Okay! Finally, we get Hatter and Alice sorted out. Thanks for putting up with me having everyone go crazy over it. If you think about it, it's really not that implausible; Hatter would have his share of trust issues just like Alice has, and he would probably see a close friend—male friend—of Alice's as a threat. And Alice would probably be so sick of the inevitable drama that comes with having a male best friend that she'd avoid trying to explain it all the time and having to defend herself. (Believe me, there is an unnecessary amount of extremely exaggerated drama that comes from having a best friend of the opposite sex.)

o…o

Hatter sat on a fence near the barn, using a hoof pick to scrape mud and horse crap from the soles of his boots before he left. His mind had been… elsewhere today. His body went through the motions on horseback, but he kept thinking about other things.

Mostly about Alice.

Except for saying that she and JD were 'just friends' she hadn't offered him any reassurance. The two of them were so close and at ease with each other and it was hard for him to really accept that there was nothing between them. Could two people really be so close without having something other than friendship in their past?

He knew exactly how silly he was being and he found it frustrating. He wasn't the jealous type, he told himself over and over again—so why was this bothering him?

"You look pissed off," Nel observed as she climbed up onto the fence next to him, carefully balancing two of the barn cats in the hood of her sweatshirt and on her shoulder.

He shrugged and kept on picking his boots.

"Here, have a kitten," she said, plucking the little black one off of her shoulder and offering it to him. "Kittens make everything better."

He rolled his eyes.

"You're being silent, that's not like you. What's going on?"

"Girlfriend trouble," he said. "I won't bore you."

Nel shrugged. "All right, suit yourself. I just have to clean up in there and then I can drop you off at the subway and you can go home."

She jumped off the fence and put the cats down. She'd started towards the barn when she turned around and looked back at him.

"You know… sometimes it helps to have someone objective look at a problem," she offered. "I can't promise I'll be able to help but at least I can listen."

She was always like that—all too willing to listen to any problem or concern he had. Nel was a deeply odd character. She made jokes and laughed at absolutely everything, and when something was clearly bothering her then she made even more jokes out of it. She worried for everyone else except herself and was an uncommonly sweet-natured person; it was impossible for him not to like her.

It was a long, long time since he'd had friends—actual friends. Not contacts, not connections, not insiders, but friends. It was a nice change from the guarded isolation he'd lived in out of necessity in Wonderland for most of his life.

Keeping to himself wasn't a matter of life and death anymore.

So he followed Nel into the barn, scooping up the cats as he went.

"She has this friend," he began abruptly as soon as he saw her.

"Uh-huh. Let me guess—guy friend?"

"Yeah."

"And he scares you because they're close?"

Hatter's eyebrows knitted in confusion. "Well… yes. How—?"

She went on. "And… let's see… there may be the last scraps of long-dead sexual tension left in that friendship and you know it's there and since it's a boy-girl friendship you see it as a threat to whatever you have with her."

He didn't say anything.

"An ultimatum isn't the way to go, you know," she said. "I dunno if that's what you were thinking or not, but you can't make her choose. That's not the right thing to do. No one wants to be in that position and you definitely don't want to be the asshole who only got the girl to himself because he boxed her into a corner."

True, for a little while he'd been considering telling Alice to pick between him and her childhood love—it had to have been love between them, he couldn't see any other way; no heterosexual man with half a brain who could get one eye open could be around Alice and not want to take a running leap and swan-dive into her pants—but he'd thrown that idea out in a hurry because he knew it was stupid and it would only put another problem on Alice's shoulders.

For a little while he'd put JD aside because she was a wreck over her mother's divorce and the secret-keeping going on around it. He wasn't so consumed with jealousy that he couldn't comfort her when she needed it. But it was always there, a little spectre, a malevolent feeling in the periphery.

This couldn't just sit and stew forever.

"So… what do you think?" He asked finally.

Nel shuffled some sawdust and bedding back and forth with a rake idly, absently, her eyes unfocused and her face unreadable.

"I haven't talked to my best friend in over a year," she said finally.

That seemed to come completely out of the blue. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"He has a girlfriend now. She hates me enough for existing and for having this pesky vagina and she made him choose, and he wanted to try and make it work with her."

She stopped and leaned on her rake, looking at him with a downright accusatory expression.

"You see, I am the friend that keeps ruining relationships because I exist. It's no fun. People have so many hangups about mixed-sex friendships that they can't get their heads out of their own asses about it. He's my friend, but he can't have a girl friend and a girlfriend at the same time."

He hadn't considered that.

He slumped onto a hay bale and set the cats down on the floor. He'd been playing the victim, but they were both at fault; Alice was being evasive but he was having a girly little strop about the whole thing. And Alice... would she have really considered cutting her friend out of her life for him? But no, that would just make things with Alice go bitter—that the only reason he had her to himself was because he forced her to. He'd made such a case about her trusting him but here he was not trusting what she said. She was being less than forthcoming with information, but for all she knew he wouldn't listen if she tried to explain.

"How d'you think she'd react if she found out you were hanging around with me?" She asked. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say she probably wouldn't care."

Of course Alice wouldn't care—if she'd had problems with her friendship with JD and people assuming, like he was, that there was something more than friendship involved, she wouldn't be so quick to jump to the same conclusions about anyone else.

He and Nel didn't talk at all when she drove him to the station where he could catch the subway home. The entire trip he leaned on the pole in the middle of the car, lost in thought about the short but enlightening conversation with Nel, and about Alice, and JD.

He emerged in daylight, squinting.

He felt something buzzing in his pocket—the mobile phone Alice had insisted he get. He looked at the screen and it read 'Incoming call: Alice'.

Oh, how perfect, he thought. He picked it up.

"Hey, Hatter? Are you home?" She asked before he could even get a word in. "We need to talk."

o…o

She met him outside the apartment building, looking unusually nervous and unsure of herself, her cheeks and nose whipped pink by the wind and the cold. The last time she looked that worried and vulnerable, they were in the forest near the Kingdom of the Knights and she was terrified that she'd be stuck in Wonderland forever.

She smiled weakly as he approached.

"Hi," she said softly.

"Hello," he said back. "D'you…" then he trailed off. "Let's go up."

Alice followed him slowly, a few steps behind him the whole way up, keeping her hands inside her coat pockets and her head down.

Neither of them spoke until they were in his apartment and the door was closed behind them.

"I'm sorry."

They looked up at each other, surprised that they'd both apologized at the same time.

"Should we just toss a coin to see who goes first?" She asked.

"My mum always said 'ladies first'," Hatter said. "But—I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've been such a pig about you and JD. I'm not gonna pretend I understand it, but… I shouldn't be such a jackass about it." He shifted uncomfortably, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his coat. "It's just…"

"Just what?"

"I'm new in your life. A greenhorn, as it were. You have a whole life here that I just sort of… fell into."

"Is that what this was about—you were afraid you just intruded on my life and I didn't want you here?"

He looked down and away, embarrassed or ashamed or some combination of both, before nodding slowly. "Partly. I see you in your life and I guess I got it into my head that I was… unwanted, an intruder like you said."

"Oh, Hatter. That's just… it couldn't be further from the truth."

She came forward gingerly, and he took the last step that closed the distance between them and they hugged each other tightly.

"And I really am sorry for being such a pig about you and your mate. I shouldn't worry."

"Yeah, well…" she fidgeted with the buttons on the back of his coat before they stepped apart. "I didn't exactly offer an in-depth explanation, did I?"

He shrugged. "I shouldn't need one, should I?"

She shrugged, too. "Maybe—but you see me hanging around with another guy, and I've known him forever, and you're worried you just barged in on my life and interrupted it, and I guess you just…"

"Took a flying leap to the wrong conclusion?"

She didn't answer him right away; she didn't know how to start this conversation because she'd never actually had it with anyone before.

"Alice?"

"It's not exactly the wrong conclusion—well, sort of," she said weakly.

His face was completely stony and he didn't flinch, but his right hand clenched hard and betrayed his sudden shock right away.

"You slept with him, then." His voice was low and even and it made her nervous.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I did."

"When?" Was all he asked.

"Off and on since I was about sixteen. You do the math."

His eyes went a little wide. Six years? Seven years?

"So… what is it with him? D'you love him, or is it something else?"

"It really isn't like that. He's my friend," she said; Hatter rolled his eyes. "No, really. That's it. We're friends and that's it."

"But you slept with him."

"Yeah." Then she sighed. "It's just sex, Hatter. You can't tell me you were emotionally attached to every woman you ever slept with."

He didn't answer her but he was looking at her with a piteous expression that begged her to go on because he couldn't stand not knowing.

"Just because he was there," she said.

"That's why you slept with him—just because he was there? I don't find that at all comforting."

"JD and I were…" she groped for the right phrase. "Occasional lovers. When neither of us was with anyone else, and we both felt like it. He was there and I trusted him and it was safer than going bar-hopping."

"So that's it, then? He's just a friend that you slept with?"

"Yeah."

She couldn't explain it any better than that. JD was her friend and yes, she'd slept with him, but she had no romantic feelings for him at all. She loved him to death—as a friend, that was all. They were friends for a long, long time before they ever slept together and then it had only been an occasional thing. He was her friend and nothing else.

But she was upfront now. Everything was out on the table. Now it was Hatter's turn to decide if he could live with it.

"So…" he stretched the word out for a long breath, as if he hadn't thought about what he wanted to say next and wanted to buy some time to do so. "What about us?"

"Are we still an 'us'?"

"D'you want to be?"

"Yes," she answered him so quickly it surprised both of them.

They were still standing more than an arm's length away from each other and she shuffled a little closer to him, uncertain. The setting was hardly romantic and it probably wasn't the right time but she didn't give half a shit anymore. Screw waiting.

"I love you, Hatter."

His face lit up and he smiled hugely.

"Really?"

Yes, really—what she had with Hatter wasn't a normal relationship and couldn't be called such, but even if they hadn't fallen for each other they would still have that connection because of everything they'd been through. She liked him, and liked him a lot, and she trusted him, and… and yes, she loved him.

What they had between them was strange—no doubt about that. She spent so much time trying to overanalyze it and think of a name for it without considering she could enjoy it without having to hang a label on it. Hatter was her lover, her friend; he was the only other person who knew what she went through in Wonderland. They argued and they made up; they disagreed on things; they were freakishly in-tune with each other and they were utterly baffled by one another. It was just Alice-and-Hatter. Why ruin it trying to figure out what to call it?

"Of course I do," she said. "If I didn't, I wouldn't've put up with all of your bullshit. I'd've just punched you and gotten it over with. You didn't intrude on my life and don't you dare think you have."

He closed the distance between them in one stride and swept her up in his arms and kissed her soundly. Even though his grip was strong, she could feel him trembling as he held onto her.

"I love you, too, Alice," he whispered. "God, I love you."

She wrapped herself around him, arms and legs, and clung to him. He kissed her gently and she kissed him back hard, making him back her into the wall. He felt good, smelled good, tasted good. He tugged at her shirt, trying to pull it off of her while she still clung to him.

She loved him. He loved her.

That was that.

o…o

I felt like the scene with Nel was necessary, so Hatter can see both sides of the story. This is where I get frustrated—like Nel, I am the best friend that ruins relationships because I exist. It sucks. People really do have a collective stick up their asses about male-female friendships. Granted, Alice had a sexual relationship with JD—it's possible for people to have sex without having romantic feelings for each other. Like she says: he was there. No commitment required.