Just a Little Mad 3/9
Title: Just a Little Mad
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.
Rating: PG
Summary: Luckily for Stephen, Connor is more than what he seems.
Notes: I'm trying to align this with the actual events in Alice so the timing stays the same. I may or may not succeed, but we can pretend, right?
***************************************
Connor had once been bloody stupid enough to break into the Queen's casino on a dare. He hadn't known his way around and had been lucky he'd opened the Rabbit Hole up in a blind corner with no one in it. Pure Cheshire's luck it'd been.
A week later his whole family had been dead. Not for any fault of his own, but that was just how Cheshire's luck ran. Something really good, something really bad.
Now that old bit of luck was lucky again, because it meant he knew a bit of the inside. Not a lot, but enough that he could land up there out of sight, combine a few things in the Tea shop closet and his own regular clothes and have a bit of camouflage. He wouldn't really pass for a suit, but at least no one'd look at him twice out of the corner of their eyes in the halls. Soon enough he was ready and spun up his way into the casino.
Hair slicked down, black jacket on white shirt and all, he hurried through the corridors, trying to look like he was there for a reason, comfortable and had somewhere to be. Hurrying through the halls, he looked at the signs, smiling a little at the abstract symbology that made sense to a Wonderlander but would have an Oyster asking why they couldn't just have an arrow, names and numbers there. A hopping white rabbit and plate of oysters pointed the way to the White Rabbit lunchroom.
A pearl and a happy face looking to the left pointed the way to the section where they sucked the emotions out of Oysters. Connor tried to keep his breath even, tried to look casual as he walked towards the start of the Tea factory. Glancing with faux casual interest into the actual casino room, he saw that Stephen wasn't in there. But there were other places he could be. Emotions they pulled out that weren't right for a casino.
Two scantily clad Diamond girls ambled past, giggling. "They want him drained of Lust before they put him onto the casino floor," the blonde said. "He's very handsome-"
"For an Oyster," said her brunette friend.
"Oh, not just for an Oyster. He's more handsome than the Prince," the blonde informed her friend lasciviously. "This is not a hardship assignment, trust me. Blue eyes, all long and lanky and muscled . . . mmmm. I don't even need a dose of Lust for him, believe you me."
"Sometimes you've got such Cat's luck," the brunette grumbled.
As they parted ways, Connor sighed and followed the blonde. Because if Stephen wound up anywhere, wouldn't it just be in the Lust room, being petted by a hot blonde. His guess was right, as a slow meander past the room showed him a smirking redhead passing off her shift of inducing Lust to the brunette, and Stephen was looking very . . . acquiescent in that room.
He was about to try sneaking out when suddenly the hall was emptied, shift changes having ended. Connor took a deep breath. He wouldn't have a better chance than this, and scattered as he was, better not to try shoving Stephen through a Rabbit Hole right then, because Connor would be distracted and Stephen wasn't going to be all there for a good few minutes after Connor got him out. So, he let impulse carry him through and burst in. With a swing that would have made David (or Abby) proud, he knocked the girl out and off of Stephen, then dragged his teammate out of the room and started hauling him down the corridor, hoping to find a quiet corner for Stephen to recover in. At least enough to get him acting some other way than a space cadet with too much Lust in his system. A quick glance back and Connor winced. Those trousers could not be comfortable right about then. Way too tight.
"Where are my shoes?" Stephen mumbled.
"Not here," Connor told him. "We'll find you some more. Later."
******************************************
Stephen stumbled along as he was towed behind Connor. He struggled to make sense of the dreamscape he was in. Because a minute ago there'd been girls, lots of really hot girls, and it had been pretty brilliant, even if they were teasing a lot. Warm and soft and perfumed, he'd been enjoying himself. And suddenly the world had gone cold and hard and Connor was there, which didn't really make sense, because Connor wasn't the sort who'd interrupt a bloke when he was alone with a girl.
Also, his feet were cold as he was towed along. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.
"I told you, we'll get you more," Connor snapped.
This was distinctly less nice than the girls in the room.
Connor suddenly pushed him into the wall. "Shush," he muttered. From the recess he'd been pushed into, he could see a bunch of people walking by in a crowd, including a girl he thought he recognised from the room. With a frown, he noted that everyone else had shoes. His feet were cold. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.
"Outside," Connor said, a weird note in his voice. Like he was tired of answering the question and was distracted.
A thought was trying to solidify in Stephen's head, but it was so hard to think past the lust those girls had been so set on inducing . . . something about that skittered through his head, and Stephen tried to latch onto the thought and make sense of what was going on. Connor was pulling him along again when a loud announcement shattered his thought processes. "Would the Fives, Sixes, Sevens and Eights of Clubs please report to the third level," came a voice over a PA system.
It had the effect of snapping Stephen back to reality. Clubs, lust, girls with diamond patterns, Wonderland! "Connor? Where are we?" he asked.
Connor shot him a considering look. "We're in the Queen's Casino and I'm trying to break you out. You back with me yet? Or are you going to keep asking about your shoes?"
"I assume we're not going to try one of your anomalies home right now," Stephen murmured.
"No," Connor told him. "It's not like I can concentrate on much of anything but getting out and not getting caught right now."
"Fair enough," Stephen said. Then he glanced down. His feet were bare and terribly cold on the linoleum floor. "Where are my shoes, anyhow?"
"No idea," Connor told him blithely. "I guess they suck feelings out through your feet, because I've yet to see an Oyster around here with shoes."
And then suddenly they were spotted. "It's the Hatter!" shouted a man in a suit with a numeral four and a club on the lapel. "He's escaped from Dee and Dum!"
"Cheshire's luck!" Connor said in a tone that suggested he was cursing. Then they ran, hurtling through the halls, and Stephen found himself being wrenched through a wall or two, Connor looking paler with each transit. They were momentarily safe, and Stephen pulled Connor to a halt. "Breathe, Connor. Take a minute. You look like hell," he said. It was true. The geek was sweating and shivering and clinging to the wall behind him to stay upright.
"Of all the Cat cursed . . ." Connor trailed off. "It's just so hard, Stephen."
"Take it easy and we'll figure a way out," Stephen reassured him. He was surprised to find that he still had the gun. He supposed that people who were drugged up to the gills were probably compliant enough that it wasn't worth bothering to check them for weapons because they wouldn't think to use them. "What happened to you, anyhow?" he asked.
Connor took a deep breath and frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, they said Hatter had escaped from somewhere," Stephen pointed out. "You said that's your name, so unless you've got a twin around . . . what?"
But Connor was suddenly wild-eyed. "Hatter . . ." he murmured. "But Dodo said that . . . he wouldn't . . . but maybe, times being what they were . . . that'd mean . . . We have to find him!"
"Who?" Stephen asked, perplexed.
"Maybe I'm wrong," Connor told him. "But I wasn't being held by anyone. I just broke in. Which means there's someone here that looks like me being held." The look in his eyes when he glanced back at Stephen was so hopeful it almost hurt to look. "But I did once have a twin brother. I thought he was dead."
Following the cryptic signs, and Stephen wondered what a cartoon thinking bubble and a stick could possibly indicate to Connor that would make him take a turn down that hall. "Why don't you people use words and numbers?" he muttered.
"Why should we?" Connor asked, sounding far too amused. "It's obvious that's leading to the rooms where they dig through people's minds."
"With a stick?" Stephen asked.
"That's a cattle prod," Connor told him.
*****************************
David could feel his grip on reality slipping, the lava lamp he was trapped inside with Dee and Dum just adding to the disorientation that came from too little sleep, too much pain and the judicious application of electricity to the point where it had sort of stopped hurting because it had passed beyond pain into something else.
There was a commotion at the other side of the room, and suddenly a door popped open. Dee and Dum were shot away, and that was when he knew he'd started chasing the Cheshire. "David! Cheshire, tell me you've not gone mad."
"Clearly I have," he replied. "'Cause Conn? You're not real. You're dead."
"I'm not," the hallucination with his brother's face said. "Dodo lied to me. He said you were dead."
"You look like a suit," David pointed out.
Connor, or his hallucination, sighed and started tugging the straps that held David down. "I had to break in, yeah? What was I supposed to do? Wear Dad's purple hat with the green ribbon and the matching jacket Mum bought?"
"Can't wear the jacket," David muttered. "Alice has it."
"Alice?" Connor's voice was amused. "Of Legend?"
A voice interrupted them. It was an Oyster, in a dull grey shirt, no shoes and holding a very familiar gun. "Can we get him out and then argue about who's not real later?"
It was the surreality of everything that convinced David it had to be real. Because he could never have come up with this and neither could the Queen's goons. "Connor? Little brother?"
And then he had his arms around the twin he'd thought he'd never see again. "Cheshire, you're alright!"
"Five minutes," Connor muttered into his collarbone, sounding like he was going to cry. "Five minutes and you're always rabbiting on about being older."
"Should I start trying to find a pair of shoes?" asked the Oyster.
Connor pulled away and shot an amused look at the man. "Now you're just being obnoxious," he told him. "David, this is Stephen, Stephen, my brother David."
"Now we just have to find Alice," David said urgently. The girl hadn't the common sense of a bucket of gravel, but she had a way about her.
Hissing, Connor said in surprise, "There's actually an Alice?"
Whimsically, Stephen the Oyster said, "Why shouldn't there be?"
"You're not going to get all literary on me now, are you?" Connor asked the man. "By the way, I can't wait to try to explain to Cutter how you got a tattoo."
"Yes, there's an Alice," David said, "And I'm pretty sure the Queen's got her around here somewhere."
"Hatter." Came a mechanical voice behind them.
They turned and David shoved Connor behind him. He didn't know where his brother had been all these years, but he wasn't going to lose him to March. "Hello, Marchie. Looks like I'm not going to continue enjoying your hospitality."
"I should have known you'd wriggle out of it," March said. "Well, you're going to be more trouble than you're worth." He turned, clearly about to call the guards, when Connor snatched the gun from his Oyster friend and shot March.
"You always had the worst taste in friends, David," he said.
The Oyster stared. "You killed him?"
"He was already dead," David hastened to reassure the man. "The Queen had him brought back. Still don't know how she did it. Most people don't come back from beheading."
The man had that same sort of bewilderment in his eyes as Alice seemed to have all the time, but he recovered. "Connor, you've got to remember to hold your stance when you're shooting. You don't have the arm strength to do that. You're lucky the recoil didn't twist your aim off completely."
"You and Cutter can scold me later. Where do you think they'd take your Alice?" Connor asked.
"I'm never going to get shoes, am I?" asked Stephen the Oyster.
Connor laughed. "You're really just trying to annoy me aren't you?"
"Call it revenge," the man said.
"This way," David told them, and led the way to the noisy upset that was sure to be Alice's fault. It seemed like it always was. They'd get Alice, get out, and then he and Connor had a score to settle with Dodo's lying arse.
Part Two
Part Four
Return to Other Fandoms Archive
Return to Primeval Archive
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.
Rating: PG
Summary: Luckily for Stephen, Connor is more than what he seems.
Notes: I'm trying to align this with the actual events in Alice so the timing stays the same. I may or may not succeed, but we can pretend, right?
***************************************
Connor had once been bloody stupid enough to break into the Queen's casino on a dare. He hadn't known his way around and had been lucky he'd opened the Rabbit Hole up in a blind corner with no one in it. Pure Cheshire's luck it'd been.
A week later his whole family had been dead. Not for any fault of his own, but that was just how Cheshire's luck ran. Something really good, something really bad.
Now that old bit of luck was lucky again, because it meant he knew a bit of the inside. Not a lot, but enough that he could land up there out of sight, combine a few things in the Tea shop closet and his own regular clothes and have a bit of camouflage. He wouldn't really pass for a suit, but at least no one'd look at him twice out of the corner of their eyes in the halls. Soon enough he was ready and spun up his way into the casino.
Hair slicked down, black jacket on white shirt and all, he hurried through the corridors, trying to look like he was there for a reason, comfortable and had somewhere to be. Hurrying through the halls, he looked at the signs, smiling a little at the abstract symbology that made sense to a Wonderlander but would have an Oyster asking why they couldn't just have an arrow, names and numbers there. A hopping white rabbit and plate of oysters pointed the way to the White Rabbit lunchroom.
A pearl and a happy face looking to the left pointed the way to the section where they sucked the emotions out of Oysters. Connor tried to keep his breath even, tried to look casual as he walked towards the start of the Tea factory. Glancing with faux casual interest into the actual casino room, he saw that Stephen wasn't in there. But there were other places he could be. Emotions they pulled out that weren't right for a casino.
Two scantily clad Diamond girls ambled past, giggling. "They want him drained of Lust before they put him onto the casino floor," the blonde said. "He's very handsome-"
"For an Oyster," said her brunette friend.
"Oh, not just for an Oyster. He's more handsome than the Prince," the blonde informed her friend lasciviously. "This is not a hardship assignment, trust me. Blue eyes, all long and lanky and muscled . . . mmmm. I don't even need a dose of Lust for him, believe you me."
"Sometimes you've got such Cat's luck," the brunette grumbled.
As they parted ways, Connor sighed and followed the blonde. Because if Stephen wound up anywhere, wouldn't it just be in the Lust room, being petted by a hot blonde. His guess was right, as a slow meander past the room showed him a smirking redhead passing off her shift of inducing Lust to the brunette, and Stephen was looking very . . . acquiescent in that room.
He was about to try sneaking out when suddenly the hall was emptied, shift changes having ended. Connor took a deep breath. He wouldn't have a better chance than this, and scattered as he was, better not to try shoving Stephen through a Rabbit Hole right then, because Connor would be distracted and Stephen wasn't going to be all there for a good few minutes after Connor got him out. So, he let impulse carry him through and burst in. With a swing that would have made David (or Abby) proud, he knocked the girl out and off of Stephen, then dragged his teammate out of the room and started hauling him down the corridor, hoping to find a quiet corner for Stephen to recover in. At least enough to get him acting some other way than a space cadet with too much Lust in his system. A quick glance back and Connor winced. Those trousers could not be comfortable right about then. Way too tight.
"Where are my shoes?" Stephen mumbled.
"Not here," Connor told him. "We'll find you some more. Later."
******************************************
Stephen stumbled along as he was towed behind Connor. He struggled to make sense of the dreamscape he was in. Because a minute ago there'd been girls, lots of really hot girls, and it had been pretty brilliant, even if they were teasing a lot. Warm and soft and perfumed, he'd been enjoying himself. And suddenly the world had gone cold and hard and Connor was there, which didn't really make sense, because Connor wasn't the sort who'd interrupt a bloke when he was alone with a girl.
Also, his feet were cold as he was towed along. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.
"I told you, we'll get you more," Connor snapped.
This was distinctly less nice than the girls in the room.
Connor suddenly pushed him into the wall. "Shush," he muttered. From the recess he'd been pushed into, he could see a bunch of people walking by in a crowd, including a girl he thought he recognised from the room. With a frown, he noted that everyone else had shoes. His feet were cold. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.
"Outside," Connor said, a weird note in his voice. Like he was tired of answering the question and was distracted.
A thought was trying to solidify in Stephen's head, but it was so hard to think past the lust those girls had been so set on inducing . . . something about that skittered through his head, and Stephen tried to latch onto the thought and make sense of what was going on. Connor was pulling him along again when a loud announcement shattered his thought processes. "Would the Fives, Sixes, Sevens and Eights of Clubs please report to the third level," came a voice over a PA system.
It had the effect of snapping Stephen back to reality. Clubs, lust, girls with diamond patterns, Wonderland! "Connor? Where are we?" he asked.
Connor shot him a considering look. "We're in the Queen's Casino and I'm trying to break you out. You back with me yet? Or are you going to keep asking about your shoes?"
"I assume we're not going to try one of your anomalies home right now," Stephen murmured.
"No," Connor told him. "It's not like I can concentrate on much of anything but getting out and not getting caught right now."
"Fair enough," Stephen said. Then he glanced down. His feet were bare and terribly cold on the linoleum floor. "Where are my shoes, anyhow?"
"No idea," Connor told him blithely. "I guess they suck feelings out through your feet, because I've yet to see an Oyster around here with shoes."
And then suddenly they were spotted. "It's the Hatter!" shouted a man in a suit with a numeral four and a club on the lapel. "He's escaped from Dee and Dum!"
"Cheshire's luck!" Connor said in a tone that suggested he was cursing. Then they ran, hurtling through the halls, and Stephen found himself being wrenched through a wall or two, Connor looking paler with each transit. They were momentarily safe, and Stephen pulled Connor to a halt. "Breathe, Connor. Take a minute. You look like hell," he said. It was true. The geek was sweating and shivering and clinging to the wall behind him to stay upright.
"Of all the Cat cursed . . ." Connor trailed off. "It's just so hard, Stephen."
"Take it easy and we'll figure a way out," Stephen reassured him. He was surprised to find that he still had the gun. He supposed that people who were drugged up to the gills were probably compliant enough that it wasn't worth bothering to check them for weapons because they wouldn't think to use them. "What happened to you, anyhow?" he asked.
Connor took a deep breath and frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, they said Hatter had escaped from somewhere," Stephen pointed out. "You said that's your name, so unless you've got a twin around . . . what?"
But Connor was suddenly wild-eyed. "Hatter . . ." he murmured. "But Dodo said that . . . he wouldn't . . . but maybe, times being what they were . . . that'd mean . . . We have to find him!"
"Who?" Stephen asked, perplexed.
"Maybe I'm wrong," Connor told him. "But I wasn't being held by anyone. I just broke in. Which means there's someone here that looks like me being held." The look in his eyes when he glanced back at Stephen was so hopeful it almost hurt to look. "But I did once have a twin brother. I thought he was dead."
Following the cryptic signs, and Stephen wondered what a cartoon thinking bubble and a stick could possibly indicate to Connor that would make him take a turn down that hall. "Why don't you people use words and numbers?" he muttered.
"Why should we?" Connor asked, sounding far too amused. "It's obvious that's leading to the rooms where they dig through people's minds."
"With a stick?" Stephen asked.
"That's a cattle prod," Connor told him.
*****************************
David could feel his grip on reality slipping, the lava lamp he was trapped inside with Dee and Dum just adding to the disorientation that came from too little sleep, too much pain and the judicious application of electricity to the point where it had sort of stopped hurting because it had passed beyond pain into something else.
There was a commotion at the other side of the room, and suddenly a door popped open. Dee and Dum were shot away, and that was when he knew he'd started chasing the Cheshire. "David! Cheshire, tell me you've not gone mad."
"Clearly I have," he replied. "'Cause Conn? You're not real. You're dead."
"I'm not," the hallucination with his brother's face said. "Dodo lied to me. He said you were dead."
"You look like a suit," David pointed out.
Connor, or his hallucination, sighed and started tugging the straps that held David down. "I had to break in, yeah? What was I supposed to do? Wear Dad's purple hat with the green ribbon and the matching jacket Mum bought?"
"Can't wear the jacket," David muttered. "Alice has it."
"Alice?" Connor's voice was amused. "Of Legend?"
A voice interrupted them. It was an Oyster, in a dull grey shirt, no shoes and holding a very familiar gun. "Can we get him out and then argue about who's not real later?"
It was the surreality of everything that convinced David it had to be real. Because he could never have come up with this and neither could the Queen's goons. "Connor? Little brother?"
And then he had his arms around the twin he'd thought he'd never see again. "Cheshire, you're alright!"
"Five minutes," Connor muttered into his collarbone, sounding like he was going to cry. "Five minutes and you're always rabbiting on about being older."
"Should I start trying to find a pair of shoes?" asked the Oyster.
Connor pulled away and shot an amused look at the man. "Now you're just being obnoxious," he told him. "David, this is Stephen, Stephen, my brother David."
"Now we just have to find Alice," David said urgently. The girl hadn't the common sense of a bucket of gravel, but she had a way about her.
Hissing, Connor said in surprise, "There's actually an Alice?"
Whimsically, Stephen the Oyster said, "Why shouldn't there be?"
"You're not going to get all literary on me now, are you?" Connor asked the man. "By the way, I can't wait to try to explain to Cutter how you got a tattoo."
"Yes, there's an Alice," David said, "And I'm pretty sure the Queen's got her around here somewhere."
"Hatter." Came a mechanical voice behind them.
They turned and David shoved Connor behind him. He didn't know where his brother had been all these years, but he wasn't going to lose him to March. "Hello, Marchie. Looks like I'm not going to continue enjoying your hospitality."
"I should have known you'd wriggle out of it," March said. "Well, you're going to be more trouble than you're worth." He turned, clearly about to call the guards, when Connor snatched the gun from his Oyster friend and shot March.
"You always had the worst taste in friends, David," he said.
The Oyster stared. "You killed him?"
"He was already dead," David hastened to reassure the man. "The Queen had him brought back. Still don't know how she did it. Most people don't come back from beheading."
The man had that same sort of bewilderment in his eyes as Alice seemed to have all the time, but he recovered. "Connor, you've got to remember to hold your stance when you're shooting. You don't have the arm strength to do that. You're lucky the recoil didn't twist your aim off completely."
"You and Cutter can scold me later. Where do you think they'd take your Alice?" Connor asked.
"I'm never going to get shoes, am I?" asked Stephen the Oyster.
Connor laughed. "You're really just trying to annoy me aren't you?"
"Call it revenge," the man said.
"This way," David told them, and led the way to the noisy upset that was sure to be Alice's fault. It seemed like it always was. They'd get Alice, get out, and then he and Connor had a score to settle with Dodo's lying arse.
Part Two
Part Four
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Return to Primeval Archive