A/N: This fic is very strange. Pieces of it have been hazily drifting through my head for ages now, and last night I was blocked on "In the Rough" and thought maybe I'd faff out a few sentences, and within an hour the whole fic in its entirety had spilled out onto the page. That makes it, to date, the quickest fic I have ever written.
It's a very twisted sort of fairy-tale. I meant for Alice's world to feel like a stilted and flat version of reality, like a pop-up book. Then Hatter comes in, the only real thing, and she doesn't even recognize him for what he is. He doesn't fit. The end result is spooky and devastating, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.
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Once Upon A Time, a girl woke up. She was in a large, white bed in a large, white room, and her Mother was sitting nearby. "Oh, Mother!" the girl said. "I'm so glad it's you! I have had the strangest adventures just now, Mother!"
Her Mother came over and embraced her daughter. "Oh, Alice!" she exclaimed (for her daughter's name was Alice), "You have been sleeping for such a very long time!"
"Sleeping?" asked the daughter, for she could have sworn that she had just been in a very strange land battling evil Queens and giant Monsters, with one gallant Knight and one not-so-gallant Knight at her side, and that she had found her long-lost Father. "But that can't be true," she insisted. "I have saved the world, and found our long-lost Father."
"Oh, my dear," her Mother said fondly. "I'm afraid that can't possibly be true. Father has been gone too long to be found, and you have not gone on any adventures. You have been injured, and have since been sleeping in this bed all through the night and day."
"But Mother, I can prove it!" Alice said, and went to pull up her sleeve.
All that met Alice's eyes was the bare skin of her forearm.
"That is so strange, Mother," Alice said, confused. "On my adventures, I got a tattoo right here on my arm. Perhaps you're right," she said. "Perhaps it was all just a dream."
And so her Mother told her the story of how she had been missing for several hours, and how they had looked high and low for where she had gone. They had even gone to the home of her boyfriend Jack Chase, but found that the address he had given Alice and her Mother led only to an empty lot. The Police suggested that Jack Chase was into bad, bad company, and told her Mother that neither she, nor Alice, should ever go looking for him again. Then, late into the night, when her Mother was nearly beside herself with worry, a kind construction worker found Alice sleeping on the ground. The kind construction worker rescued Alice, bringing her to this strange, white room to sleep on this strange, white bed so that her Mother could find her.
This story made sense, and Alice was glad to be reunited with her Mother. The next day Alice was able to leave the strange, white bed in the strange, white room, and hand-in-hand she and her Mother walked home.
..
A day or so later, Mother found Alice as she was cleaning. "Alice," she said. "We have a guest on his way to meet you!"
"A guest?" Alice asked curiously, for she was a very smart girl, and was wary of strangers. "Who?"
"The construction worker who rescued you is to arrive within the half-hour. When we spoke on the phone, it sounds as though he has traveled from a land very far away. We should be gracious to him, for he has done such a good deed in saving you."
"That sounds wonderful, Mother," Alice said. "I will be very polite, and happy to see him." and she continued to clean.
Soon the doorbell rang, and Alice went to answer the door.
The man on the other side was brown all over. His jacket was brown, his hair was brown, his eyes were very, very brown. He carried a felted black hat that spun and danced in his hands. He had a handsome face, but he looked a bit unwell, like he was going to throw up. He looked into Alice's eyes, with his own eyes that had grown very wide. "Hey, Alice," he said, his voice shaking a bit and a crooked smile blossoming over his face. He visibly relaxed at the sight of her, standing there. "Surprised to see me?"
"Hello," Alice said politely. "Are you the construction worker?"
He paused. "What?"
"The construction worker who saved me," she explained. "That's you, isn't it?" She smiled graciously and extended her hand. "Thank you very much."
He froze where he stood… he hardly seemed to breathe.
Then the expression on his face, the tentative, endlessly anxiously hopeful expression seemed to slip, and fall away, and break into a million pieces. "You don't remember… oh, Christ," he said, rubbing a hand through his carefully combed hair and messing it all back up again. "You don't… I just…" he gritted his teeth and slammed a hand against the door frame so hard that it shuddered. "No! NO!"
Alice looked at the man, alarmed. "Excuse me, sir!" she exclaimed. "I don't understand what has gotten you so upset! Perhaps you should leave."
"No, please!" he protested, rubbing a weary hand over his face. "No, let me stay, just… just…" he was looking at her so desperately. "You have to remember," he begged. He grabbed Alice's arms and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm here, I came, I want to do lots of other things. Lots of other things, you said! We have lots of other things left to do, but you have to remember! Please, please, Alice, you have to remember something, anything… all the stuff we did, all the… Charlie? You must remember Charlie!"
"Charlie?" Alice repeated. Her face was twisted into a look of confusion. "I thought Mother said your name was David. Isn't it David?"
His expression was empty, now. He had so far to fall, when he first knocked on her door.
"No," he said, and his voice cracked with the effort it took to say that single syllable. "No, that's… that's right. David. Yeah." He laughed hollowly, looking visibly pained. "Sorry… I didn't mean to scare you. You're just… you're just livin' your life here, and I barge in and…" he looked at a loss for words.
"That's okay," Alice said mildly. "I just wanted to thank you for saving me, David." She reached forward to grab his hand where it lay, limply, by his side. Alice shook it firmly and moved to close the door, but the man wouldn't let go of her hand.
"No," he said. "I want to thank you. Alice, you…" He gripped her hand as though it were a lifeline, folding both of his own, large, calloused, slightly trembling ones over it. "I mean, I just wanted to say…" he started with a shaky voice. "I just wanted to say…"
Alice waited patiently.
He looked straight into her eyes with the saddest, most desperate expression Alice would ever see ever again in her life, "I just wanted… I just wanted to make sure you're happy." he finally managed. "I want you to to be happy, Alice. Have a fantastic, wonderful life. That's all I wanted, that's all I want for you. You deserve it," he finished quietly. "So please, promise me you'll have a wonderful life."
"I promise," Alice said simply. "It was a pleasure to meet you, David. Thanks for stopping by."
"Yeah," he mumbled. Her hand slipped out from between his. "Yeah…"
And Alice shut the door, and went back to her room to finish her cleaning.
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