Thank you for sticking around, dear readers! As always, Vanilla212 and her fabulous beta skills have been the making of this chapter.
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Hatter rang the doorbell for the third time, then banged on the door a few times for good measure. Where the hell was his oyster? "Probably off traipsing about the city instead of minding me shop," he muttered darkly. Rummaging through his small suitcase, he wrapped his fingers around cold metal and extracted a key that was very large indeed. It was about the length of his arm, but only about a finger's length of it actually fit into the lock. Normally the absurdity of it amused him to no end. After all, Hatter would not be Hatter if he did not indulge in a little nonsense from time to time. At the moment, however, it was just one more thing to annoy him.
With a tired, peevish sigh, he pushed the door open and walked inside. The shop was pristine, as he'd come to expect from Alice. At least she was good for that much, even if she couldn't be relied upon to answer the damned door. He dropped his suitcase in the dining room and went to the tea counter, thinking he could do with a spot of Patience before he went to deal with her.
It wasn't that he was so very angry at Alice, as he was angry at everyone, he mused as he fished the (normal-sized) key to the tea counter from his pocket. The things he'd learned over this past week...but he shoved those thoughts aside and opened the door.
An unfamiliar crunching sound made him stop, and he looked down to see the floor littered with broken glass. He felt a momentary stab of worry, but it was quickly chased away by the intense anger coursing through his veins. Alice, what have you been up to, you irritating little fool?
He forced himself to take a breath, then located a bottle of Patience and helped himself to a generous serving, which he gulped down before heading off to find her. He struggled to keep his impatience under control as he stood at her door and knocked loudly.
No answer, so he let himself in.
She was curled up on the bed, sound asleep.
He leaned over and shook her. "Alice," he said loudly and deliberately, "why are there broken cups behind me counter?"
"Whaa?" Her eyes fluttered open and she stared at him sleepily. "Hatter?" A radiant smile lit up her features. Hatter wondered why it didn't cheer him up. Usually there was something about Alice's smile that lifted his mood.
But no. He knew precisely why it didn't cheer him up, and now was definitely not the time to go into it. Keep your brain in the game, mate. He backed away from her, suddenly feeling suffocated by the small room and Alice's puzzled stare.
"There's broken glass behind me counter. Go clean it up, and then come back to the office, yeah?"
"All right." She sounded calmer than he'd expected her to be, and for some reason it made him feel incredibly angry.
Hatter grabbed his suitcase and went to his office to put its contents away. The safe he used for his personal valuables was built into the wall near his desk, carefully concealed behind a painting of a dignified hedgehog with crimson red spines. This was a reference to a piece of history from well before Hatter's time, back when oysters were first introduced to Wonderland.
As best as Hatter could recall, one of the Heart queens had kept an oyster girl in her garden as something of a pet. The queen was an unpleasant piece of work even by Heart standards, and she took particular pleasure in tormenting her oyster. When she learned that the girl had been an artist back in her world, she'd ordered her to paint every single rose in the royal garden the perfect shade of red, without flaw, if she valued her life. Her Majesty was said to be vastly amused by the girl's frantic desperation, and Hatter had no difficulty at all believing it.
There was a butler working in the palace at the time whose outrageously bushy beard was said to resemble the spines of a hedgehog, and so of course everyone called him Hedgehog. He took pity on the oyster, and squirreled her out of the palace and back to her world. Some version of the story claimed Hedgehog was in love with the girl, but Hatter had always been more than a little skeptical about that part. A Wonderlander falling for an oyster would be unnatural, like Chez falling for a common housecat. Like bad teas and good ones, some things weren't meant to be mixed together.
But then, what Hedgehog's oyster been like his Alice, full of life and curiosity? Hatter felt another stab of sudden anger, this time directed at himself for entertaining such an absurd notion, and reminded himself of how that story had ended.
The queen had found out about the Hedgehog and the Oyster, of course, and had the Hedgehog's head off, turning his beard into a bloody red. The Hedgehog had survived to the present day as a subtle symbol against the House of Hearts, which Hatter liked. Mostly, he was just fond of the painting, though, and he counted on the Suits' ignorance of history to protect him from the consequences of having it- not that he'd tolerate Suits in his office, anyway. The historical queen's pathological affection for the color red reminded Hatter uncomfortably of the present monarch, however, and he only hoped he wasn't the Hedgehog.
As he moved the painting to open his safe, he considered ridding himself of it. But that would do no good, not after he had another chat with Jack Heart.
He took one of his many rings off and pushed it into a small indentation on the door of the safe, which was designed to blend in with the rest of the wall. He twisted once, and the door popped open with a quiet ping. Hatter carefully began transferring bottles of tea from his suitcase to the safe, thinking all the while of what a crime it would be to leave these beauties on the shelves for public consumption.
Looking at them made his head spin like a top on a boat deck.
He considered for a moment, and removed one bottle. He set it inside his desk drawer for later, then put the last of them inside the safe. They filled up the small space, nested against each other in neat rows. Hatter was not one to get sentimental over tea, but they looked...well, beautiful.
"What are those for?"
Alice's voice startled him, and he felt the blood rush to his face as he slammed the safe door closed and locked it.
"Nothing you need to worry about, Alice. Did you clean up the glass?"
"Of course." She was eyeing him suspiciously, obviously trying to hide her fear behind a carefully placed mask.
It's not working, he thought, surprising himself with an inward sneer. "You're a bloody open book Alice. What's wrong?"
"I was about to ask you the same question." She hadn't moved from the doorway, and he saw the fear turn into terror, much like the way she'd been when he first rescued her.
For some damnable reason, he couldn't see anything but an oyster when he looked at her. When did his Alice become so...well, not Alice.
His Alice? What had he been thinking? Had he really thought he could help her become anything but what she was?
"Where's Dormie? And what happened to me tea counter?" He managed to force his voice into a tone of calm authority, even though he wanted to shout at her. There was the Patience doing its bit.
She looked away. "He's out, but he'll back sometime today."
"The day's nearly over. Where'd he go?"
She shrugged. "Out." Then she took a deep breath, as if steeling herself to slay a dragon, and looked him in the eye again. "Hatter, he tried to hurt me."
Patience be damned. Hatter's blood start to boil at that. He should have known the little man would try something. "I see," he said slowly. "What do you mean by that?"
"He was here with some...friends. He made me get tea, and then he told them I could speak and they realized that I was an oyster. And...and they kept talking about the Dodo." She swallowed. "I pulled the gun and made them leave, and that's when the cups were broken."
Hatter had to give her points for bravery, and he allowed himself a moment of pride. That's me girl. Only she was not his girl, she was an oyster.
And why had this silly little oyster opened her mouth in the first place? The sound of crunching steel reached his ears, and he realized that he was gripping and twisting the corner of his desk in his right hand.
Lovely. Another thing to fix.
"I'll have a word with him," he said. "Anything else to report that I may have missed?"
Her face immediately turned a bright shade of pink. Normally he would have that amusing, but the likely reason behind it made her rosy glow look decidedly unappealing. It was all too easy to guess. He slowly sauntered over to her, stopping just a little too close to Alice for her comfort, close enough that he could almost feel the Guilt and Anxiety rolling off her in waves.
"Jack Heart came by, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did." Alice appeared to be trying to master herself. She spoke calmly, but he knew she was still terrified. Ordinarily, he would have felt concern, but just then it was taking all of his willpower not to grab her and shake the full story out of her.
"And?" He let the word hang in the air.
"And nothing. We just talked."
"I see." He could see her starting to close that oyster shell around her, and knew he wouldn't get any more out of her. "Well, I'll ask him meself. I've sent word to have him meet me. Would you like to be present for the meeting? Maybe learn a little more than what's good for you?" He tried to control it, but there was a distinct venom in that last sentence.
Alice looked conflicted, and he figured she'd probably rather be on a rooftop whistling to herself than caught up in another conversation between the Prince and himself.
Well, that was tough luck for her.