Heart and Sole, Chapter 15
All throughout the train ride, she had endeavored to strangle every single one of her romantic notions into nothing. It had helped to speak of friends, of anything other than herself or the Hatter or the events that have recently transpired. For a moment (as she’d more or less ordered Hamish to escort her to the castle), she’d actually believed that she could do this. It’s only for a day, she’d counseled herself. Just one more day with the Hatter and then they would part ways again and she would be able to stop pretending to breathe properly and let out the sobs crowded so tightly together within her chest.
She’d been sure she could manage afternoon tea with the queen. She’d even looked forward to kicking Hamish under the table once or twice… but then the Hatter had interceded and closed off all avenues of merciful distraction.
“Here we are,” he announces brightly, opening the hat workshop door with a grand gesture.
Alice looks into the Hatter’s perfectly pale face. He has never once flushed that she can recall, never gained any lively color at all. But then, how can he if his heart is broken and incapable of stirring his blood?
It is true, then. She and he - they - have no hope whatsoever.
Suddenly, she knows she cannot do this; she cannot take tea with him as a friend. In her chest, her heart throbs painfully. Yes, perhaps it is better if she merely lays her cards upon the table, so to speak, and retreats to lick her wounds in relative peace.
Leaving the door slightly ajar, the Hatter breezes toward the hearth, merrily rhyming about silver pots, boiling water, and waxed peonies. Alice’s hand reaches into her pocket for the wind-crinkled letter that she hadn’t been able to let go on the caboose. She clutches it once again, hoping she’d merely misunderstood its message but knowing she hasn’t.
The Hatter is not for her.
“Tarrant Hightopp,” Alice whispers, pausing beside the worktable nearest to the door.
Kettle in hand and midway to the tea table, which looks as if it had been set and then hastily abandoned (perhaps when Hamish had arrived with news of Alice’s abduction), the Hatter comes to an abrupt halt. His eyes flicker this way and that as if calculating some great sum. Slowly, he sets the kettle down, pivots on the heels of his new shoes, and replies cautiously, “Alice Alishin?”
Alice studies his face, watching his brows twitch beneath his hat and the corners of his smile wobble with sudden uncertainty in response to her somber expression. In silence, she removes the envelope. She watches the Hatter’s green eyes dull as he tracks the movement of the letter in her hand as she places it upon the worktable. Alice says simply, “I read your letter.”
“Alice…” he chokes softly. He takes a step forward and then another. When he gets within arm’s length, Alice retreats, giving both him and herself a bit of necessary space.
“I found it in Hamish’s jacket pocket and… I am sorry,” she tells him. Alice tries to ignore the sight of his trembling hand as he reaches for it, but she cannot. She watches helplessly, her gaze dawn to his battered fingers as he brushes the surface of the paper once… twice... In that moment, everything becomes perfectly clear to her: she still wants those hands; she wants them touching her with such gentleness and reverence, just as they had in the tower the day before.
But it will never mean what she wishes it to.
Swallowing back all the hopes she has lost, she continues, “I understand now.”
She pauses but no other words come to her. Truly, could that be all that needs to be said? Perhaps. She knows naught about hearts like the Hatter’s - broken, shattered, ashen hearts, a heart that has been so completely mutilated that the man who holds it in his chest is made pale and incapable of love. This is not a Jabberwocky which she must slay. This is not a customer in need of shoeing. Alice does not know what to do.
She takes a deep breath and then, defeated, informs him, “I’m going home now.”
She turns toward the door.
“Ye luv me.”
The Hatter’s gruff accusation brings her up short.
Alice closes her eyes, willing her heart to be deaf, willing the pain to stay beyond reach just a bit longer, just until she’s back in her workshop in Whotchworks with her wily employer who will give her a plate of hot stew, and her spunky friend who will cheer her with rude limericks.
She challenges, “How would a man with a broken heart be able to know mine?”
The Hatter takes a step forward. “I feel it, Alice. Right down to my soles.”
Alice glances up as he rocks back on his heels, lifting the toes of his new boots. She stares at his feet as his words reverberate through her. “I feel it… Right down to my soles…”
Oh, God. She had made those boots for him with love. Cordwain had praised them, even: “A mahn’s lucky teh have anythin’ made with love…”
She’d crafted those shoes with love and the Hatter can feel it.
She has been caught, well and truly caught. There being no possibility of denial, Alice chooses to flee.
“Nay!” the Hatter hisses, leaping toward her and slamming the workshop door closed before she can reach it. “Nay,” he says again, his tone soft, low, and deeply mad. “I’ll no’ let ye leave me.”
Alice blinks, gapes, and then gets angry. “I fail to see how you can stop me, sir!”
He straightens, still blocking the exit, and explains as his green eyes shift past vermillion and into umber, “I’m bigger than ye, Alice.” With the quickness of a lightning strike, his hand darts out and clamps down on her forearm, avoiding the still-healing bruises on her wrist. “I’m heavier an’ stronger.”
She stares at him, shock robbing her of even her anger.
He leans closer. “I don’ wan’teh, bu’ I will figh’ for ye. I’ll figh’ ye if’n I mun.”
“Ridiculous,” she rallies. “You would never hurt me, not even in madness.” He had promised as much in his letter.
“Ye don’ understand,” he replies, his burning eyes seeking and searching, unnerving in their unblinking intensity. “I’m yer match, Alice. ‘Twas whot th’ twitterpation was showin’ us.”
Alice merely stares at him, her heart pounding in her throat.
“I’m yer match,” he repeats softly. “I cannae let ye leave me.”
“And yet you cannot love me,” she retorts, her fury slowing building and warming the chill that had begun to creep into her limbs. “Would you really be so cruel, Hatter? Would you?”
He seems to consider this. For a long moment, he says nothing. And then his mouth, set in a determined line, droops at the corners into a frown of regret. “If’n it meant keepin’ ye… aye, I would.”
Alice rears back, tugging her arm from his grasp. “Step away from the door.”
He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. He then slips the thimbles off of his fingertips and places them securely in one of his waistcoat pockets. All the while, his gaze remains fixed upon hers. “Alice,” he brogues thickly, “ye shall ha’e teh make me shift if’n ‘tis whot ye truly wan’.”
Her gaze drops from his eyes which burn from under the brim of his hat and fixes upon his hands which had just now dexterously stowed his thimbles for safe keeping. Her heart sinks as she acknowledges her undiminished desire for him. The vision of their future family is still a ghost in her mind, tormenting her with the very nature of their ephemeral quality and impossibility. Yes, she wants him, but she cannot have his love.
Really, she has no choice at all. Alice clenches her hands into fists and grits her teeth. Marshaling her determination, she heads for the door. “Move,” she orders him.
He doesn’t so much as twitch… until she places her hand on the door handle and pulls.
In the next instant, she’s struggling to catch her breath as the Hatter pushes her firmly up against the wall and crowds her there.
Oh, how she had wanted - wants! - him so close. Oh, how she had wanted - wants! - him to want her! But not like this.
“Stop!” she commands-orders-pleads, trying to wedge her arms between them so that she might gain some leverage.
He doesn’t relent, merely presses more insistently against her, trapping her, caging her. Thoroughly panicked now, Alice attacks the only way she can, the only way which will not destroy her own heart. “Would you twist my affections into hatred? Is that acceptable to you?”
Underland help her if it is. Underland help them both if there exists such darkness in him.
The Hatter blinks at her once, his eyes widening with shock. Their angry simmering abates with realization. At last, he seems to take note of the tears clumping Alice’s lashes and her struggles against him.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, stepping back. “I… I am so very sorry, Alice.”
The words, while they allow some small, huddled, fragile hope within her to be kindled, are not enough to keep her here. Acknowledging the apology with an abrupt nod, Alice turns away and once again reaches for the door.
The Hatter lunges for her, his long, strong fingers wrapping tightly around her arm. Startled, she looks back at him, her ire rising.
“Don’ leave me,” he growls.
The angry words die on her tongue at the sight of his face, of his eyes which are still burning with desperate urgency but not with madness that is no longer beyond control. She does not ask him why. Not with words. She is incapable of words at the sight of him looming over her, heat rising from his body and his scent slipping into her mind and whispering seductively. She tilts her chin up, issues the challenge in silence.
He answers it. A fine tremor runs down his entire body, from the top of his hat to the soles of his shoes. “I need ye.”
“Do you?” she rasps. “You have refused my affection, ignored my friendship for months, and just now you actually assaulted me.”
He nods slowly, his eyes still shifting and simmering, his every muscle is still tense as if he expects to have to fight her physically… again. In response to her accusations, he reaches for her hand although he does not release his grip on her arm. He softly interlaces their fingers as he lifts her hand and presses the back of it to his chest.
“’Tis true tha’ mae heart is broken. I need ye teh mend it f’r me.”
She studies his expression. Is that even possible? And could she really possess the means to mend his heart? Does she still want to? If he is not whole now, then what sort of man has she fallen in love with?
Don’t you want to know, Alice? Aren’t you curious?
Damn her endless curiosity, but she is. She does want to know him. She wants to see what sort of man lies beyond the façade of the Mad Hatter. She wants to meet Tarrant Hightopp.
But that doesn’t mean she’s going to make it easy for him. “You’ll have to give your heart to me before I can have any hope of repairing it.”
The breath he’d been holding escapes him in a soft whoosh. The tension evaporates from his shoulders and he sags, still clutching her hand as if he is alone in some very dark place and her touch is the only light in his world. Softly, he repeats the warnings in his letter, “There’s not much to be given. Jagged, charred, scattered pieces…”
Alice now holds her breath; they have arrived at the crux of the problem at last. She informs him with quiet strength, “You shall have to trust me. If you can.” And she will have to trust herself, trust that her skills will be sufficient to heal him.
But if she is somehow lacking…
The very thought terrifies her. She forcefully puts the thought out of her mind entirely. She will succeed because he needs her to. That is all there is to it.
His eyes drift closed. “I trust you, Alice,” he lisps. “If you will but lead me…” He opens his eyes and Alice feels herself swept away by the beautiful sea of green she sees in them. “I will follow.” His fingers uncurl from her arm and he turns her hand so that her palm is now resting flat against his chest. “Lead me, Alice?”
She swallows thickly, robbed of breath by his plea.
“I’ll follow ye Above,” he offers. “I’ll follow ye teh yer home if’n-”
“Above?” she repeats, blinking once in confusion. “Why would I go Above?”
The Hatter hesitates. “Just nauw, when ye spake o’ goin’ home, were ye no’ speaking o’ yer home, Alice?”
Alice closes her eyes and sighs out a weak chuckle. Now his extreme reaction to her departure makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Especially considering all of the people this man has lost before. He’d thought she was intending to leave Underland! And given how easily Hamish seems to depart, why, returning Above might have been as simple as opening the workshop door. It’s no wonder he’d barred her exit rather than risk watching her disappear into thin air.
“In all honesty,” she replies, opening her eyes and meeting his gaze, “the thought never crossed my mind.”
“Sae, yer home woul’ be…?”
“Whotchworks.” She gives him a half smile. “Of course.”
“Och, sa’e me,” he murmurs in prayer, lifting her hand and pressing his lips to her fingertips. “I’m sae sorry, Alice.” He repeats the whisper again and again until Alice takes the initiative. She slips her hand from his grasp and frames his face between her palms.
“Never do it again,” she tells him.
He nods slowly, watching her expression as her fingers move over his face, smoothing down his eyebrows, tracing the fine lines upon his pale and bloodless skin, brushing through the hair at the nape of his neck.
On a breath, the Hatter confesses, “It ne’er occurred teh me tha’ I’d wan’ mae heart teh b’ mended, bu’ I…” He swallows thickly. “I wan’ it, Alice. I wan’teh luv ye as ye deserve teh be.”
She wants that as well, but she can’t resist scolding him just a tiny bit: “A saganstitute man once told me that a thing is impossible only if you believe it is.”
“Alice,” he lisps, placing her hand once more upon his cheek and leaning into her touch with a sigh. “No matter how many voices there are, I always hear yours, and you call me back to myself. You help me remember the man I used to be. If I could be him again…”
“Hush,” she replies, hovering her other hand briefly over his lips. “Do not try to be him; simply be you.”
“With your assistance, Alice,” he vows.
“Which you have,” she replies solemnly.
The Hatter’s lips stretch into a tentative smile. Alice feels an answering grin tug at her own mouth. For a long moment, they merely share a smile between them and then…
And then something changes, something subtle but irreversible. The hue of his eyes deepens to a shade of evergreen and his gaze moves undeniably to her lips, which part in helpless reaction to his sensual focus.
He whispers, breathes her name, as he leans toward her. Her heart pounds; her lashes flutter closed; her hand upon his chest clutches his jacket lapel. Part of her wants to refuse this kiss - he does not love her and she will love him more than she can bear if he bridges the distance between them but she doesn’t think she has the strength of will to refuse herself this-!
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
She startles at the sound of someone pounding upon the workshop door.
“Alice!” she hears Hamish call frantically through the wood.
Before she can recover the equilibrium needed to step away from Tarrant Hightopp, the door slams open and Hamish lurches across the threshold fairly shouting, “Don’t read that blasted lett-! …oh.”
Alice bites her lip in response to Hamish’s wide-eyed stare. The Hatter still holds her hand intimately against his chest. Given their close proximity which must clearly indicate that Hamish had barged in on a rather private moment, she isn’t surprised to feel herself blush.
“I, ah, already read it, Hamish,” she replies in a tone that is embarrassingly breathless.
“Read what?” He blinks at her owlishly. Alice has never seen him so out of sorts. Nor has she ever seen such an obvious stain on his waistcoat. Had he just spilled tea all over himself?
Clearing her throat, she clarifies, “The letter. The Hatter’s letter.”
“And you’re…? And he’s…? Ah, right. Well done, then.” For a moment, it seems as if Hamish will merely pivot smartly and retreat. He turns back toward the door but then some thought pulls him up short. “No. No, blast it!” Facing her and the Hatter once again, he declares, “No, I cannot in all good conscience leave you to it! Why, what would people say about you carrying on with a man who’s not even your fiancé!”
“Alice can speak for herself,” the Hatter points out somewhat unhelpfully.
Hamish makes an odd, growling sound.
“Calm down,” Alice orders him. “I don’t care what people will say! If I want to-to-” Actually, Alice isn’t sure what she and the Hatter are doing… or about to do. Well, that sort of uncertainty is hardly going to get Hamish to mind his own business! And he most certainly should mind his own business: she’s a grown woman, fully capable of making her own decisions about her life! Alice casts about for an assertion of adequate panache. “If I want to futterwhacken, I will!”
Hamish blinks. “Futter whack?” he repeats slowly. “Is that the current euphemism?”
It belatedly occurs to Alice that her words had not come out the way she’d intended for them to be heard. Feeling heat rising in her face, Alice attempts nonetheless to make a full recovery, “It’s just a dance!” Oh, botheration. That doesn’t sound much better.
And if Hamish’s silently raised brows are any indication, he doesn’t think so, either.
Still faced with only the barest of certainties - which is that she will stay in Underland and she will be with the Hatter somewhere - Alice strives to speak abstractly, “Um, I mean, we’re in this particular position-” That’s hardly and improvement, Alice! “-er, at this particular juncture-” Oh, damnation! Alice squeezes her eyes shut briefly in an effort to focus. “Er, in this stage of the proceedings… uh…”
The Hatter’s bandaged fingers move over the back of her hand in a caress that he’d probably intended to be supportive. Unfortunately, it only robs her mind of every single solitary thought it possesses. Including tactful attempts at abstraction.
*~*~*~*
“Marriage proposals aren’t necessary for this sort of thing!” Alice eventually blurts out and then promptly blushes so magnificently that Hamish fears she’s on the verge of an apoplexy.
Hamish can only hope that his own too-warm face is not as bright as hers. He wills her to simply shut up with every fiber of his being. In fact, he probably would have been carried away by the same wave of mortification which makes her close her eyes and sway on her feet with shame except Tarrant Hightopp’s expression catches Hamish’s eye.
The man’s wild and screamingly orange brows twitch together in response to some terrible thought or other. “Marriage, an un-necessity?” he whispers in a distraught tone. “But that would mean…!”
“That would mean,” Hamish hurriedly attempts to interject, saving the lot of them from expiring from sheer awkwardness, “that a man mustn’t rush things. Rather, in time, he will demonstrate his financial stability and contentious commitment toward so momentous an enterprise as family, hearth, and home. I am sure,” Hamish concludes with a pointed glare at the Hatter, “that although the customs may be different here that the spirit of the practice is identical.”
“Hamish, stop lecturing us,” Alice says, somewhat recovered from her mortification and her tone equally balanced with exasperation and amusement.
“I believe he was lecturing me,” the Hatter differs, grinning broadly.
Hamish doesn’t deny it. “Hm, yes, well. So long as we understand one another, Hightopp.”
“As well as we ever do,” the man replies with maddening vagueness.
Opening his mouth in order to share a smart retort to that, Hamish chokes instead when a familiar, feminine voice muses from the corridor, “Have you successfully located the contents of your jacket pocket, Sir Hamish?”
He turns and regards Mirana’s patient (and patently amused) smile. “Ug, um, yes. Quite.”
“Excellent!” The queen then gently places her hand upon Hamish’s arm, which twitches embarrassingly. Damn this sudden case of nerves in her presence! Whatever has come over him? If these bizarre seizures continue, he shall have to consult a physician!
“Ah, Alice, Hatter,” the queen sighs happily, seeing their still-joined hands, the Hatter’s ceremonial dress, and Alice’s pristine tunic and breeches. “Will it be a handfasting, then? A wise choice. We mustn’t rush things where the heart is concerned.”
“A… a handfasting?” Alice sputters, staring at the queen and completely missing the euphoric expression on the Hatter’s face. For which Hamish is seriously considering throttling him.
“Oh, yes,” the queen continues. “The only way to build a home is from the ground up, as they say.”
Hamish opens his mouth to protest but, just then, the queen’s hand slides up and then under his arm in a sensual motion. She draws herself nearer to him until the edge of her bodice nearly brushes his elbow. His protestations scatter.
Alice seems immobilized with shock. Her eyes are still wide and expression blank as the Hatter gently nudges her chin up with his battered fingertips so that he can meet her gaze.
That task accomplished, he reaches for her hand again. “Will ye give me th’ gift o’ a year an’ a day wi’ ye?”
Her response seems to be a tiny, strangled squeak, muffled in the back of her throat.
The Hatter brushes his thumbs over her captured hands. “Will ye let me show ye tha’ I’m a gehd match f’r ye, Alice?”
“But… your heart,” she finally - weakly - protests.
“Once it’s healed, ‘twill b’ yers,” he swears.
Silence stretches in the hat workshop as Alice considers this. Hamish glances toward the hat stands, wishing even one were within reach so that he might pitch it at the Hatter and break the power that the blasted man seems to wield over Alice. Forcing himself to ignore Mirana’s luminous presence at his side, Hamish blurts, “Think carefully, Alice, please. Are you fully prepared for this sort of thing?”
“But that’s the beauty of it,” Mirana points out graciously. “Neither of them are. They must make a new path - a path for two - and such journeys are rarely undertaken with full preparation and foresight.” The White Queen turns toward Alice and the Hatter. “Alice, my former champion, do you understand that this will not be easy? However, if you accept, you will be guaranteed a year and a day to get it right.”
“And… at the end?” she asks brazenly.
Mirana doesn’t flinch at the delicate topic. “If there are no children, if the house is in disrepair and its occupants ambivalent, then no one will speak of the handfasting again. But I wouldn’t worry,” the queen continues, smiling wistfully, “twitterpation has never been wrong.”
Hamish draws in a breath, endeavoring to be the voice of reason in this mad kerfuffle.
“I accept,” Alice says softly but with confidence. She looks into the Hatter’s bright green eyes and repeats, “I accept a handfasting with you, Tarrant Hightopp.”
“I shall provide you with the best of which I am capable, Alice Alishin, for a year and a day… and longer if you permit it,” he vows, raising her hands to his lips and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
At Hamish’s side, the queen produces a perfectly white handkerchief and dabs at her misty eyes. Hamish, perhaps inappropriately, despairs at not having a freshly laundered and monogrammed square of linen to offer her. But, however!
Hardening his resolve, Hamish returns his attention to the utter mess Alice has just made of her life. A handfasting, indeed!
“I trust,” the Hatter continues in the same deliberately clear and well-enunciated tone, quirking a mangy brow in Hamish’s direction, “that this will satisfy the conditions you laid out in your lecture?”
Hamish swallows back an oath. How could things have backfired so badly? But then he recalls: this is Underland. Utter backwardness is rather the norm here.
“Alice?” Hamish tries one last time.
“I want this, Hamish,” she informs him with quiet confidence.
Blast! Well, that only leaves him one avenue left. He takes it:
“Hightopp, you will do right by her or, I swear by all that’s holy, I’ll hunt you down and-”
“Thank you, Hamish,” Alice speaks over him.
“And you,” he continues, “ought to have known better than to agree to… this.”
She arches her brows haughtily in answer to his challenge. “Says the man in denial of the fact that he’s all a-twitter.”
“I most certainly am-”
“Not ready to think about it,” Mirana smoothly interjects, rubbing his arm beneath her hand protectively. “Which is just as well. We haven’t finished our battenburg yet. Shall we, Sir Hamish?”
As she gestures toward the door, the handkerchief held in her pale hand flutters free from her grasp. Hamish reflexively and mindlessly dives for it as it tumbles beneath the Hatter’s worktable.
“Ah, here we are, Mirana,” he says, standing once again. He turns and blinks at the sight of his butler standing in the doorway to his room. Hamish startles.
The butler merely holds out his hat, walking stick, and raincoat. “Will you still be going out, sir?”
For a moment, Hamish chokes on a tangle of painful emotions in his chest. Just a moment ago, he’d been in Underland. Mirana had been leaning upon his arm, driving him to distraction. Alice had entered a virtue-compromising handfasting with Tarrant Hightopp. Just a moment ago, he’d had far more important things to deal with than meetings and traders’ work and other assorted business.
Hamish stares at the handkerchief in his hands for a long moment before he finds himself concluding that it had all really happened. He’d just spent the last day and a half (and not just an hour!) in Underland on a quest to rescue Alice… and, all the while, hardly more than a moment had passed here in his absence.
“Impossible,” he mutters, stunned.
Some part of him, however, which has begun to take on a few of Alice’s more unconventional qualities, whispers cheekily that nothing is impossible… so long as you believe.
Perhaps, Hamish allows, he is ready to do that now. Yes, he decides, gently folding up the White Queen’s favor and placing it in his jacket breast pocket, it is time to believe that Underland is, in fact, both real and utterly impossible.