Skyline part 4
by JestaAriadne
Yet again, THANK YOU to the wonderful beings known as reviewers! Had a happy Christmas & New Year? Good. This is where it gets depressing again... :( Also the longest part so far!!
This is dedicated with all my love and encouragement (and offers to assassinate Maths exams once I can make them mortal) to Norbert and to else doomed to die in some exam room around this time. Don't get too depressed!! Things'll get better!! (in this fic and in life, hopefully!)
3. Pathétique
I woke up at the north pole.
It was freezing, just like I'd expected.
And...
Hehe, did you believe me? Did I have you going there? No?
Well, for your information, I honestly thought I had somehow got the arctic in the middle of the night - I'm not at my most rational when I'm half-asleep.
And it was freezing.
But let's try this again...
I woke up shivering.
Then I realised someone had been sick, and it was most probably me. I could smell it before I'd even opened my eyes. One of those smells you get very used to very quickly without exactly meaning to. Vomit. Blood. All the other junk in the kitty litter. Day in, day out - along with the laughs and the silly games and pretend pearls, there was always something there to remind me of the awful state I was actually in. So annoying that I couldn't actually do something about it now, not even run away.
And that's the truth. Fiction's so much nicer, don't you think?
I didn't want to move. So I shouted a bit first. Someone come help me! But it felt so stupid, in the silence of near-morning, yelling out - what? Help?' would hardly cut it, it's not like I was dying. Hello?' was a bit redundant, but I tried anyway. "Mungo!" I cried at last. "Mungo!" He couldn't hear, of course. All the way downstairs could have been halfway across the universe; didn't make any difference. Darkness was solid. Sickly soft velvet. I could focus my eyes on any one point in the void in front of me... Funny; you can't do that with light. But I couldn't make myself shout loud enough. I didn't really even want to. Could just imagine Mungojerrie sprinting up the stairs and running headlong into the living room door. Scratch scratching on the glass panelling like a faithful puppy or something. Let me in Teaz, I need to help you...
No. And I really stopped yelling when the thought grabbed me that it might make me sick again.
I still wasn't moving and the silence was getting to me, like it was freezing me still, holding me in place. So I started talking to myself; quietly, but out loud. I hadn't done that for a while. I don't think I was very articulate. Get yerself up, Teaz.... Tha's it. Paws steady - come on, steady...
My legs actually wouldn't take it. I flopped. Rolled sideways. ARGH, I hated that carpet! It probably hated me too, the way I kept liberally covering it in my rejected food. I kept rolling around until I was sort of vaguely less saturated in sick (pleasant image, isn't it? When you're sick, they sure do it to you properly; no one skimps on the details around here.) Then I lay still on the carpet, tried to sleep again. No blanket. I felt exposed, and cold, though in this state a blanket probably wouldn't have helped much anyway.
As I slipped off to dreamland again, I thought a vague "Congrats" to myself... I hadn't lost control, gone hysterical or blown up the house while the owners were away. I'd been calm. Made it. I was to some weird degree (probably off the scale) OK, and I'd done it all-on-my-very-own.
It wasn't much comfort, when I came to think about it. It felt like I was getting used to this.
~~~
I meowed in complaint when the human picked me up when I was still half asleep. He was getting me off the sick-covered floor, which seemed a good idea on principal, but it made me ache all over. They didn't wash me off properly; they wouldn't even let Mungo do it. They just sponged me off with a luke-warm flannel. So I meowed, in half-hearted annoyance. I deserve better than this! I told them. I'm High Queen Rumpelteazer and I only take the best!
Sheesh, what a life these royals must have.
It was almost like I was moaning out loud to try to shut up the other thoughts inside my head which were running dangerously near the edge. Oh, Heaviside... just get me out of this and I'll never want the best' of anything ever again... Just get me out of this...
"Teaz..."
Oh, why...? Why does that single syllable on his tongue sound so - I dunno - just like it does... Why does it make me feel like it does? Why is he so wonderful? Why is he so him? Mungojerrie....
"Ow are ya?"
It had become almost a ritual. He asked, I answered. "Foine..." I said.
Then, on cue: "Ya sure?"
Slowly, I nodded my head. "Yeah. It's OK." I shifted in the newly laundered and folded blankets; so uneasy, so uncomfortable, so un-OK. "Oi'm tired, Mungo. Oi'm jus' gonna sleep a bit."
He nodded sadly, holding my gaze.
I looked at him a bit longer, then I closed my eyes, mercilessly, shutting him out.
~~~
"All Ail Igh Queen Rumpelteaza..." I said to myself, again, when I woke. Again and again and again. "Empress of the Livin' Room... or dyin' room, woteva.. Ruler of all she surveys... which ain't tha' much, really...."
Gaaaaah.... It was wearing a bit thin.
Why?? I didn't know why I getting so grumpy now. The drugs, maybe. Blame the drugs. Had to be the drugs. Or maybe I'd just used up my cheerfulness quota for the time being.
And I was bored. I was very very very bored. It should have been a plus point that I was at least aware enough to be bored, but it was just so boring that it hardly seemed worthwhile. It was B O R I N G. Do you understand just how BORING it is to be just lying in a half-made bed that smells of your sickness and their half-hearted attempts at sterilisation? And to be so used to the stupid basket you were spending your days - days and days and days - in, that you even dreamt about every single toothmark and line and tear in it?
The humans still didn't think it was a good idea for Mungo to be around me the whole time, and so I'd just go crazy waiting for him to be allowed in. So what if I wasn't sure about my feelings for him, or his for me, or mine about me, or any of that? - I wasn't about to work it out if I never saw him! Usually, by the time he came, I'd spoil it because I'd run out of coherent thought by about 9am. And the same rule seemed to apply for Pounce and Jem and any other members of my royal court, only they had the added inconvenience of being checked at the door for any germs, fleas, mites, maggots or sub-machine-guns that they might be carrying. I sometimes tried to just sleep through it all, but although I could usually manage it, it just made me feel slow and sicker and still sleepier. Besides, I was dreamt funny things. Not haha funny now either. Funny that made me wake up to the smell of sick - yep, it happened a few more times.
The apparent ban on chocolate really sucked as well, although I had been kinda expecting that. It must have been a fluke that I'd kept it down that first time; maybe it was again all the new funny drugs causing it, but again I was puking up just about everything I ate or drank.
Still.... mustn't let these things get me down, right?
Right?
I can handle this...
I tried to be careful with myself so that I never had to repeat the hysteria I'd experienced... how long ago was it? I got to know the warning signs; my breath would cut out and my heart panicked and jumped, trying uselessly to pump oxygen when there was none, then the roaring in my head and through my ears. My eyes would have shut by this point and I'd probably be choking myself on whatever I was coughing up that day, tying my stomach into knots and curling myself into a little ball of hurt. Never, never again.
I'd gotten pretty close a couple times. Usually though, just as the whisper-screams started up, there would be Mungo; my saviour, my angel, the arial spirit that was such a heavy load on my fraught conscience; and he'd be holding me, keeping my head above water. It'd be OK. It usually was.
~~~
Jemima came to see me by herself one day, but it all went a bit wrong when I was violently sick right then and there and in front of her, and not all in the kitty litter. She valiantly helped Mungo to clean me up and then he left awkwardly and we tried to have a laugh about the unbelievably soppy antics of Victoria and Plato she reported to me. I asked her slyly how Pouncival was, and she told me, and I tried a happy hyper giggle, but it turned into a painful cough half way through. Jem looked panicked, tried to help by hitting me on the back, but did it in such a gentle way that it did absolutely no good whatsoever.
I stopped coughing by myself eventually, I usually did.
"So," I tried again, grinning determinedly.
"So..." She looked around the little area where I lived. "Someone been plundering the royal court?" she joked. Well, it was looking a bit pitiful; certainly worse than when she'd last seen in it. Remnants of Glorianna; most of the jewels gone and the chocolate packet only remaining due to fierce guarding of said object.
"Yeah. The umans." I shrugged, painfully. "Sumfin's apparently wrong with gettin' all em necklaces covered in me sick a coupla times a day." Grin. Yeah, well, I was allowed to joke about it too, you know. "Oi've managed to keep old of a few choice items, though."
"Yeah," she nodded, looking around again. "Hey, I remember that one! That's the one me'n Pounce nicked for you!"
"Yup!" The grin was holding up, just about, even if the words were running a bit dry.
"So..." I should have kept count of how many times we'd said that... "D'you want your royal court to meet again?"
I managed to keep it up at sort-of-smile level.
She was trying to try so hard to act natural, but it was as if she couldn't remember what that is either. Couldn't blame her. If I were her I probably wouldn't have known what to do around me either. If that makes sense...
"Oi dunno..." I said hopelessly, "if ya want to..."
"You don't?" Big eyes only a little bewildered. Heaviside, kittens shouldn't have to cope with this... For that matter, neither should I!
I shook my head. "Well, Oi don' mind.... Don' matter."
"OK..."
I squinted at the wall opposite. I could never quite see the window from here. I learned to learn a lot from the shadows. "I's gettin' dark, Jem," I sighed. "Oi suppose ya oughta go an' pay a token visit to yer own umans."
"Suppose so," she said, sighing too and getting up. "It's been great seeing you, Teaz," she said politely. Wow, I never had the guts for stuff like that.
"Yeah..." Well, that sounded stupid. It's an honour to have you meet me,' type thing. Hmmm. Couldn't even string a decent sentence together. Nice going.
She left the room, and I was left pondering over it all again, falling into dark-dreamy and drained, tired thoughts.
Things weren't making a huge amount of sense in general lately. I felt like I was thinking too much, but I was never getting any closer to a conclusion that would make everything in the world fit together in a flash of brilliance. Well, alright, that's hardly surprising; I'd've settled for something to explain WHY this was happening to me... No, forget that, if there was a real reason, I wasn't sure I wanted to know. What I wanted was to get better. No, forget that too. Be better. None of this intermediate bumbling around on the edge of illness, never knowing what, if anything, was really holding me down.
Please..... Oh.... oh Life, I was begging. No settling for', no very funny jokes inside me anymore, just a plea. Oh please... tell me if it's too much to ask...
I didn't like thinking like that. Defeatist, death-drivel. I was OK... I'm fine, Mungo, really I am... Just tired. Just a bit worn out. Beaten up inside. Call me again when I'm a little more myself.
~~~
A few days later, and I'd heard a new word from the humans lately: infection.
That could explain it. The grumpiness, the extra injections. They were just pumping up my body with whatever they thought could wipe out the death-bugs. Oh, hurrah, it's all coming together, I'm so happy. Not.
Infection...
Oh, I knew what that was all about alright. Back on the streets there'd been a whole lot of infection. Unclean wounds - who was there to clean you up? - and poison would just somehow get in you and then wouldn't get out no matter what you did. Or through something you ate, that would do too. Food poisoning, water contamination, call it what you want, it ended the same way. Nothing you ever actually saw. Just the stories, and never too tall because there was simply no point in exaggerating this sort of truth.
It must've only taken a couple of seconds. Funny, that. Hit by a car, open up a vein or two and it's BOOM - Rumpelteazer, you're infected, contaminated, poisoned... and guess what? Yer gonna die.
And there was this interesting thought floating around in my head lately: it wouldn't be like this on the streets. There wouldn't have been any humans holding me down there. That little spunky kit inside me, whoever she was, was yelling at me that this was all my fault for going soft on the humans. Who knows? Maybe it was. And that was part of it: I just didn't know.
Whoever was up there, or down there, or wherever, pulling the strings was seriously going to get it when I met them, I growled to myself. But it was only a half-hearted threat. Something like nostalgia was choking me, or maybe it was just my body fluids up my throat. Little Rumpelteazer would go and give someone hell for this, I thought. She wouldn't just sit back and let herself fall apart. Or maybe memory had given me coloured sunglasses, or whatever the phrase was. Little Rumpelteazer would probably just have a laugh about it. In fact, on second thoughts, this just wouldn't have happened to Little Rumpelteazer. It would have happened to someone else, and she/I'd have been around to cheer them up. The only other thing I might have been good for.
I suppose I was just dodging the fact: if this had happened back then to "Little Rumpelteazer": the streetwise stray with the impossibly cheery outlook coupled with a hard-headed acceptance of The Way Life Was, she/I'd be dead by now. No wonder-drugs to keep my heart from collapsing, no one to pay the vet's bill. Not even anyone to pull me out of the road in the first place, actually. I wouldn't have lasted five minutes.
I'd be dead by now.
It was about then that the treacherous thought came sliding around my achy head. And dead mightn't be so bad...
Heaviside, if only I knew! If death wasn't so bad, then surely life was pure bliss, but I felt like I was straddling limbo just then. Or trapped in purgatory, maybe. Was this my punishment? No one seemed to know just how long it would be before I'd kick the bucket. How long I'd be stuck in the middle.
Hey, Death, maybe you'd like to make a couple things clear to me?
I'd heard of people cheating death - or playing some stupid game against Him/Her/It for their lives. Good on principal, but I couldn't play chess.
Ordinarily I'd challenge you to a running race, but your mate Malady or whatever his name is seems to be fixing the odds a little on that one.
For all I never planned for my life, or my death, I wanted and needed the security of someone else doing all that for me. Someone it just came natural to. It struck me a little painfully that maybe Death was just like that, too. A play-it-as-it-comes trickster disco dancer. Maybe Death was a practical joker who never planned anything and just liked sticking its hand in a lucky dip to see who to knock off today. I didn't like that idea much. Even the good old black-robed figure with the pointy stick and serious eyes appealed more than this new wild guy. A Death who played mind games and drowned kittens in hessian bags.
Oh, where was I going with all this anyway?
Nothing made sense.
~~~
I shouted at Mungojerrie.
That's just me, isn't it? Everyone knows it. Happy and non-threatening most of the time, but watch out for the volatile girl; her emotions can shoot right off the other end of the scale. I really don't know how he coped with me. I mean, he's no mature Munkustrap or golden-idol Tugger and not perfect (probably), but whatever he was was close enough for me. Too close, sometimes. It felt like he was getting right inside me, like I never wanted to keep any secrets from him ever again. Scary how much he cared. Scary how I could ever risk losing that.
We were doing the usual "you OK"/"yeah"-can taste blood"-"fine!" thing. He was getting more persistent; waiting for me to snap under this caring pressure, it felt like.
"Ya sure you're OK? Yer gonna be fine, yeah?"
What the hell was he doing, asking me?? How was I supposed to know? It was like we were chucking a ball back and forth: reassure me, reassure you; only I kept dodging, never able to give honest reassurance and trying never to beg for it.
"Foine."
"Teaz, Oi know it urts..."
"Oi'm foine." wish my stomach would stop tying itself up, wish I could breathe normally.
"You can tell me, Teaz...." Then why do you sound so scared? "Oi - Oi know yer urting." Maybe cos you are -
"Stop saying that!" Words tearing painfully from my throat. "You don' know a bloody thing bout ow it feels!" I yelled and yelled again, freezing my thought processes. Had to get this out... "Ow - ow dare ya say tha'? You don' know!"
The words recoiled like a whip and slapped me in the face half a second later.
Apart from anything else it was just a stupid blatant lie.
I didn't need a mirror these days, it was like my pain rubbed off on him and I could see me reflected so well in his eyes. He knew how I felt.
"Oh, Eavisoide," I breathed unevenly, "Oi'm sorry Mungo..." Pathetic whispering, wasn't it? Pathetic and useless and just wasting my time, and his - his time kinda seemed more important. Mine didn't seem worth much now. "Y'know Oi don' mean it..."
"Yeah, Oi know." He sat down next to me, leaning his head on the plastic edging of the basket. Sighed. "Oi know. Teaz - we're always gonna be- friends, yeah?"
Funny how he had to make that a question. "Yeah," I said. "Always," though it was breaking my heart into thousands of little plastic pieces, "Mungo. Sorry." never thought it would be so much - hurt like this -
"Oi-" he started, then scratched his ear, shaking his head. Too complicated. "Love ya," he said, almost shrugging. It had just been there all along.
I -
"- Love ya always," I replied, my smile hurting my eyes. Simplicity itself, eh? Then why was it hurting even worse...? Another piece in this mess. Our fragmented lives and we could never get anything out straightforward...
- Love you so much.
Oh... Mungojerrie.... I didn't deserve this... My Mungojerrie... If he was my angel, then I was nothing more than a pleasantly sparkly fairy, but all too mortal and all the glitter knocked off.
All too mortal.
Well... I had to ask sometime, didn't I? Had to bounce that ball back...
"When am Oi gettin' betta, Mungo?" An appeal to my angel, my oracle, my all. He was all I could trust, but then I knew he couldn't bear to tell me the truth.
"Soon." He smiled, and as my insides squirmed, I thought I thanked him for that. It was all going a little strange lately - almost like role reversal. I was supposed to be the one to cheer him up, and most importantly, I was never supposed to have any doubts, or fears, or worries. Not ever. I was always Fine, remember? But there I was, finally giving in and just asking the dumb question. And there he was. Smiling bravely. Reassuring.
Lying.
Yer not gonna get better, Teaz, I told myself. You better believe it, cos no one else seems like they're going to.
I felt like a broken doll. Not anything porcelain and perfect; probably not even silk or wax or cotton. Probably just some cheap perky plastic contraption. Pull the string at the back and she'll giggle inanely. I'd had some good times; been out and about and faded in the sun and had a laugh or two, but now the mechanism was slowing down and it could only be so long before someone just chucked the cracked and careless pieces away....
And I couldn't make any of it unhappen again.
You've been telling porkie-pies, Mungo, I wanted to scold him babyishly, and I wanted to laugh. But it didn't come out. Instead, weak and stupid as it was, I was crying into his fur.
"Teaza!"
Paw on my shaking shoulders, but I couldn't stop.
Helpless.
And of course as the sobs got worse and my whole useless body started to quake uncontrollably, I felt the awful squeezing in my stomach and my ribs and my guts were heaving and protesting... I sort of rolled towards the kitty litter, Mungo's comforting weight on my thrashing body half-hindering, but in the end it seemed I didn't even have the power to spew it up properly, and there was nothing left inside me anyway. I was embarrassingly and unstoppably coughing and coughing up just acid and blood and probably half the drugs I'd just been given...
I missed the kitty litter. Mostly it went all over me, and then I didn't care, just kept wailing and coughing blood and choking on my own vomit. Couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't hear. It's all happening again... What did it matter anymore -
" - gonna die nyway-" I burbled.
How much did he hear? It was really happening to me again. Worse. Hysteria and I wasn't even laughing this time... Words just black marks on a page too close to my eyes. Mungojerrie was talking to me too, but it wasn't making much sense, and it almost didn't seem like his voice. Choking. We were both choking to death and drowning and -
"...Yer not gonna die, Teaz." Sound from the white/black noise. Words like light. It was such an incredible damned-and-blessed effort to hear.
I panted, hearing my breath now rushing in my ears as my sobs were cut short. My heartbeat slowed, winding down like a clockwork toy.
Mungojerrie, carefully and gently licking my fur clean. "Yer not gonna die."
"Don'..." I just managed the word, broken.
He paused for a second.
"Mungo, why've you always gotta elp me?" I whispered.
"Cos Oi love ya."
Four words. Nothing superfluous or fancy, just... that. Simple enough, no? No. Mungojerrie simply happy, carefree and happy-go-lucky and it's all-alright-for-some, or so they said. They'll never get hurt. No... We were never simple, and it never made sense, not even for us. Love. The air was mist and crying, and it hurt... Heaviside, it hurt so much... Love hurt and life hurt and I couldn't do anything right and I couldn't do without it...
"Everything is gonna be alright."
Liar. Oh... what did it matter?
He went back to cleaning my fur,
I shut my eyes.
"Everything'll be alright," he whispered again. Oh, Everlasting Cat, he was so gentle; everything should have been so soft and perfect, only I was killing myself, and spoiling it all... "It'll be alright." Like I was that kitten. "It'll be alright. Promise."
My tears leaked slowly into the blanket.
I ask you....What could I say to that....?
~~~