Through a Looking Glass Darkly: Five of Cups, Part Two
They sat around a table beneath an awning as they talked. It was an incredibly frustrating process. Caterpillar refused to speak directly to anyone who wasn’t Jack, Mom, or very occasionally her father. For his part, Dad was mostly staring off into space again. Charlie started out trying to look noble and ended up nodding off with his head on his chest. Hatter alternated between sending her concerned looks and interjecting on the three-way argument Jack, Caterpillar, and Mom were having about the fate of the Stone. Caterpillar wanted them all to remain here, so that they would have news the moment the Casino fell. Mom felt that all of them should take the Stone and hide out in the country. Jack was reluctant to give the Stone up, and torn between wanting to be in the City where he could more easily coordinate his supporters, and being out in the country where it would be safer. Alice tottered on the verge of swallowing the Stone and declaring that she’d be in the Wabe until everything sorted itself out, and they could come find her then.
Eventually they decided that she, Jack, and Hatter would hide out in the country, probably taking Charlie with them. Mom would keep the Suits engaged; Dad would stay in the Hospital of Dreams with Caterpillar and work on a way to cure Tea addiction in mass quantities. The Casino would fall on its own without the Looking Glass in operation, and the government would fall with it.
It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t even close to ideal; the collateral damage would be huge. They would likely lose every Oyster in the Casino, as well as large chunks of the civilian population as the City devolved back into rioting, not to mention the Suits that would go off the edge without Tea or die at the hands of angry mobs. But it was the surest way to topple the Crown.
“Wake up,” Alice whispered, clapping her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. The knight started awake. “We’re going to go hide out for a while until the Queen’s reign collapses under its own weight. Do you want to come with?”
“Certainly,” Charlie replied enthusiastically as he stood. “We can hide easily amongst the City of the Knights.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Hatter interrupted, standing himself. “March will be able to tell we’ve been there, and that someone lived there for ages. He’d be expecting us to return.”
Charlie frowned. “The man with the rabbit head? Truly?”
“I told you, he’s an assassin, and he’s very good at what he does,” Hatter replied, swinging his jacket back on.
“But I don’t see how-”
“We left in a hurry. There must be evidence,” Jack pointed out from where he was leaning against the wall.
“We didn’t obscure our footprints around camp- he’ll be able to tell that there was four of us,” Hatter told him as he walked out from under the awning and towards the door. “Your inventions will tell him that someone was there on their own for a very long time. No, trust me, he knows.”
“I know how to blow up the Casino,” Dad said matter-of-factly.
Mom and Caterpillar looked at him askance. Hatter stopped mid-stride, before spinning around on his heels. “Come again?” he asked.
“I know how to blow up the Casino,” Dad repeated. “There’s a design flaw- I think that’s why they executed that other Carpenter. He must have built it in when he designed the place. If the Oysters were ever to experience a strong negative emotion, the distillation system would filter it in with the positive emotions. There would be a catastrophic meltdown that would take out the entire Casino.”
Everyone in the room stared at him. Dad shifted uncomfortably.
“There are two main issues I’ve been having trouble working out,” Dad continued after a moment. “The first is that someone needs to be in at least one of the Oyster rooms to wake them up. They’ve been taken from their homes and their feet are stuck to the floor- negative emotions will just come naturally from that. Each room is guarded by two Spades, however, and seeing as the last time I went up against two Spades didn’t end so well, so I’m still trying to find a way around that. The other problem is getting the Oysters released. The Eggmen are supposed to do so in the case of an emergency, but between how steeped they generally are and how panicked the Casino coming down on top of them would make them, I’m not sure they would. So I’d need to get to back down to the lab, at which point Walrus would probably shoot me.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Alice realized. “Is that why you’ve been so… not all there, lately?”
Dad grimaced. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed,” Alice told him.
“So how are we going to get far enough into the Casino to cause havoc?” Hatter asked. “And how are we not going to die in the process.”
“I think I know how to get in,” Jelly said slowly, turning so that she was facing Jack directly. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“That’s generally what-” Jack began, but was cut off by the sound of a scream echoing up from below. He turned around and peered over the edge; Hatter and Mom joined him.
“What is it?” Jelly asked.
“March seems to have gotten himself a new posse,” Hatter replied, pale-faced.
“Fucktastic,” Jelly grit out. Mom sent her a sharp look.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jelly apologized, only somewhat sarcastically, before turning to Caterpillar. “How many exits does this place have?”
“It would be a small matter to take a plank and make a bridge into one of the nearby buildings,” Caterpillar replied.
“Good. Do that, I’ll catch you up,” Jelly advised, pulling her gun out of her holster.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mom asked.
“I’m buying you time,” Jelly said.
“By doing what, exactly?” Mom said, sounding dangerous.
“Jamming the elevator and blocking the stairs,” Jelly explained. If I’m lucky she didn’t add aloud.
“That’s stupid,” Hatter opined.
“Do you have a better idea?” Jelly asked.
“Actually, I do,” Hatter replied. “Tortoise and Caterpillar run the Resistance, Jack’s got the Stone, and Carpenter needs to find some way to deal with the Tea heads.” He turned around to face the people he’d just named. “You’re too important to get caught. If you go down, the rest of us don’t have a chance.” He turned back to her. “So that’s you, me, and Charlie. We shut the place down and then get the hell out and meet up with the rest later.”
“But-” Mom and Dad protested as one.
“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Jelly cut them off. “I’ll take right, you get left, and Charlie can shore up the middle.”
“Wait,” Charlie said. “You’re being serious.”
“Yes,” Jelly said, heading towards the door. “Come on, we’re almost out of time.”
It was a moment before she heard Charlie begin to clank after them, but by the time she reached the door he was following. She wrenched the door open and scrambled down the stairs. There was an elevator just down the end of the hall, and she raced towards it. She opened the service panel.
“Okay, so when you come across an elevator,” she began as Hatter and Charlie reached the end of the stairs. “You need to find the service panel. Then you go for the thick, green tube. Then,” she placed her gun carefully down on the floor and withdrew the knife from her pocket. “You stab it,” she did so “Good and hard, so it goes all the way through. Then you,” she shifted so that her back was flat against the wall and reached behind her before narrating her actions “Twist and pull out.” A thin jet of black goo spurted out of the panel, which sparked slightly. Jelly began to wipe the knife off on the carpet until Hatter pulled out a handkerchief for her to use instead. “And that’s how you disable an elevator. Let’s go- and don’t get caught.” She picked up her gun.
Hatter went left and she went right, and Charlie eventually stopped staring at the puddle of goo and made his way forwards. Jelly spent a moment fervently hoping that any Suits that would come across him would mistake him for a patient, before she focused herself on the task at hand.
The Hospital of Dreams was full of ornate furniture impoverished Courtesans had offered as payment for their treatments; it made finding things to block the staircases with easy. Jelly had managed to finish her entire third without hearing anything more than the sound of distant curses as the Suits tried to find a way up, and was feeling cautiously optimistic about their chances of pulling this off when everything went straight to hell.
The Suits came up from the hall just around the corner from the elevator Jelly had been disabling. She pulled her knife out of the tube and managed to get her gun in hand and her body in a defensive position behind a cabinet before they opened fire. She was so engaged in exchanging fire that she didn’t hear the sound of March’s footsteps pounding the carpet until it was too late. She turned around, but he’d disarmed her before she could get off a single shot, wrenching the gun from her hands and bending her wrist back to the point of pain. The gun hit the far wall with a small clatter, and March’s hand was around her throat before she could even yell in pain and surprise.
He lifted her clear off her feet and slammed her against the wall. “Where’s Hatter?” he growled.
Jelly didn’t answer; she was too busy trying to blink the spots out of her eyes, hook her heels on the baseboard, and breathe.
“March?” called one of the Suits.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” March yelled back, shifting his hand from her throat to her shoulder. Jelly slumped against wall, massaging her throat with her free hand before she remembered that she still had a knife in her pocket. “Go find the others,” March ordered, and turned back to her just as she’d stuck her hand in her pocket.
“Where’s Hatter?” he repeated.
“What’s it to you?” Jelly snapped.
“What, a guy can’t ask after his baby brother?” March replied.
Jelly went limp with shock. March reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the knife. It fell to the floor, and March began to pat her down for more weapons, pausing to discard the spare clips she had with her.
“You had the same teeth as him,” she said finally.
March’s reply was to spin her so she was facing the wall, and divest her of the knife between her shoulder blades and the gun at the small of her back. Her arm was wrenched up back enough that she was momentarily afraid of dislocating it, and she hit the wall with enough force to drive the air from her lungs.
“Where’s Hatter?” March said again, the cold ceramic of his rabbit nose pressing against her ear.
“I don’t know,” Jelly told him.
March pulled her other arm up and pinned both her wrists to the center of her back. Jelly grunted, and set her jaw.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive,” she grit out.
He pulled back on her wrists and she stumbled off the wall.
“Are you really sure, Jellybean?” he asked, pressing the ‘door open’ button on the elevator.
“Really,” she replied, stamping down on his instep. His grip on her wrists slipped, and she tugged her right arm free and pulled it back for a punch. Then the elevator doors opened with a ding and March all but flung her by her trapped arm into the empty elevator shaft.
Jelly screamed, and her right hand changed quickly from throwing a punch at March to clutching tightly to his wrist. She looked down for a fleeting moment, and could just make out the top of the elevator she’d disabled, far, far too many stories below her.
“This is your big fear, yeah?” March asked, as Jelly tried not to hyperventilate. “Heights aren’t really your thing, and falls even less, right?”
Jelly didn’t reply.
“Tell me where Hatter is,” March repeated.
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“Tell me!” March ordered shaking her a little.
“I don’t know!”
“I’m right behind you, March,” Hatter’s voice rang out from the hall. “Let her go.”
March’s head jerked to the side. “Tell you what, Hatter. Put down your gun first and I’ll do as you meant, not as you said.”
Jelly heard the clatter of a gun falling to the ground, and then March heaved her back into the corridor, where she went spiraling into the edge of an armoire. She pressed herself against the wall unsurprised when she reached a hand up to the side of her face again and found it sticky with blood.
Hatter starts forwards, but stops when they make eye contact. Move him away, she tried to communicate He missed the knife in my boot, if you can just get him to expose his back I’ve got a chance.
Thankfully, he turned his attention back on March before she could get to Assuming, of course, that you aren’t going to attack me for killing your brother. But I’ve kind of got the vibe that your relationship with him is even more fucked up than the relationship between Jack and his parents so maybe that’s not applicable?
“Hi Hatter,” March greeted him. “How have you been?”
“You mean before having my shop stormed and being chased all through the bloody Forest of Wabe? Peachy-keen,” Hatter replied.
“Oh good,” March said, pulling out his switchblade. It snickered open and Hatter took an involuntary step back. “I’d hate to think that killing me gave you any trouble sleeping.”
Hatter laughed, a wild, mad edge in his voice. “You’re kidding, right? Without having to make sure you weren’t going to pop in and knife me, I slept like a baby.”
March started forward, and Jelly slipped her fingers into her boot, wrapping them around the hilt of her knife. Hatter stands where he is, but pulls his fist back, waiting for March to come into range.
“Oh good. You’ll be well-rested when you die, then,” March tells him.
Jelly opened the knife and lunged. March pivoted and disarmed her, but before he could do anything painful- or more final- he froze. There was a distinct crunch of plaster and wires, and a crack split March’s face in two before he collapsed on the floor, dead.
She and Hatter stared at each other for a moment. Then Hatter pulled another handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Here, you look like you could use this.”
Jelly stared at him, until Hatter leaned over March’s body and pressed it against the cut on her head. Jelly grimaced and held it in place.
“In case you were wondering,” Hatter said. “I do have more of those, and a spare gun, and a lock picking kit, and a flask full of brandy, which I’m kind of glad I didn’t break out last night because then there would be nothing to get us through today.”
“I pretty much just had my body weight in weapons,” Jelly admitted, bending down to collect them.
“Given the way things are running, that was probably a good idea,” Hatter said, handing her one of her guns. She slid it back into the holster at the small of her back, wincing as she did so.
She was bleeding, and bruised, but she was alive. And so was Hatter. And so wasn’t March.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Hatter replied quickly, pocketing his own gun. He spends too long fiddling with it before spinning to face her again. “What’d he tell you?”
“That you were brothers,” Jelly replied.
Hatter looked dismayed. But before he could say anything, there was the sound of screaming from the center of the building.
“And here we go again,” Jelly muttered, and they took off.
~*~
The screaming was from the Suits, who were gathered in a pool, floating on overturned tables and the rowboat Dad mentioned earlier. Dad was leaning against the tiled wall next to Mom, looking pretty well pleased with himself. Caterpillar was puffing on a hookah, and as they watched Charlie gave a cry of “GALADOON DE BOOSHE!” which seemed to somehow cause the floating Suits to begin to drift towards the center of the pool.
“That still makes no sense, right?” Jelly asked. “That’s not just the head wound?”
“There is no sense coming from Charlie,” Hatter confirmed. “Not ever, would be my guess.”
“Ah,” said Jack from behind them. “There you are. I was starting to worry- rightly it seems.”
He frowned at the handkerchief Jelly was still clutching to her head. Jelly glared at him. “What happened to the plan?”
“Everyone but you realized that the only people you outrank are the ones trying to turn us over to my mother,” Jack replied. “So we came up with a new plan. By the way, what happened to March?”
“I did,” Hatter replied bluntly. “Twice.”
This meant that she’d based her original gamble upon a false supposition, Jelly realized. Hatter probably hadn’t been acting under Resistance orders, and he certainly wasn’t installed in the Casino. She was horrified for a few seconds, before she gave herself a kick and realized that things had managed to work out anyway.
“Jellybean!” Dad seemed to have just realized that she was in the room, and that she was a bit more beat up than she had been earlier. Mom started towards her as well, and Jelly had the distinct impression that they were going to fuss over her like she was ten again right in front of everybody.
“I’m fine,” she tried to head them off. “I’m fine, really I-” As she cast around for something, anything to deflect her parents, she accidentally locked eyes with Darrel, who glowered at her from his wobbly perch at the front of the rowboat. She was hit with a sudden, wondrous bolt of inspiration. “And I know how we’re going to bring down the Casino.”
“You do?” Mom asked, sounding unimpressed.
Alice batted her mother’s hands away from her face and stepped up to the edge of the pool.
“Darrel!” she yelled. “How do you feel about joining the Resistance?”
Darrel laughed at her. “You have gone mad.”
“We’re in the Hospital of Dreams,” Alice shot back. “We’re all mad here. Seriously, though, you can’t tell me you like the Queen.”
“Nobody likes the Queen,” Jack muttered from behind her.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Darrel asked.
“Everything and nothing,” Alice replied. “Nothing because that’s what’s there, and everything because then I can give you a recruitment speech.”
Darrel shook his head, bemused. “After the sort of shit you were pulling this morning that speech would need to give me a pretty good reason to listen to you.”
Alice nearly flinched, but forced herself not to. She recalled his daughters instead, and smiled. “I can give you three pretty and good reasons,” she told him, before remembering his late wife. The smile slid off her face, “Possibly four.”
“I’m waiting, Jellybean” Darrel replied.
Alice took a deep breath, and began to slide the cards out of the Queen’s pack.
Eventually they decided that she, Jack, and Hatter would hide out in the country, probably taking Charlie with them. Mom would keep the Suits engaged; Dad would stay in the Hospital of Dreams with Caterpillar and work on a way to cure Tea addiction in mass quantities. The Casino would fall on its own without the Looking Glass in operation, and the government would fall with it.
It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t even close to ideal; the collateral damage would be huge. They would likely lose every Oyster in the Casino, as well as large chunks of the civilian population as the City devolved back into rioting, not to mention the Suits that would go off the edge without Tea or die at the hands of angry mobs. But it was the surest way to topple the Crown.
“Wake up,” Alice whispered, clapping her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. The knight started awake. “We’re going to go hide out for a while until the Queen’s reign collapses under its own weight. Do you want to come with?”
“Certainly,” Charlie replied enthusiastically as he stood. “We can hide easily amongst the City of the Knights.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Hatter interrupted, standing himself. “March will be able to tell we’ve been there, and that someone lived there for ages. He’d be expecting us to return.”
Charlie frowned. “The man with the rabbit head? Truly?”
“I told you, he’s an assassin, and he’s very good at what he does,” Hatter replied, swinging his jacket back on.
“But I don’t see how-”
“We left in a hurry. There must be evidence,” Jack pointed out from where he was leaning against the wall.
“We didn’t obscure our footprints around camp- he’ll be able to tell that there was four of us,” Hatter told him as he walked out from under the awning and towards the door. “Your inventions will tell him that someone was there on their own for a very long time. No, trust me, he knows.”
“I know how to blow up the Casino,” Dad said matter-of-factly.
Mom and Caterpillar looked at him askance. Hatter stopped mid-stride, before spinning around on his heels. “Come again?” he asked.
“I know how to blow up the Casino,” Dad repeated. “There’s a design flaw- I think that’s why they executed that other Carpenter. He must have built it in when he designed the place. If the Oysters were ever to experience a strong negative emotion, the distillation system would filter it in with the positive emotions. There would be a catastrophic meltdown that would take out the entire Casino.”
Everyone in the room stared at him. Dad shifted uncomfortably.
“There are two main issues I’ve been having trouble working out,” Dad continued after a moment. “The first is that someone needs to be in at least one of the Oyster rooms to wake them up. They’ve been taken from their homes and their feet are stuck to the floor- negative emotions will just come naturally from that. Each room is guarded by two Spades, however, and seeing as the last time I went up against two Spades didn’t end so well, so I’m still trying to find a way around that. The other problem is getting the Oysters released. The Eggmen are supposed to do so in the case of an emergency, but between how steeped they generally are and how panicked the Casino coming down on top of them would make them, I’m not sure they would. So I’d need to get to back down to the lab, at which point Walrus would probably shoot me.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Alice realized. “Is that why you’ve been so… not all there, lately?”
Dad grimaced. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed,” Alice told him.
“So how are we going to get far enough into the Casino to cause havoc?” Hatter asked. “And how are we not going to die in the process.”
“I think I know how to get in,” Jelly said slowly, turning so that she was facing Jack directly. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“That’s generally what-” Jack began, but was cut off by the sound of a scream echoing up from below. He turned around and peered over the edge; Hatter and Mom joined him.
“What is it?” Jelly asked.
“March seems to have gotten himself a new posse,” Hatter replied, pale-faced.
“Fucktastic,” Jelly grit out. Mom sent her a sharp look.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jelly apologized, only somewhat sarcastically, before turning to Caterpillar. “How many exits does this place have?”
“It would be a small matter to take a plank and make a bridge into one of the nearby buildings,” Caterpillar replied.
“Good. Do that, I’ll catch you up,” Jelly advised, pulling her gun out of her holster.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mom asked.
“I’m buying you time,” Jelly said.
“By doing what, exactly?” Mom said, sounding dangerous.
“Jamming the elevator and blocking the stairs,” Jelly explained. If I’m lucky she didn’t add aloud.
“That’s stupid,” Hatter opined.
“Do you have a better idea?” Jelly asked.
“Actually, I do,” Hatter replied. “Tortoise and Caterpillar run the Resistance, Jack’s got the Stone, and Carpenter needs to find some way to deal with the Tea heads.” He turned around to face the people he’d just named. “You’re too important to get caught. If you go down, the rest of us don’t have a chance.” He turned back to her. “So that’s you, me, and Charlie. We shut the place down and then get the hell out and meet up with the rest later.”
“But-” Mom and Dad protested as one.
“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Jelly cut them off. “I’ll take right, you get left, and Charlie can shore up the middle.”
“Wait,” Charlie said. “You’re being serious.”
“Yes,” Jelly said, heading towards the door. “Come on, we’re almost out of time.”
It was a moment before she heard Charlie begin to clank after them, but by the time she reached the door he was following. She wrenched the door open and scrambled down the stairs. There was an elevator just down the end of the hall, and she raced towards it. She opened the service panel.
“Okay, so when you come across an elevator,” she began as Hatter and Charlie reached the end of the stairs. “You need to find the service panel. Then you go for the thick, green tube. Then,” she placed her gun carefully down on the floor and withdrew the knife from her pocket. “You stab it,” she did so “Good and hard, so it goes all the way through. Then you,” she shifted so that her back was flat against the wall and reached behind her before narrating her actions “Twist and pull out.” A thin jet of black goo spurted out of the panel, which sparked slightly. Jelly began to wipe the knife off on the carpet until Hatter pulled out a handkerchief for her to use instead. “And that’s how you disable an elevator. Let’s go- and don’t get caught.” She picked up her gun.
Hatter went left and she went right, and Charlie eventually stopped staring at the puddle of goo and made his way forwards. Jelly spent a moment fervently hoping that any Suits that would come across him would mistake him for a patient, before she focused herself on the task at hand.
The Hospital of Dreams was full of ornate furniture impoverished Courtesans had offered as payment for their treatments; it made finding things to block the staircases with easy. Jelly had managed to finish her entire third without hearing anything more than the sound of distant curses as the Suits tried to find a way up, and was feeling cautiously optimistic about their chances of pulling this off when everything went straight to hell.
The Suits came up from the hall just around the corner from the elevator Jelly had been disabling. She pulled her knife out of the tube and managed to get her gun in hand and her body in a defensive position behind a cabinet before they opened fire. She was so engaged in exchanging fire that she didn’t hear the sound of March’s footsteps pounding the carpet until it was too late. She turned around, but he’d disarmed her before she could get off a single shot, wrenching the gun from her hands and bending her wrist back to the point of pain. The gun hit the far wall with a small clatter, and March’s hand was around her throat before she could even yell in pain and surprise.
He lifted her clear off her feet and slammed her against the wall. “Where’s Hatter?” he growled.
Jelly didn’t answer; she was too busy trying to blink the spots out of her eyes, hook her heels on the baseboard, and breathe.
“March?” called one of the Suits.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” March yelled back, shifting his hand from her throat to her shoulder. Jelly slumped against wall, massaging her throat with her free hand before she remembered that she still had a knife in her pocket. “Go find the others,” March ordered, and turned back to her just as she’d stuck her hand in her pocket.
“Where’s Hatter?” he repeated.
“What’s it to you?” Jelly snapped.
“What, a guy can’t ask after his baby brother?” March replied.
Jelly went limp with shock. March reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the knife. It fell to the floor, and March began to pat her down for more weapons, pausing to discard the spare clips she had with her.
“You had the same teeth as him,” she said finally.
March’s reply was to spin her so she was facing the wall, and divest her of the knife between her shoulder blades and the gun at the small of her back. Her arm was wrenched up back enough that she was momentarily afraid of dislocating it, and she hit the wall with enough force to drive the air from her lungs.
“Where’s Hatter?” March said again, the cold ceramic of his rabbit nose pressing against her ear.
“I don’t know,” Jelly told him.
March pulled her other arm up and pinned both her wrists to the center of her back. Jelly grunted, and set her jaw.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive,” she grit out.
He pulled back on her wrists and she stumbled off the wall.
“Are you really sure, Jellybean?” he asked, pressing the ‘door open’ button on the elevator.
“Really,” she replied, stamping down on his instep. His grip on her wrists slipped, and she tugged her right arm free and pulled it back for a punch. Then the elevator doors opened with a ding and March all but flung her by her trapped arm into the empty elevator shaft.
Jelly screamed, and her right hand changed quickly from throwing a punch at March to clutching tightly to his wrist. She looked down for a fleeting moment, and could just make out the top of the elevator she’d disabled, far, far too many stories below her.
“This is your big fear, yeah?” March asked, as Jelly tried not to hyperventilate. “Heights aren’t really your thing, and falls even less, right?”
Jelly didn’t reply.
“Tell me where Hatter is,” March repeated.
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“Tell me!” March ordered shaking her a little.
“I don’t know!”
“I’m right behind you, March,” Hatter’s voice rang out from the hall. “Let her go.”
March’s head jerked to the side. “Tell you what, Hatter. Put down your gun first and I’ll do as you meant, not as you said.”
Jelly heard the clatter of a gun falling to the ground, and then March heaved her back into the corridor, where she went spiraling into the edge of an armoire. She pressed herself against the wall unsurprised when she reached a hand up to the side of her face again and found it sticky with blood.
Hatter starts forwards, but stops when they make eye contact. Move him away, she tried to communicate He missed the knife in my boot, if you can just get him to expose his back I’ve got a chance.
Thankfully, he turned his attention back on March before she could get to Assuming, of course, that you aren’t going to attack me for killing your brother. But I’ve kind of got the vibe that your relationship with him is even more fucked up than the relationship between Jack and his parents so maybe that’s not applicable?
“Hi Hatter,” March greeted him. “How have you been?”
“You mean before having my shop stormed and being chased all through the bloody Forest of Wabe? Peachy-keen,” Hatter replied.
“Oh good,” March said, pulling out his switchblade. It snickered open and Hatter took an involuntary step back. “I’d hate to think that killing me gave you any trouble sleeping.”
Hatter laughed, a wild, mad edge in his voice. “You’re kidding, right? Without having to make sure you weren’t going to pop in and knife me, I slept like a baby.”
March started forward, and Jelly slipped her fingers into her boot, wrapping them around the hilt of her knife. Hatter stands where he is, but pulls his fist back, waiting for March to come into range.
“Oh good. You’ll be well-rested when you die, then,” March tells him.
Jelly opened the knife and lunged. March pivoted and disarmed her, but before he could do anything painful- or more final- he froze. There was a distinct crunch of plaster and wires, and a crack split March’s face in two before he collapsed on the floor, dead.
She and Hatter stared at each other for a moment. Then Hatter pulled another handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Here, you look like you could use this.”
Jelly stared at him, until Hatter leaned over March’s body and pressed it against the cut on her head. Jelly grimaced and held it in place.
“In case you were wondering,” Hatter said. “I do have more of those, and a spare gun, and a lock picking kit, and a flask full of brandy, which I’m kind of glad I didn’t break out last night because then there would be nothing to get us through today.”
“I pretty much just had my body weight in weapons,” Jelly admitted, bending down to collect them.
“Given the way things are running, that was probably a good idea,” Hatter said, handing her one of her guns. She slid it back into the holster at the small of her back, wincing as she did so.
She was bleeding, and bruised, but she was alive. And so was Hatter. And so wasn’t March.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Hatter replied quickly, pocketing his own gun. He spends too long fiddling with it before spinning to face her again. “What’d he tell you?”
“That you were brothers,” Jelly replied.
Hatter looked dismayed. But before he could say anything, there was the sound of screaming from the center of the building.
“And here we go again,” Jelly muttered, and they took off.
~*~
The screaming was from the Suits, who were gathered in a pool, floating on overturned tables and the rowboat Dad mentioned earlier. Dad was leaning against the tiled wall next to Mom, looking pretty well pleased with himself. Caterpillar was puffing on a hookah, and as they watched Charlie gave a cry of “GALADOON DE BOOSHE!” which seemed to somehow cause the floating Suits to begin to drift towards the center of the pool.
“That still makes no sense, right?” Jelly asked. “That’s not just the head wound?”
“There is no sense coming from Charlie,” Hatter confirmed. “Not ever, would be my guess.”
“Ah,” said Jack from behind them. “There you are. I was starting to worry- rightly it seems.”
He frowned at the handkerchief Jelly was still clutching to her head. Jelly glared at him. “What happened to the plan?”
“Everyone but you realized that the only people you outrank are the ones trying to turn us over to my mother,” Jack replied. “So we came up with a new plan. By the way, what happened to March?”
“I did,” Hatter replied bluntly. “Twice.”
This meant that she’d based her original gamble upon a false supposition, Jelly realized. Hatter probably hadn’t been acting under Resistance orders, and he certainly wasn’t installed in the Casino. She was horrified for a few seconds, before she gave herself a kick and realized that things had managed to work out anyway.
“Jellybean!” Dad seemed to have just realized that she was in the room, and that she was a bit more beat up than she had been earlier. Mom started towards her as well, and Jelly had the distinct impression that they were going to fuss over her like she was ten again right in front of everybody.
“I’m fine,” she tried to head them off. “I’m fine, really I-” As she cast around for something, anything to deflect her parents, she accidentally locked eyes with Darrel, who glowered at her from his wobbly perch at the front of the rowboat. She was hit with a sudden, wondrous bolt of inspiration. “And I know how we’re going to bring down the Casino.”
“You do?” Mom asked, sounding unimpressed.
Alice batted her mother’s hands away from her face and stepped up to the edge of the pool.
“Darrel!” she yelled. “How do you feel about joining the Resistance?”
Darrel laughed at her. “You have gone mad.”
“We’re in the Hospital of Dreams,” Alice shot back. “We’re all mad here. Seriously, though, you can’t tell me you like the Queen.”
“Nobody likes the Queen,” Jack muttered from behind her.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Darrel asked.
“Everything and nothing,” Alice replied. “Nothing because that’s what’s there, and everything because then I can give you a recruitment speech.”
Darrel shook his head, bemused. “After the sort of shit you were pulling this morning that speech would need to give me a pretty good reason to listen to you.”
Alice nearly flinched, but forced herself not to. She recalled his daughters instead, and smiled. “I can give you three pretty and good reasons,” she told him, before remembering his late wife. The smile slid off her face, “Possibly four.”
“I’m waiting, Jellybean” Darrel replied.
Alice took a deep breath, and began to slide the cards out of the Queen’s pack.