Disclaimer: Is not mine.
A/N: I have utterly, utterly lost it. I REGRET NOTHING. Long-time listener, first-time caller.
SON OF EDIT: Gawd, ATE MY FORMATTING. And I think it replaces words while I am not looking. Or possibly I should wait a few hours and edit before I post. But that would make too much sense. Onwards!
It was an entirely unexpected noise, which is why he took notice. The creaks and moans of the old house were familiar companions, almost a lullaby. This was a squeak, a distinctly animate squeak, and it made him wary.
The squeaking cries had become louder and then faded as he crisscrossed through the house, and he nearly stepped on the thing before he found it. His foot landed with a dead thunk on the rotting wood, a frightened squeal rang up from nearby, and he looked down to see a shivering mass of matted fur and impossibly big eyes pinned beneath a fallen bit of timber.
A kitten couldn't possibly be here. He was aware of everything that lived and breathed in the old mansion, and he would have noticed if there had been a pregnant mother, would have moved her to the town. A place that echoed with screams was no place for any expectant mother, even a cat. He stooped to take a closer look, scarlet fluttering to settle behind him, and realized it was more young cat then kitten, and terribly skinny.
He didn't have any food for it. He didn't need food, and it seemed an unnecessary luxury. Still, he could hardly leave it to suffer. Even a life this small would count, given the magnitude of his sins. He reached out gingerly and lifted the plank off the small creature, stoic as it cried out in renewed pain, and scooped it up with his human arm. The fur on its leg was bloody as well as matted; it struggled briefly, once, and then was still. He could feel a shallow, terrified heartbeat under its ribs and draped a corner of his cloak over the animal, unwilling to hold it close.
A familiar truck was parked at the edge of the overgrown driveway – she had come, again, making her rounds like a doctor with an especially recalcitrant patient. He shaded his eyes against the sun and saw her picking her way through the maze of vines and ruptured pavement, long black hair pinned up against the heat. He stopped where he was, wondering if he should call out to her and by the time he had dredged up the words she had seen him and began to run towards him.
"Vincent!" she called, waving cheerfully. "Hello! I guess you remembered." She stopped a good few feet in front of him – there was a time she had edged closer, reaching out to press a hand on his shoulder or grab him by the wrist – but he had always twitched away, and she had given up. He held the cat out to her.
"Oh!" she said, a little out of breath from the run. "Did you find it in the mansion?" she asked, taking the animal and easing it onto its back. "It's a girl…" Gentle fingers prodded at the wounded leg and the creature sent up an unholy wailing. She hushed it. "I don't think the leg's broken, just cut, and probably bruised. And she's starved half to death."
He turned away and she grabbed at his cloak, twisting the tattered edge in her fist. "Well, come on," she said, catching his eyes just long enough to say I know what you're playing at, then released him and began walking towards the town.
He couldn't say why he followed her.
He had been mistaken. This was no cat. It was a devil-beast from the foulest sulfur pits of hell, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
"It wishes me harm," he said, a bare sketch of an inflection on the last word.
"She does not," Tifa said, shoving hair out of her face. "She's scared and hurt, that's all."
The cat – devil-beast from the foulest sulfur pits of hell, he reminded himself – had borne a gentle scrubbing with patience and a certain amount of fastidious happiness until Tifa had begun on the wounded leg. He had been holding the animal down when it began to hiss and writhe, swiping futilely at his leather-covered arms. He had loosened his hold – not wanting to hurt the beast – and it had squirmed free and launched itself at his head, clearly intending to put out an eye, or perhaps tear out a jugular. Even now the thing was crouched in Tifa's hands and snarling at him.
"Here, like this," she said, pushing the cat over on its side. "Hold the scruff with one hand, and press down with the other. Don't squeeze, but don't be too afraid of being firm. She'll stop struggling if she sees you mean it."
Having positioned him to her liking, she went back to washing out the wound. It was a long, ragged gash, probably caused by a nail sticking out from the board that had pinned the animal, and encrusted with dirt. The wretched creature continued to growl as Tifa cleaned the wound and tried to bite his hand when she swabbed it with disinfectant, but true to her word the cat never got loose. Eventually it was bandaged and set to chewing happily at a piece of fresh fish fillet Tifa had cajoled, bribed, and eventually threatened out of a nearby grocer. It turned out the beast had been white under all that grime.
"There, listen? She's purring." Tifa said happily, stroking a finger down the cat's spine. It arched against her touch and chewed contentedly, all previous discomfort and indignities seemingly forgotten.
"…fickle thing," he said, almost under his breath.
"She wasn't really angry, you know," the fighter said. "She hurt, and she was hungry, and she didn't understand what was going on. Now that she sees we're not bad people, she'll be fine."
He didn't say anything.
"She must have had humans looking after her once," Tifa continued. "If she'd been running around in the wild for too long, or since birth, she wouldn't let me pet her while she ate. In case I tried to steal her food, you know."
The room she had rented seemed to gasp in the stifling summer heat. It was small and functional, nothing more than a place to stay for a few nights: a bed under a window in one corner, a table (currently holding the cat and two dishes, one of milk and one of fish), two chairs, and her duffel tossed hastily in a corner, a shirtsleeve sticking out. She would come by every month or so, though he knew the reanimated shell of her old home must pain her. Just to see how he was getting along, she'd say, smiling too brightly for the ruins of his past. She would stay for a few days, making the trek up to the mansion every day with equipment for some new scheme to make the place livable by her standards. The clattering noise she made drove him to the cellar in search of some peace and quiet, and since he never touched her "improvements" her work was always undone by the time she came back, but she never stopped coming and he could never find the words to make her unwelcome. She'd be back soon, she'd tell him before she left. He was welcome at Edge anytime, and if he ever needed anything, he knew where she was. After all, she would say with a hint of anxiety, what are friends for?
The cat lapped up the last of the milk and jumped from the table to the bed in one easy movement, curling up in a convenient late-afternoon sunbeam. She smiled at it and stood, coming over to where he was standing in a corner. "Let's go to dinner," she said, smiling brilliantly – he could never decipher how he felt about that smile, whether it pierced him or warmed him, if he wanted to see it or wanted to run from it, and by the time he felt himself drawing to a resolution she would be back, and he would be in turmoil again.
She had never invited him to dinner before. His eyes strayed to the animal on the bed, and he thought he understood.
"…I despise allegory," he said, sliding past her. She caught his forearm – his metal forearm, and he thought for a moment he could feel her through the lost limb – and found his eyes under his bangs.
"That doesn't change anything," she said quietly. They froze together, suspended in a moment, and he found it unbearable enough that he was moved to break it, break her and send her spinning from him.
"What did you have in mind?" were not the words he meant to say.
Later in the deep night, the cat jumped up on his chest where he lay gazing at the sky through a hole in the roof. He almost pushed it off, but it began to purr and knead gently against the leather covering his chest, and he let it stay.