Chapter Text
When Alice opened her eyes and smelled the salty sea air she felt the stirrings of excitement. Her travel to China had gone well, as had her business prospects, after the old men (and one fairly young man) had realized she did know what she was talking about and wasn’t silly or ignorant about the world of business. She suspected they thought her a bit scatterbrained, for more than once she’d said something about the sky or a chair or . . . or someone’s hat, and turned to find herself the object of much amazed scrutiny.
But she was now at least somewhat trusted, and she was coming back home to rest and relax and see how her family was doing before heading back to China again. Her sister and mother said they were all doing well, but Alice wasn’t so sure. She knew they didn’t want to upset her, what with her having a job and being in business now, but she still worried. Her mother had mentioned something about her health once, and then waved off all of her consequent concerns. On the other hand her sister truly did seem happy, especially when talking about the baby, but Alice still did not trust her husband. Her sister was sweet, but not very knowledgeable about the bad things in life.
With this in mind Alice stretched in her small bed before flipping aside her covers and swinging her legs onto the floor. She glanced up at the porthole and noticed that it was still dark outside, and heard the watchman on deck ring in four in the morning. Sighing with the knowledge that she wouldn’t be able to sleep now and was going to be tired later she started pushing with her arms to stand up while simultaneously turning to the chair that held her clothes.
She froze and blinked.
Stared.
“Hello,” whispered the White Rabbit. “It’s nice to see you again. Ah, sorry for interrupting your sleep.”
Alice narrowed her eyes as she tried to think of why a talking rabbit wearing a waistcoat was so unsurprising to her, and relaxed as her adventures in Underland once again came rushing back to her. She wondered briefly what had happened to her memory—it was less than two years since she’d come back. Why was Underland so hard to remember? Events were rushing through her head at top speed, but things still seemed a bit fuzzy from both of her visits. She was sure she wasn’t remembering quite everything yet, but put that aside to think about later. Right now she had a rabbit in front of her who probably wanted something, and he’d get what she could give . . . after he answered some of her questions.
Alice crouched down. “It’s nice to see you, too,” she whispered back. “How’d you get here?”
“From under the bed.”
This didn’t make sense not only because they were on a ship in the ocean and far from land, but also because the bed in her cabin was simply a mattress and some sheets on a block of wood. Bemused, Alice turned to look behind her and stared at the black space under her bed where wood had once been. She hadn’t lit a candle yet, so her cabin was dark with only the starlight and moonlight coming through the small porthole to light the space, but the place under the bed was darker than any shadow she’d ever seen before. “But . . . how?”
“The Queen made it. I’m not quite sure how. And I don’t think I want to know,” he said with a shudder.
Alice made a slightly disgusted face of commiseration as she remembered some of the ingredients the White Queen used in her potions. “Well then, why did she make it?”
“She needs you,” said the rabbit.
Alice cocked her head to the side. “What does she need me for? . . . Do I need to slay something else?”
The white rabbit also cocked his head. “What?” After a moment’s thought he gave a light chuckle and shook his head. “Oh, no, no, nonono.” His face turned serious and he cleared his throat. “No. The Queen needs you because Mr. Hightopp is ill, and she believes your presence will make him better.”
Alice wasn’t sure what to ask first, but finally settled on the question of, “Who is Mr. Hightopp?” The name seemed familiar, like she should know it, but she couldn’t connect it to a face.
The rabbit’s nose twitched. “The Mad Hatter.”
“Oh.” Her mind said Of course as his smiling face appeared in her mind. Then her eyes widened as her mind began churning. “Ah.” She hesitated.
He gave her a pitying glance. “I don’t know why she thinks your presence will do him much good,” he started gently, “but the Queen in generally right about this sort of thing.”
“Actually, I was wondering what your name is.” Although wondering how her presence would help Tarrant Hightopp seemed like a good idea now that she realized what it meant. The Mad Hatter, her friend who was hopefully no longer quite so mad after helping to save the kingdom and being reunited with his Queen, was sick, and she was apparently needed. Just how sick was he? “It’s Mr. Nivens, isn’t it?” she asked, even as she let herself fall softly onto her hands and knees in front of the dark hole. She didn’t think the White Queen would bring her to Underland for a simple sickness. This must be serious. Was the hatter about to die?
“Nivens McTwisp,” said the rabbit with a bob of his head.
“Yes, of course. Nice to meet you again.” Alice bobbed her head in return before asking, “Shall we go?”
“Right.” Nivens hopped off the chair and disappeared into the darkness. “Follow me!” his whispered voice softly echoed back.
Alice crawled after the rabbit, finding that although the space under her bed was quite dark and smooth with odd little shapes that felt and sounded like clocks and bells appearing under her hands at inconvenient intervals, there was also a spot of white in the distance. Thinking it was the rabbit and wondering how he glowed so well in the darkness when she couldn’t even see her own hand, she continued forward until she noticed that the white shape was rectangular, like the entranceway under her bed. Of course it’s not the rabbit, she scolded herself. I’d have noticed if he glowed in the dark in my room!
She crawled through the rectangular bright light to find herself in a plain white room. Nivens stood a little off to the side next to the mouse. . . . The Dormouse. . . . Mallymkun! Yes, next to Mallymkun, who looked very severe and imposing at her few inches height with a sword at her side.
“You’ve got the right Alice this time, then?” asked Mallymkun with clear disapproval in her eyes.
“Of course I’m the right Alice,” said Alice. “I don’t look any different from the last time you saw me!” Her hair was a mite longer and darker from spending more time indoors talking to people and less time enjoying the outdoors, but otherwise she looked exactly the same. Her nose wasn’t broken, she hadn’t developed a case of acne—her hair wasn’t even styled differently!
The dormouse sniffed. “It’s hard to tell humans apart,” she admitted. “You all look the same! And you’re not wearing the same clothes as last time, either.”
Alice looked down and realized she was still wearing her nightgown. Oh well. If her slip from her last visit didn’t offend anyone when it was practically falling off of her she doubted anyone would mind her wearing this much less revealing clothing.
“She still smells a little like Underland,” Nivens said crossly, “and she remembers us!”
Mallymkun sniffed the air and said, “Hm.”
Nivens crouched to all fours before frowning. “Will you at least guard—?”
“I’ll do my job,” Mallymkun interrupted in an offended voice. “Now go and do yours.” Seeing the mouse looking ready to pull out her sword and swing at him the rabbit hopped towards the doorway. Alice skirted a long white couch and followed Nivens through the door.
Alice didn’t recognize the part of the castle they were in from her previous stay. She frowned around the white hallway with its large windows and occasional portraits as if she could force herself to remember someplace she’d never actually been. She was sure, as she glanced down at the white rabbit in front of her, that if he hadn’t been wearing his waistcoat she would have lost him amongst the absolute lack of color on the floor. Checkered tiles of alternating shades of white didn’t make it easy to see another splotch of white.
Nivens eventually stopped in front of a door much like any other except for the plaque shaped like a hat, and fidgeted for a moment with the watch at his waistcoat. He flipped it open, checked the time, and flipped it back closed. “Here’s Mr. Hightopp’s room.” He gestured in front of him before hopping forward and pulling open the door for Alice, who wrinkled her nose at the hint of a distasteful odor. “The Queen will be done with her duties in another hour.” He turned and hesitated before hopping away. “Please help him,” he whispered, giving her a soulful stare with big eyes. Then he loped off back the way they’d come.
Alice stared after the white rabbit as he disappeared around the corner before slowly stepping into the room. The scent she’d smelled outside was now identifiable as a mixture of dust and rot, and grew evermore unpleasant the closer she walked to the lump under the covers on the bed with a familiar top hat resting next to it. The room was large with a subsequently large window and large table. There were hats on every available surface, including candlesticks, the chandelier, and the floor. A half-made hat was beside the head of the bed on a small stool, and as she stopped beside it she could see the stitches that attached the lace to the brim growing progressively bigger and sloppier the closer they came to the end of the thread.
She frowned in thought before letting her gaze rest on the most interesting object in the room—which was a person.
The Mad Hatter—Tarrant Hightopp, she reminder herself—looked sick. His lax face, now nearly translucent instead of white, had one big crack down the middle with smaller cracks leading off of that, like an oddly shaped leaf. The covers on the bed were thick and pulled up to his neck, so Alice couldn’t see more than his head. She frowned and wondered if she should pull down the covers, but saw the tiny tremors making his hair shake and decided against it.
Now that she was looking at it she could see that his hair, once a nice orange color, was only orange in the front and otherwise mostly gray. The curls were also not as curly as they used to be. In fact, his hair looked limp and dead.
Alice couldn’t help but think that the Mad Hatter used to be much more mucher.
“You’ve lost your muchness,” she murmured to the prone form quietly, sure that she was paraphrasing something he’d once said to her.
The hatter’s eyes snapped open and Alice jumped. The golden stare swept from gazing straight up in front of him to her face, where his eyes proceeded to rake over her form with such a hungry and angry stare that it made her uncomfortable. The cracks on his face lengthened and deepened, and that made her alarmed.
“Mr. Hightopp,” she started, but didn’t get any farther because his eyes suddenly lost their glow and returned to normal.
“Please,” he said with a pleasant smile, “call me Tarrant.”
“Tarrant, then. What happened to you?” Even as she stared the cracks were sealing up as if they’d never been, and his hair was growing more orange and wavy by the second.
“I’m not quite sure.” He sat up in bed, plucked his hat from beside him, and started to push back the covers. Alice noticed a distinct lack of clothing and turned around to give Tarrant some privacy. “I haven’t felt good since the Frabjous day, actually. I woke up the next morning quite tired and slow, even though I’d only done the Futterwacken for an hour at the party and got a good four hours of rest. It took me all day to make twenty-two hats,” he said, sounding depressed for an instant before forcing cheer. She could hear the rustling of cloth and assumed he was getting dressed. “And that was only the first day. I kept getting slower and slower, and my hands started aching, and then my feet. And before you know it my head was a-whirling whenever I moved and I didn’t want to eat, even when the Queen came into my room with a special soup made just for me by her hands. You can turn around now.” Alice turned as Tarrant popped his hat on his head. “And then yesterday I started cracking. And not the mad kind of cracking, but the ‘pieces falling off of you’ kind of cracking.”
“I’d noticed.” Alice watched as Tarrant picked up the unfinished hat on the stool and brought it over to the big table. “But you’re all better now. How?”
“I don’t know.” The Mad Hatter shrugged as he sat down and started unthreading his too-loose stitches. “When I saw you, everything just felt better.” He smiled his guileless half-smile at her before waving his hands at the couch. “Sit, sit!”
Alice brushed two hats onto the floor and obligingly sat.
Tarrant finished with the stitches and gently set the hat aside for later. Then he came over to join her on the couch and started smiling at her. It was very odd—first the smile was joyous, then uncertain, then he’d look away while losing the smile altogether, then he’d glance back and she’d raise her eyebrow in a silent question and it would start all over again.
This happened three times before Alice decided enough was enough. “How has everyone else been while I was away?” she asked.
Tarrant grinned a madly delighted grin at having something to say and started rattling on about how everyone was doing. Alice was surprised to learn that Mallymkun was seeing someone—a rather timid frog, if she understood correctly—and that the card soldiers were now dyed white of their own volition in order to be better sentries by blending in with the walls. She was also happy, but not entirely surprised, to learn that the Bandersnatch was as content in peace as he was in war, and that he’d joined the family of bloodhounds in farming truffles, of all things! Alice expressed her shock that the same kind of food existed in both worlds after seeing all the plants that looked nothing like what she was used to or looked much, much bigger. After Tarrant said, “Oh, of course! The seeds of the truffle plant are a delicacy on any table, especially considering all the teeth one must avoid to reach them,” Alice was again reminded that this world was very different than her own and she should stop thinking it had that many similarities. Roses and grass were the only plants she’d seen that were exactly the same in both worlds.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Tarrant frowned, said, “Excuse me a moment,” and got up to answer it. When he saw the White Queen he froze for a moment before ushering her in. He offered her tea that he didn’t actually have but which she waved off graciously. She looked around for a moment for a place to sit and ended up perched on the end of the bed. Tarrant looked ready to upend a chair and offer her that before she started speaking. “I’m glad to see that you’re better,” she started warmly.
Tarrant started smiling again. “It’s good to be better.”
The White Queen turned to Alice. “And how are you doing?”
“Better,” Alice admitted. “I’ve got some new business partners, and even more potential business partners. I’m just coming back home now to visit my family and talk to Lord Ascot about how things are going.”
“Excellent.” The Queen beamed. “It’s so nice to hear you’re doing well.”
Alice couldn’t help but smile back. “It’s nice to hear everyone here is doing well, too.”
The Queen’s smile became less than it was, although it was still warm. “Almost everyone,” she kindly reminded.
Alice glanced at the hatter to find him looking down in something close to shame. She turned back to the Queen and frowned at her for making Tarrant depressed.
The Queen’s smile grew again before she asked, “Would you mind it terribly if Mr. Hightopp went with you when you returned to Overland?”
Alice wondered briefly what Overland was before realizing that the Queen was referring to her world. “Not at all,” she said into the oppressive silence of the room.
Tarrant began a sputtering protest. “But-but my Queen! It’s not right! I-no offense is meant, Alice,” he told her with a glance, “but I must stay here!”
One of the Queen’s black eyebrows rose. “And why must you stay here?”
The Mad Hatter straightened up tall and proud. His eyes spat deferential golden acid as his voice changed to a Scottish brogue. “I am the last of the Hightopp Clan, and it is my duty and honor to make hats and protect the Queen.”
“All good reasons for you to go.” Sanity came back to the hatter’s eyes as he stared stupidly at his Queen. Even his twisted mind couldn’t understand that logic. The Queen looked unbothered by this as she swung her gaze to Alice and politely requested, “Would you mind waiting outside for a minute, please?”
“Not at all.” Alice stood up and exited the room, closing the door behind her. She noticed a spot of blue and turned to find Nivens waiting patiently. She slid down the wall and joined him on the floor.
Meanwhile, Mirana of Marmoreal had turned to Tarrant and was staring at him expectantly. “Will you tell me what’s truly troubling you now?”
Tarrant insisted, “I already have! I’m the last Hightopp, I am a hatter, and I will protect you!”
The Queen shook her head in a disappointed fashion. “No, that’s not it. I’m not saying that that’s not some of it, but it’s certainly not all of it.” She stared into his eyes, and Tarrant had the uncomfortable feeling that she could see his cracked soul and understood all of it, even the parts that made him mad. “You can make hats anywhere, and I have many people to guard me from attacks. No—what you fear is not wanting to come back.”
Tarrant was gob smacked. “Not-not come back?”
She nodded. “It’s happened before, you know, when people were in love.”
“In love?” squeaked out Tarrant, sounding like a boy going through puberty. The Queen barely held in a laugh, knowing it would only hurt Tarrant to think she was making fun of him.
“Of course,” she said gravely. “You didn’t think you’d start falling apart for just anyone, did you?”
“Well, I—you never mentioned—”
“I did. But you must have been too out of it to understand what I was saying at the time.” She gave him a mildly severe look as he collapsed onto the couch. “I didn’t know you felt quite so much for our dear Alice until you started falling apart, and by then it was too late to do anything. I might have created a potion so that you could forget her—,” Tarrant looked horrified, “—or a cookie to simply take away all your feelings—,” his eyes squinted nearly shut before looking considering, “—but I’m afraid those would simply make you more mad than ever, eventually, and then you’d fall apart all over again.” The Queen picked up a few beads and let them fall through her lax fingers as she said, “Piece by piece.”
Tarrant opened his mouth to say something, then closed it when he couldn’t find the words.
“Love is a different kind of madness than you’re used to,” the Queen went on, understanding her hatter’s confusion. “It is more subtle, less understandable, but it is madness all the same. And all madness leads to cracking when it is severe enough.”
The poor man looked more confused than ever, and the Queen readied herself to pound her knowledge into his thick skull until he couldn’t fight back against his own needs anymore. “But then how can anyone ever fall in love?” he asked desperately, most likely thinking of all the happy couples claiming to be in love and how they were definitely not cracking despite apparently being mad.
“Because love is also a healer.”
His brows knit, his teeth nibbled his lip, his eyes fogged over as he searched for any loophole in his Queen’s reasoning. He did not want to leave his home, his life, and his Queen simply because he supposedly had some kind of rare falling-apart disease (that he was already better from, thank you). The hatter would like to go with Alice to Overland, he really would. Nivens told stories about his adventures up there—mostly stuff about being chased by naked owls and dogs, but also descriptions of the plants and the buildings. It sounded like such an interesting place! But he also wanted to properly represent his dead clan and loyally serve his Queen. . . . His clan! His eyes cleared as he explained, “But I loved my family. I loved my whole clan! Everyone, from my mother and father to my fifth-cousin three times removed Jermomery. . . .” His voice trailed off as he neared the end of his justification that love couldn’t be his reason for cracking. He wasn’t even looking at her any more, instead focusing down on his twisting hands.
Mirana stood up from the bed and floated elegantly across the piles of hats on the floor to reach out and gently lift up Tarrant’s chin. The eyes meeting hers were a swirling storm of gold and green that calmed under her tranquil brown stare. “Do not think for a moment you did not love your family. I know your heart, and it is strong and able. Certainly strong enough to keep you from cracking under the weight of so many lost loves.” She stroked his hair tenderly, careful not to disturb his hat. “But there comes a time when there is simply too much, and your heart couldn’t take another person you loved being away from you.”
Tarrant stared.
“You thought she wasn’t coming back, didn’t you?”
Tarrant nodded shyly even as a glimmer of hope entered his eyes. Hope for a future with Alice, one of the people he’d loved in his lifetime.
The Queen smiled benevolently even as she sweetened the deal. “Do you not think, Mr. Hightopp, that the people of Overland would benefit from such a great hatter as you? Your hats bring joy to everyone who wears them. You always know the right cut, color, size, shape, and ornamentation for any and all occasions.”
The hatter straightened up under his Queen’s praise before he became hesitant again. “I would like to . . . share my hats with the people in Overland, but . . . I—I also love you, My Queen, and Thackery and Mallymkun!” He added in a mumble, “And . . . Chessy.”
“But not the way you love Alice.” Ah, more confusion. Sometimes it was hard to explain her reasonings to others when understanding came to her so easily. “You met her when she was but a girl, then again when she was older, our only hope and jaded to her own world and its wonders. You watched her defeat the Jabberwocky, who killed your clan. You helped her get there; you made her brave. She was your little sister Tateenya, and then she was your friend and your hero, and you feel more for her than you do for anyone in Underland. Yes,” she said, seeing Tarrant about to deny it, “even more than you feel for me. To you she’s already family, while I am merely someone to serve. You can still see that little girl confused about how the adult world works and you want to help, even as you see the adult that she is and respect her for her drive and ability.”
The Mad Hatter stared at Mirana of Marmoreal, at once flummoxed and hopeful. “How . . . how do you know all this?”
The White Queen smiled. “Because you fell apart for her, and also because everyone wants to be needed. We all love you and want you to be around, but we do not need you.” Seeing his crestfallen look she wrapped a loose arm around his shoulders. “Alice, on the other hand, does. She may not know it yet, but you help her to face things that need to be faced.”
He perked up. “I do?”
Mirana nodded gravely. “Absolem did as well,” she admitted, “but butterflies do not last long in Overland, and he cannot help her there.” She looked him solemnly in the eyes and said, “Only you can.”
Tarrant looked at his Queen for a long moment and remembered how she’d stressed the word “need” before taking a deep breath. “I’ll join Alice in Overland.”