Update 6/15/2016: With the Alice sequel out, there has been a resurgence of interest in this story, so I went back and did some editing. Not much, just fixed some typos.

Author's Note: I tried to keep the brogue to a minimum. Scottish dialect is a hell of a accent to try to read. But I guess technically Hatter is Speaking Outlandish so it can be a little different. Enjoy.

Muchmoreness

He thinks of Alice in ways he should not be thinking about Alice.

He dreams, and in his dreams he is doing all the things He Should Not Be Thinking About Doing to Alice. She doesn't want him to, but he does them anyway. And he laughs, laughs, that high, mad laugh that isn't really him when she asks - pleads - with him to stop.

But he doesn't stop, and he keeps laughing.

When he wakes he is not laughing. He's afraid. Afraid of his mind and these thoughts. Thoughts that started the first time he saw Alice as Right Proper Sized Alice.

He gets out of bed and goes to his workroom hoping hats will curb his Should Not Be Thinking About Alice thoughts.

She comes to visit. Thackery and Maly are out at the perpetually set tea table conversing with Right Proper Sized Alice. He can see her through the window of his house, but doesn't go out.

He can hear them talking. They're worried about him. They wonder if perhaps he is sick. He laughs and it is a low, mirthless sound, because he is sick, just now how they think.

The next time she comes, she knocks on his door. He gruffly tells her to "Go away" using as few words as possible to hide the brogue that always slips through whenever he feels a strong emotion.

She doesn't leave. She calls his name. No, she calls him Hatter. That is not his name.

He wants to tell her to leave. His workroom is no place to have a Proper Sized Alice about, with too many surfaces on which one could place a Proper Sized Alice. Too much room where he could fit between the legs of a Proper Sized Alice.

He's been with women before, but that was when he was much younger. And much less mad. But even in his madness he's never had thoughts like these before. But then again Underland is short on Proper Sized Alices. Or Proper Sized Women of any sort. But he doesn't think these things simply because she is a Proper Sized Woman, but because she is Alice.

He remembers his dreams and feels ill, physically and mentally. But then his mind is racing because there is no one there to stop it and he can't stop it himself.

"Hatter?" Alice calls again from the other side of the door.

He feels pain and realizes he's cut himself with a pair of shears, gripping them too tightly. Another scar for his already scarred hand.

"I'm fine," he says tightly, hoping today her Muchness is much less muchier than usual and she will simply leave.

She doesn't. She never does because she is Alice and her Muchness is part of the reason why he dreams of smothering her Muchness with his Muchmoreness.

No, with his Madness.

But today she has much Muchness and she doesn't leave. She opens the door and comes inside uninvited.

His back is to the door, to her. He doesn't turn around because he's unsure what color his eyes will be.

"Please, lass, jist goh," his Outlandish brogue has slipped through, but it can't be helped.

"What's wrong Hatter?" She comes a little closer. She isn't afraid of him like some of the Queen's courtiers are. They've become friends since her return to Underland. This is the second time he's been missing at tea and his absence worries her.

A shiver runs through him at the sound of her voice. It isn't desire, but fear. Fear that the desire will soon follow.

"Hatter?" She's at his arm now, hand hovering over this elbow, unsure if she should lay her hands on him. She isn't afraid, just uncertain if their friendships is the kind where they freely touch one another. Alice has always kept herself apart, even from her friends.

He turns his face away and doesn't trust himself to speak, afraid he'll hear his own maniacal laughter erupt from his throat. He makes a vague, strangled noise when she does touch his arm. Her Muchness is Too Much for him today. He's feeling more mad than usual, having woken in the middle of the night from another dream. He flinches away from her as his mind remembers her crying and his laughing.

"Alice," he starts, but stops. What can he say? He's rarely at a loss for words, but today they seems to have fled from him, they way he wishes she would. "Tedae is nae a guid day fur a visit," nor any other day ever again if he can't get control of himself.

She's looking at her hand. The hand that had been on his sleeve until he moved away from her. Perhaps they are not the type of friends who touch one another casually. It had been nice to touch him.

She's not tall compared to him. Her eyes don't quite come up to his chin, but she tilts her head, trying to look into his face. His mad, wonderfully expressive face. She knows he's hiding from her.

"Tarrant?"

He looks at her without meaning to. She's never called him by his proper name. Until this moment he wasn't sure she knew it. Her eyes widen and he thinks he must look frightful.

She doesn't listen, just like she doesn't leave. He's trying to protect her from himself. From the madness. But she just won't listen. A sudden, harsh anger over takes him.

"Ye wee bloody fool! Ah told ye ta git outta mah sight." He turns the full fury of his yellow, darkened eyes on her hoping it will scare her away. He's on the ragged edge of his slim margin of sanity.

Then she does something extraordinary, but very ordinarily Alice. Rather than stepping away, she comes closer. Not frightened, but fascinated. She only has a moment to contemplate the sudden intensity of his eyes before his lips are exerting a fierce pressure against her own.

She's startled at first but quickly adapts, pressing back. She tilts her head a little to one side to slant her lips against his more fully. The kiss is toe curling in intensity and it isn't even as deep as she knows kisses can be. Already teetering, if the kiss gets any deeper she is sure to fall.

His mouth moves roughly over hers, coaxing her to open to him. She does so without hesitation and a strangled groan rumbles in his chest. It's too much to think she wants this.

He forces himself to turn away from her searching mouth. Before she has time to realize, he's hauling her to the door by her arm. She's too shocked to protest when he shoves her outside and closes the door in her surprised face.

Hatter leans against the inside of that door, nearly holding his breath until he hears her footsteps leading her away. If she'd done anything: knocked, tried to enter, said his Not-Name, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from acting upon his Should Not Be Thinking About Alice desires.

That night he drinks a pot of very black tea and avoids sleep altogether.

She comes back the next day.

Dear Underland, she comes back.

Doesn't she know the worst thing she could do is to come back?

He's not properly dressed, wearing only a button down shirt and a pair of trousers. He hasn't bothered with his waistcoat and jacket, or even his hat. He pulls at his hair less since the downfall of the Bloody Big Head, and it has started to grow back the soft red curls he had before the war.

Her golden yellow hair has always enticed him, so this time when he kisses her, his finger lace through her bound hair, pulling the coifed stands painfully tight, until the pins slip and locks go tumbling down her shoulders.

It's Alice who pulls him down to the floor. Down on top of her. And now he is truly lost in madness. He kisses her deeply, tasting the contours of her mouth. She can't quite match the frantic strokes of his tongue but she tries as best she can to reciprocate. One of his scarred hand, devoid of thimbles and bandages for once, travels down, ghosting over her breast and stomach. Lower and lower, like tumbling down a hill, until he fists the material of her skirt bringing it up and up.

She can't concentrate on all the sensations at once and fleetingly thinks, 'This is insanity. Sweet insanity.'

His mouth moves to her neck, finding spots that were never so sensitive under any other treatment. The inside of her thigh is also sensitive when his searching hand finds the silk of her skin beneath all the tulle and lace of her petticoats.

He knows from previous conversation that Alice eschews most conventional undergarments, like stockings or corsets. He can feel the sweet press of her small breasts against his chest and her bare thigh beneath his hand. He growls briefly to discover that she does in fact wear some undergarments when his seeking fingers come upon damp satin.

She's helpful and damning, lifting her hips so he can slide her knickers down and away. Her skirts ruched up near to her waist, he wastes no time finding the hot, moist core his impatient fingers have been seeking. She groans deep in the back of her throat, arching a little to press against him. Her scrambling hands twist their way into his hair, pulling his mouth back to hers.

She's confused and curious and more than a little crazed about the feeling of his hand stoking between her thighs. The calloused pads of his fingers slide between her folds and she contemplates the burning, rising sensation he's causing in her. She gasps, then laughs in delight when he slips one of those long, dexterous digits inside her. Sensation engulfs her, intensifying every sense of touch, taste and feel. His mouth is back to her neck, suckling her skin before the soft, firm nip of teeth leave her shaking with newborn desire.

The coiling spring which apparently resides somewhere south of her stomach is pulling tighter and tighter, threatening to release with frightening intensity. Just a little more. She moans, connecting syllables to form his name.

Tarrant.

She calls him not by his un-name. She calls him Tarrant. His name. Him. He's the one making her squirm restlessly. He is the one calling forth little moans and screams of pleasure. Suddenly he doesn't feel so mad. He feels like a man. A little like the man he was before the war and the Bloody Big Head rent his sanity to pieces.

He's always been a little mad. We're all mad here. But even in the insanity of Underland he's known as the Mad Hatter, and that is saying something.

It hurts when he enters her, but he doesn't pause or stop to let her adjust. And Alice, ever the Champion, bares out the pain.

This first time is not what she would deem pleasant. Not because he's mistreating her, but because her body can only accommodate the intrusion as tolerable, but not yet pleasurable. What their hips are doing lower down is not what entices her for more. It's his mouth and hands that give her some semblance of pleasure, since her body seems incapable of enjoying this first, blunt invasion.

His hot mouth slants over hers, moves across her cheek and jaw down her sensitive neck. She feel momentary pain and realizes he's bitten her, not hard, but hard enough to leave a mark. But then he's lavishing the mark with his tongue, offering tender apologies to her bruised flesh.

The sting of his bite lessons, just as the sting between her thighs morphs from something unpleasant into something delightful. Like a butterfly unfurling it's wings for the first time, she tests to the edges of this new awareness of her body.

He groans when she arches against him, and she answers with a moan of her own. His stained hands cup her backside, making the Alice of Legend shiver when he angles her hips for his deeper possession. And Alice feels as if she's tumbled down, falling, falling into oblivion.

Alice returns to the Queen's court just before sunset. Mirana is waiting, speaking to Chess, Mally and McTwisp. They were worried about her, on the verge of sending out a party to search. They see her coming, happy at first but then confused.

She knows what they see, but not what they think about it. Her hair is loose and tangled, her dress is wrinkled in several places. Her lips are swollen red and there is a bruise on her neck.

McTwisp hops tentatively forward. "My goodness, Alice, are you alright? You look as if you've fallen down another rabbit hole."

"Or were mauled by a madman," Chess offers, with a smile more knowing than Alice cares for.

"I'm fine," she mutters tightly. The oft used Hatter phrase tumbles from her lips without thinking. "I think I'll just go have a bath before turning in."

She's halfway across the courtyard before the Queen's voice stops her.

"Alice, are you sure you are alright?"

Alice turns and smiles. It is a genuine smile. "Absolutely, your majesty."

She continues on her way, leaving her friend to puzzle over the nature of her absence and strange return.

-The End-

Author's Note: That is all there is. I feel this story is unfinished, but good enough to stand alone as a one-shot. I don't think I have any more inspiration in me to expand it into a full blown story.

Reviews are always welcome. J