(no subject)
... dear god I really do hate myself-- I mean.
Here we go, Twenty Facts about Alice. :(
Challenge/Prompt: None
Title: Singing and Sorrow
1.
Alice's name was decided after she was born.
Her father, young and excited and nervous about the birth of his first child, jiggled the screaming bundle awkwardly in his arms while his wife soothingly assured him that yes, all babies did indeed cry at birth and that their daughter wasn't actually in unimaginable agony.
All the same, he was immediately reassured when the baby finally stopped crying and gave him the sunniest smile he would ever see from someone with no teeth whatsoever. One tiny hand worked its way free and reached out, even smaller fingers wrapping around one of his when he held it out to her. There was such a curious fascination in the infant's unusual blue-violet eyes and, watching her as she struggled to take in her new world, her father's smile became thoughtful.
"Dear," he addressed his wife, "I know we were planning to name her Mayoi, after your grandmother, but..."
She smiled wearily. "You're a writer, after all. Did you think of something more suitable?"
"Alice." He said it simply, and the baby's eyes settled on his face with interest. "Let's see what adventures this little girl will tumble into."
2.
Alice began learning English at an early age.
Her first two words were "Mommy" and "Daddy", which was only to have been expected. By then, her father had taken to sitting her on his lap after she'd finished her breakfast and reading his articles out loud to her. Alice was too young to understand the content of the articles, but was starting to enjoy the sounds of words, and would struggle to repeat sounds and words that appealed to her the most. It was then that her father got the idea to ease in another language while she was still young, and so he would read her his articles in Japanese in the morning and then read "Alice in Wonderland" in English to her at night.
It took another year and a few more months, but when his wife went to wake Alice from her nap and found her wide awake and softly chanting, "... Of cabby ages and keeeeens," it was well worth it.
Her father compromised for the difficulty level by next teaching her how to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in both languages, something Alice took to gleefully.
3.
Alice could always tell when someone liked someone else.
Her parents thought it was cute when all three were on walks together, and they'd come across a couple holding hands or making no effort to hide their mutual affection-- Alice would instantly perk up, declare, "They're in love, aren't they?" and beam proudly because she'd been able to tell.
She encountered a bit of a dilemma, however, in the form of their next door neighbor's son. Alice's mother stayed home, and Alice would spot the boy peering around a corner at her. Whenever her mother engaged him in conversation, he'd blush and stammer and laugh too loudly. And he never seemed to look at her face, which puzzled Alice immensely.
When her father came home one night, his daughter pulled herself into his lap.
"Hey, Daddy?"
"Yes, Alice?"
"You love Mommy, right?"
"Of course!"
"And Mommy loves you, right?"
"I would certainly hope so."
Alice frowned, clearly perturbed. "If you love someone, you get married?"
He blinked down at her. "Well... usually, that's the course of action. Where is all of this coming from? Y-you're... not in love, are you??"
She ignored that, having proclaimed only last night that she wasn't going to fall in love until she met someone as cool as her daddy, and that had yet to happen. "I don't want the boy next door to marry Mommy."
Her father stared. "... Imamura?"
"Mm." Alice swung her legs back and forth. "I think he's making a movie about her, too, 'cause I saw he had a camera!"
"... Alice, if you see that boy again and he so much as talks to Mommy, I want you to make your best scary face at him. Oh, and make sure you say lots of things about how big and tall and strong Daddy is, okay?"
"Okay!"
And that was that.
4.
Alice loved animals, but never had any pets.
Her parents had never planned on pets, and the one time she'd won a goldfish at a summer festival, circumstances ended with the neighbor's cat getting in and nabbing itself a meal and her father very solemnly telling her that "Fishy" had gone on a long, life-changing journey.
They promised her a dog when she turned ten.
They weren't able to keep that promise, but she got one at seven anyway.
5.
Alice didn't believe in monsters until she was seven.
She'd aptly guessed that they were stories meant to scare kids into being good, but that "I'm not bad, right? So I don't have to worry!"
And so she hadn't. She came home from school, happily told her mother about her day, settled down to do her homework in her room-- and had to wait for help from her dad on the math part. He seemed unusually strained when he came in, but he just said not all news to report was good news, but it was nothing to worry about.
She didn't hear her mother's scream over the shattering of glass, but her father had already seized her hand and dragged her at a dead run to the back door and out into the night-- not before stopping at the shed to grab something big and blunt, however.
"You're a good girl," he said tersely, as Alice tried not to stumble; she kept glancing back towards her house, seeing dark shapes shuffle towards it, but no sign of her mother. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"D-Daddy..." Now incredibly confused and becoming increasingly panicked, she looked up at him. "Why are we running? What's happening?"
Another scream split the air, followed by three more in chilling succession. His grip tightened on her hand.
"Monsters, honey. It's a little more than a story now, I'm afraid."
6.
Alice can tell the difference between a fake smile and a genuine one.
He had never lied to her before, but there was no way her father could be okay. Not when he was bleeding that much, and his hand was feeling heavier, like he wouldn't be able to keep it pressed against her cheek if she wasn't holding it there. He was lying, with a smile that was nothing like his usual smiles. Her father's smiles were warm. They made her feel brave. They didn't tremble, nor were they stained red, and they never made her feel as though the ground was dropping out beneath her, like a nightmare.
He told her he'd be okay.
He lied.
When Kohta lifted her up and told her to run, that they'd follow shortly, Alice shook her head wildly and clung to as much of him as she could.
His smile was the same as her father's.
When someone reassures her now, the first thing Alice looks at is their smile, and it tells her everything they're not.
7.
Alice is not a crybaby.
Things like falling and scraping her knees hurt, but it was always an instinctive sniffle, a whimper or two, and then she would push herself back up and it was business as usual. She never cried when she went to the doctor for shots; her mother would play Shiritori with her as a distraction, and it was only a prick and some soreness, so nothing to waste tears over.
Loss and fright were different than pain. Pain would go away. Once you lost something, it was gone for good, and fear meant you didn't know what would happen to you. But Alice was with older people who hardly ever cried, so she smiled and held back the pangs of loss as best as she could.
Until they reached the safety of Saya's home and night fell, and her parents weren't there to tuck her in and tell her stories and kiss her goodnight, like they always did.
It began with a sniffle, valiantly withheld until another came along to dislodge it. The sniffles progressed to whimpering, to choked noises, and then when Takashi worriedly asked if she was all right, to full-fledged sobbing. Shizuka, who was older than the rest of the group but younger than her mother, still possessed the maternal instincts needed to gather the little girl into her arms and hold her to her chest. And that was all Alice needed to stop trying to hold back her tears and cry so hard and for so long that she nearly lost her voice.
She was still crying when she fell asleep.
8.
Alice wants to help everyone.
She'd had that trait since the beginning. If an old woman was crossing the street, Alice always accompanied her to keep her from tottering over. If someone at school lost their eraser or forgot a pencil or broke a crayon, she would lean over and offer them use of her own things. She liked their smiles, liked knowing that she was being helpful and that she'd actually been of use.
It became harder when the old woman in the mall became sick, because the energy food and drinks she found, she couldn't pay for, and Alice had to settle for taking them without leaving money on the counter; she'd felt tremendously guilty about "stealing", but Shizuka had praised her for her thoughtfulness.
It became even harder when the group hesitated on risking their lives to get the woman the blood transfusion she needed, a hesitation that had Alice tearfully questioning why they'd helped her when they wouldn't help this person who obviously needed it.
She knew this wouldn't be the first time, and she was afraid of becoming utterly useless, but that didn't stop her from running to hug Kohta when he, Takashi, and the police lady returned, blood in hand and sans one person who'd gone with them.
It didn't matter, she thought, looking over the group who'd saved her. As long as she could still help, she would do whatever she could. She wasn't going to be like the people who'd stabbed her father instead of giving them shelter. She wasn't going to be like some of the people in the mall who only cared about themselves.
Alice would keep helping until she couldn't anymore, and it was as simple as that.
9.
Alice is an excellent biker.
Before she was deemed old enough for a proper bicycle, she had a tricycle, and entertained herself by riding it nearly every day and coming up with new tricks to show her parents. She got an actual bicycle (with no training wheels, because she insisted she'd be fine) on her seventh birthday, and rode it faithfully; in all, she only took a total of three spills, but a helmet and pads on her knees and elbows prevented much injury. She couldn't take it with her when her father dragged her out of the house, but when she saw the bike shop at the mall that the group was hiding out in, she cheerfully waved away the worries of her older "sisters" and proved that she hadn't lost her prowess at all. If anything, it made her feel like less of a liability to the group.
When Crow proudly showed her his D-Wheel, Alice's eyes went round and she gasped, "That's the coolest bike yet! Can I ride it, can I, can I, pleeeeeeaaaase?"
From the day onward, she insisted on helping him keep Blackbird clean and in working order-- even if that help only consisted of running over with rags or a wrench whenever Crow needed them.
10.
Alice is glad her father was killed by living humans, rather than dead ones.
It was an awful thought to have, and she knew it, but her father had been himself when he'd died. He'd squeezed her hand and told her to stay safe, and although he was dying, he was still the father Alice knew and loved. He wasn't mindless. He wasn't trying to sink his teeth into her skin and rip her apart, like "They" did.
When she saw him on the island, there had been a brief moment of breathless, anticipatory joy that maybe it had all been a dream, because he was right there, walking and he wasn't dead, he was there and maybe she hadn't lost her entire family after all, maybe her mother was safe, too, and they could go back to being the way they used to be.
But then he had walked away. She couldn't catch up.
And when he stopped, and turned, it wasn't him. He was one of "Them", and her heart clenched so painfully that Alice nearly screamed.
Deep down, she knew it hadn't been her father, but the mere thought of that happening, if those people hadn't killed him (or if they'd found a safe place and he was alive and still with her) made her go to bed early and curl into a little ball under the covers without a word to anyone.
The group was in constant danger, knowing if any one of them got bitten by "Them", it was all over. They would have to be destroyed by their own companions, whether it was before they actually died, or after they'd turned.
"Don't let me hurt anyone," she'd told Kohta once, in the middle of playing a hand game with him at the Takagi estate.
"Don't let me hurt anyone," she told Crow much later, red-eyed with a tearstained face and rumpled hair.
One had understood, while one did not, but both said nothing, only hugged her.
11.
Alice wants a family again.
Family was something you always had, people who would always support you-- and Alice, who had lost that support in the time it took to gasp, immediately latched onto Takashi, who stated with no hesitation that her father had been a good one and let her cry before he had to quiet her, lest "They" swarm. Through him, she met a lot of siblings. There was Rei, who always had a smile and a headpat for her, Saya, who teased her and pulled her cheeks, but was always one of the first to fret over her, and Saeko, who always had some wisdom to offer. There was Kohta, who let her help him bring him gun cartridges and taught her all sorts of things, and Shizuka, who shared Alice's sentiment in wanting to help everyone they could.
Zeke was the only member of her "family" who came to the island with her, but there was everyone on the blimp to make up for it. And Haru, although Alice couldn't truthfully view him and Crow as "Mommy and Daddy"; that weekend where she'd seen him as her father and Leo as a brother still made her head hurt when she thought about it.
No one would be able to replace her parents. She only had one of each, and they were gone, never to come back to relive those older days. None of these people were actual relatives, but Alice treasured each and every one of them. They made her feel that she actually had a family again, albeit a strange one.
When Maka came into the kitchen one day, and found Spirit seated at the table with Alice asleep in his lap, he offered her a weak smile.
"She said she wanted to remember sitting with a daddy, so try to bear with it."
12.
Alice enjoys high places.
She felt less like a little kid when her father set her on his shoulders, or when she got a piggyback ride from anyone taller. She could see much more this way, and she didn't have to tilt her head back as much in order to talk to older people. She preferred this as a travel method, and was one of the few kids who didn't protest when someone scooped her up to carry her.
... She did feel rather gypped when she learned that the blimp she was going to be living on couldn't actually fly, though.
13.
Alice uses honorifics very deliberately.
The accepted use was that for people her own age, it was "chan" or "kun" or no honorific at all. For older people, it was "san" or "oneechan" or "oniichan"-- or "sensei", for Shizuka. There was the occasional aunt or uncle, but there were some people Alice liked enough to switch the rules up a bit. She liked them a lot, so she used the friend honorifics for them. Kohta became Kohta-chan. Saya, even after her insistence that it was "Oneesama", became Saya-chan. Yotsuba was just... well, Yotsuba, and Black☆Star didn't get an honorific at all, because Alice neither viewed him as older or someone close to her age. He was just Black☆Star, and that was it.
Crow (like Kazuki) had the big-brother feel to him, and was casual enough that he was "Crow-niichan" and nothing else. But when he asked why she called Haru "Haru-chan", still doing his best to keep her from getting too close to the hooker who'd groped him, Alice's explanation was far from satisfactory.
"I really like Haru-chan, so he's Haru-chan!"
It wasn't quite a scream of frustration, because Crow didn't scream, but the frustration got across clear enough. The reason for the frustration, however, did not, for Alice only sweetly patted his hand and smiled up at him.
"It's okay, Crow-niichan. I like you too."
She took her honorifics seriously, after all.
14.
Alice loves to sing.
She considered "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" a tribute to her father-- and Kohta's version a tribute to him, of course, although the first time she sang it on the island, Kazuki nearly choked on air (which was better than Saya's reaction back home, where she'd threatened Kohta with a slew of things ranging from punching to castration for corrupting a child). With Yotsuba, the younger girl would sing about absolutely anything, allowing Alice to join in with another verse about absolutely anything else and they'd keep it up until they forgot what they'd even started singing about. She never minded; singing to her was a way of expression, a chance to be happy when everything else seemed far from it. It was also a way to remember her parents, the way her mother sang quietly in the kitchen or the lullabies her father sang to her every night before she fell asleep. The game show jingles that Alice always led them into, waving her arms like a conductor.
Her first few nights on the blimp, she sang to Zeke, who was the perfect audience (except when he fell asleep) and, when she heard about Tear's singing abilities, she earnestly asked the girl to teach her a song. In return, she offered to teach her the lyrics to her favorite song.
Kaito tried valiantly to keep a straight face when he heard Tear singing under her breath about rowing boats gently down streams, while Yami wondered why Alice was speaking in tongues when she started singing what Tear had called the "Grand Fonic Hymn".
15.
Alice has vivid dreams, but the ones that make her cry aren't nightmares.
The nightmares were bad, but deep down, Alice knew they weren't real, and Zeke was always there to lick her awake whenever she started to whimper and thrash in her sleep. But then there were the dreams where the little dog didn't so much as stir, because she wasn't crying out or flailing at her sheets. She was content. She was happy.
Because in her dreams, she was home. "They" didn't exist, and it was just another morning where she sat in her chair with her legs swinging back and forth, digging enthusiastically into the omelet her mother had just set on her plate. Her father was laughing at his newest column, exclaiming that he could never see the brilliance of what he wrote until the newspaper published it.
She'd go to school with a wave to her parents, and she knew they'd be there when she came home with all sorts of news to tell them and projects to work on. There'd be homework and dinner and a bath and an evening on the couch wedged between them while she half-paid attention to the television until she started to yawn. Her father would carry her to bed, and tuck her in, and tell her that tomorrow would be even better.
And when Alice slept, she woke up on the blimp.
She endured it for well over a month, but her resolve began to crack as the dreams continued, and a sleepy-eyed Crow came into her room one night when he heard her wailing into her blanket while Zeke whined in concern in her lap.
It took awhile to calm her down enough for a coherent explanation, and Crow only got bits and pieces of it, but that was enough for him to perch himself on her bed and pull her (and Zeke) into his lap. He rocked them for a little bit and murmured comforting things that Alice never heard, and it was only then that she was able to fall back asleep without dreaming this time.
16.
Alice will never be able to understand why people like coffee.
She'd once tried a gulp from her father's mug out of curiosity, and had not only recoiled at the bitterness but scalded her tongue, making her own drink of orange juice not as enjoyable for the entirety of the meal. Her mother had been appropriately sympathetic, while her father hid his chuckles behind his newspaper and explained that coffee was something you grew to like when you were older and getting up early wasn't as fun anymore.
Alice equated coffee with being an adult, and nodded to herself whenever her theory was validated. Until she noticed Rei and Takashi drinking it, too, and Kohta gulping it down like water. Wondering if the taste had changed, she warily tried a sip-- and learned it hadn't.
One morning, Soul and Maka found her at the kitchen table, determinedly dipping her tongue in and out of the cup in front of her, making a face each and every time, and dumping in a spoonful of sugar to try the process again.
"It's no good," she said disgustedly, after the fifteenth attempt. "I'm not an adult yet."
Soul comforted her by telling her that Stein was an adult and preferred the blood of endangered species to coffee, shortly before Maka produced a book out of nowhere and smacked him over the head with it.
17.
Alice thinks breasts are a great mystery.
It wasn't that she didn't know what they were, because she did. Ladies had them - and she would, too, once she got a little bit older - and men didn't. But just from traveling with the group, Alice couldn't see the fascination the two males in the group seemed to hold with the girls' chests. Maybe Shizuka's had made an excellent pillow, and it was true that they were just as soft as her pillow back home, except that she couldn't fluff them, but she hadn't seen Takashi or Kohta use them to sleep. They just seemed content to stare and turn red when Saya or Rei leaned against their backs or arms.
On the island, Blair got the same treatment, only she never seemed as flustered when it happened. The more Alice watched this odd reaction to girls' chests, the more confused she got, until she got too curious to observe in silence anymore.
So she asked Crow.
Ten minutes of sputtering and arm-waving and hoarse yelling later, she decided to ask Haru instead. That lasted about as long as it took for Haru's expression to gain an odd smile, and him to say "Well now" in a conspiratorial tone, before Crow came sprinting in, scooped her under his arm, and took off at a dead run back to the blimp.
She never did get an answer.
18.
Alice believes that names are very important.
Her own, she felt, meant that she was to be dropped into a different world and have lots of adventures-- which, as it turned out, ended up happening. There was Crow, who could get as loud as the actual bird, but he wasn't bad luck, like they were. There was Tear, who Alice kept studying to make sure that she wasn't actually going to start crying at any given moment. She spent a week avoiding Soul, after she learned that his full name was "Soul Eater", wondered what was so dark about "Yami" and what was so black about "Black☆Star", and loved Courage's name.
"Arooooooo?" the dog had asked plaintively when she brought it up, and Alice (who had never been perturbed by the idea of talking animals with her knowledge of the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat and the Dormouse and the March Hare) smiled at him.
"Anyone would be scared to come here by themselves, but you did it! You're plenty brave! So you really live up to your name, Courage!"
It took awhile longer with Kaito, since the first thing Alice thought of was someone attaching a string to his legs and flying him in the sky, a thought that made her start giggling whenever she saw him.
19.
Alice wants to have long hair.
Her mother had long hair, and her father often claimed that Alice would grow up to look just like her. It became Alice's goal at the time to emulate her mother, which was easier said than done, especially when she was at the age where it was much easier to move around in pants than skirts and dresses.
In the days after the loss of her parents, Alice lamented (to herself) that she hadn't had time to grab any pictures. All she had were her memories and, with time, details in faces faded, as well as the accents and tones in voices, until Alice couldn't clearly recall the people who had raised her.
Who had loved her.
Who were gone.
She remembered her father's joking, however, and her mother's long hair. Every morning when she woke up, she would dash to the nearest mirror and tug at her short hair, sometimes fancying that it was just a little longer. And the longer it got, the closer she came to remembering her mother's face.
It wasn't quite the same as having her mother actually be there, but Alice made due where she could.
20.
Alice doesn't want to be alone.
She knew - perhaps better than a lot of people - how you could have someone close to you, right there, and then in the next moment, they were lost to you. So she clung with a fervor most people would have blinked at. She cried wildly out to Kohta, gripping at his arms as he tried to lower her to safety, that she couldn't lose anyone else, that she didn't want to be alone again. She watched people on the blimp, trailing after any one of them like a violet-eyed duckling, and when they all left during the month where the rain rarely stopped, Alice scurried after them. Curiosity played a large part in that, but she also didn't want to be left alone, to lose the people featuring more prominently in her life. Even the ones she'd only met once or twice, like Suiseiseki, she'd been happy to see just wandering around. When Haru looked ill, not like himself, Alice had insisted that he take better care of himself.
And when she caught a bad cold and Crow asked her why she'd been out in the rain, she couldn't tell him why. She was seven and she had to be brave, just like her friends, so she couldn't flat-out say she didn't want to be left alone anymore. Not unless she had to, and she had Zeke with her, so that made things more tolerable.
But Alice continued to watch over who she could, continued to tag along so she wouldn't be left behind, and continued to make memories with the islanders, so that even if they did leave her one day, she'd have that much and she'd be able to remember it and smile.
Here we go, Twenty Facts about Alice. :(
Challenge/Prompt: None
Title: Singing and Sorrow
1.
Alice's name was decided after she was born.
Her father, young and excited and nervous about the birth of his first child, jiggled the screaming bundle awkwardly in his arms while his wife soothingly assured him that yes, all babies did indeed cry at birth and that their daughter wasn't actually in unimaginable agony.
All the same, he was immediately reassured when the baby finally stopped crying and gave him the sunniest smile he would ever see from someone with no teeth whatsoever. One tiny hand worked its way free and reached out, even smaller fingers wrapping around one of his when he held it out to her. There was such a curious fascination in the infant's unusual blue-violet eyes and, watching her as she struggled to take in her new world, her father's smile became thoughtful.
"Dear," he addressed his wife, "I know we were planning to name her Mayoi, after your grandmother, but..."
She smiled wearily. "You're a writer, after all. Did you think of something more suitable?"
"Alice." He said it simply, and the baby's eyes settled on his face with interest. "Let's see what adventures this little girl will tumble into."
2.
Alice began learning English at an early age.
Her first two words were "Mommy" and "Daddy", which was only to have been expected. By then, her father had taken to sitting her on his lap after she'd finished her breakfast and reading his articles out loud to her. Alice was too young to understand the content of the articles, but was starting to enjoy the sounds of words, and would struggle to repeat sounds and words that appealed to her the most. It was then that her father got the idea to ease in another language while she was still young, and so he would read her his articles in Japanese in the morning and then read "Alice in Wonderland" in English to her at night.
It took another year and a few more months, but when his wife went to wake Alice from her nap and found her wide awake and softly chanting, "... Of cabby ages and keeeeens," it was well worth it.
Her father compromised for the difficulty level by next teaching her how to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in both languages, something Alice took to gleefully.
3.
Alice could always tell when someone liked someone else.
Her parents thought it was cute when all three were on walks together, and they'd come across a couple holding hands or making no effort to hide their mutual affection-- Alice would instantly perk up, declare, "They're in love, aren't they?" and beam proudly because she'd been able to tell.
She encountered a bit of a dilemma, however, in the form of their next door neighbor's son. Alice's mother stayed home, and Alice would spot the boy peering around a corner at her. Whenever her mother engaged him in conversation, he'd blush and stammer and laugh too loudly. And he never seemed to look at her face, which puzzled Alice immensely.
When her father came home one night, his daughter pulled herself into his lap.
"Hey, Daddy?"
"Yes, Alice?"
"You love Mommy, right?"
"Of course!"
"And Mommy loves you, right?"
"I would certainly hope so."
Alice frowned, clearly perturbed. "If you love someone, you get married?"
He blinked down at her. "Well... usually, that's the course of action. Where is all of this coming from? Y-you're... not in love, are you??"
She ignored that, having proclaimed only last night that she wasn't going to fall in love until she met someone as cool as her daddy, and that had yet to happen. "I don't want the boy next door to marry Mommy."
Her father stared. "... Imamura?"
"Mm." Alice swung her legs back and forth. "I think he's making a movie about her, too, 'cause I saw he had a camera!"
"... Alice, if you see that boy again and he so much as talks to Mommy, I want you to make your best scary face at him. Oh, and make sure you say lots of things about how big and tall and strong Daddy is, okay?"
"Okay!"
And that was that.
4.
Alice loved animals, but never had any pets.
Her parents had never planned on pets, and the one time she'd won a goldfish at a summer festival, circumstances ended with the neighbor's cat getting in and nabbing itself a meal and her father very solemnly telling her that "Fishy" had gone on a long, life-changing journey.
They promised her a dog when she turned ten.
They weren't able to keep that promise, but she got one at seven anyway.
5.
Alice didn't believe in monsters until she was seven.
She'd aptly guessed that they were stories meant to scare kids into being good, but that "I'm not bad, right? So I don't have to worry!"
And so she hadn't. She came home from school, happily told her mother about her day, settled down to do her homework in her room-- and had to wait for help from her dad on the math part. He seemed unusually strained when he came in, but he just said not all news to report was good news, but it was nothing to worry about.
She didn't hear her mother's scream over the shattering of glass, but her father had already seized her hand and dragged her at a dead run to the back door and out into the night-- not before stopping at the shed to grab something big and blunt, however.
"You're a good girl," he said tersely, as Alice tried not to stumble; she kept glancing back towards her house, seeing dark shapes shuffle towards it, but no sign of her mother. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"D-Daddy..." Now incredibly confused and becoming increasingly panicked, she looked up at him. "Why are we running? What's happening?"
Another scream split the air, followed by three more in chilling succession. His grip tightened on her hand.
"Monsters, honey. It's a little more than a story now, I'm afraid."
6.
Alice can tell the difference between a fake smile and a genuine one.
He had never lied to her before, but there was no way her father could be okay. Not when he was bleeding that much, and his hand was feeling heavier, like he wouldn't be able to keep it pressed against her cheek if she wasn't holding it there. He was lying, with a smile that was nothing like his usual smiles. Her father's smiles were warm. They made her feel brave. They didn't tremble, nor were they stained red, and they never made her feel as though the ground was dropping out beneath her, like a nightmare.
He told her he'd be okay.
He lied.
When Kohta lifted her up and told her to run, that they'd follow shortly, Alice shook her head wildly and clung to as much of him as she could.
His smile was the same as her father's.
When someone reassures her now, the first thing Alice looks at is their smile, and it tells her everything they're not.
7.
Alice is not a crybaby.
Things like falling and scraping her knees hurt, but it was always an instinctive sniffle, a whimper or two, and then she would push herself back up and it was business as usual. She never cried when she went to the doctor for shots; her mother would play Shiritori with her as a distraction, and it was only a prick and some soreness, so nothing to waste tears over.
Loss and fright were different than pain. Pain would go away. Once you lost something, it was gone for good, and fear meant you didn't know what would happen to you. But Alice was with older people who hardly ever cried, so she smiled and held back the pangs of loss as best as she could.
Until they reached the safety of Saya's home and night fell, and her parents weren't there to tuck her in and tell her stories and kiss her goodnight, like they always did.
It began with a sniffle, valiantly withheld until another came along to dislodge it. The sniffles progressed to whimpering, to choked noises, and then when Takashi worriedly asked if she was all right, to full-fledged sobbing. Shizuka, who was older than the rest of the group but younger than her mother, still possessed the maternal instincts needed to gather the little girl into her arms and hold her to her chest. And that was all Alice needed to stop trying to hold back her tears and cry so hard and for so long that she nearly lost her voice.
She was still crying when she fell asleep.
8.
Alice wants to help everyone.
She'd had that trait since the beginning. If an old woman was crossing the street, Alice always accompanied her to keep her from tottering over. If someone at school lost their eraser or forgot a pencil or broke a crayon, she would lean over and offer them use of her own things. She liked their smiles, liked knowing that she was being helpful and that she'd actually been of use.
It became harder when the old woman in the mall became sick, because the energy food and drinks she found, she couldn't pay for, and Alice had to settle for taking them without leaving money on the counter; she'd felt tremendously guilty about "stealing", but Shizuka had praised her for her thoughtfulness.
It became even harder when the group hesitated on risking their lives to get the woman the blood transfusion she needed, a hesitation that had Alice tearfully questioning why they'd helped her when they wouldn't help this person who obviously needed it.
She knew this wouldn't be the first time, and she was afraid of becoming utterly useless, but that didn't stop her from running to hug Kohta when he, Takashi, and the police lady returned, blood in hand and sans one person who'd gone with them.
It didn't matter, she thought, looking over the group who'd saved her. As long as she could still help, she would do whatever she could. She wasn't going to be like the people who'd stabbed her father instead of giving them shelter. She wasn't going to be like some of the people in the mall who only cared about themselves.
Alice would keep helping until she couldn't anymore, and it was as simple as that.
9.
Alice is an excellent biker.
Before she was deemed old enough for a proper bicycle, she had a tricycle, and entertained herself by riding it nearly every day and coming up with new tricks to show her parents. She got an actual bicycle (with no training wheels, because she insisted she'd be fine) on her seventh birthday, and rode it faithfully; in all, she only took a total of three spills, but a helmet and pads on her knees and elbows prevented much injury. She couldn't take it with her when her father dragged her out of the house, but when she saw the bike shop at the mall that the group was hiding out in, she cheerfully waved away the worries of her older "sisters" and proved that she hadn't lost her prowess at all. If anything, it made her feel like less of a liability to the group.
When Crow proudly showed her his D-Wheel, Alice's eyes went round and she gasped, "That's the coolest bike yet! Can I ride it, can I, can I, pleeeeeeaaaase?"
From the day onward, she insisted on helping him keep Blackbird clean and in working order-- even if that help only consisted of running over with rags or a wrench whenever Crow needed them.
10.
Alice is glad her father was killed by living humans, rather than dead ones.
It was an awful thought to have, and she knew it, but her father had been himself when he'd died. He'd squeezed her hand and told her to stay safe, and although he was dying, he was still the father Alice knew and loved. He wasn't mindless. He wasn't trying to sink his teeth into her skin and rip her apart, like "They" did.
When she saw him on the island, there had been a brief moment of breathless, anticipatory joy that maybe it had all been a dream, because he was right there, walking and he wasn't dead, he was there and maybe she hadn't lost her entire family after all, maybe her mother was safe, too, and they could go back to being the way they used to be.
But then he had walked away. She couldn't catch up.
And when he stopped, and turned, it wasn't him. He was one of "Them", and her heart clenched so painfully that Alice nearly screamed.
Deep down, she knew it hadn't been her father, but the mere thought of that happening, if those people hadn't killed him (or if they'd found a safe place and he was alive and still with her) made her go to bed early and curl into a little ball under the covers without a word to anyone.
The group was in constant danger, knowing if any one of them got bitten by "Them", it was all over. They would have to be destroyed by their own companions, whether it was before they actually died, or after they'd turned.
"Don't let me hurt anyone," she'd told Kohta once, in the middle of playing a hand game with him at the Takagi estate.
"Don't let me hurt anyone," she told Crow much later, red-eyed with a tearstained face and rumpled hair.
One had understood, while one did not, but both said nothing, only hugged her.
11.
Alice wants a family again.
Family was something you always had, people who would always support you-- and Alice, who had lost that support in the time it took to gasp, immediately latched onto Takashi, who stated with no hesitation that her father had been a good one and let her cry before he had to quiet her, lest "They" swarm. Through him, she met a lot of siblings. There was Rei, who always had a smile and a headpat for her, Saya, who teased her and pulled her cheeks, but was always one of the first to fret over her, and Saeko, who always had some wisdom to offer. There was Kohta, who let her help him bring him gun cartridges and taught her all sorts of things, and Shizuka, who shared Alice's sentiment in wanting to help everyone they could.
Zeke was the only member of her "family" who came to the island with her, but there was everyone on the blimp to make up for it. And Haru, although Alice couldn't truthfully view him and Crow as "Mommy and Daddy"; that weekend where she'd seen him as her father and Leo as a brother still made her head hurt when she thought about it.
No one would be able to replace her parents. She only had one of each, and they were gone, never to come back to relive those older days. None of these people were actual relatives, but Alice treasured each and every one of them. They made her feel that she actually had a family again, albeit a strange one.
When Maka came into the kitchen one day, and found Spirit seated at the table with Alice asleep in his lap, he offered her a weak smile.
"She said she wanted to remember sitting with a daddy, so try to bear with it."
12.
Alice enjoys high places.
She felt less like a little kid when her father set her on his shoulders, or when she got a piggyback ride from anyone taller. She could see much more this way, and she didn't have to tilt her head back as much in order to talk to older people. She preferred this as a travel method, and was one of the few kids who didn't protest when someone scooped her up to carry her.
... She did feel rather gypped when she learned that the blimp she was going to be living on couldn't actually fly, though.
13.
Alice uses honorifics very deliberately.
The accepted use was that for people her own age, it was "chan" or "kun" or no honorific at all. For older people, it was "san" or "oneechan" or "oniichan"-- or "sensei", for Shizuka. There was the occasional aunt or uncle, but there were some people Alice liked enough to switch the rules up a bit. She liked them a lot, so she used the friend honorifics for them. Kohta became Kohta-chan. Saya, even after her insistence that it was "Oneesama", became Saya-chan. Yotsuba was just... well, Yotsuba, and Black☆Star didn't get an honorific at all, because Alice neither viewed him as older or someone close to her age. He was just Black☆Star, and that was it.
Crow (like Kazuki) had the big-brother feel to him, and was casual enough that he was "Crow-niichan" and nothing else. But when he asked why she called Haru "Haru-chan", still doing his best to keep her from getting too close to the hooker who'd groped him, Alice's explanation was far from satisfactory.
"I really like Haru-chan, so he's Haru-chan!"
It wasn't quite a scream of frustration, because Crow didn't scream, but the frustration got across clear enough. The reason for the frustration, however, did not, for Alice only sweetly patted his hand and smiled up at him.
"It's okay, Crow-niichan. I like you too."
She took her honorifics seriously, after all.
14.
Alice loves to sing.
She considered "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" a tribute to her father-- and Kohta's version a tribute to him, of course, although the first time she sang it on the island, Kazuki nearly choked on air (which was better than Saya's reaction back home, where she'd threatened Kohta with a slew of things ranging from punching to castration for corrupting a child). With Yotsuba, the younger girl would sing about absolutely anything, allowing Alice to join in with another verse about absolutely anything else and they'd keep it up until they forgot what they'd even started singing about. She never minded; singing to her was a way of expression, a chance to be happy when everything else seemed far from it. It was also a way to remember her parents, the way her mother sang quietly in the kitchen or the lullabies her father sang to her every night before she fell asleep. The game show jingles that Alice always led them into, waving her arms like a conductor.
Her first few nights on the blimp, she sang to Zeke, who was the perfect audience (except when he fell asleep) and, when she heard about Tear's singing abilities, she earnestly asked the girl to teach her a song. In return, she offered to teach her the lyrics to her favorite song.
Kaito tried valiantly to keep a straight face when he heard Tear singing under her breath about rowing boats gently down streams, while Yami wondered why Alice was speaking in tongues when she started singing what Tear had called the "Grand Fonic Hymn".
15.
Alice has vivid dreams, but the ones that make her cry aren't nightmares.
The nightmares were bad, but deep down, Alice knew they weren't real, and Zeke was always there to lick her awake whenever she started to whimper and thrash in her sleep. But then there were the dreams where the little dog didn't so much as stir, because she wasn't crying out or flailing at her sheets. She was content. She was happy.
Because in her dreams, she was home. "They" didn't exist, and it was just another morning where she sat in her chair with her legs swinging back and forth, digging enthusiastically into the omelet her mother had just set on her plate. Her father was laughing at his newest column, exclaiming that he could never see the brilliance of what he wrote until the newspaper published it.
She'd go to school with a wave to her parents, and she knew they'd be there when she came home with all sorts of news to tell them and projects to work on. There'd be homework and dinner and a bath and an evening on the couch wedged between them while she half-paid attention to the television until she started to yawn. Her father would carry her to bed, and tuck her in, and tell her that tomorrow would be even better.
And when Alice slept, she woke up on the blimp.
She endured it for well over a month, but her resolve began to crack as the dreams continued, and a sleepy-eyed Crow came into her room one night when he heard her wailing into her blanket while Zeke whined in concern in her lap.
It took awhile to calm her down enough for a coherent explanation, and Crow only got bits and pieces of it, but that was enough for him to perch himself on her bed and pull her (and Zeke) into his lap. He rocked them for a little bit and murmured comforting things that Alice never heard, and it was only then that she was able to fall back asleep without dreaming this time.
16.
Alice will never be able to understand why people like coffee.
She'd once tried a gulp from her father's mug out of curiosity, and had not only recoiled at the bitterness but scalded her tongue, making her own drink of orange juice not as enjoyable for the entirety of the meal. Her mother had been appropriately sympathetic, while her father hid his chuckles behind his newspaper and explained that coffee was something you grew to like when you were older and getting up early wasn't as fun anymore.
Alice equated coffee with being an adult, and nodded to herself whenever her theory was validated. Until she noticed Rei and Takashi drinking it, too, and Kohta gulping it down like water. Wondering if the taste had changed, she warily tried a sip-- and learned it hadn't.
One morning, Soul and Maka found her at the kitchen table, determinedly dipping her tongue in and out of the cup in front of her, making a face each and every time, and dumping in a spoonful of sugar to try the process again.
"It's no good," she said disgustedly, after the fifteenth attempt. "I'm not an adult yet."
Soul comforted her by telling her that Stein was an adult and preferred the blood of endangered species to coffee, shortly before Maka produced a book out of nowhere and smacked him over the head with it.
17.
Alice thinks breasts are a great mystery.
It wasn't that she didn't know what they were, because she did. Ladies had them - and she would, too, once she got a little bit older - and men didn't. But just from traveling with the group, Alice couldn't see the fascination the two males in the group seemed to hold with the girls' chests. Maybe Shizuka's had made an excellent pillow, and it was true that they were just as soft as her pillow back home, except that she couldn't fluff them, but she hadn't seen Takashi or Kohta use them to sleep. They just seemed content to stare and turn red when Saya or Rei leaned against their backs or arms.
On the island, Blair got the same treatment, only she never seemed as flustered when it happened. The more Alice watched this odd reaction to girls' chests, the more confused she got, until she got too curious to observe in silence anymore.
So she asked Crow.
Ten minutes of sputtering and arm-waving and hoarse yelling later, she decided to ask Haru instead. That lasted about as long as it took for Haru's expression to gain an odd smile, and him to say "Well now" in a conspiratorial tone, before Crow came sprinting in, scooped her under his arm, and took off at a dead run back to the blimp.
She never did get an answer.
18.
Alice believes that names are very important.
Her own, she felt, meant that she was to be dropped into a different world and have lots of adventures-- which, as it turned out, ended up happening. There was Crow, who could get as loud as the actual bird, but he wasn't bad luck, like they were. There was Tear, who Alice kept studying to make sure that she wasn't actually going to start crying at any given moment. She spent a week avoiding Soul, after she learned that his full name was "Soul Eater", wondered what was so dark about "Yami" and what was so black about "Black☆Star", and loved Courage's name.
"Arooooooo?" the dog had asked plaintively when she brought it up, and Alice (who had never been perturbed by the idea of talking animals with her knowledge of the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat and the Dormouse and the March Hare) smiled at him.
"Anyone would be scared to come here by themselves, but you did it! You're plenty brave! So you really live up to your name, Courage!"
It took awhile longer with Kaito, since the first thing Alice thought of was someone attaching a string to his legs and flying him in the sky, a thought that made her start giggling whenever she saw him.
19.
Alice wants to have long hair.
Her mother had long hair, and her father often claimed that Alice would grow up to look just like her. It became Alice's goal at the time to emulate her mother, which was easier said than done, especially when she was at the age where it was much easier to move around in pants than skirts and dresses.
In the days after the loss of her parents, Alice lamented (to herself) that she hadn't had time to grab any pictures. All she had were her memories and, with time, details in faces faded, as well as the accents and tones in voices, until Alice couldn't clearly recall the people who had raised her.
Who had loved her.
Who were gone.
She remembered her father's joking, however, and her mother's long hair. Every morning when she woke up, she would dash to the nearest mirror and tug at her short hair, sometimes fancying that it was just a little longer. And the longer it got, the closer she came to remembering her mother's face.
It wasn't quite the same as having her mother actually be there, but Alice made due where she could.
20.
Alice doesn't want to be alone.
She knew - perhaps better than a lot of people - how you could have someone close to you, right there, and then in the next moment, they were lost to you. So she clung with a fervor most people would have blinked at. She cried wildly out to Kohta, gripping at his arms as he tried to lower her to safety, that she couldn't lose anyone else, that she didn't want to be alone again. She watched people on the blimp, trailing after any one of them like a violet-eyed duckling, and when they all left during the month where the rain rarely stopped, Alice scurried after them. Curiosity played a large part in that, but she also didn't want to be left alone, to lose the people featuring more prominently in her life. Even the ones she'd only met once or twice, like Suiseiseki, she'd been happy to see just wandering around. When Haru looked ill, not like himself, Alice had insisted that he take better care of himself.
And when she caught a bad cold and Crow asked her why she'd been out in the rain, she couldn't tell him why. She was seven and she had to be brave, just like her friends, so she couldn't flat-out say she didn't want to be left alone anymore. Not unless she had to, and she had Zeke with her, so that made things more tolerable.
But Alice continued to watch over who she could, continued to tag along so she wouldn't be left behind, and continued to make memories with the islanders, so that even if they did leave her one day, she'd have that much and she'd be able to remember it and smile.