I feel the need to say this turned a bit darker than originally anticipated. Wasn't my intention, not by a long shot, but when you play with the Scarecrow…

Regardless, hope you enjoy.

Arkham's library was perhaps the saddest thing Crane had ever seen, and considering the scenes he'd caused or come across, he was something of an expert on tragedies. It was to be expected, of course—convicted madmen and madwomen weren't going to be given pristine copies of Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow—but logical or not, Crane still felt a pang in his heart whenever he found the middle fifty pages had been torn out by the roots.

What kind of monster would want to maim a perfectly harmless copy of As I Lay Dying? Anyone who treated Faulkner like that deserved to be delivered straight into the Scarecrow's clutches! That would teach the illiterate little beast to—

"And what is the use of a book without pictures or conversation?"

The mutilated novel was pulled from Crane's grip by a much smaller and far less gaunt set of hands. Crane, so distracted by his righteous fury, could only blink in surprise as the stolen book was subject to a whole new set of indignities.

While Crane watched, Jervis Tetch flipped through the book, held it upside down, shook it (thus causing another page to drift out), and finally clapped the covers closed. It was the sound of the book snapping shut that brought Crane to his senses. He forgot all about whatever faceless Arkham inmate had originally inspired his ire and brought all that fury, plus a little more, down on the hapless Hatter's head.

Crane snatched the book away from Tetch. "There are fourth-graders who have better earned the right to discuss the value of literature with me. They at least understand that not all books need illustrations to cater to the minds of the easily distracted."

Tetch sniffed. "Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense."

"Go back to your fairytales and leave me alone," Crane said.

Instead of doing as he was told, the Hatter had the audacity to reach for the novel again. Crane had no intention of taping in any other molted pages, and slapped at Tetch's grabby mitts.

"I just want to see it, Jonathan," Tetch said.

"Oh, you'll see it alright. See it when I hit you over the head with it! I didn't rescue this book just so it could be further besmirched by the hands of an infantile fool," Crane replied.

"Speak English! I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!" Tetch exclaimed.

Crane rose from the ratty armchair he'd folded his long, awkward frame into and Tetch was wise enough to back away as the Scarecrow's shadow stretched across the floor. With deference he reserved for great works of literature, Crane laid the book down on the arm of the chair and then gave Tetch his full attention.

"You know exactly what those words mean. Somewhere, buried under all that garbage you've accumulated, there is an exceptional mind. An idiot doesn't create circuitry capable of controlling human brainwaves. Nor does he beat me in chess," Crane said.

Tetch shook his head. "But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."

"You were limitless potential! Now you're a depraved bibliophile who kidnaps little girls to fulfill a fantasy created by a dead opium-addicted story-teller!"

The Hatter recoiled violently, as though Crane had raised a hand to strike him. He stared at Crane, open-mouthed. Then, lumen by lumen, Tetch's face darkened. He drew himself up—not a particularly intimidating gesture, as the very top of his hat was still well below Crane's chin—and let the much taller man have it.

"If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think!" Tetch shouted.

"Not even I can begin to translate that into anything close to sense," Crane said.

Like a foreigner struggling for words in his new language, Tetch stuttered and waved his hands, as though that would somehow impart the word that would not come to mind. Then, suddenly, he found the words that had danced so tantalizingly on the tip of his tongue.

"I was never happy, Jonathan, never! All my life, something was missing. If I hadn't found my Alice, I- I quake to think what might've become of me. As Jervis Tetch, I was a wretched, miserable creature. As the Mad Hatter, I've found my Wonderland," Tetch explained.

"You mean you've surrendered to a delusion because it makes you happy." Crane snorted. "Christ. You could have just adopted a religion."

A moment later, Crane was doubled over in pain. Tetch, unable to reach any higher, had socked him in the stomach. As he crouched over, wheezing and clutching his gut, Crane wondered if Tetch wouldn't take advantage of the sudden height reversal and try smacking him in the face, like the little maniac no doubt wanted to do in the first place.

Let him try it.

Tetch wavered between hitting Crane again and bolting for the door before Crane recovered and tore into him like the biting jaws and catching claws of the Jabberwocky. The longer he stood gripped by indecision, the stupider both options sounded. He'd never outrun Crane, nor could he beat him into submission. Already the anger that had fueled his attack was abating and being quickly replaced with fear.

"Jonathan, I'm sorry. It's just that, well, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later," Tetch said.

"Ah, I almost thought we were getting somewhere," Crane replied. "Suppose I'll have to try harder."

Before Tetch could ask what Crane meant, the Scarecrow straightened up and shed any sign of the pain Tetch's low blow had caused. Tetch squeaked in fear and surprise as Crane's hands suddenly shot out and seized him. Crane's skeletal fingers grasped Tetch's shoulders hard enough to hurt even through the overcoat Tetch wore.

"I want a proper apology, Tetch, none of that Carroll nonsense."

"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir," Tetch responded, shaking in Crane's bruising grip.

"What a shame. If you won't willingly break character, I have no choice but to resort to other methods," Crane said.

Even someone as delusional as Tetch was lucid enough to know the Scarecrow's "other methods" would not include hug therapy and a presenting a welcoming and understanding shoulder to cry on.

"Tell me, Jervis, who's the president of the United States?" Crane asked. "Come now, you aren't going to find the answer to that in Wonderland."

Tetch bit his lip. "The King."

"No, not the king. The president."

"The Dodo?"

Crane smirked. "To some, perhaps. No, damn it! I will not be distracted. You are giving me a name!"

"Alice!"

Crane released his right hand's grip so he could press that hand against his face in frustration. Word games, that was all they was doing, playing word games. The Hatter probably remembered every noun, adjective, and portmanteau Carroll had ever penned and would, given enough time, contrive some quotation to fit nearly anything Crane asked him.

The key, then, was to allow Tetch neither the time nor the concentration he needed to quote his beloved author.

"What is an alpha wave? How many miles separate the Earth from the sun? What is the square root of sixteen?" Crane rapid-fired.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Tetch replied.

"Haven't you? The same man who invents a way to override all mental function, including that slippery bastard the survival instinct, doesn't know basic math, astronomy, or physiology? I find that hard to believe."

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

"I bet you have," Crane muttered.

So merely being quick with the questions wasn't going to suffice. Crane looked down and studied the man he still had locked in place before him. Tetch tried once to meet Crane's gaze but, when Crane's eyes narrowed in response, Tetch hastily averted his eyes to the floor.

"You'd like me to let you go back to your stories, wouldn't you?" Crane asked.

Tetch nodded so vigorously his hat bounced off his head. It landed askew and the Hatter reached up to straighten it.

"Then here's all you have to do: answer my questions with an original response. Give me something from the mind of Jervis Tetch, not the Mad Hatter, not Alice, not the frumious whatever."

Tetch remained mute. Though he did experimentally tug at the one-handed hold Crane had on him. Crane hastily replaced his right hand on the shoulder it had abandoned.

"It's like dealing with a child," Crane mused to himself. Then, this line much louder and meant for Tetch, Crane added, "You are not going anywhere until you give me what I want. Believe me, you want to do it soon, because you won't like what we try after this."

The Hatter said, "You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk."

"Alice in Wonderland, chapter nine, the Duchess," Crane said. "You're going to have to do better than that."

The next ten minutes tested both Crane's patience and the impressive familiarity with Lewis Carroll he had, through osmosis, picked up from Tetch. By the time Crane successfully identified a line from "You Are Old, Father William," he was sufficiently fed up with the Hatter's refusal to cooperate. It was time to stop being nice and start getting results.

"You've had your fun, Tetch, and now I'm going to have mine."

Crane removed his hands from Tetch's shoulders and turned his back on the Hatter. While Crane went to do whatever it was he had planned, Tetch absently rubbed at his aching shoulders and shifted from foot to foot. The Hatter, without being too conspicuous about it, looked around the room, though he wasn't entirely sure what he hoped to lay eyes upon. An exit? A weapon? A little white rabbit wearing a vest and holding a pocket watch?

At the other end of the room, a little to the right of the room's single door—and by proxy single exit, unless Tetch intended to throw himself out the window and fall two stories to the alleyway below—Crane slipped into something more comfortable. He didn't have time to go full-ensemble, but the mask alone would suffice.

Crane, or, more accurately Scarecrow, slowly pivoted around to face Tetch. The Hatter took one look at Crane's grinning burlap face and promptly wished he could shrink like Alice and become small enough to hide under the floorboards or beneath the armchair. Lacking the potion required for such profound shrinkage, Tetch was forced to resort to cowering.

"Since you like stories so much, I'm going to tell you one. Once upon a time, there was a man named Jervis Tetch. One day, Jervis, unable to cope with rejection and unwilling to join a dating site or visit a bar and just get over it, decided to forsake reality and become the Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter made the grave mistake of seeking refuge with the Scarecrow one night, and invoked the Scarecrow's wrath by disobeying him, punching him, and reciting insipid poems about oysters to him. So the Scarecrow decided he was going to cure the Mad Hatter using whatever means necessary. And that's where we are now, Tetch. Whatever means necessary," the Scarecrow said.

Tetch whimpered and pulled his hat down over his eyes, like a child escaping under the sheets to hide from monsters. The Scarecrow strode across the room and yanked the hat off. He threw it into the corner of the room, and when Tetch scrambled for it, the Scarecrow caught the tails of his coat and dragged him to the ground.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" Tetch wailed as the Scarecrow flipped him face-up and straddled him.

"The Jabberwock has nothing on me!" the Scarecrow replied.

"The— We're all— Off with their—"

"I am worse than the Red Queen, more ghastly than the Jabberwocky, and there is nothing in those books that is going to save you from me!"

The Scarecrow leaned down, bringing his inhuman face within centimeters of the Hatter's. Tetch wanted ever-so-desperately to close his eyes but he felt compelled, almost hypnotized, by the demonic visage poised just above him. It was too horrible to risk looking away from, for there was no telling what it was capable of doing once it was out of sight. At least as long as Tetch looked at it, he knew where it was and what it was up to.

"Am I still not digging deep enough, my little Hatter?" the Scarecrow asked. "No matter. I can drag you screaming from the rabbit hole if that is what it takes."

A merciless hand wound around Tetch's throat and, while it did not squeeze, its threat was implicit. The Scarecrow's unoccupied hand pushed up the sleeve of Tetch's coat and, once that was accomplished, retreated beyond Tetch's very limited field of view.

Not that Tetch needed to see the hand to know where it had gone, or what was about to happen.

And if he needed any further hints, the sudden sting at the crook of his elbow was sufficient.

"Last chance to come to your senses, Jervis," the Scarecrow said.

Tetch's mind was not, as the old idiom said, blank. It could be described as just the opposite, awash in the color and chaos of a Jackson Pollock painting. But, just like the mind devoid of all color, the mind drowned in color was equally unable to speak.

"No? We'll try again in a few hours."

From the splatter and madness inside his head, a stern, authoritarian female voice rose above the generalized howling. Tetch strained to catch what the voice was saying.

"Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing. And remember who you are!"

It was the Red Queen! And, just in the nick of time, her words had found the Hatter.

"Stop! Jonathan, please, you've made your point! These words are my own, purely my own, please, I've left Wonderland, and I shan't visit it again in your presence!" Tetch cried.

The Scarecrow, still astride the Hatter, withdrew a little, so at least he and Tetch were no longer breathing the same air. He unlatched his hand from around Tetch's throat and then, with a practiced motion, plucked the dreadful mask from his head.

"Good boy, Jervis," Crane said. Then, grinning, he revealed the needle he'd stuck Tetch with. "Saline."

Jervis burst into tears. "That's an evil, evil trick to play on me!"

"I'm an evil, evil man," Crane replied. He stood up, capped the needle, and placed it back in his pocket. He then bent down and, much to Jervis' embarrassment, lifted the sobbing Hatter off the floor and carried him over to the armchair.

Crane deposited Tetch in the chair and gave the man time to regain his composure. Once Tetch was drying his eyes with a comically large handkerchief he'd produced from a pocket, Crane knelt down in front of him.

"Would you like to read a story?" Crane asked tenderly.

Tetch nodded.

"And what story would you like to read?"

Tetch picked up the novel Crane had left on the arm of the chair. "This one looks frabj— interesting," Tetch amended.

Crane rose and planted a gentle kiss on Tetch's forehead. "Excellent choice."

The End

Many of Tetch's lines come from the assorted works of Lewis Carroll. Gotta give credit to the creator.