Chapter Text
To be completely fair, Death had promised that they would meet again.
That still didn’t make it any easier for Puss in Boots when he heard the telltale warning of a low whistle, a soft, haunting tune that drifted through the night in a cold promise of demise. It made the hairs on his body stand on end and his heart pound rapidly in his chest, and before he knew it, his breathing had grown raspy and ragged, a panicked gasp that had spiraled far outside of his jurisdiction.
“Did you hear that?!” Puss asked wildly, the words spoken before he had the chance to reign them back in and get his instinctual reaction, stupid and involuntary that it was, under control.
Across the fire, Kitty and Perrito paused, giving him a look of pure bewilderment. Perrito had been in the middle of explaining how out of all the kibble colors, the red-tinted X-shaped bits were by far the superior flavor, with the greenish rod-shaped pieces being the absolute worst (to which Kitty had responded by saying that she didn’t eat that garbage, because it all tasted repulsive so why even bother picking a favorite), but after Puss’ rather brusque outburst, they both fell silent. The only sound came from the crackling fire and the dull buzz of the forest surrounding them.
“Hear… what?” While Perrito’s confusion had an air of innocence, Kitty was much more skeptical, her eyes narrowing in the cautious questioning of a seasoned thief always prepared for the worst.
Puss hesitated, not exactly itching to explain that he was certain he had just heard Death whistle for him, just beyond the scope of the clearing. “Er…” he began rather intelligently, before the sound returned. However, unlike the clear tune before, this new keen was a single note, low and steady before slowly fading out.
Perrito laughed. “Oh that? That’s just the wind!”
“The… wind,” Puss repeated, dumfounded. Because clearly, that was not the wind. Puss knew what the wind sounded like, for crying out loud, and it definitely wasn’t that.
“Oh yeah, who doesn’t love the sound of a nice, howling wind?” Perrito said as Puss stared at him blankly. “When I lived under the porch at Mama Luna’s house, it was usually very cold and lonely but the only thing that made it better was the wind to keep me company. Well that, and the rats when they weren’t in a biting mood, which they normally were, so I guess it really was just the wind."
Next to him, Kitty relaxed. “Perrito, we’ll unpack that in a minute,” she promised. “See Puss? There is nothing to worry about. It’s just us out here.”
Puss lightly frowned, but chose not to respond. Perhaps Kitty and Perrito were right; it was nothing more than his overactive imagination. The lingering residue of his most recent harrowing adventure.
Still. He glanced over his shoulder into the darkness behind him as Kitty and Perrito continued to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of eating kibble. It had been Perrito’s idea to camp in the forest for the night. Puss was always one for the soft bed of an inn and a raucous party to accompany his arrival in whatever town was lucky enough to be graced with his presence, but it had been getting late, and they had all been growing tired.
“I’ve always wanted to have a slumber party camping trip,” Perrito had gushed, a distant, wondrous glow in his eyes. “This will be so much fun!”
“Perrito,” Puss had said as he begrudgingly set down his travel pack. “We travel everywhere together. Every single night is a slumber party.”
“Maybe, but how often do we get to sleep in the great outdoors?!”
Kitty shrugged as she joined Puss in setting up camp for the evening. “Eh, I would say about half the time.”
“Oh.”
Puss snorted. “See? If we do this half the time, then surely we can continue onwards just a little longer?”
“Too late,” Kitty had said, placing her paws on her hips. “You already put your pack down. You know the rules!”
“The rules are stupid!” The rule, of course, was that once you put your pack down at a campsite, that was where you spent the night. This had been spurned by Perrito’s tendency to jump around from place to place, his hyperactive personality making it difficult for him to stay in one spot for very long or, at least in this context, be satisfied with a campsite after all the setup had already occurred. Hence, the creation of the rule.
“You can’t be serious,” Puss protested when Kitty shrugged in response. “We are less than an hour away from an inn. It’s still light out, we can make it before dark!”
“It certainly would be cheaper to stay out here,” Kitty had reasoned, and Puss had shot her a glare for condemning them to a night sleeping in the cold outdoors.
And cold it currently was. Cold, dark, and apparently windy. Perhaps that explained why his fur still stood up, twitching and quivering as a chill wracked his body. Perhaps he had been simply imagining things, his mind hard-wired to associate anything that remotely resembled an eerie whistle with a promise of death.
“Puss? Hey, Puss? Can you hear me?”
Distantly realizing that Perrito had been repeating his name, Puss refocused his attention to shoot him a quizzical look across the fire. “Er, yes?”
“I was just asking you what your favorite piece of kibble was.”
At this absolutely ridiculous, outlandish question, Puss scoffed. “I do not have a favorite, because it is all disgusting.”
However, at the sight of Perrito’s face falling ever-so-slightly, because the last thing you ever wanted to do was make Perrito sad, Puss quickly scrambled to amend his harsh statement. “Although, er, if I did have to choose, the yellow circles are not all that terrible.”
That had been a lie. The yellow circles tasted absolutely heinous, as did the rest of them. Despite the pain it caused him to say something so repulsive, the way that Perrito brightened and wagged his tail in sheer thrill made it all worth it. “I love that flavor too, Puss!”
Puss certainly wouldn’t describe any of the kibble pieces as having flavor— and based on Kitty’s expression of disdain it was safe to say that she agreed— but he refrained from pointing this little detail out.
“Now,” she said, “while this conversation has been fun, all this talk about cat food has caused me to lose my appetite. Can we please talk about something else? Anything else? Please?”
Perrito began laughing, and since he had such a contagious laugh, Puss found himself chuckling along as well, Kitty joining in shortly after. And as they laughed, the glow of their friendship burning deep in Puss’ chest, the only thing he felt for a brief, fleeting moment was joy, when all of a sudden, it returned. The chilling tune of a whistle, tangible, terrifying, and decidedly not the wind. The warmth of his friends had nearly made him forget the impending threat, but now hearing it again, the cold thrill of fear returned twofold.
“Puss?” Kitty asked, arching an inquisitive eyebrow in his direction and making him realize that he had abruptly stopped laughing.
“Is something the matter?”
Puss hesitated, turning to look behind him into the forest at his back. It was dark and impossible to see anything out there, but he knew. He just knew that something, no, someone was out there waiting for his arrival.
Turning back to his friends, he made a decision. An incredibly stupid decision, mind you, but a decision nonetheless. He cleared his throat awkwardly, averting his gaze to look at his boots. “I… uh… have some business I have to go take care of.”
“Business?” Perrito’s crooked ears perked up, a miraculous feat given how floppy they were. “What kind of business?”
Puss hesitated, his fingers curling around the air as he struggled to procure a response that would make it seem like he definitely was not about to confront Death, because that was almost certainly what he was about to do. “It’s, er, private business.” He mimed taking off his belt, causing Kitty to roll her eyes and Perrito to sit up straight.
“But what could possibly be private between two friends? I always accompany you when you take care of your business!”
“Perrito.” Kitty tilted her head with an austere look, one that was only mildly chastising. “I thought we’ve established that we’re done watching Puss while he goes to the bathroom?”
Perrito pawed at the ground in protest, doing a little dance in place that might have looked petulant if it wasn’t so adorable. “Aw, come on! Team Friendship does everything together! What if Puss needs help with anything?”
“I think he can manage going to the bathroom by himself.”
“Well how do you know that?”
As Kitty tried to convince Perrito that maybe watching Puss in Boots go to the bathroom wasn’t really an indicator of a solid friendship, Puss slipped away into the night. Leaving the warmth of the fire and his friends behind him, he ventured out into the forest, his ears on high alert for….
There.
The whistling had returned, a melody strung out and creating a trail for him to follow. While in the past, he had always run away from the sound, the source meaning certain death, he now found himself approaching it. Every fiber in his body, every nerve, every muscle, screamed at him to turn around and sprint in the opposite direction, but swallowing his fear, Puss pushed forward.
It probably didn’t help how dark and creepy the forest was. And how alone he felt, now that the light of the fire and the sound of his friends was fully obstructed from his senses.
He continued onward, going deeper and deeper, the whistling growing louder and louder until he could practically feel it reverberate in his skull. Memories of his past, his fears, blind terror as Death swung his lethal sickle toward him in an image burned behind his eyes, stifling his senses and accelerating his heartrate, and it was only with the calming breathing techniques that Perrito had taught him was he able to maintain a level head. It was building up, however, the suspense of the inevitable. Dragging on and on to an unbearable degree, and just when Puss had been about to give up and venture back the way he came, he turned a corner and…
…there he was. Leaning against a tree with his hood drawn up, sharp ears like pointed daggers poking out from underneath, stood Death. His arms were folded over his chest as he whistled his grim requiem, his looming frame and the power that it held concealed by the folds of his thick, massive cloak. He was exactly like Puss remembered him, exactly as he appeared in the nightmares that plagued him nearly every night.
Death looked up as Puss approached, his scarlet eyes meeting Puss’ and just about freezing him in his tracks.
Fearless hero indeed. Death was, quite plainly, the literal antithesis to that self-assigned title.
However, Puss was able to keep his gait steady, carrying himself forward until he stood in front of his fearsome foe. A safe, respectable distance remained between them; calculated so that he was not too far off to portray cowardice, yet not too close to be foolish.
“Ah, there he is,” Death drawled as Puss came to a stop, pushing himself off the tree and to his full height. “The legendary Puss in Boots. And here I thought you hadn’t heard my call, or perhaps worse; you had decided to ignore it.”
“What do you want, Muerte?” Puss challenged. He was proud of himself for maintaining a level tone; none of the distress that gripped his heart bled into his voice.
Death merely chuckled, as if his display of brevity was somehow amusing. Which, to be quite honest, it probably was from his perspective. It didn’t help that Puss in Boots was barely knee-height against his towering figure. “Always so brash and bold. So demanding. Whatever happened to a proper greeting, hm?”
Puss’ teeth ground together, his eyes narrowing into thin slits. “Hola, Muerte,” he hissed. “Now, what do you want from me?”
“Much better,” Death said in praise, his voice a low rumbling growl in the back of his throat. ”As for what I want from you, why, is it really such a crime to want to see an old friend?”
Puss frowned. He wouldn’t exactly call someone who he would consider his sworn enemy (and while there were a lot of people graced to be on that rather long list, it was important to note that Death had a very special place reserved at the top) to be a friend. Hell, it had taken a long time to get to the point where he could assign that title to Kitty and Perrito.
Yes, he was nearly certain that Death was not here to ‘visit an old friend.’
“Have you come to fight? Pick up where we left off?”
Death shook his head, a light smirk on his sinister face. “Not exactly.”
“Come to hire me for a job?”
“I think you and I both know that I am perfectly capable of working on my own.”
That was a very valid point. Puss paused, pressing a paw to his chin in thought. Across from him, Death tilted his head, a teasing glint in his eyes as he watched the realization light up on Puss’ face as he came to the answer. “You’ve come to check up on me. See if I’ve changed.”
“My, not nearly as stupid as you look, are you Puss in Boots?”
Puss’ hackles raised, and he had a colorful retort he wanted to spit back, but he wisely bit his tongue instead. Death had proven himself time and time again to be quite the formidable opponent; the last thing Puss wanted to do was needlessly provoke his ire. A single senseless misstep, and he would find himself at the sharpened end of a sickle. Two, if he was really unlucky.
“Yes,” Death continued with a nod, “you are correct, to a certain degree. While I meant what I said that I saw your change from the old cat you used to be, my better judgement tells me that sometimes a little, how shall we say, wellness check might be in order.”
“Is that so? Well, if that is the case,” Puss said, gesturing towards himself. “I am alive, I am well, so you may conclude your little ‘wellness check’”—at this, he lifted his claws to demonstrate the most sarcastic, sassiest pair of air quotes he could manage—“and be on your merry way.”
On his merry way, and far away from their campsite. Even though Death had made it abundantly apparent that his only target was Puss in Boots, there was still a part of Puss that feared for the safety of Kitty and Perrito. They were not so far off, and what stood in front of him was a dangerous creature. The last thing he wanted for the attention of Death to shift toward his friends.
“Ah, if only it were so simple,” he preened, the words displaying the rows of sharp, glittering teeth he toted in his long silver snout. “But I think you and I know that not to be the case.”
Puss quirked an eyebrow; a safe response that prompted his adversary to continue without him having to use his voice and run the risk of it trembling in fear. Or cracking. There was nothing more pathetic than a voice crack, and if there was one thing that Puss in Boots was not, was that he was not pathetic!
“I relinquished my pursuit of your last life because I believed that you had proven yourself worthy of living it. However, the moment that you demonstrate that you have squandered my benevolence and reverted to your previous ways, I will not hesitate to revoke this precious privilege.”
Puss gave Death a cautious once-over. “So, what, you’re going to follow me forever? Until you have decided that I no longer deserve to live?”
The corners of Death’s mouth curled upwards in a cheap imitation of a smile. “One could put it like that, yes.”
“Do you really have nothing better to do with your time?” Puss asked incredulously, and regretted the words the moment they were spoken with how downright insulting they sounded. He had meant it though; surely Death, the most powerful and skilled creature he had ever encountered (other than himself, of course) would not waste the rest of his days following Puss in Boots around. He was important, yes, but even he was able to recognize that he was not that important.
Luckily for him, Death overlooked his insult, simply tipping his head back as he laughed. It was a hollow, empty thing, and it made a prickle of unease tingle at the nape of his neck. “Few things fascinate me the way that you do, Puss in Boots,” he chuckled. His eyes remained intently pinned to Puss; unsettling, unblinking, unyielding. “I did say, once upon a time, that I was your biggest fan, and I really did mean it. I am simply curious to see where your story goes next.”
It took everything within Puss to not visibly gulp, and if he wasn’t so terrified, he might have ventured as far to say that Death was a little creepy.
However, deciding that this opinion would not be the wisest to voice, he opted for a different direction instead. “Ah yes, well, if you were to choose anyone to follow, I should hope that it would be me! I am quite the exciting, daring, and may I say dashing hero, surely my adventures will keep you properly entertained.”
Unluckily for him, Death saw straight through his flimsy bravado. “Careful, Puss,” he chastised. That unnerving, wide smile was still plastered to his face. “Your arrogance is showing.”
Puss was many things. Brave, pompous, devilishly suave… but if he was one thing, he was not stupid. And because of this, he didn’t miss the warning, the implicit threat as Death shifted his body, his cloak peeling away to reveal his two lethal sickles clipped to his belt.
Feeling a thrill of unwanted terror shoot down his spine, but determined to not let his fear show in his face or demeanor, he let out an easy laugh. “Come, now. Is it arrogant if it is true?”
There was a beat of silence, and for a brief, tortuous moment, Puss worried that he had said the wrong thing. But then, looking down at Puss with a pensive frown, Death said, “No, I suppose not.”
“I’m glad that is something we can agree on,” he replied with his characteristic smoothness, and before he could overthink whether he had somehow managed to offend the wolf once again, their conversation was interrupted.
“Puss?”
The cat in question froze as he heard his name called out from a distance, Kitty’s concern a favorable distraction from the monstrosity in front of him.
“Is everything okay out there?” There was a pause. “If you don’t come back in two minutes, I’m sending Perrito out to find you!”
Well, that was a threat if he had ever heard one.
Death, whose attention had been momentarily trained on Kitty’s disembodied voice, redirected his focus onto Puss, smirking down at him with a theatrical sigh. “I’ve kept you long enough. Quite greedy of me, I will say.”
It was difficult to keep the relief from showing on his face at his chance at escape, a promised end to their agonizing conversation. Posturing a loose paw on his hip to portray an aura of nonchalance, Puss ran the tips of his claws along the brim of his hat. “Ah, do not worry, there is plenty of me to go around.”
Death inclined his head, a strange flash of something crossing his face, before waving Puss off in dismissal. “If you insist, Puss in Boots. To our next meeting,” he said, lifting a massive paw in a mocking gesture of toasting a drink. “I am ever so looking forward to it.”
Puss opened his mouth to respond, wanting to say something along the lines of ‘I’m personally not looking forward to our next meeting, and it really isn’t all that necessary that you follow me around, and I truthfully would not mind if I never saw you again,’ except in a much more poetic way and not nearly as blunt, when he heard the sound of Kitty’s voice calling out behind him in the distance once again.
“Puss?”
Puss glanced over his shoulder towards the sound of her call, and upon turning back to face Death, found that he was gone, the only thing remaining an eerie layer of mist that clung to the ground.
Swallowing, Puss had only a split second of hesitant indecision before he doubled back, tracing his tracks to make it back to camp.
The way back was quicker, or at least it felt that way, probably because he wasn’t slowly following the trail of an unsettling whistle like he was in a trance. If he didn’t know any better, he would say that Death was secretly the Pied Piper in disguise. Which was definitely not possible, because Puss had met the Pied Piper before, and there was no way that a scrawny guy with a hideous coifed haircut and an ugly hat could be the same person as the ominous, looming figure that was Death.
Before long, he returned to the fire, his path guided by the soft glow it cast through the trees. As he stepped into the small clearing, raising his paw in silent greeting, Kitty and Perrito leapt to their feet.
“There you are!” Kitty exclaimed, the relief evident on her face. “What took you so long?”
“It was a big one, huh?”
Puss looked down at Perrito, and then back at Kitty. His mouth opened, and to his dismay, no words came out. Because what was he even supposed to say? When his hammering heart was only now beginning to calm, and he was shocked that he had walked away from the encounter unscathed? How could he possibly tell them that he had willingly approached Death with not even a blade strapped to his belt?
The answer was that he couldn’t.
Because truth be told, he wasn't even sure why he did it.
“Look Kitty,” Perrito said, tugging at her paw and pointing emphatically at Puss. “It was so intense, he’s speechless!”
Perrito’s accusation that his supposed bathroom break was so ‘intense’ that it had rendered him mute was more than enough to kickstart Puss’ mind into action. “Er, yes!” he said, pointing emphatically towards his friend. “In fact, it was so intense, words cannot even begin to describe it! So let’s, uh, talk about something else? Please?”
Perrito didn’t need to be told twice. He loved talking about anything and everything. “Okay!” he agreed enthusiastically, and then launched into a long-winded monologue about how pine needles made for far comfier bedding than, well, a bed.
Kitty, however, was not assuaged nearly so easily. “Puss, your fur,” she said, reaching out a tentative paw to pat it down. This was a futile effort, of course, as the hair stood straight back up after her pointless ministrations. “Are you okay?” Her voice was spoken in a soft undertone, careful eyes searching his.
“Ah, yes, of course!” he said in a boastful, hearty voice. His hero voice; the one he defaulted to when his guard was up and he kept his true emotions shielded deep away. “Puss in Boots is always okay!”
Kitty saw through the farce as if it were glass. She put her hands on his shoulders, forcing his body to turn towards her as he tried to saunter away. “Did something happen out there?”
“Do you need therapy?” Perrito chirped, interrupting his tirade about bedding choices to join in their conversation. He had a big grin on his face and his tail wagged in excitement, always eager to help.
Puss looked between them and the concern written in their words, in their faces. “It is just, eh, a chilly night! That wind, wow!” He laughed, his shoulders bouncing jovially as he tried to will his fur to go back down. “Perrito, it is very depressing that this is something that you actually enjoy.”
“Heh, the wind is great and all, but I much prefer cuddling up by the fire with my best friends. That’s way better.”
Puss in Boots did not need to be given a more blatant hint. Reaching up so that he removed Kitty’s unbelievably soft paws from his shoulders and held them in his own, he guided them over so that they sat on either side of Perrito, their backs to a log. “Like this?” Puss teased, laughing at Perrito’s happy panting and thrashing tail in response.
“Yes! Yes! Exactly like this, yes!”
A few hours later, after the conversation and banter had died down and the fire was reduced to nothing more than a smoldering pile of embers, everyone retreated to their respective resting spot. Kitty in a sleeping bag she carried in her pack, Perrito on a pile of pine needles, and Puss wrapped up in his cape.
However, while the gentle snores of Perrito and Kitty’s soft puffs of breath indicated that they were asleep, Puss found that such an achievement eluded him that night. Lying on his side, he gazed out into the forest.
And there, staring back at him, deep in the trees, was a pair of wide, red eyes, unblinking and systematically peeling back each layer of his soul. Feeling a sense of rising panic, Puss felt paralyzed to the spot, but when finally regained control over his body to do something as menial as blink, they were gone.
His breath hitched in his throat as he heard as he the ghost of a melody so faint, it may as well not even existed at all, fading off until the only thing that remained was his roaring pulse in his ears.
To our next meeting. I am ever so looking forward to it.
Puss in Boots shuddered, a reaction completely independent from the breeze that drifted over him.
Perhaps because some tiny, very miniscule, microscopic, barely-there part of him felt the same way.