AN: Sorry for the long update times... writer's block. Seems to finally be letting up now, and voila... long chapter!

Thanks for reading!

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Hatter would never get over how quick a transition it was, going through a door. One moment, he was chasing the Nine of Clubs through the hallways of the palace, the next, he was in some sort of public toilet. The first thing he noted, and much to his relief, was that it was obviously a men's public toilet, judging by the wall of urinals. The second thing he noted was the muffled sound of... traffic!

He was back in Alice's world! He pulled open the door he had just come through, and looked out into a lobby of sorts. Not the palace. Not Wonderland. He cautiously stepped through, and breathed a sigh of relief when he could still hear the traffic, a little louder now, through glass doors that seemed to take up much of one wall of the foyer he was now in.

Definitely Alice's world! He couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face, and the deep sigh of relief, as the glass doors swung outward, automatically, and he found himself on the sidewalk.

But in an instant, his elation turned to confusion.

Wherever this was, it didn't appear to be New York. Yes, there was the constant crush and rush of people. He had to press himself against the side of the building to not be swept along with the crowds. Yes, there was the constant roar of traffic, but the cars were behaving strangely. At first, Hatter couldn't quite put his finger on what was so strange, but then it hit him. It was all backwards. The cars were driving on the wrong side of the street.

A bit apprehensive now, Hatter surveyed the skyline. Definitely not New York. The buildings were all wrong too. The signs were all in English, much to his relief, but he still wasn't quite sure where he had ended up.

"S'cuse me?" He stopped a passerby, an older gentleman in a suit. "Where 'bouts am I?"

"Victoria Street," the man replied, before continuing on his way.

Victoria Street? Great. Victoria Street, where?

"S'cuse me?" This time he stopped a younger man in a printed t-shirt and jeans. "Where am I? What city is this?"

The man looked at him incredulously. "Ya serious, mate?"

This time it was Hatter's turn to be shocked. The man sounded like a Wonderlander. His accent wasn't much different from Hatter's own. But he certainly didn't look like he was from Wonderland, and Hatter wasn't about to ask.

"I just need to know," Hatter replied, shaking off his shock.

The man was still staring at him like he'd grown another head. "It's London," he answered finally, then shook his head and continued up the sidewalk.

London. As in... that London? Hatter couldn't stifle his groan as he slumped against the wall again. He was back in Alice's world, but he was on the wrong side of it.

When Alice had been dating Jack, he had claimed to be from London. When Hatter had been given his identification for this world, his birth certificate had said he was born in a place called Bradford, West Yorkshire. Apparently the way they talked made them sound like they were from a place called the United Kingdom. Alice had shown it to him on a map once, and she had encouraged him to learn enough about it to convince people that it was where he was from.

But he had never been there... here... until now.

And now the question was, how was he going to get home? He had no money, none of his identification. Nothing but...

He quickly jammed his hands into his pockets, fishing around until he found what he was looking for. His wallet and his keys had been left behind in his flat when he had disappeared through to Wonderland. But he had discovered his cell phone, still in the pocket of his pants, and as there was no service in Wonderland, he had turned it off, but had kept it with him.

He needed to call Alice, to let her know where he was, and to figure out how to get home.

…

Both the Nine and the Ten of Clubs stood, staring, from either side of the doorway.

Hatter had been following Nine, following him to where the White Knight had disappeared through a door. And Ten had been following Hatter. Until Hatter had simply vanished.

He had wondered what it looked like, when a door became a rabbit hole. When a person passed from Wonderland into the other world. He half expected a flash of light or a puff of smoke. Something to indicate what had occurred.

But there had been none of that. Hatter had simply walked through the doorway and disappeared in an instant, like he had never been there.

Leaving Ten to simply stare at the spot Hatter should have been standing.

…

He was about to hurl the wretched piece of technology to its doom. Every time Hatter dialed Alice's number, a mechanical voice had come on, stating that the number could not be completed and to call his service provider. He found himself cursing the doors once again for the games they were playing, and only realized that he was cursing them out loud when people started to steer clear of him, casting him strange looks.

It was an American girl who had eventually helped him. Rebecca, as she had eventually introduced herself, laughed lightly at him and rescued his cell phone from its near-destruction, when he had told her of his plight. Well, the parts that he could tell without her thinking him completely mad.

"You can't make an international call from your cell phone," she had explained, before pulling him in the direction of a bright red call box. Hatter had stared at the familiar object for a long moment. There had been one just like it, only significantly more aged, across the bridge from his tea shop. Only there hadn't been a phone in that one. Again, he shook it off, and listened carefully as Rebecca instructed him on how to make an international collect call.

He struggled to squelch his disappointment when an all-too-familiar male voice accepted the charges.

"Jack, where's Alice?"

"Hello to you too, Hatter."

"Where's Alice?"

"She's not here."

"What do you mean..."

"She went for a walk."

Hatter could practically hear Jack rolling his eyes, but he breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Alice hadn't somehow been banished to Wonderland now that he had found his way back to this world.

"Where are you Hatter?"

"London."

"London?" Hatter could hear Jack curse softly. "How did you get there?"

"How do you think?" Irritation was starting to set in, but so was anxiety. "I'm stuck, Jack. I have no money, no ID, and I'm clear across this world from where I ought to be."

Silence met him on the other end of the line.

"Jack?" Still silence, though a bit of muffled noise in the background. "Jack!"

"Look, we'll figure this out," Jack's too-calm voice came back on the line. Then, muffled once again, he heard Jack say, "It's Hatter."

And in an instant, it was Alice's voice that replaced Jack's.

"Hatter!" She practically screamed his name into the phone, causing him to jerk the receiver away from his ear. But her voice had never sounded so welcome.

"Alice!" he breathed, a lump rising in his throat.

"Where are you?"

Hatter released a puff of breath. "London," he answered, once again.

"London? How did you get there?" Then she paused. "Nevermind. I know. The doors."

Hatter released a wry chuckle.

"God, Hatter, I miss you." A pained note came into Alice's voice.

"I miss you too." It came out a bare whisper, but she heard it. For a long moment, they were both silent, listening to the other breathe, and trying to collect themselves.

Finally, Hatter broke the silence. "Alice, I'm stuck here. I don't have any money or any of my ID. I don't know how to get home." A hint of nerves he was trying to hide came through his voice.

"We'll figure it out, Hatter." Alice's voice was reassuringly strong.

There was some muffled talking in the background. Hatter strained to hear it, but couldn't make it out. Then he heard Alice's voice say, "Okay, in a minute." Then she was back, talking to him. "Jack wants to talk to you again. He says he knows someone that can help you."

"Wait, Alice!" Hatter remembered something, all too suddenly, and it made his stomach drop. "Charlie went through a door too. He's somewhere in this world." Though, now Hatter had to wonder if he was in New York or London or somewhere else entirely.

But his fears were quickly assuaged by Alice's next words. "I know. He's here with me."

Hatter released a relieved sigh. "Good."

Then Jack's voice came back on the line, telling him about a Wonderland contact in London, and giving him an address. Hatter had no paper or pen to write it down with, but he repeated it over and over in his head until he was sure that he would not forget it. The contact's name was Dumpty, and Hatter had to wonder if it was that Dumpty, or perhaps a relation. But it didn't matter. If this contact could help him get home, that's all that mattered.

Alice came back on the line, and they talked for a few more minutes. She assured him that they would send his passport and a plane ticket to Dumpty's address, and that within a few days, he should be home safe.

He could hear the tears in her voice when they said goodbye. "I love you, Hatter," she whispered into the phone, just before the call disconnected.

…

Alice sat down, hard, on the couch and buried her face in her hands for a moment, struggling to collect herself. Hatter was back in her world, even if it was the wrong part of it. Even if the doors were to stop working now, at least they were both on the same side.

But so was Jack. And Charlie.

Charlie. If he was stuck here for a while, they were definitely going to have to do something about how he was dressed. He couldn't very well stay in his armor in New York City. Alice determined that she would need to stop at a thrift store when she went out, to purchase a few outfits for him.

Jack was on the phone again, talking to who she assumed was Dumpty. She had nearly snickered at the name, singing the nursery rhyme in her head, but then she had recalled that Humpty Dumpty had appeared in Alice Through the Looking Glass as well, and therefore quite likely had been a real person in Wonderland.

Dumpty agreed, without much persuasion, to assist Hatter, and Jack was off the phone within minutes. Alice rushed off to find Hatter's passport, and then she and Jack headed for the door.

It was only then that Alice noticed that Charlie was still standing, much as he had since his arrival, right by the front door. He was strangely silent, but watching their rushing about with interest.

"Charlie?"

"Hmm?"

"Make yourself at home." Alice waved him further into the apartment. He nodded and took a few steps in the direction of the kitchen, before turning around to face the two, a question in his eyes.

"Where are you going?"

"We'll be back soon, Charlie. We need you to stay here," Alice told him. She could see his face starting to fall, and she knew that, if there was one thing Charlie hated, it was being left behind. "We need someone to guard the apartment," she added finally.

Charlie seemed to perk up at this, and began humming hey nonny nonnys as he headed back toward the kitchen. Alice breathed a sigh of relief, and motioned Jack out the door, pausing just on the threshold to ensure that the door wasn't going to banish her to Wonderland now that Hatter was finally back here.

…

It had taken him nearly an hour to find someone that would trade one of his gold rings for some of the money from this place. He didn't know how much "pounds" were worth, but he doubted that he had gotten anything near what the gold ring was worth. But that didn't matter. He just needed enough to take a cab to the address that Jack had supplied.

It had taken another long while to find a cab that wasn't occupied, but he finally had, and had finally arrived at the address that Jack had given him.

It was a small inn and pub, to Hatter's surprise, and despite the early hour, the pub was half-full of people. A thin, graying older man stood behind the counter, looking half-asleep as he stared out over the pub-goers. He certainly didn't look like a Dumpty, if record held true. But he looked up as Hatter approached the bar, and looked him over with almost a knowing look.

"I'm looking for Dumpty," Hatter stated, keeping his voice low.

The man cocked an eyebrow, and looked a little more interested. "Here on business?"

Hatter lowered his voice even further. "Yes, Jack Chase sent me." He exercised caution, not willing to refer to Jack by his true name or his title as the king until he knew who he was dealing with.

"You must be David."

Hatter jumped at the voice directly behind him, and wheeled about to come face to face with a plump and pleasant looking older woman. His face obviously betrayed his surprise, because the woman chuckled, good-naturedly. "You were expecting a man." It was a statement, not a question.

"You're Dumpty, then?"

The woman nodded. "Though to most I'm Edith." She smiled at him again. "Let's go to the back room, shall we?"

Hatter hesitated at the doorway, glancing past it before continuing forward. Edith noticed, but said nothing. And the back room, were it not for the sound of traffic coming through the small windows, would only have made Hatter believe he had fallen back into Wonderland. Ivy and creeping plants grew up the walls, and a small tree graced the corner of the room, its branches stretching across the ceiling. The floor was dirt, with small tufts of grass sticking up in places.

"We try to make misplaced Wonderlanders feel at home," Edith explained, noting his expression. "And there are a lot more of those then usual these days."

Hatter found out that Edith and her husband, who was not from Wonderland, were currently housing twelve people, displaced by the doors. Several had been stuck for weeks, and the doors back had seemed far more infrequent then the doors out.

Hatter had almost laughed, stating that it had seemed the other way around for him. He explained that the doors had sent him back to Wonderland twice now, and he had been stranded there for nearly a week before the door that had brought him here had finally opened.

"And now I'm on the wrong side of this world," he stated ruefully.

Edith had squeezed his arm, comfortingly. "King Jack and your Alice are working on fixing that. You just need to make sure you don't walk through the wrong door before then."

…

They had made it to the post office just as it was closing. The counter attendant looked none too pleased to see Alice and Jack rush in, but at Alice's vehement insistence, had dutifully filled out the paperwork and taken the payment to have their package rushed out first thing in the morning.

Alice seemed to relax slightly as they started back toward the apartment. She almost looked ready to smile, but Jack knew that was unlikely until Hatter was safely back in her arms. The slight crease of worry was still in her brow – concern that he could end up back in Wonderland instead, or that she might.

"I wish I hadn't broken the looking glass."

Jack's statement surprised Alice and drew her up short.

"I didn't realize it would cause more problems then it would solve," Jack continued. Alice was really looking at him now, seeing the hint of misery in his eyes. He was being vulnerable, not hiding behind his regal mask. And Alice felt a little sorry for him.

"You didn't know this would happen," she stated.

Jack shook his head. "But I should have known that nothing in Wonderland is ever simple."

"Guess not." Alice took a deep breath and continued walking. Jack paused for a moment longer before falling into step with her. He didn't say anything more, but Alice could tell that he was still thinking about it.

They detoured to an army surplus store on the way back to the apartment. Alice was determined to find Charlie at least one outfit to wear. She couldn't imagine the armor being terribly comfortable, even to a man who was used to wearing it. She found some trousers that she eyed as being close to the right size, and a small selection of button-down shirts soon joined it. But it was something in the window that really caught her eye.

…

Alice snuggled down into her bed with a small sigh. A few more nights alone, then Hatter would be back, back in their bed where he belonged. And she couldn't wait.

She could hear Charlie snoring in the other room, and briefly wondered how Jack would sleep. Charlie, while wary of the clothing they had selected, had been quite ecstatic at their other find – a long mesh hammock on a large metal frame. It had taken up a good chunk of the living room, making the small apartment feel even smaller. And Jack had seemed significantly less then pleased at the prospect of sharing his sleeping quarters with another man.

Alice had peeked back into the living room before going to bed, and shook her head at the sight. She couldn't help but wonder how many more unexpected visitors were going to show up on her doorstep.

…

So, will Alice and Hatter be reunited? Or will the doors come between them again? Stay tuned.

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