[OPEN] We'll Take A Cup of Kindness Yet

[nascensibility]

Who: EVERYONE, but especially you!
Where: Wonderland Ballroom
When: New Year's Eve
Rating: PG - PG13 (will change if applicable)
Summary: New Year's Eve Party
The Story:

[The morning of December 31st, all residents will receive a handwritten invitation slipped under their door.]



You are cordially invited to attend a party
celebrating the New Year

Wonderland Ballroom
8 pm - 1 am

Semi-Formal Attire
Buffet & Bar
No RSVP Required

All Ages Welcome

For inquiries, contact E. O'Connell

[Punctuality in planning is important: the ballroom itself will only be ready for guests at exactly 8 o'clock, bedecked in glittering golds and the red-green of Christmas' vestiges, still clinging to the old year. Dining tables surround a central dance floor, bars and buffets dot the edges of the room and both holly and mistletoe are expressed liberally through the interior.

Mingle, dance, eat and be merry! The New Year will come in at midnight - the band will play and the drinks will flow for long after.]

Comments

[postictal]

"New Year's Resolutions?" That's a halfhearted guess, and a poor attempt to lighten the mood. He's not exactly the greatest at this, and it's probably painfully obvious.

It's equally obvious that her smile is a false front, and a hasty one at best. He's looked through enough equally thin veneers to recognize it on sight.

"Looked like pretty heavy thoughts," he adds, because he might as well put one in for the sincerity camp. Owes her that much, doesn't he? Or...something. Yeah.

[uncaging]

"It just all seems a little silly, really." She decides she owes him sincerity, too, feeling that he'd be unlikely to brush her off. "Do we even know what year we're coming into? Or is it actually even a new year here at all? I haven't aged a day since I've been here, after all."

[postictal]

"Well, you know. Time is an illusion." It's a pretty shitty joke when he's not one for smiling, or any sort of humor that requires genuine laughter. Not one for lightening the mood, needless to say.

"If people decide it's a new year, I guess it is one." Doesn't mean you have to buy it, but Tim's lost any real motivation to contradict that.

[uncaging]

It's difficult to argue with that, though she still thinks it's all rather futile. She glances around at the decorations, knowing the effort people have gone to in order to make this a celebration rather than the sombre moment it feels like to her.

"How many more new years do you think we'll see in this place?"

[postictal]

"Who knows?" He can't say he's been around here longer than most. There's people who've been here for literal years, and he's only been stuck here since, what? September? Wonderland's equivalent of September? Whichever.

"This your...first, then?"

[uncaging]

Elizabeth nods. "I was so looking forward to it, too - I've never been able to celebrate the new year before." She's a little annoyed at herself for getting so existential and spoiling her own fun. "Yours, too?"

[postictal]

"Yep. I only showed up in September, so I guess I'm still technically a newbie." Feels like he's an old hat at this point, but compared to everybody else, he might as well be someone who's still fumbling their way along.

[uncaging]

She casts her mind back to their previous meeting. "Then you hadn't been here too long when we were in that school. That must have been an odd event when you're just getting used to this place as it is."

[postictal]

"That...yeah. Hogwarts." Christ, but that had been a weird turn of events. Doubly so since he was actually probably halfway tolerable to be around, and now he's just gonna up and disappoint everyone who met him for the first time there.

"I dunno. Memories aren't very...set in stone." Gotta watch his mouth, make sure he doesn't spill anything he shouldn't, but he can't say he wasn't used to it, right?

[uncaging]

"Certainly here, they're not," she agrees a little bitterly, remembering Alice's room, the last vestiges of the person she'd been before Wonderland had claimed her completely.

[postictal]

"Those, uh, dreams." An awkward segue, but he's never been a very refined conversationalist. As he's sure she's rapidly gathering.

"Is that...normal here? To see stuff like that, where everyone's just lost everything?"

[uncaging]

Elizabeth shudders a little as she thinks about the strange dreams - she's still not recovered her sleeping pattern, and if everyone else hadn't experienced the same thing she'd have convinced herself that she'd gone quite mad.

"That wasn't normal even for this place. I hope we never have anything like that happen again."

[postictal]

"You haven't seen something like that happen before?" Nothing to gain from asking the people who've been around longer than he has - which is most people, he's pretty sure, since he's only stuck around for a mere handful of months.

Either way, knowing that something like that could be coming in the future might give him a leg up when it happens again. Not if. When.

"Figures this place wasn't done dicking around with our memories, huh?"

[uncaging]

"No, I've never known an event to be able to reach us in our dreams. Most of the time they alter our memories or the environment itself." It was all the more unsettling to know that they couldn't just hole up in their rooms and sleep until the event was over.

She flinches a little at his turn of phrase, but decides not to say anything. "I'm not sure it will ever be done with that."

[postictal]

He forgets sometimes that not everyone's from Alabama. Maybe make an effort to tighten his language, at least around her. He can manage it around the gazillion kids he's got around here, so he can manage it with her too.

"Everything did kinda look all white for a while," he adds. "All those decorations, the snow...kinda like it was trying to recreate that other world."

[uncaging]

Elizabeth suppresses the urge to laugh, finding his suspicion where she'd only had wonder perhaps a far more reasonable reaction to the changes that Wonderland had made. "Why, that was just for the winter holidays. ...Wasn't it?"

[postictal]

"It was white. Like the White Queen already took over."

His grasp of reality is tenuous in the best of times, and that certainly hadn't helped. An absurd suspicion? Maybe. But his paranoia has, in his experience, a history of being justified. "Maybe put there so we'd have trouble picking the two Wonderlands apart."

[uncaging]

"But everyone knew this was real. It wasn't like the other Wonderland, where everyone thought I was crazy. That was the worst part." She shudders a little, hoping that particular event wouldn't be repeated.

[postictal]

"Everyone telling you that you're wrong until you start to wonder if they're the ones that're right? Yeah." A hand goes to the back of his neck as he glances away, grimacing. He's no stranger to having that little message ground into his head, and this time there was no way to corroborate the evidence with anyone.

"Yeah. That was the worst part."

[uncaging]

"At least it's all over now." She sighs in relief. "I hope we never have an event like that ever again. It's not one we can really prepare for, but just have to endure."

[postictal]

"Maybe we need some way to...I dunno, make sure we're in the right reality, or something."

Someone's probably made a movie about that already, or several. How to check and make sure you're not in a dream. Usually he can do something inane, like counting his fingers or the leaves on the trees, and that's when the dream's logic combusts on itself.

Doesn't mean a damn thing when it looks and feels real.

[uncaging]

"That's a good idea." She was surprised it hadn't been suggested already, although just how they'd be certain that whatever they'd designated as the way to tell if it was real was actually working. "Perhaps a code word, or something we can touch."

[postictal]

"Won't work if a Mirror overhears us, or if an event screws with our memories again, but maybe it'll mean something?" He's not fond of feeling helpless, and he's felt helpless his entire life. He's just kind of all-around sick of it, even if it's little more than a shift in perspective.

He's never had a say in how his life goes. Why start now, right?

[uncaging]

Elizabeth cocks her head to the side a little as she tries to think of a good code for them to use.

"Do you have any ideas?"

[postictal]

Somehow he figures it should be something like let's tell each other a secret no one else would know, but that's - that's a really, really terrible idea, considering that all of Tim's secrets tend to get people killed.

"Maybe a, uh, a name? A name of like...the first person we met here, or something. Mirrors wouldn't know that, right?"