A/N I'm sorry for the delay in getting this up. I forgot last week was Spring Break, and I have a difficult time writing when there's a 6 year old kid running loose around the house. The more I write, the more this story is going in unexpected ways, but that's ok. It happens sometimes :) I'll try to get the next chapter up soon! By the way, a friend and I actually found a kitten like this behind a grocery store about ten years ago. He was so thin the vet couldn't even vaccinate him, because he didn't have any muscle sites on his body to inject into. Spectre recovered and went on to make a great pet though.
I also found a beta reader (thank you Angel) who helped clean up this chapter so it reads far more smoothly than the previous version did.
The evening started out badly with dinner, and things went strictly downhill from there. The arguments had been going non-stop all night with their father concerning his visit from New York and the divorce.
Even after leaving the movie theater, before Jack, Lucy and John had even reached the rental car, another heated dispute was underway, this one about John's apparent inability to stop smoking while in their presence.
Stopping, Lucy turned to give her father a derisive smile, "Jesus, John, you're the one who promised not to smoke or drink around us. It doesn't make any difference where we are."
John stiffened as his daughter called him by his first name, and Lucy immediately picked up on it. Even Jack was grinning at his discomfiture.
"Gee, sorry, John," she continued, putting added emphasis on the name, "I mistakenly believed you'd keep your promise, for once in your life. I guess I should have known better, I mean after all if you're going to break your wedding vows to Mom by divorcing her, why should we expect you to keep your promises to us?"
John's face went still at that, and he reached into his pocket and pulled the pack of cigarettes back out, "You don't think I can quit smoking around you?"
Jack snorted, "Hell, I'm shocked enough that you've stopped drinking while you've been visiting us here in L.A." He walked up to stand beside his sister. At fifteen, she was two years older than he was, but the boy had just hit a recent growth spurt and was already her equal in height.
"Want me to quit smoking?" John crumpled the pack of cigarettes in his hand, and threw them toward the trash dumpster a short distance away. The lighter followed suit and clanked against the side of the dark green dumpster before falling to the pavement. "There, I quit smoking. You happy now?"
"Please," Lucy replied, rolling her eyes. "Like you're not going to go buy another pack before you head back to New York." She arched an eyebrow at her brother, "What do you think, Jack? I give him 24 hours, you willing to take that bet?"
Jack shook his head, smirking. "No way, no bet."
"Quiet!" John broke into their conversation in a low voice, holding up his hand.
Lucy began to retort but realized he wasn't even looking at her. Instead his attention was focused on the dumpsters. "What..?" she started to ask, but her father interrupted her again.
"Shh, I thought I heard something," John said out the corner of his mouth without looking around.
Jack shrugged unknowingly at her, "I didn't hear anything." But he fell silent, cocking his head in concentration.
Heaving an impatient sigh, Lucy listened as well. She could hear the sounds of cars leaving the front side of the movie theater parking lot, and… something else. Some kind of crying, mewling sound was coming from the direction of the wastebin.
As their father warily approached the dumpster, Jack whispered, "It kinda sounds like a baby."
Lucy's mind suddenly filled with the image of them finding a newborn baby amidst the theater's trash, bloody and umbilical cord still attached. She didn't watch the news very much but even so she knew it had happened before. For the first time since his arrival from New York almost five days earlier, Lucy McClane was glad that her father was there. Whatever was making the noise, she knew John would be more than capable of dealing with it. "What is it, Daddy?"
John crouched down, peering under the dumpster and finally answered, "It's a cat. It's a damned cat."
The small animal sat just under the edge of the wheels of the dumpster. It didn't move as they approached Instead it continued meowing hoarsely, a rasping quiet sound that rattled in the thing's throat.
"It's not a cat, it's a kitten," Jack corrected, moving up to stand behind his father, and his eyebrows furrowed. "It's awfully small. Why's it sound like that? My friend Tucker got a kitten and it didn't sound like that."
John reached out, wrapping his fingers around the little kitten's torso to pick it up and then cursed as he touched it. "Son of a bitch," he said with disgust, standing to his feet and staring at the kitten that was so small he could hold it in the palm of one hand and still have room to spare.
"What's wrong?" Lucy immediately asked, moving around him and reaching out to pet the cat. She gasped, drawing her hand back in shock. "Oh my god, it's nothing but bone."
The kitten's coarse but fluffy fur had hidden its true physical condition. This animal was beyond thin. It was emaciated, literally starving to death. Lucy could feel every single one of the ribs, the bony protrusions on the spine, and the points of the hip. Even the bones of the cat's tail could each be felt individually, it was so thin. No wonder it hadn't moved forward to approach them, it was doubtful the kitten even had the strength to walk. It began to shiver uncontrollably even though it was a typical warm Los Angeles night.
Jack felt the kitten as well, and wrinkled his nose. "That's just gross," he announced, shaking his hand as though to rid it of the feeling.
"Here, take it for a minute," John ordered, pushing it into Lucy's startled hands before he quickly unbuttoned and removed his blue shirt, revealing the plain white t-shirt he always wore underneath.
"Why's it shivering like that?" Lucy asked, looking up at her father. "It's not cold at all outside."
John reclaimed the kitten, wrapping it in the warmth of his shirt as he answered, "Because it's got no muscle. Takes muscle to stay warm, to insulate you from both heat and cold." He tucked it under his arm and began walking briskly toward the rental car. "Either of you two know where there's a vet clinic that's open 24 hours?"
Jack and Lucy looked at each other with no small amount of confusion, then hurried after him.
"Uh, yeah. I think there's a 24 hour vet on the way home, you know, that big one on the right just past the McDonald's?" Lucy responded, then hesitantly asked, "Is that where we're going? But Daddy, um, I thought you hated cats. Hated them with a passion, in fact."
Jack immediately nodded, as he climbed into the back seat. "I definitely remember you saying you hate cats on more than one occasion. You said it was why we couldn't get one when we were kids."
"I do hate cats. What the hell's that got to do with anything?" John demanded as he gave the kitten to Lucy again so he could drive. "I can't stand cats. But what, did you think I was just going to leave it under the dumpster to die a slow death? I may hate cats, but this cat needs help and there's no one else around to help him. So that's what we're going to do."
Five years later, for some reason that particular occasion came to Lucy's mind as she stared at a very inebriated Jennifer Brooks, who was in an alcohol-induced stupor and passed out on the large sofa at the frat party Lucy and some friends had gone to.
Two guys sat on either side of Jennifer, running their hands up and down her jeans-clad thighs. The girl's head lolled, her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. "Man, check this out," the dark haired guy on her left said, leaning over to nuzzle her neck and kiss her. The other guy laughed and roughly groped one of Jennifer's breasts. "She is totally out of it."
"Come on, Lucy, let's get out of here," Bethany Tatum said to her, and not for the first time. She followed Lucy's gaze to where the guys were again feeling up Jennifer, and let out a short bark of laughter. "Talk about getting what you deserve, that stupid bitch. If I'd known she was gonna be here, we never would have come." In a lower voice, she whispered to Lucy, "Not that the party would have been any better without her… What a waste of a Saturday night."
Lucy didn't respond, still watching the guys, and finally Bethany snapped her fingers a few times in front of her friend's eyes. "Lucy? Hello? Earth to Lucy… Wish you were here…"
Blinking, Lucy gave a slight shake of her head as she came out of her reverie, and then said quietly to Bethany, "Help me get her out to the car. We'll take her back to her dorm room, her roommate is probably home by now."
"What?" Bethany drew back with surprise. "Are you kidding? Um, hello? Lucy, don't you remember about a month ago, when Jennifer told Carlos that you were cheating on him, so he'd dump you and then go out with her? I remember that, and I also remember you saying she was a bitch and deserved anything bad that came to her."
Lucy sighed, blowing her bangs off of her forehead. "Yeah I remember saying that. But I also remember that Carlos could be an arrogant jerkwad and that I said I'm better off without him," she reminded her friend, adding with a small smile, "So in a way, she did me a favor." She watched the two frat guys feel up Jennifer more, by this time they'd managed to unbutton the girl's blouse. "But I also know that she's too drunk to defend herself right now, and I am pretty sure neither of these two guys are her type."
"Yeah, but…" Bethany started to protest, but Lucy interrupted.
"Look Beth, if that were you, would you want to be left alone here, with two guys doing to you what they're doing to her right now?"
Beth didn't reply but her answer was obvious enough.
Lucy lifted a chin to indicate the guys, who had now been joined in 'the fun' by two more. "She needs help getting home, and I'm going to help her, with or without you. With any luck she won't remember a thing…. Including the fact that you and I were the ones to help her home."
This time Lucy didn't wait for an answer. Instead she strode purposefully toward Jennifer, announcing to her 'suitors' that she was going to help the girl get home, and using her most unfriendly and darkest glare to scare away any the guys who protested.
"Girl," Bethany finally said as she came up to Jennifer's other side, and together the two friends lifted the drunken girl off the couch and helped her toward the door. "You just don't do things that normal people do sometimes."
"Yeah," Lucy grunted, a slight smile on her face as she glanced at Beth, "I get that from my dad's side of the family."