Disclaimer: The characters in the following story do not belong to me, nor am I profiting from this story. Alice belongs to Lewis Carroll, Nick Willing, and SyFy. I'm simply borrowing the characters for my own amusement, and I promise to return them.
Prologue
Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life.
- Albert Camus
Happy endings belonged to the pages of fairytales; Alice Hamilton understood that now.
At first, deceptively, her reunion with Hatter appeared so very much like the proverbial happily ever after. For her, Hatter had traveled through the Looking Glass, abandoning his world and the life he knew in Wonderland.
Naturally, her mother was more than a little perplexed by her relationship with David, the construction worker. As any loving and concerned mother would, she asked countless questions, and Alice provided feeble lies that even the most naïve of mothers would never believe. Still, Carol Hamilton rather liked David. Therefore, she managed to overlook Alice's contrived explanations for her mysterious and abrupt relationship with David.
David; Alice never called him that. She asked him once why he chose that name, and he replied, "Seemed as good as any other Oyster name. Can't go around tellin' people my name's Hatter, now can I?" Thus, he adopted the name David Hatter, and Alice noticed that, even after several months following his arrival in her world, he still cringed slightly when people addressed him as "David."
Of course, Carol commented on Alice's strange insistence of calling her boyfriend by his surname. It seemed, as Carol put it, rather "unorthodox."
Yet, all things considered, Hatter's continued aversion to his Oyster name was the least of his and Alice's concerns.
Initially, Hatter's front as a construction worker was merely that: a front. However, shortly afterward, he managed to find an actual job in construction. Alice never asked how he accomplished that particular feat, considering the fact that she highly doubted Hatter knew the first thing about construction. Regardless of his methods, Hatter earned a decent wage and, in Alice's opinion, seemed satisfied with his career choice, however unconventional for a man recently removed from Wonderland.
Construction work aside, Alice and Hatter dated for nearly three months before Alice informed her mother that she was going to live with Hatter. Since that declaration did not include, at the very least, the announcement of an engagement, Carol was not necessarily ecstatic by Alice's decision. With her traditional ideals, Carol protested the situation but eventually realized she could not deter her daughter. Still, the arrangement did not lower Hatter in Carol's opinion. Instead, she faulted Alice for being impetuous. Yet the so-called guilt trip with which she inundated Alice was, more or less, superficial. Ultimately, her daughter's happiness meant far more than her conventional principles.
In the end, it should have been the happily ever after of which Alice always dreamed – of which any girl dreams as an idealistic child. But less than a month after she first called Hatter's small but comfortable apartment home, Hatter suffered his first headache, a throbbing migraine which crippled him for nearly a full day.
At first, it appeared a small matter. Headaches, after all, were not uncommon, despite the fact Hatter did not leave their bed for an entire day. However, the second debilitating headache occurred barely two days later. Then, a third one incapacitated him four days after the second headache.
Hatter tried to brush off the entire issue, but Alice insisted he see a doctor. His subsequent visits to the doctor at Alice's behest proved ineffective. The number of headaches increased just as they intensified, but, by all medical tests performed, Hatter was pronounced the very picture of health. His doctors were baffled, incapable of explaining the sudden onset of his violent migraines.
Hatter assured Alice that she shouldn't worry, but Alice was beginning to fear that his prolonged exposure to her world was somehow the cause of his mysterious illness. When she hesitantly voiced that theory, Hatter told her that was impossible. And, obviously, Alice wanted desperately to believe that.
But then the nosebleeds started, and the nightmares soon followed.
Hatter told her of the recurring nightmare so often that it began to haunt her dreams as well …
She stood alone, staring out over the vast snow covered field before her. Though impossible to see from her position, she knew the seemingly endless field was neatly divided into massive squares by the intersecting lines of frozen brooks. In one square, the snow covered the earth with a thick blanket of white; in the next, black snow glistened in the waning light of the winter sun.
She shivered. Her limbs were stiff, and her fingers were turning blue.
The cold was consuming her – claiming her and killing her.
The cold devoured the very world itself.
The cold had taken him; it had taken everything.
Time was running out. She had to move, but she could not. Horrified, she looked down. The snow had climbed nearly halfway up her legs, fusing her body with the frozen earth.
She panicked, struggling as the snow climbed higher.
Alice gasped, and her eyes opened. Her heart pounded, and it took a moment for her to realize she'd been dreaming.
As her breathing stilled, she realized Hatter was not beside her. She suspected he'd never even tried to sleep that night. When the headaches did not plague him, confining him to bed, then he often suffered from insomnia.
Alice threw back the covers and rose. When she opened the bedroom door and stepped into the short hallway, she noticed the light. She walked into the dining room, a tiny area that suited its purpose but was just barely large enough to accommodate a table and four chairs. In one of the chairs, Hatter sat while Alice's old chessboard occupied the table before him. Bloody tissues littered the remainder of the table, indicating yet another nosebleed.
He rolled a white pawn between his fingers, and he did not acknowledge Alice's approach. He frowned, intently studying the chessboard.
"Hatter," Alice whispered as she gently placed one hand on his shoulder.
Though he had appeared lost in a trance over the chessboard, he was not startled by the sudden contact. Instead, he blinked several times as if awaking from a dream … or nightmare. "Alice?" he asked. "Sorry, couldn't sleep."
"So you decided to play chess … alone?"
"Yeah, it's … well, it's, um, good for the mind, you know. Plus it's boring," he added. "Figured maybe it'd put me to sleep … which, obviously, it didn't."
"I see that."
"But don't let me keep you up," Hatter said as he placed the pawn back on the chessboard. "I'm fine, really – just a bit of trouble sleepin' is all."
"It is three o'clock in the morning," Alice returned. "You're staring at a chessboard. You had another nosebleed." She paused. "Hatter, you are not fine."
Hatter avoided her gaze. "Your doctors all say I'm fine."
"The doctors don't know you're from Wonderland," Alice replied.
"Look, Alice," Hatter said with a sigh, "it's just a bit of an adjustment is all – nothin' to worry about. Here, I'll go to bed if that's what's got you worried," he added as he pushed the chair back from the table. The chair's legs scraped loudly along the hardwood floor.
It wasn't the insomnia alone that concerned Alice. It was the headaches and the nosebleeds, the nightmares and the solitary games of chess where Hatter never actually moved any of the pieces, except the white pawn. He simply studied the board as if waiting for some kind of profound revelation.
Alice shook her head, forcing aside the troubling thoughts. Maybe it was just an adjustment for him as he adapted to her world. She tried to convince herself of that fact, but it was becoming more difficult to continue the charade of normalcy with each passing day.
Then, finally, the charade became impossible.
Nearly a month after that incident in the dining room, Alice returned home after joining her mother for lunch. She found Hatter in the bedroom.
When she entered the room, her jaw dropped. Large sections of the white walls were covered with writing. In fact, Hatter was still writing, apparently oblivious to Alice's arrival. As he wrote, he recited: "The Lion and the Unicorn were fightin' for the crown: The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town. Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown: Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town (1)."
"Hatter," Alice whispered, horrified.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Alice," he greeted. "Fancy seein' you here."
"I live here," Alice reminded him, fearing that he did not even know where he was.
"Right," he replied, seeming to simply brush right over her comment without the slightest comprehension. "Well, I had some stuff on my mind – had to write it down." He paused as he looked over what he'd just finished writing. "Strange song, that," he said. "Haven't the slightest idea what it means, but I keep hearin' it in my head." He shook his head, looking momentarily perplexed. Then he continued, "They're callin' me 'Mad' Hatter. Did you know that?"
"Who're 'they,' Hatter?" Alice was trying desperately not to panic. It wouldn't do either one of them any bit of good if she panicked. After all, someone needed to think clearly.
Hatter shrugged. "Don't know, actually. I keep hearin' it is all." As he turned away from her again, prepared to continue decorating the wall with riddles and rhymes, Alice reached out and grasped his arm. The physical contact jarred him, and he blinked several times before looking back at her. "Alice," he greeted as if he hadn't just been talking to her. "You're back early. Lunch with your mum go all right?" He frowned. "What's wrong? You look a bit pale."
"Don't you remember what you were just doing – what you were just saying?" Alice asked as she waved a hand toward the walls, which Hatter had used as paper.
"What the …?" Then, realization seemed to dawn on him. "Oh," he said. "That was … um, that was me, wasn't it?" Hatter cleared his throat. "Well, I'll just have to paint over that then." He offered a valiant front, acting perfectly nonchalant about the entire situation. But the façade crumbled quickly. Hatter sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not all right, Alice," he said quietly.
Alice swallowed hard. "I know."
"No one here can help me."
"I know," Alice whispered.
"I've got to go back to Wonderland." Hatter hesitated. "I don't expect you to come with me. I know you've had enough of Wonderland for a lifetime. Don't blame you for that one. If I were you, I'd be done with the place myself."
"I'm going with you."
"You don't have to explain, Alice. I understand. It's – wait a second. You said you're going?"
Alice raised an eyebrow as she folded her arms across her chest. "Of course I'm going, Hatter."
"Well, what about your mum? She'll worry."
"Last time, I was only gone an hour," Alice replied. "I doubt she'll even realize I'm gone."
Hatter appeared to consider that for a moment. "All right, true, but … you know I've got a bad feelin' about this. It's not just me, Alice. Somethin' isn't right about Wonderland."
Alice suspected that Hatter was correct in his assumption. Unfortunately, there was only one method available to prove Hatter's theory just as there was only one way to understand and, hopefully, cure Hatter's mysterious affliction.
The answers were through the Looking Glass.
(1) - The Lion and the Unicorn is a nursery rhyme played upon by Lewis Carroll, who incorporated the Lion and the Unicorn as characters in Through the Looking Glass.