The Mad Hatter laid himself back in his chair, done with the night's entertainment. In front of him on the long table of forgotten tea-times lay his new toy, Emily, sleeping in a rumpled pile of oil-stained white silk fabric. He had tried his hardest to keep her clean, but keeping control of such things while he with her was indeed a challenging task. Her long legs, with small toe-less feet, sprawled outwards towards him, her remarkably flexible fingers curled slightly towards her chest, her pale pink lips parted slightly…all in all, she was very enticing.

However, despite all this, she was not made without intellect. She listened intently to whatever he had to say to her, be it vulgar or political. Her responses were clear and well-spoken, and she always took the side of her new master in any conversation. But there was one thing that was beginning to puzzle the Hatter. Whenever he tried to bring up the subject of Alice, she insisted that he change the subject immediately. Sometimes she would distract him by asking him what he would do if she jumped out of the window into the infinite blackness below, so he would never see her again, and other such unusually suicidal ideas. Although he was, with her, the most satisfied then he had ever been while Wonderland had been corrupted, he was starting to get annoyed.

While the Hatter pondered on these matters, Emily suddenly lifted her head to look at him. She raised herself up slowly, arching her back slightly with a small, cute squeal of comfort. Locking eyes with the Hatter, she asked one shocking thing: "Where is Alice?"

The Hatter looked at her, surprised that she had been the one to utter her name first in the conversation. "My dear girl, why would you want to know such a thing?"

"Oh, well…" Emily rolled onto her hands and knees and began to crawl towards the Hatter slowly, cat-like almost. "I have pleased you well, have I not?"

"To say that you haven't would be the ultimate lie my dear."

"Well…" Emily, having reached the edge of the table, slid gracefully into the Hatter's arms. "who needs her, now that you have me? I am completed and whole, and Alice still lies there day after day, unfinished…and perhaps even decaying. She'll spread disease and kill the insane children and your fat servants if she lies there for too much longer…"

The Hatter grabbed Emily's chin and lifted her face gently to peer into her eyes. "I can assure you, child, that Alice will not reach that stage for some time. And though you have satisfied me these past two weeks, it is about time that I go back and finish her. The two of you should get along splendidly…"

A flicker of something like repulsion flashed across Emily's face before her features distorted into an angry mask. "But I don't want her! She's fleshy and imperfect, with a beating heart and a mushy, mercury-filled brain! She disgusts me!"

Seeing the reaction on the Hatter's face, Emily changed her look to one of pity and adoration. "We are perfection, can't you see? To have her among us, still human, still FLAWED (she said this with a snarl of rage), would give the two of us a bad name. Besides, I can perform any task that this Alice girl could ever accomplish, and I'll probably be better at it as well!"

The Hatter sighed. Emily plainly didn't understand that Alice had came first before anything. She was his, everyone could see that, they just didn't want him to be happy. That's why they all wanted him to dispose of her body…but fuck them. Fuck them all. Alice would be his…he would just have to make Emily understand this first.

"Emily, you are beautiful and lovely, and very good at your craft. However, Alice came first before any of this ever occurred. She was a beautiful child, and as she grew, I began to want her more and more. But when she had came back to kill the corruption that had given me this intense knowledge, I couldn't let her do it. She just didn't understand that there was no changing what had happened here, and that her sanity simply did not belong. She mistook this for psychosis, of course, and challenged me to a duel of sorts. Of course, you do know who won…"

Emily giggled, cuddling up in the Hatter's spindly arms as much as they would allow. "My Master won, my Master won," she cooed , kissing his face lightly.

The Hatter looked approvingly at her, running a gloved hand through her hair. "That's right, my girl. After an hour of fighting, I gave her a smashing blow to the back of her neck, rupturing her medulla. She died instantly…and the silence that followed, I shall never forget. It was as if Wonderland had breathed a sigh of relief at her passing. I then took her body back to my workshop, and there she lays now, nearly completed."

Emily stared. "The workshop on this floor, my Master? The one with the carved double doors?"

Another surprise. The Hatter was about to ask how she had known that, since he had never let her out of this particular room to explore the halls of his Asylum before, when there was a knocking at the doors.

"One moment, my dear," said the Hatter, placing Emily on the edge of the table once more. "Who's there?" he asked, standing and grabbing the neglected cane that had fallen to the floor in his rush.

"Uh, it's Tweedle-Dum sir. I've got a bit of a problem, sir…"

Opening the doors, the Hatter stared down at his obese servant. "Well, what is it?"

Tweedle-Dum shifted nervously. "Well sir, I, uh, haven't been able to find my bother anywhere sir. He has gone missing before sir, but he always shows up again after a day or two…"

The Hatter glared at Tweedle-Dum. "You interrupted me because you can't find your block-head of a brother?!"

Tweedle-Dum cringed at the outpour of vicious words, almost as if he expected a blow. When he didn't get one, he continued. "Uh, well, sir, it's not just that…someone used the portal in your arena, sir."

The Hatter's face went a paler shade of green rather suddenly after hearing this. Slamming open the doors, he walked out of the room and grabbed Tweedle-Dum by the front of his shirt. Lowering himself so he was face to face with his terrified servant, he whispered calmly, "Now you hear this. If there is any little thing that you know your brother had planned for that portal, you'd best say it now. Because if you don't, I swear, I will make sausages out of your intestines and make you eat them when you're still squirming on the operating table!!"

Tweedle-Dum whimpered, his face tight with fear. "N-no s-sir, I s-swear to you sir, I don't know a-anything s-sir!"

Throwing Tweedle-Dum aside with a small splat against the wall, the Hatter ran forward, his mind only focused on trying to figure out what his traitorous servant had done. So therefore, he had totally forgotten about Emily, who stood alone in the open doorway with a grin on her face that certainly didn't match the mood of her Master. For she had plans of her own…