When he woke up, the vultures were still there.
Ignoring them, Oscar tried to get to his paws, but it proved to be too difficult for him just yet. He took his time coughing, and it was every bit as painful and exhausting as it ever had been, but the muck he coughed up was less stained with blood than before. This time, he managed to cover it with dirt himself.
Which inspired him to slowly turn around and assess the mess- or, rather, the lack-there-of- that he'd been laid in. The ground beneath him was relatively clean, except for the whiff of urine. Somebody had been cleaning up the by-products of his body while he was out of it, and doing it to the best of their ability…the realization made Oscar's insides twist with mortifying embarrassment. It would have been bad enough if it had been Lenny or Zeke, or even his late tigress…but even to think that it had been Diego…
He turned to coughing again, and when he finally stopped, breathless, shaking with pain, eyes watering, he found Diego observing him clinically, perched on a large boulder nearby. Had the bloody runt been here all this time? Had he been enjoying himself with Oscar's misfortune so thoroughly that he'd been keeping Oscar alive only to prolong his agony? He wouldn't put it past the traitor.
Diego turned away and was gone again, and Oscar wasn't surprised when, within minutes, another patch of wet moss fell in front of his hiding place. This time, however, it was a bit beyond his grasp. He wished very much to tell Diego exactly which body cavity he could stash up his darn moss… had he only been a little less thirsty.
Diego landed on all fours next to the moss patch, sly, elegant and powerful as ever, while Oscar could only stare at him from his prone position, shooting daggers of hate from his feverish eyes.
"You should drink", Diego stated lazily.
"Yer enjoying this a bit too much", Oscar growled, not knowing whom he hated more- himself for his helplessness, or Diego for being Diego in general.
"Not at all. It's not going to hold water forever. You should hurry."
"You know too darn well I can't reach it, ya traitorous whelp, ya pathetic excuse for a predator!" ah, that felt good. At least he was starting to sound a bit more like himself.
"Yes, you can, and you will", Diego answered in a quiet, dangerous voice that used to send shivers down Zeke's spine. "Get up, you picture of a powerful predator, and get to that bloody moss."
"And t' give ya the pleasure of seeing me crawl? I'd rather drop dead!"
"Now that's the spirit", one of the vultures approved.
"Shut up!" both tigers growled at him. The bird chuckled.
"Move, Oscar. I'm warning you", Diego leaned down into Oscar's face.
"Hell, no!"
The next thing Oscar knew, he was being gripped by the skin on his neck by strong jaws- gripped like a disobedient cub, in front of the vultures, Mother Nature, and his own disintegrating dignity- and dragged, despite his clawing and spitting and hissing, to the cursed patch of moss that was oozing water on the stony ground. He panted, not knowing whether to concentrate first on not howling in pain, on thinking of a proper insult for Diego, on calming his raspy breath and hammering heart, or on sucking precious water from the moss. The vultures were shrieking with laughter. They promptly stopped laughing when Diego launched himself, roaring, on their tree, lashing out with his claws and very nearly missing the closest bird; the vultures scattered away, while the dry tree failed to sustain Diego's considerable weight and started cracking in two; Diego jumped away just in time before the tree snapped, its dry crown crashing against the ground, while the irate saber scampered up back at Oscar's side; the older tiger caught him limping slightly before he sat back on his haunches, breathing fast and growling at the world in general.
"Impressive", Oscar sneered. "A tree managed to kick your butt, I see?"
"It's my old wound, you half-dead waste of breath!" Diego roared, piercing Oscar with burning eyes, "It never quite…"
And he cut it off, clamping his mouth shut, looking away, and Oscar glanced at the scar on Diego's right shoulder and side. He knew where that wound came from. Serves you right if it still gives youtrouble, you sack of dung, Oscar thought, you deserve that and thousand times worse than that, but said nothing, and suckled on his moss instead.
"You'd better stay on open air for some time", Diego snarled and stood up, his limp no longer showing. "You reek of illness, and so is your hidey-hole. It's only a matter of time and luck before the stench attracts a cave lion, a pack of wolves, or a bear. Good luck with ventilating your butt."
And he leaped away behind the rocks and out of sight again.
Oscar's first instinct was to yell: 'wait!' but stopped himself in time to preserve some modicum of pride. He gulped, looking around…his 'hidey-hole' was only a few steps away, but a few steps he couldn't take, and he was out in the open now, alone.
He tried to sniff around a bit. He still couldn't feel scents properly, but his nose wasn't as useless as it was…yesterday? Last week? Last month? How long had he been rotting here, anyway?
In any case, the only thing he could sniff out was the predominant scent of Diego. He'd obviously marked this area through and through. That was good…probably. It might keep other carnivores away…maybe.
He waited for a certain amount of time before concluding that there had been enough of ventilating.
Okay. I can do this.
He tried to claw on the hard ground to pull his weight towards his hideout, and he managed to drag himself a step or two closer to it before having to stop. His chest hurt like hell, his head was spinning and he was shaking like a leaf, but he was two steps closer.
Again he coughed, again he spit out some brownish-yellowish muck, and when little shiny dots of pain cleared away from his eyesight, he went on crawling, hating Diego from the bottom of his festering chest. The runt was nearby, he was certain; nearby and enjoying the show. But now that he'd started doing this, he'd much rather suffocate in pus in his own chest than giving Diego the opportunity to gloat over Oscar's helplessness.
He'd never thought that he'd be so darn proud for crawling any length of space, let alone the length so short, as he was when he'd finally found himself curled up in his hiding place again, exhausted and breathless as if he'd been running for endless hours.
He slept like a proverbial log.
**
Oscar was able to eat the next meal- a large chunk of meat ripped from a bison calf- without Diego's help, at both tigers' unspoken relief.
They didn't exchange a word during the ordeal. The younger tiger was staring purposefully away from Oscar, whose head was now clear enough to think in detail about their bizarre position.
When Diego had betrayed the pack, when it became obvious that he was protecting the mammoth, Oscar didn't have the time to contemplate the reasons behind such behavior. He didn't really contemplate them much any time afterward; he lacked both the time and will. But he had to marvel at how completely and thoroughly had the young tiger fooled both him and Soto, both much older and much more experienced. Oscar had always prided himself at being brainy, but Diego had left him far in the dust.
It burned Oscar's pride, burned worse than being overranked by that runt had ever burned. To think that he'd still trusted him back then, they all did... There had never been a slightest indication, the tiniest sign that would make anybody in the pack, Oscar included, suspect that Diego's loyalty to the pack and to Soto wasn't genuine and absolute. Hell, when Oscar, Lenny and Zeke were almost ready to stand up against Soto's mad rampage for the human baby, it was Diego who had still stood fiercely loyal to the leader. Or so it seemed.
Idiots, all of them.
When exactly did Diego switch sides? And, most importantly, why? What on Earth could the herbivores offer to him that his own kind couldn't have provided? Did he have some ulterior motif which Oscar, with his current lack of detailed knowledge of the situation, wasn't aware of…or did he simply slip into madness, like Soto had, after the half of their pack was killed, and they all failed to notice? Perhaps he didn't have a motif at all; perhaps it was simply a doing of a disturbed mind?
Well, for a lunatic, he had done a good job out of surviving alone…well, at least, hunting alone. Oscar, Zeke and Lenny had been quite particular about spreading the word about Diego the blood traitor to whichever saber pack they could come in touch with. The word soon enough came back to them- the word about a sabertooth tiger residing with a mammoth and a sloth. It couldn't be a coincidence. So he was still with them, making himself a complete abomination and disgrace.
They didn't know Diego's exact territory, provided that he had any, but in fact, they didn't quite care. The survival was difficult enough if they were focused only on…well, survival. Revenge wasn't at the top of their priority list at the moment. They didn't search for Diego actively, but they all swore that if their paths ever cross with his again, they would have him rethink and redefine the meaning of the word 'pain' before they relieve the world of his worthless existence.
But things didn't quite work out that way, at least not yet, and the outcome was becoming more and more debatable with each passing day. Try as he might, Oscar couldn't figure out why Diego was helping him. It didn't fit into anything that he'd done by now. If he was loyal to his…herd, then why helping out another saber, particularly the one that might want him dead for more than one reason? If his loyalties had changed again…was he still with the herbivores? Which interest could Diego possibly have in keeping Oscar alive? Did he have any interest at all? Were any of his actions driven by interest, or was it all a random product of an unhinged mind?
Whatever was the case, one thing was certain: Diego was completely unpredictable and very dangerous.
He was definitely unpredictable in his comings and goings. In the following week or so, he'd show up at any time of day or night, sometimes bringing food and infamous water-soaked moss, sometimes- usually a day after bringing a decent kill- just passing by, but never hanging out for long. But Oscar could say, thanks to the swift recovery of his scent of smell, that Diego had been spending most of his time somewhere nearby. And what of his herbivores? Had he abandoned them…or had they abandoned him? Was that the answer to Diego's inexplicable care about Oscar's welfare? Did he want to have a pack once again? If that was the case, it was a definite proof that the runt was barking mad. He'd never have a pack to belong in his life, no matter how deeply repentant he'd be, or how successfully he'd pretend to be.
And all that time, they didn't exchange one single word.
**
It was the evening when Diego had first found Oscar in seating position, rather than lying down, that they spoke again.
"If you're well enough to sit, you just might be well enough to come over here to eat", said Diego gruffly. "I've had more than enough of cleaning after you to last me a lifetime."
"I didn't ask you to do it", Oscar growled back. His words were followed by a bout of cough. He didn't cough so much anymore, and he didn't cough up blood anymore; the pain was significantly less severe, but it was still giving him hell.
"Just try your best to drag your butt over here, lunger."
Oscar's eyes were watering with pain and humiliation. "Lunger…", he repeated bitterly and coughed up some whitish muck; "lunger, lunger…you know, I remember the time when younger tigers actually held some respect for their elders, enemies or not; when they addressed them with their proper titles…"
"Sure, oldtimer. Just drag your respectable hide over here."
"Oldtimer?" Oscar hissed. "Changed my bloody mind. Just keep calling me 'lunger'."
And he walked on shaky legs, coughing and spitting, after Diego, who led him among the rocks and towards the pile of freshly dug ground. It was the place where Diego was obviously digging the abundant meat to be eaten afterward; now he produced the remnants of their last meal- an old elk- from that depositary.
It took Oscar several minutes to find his breath after that short walk before he could breathe slowly enough to eat. They both devoured the meal in haste and silence, after which Diego dragged the skeletal rest away and returned to Oscar, leading him to the nearest water puddle next. That wasn't difficult to find; the impact of flood was still evident on the land and water was abundant everywhere. After they both had their fill, Diego turned away from Oscar and from the hiding place, tossing casually over his shoulder: "If you could come here on your own legs, you can get back the same way, too. See ya 'round."
Oscar licked his lips. This was stupid what he was about to ask, he'd tried once, to no avail…but still…
"Wait a minute."
"Now what?" Diego growled irritably, not quite turning to look at the older tiger.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Exactly what do you mean? Hanging around with the herbivores, or wasting my time on saving your hide, or something else?"
"Well…both, exactly, but now I was thinking more along the lines of you saving my hide."
"And what the heck makes you think that everything has to have a rhyme and reason behind it, Oscar?"
And he once again started walking away.
"That ain't good enough, Diego!" Oscar stood, fueled by fury and energy that a good meal provided.
"Well, that's the best you'll get, so accept it! What do you want me to say? Because I could! How about that? Because I could, so I bloody did! Happy?"
"Not nearly", Oscar snarled into Diego's frowned, darkened face. "Is that why you betrayed us back there? Because you could?"
He shouldn't have said that, he knew it, not yet, not when he was still too weak to hunt, not when he depended so pathetically much on his enemy's benevolence, or madness, or whatever it was, but he said that, and there was no turning back now. Naturally, expectantly, Diego lashed out and slammed him across the face, effectively cutting off any further remark Oscar might have had in store. By the time Oscar managed to get back to his unsteady legs, Diego was gone.
From that day on, by an unspoken deal and obvious logic, Oscar was heading out to drink by himself, no longer needing Diego's improvised mossy water container. And Diego's visits were becoming less regular as Oscar's condition was slowly, but steadily improving. Sometimes he'd appear two days in a row, sometimes three days would pass without any sign of him- his scent included. Except that most of the times Oscar would visit the depositary, he'd find something dug in the ground, indicating that Diego had been there and went away without bothering to show himself. And again, they didn't talk.
Well, it suited Oscar just fine. He didn't know what to say anyway. Diego's supposed secret agenda yet had to be shown, but the more Oscar thought about it all, the less it made any sense.
But some things didn't need to be spoken to be known to the both of them. For example, Oscar knew now that Diego was definitely still hanging around with the mammoth- two mammoths now, actually, and a sloth, and something that might be some kind of vermin; the scents on Diego's fur were now distinctive enough for Oscar to decipher.
Another thing very obvious to Oscar was that Diego's fuse was becoming shorter by every passing day. Diego didn't need to say a word; his dark glares, irritable growls and obviously sleep-deprived face spoke enough. And he had also lost some weight since the whole thing had started. Those things were easily explicable, and they all came down to one thing: Diego was overworked and overburdened. Sabers were creatures of the pack, and they hunted in packs; they were designed for that. A lone hunter could survive by his wits, if he was strong and clever enough, but a lone hunter providing food for two grown tigers…well, that wasn't likely to last for long. It was simply too demanding for the best of hunters, and Oscar knew that he'd better recover completely soon enough, because his welcome was quickly to be worn out.
Well, the vultures were no longer anywhere in sight. That was one encouraging thing to start with.