Note: I'm picking this up again thanks to clairina19. Thank you. :3 I own nothing, sillies. I apologize in advance for any unwanted typos.

She was taking me to see Alice.

Walking through the maze of the white rose garden in silence was agonizing. I thought, well gee, I think I might just die here. Or something. Or have to spend my whole life here. I said it to myself in a sarcastic manner to calm myself. I had no idea what was going on, what would happen to me, what would happen to Terror… I mean, at least if I knew for a fact that I was going to be killed right then, it would have made things much more straightforward. I would have had time to prepare myself. Strange way of thinking, but that's how I felt then. All I could do was walk and prepare myself for the worst.

The sky was darkening at a fast pace. Nighttime so soon? And the rain was clearing. The stars were beginning to come out and I noticed something for the first time.

The constellations moved. They weren't the constellations I was used to though. There was a rabbit and a girl and… I could actually recognize some of them. Like I saw the Hatter, up there in the sky. And the Cheshire Cat. I couldn't help wondering if they really were "just" constellations. That's around the time I caught sight of the castle. We were getting closer. It was huge and made out of what appeared to be white marble.

I don't want to go.

I stopped in my tracks. It was the strangest thing. I felt a wave of fear throw itself over me. A lick of cold touched the back of my neck and the hairs on my arms stood up.

What's wrong with me?

Ace turned around and looked at me with sharp eyes. The wooden black double doors that would lead into the castle were right in front of us. Only some marble stairs were in between me and the doors.

"Are you coming?" she asked. Her voice was sharp enough. I wondered what damage she could do with a weapon. I really wanted to say, "No." In the end I figured that'd be a bad thing to say in my situation.

"Something doesn't feel right," is what I ended up saying. Ace arched her eyebrows, then shrugged.

"I don't feel anything out of the ordinary." She walked up the steps, and without any hesitation whatsoever she opened the ornately decorated wooden black doors. It hit me like a brick, that suffocating feeling of… whatever it was. I walked up one step.

You're just closer to seeing Alice.

Two steps.

Alice.

Three, four, five. Alice, Alice, Alice.

I took a step inside the castle. Black stone was on the floor and I couldn't tell what it was made of. It looked like polished glass and I hated to step on it because it looked more like smoke than solid. I kept my eyes towards the ground though. I knew that whatever happened, I couldn't look up and I couldn't look straight ahead, because then I'd see her. And that would be very bad. There was something about her presence, something about her name that caused this awful feeling to flutter all over me.

"Welcome, Outsider."

Ah, dang, I looked up. And at first, I thought I was seeing double. There were two identical skinny teenage boys in front of me. They both wore the same pants and shirts. The only difference was one wore a green sash over his shirt, the other blue. Both had the same tan curly hair and fair skin and thankfully NOT red eyes. Blue eyes. Safe blue. And they hadn't called me "Alice" which was a definite plus.

"Let us introduce ourselves," they both said, bowing.

"He's Dee—" the blue-sashed one pointed to his partner.

"—and he's Dum," the green-sashed one finished.

The fact that they were bowing to me and actually welcoming me was surprising. That is, until I felt something prick my back and I was jolted forward.

"Walk." Ace's voice. Sword at my back. I swallowed and walked forwards. I studied my shoes. Black. Polished. My dress was still clean despite everything I had been through so far in it. Maybe that was why Terror had managed to look completely perfect—Wonderland clothing was apparently resistant to becoming dirty. That's when I was pushed and I stumbled to the ground, palms hitting hard ground. It hadn't been such a long time since I had cut myself with glass. My hands were still sore. The pain when they hit the ground was pretty intense and I'll admit that tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I noticed that a few feet away from me there was what appeared to be the bottom portion of a golden throne. I saw black shoes.

I dared not look up.

"Welcome to my Wonderland," a voice, her voice said.

I was very surprised. I had expected her voice to be more… More something. Instead it sounded immature and authoritative. But that voice also caused that fluttering, that feeling to wash over me.

"What's your name?" she asked.

The name "Alice" nearly slipped out my mouth. I stopped myself. I would not call myself Alice. Why in the world would I do such a thing?

"Hazel," I said.

"Well then. Look up at me, Hazel."

I didn't even think of disobeying. Her voice ran through me and made me look up, as though I could not control my own actions. I gasped. She was barely my age. And she was wearing the same dress I was wearing… Blue dress, blue eyes, blonde hair. Sweet smile that looked fake.

"Goodness, you look so mad right now, Hazel," she said and flicked a piece of blonde hair out of her face.

"I'm not mad," I said. I just said the words as they came. I could not think. She giggled.

"If you say so. Now answer me, Hazel dear. I have this burning question I must ask you," she said. She leaned forwards on her throne. "How did you get into my garden?" I blinked. Why had her face been tinged with red just a second before? My head was beginning to ache.

"The Hatter. His back door," I muttered. Alice's eyes grew wide and she clenched the arm of the throne.

"The Hatter? You've met the Hatter?" Her voice was escalating two octaves every other word. I nodded. She looked more troubled than angry. She swallowed. Then she asked me the strangest question, the last question I expected to be asked, the last thing on my mind. "Do you love him?"

My whole body jolted. "What?"

"Do. You. Love. Him," she said. "The Hatter." I shook my head quickly.

"No. Of course not," I said.

She sighed. I think she looked relieved.

"Now, one last question. What's the name of the boy who was found with you?" she asked. My head was spinning. This overwhelming feeling was ready to explode, or so it felt. I shivered. I couldn't think straight. I could only remember one name. Alice. Alice. Alice.

"A—Terror," I said. I had nearly said Alice's name again. I rubbed my temples with my fingers. I must have looked pitiful, sitting on the floor of the castle, sitting in front of Alice. I heard Alice get up from her throne, walking, and I heard her mutter a name. "Chaos."

I looked up once again and found Alice's face right in front of my own, her blue eyes glaring at my hazel ones. The feeling spilled over. Something switched on in my brain. Or maybe something switched off. I was suddenly calm, cool, collected.

Hmmm… Yes, Alice. Don't be afraid now.

I stood up and flicked my hair out of my face… my blonde streaked hair… yes… blonde…

Madness isn't all that bad, now is it?

Alice backed away from me and yelled, "Are you MAD?"

"Yes, Queen," I said. Grinned. "You very well know how madness affects Outsiders." Alice huffed.

"You are mad," she said. "And I don't know, and I don't care."

You have a knife, Alice.

I unsheathed the dagger from my belt and held it out threateningly. Alice's eyes grew wide, and I charged. And I kept on hearing that name over and over again in the back of my head. Her name. My name. Alice. Alice. Alice. I had become something like her. I have a feeling that if somebody had yelled my name, I would not have cared a bit. "Hazel" was not my name then. Alice. Alice. Alice. And the Queen of Hearts, the ruler of Wonderland, in my mind she had to die. She had to. And I had to do it.

"Guards!" she shouted. "Ace! Arrest her!"

A guard rushed in between me and her. He swung the sword towards my neck, but she shouted—

"DON'T KILL HER, FOOLS!"

—and he hesitated, and I took the moment to knife him in the chest. I pulled the dagger out. He fell. She was right in front of me, standing, looking angry. Not scared. Angry. Furious.

I smiled. A sweet smile.

Roses' petals were so white

And there was a feeling of dread

"ACE!"

As, with a knife in hand,

Alice turned the petals red…

Before I could throw my dagger at her, I felt a pain on the back of my neck. She was smiling and I felt burning resentment. The room went dim and I collapsed into a world of swirling darkness.

"Lock her away."

(O.O)

Waking up was very strange for me. For one, I didn't know where I was. I was lying down on a carpet of grass. It was light. But that was weird because I was at the bottom of a deep hole. There were four walls all around me about as large as a relatively small bedroom. The sky was blue up above but it was far away. The four walls, I noticed, were covered in vines. On closer inspection, they were thorns.

Another strange thing was not remembering my name at first. It took me a second. It had started with an "A". No. "H". Hazel. My name was Hazel. Then everything that had happened so far—up until reaching Alice's castle—came rushing back into mind. Then I noticed another thing. My hands were covered in blood. It was pretty clear from the fact that I had no injury that it was not my blood, and that was something that scared me.

And that's around the time that I remembered how I had been captured and brought to Alice. And how suddenly something had happened and I had become… different. And then I had killed a guard…

I had killed someone. Me, a murderer. I looked at my hands and around the room but there was no place to wash them. I repulsed myself.

I had called myself Alice. I had tried to kill Alice. My hair had turned blonde. I fingered a lock of my hair. It was black. Good.

"I'm mad," I said aloud.

And that's when I cried. Well of course I was mad. I had been hearing voices for a long time. I lay back down on the grass and cried for a while, staring at the blue sky. I hoped Terror was okay—

I remembered another thing then. Alice had said something when I had mentioned Terror's name. Chaos, I think it was. I wondered if she was referring to the actual chaos or somebody's name. Mostly I wondered what this "Chaos" had to do with Terror.

"Darling, you could use some cheering up right about now, huh?"

Due to everything that had occurred, it wasn't so surprising that a startlingly beautiful woman just suddenly appeared standing right next to me.

She had fiery red hair and silver eyes and wore a striking royal purple dress.

"Who are you?" I asked, getting up from off the floor. The woman's voice sounded… I couldn't place a word for it. It sounded familiar in a way.

"Hazel dear, don't worry about who I am until you've solved everything you need to know about you," she said, smiling.

"Then why are you here?" I asked. I was about to rub my eyes, but then I remembered the blood on my hands. So I wiped them with the sleeve of my dress instead.

"That should be obvious. I'm getting you out. Now give me your hand, please," she said. She held out her hand. It was white, clean. I looked at my own hand. Red, stained. I held it out and she took it. And then, suddenly, we were back inside of the castle, standing in front of Alice who was sitting on her throne.

I felt the Madness beginning to creep up on me, and without realizing my free hand started straying towards my dagger—why had they left me my dagger? Some questions I would never be able to answer.

"Calm your Madness, now, Hazel," the woman said. I pulled my hand from my dagger back to my side.

Alice looked up. She looked straight into the woman's eyes, and the woman stared right back at her. Alice's mouth began to form a name, but she never quite got to say it. The woman spoke first.

"I'm going to be taking Hazel for now, okay, Alice? Oh, and I'm taking Terror back as well."

And then we disappeared and I found myself standing into a place I recognized as the Desert of Glass. The woman was right next to me. I figured I should say something.

"Thanks," I said. I didn't know what else to say. The woman smiled.

"Goodbye, Hazel dear. I'll be seeing you soon."

She began to literally fade away, but not before Terror suddenly appeared by my side and caught sight of the woman. They both locked eyes for a second before she faded completely. Then Terror and I stood in silence. I looked up at him.

"You okay?" he asked me. I stared down at my hands.

"…fine," I said. He didn't mention the fact that my hands were bloody, and I didn't dare say anything on the matter either. "You?"

"Fine," he said. "I've been in tighter situations."

We began walking in silence. "Do you know that woman?" I asked.

He shrugged. "No. I've never seen her before."

And that was when the Cheshire Cat suddenly appeared right next to me, his arm around my shoulder.

"Come now, Terror. Nobody likes a liar," he said.

Nothing could surprise me by then.

"I don't know her," Terror insisted. I arched my eyebrows. I tended to trust the Cheshire Cat's knowledge and intuition. Terror frowned.

"Fine. But it won't help anything," he said.

"Well, I want to know," I said. He sighed.

"Her name is Chaos."