A one-shot ficlet because I couldn't quite bring myself to let them go after the movie ended.

Disclaimer: As always, Alice's world and associated characters do not belong to me.

Gracious emptied the bucket into the waste basin, and replaced it beside Alice's cot. She smoothed back the girl's blonde locks, and felt her tremble violently under her fingers.

"Feeling any better?"

They'd been sailing for four years, and storms never seemed to get easier on Alice. Gracious shook her head. They should have just stayed in port after the captain announced they were going to hit rough water. But who was she to tell her mistress what to do? Alice was crazy about her work. Well actually, Gracious amended fondly, she was a bit crazy, period.

Alice curled herself more tightly into fetal position, and moaned a response that sounded like "ughooge fanks."

They were interrupted by a sudden high keening of the wind, and the ship rocked violently. Alice made a sudden dive for the bucket, just in time. Gracious supported her as her body convulsed. When she began to quiet, Gracious helped her lean against the headboard.

"Okay, now I do feel better…" Alice lifted thin shaky hands to brush a strand of hair from her face.

"Oh Alice," Gracious turned to hunt for a cold towel, "you know, maybe you should think about staying in London for awhile this time."

Alice made a face. "Ugh, bad trade prospects."

"Well, at least that way you wouldn't look like death half the year, throwing up your guts like you do. You'd be well taken care of back home."

Alice managed a weak chuckle. Looking like death wasn't something she worried about out on the ocean with a horde of burly unwashed men – provided she didn't actually die. "You take good care of me, Gracie." She sighed as Gracious placed the cold towel on her forehead. "Plus, I belong out here. There's nothing for me back home. Mother and I would just fall to arguing all the time." And at home, with nothing to do, nothing could stop her from looking for a way back.

There was a brief silence. Both anticipated the words that were about to come. They always had this conversation whenever she got sick on board. She set it up, Gracie probed, and she parried the questions. Sometimes she could see the confusion in the other girl's eyes, and she felt bad about not being able to give a straight answer. He just wasn't someone she could explain very well.

"You could have married him." Gracious said in a low tone.

Alice sighed. "No, I couldn't."

"But he wanted you. He asked for your hand."

"He wasn't right for me."

"Oh good, you are sweating, finally." Gracious gently wiped away the beads of moisture on Alice's forehead. Her hazel eyes met her mistress's tired brown ones and held them. She saw something – a subtle longing, which made her ask a question she never allowed herself to think, out of respect for Alice's privacy. "Was there anyone else?"

Someone else. Alice sometimes wondered if he was that someone else. Not that it wouldn't make sense. She had known him for as long as she could remember. Where he was, that other world in her dream became magical instead of frightening. When she fell into that world a second time, it was – deep down inside – the knowledge that he was somewhere there which made her fearless. And when she finally met him again – well, that was that. She watched him constantly, and he her. She saved him, and he protected her – there was never any question about that. They continued together – there was never any question about that, either.

But he had never been that someone else, never like that. Nor could she imagine him that way.

"So I'm a figment of your imagination?" She smiled. She liked that. He was a figment of her.

Gracious misinterpreted her mistress's silence as affirmation. "Alice… Is there any way we could find him? Bring him back?"

"No Gracie, there never was." Not in her control, anyways.

"Then…"

And Alice said the same thing she always said – the part Gracious could never understand, and Alice would never explain. "But still, I never had a choice."

The Mad Hatter sat at the head of the tea table, moping. There was no way around it – he moped now more than he ever did.

He couldn't even arouse himself when the White Queen stopped by his garden to visit. He and his friends had been the first one she invited back to the castle after she was reinstated as Queen, and he had agreed – after all, the March Hare was rather partial to the White Queen's kitchen. But he stopped noticing the world around him – it was the strangest feeling, that moment when he first noticed that he had noticed that he was no longer noticing what he was doing, and –

"Hatter!"

He did like that about her. The White Queen could calm him down even when he wasn't saying anything. She might be a bit flighty up in that small head of hers, but she was considerate. She saw how sad he was, and sent someone to bring his old tea table and his whole tea set up to the castle. And yet it hadn't made the slightest difference in the world. She was no longer having him hat her household - she was tired of having all her subjects wear blue hats. The Hatter seemed to have forgotten that she only wore white.

"Hello, my Queen."

"Hatter… my dear Hatter… you know I hate seeing you like this."

"Yes, that is precisely the difficulty, you see" the March Hare piped, picking up the pepper shaker. "Yesterday he didn't even flinch when I flung this at his head." He shook his floppy ears.

"Now Earwicket, that was most unkind of you…"

"Well, it didn't seem to me like it would actually hit him!" The rabbit shook his head in disbelief, and made a motion to throw it again, just to make sure.

"Ahh… let's not be so hasty." Smoothly the White Queen intercepted his wind up, sliding the shaker out of his grasp. She glided toward Hatter, setting the shaker down well out of the Hare's reach. "Yes, that would explain this nasty orange bump you have, wouldn't it?"

"Have I? Why, I can hardly feel it."

Gently, she touched the side of his head. Ouch, it did make him a little bit dizzy.

"Dear Hatter… you are not you these days. You are out of your mind…"

"Or in his mind – depending on what state you think he's usually in." The March Hare corrected.

The White Queen smiled rather vapidly at him, trying to work out this logic. "He's right, you know," the Hatter tried to catch the March Hare's eye – that rabbit was being entirely unhelpful. It was unfair to ask the Queen to think. Alice was the one who understood his mind – to whom everything he said and was made sense even though to everyone else it was nonsense.

"Hatter – are you thinking about Alice?" Despite her flaws, she always seemed to know that.

"Yes," he whispered.

The White Queen took both of his hands with her own. "You're sad without her."

He wasn't that, exactly. He just wasn't himself. But there was no way he could make the Queen understand that. The best way he could describe it would be asking her to imagine Tweedledee without Tweedledum – but he didn't want her to think of him or Alice as a Tweedle, as he knew she had a propensity to take everything a little too literally. My, that would just be strange.

"I miss waiting for her to come back." He said finally.

"But you are waiting, my silly friend. Everyday."

"No no no. He misses her coming back," the ever so attentive Hare offered.

"You don't think she'll come back this time?"

"I don't know. She might, she might not."

"And you would keep waiting, dear Hatter," she asked softly – more as a statement.

He looked up at her with wide green eyes. " My Queen… I never had a choice."

La Fin.

Any thoughts/feedback/comments/etc. is appreciated! =)