Note- I think the fic's about half done now. I had no idea it would shape up to be this long- hell, it didn't even start as a CATS fanfic! It started as just a freewriting exercise. I'm not too happy with this chapter.
A bit more German: Aufwachen means wake up.
Guess what I don't own? A: CATS!
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6
"Quaxo! Quaxo!"
"Mwha?"
"Wake up? C'mon, man. I need you."
"Again?" He tries to sound angered, but fails miserably. Instead his voice shakes with apprehension. "What is it this time?"
"You gotta-" I stop, my voice dying in my throat, and my body slumps with fatigue. "summon-" Whatever it is that's been keeping me going for so long suddenly flies away and hits me with it's bill, knocking words and breath from me in one deadly sweep. "Gotta-" The last thing that I remember is the world falling in on me, then blackness, beautiful, blissful blackness.
A giggle echoes shrilly out over the junkyard, and a pigeon flies from its perch, cooing in terror.
She spins in a lazy circle then crumples to her knees- the moon is almost set, but its light does not grow softer or kinder on the orange stain her fur makes on the night. It is icy as ever, sending shivers through her.
Is she laughing or crying?
Maybe both.
Where will she go now?
Where will she go?
Shaking like a leaf, she quivers on her feet, not standing so much as quaking in place.
And then she runs.
And runs.
The night absorbs the sound of her footsteps, and the moonlight forgets the sight of her pelt.
The city is unchanged.
Cassandra is lost on streets she doesn't know- panic sears through her brain irrationally. Everywhere she turns, she sees nothing but the same neon lights, flickering angrily, taxis screeching around corners, fog creeping into the early morning streets, an overpowering blanket.
She backs up, away from it, towards the dark and quiet of a comforting looking alleyway, and the city consumes her.
Warmth. I had no idea warmth could be so lovely.
No. Something's wrong. There is no one, and I don't know where I am, except that I want to stay here and never move again. Something cushions me beneath and perhaps it is a blanket draped over me above, but it's wrong! I have to be somewhere, doing something, even if I can't remember what it is, and I have to go now. I have to!
But even as I try to stand, I am pressed back down, and a voice tells me to lay still. I will later remember protesting, but it isn't to be argued with, because my body agrees with it, and I slip away back into my dreams.
The oven has one more patient, one more nurse, and now the tuxedo tom named Quaxo paces outside, guarding it simply because there is no one else to do so. A thousand thoughts whirr busily inside his mind, shaping a hundred possible places to go from here, none of them good.
Inside, Jellylorum sighs with disgust. All four of them are idiots, but him most of all. Couldn't he just listen to her? Was it too much for her advice to- never mind. But she wasn't going to be soft on him. When he woke up, she would come down with both paws and screw what Jenny said about patients being left to rest.
Sleep was well and good, and food as well, but rest was for the weak minded. She hadn't raised him to be weak.
Ignoring the little voice which whispered she hadn't raised him at all, she glared down at four still forms that might well be dead, carefully guiding her eyes away from the feet of the horrid figure in the corner.
What doesn't kill us, makes us strong.
This time it is light, running through the smoky glass and drilling through my eyelids- the light of morning and time to be active. My body still feels hollowed out and brittle as a dried leaf, but it is at last an energized leaf. I have things to do, yes, and it's high time I talked to the junkyard-
"Alonzo!"
That same voice hits me in razor tones, wiring through my brain and bypassing the free will circuits, yanking me up directly by my spine.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The voice reaches in me and presses the button that says 'cringe', and my ears fold down as my shoulders hunch in.
"Stand up this instant!"
Entirely bewildered, I can't stop myself from obeying, and I whirl around to look into a face set like cement.
"Now answer me!"
Finally I think to talk, somehow I can't force my mouth or throat to so much as twitch. Instead my eyes widened, and I bite my tongue until blood and pain begin to spread out of my mouth and trickle down my face, and my commander takes me by the shoulders and shakes me. "What the hell were you doing? Now go get something to eat and take care of your stupid junkyard, or I swear I'll have the hide from your back!"
You ever heard them say sometimes all you need is a shove in the right direction? Ha! Try a kick in the kidneys in the right direction, nothing motivates you like that.
You stumble head over heels towards where you need to go, and even if your balance is good you cascade all over the place, grasping constantly on what turns out to be thin air until you can support yourself on a handy wall, or maybe another cat. Jenny is generally a good bet.
"Alonzo..."
"Ngh." Is that all I can say? My mouth moves as though filled with glue and pencil shavings.
Jenny's eyes roll back in her head. "There's water in the corner and food beside it. Eat, then scram. I don't know when we'll need more sickbeds, and if you're well enough to walk, you're well enough to do your job."
Wonderful, I want to say. I want to be sarcastic and nasty, but maybe it's for the best that I can't get sound out. Instead, I merely stagger across the yellowed paint to hit the metal knees first before a bowl of water, and I teeter forwards, catching myself on my claws, almost as though I was kowtowing in worship of it. I feel like I should- water! It's the best idea in the world right now.
Jelly is glaring at me, so I don't dip my paws in it, or splash it over my face like I desperately want to, merely drag myself up to drinking level and lap thirstily at it, as it cleanses my throat, soothing over the dry, ravaged feeling with coolness that feels better than anything I've ever tasted. Taste. Yes, I should have food! And then I should go outside and think about what to do. I've been reacting this whole time, with no plan, no motivation except to get from one encounter to the next, and if I just sit down and mull this over, I'll figure out what to do. Munkustrap wouldn't have chosen me to be his successor if I didn't have it in me.
Right?
Lost. Dammit! Where is Cassandra?
Is that all she's out here for? No.
Many things drive Tantomile through the city streets, their flashes of neon spraying garish color over the world of the night. A corner of the feeling of urgency which pulses quickly, almost in beat with the bar signs and light ads, is concern for her friend, but mostly it is a feeling she cannot define.
Fear. A monster, lurking beneath her fur, devouring her self-possession and making candy bar bites of her confidence. Nothing like this has ever pounded in her blood before, and it drives her faster, high on adrenaline, determined to do this for herself, through the night.
She knows what she has seen, and what will come to pass.
But perhaps it is, in the end, for the best.
"Alonzo!" Everlasting Cat, I never thought I would grow to hate my own name! "Alonzo!"
"What!" It is not my voice that flies out of my throat but a snarling wolf's and I feel it lash back on me, sagging. "I mean," I pound it softer, "what do you want, Quaxo? That I can actually do?" Maybe too soft. I need to master the art of what I can say and what is better bottled up inside of me.
His eyes dart away from mine, blinking a spark of reflected moonlight as they do. "I want to help you. You know. Like. With the junkyard."
"You what?"
"With stuff. Like, I can keep track of people... and... stuff... But I'll be useful. Really, I will. Munkustrap was gonna let me use my powers to protect the Junkyard, the Twins were training me for it-" he stops to gasp in a breath, "and you really my help. Even a Peke could see that." And then he lapses into a silence fraught with possibility- me biting my lip and staring at him, wondering what would happen if I said I could do this myself, just let the words on my tongue leap out and tear this into pieces. That can't happen. But I can feel it trying to anyway. By the look of apprehension on his face, he can too.
Okay, maybe I was a little too proud, but I always thought that I should do everything on my own. Right now, I'm just worn and beaten and hope that his mentors will forgive me when I tell him that I need all the help I can get. Maybe later, I'll learn to rely on just myself, but right now is the time to for once do something smart.
Even if he isn't ready.
After all, it's not like I was.
It's five am, and the junkyard is still. Washing out the night to the east, barely distinguishable from the city's brightness, the sun thinks of rising, and through the air flows the damp, refreshed feeling that makes the junkyard cats believe that all is well.
They sleep.
Or most of them do.
Alonzo thinks, trying to ignore Quaxo's still form, trying to quell the fear of the other cat's power as he sits motionless, tracking down every living Jellicle in London
(they hope, anyway)
with his mind.
In the infirmary, Bombalurina does not sleep, but lies awake, still watching Demeter for signs of life. In the new light, with brand new shadows dancing across the room, she realizes that she can make out her sister's ribs beneath unkempt and unwashed fur- and shudders, cold despite her blanket.
On the streets, Cassandra dances with death, because He is stalking her in the form of a shadowy tom, and Tantomile has joined the three, creating an odd sort of morbid ballet to a soundtrack of early city traffic. For her, it's a race against time. She thinks not of what will happen when she makes her decision, only of one future, and her friend's life.
A mind follows her, icy with dread and sorrow it is terribly resolved to as Coricopat sits on the car trunk, motionless as a statue, praying even in his subconscious that she will not get there in time, and feeling guilt-ridden for it.
Somewhere, a monkey wrench dances around the gears. Her name is Rumpelteazer. We will watch her, and see what happens.
But the sun does not watch. It doesn't see, it doesn't care, it just spins in the sky, bringing on the ever flowing onslaught of time.
It's what, four, maybe five? God, how can he sit there and sit like some ice statue, his eyes shut against the world? What does he see in his mind?
His power truly scares me. No cat should be like this, able to create a living dead man like the Tugger, or send his mind elsewhere while his body rests on earth. It's not right.
Of course, I don't exactly have much else to rely on, and what can I do? Tell him to get rid of his magic? Even if I dared, he couldn't. Even if he could, he wouldn't! The junkyard cats need it to protect our tribe.
What was it Munkustrap told me? I can't remember, so I merely widen the distance between me and Quaxo, waiting for him to surface again, in the ever brightening daylight.
Six thirty am, by the sound of the traffic, a cacophony of discordant blaring as rush hour swells to its peak. With it, the sunrise has brought an icy wind that pierces my coat and abrades my eyes, making me blink until they burn with tears.
"Autumn comes swift and hard this year."
I don't turn around. My bones ache with the sudden temperature change, and standing or even bending my knees is unthinkable just now.
"Perhaps by October we will see a snowfall." Now I begin to recognize the voice, and I remember how I always thought that Old Gus had the speech of a winter leaf, for his voice is warm and brown, but faded and wrinkled into terminal frailty by untold ages of wear. A voice so familiar and routine is a breath of fresh air in the suffocating crazy world that I feel I now live in. "Perhaps sooner."
"Surely there have been worse autumns?" I do not take my eyes off the patch of ground that has fixated them for the last hour- I know that inch of dirt like my own brother, now.
Behind me, a breath is drawn in heavily. "Some. Yet it is rare to feel the bite of winter at the end of August." Now I let my eyes slip closed, trying to see what his voice paints pictures of. Black and white, faded photographs, of families forcing smiles in front of cameras, in clothes they would never otherwise wear. No one in those pictures wants to be there, they do it for their family. But you can see the family dashing inside and locking the door against screaming blizzards and sleeting rains of ice, or at least I can feel it in his words. The chill of winter cut through fur and threadbare human rags, slicing a creature up right at the heart of his bones. The old moan in bed and the young dash restlessly around the house, drowning themselves in the clamorous cries that they raise. The adults drown sorrows and fears in good warm brandy, and sometimes have a bit too much, and then the house gets scary...
No. No! Why am I so morbid today?
"How long will the winter last, Gus?" Just the polite thing to ask. A long winter will be bad and good for the junkyard- worse for those with no humans or shelter.
"Not so long." His voice rasps and shakes as if his throat is torn. "Not so long. But colder. And there will be storms." And he stands behind me, his statement sitting in the air, a rock of certainty.
What a way to put it. There will be storms.
The junkyard will be buried in snow.
Ice will coat the streets, homeless humans and animals alike will be snuffed silently in the night as Jack Frost exercises his twisted humor.
Strays will hide indoors, huddle together as the devil's cries echo in the wind.
The weak will die.
The frost will kill the mice, the rats, it'll bring new dangers to foraging the dumpsters. What survives will be lean, tough, and nasty.
There will be storms.
And yet,
(Alonzo turns around slowly, but Gus is gone with the shift of the breeze, fluttering away like a leaf, searching for a place warmer and nicer than this)
those who survive will keep surviving
(his face is weathered and fragile, like his voice, and his fur hangs in tatters from his skin, but he is alive and older than almost any cat in the junkyard)
and keep surviving, until they are as old leather, drenched and dried in the sun, pale, wrinkled, and finally ready to give life over to the next generation.\
Huh. Life. You'll never get out of it alive.
"Aufwachen."
At the whisper, crisp and clean and sudden like a cockroach being stepped upon, I turn to face the magical cat. His dark body was wire-tense with meditation, but now it deflates as he releases a sigh that goes on forever.
"Well?" My immediate life will be shaped by the contents of his report.
"Pretty much everyone's hanging around the junkyard. Of course you know whose in the oven, 'cept they just got joined by Gus, trying to keep warm. The kittens are all with Skimble because the queens are busy, and they're hanging around by the Tire. Old Deuteronomy is sleeping, dunno where his den is, can't tell, but he's fine. Um... Plato and Asparagus are just sort of keeping watch over the entrances and exits for you, though I'm afraid they're keep getting distracted by street queens. Still, they're at their posts. And Dad's at home." With the mention of his father he stops to breathe, then failed at smiling. "Unfortunately, Rumpelteazer's totally erratic- trying to keep track of her progress through the streets is terrible."
My lip hurts from being chewed on so much. "Then let her go for now. If it's a choice between her and the tribe, we have to keep watching the Jellicles."
"For now. That just leaves the Twins, and that's where it gets odd."
"What? Coricopat's right over there, so Tantomile should be too."
I regret my words the instant they leave my lips, partly because of the scared look that flashes in one unguarded instant across his wide eyes. "Well she's not. She's in the streets chasing after someone- 'snot Rumpie, and there's serious bad vibrations coming from her brother. Something isn't right Alonzo."
For a minute I paw idly at the dirt, trying to get past the instinct to say good riddance to the Twins, and focus. After all, they are cats too. Really. Even if she hates me and I hate her. Damn!
"And what about Cassandra?" My ears have been open the entire time for the one name that he hasn't mentioned.
The words come out in a flat hammer blow. "I can't find Cassandra at all."
As sudden, as hard, before I have the chance to react, a terrible scream explodes from the middle of the junkyard, and I am on my feet and running only a fraction before Quaxo.
There, where the scream came from, the male half of the magic Twins lies stiff across the car trunk, fallen backwards with his eyes and mouth still open in a soundless, twisted scream. Others are running over, but I barely take notice, only step away from it, afraid it will move, scared of how its head is turned, staring directly through me.
Quaxo's own scream sounds as if it is filtered through thick veils, veils of blood. Blood from wounds. Wounds etched like gaping death marks across the very, very dead body of Coricopat- Bile rises and heaves itself from me in one motion. Sounds around me suggest that this reaction is not unique to me, though I feel as if it must be. The sour taste stings my mouth; it cakes in the fur of my muzzle as I double over, stomach empty, gasping out dry heaves.
And then I land on my knees and it is over, one more thing on top of everything else.
I must be insane. That's the only answer. All of this has driven me crazy.
I'd like to think that.
I really would.
