Back to original timeline. Thanks for the reviews, please keep them coming. :) Enjoy.
They were harvesting oysters after all.
Hatter had thought that the White Rabbit was only occupied with Jack. However, it had been a nasty shock for him when he found out.
He had gone back to wearing his hardhat, even when he was around town during the day. And after observing some of the construction workers around the city, he had swapped out his usual jeans for coveralls. He was becoming more and more of a chameleon, and as much as he hated his new sense of style, he knew it was necessary. It was a front. He now blended in almost perfectly.
Perhaps too perfectly.
He had been walking from the warehouse back toward his hotel when it happened. Someone came up behind him, slowly, and cleared his throat. "Excuse me," the man had said.
Hatter had turned to see who was talking to him, and the suit standing behind him spritzed something right into his face.
He staggered back, a little dazed, and a fog misted his eyes for a second. Then he coughed, and his eyes cleared. The suit looked confused at his reaction, and didn't react quickly enough to elude the fist Hatter drove into his jaw.
They had tried to harvest him. Hatter didn't know whether to be amused or angered by that, and the result was an agitated mirth. He knew that, if he had been an oyster, that drug that the suit had sprayed him with would have turned him instantly catatonic. Thankfully, the drug had little effect on people from Wonderland – it could muddle them a bit, for a moment, but that was all.
But the experience had drawn his attention to the fact that he had not been watching the White Rabbit nearly as closely as perhaps he should have been. He had been too busy watching Jack, and far too distracted watching Alice, and battling his frustration whenever it was the two of them together. Especially when they went to the dojo, alone, after hours.
He wondered if there was anything he could do to stop the harvesting and perhaps save a few oysters. He didn't have a plan... yet.
But then, he had too much to do to spend much time coming up with a plan. Because upon arriving at his hotel, he could immediately see that something was wrong.
There was a white van parked outside of Jack's flat. And the driver was sitting there, in a gray button up shirt and a tie, and watching the building through sunglasses, in spite of the fact that it really wasn't sunny anymore.
And he could see three more suits, trying to act nonchalant and inconspicuous. Hatter shook his head. He wondered how the White Rabbit could be so successful when they were so obvious. He knew they were lying in wait for Jack. And he knew that they were done watching him.
Hatter barely got into the lobby of the hotel before he pulled out his cell phone and sent a series of rapid fire texts to Jack.
"Rabbit at your flat. Danger. Stay away." Then, "Lose your tail and hide." He wasn't stupid. He knew that at least one of the suits was still following Jack, possibly two, or even more. "Stick with the crowds," he texted finally, then rushed up to his room to change clothes and go look for Jack.
Hatter didn't stay at the hotel after that. And Jack didn't return to his flat. Instead, Hatter followed Jack constantly, and caught what sleep he could on top of the warehouse once Jack was hidden away in a hotel room (a different one each night). Jack was far more alert now, constantly keeping an eye out, and as often as not, spotting the White Rabbit himself. Hatter found himself fostering a small bit of admiration for Jack when he managed to even shake him a couple of times.
And Hatter kept an eye on the comings and goings from the looking glass. The oyster harvest was increasing, and there was one suit in particular who stayed by the looking glass almost constantly - it seemed to be his job to ferry the stunned oysters through to the other side.
It was early morning, two days and counting. Hatter woke up cold, tired, and with a stiff neck from sleeping on the concrete, and found himself longing to go back to the hotel to sleep, instead of to just shower and change clothes. But he knew he needed to keep tabs on the White Rabbit and on Jack, and if that meant sleeping within earshot of the looking glass, so be it.
He peered over the edge of the wall, and saw the white van parked just outside the warehouse. And as he crept down toward a side door, he heard suits talking. There were two of them, and they were bringing in more oysters. A man in a business suit, a young woman in loose fitting jogging clothes, and a teenage boy. Then his breath caught in his throat and he let loose a strangled cry, and he found himself charging down toward the looking glass as fast as his feet could carry him.
The fourth oyster wore a blue and yellow waitress uniform. A middle aged woman, with a badge that said Tessa.
He had made such a clatter in his careless, crazed approach that a suit was waiting for him, in front of the looking glass, with a loaded gun.
Hatter skidded to a stop, his eyes wild, cursing that he hadn't brought his body armor with him from Wonderland. The other suit was just pulling Tessa and the teenager through the glass.
"NO!"
A shot rang out, and Hatter dropped to the ground, clutching his side. The suit grinned maliciously as he walked toward the fallen man, and aimed the gun again.
Hatter's foot shot out, tripping the suit, and in the next moment, they were wrestling, scrambling for the gun. At one point, the suit managed to grasp it again, but the shot that was fired imbedded itself harmlessly in the ceiling. Then Hatter knocked the gun from his hand, and it skittered to the edge of the looking glass.
Hatter tried to land a punch, but this suit was faster then the others had been. He shoved Hatter back and slugged him in the side. Then he got up and raced toward the gun. Hatter grabbed him and pulled him back onto the floor, and maneuvered himself between the suit and his weapon, inadvertently placing himself directly in front of the looking glass.
Then the suit smiled, and rushed at Hatter, intent to tackle him into the waiting portal.
Hatter had never taken any of Alice's judo classes, but he had watched plenty of them. And as the suit raced toward him he planted himself and lowered his shoulder.
And flipped the suit perfectly over his shoulder and through the glass.
...
Only after he had run five blocks and ducked into another alley did Hatter slow to a stop. His side screamed at him, but when he pulled up his shirt, he saw that the bullet had just grazed him, not imbedded. He breathed a sigh of relief..
But the sigh caught in his throat, and turned into a half sob. They had taken Tessa. The first friend he had made in this world, and they had taken her, and she would be hooked up and drained of her emotions to make the teas that he had sold in what felt like a whole other life. And he started to wonder, had he sold any of her emotions?
Hatter felt guilty. For the first time in all his years of selling the teas for the queen, he started to grasp what it really meant to deal in human emotions.
He sank to the ground beside a dumpster, buried his face in his knees, and felt the unbearable heaviness of what he had done.
The people that had been taken, drained, and discarded. They had friends too. People who cared about them. People who loved them (like I love Alice, he thought to himself, which only made it worse), family. He wondered how Tessa's family would react to her disappearance. Or if she even had a family. He realized he had never asked her.
Was she one of the people that Alice had rescued from the casino? Mentally, he went back to that day, standing in the field during the showdown with the queen. He tried to remember the faces, but they all bled into each other, indistinct. He had been too busy paying attention to Alice, the queen, the guards, Jack and Duchess, and his own role to pay any attention to them.
If he could re-live that day, he would have looked at them, each of them. All the people.
He didn't know if it was because of Tessa. Or maybe because of Alice. But something had changed.
He couldn't call them oysters anymore.