The Wrong Skin

Alice picked at her curls to move them in a somewhat adequate manner into a lose braid. She was kind of anxious; she still couldn't believe that all through her husband-unnerving-chatter Margaret still wasn't aware of her solo-invitation for the evening. Her older sister wasn't stupid and usually of high attentiveness, her not realizing of the situation was more than strange, it was almost… magical?

Or did she interpret too much in these things?

How could she even think about that, the Hatter had stood in front of her, disguised in the shape of a quirky but yet normal English gentleman. I guess I should stop being surprised by things, but this was easier thought than done.

The dress she wore was similar to her old blue dress, yet it had slivers of silvery silk implemented. It was a more adult, more sophisticated, fine dress. It perfectly reflected her inner diremption, she was torn between her younger self that still believed in wonders and her recent, adult self that had given up to hope for any wonder. Alice closed the window of her room, gazed upon the layers of green outside that led to the neighbors' property, which was inhabited by a certain Hatter right now. The past events were incomprehensible as they happened, so, she decided, it was the best way to meet destiny in a few minutes, because answers wouldn't come flying to her, just like usual she had to find them herself.

A few minutes later she went quietly down the stairs and sneaked to the door. There was no problem yet but she didn't feel like tempting fate. Alice slid through the door and took a deep breath when she was outside. Leaving the Manchester property, she realized that the street was entirely empty.

They'll probably have dinner already, she thought about the missing signs of life on a mild spring evening. It was a bit awkward, through, and because of this awkwardness she hastened her pace.

Finally she arrived at the reality of the Hatter, finding the gate already opened. It was no big estate but just as the other houses around here, it wasn't small either – it blended perfectly in but shouldn't it lie far outside of what a hatter could make?

Some steps more and she stood in front of a door, which was quickly opened in exactly the same moment she wanted to ring the bell. "Alice!" the Hatter cheered "You actually came! Come in, Alice, come in…"

Faster than she could move she was already dragged in, the door behind her closed and shoved into the parlor "We don't have enough time, enough time…"

"You sound like the White Rabbit!" Alice said, "Why don't we have enough time?"

The Hatter stopped shoving her and looked confused "… I don't know? I just… have this feeling that we have not much time left…"

"And even if we had no time left it would still be too much!" Shouted an austere but squeaky voice and the Hatter looked immediately at the door to the left, where a small maid with mousy-blonde hair and dark eyes stood, swinging a broomstick like a sword "I can't believe we are still here doing this mockery!" she shouted again.

"But Mallymkun, do you see? She actually came!" The Hatter started,

"OhmyGod!" Exclaimed Alice in a short heap of breath as she saw the girl entering the parlor in an angry pace "Mallymkun is that you? Oh my… what happened to you?"

Short-tempered the ex-dormouse strode forward and snapped: "I don't know what happened! Nobody knows what happened! But that's your fault, just as usual!" With her wild gesturing the broomstick appeared just as dangerous as her sword with which she had partly blinded the Bandersnatch.

"My fault?" Alice asked disbelieving,

"It is always your fault! Every time something terrible happens you are there!"

The Hatter seemed apologetic and tried to calm his friend with open hands "Now don't you think that's a bit unfair to…"

"Unfair? Unfair?" Mallymkun shrieked, "I tell you what is unfair, look at this is!" she spun slowly around "I was a -beautiful- dormouse with a -beautiful- tail and -perfect- small eyes and now I'm… I'm…THIS!"

Her voice sounded to Alice as if she was tearing up, which of course would never happen and if it happened, Mallymkun would never admit it.

"I'm very sorry for you…"

"Oh I hope that!" The humanized dormouse snapped again,

"But I still don't see why I am to blame for this." Alice finished the sentence with a more stern voice, as she wouldn't accept being talked to like this. Mallymkun was good at heart but she and Alice never had a good relationship, possibly because the dormouse saw concurrence for the Hatters attention in her.

While she was thinking about it… the Hatter seemed terribly quiet and as she turned towards him he seemed deeply in thoughts as she could recognized from the profound frown and the dark layer over his bright green eyes. Suddenly he snapped out of it and his mimic brightened "I know what will help us," he said "Ah good old cup of tea!"

Tarrant went past the two ladies, or one lady and a dormouse, to the rather small kitchen Mallymkun came from – quite obviously avoiding the conflict. Mallymkun glared at Alice but Alice felt no mood to be submitted to more accusations by the dormouse. Instead she lifted her chin and walked into the kitchen, followed by a scowling bewitched Mallymkun.

The Hatter seemed to be well acquainted with the kitchen because his fingers were as swift making tea here as they were in Underland. This way Alice had to remember that he was already living in England for the past year and again she felt very worried – this time not for her mental health but for the life those two must have let, somehow forced into wrong bodies.

"So," she said looking up from the cup of tea the Hatter had put in front of her before sitting down – soon followed by his friend – "I still know even less than you, could you tell me what happened in the past year, at least what you can still remember?"

The Hatter caught her eyes and then looked down into his cup, one hand fastened around it and tipping against the brim:

"I still remember Underland," he said, "Everything until the… day you left… promising to come back…"

Alice noticed a bitter hunk clotting together in her stomach; she had lied to him and was too aware of it.

"I remember the years after that, how Queen Mirana restored the kingdom and made everyone feel a lot better," he smiled thinking of that development. "There were some problems at the west border…" of which he and Mallymkun had taken care of, something he left out of his tale, "But everything was fine, I guess, but not everything was fine because you promised coming back, yet you didn't."

Alice felt even guiltier than before, it didn't seem like the Hatter intended to have that worried and hurt a face, but Mallymkuns angry gaze was a hint, too.

"Then I don't remember what happened…" he started only to be interrupted by Mallymkun:

"I still remember you sitting on the floor like a wet sac of Quiddleditch and not going out for weeks, not even for tea. And how you left the Marchhare all alone at tea time, letting him throw the cups everywhere till the whole clearing was covered with them, you even let him alone now! Imagine what he must've been like alone in the past year!"

The Hatter stared straight onto the table not letting a single emotion reveal what was going on in his head after this desperate rant by his best friend.

"Someday, I was here," he started again, "I suddenly woke up laying on the floor in this bleak dress and when I got up, I sat in front of a mirror and I was…" he was silent for a moment "I wasn't me, at least, I didn't look like me, but still felt like me, so I guessed it was me at all." Yet, that had taken a while, he sat on the bed behind him for an hour, staring into the mirror and figuring out who he was.

"My house wasn't there anymore, neither was my tea and…. and my hat, my favorite hat…" one hand immediately went up to his cylinder to check that at least any hat was still on his head. "Then I called for my friends, I called for the Marchhare, 'Marchhare!' I called, but there was no answer. I called for Mallymkun but there wasn't an answer either. I called for Chessur, as he is often quite hard to see, even if he's there, you know? 'Chessur!' I called but although he wasn't to see he wasn't there either…" a moment of uncomfortable silence again, he swallowed and told: "Late I found Mallymkun in a corner of this kitchen, crying…"

"Oh, will you shut up now?" she cried angrily and obviously tensed, her hands clenching at her gown and one around the broomstick she still held – it comforted her, but you shouldn't approach her about that.

The kitchen went quiet. Alice clenched her own fingers into her dress, her heart ached. She didn't understand how it could happen, but what if she really was at fault for this?

How could she live with being to blame for all that pain her friends were clearly feeling? They had suffered, she could see that. The pain filled up the room, it was even to taste from the air. Alice barely dared to ask but decided to do it anyway: "And then?"

The Hatter took a sip from his tea cup, then drank it all out and put it on the saucer with a force that the now empty tea cup was split by a fissure right through the middle. The skin around his eyes darkened noticeably but his eyes stayed green:

"We were quite confused, you know? We had no idea where we were, nor what happened or anything. Seeing Mallymkun as a human was not really something I'd ever expected but for some reason I couldn't believe her when she told me she was a dormouse at first, through I had known her for years." He looked at Alice again "Something happened to us, Alice, something that doesn't let us figure it out by ourselves. We tried to go back to Underland remembered what you told us, so we dug holes into the garden… very many holes… then we tried every mirror in this house… and dug even more holes but they weren't the right kind of holes and if there was any we hadn't a chance recognizing it, because there is no visible difference between holes. I mean there are broad holes and not so broad, deep and not so deep, but you could dig them deeper if you had the right tools only you don't know if a narrow hole is still narrow if you broadened it or if it's no…"

"Hatter?" Alice interrupted his rambling affectionately; the Hatter stopped and looked at her

"Yes?"

"Go on."

"Somehow we lived through that time," he said "I'm not sure how because Alice… Alice something terrible happened! We started forgetting… actually forgetting ourselves."

"YOU forgot yourself" Mallymkun added confidently, putting her snub nose into the air "-I- was sure who and what I was the whole time!"

"Until you started cleaning the floor," amended Tarrant in a voice that was a little too casual.

Mallymkun turned actually pink, being exposed this way and defended herself by stating that -someone- had to clean up.

The Hatter turned back to Alice "I lost all memory of myself". His voice was breaking her heart, he sounded like a boy that stood in front of an expensive yet broken vase, only it seemed to be his life that was broken now.

"Over time I started questioning myself, I'm used questioning myself but about things not about… my own self. I – I – I started thinking that maybe… everything was just a dream. You always told me it was a dream, too, and that you would awake soon. So I guessed I wasn't a fantasy of you at all, maybe I just dreamed too… but I had no memories of this house either and I didn't know anyone so it was impossible that I ever lived here… then I got to know the neighbors and … somehow the memory of Underland… completely faded. I forgot who I was and what was real, I forgot about my friends and… I almost forgot how to make hats, can you imagine that?"

The only thing he never had forgotten was Alice, or at least that he was waiting for someone, but every time he saw a blue dress, he remembered again that he was waiting for Alice.

"Shortly…" Mallymkun admitted quietly, "I doubted myself, but then…" her voice grew more secure "I remembered my great strength as a dormouse! I gave some materials to the Hatter, so he could do what he does best, then slowly he remembered again, a little."

"Yet," the Hatter said "I didn't remember to be the person I was, it is as if two lifes were thrown together… the life in Underland and this, and the life in Underland became less and less real suddenly… I felt a kind of a stingy voice inside my head," his eyes grew wide "I'm used to voices, but I never heard that before. This voice always told me that it couldn't be right, that I was fantasizing, nothing of Underland was real and that I must be quite mad."

Then he beamed broadly "Yet mad I am. We are all quite mad in Underland, so this voice had to be mad, too."

This reasoning was a bit hard to understand for Alice but as she knew the Hatter was her Mad Hatter, she nodded.

"So I remembered being me again" he said "Through I was still here, still doubting and yet not doubting, for I was sure to be myself just… wearing the wrong skin."

TBC

A/N: I'll make a break here, because otherwise the next break would be very uncomfortable. I've fleshed my plot out by now and I fear it will take more than five chapters to finish this story… sorry about wrong advertising but I wasn't aware of this development myself.

Yet I don't want to run through the plot, I want to explore some of the cute little moments in this story which came far too short during the movie.

I noticed that it's a bit hard to characterize the Hatters speed patterns, as I hadn't the chance to see the English version yet, except for trailers. I'm starting to read the book to the movie now and I hope it will help me a bit.

I hope you all enjoy the story so far and that you'll stay with me, there are still many mysteries to be solved and some of the solutions will come at a rather late point, however do not fear, soon we will see Wonderland again.

Please C&C, thank you all for reading this, your favs make my day! -smiley here-