We knew it had to happen eventually. Alice and Jack have the talk. Enjoy.

Alice awoke several hours later to a gentle shaking of her shoulder. She winced against the tired stretch that made her ribs protest sharply and opened her eyes expecting to see deep chocolate and instead finding murky jade. She sat up too quickly, gasping in pain, her eyes darting around until they fell on the familiar form of Hatter standing off beside his desk. His face, for the first time since she'd met him, was an unreadable mask. The girl didn't like that, but with the Prince of Hearts standing there before her, there was little she could do about it.

"Jack," she started, but couldn't finish the sentence. What would she say? What are you doing here? She could guess. What took you so long? She already knew. He offered a hand to help Alice to her feet, but she declined it, struggling up under her own power. Hatter's leg twitched, looking like he wanted to take a step towards her, but did not.

"Alice, I need to speak with you," Jack said the words she had been waiting a full day to hear.

"I'll just…" Her dark haired friend nodded towards the door and made to leave the room, but she held up a hand.

"No, don't." This was Hatter's place. Not only did they have no right to impose like that, but the girl certainly did not want to have a serious relationship discussion with Jack here, surrounded by Hatter with the man himself barely out of earshot. "We'll go."

Hatter stopped, nodding, his face seeming even more closed off; if that was possible. Jack politely motioned Alice ahead of him and she moved towards the hallway. Turning back just once before walking out of his office, she looked to her friend, promising, "I'll see you later."

He lifted a hand in parting, but his facial expression never shifted. As Alice made her way out of the building, the silent prince at her side, a knot was forming in her stomach. Each step tightened the knot, anticipating the conversation to come.

"Where are we going?" she asked her lover. Jack looked down at her.

"The Diamond Palace is not far from the city."

"Is that where all the other oysters are?"

He nodded. "Yes. And your father." Alice nodded back. The trip to the palace was silent and she barely looked at the towering structure, though it must have been quite grand to have housed the Queen of Hearts. The girl vaguely noticed sparkling ramparts and sumptuous decorations in the ubiquitous crimson favored by the deposed ruler. She spent the time working out in her head exactly what she would say to the man who had both loved and betrayed her, every word carefully chosen and ready at her lips. When he finally closed the door behind them and they were alone, Alice turned to Jack and met his troubled emerald gaze and found the words had deserted her.

"Alice," he began softly, moving to stand before her and taking her hands in his own. "I love you."

Instead of keeping her gaze on his, her eyes fell to his hands curved around hers. He loved her. The declaration once would have sent a great thrill of pleasure and excitement through her, but now only carried frustration and sorrow and disappointment.

"You lied to me," was her response. He let out a breath which told her he had expected and feared that answer.

"I know, I did. I'm sorry. There was no other way."

The girl scoffed and drew her hands away from his, stepping back and glaring up at him incredulously. "There was no other way? Seducing me and making me feel something for you when none of it was real was the only way?"

"I shouldn't have…" he trailed off shaking his head, looking guilty as Hell. Good. He ran a hand through his perfectly slicked back hair, mussing it uncaringly in a move what was so like her Jack it hurt. "I never should have let it go that far, but being with you… It was so wonderful, so perfect. I didn't want it to end. I put my mission in jeopardy for more time with you."

"And that's my fault?" she demanded in angry disbelief. Jack shook his head, holding out his hands imploringly.

"No, it's not. None of it was your fault. I was selfish and stupid," he insisted, green eyes almost crystalline with sorrowful pleading. "I knew the longer I let it go, the more you'd hate me for it, but I couldn't help myself. You're such an amazing woman. I just wanted one more day to look at you, to hold you, for you to be mine."

Alice sighed, rubbing her fingers against her forehead. "I don't hate you, Jack. I really want to. I'm hurt and angry and I feel so stupid."

"Don't-"

"Don't tell me what to feel," she snapped when he tried to interrupt. The blonde nodded contritely, his bangs falling over his forehead and almost into his eyes. She could so easily see the man she'd cared for now, under the bleached hair and perfect suit. Her Jack. But he was just one facet of a much larger gem, one she knew nothing about.

"I don't feel stupid because you fooled me, because you didn't really, did you?" she went on. "You really do love me. You're just not who I thought you were. You're a good man, Jack Heart, but I don't think we were ever meant to be. I'm not the girl you thought I was either."

The little oyster laughed softly, sadly, wiping away the tears that spilled over her lashes. "Hell, I'm not even the girl I thought I was." It was true. Alice had never thought herself particularly strong or brave or selfless, but she'd been proven wrong on all fronts and it still surprised her. Even forgiving Jack was something the girl would never have believed herself capable of doing.

"You're wrong," the prince insisted, closing the space between them and taking her face in his hands. "You're exactly the woman I thought you were; the woman I fell in love with. Alice, please…" He released her, reaching into his pocket, and pulled out something small that shone in the light of the room - the Stone of Wonderland. "I tried to give this to you once before, but you didn't know what it meant."

Her heart ached as he sank down to one knee, taking hold of her hands again. "I'm asking you to wear it again. Marry me, Alice. I love you more than anything. Please, stay with me and be my wife."

Alice took Jack's face in her hands now, bending to press her forehead against his, breath hitching with gentle sobs as more tears fell from stormy eyes. "I'm sorry, Jack. I can't."

His eyes slipped shut in sharp pain, his arms coming around her waist. She let him hold her, held him in return, pressing sad kisses to his hair. It hurt so bad, but it felt right and that was the important thing, wasn't it?

Some time later, Jack had excused himself and left her alone. She didn't blame him, she knew what it was like to have your heart crushed along with all your hopes for the future, had experienced it more than just the one time with him. It would have been easier to hate the prince, but she couldn't summon up the vitriol. Being entirely honest with herself, Alice did not think their relationship would have lasted if he really had been Jack Chase. He was everything she told herself she wanted, but she had been wrong and not known it. Or maybe she had known it and was lying to herself just as much as he was lying to her. None of it mattered now. He was King of Wonderland and she was just an oyster who had to go home. At least she wasn't leaving empty handed.

As though the thought had summoned him, her father entered the room. "The Prince said you would be in here."

Alice stood from the chaise lounge she had been sitting on and smiled at the older man. "Yeah. How are the other oysters?"

"Good. They're removing everyone's mark now. I thought you'd like to come down and have yours taken off."

The girl looked down at her arm, tracing the green seaweed that now adorned her skin. The mark of an oyster, an outsider who fell into Wonderland. "I thought I might keep it. You know, to remember."

Hamilton nodded. Somehow, she knew he'd understand. "How long until we go back?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"That soon?" Why her stomach shifted uneasily, the girl didn't know. Shouldn't she be happy to be getting home as soon as possible? Of course. That didn't mean she couldn't miss Wonderland, did it? Her father nodded again. The girl turned her thoughts to more pleasantly certain matters. "How are we going to explain you to Mom?"

Her lips had curved into an eager smile, but the way her father's eyes had slid away from her own, pulled them back down. "What is it? She's going to be happy to see you," she assured him, thinking he was worried about Carol's reaction after so many years separated.

"Alice, come sit down." His soft tone and the fact that he still wasn't looking at her worried the girl, but she did as he asked, sitting beside him on the lounge. When his eyes finally found hers again, the slight worry bloomed into a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. "I'm not going back with you."

She blinked at him several times silently, waiting for him to take it back or tell her she must have misheard him. "What?"

"I can't go back," he said again, but her mind still wouldn't accept it as true.

"What do you mean you're not going back? You have to go back!" she insisted, gripping his hands tightly as though he would try to slip away from her again as he did so many years ago.

"I have to stay here. I have to make amends," he tried to explain, but she wouldn't hear it.

"No, you don't! You were kidnapped. You don't belong here, Daddy." He just felt guilty; of course he did. He'd done terrible things, but it wasn't his fault. He'd been under the Queen's control.

"I have to tell you something, Jellybean," he said. Her father's too somber tone snapped her mouth shut like a clam, even though she knew with full certainty that she did not want to hear whatever it was he was about to tell her. "My name isn't Robert Hamilton."

"But-"

"Just listen," he plead softly. But I don't want to listen. I just want you to shut up and come home and make everything right again. "My name is Nestor Carpenter and I was born in Wonderland."

"No," she whispered. One more horrible shock this place had brought down on her. Too much. Her hands went cold like she'd dunked them in a bucket of ice water.

"I'm sorry. I worked for the Queen of Hearts for many years before Caterpillar and the Resistance kidnapped me and forced me through the Looking Glass. They locked up my memories and gave me a new identity. I thought I was Robert Hamilton of New York City. I met Carol and fell in love. We were married and had you. I was happy. But the Queen never stopped looking for me and when she found me, I was torn away from you and your mother and brought back here."

"You mean you knew the whole time?" Carpenter shook his head, lifting her hands to kiss her knuckles.

"No, I swear. I didn't want to go back, even when I remembered who I was. I fought the Suits to stay with my family, but I couldn't break free. The Queen tampered with my memories again and I forgot everything about my time on the other side." His eyes shimmered with sorrow and guilt and for the second time that day, Alice found her cheeks wet with tears. "I should have been stronger, I should have been able to fight it. I let you down, Alice. I'm sorry."

The girl shook her head, pulling her hands free of his grasp and wrapping her arms around him. "It's not your fault, Daddy," she insisted against his shoulder. "She did this to us. I don't blame you."

He was careful not to squeeze her injured ribs, but his hand stroked her back comfortingly, making her tears dry up, but her heart ache with bitter sweetness. "I have to stay to set things right. I have to try to make up for everything I've done."

She leaned back to look at him, pleading with gaze and voice, "What about me? What about Mom? Don't we matter?"

"Of course you do, Jellybean," he rushed to assure her, cupping her cheek in one soft hand with calloused fingertips. "It won't be forever. I just can't go now. I promise, I'll come home to you. We'll tell your mother the truth about everything. But right now, I have to stay."

The girl nodded, sniffling unhappily. More waiting. She'd waited almost fourteen years to have her father back and now he was asking her to go home alone and wait some more. It was cruel and too great a request. She would grant it. What choice was there? He had to do what was right for him, just as she had to do what was right for her. It wasn't fair, but when had that ever stopped the fates from setting down a decree?

"How long?"

"A couple months," he said with a shrug. "I have to tell Caterpillar's people all that I know. I can't promise I won't be called back to Wonderland at some point, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

She nodded again, returning her head to its place on her father's shoulder, letting him rub her back like a father ought. After a few minutes of comforting silence, a thought came to Alice and she voiced it aloud.

"So, that means I'm half Wonderlander?"

Nestor Carpenter/Robert Hamilton chuckled gently. "No. You're not half anything, honey. There is no difference between a Wonderlander and a New Yorker. We're all just human."

"But Turtle said-"

"The Queen has put a lot of time and effort into propagandizing the term 'oyster' to convince people there is a difference; that people from the other side of the Looking Glass aren't like us," her father explained.

"Why?"

"So no one would protest when she had them kidnapped and brought here to drain."

"If we're all the same, why go through the trouble of kidnapping oysters at all?"

She could feel the man shake his head. He sighed before answering. "So no one would think twice about drinking down the emotion tea. She uses- used it like doctors use drugs in an asylum to keep the populace in check. Do you think the people would have succumbed to it so easily had they known the precious emotion they were taking might have come from someone they knew? Could one day be their own being used by someone else?"

Alice shivered at the thought, because it hit home. When she had thought the man holding her now had been one of those being drained it had sickened her. Little drops of her father put into bottles and sold to Wonderlanders. It had horrified her. There was no way the people of the realm would have fallen so easily in line had they known the truth.

"But there has to be a difference," she insisted softly, mind whirling. "Charlie is over two hundred years old and the Queen is even older than that!"

Her father paused before answering, combing his fingers through her hair. "I don't know about your friend the White Knight. Perhaps Wonderland just wasn't ready to let him go. The only difference between those on this side and those on the other side of the Glass is Wonderland, itself. This place is what separates us.

"The Queen, on the other hand; I know how she prolonged her life," he said. She could hear the heavy distaste in the words and knew this explanation would be more horrible than the last. "Stealing emotions is relatively easy to do and doesn't harm the donor at all. People put out so many feelings at a given time, you could catch them with a butterfly net. The reason she always needed to bring in fresh oysters was because the Queen was stealing more than their feelings, she was stealing their lives."

Alice squeezed her eyes shut against that statement. That would be what Owl's brother Robin had found when he'd infiltrated the casino labs. The Queen was draining life from the oysters to prolong her own existence. She wondered if that was what the Cheshire Cat had meant when he said the ring did more than power the Looking Glass. The girl was disgusted and felt sullied. She wanted to wash away the knowledge her father had just imparted. Not that a shower was a bad idea anyway. Once the thought was in her head, she couldn't get it out; her skin fairly crawled with the need to be clean.

Carpenter, who was really Hamilton, who was really Carpenter obliged, leading her to a suite of rooms Jack had set aside for her even before she had left the hospital that night. The bathroom was massive, like her own private spa with a tub big enough to swim in if she went in circles. The shower had four - yes, four - wonderful showerheads and managed to hit each and every achy spot on her body at once.

As she let the near scalding water sluice over her skin, Alice couldn't help but feel a stab of guilt. Hatter certainly had nothing like this back at the Tea Shop - where the girl was fairly convinced he lived in that office. As grand as the palace was and as soft as the massive bed in the other room in her suite would be, she couldn't think of any place she'd rather be than curled up on Hatter's white couch, listening to him try to type quietly on his typewriter with his one good hand.

Anybody see that tweest coming? Hope you liked it. Sorry it's a short chapter. More to come, soon.