Down the Rabbit Hole or Curiosity Killed the Cat, Satisfaction Brought It Back or When I Get Home, I Shall Write a Book About This Place

By: 1000th Ghost

*This story is dedicated to Mitty (my favorite thing that begins with the letter "M"). Or Dinah. Mitzi? And, of course, I'm Alice. Dorothy? WHO…R…U?*

"Going down the rabbit hole.

Get away from all we know.

Come on, follow-

Come on, and follow me."

-Adam Lambert (Down the Rabbit Hole)

"...leaders and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest."

It was something she should have known, something that sounded vaguely familiar, something that had nothing to do with a little crocodile, as much as her mind told her it did. But her mind told her many things that had nothing to do with anything.

She attempted to pay attention for exactly ten seconds, but by the time she got to six, she was wondering if he was wondering about six impossible things to do before breakfast and what he had for breakfast and was it tea – she was rather fond of tea.

What had she told him? Well, that there were questions she had to answer. She was always trying to answer questions, always, always, the who, what, where, when, and why of the world. It was a horrid habit, especially considering that she lost interest in the questions before she found their answers.

Take now, for example. Why, here she was, sailing back to London from China, of all the ridiculous places. And why? Not because she had any interest in business or companies or apprenticeships whatsoever but because she was curious to find out if she could expand to China. And what was it like in China? And on a boat? And to blatantly disregard the rules of proper society in front of a crowd of the most distinguished-

He had been somewhat distinguished too, she supposed. He had worked in both queens' courts, after all. But he had a healthy dose of madness to go along with it.

She couldn't understand Chinese, and the boat made her seasick, and she just wanted to go home. The second she had departed, she had wished she was home, and she knew the second she arrived back home she would wish she was somewhere strange and wonderful.

Or Underful because that was where he was.

And come to think of it, "home" lately did not seem to be her mother and sister at all but a new kind of love that dwelled under the ground. She loved her mother, but corsets were equivalent to codfish, and she loved her sister, but history lessons were impossible to listen to from a book with no pictures in it.

One of the various business associates, whose name she had quite forgotten, was still going on, just as Margaret had, and Alice knew they both meant well, but her mind was a million miles away because the studies of childhood and the careers of adulthood had no place or importance in her golden-haired head.

Which she may have already lost, just like him.

He was certainly wrong when he said she would forget him. Every five (six?) minutes, it seemed, something would remind her of something that would remind her of him.

"I'm just like Aunt Imogene and her imaginary prince," she thought and was immediately scared to death at the notion. She had told Hamish that he was not the man for her, which implied that there was a man for her, right? Yes, he was way, way down in Underland, and unlike the imaginary prince, he had proved himself to be quite real.

She loved him probably from the moment he recognized her. Or maybe from the moment he said "Naughty" or maybe from the moment he had accidentally viewed her naked in the teapot (or from the moment when he reached his fingers in regardless).

Anyway, she loved him, although looking back, she possibly had done a laughably poor job of showing it. Perhaps because she was convinced he was a dream for quite some time, and what kind of a person fell in love with a dream?

A half-mad person, that's who.

It would also take a half-mad person to leave the one she loved when he pleadingly told her, "You could stay." But she had told him that she would be back before he knew it. Was that enough to let him know how she felt?

She was sure that he loved her too, but something always stopped him, something always held him back. Maybe her constantly fluctuating height. Maybe she was always too small or too tall to kiss.

What was he doing now? she questioned again. Just waiting and waiting for her?

The waiting made her curious.

Also, she missed Dinah.

The waiting did not make him curious.

It made him furious and impatient and…well, mad, but that was a given.

He had waited for her to return for thirteen years before, doing nothing but sleeping and occasionally sipping tea. Thirteen years at that table, in that chair. Never moving since the moment she left.

Actually, as frustrating as it had been, the few months he had been waiting since she left the second time were even more unbearable. At least when she was seven, she had left him sitting down. At nineteen, she had left him standing up, which was so momentously uncomfortable a position to hold that occasionally he pondered walking away and doing something besides waiting.

But then he would remember that there was nothing else to do – nothing he would find any pleasure in doing, anyway – until she returned, and he would continue to wait.

It wasn't until he heard a panicked "meow" which his jumbled brain somehow related to "Alice" that his legs set off towards the rabbit hole.

He found a cat there, small and red, positively dead as a doornail. It had not survived the long fall, as Alice somehow always did.

"You are the 'You know who' I was supposed to know, aren't you?" he asked the lifeless cat, picking it up gingerly and cradling it in his arms. "Yes, I believe she was trying to tell me about you. Dinah. The letter 'M', the letter 'M'."

Dinah opened her eyes. "She was trying to tell me about you, too," she meowed in perfect English. "That's why I came down here: she's been gone for so long, and I figured she would be here with you."

"Why, you're alive," the Mad Hatter stated plainly.

"Here you are, and here she is obviously not. I have my answer; satisfaction brought me back." She paused. "I'm not nearly as curious as she is though."

"Just curious enough to come looking for her?"

Dinah nodded. "Now she'll be curious enough to come looking for me and probably snap her neck like I did falling down the hole. There's no chance she could survive three entire trips down it."

"Hmm." The Mad Hatter pondered this while unconsciously stroking the cat's fur, although it was rather difficult to ponder much of anything as images of ravens and writing desks and hats and teapots and almost-kisses and nonsense words whispered in ears instead of "goodbye" flashed through his mind. Finally, he spoke, an alarming shade of desperate determination evident in his features, "A very merry unbirthday to you."

With that, Dinah was set down to continue waiting where he had left off, and he journeyed backwards up the rabbit hole she had fallen down.

The cat knew her well, for when he reached the top, the blue-clad girl was indeed wandering temptingly close to the hole, calling, "Dinah, Dinah!"

Her back was to him, but her dress was very pretty, and it was a good back, it was a great back, it was a right-proper-Alice back, and he could easily picture what was on the other side of the dress. And perhaps under it as well.

These thoughts in his head, his eyes dangerously dark, he took no concern of her exclamation of shock when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She was light, but even if she had weighed as much as three Tweedles, he would have found the strength to carry her.

He said nothing, and all she could see of her captor was his jacket sleeves (which were surprisingly quite ordinary). She opened her mouth to scream, but he coaxed, "Come on, and follow me," alluringly in her ear, and she was so deathly curious.

She was fairly certain it was him and fairly certain that she did not want him kidnapping her without her consent. But his grip on her waist tightened, and one of his arms came to rest firmly across her chest, and the sensation it invoked was so foreign and sensual that she promptly forgot all about resisting and blindly let the madman carry her into the gaping rabbit hole.

Somehow, they didn't exactly fall. Not in the head-over-heels, screaming way she had, anyway. It felt more like purposely tripping in reverse down moving steppingstones. In any case, the journey was infinitely shorter than her previous ones had been, and when they arrived in the room with the locked doors, he was still standing on his feet as though the fall had not occurred.

She had not said a word the entire encounter and felt that she should say hello and perhaps ask why he had stolen her. But before she had the chance to, he had let go of her waist, placed his hands on her shoulders, spun her around, and fairly shoved her against one of the doors.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he spat, and it was a firm statement, not a question.

His skin was even paler than it had been, if such a thing were imaginable, and his eyes! She had seen him in these fits of rage or passion or madness or whatever irrepressible emotion formed in his head, but never had she seen his eyes so dark.

"I've been investigation things that begin with the letter 'M'," he continued seamlessly, his piercing gaze burning her with its intensity. "Maddening, missing, memory-"

She could see the obvious pain he had been through and had a terrible suspicion that it was because of her.

"-magnificent, magical, mesmerizing-"

No, no, she wasn't, she didn't deserve any of those words. She was not – "Marvelous," her brain interjected, "Another 'M' word" – at all, not after what she had put him through. And yet, though his tone was livid, he looked at her so adoringly that she wondered if he really cared about her absence now that she was back.

"-muchness, magnetism, mate-"

Now she was slightly alarmed, and her lips formed the word "Hatter" to break him out of his trance, but only a strangled gasp escaped her throat, and his fingers dug deeper into her shoulders as he came towards her.

"-make love, marriage, my you're a lovely girl, Alice-"

"HATTER!"

He drew in a quick, shaky breath and muttered, "I'm fine." Then he blinked, and his expression changed to one of absolutely delighted bewilderment. "Alice! Have you come back then?"

"I-I-" She tried to think of a suitable answer while still acutely aware of his frantic grip and his breath on her skin, his lips mere inches from her own. "Well, you brought me here, so I suppose I am back."

"I did?" He seemed ridiculously amused by the notion.

"Yes! I was looking for Dinah near the rabbit hole, and then you came and grabbed me from behind and-"

"This is a fascinating story, Alice, but I do believe that I am crushing you."

Alice felt her cheeks burn. "Pinning me against the door, really."

"What a silly thing for me to do." He freed her shoulders but did not back away. "Doors are not for pinning people against, they are for going through. Or going back through. Or really, one could just open and close it continuously without going through at all, which might be fun but might also prove unsatisfactory in getting to another room."

"Hatter, why did you come for me?" For as much as she was thrilled to see him, true to her nature, a nagging notion seemed to be pushing her back towards her own world, if for no other reason than she was still curious as to where Dinah had gone.

"I came back for you," he replied, "because you had said you would be back, and Time has a traitorous way of standing still – and me along with it – while you are not by me. Also, your cat said you would snap your neck."

"Dinah?" Alice exclaimed, and the Hatter leapt back and exclaimed, "Yes!" with equal (although unnecessary) enthusiasm.

Alice giggled then realized his confusing response was filled with questions to be answered. Which she was especially fond of.

"You can't move if I'm not here?"

He stared at her as though she was completely daft for asking such a question, and she began to feel quite stupid indeed until he explained, "What would be the purpose of moving – of anything – without you there to do it with?" Alice smiled, and he quickly added, "Plus, ever since your first visit, Time has decided that you and I are simply destined to fall in love and live happily ever after – a theory which I have not helped disprove by trying to kill Time until you came back – and it would not let me move even if I had wanted to. Which I don't. Didn't. Will not."

She reached out a hand, a peculiar memory rising to the surface, and his break hitched at the almost-contact as she quizzically brushed her fingers through his fiery-red hair.

"My first visit? My first visit you had white hair. And you were shorter than me and very, very old. A little, old man with white hair."

"Your first visit," he countered nonchalantly, "you were an obnoxious, flat-chested girl with a white apron." Ignoring her shocked expression, he concluded, "You grew up, and I grew down."

"W-where's Dinah?" she inquired again, eager to change the subject.

"Oh! The tiny, red, furry thing? Why, I left her right-" He opened a door (without the need of a key, she noted) and slammed it shut again, rounding on her. "N-nope, nope, she's fine," he sputtered, a hint of madness beginning to darken his eyes once again.

"Well, let me see her!"

"I-I really don't think-"

But Alice had pushed past him and flung the door wide open.

"Cheshire Cat?"

"Hello, luv."

Alice immediately closed her eyes to block out the scene. "What are you doing to my poor, little Dinah?"

"Ah, that would be futterwacking," the Hatter replied from behind her.

"That's a dance!" Alice cried, her eyes still tightly shut.

"Clearly, it's more enjoyable when done with a partner," the striped cat retorted. "Hello, Tarrant."

The Hatter tipped his hat slightly and coughed.

But Alice's mind was already beginning to wander. If the Hatter did the best futterwacken…

"Miss Alice, you had me killed, disappearing for months, making me wonder where you were."

"Dinah? You can talk?" She had to open her eyes to check but promptly shut them again.

"Didn't you say I would be able to?" the cat accused. "Luckily, my curiosity was satisfied, and I was brought back." She paused. "Although why you were not with Tarrant, I still can't understand. Ooh, Cheshire, you're too much!"

"Erm…" Alice fidgeted uncomfortably.

"Vigorously," the madman whispered, his tone recognizably insane.

"Stop being so curious, Miss Alice," Dinah advised. "Just be satisfied."

She wanted to interrogate her cat further, but the Hatter grabbed the door and crashed it back into its frame.

"What an idea." His eyes were leering at her again, positively dark and threatening.

And what, she wondered, would happen if she did not shout "Hatter" and bring him back to his senses? She was not sure, but she had never been so curious about anything in her entire life.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" she whimpered. Which, of course, was a direct translation to "I love you".

"Precisely."

And then she was almost completely bent over backwards from the ferocity of his kiss, only kept from collapsing to the floor by his desperate, fervid embrace. His tongue raked over her own incessantly, his hand in her hair, now on her cheek, now cupped around her breast, and something large and hard pressing against her stomach.

He released her lips for a moment to lean into her, whispering a lascivious message in her ear.

"Come along, it's time for tea."

The End