HOME | DD

Description
Of course I'd come back. I never really left. I might have made myself known less frequently, or spent more time outside the city walls than before, but I'd never left my home. I was a Gatherer; it was my job to break into the city on the regular. And, conveniently, the Gatherer supply routes always happened to bring me back around to you.

I made sure you were okay. I watched you in your humans' yard, I watched you inspect the shed where you first found me. I knew you were looking for me. I would have been looking for you, too. But you had seemed angry, so angry, on our last day together. I didn't ever want to see that disappointment or anger in your eyes ever again. I wanted to watch you live your life without me, without the complications I brought, without the danger. You were safer and stronger without me. You didn't have to sneak around, you didn't have to wonder where I slipped off to at night. When I started to pick up traces of another cat around your home, I was almost happy. You were moving on. I could see you smile again, maybe. But you also came outside less. You stayed with your humans, and when you were outside, you seemed more troubled than ever. Less and less I got to see your face. Less and less I watched you inspect the shed. Until you stopped coming outside at all.

I don't know why I was surprised. Cats in Rome moved around constantly, passed from owner to owner. You had found a new place to live, maybe, or maybe that other cat scent I'd noticed laying around had given you cubs. Something I'd never be able to do for you. But I kept coming back, every day. I kept watching for you. The traces of the other cat grew more frequent. Paw prints in the mud here, a faint city-drenched scent there. I tried to be happy that you were moving on from me, but something unsettling was forming in my gut. I was worried. I wanted you to be okay.

So despite the fact I hadn't seen you for weeks, I kept coming back. Every time we snuck into the city, like clockwork. Sometimes I started leaving little gifts to see if you'd take them. Nothing big. A feather, a nice rock. They were always sitting there when I returned, though.

And in the last day I entered the city, I went to drop off a smooth piece of driftwood I'd recovered from the river. As I was adding it to your pile by your humans' yard, my nose was filled with the strong scent of the other cat. They weren't trying to hide it anymore; they had blatantly scent marked my gifts. And I recognized the scent immediately, now that it was so strong. Panic swelled in my chest. I dropped the driftwood, not thinking, and immediately hurled myself towards your home. I didn't think about being caught. I didn't think about how you would feel about me. I only wanted to keep you safe.

I jumped in the window I last left through. I knocked something over, some human ornament, but I didn't care. I heard you make a sound of alarm in another room, and I pelted to it.

There you were, for the first time in moons, looking as perfect and elegant as ever. "Lynn," I breathed. You looked up at me, confusion in your gaze, slowly shifting to fear. But you weren't scared of me. You were scared for me.

"Faeles, leave--" you started, but the other cat stepped in front of you and cut you off.

I looked up at her. I knew her face well. Her long, powerful legs, her scarred pelt, torn ears, yellow, hungry eyes. She sneered at me. "I knew you'd show your face eventually," she said, her voice smooth.

"Get out of here, Dura," I snapped at my old Hunter mentor. "Lynn didn't do anything. Your fight is with me, not with her."

"Ah, but she associated herself with a traitor," Dura told me, stepping over you and brushing her tail along your flank. You shrunk back. "Which makes her an enemy of the Republic."

"Leave her alone," I snarled.

Dura's eyes flicked up to meet mine. She sized me up for a minute, a frown forming across her scarred muzzle. "I see the Defectors fit you up moreso than I was ever able to. I wonder how that was? I worked you harder than I ever worked any of my apprentices."

"Because the Defectors aren't training me to kill," I said, dropping lower. "They train me to protect. To fight for what's right."

"Is that what they tell you in Ferox school?" Dura said slyly, her voice dripping with malice. "How noble."

"Faeles, please, leave," you begged. "Just go and I'll be fine."

"You won't," I said quietly, still glaring at the pale brown cheetah in front of me. Dura smiled.

"She's right, little pet," Dura cooed to you. She pressed her paw against your shoulder. "You are strong. Pity you were never trained to fight at a young age, though. Perhaps you would make an excellent breeder for the Bounty Hunters."

Your face filled with dread. I hissed loudly, my fur rising. Dura looked up at me, eagerness lighting up her eyes. "Perhaps I should beckon Seth into the city for once," she snarled.

"No!" I snapped, then lunged forward. I slammed into Dura with a force I didn't know I had. She didn't know it either. She stumbled back before falling on her side, and I pinned her down and began battering her belly with my hind paws. Her legs were long, though, so she shoved them forward, into my chest, launching me backwards. I rolled straight into you.

You jumped up, concern painted across your face. "Faeles, don't fight her!" you cried out. "You need to go! You can't beat a Hunter!"

I felt a smile creep across my face as I rose to my paws again. I rolled my shoulders, making sure you saw the muscles that had built up there since I had last seen you. Your eyes widened a little. "Don't worry about me," I said. "I was a Hunter once. And now I'm the one thing the Hunters hate the most, because they know they will never beat us." As I was speaking, I lifted my gaze to meet Dura's angry eyes. "I am a Defector."

"Worthless band of traitors," Dura snarled, then lunged. I shoved you to the side, told you to run, then met Dura in the middle of the room again.

Dura's sharpened claws raked across my face, narrowly missing my eye. I yowled and took my claws across her shoulder in response, successfully feeling flesh rip and blood swell between my toes. We separated, but I was surprisingly quicker to jump back at her. I slammed into her chest again, but this time she rolled back and shoved me away. I rolled on the ground, and Dura leaped forward and pinned me.

"Ah, I see you've been practicing!" Dura said, blood dripping from her muzzle. She laughed, her hot breath on my face. "You still fight like a brute, though! The Defection hasn't changed you as much as you'd like to think. You still have no technique, no correct form. You just lunge." She jumped back and I scrambled up quickly. You were still there, even though I'd told you to run. You were watching from the doorway with wide eyes. "C'mon, come at me again!"

I yowled and flung myself at the old Hunter again. She side-stepped me, though, and shoved her paws into my side, throwing me back on the floor. "Your form is sloppy!" she bellowed, hurling herself at me. I quickly pushed myself up and dove underneath her long legs, sliding on my belly across the ground. But I didn't have enough time to stand up and turn back to face Dura, and she was already on top of me again.

"Useless dodge," she hissed in my ear. "You left yourself vulnerable and exposed."

I was breathing heavily, the wind being crushed out of my lungs. My legs were flailing, desperately trying to get out from under my old mentor. Finally one of my paws caught her back leg and she stumbled a bit, enough for me to be able to squirm my way out and smack her across the face in the process. Her muzzle curled back in a snarl. I jumped forward, desperately trying to remember a move any of the Ferox had taught me, but I ended up with a unpracticed and sloppy dive to the side, trying to take out her legs. She simply jumped over me. I hissed in frustration, spun to face her, but didn't attack again.

"A Hunter Tribune could beat you," she snapped. My legs were shaking. She jumped again, and I reared up to catch her. But she weighed more than me, and my move backfired. She slammed me on my back and had me pinned again, her paw pressing down on my throat. I gasped for air. "A lone Solus could beat you." Her claws pierced my skin. I felt warm blood on my neck. My head throbbed. "Your father should have left you with your worthless mother."

I quickly said an internal apology to you. For making you watch this happen, for not being able to prove to you how much I actually loved you. No, I was just going to die here, writhing on the floor of your humans' house, under the claws of a Bounty Hunter. I prayed for you, too. I prayed you'd find happiness, and you'd move on. I felt my eyes rolling to the back of my head, my lungs closing. I felt myself dying.

And suddenly the pressure was gone, my lungs were filled, and my head was clearing. I figured death had come. But it wasn't death; it was you.

"Lynn?" I muttered, my voice low. I heard the sounds of fighting, of bodies smashing into things. I blinked away the blurriness in my vision, and my chest swelled with panic. You were fighting a Bounty Hunter. You, the one with no training of any sort. I wasn't sure you'd ever even seen a fight before today. But you were fighting like you had the strength of Benedictus and Jax combined in you, a ferocity in your eyes I hadn't seen in anyone else. Dura was bigger than you, but you were more powerful. As I struggled to my paws to help you, you grabbed Dura by the shoulder in your jaws and whipped her around, slamming her into a wall. She crumpled, and you leaped at her again, shoving her back into the wall once more. I saw, a moment before it happened, what you were aiming for. Some decorative human thing that we had broken earlier, standing out in a weird angle, driven through Dura's back--

And the cheetah fell, and you were still standing.

You didn't hesitate to rush towards me, and I collapsed into your shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Lynn, I'm so sorry--"

"Shh, shh," you soothed me, and I quit talking. I pressed my face into your fur and let myself cry, I let myself inhale your scent between my sobbing breaths. And while I was weak and broken and defeated, you were strong and comforting. "It's okay, it's okay," you said. "I love you, Faeles. I love you. I'm here. She's gone. You don't have to run anymore. I'm right here, I'm right here."

We stayed like that for a long time. When you heard your humans coming home, you hurried me out the window, but this time you followed. We hid in your humans' shed, and I carefully took out my pile of gifts, and you teared up when you saw them. I added one more to the pile; the small golden bird charm I had intended to give you on the last day I had spent with you in the city, all those moons ago, the last time I had encountered Dura. I think you loved it. You didn't say anything for a long time, then you pressed your muzzle into my neck. I think that means you loved it.

In the middle of the night, after her humans had quit yelling about the destroyed house and the dead cheetah, we slipped outside. You'd wrapped yourself in an old human cloak that was hiding in the shed, and I'd put all of your gifts in a bag and tied them across my chest. We left together that time. We went back to the wild, where we were both born. We first traveled to my mother's old den; it was empty, and her scent was completely gone. I didn't care about her, though. We stayed there for a few nights, then left again, heading north, away from where I knew the Olum camped and the Ferox patrolled. We camped in random caves or thick underbrush, and I taught you to hunt. You were naturally good at it. I think you loved it. You smiled a lot, and at night you watched the stars with me. I think that means you loved it.

I think that means you love me.

this is single-handedly the gayest and sappiest thing i've ever drawn or written, which is great. can successfully cross that one off the bucket list.

Fael's gay little bye-bye story. also i love drawing pine trees.

i dont think this gets any deni since it's a going away story and i?? wouldn't use the deni anyways?

Faeles, Lynn, story, art (c)

Description
Of course I'd come back. I never really left. I might have made myself known less frequently, or spent more time outside the city walls than before, but I'd never left my home. I was a Gatherer; it was my job to break into the city on the regular. And, conveniently, the Gatherer supply routes always happened to bring me back around to you.

I made sure you were okay. I watched you in your humans' yard, I watched you inspect the shed where you first found me. I knew you were looking for me. I would have been looking for you, too. But you had seemed angry, so angry, on our last day together. I didn't ever want to see that disappointment or anger in your eyes ever again. I wanted to watch you live your life without me, without the complications I brought, without the danger. You were safer and stronger without me. You didn't have to sneak around, you didn't have to wonder where I slipped off to at night. When I started to pick up traces of another cat around your home, I was almost happy. You were moving on. I could see you smile again, maybe. But you also came outside less. You stayed with your humans, and when you were outside, you seemed more troubled than ever. Less and less I got to see your face. Less and less I watched you inspect the shed. Until you stopped coming outside at all.

I don't know why I was surprised. Cats in Rome moved around constantly, passed from owner to owner. You had found a new place to live, maybe, or maybe that other cat scent I'd noticed laying around had given you cubs. Something I'd never be able to do for you. But I kept coming back, every day. I kept watching for you. The traces of the other cat grew more frequent. Paw prints in the mud here, a faint city-drenched scent there. I tried to be happy that you were moving on from me, but something unsettling was forming in my gut. I was worried. I wanted you to be okay.

So despite the fact I hadn't seen you for weeks, I kept coming back. Every time we snuck into the city, like clockwork. Sometimes I started leaving little gifts to see if you'd take them. Nothing big. A feather, a nice rock. They were always sitting there when I returned, though.

And in the last day I entered the city, I went to drop off a smooth piece of driftwood I'd recovered from the river. As I was adding it to your pile by your humans' yard, my nose was filled with the strong scent of the other cat. They weren't trying to hide it anymore; they had blatantly scent marked my gifts. And I recognized the scent immediately, now that it was so strong. Panic swelled in my chest. I dropped the driftwood, not thinking, and immediately hurled myself towards your home. I didn't think about being caught. I didn't think about how you would feel about me. I only wanted to keep you safe.

I jumped in the window I last left through. I knocked something over, some human ornament, but I didn't care. I heard you make a sound of alarm in another room, and I pelted to it.

There you were, for the first time in moons, looking as perfect and elegant as ever. "Lynn," I breathed. You looked up at me, confusion in your gaze, slowly shifting to fear. But you weren't scared of me. You were scared for me.

"Faeles, leave--" you started, but the other cat stepped in front of you and cut you off.

I looked up at her. I knew her face well. Her long, powerful legs, her scarred pelt, torn ears, yellow, hungry eyes. She sneered at me. "I knew you'd show your face eventually," she said, her voice smooth.

"Get out of here, Dura," I snapped at my old Hunter mentor. "Lynn didn't do anything. Your fight is with me, not with her."

"Ah, but she associated herself with a traitor," Dura told me, stepping over you and brushing her tail along your flank. You shrunk back. "Which makes her an enemy of the Republic."

"Leave her alone," I snarled.

Dura's eyes flicked up to meet mine. She sized me up for a minute, a frown forming across her scarred muzzle. "I see the Defectors fit you up moreso than I was ever able to. I wonder how that was? I worked you harder than I ever worked any of my apprentices."

"Because the Defectors aren't training me to kill," I said, dropping lower. "They train me to protect. To fight for what's right."

"Is that what they tell you in Ferox school?" Dura said slyly, her voice dripping with malice. "How noble."

"Faeles, please, leave," you begged. "Just go and I'll be fine."

"You won't," I said quietly, still glaring at the pale brown cheetah in front of me. Dura smiled.

"She's right, little pet," Dura cooed to you. She pressed her paw against your shoulder. "You are strong. Pity you were never trained to fight at a young age, though. Perhaps you would make an excellent breeder for the Bounty Hunters."

Your face filled with dread. I hissed loudly, my fur rising. Dura looked up at me, eagerness lighting up her eyes. "Perhaps I should beckon Seth into the city for once," she snarled.

"No!" I snapped, then lunged forward. I slammed into Dura with a force I didn't know I had. She didn't know it either. She stumbled back before falling on her side, and I pinned her down and began battering her belly with my hind paws. Her legs were long, though, so she shoved them forward, into my chest, launching me backwards. I rolled straight into you.

You jumped up, concern painted across your face. "Faeles, don't fight her!" you cried out. "You need to go! You can't beat a Hunter!"

I felt a smile creep across my face as I rose to my paws again. I rolled my shoulders, making sure you saw the muscles that had built up there since I had last seen you. Your eyes widened a little. "Don't worry about me," I said. "I was a Hunter once. And now I'm the one thing the Hunters hate the most, because they know they will never beat us." As I was speaking, I lifted my gaze to meet Dura's angry eyes. "I am a Defector."

"Worthless band of traitors," Dura snarled, then lunged. I shoved you to the side, told you to run, then met Dura in the middle of the room again.

Dura's sharpened claws raked across my face, narrowly missing my eye. I yowled and took my claws across her shoulder in response, successfully feeling flesh rip and blood swell between my toes. We separated, but I was surprisingly quicker to jump back at her. I slammed into her chest again, but this time she rolled back and shoved me away. I rolled on the ground, and Dura leaped forward and pinned me.

"Ah, I see you've been practicing!" Dura said, blood dripping from her muzzle. She laughed, her hot breath on my face. "You still fight like a brute, though! The Defection hasn't changed you as much as you'd like to think. You still have no technique, no correct form. You just lunge." She jumped back and I scrambled up quickly. You were still there, even though I'd told you to run. You were watching from the doorway with wide eyes. "C'mon, come at me again!"

I yowled and flung myself at the old Hunter again. She side-stepped me, though, and shoved her paws into my side, throwing me back on the floor. "Your form is sloppy!" she bellowed, hurling herself at me. I quickly pushed myself up and dove underneath her long legs, sliding on my belly across the ground. But I didn't have enough time to stand up and turn back to face Dura, and she was already on top of me again.

"Useless dodge," she hissed in my ear. "You left yourself vulnerable and exposed."

I was breathing heavily, the wind being crushed out of my lungs. My legs were flailing, desperately trying to get out from under my old mentor. Finally one of my paws caught her back leg and she stumbled a bit, enough for me to be able to squirm my way out and smack her across the face in the process. Her muzzle curled back in a snarl. I jumped forward, desperately trying to remember a move any of the Ferox had taught me, but I ended up with a unpracticed and sloppy dive to the side, trying to take out her legs. She simply jumped over me. I hissed in frustration, spun to face her, but didn't attack again.

"A Hunter Tribune could beat you," she snapped. My legs were shaking. She jumped again, and I reared up to catch her. But she weighed more than me, and my move backfired. She slammed me on my back and had me pinned again, her paw pressing down on my throat. I gasped for air. "A lone Solus could beat you." Her claws pierced my skin. I felt warm blood on my neck. My head throbbed. "Your father should have left you with your worthless mother."

I quickly said an internal apology to you. For making you watch this happen, for not being able to prove to you how much I actually loved you. No, I was just going to die here, writhing on the floor of your humans' house, under the claws of a Bounty Hunter. I prayed for you, too. I prayed you'd find happiness, and you'd move on. I felt my eyes rolling to the back of my head, my lungs closing. I felt myself dying.

And suddenly the pressure was gone, my lungs were filled, and my head was clearing. I figured death had come. But it wasn't death; it was you.

"Lynn?" I muttered, my voice low. I heard the sounds of fighting, of bodies smashing into things. I blinked away the blurriness in my vision, and my chest swelled with panic. You were fighting a Bounty Hunter. You, the one with no training of any sort. I wasn't sure you'd ever even seen a fight before today. But you were fighting like you had the strength of Benedictus and Jax combined in you, a ferocity in your eyes I hadn't seen in anyone else. Dura was bigger than you, but you were more powerful. As I struggled to my paws to help you, you grabbed Dura by the shoulder in your jaws and whipped her around, slamming her into a wall. She crumpled, and you leaped at her again, shoving her back into the wall once more. I saw, a moment before it happened, what you were aiming for. Some decorative human thing that we had broken earlier, standing out in a weird angle, driven through Dura's back--

And the cheetah fell, and you were still standing.

You didn't hesitate to rush towards me, and I collapsed into your shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Lynn, I'm so sorry--"

"Shh, shh," you soothed me, and I quit talking. I pressed my face into your fur and let myself cry, I let myself inhale your scent between my sobbing breaths. And while I was weak and broken and defeated, you were strong and comforting. "It's okay, it's okay," you said. "I love you, Faeles. I love you. I'm here. She's gone. You don't have to run anymore. I'm right here, I'm right here."

We stayed like that for a long time. When you heard your humans coming home, you hurried me out the window, but this time you followed. We hid in your humans' shed, and I carefully took out my pile of gifts, and you teared up when you saw them. I added one more to the pile; the small golden bird charm I had intended to give you on the last day I had spent with you in the city, all those moons ago, the last time I had encountered Dura. I think you loved it. You didn't say anything for a long time, then you pressed your muzzle into my neck. I think that means you loved it.

In the middle of the night, after her humans had quit yelling about the destroyed house and the dead cheetah, we slipped outside. You'd wrapped yourself in an old human cloak that was hiding in the shed, and I'd put all of your gifts in a bag and tied them across my chest. We left together that time. We went back to the wild, where we were both born. We first traveled to my mother's old den; it was empty, and her scent was completely gone. I didn't care about her, though. We stayed there for a few nights, then left again, heading north, away from where I knew the Olum camped and the Ferox patrolled. We camped in random caves or thick underbrush, and I taught you to hunt. You were naturally good at it. I think you loved it. You smiled a lot, and at night you watched the stars with me. I think that means you loved it.

I think that means you love me.

this is single-handedly the gayest and sappiest thing i've ever drawn or written, which is great. can successfully cross that one off the bucket list.

Fael's gay little bye-bye story. also i love drawing pine trees.

i dont think this gets any deni since it's a going away story and i?? wouldn't use the deni anyways?

Faeles, Lynn, story, art (c)