Chapter Eleven: The Hightopps of Iplam (1)

[manniness]

This entry is rated M for semi-explicit sexual content.

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Alice opens her eyes and squints against the glow of the dawn-light seeping into the room through the window. For a minute, she is oddly disoriented – Where is she? How had she gotten here? Why does she feel so... light? – and then her arms throb, ache, and twinge.

Her gaze passes over familiar bedroom walls and a mussed bed to the warm body lying rather heavily across her lap.

Tarrant.

She blinks at his not-so-pale, not-so-stained face and not-so-short, not-so-orange hair. She studies the fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth and the gray hairs at his temples and...

“Tarrant!” she rasps, watching one of her own youthful-and-familiarly-scarred hands reach for his chest and press against his Heart Mark. His perfect Heart Mark.

The scar is gone. Gone as if it had never been. The Fates had kept their word about this, at least!

A sob of joy catches in her throat.

“Tarrant! Wake up! You’re home!”

But he does not wake. He stares up at nothing and does not breathe. Within his chest, his heart does not beat.

A flash of panic explodes through Alice, streaks down her heart line – which is far from numb and crumbly now! – and she feels Tarrant’s heart thump once beneath her hand in response. Once, and then... nothing.

No.

NO!!

“Tarrant!” she hisses, mindful of their son who is still sleeping down the hall.

He does not answer, does not blink, does not twitch at that tone of voice which has always made him jerk in response. It is her Widow’s Voice, Alice realizes tangently, the tone she had used on him when she had been old and gray and his self-appointed mentor.

He does not recognize it now.

“You will come back to me,” she informs him. She refuses to believe that he had chosen to remain Beyond. He would never... never... ! Not knowing what else to do or how else to elicit a heartbeat from him, Alice Pushes him through the heart line. She Sends him her fear and love and need and NOW and—!

His heart thumps again beneath her hand. Thumps once and only once.

“Brangergain...!” She lays him down against the pillows and scrambles upright. “Why can’t things be bloody simple for once?” she grits out, crouching over him.

He doesn’t answer.

“Live!” she commands, and it is a Command for she is a queen, is she not? At least, in the eyes of the Fates? Surely that must count for something! She presses her hand against his Heart Mark and – with everything in her that could possibly produce a Royal Decree – Orders his heart to beat.

Sluggishly, it does, but only in response to her regular and intentional manipulation of the heart line.

“Not enough,” she mutters, struggling to stay calm, to think. She has nearly succeeded. Nearly. But she is forgetting something, missing something. What had the Fates told her? They could not make his heart beat again nor could they... what?

“Breathe life into him,” she hears herself gasp.

She leans over him, presses her mouth to his slack lips even as she concentrates all her love for him into rhythmic pulses against his heart. She seals her lips against his and gives him the very breath from her own lungs.

It rushes out almost immediately through his nose and blows against her cheek.

“Bugger—!”

She steadies herself to try again. With her free hand, Alice reaches up and pinches his nose closed.

I love you, she Sends with yet another Push, another Jolt, another Shock.

She inhales deeply.

I need you, she Presses.

And she exhales all the breath she can manage into his mouth.

Come back to me, she Commands.

Beneath her hand, his chest rises just the smallest amount to accommodate the breath she had forced into his body.

Tarrant, please!

Please!

PLEASE!

And then he’s shuddering, twitching, coughing beneath her. His hands flail a bit, as if he has forgotten how to use them, before clutching at hers and pulling them just the slightest bit away – enough so that his nose is free and only her fingertips brush his chest. Alice coughs as well, as the gusts of unexpectedly expelled air puff into her mouth, and she leans back of her own volition, her gaze wide and desperate and seeking and...

Had she done it?

“Al—lice?” he wheezes thinly.

She clamps her jaw shut and stares in frantic silence at his fluttering eyelids, his roving and confused gaze, his gasping mouth. Recalling the Fates’ warnings – remembering that this venture of hers may have failed, that it may not be her husband who has returned to her but another spirit from Beyond – Alice holds back her words of welcome and searches for something she can say, some question she could ask... the answer to which would prove that he is hers ...

His brows twitch as he looks from her to his Heart Mark and his eyes widen when he sees it.

“The scar... Alice... my Alice, what have you done?”

“Everything,” she replies, her temper momentarily overcoming her hesitance and fear. “Everything the Fates asked. Everything you didn’t tell me I would have to do, you slurvish man.”

“I...” His voice dies away as he takes in her expression: she doesn’t doubt she looks as furious and frightened as she feels. “Aye, I am. An’ aye, ye did,” he admits solemnly. “I still remember ye... Gray Lady.”

She dares to think, if only briefly: perhaps everything truly is fine and her husband is truly lying in their bed, looking up at her with grave understanding...

“I remember what ye did fer me,” he whispers, not moving. “I have always remembered.”

She knows. She knows he has despite his never having spoken of that time or of his mentor, for he had passed on those very lessons to her when she had asked for his help so long ago, when she had asked him to train her, to test her, to push her, to show her if she could be a Champion. And she recalls how – before Frabjous Day – he had hidden her with the aid of Pishsalver and an empty teapot, had recited the prophecy to her on the road to Iplam, had successfully tossed her to safety on his hat, had surrendered himself to capture, had lied to the Red Queen, had fought the Knave with little more than a perfume bottle and a powder puff, had stepped forward to protect her on the battlefield when she had needed help most...

“Other things...” he muses softly and uncertainly, “I cannot... Alice, where was I until you... before I opened my eyes just now?”

Honestly, she does not know more than the name of the place. She had heeded the Fates’ warnings and invited the light to cauterize her senses before she had entered Beyond. “What do you remember?” she replies on a thread of sound, still terrified to hope but helplessly wishing-wanting-needing for it to be true that her husband has indeed come back to her!

“Dying,” he replies, shuddering. “I remember dying and, before that, your tears.” He lifts a hand to her dry cheeks. “I remember whispering to Tam...” He blinks, focuses, and then frowns thoughtfully. “He won’t be needing that Answer to His Prayers, after all.”

“T—Tarrant?” she stutters, unable to stop the momentum of her growing belief that it is truly him!

He startles, surprised at her hesitance. “Alice, are you expecting someone else?”

“Are you someone else?”

He whispers, “To my knowledge... I’m precisely whom you see afore ye.”

Iambic pentameter, she nearly informs him.

“Raven?” he worriedly prompts her.

Shivering, she reaches for his hands. “Why,” she rasps, “have you never had your hair cut short... again?”

He studies her face, his expression only concerned and not cunning, not conniving or cheating. “I suppose... because there was never another need for it.”

She waits, hovering over him, searching his face, needing just a bit more, just to be sure.

And he seems to understand: “My Alice, my wife, my Champion... my mentor and Gray Lady...”

Her fingers curl tightly around his hands.

He smiles, not seeming to mind the dig of her short nails into his skin. “You saved Underland... and me . Again.”

“You are my Underland,” she corrects him, and the tears follow the declaration. She gives in, for she does not have the strength to continue resisting her desire to believe, and presses her cheek against his, inhales his scent and sobs at the feel of his warmth.

“Hush, my Alice. Shush...” he breathes and brushes kisses against her ear and temple and cheek and jaw.

“You’re really you,” she chokes out, babbles madly, “the right you, the proper you and not some other you and I almost couldn’t believe... Although I did believe, at first, and then they told me they wouldn’t... couldn’t... and I had to fetch you back myself and there were so many things that could have gone wrong and now! Now that you’re here I still ... I almost don’t dare think that I’m truly seeing you again, that you’re really you , that you came back with me, that I could bring you back and—!”

“Raven,” he murmurs, wrapping his long, warm arms around her. “Where else would I be, were I given the merest possibility of choosing, than here? With you? In our home?”

His words echo through her memory and into the past, into a night when she had sworn not to let her own madness hurt him again, when she had offered to go and leave him in peace... and when he had promptly welcomed her home.

She presses herself more firmly against him, as if she could burrow into him. She seeks that connection, that tangible and corporeal proof that she is not—

“Is this a dream?” she croaks. Is it truly possible that she had watched him die, had bartered with the Fates for his life, had stepped back in Time to complete her task, and then had gone into the land of Death and Called him back to Life again?

Had she really done the Impossible?

“You could pinch me,” he offers, holding her tighter.

“No, I couldn’t,” she replies. And then she kisses him. It is messy and rough and not at all practiced as the kisses of long-wedded couples more often than not are. She doesn’t care. He rolls her beneath him, tucks her down into the bed and covers her with his body and she revels in his heat and the smoothness of his skin and the stirring of his breath and the fact that he is here and living and she has succeeded and their reward is nothing more and nothing less than—

“The future,” she pants against his lips, wrapping her legs around his hips and crossing her ankles – locking her feet together – against the small of his back. “We have...”

“Yes. And we have our answer, Raven,” he murmurs against her skin. “We have the answer to our riddle.”

She sighs out more tears and tangles her fingers in his hair. “Tamial.” Somehow, hearing this confirmation from her husband, makes her success more real than anything the Fates could have said to reassure her.

“Our son... who will likely be waking soon,” Tarrant reminds her.

She sniffs back another round of tears and smiles. Leaning back, she looks into his eyes and says, “Hm... unless we’re quiet.”

Catching her meaning, he giggles and his brows wiggle. “An excellent point, my Alice. As always.”

Always. She very much likes the sound of that word.

She reaches for him and with every brush of his lips and every caress of his hands against her skin, her fears and doubts – such stalwart companions over the time spent in the past – begin to fade.

“I have questions, Alice,” he warns her as she shrugs out of her nightshirt. She pushes his sleeping trousers away and squirms out of her own. It is hard for her to comprehend that it has been days since she has made love with him and yet it has been only hours – and a sojourn in Death – for him.

“Ask them,” she invites as she opens herself to him.

He tickles the swell of her breasts with butterfly kisses. “They will wait,” he declares as he gently sheathes himself within her.

She clutches his sides – normally ticklish but never while they are like this, together, one! – and urges him to move. He covers her completely – his chest against hers and his lips pressed to her mouth and his hands cradling her face – and only then does he withdraw and then lever his hips forward again. He is alive and real and he is himself and she Knows this now more than ever before because he does not make love to her as she had – mistakenly – hoped he would.

They do not make love.

They make Life.

There is warmth and feeling and presence and here-and-now and there is no lust in his expression, no grasping for pleasure or test of wills to see how long she can last or how much he can give her. They move together because they can, because they fear, because they need, because they are .

They seek each other – make the path back to the state of being wherein they are Bound together; their heart lines (both healed and whole) blaze with heat – and find one another.

Alice does not come. She cries.

“I missed you,” she whispers and he kisses her chin.

He does not find his release. He meets her gaze.

“You will never be forced to do so again.”

“A promise...” she warns him gently as his hips press against hers one last time.

“I know,” he says, simply.

She holds onto him for as long as she can, until exhaustion will no longer be ignored. They do not sleep, but clutch each other in the nest of their bed, bathed in the sunlight of a new day.

As she lies in his arms, she thinks of all the questions she could ask: Does he forgive her for all that the Gray Lady did, didn’t, and could not do? Had he ever wanted to tell her about that time but simply couldn’t? Will he understand that she is – and cannot be anything other than – a Champion...?

“Yes,” he lisps, his breath stirring her hair, “you saved me, Alice.”

It does not occur to her to question his impeccable timing. Perhaps he had read her questions through the heart line. Or perhaps he had used that unique sense of his to anticipate her needs.

She asks instead, “Did you ever suspect that I was... that I would... that the Gray Lady and I were one and the same? Before I asked you to give me this scar?”

“I never wanted to,” he answers bluntly, his eyes nearly uniformly focused on the thin line spanning the front of her throat. “I put it out of my mind completely.” And by the tone of his voice, Alice knows that he had done so intentionally. “The thought of you, my widow... The thought that I would ever be forced to leave you... alone... It was too much to bear.”

“Did you ever consider... telling me? About the Gray Lady?”

“Aye, nearly,” he admits. “Once, or mayhap twice. For th’ most part, I let mae-self forget that time. ’Twas for the best. The memories were tae... much.” He shifts then and pins her with a piercing, blue-green gaze even as she draws in a breath to reply. “An’ I know ye, Alice. If I’d’a told ye, ye would ha’asked mae th’ ver’ questions I was mae-self afraid teh answer.”

And she knows he’s right. She would have been Curious and she would have wanted to know more, either out of genuine interest or out of mindless jealousy. He had been right to allow himself to forget about the Gray Lady for as long as he could.

“You... cared for her... me . That me. Deeply,” she whispers, studying his expression. “And I left you.”

His lips curve into a sad smile. “And now I understand why.”

She frowns. “Why did you think I...?” The flash of doubt in his gaze and the unsure pulse against her heart are enough of an answer. “Tarrant Hightopp, didn’t you know how proud I was of you? How badly I wanted to stay?”

“I did,” he confesses. “But while the Truth rings clear, Doubt often speaks louder and... over time – we hadn’t been on the best of terms even then, Time and I – it became harder and harder to believe...”

“No,” she answers his unfinished explanation. “No, that’s not why I left. I never, not for one instant, felt disappointed in you. I never thought that you were... lacking in any way, Tarrant. Never. I knew you needed time and I worried that I might not be able to give that to you...”

He frowns and Alice realizes, suddenly, that for all that her husband does know about the Gray Lady, there is one thing she had kept from him. One thing that Mally must never have mentioned.

“I didn’t have much time, when I Stepped into the past,” she explains, her gaze drawn to the rich, deep blue mark on her skin that originates from her heart-line finger and ends fantastically over her heart. Alice shoulders aside her reluctance to admit her weakness, her failure, and says honestly, “From the moment you... died, I didn’t have much time.”

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I know... you asked me to live... for Tamial, but I... I’m sorry. I couldn’t... want that enough. I needed you more than I wanted... And, little by little, the heart line began turning to ash. I had only those five days... I’m sorry.”

When she looks into his eyes, he seems torn between sorrow and... something very much like pride but softer, better, muchier.

“I shouldnae ha’asked ye teh look afteh auwr ladling f’r me, Alice,” he admits. “But I’m slurvish enough teh be glad tha’ ye need me...”

“You silly... man ,” she replies on a teary huff. “I have always needed you.”

“I know,” he whispers and the words carry a Thank You that Alice never would have asked for... or needed. “You came for me,” he says, not out of awe or amazement – for he Knows that of course she would do precisely that! – but as evidence of that claim.

She then answers the questions he has not yet asked and tells him of the Fates; she confirms the bargain she had made with them. She would have stopped there – she would have let him disregard her earlier babblings and think that she had simply traded her services for his soul – but he can sense that she is holding back.

“Tell me,” he commands as absolutely as any king of Underland might.

And so she does. She tells him, watching his irises shift and deepen in color with the telling, of the limits to the Fates’ powers and the memories he would lose should he choose to leave Beyond. And she apologizes for that: “You must have met your family again, your clan... and now you cannot remember having done so at all. I’m so sorry.”

“I choose us , my Alice,” he answers simply and with finality. “Now tell me of this epic rescue.”

She tells him of the riddle she had solved, of the torch on the black wall and how it had really been the light at the end of the tunnel through which she had had to pass. She does not tell him of the flame or the pain, for truly he does not need to know any of that! But she does tell him of the nothingness she had ventured into and the risks she had taken, the strength and sacrifices she had demanded of him, the fear that it would all be for naught, that she would return without him and...

“Alice,” he whispers, tears swimming in his cobalt eyes, “have you any idea why is a raven like a writing desk?”

It is the perfect thing for him to say here, now, in the wake of all the heartache and fear, the hardship and strife.

She returns his teary smile with one of her own.

“Yes,” she answers simply, confidently, absolutely. She kisses away the tears that spill onto his cheeks, noticing his diminishing pallor; soon he will look himself again. “Do you know why a raven is like a writing desk?” she invites softly.

His lips move against her cheek and he murmurs in a low, vibrating tone, “I haven’t the slightest idea, my Alice.”

His response is contrary to what she had expected. For a moment – the briefest of moments – Alice does not understand why he would say such a thing...

And then she does.

It is not the correct answer; it is not the answer they had found together.

It is their first answer, back when they – when the two of them had first become a They – had been new and just Thrice a-Vowed. It is the answer they had shared back when a whole, wide, wondrous future had stretched out before them.

Just as it does now.

  

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Follow this link for Chapter 11, Part 2.


Notes:

1. Yes, in this chapter we got Tarrant’s reason for never telling Alice about the Gray Lady: he put those memories out of his mind. (“Out of sight, out of mind” can have a very interesting interpretation in Underland. People can willfully forget about something unpleasant if they choose to do so.) We see here that Tarrant chose to forget about the Gray Lady, but not about the lessons, the prophecy, and so on. The fact that Tarrant could willfully forgot about the Gray Lady possibly also explains why he seems shocked to find himself in Iplam again in the film. “It was here...” he tells Alice, looking around the clearing and seeming startled. (Really, he shouldn’t have been surprised to find himself there after going off on Chessur at the tea party, yes? So, I’m thinking that maybe he made himself “forget” a lot of what happened... in order to move forward and do what had to be done.)