Disclaimer: None of the characters in this chapter are mine. They all belong to the Syfy Channel (I hate the new spelling of that...). The story of Alice, also belongs to said channel, as well as anything that might remotely look like a good idea. Well, that's not entirely true, I have good ideas sometimes. And of course to Lewis Carroll for creating an Alice that we could follow through the Looking Glass, even all these years later.

Meeting Mom

It was probably a good thing, Hatter mused, that he had been able to talk to Carol before Alice woke up at the hospital. He had been able to tell her that his name was David Hatter, just incase Alice ever felt the urge to call him by his nickname.

Yes, people called him "Hatter" but it wasn't really his name at all. David, sadly was. His mother had been an avid gossip, and her favorite topic had been the Heart family. When they named their son "Jack" (a terribly Oyster name in his opinion) she had decided that an Oyster name would be best for her expected child as well.

But who cared about a name anyway? At least that's what he thought.

Carol apparently cared. The fact that his name was not Jack Chase and he was not the terribly (or just revoltingly) handsome man that she had met just hours before who had proposed to her little girl meant that Carol cared a great deal.

After that first, wonderful kiss, Carol almost refused to look at him. She was polite enough when they spoke, but it was Alice who carried the conversation.

"Hatter…umm… I mean David, went to school with Jack." Alice mumbled. Her mother simply was not going to buy the fact that she had thrown herself into some random construction worker's arms. Alice's eyes drifted back to Hatter. She hadn't known that his hair was capable of laying flat, instead of flying out under the brim of his hat. Blearily she wondered where exactly his hat was…

"Yeah, Jack's a great guy. Made the mistake of introducing me to Alice though." Hatter grinned widely at Carol, who did not seem to be buying a word that either of them were saying. Well, he had just basically implied that he had the hots for her daughter while she was supposedly with another man (true) and that it was Jack's fault that they had met (also true, but with a slight spin on things). A man simply did not play against both the Suits and the Resistance by telling the absolute truth, now did he?

He noticed Alice's eyes start to glaze over. That girl had been busy. Saving Wonderland had not been an easy task, even if it was not exactly what she had set out to do. She had lost her father again… Hatter started to wonder if this really was the right time to try to be getting into a relationship with her. After all, she had just turned down Jack's proposal, twice if what he heard was correct.

He wanted to be prudent, wise… alright, he wanted to kiss her so hard that her mother ran from the room to find something large to hit him with, but that didn't mean he would do it.

"Umm… I think I had better go." Hatter had the feeling that at this point it was Carol who was thinking: Finally!

He extracted himself with little effort from the Hamilton household. Alice really was too tired to fight against his retreat. Frankly, he was a bit surprised that she had greeted him with so much energy after the shape in which he had found her laying beside the Looking Glass.

He walked back to the construction sight and pulled a blanket over himself. At least he had had the foresight to pack for his trip to win Alice's heart. Now if only he had taken her strange money when she had offered it…

Hatter fell asleep dreaming of a young girl wearing a pretty blue dress and following a strangely colored cat through a forest.

Alice woke up in her own room, not a hospital or in Charlie's strange white cast iron bed. She felt sheets under her body that were not covered with leaves. Her pillow smelled like the detergent that she and her mother had used for years. She was back to worrying that it had all been a dream. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland lay on the nightstand beside her bed, challenging her to think that it had all been a dream. But certainly the Alice in the story had never woken up from having a distinctly not childish dream about the Mad Hatter.

She stretched, her body aching in a thousand different places, just in case she needed to be reassured that she had not imagined her trip to Wonderland. Who could have dreamed anything so strange anyway?

Alice got up and made her way into the bathroom, excited for the simple pleasure of having a shower to start off the day. Her visit to Wonderland hadn't been so bad, except for no showers, Jabberwocks, a crazy queen, an entire city with random drop offs… ok, Wonderland had been a bit too much. But there were some parts of it she absolutely liked; such as the idea that she might soon be getting another kiss from a certain "David" Hatter.

A note on the bathroom mirror reminded her of the doctor's orders that she was not to teach any karate classes for at least the next two days. The extra money would have been nice, but tracking down Hatter would be even better.

During her shower, she planned what she was going to do. Hatter couldn't have gone far the night before. Why hadn't she thought to tell her mother he should stay? Because Carol had so obviously been mystified as to why her daughter who could have married Jack Chase (Heart, Alice amended) could move on so quickly to a kind, if scruffy construction worker. Alice laughed outright at the idea of Hatter working construction. His hat may have been yellow, but it was definitely not a hard hat.

Construction… that sparked her memory. Hatter had posed as a construction worker to explain why he had found her and brought her to the hospital. (Thank goodness that hospitals existed in both worlds.) He was probably somewhere near the Looking Glass, or back through the Looking Glass. Maybe her world hadn't been what he expected. Maybe the novelty of kissing an Oyster extended to any Oyster. No, this was the type of thinking that had caused to run away from men before (a lot).

She dressed quickly, carefully choosing not to wear blue. Maybe red, or tan, Hatter seemed to like those colors, or maybe she was just judging that from his clothes. She realized just how little she knew about him. She probably knew more truth about Jack than she did about Hatter. But that hardly mattered.

Alice slid into a pair of jeans and a green t-shirt. Finally, freedom of movement. She sighed. It would be nice to not have to run all over a country being chased or fighting. She would have plenty of time to get to know Hatter if everything went well in the next couple of days.

Finding out which construction sight the Looking Glass was at proved trickier. There were seven within just a few blocks of her apartment. Running after Agent White had not given her much opportunity to check for directions in her original mad dash to save Jack.

AN:

Leave it to Syfy to create a batch of characters that I can't possibly leave to their own devices. Nope, too much meddling to be done here. So, time to work on a multi-part fic and hope that everything goes well. I am a firm Alice/Hatter shipper so, I just had to see where their relationship might go.

Any questions, ideas for the story, comments, or fan-talk about the show? There is a review button for a reason.