TWO - Diamonds

There was something ugly kicking round inside Hatter's own chest, and he didn't like it one bit. Every time Alice insisted she had to save her boyfriend, every time she resisted his very sensible advice, that ugly thing in his chest would roll over and he hated it.

It was an unusually powerful emotion, for a Wonderlander. And it wasn't something he was picking up from her, oh no. It was all his own.

Jealousy.

Hatter fervently hoped that this Jack Chase appreciated his Alice.

The first rush came when she held his hands and let him lead her, setting aside her fear of heights and trusting in him. The first inkling of trust was as exciting as he suspected it would be. He stayed strong and confident for her, making sure she saw him as her protector. And oh, the feeling of that soft, strong hand in his! As capable in a fight as he later learned her to be, her skin was still smooth and warm under his fingers.

The second rush had come when she hadn't left him behind at the Great Library. She'd come back, fighting Dodo for him. And in the bus, she'd pulled open his shirt, and Hatter didn't mind admitting he'd felt a rush of highly inappropriate something right there…. but her anger confused him. It took some mulling in the back of his head before he realized that her anger that he wasn't injured was a response to thinking he'd been really hurt. Which didn't make sense to him, but he figured it must be an otherworld thing. Did it mean she might feel something for him?

But the downside was Alice's conviction that her precious boyfriend needed saving. Hatter assumed White Rabbit had taken the guy into the Casino, like all the other Oysters, and really, there was no coming out for Oysters. But how how HOW had the guy gotten his hands on the Stone of Wonderland? It made absolutely no sense at all, even for a Wonderlander used to convoluted logic.

Until of course, it made perfect sense, when one realized that Jack Chase was really Prince Jack Heart.

Rescuing Alice from the Casino, with Charlie's mad help, was the score of the lifetime, if only Hatter had someone to crow to about it. And hearing Alice's stubborn determination shift from rescuing Jack to rescuing her father only made Hatter want to stomp on his own hat and tear his hair in frustration. Why could she trust him enough to swing over that bottomless pit and into his arms, but not LISTEN to him? She'd trust the word of that stupid treacherous blighter of a Prince but not the guy who'd stood by her and helped her all along?

Jealousy. The emotion, all his own, clawed its way through his chest. He wanted to yell in her face, make her see sense, scream what about me? to the skies.

So he appealed to a higher power. Surely Caterpillar would be able to make her see reason.

During the trek back to the city to make contact, he rummaged through his head, trying to justify the hot envy tearing him up. When he stumbled upon the answer, he nearly tripped and sprawled on his face.

The intoxication of being near her. The rush he got from her trust, her concern. The scent of her hair, the feeling of her arms around him on the flamingo, the shiver of relief she'd made when he caught her from the wild jump out of the torture chamber. The raw lust for her combined with the constant need to live up to the façade of strength and trustworthiness he'd present to her. The worry, the gnawing fear for her when she wasn't near. The way he tried to find reasons to touch her – grab her hand, her arm, a palm to the small of her back, an arm around her shoulder.

The one pure emotion mostly highly sought after in the Tea house was Love. It was the hardest for the Queen to produce, because by the very nature of the operation, Oysters were taken away from the ones they loved. Love was triggered by another person, so by definition, you couldn't really score much Love off a single kidnapped Oyster. It was so expensive, so rare, Hatter had never tasted it himself.

Until now.

TBC