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Jack sat in the room of eyes angry with himself. After everything he’d tried to do to help his people he failed. Not only that, in the process he betrayed the two people he cared for the most.
Alice at least would be sent home. Jack was content with that. He had not meant to hurt her or play with her emotions when he involved her in his mess. His original intent had been to befriend her, not to have her fall in love with him. He cared deeply for the girl, but it had not been true love. Given enough time it might have turned to that, but he wasn’t there yet.
In the end she knew everything. The guilt of his betrayal of her though his lies and omissions weighed heavily on him. Unlike his mother, he preferred feeling the guilt. It made him a better man. He had one consolation; Alice would survive to rebuild her life in her world. There was even some closure with her father, although not nearly enough to make up for all that time she and her mother spent without him.
The second betrayal came as a surprise to Jack. It came about when he ran into Alice with the double agent in the forest. He honestly had not recognized Hatter when he first saw him. It hadn’t been until Jack’s attempt to get Alice to go with him caused pain to form in Hatter’s eyes that he recognized him.
It had been years since the two of them talked, and Jack had been using the pseudonym “Jack Lewis” at that point in his life. The sixteen year old Jack had been exploring the kingdom, trying to forget how much his mother had been changing recently when a dark haired, dark eyed child literally ran into him. The boy had the audacity to yell at Jack for getting in the way. Suddenly a couple of suits rounded the corner near where they were standing and the boy broke into a run with the suits close behind. Jack followed the boy out of curiosity and when the other tripped he pulled the smaller one up and helped him escape. The boy grudgingly thanked him and told Jack that his name was David. That day the boys formed what would become a very close friendship.
After that point the two often would be seen together. Anytime Jack could sneak out of his home he would go meet up with the younger lad. For three years this continued and the boys grew closer. David told Jack that his older brother had gone missing, and the reason the suits were chasing him the day they met was because David stole food that he needed to avoid starving. Before, his brother was the one to earn enough for the both of them to eat.
Jack looked into David’s missing brother, only to realize that his mother’s new assassin was David’s brainwashed older brother. Jack had no way to help his young friend and he was too much a coward to tell his young friend that his mother was the reason the last of David’s family had been taken from him.
As they grew closer, Jack began to fall for his young companion. He kept his emotions to himself until the day the smaller boy hesitantly kissed him. Knowing that his feelings had been returned, Jack responded to the kiss and their relationship became slightly more intimate than it had been before. Unfortunately his mother caused everything to come crashing down a month after the boys shared their first kiss.
Deciding that her son needed to take up more responsibility, she demanded that he stop going into the city. The suits started keeping a closer eye on him and he could not find the time to escape.
Eighteen days after the fateful summoning into the throne room and his mother’s announcement, his father arranged for him to go into the city one last time. His father knew he had a few friends and told Jack he had to say goodbye.
Jack went immediately to David, who had been worried about where he disappeared to. Knowing that if he didn’t completely sever ties with the teen he would never be able to get over him, Jack disdainfully told the dark haired boy that he was tired of playing games and that he didn’t want to have the other one continue to follow him around like a lost puppy anymore. Now that he was an adult he no longer needed him. At that he turned around and walked off, swallowing his own broken heart, he could hear the sniffling from the other lad. Jack never even tried to find out what happened to the boy he fell in love with, since he knew he could never see him again.
Jack had done his best to forget David, but those dark eyes filling with tears haunted his dreams up until he went to the other world and met Alice. It was ironic that the Hatter that was helping Alice turned out to be David all grown up. And it was the worst sort of karma that the words Jack only used to get Alice to go with him, a description that Jack did not truly mean, were about the man he still loved in the deepest part of himself.
Jack stood up and threw his chair in frustration and watched as it disappeared into the room. A minute later he noticed that the eyes began to wink out and he turned to see the door to his prison open.
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Hatter sucked in a shallow breath as soon as the electrical prod was removed from his chest. It was just perfect that he ended up tied to a chair at the mercy of the mad twins. As the two laughed at his pain and decided to take a break to get something to drink Hatter had the opportunity to lament what a mess his life had turned into.
Of course the one time he tried to do the right thing for the right reasons it would blow up in his face. The worst part of the entire fiasco was meeting the prince for the first time. To find out that the man that Alice had spent so much time searching for was Jack Heart shocked him. What was worse was that he recognized the man as someone entirely different.
Hatter assumed fate had to be laughing at him. For a decade he tried to forget the only person that he ever fell in love with only to only to find out the truth about him in the middle of a forest. Jack Heart was Jack Lewis. That was something Hatter was having a hard time accepting.
Hatter never knew what had happened to him after that horrible day when he broke up with him. The only thing that helped was that David saw the pain in the other boy’s eyes and could tell he was lying. Whatever was forcing their confrontation had to be bad to cause that much pain.
The few people who knew Hatter would occasionally wonder what caused the change in him. Hatter never told them that it was the day Jack broke up with him that David disappeared and Hatter emerged. He refused to be played again, deciding to become one of the players and not another victim. His plan had been a success until Alice appeared and he met Jack in the forest.
Hatter was unsure whether or not Jack recognized him in the forest, but he supposed it didn’t matter. As Jack’s cruel words washed over him, the confidant and witty Hatter disappeared and the more timid David emerged.
He had thought that Alice would be better off with Jack, but it was soon proven that, as usual, Hatter was wrong.
A sharp pain raced through his side as one of he doctors applied the rod to him.
“Now, now. We can’t have you drifting off on us can we.”
Hatter braced himself for the next round.
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A little later Hatter tensed as another person appeared along side the doctors. He knew his situation was about to get far worse as the creepy rabbit headed man sent away the doctors. Soon enough he was alone and tied to a chair in the presence of a mad killer. It happened to be a person that he thought he also once knew as someone completely different.
“Hello brother,” the oddly mechanical voice ground out as Mad March stood in front of him.
At that statement, Hatter knew that his worst suspicions were confirmed. Mad March really was his older brother.
He had seen the other man from a distance since the Queen’s assassin first appeared in Wonderland, recognizing the slightly twisted features that once belonged to his brother. The one time that Hatter worked up the courage to approach the other man, the assassin acted like he had never seen the boy before and attempted to stab him. That action did more than anything else to convince the teen his brother was dead and a monster wearing his face emerged in his place. Hatter hadn’t known how to feel when he heard of the death of Mad March years later, and he certainly didn’t know how to feel now.
“I thought you didn’t know who I was,” Hatter cautiously commented.
“Amazing thing about dying, it does wonders for the memory.”
“If you remember me, then why are you still helping the Queen of Hearts?” The statement of ‘why aren’t you helping me’ was implied in his question.
“Simple, you stupid git, I just don’t care about you. Killing people is far more fun.” At that, the mechanical man pulled a knife from his sleeve. “Time to go to sleep little brother.”
As Mad March lunged toward Hatter, he pushed his chair over and kicked out desperately, causing the assassin to stumble back. This gave him enough time to get the chair in front of him to use as a shield. Luck allowed the next swing of the knife to slice his right hand free. The edge of the blade nicked his hand, but Hatter ignored it as he punched the grinning face, shattering ceramic and circuitry.
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Jack and the Duchess hurried through the halls of the Casino. The pair overheard a couple of workers talking about how Alice escaped from her guards and made it back to the Casino. With Alice in the building, Jack knew what he had to do.
They hid around a corner as another group of suits raced by.
“Where are we going?” The Duchess asked as soon as the guards were gone.
“We need to find Hatter and Alice, then figure out a way to get the ring back from my mother,” Jack informed her in a low voice.
“Hatter? That scruffy man that was captured with Alice and you?” At Jack’s nod, the blond hurried off further into the building. “We have to hurry. The Queen ordered the doctors to interrogate him for information on the resistance.”
They burst into the doctor’s examination room to find a heartbreaking sight. Hatter was kneeling in front of the body of the assassin, ceramic shards cutting slightly into his legs. Hatter raised his head towards the pair, eyes red, but didn’t seem to really see them.
“He was my brother and I killed him. I didn’t have much choice since he was trying to kill me. He remembered me and still wanted me dead because he enjoyed murdering people. It didn’t matter that I was family.”
Jack walked over to the younger man and knelt next to him, avoiding anything that could cut himself.
“I killed him.” With that Hatter returned to staring at the prone body.
“Hatter,” The younger man did not look up at his name so Jack tried again.
“Hatter. David.”
At the use of his real name, Hatter looked up at the prince, really seeing him for the first time that day.
“We understand that you only did what you had to do. You aren’t to blame, but we have to go now. Alice is in the building and we have to help her before she gets into more trouble.”
With that, Jack pulled him to his feet and the three of them left the room.
“You go find Alice. The Duchess and I will get the ring from my mother somehow, then we will free the oysters so they can all go home.” Jack turned to head off with the Duchess when Hatter grabbed his arm.
“After this is over with, one way or another, we need to talk.” Hatter’s dark eyes bore into Jack’s own.
“I agree. When this is over we have much to discuss.”
With that, the three split up to try to stop the Queen of Hearts.
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Hatter glanced around the improvised throne room. Ever since the Hearts Casino collapsed rooms had to be found in the city for all the workers who had lost their jobs. This was in addition to all the refugees who came out of hiding once Jack Heart had taken over the kingdom.
Alice left Wonderland almost immediately after the Queen was forced to step down and went home with her father. Hatter had stepped in front of the father/daughter reunion when he noticed the bleeding Walrus enter the room. The young man was still wearing his protective layer and he doubted that either Alice or Carpenter had any form of armor on. He was glad he did seeing as the worker shot his gun a moment later.
With her father safe, Alice decided to return home. Before she left, Alice asked both him and Jack to stop by for a visit in a few months. It would take some time to rebuild her life with her father. Hatter was curious to find out how the reunion between Alice’s mother and Carpenter went.
Jack was a mystery to Hatter. He never renewed his affections for Alice, but promised to remain friends. He even broke off the arranged marriage with the Duchess, though they remained friends as well. For the last two weeks the new king of Hearts threw himself into renovations to the city. There was so much to do to help the people that Hatter barely saw him across the room. Hatter had fully expected, despite his desire to speak with the other man, to be sent back to the city. Instead, Hatter found that he had a room in the same building as Jack and people were asking him to help out with the renovations to the city.
In a way he was glad of having something to do. It kept him from having to dwell on what happened between Mad March and him. He’d been able to suppress what happened during those last few hours in the casino, but in the weeks after his mind kept returning to that awful green room and the man buried in it.
Unfortunately, being busy also meant that he had not had the chance to talk to Jack about had what happened between each other. Seeing Jack again brought back all of the emotions that Hatter had tried to bury and he needed some sort of resolution between them to occur.
There was one reason why he was able to run a tea shop. He had no interest in feeling artificial emotions and therefore was not tempted to try, and then get hooked on, any of the teas. Real emotions were hard enough to deal with without the withdrawal causing them to be all the more prevalent. With Jack’s grand reentrance into his life all the emotions he’d successfully ignored over the years crashed into him just as strong as ever.
In the days following the Queen’s fall and the King’s death Hatter had the chance to work out some of why Jack Lewis had broken up with him when they were teens. Unexpectedly enough, it was the golden Duchess that explained a few things to Hatter. The woman had approached Hatter in order to find out what he knew of Alice and how he had met Jack. He explained some of it, but chose to leave out just how close he and Jack had been. He suspected that the Duchess guessed it anyway. She was far more observant than most gave her credit for.
In exchange for his information, she told him about how Jack had been forced to leave his city friends behind when his mother became worried that he sympathized with them too much. The arranged marriage to the Duchess was another of the Queen’s methods to control her son.
As the two talked, Hatter realized that the blonde was more than just a pawn for the Queen and was a decent person in her own right. She proved this when, as she was leaving to attend to other business, she made a seemingly off-hand comment that she suspected that Jack had fallen for one of his city friends that he was forced to ignore, and that he had not gotten over that person at all. The Duchess’ information made Hatter wonder how the conversation with Jack might go, although he refused to hope for anything good.
Today was the day that Jack sent a request to talk to Hatter alone. Hatter braced himself to meet with the young king.
Jack looked up from the desk he was working at as Hatter entered. The younger man could clearly see the tiredness in Jack’s eyes. Despite this, he smiled when he saw Hatter.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” Jack stated as Hatter sat down on the other side of the desk.
“It’s fine,” Hatter replied, licking his lips in nervousness.
“Let me begin by saying that I am sorry. I know it is an inadequate apology for all that you have gone through because of my family, but it is a true statement none the less.”
“I understand some of it,” Hatter broke in, seeing that Jack could very well continue on this way if he didn’t say something. “The Duchess explained about-“
“The Duchess?” Jack interrupted.
“Your former fiancé. She and I have talked several times. I think I understand why you broke up with me and why you tracked down Alice. What I don’t get is why you still want me around.”
“I was never able to forget you. I wanted the chance to ask for your forgiveness and see if we could start over in some form or another.” Jack looked at Hatter nervously.
Hearing those words caused Hatter’s heart to leap into his throat. Hope grew slightly in his chest. He had never fallen out of love with the other man and now it seemed like he might have a chance to have him again.
“I forgive you.” Hatter watched as Jack’s smile widened. “Where do we go from here?”
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Jack asked as he stood up.
“I would love to,” Hatter replied as he got to his feet as well.
Jack gestured for him to follow and walked towards the door. Hatter knew that they still had much to discuss and the issues between them were far from settled.
Although as a new beginning, this one wasn’t so bad.