AN: Officially 500 reviews! I'm so happy! It's a dream come true, honestly. Can we make it to 1,000 reviews? Eh, probably not, but we're making a pretty good haul so far for a mostly unknown crossover, wouldn't you say?
I thought it would only be appropriate to bring in a popular fan-favorite, highly requested group of disfigured troublemakers for this chapter so they can advance the conflict of the plot.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns.
Your eyes, they shine so bright
I wanna save that light
I can't escape this now
Unless you show me how
When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It's where my demons hide
Demons ~ Boyce Avenue feat. Jennel Garcia (Cover)
In all senses, disfigurement was an ugly word. It was harsh on the ears, sour on the tongue, and hell on the eyes.
Jack followed the laughter into the rose garden with Baby Tooth closely in tow, feeling a sense of familiarity. It was instantly crushed to pieces when he gazed upon the faces of the little lost souls that (he would later learn) Alice dubbed the "Insane Children". Or rather, what they dubbed themselves, with an odd display of pride that would've been greatly misplaced if they lived anywhere other than the wicked world of Wonderland.
Insane was another ugly word, even more so when the word "children" followed afterwards. It sounded like some sort of twisted oxymoron that really had no business existing. It seemed too harsh of a name, especially since Jack had only just met them. A little unhinged perhaps, influenced mainly by their appearances and jumbled speech, but he wouldn't go so far as to call them insane. Then again though, that was probably because he couldn't go that far. It was difficult for Jack to think that way about any child, even one born from Alice's twisted imagination.
There was obviously something very disturbing about them though, that went beyond just their horribly disfigured faces.
He kept his distance from them once he realized they were just as twisted as the rest of the Wonderland inhabitants. They had pale, badly scarred faces with fifthly hair and ragged clothing. The roadmap scars zig-zagged across their skin with angry inflammation, portraying a past of wicked pain and torture inflicted on their young souls. Jack debated with himself as he lurked in the shadows of a nearby hedge wall while they laughed and chattered among themselves just like any normal group of children would. They gathered around the large koi pond in the garden, sticking their small hands into the cool water and disturbing the colorful, slightly mutated fish swimming inside.
If Jack were to be honest with himself despite the risk of shaming his prized title as a legendary guardian, the very sight of the children made him want to gag and tear up.
It wasn't so much as he was disgusted by their appearances, but rather just deeply disturbed by them. Disturbed that such young faces could be so twisted. He also felt a surge of anger directed towards Alice, leaving him to wonder why on earth she would have something so sick living inside her Wonderland. He also wondered what kind of searing pit of ugly hate and pain the green-eyed woman had festering inside her that made her capable of actually creating something so heartbreaking as child disfigurement and torture.
Was his anger justifiable? Yes. Was it still misplaced? Probably.
It was a sort of a back and forth thing. His mind argued with itself as he continued to watch from the shadows as the children splashed around in the pond, throwing lily pads and clumps of mud at each other. Baby Tooth, who had equally been disturbed by the children, retreated into one of the hidden pockets she found on Jack's "royal suit" jacket.
On the one hand, the sight of the children made him angry. It was the kind of anger that demanded he blame someone for its cause, which focused on Alice by default because the children were her creations and he honestly couldn't think of anyone else. On the other hand though, the more understanding and insightful side of him reasoned that perhaps his brash, impulsive side was thinking a little too ahead of himself. After all, how many times did he find himself standing in the wake of a powerful blizzard, created purely from his own sour emotions, while taking in all the destruction and hardship he had caused to blameless people, wondering what kind of monster lashed out like this just because it was lonely.
Then of course there were the natural disasters of the icy persuasion that had absolutely nothing to do with him, but still had mortals cursing him for their weather misfortunes. Just like the Sandman wasn't responsible for every single good dream a child has, or Pitch being responsible for every nightmare, Jack wasn't responsible for every blizzard that happens in Winter. If he were to apply that same understanding to Alice's creations, than it wouldn't be fair to judge her.
Yes, the Insane Children were once figments of her imagination, but did she purposely make them like that? Does she consciously craft every single one of her creations, or did they just sort of appear? From Jack's limited understanding, Wonderland was no longer as deeply connected to Alice mentally as it was when she was human. Yes, there was still a connection, it allowed her to build new sections, command some inhabitants, and change the weather with sheer willpower, but it wasn't a full bond. And of course, there was the matter of why Alice would see children like that in the first place. Nobody just automatically sees children as disfigured monsters, especially not a potential guardian.
So again, it was a sort of a back and forth thing that his mind was doing to him. It only stopped badgering him when he saw one of the Insane Children pick up a large clump of dirt and throw it directly at another one's face, knocking him to the ground.
The little boy with the shaggy brown hair and ashen skin fell on to his backside with a small cry, causing Jack to buckle at the sight of him whining softly to himself, trying to pretend he wasn't hurt while wiping the dirt off his scarred face. In a perfect world, the Winter spirit would remain hidden in the shadows until his horrified stupor died down enough for him to flee back inside the castle, but the guardian in Jack was too strong to ignore. He moved forward to help the disfigured child with the ghastly piece of hardware lodged into the side of his head.
"Hey, are you alright kid?" He asked with concern as he kneeled down next to the boy. He reached down and gently laid a hand on his bony shoulder.
Feeling the cold touch, the boy's head snapped up from his hands in a rigid movement that had his neck making a series of sickening cracks and pops. He gave the Winter spirit crouching next to him a mean once-over with his beady little eyes before looking down at the pale hand on his shoulder. He roughly shook Jack's hand off, disregarding his concern as if the boy didn't realize he had a giant corkscrew sticking out of his temple. Along with the corkscrew, he had a metal dome on top of his head that almost resembled a hat, but it was painfully obvious by the way it molded with his skin, that the dome was made to replace a large portion of the boy's skull.
"Oy! What do ya think ya doin'?" He demanded, moving away from Jack with a distrusting glare.
Jack raised a hand out in front of him in a calm, nonthreatening gesture. "Easy. I'm just making sure you're okay."
"You can't touch me! Only people tha' I say so, can touch me! That's the new law!"
"Alright, I'm sorry," He apologized. "It won't happen again."
"Liar! That's what they all say!"
Jack motioned with his hand again for the child to calm down, but the little boy only seemed to get more riled up. He shouted and cursed at Jack as he backed further away from the ice spirit. Jack gnawed on his bottom lip nervously, unsure how to handle the disfigured boy's tantrum. He quickly looked around his surroundings for Alice, hoping the woman would help bail him out, but he grimaced when he saw that the other four children were now staring openly at them. The boy's cries must've drawn their attention away from the pond. They watched their companion furiously shake his head and repeatedly shout out "no" before they looked at each other. Then they climbed out of the pond and made their way towards Jack and the other boy. Even Baby Tooth was drawn out by the yelling.
"Wha's going on?" The smallest of the group asked timidly; a girl with choppy brown hair and a small overbite.
"This scoundrel touched me! He's a pervert!" The boy proclaimed, pointing accusingly at Jack.
"What?" Jack spluttered indignantly at him while Baby Tooth chirped angrily at the accusation from her perch on his shoulder. "You think I'm a pervert? Why would you even- I am not a pervert."
Three of the other four children gasped loudly at the boy's words as they stared wide-eyed at Jack. Immediately, they glared hatefully at him as they all started shouting at him, forcing Jack to slowly back away from them. The only child that didn't yell was another little girl. She stood in the back of the group with a filthy teddy bear hanging from her hand. The scars that littered her face suggested she had been the most cut up of them all in terms of lacerations, but the inquisitive gleam in her eye as she watched suggested that maybe she wasn't quite as unhinged as the others.
"Oh no, the perverts have finally come back!" The smallest girl cried out, hiding behind the tallest boy wearing an unbounded straitjacket.
"Stand back scoundrel, or we'll call the guards!" Said the shortest boy with grayish-black hair. Despite his bold words, he spoke in a soft, English accent that barely raised above a whisper. Other than a few faint scars, grey skin, and a large bald spot on his head, the boy seemed less disfigured compared to the others.
Jack held up his hands in slight surrender as the children crowded around him. They glared up at him with ugly scowls on their faces as they continued to shout at him. It wasn't until the one child hanging back decided to step in, that the others quieted down.
"You retarded dimwits. Whas' tha point of Alice takin' the stitches outta ya eyes if you're not even gonna use 'em?" The oldest looking girl with long brown hair finally spoke up in a thick cockney accent. She moved towards the front of the group, shoving her way through the others. "That's not a scoundrel, or a pervert."
"He's not?"
"Wha' is he then?"
"He's the blue boy!" She proclaimed with a knowing smile, putting her hands proudly on her hips as the others all gasped in awe. Jack stared at the group, completely lost, as they started whispering excitedly to each other, peeking glances at him and snickering.
"Blue boy? More like stick boy!"
"Hey!" Jack barked indignantly.
"But he's not wearin' any blue!" The boy in the straitjacket pointed out, so to speak.
"So?" The girl snapped at him. "Doesn't mean he nevah wears blue! He's in the kingdom, persons in the kingdom wear red. You'd know tha' if you weren't so inbred!"
The other children "Oh'd" and nodded in sudden understanding, looking at each other smartly like a couple of scholars having a taxing discussion. Jack did nothing but blink at them with a blank look on his face while he and Baby Tooth waited. The girl with the long hair rolled her green eyes at her stupid companions before turning towards Jack again.
"There's been many a whispah of you, blue boy," The apparent ringleader of the children said.
"Oh yeah?" He crouched down on his toes so he was more leveled with the girl's height. "And what do these "whispahs" say?"
"That yer the blue boy, the new visitor in Wonderland. That you have special powers over the ice and snow. We like new visitors, don't we dimwits?" She looked back at her friends.
"Oh yes!" The other girl nodded. "Especially non-perverted ones! We never get new visitors around here!"
"Except for the cranky rabbit," The boy with the corkscrew added, his face curling up in distaste.
The other children all made sounds of disgust at the mentioning of the "cranky rabbit".
"He's all grey and boring lookin'. He never wants to play with us."
"I keep tellin' you guys it's because he's afraid of us! He never comes to the Dollhouse, but he'll gladly go other places. He runs like the Dollmaker's on his heels when he sees us, he does."
"He doesn't like yer ugly face, that's why."
"Well I don't like his face neither, but you don't see me bein' so rude 'bout it!"
"Are you guys talking about the Easter Bunny?" Jack asked.
"Show us a trick, blue boy!" One of the boys shouted, ignoring his question.
"Yes, yes! Show us a trick! Prove you're the blue boy!"
Jack looked down at their persistent faces with uncertainty. "I don't really think-"
"Now! Prove it now or we'll call the card guards!"
"You won't like playin' with them! They're meaner than the Samurai Wasps!"
"Bite harder too!"
"Do it!"
"Alright, alright! I'll show you something!" Jack shouted, giving in to their bossy demands. He tightened his grip on his staff, making it glow brightly. The children stopped their cries and stared in wonder as the stunning blue reflected off the surface of their beady eyes. "But if this gets me in trouble, I'm throwing all of you under the bus!"
~O~
Alice stood out on the balcony overlooking the garden with an exasperated frown on her face as millions of little white snowflakes floated down from the sky. She let out a small huff and slowly shook her head, not knowing whether to feel pissed off, or impressed, by the thick layer of snow now covering her rose garden.
"Infectious little cockroach, isn't he?" The Cheshire purred deeply from where he lounged lazily along the stone railing of the balcony.
"Impulsive," Alice corrected. "I was thinking more along the lines of impulsive."
"Does it make much of a difference otherwise?"
"Not really," She said with a sigh. "Infectious seems a little jaded though, and so does cockroach. He carried me out of the Teapot Canyons yesterday. And despite what he may think, he really didn't have to. The least I could do is stop labeling him as various underworld creatures and insects."
Alice walked towards the railing and swept off the thin layer of snow covering it so she could rest her arms across it. She shot Cheshire a neutral look before scanning the powered white garden below for her troublesome guest. It was easy to find him, even with all the snow. The red and black coloring of his jacket was a dead giveaway against the white backdrop of the garden. She frowned slightly and let out a curious hum when she spotted five little figures hovering around the Winter spirit, all standing in the center of the garden, definitely surprised to see the Insane Children on kingdom grounds.
It was not a normal sight, to see the Dollhouse inhabitants outside their domain, especially in the Red Kingdom, but there they all were, joyfully engaged in a rousing snowball fight with Jack Frost.
"Well would you look at that," Alice murmured to herself. She watched Frost with a curious smirk as he crouched low to the ground to make another snowball before throwing it at the laughing children hiding behind a poorly built snow wall. The Insane Children leader stood by his side, making more snowball ammunition and throwing them at the others when she had the shot. Occasionally, when Jack ran out of snowballs, the girl would hand him one of her own. He'd smile down at her while staying ever vigilant to the enemy forces from across the way.
Alice hummed again at the sight as she continued to lean against the balcony railing. "He's clearly disturbed by the Insane Children, rightfully so...and yet, he doesn't shy away. I can't imagine there's a lot of people out there capable of looking into those poor beings' eyes and actually manage to conjure up a genuine smile."
"Not even the cottontail," The Cheshire Cat remarked, his bony tail flicking slowly back and forth in amusement as they watched the battle below.
"Yes, not even Bunny. He refuses the Dollhouse entirely. Although, I don't fault him for being squeamish. It must be difficult for beings like them to see children in such a state," She said softly with her eyes on Jack. "Which reminds me of something I've been-"
"You're wondering about the unexpected effect Frost is having on Wonderland. I've noticed it too, naturally."
"Bunny has never been this affected by Wonderland and he's been here hundreds of times," She shook her head, so used to the skeletal feline's seemingly all-knowing abilities. "Frost is here less than a day and already the winds have shifted, the weather fluctuates constantly from warm to cold, and the lesser inhabitants shy away from him. His clothing even changes, just as mine does. Why does it affect Frost so significantly, but not Bunny? And don't you dare say it's because he wears clothes and Bunny does not."
"If I had to guess, it's because the boy is younger, more open. The little fool isn't nearly as jaded and cantankerous as the rabbit. He's more open to the influences of your world...and mind, if you really think about it," His unsettling grin curled higher.
"Well, that sounds lovely," Alice remarked dryly with a noticeable cringe.
"Not to mention the boy has your fancy, which I'd imagine ups the ante a smidgen."
"Fancy?" Alice echoed disbelievingly.
"Of course I mean that in the most platonic way possible," Cheshire hummed sarcastically, blinking his yellow eyes innocently at her.
She scoffed loudly and rolled her eyes. "Granted, he's amusing to watch sometimes, and he's full of a surprise or two, but I certainly wouldn't say I fancy him."
"If you say so," He quipped, ignoring Alice's glare. There was a long moment of silence as the pair watched the snowball fight progress below them before Cheshire made a strange noise in the back of his throat, drawing Alice's attention towards him. "Excuse me." He suddenly said before disappearing barely a second later.
She stared at the spot where the gray cat had previously been lounging with a frown and a cocked eyebrow, wondering where, and why, her companion suddenly ran off to. Deciding it was pointless to think about any longer than she already had, Alice focused her attention back on Jack as she watched him play with the Insane Children. She let out a small, wistful sigh as she rested her elbow on the stone railing and placed her chin on her gloved hand as she watched. It truly was a remarkable sight, seeing the Insane Children laughing and playing so carelessly in the snow-covered garden that they all once feared so many years ago, almost as much as they feared the Dollmaker's workshop. It was nice to see them enjoying something so innocent for a change, instead of bullying and torturing each other with mean words and a penchant for violence.
And then there was Jack, with that look on his face. That look that children like them, and even Alice herself, had so rarely, if ever, been on the receiving end of.
Acceptance
That unconditional acceptance of the young wards he was entrusted to protect, guide, and love, whether they be born of his world, or her Wonderland, whether they were naughty or nice, beautiful or disfigured, healthy or sick, and even sane or insane. He chose to still see them as children, which was more than anybody outside of Alice has ever given them in their entire existence.
She felt a new blossom of respect for the Winter Spirit grow deep within her chest.
And almost as if he sensed the sudden shift in her personal view of him, Jack turned around and looked up towards the balcony, eyes locking with hers, fresh snowball in one hand, glowing crooked staff in the other. There were a few empty moments between them where they just looked at each other, almost curiously, before the Winter spirit straightened up from his snowball-throwing stance and smiled at her. It was a soft, welcoming smile that seemed to breathe and beckon the enticing words of, Hello stranger, wanna come play?
She almost, almost smiled back, nearly falling into his trap, but quickly caught herself in a half-hearted smirk. However, the satisfied gleam in his azure eyes told her he caught it despite her best efforts to stifle it completely.
Instead of uselessly trying to hide her slip-up any further, Alice pushed off the balcony railing and moved back through the double doors.
~O~
It was impossible to completely forget about their disfigured faces, but Jack tried his hardest to grin and bare it by focusing solely on their eyes.
Their faces might've been riddled with ghastly scars from wired stitches and rusted staples, but their eyes still managed to portray the same child-like wonder and innocence Jack saw in Jamie's eyes, despite their grisly appearances. It was a discovery that both stunned, and horrified him, especially when he had to fight back an onslaught of mental images of Jamie's face being just as disfigured as theirs.
He looked up towards the large balcony that overlooked the garden when he spotted a speck of red and black that wasn't him from the corner of his eye. He was only mildly surprised to find Alice watching them from above. She seemed to have a knack for appearing out of nowhere without anybody noticing. Feeling in a much better mood than before, Jack hoped to coax the dark-haired spirit into coming down from her makeshift tower with a smile, but she only continued to watch them. He wondered briefly how she was able to look so collected all the time, even while watching something as morbidly depressing as the Insane Children. Jack was supposed to be the strong, elder Guardian in this situation, wasn't he? Even Baby Tooth was still too deeply disturbed by them to venture out of her pocket.
Honestly, he wished he could just blindfold himself, block out everything and just focus on their gleeful laughter, but that would've made him feel like a standoffish jerk. The Insane Children didn't seem to care whether he found their faces disturbing though, so that was at least something to help alleviate his guilt. They probably didn't know any better, he reasoned. They probably didn't know normal children weren't supposed to look like that.
On a lighter note, the snowball fight was a rousing success. All suspicion and distrust melted from the children's scarred faces the moment they looked up and saw the legion of little, white puffs floating down from the sky. Judging by the sense of awe and wonderment radiating off them, they had never taken a trip down to Tundraful. That only confirmed that it never truly snowed in Wonderland, which was a damn shame really.
"Hey blue boy!"
Jack turned away from the now empty balcony just in time to receive a large snowball to the face. He stumbled backwards at the sudden assault and tripped over his own feet, landing flat on his back.
'Goddamn, that was a good shot,' He groaned inwardly as he laid on the ground, his pale face caked with snow. He could hear the Insane Children snickering among themselves in the distance, clearly pleased by the little mishap they caused the Winter spirit.
He continued to lay motionlessly on the ground while staring blindly through snow-covered eyes. He laid there for quite some time, failing at life, until a shadow fell over him, prompting him to finally wipe the snow off his face.
"I thought you were ready to take things more seriously," Alice remarked coolly as she stood over the Winter spirit with her hands planted firmly on her hips.
"Aww, but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," He pouted up at her. He continued to lay sprawled out over the ground, still not willing enough to move.
"And I suppose it doesn't bother you either that you made a mess of my rose garden."
"Not really," He shrugged his shoulders. "All the flowers were dead anyways."
She scoffed. "Says you."
"And anybody else with eyes," He scoffed back. He looked at her annoyed frown before flickering his gaze briefly towards the skirt of her red dress. "Mind your distance though. As a fair and gentlemanly warning, any closer and I can probably see up your dress."
"Much to your disturbance I'm sure. Still, I'd cherish it if I were you. In such a case, it'll be the last thing you'd ever see."
"Is this you talking dirty?" He pulled himself up into a sitting position with a grunt and crossed his gangly legs while his staff rested across his lap. "Because oddly enough, I kinda dig it. Like a posh Englishman trying to seduce someone in the most passive aggressive way possible, which I suppose that's what happening."
"Don't flatter yourself," She scoffed again. "Now get up, we have business to conduct."
Jack rolled his eyes and climbed to his feet with another grunt before brushing off any lingering snow from the front of his jacket. "Business involving our return to Santoff Claussen, I hope."
"Unfortunately, there's been a small hold up," She told him before letting out a sigh when he frowned at her. "Oh don't give me that look. You are more than welcome to leave now if you'd like, no one's stopping you. In fact, I'm sure the White Rabbit would be more than happy to show you where the looking-glass portal is. I, on the other hand, need to handle something before leaving Wonderland again."
Jack thought about it for a moment before letting out a heavy, exasperated sigh of his own. "Alright, alright. What "business" are we talking about here?"
"Nothing too taxing, I promise. I just need to speak with the Insane Children. They're not suppose to be in the Red Kingdom."
"Why not?" He asked. "You have some law against it?"
"Well no," She replied before tapping a gloved finger against her lips, contemplatively. "Perhaps that was the wrong choice of words. They are most certainly allowed in the Red Kingdom, but they just never come here."
"Why?"
"Because they have an entire section of Wonderland to govern. More than enough to keep themselves occupied without ever feeling the need to live. And not to mention, they fear the Red Kingdom, or used to anyways. Bad association."
"Let me guess. That's because of the Red Queen?"
"Naturally," She replied succinctly. "The Insane Children are afraid of this place."
"Oh yeah?" Jack quipped, absently scratching his cheek while leaning on his staff. "Well, I'm afraid of Pennywise the Clown and accidentally drinking expired milk. What's your point? Why's this keeping us from leaving?"
"Just be patient, would you?" She snapped before looking towards the little children still playing gleefully in the snow, throwing snowballs at each other and making oddly shaped snow angels on the ground.
Jack looked curiously in between them and Alice's sudden forlorn stare. "Should we go now?"
"One moment," Alice said, holding up a finger without taking her eyes off the children. "Just give me one moment to watch this."
Ever since they were freed from the clutches of the Dollmaker, the Insane Children had taken to building and maintaining their own community within the Dollhouse. Much like the other domain owners, with most of the insidious ooze pollution expelled from Wonderland, they set to work with rebuilding both their block fort, and their physical health.
If Frost was disgusted with how the Insane Children looked now, Alice would hate to expose him to how they used to look during the Dollmaker's siege, long before their bodily "healing". True, the Winter spirit probably would've involuntarily given up the contents of his stomach if he saw the children in such a state, but the disfiguring scars left behind still spoke volumes. Jack wasn't stupid, nor unimaginative. His mind surely filled in the blanks.
Alice's remorseful frown deepened.
Despite the significant representation behind their mangled appearances, and even the Insane Children's own high-pitched protests, Alice tried her hardest for many years to undo all the damage that the Red Queen, the Dollmaker, and her very own subconscious inflicted on their poor little minds and bodies.
She tried to fix up their appearances the best she could without furthering their deplorable states. She removed the staples keeping their eyelids open and neatly re-did their poorly stitched cuts so they had more of a chance to heal properly. She got to work with sealing and securing exposed cranium tops and removed as many rusty medical instruments protruding from their heads as she could. She also made sure their fort had proper sleeping quarters and a fully stocked food supply, even though they didn't really need neither of those things to sustain themselves. It was done more for their comfort than out of necessity.
For a time, the small, underused medical wing of the Red Kingdom became a sort of Insane Children clinic, like the equivalent of a bear hospital.
"The Insane Children aren't based off children you actually used to know, are they?" Jack asked tentatively, realizing why Alice's mood must've dipped so suddenly.
"What makes you think that?"
"It's a common concept in the Alice in Wonderland adaptations of the modern world. They always center around Alice being faced with a difficult real world choice, and just before she has to make a decision, she sees the White Rabbit and follows him to Wonderland where she goes on this adventure and encounters all these crazy characters.
Almost always, the Wonderland inhabitants represent a person she knows in the real world," He explained, successfully grabbing her attention with the talk about her fictional counterparts. "Now, I know from personal experience that the mortal realm does a pretty poor job of correctly portraying beings like us, especially in modern times, but there's always some small ring of truth around their stories and myths."
"I think Bunny would be quick to disagree with you on that one," Alice smiled fondly at the thought of her pooka friend and the humans' cuddly, silly portrayal of him.
"That's something you used to do though, isn't it? Retreat into your head whenever times in the real world got tough?"
"Well, you're just full of surprises today, aren't you?" Alice mused before casting a long look across the white garden at the Insane Children. "But you are correct, in a way. Individually, each Insane Child is not based off someone I used to know, but as a whole, they represent children I used to know in both Rutledge and London. More so in London."
"Why do they look like that?"
"Their disfigurement is merely just a physical manifestation for something horrible a man I used to know did to the real life children they represent."
"And what was that?" Jack asked with slight hesitation in his tone. Something in Alice's expression had darkened since they began their conversation about the Insane Children and her head bowed noticeably, almost in a flinch, when at his question, as if she had been expecting it.
She gazed at him through the dark curtain of hair framing her face with hard, emerald eyes. "Haven't you learned by now that you shouldn't ask questions you don't wish to know the answers to?"
He didn't quite know what to say to that. He opened his mouth, but closed it again immediately afterwards when nothing came out. Something unpleasant boiled in the pit of his stomach at the implications Alice had planted inside his head. He stared at her with blank eyes before blinking himself out of his trance, breaking the invisible hold she had on him. He did not like where this talk was going, nor did he like the dark places it was dragging his thoughts through.
"Dr. Bumby was nothing short of a wolf in sheep's clothing," Alice spat suddenly, more to herself than Jack, but startling the Winter spirit all the same.
Before he could ask who this "Dr. Bumby" was, Alice walked past him in her usual sharp stride and made her way towards the Insane Children. She walked across the garden and on to the small battlefield taking place on one of the giant chess boards that littered the garden, making sure to avoid flying snowballs before stopping behind the leader of the Insane Children; the long-haired little girl who dubbed herself "Catherine".
To further install a sense of normalcy in the healing children's new lives, Alice once requested that Bunny bring her a book of names so the Insane Children could pick out ones they liked. With the way they cooed and preened over the book with excitement as they thought over which name to pick, it was almost like watching normal children open presents on Christmas morning.
"Catherine," Alice crouched down so she could better accommodate the leader's height. She reached out and lightly tapped the girl on the shoulder. "I don't mean to pry in your affairs, but since you are out of your jurisdiction, I'm afraid it's entirely within my rights to ask what you are doing outside the Dollhouse."
"Oh, don't worry, Miss Alice," Catherine smiled, reaching out with the hand that wasn't holding a snowball and patting the woman's knee. "We know the rules. We've been followin' 'em real well! We just came to tell the bony cat that we have accomplished our mission!"
Alice blinked at her, her slim eye brows raising in surprise. "Mission? The Cheshire Cat sent you on a mission?"
"Yes, he did!" She replied excitedly. "An' it was a fun mission, wasn't dimwits?"
"Yes, real fun!" said the boy with a corkscrew through his temple, who chose the name "Icarus". He nodded his head frantically and clapped his hands. "To catch the snotty black horse!"
"It was no match for us!" Lucinda, (or "Lucy") the littlest of the group cheered, throwing up handfuls of powdery snow.
Geoffrey, the shortest boy with the bald scalp, joined in on the snow throwing. Alice had to step back to avoid the icy cloud they were producing. He laughed gleefully. "We tricked it real good! Had it believe we were scared and in danger to draw it to us, just like the bony cat told us to!"
"It came runnin' like a bolterfly to a lit candle wick!" The tallest boy, Philip, laughed while trying to join the others, but having difficulty because of the long, obnoxious sleeves of his unbound straitjacket.
"It thought it was going to get a tasty meal, it did, but instead we trapped it in the castle's dungeon!"
Alice looked down at the group of frolicking children with her mouth set in a tight frown and her eyebrows knotted in deep confusion. A mission from the Cheshire Cat? She felt her temper flare at the thought.
In what universe did that mangy feline believe he had the authority to send the Insane Children on a mission? A mission done without her knowledge no less!
There wasn't much Alice could do to stop the Cheshire cat from lurking about Wonderland, manipulating other inhabitants into doing his bidding, but even he was well aware that trying such a thing on the impressionable children was crossing a very deadly line. Was this the reason he had disappeared so suddenly before?
"Did we do good, Miss Alice?" Catherine asked with hopeful eyes, pulling Alice from her souring thoughts.
The other children gathered around her again, adopting the same wide-eyed look as their leader, always striving for their new queen's approval.
"Yes, did we do good?" Icarus echoed while reaching up to grip Alice's apron. "The bony cat said if we did this, you'd be proud of us! He said you was countin' on us to do this for you because no one else could."
"Oh he did, did he?" Alice felt her frown deepened as her anger for Cheshire's actions continued to flare. She tried not to direct it towards the children, lest they misinterpret it and think she was upset with them.
"What are you thinking?" Jack spoke up suddenly. He leaned in close to Alice's ear, making her jump slightly at the coolness of his breath ghosting over her skin. She turned her head to see him standing there, with an uncertain expression on his pale face as he watched her. She had been so fixated on her thoughts, she didn't even notice that he had come up behind her.
She shook her head slowly in contempt for that blasted cat. It was just one delay after another, wasn't it? "I'm thinking I was correct to assume the Cheshire Cat's been following his own hidden agenda."
"And I'm guessing that's not a good thing..."
Alice only shook her head again in response before sidestepping the Insane Children, who went back to their Winter games, and briskly making her way towards the main entrance of the rose garden.
"Come," She beckoned him to follow her. "Let's go see what Cheshire has locked in the dungeon."
~O~
"Ugh!" Jack cried out in disgust as a foul, familiar smell reached his nose. "It's that smell again! The smell from North's workshop!"
Alice didn't respond as she looked through the steel bars of the Red Kingdom's dungeon at the hellish creature thrashing madly inside. At first glance, it appeared to be just a black horse, bucking and kicking its powerful legs against imaginary bindings while pacing frantically in its cell; however, where there should've been smooth fur and a long mane, there was dripping ooze and bleeding pollution. It bellowed loudly from within its prison, making both spirits flinch at the grating noise.
"Jesus, what is that thing?" Jack coughed loudly and blinked his watering eyes. He held the sleeve of his red and black jacket against his nose to help block out the sickening smell the oozing black horse was giving off. It was that same smell of hot tar and despair that slapped them in the face when they had returned to the North Pole from Burgess. "Is this what attacked the workshop?"
He regarded the creature inside with a disturbed frown, recognizing its familiar shape instantly. It was just like one of Pitch Black's nightmares, only...it wasn't.
It was definitely one of the Boogeyman's mares, it was obsidian black with glowing yellow eyes, but it wasn't made of his usual corrupted dreamsand. It was made of the same tar-like substance that coated North's workshop in sizzling puddles after the attack Jack and Alice hadn't been present for. Was this what attacked them?
There was more to it though, than just the mysterious ooze that dripped and drizzled off its flank and out of its panting mouth. The creature had what looked like little, porcelain doll heads, sticking out of various parts of its body. They stared out at nothing with slack-jawed mouths and eyeless sockets while short, rusted pipes stuck up along the back of the mare's neck where a mane should've been. And from those crooked pipes, thick, black smoke wafted out, making the air in the dungeon hot and difficult to breathe.
"What is this monstrosity!?" Alice shouted at the grey feline who had been waiting for them outside the dungeon with a large grin and a dark spark in his yellow eyes.
"Another one of your wicked creations," His grin deepened. His hypnotic, yellow stare trained intensely on Alice before it flickered towards Jack. "And the seed of his destruction."
Jack blinked at the cat. "What? Me?"
Of course Alice wouldn't remember, being as absentminded as he knew she could be, but Cheshire knew it was the beast that created Alice's night terror. He heard it in the soft, dark whispers that secreted from the haunted bowels of the Wonderland Graveyard. They spoke of a disturbance in their creator, an invasion on the deepest levels of her subconscious. The invader, doing what he did best, lurked among the most tainted parts of Alice's mind, bringing along his own wicked creations and inadvertently exposing one of them to a puddle of insidious ooze. From there, the Boogeyman's mare mutated and became even more corrupted than it was before, destroying all semblance to the kindly Sandman's dreamsand. The end result was the Boogeyman unintentionally stumbling across the formula for turning a nightmare, into a night terror. It took on a new and improved physical form; a Night Ruin.
It let loose on Alice's subconscious copy of Wonderland, destroying the pleasant dream the Sandman had weaved for her that night, before somehow bleeding its way into the real Wonderland, which further served to worsen Alice's overall luck. With a connection as fickle as the one between Alice's mind and Wonderland, it was difficult to predict what sort of things would transfer over into the physical realm, and what wouldn't. It was just greatly unfortunate that this new evil turned out to be the former.
"I warned you, did I not?" Cheshire said snidely to Alice, ignoring Jack completely. "I told you something wicked was coming, but you let your guard down anyways. You allowed the Boogeyman to infiltrate and plunder your mind without a fight and now he's stolen something from the Wonderland graveyard and taken back to the outside world.
"Taken what?" Alice asked bitingly, her anger feeding off the screaming creature inside the dungeon cell.
"A deadly new virus," The cat replied grimly. "You're volatile mind has crafted a new toy for the Boogeyman; this Night Ruin, he intends to give it a brand new breeding ground."
"...Wonderland?" Alice offered with an uncertain frown, inciting an eye roll and a long-suffered sigh from the grinning cat.
"Think more creatively, won't you? Wonderland, for the most part, is safe, but it's his-" He gave a sharp nod in Jack's direction. "-world that is now in danger of corruption. So many young, ripe minds to plague."
Jack's eyes widened at the cat's implication. "The children!?"
Cheshire rolled his eyes again and nodded sullenly.
Suddenly feeling more panicked than before, Jack looked inside the dungeon cell again and watched as the monster continued to buck wildly. He cringed at the thought of a child's vulnerable, slumbering mind being exposed to such a monster. He'd seen it happen before, seen what Pitch's nightmares could do to a good dream.
Sometimes, he would go on dream-spreading runs with the Sandman and they would come across a lone nightmare, one of the few left behind by Pitch's siege. Usually, they would catch it in time before it could inflict any damage on Sandy's dreams, but sometimes they would come too late, and Jack would find himself sitting silently in the corner of some child's bedroom, watching while the golden spirit gently lulled the struggling, crying child back into a peaceful sleep.
If he took those experiences and pitted them against his memories of Alice's night terror - the way she screamed and thrashed like she was being murdered with a rusty axe - the result wasn't a promising one. If such a creature could inflict that much damage on a powerful spirit like Alice, Jack shuddered violently at the thought of what it could do to the children.
"We can't let that thing anywhere near them."
"I believe it's a little too late for that. The Boogeyman has already taken it out into the real world. I'm certain it'll only be a matter of time before you start feeling the changes in the air."
"How do we stop it then," Jack demand to know, fixing the emaciated cat with a hard stare before switching it over to Alice, who had fallen silent as she watched the Night Ruin inside the cell. "Alice?"
"It takes a leech to know a leech," The Cheshire Cat hissed suddenly. "My "hidden agenda" isn't the only one at play here, Alice. If you wish to find the tool you'll need to battle this new threat, confront the creature who guards it. The creature responsible for the stupid boy's unpleasant trip to Wonderland. She's been dwelling within the shady undergrowth of Wonderland for years. Much like it's always been, she knows far more about the dark recesses of your mind than you do."
Alice turned from the cell and stared at the cat. "The Red Queen?"
"What was once served and feared is now pushed to the farthest corners of our world and left to rot in plain sight."
"You know where she is!" She accused scathingly. "You've always known, you filthy rat! I knew you knew!"
"Don't blame me for your own ignorance, girl," Cheshire snapped. "You never found the queen bitch's hideaway because you didn't want to find it. You couldn't stand looking at her face."
The air in the dimly lit chamber worsened from just smokey and fearful, to menacing and deadly in less than a second as Alice's glare darkened. There was a sudden flash of blue and the dark-haired woman's glowing Vorpal Blade appeared in her hand.
"Tell me," Alice growled, brandishing her gleaming knife at the smirking feline, who didn't seem at all deterred by the threat in her tone. "Now."
Jack quickly stepped out of Alice's potential warpath, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire. He marveled briefly at how deathly serious Alice could become in just a split second, but then he remembered who he was dealing with.
A knife-wielding ex-mental patient. Right, he should really stop forgetting that.
"Dear sister has been calling you home, Alice. Perhaps it's time you've finally listened," Cheshire purred.
"Show me where she is," Alice commanded almost in a whisper while her acidic eyes never once wavered from his.
"Well of course, your majesty," He complied mockingly with a dip of his head. He disappeared from his spot in front of Alice and then reappeared behind the both of them, at the entrance of the dungeon.
"Funny," He sneered in amusement, fixing Alice with a knowing grin. "It always comes back to her, doesn't it Alice?"
AN: Hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to keep reviewing! Reviews make me so happy!
As you can see, in my story, the Insane Children are mostly cleaned up. Not all the way, but mostly. I figured that it would be very unrealistic, and also a little heartless, to have Alice not do something about the tortured Insane Children. I also gave them names. It made it easier for me to write them out without having to constantly label them "insane child 1" and "insane child 2". I don't think it matters if you know what child I'm referring to specifically other than their leader, but I tried to be as descriptive as possible.
And by the by, how do you guys like the name I came up with for the new enemies? Night Ruins. A deadly cross between a nightmare and an insidious ruin. Super creative, I know.
~Scorpiofreak~