Soundless Imaginings | One-Shots

Soft Spoken | UnchainedHeart's Contest

He was slipping.

He couldn't be slipping. It wasn't fathomable. Kitt did not lose. Kitt did not fall. Kitt did not die.

But here he was, bleeding out, his eyes glassy, lips quirked into the crookedest of grins. Watching me, gauging my reaction. Deciding how he would solve the problem that was his fraying captain.

"Kitt, what... de hell did ya do to yerself...?"

I fell to my knees at his side, unsure where to look, what to do with my trembling hands.

Kitt lay wedged into the space between an overturned crate and the railing, one arm thrown over the obstructing crate, the other awkwardly positioned across his stomach. Though his face glowed with his usual smile, he looked ghastly, his cheeks leeched of their sun-warmed coloring; sweat clung to his pallid brow, creeping steadily down the outline of his jaw. His gray eyes were alive with anguish.

He fought me for a moment, tried to edge away from my probing hands, but I pried his arm from his abdomen; his forearm dripped crimson onto my legs as I bent it over my lap.

It's hard to explain - I'd rather not even attempt to find words that adequately express the rapidly crumbling nature of my sanity. Even the brief recollection required to write this out... hurts.

In that moment, I fractured.

I'd yet to shatter - that would come later. But this fracture was the catalyst, what made me so willing to succumb to the eventual destruction.

Because Kitt really was going to die.

"Kitt, ya bastard... Ya petty, bastard waster....!"

Again, he smiled. Gently pulled his wrist from my wavering grip, aligned our palms, curled his fingers around mine. Dropped our joined hands into the static space between us, exhausted.

My eyes were fixed on the jagged, terrible gash he'd been desperate to conceal. It cut cleanly into his flesh, beginning just beneath his rib cage, wrapping around his hip, probably even scraping over his spine; without enough backbone of my own, I wouldn't be turning him to check just how far the laceration reached. Blood welled up from cleaved veins, overflowing, reveling in this unfounded freedom. Kitt's once-white shirt was indistinguishable from his red button-up.

"How... how did dis..."

Words came in short bursts of intelligible thought; the more pressing terror that was flooding my brain was careful to flush out any form of coherence. Rational thought was, after all, the primal enemy of instinctive fear.

But Kitt had never had trouble deciphering my maddened gibberish; he claimed fluency in my stuttered language, something I'd never given credence in the past. Now, its existence, just knowing he understood, was a merciful gift from a spiteful god.

He mouthed something, his articulate fingers too preoccupied to dictate his thoughts, and I bent forward, closing our buffer zone so that I could follow the movements of his lips. His bloodied, tremulous, smiling lips.

"Sorry, Cat, just... it's my time, I guess."

I shook my head, squeezed his hand, shouted to heaven and hell in the screaming whirlwind that wreaked such havoc within my mind that this couldn't be happening.

"Hey, give me a smile, Captain Cat," Kitt mouthed, cocking his head. "Be a shame if I bit it without seeing something beautiful, don't you think?"

"Stop," I begged, "stop, Kitt! Yer goin' t' be fine. Ya have t' be, I don't... I can't do dis if yer not wit me!"

That infuriating smile again. He knew - more than anyone, more than our crew, probably more than even myself - that I was not in any way exaggerating. Without Kitt, I'd be a mess. Lost as a shipwrecked sailor.

A captain was nothing without their first mate.

"Where de hell is Zeo?!"

I whipped around, straining to see in the oppressive darkness that shrouded us. Another attack had been mounted in the fleeting moments just before night had truly fallen, and we'd been overrun. Tempo, Faline, and Kitt had instantly clashed with the invading pirates while I ushered Zeo to relative safety; the crow's nest had seemed the most reclusive and secure place aboard the ship at the time. He was still up there, then, waiting for the all-clear that would never come.

Kitt's tugging pulled me from my thoughts, and I grudgingly looked back at him, already watching his fine mouth.

"Nothing to do about it, Cat," he went on, slower now, his lips working with less fluidity. His hand withdrew from mine, and I fought the sudden urge to snatch it back."I drew the short stick this time 'round. I'm... gonna be shoving off, soon..."

"But, you can't... I promised. I promised you, all of ye, dat I'd be yer guiding light, like... like de blasted North Star! I said dis wouldn't happen...!"

I watched his hands, those hands I knew by touch alone, as though this were any other conversation, any other moment. They shook terribly, making his signing a challenge to decipher; my heart slammed into my throat as he vainly mouthed the words with each dismal sign he produced.

"You... weren't... just... a star... to... me..."

He was losing so much blood. I grabbed at his wrists, shouting at him to stop, just stop, because whatever energy remained in his decimated body needed to be preserved, and because this was obviously only a wasted effort, and because I was his captain, dammit, he had to listen to me just this once!

But he ignored me, my warnings of no consequence to him, my threats empty and insubstantial. He repeated himself, the same words he'd signed before, but more frantic now.

"You weren't just a star to me, Cat... you were my whole damn sky."

And then his hand was somehow clasped around the back of my neck and I was falling and Kitt was rising ever so slightly. His lips found mine in the next heartbeat. It was a soft, breathless kiss, passionate without the sinful lust I might have imagined were it a less morbid situation. Just his lips against mine, just Kitt and his temper, Kitt and his fervor, Kitt and his loneliness, Kitt and his shame. Everything that couldn't be found in words alone.

He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, cheeks bloodless but warm. His breath washed over my cheeks, his nose pressed into mine. Another lingering kiss touched to my lips.

"Don't miss me too much, Captain Idiot. I told you, you're not allowed to cry when I'm not around."

I was going to have to break that promise into uncountable fragments; tears chased one another down my skin in flashing, silver streaks.

"Kitt, I..."

What was the point of finishing?

He was already dead in my arms.