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I came across THIS image the other day… Take a Break by Doubleleaf on Deviant Art.
The moment I saw it I nearly fell out of my chair in shock because the dear little kitten in the image looks EXACTLY LIKE PC! *stares aghast*
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Chapter 1; Losses
Malik felt abandoned. Standing there still shaking from the shock of it, blinking dazedly around at the empty bureau.
He'd been trained, briefly, so it wasn't a mystery what he was supposed to do here. But, it was terribly quiet. And such a silence as this never sat well on his nerves.
For the next few weeks as he acquainted himself with his 'promotion' he had too much time to think. Too much time to dwell on unpleasant things… Too much wine lying around up there in storage that he found himself sitting with a bottle held between his feet as he wrestled it open to get to the few moments of mindlessness within.
He'd also found himself, over those first few weeks banging the abbreviated length of his left arm on just about everything and doubling up nearly in tears from the pain of it. He grew angry at his own clumsy mistakes, grew angrier still at his predicament and what he had been reduced to. And grew to hate Altair even more—grew to hate everyone.
He found himself enjoying the flinch of young boys that came through when he would bark at them and threaten to petition the master that they be stripped of their rank and placed back in novice training. He began to crave that little bit of control he had over them when their eyes were full of so much fear.
He enjoyed it even more when Altair came through the first time. The insults came naturally, the flinch, the bow of his head. Malik liked that he could undo him with just words. That he was more than the strength behind a sword.
The first time Altair stumbled in bleeding a moment of concern bit at the back of Malik's mind, but he forced himself to stay back and the insults came again. "What was all this racket? The bells have been ringing for hours—Rumors have it you slaughtered some poor woman who begged for coin!"
Altair bound his own wounds and left without a word.
Two days later Altair returned. Malik, unfortunately, had been listening for that soft thud of boots on stone. There was a fire in the poor district and the air carried that unpleasant scent of scorched wood and smoke.
Half a moment later Altair was standing before him, robes streaked with soot and charred in a few places. And in his lifted hand held by the scruff of its little neck was a kitten. Blackened by ash, shivering with its watery eyes squeezed closed in pain, the hair all burned away in patches along its back and tail.
Altair dropped it onto the counter.
"What is this…" Malik just stared at it where it was curled trembling on the desk.
"An innocent, from whom I have stayed my blade." He seemed to smirk from beneath his hood.
Malik rolled his lips back from his teeth and took a swipe at the younger man, hand fashioning a rude insinuative sexual gesture as the other strode purposefully back into the garden to clean the ash and grime from himself.
Malik did not like the taste of his own words. He ignored the little animal for a while, until it began purring erratically.
The little thing was lying there, its sides heaving for breath, eyes dilated, tongue sticking out as it tried to breathe.
It was ugly and pathetic and Malik wanted to kill it to end its misery… but he couldn't. Were animals included in the Creed? If so, was not just standing there and watching it slowly die harmful?
He cursed under his breath and picked the poor thing up by the scruff of its neck and carried it into the garden, Altair was sitting on the cushions with his elbows on his knees, head bowed, resting.
Malik grumbled as he passed, crouching by the fountain and depositing his little burden on the floor. He dipped the pitcher back into the water.
He had always known cats did not like water. He himself didn't like it either, but he tolerated it because he must. And he poured it, as gently as he could, over the poor shivering creature—He was not surprised when the thing howled and proceeded to attach itself by all twenty little claws, to the high inner side of his left thigh.
He roared and launched himself to his feet swatting at it and it dislodged, thumping wetly onto the floor to arch its burned little back threateningly while Malik danced around holding himself and roaring in pain.
Altair laughed, so Malik called him a bastard and threw the remaining water from the pitcher onto him, plucked up the now soaked kitten and stormed back into the bureau.
While the thing squirmed in a rolled bit of cloth he had upstairs in his room, Malik searched through his chest of medicinal supplies, and found a jar of grease he'd been given that was supposed to treat various burns and blisters and much like he did with the bottles of wine, held the squirming bundle motionless between his knees and smeared each of the reddened, hairless burns before returning down stairs with the 'innocent' intent on telling Altair exactly what to do with it.
But, of course the bastard was gone again, leaving Malik to clean up the mess.
So, the kitten was deposited in an empty crate with a few bits of cloth under the counter until the idiot returned to collect it.
Altair though, didn't return for a month, and by that time Malik had become a little attached to the thing…
It had grown exponentially, and had even killed a few mice that had been eating from Malik's food stores.
The burns had healed, and hair was growing back in, white now instead of gray. A strange mottling of colors… Except for one scar on the little cat's right hip that was shaped oddly like crescent moon.
Malik still thought she was an ugly creature. A short nose and eyes that almost looked like they wanted to cross… she had also taken a liking to chewing on his boots… or his belts, or the scabbards to his knives and weapons upstairs. This was something Malik did not like at all. He found stomping toward her and screaming while flapping his arm was most likely to scare her away from whatever she'd been gnawing upon, although she got used to it quickly and had begun to just stare up at him as if he were the idiot. And that, plus the fact Altair had been the one to bring the wretched thing into his bureau, is why Malik started calling her Novice.
The few customers he had for scribe and scholar's work when they overheard him grumbling, thought he had taken on apprentice. He did not discourage it. They seemed quite impressed that he was able to teach some hypothetical young boy. It made him seem more mature and professional that he would have a novice in his place of business.
He was very pleased, especially when he was woken one morning by the cat's ungodly yowls and angry screeches… And discovered not only was Novice an excellent killer of mice, but she was also an excellent deterrent of Templars and guards who had been patrolling the rooftops and had become curious enough to stop and peer in at length, through the locked lattice.
Malik stood there on the upper ledge above his desk with weapons hastily dawned over his bare chest, planning how to dispatch each one, and how quickly he could do so and then vacate the premises with the vital information he kept here, and his odds of doing so without detection. Staring down at the men's shadows from above with sweat on his brow… and hearing them talking quickly amongst themselves.
"No—NO, don't bother with it… I would ten times rather fight a mad dog than a mad cat!"
"Someone could be hiding in there."
"Do you want to be mauled by that beast?"
"No."
"Then move along!"
Malik bartered with a man who had a few goats in the main market square later that morning and brought home some fresh milk, watching with a grin on his face as the cat lapped it up eagerly with its scraggly half naked tail in the air.
It went on like this for almost half a year. Novice killed rats and mice alike with deadly accuracy and stealth. She yowled and screeched if anyone came near the lattice that was not of the brotherhood… And had even woken Malik up on a few occasions when fellow assassins would appear in the dead of night seeking quick refuge, rousing him with her thunderous purr and the sharp pricks of her claws as she kneaded the man awake.
It was on one night such as this, a journeyman coming through, having ridden all the previous day and night to escape pursuit, panting and faint with thirst and heat, and Malik had leaned the ladder up into the roof opening for the young man to climb down… and left it there so the man could climb out again after he had had his fill of fluids and shared his information.
And the Novice escaped.
Malik didn't realize she was gone until he'd woken up the next morning, noticed there were no dead mice for him to fuss over, and called out to her offering a bit of meat for her breakfast… But she didn't come.
For a week he waited, growing anxious. Every passing day without her familiar meow or her rumble in his ear as she pressed his shoulder rhythmically before curling to sleep on the pillow by his head. Every hour she was not pacing around or twining around his ankles while he worked was absolute torture.
Altair's reappearance was no help at all, so Malik was doubly rude to him to make up for it.
Two days later, while Malik was washing, eyes closed where he sat working a wet cloth over his body something furry brushed against his naked leg. He nearly kicked out in alarm at it, but was able to restrain himself when his eyes snapped open and he saw what it was.
Novice had returned. Covered in filth and ravenously hungry. So hungry she killed and ate two rats, leaving only tails and heads and fur and a few mushy internal organs amid the broken half gnawed bones.
She howled and yowled while Malik washed her, gaining bites and scratches on his arm and chest and legs for his efforts. But at least now his mood was lightened and he found a little more patience when dealing with the other novice…
Weeks passed and one night Malik was woken by a horrible racket under his bed. And when he lit a lamp and put it on the floor, leaning over the edge of the bed like he remembered doing as a child and staring, he was met with a rather disgusting sight.
At first he thought she had caught a rat in his room and he felt gleefully excited byall the blood. Enthralled by the kill—But as she licked the blood away his joy was replaced with shock and horror because that was no rat… As he hung there, upside down, his crown on the floor, eyes wide, Novice had five kittens there on what he would soon realize was one of his robes she'd dragged under there because it was warm and smelled of him. He would not be pleased with this when he discovered it, but at the moment he was only enthralled by the squirming little lumps under there.
Part of him wanted to pull them out and look at them. He had never seen a new kitten before. Yes, he'd seen young ones out pouncing and rolling and chasing insects, but he'd never had the opportunity to see them just moments after birth.
They were… hideous. Wrinkled and fat with thin fur and flat ears.
He wanted to pull them out and look! But when he tried a few days later he got a finger full of teeth for his efforts and instead was banished to just sit there and watch from a distance.
Malik found himself sleeping under the lattice on most nights, because Novice would growl and hiss when his bed sagged too close to her and her litter.
He didn't mind it much in all actuality. Aside from the chill of the night, lying sprawled on those cushions was familiar and he dreamed fondly of a time, years ago, when things had been different and life had seemed so much simpler.
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The kittens grew quickly, and soon Malik was allowed to inspect them. Sitting with his legs crossed in the floor, a lamp flickering close by, holding each one on his lap in turn as he ran his fingers gently over their heads, down their backs and to the very short tips of pointy little tails.
They mewed and grunted fitfully and nosed around in the folds of his clothes for their mother's milk and once or twice, holding his hand down to them, they would latch on to the pad of one finger or another with warm, hungry little mouths.
Two were uniformly all gray, two were gray with white patches on their chests and the fifth had white feet and white on its face and the tip of its tail.
Malik didn't know much about cats, just knew that they killed mice and liked to rummage around in the garbage… Altair on the other hand, it seemed, knew a great lot about cats.
He knew a great lot about them, and when he appeared one morning sitting beside the roof access pinning his arm to his chest, he called down to Novice who was having her morning drink at the fountain, with a sound like a loud purr rolled over his 'R's. And the new mother cat politely looked up at him, offended that he would try to converse with her in her native tongue, pinned her ears back and flipped her rear left foot at him a few times as she walked away without alerting Malik of the other man's presence.
Altair called out like that a few more times and finally the mother cat returned, tail crooked up over her back, rubbing her cheek against the stony frame work of the door, eyes rolling as she gazed up at him with amusement.
Malik came out a few seconds later to see where Novice had gone and noticed Altair sitting up there looking very much like one of the male cats the Bureau had been plagued with recently; sitting there looking downward with an omnipotent yet somehow forlorn expression on his face.
Malik was tempted at first to tell him to leave, but rationality ate at him. He really didn't like how the younger man was holding his right arm like that… So, begrudgingly, he dragged his ladder from behind his desk and propped it up against the wall, watching with a disapproving eye as Altair winced and limped his way down. Standing there with his head bowed and the edges of his lips curled downward.
The stool he kept behind his desk, but rarely used, found itself an occupant. Altair perched there with his knees drawn up while Malik peeled leather and sleeve away, inspecting a bruise purpling the younger man's forearm.
"Move your fingers."
They twitched feebly but Malik could tell simply by looking at them, how they'd grown slightly darker than normal and appeared to be swelling, that it was more than a simple bruise. He didn't have plaster to form a sturdy cast so he wound up pulling a few thin strips of wood from a crate under his counter and fashioning a hasty but efficient splint, then aiming a kick at the seat of Altair's pants as he shuffled lamely out to rest on the cushions and nurse his bruised pride.
Malik made food not long after that and had retired to his room to eat and enjoy watching the waddling little balls of fluff Novice tried unsuccessfully to wrangle by herself. He was sitting there in the floor with a chunk of bread between his teeth carefully helping the new mother arrange the kittens back into the little nest under his bed when he noticed a shadow looming at the edge of his room. A seemingly disembodied head peering up over the ledge between the struts of the ladder.
Altair's eyes were wide and keen his mouth hanging open in something akin to astonishment.
Malik ripped a bit of bread off between his teeth and chewed loudly with a bored expression on his face; "What are you looking at?"
Altair's eyes flicked up to him, then back to the tiny creatures trying yet again to escape. "A-are they male or female?"
Malik scoffed and glanced down at them. "They're all girls."
"Are you sure?"
He turned back and wrinkled his nose; "I think I'd be able to tell by looking. I don't see anything protruding in a way that would incline me to believe they were male."
Altair's expression became indignant; "They're not like humans, it retracts."
And Malik choked on his bread.
Five minutes later, Altair was sitting there near him, injured arm held to his chest Novice pacing nervously around him while he held each squirming shrieking kitten on its back in the palm of his hand and declared their genders.
"You have four sons and a daughter, Malik. Congratulations."
Malik bounced what was left of his bread off Altair's head and harried him from his room before Novice decided he would make a nice scratching post. Although perhaps, in retrospect, watching Altair be mauled by his cat wouldn't have been such a terrible thing.
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Nya-
This turned out a little longer than a one-shot, I hope that's OK. I'll put up the other chapters as soon as Hubby gets back from his business trip and has time to edit them.
Love, OZ
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