It had finally happened. The most awful, impossible thing in the DC universe...

No, not Batman making out with Joker! (That's next week and far removed from this awful terrible thing.) It took place in a cell in Arkham asylum, adding it to the list of many other terrible things...

Jervis Tetch was sitting on his bunk in the cell he shared with the ever cranky, Scarecrow.( Who was at the moment also in his bunk, reading a worn copy of Cujo and smiling to himself as the mad dog ripped the stupid cop apart.)

Just thinking about Alice, how pretty she was, how she was so nice to him, and how great she looked with all of her long blonde hair held back by her simple black hair band...

Then... nothing! He knew he knew Alice, she had been his secretary, he knew how he had felt about her... But, he was also dimly aware that he no longer felt for her!

The Mad Hatter stopped loving Alice! His battered and beloved copy of through the looking glass fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

No more rage at her fiancé, no more obsessions over her, no more love. He put his head in his hands.

The dim awareness grew into a spark of knowledge, then a flame of understanding, followed soon after by a forest fire of uncaring nothingness. It was a terrible thing.

For every door that closes... as they say another opens. The door between Alice and his heart may be slammed shut like a vault, with a restring order tacked to the front, yet. . . that just meant that, (Even if he didn't know it yet) there were more doors to his heart that were being shoved open. As well as rabbit holes to wonderland being furiously dug.

He lay back in his bunk, having regied some of his composure, and was strangely calm and empty in side his mind. Pale hands folded neatly over his stomach, and thought about the opportunity now presented to him. Finally resolving to speak with Dr. Arkham, first thing in the morning. With luck, he'd be back on the street before noon tea.