Archive of Our Own

Spontaneous Juvenile Felinization, known colloquially as the kitten pox. Tarvek knows what it is, of course. Most kids get it at some point before they’re ten, either by catching it naturally or by getting it on purpose. Safer to catch it when you’re still young, after all. Anevka had it just a few years ago, but Tarvek was at Grandma’s place in Paris that week and by the time he came home she wasn’t contagious anymore, so he didn’t catch it then.

She’d just gotten slit eyes, a bit of fur and a small tail that fell off after a while. That’s about as much as most kids get. Sometimes they shrink a bit or switch to a quadrupedal gait for a while, but it’s rare for a case to get as bad as this.

Knowing what’s happening doesn’t help him much when he’s sitting on top of the pile of clothes he had to wiggle out of, looking up at a door handle far above his head.

The stupid thing is he knew it’s been going around, too. Sleipnir was a foot shorter than normal and had a cat tail for all of last week, and there’s been shed fur everywhere lately. It was only a matter of time before he caught it too, even though he’s been trying to be careful.

Well, not that careful. With Von Pinn busy trying to watch two dozen feral animal kids, it was the ideal time for him and Gil to slip away unnoticed to investigate confidential files.

His ears are flat against his head and he’s hissing before he’s even finished the thought. What good did sneaking away get him? Gil betrayed him on the spot, and for no reason. In an hour someone’s going to pick him up to send him home, and also he’s a cat.

He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to go back. He likes it here!

He crawls under the bed in his room and curls up in a corner. Walking like this feels natural, now, but it’s still strange. All his things are packed. His room is pretty much empty. Arguably it’s not really his room anymore, just a room where he’s waiting to be taken home.

A room with vents on the wall up by the ceiling, and Tarvek doesn’t want to leave.

He stays in the corner, still curled up with his ears all the way back, surveying his small realm for useful resources. After a few minutes he slinks back down from under the bed and hops onto it.

It’s easy. Cats are strong, and he doesn’t weigh very much right now. He remembers reading about the mass displacement involved in the transformation, but most of it went over his head. He suspects he’s going to need a more thorough education in cross-thermonic metamorphosics to understand it properly, but he understood enough not to be too worried.

He’s strong and small, is the point, and when he runs the calculations in his head it should work, so he jumps again until he’s on top of his dresser, stepping carefully so he doesn’t knock anything down, and crouches at the edge closest to the vent. He’s never been that good at jumping even as a human, but the cat body seems to come with the necessary knowledge and the theory seems sound, so he takes aim and wiggles to get started, and then he leaps.

His claws catch on the grate in front of the vent. For two seconds he hangs there, scrabbling at the wall with his back paws. The grate is hard and it’s hurting his claws and this was a bad idea, he’s going to hurt himself and not even get away, this was a terrible idea.

The grate pops off the vent.

He falls. It’s two meters, but it’s infinitely far down and his claws are still stuck in the grate.

The he hits the floor hard, the grate falling on top, yanking on his claws so hard he yipes with pain, and the sound is loud enough they must hear it on the other side of the airship.

He crawls halfway back under the bed before he manages to extricate himself from the grate and then he goes right back to his corner, breathing hard, all his fur on end. If anyone comes in, he’s going to bite them.

It takes him a few minutes or maybe an eternity before he’s sure no one’s coming.

Now that his heart has slowed down a little and he can think through the panic, it makes sense. The door is locked, so there probably aren’t any guards directly outside, and it probably mostly sounded loud to him because he was directly below the grate when it fell.

He’s calmer now, though, and thinking a little clearer.

They are going to come looking for him, so he should make sure it takes a little bit of time before they realize what’s happened.

A glance at his alarm clock shows he still has over forty minutes until they’re supposed to come, so he’ll give himself twenty.

The bottom drawer of his dresser opens easily enough with the right leverage. Getting his discarded clothes into it is harder, but eventually possible with patience and clever work. He doesn’t like having to carry his underwear with his mouth, but at least it’s not someone else’s. Closing the drawer again is easier than opening it.

Then there’s the grate.

He considers it for a long time.

He can probably get it back up if he ties it to a string and takes the other end up as he leaves, but he’s used most of his twenty minutes already and he’s not sure how to tie good knots without hands. He’s sure he could, but it would be hard, and even if he manages that, he’s not sure how to attach it back on the vent from the inside, and it might well fall back down, making the sound again and now lying on the floor with the string as a tell-tale sign that someone was doing something with the vent.

In the end he just pushes it as far under the bed as he can and leans it up against a wall so it disappears in the shadow. It’s not perfect. The vent is conspicuously grate-less and there’s claw marks in the paint if you look, but it’s the best he can do.

He jumps onto the dresser again, and this time, he gets his claws over the edge of the vent and hauls himself up.

Then he’s out.

He’s mapped the ventilation system of Castle Wulfenbach as best as one can from the outside. He knows it’s not possible to traverse more than a few rooms through them before you run into problems, but he doesn’t have to go far. Two rooms down from the school dormitories is a vent opening into a closet, and this time he can push the grate open without getting stuck or falling. The grate itself lands almost quietly a couple centimetres down, on the top shelf running along the ceiling.

Hopping down to the floor is easy, and only when he’s there does he look up and realize the light is off.

He doesn’t even have his glasses, and it’s dark, the only light coming in through the crack around the door, but it’s more than clear enough for him. Mostly grey and rather blurry but he can see every foothold along the walls without having to strain.

Cat eyes, of course. His pupils can open to fill almost his whole irises, and the tapetum lucidum catches more light beside. He’s never thought about how nice it would be to be able to see in the dark.

He’s going to miss these eyes when they go away in a week, he thinks.

The ears too. He presses one to the crack of the door and knows for a fact that if anyone was out there, he’d know.

The door handle is an obstacle, but not a big one, and then he’s walking down a hallway without a trouble in the world.

Three doors and a corner farther down the hall, he slips through a crack between two wall panels that a human would never fit through and continues his exploration from the inside of the wall. He can go anywhere, up, down, around, through tiny gaps and past doors he never could before.

He and Gil have explored quite a lot of the airship while sneaking out at night, but this is different. He’s trying to avoid people a little, but if someone spots him in a hallway they won’t look twice. There are a lot of cats aboard the ship, to deal with the rodents and mimmoths, and no one thinks twice about another one walking around. He should probably worry about the jägers, he suspects they might be able to smell the difference, but to anyone else he’s just a cat.

There’s probably things to consider. When the illness has run its course he’ll turn back into a boy, so at most he’s putting off the inevitable, but he doesn’t want to think about that, so he doesn’t.

He’s never felt this kind of freedom before, never felt this fine just… being. No one is expecting anything of him. No one minds him. Even if they find him sneaking around inside the walls or in restricted areas, the worst they’ll do is move him somewhere else. He can just do what he wants.

If he was still human, he’d be laughing, but instead his tail is swishing back and forth in excitement and he runs down a whole hallway at full tilt just because he can. He notices something that smells very interesting and follows the scent through another hole in the wall, up several floors and through the narrow empty gap over a ceiling, sneaking along a metal beam as narrow as his paws without even worrying about slipping.

He finds a couple mimmoths sneaking around and stops.

Watching them is a lot more fun than he expected. They haven’t noticed him and he’s lying completely still, his eyes on every tiny movement they make. He inches closer, moving so slowly they don’t even realize anything’s there, and….

Well. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually want to eat a mimmoth. It’s a little gross, intellectually. They probably have worms. If he was still human he’d be very grossed out just at the thought of it, but it’s interesting that he’s not, now. In fact, they look pretty tasty. He didn’t know felinization worked like that, but it makes sense, since it also comes with the necessary instincts to move around without trouble. He bets it has something to do with the platonic idealization of the cat brain. He’ll have to look it up.

He stays there for a few minutes watching the mimmoths before he gets bored and walks away. Soon he’s walking along the narrow rafters high above one of the hangars, marvelling at how he’s not even a little afraid of falling. He’s steadier on these paws than he ever was on his own feet.

Being a cat is great actually, he decides. Sure, no thumbs, and he’s pretty sure he can’t talk, but he haven’t missed either, yet. Not really.

He crosses the hangar and finds himself in a corridor again. He’s feeling a little hungry, so he should see if he can find the kitchens. They’ll probably give him something to eat. Maybe he should’ve eaten those mimmoths… No. No, that’s still gross. He has to remind himself of that.

His ears perk up at the sound of a voice.

There’s a lot of voices around, but this one is different, younger, familiar. He can’t quite place it, but he knows it’s familiar. It’s quiet, so quiet he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have picked it up with human ears, just little, wordless sounds.

Curiosity piqued, he follows the sound until he reaches a narrow, rarely visited hallway.

And… it’s Gil.

Tarvek’s halfway through the hallway before he recognizes him. Gil is sitting on the floor, curled around his knees, not quite crying, but sounding like he almost is.

While Tarvek watches, frozen and uncertain of what to do, Gil looks up and looks right at him.

Right. Sniffing at the air, Tarvek turns around to go away. What does he care about a traitor anyway?

He’s intending to leave and not look back, but when he reaches the connecting corridor, there are two jägers approaching. He stays still, hoping they won’t notice him.

“That’s okay,” Gil says behind him, still so quietly it’s barely voiced. “You don’t have to like me. No one does.”

I wonder why, Tarvek thinks sarcastically, glancing back, but Gil just looks miserable.

He looks like he did back when they first met, when he was still spending most of his time hidden away in secret corners so no one would find him, before he opened up and proved exactly how brilliant he was. Of course he goes back to that the instant he gets Tarvek thrown off the castle. What did he expect?

“Not that they have any reason to.” Gil sniffs, really on the verge of crying now. “Not like I can say anything. And if I could, this wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.”

Tarvek… has no idea what that means. He stays at the corner even as the jägers pass by, sending Gil the most confused look he can manage.

“What?” says Gil. “Are you angry at me too?”

Well, yes. But now he’s curious.

And Gil doesn’t even know who he is, thinks he’s one of the airship cats, so maybe… maybe if he doesn’t act angry, he’ll get some answers.

He walks up and sits down next to Gil, looking up at him.

“Oh,” says Gil.

He doesn’t move for a long moment, and then, slowly and carefully, he reaches out a hand.

Tarvek isn’t sure how he feels about that that. He sort of wants to shy away, but he is pretending not to be angry, so he doesn’t move even when Gil starts petting him. After all, it’s Gil. He might be a traitor, but he wouldn’t hurt an animal.

And it… it feels good. It’s warm and nice and solid, and it’s easy to lean into Gil’s hand, let it stroke gently down his back. Then Gil curls his fingers and starts scratching behind Tarvek’s ear, and oh. Oh, that is heaven.

“…Hi kitty,” Gil whispers, and sniffs, drying his eyes with his other hand. Then he shifts to sitting on his knees so he can use both hands.

With the new position, his face is better lit, and Tarvek can see that he wasn’t about to cry, he has already been crying. His eyes are red, and having been crying is never as obvious on him as it is on Tarvek, which is unfair but also means that if it’s this visible now, he’s been crying a lot.

But Tarvek’s having a hard time focusing on that while he’s having his ears scratched. His eyes are drifting shut and he’s shaking, which feels weird even though it feels really good, and it takes him a minute to realize he’s purring.

It’s odd, but he doesn’t want it to stop.

He doesn’t notice he’s laid down on the floor before Gil takes his hands away and he has to get up to chase them.

Gil laughs a little. “Sorry, my knees were starting to hurt.” He sits up with his legs in front of him. “Here, you can sit on my lap.”

Tarvek should probably think twice about that, but he doesn’t want to. He just follows Gil’s hands and sprawls across his lap, letting himself be pet again. Some part of his mind remembers that this isn’t even remotely dignified and that if someone tried assassinating him now they could do it in their sleep, but most of him is occupied with the fact that purring is amazing and it’s a shame humans don’t do it.

“I have a friend who looks kind of like you,” Gil says. “You’ve got the same hair colour.”

Tarvek is really only sort of registering the words.

“Well, I guess we’re not really friends anymore, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t just let him keep spying. I shouldn’t have let him do it in the first place.”

Oh. Gil’s talking about him. Tarvek probably should’ve realized that earlier.

Gil goes quiet for a while, still petting Tarvek but seeming distracted, and when Tarvek cracks an eye open to look up at him, he’s biting his lip and staring at the opposite wall like he’s deep in thought.

“Hey,” he says eventually. “Do you wanna know a secret?”

Well, yes, of course, but he can’t exactly say that, so he just pushes into the fingers to remind Gil to keep scratching and blinks up at him.

“I just found out myself,” he continues. “It’s… I just wish it mattered. It’s cool, and I’m happy about it.” He doesn’t look happy. “But it’s not like I can do anything with it. It’s not gonna make me any more friends. So it’s pointless after all, isn’t it.”

He looks down at Tarvek and looks almost like he’s about to cry again, so Tarvek purrs a little louder. Maybe it’ll help.

“I’m…” Gil says, and he lowers his voice so it’s barely even a whisper anymore, bends down closer to his hair frames his face like a messy curtain. “I’m the Baron’s son.”

…what.

What.

That can’t possibly… but oh, it makes sense. It makes everything make sense.

“It sounds crazy,” Gil whispers, “But he said it was true and I don’t think he’d say that if it wasn’t. If he was pretending I was, then he’d be nicer to me, right? But he doesn’t… I don’t think he even cares.”

He sniffs again, and Tarvek purrs as loudly as he can. It’s helping calm himself down a little too.

“He said it had to be a secret, because if anyone knew, they’d send assassins, but I don’t know why they would if he doesn’t even care about me. Maybe they think he does even if he doesn’t. And I still can’t tell, so no one else is gonna care about me either.”

Assassins. Of course they’ll send assassins. Tarvek’s family will send assassins, and that’s fine when they do it to Tarvek because Tarvek knows how to deal with that, but Gil doesn’t. Gil will just die.

Tarvek pushes himself close to Gil’s chest and Gil hugs him, which isn’t actually very comfortable and makes him want to wriggle loose, but at least it means Gil is there and safe and no one knows yet except him and the Baron. Or, probably a few people, but only people the Baron trusts, and the Baron doesn’t really trust anyone, so that’s fine. He’s a tyrant and a usurper, but he’s going to keep Gil safe.

And that’s… that’s important. Almost important enough to have Tarvek thrown off the airship. Almost.

At the memory of the sting of betrayal, he starts wriggling free, too uncomfortable to keep himself still. Gil lets him go easily and wipes his own eyes. Then Gil’s stomach grumbles.

“Oh,” he says. “Are you hungry?”

Yes. Tarvek is starving, in fact. He can’t have eaten since yesterday at least. He sits back and makes a mewling sound that comes out a little more pitiful than he intended.

Gil snorts. “Yeah, me too. Let’s go find some food.”

At least they can agree to that.

Tarvek knows the airship, but Gil always knew it better, so he follows at Gil’s heels through every human-accessible secret passage leading them as directly as possible towards the kitchens.

They sneak in carefully, through a loose panel behind one of the cupboards, waiting in the shadows until everyone who works there is looking away, and then Gil runs and grabs things because he’s the one of them with hands. He comes back with a small stack of sandwiches and a whole fish about half the length of Tarvek.

Tarvek is about to complain about the fish, but then they’re back in the safety of the secret space between the walls and Gil puts it on a plate on the floor for him and he can smell it, and after that he has no complaints about anything anymore.

“I should probably get back to the school,” Gil says eventually. “Von Pinn doesn’t mind much if I’m not around in the afternoons, she knows I can take care of myself, but she’ll get scary if I’m not back before bedtime.”

Oh, is it that late already? Tarvek has lost track of time.

“Um, you can stay in my room if you’d like?”

Does he want that? Well, it’ll be a place to sleep, and he can’t exactly use his own room any longer. Ah well.

He blinks up at Gil, and Gil smiles, which… matters.

They head back to the school.

Tarvek stays a few steps behind, slinking along the walls so he’ll stay out of sight, which pays off when they come through the door of the school and Gil is instantly yanked off his feet.

“You,” Von Pinn growls. “Where have you been?”

Gil shrieks, which is reasonable. Tarvek is pressed as flat against the wall as he can manage. “Just out by the hangars! I was watching the airships come in!”

Von Pinn narrows her eyes. “And you were alone?”

“Yeah! Who would even… yeah, it was just me.”

He’s lowered to the ground again and Von Pinn puts a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You are not to leave the school again for a while. No more wandering unsupervised.”

“But…”

“No buts. One of the other children has gone missing. If you were not the cause of it, it is possible it will be a danger to you as well. You will stay here.”

“Someone’s… who?”

“It is no concern of yours.”

“Of course it is! What happened?”

“It is no concern of yours,” she repeats. “You will stay here, is that clear?”

He opens his mouth to argue again, and then closes it. “Yes ma-am.”

“Good. Now head to bed.”

“Yes ma-am.”

He runs to his room, and only barely remembers to let Tarvek slip in before he slams the door and sits down on the floor. “That was terrifying. I wonder who’s missing?”

Tarvek is. Tarvek’s the one who is missing, and that means they haven’t figured out what actually happened yet.

“If they went missing on the ship I think they’re fine,” Gil says. “Unless they tripped and fell into the engines or something, I suppose, but… I’m sure it’s fine, right?”

He yawns, looking exhausted. Soon he’s climbing into bed and patting the covers beside him.

Tarvek deliberates for a few moments before he jumps up after him.

“Good night, kitty,” Gil says, and then he falls asleep.

Tarvek isn’t sleepy.

He has too much to think about. He’s more or less gotten used to being a cat. It’ll take a little longer if he wants to compensate for the behavioural changes, but he isn’t sure he’s going to bother. There’s much more important things to care about.

He’s not sure he’s angry at Gil anymore. Probably a little, maybe a lot, but it wasn’t just for no reason, he knows now. And he doesn’t really want to be angry at Gil. He wants to be angry at the Baron a little. Maybe he’ll just do that. Yeah.

The adults know he’s missing now, but they don’t know he’s a cat, and he’s fine with that. He’s not going to stay a cat, however. This isn’t a solution, it’s just a break. It’s going to get worse later.

Probably.

He’s not sure how much worse it can get.

Gil’s breathing is slow and even beside him. Tarvek still isn’t tired, and thinking is annoying.

He gets up and stretches, and then he hops off the bed. Gil’s door handle is loose, so he’ll easily be able to get out. He has a cat’s freedom of movement for only a week and a whole giant airship to explore.

He’ll be back before sunrise.

***

By the time Gil blinks awake, Tarvek is finally properly tired. He’s napped here and there, but he thinks a cat’s circadian rhythm is very different from a human’s. Now, after a long night of exploring and chasing pests through the walls, his eyes are falling shut almost on their own where he’s curled up on the sheets.

“Oh, kitty,” Gil says, sounding surprised and pleased. “You’re still here!”

The sudden hand on his fur startles Tarvek out of his dozing, and he leans into it reflexively, enjoying the warmth. It doesn’t last for more than a few seconds before Gil stops and gets out of bed, though.

“Um, I have to go to school now,” he says. “You can stay here while I’m out if you want, and I’ll come get you something to eat when it’s lunch?”

Tarvek was planning to stay here anyway, but won’t say no to the food. He moves into the warm bit of the bed that Gil just left and watches with half an eye as Gil pulls a shirt over his head and entirely forgoes brushing his hair – not that it would help.

Gil takes a deep, bracing breath. “It’ll be fine,” he says, determined, and clearly just to himself. “Bye, kitty.”

Gil leaves, and Tarvek goes to sleep.

He sleeps for four solid hours before Gil comes back, waking him up. He’s carrying enough food for both of them and looks almost like he’s about to cry again.

Tarvek stretches awake and hops down to meet him. He’s curious about what’s gone wrong now, but food is the priority. He’s hungry again. Sleeping is hard work.

Gil doesn’t say anything either, just sits down so they can both eat on the floor, in silence.

Only when the plates are empty and Gil is still not getting up does Tarvek poke at him with a curious paw, wondering what’s wrong.

Gil doesn’t sound happy when he talks. “I thought…” he says. “I don’t know. They haven’t been as mean in a while because Tarvek was there, and it wasn’t as bad when I wasn’t alone anyway, so I thought maybe they’d gotten used to not being as mean and it’d be fine anyway, but they’re just as bad.”

Well now Tarvek is angry. Have they learned nothing? If it’s true that Gil is the Baron’s son, and it only makes sense that he is, they’re all going to get such a nasty surprise when they’re older.

But that doesn’t help now.

“If Theo was there he’d help a little at least, but he…” Gil sniffs and wipes his eyes angrily. “He’s had cat ears for the past week and now they’re falling off, and he’s a little older than most of us so the adults are worried about complications and he’s been under medical observation all day.”

Oh. Well at least Theo isn’t that much of an idiot. Tarvek hadn’t thought so.

Gil pulls Tarvek into his lap and starts scratching his ears, which is one hundred percent acceptable.

“He looked cool though so I think it’s worth it. His ears were way larger than yours, and they could swivel all the way back. It’s unfair really. All I got was a little fur on my back and tiny fangs. You could barely even notice unless I like, bit someone or something.”

Tarvek remembers that. Gil had been disappointed at the time as well, though he turned out to look surprisingly natural with fangs. It’s almost strange to see him without them now.

“Oh, and I figured it out. Apparently Tarvek’s the kid who’s missing,” Gil says, not sounding all that sad about it. “I guess he ran away or something? I don’t think the Baron would’ve forgotten to tell Von Pinn if he’d actually managed to send him away. Anyway, at least I know it’s fine. Tarvek is really good at being careful, so he’s not gonna trip into any engines.”

Well. At least Gil has that much faith in him.

Gil doesn’t have much else to say, apparently, because he falls quiet after that, just sitting there staring into space with his hands carding mindlessly through Tarvek’s fur until he has to go back to the school.

Tarvek sits and looks at the closed door for a couple minutes before he hops back on the bed to sleep some more. He has lunch to digest, after all.

The next time Gil comes back, he has dinner and homework, and Tarvek has slept as much as he needs, so he sits on Gil’s desk and pays attention as he works through the problems out loud. It’s useful. This way he can pay attention to the lessons even though he’s not supposed to be there anymore, and it seems to help Gil too to have something to talk to.

Once or twice, he looks longingly towards the door, probably wanting to sneak out to explore again, but sneaking out normally is one thing, sneaking out when Von Pinn threatened him not to is quite another.

So even when he’s done with his homework, he just stays there in his room. He picks up and puts down a few books, not keeping his focus on any one of them, and once it’s late enough to be reasonable, he climbs into bed.

It takes him a while to fall asleep, but Tarvek waits until he does.

And then he hops off the bed and leaves the room again.

There were an unusually high number of people patrolling the hallways yesterday, and there are just as many this night, probably looking for him, but they’re not going to find him. Even if they know by now that he’s a cat, which isn’t impossible, Tarvek knows how to keep hidden. He’s way too young to be a proper smoke knight, but he’s still gone through the very basics of the training, and on these paws he’s quiet by nature. No one even knows he’s there unless he wants them to.

He wants to go exploring and chasing mice again, but this time, he ignores the instinct and heads off for the library instead. Watching Gil do his homework helps, but it’s limited, and there’s things he needs to look up about his own current condition, among other things.

Getting the books off the shelves makes him miss his thumbs, but he manages. The library is empty this time of night, and he can take his time.

Again, he’s back at Gil’s room before sunrise.

***

It becomes a routine.

While Gil is at school, Tarvek sleeps in his bed, only waking up to eat lunch in the middle. When Gil is asleep, Tarvek is out, exploring the airship, eavesdropping on late-night conversations, and reading up on things in the library. Mostly about his own current biology, as far as he can interpret texts technically years above his level, but also about anything and everything that catches his eye. There’s so much to learn and so little time.

And when Gil is awake and out of school, they’re together. It’s… rough.

Every day, Gil comes back from the school looking a little more downtrodden. Theo helps a little, from what he says, but not enough. He’s alone, and he’s frustrated.

By the third day, he’s restless enough to sneak out regardless of Von Pinn forbidding it, and they wander aimlessly through the airship’s corridors for a while. It barely seems to help. “If I could just tell them,” Gil says, as much to himself as to the cat at his heels, gesturing angrily. “Except I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to be more important than them to… to get a crumb of respect!”

Tarvek meows agreement, and also warning, letting Gil know they’re about to be noticed, and they climb into the rafters before the approaching patrol can spot them.

“I don’t even… They’re all stupid anyway. I don’t need their company.”

Tarvek settles beside him on the crossbeam and refrains from commenting.

“I wish you could talk,” Gil says, some of the angry air going out of him and leaving him cross-armed over his own knees, deflated. “You don’t act like I’m… like I’m dirt just because I don’t have parents. But I’ll show’em. Just you see.”

Tarvek doesn’t doubt it. Gil has always been good at pranks, once he got the confidence and the encouragement. He always has the best ideas.

But he doesn’t look like he’s up for pranks right now. Not really. He just looks sad.

They sneak back into the school and Gil’s room soon enough, and Gil stays up late that night, doodling organic chemistry models all over the back of his homework.

Tarvek stretches out on the floor beside him and pays half attention. It’s interesting in the context of his own current predicament, but even in biology, Tarvek has always cared more for how the bones go together mechanically than the exact chemistry. An elegant joint is more interesting than things you can’t even see.

As a case in point, his current chemistry is still mostly human, according to what he’s read, it’s simply the shapes of everything that’s different. It’s the shapes of it that make these ears so good, make his eyes see so clearly, make his reflexes sharp and muscles powerful. He’s going to miss it, when he loses it.

Almost as much as he’s going to miss Gil.

The week passes and Gil gets increasingly restless and irritable. He stays up late doodling and writing notes only tangentially related to his actual homework, and the lack of sleep makes him even more irritable the next day.

But even so, from what he says to Tarvek in angry mutters, he has every right to be angry. The other students are as bad as they’ve ever been. He can’t work with anyone in classes, can’t play with anyone outside of them, and though he’s more than smart enough to handle himself academically, the isolation is damaging.

And the Baron, despite having admitted their relation, is doing a great big deal of nothing.

It’s keeping Gil alive, Tarvek reminds himself. It’s keeping Gil alive, but looking at the way he is slowly curling in on himself, driving his own fingernails into the flesh of his arms, it is also destroying him.

And Tarvek’s presence helps, he thinks, but only a little bit.

It won’t help for long, either.

It’s close to the end of the week. Just a day or two left before his time is up. Gil is at school, and Tarvek’s dreams, light as they are now that he’s a cat, are restless and sticky, clinging to his mind with the certainty that soon he’ll be back on two feet and have to face his life.

The door slamming open only barely drags him awake, and he blinks at Gil in confusion.

He can’t smell food. Gil hasn’t brought any, but he’s pulling something from his pockets. A napkin and a small chemical flask from the labs, stolen, probably.

He’s smiling, though. Joyful and bright-eyed like Tarvek hasn’t seen him since… since before.

“They’ll see. I told you they’ll see. I have the best idea!” Gil says, voice sharp and fast, doing something with the items in his hands.

Warning bells are ringing far in the back of Tarvek’s head, but he’s still half asleep and stuck to his dreams, and it’s Gil. He trusts Gil.

“If they’re not going to be friends with me I’m just gonna have to make one!” Gil says, approaching the bed where Tarvek is lying, napkin in one hand and reaching out with the other.

He trusts Gil, but the warning bells are getting louder and he shuffles himself to his paws, ears back and a questioning sound in his throat.

“You’ll be fine,” Gil insists, grabbing too fast, too hard, getting his hand on Tarvek’s scruff before he can scurry away. “You’ll be great. You’ll be fantastic, I promise.”

Tarvek is awake now, scratching at Gil’s arm and screeching. He knows what this is and it’s ridiculous they’re only eight and he can’t get away.

Gil ignores the scratches along his arm, ignores the yowling, brings the napkin up to hold over Tarvek’s nose and it burns, makes him cough, smells like… oh shit… oh… no….

Black creeps into his vision. His head swims, and then he’s gone.