Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever own the characters, ideas and references made in this story. Syfy channel and Lewis Carroll hold those privileges.

---

Too Many Clothes

Hatter woke up to creaking sounds. If the Tea Shoppe patrons were trying to make their way into his private office again… He jerked fully awake. The shop had been ransacked, there was no place for him to work or live and he was on the other side of the damned Glass. He was surrounded by Oysters. This thought caused him a moment's alarm. What if they knew what happened to them in his world? No… he calmed, Alice hadn't had a clue that Wonderland even existed, why should anyone else?

---

"There you are Hatter." Alice's voice rang out, echoing slightly in the wide open building. He looked up with a smile from his nest of clothes and the overly large blanket he was curled up under.

It looked like the man had brought his entire wardrobe with him. She even thought she spotted the sleeve of the velvet coat she had worn. And men thought women were obsessed with their clothes. She should have realized that Hatter would be, after all the man was named after his hat. (She didn't believe for an instant the lie he had told about people calling him "Hatter" for his generosity.)

She smiled and held out a hand to help him out of the mound of clothes.

"You know, you could have just asked for money and gotten a hotel room or something." He looked a little rumpled, but no where near as bad as he had after getting shot.

"And put a stain on the good name of construction workers everywhere? I think not. Your mother looked fit to boil me as it was." Alice coughed slightly at the phrase to keep from laughing, after all the times she had been called "Oyster" in Wonderland, the idea of Hatter getting boiled was a bit amusing.

He sent her one of his half smiles that mad her insides burn. Could she really fall in love so fast? She had thought so before, but maybe… No, she would focus on being with Hatter when she was with Hatter, not with how she might end up not with Hatter.

"So, David…" She tried out the name carefully. She had used it the night before, but it just didn't seem to fit him at all.

He grimaced.

"Please don't call me that." She gazed with a bit of admiration at his backside as he bent down to start folding up his clothing to put in the oversized suitcase she hadn't noticed earlier. "It is my real name, if you were wondering though." He sounded sincere, which was not at all unusual for Hatter, but she found that this time she believed him. After all, if he had to pick a name, it would have been one with more flash than "David" had.

---

Loaded with one gigantic suitcase (how did everything fit in there?) she and Hatter left the construction site. She almost felt as if someone were watching them from behind the Looking Glass, but that was silly, even on the other side, the Looking Glass just reflected back the room it was in. With one parting wish that everything was going alright with Jack's assent to power, she led Hatter to her dojo.

Dojo might not have been exactly the right word. It was more of a studio, but she had been trying for years to get her students to treat the space as they would a proper dojo, and she intended to keep calling it that.

The room was bare, with just a pile of blue mats in the corner from where she and Jack had put them after that last lesson. It was strange to think that Jack had been the last person in that room with her, and now Hatter was there.

"A bit bare, isn't it?" He looked quizzically around, as if trying to figure out where she had hidden all the furniture.

She smiled at him before tossing the suitcase over towards the mats. He lurched forward.

"Hey! That's my stuff." The look on Hatter's face made it seem as if she had just kicked a puppy, or whatever was the Wonderland equivalent (certainly not that creepy cat, she thought with a shudder). She couldn't see the problem. Clothes didn't damage easily, at least not that easily.

---

Hatter opened the suitcase, trying to make sure that nothing had been ripped or smashed. He thanked everything he thought of as holy that his hat had been on his head and not in the bag. Some of the clothes had already suffered at the hands of Mad March and his cronies. There were rips in some shirts, and a bullet hole in at least one. A pair of pants had been torn nearly in two in the wreckage of the Tea Shoppe. The clothes were the only things he had of Wonderland for the time being.

"Sorry, I guess." Alice seemed genuinely contrite, a new look for her, but one he could manage. It actually made her look, cute. Now that was a strange thought.

Alice, cute? No, that was a bit too mind boggling. Alice as sexy he could see. Alice as a powerful woman capable of probably turning him ass over ears, definitely. But Alice as cute was just too strange.

He shook himself, wondering if there was a Cheshire nearby. Those things always made him feel as if someone were dancing on his grave.

"Well, you'll just have to make it up to me." He announced grandly, flopping onto the pile of blue mats.

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Hatter liked the fact that he could keep her attention now. Previously everything had been about Jack. Now it would be about him.

"Pizza."

---

AN:

It struck me that if Hatter were going to come to our world, he would bring his clothes with him. They were displayed quite prominently in his introduction scene, so I figured that clothes and appearances were important to him, like they are to people who try to play certain roles in their lives. A doctor wears a lab coat, a lawyer wears suits, an up and coming business owner and con-artist wears nice clothes by the standards of his society. Ever notice how nice his clothes stay during the entire four hours of the event?

Also, David? I figured that Hatter would have a reason for calling himself David. I couldn't resist making it his real name.

Any comments, concerns, questions? The review button beckons to you.