Best Intentions, Chapter Four

[wanderamaranth]

 

The next day brought the Hatter again, and only he. Alice had been hoping one of her other Underlandian friends might be stopping by to visit her, but that was not to be the case, it seemed. She sat up the bed just enough to see Hatter's thin-lipped frown at the still-full tray of food from the previous night moldering on the bedside table. He collected it up, glanced in her direction and promised quietly to return with something perhaps more to her liking.

While he was gone, she attempted to pull herself up further in the bed, but her muscles shook with fatigue and refused to cooperate. All of the excitement and exertion of the day before had exhausted what little reserves of adrenaline-fueled energy she had, it seemed. Mouth dry, Alice swallowed, wishing almost desperately for a sip of water.

The new tray, when presented, held a wider variety of tempting treats on it; a small tea-pot, designed for a single drinker, steaming with freshly brewed strong black leaves; egg-battered toast, thick with butter and whistlebush syrup; round and linked sausages; clotted cream and indecently large scones dotted with cheese...there was even a small flower in a miniature clay pot in one corner, smiling encouragingly at her.

When Alice simply blinked at him, then at the flower, and back again at him again before softly saying “Thank you” and then nestling back down into the bedding with her face towards the wall, Hatter felt Disappointment drag his features down. The flower raised the petals above its eyes in a sympathetic manner.

“You go on, dearie,” it told Tarrant, shooing him away with a verdant leaf. “I'll talk to her, hmm?”

Yet try even with the flower trying with all of its might, Alice would not eat. In fact, she didn't even turn around to look at the bloom.

By the third day the Hatter was desperate.

He sat by her bed. With one hand on her shoulder, he rolled her over to look at him. She scooted away from him, a careful blankness in her eyes that nearly broke him. Still he pressed on. “Will you not eat something?” he asked. “Please?” Begging was not something he liked to make a habit of, but for Alice...if it would get her to eat something, even a few small bites, than he was willing to beg. Being in Underland and in his presence would only help so far—she needed sustenance as well!

Her large hazel eyes blinked slowly at him, as if focusing on his face was difficult. Then a decision crossed her features, and she opened her mouth, speaking slowly and roughly, as if she'd not used her voice in many days. Tarrant worried that he should have allowed one of the others to sit with her while he was rushing about with his things that needed doing, his very-last-moment preparations in making the House Ready for Alice.

Mally in particular had been quite insistent on having contact with the Champion, but Tarrant had refused, afraid of what she might tell Alice, afraid of what Alice herself might have to say to the Dormouse about him.

So instead he'd allowed Alice to sit by herself in the stuffy bedroom, with no one to speak to, no amusements, and only one tattered book upon the nightstand—a book without a single picture or conversation in it, he recalled with a frown—while he went back and forth from Marmoreal, gathering up all the Alice-bits he'd kept stashed at his workshop there...Alice dresses and Alice hair ribbons and Alice slippers...

Worse than leaving her with little entertainment, Alice had been forced by his hours-long absences to either wait for his return or to use the chamber pot stashed under the bed. He'd only had that particular realization that very afternoon, when, blushing brilliantly, Alice asked him to hold one moment before escorting her to the necessary room, reached under the bed and pulled the pot out with a shaking hand. Her Pride was greater than her illness-caused weakness, though, for she'd insisted on cleaning it out herself, and gently shut the washroom door in his face.

That would not happen again, Tarrant told himself. It was inexcusable for him to not think of such a basic need. He would be here if she needed him. He would do Better.

“I had planned to return, you know. I had a few more affairs to resolve, but then I was coming back. I wish...” she paused, and Tarrant could hear her wet her lips (as he'd lowered his eyes from hers, unable to continue looking at her when they were so full of reasonable condemnation) before she admitted, “I wish you had allowed me that decision, Hatter.”

“I wanted to, Alice, I did, but--!”

“Please, stop.”

The distress in her voice lodged the words, the excuses, that wanted to tumble and rush out of Tarrant's mouth. His mouth snapped shut, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. Alice waited for him to collect himself, then began again, in a soft voice. It was free of accusation, but to Tarrant, the effect was the same as if she were raging. “I don't want to hear your reasons, Hatter. The time for you to explain would have been before...because now, I have no desire to debate with you on this matter, sir. I have told you my desires, and you've ignored them. I'm too tired to argue today.”

Hatter silently listened to this, heard the exhaustion in her voice. His hands shook with the need to reach for her, to attempt to offer her some sort of comfort. Instead he nodded. “I understand, lass. But... why willna ye eat? Will ye please tell me that? Being in Underland and with m—being in Underland will make you healthier eventually, it's true, but eating is a needful part of the process too, my Alice.”

Brows tilting in consideration (or perhaps it was disbelief; he was shamefully out of practice in reading Alice-expressions) she said slowly, “Yes, I suppose so. I thought you knew. Or at least would have been able to make a very good guess.”

Tarrant leaned forward, dread and a bit of unreasonable hope (truly unreasonable, for Alice had given him no indication that hope even had a place here right now!) infusing him. Alice was speaking to him, she was not unwilling to Talk! “Yes?”

“I heard you and mother, you know. I was right there in the room, even if you both acted as if I weren't. The soup did this, that finger-full that I took in the kitchens, and if I had known, than I would have never, and--” Alice stopped, took a deep breath, and said, in a calmer tone, “What I would have done is irrelevant now, I suppose.”

“It is,” the Hatter agreed. “What matters now if that you must eat something, Alice. Tis the only way for you to be fully well again.”

Smiling in a sad, winsome way, Alice said, “I've guessed that. I just...I'm afraid, Hatter. This is not what I wanted from my life. Underland is a beautiful place—literally, the land of my dreams! I would love to belong here, but...I don't. My place is Above, with my family, with my father's company, and...and I just thought maybe...if I don't eat while I'm here this time, and then I go home when the three months have passed...I would able to divorce myself from this situation. To be free.”

Hatter froze. There was no other word for what his body did upon hearing those words. His face was stuck in that expression containing the odd mix of hope and dread on it, yet his eyes—those eyes, if they could speak, would be screaming.

“Oh,” he finally said, simply. “I see.”

He flinched so violently then that his whole body shook, a much delayed reaction to her words. His green eyes floated down to the pincushion ring on his left ring finger, and Alice was a bit horrified when he closed his crystalline lashes and a small glimmer of moisture leaked out. “I'll leave you be, then,” he said brokenly, as he stumbled to his feet.

Alice looked down at the gold on her own left-hand ring finger. The way he'd stared at his pincushion was almost as if... “Impossible,” she murmured. He'd always worn that ring, hadn't he? Her illness was making her think things that were absurd in the extreme. Raising her head, she was determined that she would simply stop with her school-girl prevaricating and just ask the man what the ring could mean, but by the time she looked to where he had been, he'd already quit the room. She was alone once more.

“No, no, dearie,” the doorknob chided her when she rose on unsteady legs. “I don't think you going after him right now would do either of you a bit of good.”

“I didn't ask for your opinion,” Alice tartly replied, and turned the handle. It screeched in indignation, but did not open.

“You can twist and turn all you wish, girlie, but I don't have to open for you if I don't want!”

Alice huffed, threw her hands in the air and, turning on her heel, clumsily shuffled towards the window. The doorknob called out, “Don't bother asking him! He'll agree with me, he will!”

“Well?” Alice asked the window, grasping the sill for balance with a sweaty grip.

“'fraid he's right, missus. I won't be letting you out either.”

Hands clenching in impotent frustration, she returned to the bed and flopped upon it with a sigh. “I just wanted to--”

“Leave?” the window said.

“No, I wanted...”

Alice stopped. Not once—not for a moment!--had she ever considered leaving...Something that should have been at the forefront of her mind! At any time, she could have gotten out of bed, walked out of the house, and tried to find her way home. But she hadn't.

Why not? Alice didn't know.

*~*~*~*

Later that night she heard violence. It started suddenly, a dull roar that jerked her out of an uneasy dream of flying teapots and weeping napkins. The roar was followed by breakables smashing, then wood splintering, and finally his voice again, a growling wail.

Alice crept out of bed and tried the handle of the door. Surprised when it gave away easily under her hand, she leaned against the wall and shuffled on rubbery legs down the hall, towards the noise. She knew she'd found the correct room when she saw what appeared to be a glass mason jar fly through an open doorway and smash into the opposite wall; its contents scattered everywhere, like pellets from a shotgun blast. Buttons, she realized dully. The jar had been full of buttons.

Unable to step around the shards of broken glass and still support herself by leaning against the wall, Alice grit her teeth before taking the next step. Pain lanced, hot and sharp, and even prepared for it as she was, Alice still grunted as her foot met the glass. Three more such steps, and she was in the doorway, bracing herself against the frame. And the Hatter...

The room looked completely destroyed. Feathers floated down from the ceiling, and for a moment Alice wondered if it were raining feathers inside the room—until she realized the cause was much more prosaic—a feather pillow that had been ripped in half and flung to opposite sides. Hatter sat in the center of the room, hunched in upon himself, keening.

Alice took a deep breath, and then pushed herself away from the door frame. Stumbling, shuffling, she made her way to him. Her hands set down upon his shoulders, and Hatter shuddered under her touch.

“Hatter,” she whispered, throat tight. A glance upward confirmed her suspicions; this was his room—there was a bed a few paces away. Sincerely hoping she would not be required to carry him that distance (as she could hardly carry herself) Alice wound her fingers into his tightly matted, wild hair, and took a moment to wonder where his hat had gotten off to. Something deep within her chest clenched tight at the sight of him here, like this, so despondent, so broken. Frabjous Day would help to heal much of his pain, Alice had thought, when she'd gone back Above.

Seeing him in this manner, though, revealed that thought for the selfishness that it was. She'd believed he'd be fine because she'd wanted to believe that...but his entire clan was still dead, weren't they? Her slaying the Jabberwocky hadn't brought them back, hadn't made him more sane, hadn't given him the peace he so desperately needed and deserved...

“Hatter,” she tried again, and this time his head tilted towards her, just in the slightest. In a confused voice, he asked, “Alice?” and she hummed in agreement. He's starting to come out of the worst of it, Alice thought, relieved.

“Yes, Hatter. It's Alice.” She wanted to ask him if he was alright, but she already knew the answer to that; he most certainly was not alright. Instead, she said, “It's time to go to bed, Hatta.”

“Tarrant,” he muttered. Alice paused.

“What was that?”

“Tarrant. Call me Tarrant, lass,” he requested. “Have waited so long to hear you call me by my name...and I just realized you didn't know it. One can't call out what they don't know, can they?”

He was still in the grip of his madness, Alice realized. This reprieve was just due to his body's exhaustion, nothing more. She stumbled around on her scraped and punctured feet to face him, and his green-yellow eyes were unfocused, staring at the floor. “Come to bed, Tarrant,” she said, his name tripping awkwardly off her tongue. Slowly, very slowly, his face lifted to meet hers. Chilled at the blank expression on his face, at the madness that still controlled him, she continued nonetheless, “Rest, Tarrant.”

Following after her like a small child listening to his mother, Hatter rose and shuffled towards the bed. Luckily he was able to do this under his own power. All Alice had to do was hold onto his arm and murmur encouragements. If she'd had to do more, she wasn't certain that she would have been able to succeed, with her strength the level it was at.

He settled into the mattress, whimpering softly as he continued to stare at her face. Alice clumsily pulled the blanket over him, turned away to look for a pillow that was not shredded, and was stopped by a hand on her left wrist. His unfocused gaze narrowed in on the ring upon her finger. A silly smile danced on the corners of his lips.

“Still wearing...oh, ye make me sae happy, my Alice. Stay w'h mae, just fer a while?”

Once again, there was an explanation tugging at the back of her mind as to his relief at seeing the ring on her finger, and once again, Alice made the decision to ignore it. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, Alice agreed, “As long as you try to sleep, Tarrant.”

“Aye, lass. Sleep...”

It was a full hour before the Hatter finally drifted into a deep slumber. Before that, whenever Alice tried to move even the slightest bit, even to check upon her aching, bloody feet, his body would tense and he would shift and grasp hold of her arm once again, and she would be forced to subside until his grip slackened. Eventually, though, he did sleep, and Alice carefully rose, exhausted. Somehow, she made it back to her own room down the hall (which required stepping on the broken glass once more, but she was so far gone at this point that she hardly noticed the fresh lacerations) and, without bothering to pick the shards from the bottom of her soles, collapsed on top of the bed and knew no more for the rest of the night.

*~*~*~*

The next day when he came in her room Hatter looked almost unspeakably tired, as if the rest he'd gotten the previous night had not been nearly enough, but he still seemed calm. Calm enough, at any rate. There was a strange cast to his features that made the skin around his eyes and mouth tight. He woke her by slamming the tray down hard enough onto the nightstand that one of the rolls positively heaped atop it fell off and tumbled to the ground.

Blinking blearily, Alice watched as a growling Hatter stooped, picked up the roll, and threw it towards the rubbish bin across the room. The roll bounced off the edge of the bin and onto the floor, and exasperated, he left it there with a wave of his hand that practically screamed the words, oh, fine then.

Yellow-green eyes flicked over her, bright with leftover tinges of anger. They were yellow, that is, until he saw how weak Alice was. She was struggling to push herself into a sitting position, her arms trembling with the effort.

Half-collapsing on the edge of the bed, he stretched for one of her hands, which she withdrew from his reach. She wished to sit up under her own power.

“Alice,” he said, and his voice was rough—from emotion or from the last night's raging, Alice didn't know. “Please,” he said, looking longingly at her hand left hand. She tucked it out of sight under the blanket, and Hatter shook his head as though to clear it. “Let me help you?”

“I'm fine, really,” Alice lied, wincing. Tarrant's brilliant eyes flicked from her face downwards, checking the veracity of her statement. All was well until they reached the bottom edge of the blanket, and then he stilled.

“That's blood on your...” Without even so much as a by-your-leave, Hatter was jerking the blankets back. When the cool air hit her feet, Alice hissed, forcibly reminded of the injuries she'd sustained the night before. “Your feet, Alice, how did this--”

Memory must have returned to him (at least in part) of the night before, because he stopped the question before it could be fully formed, and snarled. “I did this. I hurt you...and then I...” Jaw clenching, Tarrant turned and walked out of the room. Alice could hear a clatter and clanging float down the hallway from the washroom, and she wished Hatter would return soon, if for no other reason than to help her tend to her feet, (an irony of which she was well aware, as only moments before she'd been rather insistent with herself that she needed no help at all!) which were beginning to throb quite painfully now that she was forced to acknowledge once more that they were, in fact, injured.

The Hatter was back not long later, with a steaming bowl and several towels. Silently he assisted Alice into a sitting position. Then he pulled a stool over to the side of the bed, set the bowl of hot water atop that, and gently eased her feet into the basin. Alice hissed through her teeth, but kept them in the water.

“I'm sorry, Alice.”

Removing her attention from the pinkening water, Alice focused on Tarrant, who stood across from her, staring into the water that she herself had just been so fascinated with. She reached out for him, found his elbow, but he withdrew from her touch to kneel at her feet. Carefully he removed one from the water.

“This will likely sting,” he warned her. A tug, and then he held a curve of glass in his fingertips, clean except for a faint smear of her blood on the sharp edge. “So selfish...I'm sorry,” he said again, as he pulled out another sliver. “Alice, I'm--”

“Hatter, it's fine,” she assured him. This time when she reached for him, he didn't flinch away. Her right hand found his shoulder, which felt warm and solid and reassuring to her touch.

“It is not fine,” Tarrant argued. “I did this to you. If not for me, you would be...”

“Hatter,” Alice firmly interrupted him before he could self-flagellate further. “It was an accident. You didn't intentionally set out for this to happen.”

Lowering that foot back into the water to soak again, he switched his attention to the other. Carefully removing the first shard, his eyes very much (too much, Alice thought, as he was never this steady) riveted to his work, he asked, in a small, lisping voice, “Will you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Alice insisted. Hatter twitched, and changed topics rather abruptly.

“Ye mun eat something,” he continued, patting her feet dry, “Ye willna get well without eating more of the food of Underland. Ye are hurting yerself by refusing, my Alice.”

“I'll eat something,” Alice agreed, and his head snapped up to meet her eyes, tie fluttering. “But only after you tell me what exactly happened last night.” He could try to prevaricate, but that didn't meant that Alice had to let him.

Face blank, the Hatter repeated dumbly, “What happened last...” as he carefully placed her feet back atop her blood dotted sheets. He twitched at the sight.

“Yes,” Alice said. “In your rooms.”

“I...I am not certain what you mean.”

He was lying; he was a terrible liar, Alice decided, suddenly furious. What was so bloody difficult about being open with her? Swallowing down her inclination to rage at him, Alice said levelly,

“What caused this bout of madness, Hatta? What was the last thing you remember thinking of before it came for you?”

“I...I...” Alice could see Hatter's eyes flit about, could practically feel the panic as it rose within him. “I don't wish to speak of it. Please.”

Her anger flared back up, and Alice gritted out through clenched teeth, “Perhaps it would be better if you left the room then, Hatter.”

Tarrant's mouth fell open, in either shock or to spill forth that which he had just denied her, but Alice was unmoved. Despite her anger at him for dragging her to Underland against her will, last night's fit of madness worried her, and his refusal to talk about it worried her more. If she allowed him to stay, she might say something in her anger that she would regret; it was better, for right now, if he simply left the room.

“My Alice, I...”

At his possessive qualifier she shot him a look full of reproach, but his gaze was steady, resolute. He picked up a roll from the tray and held it out to her. Her hungry gaze gave her away; she'd very much wanted to accept, but her pride was preventing her from doing so. She looked away from the food, nose in the air. “The others would like to see you,” he tried again, holding the roll out imploringly. “Yet they will not until you are more well. If you will not eat for me, what of them?”

The fact that he was attempting to change the subject away again—and not very well, either—made her angrier still. She knew if she opened her mouth this time, she would say things to her friend that she would regret.

So she ignored him until, with a sigh, he placed the baked good back on the tray, picked up the basin of now-cool water, and went to exit the room.

A roll, obviously thrown by a weak arm, landed with a small plop by his feet. Alice was most disappointed in herself; she'd hoped to strike him on the back of his head, perhaps even knock his hat loose. Why did he have to be so infuriating? All she wanted was for him to talk to her! Hatter looked down at it, and Alice could see a small shudder wriggle down from the top of his head to his feet. Without responding, or even turning back around to look at her, he stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him. Alice waited, but he did not return for the entirety of that day.

Previous Chapter                                                                                        Next Chapter