Poisoned Piece: Connected Pawns
They were killing the street kid today.
It had been Mad March who'd forced that identity to become a more latent one, and so it was only fitting that he be present when it was buried forever. He helped them warm Hatter up, pushing him past his pain threshold and making him more susceptible to their tricks. The doctors themselves set up their elaborate trap, the landscape of the city streets he'd lived on as a teen. They made the predators more threatening, the hidey-holes harder to get to and less pleasant to be in, the food laced with drugs and disease to slow down the prey. Whereas in reality Hatter had managed to avoid most of the pitfalls that came with cohabiting with Lust-steeped Teaheads, muggers, and gangs of older kids, they set it up so that he would have no escape, no chance meeting with the Queen's favorite assassin, no impression to leave upon someone capable of helping him under a roof.
After his physical body was taxed enough to lower his mental defenses, they pulled Mad March into Hatter's head and began to work on the facet. They coaxed it out of the glassy encampment with the same promise that had tempted the 'real' Hatter into March's care: the promise of easy money and a steady supply of food and shelter. From there all that was needed was to watch him run himself down, watch the self-confidence he'd fallen back on fail to develop, watch the knowledge that he could avoid the worst of anything fade until it was nothing more than a flight of fancy. There are a lot of nasty things that can happen to a young boy on his own, and without the favor of Luck and with the attentions of the Tweedles, every one of them was given a go at the facet.
It ended like all torture sessions do: when the subject finally gives in. Hatter's teenaged self pitched himself and all the associated memories and feelings and traits off a bridge. An end to the simulation showed that Hatter's face was heavily bruised, and that he was bleeding sluggishly from his ears and nose; when he woke up, he would have no memory of those years, and they would provide no holds for him.
A most satisfying session: they would work on killing the Tea Shop owner next.
There was no way to make it to the closest dock, and so they went downwards, walking beneath aqueducts and making good use of the ramps whenever the option was available to them. The sounds of the Suits searching for them faded into the sounds of running water and the occasional footstep of one of the city's regular citizens, hurrying to get to wherever they were going without getting waylaid. It was a nice walk, in Jack's opinion, for all that it was mostly in the dark and done under less than ideal circumstances. Eventually, Jack realized that Duchess had lost the way and was desperately trying not to show it, and began to steer them towards the lake where there were bound to be plenty of boats to steal and plenty of places to run to. They could take it down the aqueducts and hide out in the Underlands, or take it east a ways and hide out in his old family estate. They could even-
They could even take it across the lake, to the City of the Knights, where Alice may possibly be. He wasn't quite sure how helpful that would ultimately be, but he would feel much better with the knowledge that she was safe and still on his side.
There was a dock up ahead, a line of unattended boat bobbed gently where they were tied to it. Just three stories more downwards and they were free.
Naturally, no sooner had they reached the boat and begun to untie it when someone grabbed him by the wrist and flung him into the water. Duchess cried out in alarm, and then the lake closed over him. He surfaced quickly, spluttering.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Alice yelled from above him, though not at him. She held a torch in her left hand, and was shinning it at Duchess, who squinted against the onslaught. Jack spat out more tepid water, and began treading.
"What are you doing here?" Duchess hissed.
Alice set down the torch, eyes never leaving her face. "I'm not going to tell you!"
"And I'm not telling you!"
"While neither of you are speaking to each other," Jack interrupted as politely as possible. "Could I get a little help?"
As one, Duchess and Alice walked to the edge of the dock and helped him back onto relatively solid and dry land. Jack took off his jacket, and wrung it out in a futile effort to preserve it.
"Thank you," Jack said.
"You're welcome," Alice replied, soundly slightly unsure of that statement. Jack felt something cold settle into his chest that had nothing to do with the water.
"Duchess does have a point. Not that I'm not overjoyed to see you well." The words sounded off even to his ears. He winced, then pressed quickly forwards. "But what are you doing here?"
Alice tilted her chin up a little. "Besides enjoying the karmic slapstick show?"
Jack took a look an involuntary look at his sodden self, then looked back her. "Yes."
"I'm… running errands."
Jack frowned. Over Alice's shoulder, he saw Duchess do the same.
"For who?"
Alice seemed to ponder it, then crossed her arms and looked up at him. "Would you like to meet them?"
Alice was his daughter; his and Carol's, through and through. She was intelligent and assertive. She was a cat person. She always wanted to be pushed higher on the swings. She was the top of her graduating class in elementary school. She wanted to be a policewoman when grew up.
She was a grown-up now. Maybe she was a policewoman. He didn't know. He'd missed it- he'd missed her teenage years, her first boyfriend, her first break-up, her high school graduate, her college years…
"Jesus Christ," Robert swore. Walrus looked at him oddly.
"It's gone off," he explained quickly, "And given me the great-grandmother of all headaches in the process."
Walrus grimaced in sympathy, and promptly washed the vial of Nostalgia down the drain. It was easy to feign the symptoms of a bad batch, not bad enough to stop him from working, but enough to give him a rough time of sleeping and excuse his being late to work tomorrow. By the time 'late' became 'absent' and anyone thought to look for him, he'd be long gone.
But first, he had to finish the day. And then he had a prisoner to visit.
Charlie made it back to camp in short order after seeing off Lady Alice and the cabbages. He still didn't think much of being separated, and even less of being so far away from the dangers that would surely be plaguing her, but supplies were important. It was among the first things they taught you as a page: keep your weapons in good repair, wear your comfortable boots to battle, and watch your supplies.
Supplies had also factored into sieges, if he recalled correctly (which he did- he was a Knight, after all). The safest way to win a siege was to cut off a fortress' supply lines and wait until they found surrender preferable to starvation. While the library was not an impenetrable fortress such as he had grown up learning the ins and outs of, there was no doubt that Lady Alice's allies were under siege, and thus, his supplies were of vital importance.
Not that it change the fact that he would much rather be with Lady Alice than stuck here, trying to teach Duck how to harvest a crop without killing everything in the process.
Hatter was the sort of person who survived by appearing as more than he was. He could fool everyone and anyone into thinking that he was suave, or ruthless, or cunning when he was mostly just scared. He could, that is, until now.
All his lies were gone now. The mirrors lay in shatters on the floor, the web straightened out and spooled closed, the smoke long dispersed and the masks burnt. All there was left could hide beneath his hat- was hiding beneath his hat, as a matter of fact, waiting for one Tweedle or another to find him.
Still, his life hadn't been an entirely worthless thing. After all, he reminded himself as the hat was lifted away, leaving him completely exposed, Alice was safe. And that was worth everything.
Walking through the city at night when two of your three-person party is wearing blindfolds was no easy feat, but somehow they managed. The blindfolds were removed by a shotgun-toting , elderly woman as they stood on a balcony overseeing what could only be described as a city of books. They were everywhere, used as tables and chairs and beds for the people living among them. He wouldn't have been at all surprised to hear that they were used as clothing either.
"The Great Library," Duchess breathed from beside him, leaning forwards slightly as though to drink in the sight. He remembered, with a pang, how excited she had been when he'd shown her one of the books Caterpillar had had smuggled to him. He'd assumed in recent times that the reaction had been faked, that everything that she showed him had been faked, but now he wasn't sure.
"I'm sure Caterpillar will vouch for you," Alice said. Jack started, and turned to face her wear she stood with her back against the pillar. He would very much have liked to say that she looked strange, standing there dressed in Wonderland clothes a good thirty years out of fashion and leveling a closed-off, considering look, but in truth she didn't.
"Does that mean you won't vouch for me?" Jack asked.
Alice crossed her arms over her chest. "It's not that I doubt you have the best of intentions…"
When it became clear that she wasn't going to complete that sentence, he did it for her. "But no, you won't vouch for me."
"No."
The surge of anger was irrational, but knowing something was irrational didn't diminish its effects. "But why?"
"Because you lied to me!"
"I had to!"
"No you didn't!" Alice's arms were no longer folded close but jutting out towards him, her body angling sideways in the defensive posture it took weeks of courtship to wean her off of. "All you needed to say was that you'd found my father and I would have come running. Just four words: I found your father. There wasn't any need to tell me your name was Jack Chase, or that you were an accountant for Britain, or to enroll in my class or to ask me out on dates-"
"No, I didn't! I did those things because I wanted to, because- because I care about you," Jack protested.
"How do I believe that?" Alice yelled.
"Because it's the truth!"
Alice's hands shot into the air in a frustrated gesture as Jack was suddenly hit with a wave of déjà vu. There was a quiet cough from beside them: there Caterpillar stood, unflappable as always. It was, perhaps, a mark of how bad a day he was having that it took until that moment to remember that by all rights the man should be dead.
"Well, this will change the game a bit," he said. "How are you doing, Jack?"
"Better than I'd expected to be doing," Jack replied honestly.
"And Duchess?"
Jack looked to her automatically as she spoke: "Likewise, I'm sure."
Caterpillar ignored her response. "I must admit, I'm surprised to see her here among us."
Duchess seemed to find her fingernails incredibly interesting. He suspected this was so she didn't have to look at the giant sign spelling out 'hypocrite' that had evidently been hanging over his head for some time.
"I was as well." Jack took a deep breath and steadied himself for a tremendous leap of faith. "But we can trust her. She has an unparalleled talent for keeping secrets."
The prison chambers stank. There was no way around it, and he supposed that Dr. Dee and Dr. Dum preferred it that way. The long-term health of their subjects hadn't ever been a priority, which had been an issue they'd clashed over in the past. His job as Carpenter was to get as much emotion from the Oysters as possible, and he couldn't do that if they were sick or dying. He supposed, though, that once the Tweedles were done with your mind there wasn't much use for the body.
Or they body was set to work under a completely different identity and had no idea what was done to it. He wondered for a moment what had been done to him. After about three seconds he decided he was better off not knowing.
There were other people who lived here too, although lived was perhaps too generous a term. Those who were unlucky enough to have the sentence of beheading passed upon and not have the King intervene in a timely manner waited for the executioner's ax here. It was towards one of those cells that he made his way, reminding himself all the while that a mass prison break would likely be noticed, and that he was aiming for discreet.
He finally found the right cell, the numbers having long since been buried beneath layers of grime, and entered the general Eggman code all his workers had. The door opened, as most would, and the former Nine of Clubs cautiously picked himself off the floor. He had been the driver who had gotten Duchess and Jack to safety, and once the information of where and how had been rung from him he'd been sentenced to death.
"Listen very carefully," Robert said. "I can get you out of here, alive, but I'm going to need something in return."
The man Caterpillar had introduced as Dodo stared at Jack. "Goddesses above, man, why don't you just bring the bloody Queen of Hearts here and be done with it!"
He was shouting at Caterpillar, but it was Jack who answered. "Because if my mother were here, we could just shoot her, and that would be far too easy."
"Well, I'm happy to see sociopathy runs in family!" Dodo exclaimed.
"As I was saying," Caterpillar interrupted mildly. "The woman in green is Duchess."
"Of course she is!" Dodo threw his hands in to the air.
"Now that we've got that settled," Alice said, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Can we figure out how their being here changes things?" She waited a beat, then added. "Or if it's painfully obvious, could someone please tell me, instead of playing ten rounds of 'confuse the Oyster girl'?"
"As Jack and Duchess have been heirs to the throne for some time now, their open support should galvanize our more conservative sympathizers."
"And annoy our progressive members," Dodo grumbled. "Presuming, of course, we all live long enough to tell anyone, now that this has become the hub of activity for Wonderland's most wanted."
"It would be a clever trick, to hit a target you can't see," Caterpillar mused.
Dodo twitched, and picked up a book, looking for a moment like he was going to hit someone with it. Once more, Alice intervened. "Will that help our plan to get me to my father? Is it going to rescue Hatter? What are the results likely to be?"
"Besides our imminent death by way of sheer stupidity?" Dodo asked.
"Yes," Alice said, tugging the book out of his hands and placing it back on the desk. He snatched it back up almost immediately.
"As you might imagine, many members of the Court fall under the heading of 'conservative sympathizer'. It may be possible, once news of their affiliation filters back to the Casino-"
It was at that point that Duchess made a decision. She was tired of being talked over and around and to instead of with, and it was going to end now. "There's no need to wait. I have contacts in the Court that can smuggle Alice in, as well as start a whisper campaign."
"You do?" Jack asked.
"They did smuggle us out," Duchess pointed out.
"That's the best news I've heard all week!" Alice said, sinking into a chair.
"If you're leaving, it's the best news I've heard too!" Dodo added.
"For someone claiming to want my mother ousted, you aren't being very helpful," Jack observed drolly. Dodo spluttered.
Caterpillar sat as well, looking as unflustered as he had when serving as the King's advisor, and as calculating as he had the day the Queen sentenced him to death. "Tell me about your contacts. We'll formulate a plan from there."
Hatter awoke to find a large ceramic rabbit head hover inches above his own. Instinctively he yelled, pushing himself away and raising his fist. Then he yelled again, this time from the pain the movement caused. He collapsed back onto the bed, but forced his arm to stay in front of him defensively.
"Hey hey hey!" The rabbit shouted. "Watch the mug!"
Hatter blinked. He knew that voice.
"March?" he croaked.
"Were you expecting the White Queen?" March replied, head tilting at a condescending angle.
"What the fuck?"
"What do you think happened?"
Hatter thought about it for a moment. "Well, I was obviously set on fire and thrown through a window into an aqueduct ten stories down, and it took you awhile to fish me out because you were just having too much fun in your pottery class. That still doesn't count as a proper hat, but I'll give you credit for the effort."
"Huh," March said after a beat. "Well, the docs did say that the head injuries might have done something to that memory of yours."
"Head injury?" Hatter inquired, frowning.
"Name a body part. You've been injured there," March told him. "What the last thing you remember?"
Hatter thought furiously. "I think- the Thyme job?"
"Seriously? The Thyme job?" March threw back his head and laughed, which was a very tinny sound when it came out of a voice box embedded in his neck. "That was fifteen years ago!"
"Fifteen years! I'm missing fifteen years?" Hatter cried. March laughed harder.
"No wait it's more than that…" He thought furiously, looking for facts. He was David Theophilus Hatter, age probably around forty-two, and he had a best mate called Mad March. He worked as a spook, finding evidence of Resistance work, and once that was found he gave to go ahead to March to take them out- unless the people he was spying on had… something he wanted. But beyond that...
"My childhood's gone!" he said, as March slowly sobered. "I don't even know who my parents are!"
"They're either dead or abandoned you, so I wouldn't worry too much about it," March told him as the door to what Hatter belatedly realized was some sort of infirmary swung open, to reveal an extremely nervous nurse.
"I- I- M-m-m-mister-" She stammered.
"Relax doll," March said, with a familiar enough tone that Hatter could mouth his next words along with him. "I only bite when asked."
She did relax, though not as much as she would have if March was currently part lupine. "The Queen would like to summon you to the throne room to discuss a possible job."
"I'm sure she would," March snapped. The nurse cowered. "But I'm a bit busy with my pal Hatter here."
Hatter, for himself, had come to the sudden realization of why March's head was now made of clay. "Oh go on."
"You sure?" March said, suspicious.
"Well, I shudder to think what you've down to our accounts while I've been laid up, but we must need money," Hatter pointed out. "Besides, you don't even want to know what sort of jokes I have planned if she decides you'd look better as a flamingo next."
March laughed again.
"Pink is not your color!" Hatter insisted. March stood, and the nurse relaxed ever so slightly.
"Okay, okay, I get the picture. You don't charm the nurses too much, I don't want any of them trying to follow you home," he groused. "With a little luck, I'll be back before they're ready to even consider the idea, though."
Hatter laughed, which turned quickly into a cough. By the time the fit was over, March had left.
The Nine refused to give him his name, and for his part, Robert allowed himself to be called Carpenter. They didn't dare try and steal a bullet car, and with Nine injured as he was it was slow going. They walked through sunset, through the night, and the sun had risen above the horizon again before they arrived at the right place. Nine knocked on the door.
"Who are you, aged man? And how is it you live?" Came a muffled voice from inside. Carpenter found the question odd (as the voice was elderly and female) until the even odder reply came.
"I look for butterflies that sleep among the wheat. I make them into mutton pies and sell them in the street," Nine gasped. The door flew open, and sure enough, an elderly, female person came barreling out, throwing her arms around the Club.
"We heard you'd been captured! We thought you'd been executed!" she cried. There was the sound of a gun being cocked, and Robert felt something heavy being pushed into his back. He raised his hands up.
"Who are you?" said a gruff voice from behind him. It was elderly and male- probably the woman's husband.
"He's Carpenter," Nine said. "He got me out, and he says he wants to defect."
"Oh?"
"I've found- they never- it's a long story, but the short version is that I'm hoping I can find and apologize to my daughter, Alice," Robert said.
"Alice, eh?" said the man. The pressure on Robert's back disappeared, and he stepped out of the shadows into the sunlight.
"Yes. Have you heard anything?" he asked.
"Maybe," the man's hand came down on his shoulder, just a bit too tightly to be entirely friends. "Name's Eaglet, and this is Lory. Why don't you step inside and tell us that long story, Carpenter?"
"It's Robert," he replied. "And of course. Lead the way."
The Queen's throne room was missing its normal number of aristocratic admirers, which was a sure sign that something serious was about to go down. A week ago March would have put this down to the impending need to have Jack taken care of: but considering that she'd been perfectly willing to declare him fodder for the ravens in front of everyone he had a feeling that something even more screwball was going on.
"Carpenter has escaped," the Queen said bluntly after the doors had swung shut behind him. "We're keeping it quiet for now, but word is bound to get out sooner rather than later, unless he's found and bought back. I want you to do it- quick as you can."
That was a sensible thought- it must have been the King's. March spared a glance over at His Royal Cuckold, who, predictably, had a dull, slightly besotted look about him. Stupid sod.
"I thought we agreed I'd have time to make sure Hatter's brain stays the shape it ought," March replied. "All that work will be for nothing if he snaps back into Alice mode."
"The process is sound," said one of the Tweedles. March couldn't be bothered to tell which was which at the moment.
"It has never failed," added the other.
"I thought you said Carpenter had escaped," March drawled. The twins scowled.
"That was an entirely different process!"
"My brother is correct. It wasn't designed to withstand familiar settings and people. Hatter's was."
"Well, tough titties, you still promised me time with him," March said, giving up on logic as a bad job. "If you think I'm going to give that up to chase after your runaway scientist you got another thing coming."
The Queen's face turned beet red, and he continued "And don't think of threatening me with the lab again. Carpenter was running that show, the rest of them couldn't find there ass with both hands and a map."
"A word in your ear, sweetest," the King said, before the Queen could say something hasty that probably would give him a flamingo head.
He whispered. March wished he had eyes to roll, and contented himself with pretending to check a nonexistent watch instead.
"Upon reflection," the Queen announced. March snorted. "I've decided to grant you some time. We have the Looking Glass, and the Tea production will not suffer greatly in the next few days. But I want you tracking him within three days at the very most!"
March bowed as sarcastically as he could and made to leave.
"And March," the Queen called after him.
He turned around.
"We only need Carpenter alive. You can kill whoever he's hiding with."
March could have smiled. "Even if it's your son?"
"If it's my son, bring me back his head. Whatever you do to the body is entirely at your discretion."
March bowed, genuinely this time, and walked away whistling. Why shouldn't he? He was alive, he had his old partner back, and very shortly he'd be taking a very long bloodbath. Life was good.
Next chapter can be read here.