Kitty

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain belongs to Edios and Crystal Dynamics, not me. I am making ?0.00 out of this fic; it is written purely because I have a burning need to create. Although I would like to own Vorador . . . then he'd be mine.

Rating: PG-13

Note: This is very much just a short little thing, unfortunately for the first time in years, I'm hitting a wall when it comes to writing. I think this is caused by a combination of various stressors which I am hoping will all be resolved in the next few weeks. So fingers crossed, things will improve, and I will stop having to force out little broken bits of writing and can put out something halfway decent again.

In the meantime, have this :D

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Kain was aware, to an extent, of the usual complaints of parenting. When he was a man he had listened in taverns to other men complain about their offspring and had noted patterns in the complaints, behaviours that seemed typical to all children. He had never thought they would apply to himself.

Technically, his children were not children, they were grown men.

Admittedly, they were grown men who had been dead for centuries and it was taking a while for their minds to recover. This meant that while their bodies were those of men, they sometimes had moments where they acted like infants. It relieved Kain to find those moments were becoming fewer and fewer. Now his brood was ignorant rather than childlike.

Some of them had even shown common sense.

It was a relief.

Only a month ago Kain was considering scrapping the lot of them and trying again with live children. He'd been ready to outright slighter his brood, taking it as a lesson to not raise corpses. But they had survived that dark mood day, in part because of his own stubbornness, and in part because of the actions of his youngest, Melchiah. Melchiah had unwittingly saved his brothers by demonstrating an evolving intelligence, and an ability to problem-solve. He was perhaps the least verbal of all his children, but was learning. He had taken his own prey; he had killed a mortal man, in a very deliberate and purposeful manner. It was not a happy accident, he'd watched Kain hunt for them and had kept the information and put it into practice himself.

It had been such a promising move forward, that Kain had spared his brood because of it.

Pleasingly the others had followed suit and were showing behaviours that meant that while they were not independent, they no longer required their sire for every little thing. Which gave Kain time to think and time to sleep.

No longer utterly exhausted by the demands of his children, Kain had seen them as something other than a burden, he'd even noticed positive traits in all of them. Melchiah was quick to learn, Zephon was fast and better coordinated than his brothers, Rahab was wilful and Dumah had a unique view of things when he cared to express an opinion verbally. Turel had a paternal edge that Kain was determined to hone and foist his children off on their elder brother as soon as possible. Only Raziel had a level of curiosity was beyond anything Kain had witnessed before, he had yet to decide if this was a good thing or not.

It was Raziel and his curiosity that was his current focus.

They had found an old house in which to squat for the night, and Raziel had found that they were not alone. Something was living in the kitchen. Kain had already identified it as a cat from the smell and had snorted a laugh when Raziel had curiously reached for the creature, only to receive a scratch and hiss for his trouble. Kain had expected one of two outcomes, that Raziel would dismiss the creature and its tiny claws, or he would be angry and lash out, likely killing it. But it surprised him when two hours later Raziel emerged from the kitchen, the small black-furred beast in his arms. It didn't look overly happy about its situation, but it wasn't attacking.

"I want it," Raziel had said.

"You want to keep the cat?" Kain frowned. Raziel nodded. "To eat?"

"No, I want it," Raziel said, petting his somewhat disgruntled hostage.

"Just to keep."

"You're asking for a pet," Kain pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Yes," Raziel smiled.

"You know that's ridiculous," Kain said firmly. "Not to mention impractical."

"Why?"

"Because we travel, we're not safe, it'll starve with us or get lost," Kain muttered, wondering why he was having this discussion.

"I'll feed it," Raziel said. "and keep it safe." Kain rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"Do what you like," he sighed. "But if… when it dies, I don't want to hear about it." Raziel grinned widely and ran his blunt fingers down his new pets' belly. "Also, make sure you clean up after it, I'm not living with cat shit."

"I will," Raziel was already wandering off, Kain caught him muttering about finding a carry box for it and some meat. Kain sighed again. Well, at least it would teach his eldest the fragility of mortal life.

But to his surprise the cat did not immediately die or flee at the first opportunity, it remained with them for several years, only to eventually die as all mortal things must. It was mourned by his eldest, but his kittens (which had appeared in the second year of ownership) remained with them and so on down the generations.

Several centuries later, Kain walked the wide halls of the Razielim and noticed that they littered the entire damn citadel with cats.

End Fic

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