Through the white lace curtains of Alice Liddell's window, morning light dripped into the powdered blue bedroom. It swept across the floor and up the right side of the bed, to tug at the naked young woman's eyelids. She ignored it and buried her face deeper into her sheets as her subconscious seized her with hazy images of ridiculous tea parties and purple grinning cats.

Yet the shaft of light had unsettled the blond young woman's veil of dreams. Something, she sensed, wasn't right. With a sleep drenched moan, Alice turned over under the warm comforter and white sheets. She sighed, lying on her stomach with her head under a pillow and the sheets only covering below her waist. She was about to resume her escapades in the wonderland in her mind, when a draft found her exposed back and swiftly traced across her spine. She shivered. Her hand crept out blindly to find the hot freckled flesh that she had burningly clung to last night, that had consumed her in the dimly lit hours before this morning.

Alice smiled in her sleep, expecting her hand to soon touch the face of the mad man she whole-heartedly trusted. She assumed that she'd meet his shoulder or his chest (or his feet, knowing him). and she would open her eyes to see him grinning at her affectionately with his buck-toothed smile, and his warm blue eyes over a ridiculously bulbous nose.

Her hand found only the cold cavity of rumpled bed sheets and empty air left by Reginald Theophilus the Third. Alice struggled to grope and finally grab a warm, ginger piece of the hatter's skin--yet her eyes breached into consciousness in her panic. Slowly, their shutters lifted to the glare of Reality, and she was betrayed the truth. There was no one there.

Alice stared for what seemed an eternity. The side of the bed where he had been sleeping at still smelled of him--of brewed tea and millinery chemicals. She wanted to look away, but the phantom of chamomile and hat dye still lingered in that space, holding her down. Her mind, her logic commanded Alice to turn and run from her bed, run from the anguish and the shame that boiled deep beneath her surface. Instead, visions of last night and images of him holding her in his arms as they both fell asleep, rooted her to the spot. She stared at the right side of her bed, the imprint of his body still in the mattress. Mixed and violent emotions washed across her face one by one, until it all drained away into an unreadable stare.

So...it had finally happened.

The though bubbled up in Alice's mind, yet it didn't hold and become absorbed. It just hung there in her mind, like a delicate and near undetectable gossamer cobweb as she finally slipped out of her bed and into a long robe nearby. Trivial thoughts eclipsed everything else--she had to get up, get moving get moving, she had to open the bookstore today, her hair was a mess, a shower would be nice, shower shower shower, would it rain today? Too quickly she found herself at her kitchen sink, staring out the window with water on the stove and tea bags dangling from her hand, caught in the mute thought's web.

Outside, the morning was golden and crisp from the first touch of fall. Everything was as green and as vibrant as in the summer, yet the sun's light was so fluorescent that it seemed to wipe clean the vivid pigments in a flood of light. A feeling of age overhung the cold summer garden, stifling as a cough of dust to one's senses.
The kettle on the stove shrieked awake and broke Alice out of her thoughtful trance. It was whisked off and stiffly tipped to sprinkle steamy water into a mug. The liquid was tainted with the brown little bags, which were mechanically dunked up and down; it was added with sugar and cream, sipped slowly once, and then left untouched on the counter for the rest of the day. Alice suddenly didn't feel like tea anymore.

She brushed her hair, cleaned her teeth, and put on her high-necked frock with numb precision in the empty, cold house. Some tears welled up in her eyes at one point, but she briskly brushed them off on her walk to the bookstore.

Waiting for her there was Reginald.

I know I'm probably getting glares from a lot of peeved fangirls. 0.o

Okay okay, calm down...I know barely anyone wants to see Reginald doing what we all hope he won't--leave our dear Alice right as soon he hops into bed with her, 'just like all the other blonds.' But, this is how some things are--you think things will last forever, and they don't. That's life. (Is it obvious that I wrote this as an outlet right after a relationship of mine failed...?)

Anywhos, some people have asked me to keep going after the cliffhanger. I want to, but I can't feel a tangible plot in my mind. Maybe, after Camping Experience is done, or my Frobin fic has forced me into a block, I'll revisit this and put down what I feel should be Reginald's explanation and Alice's reaction. Maybe if some not-so-angry HatterxAlice fans gave me some reviews...?

But if you do give me a review, and its something like 'I don't think Reggie would do this blah blah blah' or just randomly the word 'grrr...', know that you didn't have to read it--but you did anyway. You also don't have to like it--for the content or the cliffhanger or whatever. I wrote this when I was in pain, and the cliffhanger's there because the pain never got resolved. But it did heal, so I never got around to finishing it. Sorry.

This was a When Curiousity Met Insanity fanfic. If you don't know what that is, google it. I 3 thier work, and I am all for the webcomic to turn even darker. :3