In Loving Memory
Written by: A Humble Reader
Note: My cat has been missing for days, and my Mom has informed me that he's lived a very long life, especially for an outdoors cat. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I probably won't ever see him again. As always, writing it out like this is cathartic. Treads' point of view for a change of pace. I don't think you'd want all of the angst I could pack in there if it was me.
Thank you for reading. This could be considered a companion fic to "seizure," a two-shot also based off of true events with a transformers twist.
Sometimes, he didn't feel like an ancient warrior who was part of a millennia-long civil war that was bringing the very future of their race into question. He was a soldier, though. Nothing more, nothing less. He had chosen to become a warrior, and fight, and that would never leave him, even if they did somehow manage to find peace. (Not slagging likely.)
As a soldier, he dealt with loss all the time. He wasn't numb to it, he thought. He still felt the same agony deep in his spark when someone he knew, someone he cared about and fought beside passed into the well. But as a soldier, he also knew how to compartmentalize, and how to move on. One of his brothers dying wouldn't send the Decepticons scurrying back into their holes so that he could grieve. The world kept moving, and so did he.
This assignment was nice. It allowed him to forget, sometimes. He knew he was still a soldier, deep down, but he was also able to relax. To watch as his little squishy rode around with her friends and told jokes and funny stories, and sang so terribly, terribly out of tune with her brother and the radio. So sometimes he forgets. And sometimes she reminds him.
He only truly noticed the day she came outside, calling for the small furry quadruped they cared for so much. It was a cat. His name was Buttons.
She tromped down the rickety wooden stairs in her mother's shoes, just like she always did when she was too lazy to get her own. He watched, curiosity growing, as she wandered through the backyard, up and down the path, around the pool and squatting to look underneath the lower deck. All the while she was calling for her pet, makes small clicking noises and drawing out his name in hopes of catching his attention.
To be honest, he was only mildly interested. This used to be a frequent occurrence, when they would let the cat out and worry when it got too late. Or if it rained, and the small animal was caught in the storm. (Which is probably why she checked under the deck, since that was his usual hiding place in those times.)
The only odd thing about it, really, was that she was out looking in the middle of the day. Typically, nobody worried until night fell. But he shrugged it off - his squishy tended to over-worry anyway. She was very anxious, at times.
He only listened with half an audial as she moved into his driveway area, calling into the small copse of trees just beyond the pavement. She went and searched the basement too, before retiring her efforts and returning indoors.
All in all, it was another mildly interesting blip in an otherwise completely normal day. He soon forgot about it.
That is, until the next day, when she came out and called again. And then her parents came out, one by one. And then his squishy, again.
Apparently, Buttons was still missing. And this time, he finally took the initiative and realized exactly how much it was upsetting the human he was charged to protect. It had been three days by this point already.
She was agitated for the rest of the day. The next morning, after an early breakfast, and just before he was forced to take her brother to his first day of school, his scanners caught her crying, alone, in her bedroom. She seemed to be muttering to herself again, as she was sometimes prone to do, and choked off a small cry that was louder than the rest.
Sometimes, taking care of the humans, and just watching them as they lived their normal, peaceful lives, he would forget that he was a soldier. And other times, a little girl crying hopelessly over her non-sentient, irritant of a pet cat was all it took to remind him again.
Every time she looked out the back door, she began to cry. Every time she went into her room, she fought back tears. Every time she went outside to call, she stayed out less and less, but her eyes were usually wet by the end of it. She'd look up to the ceiling or the sky as though looking heavenward would force the waterworks to stop.
Treads, the soldier that he was, didn't really cry, anymore. (Not that as an autonomous robotic organism he was really capable of tears in the same sense, anyway, but that was another matter entirely.) When he got the chance, he spared a moment to think of the ones he lost in fond remembrance, grieve their abrupt end, and then gather himself together and continue forwards.
He was a soldier, and she was a civilian, who was devastated by the fact that the last thing she ever said to her beloved Buttons before he disappeared was an angry shout. And the last thing she ever did was shove him away from her. And then she never saw him again.
It was humbling, in a way. Treads cared about his fellow soldiers. He mourned their passing. But he never really stopped moving. Sometimes, he did feel as though those deaths weren't important, in the grand scheme of things. And sometimes, he could forget that he was mourning at all. Death stopped meaning so much. It happened. You got over it. That was the way of things. In a way, he envied her ability to take so much time for herself.
He watched as his human walked out into the woods late one night, flashlight in hand. She didn't go far from the house, just far enough that she was well surrounded by the trees from all sides.
She knelt to the ground slowly, tucking her flashlight in between her neck and her shoulder, and began to rummage around the small metal box she had brought with her.
After a moment, she seemed satisfied, and placed the flashlight on the ground. Then she clasped her hands together tightly, and bowed her head.
"Dear Lord," she said softly, "thank you for helping us find Buttons on our Aunt's farm, and letting us save him from the snake bite. Or, helping us. Or, actually, saving him. You...gave him so much better a life than he would have had there. A lot longer one, t-too." She paused for a moment to sniffle. She was already a blubbering mess, but she did her best to reign it in.
"Thank you...for the time we had with him. Please protect him up there, i-in heaven with you, and Jesus. I know the bible doesn't say a-anything about animals going to heaven, but I know you have somewhere good for him to go, anyway." She stopped for a moment, taking shaky, shuddering breaths.
Slowly, she reached out with trembling hands and picked something up from her box. Then she began to read what she had so painstakingly wrote in calligraphy the day before.
"I-In loving memory of Buttons McPeak, my cutey kitty cat. W-We loved h-him, so much, and w-we miss him, s-so much more." Another deep, shuddering inhale.
"Please protect him Lord, Amen."
After that, she again shuffled the items in her box, before determinedly digging a small hole and burying it.
It was a short affair. But it was still so much longer than he allowed himself, sometimes. And that's when Treads realized something.
Sometimes he forgot he was a soldier. Sometimes he forgot how being a soldier changed him from what he might have been. And that's why he was glad to have her there to remind him what he was fighting for.
Peace, and life, and hope. The ability to grieve openly and not have to shuffle everything out of the way so you can focus on taking one more step. Innocent families who didn't deal with death so much they became used to it and forgot what it was like to care so, so much, for the smallest of things.
Little girls and black, fluffy cats, who loved each other 'till the very end.
Note: Dedicated to my wonderful, annoying demon kitty. I'll always regret not letting you snuggle with me that last night just because I was worried about some bugs, and I'm sorry for shoving you away like I did. I love you.
I cried a lot writing this, but I feel better. Thank you for reading.
In Loving Memory