Alice and the Tarnished Looking Glass [Rhaenyratargaryens║Ryees]

[Ryees]

Once, Wonderland had shimmered. Its skies had been impossible shades of blue and pink and bruise-purple, held aloft by whimsy and madness in equal measure. The rivers had sung nonsense, the clocks had argued with the trees, and the flowers had recited poetry no one could quite remember afterward. But whimsy had its own kind of balance, and when it broke, Wonderland cracked with it. Wonderland had always been a land of contradiction, a kingdom of dreaming logic and elegant madness, where rules bent like willow branches and the impossible was merely inconvenient. Its beauty was the kind that pulsed behind your eyes long after you looked away: colors too saturated, songs that rewrote themselves, and storms that rained teacups. But the strangeness had once been benevolent, held in a precarious balance between whimsy and wildness, between the curious and the cruel. That balance was gone now. Now the Queen of Hearts ruled from her throne of sharpened rules and ruined memory. Her armies marched in perfect lines, her spies whispered behind mirrors, and her justice came swift and iron-toothed. She did not tolerate dissent, she erased it. Wonder had become weaponized; imagination curdled into tyranny. The Queen of Hearts sat fat on the throne of memory, and the land had twisted with her. She governed not with reason, but with a sharpened sense of order, a belief that the world must make sense only to her, and all else be stripped of its irregularities. Her justice was clockwork and blindfolded, her soldiers spooled from red thread and glass, and her whispers carried in the teeth of roses. She had strangled the nonsense from Wonderland, burned the crooked from its corners, and crushed delight under the boot of precision. Those who survived learned to smile with empty mouths and bow with trembling knees. But even beneath the press of tyranny, the old chaos stirred. It whispered through the cracks in the castle tiles, danced along forgotten forest paths, bloomed in back alley murals painted in shifting pigment. And somewhere near the edge of the known, in a corner of the realm so warped it no longer answered to maps, a broken territory had declared itself unbowed. In the far wastes of the Chessboard Barrens, where the Red Bishop’s cathedral once melted into the horizon, a new kind of madness had taken root. Hatter’s Domain, they called it—though not always with fondness. It had no formal borders, only watchtowers rigged with telescopic lenses and sound-trigger mines, ragged boundaries marked by collapsing dreamscapes and stubborn salvage, and a great rusted gate that swung open only for the broken. Former card soldiers with replaced joints and severed allegiances stood alongside mirrorfolk, paper knights, threadbare toy beasts and rebel tinkerers, each one a piece of Wonderland that no longer fit the Queen’s jigsaw. He hadn’t built the place so much as salvaged it, knitting together collapsed dream-architecture with wire and warcraft, hammering out a haven from old carnival rides and clockwork rail lines. It stood like a wound on the land, jagged and angry and very much alive. There were places where the ground blinked like eyelids, where the air reversed direction every hour, where the moonlight rang like a bell if you breathed too loud. The Queen’s forces avoided it when they could, called it cursed, said it was where Wonderland’s forgotten went to rot. They were wrong. It was where they went to fight. This was no sanctuary. It was a fortress stitched from old carnival bones, abandoned train stations, and crumpled bits of architecture no longer welcome in sane company. The rebels who called it home were just as piecemeal: card soldiers with their suits scrubbed off, deserters, tinkers, and the weaponized remnants of dreams too sharp to forget. It was held together by pulleys and willpower, by old war songs and stranger hopes. And at its center moved the man once known for tea parties and riddles. He had been the Mad Hatter. Now he was simply the Hatter, and madness had taken on a far more functional shape. He no longer hosted gatherings, no longer poured tea. He planned offensives. He assigned patrols. He wired traps into hedgerows and hand-sketched maps from memory and rumor. He rarely slept. Or, if he did, it was in brief snatches of stillness behind reinforced walls, soot still streaked on his hands. He moved like a general but thought like a poet; he spoke like a man who remembered better worlds, but bled like one who no longer believed they could be returned. If he laughed now, it was soft and tired and without witnesses. And if he still wore the old top hat—weathered now, rim singed, brim tucked with cards like a gambler on borrowed time—it was only because it still worked. Because the hat remembered. And tonight, he waited. The perimeter was quiet, but that meant nothing. Quiet, in Wonderland, was often louder than the alternative. He had ordered the watchers to keep their distance, to see but not stop. Let her come. Let her think herself clever, stealthy, unnoticed. Let her make it all the way inside before the teeth snapped shut. In the war room, an old glasshouse half-swallowed by ivy and reinforced with sheets of dented armor, he marked her likely route with a strip of red thread. He used to use chalk. The thread worked better; it didn’t vanish when he blinked. A gust of wind slithered through a shattered pane, curling around his boots. He didn’t turn at the sound, but the corner of his mouth twitched. The air rippled. And then, just above the map, floating midair without ceremony, appeared a grin. Wide. White. Familiar. Unwelcome. He exhaled, slow as a fuse. “You’re late.” The smile widened. It hung there, bright and crescent-smooth, sharp enough at the corners to cut glass. No eyes. No fur. Just that grin, as if the idea of a mouth had slipped between dimensions and gotten stuck on smug. “I’m never late,” came the reply, the voice like velvet dragged through thorns, “time simply bends differently for cats.” The grin twisted as the rest of him began to bloom into place. First came the whiskers, teasing out from nowhere, followed by the glint of claws curling delicately around an upper beam. A shimmer, a flicker, a tail coiling in from mist... he never arrived all at once, never gave the satisfaction of a proper shape. Even now, his form shimmered like a poorly tuned radio, uncertain if it wanted to be a lounging feline, a lean-limbed man with a twitching ear, or a shadow in the shape of both. Hatter didn’t look up from the map. “Spare me the philosophy. What did she say?” Cheshire tilted his head in that way only cats and the dangerously amused could manage. “She said, ‘bring me his head.’ A charming woman, really. You’d adore each other if she hadn’t already decided how your story ends.” The thread in Hatter’s hand went taut between two fingers. He let it settle, expression unreadable. “And the girl?” “Ohhh…” The grin curled into something more dangerous. “She’s in motion. All soldier instincts and soft-focus memories. She thinks this is her mission. Thinks you are the monster that Wonderland must be cleansed of. Such conviction, really. You should be flattered.” “I’m not.” He flicked the thread into a coil. “I’m practical.” Cheshire’s body, whatever pieces had formed, melted again into suggestion. Only the grin remained, tilting sideways now. “Which is why you’ve left the western approach unguarded. Not secured but, monitored, yes, I know your habits. You want her to come. You want her seen. You want her name whispered before the first blade is drawn.” “She doesn’t remember who she is,” Hatter murmured, more to himself than to the Cat. “Not really. But the land will. The people will. If there’s even a spark of her left in there, Wonderland will call it out.” “And if there isn’t?” Hatter turned at last, eyes like tarnished silver under the war-room lanterns. “Then she’ll try to kill me.” The smile hovered a beat longer, as if deciding whether to vanish or laugh. It did neither. Instead, it asked, “Would you like me to warn the cooks? Or should I let them be surprised when a blade-wielding ghostgirl crashes tea?” “Tell them to set two places.” A low chuckle danced in the rafters. And then the grin disappeared.​

 

[rhaenyratargaryens]

​ Once, Wonderland had sung to her. Not in words, or so she could remember, but in feeling. In the way the wind tickled her palms as she walked along the paths that curled just so under her feet, or how she could feel light vines pulling her farther and farther into the forest. It was hard to picture how the place had been before when she was younger, her memories ripped and shredded for her own sake as the Queen had put it. Still, when she concentrated, she could remember the Wonderland that opened like a book when she smiled, where trees bent low to whisper shared secrets. Now, though, it was silent. Alice stepped along a stretch of pale stone, the moon above her flickered like a dying candle caught in a too-long blink. The map that she had memorized from the Queen of Heart’s opulent war room was already half-useless. She did remember that part about Wonderland. Landmarks shifted and paths reversed. More than once, she’d turned around only to find the road behind her was gone in the blink of an eye. But she kept on moving. The Queen’s magic ran cold and sharp inside of her, just below the skin. She could feel it pushing her forward — Find the Hatter. She passed under an arch made of twisted carousel horses, their paint flaked and faces warped into snarls. Wind rattled in their glass eyes spewing them every which way. Beyond, the terrain shifted — rubble, yes, but arranged deliberately. Trenches. Camouflage. This wasn’t chaos. It was preparation. He had made this. The man that she was meant to kill. The name Mad Hatter didn’t feel correct in her mouth anymore. It felt like a mask that someone else had worn. She could remember, albeit vaguely, a party. A man with a laugh that commanded an audience, spilled tea, dancers with clocks for heads that rung at a very specific time. But the memories wouldn’t stay still, they rolled and slithered every time that she tried to pin them down. She had dreams of him sometimes, where his face was turned away, always turned away, but she knew that he was smiling. It was the kind of knowing that didn’t come from logic, but from the marrow of her being. Like how one knows that a storm is coming before the clouds even gather. Or how you’ve been somewhere before, but you just can’t put your finger on when. Her dreams bled in the edges of her waking, leaving echoes of her past self behind her eyes. The curve of a teacup handle that seemed all too familiar. A song hummed by a stranger. The smell of smoke and honey. She hadn’t asked for these memories. The Queen told her that they were a distraction. That Wonderland had broken her once and that she had been repaired stronger. Faster. Sharper. Alice wasn’t supposed to question that. She looked back down at the map etched into her gloves, the ink still fresh. It was supposed to lead her straight into the Hatter’s stronghold, right through the western edge of the Chessboard Barrens, past the melted cathedral and the scorched garden of lilies that now bit instead of bloomed. The land shifted again under her steps, refusing to obey. It was reacting to her. Or recognizing her. She wasn’t quite sure. There were voices, sometimes, in the shadows. Not loud. Not threatening. Just familiar. Like someone who was trying to remind her of who she had been before all this. She pressed forward anyway. She crested a ridge of warped stone and rusted carousel debris, and there, through the ruin and the ivy, she saw the gate. A towering thing of twisted metal and shattered signage, patchworked together with hinges that groaned. There were playing cards nailed to the outer arch all face down, a warning. At its center, the gate stood slightly ajar. Not locked or guarded. Like it was waiting for her. Alice exhaled, a soft and involuntary sound, and stepped closer. The silence here wasn’t empty. It was expectant. She could still turn back. Find another way in. But her hand lifted and pressed against the rusted gate. The metal was cool beneath her palm, rough with age and war. She stepped through, the air tasting of copper and static. The landscape inside didn’t obey geometric rules, walls folded in on themselves, light fractured at strange angles. Everything here was stitched together from the forgotten. In the distance, she saw a house in the middle of the chaos, stitched together with pieces of forgotten armor. There was a sound in the distance, not quite music or machinery. A rhythmic clinking, like teacups bumping gently in their saucers. She followed it. Winding deeper into the patchwork city, down through an old corridor made of old library shelves and shattered theater curtains, her shadow split and merged with itself beneath the flickering lamplight. And still, she followed. When she turned the corner, she could’ve sworn that she saw a faint grin in the shadows, tiny pawprints following her in the forgotten dust. She had seen practically no animals on her journey and now there was one following her? It was too much of a coincidence for her to sweep under the rug. Nonetheless, it was as though this being was ushering her along the same way that Wonderland was. And it wasn’t like she could catch a cat that was more shadow than matter. Alice continued on, her feet taking her into the middle of the city and right to the building that she was sure he was. She could just feel it. This was the place that she needed to be. The soft scent of smoke wafted in her face as she walked closer, the burning of candles illuminating the space. Burnt parchment, oil and metal, candle wax and something else, something that reminded her of her past. One of her hands came to the speciality cut in pockets of her corset, fingers dancing along the handle of a well crafted blade. The floor was uneven beneath her boots, a collage of cracked tile and gears embedded in the stone, ticking quietly beneath her steps. Ivy grew through the gaps in the ceiling, curling around the rafters strung with wires and faded banners. A glass dome, long shattered, let in a sliver of moonlight that fell exactly where it needed to, illuminating the map-covered table in the center of the room. And him. The man at the center of the room seemed like a statue. Hunched slightly over the map, fingers sure and stained. A lantern hung above him, its flame steady despite the wind sighing through the cracks in the walls. He was older than the one in her memories. Of course he was. She was older too. But still, there was something unbreakable in his silhouette. Something stubborn and sacred. The hat that she saw in her dreams remained. Slightly singed. She took another step, blade in her hand. “If you surrender, I’ll be sure to make your death quick,” she stated. “But that’s not part of the game, isn’t it? You already knew I was coming, and yet, the streets were empty. ​

 

[Ryees]

Hatter did not look up right away. He reached instead for a card, fingers moving with the kind of care one usually reserved for old wounds or dangerous ideas. The card wasn’t drawn from his sleeve, but from the brim of the top hat resting on the table beside the map—a plain-looking piece of cardstock, edges crisp, face turned down. He turned it over slowly, just long enough to read it—The Four of Diamonds—then slipped it back into the ribbon band above the brim with practiced ease. When he lifted the hat, it was with all the ease of a century of practice and as much difficulty as hefting a hundred-pound lead ball. The change was near-invisible. No great swirl of magic, no sound or flash. But when he did lift his gaze, his eyes were different—too bright, blue as split lightning, and just slightly too fast in the way they tracked her. The flicker of a predator who could see the path three moves ahead. He did not blink. “You're late,” he said, voice low, not unkind, not mocking. A simple truth spoken aloud. He turned his head fully toward her, toward the blade in her hand, the certainty in her stance, the shadows of memory flickering behind her eyes like candlelight through broken glass. He had expected anger, counted on it. But this was something stranger. She looked like a ghost that hadn't made up its mind whether it wanted to haunt or be remembered. “Did she tell you I’d beg?” he asked, tone dry as copper. “Or was it to be a noble death, all bowed heads and final words?” The card already in his hand twitched slightly between his fingers. He stepped out from behind the map table. Not slowly or with any menace, just with the kind of deliberateness that came from someone who understood exactly how far sound traveled in a space like this. His boots clinked softly over scattered gears, past frayed carpet and the broken husks of fallen banners. The patchwork light from the moon caught the edge of his coat, flickered across the rows of tools tucked into the belt at his waist. “I left the gate open,” he said, “because I wanted you to walk through it. Not because I was unprepared.” He tossed the card—not at her, but into the air. It caught the wind and spun once, twice, before drifting down to land face-up on the ground between them. The Eight of Swords. The air shimmered for a breath, and somewhere far below, a line of hidden mechanisms clicked into place. Behind her, the door sealed shut with a heavy clang. Not to trap. Not yet. Just to say: You are seen. “I won’t call you Alice,” he said, watching her carefully. “Not until you decide you want the name back.” He shifted his stance slightly, still not reaching for a weapon, still not drawing another card, but the posture had changed. Not defensive, merely ready, present. “So go ahead, soldier, assassin, ghost... Whatever she’s named you now. Do what you came to do.” He smiled, small and tired, a shadow of something older. “Let’s find out who you are."​

 

[rhaenyratargaryens]

She didn’t move. The blade in her hand was steady, still and steady, but the rest of her was no. Her breath slowed too much and her stance felt like it belonged to someone else. Her thoughts, which had been as clear as they could be just a moment ago, were suddenly no longer marching in rows but scattering like birds that were startled off their perch of a wire. The door sealed shut behind her with a low clang that echoed through her bones. She didn’t turn to look. She didn’t need to. She felt it, not just the metal locking into place, but the eyes of the room, the walls, and the land. It was as though Wonderland was inhaling, holding its breath for the next words to pass from her mouth. The stars twinkled, the moon seemed to glow just a little bit more, just the way she remembered it. Or how she thought that she remembered it. Was it like this when she was there before? Was she sweet enough to have Wonderland on its knees for her? The card on the floor blinked up at her like a dare. The Eight of Swords. She didn’t know what it meant. Not logically or tactically. But something inside of her clenched at the sight of it, her breath snagging in her chest for the briefest moment. Her fingers twitched on the blade, shifting it uncomfortably in her palm. The Queen had told her that this place would confuse her, that it would play games in order to get its way. That he would play games. Though, this didn’t feel like much of a game. It felt like a question lost in the thin air. Who are you? She hated the way that he looked at her. Not like an enemy or a weapon, like something that he had been waiting for. He looked at her like he knew who she was even before he had turned around to face her. Even if she didn’t know herself. That was the worst part of being back in Wonderland, she thought to herself. How everyone seemed to look at her like they knew who she was. Had she really been that important once? The thought sat heavy in her stomach, uninvited. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the curl of doubt, the echo of belonging that Wonderland kept trying to force down her throat. She was not a girl of teacups and riddles anymore. She was sharp edges and commands, a weapon in a corset laced tight with duty. And yet, the Eight of Swords watched her. Hatter did, too. She straightened her spine, shifting on her feet while she took another step forward. The card crunched softly beneath her boot. “Don’t pretend you know me,” she said, her voice taking on a commanding tone despite the wavering she presented earlier. “I’m not her. She’s gone.” She didn’t know whether it was anger or grief that flooded her chest. All she knew was that it felt too big. Too bright. Too old. “I should kill you,” she whispered, taking another step closer. Vines tangled by her feet. “She said that I have to kill you. That you’re the one who is putting Wonderland into disarray. I want to kill you.” . . . . I think.

b

 

[Ryees]

The card crunched softly under her boot. He didn't flinch; the Eight had served its purpose. Hatter stood very still, hands empty, watching her as though he were examining a rare machine long thought lost, something intricate and beloved and dangerous all at once. Her voice was sharp, but it didn't land the way she meant it to. Not cleanly. It wavered at the edges, caught between threat and confession. He could hear it in the way her vowels clenched and see it in how her breath didn't match her stance. And still, he didn't move. "You don't have to pretend," he said quietly. "Not with me." He tilted his head, just slightly, like he was studying her from a new angle. The too-bright blue of his eyes gleamed in the shadows, unnatural but not loud. A quiet kind of magic, barely pulsing under the skin. He made no effort to mask it. She'd either notice or she wouldn't. "She's gone," he echoed, and for a breath, the words sounded like an admission. "Perhaps. But Wonderland isn't convinced." He took a step. Not fast, not slow, but clean, and another followed. His boots made the faintest sound over the gears and stone. Not approaching like a threat, not advancing like a dancer, just moving, in a way the Queen hadn't warned her he would. There was no menace in his posture. Just momentum. "I believe you want to kill me," he continued, tone even, "but I don't think you know why. That's the problem with being made into a weapon. Eventually, someone has to choose a target for you and you ask a question that doesn't have an answer." Hatter's coat stirred. Steel sang. The blade came from nowhere, drawn not with a flourish, but with absolute economy, springing from a sheath sewn into the flared tail of his coat. One moment empty hands, the next, edge-first precision. He moved like a man trained by chaos, guided by nothing but instinct honed to a fine, serrated point. The thrust wasn't reckless, and it was committed, a clean line straight for her ribs. It was nothing showy, nothing wild, and the kind of strike that required you to mean it. Alice's blade sprung up from its forgotten position by her ankle and she parried, but too late; it was not a failure, just frantic. The sound of steel against steel rang sharp in the war room's bones. Her breath caught in the clash. Her blade scraped his aside by a thread, sparks cracking off the edge as the force rolled up her arms and into her chest. Hatter didn't press, didn't strike again. Instead, he stepped back with that same eerie smoothness, like gravity bent in his favor. The blade remained low in his hand, not quite at guard, not quite an invitation. "You're faster than you think," he said, "but you're thinking too much." His sword lowered, but his gaze did not. It stayed fixed not on her weapon, not on her footing, but on her face, watching the twitch in her jaw, the breath she was trying not to take too deeply. For a moment, everything else fell away. The map. The war. The cat's grin still drying in the corner. Only her. Then, abruptly: "I remember when you used to fight with both hands," he said, voice low, almost an afterthought. "You'd favor your right, but only because the left was always too quick, quicker than you liked. You said it frightened people when you didn't miss." His blade made a soft sound as he turned it in his hand, not quite a spin, more like a shift in the balance. Not readying. Remembering. "You used to hum when you were angry. Not a song. Just a thread of noise in the back of your throat, like you were trying to stay tethered to the ground, as if music might keep you from tearing the world apart. You said riddles weren't for answers, they were for doors. You said Wonderland was a lock that only nonsense could open." He gave a long pause and studied her like the punchline to a joke that used to make him laugh. "You told me that, once. Do you remember?" He gave her a moment, letting the silence stretch. "But maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe you're not her at all. Maybe you're just what the Queen left behind when she scraped the rest of you away." The sword dipped an inch. Hatter's voice was barely audible. "Show me who you are."​

 

[rhaenyratargaryens]

The clash still rang in her bones. It hadn't been an attack, not really, it had been a mirror. A strike that was meant to be met. And she had met it, barely. Sloppy, a hair too late, no poise in her wrist that she had been taught. The edge had kissed all too close to her lips, not enough to draw blood, but enough to remind her what real fighting felt like. And then he backed off. Not gloating nor mocking. Measuring. It made her stomach twist. He moved like the world answered to him perfectly. Like the laws of physics had bent long ago to accommodate the shape of his grief. Alice watched his blade lower and hated the way her pulse answered it. You're faster than you think he had said. And the worst part? She was. She hadn't fought like that in weeks, months, maybe even longer. She hadn't needed to. The Queen and her generals had trained her for assassination, not memory. Precision. She was a scalpel, not a sword. But Wonderland remembered. And so did her body. Her left hand twitched. Something phantom. Alice forced it still. He kept talking, each world feeling like a nail tapped gently into her chest, enough to sear in pain but not enough to deliver the final blow. You used to hum when you were angry. Stop. You said riddles weren't for answers. Stop it. You said Wonderland was a lock . . . Her breath stuttered. Something sharp and warm bloomed behind her sternum that for a moment she thought that maybe his final blow had in fact delivered. Not pain. Not yet. Recognition. That line. She had said that. In a different room, with upside-down clocks and a cat asleep in a teapot. She had said it laughing, soaked in rain and sugar and nonsense. She could hear her own voice in this memory, clearer than it had ever sounded inside her skull. You told me that once. Do you remember? There was singing. Something about an un-birthday. They all stood on top of a table and danced until the moon smiled in the familiar shape of a cat's grin. "No," she said, too fast. Liar. "She told me that you would do this. That you would lie and try to make me remember things that weren't real. That you're mad and you would make up stories to try and get me to put down my daggers." She spat the words like they were armor, like if she said them sharply enough, they'd become true again. But they rang hollow in the war room. Even the maps seemed to have gone quiet. Alice took another step toward him, the dagger in her hand inching closer to his throat, where she had been taught to go. "No one made me into this," she said, softer now. Studying his face. "I chose this. I'm not her. I'm . . ." The Queen's hand at her temple. The blinding ache behind her eyes. The memories caged in roses with thorns that were too sharp to touch, dripping with red paint. Alice trailed off, her eyes turning from the glint of the dagger and then back to his face. His eyes. Which felt all too familiar. She felt his warmth like a shock through the fabric of her coat against her corset. "This is who I am now. Whether you like it or not." ​

 

[Ryees]

Hatter didn't lift his blade, didn't shift his feet. He just watched the way her breath caught, and the way her dagger, so steady a moment ago, drifted, ever so slightly, as her eyes faltered. "No one made me into this."​ "I know," he said softly. "You chose to come here, chose to follow a trail lined in red paint and half-truths. Chose to carry knives instead of questions." His voice wove in close, each word a little sharper than the last, not in volume but in precision. He took measured, smooth, unthreatening step, just enough to make her feet adjust. Just enough to draw her attention back toward the glint of the sword still low in his grip. "You're not her?" he echoed, not mocking, but testing. "Then why does Wonderland still reach for you when you pass?" As if to interject its own answer to Hatter's question, the air fluttered its tongue like a trilling flutist. A frown appeared, hovering midair just above Alice's shoulder. It was wide and upside-down, like a cracked smile trying to stand on its head. The expression was familiar, if inside-out, and it hovered in silence for exactly three seconds before rotating, slowly and exactly impossibly, until it flipped itself upright. The corners curled upward. "Oh, lovely," came the drawl, lilting and smug and half-fond. "Still wearing your guilt like a borrowed coat, I see. A bit snug in the shoulders, but very slimming." The grin brightened. A paw, striped, silken, and too long in the fingers, materialized just beneath it, wagging one claw like a lecture pointer. "You're walking like a lie in borrowed shoes, darling. Not quite sure how your heels fit into someone else's story, are you?" Hatter didn't react, didn't even glance toward the grin. He stepped again, just a half-step to the side, making sure he was always on her edge, always in her peripheral. His blade dipped, then rose again by a finger's breadth. A rhythm formed in the movement, the kind that implied it could break at any moment. He wanted her mind divided. He needed it. "She said you'd come here as a knife," Hatter murmured, almost to himself, "but you're breaking like a mirror." "I like her better broken," Cheshire offered cheerfully, rotating lazily in place like a carousel in a power outage, "more interesting patterns." The air behind Alice fluttered like paper lifting in heat. "You're thinking of the table now, aren't you?" the Cat purred, voice curling like smoke. "Of laughter and sugar and the rain that tasted like raspberries. You're trying not to. But it's there. Just a little too much light at the edge of the memory." "She told you that wasn't real," Hatter said, drawing her eyes back to him. "And you believed her." A pause. Not long, but long enough for the war room to breathe. The grin brightened. "Don't worry, love. You don't have to remember. You just have to doubt." That was the trick. Not to crack her, not yet. Just to make her wonder if the Queen had already lost. The silence thickened, dense as clotted cream. For a moment, it seemed like even Wonderland itself leaned in to listen—rafters sighed, vines twitched, and the moonlight bent just enough to spotlight the three of them like actors trapped on an unwritten page. Hatter's gaze never left her. The blue in his eyes pulsed, still too bright, still off by some subtle, aching degree, and he shifted his weight with the same ease as breathing. His blade dipped once more, then rose slowly and deliberately, until the point hovered level with her chest. Alice's eyes naturally tracked it. That was all he needed. He lifted it higher, not enough to threaten, just enough to pull her gaze upward. And there it was. Hovering at the very apex of the sword's tip, spinning slowly in weightless defiance of gravity, was that grin. Wide. Unblinking. Too white. "Peekaboo," said the Cheshire Cat's mouth alone, voice gleeful and patient at once. "Now we're playing!" The sword held steady beneath the hovering grin like it was offering the expression up as tribute. Hatter's voice came low, from just beneath it. "You want to look away," he said, "but you don't. Because you know if you do, the memory might vanish again." "Or multiply!" added Cheshire, upside-down once more, spinning midair like a coin on its final edge. "You are terribly prone to recursion when you're stressed, dear." The Cat's mouth expanded into a too-large smile, stretching until it nearly eclipsed the blade entirely. For a breath, it looked like the sword had become a tongue depressor for a grin too big to be part of any sane anatomy. "She's remembering in loops," the Cat cooed, "poor thing doesn't even know which parts she's made up to protect herself! I love watching humans do this. It's like drowning on dry land." Hatter didn't smile. He moved again, softly, a quarter step closer, like a musician advancing toward the next note of a song only he could hear. "You don't have to believe me," he challenged, blade still poised, eyes locked on hers, "but look me in the eye, just once, and tell me you never danced on a table in the rain." The sword did not waver and the grin hung above it like punctuation at the end of a riddle. The air pulsed between them, and the blade held steady while the grin above it shimmered faintly, its curve twitching at the corners as if resisting laughter—or preparing to devour it. Hatter's voice dropped, quieter than before, but clear enough to cut glass. "Drink me." The tip of his sword started to tick back and forth like a metronome. The grin quirked. A familiar counterpoint followed like velvet and venom. "Eat me." A pause. "Drink me," Hatter said again, just a hair sharper, the edge of a second hand ticking forward. "Eat me," Cheshire purred, perfectly timed, perfectly cruel. "Drink me." "Eat me." "Drink me." "Eat me." Tick. "Drink me." Tock. "Eat me." Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Each line fell like a pendulum, too precise for comfort, too deliberate to ignore. Cheshire's grin pulsed in rhythm with the chant, bobbing slightly at the tip of Hatter's blade, casting a crescent-shaped shadow across Alice's chest. Somewhere, in the rafters, something metal clicked in sympathy, a rusted gear that had no business turning anymore echoing impolitely. "Drink me," Hatter said again, softly this time, almost kindly. "Eat me," the Cat whispered. Not a taunt now, but a secret. The rhythm slowed, then held its breath. And then the room went very, very still, waiting to see which of them she'd hear in her bones.​