Chapter Text
Adaliene had just finished putting her entire supply of glitter glue across her bedroom wall, her paws and fur now also coated with the quick-drying craft supply. She was only five years old, and to be completely fair, you should never leave a young leopard alone. After a period of much too long where silence had reigned, her father came to see what mischief his little girl had gotten into this time. He groaned upon seeing the abomination that lay before him- the consequences of the ever-regrettable decision he made to leave her alone without supervision while he prepared lunch.
“Your mother is going to have a fit when she sees this,” he sighed, but a loving smile still twitched on his maw. “Come on, let’s get you in the bath.”
After wrestling with her for an hour with a bath, he managed to at least get the glue out. The glitter left something to be desired; no doubt it would take ages to clean up the wall. They used reasonable consequences in their household, so Adaliene had to scrub it off(with supervision, to avoid getting distracted). Right on time, it seemed, her mother arrived home as they poured out the dirty water. Adaliene pounced onto her mother’s legs with a delighted squeal. She was her mother’s spitting image, with a rusty brown coat and black spots, the brown pigmentation only visible with good lighting. She had those same, striking yellow eyes that shined with a ferocity for life.
It was about as normal of a Friday as it could have been. Tomorrow, they would walk over to the neighbors across the street to deliver a birthday present for their son, Adaliene’s best friend. The Cooper family had been some of the kindest neighbors the Aubert family had the pleasure of knowing. Something got blown up in the tree? Call Conner Cooper. The family of raccoons had the agility of professional athletes, though they claimed it was all genetics. Adaliene was six months older than their child, Sly, but they got along as if they’d been best friends for generations. They stuck up for each other on the playground and practically played together every day. Today they hadn’t, but that was okay.
For the rest of the day, Adaliene learned more English from her father, sang songs with her mother, and played every iteration of hide and seek known (and some not known) to man. Her mother helped her wrap the present they had made for the boy, trying to save them from the cleanup of balls of tape everywhere. Dinner was prepared and served in a timely manner, then it was time for the bath and a bedtime story. After their daughter was fast asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Aubert caught up on menial chores before settling down on the couch for one last show and a glass of wine.
I don’t like this memory.
The events that occurred next felt like a blur for Adaliene. She was shaken out of sleep by her father. Though groggy and startled, she could clearly feel the terror rushing off his body like water. He picked her up and huddled her into her closet, tucking her behind clothes and the boxes on the floor. He motioned a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. She was more alert now, but her childhood instinct made her follow her father's orders over asking questions. He gently pressed the door to the closet shut and she heard his footsteps rush back downstairs.
There was so much yelling, and then a scream; it was her mother. Her father cried out, and more yelling ensued. All Adaliene could do was cover her ears and tuck into a tight ball, afraid for her parents, afraid of the unknown. Then the slightly familiar scent of iron tickled into her senses. She had only smelt this a few times. When she fell and scraped her knee when she accidentally scratched her father when she was overdue for a nail clipping. However, her brain was so wracked with panic that she could barely make the connections that what she was smelling was blood.
The screaming and yelling seemed to end abruptly, and now all Adaliene could hear was the sound of her heart thundering in her chest. She was paralyzed, stuck to that spot in the closet. There were hushed voices, unfamiliar ones, that she could barely register downstairs. Her vision began to spot in black as she heard the sound of taloned feet begin to creep up the stairs. She wasn't sure to feel more uneasy or relieved that when she came back into consciousness, she was all alone. Shaking, she pushed the closet door open and so she crawled out of the closet, and then out of her room. That smell of iron felt five times as strong now, and it made her stomach churn. A new smell accompanied it, one she wasn't familiar with at all, but it was very unpleasant. Taking tentative steps, and holding tightly onto the handrail, she counted the steps as she went down them.
“Mama? Papa?” Her voice called out, squeaking more than she would have liked. There was no response. “Mama? Papa!” Adaliene called out once more as she reached the bottom of the stairwell. It was so quiet, she could hear police sirens off in the distance. Using the wall as a support, she walked into the living room, where the smell was strongest. Blood coated nearly every surface, and stained her beloved parents coats, who lie motionless in different areas of the room like discarded toys. Adaliene was merely five - she thought perhaps they had fallen asleep and gotten hurt. She did not yet understand the concept of death. The officers who showed up at the scene exchanged pitiful glances at each other as it was explained to the young leopard that she would never see her parents alive again.
Adaliene’s parents were not the original target of this senseless slaughter; Her neighbors, the Cooper’s, had been killed too, survived by their son, who very much understood the gravity of the situation. The raccoon and the leopard clung to each other, as they were all that was left of their normality now.
Why can’t I wake up?
Am I dead?
That first year in the orphanage was a hard one for the two of them. Adaliene and Sly were inseparable, making it hard to get them adopted. The orphanage owner, Mrs.Puffin, just couldn’t find a client who was willing to separate the two. However, that all changed with the arrival of two very special kids, one box turtle, and one pink hippopotamus. The four of them just seemed to click instantly - and it would soon make Mrs.Puffin wish she never put them all in the same room. Snacks and juice boxes started to frequently go missing, as well as bandaids at times, though those usually reappeared, just on top of a wound.
All these small offenses were just leading up to the biggest heist of all for them, the cookie jar. Mrs. Puffin always took all the holiday cookies meant for the children for herself and locked them in her office. Once they constructed the “perfect plan”, Adaliene was barely nine years old. It was around Christmas time, which she knew because a fir tree sat in the lobby, adorned with small, twinkling lights and baubles she did her best to not knock over. The plan was simple, Murray would be by the window, and Bentley would be at the wagon with their stuff keeping watch. Sly and Adaliene would watch each other’s backs as they snuck into the office while Mrs. Puffin got up to do bed inspections. Everything was going off without a hitch, the cookies had been handed down into the wagon, and Sly had just landed on the grass to help Adaliene out of the window. The sound of a car approaching the building caught her attention. It was strange because the orphanage was closed today, a Sunday.
“Ada, C’mon!” Sly urged. Adaliene’s ear twitched as she wiggled the rest of the way out of the window, landing on the ground between her two friends. They helped her up and started piling into the wagon. But Adaliene’s focus kept coming back to the car, especially when a skunk stepped out of it. She recognized vaguely the shape of the item in his hand as a gun of some kind, like the big blocky ones you see on sci-fi shows that shoot lazers. She felt her heart lurch a bit in her chest as the skunk’s eyes locked in on their group, and the anger that seeped off his body she could smell from here.
Adaliene’s first instinct was to get her friends in the wagon. She and Sly, having the similar notion, heaved Murray into the wagon, and then Sly hopped in himself to help Adaliene in. She began pushing on the wagon, so it would begin to roll downhill, straining as hard as she could. As the wagon’s wheels began to roll, she reached out for Sly’s arm, and that’s when she heard a loud zap, and her body seized moments later. The scream that she tried to push out of her throat got stuck. The white-hot fire spread throughout her entire body, and she felt as if she had never hit the ground. Nothing she had gone through could surmount this, it felt like her insides were becoming outsides. Then, after what felt like an eternity, she felt absolutely nothing, not even her own heartbeat.