I'm jumping on the bandwagon and writing my own 'Alice and Hatter after Wonderland' story. Well, why not? It's been running through my head for a while now as a series of disjointed stories and scenes. I'll stitch it all together. Somehow. In the meantime, enjoy the products of my imagination.

The title of this fic comes from a quote by Anton Chekov: "Any idiot can handle a crisis; it's living day to day that wears you down."

Disclaimer: Alice and Hatter, as well as all of the rest of the characters you're likely to recognize over the course of this story, are not my property. Neither is this particular version of Wonderland. It's the property of the SyFy channel.

o…o

It was a few weeks of getting settled and getting re-acclimated to living in New York and Hatter getting used to his new surroundings. They stumbled into bed together almost immediately meanwhile going through all of the getting-to-know-you stuff that they were too busy to bother with in Wonderland. Eventually they worked on going on an actual date.

They did pizza.

And lots of other things.

'Lots of other things' started almost before they got through dinner. She wore a low-cut top on purpose just to drive Hatter crazy and he spent the entire night pretending not to stare at her breasts. She gave him cheeky looks and grins and discreet touches and sat more than a little too close to him in the cab on the way back to his apartment—it all added up. By then he was white-knuckling it and the driver kept looking at them accusingly in the rear-view mirror, probably because he didn't fancy cleaning up after them if they fucked in his back seat.

They took the stairs ten at a time and Alice had to unlock the door, because Hatter couldn't figure out something as intellectually complex as a deadbolt lock and a key, not in his condition. They stumbled gracelessly through the door when it opened and he closed the door behind them with his foot.

Hatter's apartment was really Jack's old apartment, but it had been so modified and Hatter-ized that it was unrecognizable now. When Jack lived there it was black-and-white, sharp angles, and regular symmetrical shapes, which suited Jack just fine but wasn't Hatter's style at all. Now it looked like the abstract art exhibition at the museum—asymmetrical shapes, funny wavy lines, colours. There was a long sofa with fat velvet cushions and a circular bookcase full of books—all facing the wrong way; in the kitchen there was a round table with four mismatched chairs. The bedroom had a ridiculously ornate queen-sized bed; it takes up a good two-thirds of the floor space, so there was nothing else except for the chest of drawers and a hat-rack.

The whole place might as well have said 'Hatter' all over it in flashing neon letters.

They wandered in the general direction of the kitchen, in a lip-lock and arms tangled around each other, until they collided with the table and knocked down two of the four chairs—neither of them noticed—and Hatter lifted her up and plonked her down on the table.

They broke apart briefly for air and sat there panting. His arms were wrapped around her waist and his hands were clasped at her back; she wound her legs around his hips and crossed her ankles behind him. He leaned forward and kissed the soft hollow at the base of her throat; she mewled and tilted her head back so he could have access to her neck and he followed up her throat with slow, hot kisses.

She made a low whimpering groan and he laughed softly against her skin.

"Alice…"

Her name is a sigh on his lips.

"My Alice…"

He kissed her again, hot and sweet and deep, and plucked her up off the table. He only made it as far as the sofa because she licked and then bit his ear and he growled and dumped her on the cushions. Alice giggled.

They pulled their clothes off, scrambling with zippers and laces and popping buttons. Hatter's ever-present hat remained in place until sometime after they made their way to the bedroom. All Alice knew was that it wasn't there when she got up to leave. She didn't want to leave—she'd rather have stayed there all night, curled up with him in the blankets—but she had to work in the morning.

She left a quick note for him: 'Have to get up tomorrow for work. Don't panic. Jabberwocky didn't eat me in the night! I'll call you tomorrow.' She agonized for a few seconds over how to sign it before settling on '—Alice'. She taped it to the electric kettle in the kitchen where she knew he'd find it in the morning, and then quietly left.

The buses weren't running at such an hour and she didn't feel like taking a cab, so she walked home. The route was through the safe part of town and she was confident in her ability to kick the ass of any creep who might have decided to make a grab at her along the way.

Her life had taken a lot of crazy turns in the last month since her tumble through the Looking Glass—not the least of which was Hatter.

She wasn't completely sure what she even had with Hatter, anyway—this weird sort of friendly relationshippy affectionate animosity thing didn't seem to fit the mold for any of the other relationships she'd had.

She trusted him in a way she'd rarely trusted anyone before; it began out of necessity, in Wonderland when she had no one else except for endearingly daft Charlie. It was a long time then, even, before she actually trusted him at all, but he proved himself to her. Now that she was out of that environment and back in her own world, where she habitually kept herself guarded and trusted no one who wasn't very close to her, she didn't know how to handle it.

Her mother was at first concerned about how suddenly Alice got over Jack and jumped into 'David's waiting arms; the Looking Glass dropped her more or less at the same time she left, even though she'd spent nearly a week in Wonderland. The story she and Hatter concocted was that they'd known each other briefly—intensely—some years ago and that Alice had never mentioned it. Since Alice was known for keeping things secret, even from her mother, their alibi wasn't questioned; neither was the revelation that Jack had a fiancée. She told her mother that after she chased Jack down she found out that he was engaged to another woman, and Carol seemed to buy that story, too.

And naturally Hatter charmed her mother quite easily; Hatter was a charming character and could talk his way into just about anyone's favour. Carol had grown quite fond of 'David' in the last few weeks, which Alice was glad of, except that she kept making snarky comments to her about a 'British Invasion' going on in her love life.

But she still wasn't sure what their whole relationship… thing… was. Did she like him? Sure. Definitely. She liked him a lot. He was endearingly odd, he made her laugh. He was fun. They'd been through so much together that even if she hadn't fallen stupid, fairy-tale, head-over-heels for him, they still would have shared a bond. Did she love him? She didn't know. They were… good friends, lovers. Boyfriend and girlfriend?

She really, really didn't know.

She paused by a street-light so massage her temples.

Hatter and this whatever she had with him was only part of her headache. The other part was more or less the rest of her life.

She couldn't just go back to her old life because so much of that had been left in Wonderland. She knew what happened to her dad, where he was, so there was no reason to look for him again and that was a huge part of her life that was left open now. What was she supposed to do with herself now? Go back to school? Go to full-time at the dojo? Change careers? Have a premature midlife crisis, and buy a red convertible and give herself a home perm and take up interpretive dance?

For so long her entire life revolved around finding her father and answering all of those unanswered questions and she went after it full-tilt with blinders on and it never occurred to her that there might be a time when she had to do something else. She'd never planned out anything about her life. Everything she'd ever done since she was a girl and then as an adult had revolved around this. Everything else was just filler. Finding her dad was the focus of her life.

And now her search was over and she had the answers.

So… now what?

She had no idea and she couldn't even begin to guess.

There was so much left open now. She felt like she had to start all over again from scratch. A whole life, a purpose, an ambition—all gone. She had to start over again.

It was very nearly sunrise by the time she came to her building. The clock on her phone read 4.45am. She tiptoed up the stairs, opened the front door as quietly as possible. The alarm at the door beeped and it echoed through the room, and she hoped that her mother didn't hear it; she went to her room and collapsed into her cold, empty bed all alone where she promptly fell asleep.

The next morning she noticed she'd come home with her clothes on inside out, and had an enormous hickey on her neck. She covered the mark up with makeup as best as she could manage before going in to breakfast.

Carol said nothing about it at the table, or about her unusual arrival home, or about anything else. She didn't even seem to notice anything out of the ordinary about her daughter at all.

Alice wasn't sure what was worse: that she came back from a date at five the following morning with her clothes inside-out and a hickey on her neck—or that she came home from a date at five the next morning, with the hickey and the inside-out clothes and that it wasn't seen as anything worth noticing.

She didn't know whether to be offended or relieved.

o…o

I'm not sure that Alice would be able to jump back into her life after everything that happened in Wonderland—it seemed to me like her whole purpose in life was to find her dad and get the answers to her questions. After she found him, lost him, and got all the answers… I think she'd feel lost. Life is messy and complicated. It's fun to write stories where it isn't. But sometimes it's more fun to write stories where it is.