A/N: Please excuse the fact that I use both Heaven and Heaviside. The Heaviside is the cat's version of Heaven, so I use both terms. I hope that won't be too odd. The story is odd enough as it is. Oh, and I forgot to do this in the first chapter...
Disclaimer: I do not own Cats. I'm only borrowing their story to help make my own. And hopefully, I'll do them justice.
Chapter 2 – In the beginning
Demeter watched as Munkustrap slept soundly in the corner of their den. He had been injured that night because of her. Though he put on a brave face for the rest of the tribe, alone in their den, he had no choice but to show her how injured he was. His brave facade had deteriorated as he crumpled into a ball in the corner, trying not to whimper in front of his mate. She held back her tears as she tried to calm him down. She could feel his heart racing as she licked his wounds.
After a while of this, he tried to shake her off. "I'll be fine."
"You always say that," she reminded him.
"I'm just…tired. Injuries hurt more when you're tired. I'll be fine. I think--" He grunted as her tried to get up, looking like he was about to be sick. When he was thrown by Macavity, it knocked the wind out of him, and he had complained about his back not feeling quite right. Now the pain was worsening. He couldn't talk anymore, and Demeter immediately made him lay down and rest.
"If you don't care for yourself, I guess I'll have to do it for you. At least this time."
It took him a while to steady his breathing and find a comfortable position to lay in, that didn't, as he put it, feel like there was a snake constricting his lungs to breath. After he had finally found a comfortable position, he smiled to Demeter. "What would I do without you?"
Demeter smiled sadly back at him. "You're life would be far less complicated. And you wouldn't get hurt." But he wasn't paying attention. He was drifting to sleep. Demeter kissed him on the forehead, before leaving the den, she was greeted by the rising sun with a blinding light, as if it had foreseen what she would do to him, and readily punished her for her actions yet to come. 'It's not my fault,' she thought to herself. 'To have caused so much trouble to so many cats…'
It all began when she was a young kitten. Her tribe didn't understand why she and her sister were developing so slowly. Their mother assured them they weren't sick. Then she joked about them being Jellicle Cats…"Isn't that what they did?" But she was hardly as calm as she pretended she was in front of the other cats in her tribe. She gathered her two kittens that night and left.
As they walked through the streets, on that cold night, Demeter couldn't help but wonder why they were leaving their home for the frosty night air. "I don't understand…"
"I know you don't, my love," their mother sighed, never stopping her quick stride. The kittens were struggling to keep up with her. "And I hope you never have to. Cats are afraid of what they don't understand. We need a tribe's protection rather than stay on the street, but there are times we need to protect ourselves from a tribe. They can turn on you if they know what you are."
"But they're our friends," little Bombalurina said, far wiser and much more articulate than a kitten her supposed age should have been. She didn't realize their level of maturity had raised eyebrows and far more questions. "What harm could they do?"
"Fear is a very powerful emotion, my loves," their mother explained, stopping momentarily. "Those who claim to love us one moment will turn on us when they find out we've been harboring a secret that we are not like them." And she showed them her scars to prove it.
Demeter paced outside of their shared den. Munkustrap could barely walk the next night, and she had to call the resident healer, much to his protest. To everyone else, it seemed like she was just being overly concerned for her mate. Luckily, so much could be explained away by her actions with her love for the tribe protector. She didn't have to ever go into explanation about why she reacted a certain way. Other's comforted her, told her he would be okay, and reminded her how tough that silver tabby was.
'Against physical pains, yes,' she thought to herself. 'But even the strongest warrior can be destroyed by a broken heart.' The primary thought on her mind was how he was going to take her leaving or simply how he would take finding out the truth. Which one would hurt less? And who would it hurt more? She debated on whether she should tell him the secret she had been keeping from other cats since the night they left their first tribe. She had never told anyone.
But her sister had once. And that experience was enough to make her reconsider telling this tom she trusted with her life about her.
It was after their mother had left them. She thought that once the kittens reached maturity, they should split up and travel on their own. It would be easier to slip into nonexistence with only one cat to consider. But the sisters could not leave one another; they needed each other. So instead, Bombalurina had devised a plan for them, taking example from what their mother had done.
"I think I figured out why our first tribe didn't take to us," Bombalurina said as they sat in an alleyway, eating some fish that had been thrown out from a restaurant. She spoke of the first tribe they had gone to after their mother left. Their tribe couldn't care less if they disappeared, and when the sisters started getting close to a male cat, his mate had her friends chase them out of the tribe. (Frankly, they were insulted that the other queens thought they were interested in him like THAT.) "Mom always made friends with queens when she went into new tribes. High standing queens. She had friends to back her up if anything ever happened. And she was pretty well liked."
"We don't like queens," Demeter said, frowning. They hadn't had many good experiences with queens their own age. (Toms were another matter.)
"Well, maybe we don't have to make friends with queens our age," the red queen continued. "They usually don't have much standing anyways. Think of it, we make friends with older queens, and they act like a matriarch to us."
"What if they don't like us?" Demeter asked.
"Well," Bombalurina reasoned, "We can go with our failsafe. Toms."
"That's what got us in trouble last time."
"We wait," Bombalurina continued. "We watch them, while we make friends with the other queens. We listen for rumors of which are available, looking, and possibly interested. Then…we use our female 'enchantments' on them. And they're OURS. Think of it! A leader of a tribe, or a sentinel? Anyone who is well respected! Even if the others didn't like US, as long as we have Mr. Right with us, he would defend our standing in the tribe."
"I don't know," Demeter said, squirming in her place. "How would that make us any different from whores?"
"We wouldn't be SLEEPING with them, per se," Bombalurina said, working out the plan in her head as she went along. "We wouldn't even have to call ourselves their mates. By the time they'd want to start something, we'll be ready to leave again."
The idealism of youth…They didn't take into account the aggression some toms had, the competition from secret admirers, and the back-stabbing of so-called friends. They also never expected to gain affection for the cats they were deceiving. Love seemed so easy to control, when they weren't involved with it. But Bombalurina fell for one of the toms she was deceiving. When it came time for them to leave, she decided she would tell him of their secret. Maybe they could stay. Maybe their mother was wrong.
They had never seen a tribe turn on them so quickly.
"Demeter?" The queen gladly broke her train thought as she turned to look at Jennyanydots. The gumbie cat beckoned the queen inside. "He's doing fine. You just make sure he keeps off his feet for a while. He's asking for you." The gold queen smiled to the elder cat, before walking into the den. Jennyanydots closed a makeshift curtain at the entrance of the den they used as a door to give them privacy.
"Munku," Demeter said as cheerfully as she could. Her nervousness couldn't be masked, however.
"I'm fine," he assured her, sitting up slowly, holding his side. "I wanted to see you. I think I scared you last night."
"You made me a little nervous, yes," she admitted. She had mastered the art of equivocation, if nothing else. She walked to his side, and sat on his bed, putting a paw on his shoulder, not wanting to injure him by hugging him.
He, however, put out his paw and pulled her closer gently, letting his paw rest on her side. "Well, at least I'll have a scar to match yours, now," he said lightly, trying to smile. The look from the gold queen made him cringe. "Sorry, a joke in bad taste." Demeter felt him gently stroke the scar on the side of her stomach, only detectable when she allowed someone close enough to feel beneath her fur.
"I don't know who would hurt an angel like you," he whispered into her ear.
"You're the angel, Munku." She looked at his wounds. "Anyone who would hurt you should be punished in hell." To her, that was the fate that should befall anyone who injured an angel. And she waited for it, when she would finally meet her demise.
So many hearts broken. So many dreams they allowed to be built that involved them, only to send them crashing to the ground when they abandoned their friends and lovers. There were cheerful faces of kittens who were close to them lodged in her memories. The kittens were now old or dead, and probably aged faster than they were meant to when they had to deal with their role-models disappearing. The scars on their bodies served as reminders of the pain they caused others by their sheer existence. Each scar held the sins they would have to pay for one day.
This made Demeter feel hopeless. When their mother had left them, she said to them, "We will meet again in the Heaviside." But once they decided their fates were to be the opposite of their paradise, Demeter told her sister they had to keep moving. If not for their survival, then to find their mother before any of them died. To see each other one last time before not even death could bring their souls back together. Maybe they could find a bit of heaven on earth for themselves. It was the only thing Demeter hoped for.
That was, until they met Grizabella. Then all hope was lost.
Demeter looked in on Munkustrap from outside their den as he was sleeping. Bombalurina stood behind her, a paw on her shoulder. "Do I have to leave him now?" she asked. "While he's injured?"
"A week ought to clear that right up," Bombalurina tried to sound cheery. But Demeter would have nothing of it. "Why are you so obsessed with him, anyway? You never used to get this way about leaving." The two moved away from where the others couldn't hear them.
"Do you remember when we found Grizabella?" she asked.
"Her?" Bombalurina asked, confused. "I wasn't too fond of her."
"Well, with good reason," Demeter admitted. "But…when she told us mother had died, I didn't know what to do. All I wanted to go was see her again. Now…why can't we go to the Heaviside? They have that ability! We could make friends with Old Deuteronomy, and…" Her sister looked unconvinced. "Imagine, staying here, making lives for ourselves. Stopping our games and lies!"
"They'll grow old all around us, Demeter," Bombalurina said warningly.
"I want a chance to go to Heaven!" Demeter said louder than she had meant to. They both looked around, nervous, but when there were no heads popping out from around the corner to give them a questioning look, Demeter continued, in a softer voice. "We can't do that if we keep lying to everyone we meet! It's not fair to anyone. Not them, not us…"
"You'll break a few hearts," Bombalurina said. "But atleast you'll save yours." Demeter averted her eyes. The red queen furrowed her brows in question, before realization struck. Bombalurina's jaw dropped, and she shook her head. She then grabbed her sister by the shoulders. "No!" she said. "Don't go thinking that you have feelings for him! You're just thinking that because you miss mother!"
"And if it's not that?" Demeter asked.
"DEMETER!" Bombalurina said sharply, trying to get her sister to look her in the eyes. "Do you want to stay here and watch everyone dying around you? Is that really what you want? How do you think he'd feel about that? And the others? Face it, kitten, we're not normal! We never will be! We can't ask for what normal cats have! They have precious few years to spend with each other…" Then she sighed. "I'm starting to sound like a greeting card…
"But you know what I'm saying is true," she continued after regaining her train of thought. "Maybe someday you'll meet a nice Jellicle tom to spend your life together with. But…it's not him. And you can't spend the rest of his life with him. It's too hard. He won't accept it."
Demeter could see the pain in her sister's eyes from the memories of their past, and she could say nothing. The gold and black queen nodded in acceptance. She found herself crying on her sister's shoulder like a kitten. Everything was far too confusing. And while she knew what she was supposed to do, she didn't have the heart to do it.
"Mom?" asked little Demeter, long before she knew how difficult life would be. "What's a Jellicle cat?"
"An alumnus of heaven and hell," the mother responded, cleaning off her kittens' fur.
"What does that mean?" little Bombalurina asked.
"We were kicked out of heaven," she explained. "But we live through hell."