Disclaimer: I don't own CATS!

Sorry its another short chapter, I'll add more stuff in the next chapter update, but please review anyway!

Two a.m., the worst possible time for a parent to be awake...

Electra finally got Spotstical to go to sleep, after cleaning her face and making her hold ice to it, treating the burnt remains of her whiskers, and hours of wimpering, the tiny queen was sleeping in her bed.

Her whiskers were now tiny little burnt barbs that were now each wrapped in tape so as too protect them since cats feel with them, making one want to cry and laugh at the same time at the sad yet silly sight, even as she slept.

"She seems like a handful," commented Leah, laying back on a soft chair in the dark room, trying to force herself to get up and get ready for bed.

"Yeah... the little furry muffin is sometimes more trouble than she's worth," said Electra in a joking voice, although it wasn't really funny. It was obvious she was exhausted and frustrated, the bags under her eyes and lumbering movements giving her away.

"She's very pretty," said Leah, looking at the sleeping queen, who was gripping her face with her paws. But it felt as though a question was looming over both of them, one the woman was afraid to ask, but the Jellicle already knew. A question that had been asked or gossiped about for the past four years, a question most were too polite to ask.

"So Electra... I was wondering..."-"You can ask, I already know what your going to say," said Electra with a sigh.

Leah stared at Electra for a second, shocked and unsure, as she still hesitated on the question. "Wh-who's the father?" she finally asked tentatively.

"Everyone asks that, but I've hardly told anyone. Just a few souls who I trust to know about it... but the father is Macavity," she said, with an air of maturity but also a sense that she was proud of this.

"Macavity?" Leah could barely say it, completely unprepared for this. She would have sooner bought that the Jellicles were real than believe her character would have a kitten with the Nepoleon of Crime.

"I know what you're thinking, that he's evil and insane, and I'm a traitor," stated the Jellicle, laying back. "But please, let me explain."

The human responded only with silence, but her slow breathing and shocked expression seemed to give way for just a moment, as she nodded for the Jellicle to continue.

"You see, a few weeks after the Jellicle Ball, I was walking in cat form through some allys on my way home from Victoria's, when I saw something behind one of the garbage cans. as I got closer, I heard a pained moan and I noticed it moving, and I realized it was an injured cat. I immediately rushed to help it, since it was bleeding and covered in burns and garbage, but then I pulled the garbage away and saw it was Macavity." As she explained all this, she shuddered slightly, as if such a horrible memory could bring about physical revulsion. "...my first instinct was to run... but then I saw the flies, all over his wounds, buzzing around so loudly they were all I could hear...I-I c-couldn't leave him."

Leah felt a wave of nausea pass through her at the thought, the mental image playing before her eyes as she almost swore she heard the sound of flies buzzing around the room.

"I brought him back to my den in an old apartment building and there cleaned his wounds and treated his burns the best I knew how, keeping it a secret from the others. And when he woke up I made him eat some chunks of mouse...even though he wouldn't talk." She added this last bit as if just remembering it, although just by the eureka look on her face you could tell it was important. "Instead he just stared in confusion as I cared for him, and when he finally did speak, I had come home and found him wandering around like a lost puppy. He seemed surprised to have been rescued, and just told me thank you, and then asked for some food. It was so strange... he kept asking me what happened, and I kept explaining it to him... finally one day while looking out a window at some power lines, he said he thought it was the shocks."

"You mean when he used those cables to cause an electric surge so he could escape without being seen?" asked Leah, speaking for the first time since Electra started telling her this.

"Hmmmm, it caused him to lose a lot of memory, but it slowly came back. Yet somehow he didn't go crazy like I thought he would. You see, he's a genius, but he's also mad with power, often doing things he can't explain. Like trying to just pick up Demeter and run off with her, or the first times he experienced uncontrollable anger... he's just so unstable, that's why he turned to doing acts of evil: as a means of living out what he thought he had to be...but when he told me this, he was almost serene. It was the Electric shocks."

"So you mean he's crazy, not evil?" asked Leah, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

"Oh, he used to be evil, but his reason and justification for being that way was that he was crazy, which is quite a paradox, but even he knew that in a way," she shrugged, as if the idea of him being evil didn't scare her now that she knew why. "But when he begun to remember things, he decided to try and change, and he started to discover he actually could love again. I learned that even though I have a bullet proof heart, it doesn't matter, because he has an armor peircing personality. We lived together for about two years, during which time I barely visited anyone, but he was great company."

"Your in love with the Nepoleon of Crime," stated Leah, her hands beginning to shake at the madness and excitement of it. "Now that's the shit, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but there were hard times... sometimes madness would overtake him, and he would roll on the floor biting his paws until it passed, or else lock himself in a room until he felt the compulsion to go and do something horrendous went away, because he now had a reason fight it, he said."

"So when did she come along?" asked Leah, pointing at Spotstical, who was dead to the world.

"Well, when I told him I was expecting, he felt so scared he locked himself in a closet for several hours, worried he would lose control for some reason. It was difficult on me, because despite how helpful and kind he was, he started having more and more rages, the closet became a place for him to go to calm down... it was obvious whatever those shocks did wasn't permanent, but he so wanted to have control of himself so he could stay with me and raise his kitten." A single tear ran down the Jellicle's face, as she found her voice fail for just a moment, as if reliving the sad times. "...When Spotstical was born, he was afraid to hold her. He was terrified, he looked at her like she would explode, although it was because he was afraid of losing control and hurting her. In the end I had to beg him to take her; he was bawling by that point."

"So what happened after that?" asked Leah, truly fascinated by all this, even though it was late and she didn't want to accidentally sleep in and miss breakfast, it was worth the risk.

"He was a good father, but his mental state kept deteriorating. He once locked himself up for three days after picturing himself clawing up Spotstical's face, and then found a shredded picture of her in his paws. He knew he couldn't ward off his madness forever, no matter how much he loved us... So when Spotstical was only one, he went away to seek help, from an old Pollicle psychic who treats the mentally ill. He's still in treatment."

"So he pretty much checked himself into the Jellicle/Pollicle equivalent of a mental ward?" asked Leah, feeling as though this was both ludicrus and tragic at the same time.

"I guess you could say that, I've visited him a few times, and he's slowly improving. Last time I saw him, he didn't remember me at first. But when he finally did, he held me and kissed me repeatedly for almost a full minute. Spotstical writes to him and draws him pictures, they're all over the walls of his room, and he writes to her. He hasn't had any rages or flashbacks for a month, since they've started a new treatment." She paused here, looking off into space thoughtfully as a look of resoluteness seemed to rise over her features. "Someday we'll have him back."

Jo sat curled up on one of the big couches next to the fireplace, staring at the the few softly glowing embers that remained of the fire, trying to fight off the sleepiness as she tried to figure out the confusing slury of emotions that spun in her head.

"Why?" was the question tha consumed her thoughts, as if that one word held some secret meaning which was ineffable.

And really, why? Why was she so angry at Drew? Why wasn't she upset with Cettie? And why the hell was she still even awake?

Slowly she turned the ashes of the smoldering logs with a poker and then set it back in its holder beside the fireplace, getting up off the couch and turning to one of the front windows.

She walked over to the window in her bare feet, staring out blankly into the dark storm that made it impossible to see anything, not even the slightest hint of moonlight.

"You're crazy," she told herself, setting a hand on the cold glass. "You're probably not even going to live through this, and you're worried about your best friend dating... a member of another species."

This idea ran through her mind a bit, fighting for attention with everything else on her mind, like that fact that it had set in that they might all die.

As she looked out the window, she reflected on this, when the woman slowly became aware of the feeling of being watched.

Cautiously she turned, every muscle in her body stiff from fear that someone had heard her and was watching, only to have that fear confirmed, as she caught a glimpse of a cloaked figure slinking back up the stares.

You people have been wondering about Macavity, well, now you know. I put him in a mental ward, the Nepoleon of Crime in a mental ward... makes sense.

So please review and tell me what you think!