"I'm looking at you through the glass -
don't know how much time has passed,
all I know is that it feels like forever.
But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home,
sitting all alone inside your head."

-Stone Sour

["Lizzie! ...Lizzie?"]

There was nothing, nothing at all – not even a shadow of emotion. The part of his mind that was normally lit by Lizzie's presence was dark, and for the first time since he'd met her as a child, Fred was blind to her. In that moment, he realized what it would have been like had he never been locked in the jack-in-the-box. If Lizzie had been as every other charge had been to him – forgotten in the ocean of time. He fell to his knees, not knowing if she was alive or dead.

"What's wrong?" Tarrant knelt beside him, steading him.

His brother looked up at him, stricken. "She's gone," he whispered.

"What d'ya mean? Who's gone?"

"Lizzie! She was talking to me and something happened." He needed a way to get to her, and there was only one thing he knew to do. It wasn't a good plan, but he didn't have time to think of a better one. "I have to go! Can you finish my watch?"

"Aye, give me yer sword. What are ya goin' t' do?"

Fred unbuckled his claymore and handed it to his brother. "Dig out a rabbit hole." He took off running to the castle before Tarrant could ask him just how the heck he planned to do that.

["Lizzie, I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm coming. Just hold on and I'll be there – as quick as I can."]

["Lizzie... don't know... hear me...coming...hold on and I'll be...as..."] She followed the voice, but it swirled away into the distance, like a leaf caught in the wind, over the great black cliff she found herself leaning above. Her fingers slipped, the purchase her hands had found fell away, and she tumbled down, down into the never-ending, silent darkness.

He took the main stairs, two at a time up to the main level and then turned into the back service entrance, running down to the Great Hall. He opened the door and looked around for Mirana, spotting her at the far end. She looked up as he approached her and gave him a bright smile before taking in the expression on his face.

"What's the matter?" she asked, concerned.

"I can't tell you here," he said. "Meet me in the kitchen. I need your help with something." He left without waiting for her to answer him, making a left out of the Great Hall, up to his room.

Freddie's room had always looked more like a cross between a classroom, laboratory, and museum than a place for sleeping. Even in the short time he'd been there, it was rapidly taking on it's former persona. Being Underland, many different varies of flora had magical properties. Freddie had always taken a fair amount of personal pride in discovering some of them and had always kept a few 'useful' ones around – just in case. After Lizzie had gone back, he found himself with not much to do so he spent a few days searching out some of the things he'd always kept on hand. The first one he'd looked for was dreamwort.

Dreamwort was a wildflower; it's blue, bell shaped flowers hanging down much the same as the bluebells in Lizzie's world. Only these, when tapped gently, released a powder than would instantly put someone to sleep for about an hour, leaving them with a nasty headache when they awoke. Freddie used to sprinkle it in Tarrant's food occasionally when he was younger – just for kicks. It was the closest thing he would be able to take with him for a weapon. He grabbed the vial he'd collected off the shelf and stuck it in his pocket and threw a change of clothes into his pack before running back down to the kitchen.

Mirana was already there waiting for him.

"What's going on, Freddie? What's wrong?"

"It's Lizzie, something isn't right. I have to get up there. Look, you're going to think my plan is crazy so just don't ask, okay?"

"If you want my help," Mirana said, testily, "you're going to have to tell me what you're planning to do."

Fred grimaced. "I'm going to dig out the hole."

"What are you talking about? You can't dig it out by yourself!"

"I can with upelkuchen," he said. "There's another door that leads to the room, I can dig it out if I'm large enough."

She stared at him like he was crazy. "You're kidding, right?"

"Look, it's the best idea I've got right now, but I need you to do that charm thingy with my clothes so they'll shrink and grow with me. ...Please?"

"Fine," she sighed. "Give me the clothes. You know where the upelkuchen and pishsalver is." He tossed his change of clothes to her. "You'll need to give me your boots, too." He unlaced them and set them beside her lab table then took two squares of upelkuchen out of the cupboard and two vials of pishsalver.

"It'll probably take me the night. Send Nivens out in the morning to check on me. I need to get one more thing before I go, and it's going to be a long walk even by door."

Mirana shook her head. "Even if you're able to get to her, there's no way you're going to be able to get back to the hole without someone stopping you. I was under the impression she lived quite a ways from it."

"She does, but I'm not worried about that part. Just have someone waiting by the mirror and some upelkuchen on hand."

"You're going to look for a mirror when you get there?"

"No, I have a mirror. It's just a little...small. I'll take it with me."

Mirana smiled. "That's kind of...well, that's brilliant!"

"Yeah, well, that's if I can get up there," he smirked. "Are you done, yet?"

"Just about." Mirana had been throwing 'ingredients' together in a huge pot. She gave it a stir. "Hold on a minute." She disappeared out the door for a few minutes and then came back in with a cloak, white with silver and gold threads running through it. She handed him the cloak. "For Lizzie," she said. "It's already been charmed."

He took it gratefully. "Thanks." He stuck the cloak into his pack while she popped his other clothes and boots into the pot. A 'poof' and a shower of pink sparkles burst from the vessel and Mirana took the clothes, looking no different than they did before, from the pot and handed them back to Fred. She gave him a long look. "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, Freddie. Come back and we'll think of something else."

He met her eyes. "It'll work, Miri. It has to..."

She was in a room - like a waiting room, only she couldn't remember what she was supposed to be waiting for. There was no door, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were all a uniform gray. She sat in a simple metal chair from which she found she had no energy to move - if there had been anywhere to move to. Occasionally there was a voice, echoing off the walls of the sparse cubicle. The tones rose and fell, perhaps forming words, perhaps not. She did not answer. Deep in her mind, she waited...and waited...and waited...

There was a series of five doors to get back to where his cabin once stood. He'd need to pick up the mirror first. He went over the combination in his head as he ran to the first door, the one he'd taken earlier through Queast. Marmoreal to Queast, Queast to Crims, Crims to the clearing in the Tulgey Wood, then a long walk Northwest to the edge of the woods to the door to West-Central Crims, then finally Crims to his destination. He was going to have to look for more doors he decided as he finally made it halfway after two hours of walking between them. Taking four hours to get somewhere had never bothered him when he was younger and just wasting time, but now, when time was of the essence, it was killing him. Not only that, but time passed faster for Lizzie than it did for him, and without Lizzie's input he had no idea just how fast it was going. He'd neither heard nor felt anything since their last conversation. He continued to talk to her, not only for her benefit in case she could hear him, but it helped him keep his sanity.

He finally made it to Witzend. He took the chest from it's hiding place in the cave and removed the mirror, which was about 3" tall by 5" wide. In afterthought, he took the small wooden box out as well and stuck it in his pack. He went back through half of the doors until he arrived in Crims, north of the Room of Doors and then walked the rest of the way until he was back at the tree door that led into it. He changed into the clothes Mirana had charmed for him, wondering why he hadn't just worn them in the first place ,and took a small bite of the upelkuchen. He shot up about three feet. That wasn't what he had in mind. He shoved the rest of the square into his mouth and grew to about 30 feet. Upelkuchen, unlike magic mushrooms that were plentiful in the Tulgey wood, kept you proportionate. He checked his hand to make sure it would still fit through the door, and scratched gently at the packed earth. To his relief it fell away easily, but he estimated he could still be larger and bit off a small corner of the second square. This time his hand fit through perfectly with no room to spare. He knelt at the door, taking care not to squish anything underneath him.

Night was beginning to fall, and he'd forgotten a torch. He called for Chess, hoping the cat was around, but there was no answer. Thankfully there was a full moon and since the door was in a clearing, there was enough light to see.

He set to work, pulling handful after handful of dirt from the room beyond the door. The more he took out, the more seemed to fall down to replace it. He tried not to think how enormously high the hole was as he labored through the night, and the pile of dirt next to him grew to a pyramid as tall as a tree. As pinkish purple light streaked the sky, he reached a point at last where he didn't feel the earth collapse back in place. After several more handfuls, he finally raked the remaining dirt from the checkered floor of the room.

He'd set the pishsalver on a rock before he started so as to not loose it, and now he carefully uncorked the tiny (to him) bottle and drank half of the liquid. That took him down to about eight feet and one more sip had him back to normal. He walked cautiously through the door into the room and looked up. A faint point of light, no larger than a star gleamed at the top - the light of Lizzie's world.

He was so tired, but he dared not sleep. Instead he walked to the fountain that was just south of the room and washed up. Nivens was waiting for him when he returned.

"Oh my, you have been busy!" said the rabbit. "I haven't been up in so long, I daresay I wouldn't know where to begin."

"That's okay, Nivens, I just need you to get me up there. I'll take care of the rest."

"Oh! Before I forget, Mirana though you might need this." He took a small pouch gold coins from around his waist and gave it to Fred. "Just in case. It's usually better to actually purchase transportation than to use whatever vile trickery you might have planned," he said.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, but thanks all the same."

Freddie left the clothes he'd changed out of there in the room to retrieve later – he wouldn't be able to take his pack back through the mirror so he'd need to go as light as possible. He knelt down to Niven's level and handed the rabbit the half-empty bottle of pishsalver, keeping the full one. Reluctantly he also handed over the small wooden box. "Please put this in the chest underneath the bed in my room. Don't lose it."

"I do not lose things," Nivens said with an offended sniff. "Are you quite ready?"

Freddie picked up his pack and took a last look around. "I'm ready, let's go."

"Take my shoulders," said the rabbit.

Fred placed his hands on Nivens shoulders and was suddenly propelled up through the tunnel as the rabbit jumped. The light which was just a dot at first steadily grew larger and larger until he was able to see clouds and the grass spilling into the hole. And then- he was there. He clambered up over the edge as the rabbit went back down. He stood up, looked around, and couldn't help but laugh. The hole, instead of being in the garden of an English manor, was now in an empty lot, flanked by a McDonald's on one side and a car wash on the other.

It had been several assignments before Lizzie's since he'd been in this country and that equaled out to approximately thirty some-odd years by his guess, though this was the first time he'd been "real" here. It was a little daunting. There was a bank nearby and he walked in and exchanged his gold coins for currency (raising several eyebrows in the process), unsure if he could get anywhere with the other. He took a cab to the airport and boarded the quickest flight into the United States. He'd need to catch another one when he got there, but he wasn't sitting around in an airport for three hours waiting for something closer. He desperately wished he could just pop in and out again.

Gradually, the fog lifted, the walls of the gray room faded away, and Lizzie found herself sitting in her own room. The nurse noticed that she was lucid.

"It's time for your next dose, Ms. Cronin. Dr. Ryland thinks it will be some time before you're ready to join the 'real' world again." She took a syringe and a vial from a small metal case, and stuck the needle into the vial as she tipped it upside down, drawing the clear liquid into it. Lizzie shrank back as she approached her, but her arms and legs wouldn't move and there was nowhere to go. She fought desperately to clear her mind as the nurse injected her arm.

["FRED!"] she shouted through her mind, over and over – screaming his name aloud as she felt herself slipping back down.

"There's no one to help you here, darlin'," said the nurse.

["Lizzie! I'm coming..."]

She heard neither.

When Lizzie had called to him, Fred had finally been able to get his bearings on where she was. He'd been afraid she wouldn't be at her mother's house and he'd have no way but luck of finding her. He tried not to remember the anguish in her screams as they'd echoed through his mind. He stopped as he neared the house, pulling out the bottle of dreamwort – he wasn't messing around with anyone who got in his way. He dumped about a teaspoon worth of the powder into his left palm and stuck the bottle back in his pocket. He took a deep breath and was almost to the front steps when he was interrupted.

"Hey you! Wait!"

He knew that voice. The person it belonged to was running up behind him. He spun around, the anger and hatred on his face causing Mickey to stop short.

"Hey, who are you?" demanded Mickey. "Tell me what's going on in there!" After the doctor had knocked Lizzie out the previous morning, he'd been sent away. No one would answer his questions or let him in.

Fred advanced on him and with one punch landed Mickey flat on his back. "I'm not sure what you did," he said, looking down at him, "but I'm fairly sure you deserved that." He knelt beside Mickey and grabbed a handful of his straw colored hair, pulling his face up to look at him. "I'm Fred, and you'd better start talking. What's happened to Lizzie?"

"You're Fred? As in Drop Dead Fred?" Mickey's face had turned as white as a sheet. "Oh my gosh, you're real!"

"No shit, Sherlock. Where's Lizzie?"

"I...I swear I didn't have any idea what her mother was planning to do," he exclaimed, frantically. "They told me they were just going to talk to her, about getting counseling! Then the doctors injected her with something and she passed out and they haven't let me in since! I swear I didn't know, please don't hurt me..."

Fred dropped Mickey's head in disgust. "Useless, as always." He climbed the stairs to the porch and knocked on the door. A voice he didn't recognize came from the other side.

"I'm sorry, sir, the Cronins are not taking visitors today."

"The hell they're not!" He kicked the door open so hard the frame nearly broke in half. He didn't wait for the nurse on the other side to say anything else, he merely blew through his left fist into her face. The dreamwort hit her full force, and she fell down, asleep instantly. He took the bottle out of his pocket and dumped more in his palm, just in case he needed it later.

As much as he wanted to run up the stairs, he needed to check and make sure there were no more nurses around. He went first into the dining room and yanked the phone cord out of the wall, just for good measure. He'd gone nearly all the way around the first floor when he got the feeling he was being followed. He spun around just in time to catch Polly Cronin about to brain him with a baseball bat. He grabbed her wrist, twisting it around behind her as she dropped the bat.

"Who are you?" she grunted. "What are you doing here?"

He leaned over her shoulder, and whispered, "Oh, you know who I am – and I sure as hell know who you are, bitch. I'm Drop Dead Fred. You've had you're little reunion with Lizzie and screwed it up again for the last time. Now she's mine."

She made some inarticulate sound, and Fred opened his left hand, blowing the powder in her face. He stepped over her unconscious form and headed up the stairs. There was one nurse asleep in a chair in the corner of the pink bedroom. He made sure she wouldn't wake up for a while with the last of his powder and then turned his attention to the other person in the room.

She was propped in a wheelchair, leather restraints buckled around her wrists and ankles and one around her chest, holding her somewhat upright in the seat. Her hair was sweaty and he brushed it back where it was plastered against her face.
"Oh, Lizzie...what have they done to you?" Gently, Fred unbuckled all the restraints and caught her as she fell forward, still unconscious, into his arms.

Unbeknownst to Fred, Mickey had followed him up the stairs and watched from the doorway as Fred tenderly swept her hair back from her face and freed her, and as he did, he knew why Lizzie had wanted to go back to Fred – to this man who obviously loved her so deeply. Mickey knew he had never stood a chance.

"Will she be okay?" he asked Fred.

Fred didn't bother to look at him. "She will if I can get her home." He signed unhappily – he really needed another hand. He couldn't reach his pack while he was holding Lizzie. There was no way Fart-pants was touching her, so instead he said, "I need some help. Can you reach inside my pack and give me the cloak and the mirror in it?"

"Sure." Mickey was only too relieved to be asked to help, guilt was gnawing a hole inside of him. He unbuckled the pack and pulled out the white cloak and a small mirror. "What are you going to do?"

Fred didn't answer him, just took the cloak and fastened the clasp around Lizzie's neck, trying his best to wrap it all the way around her. The mirror he sat up against the wall. "Alright, now hand me the bottle with the liquid in it."

"What is it?"

"Shut up and do what I say."

Mickey handed him the pishsalver. Fred uncorked it, leaned Lizzie's head back, and poured a small amount in. He shut her mouth and waited until she swallowed. She immediately shrunk down to about two feet tall. Mickey nearly fainted. Carefully, Fred poured another sip into her mouth and waited. She shrunk down to about two inches until she fit into the palm of his hand. He sat her down gently on the floor in front of the mirror.

"Fred," said Mickey. "When she wakes up, will you tell her I'm sorry... I'm sorry that I didn't believe her?"

"On one condition."

"Name it."

"When we're gone, take the mirror and the pishsalver - that's the liquid, and destroy them both."

"I will."

Fred nodded, "I'll tell her." He took two quick sips of the pishsalver and shrank down to Lizzie's size. He picked her up in his arms and together they disappeared through the mirror.