The Cheshire Cat was trying to decide whether or not he would let Mally beat him up. He'd known better than to approach her at the wedding; he'd seen her run off yesterday in tears. No doubt she'd recovered enough by now to seek him out, and probably for revenge.

If she was angry with him, which was what he expected, did he deserve it?

I did what I thought was right, Chessur thought, licking a paw. So I'm fine there.

He wasn't one to second-guess his own actions, after all. It was a much easier way to handle problems. Other people, however, second-guessed him often.

Of course, there was the possibility that Mallymkun wasn't mad at him. When he'd comforted her before, she had been very self-depreciating.

She might be mad at herself, now that everything was a mess.

But it had been a mess before! Now it's…a different mess.

Either way, he was waiting for her outside of his tree-stump house, not sure whether he should evaporate away when she appeared or sit through whatever happened next. The one thing he was sure of was that she would come. The dormouse could be very predictable when she was upset.

The rest of the time, however… Chessur chuckled softly, thinking of the wild whirlwind of a rodent, always ready for action and eager to prove herself.

That was the Mally he hoped to bring back.

"Don't know what you're laughing about," the dormouse muttered, coming around the stump.

Chessur turned his head to face her as she pulled herself up onto a root of the stump and sat. Her fur and clothes were dirty, and there were dark circles under her eyes, which Chess barely glimpsed before she let her head hang down over her chest.

"You look terrible," he commented.

"I feel terrible," came the mumbled reply.

"Did you sleep at all last night?"

"No. Does it matter?"

"To me it does." Chessur flicked his tail towards his front door. "You know, my place is always available if you need somewhere to stay."

Mally looked up at him.

"Sleep in a feline's den?" she said with just a hint of the usual tone she used around the cat. "I'm not that reckless, Chessur."

"For the thousandth time, I don't eat mice!" Chess playfully protested, his ever-present grin widening slightly.

"Now, if you were to make such a statement without showing off all your teeth…" Mally fingered the hilt of her sword and sighed.

"What the henfan were you thinking, Chess?" she asked.

Chessur stretched lazily, although he was taking the topic very seriously.

"I went looking around," he said. "I saw enough to convince me that you were right about where our friends' hearts lay."

"And so you thought you'd just tell Tarrant, 'Your wife's in love with the Queen; go crash a wedding,' because the dormouse seemed to be right?"

Chess hissed at her bitter tone.

"The wedding was right then; there wasn't time to talk it over! You would have had me do nothing?"

"Yes, do nothing! You're good at it, so why stop now?"

Mally knew full well the depth of that insult—her constant complaint about him for years had been that he'd stood by and done nothing when he knew that Witzend would be attacked—but she was too angry to care about the hurt in his eyes.

"The only one with a problem was me, Chess! Me!" she continued, tears running down her cheeks once again. "Now it's everyone!"

"Do you honestly think that Mirana and Raymond and Alice and Tarrant would have been happy if things had continued as they were?" Chessur demanded.

"They could have!" Mally wailed. "But now—"

The cat's paw shot forward, knocking the dormouse off the tree root and pinning her to the ground.

"Now you listen to me, Mallymkun," he snarled. "Maybe they could have. Maybe, in some alternate existence, they did find happiness. Maybe I didn't do anything about it, or you never told me, or you didn't care. But what good does sobbing about that do you now? All anyone can do now that has any chance of being productive is move forward from here. Mirana and Alice can take care of themselves and the politics, too, I'd wager. And Tarrant's no longer the man who spent a decade dwelling on the past. Time passes, things happen, people change. So grab your muchness back from wherever your self-pitying, depressed little heart has stowed it and work with what you have!"

Mally stared up at him with wide eyes and was silent for so long that Chess almost, almost, thought he'd overdone it.

Luckily for him, he ended up not having to reassess his status of never second-guessing himself.

"…I have been quite the pitiful little thing, haven't I?" Mally said. Then she frowned. "Get off of me, you great lug."

Chessur removed his paw and Mally got to her feet.

"Work with what I have…" she muttered, looking down at her hands. "I should clean myself up, first of all."

"That's always a good place to start," the cat encouraged.

"And then—" Mally's planning was cut short by a wide yawn.

"A nap would be nice, too…" she continued, rubbing her eyes. "But I'm not sure what then. What do I do about…well…about my place in this mess?"

"You want my advice?" Chessur purred.

Mally shrugged. "I don't have to follow it."

"I think you should tell Tarrant how you feel about him."

The dormouse gaped. "Right after all this trouble I've caused him? He was so upset, Chess!"

"We're all going to be putting things back in some kind of order after this," Chess said. "In my opinion, it would be better to not have anything secret, especially if such a secret could become part of the new order."

Mally yawned again. "I'll sleep on it. See you around."

The dormouse turned and began to walk away, but then she stopped and looked back at the cat.

"You know," she said. "You're not the same cat I met all those years ago. You do more."

Chess shrugged. "People change."

Mally grinned. "Thanks, Chess."

"Good luck, Mally."

Chessur watched her until she'd disappeared into the trees, and then he slowly evaporated away, tail to torso to grin.

XXX

A.N.: My thanks go to jjhatter for the Outlandish word and Chessur's house, and to Alix Cohen for the quick betaread!