A/N: Another little oneshot (well, at least it's a fanfic! At least I've written SOMETHING!) centring on two unlikely characters together... Written for a challenge, more explanatory notes at the end :)
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"Let me help you..."
Macavity just stares, eyes empty of almost everything. "Haven't you done enough?" he growls at me, but there's no force behind it.
"Let me help you."
"No."
"You're bleeding," I state blankly.
"I know."
"I'm sorry," I say. And he won't reply.
We're alone. I am alone in this forsaken backstreet with the Napoleon of Crime. Or the fomer Napoleon of Crime. There's blood gleaming in the feeble moonlight all over his coat, and I think it's all his own. He's used to hurting, he told me. Because everyone turned against him eventually, or turned him away. And now this. Torn by his own gang, his alleged allies, his creation.
Even now I can't help but wonder if this could have turned out some other way for him. Maybe the world just always had it in for Macavity, the way he says; maybe it was just fate or destiny or some other convenient concept. Fancy that. Doomed from birth, never given a chance. Maybe it was him, and that's why he never lets anyone close. He's afraid he'll destroy them the way he's destroying himself.
I think I'm just scared that maybe it really was me. My fault.
I hear him take a shuddering breath. "Just go home, Jemima."
I shake my head.
"Go home!"
"No."
"Jemima..." Like I'm his kitten to order around.
"No."
And that's it. He doesn't make
any further protest. I've faced Macavity down again; I feel like
I've just cut away another piece of what he considered himself.
I've bared him of his defences again. My short words are knives
to him. But I can't leave him here.
He never let anyone get to him like I did, that's all. He doesn't
know what to do now.
I arrived on a typically stormy day. It was so cold, like now. Accidents happen, I guess. I ended up hanging around Macavity's Lair, or whatever the fanciful name was, not exactly of my own voilition. I wasn't scared. I don't think I was ever really scared until today. He kept me 'locked up' and brought food and water everything done as he assumed he should for a valuble Jellicle prisoner. It makes me think he never really knew what he was doing or what he wanted. Still, I suppose most of us are never quite sure. It was just the way he always acted, like he was the only one in the whole world who knew where he was going, and everything was always going the way he wanted it.
He made his way to the top because he could, and because he had nothing else with which to fill his empty hours and whatever desperate space was left inside him.
He was, in a strange way, just like me.
Lonely. Lonely to the point of suffocation life stifling you because you have no one to share it with. No one to need.
We'd found each other through a weird mutation of fate, and maybe it was enough.
But there was still the reality, tugging on his throat and pulling him back. You've got to me, he told me. You've changed me. I can't do this anymore. But he clung on to his old life, though everyone saw he was changing. Macavity's going soft, they said. Losing grip on reality and all that.
It's so sad... Maybe I can't help but wish things could have been different then.
We just can't have it both ways. Somehow the dissenters among what he had called "henchcats" in that still wannabe way of his had organised themselves and decided it was time to take new leadership. He wasn't stupid. He knew it was coming. No one, he said, could expect anything like a lifetime of supremacy on the streets. But then, he had always considered himself no one, because at least that made him special.
And when they barged into the room, demanding he step down, his face was simply sad. Only a little surprised that it had finally come, and the anger had drained away by now.
But he wasn't going down without a fight. Just because. Even if he knew he had to lose, it was a matter of pride.
So here we are, lying and bleeding and crying here in the semi-dark.
I lean forward to touch him. Maybe I want to make it up to him in my stupid small way.
"You're so cold."
He nods.
Then he clasps my hand in his, resting it on his cheek. "Don't go," he says. "Please. I'm sorry."
I don't know what to say, but it doesn't matter.
I stay there for a long time, who cares how long. A liquid is trickling down his face, and it could be anything from rain to blood to tears.
"I'll live," he tells me regretfully with just a trace of his own smile.
"Yeah," I say, pointlessly, just to offer some affirmation.
Well, it's true. He'll live, manage like he always does. We will live. We'll struggle on, alive and kicking and screaming because that's what life is. I learnt from him too. I didn't know life hurt so much.
We're on the edge of tomorrow now, and maybe I've never been so scared. We are so totally free now. Light starts to pierce the skyline. There's some hope in me though. I've made my choice. In a few more hours we'll have to leave this place, and struggle through the world, alone, together, hurting, but more complete than we've ever been. We're not fated to die inside, and however it painful it is, this is only second chance we're going to get.
"Let me help you, please... You're hurting."
He gives a small nod and a whispered thanks and something soft about love, and I clean his wounds as gently as I know how, and dawn shatters the night.
~
To explain : a Jellicle Moon Fanfiction challenge was to write a Macavity/Jemima romance... After writing "Can it Be??" I wanted to see if I could actually do a serious take on this! I had the idea for the whole story behind this vignette, various things that had already happened by the time this is set, but it was too long to write and I'd never have finished a decently-written long story before the deadline! But I liked the possibilities....... sooo, you get it, I wrote this instead, opening my mind more to Macavity. I certainly owe something to Yuffie Valentine for Shards in The Alley again, it's Macavity in a different light than usual, and of course big thanks to Daniel for showing me moooore possibilities!