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
UNFINISHED, PLEASE DO NOT READ
"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 the secret hope he'd hidden in his heart had names. He'd planned them, dreamed them up in those twilight hours with Roseleaf between waking and sleeping, when the corners of the boundaries he'd built for himself all his life blurred into glorious possibility. Stormkit. Fernkit, after his mother. And Violetkit.
They would never exist, those kits. 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.
He and Riverfur ducked out of the camp and began to walk. Almost without realizing it, Blackbird veered off the beaten path, onto one he had not set paw on in a long, long time.
Riverfur let out a noise of surprise, running to catch up. "Blackbird?" he said hesitantly.
Ghosts. Ghosts of hopes, ghosts of the past. Blackbird figured if they were going to haunt him, he might as well attend the party willingly.
He and Riverfur were at the border now, but he ignored the scent markers and pushed onwards.
On into the thickest part of the forest. On into the heart of his own personal Ghostlands.
"It's grown," said Riverfur, and pointed to a sprawling holly bush directly in front of them.
Nodding wordlessly, Blackbird walked forward so that he was standing under its boughs. He scuffed his paws in the dirt underneath. Mostly it was covered in the tracks of small woodland creatures, but there were three indistinct piles of grass in a corner, old and faded and half scattered by the wind. Old nests.
"Do you still think about them?" asked Riverfur.
"Everyday." Every hour. All the freaking time.
"Me too. I wonder where they went, whether they're still okay, whether they've changed . . . why they left in the first place."
"Mothfly," Blackbird reminded him.
"Mothfly barely had my loyalty as a deputy. Violet and her sisters had my whole heart. Don't act like you're okay with what the Clan thinks happened. Violet is not some insane rogue who felt like randomly killing a Clan deputy. Something happened."
"I guess we'll never know," said Blackbird, "because she didn't tell us. Didn't even tell us she was leaving."
"She probably felt like she couldn't."
"Yeah. She couldn't do that, didn't have it in her. But we could lose her, we could bear that."
"Good practice. We lose a lot."
"We're losers."
"Speak for yourself."
There was a pause that stretched into several minutes of silence. Then Riverfur said, "Why did we come here?"
Blackbird had closed his eyes; at the question, he reopened them. "I don't know. It's kind of the center of all sadness somehow, isn't it?"
"It used to be the center of all happiness, remember?" said Riverfur with a nostalgic smile, remembering. "We'd play moss-ball, we'd go fishing, we'd teach Vi hunting, we'd chase Aurora and Willow--"
"I remember," said Blackbird curtly.
"Too idyllic. We should've known it wouldn't last, in retrospect. I mean, what kind of life is that -- the sons of Thunderstar of NightClan, running around playing at fairytales with a few loner orphans. It was an illusion, so we could pretend we were normal and we mattered because of who we were."
It was a surprisingly harsh statement coming from Riverfur, and Blackbird had no practice in making optimistic comments -- that wasn't his job. He shrugged. "We matter because of who we are."
"The wrong parts of who we are. Just because we're Thunderstar's sons. Of course, you have to bear the brunt of that a lot more than I do."
Momentarily forgetting the other thousand things to be sad about, Blackbird glanced at his brother and saw only him. "You know if we could trade places . . ."
"I wouldn't," said Riverfur stoically. "Even if it weren't for my -- my condition. I just can't ever imagine myself being leader of NightClan. It makes my stomach turn."
"Yeah. Sometimes it makes mine, too."
"I can see it now. You get on High-Rock to address the Clan and end up vomiting all over them," said Riverfur.
"Gross!" It was what Blackbird had been thinking, but he hadn't said it aloud. With a frown, he glanced over his shoulder, back at the thick line of bushes they had come through where NightClan territory ended.
Riverfur gave an exasperated smile and called loudly, "We know you're there. Come on out."
There was a beat of silence, and then the bushes swayed wildly as two young toms clambered out. "We didn't know you were leaving the territory, honest!" said Treepaw, as Stonepaw nodded along with an expression of contrite apology on his face. "We just wanted to come see if we could help."
"We know how sad you've been, Blackbird," said Stonepaw.
Been sad. As if his sadness were a chronic illness that extended to far before Roseleaf had died.
Well, that wasn't entirely inaccurate. Roseleaf had been sick for a while. And -- he tried to stop the thought from coming, tried to push back the glaring truth that he still wasn't over it -- Violet and her sisters had been gone for an even longer while.