Alice thinks everyone has a Wonderland (offinherhead) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-10-12 16:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, alice liddell, river tam |
Didn't everyone have a Wonderland?
Who: Alice, River
What: River’s gone a little nuts, Alice understands.
When: Late Monday Night/Morning
Where: On a Bus, other locations.
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13 for insanity.
Status: Complete!
River couldn't remember why she'd gotten on the bus or where she was going. There was a box on her lap filled with muffins, and she was pretty certain her location had something to do with them. She'd either been coming from a location with muffins, or had been traveling in a direction to give muffins to someone.
Maybe. She didn't really know. Some part of her remembered a series of dreams that had lead to the baking of something to do with... something to do with dreams, dreams of dreams of hallucinations of dreams. He was supposed to come for her and she'd sent the message and she didn't think he ever would, she didn't...
They'd come for her, the hands of blue. Always in pairs, two by two, hands of blue... no. No, they weren't taking her anywhere. They hadn't found her. She was on a bus, with muffins.
The bus driver didn't want her on the bus, he kept looking back at her and wondering if she was a transient, "I'm not a transient, I'm a girl, I look like a girl, don't I?"
Alice had walked out of her flat, in a contemplative mood. Drinks with Maeglin (and a fake ID on her part) had made her thoughtful. And curious. He was a strange bloke, and she had to admit a small amount of attraction to him.
Just a smidge.
She was wearing a dress, black and blue with fishnets and knee high boots, and Dinah, as always, was curled around her shoulder.
As she looked around for a seat, she spotted a girl. Just a girl. A girl who was very lost. Alice knew that feeling. Alice remembered what it was like to be lost. To be off in her head. She sat down next to River and remarked, "Fancy sharing a muffin? They look almost like the perfect biscuit."
The blue was disturbing to River, and she winced away from Alice as she took a seat next to her, "I'm a girl, I'm a girl... No, I am. Dinah is a cat. I'm not... Who am I? What am I?"
She ran both of her hands up into her hair and rocked in place for a few seconds, before registering something about muffins and perfect biscuits, "The perfect biscuit... it doesn't look like what you think it looks like if you think it looks like muffins."
"I'm making conversation," Alice said, as Dinah hopped off her shoulder and into River's lap, "You're River. You flow into the sea. You dance and you bake and you're who you are, and no one else."
She propped her boots up on the chair in front of her, "No use going nutters. You won't find yourself that way."
"My head can't fit all of the things..." River whispered. One of her hands reached down and started to pet Dinah, though. The cat made her feel safer somehow. She wasn't sure why and didn't really have the brain power necessary to figure it out.
She glanced at Alice, "We're riding on a train... Have we always been riding on a train? Do I really flow into the sea? I don't think I want to flow into the sea, that sounds like I'd get lost out there in the big ocean."
The ocean was huge, and she was already lost in it. She didn't want to be lost. She didn't want to be not-her. But zen gardens and baking and dancing weren't making her stay her, "I'm not making myself stay myself, they took me away, they stripped me away, like... little pieces of peel off an orange..."
The cat was a pretty mellow cat. Years of being around Alice had made Dinah generally content to be carried around everywhere and treated like a princess. In other words she was spoiled, and knew it. She kneaded her paws into River's leg.
"Maybe that's where you need to find yourself," Alice replied thoughtfully. "Find the oyster that's you out among all the other oysters, before Walrus gets to you. Who is they?"
"They..." River trailed off and held her hands and looked down at them, then waved them in the air a bit, "Hands of blue, two by two..."
Alice held out her hands, "Two hands, not blue. It's better than red hands, love. You can't ever get them clean."
"They've been red before," River admitted, with a bit of a whimper, "He heard a lot but he never listened, and then he listened, but he didn't care, and they were always watching. I knew they were watching. I knew, so ... so I showed them. I showed them who I was. I showed..."
She trailed off with another whimper and squeezed some tears out of her eyes, "That's not me. That's not ME! I'm River. I'm River Tam. I'm River..."
Alice dropped her boots to the floor of the bus with a resounding clanging sound. She thought of her own life. Of her family raped and murdered, of her family burned in her dreams. Of the 'good' doctor who fondled children and sent them off to other perverts, and then broke her mind so she would forget. But she could never forget, she would never forget.
"How many have forgotten," Alice wondered aloud. Wonderland had twisted with her own mental anguish, and she seized upon a thought. Didn't everyone have a Wonderland?
The bus became a train to Alice's mind, and she said, "Keep it together, love, your world depends on you. You're River Tam."
River's wonderland was a gorgeous forest in autumn, colorful and alive with a bright blue sky and grass that was always soft under her bare feet. Perhaps it was because of Alice's thoughts that the scene shifted. River had previously known it to be a bus at night, and then a train, and now it was a train making its way through a sunny forest in autumn.
She liked that much better. It made her smile, and she blinked some of the tears out of her eyes, "I'm River Tam."
"You're beautiful, River Tam," Alice replied. The train whistled, and chugged along. River's forest was a colorful landscape of flowers, mushrooms, plants and butterflies, to Alice. A large one fluttering overhead sounded a bit like a jet engine.
The bus turned, making the train seem to curve through an odd mixture of mushroom houses and grass light posts.
It was a beautiful world. River stared out the window at it, a bit fixated, and went back to petting the cat that was on her lap, "The world is beautiful..."
Some parts of her fell back into place as she calmed down, and she realised that she was still on a bus and had been on a bus for a long time now. And she still had muffins, "Oh. Do you want a muffin?"
"I would love it." The shrooms shrunk a little, and the sky became a more normal shade of blue, but Alice could not quite remove the haze of Wonderland from her vision. She would envy River's ability to do so.
"Do you feel better, love?"
"I don't think I'll ever be better again," River confessed, while looking down at the cat on her lap. Her tone was forlorn, "They did things. They did things to my head, and I don't know if it works that way here..."
The world, at least for River, was starting to fade back into reality, though. She let out a long sigh, "I should go home. Simon's going to be worried. He takes so much looking after."
"I knew a man," Alice said grimly, and with a little trepidation. "He used hypnosis, and other mind tricks. And I'm sure he had a hand in my lobotomy. But he tried to make me forget. I refused to forget, even though I wanted to, it was all too horrible to remember.
She glanced over at River, "We have to remember so those who can't aren't forgotten.”
River chewed on her lip and whispered, "I don't want to remember. They were hurting us. And no one would listen. No one would get us out. I tried to write to Simon..."
But Simon had come for her eventually. She remembered that, waking up on a ship. He'd given up everything he'd had to do that. Would that be what it was like here, too?
She blinked her eyes, "He gave up everything he had."
Alice nodded her head in understanding, "That's what family does. I would give everything if it brought my sister back. If I could see Lizzie's smile again."
She patted River's leg, "He doesn't have to here. Those men who hurt you, they're not here."
"They might be here. I'm here. Simon is here. I've seen some of the others on the net... They could have followed me here." River frowned. She didn't like that thought at all, and tried to focus on her happy place again. Simon had said he wouldn't let that happen to her here. She had to believe that.
"...I hope you're right, Alice."
"If they are here, I'll stab them in the testicles," Alice assured her, and from the look on her face, she meant it.
At that assurance, River flopped against Alice and let out a relieved sigh, "Thank you."