9586/Bee In The Bonnet

Bee In The Bonnet
Date of Scene:	11 January 2022
Location:	Boardwalk - St Martin's Island
Synopsis:	There are too many questions about Wonderland and not enough answers. But at least Gar gets food.
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Gar Logan

---

Terry O'Neil has posed:
It has been three weeks, more or less, since the Titans rescued the Mad Hatter, the real thing, from the grasps of the Knot Maze. Three weeks that the man had been in too injured to give coherent answers, spending a protracted recovery in the medical bay, sedated while his injuries healed.

Of course, the big question is whether the Hatter would give a coherent reply even if he were uninjured and conscious.

Terry isn't too far from the Tower, just along one of the beaches south of the boardwalk at St. Martin's. He often comes here to think, when he wants to get away from the Tower but not go /too/ far away. In the Summer, he usually has to take on his human guise so as not to be spotted and avoid autograph seekers and the like. In the Winter, there's hardly anyone here at all, and they're too busy getting from point A to point B in the cold, that they don't bother looking around. Otherwise they would have seen the Cheshire cat sitting on the sand, idly pushing mounts of sand this way and that with his hands and feet while looking at the ocean, deep in thought.

Gar Logan has posed:
There has been...a lot going on after that Wonderland excursion. Was it Wonderland itself? Just a normal location that got transformed along with the naval base?

Gar knew falling in love with and dating someone who had the Cheshire Cat as his other half would be weird at times, but this was getting beyond that. Answers were needed, but with the Mad Hatter not waking up, and Terry just worn down, Gar could only attempt patience. That was something he wasn't great at, and he had to find ways to distract himself, to occupy his time, to get his mind elsewhere. A few readings for other gigs, a shoot for a commercial or two, charity work, and of course long gaming sessions helped a little, but the questions didn't go away.

Now, upon checking the Tower and finding Vorpal not in it, Gar took flight as an eagle to go up above and look around. In the daytime, eagles, hawks, falcons - their eyesight is unmatched. Had it been after the sun went down, there'd be an owl overhead right now. It doesn't take long at all for him to spot Vorpal, and he silently descends until landing stop the feline's head as a sparrow instead. "There you are. What are you doing, trying to keep the water back? That's not gonna work, you know."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal's eyes roll up in the direction of the voice. Gar perching on his head isn't a new thing by now, so he's not startled, only surprised. "I'm... kneading. I guess." He immediately stops, suddenly self-aware and self-conscious of something that was apparently an unconscious action. A stressed cat may knead to create a soothing, calm mood, and Terry is clearly a little embarrassed at realizing what he was doing. He shakes the sand from off his hands.

"You were looking for me, greenie?" he asks quietly, resisting the urge to tilt his head up to address the voice, so as not to tip Gar over.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Oh, is that what that was? Making sand biscuits?" The sparrow's head turns in a curious manner, though it's impossible to see from the spot Gar's taken up. Then he flits away and lands a few feet off, back to normal, in costume. "I was just wrapping up monitor duty. You've been off ever since..you know. All that." He gestures in general with a hand out.

Then he sits down to show he's not just going back off now that he's found the cat. "So let's talk. I have questions, too. A lot, but I'm gonna try to stick to the big one. What's going on with Wonderland?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry exhales. "I wish I knew!" the cat says, irritation dripping from each syllable. "It's infuriating. He's just... sleeping. He's got answers, and we can't get any of them out of him." He glances at his boyfriend with a frown. "At first I was hoping it /wasn't/ wonderland, but Miss Starr was right. Then I was hoping that the man Nadia and Vic picked up on satellite was Jarvis Tetch. But he wasn't. It's the Mad Hatter. The /real/ thing."

He glances back at the ocean, "This is the man who knew me... well, my father. But me. He has answers. Answers for things I only have vague notions and broken recollections about."

Quietly: "... and I'm fucking scared."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan pokes a finger into one of his pointy ears, rubbing around at it, glancing at things afterward. "Brains still inside. Good."

Refocusing, he frowns at the exasperation and the lack of clarity. "So I had my hands..well, paws at the time..full with that whole guitar weirdness, but I couldn't change back. Something was stopping me from it until we fixed..whatever was going on with the base. You're saying you have no idea why that guy was nailed to the tree? Or anything about this Alice or not-Alice stuff? No clues at all?"

He points, gesturing in the way Captain Picard does in the 'WTF?' meme that's been so popular. "You're part of that world. Did anything, you know, carry over when you got, uh, that half of you? Or is it all sort of just locked away and you need a key to get in?"

The admission at the end, though, leaves him to add, "Yeah, I kind of am too."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry shrugs. "Not. A. Clue. Wonderland doesn't /have/ Christian iconography. I don't know why this person would /crucify/ the Hatter... she clearly isn't from Wonderland..."

He pauses, and suddenly straightens up a bit. The hint of a thought, a connection, but it's not fully formed. He gets distracted from it by Gar's question. "I-- got memories. But it's all jumbled. A lot of it is vague. Things were /fresher/ when I first got my powers, but now there's a lot that's just become impressions. And back when I was brand new..."

He looks down at the sand, tail whipping behind him suddenly. "I saw my dad when we were going up the stairs, Gar. He chided me because I hadn't /wanted/ to look into things. I deliberately didn't look into my memories back then because..."

He exhales. "I was afraid. I was afraid that I might discover the reason for /why/ my dad came here. And a reason that would force me to go back /there/. Because... I was happy here. I was happy with who I was becoming, happy that you were finally looking at me... like I hoped you would." He glances at the green teen, biting his lower lip. "I was a Titan. I didn't want to suddenly get slammed by some obligation to go back- what if I couldn't get back? My dad couldn't get back from here to there, so..."

He exhales, and wiggles a little, scooting over so that he is hip to hip with Gar, on the sand, one hand reaching out for his. "And now it's right at my doorstep and I can't ignore it."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan keeps his place, just staying where he is. Sometimes you have to let a cat be the one to decide when to come closer and trust, and..well, they're a bit past that point and Terry is only part chaos cat. It's complicated.

"It sounds like when you first got them, it was raw and unfiltered and kind of just..everything, like jumping into the ocean and it's colder than you thought and you just sort of feel nothing else for a few seconds before the rest starts to come back," he muses, rubbing at his /other/ ear this time before Terry's father is brought up. "Maybe you should have."

He nods along slowly, hearing out what Vorpal is fretting over, then he says, "Yeah, I definitely think you should have, but I get why you didn't. There's a lot of stuff I didn't want to dig too deep into once others started accepting me and letting me be a part of their family, because things were getting better and I didn't have to worry about other stuff as much. But it doesn't just go away. Sooner or later you have to deal with it or it's gonna eat you up from the inside. Trust me, I know."

With them now next to each other, he reaches up to rub at the back of the feline's neck. "No, you can't ignore it. Yes, you're gonna have to face this stuff and get some answers. And yes, we'll be doing it with you. You were trying to get answers when you were looking for your dad, but you stopped once you found a few things out. I think you need to look for more answers now."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry leans into the rubbing, and he sighs a little. His arm snakes around behind Gar and wraps itself around the green Titans' slender frame, hand resting on his hip and pulling him closer. "I should have. Admittedly, I had a lot of distractions at the time. Not the least of which was this kind of adorable, kind of annoying green guy who crashed on my couch and ate me out of a roof, who couldn't decide whether he liked me /that/ way or not." He turns to glance at Gar and smiles a little. "It's all your fault, you know," he teases, leaning in to touch a cold nose to an exposed green neck. "I should've known you'd be nothing but trouble."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan stops with the rubbing, getting closer in exchange as Vorpal starts to talk about him. Instead of playing into it, he snaps his fingers in front of the cat's face. "Dude, focus. I know. We had a bunch of stuff going on back then and you probably helped keep me on the right path as much as anyone when it came to getting all of this going again with the Titans, but let's stay on target here."

It's a little tough when you have a cold cat nose at the neck, causing him to cringe briefly from the sensation.

"That's real funny, coming from the Cheshire Cat. But seriously, what's the play here? Are we stuck waiting for the Mad Hatter, who notably is /not/ Jervis Tetch but the /real/ one from Wonderland, to wake up? Do you think he's just gonna fill in all the blanks for you? What do you know about him? Can we even trust him? And we still don't know why all this stuff is bleeding over into our world."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I /am/ focused! I can multitask, you know," Terry says, "What's wrong with looking for a little comfort from my boyfriend? Nothing, that's what." He rests his chin on Gar's shoulder, a habit that he shared with the Duchess, but his chin wasn't pointy and painful like hers. To his credit, he gives Gar's question their due consideration.

"We can trust Theophilus..." he pauses. "Theophilus. His name's Theophilus." He muses this in a low voice before continuing, "he isn't malicious, but by the standards of this world, he is one of the least logical people alive, which makes him perfectly adjusted to Wonderland. His mind leaps at angles all the time, he doesn't so much jump to conclusion but pole-vaults over them and uses the momentum to land somewhere beyond. How much help he can be... we'll have to see, but at least he should be able to tell us /something/."

"But it's telling that the Wonderland phenomena hasn't slowed down after we recovered him. It sort of lends credence to this... other Alice narrative. But just /how/ exactly she is able to do all this-"

And there, that earlier thought connects once more, uninterrupted. "Nadia said something... Al-is... Al... friend back in Tartar---" the Cheshire cat's eyes suddenly go much wider. "Al-Is. Er-Is. Is /that/ what Nadia meant?"

Gar Logan has posed:
"Sometimes, yes. Other times, you end up putting the milk in the cupboard you got the glass from," Gar reminds, crossing his arms with Vorpal-chin against shoulder, cheeks nearly touching.

Squinting, he asks, "Is that his name? Theophilus? That's very..Roman, or Greek to me." Pulling out his phone, he does a quick search, reading off a bit:

    Carroll may have taken his inspiration for the Mad Hatter from a man named Theophilus
    Carter.

    An Oxford cabinet maker and furniture dealer, he was known for standing outside his shop
    in full top hat.

    No matter what else he was wearing.

    Lewis Carroll would have been familiar with the sight of Carter.

    "All Oxford called him The Mad Hatter," wrote the Reverend W. Gordon Baillie in a letter to
    The Times of March 19, 1931. "He would stand at the door of his furniture shop...always
    with a top-hat at the back of his head, which, with a well-developed nose and a somewhat
    receding chin, made him an easy target for the caricaturist."

Gar notes, "I found that on some Medium site. So this is, like, a made-up guy based on a real guy, who is now also a real guy like you ended up a real cat? My head is starting to hurt. He'd /better/ be able to tell us something. Anything is better than nothing."

The mention of Eris, as Vorpal begins to put a piece or two together from the Al-Is mention, leads to a sharply raised brow. "Oh, I remember her. Boy, did she ever have it in for you."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry /frowns/ at this, looking over at Gar's phone and muttering. "Funny... I remember reading about that guy. Never really made the connection..." he narrows his eyes, "He invented an alarm clock bed that /tips/ people over when it sounds? That sounds very... Wonderland logic. Did Theophilus have a double life? Did he come up here because he had done it before?" He frowns. "I would remember that. If I /could/ remember... maybe it's a coincidence. Those happen when Chaos is involved. IN fact..."

He digs into his uniform to take out his phone with his spare arm and types something into the search bar: 'Alice Liddell.' A brief image search afterwards, and he shows the screen to Gar of the young girl with the intense eyes and the pageboy cut. "Does /she/ remind you of anyone we know?"

She's very young, of course, but the facial features are strikingly familiar. It's Nadia.

Or could be, much younger.

Gar Logan has posed:
"That's one way to get you out of bed," Gar deadpans. "But really, I'd have to read more."

Now it's his turn to peer at Terry's phone, glancing from the screen to his face and back again when his search results come up. "Uh, yeah. Nadia. But what would that have to do with the threat Eris made? Anything?"

He's grasping at straws here, but it might be Vorpal that has more of an idea about where this could be going.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Nothing, that's related to that other Theophilus. But think about it. That dude here was kind of cuckoo and eccentic and wore a top hat. So does /my/ Theophilus. Alice changed sizes, was bright but somewhat naive and asked questions all of the time. So does Nadia. And Nadia /looks/ like Alice. All I'm saying is that there's levels of coincidental /weird/ going on."

He exhales, "As for the threat Eris made? What do you think would be a greater threat to me than to bring to my very doorstep what I have been actively avoiding? I think /Eris/ is 'the other Alice' Theophilus was talking about. That miserable meddling..." he fumes.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan points out, "There are lots of people who are weird and eccentric. Just look at Dennis Rodman. And just because Nadia can change sizes doesn't mean it's the same thing with Alice, because that was because of what she ate or drank. It's definitely weird, though. Weirder than usual, I mean. The Cheshire Cat was already weird. But maybe that means we're not done seeing people that are like other people."

Frowning, he mutters, "Especially if Eris is messing with you and somehow causing all of this. Then the question becomes, what do we do about it?" Simple question. Not so simple answer, really.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I mean, if you look at it from a skewed angle- a Wonderland angle- a Pym particle can be seen as a teeny tiny pill. So..." he waves his hands, and sighs. "But I'm afraid you're right. No simple answers. Which means we should probably go bother Donna because it's /her/ goddess. She might have ideas." He raises his head and gives Gar a kiss on his cheek. "You came looking for me. You are so sweet. But... speaking on being familiar with running away from your past... I meant to ask you. When Robotman was in town, you almost went out of your way getting busy enough that you couldn't see him." He glances at Gar, "Is that something like that? We don't have to /talk/ about it if you don't want to. But we might want to bookmark it and come back to it when you feel you can talk about it."

A playful poke to the ribs, "Before we talk to Donna, we should go and get you fed with good food. For being the best boyfriend a Cheshire cat could want."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan was never one of the team's brightest members. Dumb? Certainly not, but a scientist or a scholar, he is not. Impulsive, easily distracted, not serious enough sometimes, goofy? Yes, all of that. But also caring about others, friendly.

What he can do on occasion is help someone else get further along with a problem, just by being there to listen and support, never asking for anything back in return.

"Yeah, maybe she will, and of course I did. Why wouldn't I?" he asks, like the observation is really that difficult to fathom. The kiss to the cheek gets a quick nosing along Vorpal's in return, then he stands to turn and stretch.

Right as the Robotman question comes up. A touch too quickly, he says, "Running away from what? I still see those guys when I can." Which doesn't get into how frequent or infrequent it may be. "Everything's cool with them. Mostly." He squirms away from the poke, catching a breath before saying, "Food's good! Food's always good!"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
In a relationship, you slowly become accustomed to each other's beats. You start getting a feel of when to press, and when to let sleeping dogs lie for now. Gar had come to Terry when he gave signs that he wanted to talk, even if Terry didn't know he had, he realizes now. Now it was his turn to wait a little.

He brushes the sand away from him and stands up, "Alright, then. Let's get you fed- I've got a craving for Oyakudon, but we can get something else if you'd like." He reaches out a hand for Gar to take, before he opens the Rabbit Hole.