"We were both young, when I first saw you.
I close my eyes and the flashback starts,
I'm standing there, on a balcony in summer air.

See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.
See you make your way through the crowd
and say hello, little did I know..."

-Taylor Swift

Mirana found them in the kitchen, finishing their supper. Alice was with her.

"Ah, good, here you are! I was beginning to think you were lost in the basement somewhere," she said.

Lizzie and Fred smiled at each other. Then Fred's smile faltered and his face drained of color. Lizzie saw that Mirana had taken a small vial out from the folds in her dress. Was this it? Fred's 'cure'? Lizzie got up from the table and moved around beside Fred as he stood up as well. She reached out and took his hand- entwining her fingers with his in a subtle effort to show him that she wasn't going anywhere. He squeezed her hand gently.

"There's no need to look so glum," said Mirana. "This won't work, yet." She held up the small vial. "Unfortunately sometimes cures are a bit tricky. This one will require you to be somewhere else before you use it."

"Somewhere else?" asked Lizzie.

"Yes, Freddie will need to travel to the Crystal Cavern for the potion to work."

"How far away is that?" The further, the better thought Fred.

"The cavern is three days journey to the northwest border of Witzend. Our best horse has already volunteered to escort you and I've taken the liberty of having him provisioned." She looked at Lizzie. "I assumed that you would wish to accompany him." Lizzie nodded, gratefully.
"Well, then," she said, handing the vial to Fred, "the footmen will show you back to your rooms. You leave at dawn. Lizzie, I've left clothes suitable for traveling for you in your room. There is a cloak in the wardrobe that you will need to take as well." She turned to Fred. "Freddie...get some sleep, please. I will see both of you in the morning."

Lizzie felt somewhat like a child being told to go to bed. Mirana motioned that they should follow the footmen from the room and didn't seem to leave much choice in the matter.

After they left, Alice turned to Mirana. "I didn't realize there was anything magical about the Crystal Cavern."

"There's not," answered Mirana. "The potion would work just fine here as anywhere."

"What?" Alice asked, confused. "But then, why did you send them off halfway across Underland?"

"I thought a journey would do them good."

Alice didn't know whether to be disgusted or amused. "So, you're playing match-maker?"

Mirana shook her head sadly. "After he drinks that potion, Freddie's going to need something to live for..."

Mirana remembered another day in this same kitchen...oh, so long ago. She had once again tried to set Freddie up with a girl she thought he'd approve of, with no success.

"I appreciate your concern," he had said, "but since I'm neither lonely nor old, please stop trying to help me, Mirana."

"I don't know what you're waiting for," said Tarrant, who had been with them. This was somewhat of a bone of contention between the brothers with Freddie usually telling Tarrant to shut up and look after himself, and Tarrant pointing out that the younger Freddie was much more more eligible than he was.

That day, Freddie had turned angry eyes on his brother and said sarcastically, "I don't know Tarrant, I guess I just haven't found my Alice, yet!" and stormed out of the room.

Mirana hoped that perhaps Freddie had finally found her.

Fred took off his coat and threw it on the bed. He didn't feel like sleeping yet. What he really wanted to do was talk to Lizzie and apologize for getting her into this mess. He opened the door that led out to the terrace. It was a sort of communal balcony with the doors of three rooms opening up to it. Lizzie's room wasn't one of these, but he'd managed to see where it was this time on the way back from the kitchen. He felt sure he could pick it out from the courtyard. He looked over the edge and saw that he wasn't very high up, only about 15 feet, and the bricks on the side of the castle jutted out at regular intervals. It seemed do-able. Full night was just coming on and if he didn't hurry, she'd probably be asleep.
He went to the far edge of the terrace, climbed over the stone railing, and found footholds on the bricks. In seconds he was on the ground. Fred walked around to the other side of the wall to where the rooms of the hallway adjacent to his were to look for Lizzie's room. He found her door and saw that behind the tightly shuttered window, light still shone. He bent down and picked up a couple of small stones from the ground.

Lizzie was just about to change for bed when she heard something hit her window. "Plink!" Another one. She went to the window and unbarred it, nearly getting pelted in the face with a small rock as she opened it.

"Sorry!" Fred called from below.

"Hey! How did you get down there?"

"I escaped. Come out to your balcony."

She unbolted the door that led out to it and stepped outside. Fred was just climbing up the side of the wall. Lizzie laughed as he jumped over the railing and came to stand beside her, looking over the edge. The night was warm and Lizzie pushed her long sleeves up to her elbows. They stood in silence, watching as courtiers lit lanterns, which reminded her of Japanese globes that she'd seen in books, and hung them from the branches of the apple trees.

"I'm sorry," said Fred.

"For what?" she asked, confused.

"For getting you into all this mess. Now it will be a week before we can get back to Marmoreal to try to get you home. If you'd rather not go with me, I'll understand."

"I promised I wouldn't leave yet, Fred, and I'm not. Besides, probably no one even misses me back home."

"I'm sure Mickey does."

Mickey! Had she even though of him once since all this happened? "For some reason, this world seems more real than that one," she said. "I can hardly remember what he looks like...that sounds cruel, doesn't it?"

Fred just shrugged and continued to watch the lanterns being hung below. There were over two dozen in the tree just below them now, lighting the terrace up as if it was mid-day.

Fred was about to hop up and sit on the railing when he stopped short. In the light from the lanterns, he could plainly see the purple bruises encircling Lizzie's wrists as she rested her hands on the railing. Scenarios of how she would have gotten bruises like that filled his mind – none of them good.

"What is that?" he asked sharply, his heart pounding.

Lizzie noticed what he was looking at and tried nonchalantly to clasp her hands behind her back and pull her sleeves down. Fred grabbed one arm from behind her back and pushed the sleeve back up. He turned her wrist over, inspecting it.

"This, Lizzie...who did this to you?" he demanded. In the lantern light, he could clearly see the marks that could only have been made by someone holding her tightly by her wrists, hurting her.

"It's nothing, Fred. Don't worry about it." She tried to pull her arm back, but he held her fast.

"Don't worry about it? Someone did this to you and you expect me to not worry about it?" He focused on Lizzie and tried to calm himself...he needed an answer. "Lizzie, I need to know who did this."

Lizzie sighed and dropped her eyes, unwilling to meet his. "You were having a nightmare. I tried to wake you up, but you thought I was someone else," she said quietly and looked up at him. "You were asleep, Fred, you didn't know what you were doing..."

Realization dawned on his face. He backed away from her, dropping her arm as if it were made of burning coals. She crossed the distance that he had put between them and put her arms around him.

"Fred, it's okay, really. It wasn't your fault!"

Fred just stared, unseeing, lost in self recrimination. He had done this. He had hurt Lizzie. He remembered feeling her fear after he had woken up, not realizing what had happened. Each thought was like a separate dagger slicing at his heart. Lizzie – who he had sworn that he would never hurt! How could she possibly be standing here, holding him, telling him it was okay?

Lizzie, desperate for some response other than this trance he seemed to be lost in, took his face in her hands. "Fred, look at me..." she pleaded.

Her touch brought his attention back to her. Gently he took her hands from his face and held them in his own.

"You should have told me. I could have hurt you...worse than I did."

"You didn't."

Fred was not to be sidetracked. "I could have killed you."

"No, you wouldn't have."

"You can't know that," he said.

"Yes, I do. You couldn't have killed me, because I wasn't real in Elphyne."

"You were real enough to me." He took one of her wrists in his hands, smoothing it with his thumbs. Impulsively, he raised it to his lips and kissed it tenderly. Suddenly he was barraged by a feeling coming from Lizzie that made his heart race strangely. Quickly, he dropped her arm and turned back to the railing.

"So, what do you think would happen if one of those things caught fire?"

"I don't know," she said, slightly breathless. "I suppose it would probably burn the whole castle down."

"Hmm...nice thought to sleep on. I'll see ya' in the morning!" He hopped over the rail and let himself down to the ground, turning around to smile at her as he walked away.

"night, Fred..." Lizzie whispered.

She watched him until he turned the corner and was out of sight then went back inside, and tried valiantly to concentrate on getting changed for bed and nothing else. She threw the night gown over her head, blew out her lamp and hopped into bed, pulling the covers up around her, wishing herself to sleep – tomorrow morning would be here before she knew it and she was not an early riser. The harder she tried to sleep, the more Fred kept popping up in her mind, begging to be thought about. Her wrist still tingled slightly with the memory of his kiss.

Oooo! Fred! Exasperatingly, confusing Fred! She decided he either must not have realized what he was doing (and wouldn't that account for his actions afterwards?), or he was playing some game designed to piss her off or make her uncomfortable. Either of those scenarios she could deal with. She most definitely was not going to think of how his eyes looked - the deepest blue she'd ever seen, or how tenderly he had touched her, or how his kiss had sent a shiver through her – nope! She wasn't going to think about that at all.

Fred knew Lizzie would be watching him, so he walked at a painfully normal pace until he was out of her sight. Then he raced up the side of the castle to his own terrace as fast as he could without falling. He opened his door, barring it behind him and let himself sink to the floor, his back propped against it. What was he doing? He smacked the back of his head against the door a few times for good measure, hoping perhaps he could knock some sense into himself. Lizzie was going to think he had absolutely cracked.

Maybe he had.

The memory of the feelings that he had sensed from her, the shiver that ran through her as he had kissed her, almost intoxicated him. He just...he had been so worried about her, so grateful for her forgiveness... He had crossed a line and he knew it. His only hope was that Lizzie thought he'd been teasing her. It was just a game – a dangerous game that he should not be playing. He undressed and climbed into bed, wondering if his forgotten demons would wake him before dawn. That was another thing he'd need to address. If Lizzie was going to be anywhere in the vicinity of him sleeping, he'd need a way to protect her. There was only one thing he could do, he decided, as he felt sleep closing in on him.

That night, he slept soundly.