Title: Gods and Monsters
Author: Silverkitsune
Part: 1/1
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: I should like to sleep like a cat,/with all the fur of time,/with tongue as rough as flint,/ with the dry sex of fire;/and after speaking to no one/stretch myself over the world.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of their respective characters. No money is being made from this.
Warnings: Cat crack
Author's Note #1: High fives and cookies to my betas.
Author's Note #2: Summary from Pablo Neruda's poem Cat's Dream
As he stepped across the invisible line that separated the front yard from the backyard, Jason Cho realized that he was only three-fourths of the way into his panic attack. Three-fourths, because while his breaths were coming in a fast jerky rhythm and he could feel his breastbone protesting the harsh palpitations his heart was making, there was still a part of his psyche, about one-fourth the size if he had his fractions right, that had managed to remain relatively calm. The problem was that this quarter cup of calm wasn't exactly doing much to help him out of his situation. It wasn't throwing out ideas or telling him that everything was going to be alright or even having the decency to stay quite and mouse like. Instead the only clear and rational percent of his mind had decided to draft a letter to Shelly. The first line of which read, "I know you're going to kill me for this, but I accidentally lost our daughter."
It was puzzling over the content of the second line when Jason found Min.
His five-year-old daughter was sitting cross-legged on the damp grass with her back to the family's townhouse. There were no broken bones, no cuts, no scrapes, not even the slightest hint of a bruise covering her, and the sight immediately canceled out 99 of the 100 horrific scenarios his imagination had crafted since he'd found her gone from her room.
Loosening the knot of his tie, Jason closed the distance between himself and his daughter and crouched next to the seated figure.
"Min?" he began, trying to sound stern. Jason was pretty sure that now was the time for punishment, and some sort of lecture about little girls not giving their otherwise healthy thirty year old dads coronaries, but his voice jumped up a notch without warning and he sounded more like a worried Kermit the frog than an irritated parental figure. Shelly was so much better at this than he was.
"Hello daddy," Min greeted softy. "Look what I found."
Cradled in the little girl's lap was a shaking brown tabby cat. There were scratches down both its sides, and one of its ears was battered and bleeding. Its front right paw was curled in an awkward position, and every time the striped brown tail twitched the creature cried.
"Don't scare him," Min ordered firmly, when her father reached a hand out, her thumb gently stroking the cat's forehead.
The cat's eyes were closed, a small pink tongue poking out between the panting animal's lips. When the cat noticed Jason's extending hand the panting sped up. Jason withdrew the hand, and sat back on his haunches.
His daughter watched him with a look that Jason couldn't read nestled in her eyes. His palms began to sweat. There were days, most days really, when his young daughter mystified him. Her mother was much more in tune with the little girl, and he'd hoped that Shelly's three week business trip would allow him to form a bond with his daughter that didn't include awkward pauses and raised eyebrows. Jason had a sinking feeling that how he handled this was either going to make or break his career in fatherhood.
"Daddy?"
The total came to five scratches, three of them deep enough to need stitches, one broken paw that would be fine as long as they kept the cat resting, two broken ribs that guaranteed the cat wouldn't argue about the resting, a bruised tail, and a bill that made Jason want to cry.
"Do you feel better?" Min asked earnestly. She wiggled her fingers in-between the holes of the cardboard carrier the vet had given them. "Dr. Slowen said she gave you a shot. Did that help?"
"Mr. Cho?" the receptionist said from behind the front desk. "Cash, credit or check?"
Jason fished his Visa out of his wallet, and slid the plastic card across the desk.
"Would you also like to make a donation?"
Scrawling his almost illegible signature across the bill, Jason crumpled his copy of the receipt in his hand.
"No."
They were crossing the parking lot, Jason doing his best to keep the box in his arms level and his steps even and smooth, when Min told him that she had already decided on a name.
"You named him what?"
"Thor," Min repeated patiently.
"Is, ah, Thor one of your cartoon characters?"
"Thor is a hunter," Min said happily. "He's the Norse god of thunder. He's linked with trees, and sacred groves, and his name is where Thursday comes from. Thor's also really, really strong which means it's his job to protect Asgard which is where he lives with all the other Norse gods. He smashed a giant's head with a hammer once."
Jason peered through one of the quarter sized holes. The miserable looking ball of striped brown fur lay unmoving.
Min followed her father's gaze.
"He'll grow into it."
"Sure, honey."
When Thor started moving, or rather limping, around the townhouse after only a few days Jason was surprised. Min was overjoyed about the limping, but baffled when she couldn't get him to eat any of the wet canned cat food.
"What's the matter?" Her hand ran through Thor's shaggy brown fur mindful of the still healing hurts that covered him. "Aren't you hungry?"
Thor, his nose hovering over the bowl, flicked his ears back. Jason watched from his place at the stove, and moved the sausages and scrambled eggs that were going to make up dinner around in the frying pan.
"It's tuna flavored," Min continued. "I picked it out because Victoria, she lives down the street and she has a cat, said cats really like tuna and if you eat something you like you might get better faster."
Thor let out a curious sound, something between a sigh and a grumble that Jason was sure he'd never heard a cat make before, and took a tentative bite.
"Good," the little girl crowed. "That's really good, Thor. Eat it all and you'll get big and strong. Just like the Nemean lion."
"Min, it's ready. Come get a plate," Jason called. The little girl laid a quick kiss between Thor's ears.
The cat's eyes large brown eyes followed her, or more specifically the plate of steaming scrambled eggs that she was handed, longingly.
It had been a shitty day. Computer viruses, unruly copy machines and the overall low moral that came with working in a cubical had made the hours drag and the day feel endless. Jason hustled the baby-sitter out the door with a handful of cash and a strained good-bye before making for the bottle of Aspirin he knew Shelly kept in the top kitchen cabinet. Popping two of the pills he turned the tap of the kitchen sink, and cupped his hand under the flowing water. A cat who wasn't Thor jumped onto the counter.
Like Thor, the new cat was a tabby, but unlike Thor (who couldn't so much as jump onto the couch let alone get to the top of the kitchen counter yet) he was dirty yellow in color, his stripes a deep orange brown. Thor, once he had been able to do more than curl into a tight ball, had shown himself to be a large cat, skinny and long. The new cat was compact and well muscled, but filthy. Sections of the creature's back were bedaubed with dry mud, and there were burrs buried in the cat's white belly fur. The yellow tabby's tail twitched from side-to-side, and his green eyes studied Jason with a mild-curiosity.
Padding forward, the strange cat dipped its head under the still flowing stream of water and began to drink.
"Min!" Jason yelled, shaking the water from his hand. "Come here."
"You met Odin," Min said, appearing at her father's side. "He was scratching at the back door when I got home from school. We need to give him a bath, but I don't mind that he's dirty because I think he was out adventuring. Like Odysseus or maybe Xena."
"Min, what exactly are you reading in school?"
The new tabby smirked at him.
They kept Thor because Jason Cho was in possession of a healthy beating heart. Allowing that poor shaking animal get taken to the pound and put down was not something he could have done in clear conscious. They kept Odin because Shelly wasn't there, and Jason had a hard time saying no to Min's very earnest eyes. That and letting Min keep two cats had scored him more parent points than he knew what to do with.
"This is the living room," Min told the freshly washed yellow tabby in her arms. "Thor sleeps here, and if he's ok with it you can sleep here too."
That didn't mean Jason didn't have worries about the new tom cat, the largest of which involved sharp claws sinking into his five-year-old's flesh.
"You can sleep with me if you want," Min continued. "But it might be better if you stayed here with Thor so he won't get lonely."
He was beginning to think the first worry was unfounded. The cat Min had named Odin was allowing the little girl to treat him like a heavier version of her stuffed animals without so much as a tail twitch. The thing was even purring.
Jason's second worry had not yet been extinguished. He didn't know much about cats, but he knew a thing or two about guys and he wasn't sure he trusted Odin around Thor. He didn't want the still healing cat bullied by the stronger, healthier newcomer. If the two cats didn't get along Min was going to be upset, and then ask questions. Specifically, she was going to ask him questions, and then expect answers Jason was sure he didn't have.
Was it ok to tell a five-year-old that sometimes living creatures were just jerks to one another? Did she understand bullies? Kindergarteners knew about bullies, right? Should he call Shelly and ask? What time zone was his wife in today?
"Odin," Min announced, bending down next to the blanket lined box Thor was occupying. "This is Thor."
Jason watched the cats interact for almost a week before allowing the second worry to melt away. Odin didn't push Thor away from the food, he didn't trap the poor guy under chairs and keep him in place with well placed swats, he didn't even hiss at the other animal. In fact his first order of business had been to wash Thor's ears an action the brown tabby had protested with an annoyed merp before sulkily letting the other cat do as he pleased.
The ear cleaning wasn't a one time thing either. Odin's favorite activities seemed to include curling around Thor during naps, butting against Thor's forehead, watching the Cubs game with Jason and washing Thor's ears.
"It's like Brokecat Mountain over here, honey," Jason confessed to Shelly during one of his wife's phone calls home.
Min looked up from her dinner at the comment, her eyebrows knit together. Odin had taken to sitting in Shelly's empty chair during their meals, and Jason looked up to see the yellow tabby's green eyes watching him coolly. Thor, still unable to do much in the way of jumping, hung around the square of floor between Min and Odin. Pushing himself onto his haunches, he pressed his paws against Odin's chair, showing off his furry belly, and meowed. Min leaned over to pet him, and slipped him a piece of her hot dog.
"I didn't know Odin was your boyfriend," she said, her fingers gently rubbing Thor's head. "Was he looking for you? Is that why he came here? He must have walked a long way to get so dirty. Odin, you must love Thor a lot to walk so far, just like when Orpheus walked through the underworld to get Eurydice."
Both of Odin's ears flattened against his head, and he took a sudden interest in cleaning his paws.
Min tore another piece of her hot dog off and slid it to Odin. "Just don't mess it up like he did, OK?"
"Min, don't give the cats people food," Jason said before he handed the phone to his daughter.
"Did you know," Min asked Jason while he was attempting to plait his little girl's hair into pigtails before she went off to school, "Daddy, did you know that the Norse have a goddess, her name is Freyja, and that she gets to drive a chariot pulled by two cats?"
A majority of the left braid slipped through his fingers, and Jason swallowed the curse in his mouth.
"Really. Um, wow that's neat."
"And did you know that the Egyptians they have a cat goddess and her name is Bastet, and sometimes she's a cat, but sometimes she's a lioness?"
Jason secured the end of the left braid with a rubber band, and moved onto the right.
"That's nice. Where did you learn all this?"
Min sighed, and tilted her head in annoyance. "Where I always learn it."
"Min, please don't move your head!"
"From a book. I'm reading a really big book, right now. Mr. Gazda, the librarian, he helped me find it, and he said he didn't think I would like it because there aren't a lot of pictures and the words are sometimes really big, but I got it anyway, and I'm reading it all by myself. See!"
Jason's fingers finished the braid, while his eyes followed his daughter's small finger. A thick book with a light blue cover lay open on the floor. Both Thor and Odin sat on either side of it, peering at the yellowed pages.
Min gave her braids a tug.
"It feels different when mommy does it."
Jason had stubbed his toe on the doorframe, and made it half way down the hall before he realized that Min wasn't the one crying. Rubbing sleep out of his eyes and blinking away the darkness Jason turned away from his daughter's closed door and followed the series of intense cries that were drifting up the stairs.
Thor was in the front hall having some kind of fit.
The tabby was twisting his body into an S shape his head rubbing against the carpet and his tail whipping violently in every direction. Long painful yowls were torn out of the small body, and when they halted Jason felt himself flinch. Thor collapsed, his brown eyes glazed over as he stared at nothing, a steady trickle of blood dripping out of his nose. Jason reached for the animal, and his fingers brushed the tips of Thor's ears before Odin attached himself to his extended arm with both sets of claws.
"Son of a bitch!"
Jason's head connected solidly with the back wall. Odin dropped soundlessly to the ground. A dull throbbing pulsed through Jason's skull, and his teeth ground against one another.
Odin, meanwhile, was alternating between rubbing his cheek against Thor's side, and gently nipping the other animal's neck. Thor seemed to be back from whatever trip he'd taken, and though a tremor worked its way up the cat's spine every few moments his eyes were open and clear.
Odin growled when Jason stood. The yellow tabby moved to stand over Thor, and his eyes glowed flat and yellow in the reflected kitchen light.
The next morning both cats were gone. Jason stalked through the townhouse, the cardboard carrier swinging from one hand, the conversation with the vet still fresh off his tongue, but he couldn't find so much as a whisker.
He did, however, find clumsily laid lines of salt next to the windows and doors. Rubbing the crystals between his thumb and forefinger Jason wondered if he even wanted to know what new game Min was playing.
When Min thundered down the stairs later that morning, still in pajamas, her long black hair tangled and wild, Jason was seated on the couch the empty carrier by his feet.
"Daddy, since it's Saturday can we have French toast?"
When she caught sight of the carrier, the little girl blinked.
"Are the kitties going somewhere?"
Min checked every place Jason had already searched and then a few dozen places he never would have thought to look. She called their names and offered hot dogs and stories for them while circling the yard's edges. Jason phoned neighbors and drove to the nearest shelters. Their search lasted until sunset, and as watery orange and purple colored stripes bled into one another across the sky, Jason let his daughter cry into his shoulder, and silently wished that he could be better at all of this.
There were claw marks covering the side of their home's east wall. At least, that's what they looked like. Running his fingers along one of the grooves, Jason bit the inside of his cheek and frowned. There was a powder coating the marks, and an unpleasant scent that Jason was sure he should recognize hanging in the air.
Pulling his hand away from the siding, Jason started for the garage. He needed to hose the wall off.
Circling around to the front, Jason was surprised to see two strangers sitting on his front porch and conversing with his daughter. One of them, a tall lanky kid in his early twenties, was laughing at something his companion, a man in motorcycle boots and a brown leather jacket, had said. Min was sitting between the two of them, and Jason wondered when the "don't talk to strangers" lecture that he'd hammered into her brain had gone out the window.
They both stood at Jason's approach.
"Can I help you two?"
The tall man's right arm was in a sling, and the man in the leather jacket sported a butterfly bandage over his forehead. The man in the leather jacket stuck his hand out.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said with a smile. "I'm Mr. McFly, this is Dr. Brown."
Jason returned the handshake. "Jason Cho"
"Mr. Cho," Dr. Brown greeted. "We're from the local forest preserve. There were reports of a large animal wandering around your neighborhood-"
"What kind of animal?" Jason broke in, thinking of the east wall and the odd smell.
"A cougar," Mr. McFly said. "There's nothing to worry about. We bagged and tagged the furball two nights ago, but we're double checking the area."
"There aren't any cougars in Illinois." Jason said with only mild certainty. He was trying to place the location of the forest preserve in the crudely drawn city map he had in his head, and found himself unable to pinpoint a location.
Mr. McFly tilted his head and grinned. "Not officially no."
"There have been some cougar sightings in the state," Dr. Brown threw in his smile never falling. "It's very rare, but it's happened."
"We'd actually appreciate it if you could keep this information to yourself if you know what I mean," Mr. McFly said with a wink. "Don't want to cause a panic."
Min grabbed Dr. Brown's hand. "Do you think the cougar ate my kitties?"
Dr. Brown, his long bangs falling into his eyes, squatted into a position that put him eye level with Min.
"Naw. Cats can take care of themselves. They're really smart."
"Though some are smarter than others," Mr. McFly muttered.
"My cats, Thor and Odin, they were really smart," Min said. "They were boyfriends, and I though they liked me, but they ran away."
"Why exactly would you say, 'boyfriends'?" Mr. McFly asked, rubbing his hand over his jaw. "Two guys can be buddies without being boyfriends. For all you know they might have even been related."
"I'm sure they didn't run away because they didn't like you," Dr. Brown said firmly.
"But I did everything right" Min said in a voice that sounded close to frustrated tears. "I fed them, and I watched Animal Planet with them, and I told them stories, and I brushed Odin's fur every day."
"Maybe," Dr. Brown began. "Maybe Thor and Odin wanted to stay, but they had something very important to do."
Jason thought that was an awful lot of credit to give a couple of cats, but kept his opinion to himself.
"Like maybe they were on a hero's journey?" Min asked cautiously.
Dr. Brown nodded encouragingly. "Yeah."
Min nervously tugged on a strand of her dark hair.
"Do you think Odin was Thor's Herald?"
"Definitely his call to adventure guy," Dr. Brown said with a laugh.
Jason shot Mr. McFly a confused looked and received only a shrug in return.
"I don't really speak geek," the blond man said. "But your daughter seems to be fluent."
For the first time in days, Min smiled. Jason batted away the jealous feeling that curdled in his stomach.
"Does that make me the Wise Woman? I can be the Wise Woman even though I'm not old, right?" Min asked bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"I think the role fits you perfectly," Dr. Brown said.
"Daddy, I'm the Wise Woman!" Min announced happily.
Jason nodded, "Ok."
Dr. Brown stood to his full towering height.
"We're sorry to of troubled you," the tall man said. "But if you haven't noticed anything strange we'll be on our way."
"There are some claw marks on the side our house-"
Mr. McFly waved the words away. "Oh, those things are days old."
He yelped as Dr. Brown's foot landed on top of his.
"Sorry man didn't see where I was walking."
Mr. McFly ruffled Min's hair and Dr. Brown shook her hand in a mock serious fashion. The two men walked down the sidewalk, and disappeared into a large black muscle car that was parked in front of the house.
"Daddy, do you want to hear about Valhalla?" Min asked grabbing his hand and leading him to the front porch.
"Yeah, baby," Jason said, running his fingers through his hair. "Tell me everything."
"Valhalla is like heaven for really brave Vikings. There are these ladies there who ride horses, they're called Valkaries, and the horses can fly and-"
The deep purr of the muscle car's engine stood side-by-side with his daughter's voice, and for a moment the two sounds were woven tightly together each one adding strength and feeling to the other. Then the car pulled away from the curve, and continued down the road the rumble becoming fainter until it had pulled away entirely leaving Jason alone with his daughter's voice, his daughter's stories, and his daughter's grip around his hand.