Hi there, readers! J.J. Hatter here! Sorry for the absence, but college has been a Jabberwock…
Anyway, here is my first foray into the world of Once Upon a Time. I'm actually planning a much longer story, centered on the sadly cancelled spin-off show Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, and Jefferson is planned to make an appearance in that story.
So, it seemed only natural to "test the water" with a short story about our Mad Hatter played by Bucky. (...As far as I know, the ONLY Mad Hatter played by Bucky.)
Ahem...now, the boring stuff…
Rating: T (for safety's sake, mostly; some frightening and/or violent situations and imagery, including one death (Hatter's wife doesn't count))
Disclaimer: I do not own the Once Upon a Time franchise, nor shall I ever. If I did, I would be truly heartless, since I likely would NEVER have given Jefferson a happy ending, seeing as that (and Sebastian Stan's schedule) would have been likely to assure more appearances. (Also, I would have done Maleficent better. Sorry, but I didn't like their version of that one…but that's another story.) The rights go to Disney, the ABC network, and the show's creators, as well as anyone else involved I didn't mention. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll, although it is in the public domain.
Summary: Madness isn't a difficult disease to catch. Jefferson found this out the hard way. How hard? Why don't you see for yourself… A short story depicting Jefferson's transformation into the Mad Hatter after being abandoned in Wonderland by Regina.
Notes: There are two major things worth mentioning here: one, this story was inspired by the song The World Has Gone Insane, a deleted track from the musical Jekyll & Hyde. While this is NOT a songfic (isn't that a surprise, coming from me…) this does reference the song a few times, and it is quoted twice (thrice, counting the title). The song is not mine, needless to say; it belongs to Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse. Also, the Mad Hatter's wife I named "Signe," in reference to Signe Toly Anderson, one of the founders of the band Jefferson Airplane. (Since both Jefferson and Grace's names also refer to this same band.)
Now, enough of this foolery! Let the games begin…
The World Has Gone Insane
Madness isn't a difficult disease to catch.
First of all, it's quite contagious: when working with smirking imps and demented doctors, you were often surrounded by craziness on a normal day. Add portal jumping to places like Wonderland, and anyone could become a little...eccentric.
Second of all, it is easily triggered: loss was his trigger, specifically.
First came his lovely Signe, and then...Grace.
He didn't know which was the worst feeling: holding his wife in his arms as she died, a victim of a raging Bandersnatch, or the knowledge that his precious Gracey would never - NEVER - see her father again.
...Well, never, that is...unless he got it to work.
Unless he got it to work.
Got it to work.
Get it to work.
Get it to work.
Get it to work!
GET IT TO WORK!
...Work…
…
...His glasses were dirty.
He wiped them as clean as he could, then got back to his task.
Every so often, a guard would walk in, but he never heard a word they said, never paid attention to what they even thought.
The worst parts were the nights.
He would be "escorted" to his "home" every evening, promptly at 5:30; he'd get back at around 6:00. He would meet with Mrs. Rabbit - she went by the name of Marcha - and the Dormouse - called Timothy - for tea, but, truth be told, it did him very little. The two pitied him, and they were two of the few people in Wonderland he'd opened up to...but he couldn't be distracted for long.
He had to get back to work.
Work.
Get back to work.
Get it to work.
Get it to work!
GET IT TO WORK!
…
...Nights were the worst...because of the nightmares.
When making hats, you see, one uses mercury and magic to cure it...to try and make it work.
He had too much mercury, not enough magic.
Mercury fumes are even more unhealthy for a mind than loss and loopy alliances.
And, when an unstable mind meets mercury, and tires itself out...nightmares are not likely to be far behind.
It was probably the nightmares, more than anything, that drove Jefferson over the edge.
He would doze off for seconds…but in his head, it felt like hours.
Sometimes, he'd awaken in a dark forest, the howling of werewolves echoing around him. He'd sprint as fast he could pelt, hatless...then came a scream of pain.
A familiar scream.
He'd backpedal, and find his Grace lying dead in the dirt, with her mother standing over her, pale as the Reaper, grinning like the Cheshire Cat himself.
Signe would hiss, "Join us," and her deathly form would dissolve into a great, crimson wave of blood and plunge down towards him, drowning him, choking him…
And he would awaken in a cold sweat, clawing at the scar that circled his pale neck.
Other times, he would be back home. Things seemed to be going first rate, as he began to cook an omelette for his daughter, using some eggs he'd snatched from the nests of blue jays, or sometimes he'd even be baking a small unbirthday cake, or, better (worse) still, stitching together a new doll he had hand-made for her to play with.
He'd whatever room he was in in their old hut, and find Grace with her back turned toward him, out on the porch, taking tea with her "friends…"
But, when he called out to her, and she turned...she'd have no face.
He would, of course, be horrified, and cry out "What happened to you, Grace?!"
She would respond with a tilt of her blank skull and whisper a curious, "Who are you? I forget."
In this case, he'd wake up sobbing.
When he woke up, he'd get to work. On many a morning, he didn't even eat a scrap of breakfast; tea time was his only meal time, more often than not. Soon, his house was as littered as the workshop at the Queen of Heart's Palace.
Then, the guards would return, march him away, and the work at the Palace would begin again.
He stitched and snipped and tore and pricked and tacked and bound and flipped the hats he made with a bizarre sort of intensity; frenzied and maniacally obsessed, almost animalistic, yet somehow graceful and with skilled artistry, like a master sculptor with his clay, all at the same time.
As the mercury, the nightmares, and the pain in his cracking heart wore on him further, his moods became more erratic. He would giggle and shriek and bawl like a tormented baby. Eventually, he began to lose track of the hats; top hats became bowlers, then caps, then toppers again. The colors changed, clashed; many of the hats were not even fit for wearing.
They didn't need to be.
They just needed to work.
Needed to work.
Get it to work.
Get it to work!
GET IT TO-
As days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years, Jefferson grew callouses, cuts, and small pricks where his hands would slip, his work growing less and less delicate seemingly every passing second he was alive. Sometimes the hats wouldn't even get finished; he had started out knowing he, alone, could get the hat to work...but, now, he begged the guards for help.
They seemed so blind...they never spoke a word to the cringing madman.
The Queen, by now, had given up most hope on the pitiful portal jumper, but decided to keep him alive "for the sake of her wardrobe."
Jefferson never even seemed to be aware.
As the mercury took its toll, the use of his glasses became more frequent, the mood swings more erratic, and his speech more and more incomprehensible. Eventually, even Marcha and the Dormouse were afraid to go near him. The cloth he began to get sometimes didn't come from cloth providers of the usual sort; strange, leathery coiffures were conjured up overnight, fur and feather decorations adorning his handiwork.
Bloodstained teabags stained the floor of his house.
Reality seemed so far gone...and in Wonderland, that was saying a lot.
The nightmares moved into "daymares;" one time, while in the process of a boater hat, he had froze as a garter snake crawled along his arm. He removed it cautiously...then howled in horror as he saw a sea of similar serpents writhing about his feet, coiling around his ankles. They did not hiss, the entire menagerie silent as slippery tombstones...but he saw them. He FELT them…they twisted and writhed, then rose up, as if by marionette strings...until their long, wiggling forms connected and formed the shape of a beautiful woman. She leaned in to kiss him with pearly fangs...
Then disappeared.
He threw the unfinished boater halfway across the room with a snake-like hiss, and stabbed the scissors into the table, keeling over and moaning in shock.
Another time, he had thought he'd seen his own Grace in the corner...hoping against all hope, he ran to embrace her, as any father would...then fell back, cowering, as the Dark One himself sneered down at him, hands clawed and burning with black magic, screaming like a banshee in his face before vanishing in a flash of fire and brimstone.
He lay there on the ground, staring blankly at the spot the vision had been, for a full two hours before getting back to his duties.
The final straw came less than a month before the event known as "The Dark Curse."
He'd just finished another hat.
Another top hat.
It looked perfect.
Just like his old one, down to the smallest stitch.
He flipped it three times…
Nothing. Not even a spark.
Roaring like a bear, he tore the hat to shreds, chewing it, literally EATING his hat at the absurd and agonizing impossibility of it all…
Then...suddenly...he twitched...his hands went to his cranium...
His head...it felt horrible…
He clutched his ears, whimpering; his brain felt like it was tying itself into knots...like a group of starving maggots were writhing and tearing and gnawing on his skull, burrowing deeper into him...then drilling their way back up through his scalp, squealing like angry rats…
He screamed in silence...louder, Louder, LOUDER...
A guard came into the room.
He found the milliner on the floor, hands still covering the sides of his head. Rolling his eyes, the indifferent soldier approached him…
And was promptly and efficiently strangled.
Jefferson had continued with his work as if nothing had happened.
When he was brought before the Queen of Hearts, Queen Cora herself decreed that his punishment, rather than the usual sorts of his heart being stolen or permanent beheading, would simply be to stay in Wonderland forever, and had him put under house arrest...for life.
It didn't matter.
He could still continue on.
As he toiled in the days afterward, stuffing his house full of more hats, he visibly changed; from the frenzied wildman he had started out as when he began to lose his mind, Jefferson became...slower. He was lucky to get a single hat done in 24 hours, and he still ate very little.
It was a miracle, many thought, that he hadn't died of overwork yet.
But his will was too strong.
His hope was dwindling, his mind was lost...but he held onto a single name.
Grace.
In the darkness of the night, unable to sleep, still stitching up a hat, the Mad Hatter was heard to chuckle lowly, softly to himself.
For years, the most anyone could get out of him was, "Get it to work!"
Now...though no one was around to hear it...he spoke anew.
"Perhaps it's wiser to be mad...when the world has gone insane."