A/N: Well, then. Hello hello, CATS fandom.
Here is one of the one-shots I promised a while back. I do have more, but they're currently all on my iPod, so here is the first of what I hope is many. Keep in mind that it's old writing. I'm hoping to get "His Broken Belief" completed, as a side-note. You can hold me to that.
I dedicate this to C. Lennox; a faithful and dedicated Mistoria shipper. I wanted to see what was so great about this fantastic Mistoria. Though, I admit that the file was named "ewmistoria". You'll never convert me. ;D But this was fun to write.
This is a little vague and possibly quite depressing. You may like it, you may not. Human elements, if I remember correctly. Italics are flashbacks, non-italics is present day.
Disclaimer: I'm sure that there are many others more worthy of owning CATS than me.
She is burned into his sight.
A permanent image; lounging there, eyeing him coolly without any sort of relent, reprieve.
Her lips stay fixed in that line pressed tight, tight, lips white as her fur.
The way she looks at him makes him giddy and he doesn't know why, really. He's only young, so how is he expected to understand?
But something he does know: that she saw him staring means that she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her.
He's mad - he's accepted it. The moment comes one day as he tears into some pitiful gull's neck, baring his teeth in savage hatred at the downy white feathers upon its breast. He stares, blank eyed, as the scarlet soaks the white away, away, away. The gull falls limply from his murderous hands.
It was all her fault. All hers. She sauntered in, sprawled in his lap and breathed butterfly kisses across his neck.
And then - and then she felt as if she had the right to fade away into the snow. Hide from him.
A gaunt stray ravages the gull's body and Mistoffelees turns away, insides heaving, he is disgusted, disgusted, sick to the bone.
It's during a dance. And it's only an impromptu thing, but the ebb and flow of her movements are entrancing. There's not even any need to look at her friends – there's no comparison to be made.
But quite suddenly, she's collapsed on the ground, heaving back the tears and the unpretty that comes with them. He's on the ground, next to her, next to her, touching her shoulder,. He pulls her to an upright stance and she stares at him through glittering, glowering eyes, sniffing quietly.
Her knees are scraped raw and he winces at the blood that trickles out, rivulets of deep red running down her shins. It's like the red is blotting out the white and he hates it, hates it. In a rush, he pulls out the first things he has on hand – Spiderman bandages – and covers the red, hides it.
And the scars, he tells himself as her eyelids shiver, will fade in time.
"You're torturing yourself."
Mistoffelees looks, nearly bemused, at her. She folds her arms and frowns unsympathetically at him. All he sees are her slender fingers tucking into fists, curling into the crooks of her elbows. Those fingers belonged to him: as long as he could keep her here, he could take her hand and place his lips to it.
"Stop it," she says lowly, shoving her fingers further from his sight. "And remember me without holding me here."
Mistoffelees reaches a hand to her, wanting to stroke her white fur.
His eyes open.
He finds himself touching Jemima's eyelids as they flutter shut.
They're sitting together and it's a murky day, swirls of mist embracing the tips of Mistoffelees' fingers as he holds them out in front of him.
"It's cold," he mutters, his fingers squirming, seeming detached from him, his palms and knuckles hidden by the fog.
"I know," Victoria says. He expects her to suggest that they go inside, but she doesn't. Inside is where everyone else is and they don't want to be a part of the collective everyone else.
Victoria reaches out, pulls Mistoffelees' fingers back – they are attached after all – and wraps her hands around his. Their hands are both chilly, chilly, chilly, and Mistoffelees gasps at the contact. But it's a nice chill.
Ironically, Victoria's hands are bigger than his – her fingers longer. Mistoffelees smiles because they're defeating the ideal of a tom loving the contrast of holding his queen's tiny delicate hands within his own.
He knows that seeing her is like locking himself behind bars. He knows that escape is the gentle croon of emotion.
He craves escape.
But it's hard to stop committing crime after crime for her. His white beauty. His dancer. The ethereal ghost slipping through his subconscious, slashing the strings of his sanity.
"I want to be free," she says. "And one day, I will be."
He frowns at her. "What do you mean? You're free enough – you're not in a cage."
Her lips turn downward, disapproving. "I thought you would get it, Misto," she sighs. "I love you, you know? But sometimes it's stifling. This whole place is stifling. One day I'll walk away from it all and I'll be free to go wherever I want to – be whoever I want to."
Mistoffelees still doesn't understand, but she loves him, she loves him, he's aglow with love.
They have a painful relationship. He tries to preserve her smile, but the look on her face, his memory, continues to grow colder, though her eyes become hot, burning, hating the love that grips Mistoffelees' entire being.
"You're so beautiful, but so complicated," he whispers to her image.
She glares at him. And oh - he can no longer remember her smile.
That's okay, isn't it?
Her smile is his favourite part of her. It's a rare thing. She hates her smile – she doesn't say so, but he knows that she does. She doesn't like her laugh either. She frets that she sounds like a rattling crow and that showing her teeth means too much white – so much white.
He hates the slight turn of her lips that shows she's avoiding the tug of a real smile. He hates the half-chuckle, stifled in her throat.
But he loves it when he waves at her and she can't help but grin.
He loves kissing her and slipping his tongue into her mouth when she laughs.
They yell at him and he takes it mindlessly. Surely they can see the dull sheen permeating his eyes, his eyelids almost slipping down to curtain them?
"Stop it, stop it," is all he hears from them - his friends, his family, those who do not matter. Victoria bares her teeth at him. He lazily watches the wrinkles between her eyes as her nose scrunches.
They want something from him, but don't they understand? He's devoting everything to her image.
She turns her back on him.
"Misto, why don't you do magic shows for the kittens anymore?"
Victoria's standing in the kitchen, stern, clicking her claws on the counter. Mistoffelees scratches the back of his head, sheepish. "Etcetera's not a kitten anymore, Vic."
"That's not what I meant," she says drily. "There are more kittens now. We'll have some soon enough."
"I'm working," Mistoffelees says earnestly. He steps towards her, tries to embrace her. She pulls away and engrosses herself in the fridge. "For you," he adds, thinking it'll help.
"Then perform," Victoria says. "For me."
She turns and faces him, smiling cheekily.
Jemima peers at him between the cracks of her fingers. Breathing hard, he steps away from her, falls flat back against the wall and stares at her.
"I'm just trying to help you remember how to live," she hisses. "But you're torturing yourself."
"I don't care, I don't care," and suddenly, Victoria is there, frowning at him. He runs at her, but the image flickers - it's only Jemima. So he twists an arm round, shoves her away from his flaming watering stare. She knows better than to tempt the memory of magic curled tight in Mistoffelees' mind. She runs.
Victoria gives him a scathing look.
"You didn't tell me," he said softly.
"I can't tell you what I don't know," she replies, just as softly.
And that's the extent of their anger, because Mistoffelees is not angry – he's terrified. Victoria is wretched – shadows creep out from beneath her eyes, her fur ragged.
Jemima bites her lip, standing behind him, and, "I thought it was just the flu. She didn't want to bother you – you make the kittens so happy with your magic."
"I'd give up my magic to keep you healthy Victoria," Mistoffelees whispers.
It's then that she begins to stop attacking Mistoffelees' mind. The next he sees her, her white perfection is imperfect, plum-black bruises budding beneath her fur. Her eyes hold webs of red within them.
Mistoffelees chokes.
She was his first love, and a first love is a love one can never forget. But he wants to make her his last love, one that can last forever.
"Don't you get it?"
She stares, eyes tearless, fearless. Face ashen. With a smile that is not really a smile, she rips a glittering red line across her forearm.
She's almost unrecognisable, sunk into the mattress and smothered in duvets. Her face nestles among pillows, eyes shut and twitching, ears flat against her head.
Mistoffelees reads to her. Kitten's tales, stories of his own making, morals and messages so hopeful that he cries as he speaks. Victoria says not a word.
She's curled so tight, so secure on the bed, but she's slipping, falling through the layers.
"...and they live happily ever after," he finishes. He makes it sound like a wish; a prayer.
Victoria gazes into the sky of his mind, reading her surroundings.
"Tell me what you want," Mistoffelees whispers, fingers white as he clenches them.
And she smiles, at last, her lips relaxing. Her eyes are bittersweet. The red lines across her arms have multiplied.
"Isn't it simple enough, sweet?"
"The only thing simple about you is loving you," he rasps.
"Then perhaps it is time you set a challenge for yourself," Victoria urges gently.
He stares, soaking in her image. And then he turns away from her. Behind his back, her smile pulls up.
Tears leak from her eyes.
"Listen to me," she says. Her voice is a breath. Her last breath, perhaps.
They told him that she'd never wake again – that she'd fall and that she'd never say goodbye to him. But here she is.
"Don't dwell on me," she says. "You and I, our memory will forever linger. But we both need time. That's why I'm leaving, see?"
"Don't go," Mistoffelees rasps. Breaking.
"I'm leaving now, but I'm not leaving you. I'll hold your hand as I go," she says. And her fingers crawl towards his. He grasps them, tight, tight.
"Follow me," she sighs. "Catch me up one day." She closes her eyes.
Mistoffelees isn't ready for it. Choking, he steals the path of her spirit and pulls her within him..
(x)
Mistoffelees knows. He cries quietly over her grave and thinks of her.
Victoria is a kitten, scraped knees on concrete, Mistoffelees plastering his Spiderman band-aids to the scratches with firm determination.
Victoria is growing, passing him notes - "I like you" - her cheeks blushing roses.
Victoria is older, tying a beaded bracelet round his wrist, feeding him strawberry cupcakes, pointing at the stars and kissing crumbs from his lips.
Victoria is dying, face pallid, eyes too busy being shut to look at him - but her ears twitch to the sound of his voice, "We're finding the cure, you'll be fine this time next week". She knows she can't believe him but she squeezes her hand around his.
Victoria is dead, her memory reduced to being a pale imitation of the real her by Mistoffelees' anger.
Victoria... Mistoffelees closes his eyes and sees these images. She can continue through his memories, her smile, her eyes, her voice. But she needs to go now.
She turns to him, smiles, waves. He runs to her; peels the bracelet from his wrist and hands it to her. She lights up, delighted. From behind her back, she pulls a petite cupcake, a note tied to it by a pink ribbon. They stare at each other, breathless.
And then he takes two steps backward, nods at her, yes. She blinks. Her eyes crease at the corners. Her lips tremble. There are suddenly tear tracks upon her cheeks. She turns away from him at last and begins to walk.
She stops.
She turns back to him, smiling waveringly through a shimmer of tears. And she walks away with her back to the future, her eyes fixated on the past, because she cannot bear to look away from the love that paints his features lest she ever lose it on her way away from him.
Their tears are sweet, cleansing.
They're free.
(x)
Victoria screams, her heart is set on the light, but Mistoffelees hides her in the dark. He shakes when she beats against the walls of his mind, but they take it for tears.
He won't cry, though. Victoria's not dead. She lives on.
"Let me go," she sobs.
"Let's be free together," Mistoffelees croons.
She turns to him and glares, threatening. "You're not ready to face freedom yet, Mistoffelees. It's too great for you."
She turns away from him and walks backwards into his arms, knowing...
That they're caught.
a/n: I really hate leaving two sets of notes on a story but in this case, I did feel that it was necessary. First of all, damn this site for screwing up the formatting of this fic and forcing me to try to fix it! Why can't I put line breaks between the last three sets of writing? Who even knows. Seriously, damn this website.
This is 2014 me, by the way, just here to clarify this fic since it's mainly me playing around with style and not giving any craps if no one knows what the hell's going on. But hey, people who read fanfic generally do it for fun and relaxation, not for being forced to deeply examine and contemplate the meaning of every word, so…
Essentially, Misto and Vic fall in love. Hooray. Then, Vic gets very sick, so sick she's sure to die. Just as she's about to die, Misto (being a magic cat) traps her soul in his mind rather than letting it go to wherever cat souls go when they leave the body behind. She is, understandably, unimpressed by this. She becomes increasingly violent within his mind, which sort of has the effect of driving Misto crazy. Others try to help him but he's delusional and so caught up in wanting to have Victoria forever that he drives them all away. Eventually, he realises how wrong he is to hold Victoria back from passing on, so he releases her.
So yeah, just in case anyone stumbles across this fic, that's the plotline (in chronological order).