Skyline
By JestaAriadne
(jesta_ariadne@mail.com)
More love 'n' hugs 'n' chocolate to the reviewers - believe it or not, this is the highest number of reviews I've ever recieved! And the longest story I've written, so far. Looking at everyone else's work (this isn't exactly a long story by most people's standards...), you know I still feel like newbie sometimes, and I've been here for - well, a fair time, haven't I? Gaah, for a start I find it so hard to continue a story for very long, so most of my fics never even see the metaphorical light of day on the internet, having died in the first stages...
Anyway, I ramble. I'm just trying to say a great big thanks and all to everyone.... Thank you!! All so nice comments, very flattering, however untrue. Hmm - I should say I'm... honoured by The Mean Reviewer's comment, after reading a couple of their others... Right...um... you know, you are perfectly free to ignore all my notes, there's rarely anything important. So knowing that, read on with the story, or sit here and listen to me bla for a bit longer. This chapter, or possibly the last one, is probably as depressing as it gets here, so there is hope soon!! Is everyone still OK with the PG rating? Should I change it? Bits of this part were tough, -- what do I know about romance??? Or dying, for that matter??
OK, that's it! No more notes! (For now, muahaha!) Do read on.......
----
4. canon
We didn't talk about it.
We just - didn't mention anything about me dying anymore.
I guess I'd hoped that somehow this sort of thing would bring a weird sort of maturity, but now I wasn't actually too sure about that. Felt like I was being stretched in both directions. On the one hand: I could be in My Final Hour, and frail and fading and old and accustomed - on the other: I was small and helpless and screaming because I didn't understand and I just couldn't handle what was happening to me. Dying takes all the fun out of being alive, you might say.
Poor Mungojerrie.
At least the not-understanding-anything-thing doesn't get me down quite the way it does him. At least I'm not going to have to worry about it much longer anyway. At least I'm not the one who's gonna be alone and upset when I -
Yeah.
Well - like I said, I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't going to let any of these stupid morbid traitor-thoughts mess with my head. Really. Not gonna get me down. Ever.
Only it was, of course.
It was just getting so hard to keep happy now. Anything chirpy' usually came in a kind of stupid croak instead. I'm trying to keep afloat here, honest...
It was just getting so hard.
~~~
"Woulda brought you some chocolate, but..."
I just nodded and gave an imaginary shrug to let him know he didn't have to finish. Pounce was so cute like that. Trying, but just never able to keep it together. Him and Jem. Little hopelessly smiling bags of useless energy. Sitting and reminiscing with the dying. What a life.
We talked about lots of wonderfully irrelevant and irreverent junk. My mouth just shot off a load of tired questions and they responded dutifully. I tried, I really did. Mungojerrie tried, weakly smiling his constant encouragement.
It's not fair. It really got to me. We're trying here. My mind fixed on that point and held it. If we're all trying so hard and if love is that strong -- why is this happening to us? To me?
I flattered myself that they'd miss me, and I wasn't sure if this made me feel better or not.
When they left, I felt like I should make a speech or something. You two look after each other, OK? sorta thing. You stick together through thick and thin and never let each other go. Promise me, because for some reason I care about your happiness, and maybe even imagined I'd done something for it....
Enjoy your love... The thought just drifted after them. Bitter or hopeful? Enjoy your life...
And, Heaviside, what was I doing, thinking like that? What the bloody hell was I doing, being so bloody stupid and sentimental when I didn't have the damn time and - Bast take it all - I was only a couple years old...
You know I didn't swear much? I'd decided that I obviously wasn't doing it anywhere near enough, and thought I may as well try it out a couple times. And so I did. Trying out my wonderful new vocabulary on whoever I felt like. The humans, much of the time, not that they exactly got what I was meowing at them. And I think Mungo got a little more than his fair share of bitter whispers and moans. You know, it didn't really have much of a thrill; just words, after all.
I gave up on it pretty quick.
Anger was just too tiring, and it was all useless anyway.
I was getting to the point of not caring, and I hated myself all the more for that.
~~~
I kept Jem and Pounce away the next day. I got Mungo to tell them No, I wasn't really awake enough, and maybe some other time. The truth was I couldn't bear to let them see me. Not just that. I didn't really want to see them, and the thought of course made me feel a hundred times worse. I just didn't think I could cope with their eyes so confused and pained and - pity. Pity from them, and they were younger than me. It made me feel so old and infirm... or young and helpless... Screaming kitten, fading old fool... either way: pathetic and dying.
I let Jennyanydots in, though; later that day, because I hadn't seen her lately and I needed something to lift me out of my thoughts.
So she visited me out of her jolly old-fashioned courtesy, and I could tell it was a burden for her. A bumbling darling with all the most inappropriate words of irreverent comfort, but I guess I was starting to see through that. Concern. Pity. Well, of course. Her own hurt. Poor old dear thing...
Darling.' Poor old thing.' Where was I getting this from, anyway? Now didn't strike me as the perfect time for me of all people to be cultivating any sort of affectionate pity, but there it was. I guess it just came of having altogether too much time on my paws. Nothing to do. Not that I'd ever exactly had a purpose in my life or anything like that, but at least I'd had a choice.
"You're... looking fine, Rumpel," Jenny said, smiling slightly. "Keeping... a trim figure and all...." She patted her own ample waist and I laughed politely. And envied her. What I wouldn't have given for a bowl of cream... No, scratch that. What I wouldn't have given for the ability not to bring it right back up again a couple minutes later and ruin the carpet.
But Jenny's words struck home, alright. Never again was I going to think of "slim" as something admirable, and I'd probably have an absolute phobia of "skinny" for the rest of my life. Trim figure, Jen? Ha. I was skeletal. Try "bag of bones", only without much in the way of a bag.
My eyes probably couldn't be bothered to focus properly, so she might not have seen me watching her watching me. She looked so... pained. Like everyone seemed to around me, which just made me dread what I must have looked like myself. I suppose you might call her the closest thing I had to a mother - for all I used to keep my distance from any of the elders/oldies. But she never kept away from any of us - it was always: "Are you alright, dear?", "Here, let me help you with that..." - you know, the interfering busybody omni-maternal figure you can't help but love, no matter how hard you try. Always there to patch us up, to cheer us up...
Which was probably why she was so broken just then. Because I was. How come you can't make it all alright, Jenny? It was a little petulant, pleading voice in my head. A little helpless kitten I had only become now. Kiss it better for me, please...
What had I done to everyone?
"Pouncival's been talking about you," she said, conversationally.
"Eh?" I asked, super-articulately.
"Pouncival," she repeated, nice and clearly, as if I was going deaf as well as the rest of it. "Talking about you."
Why's it always gotta be me? I asked myself... Maybe I always was playing for attention... but not now!
"Tell me about the mice," I said suddenly.
She blinked, and I hoped she wouldn't take as an intentional fob-off and turn in the conversation. Then she looked flattered. Yeah. It's about time I gave her at least this in return.
"Well..." She almost didn't know where to start, so I just feebly grinned my encouragement, which seemed just to bemuse her further. (If my face looked as bad now as I guessed it did, I'm surprised the sheer freak-out value of such a vision didn't scar her permanently, let alone scare her.)
"Well..." she said again. "It's been quite a productive week. Cheese straws on Monday went really rather well, and then we put on a bit of a concert in the evening...."
Monday... I thought vaguely. When was Monday? Time had flown away, right away and out the window and I was completely free of it. I was caught up in another current, blown about like a wingless, helpless bird; a feather; a paper streamer bleached in the sun... I tried to focus on the hazy words Jenny was speaking, but it was sounding more and more like I imagined a lullaby might sound, not that I knew. Just a comforting wash of sound. My head buzzed as I tried to clarify further.
Tiredness and drugs flowed doggedly around in my blood. Closing my eyes, I thought I could see my heart beat unevenly and taste old vomit and metallic cleanliness on my eyelids. I wondered distantly how offended Jenny would be when she found I'd fallen asleep while she was talking, and I added another good deed to my list of what-I'll-do-if-and-when-I-get-better.
I'm sorry, Jenny.... I'll make it up to you... Hehe...maybe I'll help teach good language and diction to the mice, that'd be fun....
~~~
Listless, I think, is the word you'd have used to describe me. For the first time in my life, probably. Things change, eh?
I did a lot of lying still, looking vague and dull because I couldn't summon the energy to arrange my features any other way. It was partly the drugs, I guess - injected now several times a day, into whatever part of my stupid body wasn't already too swollen to take any more. And partly just that I think the -gravity - of the whole situation was getting to me. You know, there was a reason I never used to take things seriously... Overheard human conversations more and more when I was awake. Talk of my "condition", their "options". Too tired to block them out now, so the words went straight into my head where my flippant brain could translate conveniently. She ain't looking so good, is she? Yup, she's gonna die. Maybe we should just bump her off first to make a clean job of it...
Listless.... I told myself I didn't care. Didn't give a - whatever - that I was really approaching end-game this time.
They still didn't let Mungo stay with me all the time, and in some strange, horrible way I was glad. There wasn't anything to say anymore. There wasn't much I could do either, especially without help, but I did want to prove the point a couple times.
One day, I tried to drag myself over to the floor-length windows, basket and all. I think it actually took me hours. Hanging my limbs pathetically out and gripping my claws in to the carpet. Grab, pull, grab, pull. Like rowing. I was escaping properly from my cave' under the occasional table; its cozy, stinky comfort was doing my head in. And I wanted to go and see the sky again somehow.
But I couldn't do it. I just gave out in the middle of the carpet and flopped uselessly down again, panting like I'd just done something great. It's not fair. I think I even started crying.
And Mungojerrie padded up the stairs, someone opened the door for him - his face looked so - pained, confused. Just like it had done for the last few weeks, really.
"Teaz?"
I looked at him. That's me name. "Get me to the window, please," I said.
He never argued with me. I guess it's some sort of death-bed custom; honour the wishes of the crazy person who's falling to pieces right in front of you, because pretty soon they'll just be memories and milestones and ashes....
Oh Heaviside....
He gripped his teeth into the basket's edge and walked slowly backwards. I remembered how icky the plastic stuff tasted and pitied him, but he didn't seem to mind about that much. It even took him a bit of effort, and I guess that made me feel in some small way slightly less pathetic.
"Mungo..." I was shaking. I wanted to say it, well - I needed to. I dreaded it. No more pretending. No more Foine, Oi'm alright, honest...' Felt like no more me. I said: "When - Oi die -"
"Yer not gonna," he said; husky, gentle, desperate; like out of the tackiest love scenes that I would have laughed my head off at, if only laughing didn't hurt so bloody much. Only it wasn't funny, of course, and I wasn't sure how much it was to do with love anyway.
"Yeah -" I tried to tell him.
"No."
"Mungo!"
"Yer not."
"Oi'm-"
"No."
"Foine!" I was almost angry at him. "IF, then. IF, on the vaguest possibility Oi should chance to somehow exit this wonderful loife of mine..." Then... All those excess words had tired me out, and so I stopped. "Then..." And I stopped again. Then - what? Then he should find a nice queen and settle down and live his life again? He should always remember me with a smile cos that what I would have liked? Past tense. He should - I didn't know. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with those sentiments in themselves, but can you imagine me saying them?? Can you imagine anyone real saying them?? Love and death.... make you do stupid things... maybe that was it, and maybe all those platitudes were just waiting round the corner ready to gobble me up and get me saying them any second now. And - well, you never know - he might just grow strong in my memory', though I don't really see how that'd work. I'm not much worth remembering.
And so I never continued.
"Yer not gonna die," he repeated.
"Ow can ya say that...?" I said, too softly, like I was already fading. "Oi - Oi thought you were braver'n that."
My eyes towards the sky, I never knew if his face fell. Well... I did. Of course I did. If I hadn't had time to get to know just how to hurt him in these last couple weeks, then I never would. And I had just kept on hurting him...
"msorry." Not that it mattered what I said. Probably nothing I did now mattered. That sounded awfully pessimistic, I guess, but... Maybe even I had to take things seriously at some point. Now seemed just about right.
"...It's alroight." No making excuses for me. We were past pointless words, or just about. But he still asked me: "Can I...?" and waited for me to nod frantically and pathetically before he lay down beside me.
Love and death, love and death... Love, and - Just one more thing to say then; I'd say it just once more, and after all, why not? "Love you, Mungojerrie. Always will." My voice came out all wrong.
I couldn't see his face when he answered, but I didn't need to. His paw on my back and my strange heartbeat against his side, that would do. "Love you. Love you f'rever."
And that was it. The moment I really fell apart. Oh Heaviside, oh everlasting Cat, oh spirit of the ages, oh - oh Life, I felt so complete... and so, so confused. Like I was being cheated out of the rest of it somehow. But - calm. It didn't matter. I'd tied up my loose ends.
We just lay still. Me, with eyes almost working, with my head hanging out in the vague direction of the stratosphere, finally taking notice of the universe. Wow, big words. But they suited the bigness, and sheer awe of the sky. There was nothing at all limited here - nothing I could stick "just" in front of, and pass off as futile. It's weird. I never really used to look at things much, let alone think they were pretty. Well, unless they were shiny and sparkly and worth stealing. But this had a different sort of beauty. I lay there, staring, thinking: it was everything. It was all I needed, all I could take... This was... This was - Life, in a way, and it would do. Yeah. People always suppose somehow that you can never see the sky over the city, but it's not true. It's still there, just look up.
Bit of a stupid time to start living, Teazer...
I felt like I was floating up there, wingless again. Found myself watching the clouds move; faster, slower, like they really didn't care, or else couldn't do anything about it. Felt I was drifting away and dispersing and dissolving into the air. I wasn't... sad... really. This wasn't so bad...
Love and death, love and - I was choking, sobs softly clutching at my throat. Just two thoughts, just two words, just one tiny flickering life no one had probably ever noticed, but the sky was brilliant above and shining for me- what else is there left now?
I was shaking. He was still there. Touching me always so gently... Ya shouldn't do that, you know... I'll just kill you too. But - Just stay there, so I know I'm still here... Surprised your paw doesn't fall right through me.
Weightless... I was weightless, and my bones were like birds'. Thin and transient as a cloud. Just drifting. Immaterial.
Oh Mungo... when you gonna let me go?
Evening. From distant downstairs I heard the strains of Pachelbel's Canon. An ironic requiem if ever there was one, but I didn't feel I minded much. Yeah, it would do. If I had to go, let it at least be pretty and let there by happy music while I did.
Love and - Life - and.... I was really going to miss the sky.
~~~
Yes, to be continued....