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Once upon a time, for the sake of a very pretty girl in a very wet dress, Hatter learned not only to fight a Jabberwocky; he also learned to listen all the way down to the very truth of himself. 
 
Alice taught him that. 
 
Before her, his life had been as grey as the buildings that stretched down and down into the fog at the bottom of Wonderland.  He hadn’t known whether he wanted to a Black Hat like the Clubs and the Suits, or a White Hat like Caterpillar was rumoured to be.  Dodo insinuated he should have a grey hat, but Hatter had always lived in denial.  Besides, he looked better in Tan.
 
He hadn’t known whether he wanted to live the high life or the low life, to fit in with the Hearts or to fight for the Resistance.  Hatter fitted nowhere.  He tried for a while to sit at the table his great-great-and-then-some-Grand Father sat at, where he had apparently used to – in his drunken moments – espouse about The Alice, The Great Alice.  Then again, his Great etc. Grandfather had once kept a Dormouse in a teapot, so clearly lunacy was just ingrained in the family tree.
 
That’s what Hatter thought when he started running around with Alice.  First he thought he was mad, and then he thought he was loopy, and then he thought he’d gone round the bend.  He knew it rather than thought it in the end when he started to listen to Alice.  He knew his madness was irredeemable when he not only listened to her, he believed.  He knew he didn’t even want it to be redeemable when he started to talk like her.  It helped that her eyes lit up when he did talk in the same impassioned tones, truth making his words come to life. 
 
It felt amazing to have her by his side in the casino as they talked and talked and the oysters came back to life.  Hatter finally had a purpose in life.  He had someone to share his life with.  When Alice kissed him in the casino, under those too bright lights, while the Oysters helped fight off the Suits, Hatter knew it then and there: he was in love with Alice.  Just Alice.  Alice Hamilton.  Not the Alice; his Alice.  He was in love with her and he would go to the ends of Wonderland for her.  He would die for her.
 
That night they gave themselves to each other.  It should have been uncomfortable, out in the bracken and branches, as they hid from the Suits trampling through the undergrowth and planned their escape through the Mirror.  Neither of them felt it.  Hatter pulled her close and told her I love you; she said it back.  That night, Wonderland lived up to its name.
 
In the morning Hatter ignored the surface voice in his brain, the superficial one, that said to wrap up this woman that he loved in blankets and run and keep running until they found somewhere to be together forever, but Alice had completely and irrevocably changed him.  His deeper voice, his singing heart, told him they needed to complete their plan, and that was the voice he listened to.
 
With Alice by his side, they stormed the building where the Mirror was held.  The guards were taken by surprise.  A couple of Oysters fell and died in the melee; Alice didn’t cry, she just got pissed.  Apparently in her world, Alice was something called a Judo Sensei.  Hatter could fight, he could fight really well; Alice could beat him any breath of the day.
 
The fight went well, they were winning.  Except that’s when Mad March came in and ripped the ring out of the device.  The Mirror only had so long to function before it sputtered out.  Alice kept fighting; Hatter kept scooping up the Oysters and bodily flinging them through.  He ended up fighting Mad March, and he was losing, but his fingers grasped around the Stone of Wonderland, and he stumbled back, and Alice caught him.  Her eyes were wild and so very, very beautiful. 
 
Hatter turned slightly and saw the Mirror sputtering.  He turned back to Alice, ready to push the ring into her hands, ready to pull her through with him, and he had time for none of it – Mad March grabbed hold of Alice and not him.  Alice struggled, got half free, and instead of turning around and getting the rest of her free, she did something else. 
 
She kicked Hatter.  Hard.  So hard he tumbled with the last of the Oysters right through the Mirror and into Alice’s world.
 
When he finally regained consciousness, on the wet damp pavement of New York City, in a puddle of his own blood, the Mirror was shattered, and would not open again.  He was trapped on this side, and Alice was stuck in Wonderland without the ring.
 
Of course his plan was simple at first: find a mirror, open the mirror to Wonderland, get Alice, smash the ring, live happily ever after in whichever world she chose.  The plan by necessity became more longwinded the longer he searched.  He took the name David Hatter for a while.  The wheeling and dealing that he had learned in his Tea Rooms worked surprisingly well in Alice’s world.  He got money, he changed aliases a dozen times, he learned about Alice’s world, he sent money anonymously to her frantic mother, nothing helped.  No one could help him find Wonderland.
 
Then by chance he found something.  A woman named Helen Cutter disappeared 7 years ago, and a conspiracy theorist linked it to some sort of anomaly.  Hatter spent a long time examining the anomaly thing.  It was a random burst of energy, boosting some sort of radio signal and chronotemporal displacement energy and a weird type of radiation no one on Earth had ever seen.
 
But Hatter had seen it, in Wonderland.  When the ring was activated to open the mirror.
 
Hatter spent 7 months trying to detect the anomalies and come up with some way to use them to get back to Wonderland.  He failed.  He had money, but he didn’t have the proper knowledge or the proper resources.  It would take decades, and Alice and he didn’t have decades.
 
So his plan, his simple plan for a Happy Ever After, became a little more complicated.
 
He couldn’t gather the resources, but the British Government – where the anomalies seemed most to surface – could. 
 
So that plan was this:
 
a) convince the government they needed a crack team of specialists designed to investigate the anomalies and
 
b) convince them to let him on that team. 
 
Hatter’s best chance was to assume a new identity; he picked a bumbling nerd, and called himself Connor Temple.  He conned a grieving parent to give him a database of prehistoric life her son had spent his whole life since he was 14 working on.  He practised being clumsy and socially inept because people accepted that kind of persona more easily; the database and the fighting skills he would hide would have to be enough to convince them he was needed on the team. 
 
He would have to pretend to be Connor Temple 24/7.  It didn’t bother Hatter; being Hatter just felt painful for most of the time anyway, because he missed Alice more than he could bear.  He’d only known her for four days but chocolate and cream cake were useless on true love.
 
So his new plan ended up being pretty simple too.
 
Except he didn’t exactly count on the dinosaurs, but once upon a time for the love of a pretty girl in a very wet dress, he fought a Jabberwocky.  Dinosaurs weren't half as scary after that.  Of course, he couldn’t tell anyone that, because Connor Temple was a cowardly cat most of the time and couldn’t even say boo to a goose. 
 
It was difficult, but it was for Alice, it was all for Alice, and if Nick Cutter could find his wife after 8 years, it wasn’t impossible for Hatter.  And even if it was, well, believing 6 impossible things for Breakfast was his Wonderland hobby.  He’d had practice.  He would believe and believe and believe until he had her back. 
 
Whatever he had to do to get her back.
 
And if that meant pretending to be an inept dork of a geek, well, that’s what Hatter would do.

 
Abby used to have a borderline relationship with insomnia before starting work with Nick Cutter and his team.
 
She tried all the usual insomnia cures. Whale song. Long baths. Learning to meditate. Reciting all the scientific names for all the reptiles she had ever seen.
 
Nothing worked so well, apparently, as running from various dinosaurs and dangerous prehistoric creatures for her life.
 
Failing that, there was just something calming about hanging out with her team. Either sitting back and listening to Nick's offbeat version of typing on a computer (like a woodpecker trying to tap against a tree that kept moving in the dark), or exchanging war stories of university with Stephen, or messing around in the lab as Connor tinkered with yet another of his odd projects.
 
Abby just felt settled with them, with the whole thing, which was ridiculous. She hadn't realised something was missing from her life to start with, and the fact that the missing item was nearly being eaten by a velociraptor every other week, well. It did sometimes rather boggle the mind.
 
This week, though, Connor had been a bit more distracted than usual. Abby found herself hanging out more by herself in the cafeteria than she would have liked, because Nick had just come back from a week of conferences with Julia, with a face full of thunder, even though Julia seemed unchanged, and Stephen was going through a huge rugby phase and while Abby normally liked seeing men get sweaty and dirty on a field, she had a lot of reports to write, and she really liked to write them with company around.
 
The cafeteria wasn't exactly company but at least it had noise – the clatter of plates, the buzz of the lighting, the faint dull conversation as employees chatted politely over the soggy tunafish sandwiches and traffic light jelly which seemed to be the only two edible items of food (and that was stretching the definition of the word edible) that the cafeteria served.
 
The idea of going into the cafeteria on her own for the seventh day running cut severely into her sanity levels; it was an easy decision to risk a brain full of science babble from Connor to avoid the dire fate of the cafeteria ladies giving her those sad, sympathetic looks over their thick eyeliner and claggy mascara. (Abby had idly wondered about putting in a request to Lester for the maintenance female staff to have mandatory make up lessons, but as Lester hummed and hawed over approving toilet rolls for the staff toilets, the very concept might give him an aneurysm. Actually, this was probably a plan Abby shook take a second look at it, because apparently it had hidden promise.)
 
As Abby expected, Connor had his dark head bent over one of his odd pieces of machinery when she entered the lab. She liked the moments like this, when she was able to watch him putter around whatever it was he was building, fixing odds and ends and humming contented odd little songs under his breath that she had never heard before. Then he would inevitably notice her, and sort of tense up. Abby had tried to call him on it once; he told her only he hated being watched, it made him nervous. She guessed it made sense.
 
Still, he had to stop for lunch, despite his brain not being clued into that necessary part of reality, and well, Abby was just being a mate by interrupting his work and making him eat lunch with her. It wasn't entirely selfish.
 
It wasn't 100% selfless, but Connor wouldn't appreciate passing out on his experiment either.
 
"Connor? Hey, it's lunch time."
 
Connor didn't turn around. Abby frowned, cleared her throat, and tried again. "Connor?"

Sometimes he didn't respond to his own name. Abby once had the flight of fancy that it wasn't his real name, because there were times she called to him and he didn't even flinch or tense up like people did when they heard their name. But she'd been around him for long enough to notice that he didn't pay much attention to anything when he was in his own little world.
 
"Aha!" Connor moved in a blur, grabbing for a screwdriver and doing something to the whatever it was on his desk, pressing a button, putting his safety glasses on which made him look especially dorky and watching his machine like it was about to turn into gold, or something.
 
It didn't. It made a whirring sound and started producing smoke.

"Ah," Connor said, eventually. "That wasn't meant to do that."
 
"It's not a smoke machine?"
 
Connor turned, startling at the sight of her leaning against one of the lab desks. He was so in his own little land most of the time. Scientists were supposed to be observant, but then, no one on the team was a proper scientist.
 
"I came to distract you, to get some lunch," Abby said, stepping forward, her best wheedling expression on her face. She knotted her fingers together, stretching them forwards, turning one foot beneath her, aiming for casual and coming across as way too desperate. Connor looked at his smoking machine. "You need it to cool down before you fix it. And there's soggy tuna sandwich and traffic light jelly in the cafeteria."
 
Connor looked at her, his eyebrows raised comically, and Abby fought down the flush she wanted to make whenever he focussed his attention on her. He was cute. It was just a pity he was so distracted all the time by his job, but maybe that's what Abby liked best about him. That he could go off in his own world. Too many of the blokes she dated needed her constant attention, it was irritating.
 
"Soggy tuna sandwiches and traffic light jelly, how could I refuse." Connor slid his safety glasses off and extended his arm to hers, gallantly. Abby took his arm, and grinned. "Lead the way, milady."
 
#
 
Connor prattled his way through the whole miserable lunch, and also through the chips which they went for after the sandwiches and jelly, because really, that hadn't been food. It was nice walking down the street, eating the fish out of paper and pointing out all the variety of people that lived in London. Connor was never familiar with London geography, and Abby ribbed him mercilessly for being a country bumpkin, which just made Connor smile, shy and sweet, which was probably why Abby did what she did.
 
It wasn't much of a move, but it was one which had been successful for her in the past. Connor had smeared his chips with ketchup, because chips were never chips unless they had ketchup, and predictably he had ended up with most of it on his face. Abby leaned in and wiped it off with her fingers, and Connor didn't even react to her touch.
 
Like it was completely normal. Like she wasn't flirting, even though she was trying her best. Connor was either clueless, or just not interested, and both options stung a little. She ended up wandering back into headquarters with him, a little quiet, and she didn't notice James Lester was in reception until he was heading towards them.

"Ah," Lester said, hurrying over from the main desk, "I was looking for you, uh, Connor."
 
Abby folded her arms, moving in close to Connor, because Lester could remember all of their names – especially when he was chewing them out – but he always stuttered over Connor's. It worried Abby, and she knew it worried Nick too. If Lester didn't rate Connor enough to even properly remember his name, it meant if their program got their funding cut, Connor was in danger. Their contracts were carefully worded so any of Connor's work – including the huge prehistoric database that Connor basically paid his way onto the team with – would belong to them.
 
Abby didn't want to lose Connor from the team. He was an amazing asset, and an amazing friend. Even if Abby was probably going to have to run into him with the clue bus to get him to notice she was flirting with him.
 
"I wanted to talk to you about that mirror project," Lester said, his eyes flicking nervously from his hands to Connor's face. "I pushed the paperwork through and the equipment's in the main room. I know privacy is of course optimal in this case, but the size of the requisitions, they, uh-"
 
"It's fine," Connor said, balancing on his feet, barely able to contain obvious excitement. "As long as it's there, I am fine. Giddy, even. Dandy."
 
Lester looked a little flustered. "Oh. Um. Grand, then. Bring me a report whenever."
 
"Absolutely." Connor grinned at Lester, then turned around and picked Abby up bodily, twirling her around before dropping her back on the ground. Abby couldn't help the squeal, but she could manage a death glare at him, which lacked coherency because she hadn't known Connor was that strong. "Let's go!"
 
Abby stared wordlessly at him, his hands on her elbows as he shook her, and she nodded, caught up in his infectious happiness. "All right."
 
The requisition turned out to be a mirror. A really big mirror. And some larger equipment, of the kind Connor had been working on in his lab. Several of the other team members were working in the main room who wouldn’t normally be there, so they were curious too, and Abby could see why. It was odd, and for Lester to be approving such an odd thing that Abby doesn't remember being mentioned in the team meetings...
 
Connor headed for his anomaly detection screen first, tapping something on the screen, a line of graphs that Abby would never understand and she thought she had a head for science. But he got excited at something on the screen, jabbing at something and talking nineteen words to the dozen to Janice, one of the lab techs, and they immediately started toward the equipment, unpacking things.
 
Abby hung around at the back, at a loss. She supposed she should go and work on her reports, but she was just as curious as the others. She ended up pulling up a chair and not even pretending to work. Then Connor's anomaly detection screen started beeping, which set off a series of light inside the headquarters, and Abby leapt onto her feet because that meant one thing – an anomaly. An anomaly here.
 
"We're not ready yet," Connor said, and stayed working on the equipment, hefting another piece out a crate with the grimmest look on his face she had ever seen on anyone, let alone Connor, so on Connor's face it was like Abby was getting a glimpse of another person. A dangerous person. Someone she could quite imagine going to war. Abby shook that thought away, unaware where it came from, and the next time she saw Connor's face, reflected in the giant mirror, he looked hopeful, which was so much more Connor - but no less confusing.
 
"Connor." Stephen came into the room then, Nick a few metres behind him, "The anomaly's scheduled for the middle of the room, you need to let the professionals in for this. We need you behind the defence line to help us identify whatever comes through."
 
"No time," Connor said, pushing something into place, and the machinery came to life, spluttering into a spectrum of colours, tiny lights all over it. Abby tilted her head, even as Nick came forward to guide her behind the line of guys with guns. The machinery looked like some sort of giant arch over the large mirror, and it formed some sort of carriage around the mirror, like the mirror could be moved. Which was exactly what Connor did, after punching some buttons. He shifted the mirror round in an angle, and returned to the console of his giant new device, his face strained and anxious.
 
"Connor," Nick barked out, as the telltale light of the anomaly sputtered into life, and the alarms in the headquarters automatically started blaring - but there was no need. The anomaly sort of spasmed, and spread out, over the mirror, widening and going slightly dull. Abby couldn't help but gasp at the effect, it was like the mirror was trapping the anomaly, holding it into itself and clouding their stunned reflections. It was like looking at a pool of water in the morning, sunlight bouncing off it so hard you could hardly see the water below, but this was vertical, not horizontal, and it was more beautiful than Abby could describe.

"Oh, my god," Abby said, "I don't even care what this is."
 
"It seems to be neutralizing the anomaly, centralizing it," Nick said, and Abby didn't think he even realised he was speaking out loud. "This could revolutionise everything, if we can stop the anomalies from fully opening. This machinery must have cost millions."
 
"Lester approved it," Abby said.
 
Nick actually turned to her at that. "Lester did?"
 
"I had to." James Lester's voice was unmistakable. He joined them, looking at the sight contemplatively, at Connor furiously looking between the mirror and his console as he jabbing furiously at the buttons, making some changes. His face was getting more and more strained, and Abby wanted to help, but she had no idea where to start. "We got the nod from up on high."
 
"David approved it, you mean." Stephen joined their small line, squinting at the shifting light of the trapped, dancing anomaly. "Which is why Connor's allowed to put everyone's life at risk for a madcap, untested experiment while we're left completely in the dark."
 
"David?" Abby questioned. She had heard the name maybe once before, like a rumour or a whisper, but nothing else.

"That's as much as I've heard," Nick said. "The government's not fully funding this. There's a private investor who puts most of the money into this project. So I guess a hoop like this is a small enough one in order to help people."

"I don't like it when rich people think they can swoop in and sabotage anything, just by throwing money at it," Stephen muttered. "Like we can't be trusted, or there's something they're hiding."
 
"Look," Abby said, not because she wasn't interested in the conversation – it was interesting to learn more about where their funding did come from, especially with all the paper trails the government had to deal with when funding super secret projects – but because something was even more interesting.
 
Specifically, Connor shrieking "Ha!" and punching even more ferociously at the console of his giant mirror machine, and, even more specifically, the mirror.
 
It was changing. The anomaly was still spilling in it, almost as if trapped somewhere between the surface of the glass and the reflection, but in the centre, there was a darkness, and the darkness was growing. Abby found herself stepping forward instinctively; the line of security guards with guns pushed her back, which startled Abby into looking at them angrily for a second. When she looked up, there was... part of a structure of some kind. Like they were looking inside another building. It was fuzzy, and like they were looking through murky water, but Abby could see a column, and a wall of bricks, and she could barely breathe.
 
Especially when something in the darkness moved, and Abby thought, oh, here comes the dinosaur, but it wasn't.
 
It was a woman. Abby couldn't clearly see her face, but it was definitely a woman – waist-length brown hair, blue dress, purple tights. The woman ran forward, toward them, but stopped as if hitting glass, and her face was still out of focus, but the woman's fists were banging against the mirror from the other side, and there was a darkness on the woman's face, like she was shouting, and Connor was furiously typing at the machine, staring at the mirror as he did, an earnest, terrified look on his face, and he was saying something, under his breath, that Abby could barely make out. "Come on," she eventually made out, "come on, come on, come on-"
 
Abby thought the woman's face was about to become clear, and the anomaly flared around the edges of the woman, like twenty fireworks going off around the reflection of the woman at once, and then the mirror shattered and the anomaly sucked in the shards of it as it collapsed into itself.
 
Abby's ears were ringing. She found herself staring at the spot where the mirror had been. She could see through to the offices behind again, and there were several large pieces of mirror on the ground, but they were back to being regular, reflective mirror shards, and they were the only evidence  that the stupidly large mirror had been there.
 
And Connor was stood staring at the gap where the mirror had been, tears on his face.

At first Abby thought he was hurt, and summoned the paramedics to the main room before realising he wasn't physically hurt. He was just upset, and Abby didn’t blame him one bit. This was epic. This was game changing. Somehow, somewhere in time, there was a woman. Trapped in prehistoric time. Like Helen, except maybe this one had wandered through an anomaly and was stuck. With no idea how to get home.

Abby wondered how the woman had seen them, if she had seen them staring at her, wide mouthed and a combination of curious (the scientists), wary (the security guards), angry (Stephen) or concerned for Connor (Nick and Abby.) Her heart leapt for this woman, and Connor was softer than her. Of course he would be tearing himself up over this.
 
He was.

"Stupid," Connor said, "so, so stupid. I'd calibrated it all wrong. I could have, she could have-" He looked up as Abby picked her way over the few remaining mirror pieces to see if he was okay. His face was tear-stained and he looked devastated, but also... a little like Halloween when he went Trick or Treating and ate too much sugar all in one go.
 
Hyper and on edge and completely somewhere else in his mind.
 
#
 
"Okay, so you know how I said that last week's mirror experiment was the creepiest thing in the world after being chased by giant carnivorous worms?" Stephen said, a week later. "I was wrong. This is."
 
Abby looked up from her handheld anomaly detector, and across to where Stephen was looking, at a silent Connor traipsing along, not clumsily, just walking. Not saying a word. Or prattling.
 
He'd been that way for the whole week, and it was, definitely, pretty damn creepy.
 
Abby tried to strike up a few conversations, at first being casual about how horrible it must be to be stranded through an anomaly, and eventually she even researched some conspiracy theories online, trying to talk about Slenderman and black helicopters, but nothing worked. She even went to Lester in the end, who muttered something about another mirror due in a fortnight, but that was obviously too long for Connor. When he did speak, he was muttering words she didn't understand, or writing down formulae way beyond her level.
 
She was at a loss, but he was her friend. She only had time left to give him, so that's what she was going to do. Hang around until he felt he could talk.
 
Of course, Abby hadn't exactly factored being kidnapped by lunatics into her plan of giving them time and space, and it wasn't her first thought when she woke up groggily on the floor of a dirty warehouse, inches from where Stephen was doing the same thing. She blinked, trying to remember what was going on, because as far as she was concerned, she had just been hurrying along the street alongside Stephen, anomaly detector in hand. Stephen said something about Connor's silence being weird, and then- then-
 
Her head was aching, and her back was too, and when she touched her hand to her head, it came back sticky and wet with blood. She opened her mouth to speak, and Stephen moved towards her, clamping his hand over her mouth. His hand tasted of dirt and straw and Abby glared at him until her vision focused and she could see the scene. There were two guys in balaclavas with guns trained on them. Abby nodded, and Stephen pulled his hand back.
 
"You're all awake." Another man stepped out of the shadows, dressed in an immaculate, well-tailored suit. He hadn't bothered with a balaclava. He was about forty years old, thin black hair, thick black moustache. He had wrinkles, but looked good for his age, but also a little tired, which worked well in their favour for when they would inevitably try to fight back. He looked quite pleasant, except for the hardness in his voice. He didn't sound British, but Abby couldn't place his accent.  "Good. I presume you're not going to struggle, considering what happened last time."
 
Abby opened her mouth to speak, and then saw it – Nick, slumped unconscious a few metres over, covered in blood. He'd obviously woken up first, and tried to rescue them. Abby's heart tumbled painfully in her chest with worry. She remembered, now, feeling concern over Connor, her handheld anomaly detector in her hand, and she meant to reply to Stephen, let him know she was worried too, but she saw a coloured dart appear in Stephen's chest, and then a sting in her back, meaning she must have been hit too.
 
These people had kidnapped them. Abby didn't want to think about why, but her missing anomaly detector unfortunately spoke volumes. Lester had always included being kidnapped by conspiracy theorist lunatics in his safety briefings, but Abby had always assumed that had been his pedantic ever-present neuroticism. She felt like an idiot for thinking that.
 
"There's far more of us than there are of you," the man continued, and six men with guns flanked him immediately. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I don't get what I want."
 
"What do you want?" Stephen spat out.

"My dear boy," the man said, sounding delighted with himself, "answers. Like, what all that delightful equipment is you're carrying." The man looked over them, his eyes lingering horribly on Abby for a moment; she felt raw, and exposed, and terrified for herself, which she hated, because even when they were running over velociraptors she was more scared for her friends than herself.
 
But these were men, with larger brains than reptiles had, and their motivations could be much more insidious than hunger or survival.
 
"That's the one we want to question," the man said, and for a horrible moment Abby thought he meant her, and she felt sick, and awful, and then it turned out he actually meant Connor, and she felt sick at her relief.
 
She watched, heart in her mouth, as the men dragged Connor to his feet and flung him onto a chair, restraining his hands roughly. Connor looked up at the guy sullenly, his eyes flashing with something Abby couldn't identify.
 
"Are you going to give me the answers I'm looking for, I wonder." The man yanked out a knife from a sheath hidden under his jacket. Connor's eyes tracked it.
 
"It's me you want to question." That was from Nick. His eyes were barely slits. He'd obviously only just regained consciousness, and his first impulse was to help his team, and Abby felt shame for her self-worry again. "I'm the team leader. I'm-"
 
The man gestured at one of his goons, and the nearest one to Nick smacked him over the face with the back of his hand. Nick groaned, in obvious pain.
 
"I know fully who you are, Professor Nick Cutter, Professor of Palaeozoology at the Central Metropolitan University. Stephen James Hart, his loyal lab assistant. Abby Maitland, lizard specialist. I've been following you for a while, you and your organisation." The man looked down at them, an odd expression on his face. "There's a lot of money disappearing your way. Odd reports of these... anomalies. Creature reports in the police files that make no sense. I think your team work for an organisation that is either creating them, or covering them up, and I want to know."
 
"You're being ridiculous," Nick said. "We're just Palaeozoologists, doing a project funded by the private sector, tracking fossils and extracting biological information, there's nothing-"
 
The man made a signal across his arm, and the nearest goon clicked his gun, aiming it at Nick's face. Abby strained forwards automatically – Stephen held her back.
 
"I've heard those lies," the man said, dismissively. "I'm here for the truth. And you," he added, turning to Connor, "are the one to give me them. Of course, all the torture manuals do say to go for the weakest link of the team..."
 
Abby got angry, then, because Connor wasn't the weakest link, okay, he was a bit goofy and strange, and rambled, but he wasn't the weakest link, he was brave and he was brilliant-

"Calm down," Stephen hissed. "Connor won't last a minute. You shouting in his defence only weakens him further."
 
Abby shot an angry look at Stephen, but stilled.
 
"Quite," the man said, looking across at Abby with an indulgent smile. "I thought about it, but no, it's not nice beating up a woman, and I'm far more interested in you, Connor Temple." He looked back at Connor, a hard expression on his face. "You see, you're the anomaly in this whole thing." He smiled. "I see it in all your faces. Anomaly. It's a word that means something to you. Maybe you... hunt them? Ah, perhaps that's the case. But did you know one existed in your midst?"
 
The man looked away from Connor, at the three of them. "Did you know Connor Temple doesn't exist? That the database online all the paleozoologists are going gaga over was created by a dead fourteen year old, and this man here stole it from his grieving parents for a paltry amount of money, my dear boy-" the man turned back to Connor, "you really should know how to cover your tracks better."
 
"I'll keep that in mind," Connor said, his tone oddly jovial.
 
The man sneered a little, and pulled up a chair, straddling it backwards. "Care to do this the easy way? I've been tracking you for months, Temple. All that money, weaving in and out in pretty circles."
 
Connor shrugged. "Beats me. I just like the way all those numbers go up and down, and how little men like you panic when it happens."
 
"Beats you, huh?" The man snarled, and looked at one of his goons. "Rough him up a little for me, would you?"
 
Abby clamped a hand over her mouth so the goons didn't hear her squealing, because she couldn't help the sound that ripped from her own throat as two of the guys moved over and started beating Connor with what looked like thin, narrow truncheons.
 
She expected him to react like Connor, cry and whimper and possibly beg for his own life.  He was silent until the man said, quietly, "Enough."
 
There should have been terror in Connor’s gaze after that; there was nothing but an almost belligerent amusement.  Abby would have bet a thousand quid before today that Connor had never been tortured or abused; now she wouldn’t take that bet at all.
 
"Willing to talk now?"
 
Connor stared up at the guy, blood running from his forehead to his teeth, and smiled a smile full of bloodstained teeth. "What would you like to talk about?"
 
The man cocked his head, frowning. He obviously hadn't expected that reaction. "Huh?"
 
"How about... this?" Connor moved suddenly, yanking a hand out that Abby hadn't even noticed he'd loosened, and Connor grabbed hold of the man's wrist, pushing the material up and out of the way, revealing one of the weirdest tattoos Abby had ever seen. It was almost like a leaf, dark green and twisting, with holes and a swirl, and Abby had the oddest feeling she'd seen it before, somewhere.
 
"So I was an Oyster," the man said, shrugging, "there were a lot of us got free."
 
"It means you know exactly who I am," Connor hissed, "and you're a jerk anyway."
 
The man smiled, no sign of humour in it, only malice. "What are you going to do about it?"
 
"Shoot you," Connor said. There was a moment of confusion on the man's face, and then horrified realisation as he went for his gun, and noticed it in Connor's hand.
 
The next few minutes were a blur, as gun fights always were to Abby. Stephen launched into action, all rugby muscles and basic firearm training and bravado, with Nick close behind. Abby stayed out of the way, only joining the action when the nearest goon to her had his firearm forcibly taken from him by Stephen. She had the fleeting image of Connor kicking ass and taking names as the vernacular went, and then she was distracted by the fact she really needed to take this nearest guy out or have her own ass kicked, and by what felt like ten seconds later but was probably much longer, the goons were either knocked out or they had escaped, and unfortunately, according to Stephen, the man leading them was one of the latter.
 
"Found our anomaly detectors," Connor said. "Looks like our original call was a false signal."
 
"I've put a call through to Lester," Nick said, having rooted out a mobile phone from one of the unconscious goons. "He's on his way with backup so we can get some answers from the ones that are left."
 
Abby hugged herself, and looked at them.
 
"We should tie them up for now," Connor muttered, his face swollen and bloodied.
 
"Good idea," Stephen said, grabbing some of the rope lying tangled around the chair Connor had been tied to. Connor mutely helped tie the guys up with Stephen, and Nick was reading something. Abby crossed over to him.
 
"What's that?"
 
"The man in the suit left this behind," Nick said, and his voice was hard, and his expression was unidentifiable as he looked up to where Connor and Stephen were securing the last guy. Abby caught a glimpse of a photograph of Connor in the file before Nick slammed it shut and crossed across the floor.
 
Abby recognised Nick's angry expression a second before he reached out and grabbed Connor by the shirt. "Hey!" she shouted, "what do you think you're doing? He's hurt!"
 
Connor flickered a grateful look at Abby from behind his swollen eyelids.
 
"He's a liar is what he is," Nick said, and pushed Connor bodily into the nearest wall. Stephen flanked Nick immediately, another length of rope stretched between his hands. “Who are you?”  Nick reared back and smacked Connor across the face hard with the back of his hand.  Abby flinched.
 
 “Connor Temple,” Connor said, in a low amused voice, a smirk coming onto his face slightly before Nick belted him again.  Abby let out a soft cry and moved forward to stop Nick; Stephen bodily held her back, his face impassive.
 
“You stole that database from a dead kid,” Nick said, “pretended it was yours; said you were one of my students but the university has apparently never heard of you according to this file. There’s no record of a Connor Temple past a little over a year ago. If you’re Connor Temple, you don’t exist.”
 
Connor stayed silent.
 
“Connor,” Abby pleaded, “tell him. This is a misunderstanding. You’re you, of course you’re you.”
 
But Connor just smiled, with false joviality, and said, in a weird sing-song voice she’d never heard him use, “Of course!”  He grinned, all teeth showing, and Nick reared back and hit him again.
 
“Me and Stephen, we can keep this up all day,” Nick said.  “We apparently don’t know you, but you know us.”
 
Connor just looked away.  Abby’s stomach clenched.  She had seen someone smacked around until they were honest, and they’d reacted the same way – when Abby asked them why, the poor girl said it was because it wasn’t the first time.  Connor had definitely been beaten like this before.  Her stomach clenched more.  Was he an enemy?  She didn’t like that thought at all, it didn’t ring true with what she knew of Connor; then again, she remembered the weird things he’d been doing over the last week, and her stomach plain hurt, because apparently she didn’t know Connor at all.
 
“What was that device you were using back at headquarters?”  Nick punctuated Connor’s silence with another hit.  “What are you trying to do with the anomalies?  Are you working with her?”
 
“No,” Connor said, as if completely scandalised, and then he pursed his lips together as if he hadn’t even intended to speak at all.  Nick went as if to hit him again; Connor winced, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment, before opening and locking on a point on the floor.  “I’m working alone.”
 
“To do what,” Nick said.  “I took you in, took you under my wing, and this is a complete betrayal of everything we stand for.”
 
“You wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for me,” Connor said oddly, somewhat heatedly, and Nick both looked confused and like he was going to hit Connor again.
 
Then Stephen said something, something that might have been one word, something that might have been two, Abby didn’t know, but it was something that made Connor’s face completely change.
 
“Wonderland,” Stephen said.
 
Connor froze.  It wasn’t for long, but it was enough.
 
“Wonderland?” Nick said, obviously thinking it was some sort of name for a drug cartel or triad or secret Government organisation.
 
“Connor Temple,” Stephen said, slowly releasing Abby and walking over to stand next to Nick, his eyes lightly on Connor, his body tensing as if for a fight.  “Friend to all conspiracy theories everywhere.  You’ve mentioned nearly every Conspiracy Theory out there under the sun – black helicopters, Slender Man, Yetis and 9/11 - yet never once in the last year have you mentioned Wonderland.”
 
“Wonderland?” Nick said.
 
“Yeah,” Stephen said, his eyes remaining on Connor even though he was talking to Nick.  “A ton of people disappeared over a space of ten years, and a large number of them reappeared in New York City on the same day.  All of them with some same variation of a tale, that they were kidnapped by a man that looked like a white rabbit, and put to work in a weird Casino where they were called Oysters."
 
"Like you said that man was," Abby said, thinking it over. "You said he was an Oyster."
 
Connor's eyes fluttered shut for a moment at that accusation.
 
"These Oysters, they said they were rescued by Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter.  I thought they were all insane, that it was just a coincidence, a madness.”
 
“Wonderland’s just that, an old story,” Connor said, dismissively.  “It’s not true.”
 
“But that’s the thing about conspiracy theories,” Stephen said, his voice harsh.  “Most of them aren’t true.  So for a true Conspiracy Theorist, who’s seen what we’ve seen, you wouldn’t discount Wonderland.”
 
“So I missed one Conspiracy Theory,” Connor said.  “Big deal.  It doesn’t make me not who I am.”
 
“Except you flinch every time I say Wonderland,” Stephen said, and it was true.  It was barely perceptible, but Abby could see it, now she was looking for it.  “Wonderland,” Stephen repeated, “Wonderland, Wonderland-“
 
“Stop it,” Connor said, and he did look wild now; he jerked against the restraints and looked up at Stephen and somehow, incomprehensibly, he was upset.  “Stop it-“
 
“My little sister disappeared a couple of years back.  I thought I’d never see her again, but she came back and she was one of these Oysters, telling the same story and I thought it was food deprivation and abuse, and that she was crazy,” Stephen said.  “But she’s not, is she?  Wonderland ... is completely real... and for some messed up reason, you want to open the door to it.  If you were an Oyster, I can’t imagine you would want to go back, so what are you?  Mandy used to have these nightmares about something called Mad March and the Suits, are you one of them?”  Stephen’s voice and gestures got more expansive.  “Or, let me think back to the book.  Are you the Queen of Hearts?  Jack? Did you steal her tarts?”
 
“Stephen, enough-“ Nick said, but Stephen ignored him.
 
“Did you work for the White Rabbit? Is that it?  Did you kidnap the ‘Oysters’?  Did you kidnap my sister?” Stephen’s voice rose to a controlled shout.  Connor flinched.
 
“No, no,” Connor said, and his voice broke a little as he said, “I helped them.  I helped them.  All right?”  Connor dropped to the ground, his knees crumpling beneath him, and Nick let him go.  His shoulders shook a little.  He looked almost broken.
 
Stephen stared, looking completely stunned, and Nick looked bewildered, and it was Abby who managed to move.  She stepped forward, and knelt down, and looked up into Connor’s face.  The tears made her heart shake, just a little bit.  “Who are you?” Abby said, trying to sound kind.
 
“Lady asked you a question,” Stephen barked when Connor didn’t respond.
 
“He doesn’t have to,” Abby said fiercely, defending him.
 
“He does,” Stephen said.  “Who are you?”
 
Connor lifted his head, his face pure anger.  “I didn’t help take them.”
 
“Who are you?”
 
“A friend-“ Connor started, but Stephen leant over Abby and punched Connor so hard that Stephen’s knuckles were covered with his own blood, and Abby screamed a little, and Nick leapt forward, but not quick enough, because Stephen lashed out again, and Connor screamed, “I’m just trying to help, I've always just been trying to help. I got them through, I'm the one that got them back, ask any of them, ask your sister. I'm from Wonderland, and I'm just trying to get home." His voice broke at the end, and he sank all the way down to the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked so very broken that Abby pushed all the way forward and sank down next to him, crouching down on her knees, putting her hand on his shoulder.
 
"Abby," Stephen said, his voice full of warning, and she shook her head.
 
"No," Abby said, "no. I believe him. Don't you?" She looked up at Nick and Stephen, putting as much energy into her glare as she could. "If he wanted us hurt, he wouldn't have done all he has during our missions. If his aim was just to get back, he wouldn't have helped saved our lives from the dinosaurs, we wouldn't have meant anything to him. But this is Connor. Even if that's not your name." She frowned, and looked at Connor, like it was only the two of them in the room. "What is your name?"
 
Connor smiled, and looked away from her as he said, "David. My name's David."
 
"That's kind of dull," Abby said, considering it. "I guess you look like a David."

"Thanks," Connor said, and he would probably always be Connor in her head.
 
"We will ask my sister," Stephen said, his voice low and angry, "she's in town."
 
"I know," Connor said. "Mandy, you said? Saw her last week. We had cake." He hummed under his breath a little, which made Abby smile and shake her head in disbelief. He grinned at her. "I like cake. Cream cake can salve a lot of things. Just... not everything."
 
"That woman in the mirror," Abby said, testing out the theory, because the pain in his voice then was so very tangible, and no one raised as much hell as Connor had in the mirror experiment just to get home, no one got so urgent about a place, but about a person... "She's who you're trying to get back for."
 
Connor looked at Abby then with such a long, lost look that Abby felt it like a blow to her gut. He eventually shrugged helplessly and got to his feet. She offered him a hand. After a second, he took it, looking really vulnerable for a moment. She guessed trust must be difficult for anyone even if they were, uh, apparently from somewhere else.
 
And that was a thought. Was Wonderland another island in the world? Or a different planet? She felt woozy, and wondered why she had skipped lunch before heading out on this anomaly search in the first place. (Oh, yeah, tuna sandwiches and traffic light jelly. It was palatable the first hundred times, but eventually, one had to give up trying to eat the cafeteria food.)
 
"Hang on," Stephen said, "David." His mouth opened and stayed like that, unattractively. "You're that David."
 
"Yeah," Connor said, laughing a little under his breath, putting an arm on the back of his neck and grinning helplessly. "When I found out money was the only way to ensure these anomalies got researched, well. It's easy to make a few million when you're inspired. If it had been just up to the Home Office, they'd have absorbed the velociraptor casualties into their accident statistics. You've got a bit of an odd world. Says me, jabberwockies, bandersnatches-"
 
Nick looked a little bit cross-eyed at that, at the whole thing actually.
 
"Once these guys get here-" Connor started.
 
"No."
 
Abby frowned. Nick wasn't normally so harsh.
 
"What?" Connor said.
 
"I said no," Nick said, "we're not deciding things as a team. You are not part of this team any more. Christ, Connor – David – I'm not even sure you're human."
 
The hurt on Connor's face was so palpable that Abby's stomach lurched and she felt the urge to protect him spring up in her more fiercely than ever. "Not even sure I'm – Oh, right, I'm Nick Cutter, I define the world. Something crops up I'm not sure of, I can't control, then-"

"Don't turn this around on me," Nick snarled.

"Oh, because you weren't making this about you, and your long history of betrayals, Helen this, Helen that, when we all know the instant you get a chance to run off and save her, you'd be gone like a shot, whether you had to betray us or not." Connor stepped into Nick's personal space, his eyes cold and deadly, and every shred of his pretence of clumsiness gone. This Connor was aware of his physicality and what he was capable of, and Abby saw how much of Connor Temple was an act. It chilled her a little, but not enough to stop wanting to help him. Facts could be faked, but friendship like theirs couldn't be entirely fabricated.
 
"What would you even know-" Nick started.
 
Connor laughed, a sound utterly devoid of humour. "What would I know? My 'Helen' is stuck in Wonderland. Trapped, without any means of getting home." He stepped so close to Nick they were nearly touching. "My Alice is in Wonderland, and I can’t get her back, and I need to.  I need to get her out.  I love her and I’m trapped here in this place without her and I-“  He looked up at Nick through unshed tears.  “If it was a year ago, and it was Helen on the other side of an anomaly, you would have raised hell to get her back.”  Connor looked at him very earnestly for a long beat, and then he edged a look at Stephen.  “And by the way, Jack of Hearts? He’s the tart.”
 
That was the moment their response team burst in, guns waving and yelling at the top of their lungs. Nick sighed, not looking away from Connor. "We aren't finished here," Nick said, and stalked away to deal with the situation.

#

The ride back to headquarters in the response team's back-up van was stiff and the atmosphere was weird. Abby felt awkward and self-conscious. Stephen and Nick had sandwiched Connor in between them, like he was a criminal, and she shuffled in the seat opposite them. She could hardly see Connor's face in the darkness, and she hated knowing she had no clue about what he was thinking.
 
"You don't look like a David," Abby said, starting up a conversation even though headquarters was close, and it might have been its nearness that was so intimidating. She didn't know what would happen when they got back. It only felt like everything had changed. My Alice is in Wonderland, Connor had said, with such a plaintive note Abby's heart broke with it, because there was so much love in his voice, and now she knew for certain she had no chance with Connor, and she was more sad about that than she could really accept for the moment.
 
"Thank you, I think. Mum never managed to call me by it unless I was in serious trouble," Connor said, with a soft note of remembrance in his voice.

"Oh, so you had a mother," Stephen muttered, resentfully.

"Shut up," Abby said, "you're only grumpy because you beat him up and he could probably get you fired any moment he wants. I'm right, right?"
 
"I could," Connor said.

"Oh, piss off," Stephen said, but he didn't sound too angry, which was an improvement.
 
"I had to lie," Connor said, as gently as he could. "Would you have believed the truth, from the beginning? I know your sister, of course I knew from her you wouldn't. I knew you were angry about Wonderland. I thought I could... lead you in gently. When the experiments got closer to getting through, I thought-  Maybe I thought wrong."

"Maybe you did," Nick said, his voice still cold. Abby could see enough in the dim light to see Connor was affected quite badly by their apathy, and she wished she knew how to make it better. Time was what she had thought would help before, but it seemed like no one wanted them to have much of that.
 
When the van lurched to a stop, Abby stumbled out into the daylight, shielding her eyes from the sun, and she rolled her eyes when Stephen and Nick basically frogmarched Connor to the entrance. She pulled out her ID at main reception, and frowned at the three of them as she waited to be buzzed through.

"I'm sorry," the receptionist said, "your ID card has been refused."
 
Abby turned back, a frown on her face. "Pardon me?"
 
The receptionist glared, coolly. Abby stared back, trying not to get frustrated, because she'd used her ID card not seven hours previously. With the same receptionist. "Try it again," Abby said, thrusting it forward.
 
"I'm sorry," the receptionist said, "I have to hold onto this. Please stay in reception while I sort this out."

"Here," Nick said, "I'll sign her in as a guest." He handed over his card.

"Your ID card has been refused," the receptionist intoned, keeping hold of it.
 
"Excuse me?" Nick's accent was always thick when he was angry. Abby had never had a whole day where he'd sounded so consistently Scottish before.
 
"And mine?" Stephen said grimly, holding his forward. "Are you going to tell me mine's blocked too, Ellie? You've known me for the last eighteen years. You know I work here. So you know something fishy's going on, don't you?"
 
The receptionist – Ellie – hesitated halfway through reaching for Stephen's ID card. "There's a man," she said, instead, and tilted her monitor. Stephen leaned over the counter, and his face darkened. "Security are on their way. You'd better run."
 
"Tell them we scared you and overpowered you," Stephen advised, and grabbed Abby's arm. "Come on, let's go."
 
"Where are we going?" Abby said, as they turned and hurried through the gates. The van they returned in was still there – the driver was chatting to one of the other response team guys. Stephen nodded at it, and they upped their pace, running to the van and clambering inside. The driver had left his keys inside, obviously not expecting the good guys to run off with it.

"Hey," the driver yelled, as Nick gunned the engine and Connor swung the back doors closed.
 
"Where are we going?" Abby yelled, as Nick reversed the van out of the car park and through the now-lowered barrier.

"Anywhere but here," Stephen said, "the man who captured us was inside headquarters, having a cosy conversation with Lester and about eighty of his goons with guns."

"Ah," Abby said, "that would be why we're on the run."
 
"Ellie showed you the security feed," Connor said, sounding hesitant, "were they doing something with my mirror equipment?"
 
"They were," Stephen replied, just as cautiously, like they were a new team again and just feeling each other out.
 
"Well, shit," Connor said, very comfortingly. Abby raised her eyebrows at him. He gave her a soft look of apology. "They've got my research. If that guy's an Oyster... Well, Oysters were people just caught by some bad people. There's good Oysters and bad Oysters like there's good humans and bad humans and good Wonderlanders and bad Wonderlanders, and I've met my share of both. It's good and bad."
 
"I can see the bad," Abby said, "but what's the good?"
 
"They've got my research. They don't have this." Connor held something in his hands, and then shyly extended it to Abby. She took it, feeling like she was possibly holding something either very precious or very explosive. The van shook a little, and she clenched onto it automatically.
 
"It's a ring," Abby said, opening her fingers and peering at it.
 
"The Stone of Wonderland," Connor said, his voice almost reverent. Abby held it out back to him, and he took it, pushing it into a weird small box and pocketing it. "It's the only thing that can open this world to Wonderland. The trouble is, the mechanism's on that side, and the ring's on this side."

"So you were trying to use the anomalies to kick start an opening through," Nick said.
 
"The Stone resonates at the right frequency," Connor said. "Think of the anomalies as a radio, and the Stone is a tuner. Only they're speaking completely conflicting languages. If that Oyster gets back through... You have to understand. Wonderland's a... less developed realm. We have resources you wouldn't believe, and no corporation on this side would feel bad about killing all our trees, or taking all our coal, because we're not human." There was undisguised loathing in his voice at that point. Abby remembered Nick saying Connor wasn't human with horror, because it was true. Their governments were brutal, and human rights laws only protected those the law deemed as human. "And we have resources you wouldn't believe. I used to sell emotions."
 
"Emotions?" Abby said. "How can you sell emotions?"
 
"In Wonderland you can take them from people. Bottle them up. Make tea." Connor sounded sad as he leaned against the back of the van, no longer looking out the window to see where they were going. "Joy and imagination were my best sellers. And depression had its niche."
 
"Who would want to buy depression?" Abby asked. She couldn't quite believe she was buying into this odd world. She should be off somewhere looking for a doctor for him. But it was Connor, and he had such tangible emotion in his voice that it was so hard to believe he was lying or crazy. In a way, Abby wanted to believe in Wonderland. She'd always loved the book as a kid, imagining herself as Alice, and that made a horrible sense – Connor had said his Alice was in Wonderland, and Abby had imagined herself as Connor's girlfriend more than a few times. It seemed she was just doomed to imagine herself in that role again and again. Her favourite character had always been the Mad Hatter. He liked tea too. She wondered if the tea the dormouse slept in was depression tea.
 
"You'd be surprised," Connor said. "Maybe it was the people who'd eaten too much cream cake. One can't be too happy in polite society, I suppose." He looked oddly contemplative and distant for a moment. "You'll want to head right up this street."
 
"I do?" Nick said.
 
"Yeah, "Connor said. "There's a meeting every Wednesday afternoon of Wonderland survivors. Your sister will probably be there, Stephen, and she's got something I need. She'll vouch for me as a good guy, too."
 
"I'll believe that when it happens," Stephen grunted.
 
#
 
"Oh, my god, Hammpkppkkp!"
 
Abby stared as Stephen's sister Mandy flung herself at Connor, looking utterly happy and amazed. So did Nick and Stephen. It seemed like the thing to do.
 
Not only were there a lot of people in the bar, all covered in the same sort of tattoo the man who captured them had on his arm – although some of them had them on their face, some on their arms, some on their legs – but they all squealed and looked delighted to see Connor.

"Ssshhh, Mandy, they know me as Connor. Best not to rock the boat and all that," Connor said, leaning into the hug Mandy offered regardless.
 
"So you're not David," Stephen said, looking bewildered at his younger sister. Abby had seen photos of her before, with Stephen's serious mouth and eyes set in a decidedly feminine body.
 
"You're not?" Mandy tilted her head. "Oh, didn't you say you only got your first name when your mum was mad at you?"
 
Connor actually blushed. "I need you to vouch for me with your brother. Just tell him I'm good so we can get down to business."
 
"He's good," Mandy said, automatically, grabbing hold of Connor's arm. Abby felt a curl of jealousy, and stabbed it away. She really did have a great track record of going for completely unavailable guys. "He saved our lives. Without him, we'd all be dead, ask anyone."
 
Stephen looked cross, but he shrugged. "Okay. Guess that makes you worth listening to at least."
 
"You say the sweetest thing," Connor deadpanned, and turned back to Mandy. "Do you still work for that firm?"
 
"I do," Mandy said. "And so does Georgia."
 
Five minutes later, Abby was sat at a large table inside a dark but cosy pub as Connor sat at the head of the table, like some sort of King to these people, these Oysters, all vying for his attention and staring at him starry-eyed.
 
"I was so close," Connor was saying, and Abby tuned in, especially curious now for any clue as to who Connor really was. He'd suppressed Mandy saying his surname, or his nickname, or something, for a reason. "The equipment was nearly working. I think if I'd put the Stone in, calibrated it quicker, I could have gotten through. But that can't be the aim anymore." His voice trembled a little.
 
"But, Alice-" Mandy started, her eyes wide and tracing Connor's face like she was searching for the absolute truth of the universe in it.
 
"Alice is a secondary goal," Connor said. "One of us has turned rogue."
 
"Silvan," one of the Oysters broke in. "I'd bet you anything it was Silvan Murray. He was mafia, back in the eighties, heavy hand of the West End, had some territory in Malta for a while. He'd want to rip the heart out of Wonderland."
 
"That's why I want to get the Stone back. Seal Wonderland off from Earth for good. We're not ready for it. In time, Wonderland will try and reach out to Earth as it should. The Resistance will be strong enough now, I can feel it. Wonderland is safe. Alice wouldn't have been on the other side of the mirror if she wasn't free. One day-" Connor couldn't finish his sentence. Two of the Oysters pushed their drinks at him automatically. He smiled at them, benevolent. "One day, Wonderland and Earth will be able to be friends. But it's not now and it's not yet, and we need to keep both places safe."
 
"We're with you," Mandy said. "Anything you ask of us. Always. You know that."
 
Connor smiled at them.

"Yeah," Abby called, smiling. "All of us."
 
Connor looked over at them, and Stephen and Nick slowly nodded, and Connor swallowed, looking upset all of a sudden. That moment passed, and his eyes dipped to the table, as if he was reading something that wasn't there. "Okay," he said eventually, looking up. "This is the plan."
 
#
 
Once they all had their roles, the plan moved quite quickly. It was either very easy for all the appropriate items to be procured, or all these people were willing to move heaven and earth for Connor, and if the latter, Abby didn't blame them. More than one of the Oysters chatted to Abby as the back room in the bar was cleared for their work, and each of them had the same story – about Connor standing up to the Suits, and risking his life, and having the woman he loved ripped from his life, and still he did his best for them, working to get them acclimatised back in this world, while tirelessly working to get Alice back.

"Alice," Abby said to a couple of them, "the Alice?"
 
Most didn't know. One said something about hearing "Alice wasn't the Alice, she was just a Alice. Or his Alice," while nodding in Connor's direction.
 
Later, as Stephen and Mandy wheeled in some equipment, Abby found Connor with a pile of napkins, scribbling things down and muttering to himself, while Nick looked over the napkins and looked stunned.

"I should have figured out you weren't real a Central student," Nick said, shaking his head. "This is legible for a start."
 
Connor grinned. "I was, actually. I enrolled, and I put papers in your office, and I sent you messages. I knew what was coming out of those anomalies before the Home Office caught up. I couldn't risk not having the best expert on the team."
 
"It still irks that you've been pulling the strings behind all of this," Nick said. "But I guess... I guess I see where you were coming from."
 
"We need to make this smaller," Connor said, pushing a napkin with a diagram over to Nick. "We can't waste time waiting for an anomaly to come to us like I did with the giant mirror. I made it mobile enough in the headquarters, but with the strength of this smaller version, I'd need it exactly on the location of the anomaly. The anomaly in headquarters should have materialised somewhere in the cafeteria; the drag on the amplified here pulled it over to the mirror. With a smaller one, I won't be able to do that. But moving it around..."

There was silence as the two men stared at the napkin, mirrored drawn expressions on their faces.
 
"We have a stolen van," Abby offered.
 
They looked at her like she was a genius. Abby was pretty relieved, because the last five minutes of their conversation had made her feel like an idiot child.

Three hours later, they had a version of the mirror device crammed into the back of the van, hooked up to a mirror on a trailer which could conceivably be dragged behind the van. Abby had been able to help, too - tightening the breaks in the van, and jury-rigging a way to attach the trailer to the van.
 
"This is way more volatile than the version which cost ten million quid," Connor said, jumping out of the van after making some adjustments to the complex machinery which Abby blanked over in her head, "but it's versatility means hopefully we can catch a stronger anomaly, focus it down in a smaller area..."
 
"You're hopeful?" Abby bumped his shoulder with hers, and he smiled, not at her, but it was still reassuring to see.
 
"I am." He looked down at her then. "Thank you," he said, in a more serious tone.
 
Abby frowned. "What for?"

"For trusting me."
 
Abby smiled. "Anytime for my favourite non-human after Rex."
 
Connor pretended to look offended.
 
"Oh, there you are." Mandy bounded towards them, her hands behind her back. "I have something for you, uh, Connor."
 
The slip over the name made Abby curious again. She swallowed it down. Connor would tell her when he was ready, she was sure of it. Mandy was almost bouncing on her feet with excitement.
 
"We found it," Mandy said, "some of the Oysters and I. We've been scouring the arrival site for weeks."
 
"No," Connor said, "no-"
 
"Yes!" Mandy threw her hands forwards and in them was... a tan, leather hat?

"Oh my god," Connor said, and automatically put it on. "Ha-ha!" He span on one heel, and grinned like a child. "I thought it was gone forever."
 
"We know," Mandy said, almost squealing. "We knew we had to do something to pay you back for what you gave up, and we thought it was appropriate."
 
"This is brilliant," Connor said, "and I'm going to hug you now."
 
He did, yelling in almost pure joy as he did, and Mandy clapped her hands when she pulled back, and ran off to a group of Oysters watching. They instantly burst into loud chatter, and applause when they peered round her to see Connor in the hat. Connor bowed, exaggeratedly, and then turned back to Abby.
 
Who obviously looked as confused as she felt.
 
"Oh," Connor said, touching the rim of his hat self-consciously. "It's my hat. From Wonderland."
 
"And they thought it was appropriate," Abby said, mulling the thought over. Her eyes flew to his. "You're not," she said, with a firm conviction she didn't feel. "You're not, no way."
 
Connor looked at her, long and slow.
 
"No way," Abby repeated. "You're-"
 
She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. It was just so surreal.
 
Connor just grinned. A very Connor grin.
 
"Well," Abby said, and hoped the wind didn't change, because her face was probably a complete picture.
 
"The detectors aren't showing a thing," Nick said, coming up behind them and breaking their moment, unaware Abby only needed a minute more to get her voice to clarify what she was thinking. Nick glanced at Connor. "Nice hat."

"Thanks."
 
"So what do we need to do now?" Abby asked.
 
"Now," Connor said, looking thoughtfully at the van, "we wait."
 
#
 
Waiting wasn't as exciting as getting all the equipment had been. They stayed in the pub – apparently one of the Oysters owned it – and pretended it was closed for renovation.
 
It was all going too, well... easy. Abby couldn't shake that. Sure, there were a lot of Oysters who were all well connected, and everything that had happened was feasible, if a little impossible-sounding (Connor muttered that Alice in Wonderland thing about impossible things before breakfast, but that was the first thing he'd said all day Abby hadn't fully believed – she'd seen him try and work without breakfast, and it was all a total shambles.)
 
She worked up the energy to see if Stephen felt the same, about it all being too easy, but was distracted by their anomaly detectors going off simultaneously.
 
"Silvan will have this too," Stephen said, hurtling into the van, moments before Abby. "We have to be fast."
 
The van thudded with Nick and Connor climbing in to the front of the van, and then the van was on the go. Abby watched her anomaly detector carefully, watching it grow – it was a big one. Hopefully they could get there before anything too big came through it. It was going to be hard enough defeating someone like Silvan Murray. Some of the Oysters told her what he was like. Abby wasn't sure she was going to sleep again properly for a long, long time.
 
The anomaly this time was in a thankfully quite easy location, an abandoned warehouse's car park. There was a wide space for them to do this in. Stephen and Nick seemed less pleased than Abby. She didn't understand. Anomalies in abandoned spaces were good, it meant less chance for the public to be hurt, but then Stephen passed Nick a gun one of the other Oysters had procured for them, and she realised why it was bad. If Silvan Murray had people for them here, there was no protection, nothing to hide behind if there was a gunfight.
 
"There it is," Abby said, pointing to the corner of an abandoned dumpster. It wasn't a big anomaly at all from the looks of it, but her readings on her detector were spiking like crazy.
 
"It's a doozy of an anomaly," Connor said, "I need to recalibrate for the intensity. How long do you reckon I have?"
 
"Minus two minutes," Nick grunted, flicking the safety catch to off on his firearm. Connor visibly swallowed, nodded, and ducked back into the fan. Abby helped Stephen unload the mirror, and Nick and Stephen pushed the mirror closer to the anomaly.
 
"I'm ready," Connor said.

"All right," Nick said. "Go."
 
They push the mirror into the anomaly. Abby realised she was holding her breath, expecting it to disappear, and she wondered giddily for a second what a dinosaur would even do with a mirror, and what if an archaeological team found it- but the mirror did what it did in headquarters, sparkling to life. Connor did something to the controls, and hopped out of the van, running towards the mirror, his hand outstretched, the Stone in his palm.
 
As soon as he got close to the mirror, the anomaly moved to the edges again, and an image appeared in the centre of the mirror.
 
It was clear, and Abby couldn't help but gasp. It was the woman, but this time her face was in focus, and she was beautiful. Her eyes were as bright as the Stone in Connor's hand, and he pushed his hand up against the image, and... nothing. The mirror was solid. Connor's eyes fluttered shut in dismay, but opened immediately, like he couldn't bear to miss more than a moment of her face.
 
"Alice?" He spoke her name with heartrending clarity, and the woman in the mirror shook her head, and mouthed something Abby couldn't understand, and then the woman bent and picked up something, and Abby moved closer, curious, and saw it was... a baby.
 
A baby with a shock of dark hair and eyes like the woman's, and Connor was staring, frozen, and then someone else moved in, a blond guy, and he put his hand on Alice's shoulder, saying something, and Alice was looking at him, shaking her head, and then looking back at Connor, pleading, shouting, cradling the baby in her arms, and the anomaly spluttered out.
 
This time the mirror didn't shatter. There was a ringing in Abby's ears which she suspected was in everyone's ears, and when she was able to open her eyes again from the pressure of the sound, Connor was staring at the mirror, his face pale. His fists were clenched and his shoulders sagged.
 
"I wasn't quick enough." Connor stared at the mirror, his expression blank. "Four years, and I've not been fast enough."
 
He sounded so unlike himself that Abby had no trouble believing him not of this world. He shook himself and looked across at her, endlessly sad, world weary, but still going. She loved him in that moment, unconditionally and impossibly, but she was resigned to the fact his heart belonged to someone else.
 
Even if looked to all of them like the woman it belong to had moved on.
 
#
 
Silvan not coming to that anomaly meant he was still distracted, or he knew something they didn't. Connor cracked what Silvan knew when they got back to the pub.
 
Abby didn't know what to say to him. Stephen was the most help, just patting Connor on the shoulder and looking at him with the same heartbroken expression. Abby remembered Stephen talking briefly about his first love breaking his heart, and her heart ached for both of them. She hadn't loved deeply enough yet to know what real heartache was. So maybe her love for Connor was just... friendship, even though it felt deeper. More real than anything else.
 
"We need more power," Connor said, dolefully. "There's no way the mirror can act as a conductor for the anomaly without more power."
 
"Let me guess," Nick said, flatly, "the amount of power we have available at headquarters."
 
"He'll have known." Connor twiddled his thumbs, and stared down at them. "He'll have known he only had to wait for us to come to him."

"But we can't guarantee an anomaly striking there at any point," Abby said, not wanting to add to the hopelessness descending on them, but unable to not to say it.
 
"I'm not giving up," Connor said. "I don't- I don't care if she's gone off and married the Jack of Hearts, I don't. I- really seriously care, but if she's happy, I'm delirious. We still have to get the Stone of Wonderland through. We can't let Silvan strip Wonderland clean. I can't."
 
"Relax, we're with you," Nick said. "I'm all for no power going to these types of guys. And honestly, this mirror invention makes anomalies harmless. That's more than enough of a contribution to this planet for any of us."
 
Connor swallowed, and nodded. "All I need is the new settings and a new mirror, an anomaly and ten minutes alone with the machine."
 
"Unless..." Abby started. Their attention flew to hers. "Unless we just stole the power? We already have the machines and the mirror."
 
"It would register as a power cut," Stephen said, turning to Nick. "If we paired it with an attempted break-in..."
 
"I could wire into the anomaly detector in base," Connor said. "Make it think there's an anomaly spawing inside the building. If I set it off the same time as a real anomaly spawns in a- well, whatever radius of the building as we can get wires for..."
 
"Okay," Nick said, looking around at them all. "Let's go save Wonderland."
 
#
 
It was difficult being left out of the most dangerous part of the plan, but Abby was mostly assuaged by the fact that her part of the plan was the most important, and showed just how much Connor trusted her.
 
The Stone of Wonderland sitting in her hands proved that.
 
Connor had tapped into the security feeds of the building, only needing access to the same power wires they were currently siphoning energy off in order to do it. Nick muttered something about having words with Connor later about installing back doors into highly secret government projects, and Connor nodded mutely through the telling-off until Abby pointed out Connor basically owned the whole project and it probably wasn't the best idea to tick him off.
 
"I could fire anyone I liked," Connor had said, grinning. "Although firing people I like seems a bit odd."
 
The plan was sort of brilliant. Waiting until an anomaly warning came up, Connor setting off his program to crack the main anomaly detector, and then he, Nick and some of the Oysters pretending to break into the building, to make Silvan think they wanted the main equipment.
 
It was brilliant, and nervewracking, and then the anomaly detector went off, and now Abby had nothing to do but wait until the time was right, staring at the security feeds Connor had hacked into.

It was taking so long and then there was movement.

Abby's heart leapt into her mouth when saw Silvan's guys and their guns, and the object in Connor's hand. The case the Stone of Wonderland had been kept in. She wanted to keep watching, to know if Connor was going to be okay, but Stephen nodded over at her.
 
"It's time."
 
Stephen started the engine, following the handheld detector, while Abby stayed in the back of the open van. They had wire on a huge coil, in order to get the energy from the building as close to the anomaly as possible, and Abby unwound it as Stephen drove as slowly and carefully as he could.
 
She worried they were taking too long, and felt the reassuring weight of the gun Nick had pushed into her pocket lean against her thigh.
 
"Keep going," Abby yelled, "I can see it."
 
The wire ran out maybe ten metres too short of the sparkling anomaly, leading Abby to stumble out of the van still holding it. She yelled for Stephen to stop. It was doable. They just had to haul the equipment out of the van and hope like hell they were quick enough and that this anomaly didn't shut before they could get the Stone of Wonderland through.
 
Stephen hurtled out of the driver's seat, starting to heft some of the equipment through. Abby thought longingly for a second of the Oysters that went with Connor and Nick, but she gritted her teeth. They could do this.
 
Just please, she thought, please no dinosaurs come out of this anomaly before we get to it. She had mental visions of firing the gun at a triceratops while helping Connor's lost love through a mirror, and wondered for the hundredth time that week whether this was real, or if she'd really lost it.
 
She had no choice but to continue as if it was real. Luck was on their side, thought, maybe, as Stephen lifted the mirror out of the rear of the van and Abby started punching in the calibration as Connor had taught her. She fretted for a moment that she had forgotten how to do it, and took a deep breath, looking back at the building and seeing lights flashing from some of the windows. She hoped like hell it wasn't a gun fight, and turned back to the task at hand. With trembling fingers, she punched in the rest of the code and nodded at Stephen, who bodily lifted the mirror over the rocky ground and pushed it into place.
 
The anomaly instantly settled into the mirror, spilling out into the frame. The image of Alice on the other side solidified instantly, and Abby ran to it, pushing her hand against the mirror, expecting resistance, and her hand just went... in.
 
On the other side, Alice started jumping up and down, making noises that Abby could almost hear, like she was deep underwater and someone was screaming up above the surface.
 
Abby held up the Stone of the Wonderland as close to the mirror as she could, and Alice made a thank you gesture with her hands, her eyes wide and searching, like she was looking for Connor. Alice made a gesture with her hand, like she was pitching a ball, and Abby understood – throw it.
 
Abby pitched her arm backwards to do it, and Alice's eyes widened even more, and a voice in the distance said, "Stop right there" so Abby just flung the Stone instinctively. She didn't care who it was, or what was happening. She only knew that if this was her last breath, she was doing what Connor had asked of her, come hell or high water.
 
She was saving Connor's world, as he had saved her, over and over without realising. Abby's life of dullness and insomnia was going to kill her, before the anomalies came along, and the excitement, and the team. Real life was horrible in comparison to her life now.
 
If this was Silvan Murray, racing across the ground to kill her, so be it. Abby would die knowing her last act had been worth it.
 
When she didn't die immediately, Abby turned, looking defiant. It was Silvan, and four of his goons, but it was Connor too, and they weren't shooting at him – Abby could see the Stone's container in Connor's hand. Silvan obviously thought he still had a chance.
 
Of course, then Silvan's guys started shooting at her and Stephen. Stephen grabbed her, bodily shoving her behind the van, and Abby crouched down behind the tyre, covering her head.
 
"The portal's open to Wonderland," Silvan was yelling, "he didn't have the Stone. Men, secure the mirror, secure the- what the hell, no!"
 
"You'll never have Wonderland," Connor shouted, and then... silence.
 
The gunfire ceased, and Abby glanced to her side. The mirror was just a mirror again. Alice was gone, and the men around Silvan looked confused. Silvan howled with rage and Connor, with swagger, showed both the emptiness of the ring box and the handful of wire in his hand from where he'd disconnected the mirror, severing forever the connection between Earth and Wonderland.
 
He'd sacrificed a chance for him to go through to Wonderland to ensure Silvan never did.
 
"You-" Silvan started. Connor just hurtled forward and knocked him out, throwing a are you going to challenge me? look at the goons.

"We're just mercenaries," one of the goons started. He silenced with one look from Connor.

"Best get your men and go home," Connor said, his voice an octave lower than normal. He was even more beaten up than he had been from the guys – and Nick and Stephen – whaling on his face for the truth.
 
He stared at the mirror, even as the goons trudged away, police sirens already blazing in the distance. (Lester was nothing if not efficient after it was useful to be so.) He probably would have stared at the mirror all night, had Abby not forcibly pulled him away. He was injured, and hadn't let the Oysters look after him.
 
Connor stopped part of the way back to the building, and looked back at the mirror sadly. Abby stayed with him, rubbing his arm. Stephen hung back a distance, like he knew Connor just needed support and space.

Then, Stephen had once lost someone he loved. He'd know exactly how Connor was feeling right now. Abby's heart broke a little more for the both of them.
 
"I guess that's that done properly," Connor said, his voice breaking a little, and then he was breaking down, there on the ground, in an overgrown piece of land behind the main building, in the outskirts of London, on Earth, and not in Wonderland, and there wasn't a thing that could be said.
 
#
 
Eventually, once Lester had smoothed things over with the police, and a crew came in to clear it up, and Connor had "David" allocate some money to fix everything satisfactorily for the Home Office, Abby managed to convince Connor that they really needed to clean him up.
 
All the time in the world might not be able to fix Connor, he might never be fixed, but Abby could get him presentable and help him heal, and that was a start.
 
She wanted to make sure he cleaned up, so despite his protests she went in with him to the toilets, yanking one of the first aid kits down from the wall with her, and eyeballing the male lab tech at the urinals, daring him to have a problem with her being there.
 
Connor kept his head lowered, obviously not wanting to look at the mirror, and Abby tried to be as gentle with his cuts as she could.
 
The silence was stifling. Abby aimed for a casual conversation opener, but it still sounded flat in the white tiled room. "How does it feel to save the world?"
 
Connor looked up and into the mirror at that, meeting her eyes. He looked older, wiser, impossibly sad. "I feel like Connor Temple," he said, a wry twist to his mouth. "Getting information beaten out of me. Twice. Even in Wonderland-"
 
He froze, and dropped his eyes again.
 
Abby could have kicked herself. She was so happy he was talking that she hadn't thought to stop him, just in case he mentioned something to make him look like the world had collapsed around his shoulders again, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to, and now he was kicking himself, and Abby was mentally kicking herself.
 
Until the mirror blanked out.
 
Abby frowned, confused about what she was seeing, and then it sank in. Connor said the Stone could open the way through from Wonderland, but not here. So someone in Wonderland...

"Connor."
 
"'m fine," Connor muttered, not looking up.
 
"Connor."
 
"Abby." His petulance was almost amusing. Abby didn't know whether she dared to laugh, but she wanted to. It was bubbling up inside her. She couldn't help it. She laughed, a sound of just joy, and Connor looked up at her, angry, probably about to start shouting, let out some of that rage in transferred grief, and he paused, too.
 
Because the mirror was definitely, definitely not solid anymore.
 
It was... moving.
 
"Best stand back, yeah?" Abby said, and Connor let her push him backwards. He seemed to be holding his breath, his eyes on the glass, and she wondered if he was thinking of going through. Of going back to Wonderland, even if Alice was lost to him if that previous image had been any indication.
 
Although, from the shock of hair on the baby, Abby was starting to think something she hadn't wanted to think, because it meant even the slight hope Connor would think of her once accepting Alice was gone forever would be eradicated. The thought didn't hurt so much. It bubbled through her like her joy had, sincere and effervescent.
 
Then a figure stumbled through the mirror, and straightened, and the joy Abby felt slowly translated onto Connor's face.
 
"Alice," Connor breathed, like it was a magic spell, like if he said her name too loudly she would disappear. He looked completely awed to see her, and it wasn't hard to see why. She was glorious. The girl who stole Connor's heart before Abby had a look in. Abby couldn't even bring herself to hate her, because the way she made Connor light up...
 
"Hatter," Alice yelled, not being as gentle as Connor – or, as Abby had barely dared believe, Hatter – had been. Connor – Hatter – lifted his hand to help her down, but she shook her head and leaped, jumping on him, her arms going around his neck. They stumbled in collision, and then she leaned in, and Abby had to look away. It was one thing to acknowledge she was happy to see Alice back for Connor's – uh, Hatter's – sake, it was another to want to see them kiss in front of her.
 
Abby looked back eventually, because for a reunion, it was ridiculously romantic, and she was completely jealous. Alice and Hatter kissed like they weren't even two separate people, and Abby could feel her heart in her own chest, beating furiously.
 
Then, of course, something had to remind Alice and Hatter that the real world existed, and that was another figure coming through the mirror. There were hearts on his jacket, and Abby frowned, recognising him from the mirror the first time.
 
The Jack of Hearts. Connor – Hatter! – had called him a tart. Abby felt a surge of anger. This was the guy that had moved in on Hatter's Alice when Hatter was gone, when Hatter waited and worked so patiently, why, Abby should-
 
Jack glanced at Abby for a brief second, looking surprised at her hateful expression, and held out something in his arms. He coughed when it became apparent that Alice and Hatter weren't going to stop kissing any time soon. Jack didn't look mad, so Abby adjusted her expression from anger to confusion. It seemed a good idea.
 
Jack eventually settled on coughing some more. Alice broke away, looking suitably embarrassed but bright cheeked, and Hatter looked so happy. His smile faded when he watched Jack pass the bundle over to Alice.
 
"Ah, the baby," Hatter said, rocking on his toes a little. Abby didn't recognise the tone from anything Connor had ever used, but then, this was him being himself. Hatter looked unsure, and vulnerable, so maybe this tone was his denial tone. "Hello there, Alice's baby." He reached forward to tickle the baby, and it made a grab for his finger.
 
"Excuse me?" Alice's forehead screwed up. "Uh, Hatter. He has a name."
 
"Hmm?" Hatter looked up, his face arranged into a polite question.
 
"I know I shouldn't perhaps have named him without his father there," Alice continued, "but I couldn't keep calling it Baby Hatter, and-"
 
"Uh," Hatter said, "sorry, pause, rewind-" A stunned expression hit Hatter's face. "Alice, how long have I been away?"
 
"Ten months," Alice replied promptly. "Long enough to have a baby, time for it to grow a tiny bit of hair-" She stopped when she noticed Hatter was crying. "Hatter?"
 
"I, oh. Sorry. Time must run at different relative rates, or maybe the Stone makes the mirrors connect over a different time period, or-"
 
"English," Alice said, "please." Her eyes searched Hatter's face, lingered on an eye crease, and it was like she was starting to understand but couldn't quite find the answer.
 
"It's been four years," Hatter said, and he couldn't stop crying, but he was smiling too, smiling through the tears, and Connor, Hatter, whoever he was, he was happy and relieved and exhausted and absolutely where he needed to be for the first time in obviously four years. "And I've never stopped trying, I've been fighting so hard every day to get back to you, to get you back to me, and I thought- Oh, I thought I'd lost you-"

"You thought I was the father," Jack said, sounding appalled, "the kid isn't even blond-"
 
"He's an elitist when it comes to hair colour," Alice said, rolling his eyes. "Jack, thank you for your help. Hatter and I'll be staying here a while longer. Maybe for the rest of our lives, if he has no objections."
 
"I don't care where we live," Hatter said, "Wonderland or here. As long as I'm with you and-" His eyes were still wide with wonder. "What's his name?"
 
"Lewis," Alice said, her mouth twisted a little. "It seemed appropriate. If it was a girl I would have called her Carol."
 
Hatter grinned.
 
"Well, that's my cue," Jack said, as something else came through the mirror – a small rock. Obviously a crude signalling system to let them know the way back was going to be cut off. "I wish you the best of luck. Thank you for saving Wonderland."
 
"Thank you, Jack, for getting me home."
 
Jack nodded, and clambered with a surprising amount of dignity back onto the sink and through the mirror.
 
Moments later, the mirror solidified again.
 
"You're not angry I decided to stay here, to strand you here?" Alice turned back to Hatter, her eyes scraping his face almost constantly, like she couldn't believe he was real. "Because you could have gone back with him, I mean, he's not going to open the mirror again for a long time, get everything settled, but, oh, I shouldn't have assumed, I just wanted to be here so badly, with you, and mom, and- I forgot Wonderland was your home."
 
"No," Hatter said, knocking his hat to the floor so he could rest his forehead against hers. "No, you're my home. Wherever you are."
 
"Abby, are you and Connor all..." Stephen trailed off, slowing to a halt as he burst in through the toilet door. He stared at Hatter and Alice and the baby. "Nick," he called, through the door as it swung shut on its own, "Nick, I think you'd better get in here."
 
"Why would I want to come and hang out in the toilets-" Nick started, and then stopped talking at the sight of them. "Huh. Is..." He turned to Abby. "Is that a baby?"
 
"It's Connor's son," Abby said. "Connor's the Mad Hatter, by the way."

"Less of the mad," Hatter said, sparing them a glance, but it didn't sound too serious a protestation through his wide, wide grin. "Nick, Stephen, I'd like you to meet Lewis. I only met him a few minutes ago, but I think he's marvellous. Better than cream cake."
 
Alice laughed, stroking her baby's cheek with a finger, and snuggling into Hatter's side. "Coming from him, that's high praise."
 
"I've got my own happily ever after," Hatter said. "I can afford to be generous."
 
"Happily ever after, huh?" Abby said. "You might to get on with that outside the men's loos."
 
"Meh," Alice said contemplatively, "it's safer than Wonderland on Earth. We don't have Jabberwockies or Bandersnatches, or-"
 
Hatter's genuine smile slowly became more forced.
 
"So there hasn't been time to tell her about the velociraptors," Nick said.
 
"Or the giant spiders," Stephen said.
 
"Or the Hesperonis," Abby said.
 
"You guys think you're so funny," Hatter howled, in such a Connor voice that Abby giggled at it.
 
"Um," Alice said, "what?"

Hatter wrapped an arm around her. "I'll tell you over tuna and jelly in the cafeteria."
 
"Maybe skip the tuna and jelly," Abby advised. "You're trying to persuade her staying here was a good idea, right?"
 
"Oh," Hatter said. "Yeah. That. Alice?"
 
"Yes?" Alice said, as they emerged into headquarters, which looked a little beaten up and worse for wear.
 
"Welcome home."
 
Alice rolled her eyes but smiled, and Hatter smiled back, and it was infectious. Everyone they passed that day smiled without knowing why. It was a happy day for everyone. Who needed Wonderland when they had wonder enough between them?