By some miracle, I made it to the attic unmolested. It was hardly bigger than the closet I had just been in and bare save for a sleeping bag balled up into one corner of the room. There were no windows and no lights, so I knew I could only see due to my night-vision. Otherwise, it would be pitch black.

Is this really where Kat lives now?

"Are you there, Foxy?"

I jumped and nearly yelped at the sudden voice in my head. Apparently I was still expecting that other voice to attack. "Yeah, I am."

"I'm coming up. Watch out for the door, it opens up at the center of the room."

I backed away accordingly as new light filtered into the tiny attic. Kat's tall and lithe form crawled inside and swiftly shut the door behind her. She was too tall to stand, so she did an awkward looking half-crawl, half-hobble until she reached one side of the attic and sat herself down before pulling up her legs and burying her head into her arms.

I barely had time to take this all in before she spoke out-loud. "So, why did you follow me?"

Right to the point. Not that I should have expected any less from her.

"Do you even have to ask? I'm worried about you. I haven't seen you in months. And, like I said before, I missed you."

If she was going to be blunt, then so was I. With careful steps, I inched closer towards her. The memory of the green and blue eyes I saw back in the alley still haunted me, but Kat was keeping her head lowered. Her wavy blonde hair blocked everything I wanted to see from view.

"Well, like I was trying to say before, it's not safe for you here."

"Yeah, I kind of got that feeling with the whole insulting-Doctor-who-doesn't-like-familiars and Maple-gone-completely-mad-vibe I've been getting from this place."

"I'm not going to make any excuses. You saw what you saw," Kat said with a casual shrug of her bony shoulders. "But Maple isn't your Master. This isn't your life. This is my fight."

I risked moving ever closer to her as a growl threatened to escape from my lips. "What part of the crap I said back at the Exchange Ceremony aren't any of you getting? We're friends, Kat. I want to help you."

Kat's hands tightened on her arms at my words. I braced myself for her death glare, but her head did not move. "I don't remember asking for your help."

"Tough, I'm giving it."

I tried not to think about how much I was starting to sound like the very person I was talking to, but felt a wave of heat nonetheless when a dry chuckle escaped from Kat's hunched over form.

"What can you do, Foxy? Sway her with cuteness?"

"No!" I shot back, my body letting out some sort of strange whine I hadn't heard before in response. "But I'll think of something. I'm not just going to sit by and let this monster control you!"

Kat didn't say anything back right away. Instead, I watched and listened as she took in a deep breath that sounded like it filled her frail body several times over. In one agonizingly slow and deliberate motion, she let it out, drawing out the exhale for as long as she could. When she finished, her legs sprawled out and her arms fell away. She kept her head lowered.

"Do you really have that little faith in me?"

The tiny, frail voice that whispered inside my head was unlike any I heard from her before. It was without passion, without strength, and without hope.

I moved closer to Kat until I stood right before her. Still, she would not look up at me. She would not let me see what I wanted to see.

"Kat, you are the strongest person I have ever met. I think I can safely say that despite only remembering the past three years of my life. You've been saving me since the moment I met you up until just a few minutes ago. You might not believe it, but I do appreciate what you have done for me. I still...Well, we're still friends, aren't we?"

Kat did not say anything back, so I swallowed the lump in my throat and continued. "Whatever you might think of me, I still like you. You're still my friend. I can't keep living this sort of life unless I at least try to help you. Whatever the cost. Whether you want me to or not."

"Whatever the cost?" Kat whispered out-loud.

"Yes!" I nearly pounced at the opportunity she was giving. "I don't care what happens if it means I can..."

My thoughts turned to mush when Kat wordlessly lifted her arms out towards me. When I didn't move or speak, she spoke instead. "Come here."

"What? Why?" Was it wrong of me to think the worst? To think that somehow Maple got to her. That this was somehow a trap.

"If you really want to help me," Kat's voice said inside my head, the words soft and almost hesitant, "then come here. Sit in my lap and let me hold you."

I had already done most of the work for her without realizing it. I had practically put myself in her lap in my insistence for her to listen to what I had been saying. And, now that I was but a foot away from 'helping her', I could not move. All the veins in my body ran ice cold.

Slowly, Kat's arms began to lower. "I understand why you don't trust me," she said. "When have I ever seemed like the person who wanted affection, right?"

"Kat—"

"Those times we touched, my chest hurt just as much as yours. When I kissed you, I did it because of more than just gratitude. When you told me your feelings, I did not want to admit mine. I was afraid of what would come of it."

My mind was blank. Completely and utterly. What could I even think? What was even happening right now, in this dark and empty attic?

"And when you kissed me," Kat pressed on, her whole body trembling, as if she was fighting her very soul to get it out, "I wanted you to kiss me again."

I think at some point I had fallen back on my backside. I was sitting there, fox mouth hanging open, looking for all the world like I had been stuffed and mounted. The only words I could even think to think were "Kat" and "Why?".

"Is that enough for you?" Kat muttered, her hands turning to fists as they fell against her lap. "I cut myself open and spilled my guts out for you. Maple would never want me to do this. Do you trust me now?"

Enough clarity returned for me to stand up. I gathered up enough courage to place a single paw on her thin leg and keep it there when her entire body tensed up in response.

"You know, I don't think you could have picked a worse time to tell me all that."

Kat chuckled again, but it was in-dispersed between coughs and a hiccup. Had she been crying?

"I don't think there was ever going to be a good time," she said.

"True, but it might have looked less weird if you weren't admitting your feelings to a fox."

Kat laughed again and I took the opportunity to slide between her feet and further up her legs. Her laugh caught in her throat almost right away as she turned her face away from me. Her hair continued to block everything I wanted to see.

The blunt approach had been going well so far, might as well stick with it. "Kat, look at me."

"I can't."

"Because Maple is making you? Or because you don't want me to see what she did to you?"

It was just a suspicion, but the way her back tensed against the wall told me everything. I knew what had happened without having to see it. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew since I saw the blue eye and the uneven way her hair fell around her face, but I didn't want to admit it.

Now there was no ignoring it.

"I'm going to kill her."

"You don't mean that."

"The hell I don't! Are you seriously still going to defend her after what she did to you? Kat, she—"

"I know what she did," Kat spat, the emotion in her voice cutting through my pathetic, thought-out words. "She lost control and she blames herself every day for it. She punishes herself for it. She let's the demon inside her..."

Kat fell silent. I tried to angle my head to where I could almost see what lurked beneath the uneven, blonde tangles. "Kat, talk to me."

Kat did not talk to me. At least, not right away. Instead, without a word or a sound, she reached up with one hand and lifted the hair blocking the left side of her face.

I think I almost went mad, in that instant. A silence deeper than what had already been in that room sunk inside me. I believed the darkness of the attic would consume me entirely.

Scars. Skin stretched thin and deep red scars scoured across her face. She no longer had a left eyebrow and the eye the singed flesh surrounded was blue and fogged over. It didn't matter if that eye was looking away from me. It was never going to see anything ever again.

"I'm not ashamed of what's been done to me," Kat said, her voice sounding a million miles away. "And I'm not upset by it, either. I only hid it from you because I knew how you would react. I knew you would..."

She was saying more, but I could no longer hear it. A slight ringing was starting to take over her voice, and the absolute silence that once was inside me. A thousand, violent images swirled around in my head. Things I could do. Things I believed I should do.

And then Kat reached out and pulled me against her chest.

I am ashamed to admit that my first reaction was to bite and claw and fight my way out of the sudden attack, but all became clear when her arms wrapped around me and her face became buried in my fur.

"If you really want to help me," Kat repeated, her voice muffled by my body, "and if—If you feel for me the way you say you do, you won't interfere. You will only make things worse."

I tried to move out of her grip, but she only held on tighter.

"Kat, you can't expect me to just—"

"I don't want to see you hurt. I don't want to see you almost die. Not for me. Don't make me have to go through that again."

"What about what you are making me go through, Kat? Seeing you like this. Seeing what those witches are doing to you. It isn't right. I won't stand by and just let it happen!"

"I'll say it again, Foxy." Kat held me tighter. "Just what can you do? I saw what happened between you and your Master. I couldn't hear her side of the conversation, but I saw your teeth on her neck, I heard the conviction in the words you thought at her."

The bloodlust simmered as I thought back to that moment in the alley. It almost made me sick thinking about her seeing what I had almost done.

"Kat, I wasn't—"

"You must have been closer then a familiar has ever been to killing their Master," Kat interrupted, her voice void of inflection or emotion, "and still you could not do it. Even near death, she stopped you."

Before I could say anything back, Kat continued, her grip around me only growing tighter. "If you stood up to Maple, she would kill you. Or, worse, she would make me kill you. You can't put me through that, Foxy. I would rather die."

I would rather die.

I had said something similar to Mary, when we met in my dream. After she had risked her life to feed me Ash's Dream Sand.

I took in a deep breath of my own as all the memories from the dream world filled my waking mind. For the first time, I allowed myself to relax my muscles and accept Kat's embrace. She almost reflexively loosened the almost vice grip she had on my frail body.

"Foxy?"

"You're right."

That made Kat pause, for a moment. "Um, what?"

"I was being irrational. You're right, there's not really much I can do the way I am right now."

"Huh." The girl holding me paused again. "I honestly did not think I would ever hear you admit I was right. Maybe I should confess how I feel for you more often."

"That was a one time trick," I thought back, ignoring the feeling of my body growing hot when I noticed Kat's smirk. "Besides, I'm sure I've admitted you were right before. I'm not that stubborn."

"Apparently not anymore but, trust me, you used to be a real pain in the ass."

"Alright, alright just because we're all close and cozy now doesn't mean I'll keep letting you take shots like that. Besides, I wasn't finished." I regretfully pushed myself away from the warmth of her body to look her in the eyes that were still avoiding me. "There's not much I can do right now. But there is something."

Kat's green eye drifted to the ceiling, then the floor, then to the space just above my head. I felt a hand gently stroke my head, pushing aside the ears as it did. A warm smile I don't think I had ever seen before graced her thin lips.

"I'm listening."

...

*Author's Note*

Foxy's and Kat's relationship seems to be changing. For better or for worse, that may be up to you all to decide. Can these two damaged people help fix one another? Or will they only make things worse? Whatever your thoughts, you know by now that I'd love to hear 'em!