I Have Your Heart
xxXxx
Haru stared at the book on her lap. There was a definite difference between actually reading a book and merely staring at one, but luckily, she'd be able to recite this one if anyone thought to question her.
Her lips took in an unsteady breath that would have been a laugh out of someone less disciplined. She knew full well that as long as she at least looked like she was being obedient, no one would bother her until she had a new order.
Her hand wandered of its own accord to the front of her dress, pressing gently just over her heart.
Her heart. If only even that didn't feel like a lie. The long cut over her upper chest throbbed at her touch, reminding her that the doctor had said to leave the incision alone.
A bird chirruped, making her look up and around the garden she had been left in for a breath of fresh air and sunshine to speed along her recovery.
For more orders, naturally. What would be the point of the surgery if her grandfather didn't have plans for her future?
Haru heaved a sad sigh and at least directed her eyes back at the book while adjusting the warm shawl pinned over her shoulders.
Without warning, an orange tabby hopped onto her lap, knocking the book out of her hand by landing on it.
She gasped in surprise while looking down at him. "Where did you come from?" she couldn't resist asking, secretly happy for the distraction.
"Meow," he responded, looking up at her as if waiting for the first move to come from her.
Haru did her best to be gentle as she used both hands to rub his fur and scratch his ears. "I've always liked cats. I keep hoping to meet a Bastet someday, but Grandfather's a little too prejudiced to let that happen while I'm under his roof."
His ears pricked upward at the admission, and he stretched his body enough to lay his head against her heart.
… Well, the heart. He was even careful about placing his paws against her stomach so that there wouldn't be additional stress on her stitches.
"Can you tell?" she whispered in agony as the organ pounded against her chest.
The cat looked up at her with eyes the color of grass and nodded gravely.
Haru couldn't look into those eyes forever, though she wrapped her arms around him. "Just between us," she confided sadly. "I would have been a lot happier if they hadn't found a heart for me."
"Meow?" he asked, almost like he wanted to hear more.
Haru nuzzled his head and ran a hand over his back as she thought again over her predicament. "It's… just… I know what's expected of me, now that I have got an extension on my life," she explained while staring at the water flowing down a nearby fountain. "Marry whoever my grandfather deems a good match for me and hope that the stress of childbirth doesn't kill me, or that the firstborn will at least be a boy if I do die. Ooh, ah, so much to live for," she muttered angrily under her breath. "Especially since I won't be consulted on who I'm giving vows of loyalty or a child to."
He growled low and deep in his throat as if he agreed that it wasn't much.
"What about the person this heart used to belong to?!" she demanded, now that the dam had burst. "No one will tell me anything about the donor, but I'm willing to bet all my limbs that whoever it was had a better chance for a happy life than I do." She gave the tabby cat an angry look. "Do you know what it feels like? Knowing that you're alive because someone else is dead?" Her arms tightened on the feline possessively. "… I wasn't even given a choice about the surgery. If it had been my decision, maybe I'd feel differently, but I might as well be a doll for all the say I get in my own life." She rubbed his head a little more fiercely, but still being careful not to hurt him.
"I'm probably going to get yelled at for getting your fur on my dress," she admitted almost pathetically, though it wasn't enough to make her let go of him.
The tabby reached up with his head to lick her chin and mew comfortingly.
"Thank you," she told him with supreme gratitude before rubbing her face against his fur. "No one around here listens to me this well, and at least you're not likely to rat me out to my grandfather that I've been thinking again."
He purred as if to assure her that he didn't mind her thoughts at all.
There was a sudden crash from inside her home, making the young woman look up with surprise. "That sounded expensive," she commented while bracing herself to stand up.
The tabby in her arm mewed and patted her shoulder, almost like he was telling her that it wasn't her job to investigate the mess.
"… They do prefer for me to stay out of anything interesting," Haru admitted, forcing herself to settle again. "Especially since this heart and myself are still working on working together."
He purred at her and patted her shoulder encouragingly.
But then there was another sound of another crash, making Haru look towards the house all the same. "I hope no one's going to get fired over what's going on," she fretted, though the cat seemed unconcerned by the drama.
He rubbed his head under her chin while purring happily.
"It's too bad I won't be allowed to keep you," Haru noted a bit wistfully while trying to return the affection. "Grandfather has never approved of companionship that doesn't have a title."
It could have been her imagination, but there was something about the next purr that almost sounded smug.
The sounds became louder, and she could hear shouting, but… something was off. There was a certain pattern to screaming when it came to broken vases.
What was coming from the house sounded more like an attack.
"That tears it," she muttered, bracing herself to get up again to investigate, this time never minding the cat that wanted her to stay put. She left the book on the chair since she didn't want to juggle both it and her new friend.
Haru managed to get up and start walking toward the house, but then a giant crow landed right in front of her! She screamed while taking several steps back.
"Now, now. I'm not here to hurt you," the large bird informed her with a surprisingly gentle tone as it stood between her and the only home she had ever known. "But it would be better for you to wait out here for your grandfather."
The heart in her chest was pounding hard from the sheer terror. She looked up at the crow, only stopping her backward retreat when she unintentionally backed into the large garden chair she had been resting in. "Wh-what's going… on?"
"You will see soon," he assured her while gesturing for her to sit again with one wing. "Your new heart will be bearing plenty of strain soon enough. Take it easy for now."
Haru didn't really want to but thought it would be a bad idea to argue with the owner of such a large set of beak and claws. She reluctantly took the needed steps around the chair to sit back down and set the book to the side, although she felt sick at the noises that were coming from the house.
Her grandfather had gone out of his way to make sure that she had no emotional attachment to anyone within, but that didn't change the fact that she knew their faces, their names, and some of them were most certainly getting hurt.
The screams were enough to confirm that.
Haru couldn't understand how the cat in her arms could be so calm. He was tiny enough that the crow could swallow him with one gulp, but all he seemed interested in doing was making sounds and motions that approved of her obedience to the crow's wishes.
After a tense half-hour, the wait was over. Haru could hear someone coming out to the garden, making her peek around the large garden chair to see. Her brown eyes widened with shock.
They were Bastets! Bigger than she had imagined they would be! It was one thing to know that Bastets were as tall as humans with limbs that were about as proportional, but Haru felt like at least three of her could fit into one of their shirts!
There were two of them dragging her grandfather by the arms with a thick gag ran between his teeth. Following behind them were two more Bastets dragging Doctor Jigo, though the massive bump on his head explained why the man was being quiet and motionless for once.
Haru again tried to stand up, but the cat in her arms seemed to physically force her back down as the Bastets dragged their captives to the front of the chair.
"We got the culprits," the biggest of the Bastets grunted while looking at the tabby in her arms. "Did you get a confession out of Chicky?"
Haru looked down at the cat, only now wondering if maybe it wasn't a normal one after all. It was only then that she was able to pry her own arms off him, though he didn't seem too happy about the loss of affection.
"Lady Haru is completely innocent," he responded clearly, hopping off her lap and starting to glow like the sun.
She raised her hands to shield her eyes, but it wasn't long before the light faded.
"I wouldn't be shocked if she were the only innocent in the kingdom," the large crow commented as he took the three needed steps and Haru let herself take a peek at the tabby.
He was a Bastet as well, about what she would consider a normal man's build and height compared to the ones obviously under his command. She could tell from his perfectly pressed suit that he was not just a noble, but probably the mastermind of whatever was going on.
"What did you do?" Haru couldn't resist demanding of her grandfather, who was still struggling against the biggest Bastet who had spoken earlier.
That large feline almost casually punched her grandfather in the face to quiet him. "I guess that confirms she doesn't know. Who wants to do the honors of telling her where the heart came from?"
Haru instinctively put a hand over it as a terrible dread overtook her. She glanced once at her grandfather again, but she couldn't tell if the shaking of his head was against anyone telling her the truth or continued outrage at being taken prisoner in his own home. By non-humans, if events weren't offensive enough for his tastes!
"I believe I better do it," the tabby lord said with a stern tone and a stern look at the larger Bastet. "You for one tend to be too blunt." He turned his green eyes to the young woman, not really looking like he wanted to be the one to tell her, either.
"I take it, Lady Haru, that you've guessed by now that your new heart wasn't obtained legally."
Haru briefly nodded, and willed some moisture back into her mouth. "H-how… why… is this personal?" she managed to ask.
"Oh, it's very personal," he assured her while stealing a death glare at her grandfather. "Now that I've tracked down the monsters responsible for my sister's disappearance, we're all going to take a trip back to Bast, now aren't we? My king has made certain promises concerning punishments, and I intend to collect."
Sister's disappearance.
Kidnapping.
… Harvesting?!
Haru's gut reaction to the Bastet's meaning barely left her with enough time to roll out of the chair before she started retching into the flower bed directly next to it.
"Do you see that?" the tabby lord asked her grandfather with contempt. "That is the normal reaction of a decent person to what you have done. How she remained so in your household, I can only assume that you were neglectful as well as emotionally abusive."
She distantly thought that he had it right on the money, but most of her attention was on ejecting everything she had eaten in the last month. 'I guess I told him more about my situation than I thought.'
Haru had no reason to know it without looking behind her, but she somehow knew that it was the tabby kneeling behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders to help steady her near the end of her terrible convulsions.
Once there was nothing left to come back up, her hand shakily grabbed at one sleeve for the handkerchief she usually kept up it to wipe her mouth.
"Do you think you're under control now?" the feline lord asked gently.
The young woman could only shake her head before forcing herself to look at her captive grandfather with rage. "You don't even love me," she stated, not bothering to phrase it as a question. "Ordering me around can't be fun enough to justify doing this!"
He tried to protest something around the gag, but one more fist from the biggest Bastet knocked him out completely.
"Can we go home now?" the huge cat asked a little plaintively. "I don't think we can do any more damage around here, and the few servants that got away are probably going for soldiers."
The tabby lord was surprisingly gentle about helping Haru to stand. "Do you think you're well enough to travel?" he asked directly.
"Get me out of here," she responded without thinking. "Take the heart back. Do whatever you want, but don't make me stay in this awful house."
"That's the spirit," he encouraged while sweeping her into his arms.
Although surprised by the action, Haru was secretly grateful for it as she accidentally let her soiled handkerchief fall next to the chair. Between recovering from the surgery and now this terrible shock, she doubted her legs were up to supporting her weight right now.
The large Bastets carried her grandfather and Doctor Jigo to the far wall of the garden as the large crow miraculously shrunk himself to a normal-sized bird. The tabby lord followed them, cradling Haru in his arms.
She briefly wondered if she should put her arms around his shoulders but decided against it. From where she was, she could see all four of the big Bastets reach for their necks to mess with something.
"Would you be a dear and press hard on the ruby around my throat?" the tabby asked politely. "My hands are a little preoccupied right now."
Although she felt a bit forward about it, Haru fished a necklace from around his bowtie and pressed a thumb against the ruby.
He immediately seemed to shift into a human- oh dear!
He made a gorgeous human!
Haru immediately dropped the necklace and looked away from him and prayed that he didn't know enough about humans to know what blushing meant. She could feel his chest shake with repressed laughter, so he seemed to know exactly what his human face did to her. Did Bastet women react like that to his regular face?
One of the disguised Bastets whispered something while keeping one hand on the stone wall, making part of it simply… not exist anymore. While Haru gaped in surprise, the Bastets all filed through the opening to where two plain carriages were waiting. What was even stranger to her was how the street and people around the carriages seemed… almost how she imagined the world looked like from inside a soap bubble. The crowds, buildings, and streets seemed to sway lazily from side to side as people unconsciously avoided the space within the bubble.
"What on earth?" she muttered out loud, but the tabby shushed her before whispering something else to make the hole in the wall disappear after them.
"Just a spell to keep anyone from paying too much attention to what we're doing," he explained while carrying her to the first carriage. "Until it's too late, that is."
The servants immediately got to work loading the captives into the second carriage with the distinctive accompaniment of heavy chains.
There was probably a third set of manacles in that carriage. Just in case she had been a willing participant.
Haru couldn't help thinking about it as one of the bigger Bastets hurriedly walked over to open the carriage door for them. The tabby lord was careful about easing her body into the carriage.
It didn't take her long to slip onto the cushioned seat, and while she was expecting that the feline would rather ride with her than with the monsters that murdered his sister, it was still surprising when he chose the same seat as her before closing the carriage door after himself.
"There. This was wrapped up ahead of schedule," he said aloud with satisfaction, pressing the ruby until he was in his own form again since the windows were covered and only letting a bit of light through. "With luck, we should be long out of the city before anyone begins the search."
Haru looked down at her lap, secretly wishing she had the chance to brush her teeth and entire mouth before they left. "… I don't think I caught your name, my lord?"
Although it was dim inside the carriage thanks to the covered windows, she could just make out him blinking in surprise.
"Many apologies, Lady Haru. You made it very easy to forget that we're strangers." He gave her a very elegant bow without getting up from his side of the seat. "Baron Humbert von Gikkingen at your service."
Haru gaped in surprise. "Baron von Gikkingen?!"
"You've heard of me?" he asked hopefully.
Haru looked behind herself in the direction of the second carriage. "I already guessed Grandfather and Doctor Jigo weren't going to escape with their heads, but your sister? Even their hides are forfeit!"
"If I can arrange it, yes," he agreed without hesitation. "Thank you for understanding that without any hysterics."
Although she had been taught better, it was all too much. She leaned against the back of the seat and covered her face with her hands while she tried to make steadying breaths.
After another minute, she could feel two of the larger Bastets climb into the driver's seat and urge the plain horses into a slow trot.
Haru lowered her hands in surprise at the pace.
"You seem to know this isn't the first coup of mine," he responded as if reading her mind. "Believe me, acting casual is much more effective for a complete getaway, even if it's terribly nerve-wracking."
Haru couldn't resist a nerve-ridden laugh. "There goes my fantasies of you galloping through town with half the garrison in hot pursuit."
His returning laugh at least didn't sound scornful. "Oh, I assure you I've done that more than once. I merely try to avoid the situation if at all possible."
"Understandable," she sighed while staring at her lap again. "… I'm sorry about your sister. This isn't how I wanted to meet Bastets."
That silenced his mirth. "This isn't how I wanted to meet a decent human noble, either. Thank you for your condolences." He leaned back in his seat as well, possibly thinking over what he wanted to say next. "I'll do what I can to make sure everyone back home understands how little you wanted anything with what happened to Louise. I honestly think that you would have liked each other."
"How old was she?" Haru couldn't resist asking through numb lips.
"… Thirteen."
Haru covered her face with a moan.
"It wasn't your fault," the Baron insisted, scooting a bit closer to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "You've made it clear that none of this was your idea or doing."
"… Why?" she asked in an almost inaudible whisper.
"This is unfortunately nothing new for a member of my race," the Baron forced himself to admit. "Because we have magic, an organ from us has a much higher chance of, um, taking to a new body. Even prejudice will take a back seat for such a risky procedure if there is a dire need for it."
Haru knew she didn't deserve it, but she desperately needed comfort, and for the first time in her life, she was certain that there were no secondary motives from someone offering her such comfort. She leaned into his chest, slightly aided by the little bumps in the cobblestones underneath the carriage's wheels. "… Why are you being so nice to me? I'm still the reason she's gone."
He tightened his grip on her as he thought over the right thing to say. "Lady Haru, you are underestimating the comfort it is bringing me that if life had to be cruel enough to take Louise from me, at least it wasn't to preserve the life of a spoiled brat. Is there any other family that will demand I turn you over to them after the trial?"
She shook her head tiredly. "None close enough to be taken seriously. Definitely no one with an emotional attachment. Grandfather made sure of that," she added without holding back on the bitterness for once.
"I see. In that case, I'll convince the king to leave your future in my hands. I don't think I'd trust anyone else to actually consult you before decisions would be made."
She couldn't resist an ironic smile, lowering her hands just enough to smile slightly at him. "So instead of making you my pet, I'll be yours?"
He flinched slightly with embarrassment. "… Unfortunately, there will be more than one who will think so, but I swear I'll make sure that you will at least be a little more reluctant to leave my home than you were to leave your own today."
Haru couldn't resist a bitter laugh. "That's setting the standard a little low, but being your pet already sounds better than being Grandfather's doll."
His expression darkened as his grip tightened just a shade more. "I think I'm going to carve that out of your grandfather as well."
xxXxx
A/N: This was based off of the YouTube Animation 'I Have Your Heart'. It was gift-wrapped for Cat Returns, even with the horrible implications.