PMS?
I was annoyed with everyone today and wanted to kill people, soo....
Title: Contagion
Author: amphetamine_47
Rating: PG-13 for death and violence
Summary: No one is surprised that the Queen of Hearts had an ace up her sleeve, but they are stunned by the lengths she's willing to go to have her revenge.
Notes: I had a bad day, so I killed everyone in Wonderland. My first ever attempt at apocafic is very likely cliche and lame, but it makes me bizarrely happy.
No one is surprised that the Queen of Hearts had an ace up her sleeve, but they are stunned by the lengths she’s willing to go to have her revenge.
It starts slowly, going almost unnoticed among the turmoil that shakes Wonderland after the coup. The price of tea has skyrocketed, of course, now that there’s no longer a ready source. The Doctors Dee and Dum and a few former Aces set up their own little kingdom of fear and have to be dealt with. The economy’s in ruins. No one quite trusts King Jack Heart even if he did overthrow his mother.
If there’s an uptick in the numbers of people being taken to the Hospital, it’s second-or third, or seventh-on the agenda behind the more pressing needs of Wonderland’s new government.
Until people start dying.
Jack sends them updates on a fairly regular basis, usually carried by a Club in a nondescript black suit and hat, who waits patiently for Alice or Hatter to write out a response before heading back through the Looking Glass. This time the Club appears at the apartment while Alice is teaching; he looks tense and Hatter notices.
The note is terse, and written in the King’s own hand: “An illness is spreading through Wonderland. On no condition are either of you to return.”
Hatter’s jaw clenches as he reads it, thanks the Club, and sends him back without a response. When he shows it to Alice, later, she doesn’t understand.
“No one gets sick in Wonderland,” Hatter explains, “Unless they’re made to.”
Unless the Queen makes them, he doesn’t say, but he thinks it. A frown replaces his ready smile, and he rambles in that way he does when he’s nervous, and even Alice can’t quite comfort him. Being forbidden to return, barred from reentry to Wonderland, hurts more than he thought it could, and Hatter feels more than ever like he doesn’t quite belong in Alice’s world.
Like he has no home at all anymore.
The King and his Court retake one of the Queen’s old palaces and hole up there, implementing rudimentary quarantine procedures that Jack had learned of in the Other World. The crops fail, the economy is in ruins, even the most careful of hoarders have exhausted their supplies of tea, and people are still dying.
Wonderland doesn’t have many scientists-not real ones, unless you count the “Doctors” like Dum and Dee--hence why they’d had to take Robert Hamilton so many years ago. There are few healers, because for too many years no one got sick except by the Queen’s command and they were certainly not to be healed.
The Great Library is searched for answers and opened to the sick. It’s Dodo, slightly mad but still brilliant, who understands first, his nose buried in an ancient text that everyone but he has forgotten how to read: “It’s a plague.”
Dodo sends word to the King, locks himself and the stricken inside the Library, and burns it to the ground in hopes of containing the disease.
He fails.
Alice worries about it, but not like Hatter does. For the first time, he opens up and tells her all about his life in Wonderland. About his parents, his childhood, his friends, the tea shoppe. There’s a sadness to it, a desperation; as though he wants to be sure that someone will remember. Alice curls up against him and listens as his voice grows hoarse, but he keeps talking.
The next note comes through tied to Charlie’s beaten up old stuffed toy, and what’s not said in it makes them both cry.
Wonderland descends in to panic and anarchy. The King, like everyone else, is powerless. People die in their homes, in the streets. There’s no one left to collect the bodies anymore, so they’re simply shoved off ledges in to the abyss, the survivors moving ever higher in an attempt to avoid the contagion.
The Court is infected, and the day that Duchess-never crowned Queen-dies, Jack goes to see his mother. The former Queen is, ironically, held in such isolation that not even one of her guards has fallen ill. The Queen of Hearts’ mouth twists in a bitter smile at her victory, and she’s still smiling as her son pulls the trigger of the gun that ends her life.
The last message comes through unaccompanied, scrawled in an unfamiliar hand: “The King is dead. Wonderland has fallen.”
Hatter starts to cough.
And now I'm working on a vid! YAY! OCD in full effect, ya'll, I apologize for the spammage...
Title: Contagion
Author: amphetamine_47
Rating: PG-13 for death and violence
Summary: No one is surprised that the Queen of Hearts had an ace up her sleeve, but they are stunned by the lengths she's willing to go to have her revenge.
Notes: I had a bad day, so I killed everyone in Wonderland. My first ever attempt at apocafic is very likely cliche and lame, but it makes me bizarrely happy.
No one is surprised that the Queen of Hearts had an ace up her sleeve, but they are stunned by the lengths she’s willing to go to have her revenge.
It starts slowly, going almost unnoticed among the turmoil that shakes Wonderland after the coup. The price of tea has skyrocketed, of course, now that there’s no longer a ready source. The Doctors Dee and Dum and a few former Aces set up their own little kingdom of fear and have to be dealt with. The economy’s in ruins. No one quite trusts King Jack Heart even if he did overthrow his mother.
If there’s an uptick in the numbers of people being taken to the Hospital, it’s second-or third, or seventh-on the agenda behind the more pressing needs of Wonderland’s new government.
Until people start dying.
Jack sends them updates on a fairly regular basis, usually carried by a Club in a nondescript black suit and hat, who waits patiently for Alice or Hatter to write out a response before heading back through the Looking Glass. This time the Club appears at the apartment while Alice is teaching; he looks tense and Hatter notices.
The note is terse, and written in the King’s own hand: “An illness is spreading through Wonderland. On no condition are either of you to return.”
Hatter’s jaw clenches as he reads it, thanks the Club, and sends him back without a response. When he shows it to Alice, later, she doesn’t understand.
“No one gets sick in Wonderland,” Hatter explains, “Unless they’re made to.”
Unless the Queen makes them, he doesn’t say, but he thinks it. A frown replaces his ready smile, and he rambles in that way he does when he’s nervous, and even Alice can’t quite comfort him. Being forbidden to return, barred from reentry to Wonderland, hurts more than he thought it could, and Hatter feels more than ever like he doesn’t quite belong in Alice’s world.
Like he has no home at all anymore.
The King and his Court retake one of the Queen’s old palaces and hole up there, implementing rudimentary quarantine procedures that Jack had learned of in the Other World. The crops fail, the economy is in ruins, even the most careful of hoarders have exhausted their supplies of tea, and people are still dying.
Wonderland doesn’t have many scientists-not real ones, unless you count the “Doctors” like Dum and Dee--hence why they’d had to take Robert Hamilton so many years ago. There are few healers, because for too many years no one got sick except by the Queen’s command and they were certainly not to be healed.
The Great Library is searched for answers and opened to the sick. It’s Dodo, slightly mad but still brilliant, who understands first, his nose buried in an ancient text that everyone but he has forgotten how to read: “It’s a plague.”
Dodo sends word to the King, locks himself and the stricken inside the Library, and burns it to the ground in hopes of containing the disease.
He fails.
Alice worries about it, but not like Hatter does. For the first time, he opens up and tells her all about his life in Wonderland. About his parents, his childhood, his friends, the tea shoppe. There’s a sadness to it, a desperation; as though he wants to be sure that someone will remember. Alice curls up against him and listens as his voice grows hoarse, but he keeps talking.
The next note comes through tied to Charlie’s beaten up old stuffed toy, and what’s not said in it makes them both cry.
Wonderland descends in to panic and anarchy. The King, like everyone else, is powerless. People die in their homes, in the streets. There’s no one left to collect the bodies anymore, so they’re simply shoved off ledges in to the abyss, the survivors moving ever higher in an attempt to avoid the contagion.
The Court is infected, and the day that Duchess-never crowned Queen-dies, Jack goes to see his mother. The former Queen is, ironically, held in such isolation that not even one of her guards has fallen ill. The Queen of Hearts’ mouth twists in a bitter smile at her victory, and she’s still smiling as her son pulls the trigger of the gun that ends her life.
The last message comes through unaccompanied, scrawled in an unfamiliar hand: “The King is dead. Wonderland has fallen.”
Hatter starts to cough.
And now I'm working on a vid! YAY! OCD in full effect, ya'll, I apologize for the spammage...