sobbing, simultaneously freeing the White Queen and casting off Eleanor's appearance. In reality, she could have been a twin to the White Queen except that she wore black. She looked at the White Queen and smiled sadly. "I'm sorry, sister, for being so horrid to you all over a riddle-solving contest. But I don't think we can go back to the way things were just yet. It'll take time for me not to be such an angry person, and until that time comes, I'm going to go to sleep until I know I can be better behaved." and so saying, she fell unconscious.

Edward, who had been awake from about the time Alice rushed the Queen of Hearts, suddenly spoke. "Alice."

Alice whirled and ran to him. "Edward!" she helped him up, and he kissed her. Just as she began to return the kiss, he pulled away.

"I need you to do something for me, Alice." he said.

"What?"

He smiled sadly and cupped her cheek. "I need you to wake up."

She looked at him in confusion, then, as if she were hearing it from the receiving end of a bad telephone connection, Nurse Monroe's voice began to echo softly in her ear. "Alice! Alice! Please, wake up, Alice!"

Alice was whisked out of Edward's arms in a blur of indistinct color, and she woke up laying on the lawn of Watertown Hospital.

"Was that all a dream? But it felt so real..." Alice murmured, putting a hand to her head. "But then, that means..."

'Edward Eldritch doesn't even exist. I fell in love with a figment of my own imagination.'

AN: Le gasp! Could it be true? Would the authoress be so cruel? Why am I asking things like this again? Find out in the next chapter! Seeya!