Don't waste your time on me, you're already the voice inside my head
(I miss you, miss you)
— Blink 182, I Miss You
blackbird
"I'M SORRY."
"Well." Blackbird looked at Riverfur for a long moment. "Who isn't? It's sad. The whole freaking thing."
"You don't have to act like that around me. Maybe everyone else. But not me. I know you cared for her, even if you never loved her."
"How do you know whether I loved her or not?" Blackbird snapped.
Riverfur sighed, and Blackbird instantly felt sorry for the pained look on his brother's face. "I don't matter. Did she know you loved her?"
"I don't think I knew if I did," Blackbird whispered. "Isn't that sick?"
"How was the vigil? Last night was cold."
"I didn't feel anything." On the outside. On the inside . . . He didn't want to even try and figure that out.
Riverfur, who normally was on a completely different wavelength than Blackbird at all times, understood immediately. "We could talk about something else? How about a walk?"
"Why not. Everything here" Blackbird gestured to the entirety of the NightClan camp "reminds me of her."
It was true. Everywhere he looked, he saw Roseleaf -- visiting the kits in the nursery, wearing that gentle smile of hers that said when we have our own . . ., playing with the apprentices easily because she was young at heart herself, trotting to and from the fresh-kill pile, laying in her nest and waiting up for him all night when he was meeting with his father and other senior warriors.
She had been an incredible mate. And he had loved her. Whether she'd known it or not. Whether he'd known it or not -- the sad truth was that he had not. He had wanted a life with her -- only now that they had been ripped away did he realize that the ghosts of hope he'd hidden in his heart had names. Stormkit. Fernkit, after his mother. And Violetkit.
They would never exist. What a cruel, cruel lesson to learn: the value of what he had. He had taken Roseleaf, and the solid, comforting life she represented, for granted. Now he was untethered, a leaf blowing loosely on a volatile wind.