I smiled at him, my lips so tight that they burned against my teeth. It was such a forced expression, so inhuman that I could barely understand how I had managed it in the first place, but I had to let him know that I was willing to drop the whole thing. I was willing to forget what he had already done if it meant that his eyes would fade back to green and he would be his normal Hatter self again.

"Yer just like her," he spat, swiping the teacup off the table with one flick of his hand. I flinched once, and then looked away, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. What was it that Margaret had said about how she could forgive Lowell when he came in angry and drunk every evening? He was, what, scarred?

Yes. Tarrant was scarred. The war, the loss of his family, waiting so long for me; life's every storm had taken a piece from his mind, and now he was this. Not a monster, not a horrible person like most would believe should they find themselves in my place, but instead someone who had been to hell and back. He had seen too much, and now he had lost part of himself in the darkness.

"I'm not, Hatter," I pleaded, slowly edging my hand over the tablecloth towards the place where his fist rested. He was silent as my fingers met his and then crept up his forearm and yet I couldn't work up the courage to open my eyes. I was too afraid to see what color his would be. "I'm Alice. Your Alice."

It was then that he grabbed my arm with his other hand and yanked it up so hard that I was lifted from my chair. I yelped in pain and surprise as he slung me over the table and leveled his face so that I had no choice but to stare directly into the eyes that I had been so purposely avoiding.

"Yer a wench," he growled. "Ah frumious wench and I wahnt nething teh do wit ye."

It was then that the fist that had once rested on the table came in contact with my mouth. I tried to scream, but the sound was caught in my throat and he just continued to hit me again and again in the face until I couldn't see anymore. I was glad for this. I didn't want to know what he was doing to me.

I blacked out before he was finished. Mirana discovered me a few hours later on the table, bloodied and dirtied, with Hatter nowhere to be found.

"No more of this, my child," she choked, wiping my face with her handkerchief before holding my head against her shoulder. Her skin was soft and smelled of lye soap while her hair smelled like honey and lavender. "I can't bear to find you like this again."

I couldn't speak then, but we both knew what I would have said.

This wouldn't be the last time.

I loved him.

He loved me.

And everything could be blamed on scars.