Carol was pretty familiar with Thanksgiving Day disasters.

There had, of course, been the time she had introduced Robert to the extended Lewis family; despite repeated notices, Mom had acted surprised to find that he was vegetarian, which had set the tone for all his interactions with her family for the entire rest of the visit. The next year they had only tofurkey, which wasn't even to Robert's tastes, and they had ended up eating Chinese instead. There had been the year she was pregnant with Alice, and had thrown up on the turkey: they had eaten Chinese that year too. Robert left almost a full nine months before that year's Thanksgiving, but Dad had been far enough gone that he kept pulling her aside and asking if her husband had gone out for Chinese, and it had been a long time, do you think we should start looking for him? Next year there had been one less seat at the table.

This year was already shaping up to be another bad one (Mom had decided at the last possible minute that she was absolutely unable to fly, and at last check in, all the Lewis clan were stuck in a couple of minivans somewhere in Georgia) when David and Alice came back from the parade and were ambushed by half a dozen armed gunmen right outside her door.

At first, Carol had just thought they were having another one of their infamous arguments. It wasn't too long before she realized that there were too many voices for it to just be Alice and her boyfriend: she assumed that meant that part of her family must have arrived. Fearing that Aunt Margaret might possibly be trying to trip David in admitting he was related to Ringo Starr, Carol opened the door and very nearly walked into the barrel of a gun.

She gasped, involuntarily. The man holding a gun in her smirked, and turned to where Alice and David were standing in the hall, back to back and hands raised. "Yeah, there's no one in the apartment," he said, in a British accent.

"No one who has anything to with this," David said swiftly, shifting slightly. "Why don't you just let her go back inside? You don't want any extra witnesses, do you?"

The man cocked his gun, and Alice reached out and dragged Carol out from in front of it, placing her between her daughter and David. "On second thought, why don't we just follow your first suggestion and go back to the shop?"

"All of us," David added. "Under our own power even."

The man nodded, and the nine of them began to walk down the stairs. Alice clutched at her arm, and refused to let go.

~*~

The shop of course, referred to the warehouse Alice had knocked herself out in: David had converted it into a bookshop with an apartment overhead within months of their meeting. Fate, he had said, as he'd christened it The Rabbit Hole. She supposed 'fate' referred to the fact that it was within walking distance of her apartment, so that if Alice wanted to spend the night (or two or three or the entire week) she could easily pop home and grab a toothbrush and a spare set of clothes.

The walk itself was mostly through back alleys, so the opportunity to raise the alarm didn't present itself before Carol and Alice were lead inside.

Normally it was cozy in a haphazard, cluttered short of way, with bookshelves, potted plants, and seating strewn about without any regard for what could conventionally be described as aisles. The cash register was located near its center, surrounded by small tables and mismatched chairs, and doubled as a center for ordering hot drinks. Paintings by local artists hung suspended from the ceiling by wires, added to the overall effect of walking into your grandmother's sitting room.

As she was propelled forwards through the shop today, she felt more like she was entering a disaster area. It was in complete disarray, shelves demolished and chairs upturned. Several paintings had come crashing down in a pile of canvas and wood, and books were strewn across the floor. She was grateful for Alice's grip when she nearly took a tumble over a piece of broken pottery.

"What is with you people and destroying my shop?" David asked angrily, surveying the damage with one hand clutched to his hat.

"This has happened before?" Carol asked.

David shrugged. "The first time they were just doing their jobs, but this is just malicious. There's no point to this at all!"

"As I said," the man who had held a gun to Carol's head began. He was the tallest of the group, with completely white hair that reflected the fluorescent light's shine back up to the ceiling. Now that she had calmed down enough to pay attention to finer details such as their kidnappers' appearances, she could also see a pin shaped like the number ten on his lapel. "We're looking for the list."

"And as I've said, we haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," David replied. "Do you want us to run through this again? Alice, have you been sent a list?"

"No Hatter, I have not. Have you?" Alice answered, sounding far less frightened than Carol had expected, given the way she was still squeezing on her arm.

"Nope, me neither," David turned back to Number Ten. "I'm not sure what else you want from us."

"What about her?" asked another man to Carol's left, nodding at her. Like the leader, he sounded British; unlike him, he was a brunet, and wore a number six.

"She's not involved," Alice told him, stepping between Carol and Six.

"You keep saying that." Ten said, moving closer.

"Because she's not," David insisted, intercepting Ten.

"She doesn't even know about the looking glass," Alice added, trying to push Carol back a bit farther.

"Looking glass?" Carol repeated faintly.

"See, she's got no idea," David confirmed.

"No, I don't. What is it I'm supposed to know?" Carol asked.

"Now's not a good time, Mom," Alice hissed.

"Mom?" Ten repeated, sounding amused. "You've lived with this for two years and still haven't told your own-"

"Enough," David interrupted before Alice could do more than glare back at him. "If you want our cooperation, you're going to have to stop taking cheap shots."

"I thought you didn't have the list?"

"I don't," he replied. "Which doesn't mean that I won't have it. I'm expecting a courier in about two ticks, there's a good chance this list of yours is in his possession, yeah?"

Ten nodded, reluctantly. "Well, then," David continued. "Always assuming you haven't completely trashed my rooms as well, we could go upstairs; I'll put a kettle on, you'll stop waving guns around in people's faces, and we'll wait for it to arrive."

David smiled. Ten contemplated him for a moment, and then gestured towards the far end of the warehouse, where the stairs up to his apartment were. "After you, Hatter."

Carol could never tell whether it was the fact that the stairs were their original industrial size, the way the halls were lined with bookcases and filing cabinets, or if the hallway really was, in fact, just that narrow, but it was always hard for her to walk down it without feeling at least a little claustrophobic. Today it was difficult not to have a full blown panic attack.

"Do you know who these people are?" Carol whispered to Alice, more out of a desire to distract herself from the feeling of the walls closing in on her than anything else.

"Not now, Mom," Alice repeated.

"Yes now, Alice!"

Her daughter didn't reply. Carol pressed onwards anyway.

"What did he get you caught up in?"

"Mom!" Alice yelped, clearly offended.

"Well, what am I supposed to think?" Carol retorted. "You certainly weren't in any danger of being kidnapped by… by the British mafia before you met him!"

"They're not the mafia," Alice said.

Before Carol could repeat her question, Ten spoke up from further down the hall: "And believe me, no one here mistakes your daughter for the lesser threat."

Carol's response to that was cut off by Alice shoving her in between two bookcases as David opened the top half of his office door into Ten's face. There was, presumably, an awful lot grunting and yelling as the fighting began, but she couldn't hear it over the sound of blood pounding in her ears. The room tilted dangerously, and for a moment all she knew was that she needed to get out of here before she was crushed to death. She pushed herself forwards, crashing into someone as she did so. He landed on top of her, and she screamed until she realized that Alice had kicked him off her.

"Mom, come on, get up, let's get you somewhere with more space in it," Alice was saying. Carol let her pull her up on her feet and lead her past Ten's body into the office, where David was busy opening the shades on his windows. She sank down on his couch, watching him move against the skyline in the reflection of the mirror propped up against the far wall.

"Oi!" he yelled suddenly, spinning around to face the hallway. "I said don't move! Don't move!"

"Go ahead," Alice said sitting down at the other end of the couch. "I'll catch up."

"Right," David nodded, picking up the gun from next to Ten's hand and jogging down the hall.

"Just breathe, Mom. Everything's fine. See?"

She pointed out the window. Carol nodded, half listening to her, half-listening to the sound of the scuffle in the hallway.

"Breathe, okay? I'll be right back." Alice hurried out of the room down the hall. Carol turned her attention from the mirror to the body just inside the doorway. After enough time had passed, she came to three conclusions: a) Ten was unconscious, not dead b) she felt good enough to stand and c) she wanted answers, and she wanted them now.

She walked to the door and watched as David tossed Alice a handcuff from out of a filing cabinet drawer. Alice cuffed the man at the farthest end of the hall, and David reached inside the jacket of Number Six, pulling out his and Alice's cell phones.

"I would like to know," Carol began. Both David and Alice snapped upright, startled. "What the hell just happened?"