Disclaimer: I don't own Static Shock

Title: The Lynx And The Mouse

Summary: He was a lynx. Hawkins was a mouse. That is, of course, until the mouse became a panther.

Authors Note: Just a random, metaphorical drabble I came up with.

...

He was a lynx. Hawkins was a mouse.

He squeaked and stuttered and was really hard to catch once he started running, but he was fun, so he chased and caught him often. Out of all of his playmates, Virgil was easily his favorite, and he got a dark thrill out of catching and releasing the mouse often after having some fun. He'll kill the wounded mouse someday, he swears, he just has way too much fun to do it quickly.

That's why it was so surprising he was there the night of the gang fight. When did he get so brave? But the mouse cowers and backs away the moment he sees him, making him realize that he wasn't brave and had probably only been drug along. His claws slither out an he grins because it's time to catch him and boy was he gonna have fun doing it.

But then the gas enters his lungs and all he can think of is death. He's going to die because of some idiot police officer who'd decided it'd be smart to hit some chemical vats with a smoke bomb. That wasn't fair! He wanted to catch the mouse first, finally put it out of its misery.

He struggles to open his eyes only to watch as the cowardly mouse attempts to climb over the fence and flip over onto his back as he lands on the other side. Of course, he thinks bitterly, eyes flickering shut for what he believes is the last time, the rat was to scared to face death like a man. How pathetic. But he does wake up, and he soon realizes he's stronger than ever and has a mouse to hunt.

So he does, and the mouse has changed. He's still a coward, but he's slightly heavier and has a few more muscles than before, but that doesn't matter. He's still a mouse. So he gives him a quick fireball to the whiskers and turns to work on more pressing matters (such as a certain cat his really likes) when suddenly he's being batted aside by a panther.

He struggles to his paws, snarls. The panther, mysterious yet somehow familiar, snarls back, and soon he finds himself getting his tail kicked by said cat. They're both new to their powers and uncertain of how to use them, but the panther is adaptable and tough.

At first, he's mad. He still is after every battle, every defeat. He was the toughest kid in Dakota City, and he'd just been beaten by some new kid who has no clue who is. But then, after some thought, the anger dulls a bit and he smiles cruelly because now he has a new playmate.

And he's a fun one, almost as much fun as the mouse. He fights him as much as possible, claws and snarls and does his very best to kick him out, but it never works. The panthers a rock.

And he doesn't act like a panther. He jokes and teases like they're old pals, and his claws are decidedly shorter than most other cats, but their was no denying that the hard muscle and sleek fur was all panther. He's a panther and he has claws and fangs and he's not afraid to use them.

Ebon tells him to give up on his new play-toy, to keep his obsession at bay. He doesn't. he wasn't going to stop until the panther lay beaten (or dead) in a bloody mass beneath his paws.

It isn't until years later that he wakes up and one day and realizes that the only person who'd been there during the big bang that looked even remotely close to the panther was the mouse. It couldn't be anyone else. They'd been in the center of the blast, and they'd been the first to find their powers. But they panther was a panther, and the mouse was a mouse. He couldn't change that much, right?

He's the only one who notices. The others wanted Static dead, they couldn't care less about who he was under the mask. They could find out who he was after he was dead.

he quickly became ecstatic. The panther was really just a mouse! He could beat the mouse. She he pushes and prods and tries to get the mouse to come out of hiding. The panther pushes back. He won't be afraid, he swears, not anymore.

And he gets beaten into submission. Again. Claws and fangs draw blood and fire and electricity and the lynx is slightly worried that the street will fall down around them but honestly he's too angry to care. But the panther wins, blood dripping from his paws and flank, his teeth bared. They aren't fatal wounds, because the panther doesn't kill, so none of them are, but he's pretty sure they'll scar. The lyinx has scarred the mouse, and the panther has scarred the lynx.

It's years later he realizes, chained up in some cell in who-knows-where, that the mouse might have been a panther hiding behind whiskers and squeaks all along.

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