Confessions

Alice caught herself and turned slowly to the Hatter. William, mad?

"What do you mean, going on about me being mad? Of all the people to drop that line, you were the last I expected, and no one to point fingers!" She stamped her foot at him. "Besides, William was too young to be mad, and Clarice is actually dreadfully sane!" Alice didn't notice that she hadn't said 'Mother'.

Neither of them had noticed that the banging on the door had stopped.

"Clarice? What's she got to do with any of this?" Hatter replied. They looked at each other a few more moments, the clock on the wall ticking out the seconds.

"Your mother, the Queen of Hearts, was absolutely, delightfully, wonderfully and tempestuously insa--"

Alice kicked Hatter's shin before he could finish. "Queen of Hearts? That ghastly woman? She didn't even deserve her suit in the deck! How you would believe that such a monster..." Alice trailed off as Hatter became, if possible, even more pale under his thick mask of makeup, and thrust his face down to an inch from her own.

"Say what you will about the she-devil of Diamonds, the charlatan with red paint and flimsy authority that dethroned the Heart of Wonderland and took her place. Just because you were too stupid as a child to tell the difference between the proper markings of the suit of hearts and her false trappings doesn't mean you can excuse your ignorance now!"

Alice got quiet again, her mind finally starting to work, instead of tossing about on a violent sea of emotion.

"You mean to say Clarice is not my Mother? And that the real Queen of Hearts was someone else? But who?"

Hatter rolled his eyes, still clearly chaffing from Alice's earlier outburst. "The Queen of Diamonds is crafty and ambitious. When her suit didn't bring her quite the prestige she thought she should have, she sought that of the Hearts. She made clever use of a pet courtier to take her place in Diamonds, and..."

He stopped for a moment, his breath catching. He looked at her longingly for just a moment. But the moment was short-lived, and his eyes grew wild and sharp again. "and when Diamonds took the robes of Hearts...then she made an example of your mother. Then...then, 'OFF WITH HER HEAD!'" he cried, slamming his hand against the door.

The door handle abruptly started rattling again, and more insistently. Hatter glared at the door, unlocked it and wrenched it open faster than Alice could watch his hands move. "What?" was all he said to Alice's father, who was ashen and trembling in the doorway. With effort he reached to Alice, checking to see that she was well. Her eyes were confused and searching, but she was, to his relief, unharmed.

"Father.." she started, having trouble finding the words, "Father, Hatter isn't lying. He doesn't bother. He's mad, after all." She said the last words thoughtfully, as though this were both ample explanation and a noble state to be in. What need have the insane to quail before the inconvenience of Truth? No, the fall to madness is only stripping away the comfort of lies.

Alice read in her father's eyes that there was something to what Hatter had said. But Father always walked the thin line of never telling Alice that she was a liar, never calling her crazy, because he never wanted to hurt her. So he simply discouraged her from speaking of it. He assumed that the death of William, when Alice was only nine, was what had turned her childish stories about Wonderland into a rebellious insistence on the existence of such a place. And then there came the day she just stopped talking about it altogether.

Patrick Hervey shook his head, then turned abruptly to Hatter. "I don't know who you are, or what your purpose is, but this has gone far enough-"

Hatter interrupted the dialogue by suddenly flopping to the floor, legs spread apart, leaning back on his hands. His steel blue eyes looked nonplussed up at Alice's father, "Really, you had years. Really. Years to comfort. Years to explain. What have you been doing?"

Alice watched as her father began to turn red, but seemed to be stumbling for words. The lean man all but sprawling along the floor wagged his head around, as though bored by the older man's inner conflict.

"Let's just skip the excuses, and skip the part where you make up something in your head to explain me away. Let's skip right to the part I'm particularly curious about. Alice was nine. Alice was here, and crying. A lot. Understandably. Alice had gone to a funeral, and really should be crying. But then Alice got angry, and started talking about her friends back where I'm from. Said she's promised to take William there, and now she had to get back, had to find a way to keep her promise." Hatter ticked each point out on a finger, continuing past his hand when he ran out of fingers. "Long about this time, you up and disappeared," here he snapped his head at Alice's father, who'd gone to sheet white again, his jaw clenched and eyes disbelieving. "It wasn't a day after that we saw Alice packing. We were trying to help, you see. Help her keep her promise."

Here he turned his eyes away, looking back at the painting, which was now dangling from Alice's limp fingertips, tears still lazily dripping off it's edge. Alice's eyes had become distant. For all the world, she looked like a waxwork, her tear-stained face frozen. She was looking in Hatter's direction, but clearly not seeing him.

Hatter's voice got uncharacteristically soft as he gazed at her. "She was gone, and we had risked everything to get her, to bring her back. We waited a week here, trying to hold onto Time before it collapsed. We hadn't meant to stay so long. We weren't prepared. Time, and Death, I suppose, spat us back." Here he flicked his finger, then let his arm drop at his side with a thud.

"Now, this is where your story-time begins. Where did you let that harpy take our Alice?!?" he hissed.

Alice knew what Hatter was talking about. But no one had spoken of it in so long. Hush, hush, never tell the dirty family secret. But it wasn't Father's fault, and it was important, some part of her thought, that Hatter know. "He didn't let anyone take me. He was gone, yes, but I don't know why. He told me to behave. I did." She turned to her father, slowly, but didn't register his face. Rather, she seemed to speak to the wall behind him, as though she'd rehearsed this a thousand time. "I did, Father. I swear I said nothing at all to Mother. But she bade me pack my things. I packed. And the good doctor took me away." Even now she had a hard time saying the words, and she paused, as if she felt she weren't saying them right.

Hatter was mesmerized. In all the time he'd seen her in the mirror, not once could he untangle the mystery of where she'd been when he was trying so desperately to reach her. He only saw her again, long after she'd gotten back, and the Alice he knew was gone. A silent, sickly-pale girl with bony shoulders and ever-darkening hair had taken her place.

Said girl's father, however, whipped his head to Alice and stared. "The doctor? Not your aunt?"

Alice seemed to be troubled a little at this. "Yes, my aunt. You're right, Father, of course. Aunt-Doctor-Father Aranmula-Marione...went to my aunt's house...with all the other sick children...in the hospital that wasn't a hospital – of course not a hospital, Father, and certainly no house of anyone's aunt. No aunts there, but uncles. And Fathers. So fatherly is Father Marione. So good the Doctor Aranmula"

Alice's voice seemed to twist back and forth as she jumbled the truth with the lies she'd always told. She tilted her head, looking at Hatter and really seeing him. A slow, dreadful smile was curling along the red-haired man's lips. It just grew and grew. The Cheshire cat would have been envious, Alice thought, as she began to recite. She was only three words along when Hatter joined in:

"All will be well, holy and good,

When your ribbons are done up tight

And the Doctor will cure,

And the Priest will bless,

With a mirror, a string and a knife."

And with that, Alice's mind reeled back, and she saw only Hatter's ice-blue eyes and long-stretching grin.

"Ahhh! My dear little Alice! Your mother has told me so much about you!" the man in the long white coat said as the carriage made it's way down the road to the "retreat". Alice said nothing. Father told her to behave, and the best thing to do was say nothing, she thought.

"Alice, you will soon learn to trust me. You see, I know your stories. And let me tell you a secret...I believe you! And so will the other people where we're going. But do keep this a secret from your mother. She would never understand. And your father, well..."

"I am to say I am with my aunt. Yes, Mother told me," she responded, angry at the string of lies she was already being instructed to tell, and all because she had been so naughty as to tell the truth.

"Where are we going, Doctor?" Alice felt a little courage come with her annoyance.

"Do you know what the word 'asylum' means, child? It means a safe place. A retreat. A place for people to get well. You're very sad now - so sad that you are sick! - now that your brother is dead. Clarice tells me you cry yourself to sleep, and laugh yourself awake. The asylum, Kazan, will help you get better. All will be well, all will be holy and good." He patted her knee as he said this, and did not bother to remove his hand.

Not long after he spoke these words, a large gray building with a tall iron fence all around came into view. An archway over the entry road read "Kazan Asylum"

Patrick wondered if he was having a heart attack. He didn't know what the words of the rhyme meant, but he knew exactly where Alice had been. Kazan...

The only thing keeping him aloft was his hatred, and it was growing. And where was the bitch now? "Clarice. CLARICE!!" His angry bellow echoed down the stairs.

Alice was still lost in her memories. She'd not stopped staring at Hatter, whose eyes were bright, the grin still seeming to grow.

"Who are you?" asked a small face standing in the doorway of her 'room'. More of a cell, really.

"The last person to ask me that was a caterpillar." Alice responded. She was quaking, but too shocked to stop herself from speaking of Wonderland, as she'd promised.

The child only shrugged, unsurprised. "You must be new here. You have proper clothes." Alice looked down at her pale blue dress, then over at the ragged child's unkempt hair and burlap tunic.

"Why are you here?" Alice asked. She hoped for a moment that this child, too, had been to Wonderland.

"I was naughty. I didn't do what I was told. Doctor Aranmula said he would help me with my 'troubles', and mummy and daddy sent me here."

Alice's shoulders slumped. Nothing of Wonderland. "How does the doctor 'help'?" Alice asked. She had no trust for the man, and hoped fiercely that she could avoid him as much as possible here.

The child (she couldn't tell, even now, if it was a boy or a girl) walked slowly from the doorway, and placed a hand on Alice's. There was only pity on that face. He recited slowly,

"All will be well, holy and good,

When your ribbons are done up tight

And the Doctor will cure,

And the Priest will bless,

With a mirror, a string and a knife."

Clarice must not have sensed that the anger in her husband's voice was directed at her. They could hear her shoes clicking on the floor near the bottom of the stairs. "Is that madman gone? I'll not be exposed to him any longer, you know!"

"Clarice, you will attend me now." Alice's father's voice was never, ever dangerous. That must be why the woman faltered at the bottom step.

"Really, Patrick, I'll not sully myself in the presence of a madman. Especially when Alice is being so...difficult...again."

The word seemed to snap Alice out of her reverie, and hurt was suddenly written on her face. Hatter was still grinning, but his bright eyes were full of tears, and the tears were carrying away the makeup. Under the makeup were black lines, in the path of his tears. When the tears reached his mouth and pooled, the makeup cleared away to reveal the edges of ink-black lips.

"CLARICE!!" Patrick was on fire, raging, looking down the steps, but not daring to leave his daughter's side. By the time Clarice appeared, the loathing on Patrick's face had contorted it into something unrecognizable as the face of Father.

Clarice saw this and instantly looked to Alice, blame written on her every feature. "What've you been saying, child? What've you gone and done now?" Panic was making her voice shrill.

"Kazan." Patrick's voice almost cracked when he said it. Clarice blanched, and Alice's eyes widened. Still, she only stared at Hatter.

"Of all the things to do to my child. You sent her there. After all that place took from me, you sent her there," his voice was a broken whisper.

Clarice faltered. "Now, darling, it's not what you think. I was only doing what was best for our children."

"Our children? No, Clarice, you only have one daughter. I took Marissa in as my own. And I love her. But you never loved my Alice, no, not even my William. It was all I asked of you. The only thing I've really ever asked of you. Be a mother to my children. You failed."

Clarice flew into a rage, insulted and exposed. "Your children were tainted by Faelyn! And you expected me to love them? They were both just as mad as their mother! Doctor Aranmula fixed Faelyn, and he swore to fix her, too," she said, gesturing wildly at Alice. "Can't you see that he did?"

Patrick was really incapable of violence. There was nothing in his nature for it. And certainly not against a woman, and not his wife.

So his hand must have been flying of it's own accord. Because it was sailing a true course to his handsome wife's face.

Unfortunately, Hatter's fist got there first. There was a sickening crunch as the perfect nose gave way to the knuckles, and a resounding crack as the back of her husband's hand sent her head spinning. She tumbled back, back, and down, down the stairs.

Both men watched, neither moving to help her.

"What a pity," Alice said into the sudden silence. "I can still hear her wheezing."

It was as if, when Hatter moved away from her, that a spell was broken. Alice looked about, and saw something moving in her mirror. "Rabbit? Is that you?"

Both men turned at once to Alice, then to the mirror. It didn't reflect as it should...there was only a long, twisting vortex. And at the base of the vortex was a large, harried rabbit in a ratted green waistcoat. He was gesticulating wildly at Alice, and at his obscenely large golden pocket watch.

A.N. A few historical notes:

- In Through the Looking Glass, Alice claims to be 7 ½ exactly. I'm trying to keep to this time line.

- The name Kazan is after a city in Russia where the first punitive asylum was created. Also, it sounds imposing in my ears, and just creepy enough to fit.

- Aranmula kannadi is a metal mirror with a highly polished front surface. It doesn't create secondary reflections or other aberrations. Check out the wiki on it, it's pretty interesting. Doctor Aranmula's name is a false one, as is Father Marione (an abbreviation for marionette). More of these characters to come!

Also, if things are getting a little confusing, let me know. Mystery is fine, but if you're lost I'd like to make changes to the chapter to help.

Up to two reviewers! Woo! I need all the encouragement I can get. I think the next chapter may take a bit longer to get out (as in longer than 24hours. A chapter a day would be fantastic, but I'm a bit rusty...) Toodles!