Anon prompted: "You're blood of my blood."
A Frumious Mess
Muddied to the calves, leaves and briars tangled in her hair, Belle careens through the front door of her father's flower shop. Hatter takes one look at her and drops everything. A bucket of yellow roses, a pair of scissors, a block of foam—all of it falls to the floor with a series of dull thuds—and he dashes out from behind the counter.
"I just mopped the floor, you lunatic," he says and it's meant to be flippant—a joke, something to soothe—but his voice clenches with anxiety and when he sweeps her up into his arms like a new bride, his arms squeeze too tight.
Still, it feels like breathing again.
Belle buries her face in his neck, fingers clenched in his—her—apron. She doesn't cry. Crying won't make the world a proper size again. She sucks in great heaving breaths instead, makes a little flame with her fingers to remind herself she can.
She can. She can. Hatter's here. She can.
"Crumbs in the works," he murmurs, striding for the back room with her in her arms. "Oh, what a frumious mess. I knew this was bad idea. I knew it."
From the safety of his neck, Belle whispers, "It had to be done."
"And there were other ways to do it, mutton." He shakes his head and sits her gently on the flower counter, eases her bare and filthy feet into the sink—winces with her when she hisses at the touch of cool water against a thousand scrapes and bruises she hadn't known she had.
Hatter leans in, touching his forehead to hers. For a long moment, they stay like that, eyes closed and faces pressed together. His breath smells sweet, like the candies that forever line his pockets. Belle knows hers is still sour with fear and spoilt adrenaline, but Hatter does not pull away. His hands do not leave her shoulders, his nose remains tucked neatly beside her own.
"Whatever happened to your lovely shoes?" he asks at last.
Belle thinks of tumbling over that impossibly wide expanse of grass, the tables and lawn ornaments and startled people and finally, finally the woods. She shivers. She knows better—should have kept her back to the trees. How many years have taught her this? How many mobs and fire and unfriendly towns? Why had she strayed? Had she lost her mind?
Sucking in deep, shuttering breaths, Belle tries to quiet her trembling heart. She says, "I don't know. I—I fucked up, Hatter."
Hatter only blinks, pulls back a little. One clever hand flashes up to gently, so gently, untangle a long hook of thorns from her hair. "How's that, mutton?" he murmurs.
For a moment, she can't speak. The world outside is massive, so heavy, so ready to fall, and she cannot—cannot even think where to begin.
She manages, "He was there."
And because Hatter knows her, because he knows her loves and losses, because they never speak of names, he understands.
He snarls, "What'd the whiffling bastard do, eh?" and desperately, in a broken sort of way, Belle wants to laugh.
"Your accent's showing, Hatter," she whispers.
He closes his eyes, starts again. "What happened, Belle? What'd he do to you?"
"He apologized." And then, in a rush and realization, "Well, no. He didn't. He didn't apologize at all. He said he wanted to, then he called my papa a thief and said he'd never stopped loving me."
"Oh, Mary Ann," Hatter breathes. He shakes his head, thumbs another few leaves from behind her right ear. "You want I should kill him?"
Belle startles at the sound of her own laugh, but once she's started, she finds it hard to stop. She must laugh—she must. If she does not, she will shatter down the seams, and something worse than any jabberwocky will burst out from the gaping wound of her chest.
This world… this world is too much. And here they are, still together, she and Hatter—dirty, old and useless clowns.
Belle sits on a counter in her father's flower shop, her feet in a sink and battered bracken in her hair, and she must be insane. She must be. Because the alternative—that this world is vast and incomprehensible and terrifying and new—is far too much to bear.
But Hatter knows her. When the laughter turns to coughs, to sobs, he wraps his arms around her shoulders and tucks her head beneath his chin.
"Shh," he whispers. "Shh. It's alright, mutton. You're blood of my blood, yeah? You need me to kill this bloke, I'll find a way. Poison his tea, razors in his tie, a little friendly arson…?"
Belle presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. She is shaking and she knows she should fetch the pills Dr. Hopper gave her, but Hatter's coat is so far across the room.
"I killed a man with a card trick once," Hatter murmurs, stroking the last shattered stick from her hair. "The big wizards, the ones they say it takes a vorpal blade to kill? That's just it, poppet. They're looking for the magic swords. They never think to check the small things. It'll be easy. Quick as rabbits."
"No."
"No?" Hatter pulls back, his hands on her shoulders to look her in the face. "But if he comes after you?"
"He won't."
"He came after your father."
Sucking in a deep breath, Belle pushes a hand through her hair. "I think I need a pill."
Hatter flicks his fingers at his jacket. Like an obedient pet, it flies to his outstretched hand, and with a minimum of fuss and fumbling, Belle takes her medicine.
"Breathe like Dr. Hopper says," Hatter murmurs. And sitting in her father's sink, Belle leans her head against the wall of Hatter's chest and tries.
"He said he loved me," she whispers.
"Dr. Hopper? He seems a lovely bloke. I approve."
It's a poor attempt at a joke. Still, Belle smiles. She appreciates the effort and Hatter relaxes some. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then reaches under the counter, finds a washcloth for her feet.
"I think separating is a bad idea," he says as she gingerly eases the mud from her heels. "Too many cards between here and there. We shouldn't do it again."
Belle tries to concentrate on the mud—it's easier than lost loves and wars, sealing wax and kings—but her thoughts circle and circle back like lost birds.
"He didn't find me," she whispers to the water in the little tub. "How could he love me, but not find me? If it was you, Hatter, I'd tear apart the world."
Hatter doesn't say a word. When she looks up, his lovely doggish face is set and grim.
"He never loved you, poppet. He certainly doesn't now."
And Belle knew that. She knew that days and years and decades past, when Rumpelstiltskin swore and screamed and shook her by the shoulders.
For a kiss.
He'd panicked.
It makes no sense. Hurting her over a kiss, beating her father for a cup she chipped. There'd been years between here and there. Performances. Towns on every border knew the Mad Hatter and his Mary Ann. If Rumpelstiltskin wanted her, he could have found her.
The queen certainly had.
Belle wipes the last of the mud from her feet, rinses her hands and sits back.
"Hatter, what are we supposed to do?"
Hatter presses his mouth tight, leans in again to touch his brow to hers.
"I don't know, love," he says. "I really don't."