Chatterbox: Inkwell

I was experimenting with characters yesterday and ended up writing a character study of Morris (from Wonderland) because, while I have a very clear picture of him in my head, it was difficult to pin it down while writing OUaTW. 

Turns out it's because I've been trying to write him in past tense and he really doesn't like that. And I am aware of how schizophrenic that sounds, yes.

Anyway. Not at all my usual style but... it's Morris as I imagine him, so it works. (and his obsession with Hatter ended up creeping me out, a lot. not as much as Hatter herself does, but... dysfunctional OTP is very dysfunctional)

And note that the Hatter mentioned in the first part is not Shindle!Hatter but the very-soon-to-be ex-Hatter, i.e. the one that Shindle!Hatter replaces. (It's like Pratchett's Igors; Wonderlanders don't change a winning formula so they don't bother much with names. I have a headcanon for why Morris has one, but it's not important for the story) 

Critique would be nice? *bambi eyes* Specifically of the does-it-make-sense variety...?

*

His home is the stuff of nightmares. Cobbled together from the scraps of a madman’s dreams, it’s always dancing on the razor-edge of unravelling. If it changes too much, it dies. The Protocol’s there keep that from happening, though. If things get too far out of line, and it rises up to put them back the way they were. Hearts help anyone who stands in its way. For a place that runs on dream logic, Wonderland sets a lot of store by the rules.

It’s his life. He plays by the book, and keeps his mind and his memories and his personality in exchange. It’s not what he wants, but he’d rather keep a lid on the unwanted part of himself than be rewritten to fit better. He knows too many rewrites to consider it an option for himself.

So he keeps his mouth shut and his ambitions to himself and just runs the Tea Party for the Hatter like he’s supposed to. Time is meaningless, and so is everything but his role in the Protocol. He grins and bears it and takes comfort in the fact that, miserable though he may be, at least he’s still capable of wanting more. 

He’s there the day the Protocol rewrites the Hatter. It’s almost pretty, at first. It flows out of the ground in twists of silvery liquid, and he can’t help but notice the similarity of the stuff to mercury. And when it forces itself down the Hatter’s throat and takes away everything he had that threatened their way of life, he can almost appreciate the appropriateness of the resemblance. Almost, because the reminder is a harsh one. The Protocol gives no second chances.

He toes the line more carefully after that.

} {

The first time he meets her, she’s visiting the Tea Party in the company of four knights, on the crest of a wave of refugees from the Jabberwock in the Glassland. She’s calling herself Red, but it’s only the latest in a long line of meaningless labels that she’s claimed for herself over the last four years. None of them last long, she tells him. It’s best not to grow accustomed. She doesn’t clarify whether she means herself or simply the name, but she stays with the Tea Party when the knights move on and he doesn’t take her advice.

He’s there when the Protocol tries to rewrite her and fails. It’s something he’ll never forget, the mercurial tendrils reaching for her and then wilting to nothing upon contact. She does nothing but smile coldly and they never speak of it, but he knows from that moment where his loyalties lie.

She never bothers to hide her true intentions from him, though he knows she’s capable of it. The charming, flattering mask she presents to the Partygoers and, on the rare occasion that the Hearts stops by, the Queen herself is all but flawless. But afterwards, when she helps him strike the Tea Party and he’s the only one around to see, she lets it slip and he can see the ruthlessness that lies beneath. A better person might have told someone, but then, a better person wouldn’t have been allowed to see in the first place.

When she steals control of the Tea Party and becomes the Hatter herself, he’s only surprised by the swiftness with which the coup happens. He never asks for the details and she never offers them, but afterwards her predecessor can barely summon the energy to shuffle vacantly from place to place. Eventually the Hearts take the old Hatter in to act as some kind of valet.

It’s better now. He’s aware even as he thinks it that it sounds like a rationalization, but it isn’t. This Hatter’s Tea Party is a boiling pit of ill-concealed grievances and restlessness. Every meeting teeters on the brink of falling to chaos and provoking the Protocol or alerting the Hearts to what the Hatter’s really doing, and that danger crackles in the air like electricity. She wields it like a surgeon would a scalpel, meticulous and efficient. 

His job hasn’t changed much on the outside; he still aides and abets, even if the particular Hatter has changed. The difference for him is an internal one. He’s not simply free labor to this Hatter. He’s her lieutenant, and she treats him as such. They work well together, too. She starts arriving to the Tea Party later and later, letting him fuel the Partygoers’ anger before she arrives to sweep them away with the sheer intensity of her focus. 

Some days she disappears altogether, and he learns to work the crowd alone. He’s grateful for it when the Queen puts her in charge of the desolate wreck that the Glassland has become and she has to leave Wonderland for months at a time. Under his management the Tea Party grows and simmers and waits while the Hatter rearranges the Glassland to her liking. 

*

mmmyep.