Hi, so here is another chapter. I did not believe that i would get another chapter published but here is another one. There are two more chapters left in this story and then this is finished but i do have more than a couple ideas for the Wonderland fandom so...

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

I do realise that this story is delving a bit into the AU side of things but the story will end with a cannon scene so the embellishment between the first scene in 1x01 and the scene in 1x02 where this story will end.

I know i said it before but this will probably be the last chapter published before i am without wifi so enjoy all these updates and i will hopefully update with the final two chapters if i don't get them published with this update by some miracle.

If You Really Love Someone

Chapter 8-Alice-Summertime Sadness

Events-Alice and Cyrus have a massive row about their future as both friends and something more and after witnessing the Red Queen's troops for the first time Alice stands her ground and makes another decision that begins the build up to a very well-known scene.

They had been walking for some time before Alice had decided that enough was enough. She was not some silly little girl who ran away from the first sign of trouble and she wanted to know what had gone wrong. She did not think she had read Cyrus and his feelings and his intentions the wrong way. In fact, she believed that he was just as invested in exploring this growing love between them (and she knew that was it was she wasn't completely naïve) but she also wanted to know what was holding him back from being happy-even if it wasn't with her she knew that Cyrus deserved to be happy. If anyone deserved a simple thing as happiness, then it was Cyrus.

But so help her if it was something stupid that could easily be fixed or a simple misunderstanding standing in the way of the two of them then Alice was going to murder him herself.

And as she had been told by many people many times (and in many various tones) her stubbornness was unparallel.

"Why don't you want to be with me?" She asked unable to stop herself and Cyrus turned to stare at her with wide eyes in shock and Alice could have kicked herself because she was trying to have a serious conversation here and her immediate response was to blurt out the question with as little tack as a carriage accident.

"Alice it's…" Cyrus looked like each word was costing him a part of himself but clearly, he had decided to man up and tell her the truth this time. He looked around wildly and then his eyes which were bleeding chocolate brown looked at her with a rather desperate expression. "It's not you it never was. It's me…always has been for years it's been me" He looked like she had just reached inside him and yanked hard at his insides until he was bleeding.

"I am a genie Alice, I am always going to be in service of a master and you say you don't want to use your wishes, at some point you will. I don't expect you not too and then we will be separated and the thought of losing you…well…I think despite only knowing you a short time that might kill me." He gave some sort of helpless little shrug but once he had started talking it was like he couldn't stop even as his voice took on a self-deprecating kind of tone.

"Alice I…even if you wanted to stay with me it couldn't be a life…not the one you deserve. I am a slave to something far too powerful and I'm constantly going to be hunted down by anyone who wants to use me for their own good. The thought of hurting you…" he shook his head but Alice remained silent even as he looked down at his hands.

"And It cannot be a real life. Not like that…but…Alice I'm going to be alive for as long as I'm a slave to this bottle while you grow old. Even If I could give you children…which I'm not sure I could you and the child would grow old and die and I would remain younger and younger and then sent on my way before I even had a chance to bury you, before I could even say goodbye. You have to understand it's not you it's me. There is no long term life I could give you."

He hung his head then his shoulders shaking and Alice realised with a sick feeling in her stomach that not only was what he saying so sickeningly true but that he was crying because he knew that the life he wanted so bad couldn't happen.

She dropped to her knees unflinching as the cold mud hit bare skin and wrapped both her arms around him pulling him off the rock he had sat down on at some point and clutching him too her. He sobbed into her shoulder, into her hair and Alice clutched him back letting him mourn what he wanted but couldn't have.

Finally, as she was stroking her fingers through his hair he stopped. He leaned his head against her neck for a second longer, his breath making her shiver, it was as if he was drinking her in so that she realised with what felt like a punch to the gut he could remember her when time eventually tore them apart even if the genies magic did not.

She suddenly hated with a passion whomever had cursed him to such a life. How could someone like Cyrus deserve something like this? These were the questions that were running around her head as he laid there on her shoulder for a time until Cyrus pushed off and wiped his eyes furiously.

"Cyrus it doesn't meant that we cannot be together" she tried to say even though she knew the odds were overwhelmingly against them. Cyrus gave a laugh and reached out, so the pads of his fingers were brushing against her cheek. There was a pause where they sat there and stared at each other and Alice knew her eyes were filling with tears at the hopelessness of the situation.

"I know but…Alice it took me lifetimes to meet you and only seconds to love you and I know it will take me more than a lifetime to get over you"

She should be cheering she thought to herself. She should be cheering over the words she had wanted to hear so desperately but instead her heart was breaking all over again.

"Do you want me Cyrus?" she said finally. Cyrus gave out a bark of laughter that was filled with a combination of awe and incredulity and pain so much pain that Alice had to wipe her eyes again because she was on the cusp of getting everything she wanted and yet she was being presented for very reasonable reasons why she couldn't have it.

"Alice, I want you more than anything" Cyrus said smiling as if it was painfully obvious even though his eyes were bright with pain. "And I may hate myself for being the way I am now, but I will not put myself through the pain of losing you because I do not think that I will recover"

Alice stood up looking down at him feeling her temper rise and she bit her lip.

"We could live in the moment you know. We could just stay here and live and enjoy our time together, if it's a choice between you and the wishes then I'm going to choose you. I know it sounds insane but…but…I think…I want you to take a chance on us Cyrus. Because I feel the same way that you do and…Gods this is coming out all wrong" she said shaking her head and running her hands through the strands. Why the hell did she not just cut this?

"Alice" Cyrus said standing up and taking her hands and pulling it out of her hair so that they were linking fingers like a happily married couple in love, the kind she'd see in London who couldn't keep their hands off each other. Instead this felt like a goodbye.

"Let's just be happy, be happy Cyrus. You deserve it and…and we can see what happens"

Cyrus leaned her forehead against hers for a second and Alice thought that had they not been interrupted then she might have won him over. She might have held him in her arms as they planned for a future together that did not involve looking towards a future that for both of them was complicated. Alice herself did not know what was going to happen, if she was going home to England-if she wanted to go home to England, to her father and too her life where everything was based on a lie, of the ideal of a perfect family that she had not had in so long. Either way she had let the rabbit go and therefore she had to find some new proof that she wasn't mad or her last living relative was going to demand that she go to an asylum to live out the rest of her days.

"Let's just be happy" she whispered again and for a second, she saw him smile the half smile he gave whenever something was so unbelievable he didn't think that he could get it. Alice knew the feeling intimately. Instead there was a rustling in the bushes and the sounds of tree branches and twigs snapping in a way that Alice knew intimately told her that people and more than one was, coming in their direction.

Cyrus held her hand and then placed a finger to his lips indicating that they had to be quiet and then he picked up the bottle and the two of them crept through the bushes until they were a suitable distance away from the noise, but they could still see what was going on. Alice saw them, the red livery and the black tunics and knew at once who they were dealing with.

And judging by the look on Cyrus's face he too knew intimately who they were dealing with.

It was the Red Queen's guards.

And they were looking for someone.

For one wild moment Alice thought it might be the Knave before she remembered that he had gone back to his old world and she had come back here. Also there was no way a sighting of the Knave would mean soldiers walking quietly through the forest as if they didn't want to be heard. No they were looking for someone else. Alice turned to face Cyrus who had his face screwed up in a look of concentration and then he turned to jerk his head in the opposite direction so that they could edge their way through the undergrowth without being seen.

They made it back onto the path and down the road silently until they were out of the forest and back along the edge of towns. If Alice remembered correctly there was a very good chance that most of the towns would help people hide from the Red Queen's guards even if the punishment was getting severe. She had not, Alice knew, done much by way of ruling her people and the Good Lord only knew what she was getting herself involved in now.

"There looking for me" Cyrus said finally as they were walking down the road and the sound of laugher could be overheard. He had shoved his bottle into her bag and for all the world they looked like young lovers simply taking a country stroll.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you about Alice. You will never be safe as long as you are with me. You cannot defend yourself from the Red Queen's guards even if you do fight well enough. I told you being a genie is a lot like being a wanted man. Everyone wants you and sometimes they don't have the means to take you and sometimes they do. And the easiest thing that you can do is get the hell away from me"

"What do you mean?"

Cyrus paused. "There's a man Alice. He killed my last master and I only managed to get away and…Alice I think he has magic I didn't get a good look at him but even if he doesn't he can fight and he can fight well…"

Well Alice thought stopping in the middle of the yellow road and thinking hard. If defending herself was one of the things that was holding Cyrus back then she could fix it. There was a pause where Cyrus looked at her with that resigned look as if he knew that she was already going to run, and Alice wanted to hunt down whomever had etched that look on his face and hurt them for it.

"If it's self-defence I need" she said eyeing his sword. "Then I suppose you better get me another one of those. Because your going to teach me how to defend myself and then we are going to have a long talk and so help me if you try and find a way out of it"

And with that she stormed off down the road her mind fresh with purpose. She didn't notice the look on Cyrus's face the amused look mixed in with the love he had admitted to her that he had tried to pretend didn't exist or couldn't exist.

But she did hear the "Wouldn't dream about it" that he uttered and Alice smiled to herself as she carried on walking down the road back into the woods so she could learn some semblance of sword fighting and perhaps if she was lucky finally…finally get the one thing that she had spent her entire life searching for.

Love.

And again the next chapter will be from Cyrus's point of view and it will be the last one that i publish from his perspective.

Enjoy.