Fox Life

Iris turned away, unable to keep watching. Seeing Lucy at death's doorstep was bad enough, but now she was faced with Kyro's forlorn expression as well. His actions were minimal, just the caressing of the cat's head, but somehow her heart ached even more because of his control.     

It sounded like a foreign person had been speaking when he called the vet. His controlled voice chilled her like nothing else could.     

She had known Lucy for just a few months, but she was already in love with the grumpy giant. On good days, he was almost absent, napping somewhere, but whenever something bad happened, he was the first to protect her. Today was only a single mention in a long list of his heroics.     

Unbidden, the memory of him teaching her to climb came to the front of her mind. She'd thought he was playing with her at the time, but that was wrong. With an unprecedented patience, he had actually taught her how to survive as a little animal.     

Tears collected in Iris' eyes, and she pulled closer to rub her nose against the cat's cheek. He couldn't die. He just couldn't. There was so much stuff she should have done but hadn't. Not once had she thought to repay him for his kindness.     

'Please, Lucy, you have to live.'     

As she whimpered that to him, the cat wheezed and shuddered again. He shifted his head a fraction and licked her cheek, as if cleaning the blood off.     

The thought that he was still caring about her when he was in this kind of position broke Iris' last vestiges of composure. She crumpled to the ground by his side and began bawling, unable to keep it back.     

It was all too much. She had just returned to the apartment and hadn't even seen Lucy before he rushed into her bedroom to defend her. Which then cost him his life.     

Kyro picked Iris up, and she pressed against his chest, but her eyes never left Lucy. The cat breathed slowly, each raise of his chest a small miracle. It looked like it required all his effort just to keep breathing, and his energy was seeping away, one intake of air at a time.     

It was hard to say how long the three of them had stayed like that when there was a commotion outside. People spoke in raised voices, and Kyro broke out of his stupor. He rose and, after promising Lucy to come back right away, left to check it out.     

Next to the doorway, the officers were speaking with a thirty or so year old man in a casual dress. There was a large case in his hand, and he kept on frowning while looking inside the apartment.     

"Are you the one who called about an injured cat?" he asked upon taking notice of Kyro. His voice was gruff and full of annoyance.     

"Let him pass," Kyro ordered the officers. "I asked him to come."     

The police wasn't too happy, but they allowed him once Kyro explained about his injured pet. The whole crowd then went to take a look at Lucy, with only one guard staying by the handcuffed perpetrator.     

"Damn," the vet whispered when he saw the cat and strode to his side. "Have you moved it?" he asked after crouching down on one knee to softly touch the cat's sides. His fingers moved over Lucy's side and face like butterflies, putting almost no pressure.     

Kyro shook his head. "He was like this when I found him. It seems he somehow got in the way of the thief."     

"I see. How old is he? Any sicknesses?"     

While speaking, he took out a few tools out of his case and checked Lucy's eyes, opened his mouth, then gently brushed his fur, looking for any open wounds. When he touched the back right leg, a shiver ran down the cat's whole body, and he choked on his breath a few times.     

The hand holding Iris trembled once, but Kyro's voice was steady when he spoke next. "Around eight, and he's always had a good constitution. I only brought him to the clinic for regular check ups."     

"Well, I can't do much here. If we're to have a chance to save him, I'll need to operate on him. Some of his bones are broken, but I'm more worried about internal injuries. It's hard for me to say how bad it is without a scan, but it's not looking positive. I might not be able to save him."     

After his speech, he looked around. "Where's his traveling case? We need to go right away."     

Soon, Kyro brought it over and they placed plenty of cloth to cushion it before the vet moved Lucy. This pained the cat, who whimpered for the first time, the sound barely audible. It tugged at everyone's heartstrings, and the vet's eyes filled with pity. "I'll do all I can," he promised in a soft voice.     

On the way out, the officers tried to stop Kyro to give a statement, but he didn't care one bit for what they wanted. He said that he was going to go to the station once he was finished and do his part, but now, he didn't have the time.     

Then, without a glance back, he stepped into the elevator. Below, he sat down in the back of the vet's car, Lucy's cage on his knees. Iris in the meantime sat by his side, having ran over herself. The vet gave her a look, but didn't comment.     

Once they reached the clinic, the vet took Lucy away and told Kyro to wait outside. Before closing the door, he once again promised to do everything that's possible, but warned him not to hope for too much. The cat's condition was pretty bad, so the likeliness of his survival was minimal.     

When Kyro sat down on the waiting chairs, his expression tightened. The indifferent mask fell off. After a moment, it seemed as if all energy left him. His shoulders hunched, and he rested his head on his hands. There were no tears in his eyes, but the empty void within them was unmistakable.     

Iris jumped on an adjacent chair and went to curl up on his knees. There was little the two of them could do at the moment besides worrying. Lucy's life was now in the hands of that vet.     

A single minute of waiting was equal to a day at another time. Iris' gaze returned again and again to the closed door, but there was no sign of movement there. They stood closed, ominous-looking. In Iris' mind, they soon became akin to the gates of hell that would never open, having already swallowed their prey.     

Hours seemed to pass without anything happening. There was a distant echo of people talking in the main room, but they sounded far away, almost like an illusion. The waiting room seemed to exist in a different plane, one that was cold and void of life.     

By the time Iris had stopped hoping for anything, the door's opened, and a tired-looking vet came out. He was wearing a white coat and gloves, which glistened with water from having just been cleaned.     

"You can come in now, but be quiet."     

Kyro didn't need to be asked twice. He rose and almost bounded over to the operating room. Within it, Lucy lay on the table, both his eyes closed.     

"Is he—"     

Kyro couldn't finish the sentence, the words choking in his throat, and Iris looked away. She didn't want to see Lucy like that. Large parts of his fur had been shaved off, revealing the skin underneath. It was marred with threads where it had been sewn closed.     

The vet stepped closer and placed a hand on the cat's side. "He's just asleep. I had to drug him to make sure he didn't move while I removed a splinter from his insides. He's really lucky. If the bone had broken and pushed in any other direction by a few millimeters, it would have hit one of the organs and killed him right away."     

For a long while, silence reigned in the room. Neither Kyro nor Iris were able to comprehend what they were hearing. "He'll live?" Kyro finally asked, his voice low.     

"Yeah." The vet nodded. "I managed to save his life, but you have to understand that he won't be the same from now on. His left eye was damaged, and it's hard to say if it'll work again. His back leg will heal, but he'll limp to the last of his days. There were some internal injuries as well, so he'll not be able to eat much. All of this is likely to lead to the cat becoming irate and unapproachable. Try not to fault him for that."     

"Never." Kyro stepped forward and brushed the few remnants of the sleeping Lucy's fur. "I would never turn on him," he swore.     

Whatever came, he would deal with it. Lucy had not left him when he was at his worst, and now it was his turn to repay with the same.