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Episode 8, Season 5 of War.
Enjoy!
Misery[]
"Right, everyone, back to Main!"
Gorsefur squeezes his eyes shut and I resist the urge to purr. Because that strategy has worked so well in the past. I poke him with one of my claws, "Up!"
"How can you be so freaking chipper?" he grumbles, still not opening his eyes.
"Sleep is boring," I tell him. "And the morning's so nice and pretty and we have stuff to do."
He stretches, then yawns. "What stuff?"
"I dunno. Don't we have things to do?"
Golden eyes blink blearily at me, and my whiskers twitch. Finally, Gorsefur yawns again and meows, "I dunno, I guess we're going back to Main."
That's the best news I've heard in a while. Even though we've only been gone from Main a couple of weeks, it feels like far too long. I haven't seen Riverkit in a while and I just miss all the hustle and bustle, and my shiny new den. Even Gorsefur's occasionally scary parents seem appealing now. And all of this is in addition to a few days of rest, during which I can maybe find some time for romance, and no one will be trying to kill or fight us.
Caught up in my thoughts, I've failed to realize Gorsefur has curled back up and is now snoring softly. I stamp my paw, "Gorsefur!"
I hear a thud and look up. "Sorry," Grayleaf mutters. He looks tired too, and apparently bumped into the prey pile. He picks up a squirrel from where it's landed and sheepishly sets it back on the pile. I sigh and turn back to Gorsefur, in time to see him swiftly shutting his eyes. "I saw that! Hah! I knew you were awake!"
Muttering, he clambers to his paws and shakes moss free of his fur, giving him that rumpled look I love so much. Albeit, not when he's giving me the evil eye.
"Relax, would you?" I sigh. He tries to keep looking angry, but fails, and ends up pressing against me.
"You have to go wake up Oakclaw," he whispers. I laugh and shove him away. There's a sudden rustle and I fear I've pushed him into the bushes (although that'd be funny). But Gorsefur just stands, alert, all the playfulness drained from his eyes. It used to be we could take on a FireClan patrol and have fun. But that was before.
A skinny black and white tom stumbles into camp. "Jeez," he pants. "Couldn't you have made your camp a little easier to find? So impolite."
Gorsefur and I stare at him in bemusement and Grayleaf slowly creeps towards us. "Who are you?" Gorsefur finally asks.
The tom shakes out his short fur proudly. "I'm Whitedash," he says, acting like we should know him. After a few moments, he deflates a little, "I have a message."
Gorsefur pads forward, but I can tell he's tense. Grayleaf and I start in on the squirrel and by the time we're finished, Stormflight, Snowflight, and Shadowsong are awake and asking why we didn't save any for them. Adderscar joins us shortly, leaving only Oakclaw still asleep. And Gorsefur is still gone.
Just as I'm about to go after him and see what's going on, Gorsefur comes back.
"Get rid of Proudstar?" I tease. He looks up at me, and only then do I fully take in his wide eyes, the slightly bristling fur. "What's wrong? FireClan? Lionwing?"
Slowly, Gorsefur shakes his head, "Shadowsong, Oakclaw. I need to talk with them."
I expect Shadowsong to make some witty remark, but she, unlike Oakclaw, usually can tell when it would hurt more than help. "I'll get him."
Gorsefur nods, and she rushes off. I want so badly to ask what's wrong, but he's just staring at his paws and I can't bear myself to make him talk about something that hurts him so obviously. I start to understand why mates are usually put on different squads- you just can't bear to see them get hurt, no matter what the cost.
Shadowsong returns with a cursing Oakclaw and Gorsefur silently leads them into the woods. I stand, take a few steps after them. I'm the second. I'm their friend. But for some reason I know I will never have the connection they do. They began together. They'll probably end together. I will be loved and accepted by them, but I can never stand on the same level. And a terrible jealous feeling sweeps over me.
"Go."
I turn, to see Adderscar nodding at me. His eyes are muted, his tone an echo of it's usual snarkiness, but betraying true affection. "You deserve to be there. They'd want you to be there."
I nod and, not letting myself think or say anything else, chase after the trio.
They're sitting in a clearing, a few away from ours. A triangle. Again, that envy rises in me and instead of padding into the clearing, I crouch in the bushes, listening. It's stupid and petty, which I, of course, realize. But logic doesn't matter sometimes.
"-spit it out," Shadowsong looks half sympathetic and half annoyed. "Come on."
"Can't believe you woke me up for this," Oakclaw grumbles.
"It's Hawkclaw."
I feel a brief flash of panic. Hawkclaw. Do I know a Hawkclaw? Is he dead? Dying? Hurt? But wait...I don't know a Hawkclaw. Right? Right.
Shadowsong and Oakclaw also share identical looks of confusion. Then Shadowsong's eyes widen slightly. "No..."
"Hawkclaw?" Oakclaw asks, looking a little guilty.
"Don't you remember? Icefall?" Oakclaw still looks a little confused and Shadowsong rolls her eyes. "Does anything stay in your head or is it just one ear out the other? Hawkclaw saved us. Saved the camp."
Oakclaw nodded slowly, "That one tom who always brought you fish, even though you hated it." He looked at Gorsefur, suddenly apprehensive, "What's wrong with him?"
"They're going to kill him," Gorsefur murmurs. Shadowsong and Oakclaw don't say anything and I desperately wished I knew what they were talking about, why it was hurting them so badly.
Whatever the case, it obviously wasn't something meant for outsider eyes. So I left.
"You'd think they would brag around you more. They first time I got stuck with Oakclaw he wouldn't talk about anything else. Icefall, Icefall, Icefall."
I give Adderscar a critical look. "Oakclaw expressed deeply sentimental feelings about someone who saved his life...to you?"
Adderscar rolled his eyes. "Of course not. That was Gorsefur. He decided I was 'antisocial' and decided the best way to get me out of my 'shell' was to share a deep, emotional experience with me. It was ridiculous."
I feel defensive, "Gorsefur's- hey wait, okay, so who is this Hawkclaw?"
Adderscar sits back a little, thinking. "He was a FireClan cat...pretty important too. By association, I mean. I think his brother or father or something was deputy. But anyways, Shadowsong and Oakclaw started up their dumb antics and got themselves caught. The general stationed there wanted to kill them on the spot to send a message." Adderscar blinks, like he's realized something. "I think he was Thundercloud's father actually. If I remember the story right."
"That explains everything," I groan.
"Anyways," Adderscar drawls, sounding impatient. "They were stupid, yadda yadda. And Hawkclaw was the one who convinced the general not to kill them. He was really nice or something. And then, when the time finally came, he stopped their execution."
"Like...just stopped it?"
Adderscar nods. "Tackled the general. Or, so Gorsefur says. He probably exaggerated a bunch."
"That's why Hawkclaw means so much," I say softly, almost to myself. "He saved Oakclaw and Shadowsong's lives...and they probably wouldn't even be together if it wasn't for him!"
Adderscar looks at me blankly. "Yeah. Whatever."
I glare at him and prepare to turn tail, as Gorsefur yowls for us to get ready to head home.
Tom and she-cat flirt. They fall in love. She-cat gets caught. They get back together. Psychopath drives tom and she-cat apart. They get back together. She-cat almost dies. She-cat joins her evil half-sisters. Tom breaks she-cat's heart. She-cat almost kills tom. She-cat returns to tom, but is mad at him.
Are all relationships this complicated? thought Oakclaw.
He sat next to Shadowsong, pelt prickling with electricity. It felt so good to be close to her, but so wrong to be this far apart. She wouldn't look a him.
He wish he knew what had gone on at Amberdrop's party. She had seemed different when she came back. But then the toms had to go ruining it with their story about how a bunch of girly medicine cats drugged them.
"You two?"
Shadowsong jerked her head up and stood, facing the soldier. "We're here to visit Hawkclaw."
The soldier nodded and led them past a few prison dens. Oakclaw didn't look at them, not wanting to remember Thundercloud or prisons or Shadowsong's blood, her glassy eyes reflecting the sky...
"Here you go," the soldier nodded them into a large den. "Wait here, I'll go get him."
Shadowsong and Oakclaw nodded and the soldier left. Oakclaw made small scratches in the dirt with his claws, trying to concentrate on anything beside the she-cat beside him and the tom on his way.
The guard came back after what felt like only a few seconds, as well as an eternity. He looked a little confused. "Look, I'm sorry, but you can't see Hawkclaw today."
"Why not?" Oakclaw narrowed his eyes. He was surprised that Shadowsong didn't stand, didn't shout in the guard's face.
"His execution is scheduled for this afternoon," the guard apologized. "He hasn't had any visitor in seven sunrises advance to make sure he doesn't..." the guard didn't seem to know how to put it lightly. "...try anything."
"When's the execution?" Oakclaw asked.
"Moonhigh." The warrior muttered a few more apologies and escorted them outside the prison.
"What do we do?" Oakclaw asked, feeling a bubble of panic rising in him.
"We go back to the den, tell the others," Shadowsong said softly. "What else can we do?"
Oakclaw forgot his trying to be nice to her and spun around angrily. "You want to let the tom who saved our lives be killed?!"
"No!" she said loudly. "Of course not. But I'm not exactly the most inconspicuous at the moment and if we wanted to try anything, it should have been days ago. This isn't some backwater country camp, this is WaterClan Main Camp and we can't do anything."
"We should at least...go," Oakclaw said, still trying to get used to the idea that fiery, rebellious Shadowsong would not want to save anyone, let alone a friend.
She let out a short laugh. "Go? To see? To show him that we can't do anything?"
"To show...solidarity! I don't know! It's the right thing to do!"
She looked at him for a long sad moment, then turned tail and strode away.
"It's not fair!" Oakclaw rants. "It's like she doesn't care at all!"
"To be fair, she did just get back from FireClan," Stormflight mutters. "I don't think they're big on emotion there."
"To be fair, most of us have no idea what this is even about," Adderscar sighs, stretching.
Gorsefur shoots them a look. "She's under stress Oakclaw. It happens."
"This isn't stress!" he yowls, in frustration. "This is apathy and-and-"
"Oakclaw," I say gently. "You're crying a little."
"I'm not!" he shouts, then stalks outside, coming back in a moment because he forgot the mouse he was eating for dinner.
We all sit in silence for a moment. Gorsefur makes eye contact with me and I shrug. "I'll go check on him," he says finally. Standing, he looks at me, "Come with?"
For some reason, this makes me unbelievably happy. I nod and we slip outside to find Oakclaw mumbling to his food. "Oakclaw?" I say softly.
He looks up, "What?" I notice the wet streaks down his cheek and feel a stab of worry. I've seen Oakclaw angry and sad and everything in between, but I don't think I've ever seen him cry, except for when Shadowsong was gone.
"It's almost moon-high," Gorsefur points out. Oakclaw looks up, like the moon will suddenly be gone and the sun will light up again.
"Do you want us to go with you?" I ask.
He shakes his head and stands up. "I'll be okay." He attempts to give a cocky half-smirk. "Don't wait up."
We don't say anything as he goes, but after a moment I realize Gorsefur's leaning against me a little. I turn and see a few tears streaking down his cheek. "I hate this," he whispers.
I don't know if he's talking about Oakclaw's pain or Shadowsong's apathy or Hawkclaw, so I just nod. "I know you do."
We stand together in the darkness, and wait.
Oakclaw wasn't sure how strict cats were about getting to executions on time. Would they wait for cats, or was it better for them to just get it over with?
He skidded into the prison area and quickly explained to a few guards. They directed him to a clearing a little ways away from Main. He tore down the path.
Even though his parents hadn't been strong believers, Oakclaw had a pretty firm, although lax, belief in StarClan. He prayed to them fervently as he ran, not really knowing for what.
Slowing as he approached the clearing, he heard a soft voice drifting through the trees.
"-and one time she put a squirrel tail over her eyes, but it got stuck on this piece of cobweb and she freaked out. It was the funniest thing. Rosepaw was so crazy sometimes..."
Oakclaw padded into the clearing and looked around.
There was the assorted number of officials and warriors who simply had to be here for one reason or another. There was an empty area, which was where he supposed family and friends would have sat.
In the center of the clearing, two warriors stood guard over a crouched tom. Oakclaw recognized him after a moment, seeing past the dirty fur and protruding bones and finding an old friend. A friend he couldn't save.
A medicine cat sat beside him. A large leaf held a few berries, and though Oakclaw was the opposite of a medicine cat, he thought he recognized them as deathberries. Something poisonous anyways.
Crouched across from the condemned tom was Shadowsong. Oakclaw was more than a little surprised to see her, but he couldn't go to her, couldn't go to Hawkclaw. His paws were rooted as he listened to her soft voice, whispering him away.
"My mother always wanted to be a medicine cat. It was hilarious, because my father was this crazy warrior. We never had enough influence or fame to get her into the Academy though, so she would just settle for refusing to hunt and self-diagnosing herself when she got white-cough in the winter..."
"It's time," the medicine cat said softly, looking at the moon. Oakclaw was close enough to see Hawkclaw shiver.
Shadowsong never lost that mesmerizing tone to her voice. That steely calm that refused to let you think about anything else but her stories of kithood and sunlight and games.
"One time I got stuck up a tree. I was four moons old and I climbed up so far...I wasn't scared at all. But when it came to getting back down, I was terrified. I didn't want to leave the clouds and the birds and come back down to earth. My father teased me for days about that."
Hawkclaw managed a faint purr and the medicine cat nudged the berries closer.
"My father taught me how to fish. The first time he took me, he gave a big speech about how a hunter's first lesson showed everything about how they would progress. Then he took me to this place in the river where the rocks were slippery with moss and just watched me fall down over and over again for an hour. Finally he was laughing so hard I got it."
Hawkclaw leaned forward, and almost delicately, ate one, then two, then three berries. He grimaced at the taste, and his eyes were wide with fear.
Oakclaw wasn't sure how long poisons took to work. Maybe a minute, especially since Hawkclaw was a decent sized tom.
Shadowsong gave a small smile. "You were so nice to me...I don't think I ever said thank you."
"Thank you," Hawkclaw replied. Oakclaw started at his voice. He remembered it and, even though he felt like he had been grieving all day, the force of this all hit him in the face then. The unfairness, the hate, the misery.
Hawkclaw yawned and the medicine cat leaned over to whisper something to the guards, who stepped away. Apparently this was normal.
"I'm getting tired," Hawkclaw said. He sounded scared, like a kitten, and Oakclaw wondered for a moment what that had been like. Growing up with Thundercloud as a littermate. He shuddered.
Shadowsong blinked and stood, then lay down again next to Hawkclaw, pressing against him. "Want to hear another story?"
Hawkclaw nodded, weakly.
"Okay...so once, this tom dared me I couldn't eat as much yarrow as him without getting sick. We snuck into the medicine den and stole some and then we just ate and ate...he got sick first, but both of us threw up so much I don't think it mattered."
That was a total lie. She had choked first, he was sure of it.
Hawkclaw laughed.
"And one time we decided to test the ice on the river without waiting for a backup patrol. We made it a few fox-lengths away from shore. I fell through, but he dived in after me."
Hawkclaw was quiet now, his eyes half closed. Oakclaw found himself walking forward.
"And then this other time, I almost told him I loved him."
"But you didn't," Hawkclaw said softly, like he knew the story.
"I didn't," Shadowsong confirmed. A silvery tear fell from her eyes and caught a shard of moonlight before splattering on the ground. "But I could've. Thanks to you."
"You should tell him," Hawkclaw said softly. His eyes were closed now, breathing labored.
"I think I will." Shadowsong watched him until the last breath exited his lungs, and another didn't sweep in to take its place. She touched her nose to his once, then walked into the forest, without seeing Oakclaw.
He padded over to Hawkclaw and whispered some regards, touched him on the nose, before chasing after her.
"Thought you weren't coming," he blurted. Shadowsong was only a few foxlengths away and she stopped, turning her head to the side.
"I didn't think I was either," she said softly.
"So why did you?"
"Because sometimes you have to be a little selfish," her eyes drifted along the ground, then finally met his and she hurried to explain. "Look, I didn't want to come because I was trying to be selfish. I didn't want to hurt myself by seeing someone I loved get killed. But then I realize it would hurt more not to go. And that doesn't make any sense."
"Not really," Oakclaw admitted, whiskers twitching slightly.
"You have to pick your battles," Shadowsong said. Her eyes met his and he realized she'd stopped crying. But she wasn't hiding the tears still on her cheeks or caught in her whiskers.
"And you picked this one?" He really didn't know what else to say. All he could think about was that they were so close to each other and her tears hung there, like the first rain of spring, a change. Hope. Difference.
She was silent for a long time. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, seeming to steel herself.
"No," she said softly, drawing even closer. "I choose this one."
Her nose touched his and her tail twined with his as she pressed against him. He let the world fade to nothing and simply lived the moment.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Oakclaw stumbled away.
"You've never apologized. Ever."
She grinned. "I'm trying to be...better. Just let me have this moment, will you?"
"Better? Does this mean you're going to stop putting maggots in my nest and calling me names?"
Whiskers twitching, Shadowsong cuffed him on the side of the head. "No. But I will put maggots in your nest and call you names, and then maybe I'll work some on expressing my feelings and not be such a wreck."
He stared at her for a moment. "That was so girly."
She swiped at him and he danced out of the way. "Let's get back to the den, Dirtface," she said, leading the way down the path.
"Wait..." he stopped, looking at her suddenly. "What do we tell them?"
Not that he suspected his squadmates would tease him or anything, but....well, he didn't suspect it. He knew they were.
Shadowsong took a deep breath and looked at him with a new light in her eyes. Sadness and joy and everything in between. "We tell them everything."
He looked at her for a moment. "Everything?"
She grinned, not the same as she'd always been, but also not as...broken. Hurting. Confused. "Well...almost everything."
"I like the sound of that."
"You're an idiot," she darted off down the path, looking back, daring him to keep up with her.
He sprinted to catch up.