Hello everyone! A little back-story: This is to be a Hatter/Alice fic inspired directly by Bri-chan and zippitydodah27's story When Curiosity Met Insanity (which is a community that can be found on livejournal). I will be using the name they created for the mad hatter and therefore a large amount of credit goes to them. However, this will not be following the plotline of their story at all. In this fic Alice is eighteen and lives in a world with a lot of other Disney characters, which Wonderland is a part of. However, she has never visited Wonderland before. Obviously I do not own any of the characters from Lewis Carroll's works. I'm simply borrowing them in an attempt to create fluffy Alice/Hatter ship moments. This is my first fanfic that I have taken seriously…so I hope you all like it!

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The wine glasses clinked above the sounds of laughter and merriment; the dark liquid oozed down the throats of the guests as they consumed their drinks. Alice sat at her assigned table, surrounded by her family, yet felt utterly alone. Wendy, her friend and confidant, had just left her childhood behind and bravely faced the duties society so harshly bestowed upon her. She had smiled, but Alice had heard the barely audible hesitation in her voice during the vows. She must have felt Alice's stare on her during the ceremony, deliberately not allowing her eyes to lock with hers. Alice sighed. How foolish she had been to think that wishes could simply come true and that everyone was awarded a happily ever after. She had clung to the thought that something would happen to disrupt the wedding and everyone would accept it, everything would be well. But as she saw Wendy dancing there with her new husband, she knew that the hours locked in her room after the discovery of Peter's visits to her room late at night had crushed her will to pursue all the things they had giggled about privately whilst discussing their girlish fantasies. Those days were gone and soon Alice would be expected to follow in her footsteps. She could not believe that she had been so naïve. She felt numb as her stomach turned.

It was time to throw the bouquet and she was ushered by her sisters and mother to join the group of women who joyfully placed themselves in front of the bride. Alice turned, glancing back at her family nervously, but was met only with the stern glare of her mother. She turned once again, just in time to see the delicate ball of lace and silk flowers flying directly at her. She grabbed at it in a desperate attempt to shield her face, realizing the irony of her situation. She was met with the jealous faces other the other girls, the gleeful squeals of her sisters, the approving nods of her parents, and the thought that perhaps Wendy that purposefully aimed at her. For what reason she did not know.

Alice reclined in the sitting room staring at the ceiling with Dinah sleeping on the floor beside her. Her mother had talked of nothing but her possible engagement on the way home, to a man she had never met. What a frightening proposition. But then maybe she was overreacting. Maybe this was just how life was."What a convoluted day it has been," she sighed to herself. She gazed at the cracks in the ceiling paint and frowned. "Nothing seems to be the ideal I imagined it would be as a child," she murmured, turning on her side as if to hide from her thoughts, squeezing her eyes tightly. 'Of course I blame Mr. Dodgson, filling my head with such silly things.' She paused. 'No, my fantasies were my own. I mustn't push the responsibility on him.' She opened her eyes to find herself staring back at her, by way of the large ornate mirror propped against the wall. 'Hmph. I fear you shall never find a husband looking like that!' she scolded herself. Secretly she hoped she was correct. Still, she felt like the ugly duckling compared to her sisters who were already wives. She arose and walked to the mirror, sitting at its base. Turning her head side to side, she examined herself from every angle. She would just have to push aside her self-esteem issues for now; they were much too tiresome. 'Perhaps life is not so terrible,' she mused, 'there are quite a number of activities which are pleasurable.' She began reciting a list to herself in her head. 'Croquet, reading, drawing….' Suddenly her thoughts turned back to Wendy, causing her to frown at her reflection. They would often make secret plans to go on daring adventures; they were rarely put into action but on one occasion they had managed to attend the Topsy Turvy celebration which intrigued them mostly because it was specifically forbidden. They had hidden under hooded cloaks and laughed to themselves at all the silly fashions and wild events. She could no longer do such things without an accomplice. Without someone to assure her that wrong was right, she felt smothered by the rest of the world. Tears formed in her eyes and she braced herself with one hand against the mirror. "I just wish I could go somewhere where everything is backwards!" she choked out. "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would." She began to laugh at herself for wishing such an incredulous thing. Her hand began to tingle. The room around her melted away. Panicked, she attempted to jump back, but she was being pulled forward. She was floating, spiraling through the air. In an instant she was thrown to the ground, colliding with grass and dirt, unconscious. When she awoke she could barely make out the landscape as the sun had already begun to set. She turned around in alarm, seeing nothing but trees and rolling hills. There was no sign of her family, her home, her cat. "Oh dear, now what have I gotten myself into?"

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Here's some other little tidbits I'd like to mention:

-I will often list songs here that inspired the writing of this particular chapter or a scene within it. I may also put the songs up at some point so everyone can hear them. I'm not a big fan of songfics so I will NOT be putting the lyrics directly in the text, but the songs are still good enough for me to put down at the bottom.

-So to start it off, the song which will accompany this chapter is 'Could Be Anything' by the Eames Era, which is intended to be Alice's thoughts. I'll post the link here if/when it is up so keep checking back.