Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She is not young when her admin joins the server. She’s many moons old and has kitted plenty times. So when humans show up to the previously wild server, she is not impressed.

The humans, originally, didn’t even really show up on her periphery. Who cares about a few more icky, smelly creatures if they weren’t interfering with her prey supply? Still, when an offensively green one with an axe who is far too loud stumbles right onto her territory, she fends him off. Yes, she did, all on her own. All it took was a threat display and he retreated.

Okay, she hadn’t planned for him to show up the next day. What? What does he want now? He doesn’t even do anything, just sits at the edge of the clearing and what, watches her? Eventually he pulls out and baits her with fish, but she isn’t some village cat, easily tempted by treats. He tries for the whole day— are all humans this dumb? She’ll do what she wants, thank you very much.

Knowing she does what she wants doesn’t mean she knows why she ends up trailing him as he continues on— not that she needs to know. She’s a cat, after all; reasoning is for humans. Speaking of humans, hers is called Stupid. He’s not actually called Stupid, but she felt the moniker fit after watching him flail about with the other humans and fall into a river. Willingly. What an idiot— but this particular idiot supplies her with fresh fish, so she’ll entertain him for now.

And so she tolerates it when more humans— or at least human-adjacent things— come to her server. She won’t tolerate them anywhere near her, which a luxury only Stupid is allowed, but she won’t bite off their faces. Probably. As long as she’s well-fed. And Stupid and Stupid’s friends build an ugly dwelling surrounded by water, and then the humans build more houses and paths and whatevers, and then blow them up, because they’re all strange, weird humans.

It doesn’t hurt when Stupid spends less and less time with her, and it doesn’t hurt that when he does show up he babbles about countries and disputes and war. So what? If she was him, she’d just chase them off. Hers to claim, hers to keep. And then Stupid, instead of sensibly listening to her, goes off and comes back smelling angrier and wilder; not the good wild, though. It’s… not great.

But that’s fine. She has plenty to occupy her time. Hunting, grooming, exploring if she has the desire. Her exploration leads her to a blond winged man standing by a hole (well, more of a crater), who looks sad.

“Hello,” he says, and she hisses at him. Yes, run away, loser. This is her server— finders keepers and all that. Hers, hers, hers. Not for men who smell of blood and sadness— it’s for her and the other wild things (and maybe Stupid too, but only maybe) and he has no right to be near this perfectly good hole that smells of old gunpowder and humans.

He doesn’t go far, annoyingly. He just sits and looks depressed, which, what? He’s a human— humans like blown-up things and holes and gunpowder. It gives them the ability to do what humans always do; build stuff, blow it up and build it again. Go build something, idiot. Then you can blow it up later and it’ll make you feel better.

He leaves. She eyes the hole, but moves on. It’s a hole— she doesn’t care about it if he doesn’t. She has better things to do. Like watch the small, loud humans, which… ew. Small, loud humans are never a good thing. And these ones are sad small, loud humans. That’s even worse, because at least happy small loud humans bring a pleasant buzz to the air— these ones are just boring. If Stupid were here… she doesn’t know what he’d do. Something interesting, maybe.

Weeks go by and Stupid doesn’t show up and she’s… not worried, per se. Just… peeved. There’s a hum in the air and all the humans are loud and busy and she feels almost lonely. Stupid wasn’t the brightest human, but she was fond of his weird ways and propensity for jumping into water. Maybe that’s why she still curls up in the small hollow Stupid has carved out for her near the Community House. It’s hidden and hard to notice if you’re not looking (for her safety, and she likes it this way), which is was a surprise to hear the shuffling outside of it one night.

Oh. It’s Stupid? Hello, Stupid, you haven’t been missed at all. Yes, show up to her hollow after months of disappearance without any treats at all, that’ll totally go over well.

It’s good to know he’s still alive; but he’s not quite right. He’s been gone too long, his movements are shaky even as he takes her by the scruff— still gently, always gentle enough that she doesn’t yowl— and takes her down to a river. He’s smells not-right and is glassy-eyed as he stares at the water, unmasked face warping into unrecognisable shapes.

“I have to do this. I have to. Attachments are— they’re dangerous. I have to do this.”

She yowls— she’s had more than enough of this. She wants down. Now. Let her down, Stupid, or she’ll bite.

Stupid doesn’t comply. He’s still shaking and doesn’t smell right. Her ears cock back and she permits him to hold her a little longer. That’s what worked with the more measly of her kits, and they turned out to be able to fend for themselves, so she might as well do it for Stupid too, who is just a rather hairless, overgrown kitten anyways. Still, her tail swishes and she mrrs her displeasure when Stupid sits down with her still in his arms on the riverbank.

“I’m not attached to you,” he says stubbornly, “You don’t even have a name. So I can’t be attached to you.”

Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night, stupid. Just get this river muck off of her, now. Look at her coat, does he want her to catch fleas? She sneezes, unimpressed, and finally Stupid lets her down. Alright, she let him hold her, now fork over food. C’mon, stupid, she knows he has it.

“I— I can’t— it doesn’t count as an attachment, right?”

Who is he talking to. Is he asking her? Are all humans like this, or is this purely a Stupid thing? Stupid, is this a Stupid thing? Stupid, instead of answering her, goes to pick her up again, which no, no, no, she does not want to be picked up, thank you very much. Stupid, instead of sensibly letting her down, just holds her tighter as he treks through the dark server. Thankfully it’s a short trip, only going to the offensive looking cat cafe that Stupid’s friend sleeps in, where Stupid lets her down.

She gets a good look at him as he stands, illuminated by the moonlight. Stupid still has the mask he always insists on wearing off, his clothes are dirty and there’s still a manic shine to his eyes— but he’s crying too, she notices with almost-concern. Why are you crying, Stupid? Is her presence enough to bring him to tears?

“You stay here,” he says, snotty and covered in human ick. She looks at him, unimpressed and trying to communicate that she does not want to stay at the tacky cat cafe that smells of other cats and too many icky humans. No, she will not stay here, thank you very much. She will go where she pleases.

“Please,” says Stupid, which… hm. The desperation makes it seem like there’s danger which is… a new consideration (she doesn’t like to think of the way Stupid reminds her of a rabid wolf sometimes, how he sets her fur on edge. Maybe… maybe this is for the best). So on second thought, the cat cafe may be amenable. Stupid will have to return, however— she can and will claw off the sleeping friend’s face if given incentive and incentive is whatever she wishes.

“Good… good cat,” chokes out Stupid when she eventually settles down and figures, alright, whatever, he’s going through something, it’s not her issue. Still, she almost feels… lost? Sad? Bad? Hungry? as Stupid leaves, placing his mask firmly back on his face and teleporting away. Stupid’s sleeping friend doesn’t even twitched upon physical contact, which means the estate is essentially free territory for her.

She’ll miss Stupid, she thinks. He was a good source of food. Thankfully, she has nothing but time and she’ll wait for him here for as long as she’d like— and then, if he doesn’t show up, she’ll find him.

She is a wild thing after all, and she’ll know the scent of her Stupid anywhere.

Chapter Text

Stupid goes missing again, and this time it seems to have stuck. Cat’s intuition, and also the fact people go into the recently built prison smelling like themselves and come out smelling like her idiot.

She has a hint, and a feeling, and a worry. So she watches.

She watches how there’s a slow trickle of people going in and out and how it slows. She sees a boy go in and come out soaked with fear and death and blood. Then nobody really comes in or out, aside from the creeper and the duck-man. They come out smelling like blood and fear, but it’s Stupid’s blood and fear which is… not ideal. She kind of maybe wants to do something about that, but she’s just a cat— an amazing, clever, beautiful cat, but just a cat all the same. She can’t do anything but witness.

She watches a boy, a ghost and a sheep go in, sees a boy and a sheep come out. Sees how a pig-man goes in and doesn’t come out. At some point, Stupid’s sleeping friend wakes up. She bites him and he shoves her off, muttering about dreams and gods and whatevers and she claims his bed as hers— not that it wasn’t already hers, it’s just now it’s hers hers. He blinks and stumbles off, mumbling, and she sneezes. Maybe she’s allergic to him.

After that, there comes a feeling in the air; a feeling that causes her ears to swivel and her fur to rise. It’s a feeling that means change is coming, or means somebody’s playing around with lightning again. It’s a feeling that makes wild things run and cats like her stay.

She wonders what caused it; was it the sleeping friend— now deemed goggles for his unattractive pair of goggles— waking up? Was it something else, beyond her sight? Was it the fact she threw up rat bones on the main path and managed to trip up no less than four people?

Not that it matters, of course. Because she’s a cat and she’s wild and scary and listens to nobody but herself and her instincts.

Her instincts are right, of course; change does come. Change comes in the form of quiet conversations, questions and choices and decisions that she doesn’t care about leading up to a day she does care about more, because her favourite idiot is released from the prison.

They pull him out in a bloody heap; red soaks the path they take him on to the Community House and it hangs thick and coppery on her tongue for hours. The fact it appears his release wasn’t too planned helps her; through all the yelling and arguing that follows, nobody notices a scrawny cat trailing along their motley group; nobody glimpses lampshade-yellow eyes in the underbrush; nobody sees whiskers twitching as a cat slips through crevices people cannot to a makeshift ward that had been hastily put together.

The unpleasant scent of healing balms hang in the air and all she hears are choked whimpers as the bloodied heap writhes and tries to fight back against the dark-winged man, who is murmuring platitudes and shoving potions down their throat. The scent is strangely familiar and she gets a glimpse of blond hair and pale skin and oh. Oh. This… it looks bad. Like, mauled-by-a-wolf-or-worse bad. Oh, Stupid, what’ve you gotten yourself into?

It’s a long night. She’s not there for most of it; cat germs and wounds generally aren’t a good combination. It’s pure luck that she’s dropping in when Stupid starts choking which, no, no, no, you are not dying, idiot! Where’s the healer?

The healer— the man with dark wings— is passed out on a chair near Stupid and he looks exhausted but she’s not going to feel bad over this. Come on, feathered man! You’re an awful healer if you can’t do this one thing— alright, you brought this on yourself.

The man yelps as she bites him awake and fumbles about for precious moments before he hears Stupid’s choking and shoots up, shouting for help. There’s a thunder of feet rushing about and Stupid’s chokes turn into gasps. Her work here is done; by all logic, she should leave.

She doesn’t leave. She slinks back in to sit on his bed, purely for selfish reasons, like the fact his bed is warm and her life might be a bit harder if he just keeled over and kicked it. Stupid only wakes up a few times during the night. Most of the time his one unbandaged eye just stares at her and she stares back, asserting dominance, before he falls back asleep. At some point Stupid’s fever breaks and she creeps off to trip up all the people she can in order to assert her dominance over them too.

All her actions are purely for self-serving reasons, don’t you dare suggest otherwise.

It’s two weeks before Stupid is allowed out on his own. There’s quite a few people to greet him: the once blood-soaked boy with his friends; the healer and the piglin; a man with a white streak in his hair, a few others. They talk— shout in some of their cases. The boy talks firmly to her idiot and walks off with his head held high and his friends at his heels. All the humans seem to have something to say, so she waits. She’s in no rush. She can’t see her idiot, but she’ll wait.

It takes a while. There’s a lot of icky human feelings so they talk and gesture and threaten and then they just kind of… leave him on the bench he’d made his way to. Not without hissed words and threats (or praises, in some people’s cases), but they eventually clear off and her Stupid just… sits there.

The stillness isn’t normal, because in all her time knowing Stupid he’s always moving, always having some plan or flitting about babbling about irrelevant stuff she doesn’t care about. He doesn’t do that, now. He just sits; still, quiet, boring. Why are you like that, idiot? Enough of that, time for watching is over, time for doing is now, budge over Stupid because there’s plenty room on that bench for her.

He startles when she jumps up on it and wow, Stupid, you haven’t forgotten about her, have you? He better not have. Though maybe she’s just gotten sneakier, which is actually far more likely because she is better than everyone and is the sneakiest anything on the server.

She also uses his moment of startle to get a good look at him and oh, that’s why he’s not up and about. Anyways. Hello, idiot. It’s been a while since you were lucid. You’re missing… bits. Like an eye. And half a leg. Don’t you need those?

“Is that— are you my cat?”

Who else, Stupid? Anyways, get up. The stillness is weird and she does not like it. Up with ye, they have things to do. It’s getting cold and the wind nips at her fur, which means he, dressed in thin healers robes, is probably freezing. So up.

“Wait!”

She is waiting, idiot. Get your crutches, come on, she has places to be. Up, up, up, there you go, yes Stupid, follow her, good human.

She doesn’t doubt they make an interesting sight, a scraggly looking cat followed by an equally scraggly looking human who swings along on crutches and pauses for breath every few moments, but she doesn’t care. This is her server; it’s right they should stare. In awe, that is, of her majesty. She comes to a stop near her hollow and Stupid leans against the wall outside the Community House, breathing heavily. Another few humans watch them warily from nearby, but they don’t meddle, which is good because she’d bite their faces off if they did. Stupid watches her, curious, as she goes into her den.

“What are you doing? I can’t fit in there.”

That sounds like a you problem. He doesn’t need to go in there anyways— she just needs to grab something. It’s the base of her den and she’s had it for a long, long time, which means it’s faded and covered in a mixture of cat fur and feathers and a teeny bit of very old blood, but the once bright green hoodie still holds its shape. It’s a hassle to drag out, though; the things weighs almost as much as she does and she only has her teeth to work with, but it’s worth it to see the look on Stupid’s face when she finally manages to shove the thing out.

“Is that my—“

Yes. Stop looking at her like that— it was comfortable. Also, get a new mask already— she can see every emotion on his stupid human face and it makes her feel all wiggly and uncomfortable when he looks at her like she hung the moon. Raise your standards, idiot.

Now follow the kitty, she’s not leading you to an ill-timed death. Look, a lovely clearing that was coincidentally where he found her. Start building, she wants a house.

Stupid mutters something about how he doesn’t know what to do, but does she care? No. No, she does not. Now get to building, idiot. She did not sacrifice her perfectly good hollow to be denied an even better abode.

Stupid takes the hint. His scarred hands are slow and don’t bend quite right, but he manages to cut down wood and mould stone into the start of a rather ugly but stable house. The floor is dirt and there’s holes in the ceiling but it’s dry and keeps out the elements as Stupid lays on the floor, breathless. He’s crying, which, gross, and why? It’s a house, so what? Stop that, human. This is why she doesn’t build houses, because humans get all attached and feely and then inevitably someone’ll go and blow it up and they’ll all start fighting again over houses.

Idiots, all of them. Speaking of idiots, her idiot apparently can’t feed himself. His skinniness once again reminds her of the more pitiful of her kittens; he needs to be fed, and if he can’t do that for himself, she’ll do it for him.

Thankfully now she’s on familiar territory, and there’s a reason why she’d originally lived here: the abundance of fowl who gather nearby make for easy prey. Ducks and other birds live nearby already nested there and her absence has allowed them to feel even safer, making it more than easy to find and catch a particularly plump duck who hadn’t been prepared for the apex predator in the area to return. Fear her, ducks, for she is the ender of lives.

Stupid still hasn’t moved when she comes back, but she can hear his heartbeat and his breathing which means he’s not dead. Wakey wakey, get up or she’ll bite. Up.

Stupid yelps at the resulting chomp, but she didn’t even draw blood so they’re fair. Look, Stupid. Food. Eat. No, you have to cook it first. Don’t eat that much that quick, you’ll— ew.

He wipes the bile from his mouth and goes to stand which means… yep, there he goes. Crutches, buddy, crutches.

Ugh. These next few weeks are going to be interesting.

She’s gotten into a routine of sorts. Wake up, yell at Stupid for breakfast, do whatever she wants, yell at Stupid for dinner, do whatever she wants, go to sleep. She’s also gotten familiar with Stupid’s habits, which are boring at best and destructive at worst. He tries to tear down their house a few times. He never goes through with it.

Stupid often wakes up screaming, which is annoying but manageable. Sometimes the other humans will come around, which means they’ll probably yell at Stupid, who’ll yell at them, and then they’ll yell back and this goes on until they leave and Stupid comes back angry so she hides and won’t come out until she’s baited with a sufficient amount of food. It’s not easy. It’s not hard. It just is. Stupid cries a lot, he yells a lot (not at her, though), he spits insults and vitriol in order to drive other humans away. She almost respects him for that, except she doesn’t respect anyone because nobody deserves her respect.

Most days it’s just her and Stupid. He’s built a little farm that grows carrots and wheat and beetroot and has a mine that isn’t very deep. Their house is still ugly, but they have a carpeted floor now so it’s not all bad. There’ll be days where he can’t leave the house, where he’s so paranoid he shuts all the windows and retreats under the bed, and there’s days where he joins her outside, working on his farm.

They’re outside wriggling in the sunbeams— well, she’s wriggling around in the sunbeams, Stupid’s pulling up carrots— when he pauses and looks at her and laughs. Which, what? How dare you! She is a cat, she will do what she wants!

Instead of grovelling, he grins and then he just… goes back to pulling up carrots. She realises then that there’s no dangerous edge to Stupid anymore; the desperate, wild energy is faded and he seems… at peace, almost. There’s dirt all over him and he looks as dumb as all the other humans but there’s a weird feeling in her chest that’s almost warm? Fluttery?

Must be the sun. Or she’s hungry. Or both. Her ears twitch; ew, people are here. It’s goggles and the one Stupid told her not to go near because of his murdering-pets tendencies. Well, all good things come to an end, good luck with this one, Stupid. Your mess, you fix it. She stretches and yawns, slinking off to lie on the roof. She watches them exchange greetings and go inside the house.

A few hours pass. Surprisingly there’s been no audible yelling, or throwing things, or passive-aggressive manipulation tactics. It probably went well, because the two of his friends leave not happy, exactly, but not sad. Their conversation must’ve been— what’s the word? Cathartic.

Stupid’s leaning on the door when she hops down and he looks at her and his expression is soft in a way she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

Words don’t need to be said. Yowls, however, do need to be made audible, because it’s past time for dinner, come on, food. Seriously, it’s past dusk. Chicken is acceptable, no you have to cook it, don’t you know that? She’ll bite, she absolutely will, she’s starving, she’ll starve to death, do you want that, Stupid? Honestly, she can never leave because they’d both starve and die, well, she wouldn’t because she can hunt for herself but Stupid absolutely would. What would you do without me, idiot?

People are useless without cats. It’s a mercy she happened to get this particular idiot.

(She’ll never admit she wouldn’t know what to do without him.)