Disclaimer: nope, not mine. And that makes me very depressed. I want a Hatter of my own. I will, of course, settle for a cute man with a British accent...

A/N: Beta and co-writing credit goes to my girl Renee-chan. Thank you for your patience and putting up with my constant emails! LOL Please read and review! I'll have the second half up sometime this weekend :-)

The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight

Maybe it can stop tomorrow from stealing all my time

I am here still waiting though I still have my doubts

I am damaged at best, like you've already figured out

Alice looked over at the clock on her bedside table. 12:27 p.m. She didn't have the energy to get out of bed. It had been three days. Three days since she woke up in the hospital. Three days since she returned from Wonderland. She was unconscious for an hour, the equal of three days in the other world. She held up her arm in front of her face and looked at where the green "oyster" mark had been. Nothing marred her skin.

An hour unconscious, three days in Wonderland.

And it was all a dream.

Wonderland was all a dream. Charlie. Her father. Hatter.

But, if it was all a dream, how did it feel so real? How could it all be a dream when the pain of her father's death literally took her breath away?

And Hatter… Alice's heart constricted when she thought about him. She hadn't always been sure how she felt about him, but whatever she'd been feeling, it had always run deep. Whether it was hatred and betrayal, or eventually loyalty, trust... and something more. She had learned more about Hatter and felt more strongly for him in three days than she had about Jack in the entire six weeks she'd been dating him. And she had thought that maybe... he might have felt just as deeply for her. He'd risked himself on three separate occasions to save her - a man who never risked himself, only others. He'd shared pieces of himself with her, bits of knowledge that he'd guarded closely, feelings and thoughts that he'd never shared with anyone - a man who never showed his true face. And then there had been that near kiss in the woods... Alice might not know exactly what she was feeling for him, but she *did* know she wanted to explore it. And she wanted him to say something – anything – to give her an idea that he felt the same, that he also felt that pull, the strength of the emotions that had grown between them. But instead, she caught him trying to sneak out of the mirror room before they could even say goodbye, had even had the brass to flippantly joke around about her staying or him visiting. As if this thing between them was just a game, a moment's fancy to help pass the time.

But if it was only a game, a flight of fancy... a dream within a dream... how could the thought of him still cause her pulse to race?

It had been three days... only three days here on Earth. How long was that in Wonderland? A week? A month? Did it vary?

Three days and Alice missed Hatter so much it hurt. Three days... did he miss her the way she missed him? How could he? He never came. Not even as a joke, not even to visit, not even to say "Hello."

Not that it mattered. It was all a dream... Right?

The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head

I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead

And I still see your reflection inside of my eyes

That are looking for purpose, they're still looking for life

Hatter stared around at the remains of his destroyed Tea Shop. Though he had never touched a drop of it before, he found himself praying that there was some Emotion Tea left. He needed to feel something... anything other than the pain and emptiness he was feeling in the wake of Alice's departure and denial. He had thought that they were on the same page… that they were beginning to become something more than forced comrades and coconspirators...

He was wrong.

She didn't want him. She wanted Jack, the Prince- no, King of Wonderland. And who could blame her? The cultured and coiffed son of royalty could offer her much more than the ex-proprietor of a decimated Tea Shop. Hell... Jack could make her a queen. And who wouldn't want that? Clearly, Alice did. It was obvious in the way she smiled at him, the way she hugged Jack in front of the Looking Glass. In that moment, Hatter had realized that he didn't stand a chance and he tried to sneak away... but she caught him. He'd tried to make the best of it, tried to put a brave face on it, tried not to show her how much her denial had hurt him. The effort was stilted at best. They'd shared an awkward conversation and an even more awkward hug. Alice had then casually asked him if he wanted her to stay, but her voice clearly relayed that she wanted nothing more than to go home. And then had come the final coup de grace... she gave him back the coat. He had intended it as a gift, had thought she would keep it to remember him by... had thought she would want something to remember him by. But, apparently, he'd been wrong about that, too.

At that moment, Hatter would have given anything for her to ask him to go through the Looking Glass with her for good, for her to want him. Instead, she'd given him a weak, "You could always visit my world..." and another awkward moment had descended.

Right. Visit. Like he'd never done that before. He'd visited plenty. He wanted another kind of offer from her, one he thought she might have been considering just the day before.

It looked like he was wrong about everything.

He walked around the rubble, making his way to the back office. There wasn't even one bottle of Emotion Tea left - not one bloody bottle. Hatter sighed, ripping the hat from his head, angrily. He wanted to hit something, anything, he almost didn't care what. As long as he could feel the satisfying crunch of something breaking under the weight of his fist. But he was too emotionally drained to even contemplate that kind of proactive behavior. So, instead he fell back on his earlier desire for oblivion and sat down at his old desk to start to go through the drawers. Hopefully there would be something left in its hidden depths that the queen's soldiers had overlooked in their rampage... something that could take away this pain.

After a few minutes of futilely searching, Hatter remembered the false bottom in the deep bottom right drawer. Reaching in, he pressed the button to open the catch. He gave a wry smile when he saw what was in the bottom: a bottle of tea-infused vodka. He'd almost forgotten about that.

Years ago the Queen of Hearts had banned anything and everything that wasn't Emotion Tea, that wasn't the false euphoria of drained Oyster emotions. There was to be nothing real, nothing one had to depend on one's self to feel. No alcohol, no singing, no dancing, no playing games… no love. Nothing that could bring on a happy or sad feeling that wasn't Tea-induced.

The vodka was from a smuggler that had frequented the Tea Shop and specialized in Oyster items. In need of a fix and lacking the necessary funds for the Emotion Tea, he had given Hatter the vodka as payment. Being the tea connoisseur that he was, and always interested in finding something new and different that he could offer his clientele, Hatter had accepted and saved the alcohol for a later date.

He decided that now was the perfect time to test out the Oyster concoction. After all, the worst it could do was kill him... and right now he wasn't altogether certain that that would be a negative change. Opening the bottle, he sat down in his formerly pristine white chair and proceeded to get completely and thoroughly drunk. He couldn't have said whether or not he truly enjoyed the sensation, but at least with enough of the stuff in his system, he couldn't think... couldn't remember. It was appealing, to say the least.

Of course, he didn't have enough of a supply to keep himself numb for long. Fortunately, now that the queen was overthrown, Wonderland slowly began to go back to normal. Wonderlandian alcohols were being produced again, along with the Oyster drinks that the smugglers were still bringing in. Hatter had his choice of oblivion. He found he was fond of the Oyster creations, and made a deal with he smuggler he originally got the drink from. Keep him supplied and Hatter wouldn't smash his face in… since the only feeling he had that was stronger than his desire to forget was the desire to destroy something… anything. So the smuggler readily agreed to whet his whistle at a very low price.

And that was how Hatter spent the next two weeks. Once he had more alcohol in his possession, he spent his time drowning himself in it, only venturing out occasionally to find a bit to eat... but not too much. It had been way too long since the last time he'd be as drunk as he was the first night that Alice left, and he'd forgotten what a hangover felt like. The pounding headache, followed by the extreme nausea had brought those memories back quickly. He had a fleeting moment to rethink his decision to drown himself in booze and self-pity, but the wave of memories that accompanied his sobering up won that argument for him. The nausea and headache were more than welcome in comparison to that. He didn't want to remember. Didn't want to think about the feel of Alice's small arms wrapped around him as they sped away on those flamingos. Didn't want to think about the pride and joy he'd felt when he realized that she'd come back for him at the castle. Didn't want to think about how milky white her skin looked in the moonlight... or the rich, mahogany dark of her hair... or how the piercing gleam of her silver eyes seemed to see right through him. No... he didn't want that at all. Right now, all he wanted to do was forget.

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing

With a broken heart that's still beating

A/N 2: song is "Broken" by Lifehouse.