“This is insane,” I muttered, nothing moving except for my lips and my eyes.
I was perched against some rock, and my eyes set on someone … someone I’d just seen; two someones actually. One was familiar in the way he dressed and appeared, if only slightly. The other, the woman, had changed.
Her brown hair, average in color, fell down her back in loose waves. Her eyes, similar to the boy who stood next to her, were void of eyeliner, instead rimmed by some odd green substance. Clothing, it was loose sweat pant like things, and the shirt was loosely matching the description of a tee shirt.
She looked almost as mad as I felt.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and her voice sounded the same. Something familiar about her, that’s something I coveted.
“Gemma?” I asked, struggling to sit up, despite my limbs protests. “Gemma, why are here?” I asked, my mind struggling to connect the dots. I remember my surrounding, I know they weren’t the alternate world I’d just been in, but she wasn’t supposed to be in them.
This could only mean one thing. My hallucinations were forming together.
“You remember my name?” she asked, surprised, shooting the boy next to her … her brother a look. “That’s fantastic!” she exclaimed, obviously pleased with herself, “Those leaves I gave you must’ve worked.”
“Why are you here?” I asked again, flicking my worried eyes to Harry. “Why is she here?” I found myself asking him, and yet he didn’t have an answer. He may have appeared in both worlds, but he completely different.
“She’s helping you Alice,” he said, lowering down to my knees and taking my quivering hands, righting me so I was sitting up. He looked into my eyes, concern rimming his irises. “She’s helping you find yourself,” he told me, looking down at my hands, shaking despite his tight grasp.
“I’ve already found myself though,” I told him, voice stern. “I’m here, I’m right here,” I practically shouted, and he sighed, tearing his eyes away from me, and letting go of my hands.
“I’m going to go grab some food for her, she’s probably hungry,” he said, looking at Gemma, who was nodding, but distractingly. She was taking note of our interactions.
“Don’t leave,” I said softly, my legs fighting to get up, to reach to him, but failing. Despite my mind’s state he was only thing that stayed somewhat consistent. Sure, one of the Harry’s was in love with me and one thought I was strange, but his personality was similar. Similar is someone worth notation.
His expression looked hopeful, and somewhat surprised at my request. I hadn’t shone much interest in before, so I guess this would come as a surprise, but I didn’t like just how much shock filled his vision.
“I need to talk to you alone, Alice,” Gemma announced, sending Harry a look. “He’ll come right back, he always does,” she promised me, a smile on her lips. “But he’s right about you being hungry, fainting can do that.”
“When did I faint?” I asked, tipping my knees forward, peering up at the girl.
“Harry said you were walking on the Jabberwocky’s path, just talking, when you fell. You collapsed right there in front of him,” she started in explanation, sitting down so we were eye to eye. “He scooped you up, quickened his pace, and here you are.”
I looked away from Gemma, noticing my surroundings for the first time. I was in a forest, like everything I’d seen in that reality so far. The difference was little house, more of a shack really, perched next to us. Smoke was billowing from a cut out in the roof; a sweet scent came from the doorway.
I could make out a form from within the shack, right through it’s doorway. It was tall, hunched over a table.
“I’m not sure how much you remember other than my name, but I’m a doctor,” she told me, and a flash of Gemma, a different Gemma, went through my head. She held multiple pills in one hand, all in a single paper cup. In the other hand she held a water cup. But then the Gemma with green-rimmed eyes appeared, watching me more like a physiatrist than a physician. “The boy who’s with you is my brother,” she added, “younger brother.”
“Why did you want to talk to me alone?” I asked, running my finger across soft skin of my inner wrist. My skin stung, and the ligaments connecting my hand to my arm strained to move.
“I needed to make sure you weren’t faking this,” she told me, lowering her voice, and locking her eyes with mine. “If my brother heard me asking this he’d laugh and ask me to stop. I’d keep on asking and he’d get angry. I’d still ask though, because it’s important.” I gulped, and spit out a response.
“Why would I be faking it?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” she muttered, eyes never wavering. “Maybe you’re working for the red queen now. Maybe you’ve been brainwashed. Maybe you’re so traumatized that you can’t handle telling the truth.” She stopped talking, but her brain didn’t stop working. I could see the thoughts running through her head as she watched me, like I was an open book, although that’s anything but what I felt.
I cleared my throat, running my reply over in my head before saying it. “I’m faking it,” I told her, not sure how I could prove it. “I’m scared,” I told, and as she flinched I noticed how much emotion I’d injected those two words with. My voice cracked on the second and my voice wavered on the first.
She paused, lowering her eyes to the ground, where she moved dirt around with her forefinger. It seemed so childish, moving dirt into a pile, and I vaguely remembered doing it myself as a child. The memory was fuzzy, and watery though. I could see it clearly through the two filmy layers it hid behind.
“I know,” she said finally, popping up like a jack in the box. Her eyes didn’t meet mine, but I saw the glassy look to them. “I’ll go tell Harry to come out,” she told, running a hand through tangled waves, “and I’ll go grab you something for that wrist of yours.”
I looked back down at my wrist. I hadn’t said anything aloud to Gemma about it, but I guess she really was more of physiatrist than a physician.
“I’m back, and I got you an apple,” Harry announced, and I looked up to see a blue fruit right before my eyes. I smiled and took it from her hand, taking a bite into it. Despite the odd color it tasted fine, even better than any apple I could reminder tasting.
“Thank you,” I said in between chewing, and Harry nodded in his own version of ‘You’re welcome’. He settled down on the ground in front of me, crossing his legs, and watching as I took another bite of the peculiar fruit
For a second we just stared at each other and a flash of a Harry from the other reality flickered in Wonderland Harry’s place.
I personally prefer the one that confessed his love for me.
“I came back,” he said, and his voice was light, floating on air. Something I hadn’t heard from him yet.
Another image flickered in my mind, one I hadn’t seen before. One of him giving me a white rose painted with blue. The image shook as my body laughed, taking the rose.
“Gemma said you always come back,” I told him as the image faded. Harry’s smiled paled, and I wanted to tug the corners of his lips back up, but a question needed to be answered. “Has this ever happened to me before?” I asked.
“No,” he promised me, and I felt his hand on my knee, “this is the first time.”
“Then why did she say you always come back?”
“Whenever we fight I come back,” he said hesitantly. “I always convince you to take me back,” he said with some hesitancy. I bit down my lip, realizing this was something he had wanted to keep from me.
“Don’t you ever leave me?” I asked, but he shook his head, unable to meet my eyes. “Why?” I asked, and his lips twitched into a smile for a second. “What’s funny?” I asked, wanting to get some sort of response from him.
“That’s it,” he replied, eyes on the pile of dirt Gemma had made, “nothing about our relationship was funny to me. That’s why I was the never the one to break things off. I wasn’t about to give up on you.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat I hadn’t realized had formed.
Alice no, this is the Harry that likes you. Don’t fuck this up.
“I mean, you to,” I blurted, and Harry snapped his eyes to my face. “I won’t give up on you,” I repeated, and I imagine was bright pink. Harry was saying this to a long time friend, but I was saying this to someone I’d just met. “I like what I’ve seen so far,” I said, hoping the heat of my cheeks would moderate.
I moved my eyes the millimeter they needed to meet Harry’s and I watched as the same look of surprise took over his eyes again. I hated that look, the shock that he held in those damned beautiful eyes of his.
I leaned forward and kissed his frozen lips. It confirmed just what I thought, that it wasn’t just his eyes that were shocked. It was everything.
I started to pull away in frustration, but when my lips pulled away just a bit he took action. He gripped my arms and started to kiss me back. Really kiss me back. I guess I was shocked for a moment there as well, but my body reacted quickly to his.
Even if my mind didn’t remember him, something obviously did.
At that thought I smiled against his lips, and leaned forward, wrapping my arms around him. Sure, it made me happy to kiss him, but if my body had some sort of muscle memory that meant that I had to have lived in that reality before, that Wonderland really was my main reality.
It still didn’t make me feel much better about the fact that I was hallucinating, but it did help that I was making out with a boy who apparently loved me and wasn’t a hallucination. That can help calm a girl.
“I really do love you Alice,” he whispered against my lips. He was close to me. His breathe on my lips; my hands tangled in his hair. The words sent a shiver down my spine. They seemed familiar, but not because they were from another life, but because I’d heard them in Wonderland before. “Don’t say it back to me if you’re ready to say it again,” he pleaded, slightly pained.
“I think I could. I know I once did.”
I saw a different type of emotion in his eyes. It made me want to kiss him just as much as the other type did, but I preferred the new emotion. It was happiness. Pure, unrestrained, unstrained, happiness.
“Thanks,” he replied, keeping a straight face for only a second before he started laughing. He was still close to me that I felt the vibrations run through me.
“I’m glad to see the couple happy again,” Gemma’s voice rang, after a clearing of her throat, “but you are still my brother, Harry.”
We drew apart from each other, but not a jumping away. My hand lazily fell away from his hair and his arms slowly retracted from my waist. Our faces moved even slower then the rest of us, and Gemma’s sigh was audible.
“I take it that you remember more now?” she asks through a chuckle, observing us with a fond expression. I nodded, and she smiled, coming over to me to present me with clay mug. It was crudely made, and the walls of the clay hadn’t been shaven down so it was thick. Inside a clear liquid sat, tinged with red.
“What’s this?” I asked, looking up as she sat the cup in front of me.
“It’s tea,” she told me. I flicked my eyes back down, and I knew she’d know what my real question was. “Oh, those are red rose petals smashed up into powder. Real red roses, some say they hold healing properties. Helps cleanse the mind.”
“I think it’s been thoroughly cleansed already,” Harry said, and Gemma shook her head.
“It’ll help her reminder. It’s like a toxin cleanser for her mind.”
I took a sip, slowly to make sure it wouldn’t burn my tongue. It wasn’t all that warm though, strictly room temperature. The heating must’ve not been great in the shack in the woods. Despite its temperature I drank it, for two reasons. The flavor wasn’t entirely bad, a definite plus. It was strong, but sweet. It must’ve been a factor to the scent I had smelled earlier. But the main reason was because it promised memories, and less confusion. Even if it tasted horrid I would drink it if it promised something as priceless as that.
I expected the two siblings to talk while I drank my tea, but I could feel Harry and Gemma’s eyes on me.
“What do we do now?” I asked, lowering my drink to the ground. I settled it into the ground in a patch of orange tinted grass, awaiting an answer that came rather quickly.
“We get you better,” Gemma and Harry answered at the same time. There wasn’t laughter from them over their choice of words, because the matter was serious. Not unlike Harry and I.
“Then what?” I asked, and there was silence. This answer wasn’t quite as clear as my last.
“I think we should tell the army,” Gemma suggested and Harry shot her a look.
“Army?” I asked, turning to Harry who was frozen. Not surprised, but frozen as if he’d been caught.
“You mean he hasn’t he told you, Alice?” Gemma asked, voice tinkering like a bell. I shook my head, but I didn’t have the heart in me to give him an accusatory look. Not when I knew there was a history of fighting I wasn’t ready to delve back into.
“What hasn’t he told me?” I asked, and Gemma smiled, but she took her time answering. I took another drink of my tea to fill the time, but she was to busy shooting Harry dirty looks to respond, and I finished my tea before she answered.
I’m happy I finished it though, because if I still had it I have spit it out when I heard what Harry had failed to tell me.
“You’re the leader of a revolution, Alice.”
Authors Note ~ I think I deserve nice long comments and lots of votes for this long chapter? Plus the Halice Action was pretty damn cute so I expect some comments with reactions to that.
I wrote this chapter the way I did because I was rereading the other chapters in Wonderland and I realize they're very .. oddly written. I realize you guys are really big fans of chapters that confuse you from your comments, but I wanted you to have a more realistically written chapter because Alice is making realizations, and it simply needed to be done.
And before you think that this story contains insta-love let me remind you that Alice was once in love with Harry in the Wonderland reality. The feelings are already there, she's just regaining there and making sense of them. I absolutely despise insta-love and that's one of my main problems with most Fan Fictions. I wouldn't have that in my story.
[And I'm sorry I just really like writing cute Halice scenes I honestly didn't mean for that to evolve into what it is, it just happened. I blame that I was listening to Mermaid Motel on repeat while writing that. Set the mood a bit.]
Also, if you managed to read this entire authors note [bit long, sorry bout that] then include in your comment the word Lattie. Bonus points for figuring out what that means. [Yeah that may or may not be a hint/preview for something in the future of this story.]
Questions, Comments, Theories, or Concerns? Comment them below. I read all comments and reply to the ones that contain things worth replying to.
xx,
Luce