Catseye 2015

By Willow. Originally posted on x_project.

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The onset of old age had occurred with terrifying swiftness, leaving its victim dazed and scared and those around her racing to find a solution with a desperation measured by the questioning ache in the girl's once brilliant purple eyes.

Finally though, the only answer possible lay before them, immutable and undeniable.

Catseye's life truly was measured by the span of a cat's years, and not a human's as they had always thought.

She accepted the news with a smile and a purr, nodding peacefully, thanking them softly for their efforts on her behalf.

And asked them to stop.

Things were as they were meant to be, and she would far prefer to spend the rest of her time with her loved ones, living every moment to the utmost in joy and laughter, rather than fear and despair.

That day, Forge added a small device to her collar, the nature of which Catseye never inquired again about after the troubled, sad look he'd given her in reply to her first query.

And so, her first heartbeat echoed steadily through Forge's cyberarm, in the small device he had added to it. To keep track, somehow, of her every moment, in his own way.

She took to spending more time in her cat shape as the weeks passed by, the only way she could find to escape the aches and pains of a deteriorating human body, returning to one she knew better and felt safer in despite the stiffness and the lack of agility present even in that one. She was lavished with even more attention and care than before, her every moment either waking or sleeping (and there were far more of those than before) spent in the presence of one person or another.

The numbers Forge held close to himself grew steadily, averages and increases which soothed his mind at day and kept him awake late into the night, staring at the ceiling in silence.

One day, Jean paused in the kitchen to smile at the purple shape curled up in a spot of sunlight on the kitchen table, and then paused, staring. After a moment, she bowed her head and backed out of the room, tears streaming down her face. The cat never noticed, thinking happy sun warm cat thoughts to itself, the buzz of a nearby fly ignored in favor of a peaceful nap within the warm rays of the daystar above.

From that moment on, the cat was rarely seen alone - she was most often in Forge's company, be it in his laboratory or his rooms, or the spaces in between. There were always places reserved only to her, kept carefully in the same place regardless of the ever changing chaos around them.

Six months after her mind had fled, leaving behind only the cat, Forge was still bent over his notes, dictating furiously under his voice, one hand writing cryptic notations of another order entirely, metallic fingers stretched out and resting against soft, purple fur liberally edged with a flurry of white.

Quiet fell in the laboratory, both voice and writing implement stilling at the same moment.

And then finally, Forge reached out and pulled a fresh sheet of paper, crisp and white and clean, writing down a single number upon it. He stared at it for a long time, unmoving, before finally rising to his feet to tell the others, hand lingering for one last moment on the still shape curled up on his desk.