Chapter Text
Alice Hamilton had known today was going to try her patience.
The morning broke hard and premature, the sounds of Charlie moving around camp before dawn rousing Alice from a well earned sleep. She needed no time piece to declare the hour early and a most unfair time for training, but Charlie made no move toward her side of camp, quietly leaving without setting the traps or giving her any sign of acknowledgement.
Charlie mysteriously leaving camp before dawn was one thing— her mentor was madder than any hatter she’d ever met, after all— but Charlie never, ever, forgot to reset the traps.
Grumbling at the cool air, Alice had freed herself from her blanket cocoon, keeping a wary eye on the treeline least Charlie emerge for another of his sneak attacks as she readied the camp for what she had a nagging suspicion would prove to be another long day. She donned her armor and stirred the fire to cook a breakfast for two, but ate Charlie’s share when he failed to arrive and her stomach couldn’t resist the last sausage.
Near as she could figure, even with Wonderland’s wonky sense of time, Alice was 20, long past the ages of growing. But being a Knight, even one hiding in the woods, proved a hungry work, and she still held that nagging sensation the day would be long and difficult. Charlie wouldn’t miss what he didn’t know she’d made, after all.
Her suspicions were confirmed when the familiar line of her long dead cat sprinted across the clearing, pausing only briefly to smile that inhumane grin. When that Cheshire specter appeared, trouble was not long to follow, and Alice was doubly glad for her armor.
Alice blanketed the fire and mounted her steed, a big beast of a roan that Charlie had nicked a few years back when her legs had outgrown her pony. She gave the clearing one last look, gaze lingering on the hammock she should by rights still be sleeping within, before turning the charger towards the treeline where the had had disappeared.
One thing Alice had learned growing up in Wonderland— when the Cheshire cat appeared, you had better follow.
* * *
The sun was only just peeking at the slumbering world when the first trap sounded, cheap bells and whistles slicing through the chilly air. Beneath her the charger startled, prancing his hooves and balking at the reigns.
“Be easy, David,” Alice stroked the roan’s hide, wishing for the placidity of her old pony. Few things startled that old beast. “I’m sure you’ll be twice the size of whatever intruder we’ve caught in that trap.”
The charger was still unsettled, but she knew he’d come through in a fight, just as the boy she’d met briefly in the Resistance nearly ten years ago had. One look at the steed’s warm brown eyes had reminded her at once of the boy she had known, who may have lost his life distracting the leaders so she could make her flight to the forest. David’s eyes may simmer with stark fear, but there lies a steadiness beneath, the kind that was essential in the heat of battle.
It was a poor tribute to that boy, but two years on it still felt right.
She patted David’s hide one last time before laying in her heels. “Come on boy, there’s adventure to be had. You wouldn’t want your mistress to charge off into the unknown alone now, would you?”
Nearly ten years in Wonderland and Alice was never quite certain if the oddness that permeated the place gave all the creatures an understanding of speech. But the charger seemed to listen, stilling his prancing and allowing himself to be lead towards the trap still sounding in the air. They made swift progress, and Alice dismounted before the clearing she knew the intruder to have stepped into, giving David enough lead to graze.
Alice pressed on, quiet as she could, and found the intruder shrouded in the dimness cast by the edge of the trees. They were scarcely a mile from the Queen’s land, but the figure seemed unsurprised to be captured by the snare Alice could see still wrapped around their ankle. The figure made no move to turn round, keeping their back to Alice’s approach.
Either the intruder was deaf to the clatter a knight’s armor made, or they labored under the foolish delusion no harm should fall them in the forest.
And though the Jabberwock might be slain, all should know the forest still held many dangers. The traps Alice and Charlie had scattered throughout the woods were not just for protection against the Queen and the Resistance against her. Wonderland spawned a great many terrifying creatures, many more than Alice remembered reading as a child in her books.
Alice slowly raised her heavy sword, careful to keep it level and angled just high to defend against any hidden weapons the intruder may carry, but not so high as wear her muscles by the lift itself. Cursing the heavy clatter her armor made with each step, Alice inched towards the dark figure, wary for any movement.
“Who dares the broach the sanctuary of the White Knight?” Alice was careful to summon timber to her voice.
The figure turned at that. “Hello Alice.” The woman smiled, removing her snare before stepping into the light slanting through the treeline, revealing her glittering form. It was the Duchess, the Queen of Heart’s favorite creature. “I was beginning to wonder if you had fallen asleep on watch— a year ago you’d have bounced in here minutes after I stepped into your trap.”
Alice sheathed the sword. “I had a feeling it would be you. What brings you to the forest?”
The Duchess was entirely a creature of the Queen’s fabrication. And that was what makes her the perfect spy — after all, who would expect a plaything of their own devising to turn against them?
It had been a great stroke of luck for the Duchess as a child to fall lost in the forest, and for Alice to find her. That had been the beginning of the plan, five years of careful planning that always seemed to find a new stumbling block to delay implementing, a new pawn to consider, a new play to factor in.
And always pushing back a date Alice could finally see her father once more.
“You seem troubled, Alice.” The Duchess spoke, gently peeling back the veil to reveal her quiet beauty. Alice always preferred this Duchess, striped of the glittery excess of Heart Casino— standing in the forest she feels less like the Queen’s plaything, and more a measure of the woman Alice had grown to know the length of her time in Wonderland.
“Why shouldn’t I be? How was I to know for sure it would be you in my trap. We need a better system to meet, Duchess, especially if our plan to steal the stone of Wonderland-”
“There is no need to steal the stone.” The Duchess’s smile was tight, not quite reaching her eyes. “Someone has beaten us to it. The portal to your world is closed before we could be ready.”
Alice cursed, uncaring of how the Duchess flinched at her coarse language. That stone was integral to their plan— without it, how could she barter for her father, for a way home? “No wonder the cat appeared. All our years of plotting, all of it ruined! The Queen will turn Wonderland upside down to find it. All the plans we’ve made are ruined by the actions of-”
But the Duchess waved her hand, dismissing Alice’s concerns as petty as a court lady inquiring as to the thread count of the noose the Queen’s men twist round her neck. “Fret not Sir Alice. I know who has the stone.”
Alice could only stare at the golden woman in shock. “What?”
“The stone is safe.”
Alice groaned. “Which means that he has it. Duchess, he’s every bit a fabrication of the Queen as you are-”
“Do you not trust me?” Duchess demanded. “For I trust him with my life, every bit as I trust you. The Queen cares too much for her precious son to meddle with his mind, to strip him of the emotions she’s cast out of our hearts only to spoon feed us the echoes of your oyster feelings. Of Wonderland, I would argue he alone is free of the Queen’s influence.”
“Save for the fact he’s the Queen’s son. As evil as the Queen of Hearts is, I don’t think I could trust a man who could stab his own mother in the back to take power for himself. You can’t ask a man to turn against his own mother.”
Duchess smiled. “He has done so himself, by stealing the stone.” But a shadow crosses her face, then. “And by seeking the woman of legend who will do what he cannot, release Wonderland from the Queen’s evil grasp.”
Alice considered that. “You could end the Queen’s rule, Duchess. You may be a creation of the Queen, but I know you have the heart of a true leader. Marry the Prince, save Wonderland yourselves. I only wished to rescue my father.”
“I cannot defy the Queen to such lengths, unless I augment myself with the most powerful of Oyster teas.” Duchess splayed her hands, her body frozen with regret. “And I fear even then I would fail when the time came. My fear for the Queen is great. That is the core of how she holds power over us all.”
But Alice was not convinced. “Your love for the Prince is greater.”
“That is why I came to you. I worry for him— he has hidden himself with the Underground, but they would make him the figurehead they made you those years ago rather than join forces with him to end the Queen’s rule.”
“You want me to find him, save him, and kill his mother for him.”
And the golden Duchess smiled. “Yes."