asgardmeridiem | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: (Elder) Alice and open
What: After the school fire, Alice more or less blacked out and slept for a few days, only to wander out while hallucinating. She finally wakes up.
When: Day 422
Where: All over Asgard
Warnings: May have potential triggers or content warning here for mental illness (i.e. disassociation and hallucinating), but nothing fairly extreme. I just want to make that pretty clear, since these things can be sensitive in nature.

The rest of it seems to be a blur.

Or rather, a big, big blotch of black ink on paper, from a fountain pin onto white paper. It spreads and spreads, until the blinding white is consumed by black. Darkness. She feels herself falling and falling -- but there is no rabbit hole to speak of, just a sinking feeling until she hits something. Hard.

She had fallen off the bed, not that she would have noticed. In an lucid dream, Alice had staggered out of doorway, down a flight of stairs that seemed too endless for her memory, as if she was going further and further into darkness again. The ground was rumbling and in her mind, she envisioned snakes and wolves, climbing up a hill made of doll heads and skulls, past grey visions of figures with no faces to spare. "LOOK AT ME." She hears them screaming.

But in her mind, Alice had kept her head low, her head ringing as she staggered forward, bare feet hitting the cobbled stone street, as Alice was remembering something... something terribly vague. Triangles... shards. Absolutely hysteric! Glass? A vision of her arms red, black and white. Blood red. The rage box? No, that was left in Wonderland.

"Worry for others can end up damaging you, Alice."

She can still glance back to the Dollhouse now and see them glancing through the windows waiting for safety. But had she not gone through a window? No, that couldn't be it. She could recall smoke and climbing through a window, but it seems to blur. She was seven in that memory, not nineteen. Alice finally glances down at her hands, sure that there were shards of glass in them, but.

There's nothing. No burns, no scratches, no cuts. Nothing.

"I've could have sworn-"

She was consumed by her visions, which is, sadly, not terribly unusual for her. She flexes her trembling hands, turning them front to back to inspect them. Not a trace on her pale skin, nothing more than the sickly parlor of her skin and veins. Was it just her imagination running loose? It may take a few more moments, but Alice is currently pulling herself back up off the ground, clutching her head as the headache subsides.

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While she circles the hatter simply sits there for a moment before getting up once more and rummaging through a few more drawers once again. It didn't do very much good to get one thing out and not what you actually need to make the tea. After a few moments he manages to pull out a tin that had been given to him as payment for a hat and placed in on top of one of the partially constructed tophats.

Finally he takes his seat again, this time seeming to settle in a little more. A little confused by the statement he figured that she just meant the weather or something since she was probably pretty chilly.

"Yes, well it's absolutely important to make sure it's not too cold or too hot or the glue won't won't hold probably while I work."

"Hatter?"

Alice is a little afraid to ask, wrapping herself further into his coat sheepishly. Her green eyes are the only thing point to the dress. She just cannot work up the nerve to ask.

"Is that-?"

"It's a dress. It should fit better than a coat, unless you would rather wear a coat? I could make one of those as well, though I would have to go get the fabric, and probably some heavier thread, oh and I would need different buttons."

He wasn't entirely certain why she wouldn't have known a dress as a dress and Alice had certainly not fussed when made the dress for her when she showed up at their tea party in Underland.

He's always true to his word, isn't he? And she won't be able to talk the Mad Hatter out of anything if he sets his mind on it, despite how undeserving Alice thinks she is. Oh, no. She won't get sheepish about it, but she does, on the other hand, puff up at the idea that comes to mind.

"Oh, Hatter! No, no! You do need your coat back, don't you? Thank you! I will return the favor, I promise!" Unless he's like a few of the people Alice knows and insists otherwise.

"Buttons, uh- there could be some in Freyr's district..." She trails off.

"Well if would be nice to have, since it has quite a few pockets and if there's ice it might get rather chilly."

Come now Alice you should know that he doesn't really consider it that way, it's a favor for him to get to work at his craft and to make something. Besides Alice certainly deserved anything that he could make for taking acre of the jaberwock and for helping the queen to retrieve her crown.

"Maybe so, what kind of buttons do you like?"

"Blue?"

Her favorite color, of course. She doesn't really mean for that to come out as a question. Buttons are blue -- they're always blue, all sorts. She may as well be warm enough, so Alice stands back up, approaching him with her hands on the rim, "I mean- blue is fine, I think that your creative expertise is better than mine for that."

She thinks to herself how absurd she sounds, how ridiculous that may be, "Do you want your coat back, then?"

"I suppose so. Ah yes it would be good to have my coat back if Alice is done with it. It would also make trying on the dress a lot easier."

Since usually coats were worn on the outside and not the inside of something like a dress, and he wasn't quite sure that either would fit the other way around. Though he could make one that would, and maybe he should or rather not since he had to find buttons first blue buttons of course.

Getting the dress off the mannequin rather easily he held it out for her.

"It think it should look better on Alice than the dummy."

There would be that fluster again and Alice is back to hiding her face behind her dark locks. Accepting an article of clothing will never be this easy for Alice ever again. "Yes," She mutters, with a few baby steps.

She'll try again, reluctantly shrugging off the coat and quietly handing it back to Hatter. With looking at the other side of the room, of course.

"Well. Here is your coat, Hatter."

They can have an awkward trade, but it's Alice who's being awkward.

"Thank you."

Handing over the dress while accepting the coat, he was rather curious what it would look like. Though after just a moment he realized that she was still in a nightgown now and that she couldn't quite get dressed with him being right there.

"Oop, sorry. I'll wait out here."

Laying the coat across the barrage of partial hats he quickly stepped out into the hall to give Alice a little privacy. After this they would be able to have tea and things would be back as they always were, and then they could figure out what Alice was needing to do so badly she couldn't sleep.

Yes, that would do nicely before there's a little mishap of Alice dying from embarrassment.

Or so she thinks, she allows herself a brief moment to actually be a youth, despite the added years of trauma and scars. Her jaded mind can use this break, even as Alice will still say she's not worthy these things.

Not worthy, at all.

It will take a few minutes for Alice to gain courage to even put it on. She's normally not this shy, this reluctant. This place has really changed her, she almost feels... normal. And how ironic is that for a mythical world to do that? Please don't let me go back to London. She wishes and hopes that over and over.

Ater a good twenty minutes of Alice giving herself grief and swimming in her self-loathing, Alice opens the door rather shyly to step out in that dress, trembling hands on her nightgown in her arms. She a least feels warmer. "Ah... Hatter? Are you there?"

Waiting, it did take a little longer than he had expected for Alice to change but all the while the hatter stayed where he was. Sitting just outside the door fiddling with this and that which had been pulled from his pockets. Once or twice he had been tempted to knock and check on her, but eventually she opened the door and he looked back over his shoulder.

"Of course! Did it fit?"

Standing up he turned to face Alice. It did, good, and it certainly wasn't a bad dress at all. "I like it."

"Oh, no, it fits!"

"Fits" is a little ambiguous, a little loose around her, but at least she can be modest and that's what matters to Alice. She'll always be a little small for her age.

"I'm Sorry, I wasn't... sure about a few things..."

Few things being more like the usual self-conscious behavior of a nineteen year old.

Well he could take it in a bit more, but something told him that Alice would probably like it more the way it was. And she hadn't seemed very keen on standing still or being touched very much both of which he would have to do to alter it just right.

Besides it really was fine just the way it was. It wasn't as if it were falling off of her as the coat had been.

"Weren't sure?"

It hadn't seemed like that complicated of a dress. Ah but maybe she had been trying to figure out what to wear with it and whether the hat he had given her would go at all with it, though he imagined that it would since it had blue in it as well.

"Now that Alice is dressed, what do we need to do?"

She's not too bothered; even the most simplest, newer clothes mean a lot to Alice. Without being reduced to a flustered mess, she nods, even as she can't really explain her dawdling in the room for twenty minutes.

It's a girl thing, clearly.

"I need to rest," She's tired, but it's likely she slept for days, taking a seat back down with sore feet and her head spinning.

"Then you should use the bed, it's rather comfortable. Especially when you lie down rather than just sitting on it. Though the chair works rather well too and I've fallen asleep there quite a few times while I was working."

Sometime it was even mid-stitch and he would just close his eyes. And if Alice was tired it was certainly alright for her to sleep there while he watched over her to keep her safe. And there certainly was no place safer.

Alice opts to curl up on a chair, pulling her legs to her chest to nestle herself on it, just like a cat. She has no qualms that she may pass out right in his company. He's an old friend, after all, someone she trusts, showing a great vulnerability. Alice simply shakes her head with a soft "no".

This is his spot, not hers. She isn't sure how long she slept, but it had to have been a while. And worst of all, she doesn't recall a thing. Alice will resign herself to that fact for now.

Well then they could simply stay where they were. Taking a seat he left everything just where it had been and there were certainly enough things to keep one occupied in the room, which was rather cluttered and unorganized; at least to most people since he knew just where everything was. There certainly was no rush here as there had been in Underland, and he certainly didn't want to rush her off since he enjoyed her company. So he would simply let her rest there.

A few minutes later and Alice mutters something about Dormy and the March Hare. He must miss them in Asgard. She nestles against the couch after she lets out a small sigh relief. She's out like a light after allowing herself a simple pleasure of her childhood memories of his tea parties. She may startle later on from terrible nightmares, but for now, Alice seems like her old self from so many years ago sleeping like that.

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