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If he’d ever known who he was, those times had slipped away like his life was, right now, his warm thick red life that was gushing out. Life, or light? The last one he didn’t need, that was only for humans…for killers…light, like a golden pelt...
He doesn’t remember them. He remembers impressions of warmth, the scents of other squirming bodies. But he never knew his siblings. He can’t mourn those he never knew, but the coldness from their absence is what lingers in his mind like a bad dream. It marked the start of the forced solitude that would cling to him throughout his short, violent life.
Golden softness is the first thing his eyes ever saw, the first thing his sensitive pup’s nose brushed and cherished the scent of. His next clear memories are much less pleasant; the agony of beatings and watching both his parents die.
Snare…he never missed Snare. Razor had been a better father than his birth one ever was, who he barely even remembered as a gnawer. No, Snare was claws, a lashing tail, several hard smacks. He was not a personality - he was a cause of fear, he was the fur that rose on the Bane’s spine even when there was no one else around. Goldshard…did Snare kill her, or was it the warrior? His memories were hazy like the smoke of the humans’ torches…damn the warrior…He’d killed him, they’d die together in this lonely place. His reign had been short, too short, but it had also been glorious.
Or had it?
For the Bane, yes. Had it been glorious for Pearlpelt?
He supposed it didn't matter now. Not much mattered anymore.
His memories didn’t heed his apathy - even as he died, his life replayed before him in sharp detail.
He and Razor, playing, the older rat laughing as the Bane jealously guarded a small piece of bone he'd been gnawing on before scooping up the young rodent and cradling him protectively.
Why did you die? I didn’t push you that hard!
But no one…no one could know about it, and then they did, then they did…
Then there was a beautiful voice, much lighter than Razor’s, the one that raised him from his despondency and reminded him what he was born to be.
She had died too…but she, she had deserved it. She’d spewed nothing but lies…or had she? Had she loved him? Had any of them loved him? Had he been too strong for all of them? He’d just wanted what he needed, what he deserved, to feverishly prove that he was worthy of their devotion and their respect and their trust, all those things that the small, crying child carried away by a human had never gotten the chance to know...
The Bane never apologized for what he did. Such things were beneath a king. But even kings were children once. Even kings could feel regret, when they remembered how to be someone besides the paw of power.
Pearlpelt’s last thoughts went out - to all those he had hurt, to Ratriff, to Clawsin, to Twirltongue even, and to Razor most of all.
I’m sorry.