Fic: Pass the Hat
Title: Pass the Hat Author: nicole296 Characters/Pairing: Hatter; Queen of Hearts; OCs Rating: PG Summary: Chapter Two; Crimson and Red Warning: none Disclaimer: Don’t own. Pre mini-series. Word Count: 1,394
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Pass the Hat
I call you my friend
And that’s all I knew
Why do I have to pretend
To find ways to be around you?
- Around You, Ingrid Michaelson
Crimson and Red
The story had grown taller at dinnertime. Much too tall, in fact. It had begun simply enough. Her family, not to mention the whole castle, knew when she disappeared into her hidden corner of the garden that none of them had found (and never would), that she was thinking up the most fantastic of her stories. She sat in her usual chair, nearly halfway down the table from the King and Queen. This wouldn’t have presented a problem to most, but the table for the royalty of Wonderland was much longer than any table in any other land, on either side of the Looking Glass. But the little queen of Diamonds had grown accustomed to the place settings. For just such occasions, she would pull her plate in close and move her water glass, to the dismay of her etiquette tutor, all the way parallel with her dinnerware and then the tales began.
Her sister hated this part of dinner. Luckily, she sat opposite her and the table was almost as wide as it was long. Mary detested the frivolity of her sibling’s stories that came from the garden. She tolerated the rehashing Katherine would illustrate for the day’s history lesson - especially well if it was anything to do with the darker parts of Wonderland’s past - with great patience. Garden stories, however, she excused herself from in a very non-polite manner.
Unfortunately, dinner had just begun when their father, the Red King, spoke, “So, Katherine, I hear no one could find you in the garden today.” All of them knew what he was really asking. The Red Queen beside him leaned forward inquisitively as though she could see the expression on Katherine’s face.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to hear an excellent story, would you, dear King?”
Mary rolled her eyes. As if he had meant anything less. She looked back down distastefully at her hardly finished plate of salad (she despised raspberry vinaigrette). The main course hadn’t even arrived yet. She could hardly slip away now. She thought about requesting that Katherine didn’t tell that story, but the monarchs seemed to dislike that more than she disliked the fairytale rubbish that was about to spill out across the table.
The snap of Katherine’s fingers - her left hand, tonight - resonated off the marble floors and all the way into the kitchen. At least two of the cooks and no less than six of butlers sprinted to the dining hall’s entryway to see the good fun. The forlorn queen of Hearts glowered at them but they failed to notice. Their eyes were all glued to the center of the table in front of Katherine.
A battlefield that looked rather a lot like a chessboard glowed red a few inches above the white tablecloth. In one far end, waited the likenesses of the Red Queen and King, more marble than man. At the other was a small pawn, looking more purple than red, and glowing with a fierceness that neither the chessboard nor her parents possessed. Two larger pawns and a bishop closed in, leaning on the edges of their bases to leer at the Katherine-pawn. The purple pawn moved back and forth, followed by the bishop and other pawns wherever it went. Somewhere in the distance, Mary could hear her younger sister narrating the story but she wanted to hear that even less than she wanted to see the story being played out before her. She was daring to hope that the chessboard-battlefield at least meant there would be a good fight - preferably a fatal one.
So while her sister sat daydreaming of flesh wounds and good old-fashioned beheadings, Katherine hesitated to introduce the final character. How best to paint him? In the end he came out looking very much like a rook, which was appropriate since she had already given him the hat he wore now. The bishop wore a hat as well, but his was much stupider and looked rather a lot like that of a court jester.
“What’s that one called, child?” her mother asked in a faraway voice.
“That one, your majesty, is The Hatter.” Her voice held a grand sort of pride as she echoed his name across the room. She gestured grandly, too, as she spoke and nearly knocked her own salad plate out of a distracted butler’s hands. Luckily, he caught it before it hit the ground and was ignored still by everyone.
The story went on, The Hatter triumphing by the table’s length times two. His face always smiled, even when the bishop threw misguided punches at him (because she didn’t want him to get hurt this time). The Hatter’s final blow sent the bishop three times as far as it had in real life. Even this didn’t turn the story for the better to Mary, who had long ago lost interest. The little glowing Katherine kissed the red rook on the cheek. The Hatter chess piece turned crimson at the chaste kiss in turn, and then faded back to his original color. He escorted the purple pawn to the marble King and Queen, bowing deeply before slipping into one of the checkers of the chessboard as though it were a rabbit hole.
The entire court (for the whole of them had gathered by now) applauded as the hero made his exit. (“Exeunt brave Sir Hatter,” as Katherine had put it.) The queen of Diamonds grinned, much like the real Hatter had in the alleyway, and stood to make shallow curtsies for all of them.
So began the saga of the Valiant Hatter, as the King would come to call him. It was the King who encouraged these tales the most. He would gladly let Katherine regale him with stories in his study during the late hours of the evening so long as she promised that the courageous rook would make an appearance.
The King probably would not have been so enthusiastic had he known the fodder for his daughter’s stories. For you see, Katherine felt it necessary to keep her tales as fresh and close to the source as possible. But that boy, the Hatter, had made it quite clear that he did not think the risk of being her acquaintance would be worth the reward. So she kept her distance, watching him from crowded streets and through the cloudy windows of establishments she dared not to go into. She learned his mannerisms and his colloquialisms. She imitated his gestures and his gait.
The rook-Hatter that had at first been stilted, though handsome and true, became a mirror image of the boy on the streets. His bows became more flourished and very nearly impertinent (but the King and Queen thought it endearing of the rook whereas they would not have the real young man). He made jokes in high-pitched tones. Her father’s favorite addition were the hat tricks he performed to placate angry mobs of mome-raths and distract ugly jabberwocky.
The young queen was what passes for about eleven on the other side of the Looking Glass when it became more difficult to mirror the fluid movements of her Hatter (for he really had taken the moniker for his own, much to her delight). He no longer stayed in the safer passes of the city’s alleys. He was making a lot of trips into areas she knew better than to follow. The dark, poverty-laced neighborhoods of their yesteryear were left behind for windowless and smoky bars and gritty backdoor establishments. She swore that once she had even seen him pick up a small knife at a shop on the edge of town. His childhood was over (if he’d ever had much of one) and, consequently, so were her favorite stories. She occasionally still told them to herself (the original tale revisited and redrawn a hundred times at least) over the following years. Six years passed on the other side of the Looking Glass before her own bedtime stories of boys in hats with sweet, sinful smiles and misleadingly trustful eyes no longer put her to sleep.
The queen of Diamonds had grown up. She had needed to: her father had died and her mother was too ill to rule for even a year longer. Wonderland’s fate had fallen to her and her sister. Both were of age; now came the Coronation. And the Blackjack.
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So my keyboard has decided that the ‘e’ is sensitive. I apologize for an extra e’s that may sneak onto the end of inappropriate words. Not much Hatter in this chapter, but I’m trying to condense this part of the story so that I can get to him. I’m using this as a bit of a feeler chapter, I guess. Probing for negative or positive response. (I.E. Review, please!) If anyone experienced would like to volunteer as a beta, I’m open for one.
I’ll answer questions about characters or this story’s mythology, also, if you like. Concerning the story’s future, I may be more tight-lipped, though.
Chapter One: You Plus Me Is Bad News Chapter Two: Crimson and Red Chapter Three: Where Is It She Goes Chapter Four: Many The Miles, Many The Miles Chapter Five: Reach Into Foreign Lands