You could stay.
The words resonated deep within Alice's head as a very pale man with frazzled orange hair and a well-worn top hat appeared briefly before dissipating into nothingness, his glittering eyes the last to fade. His name would not come no matter how much she strained to remember, but she knew who he was.
You could stay.
He smiled at her, trying to understand yet the despair was plainly scrawled upon his elegantly carved features. She smiled back, fighting the urge to embrace him and inhale the almost intoxicating scent of tea and cakes and the pleasant mustiness of his tattered clothes, and drank the slippery purple blood of a monster she vaguely remembered slaying.
You could stay.
And then, just like that, she woke up.
"I could have stayed," she murmured, sitting up and pushing the thick blonde curls out of her eyes, "but stayed where?"
Much like the nightmares and dreams of her childhood, the mysterious man haunted her mind, causing her sleep to be restless and to spend her nights tossing and turning and flipping and flopping.
Sighing, Alice kicked off the quilt and rose out of her bed, lifting her arms high over her head and yawning. For another day he would have to remain a mystery for she had to rise and dress to go shopping with her sister. Margaret had chattered about needing a new dress or gloves or something, and she had absolutely insisted upon Alice joining her.
"It's been so long since you've had fashionable clothes," Margaret had said, "and even longer since we've been shopping together. Please do come with me."
"Oh, all right," Alice had mumbled back, folding her arms sullenly.
Slipping her arms through the sleeves of a dress, Alice attempted to untangle her curls and assemble them into a suitable style. When she finally gave up, she trudged down the stairs toward the dining room, purposely ignoring the new stockings laid out on her bureau.
Margaret fussed and picked at her appearance, but Alice bluntly informed her that she would go out dressed the way she was or not go out at all. Margaret hated shopping alone, so she surrendered to her sister's eccentricities and the two trotted out the door.
--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--
"Alice, don't you think this is just adorable?" Margaret gushed, clutching a blouse to her front as she gazed at her reflection. When she didn't receive an immediate response, she turned and frowned. "Alice, please pay attention. This is important to me."
Alice reluctantly tore her eyes from the hat shop across the street and looked at the blouse. "It's nice," she replied, forcing her lip not to curl in disgust, then she let her eyes return to the hatter's. Recently she had become almost obsessed with hats and the people who crafted them, heaven knows why. They had never intrigued her much before, but now it was difficult to maintain her attention if there was a person with a peculiar hat in sight.
After dragging her through multiple shops and emerging with multiple packages, Margaret sighed contentedly and glanced over at her sister. "Just one more shop," she said, "then I promise we can go home."
"Of course," Alice replied. "Where are we going now?"
Margaret smiled and pointed behind her. "Just there." Alice turned and easily spied a hat shop. When she made the connection between her sister's gesture and that particular store, Alice knew her heart must have skipped a beat.
As the sisters pushed open the door, a merry bell chimed above their heads and already Alice felt her chest lighten, as if a weight had been pressing upon it.
"I'll be with you in a moment," a voice called from the depths of the shop. Alice edged away from her sister's side and moved to examine a plethora of hats on display in the window.
Cloches, boaters, gainsboroughs, capelines, bowlers, bonnets, enormous sunhats and dainty pill boxes in dozens of colors and fabrics and designs with a myriad of decorations and trinkets dangling from brims and bands. She dragged her fingers along each of them, savoring the smoothness of silk and velvet beneath her fingertips, the crackle of chiffon, the crunch of crinoline. But again and again she was drawn back to the rows of top hats, each unique and warm and simple in its own way. Something about the top hats was strangely familiar.
That man…
You could stay.
And then, as if materializing straight from her dreams, a top hat she had not noticed before drew her eye.
It was lovely deep burgundy overlaid with gold lace and wound with a peach-colored ribbon that was so long it trailed along the floor. A dozen pins and a peacock feather protruded from the sides, as did a card that read "10/6." As if in a trance, she slowly reached out to glide her fingers along its round top when it was suddenly lifted off the table by a pale, bandaged hand. Just as Alice was about to protest, she raised her eyes and all of her indignation evaporated.
"There you are!" Margaret cried, running up and grasping Alice's arm. "I wondered where you had got off to. Oh!" she exclaimed, noticing the object of her sister's attention. "I see you've met the proprietor of this fine establishment."
Alice nodded. "Yes," she gasped.
The man tipped his hat. "It's a pleasure."
"Shall we be going then?" Margaret inquired. "I've already been measured and ordered, so we can go home now."
"I think," Alice began, not really comprehending her own words, "I shall stay awhile longer."
Surprise overtaking her lovely features, Margaret glanced between her sister and the hatter before realization dawned on her and she smiled slyly. "All right. I'll see you when you get home then?"
She nodded slightly, so Margaret bustled out the door, the bell tinkling at her exit. Alice never took her eyes off the man standing before her.
He was different than in her dreams. His hair was trimmed and combed back, his skin a much healthier shade of cream, his hands not quite so scarred and his clothes not quite so outrageous. But his eyes were still the same eerie green, glittering like crushed emeralds in the fading sunlight, and there was still that awful gap between his teeth that he revealed when he smiled at her.
"Hatter," she breathed, not quite daring to hope that he was standing in front of her in a hat shop in London.
The Hatter smiled. "Hello Alice," he replied, slurring the 'c' in her name. "It's wonderful to see you. How are you?"
But Alice wasn't able to formulate a cordial response. Instead, the only response she was capable of—really, the only response that seemed right—was throwing her arms around his neck and thrusting her head into his shoulder.
"How I've missed you, Hatter," she murmured, trying not to cry with the sheer joy of seeing him in the flesh after so long.
After a moment, his arms came up and rested lightly on her waist. "How I've missed you, Alice."
She tightened her grip on his neck. "I feared I would never see you again. When I made the decision to come back up, I never dreamed that I might never go back down."
He sighed. "You could have stayed."
"I know," she choked out, then she suddenly drew back. "How did you get here? I thought… I thought…"
The Hatter sighed. "You think far too much, dear Alice," he chided gently. "Thinking too much isn't good for one's health, you know. You'll lose your head to too much thinking, so think much less."
She reached up and brushed an unruly lock of orange hair away from his brilliant green irises. "How are you here, Hatter?" she asked again.
He shrugged. "Who's to say I never was here? Perhaps you just weren't looking hard enough."
Exasperatedly, she leaned back into his embrace. "Well, I'm glad you are."
"Alice?" His voice was quiet, shrill, and anxious.
"Hmm?"
"Does this mean that neither of us is a figment of your imagination?"
She smiled into his jacket that smelled of tea and cakes and pleasant mustiness. "Hatter, even when I believed you to be a dream, you were always real to me."
A/N: I totally thought this was how the movie should've ended, and then I discovered somebody who beat me to the punch, but now I can't find their story on here! D: Until I figure out who it is, I just want to give credit to them for inspiring me.