Author: Avery11
Genre: Gen
Nine Lives
When his communicator sounded, Napoleon was in the middle of a very pleasant dream.
"Don't answer it," Angelique whispered and pressed her ruby-red lips to his. He sighed, and leaned into the kiss.
"Let them get someone else for a change, liebchen," Serena cooed, rubbing her bare breasts against his chest. Her hands were doing delightful things to him.
His communicator whistled again.
Damn. With a sigh of regret, Napoleon struggled back to consciousness. He felt fog-brained, and more than a little disappointed to find himself alone in his bedroom. His head pounded painfully; it felt as though an eight-hundred-pound gorilla had taken up permanent residence in his cranium.
Another reason to thank my partner when I see him.
At Illya's suggestion – wasn't it always? – they'd gone out to a local jazz club to celebrate their success in shutting down the Union City satrapy. They'd really tied one on, and a King Kong-sized hangover apparently was to be his penance for the transgression.
I'm getting too old for these post-Affair binges, he decided as the gorilla zeroed in on his prefrontal cortex. Next time, the Mad Russian's on his own.
Another whistle, louder this time. He glanced at the bedside clock and groaned.Three A.M.
"Solo here. This had better be important."
"Napoleon?"
"Illya?" He sat up, and felt his stomach lurch unpleasantly. "Is everything okay?"
"No, everything is not 'okay.' How soon can you get over here?"
"Get over...?" The words made no sense. He groped for the glass of water at his bedside.
"Napoleon, focus! How. Soon. Can. You –?"
"I heard you the first time." He drained the glass, and waited for the room to stop spinning. "Are you at your apartment?"
"Of course I am at my apartment," Illya snapped. "Where else would I be?"
"You do know it's three A.M.?"
"Yes, Napoleon, I know how to tell time."
"Excellent. Feel free to call back after nine." He laid his head – gently – back onto the pillow. The silk sheets felt blessedly cool against his skin.
"Napoleon!" Illya's exasperated exhalation crackled across the airwaves. "Please? It's important."
The senior agent sighed, and sat up again. "What's the emergency? Did you run out of vodka?"
"Don't be ridiculous." A pause. "I would rather explain the – situation – in person."
Illya sounded tense, and a bit desperate. Warning bells began to go off in Napoleon's befogged brain. "Sounds intriguing," he replied carefully. "Can I bring anything? Coffee? Breakfast? Reinforcements?"
"There is no need to involve anyone else," Illya replied shortly, "and I have already made coffee." He hesitated. "You could bring along a heating pad, if you have one."
"A heating pad?" The warning bells got louder."What for?"
"I just – Can you?"
Illya hadn't used any of their emergency code words, but Napoleon knew his friend well enough to tell that something was wrong. "I've got a hot water bottle in the medicine cabinet. Will that do?"
"It will have to, I suppose."
"Let me grab a shower and shave, and I'll –"
"You probably should skip the shower." A hesitation. "And the shave."
What the hell was going on? "On my way." Napoleon signed off, already fishing under the bed for his trousers.
*/*/*/
He made it to Illya's apartment building in record time. The cozy brownstone seemed peaceful enough – at least from the outside – and the tree-lined street was dark and still. Nothing moved in the bushes surrounding the building, or in the alley behind it. Still...
No sense waltzing in unprepared.
Napoleon inserted a fresh clip of ammo into his Walther, and sprinted across the street. Bypassing the building's intercom, he picked the lock on the front door, and ascended the stairs to the fourth-floor landing. A faint moaning sound came from somewhere inside the apartment at the end of the hall.
Illya?
Napoleon's first impulse was to break down the door and charge to the rescue of his friend, but he realized that surprising what could turn out to be a flock of THRUSHbirds in an apartment building full of sleeping Innocents might not be his best option. He knocked, and stepped back into the shadows to see who answered.
The door opened.
Illya was a shade paler than normal, but otherwise he seemed perfectly fine. "About time you got here," he hissed, pulling the senior agent inside.
"What the –? Are you alright, tovarisch? "
"Shh! Keep your voice down."
"I thought – That is, I heard moaning, so naturally I assumed THRUSH –"
"THRUSH?" Illya snorted. "Not likely after the thrashing we gave them. And put away your gun. In your dissolute condition, you might shoot me."
"Oh, I'm considering it," Napoleon grumbled. The gorilla in his brain moved on to his cerebellum.
The apartment was dark and very warm, which was unusual, since Illya seldom bothered to turn on the heat. He followed his partner into the tiny kitchenette, blinking to adjust his vision. "Christ, it's like a sauna in here – "
"Shh. We don't want to disturb him."
"Him?" Napoleon scanned the room. "Him who?"
Illya ignored the question. He poured two mugs of coffee from the pot on the stove. "Here. It is likely to be a long night."
"It's already been a long night, in case you hadn't noticed." The coffee was hot and strong, and there wasn't nearly enough of it. He glanced at the thermostat on the kitchen wall. "Illya, what the hell's going on? You've got the heat cranked up to eighty, for pete's sake! And why are all the lights off?"
Illya shrugged. "See for yourself." He turned, and cracked open the bathroom door.
The tiny room was as dark and warm as the rest of the apartment. A patchwork quilt had been laid across the blue tile floor, and beside it, a laundry basket stuffed with old towels. Jellyroll, Illya's famously ill-tempered cat, paced back and forth across the colorful squares, his razor-sharp claws ripping out tufts of cotton batting with every step. His eyes were glazed, his thick fur matted; he panted and howled as he tore at the fabric.
Napoleon stepped back, an instinctive act of self-preservation – he'd already lost several pairs of trousers to those claws. "How long has he been like this?"
"Since I got home." Illya knelt to pet the beast, but Jellyroll snarled and turned away, tail flicking in agitation.
"What's wrong with him? Is he sick?"
"Hardly," Illya sighed. "He is having kittens."
"His belly looks kind of swollen. Maybe he ate –" Napoleon blinked in confusion. "Did you say 'kittens?'"
Illya nodded. "Any minute now."
"But...that's impossible, anatomically speaking. Isn't it?"
"Evidently not."
"I don't understand. Isn't Jellyroll a male cat?"
Illya shrugged. "Yes and no. It turns out that he is a hermaphrodite."
"You mean - he's a 'he' and a 'she?' Simultaneously?"
"It is not as rare as you might think. There have been a number of cases documented in the veterinary literature. I've been reading up on it."
Of course you have.
"Hermaphroditic cats are born with both male and female sexual organs," Illya went on as the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in Napoleon's head began a victory dance on his cerebrum. "Jellyroll's penis has always been remarkably – prominent – and he has a scrotum, so I assumed he was a male. I never noticed the other...equipment. Apparently the vet did not, either."
"I'm not surprised. Who could see anything under all that fur?!" Jellyroll hissed at the comment, baring a set of lethal-looking fangs. Napoleon took another step back. "When did you find out about the – uh –?"
"This evening. I came home, and he – she – was in labor. I have spent the past hour preparing a birthing room. Incidentally, did you remember to bring the hot water bottle?"
Napoleon handed it over. "I'll trade you for an aspirin."
"Medicine cabinet. Second shelf, behind the tincture of arnica."
While Napoleon rummaged through the collection of oddly shaped vials and gypsy remedies, Illya filled the water bottle, wrapped it in a blanket and arranged it inside the cardboard box he had placed under the sink. "The older newborns will need a warm place while their younger siblings are being born."
Napoleon's gaze sharpened. "Speaking of which – "
Jellyroll climbed into the laundry basket, yowling at the top of her lungs. She circled several times, lay down on her side and began to pant rapidly, bracing her hind quarters against the side of the basket for leverage. Her great belly pulsed and contracted with each push. Moments later, a bubble of amnionic fluid gushed forth from between her legs.
"Looks like it's showtime." Napoleon abandoned the search for aspirin, and lowered his body to the tile floor. He had barely settled himself when a pair of tiny paws appeared from beneath the big cat's mountain of fur.
"She is queening," Illya whispered.
All at once, a tiny, wriggling kitten slid out, its face covered in the remnants of the amnionic sac. Jellyroll licked the membrane away, revealing a pair of closed eyes in a delicate calico face. She severed the umbilical cord with her teeth, and devoured the discarded placenta. The newborn kitten mewed softly, and groped its way toward its mother.
Illya breathed a sigh of relief. "Everything appears to be functioning normally. I was afraid there might be anatomical complications, given the hermaphroditism, but Jellyroll seems to know what he – she – is doing." He took the kitten from its mother, dried its damp fur with a clean towel, and placed it carefully into the warming box.
Napoleon grinned in pleasure. As a child, he had witnessed dozens of calvings on his grandparents' farm, and had seen their border collie, Norrie, give birth to five adorable puppies. As a fledgling agent, he'd helped a young woman birth a set of identical twins in a Chinatown taxicab. The process was nothing he hadn't seen before, countless times, and yet he found himself deeply moved. He felt a profound reverence in the presence of this fragile, precious new life.
"Here comes another one."
The second kitten came out headfirst, a jet black beauty with white socks on all four paws. Jellyroll licked the small face with a tenderness that Napoleon found astonishing, given the cat's unshakeable contempt for all living things. The newborn kitten meowed, already searching for a teat.
"A good set of lungs on that one."
The process was repeated seven more times, with a brief pause in the middle while the second horn of Jellyroll's uterus engaged. At last she lay back, exhausted and gasping heavily from her labors. Illya and Napoleon lifted the newborns from the warming bed, and carried them back to their mother. They huddled together beneath her belly, mewling softly, and began to suck. Jellyroll's eyes closed in bliss.
Napoleon gazed down at the nine wriggling kittens – five calicos, a tiger stripe, two marmalades and the jet black one.
"Beautiful, aren't they? Nine new lives."
Illya smiled wearily. "A good omen, considering how many lives you and I have likely used up."
"A good omen," Napoleon agreed.
They sat on the floor of Illya's blue-tiled bathroom, sipping mugs of cold coffee and watching the sun rise through the room's tiny window. Jellyroll and his/her kittens slept beside them, safe and warm. Napoleon thought that he could not imagine a more wonderful place to be.
*/*/*/