In the Rough, chapter 20/40
Title: In the Rough (20/40)
Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
A/N: I’ve noticed that Alice and Hatter are yellers. When they fight, my italics-coding fingers go crazygonuts, whether I’d planned on it or not. LOL. Also, I impulsively added a Charlie & Hatter (awkward) Bro Moment scene in this chapter, and I’m glad I did because it makes me ludicrously happy. XD Hope y’all enjoy it!
I want to thank you all so much for your lovely feedback! ^_^ Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five,
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten,
Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen, Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Eighteen, Chapter Nineteen
***
That night at dinner, as Charlie expertly roasted a meal out of their catch and began to serve it up, Hatter and Alice got to talking.
“Hatter, what do you mean you ‘don’t think it was an accident’?” Alice asked with a note of suspicion. Hatter twirled his hat nervously in his hands.
“I think someone’s got it out for me. They’re trying to kill me and make it look like an accident.”
“What makes you think that?” Alice asked. “We’re in the Tulgey Wood, it’s dangerous here. That’s no reason to think someone’s taken a hit out on you.”
“Think about it,” Hatter insisted, leaning forward and speaking low, as though the culprit could be listening in on their every word. “First the JubJub bird appears out of nowhere, an animal that’s supposed to be extinct, in the middle of the Great Library!”
“Meaning?”
“JubJub birds are carnivorous birds of prey, right Charlie?” he pointedly asked the knight, who looked rather surprised at the sudden query.
“Erm… yes,” he mumbled. Hatter turned back to Alice eagerly.
“It never would have been able to survive in the Great Library for that long on its own. And you saw it, it barely had room to spread its wings and fly!”
“So you think someone planted it there?”
“Exactly, and the Flower Garden was a set-up, too. Those flowers should have been asleep, there was no reason for that bluebell to suddenly drop half a foot and brush against my hat-“
“A stray breeze could have done that just as easily-“
“And Charlie,” Hatter continued, refusing to be interrupted, “How likely is it to find a borogrove that big, on the outskirts of borogrove territory, without the rest of the pack right behind him?”
“Look,” Charlie said pleadingly, holding his hands out, “I really don’t want to get in the middle of all this…”
“Charlie!”
His hands fluttered, looking anxious. “Very unlikely, it’s true. But it was a very violent borogrove, so perhaps it was a runaway…”
His voice trailed off at Hatter’s stony glare.
“It wasn’t just a runaway fluke!” Hatter insisted, turning his attention back to Alice. “All the evidence points to someone trying to kill me.”
Instead of being impressed by this evidence, Alice looked at him with a face of flat you must be kidding me written all over it. “Hatter, this is just like Carlotta St. Delaware, and just like then, you are full of it.” She stood with a maddening look of authority. “We’ve just got to find the meteor so we can get out of this madhouse and back where we belong.”
Hatter seethed, rising to meet her gaze on opposing ends of the campfire. “I think the attacks would stop if we stopped looking for this stupid meteor! You are just so dead-set on returning to your world that you don’t mind putting the rest of us in unnecessary danger!”
“My world!?” Alice shouted, eyes widening in disbelief. “Unnecessary danger!?”
The two of them stood staunchly where they were, mouths in firm lines and fuming at each other.
“I’m going to go make room in our luggage for all the leftover borogrove!” Charlie interjected with exaggerated cheer, looking furtively at the two of them before shuffling off to the corner of the camp where the horses were also cowering.
“It’s your world, too!” Alice started, pointing accusingly. “We built a home there, Hatter-“
“We can start over here! We can make a new home here!” he countered. “In Wonderland!”
“What,” she laughed, “so we can choose to live in either a place infested with monsters and man-eating flowers, or a city so run-down and decrepit that it’s practically crumbling to dust in front of your eyes!? Not to mention-“ she gave him a scathing look, “the alleged assassins wandering around?”
“We,” he asserted, “are currently in the most bloodthirsty section of the most dangerous forest in Wonderland, and you are the one insisting that we stay here, so don’t stand there and talk about how dangerous Wonderland is, all judgmental. You’ve only ever been in the worst parts of Wonderland, you haven’t grown up here like I have.”
He circled around the fire to stand with her, but she circled in the same direction to keep him on the opposite side. He persevered. “I went out and saw the City when you were resting in the teashop, and I’ve seen how it’s changed. Jack’s done good things with the City, Alice. There’s grass on the ground for the first time since my parents were kids, for God’s sake. It’s a different place than the Wonderland I knew-“
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Alice said, her hands coming up to her head, fingers tangling in her hair like she was going to pull out handfuls of it in sheer frustration. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this!” Her face was starting to crumple like she would cry, but Hatter didn’t stop his heated argument, determined to get his point across.
“Wonderland doesn’t need the Looking Glass any more, Alice!” he said. “Jack has stopped the Tea trade, we don’t kidnap people from your world any more, there’s no reason for the Looking Glass to be operational. The only reason this whole charade is happening in the first place is because you’re being so selfish!”
“YES! I want to go HOME!” she cried, her hands fisted at her sides. “I don’t belong here, with your talking plants and your horses and meteors and monster-infested forests and… vertical cities with buildings only connected by narrow-ass ledges! For heaven’s sake, Hatter, I can’t believe you have the nerve to just…” she spluttered, gesturing madly, “stand there and ask me to leave everything I’ve known, my job, my friends, my Mother-“
“None of that bothered you when it was the other way around.”
Alice paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you weren’t so keen to understand my losses when I followed you through to your world!” Hatter spat. “What about the sacrifices I made, yeah? You can be such a hypocrite, Alice! I don’t belong in your world either - in fact, I think it’s pretty ridiculous - but I make an effort to understand.” He crossed to her side of the fire so quickly that Alice didn’t have time to run, and he grabbed her wrist. This close to the orange glow of the fire, one illuminated eye glowed fiercely at her, the rest of his face darkened like a mask. “I made the choice to adapt because I loved you,” he whispered urgently. “And now, when our situations are reversed and we may have no choice…” his voice faltered in barely concealed pain that made Alice’s heart hurt. “Why won’t you even consider doing the same?”
Alice’s breath stalled in her lungs, her heartbeat slowing its manic pace. “When I thought I might be stuck here, and I asked you what you would do…” She gulped. “You said you’d take care of me.”
Hatter nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Alice squeezed her eyes shut and pictured her mother, twice abandoned, all alone in the world with no explanation of ‘why’ or even ‘where’. She’d felt that pain, lived with it for ten years… had lost herself in it…
She felt her resolve turn, shift, and fall into place like a puzzle piece.
“You’re lying,” she said finally, wrenching her wrist out of his grasp with a well-practiced twist. “Because what I need is to get home, and obviously I can’t trust you to help me do that anymore.”
“Alice-“
“No!” It was the hardest thing, stepping away from him - even now her body was instinctively bracing itself for all of what she would feel if she just stepped into his arms and let him hug everything away, smelling of allspice and leather jackets and… she shook the thoughts out of her head. “I can’t trust you, Hatter! I don’t think I ever could - after all these months, you’re still trying to rope me into your grand scheme, your ultimate goal--“
“That’s not true! Alice,” Hatter pleaded, his voice cracking on her name, “Alice, listen to what you’re sayin’-“
“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” she said, standing tall and forcing the tears away, “I will be taking care of myself. I did it a long time ago and I’ll do it again, and you,” she pointed directly at him, cutting off what he’d been about to say, “will leave.”
She turned to walk away, but Hatter shouted in protest, running up to block her escape with his arms stretched as wide as they would go. “I’m not leaving, Alice!” he insisted, breathing heavily and ignoring the single tear that escaped as she shook his head fiercely. “You know me - all those times I went back to the Casino for you, walking right into the lion’s den I did - so you know I won’t leave you.”
Alice’s bottom lip threatened to tremble, but she held fast, looking him straight in the eyes. “I…” she started, but faltered at the hurt and pain reflected in his expression. He looked so broken…
You can’t trust him, she reminded herself, and you can’t afford to lose your focus, can’t afford to give up.
“I’m going to do what I need to do to get home,” she said, “And I don’t think you can help me any more.”
She wrestled her way past his outstretched arms and stalked over to Bill, yanking off her bags. “Take Bill with you when you go,” she said, not looking back at him, knowing she would crumble if she did. “I think he always liked you best.”
Then she walked into the dark of the forest without a backward look. Only when the fire’s glow shrank to the size of her thumb behind her did she allow herself to sink to the forest floor in a jumbled mess.
***
Hatter watched Alice’s hair whip behind her as she walked away, and immediately tried to follow, argument ready on his tongue… but Charlie stopped him with a firm hand.
Charlie. With a flush of embarrassment, Hatter realized he’d forgotten they’d had an audience… Yet the firm hand gripping Hatter’s shoulder tightly was strong evidence to the contrary. “Let her go,” Charlie said pityingly. “Let her cool off, you know, and all that. Women!” he tried, shaking his head dramatically.
“But the forest,” Hatter protested. “It’s nighttime, Charlie, you know what could find her out there-“
“She’ll be fine,” Charlie said, not-so-gently guiding Hatter back to the fire. “She won’t stray far from camp, she’s a smart girl. And you both need time to clear your heads.”
“I don’t understand,” Hatter bit out through clenched teeth, sitting down heavily down on a log and squeezing his fists to his temples. “I didn’t-How did-“
He stood up suddenly, running over to the nearest tree and punching it with enough force to knock out an elephant. The tree cracked and teetered dangerously, the bark within a foot’s radius of Hatter’s fist exploding into dust and woodchips. Charlie winced.
“Ooh, don’t do that,” he said, rushing over and pushing Hatter back to the fire. “See what I mean? Clearing your heads! Very important. Just because you can’t hear trees cry in pain doesn’t mean that they’re not, you know. Benefits of the Black Arts,” he said wisely, tapping his head. “Empathy with one’s surroundings. That’s how I’m so good with people!”
Hatter didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were fuzzy, unfocused, turned inward. “I think I broke my hand,” he said blankly. Charlie looked down at it-some of the knuckles did seem to be a bit… bloody.
“Here,” he said, sitting Hatter down by the fire. He walked over to Guinevere and reached into a pouch on her saddle. “I always keep Liffaleaf around for just such an emergency. You never know when you’re going to be gored by a borogrove!” he chortled. Hatter didn’t react. Shaking his head at his friend’s lack of humor, Charlie separated one leaf from the others and folded up the rest of the package, placing it reverently back in Guinevere’s pouch. Sitting down next to Hatter by the fire, he wrapped the leaf carefully around his knuckles with gauze.
“Great stuff, Liffaleaf. Does wonders for heavy bleeding, nothing else quite like it. And…there!” he said upon finishing. “Good as new in the morning, eh? You’ll live to punch trees another day.” He paused.
“Yes, Charlie, you’re trying to make me feel better, I get it,” Hatter snapped. He rubbed his good hand wearily across his face, wiping the tear tracks away that had appeared without his knowing. “You don’t…” he gulped. “You don’t think she’ll actually… I mean obviously, I knew she had trust issues when I met her, but after all we've been through I... I mean, I don’t know what I’d do without…”
Charlie patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Look,” he admitted. “I’ve never had any experience with women-ever, really-so I’m afraid I can’t be of much help in that regard. But all the women I’ve ever known have been Alice. And I can say for certain that I don’t think Alice has it in her to abandon anybody, let alone you.”
Hatter didn’t say anything. Charlie had it on the tip of his tongue to offer some old Knight clichés about relationships and women…but decided against it. He settled on a tired-sounding, “So many dramatics lately.”
“That’s what you get for going on a quest,” Hatter replied, voice gravelly with exhaustion. Charlie nodded and continued staring at the fire.
The two men stayed that way until they drifted off to sleep.
***
Next Chapter
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Author: alittleoddish
Rating: Teen
Characters: Alice/Hatter, Jack/Duchess, Charlie
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Syfy's Alice.
Summary: "But this is starting to sound like a quest! Quests are such a pain, Alice, they really are. All horseback and food rations and traveling in groups and no truly hot tea, with significantly less sex against trees.”
A/N: I’ve noticed that Alice and Hatter are yellers. When they fight, my italics-coding fingers go crazygonuts, whether I’d planned on it or not. LOL. Also, I impulsively added a Charlie & Hatter (awkward) Bro Moment scene in this chapter, and I’m glad I did because it makes me ludicrously happy. XD Hope y’all enjoy it!
I want to thank you all so much for your lovely feedback! ^_^ Again, thanks so much to my GORGEOUS betas, zombres and randombattlecry! They are simply fantastic, they always keep me on my toes to provide the highest quality of writing I can. Also, thanks to my amazing Official Fandom Soundboard abscondinabox, with whom I have spent many-a-Skype session discussing the ins and outs of characters and plot, and without whom this story would undoubtedly be a disaster.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five,
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten,
Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen, Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Eighteen, Chapter Nineteen
***
That night at dinner, as Charlie expertly roasted a meal out of their catch and began to serve it up, Hatter and Alice got to talking.
“Hatter, what do you mean you ‘don’t think it was an accident’?” Alice asked with a note of suspicion. Hatter twirled his hat nervously in his hands.
“I think someone’s got it out for me. They’re trying to kill me and make it look like an accident.”
“What makes you think that?” Alice asked. “We’re in the Tulgey Wood, it’s dangerous here. That’s no reason to think someone’s taken a hit out on you.”
“Think about it,” Hatter insisted, leaning forward and speaking low, as though the culprit could be listening in on their every word. “First the JubJub bird appears out of nowhere, an animal that’s supposed to be extinct, in the middle of the Great Library!”
“Meaning?”
“JubJub birds are carnivorous birds of prey, right Charlie?” he pointedly asked the knight, who looked rather surprised at the sudden query.
“Erm… yes,” he mumbled. Hatter turned back to Alice eagerly.
“It never would have been able to survive in the Great Library for that long on its own. And you saw it, it barely had room to spread its wings and fly!”
“So you think someone planted it there?”
“Exactly, and the Flower Garden was a set-up, too. Those flowers should have been asleep, there was no reason for that bluebell to suddenly drop half a foot and brush against my hat-“
“A stray breeze could have done that just as easily-“
“And Charlie,” Hatter continued, refusing to be interrupted, “How likely is it to find a borogrove that big, on the outskirts of borogrove territory, without the rest of the pack right behind him?”
“Look,” Charlie said pleadingly, holding his hands out, “I really don’t want to get in the middle of all this…”
“Charlie!”
His hands fluttered, looking anxious. “Very unlikely, it’s true. But it was a very violent borogrove, so perhaps it was a runaway…”
His voice trailed off at Hatter’s stony glare.
“It wasn’t just a runaway fluke!” Hatter insisted, turning his attention back to Alice. “All the evidence points to someone trying to kill me.”
Instead of being impressed by this evidence, Alice looked at him with a face of flat you must be kidding me written all over it. “Hatter, this is just like Carlotta St. Delaware, and just like then, you are full of it.” She stood with a maddening look of authority. “We’ve just got to find the meteor so we can get out of this madhouse and back where we belong.”
Hatter seethed, rising to meet her gaze on opposing ends of the campfire. “I think the attacks would stop if we stopped looking for this stupid meteor! You are just so dead-set on returning to your world that you don’t mind putting the rest of us in unnecessary danger!”
“My world!?” Alice shouted, eyes widening in disbelief. “Unnecessary danger!?”
The two of them stood staunchly where they were, mouths in firm lines and fuming at each other.
“I’m going to go make room in our luggage for all the leftover borogrove!” Charlie interjected with exaggerated cheer, looking furtively at the two of them before shuffling off to the corner of the camp where the horses were also cowering.
“It’s your world, too!” Alice started, pointing accusingly. “We built a home there, Hatter-“
“We can start over here! We can make a new home here!” he countered. “In Wonderland!”
“What,” she laughed, “so we can choose to live in either a place infested with monsters and man-eating flowers, or a city so run-down and decrepit that it’s practically crumbling to dust in front of your eyes!? Not to mention-“ she gave him a scathing look, “the alleged assassins wandering around?”
“We,” he asserted, “are currently in the most bloodthirsty section of the most dangerous forest in Wonderland, and you are the one insisting that we stay here, so don’t stand there and talk about how dangerous Wonderland is, all judgmental. You’ve only ever been in the worst parts of Wonderland, you haven’t grown up here like I have.”
He circled around the fire to stand with her, but she circled in the same direction to keep him on the opposite side. He persevered. “I went out and saw the City when you were resting in the teashop, and I’ve seen how it’s changed. Jack’s done good things with the City, Alice. There’s grass on the ground for the first time since my parents were kids, for God’s sake. It’s a different place than the Wonderland I knew-“
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Alice said, her hands coming up to her head, fingers tangling in her hair like she was going to pull out handfuls of it in sheer frustration. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this!” Her face was starting to crumple like she would cry, but Hatter didn’t stop his heated argument, determined to get his point across.
“Wonderland doesn’t need the Looking Glass any more, Alice!” he said. “Jack has stopped the Tea trade, we don’t kidnap people from your world any more, there’s no reason for the Looking Glass to be operational. The only reason this whole charade is happening in the first place is because you’re being so selfish!”
“YES! I want to go HOME!” she cried, her hands fisted at her sides. “I don’t belong here, with your talking plants and your horses and meteors and monster-infested forests and… vertical cities with buildings only connected by narrow-ass ledges! For heaven’s sake, Hatter, I can’t believe you have the nerve to just…” she spluttered, gesturing madly, “stand there and ask me to leave everything I’ve known, my job, my friends, my Mother-“
“None of that bothered you when it was the other way around.”
Alice paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you weren’t so keen to understand my losses when I followed you through to your world!” Hatter spat. “What about the sacrifices I made, yeah? You can be such a hypocrite, Alice! I don’t belong in your world either - in fact, I think it’s pretty ridiculous - but I make an effort to understand.” He crossed to her side of the fire so quickly that Alice didn’t have time to run, and he grabbed her wrist. This close to the orange glow of the fire, one illuminated eye glowed fiercely at her, the rest of his face darkened like a mask. “I made the choice to adapt because I loved you,” he whispered urgently. “And now, when our situations are reversed and we may have no choice…” his voice faltered in barely concealed pain that made Alice’s heart hurt. “Why won’t you even consider doing the same?”
Alice’s breath stalled in her lungs, her heartbeat slowing its manic pace. “When I thought I might be stuck here, and I asked you what you would do…” She gulped. “You said you’d take care of me.”
Hatter nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Alice squeezed her eyes shut and pictured her mother, twice abandoned, all alone in the world with no explanation of ‘why’ or even ‘where’. She’d felt that pain, lived with it for ten years… had lost herself in it…
She felt her resolve turn, shift, and fall into place like a puzzle piece.
“You’re lying,” she said finally, wrenching her wrist out of his grasp with a well-practiced twist. “Because what I need is to get home, and obviously I can’t trust you to help me do that anymore.”
“Alice-“
“No!” It was the hardest thing, stepping away from him - even now her body was instinctively bracing itself for all of what she would feel if she just stepped into his arms and let him hug everything away, smelling of allspice and leather jackets and… she shook the thoughts out of her head. “I can’t trust you, Hatter! I don’t think I ever could - after all these months, you’re still trying to rope me into your grand scheme, your ultimate goal--“
“That’s not true! Alice,” Hatter pleaded, his voice cracking on her name, “Alice, listen to what you’re sayin’-“
“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” she said, standing tall and forcing the tears away, “I will be taking care of myself. I did it a long time ago and I’ll do it again, and you,” she pointed directly at him, cutting off what he’d been about to say, “will leave.”
She turned to walk away, but Hatter shouted in protest, running up to block her escape with his arms stretched as wide as they would go. “I’m not leaving, Alice!” he insisted, breathing heavily and ignoring the single tear that escaped as she shook his head fiercely. “You know me - all those times I went back to the Casino for you, walking right into the lion’s den I did - so you know I won’t leave you.”
Alice’s bottom lip threatened to tremble, but she held fast, looking him straight in the eyes. “I…” she started, but faltered at the hurt and pain reflected in his expression. He looked so broken…
You can’t trust him, she reminded herself, and you can’t afford to lose your focus, can’t afford to give up.
“I’m going to do what I need to do to get home,” she said, “And I don’t think you can help me any more.”
She wrestled her way past his outstretched arms and stalked over to Bill, yanking off her bags. “Take Bill with you when you go,” she said, not looking back at him, knowing she would crumble if she did. “I think he always liked you best.”
Then she walked into the dark of the forest without a backward look. Only when the fire’s glow shrank to the size of her thumb behind her did she allow herself to sink to the forest floor in a jumbled mess.
***
Hatter watched Alice’s hair whip behind her as she walked away, and immediately tried to follow, argument ready on his tongue… but Charlie stopped him with a firm hand.
Charlie. With a flush of embarrassment, Hatter realized he’d forgotten they’d had an audience… Yet the firm hand gripping Hatter’s shoulder tightly was strong evidence to the contrary. “Let her go,” Charlie said pityingly. “Let her cool off, you know, and all that. Women!” he tried, shaking his head dramatically.
“But the forest,” Hatter protested. “It’s nighttime, Charlie, you know what could find her out there-“
“She’ll be fine,” Charlie said, not-so-gently guiding Hatter back to the fire. “She won’t stray far from camp, she’s a smart girl. And you both need time to clear your heads.”
“I don’t understand,” Hatter bit out through clenched teeth, sitting down heavily down on a log and squeezing his fists to his temples. “I didn’t-How did-“
He stood up suddenly, running over to the nearest tree and punching it with enough force to knock out an elephant. The tree cracked and teetered dangerously, the bark within a foot’s radius of Hatter’s fist exploding into dust and woodchips. Charlie winced.
“Ooh, don’t do that,” he said, rushing over and pushing Hatter back to the fire. “See what I mean? Clearing your heads! Very important. Just because you can’t hear trees cry in pain doesn’t mean that they’re not, you know. Benefits of the Black Arts,” he said wisely, tapping his head. “Empathy with one’s surroundings. That’s how I’m so good with people!”
Hatter didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were fuzzy, unfocused, turned inward. “I think I broke my hand,” he said blankly. Charlie looked down at it-some of the knuckles did seem to be a bit… bloody.
“Here,” he said, sitting Hatter down by the fire. He walked over to Guinevere and reached into a pouch on her saddle. “I always keep Liffaleaf around for just such an emergency. You never know when you’re going to be gored by a borogrove!” he chortled. Hatter didn’t react. Shaking his head at his friend’s lack of humor, Charlie separated one leaf from the others and folded up the rest of the package, placing it reverently back in Guinevere’s pouch. Sitting down next to Hatter by the fire, he wrapped the leaf carefully around his knuckles with gauze.
“Great stuff, Liffaleaf. Does wonders for heavy bleeding, nothing else quite like it. And…there!” he said upon finishing. “Good as new in the morning, eh? You’ll live to punch trees another day.” He paused.
“Yes, Charlie, you’re trying to make me feel better, I get it,” Hatter snapped. He rubbed his good hand wearily across his face, wiping the tear tracks away that had appeared without his knowing. “You don’t…” he gulped. “You don’t think she’ll actually… I mean obviously, I knew she had trust issues when I met her, but after all we've been through I... I mean, I don’t know what I’d do without…”
Charlie patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Look,” he admitted. “I’ve never had any experience with women-ever, really-so I’m afraid I can’t be of much help in that regard. But all the women I’ve ever known have been Alice. And I can say for certain that I don’t think Alice has it in her to abandon anybody, let alone you.”
Hatter didn’t say anything. Charlie had it on the tip of his tongue to offer some old Knight clichés about relationships and women…but decided against it. He settled on a tired-sounding, “So many dramatics lately.”
“That’s what you get for going on a quest,” Hatter replied, voice gravelly with exhaustion. Charlie nodded and continued staring at the fire.
The two men stayed that way until they drifted off to sleep.
***
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