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“Do you know who it was that took you?” asked Raven, who had once been Oz’s friend and Alice’s sister’s rival’s brother.
Oz looked him dead in the eyes and smiled. “No.”
When Alice had first met the Oz with the human shape, with the blonde hair and the green eyes and the slowly-returning memories of the time he was her pet rabbit, he had said We’ll get out of this someday, he’d said We’ll tell the police and the newspapers and my uncle and everyone and they’ll rip Jack to pieces, he’ll never touch use again.
When Alice had first met this Oz, she had been told that she was going to have a little break from the experiments and the pain and the fighting for a bit, and then locked into a room with him for two weeks, and Alice was many things but not an idiot.
Oz had fought Jack tooth and nail when he was first shoved into the room with her.
Unlike Alice, during those two weeks, Oz was still taken out and came back injured and bloody.
It had taken four days for him to stop fighting. It had taken four days, and he’d never fought Jack again, never pushed back against him, never denied him anything again.
He had still hated him, of course: Oz and Alice both hated Jack. They both wanted him dead—preferably at their hands. But Oz would not move against him, could not deny him, and Alice refused to do any such thing without Oz by her side, and this left them at an impasse, and Jack knew it.
He had made the right choice, shoving them in that room together. It had defanged them. Alice would no longer make a move without first assuring herself that Oz was by her side; Oz would never, ever do anything to put Alice in danger.
And now, Oz was leaning against the arm of his grown-up childhood friend, and the jackass clown and the young lady were watching him suspiciously.
“What about you, Alice?” asked the clown. “Do you know who took the two of you?”
“Of course I do,” Alice scoffed.
“Who?”
Oz looked at her. He did not want her to say anything, though he wouldn’t stop her from speaking. Her words, she knew, could immediately make him the enemy of the man he was leaning against, of Raven, whom he adored above all else other than her.
“A fucking jackass,” said Alice, “like, the biggest dick ever.”
“Do you know his name?” asked the young lady.
“Bitch-ass motherfucking cunt,” said Alice, “—or at least that’s what we called him.”
“What does he look like?” asked Raven. “I’ll kill him.”
“Imagine the biggest dick you’ve ever met,” said Alice, “like just the most assholish guy ever. He looks like that.”
There: Oz had already named names, after all, and told Alice that these three all worked for Jack, and then Raven had informed everyone that he hated Jack. This would let him know who, exactly, it was who’d had Oz and Alice—right?
“...That’s not a description. What color hair did he have?”
“Asshole hair,” said Alice.
“Ew.”
“We didn’t ever actually see him much,” said Oz, who saw Jack plenty, though not with Alice there. She supposed it was technically true, since he’d said we, and she wondered what lengths he’d go to to hide the truth from Raven.
She wondered what Jack had told him to do, when he’d allowed them this so-called escape.
“Could you pick him out of a lineup?” asked Raven.
“Yeah,” said Alice.
“Do you have a lineup?” asked Oz.
“...No,” Raven admitted.
“Then I couldn’t.”
Wouldn’t, more like: neither Alice nor Oz was stupid. Neither Alice nor Oz would reveal Jack to anyone unless he wanted them to, because Jack had made sure that Oz was his creature and Alice wouldn’t ever abandon her Oz.
“We’ll find who did this to you,” Raven promised, “and we’ll make them pay.”
“Just focus on keeping yourself safe, Gil,” said Oz. “We don’t need revenge.”
“We certainly fucking want it, though,” Alice grumbled. It burned that their ‘rescue’ was orchestrated by Jack’s employees, and it sucked even harder that Oz would probably be forced to kill his best friend, but if Raven wanted Jack dead…and if Alice could hypothetically restrain Oz, or make herself into some human shield of sorts until Raven successfully killed Jack…maybe things could turn out alright. And they could stay out here, safe and free, though unfortunately most likely far away from Raven, since she doubted he’d forgive Oz the murder attempt or his loyalty towards Jack. But that was life, she guessed: everything sucked, and then you died, and hopefully took most of your enemies out with you.
“The question is,” the clown said in a sing-song voice, “revenge against who?”
Oz continued leaning against Raven’s side; Alice scowled down at her hands. She wanted to have revenge against Jack—God, she wanted it. But Oz…
Pandora, founded by hero Jack Vessalius. Nobody in Pandora would be their ally—but anyone who stood against Jack was necessarily their enemy.
Revenge against who, a voice whispered in Alice’s head, indeed.