In the Rough, chapter 19/40
Title: In the Rough (19/40)
Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
A/N: I don't really have anything clever to say about this chapter, so I want to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have stuck with me through this fic for so long! ^_^ You guys are the reason the Alice fandom exists, as small and loyal as we are, and I really can't thank you enough! You're kind and inspiring and ask all the right questions, and I'm so greatful for your support. (hearts) We're only halfway through my outline and really starting to cook on this plot, and everything is about to get all shook up... Mwuah ha ha...
Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five,
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten,
Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen, Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Eighteen
***
When Hatter and Alice rejoined Charlie at his camp the next morning, it was only to find him hunched over in a ball next to the remains of that night’s fire, muttering to himself. The pair looked at each other with a frown, Alice’s brow furrowing in concern. “Charlie?” she asked softly, making tentative steps across the camp to where he sat. Hatter followed close behind. “Charlie,” she repeated, “is everything okay?”
“Galadoon…” he muttered, eyes squeezed tight and fingers perched on his temples. “T’poosh!”
Alice sighed. Behind her, she heard Hatter’s exasperated snort. “Charlie, what are you doing?” he asked.
Charlie looked up at him impatiently, obviously miffed at being interrupted in his work.
“I’m trying to determine where we should go next,” he said matter-of-factly. “Naturally, my considerable aptitude in the black arts could only help us in this endeavor!”
“Naturally,” Hatter muttered under his breath, but left Charlie to carry on. Alice patted her long-suffering boyfriend on the shoulder and started the process of packing up the horses.
They were rewarded a few minutes later with a triumphant “Aha!” from Charlie, complete with a surprisingly nimble and armor-clanking leap to his feet. “Straight in that direction!” he announced grandly, pointing off to a random clump of trees with, Alice noted, a considerable lack of path. “We’re quite far, though,” he admitted. “I don’t think we’ll reach it today, but with a full day’s ride we’ll definitely be there tomorrow!”
“Wonderful,” Alice said, trying to sound cheerful and climbing up on Bill for another long day’s ride. “Nice to know we’re on the right track, at any rate.” She watched as Charlie’s foot missed his stirrup on the first try mounting Guinevere-she frowned. That wasn’t like him at all. Usually he jumped on Guinevere as easily as she would jump over a log. “Did you sleep okay last night, Charlie?” she asked, concerned.
He nodded and turned back a smile at her, although it looked a bit strained to her eyes. “I had a… bothersome dream last night, my lady, but not to worry!” He pounded a fist proudly against his escutcheon, letting the sound reverberate though the tinny chest. “Rest assured that my physical and mental abilities are as swift today as they have ever been!”
Hatter snorted in front of her, and she reached up to smack him on the head. “Sounds great, Charlie,” she said. She tightened her arms around Hatter’s waist and kissed the back of his neck, right at the nape. He craned his head around to flash that dimple at her, wiggling his eyebrows comically. Alice, in turn, tightened her lips together in a smirk to keep from laughing… that would only encourage him.
***
Lory wouldn’t admit it to anyone, and would in fact kill anyone who would dare to even ask… but he was becoming, shall we say…
Desperate.
It wasn’t even Jack’s reaction that he was worried about, not at all - it was Lory’s reputation that was really at stake, here. Lory prided himself at being good at killing people. Discreetly and efficiently, that was his way. If he couldn’t knock off one man riding blind around his own forest, well… Lory clenched his fist, causing the feathers across the back of his hand to tremble sharply in the air.
That would just be pathetic.
Unfortunately, Lory was running out of options. The Flowers had taken some planning, and Jack would be expecting an update by the end of the day. He had to bring him some good news, NOW.
Besides which, how had that old man been able to pick out the one clear direction, anyway!? Out of all the paths in the forest, somehow he’d managed to pick the one crossing through the fewest habitats of Lory’s favorite beasts. He shook his head - at this point of the game, in this part of the forest, he only had one option. The feathers on the back of his head stood on end dangerously.
It had better work.
***
As dusk rolled around, Hatter was riding along in silence, Bill’s reins held loosely in his hands and enjoying the occasional puff of Alice’s breath on the back of his neck. For some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about riding his little flamingo scooter around the City as a kid, this nice little black and silver job he’d painted himself… which then reminded him of the afternoons during seventh year playing endless (and also slightly illegal) games of pidgelball. Which then reminded him of…
He shook his head. What was with the sudden wave of nostalgia? Hatter hadn’t had a horrible childhood, he’d admit, but it hadn’t exactly been rose-colored, either, and reminiscing on the past had never been his cuppa. He shook his head again and tried to think about something else. “Alice, have you got-“ but then something moved in the corner of his vision, and he stopped abruptly.
“What?” Alice asked, surprised by Hatter’s sudden change of mood. Automatically, she started scanning the trees. “What did you see?”
But Hatter wasn’t scanning the treetops. He had a razor-sharp gaze fixed on a densely packed clump of bushes and trees about forty feet ahead. “Charlie,” he called, and dismounted Bill so he could run up alongside him. He was pleased to see that Charlie was looking at the same spot. “Didja’ see that?”
“I did indeed,” Charlie muttered, reaching for his sword. “Keep very still.”
“What did you see?” Alice asked suddenly from behind Hatter. Only his supreme self-control kept him from literally jumping out of his skin at the surprise - he hadn’t even heard her dismount.
Charlie didn’t answer, just pointed to a large branch on the ground and looked significantly at Hatter, who picked it up and handed it to him with a bewildered look on his face. “It’s a borogrove, I believe,” Charlie said, and was that a hint of excitement Hatter heard in his voice? “In other words,” he giggled, “perhaps our dinner for tonight. Now-“
But his instructions were lost in the sudden explosion of movement in the bushes, and Hatter only had barely enough time to push Alice behind him before the borogrove came tearing out of the brush and looked straight at them, with murder in its wild, crazed eyes. It closely resembled a giant warthog, just over ten feet tall, with tusks longer and thicker than Hatter’s arm. This one was snarling, growling at them, pawing at the ground impatiently and locking its red eyes firmly on where Hatter and Alice stood, completely defenseless.
“Alice,” Hatter barked, giving her a rather forceful push in the opposite direction. “RUN!”
The two of them started to sprint in the opposite direction just in time-no sooner had he turned away than Hatter felt the ground trembling beneath him as the borogrove started its charge. The two of them ran at top speed, Alice’s hair flying behind in a wave, almost obscuring his vision as he ran close behind her, the better to defend. Hatter’s blood pounded in his ears, his breath coming in fast, furious lungfuls, his legs not even feeling the shock of the forest floor as they pounded against it in their haste. His every instinct was telling him to crane his neck back and see how far ahead they were, but he resisted - years of experience running from authorities told him that was the kind of thing better not to know.
Nevertheless, he could hear the loud, greedy snorts of the borogrove close behind him, and there was only so far they could run. “Alice!” he yelled ahead, struggling to be heard over the stampeding of the borogrove’s hooves and the sound of air rushing past them as they ran. “We’ve got to split up… try to confuse it!”
She spared an exasperated glance over her shoulder, but Hatter saw the millisecond her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and she wrenched her head forward again. DON’T LOOK, he commanded himself, fighting the now-overwhelming temptation to do so. For the love of God, do NOT look!
“Left or right!?” Alice yelled, successfully distracting him.
“I’ll go left!” He gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the result. “Three- Two-now!”
He waited until Alice started a giant curve to the right, and immediately after ran his own giant curve to the left. The sound of pounding hooves didn’t stop - in fact, it got louder. Hatter’s heart sunk. He gritted his teeth against the stitch in his side and dug his feet even deeper into the ground as he ran back the way he’d come.
“Hatter!” He could hear Alice yell in the distance, just as he felt one of the borogrove’s tusks scrape up his back, its hot breath panting on his neck and filling Hatter’s nose with its stench.
“Charlie!” he yelled as the white knight came into view, charging towards him on Guinevere. “You’ve better have a PLAN!”
“Clear the path, harbinger!” Charlie bellowed, before throwing what looked like-
Hatter did a double-take… was that a spear!? Where had Charlie gotten a spear from!?
He recovered from his surprise just in time to fall to the ground in a duck, and heard the thwock of the spear hitting its target: directly into the borogrove’s mouth, which had been open and ready to swallow Hatter whole. The thing gave a horrifically loud, shrill squeal of a thousand pigs being slaughtered at once, and then collapsed only bare inches short of crushing Hatter’s legs underneath its bulk.
Hatter lay there, looking at the beast’s gaping, bloodied mouth, his heart slamming a painful tempo against his ribs. With a last effort, he rolled over to flop spread-eagle on the ground, gasping frantically and trying to force the world to stop spinning. He heard Alice drop to her knees next to him with a flump of disturbed leaves. He opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of her windswept face and couldn’t help but laugh a little in relief.
On his other side, he heard the clanking of Charlie’s boots as he surveyed the fallen predator. “By the golden scepter of Periocles!” he exclaimed, whistling in admiration as he ran a hand along the same tusk that had threatened Hatter only moments before. “I’ve never seen a borogrove this size in all my years!” He chortled. “Good thing it had its mouth so wide open to eat you, harbinger, or I never would have managed it!”
“Yeah,” Hatter moaned, trying briefly to rise into a sitting position before thinking that maybe he’d just stay where he was for a bit longer. “Lucky.” He craned his neck up just in time to see Charlie pull his spear out of the borogrove’s mouth - but Hatter had been right, it wasn’t a spear. It was Charlie’s sword, lashed with twine to the branch that Hatter had given him earlier. Resourceful, Hatter thought in grudging admiration as he finally pulled himself to a sitting position. Every muscle in his body felt hot and stretched from being overworked, and he knew that he’d be sore as hell in the morning. He glanced over at Alice, whose breathing was starting to level out. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, brushing hair out of her face. “Sorry it took after you instead of me.” She chuckled under her breath and kissed his cheek, hoisting him up to stand with her. “Bad luck, huh?”
That’s when it clicked in Hatter’s mind, the pieces sliding into place so forcefully he felt like he’d been slapped in the face with it. The JubJub bird appearing out of nowhere in the Great Library, somewhere that should have been inhospitable for such a carnivorous bird of prey. The bluebell, just happening to brush up next to him when it should have been asleep. The biggest borogrove he’d ever seen bursting out of the brushes on what should have been only the very outskirts of borogrove territory. And all of them had been aiming for him.
“Alice,” he said darkly, his eyes hard as stone. “I don’t think it was an accident.”
***
Lory’s rage was past the point of seething and smoldering. It was a burning rage in his belly, setting his feathered skin on edge and turning his ice blue irises nearly white with anger. His hands were balled into fists so tight that his short, clawed fingernails were drawing his superheated blood, dripping down the crevices between his fingers and splattering on the forest floor to smoke softly on the carpet of dead leaves.
Suddenly, he felt the shift that told him Jack was sending a summons bird his way, and for the first time since he was an angry, petulant, and impatient hatchling, Lory screeched. He pursed his lips in displeasure, forcing himself into a calmer state of mind. It had been a long time since he had been goaded into letting his self-control slip.
He straightened the lines of his suit and readied his most severe, stony expression. He was heading into a fight, and he would come out on top. It was the only way to retain his professional reputation with the man, and Jack was already so irritable these days.
With a deep breath and a flick of his hands, sending the blood flying to the ground and leaving his hands completely clean, he evaporated. Only his signature red feather floated down to the ground, resting in a pool of his still-steaming blood.
***
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Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
A/N: I don't really have anything clever to say about this chapter, so I want to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have stuck with me through this fic for so long! ^_^ You guys are the reason the Alice fandom exists, as small and loyal as we are, and I really can't thank you enough! You're kind and inspiring and ask all the right questions, and I'm so greatful for your support. (hearts) We're only halfway through my outline and really starting to cook on this plot, and everything is about to get all shook up... Mwuah ha ha...
Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five,
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten,
Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen, Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Eighteen
***
When Hatter and Alice rejoined Charlie at his camp the next morning, it was only to find him hunched over in a ball next to the remains of that night’s fire, muttering to himself. The pair looked at each other with a frown, Alice’s brow furrowing in concern. “Charlie?” she asked softly, making tentative steps across the camp to where he sat. Hatter followed close behind. “Charlie,” she repeated, “is everything okay?”
“Galadoon…” he muttered, eyes squeezed tight and fingers perched on his temples. “T’poosh!”
Alice sighed. Behind her, she heard Hatter’s exasperated snort. “Charlie, what are you doing?” he asked.
Charlie looked up at him impatiently, obviously miffed at being interrupted in his work.
“I’m trying to determine where we should go next,” he said matter-of-factly. “Naturally, my considerable aptitude in the black arts could only help us in this endeavor!”
“Naturally,” Hatter muttered under his breath, but left Charlie to carry on. Alice patted her long-suffering boyfriend on the shoulder and started the process of packing up the horses.
They were rewarded a few minutes later with a triumphant “Aha!” from Charlie, complete with a surprisingly nimble and armor-clanking leap to his feet. “Straight in that direction!” he announced grandly, pointing off to a random clump of trees with, Alice noted, a considerable lack of path. “We’re quite far, though,” he admitted. “I don’t think we’ll reach it today, but with a full day’s ride we’ll definitely be there tomorrow!”
“Wonderful,” Alice said, trying to sound cheerful and climbing up on Bill for another long day’s ride. “Nice to know we’re on the right track, at any rate.” She watched as Charlie’s foot missed his stirrup on the first try mounting Guinevere-she frowned. That wasn’t like him at all. Usually he jumped on Guinevere as easily as she would jump over a log. “Did you sleep okay last night, Charlie?” she asked, concerned.
He nodded and turned back a smile at her, although it looked a bit strained to her eyes. “I had a… bothersome dream last night, my lady, but not to worry!” He pounded a fist proudly against his escutcheon, letting the sound reverberate though the tinny chest. “Rest assured that my physical and mental abilities are as swift today as they have ever been!”
Hatter snorted in front of her, and she reached up to smack him on the head. “Sounds great, Charlie,” she said. She tightened her arms around Hatter’s waist and kissed the back of his neck, right at the nape. He craned his head around to flash that dimple at her, wiggling his eyebrows comically. Alice, in turn, tightened her lips together in a smirk to keep from laughing… that would only encourage him.
***
Lory wouldn’t admit it to anyone, and would in fact kill anyone who would dare to even ask… but he was becoming, shall we say…
Desperate.
It wasn’t even Jack’s reaction that he was worried about, not at all - it was Lory’s reputation that was really at stake, here. Lory prided himself at being good at killing people. Discreetly and efficiently, that was his way. If he couldn’t knock off one man riding blind around his own forest, well… Lory clenched his fist, causing the feathers across the back of his hand to tremble sharply in the air.
That would just be pathetic.
Unfortunately, Lory was running out of options. The Flowers had taken some planning, and Jack would be expecting an update by the end of the day. He had to bring him some good news, NOW.
Besides which, how had that old man been able to pick out the one clear direction, anyway!? Out of all the paths in the forest, somehow he’d managed to pick the one crossing through the fewest habitats of Lory’s favorite beasts. He shook his head - at this point of the game, in this part of the forest, he only had one option. The feathers on the back of his head stood on end dangerously.
It had better work.
***
As dusk rolled around, Hatter was riding along in silence, Bill’s reins held loosely in his hands and enjoying the occasional puff of Alice’s breath on the back of his neck. For some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about riding his little flamingo scooter around the City as a kid, this nice little black and silver job he’d painted himself… which then reminded him of the afternoons during seventh year playing endless (and also slightly illegal) games of pidgelball. Which then reminded him of…
He shook his head. What was with the sudden wave of nostalgia? Hatter hadn’t had a horrible childhood, he’d admit, but it hadn’t exactly been rose-colored, either, and reminiscing on the past had never been his cuppa. He shook his head again and tried to think about something else. “Alice, have you got-“ but then something moved in the corner of his vision, and he stopped abruptly.
“What?” Alice asked, surprised by Hatter’s sudden change of mood. Automatically, she started scanning the trees. “What did you see?”
But Hatter wasn’t scanning the treetops. He had a razor-sharp gaze fixed on a densely packed clump of bushes and trees about forty feet ahead. “Charlie,” he called, and dismounted Bill so he could run up alongside him. He was pleased to see that Charlie was looking at the same spot. “Didja’ see that?”
“I did indeed,” Charlie muttered, reaching for his sword. “Keep very still.”
“What did you see?” Alice asked suddenly from behind Hatter. Only his supreme self-control kept him from literally jumping out of his skin at the surprise - he hadn’t even heard her dismount.
Charlie didn’t answer, just pointed to a large branch on the ground and looked significantly at Hatter, who picked it up and handed it to him with a bewildered look on his face. “It’s a borogrove, I believe,” Charlie said, and was that a hint of excitement Hatter heard in his voice? “In other words,” he giggled, “perhaps our dinner for tonight. Now-“
But his instructions were lost in the sudden explosion of movement in the bushes, and Hatter only had barely enough time to push Alice behind him before the borogrove came tearing out of the brush and looked straight at them, with murder in its wild, crazed eyes. It closely resembled a giant warthog, just over ten feet tall, with tusks longer and thicker than Hatter’s arm. This one was snarling, growling at them, pawing at the ground impatiently and locking its red eyes firmly on where Hatter and Alice stood, completely defenseless.
“Alice,” Hatter barked, giving her a rather forceful push in the opposite direction. “RUN!”
The two of them started to sprint in the opposite direction just in time-no sooner had he turned away than Hatter felt the ground trembling beneath him as the borogrove started its charge. The two of them ran at top speed, Alice’s hair flying behind in a wave, almost obscuring his vision as he ran close behind her, the better to defend. Hatter’s blood pounded in his ears, his breath coming in fast, furious lungfuls, his legs not even feeling the shock of the forest floor as they pounded against it in their haste. His every instinct was telling him to crane his neck back and see how far ahead they were, but he resisted - years of experience running from authorities told him that was the kind of thing better not to know.
Nevertheless, he could hear the loud, greedy snorts of the borogrove close behind him, and there was only so far they could run. “Alice!” he yelled ahead, struggling to be heard over the stampeding of the borogrove’s hooves and the sound of air rushing past them as they ran. “We’ve got to split up… try to confuse it!”
She spared an exasperated glance over her shoulder, but Hatter saw the millisecond her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and she wrenched her head forward again. DON’T LOOK, he commanded himself, fighting the now-overwhelming temptation to do so. For the love of God, do NOT look!
“Left or right!?” Alice yelled, successfully distracting him.
“I’ll go left!” He gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the result. “Three- Two-now!”
He waited until Alice started a giant curve to the right, and immediately after ran his own giant curve to the left. The sound of pounding hooves didn’t stop - in fact, it got louder. Hatter’s heart sunk. He gritted his teeth against the stitch in his side and dug his feet even deeper into the ground as he ran back the way he’d come.
“Hatter!” He could hear Alice yell in the distance, just as he felt one of the borogrove’s tusks scrape up his back, its hot breath panting on his neck and filling Hatter’s nose with its stench.
“Charlie!” he yelled as the white knight came into view, charging towards him on Guinevere. “You’ve better have a PLAN!”
“Clear the path, harbinger!” Charlie bellowed, before throwing what looked like-
Hatter did a double-take… was that a spear!? Where had Charlie gotten a spear from!?
He recovered from his surprise just in time to fall to the ground in a duck, and heard the thwock of the spear hitting its target: directly into the borogrove’s mouth, which had been open and ready to swallow Hatter whole. The thing gave a horrifically loud, shrill squeal of a thousand pigs being slaughtered at once, and then collapsed only bare inches short of crushing Hatter’s legs underneath its bulk.
Hatter lay there, looking at the beast’s gaping, bloodied mouth, his heart slamming a painful tempo against his ribs. With a last effort, he rolled over to flop spread-eagle on the ground, gasping frantically and trying to force the world to stop spinning. He heard Alice drop to her knees next to him with a flump of disturbed leaves. He opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of her windswept face and couldn’t help but laugh a little in relief.
On his other side, he heard the clanking of Charlie’s boots as he surveyed the fallen predator. “By the golden scepter of Periocles!” he exclaimed, whistling in admiration as he ran a hand along the same tusk that had threatened Hatter only moments before. “I’ve never seen a borogrove this size in all my years!” He chortled. “Good thing it had its mouth so wide open to eat you, harbinger, or I never would have managed it!”
“Yeah,” Hatter moaned, trying briefly to rise into a sitting position before thinking that maybe he’d just stay where he was for a bit longer. “Lucky.” He craned his neck up just in time to see Charlie pull his spear out of the borogrove’s mouth - but Hatter had been right, it wasn’t a spear. It was Charlie’s sword, lashed with twine to the branch that Hatter had given him earlier. Resourceful, Hatter thought in grudging admiration as he finally pulled himself to a sitting position. Every muscle in his body felt hot and stretched from being overworked, and he knew that he’d be sore as hell in the morning. He glanced over at Alice, whose breathing was starting to level out. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, brushing hair out of her face. “Sorry it took after you instead of me.” She chuckled under her breath and kissed his cheek, hoisting him up to stand with her. “Bad luck, huh?”
That’s when it clicked in Hatter’s mind, the pieces sliding into place so forcefully he felt like he’d been slapped in the face with it. The JubJub bird appearing out of nowhere in the Great Library, somewhere that should have been inhospitable for such a carnivorous bird of prey. The bluebell, just happening to brush up next to him when it should have been asleep. The biggest borogrove he’d ever seen bursting out of the brushes on what should have been only the very outskirts of borogrove territory. And all of them had been aiming for him.
“Alice,” he said darkly, his eyes hard as stone. “I don’t think it was an accident.”
***
Lory’s rage was past the point of seething and smoldering. It was a burning rage in his belly, setting his feathered skin on edge and turning his ice blue irises nearly white with anger. His hands were balled into fists so tight that his short, clawed fingernails were drawing his superheated blood, dripping down the crevices between his fingers and splattering on the forest floor to smoke softly on the carpet of dead leaves.
Suddenly, he felt the shift that told him Jack was sending a summons bird his way, and for the first time since he was an angry, petulant, and impatient hatchling, Lory screeched. He pursed his lips in displeasure, forcing himself into a calmer state of mind. It had been a long time since he had been goaded into letting his self-control slip.
He straightened the lines of his suit and readied his most severe, stony expression. He was heading into a fight, and he would come out on top. It was the only way to retain his professional reputation with the man, and Jack was already so irritable these days.
With a deep breath and a flick of his hands, sending the blood flying to the ground and leaving his hands completely clean, he evaporated. Only his signature red feather floated down to the ground, resting in a pool of his still-steaming blood.
***
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