Burton/Depp cavalcade!
Chapter one: Raven and the writing desk (Alice in Wonderland)
''Hatter?''
He lifted his eyes to hers, looked into the two brown orbs that reminded him so fiercely about his most beloved tea. His lips twitched.
'' Why is a raven like a writing desk?''
He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry; all along she'd been pondering this irrelevant, meaningless, stupid question and the fact that he actually didn't have the slightest idea why a raven should be anything near to a writing desk made his body ache with a rare, unknown, or maybe just forgotten, pain that sure as hell didn't make him want to laugh, so it kind of narrowed his options down. But he somehow managed to lift his lips into a smile.
How he was going to miss this divine creature.
'' I haven't the slightest idea.''
~**~
There was this... This pressure on his head. Just below his hat. No, lower, it was under the frizzy, tangerine hair, but that wasn't the only place, oh no, the itching, loud, hollow but crowded pressure was behind his green eyes, it was in his throat, in his chest.
But mostly in his mind. Yes, his mind was an old mansion housing crowds and crowds of young people. People like her.
And he couldn't take it. His poor, old, tired thoughts needed to loosen, to take a break... To let go of what they've been trying to grasp for so long. A thing he could never get.
I'm investigating in a word that begins with the letter 'M'!
Oh, he couldn't do this... No no, not with all those tiny ticking clocks and hats and heart-shaped heads screaming ''Off with his head!''
Didn't that pig head of a woman know that he'd lost that long before she could even say those words? Yes, the mercury could cure the disease, but it taxed the mind, no doubt about that.
''My mind is a crowded place, Alice,'' he heard himself whisper with a voice that was nothing more than a poor imitation of his thoughts. He felt so small, so powerless, partly because he was chained to the table and partly because she was twice as tall as him at the moment.
The next words that escaped his lips was so rare to him that he for a fleeting moment thought it was she, who had said them:
''Have I gone mad?''
~**~
''You could stay...''
Like a sudden cold and damp fog in the Fall, all the moments of words unsaid, feelings unfolded, things left undone, rose between them in that one single, hoping, no, pleading sentence, and he felt how the clammy foggy air wrapped itself around something in his chest, already knowing her answer.
''What an idea... '', Alice replied, a sparkle in her pretty eyes, those eyes he had been thinking of all along, ''A crazy, mad, wonderful idea... ''
That smile. It almost hurt just to look at her. But he couldn't tear his eyes from hers. He wouldn't!
''But I can't.''
She couldn't... He'd lose her, again.
''There are questions I have to answer... Things I have to do...''
This said, she lead the tiny bottle of the Jaberwocky's blood to her lips in a swift motion that was far too quick for him to even think of stopping her somehow.
And she drank.
It wasn't before he replied her seconds or maybe eternities later, he realized that his breath had hitched in his throat and he found it nearly impossible to croak out the words he spoke as an answer to her words:
''I'll be back again before you know it.''
They had been waiting for her. He had been waiting for her! A day had not went by without him remembering her laughter, her eyes, her smile, her voice
Why is a Raven like a writing desk?
And she didn't remember... She'd forgotten why a Raven is like a writing desk, and, for a time, he had forgotten, too. That damned Time, always messing up everything. She'd forgotten, then remembered, and now she'd forget once again. The cold sensation in his chest gave his heart a tight, painful squeeze.
''… You won't remember me''
~**~
AN-
Ok, so that was my first chapter in my Burton/Depp cavalcade (and by that I mean a bunch of one-shots inspired by characters made up by Tim Burton and played by Johnny Depp). It took me a great deal of song-listening and movie-watching (because I can't bloody remember all those genius Hatter quotes all by myself!?)
I really hope you enjoyed it, I know I did, it's always fun to dig into various characters, even if it doesn't quite succeed, ahehe? :D
You're welcome to leave a comment if you think it's worth it, flames will not be frowned upon but merely shrugged away.
Btw:
The answer to the odd question that Hatter time after time asks Alice (Why is a Raven like a writing desk?) is quite simple, but took me some time to figure out anyways...
Edgar Allen Poe, ladies and gents, wrote on both. That is why. Due to the fact that he probably wrote ''The Raven'' on a writing desk gives them a similarity.
Yes, Lewis Caroll was a genius, let's face it! ^^