#“it's not healthy” even being halfway there has been so absurdly effective at making my mental operations much more sustainable and nice

[lamentalia]

Amelia - Chapter 5 - Part 2

★

After a few minutes sitting back on the bed and another two cupfuls of water Amelia feels more like herself again. Katya explains that sometimes stress can cause the horrible feeling of imminent death that Amelia had just experienced and its supposedly not all that uncommon. Amelia wouldn't believe it if it hadn't just happened to her. Still, Mattie's absence is troubling in a way she's never had to consider before, especially in light of the way they'd been separated.

Lovino has pulled the chair by the door up to the side of the bed and Katya has returned to her seat on the other side of it. Natalya has taken to sitting in the open window, watching nothing in particular happen outside.

"Better?" Katya asks, taking the empty cup back from Amelia.

"Yeah... Thanks." Amelia replies unable to hide her embarrassment. Thankfully Lovino restarts the conversation.

"You were saying that you and your brother were attacked?" he says and Amelia nods, latching on to the subject.

"Yeah. We were traveling to Ransen and we had to sneak through some unfriendly territory... We almost got through it but someone must have spotted us. A whole bunch of them came out at us when we hit the river… I guess… maybe I fell in somehow?"

"Where did this happen?"

"You know the village set up on the mountain sides up in the northwest?" Instead of rising, Lovino’s eyebrows fall even farther and his eyes widen below them.

"Karo? Where the hell were you coming from that you needed to go through Karo to get to Ransen?"

" Uh... farther north of there?"

"North?? There's nothing north of Karo except cursed lands! What were you even doing up there!?" Lovino’s bafflement is starting to look a bit like anger. Amelia returns a confused gaze of her own. This is the first time she’s ever heard such a thing about her birthplace! She blinks a couple times, waiting to see if he’s being serious but it seems like he is.

"...Well, that's where our home is." Amelia says slowly. “Uh. Was, I guess. We grew up near the coast up there, but we had to leave recently because of the Void.” Lovino seems to be unable to form a response to this, with his mouth hanging open as it is, so Katya takes the opportunity to join in the conversation.

“I do not know area. What is it that makes these lands cursed?” She asks Amelia, who can only return a shrug. If it was cursed, it’s nothing she knows about. Lovino takes a few short moments to process before he continues.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t realize anyone lived up there. I admit, I’ve only heard rumors about it, but they’re widely believed. Cats don’t come and go there very often.” He looks mildly ashamed of himself for insulting her homeland and Amelia smiles at him, appreciating the sentiment.

“Nah, and you’re not totally wrong. As far as I know, Mattie and I were the only ones living up there and this is the first time we’ve been so far away from it. We didn’t exactly get a great number of visitors, either.” The thought of rumors about her home being widespread tickles something curious inside her. “Why do cats think it’s cursed?”

“Something about a witch living there and cursing it to be overrun with monsters to keep cats out.” Lovino replies. “So much for that story, I guess.”

“Oh. Well I don’t know about a witch, but there’s plenty of monsters up there! Even though there were no other cats near our territory, Mattie and I still had to keep up regular patrols just to keep their numbers in line.” Amelia says grinning with proud memories of her and her brother’s exploits bubbling up in the back of her mind. This time both Katya and Lovino stare at her slack-jawed. Which is all well and good, but she’s now reminded that her first priority is figuring out how to find Mattie. “Yeah, so… anyway. The Void cut off a direct route to Ransen and forced us to pass through… Karo, was it? Something was really… off about those cats, and there was… something there.”

Amelia remembers the chills she felt from the eerie, feral energy the cats exuded. The heart-stopping vision of absolute blackness forming the outline of a standing body. Lovino leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees.

“I’m aware of the situation up there.” He says, as if relieving Amelia of the necessity of explaining the horror she witnessed. She is grateful for it and she nods at him to show it. Katya looks curious but Lovino continues before she can question it. “So, you and your brother crossed through their territories and made it to the river and then you were attacked. What else?”

Amelia sighs, looking down into her lap. She curls her tail around herself and takes hold of it. (It’s tangled. She’ll have to brush it tonight.) “I don’t know.” She says finally. “I remember trying to get back to Mattie’s side after they separated us, but then I bumped into something… and then I blacked out.”

A concerned look crosses Katya’s face. “Excuse me, dear.” She says and leans across the bed to gently hold Amelia’s face and run her other hand through Amelia’s hair and over her scalp. Amelia holds very still, unsure of what this is about, but Katya finishes her inspection soon enough. “Hm. As I thought, there is nothing. It is strange that this would happen if you have no head injury.”

“Really?” Amelia looks up at Katya, surprised.

“Katya knows a lot about injuries and healing.” Lovino explains. “So, you don’t remember anything else?”

“No.” Amelia answers. “I mean. I had a nightmare after that, but when I woke up… well, I saw you and then immediately knocked out again, but then I woke up here and that’s all I’ve got. If it wasn’t Mattie that got me out of there, I have no idea how else I could have…”

Amelia watches as Katya retrieves a small book from the side table and writes some notes in it with a stick of charcoal. Amelia’s about to ask what’s up but Lovino speaks up again.

“What can you tell me about your brother? How do you think he would have acted?”

“Oh, uh. Mattie… Matthew, is my twin brother. He’s bigger than me, but we look a lot alike and he’s way more rational than I am. I wouldn’t put it past him to do something really stupid to keep me safe, though.” She doesn’t let this thought sink in too deep. Mattie is definitely alive somewhere, the alternative is simply unthinkable, but she can only hope he’s also ok. What if he’d been knocked out too? What if he ended up in the river like she did? … What if he didn’t?

“Alright.” Lovino says, standing from the chair. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Amelia’s heart leaps. “Oh! I’ll—”

“You should stay here and recover.” He cuts her off. Amelia frowns at him but she knows that she’s not going anywhere far in her condition. “I know the area and I can cover more ground by myself. Plus I’ll be able to ask around.”

Lovino turns and Amelia catches his shirt before he’s able to walk away. He stops and looks back at her quizzically.

“Hey, uh…” She says, faltering when she realizes she can’t really put her feelings into words. So instead she pulls him into a hug. She’s still short and sitting and he’s standing so she can’t reach his shoulder for a proper exchange, but his abdomen is good enough, she thinks while bumping her head into it. After a moment she mumbles, “Thanks.”

He’s gone very still and rigid and it takes him a long time to reply with a strangled “Yeah. Sure.” before he detaches himself gingerly and crab walks out the door, closing the door behind him. Amelia watches all this with rapt curiosity, then turns back to Katya.

“Did I do something wrong?” She says. She’s lived alone with her brother for a long time with only visits from close friends… Maybe she doesn’t actually know all that much about greeting unfamiliar cats.

She sees that Katya is once again trying desperately not to laugh behind her hands. But Katya shakes her head.

“Well… No, I think not.” She says amidst her giggliness. “It is rare for cats to be so forthcoming with strangers but it is not bad. Lovino has, ah… strong personal rule to never touch too familiarly here at Sanctuary.”

“Why’s that?” Amelia asks but Natalya interrupts suddenly. Amelia had forgotten she was even there!

“I will call when dinner is ready, Katyusha.” She says plainly before jumping out the window, not waiting for a response. Amelia gives Katya another uneasy look.

“Do not worry, I think she likes you. This is unusual. Very auspicious!” Katya says conspiratorially. Well… she would know her sister best, Amelia guesses, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. Katya continues, “Amelia, you have grown up without village, yes?”

Amelia nods.

“And your parents?”

“Um. I never knew our dad and mom died when we were little.”

“Oh…?” Katya gives her an expression that looks halfway condoling and halfway curious.

“We were lucky and someone stumbled across us not long after that.” Amelia explains, “He taught us how to survive up there and he visited us a lot after that!”

This seems to explain enough for Katya to continue.

“I see. Then I think you do not have very much contact with other cats. You are aware of Sickness?” Amelia nods again. “And you know that we who have female body are most in danger and our numbers have become so few it threatens entire ribika race, yes?”

This, too, Amelia knows. Gilbert, Ludwig, Tino and Sven have all talked about it and stressed the importance of Amelia keeping herself far away from the Void. In retrospect, its not so strange that Mattie developed such a strong complex, but being perfectly healthy and, as Ludwig put it, “absurdly robust,” Amelia never grasped the concept very well. Why the heck should she be more susceptible anyway? Katya seems to pick up on her complicated feelings.

“Well… you may not see effect where you live, but near Ransen we do not talk with strangers. We do not even walk outside where other cats are. It is too dangerous these days.” Katya says. And, as if to counter Amelia’s obvious bafflement, she adds, “It is not this way everywhere, of course! Some villages honor queens as equals to chief because they are precious! It is this way where I am from.”

There are so many concepts here that confuse her, Amelia can’t decide which to respond to first so she is silent for a moment to process them.

“Wait! I thought Ransen is the only place where the Void hasn’t reached yet. Why would it be dangerous?”

Katya’s expression looks complicated and sort of sad, not unlike the one Mattie had when he’d come to suggest they leave home.

“Amelia, most cats are good, normal cats. Lovino is unusually good cat. He helps us stay here in safe place, far from Void and Sickness. But… some cats are… ah… They want to hurt other cats.” Amelia nods. She has dispatched many of these. “Since Ransen is safe from Void, many, many cats gather together. When many cats gather, bad cats also gather and cause more trouble. And, since females are precious, we are popular target for bad cats who want profit. Does this make sense?”

“Ohh, ok.” Amelia says, finally picking up the point Katya is trying to make. “So, since there are so many cats in Ransen, it’s more dangerous just because there are more jerks hanging around. I guess it’s harder to fight all of them if they’re all working together?”

“Yes!” Katya says, smiling once again. “This is why we stay in Sanctuary; we are near to Ransen but hidden. It is also why we work hard to keep secret. Please help us to keep our Sanctuary secret, Amelia.” 

★TBC★

Ok, this isn’t quite the end of the scene but I am so gosh danged sleepy and I wanna post it. I haven’t even proofed it yet so sorry about quality, lol...

I am excited to get into some meat of the story though :D

Crit and Comments please! Thanks for reading!

#romerica #aph america #aph romano #aph ukraine #nyo america #hetalia #aph belarus #hetalia fanfic #hetalia fantasy au #hetalia au

[sp4c3-0ddity]

and another birthday generator prompt fill for @itsdecaffeinatedgentleman. they asked for katt with ‘time-traveling assassins’...though not a cliffhanger ending. For that i apologize, but this has been sitting in a .txt file for way too long so i wanted to go ahead and get it out there. ~1500 words, and hope you like it!!

Keith trailed a few meters behind his target, hood over his head ostensibly to protect his ears from the cold. She spoke on the phone while she walked, her hands moving animatedly with her words, and Keith caught a few snatches of conversation.

“…pick something up and then I’ll be there,” she said. “Yes, Matt, I know I promised I wouldn’t be late this time, but I got held up at work…”

Keith’s heart pounded in anticipation when she ducked into a nearby bakery. He lingered outside, leaning against the building with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, eyes fixed on the sidewalk rather than on the city crowds passing by.

The city itself was both familiar and unfamiliar to Keith; it was his hometown, the place of his birth, but by then it had already fallen decades before. Seeing it like this, vibrant and healthy, its people smiling and going about their business, brought an envious ache to his chest.

The envy sharpened into anger, directed at the young woman inside the bakery. Keith scowled, fingers automatically curling around the hilt of the knife hidden in his jacket, but Kolivan’s voice whispered caution to him:

“Do not let emotion guide your hand. Remember that there is no going back for you; if you are seen - if there are witnesses - there will be consequences.”

Keith exhaled and forced his grip to loosen, right as his target left the bakery with a white box in her arms. He resumed his hunt, hanging back a few paces so she wouldn’t notice him, and when she finally stepped into an apartment building, Keith stopped.

He knew from research he’d done that his target lived on the fifth floor, but for now he would wait, preferring to fulfill his task in the cover of darkness.

Keith counted his blessings that Katie Holt, despite being a prodigious computer scientist, lived in such a dingy apartment. Though the fire escape creaked more than he liked under his weight, the noise was soft and unobtrusive enough to be blamed on a brisk evening breeze.

He wedged the tip of his knife underneath the window, smirking when the lock proved broken and he could push it up. Then, carefully, he crept inside, his feet sinking into a soft rug.

The tinny sound of speakers drifted into the living room. Keith, grip on his knife tight, crept away from the room and down the hallway towards a closed bedroom, lighting streaming into the hall from underneath the door.

Music played inside, something loud and catchy that would not become ‘classic’ enough to still be known in Keith’s time, but it suited him and masked any noise he might make.

Patience yields focus. His old mentor’s words echoed through his head once he stood in front of the door, resting his hand on the doorknob.

(Never mind that Shiro would disapprove if he could see Keith now…)

Keith turned the knob and shoved the door open; he shot inside, barely processing his surroundings even as the door bounced against the wall. He only saw his target, her eyes wide, where she stood with a pair of glasses halfway between her face and a vanity.

She dropped her glasses, putting her hands up reflexively, but Keith moved too fast for her to fight him, knife already angled towards her throat. But then—

She caught Keith’s wrist, and during that split-second shift, Keith met her eyes.

They were too high.

Keith stared, hesitating as he finally took in more details. Hair too short, the glasses, the slender but masculine build, the—

His distraction cost him, and the man snatched the knife from Keith’s hand. He held it improperly, grip too loose, but then Keith was unarmed.

But not defenseless.

Keith stepped back, effortlessly sliding into a defensive stand, the kind to defend against a short blade, but the man that faced him didn’t attack.

Instead he demanded, “Why did you attack me?”

Keith bit his lip. “Who are you?”

The man blinked and said, “You just broke into my apartment and attacked me with a knife!” He gestured around the room, pointing at a set of speakers balanced on a bedside table. “What, don’t tell me you’re my neighbor and filing a noise complaint?”

Absurdly, the catchy tune playing in the background lent their altercation a strange atmosphere, but Keith had all but tuned it out, head lost in his objective until now.

“I…no,” Keith said.

The man snorted, raising the knife to his face and examining it without taking his attention off of Keith. “Odd sort of metal though,” he observed, eyes flitting up to him. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it some kind of steel?”

“Luxite,” Keith told him with a shrug.

“Lux-what?” he said. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s forged from a rare metal mined from deep underground,” Keith explained. “It hasn’t been discovered yet.”

He crossed his arms and stared at Keith skeptically. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you haven’t developed the technology to be able to mine it,” he said. He relaxed his posture, and though he was wary of leaving witnesses - of telling them too much - he held no grudge against this man who looked eerily like his target.

For some reason, the man laughed so hard he wrapped an arm around his belly while Keith stared at him, bewildered. When he caught his breath, he smiled and said, “Are you from the future or something, here to kill me for some choice I make that affects it?” He rubbed the back of his neck and added, “Oh, I always knew I was destined for great things, so I’m glad to know my efforts are finally paying off.”

Keith gaped at him, arms hanging loosely at his sides; his heart pounded, shocked that he could’ve guessed the truth so easily. “Not you,” he said when he recovered.

The man sobered immediately, eyes round with surprise. “Wait, what?”

He shook his head. “You’re not the one scientist I’m looking for.”

“Oh, you have Star Wars in the future?” he said with a smirk.

Keith scowled and crossed his arms. “We are not fighting stars,” he retorted tersely. “Now, I have a mission, and since I’ve gotten you mixed up with someone else…maybe you can help me?”

“Exchange one life for the many?” He tapped his cheek, eyes darting around as he mulled it over. “How do I know you’re not just some psychopath trying to get away with murder?”

“I stopped when I realized you weren’t my target.”

“So you did,” the man agreed. He sat at the foot of his bed, Keith’s knife still held loosely between his hands, then glanced up at him. “Then who is your target?”

Heat flared under Keith’s collar under the man’s sharp gaze, making him almost as anxious as the memory of Kolivan’s warnings to be discreet, to avoid notice and detection. Yet here he stood before the man that he mistook for his target, conversing with him and…asking for his help.

Keith didn’t know this city, this time, like he knew his own, or that was how he rationalized what he said next:

“I’m looking for a scientist named Katie Holt.”

The effect on the man was instantaneous, anger overflowing as he shot upright and used the few extra centimeters he had in height to tower over Keith. “You won’t have any help from me,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

Keith blinked, but he refused to back down. “And why not?” he said, glaring up at him. “You said it yourself:  one life for the many. This Katie Holt is—”

“My sister,” said the man, “and you will not go anywhere near her.”

His heart sank, heavy with dread, and faced with the protective brother of his target Keith regretted convincing Kolivan to choose him.

#katt #except not really tbh #this was supposed to go somewhere #i promise #but i lost steam and interest and for that i apologize #voltron #reem writes fic #reem writes gen #qna