..
Everything in The City looked the same to Alice, especially in the dim, dusky light that steadily deepened for every minute that ticked by. All the buildings were tall, gray, and covered in moss and mildew. As they climbed higher, the surroundings continued to look the same: like the smooth, rust-colored leather of Hatter's jacket, specifically the back of it as she clung to him tightly and turned her cheek to stare at his right shoulder.
This is the jacket I bought him, she realized, trying to concentrate on that instead of the dizzy feeling in her head that intensified as the altitude increased. She focused on the memory of finding it at a thrift store and thinking it looked just like the jacket he wore in Wonderland, back when she first met him, but this one had a slightly deeper, orange-y color. He'd loved it, told her he'd missed that jacket and ever since, Alice got a certain thrill in her stomach whenever he wore it. Hatter was very particular about his clothing, more particular than any other man she'd ever met – it was nice to think that she knew him so well that she could recognize clothing that would meet his exacting standards.
"We're here," he announced suddenly, and Alice was pulled out of her thoughts with a sharp jolt. She looked around and thought for a second that Hatter must be mistaken: his tea house hadn't looked nearly this ill cared-for when she had visited it before. The steps were sagging and cracked, leading up to a door hanging askew by one brave, determined hinge. The paint had begun to peel in places all around the storefront, and the electric readerboard that had once been above the porch was now lying in glittering, splintered pieces on the dirt. If it weren't for the bright red phone booth still standing stalwart in front of the place, Alice wouldn't have recognized it in a million years.
She touched Hatter's tense shoulder, rubbing in what she hoped were calming sorts of circles as they both surveyed the wreckage. "Probably teaheads," he choked out in response to her touch, voice hoarse with either emotion or anger- Alice couldn't tell which. "Scavenging for scraps. Gone mad, most like."
"We can go somewhere else," she tried. "I'm sure there's an abandoned building around here somewhere—"
"No," he interrupted, looking at the trashed storefront with dark but determined eyes. "No, this was my shop, I'm going to goddamn stay in it if I want to." He dismounted Pat, reaching up to help Alice down after him. "Fuck the teaheads," she heard him mutter under his breath as he grabbed Pat's reins and led him up the stairs, ignoring the way the splinters of readerboard crunched under their feet.
Even Charlie was uncharacteristically quiet as they entered the main room of the teashop, even more thoroughly ravaged than the storefront. The shelves had been completely demolished, torn from the wall and thrown to the ground to sit in beds of glass shards, probably from broken bottles that had once held valuable emotions (like Peace, Alice thought ironically, but didn't dare say it aloud). Half the lights were either dangling crookedly from the ceiling or left overturned on the floor, the blackboard at the end of the room lying in two dejected pieces.
It was dark, dusty, and painfully quiet.
Alice felt more than saw Hatter turn on his heel and walk steadily towards the wall behind them, his footsteps echoing loudly in the empty room, the whisper of his hands trailing through the dust across the wall, and then –
"Aha!" He said, the shaky relief in his voice contrasting sharply with the dejected feel of the room around them. Alice heard the small, hollow click of a tumbler falling into place. "They didn't find my office!" A part of the wall opened up and Hatter darted inside, Alice doing her best to follow close on his heels.
He was right; aside from the yellowed, dead grass on the ground, his office was exactly the way she remembered it: a gleaming white desk and swivel chair, the silver headphones still draped over the side, the clear cabinet full of abandoned jackets he had decided not to take with him; even the papers splayed haphazardly on his desk appeared undisturbed.
Hatter turned in slow circles on the grassy space front of her, taking in his old surroundings with arms held wide. "My tea surplus is gone, of course," he said to no one in particular. "Dormy probably took it, he's the only one who could've gotten in here once I'd closed the door. But – oi, hey, watch it, you!"
He rushed at Pat, Bill, and Guinevere, all of whom had started to munch on the dead grass.
"Leave them be!" Charlie huffed. "We don't have much in the way of food for them, you know!"
"Yeah, and your grass is long dead, anyway," Alice said, reaching forward to hug Hatter from behind so he wouldn't strangle their horses. "Let's set up some food for ourselves, yeah?"
They ate from the rations Jack and the Duchess had provided them, during which Hatter stared at the horses darkly from the corners of his eyes, and after which Charlie rolled out a hammock from nowhere and hung it from some of the pipes climbing up the sides of the walls.
Alice turned to Hatter, eyebrow raised. "You got a place for us to sleep?"
"Of course," he said, standing up and stretching his arms wide with an accompanying groan. "That's probably just the way I left it, too—not even Dormy knew how to get in there."
Alice watched as he walked over to the far left corner of his office, the same portion of wall she had seen open to the cityscape on her first trip here, and she opened her mouth to say—
But the door opened to a dark staircase, steep enough to almost be a ladder and leading up out of sight. Alice's mouth snapped shut and she blinked. "Hatter, didn't that door lead outside earlier?"
He gave her a look that was endlessly amused. "Wonderland," he quipped. "Come on, Alice, you should know the drill by now."
Alice rolled her eyes and scanned the room one more time as she stood: Charlie, already sleeping with the loud snores of an old man, the horses grazing peacefully on Hatter's grass. Satisfied that they were safe, she walked over and smacked Hatter's shoulder as she started up the stairs. "Cheeky," she muttered.
He smacked her butt as she went by in response.
"Oh, don't you even, mister."
..
Alice didn't know what she had expected Hatter's room to look like – indeed, she wasn't sure it had ever occurred to her to think about it – but whatever she would have thought, this wasn't it. It was small, maybe a hundred square feet, carpeted with a deep, almost black, purple color that matched his textured bedspread. The neatly made twin bed sat in the center of the room, surrounded by white wall-to-wall bookshelves crammed full to bursting with books and knick-knacks. Some of them Alice would have expected, like tea leaves, a teapot, a teetering stack of saucers and cups. What surprised her was the small collection of things from iher/i world: copies of The Shining and Jurassic Park sat right next to a beat up edition of Pride and Prejudice. He had a whole shelf dedicated to dinosaur figurines sitting next to a mountain of broken pocketwatches. Then there were things she didn't recognize, like a glass ball that looked like it was full of moving stars, a funnel that was covered in spikes issuing smoke that vanished as quickly as it was created, a clock with no numbers and no hands but clicked the seconds nevertheless, and all over the room, hats hung from anything with an edge or a hook or an available flat surface.
"I never thought I'd be in here," she said honestly, because what else could she say?
"Actually, neither did I," Hatter said, coming up the stairs behind her. He took off his jacket and threw it onto a coat rack she hadn't seen in the corner. He slid off his hat and threw it with an expert flick of his wrist to land perfectly on a brass hook by his bed. And all of this was done while spinning to jump spread-eagled onto his bed. It was one smooth (and, Alice begrudgingly admitted to herself, impressive) motion obviously perfected over years of practice. "I never thought I'd see any of this again, you know."
She came over to sit next to him, nudging his knees to the side to make room on the tiny mattress. "Do you miss it?" she asked, tapping her fingers absently against his knee.
"Miss what?" he asked evasively.
"Wonderland."
He was quiet for awhile, still flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. "I'm not sorry I followed you, if that's what you're asking."
"It's not."
"Alice," he said, "the thing is, it wouldn't have changed anything, me staying here. My shop would still have been destroyed by desperate teaheads, I would still be…" He shrugged listlessly. "Dunno, really, but I probably wouldn't be happy."
For the first time, Alice finally realized she knew the name of that feeling of unease in her stomach: the sick, swirling, sinking feeling in her gut that had been growing ever since she had first seen Hatter's storefront. What she thought was just empathy and height-induced nausea was in fact something far more sinister.
Guilt.
"I'm sorry." The words trembled out of her mouth and she swallowed hard, trying to make the stinging sensation at the back of her eyes go away. She stood up and begun to pace back and forth, frustrated that the clutter of Hatter's room didn't allow for a sufficiently calming pacing distance.
Hatter raised himself up on his elbows. "Alice?"
"Look what I've done!" she wailed, her voice tearing, haggard, out of her throat. One trembling finger pointed at the door, the other balled painfully at her side. "I've… Hatter, this world is broken. Full of desperate, violent junkies searching for their last fix, economy shattered, losing their homes and their jobs, and I did that!"
Hatter pushed himself standing, his brow furrowed. "Now, look here—"
"And then I just waltz off, leaving it for Jack to clean up!" she continued, pacing again, nervous fingers scraping her cheek as she furiously wiped her tears away. "I dump this mess in his lap and don't even think twice—"
"Hey!" Hatter snapped, and he gripped both of her arms tightly enough to hurt. He looked truly angry, eyebrows drawn together and his mouth set in a firm, small frown. "I think you've forgotten all the time and people it took to make this revolution happen, Alice!"
Her mouth snapped shut, her wide blue eyes meeting his hard, brown ones.
"What, you think you just swanned in and toppled the Queen all by yourself!" He snorted dismissively. "The Resistance had been working for years, setting up the very dominos you toppled! And as for Jack, he was the goddamn Prince, you think he didn't realize exactly how much damage he'd have to fix after he usurped his mother! Don't trivialize all the work that we did, and don't you dare assume that we didn't realize just what we were getting ourselves into!"
Even though he was yelling at her, Alice still felt the guilt in her gut beginning to lift away as the truth of his words sunk in. She turned her embarrassed gaze to the floor and shrugged off his grip. "Fine," she muttered, shame burning in her chest. "I… You're right. But how can I not feel guilty for my part in it when we ride up to your home, and it's completely..." She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes to stop from crying again – she hated crying, it made her feel like she was ten again. "Hatter, you can't deny that part of it is my fault, and I wouldn't be me if I didn't feel guilty about it, so just—"
Hatter groaned in frustration, ruffling his agitated fingers though his hair. "Look, do I wish I could go back to the way things used to be? I don't know. Sometimes I might think that maybe I'd like to re-do them, but those days are gone, and they're not coming back, and… y'know what, good riddance to 'em. Trading them for a life with you was worth it, would still be worth it every time. You… mad thing," he added lamely, as though he felt he needed something at the end.
She was quiet for a second, anger and panic beginning to subside. "…I think we just agreed that we're both responsible for destroying Wonderland."
"…I think maybe that's what happened, yeah."
Alice choked out a laugh, running a wayward hand through her hair.
"Look, don't worry about the tea shop," Hatter said, his expression softening. "It's just a house, Alice. Just a shell, a front. Not like I was really using it, anyways. And," he grunted, kicking his shoes onto the floor and beginning to undress for bed. "While we're on the subject, don't go beatin' yourself up all the time, over every little thing. When you've finally done something worth blaming yourself over, trust me, I'll tell you. In fact, I'll probably be first in line. Until then?" He poked her with his foot as he pulled the covers back. "Let's just get a good night's sleep."
Alice rubbed her hands roughly over her face and began stripping down to her underthings as well. She'd brought some PJs in her knapsack, but it felt silly to be using them now, with Charlie sleeping downstairs.
"Will we still be fighting in the morning?" he asked, looking pained, as she climbed into bed beside him.
"No, I don't think so," Alice told him, pulling the covers over them and sniffling the last of her tears away. "I think maybe you just gave me a much-needed talking to."
"We're okay, then?"
"Yeah. We're okay."
He kissed her on the forehead and tucked her into a hug. "Good."
..
A/N: I just wanted to thank all my readers who have left me such positive reviews! ^_^ I can't believe the wonderful response I've been getting to this fic - over 30 favorites and 40 story alerts! I put a lot of work into making all my Alice fics intricate and consistent with canon, so I'm glad to see that I've been succeeding in your eyes. If you've been reading and lurking, I'd love you to drop a line and say hello! ^_^ I hope to see you all as I continue to post.