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"Giles!" a head covered in pink and blue cotton candy colored hair stuck through the doorway, grinning a Cheshire grin from ear to ear. "It's tea time!"
He looked up startled from his work—okay, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't grading the papers he was supposed to, rather he was staring off into space again—but relaxed when he realized who it was.
"Come in, Madeline," he mustered up a small smile, barely visible in spite of the effort it cost him. "How has your day been?"
It was their new custom to have tea together in the afternoon after the last class of the day. Really, Maddie had started it after the first time she barged into his office (falling through the ceiling which he hadn't thought even possible but leave it to the Wonderlandian girl to figure out a way) and demanded his company during tea time, refusing to leave until he had at least one scone. Some days they skipped it, due to either one's schedule refusing to cooperate, but most of the time they squeezed it in. Maddie seemed determined to force her way into his office, or his classroom, or the library, or really wherever his feet wandered and ended up, he would always find Maddie sitting gleefully in front of the petite table she pulled out of her hat. Not wanting to let her down, he never failed to sit and share in the small meal. It was the least he could do for the girl who saved him.
He owed Maddie everything. How long might he have been stuck in the Vault of Lost Tales before someone else managed to find him and break his curse? Who else but Maddie, who was caring enough to listen to him, who could understand the Riddlish forced upon him by the babble spell, who led her friends down to seek his advice and thereby provided him with the means of securing his freedom? Some days he imagined how things might have gone differently, both for the better and the worse, but the darker paths he pictured made him eternally grateful that Madeline Hatter stumbled upon the basement of the school sooner rather than later.
"It's been tea-riffic!" she exclaimed, plopping down in one of the chairs conjured out of her hat. "Raven showed me a hexcellent new song she's working on during lunch and I finished my project for Science and Sorcery. I hope Professor Rumplestiltskin likes bubbles," she giggled to herself. "And I'm going to visit Dad after this down in the village. He just sent me a letter to tell me where to meet him." She cleared her throat and pulled out a small scroll from her pocket, unrolling it and reading aloud the words printed on the paper. "Dearest daughter: just made some salad with pickled artichoke hearts I cut in half and I think it'll be really good. Love, Dad." She rolled it back up and stuffed it in her hat, looking at Giles expectantly.
"Was that… all of it?" he asked, confused.
"Yep!" Maddie said. "Dad's been wanting to try the artichoke salad for a long time now."
Giles shook his head, ill-equipped to keep up with the habits of the Mad Hatter. He knew Maddie well enough to usually pick up on what she was trying to say, but the other Wonderlandians he often struggled with, especially the one who could be considered the maddest of them all. Maddie was going to be uncontrollable when she stepped into her dad's shoes after high school. He could only hope Ever After was ready for it.
"That sounds quite delicious," he finally said, unsure if he handled his response well or not.
"And how are you doing this hat-tastic afternoon?" Maddie asked, picking up the teapot to pour for both of them.
An easy question to answer but one he couldn't respond honestly to, not without crossing some lines. The times were long gone when he could pour his heart out to anyone without feeling awkward. Especially Maddie, who didn't need to hear about his foggy days, who didn't deserve to hear him disparage his current existence when the one he so recently escaped was worse on every level. From the moment he woke up that morning he could tell it would be one of the harder days to get through. The ones where he woke up disorientated and couldn't remember where or who he was, the ones where everything seemed a challenge and the thought of seeing another person turned his stomach sour. It took everything in Giles to leave the safety of his room on those days, not to mention getting through a whole day of teaching when his words were twisted up with every sentence he spoke and his cloudy head begged to close his eyes and forget about the rest of the world. It was hard to block out the bad memories and often Giles wound up staring out the window at the end of the day, trying to convince himself that the sun he saw through the glass was real.
He shrugged. "Can't complain."
"Hm." She raised one eyebrow dubiously, much higher than a regular eyebrow should ever reach, and Giles felt peculiar, like she was trying to see through him and didn't like whatever form his assorted organs were arranged in. "Honey? Sugar?"
"Oh!" he looked down at his full teacup. "Just honey, please."
Too much sweetness ruined it for him. Giles had always been more of a plain drink person and tea, for him, was almost always the highlight of his day. But having two or three cups regularly meant an excess of sugar quickly left a sickeningly sweet aftertaste in his mouth. Even a little honey was pushing it.
Maddie, meanwhile, dumped two lumps of sugar into her Earl Grey tea, stirred it around, and then threw a (probably stale) peppermint stick into the mixture from a side pocket in her hat.
"Six impossible things?" she prompted, stirring her tea with the end of a spoon.
Giles nodded, "you first."
During one of their first tea rendezvous Maddie had mentioned the White Queen's tradition at the start of each of her classes, to have her students list six impossible things before beginning to teach. However, as the only classes the White Queen taught were Princessology and Crownculus, Maddie lamented the fact that she never got to participate in the classic Wonderland tradition except for during the summers. Giles, therefore, had suggested that they continue the tradition together, and now they always imagined six impossible things before proceeding with tea time.
Maddie scrunched up her nose and thought hard. "An orange Bandersnatch as small as my pinkie!" She stuck out the mentioned digit, wiggling it slightly back and forth.
Giles closed his eyes, thinking of something in turn. An impossible thing. Not too depressing, he reminded himself, even though the only things coming to his mind were absurd and petty. He took a breath and tried to clear stray thoughts from his head, picturing only the fantastical, the whimsical, the type of thing he was supposed to say when instructed to name six impossible things, and definitely nothing to do with certain someones, scenarios, and regrets from his younger years.
Opening his eyes again he spoke quietly, "losing one's shape and form, and melting into the foundations. Seeping through the cracks like an oozing slime."
Maddie pulled a face at the description but let it slide, for which Giles was grateful. His imagination would not cooperate at the moment, weighed down by his lackluster spirit. What would usually have been a straightforward game only served to compound his fatigued state. Somehow, he managed to come up with two more impossible things satisfactory to Maddie's critique and she completed the other two, listing things that Giles heard but couldn't focus on, sliding in one ear and out the other.
They drank the tea quietly, for a time silently amused by Maddie's pet dormouse scrambling over the mountain of scones and pretending to fall down like Jack and Jill with an empty jam pot as his pail of water. Maddie giggled at her pet's antics and Giles managed one fond smile, but it quickly turned melancholic as he was reminded of the mice he had come to love so much down in the Vault. They had been the only other residents but they were quite polite and never disturbed the books, unless it was to snuggle up under the pages for a tiny nap. They couldn't speak (which never bothered him because oh, how he could relate) but they were smart little critters, probably distantly related to the species of intelligent mice found in the tales, like the Three Blind Mice, or even the very same Dormouse from Wonderland. Giles had not yet braved the trip back down to see them again, but a visit was probably overdue. If he could ever convince his feet to traverse the path back down into the basement tunnels of the school.
"Hey, Giles?" Maddie's typically bubbly voice was somber as she set her empty teacup back down on the plate, breaking him out of his train of thought.
"Yes?"
She met his eyes with optimism shimmering in her crystal-blue irises. "Do you ever think you'd try to speak Riddlish again?"
He was unable to hide the wince the question brought out of him. In all honesty, he had been dreading that question for many meetings now, almost since the first time Maddie had barged in and demanded to talk to him. The naturally curious girl loved anything that had a connection to her home. Unable to return due to the curse and the sealed portals, Maddie often happily turned her attention to the few remaining things in their world that reminded her of Wonderland. It was largely because the babble spell transformed his words into Riddlish that Maddie had come to him the first time, excited to converse with someone new who understood her native language. Of course she would want to continue their conversations after he had been freed. His curse had been broken, but not the one on her home.
Yet Giles had not tried to speak the language since his release. It was too connected with those bad memories and the time spent imprisoned. In truth, he didn't know whether he still could. Sometimes, since the curse was broken, his inner train of thought became jumbled and ended up in broken Riddlish, gibberish even to himself. A side effect from so many years of words being twisted on the way from his head to his mouth from simple reasoning to absurd rhyming patterns.
In his youth, Giles had obsessed over Wonderland for a long time. A mystical kingdom (or queendom was probably the more accurate term) where there were no rules, no expectations, not even a solid or consistent presence of gravity. Everything was chaos, everything was free. The exact opposite of the strict and imposing halls of the Grimm family manor that Giles spent most of his childhood in. He had begged his father to allow him to study at Wonderland High for a semester and was thrilled when his request had been granted. Of course, he had then found at that the whole school year in Wonderland was crammed into one day, and he had departed feeling exhilarated but disappointed at the short experience. He would gladly have spent every semester in that magical land where destiny was an afterthought and the inhabitants were allowed to feel however they wished, as long as it was suitably mad enough.
It hurt all the more to know the people and places he had been so fond of back then and who had welcomed him so completely into their culture were now suffering under a curse of their own, one that poisoned the land they lived in. Even more so when it was his fault, in a way. It was he and Milton who had trapped the Evil Queen in the end, but not before her magic had corrupted the beauty of Wonderland. If they had been just a bit faster, or just a tad wiser, the kingdom would never have fallen. And it was his inability to overcome his own curse that led to the responsibility of keeping the realms sealed on Milton's shoulders, who was still keeping them sealed, even though his brother had yet to spare a single thought of undoing the curse itself. Even though he had the means, should he wish too, to investigate the progression of the curse and whether time had weakened it enough to dispel. The Grimm family magic was largely latent, a lingering spark in their blood, mostly inaccessible unless a dire situation presented itself. For instance, the danger the Evil Queen posed by going off-script allowed the brothers to access the mirror realm banishing spell, helped by Baba Yaga, a powerful sorceress in her own right. But magic required the proper pronunciation of the incantation and such precision was impossible with Riddlish, leaving Giles helpless under the curse. He still could not access it after the curse was lifted, either. So he was paralyzed, Milton was indifferent, Wonderland was cursed, and Maddie couldn't go home. It felt like a betrayal and it cut deep to his heart, leaving his guilt bleeding like an open wound that stained his hands red for the world to see. Maddie should have hated him, and yet here she was with only one small request on her lips.
Even after all his time in Wonderland in his younger years, he had never managed to learn the language. It was too intuitive, and in some ways Giles believed you had to be truly mad to speak it with ease. There were subtle hints and tricks with words that weren't easily picked up on. Coming up with riddles on the spot was hard enough, but especially the confusing process of eloquently describing a specific intention with metaphors and rhymes, and then translating back on the spot the layered response. It was all on another level. Giles had gotten to a point of understanding the basics of Riddlish, and hearing another speak it he could translate with a little difficulty, but speech avoided him. Until, Milton cursed him, of course.
The babble spell didn't bestow along with it the knowledge and understanding of Riddlish, it only forced his words to come out that way. Perhaps, through understanding his own words, he could have reverse engineered the tongue, and it certainly helped with mastering the language, but Maddie had mentioned several times that the filtered and contrived version of Riddlish the curse inflicted was different from the way native Wonderlandians spoke it, possibly comparable to a different dialect. In another life, Giles might have found that interesting and worth further study. Instead, he was merely grateful that he and Maddie had been able to communicate, prior knowledge and dialect included.
He wasn't sure what scared him more. If the Riddlish came back to him naturally, as easy as it had been under the curse, or if he had lost the proficiency completely, reset to where he had been a decade ago. On the one hand, it would be just another lasting reminder of what had been done to him. On the other, he couldn't stand seeing Maddie's disappointed upside-down smile (she never frowned, of course, that would be absurdly boring) if he wasn't able to speak with her.
"I'm… not sure," he confessed, nervously rubbing his thumb up and down the side of the porcelain teacup.
Maddie knew bits and pieces of his hesitance. It was impossible for her not to. She was the most intimate with his past, having seen him at his worst, and in their many conversations, Riddlish or not, she had dragged small parts of the larger story out of him. Milton's stubbornness. His former love of Wonderland. The intricacies of the curse. She was a clever girl, and more than likely had put together the truth of the pain Riddlish caused him. She didn't ask out of naivety, rather from a place of understanding, but not one that set her own feelings aside. He admired the courage she had to push herself and others to do the right thing, the adventurous thing, not sit and hide wrapped up in regrets.
The girl was a stellar example of just how impressive this generation of fairytale characters was shaping up to be. Giles loved each student dearly, despite only having known them for a brief few months. Some he had met as babies and children, but time changed everyone, and meeting them again as teens renewed his faith in their class. The first generation to openly rebel. He had done everything he could from his difficult position to encourage Raven Queen to defy her destiny. They continued to make him proud with each obstacle of prejudice they overcame and how much they clearly loved each other, even with the rebel and royal split still liable to spark tensions. Why couldn't Milton see that any of them could become an outstanding hero or leader of Ever After?
And why couldn't he do this one thing for Maddie after she had given up so much of her time for him? He fretted in silence, pulling awkwardly on the cuffs of his sleeves and staring down at the empty teacup in front of him. He felt Maddie's eyes on him, her head cocked to one side as if listening to something no one else could hear, an enigma to most but to him a close friend. The only one who chose him while under the spell after isolation had taken its toll and yet had overlooked his worn social skills, embracing a frazzled and lonely librarian out of the kindness of her heart.
"I believe you can," Maddie said. "In fact, I'll eat my hat if you can't."
Despite himself he laughed, so surprised by the thought. "Maddie, darling, you can't eat your hat. It would give you horrible indigestion for weeks if you could even manage it."
"Huh, would it? Drat." She picked it up off her head and rummaged around for a moment. "I was sure I filled it full of fish sticks the other day, which would have been positively tea-riffic to taste." She pulled out a metal wrench. "Yuck. Never mind."
"Well, I see your point," he said, once they had both calmed down from the induced fit of giggles.
"I'm glad," she said, a smile back on her face.
"Tomorrow, then, at tea time. If you care to join me again. I'll… try."
"That sounds hexcellent," Maddie whispered in delight.
She hopped to her feet, sweeping the whole tea setup back into her hat. It was a noisy affair but rather efficient when it came down to it. Giles got to his feet, both to see her off and because the chair he had been sitting on had magically disappeared along with its matching twin and the whole table. He walked the girl over to the door, courteously holding it open for her.
"Have a good afternoon," he said.
This time, the smile came much more easily. It was still a foggy day but Maddie had lifted the haze just slightly. The promise to try Riddlish hung heavy on his tongue but he stuck to his instincts. Giving this to Maddie was the right thing to do. Hopefully having a full day to prepare himself would ease the aftermath, regardless of the outcome of his trial.
Maddie darted forward to give him a short hug around the waist. She, too, seemed like the visit had raised her spirits. He was still not used to her eager and unflinching affection, but she didn't let his hesitation impede her goodbye. The difference between their statures meant she only came up to his chest, but she resolutely hugged him nonetheless, and when she met his eye he saw the depths of her irises shimmer in delight. The sight of that excitement alone convinced Giles to follow through. Whether it be success or failure to come the next day, making Maddie happy was enough of a victory to stave any lingering uncertainty he felt. He did his best to hug her back with a newfound lightweight abandon.
"Bye, Giles." She grinned, before extricating herself from the hug and moving down the hallway, a noticeable bounce in her step.