Her exposure to mercury had made the nightmares worse.
For the one hundredth time this year-yes, Chloe has been keeping count because it's the only thing in these moments that can distract her from wanting the ground to swallow her up the way it did her mother and father-she wakes up silently screaming.
As she has done exactly seventy-one times, she sits up slowly, gets out of bed, and makes her way to the kitchen. As he has been for the past ninety-two times, Morris will already be there, brewing them both a pot of tea, dark circles around his eyes.
She doesn't know if he counts, too, or if the tea is his distraction.
Tonight, her cup is already full and waiting for her.
Tonight, as she has done twenty-five times before, she stops in the kitchen doorway.
"I'm going across. I have hats to finish." She has twelve and a half hats to finish in a week. It will take her only three sleepless nights to put the finishing touches on them all.
"Don't let the tea get cold, I'm not going to brew a fresh pot for you if it does." He warns, but they both know that he will make a second pot anyway, even if it is just to have something to occupy his mind and briefly make him feel as though the consuming void created by his Hatter's absence has been filled.
She steps outside. There is, as always, a warm summer breeze. She wishes (she's wished so many times she's lost count) that for once it could be a cold, stinging wind. She misses the occasional harshness of winter.
Barefooted, she walks out on the cool grass towards the Hatter's workshop. It has not been lived in for 3 years, but it has been occupied.
Opening the door (it is never locked, no-one would dare steal from the Hatter even if she is gone forever), Chloe stepped inside and turned on the lamp beside the door, setting to her work.
Mercury had no smell, but it had a distinctive feel that Chloe had become sensitive to after a few years of hatmaking. There was an edge, something dangerous, something that made her pulse quicken ever-so-slightly. It made her feel again. The beautiful hats she made were just a bonus.
The first pot of tea was cold when she returned to Morris' house-her house too, she reminded herself. Three years and she hadn't gotten used to the thought.
He had just poured her a fresh cup, though it was likely lukewarm by now. But tea was tea, and despite the oddness of the temperature or perhaps because of it, it was soothing, and well-brewed as always. Tea softened the edges that mercury left in her mind.
Her hands shook slightly when she set the empty cup down on the kitchen table.
"The side effects are showing themselves rather fast..." He hummed, moving his chair closer to hers. "That can't be good. You need to stop working so much at night."
Morris had been Hare to two Hatters now-soon to be three, if she kept working hard-so Chloe knew she ought to take his advice.
Yet, she couldn't bring herself to agree. "I don't mind. It's almost soothing. Like I'm losing my old self. And I think... That's good, in a way."
He thought about this for a moment, staring fixedly into his empty teacup. "...I understand, Chloe."
"I know you do." She said, smiling wanly at him. They had formed an odd bond, a quiet understanding forged from heartbreak and emptiness and sleepless nights. "Thank you for the tea."
Chloe stood, and left the kitchen to go back to her room as the Hare began clearing away the empty cups (he would always set out one extra, perhaps as a force of habit or perhaps out of some foolish hope that she would one day reclaim it).
She would, as she had for the past one hundred nights, fail to fall asleep until just before the light of dawn crept over the horizon.