Content Warning: Stalking; emotional abuse
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"Why do I get denied? Time and time again, I offer you all that I can give, only for you to throw it back in my face! What more could you possibly want?" The Mad Hatter took a pleading step forward, eyes partially obscured by the brim of his hat. Threatened, Jonathan took a step back. "H-how did you find me here?" he asked.
Jervis ignored the question. "What is it that I have to do? What must I bring you— what indignity must I suffer before you'll let me let me have you!?"
The object of his fervent courtship stumbled further backwards, alarmed to note that his palms had found the brick wall behind him. Truly, there was no way out now. It was plain to see that Crane's little suitor was surpassing mere anger and breaking into a whole new plain of blinding fury, a level of unleashed emotion to which the professor had never had the misfortune of experiencing himself. He'd thought he was safe here. Not even the bat had ever found him here—
"I've put my well-being on the line for you countless times! Jonathan, I've saved your life!"
Crane's temper flared. "I never wanted that!" he snapped, still pressed up against the old room's back wall. His voice echoed and reverberated about the decadently high ceiling before dissipating into nothingness. "I never wanted any of that! Why won't you leave me alone! Can't you see that I'm not Alice?"
Surprisingly, horribly, The Hatter broke into a grin which shown brightly in the dark, looking almost disembodied, like a grin without a cat. "Well of course you're not Alice, silly." His voice was oddly calm all of a sudden, but a far cry from soothing. He'd since straightened up into his usual, erect posture, rather than the hunter's hunch he'd taken on just moments before, though he still brandished a card marked "10/6ths" clamped between two fingers. An ominous sight indeed. "You're the March Hare."