A bit from the cutting room floor. Next chapter jumps right back to the story.

Hatter lay on his bed, staring at the shadows caused by the street lights across the white ceiling.

"That's the problem with time, ya know," he told himself out loud (something he knew he needed to stop doing... here in the oyster world, that tended to draw strange looks).

He knew that at the end of this story, this twist of fate and time, he and Jack were allies, and that Alice didn't want Jack anymore. But here he was, forced to watch Alice in Jack's arms again. Except that for them, it was the first time. For Hatter, it was horrible repeats.

And he was really starting to hate Jack again.