Description: In which individuality is established.
This dim-lit forest is worryingly reminiscent of His realm, and despite knowing it isn't real, I'm afraid.
Alice has been playing video games, apparently. It makes sense – I used to love them, myself, back in the day. Back before my life turned upside-down, I used to be good at this.
Shit – the pounding heartbeat in this game is going nearly as fast as mine would be, though Alice is apparently unflappable. She guides her short, dark-skinned avatar just around the base of a tree, breaking the inhuman creature's line of sight – oh, no. I can't do this. It – he – is tall, too tall for my liking, and wearing a neon white mask. I have the urge to flee, to panic, to escape.
Fuck's sake, he even hangs his victims up!
Another girl screams as she's brutally impaled on a hook. Alice keeps oh-so-calm, watching from the other side of a tree. As she waits, she casually brings a vividly colored sugar cookie to our lips. Then, seeing an opening, she keeps the cookie held lightly between her teeth, slipping past the knife-wielding murderer and his victim.
I don't want to watch anymore, but it's her turn – I can't direct our attention anywhere else.
She rips the girl off the hook, and then lets him strike her, so his original victim can escape. The other girl is still crying about the pain – it's just a game, I know that, but damn – Alice's avatar is apparently made of sterner stuff. Even after being struck twice, she's still on her feet, ducking and weaving in near-complete silence.
After what feels like an eternity, she's apparently lost him, and she begins healing herself up. It's almost a believable motion, if she had bandages or something, and the sound effects suggest gauze – but without anything in her hands, it looks sort of like she's aggressively clawing at her own skin.
She stays there, patching up her wounds, for far longer than I would like. There comes a musical note, thin and weak, before exploding into an anxious little jingle.
She swivels the camera to pinpoint his location. He's just watching, like he's no more than a distant part of the scenery.
Of course, that wouldn't have the same effect on Alice. She hasn't even bitten down on the cookie, yet: it's still dangling from her lips.
And she's still just standing there, doing the Healing Scratch.
Finally, she's been topped off, apparently. Her character no longer oozes blood every time she moves.
He begins his approach.
A loud electrical noise is accompanied by a vivid, yellow icon flashing on-screen, but neither of them pay any attention to that.
She beckons him, a taunting gesture, before ducking around another tree. At the last possible second, as he brings the knife down, she slams a wooden pallet on his face and flees.
Eventually, she manages to slip through an improbably-placed escape hatch, winning her survival.
I never quite got comfortable with any part of this game. It's an unholy reminder of everything I've survived, myself, all the things I was sure I'd buried.
Doctor Finnegan is encouraging me to face my fears, to understand them and learn from them. She's stopped really encouraging Alice to try to piece together her shattered memories, as near as I can tell, honoring my request and my way of dealing with what's happened.
Apparently, in her guise as Ilyana of the Autumn, she's put my name forth to an 'Autumn Court,' one of the ruling branches of a local group of people like us. Other than myself and the good doctor, I've yet to meet anyone like me, but she assures me there's an entire 'freehold' somewhere in this city.
It's probably callous to say, but I don't expect to get very attached.
I sort of have this lingering thought, like they'll all die out, or He'll find me and I'll have to start running again. Like this is all just a reprieve, a brief interlude that won't really matter for long.
Description: In which a newly escaped Changeling discovers she’s not alone, after all.
I never figured I'd be jealous of someone I'd made up, but here I am, and there she is.
Right now, she's talking about how she's settling into her new apartment, how her roommate's been cool about things, how she almost remembered something today.
"I was going for a run," She began, then frowned, trying to put it together. "No – I was running." She said that a bit more confidently than I'd have liked, so I did that little mental trick, to muddy her thoughts. I'd kept us alive so she'd be able to live. It would defeat the whole purpose, if she started to really remember what had happened.
She frowned again, inspecting our gloved hands. Her eyes slide right over the weird stuff, but I'll admit, I worry about how fragile this all really is.
Besides that, I worry there are other people who can see the weird stuff, too.
"Why does it matter, if I can't remember who I used to be?" Good girl. Let's get one of those cookies we like, after this. "I still know how to do stuff. There aren't any 'missing persons' matching my description. Whoever I was before, nobody missed me enough to care if I vanished." She sounded bitter – I am bitter. I can own that.
He put a doll in my place, a contrite little thing who's oh-so-sorry she ran away. She's a model student, headed to college with a brilliant future ahead of her, if only because she knows better than to ask questions she shouldn't.
Hold up. There.
The shrink's looking way too suspicious.
She's eerie, too pretty by half, but she's a specialist in amnesia. It didn't make sense for "Alice" to turn down this recommendation, even though I'd had a bad feeling from the start.
"Alice … surely, there was someone you cared about, before?"
Yeah. That's why I ran, bitch.
"Not – not that I remember, I – I don't think so, no." Bless her, she was trying. I must've given her the best parts of me. But Alice doesn't have anyone. Alice never existed: she's a front, a construct of outdated skills and unused scraps of personality. The parts I gave up so we could survive.
Those fucking eyes.
They're too pretty, unnaturally gorgeous, and it's like she can see into my very soul. That thought chills me to the bone – that, and I'd swear the air conditioner's set about ten degrees too cold.
Alice fidgets under that unblinking stare.
"What were you running from?"
Ice flooded my body. Mine, because I don't trust Doctor Finnegan as far as I can throw her. It's why I'm still awake while it's Alice's turn, I kept expecting something like this to happen.
"I couldn't say," I said, which was true enough, for all it was an evasion. I might not trust her, but I'd rather not lead anyone down the same road I walked.
The ice in the air turned colder still. "He only takes those who've seen Him," she said. There was something to her voice, then.
She knew.
She fucking knew.
I couldn't wipe the shock from my expression fast enough. "So, it's what I suspected." Now, she sounded self-satisfied. "I am so … very pleased … to finally make your acquaintance."
Even her fucking hands were graceful. She tucked her soft red hair behind her ears, and only when I noticed the points did I realize that she'd been hiding them just as I hid my hands.
What. The. Fuck.
Suddenly, I was glad I'd been sitting down: shock and fear had turned my legs to paste.
Despite her efforts to make me feel at ease, I felt trapped.
"Come again?" The words were weak, strained, and I had to remind myself that, as a living person, I still needed to breathe.
She smiled, that warm, inviting smile that said everything would be okay. She spoke, and there was weight to her words, a power simmering just under the surface. "You have nothing to fear. I am Ilyana of the Autumn. You can stop running: by my name, in this place, there is peace and safety. So long as you harm none within these walls, I grant you all the shelter I am able to provide."
I can't say how I knew, but I knew, with absolute certainty, that within her office, she could and would kill to protect any who respected her hospitality.
"May I ask who it is that I address, now?"
At this point, I considered getting up and running, going as fast and as far as my legs could carry me.
That's Plan A: if trouble's coming, get out while you can.
But I'm not entirely sure that if I'd stood, I wouldn't sit right back down. My legs were shaking in that way that said they were going to decline to support my weight, and standing's a rather integral part of running, after all.
"How can you know?"
Comfort and compassion warmed her smile. She seemed so earnest, so genuine. "There's a trick to it, a trick I might yet teach you. I have learned much and more of the terrors that plague our kind." She raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. "Alice fears that one day, she will be forced to remember everything. Rather an odd worry, for one seeking treatment. You, on the other hand … " She folded her hands in front of her, elbows rested on her desk. "Your fears are crowned by a featureless face. Am I wrong?"
I could have lied. I could have.
I didn't, though. "Don't speak His name." My breath caught in my throat, and my eyes instinctively flicked to the door. There was only one door, why was there only one door? If He blocked it, I'd be trapped, well and truly. I knew better than to stand and fight against Him.
"I shan't," she replied. There was an almost musical note to her voice. "Like you, I've no love lost for the Others, hm? If your tall stranger comes when called, why then, we simply mustn't call Him."
She understood. She understood there were Rules, she understood it and didn't question.
"I go by 'X.'" The words came unbidden. "It was easier, made it easier, to not get too attached. Please – Alice can't know. Please." She smiled. She smiled that understanding smile, and she listened, and God help me, I should have shut my mouth. "Wonderland – ain't. I can't remember everything, but I know He took me someplace, someplace bad, and I know I'm the only one who lived."
For a given definition of living. Skeletal hands gripped bony knees. I'm still too thin, by far.
"May I ask what you do remember?" She was so calm, soothing. And I wanted to share, to bleed off the pain by talking. God help me.
I peeled off my gloves. I'd gotten them special – they go past my elbow. Somehow, I knew she'd be able to see my hands how I saw them: bone and tendon to the elbow, flesh and muscle beginning after that. She looked surprised, but only slightly, and I suspected then she'd seen more outlandish things.
So, I took a deep and steadying breath. "I got tired of running," I confessed. "In one of the burned buildings, there was a board, a board with nails hammered through. I pried that board off the wall, and I tried to hit Him. Things – went sideways. There were – there were leaves, and branches, black on black, and – when he, you know, when he took me to that place – when he took me, when the branches tore at me, I – I started to change."
"So, you'd been running before that?" There wasn't any judgment in her voice. She seemed to just accept I was telling the truth. It felt good to know she believed me, even a bit.
I nodded. "A lot of us started out that way." I only met the rest of 'us' after, at least in person, but we'd talked before. "We came across Him online – message boards and stupid, creepy videos. Chat rooms and the like. It's only after you start looking for Him out your real window, that you start finding Him." I nibbled my lower lip, a moment. "He just … watches."
"He just watches?" There was a hint of prompting, and she sounded only a touch disbelieving at that.
So, I clarified. "He watches, and, one-by-one, we break down, each in our own way. The violent ones put on masks. Some side with him, some against, but it's all for him, isn't it?" Water blurred my vision, and I realized only now that I could cry. When I finally regained my composure, I continued.
"He put the bodies in bags, and sure, I could've buried them like that, but it ain't respectful, and with ghosts, you wanna still treat 'em like people, even with their body across the way in pieces."
Maybe I could still remember that because of what I'd known before He took me. Maybe it was because it was only a short run from the hanging garden, the skeletal trees and the swaying, bloody bags, to freedom. The girl's grateful spirit leading me through a maze of black thorns, fading as we went, until I could hear cars and chattering people.
The doctor was quiet for a bit, writing. Making notes. "What do you hope to gain from these sessions, X?" I got the impression she'd been weighing those words for a while now.
I decided to trust her. "Being honest, I need a new start. There's no place for me in this world. I survived this long, and now – now Alice gets to live. Really live." That was it, out in the open, then.
"What if I told you there was a place you could live, too?" She caught my eyes with her own, those too-deep orbs of flawless emerald. "There's a place for people like us, people who've seen 'Wonderland' in all its horror. Alice never needs to know. I can show you, if you're interested – believe me, it helps, to know you're not alone."
I considered. "I'll need to think on it," I said honestly. "The plan was, Alice would take over. I'd – I'd step back, let her live, until and unless she needed me." I inspected my hands. "I want a normal life, but – knowing what I know, seeing what I've seen – I can't have that. Alice … can."
"You've changed." She knew, in a way only someone who'd held that very wish knew. Understanding and sympathy tinged her voice with warmth. "It isn't possible to live with that knowledge, to have seen the other side and still be the same as you were. But you can live, all the same. It just … takes time to adjust." She smiled, the afternoon sun in her expression.
"Let Alice be Alice. Let her live a life untouched by horror. You can keep her safe – if you prepare yourself for the dangers she cannot face." Here, Ilyana of the Autumn offered me her hand.
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