Demeter smiled weakly. "I’m so sorry, my love," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think." She closed her eyes, but not before a tear glimmered in their amber depths.

"I just… wanted us to be together, forever, and now I’m dying and you hate me and I can’t even tell you how much I love you…"

Alonzo struggled to keep his voice steady as he said coolly, "How much longer will this… letter be? I only have so much paper." Demeter nodded, then winced as even the slight movement caused her pain.

"I understand. I’ll just finish it, then." Alonzo nodded in silence, and pulled his eyes away from the beautiful queen dying on the bed next to him. He stared instead at the paper before him, but as Demeter began speaking again, the words wavered, and his head span.

*I can’t go on like this,* he thought wildly. *I can’t let her die and not tell her how much I adore her! She’s dying! She’s going to be gone! Oh, by all that’s good… I love her. And she’s wasting her life on that bastard… my Leader… who can’t stand to look at her any more because he thinks she betrayed him.*

"…again, I am sorry. I can’t… I can’t stress how sorry I am for… for being unfaithful to you…for murdering your father." It took Alonzo a moment to realise she’d been speaking all the while his thoughts leapt to bizarre ideas. "I’m sorry," he apologised quickly. "Can you repeat that last bit?"

Demeter sighed. Alonzo realised how much it was taking out of her to say the words; Tantomile and Coricopat had looked grim indeed when they told Alonzo how long she had, and even that little time was lengthened as much as possible by their combined magicks. "I know it hurts," Alonzo said gently, taking the calico queen’s limp paw. "But… just try to finish."

Demeter swallowed and spoke in a voice so thin and empty that Alonzo had a hard time paying attention to what she was actually saying. "I’m dying, should be dead already if it weren’t for Tantomile and Coricopat, but I couldn’t go to the Heaviside Layer without telling you of my undying love for you…

"I have always loved you. I love you now. And I will always love you, even in the Heaviside Layer. Good-bye."

Demeter’s amber eyes opened for a moment, and she suddenly tightened her grip on Alonzo’s paw. "I guess that will have to be all," she whispered, and the black-and-white tom was cut to the core to hear how wasted and breathless she seemed. "Thank you, Alonzo, for writing this letter for me…"

Alonzo couldn’t speak. He held Demeter’s paw as her eyes slowly closed, and as her breathing stilled and her grasp on his paw loosened, he discovered tears in his eyes. But still he couldn’t speak… couldn’t tell her all the things he longed to say, how much he loved her, how he had prayed every night she was ill that she would live… how he had forever denounced the Everlasting Cat when he had learned there was no hope for her.

How he was about to go commit suicide, or possibly homicide, depending on how soon Munkustrap returned upon hearing news of Demeter’s death.

Alonzo swallowed back his bitter tears, and, releasing Demeter’s paw, gently stroked the young queen’s headfur. She seemed to have been weeping; her face was damp with tears. Then Alonzo realised that those were his tears falling on her face.

***

"This is for you. It’s from Demeter."

Munkustrap stared at the letter in Alonzo’s paw. The black and white tom was gripping the paper so tightly, it seemed as though it might rip. "Thank you," he said slowly, reaching for the letter. Alonzo released it, thrust it into Munkustrap’s paw.

"Take it, read it, and leave this place," Alonzo said between gritted teeth. "You have no right to tread the same ground she stood on. To look upon the sights she saw moments before a death that you caused. You have no right to live in the place where she died."

Munkustrap was silent. Alonzo could see his jaw working. Then the silver tabby tore the letter in half, in quarters, in eighths, in sixteenths, and tossed the pieces over his shoulder. The scraps of paper fluttered on the breeze before being carried away. Alonzo’s yellow eyes grew wide.

"I will not read a letter from a cat who betrayed me and the tribe," Munkustrap said coldly. "The treacherous whore deserved nothing but death. She got what she deserves. Any last words are unimportant to me."

The grey striped tom reached out and grabbed Alonzo by the throat. Alonzo made no move to stop him. "And what right have you," Munkustrap spat at him, "to tell the Leader of the Jellicles that he cannot step into his own Junkyard!"

The Leader released Alonzo, who fell to the ground, unmoving, simply gazing emotionlessly after the torn letter. Munkustrap stared at the paralysed tom with cold hazel eyes… eyes that Alonzo distantly remembered Demeter praising dreamily, calling them beautiful, warm, loving eyes. They were frozen with hatred now. "You’re as much a traitor as she was," Munkustrap continued, glaring at the tom at his feet.

Alonzo slowly stood up. "You’re a bastard," he said calmly. "An absolute bastard. And a traitor to a loving, and truthful queen. She adored you." Alonzo struggled not to let his emotions show as he spoke, but anger imbued his voice with rage. "She loved you more than any queen has ever loved a tom…and you allowed the words of a foolish, air-headed kitten to blind you to that."

Alonzo had lost the battle; his voice was furious, and his paws clenched into fists as he screamed in Munkustrap’s face. "She died for you! Died because she couldn’t stand to live without your love! That’s what that letter said! It said how sorry she was! She didn’t even try to explain the truth! She just wanted you to love her before she died!"

Munkustrap was frozen in place. Alonzo suddenly relaxed, the fury gone from his voice. In it’s place was a trembling, empty sadness. "But she died and you hate her anyway. It’s not… not right that she should have died for you…"

The yellow-eyed cat shook his head and walked away, eyes downcast and shining with tears. Munkustrap stood where he had been left, staring, but unseeing, at the other tom’s back. "Etcetera was not mistaken," he whispered, but his voice shook with uncertainty. "She knew of what she spoke… Demeter was a murdering, lying whore. She deserved nothing but death…"

"…and she got nothing but death," Alonzo whispered, eyes reaching to the stars… stars that could never gleam like the eyes of his beloved as she told him, happily, that she had found a true love in Munkustrap… as she was told, dumfounded, that Etcetera had accused her of infidelity, of serving Macavity, and of murdering Old Deuteronomy… as she discovered that her adored mate believed these lies about her… and as she died, in Alonzo’s arms and heart, but still loving a tom who had betrayed her.