Hello! Here's Chapter Seven, one week late. My stupid Internet crashed, and it took forever to publish, so this is on of my longest chapters, I think. I hope you like it.

The Nightmares

Alice's sleep that night was plagued by nightmares. The first one had started out all right. In it, she and Hatter had been picnicking at the edge of the lake, in the Forest of Wabe. They had both been enjoying themselves when they heard a distant roar in the forest. Alice had been worried, but Hatter had brushed it off. A few minutes later, the roar came again, closer, and again Alice was spooked. Hatter again brushed off her concern, and they relaxed. After another ten minutes, though, the roar came again, very close. This time Hatter didn't try to calm Alice down. They both rushed to the boat, but they couldn't find it! They searched frantically for the boat, and finally Hatter found it and they were back at the little dock on the other side of the lake, March and the Suits bearing down on them. Even though Alice recognized this sequence of events, she was still frightened, and breathed a long sigh of relief when the boat started and they got out on the water. But the clouds closed in and the wind kicked up, and all of a sudden the waves were huge. Alice was swept back to a summer when she went tubing on Lake Champlain as a child at age nine. Boating back across the lake to the campsite, a huge storm appeared and the boat started taking on water. Her dad had done his best to steer, but they had almost capsized and everyone was too frightened to go way out again. Alice looked at her father at the wheel, but Hatter was there instead. He was trying to fight the weather, but it was a losing battle. Alice was telling him to drive to the shore, but he kept yelling something about having to brave the storm. Then his hat was blown off and Alice reached up, trying to grab it. She got swept overboard and her shouts were swept away by the wind as the boat sped of. All of a sudden, a gigantic wave came and capsized the boat. Alice had tried to swim to Hatter, but she couldn't find him. She fought the waves as best she could, but woke up thrashing around.

The next dreams were harder to remember, and mostly consisted of being chased or tortured or trapped. The final dream, however, was a doozy. Alice was back in the Gaming Room, hugging her father. At first Alice was ecstatic that her father was alive again, but, in a rush of information, she remembered that her father was about to die. As soon as she thought this, she was floating about the scene, watching in horror as her body continued to hug Robert. Alice tried to scream, to warn her dad that he was about to be shot. But no sound came out of her mouth, nothing happened when she tried to move. It was a horrible parody of an out-of-body experience. The gun rang out, deafening, and Robert collapsed. But then a weird fuzz spread over the scene for just a moment, and Alice's father was standing again. The same gunshot exploded through Alice's mind a second time, a third, a fourth, a fifth…her father fell again and again. Finally Alice curled up and cried. She didn't look any more. And the gunshots stopped. But then the unthinkable happened. One of the drugged Oysters detached from the tables, and looked up at Alice for a moment. Alice's jaw dropped in shock. It was her mother.

"Alice? Alice? Where am I?" She asked, confused and scared, unable to find her daughter. It seemed that Alice had disappeared from the casino floor.

"Mom! Mom! Mom! I'm right here! Run, Mom! Run!" Alice screamed and screamed, trying to get to her mother. But Carol, like everyone else, seemed unable to hear her. Walrus walked up to Alice's mom and put a gun to her head, at which point Alice realized something else. Where was Hatter? As soon as she thought that, she was answered. A Suit marched Hatter out from behind him, pointing a gun at his head too. Hatter looked beaten up and broken. He was missing his hat.

"Alice!" Walrus roared in his deep and terrible baritone. "Come out now!" "This is your last chance, Alice! Or we kill them both…slowly!" Alice screamed and beat at the invisible floor that was holding her above the crowd. No one seemed able to perceive her. Then, in unison, Carol and Hatter looked up at her, as if they could suddenly see her. The look of betrayal, disbelieving, sorrow, and – most upsetting of all – love, that they wore was heartbreaking. Suddenly, with a crack like an iceberg breaking, they both fell to the ground, twin pools of blood blossoming around their heads. Alice screamed then, a wordless sound of anguish and pain. She screamed until she could no longer make any sound, and she collapsed into a ball and sobbed wordlessly. Then there was another crack and Alice woke up. There were tears of her face.

"Honey?" Carol's worried face looked down at her.

"Mom?" Alice glanced around wildly, taking in the bed, the walls, realizing she was in her own room. "Ohmygod Mom, I had the worst dream. You got…you got…you died!" And Alice burst into tears again.

"Oh, honey! It's okay; I'm alive and well. Come on, let's go talk about it. I'll make you some tea." Carol nudged Alice out of bed. She didn't refuse.

"But Mom, isn't it the middle of the night?" Alice asked, confused.

"Yes, but I've had terrible nightmares too, and you can't go back to sleep on them. If you do, you get worse nightmares. So come on." Alice smiled. Her mother was definitely interesting. "Okay," Carol said when they were both sitting on the couch in the living room. "Now what was your dream about?" Alice took a deep breath and thought carefully.

"Well, there were two. In the first one, I was picnicking with Hatter and then we had to leave, so we got on this boat, and then I was on the boat with dad, and it was that summer where we hit the big storm, but then dad turned into Hatter and he was trying to steer the boat, and then his hat blew off, and I tried to reach it, and I fell overboard, and the boat capsized, and I couldn't find Hatter!" Alice started to cry again. Carol rubbed Alice's shoulders.

"Poor baby! But that wasn't the worst one, was it?" Alice shook her head mournfully. "Do you want to talk about it?" Alice nodded. She opened her mouth…and stopped. She was going to have to lie a little bit.

"So…um…well, dad and I were in this big room that looked like a casino, and there were all these people standing at the tables like windup dolls that hadn't been wound up. And there were these bad guys there, and dad and I were hugging, and all of a sudden I realized that one of the bad guys was going to shoot dad." Alice giggled hysterically at her use of the term "bad guys". "So, as soon as I realized that, I was sort of floating above the whole thing, and I couldn't make any noise. I tried to warn dad, but he got shot. And then the whole thing rewound a little, or something, and he got shot again, and it happened again and again, and again…it was horrible. And then finally it stopped, and one of the people just standing at the tables stood up, and it was you! And you were trying to find me, but I had kind of disappeared from the room, and I was only floating above everything. And then this big fat guy with a moustache, the one who shot dad, his name was Walrus. Anyway, he grabbed you and pointed a gun at your head. Then some other Suit, ah, guy, came out, and he had Hatter and was pointing a gun at him. And then Walrus told me that if I didn't come out, they would shoot you both. But I couldn't, because I was stuck watching the whole thing and couldn't move. So they shot you." Alice started crying, but she had sort of cried herself out, so she just hiccupped and sobbed dryly. There was something she need to do, something that would make her feel better…

"Honey? Do you want to call Hatter?" That was the thing missing, Alice realized, even as her mother asked her. Hatter. Alice nodded. "Okay, well, I'm going back to bed, okay?" Alice nodded again. Carol walked off, and Alice walked to the phone. She dialed the number for Hatter, and waited. At first she thought that he wouldn't wake up, but a groggy voice answered the phone.

"Yes?" Hatter slurred, his accent made much more pronounced by the time of night, well, morning.

"Hatter? I had the worst nightmares! Can I tell you about them?" Alice realized how ridiculous her request was. She waited for Hatter to turn her down.

"Alice? Yeah, of course! Definitely. Tell me about it." Alice smiled into the phone. She took a deep breath and told him both of her dreams, every detail, everything she hadn't told her mother. When she was done, Hatter let out a deep breath. "I'm coming over."

"What? Hatter, you can't do that, it's like one in the morning! My mom's here! No, just go back to sleep. I'll be fine. They're just nightmares." Alice attempted to scoff, but her voice cracked and the fear leaked through. She groaned internally.

"Nope, sorry, Alice, I'm already dressed. I'll see you in a few. Love you." And the phone clicked. Alice groaned, externally this time. How would she explain this to her mom?

"Explain what?" Carol stood in the doorway, looking curious Alice realized that she had spoken out loud.

"Hatter, erm, ah…" Alice couldn't find words. She took a deep breath. "I-told-him-the-dreams-and-then-he-said-he's-coming-over-I-tried-to-stop-him-but-there-was-nothing-I-could-do-I'm-really-really-sorry." The words came out in a rush and Alice blushed.

"He's coming over?" Carol didn't sound that angry. Alice hung her head anyway. "Good. He must be devoted to you if he's going to come over at one thirty in the morning for you because of nightmares. That, or he really wants to get in you pajamas."

"Mom!" Alice shrieked, shocked. She threw a pillow at her mother. "So you're not mad?" Carol shook her head.

"I'm getting used to this relationship, Alice. I'm more flexible than you think. Now I'm going to bed. Try not to be too loud." Carol walked back into her room, leaving Alice to retrieve the pillow, which she did. Then she sat and waited. Sometime later, a muffled knock came at the door. Alice rushed to open it. Hatter stood there in a t-shirt and jeans, grinning sleepily. He was wearing a fedora. Alice rolled her eyes.

"C'mon, you." She dragged him into her room and flopped on the bed. "Now, I'm tired, so only sleeping." Hatter held up his hands defensively.

"Further thing from me mind," he said seriously. Alice snorted.

"Yeah, right. C'mon, I'm tired." Hatter practically ran over, pulling off his boots and jeans – but leaving his hat on - and crawling into the bed, which was markedly too small for the both of them. Alice curled up with Hatter, and being that close to him broke Alice's tough façade. "Hatter, it was so scary!" She whimpered.

"Alice, look at me." Alice dutifully looked up, and Hatter's lips met hers for a moment. "I'm right here," he whispered. Alice nodded, and Hatter kissed the tears from her cheeks, tears she hadn't known she had cried. "Now sleep," Hatter ordered gently. Alice touched his hat brim lovingly. Then she rested her head on his chest and immediately fell asleep. There were no nightmares this time.

The bit about being on Lake Champlain was something that happened to me. There were like ten people in one boat, and it started taking on water... imagine being in a wet bathing suit in a boat traveling really fast while being pelted by rain and having huge waves splash you. It was really cold. Actually, it was kind of fun, in retrospect. Anyway, please review! I love you all, but my reviewers get cookies!