Part Two: Hatter

There are times in a person's life when they meet certain people who will change them forever. Sometimes this change is not good. Sometimes it's really really bad. But other times this change is the best you could ever hope for. And then there are the times where you aren't sure if you should be happy you met them or insanely pissed off.

David was on his first solo job. He was fourteen and armed to the teeth. His target was a man who supposedly smuggled goods to the Resistance. His name was Valor.

He found Valor in one of the older abandoned buildings of the city. He was scruffy, looked like he hadn't bathed in over a month, and David wondered how this man was a threat to anyone. However, he was ordered to kill him, so he did; shot him with a long range gun down a hallway only twenty feet long. Valor hit the wall and went down with barely a sound.

Just as he lowered his gun, clapping sounded from behind him. David flipped to face the new enemy and pointed his gun. The end of the gun touched the man's green vest and he stopped clapping, simply holding his hands up near his head. He had scraggly white hair that poked out to the sides from underneath a ludicrously colored top hat.

"Good job," the man complimented him. He nodded to the wall to his left. "Put the gun down and take a seat."

David told himself it was the authority in the man's voice that made him do it, but he did it none the less. The man knelt before him, examining his face.

"How long?" he asked.

"How long what?" David countered.

"How long have you been on the Queen's bottled lifestyle? And tell the truth," he asked like he was commenting on the weather.

David bristled a bit. "I don't drink that stuff. Just because I work for the Queen doesn't mean I drink my emotions." Actually, David didn't think he had too many emotions to feel, and maybe that was why he didn't drink them: he was afraid of what it would be like to feel something besides the lingering peace that pervaded his life.

The strange man tilted his head a bit to the right, his eyes never leaving David's face. "Then I suppose….your brother," he stated almost cautiously, "is the one feeding it to you, under the radar. Such a terrible thing to do to family…"

"Brother?" David asked tensely, trying not to give away that the mad man before him had guessed right. Was he was spy? For who?

Instead of answering, the man pushed himself to his feet and took two steps back down the hall where he'd come from. "I suppose that will have to be remedied, then." He turned to face David again. "Try not to drink anything tonight. At least nothing anyone else gives you. If you believe me then, come calling for Hatter at the Tea House in the morning."

David frowned. "Believe you? Believe what?" he called, even as the strange man vanished around the corner. David jumped up and ran around the corner after him, but the man was gone, as was typical of Wonderland. You can never find someone when you really need to, or that was David's idea at least. "He's mad," he told himself. "Totally mad, like March."

The thought of his brother brought back in stark life what the man had told him. Could March be slipping him emotions? Why? Which ones? Since when? He'd never noticed a change in his behavior, never felt a spike of some emotion.

No. Obviously the man was simply mad and that was all there was to it.

Still, David found himself almost six hours later having not drank even a drop of water to quench his thirst. March handed him a bottle of water when he got back from his own job that night, but David poured it down the drain in the men's room, rinsed it out, and refilled it with tap water. He had no idea why he was even considering that his own brother would slip him some sort of emotion, but his natural Wonderland curiosity had him dying to find out the truth. For the first time, he noticed March watching him as he drank the water, and it only made what the man in the hallway – Hatter – said seem more plausible.

March ordered him to bed early that night and David almost told him no, but kept silent and did as he was told. There was a quivering in his body, a shaking of his core. His insides felt like they were moving. Lying in bed, David couldn't shut his eyes. Every time he blinked he saw the faces of the people he'd killed, the crooked glass smile of March's, the fire that took his parents from him. He was beginning to panic. He'd never panicked before, but he'd seen some of the other younger kids panic when they made their first kill or they were wounded or scared. He'd tried to imagine what panic felt like at the time, and now he knew.

He had to get out of here.

Eight years of near constant training were probably the only reason he got out of the base and through the city without being caught. He found the Tea House easily: it was a well known place, where everyone came to buy their 'Tea', their bottled emotions. David had never been to it before. It was late at night and no one was in the front room, but David couldn't wait until morning to call. He tried the handles of every door he could find. Any that didn't open, he knocked. Then he turned a handle and the door opened.

Inside was a strange room. It was white with lots of light that made everything seem brighter. Half of the room was the gray stone of the rest of the building, half of the room was covered in lush green grass. There was a table in the middle of the grass, covered in a table cloth as ludicrous as Hatter's top hat had been. There were twelve seats at the table, and each one had a cup placed in front of it, and there were several tea pots along the center of the table with steam coming out, indicating freshly brewed tea.

Only one seat was occupied and it wasn't facing him. David knew it was Hatter because of the tall hat protruding over the back of the purple chair.

"Would you like a cup of tea, David?" the man asked jovially.

"H-how did you-" David stuttered out. He felt all out of sorts with himself and shaky.

The purple chair spun, surprising David who didn't think a chair like that could turn at all, and David was brought face to face with the mad from the hallway once more. "You're a special one, David," he practically crowed, standing while holding a cup of tea halfway to his lips. "I knew you'd listen to me, all that obedience and whatnot spinning through your veins, and that unmatched curiosity swirling about your head." He took a long, loud sip of his tea and turned to set the cup on the table before motioning grandly for David to come to him. "Come come, haven't got all day – or I suppose we do, but either way, I never liked that saying anyhow. Tell me how you're feeling."

David took one hesitant step forward, and then he practically ran the rest of the space between him and Hatter. "I'm just-" he stopped abruptly. "I feel-" he stopped again.

Hatter gazed at him in an understanding way. "How about this? What is the last thing you remember feeling? And we'll build from there."

David's mind flashed back to when he was six and watching the fire consume his house. His parents were dead. His toys and clothes and books and everything were destroyed and his parents had burned with them. He was alone with March. He was an orphan. He'd lost his family; mother, father.

Grief consumed him. The tears sprung to his eyes and all strength left his legs. He dropped to the ground, laying almost on his stomach in the grass, and held the blades between his fingers in a terrible grip. Sobs ripped through him painfully and he couldn't stop, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop.

"M-m-m-mo….," he half-breathed out, but couldn't finish. "F-fa-" he cut himself off with another sob that ended in a pitiful whine.

Hatter was at his side, a hand on his back rubbing up and down comfortingly, while his other gently pushed David's hair behind his ear so Hatter could see his face better. For some time, he just sat there and let David cry, rubbing his back comfortingly in silence. When the sobs were nearly gone, he spoke up.

"How about some tea?"

David drank probably his own body weight in teas of all kinds, and then fell asleep on Hatter's couch. When he woke up, he had to pee really bad, and he felt as bad as a rejected Jubjub bird, what with his head pounding and his body aching and his heart screaming and all. After breakfast with Hatter at his strange tea covered table, David came to the decision that would alter his fate.

"I'm not going back there. I'm staying with you."

Hatter took his declaration in stride, accepting him and making his own declaration. "And I will keep and teach you as long as you stay in all that I know; especially my love for tea."

Hatter, it turned out, was truly quite mad, just as David thought him to be. But it's in a different sort of mad manner than March turned out to be. David liked Hatter's madness. He once told Hatter he was mad and Hatter responded "That may be so, but I'll let you in on a secret I was told long ago by a girl named Alice. All the best people are. And you, David, are as mad as any Hatter."

Hatter loved David's name and he used it as often as he could when they were alone. However mad he may be, Hatter was also devious and scheming. He called David only 'Tea' when they were among strangers, even strangers Hatter had known for years, like Dodo, who visited the Tea House every other Tuesday to let Hatter know how the Resistance was going.

That's another thing David learned shortly after coming to live with Hatter: Hatter was in league with the Resistance. He took David with him wherever he went, and many of those places were Resistance houses. David met refugees and made connections with those in the underground through his new mentor. He learned the art of giving bribes, and even how to accept them if the situation arose. Hatter technically worked for the Queen, but he never met the woman. He accepted her "Teas" and sold them and ran the Tea House, but that was as far as they went.

When they sat together after dinner, Hatter giving David another lesson on the proper way of making real tea, he told David that he worked with the Resistance because he missed the old days. He missed the days where he was a hatter and was free to make hats all day long to his heart's content. Above all else, even tea, Hatter loved making hats. He made David all manner of hats and David wore them no matter how absurd they were, because Hatter gave David back his soul and he would do anything for the older man.

It was through Hatter that David learned of the Alice of Legend, a little girl who caused the last revolution and gave Wonderland to the knights, who ruled it for a thousand years(1). Then David would protest that there was no way Hatter could have known that Alice, because no one, not even those of Wonderland, lived to be that old.

And Hatter would give him a secretive smile, his eyes would twinkle, and he'd say "There is always a way, David. Remember that."

David loved Hatter's clothes. He'd lived for eight years around men and women who wore all black and dark colors, and were ready for murder at any time. He'd lived around Suits. Hatter wore long yellow jackets with pink bow ties and white shirts with polka dotted pants and a green hat. He had suits of every color in every style for every occasion. He made David jackets of all lengths from any fabric he got his hands on. And while Hatter had a strange style, he made sure he looked his best when he left for any place, even if that place were the breakfast table.

David mixed Hatter's style with that of his father and that of the Suits and came up with the look he'd wear for the rest of his life: strangely designed shirts, dark pants, a badly tied tie of any color, and a matching hat and jacket. Had to have the jacket. Had to have the hat. No outfit was complete without them.

They nearly got caught helping the Resistance by the Suits when David was seventeen. Once safe back in the Tea House and with Hatter talking his way out of any suspicion, Hatter sat David down at his strange, tea covered table and settled him with the most serious look David had ever seen on Hatter's face.

"Red King forbid it, but David…if you ever get caught by the Queen of Hearts, don't tell them anything. They may hurt you for keeping silent, but they will kill you if you talk, and they will kill anyone you mention too."

David nodded. "I know. I used to work for them," he reminded the Mad Hatter.

Hatter nodded his head too in mimic of David. "Let me tell you a riddle, David," he began in a light voice, leaning back in his chair. "It's helped me out of many a sticky situation. If you ever get caught, I think you must use it against the Queen's men. Think of the look on their faces," he mused gleefully. He shook his head to clear it and picked up a cup of tea. "It was an argument my friend Hare and I had many a years ago, before Alice came to Wonderland."

He stopped and David sat silently, waiting. Hatter did this often: starting a conversation and then going off in his own mind. David had learned to just wait it out, because eventually the old coot would remember he'd been talking.

After only a few seconds, Hatter sat up straighter in his chair and blinked hard. Without preamble he said, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

"Huh?" David let out, his eyebrows lifting.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Hatter repeated easily, with a blissful smile and an easy nod of his head. "The clockwork's not ticking properly. There must be crumbs in the butter."

"That doesn't make any sense," David protested half-heartedly.

Hatter grinned. "Why, David, that is exactly the point. If you confuse yourself, you confuse your captors all the more."

David had hoped he never had to use the Hatter's riddles. He should've known hoping doesn't do you any good.

The world ended for the second time when David was eighteen.

They hadn't even gone anywhere. David and Hatter were at Hatter's house, next to the Tea House, enjoying a simple day off. David was making the tea that day, proving to Hatter he could make it just as well as Hatter could.

"My dear boy, I do believe you are right!" Hatter exclaimed after his first sip.

David smiled widely. He'd done it!

"If ever I retire," Hatter continued jovially, "You must become my replacement! You are simply amazing!"

This really had nothing to do with David making good tea, since Hatter's profession was in the selling of emotions, and while they were called 'Teas' by some, it was nothing similar at all.

Then the door burst open and in marched Mad March, in a dark blue suit with a white undershirt. David had barely turned to face the door when a knife went whizzing past his left ear. He heard the knife slice through cloth and skin, the grunt of pain from Hatter's mouth, and the shattering of porcelain and the splashing of tea on the ground. David spun back around in time to see Hatter hit the grass floor.

"No," he breathed out, and he felt his heart crack in a way he had not felt since the day he remembered to feel.

Hatter left the knife in his chest even as he made to stand back up again, his eyes wide with pain and effort. Already his pink shirt was turning dark with blood. A short 'bang!' shot through the room and David flinched even as Hatter's body shook and more blood shot from his chest into his shirt, nearer his heart this time. David watched in mute horror as Hatter fell back to the ground…and didn't get back up.

For several seconds no one moved and there was barely a breath in the air. Then March came to stand by David's side. He held the gun in his right hand, and he wrapped his left hand around David's left arm.

"David, let's go," he said calmly, his voice holding an accent it didn't have four years ago. "The Resistance swine is dead, so you can come back to the Suits with me now."

He tugged on David's arm a bit, turning his brother around, and began walking him towards the door. David felt numb. So many emotions were swirling under his skin that he couldn't focus on one single one or he'd go mad.

Mad.

Mad like March.

Mad like Hatter.

"That may be so, but I'll let you in on a secret I was told long ago by a girl named Alice. All the best people are. And you, David, are as mad as any Hatter."

Fire erupted in David's body, like the fire that consumed his family. Even March was taken in that fire, he realized. Or perhaps he'd been gone before the blaze took over. But now it burnt in David's heart, his soul, consuming him and drowning him like perhaps only a Wonderland fire could do.

"March!" he shouted, twisting in his brother's grip and throwing his right fist towards his older brother's face as hard as he could. It connected solidly, since March hadn't known it was coming, and David almost took pleasure in the cracking and snapping he both heard and felt in his brother's face.

March went tumbling backwards over his own feet and hit the ground hard enough to dent the floor. His face was crumpled and disfigured, but he was still staring at David in shock. "W-why…D-dav-vid?" he managed.

David grabbed March's gun from his right hand and pointed it at his brother's chest. He glared harder than he could ever remember glaring, the fire still burning him through. "My name isn't David, Mad March," he spat the name out. "It's Hatter. And we aren't brothers anymore."

Without another second's waste, David emptied the rest of the bullets into March's chest.

He dragged the body out of the Tea House and dropped it over the side of the walkway, then cleaned up the trail before going back to Hatter's room. He stopped breathing again at the sight of his mentor's body still lying by the table, broken tea cup on the side. David stepped slowly, almost hesitantly over to Hatter's body and fell to his knees at his side.

The shadows were already cold. His fingers brushed Hatter's cooling cheek and recoiled, finding rest instead on the lapels of Hatter's purple jacket. The warmth of tears burned streaks down David's cheeks.

"Hatter," he half-sobbed out. "I'm sorry." He bowed his head, his fingers clenching in the smooth fabric beneath his fingers. "I'm so sorry." He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself even as the tears multiplied and his face turned red. "You were like a father to me…..You were Mad, the Mad Hatter….but you were the best." David rested his forehead on Hatter's left shoulder, his tears catching in the threads there. "You were the best."

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there like that, crying into Hatter's cold shoulder. He stayed until all his tears were gone, putting out the fire that had threatened to destroy him from the inside. When he finally pulled away, David was dead. A new Hatter was in his place. And like the old Hatter, this new one would help the Resistance: because he knew how the Teas were wrong and he knew how the Queen was destroying Wonderland, and because he knew the Mad Hatter would be so happy to see Wonderland the way it had been before….when Alice of Legend fell through the Looking Glass and Hatter made hats for the royal family. When people were free.

He made a deal with the Queen of Hearts and took up the Mad Hatter's place amongst the Resistance. The Queen trusted him because he was an old Suit. The Resistance trusted him because of the old Hatter. He smuggled food and artifacts to the Great Library. He sold Teas to the poor, deluded people of Wonderland. He helped cause mischief for the raiding parties heading to or from the Looking Glass. He helped anyone who asked, but only gave half an ear to the Suits and the Queen. He played both sides of the court.

And he never wanted for much more than compliance from his contacts, save for a good hat or a nice jacket, until that day almost four years later…when a Rat brought him a girl in a wet dress named Alice, and he thought she was the most beautiful girl in any world.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

...

...

(1) - In the movie, Hatter says the events of the Alice of Legend happened over 150 years ago, but they also said that before the Queen took over, the knights rules Wonderland and there was peace for a thousand years. So I made the Alice of Legend happen over a thousand years ago.

That's the end.