Chapter Eight: Last Resort (1)

[manniness]

OK, another looooong multi-part chapter.

*~*~*~*

One foot is placed in front of the other. One step is suffered at a time.

Alice can no longer feel their plodding progress itself, even as they make it. The cold, sucking mud has long since drawn all feeling out of her legs from the knees down. Her hips and thighs and back compensate for the lack of sensation by screaming in agony as she pulls one foot out of the muck, thrusts it forward, sinks it back into the marshy earth, and then lifts the other.

She can only imagine how Tarrant is bearing this.

Reaching up, she yanks on his hand again where it dangles in front of her chest. She’s too lightheaded – perhaps from lack of sleep although that has never affected her this strongly before – and too shaky – from pushing her body past its limits, no doubt – and too exhausted to be gentle with him. At this point, she’s just trying to remind him that they’re both still Alive. Loving and teasing touches will come after they’ve made it through the Slough.

She fairly claws at his clammy, mud-splattered, grimy hand. Tarrant fumbles until his fingers grasp hers and although he does not speak – he can barely keep his eyes open for any length of time! – he does respond with a painfully strong grip.

If she weren’t incapable of stringing two words together, she would have thanked him for the discomfort. Anything other than the monotony of their trek is welcome at this point. Anything.

“Tam... safe,” he rasps suddenly.

Alice blinks, breathes, and winces as she pulls her left foot out of the muck. A few steps later, when the meaning registers in her brain, she nods. “Yes.”

“... good,” he points out flatly.

“Very.” Yes, it is very good that they had decided to send Tam to Upland. He’ll be safe there. Margaret will look after him. Hamish will lecture him. Winslow will corrupt him. Yes, Tam is fine.

“Son...” Tarrant grunts and Alice thinks she might have actually heard a sprinkling of emotion in his tone. “So glad. Thank you, Alice.”

She takes one more step... one step which Tarrant does not take with her... and stops. “No,” she tells him, finally understanding what he’s trying to say. “No quitting.”

She tugs weakly at his arm. He shuffles a bit in the mud and stops again.

“So sorry.”

“Shut up and walk, Tarrant!” she hisses, hot fury flaming through her muscles, reanimating her. She knows it won’t last and when it burns out she’ll be even worse off that she had been before. That doesn’t stop her from taking advantage of it. “Are you going to let me die here?”

He raises his eyes – a frighteningly dull gray – to her face and stares at her.

“You quit; I quit,” she threatens.

Slowly, he shakes his head. His long auburn hair is matted and tangled and looks utterly foul from where he had permitted the slimy moss hanging from the skeletal branches of the half dead willow trees to drag over his head and shoulders. He had been too tired to try to duck or dodge them.

Alice continues her onslaught and there is no room for sympathy in her attack: “Will you make our son an orphan? What was the last thing you said to him? Did you tell him how much you love him? Did you tell him he’d never see you again?”

“Alice...” he wheezes, pained. His face twists with such agony she doesn’t doubt she’ll feel guilty for torturing him like this... later... when she has the energy to spare for it.

“Either keep walking or let me fall into the mud, Tarrant.”

“Twimble fumpt,” he curses and begins slogging forward again. Alice grimly joins him, taking note of his colorless state. She can even see the pinkish shadows of lingering stains on his once-again-too-white face. She has a fleeting thought for checking his wound, wonders how much blood he has lost, but there is nothing she can do to improve his state by expending energy on either.

“Ten,” she announces, completing a step. And then another: “Nine...”

“Eight,” he gasps.

“Seven...”

They count down to one and then Alice starts over again. Over and over and over they count down from ten and little by little the ground firms, the trees thicken, until – suddenly! – she stumbles against Tarrant, scrabbling at his waist in a futile attempt to keep herself upright as her feet hit what feels suspiciously like a hard-packed dirt path. The solid surface beneath the mud-saturated soles of her boots jars her knees and she squeals with the vibrations as they run up her aching spine. Tarrant’s right hand fists in the remains of her tunic and keeps her from falling flat on her face.

“Sorry. Sorry,” she mutters, climbing shakily back to her feet. She tucks herself under his arm again, noting that he’d locked his knees to stay standing. They have to get moving again or he’ll pass out right where he stands.

Alice uses whatever is close at hand to pull them further along the path.

“Familiar,” Tarrant whines as the path begins to slope upward through the scraggly forest of foliage-less trees.

“I know.”

“Alice...”

“I know.”

“Won’t help...”

“He will.” Or else.

“Impossible.”

“Only if you believe it is.”

Alice sets her jaw, ignores the oscillating torment of shattering cold and frightening numbness along her heart line, and nearly drags Tarrant along the path. They pass intersection after intersection but Alice continues stubbornly south. She conserves her voice, struggles to plan her strategy but her thoughts are slippery and every tactic she considers turns into a threat or a plea. She can only hope she performs better than she thinks when they arrive.

And arrive they do. Tarrant is shuddering, shivering, swaying on his feet as Alive pounds on the door. The effort is only possible with the aid of her entire body. Tarrant has no strength left to offer. He is spent and standing only because Alice had leaned down and locked his knees into position herself before she’d thrown herself at the castle gate.

She pounds on the door, screams to the midday sky... or, at least, she thinks she does. In all honesty, she cannot be sure.

“Prince Jaspien!” she pleads, all thoughts of threats long since evaporated. The heart line alternately burns her with cold, sears her with heat, and numbs to nothing, which is the most frightening sensation of all.

She slumps against the door, cries out when her knees hit the hard-packed dirt, and sighs when the door swings open. She looks up and into the unfeeling face of the man who had once lusted after the White Realm, had participated in Alice’s capture and had held Mirana against her will... She looks up into the face she hates more than any other in all of Underland.

“Please...” she begs, swaying, struggling not to fall prostrate on the ground. Although it won’t hurt her case, she doubts she’ll be able to get back up again.

Jaspien regards her for a moment that seems to warp into an eternity. She pants on the threshold of the only available haven for miles, too tired to plead, too exhausted to argue, too dizzy to even keep her eyes open for more than an instant at a time.

Finally, the gray, indifferent man replies, “If you can get him to a bed, I will fetch what medicines I have.”

She very nearly passes out with relief right then.

“However...” he muses softly.

Alice holds her breath, wills herself to concentrate.

“You will owe me a boon.”

“Name it,” she whispers despite her dry tongue and cracked lips.

He does.

“Agreed.” She would have agreed to anything to save Tarrant, so the concession is not difficult to make. No, not difficult at all.