A bag of gold, hat hung up on the rack—who could ask for anything more, really, Jefferson thought. His whistling echoed through his cottage, soon to be an estate at the rate he was going, trade after trade, deal upon deal. No more using nails on a wall for a wardrobe, no more nasty looks of disapproval from most of his clients, no more cold baths...but at the moment he would be good with no more strangers entering his house. His whistling stopped. A few wet footprints on the wooden floorboards led towards the kitchen and then vanished, as if someone wiped the floor and forgot a few places. Pulling a knife out of his coat pocket, he clung to his bag with the other hand and crept towards the back of the house.

"Oh! Oh, you're back already. The tea still has to warm up!" A small, slender young woman fussed over his stove, thick sandy waves of hair down to her shoulders. "Alice Liddell." She glanced down at the knife as she extended her hand and stared back up at him with an incredulous face.

"Jefferson Hatter...and you're in my house..."

"Yes, I know," she said, lips pressed in a sheepish expression. "And I do know your name. It's why I'm here. You're a portal jumper."

"I'll tell you now I've only had a crazy girl who found that extra appealing come in once and it didn't go very well." He didn't know where to stand, remembering incoherent babbling of discovering new worlds together.

"Well, maybe today will be different. I'm here to propose...oh, that's the tea." The hissing of the kettle prompted a silenced curse word from her little mouth. Jefferson placed the knife into a drawer without a sound. Still within arm's reach. He edged around the table when she turned back towards him, cups in hand.

"I'm here to propose a partnership."

"A partnership?"

"It's when two people—"

"I know what it is." He gritted his teeth. "It requires both parties have some kind of skill or attribute to offer the other. And yours would be?"

"Simple. My presence. May I sit?"

Oh, sure, why the hell not, unpack your things and put your name above the door while you're at it, he thought, gesturing at the empty seat across from him. He eyed the drawer.

"I've been following your trade for some time now and I've noticed a few peculiarities," she said. "For instance, you've turned down every job where someone asked you to bring someone here."

"I'm not a ferrying service."

"Are you not because your hat requires the same amount of people come out as go in?"

"All right, I'm prepared to let you walk out that door freely, or you can be thrown out. I don't like spies." He rose.

"It wasn't...it was just career-related," she said, forehead knitted. "I, I would never invade your actual privacy. I was just doing my research. Please, sit down. Hear me out. I think you'll be interested in what I have to offer you."

"Two minutes," he growled, sitting.

"What if you had someone to go in with? Hmm? Now, you couldn't do the jobs where someone would want the other person to stay, but if a visitor were ever needed, someone required to come to our world, for example. We would jump in together, I'd wait about in their world, and then when you dropped them off, we would return together. That's the gist of it."

"You don't need to go on, rest assured. What exactly do you plan on doing in some world you've never been to before?"

"Shop?" she said coyly after a beat, so suddenly he almost laughed.

"I don't think you understand the dangers that surround portal jumping." He puffed out his chest and exhaled, exaggerating the body language of a frustrated teacher. "I'm for hire. I've dealt with lords and ladies, but also thieves, pirates, witches, wizards, and worse. Much worse. Ever climbed up a beanstalk and been surrounded by giants that could squash you like a bug? Ever made a trip to the Dark Castle and had to choose your every word carefully?"

"Ever been able to bring someone from another world to ours and then be able to take them back?" she asked.

"It's a charming notion, Miss..."

"Liddell." He remembered, but waved dismissive fingers at her.

"Liddell, but as you can see from my latest bounty, I'm doing rather well for myself and therefore cannot possibly be losing out on enough to warrant hiring a partner with no jumping experience..."

"Nine percent."

"Excuse me?" He bugged his eyes to show extra irritation.

"You turned down nine percent of your business transactions these last six months, which involved someone physically going to another world one way or another." She frowned, then smiled, then frowned again. "I'm not here to make you feel stupid, and I'm sure I'm coming across as a bit forward."

"A bit." At last the flustered look of self-consciousness came over her, to which he smiled.

"Are you trying to embarrass me?" she asked.

"Not at all. You're already an embarrassment." Nine percent? Seriously? The bag next to him looked so much smaller now...no, no, Jefferson, that's not common sense talking. That's greed, and it's not worth her price. She sat there, mouth agape.

"Well, I, I'll just stop wasting your time then. I had thought you might be at least a little interested in making a bigger profit, and I do realize I have no experience. That's why it was just going to be seventy-thirty..."

Seventy-thirty? For shopping around while he did all the work, he considered saying, but another thought took over his mind as she stood up and started heading out the door.

"Why would you trust me to always come back for you?"

She turned, an eyebrow raised at the question. He wasn't as good at reading eyes as some, but something in her warm, caramel ones flinched, seeing the question as utterly absurd.

"Partners have to trust each other." With a shrug, she turned again to leave, and Jefferson couldn't believe he was standing, moving, blocking her from her way out.

"Maybe a trial period is in order, three weeks, perhaps." It felt extra bullying, towering over her the way he did. The top of her head was at his collarbone. "And I do a lot of jobs, sort of a get-rich-quick method. It might be a little more than you can handle."

"I literally have nothing better to do, Mr. Hatter," she said.

"Not every world is fun, you know." He locked out his arm bracing the wall with his hand, allowing him to lean his head down to where they could be face-to-face. "You'd have to have a morbid curiosity to traverse some of them."

"Fortunately for us then, my curiosity knows no bounds."

He'd spun the hat a few times, training her, he guessed, showing her which doors led where. Wide-eyed and eager, she nevertheless listened well, and it was sort of fun to show off his knowledge to someone. Few of his clients cared about the how, solely interested in the what. He'd stopped to lace his boot that had come undone only to look up and find her tucking a hair back into place using the Wonderland's looking glass. She said little when he spoke, asked few questions, but always recited everything afterwards, verbatim at times.

Lilliput was the first on his schedule. He'd decided she would go with him on a few regular runs before they would advertise he could traffic in people. Arriving on the shore, he showed her how to avoid crushing anything...or anyone, all but duck-walking sideways to reach the capital city's main street.

"What exactly are we after?" she puffed, trying to smile at the few fearless passers-by still outside.

"A pea."

"A pea?"

"Ones in our world aren't small enough for what our client needs," he grunted, swerving past a half dozen barrels that could fit in the palm of his hand. At least this time the people of Mildendo weren't hurling pint-sized spears at him. He couldn't glance back at Alice to see her reaction, live vicariously through a first-timer's expressions, but on the outskirts of town already, they were approaching farm territory. Dollhouse buildings gave way to stretches of green. Removing a leafy pea plant by the roots, he sifted through it until he found a bright pod ready for shelling.

"What could a person want with a pea so small?" Alice marveled, positioning herself into a plank to brush the pods still attached to the ground.

"From what I've heard, it's to ensure her son won't marry a fraud princess."

"Ah, that old reason," she said, the sarcasm palpable. Sticking the plant into his satchel, Jefferson motioned for them to backtrack to the shore.

"Unless you feel like shopping," he said, being sure his words dripped with mocking concern. "Although I can't rightly say they'll have anything your size."

"How do you know the worlds as well as you do? Experience?" Alice asked once he'd been paid.

"Experience, surveying it, research." An idea struck him.

"Surveying? You mean maps? Could you show me how to do that?"

She'd beaten him to it, he thought, and he didn't like being robbed of his opportunity to mentor.

"I'll set you up tomorrow with everything you'll need for it. Cartography's an art, you know." That was it. He cocked his head back and smirked. Thought she could get paid for just standing around waiting for him and not having to do any work, eh? A brush with the delicate, fine attention to detail required for a map and she'd quit, be out of his side, for she was a thorn, and then seventy-thirty could revert back to good old one hundred percent like nothing had ever happened.

A/N: Hello! I do not own OUAT, but I do hope you enjoy the fic. Onward!