Archive of Our Own

A mission was a mission. If it kept her awake and off the island, Fade could handle it.

That was what she told herself as a repeated mantra as they paced the street, long cleared by now. Their enemies had barely been prepared this time. Whatever difficulties Alpha Earth was scrambling to take control of, Omega seemed to be having their own share, too.

The mission had barely needed her. If she wasn’t entirely aware they’d only chosen her to go along for the sake of making sure she had an easy transition back to work, Fade might have been insulted.

She’d been benched for a while, now. Ever since they’d found Hourglass and Fade had crumbled at the sight of their base’s empty cells, she’d been pre-emptively removed from active duty.

“It’s a preventative measure, Fade,” Brimstone had explained to her, his voice gentle with pity. It was revolting. “Last time this happened, we could have lost you. We need you in one piece, so I’m making sure you get your head on straight before I put you back on another case. You understand?”

Fade had gritted her teeth and swallowed back all the vile things she’d longed to say to him, and she’d grimly nodded. There was no sense in arguing when the paperwork was already signed.

She’d been slowly losing it ever since, although she was doing her best to keep her head held high. Nobody needed to know how deeply the itch beneath her skin crawled.

She went to meals. She trained, keeping her body in shape and her mind sharp. She did her best to get enough sleep, as hard as it was when his eyes awaited her in her dreams. She held Neon a little tighter at night, a little more anxious than she cared to admit about waking to find her gone.

She was doing her best, determined not to fall into ruin, the way she’d done two years prior when visions of the world ending had nearly run her into an early grave. Apparently, Brimstone and Sage were happy enough with that.

The first mission she was sent on, shortly after the newest recruit waltzed into Headquarters and made himself at home - and oh, Fade was curious about the muddied history he seemed to share with Brimstone - was barely more than a scouting trip. They’d gotten signals of interference in Istanbul and needed to find if a portal was being set up in the area, and use one of Killjoy’s favourite toys to frazzle the connection from their side.

The new agent, Tejo, joined them. He was talkative in a somewhat aggressive way, the type who would happily tell you most anything you asked, but the answers he gave were not ones most would want to hear.

Fade found it was easier to keep her head down around him, at least until the dust settled around his arrival.

Aside from him, Clove and Neon were sent along. Fade was pleased to spend time with her friend and her girlfriend, of course, but she couldn’t help but bristle. They were all there to babysit Tejo, but Clove and Neon felt like additional measures Sage had taken to babysit her and to make sure she really was mentally sound enough to even be here.

They’d chosen a mission so simple an intern could have managed it alone, in Fade’s hometown, and still felt the need to send backup to make sure she coped. It was hard not to resent that.

Still, she kept her mouth shut. If she wanted to encourage Brimstone that she was ready to be back out in the field, she needed to show him what he wanted to see - an agent who could grit her teeth and do her duty, no matter how infantilising and frustrating it felt. He was pushing her, deliberately, but Fade knew him well enough by now not to fall for it.

They were on their way back when she felt it.

Fear, thick and putrid and cold as ice, pulsed like blood from a cut vein from across the street.

Fade froze in place, the hairs along her arms rising, and her breath caught in her chest. It was intense - someone was terrified.

“Fade?” Neon noticed Fade had stopped, and turned to face her with a quizzical brow. “What’s wrong?”

Fade held up a finger. She turned, seeing no one, and followed the fear trail across the street. An alley cut through the buildings, there, but she saw no one there, and as she stepped closer, the fear moved behind her.

She turned, circling the epicentre of fear, but there was only a car. She dropped to her knees and bent to peer underneath, and froze in place a second time at what she’d found.

She’d been afraid a civilian had been caught in some crossfire. Omega hadn’t made it through, but part of her couldn’t help but worry that someone had slipped by.

No injured child or terrified stranger lay under the car. Instead, Fade saw a tiny, trembling scrap of fur, and two giant eyes.

A kitten. Fade bit down hard on her lower lip, and shuffled closer to get a better look.

The kitten was tiny. Its fur was black, and mottled tawny, red, and gold. A tortoiseshell, and clearly a young one. Probably a girl, then.

Her ears were angled back, but still so small that it barely made any difference. Her eyes were still dark blue, and when she opened her mouth to hiss, Fade saw tiny teeth just barely poking through the gums - incisors and canines.

It had been a while since she’d fostered kittens, but she’d done it many times in the past. Fade knew a fair amount about taking care of orphaned cats, and this one could barely have been more than four weeks old. If anything, she looked barely over three.

She was trying her hardest to hiss. Fade could hear the tiny sounds of the little baby, trying her hardest to scare her away.

She was just old enough to know fear, just old enough to be a little feral, but Fade wasn’t frightened. She’d known worse, and she’d loved them until their fear melted and gave way to gentle natures.

Young as she was, there was something wrong. The kitten’s hiss was rattled and strained. Something wasn’t right, and even as Fade reached out with her powers, she couldn’t sense any other cats around.

Probably abandoned, she thought to herself, and promptly broke her own heart. She’d known a hundred cats with the same story, but it never got any easier. A kitten this young wouldn’t last long without her mother.

She was reaching out before she could even think about it for a split second.

“Gel buraya canım benim,” she cooed, and clicked her tongue. The kitten shied away from her, hissing more frantically, but Fade gathered her into her palm and lifted her. “That’s it, okay. Come here.”

The kitten squealed as she lifted her out from under the car. She wriggled, still wobbly from how little she was, and buried her little claws into Fade’s hand wherever she could reach. When hissing didn’t deter her, the cat took it a step further, and sank her teeth into her thumb.

Fade winced, but cradled the cat against her chest all the same, holding her tight and letting her warmth heat as much of the kitten’s body as it could. She was utterly tiny, small for her age, although she supposed that made sense if she’d been born so sickly.

“Is that why your mama left you here?” she murmured, using two fingers to scratch the kitten behind her ear. “Is it because you’re sick? Poor girl.”

The cat hissed again around her thumb, but didn’t let go of her. Fade didn’t mind - her tiny teeth and claws were sharp enough to hurt, but she figured it was better for the cat to have such fierce instincts, even when she was poorly and out in the cold.

“Yerim seni,” she grinned softly and held the cat closer, urging her to warm up. She was bony and lithe, with scraggly, tufted fur that bristled in her terror and rage. “You little tiger.”

“Fade?” Neon asked again, incredulous. She approached, her face softening at the sight of the tiny animal in her arms. “Oh, I see…”

“I think her mother must have abandoned her,” Fade explained. “She’s sick. I need to get her to an emergency vet.”

“Fade, we need to go,” Neon answered her gently, and Fade shook her head.

“Tell the others to go on ahead. You should go with them, it’s all right. I’ll be here for a few days to make sure this one lives.”

“What?” Neon blinked. “Baby, why you? A shelter would take care of her, I’m sure. Or your neighbour?”

“No,” Fade shook her head. “I don’t trust them with this. A cat this young, this sick… I don’t trust a shelter not to give up on her. And my neighbour doesn’t know how to take care of kittens before they’re weaned, but I’ve done it plenty of times. Trust me.”

Neon deflated, clearly realising she was serious about this. She pondered it for a moment, and nodded.

“Okay. I’ll stay with you, then.”

Fade’s brow lifted with surprise.

“You don’t have to, Tala.”

“I know,” Neon cocked her head. She looked down at the kitten in her arms and twisted her mouth into a small smile, although she didn’t reach out to touch her. “If this is that important to you, I’ll help.”

Fade’s heart thumped hard in her chest. It was rare for her to ask things of anyone, even of Neon, but this was important. The cats here had been her closest friends aside from him, and she’d been taking care of them for many a year.

She’d nursed dozens of sick kittens back to health, and she’d buried several more who were too poorly to be saved. She’d taken cats into her home when the weather grew too foul and bid them goodbye when summer returned. She’d spent what little money she had not on food for herself, but on vet bills and cat treats.

She’d done her best for so many of them, and it weighed on her more than she cared to admit that she’d had to leave them behind, knowing there was no one who would do what she did in her place.

She couldn’t protect them all anymore, but this little baby had practically wandered into her open arms, and she knew as an instinct that she needed to make her well. It was almost a way to apologise to all the cats she couldn’t help, and Neon agreeing to help her brought a burning heat to the corners of her eyes.

She wouldn’t call them tears, not even as her vision began to blur.

Neon headed back to let the others know what was happening while Fade called ahead to the nearest emergency vet, and then fired Brimstone a text to let him know their plan.

Me - 14:07

[image]

Found this little one on her own. She’s very sick.

I’m going to stay here and make sure she’s cared for until she’s stable. Neon agreed to stay with me.

I will still be working remotely and Neon can keep an eye on the interference site to make sure Omega aren’t planning another crossing.

I know it’s unprofessional, but I’m not really asking for permission. I need this, and I’m asking you as a friend to trust me.

She stuffed her phone back into her pocket with bated breath and her heart thumping in her throat. The kitten finally let go of her hand and turned to burrow into Fade’s body heat. Her little needle claws buried into the fabric of her shirt, poking through to her skin, but Fade was far from upset.

When Neon returned, Fade sent her to the pet store with a carefully descriptive list, and hurried with the kitten to the vet. It was a brief appointment - they confirmed her to be female, nearing four weeks old, and that she likely had a respiratory infection. She needed to be kept warm and fed, and she needed a treatment course to help her get through this sickness, which had taken hold of her at such a vital age.

Fade was sent away with a very unhappy kitten in a new vet-bought carrier, a bag of medicine and instructions on how to care for her, a warning that she might not survive despite her best efforts.

Fade wasn’t afraid. She’d nursed kittens sicker than this and seen them bounce back. This little baby’s spirit alone was enough to fuel her stubbornness.

She met with Neon at the pet store and helped her carry back the bags of new supplies they’d bought - fuzzy blankets, kitten-safe litter, kitten replacement formula and soft food for when she was ready to wean, and plenty of paper towels and cleaning supplies.

“So,” Neon asked as Fade set up the kitten’s enclosure. “How is she?”

“She’s sick,” Fade answered her honestly. “I’ll warn you now, we might be too late, but I think I can save her.”

“It’s that bad?” Neon glanced over towards the boiler, where they’d left the kitten’s carrier to keep her warm before they could get her set up in her enclosure, and Fade nodded.

“She’s very small, Tala. Kittens this young are very fragile, but I’ve taken care of babies in worse shape than her. I can’t promise anything, but I’m hopeful.”

Neon nodded, but Fade could see her chewing on the inside of her cheek as they worked to get the setup ready.

Fade still had most of her old fostering supplies - a large nylon playpen, a heating pad, a soft bed, and a water dish. The cat needed to be bottle-fed every four or five hours, including overnight, but Fade had taken care of newborns which needed to be syringe-fed every two hours, and she wasn’t afraid.

Once the setup was ready, Fade headed through to fetch the kitten, and found her huddled at the back of her carrier. Once again, as Fade reached for her she shied away and hissed, and this time she had the energy to swipe at her with a clumsy forepaw.

She caught her, drawing a sharp line down her finger, but Fade didn’t react. She clicked her tongue gently and hushed the little cat as she gathered her into her arms, and she held her close as she turned to head back to the setup.

“She’s so small,” Neon gushed, although she still didn’t come any closer.

“She’s less than a month old,” Fade smiled as she rested the kitten down in the blankets and watched her try to find her bearings.

She was still wobbling on her feet, still little and barely used to walking without dragging her belly along the ground, and she waddled with her tail sticking straight up in the air as she made her way over to the blankets over the heating pad.

“So little to be all on her own,” Neon drew nearer, standing behind Fade as Fade knelt beside the playpen. “Poor thing.”

“She’ll be all right,” Fade murmured, and hummed her satisfaction as the cat settled in and began to make biscuits against the warm blankets. “She’s not alone anymore.”

-

Fade dove into caring for the kitten with a vengeance. Neon had never seen her quite so driven outside of her work.

She woke up in the middle of the night to feed the little cat, and wiped her bottom with paper towels to encourage her to use the bathroom, since she was still too little to reliably go by herself. Fade did it over the litter box to encourage association between the scent of her urine and the litter, and even placed a couple of leaves over the corners of the box to make it look a little more like bathroom spots she might have known before they’d rescued her.

She held her constantly, desensitising the frightened little baby to her touch. She scratched her cheeks and the backs of her ears, but the kitten seemed to especially love pets on her chest and back, at the base of her tail. She’d been feral when they found her, but after only a few days she was melting into Fade’s touch and purring like a little steam engine.

Fade wore her hoodies backwards so she could carry the kitten in its hood and cuddle her close while she worked. She looked ridiculous, but it was so painfully cute there wasn’t a shred of Neon that could bear to mock her for it.

She stroked a toothbrush over the kitten’s fur to simulate her mother’s tongue, and to Neon’s fascination, the kitten responded by jamming her paws into her mouth, attempting to begin grooming herself from Fade’s example.

Fade spoke to her constantly, too. She murmured all sorts to the little cat, in English and Turkish - she read out emails as she typed them, or pages of research she scrolled through, or she sang hoarsely along to whatever music they had playing in the background while they worked.

If nothing else, it was painfully sweet.

After two weeks, the kitten had gotten the hang of using the litter box by herself, had formed a decent habit of grooming herself without help, and had even made decent progress weaning. As she slowly recovered from her respiratory infection she developed a ravenous appetite, and Neon watched Fade burn brighter and brighter every day, so clearly delighted that her little visitor was doing so well.

It hadn’t been a secret that the past few weeks had been hard for Fade. She’d crumbled to her knees at the discovery that he was nowhere to be found in the Hourglass base, and it had only crushed her more to learn he hadn’t been in any of the other bases Vyse had destroyed, either. He was just as lost as he had been before.

With the kitten, though, she was beginning to regain some of her spark. She’d needed something to capture her attention, to alight the fuel that drove her to keep going, and a sick little cat had, apparently, been just the thing to do it.

Neon couldn’t say she liked the thing, especially - she’d never been all that fond of cats. The cats she’d known back in the Philippines had been mean, and most of her past experiences with cats had ended up in blood drawn. She liked them well enough, as she did any animal, but she associated them more with the memory of needing to go get shots and carefully monitored after getting bitten than she did a friendly, purring creature she shouldn’t fear.

The kitten was hardly frightening, but still, Neon had seen the scratches she’d left on Fade’s hand on the day she’d found her. She was capable of the mean streak that so many other cats had welcomed Neon with before, and she simply thought it best to be wary.

She didn’t share that opinion with Fade, of course. It was unnecessary, particularly when Fade was so obviously endeared by the little animal.

She kept it to herself in an attempt to be kind, but it turned out to be a poor choice. The morning before they were scheduled to return to the island, Fade stilled in the kitchen, turned to face Neon, and admitted something in a quietly desperate tone.

“...I want to bring her back with us.”

Neon, with a mug to her lips, froze and fought to keep from spluttering on her coffee. She struggled to swallow her mouthful and cocked her brow.

“Baby, she’s healthier now. You said yourself the other day that she’d survive just fine on her own, now.”

“I know,” Fade responded sullenly. “But I want her.”

If Neon was a kinder woman, she might have softened at that. She wanted to be a sweeter person, to warm at her girlfriend so openly asking for something so cute, but instead she found annoyance bubbling to life in her chest.

“None of us got to bring our pets to Headquarters, Hazal,” she tried to keep the irritation from her tone, but some of it leeched through and poisoned her tongue. “You think I don’t want to wake up to Kidlat begging for hugs?”

“I know you do,” Fade frowned. “It’s not… just to have a pet. She’s a baby. She needs constant hands-on support for a while longer and I don’t trust anyone else to do it properly.”

Neon’s expression soured. It was a bullshit response - maybe not a lie, but certainly not the entire truth.

She didn’t need to say it, though. Fade continued, her shoulders sagging.

“And I want her. She’s good for me. She makes me feel better about everything.”

“Can’t I do that?” Neon tried, and Fade shook her head.

“It’s not personal, Tala, but you know it’s not the same.”

It wasn’t, Neon knew. Fade could never give her the same comfort that Kidlat did. She couldn’t deny, either, that Fade had very obviously benefited from taking the kitten in. It was a reasonable idea, soured mainly from envy and a little from Neon’s slight fear.

“Well, there’s only one problem, then,” she twisted her mouth into a grimace. “Brimstone will never allow it.”

Fade snorted. She shook her head, a small smile tugging at her lips, and brushed past her with a loving hand landing for a moment on her shoulder.

“You leave that to me.”

Fade pulled out her phone as she went, and disappeared into the bedroom. Neon cocked her head, admittedly curious, and slipped from her chair to follow her girlfriend.

Fade called HQ - not Brimstone, to Neon’s surprise, but Sage. She answered with obvious surprise on her face, just as shocked as Neon that Fade would seek her out of all people, and Fade dove right into the topic.

“I won’t waste your time with small talk. I want to bring the cat back with me, and I need your help.”

Sage’s eyebrows climbed nearly to her hairline. She blinked, stalled for a moment while she took in what she’d heard, and then frowned.

“Fade, you know our policy on pets is-”

“I don’t want her as a pet,” Fade cut her off. “I’m asking for an emotional support animal, the same as Omen has.”

Sage withdrew once more.

It was true that Omen had a cat on the island. She was rarely seen - a long-haired black shadow in the corner of any room that usually stayed in the privacy of Omen’s room. She was sweet enough, but she rarely paid any attention to any of them except Omen.

“Well,” Sage collected her thoughts. “You know that was… an unusual case.”

“I know,” Fade nodded. “Believe me, I’m not belittling what he suffers. I’m only putting forward the case that through my Radiance that I need to work with you, I also suffer a great deal of mental strain, and taking care of a cat has been hugely beneficial for me over the past few weeks.”

She glanced behind her to Neon in the doorway, and gestured towards her with a nod.

“Neon can back me up on that.”

Neon stiffened, not expecting to be called upon, but she nodded quietly.

“It’s true,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen her this happy in… quite a while.”

Fade’s face warmed, blossoming with gratitude, and she turned back to Sage with a newfound confidence.

“She’s a big help. She keeps me focused and motivates me to keep myself healthy so I can take better care of her.”

Sage was quiet for a while after that, rolling the idea over in her mind. Fade fidgeted from foot to foot in a display of visual nerves that Neon rarely saw from her.

“Please, Sage,” she tried after a few more moments of painful silence. “You know I don’t ask for a lot.”

Sage’s expression paused, hesitant, but then collapsed into acceptance. She nodded, and Neon practically heard Fade’s breathing stop dead in her chest.

“You’re right,” Sage agreed. “You don’t often ask for what’s good for you, and if you’re willing to go to these lengths, it’s clearly important to you. It’s unorthodox, and I expect you to show growth from this, but if you can promise me I’m making the right choice here, I’ll write up the paperwork.”

“Thank you,” Fade’s voice wavered in clear relief. “Thank you, Sage. I mean it - she helps. You won’t regret it.”

Sage merely hummed a single note of acknowledgement before ending the call. Fade turned, her expression lighting up, and crossed the room in three strides before sweeping Neon into her arms in a viciously tight hug.

Neon wheezed, but hugged her back. It was rare to see her so happy. More than a rarity, it was a blessing.

She buried her face into her girlfriend’s neck and stroked small circles over the small of her back, and she tried not to choke up at the realisation that she was trembling in her arms.

They packed up the kitten’s things together and made their way to the Vulture with a displaced cat in her carrier and their arms full of extra bags. Neon half expected her to cry for most of the flight back, but to her shock, once they were in the air, the kitten settled down and went to sleep.

It was a quiet flight. Neon rested her head on Fade’s shoulder while she picked through a book, and she finally took the time to digest what she’d been trying to ignore until she no longer could.

They had a cat, now, and there was nothing Neon could do about it.

-

Kırçık - and no, Fade absolutely hadn’t picked that name out days before knowing if she could even keep her - settled into Headquarters surprisingly well.

She’d handled the flight like a little champion. Fade had half expected the kitten to wail for the duration of the trip, but she slept for nearly the entire flight and didn’t make much trouble even as they were coming in to land.

The others were expecting them. Fade had been sending Omen pictures for the entire time she was away, of course, and he’d fawned over her in her private messages, but once she’d gotten confirmation she could keep her, Fade sent a picture of the kitten out to the entirety of the Protocol.

It was a simple picture of Kırçık in her hood, with her head poking out from behind the fabric. She was staring up at Fade with little but adoration on her face, and one tiny paw stretched up to press against the column of her throat.

She sent it to the group chat with a simple message.

Me - 09:21

[image]

This is Kırçık.

People hadn’t understood at first, for the most part. Several agents reacted to the picture with a heart emote, and Clove messaged back gushing about how “bonnie” the little cat was. It was casual, though, and clearly they hadn’t realised that it wasn’t simply just an update on the kitten they’d seen Fade rescue.

When Sage spoke up to explain that she’d be coming to live with them on the island, though, the chat exploded.

Jett - 09:27

What????

Clove - 09:27

NO WAY

Gekko - 09:27

Another cat??? Fr?

That’s /pos

She’s hella cute

Jett - 09:28

I want her

@Phoenix

@Phoenix

@Phoenix

cat

@Phoenix

@Phoenix

Phoenix - 09:30

Ohh

Peng

Jett - 09:30

I’m stealing her

I’m burying fade behind the gym and stealing her cat

Come help

Need help dragging the body

Phoenix - 09:30

Oh ok

Jett - 09:30

Fade mark your fucking days

Fade rolled her eyes and put her phone back in her pocket.

She wasn’t particularly phased by Jett’s threats. She joked about her demise on a semi-regular basis anyway, and it wasn’t like Fade was going to be angry that she thought her cat was cute.

Besides, she was right. Kırçık’s sweet face was worth a murder case.

Once they landed on the island, they were met with a small crowd. That wasn’t all that unusual for when an agent had been gone for a while, as their friends quite often waited to meet them as they touched down, but this time no one was here for Fade or Neon.

Jett, Phoenix, Gekko, Clove, and Omen rushed close, and without even a greeting, they bent to peer into the pet carrier, where Kırçık lay curled in a ball, still in the slow, woozy process of waking up.

“She’s so small,” Jett cooed. “Fuck, she’s cute… why’d it have to be you who found her?”

Fade shrugged one shoulder.

“You ever fostered an unweaned kitten?”

Jett relented, shrugging her shoulders and cocking her brow, before she turned back to gushing over Kırçık. She and Clove clicked their tongues, pspspsing at the little cat, although Kırçık didn’t pay much attention. She found grooming her paws to be a much more vital focus.

“What was her name, again?” Omen straightened, standing tall.

“Kırçık,” Fade enunciated for him. “It’s a name from back home for cats this colour.”

“Torties?” Clove checked, and Fade nodded.

The small group set about practising the name, and it was sweet to see them try, if not a little funny to hear how some of them butcher it. Clove’s accent made quite a number of Turkish words hard for them to pronounce, but Fade knew they’d keep trying until they nailed it.

She picked through the crowd to get Kırçık set up in her room, and while she worked, Neon sagged face-first onto her bed.

“Tired?” Fade checked as she lifted Kırçık from her carrier into her newly erected playpen.

“Always,” came Neon’s dejected reply, muffled by the blankets. Fade lifted an eyebrow, snickering, and wandered over to where her girlfriend had collapsed. She bent over her, pressing a hand lightly against the small of her back and kissing her shoulder.

Neon pleasantly shivered under Fade’s attention, and Fade rubbed her hand back and forth across her back as she rose to her feet again.

“You can sleep. I’ll bring some food back for you tonight if you don’t feel like talking to people.”

Neon turned to peer out at her from behind the blankets and pouted.

“I’m in love with you.”

Fade barked with laughter and headed for the door to collect the rest of their things.

Kırçık didn’t protest much against her new environment, happy that everything she’d known in the playpen had been brought along with them. It was a pretty easy integration after that.

As she grew a little older and outgrew her pen, Fade let Kırçık out of the room. It wasn’t something she worried about for a moment; Kırçık was a nervous little baby and rarely strayed from Fade’s side.

She followed her, staying close to her ankles, and only wandered further once she started to form relationships with the other agents. For a while she was afraid of them, as she was afraid of anything and everything, but most understood to leave her alone, and to reward her warmly when she plucked up the courage to approach them.

Jett adored her. If ever she disappeared from Fade’s side, Kırçık could pretty regularly be found curled up next to her, or even purring in her lap.

Jett quickly discovered the spots Fade had found to be her favourite - her chest and back, at the base of her tail - and cuddled her while whispering playful nothings into her ear. She played with her happily, too, and even showed up one day with a box of brand-new toys, which she wouldn’t even let Fade try and thank her for.

Aside from her, Kırçık seemed fond of Phoenix (he was warm, and made for a very cosy pillow when he sat down long enough), Omen (he understood cats innately and could read when exactly she wanted to play, and Yoru (he was fond of her but tended to ignore her completely, which to her looked unthreatening and safe enough to hang around with).

Neriah, Omen’s cat, didn’t pay her much attention. She was rarely found in the common rooms anyway, and when the two came into contact, Neriah offered her little more than a dismissive sniff before wandering away back to her preferred perch.

It was a small world for her to inhabit, but Kırçık seemed happy enough.

She was growing into quite a playful cat, although Fade suspected much of that energy would dissipate as she grew. She was quick on her feet and nimble, very often hopping or bouncing against walls when the game certainly didn’t call for it, and she had a real hunter’s drive.

For a while, she seemed to form a habit of diving in mouth-first for people’s hands and feet. It wasn’t a good habit, and Neon certainly didn’t appreciate it, although she never said anything beyond yelping and pulling away when the kitten managed to land a bite. As soon as it became an issue, Fade dove in on the redirection training, pulling their hands away whenever she went to bite and replacing them instead with a much more enticing toy.

It wasn’t a foolproof method, and a more stubborn cat might have ignored her efforts, but it worked well enough for Kırçık.

She was notably fond of scratching toys, and of climbing - as the weeks passed and she grew older and stronger, she formed a habit of climbing the back of Fade’s pants and right up onto her shoulder whenever Fade was busy doing something that didn’t involve her. Whenever she was cooking or working at her desk, she very often did it with a cat on her shoulder, happily purring away.

Some might have winced at the thought of claws in their leg, but to Fade, it was a blessing in disguise. She was happy to press little kisses into Kırçık’s head while she worked, but it wasn’t always enough, and sometimes Kırçık would leap down onto her keyboard and ruin any chance Fade had of getting her work done.

With her fixation on scratching toys, it was easy enough for Fade to buy her a toy laptop with a scratching-post keyboard. She built her cat tower, too, although Kırçık was still a little too small to reach most of it.

Kırçık turned her nose up at first, unsure of the new intrusion in her home. Her nerves had never left her, and Fade supposed she’d likely always be a little skittish, and it made her unsure of anything she didn’t know. For a few days she circled the fake laptop, batting at it with a displeased paw and bristling at it as if she could make herself look less scraggly and bony with her kitten fur puffed out, but eventually, her curiosity won out over her fear.

It happened while Fade was out for a run, having been dragged out by Skye for a “mental health check”.

Neon sent her a picture of Kırçık, standing on the laptop’s keyboard with her back arched and her claws buried into the scratching texture. Her eyes were wide and her pupils even wider - even after being nervous of the toy for so long, she was having a fantastic time.

“No way,” Fade, panting after her run, laughed breathlessly and bent at the waist to gulp for air. She dropped her phone, hands too sweaty to keep a decent hold on anything, and made her excuses to Skye so she could head inside and see her cat enjoying the toy for herself.

Neon greeted her, wrinkling her nose at the stink of Fade’s sweat but accepting a kiss all the same. Fade kissed her once on the lips and again on her forehead, before turning to her cat.

Sure enough, she’d accepted the toy and fallen in love with it all at once. Kırçık lay across the laptop and kneaded the keyboard, purring to herself. When excitement burst the banks of her enjoyment, she arched her spine and writhed, skirting her little hind legs in a circle around the toy and tearing at the keyboard with her front claws.

Fade took a small album of pictures through her giggles.

“Oh, she’s so stupid,” she beamed. Neon chuckled behind her, clearly just amused to see her so pleased by this.

In the weeks after bringing her home, Fade’s phone was very quickly filled with Kırçık pictures. She took pictures of her when she curled into people’s laps to sleep and when she fought their shoes, batting at their shoelaces as if they were any prey worth catching. She took pictures of her climbing onto their keyboards and batting at their phone screens, curious at what made people stare at these little boxes all day.

She had pictures of her in every scenario, looking as silly as anything, and it turned out she wasn’t the only one.

As Kırçık grew old and strong enough to jump up onto counters, she formed something of a clumsy habit. She was a skittish cat, often bolting at a sound that was just too loud or a movement that was just too quick. She scrambled off of whichever counter she happened to be sitting on and disappeared off to find a couch to hide underneath, and as she went it wasn’t all that uncommon for her to knock down glasses, plates, and vases.

Fade tried to discourage her from jumping up on counters using foil and a spray bottle, but all she found that did was encourage Kırçık to jump up only when Fade wasn’t around, and things still ended up getting broken.

In defeat, she made a group chat for people to list anything Kırçık broke so Fade could pay them back for it, although it very quickly turned into simply a hub for anything Kırçık-related anyone had to say.

People posted their pictures of her, usually with some kind of playful comment. Jett was the most common offender, posting pictures of Kırçık with her claws fastened into a toy with a comment calling her a vicious hunter securing her prey or something along those lines.

Nicknames formed from the chat, too, and there was little Fade could do but watch it happen with amusement tugging her mouth into a wry smile.

It started with Jett posting a picture of Kırçık, curled up and sleeping in her lap. She still had a toy in her mouth - clearly, she’d tired herself out so much in her play session that she’d conked out asleep before she could even put it down.

Jett - 21:46

[image]

Çık-çık-chicken

Eepy-sleepiest huntress in the world

Raze - 21:47

ÇİK-ÇİK-CHICKEN??

Jett - 21:47

Yes

Like chick-chick-chicken

Fade - 21:47

Wow

Jett - 21:47

Oh perfect Fade hates it

Now it’s staying forever

[image]

[image]

[image]

Look at your chicken child and seethe

Fade rolled her eyes, biting back a chuckle. Neon was on her phone too, reading along next to her, and even she pulled a small smile.

“It’s a clever nickname, you have to be fair,” she defended Jett, and Fade bared her teeth with a grin.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I’d never tell her that.”

“Of course not,” Neon shifted closer, cuddling into her girlfriend’s side, and Fade peppered kisses over her brow, all too content to give her attention when she pleaded for it so obviously.

Phoenix - 21:48

First time I heard her name out loud it reminded me of churchill ngl

Like the guy

Jett - 21:48

HOW

Phoenix - 21:48

idk

Sounds kind of like it if you squint

Raze - 21:48

Oh that one sucks

Jett - 21:48

RIGHT

Phoenix - 21:49

Wow

You guys don’t love me

Smh

That’s okay Churchill thinks I’m cool

Fade - 21:49

Don’t name my fucking cat after a dead english guy

The chat burst into activity, as it so often did when Kırçık was involved, and it very quickly became clear Fade would have no say over the silly nicknames the other agents gave her cat. She would be Çik-çik-chicken, and Churchill, and Kır-kır-lemon-curd, and Scraggly Rat Baby, and a dozen more, and she was powerless to stop them.

Life was certainly more exciting with the kitten in their lives. All too often, Fade felt a burst of fear from her cat, followed by the scrabble of her claws as she bolted to find a hiding spot.

The others often asked her what it was that had scared her - she could sense fear, after all, when none of the rest of them could. Fade could only bite her tongue and try not to laugh as she explained Yoru came into the room too fast, or someone opened the fridge and the hinges squeaked, or the kettle boiled and it caught her off guard.

It was ridiculous for a carnivore to be scared of such harmless things, but Kırçık had always been terrified of the world. It was simply coded into her by now, and Fade didn’t mind sitting down beside whichever couch she’d hidden underneath and murmuring gently to her until she felt safe enough to crawl back out.

Most had very quickly taken to having Kırçık in their lives. She was a lovable little cat, with a big personality squeezed into such a tiny body. She liked attention and to be pet. She liked to explore, although it often frightened her. She loved to play and to climb, and she had a loud, rattling, unpractised purr, likely a little damaged from being sick so young but charming all the same.

Most loved her, but it certainly wasn’t everyone.

That was fine. Fade didn’t expect everyone to love her, and she had no problem making sure Kırçık never went too close to Viper’s lab or to the training areas where she was at risk of getting hurt, but she did find herself caught out by one detail.

One of the only people who hadn’t accepted her openly was Neon.

Kırçık loved Neon. Like Fade, she was one of her mothers. She’d been a constant presence, around for almost her entire life, and like Yoru, she tended to ignore her, which Kırçık only saw as a reason to trust her more.

Neon wasn’t cruel to her by any means, and she never said an unkind word about the cat, but Fade could see how difficult she found it to bond with her. She didn’t try to pet her, or to play, and she did what she could to stay as far away from caring for her as she could. She let Fade handle it and kept Kırçık out of her mouth whenever she could.

While the others called her friendly nicknames, Neon rarely called her anything other than the cat. She eyed her cautiously whenever Kırçık drew close and turned stiff when she crawled between them to sleep.

There was a discomfort there that Fade couldn’t understand and didn’t know how to address. Neon was being kind to her, as much as she could, and Fade didn’t want to upset her by bringing up something that could upset her without cause. So long as they could get along well enough, she’d leave Neon to cope with her however she needed.

She’d have never asked more of Neon if it weren’t essential, but when she woke one morning to find herself assigned to an overseas mission along with Jett, Omen, and Cypher, Fade realised there was no one else she trusted as much to take care of Kırçık in her absence.

She sat up, frowning down at her phone, and Neon shifted closer, half awake and voice hoarse with sleep.

“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice blurring together and barely coherent. “S’wrong?”

“Hi, you,” Fade murmured. She reached down to run her fingers through Neon’s hair, and her girlfriend hummed appreciatively, turning her face towards Fade’s hand to press into the affection. “I’ve been called out. Mission in Europe.”

“Oh,” Neon’s voice dipped with disappointment. “...Okay.”

“Neon,” Fade softened her tone. “I have a favour to ask. A big one.”

Neon was quiet for a moment. She pushed herself into a wobbly sitting position, clearly exhausted. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and focused on Fade with a squint.

“Can you take care of Kırçık while I’m gone?” Fade’s chest ached as she said it. She didn’t understand why Neon didn’t like her much, but she also knew that she’d do everything in her power to take good care of her until she got back, more than any of the others.

Neon’s eyes widened. Obvious discomfort tugged at the edges of her expression, and Fade shook her head slightly.

“I know. I understand that you don’t want to, but Omen’s coming with us. So’s Jett. I’ll be gone for a few days, I need someone I can trust to keep an eye on her, and you’re the only person I know who I trust to do it properly.”

Neon’s discomfort shifted - she was still clearly uncomfortable with the idea, but she didn’t argue. She nodded slowly.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked quietly, and Fade bit her lip as she glanced down at her phone.

“Three days, maybe? I’m sorry.”

Neon sagged, clearly uncomfortable, and Fade couldn’t help but ask her again.

“Please. I know it isn’t your thing, but…”

“It’s okay,” Neon shook her head and met her eye. “Of course I’ll watch her. Send me a list of instructions and I’ll keep her safe.”

Fade’s stress crumbled, and she leaned in to kiss her. Neon’s lips were warm and soft, and she melted into the kiss, even though it was soured by their morning breath.

“Thank you,” Fade whispered into the space between their lips as she broke away, and Neon shifted forward to wrap her arms around her and hold her tight.

“Always,” she promised, and hugged her tighter still as Fade reached up to hold her in return. “You have to promise me something too, though.”

“What is it?” Fade nosed along the line of Neon’s neck, and Neon pulled back to look her in the eye.

“Come back to me in one piece. I’ll miss you.”

Fade’s chest ached anew, but this time it wasn’t nerves that throbbed between her ribs. She slid her hand up to Neon’s cheek and brushed her thumb over her cheekbone.

“Always,” she parroted, and watched with fondness as colour passed over Neon’s cheeks like a prairie cloud.

-

This’ll be fine, Neon told herself on repeat as Fade packed her bag and vanished down the hall. It’s only three days.

Kırçık couldn’t cause that much trouble in less than a week. Surely, there was nothing to worry about.

It’ll be fine, she told herself as she gave the cat her breakfast and got ready for training. Kırçık would be fine entertaining herself for a couple of hours - there were other agents milling about and plenty of toys she could bat around the floor, after all.

When Fade went to train, Kırçık often tormented the rest of the Protocol until she tuckered herself out and fell asleep in someone’s lap. Her energy levels were a bit of a mystery to Neon, in truth. Her dog was a fireball who wanted constant play, but he didn’t fall asleep in the blink of an eye like Kırçık did.

According to Fade, her energy spikes would likely settle with age, at least a little. Neon didn’t know jack shit about cats, so she could only shrug her shoulders and wait.

Kırçık followed her closely, little paws pattering against the floor as they went. She was extremely fond of Neon, which Neon couldn’t understand and didn’t entirely enjoy, but she supposed it was sweet to have a shadow.

Normally Fade was the one Kırçık followed around, but with her gone, the cat was looking to the second best thing. Until Fade returned, she was Kırçık’s centre of gravity.

“Stay here,” Neon instructed the cat as she reached the door to the training rooms.

Kırçık didn’t understand, of course. She tried to follow Neon through the door, and when she nudged her gently back with a foot, she sat back on her haunches and mewed.

“No,” Neon warned her. “That won’t work on me.”

Kırçık tried again, her voice pathetic and wavering, like a toddler’s desolate cry as their dropped ice cream melted into the grass. It was a tantrum if Neon had ever heard one.

Figures, she rolled her eyes. I didn’t know cats could even throw tantrums.

“I’ll be back in two hours,” Neon held up two fingers, although it felt a little foolish. She knew Kırçık couldn’t understand her. “Wait here, and don’t cause too much trouble.”

Kırçık meowed once more, something insolent in her voice as she realised Neon wasn’t going to give in, and watched as Neon shut the door firmly behind her and went to join Reyna and Gekko in the firing range.

Training with Reyna wasn’t exactly relaxing, but it was at least a decent distraction.

“You’re late,” her mentor welcomed her as pleasantly as she usually did, and Neon bit back a sigh.

“I’m watching the cat while Fade’s gone. She protested being left behind.”

“Ah,” Reyna’s face softened somewhat.

She was a harsh teacher, but she wasn’t cruel, and the kitten had tugged on even her heartstrings. Neon had seen her a few times, kneeling next to the cat while she slept on the couch and murmuring soft affections to her while her nails scratched her just behind her ear.

“You ready to get your ass beat?” Gekko winked as Neon shrugged into her protective gear and hauled a Vandal from the wall.

“Don’t get cocky,” Neon smirked. “I’m the K-Sec asshole with years of military experience, remember?”

Gekko rolled his eyes, but it was all in good fun. They stepped up to the counter and lifted their guns’ sights to their eyes, and any stress over Kırçık melted from Neon in the spirit of friendly competition.

Of course, that couldn’t last. Once her training was done, Neon wandered back out to see Kırçık curled up asleep in the crook of Phoenix’s neck. He had his Switch in his hands and was focusing hard on his game, unphased by the kitten using him as a heated pillow.

When the door swung shut behind Neon, Kırçık startled awake. She let out a frightened squeak, clinging to Phoenix’s shoulder with extended claws, but her fear quickly dissipated at the sight of Neon.

She chirruped a delighted greeting and scrambled down from the couch to trot across the room and meet Neon halfway.

“Hi, cat,” Neon looked down at Kırçık as she wound around her ankles in jovial figure-of-eights. “Someone missed me, apparently.”

Kırçık purred as she flattened herself against Neon’s calves, and Neon gingerly picked her feet up, winding around the cat.

“Watch it,” she murmured to her, taking care not to step on her as she pulled away and began to head back towards her room. She had an hour until lunch, and she figured she might as well spend that time in bed.

The cat followed her. Of course she did. Neon rolled her eyes at the familiar pitter-patter of tiny paws echoing behind her as she headed down the hall.

She slung herself into bed with a huff and dug her phone from her pocket, and Kırçık jumped up to make herself comfortable in the sheets next to her. She stretched out, purring and making biscuits against the blankets. She closed her eyes, content in the bliss of comfortable blankets and the warmth of a summer’s late morning.

Neon reached out to scratch the cat down her back, but it was apparently the wrong thing to do. She’d thought Kırçık looked relaxed, but as soon as she tried to pet her, the cat’s eyes opened, wide and with blown-out pupils, and she rolled onto her back to grab Neon’s hand between her paws. She growled and lunged to sink her teeth into Neon’s hand, and Neon wrenched back with a yelp.

“Puta!” she snapped, not in anger, but in fright.

Kırçık hadn’t drawn blood, but her teeth were still no joke. She scowled at the cat and got up to wash her hands - she’d read plenty on the germs in a cat’s mouth and the infections that could come from their bites, and she didn’t feel like trying her luck even if Kırçık hadn’t bitten her that hard.

She returned to find the cat sitting up on the bed, watching her with adoration on her face, like she hadn’t just tried to gnaw on her, and Neon clicked her tongue in displeasure.

“What am I going to do with you, hah?” she grumbled. Kırçık only slow-blinked up at her in response.

Neon took a deep breath, settling her nerves, and shifted her attention away, choosing to ignore the cat’s antics as much as she could until Fade got back to rescue her.

From there, it went… more reasonably. The rest of the day was uneventful, but the next morning Neon woke up to Kırçık’s paws in her face, batting at her nose. She had her claws sheathed, but she mewled pathetically and refused to let up, even as Neon groaned in protest.

She’d learned Fade’s stubbornness, it seemed.

In the end, Neon gave up on trying to ignore her. She got miserably out of bed and checked the clock to see it wasn’t even six - too early to feed her, but there was no way she’d get any more sleep when the cat was behaving like this.

She managed to stave off the kitten’s hunger by drawing wand toys across the floor. Kırçık scrambled after them with her ears pinned back to her neck and a low growl rumbling in her tiny chest, and she put entirely too much effort into the hunt.

She’d always been a bit of an extravagant hunter, bouncing off walls and people’s laps in the pursuit of a toy moving slowly enough that it certainly didn’t need that kind of acrobatic display. Neon could only guess that she enjoyed it.

Kırçık pounced on the toy, slamming her paws down onto it and pinning it to the floor. She grabbed it, holding it close to her chest and sinking her teeth into the soft fabric while her back legs bunny-kicked it relentlessly.

“Yeah, kill it,” Neon smirked. “Ferocious.”

She didn’t entirely like the cat, but she wasn’t heartless. Even she could admit it was cute to watch such a tiny baby put her entire heart and soul into killing a scrap of colourful fabric.

By the time they’d finished playing, it was a much more reasonable time to feed her. It was still a little too early, but not so much that Neon thought it would teach the cat bad habits.

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you think you can get fed whenever you want by waking us up,” she grumbled to Kırçık as the kitten followed her through to the kitchen, glued to her ankles like always. “You already interrupt half of the time we try to have sex.”

She turned to glare at the cat over her shoulder, and Kırçık meowed, delighted and hopeful. She didn’t understand a word Neon was saying, of course, and was putting on her sweetest, hungriest display.

Look at me, she said, with massive eyes opened wide and her tail happily held upright. I’m such a small, adorable baby, and I’ve never had a bite of food in my life.

She mewed again, high-pitched and pathetic, and Neon rolled her eyes as she turned back to face forward.

“You don’t fool me, cat,” she warned her, but she opened the cupboard to grab her food all the same.

Kırçık’s mews grew louder at the sight of Neon preparing her food. She wound around her legs, excitedly diving between them and twining herself tightly around her ankles. Once she’d tired herself out of her circing, she chirruped, standing on Neon’s foot and staring up at her with impatience and desperation.

“Give me a second,” Neon snorted as she grabbed a fork and scraped the remains of the food from the bottom seams of the can. She wrinkled her nose at the stink - it was such a horribly fishy-smelling food, but it was medicinal, prescribed by her vet to make sure she continued to build immunity after being sick at such a vulnerable age. “It’s almost done.”

She emptied the can onto the plate they’d been using to feed her - she was still too little to use a food bowl properly, so they opted more often for paper plates until she grew a little more. They were flat to the ground and easily disposed of, and they worked well enough for their purpose.

She was almost done, about ready to turn and give the cat her food, but in the next hallway, Brimstone’s voice boomed through to the common room out of nowhere.

“I’ve heard enough!” he shouted, and Neon heard a shudder as he struck something - his desk, or perhaps even the wall.

Arguing with Tejo again, she guessed, and rolled her eyes.

They all felt for Brimstone. It was obvious he and Tejo had considerable history, but when the rest of them didn’t know a damn thing about it, listening to their shouting was getting old.

It would almost have been normal. Neon was long past being startled by their arguments, at least, but she’d forgotten one crucial detail.

Kırçık was a skittish little baby, and even the fridge’s squeaking door scared her.

At the sound of sudden shouting, she let out a horrified squeak and scrambled away, her claws bursting free from their sheaths and clicking against the ground. Her fur rose from her spine at once, puffing herself up, and she fled with her tail held at an odd angle towards the common room seating area.

“Wait!” Neon called after her, knowing where this would lead. When Kırçık was frightened, she liked to hide, and when she hid, she was damn near impossible to calm down. Only Fade could reliably coax her out from most of her hiding spots, and Neon had never even felt comfortable trying.

The cat didn’t listen to her calls. She’d been scared out of her skin, and she fled right to the couches at the back of the room and scrabbled underneath.

“Shit,” Neon spat.

Most of the time, it didn’t matter all that much if Kırçık felt like hiding for a few hours. In the morning, though, she needed to eat her breakfast. She needed her medicine, and Neon would be damned if she’d mess up the one-time Fade asked her to handle it for her.

Panic coiled like wire around her guts and tugged. She took a deep breath in a quiet attempt to calm herself, but she only found nausea in place of peace.

She knelt by the couch and saw Kırçık balled up underneath, right in the middle of the couch. She was bristling furiously, all of her fur puffed out as if it made her look at all threatening. Her eyes were open as wide as they’d go, and Neon saw her little side heaving with her rapid, terrified breaths.

She fixed her eyes on Neon as she pressed herself to the ground, and shrank away from her further, as if she could pull her head right into her body like some kind of turtle retreating into its shell.

“Hi,” Neon tried. “Kırçık, beb, come on. You’ve got to eat your breakfast.”

Kırçık stared at her. She licked her lips twice and pulled her ears back, but didn’t make any attempt to move.

“Kırçık,” Neon said again. “Come on. Aren’t you hungry? You must be hungry.”

No response. Kırçık licked her lips again, and Neon heard her let out a low growl, but she still didn’t move.

Neon’s chest pierced, not quite with fear, but certainly with stress. She couldn’t bear to think of Fade’s disappointment if she messed up giving her the medicine she needed. She was still young, still vulnerable, and she needed all the protection from disease she could get.

“Kırçık, please,” Neon pleaded. “Come and eat. I know you want it.”

Kırçık didn’t move a muscle, and Neon bit her lip. She was close enough to the edge of the couch that Neon figured she could reach out and scoop her out.

Maybe she’ll feel better when I’m holding her, she reasoned. She didn’t know cats all that well, but she knew that it often had helped Kidlat when he was still a nervous puppy she’d brought home off the streets.

Worth a shot. Neon bit her lip, fastening it between her teeth with bruising pressure, and reached out for the cat. Kırçık flinched backwards, watching her hand with alarm, and Neon hushed her with gentle clicks of her tongue.

“Shh, it’s okay. I promise, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She kept her hand movement slow, hoping that Kırçık might understand she was only trying to comfort her, but she was wrong. As was becoming a recurring story, she couldn’t read the cat’s body language until it was much too late.

Kırçık let out a hiss, flattened her ears all the way back to her neck, and lashed out with extended claws. She raked them down Neon’s fingers, and Neon pulled back with a shriek.

She looked at her fingers and saw three sliced lines running down the length of them, already welling with blood.

“Putangina,” she snapped, and tore away from the couch. “Punyeta ka, why’d you scratch me?”

The cuts weren’t severe, but blood began to run down the length of them. Neon gripped her fingers with her other hand, grasping it hard enough to keep blood from dripping onto the floor. She stormed to the kitchen to clean her hand until it stopped bleeding, and with each step she took, her breathing grew tighter and tighter.

She washed her fingers under cold water with a persistent, stabbing pain in her chest, and it drove deeper and deeper the longer she refused to address it. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to keep from panicking, but it was no use.

She couldn’t do this. She didn’t know how. She didn’t know cats, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to bring this one home.

She couldn’t say no when it was so clear how happy she made Fade, but Neon couldn’t cope with being expected to fill her shoes. Fade was so good with her, like knowing each of her whims and intricacies was merely instinct, and Neon didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to be doing.

Fade’s instructions had been good, but Neon didn’t understand the emotional side of any of it. Cats didn’t behave like dogs, no matter how much Neon tried to empathise with them, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t work out what Kırçık was thinking.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and was dialling before she could even register she was crying.

Fade’s phone rang only three times before she picked up.

“Hello?”

At the sound of her voice, Neon nearly crumbled. She joked often about Fade driving her wild and the little arguments they had which was really just part of their banter, but in truth, Fade made her feel safe. She knew her well, with all her flaws and awkwardness, and she loved her like it was easy.

“Fade,” she tried to keep her voice even, but it was painfully obvious she was crying. She heaved for breath, and cussed herself out for failing to stay calm when Kırçık needed it. “She’s under the couch. I can’t get her out.”

“What’s happened?” Fade’s voice tightened with concern. “Is everything okay?”

“She’s okay,” Neon assured her. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to worry you, I just… I don’t know what to do, she needs to eat, and I-”

“Tala,” Fade cut her off. “I’m asking about you. Are you crying?”

“Oh,” Neon’s chest ached terribly, and she let out a squeak as her tears threatened to overtake her entirely. She hiccuped and reached up to press her palm into one eye, as if she could crush her tears right back into their ducts. “Shit. I don’t know. I’m trying so hard, but I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t understand any of this.”

Fade listened quietly, humming her acknowledgement but letting her continue. Neon sniffed, and wiped the tears away from her cheek.

“I was making her breakfast and she got freaked out by Brimstone and Tejo, and now she won’t come out. I tried to call her and she won’t come, and when I tried to pull her out she scratched me.”

“How bad?” Fade checked, and Neon sniffed again.

“It’s fine. Bleeding, but nothing serious. I just… I don’t know what to do. She needs her medicine.”

“I know,” Fade’s voice gentled. “Tala, it’s okay. I’ll talk you through it.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Neon repeated again, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “I don’t… I don’t know cats, I don’t know what they want or what to look out for.”

“That’s okay,” Fade responded calmly. “No one’s expecting you to know what to do on instinct, Tala.”

“You seem to,” Neon sighed, and Fade chuckled on the other side of the line.

“I’ve been doing this all my life. I had cats for friends before people. I’ve had a lot of time to learn these lessons, and I got scratched a lot before I worked it out.”

That helped a bit, admittedly. Neon couldn’t imagine Fade pushing a cat so far out of ignorance. It was shameful, a mortification and a guilt that worsened the burning in her eyes, but Fade admitted to it freely.

“Listen,” Fade’s softened. “Kırçık’s a frightened baby. You need to be patient with her, and you can’t always reason with her.”

“I know,” Neon huffed miserably.

“I’m not scolding you, Tala. I’m only explaining. You can’t try to pull a cat out when they don’t want to be touched - they’re stubborn and they’re made of knives, even if they look soft.”

Neon laughed wetly, and sniffed. She wiped fresh tears from both cheeks and used her sleeves to dry her eyes while Fade explained what to do.

“Talk to her gently. It might take a while, but if your voice is calm, she’ll start to understand that she’s safe. She isn’t doing this to annoy you - she’s a tiny animal in a world much bigger than her, and she’s clever enough to run and hide when she thinks there’s a threat.”

“I did talk to her,” Neon mumbled. “I… guess I didn’t sound calm, but I tried.”

“I don’t mean calling her,” Fade explained. “Tell her about anything. Talk to her about what you want for dinner. Tell her about the last book you read. Just keep talking, stay calm, sit still and don’t look at her or try to force her out before she’s ready. When she’s calm, she’ll come to you.”

Neon bit her lip. She looked out towards the couches again, and sighed.

“What if that doesn’t work?”

“Be patient, Tala,” Fade’s voice warmed. “Worry about crossing that bridge when you reach it, not before.”

Neon nodded, and sniffed once more. The panic in her chest was receding steadily now.

“Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Of course. It’s okay, Tala. You don’t need to know all the answers. Text me in an hour if she still won’t come out, all right?”

Neon could do that. She nodded, before dizzily realising Fade couldn’t see her through the phone.

“Yeah,” she swallowed, and held the phone a little closer for a moment, as if she could hug her girlfriend through the line. “Thanks. I’ll try it.”

“You’ll do fine, Tala. I’ll call you tonight.”

Fade hung up after that, and once the line went dead, Neon was left with a seed of new determination and nerves that, while still there, had receded far enough to manage.

Neon made her way back over to the couch and sat down on the ground next to it. She didn’t kneel this time or look to watch Kırçık. Instead, she lifted her knees to her chest and hugged them, and she began to talk to an empty room.

“I’m sorry I grabbed you,” she murmured. “I was trying to help. You’re… cats are very new to me. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I hope you know that I’m doing my best. I’m not trying to frighten you.”

There was no response from under the couch. Neon didn’t expect there to be, of course, but she continued chatting all the same.

“You remind me a little bit of Fade. Stubborn as an ox, bullheaded, somehow stupid and so smart at the same time. You’ll accept comfort but only in odd little ways that don’t scare you, and you take a long time to decide to trust anyone.”

Now she’d started thinking about it, Neon’s mouth twisted into a small smile. Fade and Kırçık were more similar than she’d realised, and the longer she looked at it, the more similarities she noticed.

“You exert yourself until you pass out instead of just going to sleep when you’re tired. You put more of yourself into any situation than you need to, because you like it that way.”

The smile on her face grew into something wobbly and horridly fond. She didn’t know cats, but she loved Fade, and now she was recognising so much of the person she loved in Kırçık…

She couldn’t help but find her heart softening at that kind of revelation.

“You like texture toys,” she grinned. “Fade likes certain textures, too. She won’t admit it, but I see it. She gets so stiff and uncomfortable when she wears certain clothes or if she touches certain fabrics while we’re out. She’s picky about where she puts her feet and hands, too, and always has to keep herself clean and tidy but only in specific ways.”

She rested her chin on her knees.

“I love her so much. I don’t know what causes that. I don’t know if she even realises it’s not normal, but I notice it. Reminds me of you and all your scratching posts. I suppose it must feel good to dig them into something coarse like that.”

There was a slight shift under the couch. Neon’s eyes opened a little wider and her heart skipped a beat, but she didn’t stop talking.

“You press yourself into pets the same way she does, too. No one else would know this, but she turns her head and pushes it into my hand when I scratch her scalp. You do the same thing, don’t you?”

She couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle.

“My girlfriend’s a giant cat. I didn’t even realise you two were so similar.”

She let out a soft sigh, and Kırçık shifted again under the couch. She crept up to the edge of the couch and peered out from underneath it, watching Neon, but she didn’t dare crawl out just yet. Neon bit back a grin and shifted until she sat cross-legged, with her arms slung back over the couch cushions.

“You’ve been so good for her, you know. I know you adore her, but she adores you, too. She’s been so happy, and it’s a kind of happiness I can’t give her. It’s nice to see her being so sweet with you - I should thank you.”

Kırçık watched her quietly, still not moving, but certainly listening.

“She’s a really loving person, you know,” Neon sighed wistfully. “Most people don’t understand the depth of it. She loves so much, but that kind of love makes it easy to hurt you. All you do to hurt someone like Fade is hurt the people she cares about most. Take me away, or you, or… or him… and it destroys her. I’ve already almost lost her once or twice.”

She sighed again, closing her eyes. She heard Kırçık moving again, wriggling out from under the couch, but she didn’t open her eyes to watch her, too afraid to scare her off.

“It scares her, I think, to care about more people,” Neon murmured. “Everyone new that she loves is just another way to hurt her, another person she can lose, more risk of pain. It’s frightening for her to decide whether loving someone is worth coping with that.”

A weight pressed onto her thigh. Neon opened her eyes and looked down to see Kırçık clambering into her lap. She curled up there, shaking slightly, and began to softly purr.

“She thinks you’re worth it,” Neon softened her voice. “And I trust her judgment, so that means you’re under my protection, too.”

Kırçık purred like a little rattling engine and began to knead her paws against Neon’s leg, making biscuits on the meat of her thigh.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Neon admitted and reached down to scratch Kidlat behind the ears, and then down beneath her chin. The kitten pressed into the touch, lifting her chin to give Neon better access to the spot on her chin she liked best.

Her purring grew louder, and Neon felt it rumbling against her fingertips. Warmth blossomed across her cheeks, and she began to see the appeal in this tiny little creature, as much as she didn’t understand her.

“I might be doing it all wrong,” she murmured. “But I promise, I’ll try my best, and I’ll keep trying until I get it right. You’re safe with me.”

-

Something shifted between them after that.

Neon didn’t fully understand Kırçık, but it was easier to connect with her when she’d made the comparison between her behaviour and Fade’s. By looking at her from Fade’s perspective, she could understand here and there why the kitten did some of the bewildering things she did, and it was harder to find her as stressful to be around when she could suddenly see so much of Fade in her.

She made more of an effort, from there, to bond with her. Neon took more pictures of her as she scampered throughout Headquarters, causing trouble wherever she went, and made more of an effort to spend time joining in on her games.

She sat on the ground with her while she explored or entertained herself with a toy, just watching her and trying to learn what made her tick.

She came back from training to see her asleep and sprawled over Neon’s cat plush, and she felt her heart shift and crack, like a melting ice floe turning over itself in the ocean. She knelt next to the bed and watched her for a while, and she ended up tearing up at the thought of just how much joy she’d brought into Fade’s life - and Neon’s by proxy.

 When she was cooking, she lifted Kırçık into her hoodie’s hood to keep her occupied and out of trouble, and the cat batted at her pigtails as if they were feather toys held in suspension over Neon’s head. Neon giggled as she felt her playing with her hair - it was hard not to find her endearing.

She still didn’t let her sleep as much as she’d have liked, but Neon found it more difficult to be annoyed with her the next morning. Kırçık mewled at her, and instead of a stressful animal that she didn’t understand, Neon could see her more as a baby animal, awake too early, bored, hungry, and lonely without both of her mothers to keep her company.

“Okay, mingming,” she mumbled tiredly as she got out of bed. Kırçık mewed in delight, and pounced down onto her feet as Neon tucked her feet into her slippers. “I’m up, I’m up. You win.”

On the third and final day of Fade’s absence, Kırçık was acting out more than she had before. She was biting at Neon’s feet as she walked when normally she was better at remembering not to bite people. She pissed on the floor while Neon prepared her breakfast when Neon couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an accident. She turned her nose up at her food after eating only half of it, and no matter what Neon did, she couldn’t draw her attention back to it.

There was a storm brewing, Neon knew. It would be a thundery night - not dangerous enough that the Vulture couldn’t fly, but loud enough to frighten any cat, let alone Kırçık. Neon wasn’t sure if the storm was what was frightening her, but whatever it was, something had gotten under the cat’s skin.

To give herself and the rest of the team a bit of a break from her behaviour, Neon shut her in the room while she went to train. They normally preferred to let her explore freely in those hours, but when she was already acting out, Neon didn’t trust her to behave herself, and she didn’t want to end up with a bill if the cat broke something expensive.

It was a decent enough idea, she’d thought. There wasn’t that much chaos Kırçık could wreak in a small room filled with so many of her toys, but of course, Neon was proven wrong.

She returned from training with her muscles burning and sweat clinging to her back - it had been a day focused on cardio and strength training, and while Neon loved working out, it still left her utterly exhausted - and found Kırçık on Fade’s desk.

She’d pulled Fade’s wall hanging, one of the first mementoes Fade had brought from Istanbul and always kept displayed over her desk, free from its usual nail. It had been an eye, such a similar design to the symbol that formed Fade’s logo, and Neon had always assumed that Fade or a loved one had made it for her.

The decoration was a fragile thing, bound together carefully with string and clearly handmade, and Kırçık had shredded it in multiple places, pulling it apart to spill the beads across the desk and clawing at the wood that had once formed the eyelids until it was flayed into splinters.

“Oh, fuck,” Neon whined and rushed over. “Oh, Kırçık, no…”

Kırçık had still been playing with it by the time Neon got back. She looked up at her, mewing at her, and Neon huffed as she lifted her away from the desk.

“Oh, baby, why’d it have to be that? Destroy one of my things, if you had to wreck something.”

She plopped the kitten safely on the bed while she hurriedly collected the beads - the last thing she wanted was for Kırçık to try to chew on one and choke on it.

She didn’t panic this time, but for the second time in three days, she found herself dialling Fade’s number with tears in her eyes.

She took longer to pick up this time.

“Hello?” Fade picked up, and Neon bit her lip.

She could hardly bear to tell her what had happened - Fade had never talked about the wall hanging in particular, but as with anything Fade held quietly close to her chest, Neon could only assume it had been important to her.

“Baby, she’s…” Neon cleared her throat, determined to tell her outright, without bursting into tears. She wasn’t the one with any reason to be upset when it was Fade’s property that had been wrecked. “She destroyed your wall hanging. She’s been misbehaving today so I left her in the room while I was training. I thought it would keep her calm, but…”

“Which wall hanging?” Fade checked.

“The eye one from over your desk. I didn’t think she’d touch it, I’m so sorry. It’s… I don’t think it’s fixable, baby, I’m sorry.”

She ran her fingers over the ruined wood - it was misshapen and clawed at, with splinters poking up on either end. There wasn’t a chance in hell of repairing it, not in any way that looked good.

“Oh,” Fade sighed. “Don’t worry, Tala. It isn’t your fault. I think I know why she did it.”

“The storm’s probably freaking her out,” Neon justified, defending the kitten, but still collapsed in on herself from guilt. “I thought maybe if I kept her in here she’d just sleep, or play with her toys, but-”

“It’s fine, Tala. She’s probably acting out because she misses me. If she went onto my desk to destroy my things, she was likely going for something that smelled specifically of me. I’m sorry, I didn’t stop to think that separation anxiety might be an issue with her.”

Neon’s eyes widened. It made sense for Kırçık to struggle with separation anxiety, now she thought about it. She and Fade were regularly gone for hours at a time, but Fade hadn’t had to leave her for multiple days at a time before. It made sense for the kitten to grow stressed as hours turned into days without her favourite parent.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, the poor baby.”

“Yeah,” Fade sighed. “Look, we’re about to board the jet. I’ll be back in a few hours and she should relax. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Neon clicked her tongue. “It’s not your fault, either. I’m just sorry it took her destroying your things to realise it.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Fade’s voice grew distant - she was upset about it, certainly, but not to the point where she’d be upset with Neon or Kırçık over it. She was a pragmatic woman when problems arose, and she’d grieve whatever sentiment the wall hanging offered her when they’d dealt with Kırçık’s anxiety.

“Fly safe,” Neon bid her farewell. “I’ll see you tonight. Mahal kita.”

“Seni seviyorum, Tala.”

Fade hung up the call, and Neon heaved a heavy sigh. She glanced over at Kırçık.

“Poor baby,” she murmured. “You missing your mom?”

She didn’t get a chance to say another word before thunder cracked, and Kırçık let out a frightened mewl. She fled to the head of the bed, huddled between the pillows, and Neon sighed as she wandered over.

“I know, it’s scary. Come here.”

She reached down to lift Kırçık and held her securely to her chest. Kırçık huddled against her collarbone, trembling and looking around with wide eyes, and Neon held her tight as she grabbed a blanket and headed through to the common room, where they’d be a little more sheltered from the loudest of the thunder.

They’d still hear it, of course, but it was sheltered by the rearing cliffs on the island, and would be the most muffled place in Headquarters outside of the soundproofed firing range.

She slumped back into a couch, settling comfortably into the corner with Kırçık still on her chest, and draped the blanket over the both of them.

“There you go,” she murmured, and kissed the cat on the top of her head. Kırçık was trembling, clearly nervous, but she settled a little with the weight and warmth of the blanket draping down over the top of her. “Relax, now. I’ve got you.”

Something in her heart, a sensitive little string she hadn’t dared pull, was aching. Neon hadn’t had the guts to look it in the eye just yet, but now she sat here cradling the cat, she couldn’t help but admit it.

She saw so much of Fade in Kırçık, but she saw herself in her, too.

Kırçık was a frightened, lonely baby, huddled with a secondary caregiver while the parent she wanted left the island for work. If Neon thought about it for too long, she saw a perfect mirror of herself, alone and not trusted with friends, in her Lola’s house while her parents worked themselves to the bone for her sake.

She’d missed them horribly. She loved her Lola viciously, but she wasn’t them, and as a child who desperately wanted a normal life, she’d spent more than a few nights crying herself to sleep and aching for the kiss goodnight her parents were too busy to give her.

Her Lola had sometimes swept her up into her lap and held her with a blanket, like she did now for Kırçık, and it had never fixed what bothered her, but it had certainly comforted her. Sometimes comfort was enough when the world was so terribly frightening.

Her heart broke in time with the next crack of thunder, and Neon held Kırçık a little tighter as the kitten let out a miserable yowl.

“Shh, mingming,” she murmured. “I know. I miss her, too. She’ll be back soon.”

Kırçık settled against her chest, folding her legs underneath herself. Her ears were angled out to the side in discomfort - the thunder frightened her, but she was under a warm blanket and tucked up against Neon’s chest where she could feel her heart beating through her shirt, and that was enough to settle her nerves for now.

“I’ve got you,” Neon promised, and kissed the top of the kitten’s head again. “We can wait for her together.”

-

It was a long flight home.

Fade returned to Headquarters with a headache from her ringing ears, popped uncomfortably from the storm’s pressure. Her muscles ached from days of work on her feet and her chest ached from the knowledge that Neon had been dealing with a kitten with separation anxiety - a kitten she hadn’t been confident about caring for to begin with.

I’ll have to make it up to her, she thought wearily to herself as the jet touched down. She hauled her bag over her shoulder and followed her teammates out onto the hangar. I wonder how easy it would be to get a bouquet delivered to the island.

Headquarters was quiet. It was late, after mealtime, but people were often relaxing in the common room at this time. Fade followed the silence that was oddly louder than Headquarters’ usual babble, and found the common room almost empty - almost.

In the corner, asleep on a couch, Neon lay draped in a blanket, and Kırçık had settled herself comfortably against the crook of her neck, with half of her body swaddled warmly beneath the blanket and the rest pressed flat against Neon’s shoulder and throat.

Fade’s heart cracked in her chest. Neon’s face was smooth in sleep, and twitching as she dreamed. Kırçık was calm in her sleep, too, despite the anxiety Fade had been expecting from her.

She didn’t dare wake them. She bent over them with a hand brushing her fringe back, pressed a soft kiss to Neon’s brow, and then rose to unpack her bags.

She’d greet them properly later, when they’d both had a chance to wake and stir from the cosy nest Neon had built for them.

For now, they could sleep, and the anxiety in Fade’s chest could begin to unravel. There were a thousand things to worry about on any given day, after all, but Fade found it hard to find any of it particularly pressing when her family were safe.

For now, they could sleep, and Fade could enjoy her relief.