"Memories we share together,
moments no one else can know,
I will keep them close to me
and never let them go...

You have lost yourself in dreaming,
I have lost myself in you.
Now we lie beneath the sky
of stars and midnight blue."

-Enya

Someone was shaking her.

"Hey, wakey – wakey!" called a cheery voice.

"Fred, go back to sleep...," Lizzie groaned. How could he be so chipper when she knew for a fact he'd only gotten a few hours of quality sleep. She pulled her hood down over her face.

He pulled it back off. "Come on, at least untie me."

She sat up and unknotted the cord around his wrists. They were red where the cord had dug into them. She sighed unhappily.

"Yeah.." he said, "apparently I didn't sleep well. Anyway, I don't want to talk about that. Come on, let's go."

"I thought you weren't in a big hurry to get there."

"I'm not, but sitting around is boring." He was was also lonely and tired of watching her sleep.

"Alright, I'm up..." Lizzie struggled into a standing position.

They had left the Tulgey Woods and were now crossing through a dry, deserted region. As the wind blew across the plains, it brought with it dust so thick that it blotted out the sun, turning the clear, cloudless day into an unearthly twilight of golden haze. They tightened their cloaks around themselves in an effort to shut out the worst of it. Fred asked Torineil if they should stop so that they could find something to shelter him with as well, but the horse cautioned them to stay astride. The winds here were fickle and could come or go at any time.

"Many a traveler has been lost forever by sheltering in these parts," he said. "The false light plays tricks on the mind."

Gradually the storm abated and they were left in a land filled with desolation. As far as the eye could see, there was hard packed earth broken only by a lonely, twisted tree or a bit of scrub grass.

"What is this place?" asked Fred.

"These used to be the fertile plains of Iplam," replied Torineil. "What you see now is all that is left after the savagery of the Red Queen. Twenty years ago, these lands were lush and green, the crops grown here the pride of all Underland."

Fred looked across the barren land, confused. "But not even a whole army could destroy something like this..."

"It was not the army who did this, but the Jabberwock under the command of the queen. This land is cursed, the clans who lived here dead. There are parts no man can journey to where the families still lay where they were slaughtered."

Lizzie winced at his words. She lay her forehead against Fred's back and tightened her arms around him, hugging him for a moment as she felt tears in her eyes. She couldn't imagine how he must feel, to be approaching his moment of truth, knowing all the pain that he would remember. The more she thought about it, the more she worried about him, about his sanity and his future here in this world. Where would he go? Even Tarrant, who would understand his pain, had had 15 years to overcome it. She tried to think back to any disasters that had happened that long ago in her world - nothing distinct came to mind. What would seem like history to many would seem like it had happened yesterday to him. Who would there be here - when her protector needing protecting?

It wasn't Torineil's words, but the feel of Lizzie's arms tighten around him and her head nestling against his back that made Fred's heart ache. He closed his eyes and concentrated on her emotions, trying to sense what she was feeling. Like looking into a mirror, all he found were thoughts of himself. She was worrying about him again, trying to find a way to save him from the heartache she knew awaited.

He should tell her to stop. He should have made her stay in Marmoreal, but he knew if she had, he would have never made it this far. There were things he could face without Lizzie, but himself wasn't one of them.

His attention was diverted by an object sitting in the middle of the empty plain, still far off, but close enough for him to make out the shape.

"Where does that door lead?" he asked Torineil.

The horse stopped. "What door?"

"Over there," he said gesturing in the distance.

The horse moved his mighty head in the direction Fred indicated. "I cannot see a door."

"Fred, I think you're the only one who can see it," said Lizzie.

With Fred's guidance, Torineil took them closer until he asked him to stop. He helped Lizzie down and then climbed down himself and walked to a spot in the middle of nowhere, put his hand out as if he was reaching for a knob, turned his hand, and pulled. A large open door suddenly sprang to life in front of them, sitting about six inches off the ground. It had nothing supporting it, just a door approximately 7 feet high. Through the door stretched not the deserted plains of Iplam, but the intersection of two roads in a forest.

"I know that path," said the horse. "But it is in the Southern part of the Tulgey Wood, far from our goal."

"Great!" said Fred, "A detour!"

"Fred," said Lizzie, ignoring him, "how many doors have you seen since we left?"

"I don't know, probably a dozen or so."

"And you didn't think to say anything?"

"I thought if it was important someone else would," he said, defensively, "I didn't know I was the only one who could see them."

"Torineil," she asked, "would it be possible to find a door closer to the cavern?" Fred elbowed her in a effort to shut her up.

"It's very possible," replied the horse. "There are legends of them around Witzend."

"Fred, let Torineil know when you see another door, and we'll check it out."

"Lizzie," he whispered, fiercely, "I really don't want to get there faster than we already are!"

"If we save a day, we don't have to be in such a hurry to get there..," she whispered back.

Oh.. "Oh! Good idea..."

It took them three hours and four doors before they found one in the right direction. As it turned out it saved them more than a day, the Crystal Cavern was less than half a day's journey from the foothills they now found themselves in. Stepping through the doorway had reminded Lizzie of some strange game of 'Snakes and Ladders', passing all the miles left ahead in a matter of seconds. Torineil led them to the place where they would have made camp on the third night. In the face of the rocky hillside was a cave, not very deep, but large enough to offer protection from the elements. The rocky ground sloped gently away from it's entrance.

After unloading their supplies, they set about finding enough wood for a fire. What had been an easy task in the Tulgey Wood now took them twice as long. The trees here reminded Lizzie of pines with their long prickly needles and high branches. As in a pine forest, the needles covered the ground, choking out smaller trees making finding adequate kindling difficult. They finally settled on chopping a small tree into usable logs with the small hand ax from their pack. When they'd hauled what they could back to camp, Lizzie asked Torineil if there was anywhere close by to wash up. The dust of Iplam still coated her clothing and she felt like it was ingrained in every pore.

"There is a stream if you follow the path through the trees to the next valley. It is a short distance."

Lizzie looked at Fred.

"Go ahead," he said, nodding towards the trail. "I'll start the fire."

She took the pack with the other dress that had been packed for her and rummaged around until she found a square of something that smelled like soap. The stream was bigger than she imagined. It wasn't very deep, but wide and fast moving. The water crashed over the rocks, throwing up spray and foam, the sound drowning out everything around her. She walked downstream along the bank until it turned and found a deep pool with a wide sandbar where the current was not so turbulent. She stripped off her dirty clothes and washed as quickly as possible. It was more than just a little eerie to be bathing in a creek out in the middle of nowhere. She ducked under the water, wetting her hair and trying her best to tackle that with the soap as well. When she felt that perhaps she'd finally gotten as clean as she was going to get, she threw the new dress on from her pack (a green one with gold trim). The sun was still high in the sky and the day fairly warm so when she finished dressing, she washed the one that she'd been wearing. The sun should dry it before nightfall. She shook the dust out of her cloak as much as possible – it felt like wool and she didn't think you were supposed to wash that.

She had no intentions of sneaking up on Fred, but she saw him before he saw her. He was sitting by the fire with his back against a rock, scribbling something in one of the books she recognized from his trunk at Marmoreal. She didn't realize he'd brought one, but Fred was nothing if not surprising. Captivated, she moved behind a tree as he stopped and looked up, his eyes far away in thought for a moment until he looked down and began writing once again. Here, alone, with no one to see her, Lizzie allowed herself to watch him. There was a quiet grace about him now, a calmness, she thought. Almost as though his persona of Drop Dead Fred had been balanced by this other part of himself, left here in this world so many years ago. He closed the book, putting it in his pack, and leaned his head against the rock with his eyes closed. Lizzie smiled, he looked so normal now...and for the first time it struck her that here, in the land of his birth, he was - though his life so far had been anything but. He was a man who had seen unspeakable horrors and found himself in the position of starting over in a world where he knew nothing and no one, not even himself, and had survived. It made her want to go and throw her arms around him... She noticed that the sun was getting lower in the sky, and used the opportunity of him not paying attention to walk back into their camp.

"I thought you were going to hurry," he said without opening his eyes.

"Sorry, I got sidetracked."

He stood up and picked up his pack, slinging it over his shoulder. Lizzie held the soap out to him as he passed and made his way down the path from which she'd come. She lay her newly washed dress over a sunny rock and sat down by the fire. She wondered what Fred had been writing in the journal...the inner-workings of his mind never failed to intrigue her, and there were very few windows into his soul. She supposed she was lucky he had taken the temptation of reading it away by putting it into his pack. Still...

"Oh for crying out loud..." Fred took everything out of the pack one more time to check, but there was still no shirt. He must have thrown it into Lizzie's when he was looking for something. He debated just going back without one, but in the end put the dirty one on. At least his other clothes were clean. Maybe he could get past Lizzie without her noticing he thought as he made his way back to camp.

"It's customary to put on clean clothes after you bathe," she snickered as he walked past her.

"Ha, ha, ha...," he said, sarcastically. "My shirt must be in your pack."

"Don't go rifling through all my stuff." Lizzie got up and went over to check in her bag, pulling out his clean shirt. "Here...," she said tossing it at him.

"Thanks." His back was to her as he took off the dirty one and tossed it aside.

He felt her alarm more than he heard her sharp intake of breath. He turned around. "What's wrong?"

She just stood staring at him for a moment, and he felt her trying very hard to hide the slew of emotions running through her – dread, dismay, anger, protectiveness. Something was very wrong with him. She was going to lie to him, he knew it - she was going to tell him it was nothing.

"Nothing, you just...have some scratches."

"Don't lie to me, Lizzie. What's wrong?"

She looked up at him, meeting his blue eyes. "They're... pretty bad, but they're healed...long healed."

"Stibbler said I was injured when I came through the door. Maybe it happened then." He threw the clean shirt over his head.

"Maybe so." Thick lines of scar tissue criss-crossed his back. She felt sick at the thought of even counting how many. They weren't scratches. He'd been beaten.

From her still simmering emotions, Fred suspected they were more than just scratches. Whatever it was had upset Lizzie deeply – tears filled her eyes. "Lizzie..."

"Oh Fred," she cried, "I'm so sorry...for all that's happened to you. It's just not fair..." She threw her arms around him, the tears streaming down her face.

He held her tightly, holding back his own tears - not for himself, but for Lizzie. How she made him feel like he could face the world and everything in it, how she cared for him, and how he loved her. What would he do when she left? Someone else in her world would hold her, and make her laugh, and wipe away her tears, but for him... there would be no one - because for him, there would only be Lizzie. He kissed the top of her head before he stepped back.

"Lizzie, I don't want you to worry about me. I'll be fine." He needed her to stop, he couldn't bear the thought of being the source of her pain. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, he tried to think of a way to change the subject. "Hey! I know something that'll make you feel better..."

He left her and rummaged around in their supplies, taking out a small tin and one of their metal cups. He poured water into the cup and then grabbed one of the smaller logs from the fire whose end was still unburnt. Placing the flaming end under the cup, it only took a minute before the water began to steam and he mixed in the power from the tin. He kicked the log back into the fire and held the cup out to Lizzie.

"Try it! It's like hot chocolate...sort of...without the chocolate."

Lizzie laughed and took the cup, sitting down against the rocks with him beside her. "Fred, how come you always know how to make me feel better?"

"Because I'm Fred! It's my job. It's what I do." he boasted.

She looked over at him. "It's not your job anymore."

He held her gaze for a moment. "It's still what I do..."

When the sky grew dark, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks (Fred making Lizzie tie his wrists once again amidst her complaints) and lay down outside the cave in front of the fire, their heads close so they could hear each other speak with their bodies stretched out in opposite directions. They watched as the stars came out, seeing who could come up with the craziest names for them and looking for alien spaceships, well Fred was anyway. Finally, they both became quieter until, after a few minutes of silence, Lizzie realized that Fred had fallen asleep. She wished he'd have pleasant dreams for once. She was about to turn over and go to sleep herself when his pack, sitting by the rocks not five feet from her, caught her attention. It would be wrong. It would be more than wrong. Never mind that he would do exactly the same thing she was thinking of doing. Quietly, she sat up and crawled over to his pack. She looked back at him, sleeping peacefully. She opened it and removed the journal, moving back to her place by the fire, ready to hide it if he made the least little sound.

She opened it, but all the first pages were blank. This was the only journal in his pack, something had to be in here... She flipped through more pages until she came to a page near the back filled with Fred's neat hand-writing. She looked guiltily over at his still unmoving form before turning back to the journal. The firelight flickered over the page as she read the lines he had written.

"I sit alone, tired, and cold
waiting for the memories that will
take you away from me.
No right have I to ask you to stay
to live, and love, and never leave.
Beyond the sunsets of tomorrow,
your life is waiting
without the pain that mine must bring.
Our souls, though barely more than strangers,
are joined by an invisible chain
my heart to yours.
I do not know if we will ever meet again,
life is short, our distance far.
When this world has passed away
and time is no more,
I will be waiting for you then
somewhere beyond the stars."

Her hands shook as she closed the journal and placed it gently back in Fred's pack. What had she been expecting to find? She had no idea, perhaps a sketch or notes of some innocuous sort. Certainly not the heart-braking declaration she'd just read. She looked over at him. She had found the window to his soul and seen inside his heart, and she knew now as she watched him sleep that he hadn't been playing games with her after all. She thought back to all those times over the last week when she'd believed he'd just been teasing her or unaware of his actions and saw them now in a new light. And in that light of love, she was overwhelmed by what she found. She knew he would never tell her the things she had read – he would let her walk away and leave him without ever asking her to stay, without saying a word. He was without a doubt the most unselfish man she'd ever known. Her heart ached terribly at the thought of never seeing him again.

Suddenly, worry clouded his face, and his eyes moved rapidly behind their lids. His wrists strained against their bindings in an effort to escape his unseen dreams.

"Fred...," she knelt beside him, and ran her fingers through his hair. "Fred, wake up..." She knew he wouldn't wake, he never heard her after the nightmares began. She looked behind her and saw that the large rock they'd been leaning against earlier was only a few feet away. Pulling him under his arms, she dragged him close enough to the rock for her to lean against it. She raised his body so that his head rested in the crook of her arm and cradled him as he fought his personal demons. Gradually, his struggles lessened. She untied the cord binding his wrists and was about to lay him back down when he shifted, putting his arm around her waist in his sleep.

"Lizzie...," he murmured, "Lizzie...please don't leave me..." His voice was filled with sadness, every pretense stripped away in his unconscious plea - but in those four words, she read her future. She knew where she was meant to be. She had been born in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but she belonged here, now, with him.

Lizzie brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. "Don't worry, Fred," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

A/N: In this story, I refer to the Jabberwock without a 'y' on the end. If you read the original poem, that what he's called. "Jabberwocky" is the name of the poem about the "Jabberwock".

Also, lots of the references to the places or descriptions of Horunvendush Day came from the actual screenplay of Alice in Wonderland, not the movie. There's a whole lot of cool stuff that didn't make it into the final product.