A year passes, then two, with no sign of Lionel or his sister returning to reclaim their throne. There are minor uprisings, easily crushed by Marcella's newly-loyal army.

Then, a public occasion. An invitation, issued to anyone of any status above 'peasant', to a royal celebration. 

Her Majesty Marcella, Queen of Wonderland, styled the Queen of Hearts, is delighted to announce her engagement to...

He goes. It would look suspicious to do anything else. 

He dresses up in his nicest suit, and makes a new hat specially for the occasion.

It has a red ribbon. Red is in fashion. 

One could be forgiven for completely overlooking the small figure kneeling at Marcella's feet, next to the throne. Most people don't notice, or at least give the appearance of not noticing the young child. Marcella herself barely pays him any attention, except for the occasional pat bestowed absently on his curly head. 

He can't be more than four, maybe five, dressed in a miniature version of the white-and-grey uniform of Marcella's household. On his chest is a single red heart, the embroidery looking almost like blood against the snowy backdrop. His eyes have the same uncanny blankness as the elite retainers already beginning to be known as the Hearts. 

They look, if one corrects for the expression, like Lionel's eyes. 

Hatter doesn't stare. That probably wouldn't be healthy; he doesn't particularly feel like finding out what happens to someone who stares at something Marcella would rather have ignored. 

But he knows those eyes, probably better than he knows his own. 

Completely independent of any rational decision to do so, his mind starts insistently calculating timings, weighing up probabilities. Could this be - no, surely Lionel would have told him, even if the child had to be secret from everyone else...

But those eyes. Those damnably familiar eyes. 

Some minor noble, anxious to obtain Marcella's good graces, barges past Hatter - who is, after all, only a milliner - on their way to pay their respects to the Queen. 

He is jolted out of his thoughts, to the realisation that he has been standing like a particularly gormless statue in the middle of the crowded ballroom. 

Abruptly, the lights and colours and music all seem too much, and he wants to be anywhere but here. He leaves the room, stumbling half-blind through the throng, and makes his way to a blessedly quiet cloakroom.

It has a door he can close and lean against. He does that.

All the thoughts and memories he has been pushing down for the last two years - memories of Lionel, thoughts of Lionel - rush over him like waves. And, like the sea, they pull him under. 

A memory floats to the surface, from just a few months before the coup. 

"Well, how do I look?" 

Lionel strikes a pose, looking every inch the dashing young lord, then ruins the effect by running a hand through his hair self-consciously. 

"Ridiculous," Hatter teases. "C'mere, let me fix it." 

"Beautiful," he whispers now.

Tears blur his vision as he sinks down to sit curled on the floor, forgetting to care about his suit. In truth, he's forgotten he's wearing it. 

Other memories crowd forward, each one calling up four or five more by association. 

Lionel grins at him, rages at him, laughs at him. Lionel in a suit, in armour, in Hatter's borrowed clothes. Lionel shirtless, dripping with water on a hot summer day. 

"Well?" says the half-naked teenage boy standing in front of him, looking like he stepped out of one of Hatter's more pleasant dreams. "Aren't you going to swim too?" He turns back towards the lake, ready to dive in - and, incidentally, giving Hatter a fine view of his backside.

All Hatter can think is that he can't wait for puberty to be over. 

A sharp rapping on the door jolts Hatter from his reminiscence. Someone left their handkerchief in their coat pocket. 

He gets up, brushes himself down, wipes his eyes. Tries to pretend he wasn't just curled up on the floor crying over his dead...he doesn't even have words for what Lionel was to him. His prince, anyway.  

The door opens. The moment is past. 

Life goes on.