Possible Side Effects, Ch. 20

[wanderamaranth]

Summary: Jabberwocky blood is powerful, but has a short shelf life. Then, there are the possible side effects...

Disclaimer: Still don't own. Still don't want to be sued. Thank you.

Rating: T

"She didn't pass this way." Deagmond confirmed, and the six other magpies warbled disapprovingly.

"Out of all the paths one can take away from our Bridge, that creature had to drag her over the most difficult one, didn't he?" Cantara complained. Bifrost rustled his feathers, a bit impatiently. "It was nothing we should not have expected. "Why have we wasted Time by looking in places we know they will not be?"

Deagmond, full of righteous indignation, defended, "It is not wasting…him to check all possible paths! It is simply being thorough!"

Stepping forward, Bifrost retorted, "Your thoroughness might result in Death coming for the Champion of Underland, much sooner than Time would like!"

Undaunted, Deagmond stepped forward as well, so the two birds were standing chest-to-chest, feathers puffed out. Their beaks nearly clacked together when next he spoke. "You having been speaking more and more of Time in the manner of a bosom companion, Bifrost. Have you become better acquainted with he, while he flew past the rest of us?"

"Mayhap he would not fly past you if you were a bit more respectful, eh?"

Cantara stepped forward, insinuating herself between the two posturing males. "Stop it, right now! Both of you! Honestly, you're having an argument about Time being wasted, and all it is accomplishing is that very thing you are arguing about! Are we going to attempt the journey to Somewhere Else Altogether to help reunite our lovers, or not?"

Unfortunately for Cantarra, while her statement might have soothed those feathers ruffled between the two males, the other three birds decided this would be a good time to state their dissatisfactions.

"Why are we even looking for this girl at all?" Adalmund, yet another Magpie, complained. "If this were truly a fated match, should he not have been able to pull her right to him, even without that Cat's help!"

"Aye, tis true, tis true!" the other two chorused.

"Oh, because we all know that's how it worked in China!" Cantarra snapped back, and the three dissenters were silent once more.

"She and he both were under our Protection. We have Failed them!" Cantarra said. "Worse than Failed them, if we do not assist the Champion! What say you we stop dawdling and get to helping! Those with me, say aye!"

Such was the power behind her voice that none dared to contradict her words, nor disagree with her.

"Aye!" the Six remaining Magpies approved.

---

"Some say we're born into the grave."

Alice ignored the Flower as it spoke to her and continued to slice it into smaller pieces. The Flower took this calmly enough, apparently philosophical about its fate.

The kitchens of Marmoreal were a decidedly peaceful place to wile away one's time, Alice thought, as she moved on from chopping the Flower and picked up Weeping Willow branch. This particular branch was sobbing more than weeping, but Alice supposed it would do just fine for the Elixir she was making. Tears were tears, after all. She began hewing away at it in slow, precise movements, to further draw out the tear production.

A hand landing heavily on her shoulder had her turning about, the knife held aloft. Lowell smiled at her, and Alice felt herself relax minutely.

"You might like me better if we slept together." he drawled, the suggestive quality of his tone making her shiver. "I know the thought has at least crossed your mind, Mirana. Iracebeth is, after all, your sister. It won't even be like a betrayal." A smile tilted the corners of his mouth. "You shared everything while growing-why not share me, as well?"

The knife shook in Alice's hand, and her vision trailed down to see her arm was encased in a bejeweled white sleeve. The hand holding the knife was very pale as well, with squared-off fingernails painted the deepest burgundy. She recognized that sleeve, the nails, those hands, and knew she was once again in a memory and a body not her own.

Somewhere within her, Alice felt a strange satisfaction at the entire situation, as if a plan carefully laid was suddenly coming to fruition. But that was ridiculous, as she'd never want Lowell to look at her in such a way, to say such things to her!

He'd called her Mirana, Alice recalled. The satisfaction she felt, Alice realized, must stem from the one to whom this dream-memory truly belonged to: The White Queen. Jabber, it seemed, had broadened their playing field. Did that mean, Alice wondered, that she was winning, or was he just enjoying himself so much that he thought to expand the perimeters of play? Had this actually occurred, or was it a fabrication from their imaginations?

"Lowell…how can you even suggest…" Alice forced herself to say through her shock, (why did this man have to look so much like Lowell?) and the man in front of her tilted his head in an inquiring manner. "Lowell?" he asked. "Mirana, are you quite well?" Laughing, he grasped her waist with one hand and removed the knife from her grip with the other.

"No wonder you'd been looking at me so strangely. I don't know whom this Lowell is that you've mistaken me for. It's me, Tertian." Nodding slightly to his clothing, he said, "I rather thought the amount of Red I'm wearing would have given me away." Before Alice could look down and see just how much Red he was wearing, Lowell-Tertian, she corrected herself-used the knife that he had taken from her and ran it along her chin. "One word is all I am waiting for, Sister-of-my-Wife." he murmured, leaning down to her lips.

Alice fought to say "No!", to deny the advances this Lowell-who-was-not was pressing upon her, but she had lost what control she'd had in this situation, and she felt her body whispering, "Yes." Then his lips were upon hers, and there were no more words able to be spoken.

She fought against the kiss, even as her body melted into it. Thankfully, thankfully, the ever-more-familiar purple smoke rose up around her feet, and soon she was forcibly removed from Tertian's presence, and thrust into yet another untenable situation.

---

"You must be kidding me."

Stayne, Snellum, Geoffrey, and the two horses sat before what was normally a tinkling stream only a few kilometers outside of Marmoreal's walls. Usually being the case, as it was now a swollen, raging river, one with no clear way of getting across. Paricia and Parick had taken one look at the banks, and the distance between them, and refused in no uncertain terms to even attempt a fording. ("What, do I look like I'm fond of drowning?" had been Paricia's droll reply at Geoffrey's anxious suggestion of this method of crossing.)

"Were that I was, Knave."

"Going back through the Garden to the Room of Doors will take hours, Pawn." Stayne stressed Geoffrey's title, and he stiffened in his saddle. A warning whuffle from Paricia underneath him forced the soldier to calm himself, and relax his body.

"If you have another suggestion, I am more than willing to hear it. As it is now, though, we shall waste just as much time sitting here arguing about how to cross as we would in traveling to the Doors and going to Marmoreal that way."

"He's right, Stayne." Snellum added, sitting atop Parick's head. "Queen Alice will not be helped by our dawdling, either. What would she suggest you do, if she were here, and the goal the same, to get to Marmoreal?" The Mouse knew the answer, already knew what the Knave would agree upon doing; he wouldn't have asked the question, otherwise.

Hanging his head in defeat, the dark-haired man agreed. "She'd say we need to go back to the Room of Doors."

"Well then!" Snellum said. "Go back that-a-way about a half-kilometer, and we'll be at a Tree Door."

"A what?" Stayne asked, while the Pawn gaped at him.

"You knew the location of a Tree Door to the Room, and you were going to allow us to keep going the long way around to Marmoreal?" Geoffrey demanded.

"Do I look like the leader of this operation? I thought the stupid man knew what he was doing! For all I know, his freakishly large form won't fit through normal doors!"

"That is what the Pishsalver is for!" Geoffrey called out, as Stayne made a grab for Snellum, and the Mouse danced out of the way.

"You seem to be recovered rather quickly from your injuries, Sir Mouse." he gritted out, and Snellum froze.

"Did you just Knight me?" he asked, nervously.

"I will request Queen Alice to do so if you lead us to this….Tree Door…that Geoffrey seems to think will lead us right to Marmoreal." Stayne promised.

"Right then!" the Mouse declared. "I guess that does make me the leader of this operation! Parick, you saw the Door, aye?"

"I certainly did! What do I look like, a half-blind Knave?"

The three animals shared a chuckle, while the Knave and Geoffrey glowered. "To the Door, then!" Snellum cried, and the horses took off at a lurch, Geoffrey and Stayne clinging to their tacks to stay seated.

---

The Sword arched down. Fierce joy rang forth from it's center as it sank past the surprisingly tough outer layer of skin into meat and tendon and bone and finally back through again.

She'd almost expected blood and ichor to spray outward, to splatter her armor, the ground, perhaps even those battling on the ground below.

The Sword had other ideas. It drank down every bit of what the Jabberwocky had to offer: the blood, bone shards, even hunks of flesh were all consumed by the ever-hungry Sword, so that in the end, the killing blow she'd struck looked more like a cauterized wound than a battlefield slaying.

Alice knew, now, that the Sword would never be truly satisfied, even with this Death. She wondered if Absolem and Mirana knew just what it was that they'd harbored, and if they would be as horrified by it as she was.

She rather doubted it, on both counts.

She wasn't sure if they believed the Jabberwocky to even possess a soul, let alone one unique enough to have their Vorpal hunger for it with an intensity beyond all reason.

And if there is no soul, then there can be no horror to be had when the Sword eats that soul-that-does-not-exist, can there?

Beyond the flesh, the blood and the bone it had consumed, the Vorpal Sword had gutted itself on the soul residing within the Jabberwock's flesh. At first (and at later, and at later still, until this moment, the at last) Alice had thought the rush of Death that had screamed past her ears when the Jabberwock fell was her own fanciful form of Mourning the necessity of killing a creature, any creature, even one as dangerous as he.

Now (at this, the at last moment) she knew, with a sudden clarity that told her it must have come from Jabber's own thoughts, that the Sword had been, and always would be, after his soul, just as it had been since forging.

Yet on the Frabjous Day, it hadn't gotten that soul it so craved, once again. It had, like the many times before it had been used on Jabber, son of Wocky, eaten the soul of his host, instead.

The sound she'd heard, the one that made her sway atop that crumbling and ruined tower in a combination of fear of herself (what was she, that she could slay dragons?) and elation (if she could do this, nothing was impossible!) was the Death of an innocent soul in the place of one who was so corrupt she wasn't even sure it could properly be called 'soul', but Alice had no other word for it.

And the host, the original dragon that had resided in the body before Jabber, had been innocent. Once, all that had concerned him was laying atop his pile of treasures, those things that he was able to gather from the Passage from Above to Underland. He'd particularly enjoyed collecting books, as they always had new and fascinating descriptions of places and activities that he'd never see or participate in. He'd gather them from the Passage, (or what Alice had always referred to as the Rabbit Hole) and carefully line the walls of his home with them, until he had nearly a whole house-full, and had been considering going to the Hightopp Carpenters with the request for an addition, when word had rang out that the fearsome Jabberwocky, a manticore with eyes of flame and an appetite for flesh and destruction, was rampaging nearby.

Normally Willhem (as was his name, in that time before his possession) would not have concerned himself with such a thing. He was not the brave and bold type, to go about slaying manticores willy-nilly! But the creature was close to him, and his home, and all of his lovely books! He couldn't not protect what was his.

So he'd gone out, and the peoples of the nearby villages had lain flowers at his feet, and sung songs about the bravery of Willhem the Scaled, who would defeat the Jabberwocky, and save them all. They told him that his name would be remembered by all in Underland forevermore, that grand parties would be held in his honor, and, yes, if he wanted it, he would have all the books he could ever desire!

It would have been wonderful, if that had been how things had actually worked out.

Instead of songs sung, parties given and books delivered, when Willhem fought the Jabberwocky, he fell on the battlefield. He and the Jabberwocky had each delivered to the other killing blows; it should have been enough, he should have been satisfied that his life had been given for the good of the many, that he had saved so many from such a frum ious creature.

He'd stared into the red-slitted eyes of his enemy, though, the tooth-pick like Vorpal sword held awkwardly in his teeth (as he'd been told it'd be the only thing to kill the manticore, and while Willhem had thought that the removal of anything's head from it's shoulders would suffice, Sword or no, he'd taken the shiny bit of metal along, just in case he was wrong) he realized that, for him, it wasn't enough.

He was well and truly put out.

There were so many things he'd planned to do, so many things he wanted to see, and to read! He'd been promised new treasures at the end of this journey, and with the way his heart's blood was pumping out of his scaled hide, he'd not be enjoying anything after today, not ever again.

Then the Jabberwock had started to speak.

"You fought well, for one whom has not done so before." he said, breaths labored. (Willhem had ripped off several important looking limbs during their battle, and had thought it all but won when somehow, that crafty manticore had managed to pierce him through his tender underbelly) "It is a shame that we should both have to die here, today, on this field."

Yes, a shame. Willhem had agreed silently, too tired to even form the words with his lips anymore. The manticore was a vague outline in front of him, now, as his vision was dimming.

"It does not have to be that way."

Willhem had forced his eyes open, had struggled to focus on what the Jabberwocky was saying. There was a way for him to not die this day? A way to live beyond, to hear those songs, attend those parties, and read those books waiting for him?

"Yes, Bearer of the Vorpal One. There is a way to live beyond this day. Do you accept?"

Yes! Willhem wanted to cry out, but hadn't the strength to. I am not done yet!

Words spoken aloud, it seemed, were not needed, though, as the manticore drug himself painfully over to Willhem's slumped form. A warm, wet substance was applied to his lips, and a part of Willhem recoiled from it; the Jabberwocky crooned to him, in the voice of a lover. "Drink of me and live, Bearer."

Unable to resist, Willhem used the last of his body's strength and parted his lips. The Blood had tasted horrible, of ashes and bitter greens, but he drank it anyways.

It has been too long since I've been in the form of a dragon had been the delighted cry echoing through his mind, and in that moment, Willhem knew his mistake.

The Jabberwocky had always intended to fight him this day, to make Willhem believe he could win, and then to strike a killing blow. His goal had never been the destruction of the villages, or even the Deaths of those within them; what he'd desired was Willhem's body, and he'd foolishly just given it to him!

Too late, the Jabberwocky had gloated, and then for a long time, all Willhem knew was darkness.

---

Alice came back into awareness of her own self with a start, and looked about. She was no longer on the checkered field, no longer holding the ever-hungry Vorpal Sword, nor experiencing the sorrow and mistakes of a Bearer who had gone before her. She was now sitting in a low-lit and mostly silent room, the only sounds present the faint ticking of a clock in the background and the man in the bed before her's labored breathing.

Taking a few steps forward, even knowing what she would find there, Alice looked down at the wan and waxy face of her dying father.

"Papa?" she said, reaching her hand out towards him. He stirred, but did not open his eyes.

"I don't want to be here." she whispered, shaking her head in denial. "I don't want to be here!" she repeated, shutting her eyes tightly. "I-don't-want-to-be-here!" she insisted. The smell of smoke came to her nostrils, and she tentatively opened her eyes. She was no longer in that horridly quiet room, watching a man who loved laughter and sunlight dying without either surrounding him.

She was in a place that could arguably be said to be worse.

"Hightopp Hill." she breathed, staring out at the broken homes and still-smoldering ruins. Alice walked carefully from the center clearing towards the line of houses, and mechanically traced her steps towards the only Hightopp residence she'd know how to get to by heart.

The little house looked much as it had when Alice had seen it, paint that had been cheerfully blue now ruined with soot and grime, bright yellow door half-hanging off the hinges. She walked around the house, though, following the small stone path towards the creek-bed, and was somehow unsurprised to see a burgundy silk suit-jacket and large, burnt top-hat sitting on the stone bench. The roses whispered warnings to her, but Alice kept walking forward. Past the top-hat, past the burgundy jacket, and past the whispering roses, she walked, until she reached a strong, firm-looking young man's back. His long red hair was tangled horridly about his shoulders.

"Excuse me?" Alice asked.

The young man turned around. It was the Hatter, but only as Alice had seen him once before, in her nightmare. Two sunken holes took the place of where his eyes should have been, and his face was only barely recognizable as that of her Hatter. Some patches were burnt clear down to the bone, and others were held together by mere strips of blackened skin.

"See me as I should be." he lisped. "See me as I am inside."

"This is not you, Hatter. This is not how you are!" Alice said, walking forward. Taking his bone-and-bits-of-flesh hands in hers, she looked up into his face, searching for green eyes that were not there.

"If I had died that day, none of this would have been necessary." he insisted. "You would never have been brought back to Underland; you would have stayed Above, married a man named Reginald, bore his children…the Oraculum foretold it, you know. In that Time before Free Will decided to muck about with Fate."

"I don't want those things, Hatter!"

She glanced about the clearing, looking for signs of Jabber. Surely he would be coming shortly, to continue on with their contest?

"What do you want, sweetness?" the Hatter's voice asked, a bony finger trailing down her cheek. Alice stilled.

"Would it be too much to hope," it continued, "to think that you want me? Just say the words, peppermint tea, and you and I will be together, as long as you shall live."

"I…I want…" Alice began.

"Yes?" he said, leaning closer to her, his fetid breath on her cheek.

Is it really so easy? Alice wondered.

Yes. He's given you the answer, even if he doesn't know it yet. It must be the answer, for Alice knew that soon, she would make a mistake in one of these dreamscapes, and then she'd be lost, until another Bearer of the Vorpal Sword came, and then she'd be gone forever, another unsatisfying meal for a Blade that's hunger will never be filled.

"I want you to reveal your true self, Jabber."

"Jabber? As in the Jabberwocky?" the Hatter's face looked at her, nothing but concern and care. (Well, as much concern and care a body can show when it's held together by bits of rotted flesh.) "Alice, this is how I truly am. You're just Perceiving what I am inside."

"I refuse to accept that!" Alice shouted, twisting away from what she was now certain was Jabber-as-Hatter once again.

"Oh? How should things should be, then?" he mocked her.

"Perceive…" she murmured. "See things as they should be…"

"Brandied pears?" the Hatter's voice said, uncertainly. Taking reassurance from that faint warble, Alice pressed forward. Yes, this is the answer. It was before me, the entire time!

"I Perceive that you are Jabber, Son of Wocky." Alice said firmly, and as she spoke, thick wisps of purple smoke began to envelope the Hatter-that-was-not. "I Perceive that I shall see you as you truly were, in your original form!"

The body shaped like the Hatter twisted down and released a howl, a sound of pain and denial unlike any that Alice had ever heard before. Purple smoke enveloped him, and he began to shrink, smaller and smaller and smaller, until Alice could see nothing beyond the smoke. Walking up to the spot where he'd been, she brushed the purple haze away as she would do Absolem's exhalations, and stared hard at the ground. There, curled so small that she was certain she must be seeing things, lay a kitten.

Never had a more pitiful kitten been seen. It had no hair; it's skin sagged and drooped on it's small body, and he had no whiskers upon his face. He opened his eyes, and red-slitted pupils regarded Alice with equal parts of fear and relief.

"Jabber?" she asked, knowing it was true, and forcing herself to believe it, for fear of her Perception shattering. Scooping him up carefully in with both hands, she held him before her face, studying him. The creature she had feared and fought for so long was nothing more than a small kitten, sad and deformed. Pity made her throat tight.

You must finish it, a soft woman's voice said behind her, and she turned around, the small Jabber-kitten still cradled in her hands.

On the ground before her sat Dinah, large green eyes blinking solemnly. Chessur misted into exsistance beside her, stumbling to the ground as if a barrier he'd been fighting against had been suddenly lifted. A sheepish grin titled the corners of his mouth as her curled himself into a tight ball and laid at Dinah's feet.

Dinah looked down at Chessur, and Alice was certain she saw the trace of an answering smile on the Cat's lips. Then she looked back at Alice, and she heard the woman's voice speak to her once more.

You must finish it, she repeated, and Alice realized with astonishment that it was Dinah speaking to her, and not even by using her mouth! Her mind spoke to Alice's, and brought with her comfort and an agreeing sadness.

Would that there were another way. Dinah said. But that son of mine is Corrupt, and has been since he was as small as he is now. Daughter of my Heart, you must complete what you have started.

"Dinah?" Alice managed to say. "Chessur?"

"I tried to get here earlier, Alice." Chessur demurred. "But Jabber chose your battlefield well. The only one able to enter once you were here was Underland herself, and that it because she is here, and there, and, well, everywhere Under, really."

"Dinah?" Alice said again, desperate to understand. She hated repeating herself, but no other word seemed to want to form from her lips.

I go by many names, the green-eyed Cat finally agreed. Dinah was one, for a Time. I've also been called Diana…Titania…even occasionally Mab…but originally, I had no name. None of us did, until we chose ones that best pleased us, as Chessur here did. I am simply Underland now. Just as all that are born here will have the opportunity to become, when they decide to undergo the metamorphosis from this life to another one.

The creature known to Alice as Dinah turned and began to pad away, her footfalls making not a sound on the grass. Know that I have hopes for you, Daughter. This will not be the last we See of one another. Fairfarren, Alice.

"Wait! Dinah!" Alice called out, but the Cat was gone. Chessur was still curled in his spot upon the ground, grin forcibly in place.

"You do know what comes next, don't you, Alice?' he asked.

Her Hatter-green eyes looked down at the small form cradled in her grasp, looking up at her with desperate eyes. "How can I? He's so small." she whispered.

Blinking solemnly, Chessur said, "Cats think on these things differently than a human might, I believe. When we hunt, do we wait until our prey, until the Rat is fully grown, with sharp teeth and injurious claws? No." Standing, he stretched each of his vertebrae individual, and they plinked like piano keys as they settled back into place. Under any other circumstances, Alice might have smiled at such a display.

"We hunt out the nests while the Rats are still small, and drown them so that they may not grown up to eat our People's grains, or bring Illness to their towns."

"He is just a kitten!" Alice argued.

"Right now he is just a kitten. But he wasn't, not five minutes past. Have you forgotten so easily that he wished to consume you? The desire is still there. I can feel it." Pausing, he took a deep breath, then said, "Take this gift that Time and Tarrant's Perception have given you, Alice. Please. If you do not, the Perception will shatter, Jabber will reform, and then swallow you down. There will be nothing I will be able to do to stop him."

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If I do not do this, Alice thought, the Jabberwocky will not rest until Tarrant is dead. And he will force me to watch.

Leaning down, so her lips brushed the shell of the kitten's ear, Alice said, ever so softly, "I Perceive that you, Jabber, Son of Wocky, are no part of me, or those I consider mine, at all." If she had been able to see her own eyes, she would have been concerned at the glow their green tint took, but she couldn't, so she continued speaking.

"I Perceive that you are Dead, and Gone. I Perceive that you will never bother me or mine ever again, not in Spirit, and not in Body." Her voice rose as she finished, saying, "I Perceive these things to be True, right now!"

A high-pitched, wailing howl echoed through her mind, and Jabber disappeared from her hands in a puff of purple smoke.

---

A/N: A manticore is a mythological beast with the face of a man, the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion. The mouth contained three rows of teeth, and it the barbed spikes on the scorpion-like tail could be shot out towards prey.

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