This chapter introduces another new character. A female one. I'll put you to rest right now: no, she is not going to be a rival for Hatter's affection. I promise. Hatter just needs a friend, I think, and since Alice has JD I figure Hatter can have a female friend.
Disclaimer: The characters, places, themes, etc… that you recognize are not my property. If you don't recognize it, chances are I made it up.
o…o
He shouldn't have been so apprehensive, so worried; Alice assured him that the mysterious JD was only a friend, and he believed her. Or at least, he told himself to believe her, but he couldn't get the idea of her and this other guy out of his head. No heterosexual man alive could possibly be friendly with Alice and not want to be something more than friends, he thought. But then again, he was probably biased.
Still. It worried him.
He knew Alice had a past, knew she was far from being an innocently blushing virginal girl, and the knowledge that she did have other men in her past didn't really bother him. It didn't even really bother him that one of them was the now-King of Wonderland, considering she'd turned him down flat and chosen him instead.
But there was something about JD that made him deeply suspicious, and he'd never even met him. Maybe it was the way Alice's face lit up when she was talking to him over the phone, the way she'd been so excited and happy at the thought of seeing him again. It was probably just because, like she'd told him, they were very good friends and she hadn't seen him in a long time. But part of him worried it might be something else.
He was starting to repulse himself—he was not the jealous type!
He walked back from the library in the blindingly bright sunshine of the afternoon; the air was contrastingly cold, sharp, crisp. His breath made little clouds in the air around him. The strap on his right shoulder dug in and dragged, slowing his walk considerably. Alice gave him something she called a 'knapsack' to ferry books back and forth from his apartment, because those paper grocery bags she was letting him use kept ripping and spilling their contents all over the street. This 'knapsack' was plain black and obviously well-used, the single shoulder-strap worn from being used so much. But it helped him get his books back and forth so he was quite grateful for it.
Maybe he should've taken Alice up on her offer to go with her to meet JD for lunch. He didn't work today and the whole not knowing about his possible potential competition was starting to make him crazy. He didn't even have a face to put to the name of the man he was starting to despise for no other reason than because Alice was so fond of him.
"No thanks," he'd told Alice when she made the offer, doing his best to keep his voice light even though he was in a steadily declining mood.
"You sure?" She asked, looking at him through the reflection in her bedroom mirror. "It's no trouble and he said I could bring you."
He'd just given her a wave of his hand and declined again. "Naw. You said it yourself, you haven't seen him in a while and you want to catch up. There's nothing more boring than sitting there like a third wheel and listening to other people's reminisces."
And then she'd just shrugged and that was that.
Now he was starting to regret it.
He wasn't even the jealous type. Not really. He'd always been quite content to let the chips fall where they may, as it were, in personal relationships. He channelled all of his inherent controlling-ness into his Tea House in Wonderland, and into keeping himself alive. When it came to women he didn't have a lot of finicky controlling-ness left so he was rarely ever bothered by anything that happened. That the majority of the women in Wonderland were pretty vacant and shallow and not lucid enough to pursue relationships on the side probably played into things, too.
In fact, he'd always scoffed at the men who did worry about women's other friendships, especially those with men. So why the hell was he so concerned about Alice and JD?
When he thought about it, he was torn between jealousy at their friendship and disgust at his apparent possessiveness.
He shoved his fists in his pockets and kicked debris on the pavement and turned off to take the long way back to his flat through the park. He could walk and think at the same time.
The park was agreeable and lively, even in this cold. People in curiously unattractive clingy fluorescent clothes jogged; dog-owners played with their pets; parents pushed their children on swings and minded them on the playground while talking to each other and sharing containers of hot beverages. There was even a horse and rider trotting through, both of them bundled in warm coverings and snorting clouds of their breath into the air.
The concept of a public park was something alien to him, coming from the veritable concrete jungle that was Wonderland. The only 'nature' that existed were the expansive forests, and most people associated those with danger—Jabberwockies, bandersnatch, snark, and all manner of dangerous, long-leggety beasties and things that went 'bump' in the night existed in those woods and no one ventured into them if it wasn't a matter of life or death.
People here seemed to kind of like nature—this little pocket of manicured nature, with its lines of trees and shrubs, dormant flower gardens that he was sure looked positively radiant during the spring and summer when they were in bloom, cobbled paths, and sloping hills. It was pretty, and tame, and as he walked through the depths of it, so quiet and peaceful, it was kind of hard to believe that all around it was a bustling city full of people and cars.
It was nice, he decided. A little captive nature like a goldfish in a bowl. A little like the grass carpet he once kept in his office. It was pretty and it smelled good.
Hatter let his mind wander as he walked.
He stepped out across the road, away from the peaceful park and back into the city. He passed people who gave him a politely friendly nod and wave and he waved back.
That was another thing about this city that was so different from Wonderland—people who actually acknowledged other people as actually existing. People who were friendly. In Wonderland, if a person couldn't offer you something you needed, then you ignored them. For some reason Alice seemed to have adopted an entirely cynical view of the world around her, declaring quite firmly that people were awful, but he didn't see that; but then, he mused, she and him must have had two completely different perspectives on what made other people 'terrible'. He'd seen some of the worst of humanity in his time, after all; not having to wear body armour and not being shot at was something that made him almost giddy.
He was so caught up in thought that he didn't see the dog until it was far too late.
The dog hurled itself at him, barking joyfully, catching him completely off-guard and knocking him clean off of his feet. A few minute's scuffle and a brief panic-attack and Hatter managed to push himself away, and a young woman so small she looked like she could ride that enormous animal around like a pony came and grabbed the dog by the lead. It was absolutely the biggest dog he'd ever seen and it came up to its handler's waist.
"I am so, so sorry!" She said, terror written plainly in her face. "Are you all right? Are you hurt? Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"
She reached down to offer him a hand, keeping her other hand firmly on the dog's collar; the enormous brown-and-white dog with that floppy face and disgusting drool stalactites was wagging his tail and looking ridiculously proud of itself.
"I'm fine," Hatter said quickly, pulling himself to his feet.
That did little to reassure the young woman, who still looked frightened and worried.
"I have no idea what could've gotten into him," she said apologetically. "He never does anything like that. Ever. He's a big teddy bear, I dunno what happened."
She bit her lower lip and fidgeted nervously with the lead.
He frowned slightly; this girl—woman—whatever she was—talked like he did. Alice told him that there were people who lived in other countries in her world who had accents similar to his and Jack's, and all of his manufactured paperwork said he came from England, but he'd never actually encountered someone (he'd stopped calling them 'Oysters' now) who talked like he did.
"Please don't call the cops," she begged. "He didn't mean it, I swear. I can… I can try to pay, if you're hurt, or if anything's damaged. Just please don't report it, he never would've hurt you, he wasn't trying to be mean. Please."
"It's okay," he said quickly. "Really. It's fine. Don't look so scared, please, you're making me nervous."
Silence.
"You're not gonna call the police? And… and have him destroyed?" She looked so hopeful it was almost heartbreaking.
"Of course not. Why would I do that?"
"Because… he… jumped on you?"
He shrugged. "He's a dog. Dogs do that."
"Oh, thank you," she breathed, sighing and leaning forward with her hands on her knees. "Oh, that's such a relief."
"You seem a little high-strung, are you okay?"
"I am now," she said. "People are usually scared of big dogs like him. They think they're evil or something. You see it in papers and shit all the time—big dogs attacking toddlers or what have you, it makes it seem like they're monsters. They never tell you that the dog was defending itself because the toddler kept poking it in the face with a stick."
Hatter couldn't help a smile.
The girl smiled, too. She was kind of pretty, he thought, in a way completely different from Alice. She was all circles—a round face, round figure, big dusty-green eyes. Her hair was reddish and improbably long, in a long plait that came all the way down her back and the last few inches of it was tucked into the back pocket of her jeans.
"Are you sure you're all right?" She asked again.
"Yeah. No blood. I don't think I've dropped anything—" he turned around to make a quick visual sweep of the area, and patted his coat pockets to make sure he still had his wallet and keys and all of his library books. He did.
"Oh—oh. Wow. That's… wow," he heard the girl say.
"What?"
"Holy cow."
Now he was concerned that maybe the dog really had hurt him and he just hadn't noticed it—it wouldn't be the first time he'd been injured and failed to realize it until someone else pointed it out to him.
And then he felt the draft.
His eyes went wide and he reached back quickly and was surprised to feel bare skin and the soft cottony fabric of his underwear.
The dog had ripped his trousers; the ripped portion was hanging by the remaining threads, the hole going from the waistband halfway down his thigh and was as wide as his hand.
"Well, fuck," he said simply. Then he covered his mouth for having sworn. "Sorry."
"S'okay. I think the situation merits a good swear," she said, her expression caught somewhere between bemusement and concern. It was the sort of thing, he imagined, that would be funny in a few days.
"So, uhm… I should…"
"Look, my flat's just around the corner. I'm a fair hand with a needle and thread, I can sew that up for you in a few minutes. It's the least I can do."
He eyed the dog suspiciously but he was sitting on the pavement, thumping his tail, and looking completely unthreatening.
"It'd beat walking back to wherever you live with that hole in your pants," she offered.
"Yeah… sure…"
Which was how he ended up trouserless in a strange apartment with a woman he'd never met before.
"My eyes are covered," he heard her through the bathroom door. "I've got a blanket here, you can cover up with that."
"Thanks."
The bathroom door opened just a crack and a little hand clutching an afghan appeared.
"Pass me your trousers," she said. "D'you want a cup of tea or something while you wait?"
Ah, something familiar.
"Yes, please."
He wrapped the blanket around his waist and hitched it up with one hand and exited the bathroom; the apartment was small, even smaller than his apartment, with a little cramped living room and a little cramped kitchen where the young woman was setting a kettle on to boil; his trousers were on the table next to a sewing box. The dog was laying down on the rug in front of the front door, head on his massive paws.
She sat down and began to work.
"You can sit, you know. The furniture's all paid for."
"Oh—right. Um, thanks."
There was an awkward silence for a few minutes until she spoke again.
"My name's Nel, by the way."
She looked up at him.
"I figured we could be on first-name terms."
"I'm Hatter," he said before remembering that he wasn't supposed to go by that name here. "Or, David, rather. David Hatter."
"Well which do you prefer?" She asked, not looking up. "David, or Hatter?"
He thought for a second. "Hatter."
"Hatter it is then. I'm sorry, again—about Bello, I mean."
He frowned. "'Bello'?"
She nodded toward the dog. "Him. Bello, it's short for Bellerophon."
He knew that name, didn't he? From all the books he'd been reading. "The hero with the Pegasus?" He asked.
She grinned. "Yeah. You know it? Most people have no idea."
"I read a lot."
When the kettle screamed, she poured the tea, and the conversation lasted until she put the last knot in the thread of his newly-mended trousers and their cups were dry.
Despite how it'd begun, he enjoyed it. It had been so long since his tea shop was an actual tea house that he'd forgotten why he liked having it. It was one of his favourite things about it: sitting down to tea and conversation with a stranger.
Even if it only lasted a little while, he felt quite at home.
o…o
Nel's character has been floating around in my head for some time now. She doesn't play a particularly big role; she functions just as a friend to Hatter. Mostly to show him that yes, men and women can be friends. It sounds pretty basic but it's surprising how many people don't think they can be.
As usual, feedback of any kind, should you choose to leave it, is much appreciated—but never demanded.
