#alice proserpine

She didn't remember exactly when it was that it happened for the first time, just that she often looked down and found her fingers had turned white. A bloodless, ghostly white like fresh snow, or ice blooming beneath her skin.

Maybe she’d screamed at first. Maybe Ella had gone pale, taken Alice's small hands between her own and rubbed them until they stung. Maybe she'd asked if she had frostbite. Maybe she thought it was a bit of bad luck.

But no, it was nothing serious. She got indoors, wrapped her tiny hands around a hot beverage, and thought nothing much of it.

It became a quirk of hers, the colors her fingers and toes turned when they got cold. White, purple, red. Alice laughed at it in the beginning. But then she got older, and it got worse as the colors brought numbness. She shivered beneath the blankets in motel rooms, her mother warming her with body heat. She wore multiple pairs of gloves when she could. She pressed exposed fingers to the car heaters, the strawberry scent making her eyes water, until it felt like her skin was searing off.

Whenever they moved--whenever they ran--Alice always hoped it would be to somewhere warm, where winters weren't vast hungry creatures, and the wind didn't blow bitter and bite with needle teeth.

Because the ice came in fast and it didn't want to leave. She had to force it out, and that was the worst part. It didn't leave quietly. It screamed under heat, the pain it wracked on her so immense sometimes that she couldn't help but cry out. It took a minute for the cold to take hold, thirty to purge it--though it was never fully gone.

She was Alice-Three-Times and her ice always found her.

Notes: Little-known fact, I have a condition called Raynaud's disease, where my body overreacts to cold and causes some parts of me (usually my fingers and toes) go numb and turn white. So I headcanon that Alice's ice manifests itself as this condition when she's outside the story; after all, it can be triggered by cold or stress, I find it incredibly painful to warm back up, and it just... fits. So basically, this fic is that headcanon. I think it's really cool! (Even though Raynaud's is just absolutely terrible.)