Note- As the fic's relationships come more into focus, I would just like to say that I assigned each cat's role and relationship to the other cats by three methods- from what I have seen the the three different CATS performances I've watched, what I think best suits them, and what will best forward the story. I've tried to keep their characters as close as possible to what they really are, but as always, your interpretation may be different than mine. I don't own CATS.

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2

She was asleep when his face appeared at her door, so she didn't see the drawn expression, didn't even know he had been there that morning when she stepped outside. Instead, she saw him lying by the side of the road like a ragdoll, and being herself, ran over.

Had he fainted? That wasn't like him, and she knew him well enough. They had taken in plenty of kittens off the street, but most of them bonded with her best friend, because she was the 'nice' one. It was rare that one of the foster kits called Jellylorum 'Mom'.

There was a pulse, because she could feel the blood pumping through the kid's neck as she picked him up. In a way, she felt bad. After all, hadn't she been the one who'd taken one look at him and said something along the lines of 'typical street trash'? He'd certainly seemed like a kitten that wouldn't amount to anything. All of his time was spent dodging work, playing, and more recently flirting with young queens, since he was now suddenly an adolescent.

But unlike cats who have to live with their parent-figures, this kitten had retained some attachment to them, as long as they couldn't really impose any rules on him.

His fur was covered in blood.

He'd probably hit on the wrong tom's queen, the thought rose within Jellylorum. It wasn't the kind of thing Jenny would think, but that was okay, because she wasn't Jenny. Jenny would not have been so cynical, would have run to the junkyard for help, instead of hefting the kid over her shoulder and carrying him inside. And when he woke up, he would tell her what happened, and she would tell him what he needed to do. That had been the way of things for a long time.

What he did, of course, was always up to him. But sometimes he didn't need the advice. Just an open ear and a cup of cocoa. Because boys were like that, weren't they?

I stare at the house my feet have brought me to in a dull way, thinking I know the place. By now it has to be seven in the morning, and I've no idea how long that I have been walking. My paws hurt. My head hurts. Everlasting Cat help me, my throat hurts, but it hurts because my heart is transferring pain to it. I may be sick, at that.

I barely remember these red bricks, except that the last time I came here was almost five years ago, right on my fifteenth birthday. Some birthday.

I didn't know why I'd walked here then, either. Staggered, really. I had been drunk, gotten, in a fight, worse; I'd gotten in a fight with another Jellicle. It happened, but it shouldn't. It happened to everyone, but that never crossed my mind, just that I didn't want anyone to see me. I'd lost, that was the worst part.

I wasn't used to losing, then.

Now I look at the house, but the memory doesn't rush back to me. I remember it's nice inside, clean and beige. I can see that the lawn is as neat as ever, and quite obviously the same lady lives there, with the same cat. The cat I'm coming to see for no reason I understand, except that maybe she knows what to do.

And as the redness swells to fill my world, I fall thinking, 'Yes, this happened last time, too.'

My first awareness is of softness, and warmth. The smell of chocolate wafts over, and it tickles another memory, but one that is fuzzy, in my state. Yet clear or no, the memory opens my eyes to my surroundings. The walls are the color of coffee cream. That hasn't changed. Neither has the laundry basket I'm lying in- imagine a family that would keep the same laundry basket for five years!

The clothes are fresh from the dryer, and I stand up, not wanting to shed on them and get the lady of the house in trouble with her human, but also not wanting to leave the cloths that smell like soap and freshness and more. They smell like a mother and a place of security.

Eventually, I drift upstairs, looking for her, knowing in my heart where she'll be- sitting in the kitchen floor, under the table, with a dish of hot chocolate. She never picked up that I hated that drink, but what the hell. I never saw a reason to point it out to her.

There is no smile on her face when I reach her, but at least there isn't sadness, no fear, just an understanding glance before she turned briskly down to push the hot chocolate towards me.

The lump in my throat comes back, and I shake my head, once again not trusting myself to speak. I feel the overwhelming urge to call her 'Mom' like I used to, to break down here and now, but no. I won't.

I know she hasn't heard the news, but she has to have heard something, at the speed queens gossip around here. I don't want to tell her if she doesn't know what's happened, but my mouth opens anyway and a cracked, shattered voice that doesn't sound like my own spills out.

"He's dead, Jelly. Munkustrap's dead."

Coricopat had gotten past the urge to cry, and Tantomile hadn't sobbed for very long. Maybe, he wondered, they really were attached only to each other and magic. Maybe they were cold hearted, like he had been screamed at that they were several times that day. Or maybe it was just anger.

Much good telepathy did you, if you didn't understand people at all.

What did they need? Did they need comfort? Did they need to feel strong, or safe? Or did they sometimes just need to sort themselves out?

He turned over, and then turned over again, and another time. Finally, he just stood and walked out of the den, into the glare of the day.

"...and that's what happened." I know my eyes are probably red, and I said a lot of things that I hope never pass beyond this room. Through the whole thing she sat, nodded, but never showed pity, or sympathy, except on the general subject of Munkustrap's death. She hadn't cried, but her eyes were shining and sad. Maybe she wouldn't cry. Maybe she just didn't want to cry in front of me, or anyone.

And then I almost collapse again, then and there, but I don't cry. Jelly's not someone you can cry to, because she's liable to cuff you for being a wimp. Even if your parents were killed in front of your eyes, she wouldn't let you cry for long. It seems cruel, but it helps. It helps me. And maybe everyone needs to learn when to move on.

Still, she says nothing, just looks at me, green eyes sad and curious, waiting for what I'm going to say next.

"I don't know what to do."

Again, I want to dissolve, but not in tears. I want to run all the way back to the junkyard and scream at everyone in there. I want to scream that out loud so that they can hear me in Communist China, and so that everyone knows. What do they want me to do? What do they want me to do?

Her whiskers twitch, and then she speaks, and I listen, just to hear the sound of the cat I called mom once more. I listen, hoping to feel safe again, but no. I'm too old to feel safe, I'm twenty, maybe twenty one.

"Alonzo." Her eyes are clearing up, and I wonder if she will cry at all. "This is what you will do. Go back to the Junkyard, and protect the Jellicles. You shouldn't have come here, not now." She looks down, and sighs. "I'm glad you came here, but you shouldn't have. You don't need me, they need you." Fiercely, she looks up again. "You can't not know what to do anymore, Alonzo."

Demeter hadn't stopped crying. The tears muted everything else so that when her sister touched her on the shoulder and cried with her, she didn't notice. When Bombalurina left, she cried harder, but not because of that.

When Bomby returned, she was curled up and whimpering, and refused the food her sister had brought her.

It had been a day.

Surely she had to stop crying soon.

Right?

Right?

The argument is over, and of course she won. But it wasn't much of one, not like the ones we used to have.

Neither of us feels like arguing. I know in my heart she's right, and she knows I know it. But I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can go back there and face everyone. I'm not the cat Munkustrap was, but when I say that, she just shakes her head, looks at me, and says, "Be that cat."

Abruptly, I stand, throw my arms around her fiercely in the warmth of a hug I wanted her to give me, and that's when the lump comes back and my eyes start to tear up. I whisper "Thanks, Mom," in her ear, mainly because I needed to do that, than to thank her for that good advice that I hate. Because for an instant, she feels like my foster mother again, and me just a lost kitten. Then it's past.

I'm stronger than her now, but she pushes me off lightly with a comment like, "Oh, you," and then turns away quickly. I wish I could call her Mom again, but the flashback is faded, she's Jellylorum. Not my mother, because my mother was a street cat, and you can't get less street than her. I stand there for a minute, unsure, and she says, "You'd better get to the junkyard, Alonzo. I'll be along later."

I nod, remember she's not looking at me, and mumble something then leave, not sure if I feel better or worse. But as I step out of the room, I hear a sob, followed by the silence I've become familiar with- that of someone determinedly not crying.

Maybe she should be the protector.

The second person Tantomile told that day was the Rum Tum Tugger.

He was angry. Dead angry.

His little brother was dead.

Gone were countless arguments, hundreds of feuds and pranks and even the fact that they were both grown cats, now. Munkustrap was the chubby little kitten that used to wake up with nightmares as late as noon, the Tugger's kid brother. His brother.

Not that that bitch cared, just told him and walked away, away to go get on with her stupid witchy life.

He probably screamed something at her, but his memory was a little faded. Red was in his eyes as veins exploded, and he had to sit down, but he remembered saying one thing over and over. He was going to get that ass, Macavity. If it was the last thing he did.

It didn't matter who or what was in his way, because his little brother was dead, because of that... that...

A scream of grief tore itself from his throat, and that was it. No tears, no pain, just anger, because it was time someone taught that bastard that meaning of fear.

"Macavity." The name hissed easily between Tugger's teeth, "Macavity. You're going to regret this. You're going to regret the day you were born into this family. And you're going to curse the day I was." He might have yelled, but it was so much more satisfying, so much more threatening, to do it this way.

He wasn't a fighter by nature. He was a rock star.

What could he do? How could he get that bastard to a position where Tugger had the advantage?

Yes. No. Then he smiled grimly as a flash of striped orange fur passed. Yes.

"You're going to pay, Big Mac."

The junkyard still scares me. I feel much better standing outside it, hovering outside it, because I don't want to go inside. The tears are still caking in my throat, and I don't want to talk to anyone, but I have to. I have to do a thousand things, the first of which

(The note.)

I don't remember. Something to do with the way, the way he was found. Something...

Bast. I don't like this, I really don't.

Now the flashbacks end. The thinking ends, for now, and it's time to live.

A black and white cat, not a kitten any longer, hovers outside the junkyard. He's not heavily built, actually perhaps an inch below average height and rather slender. Many queens have considered him attractive in the past, but there is not risk of that today. Today his eyes are bloodshot and they glisten with tears that want to fall. His stance makes him look afraid, and he is.

He is afraid and scared and wants nothing more than to run, run far away.

He walks inside.

The junkyard is a Bast-forsaken mess.

I know who I want to see first, but the most important thing is who I need to see, first, right? I hope so. I really do.

It's getting so hard to think, and I can't close my eyes. I see the blood mixed with his stomach contents pouring from his mouth, all over his fur, as if that was his final reflex, to vomit with his eyes closed and then die.

My hackles raise, and I hold back a shudder, or try, without success. It comes again, and again, and suddenly I am on the floor again, collapsed against a tire, my eyes closing once more, but it feels good, because now for no reason, I really, really, need nothing more than sleep.

And then? I am standing once more, my legs shaking as I walk on inwards, with no idea what to do or even expect, still with the pain in my throat as hundreds of unshed tears become a malignant tumor of sorrow.

Tantomile watches him walk in with her arms around the dark queen Cassandra, and her lip curls only a little.

She had hoped he wouldn't come back, after he ran away like that, on one side, on the other she had prayed he might show a bit of backbone. But not this. Slinking into the junkyard like it could kill him to be strong, as if he expected it to protect him, now.

And poor Cassandra.

Could he have had any idea what the dark queen felt? What would he think if he saw her now, curled up and racked not by tears (though everyone in their way grieved for Munkustrap, some knew him far less personally) but by fear. Fear of what was coming, without a protector.

Tantomile had actually thought that the little worm was going away for good.

But it was worse than that.

At first, Cassandra smiled, said Alonzo would handle it, he could handle it, they would be safe.

She had faith in that selfish bastard, and he ran away. Ran away and left the junkyard terrified, and his own mate scared not for herself but for him, thinking whatever had gotten Munkustrap had gotten him. And now he has the nerve to come slinking back in like a beaten weasel, and she wonders where their 'protector' has been while the people with feelings mourned.

Tantomile bites back a snarl and turns it into a smile. Conflict can come later. Just now, there has to be peace, for her friend's sake.

"Look," standing, she lays a paw on the Burmese's head, and gently tilts her face upwards, towards the tom who sure as the fell had better make her feel better. "He's back."

I try to pretend I'm still talking to Jelly, in that sand colored soft house, where I can be brave. But the first cat to come up to me ruins that charade.

"Where the hell have you been?" Her voice is a screech, her normally beautiful face is in tatters, no makeup on, her hair undone, and she stands before me, a picture of anger.

Some queens look wildly beautiful in moments like these, but Bombalurina sends chills up my spine. She looks rabid.

For the first time in my life, I genuinely have no idea what to say.

"Do you think you can just waltz away from us now? Do you? My sister," her face draws close to mine, an incensed snake hiss shredding from it, "isn't eating. The kittens are in tears. Jennyanydots is in tears, and so is Skimbleshanks, and even more of the kittens start crying because they're crying!"

The hardest thing of my life

(has everything lately been the hardest thing of my life?)

is to not flinch away from her, to try to take a collected step backwards.

"Half of the population of the Junkyard is terrified, and..." the rage still in her eyes, she draws back her fist, and suddenly I'm on the floor with hot blood spurting from my nose, and no idea how it happened so fast, only the idea of the pain like a red hot poker sizzling into the masses of sadness, and my stomach turns.

No tears. No tears. No tears! Biting into my tongue until it bleeds, I suddenly feel something horrible, starting in my throat, something that isn't a sob.

The tingle of illness and sour bile roils up my throat and over my tongue, forcing my mouth open and anything I've had to eat in the last few hours through my burning mouth into a stinking puddle on the ground.

Bombalurina is standing over me now, and I am clutching my stomach and trying to keep from both crying

(he's dead, he's dead)

and screaming

(why did you do that?)

or rolling into my own vomit.

In the end, I stand, and she hasn't moved, but her face is softer, a little bit softer.

Bombalurina doesn't apologize, and she will stand by what she just did. Her face almost looks glad that she did it to me, a bit less stressed, a little more normal.

I try to speak and choke, try, choke. For a minute, I'm afraid I won't be able to say anything at all, but I finally manage, in the same tired, defeated voice I spoke to Jelly in, I manage to say, "Don't take out your anger on me, Bomby." We're friends, or I thought we were. Are we? I have no idea any more. "It's not my fault any more than it's your fault..." I start to say, 'and I'm only feline, like you,' but stop, sigh, and walk away.

She watches him go with mixed feelings. He deserved that punch; he deserved to roll in his own puke like an animal. He was supposed to be their leader now! Munkustrap had chosen him because-

Munkustrap.

Bombalurina turns her head towards the oven, where her sister has taken her first bites of food. Maybe she's too angry. Maybe she just needs to think this through.

Who was closer to Munkustrap than Demeter? Answer- no one. No one felt this like her sister, her sister who was practically married to the tom. Had been.

Right?

Bast, she hated moments of uncertainty. What did she know about Alonzo? Not much, for someone she was friends with. He was just another kitten taken in off of the streets. One that Munkustrap had taken under his wing, because when the tom was only twenty, he wanted someone to be his younger brother...

He never cared about that stuff, though. He was just like all of the other toms his age, running off at a sign of danger, interested only in females and drugs.

Everyone knew that.

There is only one person that I dare to go see, and I can only pray that I can face her.

Frankly, I'd rather get punched by Bomby again, because who knows what she will think of me.

But I need to cry. I can feel it still, consuming my entire body with a tingling ache, my breaths more like sobs than anything else. If I don't, it will swallow me, keep me running, and I will never be the leader I need to be.

One good cry, and it will all be over. I don't need to worry about it again, and no one needs to know. No one will know, though, because I won't do it.

Because toms don't cry, for Everlasting Cat's sake. We can't.