In the Rough, chapter 24/40
Title: In the Rough (24/40)
Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Mature
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: Yeah, I've been looking forward to writing this chapter for awhile. It's been formulated in my head since I drew up my first outline. <3 awww... ENJOY!
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, Chapter Nineteen, Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One, Chapter Twenty-Two, Chapter Twenty-Three
***
The Duchess rode all night, counting on the meager moonlight sifting through the trees to light her way. The fire that had burned within her began to fade the further she rode, each mile of trees identical to the last, with no landmarks to guide her or provide a sense of whereness. For all she knew, the Duchess thought, slumping in her saddle, she’d been doing nothing but riding in a huge circle for hours.
And it was at such a time, exhausted and lost and feeling thoroughly, grumpily discouraged, that dawn broke and Duchess could finally see something that she had just been about to miss.
Over to her left, through the clustered trunks and ferns and hanging vines, was a large stretch of scarred, burnt earth. It looked as though someone had razed a nearly perfect half-mile track of forest, the piles of ash ending abruptly on either side like an invisible wall. Duchess dismounted to inspect them closer, noting with surprise how the ashes still felt warm under her feet.
This had happened recently.
“Come on,” she muttered to Diamond, climbing back atop her saddle. “I’ve got a strong feeling that if there’s a path of destruction, those three can’t be far from it.”
***
Alice looked up from the cave floor when she finally felt like she could compose herself again, wiping the little trails of vomit off her lips and chin. Now that she was taking a pause, a quiet breath-
She could hear water. The unmistakable dripping sound of a stream echoed from nearby.
Alice rushed back to the horses and grabbed a flashlight, along with their largest canteen. “I think I hear water,” she told Charlie simply. “I’m going to go collect some so we can clean up.” He nodded and continued to wrap Hatter’s wounds in gauze, leaving her free to leave again.
Sure enough, upon closer inspection of the cave she found a little dribble of water streaming down from the ceiling, marking a glistening trail down the rock walls and collecting in a small pool. Alice collected some of the water in her hands and washed the acidic taste of her nausea out of her mouth before submerging the canteen as deep as she could in the small pool and returning back to camp.
Charlie was absolutely covered in Hatter’s blood, the dark red stains trailing up to his elbows and splattered all across the armor that was now laying in pieces on the ground, waiting to be cleaned.
“Good timing,” he told her with a cheerfulness that seemed oddly out-of-place. “I don’t like to leave bloodstains on my armor for long, you see-it’s the devil to clean off once it’s dried.”
With a tired smile, Alice knelt down and reached for a spare cloth. “What did you do to him, Charlie?” she asked quietly, wiping off his gauntlets in a steady circular motion.
“Liffaleaf… well, it’s a stabilizer, of sorts,” Charlie began. “It takes the place of Wonderland parts until they’re completely healed on their own. Skin, blood, organs, whatever we need - just put some Liffaleaf over it, give it some time, and after the last of the leaf dissolves you’re good as new.”
“But that’s…” Alice’s voice trailed off at Charlie’s look and she smiled apologetically at his single raised eyebrow.
“Impossible?” he finished for her. “Well, for Oysters, it is. It’s just the way Wonderland physiology works. I can’t explain why it’s that way, but there you go. Hatter’s wounds are particularly severe, however. He’ll probably need to sit there for a few days before he’ll be up to walking again, and maybe even two weeks before he’s completely healed.”
“And in the meantime,” Alice said, trying to understand, “The Liffaleaf in his body will… keep him alive until his organs heal on their own?”
“Indeed!” Charlie looked pleased that she’d caught on to his anatomy lesson so quickly. “When the leaves on his sides fade away, we’ll know he’s ready to start walking around again.”
Alice looked at him curiously. “How do you know all this, Charlie?” He just looked so unruffled, so optimistic, sitting there with only his long johns and a smile.
He scoffed and shook his head. “I’m a Knight!”
At such a typical response, Alice couldn’t help the little answering grin that flirted around the edges of her lips… her first real smile in days. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Charlie,” she said.
He shuffled around, looking a bit embarrassed and making a big show about picking up Alice’s empty canteen. “I’ll just take this back and re-fill it, shall I?”
As Charlie stood up to go, Alice looked down at her ruined top, already knowing that it was doomed - the warm brown sweater she’d put on two days ago because she’d started feeling chilly was now covered in blood, thoroughly soaked into the thick, soft fiber. In her head, she briefly turned over the possibility of actually trying to wash the stains out with just the water from that tiny little stream… “I think I’ll just burn it,” she mused, having never been one for domestics.
***
Later on in the day Duchess found a long stretch of tramped foliage. Broken branches and flattened berries scattered everywhere down a long path, the end of which she couldn’t see.
“Looks like a stampede,” she mused aloud. “But not wide enough for several animals… maybe just one?” She guided Diamond down the path carefully, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of whether the beast was still about -- almost a mile later, however, her question was answered. She smirked down at the remains of a campfire, next to which lay a pile of what looked like borogrove bones. The bones were barely even dry, meaning they were probably less than a day old.
“They’re close.”
***
Several hours later - after Alice had changed her clothes and watched the fire lick away the last remnants of her blood-soaked sweater - Hatter finally stirred. His head lolled to the side and he groaned, which quickly turned into a coughing fit. Alice was at his side in an instant with her canteen.
“Try not to move,” she scolded. Carefully, she poured water into his mouth bit by bit, waiting for him to swallow each time. When he stopped coughing, he finally opened his eyes and looked up at her.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
Alice’s fretful expression softened the tiniest bit as she looked down at him. “Hey.”
“What’s the damage?” he croaked, making movement as though to sit up, but didn’t get far before starting to cough again. Alice shook her head with a well-practiced eyeroll and placed a firm hand on his chest, forcing him to lie down so she could give him some more water.
“Well, Charlie used up every Liffaleaf he had patching you up, so considering half of your body is currently composed of foliage, I guess you’re alright. At least, Charlie says you’re going to be alright. He saved your life, you know.”
Her voice trembled slightly against her will, and Hatter noticed. A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Sorry if I frightened you,” he said softly.
Alice almost laughed at the gross understatement. Frightened? There weren’t words to describe the level of frightened she had been. She leaned back and looked tiredly up at the rock ceiling. “I don’t want to talk about it.“
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Hatter said. “I got distracted, I left myself wide open for attack.”
She didn’t say anything.
He sighed and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him wince even at that simple action. “You know,” he remarked with a sidelong glance, “This never would have happened if you’d let me bring my bulletproof vest.”
And Alice couldn’t help it - she laughed, a real, full-bellied laugh. The sensation surprised her, and the tension in her shoulders leaked entirely away as she looked down at Hatter and tousled his hair fondly. She wasn’t at all surprised to see him grinning brilliantly back at her, smug that he’d achieved this reaction.
Still chuckling, her hand traced a path down his shoulder where, for the first time, she noticed his bandaged knuckles. Alice’s laughter faded away and she picked up his hand gently, cradling it in her own. “When did…?”
Hatter’s smile faltered slightly and he carefully avoided her gaze. “I might have, you know… punched a tree,” he admitted. “Last night.”
“Oh.”
An uncomfortable silence fell. Alice frowned intently down at his hand in hers, running the pad of her thumb across the gauzy material and worrying her lip.
“…Alice?” Hatter prodded. “What’s-“
“I don’t know what to do,” she blurted out, keeping her eyes trained on his injured hand. “I’ve never… I’ve never lost sight of what I wanted before. With other people, it’s always help me or get out of my way, that’s just how I worked. Last night in the forest… I thought you’d finally abandoned me. After all we’ve been through, every time you’ve come to back me up, I thought here we go, it’s back to the way it’s always been. And it hurt,” she admitted. “It hurt tearing myself away from you, and it hurt trying to back to the way I was before. I don’t know when that happened, that I became not myself anymore.” She sighed. “I’ve been fiercely independent since I was a kid. Taking on the world - that was just my style. No Plan B’s, and no compromises, because I’ve never had anything worth compromising myself for.”
Hatter looked at her intently. “Is that still true?”
Alice met his gaze and instantly knew.
“No,” she said in a choked voice. His eyes crinkled at the corners and he tightened his hand around hers as she blabbered on. “When you were… God, it sounds so cheesy and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’ve become a part of me somehow. I don’t know when it happened and I don’t care. Hatter, you are the first thing in my life that I’ve been willing to compromise for. So what if we live in my world or yours, we’ll figure it out. I don’t care which side of the Glass I’m on as long as it’s the side that’s got you in it. When I thought you were going to… Hatter, there was so much blood…”
“Marry me,” he interrupted.
Her rant came to a screeching halt, and for an instant, she thought her heart might actually have stopped beating. “Say that again?” she asked breathlessly, searching his face for some sign of mischief or humor. She found none. His eyes were shining brightly and a bright flush had come over his face.
“Everything you’ve said goes double for me, kid.” He exhaled shakily and rolled his eyes. “I mean, remember who I was when we met? Never an honest or brave moment in my life. I’d never had-” He swallowed, eyes closing briefly. “I’d never had this much to lose. And this probably isn’t the right time to do this, because you deserve more than a man stuffed with leaves on the floor of a cave in a monster-infested forest - damn, I don’t even have a ring, but… Alice, I need you. And hell,” he laughed. “I swear that I will come bail you out of every harebrained scheme and duty-bound quest you get yourself into for the rest of your life as long as you say you’ll let me. Just say you’ll let me. Say that you’ll marry me.”
Alice couldn’t say anything. She’d lost the words. He was right, it did seem wildly inappropriate somehow, at this moment, in this cave. And it didn’t seem fair of him to ask this instant decision of her right after he’d nearly died in her arms. Marriage was big, it was forever, it shouldn’t be decided impetuously, and… if she said yes, she would be signing up for a life just like this. Constantly afraid of his safety, constantly afraid of her own emotional safety should something happen to him, fighting and yelling and having to give up a part of herself to receive something of his in return. It meant trust. It meant more than trust, it meant dependence. Alice hadn’t been dependent since she was ten.
But it was Hatter. It was Hatter she would yell at and worry about and depend upon, and that didn’t feel, Alice realized, like a sacrifice.
It felt like a gift.
Her heart was too full to speak and her head was too light to think -- she felt like she’d just swallowed something extremely fizzy. All she could do was lean down and take his lips in hers in a hungry, delirious kiss. “Yes,” she finally remembered to whisper as their mouths met again and again. “Yes, yes.”
***
Next Chapter
Leave a Comment
Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Mature
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: Yeah, I've been looking forward to writing this chapter for awhile. It's been formulated in my head since I drew up my first outline. <3 awww... ENJOY!
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, Chapter Nineteen, Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One, Chapter Twenty-Two, Chapter Twenty-Three
***
The Duchess rode all night, counting on the meager moonlight sifting through the trees to light her way. The fire that had burned within her began to fade the further she rode, each mile of trees identical to the last, with no landmarks to guide her or provide a sense of whereness. For all she knew, the Duchess thought, slumping in her saddle, she’d been doing nothing but riding in a huge circle for hours.
And it was at such a time, exhausted and lost and feeling thoroughly, grumpily discouraged, that dawn broke and Duchess could finally see something that she had just been about to miss.
Over to her left, through the clustered trunks and ferns and hanging vines, was a large stretch of scarred, burnt earth. It looked as though someone had razed a nearly perfect half-mile track of forest, the piles of ash ending abruptly on either side like an invisible wall. Duchess dismounted to inspect them closer, noting with surprise how the ashes still felt warm under her feet.
This had happened recently.
“Come on,” she muttered to Diamond, climbing back atop her saddle. “I’ve got a strong feeling that if there’s a path of destruction, those three can’t be far from it.”
***
Alice looked up from the cave floor when she finally felt like she could compose herself again, wiping the little trails of vomit off her lips and chin. Now that she was taking a pause, a quiet breath-
She could hear water. The unmistakable dripping sound of a stream echoed from nearby.
Alice rushed back to the horses and grabbed a flashlight, along with their largest canteen. “I think I hear water,” she told Charlie simply. “I’m going to go collect some so we can clean up.” He nodded and continued to wrap Hatter’s wounds in gauze, leaving her free to leave again.
Sure enough, upon closer inspection of the cave she found a little dribble of water streaming down from the ceiling, marking a glistening trail down the rock walls and collecting in a small pool. Alice collected some of the water in her hands and washed the acidic taste of her nausea out of her mouth before submerging the canteen as deep as she could in the small pool and returning back to camp.
Charlie was absolutely covered in Hatter’s blood, the dark red stains trailing up to his elbows and splattered all across the armor that was now laying in pieces on the ground, waiting to be cleaned.
“Good timing,” he told her with a cheerfulness that seemed oddly out-of-place. “I don’t like to leave bloodstains on my armor for long, you see-it’s the devil to clean off once it’s dried.”
With a tired smile, Alice knelt down and reached for a spare cloth. “What did you do to him, Charlie?” she asked quietly, wiping off his gauntlets in a steady circular motion.
“Liffaleaf… well, it’s a stabilizer, of sorts,” Charlie began. “It takes the place of Wonderland parts until they’re completely healed on their own. Skin, blood, organs, whatever we need - just put some Liffaleaf over it, give it some time, and after the last of the leaf dissolves you’re good as new.”
“But that’s…” Alice’s voice trailed off at Charlie’s look and she smiled apologetically at his single raised eyebrow.
“Impossible?” he finished for her. “Well, for Oysters, it is. It’s just the way Wonderland physiology works. I can’t explain why it’s that way, but there you go. Hatter’s wounds are particularly severe, however. He’ll probably need to sit there for a few days before he’ll be up to walking again, and maybe even two weeks before he’s completely healed.”
“And in the meantime,” Alice said, trying to understand, “The Liffaleaf in his body will… keep him alive until his organs heal on their own?”
“Indeed!” Charlie looked pleased that she’d caught on to his anatomy lesson so quickly. “When the leaves on his sides fade away, we’ll know he’s ready to start walking around again.”
Alice looked at him curiously. “How do you know all this, Charlie?” He just looked so unruffled, so optimistic, sitting there with only his long johns and a smile.
He scoffed and shook his head. “I’m a Knight!”
At such a typical response, Alice couldn’t help the little answering grin that flirted around the edges of her lips… her first real smile in days. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Charlie,” she said.
He shuffled around, looking a bit embarrassed and making a big show about picking up Alice’s empty canteen. “I’ll just take this back and re-fill it, shall I?”
As Charlie stood up to go, Alice looked down at her ruined top, already knowing that it was doomed - the warm brown sweater she’d put on two days ago because she’d started feeling chilly was now covered in blood, thoroughly soaked into the thick, soft fiber. In her head, she briefly turned over the possibility of actually trying to wash the stains out with just the water from that tiny little stream… “I think I’ll just burn it,” she mused, having never been one for domestics.
***
Later on in the day Duchess found a long stretch of tramped foliage. Broken branches and flattened berries scattered everywhere down a long path, the end of which she couldn’t see.
“Looks like a stampede,” she mused aloud. “But not wide enough for several animals… maybe just one?” She guided Diamond down the path carefully, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of whether the beast was still about -- almost a mile later, however, her question was answered. She smirked down at the remains of a campfire, next to which lay a pile of what looked like borogrove bones. The bones were barely even dry, meaning they were probably less than a day old.
“They’re close.”
***
Several hours later - after Alice had changed her clothes and watched the fire lick away the last remnants of her blood-soaked sweater - Hatter finally stirred. His head lolled to the side and he groaned, which quickly turned into a coughing fit. Alice was at his side in an instant with her canteen.
“Try not to move,” she scolded. Carefully, she poured water into his mouth bit by bit, waiting for him to swallow each time. When he stopped coughing, he finally opened his eyes and looked up at her.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
Alice’s fretful expression softened the tiniest bit as she looked down at him. “Hey.”
“What’s the damage?” he croaked, making movement as though to sit up, but didn’t get far before starting to cough again. Alice shook her head with a well-practiced eyeroll and placed a firm hand on his chest, forcing him to lie down so she could give him some more water.
“Well, Charlie used up every Liffaleaf he had patching you up, so considering half of your body is currently composed of foliage, I guess you’re alright. At least, Charlie says you’re going to be alright. He saved your life, you know.”
Her voice trembled slightly against her will, and Hatter noticed. A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Sorry if I frightened you,” he said softly.
Alice almost laughed at the gross understatement. Frightened? There weren’t words to describe the level of frightened she had been. She leaned back and looked tiredly up at the rock ceiling. “I don’t want to talk about it.“
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Hatter said. “I got distracted, I left myself wide open for attack.”
She didn’t say anything.
He sighed and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him wince even at that simple action. “You know,” he remarked with a sidelong glance, “This never would have happened if you’d let me bring my bulletproof vest.”
And Alice couldn’t help it - she laughed, a real, full-bellied laugh. The sensation surprised her, and the tension in her shoulders leaked entirely away as she looked down at Hatter and tousled his hair fondly. She wasn’t at all surprised to see him grinning brilliantly back at her, smug that he’d achieved this reaction.
Still chuckling, her hand traced a path down his shoulder where, for the first time, she noticed his bandaged knuckles. Alice’s laughter faded away and she picked up his hand gently, cradling it in her own. “When did…?”
Hatter’s smile faltered slightly and he carefully avoided her gaze. “I might have, you know… punched a tree,” he admitted. “Last night.”
“Oh.”
An uncomfortable silence fell. Alice frowned intently down at his hand in hers, running the pad of her thumb across the gauzy material and worrying her lip.
“…Alice?” Hatter prodded. “What’s-“
“I don’t know what to do,” she blurted out, keeping her eyes trained on his injured hand. “I’ve never… I’ve never lost sight of what I wanted before. With other people, it’s always help me or get out of my way, that’s just how I worked. Last night in the forest… I thought you’d finally abandoned me. After all we’ve been through, every time you’ve come to back me up, I thought here we go, it’s back to the way it’s always been. And it hurt,” she admitted. “It hurt tearing myself away from you, and it hurt trying to back to the way I was before. I don’t know when that happened, that I became not myself anymore.” She sighed. “I’ve been fiercely independent since I was a kid. Taking on the world - that was just my style. No Plan B’s, and no compromises, because I’ve never had anything worth compromising myself for.”
Hatter looked at her intently. “Is that still true?”
Alice met his gaze and instantly knew.
“No,” she said in a choked voice. His eyes crinkled at the corners and he tightened his hand around hers as she blabbered on. “When you were… God, it sounds so cheesy and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’ve become a part of me somehow. I don’t know when it happened and I don’t care. Hatter, you are the first thing in my life that I’ve been willing to compromise for. So what if we live in my world or yours, we’ll figure it out. I don’t care which side of the Glass I’m on as long as it’s the side that’s got you in it. When I thought you were going to… Hatter, there was so much blood…”
“Marry me,” he interrupted.
Her rant came to a screeching halt, and for an instant, she thought her heart might actually have stopped beating. “Say that again?” she asked breathlessly, searching his face for some sign of mischief or humor. She found none. His eyes were shining brightly and a bright flush had come over his face.
“Everything you’ve said goes double for me, kid.” He exhaled shakily and rolled his eyes. “I mean, remember who I was when we met? Never an honest or brave moment in my life. I’d never had-” He swallowed, eyes closing briefly. “I’d never had this much to lose. And this probably isn’t the right time to do this, because you deserve more than a man stuffed with leaves on the floor of a cave in a monster-infested forest - damn, I don’t even have a ring, but… Alice, I need you. And hell,” he laughed. “I swear that I will come bail you out of every harebrained scheme and duty-bound quest you get yourself into for the rest of your life as long as you say you’ll let me. Just say you’ll let me. Say that you’ll marry me.”
Alice couldn’t say anything. She’d lost the words. He was right, it did seem wildly inappropriate somehow, at this moment, in this cave. And it didn’t seem fair of him to ask this instant decision of her right after he’d nearly died in her arms. Marriage was big, it was forever, it shouldn’t be decided impetuously, and… if she said yes, she would be signing up for a life just like this. Constantly afraid of his safety, constantly afraid of her own emotional safety should something happen to him, fighting and yelling and having to give up a part of herself to receive something of his in return. It meant trust. It meant more than trust, it meant dependence. Alice hadn’t been dependent since she was ten.
But it was Hatter. It was Hatter she would yell at and worry about and depend upon, and that didn’t feel, Alice realized, like a sacrifice.
It felt like a gift.
Her heart was too full to speak and her head was too light to think -- she felt like she’d just swallowed something extremely fizzy. All she could do was lean down and take his lips in hers in a hungry, delirious kiss. “Yes,” she finally remembered to whisper as their mouths met again and again. “Yes, yes.”
***
Next Chapter
Leave a Comment