Destined to Always Be - For @knight-rook-a-history
A/N: Set in 7x08 after Alice tries to reunite with her Papa. This got away from me when it came to this month’s theme of fear, but I think it still fits. I blame my csrr fic for tempting me with explorations into madness. Credit to Danny Alexander for the quote.
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The pretty witch said they were cured. She promised the nightmare was over. So, why couldn’t Alice wake up from it?
She’d hurt him again.
Perhaps, nearly killed him this time.
In her panic she’d run back here. Wonderland. Where it was a wonder if you could ever leave the land without losing yourself to the madness that permeated every breath a wanderer took.
She’d lost herself her once. Fell head first down the rabbit hole. Sipped tea with a Hatter, a Hare, and a Haggard door mouse. Hedged through mazes, shuffled with cards, faced fearsome foes who’d claimed she was nothing more than a mad girl because she saw the world differently.
She’d wallowed here. Separated from her beloved Papa and desperate to find a cure. That desperation had made her crazed, but it also kept her sane.
Now she feared sanity was just another illusion. Just another ripple in the fun house mirrors. Another stripe on the Cheshire Cat’s back, fading in and out of existence and leaving behind a smile of twisted mocking.
Like the pretty witch’s smile. Alice could see it now. The falsity hidden beneath pink stained lips. She should have recognized it sooner, then her Papa wouldn’t be suffering.
His external appearance might once again be young and virile, but Alice knew he was still a frail crumbling man beneath that magicked shell. Each moment in her presence chipped away his vitality, eroded his endurance, and deteriorated the connective tissues tethering him to life itself.
How much longer could they go on like this? Could he go on like this?
Perhaps she was mad after all? Mad to think she’d ever find a way to cure him. Mad to think she could best the magic she’d fought against her entire life. First to be free of the tower, and now to be freed from an existence of loneliness and despair.
She’d traveled through madness once before. Traveled through madness to find herself, only to find herself alone. Now she’d have to travel through the fear that alone was what she was destined to always be.