Work Text:
“That’s Spottedleaf,” Graypaw whispers to him from the base of the stone Bluestar is speaking from. He must have followed Rusty’s gaze — the she-cat sits straight and poised, and her warm gaze is narrowed in his direction. Rusty meets it; Spottedleaf does not look away.
“Odd,” Graypaw mumbles, and Rusty breaks eye contact to look at his new acquaintance instead. “She never looks at anyone.”
“Anyone?” Rusty can’t wrap his mind around that.
“Seers,” Graypaw scoffs, as if that explains anything. “Now that dark cat — yeah, the unfriendly-looking one. Darkstripe. My older brother, unfortunately enough.”
Rusty tries to shake himself. “Unfortunately?” he asks. He can’t seem to stop asking questions.
“Yeah, a real piece of work,” Graypaw grouses. “I wouldn’t hang around him if I were you. He’s kind of…”
Graypaw’s voice drifts as Rusty turns to look at the pretty dappled she-cat the gray apprentice had named before. Her gaze is still on him. It’s a little vacant, a little unnerving, but unquestionably welcoming.
When he meets the honey-warm gaze again, Spottedleaf smiles.
—
Firepaw has only been an apprentice for a moment when he meets Tigerclaw. Well. When Tigerclaw drags a lifeless corpse into camp, that is.
Ravenpaw is slumped at the base of the (and he knows what it’s called now!) Highrock, his eyes glassy and staring; the ‘seer,’ Spottedleaf, is crouched over him, poised and perfectly still except for the efficiency of her paws, not even looking in the direction of the cat who can’t be saved; and Firepaw’s experiencing the first moment of tragedy Bluestar had warned him of.
Firepaw’s eyes narrow as he takes in the dead cat — a tortoiseshell, with a long red tail and a mottled, dark body. There are muscles beneath his pelt, but he seems smaller than the living cats surrounding him. He wonders if Redtail was bigger in life, or if he’d always been small. Firepaw likes the thought of that, even though the ginger patches near the cat’s throat have gone dark crimson with his own blood. Perhaps no matter what size you are, you can make a difference — enough, even, to become deputy of your Clan.
Or… perhaps no matter who you are, you’re destined to die.
—
“What does that plant do?” Firepaw asks as Spottedleaf smears something thick onto the wound on Ravenpaw’s shoulder.
Spottedleaf freezes, her flicking tail going suddenly still. It’s almost as if she isn’t a living cat at all — even her sides go quiet, her warm gaze wide and shocked. “Don’t ask that,” she breathes eventually. “Don’t ever ask that.”
Firepaw backs up a step. “What?” he asks. Spottedleaf had been nothing but kind, even if she hadn’t let him in the clearing until the plant-mixing was done. What had he done wrong? Was he already screwing everything up?
Ravenpaw is trembling in his nest. His eyes are lowered, taking in his paws.
“You must not learn anything that happens here,” Spottedleaf says seriously. “The only cats permitted to learn are seers. This is StarClan’s law. Do you understand, Firepaw?”
Firepaw’s brow furrows. “Why? What would happen to me?”
Spottedleaf’s gaze is sad. “You would be banished,” she says softly. “Clawed and cast out, cursed to wander away from the Clans forever.”
“But—why?”
Spottedleaf opens her mouth, then closes it. “I wish Featherwhisker were here,” she says.
It’s nonsense to Firepaw’s ears, but the young seer will say no more.
—
“You’ve got to stop visiting Spottedleaf,” Graypaw says one evening as they tuck into their prey.
“What?” Firepaw manages through a bite of mouse. “Why? She’s nice.”
“Yeah, she’s nice,” Graypaw says, pushing his partially-eaten robin to the side. “But you’re enough of a pariah already, okay? She’s the other pariah. You’ll feed off of each other. And you know Tigerclaw and his cronies would love to see you sent back to Twolegplace—”
Firepaw bristles. “Are you serious?” he asks. “You want me to stop visiting my friend because you’re worried about my social status?”
“Well…” Graypaw looks away, gaze guilty.
“It’s stupid, anyway,” Firepaw grouses. “Why does everyone avoid her? She’s a good cat. She heals cats, Graypaw. What could possibly be more valuable than that?”
Graypaw’s expression turns thunderous. “I’m just trying to help you!” he says. “I’m basically your only real friend, and you’re throwing away my help to go visit the cat who could get you banished with a single word!”
“I can decide who my friends are,” Firepaw grates out. He grabs his mouse up, anger sparking along his spine, and stalks across the clearing.
“Where are you going?” Graypaw demands.
Firepaw snorts. “Figure it out!” he spits, and takes a sharp left toward the seer’s den.
—
“I’m getting tired of all these different schedules,” Firepaw complains as he’s pulled out of his nest by Ravenpaw, whose face is scrunched with anxiety. “Do apprentices normally get shuffled from mentor to mentor?”
“Only the kittypets,” Dustpaw spits from his own nest, looking even more displeased with Firepaw’s existence than usual. “And it’s past dawn. Tigerclaw is going to kill you both — but at least you got a lie-in,” he adds sarcastically.
“Ravenpaw’s not a kittypet,” Firepaw says dumbly.
“Yeah, but he is a weakling.”
Behind Dustpaw, Cherrypaw rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. “Calm down, Dusty,” she mutters, her bright green eyes narrowed against the early-morning sunshine. “I can smell your insecurity from here.”
Firepaw shuffles closer to the exit and the safety of camp beyond it, but Dustpaw blocks him in the den with his tail. Firepaw winces.
“Can you at least try to be sympathetic?” Dustpaw asks, acid in his tone. “Redtail hasn’t even been dead a moon.”
“You’re not the only apprentice who’s lost their mentor,” Cherrypaw hisses. “I’m sorry Redtail is gone, really, I am. But we’re meant to go on, not keep on wallowing in the past like drowned rats.”
“Say that to me when Willowpelt is dead!” Dustpaw shoots back.
“You mean your former mentor’s sister?” Cherrypaw asks, tucking her chin onto her paws. “Oh, I bet she’d be thrilled to hear about how you wish for her whole litter’s early demise.”
“You wouldn’t do th—” Dustpaw starts.
“Shut up!” Sandpaw interjects. She’s on her paws in one smooth movement, her fur spiked and paws splayed. “I didn’t talk about your parents’ deaths like it was a game!”
Firepaw takes a step back. Redtail was Sandpaw’s father?
Cherrypaw winces. “Sorry, Sandpaw,” she says.
“Yeah, sorry,” Dustpaw echoes. “But—”
“Shut up,” Sandpaw repeats, sagging. The words sound more like a whispered suggestion this time, but the entire den seems to hold its breath anyway, appropriately cowed. “My littermate and then my father. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Tigerclaw got Oakheart,” Graypaw tries. “Justice has been done.”
“Has it?” Sandpaw wonders bleakly. “Does it matter if it was?”
Ravenpaw, pressed to the side of the den, is silent.
Firepaw opens his mouth, but what can he say? He hadn’t even known they were related. In hindsight it’s fairly obvious — they both have the same sloping muzzles, pricked ears, and thick-furred tails — but he’d only ever known Redtail in death.
“‘Shut up’ includes you, kittypet,” Sandpaw says, but there’s not much of a bite to her words. Firepaw winces anyway.
A great head forces its way into the den, amber eyes narrowed. “What are you mouse-brains doing?” he rumbles. Annoyance laces his voice like vines might cover a tree. Ravenpaw jumps nearly into the roof of the den; Firepaw only slinks toward him, tail tucked between his legs. “Well?”
“Nothing,” Sandpaw says. “They were just worried about being late.”
“They are late,” Tigerclaw grumbles, but his head disappears and his heavy pawsteps grow distant.
Firepaw stares at Sandpaw, his jaw agape.
“What are you looking at?” she asks, some spirit coming back to her voice. “Get out of here before I kill you myself.”
—
“Why isn’t Spottedleaf allowed to talk about the plants she’s using to heal?” Firepaw blurts out one morning he has Tigerclaw again. He should have waited, of course, until he had Whitestorm or Lionheart or literally anyone else, but he’s never been great at timing.
Firepaw winces in anticipation as Tigerclaw looks at him. His eyes are the color of sunrise, but his gaze is colder than the depths of winter. “If you can’t figure that much out,” he spits, “then maybe you should run along home, kittypet.”
“I just don’t understand,” Firepaw says. He doesn’t flinch, but the blood churns slow in his legs. “Shouldn’t we know… basic medicine? So we can…” he trails off.
Tigerclaw smiles. The air around them feels cold cold cold, like Firepaw’s whiskers are frozen through and about to give way. “Learn, then,” he says casually. “Steal the secrets of the seers. I’ll take pleasure watching Bluestar carve the symbol of traitors into your muzzle.”
—
“Heard you found another seer,” Spottedleaf says as Firepaw slinks into the area surrounding her den. She pushes a bundle of something — Firepaw doesn’t look too closely — into a crevice in the ancient stone walls of her den. “It’s like you’re a… what did you say? Magnet?”
“Yeah,” Firepaw answers. He knows he’s sulking, can hear it in his voice, but can’t help it. “A magnet for seers and a magnet for trouble. Bluestar’s put me in charge of Yellowstorm for the foreseeable future.”
Spottedleaf winces. “A tough punishment. Yellowstorm has never been… easy to deal with.” She hesitates. “Does she have the scars?”
“She has a lot of scars,” Firepaw says, blinking. “Which ones do you mean?”
“Crossed, struck against her muzzle.”
“Oh!” Firepaw bounces on his paws. “Yes! She has those. They look pretty fresh.”
Spottedleaf’s face falls. “I didn’t think… no, she couldn’t have.” Despite the denial, her expression screams conflict.
“Couldn’t have?”
Spottedleaf hesitates. Her eyes narrow. “Those are exile marks, Firepaw. There is every chance she has stolen the secrets of the seers.”
“But she’s just a grumpy old cat!”
“Maybe,” Spottedleaf acquiesces. “I hope so. But — don’t get too close, Firepaw, okay? Not until we know her true intentions.”
“You say that like I haven’t been told to take care of her for who knows how long,” he responds wryly.
Spottedleaf gives a rare laugh. It hangs in the air, as musical as the finest birdsong. “True,” she relents, and smiles. “So, you need my help?”
Firepaw winces. “Sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Spottedleaf says. “It’s ancient law. I’m sure you’d do an admirable job.”
Firepaw scrunches his nose. “You don’t have to act like that.”
The tortoiseshell flinches. “Like what?”
“Like you’re Bluestar’s age. You’re not much older than I am. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
Spottedleaf relaxes. “If only that were true,” she says, but then she cuffs Firepaw over the ear with one paw.
“Hey!” Firepaw yelps.
Spottedleaf retreats from the den, the previously-hidden bundle held delicately in her mouth. She glances back at him, eyes sparkling with mirth, before disappearing into the camp at large.
Firepaw grins for long after she’s gone.
—
“Highstones, huh?” Spottedleaf asks. “Quite an honor for a cat so young. You know, on my first trip to Highstones, I had to walk uphill in fox-high snow both ways…”
Firepaw shoves her. “Oh, shut it,” he says. “You’re acting like an elder.”
Spottedleaf affects a startled expression. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
“One-eye described her entire life to me the other day,” Firepaw says. “Complete with a story about fighting for Sunningrocks in badger-high snow every quarter-moon.”
Spottedleaf winces. “Yeah, you think I’d be immune to it, but any time I take mouse-b—I mean mice,” she corrects herself hastily, “to the elders, you’d think I was sent to listen to every story under the stars.”
Firepaw passes the mistake around in his head for a moment before pushing it away. “So you know exactly what I’m talking about!” he accuses. “You act like you’re a responsible adult, but really—oof!”
Spottedleaf tackles him to the ground, and they go rolling in the hard-packed earth and soft grasses of the outside of her den. Firepaw scrabbles for a moment, but then relaxes into the kit-game, grinning as he fends off the bats of her paws. “I’ve got you now!” she laughs, pinning him into the dirt.
Moons of warrior training have left Firepaw’s own muscles hardened, and he could push her off, but — but this is a game, and this is the youngest Spottedleaf’s ever acted, even though she’s still lanky and apprentice-proportioned, with the last of her kitten-fluff hanging on for dear life at the sides of her face. So he doesn’t.
And then Graypaw steps in, a Firepaw! on his tongue and then shock in his eyes. Spottedleaf freezes, slipping once again into something old, to something other.
“Graypaw,” she says, her tone neutral. “Come for your traveling herbs?”
And that is that.
—
Firepaw stares at Bluestar’s body, bloodied and broken in the mud. He keens, grief filling him like the rain gluts the river, but his voice is not joined.
The others watch as Bluestar’s body grows cold. They do not make a move.
Firepaw scrambles back as the lifeless body seizes, dead eyes forced into white, unnatural light. “You knew!” he accuses his companions, and blank gazes stare back.
“Did you really think that the stars don’t protect the ones they love?”
Firepaw learns that 'nine lives' wasn’t just another fairytale Henry had put in his head.
—
“Why can’t you tell me?” Firepaw asks after the dust has settled, after Lionheart has been buried and after the wounded have been treated. Spottedleaf is gazing at him with tired, nervous eyes, her dappled face slightly scrunched as if in anticipation of something terrible. “What if what happened to Bluestar happens again? What if we could save her? What if we could save anyone?”
Spottedleaf sighs. “Then you have to let her go,” she says. “You have to let anyone go. You can’t—” she breaks off, looks furtively to the side. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“Why not?” Firepaw demands. “No one’s ever in here unless they’re sick and injured. You must be lonely. I just… want to understand, that’s all. I think you’re nice.”
“In a bit of a creepy way?” Spottedleaf asks. Her tone has the lilt of a joke, but her eyes are serious and hard.
“No,” Firepaw denies. “I mean, you can be kind of vacant… and, uh, not… well… all there? But you’ve never looked down on me from where I came from. You're my friend.”
A tilt of her head. “Is that so rare?” she wonders.
“Yes,” Firepaw sighs out. It feels like cold relief, letting it out in the open. “Especially since Bluestar took me on. It’s like — it’s like they expect me to fail even more now, if that’s even possible. And they hate that I’m Bluestar’s apprentice. I don’t understand. Even the friendlier cats can’t help but bring up my origins every few heartbeats. It’s exhausting.”
Spottedleaf smiles, but there’s no mockery to it. “I can understand that. No, really, I can,” she adds to Firepaw’s skeptical glance. “Seers… live apart from the Clan. We lose our families; we never have true friends. I can’t speak about my life, what I do and what I’ve learned, because…” she slumps.
It’s an odd way to see the normally-poised cat, and Firepaw unconsciously flinches back.
“My family…” Spottedleaf starts. “I had one, once. But when you’re… when you’re claimed by the seers, that goes away. Not fully,” she adds, “but when you can’t — when you aren’t the same…”
“Who’s your family?” Firepaw asks, wide-eyed. “Are they still alive? Or… can you tell me that?”
Spottedleaf hesitates. “I can,” she says eventually. “I’m not sure what it’ll change, but — well, I’m Sandpaw’s littermate.” Another hesitation. “Redtail was my father. Runningwind is the other.”
Firepaw’s mouth drops open. “What?”
“We don’t talk about it, because seers… seers are different,” she says. “We’re not… we can’t be with our families, not truly, because what if we give something away? What if we tell someone something they shouldn’t know, and then we have to send them away, speak them their rites, watch our leaders scar them? Never—never see them again,” she adds helplessly.
Firepaw swallows. It feels like there’s a stone lodged in his throat. But—“Why do you have your name when Sandpaw doesn’t?”
“My mentor died early,” she says. “Featherwhisker. I had to step up. He was… he was so young. Most of us are, when we die. We hold all of the knowledge to heal. Why not target us?”
“I’m sorry.”
Spottedleaf laughs mirthlessly. “So am I. It’s lonely, you know? I have no one to speak to without constantly biting my tongue. I wish I could tell you,” she adds. “I wish I could tell you everything.”
“But you can’t,” Firepaw finishes.
“But I can’t,” Spottedleaf confirms. “It’s StarClan’s will. And… I fear, Firepaw. I fear my destiny is coming sooner than anyone can think.”
Firepaw feels suddenly cold. “Your… destiny?”
“My death,” Spottedleaf sighs. “And what happens when I’m gone? When there is no one to heal, no one to carry the sacred knowledge?”
“You’re not going to die,” Firepaw denies.
Spottedleaf grins. It’s a tired, world-weary sort of smile, as if she doesn’t believe a thing of what he says. “We all die,” she says, pressing her nose to his cheek. “Some of us just die sooner than others.”
“You’re barely older than me!”
The tortoiseshell she-cat shakes her head fondly. “I will follow StarClan’s will,” she says. “But if you can save me — I would like to live to see something through.”
“What’s that?”
Spottedleaf’s eyes sparkle with the secret she holds. She presses her paw across her muzzle, flicks her ears, and then dissolves into giggles.
Firepaw joins her, but a weight settles heavy on his shoulder. He has to save her. He must.
How can he?
—
“Sandpaw,” he whispers one night when everyone is asleep. “Sandpaw!”
Blearily, the pale ginger she-cat opens one green eye. “What is it, kittypet?” she asks, but the word lacks the vitriol he’d once expected. She’s… half-hearted about her taunts these days, if she even taunts him at all. “Well?” Sandpaw prods at his silence.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Sandpaw’s lip curls. “About what?” she demands. “About how you make as much sense as a squirrel with a head injury?”
“That’s just it!” Firepaw says.
Sandpaw blinks rapidly. The other eye opens. “It is?” she asks incredulously.
“No—I mean, you spoke about an injury. Just then,” he says.
Sandpaw sighs. “Is there a point to any of this?”
“You didn’t tell me that you were Spottedleaf’s sister,” Firepaw accuses.
“That’s what you’re upset about?” Sandpaw hisses. “StarClan, you didn’t have to wake me up about it. It’s common knowledge.”
“Not to me,” Firepaw insists. “I didn’t even know she was our age, Sandpaw, she’s so young—”
“You have the observational skills of Darkstripe when he’s mooning after Tigerclaw,” his companion complains. “We eat together sometimes. She says ‘hello’ to Runningwind in the mornings.”
“But that isn’t normal for a family,” Firepaw says. “Well—at least one here? Cherrypaw and Dustpaw and Ravenpaw—”
“Are a normal family,” Sandpaw says. “When Spottedleaf was selected—well, that future ended, okay? It ended, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Her voice rises, strained and painful in the confines of the den. “I try to talk to her, but she can’t talk about anything. I should have been chosen instead,” Sandpaw spits. “She was always a gentler soul than I am. I could have taken it.”
“And she can’t?”
“Her mentor died when she was eight moons old,” Sandpaw hisses. “She has no one she can really speak to except at the half-moon, unless she wants to risk one of us getting banished. And she didn’t even get to mourn our father when he died, because seers are discouraged from those ties. It’s like we didn’t—it’s like our kithoods didn’t even matter, because I look at her and I see a stranger with my sister’s face!”
“Oh,” Firepaw says. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” Sandpaw hisses, and then deflates. “Look. I appreciate you trying to be friends with her. Taking what she can give,” she adds, “even if it isn’t a lot.”
“Is that why you haven’t been trying to set me on fire with your gaze anymore?” Firepaw wonders.
Sandpaw looks askance. “It’s hard to be angry about someone who cares about your sister,” she says, “especially when your sister doesn’t have anyone.”
“She has you,” Firepaw hedges.
Sandpaw’s gaze drops. “Not really. Not the way either of us want.”
“I’m sorry,” Firepaw repeats.
“Burn the stars,” Sandpaw says suddenly. It’s the most blasphemous thing he’s heard in Clan life so far, and he reels back in his nest. “I’d give anything to have my sister back. Anything.”
“She’s still here,” Firepaw points out. “Just… different.”
“She wouldn’t have had to be,” Sandpaw grates out. “Bluestar was going to mentor her. Did you know that? Leaders usually mentor the deputy’s kits and none other. She probably would’ve taken me, but Whitestorm—” she breaks off.
“I took your birthright,” Firepaw realizes, horrified.
Sandpaw sighs. “No,” she says reluctantly. “Nothing was stolen from me. Nothing except Spottedleaf.”
—
“So did you steal them? The secrets?”
Yellowstorm opens one orange eye, gazing over at Cinderkit disdainfully. “No,” she says.
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Yellowstorm says, “and everything.”
“What does that mean?” Cinderkit asks.
Yellowstorm narrows the eye consideringly, as if she sees something Firepaw can’t. “Maybe it’ll mean something to you, one day. That day isn’t today,” she adds when Cinderkit starts leaping into the air like a grasshopper.
Cinderkit’s face falls. “Oh,” she says. “When?”
“That’s Spottedleaf’s prerogative, not mine.”
“But Spottedleaf—” Firepaw interrupts, realizing where Yellowstorm is going.
Yellowstorm turns the eye on him, studying him as Frostfur bundles Cinderkit away. “Is young,” she finishes. “Death comes for us all, Firepaw. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Spottedleaf is right.”
Firepaw’s teeth clench.
“Ah, I thought as much. You know what she knows, don’t you?”
“Not any secrets,” Firepaw defends.
“Not the ones that would get you exiled, no,” Yellowstorm agrees. “But important ones all the same, wouldn’t you say?”
“I won’t let her die.”
“I admire your loyalty,” the grizzled gray cat sighs out, “but no one controls death, not even the seers. You’ve learned to love — now learn to let go.”
“I won’t.”
“You will, no matter what happens. You’ll have to. Whether it comes by water or by flame — well, only time will tell.”
—
Firepaw tugs a thrush from the fresh-kill pile near sunhigh, his stomach gurgling at the smell of the bird’s flesh beneath his nose. He looks around furtively, trying to find a partner — Graypaw is still out with Darkstripe and Dustpaw, and Ravenpaw… well, who knew where Ravenpaw was.
“Firepaw!” a voice comes from across the clearing.
Firepaw’s brow furrows. Was that — yes, that was Sandpaw. His denmate lounges in the shade of the apprentices’ den, accompanied by… by Spottedleaf.
Firepaw trots over, his head tilted in confusion. “Are you sure?” he asks, spitting out the bird. “I don’t want to interrupt."
Spottedleaf grins crookedly up at him. “It was Sandpaw’s idea, actually,” she says.
“Spottedleaf!”
“It’s the truth,” she says. “I’m glad you two are friends. It’s — it means a lot to me.”
Firepaw and Sandpaw look askance at each other; Firepaw nods minutely as Sandpaw does, and he sits beside her. They’re not quite friends, but they’re not quite enemies either, and they both want to make Spottedleaf happy.
Spottedleaf grins at them. “So, tell me! How’s training going? Has Whitestorm taught you that spinning move yet, Sandpaw? I know how excited you were about—”
Firepaw settles into the dynamic like warmth against Sunningrocks. He smiles to himself as he eats, and wonders if he and Sandpaw could actually be friends.
After all, Spottedleaf believes in them.
—
“It’s coming,” Spottedleaf says, taking Firepaw aside one otherwise unremarkable morning. “I want you to know—” she breaks off. “I want you to know that you were the best part of my life. I’ll miss you.”
“What? Spottedleaf, no—”
“I can’t change fate,” Spottedleaf says. “But you — you, Firepaw, are fate. Listen closely: Fire alone can save our Clan.”
“You’re not going to die,” Firepaw says sharply, the effort of keeping himself quiet straining his voice. “If you say I’m fate, then I can change it. I can!”
“My life has been written since birth,” Spottedleaf whispers. “This is what it means to be a seer. It’ll be okay, Firepaw. I promise you — you’ll be okay.”
“Not without you. I’m not leaving you, Spottedleaf. You’re not going anywhere. I promise.”
He has plans to keep this promise for the rest of the moon, for the rest of the season-cycle, for the rest of his life if he has to. And then ShadowClan attacks ThunderClan camp, and they’re separated in the chaos.
In the end, he’s only able to keep his promise for the course of an afternoon.
—
It’s approaching sunset when Firepaw finds her body. She’s tucked into a crevice behind the nursery, half-concealed by the thorns that should have kept predators at bay; blood dries underneath her and on her side, dried rivulets marring the ginger and disappearing into the black. Her face is frozen into something like courage, something like defiance, something like knowing. And she did know, didn’t she, that this was coming?
But she couldn’t prevent it. And for all of his promises, all of his hopes, Firepaw couldn’t prevent it either.
He places a tentative paw on her flank, where he could feel if she yet breathed. He knows she doesn’t; he can taste the beginnings of rot in the air, the smell of death not yet covered by lavender and thyme, but he hopes. He hopes, but his friend’s pelt is cool in the warm night anyway. “Spottedleaf,” he breathes, voice breaking, and collapses over this cat who had been his friend, this cat who he had cared for and loved and comforted, this cat who had not even seen her own littermate’s warrior ceremony.
Spottedleaf’s blood smears onto his pelt, the cold of it shocking after all of the sheer warmth of her life — her bright, honey-warm eyes are dull in death, a flat abyss void of any spark, any remembrance of who she’d once been. He stares into them for a moment, longing for something — anything — to form in their depths, but finds nothing.
She deserves the honor of having her eyes closed by one who loves her, by the one who found her first, but he can’t make himself do it. He can’t—he can’t take away the one thing that makes him think that maybe this is a dream, maybe he’ll wake up and visit the seer’s den and listen to her carefully-curated stories, herbs tucked away where he can’t memorize their scents. Instead he wails, long and low, alerting the Clan of what he’s found. He closes his eyes over the murmurs growing closer, the agitation he can feel in the air, and instead concentrates on how she’d felt when she was alive, when she wasn’t lifeless and cold, when she hadn’t been slaughtered like prey for daring to try to protect her Clan’s kits.
Spottedleaf had been right, and Firepaw had failed. Her destiny had been coming, and she had met it with honor. But it didn’t matter now, did it? She was still dead, lying warm-still-warm on the ground, only truly cool because Firepaw knows what her pelt is supposed to feel like, how her warm breath on his ear would tickle the fur within, how she’d blink at him and smile, lazy in the only way she ever was.
She’s young. She was young. She’s dead.
The Clan pours in, a trickle and then a raging stream, and he can hear Sandpaw dissolve into sobs, hear Runningwind’s choked attempts at comforting his remaining daughter while looking over the corpse of the other.
Forcefully, Firepaw opens his eyes to see Bluestar’s shocked, guarded eyes; to see Whitestorm’s pinched, hopeless face; to see terror flash through Ravenpaw’s entire body like lightning.
Bluestar’s gaze rises slowly from Spottedleaf’s body to Firepaw’s eyes.
Firepaw nods; he knows what he must do. Reluctantly, excruciatingly, he heaves himself from his Clan’s only seer, the only herb-knower, the only lore-carrier, the only reader-of-signs. He forces himself not to look back as he exits, and though he feels the weight of Spottedleaf’s blood on his chest and belly fur, he wears it as a reminder of the horror that shouldn’t have come to pass.
He wears it as he bids farewell to yet another friend. He wears it into ShadowClan. He wears it as he adds a few more marks to Clawface’s pelt. He wears it as he addresses ShadowClan, weary and cold-too-cold, down to his bones and into the marrow. He wears it as he gains his warrior name, Fireheart.
Does he deserve the name? Does he really? He’d promised to protect her, had sworn that she would live, that she would find an apprentice, that she would love and lose but come out the other side, and now she was dead and buried, Fireheart’s last image of her the cat pricked by thorns meant for protection, never harm; the cat whose throat was torn and pelt was shredded and whose claws bore the signs of a cat who had gone down fighting; the cat who had quietly accepted him into ThunderClan with joy and without a whisper of dissent or prejudice.
She had been a fighter. Fireheart has to remember her that way. Wouldn’t any other way be forgetting? She had tried to show him what she could without breaking the laws she was bound by, had tried to protect her Clan before the grave she knew was coming claimed her. Could Fireheart have been so brave?
He sits his vigil silently, not meeting Graystripe’s eyes. Instead, he counts the stars above, trying to find one that might… might be new, might be hers.
He finds nothing.
How do the Clanborn cats handle it, he wonders, this life where cats can be promoted too soon, where isolation is the way of those who make up the Clan’s beating heart, where a young cat can see her own death coming and face it without fear?
It’s—senseless, he decides.
Incomprehensible.