Getting back on track. One more chapter this time, for realz.

-XXX-

Eventually the spinning stopped. She felt something solid beneath her and stumbled, falling to her knees. Alice opened her eyes. She was greeted with grass and dirt and leaves.

Gasping, she stood and staggered forward. She was here. Back. Home again –

But she wasn't. She was back in the clearing, standing along the line of trees that overlook an all-too-familiar cottage. The roses that line the threshold wave as a breeze passes. Smoke faithfully pours out from the chimney. Windows sparkled in the sunlight, all while Alice doubled over. She wretched for several seconds, bile souring her mouth.

This was wrong. This was all wrong.

In the distance the door was opened. A ginger head popped out. Hatter, eyes narrowed in confusion, stepped out onto the stoop. When he recognized Alice, he quickly approached. By the time he had reached her, Alice had ceased removing her stomach of its contents and was straightening herself.

"Alice?" he lisped. "Whatever are you doing here?"

"That's my question." She smiled weakly, gripping a slim tree trunk nearby for support.

"You left only a week ago. Are back for a visit already?"

"No," Alice gasped. "I just left to go home. I didn't mean to come here."

Tarrent froze. "What?

"I was just in the garden with you. Under the archway."

His brows furrowed. "Whatever do you mean, Alice? You left me on the battlefield, having just slayed the Jabberwocky. I know nothing of arches."

The young woman visibly paled. "That – that was well over a hundred years ago."

"I'm more than fairly certain it was last week, lass." Hatter's happy green eyes were teasing. He believed her to be joking.

"No, no, I mean it. I – or someone very much like me – killed the Jabberwocky. I've never even seen a Jabberwocky. Hatter, there has been a mistake!"

Her distress was all too real, and Tarrent sobered. He lead her to his cottage – which was in much cleaner that the first time she had seen it. She was push gently into a chair, given a chipped cup of tea, and Hatter waited to listen to her tale.

Alice knew she was mostly babbling. She could barely make sense of the situation herself. Still, Hatter listened, clearly quite confused but more than willing to let her attempt to explain the issue. When she had finished, he sat back with a frown.

"So...you're from the future," he began slowly. "And yer naet mah Alice."

Sensing his frustration, Alice took up his hands. "Yes. I'm not the same Alice, but I am still an Alice. I'm trying to get home. I don't know why I was sent back here. I was thinking of home..."

She paused, frowning. "Perhaps the magic mistook my interpretation of home. At the White Palace, your cottage was always home. Maybe it just misunderstood which home I meant."

"If that is so, why are you leaving?"

The question surprised Alice. She opened her mouth to answer, only to stop, frowning. "Because I need to go home. My family..."

His yellow eyes flickered. Hatter said nothing.

Alice rose, pushing back on the table as she stood. "I need to go. I need to try again. I think I have enough left to make it. One more try."

"If that is what you think is best."

"I do," she snapped. "I've been through this all before. You don't think I'm your Alice, I know, I know."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Tarrent tilted his head, smiling for the first time since he'd seen her. "You are entirely Alice. Absolutely Alice."

This softens her. "I think that is a compliment."

"I should think." He stood to join her. "Alice is a terribly brave person."

"Thank you, then."

He lead her outside of the cottage when Alice suggested that her travels might be messy. She paused before the oak she'd selected as her centered place. Turning to Hatter, she offered a hand. He accepted it with hesitation, squeezing tightly once it was in his grasp. He'd not touched her in a week, but if what she says is true, he won't see her again for many years. It's as though she's the same person – her hands are warm and soft and dry, and she smells of gardenia. But he can still see differences. Her eyes are hazel and she hair falls in looser curls. She has a mole on her left cheek and brows that are a little rounder. Yet she is still Alice – from the determined set of her small lips to the gleam in her dark eyes, she is entirely, thoroughly Alice.

"I will be back," she promises.

"Not for a long long time, if what you say is true."

"Yes," she agrees thoughtfully. "But I think it's for the best. We both needed a new start."

Alice rose up on her toes to kiss him lightly. Hatter, in his surprise, froze. When she withdrew, he blinked, eyes changing shade rapidly.

"I will see you again," she promised before stepping back. This time, she focused on the proper home, visualizing it as she pulled the magic forth. Another tug at her navel, and she was send spinning towards what she hoped was her place and time.

-XXX-

She landed in the back garden of her parent's two-story house. With a gasp, Alice recognized the house before puking on the perfectly manicured lawn. Once she could stumble up the brick path, she rang the doorbell and waited. Her mother cautiously opened the door, screaming when she saw her daughter on the other side. Alice took this as a good sign.

Mr. King followed the sound of his wife's hysteria. He dropped his glasses upon seeing Alice. They soon were huddled together in a hug, crying. No questions were asked, they were just pleased she was home.

Later that evening Alice had to explain to the police what occurred. She's not planned on this. They seemed to accept her half-babbled story of getting lost in the woods and leave the family in peace.

They had their first family dinner together and her parents cried most of the way through. Embarrassed, Alice stared at her plate.

Her mother insisted on tucking her into bed, though Alice pointed out that she was twenty-one years of age. Mrs. King ignored her daughter. She sat on the edge of the twin bed, stroking Alice's hair, still wet from the shower. "We're so glad to have you home," she whispered. "Oh, Alice."

Alice kissed her hand, smiling.

-XXX-

He stood before the arch for a long time. At some point he touched the stone again. It was still warm. Still tingling. It gave him no answers.

Mirana found him in his workshop later. Gliding into the tower in her silvery attire, she glanced around the room, seemingly searching. She frowned at the sight of him. "You couldn't manage to convince her to stay?"

He blinked, eyes tinted with yellow. "Was I supposed to?"

"No," the queen admitted. "Though it would be considerably more helpful to me. Your Alice was quite an attribute to possess."

Tarrent growled lowly, not looking up from the pillbox he was brushing. "She was not yours."

"Not me," the queen replied, surprised. "You, of course. Your Alice."

"She certainly is not mine."

Mirana gave an unqueenly shrug. "As you say. Still, I am quiet astounded you did not manage to talk her into remaining her. I was fairly certain you would manage it."

"She wished to go. I was not going to hold her."

"No." Mirana was thoughtful. "But I think she might have stayed, had you asked."

Hatter didn't reply. Mirana watched him for several more minutes before showing herself out quietly, the only noise coming from her heavy gown brushing the floor.

-XXX-

For the next weeks they barely let Alice out of their sight. She was more than happy to spend time with them, yet she felt terribly suffocated. Still, for their sake she smiled, stayed near, laughed when they wished to see her happy. She didn't want to disappoint them. They'd already suffered weeks of that. There was a responsibility to make them happy.

She was paraded through family parties, displayed in public as a happy ending to what had threatened to be an unhappy tale. Her mother was more insistent on making these appearances, while Mr. King was ever-neutral in the background. He often shared with Alice a wink or slight wiggle of his mustache to let her know of his amusement towards the whole situation.

"Must we?" she sighed one afternoon after her mother opened yet another invitation to a dinner party being hosted by some second cousin.

Her mother appeared shocked by the notion. "Alice, dear, they're expecting us. You're the guest of honor."

"Yes, but I don't wish to be. Mother, I just want to get back to normal."

"Dear, something extraordinary happened. You cannot expect everything to simply go back to the way it was," Mrs. King reminded her.

From his usual spot in the armchair beside the window, Mr. King snorted.

Soon it was too much, though. She found herself missing Underland. Missing her research, her magic, her Hatter. It was ironic, really – she spent over year trying to get away, only to wish to return. Alice was unsure, however, that she could make the journey again. Magic was not, according to her studies, nearly as abundant in the Above.

At night she lay curled in her bed, listening to the crickets, drifting off between reality and that which was less-than-reality. She wondered if she could do it. Most nights, in her half-asleep state, she resolved to find a way back.

-XXX-

In time, he moved back to the cottage. If she were to return, someone would send for him. He was happier away from court – no one would bother him in the countryside, even when they were more particular customers. The peace suited Hatter, though the silence was significantly less pleasing.

That's what always got him. The quiet.

He was better than last time. Hatter fed himself. Worked in the garden. Made hats. Made a routine.

It was not bad. But it was not particularly good either.

-XXX-

They were all in the back garden a few weeks following her return. Alice was lounging on a blanket while her mother sat on the patio, reading a paperback romance. Mr. King was tending to the beds. He was a weeding fanatic, fully outfitted with a spade, hand-rake, gloves, and a classic wide-brim gardner's hat. It was a perfectly ordinary afternoon at the King household.

"Whatever are you doodling?"

Alice jerked up from her sketchbook. Her mother was leaning over, trying to peer over her shoulder.

"Just some nonsense from my head," Alice replied, shielding the book. She had found the half-filled book in her room yesterday and had already filled several pages with sketches. But she'd filled more than a dozen pages with incantations straight from her memory.

"Those are funny letters," Mrs. King observed, pointing to some of the runes in an upper right corner. "Why can you not draw something a bit prettier, dear? Flowers or birds, perhaps?"

"Yes, why not," Alice said under her breath. She rose from her blanket to join her father, sitting with a huff at the base of a tree he was working near

"You've lasted only about twenty minutes," he observed with a half-smile.

"And you're made it twenty-five years," Alice grumbled. "Though I've no clue how."

He yanked at a particularly well-rooted dandelion. "Some times you can see what others don't. I know your mother is not everyone's cup of tea. But she's certainly mine." Mr. King beamed at his daughter.

Alice folded her hands in her lap. Looking back at her mother, who was readjusting her sunglasses, the young woman's lips quirked. "I know."

After several minutes of watching her father replant a fern, Alice grew restless. She outlined a few runes until they were a deep black, snapping the tip of her charcoal pencil in the process. With a sigh, she lowered the pencil. Mr. King glanced at her with a mild frown.

"Why don't you go look at the tulips, dear? They're in the corner, behind the Japanese maple. Your favorite, right?"

"Yes, thank you, Dad. A small walk might clear my head."

She wandered around the perimeter. It was a very expansive garden. Her father had cultivated many beds, hand-laid a neat brick path, and personally trimmed each shrub and tree. Fingers out to brush each leaf, Alice recalled idyllic afternoons of her youth spent among the flowers of her father's garden. It was a refuge of sorts. There were no voices, not bothersome people in the gardens.

She had a favorite tree she used to lay under – the Japanese maple in the furtherest corner, near the wall. She loved the red star-shaped leaves. When Alice was a child she sat lay beneath the tree, half-dozing as the sun shined through the leaves, casting shards of red light on the ground.

Alice went to that tree now, sketchbook beneath her arm. At the base of the tree, she stopped to feel the smooth trunk.

A call broke her reverie. "Alice? Alice, where are you? I was just about to start dinner."

With a sigh she broke away, heading back to the house.

-XXX-

I'm not super happy with this chapter, but I needed to get it out and away.

Reviews would grand!