Bitter is the Taste of Tea
[Note – Mad Hatter is referenced after Tim Burton's vision of him.]
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Mad Hatter summoned her for a tea party. A friendly drink to be shared between foes. Such a simple thing. Until he added a touch of bitter to the tea pot. Bitter is the taste of friendship gone rotten.
Alice stares with shadowed eyes. One hand grasps the offered teacup, the other grips a red-stained knife. Mad Hatter grins with blackened teeth, stained from ink. He chews his quills when he gets nervous.
He licks his lips and raises his teacup in salute. But he's hiding a gun beneath the table. She knows he's saying goodbye.
Alice raises the knife into his view. Hatter opens himself up.
THUD!
A knife to the chest and he's sprawled across the ground. His lungs are filling up with blood and he thinks it's fitting for all his nonsense about tea that he should drown.
Alice is suddenly at his side, kneeling on the ground. Her fingers graze along his jawline, and she whispers, "Save me." He's going to kill her now, she knows.
BANG!
Straight through her heart and Alice's body hits the floor. He's coughing and sputtering, gun smoking, eyes fixed on dead, little Alice. She isn't so little anymore. Lying in a pool of crimson blood, he thinks she may even be beautiful.
The bitter tea is cold. Time wasted all it's heat away. No matter how much she tries to reheat it, [she - the Queen], it will never taste quite the same.
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End