She is alone.

She is alone in her very large home.

Not even Dinah remains with her.

She is alone.

She is not insane - but she still is very much mad.

Being as mad as she is she still sees them. Remenets of her Wonderland, that is - though she hasn't visited the land all her own in so very long.

It doesn't really matter though, not now.

She is dying, she thinks.

But that really doesn't matter now either.

Closing tired old eyes she calls to him - the only him she ever truly cared for, as infuriating as he has always been.

Opening her emerald green eyes she spies him there, in front of the fire. His bony tail is curled around his emaciated body and he is wearing a wide (too impossibly wide in fact) smile.

"Am I dying, puss?" she asks indifferently.

As said before, it made little difference to her if she was or wasn't.

"You are." The cat's voice is like silk and it's familiarity soothes her ears.

Sighing and quietly saying "Finally," the old Ms Liddell snuggles deeper into her armchair, a blue blanket wrapped around her withered old bones, and she supposes she should make at least one final request. "Tell me a story, cat."

"Dying to hear a story, are you Alice?" the cat mocks. There was a time Alice would have bit back with anger, but those days are gone, or so it seems. Instead she nods complacently and the pathetic cat seems disappointed.

"Of what then?" he asks, deflated a little at the dying woman's peacefulness.

She thinks for a moment, but only for a moment. "Your markings." She says assuredly. "I've always wanted to know about your markings."

The hairless grey cat looks down at himself, as if he had forgotten about the large amount of tattoos that littered his unseemly body. "Oh, those," he mews except he doesn't mew as that would be silly and undignified thing for a creature as unique and quizzical as himself.

Alice's mind, though it is gradually slowing, wonders if that is why he's always been a "friend".

Though the Cheshire and her were very different, they were also very much alike. Unique and outcasts. Special and brilliant in their own rights.

And mad.

Suddenly, the cat's boredom seems to vanish as if it had never existed. His ever present smile grows still wider, splitting his face and creating small tears on his cheeks.

He is jovial, and so overly pleased with whatever has just entered his rotten little cat brain.

"Will you not humour a dying woman, cat?" Alice asks slightly peeved it is taking him so long to tell her a simple story.

She is losing more and more strength every moment he delays.

She hopes she can hang on for one last tale.

"Of course not, dearest Alice," he purrs seductively and slinks closer to her chair. Once he reaches the chair, he jumps onto her lap and makes himself comfortable.

He looks ridiculous. Almost like a housecat in that instant. Almost like her beloved Dinah.

"There was once a girl who had everything." Cheshire begins with a drawl. "She was pretty, and privileged. Her family was well off and decent -yet she was a spoiled little thing and wanted more. Always more. She wanted something all her own - something special that no one else could touch. A place in which up was down and down was up!"

"Wonderland." Alice smiles fondly.

"Wonderland." the cat confirms.

"In the timeless land she meets a cat. A cat fat off of the many hummingbirds he regularly caught and ate. A cat with luxurious and long grey fur."

"Nothing about you has ever been luxurious, mangy cat. And more importantly you've always been bald." Alice's former fire seemed to return, if only for a brief moment to insult him, before dying down yet again.

"Don't interrupt," Cheshire puss chided and continued on with his story. "The girl had everything she could ever want - and now, now she had Wonderland as well."

"Several decades later and the woman lives a long life and upon her dying hours she calls to the cat and asks for him to stay with her as she passes on. Though the cat has never been one to grant comforts he gives her this."

"As the old and ailing woman gasps her last breath a patch falls off of the cat's fur and a mark as black as night appears on his grey, cold skin." The cat pauses for a while before he continues nonchalantly.

"Her name was Mary. After her came Katherine and another mark. After Katherine came Susana... and another mark. After her came Lorina and yes, another mark. So many came and went. Countless, really. And then - then there was Alice."

The Cheshire cat's face rips open more until a bit of blood drips down his maw and splatters onto Alice's white hand. "I wonder what mark her death will leave on the mangy old cat?"

And though he is her "friend", Alice knows he hopes this knowledge - the supposed knowledge if she were to believe him, that she is not unique or special or different but just another mad woman in a line of mad women - will bother her deeply. He hopes that in her dying moment she will realise there has never been anything significant about her life.

She is as common as a march hare.

It should bother her.

It should.

It doesn't.

Alice smiles.

"Well then, I hope I leave the biggest, gaudiest mark of them all."

And with that he vanishes.

Shortly after she dies.

As long as there is madness in the world.

As long as there is a longing for peculiarity, then Wonderland will live on in some little girl somewhere - just as it always has.

Cheshire, Hatter, Hare, they will all continue to exist.

But Alice will not.

She is alone.