A/N: The entire story is told in the perspective of a character close to him (Dualstep), named Dawn.
We escaped, but his mind so clearly remains in that prison, that
hellscape.
Though the air is warmed by summer winds and rainstorms and finally I can
breathe, safe in the knowledge I’ll soon reunite with my brother, I didn’t think I’d gain a limpet of all things by deciding to conspire with this tom. On fatigued nights as we travel towards the Great River, bolstered only by offhand rumors and directions from those pitying enough to help, he curls into my flank, touch-starved and no less lost than he was in the beginning. He’s awkwardly big in the small shelters we decide on (and rarely does he seem to complain, even as he folds in on himself just to accommodate us both) and sometimes I wonder if this is the same cat that helped me devise a plan of escape and understood the written and spoken language of human enough to guide us out of the facility. There isn’t even a whiff of the cat who slit the throat of Kafir, the fanatic after my own blood. The fire that once blazed in those copper orbs is abated, the coals cooled. I’m hesitant to comfort, and the shadows behind his eyes linger.
0041. He tells me that’s his name, even as we pad with nature under our toes and freedom at our backs. That half a moon cycle under bright, unnatural lights and enclosed by the sheen of harsh metal walls took its toll on me like no other, and I find myself irrationally enraged by any reminder of
that place. Yet, his closed off gaze remains calm everytime I grit my teeth at the monotone reminder. 0041. A string of numbers, nothing more than identification.
0041 is no name. I try to be discreet and call him by any other title in the hopes that he’d change it;
Breeze like the winds he never felt before,
Shadow like the swatch of darkness enveloping his one side, or even
Fire for the curious color of his eyes. (He tilts his head in confusion at the word until I realize he had never seen an open flame.) He responds to none, callous in his dismissal of my obvious attempts, yet his movements remain in sync with mine, and as constant as the sunset he lays his head to rest against my flank each night, as we inch steadily closer to my home. (My brother, my
family.) Always dually distancing himself from me and yet pulling me closer like a lifeline.
Even now I can barely read his actions, his emotions. I can only be thankful he sticks to his routines. It’s calming, in a way-- he’s become more of an external clock than the sun or moon could ever accomplish.
He speaks little throughout the day, if at all, as leaves brush through our pelts but makes a tried and true effort to speak to me during the hours where the sun sits at its peak. We converse only then, and concentrate on travel for the rest of the day. He speaks of nothing but the facility, because it is all he knows. The way he speaks of it is reminiscent of how one would comment on the weather. Nothing quite exposes me to the capacity of man to be cruel like the stories he tells.
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“‘You’ve been burdened with a glorious purpose, child.’ Kafir would tell those words to any tom unfortunate to pass through the cutter’s doors. It’s what he told me, as well, but the cutters warp the minds of those that pass through their hands. They go in with clean heads and leave with holes above their eyes.”I shoot him a dubious look and peer into his near depthless orbs. No, still as clear as the day we met. “And yet, you seem to be with me. Insofar as you’re able to be, Owl.” Surprisingly enough, that gets a chuckle out of him, but he ignores the nickname as he pauses and turns to face me. He sits back on his haunches and motions to his vulnerable underbelly. Between layers of plush fur lies the raised line of a scar, thin and perfectly straight. My chest grows cold at the sight as he speaks. “You wonder why I insist we walk to this ‘blessed land’ you speak of, and this is why. Not even I was left unscathed, and whatever they did to me now leaves me short of breath when I attempt even a deep breath.”“Why?” Why would they do such a thing? “Why, indeed. Kafir said it was the will of the Humans, and he worshipped them much like you worship your Starclan. Tell me, Dawn. Would they allow such a thing to happen to cats under their protection?”His words are spoken without inflection, and if spoken by any other cat I would call them accusatory. But, he merely looks at me questioningly. Here is a cat who knew only the reality of tyrant gods and a false prophet willing to go to sickening lengths to justify such acts. He truly holds no belief in the faith I’ve always viewed as a constant. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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