wanderamaranth | Possible Side Effects, Ch. 3 (Reply)

Aiw Fic. WiP.

Summary: Jabberwocky blood is valuable, but has a short shelf life. Then, there are the possible side effects...

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

Rating: PG13

He hadn't really intended to drink the blood at all.

It was an accident; yes, that's it. A horrible accident, a trick of Fate!

Despite whatever might be thought to the contrary. It's not as though he himself had raised the blasted thing to his lips and swallowed it down, was it?

Oh, bother. It was.

He had been sitting, staring at the vial, as it mocked him mightily from its plush spot atop his sitting room fireplace. Dratted thing even had its own pillow, despite his loathing for it, as he couldn't bear to destroy or even risk damaging the one of the only tangible piece of her he still had left. (She was now just a pronoun in his brain; the proper pronoun, finally, but a pronoun nonetheless. Thinking of her name just led to the Badness, as he referred to the times when his memory was just a black expanse of nothing, and he'd inevitably wake up with even-more disreputable, or worse, destroyed furniture.) The pillow itself was one that he had made from the leftover scraps of fabric he had found stuffed into a teapot, the first day he'd gone back to the Windmill. Light blue, with a darker blue, almost black trim. He'd mused to Mallymkun that unless she wished to having boiling water dumped upon her head at random intervals (which sometimes, she went through phases in which, she said, she rather enjoyed that sensation) she had best leave off leaving her bedding in various tea-pots.

Mallymkun had taken one look at the long strip of fabric in his hands, and sneered, "It's not as though I'd be having anything to do with a color such as that, is it? Doesn't match my fur at all. You told me yourself that I'm more of a summer than a winter."

The Hatter had been lost in a rumination at that point, trying to recall when and why he would have told the Dormouse that she was a season of the year, and whatever that had to do with her bedding being in the teapot, and such bedding as was exceeding unflattering in color to one such as herself, when Mally brought him back to. "Hatta!" she shouted, spoon clanging hard against the side of the very tea pot in which the fabric had been found.

"I'm fine." he assured, and he really was. It was not a time of Badness; just a very deep ponder, was all. He focused once again upon his diminutive friend, and said, "I cannot say at all why you would call yourself a Summer, dear friend. Last I recalled, that which you called yourself was Mallymkun. Have you decided to change what we're to call you? I can think of a dozen names more suitable than Summer, to be true, as that lovely Season herself might become offended if you attempt to snatch that name out from under her, as it were. However, if you're really set on it, I suppose we can try. After killing Time, what's the bad opinion of a paltry Season?" The Hatter had been waving the tea-pot fabric wildly to emphasize his words as he spoke, and at this point he stopped and stared at the hand holding the fabric as if he'd never seen it before. "Well, hello, what's this?"

"That, Hatter, is what you asked me." Mallymkun said, in tones of extreme patience.

"I know that! Having just asked just right previously before you told me that I had asked you what it was. Really, Mally, if you can't say anything helpful, what's the use in replying at all?"

Her kind patience at an end at this rude reply, the Dormouse snapped, "The fabric you are presently holding in your right hand is what remains of the Alice's dress from before you shrunk her down to escape the Red Guard!" When the Hatter got into one of his moods, it was best to be as specific as possible. She cared for him, she really did, but that didn't mean there were not times that she wanted to throttle him.

"The Alice's…dress?" he had said, and brought the fabric up to his nose before it was even a fully formed thought. To his extreme disappointment, all he could smell was tea. "It doesn't smell like the Alice."

Hands on hips, Mallymkun demanded, "And just how would you be about knowing what she smells like, hmm?"

The Hatter was as good as lost in the woods, though, as he could no longer hear his friend's voice. He stood from the table--tea, bread and butter and tarts forgotten--and went straight into Windmill House, the House slamming its door firmly shut behind him. (It being a clever house, and knowing when its occupants were best left to their own devices.)

"Well, I never!" huffed the mouse. (Again, not that the Hatter, or anyone else, save the House, were able to hear her indignation. She was quite alone at the Tea Table, and so she decided take a nap inside one of the tea-pots, after all. It did sound rather cozy.)

Normally the Hatter would have been able to whip up such a simple thing as a pillow in a matter of seconds, (and he still was; that is to say, he hadn't suddenly lost the ability!) but for this, the pillow of the Alice's dress (this was before he began to refer to her only as a pronoun)--this, he would honor her by spending actual minutes on it's completion. He was sure Time wouldn't mind. And if he did, well, that was just too bad. It's not as if he were killing him again, was it? No, this was most productive indeed, so Time had nothing to complain about. (Not that it'd ever stopped him before, the grumpy sod.)

So minutes had passed, and when they were gone, the Hatter had before him a smallish pillow made of the blue silk. His hands ran over the fabric, luxuriating in the feel of it's softness. Briefly he toyed with the Idea of sleeping with it upon his bed, but it was too small for one to lay one's head upon. He put that Idea into his Unused Ideas jar (as it was a shame and a waste to just discard Ideas willy-nilly) and instead went with his second thought: that it was just the right size to place…that vial…upon.

He'd taken it to the sitting room, placed it upon the mantel, and then put the Jabberwocky blood atop the pillow. He was jealous of the vial, for a moment, as it was small enough to be able to lay so upon Alice's dress in such a way. "Pishsalver would solve that problem for myself." he mused, "but that would leave my hat quite alone, and I know that Cat would come and abscond it away whilst I was asleep on that delightful little bed!" It was a close call, but the Hatter decided, in the end, that it was best if he stayed in his right-proper Tarrant size, with the hat safely atop his head; he'd still be able to look at them, after all, if he moved his patched together chair just so. So that is what he did.

He'd begun to notice, sometime during the long expanse of the time after her (she had become a pronoun by now) that the blood within the vial was teasing him. Most times, it was just as it was when the White Queen had handed it to him; quite innocuous, its only abnormality being its vibrant purple hue. (Which really wasn't an abnormality for it, being Jabberwocky blood and all, and everyone knowing they bleed purple.) But sometimes, mostly in the evenings after having his daily tea with Thackery and Mallymkun, it would form shapes out of itself, just in the very top of the vial, where it still had some room to contort, there being some empty space where Mirana had not filled it to the brim itself. There, it would briefly shape itself into very miniature scenes, ones that he was familiar with. Faces of persons long ago lost in the past, faces the Jabberwocky's blood remembered from when it had culled them from this earth. More often than not, though, when it was doing it's rare contortions after tea at the top of the vial, it would form her face, the blood remembering the one to spill it out of it's body most clearly of all.

The Badness would come then, as he fought with himself over destroying the vial and maintaining the…her happiness, or drinking its contents and securing his own.

It was during one such bout of the Badness that the accident occurred. All he was aware of was the blood forming her face, smiling in that winsome way she had when he'd returned from the Bloody Big Head's castle. He had been beaten, bruised, and so exhausted that he felt he must collapse, right there on the front steps, but then he'd looked up, and she was there, smiling, and he felt…better.

Yes, it formed that smile, the one that only should have belonged to he and her. His last semi-coherent thought (as he never had fully coherent thoughts--perish the Idea, despite the waste!) was the vial, which was the one Alice had left behind (he was too far gone into the Badness to worry about the effect of not referring to her by a pronoun) should be as it was just at the moment she left.

Empty.

When he came to, there was no more Jabberwocky blood in the vial. There was a deep burning moving through his veins, so hot he thought he may soon be just a sooty hole upon the ground, as the rest of Clan Hightopp was. Would the Jabberwocky, then, be claiming the one Hightopp it had missed, finally, after all these years? It seemed rather unfair that it should, it already being dead and all.

A teacup smashed into the wall in front of him, and he turned around to see Thackery's more-desperate-than usual face staring back at him. "Hatta, what have you done?"

"I hardly know." Had been his reply, before he collapsed to the ground, body seizing and a purple foam beginning to bubble from his lips.

It had been nine days since the Frabjous Day.

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