Disclaimer: Alice is not owned by me. I just write fanfics.

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One Step Forward…

After dodging all his belongings as they flew out of the Looking Glass, Hatter was starting to wonder if this really was such a good idea. Items that had been broken, but repairable, before entering the Glass came out on the other side in need of professional help.

He had wanted to save as much as possible, since he wasn't sure how far fifty million dollars would go. One of the first things on his list of things to do was to get Alice to explain her world's money to him, and fair prices for things. If he was going to haggle, he would need to know how much something was worth.

He propped up his chair and sighed with relief as it didn't promptly fall over again. Hatter thought that the slash in the fabric could be repaired. It was his chair, no one could complain if it was a little tattered. Brushing a hand along the tear, he wondered what would have happened if he had gone back to the Tea Shoppe after the fight at the Library. But he knew the answer. He would have been killed by the Resistance, and if not, Mad March would have done it. Better to have lost a home than his head.

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Orange and red light streamed through the windowless openings in the warehouse. How long would it take for the place to be finished? And where exactly were they going to put Hatter's stuff until then? Alice sat down on one of the square chairs that they had rescued from Hatter's office.

She looked at the manila envelope beside her, and then at Hatter who was still working diligently to make certain that his belongings had arrived in one piece. With quick movements, her small fingers pried open the brad on the back of the envelope and emptied the contents into her hands.

The birth certificate looked pretty standard, even if she didn't know exactly what birth certificates from England looked like. She glanced at the date.

Thirty? Hatter couldn't pass as thirty… Her thought was interrupted by a string of curses that she thought translated into the fact that a particular table's parents hadn't been quite faithful, or tables. She looked over at him and noted again the creases in his brow when he was thinking or worried. Maybe he really was thirty.

School transcripts followed, thought it seemed like Jack had decided that Hatter had no need of a college education. Well, if Hatter wanted one, he could always enroll in a school. The idea of him wearing his usual clothes and sitting in a math lecture made her smile. Theatre would probably be much more his thing, or maybe business.

Alice found herself thankful that Jack hadn't provided Hatter with a driver's license (he wouldn't need one in New York anyway). The idea of a man who had lived in a city that didn't even have roads trying to drive was one that frightened Alice more than the Queen of Hearts had.

The papers became harder and harder to read in the failing light.

"What time is it, Hatter?" She asked suddenly. Her watch had stopped ticking the moment that they had gone through the Looking Glass and had resumed as soon as she fell through again.

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Hatter glanced towards one of the openings in the wall.

"Not sure, but it's dusk if that helps any." His eyes grew wide. "And we left at night… Alice, your mom!" He was going to get flayed alive, he just knew it. In just a few hours in Wonderland, almost an entire day had passed in this world. Carol wasn't going to take kindly to the fact that her daughter had disappeared again without warning.

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Alice took off, running through the warehouse without a backwards glance at Hatter. Her feet pounded the pavement and again she was thankful for the fact that she was in jeans rather than a dress.

She doubted that her cell phone worked in Wonderland any better than her watch did, and no new voicemails had shown up on her phone since she got back. But that didn't mean that her mother hadn't called, just that the notifications hadn't appeared.

Her mother was sitting in their living room.

"Where have you been?" Carol's voice was cold and worried. Alice felt like a little girl again, getting scolded for playing a prank or getting into a fight at school. But Carol took disappearing very seriously, even if she had tried to put a light hearted spin on it for years. There was a reason that Alice still lived at home.

"I was with Ha—David." She sat down in the chair opposite her mother.

"And you couldn't pick up your cell phone?" Alice knew her mother wasn't unreasonable, but at that moment, it was hard to remember that fact.

"There was no reception." It was technically true. Wonderland didn't exactly have cell towers. Carol's shoulders fell and her face turned sad instead of demanding.

"Alice, can't you just tell me what's been going on?" She wanted to tell her mother, she really did. But if she was going to tell, she needed Hatter's permission. It was his world and his past that she would be ratting out to her mother, and Alice thought he should have a say in it.

When Alice opened her mouth to answer, Carol interrupted.

"Starting from Jack coming over for dinner, please." Alice stilled, considering how different her perception of the last few days was as compared to her mother's.

"Jack gave me the ring and I wanted to return it to him…" she began, trying to think of how to tell the rest of the story without mentioning Wonderland or the fact that Hatter was technically a criminal. "So, I went to the warehouse. Jack and Hatter are business partners and they've been considering buying the property." That was true enough; she thought that Hatter might approve of the lie that was still mostly the truth. "Jack was there, with his fiancé." It wasn't hard for Alice to fill that comment with resentment. Jack had lied to her, even if he claimed that there had been no real attraction between him and Duchess.

"Oh, honey…" her mother moved over to her and put an arm around Alice's shoulders.

"It was ok, Mom." Alice said, trying to brighten up her tone. "Hatter was there, and he was really understanding about the whole thing." If her mom thought that Hatter was Alice's rebound after Jack, it would still be better than her thinking that Alice had been cheating on Jack with Hatter.

"Why do you call him Hatter?" Her mom looked confused. Alice remembered her first meeting with the man.

"Well, it's his last name, and he always seems to have a hat on, so it stuck. All of his school friends call him that." She thought she remembered saying that Hatter and Jack had gone to the same school at some point. She hoped her mom wouldn't assume it was college and ask which one. But then again, Alice had read all the paperwork about which schools Hatter had supposedly attended while living in England, maybe one of those would work.

Alice decided to continue with the story.

"Even though Hatter had been really nice to me, I still wanted to get home. I guess I must have run into an exposed pipe or something, since I woke up in the hospital. I suppose I was a bit too enthusiastic about seeing him when he stopped over though." A slight blush spread over her cheeks at the idea that she had kissed Hatter for the first time in front of her mother. It was worse than being caught almost kissing by Jack.

"So, are you and Hatter dating now?" Carol sounded a little annoyed, but at least it was better than having her blame Hatter for everything.

"Well, we went out for pizza. And he's been letting me help out with some of his work. Not construction!" Alice amended quickly, since her mother had looked about ready to interrupt. "Hatter found the warehouse when he was working construction and thought it would be perfect for the business he and Jack had been thinking about. He's been letting me help him get all… um… the paperwork together so that they can purchase it." Alice couldn't even count the number of half-truths in what she had just said to her mother. She wasn't sure that she even wanted to.

"Well, we'll just have to have this 'Hatter' over for dinner."

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AN:

Some people wanted to know why I had Jack give Hatter 50 million in the previous chapter. The reason is that property values of warehouses in New York are incredibly high.

I made Hatter thirty years old because that's how old the actor is. It fit well enough for the story.

And of course, Carol finally got some answers, even if they weren't the truth.

Any reviews are welcome. And if you ask me questions, I might just answer.