Title: Just How Stupid

Summary: A contemplative take on the inner workings of Tarrant Hightopp and Alice Kingsleigh's minds.

Rating: K

Spoilers: Yes (Or more specifically the end of the movie)

Warnings: For the over-use of starting a sentence with "And" and the use of double parenthetical phrases. Un-beta'ed. Choppy flow.

"You could stay…"

She turns to look at him, where he stands just behind her, with his face so sad and his coloring and suit and eyes and hair and hat fading to a monochromatic grey in a hopeless melancholy.

It cuts her to her core.

(Her muchness, if you will.)

She tries to smile. If she is really able to return home, shouldn't that sad (adorable, lovable) Hatter be able to see it one last time? (She is irrational, un-sense-making, she knows, but she doesn't care because it might just mean that his insanity is rubbing off on her and she fears that might be the only way she'd be able to remember this mad and wonderful man.) So she does, and it is the saddest smile she's ever given anyone and his face possibly begins to brighten the slightest bit as she speaks—

"What an idea. What a crazy, mad, wonderful idea."

Then as her face falls and his falters at the sight, she says,

"But I can't."

And her brain has her mouth spit out some excuse that she's been giving herself the entire time because she has responsibilities (and she must stick to them) in the other world. And as she flings the Jabberwocky blood into her mouth, out of the corner of her eye she sees his face break; but by the time she had finished the swift motion and turned back to him, he has forced his colors to come back and a smile to come to his face, no matter how sad and terrible it is. (Because it is Alice, he must try; try to be normal and cheerful and mad; but he knows he will fail in the long run as he knows he already is. (Failing, that is.))

Alice smiles back, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes and no one is fooled as she says,

"I'll be back before you know it." And she tries her hardest to believe her own words. (Because even though her mind knows that she must eventually come back, (for she couldn't possibly stay away,) her fickle heart is scared to believe it.)

And as she looks at him something dies inside of her because something has died in him and she sees it all through those brilliant and marvelous green eyes of his, when he says ever so quietly,

"You won't remember me…"

And something in her heart snaps and shatters and as he whispers in her ear (("Fairfarren, Alice.") an action that by itself fills her with tingling thoroughly and places an ache in her heart) and suddenly she finds the need to stay combating with the wish (the responsibility) to go home, but by the time it even comes close to overwhelming the faltering (entirely too sane) wish, she finds herself in a grey whirlwind of dust as the Jabberwocky blood takes her away. (The last thing she sees is his brilliant, and sad eyes.) And she finds herself in a little rabbit hole by a gnarled tree and tears in her eyes when she realizes just how stupid it was to have left.