Day 17
The Time And Place
(Selen/Johannes)
The first time she meets him, he is trespassing on her territory, and she doesn't hesitate to send him packing with his tail between his legs. She is queen of this city, and she alone knows all its tricks and twists. He doesn't stand a chance.
.
The second time she meets him, she is on neutral ground, but she sends him packing anyway. He can't defeat her, especially not when he is as easily distracted by shiny things as the cats that gather around him to stare. Distraction was always her speciality.
.
The third time is across an official dish, in a qualifying round of a local tournament that she and Enzo have entered (the tournament has a cash prize, and she really needs some more shirts because her current one is far too small for her, and Enzo wants chocolate). She acts all innocent, eyes bright and wide and deliberately naïve, and he fall for it, head flicking to the side as she gasps and points over his shoulder. But as she lets the mask fall and aims to flip his blade clear out of the dish, his head flicks back like a snake's and the spin-track extends once, twice - and Ray Gasher slides past without the slightest tap on the other blade. And it isn't cheating, it's cheating within the rules just like she does, just like her brothers do, and it makes her smile. So maybe here is an opponent she might call worthy one day. She is still smiling as he wheels round to attack again, still smiling when he flicks between height-modes faster than the eye can follow, still smiling when the phenomenal power of his golden bey crashes into Ray Gasher and lifts it out of the stadium. She is still smiling, though hiding it because what would Argo say if he saw her smiling at a loss, when the boy who defeated her rises through the ranks and wins the tournament.
.
The fourth time she meets him, she is with Ian. This turns out to be a bad thing, because Ian is determined to wreak revenge for his sister's loss, and once again the boy is on Garcia turf. The battle is messy, and destroys a couple of houses. The battling pair are chased away by a shop-keeper with a broom handle, and in the confusion the other boy vanishes.
.
It is nearly a year before she sees him again. She has almost forgotten him, in fact, and recognises his blade before she recognises him. In the shock, he very nearly beats her, but a gasp and a "Hi, Ian!" aimed over his shoulder makes him jump ten feet in the air and she is the victor. She only feels a little bad about it.
.
After that, she sees glimpses of him around, like the tip of a cat's tail as it whisks around a corner. She is intrigued by this boy, this strange cat-like man who is – at the moment – little more than a dream in the corner of her eyes. She doesn't tell Ian that she's seen him, and when Enzo stumbles home wide-eyed after an encounter with a golden bey that changed heights at will, she volunteers no information. Argo and Ian retreat to the back of the warehouse to discuss where they might trap this new opponent, but she slips out of the front door. They have forgotten him from before. She has not.
"You need to get out of here," she says to the open courtyard about two hundred yards from the Garcias' home. "Argo and Ian will grind your bones to powder if you let them catch you."
"Who says they'll catch me?" asks the shadow behind the barrels.
"I did."
A strange sound, something like a choked purr. "I let you. And your little brother."
"So you say. Not even a grain of dust blows across the road without Ian or Argo knowing about it."
"And yet you're here without them knowing?"
She tosses her head proudly. "You're my opponent," she says fiercely. "No-one else's."
"I beat you," he answers, stepping out of the shadows and lounging against the barrels. "I don't see how that makes you my opponent. It just makes you someone I defeated."
She tilts her head to the side. "Well, I beat you three times. You beat me once."
"Mine was the only official one."
"You're in my city, cat-boy. Official means nothing."
He hums, a deep and almost guttural sound that rumbles across the space between them. "We shall see."
.
She begins to see cats out of the corners of her eyes, always following her a safe distance behind. The only one she actually sees properly is a very handsome brown tabby who sits proudly on the boxes outside the Garcias' warehouse hideout and calmly washes his face.
.
They meet by chance in the middle of a busy street, she coming back from the market and he... well, she's not sure about him, but his cats almost swarm her. He claims she must have had some kind of fish in her bag, but none of the Garcias even like seafood – and anyway, he won't meet her eyes.
.
"This is getting ridiculous," she tells the brown tabby three days later. "Is he doing it deliberately?"
The tabby looks at her and then headbutts her, asking for a stroke. She sighs and does so, and the cat purrs happily.
.
She wakes up one night to find the brown tabby and two of his friends on the prowl around the warehouse. In the space of three hours they completely clear the area of rats and mice, and leave with no sign of them having been there. Ian is ecstatic at no longer having to lock food away in a metal bin (it gave apples the weirdest taste), but she isn't going to tell him where all the rodents have gone.
She is surprised the next morning by the brown tabby silently depositing the body of the largest rat she has ever seen in front of her. A gift, the cat seems to say.
.
He is sitting on the edge of a building when she finds him. "Your cats are very well trained," she says, and he laughs.
"They just did what cats do," he answers, and in that single sentence he betrays himself. They didn't clear the warehouse for the sake of being cats. They did it for her.
"Thank you," she tells him. "Maybe this winter we won't have to beg in the streets for food."
"Cats are excellent hot water bottles," he says absently, and lets her sit down next to him. They stay there together for nearly four hours. It's strange, sharing so much of herself – of her city – with someone outside her brothers, but it's nice.
.
The next time she meets him, he gives her a kitten. Argo asks where the creature came from, and she just shrugs and cuddles the tiny scrap of fur to her chest. She knows what it means when her cat-boy gives her a kitten, and she will protect little Tiger with her life.
.
"I've been seeing that cat-boy around a lot," Ian says suddenly one day, and she tenses. "If I didn't know better I'd say he was trying to recruit around here for whatever scheme he's involved with now."
"He's not," she snaps, too loud, too fast. Ian is known as the smart one of the family for a reason.
"You care about him." Ian's voice is quiet, and if she didn't know him so well she would say it was non-judgemental. But she can hear the thoughts in his head, and she knows he doesn't think her cat-boy is suitable for her.
"And your problem with that is?" she snaps. She might as well get this over with before Argo wades in, because she can challenge Ian or Argo alone, but not together.
"You're a Garcia," Ian tells her. "He isn't."
"So?"
"We are a family," says Argo from behind her, and her heart sinks. "We live together, fight together, die together. We trust no-one else, care for no-one else, or else we weaken our chances. Our priorities must always be each other, or we will be compromised in the dish."
She cannot fight them both one-to-two. But she is the master of distraction, and surely she can think of something?
"Have you never seen him fight?" she asks. "He's got the brain of a Garcia even if he doesn't come from here. Rumour has it that he nearly beat Gingka once."
"Rumours mean nothing," Argo snaps. "He is dangerous."
And she looks up at her big brother, and a flood of something overrides her common sense because she asks "Who to?"
.
When they next run across each other, she can't look at him. They are underneath a stadium somewhere (where? It didn't matter. It was just another tournament, and she was tag-teaming with Enzo like always) and her family sweeps past him like a ship in full sail, arrogant and tall because they came here to rule this stadium. She feels his eyes on the back of her head the whole way into the main arena, and the slightest sideways glance tells her that yes, he is watching her.
And yes, he still has a black eye.
.
"My brothers think we shouldn't see each other," she tells him a week later when she finally manages to find him again. He has been sulking, and hiding from her.
"Well, that was obvious," he says bitterly, pointing to the faint bruising around his eye. "And your family always comes first, I know. You're a Garcia."
"I'm a Garcia who sleeps with a kitten on the pillow next to her," she retorts. "My brothers don't get to share my blanket."
There is something implied in that which she isn't sure she really means, but his eyes sparkle like a cat's catching the light from a window in the dark. "You won't leave them, though."
She shakes her head. She likes this boy, she likes him a lot, but he is right when he says that she is still a Garcia. Argo, Ian and Enzo are family.
"I'll persuade them," she says at last. "Whether it takes a month, a year, three years, a decade. If this is right, if this is going to work, then I'm not doing it without them."
"Meow," he laughs. "And there was me hoping that you'd elope."
She smiles, really rather in love with his laugh - though it would take a carthorse to drag that confession out her. "Not yet."
.
She pretends to be feeling ill so that she can sneak away from training to meet him the next time. He is waiting for her at the corner, eyes flicking back and forth nervously – is he really that scared of Argo and Ian? She hides a snort of laughter, because they might be her older brothers, but she's her own woman and she'll make her own mistakes, thank you very much. He smiles when he sees her, and immediately launches into a blow-by-blow account of the battle he had with Bao the day before. She falls into step beside him and listens, because his voice is different to her brothers', and so she pays attention. Plus, she thinks Bao is an attention-seeking brat, and she finds it funny when people she doesn't care about lose.
She doesn't notice the time passing until it is dark and she can barely see him.
"I should go," she tells him, frustrated that the oncoming winter means that daylight is getting shorter and shorter. "My brothers think I'm sick, and they'll have finished training at sundown."
She is about to turn and go when he grabs her hand. There is just enough light shining from a late-closing shop nearby for her to see as he blinks at her once, twice, and then quickly darts in and presses the faintest, lightest peck of a kiss against her cheek.
Then he vanishes into the shadows.
She stands there for a long, silent moment, watching the place that he disappeared, before turning to make her way back to the warehouse alone.
But one of his cats – the brown tabby – follows her home, before fading into the night the moment that he is satisfied the girl his master cares so much about is safe.
Cats protect their own.