FIVE OF CUPS
Upright - A need to re-order and re-evaluate priorities. Union and espousal. Dishonour that cannot be overcome, loss defeat. There is a need to curb futile belligerence and accept the inevitable. Worry and regret, broken engagements and emotional letdowns. Emotional or monetary legacies.
Reversed - The overturning of a way of life. False starts. Worries which arrive both unexpectedly and from an unexpected source. Ill luck which leaves a feeling of being bereft. Worries and anxieties.
When Alice was twenty years old, she committed high treason for the first time.
To be fair, the past couple of years had been hard on her. For one thing, once you reached Ace rank, promotions tended to slow- not so for her; she was an Eight, and it had taken her only three years since entry into the Ace ranks to get there. She had the responsibility to make sure that both her hands- hand, the Suit division, not the limb- were coordinated, which was no easy task to manage, especially when the Nine you served under hated your spleen as much as Harlan did. Not to say that being an Ace didn't have privileges; it did, or else she never would have worked so hard at it. She got priority on the firing range, clearance to learn knife fighting and special forms of hand to hand combat that was considered too dangerous to teach the regular ranks. She got more face time with her superiors who didn't hate her, like Uthar and Claude, who had come around to her side of things when she'd started making inroads with the King.
And it wasn't like Wonderland on the whole was breezing along either. Food was something that was always a touchy subject. There was enough for the Suits, of course; they were always sure to have several months' worth of food in storage, as well as the royal gardens. The rest of the city wasn't doing so well; you needed a permit to live outside the city, and many who did manage to complete the screening process ended up running away to join the Resistance at the first opportunity. They'd had to suspend applications for a time, and then the Queen had demanded a crack-down on illegal farming communities, and suddenly their normal state of 'just shy of enough food' turned to 'not nearly enough food at all'. The city was full of starving desperate people, which understandably didn't lend itself to civility. Ironically, in hindsight it became evident that the Resistance had benefited from the losses the Queen's crackdown had inflicted upon them more than the Suits had. The city's sympathy was with them, now, and it wouldn't be long before spontaneous bouts of civil unrest turned to full-out civil war.
In the past week, Jelly had lost seven men under her command to rioting, three to the executioner, and shot fourteen civilians. It was such a waste, and she couldn't stomach the thought of continuing on as she had been when it was so obvious to her what could be done to prevent it.
This was what led her to commit treason.
It was done with the permission of the King, of course, which under a great many schools of thought would negate it as treason: that was certainly a good part of why Othello was helping her. None of these schools were established in the Queen's head, however, so they didn't count; and besides, the King would have disavowed any and all knowledge of her work if it had become public knowledge. But her chances of surviving were greatly improved with him knowing and telling her boss to give her an extra long leash while her plan was put into motion. Or rather, while she put the plan the Resistance man in holding cell 212 had told her about into motion, with some modifications to make it more palatable.
The problem was hunger; while she knew that the Queen was pushing her father to develop a Stuffed Tea, she also knew that he didn't think it could be done- not in any timely, efficient manner, anyway, no matter how many times he was called to Court to be threatened. So that meant they would have to solve it the old-fashioned way, with food. The King could (and did) authorize the silos in the city to operate like a soup kitchen, which stabilized the areas around the city's center, but it was a stop-gap measure at best. They needed more.
The first step was to get the King to call the Queen back to the city. She'd been looking for the illegal farming communities herself, and, as rumor had it, was greatly enjoying her ability to bomb, burn, and then observe her targets from a safe height. It was easy enough for him to plead a rapidly escalating domestic situation that needed her expert touch. Once she was back, his direct involvement was mostly limited to keeping her attention from being focused on the food problem, and Jelly went to see her new Resistance contact.
She assumed an identity for this. She dressed in the casual clothing of someone who lived in the city and might have a close family member as a member of the Suits; a brilliant cobalt greatcoat over soft lavender trousers and a violet pinstriped blouse, complete with a fashionable wide-brimmed hat and veil combination. She almost decided to speak in her passable Court accent, but decided at the last minute to Albune (not-exactly-Scottish, her father called it). If anyone noticed it slipping, then they would assume that she was covering up something more Wonderlandian than Long Island. Othello went with her; he introduced himself as Iago, and she called herself Deborah. The contact was called Humpty Dumpty, and she hoped for his sake that that was a codename he hadn't picked himself.
"We're not going to give you anything that will actively hurt those under our command," Jelly stipulated.
Humpty Dumpty looked quizzical, his long, pale face scrunching in upon itself.
"What she means is that we're giving you this information so you can avoid our patrols. If we find our groups being ambushed, we won't be in touch with you, we'll come after you," Othello clarified.
"Of course!" Humpty sniffed. "And in return, we expect you to actually steer clear of these locations for a while."
"That was the deal," Jelly said. "We just need to be sure that you know the consequences of breaking it."
They stared at each other for a moment, she and Humpty. Othello stood behind her, ready to back her up if things went wrongwards or the Resistance man trying to hide in the shadows made an unexpected move. Then they switched folders of intelligence and made their way out of each other's company.
It panned out, and after a few weeks the riots began to die down. So they met again. And again, until one night she sought out Humpty on her own.
Even though they didn't know who Jelly and Othello were, exactly- they probably thought she was a Diamond, or a Club, and Othello kept dropping hints that he might be a Lizard- they would find it suspicious if they both showed signs of defecting. This part rode on her ability to act, at least as far as the King was concerned; she saw it more as a brief respite away from constantly watching herself around anyone who might report her behavior to the Crown. When safe zones and workable routes were established for the influx of food, the next step would be to make sure that food would keep moving through them, and her suggestion would have more weight if it looked like she was conflicted about her loyalties.
"Nobody can know I'm here," she told Humpty. "I want to help, but there are too many people I'm responsible for, and if they find out what I'm doing-"
"I'll keep it between the two of us," Humpty promised. "No one needs to know where the information came from."
Somehow, the Police Spades managed to 'lose' several of the packages of seeds the Eggmen had engineered to be higher yielding alternatives to the ones currently used by the Crown's farms. The panic they caused by disappearing sent the Queen flying into a rage. It was all Jelly could do to keep the Spades under her command from getting the axe, and she herself ended up in a holding cell twice. There was a scramble to replace the seeds, but the King managed to keep the Queen's focus on other things. It helped that Jack chose that moment to pull some truly spectacular stunts, so the Queen really was too busy trying to control her son to keep a close watch on what was going on with her seed production, which was good, because somehow or another packages just kept disappearing.
"Are you sure we're not dancing too close to the fire?" Othello asked her as they made their way to another intelligence swap meet.
"I started leaping over the fire ages ago," Jelly told him.
"That's not exactly helpful," he replied.
"Come on, Iago," she said. "If we don't do something to take the pressure off, Wonderland will fall into civil war, and then there'll be fire everywhere."
"Cheery thought, Desdemona."
"Deborah," Jelly corrected him. "Don't screw that up in front of the Resistance."
"What the hell kind of name in Deborah, anyway?" Othello shot back.
It's my middle one. "I'm pretty sure it's an Oyster one, actually."
She was never quite sure if Othello knew whether or not she was an Oyster. He'd grown up in the city, and so didn't have a chance to run into her father back when he would still tell people that he didn't belong here and neither did his family. She'd gotten a shot that prevented the light that burned other free-range Oysters from marking her in the same way. Her accent was weird, but she was hardly the only one with one like it. If he knew, though, he didn't give any indication, and time passed without undue incident and without any remarks to the contrary being made. They passed along the information, she passed along the seeds, and Wonderland pulled itself back from the brink of starvation. It couldn't last, though.
The problem was, of course, that the seeds represented a shift in the balance of power. Without Tea to keep them sated, the people's loyalties would go to those who fed them. Finally, when they'd gone a good five days without so much as a loud protest, the King called the whole thing to a halt.
The Resistance knew her too well, ushering her inside the building with the most cursory of weapon's checks that missed the small-caliber gun hidden in the lining of the jacket. When Humpty joined her in his office, she had taken it out, and ditched the coat and hat in favor of being recognized as a Spade, as Jellybean.
"If you don't start leaving now, my hands will scoop you up," she told him.
She didn't have to warn him, she rationalized. It would be much safer for her to not. Othello would kill her if he knew what she was up to in here. But strangely enough, Humpty didn't appear to appreciate that.
Humpty lunged at her; she sidestepped him and knocked him out with the butt of her pistol before re-donning the civilian clothes and sounding the alarm for the benefit of the rest of them. She gave the Resistance a thousand count wait as she divested once more, before tapping out the order to storm the building.
It was a very successful crack down; in addition to Humpty Dumpty himself, they bagged fifty-seven men out of a suspected cell of seventy-five. This was a good thing, because the tracking devices the King had ordered deployed into the seed the Resistance had taken weren't working as advertised, some broadcasting only intermittently and some not broadcasting at all. Worse still, when one of the patrols did manage to get a fix, they found themselves on the wrong end of an ambush, and Claude was killed in the ensuing firefight.
Dad was called in to defend his invention's performance; he had several explanations for their failure to work as advertised, many of which would be difficult and expensive to prove. Jelly was worried, but unsurprised: Dad knew better than to fight the Crown when it came to Tea, but when he had the opportunity to muck up anything else without getting caught, he'd take it. The problem was that this was as important as Tea brewing, and for all that he seemed to have managed to not overstep his bounds this time, he'd trodden on them very hard.
She held back when the Queen left, her entourage trailing behind her and the rest of the Court using the opportunity to escape. She didn't want the King to focus on what her father was capable of, and discussing ways to prevent the Resistance from infiltrating the city further presented itself as a useful distraction. And there was the matter of repairing the damage to their public image. And how to keep such a near thing from happening again. And, as the King had eventually pointed out, the matter of succession amongst the Police Spades.
With Claude dead, Nine Harlan should have ascended to the rank of Ten. Instead, he was shuffled sideways to become the new Agent White when the previous holder of that title unexpectedly retired. The other Nine, Uthar, was passed over, but considering how slow his career path was it was hardly surprising.
So Jellybean became the Ten of Spades, promoting Othello up a rank to be her top Nine as her first act. And as long as it didn't place her father in any danger, there she would stay.
Three years later, Jelly stared at her mother in shock. "Wait, what?"
Mom took a tentative step forwards. "Jellybean…"
"Back up a moment here," Jelly protested, not aware that she was doing just that until Dad reached out and stopped her. She took a deep breath. Pull it together, Jelly. It's not like this is bad news.
She wasn't entirely sure what this was, but her mother was alive, so it couldn't be bad.
"Okay," she said. "I've been asking the wrong question. How? How are you alive?"
"Somehow or another the Resistance heard about my work with the Tea addicts," Mom began. "When the Suits put me in the cell, the Resistance was waiting. I wasn't in there for more than five minutes before they came to me with an offer: my freedom in exchange for my information on how to treat Tea addiction."
Jelly nodded. "Okay. That makes sense, I guess?"
"They lied about executing her," Dad cut in. "The Crown wouldn't have wanted to lose face, and anyway…"
"It was supposed to keep you in line," Jelly finished for him, as gently as she could.
Dad pressed his mouth in a thin, straight line and nodded once, curtly. Jelly turned back to her mother. "So, have you been here the whole time?"
"No," Mom replied. "We had a very long talk about combating addiction and theories behind psychological dependency and methods for treating physical dependency, and then they sent be to a safe house in the country."
"So you were in the country." Mom nodded. "You were hiding in the country for eleven years." Mom stopped nodding and shook her head.
"Not exactly," she replied. "I couldn't-"
"Jellybean!" Charlie yelled as he clamored down the stairs at the end of the corridor.
"Uh," Mom said.
"Mom, this is Sir Charles," Jelly introduced as Charlie made his way towards him. "And Charlie! These are my parents."
"Oh, yes, of course: they're even more poufy than you!" Charlie's face broke into a wide grin. "Delighted to meet you both." He swept into a low bow, and got stuck halfway when he tried to straighten.
"Quickly, quickly, sacroiliac," he muttered, and Jelly helped him stand up straight again. "Good-O. Caterpillar would like to see everyone up on the roof, by the by."
He wandered back the way he'd come. Mom turned to her, and said in a whisper.
"Sir Charles?"
"The last of the White Knights," Jelly confirmed. "He's been hiding out in the Forest of Wabe for the past hundred and fifty years."
Mom stared at her.
"Surprise?" Jelly offered.
"You ragamuffin!" Charlie bellowed from the stairs. "Are you coming or not?"
"You could try asking them politely!" Hatter yelled from the top of the stairs.
Charlie seemed to think about it. The three of them were nearly at the bottom of the stairs when he finally said "If you would be so kind as to ascend?"
"…thanks, Charlie," Jelly replied. The knight beamed, and clanked back up the stairs, oblivious to the looks her parents were shooting each other.
She'd never been inside the Hospital of Dreams proper. She'd escorted some of her Suits here, when they became too steeped to perform properly, but she'd never been close enough to any of them to visit. She'd heard the rumors, though, about what the treatments for being steeped in Tea could be like, and her imagination ran wild now that they were accompanied by a soundtrack and occasional glimpses as they made their way up.
The Hospital of Dreams was short on windows, and the sunlight was abundant on the roof. Jelly squinted against the light, just barely able to make out Jack's figure, standing next to another man that must be Caterpillar. She almost missed Hatter entirely until he was right next to her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, fine," Jelly said automatically. "Why?"
"Well, you look like you've seen a ghost."
Jelly nearly laughed, but didn't, with the thought that if she started now she might have another breakdown. "Funny you mention that." She turned around to make sure she had her mother's attention. "Mom? This is Hatter. He's my contact with the Resistance." She turned back to Hatter, who had puckered his lips into a small 'o'. "Hatter, this is-"
"Tortoise," interrupted the other man. Jelly whipped back around to face him. "She's Tortoise."
"What?" Jack asked, while Jelly was still busy trying to form words.
"I couldn't just stay in the safe house while the both of you were still in the Casino," Mom explained.
"You couldn't have told me earlier, Caterpillar?" Jack asked. "I would have passed the word on to Jelly and we would have had this meeting years ago!"
"Yes, it's evident that if either of the three were more forthcoming about their situation we might have been able to resolve this conflict much sooner," Caterpillar replied. "But until Mock Turtle came with news of Jellybean's defection we didn't have the whole picture, and so we were left with the supposition that as much as Tortoise would like to reunite with her family her family would not go quietly, that Carpenter might be acting under the Queen against his will and inclination but he would continue to do so as long as his daughter remained under her power, and that Jellybean herself was devoted to her duties with an almost fanatical passion."
There was an awkward silence as everyone digested his words, save for the sound of Charlie's tuneless humming as he absorbed himself in peeling flecks of red paint from the white roses lining the edge of the roof.
"Somebody had to play royalist," Jelly said finally, turning to her parents. "We all thought you were dead," she jerked her head in Mom's direction, before locking eyes with Dad "And no one would have believed it coming from you in a thousand years."
Dad's eyes widened, and Jelly realized that he'd never had any idea how much of being a Spade was an act.
All this time, and he probably thought I was loyal to the Crown, she thought, her horror mounting. And I've been fighting my own mother for years. You don't always hit what you're aiming at. I could have killed her. She could have killed me.
"I was a child when we came here," she said aloud. "I've spent more than half my life in Court. If it was going to be any of us, it was going to be me."
"Jelly-" Hatter began, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't," she said, jerking away. Hatter snatched his hand back, and she winced. "Just- one minute, give me one minute."
"One-" Jelly swallowed around a lump in her throat. No. she was not going to break down in tears twice in two days. That would be stupid. "I'll be back in a minute."
She walked quickly away from them, just barely resisting the urge to break into a run. She spotted the armrest of a bench around the corner from the rooftop door, and made a crowflight for it. She sat down, kept her breathing deep and blinked the moisture from her eyes before it could overflow.
Charlie clanked over to her before sitting down on her right side, rubbing absently on the petals of a particularly red rose, singing quietly to himself. Jelly stared at him.
"What am I doing?" she asked, only half to the knight. Charlie stopped singing, and tilted his head at her, curious. She continued. "I had my plan all nailed down. I would go to the Resistance, and they would get Dad out, and I would do their work until either the Crown found me or I racked up enough favors to follow him. None of that's even an option now. It's not all bad, but I don't know what I'm doing. Jack has the Stone, Mom's alive, Hatter's shop was probably torched, you exist, and I've killed my own-"
She stopped. This wasn't helping.
Charlie peered at her curiously, still working the paint off the rose in his hands. "How old were you, when you were brought to Wonderland."
"Ten," Jelly replied. "I was ten."
"Ah," Charlie replied. "Must have been quite a shock."
"It was." She didn't remember very much of her first day in Wonderland, only that her head really hurt and there was a lot of shouting involved. But shock was definitely an applicable word.
Charlie stopped peeling the paint off his flower and stared at it.
"You okay?" she asked him.
"I was ten once," he replied distantly. "I was ten when the armies came- one of three squires to the real White Knight. My job was to carry the great lance. But when it mattered, when I was needed most… I lost my nerve, and I ran."
Jelly stared. Charlie began to work on his rose again.
"I hid for three days," he continued. "And when I came out, everyone was dead, even the magnificent Red King, still sitting on his throne. At first I wished that I'd died with them, but after a while a deeper feeling took over. I wanted a second chance. I wanted to avenge them. So I stole the White Knight's armor, his name… his courage. And I waited for the right time. When the three of you showed up, ring in hand, I knew the right time had finally arrived."
He held out the now-white rose to her.
"Thanks," Jelly said numbly, and took it.
There was a small cough from the corner. Jelly looked up and faced her mother.
"As long as were stretching minutes," Mom said. "Could we talk, Al- Jellybean?"
"Surely!" Charlie answered for her, jumping to his feet. He clamored away, and Mom took his seat on the bench.
Alice stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say.
"Look at you," Mom said quietly, reaching out a hand to cup her face. "You're taller than me, now."
"I had half a tree in my face earlier today too," Alice told her, tugging her mother's hand away from her face and intertwining their fingers.
Mom squeezed her hand, and pressed her mouth into a thin line. "How have you been?"
"Lately? Kind of confused," she admitted. "In general? I'm okay. I'm just fine."
"Do you want to try that again with sincerity?" Mom asked.
Alice snorted. "No, I'll stick with my first story, thank you. How about you? How have you been?"
"I'm okay," Mom echoed. "I'm just fine."
"Rain check?" Alice offered, only smirking a little.
"I suppose that's for the best," Mom admitted. "I just don't- I missed so much of your life. I missed you growing up. I missed you, and I'm so sorry I didn't try harder to get back to you."
"It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault. Not anyone here at least," Alice protested. "We all did the best we could with the information we had. We just never felt safe enough to check each other's notes."
Mom frowned.
"The way I hear it, you came running when you heard we were out. Besides, you haven't missed everything yet," Alice continued. "It's not like I'm married, or courting or anything yet. You'll be here for that."
Mom gave her a searching look.
"What?" she asked.
"If you aren't courting," Mom said. "What's the deal with Hatter?"
"I told you," Alice replied. "He's my Resistance contact."
"Which is why he looks at you like you're at the center of the universe," Mom half-asked.
"… What?" Alice said.
Mom raised an eyebrow.
"Hatter's just a flirty, friendly person," she explained.
"He didn't come off that way," Mom replied.
"It's been an intense couple of days," Alice said.
Mom's eyebrow climbed higher.
"By which I mean we found out Jack was Resistance, walked in on Hatter's shop being ransacked, got chased by a Jabberwock, and were ambushed by Suits," she added hastily. They'd also ridden on horseback, had a moonlight heart-to-heart, and cuddled a bit, but she figured including those tidbits would give off the wrong impression. "Look. Let's go back with the men and figure out what's going on as far as overthrowing the Crown goes."
"I'll hold you to that rain check, Jellybean," Mom told her.
"I know," Alice replied.
They sat around a table beneath an awning as they talked. It was an incredibly frustrating process. Caterpillar refused to speak directly to anyone who wasn't Jack, Mom, or very occasionally her father. For his part, Dad was mostly staring off into space again. Charlie started out trying to look noble and ended up nodding off with his head on his chest. Hatter alternated between sending her concerned looks and interjecting on the three-way argument Jack, Caterpillar, and Mom were having about the fate of the Stone. Caterpillar wanted them all to remain here, so that they would have news the moment the Casino fell. Mom felt that all of them should take the Stone and hide out in the country. Jack was reluctant to give the Stone up, and torn between wanting to be in the City where he could more easily coordinate his supporters, and being out in the country where it would be safer. Alice tottered on the verge of swallowing the Stone and declaring that she'd be in the Wabe until everything sorted itself out, and they could come find her then.
Eventually they decided that she, Jack, and Hatter would hide out in the country, probably taking Charlie with them. Mom would keep the Suits engaged; Dad would stay in the Hospital of Dreams with Caterpillar and work on a way to cure Tea addiction in mass quantities. The Casino would fall on its own without the Looking Glass in operation, and the government would fall with it.
It wasn't ideal. It wasn't even close to ideal; the collateral damage would be huge. They would likely lose every Oyster in the Casino, as well as large chunks of the civilian population as the City devolved back into rioting, not to mention the Suits that would go off the edge without Tea or die at the hands of angry mobs. But it was the surest way to topple the Crown.
"Wake up," Alice whispered, clapping her hand on Charlie's shoulder. The knight started awake. "We're going to go hide out for a while until the Queen's reign collapses under its own weight. Do you want to come with?"
"Certainly," Charlie replied enthusiastically as he stood. "We can hide easily amongst the City of the Knights."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Hatter interrupted, standing himself. "March will be able to tell we've been there, and that someone lived there for ages. He'd be expecting us to return."
Charlie frowned. "The man with the rabbit head? Truly?"
"I told you, he's an assassin, and he's very good at what he does," Hatter replied, swinging his jacket back on.
"But I don't see how-"
"We left in a hurry. There must be evidence," Jack pointed out from where he was leaning against the wall.
"We didn't obscure our footprints around camp- he'll be able to tell that there was four of us," Hatter told him as he walked out from under the awning and towards the door. "Your inventions will tell him that someone was there on their own for a very long time. No, trust me, he knows."
"I know how to blow up the Casino," Dad said matter-of-factly.
Mom and Caterpillar looked at him askance. Hatter stopped mid-stride, before spinning around on his heels. "Come again?" he asked.
"I know how to blow up the Casino," Dad repeated. "There's a design flaw- I think that's why they executed that other Carpenter. He must have built it in when he designed the place. If the Oysters were ever to experience a strong negative emotion, the distillation system would filter it in with the positive emotions. There would be a catastrophic meltdown that would take out the entire Casino."
Everyone in the room stared at him. Dad shifted uncomfortably.
"There are two main issues I've been having trouble working out," Dad continued after a moment. "The first is that someone needs to be in at least one of the Oyster rooms to wake them up. They've been taken from their homes and their feet are stuck to the floor- negative emotions will just come naturally from that. Each room is guarded by two Spades, however, and seeing as the last time I went up against two Spades didn't end so well, so I'm still trying to find a way around that. The other problem is getting the Oysters released. The Eggmen are supposed to do so in the case of an emergency, but between how steeped they generally are and how panicked the Casino coming down on top of them would make them, I'm not sure they would. So I'd need to get to back down to the lab, at which point Walrus would probably shoot me."
"You've been thinking about this a lot," Alice realized. "Is that why you've been so… not all there, lately?"
Dad grimaced. "I was hoping you hadn't noticed."
"Oh, I noticed," Alice told him.
"So how are we going to get far enough into the Casino to cause havoc?" Hatter asked. "And how are we not going to die in the process."
"I think I know how to get in," Jelly said slowly, turning so that she was facing Jack directly. "But you're not going to like it."
"That's generally what-" Jack began, but was cut off by the sound of a scream echoing up from below. He turned around and peered over the edge; Hatter and Mom joined him.
"What is it?" Jelly asked.
"March seems to have gotten himself a new posse," Hatter replied, pale-faced.
"Fucktastic," Jelly grit out. Mom sent her a sharp look.
"Yeah, sorry," Jelly apologized, only somewhat sarcastically, before turning to Caterpillar. "How many exits does this place have?"
"It would be a small matter to take a plank and make a bridge into one of the nearby buildings," Caterpillar replied.
"Good. Do that, I'll catch you up," Jelly advised, pulling her gun out of her holster.
"What do you think you're doing?" Mom asked.
"I'm buying you time," Jelly said.
"By doing what, exactly?" Mom said, sounding dangerous.
"Jamming the elevator and blocking the stairs," Jelly explained. If I'm lucky she didn't add aloud.
"That's stupid," Hatter opined.
"Do you have a better idea?" Jelly asked.
"Actually, I do," Hatter replied. "Tortoise and Caterpillar run the Resistance, Jack's got the Stone, and Carpenter needs to find some way to deal with the Tea heads." He turned around to face the people he'd just named. "You're too important to get caught. If you go down, the rest of us don't have a chance." He turned back to her. "So that's you, me, and Charlie. We shut the place down and then get the hell out and meet up with the rest later."
"But-" Mom and Dad protested as one.
"We'll cover more ground if we split up," Jelly cut them off. "I'll take right, you get left, and Charlie can shore up the middle."
"Wait," Charlie said. "You're being serious."
"Yes," Jelly said, heading towards the door. "Come on, we're almost out of time."
It was a moment before she heard Charlie begin to clank after them, but by the time she reached the door he was following. She wrenched the door open and scrambled down the stairs. There was an elevator just down the end of the hall, and she raced towards it. She opened the service panel.
"Okay, so when you come across an elevator," she began as Hatter and Charlie reached the end of the stairs. "You need to find the service panel. Then you go for the thick, green tube. Then," she placed her gun carefully down on the floor and withdrew the knife from her pocket. "You stab it," she did so "Good and hard, so it goes all the way through. Then you," she shifted so that her back was flat against the wall and reached behind her before narrating her actions "Twist and pull out." A thin jet of black goo spurted out of the panel, which sparked slightly. Jelly began to wipe the knife off on the carpet until Hatter pulled out a handkerchief for her to use instead. "And that's how you disable an elevator. Let's go- and don't get caught." She picked up her gun.
Hatter went left and she went right, and Charlie eventually stopped staring at the puddle of goo and made his way forwards. Jelly spent a moment fervently hoping that any Suits that would come across him would mistake him for a patient, before she focused herself on the task at hand.
The Hospital of Dreams was full of ornate furniture impoverished Courtesans had offered as payment for their treatments; it made finding things to block the staircases with easy. Jelly had managed to finish her entire third without hearing anything more than the sound of distant curses as the Suits tried to find a way up, and was feeling cautiously optimistic about their chances of pulling this off when everything went straight to hell.
The Suits came up from the hall just around the corner from the elevator Jelly had been disabling. She pulled her knife out of the tube and managed to get her gun in hand and her body in a defensive position behind a cabinet before they opened fire. She was so engaged in exchanging fire that she didn't hear the sound of March's footsteps pounding the carpet until it was too late. She turned around, but he'd disarmed her before she could get off a single shot, wrenching the gun from her hands and bending her wrist back to the point of pain. The gun hit the far wall with a small clatter, and March's hand was around her throat before she could even yell in pain and surprise.
He lifted her clear off her feet and slammed her against the wall. "Where's Hatter?" he growled.
Jelly didn't answer; she was too busy trying to blink the spots out of her eyes, hook her heels on the baseboard, and breathe.
"March?" called one of the Suits.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" March yelled back, shifting his hand from her throat to her shoulder. Jelly slumped against wall, massaging her throat with her free hand before she remembered that she still had a knife in her pocket. "Go find the others," March ordered, and turned back to her just as she'd stuck her hand in her pocket.
"Where's Hatter?" he repeated.
"What's it to you?" Jelly snapped.
"What, a guy can't ask after his baby brother?" March replied.
Jelly went limp with shock. March reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the knife. It fell to the floor, and March began to pat her down for more weapons, pausing to discard the spare clips she had with her.
"You had the same teeth as him," she said finally.
March's reply was to spin her so she was facing the wall, and divest her of the knife between her shoulder blades and the gun at the small of her back. Her arm was wrenched up back enough that she was momentarily afraid of dislocating it, and she hit the wall with enough force to drive the air from her lungs.
"Where's Hatter?" March said again, the cold ceramic of his rabbit nose pressing against her ear.
"I don't know," Jelly told him.
March pulled her other arm up and pinned both her wrists to the center of her back. Jelly grunted, and set her jaw.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Positive," she grit out.
He pulled back on her wrists and she stumbled off the wall.
"Are you really sure, Jellybean?" he asked, pressing the 'door open' button on the elevator.
"Really," she replied, stamping down on his instep. His grip on her wrists slipped, and she tugged her right arm free and pulled it back for a punch. Then the elevator doors opened with a ding and March all but flung her by her trapped arm into the empty elevator shaft.
Jelly screamed, and her right hand changed quickly from throwing a punch at March to clutching tightly to his wrist. She looked down for a fleeting moment, and could just make out the top of the elevator she'd disabled, far, far too many stories below her.
"This is your big fear, yeah?" March asked, as Jelly tried not to hyperventilate. "Heights aren't really your thing, and falls even less, right?"
Jelly didn't reply.
"Tell me where Hatter is," March repeated.
"I don't know," she said again.
"Tell me!" March ordered shaking her a little.
"I don't know!"
"I'm right behind you, March," Hatter's voice rang out from the hall. "Let her go."
March's head jerked to the side. "Tell you what, Hatter. Put down your gun first and I'll do as you meant, not as you said."
Jelly heard the clatter of a gun falling to the ground, and then March heaved her back into the corridor, where she went spiraling into the edge of an armoire. She pressed herself against the wall unsurprised when she reached a hand up to the side of her face again and found it sticky with blood.
Hatter starts forwards, but stops when they make eye contact. Move him away, she tried to communicate He missed the knife in my boot, if you can just get him to expose his back I've got a chance.
Thankfully, he turned his attention back on March before she could get to Assuming, of course, that you aren't going to attack me for killing your brother. But I've kind of got the vibe that your relationship with him is even more fucked up than the relationship between Jack and his parents so maybe that's not applicable?
"Hi Hatter," March greeted him. "How have you been?"
"You mean before having my shop stormed and being chased all through the bloody Forest of Wabe? Peachy-keen," Hatter replied.
"Oh good," March said, pulling out his switchblade. It snickered open and Hatter took an involuntary step back. "I'd hate to think that killing me gave you any trouble sleeping."
Hatter laughed, a wild, mad edge in his voice. "You're kidding, right? Without having to make sure you weren't going to pop in and knife me, I slept like a baby."
March started forward, and Jelly slipped her fingers into her boot, wrapping them around the hilt of her knife. Hatter stands where he is, but pulls his fist back, waiting for March to come into range.
"Oh good. You'll be well-rested when you die, then," March tells him.
Jelly opened the knife and lunged. March pivoted and disarmed her, but before he could do anything painful- or more final- he froze. There was a distinct crunch of plaster and wires, and a crack split March's face in two before he collapsed on the floor, dead.
She and Hatter stared at each other for a moment. Then Hatter pulled another handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. "Here, you look like you could use this."
Jelly stared at him, until Hatter leaned over March's body and pressed it against the cut on her head. Jelly grimaced and held it in place.
"In case you were wondering," Hatter said. "I do have more of those, and a spare gun, and a lock picking kit, and a flask full of brandy, which I'm kind of glad I didn't break out last night because then there would be nothing to get us through today."
"I pretty much just had my body weight in weapons," Jelly admitted, bending down to collect them.
"Given the way things are running, that was probably a good idea," Hatter said, handing her one of her guns. She slid it back into the holster at the small of her back, wincing as she did so.
She was bleeding, and bruised, but she was alive. And so was Hatter. And so wasn't March.
"Are you okay?" she asked him.
"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" Hatter replied quickly, pocketing his own gun. He spends too long fiddling with it before spinning to face her again. "What'd he tell you?"
"That you were brothers," Jelly replied.
Hatter looked dismayed. But before he could say anything, there was the sound of screaming from the center of the building.
"And here we go again," Jelly muttered, and they took off.
The screaming was from the Suits, who were gathered in a pool, floating on overturned tables and the rowboat Dad mentioned earlier. Dad was leaning against the tiled wall next to Mom, looking pretty well pleased with himself. Caterpillar was puffing on a hookah, and as they watched Charlie gave a cry of "GALADOON DE BOOSHE!" which seemed to somehow cause the floating Suits to begin to drift towards the center of the pool.
"That still makes no sense, right?" Jelly asked. "That's not just the head wound?"
"There is no sense coming from Charlie," Hatter confirmed. "Not ever, would be my guess."
"Ah," said Jack from behind them. "There you are. I was starting to worry- rightly it seems."
He frowned at the handkerchief Jelly was still clutching to her head. Jelly glared at him. "What happened to the plan?"
"Everyone but you realized that the only people you outrank are the ones trying to turn us over to my mother," Jack replied. "So we came up with a new plan. By the way, what happened to March?"
"I did," Hatter replied bluntly. "Twice."
This meant that she'd based her original gamble upon a false supposition, Jelly realized. Hatter probably hadn't been acting under Resistance orders, and he certainly wasn't installed in the Casino. She was horrified for a few seconds, before she gave herself a kick and realized that things had managed to work out anyway.
"Jellybean!" Dad seemed to have just realized that she was in the room, and that she was a bit more beat up than she had been earlier. Mom started towards her as well, and Jelly had the distinct impression that they were going to fuss over her like she was ten again right in front of everybody.
"I'm fine," she tried to head them off. "I'm fine, really I-" As she cast around for something, anything to deflect her parents, she accidentally locked eyes with Darrel, who glowered at her from his wobbly perch at the front of the rowboat. She was hit with a sudden, wondrous bolt of inspiration. "And I know how we're going to bring down the Casino."
"You do?" Mom asked, sounding unimpressed.
Alice batted her mother's hands away from her face and stepped up to the edge of the pool.
"Darrel!" she yelled. "How do you feel about joining the Resistance?"
Darrel laughed at her. "You have gone mad."
"We're in the Hospital of Dreams," Alice shot back. "We're all mad here. Seriously, though, you can't tell me you like the Queen."
"Nobody likes the Queen," Jack muttered from behind her.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Darrel asked.
"Everything and nothing," Alice replied. "Nothing because that's what's there, and everything because then I can give you a recruitment speech."
Darrel shook his head, bemused. "After the sort of shit you were pulling this morning that speech would need to give me a pretty good reason to listen to you."
Alice nearly flinched, but forced herself not to. She recalled his daughters instead, and smiled. "I can give you three pretty and good reasons," she told him, before remembering his late wife. The smile slid off her face, "Possibly four."
"I'm waiting, Jellybean" Darrel replied.
Alice took a deep breath, and began to slide the cards out of the Queen's pack.