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CHAPTER THREE → MAD HATTER'S HAT

It's already been, what, a day and already the people of Storybrooke were in a huge panic. Everyone was running a muck', not knowing what the hell to do or how to continue their lives which turns out, for the past twenty-eight years, has been a complete lie. So the people, actually the Nuns, created a Crisis Center where the locals could seek guidance. Whether it was food, water, or if you needed to report a missing person.

No one knew how to live their lives now and even Sage needed a tad bit of guidance.

When Sage showed up at the Crisis Center with David in the lead, they headed straight to Henry. School wasn't really active at this point so Henry got an excuse to be with everyone else. "Henry! Have you seen Blue? Uh, Mother Superior?" David asked, slightly fumbling with his words.

"No, but everyone is looking for you two." Henry said. Even though Emma's gone and this town has been flipped upside down, Sage was still the deputy and needed help when it came to managing this whole situation. Which is why she enlisted help from David who would be Sheriff until Emma returns - if she returns.

"Do we know where Rump- Mr. Gold is?"Ruby corrected herself, bouncing on her heels nervously. Sage couldn't figure out why everyone didn't call each other by their real names but then again, their fake name has been their name for a while.

Archie, followed by Marco, ran up to the two. "Wait! Does the Queen still have power?"

"I thought I would find my boy." Marco said in distress, sadness filling his eyes.

Both David and Sage ignored the questions, heading straight to Blue. While making their way over to the former fairy, Whale came out of nowhere. "Hey, let me ask you something? Are the nuns still nuns? Or can they, you know, date?"

"Uh, I don't know!" David mumbled, his attention focused somewhere besides Whale's pathetic dating life. Sage couldn't believe her or Snow slept with him. "Blue!"

Once David and Sage caught up to Blue, followed by a small crowd that was following them. "Could there be a tree on this side? The way we sent Emma through as a baby. Maybe I could go after them that way."

Blue blinked rapidly, caught off-guard by this sudden ambush. "It's possible, but without fairy dust to guide us here... No, it's hopeless."

"You'll find another way." Henry said, everyone turning to the optimistic boy. "In the book, things always look worse right before there's good news."

Sage wanted to tell him this wasn't a story or a fairy-tale; this was real life. She was well aware that Henry was only ten and didn't quite understand how life worked in a sense so she kept her mouth shut. But that's when a loud and scratchy voice yelled from feet away. "Terrible news! Terrible News!"

Everyone gasped slightly at the abrupt yelling before looking over. Leroy and his six other dwarfs were rushing over to the large crowd, heading straight over to David and Sage. "We were out at the town limits. Tell them who you think you are, Sneezy."

Sneezy, also known by everyone else as Mr. Clark, gave Leroy an annoyed glare before speaking. "Oh, will you stop calling me that. You know who I am. I'm Tom Clark. I own the Dark Star Pharmacy. What's going on here?"

"So, if you go across the border, you lose your memory all over again." Sage hypothesized, looking in deep thought as she gazed at the ground.

"A-And coming back doesn't fix it?" Archie asked Leroy questioned, not believing what he was hearing.

Leroy scowled at him. "If it did, would I have come running in yelling 'terrible news?" He calmed down slightly, glancing at his fellow townspeople. "If we leave, our curse selves become our only selves."

That's when the town went into a frenzy. The whole town surrounded David and Sage with millions of questions in different voice tones and in different emotions. It was like being swallowed whole by the ocean. Sage heaved her chest, anxiety filling inside of her like building blocks. Quickly, David led her through the crowd. But even once they got away from the mob, the pestering crowd followed them and their voice seemed to get louder.

"People!" David announced, finally grabbing everyone's attention. "Everybody! Everybody meet back here in two hours. I'll tell you my plan to fix everything."

Finally, after that, the crowd started to fade out. David and Sage quickly scattered away from the Crisis Center, not wanting for the crowd to regroup and gang up on them again. That and they had to diverge a plan in the next two hours which seemed impossible.

"What's the plan?" Sage asked with a sense of urgency in her voice.

David shrugged, much to her displeasure. "I don't know. But I got two hours to figure it out."

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"People of Storybrooke." Charming said, his voice a bit too strong and too loud. David, Sage, and Henry were all back at Mary Margret's apartment, which was also technically Emma and Sage's. Henry was lying on the bed, listening to David's speech. Sage, on the other hand, was sitting at the kitchen counter, trying to stop the laughter coming from her mouth. While Charming was a prince at one point, he wasn't a very good motivational speaker. "I know we're trapped together again, and things look bleak. But...they're not."

"Keep going. You were on to something." Sage sarcastically said while flipping through a random book Snow had lying around.

David ran a stressful hand through his hair as he walked to the kitchen counter where Sage was sitting at on the end. "I'm not onto anything. Snow did all the talking, I did the fighting."

But the comical smile on Sage's face slowly dropped once Charming pulled out the hat. It was still destroyed, ruined, and deep inside, Sage knew it couldn't be fixed. But at the same time, she didn't want to give up hope for Charming and Henry. "And I don't even know how to get this to work, again." David muttered under his breath.

"It's the Mad Hatter's hat." Sage abruptly said, speaking before she could stop herself. Charming looked back up at her, his bows knitting together. She gulped before repeating herself. "It's the Mad Hatter's hat."

Henry's eyes seemed to lit up like a Christmas tree. "The Mad Hatter!" He exclaimed before scurrying over to his book of fairy-tales, skimming through the pages.

"How do you know that?" The prince asked, holding up the hat in a tight grip.

"You forget that before the curse, I spent a majority of my life in Wonderland. The hat is a portal between worlds. The Mad Hatter and I would-"

"Wait, you knew him?" David questioned, raising his eyebrows.

Sage hesitantly nodded. "Yeah, before the curse started, I spent years and years with him. We were best friends, job partners. We used to use the hat to go between Wonderland and the Enchanted Forest."

"Here he is!" Henry announced, making David and Sage pace over to him. The young boy pointed at the large picture of the Mad Hatter with a bunch of different hats behind him. Sage inhaled deeply, not have seen his face in twenty-eight years. He looked up at his grandfather. "Do you know him?"

Charming shook his head. "No. I-I mean, yeah. I mean, the prince me doesn't know him, but David had memories of reading Alice in Wonderland in school. I need to get it to work again. Who is he? I-I mean, who is he here?"

Sage looked between the two. "He's name is Jefferson. Since my name is Sage in both worlds, he's probably is the same as well."

"Maybe he'll check in at the Crisis Center. You could check after the thing." Henry shrugged, not too concerned about finding the Mad Hatter.

"What thing?"

"The meeting? Where you tell us about your plan, remember? The speech you were doing?"His grandson said, his tone suggesting as if it was obvious.

"Right." Charming said before looking at Sage, them sharing the same look. The two quickly grabbed the hat and their coats before bolting out of the apartment. "We'll be back for that."

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"At least we got the potion." Sage remarked, shrugging as she walked over to David. They had just gotten the potion from Rumble to find Jeff. He held out the hat as Sage poured the blue potion over fabric, letting the thin liquid seep through. After the bottle ran out, David gently placed the hat on the hood of his car and waited.

Within a few minutes, Sage was just about to break the news and say it didn't work until the hat started to rapidly shake. It looked as if a rabbit was trapped inside and wanted to get out (ironic, isn't it?). The Mad Hatter's hat then started to fly through the air, David and Sage following it with every whisk of the wind.

Finally, it turned around the corner and landed on top of a blue car that was flipped over and had a street lamp crashed on it. Boxes of tea-party stuff were lying on the ground, in the pile of shattered glass.

"Hey!" An urgent voice called from inside the car, banging on the window.

Before Sage could, David yanked open the driver's seat and inside revealed the Mad Hatter himself. Sage took a sharp intake of air, nervousness bubbling inside of the pit of her stomach. This would be the first time they would see each other in twenty-eight years and that was more than nerve-racking.

"Thank you." Jeff breathed out before David helped him out of the tipped car. Once Jeff was on his feet, he turned around and froze once his eyes landed on Sage. Both people stared at each other in silence, various emotions running through their faces.

"Sage." He whispered, smiling softly before pulling her into a bone-crushing huge. Sage felt tears of happiness brimming in the corners of her eyes as she hugged back; her arms around his neck while he was squeezing her lower back.

"Jeff..."

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"Can you get us through?"

"No."

Both Jeff and Charming sat across from each other at Granny's diner, Sage deciding to sit between them. After the two hatters had their reunion, Charming skipped the pleasurable greeting and was more motivated than ever, now one-hundred percent determined to make Jeff help them.

"Can you get them back?" The prince desperately questioned, making Jeff roll his eyes. "Can you get it to work?"

The Mad Hatter laughed softly and Sage never realized until now that she had missed his laugh. "If only you knew."

David was quickly loosing his patience. "You had a little girl's tea set in your car and a stuffed rabbit toy, so I'm thinking you have a daughter you love. Well, I do, too. And a wife. And they're out there somewhere. In the Enchanted Forest, or a void, I don't even know. But I'm going to get them back."

"They're in the Enchanted Forest, that's for sure. I just can't get there." Jefferson confirmed, making Sage sigh in relief. She was glad to hear that there was a chance that Emma and Snow were alive.

"It still exists?"

"It exists. I don't know if that matters, since we can't go there." Jeff grumbled, being the usual pessimistic Sage remembered him to be.

"So, you won't help us?"

"I'm a portal jumper, and you destroyed my portal, so you're out of luck." Before Sage could blink her eyes, Charming yanked Jeff up by his collar, holding onto the fabric so tight his knuckled were turning white.

"Charming! Let him go, now." Sage hissed but he ignored her completely. "Well, I'm the closest thing left to a sheriff here, so I can just throw you in a cell until you figure out a way."

"Then all we'll do is both sit. Stuck. Two lives in our heads, cursed worse than ever." Jeff bitterly spat before David finally released him. "Two lives, forever at odds. Double the pain, double the suffering."

That's when Jeff bolted down the street and Charming quickly chased after him. Sage didn't even bother because she knew Jeff couldn't do anything to help them nor would the hat work again unless there was some sort of miracle.

Until that miracle happens, they were utterly screwed.

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Jeff and Sage finally reunited! Next chapter will feature their big scene which I am so excited to write and for you guys to see! Please vote and comment about what you thought because i just love reading your guys' feedback. Much love, Katie!