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Even Ten More Trips Through Wonderland (Trips 25-30)
Even Ten More Trips Through Wonderland (Trips 25-30)
Author:AkaiNagi
Rating: PG
Pairing: Alice/Tarrant
Summary: Prompts 5-10 (Table 3) from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
10_prompts.
Prompt: Gloomy
Tarrant Hightopp awoke one night to the sound of his wife sobbing into her pillow.
This was something that alarmed him, to say the least. He had never heard Alice cry like that before, like her heart was being torn in two.
The most disturbing part of it was, when he asked his wife what was the matter, it was all she could do to choke back her sobs long enough to get out a plaintive “I don’t know!” And then she would degenerate into tears again.
Tarrant called on anyone he could think of to aid him. He called the palace physician, who pronounced her in sound health. He pleaded with Queen Mirana to come visit his wife. The Queen, an accomplished healer in her own right, agreed immediately, but came to the same conclusion as the court physician. She pronounced it a malady of the soul and stated that time was the best remedy she could suggest at present.
Tarrant, beside himself with worry as much as his wife was beside herself with grief, found it impossible to work that day. So he spent the entire day abed with his wife, holding her as she sobbed out a flow of tears that seemed endless.
Another world away, on a gloomy, rainy day, in a town called London, a group of mourners walked slowly away from a cold stone slab that read:
Helen Kingsleigh
Beloved Wife and Mother
May She Rest In Peace
Prompt: Scarred
Tarrant is covered in scars.
Alice finds this out the first time they make love.
At first she teases him about his hesitancy in getting undressed. She mistakes his shame for shyness. “This is not something one can do fully clothed, you know,” she says teasingly as she coaxes him out of first his jacket, then his vest, and finally his shirt.
When she sees the scars that run across his chest and back and arms she is momentarily speechless.
He mistakes her shocked silence for disgust and makes a grab for his shirt, desperate to remedy his sudden vulnerability.
She won’t let him have his shirt back.
Instead, recovering from her awestruck silence, she asks him what on earth happened to him that the world has left such cruel markings on his skin.
He tries to brush her off with a generality. “Oh, here and there,” he answers “War wounds from the great revolution,” he jokes.
But she is undeterred. An immovable object as usual.
She demands an accounting for each scar, each mark. And as she receives it she places a feather light kiss on the mark in question. It is like she is going down a checklist, only instead of a pen doing the marking, her lips do the honors.
He shudders with each soft touch; a kiss for the mark left by Stayne’s whip, a kiss for the scar he obtained on Horunvendush day while trying to protect the Queen, even a kiss for the scratch left when Thackery broke a teapot on his shoulder. And when she is finished kissing every scar off her list, he is still trembling, but now for an entirely different reason.
And when he wakes the next morning, sprawled naked beside her, his war wounds on display for any to see, he finds the memory of each one weighs just a little lighter on his soul.
Prompt: Spotless
Unlike Tarrant, Alice’s skin is flawless like alabaster.
The scars delivered by her now beloved bandersnatch long since faded into nothing, her skin is pale perfection. And it drives her lover crazy.
Every time Tarrant sees that flawless skin laid out before him he is gripped with the mad desire to mark it. To bite it, to scratch it, to claw his ownership into it. Hell, he would take a needle and thread and embroider “PROPERTY OF THE HATTER” on her silken thighs if he could.
All just to reassure himself that she is really his.
Prompt: Dying
When the Hatter didn’t make an appearance by the stroke of noon, Alice began to worry.
The first place she looked, of course, was his workshop. When she found nothing there but hatforms and mountains of cloth and ribbon and lace, she went on to question the castle’s inhabitants as to the whereabouts of its resident milliner.
McTwisp was no help, the Queen simply answered her enigmatically that she was sure the Hatter would return in due time, and Thackery’s only answer to the question was to lob a teaset at her head. The Tweedles were singularly unhelpful. One swore he left the palace while the other insisted he did not. It wasn’t until she managed to pry some information out of Mallymkun that she realized the reason behind the Hatter’s unexplained absence.
As it was Alice made record time, leaping across the back of the bandersnatch and galloping full tilt to where she now knew where the Hatter would be.
When she came to the burned-out clearing she almost didn’t see him at first. Kneeling in the dirt and ash, he held his hat in his hands, muttering to himself what Alice took to be nonsense.
Alice dismounted from the bandersnatch and rushed towards him, her face a mask of worry for fear that he was hurt, or even worse had hurt himself.
He didn’t even register Alice’s presence. He simply continued his chant, rocking backwards and forwards in a rhythmic motion. “Ailbert …Alpina …Athdar … “
“Hatter!” Alice shouted, trying to startle him out of his stupor.
“Balfour … Breac … Bradana …”
“Hatter!” she called again, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Callum … Catriona …Cullodina … Donnchadh ...” his voice rose in pitch, taking on a hysterical note.
“Tarrant!” Alice fairly screamed, giving him a hard shake.
Tarrant’s looked up sharply at Alice, startled out of his stupor. “Why Alice. What are you doing here? And yelling loud enough to wake the dead.” He thought about that statement then let out a short burst of mad laughter. “Have you come to visit them too?”
“Oh, Tarrant,” she breathed, her heart bleeding for him. She knelt on the ground in front of him, paying not a thought to the ruin the dirt and ash would visit on her dress. “Mally told me you’d be here. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why Should I?” he growled, his voice descending into a rough Outlandish brogue. “It isn’t your place to be here, girl. Not your clan. Not your right. Get you gone.”
“No.”
“Leave!” he hollered, his eyes burning with fury.
“No,” Alice answered softly. Meeting his fury with as much tenderness as she could muster. Unsure of what his reaction would be, but at a loss as to what to do, she reached out and pulled him into the circle of her arms, pressing her cheek against his own. She couldn’t help but notice his was wet with tears.
“You’re right,” she spoke softly into his ear. “It wasn’t me who lost family here, it was you. But you are my family. As much family as I have in this world.” Her heart was like a stone in her throat and her own eyes threatened to overflow. “I don’t want you to suffer alone anymore.”
“Alice.” The brogue was gone, replaced by the Tarrant’s usual soft voice, this time choked with emotion. “They’re all gone. They’re all dead. And I’m the only one who even remembers their names.”
That did it. The tears were now streaming down Alice’s own face. She pulled away to cup Tarrant’s face in her small hands. “Then tell me about them,” she smiled through her tears. “We’ll remember them together.”
Tarrant looked at her for a long moment. So long in fact that Alice was afraid she’d said the wrong thing only to be pushed away again.
He nodded. And with some hesitation, began to speak.
He spoke of Alpina and Ailbert, of Moira and Morven. He told her of them all, from the oldest of the Hightopp Clan to the youngest. From who was the best singer, to who was the worst milliner.
He spoke to her of his long dead family as they sat there on the ground, hands entwined, until dusk took them.
Prompt: Afraid
As grounded as Alice and Tarrant’s relationship is in friendship and mutual affection, there is a constant undercurrent of fear.
Before Alice came along, Tarrant had no need to fear his madness. He followed wherever the twisted pathways of his mind led, not considering the consequences. Why bother? Everyone around him was mad too. That was the double edged sword of letting someone in, he supposed, when one was half mad. Before he had no one. As lonely as it had been, at least he never had to fear losing anyone.
Alice, for her part, feared her husband’s madness, but not for the reasons he supposed. She feared the seductive lure of permanent madness might one day take him away from her forever. She remembered vividly the day in the castle of the red queen when the madness had seized him. She remembered cupping his face and looking in his eyes and seeing the terror in there. He had been so close to the edge, teetering on the brink of taking refuge against the cruelty of the world in the warm blanked of insanity.
Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?
She hoped neither of them ever found out.
Author:AkaiNagi
Rating: PG
Pairing: Alice/Tarrant
Summary: Prompts 5-10 (Table 3) from
10_prompts.Prompt: Gloomy
Tarrant Hightopp awoke one night to the sound of his wife sobbing into her pillow.
This was something that alarmed him, to say the least. He had never heard Alice cry like that before, like her heart was being torn in two.
The most disturbing part of it was, when he asked his wife what was the matter, it was all she could do to choke back her sobs long enough to get out a plaintive “I don’t know!” And then she would degenerate into tears again.
Tarrant called on anyone he could think of to aid him. He called the palace physician, who pronounced her in sound health. He pleaded with Queen Mirana to come visit his wife. The Queen, an accomplished healer in her own right, agreed immediately, but came to the same conclusion as the court physician. She pronounced it a malady of the soul and stated that time was the best remedy she could suggest at present.
Tarrant, beside himself with worry as much as his wife was beside herself with grief, found it impossible to work that day. So he spent the entire day abed with his wife, holding her as she sobbed out a flow of tears that seemed endless.
Another world away, on a gloomy, rainy day, in a town called London, a group of mourners walked slowly away from a cold stone slab that read:
Helen Kingsleigh
Beloved Wife and Mother
May She Rest In Peace
Prompt: Scarred
Tarrant is covered in scars.
Alice finds this out the first time they make love.
At first she teases him about his hesitancy in getting undressed. She mistakes his shame for shyness. “This is not something one can do fully clothed, you know,” she says teasingly as she coaxes him out of first his jacket, then his vest, and finally his shirt.
When she sees the scars that run across his chest and back and arms she is momentarily speechless.
He mistakes her shocked silence for disgust and makes a grab for his shirt, desperate to remedy his sudden vulnerability.
She won’t let him have his shirt back.
Instead, recovering from her awestruck silence, she asks him what on earth happened to him that the world has left such cruel markings on his skin.
He tries to brush her off with a generality. “Oh, here and there,” he answers “War wounds from the great revolution,” he jokes.
But she is undeterred. An immovable object as usual.
She demands an accounting for each scar, each mark. And as she receives it she places a feather light kiss on the mark in question. It is like she is going down a checklist, only instead of a pen doing the marking, her lips do the honors.
He shudders with each soft touch; a kiss for the mark left by Stayne’s whip, a kiss for the scar he obtained on Horunvendush day while trying to protect the Queen, even a kiss for the scratch left when Thackery broke a teapot on his shoulder. And when she is finished kissing every scar off her list, he is still trembling, but now for an entirely different reason.
And when he wakes the next morning, sprawled naked beside her, his war wounds on display for any to see, he finds the memory of each one weighs just a little lighter on his soul.
Prompt: Spotless
Unlike Tarrant, Alice’s skin is flawless like alabaster.
The scars delivered by her now beloved bandersnatch long since faded into nothing, her skin is pale perfection. And it drives her lover crazy.
Every time Tarrant sees that flawless skin laid out before him he is gripped with the mad desire to mark it. To bite it, to scratch it, to claw his ownership into it. Hell, he would take a needle and thread and embroider “PROPERTY OF THE HATTER” on her silken thighs if he could.
All just to reassure himself that she is really his.
Prompt: Dying
When the Hatter didn’t make an appearance by the stroke of noon, Alice began to worry.
The first place she looked, of course, was his workshop. When she found nothing there but hatforms and mountains of cloth and ribbon and lace, she went on to question the castle’s inhabitants as to the whereabouts of its resident milliner.
McTwisp was no help, the Queen simply answered her enigmatically that she was sure the Hatter would return in due time, and Thackery’s only answer to the question was to lob a teaset at her head. The Tweedles were singularly unhelpful. One swore he left the palace while the other insisted he did not. It wasn’t until she managed to pry some information out of Mallymkun that she realized the reason behind the Hatter’s unexplained absence.
As it was Alice made record time, leaping across the back of the bandersnatch and galloping full tilt to where she now knew where the Hatter would be.
When she came to the burned-out clearing she almost didn’t see him at first. Kneeling in the dirt and ash, he held his hat in his hands, muttering to himself what Alice took to be nonsense.
Alice dismounted from the bandersnatch and rushed towards him, her face a mask of worry for fear that he was hurt, or even worse had hurt himself.
He didn’t even register Alice’s presence. He simply continued his chant, rocking backwards and forwards in a rhythmic motion. “Ailbert …Alpina …Athdar … “
“Hatter!” Alice shouted, trying to startle him out of his stupor.
“Balfour … Breac … Bradana …”
“Hatter!” she called again, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Callum … Catriona …Cullodina … Donnchadh ...” his voice rose in pitch, taking on a hysterical note.
“Tarrant!” Alice fairly screamed, giving him a hard shake.
Tarrant’s looked up sharply at Alice, startled out of his stupor. “Why Alice. What are you doing here? And yelling loud enough to wake the dead.” He thought about that statement then let out a short burst of mad laughter. “Have you come to visit them too?”
“Oh, Tarrant,” she breathed, her heart bleeding for him. She knelt on the ground in front of him, paying not a thought to the ruin the dirt and ash would visit on her dress. “Mally told me you’d be here. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why Should I?” he growled, his voice descending into a rough Outlandish brogue. “It isn’t your place to be here, girl. Not your clan. Not your right. Get you gone.”
“No.”
“Leave!” he hollered, his eyes burning with fury.
“No,” Alice answered softly. Meeting his fury with as much tenderness as she could muster. Unsure of what his reaction would be, but at a loss as to what to do, she reached out and pulled him into the circle of her arms, pressing her cheek against his own. She couldn’t help but notice his was wet with tears.
“You’re right,” she spoke softly into his ear. “It wasn’t me who lost family here, it was you. But you are my family. As much family as I have in this world.” Her heart was like a stone in her throat and her own eyes threatened to overflow. “I don’t want you to suffer alone anymore.”
“Alice.” The brogue was gone, replaced by the Tarrant’s usual soft voice, this time choked with emotion. “They’re all gone. They’re all dead. And I’m the only one who even remembers their names.”
That did it. The tears were now streaming down Alice’s own face. She pulled away to cup Tarrant’s face in her small hands. “Then tell me about them,” she smiled through her tears. “We’ll remember them together.”
Tarrant looked at her for a long moment. So long in fact that Alice was afraid she’d said the wrong thing only to be pushed away again.
He nodded. And with some hesitation, began to speak.
He spoke of Alpina and Ailbert, of Moira and Morven. He told her of them all, from the oldest of the Hightopp Clan to the youngest. From who was the best singer, to who was the worst milliner.
He spoke to her of his long dead family as they sat there on the ground, hands entwined, until dusk took them.
Prompt: Afraid
As grounded as Alice and Tarrant’s relationship is in friendship and mutual affection, there is a constant undercurrent of fear.
Before Alice came along, Tarrant had no need to fear his madness. He followed wherever the twisted pathways of his mind led, not considering the consequences. Why bother? Everyone around him was mad too. That was the double edged sword of letting someone in, he supposed, when one was half mad. Before he had no one. As lonely as it had been, at least he never had to fear losing anyone.
Alice, for her part, feared her husband’s madness, but not for the reasons he supposed. She feared the seductive lure of permanent madness might one day take him away from her forever. She remembered vividly the day in the castle of the red queen when the madness had seized him. She remembered cupping his face and looking in his eyes and seeing the terror in there. He had been so close to the edge, teetering on the brink of taking refuge against the cruelty of the world in the warm blanked of insanity.
Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?
She hoped neither of them ever found out.
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The real challenge with these prompts is filling them while staying in the same fic-verse.
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Scarred and Spotless are such a nice combination. I'm amazed at all the emotions you have captured here.
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Perfect.
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