Outside the Looking Glass

[madhatter]

He'd told the March Hare that the tea was cold, perhaps if the stupid rabbit had listened he wouldn't have had to lose his temper. At least he hadn't severed his head with the Vorpol sword, though he'd thought about it numerous times.
To wantonly kill the residents of his new home would dwindle his forces, and the Jabberwocky's plan would go to waste.

Now inside, Johnny sat down to a warm cup of tea. Blowing off a wisp of steam he brought the china cup to his pale lips and slurped, a calming warmth growing in his belly. Strangely, all his troubles seemed to melt away when he drank Wonderland's special brew. His mind cleared, the pain disipated and venegeance and murder were the last prospects on his mind. Oft he'd considered it mind altering in some way, a manipilative trick of this magical place to keep the Hatter and Hare in balance; the madmen in their cages. But he'd grown fairly accustomed to the drink and once he lowered the white cup to its saucer a wicked grin of delight danced back upon his features.
He was smiling about his last encounter with his darling sister, she sure had been shocked to see him, just picturing the horror on her face made him chortle. A sip more and it died away, a new thought coming over him as madness crept back.
"I wonder where Cheshire is..." he mused, realizing the oftentimes irksome cat had not visited his cheery home yet. Maybe the March Hare knew why, or Dormouse. Finishing his tea and rising, wiping any droplets onto the sleeve of his coat, Johnny opened the front door of his home and stepped onto the path.
He blinked several times, confusion riddling his pallid features. The tea table was not there, and neither were his tea drinking companions. Grabbing for the handle of his door he discovered that was not there either, resulting in him awkwardly stumbling backwards.
Readjusting his stove pipe hat, irritation crossing his visage. The Hatter wondered vaguely where everything had gotten off to. Checking himself he noticed nothing upon him had abated, the Vorpol blade was still there and so was every bit of his clothing, but this certainly was not Wonderland, neither was it his former "real" home.
It was not so much the world jumping as it was the unexpectedness of it all that made him cross, especially when it was during tea time. Lowering his hat and stroking back his shoulder length white hair, Johnny took a breath and slowly exhaled. Replacing his hat a terrible smile turned the corners of his mouth, "Guess I should introduce myself."

[THE DOCTOR]

The Doctor took one last look around him before stepping into the Tardis. This was it: time to go at it alone again. He knew he should be used to it by now, and yet here he was. Losing a friend never seemed to get easier, though the fact that he hadn't lost her to death did help to ease things for him. He sighed as he flipped a switch on the control panel. "You've done this before," he told himself firmly. "This is nothing new." He nodded with resolve, pressing up on double pronged lever. The lever seemed determined not to budge, to which he rolled his eyes and lifted one white chuck taylor clad foot, grumbling "Oh, come on," to himself. Both hands braced at the middle of the console, he kicked forward. The ship began to rattle in response, bringing a satisfied grin to The Doctor's face.

"That's more like it," he said, punching in his next destination. A nice little trip to the round table seemed in order. He hadn't been to Arthurian England in ages, and hadn't actually seen Arthur yet - a fact that he really needed to rectify, who goes to England and hasn't met the once and future king?-. That was just the sort of pick me up he needed: sword fights, knights and ladies. A perfect way to start off his new time without Martha and his ever dwindling days.

The Tardis seemed to have something else in mind for him though. No sooner had the telltale sounds that implied the ship had taken off reached his ears than the whole thing shook violently. He steadied himself as the ship was jostled to the right and left and back to the right again. "Hang on!" he shouted indignantly as he staggered back to the time coordinates. He had only just leaned over to have a look when he suddenly found himself planted on terra firma. Thousands of light years and actual years away a purple police box landed behind a stall in the market place of Camelot. In an instant it had become invisible, much to the confusion of a passing by peasant.

Elsewhere a very confused and now bespectacled Time Lord stared around himself with unbridled curiosity: there were some trees and dirt and not much else. He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he made his way into the woods, tucking his right hand into his brown jacket pocket to rest on his screwdriver. This had never happened before. He'd woken up in unfamiliar territory, yes, but never pulled right out of the Tardis. He hadn't gone very far when he heard another voice up ahead. A man by the looks of it, though he did have his back towards him. The man in question had silver hair - though he hardly seemed old enough for it to be that color. He wondered if that was the trend of the current time. . . whatever that may be. Imagine the shame, a Time Lord not knowing the time he was in. "Well. . . that would be the polite thing to do," he said in return to the man's comment.

[madhatter]

Already a mind for the warping had presented itself, a victim of Wonderland in the making. At the sound of the other's rather astute voice, he turned on heel with flair, bowing and tipping his hat. "Well then I shall do so, but as you are the one intruding upon me sir, would you like to go first?" His voice was not quite an adults, a lingering boyish charm still very much present, though he looked older than his true years. A jaunty grin twisted his face in a way that seemed dauntingly crazed, not normal in the slightest, and if the dark gleam in his eye was not enough to make it glaringly obvious that this top-hatted man was not the usual sort, than not much else would.
Johnny's quick, blue eyes scanned the rather nonabrasive man with as nonchalant a stare as possible. Beside his suspiciously pocketed hand, there wasn't anything about this fellow that rang indifferent to the world he had left behind, not Wonderland, the other one, and this, though not quite comforting was intriguing. "So are all of you like this, modern, or are you a newcomer to wherever this is too?"
It wasn't that he really suspected the latter, but having spent much of his recent life jumping through mirrors into other worlds he figured it was not out of the ordinary that this man, with his curious look upon his face, was just as much a newcomer to wherever this was as Johnny was himself.
His smile only widened at the prospect of him and this other being abandoned here, maybe he could skin him and use his flesh to scout out the place, keep his identity a secret until he was sure no enemies, or his sister, were here. If this one was alone he was merely easy prey for his dark blade, the sinister madness of Wonderland crept into the white haired male's expression, a sick malice, highlighted by uncontrollable insanity, quickly hidden away as soon as it appeared for fear that Johnny might scare away his prey.
"If you are a fresh face in this forest, how did you get here?" He cloaked his voice with a lighthearted, but unemotional tone, disguising it to be as casual as possible despite the little signs that had broken through his mask.

Waiting for the man's response Johnny looked about him, swiveling slowly, tapping his heels together once or twice and lowly muttering, "Curioser and curioser..." his grin still in place.

[THE DOCTOR]

The Doctor couldn't quite suppress a grin as the other man turned and bowed. He inclined his own upper half slightly, tapping the top of his head with his fingers, as he had no hat of his own. The other man's voice was somewhat disarming when compared to his features. There was something about the way his smile marred his features and the dangerous gleam in slightly maddened eyes that set him on edge. He'd dealt with enough madmen in his time -and wasn't that saying something- to be able to recognize one when he saw them. He arched an eyebrow at him, deciding that he would have to keep an eye on this one while he was here. After all the great bard himself had once written, "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."

"I suppose that's fair," he agreed. "I'm The Doctor." He doubted very much the man would have heard of him, and that was just how he liked it. "All of you? Oh you mean. . . No, I just sort of popped in," he replied with a shrug. Well that solved one question for him but presented several others. This man wasn't a native himself, but that left the question: who was? His brows furrowed at the expression that settled itself momentarily on this strange man's face. It was, for lack of better word, perfectly evil. "You're not from around here then," he said. It was more of a statement than question, as he arched an eyebrow at the other man.

He shrugged his shoulders casually, though his mind was analyzing this new person as he turned and muttered to himself. "Same way you did, I imagine," he replied, tilting his head slightly. Truth was he wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten there himself. He didn't particularly like that knowledge either, but what could he do? He returned his line of thinking to this strange man. There was something decidedly off about this man, and not in the endearing, quirky way. To be frank, the man gave him the willies, but more than that he gave off a dangerous aura. It reminded him a little too much of a man he had just recently watched die. He gave himself a mental shake: now was no time to be thinking of The Master. He had more pressing issues to worry about.

[madhatter]

Johnny nearly hadn't heard the name the stranger gave, but he had an ear for whispered things, he was unsure if "The Doctor" was a title or a reference of sorts, so, quizzically, he refocused his attention on the man. It seemed this Doctor recognized madness when he saw it, as a flicker of understanding crossed his face in response to Johnny's earlier lose of control in his visage, he'd have to be more cautious if he would like to catch the fellow off guard.
"Indeed, I'm as much a stranger here as you are, but I doubt we came the same way, surely I am the only one of us that goes by way of looking glass."
A tilt of his head and a soft chuckle and Johnny went back to gazing at his surroundings, taking a few steps in the Doctor's direction.
"Did you have to take a test or something to be known as that?" He asked rather frankly, the way a young child might and raised a hand to pluck down one of the leaves, intently stroking it to make sure it was real, tasting it to find it was an average leaf and discarding it. upset at what he had discovered. This place was a long way from the dizzy dreamland he had come from, he was not too excited for it, but figured he had little choice in the matter and would simply have to grow accustomed.
"Oh, I'm Johnny Liddle by the way, though few know me by that name anymore." He did not go into further detail, but he had at least been polite enough to give his own designation, though his true title went on a mystery. If this man thought hard enough about it Johnny was sure he'd discover who he was, but Johnny was fairly sure that the Doctor would be little fazed by the realization, after all he had a world weary and far knowing look in his eye, chances were he'd experienced worse than coming across a living "fictional" character before, and besides, after jumping into a strange world suddenly, not much would daunt most.
Sighing, Johnny dug into his pocket and drew out a medium sized, gold, pocket watch with many different numbers circling the stopped hands. Tapping the clock's face he frowned. "Right in the middle of tea time too." A pout muddled his features as he replaced the watch into its interior pocket and Johnny looked back at his acquaintance. "Shall we explore further, no point in staring at trees if they won't answer our questions." With another quick smile he began to put one foot in front of the other, humming, occasionally muttering a word or two, many of the ones he uttered sounding like complete nonsense.
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves..."

[THE DOCTOR]

"Looking glass, eh?" The Doctor asked, eying him with a new found appreciation. "Well unless you've got one stashed there in that pocket of yours, I'd say you probably just sort of popped in here too." He stuck his other hand in his coat pocket and turned around, ducking slightly as realization began to hit him. The stove pipe hat, the slight aura of crazy, the talk of looking glasses. Oh yes of course, he could hardly believe it had taken him so long to catch on, though admittedly if he was right in his assumption, the man before him was a fictional character. He shouldn't really exist, but then he'd seen stranger things in his life: a story book character was one of the more normal things. More importantly, how many people could say they'd held a conversation with a fictional character? Besides himself and a handful of enlightened few. He shook his head, a smile spreading to his lips. "Oh we're all mad here, aren't we?" he said with a helpless shrug of his shoulders.

He tilted his head to the left, scrunching up his shoulder at the question the man posed to him. "That's my name," he said. "But something like that." He watched in childlike fascination as the young man picked a leaf off the tree and licked it. Johnny Liddle he said his name was, but he claimed few knew him as such. "I imagine they wouldn't," he said with a knowing grin. Oh this one was mad all right, and rightly so, but there was something different about the madness The Doctor felt from him and the madness he had always associated with the infamous Hatter. It was darker, less harmless mad fun. He couldn't let the novelty of this man through him off his guard. Johnny Liddle. . . the name didn't ring any immediate bells and yet the fact that he had a name at all was enough to peak The Doctor's interest.

He suppressed a chuckle at Johnny's next comment. Ah yes, nothing worse than interrupting tea time. This man was almost enough to make him forget that he had been quite literally sucked out of the Tardis. Almost. He eyed the watch with interest until it had been pocketed. "Oh that's brilliant, isn't it?" he murmured to himself, despite his misgivings. He could always appreciate a good fob watch, and this one in particular had seemed to tell more than just time. He was distracted from his thoughts by Johnny again. "All right then," he said, holding his hand out to gesture at the trees. "Allons-y."

He followed along after him, listening to the nonsense he seemed to be spewing out. Yet it wasn't really nonsense, was it? He'd had plenty of time to read books, and though Lewis Carroll wasn't his favourite author, he knew enough of it to recognize when he was hearing it. "Did gyre and gimble in the wabe," he continued on.

[madhatter]

He'd never quite thought of his watch as brilliant, more a nuisance really since Time had stopped it. He was a fickle old coot, and really didn't like attempts on his life, but a compliment was a compliment and he agreeably muttered a 'thanks' though it was quickly followed with an angry grumble of "though it's two days slow".
As they began to walk, the path, unlabeled as it was, being rather clear due to its formation betwixt the brush, Johnny began to mutter the old tale of the monster of Wonderland, and was surprise to hear this fellow jump in on the next line, forgetting completely how mass produced the story was.
"I didn't know you were familiar with the Jabberwocky?" Johnny smiled, having seen a light of pure recognition rise in the man's eyes earlier and realizing why he must have done so, his every other comment a sign that he now understood who Johnny really was. There really was not much good in hiding his identity, he figured, many did not know of the true madness and terror of the land Dodgson wrote about, or how he sacrificed a child from every line of Johnny's ancestry to the foul clutches of thevile, murderous place, but perhaps it was best that way.
"You don't know how right you are" he smiled, the Doctor's previous question slipping back into mind, "about madness I mean, many just hide the lunatic inside with dark eyed shutters." Looking directly at the man beside him one could see that he wore his insanity on his sleeve. 
"What you said before about popping, that's true too, I had been finishing a cup of tea when as I exited my house in search of the cat I found not my woods but theirs and that eerything tha was there now wasn't, quite unfortunate." 
A rather reflective look danced about his features as he played the scene over in his mind's eye, trying to find if there was a moment in which he could have altered his path here. Johnny doubted it, and as he shoved his hands into his pockets and titled his head toward the sky he sighed and spoke giddily, "This whole mess sort of reminds me about the riddle; 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'"
It was one of those statements that leave the other person wondering if what they said was a rhetorical question, a true question, or whether it was even a question at all, his body language didn't even give any cues, though his grip did tighten around the blade in his pocket, a desire for bloodshed making him smile.

[THE DOCTOR]

The Doctor merely nodded his head at Liddle's thanks and arched an eyebrow at the latter part. Two days slow, was it? He opened his mouth to ask a question, thought better of it and shook his head. "Watches are fickle things, aren't they?" he said sympathetically as they went on. He turned to look at the surrounding flora and fauna, removing his glasses in the process. There was nothing particularly defining about the plant life there, or rather there were too many defining things about them. It was impossible to tell what time or planet they came from, and that was the maddening thing about it. He'd been everywhere and every when, he could recognize a time and a place by the texture of the sand or the level of ozone in the troposphere. . .well maybe not all that, but he could recognize his surroundings rather quickly. How could he not recognize this place?

He shook his head to clear his thoughts as he heard the questioned posed to him. "Oh me and the Jabberwocky go way back," The Doctor said with a mischievous smile. "Funny sort of rhyme." He'd been there the year that book had been released, in England. He'd picked up a copy before boarding a little ship called the Royal Adelaide. Of course fate had always had a way of laughing at him, and as it turned out, the boat was destined to be shipwrecked along Chesil Beach. Turned out, the accident wasn't of natural origins, but created by a groups of renegade Chelonian's who'd stranded themselves on Earth, but that was a story for another day. He had the more pressing issue of the potentially unhinged fellow beside him to worry about.

His eyes grew serious for a moment as he stared at this Johnny Liddle. As quickly as the expression had appeared, it dissipated. "I prefer madness out in the open," he said conversationally. "Takes out all that unnecessary guess work: is he mental, isn't he?" He nodded his head again thoughtfully, slipping his spectacles back into place, as he went on to say that he too had just popped in unexpectedly and unannounced. That was hardly reassuring and yet at the same time he supposed it was: at least he wasn't the only one just ripped out of what he was doing, and on the bright side at least this time he hadn't been stuck inside a homicidal game show. There's the silver lining.

He tilted his head slightly at the riddle he mentioned. Ravens and Writing Desks? This was probably another one of the riddles from the stories, but he hadn't been as keen on the first book, if you'd believe it: never really stuck with him. His tone left it open for a great many things: silence as it could have been rhetorical, a nonsensical answer for a nonsensical riddle or an actual attempt at an answer. The Doctor chose none of these. "Never heard that riddle," he replied evenly, though there was something about the accompanying smile from this hatter that put him back on edge. It was like a roller coaster ride for his nerves with this one.

[madhatter]

Johnny chuckled, it was a dark sort of laughter, but what was more frightening was, as dark as it was, it lost not a touch of cheer, in fact, it was probably the most joyous thing the Dcotor would ever had heard, despite how it made one tremble. "Madness in the open, why this'll be a Wonderland at the end of the day if that were to happen."
He too examined what surrounded them, but not to find where he was, but what could be used. He was used to icy fire, talking flowers, giant caterpillars, but there was nothing so obtrusive as of yet, a slight disappointment to say the least. As the Docotr fumbled over the riddle Johnny decided to ease the Doctor's burden, watching the man stare at him unstrustingly, a smart bloke to be sure. "The answer, why I don't even know it myself, yet it has been entrusted to me, sometimes I believe there is no answer, but the Hatter before me might have been more mad then I, perhaps Dodgson picked up the childish thing and it stuck with him, not even the Hare knows." A slight sadness tinged his voice at the mention of the March hare, his constant companion and tablemate, yet now the two were very far apart and only one might still hold a teacup.
Johnny sort of doubted that this man had any such dealings with the Jabberwocky, after all he didn't look much chewed upon and the Hatter was more than certain that most others that spoke to the odd sort of dragon ended up spending the rest of their lives in his stomach, that is until digested of course.

This sort of tiresome tedium was wearing thin on the boy's patience, and though he often had very much of it, it seemed as though he'd left some in his house and had forgotten to carry it with him here. Slowly he slipped his hand into his coat, his long fingers encircling the deadly Vorpal blade's handle, its grip comforting and titillating all at once. "Do you know a girl by the name Calie perchance?"
He figured it best to ask a question now before he severed the man's head, echoes of the Red Queen's most famous words making him smile and fight to hold back a laugh though a slight murmur of fear tingled the base of his spine at the thought of the Red twin. 'I'm not the Twinkler', he thought to himself, 'I've never performed it once, I swear' he spoke in his mind, laughter echoing his words as he pleaded his case, unsure if it was a memory or another trick of his mind coming through.
Awaiting the Doctor's reply he ran his eyes over every place he could cut the man, excitement twinkling in his maddened eyes.

[THE DOCTOR]

The Doctor tilted his head right and then left, shifting the weight of it back and forth as if weighing what they had both just said. "Well, maybe not quite that level of madness," he amended. He'd probably go mad himself, or at the very least drive the people and creatures around him to actual madness, if he got stuck in Wonderland. He'd meant more along the lines of insanity, the likes of which he was seeing in his current walking mate.

The Doctor listened in relative silence, a thing he didn't often do, as Johnny - the Hatter more accurately- explained the answer to the strange little riddle. He shook his head lightly at the answer. He should have figured it would be something like that. No answer at all, but only more things to puzzle over. Yes he was beginning to realize what he had found so maddening about Dodgson's' work. His thoughts stopped in their tracks as he heard the name spoken aloud, but not by him. He glanced over curiously at the other man. How did he know who Dodgson was, if he was one of the characters the strange little man had created? He had also alluded to a previous Hatter. "Sorry, did you say Dodgson?" he asked, his left brow raised while his other eye squinted in scrutiny. "You know who Dodgson is?"

The Doctor's attention momentarily shifted to the young man's hand as it slipped in his coat. He really didn't like the way this nutter, he had tried to avoid thinking the word but he really was, was looking at him. It sent a shiver down his spine and he wasn't an easy man to unnerve. What's more he was asking if he'd ever heard of a girl named Calie. "Can't say that I have," he informed him. Calie? He hadn't remembered that name from the story books. True he also hadn't remembered the riddle he'd been asked, but he was almost positive he could at least remember all the characters. Another Hatter, a girl named Calie, Dodgson and that strange glint in his eye.

He was beginning to think he wasn't in Wonderland anymore. He looked skeptically at the other man, attention back to his hand as he slipped his own back into his suit jacket pocket. "You know, I'm begging to think you're not quite the person I've read about, Mr. Johnny Liddle," he informed the other man.