The Other Side of the City--Chapter 83

A/N:  I do reread these things before I post them.  Sometimes more than once.  Honest.  I am quite sure that all of the typos, missing words, and incorrect modifiers multiply in the night.  I apologize for the continued reproduction of them.

Arcos felt Medusa stir underneath him, and reached for Aries, to steal back the covers.  He didn’t feel him, but found the sheet, and pulled it over he and his sister, nuzzling deeper into her coils to warm himself, and consequently, her.

He had slept fitfully during the night.  He blamed it on Medusa, she kept shifting.  She usually did that when she had trouble sleeping.  He didn’t know why she would have trouble sleeping, she should be exhausted, she’d carried tons, probably literally, of heavy things down into the junction that now housed the group of mutants who were recuperating.

When they arrived at the junction, he was sure it was The Grey Cats.  Or what was probably left of the Grey Cats.  But it hadn’t been, and it had hit him in the chest like a punch.

He missed them.  All of them.  Even the nasty ones.  Even the curmudgeonly ones.  Even the pathetic ones.  Even jack ass Chategris.  He missed the girls, he missed the boys, he missed the ones that he couldn’t tell what gender they were.

The Inleters, he had begun to refer to this new group in his head.  He had thought himself amusing at first, the word making him thing of The Dubliners.  But then he’d realized that was dumb, and was glad he hadn’t told anyone about that connection.

The Inleters didn’t have a cohesiveness to them, he had noticed.  No one seemed to have filled any positions, putting their talents to use where they might best fit.  He found that odd, why wouldn’t someone strong, like Medusa, start bringing in heavy stuff?  Why wouldn’t someone who knew how to fix things, like Aries, start making the things they’d need to survive in a new place?  Even he, when all he could really do was make pretty things, could do what he was told, could look around a place and think, “We need a…” and then go get it.

In fact, that is what he’d relegated himself to doing while they were at the junction.  It hadn’t taken long to get things from The Burrow, so afterward he’d taken two of the unhurt Inleters topside with him to fetch some tarps.  They’d only found three of them, but three was better than nothing.  Both mutants were reptiles of some sort, he didn’t know what kind.  He was sure his mother would be able to identify them, Medusa probably could too.  He couldn’t recall either of their names, his thoughts being on more important things.  They had wanted to go back to their previous place, and gather items.

“Are you crazy?” Arcos looked at the two of them in turn.  “Do you want to end up like the rest of your crew down there,” he motioned vaguely at the ground.

“No,” replied one of them, a woman who was a collection of pale greens and cream, with a slight rose at her throat.  “But all of our stuff is there.”

“You can get more stuff,” Arcos told her.  “And you will get more stuff.  That’s what we’re doing now, getting more stuff.” 

“We have to completely rebuild our living quarters,” said the second one.  He was small and a dappled gray, difficult to see in the surrounding gray of the city.  “We’ve had to do it once already.”

“Yes,” Arcos’ grizzly voice was gruff.  “Suck it up.  You’ll probably be doing it again.”

They’d dumpster dived, away from any kind of civilization.  Arcos steered them away from anything smelling anything like it might be self-conscious.  The pickings were slim, those who were still surviving on their wits in the city having already been through many of the places they visited.  They eventually headed back underground to comb the surrounding sewers for usable items.

Luckily for the Inleters, this section of the underground hadn’t yet been utilized by any kind of resistance.  They found a broken metal folding chair, three wooden pallets that still had some wood that was usable, and a great deal of coffee cans.  It never ceased to amaze Arcos, even after all these months, how much stuff was under the city.  How did it get down here, anyway?

Coming back to the junction, he had the two lizards wash and disinfect coffee cans.  “Scrub them good with the pine water,” he instructed, “and then rinse them with fresh water.  Put them in a clean corner to dry.  You’ll need them for something, I’m sure.”

“You like pine, don’t you?” the female had asked.

“No,” he answered.  “I like coffee.”

She smiled, the first time she’d done so in his presence.  Probably the first time she had since this whole fiasco for them began.

He had helped to clean then, starting in a corner, and scraping the walls.  The ceiling was very high, and unless grime started falling from it, he doubted it would get cleaned.

The measured regularity of the scraping gave him time to think.  He wished he had something more involved to do, to keep his mind busy, rather than his thoughts drifting to the Grey Cats.

He had always derided Aries on his flitting from girl to girl, and his regularity with which he took a girl to bed.  It seemed to him rather sloppy, not choosing someone to stay with, and doing something else besides sleeping with them.  But now, without having the option of a bed partner, he wanted one.  He hadn’t even thought of it until he was so sure these people would be his friends, been found after having disappeared like fog in the morning. 

He wanted to fight.  He wanted to make love.  He wanted to smoke.  He wanted to drink.  He wanted to do the things that he’d always participated in, but then looked down on others for doing.  He didn’t particularly care where he did it, just so long as he did, and he did with his friends.

He didn’t even know if any of them were alive.  He missed Crevan and Razz more than he thought would.   He rarely thought of either of them before, unless he wanted something specific, usually just wanting something alleviate his boredom.  If he was going to contemplate someone, it was the members of his family. 

He considered what both Medusa and Aries had said about their mother and Splinter, and decided Aries had the better case.  Splinter was novel, he seemed to fill some sort of need for his mother that obviously hadn’t been filled by anyone else she knew.  He didn’t think it was romantic.  They barely touched each other.  When anyone else he knew had romantic intentions, they were all over each other.  Splinter was a male, after all, he’d even cracked a smile when Aries had accidently tried to make Arcos’ genitalia inoperative.   If he was interested in his mother, he would have made some sort of move after all this time sequestered with them.  It wasn’t like he didn’t have the chance.  Lots of chances.  Unless something had happened while the three of them were gone, he hadn’t taken any of them.

He stood over his mother now, watching her attentively as she worked.  Maybe he was monk, and that was why he was so interested in what she was doing.  Didn’t monks help heal people?  Maybe that was why he wore that robe.  What had he called it?  He couldn’t remember, something Asian.  He watched her with a stern look on his face.  Not that he didn’t always have a stern look on his face, but this one was austere in another way.  Almost as if his mother were the only thing in front of him, not the patient, not the chipmunk at their side, not Sparks, who flittered around the table in between repeating orders that his mother gave him.  He’d never seen the look on the rat’s face before.

As for this mother, he didn’t think she was interested in Splinter romantically either.  Why would she be attracted to a rat?  They were all freaks, and she was human being.  She would want a human being.  That is why she’d pushed Chategris’ attentions away for the past ten years.  Everybody knew it.  A mutant wasn’t good enough for La Medicienne, or The Phoenix.  She was human, and that made her more ‘particular’ than the rest of them.   She restrained from touching Splinter also, he’d noticed.  She must know that he was a lackey of The Rat King.  She would know better than any of the rest of them.  He still wondered what happened when she’d been kidnapped.  She had been wary, almost afraid, of rats for quite a while afterward. No, with this man, she was just tending to a patient.  The woman had nothing else to do, just as the rat had nothing else to do than watch them all.  It was as boring as a hole in the Burrow.

His boredom would have taken him to Crevan, or the girl he was fancying at the time, if they were still at the Haunted Warehouse.  He recalled a time when he, Aries, and Crevan were alone on a roof, drinking beer that the fox had procured somehow, both he and his brother knowing it was not in an honest fashion, all of them buzzed beneath the cloudy night. 

“You two owe me for the beer,” Crevan pointed at Arcos with his bottle.

“Yeah, I know,” the bear replied.

“You can get us some of that weed that your mom makes,” he said.

“That stuff she makes Chategris?” Arcos asked.

“Yeah.”

“You got someone lined up for the next few days?” Aires teased. 

The fox furrowed his brow.  “What do you mean?”

“It gives you a buzz on the day you smoke it,” the ram explained.  “It gives you blue balls for three days after that.”

“That’s how Mama gets back at you all for taking drugs,” Arcos chuckled.

“You’re joking?” Crevan leaned forward.

Both boys shook their heads.  “Nope.”

“Daaammmnnnn,” the fox drawled.  “That’s low.”

“Who said we didn’t do low?” Aries asked.

“I figured you were all too particular to do low.”

“We do low,” Arcos said.  “We just do it with class.”

Crevan had thrown his head back and laughed.  “Good one, Big Brother.”

He missed the silver fox’s company, his nickname of “Big Brother.”  Crevan would probably have been part of his family now if Ailurosa was still alive.

How would his dead sister take this change in their lives?  What would she think of the rat?  She probably wouldn’t like him, she was a cat, after all.  She and Aries would be at each other’s throats, just like when they were kids.  The two of them were too alike, both volatile and emotional.

His eyes went to Aries, and he shook his head.  Count on the ram to be talking a woman as soon as he had the chance.  He didn’t have any illusions that Russe would soon fall under the charming ram’s spell, and end up somewhere alone in the sewer with him.  He was surprised, however, to see Aries tending to people.  He wiped blood from wounds, and unmatted fur from the mutants lying in triage.  He looked up at Russe angrily for a moment, then his face changed back into his normal, amicable self.  Aries playing nurse, who’d a thunk it?

Medusa was not in the junction for any real length of time.  She was gone, would come back with something heavy—a barrel, an electrical wire reel, a couch.  At least he didn’t have to hear her complain about being cold.  That was getting old.  She was always cold.  And whining.  Unless she was fighting, then she was trying to be coy.  Maybe she missed fighting, and loving, and drinking, and smoking, too.  Maybe she did all those things with Razz, and none of them knew.

He had come back to The Burrow and promptly fell asleep on his sister.   Now, at whatever time it was, after a brief spin with his thoughts, sleep overcame him again, until Medusa decided to jostle him once more.  Hopefully it would be a while before she did.