We had a weird way of showing we loved each other.
You preferred to speak only of my flaws.
I took the more tactical approach and called you a burden.
We could never work together, and that’s just how it was. When cats were paired up for missions or just sent off on daily, mundane patrols, we were intentionally kept separate.
No cat wanted to be between us when we looked each other in the eye, fur on our backs raised, claws unsheathed, energy and hatred crackling like lightning jumping from one rod to the next.
Yes, we were very good at pretending we weren’t in love.
So good, in fact, that both you and I believed it.
“What little mission were you sent on this time?” you mewed with a pleased smile. “Some kit get stuck in a tree?”
I returned the smile, proving to you I had just as much venom in my words. “At least I’m good for something.”
I stared into your eyes and you stared into mine, each of us willing the other to flinch, to show some sort of weakness. But the game showed: stubbornness, pride, and sheer hatred forcing our silence out longer and longer until the cocky smile on your lips melted into a snarl, my haughty posture grew into a low crouch.
Finally a beep from your ankle broke our silent war, and you stood straight again, licking down a tuft of fur on your chest. “Duty calls.” You flung me a smirk before forcing your way past, clipping my shoulder with yours and pushing me against the cold concrete wall as you passed. “See you around, you know, if they don’t come to their senses and dump your sorry tail back where you belong.”
“Not if I see you first,” I growled. Hardly original, but I couldn’t help the cliche.
Too bad you were already too far gone to hear the words echoing just behind your paws.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
“I said,” the tabby tom hissed, “move!”
I felt claws prick my side but I refused to move. I lashed my tail in his face, forgetting the bands wrapped around my tail-tip until I felt the resistance where it hit his muzzle. He hissed again, but I didn’t bother feeling sympathy for a cat who was so stupid he’d send me off to die.
We were crouched atop and behind a mound of gravel quarried from beneath the waves. It was past midnight. The moon was just over half, and gleamed brightly in the cloudless sky.
Claudius feared the moon would reveal our less-than-hidden hiding place. But I knew that movement was a far superior foe. “Don’t you forget,” I muttered under my breath, “that I’m the one calling the shots here.”
Claudius simmered, but crouched into the deeper shadows. His brindle patterning helped, but his golden eyes still shone --both with the moonlight and with his anger. I shrugged and cautiously peeked behind the gravel mound to the building below.
It stood like a monster on the edge of the cliffs, all knobs and grey skin with questing tentacle pipes oozing from its body to the ocean thirty feet down. More mounds of gravel, sand, and stone cast long shadows over the earth, debris that the monster could not consume.
The water-quarry was quiet now, sleeping off its feast of ocean soil all through the sunlight hours. Inside its quiet stomach, another monster lurked, one which revelled in the moonlight.
It was he who we were sent to fetch.
We did not know his name or where he came from. He had suddenly appeared, and with him came stories of a white cat with a torn ear who stole kits and left others wailing as he tore fur off in clumps. They told of his wild, pink eyes and his crazed laugh.
And what the citizens tell, CLAW inevitably hears.
I froze, watching the other mounds intently. Others were placed closer, for Claudius and I were the rearguard. I was the second ranked officer in the sortie.
You were the first.
So while Claudius simmered, the storm in me only blazed brighter as we were forced to wait. I was tempted to break free and rush forward on my own. I knew that of the two of us, the other agents would be more likely to follow me in than wait for your call, even if you were still in charge. But my training quenched even you, and I sat motionless behind the gravel mound.
Finally, a green flash. I saw it first on the stone to my left, then echoed on the sand between the building and us. I let my tail ring flash in response, even when I knew neither team could see us, the rearguard, from behind the gravel. Protocol.
And it stopped Claudius from another complaint, for which I heard him mutter under his breath.
We took our time dismounting the gravel, trying to avoid tumbling the rocks under too-hasty paws. The other two teams had made it to the window long before we finally sprinted up.
Your glare was acidic.
“Travers and I are searching the right. Marlov, Yix, take the left. You two, make sure he doesn’t slip past us. There’s only two exits, both in the front. I want them airtight,” you spoke, your voice pitched so it wouldn’t travel past our sorties’ ears. You looked at me, your eyes telling me what you couldn’t in front of the others: “sit here, that’s all you’re good for anyways.”
I clenched my teeth, but forced myself to nod. Guarding the outside left little room for glory. It was likely I wouldn’t see him until he was already in cuffs, ready to be transported back to the Gates.
You gave me a second glance before jumping through the window, and it was all I could do to keep my paws planted on the other side. There was very little I wanted more in that moment than to rip that smug look off your face.
Claudius stepped a few paces away to watch the window on the other side of the door. Slightly ajar, an escaping cat could easily bash through to freedom. We had sealed off the other boltholes during our first recon, and leaving these two --easily watched and centrally located-- allowed the target someplace to hope for. If the others couldn’t catch him inside, he’d be delivered right into our paws.
I stepped back, giving myself time to react on the off chance the other teams couldn’t subdue him inside. And then I set myself to waiting.
Of course, I was wearing my vest. Standard issue for any field operative that would have little or no contact with humans. Equipped within were plenty of useful things, all controlled by blinks or minute tail patterns. Some were even wired directly into the brain, taking only thoughts to activate, but those were few and gifted to only the best.
It contained the things an agent would need in the field and then some: grappling hooks, gliders, cuffs, coms, respirators, and, what I had set to go now, nets. If the target managed to get past all four agents inside, all I had to do was tip my tail up and a weighted net would spring from the chest of my vest with enough force to at least slow him down until I could get him pinned.
All agents were trained in the best of paw to paw combat.
That was the plan. In theory, it should have worked perfectly. In practice, however, plans never work perfectly and sometimes don’t work at all.
This plan turned out to be one of the last variety.
It happened in an instant. One second, the window was empty, the night silent. The next and he was there, throwing himself up from the sill and into the air. I followed his movements with my head and tipped my tail to send the net, but even as I did so I knew his leap would send him well clear.
His claws met my chest and I yowled, grabbing his shoulders to try and pin him down.
But there was nothing to pin him to but air. We were tumbling against the side of the cliff, my claws locked in his white fur. The stone slammed across my chest, knocking the breath from me with a jarring crunch.
Without waiting another second, I gathered my paws in his stomach and pushed away from him, working more on instinct than logical timing, hoping I hadn’t pushed myself closer to the deadly stones. I heard a yowl and a thud, quickly ripped away by the wind in my ears.
I pulled myself into a ball as I crashed into the ocean, plunging deep into the cold waves.
The water pulled down heavy on my fur as I let the waves take me. I tried desperately to disengage the respirator, but to no avail. As I had suspected, the sickening crunch when I was tossed against the side of the rocks had been my vest, not my bones. For a moment I wished the damage had been done to me: breaking bones was painful, but my vest was my only hope of survival.
I clawed my way to the top of the churning waves, grabbing a few breaths of air before holding the last, anticipating the next wave that would send me crashing downwards again.
I could only fight for so long, and I knew it. I gasped as I returned to the surface. I desperately turned to look around, using some of my precious energy to gain my bearings, but the waves were a labyrinth, and I could not see over the walls of my prison.
I held my breath as the wave broke over me. Waiting with a forced patience for the sea to calm before I made my way back up.
Even when I had no point of reference or way of knowing, I felt I was being taken farther and farther from the coast with every wave. It wasn’t quick, but it was done with the heavy weighted assurance and power the ocean held. I was a speck of dust being carried in the current, and the sea did not spend one second thinking about my life or lack thereof. It was ignorant --no, it was indifferent. It did not care if I lived or died, it did not care who I was or what I would be.
It only saw a speck of dust among the waves, and it did not care.
It became harder for me to fight the tug of the ocean. It took longer for me to pull myself up after the waves pushed me down, and my lungs often screamed for air before I could make it all the way back. I spluttered, choked on seawater that had probably already made it to my lungs. Ironic, that with all the water on the outside of me, I still had a chance, but if only one or two licks made it inside, everything was over.
I only managed to take half a breath before the waves pulled me back under.
It was over then. I hardly was under before I couldn’t help but open my mouth, a silent scream of frustration that I hadn’t been able to fight longer. \
And then I was pulled upwards, back towards the dim light of the sky. I coughed, feeling the warmth of the water that was inside me soak into my chest. I was facing the sky, buoyed up by something under my shoulders and snagged into my fur.
There was no mistake that I was moving now, bobbing across the tops of the waves, trying to breathe and consolidate myself to the idea that I wasn’t dead.
I slipped across the crest of the wave to a small cove in the bluff, my fur snagging on sand. It itched, but I had never been so happy to feel that discomfort. I heard movement beside me, felt the labored breaths of something beside me.
I didn’t need to look; I knew the sound of your heart better than my own. “Why?” I croaked, the salt in my throat aching as I spoke.
The silence stretched out, and I began to think you wouldn’t reply. That you’d sit beside me until the tides came and took you out to see, or that you’d silently sink into the sand. “Because you are the only interesting thing in my life, and I’m too selfish to let you go.”
I laughed and closed my eyes. “That’s not a compliment.”
“Maybe it should be.”
I could only give a hum of understanding. On the sand of the cove, the stars watch over me. Safe. Exhaustion made it so I could hardly move, so I didn’t. “Thank you.”
I didn’t think you heard me. You didn’t say anything, do anything. I may have imagined saying it, or whispered it too quietly for any cat to hear.
It didn’t matter. You understood.
We laid on the sand in silence, each gathering our own strength. Maybe that was why we weren’t hostile: we both shared that moment of weakness. We realized that underneath the facade of malice. . . we were the same. Your breaths echoed mine, slightly behind, but to the same beat.
The waves lapped against my paws, gentle now that a ridge of stone blocked the force of the ocean. You hadn’t dragged me far past the waterline, but I didn’t have the energy to move.
And perhaps with you at my side, I just didn’t want to.
