The emotions that she was hit with were monumental. They hurt with their intensity, and she opened her eyes to find herself back in Ipalm, but a bit older. A woman with fire- orange curly hair was tying bows on hats with fanciful designs. She smiled, and her violet eyes sparkled.

A little boy with bright orange hair and wild brows ran to her, wailing and cradling his arm. Another, darker orange haired boy trailed behind, slowly and quietly. Alice assumed it was Tarrant's older brother, Chawldon.

"Mother!" the youngest wailed. "Chawldon broke my thumb!"

"I'm not sorry, either." the older boy stated in the deep, cracked voice of the late stages of puberty. "He deserved it. I'll teach him to touch father's fabrics."

"Challenging the rules is natural for children, Chawldon." their mother scolded. "Tarrant was doing what was in his nature. You are too harsh of a brother." she fumed at Chawldon, and he pouted as she wrapped little Tarrant's thumb in white silk.

"You only get mad at me because I'm gonna be a Barber, and use my skills for profit, and get out of this backwater town, like a SMART person. You prefer Tarrant because he's gonna be a Hatter!" the boy's adolescence was obvious, and he fumed. "He'll be mad, just like Fa!"

"Don' yeh EVER speak abou' yeh Fa tha' way!" her brogue was let out, but her eyes just faded to indigo. She raised her arm, and her sleeve slid down, revealing a blue pattern of checkers up her arm.

"Fine! I'll be gone, then! I'm old enough to live on my own! I'll be going to Salezen Grum!" Chawldon's fury carried on further, his eyes burning black as night. He scared Alice, shook her to her core.

Then the scene shifted, and a slightly older Tarrant was before her, making a hat, and top hat in bright red silk.

"Like this, Fa?" he looked up at a familiar man, and Alice smiled.

Tarrant resembled his father in every way, down to the gap tooth smile. His father laid a hand on his shoulder, beaming.

"Aye. Yeh do meh proud, mah boy."

Once again, Alice was thrown into a scene, and the mood was very different. Tarrant's father was breaking things, yelling about a vision. His eyes were bright red, and the mercury stains were black, fading to purple bruises.

"Fa! Fa, yeh have teh stop!" a teenage Tarrant was yelling, trying to catch hold of his father. His wide green eyes were rimmed with worry, but not consumed by it. This was probably the least of his father's problems. "You're scaring Judice!"

A girl who looked like the youngest girl Alice remembered seeing in the fountain statue. Her eyes were pale blue, her bowler askew.

Tarrant's father whipped around, and shook Tarrant's shoulders. "You MUST FIND THE ALICE!" an inhuman voice tore from his father's throat, and he collapsed.

Tarrant turned to Judice. "Get Aldrea and Irene. I need you three to get him to bed. I'll have to be speaking to Mam."

She ran to accomplish her task, and Tarrant made his way to an old loom, where his mother sat, looking as young as before, excluding a few gray streaks in her hair, and a few smile lines.

"Mam," Tarrant began weakly. "What's making you feel older?"

"Chawldon's been arrested by the Red Queen he left us for, you're starting to get the mercury stains," she rubbed his hand, which was showing the beginnings of magenta marks

on his milk white skin. "I worry that you'll never find interest in a girl soon, before they have all gone. And your Fa is starting to leave us."

"Mother," he lisped, running his hand through her hair. "Fa's gone completely mad. He's broken his Hat- Workshop, scared Judice, and keeps yelling about finding the Alice, whatever that means. He's getting worse then Thakery. He's gallymoggers"

SMACK. The pain hit Alice hard, and blue blood seeped from the corner of Tarrant's pink lips, his body rigid from the shock.

"You'll no' talk abou' yehr Fa like tha'" she warned, her hand lowering, tears forming in her eyes.

They held each other and wept, knowing the truth, and Alice whipped into another memory.

Alice saw herself at age six, wandering to the March Hare's windmill, hearing music playing and furious giggling interrupting it. Tarrant sat at the table, following his still alive father's advise. After all, he had no idea he had such little time to spend with him. After her little self strode into the clearing, his cheerful demeanor changed.

"NO ROOM! No room here!" he yelled, serious as a squirting flower.

"There's plenty of room!" her small self sat down next to the March Hare, Thakery, and she was poured a cup of steaming tea from the yellow tea pot she remembered Tarrant had hid her in later, when she returned. Her younger self was about to take a sip, when Tarrant yelled.

"Clean cup, MOVE DOWN! MOVE DOWN!"

She was shoved into the chair next to him, where, in sixteen years, he had sat her down. She was poured a new cup by Tarrant, who asked for her name, smiling all the while.

"I am Alice, and who would YOU be?" she asked in her muchy way.

"Just a Mad Hatter named Tarrant Hightopp." he replied, and he leaned towards her, lifting a curl of her golden locks. "Your hair is in wont of cutting."

"How rude!" she huffed, and he laughed at her cuteness.

Alice smiled, even though it felt as if her body was surging with liquid pain. She saw her way through many good tea parties, ending with the one the re-met in, but the horror of his torture took over.

The dungeon was dark and dank, smelling if blood from beatings past. He was strung up by chains connected to the ceiling, and he hung limply. Stayne entered the small cell with a horse switch, and Alice starting forming tears.

"Now, you have hung here for a while." Stayne snapped his leather gloved fingers, and a card soldier unlocked the chains. Tarrant fell to the floor, where the chains were reattached to a lock waiting for his already raw wrists. "Now tell me, Hatter. Where is Alice?"

"I don't know," Tarrant glared, and he received a whip to the face.

"Where IS she?" Stayne repeated, and Tarrant spat, earning himself another whip. "WHERE IS SHE?"

"I WON'T TELL YOU!" Tarrant bellowed, and his shirt was removed, and after that, he received ten gashes across his back.

His screams of pain matched with hers of horror, and they faded as Alice went to another memory, in the Red Queen Iracebeth's Hat- Workshop. She felt the pain lessen slightly, as Alice was whisked away to his execution, where she saw Chess pose as Tarrant, then the moment he returned to Mamoreal and was greeted by her, then the sadness that almost knocked her off her feet when she claimed that this was all a dream, that he was a dream. How could she have been so cruel? She thought as the memories gave her the sight of his tears as she left all those years ago, just after his futterwhacken of joy, as he sunk to his knees. She felt so terrible for putting through that. She promised herself she would never do that to him again.

All of a sudden, all of the horrible things she had seen, and a few she hadn't, swirled around her, and it felt as if she was going to die. The screams of his father, the burning of their flesh, the sight of Alice herself going against the Jabberwhocky, all of her senses were attacked by fear, sorrow, and madness. She giggled hysterically as they slowed and faded.

She then felt the warmth of the good memories wrap around her, and the terrifying sights went far away, into a dark corner of her mind. Instead, her senses were filled with the scent of the White Sea Beaches, the sound of Aldrea's giggles, the sight of his family the last time he had visited them for Judice's birthday, and the feel of her own hair through his fingers. They all fell away to the bright light, and she fell through as well, and came back to herself.

She gripped the thimble and called for Tarrant with all her might.

She opened her eyes, and found her vision blurry. Alice could make out Tarrant sitting on the mat beside her, reading a book while running his fingers through her hair.

"Tarrant?" she rasped, her voice weak and trembling. "It hurts."

He lifted her hand ever so gently, and she saw blue on her, but her vision prevented her from seeing the design. "It'll be a little while until you can move. Are you alright?"

"Everything hurts," Alice huffed a breath, panting as she mentally did an inventory of her body. "Even seeing things hurts... distract me."

"Pardon?" Tarrant didn't quite understand what she was asking of him.

"Distract me... Tell me what you're reading. Tell me about what happened after you woke up. Tell me everything."

"Well, I, um, alright then. I'm reading a... reference book. Well, I was, but talking to you is much better. It's about natural activities that are normal here. I don't think that Mrs. Ellis was a very nice woman. Anyway, after I woke up, I bandaged our hands, being sure that the cord remained in tact for two hours after that. Then after untying us, I found a few books, and read, and checked every once and a while on our marks. They're almost finished, by the way. How are you feeling now?" He gave her plenty of time to think about it, waiting patiently as possible as she considered her answer.

"The pain is ebbing, but my vision is still a bit blurry." she wiggled her fingers and toes, then slowly sat up with the aid of Tarrant.

"Good. That means it's almost done. The edges of the design are becoming crisper, more defined. I worried, you know. About if you wouldn't wake up. That sometimes happens. When a woman doesn't accept all the evils a man has done and seen in his time." He shifted on his mat, cross- legged. "Mirana told me before we started this that in her storybooks, a kiss wakes up a princess. I... was tempted teh try it a little whyle ago. Bu' Ah knew tha' if it worked, yeh'd be aware of th' pain longer." His brogue seeped in, showing his worry.

"It's sweet that you thought of how to help me." Alice took his hand in hers, then frowned. "Your father..."

"Yes, he was mad. I've come to terms with that." Tarrant answered, and Alice's eyes became fully functional, her vision clearing.

"No, he wasn't. He saw you finding me." she furrowed her thin eyebrows together.

"That was the only true vision he had. That's why it was so important that I remember it. But he was violent, and he would forget things, like he had family, or that he had just finished an order. The mercury finally got to him. I worry, Alice. Eventually, I run the chance of being like that. I'm already on my way there. I don't want to frighten my wife and bairns. I don't want to forget things. I'm scared, Alice." his eyes were tight and yellow green.

"It will be alright. We just have to get you some help. Perhaps Chess can use his evaporating skills to"

"Alice, we've been doing that all along. This is as cured as I can be. It will only get worse from here. Inside my head, it's... it's terrifying. I feel like a monster. The madness isn't able to be controlled, it's just beneath the skin." his voice shook, on the verge of tears.

"Now you listen to ME," Alice grabbed his face and turned it to hers. "I will not let you loose control. You will not go completely mad. You mean too much to me to let you let THAT side of you to take over."

"They don't have asylums in Underland, either. When you lose your mind, you just wander around in the woods, until you forget everything and give up on life." his eyes took on a haunted feeling gray, and Alice knew what happened to his father, if he hadn't been killed by the Jabberwhocky. "I saw it happen to my Uncle Tilose," he looked away, and got up, putting the books away.

"What do our marks look like?" Alice purposely changed the subject, and Tarrant's easily distracted mind obliged oh so willingly.

"It's very beautiful, though I can't look at all of yours yet. That has to wait until we have our wedding night. It's a test of endurance." he pulled up the sleeve of her nightdress until it reached her shoulder. "I can only see this much."

She gazed at it herself, and gasped at its beauty. There, on the skin, was a blue elaborate design that looked like vines of ivy, with little Ravens and Writing Desks. "It's so

beautiful."

"Mine looks the same, only in red." he smiled, and the doors opened.