Disclaimer: I do not own Cats or its characters.
Whole
Theme: Get Together
It took Coricopat two days, a terrible silence in his head, to realize that Tantomile was not coming back. He lay in his den, barely moving, constantly on the alert for the quiet sounds of her approach.
He didn't eat, not wanting to leave to hunt, worried that she would think he had moved on. He didn't sleep, not wanting to miss her arrival and have her think he didn't care. He simply waited.
Slowly, the realization that she simply was not coming back came over him, and despair replaced the agonizing watchfulness. She wasn't coming. She didn't care. He stretched out his mind, searching for her, but somehow she had hidden herself. Eventually he stopped looking at all, and simply lay in the darkness.
The prospect of moving seemed overwhelming to him. It was as if a heavy weight was crushing him, slowly—so, so slowly—draining the life out of him. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He almost welcomed it. Perhaps death would end the grief.
It was a week and a half before Coricopat saw the sun again.
He and Tantomile, desiring more privacy in their den, had hung a towel across the opening soon after she had moved in. In the darkness and quiet of the den, they could pretend that they were alone in the Junkyard, silently sharing thoughts and perfecting their abilities.
The barrier was pushed aside suddenly one morning, flooding the den with light. Coricopat protested the intrusion weakly, shutting his eyes against the light. Still, a tiny flame of hope lit in him…
Tantomile? he mind-whispered, hoping she could hear him. He was too weak to speak aloud.
"Bast, Coricopat, what have you done to yourself?" a male voice was saying, somehow familiar to Coricopat. He felt his hope die. Not Tantomile.
Paws grasped him, and he cried out hoarsely, both from the physical pain of the contact and the mind flooding into his. He couldn't even dredge up the energy to put his barriers back up, and soon, the pressure overwhelmed him, taking him back into darkness.
It was three days before Coricopat was lucid enough to realize where he was.
He blinked, looking around the den, and saw two cats in the opposite corner. One a sleek brown, the other patched black and white. A queen and a tom.
Cassandra and Alonzo.
The two looked over at him suddenly, seeing him awake, and sprang to their feet. Cassandra smiled faintly at him, murmuring something about getting food—or was that in her mind?—while Alonzo came towards him slowly.
"Are you feeling better, Coricopat?" he asked awkwardly, busying himself with fixing Coricopat's blankets so that he wouldn't have to actually look at the tom. "Do you need anything? Cassandra went to get food, but there's water here…"
"Water, please," Coricopat said, surprised at just how raspy his voice was. Alonzo nodded, helping Coricopat to drink from a bowl next to him. Coricopat shuddered as Alonzo touched him, struggling to shut himself off from the other tom's thoughts. Alonzo, mistaking his expression for pain, hurriedly lay the psychic cat's head back on the blankets and drew away.
It took a few more minutes, but Coricopat finally worked up the courage to ask the question he had not been able to find an answer to in Alonzo's head.
"Why…why are you doing this?" he asked, watching Alonzo stiffen slightly and turn away to hide his face. "Everyone hates us. Me and Tantomile. Why save me? That would be one less freak cat to worry about," he spat out, remembering all the times he had heard those words from Alonzo himself. By the set of his shoulders and his silence, Coricopat guessed that Alonzo was remembering, too.
"You…you were my friend, once," Alonzo said at last, still not looking at him. "I couldn't leave you to die. Tantomile told me. She said you needed help."
"Tantomile?" Coricopat said, startled. "Where is she? Is she okay?"
Alonzo shrugged, looking up finally and giving Coricopat a confused look. "That was the only time I've seen her in two weeks. Aren't you two together?"
"We're not together…anymore," Coricopat admitted with difficulty, feeling something die within him. It appeared that Tantomile hadn't been accepted by the tribe after all—all this was for nothing. And still she would not return to him.
He lay back down, trying to block out the mixture of pity and guilt in Alonzo's head, and waited for Cassandra to return with food.
It took five days for Coricopat to be well enough to return to his own den.
Alonzo and Cassandra left him there with the warning that they would be checking in every day until they were convinced he wouldn't let himself die. Coricopat agreed after having been asked just twice. He also overheard Alonzo making a mental note to check twice each day, just in case.
Another week passed.
Alonzo, true to his word (or thought, Coricopat supposed) had been checking in at least twice a day. Several times, he dragged Coricopat out of the den to hunt with him, walk around the Junkyard, spend time with him and Cassandra. At first it was done out of some sense of obligation, a duty to their old friendship, but gradually he came to enjoy Coricopat's presence.
Maybe they're not such freaks after all, he had thought a few times, and Coricopat had almost smiled at that.
At the end of the seventh night, Tantomile appeared.
Her eyes were red with tears, her fur matted with week-old dirt. There was blood on her coat and a dead look in her eyes.
Coricopat saw himself through her thoughts. He looked tired, tired like she had never seen him before, and frightfully thin. If he hadn't been sitting up, she would have thought him dead.
They closed the distance between them in an instant, embracing and letting their minds join together. There were no words, no thoughts, just a rush of emotion. And finally, finally, a feeling of being whole.
A/N: Back together again! This is set after the first chapter, when they split up. Overall, Tantomile was gone for about four weeks. More about what she did in that time next chapter.
But, hey! Now Coricopat has a friend! (Geez, I seem to write Alonzo and Cassandra a lot lately.)