Hi guys!
I'm really sorry for the long wait. Summer is crazy at work for me. And this chapter was really tough to write.
Warning. Contains graphic descriptions of PTSD and depression. If you have experienced mental health issues, I really believe this might take you back to a bad place. Skip to the end for a brief summary to skip the triggers.
The epidemic.
The end of the world as they knew it.
He supposed the epidemic was experienced differently by each and every person who survived it.
For Riki though, the epidemic was mostly... Surreal.
He knew people were dying, heaps and heaps of them. He knew this was monumental. He knew the very basis of society shook and shuddered, creaking like an old staircase with the floorboards being ripped apart.
And yet, even if he knew all those things, intellectually, Riki didn't, couldn't feel much about the epidemic at all.
Riki also knew that this absence of caring was wrong but he couldn't help it. He should be terrified, devasted.
He wasn't.
For Riki, the epidemic felt like an especially good movie on the vid-screen, bringing a pleasant frisson of fear down his spine. Like watching storm clouds from afar, thunderous and dark, and thinking "oh my, those people are really getting it." The feeling was remote, muffled by the distance created by Riki's strange situation at Iason's.
Riki wasn't close to any other citizen in the city; he was despised by Pets in their fancy salons, and the feeling was visciously reciprocated. Sure, he interacted with some of Katze's workers in the Black Market, but the relationships were superficial at best. He couldn't have placed a name on most of their faces, much less called them friends.
So, on a personal level, the epidemic actually felt quite boring to Riki.
Katze disappeared entirely from his life.
Iason barely came home, and when he did he simply showered and grabbed a few hours of sleep. There was certainly no time for long sexual torture sessions and Riki felt useless, stuck in an empty appartment while the world desintegrated around him. Even smoking on the balcony was boring, since no cars or people circulated anymore. Only the wind remained, tugging Riki's hair endlessly. The quarantine was in full effect, citizens locked away in fear all over the city. Riki was obediently house-bound too, except...
Riki was used to being locked away.
His brain didn't differentiate the virus-caused isolation from the being-a-Pet-to-Master-Iason one. His own mortality was a concept too abstract to grasp, or maybe the vague danger wasn't immediate enough to ignite the appropriate response. In the slums, Riki had often been in life-or-death situations. It had been deeply terrifying yet almost thrilling too. There was no adrenaline high with the epidemic. Just mounting numbers of endless casualties read by a dispassionate news-bot.
Riki tried to be appropriately subdued.
He stared at the ceiling, thinking up mischief but resisting the urge to actually place a frog in Iason's bed (and where would he find a frog in the city, now that was an interesting querry. And how to make it stay in bed? Also, it was highly unlikely Iason would actually screech like a diplomat's housewife if his naked skin touched the amphibian's, even if the notion was highly entertaining.)
He attempted conversation with Cal, who pinched his lips and responded with frustratingly boring "yes sirs, no sirs."
Riki spent hours in Katze's computer room, and although he was at least moderately competent, he had nothing useful to search for and there was only so much porn he could take before he started thinking of Iason. That was a road fraught with things like feelings and introspection and ugh. He was pathetic. He couldn't even muster the energy to break into the liquor cabinet again. Getting drunk alone seemed rather pointless.
So as the long hours of the epidemic turned into days, Riki mostly spent his time trying to convince himself an epidemic was actually terrifying, not boring as hell.
It was a secret relief when things grew desperate enough that Riki was called upon to negotiate with the mongrels.
Riki felt positively chipper at finally being let out, though he tried to tamper the inappropriate emotion and hide it from Katze's grim-faced chauffeur.
And oh.
Katze looked like crap.
The first time the epidemic touched Riki's heart with it's dark fingers was when he saw how much it affected his friend.
Katze was... Fucking pale.
Riki suppressed the urge to race over and hug him forever: he fisted his hands in his coat pockets instead of murmuring soothing nothings into his companion's ear.
Katze was always pale. But right now, he looked almost transparent. There were dark slashes of shadow beneath his dead eyes and his mouth was a thin line.
Oh.
Oh.
How horrible. Riki ached with the need to console him.
Katze's auburn hair fell into his face as he stood in a warehouse, neck bowed over his papers. Though his clothing was perfectly unwrinkled and his posture was impeccable, Katze's cold cold face twisted a knot of sympathy in Riki.
The controlled act was a facade; to Riki, Katze radiated desperate desperate hurt.
Riki wondered if the other dim-wits realized how... not fine... their leader was.
Apparently not, if the oblivious guards and people milling around in preparation for the meetings were any indication.
People saw what they wanted to see. And what they wanted was a strong, composed leader. So that was what Katze was giving them, idiot.
"Hey." Riki spoke unusually softly, awkwardness making his voice small.
Katze noticed him then, Iason's Pet, tall and dark in his leather jacket.
Riki. His friend. His lover.
Katze's fingers flew to his lips, then his scar, and he swallowed. Riki could see his slim throat bob. For a second, those flat golden eyes warmed, thawed with the pleasure of seeing Riki. Then they darkened with yearning and hurt and oh, Riki was growing to hug him, fuck the roomful of people.
Katze's expression hardened and he flipped around, blindly pushing the papers onto a utilitarian metal table with a crinkle. He stood stiffly, straight-backed as he smoothed his large brown coat.
Not before Riki's heart broke though; he had seen the shimmer of unshed tears in his lover's eyes.
"Riki, good." Katze's voice was soft and infuriatingly calm and scratchy as fuck. Sympathy made Riki's lungs hurt and he blinked hard.
Oh.
He wondered what terrible terrible things had torn Katze up so bad, while Riki languished in Iason's luxurious appartment.
Suddenly, the epidemic was real.
And it was bad, bad, bad.
And the worse part was that Riki couldn't even do anything about Katze's hurt right now. Not without breaking him in front of his men anyway, which obviously Riki wouldn't do.
"Yeah, I'm here for you." Riki answered hoarsely, after a too-long pause.
Katze shuddered, still turned away.
He'd understood the implied meaning
He nodded silently, wisps of hair at his nape getting caught up in his coat collar. God, Riki wanted to go to him, slide those vulnerable strands aside and press kisses to his neck.
He didn't.
The silence stretched. Katze's long gloved fingers pulled a slim white cigarette from a crumpled pack. Riki wondered again how the idiot minions could not see how Katze was tearing himself up, hanging on by a thread. Riki wanted to touch Katze so badly he had to clench his teeth and stare at his boots to resist.
The red-head wouldn't allow it. Not now. There was work to do.
While Katze composed himself, Riki walked up to the table and peered at the long lists of mongrel gang names.
Riki began spewing whatever information about them he remembered. Anything to break the silence. Anything to help; Riki vowed to help Katze, with all of his abilities.
The support spread a thin balm of sweetness over the ugly mess the epidemic had made of Katze's psyche.
Riki-the-dark had his back.
Katze smiled at his lover, a tired grateful little thing that had Riki blinking hard again.
Damn.
Now the epidemic touched him.
And it was bad, bad, bad.
...
For Katze, the end of the epidemic felt mostly... surreal.
After the intense two-week rush, suddenly the epidemic was pronounced over.
Except... It wasn't.
Not for Katze.
His brain was caught in a loop, like a fish in a bowl; circling around and going back, racing-racing-racing but getting nowhere.
The bone-crushing weariness wouldn't go away.
He'd been sleep deprived and running on adrenaline for far too long. The first night Katze found himself alone in his appartment after the epidemic was pronounced over, he'd expected to fall into blissful dreamless sleep. He had a right to rest, after all his work. Sleep would come easily now.
It hadn't.
Katze was wound so tight with stress it felt like ants were marching under his skin. He couldn't seem to will it to stop. His very bones ached with exhaustion, nausea a familiar shadowy companion. Yet he stared at his bed, feeling like he'd somehow forgetten how to sleep.
A shower hadn't helped. Katze had paced, chain-smoking, before comitting himself to lying down and just giving it a go. It seemed the pillow was too hard, or maybe the mattress was too soft. His blankets kept twisting into snakes, confining. He couldn't get comfortable, his body needed to move. His eyes wouldn't close, staring into the dark while his brain churned.
And when, eventually, he did fall into a fitful doze... He dreamed. Horrible half-formed nightmares, full of dying people and cold-faced Blondies. He woke with a start too few hours later, stifling a scream.
Katze took another shower, to wash away the cold sweat sticking to him. His body still felt leaden, his hands shaking with exhaustion, but he couldn't bring himself to try to sleep again.
His men were surprised to see him so early, enthusiasticallly sharing reports on mongrel progress and clean-up efforts. Katze felt strangely useless. No-one really needed him anymore. He retired sullenly to his office, where the walls closed in on him.
It was much the same for the rest of the week. Everyone's fucking face was lit up like a summer sun, grateful to be alive. Katze smiled thinly in the appropriate places, giving responses that felt empty.
Katze felt empty.
He felt faded, as if a grey smudge covered his light.
Wherever he looked, Katze didn't see signs of rebuilding.
He saw death.
He saw suffering.
He saw mothers wailing for limp children and Pets cadavres piled in unsightly mounds, awaiting incineration.
He saw a postman, convulsing while the crisp white envelopes he held grew soggy and red.
He saw dogs, previously pampered and now set loose; feral and tearing into something in a dark alley with horrible flesh-ripping sounds, saliva dripping from their gaping maws.
He saw death. Everywhere.
Katze knew those flashes of horror were not real. Snippets of memory, trying to drag him down. He blinked them away, forcing his attention to the real world.
They came back anyway, again and again. He couldn't get used to the horror; the flashbacks never failed to make his heart lurch and his ears ring before he pushed his attention back to the present.
Katze knew he wasn't doing so good. The knowledge didn't help.
He would wait. Time made things better, right?
...
Time was a joke. It seemed to mock Katze.
As time passed, Katze didn't get better.
With time, the situation did evolve. But it didn't get better.
While at first it felt like Katze was the only one washed-out to an ugly grey, after a month it seemed the whole world around him was infected. In Katze's perception, the cheerful color bled out from the beautiful city; the people around him were stick-figures, disconnected and angular, as flat as Katze felt.
Katze could still reach out. He could still fake interaction.
It was becoming more and more like holding a bunch of balloons though. Relationships were full of empty-air and bloated concern; Iason's frown and Riki's tentative words. Connections like fragile strings, slowly slipping through Katze's cold fingers.
Katze knew, as time passed, that people worried more and more for him. It became harder and harder to reassure them, to attempt to to convince others that he was okay.
Katze was not okay, and he knew it.
Katze was floating further and further away, and it was a relief.
He didn't want to put in the effort anymore.
To fake being normal.
Katze wasn't normal.
He'd never been.
Katze was Broken.
And he was resigned to his fate.
...
Katze carefully took the silver bracelet from a wrist that was even thinner than before and laid it on his dresser. He could see the tiny bones, tendons like tight strings when he moved his fingers. There were small veins, blue and twisting under his pale skin. Katze spent a while, fascinated, watching the mouvements of that corpse-wrist that was his own.
He would put Iason's bracelet back on when he returned to living color, he decided.
Katze was grey. Dull, ugly. Colorless really.
He was so tired.
He stayed in his apartment more and more. Going out meant being clean and put together; faking interest in the bubbly rainbow world around him and it was just sooo much effort.
The world was getting along just fine without him. Mongrels were even being granted temporary citizenship.
Katze stopped going out. He was tired. So tired.
He stayed in his apartment and smoked. Time blended, days and nights an endless sea, nightmarish monsters lurking in it's depths, waiting to pull Katze under.
Katze tried to stay afloat. Tried to keep his head above the waters. Tried to remember to breathe.
Blinked away the sound of crude laughter and gurgling death. Ignored the dark Pet eyes that seemed to follow him, accusing.
Death, so many many deaths. Katze hadn't died, but he didn't feel alive.
He drifted, swallowing down despair. He felt dirtied, contaminated by all the horrors he'd seen.
Sometimes he washed his hands, helplessly, breathing choppy and rough; washed his hands again and again, until the hot water ran out and a worldless snarl caught in his throat. Katze could never get clean. He couldn't wash away the memory of those same fingers, pressing poison into nameless thighs and arms.
Usually, when the washing fits started, they escalated until he was heaving into the sink, hurting because his empty stomach had nothing to bring up.
Katze was fading. It felt good.
Once, he punched through his bathroom mirror. He didn't really know why he did it. It was not that his face particularly bothered him. The impulse rose, to see the cracks splitting the smooth surface and hear the crunch of heartbreak.
To hear.
To feel something, anything, in the fucking greyness.
So Katze punched his mirror.
It broke. Of course it did. It fucking hurt his hand. There was a wood plank behind the glass. His knuckles were cut, dripping blood on grimy white porcelain.
Blood.
So much blood.
Pretty dots. Not like the puddles of it he remembered, sticking to the soles of his shoes while Pets agonized. Katze brought his hand closer, inspecting the raw scrapes and then the distinctive metallic scent hit him.
Death, so much death.
Katze retched, light-headed.
Death. So much death.
Katze curled into a ball on his bathroom floor, cradling his injured hand to his chest, and he cried. It was the first time he'd cried since the epidemic. He figured he might as well give crying a try; maybe it would finally help him feel better.
It didn't.
Katze cried fat salty rivers, his throat hurting. Snot built in his nose, disgusting, and his chin wouldn't stop wobbling.
Once it was over, Katze didn't feel better. His face felt gross and puffy. Like a corpse's.
He took a shower.
The heat made him dizzy. He had to sit down, black spots dancing in his vision, the water spraying off one shoulder. Katze tried to remember the last time he'd eaten. He dimly remembered cereal, eaten dry straight from the box,
Had that been yesterday, or the day before? Katze didn't think he hadn't had anything but coffee for three days. Not really. Had he?
When he got out of the shower, Katze stepped on glass and cut his foot. Badly.
He yelled. The sound startled him, in the tomb-like silence of his appartment.
Katze calmed himself down. Bandaged his foot.
He meticulously plucked all of the pieces of mirror from the floor and frame. Now there was only an ugly brown board, water-stained around the bottom, over his vanity. Square and out of place. Like a hole in his bathroom.
Katze was being sucked into the emptiness. He wished he could disappear into it.
Forget.
Stop being so godamn tired.
Katze knew what he needed to do then.
Carefully, he brushed his hair. Found a nice clean shirt. His body remembered how to dress itself, it seemed. He brushed his teeth. It was strange, brushing his teeth without a mirror. He'd never realized before that he stared at his face when he cleaned his teeth.
Katze hired an air-cab. He didn't thing he could walk all the way. He was dangerously weak and trembly.
If you skipped the angst; please continue here. Katze had a hard time dealing with the death and horrors he saw during the epidemic. He has spiraled into depression, isolating himself until he reached breaking point.
Cal opened the door for him, blanching at whatever he saw in Katze's face.
His tunic made soft swishing sounds as he led Katze to the living room.
Iason was reading, Riki leaning against him on the couch. How domestic.
Katze didn't even feel jealous.
Cold.
Grey.
Empty.
Dead.
The city lights in the window swam sickeningly in Katze's vision.
He dropped to his knees with a crack as Iason jerked to a standing position with the grace and speed of an Android.
Katze bowed his head before his Master. He couldn't make himself look at Riki, wide-eyed on the couch.
A sudden wave of dizziness took over and he bent forward, pressing his forehead to the hard floor.
"I'm sorry." Katze whispered through dry-cracked lips.
Sorry for not being stronger. For not being able to care for himself. For letting Iason down. For losing the will to live.
Iason hurried over, easily scooping the too-light mongrel into his arms.
"Ssssshhh." He soothed, mind whirring to determine the best course of action to help his broken first-man. Iason had known Katze was struggling, but he hadn't guessed just how bad it was! It was an unforgivable over-sight. One that had nearly caused Katze his life.
Decision made, Iason nodded to Riki, who followed him to the bedroom with a worried expression.
Katze made a too-small lump in the big bed. Riki curled up behind him without a word. He hoped his body-warmth was remotely comforting; at least Katze didn't move away, pressing back against Riki with a sigh.
Katze's lashes were long against his sharp cheekbones. His eyes were half-closed, but he wasn't asleep. Iason noted way the pupils darted aimlessly, too much white showing.
"You did the right thing." Iason praised.
"We've got you."
Iason's voice was rich and comforting. Much too vibrant for a robot's. Katze shuddered, clutching blindly for Riki and cursing the whimper that escaped him. Safe. Finally.
No longer alone. He'd been fighting for weeks, all alone.
He was so tired.
Cold.
Grey.
Empty.
Dead, almost. But no longer alone now.
Iason would take care of it.
Iason would take care of him.
Katze relaxed his shoulders for the first time since the epidemic. He could feel Iason's ice-blue eyes scanning him. He supposed most people would be cowered by the First One's scrutiny.
Not Katze. He felt strangely reassured by the undivided attention.
Iason was strong. Competent. Beautiful.
Iason, impossibly, cared. He would save Katze from himself.
"I'll call Raoul." The Blondie finally decided, turning away.
Riki hugged close, pointy chin pressing into a bony shoulder. Katze wondered if Riki had felt the sudden tripping of his dead heart at the mention of Raoul. A tiny flash of white, in the insurmountable grey.
Hope.
Katze shut his eyes.
Raoul would help him.
Brilliant, golden Raoul.
Katze was just so tired.
The epidemic was over.
Well. That really didn't go the happy joyful way I wanted it. Poor poor Katze.
Pressing the "save" button after this chapter felt really RIGHT.
xxx
FrenchCaresse