Standard disclaimers apply.
1.
"Tarrant!"
Alice rushed up to the gate of Hat House, noting belatedly that it was looking very fine with a new coat of orange paint as she let it slam behind her. Normally, she would make the gate a compliment and ask who'd been mending, but at the moment Time had deserted her and she was obliged to dash about looking for Hatters who simply would not be where she thought to look.
"Tarrant!" she bellowed from the doorway, ignoring the grumbles of the indignant knob.
"Alice?" she heard the Hatter reply faintly above her and to the right. That must mean the workroom upstairs. Alice lifted her cumbersome skirts and took the stairs two at a time, revealing legs and feet quite bereft of garments. Alice clutched her stockings and heeled shoes in her hands, not quite able to bring herself to totally abandon them despite how they pinched.
The Mad Hatter looked up from where he had been carefully laying his work to rest upon hearing Alice's cry. She stood in the doorway of his workroom, chest heaving far too quickly. She was red in the face and positively gasping. Hatter wanted to ask what the matter was, but a quick perusal that might have been considered impertinent if circumstances were different told him that Alice was not exactly Alice-shaped at the moment, indicating she had been cajoled into confining herself in some sort of constricting corsetry. This was not the shape of a happy Alice. Not for the first time he wondered why she submitted to such treatment, but whenever he'd asked she had only sighed sadly and told him that she wasn't terribly good at all the other sorts of submitting that was expected of her in the Otherland, and one had to make some effort to please one's relations. He understood this, he supposed, however the Hatter harboured rather uncharitable thoughts from time to time about those who were so unappreciative of the perfection of the natural Alice-shape that they would endeavor to change it. Being foremost in the art of Alice-shape-appreciation in any world, Above or Below, the Hatter was sure he was quite biased about the importance he placed upon it. However, her heaving chest was not slowing, so he shook himself, stepped around his worktable and cutting table, and helped Alice into a chair that was mostly visible beneath the tangle of bolts of fabric and spools of ribbon that spilled off the shelf behind it.
"Alice," he started, "you simply must calm yourself. You promised to do no running, and it seems that you have, and in that vile undergarment no less. I won't have it." He scowled down at it, though he couldn't see it, and found he was actually scowling down at her chest, which confused and embarrassed him, as that was not at all a part of Alice he was accustomed to scowl at, not that he did much scowling at Alice. In fact, none at all that he could recall in recent memory. Their time together was most often filled with pleasantness, laughter, and joy, so it was little wonder that her distressed state was muddling him.
"Hatter," she gasped, trying desperately to slow her breaths for the sake of his sometimes-sanity, "I remember your admonishment, and I wouldn't have, except that I did," she shook her head to dispel this tweedle she'd found herself in, "owing to the fact that I was Followed!"
"Followed!" The Hatter exclaimed. "By what?"
"Who," she wheezed.
"Whom," he corrected.
"Bother!" Alice was still feeling extremely hot and found she had been perspiring most actively. She glanced around her for a handkerchief, and was most grateful when the Hatter produced a vermillion specimen from his waistcoat pocket and began to dab her temples.
"You do seem to have had a run in with a spot of bother, but it's over now Alice, dear," he soothed.
"No, no, Tarrant. I mean to say, it is not only bother which has followed me, but two Respectable Gentlewomen from Above. One being my mother, and the other being Lady Ascot, whom you might remember as figuring largely in the circumstances leading up to my first Return."
The Hatter's eyes widened beyond their usual impressive width and his lips pursed and expanded into a soundless "o" before he was able to catch up to the meaning of this surprising turn of events and respond.
"Should we lay out tea?"
"There should be no need, we came upon Mally and Thackery at the Wiindmill, and I charged Mally with leading them here after they'd had a cup. I didn't want to come and catch you completely unawares. Did I do the right thing, do you think?" she asked anxiously.
Alice wrung her hands and he noticed that she seemed to be suffering a loss of muchness. She seemed decidedly less much, poor girl, when threatened with visits from these Gentlewomen of Above.
Hatter gave a bit of a mad giggle at the thought of the other regulars of the mad tea party making the acquaintance of Mrs. Kingsley and Lady Ascot, and then another at the thought that he was about to do the same. Here, at Hat House! It was a good thing he'd had some fish and lizards in day before last to take care of the leaking roof and do something about the state of the garden. He'd meant it as a bit of a tidy-up to surprise Alice on her return, but now it seemed he'd gotten some luck on his side if they were to be hosting such persons.
"Will they be staying for supper? They'll depart by looking glass same as they arrived, I suppose. Would you like me to move one downstairs for the purpose?" he asked.
"But Tarrant," Alice practically wailed. "That's the thing. They didn't come by looking glass. I couldn't get through! I thought to come a bit early, but found that I was unable to get through the one in my bedchamber. The looking glass in Margaret's room and the one in the dining room and in the downstairs parlour were still as well. I didn't know what to do! I know we'd talked about not taking risks, but I decided to try the rabbit hole at Wainsbury, the Ascots' estate. My mother was to take tea with them today, so I came along with her, intending to slip away into the garden, but I was caught. I tried to get away from them so I could jump properly, but I tripped. Mother grasped my arm, and Lady Ascot grasped her sleeve, and down we all went-"
"Yeh werrenna hur' Alice, luv?" demanded Tarrant, apparently alarmed beyond Reason at her tale.
She grasped his hand and looked into his eyes, watching them greening at her touch. Alice paused in her panic and regained a measure of much.
"No Tarrant, I was careful to grab a featherbed or two as I sped by, so the landing was really nothing to me at all. I had Mother do the same, but despite my repeated advice Lady Ascot only regained the presence of mind to clutch at some tea towels at the last minute and I'm rather afraid they gave her arm a bit of a wrench as they caught on the chandelier at the bottom. She was Most Distressed. I'm afraid her opinion of Underland has not much improved in the intervening hours."
The Hatter noted the worried crease of her brow, and realized that it was put there due to Alice's concern for her mother's impressions of this world and not Lady Ascot's.
"But your mother, she has fared better?"
"She seems to have decided this is a fit she is having. It's probably for the best, but now that she has actually come here, which even I had believed Quite Impossible, I wish she didn't have to do it in a fit."
The Hatter seemed to realize once more that Company was Coming, so he began to remove his apron and run his hands through his hair before donning his hat. He took Alice's hand with care and helped her down the stairs.
"Parlour or garden?" he half-asked, half muttered, walking past the french doors leading out to the former. Alice spared a dubious glance for the back garden and gasped this time with pleasure, as she found it transformed from its usual state of dishevelment to something quite different.
"Tarrant! You've improved the garden. It's lovely." She wandered out toward the wrought-iron table and chairs painted in the same turquoise as the shutters of Hat House. As she went, many of the flowers inclined their heads on newly groomed stalks or introduced themselves with friendly how-do's.
"We can certainly host them out here," she called behind her, turning only to find the Hatter at her shoulder, carrying a large tray laden with tea things.
"They'll just have had some," she said musingly, "but it couldn't hurt to be prepared in case they need some more. Mother in particular may be in need of a restorative."
The Hatter set down the tray. "Shall I fetch the brandy?" he inquired.
"No, though it might be wise to mark where it is in case it needs to be fetched quickly."
There was, just then, the sound of a squeak and a clatter at the front gate. Sharing a glance, Alice and the Hatter laid the table for tea with such astounding speed and accuracy that several of the flowers were still applauding as Mally lead the way into the garden, two dark-skirted Respectable Gentlewomen in tow.
Mallymkun looked at the Hatter with a fierce expression that let him know he was at her disposal for hat-travel for the next fortnight at least and said in a barely civil tone.
"Here they are, The Alice. Safe and sound and completely insensible. They're all yours now."
"Th-thank you Mally," said Alice, "won't you stay for-"
"No thank you!" and with that, the dormouse stomped off through the house and presumably out of the situation.
The Hatter was nervously eyeing Alice, who seemed to be overcome by the sight of her mother and Lady Ascot standing, slightly bedraggled but still formidable, in the back garden of Hat House.
"Won't you sit down?" he said to the ladies, indicating the long table beside them. He said this mostly because Alice seemed to need to be sitting, and he doubted she would do so while the other women from her world remained standing.
He went ahead and pulled out a chair first for Mrs. Kingsleigh and then for Lady Ascot, which at least Lady Ascot seemed to feel was the wrong way about, and then rushed over to lead Alice into one by her elbow. Which perhaps was also the Wrong Thing to Do, and he felt there was much eye narrowing at his hand on her arm.
Suddenly it was as if Alice had abruptly awoken. As her skirts hit the chair she looked up at him rather desperately. Alice grasped hold of her muchness and clutched his sleeve, right there in front of their guests.
"Tarrant, you must understand, I couldn't tell my family anything. Above, they would lock me up if they heard half the things I have to say about Underland. Mother doesn't know-I've never said anything. I avoided her attempts to arrange something for me rather effectively, but I never said precisely why. Don't-" the words seemed to be trying to escape her lips before she could properly use them. "It's nothing to do with you. No-I mean, I would have if I could have, but they would never have understood."
"Alice!" The first word out of the mouth of Mrs. Kingsleigh was his favourite by far, but the tone was all wrong. It was remonstrative, disapproving, and loud. "Alice, you forget yourself."
"Indeed, Mother, I should first introduce introductions into the conversation." Here Alice stopped, looked down at her hands, and removed a rather curious ring that she had claimed to have purchased in the Orient from the finger of her right hand. She looked her mother in the eye and replaced it on the fourth finger of her left hand.
"This is my husband, Tarrant Hightopp. Welcome to Hat House, our home."
A/N –
Well! Here is a little something that just would not let me go after *finally* watching the 2010 Burton movie and reading some awesome Tarrant/Alice epics here on ffn. I seem to be unable to resist sending mothers of Alices into Wonderland, so maybe this will get me to finish the piece I started years back for Syfy's Alice.
Let me know what you think please—does it seem worth going on with to you? Is Underland interesting enough? Is the language too frou-frou? I've got more written but reviews are what makes it happen for me. Thanks ever so, bb.