All Characters belong to the amazing artists and writers of When Curiosity Met Insanity
"NO!"
The sound of breaking glass and a sharp, feminine gasp shocked her awake. Her wide, terrified eyes caught sight of her sister shrinking back, hands clasped over her mouth in surprise. A tray that had just a moment ago contained a porcelain bowl of soup and a glass of water was teetering precariously on the edge of her bed stand. Alice was in her room. It was a dream, after all.
"Mathilda…" Alice cried, panting. "I'm sorry—"
"No, it's me who should be sorry," Her sister interrupted. "You were talking in your sleep and I shouldn't have—" She looked at the mess that was seeping across the hardwood floor. "I'll get someone to clean this." She rose and hurried out of the room.
Alice groaned and fell back on her pillows. First her parents, and now her sister. She'll be in an institution by the end of the week.
A servant girl rushed in with a basin and a cloth to clean up the mess. Mathilda followed, bringing Alice a fresh glass of water, which she gratefully accepted. She was parched and the cool water felt like a balm on her dry lips. She licked them to be sure that they weren't cut open like in the dream.
Mathilda picked up the chair that had fallen and sat down. Alice could smell her perfume and it brought back memories that made her smile. She had missed her sister, who had gotten married and left home years ago. What was she doing here now?
"How are you, my sister? Mother tells me that you are ill." Mathilda said, scanning her face for signs of the illness.
Alice sighed. "I'm really not. I just don't agree with their plans for me, is all."
Mathilda tilted her head slightly. "And why not? Do you not want to be married?"
Alice's hands clasped the glass tighter. "I do, one day. How is this a strange concept? If I am to be married, I want it to be to one of my choosing, that's all. I, at least, want a say in this."
Mathilda murmured sympathetically and lifted a hand to smooth Alice's golden hair back from her face. "Alice, dear, that's not how all this works. You are not as young as most ladies are when they get married. If you become a spinster, you will become a burden on your mother and father, and that's not proper at all. You are running out of time."
Reginald was leaning over a sink, washing his hands after he spilled ink on them. He was pestering her at work and knocked over her inkwell, catching it before it could ruin one of her precious books. Had she thanked him for saving them? No, she had chided him for carelessness. But he had smiled so mischievously that she knew it had no effect. She was staring at his hands, moving against each other, the purple-inky suds falling into the sink. Her eyes rose and caught his silly freckled face, smiling so self-assuredly at her beneath his sparkling blue eyes…
"Alice? Where has your mind gone now?" Mathilda groaned. "Are you even listening to me?"
Alice shook the daydream out of her head.
Her sister huffed, "You see, that's what I've been talking about. You need to get your head out of the clouds. Its time you took things seriously and considered your future."
Alice sniffed, "You sound like Mother now, Mathilda." She glared at her beloved sister and frowned. "You followed that very same advice. Can you say you are truly happy?"
The blank look that crossed her sister's face told volumes. "Of course I'm happy!" She sputtered. "Why in Heaven's name would I not be?" She frowned and looked away, staring out into the distance. "I have a husband with a decent income, a large home and a household that I can call my own, and I have my children." The frown softened, becoming weak and unsure. "That's what any decent woman should want, right?"
Alice peered at her sister and searched her face. "Mathilda, who exactly are you trying to convince?"
The bald sadness that crossed her sister's eyes lanced Alice's heart. Mathilda sniffed primly and lifted her chin, all masks back in place. "Yes, I have everything I need and more. I only wish you had the same. Besides, happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy, or you can be miserable. Either way, the choice is yours. I chose to be happy with my husband, and so I am."
Alice remembered that sadness in her dear sister's eyes on that day she was jilted by her love. She thought that her sister would never recover. In those days Alice swore that she would never have her heart broken like that. She would never be subject to the same sadness and misery that stole her sister away from her and left a hollow shell in her place. It was not long after that time, her sister married her husband, eventually recovering enough to be almost herself again.
Alice's lip trembled before she could hide it by drinking from the glass in her hand. Perhaps if she married someone she didn't care about, she would be spared that horrible sadness. Perhaps she would choose to be happy. Perhaps she would forget about…
"My dear Cricket," He chuckled with a low, husky voice. "What in the world put that look in your eyes?" She felt herself flush and looked away. "Nothing!" She denied sharply. She backed away to the proper distance. "I just thought that miscreants such as yourself would just get the sink all dirty and make more work for me to do."
He was still chuckling, the rascal. His eyes crinkled merrily and he reached for the towel that she held out at arm's length. "Whatever you say, my darling Cricket. Whatever you say."
Her trembling caused the water to dribble down her chin. She knew, deep down inside, that her mind may think it was a practical, good, sound idea, but her heart would never allow her to follow.
….
Reginald gratefully accepted the bundle from Belle, stowing it carefully in his pack. Ears shuffled nervously at his side, fretting and muttering as he brought yet another article of clothing for him to pack.
"Ears, I'm not leaving for long," he said, once again. "I'm going to bring her back. It shouldn't take long."
Ears's nose twitched once, twice. "But what if you run into Bears?"
The Hatter considered it for a moment, then dismissed it. "The Cat will take me straight there." He said, putting the bear mace aside, "There's not going to be Bears where I'm going."
"Where ARE you going?" Belle asked quietly.
The Hatter paused, weariness and pain making his features older before their very eyes.
"What do you remember about Mary Anne, Ears?"
Ears trembled and looked away. "Mary Anne loved you so much, but you didn't really love her. You both were too young, and you were too wild and head-strong to be chained down like she wanted. You broke her heart one day, telling her that she bored you. So, she left, never to return. We had so many tea parties to forget about her, one which Alice attended, if I'm not mistaken. I was so Tea-drunk I don't remember..." The Hare smiled wistfully at the memory. "You felt so guilty, driving her away like that, then you just… forgot about her one day. Out of nowhere. I think you cared in your own way, once."
"Yes," Reginald whispered, searching for a thought or feeling. "You told me that she was the only girl that loved me, and I cast her aside. Those specific memories are beyond my reach right now, locked away…" He narrowed his eyes, "But it's the fog, I remember. I don't remember the trick she used, but she would always arrive and leave in fog. She had a flair for the dramatic, I believe."
Belle folded her arms across her waist and puzzled over his words. "So, you think she's back and she took Alice away?"
Reginald resumed closing his pack and sat down on his bed beside it. "When I was a small Hatter, my Mother would tell me about the Looking Glass. She said that it was an opening to another world and that it was also the barrier keeping that world out. She said, if anyone crossed it to the other side, they would find a world with no magic and no imagination. That world was a cold, uncaring place, and for that reason, the Looking Glass was locked away somewhere in Wonderland, never to be found." His eyes focused inward as he remembered, "I would search and search for the Looking Glass, spending my childhood on the quest, but never found it. I remember that Mary Anne told me that she knew where it was, because she was from that other world."
Ears frowned. "I think I remember that she wasn't from around here, but I didn't think she was from Alice's world."
"She told such stories, about Wars and Inventions… things so fantastic that they stretched the imagination." Reginald's brow furrowed as he rummaged for those memories. "But I had thought she was trying to impress me. They were just stories. I wondered if she went back through the Looking Glass when she disappeared, but I just let her stay gone. It was easier than seeing her upset like that all the time." His voice faded. "What a rotter I was. She wasn't the only one I hurt." His shoulders slumped. "Alice… doesn't deserve a rotten scoundrel like me."
"Reginald Theophilus," Belle scolded.
"The third…" Reginald whispered absently.
"That was a long time ago. You've changed since then." She huffed. "We have to figure out how to get her home so she can decide that for herself. Now tell me, what does Mary Anne have to do with Alice?"
Reginald looked up at her, silently applauding her determination. "I think that Alice was taken to the Looking Glass. Maybe it was by Mary Anne, I don't know. The fog makes me think it was her, but I do know that the Looking Glass will give us answers." He said with growing assurance. "If Alice went through, I will go and get her. How hard could it be?"
The silence that followed his words was chilling and ominous.
"I shouldn't have said that," Hatter whispered, reaching for the Bear Mace.
….
They met the Cat in the forest, at exactly six o'clock. Tea-time.
The Cheshire Cat rolled shapelessly down a tree branch, grinning at the Hatter. "Are you ready?" He laughed, "No? Well that's too bad. Destiny awaits you, Hatter."
The hatter straightened his hat and looked forward determinedly. "No tricks, Cheshire Cat. I need to get to the Looking Glass, not be stranded in the desert or in the middle of the ocean."
The Cat gasped with a hurt tone. "Why, I would never…" he grinned, hissing the last syllable between his teeth. "Besides, you would do me no good if you were late for that very important date…"
Hatter froze, confusion crossing his features, "A very important date—?"
The world exploded around him, deafening him with the roaring of wind. He saw a brief glimpse of Belle and Ears's shocked faces before he tumbled into a vortex of purple and pink, spinning and cartwheeling while the world around him melted away. He hit the floor with a breath-stealing thud.
"Hatter? What are you doing here?" A low masculine voice asked in surprise.
Reginald pushed himself up off the floor and waited for the room to stop spinning. His eyes focused on a pair of odd shoes and rough, tattered blue pants. He looked up at the skinny young man, wearing a strange sweater with a hood, obscuring his face.
"Oh? And who are you?" He asked, shuffling into a sitting position.
The young man's hands clenched at his sides, "Someone who worked way too hard to have everything ruined by a meddling Hatter." He snarled, turning away.
Reginald looked around the formal room, eyeing everything from the stretched and stunted furniture, to the garish wallpaper. In a grand fireplace at the center of the far wall, a lime green fire cast a sickly glow over the room. Above the mantle, a large mirror dominated the wall, reflecting nothing on its mercurial surface.
The Looking Glass.
Hatter rose to approach the Mirror, wondering if he was too late.
"Did you see a lovely young lady with golden hair pass through here?" He asked, inspecting the surface.
"Pfft, no one has been through here, yet." The young man growled. He was seated at a drawing desk, shuffling through papers, scanning each page and shoving them aside and onto the floor.
"Yet?" Reginald said, approaching the young man. "You mean she will be here?" He felt the ice begin to chill his veins. "Are you the one who kidnapped her?"
"Yeah, Old Man," said the man, distractedly. "Once I figure this out—"
Reginald had grabbed the hooded man by the front of his shirt and lifted him easily, slamming him against the wall. "Tell me," He snarled, nose to nose with the young man, frost creeping up the gathered cloth. "Where is Alice?"
The hood had fallen back slightly, revealing a thin, stubbled face and deep-set, beady eyes beneath thick brows. "Let go of me, Old Man. You don't know what you're messing with." The young man hissed. "Your stupid Alice doesn't belong here. She is ruining everything. I'm sending her back where she belongs."
The Hatter's hands clenched the cloth tighter, joints popping with the effort. "Where is she?" he growled again, ignoring the ice now crystalizing up the young man's neck.
A strange look crossed the young man's eyes. A one-sided smirk crept onto his face. "You won't ever stop me, Hatter." He whispered. "You'd have to break the Mirror first. While that mirror is whole, your Alice's days are numbered."
The Hatter dropped him with a snarl. "Then try to stop me." He growled, reaching for the chair at the desk.
….