The Universe's Mixer

Alice had told Hatter right off the bat that she was living in Jack's apartment. Technically, she guessed it was her apartment, too, now. But she preferred not to think of it that way. Especially since she was looking for another place to live. She'd been hoping that Hatter would ask her to stay with him, but he'd just mentioned going for pizza without her and acting as aloof as ever. He'd admitted to going through the looking glass to find her, but was it just to escape Wonderland or was it because he wanted to see her? She supposed she would never really know unless she asked him outright, and that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

She was in her room. Amazingly before the City had stopped moving, her closet had been filled with all the clothes she would normally wear, including some jis for martial arts practice. She was fingering them, wondering if she'd ever be able to teach again, when she heard the doorbell.

She was pretty sure Jack would get the door, but she was curious about who it could be and she opened the door to her room and stepped out into the hall that led to the living area and the front door.

She gave Jack a small smile and nodded as he reached the door and stood back slightly to see who was behind it.

Oyster food! Fine, he had to admit, he loved it. It had always been a running joke in Wonderland, between he and his colleagues. They'd all heard of it, pizza and pasta and cookies and chicken wings. But to experience it? It was like magic! Well, nothing like magic, really. This ridiculous place was much more like magic. But he dealt with it.

He'd tried pizza with Zee, and it was, admittedly, wonderful. And there'd been other things since he arrived, though he had to admit, pizza was steadily becoming one of Hatter's favorite things ever. Basically, Alice, tea, and pizza. In that order. That didn't stop him from exploring, though!

So when he found himself in front of a little cart advertising the taco things, he figured why not? He'd try anything once. An attitude that had nearly killed him on occasion. Minor details. But they smelled good and if he liked them, he could drag Alice back and make her try them, too. And wouldn't that be brilliant?

Of course, then he'd have to study the person who ordered in front of him to make sure he was doing it right. And he'd have to hope the person ate it there, too, or he'd be completely lost on that, as well.

Alice had been informed that the City was not itself. She had seen with her own eyes the way the buildings and streets rearranged themselves. For a week she'd had trouble finding Jack's her apartment. And now, suddenly, it was where it was supposed to be each time she went back to it. She hadn't really had time to get used to the fridge being full of food all the time or money being in her bank account for absolutely no reason.

This was normal for her.

Mostly.

The fact that this was neither New York nor Wonderland made it abnormal, but she prided herself on the way she was adjusting.

So far.

She missed certain people, though. And sometimes when she was walking down a crowded street, she was sure she was seeing one of them. Charlie with his shiny helmet, her mother's gently curling blond hair. But when they passed her or she managed to catch up to them, it wasn't them at all.

But that hat, directly ahead of her on the street. She was absolutely certain she'd seen it before. Her heart raced and her palms began to perspire annoyingly. She told herself not to get too excited. It probably wasn't him. But she had to check, just to be sure.

She closed the distance behind him, then when she was a foot or two away... "Hatter?"

There was only one thing Hatter was completely sure of. He wasn't in Wonderland.

He knew that place better than most anyone, perhaps even better than its royalty. The royals couldn't possibly know the underground the way he did, the back alleys and the traps and the outer forests. As a kid on the run, he'd learned the slums of the cities in and out, and as he grew into the smooth talking conman, he'd learned the city proper. And finally, as a member of the Resistance, he'd learned the secret hideouts, the places for people to go who wanted out from under the Queen's eye. This? Was definitely not Wonderland.

But it certainly wasn't what he'd been expecting when he'd gone through the Looking Glass, either. If this was Alice's New York, he wasn't sure he liked it. He'd read about it in the books in the Great Library, and he didn't recognize anything. Either it had changed drastically since the book had been published (as getting Oyster books to their world wasn't really on the agenda of the Queen), or he'd somehow ended up somewhere else. Occasionally he'd ask questions of passing people, but he was admittedly loathe to trust most people and had reverted to his old ways of hiding in alleys and stealing scraps of food where they could be found.

He was, possibly, one of the only people in the City who had no idea that it wasn't how it was supposed to be. It looked normal to him, and so he ran with it. After all, he'd dealt with some ridiculous and strange things in a city that shouldn't even have existed to the Oysters. Why would this place be any different?

Still. He'd come such a long way from the boy he'd been, always hiding, always on the run, never using a 'real' name. He had to suck it up and deal with this. If he was in the wrong place, he'd have to work on finding a way back. And he wouldn't know if he didn't get out there. When he found himself in front of the library, he felt a little better. Books were easy to get answers from, right? They'd never let him down before. He'd just head in there. Easier than putting his trust in a person, Oyster or otherwise.